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SS\NG of
THE AMERICAN
'By MONROE ROYCE

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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN

THE PASSING OF
THE AMERICAN

By
MONROE ROYCE • • •
Author of " Americans in Europe," Etc.

New York
THOMAS WHITTAKER (Inc.)
1911

COPYBIGHT, 1911,
By G. MONROE ROYCE

Entered at Stationer's Hall, London, England

Right of Translation Reserved

COMPOSITION, ELECTROTYP1NG, AND PRINTING BY
PUBLISHERS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK, U.S.A.

PREFACE
"Ix fifty years from now New York will be
what the Italians make it." I take this state
ment from a circular written by an Italian and
distributed at the New York Diocesan Episco
pal Convention held on November 9th and 10th,
1910. This paper was printed and circulated
by authority of some of the most prominent New
York churchmen, including the Rector of Trin
ity Church, the Archdeacon of New York and
the Bishop of the Diocese. The object of this
circular was to solicit aid in establishing a relig
ious periodical for the special propagation of
Episcopal Church views amongst Italians. The
circular states that "there are already nine hun
dred thousand Italians in Greater New York";
and I suppose the Germans. Slavs, Scandina
vians, and other peoples, either foreign born or
of foreign origin — that is, without American
parentage or tradition — constitute at least two
and a half million more. This will leave, at the
very highest estimate, one million native-born
Americans. In other and plainer words, the
Metropolitan city of America is not quite one-

PREFACE

fifth American.* This is rather startling. For
it is perfectly plain that if one-half of these non-
American peoples should get together and agree
as touching any matter whatsoever, they could
easily accomplish their purpose.
What is true in Greater New York will soon,
very soon, be true in New England, and, in a
few more generations — judging from the present
trend of things — it will be true throughout the
whole United States of America.
What do we think of the prospect ? We, the
offspring of the "Pilgrim Fathers" of New Eng
land and the cavaliers of Virginia ? Whatever we
may think of it, one thing is certain, we must
face it, and the sooner we face it the better.
Not, I trust, in any hostile spirit to the stranger
within our gates, but from a feeling of sheer
self-preservation. What then are we going to do about it ? First
of all it will, I think, be well to find out, if we
can, how this truly extraordinary if not alarm
ing state of things has come to pass. And next
how we native Americans may hope to keep
some footing, however small, some influence
and power, however much diminished, in shap-
* Since writing these words I have heard the Rector of St.
George's Church, New York, say at a public dinner that "in
the population of Greater New York there is only one native
American to twenty foreigners." I quote this to show that I
am disposed to understate rather than overstate the case.
6

PREFACE

ing the destinies of our fatherland. This is now,
so I think, almost the chief patriotic duty of
every true American.
It is true, of course, that the hopes, and fears,
and aims of all American citizens, whatever
their place of birth, are, or should be, one, with
out regard to race or descent. But it is also true
that we Americans, who inherit the blood, the
traditions, and the ideals of the founders of the
Republic, have a fiduciary responsibility for the
future character of the nation, which cannot
attach — in the same degree at least — to those
who have arrived later on these ever hospitable
shores; and whose traditions and ideals are,
and in the nature of things must be, different
from and less homogeneous than those of the
native-born citizens.
It is not then to any party or race spirit that I
appeal, but to a broad and deep patriotism, a
patriotism that shall seek to direct this vast
democratic nation in the true spirit of its found
ers; and the true interests of all the people.
For it is not possible that these millions of im
migrants, compounded of all races and nations,
cut loose from the restraints of home, and law,
and religion; without education in the science
of government, and without anything like an
adequate knowledge of the theory, to say noth
ing of the practice, of the government of this
country — I say it is not possible for such citi-

PREFACE

zens, — if citizens they can properly be called, —
to act wisely, either for the public good, or for
their own special wellbeing.
We native Americans have therefore, I re
peat, a fiduciary responsibility from which we
should not shirk, however much we may be mis
understood and misjudged by these strangers
who throng our portals. For we hold in trust
the ideals of government, of morals, and of re
ligion, handed down to us by our forebears.
New Yoek, April, 1911.

INTRODUCTION
I returned to America a year and a half
ago, after an absence of twelve years in Europe.
I stopped in New York at an hotel opposite
Grace Church, and after securing quarters I
walked up Broadway to Fourteenth Street. It
was the midday meal hour, and the streets were
thronged with all sorts and conditions of men,
and yet not one word of English did I hear
spoken from Tenth to Fourteenth Streets. The
first impression stunned me and I found myself
in a dazed condition, unable to adjust myself
to my surroundings, and actually doubting the
reality of the scene about me. I walked on to
Union Square. The benches were fuil of men
and women, and as I passed by them I listened,
but no word of our national tongue did I hear,
and I returned to my hotel wondering what it
all meant. The next day was Sunday, and I
spent the afternoon in the Bronx Park. I
arrived by the Third Avenue Elevated, entered
at the eastern gate, and walked through the
park to the Botanical Gardens. The park was
full of people, young and old. I asked my way
six times, and in every case save one was an
swered in a foreign voice, and in two cases in a
9

INTRODUCTION

foreign tongue. Even the officials, those at
least to whom I spoke, were of foreign origin.
I spent the entire afternoon, from half-past two
to half-past six, walking about and observing,
and I am convinced that in all this vast multi
tude of men, women, and children there was not
one in ten American, either by birth or descent.
On another Sunday, some months later, I spent
an afternoon in Central Park, and listened to
an out-door concert or musical festival, in which
at least five hundred Germans took part, and
there was nothing but an occasional American
flag to remind me that I was in my native land;
and I should say that the proportion of Amer
ican-born people present was even less than on
my earlier visit to the Bronx. And moreover,
let me say in passing, that I do not believe it
would be possible in the whole of America to
get together so large a number of native singers.
My experiences in and around New York de
termined me to go further afield, and for the
last twelve months, and more, I have been mov
ing about, north, south, east, and west, making
the observations, acquiring the experiences, and
gathering the data which form the basis of this
volume. This recent experience and study, added to a
very wide previous knowledge of my native
land, have, I venture to think, fitted me in a
somewhat special manner to see and appreciate
10

INTRODUCTION

the rapid, vast, and truly alarming changes
which have taken place in American life and
character during the last twenty, or even ten
years. These changes are of course seen and
recognized by all observant and serious-minded
people; but they are seen with a more vivid, a
more startling distinctness by one who, like
myself, has been away from this country for a
dozen years or more.
The situation in New England I found even
more changed than in New York State, outside
of Manhattan. Let me give a few facts to illus
trate what I mean. Waterbury, Connecticut,
has a population of about thirty thousand,
twenty thousand being aliens. Even in the
classic towns of New Haven and Hartford — the
seats of long-established colleges with their
aristocratic associations — the non- American pop
ulation is growing with a rapidity which, if con
tinued for another decade or so, will outnumber
the native inhabitants. There has been some
thing like a special exodus of lusty young men
from southern Italy to these conservative Yankee
towns during the last four years. Boston and
Lowell have long since been practically in the
hands of foreigners, if they did but know it.
And they will know it sooner or later. The
only care of these people now is to make a liv
ing and to get a stake in the new land. They
have no time, therefore, at present, for social
11

INTRODUCTION

or political matters, and they leave these things
for the nonce to the natives. But when they
feel their feet firmly planted in this new land
they will then turn to social and political ques
tions, and make a short shrift of the Yankees
that are left.
But parts of New Jersey are even more hope
lessly de-Americanized than is New England.
Perth Amboy is at least three to one non-Amer
ican in the character of its inhabitants, and this
has come to pass almost wholly within the last
ten years. Cincinnati and Milwaukee have
virtually been German cities for a quarter of a
century, and Chicago hardly less so. But the
German is a homogeneous population with
habits and ideals similar to our own, and with
an intelligence even superior to the native pop
ulation, and taken all in all they constitute the
very best element in our national body politic,
and the more we have of them the better, for we
have nothing to fear and everything to hope
from the Teutonic immigrant, who is our own
kinsman. But, unfortunately, the Slav and
Latin races are now sending vastly more people
to our shores than the Teutonic. German im
migration in fact has nearly ceased.
After the first shock caused by the startling
changes I saw on every hand, I began to look
about me with more deliberation and discrim
ination; and the first thing I found was the fact
12

INTRODUCTION

that nearly all the work — manual labor I mean
— in town and country is being done by the
foreigner * — that is, by men and women without
American birth or descent. I have been at
some pains to investigate this matter, and I
find, for example, that in the work of loading
and unloading steamers and all kinds of ocean
and river craft, in New York, Boston, Phila
delphia, and Baltimore, there are hardly ten per
cent of Americans employed. And this is more
or less true along the whole length of the Atlantic
and Pacific coast lines. The foreigner is doing
this work in the east, and north, and west, and
the negro in the south.
The same is true of railroad construction and
repairing, street making and cleaning, house
cleaning, etc. Nearly all the trolley conductors,
janitors, and caretakers are foreigners. Con
cerning the nationality of carpenters, masons,
painters, smiths, and other kinds of artisans,
I cannot speak with so much certainty,
but will give a little personal experience which,
while it does not furnish a very wide basis
for an induction, may serve as a straw to
show how the wind blows. I live in a bachelor
apartment in a very central part of New York
City. The agents of this apartment are Amer-
* I can think of no better word to express my meaning : and I
use the expressions "foreigner" and " alien" throughout this vol
ume with no intention to be invidious or in any way offensive.
13

INTRODUCTION

ican; the superintendent and the housekeeper
are English, and the servants employed in or
about this building of twenty-four apartments
are foreigners. The apartment was redecorated
for my reception, and the carpenters, the paint
ers, the paperhangers, etc., were all, every man
of them, foreign born. This can hardly be a
mere accident. Wherever I take a meal — in
hotel, restaurant, or private house, I am served
solely by foreigners. There is not, and never
has been, such a thing as a real native American
servant. Americans have sometimes been silly
enough to boast of this fact, but we are now be
ginning to feel that it would be a great blessing
to be surrounded in our homes by people of our
own race and nation. This would be a double
blessing; it would bless those who serve as well
as those who are served. But alas, we have no
one trained for this perfectly honorable, pleas
ant, and well-paid employment. And at least
half of the many millions paid out every year,
for domestic service, goes out of the country.
Living as I do in the chief city of America, it
seems odd that I should seldom, if ever, meet or
see Americans except in a social or professional
way; and the professions are being rapidly
filled by men of foreign names.
Now the people who do the work of a country,
if they be not slaves, will in good time possess
that land. 14

INTRODUCTION

Let me show you how this is done. Ten
years ago some Polacks settled in and about a
small Connecticut town not a hundred miles
from Manhattan island. When they first arrived
they hired themselves out as farm hands and
general laborers. To-day more than half of
these Polacks own the farms on which they once
worked as laborers. I will give the name of this
town to any one who is curious to know it, and
who will back his curiosity with a stamped
envelope containing name and address.
But I know more than one such case. I know
dozens of similar cases, have heard of many
more, and believe there are hundreds to be
found within the borders of New York and New
Jersey, to say nothing of New England and the
South. Professor Hart of Harvard has recently writ
ten his lamentations over the passing of the
old New England type. Yes, the Yankee no
longer counts in the industrial and commercial
life of New England, and in his place is to be
found the Italian, the Hungarian, the French
man, the Polack, the Scandinavian, and the
Jew, and in this change which the learned pro
fessor laments, we see a good illustration of the
scientific law, called the survival of the fittest —
a law which has no respect for races or types,
but works ruthlessly amongst all the children of
men. 15

INTRODUCTION

Under the indolence of the present-day de
generate Yankee, New England went almost
out of cultivation, fell out of the ranks of the
producers of the world, and joined the great
American army of consumers. Under the in
dustry, enterprise, and superior intelligence of
the alien, New England is being reclaimed and
brought back into the ranks of the producers
where she rightfully belongs. But New England
does not furnish the only example of the ignor
ance and inefficiency of the American as com
pared to the foreigner. I wonder whether the
reader is at all aware of the gross ignorance, in
dolence, and general inefficiency of the American
of to-day, in almost every field of industry and
commercial enterprise.
The ease with which a living of some sort
could be had in this country, up to within ten or
twenty years ago, has begot in Americans an
indolence, a careless extravagance, and a want
of thoroughness, which will bring utter ruin
upon this country, or at least upon the native
population of this country, if it is not immedi
ately seen and remedied. Extravagance has
always been, and will always be, fatal to any
nation. Thoroughness and thrift must now, and for
the future, be the watchword of the native
American if he hopes to survive in the terrific
economic battle which is now waging all over
16

INTRODUCTION

the world. Thoroughness is the essential, the
primary, the fundamental condition of success,
in this age of world-wide competition and keen
rivalry. Hence the American is being easily
outstripped, not only by the labor and enter
prise of Europe, but by the alien within his
own gates, and on his own soil.
The "Dutchman," the "Dago," and the
"Sheeney," upon whom the American has been
pleased to look with good-natured contempt, is
now showing that he is the superior of the man
who scorned him, in the simple but very neces
sary art of bread-winning. He has, in fact,
shown himself a better man than the proud
native, and bids fair to supplant him in the ex
changes and marts, as well as on the land; so
that it looks very much as if the time had come
for the American to emigrate or starve.
The American has always lived in great part
by adventure, invention, and speculation. He
is, perhaps, or has been, the quickest-witted,
most fearless, most inventive, and the most ad
venturous person the world has ever known.
But he is not, and never was, a plodder; and
doesn't like continuous hard work. But the
time has now come for these very things, and he
is found wanting, and is giving place to the dull-
witted, heavy-handed foreigner, who is willing
to work and who knows how to work. Work,
thorough, hard, continuous work, is what the
2 "

INTRODUCTION

native American is now "up against," and the
sooner he realizes this fact the better. Mr.
William S. Rossiter, writing in the December
(1910) Atlantic says: "Not only have the citi
zens of the United States been reared in an at
mosphere of individual extravagance, but they
early summoned the world to migrate to America
to aid them in exploiting their resources." And
so well has the world responded to this sum
mons, and given this aid, that the resources of
this country are even now hardly able to sup
port the population. For Mr. Rossiter goes on
to show that whilst the population is increasing
at the enormous rate of thirteen million every
decade, the productions of this country in grain
and food-supplying animals, such as cattle,
pigs, sheep, etc., are decreasing, not only in pro
portion to the multiplying population, but in
actual quantity. This cannot go on long before
we shall have the conditions of over-popula
tion such as exist in China, India, and Russia,
where a large part of the people are continually
on the edge of starvation, and where famine
and pestilence make their dire visitations al
most as regularly as the revolution of the seasons.
Are these the words of an alarmist ? If so, I am
only repeating in plain English what is being
substantially proclaimed almost every day by
men who stand high in the councils of this
nation. Dr. Butler, president of Columbia
18

INTRODUCTION

University, speaking to an association of adver
tising agents recently, is reported to have said:
"People do not understand the significance of
the late census. It means that we have gone
out of the class of Germany, France, and Eng
land, and are in a special class of the great
hoards of Russia, India, and China, peoples
whom we have looked upon as beyond our ken.
We must face the problem now of a nation with
a huge population, which is overcrowding the
land available for tillage. The day has gone by
when an American can waste every day what
would support a family in France. A man can
no longer waste one farm and then go to an
other. We must stop living on our capital, and
like other adult people live on our income."
The gentle sarcasm in the word "adult" should
not be overlooked, for the truth is we have been
living as a nation and as individuals like care
less, thoughtless, irresponsible children.
It is already becoming an interesting ques
tion, almost a mystery, how the greater majority
of the native American people find the bare
means of living. They are leaving the land in
thousands and millions. According to the late
census report, there are more than twenty-eight
million five hundred thousand (28,500,000) in
the larger towns. Of this number more than
twenty million three hundred and three thou
sand (20,303,000) reside in the larger cities of
19

INTRODUCTION

more than 100,000 population. No doubt for
eign immigration may account for a consider
able portion of this material increase in our
urban population. But the foreigner will not
account for all of it, nor half of it, and we must
go to the abandoned farms and the deserted
villages for faurther explanation of this abnor
mal, unhealthy, and dangerous condition into
which this country is fast drifting. By aban
doned farms I do not mean, wholly, farms that
have been thrown up, and left without occu
pants; but farms that have been sold, or let by
native Americans who have emigrated to the
city to live a very precarious life, and whose
children swell the ranks of the wastrels of so
ciety. Not one-tenth of the untrained country
people who desert the land for the town, can
make their way in the face of the skilled and
efficient foreigners who compete with them at
every turn. This is why I say that it is actually
becoming a mystery as to how the American
finds a living in our large towns. It is perhaps
some advantage for a family who have thriven
on the land and laid by something, to move
into the neighboring town for the educational
and social advantages which a better organized
community offers. But in every instance a son,
or some other member of the family, should
stop behind, and hold fast to the bosom of
Mother Earth, the only sure source of life and
20

INTRODUCTION

happiness. It is really tragical to see a family
pulling up their stakes from the friendly hos
pitable land that has nourished them, and cast
ing themselves upon the cold, strange, inhos
pitable, and cruel tide of a grim, bloodless, and
soulless city, where rivalry and competition
know no law, human or divine, and where none
but the strong, the fit, the efficient, can hope to
keep their feet under them.
This sort of thing must be stopped at once, or
we are lost.

*1

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAQD
Preface  5
Introduction  A
I. Jack-Of-All-Trades  25
II. Immigration  58
III. We are not Liked  64
IV. The Fatal Eloquence of Americans . . 69
V. The Discoverer of the North Pole . . 78
VI. Our Business Methods  84
VII. American Women  95
VIII. American Church Matters . . . .105
IX. Official Inefficiency  121
X. Our Statesmen  131
XI. Education  138
XII. The Passing of American Humor . . .154
XIII. The Conclusion of the Whole Matter . .179
Note  190

THE PASSING OF THE
AMERICAN

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES
When Mrs. Morse visited her convict hus
band, the New York ex-banker, in the Atlanta
prison, she found him working a typewriter,
cataloguing the books of the library, and he
told her, "I never knew before how little I
know — how little I can do any one thing well."
Millions of Americans, if as honest with them
selves as this convict banker is with himself,
would be forced to make the same humiliating
confession. Almost every European, be he servant, la
borer, farmer, artisan, clerk, or commercial
traveler; be he engaged in commerce, a profes
sion, or any other business or calling whatso
ever, knows some one thing at least, and knows
it well. It is no doubt true that the European is not
so nimble-minded or nimble-fingered as the
25

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
American, and is unable to turn his hand to so
many things; is, as we say, wanting in initia
tive. The Jack-of-all-trades has flourished in
this, as in no other country. But his day has
passed, here as elsewhere, and in the future no
man can hope to get on, "make good" in any
work, business, or profession, who has not mas
tered the principles of his avocation. The
American habit of passing from one calling to
another, without time or preparation, without
rhyme or reason, must cease — in fact has ceased;
and unless the children of the present genera
tion are well taught in some one thing at least,
the future can promise them nothing — not even
a bare existence.
We turn to Germany for lessons of thorough
ness in everything. The German is the last
court of appeal in things small, and in things
great. The Germans are the scholars of the
world, in every department of science and litera
ture, and it is beginning to look as though mere
scholarship has something to do in making a
nation. At any rate the German nation is at
the head of civilization if, as The Independent
remarks, "the production of great men may be
taken as a measure of civilization." This is not
a mere guess, nor a personal estimate; it is the
verdict of the Nobel Committees of the Swedish
Academies that award the Nobel Prizes, and it
is, I suppose, as competent and impartial a
26

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

tribunal as we are likely to get. During the
first ten years of this foundation 56 individuals
have received these prizes, in the following
national or racial order: Germany, 15; France,
10; England, 7; Holland, Russia, Italy, and
Switzerland, 4 each; Sweden, 3; Denmark,
Spain, and the United States, 2 each. One of
the prizes given to the United States is for
Peace, and ex-President Roosevelt was the re
cipient, so that there remains but one prize for
science or literature accredited to us, and even
the receiver of this prize, Professor Michelson
of Chicago University, was — let us be frank —
born in Germany. As The Independent (from
which paper I have taken the general account
of this matter) says, " If the prizes went in pro
portion to the population we should have to
have sixty-four Nobel prizes in order to match
the Dutch four," and how many, I ask, in order
to match the fifteen German prizes ? The Dutch
beat us two to one in the outward seeming, but
on closer inspection they beat us four to noth
ing, for Roosevelt received the Peace Prize cer
tainly not for eminence in science or literature,
and Professor Michelson we are forced to re
linquish to the Germans, adding one more to
their list, and taking the only man we had, or
thought we had, away from us. But how are
these great scholars, who reflect such credit
upon their nation, made or produced? Not
27

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
certainly on the Jack-of-all-trades system. We
cannot even produce them, so it would seem,
by our wonderful Yankee shrewdness. We
cannot say, "Go to, go, we must have some
Nobel prize men as well as millionaires and
promoters of trusts, for it won't do to let even
the Dutch beat us at this game." No, hard as
it seems, there is no patent right way of turning
out these national products, called great men.
And yet, after all, when one comes to think of
it, these great men are really produced in a very
simple manner. The only necessary condition
is a great nation in which they can be born,
and grow and mature; a nation with habits of
honesty, simplicity, and thoroughness. Even
the one word "thoroughness" is quite enough,
and will explain it all; for all honest work,
whether it be done by the carpenter, the farmer,
the merchant, the physicist, the philosopher, or
the preacher, must be thorough work. Thor
oughness is therefore the cause and explanation
of the masterful preponderance of Germany as
a civilized state. Let us look at the German
nation in the making, and see how it goes about
its business of producing great men. But put
ting aside civilization for the nonce, and con
sidering the mere brute powrer, or striking force,
of a nation, let us see what this national habit of
thoroughness means, how much it has to do
with, say, an army. During the Franco-German
28

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

war (1870) the illiteracy in the German Army
was, I believe, not two per cent, whilst in the
French army it was more than fifty per cent,
and the result was what might have been ex
pected from the premises.
This, however, is a digression; still, if there
must be soldiers — the necessity for which I do
not see — why not have the best ? It is a truism
that the making of a nation begins with its chil
dren — not the children of the rich and well-to-
do only, or mainly, but the children of the toil
ers, the bread-winners in all classes of society,
high and low.
The German child has to go to the public
schools until it reaches the age of fourteen years,
at least. There is no exemption from this law.
A parent cannot have a child excused for a day,
or an hour, on any ground or pretense whatso
ever. If, for example, sickness is made the plea,
either by the child or the parent, the police step
in and summon the medical officer, who has the
only authority to excuse a child on the ground
of ill-health. Even the children of aliens, re
siding temporarily in Germany, are not exempt,
and this, oddly enough for sceptical Germany,
applies to religious as well as secular instruction.
Of this I know to my sorrow. When I was
chaplain to the American Church in Munich I
undertook, at the earnest solicitation of some
American parents, who were spending the winter
29

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
in Munich, to be responsible to the educational
authorities for the religious instruction of their
children, little knowing what I was letting my
self in for. But no sooner had I intimated that
I would undertake this duty than the Minister
of Education sent me papers appointing me to
this position, and indicating the character and
scope of my duties, which were not as light as
I had regarded them. I thus suddenly found
myself under orders from the German govern
ment (my position as an accredited minister of
religion being taken as a guarantee of my char
acter and attainments) to do a special educa
tional work according to the laws and methods
of the German nation, and not in any slipshod
kind of way I might choose. For example, I
had to hold stated examinations, mark and re
port them as carefully and as honestly as though
I were a tutor in Greek or mathematics, and
not merely in the Bible. This gave me a little
taste of the way they do things — when they pre
tend to do them — in Germany. But my obser
vations went further than my personal experi
ences, and I learned that even after passing the
age of fourteen years, any boy who was look
ing to a trade of any kind had to attend the
"Continuation School" for one whole day, or
two half-days, each week until he reached the
age of eighteen years. And these hours were
not to be taken at night, after the day's work
so

