CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Spirit of Self-Assertion

On landing in New York, the European expects new impressions and surprises—most of all, from the evidences of general equality in this New World. Some have heard, with misgivings, of the horrors of upstart equality; but more look with glad expectancy on the country where no traditions of caste impose distinctions between human beings, and where the Declaration of Independence has solemnly recognized as a fundamental truth that all men are born free and equal. Those who fear the equality are generally soon put at ease. They find that social classes, even in New York, are nicely distinguished; no work-stained overalls are found where a frock coat is in order. The other travellers are just as quickly disillusioned in their hopes of equality. It is a short distance from the luxury of Fifth Avenue to miserable tenement districts;—an abrupt social contrast, in all its Old World sharpness and hardness.

If the newcomer, then, in his surprise turns to those who know the country, his questions will be differently answered by different persons. The average citizen will try to save the reputation of equality. No doubt, he says, equality rules in America—equality before the law, and equality of political rights. And such average patriot would be surprised to hear that this sort of equality is found in Europe also. But perhaps our newcomer chances on a mind of less typical habit. This one may reply, with the incomparably sly wink of the thoughtful American, that there is no more equality in America than in Europe. We indulge in such glittering generalities in our Declaration of Independence, to give our good local politicians a congenial theme on public holidays, and so that badly paid shop clerks may solace themselves with such brave assertions as a compensation for their small pay. But we are not so foolish as to run amuck of nature, which after all has very wisely made men unlike one another.

But both replies are in a way false, or, at least, do not touch the root of the matter. It is undeniable that one can no longer speak of an equality of wealth or means of enjoyment, or even, in spite of occasional modest claims to the contrary, of an equal opportunity for education and development. In spite of this, it is a mistake to suppose that on this account the spirit of equality is found only in judicial and political spheres. There is another, a social equality, of which most Americans are not conscious, because they do not know and can hardly imagine what life would be without such equality; they do not meditate on social equality, because, unlike political or legal equality, it is not abstractly formulative. The American is first aware of it after living some time in Europe, and the European grasps the idea only after a serious study of American life.

The social sentiment of equality, although variously tinged yet virtually the same throughout the United States, in nowise militates against social distinctions which result from difference of education, wealth, occupation, and achievement. But it does demand that all these different distinctions shall be considered external to the real personality. Fundamentally, all Americans are equal. The statement must not be misunderstood. It by no means coincides with the religious distinction that men are equal in the eyes of God, and it is not to be associated with any ethical ideas of life. Equality before God, and the equal worth of a moral act, whether done by the greatest or the humblest of God’s children, are not social conceptions; they are significant only in religious, and not in social, life. And these two spheres can everywhere be separated. It can even be said that, as profoundly as religion pervades every-day life in America, the characteristic principle of equality in the social community is wholly independent of the ethics of the New Testament.

It is still less a metaphysical conception. The American popular mind does not at all sympathize with the philosophical idea that individuality is only an appearance, and that we are all fundamentally one being. The American thinks pluralistically, and brings to his metaphysics a firm belief in the absolute significance of the individual. And finally, the American principle of equality which we wish to grasp is not rationally humanitarian; whether all human beings are really equal is left out of account. It is a question actually of this one social community living together in the United States and having to regulate its social affairs.

Let us suppose that a group of similarly employed good friends were on an excursion, and that the young people for the sake of diversion were agreed to represent for a while various sorts of human occupation—one is to play millionaire, another beggar, still others judge, teacher, artisan, labourer, high official, and valet. Each one plays his part with the greatest abandon; one commands and the other obeys, one dictates and the other trembles. And yet behind it all there is a pleasant feeling that at bottom they are all just alike, and that the whole game is worth while merely because they know that one is in fact as good as another. If a real beggar or servant were to come into the circle, there would be no more fun, and the game would be wholly meaningless. Strange as it may sound, this feeling is at the bottom of social life in America. Every one says to himself: All of us who inhabit this incomparable country are at bottom comrades; one bakes bread and the other eats it, one sits on the coachman’s box and the other rides inside; but this is all because we have agreed so to assign the rÔles. One commands and the other obeys, but with a mutual understanding that this merely happens to be the most appropriate distribution of functions under the circumstances in which we happen to be placed.

The real man, it is felt, is not affected by this differentiation, and it would not be worth while either to command or to obey if all men did not tacitly understand that each esteems the other as an equal. A division of labour is necessary, but as long as any one does the work apportioned to him he belongs of course to the fraternal circle, quite as well as the one who by reason of industrial conditions or natural talents comes to take a more distinguished or agreeable position. Whoever makes this claim honestly for himself assumes that every one else does likewise. On the other hand, whosoever thinks himself equal to those above him, but superior to those beneath him, conceives external differences to be intrinsic, and makes thus a presumptuous demand for himself. The man who truly sees social equality as a real part of the social contract, will feel toward those above as toward those below him. He will make his own claims good by the very act of recognizing the claims of others. The spirit of social self-assertion requires the intrinsic equality of all one’s neighbours who belong to the social community in question.

So long as one seeks equality by trying to imitate one’s more wealthy, more educated, or more powerful neighbours and trying to gloze over the differences, or by consciously lowering one’s self to the level of the poor, the uninfluential, and the uneducated, and either by spiritual or by material aid obliterating the distinction, one is not really believing in equality, but is considering the outer distinctions as something actual. Indeed, the zeal to wipe out distinctions is the most obvious admission that one feels actual differences to exist in the social fabric. Where the spirit of self-assertion, with the recognition of one’s neighbour as an equal social being, prevails, there will be no lack of striving for outward similarity, of trying to help one’s self along, and of helping others up to one’s own position; but this is looked on as a technical matter and not as referring intrinsically to the participants in the social game.

It is doubtful whether a European can fully appreciate this social point of view, because he is too apt to distort the idea into an ethical one. He is ready to abstract artificially from all social differences, and to put the ethical idea of moral equality in the stead of social differentiation. The social system is secondary then to the moral system, as in fact religion actually teaches. The American, however, goes in just the opposite direction. He presupposes, as a matter of course, that the citizens of the United States are socially equal, whether they live in the White House or work in the coal mine; and this point of view is not dependent on any ethical theory, but is itself the basis of such a theory. When we were speaking of the influence of religion on morality, we especially emphasized the fact that religious ethics are everywhere complemented by a purely social ethic, and now we meet this new form of ethics. Religion requires a morality of which the principle is clearly, though somewhat derogatorily, designated in philosophical discussions as the morality of submission, and which finds its counterpart in the ethical theories of moral lordship—the forcible and conscious suppression of the weak. Now the American constructs a morality of comradeship which is as far from the morality of submission as from that of lordship; which is unlike either the morality of the pietist based on the religious idea of immortality, or the morality of Nietzsche, based on biological exigencies. This morality of comradeship is based entirely on the idea of society.

This does not mean that it is a question of fulfilling moral requirements in order to escape social difficulties, or to gain social advantages, but of recognizing this morality simply as a social requirement. Such actions may be called moral because they are unselfish and arise from no other motive than that of the inner desire; and still they are not, in the ordinary sense, moral because they are not universally valid, and refer no further than the circle of the special social community. They may be compared to the requirements which arise in some communities out of a peculiar conception of honour; but the society here is a whole nation, without caste and without distinction. And, moreover, an idea of honour gets its force from the self-assertion of a personality, while the social morality of the American arises in a demand for the recognition of another. The fundamental feeling is that the whole social interplay would have no meaning, and social ambition and success would yield no pleasure, if it were not clearly understood that every other member of the social community is equal to one’s self, and that he has the absolute right to make such a claim.

The criminal and the man without honour have forfeited that right; they are excluded from the community and cut off from the social game. But distinctions of position, of education, of heredity, and of property, have nothing to do with this right. If we are to strive for social success, we must be perfectly sure at the outset that we are all comrades, participating in the various labours of the great gay world with mutual approval and mutual esteem; and we must show that we believe this, by our actions. And because here it is not a question of rigorous morality, but rather of the moral consequences of social ideals, the ethical goes by inappreciable steps into the ethically indifferent, into purely social customs and habits; and in many cases into evils and abuses that follow from the same social ideals. We may picture to ourselves the salient traits which are essential to this spirit of social self-assertion.

A stranger first notices, perhaps, the perfect confidence with which everybody goes about his business, without feeling oppressed by those above nor exalted by those beneath him. He feels himself an equal among equals. There is no condescension to those beneath nor servility to those above. The typical American feels himself in every social situation self-assured and equal; he is simply master of himself, polite but frank, reserved but always kind. He detests patronage and condescension as much as servility and obsequiousness. For condescension emphasizes the difference in the rank, and presumes to challenge a possible forgetting of this difference by suggesting that both the persons do recognize the distinction as intrinsic. A man who asserts his true equality and expects in every other honourable man the same self-assertion, scarcely understands how purely technical differences of social position can affect the inner relations of man to man.

One who grows up in such a social atmosphere does not lose his feeling of assurance on coming into quite a different society. Archibald Forbes, the Englishman, describes somewhere the American war correspondent, MacGahan, who was the son of an Ohio farmer, as he appeared in a Russian camp. “Never before,” writes Forbes, “have I seen a young man appear so confident among high officers and officials. There was no trace in his manner of impudence or presumption. It was as if he had conceived the matter on a single principle: I am a man—a man who, in an honourable way and for a specific purpose, which you know or which I will gladly tell you, needs something which you are best able to give me—information, a pass, or something of the sort; therefore I ask it of you. It is indifferent to the logic of the situation whether you are a small lieutenant or a general in command, a messenger boy, or an imperial chancellor.” And some one else has added, “MacGahan could do anything with Ignatieff; he calmly paid court to Mme. Ignatieff, patronized Prince Gortschakoff, and gave a friendly nod to the Grand Duke Nicholas.”

It is not surprising that Englishmen are the ones who feel this trait of the Americans most markedly. England, which is most similar to America politically, is, in this respect of real belief in social equality, most dissimilar; and in curious contrast to Russia, which is politically the very furthest removed from America, but which in its common life has developed most of all a feeling of social equality. And still the American feeling is very different from the Russian. In the Russian man, all the deeper sensibilities are coloured by a religious conception; he accounts himself at bottom, neither better nor worse than the most miserable: whereas the American feels, on the contrary, that he is at bottom not inferior to the very best. The Russian sense of equality pulls down and the American exalts.

As for the Englishman, Muirhead relates as follows in his book, “The Land of Contrasts”: “There is something wonderfully rare and delicate in the finest blossoms of American civilization—something that can hardly be paralleled in Europe. The mind that has been brought up in an atmosphere theoretically free from all false standards and conventional distinctions acquires a singularly unbiased, detached, absolute, purely human way of viewing life. In Matthew Arnold’s phrase, ‘it sees life steadily and sees it whole’; just this attitude seems unattainable in England; neither in my reading nor my personal experience have I encountered what I mean elsewhere than in America.... The true-born American is absolutely incapable of comprehending the sense of difference between a lord and a plebeian that is forced on the most philosophical among ourselves by the mere pressure of the social atmosphere. It is for him a fourth dimension of space; it may be talked about, but practically it has no existence.... The British radical philosopher may attain the height of saying, ‘With a great sum obtained I this freedom’; the American may honestly reply, ‘But I was free-born.’”

But what Muirhead thus says of the colour of the finest flowers is true, if we look more closely, of the entire flora; it may not be so delicate and exquisite as in these flowers; it is often mixed with cruder colours, but every plant on American soil, if it is not just an ordinary weed, has a little of that dye.

It is not correct to suppose that inequalities of wealth work directly against this feeling. In spite of all efforts and ambitions toward wealth and the tendencies to ostentation, the American lacks just that which makes the possession of property a distinction of personal worth—the offensive lack of consideration toward inferiors and the envy of superiors. As gladly as the American gets the best and dearest that his purse can buy, he feels no desire to impress the difference on those who are less prosperous. He does not care to outdo the poorer man; his luxury signifies his personal pleasure in expenditure as an indication of his success in the world. But so far as he thinks of those who are looking on, it is of those richer persons whom he would like to imitate, and not of those who can afford less than himself.

Envy was not planted in the American soul. Envy is not directed at the possession, but at the possessor; and therefore, it recognizes that the possessor is made better by what he owns. A person who asserts himself strains every nerve to improve his own condition, but never envies those who are more favoured. And envy would be to him as great a degradation as pure servility. Undoubtedly here is one of the most effective checks to socialism. Socialism may not spring directly from envy, but a people given to envy are very ready to listen to socialism; and in America socialism remains a foreign cult, which is preached to deaf ears. A man who feels himself inferior, and who envies his wealthier fellows, would be glad to bring about an artificial equality by equalizing ownership: whereas the man who accounts himself equal to every one else is ready to concede the external inequality which lends fresh impetus and courageous endeavour to his existence; and this the more as the accumulation of capital becomes an obviously technical matter, not immediately contributory to the enjoyment of life. The billionaire enjoys no more than the millionaire, but merely works with a more complicated and powerful apparatus. Even direct economic dependence does not depress the spirit of self-assertion. We shall have later to speak, indeed, of strong opposite tendencies, and to speak of social differentiation; but this trait remains everywhere. It is much more strongly in evidence in town and country than in the large city, and much more in the West than in the East.

The tokens of greeting are thoroughly characteristic. An American doffs his hat to ladies out of respect to the sex; but men meet one another without that formality, and the finer differences in the nod of the head, expression of the eyes, and movements of the hat indicate the degree of personal familiarity and liking, but not of social position. Position is something technical, professional, and external, which is not in question when two men meet on the street. They greet because they know each other, and in this mutual relation of personal acquaintance they are merely equal human beings, and not the representatives of professional grades. The careful German adjustment of the arc through which the hat is carried and of the angle to which the body bends, in deference to social position, strikes the American as nonsensical. The fundamental disregard of titles and orders is, of course, closely connected with such a feeling. This has two sides, and has particularly its exceptions, which we shall not fail to speak of; but, on the whole, titles and orders are under the ban. The American feels too clearly that every form of exaltation is at the same time a degradation, for it is only when all are equal that no one is inferior, and so soon as some one is distinguished, the principle of the inequality is admitted and he in turn subordinates himself to others.

It would be unfair to draw the conclusion from this that Americans hate every sort of subordination. On the contrary, one who watches American workmen at their labour, or studies the organization of great business houses, or the playing of games under the direction of a captain, knows that for a specific purpose American subordination can become absolute. The much-boasted American talent for organization could not have been so brilliantly confirmed if it had not found everywhere an absolute willingness for conscious subordination. But the foot-ball player does not feel himself inferior to the captain whose directions he follows. The profound objection to subordination comes out only where it is not a question of dividing up labour, but of the real classification and grading of men. It is naturally strongest, therefore, in regard to hereditary titles where the distinction clearly cannot be based on the personal merits of the inheritor.

One of the most interesting consequences of this feeling is very noticeable to a stranger. The American thinks that any kind of work which is honourable is in principle suitable for everybody. To be sure, this looks differently in theory and in practice; the banker does not care to be a commercial traveller, nor the commercial traveller a bar-tender, nor the bar-tender a street-cleaner; and this not merely because he regards his own work as pleasanter, but as more respectable. Nevertheless, it is at once conspicuous with what readiness every useful sort of labour is recognized as honourable; and while the European of the better classes is vexed by the query how one can work and nevertheless remain respectable, the American finds it much harder to understand how one can remain respectable without working. The way in which thousands of young students, both men and women, support themselves during their years of study is typical. The German student would feel that some sort of teaching or writing was the only work suitable to him; at the utmost he would undertake type-writing. But we have seen in connection with the universities that the American student in narrow circumstances is not afraid during the summer vacations to work as porter in a hotel, or as horse-car driver, in order to stay a year longer at the university. Or perhaps, during the student year, he will earn a part of his board by taking care of a furnace. And none of the sons of millionaires who sit beside him in the lecture rooms will look down on him on that account. The thoughtless fellow who heaps up debts is despised, but not the day-labourer’s son, who delivers milk in the early morning in order to devote his day to science.

This is everywhere the background of social conceptions. No honourable work is a discredit, because the real social personality is not touched by the casual role which may be assumed in the economic fabric. Therefore it is quite characteristic that the only labour which is really disliked is such as involves immediate personal dependence, such as that of servants. The chamber-maid has generally much easier work than the shop girl; yet all women flock to the shops and factories, and few care to go into household service. Almost all servants are immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, and Germany, except the negroes and the Chinese of the West. Even the first generation of children born in the country decline to become servants. With the single individual, it is of course a matter of imitating his comrades and following general prejudices; but these prejudices have grown logically out of the social ideals. The working-man professionally serves industry and civilization, while the servant appears to have no other end than complying with the will of another person. The working-man adjusts himself to an abstract task, quite as his employer; while the servant sells a part of his free-will and therefore his social equality, to another man.

