Chapter III: Introduction: 9 (2)

And it derives invaluable aid in keeping its place and extending its influence in national councils from the rapid spread of the study of political economy, a science which is based on the assumption that men are free and independent. There is hardly one of its principles which is applicable to any state of society in which each individual is not master of his own actions and sole guardian of his own welfare. In a community in which the relations of its members are regulated by status and not by contract, it has no place and no value. The natural result of the study and discussion which the ablest thinkers have expended on it during the last eighty years has been to place before the civilized world in the strongest light the prodigious impulse which is given to human energy and forethought and industry, and the great gain to society at large, by the recognition in legislation of the capacity, as well as of the right, of each human being to seek his own happiness in his own way. Of course no political system in which this principle has a place can long avoid conceding to all who live under it equality before the law; and from equality before the law to the possession of an equal share in the making of the laws, there is, as everybody must see who is familiar with modern history, but a very short step.

If this spread of democracy, however, was sure, as its enemies maintain, to render great attainments and great excellence impossible or rare, to make literary men slovenly and inaccurate and tasteless, artists mediocre, professors of science dull and unenterprising, and statesmen conscienceless and ignorant, it would threaten civilization with such danger that no friend of progress could wish to see it. But it is difficult to discover on what it is, either in history or human nature, that this apprehension is founded. M. de Tocqueville and all his followers take it for granted that the great incentive to excellence, in all countries in which excellence is found, is the patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy; that democracy is generally content with mediocrity. But where is the proof of this? The incentive to exertion which is widest, most constant, and most powerful in its operation in all civilized countries, is the desire of distinction; and this may be composed either of love of fame or love of wealth, or of both. In literary and artistic and scientific pursuits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted by a love of the subject. But it may be safely said that no man has ever yet labored in any of the higher callings to whom the applause and appreciation of his fellows was not one of the sweetest rewards of his exertions. There is probably not a masterpiece in existence, either in literature or in art, probably few discoveries in science have ever been made, which we do not owe in a large measure to the love of distinction. Who paints pictures, or has ever painted them, that they may delight no eye but his own? Who writes books for the mere pleasure of seeing his thoughts on paper? Who discovers or invents, and is willing, provided the world is the better of his discoveries or inventions, that another should enjoy the honor? Fame has, in short, been in all ages and in all countries recognized as one of the strongest springs of human action--

“The spur that doth the clear spirit raise
To scorn delight and live laborious days,--”

sweetening toil, robbing danger and poverty and even death itself of their terrors.

What is there, we would ask, in the nature of democratic institutions, that should render this great spring of action powerless, that should deprive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to sleep? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that one of the most marked peculiarities of democratic society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, is the fire of competition which rages in it, the fevered anxiety which possesses all its members to rise above the dead level to which the law is ever seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant stroke become something higher and more remarkable than their fellows? The secret of that great restlessness, which is one of the most disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic countries, is in fact due to the eagerness of everybody to grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic countries only the few have much chance. And in no other society is success more worshipped, is distinction of any kind more widely flattered and caressed. Where is the successful author, or artist, or discoverer, the subject of greater homage than in France or America? And yet in both the principle of equality reigns supreme; and his advancement in the social scale has gone on _pari passu_ in every country with the spread of democratic ideas and manners. Grub Street was the author’s retreat in the aristocratic age; in this democratic one, he is welcome at the King’s table, and sits at the national council board. In democratic societies, in fact, excellence is the first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones, there are two or three others which are far stronger, and which must be stronger, or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you acknowledge that the highest social position ought to be the reward of the man who has the most talent, you make aristocratic institutions impossible. But to make the thirst for distinction lose its power over the human heart, you must do something more than establish equality of conditions; you must recast human nature itself....

There are some, however, who, while acknowledging that the love of distinction will retain its force under every form of social or political organization, yet maintain that to excel in the arts, science, or literature requires leisure, and the possession of leisure implies the possession of fortune. This men in a democratic society cannot have, because the absence of great hereditary wealth is necessary to the perpetuation of democracy. Every man, or nearly every man, must toil for a living; and therefore it becomes impossible for him to gratify the thirst for distinction, let him feel it ever so strongly. The attention he can give to literature or art or science must be too desultory and hasty, his mental training too defective, to allow him to work out valuable results or conduct important researches. To achieve great things in these fields, it is said and insinuated, men must be elevated, by the possession of fortune, above the vulgar, petty cares of life; their material wants must be provided for before they concentrate their thoughts with the requisite intensity on the task before them. Therefore it is to aristocracy we must look for any great advance in these pursuits.