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

was supposed to be done, but the time occupied
by a full day's work was taken out of the week's
work; and in many cases the employers allow
these apprentices full pay for the time spent in
the schools, and in all cases the employers co
operate with the managers of these trade schools,
in order to promote their efficiency. Wise gov
ernment! Wise employers! But the boy is not
simply turned out at the age of eighteen, a well-
trained mechanic; he is also a well-developed
boy as a boy. He has been taught something
of the meaning and beauty of life, and his place
and duty in society, social, economic, and po
litical. He knows some one thing, at least, well,
and has an education that will fit him to rise to
higher things if opportunity should offer. At
any rate he has his mind opened to the good
impressions of the life of the world about him.
What have we in the ranks of labor or trade to
compare with this product of Germany, or to
contend with him when he reaches our shores?
Let me tell a little story, which may show how
one of the by-products of this system of thor
ough German training is produced, namely,
the German waiter. During my residence in
Munich I resided for the winter months in a
hotel. One afternoon on passing a public or
national schoolhouse I came upon the head
waiter of my hotel, who was about to enter a
school building, but, seeing me, he politely
31

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
paused for a moment to pass the usual compli
ments, and in order to make some response to
his well-meaning civilities I asked him if he had
children in school. He answered that he was
not a father, but was employed to give lessons
to a class of schoolboys who were training for
his profession, and my request to be permitted
to witness this lesson was willingly granted. It
was after school hours, and he told me he was
at liberty to use any rooms he pleased for his
lesson. I also learned that he was paid for his
services by the school authorities. The class
was composed of fifteen boys over twelve and
under fourteen years old, and hence all of them
were required by the law to attend school. The
room, a large one, was devoid of furniture. Two
boys were chosen and orders were given to lay
the cloth for four persons. Everything, even
the table, had to be brought in. But I shall
spare the reader the details, enough to say that
all things necessary to a dinner, including the
actual dinner itself, were prepared under in
struction from this practical head waiter. This
included a lesson in carving as well as serving.
The instructor also told me that as soon as these
lads passed the age limit of compulsory educa
tion, they would be taken in hand by the Ger
man Waiters Society (Kellner Verein) and sent
to England for two years, and then to France in
order to learn the language and manners of
32

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those countries. After that object lesson in the
art of producing a waiter, I have not been sur
prised to find the German waiter in command
of all the best positions in Europe and America.
The presence of the German waiter gives the
rank of first class to any hotel, and his absence
is fatal to any such claim or pretension of any
hotel. We see, I think, from these examples,
first, how simple it is for a nation to produce
efficient men in every activity in life, and, sec
ond, that it is only the efficient nation that pro
duces great men. A highly civilized nation is
one that produces honest, well-trained men, and
it is only from the ranks of such men that great
men proceed. This is a very simple lesson in
conduct as well as logic, and explains why Ger
many stands at the head of the list of nations in
winning the Nobel prizes. And it also explains,
I fear, why America stands at the tail of this
list of civilized nations. I see no way to avoid
this logical conclusion, humiliating as it is. But
there is hope for us yet, that is, if we will but
be wise enough to see the truth, stop our brag
and bluster, confess our sins, and mend our
ways. Mr. Morse, the convict banker, has not
lived in vain if his words to his wife — "I never
knew before how little I know, how little there
is I can do well" — will set Americans thinking
and asking themselves, What do I really know
about anything? What is there I can do well,
3 33

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
or better than any one else ? I do not mean to
say that there are not Americans, plenty of them,
who know how to do things as well as the next
one, but I do mean to say that as a nation we
are not thorough in our work, and this is true
in small and great things alike.
Again I ask, how do the American working
class live? They are not employed as laborers
on our docks, or by our railroads. They are not
even at work in the streets of our large cities.
They of course do not go into families or hotels
as servants or "helpers." The trolley-car con
ductors, at least those recently employed, seem
to be all foreigners. Few Americans are em
ployed on our ocean or river steamers. The
foreigner has almost completely captured our
foundries and manufactories. All our cooks,
men-servants, and maid-servants are alien, by
birth or descent. The fruit dealers, small gro
cers, newsdealers, especially in New York,
bakers, and other small tradesmen, even the
bootblacks, throughout the land, are already
largely foreign, and are multiplying very rapidly.
I know of but one street fruit and peanut vender
in New York who is an American, and his stand,
or rather their stand, for there are three in the
firm, — one man and two women — is on the
front of the battery wall, near the flagpole. I
have visited this stand two or three times, to
observe the business methods of the concern
34

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and see whether it was keeping its trade, and I
am glad to report that it seems to be in a very
flourishing condition. I have had one or two
talks with different members of the firm and
find that they know their business as well as
any Greek or Italian. They told me that these
enterprising aliens had made several efforts to
get their stand from them by trying to outbid
them in the rent, but the park authorities thus
far have continued their lease. They are obliged,
however, to keep a sharp lookout for the peri
patetic fruit and peanut venders who are con
stantly encroaching upon their preserves. This
gives a sporting element to their business, how
ever, and the women members of the firm seem
to enjoy it. It is really refreshing to visit this
truly American mart, where neatness, good
nature, politeness, and strict attention to busi
ness are beautifully blended with the American
freedom from all servility. But alas, this is, as
I have said, the only street stand I know in the
whole of Manhattan conducted by natives.
There is but one field of labor, so far as I
know, where the native American still holds
undisputed sway, and that is, the railroad car.
I have never seen a foreigner, or any one resem
bling or suggesting a foreigner, in any part of
this country acting as a railroad conductor,
engineer, or trainsman in any capacity. And
then, of course, our dearly beloved baggage
35

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
smasher and express agent, driver, clerk, and
everybody else connected with that strictly
American institution the "Express Company"
or "Highway Robber" is American to the back
bone. So also is that torture chamber, the
Pullman Car, with its white conductor and
black porter. But we pay well for these Amer
ican luxuries. The New England Express Com
pany has just declared a dividend of forty-five
per cent. When the dividend drops to twenty
per cent or ten per cent the Express Company
may go into the hands of foreigners, but not
before. I wonder whether we half realize what
this glorious institution, the American Express
Company, costs the patriotic American. Well,
we now know, to begin with, that it cost New Eng
land directly forty-five per cent. I should think
that this direct tax is very much greater through
out the rest of the country. But I don't know.
What I do know is that indirectly this highly
prized, peculiarly American concern, called the
"Express Company," is costing this country
the price of a Parcels-post. Let me show how
high a price it is we are paying indirectly for
the luxury of the Express Company. I will give
a concrete case, and in order to be perfectly
frank will tell the whole story just as it occurred.
The Munsey Company sent by mistake a
book manuscript to me in London. I had left
London before the parcel arrived and it was
36

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

sent on to me in Pensacola, Florida. When it
reached me there were two sets of stamps at
tached to the parcel; first, American stamps of
the value of twenty-four cents, carrying the par
cel from New York to London; and, second,
British stamps of an equivalent value, carrying
it from London to Pensacola. The parcel was
re-mailed by me to the Munsey Company in
New York, with the old stamps still adhering
to it. But the post office authorities in Pensa
cola told me that the postage would be eighty-
five cents. I showed them the canceled stamps
on the parcel, and told them with confidence,
and some show of annoyance, I fear, that they
were mistaken. They insisted, very politely I
am pleased to say, that they were right. I pro
tested, and wrote my protest to the Postmaster
General, who replied that the Pensacola post
master was entirely right. He agreed with me,
however, that the case presented a very strong
anomaly, and did not wonder that I protested.
Here was a parcel sent from New York to Lon
don for twenty-four cents, and from London to
Pensacola for the same sum. But from Pensa
cola to New York (through which place it passed
on its way to Pensacola from London) a sum
more than three times greater was exacted.
And this, strange as it seems, is the law of the
land. What is the explanation? How came it
to be the law of the land ? There was a senator
37

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
from New York named Thomas Piatt, who was
also the president of an American express com
pany. This simple fact explains everything.
These American express companies do no direct
business with London from New York, but they
do have business relations with almost every
American town. The post-office, as a common
carrier, does not compete with the express com
panies between New York and London, but
the post-office does compete with American
express companies, throughout the United
States. Hence, the rate of carriage by post,
within the United States, must be made so high
that the citizens of this free and glorious coun
try are forced to use the express company in
stead of the post-office. A very simple matter,
showing what a very simple-minded people
we Americans are — so simple-minded, indeed,
that in order to give the owners of express compa
nies a dividend of forty-five per cent or more, we
will gladly deny ourselves the convenience of a
parcels post, which would lessen, by at least two-
thirds, the cost of sending parcels, of certain
weight and dimensions, through the post-office
to points in the United States. Now I affirm
that there is no other nation in the civilized
world that would stand such an outrage for a
day, or an hour. And yet we pride ourselves
on our smartness and intelligence and up-to-
dateness. We are the stupidest nation on the
38

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

face of the globe, for in no other nation are
ninety-nine men willing to work, early and late,
that the hundredth man may slumber and sleep
in peace and plenty. The American Express
Company is a highway robber, as we have seen,
but it is only one of a large number of such out
laws, which we have brought into being and
carefully fostered by our insane protection tariff.
And yet we think we're a smart people. A
dozen years or so ago I sailed from New York
to Naples, and I had as a fellow passenger a
loud-mouthed ignoramus of a politician, who
was forever talking about the blessings of pro
tective tariff. I said nothing during the voyage
on that subject, until we reached the Straits of
Gibraltar, and then, offering my field glass to
the distinguished statesman, I asked him to
mark a little town on the Spanish coast. This
town, I said, is called Tarifa, and it gets its
name from a pirate who used to capture and
rob the ships as they entered this strait. It is
from this pirate captain, Tarifa, that we get
our precious word tariff. "By George, is that
so? Well, I'll be durned!" were the elegant
ejaculations of this traveling statesman, who was
silent on the tariff question for the rest of the
voyage, I am glad to say.
But I was speaking of the mystery surround
ing the question as to how the mass of American
artisans and tradespeople live.
39

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
In New York there seems to be almost noth
ing for the native American to do, or, at least,
little or nothing which he is seen to be actually
doing. But the invasion and capture of some
of the rural districts and small towns by the
foreigner seems even more complete than it is
in the metropolis and other large cities. Take
the half-past seven Sunday morning train from
the New York Grand Central Station, and you
will see at every way station swarms of dark,
sturdy foreigners entering and quitting the train
at the little towns along the way; for this is a
local train and makes all the stops, and these
people are thus enabled to visit their friends and
acquaintances; and there appears to be no
town, however small, where these foreigners
have not gained some footing as laborers, farm
ers, and small tradesmen. I should say that
more than half of the Sunday railroad travel in
New York, New Jersey, and New England is
foreign. I took a train from New York some
thirty miles into New Jersey, a Sunday morning
in October, and the conductor told me that he
did not think the native Americans constituted
ten per cent of his passengers. I asked him
whether that was the usual thing on Sundays, and
he said, "No, not quite so bad as to-day, but
we always have more foreigners than natives on
Sunday." When I first formed the habit of
crossing the ocean ninety per cent at least of
40

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

the travel was native American; now it is
not one-half American. This indicates pretty
clearly that native Americans in general have
not the money they once had. We have more
native millionaires to-day than we had twenty
years ago, but fewer citizens with moderate in
comes or prosperous business relations. The
prosperous native American merchant is almost
a thing of the past. But the thing, to my mind,
that matters most is the fact that Americans are
quitting the country, the land, the farm, as a
means of living, for the town and the office.
Pennsylvania seems to be almost the only State
where the same family tills the same acres from
generation to generation. But Pennsylvania
has ever remained true to its German traditions
for honest, intelligent, plodding, and thorough,
that is, intensive, farming. The fine barns of
the Pennsylvania Dutch are celebrated through
out the land. The "Pennsylvania Dutch" have
thriven because they had both industry and in
telligence. And whilst the "cute" Yankee and
New Yorker would skim the surface of the soil
for a few years, and then pull up stakes and
seek "fresh woods and pastures new," the plod
ding Dutchman went steadily on in the old
stupid way, plowing and sowing and reaping
the same acres from year to year, knowing that
soil, like everything else, improves by use, if
used properly. There is such a thing as soil
41

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
making, as well as fertilizing. And soil making
is not nearly so expensive as fertilizing. The
French farmer can't afford to use fertilizers,
and yet on two or three acres, — after paying the
enormous rent of from $500 to $1,000 an acre,
— he supports a family of from six to ten per
sons, for he makes this farm of two or three
acres produce one hundred tons of marketable
stuff each year. This sounds impossible, yet
it is strictly true. "However does he do it?"
By making it yield as high as seven crops a year,
thus multiplying his three talents by seven and
gaining eighteen talents more. Weeds and
leaves are used in the perpetual process of mak
ing soil. He never burns anything that can be
resolved into earth again. Soil that is resting,
like everything else that is idle, degenerates.
Keep soil busy, keep it producing, and the more
it produces the more it is able to produce. The
field can be at work, and profitable work, every
day in the year. Seven crops from three acres
equal one crop from twenty-one acres. Still that
is not all, for not only does intelligent — that is
intensive — farming multiply the crops sevenfold,
but it doubles the output of each crop, so that the
French farmer, or any one else, for that matter,
who knows how to farm gets forty-two times as
much out of an acre of ground as the average
American farmer. One acre yields as much to
the French farmer as forty-two acres do to the
42

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

American farmer. If any one thinks this ex
travagant nonsense let him inform himself on
this subject before he rushes into print to con
tradict me.
" Henry Wallace," the preacher turned farmer,
is said to be an authority on American farming,
and this is what he says to the American farmer.
"You have robbed every farm you have ever
owned, till it kicked you out. You have been
robbing your farm every year by taking every
thing off and putting nothing back. It has been
corn, oats, wheat, flax, etc."
Yes, our rich agricultural lands are being im
poverished and ruined; wasted and actually
killed by ignorant, careless, dishonest tillage,
and the cost of living is, of course, rising as a
result and we are now turning to Canada for
succour. When I last crossed the Atlantic on
my return from Europe, eighteen months and
more ago, our ship's chief freight was potatoes,
and I was told that she carried several thousand
bushels from England and Ireland to the United
States. This is carrying coals to Newcastle
with a vengeance; for if there is one thing pecul
iarly indigenous to our soil it is the potato.
We gave this vegetable to Europe, only a few
centuries ago, and now she is returning the
favor. In Europe the laborer can rarely get hold of
the land in fee-simple, hence he is seldom able
43

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
to secure a stake in the county, or anything re
sembling a permanent home. His one wish,
therefore, if he is a farmer, when he comes to
this country is to get possession of land, and the
American's one wish seems to be to get rid of
it, — hence an exchange of owners comes about
without much difficulty. I met a German once
on shipboard who was returning to his native
country on a visit, after a residence of ten years
in America. He had his family with him — a
wife and two children. He told me that he had
never been anything more than an agricultural
laborer in Germany; nor were there any hopes
of his ever changing his position in life if he re
mained there. He came to this country and
worked two or three years as a farm laborer. I
quote his words — "I am now a land owner, have
a farm of eighty acres, well stocked. I have
three good horses and nearly five thousand dol
lars invested. I am going to Germany (I noticed
he always spoke of America as his home, never
Germany) to induce some of my relations to
come over with me." This man had been noth
ing but a laborer in Germany, but he had an
education and some experience in proper farm
ing, and he was therefore easily able to outstrip
his American competitors. He told me he knew
but one native American farmer who under
stood how to farm.
The southern negro, even, is more sensible
44

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and far-seeing in this matter than the southern
white man. I mean the white man who depends
upon his labor for a living. The negroes are
acquiring landed property very rapidly — much
more rapidly than the "poor white." They are,
to some extent, doing in the South what the for
eigner is doing in the West. I heard Mr. Booker
Washington say recently that there are twenty-
two million ($22,000,000) dollars' worth of tax
able property held by the negro race in the
single State of North Carolina. In one little
country district in this State there are fifty-two
homes owned by negroes. The negroes are pro
gressing in intelligence and prosperity, just in
proportion as they secure homes of their own.
This is true of every race and every nation.
Thus the negro advances in prosperity and civil
ization, while the degradation of the poor white
man seems almost complete, for there is not to
be seen in the whole of Europe, so far as I know,
so low a form of Christian civilization as presents
itself to the observer in the mountains of Ken
tucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina; and in
the outlying districts of Georgia, Florida, and
Alabama. And things are nearly as bad in
some parts of New England. The competition
of the colored man in the South has driven the
poor white man to the wall,— just as the alien
has the New Englander,— where he lives in a
state of semi-starvation, abject ignorance, and
45

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
in perpetual revolt against law and order, ready
at a moment's notice to wreak his vengeance
against his natural enemy, the negro, who is held
in theory by himself and his fellow white citi
zens to be his inferior, but whom he knows, in a
half -conscious sort of way, to be his superior in
industry and intelligence. This is at the bot
tom of the outrages committed on the negro in
the South. The negro holds all the subordinate
places of profit in the South. He is the coach
man, the messenger, the janitor, the caretaker,
the teamster, the porter, and the general util
ity man, as well as the domestic servant. Every
white man of substance and position has a negro
as his friend; and every negro of any character
has a white man as his adviser.
Almost the only farmlands that pay in the
South are tilled either by negroes or foreigners.
The great majority of farms owned by white
men are cultivated by negroes, either as tenants
or as laborers. I have asked farmers in South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, and Florida,
whether they would be willing to employ native
white men to work their land, and in every in
stance they have replied no. The native white
man, in the first place, is too offensively inde
pendent, and difficult to handle. He is suspi
cious and on the outlook for all kinds of slights.
Besides, if he is really industrious, he cannot al
ways be trusted to look after the interests of his
46

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employer. He will often starve the horses and
cattle and sell their food. Nothing, of course,
could be lower than that. On the other hand,
the negro — where he is frankly trusted — is honest
and humane. As one large landed proprietor
from South Carolina, whom I met in New York
a month or so ago, told me — "My negro farmer
is trusted absolutely in everything, and reports
to me only once a year. I really think he be
lieves if he should neglect to feed a horse or a
cow I could tell it by looking at the animal. I
like a superstitious negro — but then they are all
superstitious, more or less."
"Do you know of any native white man
whom you would trust as you do that negro ? "
I asked. "Well, I don't like to have it put in that fash
ion," he replied. "But I'll be darned if I do,
now that you have put me up against it."
This alliance, both overt and tacit, between
the well-to-do white man and the negro in the
South is clearly understood by both, and it is
this fact that has saved the negro more than
once, and prevented a race war. But it cannot
prevent an occasional outburst of fury, now and
again. I repeat that this alliance between the
negro and the well-to-do white man furnishes
some restraint upon race passion, but it cannot
prevent, and the fact is it often provokes, mur
derous attacks upon the negro. The poor white,
47

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
however ignorant, knows perfectly well that his
white superiors and his negro inferiors are
linked together against him, no matter how fine
the politician may talk; and he is ready to
strike his protected foe on the slightest pretense.
His jealousy of the negro, as he sees him living
in ease and comfort, is always burning within
his heart, and I only wonder that it does not
more often blaze up into a consuming fire.
The negro has thus been, and still is, the
curse of the South in more ways than one. And
it is my firm belief that in time, however far off,
the negro will come into the possession of the
land upon which he once toiled in slavery. That
is, unless a sturdier, a more industrious, a more
intelligent race takes the place of the present
"poor white." The negro is now, and ever has
been, even in the days of slavery since he was
brought to this land, taking the bread out of the
southern white man's mouth. And the poor
white man knows it, and his resentment will
grow, in proportion as the negro grows in pros
perity; and the time must come when there will
be a final trial of conclusions between these two
natural and racial foes, and in that final trial
the negro will easily win.
Prophecies, I know, are gratuitous, but there
has always been a place for the prophet in the
world. But in this prophecy I am only echoing
the words of others, among them ex-Governor
48

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Northen of Georgia, a somewhat better author
ity than myself, who, in a letter to me not long
since, said that in his opinion a race war in the
South wTas almost inevitable. I break no con
fidence in quoting this letter from one of the
best authorities in America, for I was introduced
to Governor Northen by Mr. Seth Low, with the
explicit understanding that my investigations
were meant for public rather than private use.
But are we not threatened with a situation in
New England similar to that in the South?
The present degenerate descendants of the pil
grim fathers are little better off than their poor
white brethren in the South. They are being
ousted from the shop, the factory, the farm, by
the more efficient alien, and are already in a very
precarious condition. Read what one of the
ablest weekly periodicals in America has to say
editorially on the passing of the New Englander.
"But the Native is no longer what he was only
a little while ago. The invading foreigner is
ousting him from his lair, Portugee on the shore
and Canuck a little further back. In certain
parts of New England now the wanderer who
wants to ask his way had better begin with the
question, ' Do you speak English ? ' Of course
this is unnecessary if the questionee is young
enough to be at school, for then, whether a Dago
or a Dutchman by descent, he will have attained
an elementary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon speech.
4. 49

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
But Dago and Dutchman, Portugee and Canuck,
are not the only foreign folk to be found afield.
Now and again the solitary horseman will hap
pen on a negro settlement, and more infrequently
still on a little nest of aborigines. Nor is it un
precedented that the redskin has intermarried
with the black; and then the papoose-pick
aninnies have high cheekbones and no kinks in
their wool. Still stranger sights are possible on
occasion; and once, in the foothills of the Berk-
shires, when the twilight was making ready to
let her curtain down and pin it with a star, there
was a startling vision at the cross-roads. It
was a Sioux Indian on a bicycle, herding home
the cows. But this red man was no survival;
he was an importation. He was a Carlisle In
dian, who had hired himself out as a farmhand
in the intermission between the football seasons.
"The Native has not only been crowded out
by intruding aliens of every tinge; he is suf
fering also from dry rot. For a century or more
the ambitious young fellows have been going
out to push their fortunes where opportunity was
larger, leaving behind them the lazier and the
less enterprising to bring forth after their kind.
The best have been bred out, and the least
worthy have been in-breeding only too closely,
generation after generation. In many a nook
and corner the Native is now the result of the
survival of the unfittest. And when the nook
and corner happen to have been captured by
the Summer Boarder and the Cottager, the
50

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Native is exposed to the contagion of idle
frivolity and of empty leisure. It is small won
der that he is likely to be demoralized and to find
his frayed ethical standards falling to rags about
him. Sometimes it drives him to an increased
craftiness and sometimes it leads him down to
an indurated shiftlessness. There was a Native
once who was town treasurer, and he kept the
accounts on his cuffs, and when they happened
to go to the wash, his bondsman had to make
good the results of his casual cleanliness."
After this editorial my language must sound
very mild.
If things continue to go for the next ten years
as they have gone for the last ten years, in New
England, a desperate condition will result. The
only possible way to prevent this crisis is to per
suade the people to stick to the land. There is
already evidence that the native American in
New England, like the native white man in the
South, looks with keen jealousy upon the pros
perity of alien races; and however indolent he
may be, when driven to the last ditch by the
foreigner, as his poor white brother in the South
has been by the negro, he may be expected not
to endure silently this fatal encroachment of
aliens upon his home and his family. He will
fight. His case is not yet quite so desperate as
this, however. There is still time for him to re
gain his hold upon the land of his fathers. But
51

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
there is not too much time; and what there is, is
slipping away very rapidly, and in another ten
years will have gone forever. It is perfect mad
ness for these people, these native Americans, to
surrender their land to the foreigner, for it
means their total extinction, and we who realize
this fact should use all the means within our
power to restrain them, and to convince them
of the immediate peril to themselves and their
children. But this foreign invasion not only
means the extinction of the native American as
a personality, a character, but it also means the
destruction of the civilization which he repre
sents. We who speak out and call public atten
tion to this alarming state of things will get
nothing but abuse for our pains, to be sure, but
I, for one, am accustomed to abuse and am be
ginning to enjoy it, as the eel after repeated ex
perience is supposed to enjoy the process of
being skinned alive.
At any rate, I cannot, and will not, sit quietly
by and witness the passing of the native Amer
ican race from this land, without doing all that
in me lies to check and, if possible, to stop it.
And I firmly believe — in fact, I am quite cer
tain — that the land is the only means of the sal
vation of the American, and the civilization he
represents.