Most notorious is the fixed idea that blacking shoes is the lowest of all menial services; and this is an hallucination which afflicts not only those born in the country, but even the immigrant from Northern Europe, as soon as he passes the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour. The problem of getting shoes blacked would be serious were it not for the several million negroes in the country and the heavy immigration from Southern Europe which does not get the instant prejudice against shoe-polish. But the theoretical problem of why servants will gladly work very hard, but strike when it comes to blacking shoes, is still not solved. There is possibly some vague idea that blacking shoes is a symbol of grovelling at some one’s feet, and therefore involves the utmost sacrifice of one’s self-respect.

Closely connected with this is the American aversion against giving or accepting fees. Any one giving a fee in a street-car would not be understood, and there are few things so unsympathetic to the American who travels in Europe as the way in which the lower classes look for an obolus in return for every trivial service or attention. A small boy who accompanies a stranger for some distance through a village street in order to point out the way, would feel insulted if he were offered a coin for his kindness. The waiters in the large hotels are less offended by tips, for they have adopted the custom brought over by European waiters; but this custom has not spread much beyond the large cities. It is, in general, still true that the real American will accept pay only in so far as he can justly demand it for his labour. Everything above that makes him dependent on the kindness of some one else, and is therefore not a professional, but a personal matter, and for the moment obliterates social equality.

Just as any sort of work which does not involve the sacrifice of the worker’s free-will is suitable for every one, so the individual is very much less identified with his occupation than he is in Europe. He very often changes his occupation. A clergyman who is tired of the pulpit goes into a mercantile employment, and a merchant who has acquired some new interests proceeds to study until he is proficient in that field; a lawyer enters the industrial field, a manufacturer enters politics, a book dealer undertakes a retail furniture business, and a letter-carrier becomes a restaurant keeper. The American does not feel that a man is made by the accidents of his industrial position, but that the real man puts his professional clothes on or lays them off without being internally affected. The belief in social equality minimizes to the utmost the significance of a change of occupation; and it may be that the well-known versatility and adaptability of the American are mainly due to this fact. For he is so much more conscious than any European that a change of environment in nowise alters his personality, and therefore requires no really new internal adjustment, which would be difficult always, but only an outward change—the mastery of a new technique.

A foreigner is most astonished at these changes of occupation when they come after a sudden reverse of fortune. The readiness and quietness with which an American takes such a thing would be absolutely impossible, if the spirit of self-assertion had not taught him through his whole life that outward circumstances do not make the man. If a millionaire loses his property to-day, his wife is ready to-morrow to open a boarding-house; circumstances have changed, and as it has been her lot in the past to conduct her salon in a palace, it is now her business to provide a good noon-day meal for young clerks. She enjoyed the first a great deal more, and yet it too brought its burdens. The change is one of occupation, and does not change her personality. The onlooker is again and again reminded of actors who play their part; they appear to live in every rÔle for the moment that they are playing it, but it is really indifferent to them at bottom whether they are called on to play in a cloak of ermine or in blue-jeans. One is as good as the other, even when the parts require one to swagger about and the other to sweat.

If the members of the community feel themselves really equal, they will lay special importance, in their social intercourse, on all such factors as likewise do not accentuate external differences, but bind man to man without regard to position, wealth, or culture. This is the reason of the remarkable hold which sport has on American life. The American likes sport of every sort, especially such games as foot-ball and base-ball, rowing, wrestling, tennis and golf and polo, in all of which bodily exercise is used in competition. After these in favour come hunting, fishing, yachting, riding, swimming, and gymnastic exercises. The sport of mountain-climbing is less popular, and in general the American is not a great walker.

American sport is, indeed, combined with many unsportsmanlike elements. In the first place, betting has taken on such proportions that financial considerations are unduly influential, and the identification of opposing teams with special clubs, universities, or cities too often brings it about, that the sportsmanlike desire to see the best side win is often made secondary to the unsportsmanlike desire to see one’s own side win at any cost. And yet even the fervour with which the spectators on the grand-stand manifest their partisanship is only another expression of the fact that the average American is intensely moved by sport; and this interest is so great as to overcome all social distinctions and create, for the time being, an absolutely equal fellow-feeling.

Base-ball is the most popular game, and is played during the spring and summer. The autumn game of foot-ball is too complicated, and has become too much of a “science” to be a thoroughly popular game. In the huge crowds which flock to see a university foot-ball game, the larger part is not always aware of what is happening at every moment, and can appreciate only the more brilliant plays. Tennis and golf are too expensive to be popular; and in golf, moreover, the success of a player is too independent of the skill of his antagonist. Water sports are out of the question in many localities. But every lad in city or country plays base-ball. It can be played everywhere, can be easily followed by spectators, and combines the interest of team work with the more naÏve interest in the brilliant single play. It is said that on every warm Saturday afternoon, base-ball matches are played in more than thirty thousand places, before audiences of some five million amateurs in sport. Around the grounds sit labouring men, clergymen, shop-boys, professors, muckers, and millionaires, all participating with a community of interest and feeling of equality as if they were worlds removed from the petty business where social differences are considered.

There is only one more sovereign power than the spirit of sport in breaking down all social distinctions; it is American humour. We could not speak of political or intellectual life without emphasizing this irrepressible humour; but we must not forget it for a moment in speaking of social life, for its influence pervades every social situation. The only question is whether it is the humour which overcomes every disturbance of the social equilibrium and so restores the consciousness of free and equal self-assertion, or whether it is this consciousness which fosters humour and seeks expression in a good-natured lack of respect. No immoderation, no improper presumption, and no pomposity can survive the first humorous comment, and the American does not wait long for this. The soap-bubble is pricked amid general laughter, and equality is restored. Whether it is in a small matter or whether in a question of national importance, a latent humour pervades all social life.

Not a single American newspaper appears in the morning without some political joke or whimsical comment, a humorous story, or a satirical article; and those who are familiar with American papers and then look into the European newspaper, find the greatest contrast to be in the absence of humour. And the same is true of daily life; the American is always ready for a joke and has one always on his lips, however dry the subject of discussion may be, and however diverse the social “position” of those present. A happy humorous turn will remind them all that they are equal fellow-citizens, and that they are not to take their different functions in life too solemnly, nor to suppose that their varied outward circumstances introduce any real inequality. As soon as Americans hear a good story, they come at once to an understanding, and it is well-known that many political personalities have succeeded because of their wit, even if its quantity was more than its quality.

American humour is most typically uttered with great seriousness; the most biting jest or the most extravagant nonsense is brought out so demurely as not at all to suggest the real intent. The American is a master at this, and often remarks the Englishman’s incapacity to follow him. The familiar American criticism of their English cousins is, in spite of Punch, certainly exaggerated—as if there were no humour at all in the country which produced Dickens. But it cannot be denied that American humour to-day is fresher and more spontaneous. And this may be in large part due to the irrepressible feeling of equality which so carries humour into every social sphere. The assurance of this feeling also makes the American ready to caricature himself or his very best friend. But it is necessary especially to observe the masses, the participants in a festival, citizens on voting day, popular crowds on the streets or in halls, in order to feel how all-powerful their humour is. A good word thrown in makes all of them forget their political differences, and an amusing occurrence repays them for every disappointment. They say, Let’s forget the foolish quarrel about trivial differences; we would rather be good-natured, now that we are reminded, in spite of all differences, of our social equality.

Now, out of this feeling of equality there spring far-reaching duties. Especially there are those which concern one’s self, and these are the same as proceeded from the Puritan spirit of self-perfection. They are the same requirements, although they are expressed in different ethical language and somewhat differently accentuated. The fundamental impulse in this group of feelings is wholly un-Puritan and entirely social. I assert myself to be equal to all others who are worthy of esteem, and therefore I must recognize for myself all the duties which those who are richer, more educated, and more influential impose on themselves; in short, I must behave like a gentleman. The motto, which certainly has nothing to do with religion, is noblesse oblige; but the nobility consists in being a citizen of America, and as such subordinate to no man. The duties which accrue are, however, quite similar to religious obligations. The gentleman requires of himself firstly self-control and social discipline. Also in this connection we find a sexual purity which is not known on the Continent; one may sit in jovial men’s society after dinner with cigars around the fireplace a hundred times without ever hearing an unclean story: and if a young fellow tried to boast to his friends of his amorous adventures, in the European manner, he would be snubbed. Nowhere in the world is a young girl so safe in the protection of a young man.

The gentleman is marked, first of all, by his character; everything which is low, unworthy, malicious, or even petty is fundamentally disagreeable to him. The true American is not to be judged by certain scandal-mongering papers, nor by city politics. As known in private life, he is admirable in all his social attitudes. He has a real distaste, often in part Æsthetic, for what is vulgar or impure; and this is true in wider as in more exclusive circles. In business he may look sharply to his own advantage; but even there he is not stingy or trivial, and he will seldom make use of a petty advantage, of doubtful actions, or dishonourable flattery and obsequiousness in order to gain his end, nor be brutal toward a weak competitor. That is opposed to the American national character. It is less opposed, however, to the assimilated immigrant population, especially the Irish.

The relation of one man to his neighbour is correspondingly upright. The spirit of self-assertion educates to politeness, helpfulness, good-nature, and magnanimity. European books on America are fond of saying that the fundamental principle of American life is, “Help yourself.” If that is understood to mean that the individual person is not expected to keep quiet and wait for some higher power to help him, and is expected, instead of waiting for the government, to go ahead and accomplish things for himself, it is true. We have already everywhere discovered the principle of individual and private initiative to be the great strength of the American state; the community is to act only when the strength of the individual is not sufficient. And the American believes in self-help in still another sense. He teaches his children to think early of economic independence; the sons even of the wealthy man are to begin with a small income and work up for themselves. Here the traditions of the pioneers are in a way perpetuated, for they had to conquer the soil by their own hard work. This training in self-help has contributed very much to make the American strong, and will doubtless continue to be regarded as the proper plan of education, however much the increasing prosperity may tend in the opposite direction.

On the other hand, the motto “Help yourself” is thoroughly misleading, if it is taken to mean that every one must help himself because his neighbour will not help him. A readiness to help in every way is one of the most marked traits of the American, from the superficial courtesy to the noblest self-sacrifice. The American’s unlimited hospitality is well known. Where it is a question of mutual social intercourse, hospitality is no special virtue, and the lavish extravagance of present-day hospitality is rather a mistake. But it is different when the guest is a stranger, who has brought, perhaps, merely a short note of introduction. The heartiness with which such an one is promptly taken into the house and provided with every sort of convenience, arises from a much deeper impulse than mere delight in well-to-do sociability. In the large cities, the American affords his guests such lodging and entertainment as a European is accustomed to bestow only in the country.

More or less remotely, all hospitality involves an idea of exchange; the entirely one-sided devotion begins first in philanthropy. When men feel themselves essentially equal, they may welcome external dissimilarities which incite them to redoubled efforts; but they will not like to see this unlikeness go beyond a certain point. Differences of power, education, and wealth are necessary to keep the social machinery moving; but there is a certain lower boundary where helplessness, illiteracy, and poverty do really threaten the true personality. And then the whole significance of social community is lost. One’s neighbour must not be debased nor deprived by outward circumstances of his inner self; he must have at once the means of working for culture and striving for power and possessions. Otherwise, an inner unlikeness would arise which would have to be recognized, and which would then contradict the presuppositions of democratic society. The feeling of justice is aroused at the sight of helplessness, the desire for reform at the sight of illiteracy; and poverty inspires eager assistance.

In its outward effects social helpfulness amounts to the same as religious benevolence, although they are at bottom far removed, and their difference may be recognized, however much they work into one another. In the world of self-perfection there is pity for the needy, and benevolence is offered as a religious sacrifice. In the world of self-assertion, the consciousness of right is uppermost, which will not suffer the debasing influence of poverty; and here benevolence is felt as a social duty by the performance of which social equality is preserved. It is a natural consequence of pity and sacrifice to encourage beggary and unsystematic alms-giving; and the fact that in America everything is directed against beggary and against letting anybody feel that he is receiving alms, speaks for the predominance of the social over the religious motive in America. The one who receives alms lowers himself, while the true social purpose is not in the charitable intent to help up the fallen, but to protect the social organism from the pathological symptom of such debasement; the belief in equality and the right of self-assertion must not be taken from any individual in America. The other extreme, state aid, legal enactments, or illness and accident insurance, or insurance against old age or lack of employment, would be politically impossible. They would be an attempt on the individual’s right of self-determination, which would be opposed for the sake of principle. The American social system demands, rather, development along a line somewhere between individual alms-giving and government insurance. It is a question of creating permanent social organizations to do away with poverty, illness, depravity, crime, and distress in a systematic, intelligent fashion.

The connection with the state would thus be preserved, since the state poor-laws supervise and regulate such organizations; on the other hand, the connection with individuals would be preserved, since they derive most of their means from private gifts and enlist a great deal of personal service, particularly that of women. Besides these private and semi-public organizations, there is the co-operation of certain state institutions on the one hand, and on the other of quiet individual benevolence, for which any amount of organization always leaves plenty of scope. Care of the poor and of children, social settlements and educational funds, whatever the forms of helpfulness, the same spirit of almost exaggerated benevolence inspires the gift of unlimited money, advice, time, and strength. Philanthropy could be improved in its outward technique in many states. Too often politics have a disturbing influence; inexperience and religious narrowness are in evidence; efforts are sometimes directed partly against one another; and many conditions of distress arising from the mixed population of the great thinly settled tracts of land, present problems which are still unsolved. But this has nothing to do with the recognition of the benevolent traits of American character.

The readiness of the American to give to good purposes is the more impressive the closer one looks. From a distance, one sees gifts of millions of dollars which less impress one; everybody knows that men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt make no sacrifices in contributing sums even in seven figures. But the person who is nearer the scene observes that there is also the widow’s mite, and that the well-to-do middle class often gives away a proportion of its income that seems almost too large, according to European ideas. And this giving is never a thoughtless throwing away; the giver always investigates. Almost everybody has a special interest, where he fulfils his benevolent duties thoughtfully and intelligently, Vanity hardly figures at all; the largest gifts are often anonymous and unheard of by the newspapers. Those who are often in the position of appealing to American public spirit for good purposes, soon lose the feeling that they are reminding the public of a duty or asking for an offering. The American gives in a way which suggests that he is delighted to be called on for so worthy a cause; he often adds a word of thanks to a contribution which is larger than was expected, for having his attention called to the cause in hand.

And his benevolence is not all a matter of the check-book. Whether the wind has blown some one’s hat off in the street, or some greater mischance has brought unhappiness, the American feels that he lives in the midst of a kindly disposed community. A feeling of comradeship is always more or less in evidence. In any case of sudden accident or misfortune, the way in which the American unselfishly lends a hand, or the crowd instinctively organizes itself to give aid, always astonishes a newcomer.

This fundamental motive shows itself in many ways; magnanimity is one of the most characteristic variations. The American takes no advantage of the weakness or misfortune of another; he likes competition, but that presupposes that the competitors have equal advantages. An opponent’s disadvantage takes away the pleasure of victory. During the Spanish War, the ovations accorded to the Spanish “heroes” were often decidedly beyond the limits of good taste; and even during the Civil War, when the embitterment was extreme, people outdid themselves in their kind treatment of the prisoners. And leading men of the North have lately proposed, in spirited public addresses, to erect a national monument to General Lee, the great leader of the Southern States. As in war so it is in peace. The presidential candidates of the two parties arranged some years ago to speak in the same places during the same week; but one of them was detained by illness in his family, and the other cancelled his speeches in order not to profit by the misfortune of his opponent. In the case of a difference of opinion which is settled by vote, say in a small club or committee meeting, the cheerful submission of the minority is generally surpassed by the magnanimity of the majority.

This same magnanimity is shown in helping the weak; there are no better-natured, more considerate, and patient people than the American, so long as the social side of life is in question. Their temperamental coolness and humour stand them in good stead. At bottom it is the feeling that they are all equal, and that if one has made a miss-step to-day and needs help, one needed it one’s self yesterday, and may need it again to-morrow. The accident that one is doing one’s duty at the moment while another is careless, indiscreet, or foolish is not to be magnified nor taken to mean that one’s self is a better sort of a man. Such kindliness greatly makes for general informality.

Among the current complaints of Europeans is, that the American life lacks just this serene cordiality, the German GemÜtlichkeit. It is true, indeed, that the rhythm of American life is quicker and more energetic; so that the stranger, until he has become accustomed to the more strenuous pace, remains at first oppressed by a disagreeable sense of haste; just as the American who visits Germany has at first a disagreeable feeling of hide-bound pedantry and careless indifference. Such a first impression is superficial. As soon as the American is adapted to the adagio of German life, he feels that the slowness is not carelessness; and the German, when he has learned the smarter marching time of American life, knows in the same way that the quick, strong accent by no means excludes serenity and comfort. It is true that in the two countries these feelings are differently distributed. The German Christmas-tide is certainly more fervent and serene than the American, but it is a question whether German popular life has any holiday more warmly solemnized than the Thanksgiving Day of New England. The American nature favours a purely social comfort which has less to do with sentiment and feeling than with the sense of affiliation.