The history of literature and art and philosophy is, however, very far from lending confirmation to this opinion. If it teaches us anything, it teaches us that the possession of leisure, far from having helped men in the pursuit of knowledge, seems to have impeded them. Those who have pursued it most successfully are all but invariably those who have pursued it under difficulties. The possession of great wealth no doubt gives facilities for study and cultivation which the mass of mankind do not possess; but it at the same time exerts an influence on the character which, in a vast majority of cases, renders the owner unwilling to avail himself of them. We owe to the Roman aristocracy the great fabric of Roman jurisprudence; but, since their time, what has any aristocracy done for art and literature, or law? They have for over a thousand years been in possession of nearly the whole resources of every country in Europe. They have had its wealth, its libraries, its archives, its teachers, at their disposal; and yet was there ever a more pitiful record than the list of “Royal and Noble Authors.” One can hardly help being astonished, too, at the smallness and paltriness of the legacies which the aristocracy of the aristocratic age has bequeathed to this democratic age which is succeeding it. It has, indeed, handed down to us many glorious traditions, many noble and inspiring examples of courage and fortitude and generosity. The democratic world would certainly be worse off than it is if it never heard of the Cid, or Bayard, or Du Guesclin, of Montrose, or Hampden, or Russell. But what has it left behind it for which the lover of art may be thankful, by which literature has been made richer, philosophy more potent or more fruitful? The painting and sculpture of modern Europe owe not only their glory, but their very existence, to the labors of poor and obscure men. The great architectural monuments by which its soil is covered were hardly any of them the product of aristocratic feeling or liberality. If we except a few palaces and a few fortresses, we owe nearly all of them to the labor or the genius or the piety of the democratic cities which grew up in the midst of feudalism. If we take away the sum total of the monuments of Continental art all that was created by the Italian republics, the commercial towns of Germany and Flanders, and the communes of France, and by the unaided efforts of the illustrious obscure, the remainder would form a result poor and pitiful indeed. We may say much the same thing of every great work in literature, and every great discovery in science. Few of them have been produced by men of leisure, nearly all by those whose life was a long struggle to escape from the vulgarest and most sordid cares. And what is perhaps most remarkable of all is, that the Catholic Church, the greatest triumph of organizing genius, the most impressive example of the power of combination and of discipline which the world has ever seen, was built up and has been maintained by the labors of men drawn from the humblest ranks of society.

Aristocracy applied itself exclusively for ages to the profession of arms. If there was anything at which it might have seemed hopeless for democracy to compete with it, it was in the raising, framing and handling of armies. But the very first time that a democratic society found itself compelled to wage war in defence of its own ideas, it displayed a force, an originality, a vigor and rapidity of conception, in this, to it, new pursuit, which speedily laid Europe at its feet. And the great master of the art of war, be it ever remembered, was born in obscurity and bred in poverty.

Nor, long as men of leisure have devoted themselves to the art of government, have they made any contributions worth mentioning to political science. They have displayed, indeed, consummate skill and tenacity in pursuing any line of policy on which they have once deliberately fixed; but all the great political reforms have been, though often carried into effect by aristocracies, conceived, agitated, and forced on the acceptance of the government by the middle and lower classes. The idea of equality before the law was originated in France by literary men. In England, the slave-trade was abolished by the labors of the middle classes. The measure met with the most vigorous opposition in the House of Lords. The emancipation of the negroes, Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, law reform, especially the reform in the criminal law, free trade, and, in fact, nearly every change which has had for its object the increase of national happiness and prosperity, has been conceived by men of low degree, and discussed and forced on the upper classes by men busy about many other things.

We are, however, very far from believing that democratic society has no dangers or defects. What we have been endeavoring to show is that the inquiry into their nature and number has been greatly impeded by the natural disposition of foreign observers to take the United States as a fair specimen of what democracy is under the most favorable circumstances. The enormous extent of unoccupied land at our disposal, which raises every man in the community above want, by affording a ready outlet for surplus population, is constantly spoken of as a condition wholly favorable to the democratic experiment,--more favorable than could possibly offer itself elsewhere. In so far as it contributes to the general happiness and comfort, it no doubt makes the work of government easy; but what we think no political philosopher ought to forget is that it also offers serious obstacles to the settlement of a new society on a firm basis, and produces a certain appearance of confusion and instability, both in manners and ideas, which unfit it to furnish a basis for any inductions of much value as to the tendencies to defects either of an equality of conditions or of democratic institutions.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] From “Problems of Modern Democracy.” Copyright, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. By permission of the publishers.

JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY

The extremely romantic life of John Boyle O’Reilly began on June
28th, 1844, at Dowth Castle, near the town of Drogheda in Ireland.
His chivalrous nature and passionate love of country and of liberty
were stimulated by the traditions and beauty of the surroundings and
by the atmosphere of legend and story in which he was brought up by
his schoolmaster father and clever and gifted mother. As a young man
he was employed as a compositor in a printing office in Ireland and
later at Preston in Lancashire. In consequence of his connection with
the Fenian movement he was banished to Australia, whence he escaped
to America in 1869, settling in Boston, where his ability as poet,
journalist and orator was quickly recognized. Maurice Francis Egan
has said of him: “In the United States, after adventures by sea and
land, and tortures and suffering borne with a heroism that was both
Greek and Christian, he found the spirit of freedom in concrete form.
Our country satisfied his aspirations for liberty; he loved Ireland
not less, but America more; he was exiled from the land of his birth,
yet he found ample consolation in the country he had chosen.”