52

II
IMMIGRATION
.r is all very well for us to have more multi
millionaires than any other nation on the face
of the earth, but they may come a bit too high,
and the economic conditions that produce them,
for the most part, are not always a blessing to
the rest of the nation. Foremost amongst
these conditions stands the central fact that
there must be an enormous amount of cheap
labor, unskilled labor, imported into this country.
For however skilfully the fact may be disguised,
the majority of the immigrants, so called, are
virtually importations. But if that sounds too
strong let us say that these multitudes of for
eigners are induced to come to this country
under promise, per advertisement, of work.
These millions of aliens, we are told, are neces
sary to the development of the resources of our
country. Now it is perfectly plain that these
foreign hordes are necessary to the develop
ment of the multi-millionaires, the trusts and
the monopolies; but it is not so plain that they
are necessary to the peace, happiness, and pros
perity of this country. Why should great
53

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
armies of men of low intelligence, who know
nothing about this land save that it is a place
where they can sell their labor for more than
anywhere else, be induced, or even permitted, to
come here and exploit and exhaust the natural
resources of our country? In the olden time,
the armed invasion and spoliation of a country
by an enemy only meant the capture, or de
struction, of towns and fortresses, the works of
man, which could be, and were, re-created.
But these peaceful invasions of a million and
more immigrants every year mean the exploita
tion and utter spoliation of the vital sources of
the national life, which cannot be re-created
or revitalized. We seem in fact as a nation to be
in a state bordering on insanity. We are
actually inviting, urging, these aliens to come
over and take peaceful possession of our land —
and of our country, for the last must of necessity
follow the first. Never in the history of the
world has a people, a nation, thrown away such
unique, such boundless opportunities and re
sources of wealth and property. Never before
has a nation of people invited and encouraged
such fatal invasions. Never have the prodigal
sons of worthy fathers thrown away, squandered
in such a reckless manner, so great an inheri
tance. It seems — it is incredible that sane men,
intelligent men, educated men, should pursue
such a fatal policy. The land, and what it con-
54

IMMIGRATION

tains on, and within, its deep bosom, should be
conserved, kept well in hand, and developed
and exploited gradually for the general, and not
for the private, good. Water, trees, coal, and all
mineral substances should not be worked and
exhausted for private gain.
The natural, that is the normal, increase of
the native American population for the last forty
years would have been amply sufficient for the
proper and healthy development of this country.
But not sufficient, I grant you, for the production
of the J. Cooks, the J. Goulds, the J. Hills, the
Huntingtons, the Harrimans, the Rockefellers, the
Carnegies, the Guggenheims, and the Morgans;
nor for the kind of life we have got into the habit
of living — a life of senseless extravagance and
vulgar waste; a life of unhappiness, unrest, and
low ideals; a life of superficial knowledge; a
life that has laid less and less stress upon merit,
and has turned more and more to empty pre
tense. Had not the foreigner been called in in
such hordes, we should have been forced to do
our own work ourselves, and would have been
all the happier, and richer, for it. As it is we
have lost the habit of hard continuous labor,
and with it we are on the verge of losing our
land, and every other means of making an
honest happy living. It is truly deplorable,
and I attribute it in great measure to two things
— tariff and immigration — which two things
55

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
are linked together for the production of the
greatest curses this nation has suffered, the
millionaire and his "trust." These things have
impoverished the nation, and debased the
public conscience, until common honesty in all
ranks of our national life is the most uncommon
of all commodities. There must be a halt in
our present manner of life. There must be a
check put upon immigration. Self-preservation
is the first law of nature and the time has come
when we in these United States must resort to
it. It's a sad confession for so proud and
boastful a race to make, but it is wiser to frankly
make this confession in the face of the whole
world, than to suffer ourselves to be driven from
our hearths and our homes by vast armies of
heterogeneous aliens, who can outwork us —
that is, work for the millionaire and the monopoly
to their greater pleasure and profit. But they
can also beat us on the land, and in the labora
tory and market. We need time to train our
children to compete with these people, and
during that time the foreigner must be held at
bay. When a mere boy I heard Henry Ward
Beecher give an eloquent lecture entitled, as I
remember, "The Future of our Country."
During this lecture he touched upon the sub
ject of immigration, and among other striking
things said, "When the lion eats the ox the ox
56

IMM I (.RATION

becomes lion, not the lion ox," and he went on
lo show how quickly the American the lion —
assimilated the immigrant the ox. Yes, very
true, then, but nol now. At that lime, thirty-
live years ago, the immigrants were mostly
drawn from (J real Britain, Germany, Scandi
navia, Holland, and Switzerland, and consti
tuted a homogeneous population, all having their
origin in our common source, the Teutonic race.
That kind of food suited the palate, and diges
tive organs, of the American lion very well, and
lie kept himself well and happy on such diet.
But that period has passed, and Ihe over-fed
American lion has long ceased to assimilate or
even fo masticate the conglomerate mass of
foreign food that has been placed upon his
national board, Italians, Russians, Jews,
Slovaks, Polacks, Roumanians, Kiuus, Arme
nians, and every other kind of human beings,
from the East, West, North, and South of the
habitable globe. The problem, therefore, has
vastly changed since I heard the eloquent
preacher use that striking figure of speech.
To put it bluntly, these latter-day immigrants
not only remain an undigested mass in the
national stomach, but they are a menace to the
health and life of the national body; and we must
henceforth deny ourselves the glory of our mil
lionaires and their monopolies, if their presence
depends, as it seems to depend, upon these vast
57

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
armies of undesirable aliens. Sympathy we
may have, and should have, for the poor and
oppressed in every land; but charity begins at
home, and if any provide not for his own, and
especially for those of his own house, he hath
denied the faith — of his own land — and is worse
than an infidel. America for the whole world
sounds very large and humane, and all that;
but the smaller cry, America for the Americans,
is what we must come to, and the sooner the
better. Immigration must be checked. The resources
of this land are being over-developed, that is, too
rapidly developed by means of these aliens and
in a manner that benefits private corporations
and not the general public. But capital must
be encouraged, we are constantly told. It is a
much better thing to encourage American in
dustry and thrift. ' The habit of calling in the
foreigner to do our work for us in the home, on
the farm, in the shop, and everywhere else, is
fatal to native industry, and is weakening, and
if it does not cease will utterly destroy the
national character. We are selling our national
birthright — the opportunity to labor and live
on our own soil — for a mess of pottage, i.e.,
for ease and idleness. The pottage has been
nearly eaten, and the American father will wake
up some morning to find that there is no room
for his son on his native soil; that the broad
£8

IMMIGRATION

lands of America have been pre-empted by alien
races, who have little or nothing in common
with the native American ; aliens in whom relig
ion, morality, and the higher ideals of civiliza
tion have no controlling influence; who cannot
be kept in hand by the priest, the preacher,
or the moralist, for to be rid of these things
they understand to be a part of their newly
acquired freedom, their emancipation from the
old world, and the laws and customs of the old
world. Religion and law are associated in the
minds of these people with class tyranny and in
justice, and it is hard, almost impossible, for
them, coming in such vast multitudes to a
strange country, to readjust themselves to their
new surroundings, or to create or accept new
standards of conduct.
The natural, almost the inevitable, thing for
these people to do is, — having been freed from
these burdens which they were forced to carry
in the old world, — to refuse to have anything to
do with these matters in the new world. They
have one, and one only, well-defined purpose in
coming to this country — to improve their ma
terial well-being, and this engrosses them to the
exclusion of everything else. They have no
interest in politics, religion, or social matters.
These they leave to the natives — for the present.
But the time will come when, having secured a
home, and living free from want, these people
59

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
will turn to politics, and when they do the
native politician will be swept aside as summarily
as the native laborer, mechanic, and farmer are
now being disposed of. The really alarming
thing at present is the disposition of these
foreigners to keep together, as races. The
late Professor Goldwin Smith said he feared
that the time might come "when America
would be unable to digest the very large and
very crude material that came to it from the old
world." That time has arrived, and it is sheer
stupidity for us to ignore this fact any longer.
It is not, of course, that these hordes of aliens
have any hostile feelings or intentions against
the American native, or American ideals. But
it is that they know nothing about America,
save as a place where they can better themselves.
Manners
They have all of them, however, a kind of
notion that America means freedom and equal
ity, absence from restraint, laxity of law and
order — a kind of general license to do as they
choose. The immediate effect of this general
impression which the immigrant gets of America,
even before he leaves his native land, is seen in
his change of manner towards his superiors, his
employers, and people in general. The immi
grant leaves his good manners behind him. The
60

IMMIGRATION

want of politeness in the native American is so
common, and so natural, that we think nothing
of it, realizing that it is not meant to be offensive.
But it is another matter in the foreigner. There
it is studied, and is meant to show his attitude
towards his new home. It is this which renders
the rudeness of the naturally polite Italian, for
example, so offensive. Rudeness is not natural
to him, and we feel that he is actually making
an effort to be impolite. To an Italian fruit
vender who gave me an insolent answer, I said,
"But you would not speak in that rude manner
if you were selling fruit in Italy. You would be
careful to be polite and obliging." "Ah,
Signore, but America is not Italy. Everybody is
polite in Italy. Nobody is polite in America, and
why should I be ? It is a sign of ignorance if an
Italian uses the same polite speech and manner
in America that he would in Italy." And that
is the impression that all foreigners get imme
diately on their arrival here, or even before they
come here, for the word goes back from those
who are here to those who are to come, that you
can talk to these rich Americans without any
regard for their wealth or their position. What
a comment! And how true! We are actually a
nation without manners, and this is the very
first lesson that the immigrant learns, and he
believes that the good manners natural to him,
and to his country, are a hindrance to his wel-
61

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
fare in America. How differently such things
are regarded in the old world. There trades
people, and everybody else, know that politeness
is a part, and a very important part, of their
stock in trade. A very famous English shop
keeper was once asked by a nobleman how he
had succeeded in amassing such a large fortune.
"I bow very low, my Lord, and charge very
high" was his ready answer. Yes, we are all
willing to pay for politeness. I was passing
through the gates at the Grand Central station
the other day, when I overheard one official
say to another, who looked foreign, — "You
must get over your Frenchy ways, and stop your
polite stunts, or you will be laughed at." Last
summer a party of German students visited
this country, for travel and observation, and just
before they sailed for home they were asked
what feature of America they considered in
greatest contrast to Europe. They replied in
stantly, "A want of politeness."
This want of agreeable manners is hindering
us in more ways than one. A correspondent of
the London Times, whose letters from the
Philippines have been read both in this country
and England with great interest, while praising
the general administration of the American gov
ernment in those islands, attributes its slow suc
cess to the shock caused by the great contrast of
American manners with those of the high-bred
62

IMMIGRATION

Spaniards, whom the Americans supplanted.
The Spaniards were always considering the
susceptibilities of their polite kinsmen, and
while they despoiled them, they did it with grace.
The American's disregard for the peculiar sus
ceptibilities of a different race, and his blunt and
rude manner of approaching the Filipinos, are
an offense much greater than were the polite
tyranny and thievery of the Spaniards.

63

Ill
WE ARE NOT LIKED
Things are gradually improving from an
administrative point of view, but not on the
social side of things. The interchange of
social courtesies between the better class of
natives and members of the American colony,
not excepting the army and navy, is growing less
and less frequent and familiar. The well-born
Filipinos do not like us, and prefer to have
as little social contact with us as possible. The
Times correspondent is not alone in giving tes
timony to the harm done our nation by the bad
manners of our representatives in the Philippines.
Bishop Brent, of the American Episcopal Church
(though himself a Canadian by birth and train
ing), is even stronger in his statement with refer
ence to this matter. The Bishop says bluntly
that "The Filipinos do not like Americans"
and he does not qualify this statement in any
way. The upper classes, he says, are quite
frank about their antipathy, and while the com
mercial classes are not so frank, for obvious
reasons, their dislike is none the less evident.
Commercial men of the Latin races, as well as
64

WE ARE NOT LIKED

society ladies, resent a want of considerate
manners, and are willing to gain less and lose
more by having to do with business concerns
who are represented by agents of agreeable
address. A writer in The Independent the
other day said that we were not only disliked by
the Mexicans for our bad manners, but that
bad manners were losing us the trade of that
country, and he gave an instance. A very
important commercial transaction had been
brought to a successful close by an American,
who. feeling sure of his game, gave vent in a
rude manner to the irritation which certain
forms and ceremonies during the negotiations
had caused liim. This was overheard by one of
the principals in the transaction, who immediate
ly canceled the whole matter, and the American
lost his game after all. One would imagine
that two or three such cases would teach the
American business man the commercial value,
if notliing else, of good manners. But it does
not seem to have done so.
"We Are 1st ants ix Trade"
So says the President of Columbia College.
In Florida, a year ago, I renewed the acquaint
ance of a Russian whom I had known as a boy
in the south of France. He was a gentleman of
high birth and breeding, and able to speak well
5 «

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
four languages. He told me that being a
younger son he had come to America to make his
way. He was an engineer by profession, but
traveled a good deal, as it required some degree
of technical knowledge to sell his line of goods.
He had just been in Central and South America,
and I asked him if American trade was pros
pering in those countries. He answered no,
and gave me the chief reasons. First the want
of manners on the part of American traveling
men. They were for the most part illiterate,
uncouth and boorish in their way of doing things,
and when two or more of them got together in
Central or South America they behaved with the
utmost disregard of the habits and customs of
the people of the country, and made themselves
offensively conspicuous by their loud and rude
manners. Business men take note of such
things, and have as little to do with these ob
jectionable Americans as possible. The second
cause of America's failure to get this southern
trade is their disinclination to give time to
southern merchants. Credit is the universal
custom, both in Central and South America,
and to refuse it is something like casting a slur
upon the honesty of the merchant, to say noth
ing of changing his methods of business. It is
all very well for the American to brusquely
tell the merchant that he can buy cheaper if he
pays cash. He does not care to be instructed
66

WE ARE NOT LIKED

in his business methods by a rude flippant
stranger; and so he deals with the Briton and
the German who does not argue with him, but
is pleased to give him the usual time in which to
make his payments.
Another matter, which in itself seems very
small, but which in fact is of very great impor
tance, is the manner in which goods are packed.
Americans have got the reputation of not being
good packers, and this loses them much trade.
Last year the Russian government gave out a
competitive contract for a large number of
railroad engines. French, German, English,
and American companies entered this competi
tion, and it was publicly stated that the men
who represented American companies were
unable to give a satisfactory scientific explana
tion of their machines, and for this reason they
did not gain any of the contracts. What could
be more humiliating to a nation that boasts of
its business and commercial enterprise and
general smartness and up-to-dateness ? Dr.
Butler must have had this case in mind when he
told the association of American advertisers that
American business men are infants as compared
with Europeans in getting foreign trade. This is
not pleasant medicine to take, but nasty medi
cine is usually the more efficacious. So let us
swallow it, without making more of a wry face
than we can help. We have talked loud, and
67

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
boasted so much of our superiority in almost
everything, that it comes hard for us to eat
humble pie and confess we are "infants" even
in business matters compared with the effete
nations of the old world. This is rubbing it in, I
confess, with a little salt added, but the time has
come for heroic remedies, and if the patient is
unable to take them there can be no hope of
recovery. I propose, therefore, to follow Dr.
Butler's lead, and to mention some things out
side of pure business circles in which we are
lamentably wanting. English is the official and
social language of this country, and yet there is
not one person in ten, in Congress or out of
Congress, who speaks even decent English.
The art of direct, plain, simple speech, to say
nothing of the beauty of diction, is a very rare
thing in this country. If you wish to make a
simple test of this, ask the first person you meet
to direct you somewhere or other, and then note
the awkward, hesitating, obscure, almost unin
telligible way in which you are answered.
Americans seem to have lost the art of simple,
direct speech. They rarely say yes or no to a
simple question, but must prefix or affix some
wholly unnecessary words.

IV
THE FATAL ELOQUENCE OF
AMERICANS
Time was when we could justly boast of
American eloquence. Patrick Henry, Daniel
Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Haynes, Lincoln,
Wendell Phillips, Blaine, and Garfield were
orators, that is, they had the gift of im
pressive and persuasive speech. So also had
W. E. Channing, Bishop Simpson of the Meth
odist Episcopal Church, Henry Ward Beecher,
and Phillips Brooks. But is there a man to-day
in the public life of this country, in Church or
State, who has the gift or the power, in any
notable manner, to impress and persuade by
the art of public speech? Governor Woodrow
Wilson of New Jersey is the nearest approach
we have to such a man in political life, and
there is no one I can recall at this moment
who even suggests the eloquent pulpit orator.
By orator I do not mean the declaimer of high-
sounding periods. We have plenty of these and
to spare. These are the gentlemen who have
emptied the churches. This is the fatal kind of
eloquence that one hears in Congress, and at
69

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
political rallies, and in most of our churches.
A dozen years ago I wrote an article on the
"Decline of the American Pulpit," and was
abused like a pickpocket for my pains — that is,
by the religious press. I was accused of fouling
my own nest, etc. But it was not long after this
article had been published before there began,
in these very same religious papers, a lamentation
over the falling off of attendance in the churches,
until it has now become a general wail, and all
sorts of expedients are resorted to to induce
people not to desert the churches. We have had
many explanations of the empty-church problem,
but none seem to fully explain. The truth is,
people will go to church if the church will give
them something they need, and something the
church makes them feel they need; and the
preacher is the man to do this, — at least in the
non-Roman churches, and the simple fact is he
is not doing it, and the people are not drawn to
the church. This seems strange in view of the
fact that the facilities for the education of the
Protestant ministry are rapidly increasing. Wit
ness, for example, the dedication the other day
of the new home of the Union Theological
Seminary of New York. These new buildings
cost $2,500,000, and are perhaps the finest in the
world— to use a favorite American expression.
And then they teach almost everything, from
Harnack and Wellhausen, to slumming and
70

FATAL ELOQUENCE

settlement work. But the great preachers of
this and all other nations were not brought up
on such a rich dietetic standard. People do
not relish half-baked higher critics; nor diluted
doses of Harnack and Wellhausen, but they
relish least of all, I think, the jejune social
reformer. What the people want in the pulpit is
the same thing that humanity has always
wanted — encouragement, inspiration, spiritual
vision, — in a word, a prophet. They will gladly
listen to, and follow, the preacher who walks
with God and who speaks to them of their soul's
hunger and of the heavenly manna which God
will provide for those who trust in his love.
The gift of gab is always and everywhere a
fatal gift. No really impressive speaker is a
fluent speaker. The man who carefully chooses
his words is the real orator. Some can do this
with greater facility than others, and, other
things being equal, they are the most eloquent
speakers; and the most eloquent speaker, be it
remembered, is not the man who speaks the
loudest and uses the most "beautiful language"
but the man who speaks in the most conversa
tional and intimate tone, and who uses the sim
plest and most appropriate words. "Beautiful
language," so called, is miscalled. The most
beautiful language one can possibly use is the
language that expresses in the simplest manner
the thoughts of the speaker, and the more
71

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
beautiful the thoughts, the simpler and more
beautiful will be the language. When shall we
as a nation learn that the simplest form of speech
is always the most beautiful form of speech ?
I was present a few years ago at an interna
tional conference in England, and listened to
five public addresses, representing as many
nations— British, American, Russian, German,
and Italian. The addresses were all given in
English, and, to my shame as an American, the
Russian, the German, and the Italian all spoke
better English than the American; better as re
gards grammar, the choice and order of words,
and the manner of uttering them. I overheard
a lady say, "Why, the American can't speak as
good English as those foreigners!" This is not
agreeable reading, I know, but it is high time
that we should see ourselves as others see us.
I don't say these things for the mere sake of
being disagreeable. I should much rather speak
"smooth things" for I know that to "prophesy
deceits" would render this volume more ac
ceptable to the majority of my countrymen.
Still, I regard the praise of the judicious few
as more than offsetting the abuse of the un
thinking multitude, whom I love and in whose
interests I write, if they would but understand
and profit by what I say.
About the only thing, just now, in which we
seem to excel as a people is the ability to com-
72

FATAL ELOQUENCE

bine for monopoly and "graft." The process
is something like this. It is discovered by one
of our great financiers that a certain business —
it may be a bank, a factory, a brewery, a cream
ery, a butchery, an icery, or a steelery — it is, I
say, discovered that a certain plant is a paying
concern; and this Napoleon of Wall Street
immediately calls together a number of his
lieutenants and subordinates and tells them of
his discovery. Aha! say they, we must down
upon it; it must be ours. And they begin at
once to plot its ruin. The first step is to hy
pothecate securities enough (these great finan
ciers, be it observed, seldom or never pay cash)
to cover the cost of purchase. And the coveted
concern once within their grasp they can raise
all the cash they require. The next step is to
look about them and see how many other plants
of the same kind of business they can find, and
when found they are easily secured at a moderate
cost, and our captains of industry hitch them
up with the paying concern, in a combine.
Now no team of horses, be they two or four or
six, can go faster, or better, than the poorest nag
in that team, so the proud Kentucky thorough
bred must accommodate his gait to his harness
mate, be he the slowest Indiana roadster that
ever put on harness. Well, then, to carry out as
best I can this figure of speech, the slow-going,
non-profit-producing concerns that are com-
73

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
bined, harnessed together with the paying busi
ness, will be sure to pull it down to their own low
level, rather than be lifted up to its high estate.
Not, however, before these great financiers have
withdrawn — from what is now a trust — all the
hard cash they can lay their hands upon, which
they call their commissions.
In other words, the highwaymen, in the world
of finance, hold up every paying business they
can find at the point of the pistol ; rob it, tie it
hand and foot to as many dead carcasses as
possible, and leave it thus on the roadside to the
winds and waves of Wall Street. And, like the
traditional pirate of romance, they placate the
ill-will of the public, or rather, they make sure
of the good-will and tacit cooperation of the
innocent public by distributing largess far and
wide, in the shape of colleges, theological
seminaries, libraries, and national and charitable
endowments. Yes, the very best role for these
highwaymen to play is that of philanthropist. A
few of these gentlemen of the road have played
the philanthropic game so high, so well, so
really magnificently, as to lift them far above
the criticism, or even the unfavorable comment
of a mere writer, and I shall not presume to
question their methods or their character.
But perhaps I may be permitted to try my
hand on a somewhat lesser figure among these
proud promoters of public prosperity.
74

FATAL ELOQUENCE

About fifteen years ago there was a very
smart and successful life insurance agent in
Chicago. Trouble came to the home office of
the New York company he represented, and the
president was forced to resign. A sort of re
organization, or general shuffle among the higher
officers in this company, followed. In this
general mix-up it was found that the young
Chicago agent knew a lot about the private
methods of the company; he knew so much
about it, in fact, as to induce the people in the
home office to ask him to come to New York and
join them by accepting the post of first vice-
president of this great company. Their wisdom
was soon justified, for immediately following his
promotion the business of this company began
to increase by leaps and bounds, until its cash
surplus was enormous. The head of \\ all
Street became aware of this large cash surplus
and cast furtive glances at it, realizing how
nice a thing it would be to have this ever-in
creasing volume of hard cash within his own
reach; in other words, on deposit in the vaults
of his own safe and sound bank. So it was not
long after this great man had "twigged" this
company's great surplus, that he made a visit to
the president of the company, and there learnt
that our young man from the West was the
immediate cause, so to speak, of this great
volume of cash; and it was not long before this

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
first vice-president was attached to the great
financier's staff. And I suppose, but I don't
know, that the fifty million and more cash sur
plus of this company was placed where it would
do the most good, or at any rate be ready at
hand in case of an emergency, not, of course,
that the company took any risk in doing this;
on the contrary its deposits could not have been
placed in safer hands. I say I don't know any
thing at all about that matter. What I do know
is that this young man from the West, after a
short ten years, withdrew from the forces of the
financial chief of this country, on a pension, or
capital, or what not, of several millions, and is
now announced as a philanthropist, and goes
about the country, especially to colleges, lec
turing to our youth and young men on the car
dinal civic virtues.
Nothing funnier than this can be found in
"Innocents Abroad," and I wonder that our
great humorist did not write a book on Innocents
at Home. And still we pride ourselves, as a
people, on our keen sense of humor.
It would be, of course, the highest imperti
nence to ask this great philanthropist and lecturer
on civic virtue to our college youth, what he had
ever done to entitle him to his millions and his
character as a philanthropist.
Is there anything in the shape of a humbug or a
fraud that we as a nation will not eagerly swal-
76

FATAL ELOQUENCE

low? Dr. Cook is the representative of a very
large class which we actually run after. Even
when this man was proven by his own records
a fraud and a humbug in every sort of way, the
very periodical that denounced him most un
sparingly, and printed the truthful account of the
true hero, whom the fraud had tried to cheat
out of his fame and glory, — even this periodical
has the face to ask the people of this land to
listen to this blackguard tell the story of his own
infamy. But even this creature's confessions
are as fraudulent as his claims were. We have
indeed lost the saving grace of all persons and
nations — the sense of humor — when we can
make ourselves so utterly ridiculous before the
whole world.
This, if nothing else, would prove beyond any
question that the native wit and good sense of
the American are fast passing away.