German informality develops itself always among social equals, because in Germany social differences seem to extend to the deepest traits of personality; but social distinctions do not stand in the way of the sympathetic intercourse of Americans, because they hardly ever forget that such differences are external. In this sense the South German enjoys more GemÜtlichkeit than the North German, and the American more than any European. The most indiscriminately chosen group can be brought to a unity of feeling by the merest comical or pathetic accident, so that all social distinctions fall away like dead leaves. In the most dignified assembly, as at the busiest office, a single word or jest creates unconsciously a sympathetic mood, in which the youngest messenger and the most important director come at once into equality. A feeling runs through the whole social life, as if one would like to say, with a jovial wink, that no one believes really in all the social distinctions, but is looking for what is good in the inner personality.

The most energetic expression of this inner striving for equality lies in the feeling of justice. There is no province in which American and German feelings are so different. This is especially true in the matter of penal law. A crime is naturally a crime here as there, and the differences in penalty are mainly due to different political, social, and industrial institutions. The American is perhaps astonished at the rigour of German law regarding the press or lÈse majestÉ, and at the mild punishment for duelling, or certain social delinquencies; while the German is amazed at the severe American laws relating to temperance and at the mild punishment for slander of officials, etc. But all this does not show the least difference in the sense of justice, but only in the institution. The real difference is deeper. The German, we might say, lays the chief emphasis in seeing to it that on no account a criminal shall evade the law, while the American will on no account let an innocent man be punished. It is a matter of course that every social community includes delinquents, and that for the protection of society a penal code must do its best to suppress, to intimidate, or to improve the lawless will. But in view of such necessary machinery, the American feels that every effort should be made that his guiltless neighbour shall not be molested, since the neighbour is one like himself. It is better for a hundred guilty persons to escape the punishment they deserve than for a single innocent person to be in the least aggrieved.

The real distinctions, therefore, do not lie in the penal code, but in the way it is administered; to put it extremely, the German who is accused is guilty until he proves his innocence, while the American is innocent until he is proved guilty. A single example will make the matter clear. Any one in the United States who has been charged with murder or any other misdeed and on trial found not guilty, can never again during his whole life be tried for the same crime; not even if entirely new and convincing evidence comes up later, nor even if he should himself confess the crime. The American jurist says that the state has been given sufficient opportunity to prove the defendant’s guilt. If the counsel of the state as plaintiff has not been able to convince the jury, the accused man is legally innocent, and is protected as a matter of principle from the dread of any renewal of the accusation. In American legal opinion the German method of procedure involves a certain arbitrariness, which according to the opinion of many lawyers, is tolerated in Germany only because of the admirable quality of the judges. American jurists say that about half of the testimony admitted in the German court-room, and two-thirds admitted in the French, are entirely incompatible with the legal supposition that every man is innocent until proved guilty.

The different use of the oath is also characteristic of these two countries. The sworn testimony on the basis of “information and belief” is admitted without more ado, and so two contradictory pieces of evidence under oath are not only admissible, but are very common; and the German acceptance of the oath of one party and exclusion of that of the other seems a downright impossibility from the point of view of American law. In the same category is the requirement that the verdict of the jury shall be unanimous. The twelve jurymen may not leave the court except under surveillance until they have pronounced the verdict; and thus it happens that they often have to sleep and eat for days in the court house in order to be guarded from outside influences. If after all they can come to no agreement, the case is dropped and the situation remains exactly as it was before the trial; and the state attorney is free to bring a new accusation. Only an unanimous “guilty” or “not guilty” can be accepted. In this connection, too, is found the unusual significance of the judicial injunctions, and especially of the writ of habeas corpus, derived from Magna Charta, which says that no free man is to be deprived of life, liberty, or property, except according to the law of the land and by the verdict of his peers.

On looking over the judicial practice of the country as a whole, one will feel, quite as in Germany, that this great machinery succeeds in punishing crime and protecting society; but in America the instinctive fear of the law is accompanied by a profounder feeling that any innocent man is perfectly safe. Every trial shows, in a way, most clearly the negative side of the process, that the rights of the defendant are to be carefully protected. And if a newcomer in the country recalls certain exaggerated reports in German newspapers of corruption in American courts, he should bear in mind the words of Choate. Shortly before going as ambassador to England, he made a speech before a society of jurists, of which he was president, on the advantages and disadvantages of trial by jury. As to the theoretical possibility of bribery in such cases, he said that he could pass the matter over, since, during his experience of forty years in law, he had not seen a single case in which even one member of any jury had been accused of having been bribed. Unreliability in the administration of justice would do away at once with the fundamental principle of American social life. When men believe sincerely in their equality, they naturally develop a strong sense of justice, and regard the protection of the innocent man against every sort of prejudice, hostility, dislike, or disregard as the very highest function of the law.

We have depicted the brighter side of the American sense of equality, and may now, with a few strokes, put in the shadows. No one has denied that there are unfortunate features, although some assert that they must be accepted or else more important advantages sacrificed. A stranger is at once struck by the tendency to uniformity which arises from the belief in general equality. The spirit of comradeship is unfavourable to individual differentiation, no matter whether it is a question of a man’s hat and necktie or his religion and his theory of the universe. He is expected to demonstrate his uniformity by seeming no different from every one else. In outward matters this monotony is considerably favoured by industrial conditions, which produce staple articles in great quantities and distribute them from one end of the country to another. Exactly the same designs in fashion, arts and crafts, furniture and machinery are put on exhibition at the same time in the show-windows from New York to San Francisco. On the other hand, it is the economic custom of the American to replace everything which he uses very frequently. This is due to the cheapness of all manufactured articles and the high price of the manual labour which is necessary to make repairs. It is actually cheaper to buy new shoes and underclothing at frequent intervals than to have the old ones mended, and this also provides every man with the latest styles. If a new style of collar is brought out to-day, there will, say among the thousands of Harvard students, be hardly a hundred to-morrow wearing the old style. This tendency is, of course, aided by the general prosperity, which enables an unusually large proportion of persons to have considerably more than they need, and to indulge, perhaps imitatively, in the fashionable luxuries of the day.

As much as the general prosperity favours this rapid adoption of new fashions, it is still clear that wealth might, in itself, also help its possessors to distinguish themselves in outward ways; but this does not happen in the United States by reason of these prevalent social ideals. Now, the desire to do as others do affects even the inner life; one must play the same game and must read the same novel, not because one thinks it is better, but because others do it, and because one feels in inner accord with the social community only by loving and hating the same things as it. Those who do not like what others like, find themselves extremists at once; they are instinctively held off by society as bizarre or over-intense, and relegated to the social periphery. There are too few intermediate stages between the many who follow one another and the few who follow no one, and the finer shadings of personality are too much lost in this way. Americans ape one another as the officers of an army, and not merely in uniform, but in the adjustment of all their habits and desires, until comradeship becomes sterile uniformity.

In many ways the American inventive talent tends to relieve the general monotony. But this effort all the time to discover new solutions of this or that social problem, new surprises, new entertainments, is itself only a sort of game which is played at by all uniformly. The small city imitates the large one, the rural population imitates the metropolitan; no profession cares to keep its own social individuality; and the press and politics of the entire country tend to obliterate all professional and local differences in social life, and to make of the whole nation a huge assembly of gentlemen and ladies who, whether high or low, desire to be just gentlemen and ladies at large. It is still not difficult to-day to distinguish a gentleman of Omaha from a New Yorker; but this is in spite of the former, who, as a matter of principle, aims to present the same appearance. East and West, and recently in both North and South, one sees the same countenance, and it is seldom that one hears something of an intelligent effort to kindle local sentiment in contrast to national uniformity. There is an appeal to provincialism to free itself from the system of empty mutual imitation, and yet everybody must see that the profoundest instincts of this country are unfavourable to the development of individual peculiarities.

The dangers of this uniformity are chiefly Æsthetic, although it is not to be forgotten that uniformity very easily grows into intellectual mediocrity, and under some circumstances may bring about a certain ethical listlessness. On the other hand, the unfavourable effects of that good-nature which dominates American life are all of them ethical. Their amiable good-nature is, in a certain sense, the great virtue of the Americans; in another sense, their great failing. It is actually at bottom his good-nature which permits him everywhere to overlook carelessness and crookedness, and so opposes with a latent resistance all efforts at reform. The individual, like the nation, has no gift for being cross; men avoid for their own, but more especially for others’ sake, the disagreeable excitement. Since the country is prosperous and the world wags pretty well, no one ought to grumble if he is now and then imposed on, or if some one gets an advantage over him, or makes misuse of power. Among comrades nobody ought to play the stern pontiff.

An earnest observer of the country said, not long since, that the hope of the country does not lie in those amiable people who never drop the smile from their lips, but in those who, on due provocation, get thoroughly excited. Dust is settling on the country, and there is no great excitement to shake it off. The cobwebs of economic interests are being spun from point to point, and will finally hide the nation’s ideals. Good-nature produces a great deal of self-content in the United States, and those are not the worst friends of the country who wish it might have “bad times” once more, so that this pleasant smile might disappear, and the general indifference give place to a real agitation of spirit. The affair with Spain brought nothing of the sort; there was only enough anger to produce a pleasant prickling sensation, and the easy victory strengthened in every way the national feeling of contentment. There have been a few large disasters, due to somebody’s neglect of duty, such as the burning of a Chicago theatre, which have done something to stimulate the public conscience and to impress on people how dangerous it is to let things go just as they will; but even the disastrous accidents which result from this carelessness are quickly forgotten.

The shadows are darkest where the spirit of social equality attempts artificially to do away with those differences which properly exist in school and family life. It may be partly a reaction against the over-strict bringing up of former generations; but everywhere pedagogical maxims seem senselessly aiming to carry over the idea of equality from the great social world into the nursery. It has become a dogma to avoid all constraint and, if possible, all punishment of children, and to make every correction and rebuke by appealing to their insight and good-will. Thus the whole education and schooling goes along the line of least resistance; the child must follow all his own inclinations. And this idea is nothing at bottom but a final consequence of the recognition of social equality between all persons. To constrain another person, even if he is a mere child, means to infringe his personal liberty, to offer him an ethical affront, and so to accustom him to a sort of dependence that appears to be at variance with the American idea. Of course, the best people know that lack of discipline is not freedom, and that no strength is cultivated in the child that has always followed the line of least resistance and never experienced any friction. But the mass of people thoughtlessly overlooks this, and is content to see even in the family the respect of children for their parents and elders sacrificed to this favourite dogma.

Nature happily corrects many of these evils. It may be sport, most of all, which early in the child’s life introduces a severe discipline; and here the American principle is saved, since the outwardly rigid discipline which is enforced on every participant in the game is, nevertheless, at every moment felt to be his own will. The boy has himself sought out his comrades. If he had also chosen his parents there would be nothing against their giving him a good, sound punishment occasionally, instead of yielding indulgently to all his moods. If sport and the severe competition of public life were not here to save, it would be incomprehensible that such spoiled children should grow up into a population which keeps itself so strictly organized. Lack of discipline remains, however, in evidence wherever the constraint appears to be artificial and not self-chosen. Where, for instance, the discipline of the army sometimes leads to situations which apparently contradict “sound common sense,” the free American will never forget that the uniform is nothing but an external detail apart from his inner self. And even the commanding general will resort to the publicity of the press. In intellectual matters, all this is repeated in the lack of respect shown in forming judgment; every one thinks himself competent to decide all questions, and the most competent judgments of others are often discounted, because every one thinks himself quite as good and desires to assert himself, and feels in nowise called on to listen with respect to the profounder knowledge, reasoning, or experience of another.

We have so far said nothing of those whose self-assertion and claims to equality are the most characteristic expression of American life—the American women. We must not merely add a word about them at the end of the chapter; they are, at least, a chapter by themselves. And many who have studied American life would say that they are the entire story.

It is said that the United States is the only country in which parents are disappointed on the appearance of a boy baby, but will greet the arrival of a girl with undisguised pleasure. Who will blame them? What, after all, will a boy baby come to be? He will go to work early in life, while his sisters are left to go on and on with their education. He may work for a position in society, but it will be mainly in order to let his wife play a rÔle; he may amass property, but most of all in order to provide bountifully for his daughter. He will have to stand all his life that she may sit; will have to work early and late, in order that she may shine. Is it really worth while to bring up a boy? But the little princess in the cradle has, indeed, a right to look out on the world with laughing eyes. She will enjoy all the privileges which nature specially ordained for woman, and will reach out confidently, moreover, for those things which nature designed peculiarly for man. No road is closed to her; she can follow every inclination of her soul, and go through life pampered and imperious. Will she marry? She may not care to, but nobody will think if she does not that it is because she is not able to realize any cherished desire. Will she be happy? Human destiny is, after all, destiny; but so far as nature and society, material blessings, and intellectual considerations can contribute toward a happy life, then surely the young American woman is more favoured by fortune than either man or woman in any other part of the world can hope to be. Is this advantage of hers also a gain to the family, to society, and the nation?

It is not perfectly correct to speak of the American woman as a type—the Southern girl is so different from the daughter of New England, the women of California so different from those of Chicago, and the different elements of population are so much more traceable in women than in men. And yet one does get a characteristic picture of the average woman. It may be too much influenced by the feminine figures which move in the better circles to be a faithful average likeness. Perhaps the young girl student has been too often the model, perhaps there is a reminiscence of the Gibson girl; and nevertheless, one discovers some general features of such youth in the fair women whose hair has turned grey, and there is something common to the daughters of distinguished families and the young women of the less favoured classes.

The American woman is a tall, trim figure, with erect and firm carriage; she is a bit like the English girl, and yet very different. This latter is a trifle stiff, while the American girl is decidedly graceful; the lines of her figure are well moulded, and her appearance is always aided by the perfect taste of her raiment. In the expression of her face there is resolution and self-control, and with the resolution a subtle mischievous expression which is both tactful and amiable. And with her evident self-control there is a certain winsome mobility and seemingly unreserved graciousness. The strength appears not to contradict the grace, the determination not to be at variance with the playfulness; her eyes and play of expression reveal the versatile spirit, fresh enthusiasm, and easy wit; yet her forehead shows how earnestly she may think and desire to be helpful in society, and how little contented simply to flirt and to please men.

And then her expression may change so suddenly that one asks in vain whether this energy was, perhaps, merely put on; was perhaps a whimsical caprice; perhaps her intellectual versatility was merely an elegant superficiality. Is she at bottom only in search of enjoyment? Is this show of independence real moral self-assertion, and this decision real courage, or does she emancipate herself merely out of ennui; is it a search for excitement? And is her eagerness to reach out for everything merely an effect of her environment which is ready to give everything? But could this slim figure really be so wonderfully seductive, if her eyes and features did not awaken doubt and unsolved questions; if everything were clear, simple, and obvious? Woman is everywhere full of contradictions; and if the American woman is different from all her sisters, it is because the contradictions in her face and mien seem more modern, more complex and unfathomable.

But it is vain to speak of the American woman without considering her relations to her environment—the background, as it were, of her existence, the customs and institutions under which she has grown up and continues to live. We must speak of the education and schooling, the studies and occupations of women, of their social and domestic position, their influence, and their organized efforts; and then we shall be better able critically to evaluate that in the American woman which is good, and that which is perhaps ominous.

The life of the American girl is different from that of her European sisters from the moment when she enters school. Public school instruction is co-educational, without exception in the lower grades, and usually in the upper. Of the six hundred and twenty-eight cities of the country, five hundred and eighty-seven have public schools for boys and girls together, from the primary to the most advanced classes; and of those cities that remain, only thirteen, and all of them are in the East, separate the boys and girls in every grade. In the country, boys and girls are always together at school. In private schools in cities, the instruction is more apt to be apart; but the public schools educate 91 per cent. of the youth—that is, about 7,700,000 boys and 7,600,000 girls.

Co-education has been adopted to a different extent in the different states, and even in the different grades of school has not developed equally. The instruction of boys and girls together has spread from the elementary classes, and while the idea took the West by storm, it was less immediately adopted by the conservative East. Practical exigencies, and especially the matter of economy, have greatly affected this development; and yet, on the whole, it has been favoured by principle. There is no doubt that, quite apart from the expense, a return to separate instruction for boys and girls would be regarded by the majority of the people to-day as an unallowable step backward: there has been considerable theoretical discussion of the matter; but the fact remains that the nation regards the great experiment as successful. This does not mean that the American thoughtlessly ignores sex differences in education; he is aware that the bodily, moral, and intellectual strength of the two sexes is different, and that their development proceeds along different lines. But firstly, the American school system, as we have seen, leaves in general great freedom in the selection of studies. The girls may take more French, while the boys in the same class more often study Latin; and many subjects are introduced in the curriculum expressly for one or the other sex—such as sewing, cooking, and type-writing for the girls, and carpentry for the boys.

It is said, moreover, that just as boys and girls eat the same food at the family table, although it goes to make very different sorts of bodies, so too the same intellectual nourishment will be digested in a different way, and not work against the normal intellectual differences. It is important only for the instruction like the nourishment to be of the best sort, and it is feared that the girls’ school would drop below the level of the boys’ school if the two were to be made distinct. Equal thoroughness is assured only by having one school. Opponents of the idea affirm that this one school is virtually nothing but a boys’ school after all, with girls merely in attendance, and that the school is not sufficiently adapted to the make-up of the young girls.

