These changes have been long in preparation and are, in part, the result of world-wide forces of reorganization incident to the age of steam production and large-scale industry, and, in part, the result of the closing of the period of the colonization6 of the West. They have been prophesied7, and the course of the movement partly described by students of American development; but after all, it is with a shock that the people of the United States are coming to realize that the fundamental forces which have shaped their society up to the present are disappearing. Twenty years ago, as I have before had occasion to point out, the Superintendent8 of the Census9 declared that the frontier line, which its maps had depicted10 for decade after decade of the westward11 march of the nation, [312]could no longer be described. To-day we must add that the age of free competition of individuals for the unpossessed resources of the nation is nearing its end. It is taking less than a generation to write the chapter which began with the disappearance12 of the line of the frontier—the last chapter in the history of the colonization of the United States, the conclusion to the annals of its pioneer democracy.
It is a wonderful chapter, this final rush of American energy upon the remaining wilderness13. Even the bare statistics become eloquent14 of a new era. They no longer derive15 their significance from the exhibit of vast proportions of the public domain16 transferred to agriculture, of wildernesses17 equal to European nations changed decade after decade into the farm area of the United States. It is true there was added to the farms of the nation between 1870 and 1880 a territory equal to that of France, and between 1880 and 1900 a territory equal to the European area of France, Germany, England, and Wales combined. The records of 1910 are not yet available, but whatever they reveal they will not be so full of meaning as the figures which tell of upleaping wealth and organization and concentration of industrial power in the East in the last decade. As the final provinces of the Western empire have been subdued18 to the purposes of civilization and have yielded their spoils, as the spheres of operation of the great industrial corporations have extended, with the extension of American settlement, production and wealth have increased beyond all precedent19.
The total deposits in all national banks have more than trebled in the present decade; the money in circulation has doubled since 1890. The flood of gold makes it difficult to gage20 the full meaning of the incredible increase in values, for in the decade ending with 1909 over 41,600,000 ounces of gold were mined in the United States alone. Over four [313]million ounces have been produced every year since 1905, whereas between 1880 and 1894 no year showed a production of two million ounces. As a result of this swelling21 stream of gold and instruments of credit, aided by a variety of other causes, prices have risen until their height has become one of the most marked features and influential22 factors in American life, producing social readjustments and contributing effectively to party revolutions.
But if we avoid those statistics which require analysis because of the changing standard of value, we still find that the decade occupies an exceptional place in American history. More coal was mined in the United States in the ten years after 1897 than in all the life of the nation before that time.[313:1] Fifty years ago we mined less than fifteen million long tons of coal. In 1907 we mined nearly 429,000,000. At the present rate it is estimated that the supply of coal would be exhausted23 at a date no farther in the future than the formation of the constitution is in the past. Iron and coal are the measures of industrial power. The nation has produced three times as much iron ore in the past two decades as in all its previous history; the production of the past ten years was more than double that of the prior decade. Pig-iron production is admitted to be an excellent barometer24 of manufacture and of transportation. Never until 1898 had this reached an annual total of ten million long tons. But in the five years beginning with 1904 it averaged over twice that. By 1907 the United States had surpassed Great Britain, Germany, and France combined in the production of pig-iron and steel together, and in the same decade a single great corporation has established its domination over the iron mines and steel manufacture of the United States. It is more than a mere25 accident that the United States Steel Corporation with its [314]stocks and bonds aggregating26 $1,400,000,000 was organized at the beginning of the present decade. The former wilderness about Lake Superior has, principally in the past two decades, established its position as overwhelmingly the preponderant source of iron ore, present and prospective27, in the United States—a treasury28 from which Pittsburgh has drawn29 wealth and extended its unparalleled industrial empire in these years. The tremendous energies thus liberated30 at this center of industrial power in the United States revolutionized methods of manufacture in general, and in many indirect ways profoundly influenced the life of the nation.
Railroad statistics also exhibit unprecedented31 development, the formation of a new industrial society. The number of passengers carried one mile more than doubled between 1890 and 1908; freight carried one mile has nearly trebled in the same period and has doubled in the past decade. Agricultural products tell a different story. The corn crop has only risen from about two billion bushels in 1891 to two and seven-tenths billions in 1909; wheat from six hundred and eleven million bushels in 1891 to only seven hundred and thirty-seven million in 1909; and cotton from about nine million bales in 1891 to ten and three-tenths million bales in 1909. Population has increased in the United States proper from about sixty-two and one-half millions in 1890 to seventy-five and one-half millions in 1900 and to over ninety millions in 1910.
It is clear from these statistics that the ratio of the nation's increased production of immediate32 wealth by the enormously increased exploitation of its remaining natural resources vastly exceeds the ratio of increase of population and still more strikingly exceeds the ratio of increase of agricultural products. Already population is pressing upon the food supply while capital consolidates33 in billion-dollar organizations. The "Triumphant34 Democracy" whose achievements the iron-master [315]celebrated has reached a stature35 even more imposing36 than he could have foreseen; but still less did he perceive the changes in democracy itself and the conditions of its life which have accompanied this material growth.
