William English Walling, writer upon sociological subjects, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, March 14, 1877. When twenty years of age he was graduated from the University of Chicago with the B. S. degree; and he subsequently did graduate work in economics and sociology for a year at the same institution. Since 1902 Mr. Walling has been a resident at the University Settlement in New York. He has contributed to many of the high-class magazines, but he is best seen as a writer in his two books, entitled Russia's Message (New York, 1908); and Socialism As It Is (New York, 1912). The first title, Russia's Message, is one of the authoritative works upon that race; and it has been received as such in many quarters. And the same statement may be made of his excellent discussion of socialism. Mr. Walling is a member of many political and social societies. He has an attractive home at Cedarhurst, Long Island. In the early spring of 1913 the Macmillan Company will issue another book for Mr. Walling, entitled The Larger Aspects of Socialism.

Bibliography. The Nation (August 6, 1908); Review of Reviews (August, 1908); The Independent (May 16, 1912).

RUSSIA AND AMERICA[91]

[From Russia's Message (New York, 1908)]

Russia, like the United States, is a self-sufficient country; more than a country, a world. Like the new world, the Russian world forms an almost complete economic whole, embracing under a single government nearly all, if not all, climates and nearly all the raw products used in modern life; both countries are large exporters of agricultural products, both are devoted more to agriculture than to manufacturing industry. Both of these worlds are composed largely of newly acquired and newly settled territory; though both are inhabited by very many races, in each a single race prevails numerically and in most other respects over all the rest, and keeps them together as a single whole. As the result of the mixture of races and the recent settlement of large parts of both countries, their culture is international, world-culture, unmarked by the comparatively provincial nationalistic tendencies of England, Germany, or France. We may look, according to a great German publicist, Kautsky, to America for the great economic experiments of the near future and to Russia for the new (social) politics.

America is essentially a country of rapid economic evolution, while Russia is undeveloped, economically and financially dependent. America is the country of economic genius, a nation whose conceptions of material development have reached even a spiritual height. The great American qualities, the American virtues, the American imagination, have thrown themselves almost wholly into business, the material development of the country. Americans are the first of modern peoples that have learned to respect the repeated failures of enterprising individuals with a genius for affairs, knowing that such failures often lead to greater heights of success. They have learned how to excuse enormous waste when it was made for the sake of economics lying in the distant future. They can appreciate the enterprise of persons who, instead of immediately exploiting their properties, know how to wait, like some of our most able builders that, foreseeing the brilliant future of the locality in which they are situated, are satisfied with temporary structures and poor incomes until the time is ripe for some of the magnificent modern achievements in architecture, in which we so clearly lead. All three of these types of men we admire are true revolutionists, who prefer to wait, to waste, or to fail, rather than to accept the lesser for the greater good.

So it is with Russians in their politics. There seems no reason for doubting that the near future will show that the political failures now being made by the Russians are the failures of political genius, that the waste of lives and property will be repaid later a hundredfold, and that the hopeful and planful patience with which the Russians are looking forward and working to a great social transformation promises the greatest and most magnificent results when that transformation is achieved. Already the political revolution of the Russian people, though not yet embodied in political institutions, is becoming as rapid, as remarkable, as phenomenal, as the economic revolution of the United States.