The main point, however, lies not in the similarity of instruction, but in the bringing together of boys and girls. It is true that the success of expensive private schools in large cities proves that there is considerable desire among parents to have their sons go to school with boys and their daughters only with girls; but the nation, as a whole, does not take this point of view, but believes that boys and girls, growing up as they do together in the home and destined to live together as adults, should become accustomed to one another during the formative period of school instruction. The girls, it is said, are made stronger by actually working with the boys; their seriousness is emphasized and their energy developed, while the boys are refined by contact with the gentler sex—induced to be courteous, and influenced toward Æsthetic things. And if theorists were actually to fear the opposite result—that is, that the boys should be made weak and hysterical and the girls rough and coarse—they would need only to look to practical experience, which speaks unanimously to the contrary.

A still less well-grounded fear is that of those who wish to separate the sexes especially during the adolescent period. So far as this exceedingly complicated question admits of a brief summing up, the nation finds that the sexual tension is decreased by the contact in the school; the common intellectual labour, common ambitions, and the common anxieties awaken comradeship and diminish all ideas of difference. Boys and girls who daily and hourly hear one another recite their lessons, and who write together at the black-board, are for one another no objects of romantic longing or seductive mystery. Such a result may be deplored from another point of view—namely, that for reasons not connected with the school, such romanticism is desirable; but one must admit that the discouragement of unripe passion in the years of development means purer and healthier relations between the sexes, both physically and mentally. All regrettable one-sidedness is done away with. Just as in the stereoscope a normal perception of depth is brought out by the combination of two flat pictures, so here the constant combination of the masculine and feminine points of view results in a normal feeling of reality.

Then, too, the school in this wise prepares the way for later social intercourse. Boys and girls are brought together without special supervision, innocently and as a matter of course, from the nursery to early manhood and womanhood. It is only the artificial separation of the two sexes, the American says, which produces that unsound condition of the fancy that makes the relation of the sexes on the European Continent so frivolous and dubious. The moral atmosphere of the United States is undoubtedly much freer from unhealthful miasms. A cooler and less sensual temperament contributes much to this, but the comradely intercourse of boys and girls from the early school days to the time of marriage is undoubtedly an equally purifying force. The small boy very early feels himself the natural protector of his weaker playmate, and the girl can always, whether in the nursery or as a young lady in her mother’s parlour, receive her friends alone, even when her parents are not at home. A little coquetry keeps alive a certain sense of difference, always, but any least transgression is entirely precluded on both sides. The boy profoundly respects his girl friend as he does his own sister, and she could not be safer than in his protection. The gallantry of the European is at bottom egotistic. It is kind in order to win, and flatters in order to please; while the gallantry of the American is not aimed to seduce, but to serve; it does not play with the idea of male submission, but sincerely and truly gives the woman first place.

The only logical consequence, when boys and girls enjoy not only equivalent but absolutely equal school training, is that their further education shall go on parallel. We have seen the peculiar position of the American college; how it is almost incomparable with any German institution, being a sort of intermediate member between the high school and true university—the scene of a four-year intellectual activity, resembling in some respects the German school, and in others the German university. We have seen how the college removes the young man from the parental influences from his eighteenth to twenty-second years, and places him in a new, small, and academic world of special ideals which is centred around some beautiful college yard. We have seen how two things happen in these years; on the one hand, he is prepared for his future occupation, especially if he is to enter a professional faculty of the university, and on the other he receives a broad, humanitarian training. We have seen also that these hundreds of colleges form a scale of very small gradations, whose different steps are adapted to the different social needs of various sections of the country; that the better colleges are like a German Prima, with three or four semesters in the philosophical faculty of a university, and that the inferior colleges hardly reach the level of the Unterprima. In such an institution, we have found the source of the best that is in American intellectual life. Now this institution opens wide its doors to women.

Here, in truth, co-education is less prominent. The conservative tendency of Eastern colleges has worked against the admission of women into the better of them, and the advantages of colleges for none but women are so well attested that the East at least will hardly make a change, although the Middle and Western States look on it virtually as a sin against inborn human rights, to establish colleges for anything but the education of both sexes alike. It was easier to oppose mixed education in the college sphere than in the school, because the common elementary training was needed at the outset for both sexes, while the demand for college training for women came up much later, when the tradition of colleges for men was already well established. Harvard College was already two hundred years old when, for the first time, an American college as an experiment admitted women; this was Oberlin College in Ohio, which began the movement in 1833. The first women’s college was established, three years later, in Georgia—a pioneer institution in the South.

But progress was slow. It was not until 1862 that the government gave ten million acres of land for educational institutions; and then higher institutions became much more numerous, especially in the West, and from that time it was agreed that women should have equal privileges with men in these new colleges. Since then co-education in college and university has grown to be more and more the rule, except in the East. All state colleges and universities are open to women, and also the endowed universities—Brown, Chicago, Cornell, Leland Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania; some few others, as Yale, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins, allow women to attend the graduate schools or the professional faculties, but not the college. Statistics for all the colleges in the country show that, in the year 1880, only 51 per cent. were co-educational; in 1890 there were 65 per cent., and in 1900, 72 per cent. Practically, however, the most significant form of female college education is not the co-educational, but one which creates a special college paradise for young women, where there are no male beguilements and distractions.

There are six principal institutions which have taken the lead in making the college life of women the significant thing that it now is. Vassar College was the first, established on the Hudson River in 1861; then came Wellesley College, near Boston; Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia; Smith College, in Northampton; Radcliffe College, in Cambridge; Barnard, in New York. There is a large number of similar institutions, as Holyoke, Baltimore, and others in ever-diminishing series down to institutions which are hardly distinguishable from girls’ high schools. The number of girls attending strictly women’s colleges in the whole country, in 1900, was 23,900; while in mixed colleges and in the collegiate departments of universities there were 19,200 women students—just a quarter of the total number of college students. It is notable here that the students in women’s colleges since 1890 have increased by 700, and in mixed colleges by 9,000. It may be mentioned, in passing, that there are 35,000 women students in normal schools.

The instruction in women’s colleges is mostly by women, who number 1,744—that is, about 71 per cent. of the instructors—while in mixed colleges the 857 women are only 10 per cent. of the teaching staff. In the leading co-educational universities, like Chicago, Ann Arbor, Leland Stanford, Berkeley, and others, the women are almost wholly taught by men. The leading women’s colleges pursue different policies. Wellesley has almost exclusively women; Bryn Mawr, Vassar, and Smith have both; Radcliffe and Barnard are peculiar, in that by their by-laws Radcliffe is taught only by Harvard instructors, and Barnard only by instructors in Columbia University. This identification with the teaching staffs of Harvard and Columbia assures these two women’s colleges an especially high intellectual level. And the same thing is accomplished, of course, for women by their being admitted to full privileges in Chicago, Stanford, and in the large state universities, such as Ann Arbor. But one can realize the whole charm and poetry of women’s colleges only on a visit to the quiet groves of Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, or Smith.

In broad, handsomely kept parks there lie scattered about attractive villas, monumental halls of instruction, club-houses and laboratories; and here some thousand girls, seldom younger than eighteen nor older than twenty-five, spend four happy years at work and play, apart from all worldly cares. They row, play tennis and basket-ball, and go through gymnastic exercises; and, as a result, every girl leaves college fresher, healthier, and stronger than when she entered it. And the type of pale, over-worked neurasthenic is unknown. These girls have their own ambitions in this miniature world—their positions of honour, their meetings, their clubs and social sets; in which, however, only personality, talent, and temperament count, while wealth or parental influence does not come in question. The life is happy; there are dancing, theatrical performances, and innumerable other diversions from the opening celebration in the fall to the festivities in June, when the academic year closes. And the life is also earnest. There is no day without its hours of conscientious labour in the lecture hall, the library or study, whether this is in preparation for later teaching, for professional life or, as is more often the case, solely for the harmonious development of all the student’s faculties. One who looks on these fresh young girls in their light costumes, the venerable English mitre-caps on their heads, sitting in the alcoves of the library or playing in the open air, or in their formal debates, in the seminary or in the festive procession on class-day,—sees that here is a source of the purest and subtlest idealism going out into American life.

On such a foundation rests the professional training of the real university. Since the girl students in all the colleges of the country outdo the men in their studies, win the highest prizes, and attend the most difficult lectures, the old slander about deficient brain substance and mental incapacity can no longer serve as a pretext for closing the university to competing womanhood. In fact, the graduate schools, which correspond to the advanced portion of a German philosophical faculty, and the legal and medical faculties of all state universities and of a few private universities are open to women. But one is not to suppose that the number of women who are thus preparing for the learned professions, as that of medicine, law, or the ministry, is very large. There are to-day 44,000 women college students, but only 1,253 women graduate students; and in 1890 there were only 369. There are hardly more than a thousand in the purely professional faculties, and these form only 3 per cent. of the total number of students. The American women study mostly in colleges, therefore, and their aim is generally to get a well-grounded, liberal education, corresponding to a Gymnasium training, together with a few semesters in the philosophical faculty. But there are no limitations by principle; woman as such is denied no “rights,” and the verdict is unanimous that this national experiment is technically successful. There is no indication of moral deterioration, of a lowered level of instruction, or of a mutual hindrance between men and women in the matter of study. The university, in short, opens the way to the learned professions.

When a European hears of the independent careers of American women, he is apt to imagine something which is unknown to him—a woman in the judicial wig or the minister’s robe; a woman doctor or university professor. Thus he represents to himself the self-supporting women, and he easily forgets that their number is vanishingly small beside the masses of those who earn their living with very much less preparation. The professional life of the American woman, her instinct to support herself, and so to make herself equal to the man in the social and economic worlds, cannot be understood merely from figures; for statistics would show a much larger percentage of women in other countries who earn their living, where the instinct for independence is very much less. The motive is the main point. One might say that the European woman works because the land is too poor to support the family by the labour of the man alone. The American woman works because she wants her own career. In travelling through Europe, one notices women toiling painfully in the fields; this is not necessary in America, unless among the negroes. Passing through New England, one sees a hammock in front of every farm-house, and often catches the sound of a piano; the wives and daughters have never thought of working in the fields. But women crowd into all occupations in the cities, in order to have an independent existence and to make themselves useful. They would rather work in a factory or teach than to stay on the farm and spend their time at house-work or embroidery.

As a matter of course, very many families are actually in need, and innumerable motives may lead a woman to the earning of a living. But if one compares the changes in the statistics of different employments, and looks into the psychology of the different kinds of occupation, one sees clearly that the spirit of self-determination is the decisive factor, and that women compete most strongly in the professions which involve some rational interest, and that they know where it pays to crowd the men out. There is no male profession, outside of the soldiery and the fire department, into which women have not felt themselves called. Between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans there are 45 female locomotive engineers, 31 elevator attendants, 167 masons, 5 pilots, 196 blacksmiths, 625 coal miners, 3 auctioneers, and 1,320 professional huntresses.

Apart from such curiosities, and looking at only the large groups, we shall discover the following professional activity of women: In 1900, when the last census was made, there were 23,754,000 men and 5,319,000 women at paid employment—that is, only 18 per cent. of the bread-winners were women. Of these, only 971,000 were engaged in agriculture as against 9,404,000 men, while in the so-called professions, the intellectual occupations, there were 430,000 women against 828,000 men. In domestic positions, there were 2,095,000 women against 3,485,000 men; in trade there were 503,000 against 4,263,000, and in manufactures 1,313,000 against 5.772.000. The total number of wage-earning women has steadily increased. In 1890 it amounted to only 17 per cent., and in 1880 to only 15 per cent. The proportions in different parts of the country are different, and not only according to the local forms of industry, but also to the different stages of civilization; the more advanced the civilization, the more the women go into intellectual employments. Among a hundred wage-earning women, for instance, in the North Atlantic States, there are only 1.9 per cent. engaged in agriculture, but 7.6 per cent. in intellectual occupations, 37.5 per cent. engaged in domestic service, 12.9 per cent. in trade, and 40.1 per cent. in manufactures. In the Southern Middle States, on the other hand, out of a hundred women only 7.2 per cent. are in manufactures, 2.6 per cent. in trade, and 4.4 per cent. in intellectual professions.

Of these occupations, the most interesting are the intellectual, domestic, and trading activities of women. The great majority in intellectual employments are teachers; the whole story of American culture is told by the fact that there are 327,000 women pedagogues—an increase of 80,000 in ten years—and only 111,000 male teachers. The number of physicians has increased from 4,557 in 1890 to 7,399 in 1900; but this is not ominous in comparison with their 124,000 male colleagues. There are 52,000 musicians and music teachers, 11,000 teachers in drawing, 5,984 authors—a figure which has doubled since 1890; and in the newspaper world the troup of women reporters and journalists has grown in ten years from 888 to 2,193. There are 8,000 women officials employed by the state, over I,000 architects produce feminine architecture, and 3,405 ministers preach the gospel.

Turning to domestic activity, we find of course the international corps of house-servants to include the greater part; they number 1.283.000, and the statistics do not say whether, perhaps, one or two of these who have a white skin were born in the country. This number was 1,216,000 in 1890, so that it has increased only 5.5 per cent.; while during the same time population has increased 20.7 per cent., and the increasing wealth has greatly raised the demand for service. Let us compare with this the increased number of trained nurses, whose occupation is an arduous but independent and in itself useful career. The number of trained nurses has increased from 41,000 to 108,000—that is, by 163 per cent. The figures for all such domestic employments as admit of social independence have also increased. The female restaurant keepers have increased from 86,000 to 147,000; the boarding-house proprietresses number 59,455, double the figure of ten years ago. The independent profession of washer-woman attracts 325,000, while there are only 124,000 independent domestic labourers as compared with 2,454,000 men in the same occupations. The increase in the figures for such free professions as are classed under trade and commerce is in part even more striking. The number of female insurance agents, which in 1890 was less than 5,000, is now more than 10,000; book-keepers have increased from 27,000 to 74,000; sales-women, from 58,000 to 149,000; typists and stenographers from 21,000 to 86,000—that is, fourfold—and there are now 22,000 telephone and telegraph operators. The number of shop-keepers at 34,000 has not increased much, and is relatively small beside the 756,000 men. There are only 261 women wholesale merchants against 42,000 men, 946 women commercial travellers against 91,000 men; the profession of lady banker has decreased shamefully from 510 to 293, although this is no ground for despairing of the future of American banking, since the number of bankers other than women has increased in the same time from 35,000 to 72,000.

Finally, let us look at industry and manufactures. The number of seamstresses has been the same for ten years with mathematical exactitude; that is, 146,000. Since the population has increased by one-fifth, it is clear that this form of work has been unpopular, doubtless because it involves personal abasement and exposure to the arbitrariness of customers, and is therefore unfavourable to self-assertion. At the same time the workers in woollen and cotton factories have increased from 92,000 to 120,000, in silk factories from 20,000 to 32,000, and in cigar factories from 27,000 to 43,000. There are 344,000 garment-workers, 86,000 milliners, 15,000 book-binders, 16,000 printers, 17,000 box-makers, and 39,000 in the shoe industry. The whole picture shows a body of women whose labour is hardly necessary to support the families of the nation, but who are firmly resolved to assert themselves in economic and intellectual competition, who press their way into all sorts of occupations, but avoid as far as possible anything which restricts their personal independence, and seek out any occupation which augments their personality and their consciousness of independence. If all women who were not born on American soil, or if so were born of coloured parentage, were omitted from these statistics, then the self-asserting quality of American women who earn their living would come out incomparably more clearly.

The bread-winning activity of women is, however, only a fraction of their activity outside of the home. If of the 39,000,000 men in the country, 23,754,000 have an occupation, and of the 37,000,000 women only 5,319,000 work for a living, it is clear that the great majority of grown-up women earn nothing. But nobody who knows American life would take these women who earn no wages from the list of those who exert a great influence outside of the family circle, and assert themselves in the social organization. Between the two broad oceans there is hardly any significant movement outside of trade and politics which is not aided by unpaid women, who work purely out of ideal motives. Vanity, ambition, self-importance, love of diversion, and social aspirations of all kinds, of course, play a part; but the actual labour which women perform in the interests of the church or school, of public welfare, social reform, music, art, popular education, care of the sick, beautification and sanitation of cities, every day and everywhere, represents incontestably a powerful inborn idealism.

Only one motive more, which is by no means unidealistic, dictates this purely practical devotion; it is the motive of helping on this very self-assertion of women. Work is done for the sake of work, but more or less in the consciousness that one is a woman and that whatever good one does, raises the position of the sex. Thus, in women’s clubs and organizations, through noisy agitation or quieter feminine influences, the American woman’s spirit of self-assertion impresses itself in a hundred thousand ways. Women are the majority in every public lecture and in every broadly benevolent undertaking; schools and churches, the care of the poor and the ill are enlivened by their zeal, and in this respect the East and the West feel quite alike. Certainly this influence beyond the home does not end with direct self-conscious labour; it goes on where there are no women presidents, secretaries, treasurers, and committee members, but wherever women go for enjoyment and relaxation. Women form a large majority in art exhibitions, concerts, theatres, and in church services; women decide the fate of every new novel; and everywhere women stand in the foreground, wide awake and self-assertive.