Having colonized37 the Far West, having mastered its internal resources, the nation turned at the conclusion of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century to deal with the Far East to engage in the world-politics of the Pacific Ocean. Having continued its historic expansion into the lands of the old Spanish empire by the successful outcome of the recent war, the United States became the mistress of the Philippines at the same time that it came into possession of the Hawaiian Islands, and the controlling influence in the Gulf38 of Mexico. It provided early in the present decade for connecting its Atlantic and Pacific coasts by the Isthmian Canal, and became an imperial republic with dependencies and protectorates—admittedly a new world-power, with a potential voice in the problems of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
This extension of power, this undertaking39 of grave responsibilities in new fields, this entry into the sisterhood of world-states, was no isolated40 event. It was, indeed, in some respects the logical outcome of the nation's march to the Pacific, the sequence to the era in which it was engaged in occupying the free lands and exploiting the resources of the West. When it had achieved this position among the nations of the earth, the United States found itself confronted, also, with the need of constitutional readjustment, arising from the relations of federal government and territorial41 acquisitions. It was obliged to reconsider questions of the rights of man and traditional American ideals of liberty and democracy, in view of the task of government of other races politically inexperienced and undeveloped.
If we turn to consider the effect upon American society and [316]domestic policy in these two decades of transition we are met with palpable evidences of the invasion of the old pioneer democratic order. Obvious among them is the effect of unprecedented immigration to supply the mobile army of cheap labor42 for the centers of industrial life. In the past ten years, beginning with 1900, over eight million immigrants have arrived. The newcomers of the eight years since 1900 would, according to a writer in 1908, "repopulate all the five older New England States as they stand to-day; or, if properly disseminated43 over the newer parts of the country they would serve to populate no less than nineteen states of the union as they stand." In 1907 "there were one and one-quarter million arrivals. This number would entirely44 populate both New Hampshire and Maine, two of our oldest States." "The arrivals of this one year would found a State with more inhabitants than any one of twenty-one of our other existing commonwealths45 which could be named." Not only has the addition to the population from Europe been thus extraordinary, it has come in increasing measure from southern and eastern Europe. For the year 1907, Professor Ripley,[316:1] whom I am quoting, has redistributed the incomers on the basis of physical type and finds that one-quarter of them were of the Mediterranean46 race, one-quarter of the Slavic race, one-eighth Jewish, and only one-sixth of the Alpine47, and one-sixth of the Teutonic. In 1882 Germans had come to the amount of 250,000; in 1907 they were replaced by 330,000 South Italians. Thus it is evident that the ethnic48 elements of the United States have undergone startling changes; and instead of spreading over the nation these immigrants have concentrated especially in the cities and great industrial centers in the past decade. The composition of the labor class and its relation to wages and to the native American employer have been deeply influenced [317]thereby; the sympathy of the employers with labor has been unfavorably affected49 by the pressure of great numbers of immigrants of alien nationality and of lower standards of life.
The familiar facts of the massing of population in the cities and the contemporaneous increase of urban power, and of the massing of capital and production in fewer and vastly greater industrial units, especially attest50 the revolution. "It is a proposition too plain to require elucidation," wrote Richard Rush, Secretary of the Treasury, in his report of 1827, "that the creation of capital is retarded51 rather than accelerated by the diffusion52 of a thin population over a great surface of soil."[317:1] Thirty years before Rush wrote these words Albert Gallatin declared in Congress that "if the cause of the happiness of this country were examined into, it would be found to arise as much from the great plenty of land in proportion to the inhabitants which their citizens enjoyed as from the wisdom of their political institutions." Possibly both of these Pennsylvania financiers were right under the conditions of the time; but it is at least significant that capital and labor entered upon a new era as the end of the free lands approached. A contemporary of Gallatin in Congress had replied to the argument that cheap lands would depopulate the Atlantic coast by saying that if a law were framed to prevent ready access to western lands it would be tantamount to saying that there is some class which must remain "and by law be obliged to serve the others for such wages as they pleased to give." The passage of the arable2 public domain into private possession has raised this question in a new form and has brought forth53 new answers. This is peculiarly the era when competitive individualism in the midst of vast unappropriated opportunities [318]changed into the monopoly of the fundamental industrial processes by huge aggregations55 of capital as the free lands disappeared. All the tendencies of the large-scale production of the twentieth century, all the trend to the massing of capital in large combinations, all of the energies of the age of steam, found in America exceptional freedom of action and were offered regions of activity equal to the states of all Western Europe. Here they reached their highest development.
