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Fashions in Literature 
 
FASHIONS IN 
 LITERATURE 
 
 And Other Literary and 
 Social Essays ^ Addresses 
 
 By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 Hainilton IVright Mahie 
 
 NEW YORK . DODD, MEAD 
 ^ COMPANY . M D C C C C I I 
 
3 
 
 Copyright, 1881, 
 By Charles Dudley Warner 
 
 Copyright, 1887 and i88g, 
 By The Critic Company 
 
 Copyright, IQOI, 
 By The Century Company 
 
 Copyright, igo2. 
 By Dodd, Mead & Company 
 
 Published April, 1902 
 
 1 
 
 THE UIBBARY 
 (KiNQRESS, 
 Two Oowea Receive* 
 
 APR. 2e 1902 
 a I I 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON ♦ CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 Page 
 Fashions in Literature i 
 
 " The Centur)' Magazine," April, 1901, 
 
 The American Newspaper 31 
 
 American Social Science Association, Saratoga, September 
 6, 1881. 
 
 Certain Diversities of American Life .... ']'] 
 
 University of the South, July 30, 1889. 
 
 The Pilgrim, and the American of To-day . . 115 
 
 New England Society Dinner, Indianapolis, December 21, 
 1892. 
 
 Nathan Hale 139 
 
 Connecticut Capitol, Hartford, June 17, 1887. 
 
 Some Causes of the Prevailing Discontent . . 157 
 
 Hamilton College, June 30, 
 
 Education of the Negro 193 
 
 Presidential Address delivered before the American Social 
 Science Association, Washington, May 7, 1900. 
 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 The Indeterminate Sentence 225 
 
 1899. 
 
 The Life-Saving and Life- Prolonging Art . . 253 
 
 Centennial Celebration, Hartford County Medical Associa- 
 tion, September 26, 1892. 
 
 Literary Copyright 267 
 
 Presidential Address, National Institute of Arts and Letters, 
 January 30, 1900. 
 
 The Pursuit of Happiness 291 
 
 "The Century Magazine," December, 1900. 
 
 Truthfulness 303 
 
 Literature and the Stage 315 
 
 "The Critic," December 7, 1889. 
 
 ** H. H.'* in Southern California 321 
 
 "The Critic," May 14, 1887. 
 
 [-1 
 
Introduction 
 
 THIRTY years ago and more those 
 who read and valued good books 
 in this country made the acquain- 
 tance of Mr. Warner, and since the publica- 
 tion of " My Summer In a Garden " no work 
 of his has needed any other introduction 
 than the presence of his name on the title- 
 page ; and now that reputation has mellowed 
 into memory, even the word of interpreta- 
 tion seems superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote 
 out of a clear, as well as a full mind, and 
 lucidity of style was part of that harmonious 
 charm of sincerity and urbanity which made 
 him one of the most intelligible and com- 
 panionable of our writers. 
 
 It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, 
 not long ago, we saw him move and heard 
 him speak in the ripeness of years which 
 brought him the full flavour of maturity with- 
 out any loss of freshness from his humour 
 
 or serenity from his thought. He shared 
 
 [vii] 
 
I NT R ODUCTION 
 
 with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtis a har- 
 mony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and 
 achievement, which make him a welcome 
 figure, not only for what he said, but for what 
 he was ; one of those friends whose coming 
 is hailed with joy because they seem always 
 at their best, and minister to rather than 
 draw upon our own capital of moral vitality. 
 Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic 
 of idealists, the most winning of teachers. 
 He had always something to say to the ethi- 
 cal sense, a word for the conscience ; but his 
 approach was always through the mind, and 
 his enforcement of the moral lesson was by 
 suggestion rather than by commandment. 
 There was nothing ascetic about him, no 
 easy solution of the difHculties of life by ig- 
 noring or evading them ; nor, on the other 
 hand, was there any confusion of moral 
 standards as the result of a confusion of 
 ideas touching the nature and functions of 
 art. He saw clearly, he felt deeply, and he 
 thought straight ; hence the rectitude of his 
 mind, the sanity of his spirit, the justice of 
 his dealings with the things which make for 
 
 [ viii ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 life and art. He used the essay as Addison 
 used it, not for sermonic effect, but as a form 
 of art which permitted a man to deal with seri- 
 ous things in a spirit of gayety, and with that 
 lightness of touch which conveys influence 
 without employing force. He was as deeply 
 enamoured as George William Curtis with 
 the highest ideals of life for America, and, 
 like Curtis, his expression caught the grace 
 and distinction of those ideals. 
 
 It is a pleasure to hear his voice once 
 more, because its very accents suggest the 
 most interesting, high-minded, and captivat- 
 ing ideals of living; he brings with him that 
 air of fine breeding which Is diffused by the 
 men who, in mind as in manners, have been, 
 in a distinctive sense, gentlemen ; who have 
 lived so constantly and habitually on intimate 
 terms with the highest things in thought and 
 character that the tone of this really best 
 society has become theirs. Among men of 
 talent there are plebeians as well as patri- 
 cians ; even genius, which is never vulgar, is 
 sometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of 
 the aims and ideas which it clothes with 
 
 [ix] 
 
I N T R ODUCTION 
 
 beauty without concealing their essential 
 nature. Mr. Warner was a patrician; the 
 most democratic of men, he was one of 
 the most fastidious in his intellectual com- 
 panionships and affiliations. 
 
 The subjects about which he speaks with 
 his old-time directness and charm in this 
 volume make us aware of the serious temper 
 of his mind, of his deep interest in the life of 
 his time and people, and of the easy and 
 natural grace with which he insisted on fac- 
 ing the fact and bringing it to the test of 
 the highest standards. In his discussion of 
 " Fashions in Literature " he deftly brings 
 before us the significance of literature and 
 the signs which it always wears, while he 
 seems bent upon considering some interest- 
 ing aspects of contemporary writing. 
 
 And how admirably he has described his 
 own work in his definition of qualities which 
 are common to all literature of a high order : 
 simplicity, knowledge of human nature, agree- 
 able personality. It would be impossible in 
 briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum 
 up and express the secret of his influence and 
 
 [X] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the pleasure he gives us. It is to sug- 
 gest this application of his words to himself 
 that this preparatory comment is written. 
 
 When " l\Iy Summer In a Garden" ap- 
 peared, it won a host of friends who did not 
 stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent 
 journalism or a bit of real literature. It was 
 so natural, so informal, so intimate that 
 readers accepted it as matter of course, as 
 they accepted the blooming of flowers and the 
 flitting of birds. It was simply a report of 
 certain things which had happened out of 
 doors, made by an observing neighbour whose 
 talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused 
 fragrance and light and life of the old-fash- 
 ioned garden. This easy approach, along 
 natural lines of interest, by quietly putting 
 himself on common ground with his reader, 
 Mr. Warner never abandoned ; he was so 
 delightful a companion that until he ceased 
 to walk beside them, many of his friends of 
 the mind did not realise how much he had 
 enriched them by the way. This charming 
 simplicity, which made it possible for him 
 
 to put himself on intimate terms with his 
 
 [xi] 
 
I N T R O DU C r I O N 
 
 readers, was the result of his sincerity, his 
 clearness of thought, and his ripe culture : 
 that knowledge of the best which rids a man 
 forever of faith in devices, dexterities, ob- 
 scurities, and all other substitutes for the 
 lucid realities of thinking and of character. 
 
 To his love of reality and his sincere in- 
 terest in men, Mr. Warner added natural 
 shrewdness and long observation of the psy- 
 chology of men and women under the stress 
 and strain of experience. His knowledge 
 of human nature did not lessen his geniality, 
 but it kept the edge of his mind keen, and 
 gave his work the variety not only of humour 
 but of satire. He cared deeply for people, 
 but they did not impose on him ; he loved 
 his country with a passion which was the 
 more genuine because it was exacting and, 
 at times, sharply critical. There runs through 
 all his work, as a critic of manners and men, 
 as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of 
 wide and keen observation; put not into 
 the form of aphorisms, but of shrewd com- 
 ment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimina- 
 tion between the manifold shadings of insin- 
 
 [xii] 
 
I N T R ODUCTION 
 
 cerity, of insight into the action and reaction 
 of conditions, surroundings, social and ethical 
 aims on men and women. The stories 
 written in his later years are full of the evi- 
 dences of a knowledge of human nature which 
 was singularly trustworthy and penetrating. 
 
 When all has been said, however, it re- 
 mains true of him, as of so many of the 
 writers whom we read and love and love as 
 we read, that the secret of his charm lay in 
 an agreeable personality. At the end of the 
 analysis, if the work is worth while, there is 
 always a man, and the man is the explanation 
 of the work. This is preeminently true of 
 those writers whose charm lies less in dis- 
 tinctively intellectual qualities than in tem- 
 perament, atmosphere, humour, — writers of 
 the quality of Steele, Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving. 
 It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recall 
 Mr. Warner ; it is a necessity if one would 
 discover the secret of his charm, the source 
 of his authority. 
 
 He was a New Englander by birth and 
 by long residence, but he was also a man of 
 the world in the true sense of the phrase ; 
 
 [ xiii ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 one whose ethical judgment had been broad- 
 ened without being lowered ; who had learned 
 that truth, though often strenuously enforced, 
 is never so convincing as when stated in 
 terms of beauty ; and to whom it had been 
 revealed that to live naturally, sanely, and 
 productively one must live humanly, with 
 due regard to the earthly as well as to 
 heavenly, with ease as well as earnestness of 
 spirit, through play no less than through 
 work, in the large resources of art, society, 
 and humour, as well as with the ancient and 
 well-tested rectitudes of the fathers. 
 
 The harmonious play of his whole nature, 
 the breadth of his interests and the sanity of 
 his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful com- 
 panion, and kept to the very end the fresh- 
 ness of his mind and the spontaneity of his 
 humour ; life never lost its savour for him, 
 nor did his style part with its diffused but 
 thoroughly individual humour. This latest 
 collection of his papers, dealing with a wide 
 range of subjects from the " Education of 
 the Negro" to " Literature and the Stage," 
 with characteristic comments on " Truth- 
 
 [ xiv ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 fulness " and " The Pursuit of Happiness," 
 shows him at the end of his long and tire- 
 less career as a writer still deeply interested 
 in contemporary events, responsive to the 
 appeal of the questions of the hour, and 
 sensitive to all things which affected the 
 dignity and authority of literature. In his 
 interests, his bearing, his relations to the 
 public life of the country, no less than in 
 his work, he held fast to the best traditions 
 of literature, and he has taken his place 
 among the representative American men of 
 Letters. 
 
 HAMILTON W. MABIE. 
 
 [xv] 
 
Fashions in Literature 
 
 IF you examine a collection of prints of 
 costumes of different generations, you 
 are commonly amused by the ludicrous 
 appearance of most of them, especially of 
 those that are not familiar to you in your 
 own decade. They are not only inappro- 
 priate and inconvenient to your eye, but they 
 offend your taste. You cannot believe that 
 they were ever thought beautiful and be- 
 coming. If your memory does not fail you, 
 however, and you retain a little honesty of 
 mind, you can recall the fact that a costume 
 which seems to you ridiculous to-day had 
 your warm approval ten years ago. You 
 wonder, indeed, how you could ever have 
 tolerated a costume which has not one grace- 
 ful line, and has no more relation to the 
 human figure than Mambrino's helmet had 
 
FASHIONS IN LI'TERATURE 
 
 to a crown of glory. You cannot imagine 
 how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt 
 that gave your sweetheart the appearance of 
 the great bell of Moscow^ or that you your- 
 self could have been complacent in a coat 
 the tails of which reached your heels, and 
 the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, 
 were between your shoulder-blades — you 
 who are now devoted to a female figure that 
 resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted 
 by an isosceles triangle. 
 
 These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or 
 destroy correct proportions or hide deform- 
 ities, are nowhere more evident than in the 
 illustrations of works of fiction. The artist 
 who collaborates with the contemporary 
 novelist has a hard fate. If he is faithful to 
 the fashions of the day, he earns the repute 
 of artistic depravity in the eyes of the next 
 generation. The novel may become a classic, 
 because it represents human nature, or even 
 the whimsicalities of a period ; but the illus- 
 trations of the artist only provoke a smile, 
 because he has represented merely the un- 
 essential and the fleeting. The interest in 
 
 [2] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 his work is archaeological, not artistic. The 
 genius of the great portrait-painter may to 
 some extent overcome the disadvantages of 
 contemporary costume, but if the costume of 
 his period is hideous and lacks the essential 
 lines of beautv, his work is liable to need the 
 apology of quaintness. The Greek artist and 
 the mediaeval painter, when the costumes 
 were really picturesque and made us forget 
 the lack of simplicity in a noble sumptuous- 
 ness, had never this posthumous difficulty to 
 contend with. 
 
 In the examination of costumes of different 
 races and different ages, we are also struck 
 by the fact that with primitive or isolated 
 peoples costumes vary little from age to age, 
 and fashion and the fashions are unrecog- 
 nised, and a habit of dress which is dictated 
 by climate, or has been proved to be com- 
 fortable, is adhered to from one generation 
 to another; while nations that we call highly 
 civilised, meaning commonly not only Occi- 
 dental peoples, but peoples called progressive, 
 are subject to the most frequent and violent 
 changes of fashions, not in generations only, 
 
 [3] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 but in decades and years of a generation, as 
 if the mass had no mind or taste of its own, 
 but submitted to the irresponsible ukase of 
 tailors and modistes, who are in alliance with 
 enterprising manufacturers of novelties. In 
 this higher civilisation a costume which is 
 artistic and becoming has no more chance of 
 permanence than one which is ugly and in- 
 convenient. It might be inferred that this 
 higher civilisation produces no better taste 
 and discrimination, no more independent 
 judgment, in dress than it does in literature. 
 The vagaries in dress of the Western nations 
 for a thousand years past, to go back no 
 further, are certainly highly amusing, and 
 would be humiliating to people who regarded 
 taste and art as essentials of civilisation. But 
 when we speak of civilisation, we cannot but 
 notice that some of the great civilisations, 
 the longest permanent and most notable for 
 highest achievement in learning, science, 
 art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the 
 Egyptian, the Saracenic, the Chinese, were 
 subject to no such vagaries in costume, but 
 adhered to that which taste, climate, experi- 
 
 [4] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 ence had determined to be the most useful 
 and appropriate. And it is a singular com- 
 ment upon our modern conceit that we make 
 our own vagaries and chano'eableness, and 
 not any fixed principles of art or of utility, 
 the criterion of judgment on other races and 
 other times. 
 
 The more important result of the study 
 of past fashions, in engravings and paint- 
 ings, remains to be spoken of. It is that in 
 all the illustrations, from the simplicity of 
 Athens, through the artificiality of Louis 
 XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, 
 down to the undescribed modistic inventions 
 of the first McKinley, there is discoverable 
 a radical and primitive law of beauty. We 
 acknowledge it among the Greeks, we en- 
 counter it in one age and another. I mean 
 a style of dress that is artistic as well as 
 picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, 
 that accords with the grace of the perfect 
 human figure, and that gives as perfect satis- 
 faction to the cultivated taste as a drawing 
 by Raphael. While all the other illustra- 
 tions of the human ingenuity in making the 
 
 [5] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 human race appear fantastic or ridiculous 
 amuse us or offend our taste, — except the 
 tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now, 
 — these few exceptions, classic or modern, 
 give us permanent delight, and are recog- 
 nised as following the eternal law of beauty 
 and utility. And we know, notwithstanding 
 the temporary triumph of bad taste and the 
 public lack of any taste, that there is a stan- 
 dard, artistic and imperishable 
 
 The student of manners might find an 
 interesting field in noting how, in our Occi- 
 dental civilisations, fluctuations of opinions, 
 of morals, and of literary style have been 
 accompanied by more or less significant ex- 
 hibitions of costumes. He will note in the 
 Precieux of France and the Euphuist of Eng- 
 land a corresponding effeminacy in dress ; 
 in the frank paganism of the French Revolu- 
 tion the affectation of Greek and Roman 
 apparel, passing into the Directoire style in 
 the Citizen and the Citizeness ; in the Calvin- 
 istic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of 
 New England the grim severity of their 
 theology and morals. These examples are 
 
 [6] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 interestino: as showins: an inclination to ex- 
 press an inner condition l^y the outward ap- 
 parel, as the Quakers indicate an inward 
 peace by an external drabness, and the 
 American Indian a bellicose disposition by 
 red and yellow paint ; just as we express 
 by red stripes our desire to kill men with 
 artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them 
 with cavalry. It is not possible to say 
 whether these external displays are relics 
 of barbarism or are enduring necessities of 
 human nature. 
 
 The fickleness of men in costume in a 
 manner burlesques their shifty and uncertain 
 taste in literature. A book or a certain 
 fashion in letters wdll have a run like a gar- 
 ment, and, like that, will pass away before it 
 waxes old. It seems incredible, as we look 
 back over the literary history of the past 
 three centuries only, what prevailing styles 
 and moods of expression, affectations, and 
 prettinesses, each in turn, have pleased rea- 
 sonably cultivated people. What tedious 
 and vapid things they read and liked to 
 read ! Think of the French, who had once 
 
 [7] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 had a Villon, intoxicating themselves with 
 somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, 
 then, the French could match the paste eu- 
 phuisms of Lyly with the novels of Scudery. 
 Every modern literature has been subject to 
 these epidemics and diseases. It is needless 
 to dwell upon them in detail. Since the 
 great diffusion of printing, these literary 
 crazes have been more frequent and of 
 shorter duration. We need go back no 
 further than a generation to find abundant 
 examples of eccentricities of style and ex- 
 pression, of crazes over some author or some 
 book, as unaccountable on principles of art 
 as many of the fashions in social life. The 
 more violent the attack, the sooner it is over. 
 Readers of middle age can recall the furor 
 over Tupper, the extravagant expectations 
 as to the brilliant essayist Gilfillan, the soon- 
 extinguished hopes of the poet Alexander 
 Smith. For the moment the world waited 
 in the belief of the rising of new stars, and 
 as suddenly realised that it had been de- 
 ceived. Sometimes we like ruggedness, and 
 
 again we like things made easy. Within 
 
 [8] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 a few years a distinguished Scotch clergy- 
 man made a fortune by diluting a paragraph 
 written by Saint Paul. It is in our memory 
 how at one time all the boys tried to write 
 like IMacaulay, and then like Carlylc, and 
 then like Ruskin, and we have lived to see 
 the day when all the girls would like to write 
 like Heine. 
 
 In less than twenty years we have seen 
 wonderful changes in public taste and in the 
 efforts of writers to meet it or to create it. 
 We saw the everlastingly revived conflict 
 between realism and romanticism. We saw 
 the realist run into the naturalist, the natu- 
 ralist into the animalist, the psychologist 
 into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction 
 to romance, in the form of what is called 
 the historic novel, the receipt for which can 
 be prescribed by an}^ competent pharmacist. 
 The one essential in the ingredients is that 
 the hero shall be only got out of one hole by 
 dropping him into a deeper one, until — the 
 proper serial length being attained — he is 
 miraculously dropped out into daylight, and 
 stands to receive the plaudits of a tender- 
 
 [9] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 hearted world, that is fond of nothing so 
 much as of fighting. 
 
 The extraordinary vogue of certain recent 
 stories is not so much to be wondered at 
 when we consider the milHons that have 
 been added to the readers of English during 
 the past twenty-five years. The wonder is 
 that a new book does not sell more largely, 
 or it would be a wonder if the ability to buy 
 kept pace with the ability to read, and if 
 discrimination had accompanied the appetite 
 for reading. The critics term these suc- 
 cesses of some recent fictions "crazes," but 
 they are really sustained by some desirable 
 qualities — they are cleverly written, and they 
 are for the moment undoubtedly entertain- 
 ing. Some of them as undoubtedly appeal 
 to innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity. 
 I will call no names, because that would be 
 to indict the public taste. This recent 
 phenomenon of sales of stories by the hun- 
 dred thousand is not, however, wholly due 
 to quality. Another element has come in 
 since the publishers have awakened to the 
 fact that literature can be treated like mer- 
 
 [lo] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 chandlse. To use their own plirase, they 
 "handle" books as they would "handle" 
 patent medicines, that is, the popular patent 
 medicines that are desired because of the 
 amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they 
 are sold along with dry-goods and fancy no- 
 tions. I am not objecting to this great and 
 wide distribution any more than I am to the 
 haste of fruit-dealers to market their prod- 
 ucts before they decay. The wary critic will 
 be very careful about dogmatising over the 
 nature and distribution of literary products. 
 It is no certain sign that a book is good be- 
 cause it is popular, nor is it any more certain 
 that it is good because it has a very limited 
 sale. Yet we cannot help seeing that many 
 of the books that are the subject of crazes 
 utterly disappear in a very short time, wdiile 
 many others, approved by only a judicious 
 few, continue in the market and slowly be- 
 come standards, considered as good stock 
 by the booksellers and continually in a 
 limited demand. 
 
 The English essayists have spent a good 
 deal of time lately in discussing the question 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 whether it is possible to tell a good con- 
 temporary book from a bad one. Their 
 hesitation is justified by a study of English 
 criticism of new books in the quarterly, 
 monthly, and weekly periodicals from the 
 latter part of the eighteenth century to the 
 last quarter of the nineteenth ; or, to name 
 a definite period, from the verse of the Lake 
 poets, from Shelley and Byron, down to 
 Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet who has 
 attained world-wide assent to his position in 
 the first or second rank who was not at the 
 hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery 
 and bitter detraction. To be original in any 
 degree was to be damned. And there is 
 scarcel}'' one who was at first ranked as a 
 great light during this period who is now 
 known out of the biographical dictionary. 
 Nothing in modern literature is more amaz- 
 ing than the bulk of English criticism in the 
 last three quarters of a century, so far as it 
 concerned individual writers, both in poetry 
 and prose. The literary rancour shown rose 
 to the dignity almost of theological vitu- 
 peration. 
 
 [12] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 Is there any way to tell a good book from 
 a bad one ? Yes. As certainly as you can 
 tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good 
 esfSf from a bad one. Because there are 
 hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs 
 or the butter they eat, it does not follow 
 that a normal taste should not know the 
 difference. Because there is a highly artistic 
 nation that w^elcomes the flavour of garlic in 
 everything, and another which claims to be 
 the most civilised in the world that cannot 
 tell coffee from chicory, or because the an- 
 cient Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the 
 Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and tainted 
 fish, it does not follow that there is not in 
 the w^orld a wdiolesome taste for things 
 natural and pure. 
 
 It is clear that the critic of contemporary 
 literature is quite as likely to be wrong as 
 right. He is, for one thing, inevitably af- 
 fected by the prevailing fashion of his little 
 day. And, worse still, he is apt to make his 
 own tastes and prejudices the standard of his 
 judgment. His view is commonly provincial 
 instead of cosmopolitan. In the English 
 
 [13] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 period just referred to it is easy to see that 
 most of the critical opinion was determined 
 by political or theological animosity and 
 prejudice. The rule was for a Tory to hit 
 a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under what- 
 ever literary guise he appeared. If the new 
 writer was not orthodox in the view of his 
 political or theological critic, he was not to 
 be tolerated as poet or historian. Dr. John- 
 son had said everything he could say against 
 an author when he declared that he was 
 a vile Whig. Macaulay, a Whig, always 
 consulted his prejudices for his judgment, 
 equally when he was reviewing Croker's 
 Boswell or the impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings. He hated Croker, — a hateful 
 man, to be sure, — and when the latter pub- 
 lished his edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw 
 his opportunity, and exclaimed before he 
 had looked at the book, as you will remem- 
 ber, " Now I will dust his jacket." The 
 standard of criticism does not lie with the 
 individual in literature any more than it 
 does in different periods as to fashions and 
 manners. The world is pretty well agreed, 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 and always has been, as to the qualities that 
 make a gentleman. And yet there was a 
 time when the vilest and perhaps the most 
 contemptible man who e\'er occupied the 
 English throne, — and that is saying a great 
 deal, — George IV, was universally called 
 the " First Gentleman of Europe." The 
 reproach might be somewhat lightened by 
 the fact that George was a foreigner, but 
 for the wider fact that no person of English 
 stock has been on the throne since Saxon 
 Harold, the chosen and imposed rulers of 
 England having been French, Welsh, Scotch, 
 and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of 
 the English language, and many of them 
 also of the English middle-class morality. 
 The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist 
 of the times of George III, having described 
 a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a smuggler, 
 an appropriator of public money, who always 
 cheated his tradesmen, who was one and 
 sometimes all of them together, and a prof- 
 ligate generally, commonly adds, " But he 
 was a perfect gentleman." And yet there 
 has always been a standard that excludes 
 
 [15] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 George IV from the rank of gentleman, 
 as it excludes Tupper from the rank of 
 poet. 
 
 The standard of literary judgment, then, 
 is not in the individual, — that is, in the taste 
 and prejudice of the individual, — any more 
 than it is in the immediate contemporary 
 opinion, which is always in flux and reflux 
 from one extreme to another; but it is in 
 certain immutable principles and qualities 
 which have been slowly evolved during the 
 long historic periods of literary criticism. 
 But how shall we ascertain what these prin- 
 ciples are, so as to apply them to new cir- 
 cumstances and new creations, holding on 
 to the essentials and disregarding contem- 
 porary tastes, prejudices, and appearances .f* 
 We all admit that certain pieces of literature 
 have become classic ; by general consent 
 there is no dispute about them. How they 
 have become so we cannot exactly explain. 
 Some say by a mysterious settling of univer- 
 sal opinion, the operation of which cannot 
 be exactly defined. Others say that the 
 
 highly developed critical judgment of a few 
 
 [i6] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 persons, from time to time, lias established 
 forever what we agree to call masterpieces. 
 But this discussion is immaterial, since these 
 supreme examples of literary excellence exist 
 in all kinds of composition, — poetry, fable, 
 romance, ethical teaching, prophecy, inter- 
 pretation, history, humor, satire, devotional 
 flight into the spiritual and supernatural, 
 everything in which the human mind has 
 exercised itself, — from the days of the 
 Egyptian moralist and the Old Testament 
 annalist and poet down to our scientific age. 
 These masterpieces exist from many periods 
 and in many languages, and they all have 
 qualities in common which have insured their 
 persistence. 
 
 To discover what these qualities are that 
 have insured permanence and promise in- 
 definite continuance is to have a means of 
 judging with an approach to scientific accu- 
 racy our contemporary literature. There is 
 no thing of beauty that does not conform to 
 a law of order and beauty — poem, story, 
 costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascer- 
 tainable law of art. Nothing of man's mak- 
 
 [17] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 ing is perfect, but any creation approximates 
 perfection in the measure that it conforms to 
 inevitable law. To ascertain this law, and 
 apply it, in art or in literature, to the chang- 
 ing conditions of our progressive life, is the 
 business of the artist. It is the business of 
 the critic to mark how the performance con- 
 forms to or departs from the law evolved and 
 transmitted in the long experience of the 
 race. True criticism, then, is not a matter 
 of caprice or of individual liking or disliking, 
 nor of conformity to a prevailing and gener- 
 ally temporary popular judgment. Individual 
 judgment may be very interesting and have 
 its value, depending upon the capacity of the 
 judge. It was my good fortune once to fall 
 in with a person who had been moved, by I 
 know not what inspiration, to project himself 
 out of his safe local conditions into France, 
 Greece, Italy, Cairo, and Jerusalem. He 
 assured me that he had seen nothing any- 
 where in the wide world of nature and art to 
 compare with the beauty of Nebraska. 
 
 What are the qualities common to all the 
 
 masterpieces of literature, or, let us say, to 
 
 [i8] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 those that have endured In spite of imperfec- 
 tions and local provincialisms ? 
 
 First of all I should name simplicity, which 
 includes lucidity of expression, the clear 
 thouo^ht in fittino:, luminous words. And 
 this is true when the thought is profound 
 and the subject is as complex as life itself. 
 This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in 
 Jowett's translation of Plato, — which is as 
 modern in feeling and phrase as anything 
 done in Boston, — in the naif and direct 
 Herodotus, and, above all, in the King James 
 vernacular translation of the Bible, which is 
 the great text-book of all modern literature. 
 
 The second quality is knowledge of human 
 nature. We can put up with the improba- 
 ble in invention, because the improbable is 
 always happening in life, but we cannot 
 tolerate the so-called psychological juggling 
 with the human mind, the perversion of the 
 laws of the mind, the forcing of character to 
 fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever ex- 
 cursions the writer makes in fancy, w^e require 
 fundamental consistency with human nature. 
 And this is the reason why psychological 
 
 [19] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 studies of the abnormal, or biographies of 
 criminal lunatics are only interesting to 
 pathologists and never become classics in 
 literature. 
 
 A third quality common to all master- 
 pieces is what we call charm, a matter more 
 or less of style, and which may be defined as 
 the agreeable personality of the writer. This 
 is indispensable. It is this personality which 
 gives the final value to every work of art as 
 well as of literature. It is not enough to 
 copy nature or to copy, even accurately, the 
 incidents of life. Only by digestion and 
 transmutation through personality does any 
 work attain the dignity of art. The great 
 works of architecture, even, which are some- 
 what determined by mathematical rule, owe 
 their charm to the personal genius of their 
 creators. For this reason our imitations of 
 Greek architecture are commonly failures. 
 To speak technically, the masterpiece of 
 literature is characterised by the same knowl- 
 edge of proportion and perspective as the 
 masterpiece in art. 
 
 If there is a standard of literary excellence, 
 
 [20] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 as tliere is a law of beauty, — and it seems 
 to nic tliat to doubt this in the intellectual 
 world is to doubt the prevalence of order that 
 exists in the natural, — it is certainly possible 
 to ascertain whether a new production con- 
 forms, and how far it conforms, to the uni- 
 versally accepted canons of art. To work 
 by this rule in literary criticism is to substi- 
 tute something definite for the individual 
 tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic. It 
 is true that the vast body of that which we 
 read is ephemeral, and justifies its existence 
 by its obvious use for information, recreation, 
 and entertainment. But to permit the im- 
 pression to prevail that an unenlightened 
 popular preference for a book, however many 
 may hold it, is to be taken as a measure of 
 its excellence, is like claiming that a debased 
 Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good 
 as a gold stater of Alexander, The case is 
 infinitely worse than this ; for a slovenly 
 literature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets 
 slovenly thought and debases our entire intel- 
 lectual life. 
 
 It should be remembered, however, that 
 
 [21] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 the creative faculty in man has not ceased, 
 nor has puny man drawn all there is to be 
 drawn out of the eternal wisdom. We are 
 probably only in the beginning of our evolu- 
 tion, and something new may always be ex- 
 pected, that is, new and fresh applications of 
 universal law. The critic of literature needs 
 to be in an expectant and receptive frame of 
 mind. Many critics approach a book with 
 hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their 
 business is to look for what is bad in it, and 
 not for what is good. It seems to me that 
 the first duty of the critic is to try to under- 
 stand the author, to give him a fair chance 
 by coming to his perusal with an open mind. 
 Whatever book you read, or sermon or lec- 
 ture you hear, give yourself for the time 
 absolutely to its influence. This is just to 
 the author, fair to the public, and, above all, 
 valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critic 
 himself. It is a very bad thing for the mem- 
 ory and the judgment to get into a habit of 
 reading carelessly or listening with distracted 
 attention. I know of nothing so harmful to 
 the strength of the mind as this habit. There 
 
 [22] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 is a valuable mental training in closely follow- 
 m^ a discourse that is valueless in itself. 
 After the reader has unreservedly surren- 
 dered himself to the influence of a book, and 
 let his mind settle, as we say, and resume its 
 own judgment, he is in a position to look at 
 it objectively and to compare it with other 
 facts of life and of literature dispassionately. 
 He can then compare it as to form, substance, 
 tone, with the enduring literature that has 
 come down to us from all the ages. It is a 
 phenomenon known to all of us that we may 
 for the moment be carried away by a book 
 which upon cool reflection we find is false in 
 ethics and weak in construction. We find 
 this because we have standards outside our- 
 selves. 
 
 I am not concerned to define here what is 
 meant by literature. A great mass of it has 
 been accumulated in the progress of mankind, 
 and, fortunately for different wants and tem- 
 peraments, it is as varied as the various minds 
 that produced it. The main thing to be con- 
 sidered is that this great stream of thought 
 is the highest achievement and the most 
 
 [23] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 valuable possession of mankind. It is not 
 only that literature is the source of inspira- 
 tion to youth and the solace of age, but it is 
 what a national language is to a nation, the 
 highest expression of its being. Whatever 
 we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in 
 the application of natural laws in industries, 
 is an enlargement of our horizon, and a con- 
 tribution to the highest needs of man, his 
 intellectual life. The controversy between 
 the claims of the practical life and the intel- 
 lectual is as idle as the so-called conflict be- 
 tween science and religion. And the highest 
 and final expression of this life of man, his 
 thought, his emotion, his feeling, his aspira- 
 tion, whatever you choose to call it, is in the 
 enduring literature he creates. He certainly 
 misses half his opportunity on this planet 
 who considers only the physical or what is 
 called the practical. He is a man only half 
 developed. I can conceive no more dreary 
 existence than that of a man who is past the 
 period of business activity, and who cannot, 
 for his entertainment, his happiness, draw 
 upon the great reservoir of literature. For 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 what did I come into this world if I am 
 to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not 
 like a tree visited by all the winds of heaven 
 and the birds of the air? 
 
 Those who concern themselves with the 
 printed matter in books and periodicals are 
 often in despair over the volume of it, and 
 their actual inability to keep up with cur- 
 rent literature. They need not worry. If all 
 that appears in books, under the pressure of 
 publishers and the ambition of experimenters 
 in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader 
 would be under any more obligation to read 
 it than he is to see every individual flower 
 and blossoming shrub. Specimens of the 
 varieties would sufHce. But a vast propor- 
 tion of it is the product of immature minds, 
 and of a yearning for experience rather than 
 a knowledge of life. There is no more obli- 
 gation on the part of the person who would 
 be well informed and cultivated to read all 
 this than there is to read all the coloured in- 
 cidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes 
 repeated daily, with sameness of effect, in the 
 newspapers, some of the most widely circu- 
 
 [25] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 lated of which are a composite of the police 
 
 gazette and the comic almanac. A great deal 
 
 of the reading done is mere contagion, one 
 
 form or another of communicated grippe, 
 
 and it is consoling and even surprising to 
 
 know that if you escape the run of it for a 
 
 season, you have lost nothing appreciable. 
 
 Some people, it has been often said, make it 
 
 a rule never to read a book until it is from 
 
 one to five years old. By this simple device 
 
 they escape the necessity of reading most of 
 
 them, but this is only a part of their gain. 
 
 Considering the fact that the world is full of 
 
 books of the highest value for cultivation, 
 
 entertainment, and information, which the 
 
 utmost leisure we can spare from other 
 
 pressing avocations does not suffice to give 
 
 us knowledge of, it does seem to be Httle 
 
 less than a moral and intellectual sin to 
 
 flounder about blindly in the flood of new 
 
 publications. I am speaking, of course, of 
 
 the general mass of readers, and not of the 
 
 specialists who must follow their subjects 
 
 with ceaseless inquisition. But for most of 
 
 us who belong to the still comparatively few 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 who really read books, the main object of life 
 is not to keep up with the printing-press, any 
 more than it is the main object of sensible 
 people to follow all the extremes and whims 
 of fashion in dress. When a fashion in 
 literature has passed, we are surprised that 
 it should ever have seemed worth the trouble 
 of studying or imitating. When the special 
 craze has passed, we notice another thing, 
 and that is that the author, not being of the 
 first rank or of the second, has generally 
 contributed to the world all that he has to 
 give in one book, and our time has been 
 wasted on his other books; and also that in 
 a special kind of writing in a given period — 
 let us say, for example, the historico-roman- 
 tic — we perceive that it all has a common 
 character, is constructed on the same lines of 
 adventure and with a prevailing type of hero 
 and heroine, according to the pattern set by 
 the first one or two stories of the sort which 
 became popular, and we see its more or less 
 mechanical construction, and how easily it 
 degenerates into commercial book-making. 
 Now while some of this writing has an indi- 
 
 [27] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 vidual flavour that makes it entertaining and 
 
 profitable in this way, we may be excused 
 
 from attempting to follow it all merely 
 
 because it happens to be talked about for 
 
 the moment, and generally talked about in 
 
 a very undiscriminating manner. We need 
 
 not in any company be ashamed if we have 
 
 not read it all, especially if we are ashamed 
 
 that, considering the time at our disposal, 
 
 we have not made the acquaintance of the 
 
 great and small masterpieces of literature. 
 
 It is said that the fashion of this world 
 
 passeth away, and so does the mere fashion 
 
 in literature, the fashion that does not follow 
 
 the eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and 
 
 contribute to the intellectual and spiritual 
 
 part of man. Otherwise it is only a waiting 
 
 in a material existence, like the lovers, in the 
 
 words of the Arabian story-teller, " till there 
 
 came to them the Destroyer of Delights and 
 
 the Sunderer of Companies, he who layeth 
 
 waste the palaces and peopleth the tombs." 
 
 Without special anxiety, then, to keep 
 
 pace with all the ephemeral in literature, 
 
 lest we should miss for the moment some- 
 
 [28] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 thing that is permanent, we can rest content 
 in tlie vast accumulation of the tried and 
 genuine tliat the ages have given us. Any- 
 thing that really belongs to literature to-day 
 we shall certainly find awaiting us to-morrow. 
 The better part of the life of man is in 
 and by the imagination. This is not gener- 
 ally believed, because it is not generally be- 
 lieved that the chief end of man is the 
 accumulation of intellectual and spiritual 
 material. Hence it is that what is called 
 a practical education is set above the mere 
 enlargement and enrichment of the mind ; 
 and the possession of the material is valued, 
 and the intellectual life is undervalued. But 
 it should be remembered that the best prepa- 
 ration for a practical and useful life is in the 
 high development of the powers of the mind, 
 and that, commonly, by a culture that is not 
 considered practical. The notable fact about 
 the group of great parliamentary orators in 
 the days of George III is the exhibition of 
 their intellectual resources in the entire 
 world of letters, the classics, and ancient 
 and modern history. Yet all of them owed 
 
 [29] 
 
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 
 
 their development to a strictly classical 
 training in the schools. And most of them 
 had not only the gift of the imagination 
 necessary to great eloquence, but also were 
 so mentally disciplined by the classics that 
 they handled the practical questions upon 
 which they legislated with clearness and 
 precision. The great masters of finance were 
 the classically trained orators William Pitt 
 and Charles James Fox. 
 
 In fine, to return to our knowledge of the 
 short life of fashions that are for the moment 
 striking, why should we waste precious time 
 in chasing meteoric appearances, when we 
 can be warmed and invigorated in the sun- 
 shine of the great literatures? 
 
 [30] 
 
The American Newspaper 
 
 OUR theme for the hour is the Amer- 
 ican Newspaper. It is a subject in 
 which everybody is interested, and 
 about which it is not poHte to say that any- 
 body is not well informed ; for, although 
 there are scattered through the land many 
 persons, I am sorry to say, unable to pay for 
 a newspaper, I have never yet heard of any- 
 body unable to edit one. 
 
 The topic has many points of view, and 
 invites various study and comment. In our 
 limited time we must select one only. We 
 have heard a great deal about the power, the 
 opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the 
 press. The time has come for a more philo- 
 sophical treatment of it, for an inquiry into 
 its relations to our complex civilisation, for 
 some ethical account of it as one of the 
 developments of our day, and for some dis- 
 cussion of the effect it is producing, and 
 
 [31] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 likely to produce, on the education of the 
 people. Has the time come, or is it near at 
 hand, when we can point to a person who is 
 alert, superficial, ready and shallow, self-con- 
 fident and half-informed, and say, " There is a 
 product of the American newspaper " ? The 
 newspaper is not a wilful creation, nor an 
 isolated phenomenon, but the legitimate out- 
 come of our age, as much as our system of 
 popular education. And I trust that some 
 competent observer will make, perhaps for 
 this association, a philosophical study of it. 
 My task here is a much humbler one. I 
 have thought that it may not be unprofitable 
 to treat the newspaper from a practical and 
 even somewhat mechanical point of view. 
 
 The newspaper is a private enterprise. Its 
 object is to make money for its owner. 
 Whatever motive may be given out for start- 
 ing a newspaper, expectation of profit by it 
 is the real one, whether the newspaper is 
 religious, political, scientific, or literary. The 
 exceptional cases of newspapers devoted to 
 ideas or "causes" without regard to profit 
 are so few as not to affect the rule. Com- 
 
 [32] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 monly, the cause, the sect, the party, the 
 trade, the delusion, the idea, gets its news- 
 paper, its organ, its advocate, only when 
 some individual thinks he can see a pecu- 
 niary return in establishing it. 
 