It is incredible to the European how very much the unselfish and high-minded women of America are able to accomplish, and how so many of them can combine a vast deal of practical work with living in the midst of bustling social affairs, and themselves entertaining perhaps in a brilliant way. Such a woman will go early in the morning to the committee meeting of her club, inspect a school or poor-house on the way, then help to draw up by-laws for a society, deliver an address, preside at some other meeting, and meet high officials in the interests of some public work. She expends her energy for every new movement, keeps in touch with every new tendency in art and literature, and is yet a pleasant and comfortable mother in her own home. This youthful freshness never succumbs to age. In Boston, the widow of the zoÖlogist Agassiz, although now eighty years of age, is still tirelessly active as honourary president of Radcliffe College; and Julia Ward Howe, the well-known poetess, in spite of her eighty-four years, presides at every meeting of the Boston Authors’ Club, still with her quiet but fresh and delightful humour.

The leadership of women which is a problem to be discussed, as far as public life is concerned, is an absolute dogma which it would be sacrilege to call in question, so far as social and domestic life go. Just as Lincoln said that the American government is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” so certainly American society is a government of the women, by the women, and for the women. The part which the wife plays determines so unconditionally the social status of every home, that even a man who has his own social ambitions can accomplish his end in no better way than by doing everything to further the plans and even the whims of his wife. And the luxury in which she is maintained is so entirely a symbol of social position that the man comes instinctively to believe that he is himself enjoying society when he worries and over-works in order to provide jewelry and funds for the elaborate entertainments of his wife

Just as the wife of the millionaire has her place arranged to suit herself, so the modest townswoman does in her small home, and so also the wife of the day labourer, in her still narrower surroundings. The man pushes the baby carriage, builds the kitchen fire, and takes care of the furnace, so that his wife can attend to getting fashionable clothing; he denies himself cigars in order to send her into the country for the summer. And she takes this as a matter of course. She has seen this done from her childhood by all men, and she would be offended if her husband were to do anything less. The American woman’s spirit of self-assertion would be aroused directly if social equality were to be interpreted in such a ridiculous way as to make the man anything but the social inferior.

The outward noise would make one believe that the self-assertion of the feminine soul were most energetically concerned with political rights; woman’s suffrage is the great watchword. But the general noise is deceptive; the demands for equal school and college education for young women, for admission to industrial positions on the same footing with men, for an independent existence and life career for every woman who wants it, and for social domination—all these are impulses which really pervade the national consciousness. But the demand for equal suffrage is not nearly so universal. In the nature of things, it is often put forth by radical lecturers on woman’s rights; and it is natural that some large societies support the efforts, and that even masculine logic should offer no objections in many cases. The familiar arguments known to all the world have hardly been augmented by a single new reason on the woman’s side. But the old arguments appear on the surface to be such sound deductions from all the fundamental political, social, and economic principles of America that they come here to have new force. If in spite of this their practical success is still exceedingly small, and the most energetic opposition is not from the stronger sex but from the women themselves, it shows clearly that there is some strong opposing impulse in the American public mind. The social self-assertion of women, in which every American believes with all his heart, is just as little likely ever to lead to universal political suffrage for women as American industrial self-assertion will ever lead to socialism.

But the irony of world history has brought it about that women began with just those rights which to-day some of them are demanding. When English law was brought across the ocean by the colonists in the seventeenth century, the women had the constitutional right to vote, and in exceptional cases made use of it; not one of the constitutions of the thirteen states limited the suffrage to men. The State of New York was the first to improve or to injure its constitution by adding the qualification “male,” in the year 1778. One state followed after another, and New Jersey was the last, in 1844. But just as the last door was closed, the hue and cry was raised that they all ought to be opened. The first woman’s convention to make an urgent appeal for the restoring of these rights was held in New York in 1848. There was a violent opposition; but the movement extended to a great many states, and finally, in 1866, a national organization was formed which asked for a national law. This was just after the Civil War, when the amendment giving the suffrage to the negroes was the chief subject of political discussion. A petition with eighty thousand signatures was gotten up urging that the Constitution should be interpreted so as to give women the right to vote. Two women brought legal action, which went up through all the courts to the Supreme Court, but was there decided against the women, and therefore the sex has not the suffrage.

No national movements have, therefore, to-day any practical significance unless three-quarters of all state legislatures can be induced to vote for an amendment to the Constitution in favour of woman’s suffrage—that is, to vote that no state be allowed to exclude women from the ballot. This is hardly more likely to happen than a Constitutional amendment to introduce hereditary monarchy. Meanwhile, the agitation in the various states has by no means entirely stopped. Time after time attempts have been made to alter the constitution of a single state, but unsuccessfully. The only states to introduce complete woman’s suffrage have been Wyoming in 1869, Colorado in 1893, and Utah in 1895. Kansas allows women to vote in municipal elections. The agitation has been really successful in only one direction; it has succeeded in getting from a majority of the states the right to vote for the local school committees.

Such experience as the country has had with woman’s suffrage has not been specially favourable to the movement. A good deal goes to show that, even if full privileges were granted, they would remain a dead letter for the overwhelming majority of women. The average woman does not wish to go into politics. It has been affirmed that in the modern way of living, with servants to do all the house-work, factories to do the spinning and weaving and every sort of economic convenience, the married woman has too little to do, and needs the political field in which to give her energies free play. But so long as statistics show that four-fifths of the married women in the country do all their house-work, and so long as such a great variety of ethical, intellectual, Æsthetic and social duties lie before every woman, it is no wonder that very few are eager to take on new responsibilities at the ballot-box. Those, however, who would make most use of the suffrage would be, as the women who oppose the movement say, the worst female element of the large cities, and they would bring in all the worst evils of a low class of voters led by demagogues. Political corruption at the ballot would receive a new and specially dangerous impetus; the political machines would win new and disgusting strength from the feebleness of these women to resist political pressure, and instead of women’s ennobling and refining political ethics, as their partisans hope, they would be more apt to drag politics down to the very depths. Those who oppose the movement see a decided prejudice to political soundness even in the mere numerical doubling of the voting class.

Most of all, the conservative element can assert, with an excellent array of facts, that the healthy progress of woman’s self-assertion best proceeds by keeping away from politics and turning directly toward the improvement of the conditions of living and of instruction, toward the opening up of professions, the framing of industrial laws, and-other reforms. The radical political demands of women in all other fields, and most especially in the socialistic direction, inclining as they naturally do to be extreme, have worked rather to hinder than to aid the social progress of women. Even where the social independence of women is properly contested, there works the deterring consideration that politics might bring about differences between husband and wife. Taken all in all, the self-assertion of women in political matters is hardly a practical question. One who looks into their tracts and propaganda feels for a long while that the last one he has read, on which ever side it is, is wrong; but when he has come to a point where he meets only the old arguments revamped, he feels that on the whole the radical side has still less justice than the other. And the nation has come to the same conclusion. We may thus leave politics quite out of account in turning finally to the main question which relates to women; this is, How has this remarkable self-assertion of woman affected the life of the nation, both on the whole and in special spheres?

Let us look first at the sphere of the family. The situation here is often decidedly misinterpreted; the frequent divorces in America are cited very often in order to put American family life in an unfavourable light. According to the census report of 1900, the ratio of divorced to married men was 0.6 per cent., and of women 0.8 per cent.; while in 1890 the respective figures were only 0.4 per cent. and 0.6 per cent. Nevertheless, the total number of divorced persons is only 0.3 per cent. of the whole population, as compared with 5.1 per cent. who are widows, 36.5 per cent. who are married, and 57.9 per cent. of bachelors—with a small remainder unaccounted for. It is true that divorced persons who have remarried are here included among the married persons; but even if the number of dissolved marriages is somewhat greater than it appears in the statistics, that fact shows nothing as to the moral status of marriage in America.

Anybody familiar with the country knows that, much more often than in Europe, the real grounds which lead to divorce—not the mere legal pretexts given—are highly ethical ones. We have hinted at this when we analyzed the religious life; the main reason is the ethical objection to continuing externally in a marriage which has ceased to be spiritually congenial. It is the women especially, and generally the very best women, who prefer to take the step, with all the hardships which it involves, to prolonging a marriage which is spiritually hypocritical and immoral. Infidelity of the woman is the ground of divorce in only a vanishingly small number of cases, and the sexual purity of marriage is on a high plane throughout the people. The pure atmosphere of this somewhat unemotional people, which makes it possible for any woman to wend her way without escort through the streets of a large city in the evening and to travel alone across the Continent, and which protects the girl on the street from being stared at or rudely accosted, protects even more the married woman. Although French society dramas are presented on the American stage, one feels from the general attitude of the public that it really fails to understand the psychology of what is being performed, because all the ethical presuppositions are so entirely different. What the Parisian finds piquant, the New Englander finds shameless; and the woman over whom the Frenchman smiles disgusts the American.

And in still another sense American marriage is purer than the European; it lacks the commercial element. As characteristic as this fact is in economic life, it is even more significant in social life. This does not mean that the man who pays court to the daughter of a millionaire is entirely unconscious of the economic advantages which such a marriage would bring. But the systematic searching around for a dowry, with some woman attached to it, is unknown in the New World, and is thoroughly un-American. This may be seen in American plays; the familiar German comedies, in which the search for a rich bride is a favourite motive, strike the American public as entirely vapid and humourless. Americans either do not understand or else look down with pity on the marital depravity of the Old World, and such stage scenes are as intrinsically foreign as those others, so familiar to Europe, in which the rich young nobleman who after all marries the poor governess, is held up as a remarkable example of magnanimity.

The purely human elements are the only ones which count in marriage. It is a congenial affiliation of two persons, without regard to social advantage or disadvantage, if only the persons care for each other. And this idea is common to the whole nation, and gives marriage a high moral status. Moreover, the surpassing education of the young American woman, her college life, works in one way to exalt marriage. If she has learned anything in her college atmosphere, it is moral seriousness. She has gone there to face duties squarely and energetically, to account small things small, and large things large; and so, when she approaches the new duty of making a home, she overcomes all obstacles there with profound moral determination.

In spite of this, one may ask, Is her development in the right direction for subsequent events? While so much has contributed to the exaltation and purity of her marriage, has she not learned a great deal else which tends rather indirectly and perhaps unnoticeably to disorganize marriage, the home, the family, and the people? Is the increasing social self-assertion of woman really in the interests of culture? Let us picture to ourselves the contrast, say with Germany. There too the interests in the social advance of women is lively on all sides; but the situation is wholly different. Four main tendencies may be easily picked out. One relates to a very small number of exceptional women who have shown great talent or perhaps real genius. Such women are to be emancipated and to have their own life career. But the few who are called to do great things in art or science or otherwise, are not very apt to wait for others to emancipate them, and the number of these women is so small that this movement has hardly any social or economic importance in comparison with the other three which concern large numbers of women.

Of these other three, the first concerns the women of the lower classes, who throughout Germany are so poor that they have to earn a livelihood, and are in danger of sacrificing their family life. The lever is applied to improve their social condition, to put legal limits to the labour of women, and to protect them, so that the poor man’s wife shall have more opportunities in the family. Another movement is to benefit the daughters of more well-to-do people, to give them when they marry, a more intellectual career, to elevate the wife through a broader education above the pettiness of purely domestic interests and the superficiality of ordinary social life, and so to make her the true comrade of her husband. And the last movement concerns those millions of women who cannot marry because women are not only the more numerous, but also because one-tenth of German men will not marry. They are urged to replace the advantages which they would have in marriage by a life occupation; and although women of the lower classes have had enough opportunity to work, those of the upper classes have until recently been excluded from any such blessing. A great deal has been done here to improve the situation and partly in direct imitation of the American example.

But the real background of all these movements in Germany has been the conviction that marriage is the natural destiny of woman. The aim has been to improve marriage in the lower classes by relieving the woman of degrading labour, in upper classes by giving the woman a superior education; and the other two movements are merely expedients to supply some sort of substitute for life’s profoundest blessing, which is found only in marriage. There is no such background in America; there is a desire to protect American marriage, but it is not presupposed that marriage is, in and of itself, the highest good for woman. The completion of woman’s destiny lies rather in giving to her as to the man an intrinsically high life content whether she is married or not married; it is a question of her individual existence, as of his. Marriage is thus not the centre, and an independent career is in no sense a compensation or a makeshift; even the betterment of marriage is only intended as a means of bettering the individual. Woman is on exactly the same footing as man. The fundamental German principle that woman’s destiny is found in marriage, while the man is married only incidentally, involves at once the inequality of the sexes; and this fundamental inequality is only slightly lessened by these four new German movements. It is a secondary consequence that the woman is growing to be more nearly like the man. But according to the American point of view, her fundamental equality is the foundation principle; both alike aim to expand their individual personalities, to have their own valuable life content, and by marriage to benefit each other. And only secondarily, after marriage is accomplished, does the consequence appear that necessarily the woman has her special duties and her corresponding special rights; and then the principle of equality between the two finds its limitations. Now when this takes place, the self-assertion of the American woman is found to be not wholly favourable to the institution of marriage; it gives the married woman a more interesting life content, but it inclines the unmarried woman much less toward marriage; it robs society of that great support of marriage—the feeling that it is woman’s destiny.

Here, again, the most diverse factors work together. The social freedom of communication between men and women, the secure propriety of associating with men, and the independent freedom to go about which is peculiar to the American girl’s education give to the unmarried girl all those rights and advantages which in Europe she does not have until she is married. The American girl has really nothing but duties to face, domestic cares and perhaps quite unaccustomed burdens, in case she marries a man in limited circumstances; externally she has nothing to gain, and internally she is little disturbed by any great passion. She flirts from her youth up, and is the incomparable mistress of this little social art; but the moving passion is apt to be neglected, and one may question whether all her mischievous roguery and graceful coquetry are anything more than a social accomplishment, like dancing or skating or playing golf—whether it in any way touches the heart. It is a diversion, and not a true life content.

Then, too, the girl has a feeling of intellectual superiority which for the most part is entirely justified. The European girl has been brought up to believe in the superiority of the man, accustomed to feel that her own gifts are incomplete, that they come to have real value only in conjunction with a man, and her inferior scientific training suggests to her unconsciously that she will be intellectually exalted when she allies herself to some man. That will fill out her intellectual personality. The American girl has hardly ever such an idea; she has learned in the school-room how foolish boys are, how lazy and careless, and then, too, she has continued her own education it may be years after the men of her acquaintance have gone into practical life. Many high schools have one-third of their pupils boys and two-thirds girls, and the ratio grows in favour of the girls. Moreover, everything tends to give the girl her own aspirations and plans independent of any man—aspirations which are not essentially furthered or completed by her marriage alliance. American women often laugh at the way in which German women introduce abstract questions at the Kaffeeklatsch: “Now my husband says—.” The intellectual personality of the American girl must develop so much the more independently of male influence as the distinction which commences in school years is even more actual in the years of maturity. The older the American man grows the more he concentrates himself on business or politics, while his wife in a certain way continues her schooling, devotes her entire time to every sort of intellectual stimulation; the wife reads books, while the husband reads newspapers. It is undeniable that in the average American home the woman makes the profounder intellectual impression on every visitor, and the number of women is continually growing who instinctively feel that there is no advantage in marrying a man who is intellectually an inferior; they would rather remain single than contract a marriage in which they have to be the intellectual head.

While, therefore, there are neither novel social advantages nor any emotional urgency, nor yet intellectual inducements, to persuade women to marry, there are other circumstances which urge her strongly not to do so. In the first place, marriage may interfere directly with the life career which she has planned for herself. A woman who has taken an occupation to save herself from misery looks on marriage with a man who earns enough to support a family as a sort of salvation; while the woman who has chosen some calling because her life means so much more if it is useful to the world, who is earnestly devoted to her work, truly ambitious and thoroughly competent, ponders a long time before she goes into a marriage which necessarily puts an end to all this. She may well prefer to sacrifice some sentimental inclination to the profound interest she feels in her work.

The American girl is, moreover, not fond of domestic cares. It would not be fair to say that she is a bad house-keeper, for the number of wives who have to get along without servants is much greater than in Germany. And even in spite of the various economic advantages which she enjoys, it is undeniable that the American woman takes her home duties seriously, looks after every detail, and keeps the whole matter well in hand. But nevertheless, she feels very differently toward her capacities along this line. The German woman feels that her household is a source of joy; the American woman, that it is a necessary evil. The American woman loves to adorn her home and tries to express in it her own personality, not less than her German sister; but everything beyond this—the mere technique of house-keeping, cleaning, purchasing, repairing, and hiring servants—she feels to be, after all, somewhat degrading. The young woman who has been to college attacks her household duties seriously and conscientiously, but with the feeling that she would rather sacrifice herself by nursing the suffering patients in a hospital. The perfect economic appliances for American house-keeping save a great deal of labour which the German wife has to perform, and perhaps just on that account the American woman feels that the rest of it is vexatious work which women have to do until some new machines can be devised to take their places. This disinclination to household drudgery pervades the whole nation, and it is only the older generations in country districts that take a pride in their immaculate house-keeping, while the younger generations even there have the tendency to shirk household work. The daughters of farmers would rather work in a factory, because it is so much more stimulating and lively, than ironing or washing dishes or tending baby brother and sister at home; for the same reason, they will not become domestic servants for any one else. And so, for the upper and the lower classes, the disinclination to house-work stands very much in the way of marriage.