The decade following 1897 is marked by the work of Mr. Harriman and his rivals in building up the various railroads into a few great groups, a process that had gone so far that before his death Mr. Harriman was ambitious to concentrate them all under his single control. High finance under the leadership of Mr. Morgan steadily56 achieved the consolidation57 of the greater industries into trusts or combinations and effected a community of interests between them and a few dominant58 banking59 organizations, with allied60 insurance companies and trust companies. In New York City have been centered, as never before, the banking reserves of the nation, and here, by the financial management of capital and speculative61 promotion62, there has grown up a unified63 control over the nation's industrial life. Colossal64 private fortunes have arisen. No longer is the per capita wealth of the nation a real index to the prosperity of the average man. Labor on the other hand has shown an increasing self-consciousness, is combining and increasing its demands. In a word, the old pioneer individualism is disappearing, while the forces of social combination are manifesting themselves as never before. The self-made man has become, in popular speech, the coal baron65, the steel king, the oil king, the cattle king, the railroad magnate, the master of high finance, the monarch66 of trusts. The world has never before seen such huge fortunes exercising combined control over the economic life of a people, and such [319]luxury as has come out of the individualistic pioneer democracy of America in the course of competitive evolution.
At the same time the masters of industry, who control interests which represent billions of dollars, do not admit that they have broken with pioneer ideals. They regard themselves as pioneers under changed conditions, carrying on the old work of developing the natural resources of the nation, compelled by the constructive67 fever in their veins68, even in ill-health and old age and after the accumulation of wealth beyond their power to enjoy, to seek new avenues of action and of power, to chop new clearings, to find new trails, to expand the horizon of the nation's activity, and to extend the scope of their dominion69. "This country," said the late Mr. Harriman in an interview a few years ago, "has been developed by a wonderful people, flush with enthusiasm, imagination and speculative bent70. . . . They have been magnificent pioneers. They saw into the future and adapted their work to the possibilities. . . . Stifle71 that enthusiasm, deaden that imagination and prohibit that speculation72 by restrictive and cramping73 conservative law, and you tend to produce a moribund74 and conservative people and country." This is an appeal to the historic ideals of Americans who viewed the republic as the guardian75 of individual freedom to compete for the control of the natural resources of the nation.
On the other hand, we have the voice of the insurgent76 West, recently given utterance77 in the New Nationalism of ex-President Roosevelt, demanding increase of federal authority to curb78 the special interests, the powerful industrial organizations, and the monopolies, for the sake of the conservation of our natural resources and the preservation79 of American democracy.
The past decade has witnessed an extraordinary federal activity in limiting individual and corporate80 freedom for the benefit of society. To that decade belong the conservation [320]congresses and the effective organization of the Forest Service, and the Reclamation81 Service. Taken together these developments alone would mark a new era, for over three hundred million acres are, as a result of this policy, reserved from entry and sale, an area more than equal to that of all the states which established the constitution, if we exclude their western claims; and these reserved lands are held for a more beneficial use of their forests, minerals, arid82 tracts83, and water rights, by the nation as a whole. Another example is the extension of the activity of the Department of Agriculture, which seeks the remotest regions of the earth for crops suitable to the areas reclaimed84 by the government, maps and analyzes85 the soils, fosters the improvement of seeds and animals, tells the farmer when and how and what to plant, and makes war upon diseases of plants and animals and insect pests. The recent legislation for pure food and meat inspection86, and the whole mass of regulative law under the Interstate Commerce clause of the constitution, further illustrates87 the same tendency.
Two ideals were fundamental in traditional American thought, ideals that developed in the pioneer era. One was that of individual freedom to compete unrestrictedly for the resources of a continent—the squatter89 ideal. To the pioneer government was an evil. The other was the ideal of a democracy—"government of the people, by the people and for the people." The operation of these ideals took place contemporaneously with the passing into private possession of the free public domain and the natural resources of the United States. But American democracy was based on an abundance of free lands; these were the very conditions that shaped its growth and its fundamental traits. Thus time has revealed that these two ideals of pioneer democracy had elements of mutual90 hostility91 and contained the seeds of its dissolution. [321]The present finds itself engaged in the task of readjusting its old ideals to new conditions and is turning increasingly to government to preserve its traditional democracy. It is not surprising that socialism shows noteworthy gains as elections continue; that parties are forming on new lines; that the demand for primary elections, for popular choice of senators, initiative, referendum, and recall, is spreading, and that the regions once the center of pioneer democracy exhibit these tendencies in the most marked degree. They are efforts to find substitutes for that former safeguard of democracy, the disappearing free lands. They are the sequence to the extinction92 of the frontier.