 This motive is not lower than that which 
 leads people into any other occupation or 
 profession. To make a living, and to have 
 a career, is the original incentive in all cases. 
 Even in purely philanthropical enterprises the 
 driving-wheel that keeps them in motion for 
 any length of time is the salary paid the 
 working members. So powerful is this in- 
 centive, that sometimes the wheel will con- 
 tinue to turn round when there is no sfrist 
 to grind. It sometimes happens that the 
 friction of the philanthropic machinery is so 
 great, that but very little power is transmitted 
 to the object for which the machinery was 
 made. I knew a devoted agent of the Ameri- 
 can Colonisation Society, who, for several 
 years, collected in Connecticut just enough, 
 for the cause, to buy his clothes, and pay his 
 board at a good hotel. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say, except to 
 3 [ZZ] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 prevent a possible misapprehension, that the 
 editor who has no high ideals, no intention of 
 benefiting his fellow-men by his newspaper, 
 and uses it unscrupulously as a means of 
 money-making only, sinks to the level of 
 the physician and the lawyer who have no 
 higher conception of their callings than that 
 they offer opportunities for getting money 
 by appeals to credulity, and by assisting in 
 evasions of the law. 
 
 If the excellence of a newspaper is not 
 always measured by its profitableness, it is 
 generally true, that, if it does not pay its 
 owner, it is valueless to the public. Not all 
 newspapers which make money are good, for 
 some succeed by catering to the lowest tastes 
 of respectable people, and to the prejudice, 
 ignorance, and passion of the lowest class ; 
 but, as a rule, the successful journal pecunia- 
 rily is the best journal. The reasons for this 
 are on the surface. The impecunious news- 
 paper cannot give its readers promptly the 
 news, nor able discussion of the news, and, 
 still worse, it cannot be independent. The 
 political journal that relies for support upon 
 
 [34] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 drippings of party favour or patronage, the 
 general newspaper that finds it necessary to 
 existence to nianipuLatc stock reports, the re- 
 ligious weekly that draws precarious support 
 from puffing doubtful enterprises, the literary 
 paper that depends upon the approval of 
 publishers, are poor affairs, and, in the long 
 run or short run, come to grief. Some news- 
 papers do succeed by sensationalism, as some 
 preachers do ; by a kind of quackery, as some 
 doctors do ; by trimming and shifting to any 
 momentary popular prejudice, as some poli- 
 ticians do ; by becoming the paid advocate of 
 a personal ambition or a corporate enter- 
 prise, as some lawyers do: but the newspaper 
 only becomes a real power when it is able, 
 on the basis of pecuniary independence, to 
 free itself from all such entanglements. An 
 editor who stands with hat in hand has the 
 respect accorded to any other beggar. 
 
 The recognition of the fact that the news- 
 paper is a private and purely business enter- 
 prise will help to define the mutual relations 
 of the editor and the public. His claim upon 
 the public is exactly that of any manufacturer 
 
 [35] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 or dealer. It is that of the man who makes 
 cloth, or the grocer who opens a shop : neither 
 has a right to complain if the public does not 
 buy of him. If the buyer does not like a 
 cloth half shoddy, or coffee half chicory, he 
 will go elsewhere. If the subscriber does not 
 like one newspaper, he takes another, or none. 
 The appeal for newspaper support on the 
 ground that such a journal ought to be sus- 
 tained by an enlightened community, or on 
 any other ground than that it is a good article 
 that people want, — or would want if they 
 knew its value, — is purely childish in this 
 age of the world. If any person wants to 
 start a periodical devoted to decorated teapots, 
 with the noble view of inducing the people to 
 live up to his idea of a teapot, very good ; 
 but he has no right to complain if he fails. 
 
 On the other hand, the public has no 
 rights in the newspaper except what it pays 
 for; even the "old subscriber" has none, 
 except to drop the paper if it ceases to please 
 him. The notion that the subscriber has a 
 right to interfere in the conduct of the paper, 
 
 or the reader to direct its opinions, is based 
 
 [36] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 on a misconception of what the newspaper is. 
 The claim of tlie pubhc to have its communi- 
 cations printed in the paper is equally base- 
 less. Whether they shall be printed or not 
 rests in the discretion of the editor, having 
 reference to his own private interest, and to 
 his apprehension of tlie public good. Nor 
 is he bound to give an}-^ reason for his re- 
 fusal. It is purely in his discretion whether 
 he will admit a reply to anything that has 
 appeared in his columns. No one has a 
 right to demand it. Courtesy and policy 
 may grant it ; but the right to it does not 
 exist. If any one is injured, he may seek his 
 remedy at law ; and I should like to see 
 the law of libel such and so administered 
 that any person injured by a libel in the 
 newspaper, as well as by slander out of it, 
 could be sure of prompt redress. While the 
 subscriber acquires no right to dictate to the 
 newspaper, we can imagine an extreme case 
 when he should have his money back which 
 had been paid in advance, if the newspaper 
 totally changed its character. If he had 
 contracted with a dealer to supply him with 
 
 [37] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 hard coal during the winter, he might have a 
 remedy if the dealer delivered only charcoal 
 in the coldest weather; and so if he paid for 
 a Roman-Catholic journal which suddenly 
 became an organ of the spiritists. 
 
 The advertiser acquires no more rights in 
 the newspaper than the subscriber. He is 
 entitled to use the space for which he pays 
 by the insertion of such material as is ap- 
 proved by the editor. He gains no interest 
 in any other part of the paper, and has no 
 more claim to any space in the editorial 
 columns, than any other one of the public. 
 To give him such space would be unbusi- 
 ness-like, and the extension of a preference 
 which would be unjust to the rest of the 
 public. Nothing more quickly destroys the 
 character of a journal, begets distrust of it, 
 and so reduces its value, than the well- 
 founded suspicion that its editorial columns 
 are the property of advertisers. Even a 
 religious journal will, after a while, be in- 
 jured by this. 
 
 Yet it must be confessed that here is 
 one of the greatest difHculties of modern 
 
 [38] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 journalism. The newspaper must be cheap. 
 It is, considering the immense cost to pro- 
 duce it, the cheapest product ever offered to 
 man. Most newspapers cost more than they 
 sell for; they could not live by subscriptions; 
 for any profits, they certainly depend upon 
 advertisements. The advertisements depend 
 upon the circulation; the circulation is likely 
 to dwindle if too much space is occupied by 
 advertisements, or if it is evident that the 
 paper belongs to its favoured advertisers. 
 The counting-room desires to conciliate the 
 advertisers ; the editor looks to making a 
 paper satisfactory to his readers. Between 
 this see-saw of the necessary subscriber and 
 the necessary advertiser, a good many news- 
 papers go down. This difficulty would be 
 measurably removed by the admission of the 
 truth that the newspaper is a strictly busi- 
 ness enterprise, depending for success upon 
 a qicid pro quo between all parties con- 
 nected with it, and upon integrity in its 
 management. 
 
 Akin to the false notion that the news- 
 paper is a sort of open channel that the 
 
 [39] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 public may use as it chooses, is the concep- 
 tion of it as a charitable institution. The 
 newspaper, which is the property of a private 
 person as much as a drug-shop is, is expected 
 to perform for nothing services which would 
 be asked of no other private person. There 
 is scarcely a charitable enterprise to which 
 it is not asked to contribute of its space, 
 which is money, ten times more than other 
 persons in the community, who are ten times 
 as able as the owner of the newspaper, con- 
 tribute. The journal is considered "mean" 
 if it will not surrender its columns freely to 
 notices and announcements of this sort. If 
 a manager has a new hen-coop or a new 
 singer he wishes to introduce to the public, 
 he comes to the newspaper, expecting to have 
 his enterprise extolled for nothing, and prob- 
 ably never thinks that it would be just as 
 proper for him to go to one of the regular 
 advertisers in the paper and ask him to give 
 up his space. Anything, from a church pic- 
 nic to a brass-band concert for the benefit 
 of the widow of the triangles, asks the news- 
 paper to contribute. The party in politics, 
 
 [40] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 whose principles the editor advocates, has no 
 doubt of its rightful claim upon him, not only 
 upon the editorial columns, but upon the 
 whole newspaper. It asks without hesita- 
 tion that the newspaper should take up its 
 valuable space by printing hundreds and 
 often thousands of dollars' worth of political 
 announcements in the course of a protracted 
 campaign, when it never would think of get- 
 ting its halls, its speakers, and its brass 
 bands, free of expense. Churches, as well as 
 parties, expect this sort of charity. I have 
 known rich churches, to whose members it 
 was a convenience to have their Sunday and 
 other services announced, withdraw the an- 
 nouncements when the editor declined any 
 longer to contribute a weekly fifty-cents' 
 w^orth of space. No private persons contrib- 
 ute so much to charity, in proportion to 
 ability, as the newspaper. Perhaps it will 
 get credit for this in the next world : it cer- 
 tainly never does in this. 
 
 The chief function of the newspaper is to 
 collect and print the news. Upon the kind of 
 news that should be gathered and published, 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 we shall remark farther on. The second 
 function is to elucidate the news, and com- 
 ment on it, and show its relations. A third 
 function is to furnish reading-matter to the 
 general public. 
 
 Nothing is so difficult for the manager as 
 to know what news is : the instinct for it is 
 a sort of sixth sense. To discern out of the 
 mass of materials collected not only what is 
 most likely to interest the public, but what 
 phase and aspect of it will attract most atten- 
 tion, and the relative importance of it ; to 
 tell the day before or at midnight what the 
 world will be talking about in the morning, 
 and what it will want the fullest details of, 
 and to meet that want in advance, — requires 
 a peculiar talent. There is always some 
 topic on which the public wants instant infor- 
 mation. It is easy enough when the news is 
 developed, and everybody is discussing it, for 
 the editor to fall in ; but the success of the 
 news printed depends upon a pre-apprehen- 
 sion of all this. Some papers, which neverthe- 
 less print all the news, are always a day behind, 
 do not appreciate the popular drift till it has 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 gone to something else, and err as much by 
 clinging to a subject after it is dead as by not 
 taking it up before it was fairly born. The 
 public craves eagerly for only one thing at 
 a time, and soon wearies of that ; and it is 
 to the newspaper's profit to seize the exact 
 point of a debate, the thrilling moment of an 
 accident, the pith of an important discourse ; 
 to throw itself into it as if life depended on 
 it, and for the hour to flood the popular 
 curiosity with it as an engine deluges a 
 fire. 
 
 Scarcely less important than promptly 
 seizing and printing the news is the attrac- 
 tive arrangement of it, its effective presen- 
 tation to the eye. Two papers may have 
 exactly the same important intelligence, 
 identically the same despatches : the one 
 will be called bright, attractive, " newsy ; " 
 the other, dull and stupid. 
 
 We have said nothing yet about that, 
 which, to most people, is the most important 
 aspect of the newspaper, — the editor's respon- 
 sibility to the public for its contents. It is 
 sufficient briefly to say here, that it is exactly 
 
 [43] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 the responsibility of every other person in 
 society, — the full responsibility of his oppor- 
 tunity. He has voluntarily taken a position 
 in which he can do a great deal of good or a 
 great deal of evil, and he should be held and 
 judged by his opportunity: it is greater than 
 that of the preacher, the teacher, the congress- 
 man, the physician. He occupies the loftiest 
 pulpit ; he is in his teacher s desk seven days 
 in the week ; his voice can be heard farther 
 than that of the most lusty fog-horn politi- 
 cian ; and often, I am sorry to say, his columns 
 outshine the shelves of the druggist in dis- 
 play of proprietary medicines. Nothing else 
 ever invented has the public attention as 
 the newspaper has, or is an influence so con- 
 stant and universal. It is this large oppor- 
 tunity that has given the impression that the 
 newspaper is a public rather than a private 
 enterprise. 
 
 It was a nebulous but suggestive remark 
 that the newspaper occupies the borderland 
 between literature and common sense. Lit- 
 erature it certainly is not, and in the popular 
 apprehension it seems often too erratic and 
 
 [44] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 variable to be credited with the balance- 
 wheel of sense; but it must have something 
 of the charm of the one, and the steadiness 
 and sagacity of the other, or it will fail to 
 please. The model editor, 1 believe, has yet 
 to appear. Notwithstanding the traditional 
 reputation of certain editors in the past, they 
 could not be called great editors by our 
 standards; for the elements of modern jour- 
 nalism did not exist in their time. The old 
 newspaper was a broadside of stale news, 
 w^ith a moral essay attached. Perhaps Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, with our facilities, would 
 have been very near the ideal editor. There 
 was nothing he did not wish to know ; and 
 no one excelled him in the ability to com- 
 municate what he found out to the average 
 mind. He came as near as anybody ever 
 did to marrying common sense to literature: 
 he had it in him to make it sufificient for 
 journalistic purposes. He was what some- 
 body said Carlyle was, and w^hat the Ameri- 
 can editor ought to be, — a vernacular man. 
 The assertion has been made recently, 
 publicly, and with evidence adduced, that 
 
 [45] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 the American newspaper is the best in the 
 world. It is like the assertion that the 
 American government is the best in the 
 world; no doubt it is, for the American 
 people. 
 
 Judged by broad standards, it may safely 
 be admitted that the American newspaper is 
 susceptible of some improvement, and that 
 it has something to learn from the journals 
 of other nations. We shall be better em- 
 ployed in correcting its weaknesses than in 
 complacently contemplating its excellences. 
 
 Let us examine it in its three departments 
 already named, — its news, editorials, and 
 miscellaneous reading-matter. 
 
 In particularity and comprehensiveness of 
 
 news-collecting, it may be admitted that the 
 
 American newspapers for a time led the 
 
 world. I mean in the picking-up of local 
 
 intelligence, and the use of the telegraph to 
 
 make it general. And with this arose the 
 
 odd notion that news is made important by 
 
 the mere fact of its rapid transmission over 
 
 the wire. The English journals followed, 
 
 speedily overtook, and some of the wealthier 
 
 [ 46 ] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 ones perhaps surpassed, the American In the 
 use of the telegraph, and in the presentation 
 of some sorts of local news; nut of casualties, 
 and small city and neighbourhood events, 
 and social gossip (until very recently), but 
 certainly in the business of the law courts, 
 and the crimes and mishaps that come within 
 police and legal supervision. The leading 
 papers of the German press, though strong 
 in correspondence and in discussion of 
 affairs, are far less comprehensive in their 
 news than the American or the English. 
 The French journals, we are accustomed to 
 say, are not newspapers at all. And this is 
 true as we use the word. Until recently, 
 nothing has been of importance to the 
 Frenchman except himself ; and what hap- 
 pened outside of France, not directly affect- 
 ing his glory, his profit, or his pleasure, did 
 not interest him : hence, one could nowhere 
 so securely intrench himself against the news 
 of the world as behind the barricade of the 
 Paris journals. But let us not make a mis- 
 take in this matter. We may have more to 
 learn from the Paris journals than from any 
 
 [47] 
 
rUE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 others. If they do not give what we call 
 news — local news, events, casualties, the 
 happenings of the day, — they do give ideas, 
 opinions ; they do discuss politics, the social 
 drift; they give the intellectual ferment of 
 Paris; they supply the material that Paris 
 likes to talk over, the badinage of the boule- 
 vard, the wit of the salon, the sensation of 
 the stage, the new movement in literature 
 and in politics. This may be important, or 
 it may be trivial : it is commonly more in- 
 teresting than much of that which we call 
 news. 
 
 Our very facility and enterprise in news- 
 gathering have overwhelmed our newspapers, 
 and it may be remarked that editorial dis- 
 crimination has not kept pace with the facil- 
 ities. We are overpowered with a mass of 
 undigested intelligence, collected for the 
 most part without regard to value. The 
 force of the newspaper is expended in ex- 
 tending these facilities, with little regard 
 to discriminating selection. The burden is 
 already too heavy for the newspaper, and 
 
 wearisome to the public. 
 
 [48] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEJVSPAPER 
 
 The publication of the news is the most 
 important function of the paper. How is It 
 gathered? We must confess that it is 
 gathered very much by chance. A drag- 
 net is thrown out, and whatever comes is 
 taken. An examination into the process of 
 collectino' shows what sort of news we are 
 Hkely to get, and that nine-tenths of that 
 printed is collected without much intelli- 
 gence exercised in selection. The alliance 
 of the associated press with the telegraph 
 company is a fruitful source of news of an 
 inferior quality. Of course, it is for the in- 
 terest of the telegraph company to swell the 
 volume to be transmitted. It is impossible 
 for the associated press to have an agent in 
 every place to which the telegraph pene- 
 trates : therefore the telegraphic operators 
 often act as its purveyors. It is for their 
 interest to send something; and their judg- 
 ment of what is important is not only biassed, 
 but is formed by purely local standards. Our 
 news, therefore, is largely set in motion by 
 telegraphic operators, by agents trained to 
 regard only the accidental, the startling, the 
 
 4 [49] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 abnormal, as news ; it is picked up by sharp 
 prowlers about town, whose pay depends 
 upon finding something, who are looking 
 for something spicy and sensational, or which 
 may be dressed up and exaggerated to satisfy 
 an appetite for novelty and high flavour, and 
 who regard casualties as the chief news. 
 Our newspapers every day are loaded with 
 accidents, casualties, and crimes concerning 
 people of whom we never heard before and 
 never shall hear again, the reading of which 
 is of no earthly use to any human being. 
 
 What is news ? What is it that an intelli- 
 gent public should care to hear of and talk 
 about? Run your eye down the columns of 
 your journal. There was a drunken squabble 
 last night in a New York groggery; there is 
 a petty but carefully elaborated village scan- 
 dal about a foolish girl ; a woman acciden- 
 tally dropped her baby out of a fourth-story 
 window in Maine; in Connecticut, a wife, 
 by mistake, got into the same railway train 
 with another woman's husband ; a child fell 
 into a well in New Jersey; there is a column 
 about a peripatetic horse-race, which exhibits, 
 
 [50] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEJVSPAPER 
 
 like a circus, from city to city; a labourer in 
 a remote town In Pennsylvania had a sun- 
 stroke; there is an edifying dying speech of 
 a murderer, the love-letter of a suicide, tlie 
 set-to of a couple of congressmen ; and there 
 are columns about the gigantic war of half a 
 dozen politicians over the appointment of a 
 sugar-gauger. Granted that this pabulum 
 is desired by the reader, why not save the 
 expense of transmission by having several 
 columns of it stereotyped, to be reproduced 
 at proper intervals ? With the date changed, 
 it would always have its original value, and 
 perfectly satisfy the demand, if a demand ex- 
 ists, for this sort of news. 
 
 This is not, as you see, a description of 
 your journal : it is a description of only one 
 portion of it. It is a complex and wonderful 
 creation. Every morning it is a mirror of 
 the world, more or less distorted and imper- 
 fect, but such a mirror as it never had held 
 up to it before. But consider how much 
 space Is taken up with mere trivialities and 
 vulgarities under the name of news. And 
 this evil is likely to continue and increase 
 
 [51] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 until news-gatherers learn that more Im- 
 portant than the reports of accidents and 
 casualties is the intelligence of opinions and 
 thoughts, the moral and intellectual move- 
 ments of modern life. A horrible assassina- 
 tion In India is Instantly telegraphed ; but 
 the progress of such a vast movement as 
 that of the Wahabee revival in Islam, which 
 may change the destiny of great provinces, 
 never gets itself put upon the wires. We 
 hear promptly of a land-slide in Switzerland, 
 but only very slowly of a political agitation 
 that is chanQ-ino^ the constitution of the 
 republic. It should be said, however, that 
 the daily newspaper is not alone responsible 
 for this : It is what the age and the commu- 
 nity where it is published make It. So far as 
 I have observed, the majority of the readers 
 in America peruses eagerly three columns 
 about a mill between an English and a nat- 
 uralised American prize-fighter, but will 
 .only glance at a column report of a debate in 
 'the English parliament which involves a rad- 
 ical change in the whole policy of England ; 
 and devours a page about the Chantilly races, 
 
 [52] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 while it ignores a paragraph concerning the 
 suppression of the Jesuit schools. 
 
 Our newspapers arc overwhelmed with 
 material that is of no importance. The 
 obvious remedy for this would be more 
 intelligent direction in the collection of news, 
 and more careful sifting and supervision of it 
 when gathered. It becomes every day more 
 apparent to every manager that such discrim- 
 ination is more necessary. There is no 
 limit to the various intelligence and gossip 
 that our complex life offers: no paper is big 
 enough to contain it ; no reader has time 
 enough to read it. And the journal must 
 cease to be a sort of waste-basket at the end 
 of a telegraph wire, into which any reporter, 
 telegraph operator, or gossip-monger can 
 dump whatever he pleases. We must get 
 rid of the superstition that value is given to 
 an unimportant " item " by sending it a 
 thousand miles over a wire. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking feature of the 
 American newspaper, especially of the coun- 
 try weekly, is its enormous development of 
 local and neighbourhood news. It is of 
 
 [53] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 recent date. Horace Greeley used to advise 
 the country editors to give small space to 
 the general news of the vi^orld, but to cul- 
 tivate assiduously the home field, to glean 
 every possible detail of private life in the 
 circuit of the county, and print it. The 
 advice was shrewd for a metropolitan editor, 
 and it was not without its profit to the coun- 
 try editor. It was founded on a deep knowl- 
 edge of human nature; namely, upon the 
 fact that people read most eagerly that 
 which they already know, if it is about them- 
 selves or their neighbours, if it is a report 
 of something they have been concerned in, 
 a lecture they have heard, a fair, or festival, 
 or wedding, or fiineral, or barn-raising they 
 have attended. The result is column after 
 column of short paragraphs of gossip and 
 trivialities, chips, chips, chips. Mr. Sales is 
 contemplating erecting a new counter in his 
 store ; his rival opposite has a new sign ; 
 Miss Bumps of Gath is visiting her cousin. 
 Miss Smith of Bozrah ; the sheriff has 
 painted his fence ; Farmer Brown has lost 
 his cow ; the eminent member from Neopo- 
 
 [54] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 lis has })ut an ell on one end of his mansion, 
 and a mortoao-e on the other. 
 
 On the face of it nothing is so vapid and 
 profitless as column after column of this 
 reading. These " items " have very little 
 interest, except to those who already know 
 the facts ; but those concerned like to see 
 them in print, and take the newspaper on 
 that account. This sort of inanity takes the 
 place of reading-matter that might be of 
 benefit, and its effect must be to belittle and 
 contract the mind. But this is not the most 
 serious objection to the publication of these 
 worthless details. It cultivates self-con- 
 sciousness in the community, and love of 
 notoriety ; it develops vanity and self-impor- 
 tance, and elevates the trivial in life above 
 the essential. 
 
 And this brings me to speak of the mania 
 in this age, and especially in America, for 
 notoriety in social life as well as in politics. 
 The newspapers are the vehicle of it, some- 
 times the occasion, but not the cause. The 
 newspaper may have fostered — it has not 
 created — this hunger for publicity. Almost 
 
 [55] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 everybody talks about the violation of 
 decency and the sanctity of private life by 
 the newspaper in the publication of person- 
 alities and the gossip of society ; and the 
 very people who make these strictures are 
 often those who regard the paper as without 
 enterprise and dull, if it does not report in 
 detail their weddings, their balls and parties, 
 the distinguished persons present, the dress 
 of the ladies, the sumptuousness of the 
 entertainment, if it does not celebrate their 
 church services and festivities, their social 
 meetings, their new house, their dis- 
 tinguished arrivals at this or that watering- 
 place. I believe every newspaper manager 
 will bear me out in saying that there is a 
 constant pressure on him to print much 
 more of such private matter than his judg- 
 ment and taste permit or approve, and that 
 the gossip which is brought to his notice, 
 with the hope that he will violate the sensi- 
 tiveness of social life by printing it, is far 
 away larger in amount than all that he 
 publishes. 
 
 To return for a moment to the subject of 
 
 [56] 
 
rHE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 general news. The characteristic of our 
 
 modern civilisation is sensitiveness, or, as 
 the doctors say, nervousness. Perhaps the 
 philanthropist would term it sympathy. No 
 doubt an exciting cause of it is the adapta- 
 tion of electricity to the transmission of facts 
 and ideas. The telegraph, we say, has put 
 us in sympathy with all the world. And we 
 reckon this enlargement of nerve contact 
 somehow a gain. Our bared nerves are 
 played upon by a thousand wires. Nature, 
 no doubt, has a method of hardening or 
 deadening them to these shocks; but, never- 
 theless, every person who reads is a focus for 
 the excitements, the ills, the troubles, of all 
 the world. In addition to his local pleas- 
 ures and annoyances, he is in a manner 
 compelled to be a sharer in the universal 
 uneasiness. It might be worth while to 
 inquire what effect this exciting accumula- 
 tion of the news of the world upon an indi- 
 vidual or a community has upon happiness 
 and upon character. Is the New-England 
 man any better able to bear or deal with his 
 extraordinary climate by the daily knowledge 
 
 [57] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 of the weather all over the globe ? Is a man 
 happier, or improved in character, by the 
 woful tale of a world's distress and appre- 
 hension that greets him every morning at 
 breakfast ? Knowledge, we know, increases 
 sorrow ; but I suppose the offset to that is, 
 that strength only comes through suffering. 
 But this is a digression. 
 
 Not second in importance to any depart- 
 ment of the journal is the reporting ; that is, 
 the special reporting as distinguished from 
 the more general news-gathering. I mean 
 the reports of proceedings in Congress, in 
 conventions, assemblies, and conferences, 
 public conversations, lectures, sermons, in- 
 vestigations, law trials, and occurrences of 
 all sorts that rise into general importance. 
 These reports are the basis of our knowl- 
 edge and opinions. If they are false or 
 exaggerated, we are ignorant of what is 
 taking place, and misled. It is of infinitely 
 more importance that they should be abso- 
 lutely trustworthy than that the editorial 
 comments should be sound and wise. If 
 the reports on affairs can be depended on, 
 
 Lss] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 the public can form its own opinion, and 
 act intelligently. And, if the public has a 
 right to demand anything of a newspaper, 
 it is that its reports of what occurs shall be 
 faithfully accurate, unprejudiced, and colour- 
 less. They ought not to be editorials, or 
 the vehicles of personal opinion and feeling. 
 The interpretation of the facts they give 
 should be left to the editor and the public. 
 There should be a sharp line drawn between 
 the report and the editorial. 
 
 I am inclined to think that the reporting 
 department is the weakest in the American 
 newspaper, and that there is just ground 
 for the admitted public distrust of it. Too 
 often, if a person would know what has 
 taken place in a given case, he must read 
 the reports in half a dozen journals, then 
 strike a general average of probabilities, 
 allowing for the personal equation, and then 
 — suspend his judgment. Of course, there 
 is much excellent reporting, and there are 
 many able men engaged in it w^ho reflect 
 the highest honour upon their occupation. 
 And the press of no other country shows 
 
 [59] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 more occasional brilliant feats in reporting 
 than ours : these are on occasions when the 
 newspapers make special efforts. Take the 
 last two national party conventions. The 
 fulness, the accuracy, the vividness, with 
 which their proceedings were reported in the 
 leading journals, were marvellous triumphs 
 of knowledge, skill, and expense. The con- 
 ventions were so photographed by hundreds 
 of pens, that the public outside saw them 
 almost as distinctly as the crowd in attend- 
 ance. This result was attained because the 
 editors determined that it should be, sent 
 able men to report, and demanded the best 
 work. But take an opposite and a daily illus- 
 tration of reporting, that of the debates and 
 proceedings in Congress. I do not refer to 
 the specials of various journals which are 
 good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may 
 be, and commonly coloured by partisan con- 
 siderations, but the regular synopsis sent 
 to the country at large. Now, for some 
 years it has been inadequate, frequently un- 
 intelligible, often grossly misleading, failing 
 
 wholly to give the real spirit and meaning 
 
 [60] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 of tlie most important discussions; and it 
 is as dry as chips Ijcsides. To be both 
 stupid and inaccurate is the unpardonable 
 sin in journalism. Contrast these reports 
 with the lively and faithful pictures of the 
 French Assembly which are served to the 
 Paris papers. 
 
 Before speaking of the reasons for the 
 public distrust in reports, it is proper to 
 put in one qualification. The public itself, 
 and not the newspapers, is the great factory 
 of baseless rumours and untruths. Although 
 the newspaper unavoidably gives currency 
 to some of these, it is the great corrector 
 of popular rumours. Concerning any event, 
 a hundred different versions and conflicting 
 accounts are instantly set afloat. These 
 would run on, and become settled but un- 
 founded beliefs, as private whispered scandals 
 do run, if the newspaper did not intervene. 
 It is the business of the newspaper, on every 
 occurrence of moment, to chase down the 
 rumours, and to find out the facts and print 
 them, and set the public mind at rest. The 
 
 newspaper publishes them under a sense of 
 
 [6i] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 responsibility for its statements. It is not 
 by any means always correct; but I know 
 that it is the aim of most newspapers to 
 discharge this important public function 
 faithfully. When this country had few 
 newspapers it was ten times more the prey 
 of false reports and delusions than it is 
 now\ 
 
 Reporting requires as high ability as 
 editorial writing ; perhaps of a different 
 kind, though in the history of American 
 journalism the best reporters have often 
 become the best editors. Talent of this 
 kind must be adequately paid ; and it hap- 
 pens that in America the reporting field 
 is so vast that few journals can afford to 
 make the reporting department correspond 
 in ability to the editorial, and I doubt if 
 the importance of doing so is yet fully 
 realised. An intelligent and representative 
 synopsis of a lecture or other public per- 
 formance is rare. The ability to grasp a 
 speaker's meaning, or to follow a long dis- 
 course, and reproduce either in spirit, and 
 
 fairly, in a short space, is not common. 
 
 [62] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEIVSPAPER 
 
 When the pubHc which lias been present 
 reads the inaccurate report, it loses con- 
 fidence in the newspaper. 
 
 Its confidence is again undermined when 
 it learns that an " interview " which it has 
 read with interest was manufactured; that 
 tlie report of the movements and sayings of 
 a distinguished stranger was a pure piece of 
 ingenious invention ; that a thrilling adven- 
 ture alongshore, or in a balloon, or in a horse- 
 car, was what is called a sensational article, 
 concocted by some brilliant genius, and spun 
 out by the yard according to his necessities. 
 These reports are entertaining, and often 
 more readable than anything else in the 
 newspaper; and, if they were put into a 
 department with an appropriate heading, 
 the public would be less suspicious that all 
 the news in the journal was coloured and 
 heightened by a lively imagination. 
 
 Intelligent and honest reporting of what- 
 ever interests the public is the sound basis 
 of all journalism. And yet so careless have 
 editors been of all this, that a reporter has 
 been sent to attend the sessions of a philo- 
 
 [63] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 logical convention who had not the least 
 linguistic knowledge, having always been 
 employed on marine disasters. Another 
 reporter, who was assigned to inform the 
 public of the results of a difBcult archaeologi- 
 cal investigation, frankly confessed his inabil- 
 ity to understand what was going on ; for his 
 ordinary business, he said, was cattle. A 
 story is told of a metropolitan journal, which 
 illustrates another difficulty the public has in 
 keeping up its confidence in newspaper infal- 
 libility. It may not be true for history, but 
 answers for an illustration. The annual 
 November meteors were expected on a cer- 
 tain night. The journal prepared an elabo- 
 rate article, several columns in length, on 
 meteoric displays in general, and on the dis- 
 play of that night in particular, giving in 
 detail the appearance of the heavens from 
 the metropolitan roofs in various parts of the 
 city, the shooting of the meteors amid the 
 blazing constellations, the size and times of 
 flight of the fiery bodies ; in short, a most 
 vivid and scientific account of the lofty fire- 
 works. Unfortunately the night was cloudy. 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 The article was in type and ready ; but the 
 clouds would not break. The last moment 
 for going to press arrived : there was a prob- 
 ability that the clouds would lift before day- 
 lio-ht and the manao-er took the risk. The 
 article that appeared was very interesting; 
 but its scientific value was impaired by the 
 fact that the heavens were obscured the 
 whole night, and the meteors, if any arrived, 
 were invisible. The reasonable excuse of the 
 editor would be that he could not control 
 the elements. 
 
 If the reporting department needs strength- 
 ening and reduction to order in the Ameri- 
 can journal, we may also query whether 
 the department of correspondence sustains 
 the boast that the American newspaper is the 
 best in the world. We have a good deal of 
 excellent correspondence, both foreign and 
 domestic ; and our " specials " have won dis- 
 tinction, at least for liveliness and enterprise. 
 I cannot dwell upon this feature; but I sug- 
 gest a comparison with the correspondence 
 of some of the German, and with that espec- 
 ially of the London journals, from the various 
 5 [65] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 capitals of Europe, and from the occasional 
 seats of war. How surpassing able much of 
 it is ! How full of information, of philosophic 
 observation, of accurate knowledge! It ap- 
 pears to be written by men of trained intellect 
 and of experience, — educated men of the 
 world, who, by reason of their position and 
 character, have access to the highest sources 
 of information. 
 
 The editorials of our journals seem to me 
 better than formerly, improved in tone, in 
 courtesy, in self-respect, — though you may 
 not have to go far or search long for the pro- 
 vincial note and the easy grace of the fron- 
 tier, — and they are better written. This 
 is because the newspaper has become more 
 profitable, and is able to pay for talent, and 
 has attracted to it educated young men. 
 There is a sort of editorial ability, of facility, 
 of force, that can only be acquired by prac- 
 tice and in the newspaper office : no school 
 can ever teach it ; but the young editor who 
 has a broad basis of general education, of 
 information in history, political economy, the 
 
 classics, and polite literature, has an immense 
 
 [66] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEIVSPAPER 
 
 advantage over the man wlu) has merely 
 practical experience. For the editorial, if it 
 is to hold its place, must be more and more 
 the product of information, culture, and reflec- 
 tion, as well as of sagacity and alertness. 
 Ignorance of foreign affairs, and of eco- 
 nomic science, the American people have in 
 times past winked at; but they will not 
 always wink at it. 
 
 It is the belief of some shre\vd observers 
 that editorials, the long editorials, are not 
 much read, except by editors themselves. A 
 cynic says, that, if you have a secret you are 
 very anxious to keep from the female portion 
 of the population, the safest place to put it is 
 in an editorial. It seems to me that edito- 
 rials are not conned as attentively as they 
 once were ; and I am sure they have not so 
 much influence as formerly. People are not 
 so easily or so visibly led ; that is to say, the 
 editorial influence is not so dogmatic and 
 direct. The editor does not expect to form 
 public opinion so much by arguments and 
 appeals as by the news he presents and his 
 manner of presenting it, by the iteration of 
 
 [67] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 an idea until it becomes familiar, by the 
 reading-matter selected, and by the quota- 
 tions of opinions as news, and not professedly 
 to influence the reader. And this influence 
 is all the more potent because it is indirect, 
 and not perceived by the reader. 
 
 There is an editorial tradition — it might 
 almost be termed a superstition — - which I 
 think will have to be abandoned. It is that 
 a certain space in the journal must be filled 
 with editorial, and that some of the editorials 
 must be long, without any reference to the 
 news or the necessity of comment on it, or 
 the capacity of the editor at the moment to 
 fill the space with original matter that is 
 readable. There is the sacred space, and it 
 must be filled. The London journals are 
 perfect types of this custom. The result is 
 often a wearisome page of words and rhetoric. 
 It may be good rhetoric ; but life is too short 
 for so much of it The necessity of filling 
 this space causes the writer, instead of stating 
 his idea in the shortest compass in which it 
 can be made perspicuous and telling, to beat 
 
 it out thin, and make it cover as much ground 
 
 [68] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the 
 economy of room, which our journals will 
 more and more be compelled to cultivate, I 
 venture to say that this tradition will be set 
 aside. I think that we may fairly claim a 
 superiority in our journals over the English 
 dailies in our habit of making brief, pointed 
 editorial paragraphs. They are the life of the 
 editorial page. A cultivation of these until 
 they are as finished and pregnant as the 
 paragraphs of " The London Spectator " and 
 " The New-York Nation," the printing of 
 long editorials only when the elucidation of 
 a subject demands length, and the use of the 
 space thus saved for more interesting read- 
 ing, is probably the line of our editorial 
 evolution. 
 
 To continue the comparison of our jour- 
 nals as a class, with the English as a class, 
 ours are more lively, also more flippant, and 
 less restrained by a sense of responsibility or 
 by the laws of libel. We furnish, now and 
 again, as good editorial writing for its pur- 
 pose ; but it commonly lacks the dignity, the 
 thoroughness, the wide sweep and knowledge, 
 
 [69] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 that characterises the best English discussion 
 of political and social topics. 
 
 The third department of the newspaper 
 is that of miscellaneous reading-matter. 
 Whether this is the survival of the period 
 when the paper contained little else except 
 "selections," and other printed matter was 
 scarce, or whether it is only the beginning of 
 a development that shall supply the public 
 nearly all its literature, I do not know. Far 
 as our newspapers have already gone in this 
 direction, I am inclined to think that in their 
 evolution they must drop this adjunct, and 
 print simply the news of the day. Some of 
 the leading journals of the world already do 
 this. 
 
 In America I am sure the papers are print- 
 ing too much miscellaneous reading. The 
 perusal of this smattering of everything, 
 these scraps of information and snatches of 
 literature, this infinite variety and medley, in 
 which no subject is adequately treated, is 
 distracting and debilitating to the mind. It 
 prevents the reading of anything in full, and 
 its satisfactory assimilation. It is said that 
 
 [ 70] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 the majority of Americans read nothing ex- 
 cept the paper. If they read that thoroughly, 
 they have time for nothing else. What is its 
 reader to do when his journal thrusts upon 
 him every day the amount contained in a 
 fair-sized duodecimo volume, and on Sundays 
 the amount of two of them ? Granted that 
 this miscellaneous hodge-podge is the cream 
 of current literature, is it profitable to the 
 reader ? Is it a means of anything but super- 
 ficial culture and fragmentary information ? 
 Besides, it stimulates an unnatural appetite, 
 a liking for the striking, the brilliant, the 
 sensational only; for our selections from 
 current literature are usually the " plums ; " 
 and plums are not a wholesome diet for any- 
 body. A person accustomed to this finds it 
 difficult to sit down patiently to the mastery 
 of a book or a subject, to the study of history, 
 the perusal of extended biography, or to 
 acquire that intellectual development and 
 strength which comes from thorough reading 
 and reflection. 
 
 The subject has another aspect. Nobody 
 chooses his own reading; and a whole com- 
 
 [71] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 munity perusing substantially the same 
 material tends to a mental uniformity. The 
 editor has the more than royal power of 
 selecting the intellectual food of a large pub- 
 lic. It is a responsibility infinitely greater 
 than that of the compiler of schoolbooks, 
 great as that is. The taste of the editor, or 
 of some assistant who uses the scissors, is in 
 a manner forced upon thousands of people, 
 who see little other printed matter than that 
 which he gives them. Suppose his taste runs 
 to murders and abnormal crimes, and to the 
 sensational in literature : what will be the 
 moral effect upon a community of reading 
 this year after year } 
 
 If this excess of daily miscellany is dele- 
 terious to the public, I doubt if it will be, 
 in the long run, profitable to the newspaper, 
 which has a field broad enough in reporting 
 and commenting upon the movement of the 
 world, without attempting to absorb the 
 whole reading field. 
 
 I should like to say a word, if time per- 
 mitted, upon the form of the journal, and 
 about advertisements. I look to see adver- 
 
 [ 73 3 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 tisements shorter, printed with less display, 
 and more numerous. In addition to the 
 use now made of the newspaper by the 
 classes called " advertisers," I expect it to 
 become the handy medium of the entire 
 public, the means of ready communication 
 in regard to all wants and exchanges. 
 
 Several years ago, the attention of the 
 publishers of American newspapers was 
 called to the convenient form of certain 
 daily journals in South Germany, which 
 were made up in small pages, the number 
 of which varied from day to day, according 
 to the pressure of news or of advertisements. 
 The suggestion as to form has been adopted 
 by many of our religious, literary, and special 
 weeklies, to the great convenience of the 
 readers, and I doubt not of the publishers 
 also. Nothing is more unwieldly than our 
 big blanket-sheets : they are awkward to 
 handle, inconvenient to read, unhandy to 
 bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify 
 matter in them. In dull seasons they are 
 too large ; in times of brisk advertising, and 
 in the sudden access of important news, 
 
 [73] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 they are too small. To enlarge them for the 
 occasion, resort is had to a troublesome fly- 
 sheet, or, if they are doubled, there is more 
 space to be filled than is needed. It seems 
 to me that the inevitable remedy is a news- 
 paper of small pages or forms, indefinite in 
 number, that can at any hour be increased 
 or diminished according to necessity, to be 
 folded, stitched, and cut by machinery. 
 