This disinclination affects marriage in still another way. Families are tending more and more to give up separate houses and live in family hotels, or, if more modestly circumstanced, in boarding-houses. The expense of servants has something to do with this, but the more important factor is the saving of work for the wife. The necessary consequence is the dissolution of intimate family life. When a dozen families eat year in and year out in the same dining-room, the close relations which should prevail in the family take on a very different shading. And thus it is that the intellectual self-assertion of women works, in the most diverse ways, against the formation of marriages and against family life. There is one argument, however, which is always urged by the opponents of woman’s emancipation which is not valid—at least, not for America. It is the blue-stocking bugbear. This unattractive type of woman is not produced by higher education in America. Many a young American girl, who has arrived at years of personal independence during her college life, may have lost her interest in the average sort of marriage; but she has by no means lost the attraction she exerts on men.

The tendency of woman’s self-assertion against marriage appears to go even further; the exaggerated expression, “race suicide,” has sometimes been used. It is true that the increase of native population, especially in the more civilized parts of the country, is ominously small; this is probably the result of diverse factors. There are physicians, for instance, who claim that the intellectual training of women and the nervous excitement incident to their independent, self-reliant attitude are among the main causes; but more important, others say, are the voluntary precautions which are dictated by the desire of ease and comfort. This last is a serious factor, and there lies behind it again the spirit of self-assertion; the woman wants to live out her own life, and her individualistic instinct works against the large family. But there is nothing here which threatens the whole nation; since, even aside from the very large immigration which introduces healthy, prolific, and sturdy elements, the births of the whole country exceed those of almost any of the European nations. In Germany, between 1890 and 1900, for every thousand inhabitants the births numbered annually 36.2 and the deaths 22.5—so that there were 13.7 more births; in England the births were 30.1 and deaths 18.4, with a difference of 11.7; in the United States the births were 35.1 and deaths 17.4, with a difference of 17.7 more births.

Of course, these figures would make all anxiety seem ridiculous, if the proportions were equally distributed over the country, and through all the elements of the population. As a matter of fact, however, there are the greatest differences. In Massachusetts, for instance, we may distinguish three classes of population; those white persons whose parents were born in the country, and those whose parents were foreigners, and the blacks. This negro population of Massachusetts has the same birth and death rate as the negro elsewhere; for every thousand persons there are 17.4 more births than deaths. For the second class—that is, the families of foreign parentage—there are actually 45.6 more births than deaths; while in the white families of native parentage there are only 3.8. In some other North Atlantic States, the condition is still worse; in New Hampshire, for instance, the excess of births in families of foreign parentage is 58.5, while in those of native parentage the situation is actually reversed, and there are 10.4 more deaths than births. So it happens that for all the New England States, the native white population, in the narrower sense, has a death preponderance of 1.5 for every thousand inhabitants; so that, in the intellectually superior part of the country, the strictly native population is not maintaining itself.

Interesting statistics recently gathered at Harvard University show that its graduates are also not holding their own. Out of 881 students who were graduated more than twenty-five years ago, 634 are married, and they have 1,262 children. On the probable assumption that they will have no more children, and that these are half males, we find that 881 student graduates in 1877 leave in 1902 only 631 sons. The climatic conditions cannot be blamed for this, since the surplus of births in families born of foreign parents is not only very great, but is far greater than in any of the European countries from which these immigrant parents came. Of European countries, Hungary has the greatest excess of births—namely, 40.5, as compared with 13.7 in Germany. That population of America which comes from German, Irish, Swedish, French, and Italian parentage has, even in New England, a birth surplus of 44.5. The general conditions of the country seem, therefore, favourable to fecundity, and this casts a greater suspicion on social conditions and ideals. And the circumstance must not be overlooked, that the increased pressure of women into wage-earning occupations lessens the opportunities of the men, and so contributes indirectly to prevent the man from starting his home early in life. In short, from whatever side we look at it, the self-assertion of woman exalts her at the expense of the family—perfects the individual, but injures society; makes the American woman perhaps the finest flower of civilization, but awakens at the same time serious fears for the propagation of the American race.

There are threatening clouds in other quarters of the horizon. The much-discussed retroactive effect of feminine emancipation on the family should not distract attention from its effect on culture as a whole. Here the dissimilarity to the German conditions is obvious. The German woman’s movement aims to give the woman a most significant rÔle in general matters of culture, but still does not doubt, as a matter of course, that the general trend of culture will be determined by the men. Just as it is a dogmatic presupposition in Germany that marriage is the most desirable occupation for women, so it is tacitly presupposed that intellectual culture will take its actual stamp from the men. In America not only this view of marriage, but even this view of culture, has been opposed for a long time; and the people behave as if both were antiquated and superstitious notions, devised by the stronger sex for its own convenience, and as if their reversal would benefit the entire race.

Anybody who looks the matter squarely in the face is not left to doubt that everything in America is tending not only to sacrifice the superiority of man and to give the woman an equal position, but to reverse the old situation and make her very much the superior. In business, law, and politics, the American man is still sovereign, and in spite of the many women who press into the mercantile professions he is still in a position where he serves rather than directs. And it is very characteristic of the moral purity of the people that, in spite of the incomparable social power of women, they have not a trace of personal influence on important political events. On the other hand, they dictate in matters of education, religion, literature and art, social problems, and public morals. Painting, music, and the theatre cater to woman, and for her the city is beautified and purified; although she does not do it herself, it is her taste and feeling which decide everything; she determines public opinion, and distributes all the rewards at her good pleasure. If the family problem is shown in a lurid light by the decrease of births in the native New England population, the problem of culture comes out into broad daylight only in those figures which we have seen before; the 327,614 women teachers and the 111,710 men.

Thus three-quarters of American education is administered by women; and even in the high school where the boys go till they are eighteen or nineteen years old, 57.7 per cent. of the teachers are women; and in those normal schools where both men and women go to fit themselves for teaching, 71.3 per cent. of the instructors are women. It appears, then, that the young men of the country, even in the years when boyhood ripens to youth, receive the larger part of their intellectual impetus from women teachers, and that all of those who are going to be school teachers and shape the young souls of the nation are in their turn predominantly under the influence of women. In colleges and universities this is still not the case, but soon will be if things are not changed; the great number of young women who pass their doctorial examinations and become specialists in science will have more and more to seek university professorships, or else they will have studied in vain. And here, as in the school, the economic conditions strongly favour the woman; since she has no family to support, she can accept a position on a salary so much smaller that the man is more and more crowded from the field. And it may be clearly foreseen that, if other social factors do not change, women will enter as competitors in every field where the labour does not require specifically masculine strength. So it has been in the factories; so it is in the schools; and so, in a few decades, it may be in the universities and in the churches.

Even although the professorial chairs still belong for the most part to men, the presence of numerous women in the auditorium cannot be wholly without influence on the routine of work. The lecturer is forced to notice, as is the speaker in any public gathering, that at least two-thirds of his hearers present the cheerful aspect of gay millinery and lace collar, so that intellectual culture and public opinion on non-political questions come more and more to be dominated by women—as many persons are beginning to see. Most of them greet this unique turn in human history as the peculiar advantage of this nation; the man looks after the industry and politics, and the woman after moral, religious, artistic, and intellectual matters. If there is any doubt that she is competent to do this, most Americans are satisfied to observe the earnestness and conscientiousness with which the American woman attends to her duties, at the zeal and success with which she applies herself to her studies, and at her victory over men wherever she competes.

Here and there, however, and their number is increasing every day, men are feeling that earnestness is not necessarily power, zeal is not mastery, and that success means little if the judgment is pronounced by those who are partial to the winners. The triumph in industrial competition is no honour if it consists in bidding under the market price. In fact, it is not merely a question of the division of labour, but a fundamental change in the character of the labour. An impartial observer of the achievements of American women as teachers or as university students, in professional life or social reform or any other public capacity, is forced to admire the performance, and even to recognize certain unique merits; but he has to admit that it is a special sort of work, and different from the achievements of men. The emancipation of the American woman and her higher education, although carried almost to the last extreme, give not the slightest indication even yet that woman is able to accomplish in the intellectual field the same that man accomplishes. What she does is not inferior, but it is entirely different; and the work which, in all other civilized countries, is done by men cannot in the United States be slipped into the hands of women without being profoundly altered in character.

The feminine mind has the tendency to unify all ideas, while a man rather separates independent classes. Each of these positions has advantages and drawbacks. The immediate products of the feminine temperament are tactfulness and Æsthetic insight, sure instincts, enthusiasm, and purity; and, on the other hand, a lack of logical consecutiveness, a tendency to over-hasty generalization, underestimation of the abstract and the deep, and an inclination to be governed by feeling and emotion. Even these weaknesses may be beautiful in domestic life and attractive in the social sphere; they soften the hard and bitter life of men. But women have not the force to perform those public duties of civilization which need the harder logic of man. If the entire culture of the nation is womanized, it will be in the end weak and without decisive influence on the progress of the world.

The intellectual high life in colleges and universities, which seems to speak more clearly for the intellectual equality of women, brings out exactly this difference. That which is accomplished by the best women’s colleges is exemplary and admirable; but it is in a world which is, after all, a small artificial world, with all rough places smoothed over and illumined with a soft light instead of the hard daylight. Although in the mixed universities women often do better than men, it is not to be forgotten that the American lecture system, with its many examinations, puts a higher value on industry, attention, and good-will than on critical acumen or logical creativeness. It cannot be denied that, even a short time since, the American university cultivated in every department the spirit of learning rather than of investigation—was reproductive rather than productive—and that the more recent development which has laid the emphasis on productive investigation has gone on for the most part in the leading Eastern universities, such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton, where women are still not admitted, while the Western universities, and most of all the state universities, which are found only in the West, where women are in a majority, belong in many respects to the old type. To be sure, there are several American women whose scientific work is admirable, and to be classed with the best professional achievements of the country; but they are still rare exceptions. The tendency to learn rather than to produce pervades all the great masses of women; they study with extraordinary zeal up to the point where critical production should begin, and there they are all too apt to stop. And unless one persistently looks at the very few exceptions, one would hardly assert that the true spirit of science could unfold and grow if American women were to be its only guardians.

This distinction is much plainer in the lower walks of life. The half-educated American man refrains from judging what is beyond his scope; but an American woman who has scarcely a shred of education looks in vain for any subject on which she has not firm convictions already at hand, and her influence upon public opinion—politics always apart—spins a web of triviality and misconception over the whole culture. Cobwebs are not ropes, and a good broom can sweep them down; but the arrogance of this feminine lack of knowledge is the symptom of a profound trait in the feminine soul, and points to dangers springing from the domination of women in intellectual life. In no other civilized land is scientific medicine so systematically hindered by quack doctors, patent medicines, and mental healing; the armies of uneducated women protect them. And in no other civilized land are ethical conceptions so worm-eaten by superstitions and spiritualistic hocus-pocus; hysterical women carry the day. In no other country is the steady and sound advance of social and pedagogical reform so checked by whimsies and short-lived innovations, and good sound work held back by the partisans of confused ideas; here the women work havoc with their social and pedagogical alarms.

This does not mean, however, that a good deal of the work of American women is not better done by them than it would be by the men. In the first place, there is no doubt that the assistance of women in teaching has had very happy results on American culture. When it was necessary to tame the wild West of its pioneer roughness and to introduce good manners, the milder influence of women in the school-room was far more useful than that of men could have been; and so far as it is a question of making over the immigrant children of the large cities into young Americans, the patient woman teacher is invaluable. And the drama of the school-room is played in other more public places; in a thousand ways the participation of women in public life has refined and toned down American culture and enriched and beautified it, but not made it profounder or stronger. Woman’s inborn dilettanteism works too often for superficiality rather than profundity.

And it is indubitable that this undertaking of the burdens of intellectual culture by woman has been necessary to the nation’s progress—a kind of division of labour imperatively indicated by the tremendous economic and political duties which have preoccupied the men. No European country has ever had to accomplish economically, technically, and politically, in so short a time, that which the United States has accomplished in the last fifty years in perfecting its civilization. The strength of the men has been so thoroughly enlisted that intellectual culture could not have been developed or even maintained if the zeal and earnestness of women had not for a time taken up the work. But is this to be only for a time? Will the man bethink himself that his political and economic one-sidedness will in the end hurt the nation? This is one of the greatest questions for the future of this country. It is not a question of woman’s retrograding or losing any of her splendid acquirements; no one could wish that this fine intellectuality, this womanly seriousness, this desire for a meaning in her life should be thoughtlessly sacrificed, nor that the sisters and the mothers of the nation should ever become mere dolls or domestic machines. Nothing of this should be lost or needs to be lost. But a compensatory movement must be undertaken by the men of the country in order to make up for amateurish superficiality and an inconsequential logic of the emotions.

In itself, the intellectual domination of the women will have the tendency to strengthen itself, the more the higher life bears the feminine stamp. For by so much, men are less attracted to it. Thus the number of male school teachers becomes smaller all the time, because the majority of women teachers makes the school more and more a place where a man does not feel at home. But other factors in public opinion work strongly in the opposite direction; industrial life has made its great strides, the land is opened up, the devastations of the Civil War are repaired, internal disturbances have yielded to internal unity, recognition among the world powers has been won, and within a short time the wealth of the country has increased many fold. It will be a natural reaction if the energies of men are somewhat withdrawn from industry and agriculture, from politics and war, and once more bestowed on things intellectual. The strength of this reaction will decide whether the self-assertion of the American women will, in the end, have been an unalloyed blessing to the country or an affliction. Woman will never contribute momentously to the culture of the world by remaining intellectually celibate.

In the caricatures of the American which are so gladly drawn by the European, and so innocently believed in, there is generally, beside the shirt-sleeved clown who bawls “equality” and the barbarian who chases the dollar, the rich heiress bent on swapping her millions for a coronet. The longing for bankrupt suitors of undoubted pedigree is supposed to be the one symptom of any social aspiration, which the Yankee exhibits. The American begs leave to differ. He is not surprised that the young American woman of good family, with her fine intellectual freshness and her faculty of adaptation, should be sought out by men of all nations; nor is he filled with awe if there are some suitors of historic lineage among the rest. But the day is long gone in which such marriages are looked on as an enviable piece of good fortune for the daughter of any American citizen. Even the newspapers lightly smile at such marriages to a title, and they are becoming less and less frequent in the really best circles of American society. Besides, no such cheap and superficial aspirations are really indicative of aristocratic tendencies. The American is, by principle, very far from making his way into the international aristocracy of Europe, and he neither does nor will he ever attempt any artificial imitation of aristocratic institutions.

It is a capital mistake to suppose that the American, put face to face with European princedom, forgets or tries to hide his democracy. Aristocratic institutions, particularly those of England, interest him as a bit out of history; he seeks such social contact just as he wanders through quaint castles, without wishing thereby to transfer his own country house on the Hudson into a decaying group of walls and turrets. He takes an Æsthetic pleasure in the brilliancy of courts, the pomp of military life, the wealth and colour of symbols; and, quite independently of that, he feels indeed a lively interest in certain fascinating figures of European politics—most of all, perhaps, in the German Kaiser. But whether his interest is historical, Æsthetic, or personal, it is never accompanied by any feeling of inferiority to the persons who represent these aristocratic institutions. When Prince Henry, on his visit to the New World, quickly won the hearts of Americans as a man, there was nothing in the tone or accent of the greetings addressed to him which was out of accord with the fundamental key of democracy. The dinner speakers commenced their speeches in the democratic fashion, which is always first to address the presiding host: “Mr. Mayor, your Royal Highness.”

At the same time the peculiarly democratic contempt for things monarchical is disappearing, too; the cultivated American feels increasingly that every form of state has arisen from historic conditions, and that one is not in and for itself better than another. He feels that he is not untrue to his republican fatherland in attesting his respect for crowned heads. He shows most of all his respect, because it is just the friendly, neighbourly intercourse which makes possible a relation of mutual recognition. Democracy is itself the gainer by giving up the absurd pose of looking down on aristocracy. Thus it happens that, of recent years, even native-born Americans have sometimes received European orders. They know well enough that it will not do to wear the button-hole decoration on American soil, but they feel it to be ungracious to decline what is offered in a friendly spirit; unless, indeed, it is a politician who wishes to accentuate and propagate a certain principle. Democracy feels sure enough of itself to be able to accept a courtesy which is offered, with equal courtesy; but nobody supposes, for a moment, that European monarchical decorations have any magic to exalt a man above his democratic equality. Indeed, the feeling of entire equality, and the belief in a mutual recognition of such equality, are almost the presupposition of modern times, and only in Irish mass-meetings do we still hear protests against European tyranny. This much is sure: America shows not the slightest tendency to become aristocratic by imitating the historic aristocracies of Europe.

