If, however, we consider the underlying conditions and forces that create the democratic type of government, and at times contradict the external forms to which the name democracy is applied7, we shall find that under this name there have appeared a multitude of political types radically8 unlike in fact.
The careful student of history must, therefore, seek the explanation of the forms and changes of political institutions in the social and economic forces that determine them. To know that at any one time a nation may be called a democracy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy9, is not so important as to know what are the social and economic tendencies of the state. These are the vital forces that work beneath the surface and dominate the external form. It is to changes in the economic and social life of a people that we must look for the forces, that ultimately create and modify organs of political action.
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For the time, adaptation of political structure may be incomplete or concealed10. Old organs will be utilized12 to express new forces, and so gradual and subtle will be the change that it may hardly be recognized. The pseudo-democracies under the Medici at Florence and under Augustus at Rome are familiar examples of this type. Or again, if the political structure be rigid13, incapable14 of responding to the changes demanded by growth, the expansive forces of social and economic transformation15 may rend16 it in some catastrophe17 like that of the French Revolution. In all these changes both conscious ideals and unconscious social reorganization are at work.
These facts are familiar to the student, and yet it is doubtful if they have been fully18 considered in connection with American democracy. For a century at least, in conventional expression, Americans have referred to a "glorious Constitution" in explaining the stability and prosperity of their democracy. We have believed as a nation that other peoples had only to will our democratic institutions in order to repeat our own career.
In dealing19 with Western contributions to democracy, it is essential that the considerations which have just been mentioned shall be kept in mind. Whatever these contributions may have been, we find ourselves at the present time in an era of such profound economic and social transformation as to raise the question of the effect of these changes upon the democratic institutions of the United States. Within a decade four marked changes have occurred in our national development; taken together they constitute a revolution.
First, there is the exhaustion20 of the supply of free land and the closing of the movement of Western advance as an effective factor in American development. The first rough conquest of the wilderness21 is accomplished22, and that great supply of free lands which year after year has served to reinforce [245]the democratic influences in the United States is exhausted23. It is true that vast tracts24 of government land are still untaken, but they constitute the mountain and arid25 regions, only a small fraction of them capable of conquest, and then only by the application of capital and combined effort. The free lands that made the American pioneer have gone.
In the second place, contemporaneously with this there has been such a concentration of capital in the control of fundamental industries as to make a new epoch26 in the economic development of the United States. The iron, the coal, and the cattle of the country have all fallen under the domination of a few great corporations with allied27 interests, and by the rapid combination of the important railroad systems and steamship28 lines, in concert with these same forces, even the breadstuffs and the manufactures of the nation are to some degree controlled in a similar way. This is largely the work of the last decade. The development of the greatest iron mines of Lake Superior occurred in the early nineties, and in the same decade came the combination by which the coal and the coke of the country, and the transportation systems that connect them with the iron mines, have been brought under a few concentrated managements. Side by side with this concentration of capital has gone the combination of labor29 in the same vast industries. The one is in a certain sense the concomitant of the other, but the movement acquires an additional significance because of the fact that during the past fifteen years the labor class has been so recruited by a tide of foreign immigration that this class is now largely made up of persons of foreign parentage, and the lines of cleavage which begin to appear in this country between capital and labor have been accentuated30 by distinctions of nationality.
A third phenomenon connected with the two just mentioned is the expansion of the United States politically and [246]commercially into lands beyond the seas. A cycle of American development has been completed. Up to the close of the War of 1812, this country was involved in the fortunes of the European state system. The first quarter of a century of our national existence was almost a continual struggle to prevent ourselves being drawn32 into the European wars. At the close of that era of conflict, the United States set its face toward the West. It began the settlement and improvement of the vast interior of the country. Here was the field of our colonization33, here the field of our political activity. This process being completed, it is not strange that we find the United States again involved in world-politics. The revolution that occurred four years ago, when the United States struck down that ancient nation under whose auspices34 the New World was discovered, is hardly yet more than dimly understood. The insular35 wreckage36 of the Spanish War, Porto Rico and the Philippines, with the problems presented by the Hawaiian Islands, Cuba, the Isthmian Canal, and China, all are indications of the new direction of the ship of state, and while we thus turn our attention overseas, our concentrated industrial strength has given us a striking power against the commerce of Europe that is already producing consternation37 in the Old World. Having completed the conquest of the wilderness, and having consolidated38 our interests, we are beginning to consider the relations of democracy and empire.
And fourth, the political parties of the United States, now tend to divide on issues that involve the question of Socialism. The rise of the Populist party in the last decade, and the acceptance of so many of its principles by the Democratic party under the leadership of Mr. Bryan, show in striking manner the birth of new political ideas, the reformation of the lines of political conflict.