 We have thus rapidly run over a pro- 
 lific field, touching only upon some of the 
 relations of the newspaper to our civilisation, 
 and omitting many of the more important 
 and grave. The truth is that the develop- 
 ment of the modern journal has been so 
 sudden and marvellous, that its conductors 
 find themselves in possession of a machine 
 that they scarcely know how to manage or 
 direct. The change in the newspaper caused 
 by the telegraph, the cable, and by a public 
 demand for news created by wars, by dis- 
 coveries, and by a new outburst of the spirit 
 of doubt and inquiry, is enormous. The pub- 
 lic mind is confused about it, and alter- 
 nately over-estimates and under-estimates 
 
 [74] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 the press, failing to see how integral and 
 representative a part it is of modern life. 
 " The power of the press," as something 
 to be feared or admired, is a favourite theme 
 of dinner-table orators and clergymen. One 
 would think it was some compactly wielded 
 energy, like that of an organised religious 
 order, with a possible danger in it to the 
 public welfare. Discrimination is not made 
 between the power of the printed word — 
 which is limitless — and the influence that 
 a newspaper, as such, exerts. The power of 
 the press is in its facility for making public 
 opinions and events. I should say it is a 
 medium of force rather than force itself. I 
 confess that I am oftener impressed with the 
 powerlessness of the press than otherwise, 
 its slight influence in bringing about any 
 reform, or in inducing the public to do what 
 is for its own good and what it is disinclined 
 to do. Talk about the power of the press, 
 say, in a legislature, when once the members 
 are suspicious that somebody is trying to 
 influence them, and see how the press will 
 retire, with what grace it can, before an in- 
 
 [75] 
 
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 vincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the 
 combination of the press for any improper 
 purpose, or long for any proper purpose, 
 is chimerical. Whomever the newspapers 
 agree with, they do not agree with each 
 other. The public itself never takes so 
 many conflicting views of any topic or event 
 as the ingenious rival journals are certain to 
 discover. It is impossible, in their nature, 
 for them to combine. I should as soon ex- 
 pect agreement among doctors in their em- 
 pirical profession. And there is scarcely 
 ever a cause, or an opinion, or a man, that 
 does not get somewhere in the press a 
 hearer and a defender. 
 
 We will drop the subject with one remark 
 for the benefit of whom it may concern. 
 With all its faults, I believe the moral tone 
 of the American newspaper is higher, as a 
 rule, than that of the community in which 
 it is published. 
 
 [76] 
 
Certain Diversities 
 of American Life 
 
 THIS is a very interesting age. 
 Within the memory of men not 
 yet come to middle life the time 
 of the trotting horse has been reduced from 
 two minutes forty seconds to two minutes 
 eight and a quarter seconds. During the 
 past fifteen years a universal and wholesome 
 pastime of boys has been developed into a 
 great national industry, thoroughly organised 
 and almost altogether relegated to profes- 
 sional hands, no longer the exercise of the 
 million but a spectacle for the million, and a 
 game which rivals the Stock Exchange as 
 a means of winning money on the difference 
 of opinion as to the skill of contending 
 operators. 
 
 The newspapers of the country — pretty 
 accurate and sad indicators of the popular 
 taste — devote more daily columns in a 
 week's time to chronicling the news about 
 
 [77] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 base-ball than to any other topic that in- 
 terests the American mind, and the most 
 skilful player, the pitcher, often college 
 bred, whose entire prowess is devoted to not 
 doing what he seems to be doing, and who 
 has become the hero of the American girl as 
 the Olympian wrestler was of the Greek 
 maiden and as the matador is of the Spanish 
 senorita, receives a larger salary for a few 
 hours' exertion each week than any college 
 president is paid for a year's intellectual toil. 
 Such has been the progress in the interest 
 in education during this period that the 
 larger bulk of the news, and that most looked 
 for, printed about the colleges and univer- 
 sities, is that relating to the training, the 
 prospects and achievements of the boat crews 
 and the teams of base-ball and foot-ball, and 
 the victory of any crew or team is a better 
 means of attracting students to its college, 
 a better advertisement, than success in any 
 scholastic contest. A few years ago a tour- 
 nament was organized in the north between 
 several colleges for competition in oratory 
 
 and scholarship; it had a couple of contests 
 
 [78] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 and then died of inanition and want of public 
 interest. 
 
 During the period I am speaking of there 
 has been an enormous advance in technical 
 education, resulting in the establishment of 
 splendid special schools, essential to the de- 
 velopment of our national resources ; a 
 growth of the popular idea that education 
 should be practical, — that is, such an educa- 
 tion as can be immediately applied to earn- 
 ing a living and acquiring wealth speedily, 
 — and an increasing extension of the elective 
 system in colleges, — based almost solely on 
 the notion, having in view, of course, the 
 practical education, that the inclinations of 
 a young man of eighteen are a better guide 
 as to w^hat is best for his mental development 
 and equipment for life than all the experience 
 of his predecessors. 
 
 In this period, which you will note is more 
 distinguished by the desire for the accumu- 
 lation of money than for the general produc- 
 tion of wealth, the standard of a fortune has 
 shifted from a fair competence to that of 
 millions of money, so that he is no longer 
 
 [79] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 rich vv^ho has a hundred thousand dollars, but 
 he only who possesses property valued at 
 many millions, and the men most widely 
 known the country through, most talked 
 about, whose doings and sayings are most 
 chronicled in the journals, whose example 
 is most attractive and stimulating to the 
 minds of youth, are not the scholars, the 
 scientists, the men of letters, not even the 
 orators and statesmen, but those who, by 
 any means, have amassed enormous for- 
 tunes. We judge the future of a generation 
 by its ideals. 
 
 Regarding education from the point of 
 view of its equipment of a man to make 
 money, and enjoy the luxury which money 
 can command, it must be more and more 
 practical, that is, it must be adapted not even 
 to the higher aim of increasing the general 
 wealth of the world, by increasing produc- 
 tion and diminishing waste both of labour 
 and capital, but to the lower aim of getting 
 personal possession of it ; so that a striking 
 social feature of the period is that one half — 
 
 that is hardly an overestimate — one half 
 
 [803 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 of the activity in America of which we speak 
 with so much enthusiasm, is not directed to 
 the production of w^ealth, to increasing its 
 volume, but to getting the money of other 
 people away from them. In barbarous ages 
 this object was accomplished by violence ; it 
 is now attained by skill and adroitness. We 
 still punish those who gain property by vio- 
 lence ; those who get it by smartness and 
 cleverness, \ve try to imitate, and sometimes 
 we reward them with public office. 
 
 It appears, therefore, that speed, —the abil- 
 ity to move rapidly from place to place, — 
 a disproportionate reward of physical over 
 intellectual science, an intense desire to be 
 rich, w4iich is strong enough to compel 
 even education to grind in the mill of the 
 Philistines, and an inordinate elevation in 
 public consideration of rich men simply be- 
 cause they are rich, are characteristics of this 
 little point of time on which we stand. They 
 are not the only characteristics ; in a reason- 
 ably optimistic view, the age is distinguished 
 for unexampled achievements, and for oppor- 
 tunities for the well-being of humanity never 
 
 6 [8i] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 before In all history attainable. But these 
 characteristics are so prominent as to beget 
 the fear that we are losing the sense of the 
 relative value of things in this life. 
 
 Few persons come to middle life without 
 some conception of these relative values. It 
 is in the heat and struggle that we fail to 
 appreciate what in the attainment will be 
 most satisfactory to us. After it is over we 
 are apt to see that our possessions do not 
 bring the happiness we expected; or that 
 we have neglected to cultivate the powers 
 and tastes that can make life enjoyable. We 
 come to know, to use a truism, that a person's 
 highest satisfaction depends not upon his ex- 
 terior acquisitions, but upon what he himself 
 is. There is no escape from this conclusion. 
 The physical satisfactions are limited and 
 fallacious, the intellectual and moral satisfac- 
 tions are unlimited. In the last analysis, a 
 man has to live with himself, to be his own 
 companion, and in the last resort the ques- 
 tion is, what can he get out of himself. In 
 the end, his life is worth just what he has 
 become. And I need not say that the mis- 
 
 L" 82 ] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 take commonly made is as to relative values, 
 — that the tilings of sense are as important 
 as the things of the mind. You make that 
 mistake when you devote your best energies 
 to your possession of material substance, and 
 neglect the enlargement, the training, the 
 enrichment of the mind. You make the 
 same mistake in a less degree, when you 
 bend to the popular ignorance and conceit 
 so far as to direct your college education to 
 sordid ends. The certain end of yielding to 
 this so-called practical spirit was expressed 
 by a member of a northern state legislature 
 who said, " We don't want colleges, we want 
 workshops." It was expressed in another 
 way by a representative of the lower house 
 in Washino;ton who said, " The averag:e isfno- 
 ranee of the country has a right to be repre- 
 sented here." It is not for me to say whether 
 it is represented there. 
 
 Naturally, I say, we ought by the time of 
 middle life to come to a conception of what 
 sort of things are of most value. By anal- 
 ogy, in the continual growth of the Republic, 
 we ought to have a perception of what we 
 
 [S3] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 have accomplished and acquired, and some 
 clear view of our tendencies. We take justi- 
 fiable pride in the glittering figures of our 
 extension of territory, our numerical growth, 
 in the increase of wealth, and in our rise to 
 the potential position of almost the first na- 
 tion in the world. A more pertinent inquiry 
 is, what sort of people have we become ? 
 What are we intellectually and morally.? 
 For after all the man is the thing, the pro- 
 duction of the right sort of men and women 
 is all that gives a nation value. When I read 
 of the establishment of a great industrial 
 centre in which twenty thousand people are 
 employed in the increase of the amount of 
 steel in the world, before I decide whether 
 it would be a good thing for the Republic 
 to create another industrial city of the same 
 sort, I want to know what sort of people 
 the twenty thousand are, how they live, what 
 their morals are, what intellectual life they 
 have, what their enjoyment of life is, what 
 they talk about and think about, and what 
 chance they have of getting into any higher 
 life. It does not seem to me a sufficient gain 
 
 [84] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 in this situation that wc arc immensely in- 
 creasing the amount of steel in the world, 
 or that twenty more people arc enabled on 
 account of this to indulge in an unexampled, 
 unintellectual luxury. We want more steel, 
 no doubt, but have n't we wit enough to get 
 that and at the same time to increase among 
 the producers of it the number of men and 
 women w^iose horizons are extended, who 
 are companionable, intelligent beings, adding 
 somethino: to the intellectual and moral force 
 upon which the real progress of the Republic 
 depends ? 
 
 There is no place where I would choose 
 to speak more plainly of our national situa- 
 tion to-day than in the south, and at the 
 University of the South; in the south, be- 
 cause it is more plainly in a transition state, 
 and at the University of the South, because 
 it is here and in similar institutions that the 
 question of the higher or low^er plane of life 
 in the south is to be determined. 
 
 To a philosophical observer of the Repub- 
 lic, at the end of the hundred years, I should 
 say that the important facts are not its in- 
 
 [85] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 dustrial energy, its wealth, or its popula- 
 tion, but the stability of the federal power, 
 and the integrity of the individual States. 
 That is to say, that stress and trial have 
 welded us into an indestructible nation ; and 
 not of less consequence is the fact that 
 the life of the Union is in the life of the 
 States. The next most encouraging augury 
 for a great future is the marvellous diver- 
 sity among the members of this republican 
 body. If nothing would be more speedily 
 fatal to our plan of government than in- 
 creasing centralisation, nothing would be 
 more hopeless in our development than in- 
 creasing monotony, the certain end of which 
 is mediocrity. 
 
 Speaking as one whose highest pride it is 
 to be a citizen of a great and invincible Re- 
 public to those whose minds kindle with a 
 like patriotism, I can say that I am glad 
 there are East and North and South, and 
 West, Middle, Northwest and Southwest, 
 with as many diversities of climate, tempera- 
 ment, habits, idiosyncracies, genius, as these 
 
 names imply. Thank Heaven we are not all 
 
 [86] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 alike ; and so long as we have a common 
 purpose in the Union, and mutual toleration, 
 respect, and sympathy, the greater will be 
 our achievement and the nobler our total 
 development, if every section is true to the 
 evolution of its local traits. The superficial 
 foreiofn observer finds sameness in our differ- 
 ent States, tiresome family likeness in our 
 cities, hideous monotony in our villages, and 
 a certain common atmosphere of life, which 
 increasing facility of communication tends 
 to increase. This is a view from a railway 
 train. But as soon as you observe closely, 
 you find in each city a peculiar physiognomy, 
 and a peculiar spirit remarkable considering 
 the freedom of movement and intercourse, 
 and you find the organised action of each 
 State S2ii generis to a degree surprising con- 
 sidering the general similarity of our laws 
 and institutions. In each section differences 
 of speech, of habits of thought, of tem- 
 perament prevail. Massachusetts is unlike 
 Louisiana, Florida unlike Tennessee, Georgia 
 is unlike California, Pennsylvania is unlike 
 Minnesota, and so on, and the unlikeness is 
 
 [87] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERS ir lES 
 
 not alone or chiefly in physical features. By 
 the different style of living I can tell when I 
 cross the line between Connecticut and New 
 York as certainly as when I cross the line 
 between Vermont and Canada. The Vir- 
 ginian expanded in Kentucky is not the 
 same man he was at home, and the New 
 England Yankee let loose in the west takes 
 on proportions that would astonish his grand- 
 father. Everywhere there is variety in local 
 sentiment, action, and development. Sit 
 down in the seats of the State governments 
 and study the methods of treatment of es- 
 sentially the common institutions of govern- 
 ment, of charity and discipline, and you will 
 be impressed with the variety of local spirit 
 and performance in the Union. And this 
 diversity is so important, this contribution 
 of diverse elements is so necessary to the 
 complex strength and prosperity of the 
 whole, that one must view with alarm all 
 federal interference and tendency to greater 
 centralisation. 
 
 And not less to be dreaded than monot- 
 ony from the governmental point of view, is 
 
 [88] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 the obliteration of variety in social life and 
 in literary development. It is not enough 
 for a nation to be great and strong, it must 
 be interesting:, and interestincr it cannot be 
 without cultivation of local variety. Better 
 obtrusive peculiarities than universal same- 
 ness. It is out of variety as well as complexity 
 in American life, and not in homogeneity 
 and imitation, that we are to expect a civili- 
 sation noteworthy in the progress of the 
 hum.an race. 
 
 Let us come a little closer to our subject 
 in details. For a hundred years the south 
 was developed on its own lines, with aston- 
 ishingly little exterior bias. This compara- 
 tive isolation was due partly to the institu- 
 tion of slavery, partly to devotion to the 
 production of two or three great staples. 
 While its commercial connection with the 
 north was intimate and vital, its literary 
 relation with the north was slight. With 
 few exceptions northern authors were not 
 read in the south, and the literary move- 
 ment of its neighbours, such as it was, from 
 1820 to i860, scarcely affected it. With the 
 
 [89] 
 
C ER TAIN DIFERSITIES 
 
 exception of Louisiana, which was absolutely 
 ignorant of American literature and drew its 
 inspiration and assumed its critical point of 
 view almost wholly from the French, the 
 south was English, but mainly English of 
 the time of Walter Scott and George the 
 Third. While Scott was read at the north 
 for his knowledge of human nature, as he 
 always will be read, the chivalric age which 
 moves in his pages was taken more seriously 
 at the south, as if it were of continuing 
 importance in life. In any of its rich private 
 libraries you find yourself in the age of Pope 
 and Dryden, and the classics were pursued 
 in the spirit of Oxford and Cambridge in 
 the time of Johnson. It was little disturbed 
 by the intellectual and ethical agitation of 
 modern England or of modern New Eng- 
 land. During this period, while the south 
 excelled in the production of statesmen, ora- 
 tors, trained politicians, great judges, and 
 brilliant lawyers, it produced almost no 
 literature, that is, no indigenous literature, 
 except a few poems and a few humorous 
 character-sketches ; its general writing was 
 
 [90] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 ornately classic, and its fiction romantic on 
 the lines of the foreign romances. 
 
 From this isolation one thins: was de- 
 veloped, and another thing might in due 
 time be expected. The thing developed was 
 a social life, in the favoured class, which has 
 an almost unique charm, a power of being 
 agreeable, a sympathetic cordiality, an im- 
 pulsive warmth, a frankness in the expres- 
 sion of emotion, and that delightful quality 
 of manner which puts the world at ease and 
 makes life pleasant. The southerners are no 
 more sincere than the northerners, but they 
 have less reserve, and in the social traits that 
 charm all who come in contact with them, 
 they have an element of immense value in 
 the variety of American life. 
 
 The thing that might have been expected 
 in due time, and when the call came — and 
 it is curious to note that the call and cause 
 of any renaissance are always from the out- 
 side — was a literary expression fresh and 
 indigenous. This expectation, in a brief 
 period since the war, has been realised by a 
 remarkable performance and is now stimu- 
 
 [91] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 lated by a remarkable promise. The acclaim 
 with which the southern literature has been 
 received is partly due to its novelty, the new 
 life it exhibited, but more to the recognition 
 in it of a fresh flavour, a literary quality dis- 
 tinctly original and of permanent impor- 
 tance. This production, the first fruits of 
 which are so engaging in quality, cannot 
 grow and broaden into a stable, varied litera- 
 ture without scholarship and hard work, and 
 without a sympathetic local audience. But 
 the momentary concern is that it should de- 
 velop on its own lines and in its own spirit, 
 and not under the influence of London or 
 Boston or New York. I do not mean by 
 this that it should continue to attract atten- 
 tion by peculiarities of dialect — which is 
 only an incidental, temporary phenomenon, 
 that speedily becomes wearisome, whether 
 "cracker" or negro or Yankee — but by 
 being true to the essential spirit and tem- 
 perament of southern life. 
 
 During this period there was at the north, 
 and especially in the east, great intellectual 
 activity and agitation, and agitation ethical 
 
 [90 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 and moral as well as intellectual. There 
 was awakening, investigation, questioning, 
 doubt. There was a great deal of froth 
 thrown to tlie surface. In the free action of 
 individual tliought and expression grew 
 eccentricities of belief and of practice, and a 
 crop of so-called " isms," more or less tem- 
 porary, unprofitable, and pernicious. Public 
 opinion attained an astonishing degree of 
 freedom, — I never heard of any community 
 that was altogether free of its tyranny. At 
 least extraordinary latitude was permitted in 
 the development of extreme ideas, new, fan- 
 tastic, radical, or conservative. For instance, 
 slavery was attacked and slavery was de- 
 fended on the same platform, with almost 
 equal freedom. Indeed, for many years, if 
 there was any exception to the general toler- 
 ation it was in the social ostracism of those 
 who held and expressed extreme opinions in 
 regard to immediate emancipation, and were 
 stigmatised as abolitionists. There was a 
 general ferment of new ideas, not always 
 fruitful in the direction taken, but hopeful 
 in view of the fact that growth and move- 
 
 [93] 
 
C ER TAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 ment are better than stagnation and decay. 
 You can do something with a ship that has 
 headway ; it will drift upon the rocks if it 
 has not. With much foam and froth, sure 
 to attend agitation, there was immense vital 
 energy, intense life. 
 
 Out of this stir and agitation came the 
 aggressive, conquering spirit that carried 
 civilisation straight across the continent, 
 that built up cities and States, that de- 
 veloped wealth, and by invention, ingenuity, 
 and energy performed miracles in the way 
 of the subjugation of nature and the assimi- 
 lation of societies. Out of this free agitation 
 sprang a literary product, great in quantity 
 and to some degree distinguished in quality, 
 groups of historians, poets, novelists, es- 
 sayists, biographers, scientific writers. A 
 conspicuous agency of the period was the 
 lecture platform, which did something in the 
 spread and popularisation of information, 
 but much more in the stimulation of in- 
 dependent thought and the awakening of 
 the mind to use its own powers. 
 
 Along with this and out of this went on 
 
 [ 94 ] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 the movement of popular education and of 
 the high and specialised education. More 
 remarkable than the achievements of the 
 common schools has been the development 
 of the colleges, both in the departments of 
 the humanities and of science. If I were 
 writing of education generally, I might have 
 something to say of the measurable dis- 
 appointment of the results of the common 
 schools as at present conducted, both as to 
 the diffusion of information and as to the 
 discipline of the mind and the inculcation of 
 ethical principles ; which simply means that 
 they need improvement. But the higher 
 education has been transformed, and mainly 
 by the application of scientific methods, and 
 of the philosophic spirit, to the study of 
 history, economics, and the classics. When 
 we are called to defend the pursuit of meta- 
 physics or the study of the classics, either as 
 indispensable to the discipline or to the en- 
 largement of the mind, we are not called on 
 to defend the methods of a oreneration ao^o. 
 The study of Greek is no longer an exercise 
 in the study of linguistics or the inspection 
 
 [95] 
 
CERTAIN DIFERSir lES 
 
 of specimens of an obsolete literature, but 
 the acquaintance with historic thought, 
 habits, and polity, with a portion of the con- 
 tinuous history of the human mind, which 
 has a vital relation to our own life. 
 
 However much or little there may be of 
 permanent value in the vast production of 
 northern literature, judged by continental or 
 even English standards, the time has come 
 when American scholarship in science, in 
 language, in occidental or oriental letters, 
 in philosophic and historical methods, can 
 court comparison with any other. In some 
 branches of research the peers of our scholars 
 must be sought not in England but in Ger= 
 many. So that in one of the best fruits of a 
 period of intellectual agitation, scholarship, 
 the restless movement has thoroughly vindi- 
 cated itself. 
 
 I have called your attention to this move- 
 ment in order to say that it was neither 
 accidental nor isolated. It was in the his- 
 toric line, it was fed and stimulated by all 
 that had gone before, and by all contempo- 
 rary activity everywhere. New England, for 
 
 [96] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 instance, was alert and progressive because it 
 kept its doors and windows open. It was 
 hospitable in its intellectual freedom, both of 
 trial and debate, to new ideas. It was in 
 touch with the universal movement of human- 
 ity and of human thought and speculation. 
 You lose some quiet by this attitude, some 
 repose that is pleasant and even desirable 
 perhaps, you entertain many errors, you may 
 try many useless experiments, but you gain 
 life and are in the way of better things. New 
 England, whatever else we may say about 
 it, was in the world. There was no stir of 
 thought, of investigation, of research, of the 
 recasting of old ideas into new forms of life, 
 in Germany, in France, in Ital}^ in England, 
 anywhere, that did not touch it and to which 
 it did not respond with the sympathy that 
 common humanity has in the universal 
 progress. It kept this touch not only in the 
 evolution and expression of thought and emo- 
 tion which we call literature (whether original 
 or imitative), but in the application of philo- 
 sophic methods to education, in the attempted 
 regeneration of society and the amelioration 
 
 7 [97] 
 
CERTAIN DIFERSITIES 
 
 of its conditions by schemes of reform and 
 discipline, relating to the institutions of 
 benevolence and to the control of the 
 vicious and criminal. With all these efforts 
 go along always much false sentimentality 
 and pseudo-philanthropy, but little by little 
 gain is made that could not be made in a 
 state of isolation and stagnation. 
 
 In fact there is one historic stream of 
 human thought, aspiration, and progress; it 
 is practically continuous, and with all its 
 diversity of local colour and movement it is a 
 unit. If you are in it, you move; if you are 
 out of it, you are in an eddy. The eddy may 
 have a provincial current, but it is not in the 
 great stream, and when it has gone round 
 and round for a century, it is still an eddy, 
 and will not carry you anywhere in particu- 
 lar. The value of the modern method of 
 teaching and study is that it teaches the 
 solidarity of human history, the continuance 
 of human thought, in literature, government, 
 philosophy, the unity of the divine purpose, 
 and that nothing that has anywhere befallen 
 
 the human race is alien to us. 
 
 [ 98 ] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 I am not undervaluing i\\c part, tlic impor- 
 tant part, played by conservatism, the con- 
 servatism that holds on to what has been 
 gained if it is good, that insists on discipline 
 and heed to the plain teaching of experience, 
 that refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm 
 over every flighty suggestion, or to follow 
 every leader simply because he proposes 
 something new and strange — I do not mean 
 the conservatism that refuses to try anything 
 simply because it is new, and prefers to ener- 
 getic life the stagnation that inevitably leads 
 to decay. Isolation from the great historic 
 stream of thought and agitation is stagna- 
 tion. While this is true, and always has 
 been true in history, it is also true, in regard 
 to the beneficent diversity of American life, 
 which is composed of so many elements and 
 forces, as I have often thought and said, that 
 what has been called the southern conserva- 
 tism in respect to beliefs and certain social 
 problems, may have a very important part to 
 play in the development of the life of the 
 Republic. 
 
 I shall not be misunderstood here, where 
 
 ILofC. [99] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 the claims of the higher life are insisted on 
 and the necessity of pure, accurate scholar- 
 ship is recognised, in saying that this expec- 
 tation in regard to the south, depends upon 
 the cultivation and diffusion of the highest 
 scholarship in all its historic consciousness 
 and critical precision. This sort of scholar- 
 ship, of widely apprehending intellectual 
 activity, keeping step with modern ideas so 
 far as they are historically grounded, is of the 
 first importance. Everywhere indeed, in our 
 industrial age, in a society inclined to mate- 
 rialism, scholarship, pure and simple scholar- 
 ship for its own sake, no less in Ohio than in 
 Tennessee, is the thing to be insisted on. 
 If I may refer to an institution, which used 
 to be midway between the north and the 
 south, and which I may speak of without 
 suspicion of bias, an institution where the 
 studies of metaphysics, the philosophy of his- 
 tory, the classics and pure science are as 
 much insisted on as the study of applied 
 sciences, the College of New Jersey at 
 Princeton, the question in regard to a candi- 
 date for a professorship or instructorship, is 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 not whether he was born nortli or south, 
 whether he served in one army or another or 
 in neither, whether he is a Democrat or a 
 RepubHcan or a Mugwump, what rehgious 
 denomination he belongs to, but is he a 
 scholar and has he a high character? There 
 is no provincialism in scholarship. 
 
 We are not now considering the matter of 
 the agreeableness of one society or another, 
 whether life is on the whole pleasanter in 
 certain conditions at the north or at the south, 
 whether there is not a charm sometimes in 
 isolation and even in provincialism. It is a 
 fair question to ask, what effect upon individ- 
 ual lives and character is produced by an 
 industrial and commercial spirit, and by one 
 less restless and more domestic. But the 
 south is now face to face with certain prob- 
 lems which relate her, inevitably, to the mov- 
 ino- forces of the world. One of these is the 
 development of her natural resources and 
 the change and diversity of her industries. 
 On the industrial side there is pressing need 
 of institutions of technology, of schools of 
 applied science, for the diffusion of technical 
 
 [lOl] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 information and skill in regard to mining and 
 manufacturing, and also to agriculture, so 
 that worn-out lands may be reclaimed and 
 good lands be kept up to the highest point 
 of production. Neither mines, forests, quar- 
 ries, water-ways, nor textile fabrics can be 
 handled to best advantage without scientific 
 knowledge and skilled labour. The south is 
 everywhere demanding these aids to her 
 industrial development. But just in the pro- 
 portion that she gets them, and because she 
 has them, will be the need of higher educa- 
 tion. The only safety against the influence 
 of a rolling mill is a college, the only safety 
 against the practical and materialising ten- 
 dency of an industrial school is the increased 
 study of whatever contributes to the higher 
 and non-sordid life of the mind. The south 
 would make a poor exchange for her former 
 condition in any amount of industrial suc- 
 cess without a corresponding development of 
 the highest intellectual life. 
 
 But, besides the industrial problem, there 
 is the race problem. It is the most serious 
 in the conditions under which it is presented 
 
 [ I02 J 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 that ever in all history confronted a free 
 people. Whichever way you regard it, it 
 is the nearest insoluble. Under the Con- 
 stitution it is wisely left to the action of 
 the individual States. The heavy responsi- 
 bility is with them. In the nature of things 
 it is a matter of the deepest concern to the 
 whole Republic, for the prosperity of every 
 part is vital to the prosperity of the whole. 
 In working it out you are entitled, from the 
 outside, to the most impartial attempt to 
 understand its real nature, to the utmost 
 patience with the facts of human nature, to 
 the most profound and most helpful sym- 
 pathy. It is monstrous to me that the 
 situation should be made on either side a 
 political occasion for private ambition or 
 for party ends. 
 
 I would speak of this subject with the 
 utmost frankness if I knew what to say. It 
 is not much of a confession to say that I 
 do not. The more I study it the less I 
 know, and those among you who give it 
 the most anxious thought are the most per- 
 plexed, the subject has so many conflict- 
 
 [ 103 ] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 ing aspects. In the first place there is the 
 evolution of an undeveloped race. Every 
 race has a right to fair play in the world 
 and to make the most of its capacities, and 
 to the help of the more favoured in the at- 
 tempt. If the suggestion recently made of 
 a wholesale migration to Mexico were carried 
 out, the south would be relieved in many 
 ways, though the labour problem would be a 
 serious one for a long time, but the " eleva- 
 tion " would be lost sight of or relegated to 
 a foreign missionary enterprise ; and as for 
 results to the coloured people themselves, 
 there is the example of Hayti. If another 
 suggestion, that of abandoning certain States 
 to this race, were carried out, there is the 
 example of Hayti again, and, besides, an 
 anomaly introduced into the Republic foreign 
 to its traditions, spirit, aspirations, and pro- 
 cess of assimilation, alien to the entire his- 
 toric movement of the Aryan races, and 
 infinitely more dangerous to the idea of the 
 Republic than if solid Ireland were dumped 
 down in the Mississippi valley as an inde- 
 pendent State. 
 
 [ 104] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 On the other hand, there rests upon you 
 the responsibility of maintaining a civilisa- 
 tion — the civilisation of America, not of 
 Hayti or of Guatemala — which we have so 
 hardly won. It is neither to be expected 
 nor desired that you should be ruled by an 
 undeveloped race, ignorant of law, letters, 
 history, politics, political economy. There 
 is no right anywhere in numbers or un- 
 intellisfence to rule intelliorence. It is a 
 travesty of civilisation. No northern State 
 that I know of would submit to be ruled 
 by an undeveloped race. And human nature 
 is exactly in the south what it is in the north. 
 That is one impregnable fact, to be taken as 
 the basis of all our calculations ; the whites 
 of the south will not, cannot, be dominated, 
 as matters now stand, by the coloured race. 
 
 But, then, there is the suffrage, the uni- 
 versal, unqualified suffrage. And here is 
 the dilemma. Suffrao-e once 2:iven, cannot 
 be suppressed or denied, perverted by chicane 
 or bribery without incalculable damage to 
 the whole political body. Irregular methods 
 
 once indulged in for one purpose, and to- 
 
 [105] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERS ir lES 
 
 wards one class, so sap the moral sense that 
 they come to be used for all purposes. The 
 danger is ultimately as great to those who 
 suppress or pervert as it is to the suppressed 
 and corrupted. It is the demoralisation of 
 all sound political action and life. I know 
 whereof I speak. In the north, bribery in 
 elections and intimidation are fatal to public 
 morality. The legislature elected by bribery 
 is a bribable body. 
 
 I believe that the fathers w^ere right in 
 making government depend upon the con- 
 sent of the governed. I believe there has 
 been as yet discovered no other basis of 
 government so safe, so stable as popular 
 suffrage, but the fathers never contemplated 
 a suffrage without intelligence. It is a con- 
 tradiction of terms. A proletariat without 
 any political rights in a republic is no more 
 dangerous than an unintelligent mob which 
 can be used in elections by demagogues. 
 Universal suffrage is not a universal pana- 
 cea ; it may be the best device attainable, 
 but it is certain of abuse without safeguards. 
 One of the absolutely necessary safeguards 
 
 [io6] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 is an educational qualification. No one ought 
 anywhere to exercise it who cannot read and 
 write, and if I had my way, no one should 
 cast a ballot who had not a fair conception 
 of the effect of it, shown by a higher test of 
 intelligence tlian the mere fact of ability to 
 scrawl his name and to spell out a line or 
 two in the Constitution. This much the 
 State for its own protection is bound to re- 
 quire, for suffrage is an expediency, not 
 a right belonging to universal humanity 
 regardless of intellio^ence or of character. 
 
 The charge is, with regard to this uni- 
 versal suffrage, that you take the fruits of 
 increased representation produced by it, and 
 then deny it to a portion of the voters whose 
 action was expected to produce a different 
 political result. I cannot but regard it as 
 a blunder in statesmanship to give suffrage 
 without an educational qualification, and to 
 deem it possible to put ignorance over in- 
 telligence. You are not responsible for the 
 situation, but you are none the less in an 
 illogical position before the law. Now, would 
 you not gain more in a rectification of your 
 
 [ 107] 
 
CERrAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 position than you would lose in other ways, 
 by making suffrage depend upon an educa- 
 tional qualification ? I do not mean gain 
 party-wise, but in political morals and general 
 prosperity. Time would certainly be gained 
 by this, and it is possible in this shifting 
 world, in the growth of industries and the 
 flow of populations, that before the question 
 of supremacy was again upon you, foreign 
 and industrial immigration would restore 
 the race balance. 
 
 We come now to education. The coloured 
 race being here, I assume that its education, 
 with the probabilities this involves of its 
 elevation, is a duty as well as a necessity. 
 I speak both of the inherent justice there 
 is in giving every human being the chance 
 of bettering his condition and increasing his 
 happiness that lies in education — unless our 
 whole theory of modern life is wrong — and 
 also of the political and social danger there 
 is in a degraded class numerically strong. 
 Granted integral membership in a body poli- 
 tic, education is a necessity. I am aware of 
 
 the danger of half education, of that smatter- 
 
 [ io8 ] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 ing of knowledge which only breeds conceit, 
 adroitness, and a consciousness of physical 
 power, without due responsibility and moral 
 restraint. Education makes a race more 
 powerful both for evil and for good. I see 
 the danger that many apprehend. And the 
 outlook, with any amount of education, would 
 be hopeless, not only as regards the negro and 
 those in neighbourhood relations with him, 
 if education should not bring with it thrift, 
 sense of responsibility as a citizen, and virtue. 
 What the negro race under the most favour- 
 able conditions is capable of remains to be 
 shown ; history does not help us much to 
 determine thus far. It has always been a 
 long pull for any race to rise out of primitive 
 conditions ; but I am sure for its own sake, 
 and for the sake of the republic where it 
 dwells, every thoughtful person must desire 
 the most speedy intellectual and moral de- 
 velopment possible of the African race. And 
 I mean as a race. 
 
 Some distinguished English writers have 
 suggested, with approval, that the solution of 
 the race problem in this country is fusion, 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 and I have even heard discouraged south- 
 erners accept it as a possibility. The result 
 of their observation of the amalgamation of 
 races and colours in Egypt, in Syria, and 
 Mexico, must be very different from mine. 
 When races of different colour mingle there 
 is almost invariably loss of physical stamina, 
 and the lower moral qualities of each are 
 developed in the combination. No race 
 that regards its own future would desire it. 
 The absorption theory as applied to America 
 is, it seems to me, chimericaL 
 
 But to return to education. It should 
 always be fitted to the stage of develop- 
 ment. It should always mean discipline, the 
 training of the powers and capacities. The 
 early pioneers who planted civilisation on 
 the Watauga, the Holston, the Kentucky, 
 the Cumberland, had not much broad learn- 
 ing, — they would not have been worse if 
 they had had more, — but they had courage, 
 they were trained in self-reliance, virile com- 
 mon sense, and good judgment, they had 
 inherited the instinct and capacity of self- 
 government, they were religious, with all 
 
 [no] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 their coarseness they had the fundamental 
 elements of nobility, the domestic virtues, 
 and the public spirit needed in the founda- 
 tion of states. Their education in all the 
 manly arts and crafts of the backwoodsman, 
 fitted them very well for the work they had 
 to do. I should say that the education of 
 the coloured race in America should be fun- 
 damental. I have not much confidence in 
 an ornamental top-dressing of philosophy, 
 theology, and classic learning upon the foun- 
 dation of an unformed and unstable mental 
 and moral condition. Somehow, character 
 must be built up, and character depends 
 upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, 
 upon correct ethical perceptions. To have 
 control of one's powers, to have skill in labour, 
 so that work in any occupation shall be 
 intelligent, to have self-respect, which com- 
 monly comes from trained capacity, to know 
 how to live, to have a clean, orderly house, to 
 be grounded in honesty and the domestic vir- 
 tues, — these are the essentials of progress. 
 I suppose that the education to produce 
 
 these must be an elemental and practical 
 
 [III] 
 
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 
 
 one, one that fits for the duties of life and 
 not for some imaginary sphere above them. 
 
 To put it in a word, and not denying that 
 there must be schools for teaching the 
 teachers, with the understanding that the 
 teachers should be able to teach what 
 the mass most needs to know — what the 
 race needs for its own good to-day, are in- 
 dustrial and manual training schools, with 
 the varied and practical discipline and arts 
 of life which they impart. 
 
 What then } What of the modus vivendi 
 of the two races occupying the same soil .f* 
 As I said before, I do not know. Providence 
 works slowly. Time and patience only solve 
 such enigmas. The impossible is not ex- 
 pected of man, only that he shall do to-day 
 the duty nearest to him. It is easy, you 
 say, for an outsider to preach waiting, pa- 
 tience, forbearance, sympathy, helpfulness. 
 Well, these are the important lessons we 
 get out of history. We struggle, and fume, 
 and fret, and accomplish little in our brief 
 hour, but somehow the world gets on. For- 
 tunately for us, we cannot do to-day the 
 
 [112] 
 
OF AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 work of to-morrow. All the gospel in the 
 world can be boiled down into a single pre- 
 cept. Do right now. I have observed that 
 the boy who starts in the morning w^ith a 
 determination to behave himself till bed- 
 time, usually gets through the day without 
 a thrashing. 
 
 But of one thing I am sure. In the rush 
 of industries, in the race problem, it is more 
 and more incumbent upon such institutions 
 as the University of the South to maintain 
 the highest standard of pure scholarship, to 
 increase the number of men and women 
 devoted to the intellectual life. Long ago, 
 in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon, clergyman 
 and physician, wrote in his diary : " The 
 wealth of a nation depends upon its popu- 
 lousness, and its populousness depends upon 
 the liberty of conscience that is granted to 
 it, for this calls in strangers and promotes 
 trading." Great is the attraction of a benign 
 climate and of a fruitful soil, but a greater 
 attraction is an intelligent people, that 
 values the best thino;s in life, a societv 
 
CERT A IN DIVERSITIES 
 
 hospitable, companionable, instinct with in- 
 tellectual life, awake to the great ideas that 
 make life interesting. 
 
 As I travel through the south and become 
 acquainted with its magnificent resources 
 and opportunities, and know better and 
 love more the admirable qualities of its 
 people, I cannot but muse in a fond prophecy 
 upon the brilliant part it is to play in 
 the diversified life and the great future of 
 the American Republic. But, north and 
 south, we have a hard fight with materialis- 
 ing tendencies. God bless the University 
 of the South ! 
 
 [114] 
 
The Pilgrim, and the 
 American of To-Day 
 
 TPilS December evening, the imagin- 
 ation, by a law of contrast, recalls 
 another December night two hun- 
 dred and seventy years ago. The circle of 
 darkness is drawn about a little group of Pil- 
 grims who have come ashore on a sandy and 
 inhospitable coast. On one side is a vexed 
 and wintry sea, three thousand miles of toss- 
 ing waves and tempest, beyond which lie the 
 home, the hedgerows and cottages, the church 
 towers, the libraries and universities, the 
 habits and associations of an old civilisation, 
 the strongest and dearest ties that can en- 
 twine around a human heart, abandoned now 
 definitely and forever by these wanderers ; 
 on the other side a wintry forest of unknown 
 extent, without highways, the lair of wild 
 beasts, impenetrable except by trails known 
 only to the savages, whose sudden appearance 
 
 [115] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 and disappearance adds mystery and terror 
 to the impression the imagination has con- 
 jured up of the wilderness. 
 
 This darkness is symbolic. It stands for 
 a vaster obscurity. This is an encampment 
 on the edge of a continent, the proportions 
 of which are unknown, the form of which is 
 only conjectured. Behind this screen of 
 forest are there hills, great streams, with 
 broad valleys, ranges of mountains perhaps, 
 vast plains, lakes, other wildernesses of illim- 
 itable extent? The adventurers on the 
 James hoped they could follow the stream to 
 highlands that looked off upon the South 
 Sea, a new route to India and the Spice 
 Islands. This unknown continent is at- 
 tacked, it is true, in more than one place. 
 The Dutch are at the mouth of the Hudson; 
 there is a London company on the James ; 
 the Spaniards have been long in Florida, and 
 have carried religion and civilisation into the 
 deserts of New Mexico. Nevertheless, the 
 continent, vaster and more varied than was 
 guessed, is practically undiscovered, un- 
 trodden. How inadequate to the subjection 
 
 [ii6] 
 
AM ERIC AN OF TO-PAT 
 
 of any considerable portion of it seems this 
 little band of ill-equipped adventurers, who 
 cannot without peril of life stray a league 
 from the bay where the " Mayflower " lies. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the Pilgrims 
 had an adequate conception of the continent, 
 or of the maofnitude of their mission on it, 
 or of the nation to come of which they were 
 laying the foundations. They did the duty 
 that lay nearest to them ; and the duty done 
 to-day, perhaps without prescience of its 
 consequences, becomes a permanent stone in 
 the edifice of the future. They sought a 
 home in a fresh wilderness, where they might 
 be undisturbed by superior human authority ; 
 they had no doctrinarian notions of equality, 
 nor of the inequality which is the only pos- 
 sible condition of liberty ; the idea of tolera- 
 tion was not born in their age ; they did not 
 project a republic ; they established a theoc- 
 racy, a church which assumed all the func- 
 tions of a state, recognising one Supreme 
 Power, whose will in human conduct they 
 were to interpret. Already, however, in the 
 first moment, with a true instinct of self- 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 government, they drew together In the cabin 
 of the " Mayflower " in an association to carry 
 out the divine will in society. But, behold 
 how speedily their ideas expanded beyond 
 the Jewish conception, necessarily expanded 
 with opportunity and the practical self- 
 dependence of colonies cut off from the aid 
 of tradition, and brought face to face with 
 the problems of communities left to them- 
 selves. Only a few years later, on the banks 
 of the Connecticut, Thomas Hooker, the first 
 American Democrat, proclaimed that "the 
 foundation of authority is laid in the free 
 consent of the people," that " the choice of 
 public magistrates belongs unto the people, 
 by God's own allowance," that it is the right 
 of the people not only to choose but to limit 
 the power of their rulers, and he exhorted, 
 "as God has given us liberty to take it." 
 There, at that moment, in Hartford, Ameri- 
 can democracy was born ; and in the repub- 
 lican union of the three towns of the 
 Connecticut colony, Hartford, Windsor, and 
 Wethersfield, was the germ of the American 
 
 federal system, which was adopted into the 
 
 [ii8] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 federal constitution and known at the time 
 as the "Connecticut Compromise." 
 