The life of the poet by James Jeffrey Roche, together with his
complete poems and speeches, edited by Mrs. O’Reilly, was published
by Cassell in 1891. A volume of selected poems was published by
Kenedy in 1913.

THE EXILE OF THE GAEL

“What have ye brought to our Nation-building, Sons of the Gael?
What is your burden or guerdon from old Innisfail?”

“No treasure we bring from Erin--nor bring we shame nor guilt!
The sword we hold may be broken, but we have not dropped the hilt!
The wreath we bear to Columbia is twisted of thorns, not bays,
And the songs we sing are saddened by thoughts of desolate days.
But the hearts we bring for Freedom are washed in the surge of tears,
And we claim our right by a People’s fight outliving a thousand
years!”

“What bring ye else to the Building?”
“Oh, willing hands to toil;
Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil;
Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field,--
The sons of a race of soldiers who never learned to yield.
Young hearts with duty brimming--as faith makes sweet the due;
Their truth to me their witness they cannot be false to you!”

“What send ye else, old Mother, to raise our mighty wall?
For we must build against Kings and Wrongs a fortress never to fall.”

“I send you in cradle and bosom, wise brain and eloquent tongue,
Whose crowns should engild my crowning, whose songs for me should be
sung.
Oh, flowers unblown, from lonely fields, my daughters with hearts
aglow,
With pulses warm with sympathies, with bosoms pure as snow,--
I smile through tears as the clouds unroll--my widening river that
runs!
My lost ones grown in radiant growth--proud mothers of free-born
sons.”

“It is well, aye, well, old Erin! The sons you give to me
Are symboled long in flag and song--your Sunburst on the Sea.
All mine by the chrism of Freedom, still yours by their love’s belief;
And truest to me shall the tenderest be in a suffering Mother’s grief.
Their loss is the change of the wave to the cloud, of the dew to the
river and main;
Their hope shall persist through the sea and the mist, and thy streams
shall be filled again.
As the smolt of the salmon go down to the sea, and as surely come back
to the river,
Their love shall be yours while your sorrow endures, for God guardeth
His right forever.”

THE PILGRIM FATHERS

In every land wherever might holds sway
The Pilgrims’ leaven is at work to-day.
The Mayflower’s cabin was the chosen womb
Of light predestined for the nations’ gloom.
God grant that those who tend the sacred flame
May worthy prove of their Forefathers’ name.
More light has come,--more dangers, too, perplex:
New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex.
The Fathers fled from feudal lords and made
A freehold state; may we not retrograde
To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade.
May we, as they did, teach in court and school
There must be classes, but no class shall rule:
The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool.
Though vast the token of our future glory,
Though tongue of man hath not told such a story,
Surpassing Plato’s dream, More’s phantasy, still we
Have no new principles to keep us free.
As Nature works with changeless grain on grain,
The truths the Fathers taught we need again.
Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves
With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw,
And patch our moral leaks with statute law,
We cannot be protected from ourselves!
Still must we keep in every stroke and vote
The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote;
Our seal their secret: _Liberty can be;_
_The State is freedom if the Town is free._
The death of nations in their work began;
They sowed the seed of federated man.
Dead nations were but robber-holds, and we
The first battalion of Humanity!
All living nations, while our eagles shine,
One after one, shall swing into our line;
Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide
And bloodless order of their regicide;
The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand
Dividing farm from farm, not land from land.
O People’s Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear;
When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know;
When artist minds in world-wide symbol show;
When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise;
When priests on grand cathedral altars praise;
When pride and arrogance shall disappear,
The Pilgrims’ Vision is accomplished here!

LIBERTY LIGHTING THE WORLD[5]

Majestic warder by the nation’s gate,
Spike-crowned, flame-armed like Agony or Glory,
Holding the tablets of some unknown law,
With gesture eloquent and mute as Fate,--
We stand about thy feet in solemn awe,
Like desert-tribes who seek their sphinx’s story,
And question thee in spirit and in speech;
What art thou? Whence? What comest thou to teach?
What vision hold those introverted eyes
Of revolutions framed in centuries?
Thy flame--what threat, or guide for sacred way?
Thy tablet--what commandment? What Sinai?
Lo! as the waves make murmur at thy base,
We watch the somber grandeur of thy face,
And ask thee--what thou art.

I am Liberty--God’s daughter!
My symbols--a law and a torch;
Not a sword to threaten slaughter,
Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch;
But a light that the world may see
And a truth that shall make men free.

I am the sister of Duty,
And I am the sister of Faith;
To-day adored for my beauty,
To-morrow led forth to death.
I am she whom ages prayed for;
Heroes suffered undismayed for;
Whom the martyrs were betrayed for!