There are many who seem to believe that, therefore, the only aristocracy of America consists in the clique of multi-millionaires which holds its court in Newport and Fifth Avenue. The whole country observes their follies and eccentricities; their family gatherings are described at length by the press, quite as any court ceremonies are described in European papers; and to be taken into this sacred circle is supposed to be the life ambition of industrious millionaires. Many Americans who are under the influence of the sensational press would probably agree with this; and, judging by outward symptoms, one might in fact suppose that these Croesuses along the Cliff-walk at Newport were really the responsible social leaders of America. This must seem very contemptible to all who look on from a distance, for everything which the papers tell to the four winds of heaven about these people is an insult to real and sound American feeling. The fountains of perfumery, the dinners on horseback, the cotillons where the favours are sun-bursts of real gems—in short, the senseless throwing away of wealth in the mere interests of rivalry and without even any Æsthetic compensations, cannot profoundly impress a nation of pioneers.

On looking more closely, one sees that the facts are not so bad, and that the penny-a-liners rather than the multi-millionaires are responsible for such sensational versions. In fact, in spite of many extravagances, there is a great deal of taste and refinement in those very circles; much good sense, an appreciation of true art, honest pleasure in sport, especially if it is on a grand scale; polished address, accomplished elegance in costume, and at table a hospitality which proudly represents a rich country. In the matter of style and address, these people are in fact leaders, and deserve to be. Their society, it is true, is less interesting than that of many very much more modest circles; but the same is true throughout the world of those people who make pleasure their sole duty in life. Their ostentatious enjoyments display much less individuality, and are more along prescribed lines, than those of European circles which live in a comparable luxury—a fact which is due largely to the universal uniformity of fashion that prevails in every class of Americans, and that is too little tolerant of individual picturesqueness. In spite of all this, neither diplomatic Washington, nor intellectual Boston, nor hospitable Baltimore, nor conservative Philadelphia, nor indomitable Chicago, nor cosmopolitan San Francisco, can point to any collection of persons which, in that world where one is to be amused expensively at any cost, is better qualified to take the lead than just the Four Hundred of New York and Newport.

And yet there is a fundamental error in the whole calculation. It is simply not true that these circles exercise any sort of leadership for the nation, or have become the starting-point of a New World aristocracy. The average American, if he is still the true Puritan, is outraged on reading of a wedding ceremony where more money is spent on decorating the church than the combined yearly salaries of thirty school teachers, or of the sons of great industrial leaders wasting their days in drinking cocktails and racing their automobiles. If, on the other hand, he is a true city-bred man, he takes a considerable pleasure in reading in the newspaper about the design and equipment of the latest yacht, the decorations in the ball-room of the recently built palace, or about the latest divorce doings in those elect circles. The two sorts of readers—that is, the vexed and the amused—agree only in one thing;—neither of them takes all this seriously from the national point of view. The one is outraged that in his large, healthy, and hard-working country, such folderol and licentiousness are gaped at or tolerated. And the other is pleased that his country has become so rich and strong as to be able to afford such luxuriousness and extravagance; he looks on quizzically as at a vaudeville theatre, but even he does not take the actors in this social vaudeville the least bit seriously. The one accounts this clique a sort of moral slum, and the other a quickly passing and interesting froth; and both parties overestimate the eccentric whimsies and underestimate the actual constant influence of these circles in improving the taste for art and in really refining manners. But this clique is accounted a real aristocracy merely by itself and by the tradesmen who purvey to it.

In spite of this, American society is beginning to show important differentiations. It is not a mere sentimental and fanciful aristocracy, trying to imitate European monarchianism, and it is not the pseudo-aristocracy dancing around the golden dinner-set; it is an aristocracy of leading groups of people, which has risen slowly in the social life of the nation, and now affords the starting-point of a steadily increasing individuation of social layers. The influence of wealth is not absent here, but it is not mere wealth as such which exalts these people to the nobility; nor is the historical principle of family inheritance left out of account, although it is not merely the number of one’s identifiable ancestors that counts. It is, most of all, the profounder marks of education and of personal talent. And out of the combination of all these factors and their interpenetration proceed a New World group of leaders, which has in fact a national significance.

If one were to name a single person who should typically represent this new aristocracy, it would be Theodore Roosevelt. In the year 1649, Claes Roosevelt settled in New Netherlands, which is now New York, and from generation to generation his sturdy descendants have worked for the public good. James Roosevelt, the great-grandfather of the President, gave his services without remuneration to the Continental Army in the war for independence; the grandfather left the largest part of his fortune to charitable purposes; and the father was tirelessly active in furthering patriotic undertakings during the Civil War. And as this family inherited its public spirit, so also it inherited substance and a taste for sport and social life.

Now this product of old family traditions has been greatly influenced by the best intellectual culture of New England. Theodore Roosevelt is distinctly a Harvard graduate; all the elements of his nature got new strength from the classic world of Harvard. The history of his nation has been his favourite study, and he has written historical treatises of great breadth of view. Therewith he possesses a strong talent for administration, and has advanced rapidly by reason of his actual achievements. And thus education, public service, wealth, and family traditions have combined to make a character which exalts this man socially much higher than the Presidential office alone could do. McKinley was in some ways greater, perhaps—but in McKinley’s world there was no third dimension of aristocratic differentiation; it was a flat picture, where one might not ask nor expect any diversification in the other dimension. Roosevelt is the first aristocrat since many years, to come into the White House.

Aristocratic shadings can occur in a country that is so firmly grounded in democracy only when the movement goes in both directions, upward and downward, and when it evolves on both sides. If it were a question on the one side of demanding rights and forcing credence in pretentious display, and on the other side of demanding any sort of submission from less favoured persons or assigning them an inferior position, the whole effort would be hopeless. The claim to prerogative which is supported by an ostentation calculated to hypnotize the vulgar and a corresponding obsequiousness of the weak, can do nothing more than perhaps to preserve aristocracy after it has taken deep historic root. But such a degenerate form cannot be the first stage of aristocracy in a new country. When a new aristocracy is formed, it must boast not of prerogatives, but of duties, and the feeling of those not included cannot be one of inferiority, but of confidence. And this is the mood which is growing in America.

Such duties are most clearly recognized by wealth, and wealth has perhaps contributed most to begin the aristocratic differentiation in American society; but it has not been the wealth which goes into extravagant display or other arrogant demonstration, but the wealth which works toward the civilized advance of the nation. However much it may contradict the prejudices of the Old World, wealth alone does not confer a social status in America. Of course, property everywhere makes independence; but so long as it remains merely the power to hire things done, it creates no social differentiation. The American does not regard a man with awe because he stands well with trades-people and stock-brokers, but discriminates sharply between the possessions and the possessor. In his business life he is so accustomed to dealing with impersonal corporations, that the power to dispense large sums of money gives a man no personal dignity in his eyes. Just in the Western cities, where society centres about questions of money much more than in the East, the notion of property differentiation between men is developed least of all so far as it concerns social station. The mere circumstance that one man has speculated fortunately and the other unfortunately, that the real estate of one has appreciated and of the other deteriorated in value, occasions no belief in the inner difference of the two men; the changes are purely economic, and suggest nothing of a social difference.

At most there is a certain curiosity, since property opens up a world of possibilities to a man; and he is considerably scrutinized by his neighbours to see what he will do. In this sense especially in the small and middle-sized cities, the local magnates are the centre of public interest, just as the billionaires are in large cities. But to be the object of such newspaper curiosity does not mean to be elevated in the general respect. The millionaire is in this respect very much like the operatic tenor; or, to put it less graciously, the hero of the last poisoning case. It is the more a question of a mere stimulation to the public fancy, since in reality the differences are surprisingly small.

If one looks away from the extravagant eccentricities of small circles, the difference in general mode of life is on the whole very little in evidence. The many citizens in the large American city who have a property of five to ten million dollars seem to live hardly differently from the unfortunate many who have to get on with only a simple million. On the other hand, the average man with a modest income exerts all his strength to appear in clothing and social habits as rich as possible. He does not take care to store up a dowry for his children, and he lays by little because he does not care to become a bond-holder; he would rather work to his dying day, and teach his children while they are young to stand on their own feet. So it happens that the differences which actually exist are very little in evidence; the banker has his palace and his coach, and his wife wears sealskin; but his shoe-maker has also his own house, his horse and buggy, and his wife wears a very good imitation of seal—which one has to rub against in order to recognize.

But the situation becomes very different when it is a question of wealth, not as a means of actual enjoyment, but as a measure of the personal capacities that have earned it. Then the whole importance of the possession is indeed transferred to the possessor. We must again emphasize the fact that this is the real impulse underlying American economic life—wealth is the criterion of individual achievements, of self-initiative; and since the whole nation stretches every nerve in a restless demonstration of this self-initiative, the person who is more successful than his neighbours gains necessarily their instinctive admiration. The wealth won by lucky gambles in stocks, or inherited, or derived from a merely accidental appreciation of values or by a chance monopoly, is not respected; but the wealth amassed by caution and brilliant foresight, by indomitable energy and tireless initiative, or by fascinating originality and courage, meets with full recognition. The American sees in such a creator of material wealth the model of his pioneer virtues, the born leader of economic progress, and he looks up to him in sincere admiration, and respects him far higher than his neighbour in the next palace who has accidentally fallen heir to a tenfold larger sum. It is not the power which wealth confers, but the power which has conferred wealth, that is respected.

And then there is a more important factor—the respect for that force of mind which puts wealth, even if it is only a modest amount, in the service of higher ends. Men have different tastes; one who builds hospitals may not understand the importance of patronizing the fine arts; one who supports universities may do very little for the church; or another who collects sculptures may have no interest in the education of the negro. But the fundamental dogma of American society is that wealth confers distinction only on a man who works for ideal ends; and perhaps the deepest impulse toward the accumulation of wealth, after the economic power which it confers, is the desire for just this sort of dignity. And this desire is deeper undoubtedly than the wish for pleasure, which anyhow is somewhat limited by the outward uniformity of American life. How far social recognition is gotten by public-spirited activities and how far social recognition incites men to such activity, is in any particular case hard to decide. But as a matter of fact, a social condition has come about in which the noblesse oblige of property is recognized on all sides, and in which public opinion is more discriminating as to the social respect which should be meted out to this or that public deed, than it could be if it were a question of conferring with the greatest nicety orders and titles of different values.

The right of the individual to specialize in various directions, to focus his benefactions on Catholic deaf-mutes or on students of insects, on church windows, or clay cylinders with cuneiform inscriptions, is recognized fully. Confident of the good-will of men of property, so many diverse claims have arisen, that it would be quite impossible for a single man out of mere general sympathy with civilization to lend a helping hand in all directions. The Americans esteem just that carefulness with which the rich man sees to it that his property is applied according to his personal ideas and knowledge. It is only thereby that his gifts have a profound personal significance, and are fundamentally distinguished from sentimental sacrifice or from ostentatious patronage. Giving is a serious matter, to which wealthy men daily and hourly devote conscientious labour. A man like Carnegie, whose useful bequests already amount to more than a hundred million dollars, could dispose at once of his entire property if he were in a single week to respond favourably to all the calls which are made on him. He receives every day hundreds of such letters of request, and gives almost his entire strength to carrying out his benevolent plans.

And the same is true on a smaller scale of all classes. Every true American feels that his wealth puts him in a position of public confidence, and the intensity with which he manifests this conviction decides the social esteem in which his property is held. The real aristocrats of wealth in this part of the world are those men whom public opinion respects both for the gaining and the using of their property; both factors, in a way, have to be united. The admirable personal talents which accumulate large properties, and the lofty ideals which put them to the best uses, may appear to be quite independent matters, and indeed they sometimes do exclude each other, but the aristocratic ideal demands the two together. And the Americans notice when either one is absent; they notice when wealth is amassed in imposing quantities, but then employed trivially or selfishly; or, on the other hand, when it is employed for the very highest ends, but in the opinion of competent men has been accumulated improperly. The public feels more and more inclined to look into the business methods of men who make large gifts. The American does not recognize the non olet, and there have often been lively discussions when ill-gotten wealth has been offered in public benefaction.

Wealth gotten by distinguished enterprise and integrity, and employed conscientiously and thoughtfully, confers in fact high social distinction. But it is only one factor among others. A second factor is family tradition, the dignity of a name long respected for civil high-mindedness and refinement. A European has only the barest impression of the great social significance of American genealogies, and would be surprised to see in the large libraries whole walls of book-shelves that contain nothing but works on the lineage of American families. The family tree of the single family of Whitney, of Connecticut, takes up three thick volumes amounting to 2,700 pages; and there even exists a thick and handsome volume with the genealogies of American families of royal extraction. There are not only special papers devoted to the scientific study of genealogies, but even some of the large daily papers have a section devoted to this subject. Much of this is mere curiosity and sport—a fashionable whim, which collects ancestors much like coins or postage stamps. Although the preserving of family traditions and an expansive pride in historic lineage do not contradict democratic principles, yet the interest in pedigree, if it takes real hold on the public mind, very soon leads to a genuine social differentiation.

Such differentiation will be superficial at first. If none but descendants of Puritans who came over in the “Mayflower” are invited to a set of dances, a spirit of exclusiveness is shown which is indeed undemocratic; but this sort of thing is in fact only a playful matter in American society. The large organizations that choose their membership on the ground of peculiar ancestry make no pretence to special privileges, and many of them are nothing but philanthropic societies. On the other hand, if the aristocracy of family were to assume special rights, it would be no innovation on American soil, because in the earliest colonial days many of the social differences of English society were brought over, and the English class spirit did not disappear until after the Revolution, when the younger sons of English gentlemen no longer came over to this country. In the South, a considerable spirit of aristocracy persisted until after the Civil War.

Such superficial differentiation has virtually disappeared to-day. The mere tinsel of family aristocracy has been torn off, but for this reason the real importance and achievements of certain families come out all the more clearly. The representatives of venerable family names are looked on with peculiar public confidence; and the more the American nation becomes acquainted with the history of these families, which have been active on American soil for eight or ten generations, the more it respects their descendants of the present day.

It is true that conditions are still provincial, and that almost no family has a national significance. The names of the first families of Virginia, which are universally revered in the South, are almost unknown in the North; the descendants of Knickerbocker families, whose very name must not be mentioned in New York without a certain air of solemnity, are very much less considered in Baltimore or Philadelphia; and the western part of the country is naturally still too young to have established such traditions at all until recently. But the following is a typical example for the East:

Harvard University is governed by seven men who are chosen to fill this responsible position, solely because the academic community has profound confidence both in their integrity and in their breadth of view. And yet it is no accident that among these seven men, there is not one whose family has not been of service to the State of Massachusetts for seven generations. So that, even in such a model democratic community as Puritan New England, the names of families that have played an important public part in the middle of the seventeenth century are as much respected as the old “mÄrkische Adel” in Prussia. And although they are without the privileges of nobility, the whole dignity of the past is felt by every educated person to be preserved in such family names.

But the most important factor in the aristocratic differentiation of America is higher education and culture, and this becomes more important every day. In speaking of universities, we have carefully explained why higher culture is less closely connected with the learned professions in America than in the European countries. We have seen that the learned professions are fed by professional and very practical schools, which turn out a doctor, lawyer, or preacher without requiring a broad and liberal previous training; and how, on the other hand, the college has been the independent institution for higher culture, and how these two institutions have slowly grown together in the course of time, so that the college course has come at length to be the regular preparation for those who attend professional schools. Now, in considering the social importance of higher individual culture, we have not to consider the learned professions, but rather the general college training; and in this respect we find undoubtedly that common opinion has slowly shifted toward an aristocratic point of view. The social importance ascribed to a college graduate is all the time growing.

It was kept back for a long time by unfortunate prejudices. Because other than intellectual forces had made the nation strong, and everywhere in the foreground of public activity there were vigorous and influential men who had not continued their education beyond the public grammar school, so the masses instinctively believed that insight, real energy, and enterprise were better developed in the school of life than in the world of books. The college student was thought of as a weakling, in a way, who might have many fine theories about things, but who would never take hold to help solve the great national problems—a sort of academic “mugwump,” but not a leader. The banking-house, factory, farm, the mine, the law office, and the political position were all thought better places for the young American man than the college lecture halls. And perhaps the unpractical character of college studies was no more feared than the artificial social atmosphere. It was felt that an ideal atmosphere was created in the college to which the mind in its best period of development too readily adapted itself, so that it came out virtually unprepared for the crude reality of practical life. This has been a dogma in political life ever since the Presidency of Andrew Jackson, and almost equally so in economic life.