It is necessary next to notice that in the midst of all this national energy, and contemporaneous with the tendency to turn to the national government for protection to democracy, there is clear evidence of the persistence93 and the development of sectionalism.[321:1] Whether we observe the grouping of votes in Congress and in general elections, or the organization and utterances94 of business leaders, or the association of scholars, churches, or other representatives of the things of the spirit, we find that American life is not only increasing in its national intensity95 but that it is integrating by sections. In part this is due to the factor of great spaces which make sectional rather than national organization the line of least resistance; but, in part, it is also the expression of the separate economic, political, and social interests and the separate spiritual life of the various geographic96 provinces or sections. The votes on the tariff97, and in general the location of the strongholds of the Progressive Republican movement, illustrate88 this fact. The difficulty of a national adjustment of railway rates to the [322]diverse interests of different sections is another example. Without attempting to enter upon a more extensive discussion of sectionalism, I desire simply to point out that there are evidences that now, as formerly98, the separate geographical99 interests have their leaders and spokesmen, that much Congressional legislation is determined100 by the contests, triumphs, or compromises between the rival sections, and that the real federal relations of the United States are shaped by the interplay of sectional with national forces rather than by the relation of State and Nation. As time goes on and the nation adjusts itself more durably101 to the conditions of the differing geographic sections which make it up, they are coming to a new self-consciousness and a revived self-assertion. Our national character is a composite of these sections.[322:1]
Obviously in attempting to indicate even a portion of the significant features of our recent history we have been obliged to take note of a complex of forces. The times are so close at hand that the relations between events and tendencies force themselves upon our attention. We have had to deal with the connections of geography, industrial growth, politics, and government. With these we must take into consideration the changing social composition, the inherited beliefs and habitual102 attitude of the masses of the people, the psychology103 of the nation and of the separate sections, as well as of the leaders. We must see how these leaders are shaped partly by their time and section, and how they are in part original, creative, by virtue104 of their own genius and initiative. We cannot neglect the moral tendencies and the ideals. All are related parts of the same subject and can no more be properly understood [323]in isolation105 than the movement as a whole can be understood by neglecting some of these important factors, or by the use of a single method of investigation106. Whatever be the truth regarding European history, American history is chiefly concerned with social forces, shaping and reshaping under the conditions of a nation changing as it adjusts to its environment. And this environment progressively reveals new aspects of itself, exerts new influences, and calls out new social organs and functions.
I have undertaken this rapid survey of recent history for two purposes. First, because it has seemed fitting to emphasize the significance of American development since the passing of the frontier, and, second, because in the observation of present conditions we may find assistance in our study of the past.
It is a familiar doctrine107 that each age studies its history anew and with interests determined by the spirit of the time. Each age finds it necessary to reconsider at least some portion of the past, from points of view furnished by new conditions which reveal the influence and significance of forces not adequately known by the historians of the previous generation. Unquestionably each investigator108 and writer is influenced by the times in which he lives and while this fact exposes the historian to a bias109, at the same time it affords him new instruments and new insight for dealing110 with his subject.
If recent history, then, gives new meaning to past events, if it has to deal with the rise into a commanding position of forces, the origin and growth of which may have been inadequately111 described or even overlooked by historians of the previous generation, it is important to study the present and the recent past, not only for themselves but also as the source of new hypotheses, new lines of inquiry112, new criteria113 of the perspective of the remoter past. And, moreover, a just public [324]opinion and a statesmanlike treatment of present problems demand that they be seen in their historical relations in order that history may hold the lamp for conservative reform.
Seen from the vantage-ground of present developments what new light falls upon past events! When we consider what the Mississippi Valley has come to be in American life, and when we consider what it is yet to be, the young Washington, crossing the snows of the wilderness to summon the French to evacuate114 the portals of the great valley, becomes the herald115 of an empire. When we recall the huge industrial power that has centered at Pittsburgh, Braddock's advance to the forks of the Ohio takes on new meaning. Even in defeat, he opened a road to what is now the center of the world's industrial energy. The modifications116 which England proposed in 1794 to John Jay in the northwestern boundary of the United States from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, seemed to him, doubtless, significant chiefly as a matter of principle and as a question of the retention117 or loss of beaver118 grounds. The historians hardly notice the proposals. But they involved, in fact, the ownership of the richest and most extensive deposits of iron ore in America, the all-important source of a fundamental industry of the United States, the occasion for the rise of some of the most influential forces of our time.
What continuity and meaning are furnished by the outcome in present times of the movements of minor119 political parties and reform agitations120! To the historian they have often seemed to be mere curious side eddies121, vexatious distractions122 to the course of his literary craft as it navigated123 the stream of historical tendency. And yet, by the revelation of the present, what seemed to be side eddies have not seldom proven to be the concealed124 entrances to the main current, and the course which seemed the central one has led to blind channels and stagnant125 waters, important in their day, but cut off like [325]oxbow lakes from the mighty126 river of historical progress by the mere permanent and compelling forces of the neglected currents.
We may trace the contest between the capitalist and the democratic pioneer from the earliest colonial days. It is influential in colonial parties. It is seen in the vehement127 protests of Kentucky frontiersmen in petition after petition to the Congress of the Confederation against the "nabobs" and men of wealth who took out titles to the pioneers' farms while they themselves were too busy defending those farms from the Indians to perfect their claims. It is seen in the attitude of the Ohio Valley in its backwoods days before the rise of the Whig party, as when in 1811 Henry Clay denounced the Bank of the United States as a corporation which throve on special privileges—"a special association of favored individuals taken from the mass of society, and invested with exemptions128 and surrounded by immunities129 and privileges." Benton voiced the same contest twenty years later when he denounced the bank as
a company of private individuals, many of them foreigners, and the mass of them residing in a remote and narrow corner of the union, unconnected by any sympathy with the fertile regions of the Great Valley in which the natural power of this union, the power of numbers, will be found to reside long before the renewed term of the second charter would expire.