77

V

THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH
POLE
Time was when America could recognize a
true hero when he appeared. Washington,
Lincoln, Garrison, and Lee were all of the heroic
mould. And the nation honored itself in honor
ing them. That time has passed, and nothing,
not even our philanthropic millionaire, testifies
so surely to the decadence of the true American
heart and spirit as our treatment of that world
hero, Robert Edwin Peary, the discoverer of the
North Pole. You will be at some pains to find
in the whole scope of national history, ancient
and modern, anything at all parallel to the
treatment this hero has received at the hands of
his own people. There have been cases, to be
sure, such as Columbus, where the first outburst
of national pride and gratitude has been followed
by a reaction, founded for the most part on
jealousy, and the hero of one day is the villain
of the next. But I know of no case where a
true and great hero, such as Peary, has not re
ceived at once and without stint the proud
homage of his own countrymen. The first im-
78

DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE
pulse of men and nations is always the most
generous impulse; and the soul of a man or a
nation must be very dead indeed not to thrill
at such an heroic endeavor and triumphant
achievement as the discovery of the North Pole
by an American citizen, with all the best tradi
tions of his native land.
This treatment of Peary by his own people,
as represented by Congress, is proof positive
that the original spirit of America has departed.
In Peary we have the kind of hero that any
nation with ideals above the standards of the
grafter and the millionaire, the combine and the
monopoly, would have acclaimed with loud
and enthusiastic praise and generous reward.
Peary's achievement in itself is one of the
very greatest in the whole history of noble and
romantic adventure. But the manner of this
persistent adventure adds immensely to the
renown of the achievement. Nearly a quarter
of a century of unsparing self-sacrifice, un
ceasing labor, and perilous adventure did this
true son of the true America give to his splendid
task. He was ambitious? Yes. But what a
fine ambition! The kind of ambition that made
"the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur
that was Rome."
And yet this great hero — the greatest hero
perhaps in the field of noble action — that the
world has produced for a hundred years or
79

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
more: This American, this world hero, is be
littled and insulted in the Congress halls of his
native land, and his compatriots do not rise
up in mass and fling these contemptible mean-
souled creatures out of the places of national
trust they have so foully disgraced. This, I
say, is the kind of blackguard treatment our
hero is subjected to in his own country, while
all the world besides proclaims him a universal
hero, worthy the praise and honor of all men.
It is difficult — in fact I find it quite impossible —
to speak with patience concerning this most
disgraceful matter. One might have thought
that the United States Navy would have pro
tested, with indignation, in the spirit of a
common service, against this vile treatment of a
brother officer, who had brought such signal
honor upon their profession. But instead of
such a natural and honorable course we have
heard nothing but carping criticism and de
traction, inspired by jealousy. And worst of all,
by the spirit of snobbery which would not allow
that Peary was a naval officer, on an equal
footing with other officers, these gentlemen
must needs make it plain to all the world that the
discoverer of the North Pole was not of the same
status and dignity as themselves. There is not
another officer in the whole of the United States
Navy, so far as I know, who has done such
difficult and valuable coast-line work, to say
80

DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE

nothing of the North Pole, as Commander
Peary. A map of the coast line of the Arctic
region has been made possible only through the
arduous work of this officer of "inferior status."
One of the very finest features of Peary's
triumph was the fact that it was made in the
line of duty, and after 23 years of endeavor,
under orders from the President of the United
States. Nearly a quarter of a century did this
American citizen give to study and toil and per
sistent adventure, before he reached the goal of
his quest. No nation can show a finer type
of man, a more thorough, a more determined,
explorer, and he very nearly in himself re
deems the whole nation and would do so if the
nation had the heart and mind to see and ap
preciate his character. It is this national blind
ness which is the fatal obstacle to our salvation.
Had Commander Peary been a Briton he
would now in all probability be numbered with
the proud peers of the realm — the highest honor
that nation can bestow.
Lieutenant Shackleton on his return from
"a point furthest south" was immediately ac
claimed a national hero by the Parliament of his
country, and was awarded a knighthood and a
grant of $100,000. The Royal Geographical
Society of Great Britain examined his claims to
have reached the furthest point south, and al
lowed these claims.
a 81

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
The same learned Society — the highest au
thority on such matters in the world, except of
course the United States Congress — also ex
amined Commander Peary's claims to have
reached the North Pole, and confirmed these
claims, and in token of the value the Society
set upon this discovery it granted Commander
Peary its special gold medal, the highest honor
within its power to bestow. And still, after
more than nine months, and after all the most
learned geographical societies of the world, so
far as I know, have pronounced Peary the dis
coverer of the North Pole, — I say, after all
the world outside of America has recognized
and honored Peary as the discoverer of the
North Pole, and the greatest hero of his day,
the Congress of the United States has done
nothing but insult this great American, even in
the face of a request of the President that some
fitting honor should be bestowed upon him.
This conduct is sufficient in itself to cover the
United States Congress with everlasting infamy,
and to make one almost wish that a Cromwell
would come forward and kick these little crea
tures out of the doors of the Capitol and send
them about their business. It is being rumored,
as I write (February, 1911), that Congress may
be induced to grant President Taft's request,
and bestow the rank of Rear Admiral on the
discoverer of the North Pole. If this should
82

DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE
prove true, I hope Peary will decline such a
tardy, reluctant, and ungraceful recognition of
his great achievements. This would brand with
shame the present United States Congress for all
time, and serve as a warning to future con
gresses. Perhaps it may be just as well for me
to say that I have never had the great honor of
seeing the discoverer of the North Pole, nor
have I had any communication with him in any
way whatever.

VI
OUR BUSINESS METHODS
The President of Columbia University has
already told us that we are "Infants in Foreign
Trade as compared with England and Ger
many." What about our home trade?
We certainly ought to know how to do busi
ness in our own country, but the plain fact is
we do not, and this is the explanation of our
frequent panics, the increasing high prices for
the necessities of life, and the hard times which
have been so prevalent, and so persistent, for
the last four or five years.
Our inefficient business methods are at the
bottom of all our economic troubles, and reck
less extravagance is the chief source of our
inefficiency. I am not a financial or economic
expert, but I think I have common sense
enough to see that the American habit of going
blindly ahead without rhyme or reason, incurring
debts on the right hand and on the left for all
manner of unnecessary things, and then wiping
it all off by an increase in the capital from two
to tenfold through the simple hocus-pocus of
issuing bonds, is as dishonest as it is disastrous.
Recklessness is the one word which best

OUR BUSINESS METHODS
characterizes American business methods, and
recklessness is only a milder name for dishonesty.
The old-fashioned honest way of nations and
corporations, putting aside so much of the earn
ings each year in order to create a sinking fund
to meet all contingencies, is altogether too slow
a process for our present-day get-rich-quick
American. But he will find out sooner or later
that the old-fashioned, slow, honest methods
of our ancestors are, after all, the only sane
methods. The idea of a man lifting himself up
by his boot straps has always been thought a
somewhat difficult feat, but the American cor
poration has solved that problem with the great
est of ease, for whenever it wants to lift itself
up from a low state of insolvency to a high state
of wealth and prosperity, it has only to issue
bonds enough and the trick is done.
"A new bond issue" is the magic wand that
creates unlimited wealth in this country. A
certain property is worth say a million dollars;
one of our smart financiers gets hold of it, runs
it in debt four or five million dollars; issues
stock or bonds for ten millions; gets a com
mission of two or three millions for his magic
skill and marvelous ability, and the American
innocents at home rush in pell mell to take the
gutted concern off his hands, and proclaim him
a marvel, a wonder,— the sort of financier that
only America can produce. 85

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
A great railway corporation has just in
curred a debt of one hundred million dollars in
the construction of one station, among its
thousands. It is true that this station is in New
York and therefore the most important of all.
It has just been opened, and is beyond question
the most imposing railway structure in the
whole world. And that fact, to judge from what
the press has said, is quite sufficient for its
justification — according to American business
methods. Immediately following the completion of this
one-hundred-million-dollar station, the directors
of this great company advertise (January 11,
1911) an issue of stock, for exactly the same sum,
only one hundred million dollars. This is lifting
one's self by one's boot straps with a vengeance.
Why should not this company go on building
one-hundred-million-dollar stations all along its
line, as it has only to print stock certificates
enough to cover this sum, or any sum, for the
matter of that.
This is a method of producing wealth, not
only beyond Dr. Johnson's dreams of avarice,
but wholly beyond the dreams of magic. The
truth is the old time magician isn't in it with our
up-to-date American financiers. Does any sane
person suppose that this railway can possibly do
business sufficient to justify such an enormous
outlay for one station? This New York sta-
86

OUR BUSINESS METHODS
tion will have to make a profit of at least ten
million dollars a year to justify its existence.
This it could not do if it were worked to its
utmost capacity every day and night for 365
days each year. It stands, therefore, as the most
conspicuous monument of reckless extravagance
to be seen in the civilized world. But not to be
outdone in this monumental insanity business,
a rival railway company is at work with feverish
haste constructing another one-hundred-mil
lion-dollar station not a mile distant from the
first colossal folly. Think of two hundred mil
lion dollars being invested in two stations, in
one city of the United States, and you may get
some measure of the financial insanity that
dominates the business methods of our land.
If our national resources were tenfold greater
than they are, and were being developed in the
most careful and economic manner, they could
not begin to stand such vast expenditure in so
circumscribed a locality. The natural dilapida
tions of such structures must be many millions a
year. But this insane finance is not confined to
railways and other large business corporations.
It has spread to our religious and educational
life and churches. Think of a university with a
capital of nearly, if not quite, fifty million
dollars, and a theological seminary — of all
things— with buildings that cost $2,500,000.
87

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN

The incongruity and utter vulgarity of such
things, apart from any economic considerations,
are enough to damn them forever — at least in
this world.
Think of poor students living and working in
such an atmosphere of dollars and material
grandeur, and you will understand our national
want of high ideals, and the reason why our
churches are empty. When our great corpora
tions, our universities, our divinity schools,
and our churches set such a rapid pace of ex
travagant living, how can we expect the rank
and file of our countrymen to live modest, frugal,
and honest lives ?
The contagion of the reckless, dishonest ex
travagance of these vast concerns spreads like
a forest fire, all over our land, and reaches the
grocer, the baker, and the candlestick-maker;
and impure foods, given in light weights, are
but small items in the general national degrada
tion. The small tradesman believes that it is
impossible for him to be both honest and suc
cessful under such an inundation of extrava
gance and graft.
The youth of our land behold on every hand
unmistakable evidence of a predominant desire
to get-rich-quick at any cost, and their young
lives are thus poisoned at the very fountain of
their being, before they can get a vision of the
life beautiful. 88 i

OUR BUSINESS METHODS
Let me give a single instance of the way our
great corporations are imitated by the smaller
fry. I hold in my hand a New York journal
containing the announcement that the ground
floor of a building on the east side of Broadway
above 23d street has been leased for twenty-one
years to a retail business at the rate of $110,000
a year. Again I take from an evening paper of
January 16, 1911, the following, — "The base
ment, first and second floors of the fourteen-
story building at the northwest corner of 
street and Fifth Avenue have been leased by a
new corporation, organized to deal in high-grade
millinery and ladies' apparel. The quarters
have been leased for a term of twenty-one years
at a rental approximating $1,100,000."
Now is anybody fool enough to think for one
moment that any reasonable business can afford
to pay such an absurd rental ? How can there
possibly be anything but high prices — sky
prices — when retail concerns invest such a
large fortune in the initial matter of mere rent ?
The fact is New Yorkers are paying in many
instances not only a hundred per cent, but a
thousand per cent and more on the original cost.
It cannot be otherwise when there is, to begin
with, such an enormous, such an insane, outlay
on the part of the tradesman before he can even
house his goods, to say nothing of offering them
for sale. This sort of thing cannot go on much
89

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
longer, without impoverishing the whole nation,
for it is nothing but extravagance and waste.
I went into a New York drug store the other
day and asked for fifty cents' worth of "am-
moniated quinine." There is but one formula
by which this remedy is compounded, through
out the world, — so I learn from a highly educated
doctor, and yet the New York druggist gave me
for fifty cents just one-eighth part of what Lon
don chemists give. The day I left London
for America I gave one penny— two cents — for
three oranges, and threepence — six cents — for
four apples. These oranges and apples were
imported into England. In less than a month I
gave ten cents in Florida — of all places — for
three oranges, and five cents apiece for apples
which were not so large, nor so good, as those
I had so recently purchased in England. A
cake of cuticura soap, made in Boston, costs
fourteen cents in London and twenty cents in
America. There is not an article of American
produce, from flour to apples, which one can
not buy much cheaper in England than in the
United States.
I went one day, not long since, with one of
those back numbers called Britishers, into an
American hotel, with a view to dining there.
My companion looked over the menu and the
price list, and turning to me said, "I am very
sorry but I really can't afford to dine here." No
90

OUR BUSINESS METHODS
more could I, and after excusing ourselves to
the waiter we went elsewhere. I told this inci
dent to an American lady, and a nice one too,
who remarked, "Why, is Mr.  as poor as
all that?" "No," I answered, "he is not exactly
poor, as you would consider poverty, neither
is he a fool, and he is, therefore, not ashamed to
live within his means." The average English
man is not ashamed to say that he cannot af
ford such and such things, and he is also not
afraid to tell a tradesman that his prices are too
high. If any further proof were needed to establish
the insanity of American business methods, the
automobile would more than provide that proof.
If you see a man with a motor car in England,
France, or Germany, you may take it for granted
that he has a perfectly assured income that will
amply justify this luxury. Very few business
men, who are not exceptionally prosperous,
would think of such an extravagance. So well
is this matter understood that the motor car
is said to be the one universal thing that dif
ferentiates the rich from the poor man, or from
persons with moderate incomes. Therefore, to
see a man in a motor car in Europe is unmis
takable evidence of wealth. How does this work
in America? A banker the other day in a
western town gave out the statement that the
possession of an automobile by any of his cus-
91

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
tomers would be taken as discounting those
customers' credit in his bank; and would be
reckoned against them when the question of a
loan should come up.
One firm of real estate dealers advertised in
October (1910) 260 mortgages to be closed on
American homesteads — these mortgages having
been negotiated to enable men to purchase
motor cars. The madhouse is the only place
for such people. Could business insanity go
further, or bring more disastrous consequences
in its wake ? I quote the following paragraph
from the Ohio State Journal :
"The remarkable growth of the automobile
industry is illustrated again by the fact that
mortgages on Ohio farm lands increased from
$196,388,255 to $353,363,096 in the last fiscal
year." Is there one young man in ten in America
who, like the stupid young John Bull I have
mentioned, would have the courage to frankly
confess that he could not afford expensive
hotels, operas, etc. ? The paying teller of the
bank in which I have an account was arrested
and sent to prison for a term of years, the other
day, for stealing twelve hundred dollars.
This man associated, so I am told, with young
men and women who lived an extravagant life,
and he stole from his employers in order to keep
up with his set. This is the story that might
92

OUR BUSINESS METHODS
be told in almost every case of financial wrong
doing. A want of common sense and common
courage are at the bottom of nearly all our
business troubles.
I know a man who has a precarious income of
about four thousand dollars a year, who thinks
nothing of paying from sixty-five to one hundred
dollars for an overcoat ; or of giving from thirty-
five to fifty dollars for a hat for his daughter,
because this lady is in the way of meeting rich
people. This gentleman also pays daily one
dollar for his luncheon. A German with the
same income would hardly expend twenty
dollars, at the outside, for an overcoat, and his
luncheon would never cost him more than
twenty-five cents. His daughter would make
her own hats, and dresses too, and his net in
come at the end of the year would be about
ten times that of the American and in case of
his death he would leave something for his
daughter. American clergymen do not hesitate to spend
one-half of their yearly income in a trip to
Europe; whilst an English parson is highly satis
fied if he can get an exchange for a month, once
in a year. I know a school-teacher who spent
every cent she had accumulated in ten years, for
a trip to Europe. She lost her place on her re
turn, and is now living from hand to mouth,
doing anything that by chance may come her
93

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
way, and the chances are ten to one against
her. This reckless national spendthrift spirit is
seen in all things, great and small, and it will be
our bitter undoing if it is not checked at once.

94

VII
AMERICAN WOMEN
American women are a new world type of
the feminine and have to be reckoned with
in any study, however slight, of our national life
and character; and this study must always be
softened and qualified by the fact that our
mothers were American women. But taking as
best I can a detached view of the American
woman, I affirm that no better, no finer, no
nobler type of womanhood has ever been seen,
in this beautiful world of ours, than the mothers
who bore us. They were in truth and in very
fact helpmates to our fathers, and took cheer
fully their part in the work of founding this
nation. Such a thing as employing aliens to
nurse their babes or to do the work of their
homes, was a very rare occurrence in this country
up to the time of the Civil War. We who were
born in the South, it is true, had our black
mammies to look after us, but the black mammy
was not an alien, — far from it — and was so in
timately associated with every phase of the
family life as never to be the slightest barrier
between the mother and her child, but on the
95

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
contrary she was the confidant of both, and
served both in ways that cannot be expressed.
There has never been anything in the world,
so far as I know, just like the position of the
mammy in the southern home; and it is quite
impossible to describe it to those who have never
experienced it. The New England mother is
better understood, and more fully appreciated;
for nothing ever came between her and her
children. She bore them; nursed them; fed
them; clothed, and often educated them; and
it is to her almost solely that we owe the great
men of the North who helped to make the first
century of our national history. Jonathan
Edwards, the Adams, — for three generations, —
William Lloyd Garrison, Channing, Wendell
Phillips, Theodore Parker, Emerson, Long
fellow, Holmes, Whittier, Bryant, Phillips
Brooks, and their like were born of noble
mothers. Perhaps nothing can better reproduce the
New England atmosphere of those heroic days,
or give a truer insight into the hearts and homes
than a story — and a true story — told of the
mother of Theodore Parker. The Parker
family were hard-working folk, and earned their
frugal living on a farm near the historic town of
Lexington, Mass. They were three in the family,
— father, mother, and son. The father did his
own farming, and the boy, Theodore, was often
96

AMERICAN WOMEN

permitted to accompany him, as he followed
the furrow, or drove his team afield. One
spring day, when the boy was about seven years
old, he went with his father to some remote part
of the farm, where the father was detained
beyond his usual time, and the child's heart
growing mother-hungry, he was allowed to
return by himself. On his way home he passed
a pond, and spied some beautiful pond lilies
floating on the surface of the water. He secured
a stick and was reaching out after a flower
when an awkward tortoise crossed his path.
The child, boy-like, lifted the stick to smite the
reptile, but did not carry out this impulse. On
the contrary, he dropped his stick, forgot all
about the lily, and hurried home to his mother,
and going up to her said, "Mother, as I was
coming home I saw a tortoise, and lifted a
stick to strike it, when something told me not to
do it. What was it, Mother?" The busy
housewife stopped her work, dropped a tear on
the up-turned face of the boy, sat down, took
the child on her lap and said, "Some people
would say it was your conscience that spoke to
you; but I say it was God, and if you listen to
his voice, and always obey what he tells you,
he will speak louder and clearer; but if you do
not heed his voice, nor obey his words, he will
cease to speak to you, or, at least, you cannot
understand what he says to you." That was
, 97

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
the woman atmosphere in which the great men
of New England were born and nurtured.
I went into the kitchen of a New England
farmhouse last summer, and found the farmer's
wife wearing spurious gold bracelets and patent
leather shoes. The farmer himself was messing
about with a second-hand automobile, which he
had recently bought on credit, and which he did
not understand, and for which he had promised
to pay more than he could make during the
whole year as farmer, milk and butter man, and
Jack-of-all-trades. This is as true a picture of the present-day
life in New England as the story of the boy and
the tortoise is of the elder-day life on the farm.
All ideals seem to have fled, and waste and
extravagance march hand in hand, where thrift,
economy, and industry once held enlightened
sway. It has been said time and again, by those
who know, that the average French family can
live on what the average American family waste.
We American men are what our women make
us; and this is so in a sense that does not hold
true of any other nation, for in every other
country save America, the man is of the first
consideration, not excepting social affairs. To
begin with he is master in his own house. His
word is law, and his comfort and dignity are
matters of the first importance.
This is wholly reversed in this country.
98