 It were not worth while for me to come a 
 tliousand miles to say this, or to draw over 
 ao^ain for the hundredth time the character 
 of the New England Pilgrim, nor to sketch 
 his achievement on this continent. But it 
 is pertinent to recall his spirit, his attitude 
 toward life, and to inquire what he would 
 probably do in the circumstances In which 
 we find ourselves. 
 
 It is another December night, before the 
 dawn of a new year. And this night still 
 symbolises the future. You have subdued a 
 continent, and it stands in the daylight 
 radiant with a material splendour of which the 
 Pilgrims never dreamed. Yet a continent 
 as dark, as unknown, exists. It is yourselves, 
 your future, your national life. The other 
 continent was made, you had only to discover 
 it, to uncover it. This you must make 
 yourselves. 
 
 We have finished the outline sketch of a 
 magnificent nation. The territory is ample ; 
 it includes every variety of climate, in the 
 
 ["9] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 changing seasons, every variety of physical 
 conformation, every kind of production 
 suited to the wants, almost everything desired 
 in the imagination, of man. It comes nearer 
 than any empire in history to being self- 
 sufficient, physically independent of the rest 
 of the globe. That is to say, if it were shut 
 off from the rest of the world, it has in itself 
 the material for great comfort and civilisation. 
 And it has the elements of motion, of agita- 
 tion, of life, because the vast territory is fill- 
 ing up with a rapidity unexampled in history. 
 I am not saying that isolated it could attain 
 the highest civilisation, or that if it did touch 
 a high one it could long hold it in a living 
 growth, cut off from the rest of the world. I 
 do not believe it. For no state, however 
 large, is sufficient unto itself. No state is 
 really alive in the highest sense whose recep- 
 tivity is not equal to its power to contribute 
 to the world with which its destiny is bound 
 up. It is only at its best when it is a part of 
 the vital current of movement, of sympathy, 
 of hope, of enthusiasm of the world at large. 
 
 There is no doctrine so belittling, so wither- 
 
 [120] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 inor to our national life, as that which con- 
 ceives our destiny to be a Hfe of exclusion of 
 the affairs and interests of the whole globe, 
 hemmed in to the selfish development of our 
 material wealth and strength, surrounded by 
 a Chinese wall built of strata of prejudice on 
 the outside and of ignorance on the inside. 
 Fortunately it is a conception impossible to 
 be realised. 
 
 There is something captivating to the 
 imagination in being a citizen of a great 
 nation, one powerful enough to command 
 respect everywhere, and so just as not to 
 excite fear anywhere. This proud feeling of 
 citizenship is a substantial part of a man's 
 enjoyment of life ; and there is a certain com- 
 pensation for hardships, for privations, for 
 self-sacrifice, in the glory of one's own coun- 
 try. It is not a delusion that one can afford 
 to die for it. But what in the last analysis 
 is the object of a government ? What is the 
 essential thing, without which even the glory 
 of a nation passes into shame, and the vast- 
 ness of empire becomes a mockery.^ I wall 
 not say that it is the well-being of every in- 
 
 [121] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 dividual, because the term well-being — the 
 dien etre of the philosophers of the eigh- 
 teenth century — has mainly a materialistic 
 interpretation, and may be attained by a com- 
 promise of the higher life to comfort, and 
 even of patriotism to selfish enjoyment. 
 
 That is the best government in which the 
 people, and all the people, get the most out 
 of life ; for the object of being in this world 
 is not primarily to build up a government, a 
 monarchy, an aristocracy, a democracy, or a 
 republic, or to make a nation, but to live the 
 best sort of life that can be lived. 
 
 We think that our form of government is 
 the one best calculated to attain this end. It 
 is of all others yet tried in this world the one 
 least felt by the people, least felt as an inter- 
 ference in the affairs of private life, in opin- 
 ion, in conscience, in our freedom to attain 
 position, to make money, to move from place 
 to place, and to follow any career that is 
 open to our ability. In order to maintain 
 this freedom of action, this non-interference, 
 we are bound to resist centralisation of 
 power; for a central power in a republic, 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 grasped and administered by bosses, is no 
 more tolerable than central power in a des- 
 potism, grasped and administered by a hered- 
 itary aristocrat. Let us not be deceived by 
 names. Government by the consent of the 
 people is the best government, but it is not 
 government by the people when it is in the 
 hands of political bosses, who juggle with the 
 theory of majority rule. What republics 
 have most to fear is the rule of the boss, 
 w^ho is a tyrant without responsibility. He 
 makes the nominations, he dickers and trades 
 for the elections, and at the end he divides 
 the spoils. The operation is more uncertain 
 than a horse race, which is not decided by 
 the speed of the horses, but by the state of 
 the wagers and the manipulation of the 
 jockeys. We strike directly at his power for 
 mischief when we organise the entire civil 
 service of the nation and of the States on 
 capacity, integrity, experience, and not on 
 political power. 
 
 And if w^e look further, considering the 
 danger of concentration of power in irre- 
 sponsible hands, we see a new cause for alarm 
 
 [123] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 in undue federal mastery and interference. 
 This we can only resist by the constant as- 
 sertion of the rights, the power, the dignity 
 of the individual State, all that it has not sur- 
 rendered in the fundamental constitution of 
 the Republic. This means the full weight of 
 the State, as a State, as a political unit, in the 
 election of President; and the full weight of 
 the State, as a State, as a political unit, with- 
 out regard to its population, in the senate 
 of the United States. The senate, as it 
 stands, as it was meant to be in the Consti- 
 tution, is the strongest safeguard which the 
 fundamental law established against centra- 
 lisation, against the tyranny of mere majori- 
 ties, against the destruction of liberty, in 
 such a diversity of climates and conditions 
 as we have in our vast continent. It is not 
 a mere check upon hasty legislation ; like 
 some second chambers in Europe, it is the 
 representative of powers whose preservation 
 in their dignity is essential to the preserva- 
 tion of the form of our government itself. 
 We pursue the same distribution of power 
 
 and responsibility when we pass to the States. 
 
 [ 124] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 The federal government is not to interfere 
 in what the State can do and ought to do for 
 itself; the State is not to meddle with what 
 the county can best do for itself; nor the 
 county in the affairs best administered by 
 the tow^n and the municipality. And so we 
 come to the individual citizen. He cannot 
 delegate his responsibility. The government 
 even of the smallest community must be, at 
 least is, run by parties and by party ma- 
 chinery. But if he wants good government, 
 he must pay as careful attention to the 
 machinery, — call it caucus, primary, conven- 
 tion, town-meeting, — as he does to the 
 machinery of his owai business. If he 
 hands it over to bosses, who make politics 
 a trade for their own livelihood, he will find 
 himself in the condition of stockholders of 
 a bank whose directors are mere dummies, 
 when some day the cashier packs the assets 
 and goes on a foreign journey for his health. 
 When the citizen simply does his duty in the 
 place where he stands, the boss will be elim- 
 inated, in the nation, in the State, in the town, 
 and we shall have, what by courtesy we say 
 
 [125] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 we have now, a government by the people. 
 Then all the way down from the capital to 
 the city ward, w^e shall have vital popular 
 government, free action, discussion, agitation, 
 life. What an anomaly it is, that a free 
 people, reputed shrewd and intelligent, 
 should intrust their most vital interests, 
 the making of their laws, the laying of their 
 taxes, the spending of their money, even 
 their education and the management of their 
 public institutions into the keeping of politi- 
 cal bosses, whom they would not trust to man- 
 age the least of their business affairs, nor to 
 arbitrate on what is called a trial of speed at 
 an agricultural fair. 
 
 But a good government, the best govern- 
 ment is only an opportunity. However vast 
 the country may become in wealth and popu- 
 lation, it cannot rise in quality above the 
 average of the majority of its citizens; and 
 its goodness will be tested in history by its 
 value to the average man, not by its bigness, 
 not by its power, but by its adaptability to 
 the people governed, so as to develop the 
 
 best that is in them. It is incidental and 
 
 [126] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 imperative that the country should be an 
 agreeable one to live in ; but it must be more 
 than that, it must be favourable to the growth 
 of the higher life. The Puritan community 
 of Massachusetts Bay, whose spirit we may 
 happily contrast with that of the Pilgrims 
 whose anniversary we celebrate, must have 
 been as disagreeable to live in as any that 
 history records; not only were the physical 
 conditions of life hard, but its inquisitorial 
 intolerance overmatched that which it es- 
 caped in England. It was a theocratic 
 despotism, untempered by recreation or 
 amusement, and repressive not only of 
 freedom of expression but of freedom of 
 thought. But it had an unconquerable will, 
 a mighty sense of duty, a faith in God, 
 which not only established its grip upon the 
 continent but carried its influence from one 
 ocean to the other. It did not conquer by 
 its bigotry, by its intolerance, its cruel per- 
 secuting spirit, but by its higher mental and 
 spiritual stamina. These lower and baser 
 qualities of the age of the Puritans leave a 
 
 stain upon a great achievement ; it took 
 
 [ 127 ] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 Massachusetts almost two centuries to cast 
 them off and come into a wholesome freedom, 
 but the vital energy and the recognition of 
 the essential verities in human life carried all 
 the institutions of the Puritans that were life- 
 giving over the continent. 
 
 Here in the west you are near the centre 
 of a vast empire, you feel its mighty pulse, 
 the throb and heart-beat of its immense and 
 growing strength. Some of you have seen 
 this great civilisation actually grow on the 
 vacant prairies, in the unoccupied wilder- 
 ness, on the sandy shores of the inland seas. 
 You have seen the trails of the Indian and 
 the deer replaced by highways of steel, 
 and upon the spots where the first immi- 
 grants corralled their wagons, and the voy- 
 agers dragged their canoes upon the reedy 
 shore, you have seen arise great cities, centres 
 of industry, of commerce, of art, attaining in 
 a generation the proportions and the world- 
 wide fame of cities that were already famous 
 before the discovery of America. 
 
 Naturally the country is proud of this 
 
 achievement. Naturally we magnify our ma- 
 
 C 128 ] 
 
AMERICAN OF T 0-D A T 
 
 terlal prosperity. But in this age of science 
 and invention this development may be said 
 to be inevitable, and besides it is the neces- 
 sary out-let of the energy of a free people. 
 There must be growth of cities, extension of 
 railways, improvement of agriculture, de- 
 velopment of manufactures, amassing of 
 wealth, concentration of capital, beautifying 
 of homes, splendid public buildings, private 
 palaces, luxury, display. Without reservoirs 
 of wealth there would be no great univer- 
 sities, schools of science, museums, galleries 
 of art, libraries, solid institutions of charity, 
 and perhaps not the wide diffusion of cul- 
 ture which is the avowed aim of modern 
 civilisation. 
 
 But this in its kind is an old story. It is 
 an experiment that has been repeated over 
 and over. History is the record of the rise 
 of splendid civilisations, many of which have 
 flowered into the most glorious products of 
 learning and of art, and have left monuments 
 of the proudest material achievements. Ex- 
 cept in the rapidity with which steam and 
 electricity have enabled us to move to our 
 
 9 [129] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 object, and in the discoveries of science 
 which enable us to relieve suffering and 
 prolong human life, there is nothing new in 
 our experiment. We are pursuing substan- 
 tially the old ends of material success and 
 display. And the ends are not different 
 because we have more people in a nation, 
 or bigger cities with taller buildings, or 
 more miles of railway, or grow more corn and 
 cotton, or make more ploughs and threshing- 
 machines, or have a greater variety of pro- 
 ducts than any nation ever had before. I 
 fancy that a pleased visitor from another 
 planet the other day at Chicago, who was 
 shown an assembly much larger than ever 
 before met under one roof, might have been 
 interested to know that it was also the 
 wisest, the most cultivated, the most weighty 
 in character of any assembly ever gathered 
 under one roof. 
 
 Our experiment on this continent was 
 intended to be something more than the 
 creation of a nation on the old pattern, that 
 should become big and strong, and rich and 
 luxurious, divided into classes of the very 
 
 [ 130] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 wealthy and the very poor, of the en- 
 lightened and the ilHterate. It was intended 
 to be a nation in which the welfare of the 
 people is the supreme object, and whatever 
 its show amono^ nations it fails if it does 
 not become this. This welfare is an indi- 
 vidual matter, and it means many things. 
 It includes in the first place physical com- 
 fort for every person willing and deserving 
 to be physically comfortable, decent lodging, 
 good food, sufficient clothing. It means, in 
 the second place, that this shall be an agree- 
 able country to live in, by reason of its 
 impartial laws, social amenities, and a fair 
 chance to enjoy the gifts of nature and 
 Providence. And it means, again, the op- 
 portunity to develop talents, aptitudes for 
 cultivation and enjoyment, in short, freedom 
 to make the most possible out of our lives. 
 This is what Jefferson meant by the " pur- 
 suit of happiness; " it was what the consti- 
 tution meant by the " general welfare," and 
 what it tried to secure in States, safe-guarded 
 enough to secure independence in the play 
 of local ambition and home rule, and in a 
 
 [131] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 federal republic strong enough to protect the 
 whole from foreign interference. We are in 
 no vain chase of an inequality which would 
 eliminate all individual initiative, and check 
 all progress, by ignoring differences of ca- 
 pacity and strength, and rating muscles 
 equal to brains. But we are in pursuit of 
 equal laws, and a fairer chance of leading 
 happy lives than humanity in general ever 
 had vet. And this fairer chance would not, 
 for instance, permit any man to become a 
 millionaire by so manipulating railways that 
 the subscribing towns and private stock- 
 holders should lose their investments; nor 
 would it assume that any Gentile or Jew has 
 the right to grow rich by the chance of com- 
 pelling poor women to make shirts for six 
 cents apiece. The public opinion which 
 sustains these deeds is as un-American, and 
 as guilty as their doers. While abuses like 
 these exist, tolerated by the majority that 
 not only make public opinion, but make the 
 laws, this is not a government for the people, 
 any more than a government of bosses is a 
 government by the people. 
 
 [ 132 ] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 The Pilgrims of Plymouth could see no 
 way of shaping their lives in accordance with 
 the higher law except by separating them- 
 selves from the world. We have their prob- 
 lem, how to make the most of our lives, but 
 the conditions have changed. Ours is an 
 age of scientific aggression, fierce competi- 
 tion, and the widest toleration. The horizon 
 of humanity is enlarged. To live the life 
 now is to be no more isolated or separate, 
 but to throw ourselves into the crreat move- 
 ment of thought, and feeling, and achieve- 
 ment. Therefore we are altruists in charity, 
 missionaries of humanity, patriots at home. 
 Therefore we have a justifiable pride in the 
 growth, the wealth, the power of the nation, 
 the state, the city. But the stream cannot 
 rise above its source. The nation is what 
 the majority of its citizens are. It is to 
 be judged by the condition of its humblest 
 members. We shall gain nothing over other 
 experiments in government, although we 
 have money enough to buy peace from the 
 rest of the world, or arms enough to conquer 
 it, although we rear upon our material pros- 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 perity a structure of scientific achievement, 
 of art, of literature unparalleled, if the com- 
 mon people are not sharers in this great 
 prosperity, and are not fuller of hope and 
 of the enjoyment of life than common people 
 ever were before. 
 
 And we are all common people when it 
 comes to that. Whatever the greatness of 
 the nation, whatever the accumulation of 
 wealth, the worth of the world to us is 
 exactly the worth of our individual lives. 
 The magnificent opportunity in this Republic 
 is that we may make the most possible out 
 of our lives, and it will continue only as we 
 adhere to the original conception of the 
 Republic. Politics without virtue, money- 
 making without conscience, may result in 
 great splendour, but as such an experiment 
 is not new, its end can be predicted. An 
 agreeable home for a vast, and a free, and 
 a happy people is quite another thing. It 
 expects thrift, it expects prosperity, but its 
 foundations are in the moral and spiritual 
 life. 
 
 Therefore I say that we are still to make 
 
 [134] 
 
AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 
 
 the continent we have discovered and occu- 
 pied, and tliat the scope and quality of our 
 national life arc still to be determined. If 
 they arc determined not by the narrow 
 tenets of the Pilgrims, but by their high 
 sense of duty, and of the value of the human 
 soul, it will be a nation that will call the 
 world up to a higher plane of action than it 
 ever attained before, and it will bring in a 
 new era of humanity. If they are deter- 
 mined by the vulgar successes of a mere 
 material civilisation, it is an experiment not 
 worth making. It would have been better 
 to have left the Indians in possession, to see 
 if they could not have evolved out of their 
 barbarism some new line of action. 
 
 The Pilgrims were poor, and they built 
 their huts on a shore which gave such nig- 
 gardly returns for labour that the utmost 
 thrift was required to secure the necessaries 
 of life. Out of this struggle with nature 
 and savage life was no doubt evolved the 
 hardihood, the endurance, that builds states 
 and wins the favours of fortune. But pov- 
 erty is not commonly a nurse of virtue, long 
 
 ['35] 
 
THE PILGRIM, AND THE 
 
 continued, it is a degeneration. It is almost 
 as difficult for the very poor man to be 
 virtuous as for the very rich man ; and very 
 good and very rich at the same time, says 
 Socrates, a man cannot be. It is a great 
 people that can withstand great prosperity. 
 The condition of comfort without extremes 
 is that which makes a happy life. I know 
 a village of old-fashioned houses and broad 
 elm-shaded streets in New England, indeed 
 more than one, where no one is inordinately 
 rich, and no one is very poor, where paupers 
 are so scarce that it is difficult to find bene- 
 ficiaries for the small traditionary contribu- 
 tion for the church poor ; where the homes 
 are centres of intelligence, of interest in 
 books, in the news of the world, in the 
 church, in the school, in politics ; whence 
 go young men and women to the colleges, 
 teachers to the illiterate parts of the land, 
 missionaries to the city slums. Multiply 
 such villages all over the country, and we 
 have one of the chief requisites for an ideal 
 republic. 
 
 This has been the longing of humanity. 
 
AMERICAN OF T 0-D A T 
 
 Poets have sung of it; prophets have had 
 visions of it ; statesmen have striven for it ; 
 patriots have died for it. There must be 
 somewhere, sometime, a fruitage of so much 
 suffering, so much sacrifice, a land of equal 
 laws and equal opportunities, a government 
 of all the people for the benefit of all the 
 people ; where the conditions of living will 
 be so adjusted that every one can make the 
 most out of his life, neither waste it in hope- 
 less slavery nor in selfish tyranny, where 
 poverty and crime will not be hereditary 
 generation after generation, where great 
 fortunes will not be for vulgar ostentation, 
 but for the service of humanity and the 
 glory of the state, where the privileges of 
 freemen will be so valued that no one will 
 be mean enough to sell his vote nor corrupt 
 enough to attempt to buy a vote, where the 
 truth will at last be recognised, that the 
 society is not prosperous when half its 
 members are lucky, and half are miserable, 
 and that that nation can only be truly great 
 that takes its orders from the Great Teacher 
 of Humanity. 
 
 C 137 ] 
 
THE PILGRIM OF TO-DAT 
 
 And, lo ! at last here is a great continent, 
 virgin, fertile, a land of sun and shower and 
 bloom, discovered, organised into a great 
 nation, with a government flexible in a dis- 
 tributed home rule, stiff as steel in a central 
 power, already rich, already powerful. It is 
 a land of promise. The materials are all 
 here. Will you repeat the old experiment 
 of a material success and a moral and spirit- 
 ual failure ? Or will you make it what hu- 
 manity has passionately longed for ? Only 
 good individual lives can do that. 
 
 [138] 
 
Nathan Hale 
 
 IN a Memorial Day address at New 
 Haven in 1881, the Hon. Richard D. 
 Hubbard suggested the erection of a 
 statue to Nathan Hale in the State Capitol. 
 With the exception of the monument in 
 Coventry no memorial of the young hero 
 existed. The suggestion was acted on by 
 the Hon. E. S. Cleveland, who Introduced 
 a resolution In the House of Representatives 
 in the session of 1883, appropriating money 
 for the purpose. The propriety of this was 
 urged before a committee of the Legislature 
 by Governor Hubbard, in a speech of char- 
 acteristic grace and eloquence, seconded by 
 the Hon. Henry C. Robinson and the Hon. 
 Stephen W. Kellogg. The Legislature ap- 
 propriated the sum of five thousand dollars 
 for a statue in bronze, and a committee was 
 appointed to procure it. They opened a 
 public competition, and, after considerable 
 delay, during which the commission was 
 
 [ 139] 
 
N A r H A N HA L E 
 
 changed by death and by absence, — Indeed 
 four successive governors, Hubbard, Waller, 
 Harrison and Lounsbury have served on it, 
 — the work was awarded to Karl Gerhardt, 
 a young sculptor who began his career in 
 this city. It was finished in clay, and ac- 
 cepted in October, 1886, put in plaster, and 
 immediately sent to the foundery of Melzar 
 Masman in Chicopee, Massachusetts. 
 
 To-day in all its artistic perfection and 
 beauty it stands here to be revealed to the 
 public gaze. It is proper that the citizens 
 of Connecticut should know how much of 
 this result they owe to the intelligent zeal 
 of Mr. Cleveland, the mover of the resolu- 
 tion in the Legislature, who in the commis- 
 sion, and before he became a member of it, 
 has spared neither time nor effort to procure 
 a memorial worthy of the hero and of the 
 State. And I am sure that I speak the unan- 
 imous sentiment of the commission in the 
 regret that the originator of this statue could 
 not have seen the consummation of his idea, 
 and could not have crowned it with the one 
 thing lacking on this occasion, the silver 
 
 [ 140] 
 
N A r H A N HA L E 
 
 words of eloquence we always heard from 
 his lips, that compact, nervous speech, the 
 perfect union of strength and grace ; for 
 who so fitly as the lamented Hubbard could 
 have portrayed the moral heroism of the 
 Martyr- Spy? 
 
 This is not a portrait statue. There is 
 no likeness of Nathan Hale extant. The 
 only known miniature of his face, in the 
 possession of the lady to whom he was be- 
 trothed at the time of his death, disappeared 
 many years ago. The artist was obliged, 
 therefore, to create an ideal figure, aided by 
 a few fragmentary descriptions of Hale's 
 personal appearance. His object has been 
 to represent an American youth of the 
 period, an American patriot and scholar, 
 whose manly beauty and grace tradition 
 loves to recall, to represent in face and in 
 bearing the moral elevation of character 
 that made him conspicuous among his fel- 
 lows, and to show forth, if possible, the 
 deed that made him immortal. For it is 
 the deed and the memorable last words we 
 think of when we think of Hale. I know 
 
 [141] 
 
N A THAN HAL E 
 
 that by one of the canons of art it is held 
 that sculpture should rarely fix a momen- 
 tary action ; but if this can be pardoned 
 in the Laocoon, where suffering could not 
 otherwise be depicted to excite the sympathy 
 of the spectator, surely it can be justified in 
 this case, where, as one may say, the immor- 
 tality of the subject rests upon a single act, 
 upon a phrase, upon the attitude of the 
 moment. For all the man's life, all his 
 character, flowered and blossomed into im- 
 mortal beauty in this one supreme moment 
 of self-sacrifice, triumph, defiance. The lad- 
 der of the gallows-tree on which the de- 
 serted boy stood, amidst the enemies of his 
 country, when he uttered those last words 
 which all human annals do not parallel in 
 simple patriotism, — the ladder I am sure 
 ran up to heaven, and if angels were not seen 
 ascending and descending it in that gray 
 morning, there stood the embodiment of 
 American courage, unconquerable, Ameri- 
 can faith, invincible, American love of 
 country, unquenchable, a new democratic 
 
 manhood in the world, visible there for 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
N A r H A N HA L E 
 
 all men to take note of, crowned already 
 with the halo of victory in the Revolu- 
 tionary dawn. Oh, my Lord Howe ! it 
 seemed a trifling incident to you and to 
 your bloodhound, Provost Marshal Cunning- 
 ham, but those winged last w^ords were worth 
 ten thousand men to the drooping patriot 
 army. Oh, your Majesty, King George the 
 Third ! here was a spirit, could you but have 
 known it, that would cost you an empire, 
 here w-as an ignominious death that would 
 grow in the estimation of mankind, increas- 
 ing in nobility above the fading pageantry 
 of kino-s. 
 
 On the 2 1st of April, 1775, a messenger, 
 riding express from Boston to New^ York 
 wdth the tidings of Lexington and Concord, 
 reached New London. The news created 
 intense excitement. A public meeting was 
 called in the court-house at twilight, and 
 among the speakers who exhorted the people 
 to take up arms at once, was one, a youth 
 not yet twenty years of age, who said, " Let 
 us march immediately, and never lay down 
 our arms until w^e have obtained our inde- 
 
 [143] 
 
N A THAN HAL E 
 
 pendence," — one of the first, perhaps the first, 
 of the pubHc declarations of the purpose of 
 independence. It was Nathan Hale, already 
 a person of some note in the colony, of a 
 family then not unknown and destined in 
 various ways to distinction in the Republic. 
 A kinsman of the same name lost his life 
 in the Louisburg fight. He had been for 
 a year the preceptor of the Union Grammar 
 School at New London. The morning after 
 the meeting he was enrolled as a volunteer, 
 and soon marched away with his company 
 to Cambridge. 
 
 Nathan Hale, descended from Robert Hale 
 who settled in Charlestown in 1632, a scion 
 of the Hales of Kent, England, was born in 
 Coventry, Connecticut, on the 6th of June, 
 1755, the sixth child of Richard Hale and 
 his wife Elizabeth Strong, persons of strong 
 intellect and the highest moral character, 
 and Puritans of the strictest observances. 
 Brought up in this atmosphere, in which 
 duty and moral rectitude were the unques- 
 tioned obligations in life, he came to man- 
 hood with a character that enabled him to 
 
 [ 144 ] 
 
_ N A r H A N HALE 
 
 face death or obloquy without flinching, when 
 duty called, so that his behaviour at the last 
 was not an excitement of the moment, but 
 the result of ancestry, training, and principle. 
 Feeble physically in infancy, he developed 
 into a robust boy, strong in mind and body, 
 a lively, sweet-tempered, beautiful youth, and 
 into a young manhood endowed with every 
 admirable quality. In feats of strength and 
 agility he recalls the traditions of Washing 
 ton ; he early showed a remarkable avidity 
 for knowledge, which was so sought that he 
 became before he was of age one of the best 
 educated young men of his time in the colo- 
 nies. He was not only a classical scholar, 
 with the limitations of those days; but, what 
 was then rare, he made scientific attainments 
 which greatly impressed those capable of 
 judging, and he had a taste for art and a 
 remarkable talent as an artist. His father 
 intended him for the ministry. He received 
 his preparatory education from Dr. Joseph 
 Huntington, a classical scholar and the pastor 
 of the church in Coventry, entered Yale Col- 
 lege at the age of sixteen, and graduated with 
 ^° [ 145 ] 
 
N A THAN HAL E 
 
 high honours in a class of sixty, in September, 
 1773. At the time of his graduation his 
 personal appearance was notable. Dr. Enos 
 Monroe of New Haven, who knew him well 
 in the last year at Yale, said of him : — 
 
 ** He was almost six feet in height, perfectly 
 proportioned, and in figure and deportment he was 
 the most manly man I have ever met. His chest 
 was broad ; his muscles were firm ; his face wore a 
 most benign expression ; his complexion was 
 roseate ; his eyes were light blue and beamed with 
 intelligence ; his hair was soft and light brown in 
 colour, and his speech was rather low, sweet, and 
 musical. His personal beauty and grace of man- 
 ner were most charming. Why, all the girls in 
 New Haven fell in love with him," said Dr. Munro, 
 " and wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of 
 his sad fate. In dress he was always neat ; he was 
 quick to lend a hand to a being in distress, brute 
 or human ; was overflowing with good humour, and 
 was the idol of all his acquaintances." 
 
 Dr. Jared Sparks, who knew several of 
 Hale's intimate friends, writes of him : — 
 
 *• Possessing genius, taste, and order, he became 
 distinguished as a scholar; and endowed in an 
 eminent degree with those graces and gifts of 
 Nature which add a charm to youthful excellence, 
 
 [146] 
 
N A THAN HALE 
 
 he gained universal esteem and confidence. To 
 high moral worth and irreproachable habits were 
 joined gentleness of manner, an ingenuous dispo- 
 sition, and vigour of understanding. No young man 
 of his years put forth a fairer promise of future 
 usefulness and celebrity; the fortunes of none were 
 fostered more sincerely by the generous good 
 wishes of his superiors." 
 
 It was remembered at Yale that he was a 
 brilliant debater as well as scholar. At his 
 graduation he engaged in a debate on the 
 question, " Whether the education of daugh- 
 ters be not, without any just reason, more 
 neglected than that of the sons." " In this 
 debate," wrote James Hillhouse, one of his 
 classmates, " he w^as the champion of the 
 daughters, and most ably advocated their 
 cause. You may be sure that he received 
 the plaudits of the ladies present." 
 
 Hale seems to have had an irresistible 
 charm for everybody. He w^as a favourite in 
 society ; he had the manners and the qualities 
 that made him a leader among men and 
 gained him the admiration of w^omen. He 
 was always intelligently busy, and had the 
 Yankee ingenuity, — he " could do anything 
 
 [147] 
 
N A THAN HAL E 
 
 but spin," he used to say to the girls of Cov- 
 entry, laughing over the spinning wheel. 
 There is a universal testimony to his alert 
 intelligence, vivacity, manliness, sincerity, 
 and winningness. 
 
 It is probable that while still an under- 
 graduate at Yale, he was engaged to Alice 
 Adams, who was born in Canterbury, a young 
 lady distinguished then as she was afterwards 
 for great beauty and intelligence. After 
 Hale's death she married Mr. Eleazer Ripley, 
 and was left a widow at the age of eighteen, 
 with one child, who survived its father only 
 one year. She married, the second time, 
 William Lawrence, Esq., of Hartford, and 
 died in this city, greatly respected and ad- 
 mired, in 1845, aged eighty-eight. It is a 
 touching note of the hold the memory of 
 her young hero had upon her admiration 
 that her last words, murmured as life was 
 ebbing, were, " Write to Nathan." 
 
 Hale's short career in the American army 
 
 need not detain us. After his flying visit as 
 
 a volunteer to Cambridge, he returned to 
 
 New London, joined a company with the 
 
 [148] 
 
N A THAN HA L E 
 
 rank of lieutenant, participated in the siege 
 of Boston, was commissioned a captain in 
 the Nineteenth Connecticut Regiment in Jan- 
 uary, 1776, performed the duties of a soldier 
 with vigilance, bravery, and patience, and was 
 noted for the discipline of his company. In 
 the last dispiriting days of 1775, when the 
 terms of his men had expired, he offered to 
 give them his month's pay if they would 
 remain a month longer. He accompanied 
 the army to New York, and shared its for- 
 tunes in that discouraging spring and sum- 
 mer. Shortly after his arrival Captain Hale 
 distinguished himself by the brilliant exploit 
 of cutting out a British sloop, laden with 
 provisions, from under the guns of the man- 
 of-war " Asia," sixty-four, lying in the East 
 River, and bringing her triumphantly into 
 slip. During the summer he suffered a 
 severe illness. 
 
 The condition of the American army and 
 cause on the ist of September, 1776, after 
 the retreat from Long Island, was critical. 
 The army was demoralised, clamouring in 
 vain for pay, and deserting by companies 
 
 [ 149 ] 
 
N A THAN HA L E 
 
 and regiments ; one third of the men were 
 without tents, one fourth of them were on 
 the sick list. On the 7th, Washington called 
 a council of war, and anxiously inquired what 
 should be done. On the 12th, it was deter- 
 mined to abandon the city, and take posses- 
 sion of Harlem Heights. The British army, 
 twenty-five thousand strong, admirably 
 equipped, and supported by a powerful naval 
 force, threatened to envelop our poor force, 
 and finish the war in a stroke. Washington 
 was unable to penetrate the designs of the 
 British commander, or to obtain any trusty 
 information of the intentions or the move- 
 ments of the British army. Information was 
 imperatively necessary to save us from de- 
 struction, and it could only be obtained by 
 one skilled in military and scientific knowl- 
 edge and a good draughtsman, a man of 
 quick eye, cool head, tact, sagacity, and 
 courage, and one whose judgment and fidelity 
 could be trusted. Washington applied to 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton, who sum- 
 moned a conference of officers in the name 
 of the commander-in-chief, and laid the mat- 
 
 [150] 
 
N AT H A N HA L E 
 
 ter before them. No one was willing to 
 undertake the dangerous and ignominious 
 mission. Knowlton was in despair, and late 
 in the conference was repeating the necessity, 
 when a young officer, pale from recent ill- 
 ness, entered the room and said, " I will 
 undertake it." It was Captain Nathan Hale. 
 Everybody was astonished. His friends be- 
 sought him not to attempt it. In vain. 
 Hale was under no illusion. He silenced 
 all remonstrances by saying that he thought 
 he owed his country the accomplishment of 
 an object so important and so much desired 
 by the commander-in-chief, and he knew no 
 way to obtain the information except by going 
 into the enemy's camp in disguise. " I wish 
 to be useful," he said ; " and every kind of 
 service necessary for the public good becomes 
 honourable by being necessary. If the exi- 
 gencies of my country demand a peculiar 
 service, its claims to the performance of that 
 service are imperious." 
 
 The tale is well known. Hale crossed 
 over from Norwalk to Huntington Cove on 
 Long Island. In the disguise of a school- 
 
 [151] 
 
N A THAN HAL E 
 
 master, he penetrated the British lines and 
 the city, made accurate drawings of the forti- 
 fications, and memoranda in Latin of all that 
 he observed, which he concealed between the 
 soles of his shoes, and returned to the point 
 on the shore where he had first landed. He 
 expected to be met by a boat and to cross 
 the Sound to Norwalk the next morning. 
 The next morning he was captured, no 
 doubt by Tory treachery, and taken to 
 Howe's headquarters, the mansion of James 
 Beekman, situated at (the present) 50th 
 Street and First Avenue. That was on the 
 2ist of September. Without trial and upon 
 the evidence found on his person, Howe con- 
 demned him to be hanged as a spy early 
 next morning. Indeed Hale made no at- 
 tempt at defence. He frankly owned his 
 mission, and expressed regret that he could 
 not serve his country better. His open, 
 manly bearing and high spirit commanded 
 the respect of his captors. Mercy he did 
 not expect, and pity was not shown him. 
 The British were irritated by a conflagration 
 which had that morning laid almost a third 
 
NATHAN HALE 
 
 of the city in ashes, and which they attributed 
 to incendiary efforts to deprive them of agree- 
 able winter quarters. Hale was at first 
 locked up in the Beekman greenhouse. 
 Whether he remained there all nio-ht is not 
 known, and the place of his execution has 
 been disputed; but the best evidence seems to 
 be that it took place on the farm of Colonel 
 Rutger, on the w^est side, in the orchard in 
 the vicinity of the present East Broadway 
 and Market Street, and that he was hanged 
 to the limb of an apple-tree. 
 
 It was a lovely Sunday morning, before 
 the break of day, that he was marched to the 
 place of execution, September 22nd. While 
 awaiting the necessary preparations, a cour- 
 teous young officer permitted him to sit in 
 his tent. He asked for the presence of a 
 chaplain ; the request was refused. He 
 asked for a Bible ; it was denied. But at 
 the solicitation of the young officer he was 
 furnished with writing materials, and wrote 
 briefly to his mother, his sister, and his be- 
 trothed. When the infamous Cunningham, 
 to whom Howe had delivered him, read what 
 
 ['53] 
 
N A THAN HALE 
 
 was written, he was furious at the noble and 
 dauntless spirit shown, and with foul oaths 
 tore the letters into shreds, saying afterwards 
 " that the rebels should never know that they 
 had a man who could die with such firm- 
 ness." As Hale stood upon the fatal ladder, 
 Cunningham taunted him, and tauntingly 
 demanded his "last dying speech and con- 
 fession." The hero did not heed the words 
 of the brute, but, looking calmly upon the 
 spectators, said in a clear voice, " I only 
 regret that I have but one life to lose for my 
 country." And the ladder was snatched from 
 under him. 
 
 My friends, we are not honouring to-day a 
 lad who appears for a moment in a heroic 
 light, but one of the most worthy of the 
 citizens of Connecticut, who has by his lofty 
 character long honoured her, wherever patri- 
 otism is not a mere name, and where Chris- 
 tian manhood is respected. We have had 
 many heroes, many youths of promise, and 
 men of note, whose names are our only great 
 and enduring riches ; but no one of them all 
 better illustrated, short as was his career, the 
 
 [154] 
 
N A THAN HALE 
 
 virtues we desire for all our sons. We have 
 long delayed this tribute to his character and 
 his deeds, but in spite of our neglect his fame 
 has grown year by year, as war and politics 
 have taught us what is really admirable in a 
 human being, and we are now sure that we 
 are not erecting a monument to an ephemeral 
 reputation. 
 
 It is fit that it should stand here, one of 
 the chief distinctions of our splendid Capitol, 
 here in the political centre of the State, here 
 in the city where first in all the world was 
 proclaimed and put into a political charter 
 the fundamental idea of democracy, that 
 *' government rests upon the consent of the 
 people," here in the city where by the action 
 of these self-existing towns was formed the 
 model, the town and the commonwealth, the 
 bi-cameral legislature, of our constitutional 
 federal union. 
 
 If the soul of Nathan Hale, immortal in 
 youth in the air of heaven, can behold to-day 
 this scene, as doubtless it can, in the midst 
 of a State whose prosperity the young colo- 
 nist could not have imagined in his wildest 
 
 [155] 
 
N A THAN HA L E 
 
 dreams for his country, he must feel anew 
 the truth that there is nothing too sacred for 
 a man to give for his native land. 
 
 Governor Lounsbury, the labour of the 
 commission is finished. On their behalf I 
 present this work of art to the State of 
 Connecticut. 
 
 Let the statue speak for itself. 
 
 C156] 
 
Some Causes of the 
 Prevailinp- Discontent 
 
 THE Declaration of Independence 
 opens with the statement of a great 
 and fruitful political truth. But if 
 it had said: — "We hold these truths to be 
 self-evident : that all men are created un- 
 equal ; that they are endowed by their 
 Creator with certain inalienable rights; that 
 among these are life, liberty and the pur- 
 suit of happiness," it would also have stated 
 the truth ; and if it had added, " All men 
 are born in society wdth certain duties which 
 cannot be disregarded without danger to the 
 social state," it would have laid down a nec- 
 essary corollary to the first declaration. 
 No doubt those who signed the document 
 understood that the second clause limited 
 the first, and that men are created equal 
 only in respect to certain rights. But the 
 first part of the clause has been taken alone 
 
 [157] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 as the statement of a self-evident truth, and 
 the attempt to make this unhmited phrase 
 a reahty has caused a great deal of misery. 
 In connection with the neglect of the idea 
 that the recognition of certain duties is as 
 important as the recognition of rights in the 
 political and social state — that is, in con- 
 nection with the doctrine of laissez faire — 
 this popular notion of equality is one of the 
 most disastrous forces in modern society. 
 
 Doubtless men might have been created 
 equal to each other in every respect, with 
 the same mental capacity, the same physical 
 ability, with like inheritances of good or bad 
 qualities, and born into exactly similar con- 
 ditions, and not dependent on each other. 
 But men never were so created and born, 
 so far as we have any record of them, and 
 by analogy we have no reason to suppose 
 that they ever will be. Inequality is the 
 most striking fact in life. Absolute equality 
 might be better, but so far as we can see, 
 the law of the universe is infinite diversity 
 in unity; and variety in condition is the 
 essential of what we call progress — it is, in 
 
 [ 158 ] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 fact, life. The great doctrine of the Christian 
 era — the brotherhood of man and the duty 
 of the strong to tlie weak — is in sharp con- 
 trast with this doctrinarian notion of equahty. 
 The Christian reHgion never proposed to 
 remove the inequahties of hfe or its suffer- 
 ing, but by the incoming of charity and 
 contentment and a high mind to give in- 
 dividual men a power to be superior to 
 their conditions. 
 
 It cannot, however, be denied that the 
 spirit of Christianity has ameliorated the 
 condition of civilised peoples, co-operating 
 in this with beneficent inventions. Never 
 were the mass of the people so well fed, 
 so well clad, so well housed, as to-day in 
 the United States. Their ordinary daily 
 comforts and privileges were the luxuries 
 of a former age, often indeed unknown and 
 unattainable to the most fortunate and privi- 
 leged classes. Nowhere else is it or was it 
 so easy for a man to change his condition, 
 to satisfy his wants, nowhere else has he or 
 had he such advantages of education, such 
 facilities of travel, such an opportunity to 
 
 [159] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 find an environment to suit himself. As a 
 rule the mass of mankind have been tied 
 to the spot where they were born. A mighty 
 change has taken place in regard to liberty, 
 freedom of personal action, the possibility 
 of coming into contact with varied life and 
 an enlarged participation in the bounties of 
 nature and the inventions of s^enius. The 
 whole world is in motion, and at liberty to 
 be so. Everywhere that civilisation has 
 gone there is an immense improvement in 
 material conditions during the last one 
 hundred years. 
 
 And yet men were never so discontented, 
 nor did they ever find so many ways of ex- 
 pressing their discontent. In view of the 
 general amelioration of the conditions of life 
 this seems unreasonable and illogical, but it 
 may seem less so when we reflect that human 
 nature is unchanged, and that which has to 
 be satisfied in this world is the mind. And 
 there are some exceptions to this general 
 material prosperity, in its result to the work- 
 ing classes. Manufacturing England is an 
 
 exception. There is nothing so pitiful, so 
 
 [ i6o ] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 hopeless in the record of man, not in the 
 Middle Ages, not in rural France just before 
 the Revolution, as the physical and mental 
 condition of the operators in the great manu- 
 facturino; cities and in the vast reekins: slums 
 of London. The political economists have 
 made England the world's great workshop, 
 on the theory that wealth is the greatest 
 good in life, and that with the golden streams 
 flowing into England from a tributary world, 
 wages would rise, food be cheap, employment 
 constant. The horrible result to humanity 
 is one of the exceptions to the general up- 
 lift of the race, not paralleled as yet by any- 
 thing in this country, but to be taken note of 
 as a possible outcome of any material civili- 
 sation, and fit to set us thinking whether 
 we have not got on a wrong track. Mr. 
 Froude, fresh from a sight of the misery 
 of industrial England, and borne straight on 
 toward Australia over a vast ocean, through 
 calm and storm, by a great steamer, — horses 
 of fire yoked to a sea-chariot, — exclaims ; 
 " What, after all, have these wonderful 
 
 achievements done to elevate human nature .f* 
 II [ i6i ] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 Human nature remains as it was. Science 
 grows, but morality is stationary, and art is 
 vulgarised. Not here lie the ' things nec- 
 essary to salvation,' not the things which 
 can give to human life grace, or beauty, or 
 dignity." 
 
 In the United States, with its open op- 
 portunities, abundant land, where the condi- 
 tion of the labouring class is better actually 
 and in possibility than it ever was in history, 
 and where there is little poverty except that 
 which is inevitably the accompaniment of 
 human weakness and crime, the prevailing 
 discontent seems groundless. But of course 
 an agitation so wide-spread, so much in 
 earnest, so capable of evoking sacrifice, 
 even to the verge of starvation and the risk 
 of life, must have some reason in human 
 nature. Even an illusion — and men are 
 as ready to die for an illusion as for a reality 
 — cannot exist without a cause. 
 
 Now, content does not depend so much 
 
 upon a man's actual as his relative condition. 
 
 Often it is not so much what I need, as what 
 
 others have that disturbs me. I should be 
 
 [162 J 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 content to walk from Boston to New York, 
 and be a fortnight on the way, if everybody 
 else was obliged to walk who made that 
 journey. It becomes a hardship when my 
 neighbour is whisked over the route in six 
 hours and I have to walk. It would still 
 be a hardship if he attained the ability to 
 go in an hour, when I was only able to 
 accomplish the distance in six hours. While 
 there has been a tremendous uplift all along 
 the line of material conditions, and the 
 labouring man who is sober and industrious 
 has comforts and privileges in his daily life 
 which the rich man who was sober and in- 
 dustrious did not enjoy a hundred years ago, 
 the relative position of the rich man and the 
 poor man has not greatly changed. It is 
 true, especially in the United States, that 
 the poor have become rich and the rich 
 poor, but inequality of condition is about as 
 marked as it was before the invention of 
 labour-saving machinery, and though work- 
 ing men are better off in many ways, the 
 accumulation of vast fortunes, acquired often 
 
 in brutal disregard of humanity, marks the 
 
 [163] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 contrast of conditions perhaps more emphat- 
 ically than it ever appeared before. That 
 this inequality should continue in an era of 
 universal education, universal suffrage, uni- 
 versal locomotion, universal emancipation 
 from nearly all tradition, is a surprise, and 
 a perfectly comprehensible cause of discon- 
 tent. It is axiomatic that all men are created 
 equal. But, somehow, the problem does not 
 work out in the desired actual equality of 
 conditions. Perhaps it can be forced to the 
 right conclusion by violence. 
 
 It ought to be said, as to the United 
 States, that a very considerable part of the 
 discontent is imported, it is not native, nor 
 based on any actual state of things existing 
 here. Agitation has become a business. A 
 great many men and some women, to whom 
 work of any sort is distasteful, live by it. 
 Some of them are refugees from military or 
 political despotism, some are refugees from 
 justice, some from the lowest conditions of 
 industrial slavery. When they come here, 
 they assume that the hardships they have 
 
 come away to escape exist here, and they 
 
 [164] 
 
PREFAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 begin asritating against them. Their busi- 
 ness is to so mix the real wrongs of our 
 social life with imaginary hardships, and to 
 heighten the whole with illusory and often 
 debasing theories, that discontent will be 
 engendered. For it is by means of that only 
 that they live. It requires usually a great 
 deal of labour, of organisation, of oratory to 
 work up this discontent so that it is profit- 
 able. The solid working men of America 
 who know the value of industry and thrift, 
 and have confidence in the relief to be 
 obtained from all relievable wrongs by legiti- 
 mate political or other sedate action, have no 
 time to give to the leadership of agitations 
 which require them to quit work, and de- 
 stroy industries, and attack the social order 
 upon which they depend. The whole case, 
 you may remember, was embodied thousands 
 of years ago in a parable, which Jotham, 
 standing on the top of Mount Gerizim, spoke 
 to the men of Shechem : 
 
 '' The trees went forth on a time to anoint 
 a king over them ; and they said unto the 
 
 olive-tree, ' Reign thou over us.' 
 
 [165] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 " But the olive-tree said unto them, ' Should 
 I leave my fatness wherewith by me they 
 honour God and man, and go to be promoted 
 over the trees ? ' 
 
 " And the trees said to the fig-tree, * Come 
 thou and reign over us.' 
 
 " But the fig-tree said unto them, * Should 
 I forsake my sweetness and my good fruit, 
 and go to be promoted over the trees ? ' 
 
 " Then said the trees unto the vine, * Come 
 thou and reign over us.' 
 
 " And the vine said unto them, ' Should I 
 leave my wine, which cheereth God and 
 man, and go to be promoted over the 
 trees } ' 
 
 "Then said the trees unto the bramble, 
 * Come thou and reign over us.' 
 
 " And the bramble said to the trees, * If in 
 truth ye anoint me king over you, then come 
 and put your trust in my shadow ; and if not, 
 let fire come out of the bramble, and devour 
 the cedars of Lebanon.' " 
 
 In our day a conflagration of the cedars 
 
 of Lebanon has been the only result of the 
 
 kingship of the bramble. 
 
 [i66] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 In the opinion of many, our universal 
 education is one of the chief causes of the 
 discontent. This might be true and not be 
 an arsfument ajiainst education, for a certain 
 amount of discontent is essential to self-de- 
 velopment ; and if, as we believe, the develop- 
 ment of the best powers of every human 
 being is a good in itself, education ought not 
 to be held responsible for the evils attending 
 a transitional period. Yet we cannot ignore 
 the danger, in the present stage, of an 
 education that is necessarily superficial, that 
 engenders conceit of knowledge and power, 
 rather than real knowledge and power, and 
 that breeds in two-thirds of those who have 
 it a distaste for useful labour. We believe in 
 education ; but there must be something 
 wrong in an education that sets so many 
 people at odds with the facts of life, and, 
 above all, does not furnish them with any 
 protection against the wildest illusions. 
 There is something wanting in the education 
 that only half educates people. 
 
 Whether there is the relation of cause and 
 
 effect between the two I do not pretend to 
 
 [167] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 say, but universal and superficial education 
 in this country has been accompanied with 
 the most extraordinary delusions and the 
 evolution of the wildest theories. It is only 
 necessary to refer, by way of illustration, to 
 the greenback illusion, and to the whole 
 group of spiritualistic disturbances and psy- 
 chological epidemics. It sometimes seems 
 as if half the American people were losing 
 the power to apply logical processes to the 
 ordinary affairs of life. 
 
 In studying the discontent in this country 
 which takes the form of a labour movement, 
 one is at first struck by its illogical aspects. 
 So far as it is an organised attempt to better 
 the condition of men by association of inter- 
 ests it is consistent. But it seems strange 
 that the doctrine of individualism should so 
 speedily have an outcome in a personal 
 slavery, only better in the sense that it is 
 voluntary, than that which it protested 
 against. The revolt from authority, the 
 assertion of the right of private judgment, 
 has been pushed forward into a socialism 
 
 which destroys individual liberty of action, 
 
 [i68] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 or to a state of anarchy in wliich the weak 
 would have no protection. I do not imagine 
 that the leaders who preach socialism, who 
 live by agitation and not by labour, really 
 desire to overturn the social order and brins: 
 chaos. If social chaos came, their occupa- 
 tion would be gone, for if all men were re- 
 duced to a level, they would be compelled to 
 scratch about with the rest for a living. 
 They live by agitation, and they are con- 
 fident that government will be strong enough 
 to hold things together, so that they can 
 continue agitation. 
 
 The strange thing is that their followers 
 who live by labour and expect to live by it, 
 and believe in the doctrine of individualism, 
 and love liberty of action, should be walling 
 to surrender their discretion to an arbitrary 
 committee, and should expect that liberty of 
 action would be preserved if all property 
 were handed over to the state, which should 
 undertake to regulate every man's time, 
 occupation, wages, and so on. The central 
 committee or authority, or whatever it might 
 
 be called, would be an extraordinary des- 
 
 L169] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 potism, tempered only by the idea that it 
 could be overturned every twenty-four hours. 
 But what security would there be for any 
 calculations in life in a state of things in ex- 
 pectation of a revolution any moment? 
 Compared with the freedom of action in 
 such a government as ours, any form of 
 communism is an iniquitous and meddle- 
 some despotism. In a less degree an asso- 
 ciation to which a man surrenders the right 
 to say when, where, and for how much he 
 shall work, is a despotism, and when it goes 
 further and attempts to put a pressure on all 
 men outside of the association, so that they 
 are free neither to work nor to hire the 
 workmen they choose, it is an extraordinary 
 tyranny. It almost puts in the shade Mexi- 
 can or Russian personal government. A de- 
 mand is made upon a railway company that 
 it shall discharge a certain workman because 
 and only because he is not a member of the 
 union. The company refuses. Then a dis- 
 tant committee orders a strike on that road, 
 which throws business far and wide into con- 
 fusion, and is the cause of heavy loss to tens 
 
 [ 170] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 of thousands who have no interest in any 
 association of capital or labour, many of 
 whom are ruined by this violence. Some of 
 the results of this surrender of personal lib- 
 erty are as illegal as illogical. 
 
 The boycott is a conspiracy to injure an- 
 other person, and as such indictable at com- 
 mon law. A strike, if a conspiracy only to 
 raise wages or to reduce hours of labour, may 
 not be indictable, if its object cannot be 
 shown to be the injury of another, though 
 that may be incidentally its effect. But in 
 its incidents, such as violence, intimidation, 
 and in some cases injury to the public wel- 
 fare, it often becomes an indictable offence. 
 The law of conspiracy is the most ill- 
 defined branch of jurisprudence, but it is 
 safe to say of the boycott and the strike 
 that they both introduce an insupportable 
 element of tyranny, of dictation, of inter- 
 ference, into private life. If they could be 
 maintained, society would be at the mercy 
 of an irresponsible and even secret tribunal. 
 
 The strike is illogical. Take the recent 
 experience in this country. We have had 
 
 [171] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 a long season of depression, in which many 
 earned very little and labour sought employ- 
 ment in vain. In the latter part of winter 
 the prospect brightened, business revived, 
 orders for goods poured in to all the factories 
 in the country, and everybody believed that 
 we were on the eve of a very prosperous sea- 
 son. This was the time taken to order 
 strikes, and they were enforced in perhaps 
 a majority of cases against the wishes of 
 those who obeyed the order, and who com- 
 plained of no immediate grievance. What 
 men chiefly wanted was the opportunity to 
 work. The result has been to throw us all 
 back into the condition of stagnation and 
 depression. Many people are ruined, an im- 
 mense amount of capital which ventured 
 into enterprises is lost, but of course the 
 greatest sufferers are the working men 
 themselves. 
 
 The methods of violence suggested by the 
 communists and anarchists are not remedial. 
 Real difficulties exist, but these do not 
 reach them. The fact is that people in any 
 relations incur mutual obligations, and the 
 
 [ 172 ] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 world cannot 2.0 on without a recocrnition of 
 duties as well as rio-hts. We all aorcc that 
 every man has a right to work for whom he 
 pleases, and to quit the work if it does not 
 or the wages do not suit him. On the other 
 hand, a man has a right to hire whom he 
 pleases, pay such wages as he thinks he call 
 afford, and discharge men who do not suit 
 him. But when men come together in the 
 relation of employer and employed, other 
 considerations arise. A man has capital 
 which, instead of loaning at interest or lock- 
 ing up in real estate or bonds, he puts into 
 a factory. In other words, he unlocks it for 
 the benefit partly of men w^ho want wages. 
 He has the expectation of making money, of 
 making more than he could by lending his 
 money. Perhaps he will be disappointed, 
 for a common experience is the loss of cap- 
 ital thus invested. He hires workmen at 
 certain wages. On the strength of this 
 arrangement, he accepts orders and makes 
 contracts for the delivery of goods. He 
 may make money one year and lose the 
 next. It is better for the workman that he 
 
 [ 173 J 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 should prosper, for the fund of capital ac- 
 cumulated is that upon which they depend 
 to give them wages in a dull time. But 
 some day when he is in a corner with orders, 
 and his rivals are competing for the market, 
 and labour is scarce, his men strike on him. 
 
 Conversely, take the workman settled 
 down to work in the mill, at the best wages 
 attainable at the time. He has a house and 
 family. He has given pledges to society. 
 His employer has incurred certain duties in 
 regard to him by the very nature of their 
 relations. Suppose the workman and his 
 family cannot live in any comfort on the 
 wages he receives. The employer is morally 
 bound to increase the wages if he can. But 
 if, instead of sympathising with the situation 
 of his workman, he forms a combination 
 with all the mills of his sort, and reduces 
 wages merely to increase his gains, he is 
 guilty of an act as worthy of indictment as 
 the strike. I do not see why a conspiracy 
 against labour is not as illegal as a conspiracy 
 against capital. The truth is, the possession 
 of power by men or associations makes them 
 
 [ 174] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 selfish and generally cruel. Few employers 
 consider anything but the arithmetic of sup- 
 ply and demand in fixing wages, and working 
 men who have the power, tend to act as 
 selfishly as the male printers used to act in 
 striking in an establishment which dared 
 to give employment to women type-setters. 
 It is of course sentimental to say it, but I do 
 not expect we shall ever get on with less 
 friction than we have now, until men recog- 
 nise their duties as well as their rights in 
 their relations with each other. 
 
 In running over some of the reasons for 
 the present discontent, and the often illogi- 
 cal expression of it, I am far from saying 
 anything against legitimate associations for 
 securing justice and fair play. Disassociated 
 labour has generally been powerless against 
 accumulated capital. Of course, organised 
 labour-getting power will use its power (as 
 power is always used) unjustly and tyran- 
 nically. It will make mistakes, it will often 
 injure itself while inflicting general damage. 
 But with all. its injustice, with all its surren- 
 der of personal liberty, it seeks to call the 
 
 [175] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 attention of the world to certain hideous 
 wrongs, to which the world is likely to 
 continue selfishly indifferent unless rudely 
 shaken out of its sense of security. Some 
 of the objects proposed by these associations 
 are chimerical, but the agitation will doubt- 
 less go on until another element is intro- 
 duced into w^ork and wages than mere supply 
 and demand. I believe that sometime it 
 will be impossible that a woman shall be 
 forced to make shirts at six cents a piece, 
 with the gaunt figures of starvation or a life 
 of shame waiting at the door. I talked re- 
 cently with the driver of a street-car in a 
 large city. He received a dollar and sixty 
 cents a day. He went on to his platform at 
 eight in the morning, and left it at twelve 
 at night, sixteen hours of continuous labour 
 every day in the week. He had no rest for 
 meals, only snatched what he could eat as he 
 drove along, or at intervals of five or eight 
 minutes at the end of routes. He had no 
 Sunday, no holiday in the year. Between 
 twelve o'clock at night and eight the next 
 
 morning, he must wash and clean his car. 
 
 [176] 
 
PREVAILING DI SCONTENT 
 
 Thus his hours of sleep were abridged. He 
 was obHged to keep an eye on the passengers 
 to see that they put their fares in the box, to 
 be always responsible for them, that they got 
 on and off without accident, to watch that 
 the rules were enforced, and that collisions 
 and common street dangers were avoided. 
 This mental and physical strain for sixteen 
 consecutive hours, with scant sleep, so de- 
 moralised him that he was obliQfed once in 
 two or three months to hire a substitute and 
 go away to sleep. This is treating a human 
 being with less consideration than the horses 
 receive. He is powerless against the great 
 corporation ; If he complains, his place is in- 
 stantly filled ; the public does not care. 
 
 Now what I want to say about this case, 
 and that of the w^oman who makes a shirt 
 for six cents (and these are only types of dis- 
 regard of human souls and bodies that we 
 are all familiar with), is that if society re- 
 mains indifferent it must expect that organi- 
 sations will attempt to right them, and the 
 like wrongs, by ways violent and destructive 
 of the innocent and guilty alike. It is hu- 
 
 [177] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 man nature, it is the lesson of history, that 
 real wrongs, unredressed, grow into prepos- 
 terous demands. Men are much like nature 
 in action ; a little disturbance of atmospheric 
 equilibrium becomes a cyclone, a slight break 
 in the levee a crevasse with immense de- 
 structive power. 
 
 In considering the growth of discontent, 
 and of a natural disregard of duties between 
 employers and employed, it is to be noted 
 that while wages in nearly all trades are 
 high, the service rendered deteriorates, less 
 conscience is put into the work, less care to 
 give a fair day's work for a fair day's wages, 
 and that pride in good work is vanishing. 
 This may be in the nature of retaliation for 
 the indifference to humanity taught by a 
 certain school of political economists, but it 
 is, nevertheless, one of the most alarming 
 features of these times. How to cultivate 
 the sympathy of the employers with the em- 
 ployed as men, and how to interest the em- 
 ployed in their work beyond the mere wages 
 they receive, is the double problem. 
 
 As the intention of this paper was not to 
 
 [178] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 suggest remedies, but only to review some of 
 the causes of discontent, I will only say, as to 
 this double problem, that I see no remedy so 
 long as the popular notion prevails that the 
 greatest good of life is to make money 
 rapidly, and while it is denied that all men 
 who contribute to prosperity ought to share 
 equitably in it. The employed must recog- 
 nise the necessity of an accumulated fund of 
 capital, and on the other hand the employer 
 must be as anxious to have about him a con- 
 tented, prosperous community, as to heap up 
 money beyond any reasonable use for it. 
 The demand seems to be reasonable that the 
 employer in a prosperous year ought to share 
 with the workmen the profits beyond a limit 
 that capital, risk, enterprise, and superior 
 skill can legitimately claim ; and that on the 
 other hand the workmen should stand by the 
 employer in hard times. 
 
 Discontent, then, arises from absurd no- 
 tions of equality, from natural conditions of 
 inequality, from false notions of education, 
 and from the very patent fact, in this age, 
 that men have been educated into wants 
 
 [ 179] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 much more rapidly than social conditions 
 have been adjusted, or perhaps ever can be 
 adjusted, to satisfy those wants. Beyond all 
 the actual hardship and suffering, there is 
 an immense mental discontent which has to 
 be reckoned with. 
 
 This leads me to what I chiefly wanted to 
 say in this paper, to the cause of discontent 
 which seems to me altogether the most 
 serious, altogether the most difficult to deal 
 with. We may arrive at some conception of 
 it, if we consider what it is that the well-to- 
 do, the prosperous, the rich, the educated 
 and cultivated portions of society, most value 
 just now. 
 
 If, to take an illustration w^hich is suffi- 
 ciently remote to give us the necessary per- 
 spective, if the political economists, the 
 manufacturers, the traders and aristocracy of 
 England had had chiefly in mind the devel- 
 opment of the labouring people of England 
 into a fine type of men and women, full of 
 health and physical vigour, with minds ca- 
 pable of expansion and enjoyment, the crea- 
 tion of decent, happy, and contented homes, 
 
 [i8o] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 would they have reared the industrial fabric 
 we now see there? If they had not put the 
 accumulation of wealth above the good of in- 
 dividual humanity, would they have turned 
 England into a grimy and smoky workshop, 
 commanding the markets of the world by 
 cheap labour, condemning the mass of the 
 people to unrelieved toil and the most squalid 
 and degraded conditions of life in towns, while 
 the land is more and more set apart for the 
 parks and pleasure grounds of the rich ? 
 The policy pursued has made England the 
 richest of countries, a land of the highest 
 refinement and luxury for the upper classes, 
 and of the most misery for the great mass 
 of common people. On this point we have 
 but to read the testimony of English writers 
 themselves. It is not necessary to suppose 
 that the political economists were inhuman. 
 They no doubt believed that if England 
 attained this commanding position, the 
 accumulated wealth would raise all classes 
 into better conditions. Their mistake is 
 that of all peoples who have made money 
 their first object. Looked at merely on the 
 
 [i8i] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 material side, you would think that what a 
 philanthropic statesman would desire, who 
 wished a vigorous, prosperous nation, would 
 be a strong and virile population, thrifty and 
 industrious, and not mere slaves of mines 
 and mills, degenerating in their children, 
 year by year, physically and morally. But 
 apparently they have gone upon the theory 
 that it is money, not man, that makes a state. 
 In the United States, under totally differ- 
 ent conditions, and under an economic theory 
 that, whatever its defects on paper, has never- 
 theless insisted more upon the worth of the 
 individual man, we have had, all the same, 
 a distinctly material development. When 
 foreign critics have commented upon this, 
 upon our superficiality, our commonplace- 
 ness, what they are pleased to call the weary 
 level of our mediocrity, upon the raging 
 unrest and race for fortune, and upon the 
 tremendous pace of American life, we have 
 said that this is incident to a new country 
 and the necessity of controlling physical 
 conditions, and of fitting our heterogeneous 
 
 population to their environment. It is 
 
 [ 182 ] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENr 
 
 hardly to be expected, we have said, until we 
 have the leisure that comes from easy circum- 
 stances and accumulated wealth, that we 
 should show the sfraces of the hiofhest civili- 
 sation, in intellectual pursuits. Much of this 
 criticism is ignorant, and to say the best of 
 it, ungracious, considering what we have done 
 in the way of substantial appliances for edu- 
 cation, in the field of science, in vast charities, 
 and missionary enterprises, and what we have 
 to show in the diffused refinements of life. 
 
 We are already wealthy ; we have greater 
 resources and higher credit than any other 
 nation ; we have more wealth than any save 
 one ; we have vast accumulations of fortune, 
 in private hands and in enormous corpora- 
 tions. There exists already, what could not 
 be said to exist a quarter of a century ago, a 
 class who have leisure. Now what is the 
 object in life of this great, growing class that 
 has money and leisure, what does it chiefly 
 care for ? In your experience of society, 
 what is it that it pursues and desires ? Is it 
 things of the mind or things of the senses ? 
 What is it that interests women, men of for- 
 
 [183] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 tune, club-men, merchants, and professional 
 men whose incomes give them leisure to fol- 
 low their inclinations, the young men who 
 have inherited money ? Is it political duties, 
 the affairs of state, economic problems, some 
 adjustment of our relations that shall lighten 
 and relieve the wrongs and misery every- 
 where apparent ; is the interest in intellect- 
 ual pursuits and art (except in a dilettante 
 way dictated for a season by fashion) in 
 books, in the wide range of mental pleasures 
 which make men superior to the accidents of 
 fortune? Or is the interest of this class, for 
 the most part, with some noble exceptions, 
 rather in things grossly material, in what is 
 called pleasure ? To come to somewhat vul- 
 gar details, is not the growing desire for 
 dress, for sumptuous houses, for showy equi- 
 pages, for epicurean entertainments, for dis- 
 play, either refined or ostentatious, rivalry in 
 profusion and expense, new methods for kill- 
 ing time, for every imaginable luxury, which 
 is enjoyed partly because it pleases the senses, 
 and partly because it satisfies an ignoble 
 craving for class distinction? 
 
 [184] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 I am not referring to these things as a 
 moralist at all, but simply in their relation to 
 popular discontent. The astonishing growth 
 of luxury and the habit of sensual indulgence 
 are seen everywhere in this country, but are 
 most striking in the city of New York, since 
 the fashion and wealth of the whole country 
 meet there for display and indulgence, — New 
 York, which rivals London and outdoes 
 Paris in sumptuousness. There congregates 
 more than elsewhere idlers, men and women 
 of leisure who have nothing to do except to 
 observe or to act in the spectacle of Vanity 
 Fair. Aside from the display of luxury in 
 the shops, in the streets, in private houses, 
 one is impressed by the number of idle 
 young men and women of fashion. 
 
 It is impossible that a working man who 
 stands upon a metropolitan street corner and 
 observes this Bacchanalian revel and prodi- 
 gality of expense, should not be embittered 
 by a sense of the inequality of the conditions 
 of life. But this is not the most mischievous 
 effect of the spectacle. It is the example of 
 
 what these people care for. With all their 
 
 [185] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 wealth and opportunities, it seems to him that 
 these select people have no higher object than 
 the pleasures of the senses, and he is taught 
 daily by reiterated example that this is the end 
 and aim of life. When he sees the value 
 the intelligent and the v^ell-to-do set upon 
 material things, and their small regard for 
 intellectual things and the pleasures of the 
 mind, why should he not most passionately 
 desire those things which his more fortunate 
 neighbours put foremost? It is not the sight 
 of a Peter Cooper and his wealth that discon- 
 tents him, nor the intellectual pursuits of the 
 scholar who uses the leisure his fortune gives 
 him for the higher pleasures of the mind. 
 But when society daily dins upon his senses 
 the lesson that not manhood and high think- 
 ing and a contented spirit are the most 
 desirable things, whether one is rich or poor, 
 is he to be blamed for having a wrong notion 
 of what will or should satisfy him ? What 
 the well-to-do, the prosperous, are seen to 
 value most in life will be the things most 
 desired by the less fortunate in accumulation. 
 
 It is not so much the accumulation of money 
 
 [i86] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 that is mischievous in this country, for the 
 most stupid can sec that fortunes are con- 
 stantly shifting hands, but it is the use that 
 is made of the leisure and opportunity that 
 money brings. 
 
 Another observation, which makes men 
 discontented with very slow accumulation, is 
 that, apparently, in the public estimation it 
 does not make much difference whether a 
 man acquires wealth justly or unjustly. If 
 he only secures enough, he is a power, he has 
 social position, he grasps the high honours 
 and places in the state. The fact is that the 
 toleration of men who secure wealth by well 
 known dishonest and sharp practices is a 
 chief cause of the demoralisation of the 
 public conscience. 
 
 However the lines social and political 
 may be drawn, we have to keep in mind 
 that nothing in one class can be foreign to 
 any other, and that practically one philoso- 
 phy underlies all the movements of an age. 
 If our philosophy is material, resulting in 
 selfish ethics, all our energies will have a 
 
 materialistic tendency. It is not to be 
 
 [187] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 wondered at, therefore, that, in a time when 
 making money is the chief object, if it is 
 not reckoned the chief good, our education 
 should all tend to what is called practical, 
 that is, to that which can be immediately 
 serviceable in some profitable occupation of 
 life, to the neglect of those studies which 
 are only of use in training the intellect and 
 cultivating, and broadening the higher in- 
 telligence. To this purely material and 
 utilitarian idea of life, the higher colleges 
 and universities everywhere are urged to 
 conform themselves. Thus is the utilitarian 
 spirit eating away the foundations of a 
 higher intellectual life, applying to every- 
 thing a material measure. In proportion as 
 scholars yield to it, they are lowering the 
 standard of what is most to be desired in 
 human life, acting in perfect concert with 
 that spirit which exalts mioney making as 
 the chief good, which makes science itself 
 the slave of the avaricious and greedy, and 
 fills all the world with discontented and 
 ignoble longing. We do not need to be 
 
 told that if we neglect pure science for the 
 
 [i88] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 pursuit of applied science only, applied 
 science will speedily be degraded and un- 
 fruitful ; and it is just as true that if we 
 pursue knowledge only for the sake of gain, 
 and not for its own sake, knowledge will 
 lose the power it has of satisfying the higher 
 needs of the human soul. If we are seen to 
 put only a money value on the higher 
 education, why should not the working man, 
 who regards it only as a distinction of class 
 or privilege, estimate it by what he can see 
 of its practical results in making men richer, 
 or bringing him more pleasure of the 
 senses ? 
 
 The world is ruled by ideas, by abstract 
 thought. Society, literature, art, politics, in 
 any given age are what the prevailing system 
 of philosophy makes them. We recognise 
 this clearly in studying any past period. 
 We see, for instance, how all the currents 
 of human life changed upon the adoption 
 of the inductive method ; no science, no 
 literature, no art, practical or fine, no person, 
 inquiring scholar, day labourer, trader, sailor, 
 
 fine lady or humblest housekeeper, escaped 
 
 [189] 
 
SOME CAUSES OF THE 
 
 the influence. Even though the prevailing 
 ethics may teach that every man's highest 
 duty is to himself, we cannot escape com- 
 munity of sympathy and destiny in this 
 cold-blooded philosophy. 
 
 No social or political movement stands 
 by itself. If we inquire, we shall find one 
 preponderating cause underlying every move- 
 ment of the age. If the utilitarian spirit is 
 abroad, it accounts for the devotion to the 
 production of wealth, and to the consequent 
 separation of classes and the discontent, and 
 it accounts also for the demand that all 
 education shall be immediately useful. I 
 was talking the other day with a lady who 
 was doubting what sort of an education to 
 give her daughter, a young girl of exceed- 
 ingly fine mental capacity. If she pursued 
 a classical course, she would, at the age of 
 twenty-one, know very little of the sciences. 
 And I said, why not make her an intellect- 
 ual woman ? At twenty-one, with a trained 
 mind, all knowledges are at one's feet. 
 
 If anything can correct the evils of devo- 
 tion to money, it seems to me that it is the 
 
 [ 190] 
 
PREVAILING DISCONTENT 
 
 production of intellectual men and women, 
 who will find other satisfactions in life than 
 those of the senses. And when labour sees 
 what it is that is really most to be valued, 
 its discontent will be of a nobler kind. 
 
 [191] 
 
The Education of the Negro 
 
 AT the close of the war for the Union 
 about five millions of negroes were 
 added to the citizenship of the 
 United States. By the census of 1890 this 
 number had become over seven and a half 
 millions. I use the word negro, because 
 the descriptive term black or coloured is 
 not determinative. There are many varieties 
 of negroes among the African tribes, but all 
 of them agree in certain physiological if not 
 psychological characteristics, which separate 
 them from all other races of mankind ; 
 whereas there are many races, black or col- 
 oured, like the Abyssinian, which have no 
 other negro traits. 
 
 It is also a matter of observation that the 
 negro traits persist in recognisable manifes- 
 tations, to the extent of occasional rever- 
 sions, whatever may be the mixture of a 
 white race. In a certain degree this per- 
 13 [ 193 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 sistence is true of all races not come from 
 an historic common stock. 
 
 In the political reconstruction the negro 
 was given the ballot without any require- 
 ments of education or property. This was 
 partly a measure of party balance of power; 
 and partly from a concern that the negro 
 would not be secure in his rights as a citizen 
 without it, and also upon the theory that the 
 ballot is an educating influence. 
 
 This sudden transition and shifting of 
 power was resented at the south, resisted at 
 first, and finally it has generally been evaded. 
 This was due to a variety of reasons or preju- 
 dices, not all of them creditable to a gener- 
 ous desire for the universal elevation of 
 mankind, but one of them the historian will 
 judge adequate to produce the result. In- 
 deed, it might have been foreseen from 
 the beginning. This reconstruction measure 
 was an attempt to put the superior part of 
 the community under the control of the 
 inferior, — these parts separated by all 
 the prejudices of race, and by traditions of 
 mastership on the one side and of servi- 
 
 [ 194] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 tude on the other. I venture to say that it 
 was an experiment that would have failed 
 in any community in the United States, 
 whether it was presented as a piece of 
 philanthropy or of punishment. 
 
 A necessary sequence to the enfranchise- 
 ment of the neoTO was his education. How- 
 ever limited our idea of a proper common 
 education may be, it is a fundamental requisite 
 in our form of government that every voter 
 should be able to read and write. A recog- 
 nition of this truth led to the establishment 
 in the south of public schools for the whites 
 and blacks, — in short of a public school sys- 
 tem. We are not to question the sincerity 
 and generousness of this movement, however 
 it may have halted and lost enthusiasm in 
 many localities. 
 
 This opportunity of education (found also 
 in private schools) was hailed by the negroes, 
 certainly, with enthusiasm. It cannot be 
 doubted that at the close of the war there 
 was a general desire among the freedmen to 
 be instructed in the rudiments of knowledge 
 at least. Many parents, especially women, 
 
 [ 195 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 made great sacrifices to obtain for their chil- 
 dren this advantage which had been denied 
 to themselves. Many youths, both boys and 
 girls, entered into it with a genuine thirst 
 for knowledge which it was pathetic to see. 
 
 But it may be questioned, from develop- 
 ments that speedily followed, whether the 
 mass of negroes did not really desire this 
 advantage as a sign of freedom, rather than 
 from a wish for knowledge, and covet it be- 
 cause it had formerly been the privilege of 
 their masters, and marked a broad distinction 
 between the races. It was natural that this 
 should be so, when they had been excluded 
 from this privilege by pains and penalties, 
 when in some States it was one of the gravest 
 offences to teach a negro to read and write. 
 This prohibition was accounted for by the 
 peculiar sort of property that slavery created, 
 which would become insecure if intelligent, 
 for the alphabet is a terrible disturber of all 
 false relations in society. 
 
 But the effort at education went further 
 
 than the common school and the primary 
 
 essential instruction. It introduced the 
 
 [196] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 higher education. Colleges — usually called 
 universities — for negroes were established 
 in many southern States, created and stimu- 
 lated by the generosity of northern men and 
 societies, and often aided by the liberality 
 of the States where they existed. The 
 curriculum in these was that in colleges 
 generally, — the classics, the higher mathe- 
 matics, science, philosophy, the modern lan- 
 guages, and in some instances a certain tech- 
 nical instruction, which was being tried in 
 some northern colleges. The emphasis, how- 
 ever, was laid on liberal culture. This higher 
 education was offered to the mass that still 
 lacked the rudiments of intellectual training, 
 in the belief that education — the education 
 of the moment, the education of superim- 
 posed information, can realise the theory of 
 universal equality. 
 
 This experiment has now been in opera- 
 tion long enough to enable us to judge 
 something of its results and its promises 
 for the future. These results are of a nature 
 to lead us seriously to inquire whether our 
 effort was founded upon an adequate knowl- 
 
 [ 197 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 edge of the negro, of his present develop- 
 ment, of the requirements for his personal 
 welfare and evolution in the scale of civilisa- 
 tion, and for his training in useful and 
 honourable citizenship. I am speaking of 
 the majority, the mass to be considered in 
 any general scheme, and not of the excep- 
 tional individuals — exceptions that will 
 rapidly increase as the mass is lifted — 
 who are capable of taking advantage to the 
 utmost of all means of cultivation, and 
 who must always be provided with all the 
 opportunities needed. 
 
 Millions of dollars have been invested in 
 the higher education of the negro, while this 
 primary education has been, taking the 
 whole mass, wholly inadequate to his needs. 
 This has been upon the supposition that the 
 higher would compel the rise of the lower 
 with the undeveloped negro race as it does 
 with the more highly developed white race. 
 An examination of the soundness of this 
 expectation will not lead us far astray from 
 our subject. 
 
 The evolution of a race, distinguishing it 
 
 [ 198 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 from the formation of a nation, is a slow 
 process. We recognise a race by certain 
 peculiar traits, and by characteristics which 
 slowly change. They are acquired little by 
 little in an evolution which, historically, it is 
 often difficult to trace. They are due to the 
 environment, to the discipline of life, and to 
 what is technically called education. These 
 work together to make what is called char- 
 acter, race character, and it is this which Is 
 transmitted from generation to generation. 
 Acquirements are not hereditary, like habits 
 and peculiarities, physical or mental. A 
 man does not transmit to his descendants 
 his learning, though he may transmit the 
 aptitude for it. This is Illustrated in fac- 
 tories where skilled labour is handed down 
 and fixed in the same families, that is, where 
 the same kind of labour is continued from 
 one generation to another. The child, put 
 to work, has not the knowledge of the parent, 
 but a special aptitude in his skill and dex- 
 terity. Both body and mind have acquired 
 certain transmissible traits. The same thing 
 is seen on a larger scale in a whole nation, 
 
 [ 199] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 like the Japanese, who have been trained into 
 what seems an art instinct. 
 
 It is this character, quality, habit, the 
 result of a slow educational process, which 
 distinguishes one race from another. It is 
 this that the race transmits, and not the 
 more or less accidental education of a dec- 
 ade or an era. The Brahmins carry this idea 
 into the next life, and say that the departing 
 spirit carries with him nothing except this 
 individual character, no acquirements or in- 
 formation or extraneous culture. It was 
 perhaps in the same spirit that the sad 
 preacher in Ecclesiastes said, there is no 
 " knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, 
 whither thou goest." 
 
 It is by this character that we classify civ- 
 ilised and even semi-civilised races ; by this 
 slowly developed fibre, this slow accumula- 
 tion of inherent quality in the evolution of 
 the human being from lower to higher, that 
 continues to exist notwithstanding the power- 
 ful influence of governments and religions. 
 We are understood when we speak of the 
 
 French, the Italian, the Pole, the Spanish, 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 the English, the German, the Arab race, the 
 Japanese, and so on. It is what a foreign 
 writer calls, not inaptly, a collective race soul. 
 As it is slow in evolution, it is persistent 
 in enduring. 
 
 Further, we recognise it as a stage of 
 progress, historically necessary in the devel- 
 opment of man into a civilised adaptation to 
 his situation in this w^orld. It is a process 
 that cannot be much hurried, and a result 
 that cannot be leaped to out of barbarism by 
 any superimposition of knowledge or even 
 quickly by any change of environment. We 
 may be right in our modern notion that edu- 
 cation has a magical virtue that can work 
 any kind of transformation ; but we are cer- 
 tainly not right in supposing that it can do 
 this instantly, or that it can work this effect 
 upon a barbarous race in the same period of 
 time that it can upon one more developed, 
 one that has acquired at least a race con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Before going further, and in order to avoid 
 misunderstanding, it is proper to say that 
 I have the firmest belief in the ultimate de- 
 
 [ 20I ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 velopment of all mankind into a higher plane 
 than it occupies now. I should otherwise be 
 in despair. This faith will never desist in 
 the effort to bring about the end desired. 
 But, if we work with Providence, we must 
 work in the reasonable ways of Providence, 
 and add to our faith, patience. 
 
 It seems to be the rule in all history that 
 the elevation of a lower race is effected only 
 by contact with one higher in civilisation. 
 Both reform and progress come from ex- 
 terior influences. This is axiomatic, and ap- 
 plies to the fields of government, religion, 
 ethics, art, and letters. 
 