This has profoundly changed now, and changes more with every year. It is not a question of identifying the higher culture with the learned professions, as in Germany—there is no reason for this; and such a point of view has developed in Germany only by an accident of history. In America it is still thought that a graduate of one of these colleges—that is, a man who has gone about as far as the German student of philosophy in the third or fourth semester—is equal to anybody in culture, no matter whether he afterward becomes a manufacturer, or banker, or lawyer, or a philologian. The change has taken place in regard to what is expected of the college student; distrust has vanished, and people realize that the intellectual discipline which he has had until his twenty-second year in the artificial and ideal world is after all the best training for the great duties of public life, and that academic training, less by its subject-matter than by its methods, is the best possible preparation for practical activity.

The man of academic training is the only one who sees things in their right perspective, and gives them the right values. Even the large merchant knows to-day that the young man who left college at twenty-two will be, when he is twenty-seven years of age, generally ahead of his contemporaries who left school at seventeen and “went to work.” The great self-made men do indeed say a good deal to comfort those who have had only a school training, but it may be noted that they send their own sons to college. As a matter of fact, the leading positions in the disposal of the nation are almost entirely in the hands of men of academic training, and the mistrust of the theorizing college spirit has given place to a situation in which university presidents and professors have much to say on all practical questions of public life, and the college graduates are the real supporters of every movement toward reform and civilization.

All in all, it can no longer be denied that a class of national leaders has risen above the social life of the masses, and not wholly, as democracy would really require, by reason of their personal talents. A wealthy man has a certain advantage by his wealth, the man of family by his lineage, the man of academic training by the fact that his parents were able to send him to the university. This is neither plutocracy nor hereditary aristocracy, nor intellectual snobbery. We have seen that wealth wins consideration only when well expended, that ancestry brings no privileges or prerogatives with it, and that an academic education is not equivalent to merely technical erudition. The personal factor is not lacking, since we have seen that the rich man must plan his benefactions, the man of family must play his public part, and that academic training is in the reach of every young man who will try for it. The fundamental principles of democracy are therefore not destroyed, but they are modified. The spirit of self-assertion which calls for absolute equality is everywhere brought face to face with men who are superior, whose claims cannot be discounted, and who are tacitly admitted to belong rightfully to an upper class.

Differentiation, once more, works not merely upward, but also downward; the public leader pushes himself ahead, and at the same time the great masses are looking for some one whom they may follow. It is not a matter of subjection, but of confidence—confidence in men who are recognizedly better than many others. There can be no doubt that a reaction is going on throughout America to-day, not against democracy, but against those opinions which have prevailed in the democracy ever since the days of the pioneers. A great many people feel instinctively that the time is ripe to oppose the one-sidedness of domination by the masses; people are forcibly impressed by the fact that in politics, government, literature and art, the great achievements are thwarted by vulgar influences, that the original individual is impressed into the ordinary mould, and that dilettanteism and mediocrity rule triumphant and keep out the best talents from public life. People see the tyranny of greed, the reproach of municipal corruption, the unwholesome influence of a sensational press and of unscrupulous capital. They see how public life becomes blatant, irresponsible, and vulgar; how all authority and respect must disappear if democracy is not to be curbed at any point.

The time has come, a great many feel, in which the moral influence of authority is needed, and the educational influence of those more cultivated persons who will not yield to the Æsthetic tastes of the vulgar must be infused into the democracy. The trained man must speak where the masses would otherwise act from mere caprice; the disciplined mind must lead where incompetence is heading for blind alleys; the best minds must have some say and people must be forced to listen, so that other voices and opinions shall have weight than those that make the babel of the streets. The eclectic must prevail over the vulgar taste, and the profound over the superficial, since it is clear that only in that way will America advance beyond her present stage of development. America has created a new political world, and must now turn to Æsthetics and culture. Such a reaction has not happened to-day or yesterday, but has been going on steadily in the last few decades, and to-day it is so strong as to overcome all resistance. The desire for the beauty and dignity of culture, for authority and thoroughness, is creeping into every corner of American life.

The time is already passing which would do away with all discipline and submission in school and family life; public life brings the trained expert everywhere into prominence. The disgust at the vulgarity of daily life, as in the visible appearance of city streets, increases rapidly. The sense of beauty is everywhere at work; and men of taste, education, and traditions, rather than the city fathers who are elected by the rabble, are finally being called to positions of leadership. The democratic spirit is not crumbling, and certainly the rights of the masses are not to be displaced by the rights of the better educated and more Æsthetic; but democracy is in a way to be perfected, to be brought as high as it can be brought by giving a representation to really all the forces that are in the social organism, and by not permitting the more refined ones to be suppressed by the weight of the masses. The nation has come to that maturity where the public is ready to let itself be led by the best men.

It is true that the public taste still prevails too widely in many branches of social life; there is too much triviality; too many institutions are built on the false principles that everybody knows best what is good for him, and too many undertakings flatter the taste which they should educate. But opposite tendencies are present everywhere. The more the economic development of the country is rounded off, the greater is its demand for social differentiation, for the recognition of certain influences as superior, for subordination, and for finer organization. Just as economic life has long since given up free competition, and the great corporations show admirably that subordination is necessary to great purposes, and the world of labour has become an army with strictest discipline and blind allegiance, so in the non-economic world a tendency toward subordination, individuation, and aristocracy becomes every moment more evident.

To this tendency there is added the new conception of the state. Democracy is, from the outset, individualistic. We have seen everywhere that the fundamental force in this community is the belief of every man in his own personality and that of others. The state has been the sum total of individuals, and the state as something more than the individual has appeared as a bare abstraction. The individual alone has asserted itself, perfected and guided itself, and taken all the initiative. And this belief in the person is no less firm to-day; but another belief has come up. This is a belief in the ethical reality of the state. Public opinion is still afraid that if this belief increases, the old confidence in the value of the individual, and therewith of all the fundamental virtues of American democracy, may be shaken. But the belief spreads from day to day, and produces its change in public opinion. Politics are trending as are so many other branches of life; the emphasis is passing from the individual to the totality. As we have seen that the Americans adorned their houses before their public buildings, quite the opposite of what Europeans have done, so they have given political value to the millions of individuals long before they laid weight on the one collective will of the state. The men who would have sacrificed everything rather than cheat their neighbours have had no conscientious scruples in plundering the state.

It is different to-day. The feeling grows that honour toward the state, sacrifice for it, and confidence in it are even more important than the respect for the totality of individuals. These opinions cannot be spread abroad without having their far-reaching consequences; the state is visible only in symbols, and its representatives get their significance by symbolizing not the population, but the abstract state. The individual representative of government is thus exalted personally above the democratic level. To fill an office means not merely to do work, but to experience a broadening of personality, much as that which the priest feels in his office; it is an enlargement which demands on the other side respect and subordination. This tendency is still in its beginnings, and will never be so strong as in Europe, because the self-assertion of the individual is too lively. Nevertheless, these new notes in the harmony are much louder and more persistent than they were ten years ago.

Thus there are many forces which work to check the spirit of self-assertion; in spite of the liveliest feeling of equality, a social differentiation is practically working itself out in all American life. Differences of occupation are, perhaps, the least significant; a profession which has such a great claim to superiority as, for instance, that of the army officer in Germany, does not exist in the United States. Perhaps the legal profession would be looked on as the most important, and certainly it absorbs a very large proportion of the best strength of the nation. The high position given the jurist is probably in good part because, unlike his Continental colleague, as we have explained at length, he actually takes part in shaping the law. In a different way the preacher is very greatly respected, but his profession decreases slowly in attractiveness for the best talents of the country. The academic professions, on the other hand, have drawn such talent more and more, and will continue to do so as the distinction grows sharper between the college teacher and the real university professor. The pre-eminently reproductive activities are naturally less enticing than those which are creative, and wherever talent is attracted it quickly accomplishes great things, and these work to improve the social status of the profession. The political profession, as such, is far down in the scale; only governors, senators, and the highest ministerial officials play an important social part. Of course, one cannot speak of the especial recognition of mercantile or industrial professions, because these offer too great a variety of attainment; but certainly their most influential representatives are socially inferior to none in the community.

Social differentiation does not rest on a sharp discrimination of profession, and yet it is realized from the highest to the lowest circles of society, and to a degree which fifty years ago would have greatly antagonized at least the entire northern part of the country. In Washington, the exclusive hostess invites only the wives of senators, but not those of representatives, to her table; and in the Bowery, according to the accounts, the children of the peanut vendor do not deign to play with the children of the hurdy-gurdy man, who are vastly more humble. The Four Hundred in the large city quietly but resolutely decline to invite newly made millionaires to dinner; and the seamstress, who comes to the house to sew or mend, refuses to sit down at table with the servants. Already, in the large cities, the children of better families are not sent to public, but to private schools. The railroads have only one class of passenger coach; but the best society declines that, and rides in the Pullman cars. The same distinctions hold everywhere, and not merely as a matter of greater luxury for the rich, but as a real social distinction. At the theatre, the person who socially belongs in the parquet prefers to sit in one of the worst seats there to going into the balcony, where he does not belong, even though he might hear and see better.

The increasing sympathy with badges, costumes, and uniforms—in short, with the symbols of differentiation—is very typical. There was a time in which a free American would have refused to wear a special livery; but to-day nobody objects, from the elevator boy to the judge, to wear the marks of office. The holiday processions of working-men and veterans become gayer and gayer. Those who have seen the recent inaugurations of the presidents of Yale and Columbia have witnessed parades of hundreds of gay and, it seemed, partly fantastic costumes, such as are now worn at every university celebration in America—symbolic emblems which would have seemed impossible in this monotonous democracy twenty years ago.

The inner life of universities gives also lively indication of social cleavage. In Harvard and Yale, there are exclusive clubs of the social leaders among the students. It is true that hundreds of students go through the university without paying any attention to such things; but there are almost as many more whose chief ambition is to be elected into an exclusive circle, and who would feel compensated by no sort of scientific success if they were disappointed in their aspirations for club life. In the same way many families which have become wealthy in the West move to New York or Boston, in the vain hope of breaking into society. The social difference between near-lying residential sections is, indeed, much greater than in Europe; and real estate on a street which comes to be occupied by socially inferior elements rapidly depreciates, because the inhabitants of any residential section must stand on the same plane.

The transformations which the place of the President in public consciousness has gone through are very characteristic. A newly elected President is to-day inaugurated with almost monarchical pomp, and he reviews the Navy, as he never would have thought of doing some years ago. He sits down first at the table and is served first. An invitation to the White House is felt as a command which takes precedence over any other engagement. All this has happened recently. It was not long ago that persons refused an invitation to the White House, because of previous engagements. In social life all men were merely “gentlemen,” regardless of the capacities which they had during business hours, and in matters of invitation one visited the host who was first to invite one. All this is different now.

There is even some indication of the use of titles. Twenty years ago students addressed their professors with a mister, but to-day more often with the title of professor; and the abuse of military titles which goes on in the West amuses the whole country. In the army itself aristocratic tendencies are strongly manifest, but only here and there come to general notice. Contrary to the spirit of official appointments, men are not advanced so rapidly who work up from a socially inferior level, but the social Élite is favoured. Etiquette in social life is becoming more complicated; there is more formality, more symbolism in social intercourse. A nation which pays every year more than six million dollars for cut roses and four millions for carnations has certainly learned to decorate social life. There is even more etiquette in professional life. The professional behaviour of lawyers, physicians, and scholars is in some respects, at least in the East, more narrowly prescribed than it is even in Europe.

Looking at the situation as a whole, one sees the power of this new spirit, not so much in these petty symptoms as in the great movements of which we have spoken at length in other connections. There is the spirit of imperialism in foreign politics, and it cannot expand in its pride without working against the old democratic tendencies. There is the spirit of militarism, triumphantly proud of the victorious army and navy, demanding strict discipline and blind obedience to the commander. There is the spirit of racial pride, which persecutes the negro and the Chinese, and hinders the immigration of Eastern and Southern Europeans. There is the spirit of centralization, exalting the power of the state above the conflicting desires of the individual, and in economic matters hoping more from the intelligent initiative of the state as a whole than from the free competition of individuals, and assigning to the Federation tremendous undertakings, such as the irrigation of the West and the cutting of the Panama Canal. There is the spirit of aristocracy, tempting more and more the academically cultured and the wealthy into the political arena. There is the spirit of social differentiation coming into art and science, and bringing to the life of the nation ideals of beauty and of knowledge which are far above the vulgar comprehension. Eclectic taste is winning a victory over popular taste. The judgment of the most learned, the refinement of the most educated, and the wisdom of the most mature are being made prominent before the public mind. We have already seen how this new spirit grows and unfolds, and how the one-sidedness and eccentricities of political, economic, intellectual, and artistic democracy are being outgrown day by day, and how the America of Roosevelt’s time is shaping itself in accordance with the civilizations of Western Europe.

There are some who behold this development with profound concern. That which has made America’s greatness, which seemed to be her mission in the world, was the belief in the ethical worth of the individual. The doctrines of self-determination, self-initiative, and self-assertion, and the civilization which rested on such a foundation, have nothing to hope and much to fear from social differentiation and imperialism. Aristocratic tendencies appear to undermine this ethical democracy, and the imperialistic symbols of our day mock the traditions of the past. There will certainly be many reactions against these aristocratic tendencies; perhaps they will be only small movements working through the press and at the ballot-box against the encroachments on the spirit of the past and against the expansion of office, and hindering those aristocratic tendencies which depart too far from the traditions of the masses. Perhaps, some day, there will be a great reaction. Perhaps the tremendous power possessed by the labouring classes in the country will lead to battles for ethical principles, in which the modern Æsthetic development will be reversed; it would not be the first time on American soil that ethical reform has produced social deterioration, for “reform” means always the victory of naked, equalizing logic over the conservative forces which represent historic differentiation. So the Revolution abolished the patrician society of New England, whose aristocratic members survive in the portraits of Copley; and the day may come when trades-unions will be victorious over that aristocracy which Sargent is now painting. Even the reform which emancipated the slaves destroyed a true and chivalrous aristocracy in the South.

But it is more likely that the steady development will go on, and that there will be a harmonious co-operation between the fundamental democratic forces and the lesser aristocratic ones. It cannot be doubted that that democracy of which we have aimed to describe the real intent, will remain the fundamental force under the American Constitution; and however strict military discipline may become, however aristocratic the social differentiations, however imperialistic the politics, however esoteric art and science, undoubtedly the greatest question put by every American to his brother will be: “What do you, purely as an individual, amount to?” The ethical rights and the ethical duties of the individual will be the ultimate standard, and aristocratic pomp will always be suppressed in America whenever it commences to restrain the passion for justice and for self-determination.

The most serious Americans are in the position of Tantalus; they see, in a thousand ways and at a thousand places, that a certain advance could be made if somehow the vulgar masses could be got out of the way; they see how civic and national ends could be attained almost without trouble by the ample means of the country, if as in Europe, the most intelligent minds could be put in control. They want all this most seriously; and yet they cannot have it, because in the bottom of their hearts they really do not wish it. They feel too profoundly that the gain would be only apparent, that the moral force of the nation would be sacrificed if a single citizen should lose the confidence that he himself is responsible for the nation which he helps to guide and to make. The easy attainment of success is only a secondary matter; the purity of the individual will is the main consideration. With this stands or falls American culture. Development is first of all an ethical problem; just because the world is incomplete, is hard, and unbeautiful, and everywhere needs to be transformed by human labour, just on that account human life is inexhaustibly valuable. This is the fundamental thought, and will remain so as long as the New World remains true to its ideals. The finer notes are only an overtone in the great chord; it is only faintly discerned that the world is valuable when it is beautiful—after it has been mastered and completed.

In this opposition between the ethical and the Æsthetic, between the democratic and the aristocratic, America will never sacrifice her fundamental conviction, will never follow aristocratic tendencies further than where they are needed to correct the dangerous one-sidedness and the excrescences of democratic individualism; at least, never so far that any danger will threaten the democracy. The pride of the true American is, once and for all, not the American country, nor yet American achievements, but the American personality.

One who seeks the profoundest reality that history has to offer, not in the temporal unfolding of events, but in the interplay of human wills, will agree with the American’s judgment of himself. Looking at the people of the New World even from afar, one will find the fascination, novelty, and greatness of the American world mission, not in what the American has accomplished, but in what he desires and will desire.

Nevertheless, this will not seem strange or foreign to any German. In the depths of his soul, he has himself a similar play of desires. In the course of history, reverence and faithfulness developed in the German soul more strongly than the individualistic craving for self-determination and self-assertion; aristocratic love of beauty and truth developed before the democratic spirit of self-initiative. But to-day, in modern Germany, these very instincts are being aroused, just as in modern America those forces are growing which have long dominated the German soul.

The American still puts the higher value on the personal, the German on the over-personal; the American on the intrinsic value of the creating will, the German on the intrinsic value of the absolute ideal. But every day sees the difference reduced, and brings the two nations nearer to a similar attitude of mind. Moreover, both of these fundamental tendencies are equally idealistic, and both of these nations are therefore destined to understand and to esteem each other, mutually to extend their friendship, to emulate each other, and to work together, so that in the confused play of temporal forces the intrinsically valuable shall be victorious over the temporary and fleeting, the ideal over the accidental. For both nations feel together, in the depths of their being, that in order to give meaning to life man must believe in timeless ideals.