I am Liberty! Fame of nation or praise of statute is naught to me:
Freedom is growth and not creation: one man suffers, one man is free.
One brain forges a constitution; but how shall the million souls be
won?
Freedom is more than a resolution--he is not free who is free alone.

Justice is mine, and it grows by loving, changing the world like the
circling sun;
Evil recedes from the spirit’s proving as mist from the hollows when
night is done.
Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights and the
rights are won;

Wrong shall die with the understanding--one truth clear and the work
is done.
Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety
enslaved for ten;
My word shall stand against mart and college; _The planet belongs to
its living men!_
And hither, ye weary ones and breathless, searching the seas for a
kindly shore,
I am Liberty! patient, deathless--set by love at the nation’s door.

AMERICA[6]

O Land magnanimous, republican!
The last for Nationhood, the first for Man!
Because thy lines by Freedom’s hand were laid,
Profound the sin to change or retrograde.
From base to cresting let thy work be new;
’Twas not by aping foreign ways it grew.
To struggling peoples give at least applause;
Let equities, not precedent, subtend your laws;
Like rays from that great Eye the altars show,
That fall triangular, free states should grow,
The soul above, the brain and hand below.
Believe that strength lies not in steel nor stone;
That perils wait the land whose heavy throne,
Though ringed by swords and rich with titled show,
Is based on fettered misery below;
That nations grow where every class unites
For common interests and common rights;
Where no caste barrier stays the poor man’s son,
Till step by step the topmost height is won;
Where every hand subscribes to every rule,
And free as air are voice and vote and school!
A nation’s years are centuries. Let Art
Portray thy first, and Liberty will start
From every field in Europe at the sight.
“Why stand these thrones between us and the light?”
Strong men will ask, “Who built these frontier towers
To bar out men of kindred blood with ours?”

Oh, this thy work, Republic! this thy health,
To prove man’s birthright to a commonwealth;
To teach the peoples to be strong and wise,
Till armies, nations, nobles, royalties,
Are laid at rest with all their fears and hates;
Till Europe’s thirteen monarchies are states,
Without a barrier and without a throne,
Of one grand federation like our own!

FOOTNOTES:

[5] The poem is given in the abridged form in which it is printed in the volume of O’Reilly’s selected poems, published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons.

[6] This poem, which is here quoted in part only, was read at the reunion of the Army of the Potomac, in Detroit, June 14, 1882, General Grant being present on the occasion.

HANS MATTSON

Hans Mattson was the son of an independent freeholder and successful
farmer of the parish of Onnestad, near the city of Kristianstad,
Sweden. In an unpretending little cabin built by his father he spent
the first years of his happy and peaceful childhood. On one occasion
he was taken by his parents to see the king, who was to pass by on
the highway near his home. In the midst of the confusion he did
succeed in getting a glimpse of King Oscar I. In his childish mind he
had fancied that the king and his family and all others in authority
were the peculiar and elect people of the Almighty, but after this
event he began to entertain serious doubts as to the correctness of
his views on this matter.

After a year and a half in the Swedish army he decided to leave
the service and try his luck “in a country where inherited names
and titles were not the necessary conditions of success.” He says:
“At that time America was little known in our part of the country,
only a few persons having emigrated from the whole district. But we
knew that it was a new country, inhabited by a free and independent
people, that it had a liberal government and great natural resources,
and these inducements were sufficient for us.”

From the time of his arrival at Boston until his final settling in
Minnesota, his career is but typical of that of the many sturdy and
enterprising pioneers of Scandinavian origin who have contributed
so much to the building of the Northwest. He served as a colonel
in the Civil War, and in 1869 was elected as Secretary of State in
Minnesota. Later he was Consul General of the United States in India.

The selection that follows is taken from the final chapter of his
“Reminiscences,” the English translation of which was published in
1892.

SCANDINAVIAN CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN NATIONALITY

It is a great mistake which some make, to think that it is only for their brawn and muscle that the Northmen have become a valuable acquisition to the American population; on the contrary, they have done, and are doing, as much as any other nationality within the domain of mind and heart. Not to speak of the early discovery of America by the Scandinavians four hundred years before the time of Columbus, they can look back with proud satisfaction on the part they have taken in all respects to make this great republic what it is to-day.

The early Swedish colonists in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey worked as hard for liberty and independence as the English did in New England and in the South. There were no tories among them, and when the Continental Congress stood wavering equal in the balance for and against the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, it was a Swede, John Morton (Mortenson), of the old Delaware stock, who gave the casting vote of Pennsylvania in favor of the sacred document.

When, nearly a century later, the great rebellion burst upon the land, a gallant descendant of the Swedes, Gen. Robert Anderson, met its first shock at Fort Sumter, and, during the bitter struggle of four years which followed, the Scandinavian-Americans were as true and loyal to their adopted country as their native-born neighbors, giving their unanimous support to the cause of the Union and fighting valiantly for it. Nor should it be forgotten that it was the Swede, John Ericsson, who, by his inventive genius, saved the navy and the great seaports of the United States, and that it was another Swede by descent, Admiral Dahlgren, who furnished the model for the best guns of our artillery. Surely love of freedom, valor, genius, patriotism and religious fervor was not planted in America by the seeds brought over in the Mayflower alone.