AMERICAN WOMEN

Here the woman is first considered in all things,
and her wishes, her ambitions, and her habits
give the keynote to our national life and char
acter. She it is who sets the family pace, in all
kinds of expenditures, dress, houses, amuse
ments, travel, etc., and her reckless extrava
gance has brought ruin into thousands of
American homes. Divorces are now almost as
frequent as weddings, and the cause is not far to
seek. It is my belief that the reckless, senseless,
and utterly heartless extravagance of American
women will account for the greater number of
wrecked families that strew our country's shores.
A German woman would never dream of
dressing beyond the means of her husband. She,
in fact, is the household economy, and to her
the husband and father looks, not only as a
helpmate but as a wise conserver of his means.
The American wife is a luxury that only a rich
man can afford; the German wife is an economy
that the German man cannot afford to do
without. A German wife told me she would be
ashamed to appear before her neighbors in a
dress above her position and her husband's
means. "I should be ridiculed and shunned by
all right-minded people," she said. The great
ambition of many an American woman is to
dress as well as, or better than, her neighbor,
regardless of her position or her husband's in
come. Again, the average German woman is
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
the best-educated woman in the world. She
knows at least two languages, and is thoroughly
instructed in the history of her own country,
and many other things, and yet she is never
pretentious but always modest and unassuming.
The education of a German girl, even if she
be a member of a wealthy family, is conducted
in an atmosphere of the simplest and plainest
living, without the slightest suggestion of luxury
or riches; and this, I am told, holds true even
of royalty itself. One of the very wealthiest
families in Munich sent an only daughter to a
high-class boarding school in Dresden. Mean
time I went from Munich to Dresden on a
visit of a week, and was asked by the parents
of this young lady to take her a message and a
small parcel. I sent my card to the principal
of the school and after all due respect having
been paid to red-tape — so dear to the German
heart — I was received by the young lady and
one of the teachers in a room devoid of carpet,
or any other tokens of luxury or even common
comfort, and the young lady told me that this
room was a true index to the general life of the
school. Each girl did the work of her own bed
chamber, and partook of a common diet, which,
while plentiful, never consisted of more than two
courses of the simplest kind of food.
I must confess that, knowing something of
girls' schools in America, I felt shocked at what
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AMERICAN WOMEN

I considered the hardness of this young lady's
school life, and made bold to tell her parents
what I thought about it. They listened to me
with the most perfect patience, and then easily
convinced me that this plain manner of school
life wTas the best and healthiest life for their
daughter. It checked all disposition to pride
and luxury, and placed all the young ladies on
the same simple footing.
I know of an American family where the hus
band and father is on a salary of $3,500, and
he, — or rather she, his wife,- — is sending their
daughter to a school where they pay one thou
sand dollars a year. I asked the mother why
she chose such an expensive school and one not
celebrated for its superior instruction. "Well,"
she said, "two of Hattie's friends are going to
this school, and what's good enough for them
is not too good for my daughter." Insanity!
Still another form of our national insanity.
But I return for a moment to the German
woman. Is she the slave of her lord and master ?
Does this domesticity of the German wife,
this careful and thoughtful housekeeping, lessen
her in the esteem of her husband? Does he
accept her services and then dismiss her to her
kitchen, and her linen closet ? This, I know, is
the popular American conception of the rela
tions between the German husband and wife.
But the truth is, there are not in the whole world
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
two people who are such intimate and constant
companions as the German husband and wife.
They are always together. They take their
walks together, their beer together, and all
their amusements together. I have often
watched them with interest and admiration, in
some beer garden, and have observed their utter
oblivion to every one but themselves and their
family; and I have noticed that if they should
get separated for an unusual time, the husband
becomes restless, and you will sometimes hear
him ejaculate to himself, "Wo ist meine Frau ?"
Some eight years ago, when rector of the
American church in Munich, I visited the United
States for two months, and under a very urgent
request from a lady friend gave a very informal
lecture, or talk, on the German woman before
a woman's club, of which my friend was presi
dent. I must confess that I did not please my
audiences very well, but that is not the point.
My lecture was, for some reason unknown to me,
reported by the New York press, and several
things I said went the rounds of the whole
country, and came back to me in all sorts of ways.
But the most interesting and romantic echoes
of this unwise talk were in the form of letters
from men wanting German wives. One brother
clergyman wrote saying that his salary was but
fifteen hundred dollars a year, too small to allow
him to think of taking an American wife, but
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AMERICAN WOMEN

from what I said he was convinced that with a
German wife he could live easier on his salary
than he had been doing as a bachelor. I had
to decline, I am sorry to say, this pathetic ap
peal to act as a match-maker in behalf of my
compatriot for fear of complications that might
arise out of the circumstance that I myself was
a bachelor. But I have noticed that many American
students return from Germany with German
wives. Very few American women are nowadays
willing to marry unless — as one lady told me the
other day — they can better their position. The
sentiment and romance of wedded life seem to
have vanished almost wholly from our land;
and the feeling of maternity, — the love of child-
bearing, hardly exists in this country any more.
I made a visit once at a house in Germany
where there were two sisters — the one married
and the mother of several children, the other a
spinster. Not knowing these ladies very well I
mistook the spinster for the wife and mother,
and asked after her children.
"I am not a mother, but I hope to be the
mother of children some day" was the simple,
yes, and modest reply of a woman in whom the
natural instinct of maternity was strong, and she
was not ashamed of it.
The native American woman does not want
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
the bother of child-bearing, and she is, therefore,
bringing less and less children into the world.
This is becoming a serious national problem,
and is one of the chief causes of the passing of
the American. A birth in Fifth Avenue, New
York, is now a very rare event.

104

VIII
AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
The American cleric — I refer to the non-
Roman parson — is the poorest-paid minister of
religion in the world, so far as I know, and I
know a good deal about this matter. I mean,
of course, the average minister. There are a
few well-paid — and over-paid — clergymen in
the larger cities; but taken as a class, by rank
and file throughout the land, the minister of re
ligion receives a mean and wholly inadequate
stipend, which reflects very badly upon the
sense of justice and decency, to say nothing of
the generosity, of the American layman. This
contemptible wage weakens the position and
impairs the influence of the minister in every
possible way, and reduces him to a state of
abject dependence upon the purses of his
parishioners. The prayer of the New England deacon, —
" Oh Lord, if you will keep our pastor humble,
we will keep him poor," — is the spirit which pre
vails throughout the churches. A man without
money, in our beloved country, whatever be his
calling, and be he never so able and worthy,
105

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
can exert little or no influence in moulding pub
lic opinion. He may be a preacher or a prophet
of exceptional ability, but if he be dependent
upon the purses of laymen he is hopelessly
compromised. How can this be otherwise in a
country where the dollar is the standard of all
value ?
I overheard a very interesting conversation
the other day in a railway car, between two
women, which may illustrate my point. These
ladies were discussing a certain Boston Baptist
minister, and were remarking upon his inde
pendence and frankness of speech. "I was
brought up an Episcopalian," said one of the
ladies, "but I go to this church because the min
ister says what he likes. And you know," she
added, "that Dr.  s wife has several million
dollars, and each one of them has their own
special auto, and he don't care what he says."
(I quote literally.) " And that is why the church
is always full." Yes, exactly so. Nothing could
possibly fill an American church so quickly as
a millionaire minister "who don't care what he
says." This is the best advertisement I ever
heard of, and I advise all millionaire ministers
to let the fact be known, if they want to preach
to full pews morning, noon, and night. It doesn't
matter much what they say, or how they say it,
if they have a million to back them. I have not
been able to verify — for want of time — the cor-
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AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
rectness of this story of the Boston millionaire
Baptist preacher. He may be an entire myth;
or, as is more likely, his wealth may have been
overdrawn by these enthusiastic admirers, but
the lesson remains almost the same, in any
event. But at any rate, I know a millionaire
minister in the Episcopal Church, who com
mands a position and a respect outrageously
disproportionate to his character and his abil
ities; for, without this money to back him, this
clergyman would be very slightly esteemed, if
esteemed at all. But if there is a millionaire
Baptist minister in Boston, he will understand,
I hope, that I here make no reflections upon him
in any way. On the contrary, from what these
ladies said I should think him a fine fellow, who,
in spite of his millions, is doing a good work
among his fellows.
Human nature is just poor human nature.
That is all, and we must reckon with it as such.
At its best it is very fine, and always responds to
a noble appeal. But left to itself, surrounded by
the sensual and the sordid, without high ideals
and inspiring leaders, it sinks to the level of the
moral and religious consciousness which sur
rounds it, and if it breathes an atmosphere of
dollars and material values, then it will measure
all things by these standards; and the minister
without a good bank account will be reckoned a
poor, weak thing, who has no right to say his life
107

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
is his own; whilst the minister who can show
as full a purse as his elder or warden will be a
man of independence and importance. The
man without money in this land is without in
dependence or influence, whatever may be his
character or his talents. There is, to be sure,
frequently a certain rough and ready justice in
this manner of estimating men's worth. It fails,
lamentably, in many cases, but, other things
being equal, the man of substance always speaks
with more authority than the man who possesses
little or nothing. This being so, how short
sighted, as well as mean and contemptible, is the
policy of the American laymen to keep their
pastors penniless, and hence powerless. All
nations, to be sure, have their local and artificial
standards by which to judge men, and all I am
trying to say, at this time, is that money is a
lower standard of human value than — for in
stance — birth or rank.
I acted as locum tenens for more than a year
in an English parish, where a lord — the son
of a marquis — had preceded me. I found
this noble clergyman's picture conspicuously
placed in every cottage, farmhouse, and hall,
for miles around; and it seemed that every word
he had uttered during his curacy was remem
bered, and highly prized, by the whole parish,
high and low. All his peculiarities — I should
say his characteristics; he being a lord could,
108

AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
of course, have no peculiarities — were carefully
noted, and I was constantly entertained by their
recital. Of course this lordly English cleric
filled the parish church just as the millionaire
Bo.ston preacher filled his church, — that is, by
virtue of his being what he was, in social rank,
and without much regard to his merits as a
preacher. This, I repeat, is human nature, and
we must take it as it is, not as we think it should
be. Independence, money, security of position,
high social rank, etc., any one of these inci
dental circumstances adds immensely to the
weight of a man's words wherever or however
spoken. The stability and dignity of the Church of
England incumbent rests in a large measure
upon his security of tenure, which renders him
wholly independent of the likes or dislikes of
his parishioners, and gives weight and a tone of
authority to his words and acts. Other things
being equal, the vicar of a parish in England
commands an influence that no dissenting min
ister can possibly hope to equal. This, I hold,
is as it should be, speaking generally; for the
man who attains the incumbency of a parish
does so, generally, by virtue of service and merit,
and these things count for more in England, I
am inclined to think, than in any other land.
Many things go, and should go, into the account
in reckoning the character and claims of a man
109

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
for position. Each nation has its own altars
and its own gods, through whom it approaches
the throne of the Supreme Father of us all; and
the character of a nation is determined by the
character of its household deities. Birth and
rank are the Lares and Penates of Great Brit
ain. Dollars, syndicates, millionaires, — these be
thy gods, oh, my countrymen!
But I return to the American parson. The
contemptible meanness of the money power in
this country is shown by the fact that the Amer
ican minister of religion is powerless to help
himself, and the church officials, knowing this,
subject him to all manner of indignity, and he
is made to live on starvation wages. The won
der is that he can exist at all. The average
mechanic in America receives more wage than
the average minister. This would not be so bad
if the minister's manner of life were similar to
the mechanic's. But he, and his family, are
forced to keep up the appearance of living on
the same social plane as his parishioners.
The multiplication of churches is in some
measure the cause of the small stipends of
American clergymen.
In a little town near New York there are
three church buildings within easy speaking dis
tance of each other; each with a mere handful
of worshippers. Any one of these churches
could more than accommodate the three congre-
110

AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
gations. Now I think the people of this town,
and other similar towns, should call a mass
meeting and instruct the officials of these rival
churches that until they can get together and
settle their differences, and agree to let one of
their number have exclusive occupancy of this
small field, they — the people of the town — will
not give one dollar to the support of any one of
them. This would doubtless bring these church
officials to their senses, if not to some proper
conception of their Christian duties.
I was asked the other day to go to New Jersey
and take four services on one Sunday for the
honorarium of ten dollars. "Honorarium" was
a very delicate way of putting it, but it did not
disguise the fact that I was expected to do a
very hard day's work, representing a week's in
come, for a stipend of $10.
There should be a law in each church stipu
lating that when a minister is asked to take occa
sional duty, he shall receive at least two-thirds
of the regular salary attaching to that church.
I have spoken very openly, and very plainly,
of these church scandals, with the hope that I
may be able to do some service, however slight,
for my brother clergymen, at whatever cost to
my own standing.
This mean, this low treatment of the clergy
goes hand in hand with the most wasteful ex
travagance in all other church affairs. I know
ill

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
a church that gives $4,000 a year for its music,
and $1,200 to its pastor. I know another church
which has an endowment of $2,800 a year, and
gives $1,500 to its rector. I know a country
church, made up almost of millionaires, that
gives $1,000 a year to its rector. Such cases
could be multiplied many times over in all the
church communities throughout the United
States. And yet the multiplication of church
buildings goes merrily on all over the land, and
that in spite of the fact that the present build
ings are able to accommodate three or four
times the number of worshippers who actually
enter their doors. Why not make an effort to
fill the churches that already exist before build
ing new ones? Ah, "but we must follow the
fashion, the trend of social life, and must plant
our churches on the most accessible sites of the
new residential districts." So I was substan
tially told the other day by a church warden.
"The church must use business methods," we
are constantly being told. I answered the church
warden by saying that there was a Presbyterian
church just opposite the spot he had chosen
for the new Episcopal edifice. "Do you think
that friendly ? " I asked. " Well, but you know
we must look after the interests of our own
church," he said. "The interest of our church
is, or ought to be, the interest of all churches.
Christianity is, I suppose, the underlying prin-
112

AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
ciple of them all." "Oh, of course, but you
must really, as a minister of our church, see
that while we admire the good work being done
by other denominations, still we cannot be in
different to the fact that we are somewhat dif
ferent from other Protestant churches."
"Yes, it is a somewhat different form of relig
ion, I grant you. But don't you think that both
churches, and all churches, are very greatly dis
credited in the mind of the people by such un
christian rivalry and worldly enterprise? Be
sides, it is a waste of money that might go
toward increasing the stipends of the clergy,
and helping to make weak, struggling churches
within our own fold stronger and happier. Do
you imagine, for one moment, that the public is
blind to this church extravagance and unfriendly
rivalry? Don't you think that if the different
churches would consider and consult each other
and not intrude upon territory already occupied,
there would result not only a vast saving of
capital, but the stopping of a vast volume of
scoffing and unfriendly criticism from the skep
tics and non-churchgoers ? To talk of unity, in
the face of this unfriendly rivalry existing all
over the land, is a mockery.
" People look about them and see the various
church communities trying to outstrip each
other — not in good works, but in getting the
best sites for new churches and in attracting
8 113

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
the most fashionable people. They behold this
waste of energy and this money rivalry, this
cultivating of an unfriendly spirit between the
churches, they — the people — see all this, and
stop away from church. And no wonder. The
remarkable thing is that anybody at all should
think it worth while to go to church!"
The churchwarden took my sermon very
patiently, simply remarking at the conclusion,
"You certainly have some original ideas on
church matters."
I heard the Bishop of Montana a short time
ago, speaking as the representative of the Epis
copal Church, say that the rivalry among the
different churches in his diocese was most dis
graceful. No sooner is a new town started in
that State, than a wild rush begins by the repre
sentatives of the various religious bodies to se
cure the most desirable corner lots for church
sites. Business rivalry is not more keen than this
church struggle to get there first. The Bishop
spoke of two little towns of only a few hundred
inhabitants, where there were actually two
Methodist Episcopal churches, — one North, the
other South — confronting each other from oppo
site sides of the same street, when one of these
churches could accommodate nearly all the in
habitants of the place. Of course there were, I
suppose, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal and
other churches besides these two Methodist ones.
114

AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
The Bishop says that he will not in the future
enter such unseemly sectarian races for place,
and he advises that there should be a friendly
understanding between all the churches, and
something like assignments of special territory
should be made to each church. This mutual
agreement should extend all over the land, and
put an end to the rivalry in church building and
other wasteful methods now employed by all
the churches. Given the true Christian spirit
and the thing could be done almost at once.
Until this spirit is manifested in an unmistak
able manner it is folly for the churches to
imagine that the people will go to them for
spiritual light and leading.
Since I wrote my Forum article on " The De
cline of the American Pulpit," a very notable
change has been going on in the personnel of the
American clergy. For example, all the best
places in the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Episco
pal churches in New York City are now filled
by foreign-born clergymen. The largest and
wealthiest Episcopal parish in America, and
perhaps in the world, is now under the rector-
ate of an Englishman. This is also true of the
most important Baptist church. In fact, I be
lieve that the two most important Baptist
churches are both manned by foreigners. The
great Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, whose
late incumbent was an Irishman by birth and
115

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
education, is at present without a regular pas
tor, and is presumably trying to secure another
foreigner. I say presumably, from the fact that
it has recently "extended a call" to an English
man, who declined to accept it.* One would
think that a sense of national dignity and self-
respect, if nothing else, would cause church
officials, who have to make choice of incum
bents, to choose native ministers, — that is, if
they can possibly find any home-made parsons
who are at all comparable to the foreign article.
Again, one would imagine — a priori — that the
very intimate relations and functions appertain
ing to the office of a pastor, could be better,
more agreeably, performed by a native than an
alien clergy; and the inferiority of the native
clergyman must be very marked indeed when,
in spite of these obvious considerations, the
foreigner is preferred before him.
I venture the statement that one quarter of
the Episcopal clergy throughout this land is
foreign born and mostly foreign trained. I
know that, at least, one-tenth of its bishops —
including the two great missionaries Brent and
Rowe — are foreign born. Even the Bishop of
Washington, of all places, is an Englishman, or
an Irishman — I am not certain which. One
would think that a suitable native might have
been found for the capital city of our country.
* He has reconsidered the matter and has accepted the call.
116

AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
"But the foreign-born clergy are so numerous
in all of our dioceses as to hold the balance of
power when a deadlock occurs, as was the case
in Washington." This I quote from a brother
clegyman. The American Bible Society has a foreigner
for its president; and the National Temperance
Society of the Episcopal Church has never had
anyone but an Englishman at its head since its
birth, some thirty years ago. Is it possible that
Englishmen are the only people who can direct
the church temperance work in America ?
These things tell the story, if they tell any
thing, of American clerical inefficiency as com
pared with the foreigner. For — be it remarked
—this does not work both ways. There is not,
perhaps, in the whole United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, a single native-born Amer
ican holding any clerical post of dignity and
emolument. It is true that I myself did clerical
duty for six years in England, under license
from the Archbishop of Canterbury; but only
as locum tenens, or curate, never as an incum
bent. And I was looked upon with great curi
osity as a novelty, and the English people won
dered — as one lady frankly put it to me — how
I, an American, ever got authority to officiate
"in our Church of England." I tried to explain
the matter to this particular lady, without much
success, I admit, by saying that the American
117

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
Episcopal Church was a part of the Anglican
Communion. "But we are not Episcopalians, whatever
that may be," said this lady of high title. "We
English people belong to the Church of Eng
land." "Yes, but the Church of England is
governed, or is supposed to be governed, by
bishops, and is therefore an Episcopal church,"
I made answer. "Now then," this lady said
good-naturedly, "I will not hear any more, for
you Americans are so clever, you know, as to
make anything you say seem quite all right.
You'll be telling me next that I am a dissenter.
I am a communicant of the Church of England
as by law established, and know nothing about
your American Episcopal Church, as you call
it, so there now." And so also this lady must
die in her ignorance, so far as I am concerned,
both of the American Episcopal Church and her
dearly-beloved Church of England. In saying
all this I am not conscious of any personal prej
udice against the foreign clerics who are being
imported into this country in such great num
bers. Many of my readers have doubtless got
the impression that I rather favor these aliens
than otherwise. I mention them only to let the
public see in how many ways, and things, the
native American is falling behind and giving
place in his own country to the foreigner.
I have just been told that the Superintendent
118

AMERICAN CHURCH MATTERS
of Public Schools in Greater New York — per
haps the most important educational post in
the United States — is both foreign born and
foreign trained. And again let me say that it
is not any ill-will for the foreigner that causes
me to mention this circumstance, but it is to
point out the fact that this foreign gentleman
has won out against all his American competi
tors, with the chances, at least, a hundred to
one against him. He must, therefore, be very
superior. I know of but one native American who holds
an important educational position in the whole
of Europe, and that gentleman is Dr. Caspar
Rene Gregory, Professor of Theology in the
University of Leipzig, who was born in Phila
delphia. American dentists, it is true, outrank
those of any other nationality, and are found
all over Europe, which is pretty sure proof that
there is no prejudice against the American pro
fessional man. as such, in other countries. A
medical professor went from Johns Hopkins
University to Oxford, it is true, but he had come
to the United States from Canada.
It is no exaggeration to say that there are
hundreds of men, both foreign born and foreign
educated, holding chairs in the colleges and
other educational establishments of this coun
try who are not even naturalized Americans.
The Episcopal Church has now under its formal
119

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
control but two colleges — the University of the
South and St. Stephen's College, Annandale,
New York, and the latter has an Englishman
for its president. Trinity College, Hartford,
Hobart College, Geneva, and Kenyon College,
Ohio, have been until very recently classed as
Episcopal Church Colleges, and as such I wrote
historical sketches of them all a dozen years or
so ago. But they are now, so I am informed,
all free from any ecclesiastical domination.
Strangely enough, Columbia University is about
the only college of high rank which is, and must
ever remain, a hard and fast Episcopal institu
tion; for no one but a communicant of the Prot
estant Episcopal Church can hold the office of
president. This works out in a very curious
way, for there are perhaps a larger proportion of
non-Episcopal and non-Christian students and
teachers at Columbia than at any other of the
great colleges of America; whilst Harvard,
which is the oldest and least sectarian or eccle
siastical of them all, has the largest proportion
of Episcopal professors and students. "The
best-laid schemes of mice and men," etc.