"And where," he asked, "would all this power and money center? In the great cities of the Northeast, which have been for forty years and that by force of federal legislation, the lion's den3 of Southern and Western money—that den into [326]which all the tracks point inward; from which the returning track of a solitary130 dollar has never yet been seen." Declaring, in words that have a very modern sound, that the bank tended to multiply nabobs and paupers131, and that "a great moneyed power is favorable to great capitalists, for it is the principle of capital to favor capital," he appealed to the fact of the country's extent and its sectional divergences132 against the nationalizing of capital.
What a condition for a confederacy of states! What grounds for alarm and terrible apprehension133 when in a confederacy of such vast extent, so many rival commercial cities, so much sectional jealousy134, such violent political parties, such fierce contests for power, there should be but one moneyed tribunal before which all the rival and contending elements must appear.
Even more vehement were the words of Jackson in 1837. "It is now plain," he wrote, "that the war is to be carried on by the monied aristocracy of the few against the democracy of numbers; the [prosperous] to make the honest laborers135 hewers of wood and drawers of water through the credit and paper system."
Van Buren's administration is usually passed hastily over with hardly more than mention of his Independent Treasury plan, and with particular consideration of the slavery discussion. But some of the most important movements in American social and political history began in these years of Jackson and Van Buren. Read the demands of the obscure labor papers and the reports of labor's open-air meetings anew, and you will find in the utterances of so-called labor visionaries and the Locofoco champions of "equal rights for all and [327]special privileges for none," like Evans and Jacques, Byrdsall and Leggett, the finger points to the currents that now make the main channel of our history; you will find in them some of the important planks136 of the platforms of the triumphant parties of our own day. As Professor Commons has shown by his papers and the documents which he has published on labor history, an idealistic but widespread and influential humanitarian137 movement, strikingly similar to that of the present, arose in the years between 1830 and 1850, dealing with social forces in American life, animated138 by a desire to apply the public lands to social amelioration, eager to find new forms of democratic development. But the flood of the slavery struggle swept all of these movements into its mighty inundation139 for the time. After the war, other influences delayed the revival140 of the movement. The railroads opened the wide prairies after 1850 and made it easy to reach them; and decade after decade new sections were reduced to the purposes of civilization and to the advantages of the common man as well as the promotion of great individual fortunes. The nation centered its interests in the development of the West. It is only in our own day that this humanitarian democratic wave has reached the level of those earlier years. But in the meantime there are clear evidences of the persistence of the forces, even though under strange guise141. Read the platforms of the Greenback-Labor, the Granger, and the Populist parties, and you will find in those platforms, discredited142 and reprobated by the major parties of the time, the basic proposals of the Democratic party after its revolution under the leadership of Mr. Bryan, and of the Republican party after its revolution by Mr. Roosevelt. The Insurgent movement is so clearly related to the areas and elements that gave strength to this progressive assertion of old democratic ideals with new weapons, that it must be regarded as the organized refusal [328]of these persistent143 tendencies to be checked by the advocates of more moderate measures.
I have dealt with these fragments of party history, not, of course, with the purpose of expressing any present judgment144 upon them, but to emphasize and give concreteness to the fact that there is disclosed by present events a new significance to these contests of radical145 democracy and conservative interests; that they are rather a continuing expression of deep-seated forces than fragmentary and sporadic146 curios for the historical museum.
If we should survey the history of our lands from a similar point of view, considering the relations of legislation and administration of the public domain to the structure of American democracy, it would yield a return far beyond that offered by the formal treatment of the subject in most of our histories. We should find in the squatter doctrines147 and practices, the seizure148 of the best soils, the taking of public timber on the theory of a right to it by the labor expended149 on it, fruitful material for understanding the atmosphere and ideals under which the great corporations developed the West. Men like Senator Benton and Delegate Sibley in successive generations defended the trespasses150 of the pioneer and the lumberman upon the public forest lands, and denounced the paternal151 government that "harassed152" these men, who were engaged in what we should call stealing government timber. It is evident that at some time between the middle of the nineteenth century and the present time, when we impose jail sentences upon Congressmen caught in such violations153 of the land laws, a change came over the American conscience and the civic154 ideals were modified. That our great industrial enterprises developed in the midst of these changing ideals is important to recall when we write the history of their activity.