Yes, it is verily true that the Scandinavian immigrants, from the early colonists of 1638 to the present time, have furnished strong hands, clear heads and loyal hearts to the republic. They have caused the wilderness to blossom like the rose; they have planted schools and churches on the hills and in the valleys; they have honestly and ably administered the public affairs of town, county and state; they have helped to make wise laws for their respective commonwealths and in the halls of Congress; they have, with honor and ability, represented their adopted country abroad; they have sanctified the American soil by their blood, shed in freedom’s cause on the battle-fields of the Revolution and the Civil War; and, though proud of their Scandinavian ancestry, they love America and American institutions as deeply and as truly as do the descendants of the Pilgrims, the starry emblem of liberty meaning as much to them as to any other citizen.

Therefore, the Scandinavian-American feels a certain sense of ownership in the glorious heritage of American soil, with its rivers, lakes, mountains, valleys, woods and prairies, and in all its noble institutions; and he feels that the blessings which he enjoys are not his by favor or sufferance, but by right;--by moral as well as civil right. For he took possession of the wilderness, endured the hardships of the pioneer, contributed his full share toward the grand results accomplished, and is in mind and heart a true and loyal American citizen.

JACOB RIIS

Jacob Riis, who may well stand as a representative of the best that
America has received from the Scandinavian countries, was born at
Ribe, Denmark, May 3, 1849. He emigrated to the United States in
1870, where he subsequently obtained a position as reporter on _The
New York Tribune_ and _The Evening Sun_. It is at the close of his
well-known autobiography that he relates how he came to a realization
that he was indeed an American in heart as well as in name. In words
of patriotic fervor he says:--

“I have told the story of the making of an American. There remains to
tell how I found out that he was made and finished at last. It was
when I went back to see my mother once more and, wandering about the
country of my childhood’s memories, had come to the city of Elsinore.
There I fell ill of a fever and lay many weeks in the house of a
friend upon the shore of the beautiful Oeresund. One day when the
fever had left me, they rolled my bed into a room overlooking the
sea. The sunlight danced upon the waves, and the distant mountains of
Sweden were blue against the horizon. Ships passed under full sail
up and down the great waterway of the nations. But the sunshine and
the peaceful day bore no message to me. I lay moodily picking at the
coverlet, sick and discouraged and sore--I hardly knew why myself.
Until all at once there sailed past, close inshore, a ship flying at
the top the flag of freedom, blown out on the breeze till every star
in it shone bright and clear. That moment I knew. Gone were illness,
discouragement, and gloom! Forgotten weakness and suffering, the
cautions of doctor and nurse. I sat up in bed and shouted, laughed
and cried by turns, waving my handkerchief to the flag out there.
They thought I had lost my head, but I told them no, thank God! I
had found it, and my heart, too, at last. I knew then that it was
my flag; that my children’s home was mine, indeed; that I also had
become an American in truth. And I thanked God, and, like unto the
man sick of the palsy, arose from my bed and went home, healed.”

Besides being the author of several books, such as “The Battle
with the Slum,” “How the Other Half Lives,” and “The Children of
the Poor,” dealing with the life of the people of New York’s East
Side, he was an active and practical reformer. In the course of his
struggles to ameliorate the condition of the poor, he met Theodore
Roosevelt and formed the friendship which inspired the volume
represented in the following selection. Riis and Roosevelt had much
in common. There was in both a great deal of the old Anglo-Saxon
fighting spirit, ennobled by modern influences and employed in
defense of right and justice. Their mutual and steadfast devotion
to each other resembled that of ancient liegeman and lord. This
hero-worship is, after all, not unique in our history. It should
be a cause for great pride that so many of our leaders, of whom,
of course, Lincoln is the most striking example, by embodying the
noblest and the best in American life, have been the living ideal of
countless immigrants.

A YOUNG MAN’S HERO: AN IMMIGRANT’S TRIBUTE TO ROOSEVELT

There was never a day that called so loudly for such as he, as does this of ours. Not that it is worse than other days; I know it is better. I find proof of it in the very fact that it is as if the age-long fight between good and evil had suddenly come to a head, as if all the questions of right, of justice, of the brotherhood, which we had seen in glimpses before, and dimly, had all at once come out in the open, craving solution one and all. A battle royal, truly! A battle for the man of clean hands and clean mind, who can think straight and act square; the man who will stand for the right “because it is right”; who can say, and mean it, that “it is hard to fail, but worse never to have tried to succeed.” A battle for him who strives for “that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to him who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” I am but quoting his own words, and never, I think, did I hear finer than those he spoke of Governor Taft when he had put by his own preferences and gone to his hard and toilsome task in the Philippines; for the whole royal, fighting soul of the man was in them.