120

IX
OFFICIAL INEFFICIENCY
Railway. Army and Navy. Post Office
Mr. Louis D. Brandeis (a very foreign-
sounding name, by the way), a gentleman of sub
stance and weight in the legal profession, has
recently made the statement as a witness before
some court of investigation, and has re-affirmed it
many times since, that the railway officials of
this country are wasting $1,000,000 a day in
the conduct of their business — $365,000,000 a
year this means. A good round sum, to be sure.
Yet I am surprised that he put the figures so
low. From what I have read I gather that Mr.
Brandeis has special reference to the loose ad
ministration of railways in such matters as the
up-keep of the roadbeds, the want of care in
providing against dilapidations of rolling stock
and stations, and the want of high efficiency in the
actual running of the trains. But he has failed,
so far as I have seen, to note the most tell-tale
item in the whole administration, namely, the
accident account. This account is an absolute
standard by which to judge the efficiency of a
railway management, and it is at least ten times
121

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
greater in the United States than in any State
in Europe; and the loss resulting from acci
dents is in each case very much greater, owing
to the faulty construction of cars, a want of
proper means of salvage, etc.
The only rational explanation of the enor
mously greater loss of life and property in the
United States by railway accidents than in
Europe is our want of efficiency. Were our rail
way officials as efficient as those of England or
Germany, for example, there would be one acci
dent where we now have ten; and a saving, I
should guess, of something like a million a day,
on this account alone. Accidents, I repeat, are
proof positive of inefficiency, and the very much
greater number of accidents in this country than
in Europe is a true measure of the inferiority of
our officials as compared with those of Europe.
In plain words, our railway magnates, as well
as the rank and file of their subordinates, do
not know their business nearly so well as the
poor, stupid, down-trodden Europeans. Let
that primary fact be persistently maintained,
and daily rubbed into the thick skins of these
high and mighty railway lords, and in time we
shall have things done nearly as well in the
United States as they are done in the effete
monarchies of Europe. Meanwhile I should say
that the Boston lawyer might add another million
a day for preventable accidents.
122

OFFICIAL INEFFICIENCY
Wherever we are brought into practical com
petition with European men and methods we
fail. For instance, we have long since ceased
to be a shipping nation. There is hardly a third-
rate power in Europe which does not carry in
bottoms more international commerce than
the great United States of America. And yet
time was when we were amongst the first ocean
carriers in the world; but now our mercantile
marine has almost wholly disappeared from the
face of the waters. There are, it is true, several
American-owned vessels and fleets doing a
transatlantic carrying trade, but they do it
under a foreign flag, and are almost wholly
manned by aliens. Even the vessels in our
coasting trade are sailed, or navigated, for the
most part by foreign seamen.
These general facts, showing the inefficiency
of American official life, high and low, hold
good in almost every department of industry
and commerce.
Out banking system is the worst in the world,
and America is the only land where a "Morse"
and a "Robin" are possibilities. Men get to
be presidents of banks in this country without
knowing the first thing about finance, and with
out having established a character for anything
wise or honest. The head of a bank in any
European country must be a man who has at
tained his position by slow stages; and whose
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
knowledge, honesty, and judgment have been
tested in a hundred different ways. Banks do
fail in Europe, but it is from economic causes,
not from the personal dishonesty of their heads.
Now I am fully aware that I have brought a
hard indictment against the official life of my
country, but I am fully persuaded that it is a
just indictment. But is inefficiency inherent in
the American character? Let us see.
I suppose there is not a more intelligent and
efficient body of officers to be found in the whole
world than our army and navy contain.
Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, speaking
in the House of Lords some ten years ago, said
that the American soldier was the best in the
world. This is the highest praise from the high
est authority; and I imagine that no European
in a position to know would dispute the state
ment that the American navy, ship for ship,
man for man, is one of the most efficient in the
world. I myself would go further and without
fear of contradiction say that ship for ship, man
for man, the American navy is the superior of
any other navy.
The training at West Point and at Annapolis
is superior to anything of the kind in Europe,
and I think this is tacitly conceded by all na
tions. At Annapolis and West Point the cadet
must submit to years of discipline, and hard and
continuous work. He is taught to do one thing
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OFFICIAL INEFFICIENCY
at a time, and to do it well. This training begins
early, and is continued through his professional
life, and he rises by slow degrees (too slow by
half) from lower to higher service and author
ity. He only earns the right to command who
has learnt to obey, and the army and the navy
are about the only places where the American
learns this most important lesson.
The fact that the United States army pro
vides the chief engineers in the construction of
the Panama Canal reflects as much, if not more,
credit upon it and the nation, than the victories
of Grant and Sherman; of Lee and Jackson;
and proves to the world that Americans, when
well trained, can do their job as well as any one.
It is the thorough training at West Point and
Annapolis which has produced the great gen
erals and admirals of whom this country is so
justly proud; and it proves that if Americans
were all forced to undergo discipline, to learn
obedience, and to master their business, what
ever it might be, they could easily hold their
own with the best of any nation. And unless
they do submit to such training, and that right
speedily, they must give place to those who will.
The United States Government, while setting
the nation a most excellent example in the army
and navy, is lamentably wanting in almost every
other department.
The extravagance and waste attending the
125

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
administration of the American Government is
a shame and a disgrace. Not only is the actual
expense in the conduct of the affairs of this na
tion greatly in excess of what it should be, but
the continual waste of the national wealth is
beyond computation. To begin with, the United
States Government has given away to private
corporations at least one-tenth of all the na
tional resources in land, forests, minerals, etc.,
and has permitted these corporations to acquire
by tricks and sharp dealing twice as much more.
Mr. Frederic C. Howe in his "Privilege and
Democracy in America" makes the statement
that "one-fourth of the total acreage of America,
an area greater than Germany and Great Brit
ain combined, is owned by 50,000 persons"
out of a population of over 90,000,000. There
is nothing approaching such an unequal and
unjust division of land in any nation in the
world. Our Government not only gives to the privi
leged few with a lavish hand, but it permits
them to loot the national domain of all kinds of
treasures in coal and ore, forest and streams,
with utter impunity.
The steel trust has control of nearly all the
best ore deposits in the land, and "within the
last fifteen years," says Mr. Howe, "there has
been stolen from the public domain not less than
150,000,000 acres, an area, as one paper sug-
126

OFFICIAL INEFFICIENCY
gests, five times greater than the State of New
York. The fact that the people of the United
States have submitted to such outrages shows
that they are wholly wanting in the true spirit
of freemen; none but a stupid, spiritless race
would tolerate such high-handed spoliation for
one moment. There are still trees enough left
in America to hang these 50,000 highwaymen
on, but I fear they may all turn philanthropists
unless this hanging takes place very soon.
Let us examine for a moment a single depart
ment of the national administration — the "Post
Office," for instance.
Here is a very simple business "proposition"
— the gathering and distribution of the mail
matter throughout the country; and consider
ing the facilities for easy and rapid transporta
tion one would think that here certainly is one
of the chief sources of our national revenue.
The express companies do a similar and, in
some instances, a competing business, and their
profits reach as high as fifty per cent. Surely,
then, the Post Office as a carrier of mail matter
should secure a good profit. Such would be the
natural presumption, viewing the matter, I re
peat, as a business "proposition." But, alas,
business principles and business methods seem
to be wholly absent in the conduct of this de
partment of State, and the post-office author
ities have to walk very circumspectly lest they
127

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
tread upon the special privileges of the express
companies and the railways. A senator from his
place in the Senate made the statement the other
day that it cost about $241,000,000 a year to
run the Post Office department. "For $125,-
000,000 a year," said he, "a good business man
who would conduct this business on the merit
system could give a better service in every re
spect, and make a profit besides." A member
of the House of Representatives had the audacity
to say only last week that the "Post Office is
run by agents of railway and express companies."
Any attempt to free this office from these harpies
is "throttled in its cradle by Congress," affirms
the same member. In the early days of our
nation, when there were no railways and no
express companies, our post office was con
ducted at a profit of several millions. Put these
two things together and you have the explana
tion. Great Britain makes a profit of about
$25,000,000 a year out of her post office. The
British Government provides the people with a
cheap telegraph and telephone service, out of
which it also makes a profit. We allow monopo
lies and special interests to control our telegraph
and telephone service, and pay them about three
times the sum that a better service costs the
British people.
In this country almost all the conveniences
are exploited by corporations, and it would re-
128

OFFICIAL INEFFICIENCY
quire a brave, as well as an honest, politician
to advocate the conversion of the telegraph and
the telephone into public utilities; and to start
for the benefit of the people a parcels-post in
the face of all the powerful special privileges
that at present dominate the situation. These
things, to be sure, would be a great convenience
and blessing to the public. But "the public be
damned," as the head of a great corporation
once put it.
And yet with all this cringing to private privi
lege and monopoly; with all this extravagance
and waste in the conduct of the nation's business,
the men who serve the Government at Wash
ington as civil servants are the poorest-paid
officials almost in the world. Young men of
spirit and ability have better chances in almost
any other field. The very highest salary paid
to the civil servant, who holds a security of
tenure, is $1,800 a year. This can only attract
the unambitious, and hence none who are of
the very highest efficiency. Better places may
be obtained by influence, and in some cases by
high merit, but they are not held with any de
gree of security, and may be lost in a moment
for no fault of the holder, but simply because
somebody with stronger backing wants the post.
With such a stupid system prevailing at the
very head of the Government, how can we ex
pect the minor affairs of State to be conducted
129

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
with intelligence or efficiency? The Govern
ment should set the example of good pay for in
telligent and highly efficient service, with a gen
erous pension at the end of each honorable
career.

130

OUR STATESMEN
When Daniel Webster visited England he
was given a state dinner by the Prime Minister,
where he met De Quincey. On being presented
to Mr. Webster, the famous essayist regarded
the American statesman with close attention
for some time — so the story goes— and then ex
claimed, "Sir, you are a living lie, for no man
can be as great as you look."
I don't imagine that many of our present-day
statesmen would inspire such a witty compli
ment. No, they do not belie their looks in any
such way as Webster did. They are small in
mind and soul, and look their parts to perfection.
Go into the United States Senate and House
of Representatives and have a look at our na
tional legislators, and you will not, I think, be
overcome by the marks of greatness written
upon their faces. But stay and listen to their
eloquence, and whatever doubts you may have
had as to their mediocre, their commonplace —
I had almost said, their contemptible — ability
and character will vanish. Some aptness of
phrase; some alertness of mind; some readiness
131

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
and smartness in debate, you will no doubt ob
serve. But of real statesmanship of the Webster,
the Clay, and the Calhoun order; the Mill, the
Gladstone, the John Morley order, you will see
little or no evidence.
Lincoln was our last great statesman. Thomas
Brackett Reed and Thomas Francis Bayard
had the potentiality of statesmanship in them,
but were prevented by the exigencies of party
politics from bringing these latent powers to
their full fruition. President Cleveland had the
instincts of a statesman, but was wanting in
knowledge and opportunity. Our only ex-
President has said and done some statesman
like things, but in training and temperament he
is a smart politician rather than a constructive
legislator. Turning from these men of undoubted emi
nence to the Congress of our nation now assem
bled at Washington, we find nothing to indicate,
or suggest, that these gentlemen were chosen for
their statesmanlike qualities, in even a respect
able measure. There are some smart men,
some able lawyers in both Houses at Washing
ton; but that they are mainly concerned with
statesmanship, or anything resembling it, no
one is so simple as to suppose.
The leading senator from the South was, I
am informed, brought up in a saloon. At any
rate, he has carried the manners and habits of
132

OUR STATESMEN

the barroom into the Senate Chamber, and
when he is displeased with the conduct of his
colleagues he resorts to the methods familiar
to him. This senator assaulted a colleague who
disagreed with him on some public question,
and attacked a newspaper reporter in the lobby
of the Senate for publishing something concern
ing this august statesman of which he did not
approve. Such conduct is, of course, in perfect
character with the gentleman's antecedents and
training; but why he should be sent to the United
States Senate to display these qualities is some
what puzzling. This senator has also grown
rich, so I am told, in the practice of politics.
What else indeed is such a man in politics for?
And yet the South used to boast that her rep
resentatives were the only gentlemen in Congress !
Another southern State recently disgraced
itself by choosing an utterly illiterate man for
the office of United States senator, a man who
had gained his only fame as a filibuster, that is,
a violater of law and order; and who, when
governor of the State, acquired some twenty
thousand acres of state land in a very mysteri
ous and dubious manner. Fortunately for the
State, and for the nation, this man did not live
to take his seat in the Senate.
During the campaign of this politician for the
nomination — which was equivalent to election
— I heard a young college-bred man say that he
133

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
believed that this candidate had stolen land
from the State; and he knew him to be an illit
erate vulgarian, but notwithstanding these some
what objectionable failings, he was going to vote
for him because — and only because — his op
ponent was "too much of a damned aristocrat"
and had "been too long in office." If these were
the high motives which swayed the vote of an
educated man in the choice of a United States
senator, what can one hope from the unedu
cated voter?
As I write these words the question of whether
a certain United States senator has been guilty
of too much bribery is agitating his colleagues.
It is admitted on all sides that there was bri
bery; and that this senator profited by this
bribery; but to exactly what degree he himself
personally participated in unlawfully purchasing
a certain number of votes, and, as a result, his
election, cannot, it seems, be accurately deter
mined. At any rate, it was a very little bribe, so
his friends contend. This recalls the case of the
unfortunate English serving-woman who, on
applying to her mistress for a character, was
reminded that she had been the mother of an
illegitimate child. "But please, ma'am, it was
a very little one, and h'it died," was the perfectly
ingenuous reply.
Turning from the august Senate Chamber,
and the question of how much bribery oonsti-
134

OUR STATESMEN

tutes a crime, let us glance for a moment at the
House of Representatives. Look about you
carefully. Do you see a single man who stands
out as an able, fearless statesman? Have you
indeed heard any member mentioned as being
distinguished in any way for superior knowl
edge or virtue ? Can you name a man who is
fit for high political leadership? Let us look
for a moment at the picture of the man who has
for eight years occupied the place of majority
leader. Here is a report of a strange scene which
I take from a daily paper. It refers to the strug
gle of the insurgent Republicans to destroy
the autocratic power of Speaker Cannon: "If
there was ever a clean game sportsman in Con
gress, Joe Cannon is he,' said Vice-President
Sherman. What brought out this remark was
a little incident in the Speaker's room after ad
journment Saturday night. The Speaker en
tered his room almost exhausted. His face
showed the strain of the tremendous fight which
he had been directing against the solid Demo
cratic party and nearly thirty Republican in
surgents. In the room with the Speaker were
Representative Dwight, the Republican whip
of the House; James E. Watson, of Indiana;
the Vice-President, and a dozen or so newspaper
men. The newspaper men asked the Speaker
for a statement. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'this
House of ours has talked about 250,000 words
135

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
since the clock struck noon Thursday, mostly
about me, but, like the mummy of old Rameses,
I haven't got a word to say. But I can dance a
little step for you to show that they haven't got
the old man yet.' Weary almost to dropping
the Speaker straightened himself up, stepped
into the middle of the room, and for several min
utes danced a lively jig while Mr. Dwight patted
Juba. It was just a little side-light in the great
est period of stress and storm through which
Uncle Joe Cannon had ever passed, and he has
had many of them. The Speaker will begin his
seventy-fifth year on May 7th next."
A little side-light indeed! A light that reveals
the Speaker of the House of Representatives in
the role of a buffoon, a merry-andrew, a vulgar
fellow. Think of a man of seventy-five years,
holding the highest, the most dignified post in
the House of Representatives; think of him,
after a long and strenuous contest over a ques
tion of orderly procedure, think, I say, of this
high national official, dancing a jig for the amuse
ment of the Vice-President of the United States,
and a company of newspaper men !
And be it remembered that it is the Vice-
President himself who makes public this merry
performance of Mr. Speaker, with the evident
purpose of holding him up for the admiration of
the whole country.
Between bribery in the Senate, and jig-danc-
136

OUR STATESMEN

ing by the Speaker of the House, our national
humiliation seems complete.
A judge in Atlanta "left his bench during the
session of court," one day last April, "pulled off
his coat" (I quote from a newspaper report),
"and engaged in a fist fight with chief sanitary
officer John Jentzen. Both men were bruised.
The quarrel arose over a case being heard in
court." Here are two national pictures for our con
templation — the one of the Speaker of the House
of Representatives — the other of a judge on his
bench. You can take your choice, but for my
part I prefer the fist-fighting judge to the jig-
dancing Speaker, with his attendant and admir
ing Vice-President.

137

XI
EDUCATION
Why are American schoolboys vastly inferior
to English boys of the same age, and conse
quently much more inferior to French and Ger
man boys, is virtually the question that Mr.
Horace Holden puts in a very able article which
he contributed to the New York Evening Post.
Mr. Holden does not, however, observe strictly
the rules of logic, which require that the "an
sit" should be settled before the "cur sit" is
taken in hand. The thing must be shown to
exist, according to logic, before any inquiry can
be started as to why it exists. But when the
existence of a thing is virtually conceded as
common knowledge, one may, I suppose, pass
on without further pause to the question of why
it exists.That the American schoolboy is vastly inferior
to his European contemporary in scholarship is
then assumed to be a matter of common knowl
edge. His ignorance, in fact, is truly appalling,
and his manners are even worse than his ignor
ance. It seems to be the consensus of educated
opinion that the average American schoolboy
138

EDUCATION

and girl from twelve to fourteen years cannot
write or speak a half-dozen consecutive sen
tences correctly; nor can he or she state a sim
ple fact of history, geography, or mathematics
with clearness and intelligence. The art of
clear, simple, direct speech does not seem to
exist in our schools, or even in our colleges. The
teachers themselves, for the most part, do not
possess this acquisition, and hence they can
hardly be expected to impart it to their pupils.
I visited a class-room of the higher grade in
one of our public schools the other day, and
listened to a recitation. To begin with the
teacher asked her questions in an awkward and
slipshod manner. How then could one expect
a simple, clear, and direct reply? There was
none, not one, and it was really mortifying for
me to witness such exhibitions of our educational
incompetency. I asked to look at some of the
scholars' written work, and found it almost
unintelligible. I have visited many private schools and col
leges, first and last, and have found them little
better than the public schools. Indeed, I have
frequently found them worse, at least on the
plavground, if not in the classroom, and the
plavground is just as important a part of a school
as the classroom. This fact is well understood
and thoroughly provided for in England, and a
master must be as well equipped for the outdoor
139

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
life of a school as for the indoor life. I listened
to a number of university men discussing this
matter once in a London club, and they agreed
that the education a boy got on the playground,
and in field sports, was every whit as important
as the lesson he learnt in the schoolroom. Two
of these gentlemen contended, with much co
gency, that the playground was really more im
portant than the schoolroom. They didn't mean
simply the physical training a boy gets in the
outdoor life of a school, but the actual mental
and moral training that comes to a lad from the
atmosphere of the school in its play, as well as
in its work. Nothing, perhaps, is so sure a test
of character as the way one plays; and nothing
is a better test of a school than the manner of
its sports. A boy who learns to talk and act
like a gentleman on the playground will prob
ably carry this conduct into his daily life. I
have witnessed a great many school and college
games in England, and I have never heard a
profane word spoken by anyone engaged in
these sports. I am not referring to exhibitions
or special games, but to the ordinary games of
the daily school life. I believe you may go from
one end of England to the other without hearing
one"word of profanity uttered upon any school
or college playground. At the first school game
of baseball I witnessed after my return to Amer
ica I heard oath after oath of the lowest and
140

EDUCATION

most vulgar kind, out of the mouths of boys
from fourteen to sixteen years old, and these
boys represented the very highest social grade
of the community in which they lived. One of
the contending parties had "Sacred Heart" em
blazoned on its uniform, and the other "Christ
Church." A boy in England that would use
such language would be turned out of the game
at once, and all decent lads would refuse to have
any companionship with him.
I sat in a high-class restaurant last week and
heard two well-dressed men at another table
using the most disgusting profanity, as though
it were the language of their common speech.
Such low creatures would be ejected from any
respectable place in Europe. "Profanity," says
Professor Lounsbury, "is a brain test. The
habit is, in consequence, subject to the general
laws governing intensitiveness. To a very great
extent the practice of swearing is specially char
acteristic of a rude and imperfect civilization.
With the advance of culture profanity declines.
It declines not so much because men become
peculiarly sensitive to its viciousness, but to
its ineffectiveness. Much must always be al
lowed in the case of particular persons for the
influence of early training and association. Ex
ceptions are, therefore, too numerous to lay down
any positive rule; still, it is safe to say in general
that a man's intellectual development is largely
141

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
determined by the extent of his indulgence in
profanity." Let this philosophy of profanity be understood
in our schools and colleges, and it may moderate
the ambition of our youth to excel in this special
accomplishment. I know of four American college students who
were turned out of a beer garden in Germany
for their loud and profane language. They re
sisted this treatment, and a fight resulted, which
ended in these athletic collegians being locked
up in prison cells, and I was called upon the
next day to aid in procuring their deliverance.
A company of German students visited this
country last summer and conducted themselves
in such a quiet and gentlemanly manner that
their presence was hardly known till they were
just on the point of returning to their native
land. They were then set upon by our enter
prising newspaper reporters, and urged to say
what in America struck them as being in great
est contrast to Europe. They were reluctant to
speak, but when they did speak they all agreed
that a "want of courtesy" was the thing that
differentiated most distinctly this country from
the nations of Europe.
At the same time, another party of German
students were visiting England, and they also
went about among the people in a very modest
manner. They observed the educational, com-
142

EDUCATION

mercial, agricultural, and artistic life of England,
without feeling themselves called upon to pro
nounce their opinions of these things, but every
where, and in everything, their attitude was that
of idealists, as one paper put it, — that is to say,
they took a friendly interest in what they saw,
and tried to observe everything from an ideal
ist's point of view. So good, so very pleasant
was the impression these German students made
upon the English, by their good manners and
modest bearing, that one English lady — the wife
of a peer who has been prominent in the coun
cils of his country — offered a prize to the stu
dent who on his return to Germany would write
the best account of his impressions of England,
gained from his short visit. A young gentleman
of Leipzig won the prize. And the remarkable
thing about his paper was, that it consisted of
extracts taken from his note-book, written in
good, clear, and withal poetic English. To
show that this German student's English was
imaginative as well as correct, let me give a
specimen or two from his note-book. I take
these extracts from a quotation made by a New
York evening paper:
England's trees and shrubs seem to have left
their flock, the forest. At the borders of the field
they are standing, forgotten by the statisticians,
who measure the size of woods by square miles,
not by the number of trees. Their rows divide
143

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
the width of the landscape. This diminishes
the grandeur, but makes it more lovely. It
gives resting-places for the eye, and animates
the uniformity of the green lawn by a darker
ornament. It is to be considered that the bright
green of the English turf has been bought by a
good deal of the blue of the sky. Nature is just.
With regard to his observations of the English
people let the following be taken as a sample :
Der riicksichtslose Englander, well known on
the Continent, was surely abroad during my
English stay. I did not meet him. The polite
ness at the table and towards ladies, the conduct
of policemen and guards, and the good-nature
of poor fellows in the streets are worth taking as
models. English regardlessness abroad is, I
suppose, nothing but the fault of a virtue:
the national pride, exceedingly well cultivated.
What a really fine mind and spirit these ob
servations reveal! Not a word which could in
dicate the slightest feeling of prejudice, or race
superiority. He shows no disposition to be
smart, to pick flaws, or "to score points." He
thinks that the English stage is inferior to the
German — and who does not? — and yet in the
next breath he speaks of the acting of some Cam
bridge students as "splendid."
Throughout these notes there is not the slight
est suggestion of the patriotic bumptiousness
which is so noticeable in the American student
144

EDUCATION

abroad ? These German students did not think
it necessary to make known their presence in a
foreign country by rude and boisterous conduct,
nor by showing a contempt for the habits and
customs of the people of that country. No, their
keen observations were made with a friendly
eye and an open mind, but above all with the
spirit of idealism. Now, this difference in the
attitude towards life of the German and the
American college man abroad, is the difference
to a large extent in the methods and standards
of education in the two countries. The German
standards of education are idealistic. This is
shown in the side studies — so to speak — of the
German student; music, poetry, philosophy are
the incidental matters which in the German
university take the place of our college songs
and rag-time music. The football of the Amer
ican college and the duel of the German uni
versity about balance each other in brutality.
If the educational standards of a nation are
wanting in imagination, that is, in idealism, it
must follow, as the night the day, that the nation
itself in its bone and blood will be without high
spiritual impulses in morals and conduct.
Nothing, of course, could be more serious in
the life of a nation than this matter of educa
tion in the family and in the school. The boy
is not only father to the man, he is just as truly
father to the nation. I have said some hard
10 1«

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
things, I know, and for fear the reader may get
the idea that I am disposed to be too hard a
judge of the youth of my own land, I venture
to give two letters on this subject, written to
the public press from two points of view. These
letters are selected from a large number which
have appeared in the daily press, to the same
general effect, and all lamenting the low stand
ards and bad methods of our family and school
training:

BOYS ARE BAD NOWADAYS
A Graceless Generation Chargeable to
Careless Parents
To The Editor of the Sun — Sir: — Our
boys and youths act very bad nowadays. Wher
ever you travel they are in evidence, breaking
the laws and ordinances of the city, and break
ing the laws of God also.
Why is it ? My conclusions are that parents
are at fault. Boys are not cautioned against
evil and law-breaking; they are allowed to have
their own way, to follow their own sweet wills.
The result is a crop of selfishness, and acts that
are vicious, criminal, and un-American.
No one checks the boy who puts his feet all
over the car seat; no one says "stop" to the
boy with the fiendish and shrill whistle; no
one calls a halt on the boy who fights and yells
146