We should find also that we cannot understand the land [329]question without seeing its relations to the struggle of sections and classes bidding against each other and finding in the public domain a most important topic of political bargaining. We should find, too, that the settlement of unlike geographic areas in the course of the nation's progress resulted in changes in the effect of the land laws; that a system intended for the humid prairies was ill-adjusted to the grazing lands and coal fields and to the forests in the days of large-scale exploitation by corporations commanding great capital. Thus changing geographic factors as well as the changing character of the forces which occupied the public domain must be considered, if we would understand the bearing of legislation and policy in this field.[329:1] It is fortunate that suggestive studies of democracy and the land policy have already begun to appear.
The whole subject of American agriculture viewed in relation to the economic, political, and social life of the nation has important contributions to make. If, for example, we study the maps showing the transition of the wheat belt from the East to the West, as the virgin155 soils were conquered and made new bases for destructive competition with the older wheat States, we shall see how deeply they affected not only land values, railroad building, the movement of population, and the supply of cheap food, but also how the regions once devoted156 to single cropping of wheat were forced to turn to varied157 and intensive agriculture and to diversified158 industry, and we shall see also how these transformations affected party politics and even the ideals of the Americans of the regions thus changed. We shall find in the over-production of wheat in the provinces thus rapidly colonized, and in the over-production of silver in the mountain provinces which were contemporaneously exploited, important explanations of the peculiar54 [330]form which American politics took in the period when Mr. Bryan mastered the Democratic party, just as we shall find in the opening of the new gold fields in the years immediately following, and in the passing of the era of almost free virgin wheat soils, explanations of the more recent period when high prices are giving new energy and aggressiveness to the demands of the new American industrial democracy.
Enough has been said, it may be assumed, to make clear the point which I am trying to elucidate159, namely that a comprehension of the United States of to-day, an understanding of the rise and progress of the forces which have made it what it is, demands that we should rework our history from the new points of view afforded by the present. If this is done, it will be seen, for example, that the progress of the struggle between North and South over slavery and the freed negro, which held the principal place in American interest in the two decades after 1850, was, after all, only one of the interests in the time. The pages of the Congressional debates, the contemporary newspapers, the public documents of those twenty years, remain a rich mine for those who will seek therein the sources of movements dominant in the present day.
The final consideration to which I ask your attention in this discussion of social forces in American life, is with reference to the mode of investigating them and the bearing of these investigations160 upon the relations and the goal of history. It has become a precedent, fairly well established by the distinguished161 scholars who have held the office which I am about to lay down, to state a position with reference to the relations of history and its sister-studies, and even to raise the question of the attitude of the historian toward the laws of thermodynamics and to seek to find the key of historical development or of historical degradation162. It is not given to all to bend the bow of Ulysses. I shall attempt a lesser163 task.
[331]
We may take some lessons from the scientist. He has enriched knowledge especially in recent years by attacking the no-man's lands left unexplored by the too sharp delimitation of spheres of activity. These new conquests have been especially achieved by the combination of old sciences. Physical chemistry, electro-chemistry, geo-physics, astro-physics, and a variety of other scientic unions have led to audacious hypotheses, veritable flashes of vision, which open new regions of activity for a generation of investigators164. Moreover they have promoted such investigations by furnishing new instruments of research. Now in some respects there is an analogy between geology and history. The new geologist165 aims to describe the inorganic166 earth dynamically in terms of natural law, using chemistry, physics, mathematics, and even botany and zo?logy so far as they relate to paleontology. But he does not insist that the relative importance of physical or chemical factors shall be determined before he applies the methods and data of these sciences to his problem. Indeed, he has learned that a geological area is too complex a thing to be reduced to a single explanation. He has abandoned the single hypothesis for the multiple hypothesis. He creates a whole family of possible explanations of a given problem and thus avoids the warping167 influence of partiality for a simple theory.
Have we not here an illustration of what is possible and necessary for the historian? Is it not well, before attempting to decide whether history requires an economic interpretation168, or a psychological, or any other ultimate interpretation, to recognize that the factors in human society are varied and complex; that the political historian handling his subject in isolation is certain to miss fundamental facts and relations in his treatment of a given age or nation; that the economic historian is exposed to the same danger; and so of all of the other special historians?
[332]
Those who insist that history is simply the effort to tell the thing exactly as it was, to state the facts, are confronted with the difficulty that the fact which they would represent is not planted on the solid ground of fixed169 conditions; it is in the midst and is itself a part of the changing currents, the complex and interacting influences of the time, deriving170 its significance as a fact from its relations to the deeper-seated movements of the age, movements so gradual that often only the passing years can reveal the truth about the fact and its right to a place on the historian's page.