 We have been taught to regard Africa as a 
 dark, stolid continent, unawakened, unvisited 
 by the agencies and influences that have 
 transformed the world from ase to ao-e. Yet 
 it was in northern and northeastern Africa 
 that within historic periods three of the 
 most powerful and brilliant civilisations 
 were developed, — the Egyptian, the Cartha- 
 ginian, the Saracenic. That these civilisa- 
 tions had more than a surface contact with 
 
 the interior, we know. To take the most 
 
 [ 202] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 ancient of them, and that which longest en- 
 dured, the Eg3'ptian, the Pharaohs carried 
 their conquests and their power deep into 
 Africa. In tlic story of their invasions and 
 occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on 
 temple walls, we find the negro figuring as 
 captive and slave. This contact may not 
 have been a fruitful one for the elevation of 
 the negro, but it proves that for ages he was 
 in one way or another in contact with a su- 
 perior civilisation. In later days we find 
 little trace of it in the home of the negro, 
 but in Egypt the negro has left his impress 
 in the mixed blood of the Nile valley. 
 
 The most striking example of the contact 
 of the neo-ro with a hio;her civilisation is in 
 the powerful mediaeval empire of Songhay, 
 established in the heart of the negro coun- 
 try. The vast strip of Africa lying north of 
 the equator and south of the twentieth par- 
 allel and west of the upper Nile, was then, as 
 it is now, the territory of tribes distinctly de- 
 scribed as Nesfro. The river Nisfer runninof 
 northward from below Jenne to near Tim- 
 
 buctoo, and then turning west and south to 
 
 [ 203] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 the Gulf of Guinea, flows through one of the 
 richest valleys in the world. In richness it 
 is comparable to that of the Nile, and like 
 that of the Nile its fertility depends upon 
 the water of the central stream. Here arose 
 In early times the powerful empire of Song- 
 hay, which disintegrated and fell into tribal 
 confusion about the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century. For a long time the seat of 
 its power was the city of Jenne, in later days 
 it was Timbuctoo. 
 
 This is not the place to enlarge upon this 
 extraordinary piece of history. The best 
 account of the empire of Songhay is to be 
 found in the pages of Barth, the German 
 traveller, who had access to what seemed to 
 him a credible Arab history. Considerable 
 light Is thrown upon it by a recent volume 
 on Timbuctoo by M. Dubois, a French trav- 
 eller. M. Dubois finds reason to believe that 
 the founders of the Songhese empire came 
 from Yemen, and sought refuge from Mos- 
 lem fanaticism in Central Africa some 
 hundred and fifty years after the Hejira. 
 
 The origin of the empire is obscure, but the 
 
 [ 204] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 development was not indigenous. It seems 
 probable that tlie settlers, following traders, 
 penetrated to the Niger valle)^ from the 
 valley of the Nile as early as the third or 
 fourth century of our era. An evidence of 
 this early influence, which strengthened 
 from century to century, Dubois finds in the 
 architecture of Jenne and Timbuctoo. It is 
 not Roman or Saracenic or Gothic, it is 
 distinctly Pharaonic. But whatever the 
 origin of the Songhay empire, it became in 
 time Mohammedan, and so continued to the 
 end. Mohammedanism seems, however, to 
 have been imposed. Powerful as the empire 
 was, it was never free from tribal insurrec- 
 tion and internal troubles. The highest 
 mark of negro capacity developed in this his- 
 tory is, according to the record examined by 
 Barth, that one of the emperors was a negro. 
 From all that can be gathered in the 
 records, the mass of the negroes, which con- 
 stituted the body of this empire, remained 
 pagan, did not become, except in outward 
 conformity, Mohammedan and did not take 
 the Moslem civilisation as it was developed 
 
 [ 205 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 elsewhere, and that the disintegration of the 
 empire left the negro races practically where 
 they were before in point of development. 
 This fact, if it is not overturned by further 
 search, is open to the explanation that the 
 Moslem civilisation is not fitted to the de- 
 velopment of the African negro. 
 
 Contact, such as it has been, with higher 
 civilisations, has not in all these ages which 
 have witnessed the wonderful rise and de- 
 velopment of other races, much affected or 
 changed the negro. He is much as he 
 would be if he had been left to himself. 
 And left to himself, even in such a favour- 
 able environment as America, he is slow to 
 change. In Africa there has been no prog- 
 ress in organisation, government, art. No 
 negro tribe has ever invented a written 
 language. In his exhaustive work on the 
 History of Mankind, Professor Frederick 
 Ratzel, having studied thoroughly the negro 
 belt of Africa, says, " of writing properly so 
 called, neither do the modern negroes show 
 any trace, nor have traces of older writing 
 
 been found in negro countries." 
 
 [206] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 From this outline review wc come back to 
 tiie situation in the United States, where a 
 great mass of negroes — possibly over nine 
 millions of many shades of colours — is for 
 the first time brou^>ht into contact with 
 Christian civilisation. This mass is here to 
 make or mar our national life, and the prob- 
 lem of its destiny has to be met with our 
 own. What can we do, what ought we to 
 do, for his own good and for our peace and 
 national welfare ? 
 
 In the first place, it is impossible to escape 
 the profound impression that we have made 
 a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as 
 a race, in attempting to apply to him the 
 same treatment for the development of char- 
 acter that w^e would apply to a race more 
 highly organised. Has he developed the 
 race consciousness, the race soul, as I said 
 before, a collective soul, which so strongly 
 marks other races more or less civilised ac- 
 cording to our standards .f^ Do we find in 
 him, as a mass (individuals always excepted), 
 that slow deposit of training and education 
 
 called " character," any firm basis of order, 
 
 [ 207 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 initiative of action, the capacity of going 
 alone, any sure foundation of morality? It 
 has been said that a race may attain a good 
 degree of standing in the world without the 
 refinement of culture, but never without 
 virtue, either in the Roman or the modern 
 meaning of that word. 
 
 The African, now the American negro, 
 has come in the United States into a more 
 favourable position for development than he 
 has ever before had offered. He has come 
 to it through hardship, and his severe ap- 
 prenticeship is not ended. It is possible 
 that the historians centuries hence, looking 
 back over the rough road that all races have 
 travelled in their evolution, may reckon slav- 
 ery and the forced transportation to the new 
 world, a necessary step in the training of the 
 negro. We do not know. The ways of 
 Providence are not measurable by our foot 
 rules. We see that slavery was unjust, un- 
 economic, and the worst training for citizen- 
 ship in such a government as ours. It 
 stifled a number of germs that might have 
 
 produced a better development, such as in- 
 
 [208] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 dividuality, responsibility, and tlirift, — germs 
 absolutely necessary to the well-being of a 
 race. It laid no foundation of morality, 
 but in place of morality saw cultivated a 
 superstitious, emotional, hysterical religion. 
 It is true that it tauo-ht a savao-e race sub- 
 ordination and obedience. Nor did it stifle 
 certain inherent temperamental virtues, faith- 
 fulness, often highly developed, and frequently 
 cheerfulness and philosophic contentment in 
 a situation that \vould have broken the spirit 
 of a more sensitive race. In short, under all 
 the disadvantages of slavery the race showed 
 certain fine traits, qualities of humour, and 
 good humour, and capacity for devotion, 
 which were abundantly testified to by south- 
 erners during the progress of the Civil War. 
 It has, as a race, traits wholly distinct from 
 those of the whites, which are not only inter- 
 esting but might be a valuable contribution 
 to a cosmopolitan civilisation ; gifts also, such 
 as the love of music, and temperamental 
 gayety, mixed with a note of sadness, as in 
 the Hungarians. 
 
 But slavery brought about one result, and 
 
 14 [ 209 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 that the most difficult in the development 
 of a race from savagery, and especially a 
 tropical race, a race that has always been 
 idle in the luxuriance of a nature that sup- 
 plied its physical needs with little labour. 
 It taught the negro to work, it transformed 
 him, by compulsion it is true, into an indus- 
 trial being and held him in the habit of 
 industry for several generations. Perhaps 
 only force could do this, for it was a radical 
 transformation. I am glad to see that this 
 result of slavery is recognised by Mr, Booker 
 Washington, the ablest and most clear- 
 sighted leader the negro race has ever 
 had. 
 
 But something more was done under this 
 pressure, something more than creation of 
 a habit of physical exertion to productive 
 ends. Skill was developed. Skilled labour, 
 which needs brains, was carried to a high 
 degree of performance. On almost all the 
 southern plantations, and in the cities also, 
 negro mechanics were bred, excellent black- 
 smiths, good carpenters, and house-builders 
 
 capable of executing plans of high archi- 
 
 [210] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 tectural merit. Everywhere were negroes 
 skilled in trades, and competent in various 
 mechanical industries. 
 
 The opportunity and the disposition to 
 labour make the basis of all our civilisation. 
 The negro was taught to work, to be an 
 agriculturist, a mechanic, a material pro- 
 ducer of something useful. He was taught 
 this fundamental thing. Our higher edu- 
 cation, applied to him in his present devel- 
 opment, operates in exactly the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 This is a serious assertion. Its truth or 
 falsehood cannot be established by statistics, 
 but it is an opinion gradually formed by 
 experience, and the observation of men com- 
 petent to judge, who have studied the prob- 
 lem close at hand. Among the witnesses to 
 the failure of the result expected from the 
 establishment of colleges and universities for 
 the negro, are heard, from time to time, and 
 more frequently as time goes on, practical 
 men from the north, railway men, manufac- 
 turers, who have initiated business enterprises 
 at the south. Their testimony coincides 
 
 [211] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 with that of careful students of the eco- 
 nomic and social conditions. 
 
 There was reason to assume, from our 
 theory and experience of the higher educa- 
 tion in its effect upon white races, that the 
 result would be different from what it is. 
 When the negro colleges first opened, there 
 was a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of 
 study, a facility of acquirement, and a good 
 order that promised everything for the future. 
 It seemed as if the light then kindled would 
 not only continue to burn, but would pene- 
 trate all the dark and stolid communities. 
 It was my fortune to see many of these 
 institutions in their early days, and to believe 
 that they were full of the greatest promise 
 for the race. 
 
 I have no intention of criticising the gen- 
 erosity and the noble self-sacrifice that pro- 
 duced them, nor the aspirations of their 
 inmates. There is no doubt that they furnish 
 shining examples of emancipation from 
 ignorance, and of useful lives. But a few 
 years have thrown much light upon the 
 
 careers and characters of a great proportion 
 
 [212 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 of the graduates, and tlieir effect upon the 
 conimunitics of which they form a part, I 
 mean, of course, with regard to the industrial 
 and moral condition of those communities. 
 Have these colleges, as a whole,^ stimulated 
 industry, thrift, the inclination to settle down 
 to the necessary hard work of the world, or 
 have they bred idleness, indisposition to 
 work, a vaporous ambition in politics, and 
 that sort of conceit of gentility of which the 
 world has already enough? If any one is in 
 doubt about this he can satisfy himself by a 
 sojourn in different localities in the south. 
 The condition of New Orleans and its negro 
 universities is often cited. It is a favourable 
 example, because the ambition of the negro 
 has been aided there by influence outside 
 of the schools. The federal government 
 has imposed upon the intelligent and sensi- 
 tive population negro ofificials in high posi- 
 
 1 This sentence should have been further quahficd by 
 acknowledging the excellent work done by the colleges at 
 Atlanta and Nashville, w^hich, under exceptionally good 
 management, have sent out much-needed teachers. I be- 
 lieve that their success, however, is largely owing to their 
 practical features. — C. D. W. 
 
 [ 213 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 tions, because they were negroes and not 
 because they were specially fitted for those 
 positions by character or ability. It is my 
 belief that the condition of the race in- 
 New Orleans is lower than it was several 
 years ago, and that the influence of the 
 higher education has been in the wrong 
 direction. 
 
 This is not saying that the higher edu- 
 cation is responsible for the present con- 
 dition of the negro. Other influences have 
 retarded his elevation and the develop- 
 ment of proper character, and most im- 
 portant means have been neglected. I only 
 say that w^e have been disappointed in our 
 extravagant expectations of what this edu- 
 cation could do for a race undeveloped, 
 and so wanting in certain elements of 
 character, and that the millions of money 
 devoted to it might have been much better 
 applied. 
 
 We face a grave national situation. It 
 cannot be successfully dealt with sentimen- 
 tally. It should be faced with knowledge 
 
 and candour. We must admit our mistakes, 
 
 [214] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 both social and political, and set about the 
 solution of our problem with intelligent reso- 
 lution and a large charity. It is not simply 
 a southern question. It is a northern ques- 
 tion as well. For the truth of this I have 
 only to appeal to the consciousness of all 
 northern communities in which there are 
 negroes in any considerable numbers. Have 
 the negroes improved, as a rule (always 
 remembering the exceptions), in thrift, truth- 
 fulness, morality, in the elements of industri- 
 ous citizenship, even in States and towns 
 where there has been the least prejudice 
 against their education 1 In a paper read 
 at the last session of this Association, Pro- 
 fessor W. F. Willcox of Cornell University 
 showed by statistics that in proportion to 
 population there were more negro criminals 
 in the north than in the south. " The 
 negro prisoners in the southern States to ten 
 thousand negroes increased between 1880 
 and 1890 twenty-nine per cent, while the 
 white prisoners, to ten thousand whites in- 
 creased only eight per cent." " In the States 
 where slavery was never established, the 
 
 [-15] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 white prisoners increased seven per cent 
 faster than the white population, while the 
 negro prisoners no less than thirty-nine per 
 cent faster than the negro population. Thus 
 the increase of negro criminality, so far as it 
 is reflected in the number of prisoners, ex- 
 ceeded the increase of white criminality 
 more in the north than it did in the 
 south." 
 
 This statement was surprising. It cannot 
 be accounted for by colour prejudice at the 
 north ; it is related to the known shiftless- 
 ness and irresponsibility of a great portion 
 of the negro population. If it could be 
 believed that this shiftlessness is due to the 
 late state of slavery, the explanation would 
 not do away with the existing conditions. 
 Schools at the north have for a long time 
 been open to the negro ; though colour pre- 
 judice exists, he has not been on the whole 
 in an unfriendly atmosphere, and willing 
 hands have been stretched out to help him 
 in his ambition to rise. It is no doubt true, 
 as has been often said lately, that the negro 
 
 at the north has been crowded out of many 
 
 [216] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 occupations by more vigorous races, newly 
 come to this country, crowded out not only 
 of factory industries and agricultural, but of 
 the positions of servants, waiters, barbers, 
 and other minor ways of earning a living. 
 The general verdict is that this loss of posi- 
 tion is due to lack of stamina and trust- 
 w^orthiness. Wherever a negro has shown 
 himself able, honest, attentive to the moral 
 and economic duties of a citizen, either suc- 
 cessful in accumulating property or filling 
 honourably his station in life, he has gained 
 respect and consideration in the community 
 in which he is known ; and this is as true at 
 the south as at the north, notwithstanding 
 the race antagonism is more accentuated by 
 reason of the preponderance of negro popu- 
 lation there and the more recent presence 
 of slavery. Upon this ugly race antagonism 
 it is not necessary to enlarge here in discuss- 
 ing the problem of education, and I will 
 leave it with the single observation that I 
 have heard intelligent negroes, who were 
 honestly at work, accumulating property and 
 disposed to postpone active politics to a 
 
 [ 217 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 more convenient season, say that they had 
 nothing to fear from the intelligent white 
 population, but only from the envy of the 
 ignorant. 
 
 The whole situation is much aggravated 
 by the fact that there is a considerable 
 infusion of white blood in the negro race 
 in the United States, leading to complica- 
 tions and social aspirations that are infi- 
 nitely pathetic. Time only and no present 
 contrivance of ours can ameliorate this 
 condition. 
 
 I have made this outline of our negro 
 problem in no spirit of pessimism or of 
 prejudice, but in the belief that the only 
 way to remedy an evil or a difficulty is can- 
 didly and fundamentally to understand it. 
 Two things are evident : First, the negro 
 population is certain to increase in the 
 United States, in a ratio at least equal to 
 that of the whites. Second, the south needs 
 its labour. Its deportation is an idle dream. 
 The only visible solution is for the negro 
 to become an integral and an intelligent 
 
 part of the industrial community. The way 
 
 [218] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 may be long, but he must work his way up. 
 Sympathetic aid may do much, but the salva- 
 tion of the negro is in his own hands, in the 
 development of individual character and a 
 race soul. This is fully understood by his 
 wisest leaders. His worst enemy is the dem- 
 agogue who flatters him with the delusion 
 that all he needs for his elevation is freedom 
 and certain privileges that were denied him 
 in slavery. 
 
 In all the northern cities heroic efforts 
 are made to assimilate the foreign popula- 
 tion by education and instruction in Ameri- 
 canism. In the south, in the city and on 
 plantation, the same effort is necessary for 
 the negro, but it must be more radical and 
 fundamental. The common school must be 
 as fully sustained and as far reaching as it 
 is in the north, reaching the lowest in the 
 city slums and the most ignorant in the 
 agricultural districts, but to its strictly ele- 
 mental teaching must be added moral in- 
 structions, and training in industries and in 
 habits of industry. Only by such rudimen- 
 tary and industrial training can the mass of 
 
 [ 219 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 the negro race in the United States be ex- 
 pected to improve in character and position. 
 A top-dressing of culture on a field with no 
 depth of soil may for a moment stimulate 
 the promise of vegetation, but no fruit will 
 be produced. It is a gigantic task, and 
 generations may elapse before it can in any 
 degree be relaxed. 
 
 Why attempt it ? Why not let things drift 
 as they are ? Why attempt to civilise the 
 race within our doors, while there are so 
 many distant and alien races to whom we 
 ought to turn our civilising attention } The 
 answer is simple and does not need elabora- 
 tion. A growing ignorant mass in our body 
 politic, inevitably cherishing bitterness of 
 feeling, is an increasing peril to the public. 
 
 In order to remove this peril, by trans- 
 forming the negro into an industrial, law- 
 abiding citizen, identified with the prosperity 
 of his country, the cordial assistance of the 
 southern white population is absolutely es- 
 sential. It can only be accomplished by 
 regarding him as a man, with the natural 
 
 right to the development of his capacity and 
 
 [ 220] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 to contentment in a secure social state. The 
 effort for his elevation must be fundamental. 
 The opportunity of the common school must 
 be universal, and attendance in it compul- 
 sory. Beyond this, training in the decencies 
 of life, in conduct, and in all the industries, 
 must be offered in such industrial institu- 
 tions as that of Tuskegee. For the excep- 
 tional cases a higher education can be easily 
 provided for those who show themselves 
 worthy of it, but not offered as an indis- 
 criminate panacea. 
 
 The question at once arises as to the kind 
 of teachers for these schools of various grades. 
 It is one of the most difficult in the whole 
 problem. As a rule, there is little gain, 
 either in instruction or in elevation of char- 
 acter, if the teacher is not the superior of the 
 taught. The learners must respect the 
 attainments and the authority of the teacher. 
 It is a too frequent fault of our common- 
 school system that, owing to inadequate pay 
 and ignorant selections, the teachers are not 
 competent to their responsible task. The 
 hio^hest skill and attainment are needed to 
 
 [ 221 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 evoke the powers of the common mind, even 
 in a community called enlightened. Much 
 more are they needed when the community 
 is only slightly developed mentally and mor- 
 ally. The process of educating teachers of 
 this race, fit to promote its elevation, must be 
 a slow one. Teachers of various industries, 
 such as agriculture and the mechanic arts, 
 will be more readily trained than teachers of 
 the rudiments of learning in the common 
 schools. It is a very grave question whether, 
 with some exceptions, the school and moral 
 training of the race should not be for a consid- 
 erable time to come in the control of the white 
 race. But it must be kept in mind that 
 instructors cheap in character, attainments, 
 and breeding, will do more harm than good. 
 If we give ourselves to this work, we must 
 give of our best. 
 
 Without the cordial concurrence in this 
 effort of all parties, black and white, local 
 and national, it will not be fruitful in funda- 
 mental and permanent good. Each race 
 must accept the present situation and build on 
 it. To this end it is indispensable that one 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 great evil, which was inherent in the recon- 
 struction measures and is still persisted in, 
 shall be eliminated. The party allegiance of 
 the negro was bid for by the temptation of 
 office and position for which he was in no 
 sense fit. No permanent, righteous adjust- 
 ment of relations can come till this policy is 
 wholly abandoned. Politicians must cease 
 to make the negro a pawn in the game of 
 politics. 
 
 Let us admit that we have made a mistake. 
 We seem to have expected that we could 
 accomplish suddenly and by artificial contriv- 
 ances a development which historically has 
 always taken a long time. Without abate- 
 ment of effort or loss of patience, let us put 
 ourselves in the common-sense, the scientific, 
 the historic line. It is a gigantic task, only 
 to be accomplished by long labour in accord 
 with the Divine purpose. 
 
 *' Thou wilt not leave us in the dust ; 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why, — 
 He thinks he was not made to die ; 
 And thou hast made him ; thou art just. 
 
 [ 223 ] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 " Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 
 
 Will be the final goal of ill, 
 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. 
 
 " That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete." 
 
 [ 224] 
 
The Indeterminate Sentence 
 
 WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE 
 CRLVHNAL CLASS? 
 
 THE problem of dealing with the 
 criminal class seems insolvable, and 
 it undoubtedly is with present 
 methods. It has never been attempted on a 
 fully scientific basis, with due regard to the 
 protection of society and to the interests 
 of the criminal. 
 
 It is purely an economic and educational 
 problem, and must rest upon the same prin- 
 ciples that govern in any successful industry, 
 or in education, and that we recognise in 
 the conduct of life. That little progress 
 has been made is due to public indifference 
 to a vital question and to the action of senti- 
 mentalists, who, in their philanthropic zeal, 
 fancy that a radical reform can come without 
 radical discipline. We are largely wasting 
 our energies in petty contrivances instead of 
 striking at the root of the evil. 
 
 ^5 [ 225 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 What do we mean by the " criminal 
 class " ? It is necessary to define this with 
 some precision, in order to discuss intelli- 
 gently the means of destroying this class. A 
 criminal is one who violates a statute law, or, 
 as we say, commits a crime. The human 
 law takes cognisance of crime and not of 
 sin. But all men who commit crime are not 
 necessarily in the criminal class. Speaking 
 technically, we put in that class those whose 
 sole occupation is crime, who live by it as a 
 profession, and who have no other permanent 
 industry. They prey upon society. They 
 are by their acts at war upon it, and are 
 outlaws. 
 
 The State is to a certain extent respon- 
 sible for this class, for it has trained most of 
 them, from youth up, through successive de- 
 tentions in lock-ups, city prisons, county 
 jails, and in State prisons, and peniten- 
 tiaries on relatively short sentences, under 
 influences which tend to educate them as 
 criminals and confirm them in a bad life. 
 That is to say, if a man once violates the 
 
 law and is caught, he is put into a machine 
 
 [226] 
 
INDETERMINArE SENTENCE 
 
 from which it is very difficult for him to 
 escape without furtlier deterioration. It is 
 not simply that the State puts a brand on 
 him in the eyes of the community, but it 
 takes away his self-respect without giving 
 him an opportunity to recover it. Once 
 recognised as in the criminal class, he has 
 no further concern about the State than that 
 of evading its penalties so far as is consistent 
 with pursuing his occupation of crime. 
 
 To avoid misunderstanding as to the sub- 
 ject of this paper, it is necessary to say that 
 it is not dealing with the question of prison 
 reform in its whole extent. It attempts to 
 consider only a pretty well-defined class. 
 But in doing this it does not say that other 
 aspects of our public peril from crime are 
 not as important as this. We cannot relax 
 our efforts in regard to the relations of pov- 
 erty, drink, and unsanitary conditions, as 
 leading to crime. We have still to take care 
 of the exposed children, of those with par- 
 entage and surroundings inclining to crime, 
 of the degenerate and the unfortunate. We 
 
 have to keep up the warfare all along the 
 
 [ 227 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 line against the demoralisation of society. 
 But we have here to deal with a specific 
 manifestation; we have to capture a strong- 
 hold, the possession of which will put us in 
 much better position to treat in detail the 
 general evil. 
 
 Why should we tolerate any longer a pro- 
 fessional criminal class ? It is not large. It 
 is contemptibly small compared with our 
 seventy millions of people. If I am not 
 mistaken, a late estimate gave us less than 
 fifty thousand persons in our State prisons 
 and penitentiaries. If we add to them those 
 at large who have served one or two terms, 
 and are generally known to the police, we 
 shall not have probably more than eighty 
 thousand of the criminal class. But call it a 
 hundred thousand. It is a body that seventy 
 millions of people ought to take care of with 
 little difficulty. And we certainly ought to 
 stop its increase. But we do not. The class 
 grows every day. Those who watch the 
 criminal reports are alarmed by the fact 
 that an increasing number of those arrested 
 
 for felonies are discharged convicts. This is 
 
 [ 228 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 an unmistakable evidence of the growth of 
 the outlaw classes. 
 
 But this Is not all. Our taxes are greatly 
 increased on account of this class. We re- 
 quire more police to watch those who arc at 
 large and preying on society. We expend 
 more yearly for apprehending and trying 
 those caught, for the machinery of criminal 
 justice, and for the recurring farce of im- 
 prisoning on short sentences and discharging 
 those felons to go on with their work of 
 swindling and robbing. It would be good 
 economy for the public, considered as a tax- 
 payer, to pay for the perpetual keep of these 
 felons in secure confinement. 
 
 And still this is not the worst. We are 
 
 all living in abject terror of these licensed 
 
 robbers. We fear robbery night and day ; 
 
 we live behind bolts and bars (which should 
 
 be reserved for the criminal) and we are in 
 
 hourly peril of life and property in our 
 
 homes and on the highways. But the evil 
 
 does not stop here. By our conduct we are 
 
 encouraging the growth of the criminal class, 
 
 and we are inviting disregard of law^ and 
 
 [ 229 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 diffusing a spirit of demoralisation through- 
 out the country. 
 
 I have spoken of the criminal class as very- 
 limited; that is, the class that lives by the 
 industry of crime alone. But it is not iso- 
 lated, and it has widespread relations. There 
 is a large portion of our population not tech- 
 nically criminals, which is interested in main- 
 taining this criminal class. Every felon is a 
 part of a vast network of criminality. He 
 has his dependents, his allies, his society of 
 vice, all the various machinery of temptation 
 and indulgence. 
 
 It happens, therefore, that there is great 
 sympathy with the career of the lawbreakers, 
 many people are hanging on them for sup- 
 port, and among them the so-called criminal 
 lawyers. Any legislation likely to interfere 
 seriously with the occupation of the criminal 
 class or with its increase is certain to meet 
 with the opposition of a large body of voters. 
 With this active opposition of those inter- 
 ested, and the astonishing indifference of the 
 general public, it is easy to see why so little 
 is done to relieve us of this intolerable bur- 
 
 [ 230 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 den. The fact is, we Gfo on increasins: our 
 expenses for police, for criminal procedure, 
 for jails and prisons, and we go on increasing 
 the criminal class and those affiliated with it. 
 And what do we gain by our present 
 method .f^ We do not gain the protection of 
 society, and we do not gain the reformation 
 of the criminal. These two statements do 
 not admit of contradiction. Even those who 
 cling to the antiquated notion that the busi- 
 ness of society is to punish the offender 
 must confess that in this game society Is 
 getting the worst of it. Society suffers all 
 the time, and the professional criminal goes 
 on with his occupation, interrupted only by 
 periods of seclusion, during which he Is 
 comfortably housed and fed. The punish- 
 ment he most fears Is being compelled to 
 relinquish his criminal career. The object 
 of punishment for violation of statute law is 
 not vengeance. It is not to Inflict Injury for 
 injury. Only a few persons now hold to 
 that. They say now that if it does little 
 good to the offender, it is deterrent as to 
 others. Now, Is our present system deter- 
 
 [ 231 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 rent? The statute law, no doubt, prevents 
 many persons from committing crime, but 
 our method of administering it certainly 
 does not lessen the criminal class, and it 
 does not adequately protect society. Is it 
 not time we tried, radically, a scientific, a 
 disciplinary, a really humanitarian method ? 
 
 The proposed method is the indeterminate 
 sentence. This strikes directly at the crim- 
 inal class. It puts that class beyond the 
 power of continuing its depredations upon 
 society. It is truly deterrent, because it is a 
 notification to any one intending to enter 
 upon that method of living that his career 
 ends with his first felony. As to the general 
 effects of the indeterminate sentence, I will 
 repeat here what I recently wrote for the 
 Yale Law Journal: 
 
 It is unnecessary to say in a law journal that 
 the indeterminate sentence is a measure as yet 
 untried. The phrase has passed into current 
 speech, and a considerable portion of the public 
 is under the impression that an experiment of 
 the indeterminate sentence is actually being 
 made. It is, however, still a theory, not adopted 
 
 [ 232 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 in any legislation or in practice anywhere in the 
 world. 
 
 The misconception in regard to this has arisen 
 from the fact that under certain regulations paroles 
 are granted before the expiration of the statutory 
 sentence. 
 
 An indeterminate sentence is a commitment to 
 prison without any limit. It is exactly such a 
 commitment as the court makes to an asylum of 
 a man who is proved to be insane, and it is par- 
 alleled by the practice of sending a sick man to 
 the hospital until he is cured. 
 
 The introduction of the indeterminate sentence 
 into our criminal procedure would be a radical 
 change in our criminal legislation and practice. 
 The original conception was that the offender 
 against the law should be punished, and that the 
 punishment should be made to fit the crime, an 
 opera boiijfe conception which has been aban- 
 doned in reasoning though not in practice. Under 
 this conception the criminal code was arbitrarily 
 constructed, so much punishment being set down 
 opposite each criminal offence, without the least 
 regard to the actual guilt of the man as an in- 
 dividual sinner. 
 
 Within the present century considerable 
 advance has been made in regard to prison reform, 
 especially with reference to the sanitary condition 
 
 [ 233 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 of places of confinement. And besides this, efforts 
 of various kinds have been made with regard to 
 the treatment of convicts, which show that the 
 idea was gaining ground that criminals should be 
 treated as individuals. The application of the 
 English ticket-of-leave system was one of these 
 efforts ; it was based upon the notion that, if any 
 criminal showed sufficient evidence of a wish to 
 lead a different life, he should be conditionally re- 
 leased before the expiration of his sentence. The 
 parole system in the United States was an attempt 
 to carry out the same experiment, and with it 
 went along the practice which enabled the pris- 
 oner to shorten the time of his confinement by 
 good behaviour. In some of the States reforma- 
 tories have been established to which convicts 
 have been sent under a sort of sliding sentence ; 
 that is, with the privilege given to the authorities 
 of the reformatory to retain the offender to the 
 full statutory term for which he might have been 
 sentenced to State prison, unless he had evidently 
 reformed before the expiration of that period. 
 That is to say, if a penal offence entitled the judge 
 to sentence the prisoner for any period from two 
 to fifteen years, he could be kept in the reforma- 
 tory at the discretion of the authorities for the full 
 statutory term. It is from this law that the public 
 notion of an indeterminate sentence is derived. 
 
 [ 234] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 It is, in fact, determinate, because the statute pre- 
 scribes its limit. 
 
 The introduction of the tickct-of-leave, and the 
 parole systems, and the earning of time by good 
 behaviour were philanthropic suggestions and 
 promising experiments which have not been justi- 
 fied by the results. It is not necessary at this 
 time to argue that no human discretion is ade- 
 quate to mete out just punishment for crimes; 
 and it has come to be admitted generally, by men 
 enlightened on this subject, that the real basis for 
 dealing with the criminal rests, firstly, upon the 
 right of society to secure itself against the attacks 
 of the vicious, and secondly, upon the duty im- 
 posed upon society, to reform the criminal if that 
 is possible. It is patent to the most superficial 
 observation that our present method does not pro- 
 tect society, and does not lessen the number of the 
 criminal class, either by deterrent methods or by 
 reformatory processes, except in a very limited 
 v^ay. 
 
 Our present method is neither economic nor 
 scientific nor philanthropic. If we consider the 
 well-defined criminal class alone, it can be said 
 that our taxes and expenses for police and the 
 whole criminal court machinery, for dealing with 
 those who are apprehended, and watching those 
 who are preying upon society, yearly increase, 
 
 [ 235 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 while all private citizens in their own houses or in 
 the streets live in constant terror of the depreda- 
 tions of this class. Considered from the scientific 
 point of view, our method is absolutely crude, and 
 but little advance upon mediaeval conditions; and 
 while it has its sentimental aspects, it is not real 
 philanthropy, because comparatively few of the 
 criminal class are permanently rescued. 
 
 The indeterminate sentence has two distinct 
 objects : one h the absolute protection of society 
 from the out)aws whose only business in life is to 
 prey upon society; and the second is the placing 
 of these offiiiders in a position where they can be 
 kept long enough for scientific treatment as de- 
 cadent hunaan beings, in the belief that their lives 
 can be changed in their purpose. No specific 
 time can be predicted in which a man by dis- 
 cipline can be expected to lay aside his bad habits 
 and pu> on good habits, because no two human 
 beings •are alike, and it is therefore necessary that 
 an indefinite time in each case should be allowed 
 for the experiment of reformation. 
 
 We have now gone far enough to see that the 
 ticket-of-leave system, the parole system as we ad- 
 minister it in the wState prisons (I except now some 
 of the reformatories), and the good conduct 
 method are substantially failures, and must con- 
 tinue to be so until they rest upon the absolute 
 
 [ 236 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 indeterminate sentence. They are worse than 
 failures now, because the pubHc mind is lulled 
 into a false security by them, and efforts at gen- 
 uine prison reform are defeated. 
 
 It is very significant that the criminal class 
 adapted itself readily to the parole system with its 
 sliding scale. It was natural that this should be 
 so, for it fits in perfectly well with their scheme of 
 life. This is to them a sort of business career, 
 interrupted now and then only by occasional 
 limited periods of seclusion. Any device that 
 shall shorten those periods is welcome to them. 
 As a matter of fact, we see in the State prisons 
 that the men most likely to shorten their time by 
 good behaviour, and to get released on parole be- 
 fore the expiration of their sentence, are the men 
 who make crime their career. They accept this 
 discipline as a part of their lot in life, and it does 
 not interfere with their business any more than 
 the occasional bankruptcy of a merchant interferes 
 with his pursuits. 
 
 It follows, therefore, that society is not likely to 
 get security for itself, and the criminal class is not 
 likely to be reduced essentially or reformed, with- 
 out such a radical measure as the indeterminate 
 sentence, which, accompanied, of course, by scien- 
 tific treatment, would compel the convict to 
 change his course of life, or to stay perpetually in 
 confinement. [ 237 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 Of course, the indeterminate sentence would rad- 
 ically change our criminal jurisprudence and our 
 statutory provisions in regard to criminals. It 
 goes without saying that it is opposed by the 
 entire criminal class, and by that very considerable 
 portion of the population which is dependent on 
 or affiliated with the criminal class, which seeks to 
 evade the law and escape its penalties. It is also 
 opposed by a small portion of the legal profession 
 which gets its living out of the criminal class, and 
 it is sure to meet the objection of the sentimental- 
 ists who have peculiar notions about depriving a 
 man of his liberty, and it also has to overcome the 
 objections of many who are guided by precedents, 
 and who think the indeterminate sentence would 
 be an infringement of the judicial prerogative. 
 
 It is well to consider this latter a little further. 
 Our criminal code, artificial and indiscriminating 
 as it is, is the growth of ages and is the result of 
 the notion that society ought to take vengeance 
 upon the criminal, at least that it ought to punish 
 him, and that the judge, the interpreter of the 
 criminal law, was not only the proper person to 
 determine the guilt of the accused, by the aid of 
 the jury, but was the sole person to judge of the 
 amount of punishment he should receive for his 
 crime. Now two functions are involved here : one 
 is the determination that the accused has broken 
 
 [238] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 the law, the other is gauging within the rules of the 
 code the punishment that each individual should 
 receive. It is a theological notion that the divine 
 punishment for sin is somehow delegated to man 
 for the punishment of crime, but it does not need 
 any argument to show that no tribunal is able with 
 justice to mete out punishment in any individual 
 case, for probably the same degree of guilt does 
 not attach to two men in the violation of the same 
 statute, and while, in the rough view of the criminal 
 law, even, one ought to have a severe penalty, the 
 other should be treated with more leniency. All 
 that the judge can do under the indiscriminating 
 provisions of the statute is to make a fair guess at 
 what the man should suffer. 
 
 Under the present enlightened opinion which 
 sees that not punishment but the protection of 
 society and the good of the criminal are the things 
 to be aimed at, the judge's office would naturally 
 be reduced to the task of determining the guilt of 
 the man on trial, and then the care of him would 
 be turned over to expert treatment, exactly as in a 
 case when the judge determines the fact of a man's 
 insanity. 
 
 If objection is made to the indeterminate sen- 
 tence on the ground that it is an unusual or cruel 
 punishment, it may be admitted that it is unusual, 
 but that commitment to detention cannot be called 
 
 [ ^39 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 cruel when the convict is given the key to the 
 house in which he is confined. It is for him to 
 choose whether he will become a decent man and 
 go back into society, or whether he will remain 
 a bad man and stay in confinement. For the 
 criminal who is, as we might say, an accidental 
 criminal, or for the criminal who is susceptible to 
 good influences, the term of imprisonment under 
 the indeterminate sentence would be shorter than 
 it would be safe to make it for criminals under 
 the statute. The incorrigible offender, however, 
 would be cut off at once and forever from his 
 occupation, which is, as we said, varied by periodic 
 residence in the comfortable houses belonging to 
 the State. 
 
 A necessary corollary of the indeterminate sen- 
 tence is that every State prison and penitentiary 
 should be a reformatory, in the modern meaning of 
 that term. It would be against the interest of 
 society, all its instincts of justice, and the height 
 of cruelty to an individual criminal to put him in 
 prison without limit unless all the opportunities 
 were afforded him for changing his habits radically. 
 It may be said in passing that the indeterminate 
 sentence would be in itself to any man a great 
 stimulus to reform, because his reformation would 
 be the only means of his terminating that sentence. 
 At the same time a man left to himself, even in the 
 
 [ 240] 
 
INDETERMINATE SE NTE NC E 
 
 best ordered of our State prisons which is not a 
 reformatory, would be scarcely likely to make 
 much improvement. 
 
 I have not space in this article to consider the 
 character of the reformatory; that subject is fortu- 
 nately engaging the attention of scientific people 
 as one of the most interesting of our modern prob- 
 lems. To take a decadent human being, a wreck 
 physically and morally, and try to make a man of 
 him, that is an attempt worthy of a people who 
 claim to be civilised. An illustration of what can 
 be done in this direction is furnished by the Elmira 
 Reformatory, where the experiment is being made 
 with most encouraging results, which, of course, 
 would be still better if the indeterminate sentence 
 were brought to its aid. 
 
 When the indeterminate sentence has been 
 spoken of with a view to legislation, the question 
 has been raised whether it should be applied to 
 prisoners on the first, second, or third conviction 
 of a penal offence. Legislation in regard to the 
 parole system has also considered whether a man 
 should be considered in the criminal class on his 
 first conviction for a penal offence. Without enter- 
 ing upon this question at length, I will suggest that 
 the convict should, for his own sake, have the inde- 
 terminate sentence applied to him upon conviction 
 of his first penal offence. He is much more likely 
 i6 [ 241 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 to reform then than he would be after he had had 
 a term in the State prison and was again convicted, 
 and the chance of his reformation would be lessened 
 by each subsequent experience of this kind. The 
 great object of the indeterminate sentence, so far 
 as the security of society is concerned, is to dimin- 
 ish the number of the criminal class, and this will 
 be done when it is seen that the first felony a man 
 commits is likely to be his last, and that for a 
 young criminal contemplating this career there is 
 in this direction " no thoroughfare." By his very 
 first violation of the statute he walks into confine- 
 ment, to stay there until he has given up the pur- 
 pose of such a career. 
 
 In the limits of this paper I have been obliged 
 to confine myself to remarks upon the indeter- 
 minate sentence itself, without going into the 
 question of the proper organisation of reformatory 
 agencies to be applied to the convict, and without 
 consideration of the means of testing the reforma- 
 tion of a man in any given case. I will only add 
 that the methods at Elmira have passed far beyond 
 the experimental stage in this matter. 
 
 The necessary effect of the adoption of 
 the indeterminate sentence for felonies is 
 that every State prison and penitentiary 
 
 must be a reformatory. The convict goes 
 
 [ 242 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 into it for the term of a year at least (since 
 the criminal law, according to ancient prec- 
 edent, might require that, and because the 
 discipline of the reformatory would require 
 it as a practical rule), and he stays there 
 until, in the judgment of competent authority, 
 he is fit to be trusted at large. 
 
 If he is incapable of reform, he must stay 
 there for his natural life. He is a free agent. 
 He can decide to lead an honest life and 
 have his liberty, or he can elect to work for 
 the State all his life in criminal confinement. 
 
 When I say that every State prison is to 
 be a reformatory, I except, of course, from 
 its operation, those sentenced for life for 
 murder, or other capital offences, and those 
 who have proved themselves incorrigible by 
 repeated violations of their parole. 
 
 It is necessary now to consider the treat- 
 ment in the reformatory. Only a brief 
 outline of it can be given here, with a general 
 statement of the underlying principles. The 
 practical application of these principles can 
 be studied in the Elmira Reformatory of New 
 York, the only prison for felons where the 
 
 [ 243 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 proposed system is carried out with the 
 needed disciplinary severity. In studying 
 Elmira, however, it must be borne in mind 
 that the best effects cannot be obtained there, 
 owing to the lack of the indeterminate sen- 
 tence. In this institution the convict can 
 only be detained for the maximum term pro- 
 vided in the statute for his offence. When 
 that is reached, the prisoner is released, 
 whether he is reformed or not. 
 
 The system of reform under the indeter- 
 minate sentence, which for convenience may 
 be called the Elmira system, is scientific, and 
 it must be administered entirely by trained 
 men and by specialists ; the same sort of 
 training for the educational and industrial 
 work as is required in a college or an indus- 
 trial school, and the special fitness required 
 for an alienist in an insane asylum. The 
 discipline of the establishment must be equal 
 to that of a military school. 
 
 We have so far advanced in civilisation 
 that we no longer think of turning the insane, 
 the sick, the feeble-minded, over to the care 
 of men without training chosen by the chance 
 
 [ 244] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 of politics. They are put under specialists 
 for treatment. It is as necessary that con- 
 victs should be under the care of specialists, 
 for they are the most difficult and interesting 
 subjects for scientific treatment. If not 
 criminals by heredity, they are largely made 
 so by environment; they are either physical 
 degenerates or they are brutalised by vice. 
 They have lost the power of distinguishing 
 right from wrong; they commonly lack will- 
 power, and so are incapable of changing their 
 habits without external influence. In short, 
 the ordinary criminal is unsound and diseased 
 in mind and body. 
 
 To deal with this sort of human decadent 
 is, therefore, the most interesting problem 
 that can be offered to the psychologist, to the 
 physiologist, to the educator, to the believer 
 in the immortality of the soul. He is still a 
 man, not altogether a mere animal, and there 
 is always a possibility that he may be made 
 a decent man, and a law-abiding, productive 
 member of society. 
 
 Here, indeed, is a problem worthy of the 
 application of all our knowledge of mind and 
 
 [ 245 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 of matter, of our highest scientific attain- 
 ments. But it is the same problem that we 
 have in all our education, be it the training 
 of the mind, the development of the body, or 
 the use of both to good ends. And it goes 
 without saying that its successful solution, in 
 a reformatory for criminals, depends upon the 
 character of the man who administers the 
 institution. There must be at the head of it 
 a man of character, of intellectual force, of 
 administrative ability, and all his subordinate 
 officers must be fitted for their special task, 
 exactly as they should be for a hospital, or a 
 military establishment, for a college, or for a 
 school of practical industries. And when 
 such men are demanded, they will be forth- 
 coming, just as they are in any department 
 in life, when a business is to be developed, a 
 great engineering project to be undertaken, 
 or an army to be organised and disciplined. 
 
 The development of our railroad system 
 produced a race of great railroad men. The 
 protection of society by the removal and 
 reform of the criminal class, when the public 
 
 determines upon it, will call into the service 
 
 [ 246 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 a class of men fitted for the great work. We 
 know this is so because already, since the 
 discussion of this question has been current, 
 and has passed into actual experiment, a race 
 of workers and prison superintendents all 
 over the country have come to the front who 
 are entirely capable of administering the 
 reform system under the indeterminate sen- 
 tence. It is in this respect, and not in the 
 erection of model prisons, that the great 
 advance in penology has been made in the 
 last twenty years. Men of scientific attain- 
 ment are more and more giving their atten- 
 tion to this problem as the most important 
 in our civilisation. And science is ready to 
 take up this problem when the public is tired 
 and ashamed of being any longer harried and 
 bullied and terrorised over by the criminal 
 class. 
 
 The note of this reform is discipline, and 
 its success rests upon the law of habit. We 
 are all creatures of habit, physical and mental. 
 Habit is formed by repetition of any action. 
 Many of our physical habits have become 
 automatic. Without entering into a physio- 
 
 [247] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 logical argument, we know that repetition 
 produces habit, and that, if this is long con- 
 tinued, the habit becomes inveterate. We 
 know also that there is a habit, physical and 
 moral, of doing right as well as doing wrong. 
 The criminal has the habit of doing wrong. 
 We propose to submit him to influences that 
 will change that habit. We also know that 
 this is not accomplished by suppressing that 
 habit, but by putting a good one in its place. 
 
 It is true in this case that nature does not 
 like a vacuum. The thoughts of men are 
 not changed by leaving them to themselves, 
 they are changed by substituting other 
 thoughts. 
 
 The whole theory of the Elmira system is 
 to keep men long enough under a strict 
 discipline to change their habits. This dis- 
 cipline is administered in three ways. They 
 are put to school ; they are put at work ; they 
 are prescribed minute and severe rules of 
 conduct, and in the latter training is included 
 military drill. 
 
 The school and the workshop are both 
 
 primarily for discipline and the formation 
 
 [248] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 of new habits. Only incidentally are the 
 school and the workshop intended to fit a 
 man for an occupation outside of the prison. 
 The whole discipline is to put a man in pos- 
 session of his faculties, to give him self- 
 respect, to get him in the way of leading a 
 normal and natural life. But it is true that 
 what he acquires by the discipline of study 
 and the discipline of work will be available 
 in his earning an honest living. Keep a 
 man long enough in this three-ply discipline, 
 and he will form permanent habits of well- 
 doing. If he cannot and will not form such 
 habits, his place is in confinement, where he 
 cannot prey upon society. 
 
 There is not space here to give the de- 
 tails of the practices at Elmira. They are 
 easily attainable. But I will notice one or 
 two objections that have been made. One is 
 that in the congregate system men neces- 
 sarily learn evil from each other. This is, 
 of course, an evil. It is here, however, 
 partially overcome by the fact that the in- 
 mates are kept so busy in the variety of dis- 
 cipline applied to them, that they have little 
 
 [ 249 ] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 or no time for anything else. They study 
 hard, and are under constant supervision 
 as to conduct. And then their prospect of 
 parole depends entirely upon the daily record 
 they make, and upon their radical change of 
 intention. At night they are separated in 
 their cells. During the day they are asso- 
 ciated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, 
 and this association is absolutely necessary 
 to their training. In separation from their 
 fellows, they could not be trained. Fear is 
 expressed that men will deceive their keepers 
 and the board which is to pass upon them, 
 and obtain parole when they do not deserve 
 it. As a matter of fact, men under this dis- 
 cipline cannot successfully play the hypocrite 
 to the experts who watch them. It is only 
 in the ordinary prison where the parole is in 
 use with no adequate discipline, and without 
 the indefinite sentence, that deception can 
 be practised. But suppose a man does play 
 the hypocrite so as to deceive the officers, 
 who know him as well as any employer 
 knows his workmen or any teacher knows 
 
 his scholars, and deceives the independent 
 
 [250] 
 
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 
 
 board so as to get a parole. If he violates 
 that parole, he can be renianded to the re- 
 formatory, and it will be exceedingly difficult 
 for him to get another parole. And, if he 
 should again violate his parole, he would be 
 considered incorrigible and be placed in a 
 life prison. 
 
 We have tried all other means of protect- 
 ing society, of lessening the criminal class, 
 of reforming the criminal. The proposed 
 indeterminate sentence, with reformatory dis- 
 cipline, is the only one that promises to re- 
 lieve society of the insolent domination and 
 the terrorism of the criminal class ; is the 
 only one that can deter men from making 
 a career of crime ; is the only one that offers 
 a fair prospect for the reformation of the 
 criminal offender. 
 
 Why not try it ? Why not put the whole 
 system of criminal jurisprudence and pro- 
 cedure for the suppression of crime upon a 
 sensible and scientific basis ? 
 
 [-51] 
 
The Life -Saving and 
 Li fe -Prolonging Art 
 
 IN the minds of the pubhc there is a 
 mystery about the practice of medicine. 
 It deals more or less with the unknown, 
 with the occult, it appeals to the imagina- 
 tion. Doubtless confidence In its practi- 
 tioners is still somewhat due to the belief 
 that they are familiar with the secret proc- 
 esses of nature, if they are not in actual 
 alliance with the supernatural. Investiga- 
 tion of the ground of the popular faith 
 in the doctor would lead us into meta- 
 physics. And yet our physical condition 
 has much to do with this faith. It is apt 
 to be weak when one is in perfect health ; 
 but when one is sick It grows strong. Saint 
 and sinner both warm up to the doctor 
 when the Judgment Day heaves In view. 
 
 In the popular apprehension the doc- 
 tor is still the Medicine Man. We smile 
 
 [253 ] 
 
THE LIFE-SAFING AND 
 
 when we hear about his antics in barbarous 
 tribes ; he dresses fantastically, he puts 
 horns on his head, he draws circles on the 
 ground, he dances about the patient, shak- 
 ing his rattle and uttering incantations. 
 There is nothing to laugh at. He is mak- 
 ing an appeal to the imagination. And 
 sometimes he cures, and sometimes he kills ; 
 in either case he gets his fee. What right 
 have we to laugh 1 We live in an enlight- 
 ened age, and yet a great proportion of the 
 people, perhaps not a majority, still be- 
 lieve in incantations, have faith in igno- 
 rant practitioners who advertise a " natural 
 gift," or a secret process or remedy, and 
 prefer the charlatan who is exactly on the 
 level of the Indian Medicine Man, to the 
 regular practitioner, and to the scientific 
 student of mind and body and of the prop- 
 erties of the materia medica. Why, even 
 here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get 
 a law to protect the community from the 
 imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, 
 and to require of a man some evidence of 
 capacity and training and skill, before he 
 
 [ 254] 
 
LIFE-PR LONGING ART 
 
 is let loose to experiment upon suffering 
 humanity. Our teachers must pass an 
 examination — though the examiner some- 
 times does not know as much as the can- 
 didate, — for misguiding the youthful mind ; 
 the lawyer cannot practise without study 
 and a formal admission to the bar; and 
 even the clergyman is not accepted in any 
 responsible charge until he has given evi- 
 dence of some moral and intellectual fit- 
 ness. But the profession affecting directly 
 the health and life of every human body, 
 which needs to avail itself of the accumu- 
 lated experience, knowledge, and science of 
 all the ages, is open to every ignorant and 
 stupid practitioner on the credulity of the 
 public. Why cannot we get a law regulat- 
 ing the profession which is of most vital 
 interest to all of us, excluding ignorance 
 and quackery .f^ Because the majority of 
 our legislature, representing, I suppose, the 
 majority of the public, believe in the " nat- 
 ural bone-setter," the herb doctor, the root 
 doctor, the old woman who brews a decoc- 
 tion of swamp medicine, the " natural gift '* 
 
 [255] 
 
THE LIFE-SAFING AND 
 
 of some dabbler in diseases, the magnetic 
 healer, the faith cure, the mind cure, the 
 Christian Science cure, the eflficacy of a 
 prescription rapped out on a table by some 
 hysterical medium, — in anything but sound 
 knowledge, education in scientific methods, 
 steadied by a sense of public responsibility. 
 Not long ago, on a cross-country road, I 
 came across a woman in a farmhouse, 
 where I am sure the barnyard drained into 
 the well, who was sick ; she had taken a 
 shop-full of patent medicines. I advised 
 her to send for a doctor. She had no 
 confidence in doctors, but said she reck- 
 oned she would get along now, for she 
 had sent for the seventh son of a seventh 
 son, and did n't I think he could certainly 
 cure her? I said that combination ought 
 to fetch any disease except agnosticism. 
 That woman probably influenced a vote 
 in the legislature. The legislature believes 
 in incantations ; it ought to have in atten- 
 dance an Indian Medicine Man. 
 
 We think the world is progressing in en- 
 lightenment; I suppose it is — inch by inch. 
 
 [256] 
 
LIFE-PR O LONGING ART 
 
 But it is not easy to name an age that has 
 cherished more dekisions than ours, or been 
 more superstitious, or more credulous, more 
 eager to run after quackery. Especially is 
 this true in regard to remedies for diseases, 
 and the faith in healers and quacks outside 
 of the regular, educated professors of the 
 medical art. Is this an exaggeration ? Con- 
 sider the quantity of proprietary medicines 
 taken in this country, some of them harm- 
 less, some of them good in some cases, some 
 of them injurious, but generally taken with- 
 out advice and in absolute ignorance of the 
 nature of the disease or the specific action of 
 the remedy. The drug-shops are full of 
 them, especially in country towns ; and in 
 the far west and on the Pacific coast I have 
 been astonished at the quantity and variety 
 displayed. They are found in almost every 
 house ; the country is literally dosed to death 
 with these manufactured nostrums and pana- 
 ceas — and that is the most popular medi- 
 cine which can be used for the greatest 
 number of internal and external diseases 
 and injuries. Many newspapers are half sup- 
 ^7 [257] 
 
THE LIFE-'SAVING AND 
 
 ported by advertising them, and millions and 
 millions of dollars are invested in this popu- 
 lar industry. Needless to say that the pa- 
 tented remedies most in request are those 
 that profess a secret and unscientific origin. 
 Those most " purely vegetable " seem most 
 suitable to the wooden-heads who believe in 
 them, but if one were sufficiently advertised 
 as not containing a single trace of vegetable 
 matter, avoiding thus all possible conflict of 
 one organic life with another organic life, it 
 would be just as popular. The favourites 
 are those that have been secretly used by an 
 East Indian fakir, or accidentally discovered 
 as the natural remedy, dug out of the ground 
 by an American Indian tribe, or steeped in a 
 kettle by an ancient coloured person in a 
 southern plantation, or washed ashore on the 
 person of a sailor from the South Seas, or in- 
 vented by a very aged man in New Jersey, who 
 could not read, but had spent his life roaming 
 in the woods, and whose capacity for discover- 
 ing a '* universal panacea,'* besides his igno- 
 rance and isolation, lay in the fact that his 
 sands of life had nearly run. It is the sup- 
 
 [ 258 ] 
 
LIFE-PR LONGING ART 
 
 posed secrecy or low origin of the remedy 
 that is its attraction. The basis of the vast 
 proprietary medicine business is popular 
 ignorance and credulity. And it needs to 
 be pretty broad to support a traffic of such 
 enormous proportions. 
 
 During this generation certain branches 
 of the life-saving and life-prolonging art 
 have made great advances out of empiri- 
 cism onto the solid ground of scientific 
 knowledge. Of course I refer to surgery, 
 and to the discovery of the causes and im- 
 provement in the treatment of contagious 
 and epidemic diseases. The general practice 
 has shared in this scientific advance, but it is 
 limited and always will be limited within ex- 
 perimental bounds, by the infinite variations 
 in individual constitutions, and the almost 
 incalculable element of the interference of 
 mental with physical conditions. When we 
 get an exact science of man, we may expect 
 an exact science of medicine. How far we 
 are from this, we see when we attempt to 
 make criminal anthropology the basis of 
 criminal legislation. Man is so complex 
 
 [ 259 ] 
 
THE LIFE-SAVING AND 
 
 that if we were to eliminate one of his ap- 
 parently worse qualities, we might develop 
 others still worse, or throw the whole ma- 
 chine into inefficiency. By taking away 
 what the phrenologists call combativeness, 
 we could doubtless stop prize-fights, but we 
 might have a springless society. The only 
 safe way is that taught by horticulture, to 
 feed a fruit-tree generously, so that it has 
 vigour enough to throw off its degenerate 
 tendencies and its enemies, or, as the doctors 
 say in medical practice, bring up the general 
 system. That is to say, there is more hope 
 for humanity in stimulating the good, than 
 in directly suppressing the evil. It is on 
 something like this line that the greatest ad- 
 vance has been made in medical practice ; I 
 mean in the direction of prevention. This 
 involves of course the exclusion of the evil, 
 that is, of suppressing the causes that pro- 
 duce disease, as well as in cultivating the re- 
 sistant power of the human system. In san- 
 itation, diet, and exercise are the great fields 
 of medical enterprise and advance. I need 
 
 not say that the physician who, in the case of 
 
 [260] 
 
LIFE-PROLONGING ART 
 
 those under his charge, or who may possibly 
 require his aid, contents himself with waiting 
 for developed disease, is like the soldier in 
 a besieged city, who opens the gates and 
 then attempts to repel the Invader who has 
 effected a lodgment. I hope the time will 
 come when the chief practice of the physi- 
 cian will be, first, in oversight of the sanitary 
 condition of his neighbourhood, and, next, in 
 preventive attendance on people who think 
 they are well, and are all unconscious of the 
 Insidious approach of some concealed malady. 
 Another great change in modern practice 
 is specialisation. Perhaps it has not yet 
 reached the delicate particularity of the 
 practice in ancient Egypt, where every mi- 
 nute part of the human economy had its exclu- 
 sive doctor. This Is Inevitable in a scientific 
 age, and the result has been on the whole an 
 advance of knowledge, and Improved treat- 
 ment of specific ailments. The danger Is 
 apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, 
 who has only one hobby and traces every hu- 
 man ill to strong liquor or tobacco, or the cor- 
 set, or taxation of personal property, or denial 
 
 [261] 
 
THE LIFE-SAVING AND 
 
 of universal suffrage, or the eating of meat, 
 or the want of the centralisation of nearly 
 all initiative and interest and property in the 
 state. The tendency of the accomplished 
 specialist in medicine is to refer all physical 
 trouble to the ill conduct of the organ he 
 presides over. He can often trace every 
 disease to want of width in the nostrils, to a 
 defective eye, to a sensitive throat, to shut- 
 up pores, to an irritated stomach, to an auric- 
 ular defect. I suppose he is generally right, 
 but I have a perhaps natural fear that if I 
 happened to consult an amputationist about 
 catarrh he would want to cut off my leg. I 
 confess to an affection for the old-fashioned, 
 all-round country doctor, who took a general 
 view of his patient, knew his family, his con- 
 stitution, all the gossip about his mental or 
 business troubles, his affairs of the heart, 
 disappointments in love, incompatibilities of 
 temper, and treated the patient, as the phrase 
 is, for all he was worth, and gave him visible 
 medicine out of good old saddle-bags — how 
 much faith we used to have in those saddle- 
 bags — and not a prescription in a dead Ian- 
 
 [262] 
 
LIFE-PR O LONGING ART 
 
 guage to be put up by a dead-head clerk who 
 occasionally mistakes arsenic for carbonate 
 of soda. I do not mean, however, to say 
 there is no sense in the retention of the 
 hieroglyphics which the doctors use to com- 
 municate their ideas to a druggist, for I had 
 a prescription made in Hartford put up in 
 Naples, and that could not have happened if 
 it had been written in English. And I am 
 not sure but the mysterious symbols have 
 some effect on the patient. 
 
 The mention of the intimate knowledge of 
 family and constitutional conditions possessed 
 by the old-fashioned country doctor, whose 
 main strength lay in this and in his common- 
 sense, reminds me of another great advance 
 in the modern practice, in the attempt to 
 understand nature better by the scientific 
 study of psychology and the occult relations 
 of mind and body. It is in the study of 
 temper, temperament, hereditary predisposi- 
 tions, that we may expect the most brilliant 
 results in preventive medicine. 
 
 As a layman, I cannot but notice another 
 great advance in the medical profession. It 
 
THE LIFE-SAVING AND 
 
 is not alone in it. It is rather expected that 
 the lawyers will divide the oyster between 
 them and leave the shell to the contestants. 
 I suppose that doctors, almost without ex- 
 ception, give more of their time and skill in 
 the way of charity than almost any other 
 profession. But somebody must pay, and 
 fees have increased with the general cost of 
 living and dying. If fees continue to in- 
 crease as they have done in the past ten 
 years in the great cities, like New York, 
 nobody not a millionaire can afford to be 
 sick. The fees will soon be a prohibitive 
 tax. I cannot say that this will be altogether 
 an evil, for the cost of calling medical aid 
 may force people to take better care of them- 
 selves. Still, the excessive charges are rather 
 hard on people in moderate circumstances 
 who are compelled to seek surgical aid. 
 And here we touch one of the regrettable 
 symptoms of the times, which is not by any 
 means most conspicuous in the medical pro- 
 fession. I mean the tendency to subordinate 
 the old notion of professional duty to the 
 
 greed for money. The lawyers are almost 
 
 [264] 
 
LIFE-PR O LO NGING ART 
 
 universally accused of it ; even the clergymen 
 are often suspected of being influenced by it. 
 The young man is apt to choose a profession 
 on calculation of its profit. It will be a bad 
 day for science and for the progress of the 
 usefulness of the medical profession, when 
 the love of money in its practice becomes 
 stronger than professional enthusiasm, than 
 the noble ambition of distinction for advan- 
 cing the science, and the devotion to human 
 welfare. 
 
 I do not prophesy it. Rather I expect in- 
 terest in humanity, love of science for itself, 
 sympathy with suffering, self-sacrifice for 
 others, to increase in the world, and be 
 stronger in the end, than sordid love of gain 
 and the low ambition of rivalry in material- 
 istic display. To this higher life the physi- 
 cian is called. I often wonder that there are 
 so many men, brilliant men, able men, with 
 so many talents for success in any calling, 
 willing to devote their lives to a profession 
 which demands so much self-sacrifice, so 
 much hardship, so much contact with suffer- 
 ing, subject to the call of all the world at 
 
 [265] 
 
THE LIFE-SAVING ART 
 
 any hour of the day or night, involving so 
 much personal risk, carrying so much heart- 
 breaking responsibility, responded to by so 
 much constant heroism, a heroism requiring 
 the risk of life in a service the only glory of 
 which is a good name and the approval of 
 one's conscience. 
 
 To the members of such a profession, in 
 spite of their human infirmities and limita- 
 tions and unworthy hangers-on, I bow with 
 admiration and the respect which we feel for 
 that which is best in this world. 
 
 [266] 
 
Literary Copyright 
 
 TT 
 
 HIS is the first public meeting of 
 I the National Institute of Arts and 
 Letters. The original members were 
 selected by an invitation from the Ameri- 
 can Social Science Association, which acted 
 under the power of its charter from the Con- 
 gress of the United States. The members 
 thus selected, who joined the Social Science 
 Association, were given the alternative of 
 organising as an independent institute or as 
 a branch of the Social Science Association. 
 
 At the annual mcetinor of the Social 
 Science Association on September 4, 1899, 
 at Saratoga Springs, the members of the 
 Institute voted to organise Independently. 
 They formally adopted the revised consti- 
 tution, which had been agreed upon at the 
 first meeting, in New York in the preceding 
 January, and elected officers as prescribed by 
 
 the constitution. 
 
 [267] 
 
LIT ER ART C P TRIGHT 
 
 The object is declared to be the advance- 
 ment of art and literature, and the qualifica- 
 tion shall be notable achievement in art or 
 letters. The number of active members will 
 probably be ultimately fixed at one hundred. 
 The society may elect honorary and associate 
 members without limit. By the terms of 
 agreement between the American Social 
 Science Association and the National In- 
 stitute, the members of each are ipso facto 
 associate members of the other. 
 
 It is believed that the advancement of art 
 and literature in this country will be pro- 
 moted by the organisation of the producers 
 of literature and art. This is in strict anal- 
 ogy with the action of other professions 
 and of almost all the industries. No one 
 doubts that literature and art are or should 
 be leading interests in our civilisation, and 
 their dignity will be enhanced in the public 
 estimation by a visible organisation of their 
 representatives, who are seriously determined 
 upon raising the standards by which the 
 work of writers and artists is judged. The 
 
 association of persons having this common 
 
 [268] 
 
LIT ERA RT COPTRIGHT 
 
 aim cannot but stimulate effort, soften un- 
 worthy rivalry into generous competition, 
 and promote enthusiasm and good fellow- 
 ship in their work. The mere coming to- 
 gether to compare views and discuss interests 
 and tendencies and problems which concern 
 both the workers and the great public, can- 
 not fail to be of benefit to both. 
 
 In no other way so well as by association 
 of this sort can be created the feeling of 
 solidarity in our literature, and the recogni- 
 tion of its power. It is not expected to 
 raise any standard of perfection, or in any 
 way to hamper individual development, but 
 a body of concentrated opinion may raise 
 the standard by promoting healthful and 
 helpful criticism, by discouraging mediocrity 
 and meretricious smartness, by keeping alive 
 the traditions of good literature, while it is 
 hospitable to all discoverers of new worlds. 
 A safe motto for any such society would 
 be Tradition and Freedom — Traditio et 
 Libertas, 
 
 It is generally conceded that what litera- 
 ture in America needs at this moment is 
 
 [269] 
 
LIT ER ART COPTRIGHT 
 
 honest, competent, sound criticism. This 
 is not likely to be attained by sporadic ef- 
 forts, especially in a democracy of letters 
 where the critics are not always superior 
 to the criticised, where the man in front 
 of the book is not always a better marks- 
 man than the man behind the book. It 
 may not be attained even by an organisa- 
 tion of men united upon certain standards 
 of excellence. I do not like to use the word 
 authority, but it is not unreasonable to sup- 
 pose that the public will be influenced by 
 a body devoted to the advancement of art 
 and literature, whose sincerity and discern- 
 ment it has learned to respect, and admission 
 into whose ranks will, I hope, be considered 
 a distinction to be sought for by good work. 
 The fashion of the day is rarely the judg- 
 ment of posterity. You will recall what 
 Byron wrote to Coleridge : " I trust you 
 do not permit yourself to be depressed by 
 the temporary partiality of what is called 
 * the public ' for the favourites of the moment ; 
 all experience is against the permanency of 
 
 such impressions. You must have lived to 
 
 [270] 
 
LIT ERA RT C O F TRIG HT 
 
 see many of these pass away, and will sur- 
 vive many more." '^ 
 
 The chief concern of the National Insti- 
 tute is with the production of works of art 
 and of literature, and with their distribution. 
 In the remarks following I shall confine my- 
 self to the production and distribution of 
 literature. In the limits of this brief address 
 I can only in outline speak of certain tenden- 
 cies and practices which are affecting this 
 production and this distribution. The in- 
 terests involved are, first, those of the author ; 
 second, those of the publisher ; third, those 
 of the public. As to all good literature, 
 the interests of these three are identical if the 
 relations of the three are on the proper basis. 
 For the author, a good book is of more 
 pecuniary value than a poor one, setting 
 aside the question of fame ; to the publisher, 
 the right of publishing a good book is solid 
 capital, — an established house, in the long 
 run, makes more money on " Standards " 
 than on " Catch-pennies ; " and to the public 
 the possession of the best literature is the 
 breath of life, as that of the bad and mediocre 
 
 [ 271 ] 
 
LITERARY C O P TRIGHT 
 
 is moral and intellectual decadence. But in 
 practice the interests of the three do not har- 
 monise. The author, even supposing his 
 efforts are stimulated by the highest aspira- 
 tion for excellence and not by any commercial 
 instinct, is compelled by his circumstances to 
 get the best price for his production ; the 
 publisher wishes to get the utmost return 
 for his capital and his energy ; and the 
 public wants the best going for the least 
 money. 
 
 Consider first the author, and I mean the 
 author, and not the mere craftsman who 
 manufactures books for a recognised market. 
 His sole capital is his talent. His brain may 
 be likened to a mine, gold, silver, copper, 
 iron, or tin, which looks like silver when 
 new. Whatever it is, the vein of valuable 
 ore is limited, in most cases it is slight. 
 When it is worked out the man is at the end 
 of his resources. Has he expended or pro- 
 duced capital ? I say he has produced it, 
 and contributed to the wealth of the world, 
 and that he is as truly entitled to the usufruct 
 
 of it as the miner who takes gold or silver 
 
 [272] 
 
LIT ER ART C O PT RIGHT 
 
 out of the earth. For liow lono? I will 
 
 O 
 
 speak of that later on. The copyright of a 
 book is not analogous to the patent right of 
 an invention, which may become of universal 
 necessity to the world. Nor should the 
 o^reater share of this usufruct be absorbed 
 by the manufacturer and publisher of the 
 book. The publisher has a clear right to 
 guard himself against risks, as he has the 
 rio^ht of refusal to assume them. But there 
 is an injustice somewhere, when for many a 
 book, valued and even profitable to some- 
 body, the author does not receive the price 
 of a labourer's day wages for the time spent 
 on it — to say nothing of the long years of 
 its gestation. 
 
 The relation between author and publisher 
 ought to be neither complicated nor peculiar. 
 The author may sell his product outright, or 
 he may sell himself by an agreement similar 
 to that which an employee in a manufactur- 
 ing establishment makes with his master to 
 give to the establishment all his inventions. 
 Either of these methods is fair and business- 
 like, though it may not be wise. A method 
 i8 [273] 
 
LIT ER ART C FT RIGHT 
 
 that prevailed in the early years of this cen- 
 tury was both fair and wise. The author 
 agreed that the publisher should have the 
 exclusive right to publish his book for a 
 certain term, or to make and sell a certain 
 number of copies. When those conditions 
 were fulfilled, the control of the property re- 
 verted to the author. The continuance of 
 these relations between the two depended, 
 as it should depend, upon mutual advantage 
 and mutual good-will. 
 
 By the present common method the author 
 makes over the use of his property to the will 
 of the publisher. It is true that he parts 
 with the use only of the property and not 
 with the property itself, and the publisher in 
 law acquires no other title, nor does he ac- 
 quire any sort of interest in the future pro- 
 ducts of the author s brain. But the author 
 loses all control of his property, and its profit 
 to him may depend upon his continuing to 
 make over his books to the same publisher. 
 In this continuance he is liable to the temp- 
 tation to work for a market, instead of follow- 
 ing the free impulses of his own genius. As 
 
 [ 274 ] 
 
LIT ERA RT C O P T RIG HT 
 
 to any special book the publisher is the sole 
 judge whether to push it or to let it sink 
 into the stasfnation of unadvertised oroods. 
 
 The situation is full of complications. 
 Theoretically it is the interest of both parties 
 to sell as many books as possible. But the 
 author has an interest in one book, the pub- 
 lisher in a hundred. And it is natural and 
 reasonable that the man who risks his money 
 should be the judge of the policy best for his 
 whole establishment. I cannot but think 
 that this situation would be on a juster 
 footing all round if the author returned to 
 the old practice of limiting the use of his 
 property by the publisher. I say this in full 
 recognition of the fact that the publishers 
 might be unwilling to make temporary in- 
 vestments, or to take risks. What then ? 
 Fewer books might be published. Less 
 vanity might be gratified. Less money 
 might be risked in experiments upon the 
 public, and more might be made by distrib- 
 uting good literature. Would the public 
 be injured? It is an idea already discredited 
 that the world owes a living to everybody 
 
 [275 ] 
 
LIT ER ART COPTRIGHT 
 
 who thinks he can write, and it is a super- 
 stition already fading that capital which 
 exploits literature as a trade acquires any 
 special privileges. 
 
 The present international copyright, which 
 primarily concerns itself with the manu- 
 facture of books, rests upon an unintelligible 
 protective tariff basis. It should rest pri- 
 marily upon an acknowledgment of the 
 author's right of property in his own work, 
 the same universal right that he has in any 
 other personal property. The author's in- 
 ternational copyright should be no more 
 hampered by restrictions and encumbrances 
 than his national copyright. Whatever regu- 
 lations the government may make for the 
 protection of manufactures, or trade indus- 
 tries, or for purposes of revenue on importa- 
 tions, they should not be confounded with 
 the author's right of property. They have 
 no business in an international copyright act, 
 agreement, or treaty. The United States 
 copyright for native authors contains no 
 manufacturing restrictions. All we ask is 
 
 that foreign authors shall enjoy the same 
 
 [276] 
 
LIT ER ART COPT RIGHT 
 
 privileges we have under our law, and that 
 foreign nations shall give our authors the 
 privileges of their local cop3Tight laws. I 
 do not know any American author of any- 
 standing who has ever asked or desired pro- 
 tection ao:ainst foreiorn authors. 
 
 This subject is so important that I may 
 be permitted to enlarge upon it, in order to 
 make clear suggestions already made, and 
 to array again arguments more or less fa- 
 miliar. I do this in the view of bring- 
 ing before the institute work worthy of its 
 best efforts, which if successful will entitle 
 this body to the gratitude and respect of 
 the country. I refer to the speedy revi- 
 sion of our confused and w^holly inadequate 
 American copyright laws, and later on to 
 a readjustment of our international rela- 
 tions. 
 
 In the first place let me bring to your 
 attention what is, to the vast body of authors, 
 a subject of vital interest, which it is not too 
 much to say has never received that treat- 
 ment from authors themselves which its im- 
 portance demands. I refer to the property 
 
 [ 277 ] 
 
LIT ER ART C O PTRIGHT 
 
 of authors in their productions. In this 
 brief space and time I cannot enter fully 
 upon this great subject, but must be con- 
 tent to offer certain suggestions for your 
 consideration. 
 
 The property of an author in the product 
 of his mental labour ought to be as absolute 
 and unlimited as his property in the product 
 of his physical labour. It seems to me idle 
 to say that the two kinds of labour products 
 are so dissimilar that the ownership cannot 
 be protected by like laws. In this age of 
 enlightenment such a proposition is absurd. 
 The history of copyright law seems to show 
 that the treatment of property in brain pro- 
 duct has been based on this erroneous idea. 
 To steal the paper on which an author has 
 put his brain work into visible, tangible form 
 is in all lands a crime, larceny, but to steal 
 the brain work is not a crime. The utmost 
 extent to which our enlightened American 
 legislators, at almost the end of the nine- 
 teenth century, have gone in protecting pro- 
 ducts of the brain has been to give the 
 
 author power to sue in civil courts, at large 
 
 [ 278 ] 
 
LIT ERA RT C O P T RIGHT 
 
 expense, the offender who has taken and 
 sold his property. 
 
 And what gross absurdity is the copyright 
 law which limits even this poor defence of 
 authors' property to a brief term of years, 
 after the expiration of which he or his chil- 
 dren and heirs have no defence, no recognised 
 property whatever in his products. And for 
 some inexplicable reason this term of years 
 in which he may be said to own his property 
 is divided into two terms, so that at the end 
 of the first he is compelled to re-assert his 
 ownership by renewing his copyright, or he 
 must lose all ownership at the end of the 
 short term. 
 
 It is manifest to all honest minds that if an 
 author is entitled to own his work for a term 
 of years, it is equally the duty of his govern- 
 ment to make that ownership perpetual. 
 He can own and protect and leave to his 
 children and his children's children by w^ill, 
 the manuscript paper on which he has writ- 
 ten, and he should have equal right to leave 
 to them that mental product which consti- 
 tutes the true money value of his labour. It 
 
 [279 ] 
 
LITER A RT C P TRIGHT 
 
 is unnecessary to say that the mental product 
 is always as easy to be identified as the 
 physical product. Its identification is abso- 
 lutely certain to the intelligence of judges 
 and juries. And it is apparent that the in- 
 terests of assignees, who are commonly pub- 
 lishers, are equal with those of authors, in 
 making absolute and perpetual this property 
 in which both are dealers. 
 
 Another consideration follows here. Why 
 should the ownership of a bushel of wheat, 
 a piece of silk goods, a watch, or a handker- 
 chief in the possession of an American car- 
 ried or sent to England, or brought thence to 
 this country, be absolute and unlimited, while 
 the ownership of his own products as an 
 author or as a purchaser from an author is 
 made dependent on his nationality .^^ Why 
 should the property of the manufacturer of 
 cloths, carpets, satins, and any and every 
 description of goods, be able to send his 
 products all over the world, subject only to 
 the tariff laws of various countries, while the 
 author (alone of all known producers) is for- 
 bidden to do so ? The existing law of our 
 
 [280] 
 
LIT ERA RT COPTRIGHT 
 
 country says to the foreign author, " You can 
 have property in your book only if you man- 
 ufacture it into saleable form in this country." 
 What would be said of the wisdom or wild 
 folly of a law which sought to protect other 
 American industries by forbidding the impor- 
 tation of all foreign manufactures ? 
 
 No question of tariff protection is here 
 involved. What duty shall be imposed upon 
 foreign products or foreign manufactures is 
 a question of political economy. The wrong 
 against which authors should protest is in 
 annexing to their terms of ownership of their 
 property a protective tariff provision. For, 
 be it observed, this is a subject of abstract 
 justice, moral right, and it matters nothing 
 wdiether the author be American, English, 
 German, French, Hindoo, or Chinese, — and 
 it is very certain that when America shall 
 enact a simple, just, copyright law, giving to 
 every human being the same protection of 
 law to his property in his mental products 
 as in the work of his hands, every civilised 
 nation on earth will follow the noble example. 
 
 As it now stands, authors who annually 
 
 [281] 
 
LIT ER ART C O P T RIG HT 
 
 produce the raw material for manufacturing 
 purposes to an amount in value of millions, 
 supporting vast populations of people, 
 authors whose mental produce rivals and ex- 
 ceeds in commercial value many of the great 
 staple products of our fields, are the only 
 producers who have no distinct property in 
 their products, who are not protected in 
 holding on to the feeble tenure the law gives 
 them, and whose quasi-property in their 
 works, flimsy as it is, is limited to a few 
 years, and cannot with certainty be handed 
 down to their children. 
 
 It will be saidj it is said, that it is impos- 
 sible for the author to obtain an acknowl- 
 edgment of absolute right of property in his 
 brain work. In our civilisation we have not 
 yet arrived at this state of justice. It may 
 be so. Indeed some authors have declared 
 that this justice would be against public 
 policy. I trust they are sustained by the 
 lofty thought that in this view they are rising 
 above the petty realm of literature into the 
 broad field of statesmanship. 
 
 But I think there will be a general agree- 
 
 [282] 
 
Lir ERART C P TRIG HT 
 
 ment that in the needed revlsal of our local 
 copyright law we can attain some measure 
 of justice. Some of the most obvious hard- 
 ships can be removed. There is no reason 
 why an author should pay for the privilege 
 of a long life by the loss of his copyrights, 
 and that his old age should be embittered 
 by poverty because he cannot have the re- 
 sults of the labour of his vigorous years. 
 There is no reason why if he dies young he 
 should leave those dependent on him with- 
 out support, for the public has really no 
 more right to appropriate his book than it 
 would have to take his house from his 
 widow and children. His income at best is 
 small after he has divided with the publishers. 
 
 No, there can certainly be no valid argu- 
 ment against extending the copyright of the 
 author to his own lifetime, with the addition 
 of forty or fifty years for the benefit of his 
 heirs. 
 
 I will not leave this portion of the topic 
 without saying that a perfectly harmonious 
 relation between authors and publishers is 
 most earnestly to be desired, nor without the 
 
LITER ART C PTRIGHT 
 
 frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradi- 
 tion and in the present experience, many of 
 the most noble friendships and the most 
 generous and helpful relations have sub- 
 sisted, as they ought always to subsist, be- 
 tween the producers and the distributors of 
 literature, especially when the publisher has 
 a love for literature, and the author is a 
 reasonable being and takes pains to inform 
 himself about the publishing business. 
 
 One aspect of the publishing business 
 which has become increasingly prominent 
 during the last fifteen years cannot be over- 
 looked, for it is certain to affect seriously 
 the production of literature as to quality, 
 and its distribution. Capital has discovered 
 that literature is a product out of which 
 money can be made, in the same way that 
 it can be made in cotton, wheat, or iron. 
 Never before in history has so much money 
 been invested in publishing, with the single 
 purpose of creating and supplying the mar- 
 ket with manufactured goods. Never before 
 has there been such an appeal to the reading 
 public, or such a study of its tastes, or sup- 
 
 [ 284 ] 
 
LIT ERA RT COPT RIGHT 
 
 posed tastes, wants, likes and dislikes, coupled 
 also with the same shrewd anxiety to ascer- 
 tain a future demand that governs the pur- 
 veyors of spring and fall styles in millinery 
 and dressmaking. Not only the contents of 
 the books and periodicals, but the covers, 
 must be made to catch the fleeting fancy. 
 Will the public next season wear its hose 
 dotted or striped? 
 
 Another branch of this activity is the so- 
 called syndicating of the author's products 
 in the control of one salesman, in which 
 good work and inferior work are coupled 
 together at a common selling price and in 
 common notoriety. This insures a wider 
 distribution, but what is its effect upon the 
 quality of literature ? Is it your observation 
 that the writer for a syndicate, on solicitation 
 for a price or an order for a certain kind of 
 work, produces as good quality as when he 
 works independently, uninfluenced by the 
 spirit of commercialism ? The question is 
 a serious one for the future of literature. 
 
 The consolidation of capital in great pub- 
 lishing establishments has its advantages 
 
 [285] 
 
LIT ER ART C O P TRIG HT 
 
 and its disadvantages. It increases vastly 
 the yearly output of books. The presses 
 must be kept running, printers, paper-makers, 
 and machinists are interested in this. The 
 maw of the press must be fed. The capital 
 must earn its money. One advantage of 
 this is that when new and usable material 
 is not forthcoming, the " standards " and the 
 best literature must be reproduced in count- 
 less editions, and the best literature is broad- 
 cast over the world at prices to suit all 
 purses, even the leanest. The disadvantage 
 is that products, in the eagerness of competi- 
 tion for a market, are accepted which are of 
 a character to harm and not help the de- 
 velopment of the contemporary mind in 
 moral and intellectual strength. The public 
 expresses its fear of this in the phrase it has 
 invented — "the spawn of the press." The 
 author who writes simply to supply this 
 press, and in constant view of a market, is 
 certain to deteriorate in his quality, nay 
 more, as a beginner he is satisfied if he 
 can produce something that will sell with- 
 out regard to its quality. 
 
 [286 J 
 
LIT ERud RT COPT RIGHT 
 
 Is it extravagant to speak of a tendency 
 to make the author merely an adjunct of the 
 publishing house? Take as an illustration 
 the publications in books and magazines 
 relating to the late Spanish-American war. 
 How many of them were ordered to meet a 
 supposed market, and how many of them 
 were the spontaneous and natural produc- 
 tions of writers who had something to say? 
 I am not quarrelling, you see, with the news- 
 papers who do this sort of thing ; I am 
 speaking of the tendency of what we have 
 been accustomed to call literature to take 
 on the transient and hasty character of the 
 newspaper. 
 
 In another respect, in method if not in 
 quality, this literature approaches the news- 
 paper. It is the habit of some publishing 
 houses, not of all, let me distinctly say, to 
 seek ahvays notoriety, not to nurse and keep 
 before the public mind the best that has 
 been evolved from time to time, but to offer 
 always something new. The year's flooring 
 is threshed off and the floor swept to make 
 
 room for a fresh batch. Effort eventually 
 
 [287] 
 
LIT ER ART C O P TRIGHT 
 
 ceases for the old and approved, and is con- 
 centrated on experiments. This is Hke the 
 conduct of a newspaper. It is assumed that 
 the public must be startled all the time. 
 
 I speak of this freely because I think it as 
 bad policy for the publisher as it is harmful 
 to the public of readers. The same effort 
 used to introduce a novelty will be much 
 better remunerated by pushing the sale of an 
 acknowledged good piece of literature. Lit- 
 erature depends, like every other product 
 bought by the people, upon advertising, and 
 it needs much effort usually to arrest the 
 attention of our hurrying public upon what 
 it would most enjoy if it were brought to 
 its knowledge. 
 
 It would not be easy to fix the limit in 
 this vast country to the circulation of a good 
 book if it were properly kept before the 
 public. Day by day, year by year, new 
 readers are coming forward with curiosity 
 and intellectual wants. The generation that 
 now is should not be deprived of the best in 
 the last generation. Nay more, one publica- 
 tion, in any form, reaches only a compara- 
 
 [ 288] 
 
LIT ER ART C O P TRIGHT 
 
 tively small portion of the public that would 
 be interested in it. A novel, for instance, 
 may have a large circulation in a magazine; 
 it may then appear in a book; it may reach 
 other readers serially again in the columns 
 of a newspaper; it may be offered again in 
 all the by-ways by subscription, and yet not 
 nearly exhaust its legitimate running power. 
 This is not a supposition but a fact proved 
 by trial. Nor is it to be wondered at, when 
 we consider that we have an unequalled 
 homogeneous population with a similar com- 
 mon-school education. In looking over 
 publisher's lists I am constantly coming 
 across good books out of print, which are 
 practically unknown to this generation, and 
 yet are more profitable, truer to life and char- 
 acter, more entertaining and amusing, than 
 most of those fresh from the press month 
 by month. 
 
 Of the effect upon the literary product of 
 writing to order, in obedience to a merely 
 commercial instinct, I need not enlarge to a 
 company of authors, any more than to a 
 company of artists I need to enlarge upon 
 
 19 [ 289 ] 
 
LITER ART C O Pr RIGHT 
 
 the effect of a like commercial instinct upon 
 art. 
 
 I am aware that the evolution of literature 
 or art in any period, in relation to the lit- 
 erature and art of the world, cannot be 
 accurately judged by contemporaries and 
 participants, nor can it be predicted. But I 
 have great expectations of the product of 
 both in this country, and I am sure that both 
 will be affected by the conduct of persons 
 now living. It is for this reason that I have 
 spoken. 
 
 [ 290 ] 
 
The Pursuit of Happiness 
 
 PERHAPS the most curious and inter- 
 esting phrase ever put into a public 
 document is " the pursuit of happi- 
 ness." It is declared to be an inalienable 
 rieht. It cannot be sold. It cannot be 
 given away. It is doubtful if it could be 
 left by will. 
 
 The right of every man to be six feet high, 
 and of every woman to be five feet four, was 
 regarded as self-evident, until women as- 
 serted their undoubted right to be six feet 
 high also, when some confusion was intro- 
 duced into the interpretation of this rhetori- 
 cal fragment of the eighteenth century. 
 
 But the inalienable right to the pursuit of 
 happiness has never been questioned since it 
 was proclaimed as a new gospel for the New 
 World. The American people accepted it 
 with enthusiasm, as if it had been the dis- 
 covery of a gold-prospector, and started out 
 
 in the pursuit as if the devil were after them. 
 
 [ 291 ] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 If the proclamation had been that happi- 
 ness is a common right of the race, alienable 
 or otherwise, that all men are or may be 
 happy, history and tradition might have in- 
 terfered to raise a doubt whether even the 
 new form of government could so change 
 the ethical condition. But the right to make 
 a pursuit of happiness, given in a funda- 
 mental bill of rights, had quite a different 
 aspect. Men had been engaged in many 
 pursuits, most of them disastrous, some of 
 them highly commendable. A sect in Gali- 
 lee had set up the pursuit of righteousness 
 as the only or the highest object of man's 
 immortal powers. The rewards of it, how- 
 ever, were not always immediate. Here was 
 a political sanction of a pursuit that every- 
 body acknowledged to be of a good thing. 
 
 Given a heartaching longing in every 
 human being for happiness, here was high 
 warrant for going in pursuit of it. And the 
 curious effect of this mo^ cTordre was that 
 the pursuit arrested the attention as the 
 most essential, and the happiness was post- 
 poned, almost invariably, to some future sea- 
 
 [ 292 ] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 son, when leisure or plethora, that is, 
 relaxation or gorged desire, should induee 
 that physical and moral glow which is com- 
 monly accepted as happiness. This glow of 
 well-being is sometimes called contentment, 
 but contentment was not in the programme. 
 If it came at all, it was only to come after 
 strenuous pursuit, that being the inalienable 
 right. 
 
 People, to be sure, have different concep- 
 tions of happiness, but whatever they are, it 
 is the custom, almost universal, to postpone 
 the thing itself. This of course is specially 
 true in our American system, where we have 
 a chartered right to the thing itself. Other 
 nations who have no such right may take it 
 out in occasional driblets, odd moments that 
 come, no doubt, to men and races who have 
 no privilege of voting, or to such favoured 
 places as New York city, whose government 
 is always the same, however they vote. 
 
 We are all authorised to pursue happiness, 
 and we do as a general thing make a pursuit 
 of it. Instead of simply being happy in the 
 condition where we are, getting the sweets 
 
 [ 293 ] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 of life in human intercourse, hour by hour, 
 as the bees take honey from every flower 
 that opens in the summer air, finding hap- 
 piness in the well-filled and orderly mind, in 
 the sane and enlightened spirit, in the self 
 that has become what the self should be, 
 we say that to-morrow, next year, in ten or 
 twenty or thirty years, when we have arrived 
 at certain coveted possessions or situation, 
 we will be happy. Some philosophers dig- 
 nify this postponement with the name of 
 hope. 
 
 Sometimes wandering in a primeval for- 
 est, in all the witchery of the woods, be- 
 sought by the kindliest solicitations of 
 nature, wild flowers in the trail, the call of 
 the squirrel, the flutter of birds, the great 
 world-music of the wind in the pine-tops, the 
 flecks of sunlight on the brown carpet and 
 on the rough bark of immemorial trees, I 
 find myself unconsciously postponing my 
 enjoyment until I shall reach a hoped-for 
 open place of full sun and boundless 
 prospect. 
 
 The analogy cannot be pushed, for it is 
 
 [ 294] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 the common experience that these open 
 spots in life, where leisure and space and 
 contentment await us, are usually grown up 
 with thickets, fuller of obstacles, to say 
 nothing of labours and duties and diiificulties, 
 than any part of the weary path we have 
 trod. 
 
 Why add the pursuit of happiness to our 
 other inalienable worries? Perhaps there is 
 something^ wronor in ourselves when w^e hear 
 the complaint so often that men are pursued 
 by disaster instead of being pursued by hap- 
 piness. 
 
 We all believe in happiness as something 
 desirable and attainable, and I take it that 
 this is the underlying desire when we speak 
 of the pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of learn- 
 ing, the pursuit of power in ofifice or in in- 
 fluence, that is, that we shall come into 
 happiness when the objects last named are 
 attained. No amount of failure seems to 
 lessen this belief. It is matter of experience 
 that wealth and learning and power are as 
 likely to bring unhappiness as happiness, 
 and yet this constant lesson of experience 
 
 [ 295 ] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 makes not the least impression upon human 
 conduct. I suppose that the reason of this 
 unheeding of experience is that every person 
 born into the world is the only one exactly 
 of that kind that ever was or ever will be cre- 
 ated, so that he thinks he may be exempt 
 from the general rules. At any rate, he goefe 
 at the pursuit of happiness in exactly the 
 old way, as if it were an original undertak- 
 ing. Perhaps the most melancholy spectacle 
 offered to us in our short sojourn in this 
 pilgrimage, where the roads are so dusty 
 and the caravansaries so ill provided, is the 
 credulity of this pursuit. Mind, I am not 
 objecting to the pursuit of wealth, or of 
 learning, or of power, — - they are all explain- 
 able, if not justifiable, — but to the blindness 
 that does not perceive their futility as a 
 means of attaining the end sought, which is 
 happiness, an end that can only be com- 
 passed by the right adjustment of each soul 
 to this and to any coming state of existence. 
 For whether the great scholar who is stuffed 
 with knowledge is happier than the great 
 
 money-getter who is gorged with riches, or 
 
 [296] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 the wily politician who is a Warwick in his 
 realm, depends entirely upon what sort of a 
 man this pursuit has made him. There is 
 a kind of fallacy current nowadays that a 
 very rich man, no matter by what unscrupu- 
 lous means he has gathered an undue pro- 
 portion of the world into his possession, can 
 be happy if he can turn round and make a 
 generous and lavish distribution of it for 
 worthy purposes. If he has preserved a 
 remnant of conscience, this distribution may 
 give him much satisfaction, and justly in- 
 crease his good opinion of his own deserts ; 
 but the fallacy is in leaving out of account 
 the sort of man he has become in this sort 
 of pursuit. Has he escaped .that hardening 
 of the nature, that drying up of the sweet 
 springs of sympathy, which usually attend 
 a long-continued selfish undertaking ? Has 
 either he or the great politician or the great 
 scholar cultivated the real sources of enjoy- 
 ment ? 
 
 The pursuit of happiness ! It is not 
 strange that men call it an illusion. But I 
 am well satisfied that it is not the thinsf it- 
 
 o 
 
 [297 ] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 self, but the pursuit, that is an illusion. In- 
 stead of thinking of the pursuit, why not fix 
 our thoughts upon the moments, the hours, 
 perhaps the days, of this divine peace, this 
 merriment of body and mind, that can be 
 repeated and perhaps indefinitely extended 
 by the simplest of all means, namely, a dis- 
 position to make the best of whatever comes 
 to us? Perhaps the Latin poet was right in 
 saying that no man can count himself happy 
 while in this life, that is, in a continuous 
 state of happiness ; but as there is for the 
 soul no time save the conscious moment 
 called " now," it is quite possible to make 
 that " now " a happy state of existence. The 
 point I make is that we should not habitually 
 postpone that season of happiness to the 
 future. 
 
 No one, I trust, wishes to cloud the 
 dreams of youth, or to dispel by excess of 
 light what are called the illusions of hope. 
 But why should the boy be nurtured in the 
 current notion that he is to be really happy 
 only when he has finished school, when he 
 
 has got a business or profession by which 
 
 [298] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 money can be made, when he has come to 
 manhood? The irirl also dreams that for her 
 
 o 
 
 happiness Hes ahead, in that springtime 
 when she is crossing the line of womanhood, 
 — all the poets make much of this, — when 
 she is married and learns the supreme lesson 
 how to rule by obeying. It is only when the 
 girl and the boy look back upon the years of 
 adolescence that they realise how happy 
 they might have been then if they had only 
 known they were happy, and did not need to 
 go in pursuit of happiness. 
 
 The pitiful part of this inalienable right 
 to the pursuit of happiness is, however, that 
 most men interpret it to mean the pursuit 
 of wealth, and strive for that always, post- 
 poning being happy until they get a fortune, 
 and if they are lucky in that, find at the end 
 that the happiness has somehow eluded them, 
 that, in short, they have not cultivated that 
 in themselves that alone can bring happi- 
 ness. More than that, they have lost the 
 power of the enjoyment of the essential 
 pleasures of life. I think that the woman 
 in the Scriptures who out of her poverty 
 
 [ 299 ] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 put her mite into the contribution-box got 
 more happiness out of that driblet of gen- 
 erosity and self-sacrifice than some men in 
 our day have experienced in founding a 
 university. 
 
 And how fares it with the intellectual 
 man ? To be a selfish miser of learning, for 
 self-gratification only, is no nobler in reality 
 than to be a miser of money. And even 
 when the scholar is lavish of his knowledge 
 in helping an ignorant world, he may find 
 that if he has made his studies as a pursuit 
 of happiness he has missed his object. Much 
 knowledge increases the possibility of enjoy- 
 ment, but also the possibility of sorrow. If 
 intellectual pursuits contribute to an en- 
 lightened and altogether admirable charac- 
 ter, then indeed has the student found the 
 inner spring of happiness. Otherwise one 
 cannot say that the wise man is happier 
 than the ignorant man. 
 
 In fine, and in spite of the political in- 
 junction, we need to consider that happiness 
 is an inner condition, not to be raced after. 
 And what an advance in our situation it 
 
 [ 300 ] 
 
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 would be if wc could get it into our heads 
 here in this land of inalienable rights that 
 the world would turn round just the same 
 if we stood still and waited for the daily 
 coming of our Lord ! 
 
 [301 ] 
 
Truth fulness 
 
 TRUTHFULNESS is as essential 
 in literature as it is in conduct, in 
 fiction as it is in the report of an 
 actual occurrence. Falsehood vitiates a 
 poem, a painting, exactly as it does a life. 
 Truthfulness is a quality like simplicity. 
 Simplicity in literature is mainly a matter 
 of clear vision and lucid expression, however 
 complex the subject-matter may be ; exactly 
 as in life, simplicity does not so much depend 
 upon external conditions as upon the spirit 
 in which one lives. It may be more difficult 
 to maintain simplicity of living with a great 
 fortune than in poverty, but simplicity of 
 spirit — that is, superiority of soul to circum- 
 stance — is possible in any condition. Un- 
 fortunately the common expression that a 
 certain person has wealth is not so true as 
 it would be to say that wealth has him. The 
 life of one with great possessions and corre- 
 
 [ S'^S ] 
 
r R UTHFULNESS 
 
 sponding responsibilities may be full of com- 
 plexity; the subject of literary art may be 
 exceedingly complex ; but we do not set 
 complexity over against simplicity. For 
 simplicity is a quality essential to true life 
 as it is to literature of the first class ; it 
 is opposed to parade, to artificiality, to 
 obscurity. 
 
 The quality of truthfulness is not so easily 
 defined. It also is a matter of spirit and 
 intuition. We have no difficulty in applying 
 the rules of common morality to certain 
 functions of writers for the public, for in- 
 stance, the duties of the newspaper reporter, 
 or the newspaper correspondent, or the 
 narrator of any event in life the relation of 
 which owes its value to its being absolutely 
 true. The same may be said of hoaxes, 
 literary or scientific, however clear they may 
 be. The person indulging in them not only 
 discredits his office in the eyes of the public, 
 but he injures his own moral fibre, and he 
 contracts such a habit of unveracity that he 
 never can hope for genuine literary success. 
 For there never was yet any genuine success 
 
 [ 304 ] 
 
T R UTHFULNESS 
 
 in letters without integrity. The clever hoax 
 is no better than the trick of imitation, that 
 is, conscious imitation of another, which has 
 unveracity to one's self at the bottom of it. 
 Burlesque is not the highest order of intel- 
 lectual performance, but it is legitimate, and 
 if cleverly done it may be both useful and 
 amusing, but it is not to be confounded with 
 forgery, that is, with a composition which 
 the author attempts to pass off as the pro- 
 duction of somebody else. The forgery may 
 be amazingly smart, and be even popular, 
 and get the author, when he is discovered, 
 notoriety, but it is pretty certain that with 
 his ingrained lack of integrity he will never 
 accomplish any original work of value, and 
 he will be always personally suspected. 
 There is nothing so dangerous to a young 
 writer as to begin with hoaxing ; or to be- 
 gin with the invention, either as reporter or 
 correspondent, of statements put forward 
 as facts, which are untrue. This sort of 
 facility and smartness may get a writer 
 employment, unfortunately for him and the 
 public, but there is no satisfaction in it to 
 20 [ 305 ] 
 
T R UT H F U L N E S S 
 
 one who desires an honourable career. It 
 is easy to recall the names of brilliant men 
 whose fine talents have been eaten away by 
 this habit of unveracity. This habit is the 
 greatest danger of the newspaper press of 
 the United States. 
 
 It is easy to define this sort of untruthful- 
 ness, and to study the moral deterioration it 
 works in personal character, and in the 
 quality of literary work. It was illustrated 
 in the forgeries of the marvellous boy Chat- 
 terton. The talent he expended in deception 
 might have made him an enviable reputation, 
 — the deception vitiated whatever good there 
 was in his work. Fraud in literature is no 
 better than fraud in archeology, — Chatter- 
 ton deserves no more credit than Shapiro 
 who forged the Moabite pottery with its 
 inscriptions. The reporter who invents an 
 incident, or heightens the horror of a calam- 
 ity by fiction is in the case of Shapiro. The 
 habit of this sort of invention is certain to 
 destroy the writer's quality, and if he at- 
 tempts a legitimate work of the imagination, 
 
 he will carry the same unveracity into that. 
 
 [306] 
 
r R Ur H F U L NE s s 
 
 The quality of truthfulness cannot be juggled 
 with. Akin to this is the trick which has 
 put under proper suspicion some very clever 
 writers of our day, and cost them all public 
 confidence in whatever they do, — the trick of 
 posing for what they are not. We do not 
 mean only that the reader does not believe 
 their stories of personal adventure, and re- 
 gards them personally as " frauds," but that 
 this quality of deception vitiates all their 
 work, as seen from a literary point of view. 
 We mean that the writer who hoaxes the 
 public, by inventions which he publishes as 
 facts, or in regard to his own personality, 
 not only will lose the confidence of the 
 public but he will lose the power of doing 
 genuine work, even in the field of fiction. 
 Good work is always characterised by 
 integrity. 
 
 These illustrations help us to understand 
 what is meant by literary integrity. For the 
 deception in the case of the correspondent 
 who invents " news " is of the same quality 
 as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in a 
 prose fiction ; there is a moral and probably 
 
 [ 307 ] 
 
r R ur H F U L N E s s 
 
 a mental defect in both. The story of Rob- 
 inson Crusoe is a very good illustration of 
 veracity in fiction. It is effective because it 
 has the simple air of truth ; it is an illusion 
 that satisfies ; it is possible ; it is good art : 
 but it has no moral deception in it. In fact, 
 looked at as literature, we can see that it is 
 sincere and wholesome. 
 
 What is this quality of truthfulness which 
 we all recognise when it exists in fiction .r* 
 There is much fiction, and some of it, for 
 various reasons, that we like and find interest- 
 ing which is nevertheless insincere if not 
 artificial. We see that the writer has not 
 been honest with himself or with us in his 
 views of human life. There may be just as 
 much lying in novels as anywhere else. The 
 novelist who offers us what he declares to be 
 a figment of his own brain may be just as 
 untrue as the reporter who sets forth a fig- 
 ment of his own brain which he declares to 
 be a real occurrence. That is, just as much 
 faithfulness to life is required of the novelist 
 as of the reporter, and in a much higher 
 
 degree. The novelist must not only tell the 
 
 [ 308 ] 
 
r R UT H F U L NESS 
 
 truth about life as he sees it, material and 
 spiritual, but he must be faithful to his own 
 conceptions. If fortunately he has genius 
 enough to create a character that has reality 
 to himself and to others, he must be faithful 
 to that character. He must have conscience 
 about it, and not misrepresent it, any more 
 than he would misrepresent the sayings and 
 doings of a person in real life. Of course if 
 his own conception is not clear, he will be as 
 unjust as in writing about a person in real 
 life whose character he knew only by rumour. 
 The novelist may be mistaken about his own 
 creations and in his views of life, but if he 
 have truthfulness in himself, sincerity will 
 show in his work. 
 
 Truthfulness is a quality that needs to be 
 as strongly insisted on in literature as sim- 
 plicity. But when we carry the matter a 
 step further, we see that there cannot be truth- 
 fulness about life without knowledge. The 
 world is full of novels, and their number dailv 
 increases, written without any sense of re- 
 sponsibility, and with very little experience, 
 which are full of false views of human nature 
 
 [309 ] 
 
T R UT H F U L N E S S 
 
 and of society. We can almost always tell 
 in a fiction when the writer passes the boun- 
 dary of his own experience and observation 
 — he becomes unreal, which is another name 
 for untruthful. And there is an absence of 
 sincerity in such work. There seems to be 
 a prevailing impression that any one can 
 write a story. But it scarcely need be said 
 that literature is an art, like painting and 
 music, and that one may have knowledge of 
 life and perfect sincerity, and yet be unable to 
 produce a good, truthful piece of literature, 
 or to compose a piece of music, or to paint a 
 picture. 
 
 Truthfulness is in no w^ay opposed to in- 
 vention or to the exercise of the imagination. 
 When we say that the writer needs experi- 
 ence, we do not mean to intimate that his 
 invention of character or plot should be liter- 
 ally limited to a person he has known, or to 
 an incident that has occurred, but that they 
 should be true to his experience. The writer 
 may create an ideally perfect character, or an 
 ideally bad character, and he may try him by 
 a set of circumstances and events never 
 
 [310] 
 
r R U T H F U L N E S S 
 
 before combined, and this creation may be 
 so romantic as to go beyond the experience 
 of any reader, that is to say, wholly imaginary 
 (like a composed landscape which has no 
 counterpart in any one view of a natural 
 landscape), and yet it may be so consistent 
 in itself, so true to an idea or an aspiration 
 or a hope, that it will have the element of 
 truthfulness and subserve a very high pur- 
 pose. It may actually be truer to our sense 
 of verity to life than an array of undeniable, 
 naked facts set down without art and with- 
 out imagination. 
 
 The difificulty of telling the truth in litera- 
 ture is about as great as it is in real life. We 
 know how nearly impossible it is for one per- 
 son to convey to another a correct impression 
 of a third person. He may describe the fea- 
 tures, the manner, mention certain traits and 
 sayings, all literally true, but absolutely mis- 
 leading as to the total impression. And this 
 is the reason why extreme, unrelieved realism 
 is apt to give a false impression of persons 
 and scenes. One can hardly help having a 
 whimsical notion occasionally, seeing the 
 
 [311] 
 
r R UT H F U L N E S S 
 
 miscarriages even in our own attempts at 
 truthfulness, that it absolutely exists only in 
 the imagination. 
 
 In a piece of fiction, especially romantic 
 fiction, an author is absolutely free to be 
 truthful, and he will be if he has personal 
 and literary integrity. He moves freely amid 
 his own creations and conceptions, and is not 
 subject to the peril of the writer who ad- 
 mittedly uses facts, but uses them so clum- 
 sily or with so little conscience, so out of 
 their real relations, as to convey a false 
 impression and an untrue view of life. This 
 quality of truthfulness is equally evident in 
 " The Three Guardsmen " and in " Mid- 
 summer Night s Dream." Dumas is as con- 
 scientious about his world of adventure as 
 Shakespeare is in his semi-supernatural re- 
 gion. If Shakespeare did not respect the 
 laws of his imaginary country, and the crea- 
 tures of his fancy, if Dumas were not true to 
 the characters he conceived, and the achieve- 
 ments possible to them, such works would 
 fall into confusion. A recent story called 
 
 " The Refugees " set out with a certain 
 
 [312 ] 
 
T R U T H F U L N E S S 
 
 promise of vemcity, although the reader 
 understood of course that it was to be a 
 purely romantic invention. But very soon 
 the author recklessly violated his own concep- 
 tion, and when he got his " real " characters 
 upon an iceberg, the fantastic position became 
 ludicrous without being funny, and the per- 
 formances of the same characters in the 
 wilderness of the New World showed such 
 lack of knowledge in the writer that the story 
 became an insult to the intelligence of the 
 reader. Whereas such a romance as that of 
 " The MS. Found in a Copper Cylinder," 
 although it is humanly impossible and visibly 
 a figment of the imagination, is satisfactory 
 to the reader because the author is true to 
 his conception, and it is interesting as a curi- 
 ous allesforical and humorous illustration of 
 the ruinous character in human affairs of 
 extreme unselfishness. There is the same 
 sort of truthfulness in Hawthorne's allegory 
 of " The Celestial Railway," in Froude's " On 
 a Siding at a Railway Station," and in Bun- 
 yan's " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 The habit of lying carried into fiction 
 
 l^'^o ] 
 
r R U T H F U L N ES S 
 
 vitiates the best work, and perhaps it is easier 
 to avoid it in pure romance than in the so- 
 called novels of " every-day life." And this 
 is probably the reason why so many of 
 the novels of " real life " are so much more 
 offensively untruthful to us than the wildest 
 romances. In the former the author could 
 perhaps " prove " every incident he narrates, 
 and produce living every character he has 
 attempted to describe. But the effect is that 
 of a lie, either because he is not a master of 
 his art, or because he has no literary con- 
 science. He is like an artist who is more 
 anxious to produce a meretricious effect than 
 he is to be true to himself or to nature. An 
 author who creates a character assumes a 
 great responsibility, and if he has not integ- 
 rity or knowledge enough to respect his own 
 creation, no one else will respect it, and, worse 
 than this, he will tell a falsehood to hosts of 
 undiscriminating readers. 
 
 [314] 
 
Literature and the Stage 
 
 Is the divorce of Literature and the Stage 
 complete, or is it still only partial ? As 
 the lawyers say, is it a vinculo, or only 
 a mensa et thoro ? And if this divorce is 
 permanent, is it a good thing for literature 
 or the stage ? Is the present condition of 
 the stage a degeneration, as some say, or is 
 it a natural evolution of an art independent 
 of literature ? 
 
 How long is it since a play has been written 
 and accepted and played which has in it any 
 so-called literary quality or is an addition to 
 literature? And what is dramatic art as at 
 present understood and practised by the 
 purveyors of plays for the public ? If any one 
 can answer these questions, he will contribute 
 something to the discussion about the ten- 
 dency of the modern stage. 
 
 Every one recognises in the "good old 
 plays " which are occasionally " revived " 
 both a quality and an intention different 
 
 [315] 
 
LITERATURE AND THE STAGE 
 
 from anything in most contemporary pro- 
 ductions. They are real dramas, the interest 
 of which depends upon sentiment, upon an 
 exhibition of human nature, upon the inter- 
 action of varied character, and upon plot, 
 and we recognise in them a certain literary 
 art. They can be read with pleasure. 
 Scenery and mechanical contrivance may 
 heighten the effects, but they are not ab- 
 solute essentials. 
 
 In the contemporary play instead of char- 
 acter we have " characters," usually exagger- 
 ations of some trait, so pushed forward as to 
 become caricatures. Consistency to human 
 nature is not insisted on in plot, but there 
 must be startling and unexpected incidents, 
 mechanical devices, and a great deal of what 
 is called "business," which clearly has as 
 much relation to literature as have the steps 
 of 2, farceur in a clog-dance. The composi- 
 tion of such plays demands literary ability 
 in the least degree, but ingenuity in invent- 
 ing situations and surprises; the text is 
 nothing, the action is everything; but the 
 text is considerably improved if it have 
 
LITERATU RE AND THE STAGE 
 
 brightness of repdrLcc and a lixcly apprclicn- 
 sion of contemporary events, including the 
 slang of the hour. These plays appear to be 
 made up by the writer, the manager, the 
 carpenter, the costumer. If they are success- 
 ful with the modern audiences, their success 
 is probably due to other things than any 
 literary quality they may have, or any truth 
 to life or to human nature. 
 
 We see how this is in the great number of 
 plays adapted from popular novels. In the 
 " dramatisation " of these stories, pretty much 
 everything is left out of the higher sort that 
 the reader has valued in the story. The 
 romance of " Monte Cristo " is an illustra- 
 tion of this. The play is vulgar melodrama, 
 out of which has escaped altogether the re- 
 finement and the romantic idealism of the 
 stirring romance of Dumas. Now and then, 
 to be sure, we get a different result, as in 
 " Olivia," where all the pathos and character 
 of the " Vicar of Wakefield " are preserved, 
 and the effect of the play depends upon pas- 
 sion and sentiment. But as a rule, we get only 
 the more obvious saliencies, the bones of 
 
 [317] 
 
LITERATURE AND THE STAGE 
 
 the novel, fitted in or clothed with stage 
 "business." 
 
 Of course it is true that literary men, even 
 dramatic authors, may write and always have 
 written dramas not suited to actors, that could 
 not well be put upon the stage. But it re- 
 mains true that the greatest dramas, those 
 that have endured from the Greek times 
 down, have been (for the audiences of their 
 times) both good-reading and good-acting 
 plays. 
 
 I am not competent to criticise the stage 
 
 or its tendency. But I am interested in 
 
 noticing the increasing non-literary character 
 
 of modern plays. It may be explained as a 
 
 necessary and justifiable evolution of the 
 
 stage. The managers may know what the 
 
 audience wants, just as the editors of some 
 
 of the most sensational newspapers say that 
 
 they make a newspaper to suit the public. 
 
 The newspaper need not be well written, but 
 
 it must startle with incident and surprise, 
 
 found or invented. An observer must notice 
 
 that the usual theatre-audience in New York 
 
 or Boston to-day laughs at and applauds 
 
 [3x8] 
 
LITERATURE AND THE STAGE 
 
 costumes, situations, innuendoes, doubtful 
 suggestions, that it would have blushed at 
 a few years ago. Has the audience been 
 creating a theatre to suit its taste, or have 
 the manao-ers been cducatino- an audience? 
 Has the divorce of literary art from the 
 mimic art of the stage anything to do with 
 this condition? 
 
 The stage can be amusing, but can it show 
 life as it is without the aid of idealising lit- 
 erary art? And if the stage goes on in this 
 materialistic way, how long will it be before 
 it ceases to amuse intelligent, not to say in- 
 tellectual people? 
 
 [ 319 ] 
 
" H. H;' in Southern Cali- 
 fornia 
 
 IT seems somehow more nearly an irrep- 
 arable loss to us than to " H. H." that 
 she did not live to taste her very substan- 
 tial fame in Southern California. We should 
 have had such delight in her unaffected 
 pleasure in it, and it would have been one 
 of those satisfactions somewhat adequate 
 to our sense of fitness that are so seldom 
 experienced. It was my good fortune to 
 see Mrs. Jackson frequently in the days in 
 New York when she was writing " Ramona," 
 which was begun and perhaps finished in 
 the Berkeley House. The theme had com- 
 plete possession of her, and chapter after 
 chapter flowed from her pen as easily as 
 one would write a letter to a friend ; and 
 she had an ever fresh and vig-orous delig^ht 
 in it. I have often thouo-ht that no one 
 
 ^21 [ 321 ] 
 
<'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 enjoyed the sensation of living more than 
 Mrs. Jackson, or was more alive to all the 
 influences of nature and the contact of 
 mind with mind, more responsive to all 
 that was exquisite and noble either in na- 
 ture or in society, or more sensitive to the 
 disagreeable. This is merely saying that 
 she was a poet; but when she became in- 
 terested in the Indians, and especially in 
 the harsh fate of the Mission Indians in 
 California, all her nature was fused for the 
 time in a lofty enthusiasm of pity and in- 
 dignation, and all her powers seemed to be 
 consecrated to one purpose. Enthusiasm 
 and sympathy will not make a novel, but 
 all the same they are necessary to the pro- 
 duction of a work that has in it real vital 
 quality, and in this case all previous expe- 
 rience and artistic training became the un- 
 conscious servants of Mrs. Jackson's heart. 
 I know she had very little conceit about 
 her performance, but she had a simple 
 consciousness that she was doing her best 
 work, and that if the world should care 
 
 much for anything she had done, after she 
 
 [322 ] 
 
*' H. Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 was gone, it would be for " Ramona." She 
 had put herseU into it. 
 
 And vet I am certain that she could 
 have liad no idea what the novel would be 
 to the people of Southern California, or 
 how it would identify her name with all 
 that region, and make so many scenes in 
 it places of pilgrimage and romantic inter- 
 est for her sake. I do not mean to say 
 that the people in California knew person- 
 ally Ramona and Alessandro, or altogether 
 believe in them, but that in their idealisa- 
 tions they recognise a verity and the ulti- 
 mate truth of human nature, while in the 
 scenery, in the fading sentiment of the old 
 Spanish life, and the romance and faith of 
 the Missions, the author has done for the 
 region very much what Scott did for the 
 Highlands. I hope she knows now, I pre- 
 sume she does, that more than one Indian 
 school in the Territories is called the Ra- 
 mona School ; that at least two villages in 
 California are contending for the priority 
 of using the name Ramona; that all the 
 travellers and tourists (at least in the time 
 
''H,Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 they can spare from real-estate specula- 
 tions) go about under her guidance, are 
 pilgrims to the shrines she has described, 
 and eager searchers for the scenes she has 
 made famous in her novel ; that more than 
 one city and more than one town claims 
 the honour of connection with the story ; 
 that the tourist has pointed out to him in 
 more than one village the very house 
 where Ramona lived, where she was mar- 
 ried — indeed, that a little crop of legends 
 has already grown up about the story it- 
 self. I was myself shown the house in 
 Los Angeles where the story was written, 
 and so strong is the local impression that 
 I confess to looking at the rose-embow- 
 ered cottage with a good deal of interest, 
 though I had seen the romance growing 
 day by day in the Berkeley in New York. 
 The undoubted scene of the loves of 
 Ramona and Alessandro is the Comulos 
 rancho, on the railway from Newhall to 
 Santa Paula, the route that one takes now 
 (unless he wants to have a life-long remem- 
 brance of the ground swells of the Pacific in 
 
 [324] 
 
^'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 an uneasy little steamer) to go from Los 
 Angeles to Santa Barbara. It is almost the 
 only one remaining of the old-fashioned 
 Spanish haciendas, where the old adminis- 
 tration prevails. The new railway passes it 
 now, and the hospitable owners have been 
 obliged to yield to the public curiosity and 
 provide entertainment for a continual stream 
 of visitors. The place is so perfectly de- 
 scribed in " Ramona " that I do not need 
 to draw it over again, and I violate no confi- 
 dence and only certify to the extraordinary 
 powers of delineation of the novelist, when I 
 say that she only spent a few hours there, — 
 not a quarter of the time we spent in iden- 
 tifying her picture. We knew the situation be- 
 fore the train stopped by the crosses erected 
 on the conspicuous peaks of the serrated 
 ashy — or shall I say purple — hills that en- 
 fold the fertile valley. It is a great domain, 
 watered by a swift river, and sheltered by 
 wonderfully picturesque mountains. The 
 house is strictly in the old Spanish style, 
 of one story about a large court, with flowers 
 and a fountain, in which are the most noisy 
 
 [325 ] 
 
"H,Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 if not musical frogs in the world, and all the 
 interior rooms opening upon a gallery. The 
 real front is towards the garden, and here at 
 the end of the gallery is the elevated room 
 where Father Salvierderra slept when he 
 passed a night at the hacienda, — a pretty 
 room which has a case of Spanish books, 
 mostly religious and legal, and some quaint 
 and cheap holy pictures. We had a letter to 
 Signora Del Valle, the mistress, and were 
 welcomed with a sort of formal extension of 
 hospitality that put us back into the courtly 
 manners of a hundred years ago. The Sig- 
 nora, who is in no sense the original of the 
 mistress whom " H. H." describes, is a widow 
 now for seven years, and is the vigilant ad- 
 ministrator of all her large domain, of the 
 stock, the grazing lands, the vineyard, the 
 sheep ranch, and all the people. Rising 
 very early in the morning, she visits every 
 department, and no detail is too minute to 
 escape her inspection, and no one in the 
 great household but feels her authority. 
 It was a very lovely day on the 17th of 
 
 March (indeed, I suppose it had been pre- 
 
 [ 326 ] 
 
''H,Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 ceded by 364 days cxac-tly like it) as we sat 
 upon tlic gallery looking on the garden, a 
 garden of oranges, roses, citrons, lemons, 
 peaches — what fruit and flower was not 
 growing there ? — acres and acres of vineyard 
 beyond, with the tall cane and willows b\' the 
 stream, and the purple mountains against 
 the sapphire sky. Was there ever anything 
 more exquisite than the peach-blossoms 
 against that blue sky ! Such a place of 
 peace. A soft south wind was blowing, and 
 all the air was drowsy with the hum of bees. 
 In the o-arden is a vine-covered arbour, with 
 seats and tables, and at the end of it is 
 the opening into a little chapel, a domestic 
 chapel, carpeted like a parlour, and bearing 
 all the emblems of a loving devotion. By 
 the Q:arden orate hano^ three small bells, 
 from some old mission, all cracked, but serv- 
 ing (each has its office) to summon the work- 
 men or to call to prayer. 
 
 Perfect system reigns in Signora Del 
 Valle's establishment, and even the least 
 child in it has Its duty. At sundown a little 
 slip of a girl went out to the gate and struck 
 
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^'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 one of the bells. "What is that for?" I 
 asked as she returned. " It is the Angelus," 
 she said simply. I do not know what would 
 happen to her if she should neglect to strike 
 it at the hour. At eight o'clock the largest 
 bell was struck, and the Signora and all her 
 household, including the house servants, went 
 out to the little chapel in the garden, which 
 was suddenly lighted with candles, gleaming 
 brilliantly through the orange groves. The 
 Signora read the service, the household re- 
 sponding — a twenty minutes' service, which 
 is as much a part of the administration of the 
 establishment as visiting the granaries and 
 presses, and the bringing home of the goats. 
 The Signora's apartments, which she per- 
 mitted us to see, were quite in the nature 
 of an oratory, with shrines and sacred pic- 
 tures and relics of the faith. By the shrine 
 at the head of her bed hung the rosary car- 
 ried by Father J unipero, — a priceless pos- 
 session. From her presses and armoires, the 
 Signora, seeing we had a taste for such 
 things, brought out the feminine treasures 
 
 of three generations, the silk and embroidered 
 
 [328] 
 
''H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 dresses of last ccnliir\-, llu' iil)Osas, tlic jew- 
 elry, the brillicint stultsof ChiiKi and Mexico, 
 each article with a nicniorx- ami a ila\'OLir. 
 
 But I must not ])e beti'a\-ed into writinor 
 about Raniona's house. How charm ini;" in- 
 deed it was the next nK)rnin<j;, — tlio' the 
 birds in the garden were astir a little too 
 earl)', — with the thermometer set to the 
 exact decree of warmth without lanouor, the 
 sky blue, the wind soft, the air scented wnth 
 orange and jessamine. The Signora had al- 
 ready visited all her premises before we were 
 up. We had seen the evening before an en- 
 closure near the house full of cashmere goats 
 and kids, wdiose antics were sufTpiciently amus- 
 ing — most of them had now gone afield; 
 workmen were coming for their orders, 
 ploughing was going on in the barley fields, 
 traders were driving to the plantation store, 
 the fierce eao-le in a bisf cao-e bv the olive 
 press was raging at his detention. Within 
 the house enclosure are an olive mill and 
 press, a wine-press and a great storehouse 
 of wine, containing now little but empty 
 casks, — a dusky, interesting place, with pora- 
 
 [329] 
 
^'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 egranates and dried bunches of grapes and 
 oranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging 
 from the rafters. Near by is a corn-house 
 and a small distillery, and the corrals for 
 sheep shearing are not far off. The ranches 
 for cattle and sheep are on the other side of 
 the mountain. 
 
 Peace be with Comulos. It must please 
 the author of "Ramona" to know that it con- 
 tinues in the old ways; and I trust she is 
 undisturbed by the knowledge that the 
 rage for change will not long let it be what 
 it now is. 
 
 i^Z'^l 
 
C\ (2 
 
iCOPlf DLL. lOCAT.iilV, 
 APR. 26 1902 
 
 '^^^ ^ 1902 
 
 
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