“But he undertook it gladly,” he said, “and he is to be considered thrice fortunate; for in this world the one thing supremely worth having is the opportunity coupled with the capacity to do well and worthily a piece of work the doing of which is of vital consequence to the welfare of mankind.”

There is his measure. Let now the understrappers sputter. With that for our young men to grow up to, we need have no fear for the morrow. Let it ask what questions it will of the Republic, it shall answer them, for we shall have men at the oars.

This afternoon the newspaper that came to my desk contained a cable despatch which gave me a glow at the heart such as I have not felt for a while. Just three lines; but they told that a nation’s conscience was struggling victoriously through hate and foul play and treason: Captain Dreyfus was to get a fair trial. Justice was to be done at last to a once despised Jew whose wrongs had held the civilized world upon the rack; and the world was made happy. Say now it does not move! It does, where there are men to move it,--I said it before: men who believe in the right and are willing to fight for it. When the children of poverty and want came to Mulberry Street for justice, and I knew they came because Roosevelt had been there, I saw in that what the resolute, courageous, unyielding determination of one man to see right done in his own time could accomplish. I have watched him since in the Navy Department, in camp, as Governor, in the White House, and more and more I have made out his message as being to the young men of our day, himself the youngest of our Presidents. I know it is so, for when I speak to the young about him, I see their eyes kindle, and their handshake tells me that they want to be like him, and are going to try. And then I feel that I, too, have done something worth doing for my people. For, whether for good or for evil, we all leave our mark upon our day, and his is that of a clean, strong man who fights for the right _and wins_.

Now, then, a word to these young men who, all over our broad land, are striving up toward the standard he sets, for he is their hero by right, as he is mine. Do not be afraid to own it. The struggle to which you are born, and in which you are bound to take a hand if you would be men in more than name, is the struggle between the ideal and the husk; for life without ideals is like the world without the hope of heaven, an empty, meaningless husk. It is your business to read its meaning into it by making the ideals real. The material things of life are good in their day, but they pass away; the moral remain to bear witness that the high hopes of youth are not mere phantasms. Theodore Roosevelt _lives his ideals_; therefore you can trust them. Here they are in working shape: “Face the facts as you find them; strive steadily for the best.” “Be never content with less than the possible best, and never throw away the possible best because it is not the ideal best.” Maxims, those, for the young man who wants to make the most of himself and his time. Happily for the world, the young man who does not is rare.

JACOB VAN DER ZEE

“The Hollanders of Iowa,” by Jacob Van der Zee, was published at Iowa
City in 1912 by the State Historical Society of Iowa. The following
facts regarding the author and his book are given in the introduction
of the editor, Mr. Benjamin F. Shambaugh:--

“The author of this volume on ‘The Hollanders of Iowa’ was admirably
fitted for the task. Born of Dutch parents in The Netherlands and
reared among kinsfolk in Iowa, he has been a part of the life which
is portrayed in these pages. At the same time Mr. Van der Zee’s
education at The State University of Iowa, his three years’ residence
at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and his research work in The State
Historical Society of Iowa have made it possible for him to study the
Hollanders objectively as well as subjectively. Accordingly, his book
is in no respect an overdrawn, eulogistic account of the Dutch people.

“The history of the Hollanders of Iowa is not wholly provincial:
it suggests much that is typical in the development of Iowa and in
the larger history of the West: it is ‘a story of the stubborn and
unyielding fight of men and women who overcame the obstacles of a new
country and handed down to their descendants thriving farms and homes
of peace and plenty.’”

The selection here given comprises chapter four of the book.

WHY DUTCH EMIGRANTS TURNED TO AMERICA

Such was the condition of things in The Netherlands that thousands of people lived from hand to mouth, the prey of poverty and hunger, stupefied by the hopelessness of securing the necessities of life, and barely enabled through the gifts of the well-to-do to drag out their wretched lives. At the same time many of these unfortunate persons were hopeful and eager to find a place where they might obtain a livelihood, lead quiet lives of honesty and godliness, and educate their children in the principles of religion without let or hindrance. The leaders of the Separatists looked forward to a life of freedom in a land where man would not have to wait for work, but where work awaited man, where people would not rub elbows by reason of the density of population, and where God’s creation would welcome the coming of man.

When social forces such as these, mostly beyond human control, began to operate with increasing power, the Dutch people were not slow to recognize the truth that emigration was absolutely necessary. The seriousness of the situation dawned upon all thinking men,--especially upon state officials, who feared that unless the stream of emigration could be directed toward the Dutch colonies, their country would suffer an enormous drain of capital and human lives. Accordingly the attention of prospective emigrants was called to the Dutch East Indies,--chiefly to the advantages of the rich island of Java, “that paradise of the world, the pearl in Holland’s crown.”

The religion of the Dissenters, however, was responsible for turning the balance in favor of some other land. To them Java was a closed door. Beside the fear of an unhealthful climate towered the certainty of legislation hostile to their Christian principles and ideals. Moreover, could poor men afford the expense of transportation thither, and could they feel assured of getting land or work in Java? State officials, men of learning, and men of business from several parts of the country were summoned to an important conference at Amsterdam to discuss the whole emigration movement. The Separatist leaders were asked why they should not remain Netherlanders under the House of Orange by removing to the colonies just as the people of the British Isles found homes in the English colonies. Two Separatist ministers appealed to the government to direct the flood of emigration toward Java by promises of civil and religious liberty. But the attempt to secure a free Christian colony in Java produced only idle expectations.

Then it was that the people turned their eyes away from the East toward the United States of North America,--a land of freedom and rich blessings, where they hoped to find in its unsettled interior some spot adaptable to agriculture, and thus rescue themselves from the miseries of a decadent state. To the discontented, ambitious Hollander was presented the picture of a real land of promise, where all things would smile at him and be prepared, as it were, to aid him. It was said that “after an ocean passage of trifling expense the Netherlander may find work to do as soon as he sets foot on shore; he may buy land for a few florins per acre; and feel secure and free among a people of Dutch, German and English birth, who will rejoice to see him come to increase the nation’s wealth.” Asserting that they could vouch for the truthfulness of this picture, as based on the positive assurances and experiences of friends already in America, the Separatist clergyman-pamphleteers openly declared that they would not hesitate to rob Holland of her best citizens by helping them on their way to America.

Of the people and government of the United States, Scholte, who was destined to lead hundreds of his countrymen to the State of Iowa, at an early date cherished a highly favorable opinion, which he expressed as follows:--

“I am convinced that a settlement in some healthful region there will have, by the ordinary blessing of God, excellent temporal and moral results, especially for the rising generation.... Should it then excite much wonder that I have firmly resolved to leave The Netherlands and together with so many Christian relatives adopt the United States as a new fatherland?

“There I shall certainly meet with the same wickedness which troubles me here; yet I shall find also opportunity to work. There I shall certainly find the same, if not still greater, evidence of unbelief and superstition; but I shall also find a constitutional provision which does not bind my hands in the use of the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God; there I can fight for what I believe without being disobedient to the magistrates and authorities ordained by God. There I shall find among men the same zeal to obtain this world’s goods; but I shall not find the same impulse to get the better of one another, for competition is open to all; I shall not find the same desire to reduce the wages of labor, nor the same inducement to avoid taxation, nor the same peevishness and groaning about the burden of taxation.

“There I shall find no Minister of Public Worship, for the separation of Church and State is a fact. There I shall not need to contribute to the support of pastors whose teachings I abhor. I shall find no school commissions nor school supervisors who prohibit the use of the Bible in schools and hinder the organization of special schools, for education is really free. I shall find there the descendants of earlier inhabitants of Holland, among whom the piety of our forefathers still lives, and who are now prepared to give advice and aid to Hollanders who are forced to come to them.”

Scholte, however, never claimed to be a refugee from the oppression of the Old World. He left Europe because the social, religious, and political condition of his native country was such that, according to his conviction, he could not with any reasonable hope of success work for the actual benefit of honest and industrious fellow-men. Very many members of Scholte’s emigrant association felt certain that they and their children would sink from the middle class and end their lives as paupers, if they remained in Holland.

Later emigration to America was in no small degree due to a cause which has always operated in inducing people to abandon their European homes. After a period of residence in America, Hollanders, elated by reason of their prosperity and general change of fortune, very naturally reported their delight to friends and relatives in the fatherland, strongly urging them to come and share their good luck instead of suffering from want in Holland. They wrote of higher wages, fertile soil, cheapness of the necessities of life, abundance of cheap land, and many other advantages. If one’s wages for a day’s work in America equalled a week’s earnings in Holland, surely it was worth while to leave that unfortunate country. Such favorable reports as these were largely instrumental in turning the attention of Hollanders to the New World as the one great land of opportunity.

EDWARD BOK

Although it was impossible to include in this volume selections from
“The Americanization of Edward Bok,” recently published, it seems
that some mention should be made of this delightfully reminiscent
autobiography and of its author, who came to this country in 1870 as
a little Dutch boy of six years.

There are entertaining chapters on his passion for collecting
autographs from famous people, on his visit to Boston and Cambridge
to see Holmes and Longfellow and Emerson, on his relations with
prominent statesmen and other notable men of his time, and on his
experiences as editor of an influential and successful magazine; but
most pertinent to the purpose of this work are the last two chapters
of the book, “Where America Fell Short with Me,” and “What I Owe to
America,” which should be read by all those actively interested in
the Americanization of the foreign-born. In the first of these he
points out that America failed to teach him thrift or economy; that
the importance of doing a task thoroughly, the need of quality rather
than quantity, was not inculcated; that the public school fell short
in its responsibility of seeing that he, a foreign-born boy, acquired
the English language correctly; that he was not impressed with a
wholesome and proper respect for law and authority; and that, at the
most critical time, when he came to exercise the right of suffrage,
the State offered him no enlightenment or encouragement. Yet, in
spite of all this, he is able to say: “Whatever shortcomings I may
have found during my fifty-year period of Americanization; however
America may have failed to help my transition from a foreigner into
an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift that any nation can
offer, and that is opportunity.”

OSCAR SOLOMON STRAUS

Oscar S. Straus, formerly United States Ambassador to Turkey, was
born in Bavaria. Besides the degree A.B. from Columbia University,
he has received honorary degrees from various institutions. He was
appointed a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The
Hague, 1902, and Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the cabinet of
President Roosevelt, and has held many other prominent positions in
civil and political affairs.

His chief writings are: “The Origin of Republican Form of Government
in the United States,” 1886; “Roger Williams, the Pioneer of
Religious Liberty,” 1894; “The American Spirit,” a collection of
various addresses, published in one volume by the Century Company
in 1893. The address selected for quotation here is that delivered
at the banquet of the American Hebrew Congregations, in New York,
January 18, 1911.

AMERICA AND THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN JUDAISM

The spirit of American Judaism first asserted itself when Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Amsterdam, would not permit the few Jews who had emigrated from Portugal to unite with the other burghers in standing guard for the protection of their homes. When the tax-collector came to Asser Levy to demand a tax on this account, he asked whether that tax was imposed on all the residents of New Amsterdam. “No,” was the reply, “it is only imposed upon the Jews, because they do not stand guard!” “I have not asked to be exempted,” replied Asser Levy. “I am not only willing, but I demand the right to stand guard.” That right the Jews have asserted and exercised as officers in the ranks of the Continental Army and in every crisis of our national history from that time until the present day.

The American spirit and the spirit of American Judaism were nurtured in the same cradle of Liberty, and were united in origin, in ideals, and in historical development. The closing chapter of the chronicles of the Jews on the Iberian peninsula forms the opening chapter of their history on this Continent. It was Luis Santangel, “the Beaconsfield of his time,” assisted by his kinsman Gabriel Sanches, the Royal Treasurer of Aragon, who advanced out of his own purse seventeen thousand florins which made the voyages of Columbus possible. Luis de Torres, the interpreter as well as the surgeon and the physician of the little fleet, and several of the sailors who were with Columbus on his first voyage, as shown by the record, were Jews.

Looking back through this vista of more than four centuries, we have reason to remember with justified gratitude the foresight and signal services of those Spanish Jews who had the wisdom to divine the far-reaching possibilities of the plans of the great navigator, whom the King and the Queen, the Dukes and the Grandees united in regarding as merely “a visionary babbler” or, worse than this, as “a scheming adventurer.” The royal patrons were finally won over by the hope that Columbus might discover new treasures of gold and precious stones to enrich the Spanish crown. But not so with the Jewish patrons, who caused Columbus, or, as he was then called, Christopher Colon, to be recalled, and who, without security and without interest, advanced the money to fit out his caravels, since they saw, as by divine inspiration, the promise and possibility of the discovery of another world, which, in the words of the late Emilio Castelar--the historian, statesman, and one time President of Spain--“would afford to the quickening principles of human liberty a temple reared to the God of enfranchised and redeemed conscience, a land that would offer an unstained abode to the ideals of progress.” Fortunately, the records of these transactions are still preserved in the archives of Simancas in Seville.

It is idle to speculate upon hypothetical theories in the face of the facts of history. Of course, America would have been discovered and colonized had Columbus never lived; but had the streams of the beginnings of American history flown from other sources in other directions, it would be futile even to make an imaginative forecast of the effect they would have produced upon the history and development of this Continent. The merciless intolerance of an ecclesiastical system and the horror of its persecutions stimulated the earliest immigration, and subsequently brought about the Reformation in Saxon and Anglo-Saxon lands, and the same spirit drove to our shores the Pilgrim and the Puritan fathers; which chain of circumstances destined this country from the very beginning to be the land of the immigrant and a home for the fugitive and the persecuted.

The difference between government by kings and nobles and government under a Democracy is, that the former rests upon the power to compel obedience, while the latter rests essentially upon the sacrifice by the individual for the community, based upon the ideals of right and justice. If the Pilgrims, the Puritans, and the Huguenots brought with them, as they certainly did, the remembrance of sufferings for ideals and the spirit of sacrifice, how much longer was that remembrance, and with how much greater intensity did that spirit glow in the souls of the Jews, whose whole history is a record of martyrdom, of suffering, and of sacrifice for the ideals of civil and religious liberty; concerning whom it has been said: “Of all the races and nations of mankind which quarter the arms of Liberty on the shields of their honor, none has a better title to that decoration than the Jews.”

The spirit of Judaism became the mother spirit of Puritanism in Old England; and the history of Israel and its democratic model under the Judges inspired and guided the Pilgrims and the Puritans in their wandering hither and in laying the foundation of their commonwealths in New England. The piety and learning of the Jews bridged the chasm of the Middle Ages; and the torch they bore amidst trials and sufferings lighted the pathway from the ancient to the modern world.