The economic historian is in danger of making his analysis and his statement of a law on the basis of present conditions and then passing to history for justificatory171 appendixes to his conclusions. An American economist172 of high rank has recently expressed his conception of "the full relation of economic theory, statistics, and history" in these words:
A principle is formulated173 by a priori reasoning concerning facts of common experience; it is then tested by statistics and promoted to the rank of a known and acknowledged truth; illustrations of its action are then found in narrative174 history and, on the other hand, the economic law becomes the interpreter of records that would otherwise be confusing and comparatively valueless; the law itself derives175 its final confirmation176 from the illustrations of its working which the records afford; but what is at least of equal importance is the parallel fact that the law affords the decisive test of the correctness of those assertions concerning the causes and the effects of past events which it is second nature to make and which historians [333]almost invariably do make in connection with their narrations177.[333:1]
There is much in this statement by which the historian may profit, but he may doubt also whether the past should serve merely as the "illustration" by which to confirm the law deduced from common experience by a priori reasoning tested by statistics. In fact the pathway of history is strewn with the wrecks178 of the "known and acknowledged truths" of economic law, due not only to defective179 analysis and imperfect statistics, but also to the lack of critical historical methods, of insufficient180 historical-mindedness on the part of the economist, to failure to give due attention to the relativity and transiency of the conditions from which his laws were deduced.
But the point on which I would lay stress is this. The economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the sociologist181, the geographer182, the student of literature, of art, of religion—all the allied laborers in the study of society—have contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. These contributions are partly of material, partly of tools, partly of new points of view, new hypotheses, new suggestions of relations, causes, and emphasis. Each of these special students is in some danger of bias by his particular point of view, by his exposure to see simply the thing in which he is primarily interested, and also by his effort to deduce the universal laws of his separate science. The historian, on the other hand, is exposed to the danger of dealing with the complex and interacting social forces of a period or of a country, from some single point of view to which his special training or interest inclines him. If the truth is to be made known, the historian [334]must so far familiarize himself with the work, and equip himself with the training of his sister-subjects that he can at least avail himself of their results and in some reasonable degree master the essential tools of their trade. And the followers183 of the sister-studies must likewise familiarize themselves and their students with the work and the methods of the historians, and co?perate in the difficult task.
It is necessary that the American historian shall aim at this equipment, not so much that he may possess the key to history or satisfy himself in regard to its ultimate laws. At present a different duty is before him. He must see in American society with its vast spaces, its sections equal to European nations, its geographic influences, its brief period of development, its variety of nationalities and races, its extraordinary industrial growth under the conditions of freedom, its institutions, culture, ideals, social psychology, and even its religions forming and changing almost under his eyes, one of the richest fields ever offered for the preliminary recognition and study of the forces that operate and interplay in the making of society.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
transformations
|
|
| n.变化( transformation的名词复数 )；转换；转换；变换 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
arable
|
|
| adj.可耕的，适合种植的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
den
|
|
| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
wrought
|
|
| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
reconstruction
|
|
| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
colonization
|
|
| 殖民地的开拓，殖民，殖民地化； 移殖 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
prophesied
|
|
| v.预告，预言( prophesy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
superintendent
|
|
| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
census
|
|
| n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
depicted
|
|
| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
westward
|
|
| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
disappearance
|
|
| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
wilderness
|
|
| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
eloquent
|
|
| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
derive
|
|
| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
domain
|
|
| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
wildernesses
|
|
| 荒野( wilderness的名词复数 )； 沙漠； （政治家）在野； 不再当政（或掌权） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
subdued
|
|
| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
precedent
|
|
| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
gage
|
|
| n.标准尺寸，规格；量规，量表 [=gauge] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
swelling
|
|
| n.肿胀 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
influential
|
|
| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
exhausted
|
|
| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
barometer
|
|
| n.气压表，睛雨表，反应指标 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
aggregating
|
|
| 总计达…( aggregate的现在分词 )； 聚集，集合； （使）聚集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
prospective
|
|
| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
treasury
|
|
| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
liberated
|
|
| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
unprecedented
|
|
| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
immediate
|
|
| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
consolidates
|
|
| 巩固 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
triumphant
|
|
| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
stature
|
|
| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
imposing
|
|
| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
colonized
|
|
| 开拓殖民地，移民于殖民地( colonize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
gulf
|
|
| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
undertaking
|
|
| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
isolated
|
|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
territorial
|
|
| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
labor
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
disseminated
|
|
| 散布，传播( disseminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
commonwealths
|
|
| n.共和国( commonwealth的名词复数 )；联邦；团体；协会 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
46
Mediterranean
|
|
| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
alpine
|
|
| adj.高山的；n.高山植物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
ethnic
|
|
| adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
affected
|
|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
attest
|
|
| vt.证明，证实；表明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
retarded
|
|
| a.智力迟钝的，智力发育迟缓的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
diffusion
|
|
| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
aggregations
|
|
| n.聚集( aggregation的名词复数 )；集成；集结；聚集体 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
steadily
|
|
| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
consolidation
|
|
| n.合并,巩固 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
dominant
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
banking
|
|
| n.银行业，银行学，金融业 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
allied
|
|
| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
speculative
|
|
| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
promotion
|
|
| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
unified
|
|
| (unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
colossal
|
|
| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
baron
|
|
| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
monarch
|
|
| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
constructive
|
|
| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