It is doubtful if in any ten years of American history more [247]significant factors in our growth have revealed themselves. The struggle of the pioneer farmers to subdue39 the arid lands of the Great Plains in the eighties was followed by the official announcement of the extinction40 of the frontier line in 1890. The dramatic outcome of the Chicago Convention of 1896 marked the rise into power of the representatives of Populistic change. Two years later came the battle of Manila, which broke down the old isolation41 of the nation, and started it on a path the goal of which no man can foretell42; and finally, but two years ago came that concentration of which the billion and a half dollar steel trust and the union of the Northern continental43 railways are stupendous examples. Is it not obvious, then, that the student who seeks for the explanation of democracy in the social and economic forces that underlie44 political forms must make inquiry45 into the conditions that have produced our democratic institutions, if he would estimate the effect of these vast changes? As a contribution to this inquiry, let us now turn to an examination of the part that the West has played in shaping our democracy.
From the beginning of the settlement of America, the frontier regions have exercised a steady influence toward democracy. In Virginia, to take an example, it can be traced as early as the period of Bacon's Rebellion, a hundred years before our Declaration of Independence. The small landholders, seeing that their powers were steadily46 passing into the hands of the wealthy planters who controlled Church and State and lands, rose in revolt. A generation later, in the governorship of Alexander Spotswood, we find a contest between the frontier settlers and the property-holding classes of the coast. The democracy with which Spotswood had to struggle, and of which he so bitterly complained, was a democracy made up of small landholders, of the newer immigrants, and of indented47 servants, who at the expiration48 of their time [248]of servitude passed into the interior to take up lands and engage in pioneer farming. The "War of the Regulation," just on the eve of the American Revolution, shows the steady persistence49 of this struggle between the classes of the interior and those of the coast. The Declaration of Grievances50 which the back counties of the Carolinas then drew up against the aristocracy that dominated the politics of those colonies exhibits the contest between the democracy of the frontier and the established classes who apportioned51 the legislature in such fashion as to secure effective control of government. Indeed, in a period before the outbreak of the American Revolution, one can trace a distinct belt of democratic territory extending from the back country of New England down through western New York, Pennsylvania, and the South.[248:1]
In each colony this region was in conflict with the dominant52 classes of the coast. It constituted a quasi-revolutionary area before the days of the Revolution, and it formed the basis on which the Democratic party was afterwards established. It was, therefore, in the West, as it was in the period before the Declaration of Independence, that the struggle for democratic development first revealed itself, and in that area the essential ideas of American democracy had already appeared. Through the period of the Revolution and of the Confederation a similar contest can be noted53. On the frontier of New England, along the western border of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas, and in the communities beyond the Alleghany Mountains, there arose a demand of the frontier settlers for independent statehood based on democratic provisions. There is a strain of fierceness in their energetic petitions demanding self-government under the theory that every people have the right to establish their own political institutions in an area which they have won from the wilderness. Those [249]revolutionary principles based on natural rights, for which the seaboard colonies were contending, were taken up with frontier energy in an attempt to apply them to the lands of the West. No one can read their petitions denouncing the control exercised by the wealthy landholders of the coast, appealing to the record of their conquest of the wilderness, and demanding the possession of the lands for which they have fought the Indians, and which they had reduced by their ax to civilization, without recognizing in these frontier communities the cradle of a belligerent54 Western democracy. "A fool can sometimes put on his coat better than a wise man can do it for him,"—such is the philosophy of its petitioners55. In this period also came the contests of the interior agricultural portion of New England against the coast-wise merchants and property-holders, of which Shays' Rebellion is the best known, although by no means an isolated56 instance.
By the time of the constitutional convention, this struggle for democracy had affected57 a fairly well-defined division into parties. Although these parties did not at first recognize their interstate connections, there were similar issues on which they split in almost all the States. The demands for an issue of paper money, the stay of execution against debtors58, and the relief against excessive taxation59 were found in every colony in the interior agricultural regions. The rise of this significant movement wakened the apprehensions60 of the men of means, and in the debates over the basis of suffrage61 for the House of Representatives in the constitutional convention of 1787 leaders of the conservative party did not hesitate to demand that safeguards to the property should be furnished the coast against the interior. The outcome of the debate left the question of suffrage for the House of Representatives dependent upon the policy of the separate States. This was in effect imposing62 a property qualification throughout the nation as a whole, and it [250]was only as the interior of the country developed that these restrictions63 gradually gave way in the direction of manhood suffrage.
All of these scattered64 democratic tendencies Jefferson combined, in the period of Washington's presidency65, into the Democratic-Republican party. Jefferson was the first prophet of American democracy, and when we analyse the essential features of his gospel, it is clear that the Western influence was the dominant element. Jefferson himself was born in the frontier region of Virginia, on the edge of the Blue Ridge66, in the middle of the eighteenth century. His father was a pioneer. Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia" reveal clearly his conception that democracy should have an agricultural basis, and that manufacturing development and city life were dangerous to the purity of the body politic1. Simplicity67 and economy in government, the right of revolution, the freedom of the individual, the belief that those who win the vacant lands are entitled to shape their own government in their own way,—these are all parts of the platform of political principles to which he gave his adhesion, and they are all elements eminently68 characteristic of the Western democracy into which he was born.
In the period of the Revolution he had brought in a series of measures which tended to throw the power of Virginia into the hands of the settlers in the interior rather than of the coastwise aristocracy. The repeal69 of the laws of entail70 and primogeniture would have destroyed the great estates on which the planting aristocracy based its power. The abolition71 of the Established Church would still further have diminished the influence of the coastwise party in favor of the dissenting72 sects73 of the interior. His scheme of general public education reflected the same tendency, and his demand for the abolition of slavery was characteristic of a representative [251]of the West rather than of the old-time aristocracy of the coast. His sympathy with the Western expansion culminated75 in the Louisiana Purchase. In short, the tendencies of Jefferson's legislation were to replace the dominance of the planting aristocracy by the dominance of the interior class, which had sought in vain to achieve its liberties in the period of Bacon's Rebellion.
Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson was the John the Baptist of democracy, not its Moses. Only with the slow setting of the tide of settlement farther and farther toward the interior did the democratic influence grow strong enough to take actual possession of the government. The period from 1800 to 1820 saw a steady increase in these tendencies. The established classes in New England and the South began to take alarm. Perhaps no better illustration of the apprehensions of the old-time Federal conservative can be given than these utterances77 of President Dwight, of Yale College, in the book of travels which he published in that period:—
The class of pioneers cannot live in regular society. They are too idle, too talkative, too passionate78, too prodigal79, and too shiftless to acquire either property or character. They are impatient of the restraints of law, religion, and morality, and grumble80 about the taxes by which the Rulers, Ministers, and Schoolmasters are supported. . . . After exposing the injustice81 of the community in neglecting to invest persons of such superior merit in public offices, in many an eloquent82 harangue83 uttered by many a kitchen fire, in every blacksmith shop, in every corner of the streets, and finding all their efforts vain, they become at length discouraged, and under the pressure of poverty, [252]the fear of the gaol84, and consciousness of public contempt, leave their native places and betake themselves to the wilderness.
Such was a conservative's impression of that pioneer movement of New England colonists85 who had spread up the valley of the Connecticut into New Hampshire, Vermont, and western New York in the period of which he wrote, and who afterwards went on to possess the Northwest. New England Federalism looked with a shudder86 at the democratic ideas of those who refused to recognize the established order. But in that period there came into the union a sisterhood of frontier States—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri—with provisions for the franchise87 that brought in complete democracy.
Even the newly created States of the Southwest showed the tendency. The wind of democracy blew so strongly from the West, that even in the older States of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, conventions were called, which liberalized their constitutions by strengthening the democratic basis of the State. In the same time the labor population of the cities began to assert its power and its determination to share in government. Of this frontier democracy which now took possession of the nation, Andrew Jackson was the very personification. He was born in the backwoods of the Carolinas in the midst of the turbulent democracy that preceded the Revolution, and he grew up in the frontier State of Tennessee. In the midst of this region of personal feuds88 and frontier ideals of law, he quickly rose to leadership. The appearance of this frontiersman on the floor of Congress was an omen31 full of significance. He reached Philadelphia at the close of Washington's administration, having ridden on horseback nearly eight hundred miles to his destination. Gallatin, himself a Western man, describes [253]Jackson as he entered the halls of Congress: "A tall, lank89, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his face and a cue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular; his manners those of a rough backwoodsman." And Jefferson testified: "When I was President of the Senate he was a Senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly and as often choke with rage." At last the frontier in the person of its typical man had found a place in the Government. This six-foot backwoodsman, with blue eyes that could blaze on occasion, this choleric90, impetuous, self-willed Scotch91-Irish leader of men, this expert duelist, and ready fighter, this embodiment of the tenacious93, vehement94, personal West, was in politics to stay. The frontier democracy of that time had the instincts of the clansman in the days of Scotch border warfare95. Vehement and tenacious as the democracy was, strenuously96 as each man contended with his neighbor for the spoils of the new country that opened before them, they all had respect for the man who best expressed their aspirations97 and their ideas. Every community had its hero. In the War of 1812 and the subsequent Indian fighting Jackson made good his claim, not only to the loyalty98 of the people of Tennessee, but of the whole West, and even of the nation. He had the essential traits of the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier. It was a frontier free from the influence of European ideas and institutions. The men of the "Western World" turned their backs upon the Atlantic Ocean, and with a grim energy and self-reliance began to build up a society free from the dominance of ancient forms.
The Westerner defended himself and resented governmental restrictions. The duel92 and the blood-feud found congenial soil in Kentucky and Tennessee. The idea of the personality of law was often dominant over the organized machinery100 of [254]justice. That method was best which was most direct and effective. The backwoodsman was intolerant of men who split hairs, or scrupled101 over the method of reaching the right. In a word, the unchecked development of the individual was the significant product of this frontier democracy. It sought rather to express itself by choosing a man of the people, than by the formation of elaborate governmental institutions.
It was because Andrew Jackson personified these essential Western traits that in his presidency he became the idol102 and the mouthpiece of the popular will. In his assault upon the Bank as an engine of aristocracy, and in his denunciation of nullification, he went directly to his object with the ruthless energy of a frontiersman. For formal law and the subtleties103 of State sovereignty he had the contempt of a backwoodsman. Nor is it without significance that this typical man of the new democracy will always be associated with the triumph of the spoils system in national politics. To the new democracy of the West, office was an opportunity to exercise natural rights as an equal citizen of the community. Rotation104 in office served not simply to allow the successful man to punish his enemies and reward his friends, but it also furnished the training in the actual conduct of political affairs which every American claimed as his birthright. Only in a primitive105 democracy of the type of the United States in 1830 could such a system have existed without the ruin of the State. National government in that period was no complex and nicely adjusted machine, and the evils of the system were long in making themselves fully apparent.
The triumph of Andrew Jackson marked the end of the old era of trained statesmen for the Presidency. With him began the era of the popular hero. Even Martin Van Buren, whom we think of in connection with the East, was born in a log [255]house under conditions that were not unlike parts of the older West. Harrison was the hero of the Northwest, as Jackson had been of the Southwest. Polk was a typical Tennesseean, eager to expand the nation, and Zachary Taylor was what Webster called a "frontier colonel." During the period that followed Jackson, power passed from the region of Kentucky and Tennessee to the border of the Mississippi. The natural democratic tendencies that had earlier shown themselves in the Gulf106 States were destroyed, however, by the spread of cotton culture, and the development of great plantations107 in that region. What had been typical of the democracy of the Revolutionary frontier and of the frontier of Andrew Jackson was now to be seen in the States between the Ohio and the Mississippi. As Andrew Jackson is the typical democrat6 of the former region, so Abraham Lincoln is the very embodiment of the pioneer period of the Old Northwest. Indeed, he is the embodiment of the democracy of the West. How can one speak of him except in the words of Lowell's great "Commemoration Ode":—
"For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
Nothing of Europe here,
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer,
Could Nature's equal scheme deface;
New birth of our new soil, the first American."
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The pioneer life from which Lincoln came differed in important respects from the frontier democracy typified by Andrew Jackson. Jackson's democracy was contentious110, individualistic, and it sought the ideal of local self-government and expansion. Lincoln represents rather the pioneer folk who entered the forest of the great Northwest to chop out a home, to build up their fortunes in the midst of a continually ascending111 industrial movement. In the democracy of the Southwest, industrial development and city life were only minor112 factors, but to the democracy of the Northwest they were its very life. To widen the area of the clearing, to contend with one another for the mastery of the industrial resources of the rich provinces, to struggle for a place in the ascending movement of society, to transmit to one's offspring the chance for education, for industrial betterment, for the rise in life which the hardships of the pioneer existence denied to the pioneer himself, these were some of the ideals of the region to which Lincoln came. The men were commonwealth113 builders, industry builders. Whereas the type of hero in the Southwest was militant114, in the Northwest he was industrial. It was in the midst of these "plain people," as he loved to call them, that Lincoln grew to manhood. As Emerson says: "He is the true history of the American people in his time." The years of his early life were the years when the democracy of the Northwest came into struggle with the institution of slavery which threatened to forbid the expansion of the democratic pioneer life in the West. In President Eliot's essay on "Five American Contributions to Civilization," he instances as one of the supreme115 tests of American democracy its attitude upon the question of slavery. But if democracy chose wisely and worked effectively toward the solution of this problem, it must be remembered that Western democracy took the lead. [257]The rail-splitter himself became the nation's President in that fierce time of struggle, and armies of the woodsmen and pioneer farmers recruited in the Old Northwest made free the Father of Waters, marched through Georgia, and helped to force the struggle to a conclusion at Appomattox. The free pioneer democracy struck down the slave-holding aristocracy on its march to the West.
The last chapter in the development of Western democracy is the one that deals with its conquest over the vast spaces of the new West. At each new stage of Western development, the people have had to grapple with larger areas, with bigger combinations. The little colony of Massachusetts veterans that settled at Marietta received a land grant as large as the State of Rhode Island. The band of Connecticut pioneers that followed Moses Cleaveland to the Connecticut Reserve occupied a region as large as the parent State. The area which settlers of New England stock occupied on the prairies of northern Illinois surpassed the combined area of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Men who had become accustomed to the narrow valleys and the little towns of the East found themselves out on the boundless116 spaces of the West dealing with units of such magnitude as dwarfed117 their former experience. The Great Lakes, the Prairies, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi and the Missouri, furnished new standards of measurement for the achievement of this industrial democracy. Individualism began to give way to co?peration and to governmental activity. Even in the earlier days of the democratic conquest of the wilderness, demands had been made upon the government for support in internal improvements, but this new West showed a growing tendency to call to its assistance the powerful arm of national authority. In the period since the Civil War, the vast public [258]domain119 has been donated to the individual farmer, to States for education, to railroads for the construction of transportation lines.
Moreover, with the advent120 of democracy in the last fifteen years upon the Great Plains, new physical conditions have presented themselves which have accelerated the social tendency of Western democracy. The pioneer farmer of the days of Lincoln could place his family on a flatboat, strike into the wilderness, cut out his clearing, and with little or no capital go on to the achievement of industrial independence. Even the homesteader on the Western prairies found it possible to work out a similar independent destiny, although the factor of transportation made a serious and increasing impediment to the free working-out of his individual career. But when the arid lands and the mineral resources of the Far West were reached, no conquest was possible by the old individual pioneer methods. Here expensive irrigation works must be constructed, co?perative activity was demanded in utilization121 of the water supply, capital beyond the reach of the small farmer was required. In a word, the physiographic province itself decreed that the destiny of this new frontier should be social rather than individual.
Magnitude of social achievement is the watchword of the democracy since the Civil War. From petty towns built in the marshes122, cities arose whose greatness and industrial power are the wonder of our time. The conditions were ideal for the production of captains of industry. The old democratic admiration123 for the self-made man, its old deference124 to the rights of competitive individual development, together with the stupendous natural resources that opened to the conquest of the keenest and the strongest, gave such conditions of mobility125 as enabled the development of the large corporate126 industries which in our own decade have marked the West.
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Thus, in brief, have been outlined the chief phases of the development of Western democracy in the different areas which it has conquered. There has been a steady development of the industrial ideal, and a steady increase of the social tendency, in this later movement of Western democracy. While the individualism of the frontier, so prominent in the earliest days of the Western advance, has been preserved as an ideal, more and more these individuals struggling each with the other, dealing with vaster and vaster areas, with larger and larger problems, have found it necessary to combine under the leadership of the strongest. This is the explanation of the rise of those pre?minent captains of industry whose genius has concentrated capital to control the fundamental resources of the nation. If now in the way of recapitulation, we try to pick out from the influences that have gone to the making of Western democracy the factors which constitute the net result of this movement, we shall have to mention at least the following:—
Most important of all has been the fact that an area of free land has continually lain on the western border of the settled area of the United States. Whenever social conditions tended to crystallize in the East, whenever capital tended to press upon labor or political restraints to impede127 the freedom of the mass, there was this gate of escape to the free conditions of the frontier. These free lands promoted individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. Men would not accept inferior wages and a permanent position of social subordination when this promised land of freedom and equality was theirs for the taking. Who would rest content under oppressive legislative128 conditions when with a slight effort he might reach a land wherein to become a co-worker in the building of free cities and free States on the lines of his own ideal? In a word, then, free lands meant free [260]opportunities. Their existence has differentiated129 the American democracy from the democracies which have preceded it, because ever, as democracy in the East took the form of highly specialized130 and complicated industrial society, in the West it kept in touch with primitive conditions, and by action and reaction these two forces have shaped our history.
In the next place, these free lands and this treasury131 of industrial resources have existed over such vast spaces that they have demanded of democracy increasing spaciousness132 of design and power of execution. Western democracy is contrasted with the democracy of all other times in the largeness of the tasks to which it has set its hand, and in the vast achievements which it has wrought133 out in the control of nature and of politics. It would be difficult to over-emphasize the importance of this training upon democracy. Never before in the history of the world has a democracy existed on so vast an area and handled things in the gross with such success, with such largeness of design, and such grasp upon the means of execution. In short, democracy has learned in the West of the United States how to deal with the problem of magnitude. The old historic democracies were but little states with primitive economic conditions.
But the very task of dealing with vast resources, over vast areas, under the conditions of free competition furnished by the West, has produced the rise of those captains of industry whose success in consolidating134 economic power now raises the question as to whether democracy under such conditions can survive. For the old military type of Western leaders like George Rogers Clark, Andrew Jackson, and William Henry Harrison have been substituted such industrial leaders as James J. Hill, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.
The question is imperative135, then, What ideals persist from this democratic experience of the West; and have they acquired [261]sufficient momentum136 to sustain themselves under conditions so radically unlike those in the days of their origin? In other words, the question put at the beginning of this discussion becomes pertinent137. Under the forms of the American democracy is there in reality evolving such a concentration of economic and social power in the hands of a comparatively few men as may make political democracy an appearance rather than a reality? The free lands are gone. The material forces that gave vitality138 to Western democracy are passing away. It is to the realm of the spirit, to the domain of ideals and legislation, that we must look for Western influence upon democracy in our own days.
Western democracy has been from the time of its birth idealistic. The very fact of the wilderness appealed to men as a fair, blank page on which to write a new chapter in the story of man's struggle for a higher type of society. The Western wilds, from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, constituted the richest free gift that was ever spread out before civilized139 man. To the peasant and artisan of the Old World, bound by the chains of social class, as old as custom and as inevitable140 as fate, the West offered an exit into a free life and greater well-being141 among the bounties142 of nature, into the midst of resources that demanded manly143 exertion144, and that gave in return the chance for indefinite ascent145 in the scale of social advance. "To each she offered gifts after his will." Never again can such an opportunity come to the sons of men. It was unique, and the thing is so near us, so much a part of our lives, that we do not even yet comprehend its full significance. The existence of this land of opportunity has made America the goal of idealists from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. With all the materialism146 of the pioneer movements, this idealistic conception of the vacant lands as an opportunity for a new order of things is [262]unmistakably present. Kipling's "Song of the English" has given it expression:—
"We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,
Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.
In the faith of little children we went on our ways.
Then the wood failed—then the food failed—then the last water dried—
In the faith of little children we lay down and died.
"On the sand-drift—on the veldt-side—in the fern-scrub we lay,
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.
Follow after—follow after! We have watered the root
Follow after—we are waiting by the trails that we lost
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.
"Follow after—follow after—for the harvest is sown:
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!"
This was the vision that called to Roger Williams,—that "prophetic soul ravished of truth disembodied," "unable to enter into treaty with its environment," and forced to seek the wilderness. "Oh, how sweet," wrote William Penn, from his forest refuge, "is the quiet of these parts, freed from the troubles and perplexities of woeful Europe." And here he projected what he called his "Holy Experiment in Government."
If the later West offers few such striking illustrations of the relation of the wilderness to idealistic schemes, and if some of the designs were fantastic and abortive151, none the less the influence is a fact. Hardly a Western State but has been the Mecca of some sect74 or band of social reformers, anxious to put into practice their ideals, in vacant land, far removed from the checks of a settled form of social organization. [263]Consider the Dunkards, the Icarians, the Fourierists, the Mormons, and similar idealists who sought our Western wilds. But the idealistic influence is not limited to the dreamers' conception of a new State. It gave to the pioneer farmer and city builder a restless energy, a quick capacity for judgment152 and action, a belief in liberty, freedom of opportunity, and a resistance to the domination of class which infused a vitality and power into the individual atoms of this democratic mass. Even as he dwelt among the stumps153 of his newly-cut clearing, the pioneer had the creative vision of a new order of society. In imagination he pushed back the forest boundary to the confines of a mighty154 Commonwealth; he willed that log cabins should become the lofty buildings of great cities. He decreed that his children should enter into a heritage of education, comfort, and social welfare, and for this ideal he bore the scars of the wilderness. Possessed155 with this idea he ennobled his task and laid deep foundations for a democratic State. Nor was this idealism by any means limited to the American pioneer.
To the old native democratic stock has been added a vast army of recruits from the Old World. There are in the Middle West alone four million persons of German parentage out of a total of seven millions in the country. Over a million persons of Scandinavian parentage live in the same region. The democracy of the newer West is deeply affected by the ideals brought by these immigrants from the Old World. To them America was not simply a new home; it was a land of opportunity, of freedom, of democracy. It meant to them, as to the American pioneer that preceded them, the opportunity to destroy the bonds of social caste that bound them in their older home, to hew156 out for themselves in a new country a destiny proportioned to the powers that God had given them, a chance to place their families under better conditions and [264]to win a larger life than the life that they had left behind. He who believes that even the hordes157 of recent immigrants from southern Italy are drawn to these shores by nothing more than a dull and blind materialism has not penetrated158 into the heart of the problem. The idealism and expectation of these children of the Old World, the hopes which they have formed for a newer and freer life across the seas, are almost pathetic when one considers how far they are from the possibility of fruition. He who would take stock of American democracy must not forget the accumulation of human purposes and ideals which immigration has added to the American populace.
In this connection it must also be remembered that these democratic ideals have existed at each stage of the advance of the frontier, and have left behind them deep and enduring effects on the thinking of the whole country. Long after the frontier period of a particular region of the United States has passed away, the conception of society, the ideals and aspirations which it produced, persist in the minds of the people. So recent has been the transition of the greater portion of the United States from frontier conditions to conditions of settled life, that we are, over the large portion of the United States, hardly a generation removed from the primitive conditions of the West. If, indeed, we ourselves were not pioneers, our fathers were, and the inherited ways of looking at things, the fundamental assumptions of the American people, have all been shaped by this experience of democracy on its westward159 march. This experience has been wrought into the very warp160 and woof of American thought.
Even those masters of industry and capital who have risen to power by the conquest of Western resources came from the midst of this society and still profess161 its principles. John D. Rockefeller was born on a New York farm, and began [265]his career as a young business man in St. Louis. Marcus Hanna was a Cleveland grocer's clerk at the age of twenty. Claus Spreckles, the sugar king, came from Germany as a steerage passenger to the United States in 1848. Marshall Field was a farmer boy in Conway, Massachusetts, until he left to grow up with the young Chicago. Andrew Carnegie came as a ten-year-old boy from Scotland to Pittsburgh, then a distinctively162 Western town. He built up his fortunes through successive grades until he became the dominating factor in the great iron industries, and paved the way for that colossal164 achievement, the Steel Trust. Whatever may be the tendencies of this corporation, there can be little doubt of the democratic ideals of Mr. Carnegie himself. With lavish165 hand he has strewn millions through the United States for the promotion166 of libraries. The effect of this library movement in perpetuating167 the democracy that comes from an intelligent and self-respecting people can hardly be measured. In his "Triumphant168 Democracy," published in 1886, Mr. Carnegie, the ironmaster, said, in reference to the mineral wealth of the United States: "Thank God, these treasures are in the hands of an intelligent people, the Democracy, to be used for the general good of the masses, and not made the spoils of monarchs169, courts, and aristocracy, to be turned to the base and selfish ends of a privileged hereditary170 class." It would be hard to find a more rigorous assertion of democratic doctrine171 than the celebrated172 utterance76, attributed to the same man, that he should feel it a disgrace to die rich.
In enumerating173 the services of American democracy, President Eliot included the corporation as one of its achievements, declaring that "freedom of incorporation174, though no longer exclusively a democratic agency, has given a strong support to democratic institutions." In one sense this is doubtless true, since the corporation has been one of the means by [266]which small properties can be aggregated175 into an effective working body. Socialistic writers have long been fond of pointing out also that these various concentrations pave the way for and make possible social control. From this point of view it is possible that the masters of industry may prove to be not so much an incipient176 aristocracy as the pathfinders for democracy in reducing the industrial world to systematic177 consolidation178 suited to democratic control. The great geniuses that have built up the modern industrial concentration were trained in the midst of democratic society. They were the product of these democratic conditions. Freedom to rise was the very condition of their existence. Whether they will be followed by successors who will adopt the exploitation of the masses, and who will be capable of retaining under efficient control these vast resources, is one of the questions which we shall have to face.
This, at least, is clear: American democracy is fundamentally the outcome of the experiences of the American people in dealing with the West. Western democracy through the whole of its earlier period tended to the production of a society of which the most distinctive163 fact was the freedom of the individual to rise under conditions of social mobility, and whose ambition was the liberty and well-being of the masses. This conception has vitalized all American democracy, and has brought it into sharp contrasts with the democracies of history, and with those modern efforts of Europe to create an artificial democratic order by legislation. The problem of the United States is not to create democracy, but to conserve179 democratic institutions and ideals. In the later period of its development, Western democracy has been gaining experience in the problem of social control. It has steadily enlarged the sphere of its action and the instruments for its perpetuation180. By its system of public schools, from the [267]grades to the graduate work of the great universities, the West has created a larger single body of intelligent plain people than can be found elsewhere in the world. Its political tendencies, whether we consider Democracy, Populism, or Republicanism, are distinctly in the direction of greater social control and the conservation of the old democratic ideals.
To these ideals the West adheres with even a passionate determination. If, in working out its mastery of the resources of the interior, it has produced a type of industrial leader so powerful as to be the wonder of the world, nevertheless, it is still to be determined181 whether these men constitute a menace to democratic institutions, or the most efficient factor for adjusting democratic control to the new conditions.
Whatever shall be the outcome of the rush of this huge industrial modern United States to its place among the nations of the earth, the formation of its Western democracy will always remain one of the wonderful chapters in the history of the human race. Into this vast shaggy continent of ours poured the first feeble tide of European settlement. European men, institutions, and ideas were lodged182 in the American wilderness, and this great American West took them to her bosom183, taught them a new way of looking upon the destiny of the common man, trained them in adaptation to the conditions of the New World, to the creation of new institutions to meet new needs; and ever as society on her eastern border grew to resemble the Old World in its social forms and its industry, ever, as it began to lose faith in the ideals of democracy, she opened new provinces, and dowered new democracies in her most distant domains184 with her material treasures and with the ennobling influence that the fierce love of freedom, the strength that came from hewing185 out a home, making a school and a church, and creating a higher future for his family, furnished to the pioneer.
[268]
She gave to the world such types as the farmer Thomas Jefferson, with his Declaration of Independence, his statute186 for religious toleration, and his purchase of Louisiana. She gave us Andrew Jackson, that fierce Tennessee spirit who broke down the traditions of conservative rule, swept away the privacies and privileges of officialdom, and, like a Gothic leader, opened the temple of the nation to the populace. She gave us Abraham Lincoln, whose gaunt frontier form and gnarled, massive hand told of the conflict with the forest, whose grasp of the ax-handle of the pioneer was no firmer than his grasp of the helm of the ship of state as it breasted the seas of civil war. She has furnished to this new democracy her stores of mineral wealth, that dwarf118 those of the Old World, and her provinces that in themselves are vaster and more productive than most of the nations of Europe. Out of her bounty187 has come a nation whose industrial competition alarms the Old World, and the masters of whose resources wield188 wealth and power vaster than the wealth and power of kings. Best of all, the West gave, not only to the American, but to the unhappy and oppressed of all lands, a vision of hope, and assurance that the world held a place where were to be found high faith in man and the will and power to furnish him the opportunity to grow to the full measure of his own capacity. Great and powerful as are the new sons of her loins, the Republic is greater than they. The paths of the pioneer have widened into broad highways. The forest clearing has expanded into affluent189 commonwealths190. Let us see to it that the ideals of the pioneer in his log cabin shall enlarge into the spiritual life of a democracy where civic191 power shall dominate and utilize11 individual achievement for the common good.
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politic
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| adj.有智虑的；精明的；v.从政 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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analytical
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| adj.分析的；用分析法的 | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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utilize
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| vt.使用，利用 | |
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utilized
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| v.利用，使用( utilize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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steamship
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| n.汽船，轮船 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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accentuated
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| v.重读( accentuate的过去式和过去分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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omen
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| n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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colonization
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| 殖民地的开拓，殖民，殖民地化； 移殖 | |
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auspices
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| n.资助，赞助 | |
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insular
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| adj.岛屿的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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consolidated
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| a.联合的 | |
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subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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foretell
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| v.预言，预告，预示 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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underlie
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| v.位于...之下，成为...的基础 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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indented
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| adj.锯齿状的，高低不平的；缩进排版 | |
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expiration
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| n.终结，期满，呼气，呼出物 | |
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persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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grievances
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| n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚 | |
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apportioned
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| vt.分摊，分配（apportion的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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belligerent
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| adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者 | |
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petitioners
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| n.请求人，请愿人( petitioner的名词复数 )；离婚案原告 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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debtors
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| n.债务人，借方( debtor的名词复数 ) | |
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taxation
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| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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repeal
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| n.废止，撤消；v.废止，撤消 | |
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entail
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| vt.使承担，使成为必要，需要 | |
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abolition
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| n.废除，取消 | |
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dissenting
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| adj.不同意的 | |
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73
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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grumble
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| vi.抱怨；咕哝；n.抱怨，牢骚；咕哝，隆隆声 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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harangue
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| n.慷慨冗长的训话，言辞激烈的讲话 | |
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gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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colonists
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| n.殖民地开拓者，移民，殖民地居民( colonist的名词复数 ) | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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franchise
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| n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权 | |
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feuds
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| n.长期不和，世仇( feud的名词复数 ) | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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choleric
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| adj.易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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duel
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| n./v.决斗；(双方的)斗争 | |
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tenacious
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| adj.顽强的，固执的，记忆力强的，粘的 | |
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94
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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95
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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96
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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97
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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98
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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99
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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100
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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101
scrupled
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| v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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103
subtleties
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| 细微( subtlety的名词复数 )； 精细； 巧妙； 细微的差别等 | |
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104
rotation
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| n.旋转；循环，轮流 | |
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105
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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106
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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107
plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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108
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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109
vapors
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| n.水汽，水蒸气，无实质之物( vapor的名词复数 )；自夸者；幻想 [药]吸入剂 [古]忧郁（症）v.自夸，（使）蒸发( vapor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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110
contentious
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| adj.好辩的，善争吵的 | |
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111
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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112
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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113
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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114
militant
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| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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115
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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116
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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117
dwarfed
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| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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118
dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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119
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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120
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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121
utilization
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| n.利用，效用 | |
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122
marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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123
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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124
deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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125
mobility
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| n.可动性，变动性，情感不定 | |
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126
corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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127
impede
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，阻止 | |
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128
legislative
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| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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129
differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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130
specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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131
treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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132
spaciousness
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| n.宽敞 | |
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133
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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134
consolidating
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| v.（使）巩固， （使）加强( consolidate的现在分词 )；（使）合并 | |
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135
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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136
momentum
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| n.动力，冲力，势头；动量 | |
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137
pertinent
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| adj.恰当的；贴切的；中肯的；有关的；相干的 | |
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138
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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139
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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140
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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141
well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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142
bounties
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| （由政府提供的）奖金( bounty的名词复数 )； 赏金； 慷慨； 大方 | |
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143
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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144
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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145
ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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146
materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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147
yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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148
steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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149
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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150
ripens
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的第三人称单数 ) | |
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151
abortive
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| adj.不成功的，发育不全的 | |
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152
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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153
stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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154
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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155
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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156
hew
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| v.砍；伐；削 | |
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157
hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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158
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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159
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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160
warp
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| vt.弄歪，使翘曲，使不正常，歪曲，使有偏见 | |
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161
profess
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| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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162
distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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163
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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164
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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165
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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166
promotion
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| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
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167
perpetuating
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| perpetuate的现在进行式 | |
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168
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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169
monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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170
hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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171
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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172
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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173
enumerating
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| v.列举，枚举，数( enumerate的现在分词 ) | |
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174
incorporation
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| n.设立，合并，法人组织 | |
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175
aggregated
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| a.聚合的，合计的 | |
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176
incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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177
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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178
consolidation
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| n.合并,巩固 | |
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179
conserve
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| vt.保存，保护，节约，节省，守恒，不灭 | |
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180
perpetuation
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| n.永存，不朽 | |
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181
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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182
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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183
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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184
domains
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| n.范围( domain的名词复数 )；领域；版图；地产 | |
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185
hewing
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| v.（用斧、刀等）砍、劈( hew的现在分词 )；砍成；劈出；开辟 | |
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186
statute
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| n.成文法，法令，法规；章程，规则，条例 | |
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187
bounty
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| n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与 | |
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188
wield
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| vt.行使，运用，支配；挥，使用(武器等) | |
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189
affluent
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| adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的 | |
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190
commonwealths
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| n.共和国( commonwealth的名词复数 )；联邦；团体；协会 | |
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191
civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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