EDUCATION

in the streets. Who says "don't do it" to the
boys playing baseball, tip cat, pitch pennies,
craps, etc., in and on our streets?
No one. Why not? Because the parents of
these angels, these mamma's and papa's darlings,
are up in arms at the least reproof to their off
spring. No! They will do what is needful in
the way of punishment for their spoiled chick-
lets; they will bring up their young as they
please; the laws be hanged ; no laws must antag
onize their darling's inclinations.
Any such law is wrong and must be nullified,
and the result is a lot of misfit men and women,
undesirable citizens of all sorts later on, the kind
that fill our jails and prisons and add to our taxes
and the cost of living.
k New York, April 30.
THE AMERICAN SCHOOLBOY
To The Editor of the Evening Post: —
Sir: — Your correspondent, commenting on Mr.
Horace Holden' s article in your issue of Saturday
on English preparatory schools, raises an im
portant and difficult question. He asks why
American schoolboys are "vastly" inferior to
English boys of the same age, and consequently
much more inferior to French and German boys
— at least, in their scholarship.
As to our public schools, the answer is doubt
less to be found in politics. The voters demand
that their children shall have the privilege of
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
passing through the schools and learning
what they may, whether it be much or little.
They resent the imposition of high standards.
This feeling is very noticeable in the case of
parents of foreign (i.e. Continental) birth, and
particularly in the case of those coming from
benighted countries, like Russia, where the
standards of education are so much higher than
in America.
As to the private schools and endowed acade
mies, the answer is perfectly obvious. The
fault lies with our so-called colleges. They are
and have been for many years the greatest ob
stacles in the path of sound education. They
are neither schools nor universities. Their
pupils are neither boys nor men. The instruc
tion which they impart can be given much more
effectively by the schools, if properly encouraged.
The proof of this statement lies in the fact that
such instruction is supplied by the schools of all
other civilized countries in Europe, and much
more thoroughly and economically. In America
the waste of time, money, and youthful vigor
and enthusiasm is most lamentable. It would
not be tolerated in any country but ours — -the
home of waste and extravagance.
But how can the colleges be reformed? It
is clear that they will not reform themselves,
because the reform would diminish their im
portance and reduce their incomes. The net
result of Mr. Eliot's forty years at Harvard —
so far as the "college" is concerned — is that
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EDUCATION

clever boys may now complete the course in
three years instead of four! A few feeble ef
forts have been made at Columbia and elsewhere,
but they amount to nothing. Parents are help
less. They can only complain that their boys be
gin their professional studies or business careers
at twenty-two and twenty-three — at least three
years later than in France or Germany, or even
in England. These three years are lost by
American boys between the ages of nine and
eighteen or nineteen. This is where the waste
of time must be discovered and stopped. The
American school should be encouraged and
required to render the service which Mr.
Holden says the English "preparatory" schools
perform so well. Our schools can easily do as
well as the English schools, granting that they
cannot equal those of France and Germany, if
they are not obstructed and repressed by the
colleges. The junior or senior classes of the
colleges must be the goal of the schools. The
freshman and sophomore years, and in many
instances the junior year also, would be super
seded by the much more efficient and suc
cessful instruction of the schools. Thus Amer
ican boys would once more begin their life-work
as in the old time — with unimpaired and un
abated hope, zeal, vigor, and enthusiasm. And
many an anxious parent would be relieved of
burdens too heavy to be borne.
An Anxious Father.
New Yoke, September 16.
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
But are the girls being brought up any better
than the boys ? Hardly, judging from what I
have seen, and more especially from what I
have read. Here is a little picture of schoolgirl
life that reveals the depth to which the home
and school influence may fall. I quote from a
daily paper.
SCHOOL GIRLS JOIN IN MOB
Assist in Search for Negro who Attempted
to Assault 17- year old Kansas Girl
By Associated Press

t(

Kansas City, March 9. — Determined to
avenge the attempted assault on Cora Downs,
seventeen years old, by a negro here to-day, fifty
high-school classmates of the girl to-night joined
the sheriff's posse searching for the fugitive.
They declare that they will deal summarily
with the negro if caught. The girl was re
turning from school when attacked, and her
screams frightened the negro away."
Nothing quite so bad as this can, I think, be
found in any civilized nation, outside of our own
beloved country. This I grant is an extreme
and, let us hope, an exceptional case, but it shows
to what lengths the disregard of law and order,
and the want of ideals among the youth of our
150

EDUCATION

land may go. The future of this country is
utterly hopeless unless the training in the family
and school is radically improved, and that with
out delay. We must have a new sort of school.
a new sort of teacher, and an entirely new at
mosphere in the school house and on the play-
srround. When we set the new teacher— the
right teacher, with authority from the State, and
not from the ward politician — to teach right,
then, and not till then, will the true spirit of
idealism enter into our national life, inspiring
its conduct and its ambitions.
A word more about the college and the col
lege-bred man. The Educational Review —
which ought to speak with knowledge and au
thority — reprinted from The Argonaut some
months ago. with apparent approval, a very
strong and a very striking indictment of the col
lege-bred man. The Argonaut says that it has
found, in its own experience, the college-bred
youth to be utterly hopeless: and this after re
peated trials, extending over a long period of
time. " He cannot write clear English to begin
with." says The Argonaut. But if "clear Eng
lish" were suddenly made an essential qualifi
cation of journalism. I fear most of our jour
nals would be left with a very small staff.
The experience of The Argonaut with the
college-bred nian is not exceptional, but seems
common to all the high-class journalism of
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
America, with perhaps one exception. For there
is, I believe, one American daily paper that
makes a college diploma a sine qua non for
membership on its staff. A New York evening
paper, in commenting on The Argonaut'.? state
ments, gives a striking illustration of their truth
fulness in the following story.
At a dinner given in the Century Club some
two or three years ago, where a very large rep
resentation of the highest order of American
journalism was present, including the editor of
Harper's Weekly, and the then editor of The
Century Magazine, it chanced that this subject
— The College Man in Journalism — came up,
and it was found that of all these editors and
journalists one only was a college man.
This furnishes a pretty wide induction, and
points to the fact that a college education is a
very heavy handicap, if not a fatal disqualifica
tion for at least one of the intellectual pursuits
of this country. If so, the fault lies in the fact
that the American school and college do not
require the thorough mental mastery of a sub
ject, as do, for examples, "the German gym
nasium, and the English public school."
The average American college boy has hardly
any conception of what the conditions of real
knowledge are. That is, he has never experi
enced the sensations of mastery over any real
^tellectual problem. Let this sensation once
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EDUCATION

be felt and the intellectual life of that student is
assured. And it is the primary business of the
school and college to produce that sensation.
To know one thing well is to know the condi
tions of all knowledge. Unconscious ignorance
is hopeless ignorance. Grant Allen tells the
story of being entertained by some American
ladies who "during the whole evening talked
about nothing that they knew anything at all
about." I think we have all had similar
experiences. I was asked not long ago by a lady of some
prominence in intellectual circles, what I thought
of the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare.
I replied that I had no time to waste on such in
sane theories. She took this as a challenge, and
immediately began to expose her woeful ignor
ance of both Bacon and Shakespeare. I did not
interrupt, and made no comment at the end of
her discourse, which she took, as I could plainly
see, to be a tacit confession that I was unable
to contend with her on this subject, concerning
which neither of us knew anything.
The fruits of this neglect of mastery in our
schools and colleges crop up all over our land
in all kinds of ways, and seriously affect the
fibre of our national life and character.

153

XII
THE PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
Nothing, I suppose, has been so characteris
tic in the past of the typical American as humor,
and nothing is so sure a witness of a clear head
and a sound heart. The really humorous man
is — he cannot but be — a philosopher and a
saint, in a more or less degree. He is about the
only sane man, for sanity is an attitude of mind
which does not take anything in heaven or on
earth too seriously. Insanity, for the most part,
is over-seriousness; an over-emphasis of some
one thing. It may be one's self; it may be one's
neighbor; it may be one's God; but it is always
and everywhere seeing one thing out of focus,
out of relation to all other things. There is no
such thing as the thing — in itself. That was
the ghost which haunted the philosophy of Im-
manuel Kant. A thing exists only by virtue of
its relations to all other things. The only way
to define a thing, says Hegel, is to show what
it is not. And this is now, I believe, the ap
proved method of the medical profession. The
wise physician begins his examination of a
patient by the process of elimination, and deter-
154

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
mines what the trouble is, by first finding out
what it is not.
The humorist sees, instinctively, the right re
lation of one thing to all other things. He is
quick to apprehend the law of the eternal rela
tionship of things. And this enables him, better
than any other man, to unmask vain conceit,
and empty pretense, solemn stupidity, hypo
critical piety, and fictitious sanctity. He sees
through the tricks and shams of all sorts and
conditions of impostors, and kills them with a
laugh, as Cervantes killed the false chivalry of
Spain. This is, perhaps, the most character
istic feature of the humorist. Where less dis
criminating critics employ elaborate and futile
arguments, the humorist confounds his antago
nist by a mere turn or twist of a word or a sen
tence. The humorist is the only man who knows
how to deal with those solemn and sacred hum
bugs in Church and State who — somehow or
other — have always succeeded in persuading the
world to take them at their own enormously
overrated value. Charles Lamb and Sidney
Smith dealt with these grave impostors during
their day and generation, and Mark Twain and
Mr. Dooley deal with these solemn gentlemen
of the present day. It is a peculiar trick of the
humorist to get at the heart of the imposition
with a few thrusts of the pen or pencil, whilst
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
your so-called serious-minded person flounders
and fumbles and fails; and yet often manages
to pass for a wise man.
These are some of the many reflections which
have passed through my mind recently. I have
asked myself over and over again this question
— Why is it that the mere humorist can see so
plainly the right path, where the appointed
guardians of Church and State stumble along
in darkness and confusion?
The endeavor to answer this question started
an investigation, the results of which I now lay
before my reader. This may be a slight depar
ture from the purpose of this book, but I venture
to make it notwithstanding. I began by a some
what critical examination of the humorous peo
ple I have known personally, and was surprised
to find that they embraced, not only the most
interesting, but the very wisest and best people
I have ever come in contact with. The scope of
my enquiry now began to widen, and I thought
of Franklin and Lincoln; of Holmes and Lowell;
of Mark Twain and Mr. Dooley, and a host of
others. I remembered also that Mark Twain's
very best joke was his heroic struggle and splen
did triumph in paying his debts — debts incurred
by the unfaithful conduct of another. Can it be
possible, I now asked myself, that the humorist,
strange as it sounds, is the best, the very best,
material for a saint that can be found in life
156

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
and letters ? Not, to be sure, to canonize and
be registered in the Church Calendar, but just
to study and admire and love. I was startled at
first by my strange use of the word saint, but
upon reflection I began to question if, after all,
bishops and monks and nuns had a right to the
monopoly of sainthood. At any rate, I wTas now
fully determined to start upon the quest of a
very secular saint — the Humorist. The novelty
of the thing added immensely to the interest of
my pursuit, which I hope may be shared by my
readers. But how should I go about my inves
tigation? I was in the country with no one to
consult, and a very limited range of books at
my command. I had access, however, to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, and concluded to begin
my search by running down in the pages of this
work all the names I could think of in history,
who were known as humorists. But I soon
found that this was going rather far afield, and
for the most part into an unknown land. I con
cluded, therefore, to confine my search to mod
ern Christian times. I must confess that the
very first name I came upon staggered me, and
almost upset my entire postulate. This name
was "Rabelais" — a monk who told coarse
stories about the most sacred things. And yet
he was not only the first humorist in point of
time in our modern world, but he was also one
of the first humorists that ever lived in point of
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
merit, so said the Britannica. The account of
him in the Encyclopaedia begins thus : " Francois
Rabelais (1490-1553), the greatest of French
humorists, and one of the few great humorists
of the world." I read on and was glad to learn
that he was a man of "great literary knowledge
in Greek and Latin, and a great orator in Greek,
and Latin, and French." It was pleasant to
know that the first humorist was not an ignora
mus, at any rate; but, on the contrary, one of
the greatest scholars of his day. Still, I feared
that all his knowledge and varied accomplish
ments would not atone for his coarseness, nor
help my thesis much. But, as I read on, I found
that he gave up the cloister for the practice of
medicine. That sounded healthier. He went
to Lyons, and was the centre of a brilliant circle
of men of letters. He was condemned by the
Sorbonne. That seemed more encouraging.
But he afterwards returned to the Church, and
held a living to the end of his life. That was at
least practical. These are the facts that appear
upon the surface of history; and there is noth
ing in them, so far as I could see, that either
helped or hindered my quest. But, upon look
ing further and deeper into the history of those
times, I find that in the midst of corrupt Church
men and pretenders of all sorts, Rabelais lived
not only a respectable life — judged by the stand
ards of his own generation — but the best life of
158

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR

any of his companions, if not of his contempo
raries. 1 now turned to his famous— some might
say infamous books, "Cargantua" and "Pan-
tagruel." I found them very coarse, almost un
readable, in fact, but there is not, so far as I
have seen, one foul or filthy suggestion in either
of these volumes; and if I were called upon for
a, criticism of Rabelais, I should say he was
coarse in the letter, but almost pure in the spirit,
of his speech. That Rabelais made use of coarse
language for any other purpose than to unmask
ignorance, pretence, and all kinds of hypocrisy
and corruption, no one, I suppose, would con
tend. Rabelais is not an author to be read to
day for the general edification of society; but
that he was a wholesorie influence in his own
day, I fully believe. I was greatly elated with
the discovery that even Rabelais was the best of
his time, as well as of his kind. He was a clergy
man, but not the sort that the (Munch canonizes.
lie may not have been a saint, but he was cer
tainly "the best man of his time."
"Cervantes" stood next in the order of time,
and first certainly in the order of importance.
I turned him up in the Encyclopaedia with less
fear than I had Rabelais, but still with some
uneasiness of mind.
I found that this great Spanish humorist was
one of the first scholars of his day, when scholar
ship was high; and a most notable soldier, when
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN

Spain's military glory was at its zenith. I learned
among other things that the young Cervantes
left a bed of severe sickness, against the strong
protests of his comrades in arms, to take his post
in the great battle of Lepanto, which broke foi
ever the spell of the invincible Turk. That he
fought with great bravery and skill in many
battles; that he was captured by the Turks,
and kept as a slave for five years; and after his
ransom he married and lived faithfully and hap
pily with his wife, respected and honored by all
whose respect was worth having. Cervantes
must have been, in fact, a singularly pure and
noble character, as the only thing his critics
could say of him, after the publication of " Don
Quixote," was that its author was "old, poor,
and without friends, and with more tongue than
hands" — he had lost one hand in battle.
I felt sure of my saint this time, but concluded,
before canonizing him in this volume, to read
"Don Quixote" once more. I fortunately have
a good four- volume edition, and have enjoyed
this last reading more than any previous one,
except a reading given by Lowell at Harvard
University several years ago. This last perusal
of the immortal Don has taught me what I did
not even learn from Lowell — or, if I did, I have
forgotten it — viz., that Cervantes tilts his humor,
not against knight-errantry as such, but against
the bad literature of his time. As he himself
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PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
says, he wrote "to destroy the credit of those
romances whose reading was so pernicious to
the taste and morals of the age, and to furnish
a pastime for melancholy and gloomy spirits."
Sainte-Beuve calls "Don Quixote" the "Book
of Humanity." No other book has ever ap
proached this work in the delight it has given
mankind for more than three hundred years.
We see in "Don Quixote," as nowhere else in
all literature, the antithesis of the pure imagina
tion without understanding, Don Quixote him
self, and the commonplace good sense without
imagination, Sancho Panza; and it is between
the terms of this antithesis that the eternal con
flict of the world goes on.
Cervantes learnt the great lesson of humanity
that his book teaches, in a very rough school of
life; for at no period of his career, as a soldier,
or man of letters, was he in a condition of pros
perity, or even of comfort. Taken a prisoner
when a young man, he suffered five years of
slavery under a master who was a monster of
cruelty. The spirit in which Cervantes bore his
degrading and cruel captivity is quite enough in
itself to make him one of the greatest heroes of
romance. He never complained, but was always
cheerful, and did all within his power to cheer
his fellow captives, many of whom were his su
periors in birth and rank but turned to him for
comfort in the hour of their distress. They made
n 161

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
many unsuccessful efforts to escape, Cervantes
always taking upon himself the blame, and suf
fering the punishment. His immediate family
was poor and could not pay the large ransom
his captor demanded, and his Prince — who had
witnessed and applauded his valor — would not
come to his aid, and the author of one of the
greatest, if not the greatest, single book ever
written was forced to toil as a slave, until a
number of his friends and kinsfolk got together
the money necessary for his ransom. But after
his release from slavery he was entirely forgotten
by his Prince, and was suffered to serve in the
army in a very subordinate position, where he
constantly distinguished himself, but without
reward or even recognition. It is interesting to
know that Cervantes helped to make ready the
great Armada for its fatal descent upon the coast
of Great Britain, and that he and Shakespeare
died on the same day, April 23, 1616. On quit
ting the army Cervantes found himself poor and
friendless, but he turned to the cultivation of
letters without any bitterness in his soul, simply
saying that he had "always loved sweet poesy"
—and nothing but the sweetest and gentlest
humor was ever conceived in his noble mind, or
proceeded from his magic pen. His last words
were — "So, farewell humors, farewell, my gay
friends; for I feel myself dying, and have no de
sire but soon to see you happy in the next world."
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PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
I am sure of my saint, Cervantes. And yet it
was a high Church dignitary who tried to be
humorous by saying that "Cervantes was old,
and without friends, and had more tongue than
hands." This high-minded ecclesiastic was
afterwards made a bishop and, for aught I know,
is now one of the canonized saints of the Church.
On turning to English life and letters I felt
my feet on surer ground, and began to look
about me with a greater degree of confidence.
Shakespeare and Cervantes were contempo
raries; whether they were indebted to each other
in any way, or were even conscious of each
other's existence, we do not know, but their
humor was the same in kind and nearly the same
in degree. It may not be said, perhaps, that
Shakespeare ever wrote anything greater than
" Don Quixote " ; but it can be said that he wrote
a great deal more that was perhaps as great.
It is the quantity of his creations, as well as the
quality, that lifts the bard of Avon above all
other mortals. Shakespeare is too big; too all-
embracing to be classified, but the word humor
ous comes nearer the expression of his supreme
genius than any other word in our language.
As Emerson so happily puts it, Shakespeare is
the greatest laugher the work has ever known.
But it is never a cynical, never a bitter laugh.
Shakespeare, like Cervantes, is too great, and
too good, to flout and mock humanity with his
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
mighty wit. He laughs with the world, not at
the world. It is humor, then, rather than wit,
that is the dominant note in Shakespeare and
makes him the poet of humanity. We distin
guish between "wit" and "humor," and for
good reasons. This distinction is made very
plain when, for instance, we think of Swift and
Lamb. Swift is a bitter, and often an unfair
and ill-natured satirist. He cries aloud and
spares not our poor humanity. Lamb sees the
foibles, the vanities, the weaknesses, and the
sins of his fellow-creatures, as clearly as does
Swift; but he sees them with kindly sympathetic
eyes, and hence in their true perspective; that
is, in their just relations to the present, the past,
and the future. Like Shakespeare he sees the
thing whole. He realizes the almost omnipotent
power of circumstances over the conduct of life.
He knows that men and women do not, for the
most part, deliberately choose to be liars, cheats,
and all kinds of evil-doers. It is this clear vision
of humanity, as a whole, and not in detached
parts, which enables the humorists to see the
permanent good underlying the momentary evil.
While on a recent visit to a present-day hu
morist, I had a letter from a Most Reverend
Lord Bishop, in which he wrote, "Your host has
refreshed many a jaded brain, with his pleasant
philosophies of life." Cervantes modestly says,
in concluding his immortal "Don Quixote,"
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PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
that he wrote "to furnish a pastime for melan
choly and gloomy spirits." Thus we find that
the true humorist is the same at all times and
in all nations, in the sixteenth century in Spain,
and the twentieth century in England and Amer
ica. With the least profession or show of any
sort, he renders the greatest of all services to his
fellowmen — he " refreshes the jaded mind " and
"furnishes a pastime for melancholy and gloomy
spirits." Of all men of letters the humorist
makes the least profession; and is therefore the
least likely to be a literary hypocrite — and the
literary hypocrite is almost as unsatisfactory as
the religious hypocrite. We like to have a sort
of sub-conscious feeling that the author is with
us in spirit, and that his creations are the true
embodiment of genuine sentiment. And with
this assurance to begin with, and end with, we
desire meanwhile to be left alone, and to see as
little of the author in his creations as possible.
The time comes, however, when we meditate
upon the writer as well as his writings. If we
cannot know anything about his personal life
and character, — as in the case of Shakespeare, —
then we give the author the benefit of the doubt.
But if we can know, we will know what manner
of man our favorite author is, or was. This is,
no doubt, in the first instance prompted by a
spirit of mere curiosity, but curiosity has its
lawful functions in this world. For example,
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
it is certainly curious to learn that Hegel — the
most mystical and perhaps the greatest of mod
ern philosophers — did his own marketing, and
was a good judge of butchers' meat. But it is
more than curious, it is very informing to see
the feet of the great mystic so solidly planted
upon his Mother Earth. This gives a touch of
reality to the man that enters — we know not
how — into our conception of his philosophy.
Again, when we read that Schopenhauer, —
the arch-priest of pessimism, who declared that
this world is as bad as bad could be, and! that
death is the only blessing it has to give, — when
we read that this misanthropic, pessimistic phil
osopher ran away from Rome — or Naples, I
forget which — to escape the cholera, we lose
interest in his speculations. Nothing, in fact,
is so upsetting to the reader as literary hypoc
risy. The reading public will listen to an author
who is a proved hypocrite with hardly less im
patience than the religious world will counte
nance a priest, or a preacher, of like character.
When I was a child I was a great lover of Hans
Christian Andersen, till one day I overheard a
story to the effect that this great writer for child
hood disliked children; and I have never en
joyed him since. The story may have been un
true, and doubtless was, for I have never been
able to confirm it. Yet the mere suspicion was
enough to destroy my interest in the author.
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PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
Bulwer's readers dropped off by the thousand
and tens of thousands when his domestic sins
were exposed. On the other hand, there can be
no doubt that the heroic struggle and splendid
triumph of Mark Twain in paying his debts
has added somehow a substantial strength and
value to his writings they could else have never
possessed. The truth then is — at least in the Anglo-
American world — that the time comes sooner
or later when the writer is forced out into the
open, face to face with his reader, and must
give an account of the deeds done in the body,
before the public takes a final estimate of his
true value. This may be all very wrong accord
ing to the canons of criticism, but it is a stub
born fact, none the less, that all writers would
do well to recognize whether they like it or not.
The reader, before he sets out on his voyage
in quest of pleasure or profit, wants to know,
and has a right to know, that his pilot is a good
and honest seaman, who loves his work. And,
once assured on these matters, he seldom, if
ever, wishes to visit the pilot-house or question
the pilot till the voyage is ended.
The humorist is — and in the nature of the
case must be — modest as well as sincere; to
make a profession or pretence of learning or
wisdom, or virtue of any kind, would be fatal
to his humor. The humorist is always disguising
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
his goodness, not that he is ashamed of it, but
for the reason that he gets more fun out of it by
keeping it to himself — his only aim in life being
to " furnish a pastime for melancholy and gloomy
spirits," or to "refreshen jaded brains with his
pleasant philosophies of life." Of course, we
know there are people who are altogether too
serious and solemn; too great and good in every
way, for such trivial employment. Unfortu
nately, many of these superior persons are given
"the cure of souls," in which case there is little
hope for the poor souls — in this world, at least.
Humor is a form of cheerfulness, and cheer
fulness is essential to godliness. We shall see
then that the humorist is always the best of his
generation, if we will only stop and think about
it. But he means that we shall not stop and
think about it — or at least about him if he can
help it. He is the last man in the world to set
up for a saint; and yet it generally leaks out,
some time or other — as in the case of our own
American, St. Mark. Humor has ever been the
saving sense of American life and letters.
Oliver Wendell Holmes and Mark Twain are
the culminating points of the two poles of Amer
ican humor in letters, — the "academic" and the
unacademic. These two names are the high-
water marks of American humor as expressed
in letters; while Franklin and Lincoln stand
for the highest expression of the humorous in
168

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
the national life and character. Behind and
around these conspicuous names stand a vast
multitude, which no man can number, of clear-
eyed, sound-hearted Americans, who have seen
the things of life and letters with a lucidity of
mind which has enabled them to discriminate
with marvelous precision between pretence and
reality, truth and falsehood. Franklin and
Lincoln are the typical Americans of their re
spective times. It is characteristic of the humor
ous man under all circumstances to keep a cool
head, and no one can possess and maintain a cool
head who has not a sound heart. Franklin and
Lincoln were not only the coolest-headed men
of their generation, but you will be at great
pains to find their like in all previous and subse
quent history. Let us look for a moment at the
quality of the humor in these two colossal figures
of the New World. And first of all let us glance
at Franklin's attitude towards religion. He had
some rather intimate associates who preferred
the religion of "Deism." But Franklin discov
ered that these men were not good and honest
citizens; and he concludes that "Deism, as
viewed in the light of its advocates, might be true,
but was not very useful." He says again of his
own pastor that "his aim seemed rather to make
Presbyterians than good citizens." And what
could be more deliciously humorous than his
letter to the great preacher, George Whitfield?
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THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
"Your frequently repeated wishes for my eter
nal, as well as my temporal happiness, are very
obliging, and I can only thank you for them, and
offer you mine in return. I have myself no doubt
that I shall enjoy as much of both as is proper
for me." Franklin once offered the hospitality
of his house to Whitfield, who replied that "if
you make the offer for Christ's sake, you will not
miss your reward." But Franklin is a great
lover of clearness and does not wish to have the
issues confused; he therefore writes back,
"Don't let me be mistaken; it is not for Christ's
sake, but for your sake." I wonder if this elo
quent man of God (who introduced slavery into
the State of Georgia in violation of law) under
stood and appreciated the lucid honesty of such
a mind. Franklin's mastery of English was as
perfect as his humor; and it is at this point that
the striking resemblance is seen between Frank
lin and Lincoln. They were both wholly self-
taught, and they were both supreme masters of
style. There is as much keen humor as good
sense in "Poor Richard's Almanac." It con
tained, in fact, a much better and a much truer
Gospel than the elaborate logical system of
despair, which had been constructed by Frank
lin's predecessor in moral instruction, — the great
Jonathan Edwards. Franklin's last words are
in perfect character with the great humorist that
he was. "Please say that I am too much occu-
170

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
pied in dying to accept the kind invitation to
dinner." Lincoln was the Franklin of his time in more
ways than one; in the mastery of the English
language as well as the mastery of the science of
government, but more especially in the quality
of his humor, which kept his head cool and his
heart warm in the most trying circumstances of
the troublous times in which he was called to
administer the affairs of his nation. During
the most anxious days of the Civil War, when
the great President "with charity towards all
and malice towards none" was troubled about
many things, and critics rose up on every side
to confuse the councils of the nation; at this
great crisis Mr. Lincoln was visited by a delega
tion of citizens who meant to impress upon him
their own importance and the seriousness of the
situation. The President was subjected to two
or three hours of solemn speech-making. The
speeches dwelt upon the critical state of the war,
and pretty clearly intimated that the administra
tion at Washington was not as wise and as good
as it might be. Mr. Lincoln listened patiently to
these lugubrious patriots, and after they had fin
ished their tale of woe, he told them the following
story: "In the early days in Illinois I had a
neighbor farmer, who one day on his way home
from town, with his team of horses, stopped at a
Methodist camp-meeting and got religion. This
171

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
event detained him till nightfall, when it began
to rain, and the newly converted sinner had
trouble to find his way home. There were few
bridges in those early days, and on coming to a
pretty big stream of water, my neighbor got out
of the wagon and tried to find the ford. It was
lightning and thundering alternately, but to the
perplexed Christian there seemed to be much
more thunder than lightning. He stood for
some time at the head of his horses, peering into
the darkness for marks of the ford, which were
one moment revealed by a flash of lightning and
the next moment concealed in utter darkness,
accompanied by loud peals of thunder. The
convert stood for some time in this anxious posi
tion, and then he prayed ' Oh Lord, if it is just
the same to you, give me more light and less
noise.' " This was all the answer the President
made to his self-important critics ; but they were
Americans as well as he, and were not slow in
taking the hint. A less sincere man; a man with
less power and vision; in a word, a man with
less mastery of the situation, would have fumbled
at many things, and muddled all things by tak
ing this delegation of distinguished gentlemen
at their own valuation. But this simple story of
frontier life hit off the case perfectly, and on hear
ing it the sober face of the anxious nation broke
into a hearty laugh, and the dark clouds which
had hung over the national horizon were dispelled,
172

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
and there was "more light and less noise." If
America could only have one Lincoln in a century
her national salvation would be assured.
I have said that it sometimes leaks out that
the humorist is the real saint, and when it does,
I have no doubt that he is rather pleased than
annoyed; for such is the yearning for approval
and praise in the human nature of even the best
of us. Charles Lamb puts it very neatly, and
gives himself and all humanity away — as only
the humorist can — when he says that nothing
is so pleasant as to do some good thing secretly,
and then to be found out. There you and I and
all of us are made aware of our inner selves, and
all our lofty and hollow pretensions collapse.
We can't escape the humorist; he is the X-ray
that shows up all our little harmless weaknesses,
as well as our moral sears and deformities.
Again, the humorist is about the only man that
does not need an explanation. He is so simple
and unlearned that one never finds him hard to
understand. Unlike persons of great weight
and consideration — such as bishops, states
men, professors, and the like— the humorist is
no good as a casuist, although he can see the fun
of this particular game with even a keener relish
than those who play at it; especially when these
weighty citizens are explaining their reasons for
advocating some very questionable national
nolicv You do not catch a humorist advocating
1 173

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
any policy of Church or State that requires the
use of casuistry. That is to say, the humorist
never makes himself ridiculous.
Rabelais was a clergyman, and Cervantes
ended his days as a lay monk. When one does
come upon a true humorist in the Church how
very refreshing it is. I do not mean a preacher
who cracks jokes in the pulpit, but one who is
so much in earnest as not to take himself too
seriously. Father Taylor, the Methodist mis
sionary to the Boston sailors, is a good example
of what I mean. This reverend gentleman was
so fortunate as to have Emerson for a friend.
But his good Methodist brethren regarded
Emerson as an infidel, and warned Father Taylor
that Emerson was on his way to hell, and might
take him along. To all of which the preacher'
humorist made answer, " If Emerson goes to hell,
immigration will set that way."
Your tremendously earnest and altogether
serious man — be he preacher or layman — may
be all very well in his way, I have no doubt, but
he will generally bear watching. Not so the
humorist. You may trust him to the full. The
first thing almost that sin does is to take the
humor out of us. The liar, the cheat, and the
hypocrite can't see the fun of things. The inno
cent only knows what it is to laugh a real laugh.
"Let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play."
174

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR
It would be rather bold to say, even at the
end of this study, that all humorists are good
men, but I cannot at the present moment recall
an exception to the contrary, from Cervantes to
Mark Twain and Mr. Dooley.
I have said that humor is the saving sense of
American life and letters. It is the saving sense
of all life and letters. It is humor that makes
life worth living. I cannot speak with author
ity concerning the history of letters, but I think
it will be found that the wealth or poverty of any
literary period may be seen and marked by the
presence or absence of the sense of humor. Cer
tainly the most barren period of Christian Euro
pean letters was the time of the schoolmen, which
is unilluminated by one ray of humor, so far
as I know. There is nothing so exacting; noth
ing that requires so much of real honest, unspoilt
human nature, as humor. The humorist is
nothing, therefore, if not genuine. If the humor
ist but once surrenders himself to artifice, or pre
tence, his vocation is forever gone.
This dissertation, I repeat, is a departure
from the purpose of this book; but it may per
haps be pardoned for the reason that humor
has been our national characteristic, and I de
sire to have its nature and history placed before
my readers at full length. Humor seemed to
be native to our soil; a sort of natural inheri
tance; a kind of national attitude towards the
175

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
rest of the world. But it has passed away. It
is true that we still have Mr. Dooley with us —
and long may he remain. But even he — wise
and good as he is — is not enough to save the
whole land. It required ten righteous men to
save Sodom and Gomorrah, and how can we
hope to escape through the wit of one man?
The test of humor is its universal quality, and
Mr. Dooley is the only man among us who
speaks the language of the universal. The truth
is we appear to have lost both the gift of humor
and the gift of true merriment. There is plenty
of levity, of hilarity, of boisterous mirth, but
little evidence of the merry heart. Our gaiety
is strained, and is in the outward seeming rather
than in the spirit and emotions.
The purely local character of our national wit
is shown in the fact that the jokes in our comic
papers are never translated into a foreign tongue,
whilst Punch and Fliegende Blatter are read and
enjoyed by the whole world. Fliegende Blatter —
a German paper — strange as that may seem to
the ignorant, speaks more fluently and more per
fectly the language of universal wit than any
other periodical printed in Europe or America.
The chief merit in our comic papers appears to
be to hold up a particular race to ridicule, and
to make merry over some matter of religion.
There is, I suppose, some wit still left in our
land, but I seldom see any signs of it in the
176

PASSING OF AMERICAN HUMOR

papers devoted to its cultivation. I have taken
the first paper that comes to hand to-day (Jan.
19, 1911), and reproduce the collection of witty( ?)
sayings contained in this journal — under the
heading of "Newspaper Waifs."

NEWSPAPER WAIFS
"Does your husband smoke incessantly?"
"Worse than that; he smokes in the parlor."
— Baltimore American.
Friend — "And were you ever in Venice?"
Mr. Richquick — "Yes. Slowest town I
was ever in. The sewers were busted all the
time we were there!" — Puck.
"Is your husband playing bridge?"
"Not exactly," replied Mrs. Flimgilt. "Some
experts have merely invited him into a game to
make it harder." — Washington Star.
"Have you ever seen me act?" asked the con
ceited thespian.
"No," replied the candid critic. "I have
upon a number of occasions seen you try to." —
Chicago Record-Herald.
Belle — "Wouldn't you rather sit down than
hang on to a strap ?"
Beulah — "Well, it all depends. If I am on
the ice I'd rather hold on to any old thing than
sit down." — Yonkers Statesman.
12 177

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
Indignant Magnate (whose pet measure is
likely to fail) — "What do you think you were
elected for, anyhow ? "
Distinguished Senator (with a dreamy,
faraway gaze) — "For six years — I hope." —
Chicago Tribune.
" Is your young man gittin' a sal'ry, 'Melia ? "
"Sure he is. An' what's mo', de boss tol'
William he's gwine double it."
"Dat's fine! How much is he gittin' now?"
"I dunno what he's gittin' now, but I speck
it's somefin like half what he's gwinter git." —
Cleveland Plain Dealer.
I insert one more sample of a later date.
Johnny — " Grandpa, do lions go to Heaven ? "
Grandpa — "No, Johnny."
Johnny — "Well, do ministers?"
Grandpa — " Why, of course. Why do you
ask?" Johnny — "Well, suppose a lion eats a min
ister." — -Life.
How any rational human being can get any
fun out of such sorry stuff passes my understand
ing. But perhaps my rather long residence in
Europe has disqualified me for appreciating
such side-splitting wit and humor. If so, I am
very grateful to Europe.

178

XIII
THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE
MATTER
What I have said in the foregoing pages has
been said in good faith, and in the hope that
it may serve to arrest the decadence of the
American spirit by calling attention to the down
ward trend of our national life and character.
Many of the virtues of the founders of this
country were peculiar to their times and cir
cumstances, and passed away as the old order
changed, yielding place to new virtues, as well
as new vices. The customs and habits of popu
lous, highly organized, and what we call more
civilized peoples, must differ, and do differ,
very materially from those of primitive and
scattered communities in a new country, where
each village and town is more or less a law unto
itself. But these changes from the customs and
habits of a primitive to a more highly organized
manner of life should strengthen rather than
weaken the real bone and blood of a nation, if
civilization means anything. This, I am per
suaded, has not been the case in our own land;
on the contrary, as I think I have shown, a
179

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
very radical change for the worse has taken
place during the last quarter of a century in the
fibre of our life, our manhood, — our national
character. Indiscriminate and immoderate immigration
is, I believe, the main cause of this deterioration.
We have ceased, long since, to assimilate the
vast hordes of heterogeneous peoples who have
been dumped down upon our shores, and who
swarm all over this land in the eager pursuit
of the mere physical necessities of life. This is
the only object, the sole ambition, of nine hun
dred and ninety-nine out of every thousand.
Such an invasion is actually as disastrous to a
country as the invasion of Germany by the Huns,
who were impelled solely by hunger (the very
same motive that brings the vast majority of
immigrants to this country), and whose ravages
devastated the whole of Germany, and scattered
its inhabitants beyond the Alps and the Rhine
and to the borders of the Mediterranean. Such
masses of crude humanity as pour in upon us
cannot possibly be taken up into healthy circu
lation, but must lie undigested in the stomach
of the nation, seriously affecting its health and
happiness. The early settlers of this land were actuated
by very different motives. The spirit of ad
venture was one of the mainsprings that brought
our forefathers here. And there is nothing sor-
180

CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER
did, but always something very uplifting and
ennobling in such a brave and manly sentiment.
A desire for religious freedom was another mo
tive, and however narrow or mistaken the motive
may be, nothing is certainly more praiseworthy,
nothing more conducive to the making of good
and strong citizenship. And moreover, these
first immigrants, from whom we are proud to
claim descent, came to a far-off wilderness with
clearly defined ideals of morality, religion, and
government. They came largely as communi
ties, not as individuals, and they brought their
civilization with them. Many of the com
munities were fully organized, even before they
left their native land. The first Jamestown
colony was a perfectly organized parish, with a
pastor and all officers duly appointed. So also,
in later times, was the colony of Georgia, which
brought its pastor — John Wesley — and its gov
ernor with it. The New England colonies,
while not so officially organized, were even more
complete and homogeneous in their purpose
and character. Homes these early immigrants
sought, to be sure, but homes built upon the
foundation stones of order, morality, and religion,
and the ties of consanguinity. Never did an
immigrant race of people, seeking new homes in
a new world, think less of the flesh and more
of the spirit. Never, even in the sad hours of
their bigoted and cruel zeal, did any people—
181

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
not even the ancient Hebrews — think less of
sordid gain and more of the ideal life of righteous
ness. These were the circumstances and con
ditions under which our fathers came to this
land. Their coming was to each of them a
personal adventure, each knowing well the
danger and the hazard of such a bold under
taking. Moreover, each one had to work out
his own salvation with fear and trembling.
There were no "trusts" assuring them of a
certain wage, and no steamship syndicates co
operating with these "trusts" to degrade labor
and despoil the land.
How different in all respects is the coming of
the present-day immigrants! They cannot pos
sibly, in the very nature of things, — that is, in
the conditions under which they come — be
anything but a curse to the land, and to them
selves as well; and a very much greater curse to
themselves than to the land. The conditions
under which the vast majority of the present-
day immigrants come to these shores render
them not only "undesirable citizens" but an
actual menace to the civilization of the country.
Not that they are naturally worse than our own
native people; but the countless numbers in
which they come make it well-nigh impossible
for them to live normal healthy lives. They
are crowded together in a manner wholly un
known to them in their native lands; and are
182

CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER
forced to live under conditions which render
religion, morality, and even the decencies of life
impossible. These are the things that make
these hordes of immigrants a sore in the body
politic, and an everlasting curse to themselves.
Nothing good can come of men and women,
girls and boys, thrown together in such heaps.
Their degradation is sure and rapid. A year's
time is enough to work the ruin of the most of
these poor creatures. Look at these people at
home in Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Russia,
with the safeguards of law and religion about
them ; and then look at them one year after they
have landed in this country. The quiet, modest,
law-abiding Italian, Hungarian, Polack, and
Russian is changed in the one year to the loud,
rude, immodest, and — to a very large degree —
immoral and vicious American citizen. What
good can be expected of such so-called citizens,
who have been brought here to enable the
"trust" to devastate the land for its own profit ?
The only thing that can get any good out of such
industrial methods is the trust, — the trust which
is the Devil Incarnate— the devil that will
soon turn this fair land into a veritable hell — if
it is not checked. These immigrants, for the
most part, had better a thousand times starve
in their own land, under any system of govern
ment, however cruel and tyrannous, than to
swelter in this country under the unutterable
183

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
foulness and filthiness of the labor conditions
imposed by our trusts, — conditions which des
troy the last vestige of the gentle emotions and
sentiments of humanity. Idealism in any form
is, of course, impossible to these people. We
have just had a very good, a very powerful, and,
as I believe, a very timely and useful illustra
tion of what I am endeavoring to make plain.
One of the most deeply rooted traits of the He
brew race is the parent's love of the child, and
the child's filial devotion to the parent. These
beautiful sentiments have always, everywhere,
even in their darkest hour, clung to the Jews
with an indestructible tenacity. But at last
America has gained the infamous distinction of
snapping asunder this golden cord which has
bound a race together for thousands of years.
Last week in a New York court of justice a
wrecker of a number of banks — a Jew who
calls himself " Robin" — denied, openly, his aged
father and mother. This was not the result of
insanity, but of a deliberate agreement between
himself and his distinguished sister, a woman
with a world-wide fame in the profession of
medicine. These two creatures had got on
so well in life — as most people regard getting
on — that they could not bear the shame of being
known as the offspring of two Polish Jewish
immigrants. Let us look at this case a little and see what
184

CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER
it teaches us with regard to the so-called blessings
this country bestows upon the immigrant. A
family of poor Polish Jews came to this country
to better their material conditions; and the
parents succeeded so well as to be able to give
their son and daughter what is called a good
education. Their success is, indeed, most
extraordinary. The son becomes a great finan
cier -the head of a chain of banks; and the
daughter gains a world-wide reputation as a
physician. Look at that now! one would have been told
two months ago. See what America has done
for these children of poverty and oppression.
But listen to the heartbroken sobs of the mother
of these distinguished people when they deny
her before the whole world! "Meine kinder!
Meine kinder!" is all the poor old creature
could utter. Could there be two greater mon
sters found in this wide world than these two
products of the immigrant civilization of the
United States of America ?
The entire nature of an ancient race has been
changed; and all the noble instincts of humanity
have been wholly blotted out in these two people
by their American environments.
An exceptional case? Yes, if it were not
exceptional Schopenhauer's philosophy of pes
simism would be the only conceivable theory of
life — at least in America. Two months ago
185

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
these two people — the banker and the doctor —
would have been held up as very notable ex
amples of immigrants who had "made good."
What a remarkable, what a splendid success
these two Jewish immigrants have made in
this land with their two children! The son,
the head of a group of banks; the daughter, one
of the most celebrated doctors of the day! But
how awful this all sounds now to the ears of this
poor old degraded father and mother, who must
face the world for the rest of their lives with the
brand of having begotten two such monsters
stamped upon them, to be seen and readlof all men.
"Meine kinder, meine kinder! Would to
God — the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob —
that I had never seen this accursed land, where
gain and greed, and the unceasing quest for the
material, the grossly sensual, kills every noble
ambition, destroys every natural feeling, and
makes monsters of human beings." This, or
something like it, is doubtless what is now
passing through the minds and hearts of these old
Polish immigrants, who came to this country that
their children might have a better chance in the
battle of life than they, their parents, had enjoyed.
If then these heterogeneous masses of immi
grants are in a great measure a curse to this
country, they are a far greater curse to them
selves; and it should be the patriotic duty of
the leaders of these people in their native lands
186

CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER
to organize a propaganda in order to make
known to the would-be immigrants the true
conditions of things over here, and to expose
the devilish purpose of the "Trust" and the
steamship companies, who think only of the
profit they can secure, and nothing of the
misery they cause by persuading these ignorant
people to leave what are, in most cases, peace
ful and decent homes in exchange for the in
ferno of American materialism.
The curse these immigrants bring upon them
selves is plainly to be seen, for it is immediate.
The curses they bring upon this country are
manifold. They form a body of aliens that is
incompatible with the healthy growth of this
country; it cannot be taken into the circula
tion and assimilated in any such way as to
produce anything like good, or even useful,
citizens. That is the first curse. The second,
and greater, curse to this country is that these
multitudinous aliens do work that should not
be done at all and the really useful work they
do should be done by natives. These aliens
take the work, and therefore the bread, out of
the hands and mouths of native Americans who
are in sore need, and the question of their
means of living must soon become one of the
most pressing economic and social problems of
the day. The fact that the foreigner is sup
posed to do all the dirty work has begotten in
187

THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN
the minds of the native American a sort of con
tempt for any kind of work, and for the person
who is content to make haste slowly, in his busi
ness or profession, or in the matter of getting
money, whatever may be the means. The
get-rich-quick spirit is abroad in our land, and
such a spirit has no patience with the slow, sure,
and honest methods of our fathers.
Immigration has fostered this impatient spirit
by enabling the "Trust" to pocket its millions
out of the ruin of our natural resources and the
degradation of labor; out of trickery, thievery,
and philanthropy. Stop immigration and you
stop the Trust; and in stopping the Trust you
stop the get-rich-quick method of doing busi
ness, which is fast undermining the founda
tions of our country. Stop immigration, and
best of all you stop the degradation, the misery,
and the de-humanizing of the poor deluded im
migrant himself.
It is hardly necessary for me to say that I be
lieve in moderate and homogeneous immigration,
for the benefit first and foremost of the immigrant
himself. The Anglo Saxon — in fact the branches
of the whole Teutonic and Celtic races — are
bettered, if not blessed in coming to our shores;
and they bring a blessing in their hands for us.
Let them come and welcome.
"The Trust" has set the insane and dis
honest pace for all business enterprise, and
188

CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER
when the trust is smashed — as smashed it must
be sooner or later — we may hope that time may
then be given for the rational pursuit of profit
and pleasure, as well as the cultivation of the
gentle virtues.
We need a great deal of schooling in these
and many other matters in order to be able to
compete with the highly intelligent enterprises of
Europe. Let us be humble and willing to learn
from the foreigner, and in time our natural apti
tude wul place us in as good a position to do the
work and business of the world as any other
nation. Let waste and extravagance, in private and
public, be recognized for what they really are —
products of, and the evidence of, ignorance
and depravity — and there will be less of these
shameful crimes. Let our women cultivate
modestv, economy, and gentleness, and there
will be fewer divorces and more marriages.
Let our schools and colleges teach the pupil to
master at least some one thing, and our intellec
tual life as a nation wQl be assured.
If in these pages I have sometimes used the
rod unsparingly, I would remind the gentle
reader that 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasten-
eth. and scouxgeth every son whom he receiveth."
(THE END)
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