veins
|
|
| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
dominion
|
|
| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
stifle
|
|
| vt.使窒息；闷死；扼杀；抑止，阻止 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
speculation
|
|
| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
cramping
|
|
| 图像压缩 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
moribund
|
|
| adj.即将结束的，垂死的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
guardian
|
|
| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
insurgent
|
|
| adj.叛乱的，起事的；n.叛乱分子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
utterance
|
|
| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
curb
|
|
| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
preservation
|
|
| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
corporate
|
|
| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
reclamation
|
|
| n.开垦；改造；（废料等的）回收 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
arid
|
|
| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
tracts
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
reclaimed
|
|
| adj.再生的；翻造的；收复的；回收的v.开拓( reclaim的过去式和过去分词 )；要求收回；从废料中回收（有用的材料）；挽救 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
analyzes
|
|
| v.分析( analyze的第三人称单数 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
86
inspection
|
|
| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
illustrates
|
|
| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
illustrate
|
|
| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
squatter
|
|
| n.擅自占地者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
mutual
|
|
| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
hostility
|
|
| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
extinction
|
|
| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
persistence
|
|
| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
utterances
|
|
| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
intensity
|
|
| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
geographic
|
|
| adj.地理学的，地理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
tariff
|
|
| n.关税，税率；(旅馆、饭店等)价目表，收费表 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
formerly
|
|
| adv.从前，以前 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
geographical
|
|
| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
durably
|
|
| adv.经久地，坚牢地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
habitual
|
|
| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
psychology
|
|
| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
isolation
|
|
| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
investigation
|
|
| n.调查，调查研究 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
doctrine
|
|
| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
investigator
|
|
| n.研究者，调查者，审查者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
bias
|
|
| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
dealing
|
|
| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
inadequately
|
|
| ad.不够地；不够好地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
inquiry
|
|
| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
criteria
|
|
| n.标准 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
evacuate
|
|
| v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
herald
|
|
| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
modifications
|
|
| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
retention
|
|
| n.保留，保持，保持力，记忆力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
beaver
|
|
| n.海狸，河狸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
minor
|
|
| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
agitations
|
|
| （液体等的）摇动( agitation的名词复数 )； 鼓动； 激烈争论； （情绪等的）纷乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
eddies
|
|
| （水、烟等的）漩涡，涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
distractions
|
|
| n.使人分心的事[人]( distraction的名词复数 )；娱乐，消遣；心烦意乱；精神错乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
navigated
|
|
| v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的过去式和过去分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
concealed
|
|
| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
stagnant
|
|
| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
vehement
|
|
| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
exemptions
|
|
| n.（义务等的）免除( exemption的名词复数 )；免（税）；（收入中的）免税额 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
immunities
|
|
| 免除，豁免( immunity的名词复数 )； 免疫力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
solitary
|
|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
paupers
|
|
| n.穷人( pauper的名词复数 )；贫民；贫穷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
divergences
|
|
| n.分叉( divergence的名词复数 )；分歧；背离；离题 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
apprehension
|
|
| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
jealousy
|
|
| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
laborers
|
|
| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
136
planks
|
|
| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
137
humanitarian
|
|
| n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
138
animated
|
|
| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
139
inundation
|
|
| n.the act or fact of overflowing | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
140
revival
|
|
| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
141
guise
|
|
| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
142
discredited
|
|
| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
143
persistent
|
|
| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
144
judgment
|
|
| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
145
radical
|
|
| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
146
sporadic
|
|
| adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular；分散的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
147
doctrines
|
|
| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
148
seizure
|
|
| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
149
expended
|
|
| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
150
trespasses
|
|
| 罪过( trespass的名词复数 )； 非法进入 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
151
paternal
|
|
| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
152
harassed
|
|
| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
153
violations
|
|
| 违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
154
civic
|
|
| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
155
virgin
|
|
| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
156
devoted
|
|
| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
157
varied
|
|
| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
158
diversified
|
|
| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
159
elucidate
|
|
| v.阐明，说明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
160
investigations
|
|
| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
161
distinguished
|
|
| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
162
degradation
|
|
| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
163
lesser
|
|
| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
164
investigators
|
|
| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
165
geologist
|
|
| n.地质学家 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
166
inorganic
|
|
| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
167
warping
|
|
| n.翘面，扭曲，变形v.弄弯，变歪( warp的现在分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
168
interpretation
|
|
| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
169
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
170
deriving
|
|
| v.得到( derive的现在分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
171
justificatory
|
|
| 起辩护作用的，用以辩解的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
172
economist
|
|
| n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
173
formulated
|
|
| v.构想出( formulate的过去式和过去分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
174
narrative
|
|
| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
175
derives
|
|
| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
176
confirmation
|
|
| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
177
narrations
|
|
| 叙述事情的经过，故事( narration的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
178
wrecks
|
|
| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
179
defective
|
|
| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
180
insufficient
|
|
| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
181
sociologist
|
|
| n.研究社会学的人，社会学家 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
182
geographer
|
|
| n.地理学者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
183
followers
|
|
| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |