 CHAPTER XVI PART II OF TWENTY YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC, 1885-1905, by Harry Thurston Peck. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. President Roosevelt's first administration was likewise marked by instances of personal government. He was, in fact, by temperament no less than by the accumulated precedents of a century bound to magnify the prerogatives of his office. Under him the executive function assumed almost the form of a frank paternalism. His interference in the coal strike, his personal direction to the Attorney General to prosecute the trusts, and his hasty action in recognizing the Republic of Panama were no more indicative of this fact than was his share in almost every other matter of public concern from what he called race-suicide to college football, and behind him stood the people, not only consenting to his exercise of authority but eagerly applauding it. They liked his way of seeking tangible results, and their endorsement of him at the election of 1904 set the seal of their approval upon executive supremacy. A member of the New York Bar, after analyzing both the expressed and implied powers of the President under the Constitution, and after tracing the course of then recent historical events, concluded his study with the following words. He, the President, had claimed practically all their executive and magisterial soventies and unlimited discretion to exercise them, and 7,600,000 electors representing 46 million citizens voted that he was right and peremptorily commanded him to use them. That is my conception of the election of 1904. After 118 years it made the President in fact, as in theory, the head of the nation and the dominating force in the Republic. It was a remarkable popular interpretation of the Constitution. Thus my ideal of the President coincides with the ideal of the people. A majestic constitutional figure, uncontrolled by Congress, unrestrained by the courts, vested with plenary constitutional power and absolute constitutional discretion. A sovereign over 80 million people, and the servant of 80 million sovereigns, whose sole inspiring purpose is to serve his fellow citizens, guard their liberties, and make this nation the freest, most enlightened, and most powerful sovereignty ever organized among men. Note 16, page 741. Without going so far as this interpreter, one may nevertheless reasonably hold that in the 20 years intervening between 1885 and 1905, the President of the United States did become in essence a sovereign upon whose acts there existed no effectual restraint save that which lay in the right of Congress to impeach him and depose him. Yet the case of President Johnson shows that the successful impeachment of a President is practically impossible. If his partisans in the Senate should number only one more than a third of that body, the impeachment would fail, and it would be wholly impossible if he were supported by a majority in the House. Even the power of the purse would not avail to hamper him, since most appropriations made by Congress are not annual but continuing and extend over a term of years. It may be said, therefore, that at the beginning of the 20th century, the United States had evolved an elective monarchy resembling very closely the ideal of Napoleon III. Precisely as in the French system, so in the American, the ruler was in great crises, absolute, the more truly so because he derived his powers directly from the people through a plebiscite. The American presidency differed from its Napoleonic prototype mainly in the single fact that the sovereign's term was limited to a brief period and that another plebiscite was necessary at the end of each four years. Here, then, was established a union of two definite principles, the principle of popular selection and the principle of an independent and practically uncontrolled executive. The growth of socialism in the United States had important developments other than those which have already been described. It gave a distinct impetus to the agitation for women's suffrage and full political rights. This agitation began historically in America in colonial days when Margaret Brent, as the Executrix of Lord Baltimore, demanded the right to sit in the Assembly of Maryland. When the federal constitution was under consideration, Abigail Adams and Mary Warren asked for a recognition of women in the National Charter. In 1845 and immediately thereafter, Lucy Stone and Abby Kelly kept the discussion alive and the anti-slavery movement of which the women of the North were strong partisans had been favorable to the cause. Two leading abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, gave it their energetic support. In 1848, the first women's suffrage convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, under the direction of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Martha C. Wright. From this time, in spite of strong opposition and every form of ridicule and obliquy, many women labored persistently to secure the franchise, forming associations all over the country until in 1869, there were organized in New York, the National Women's Suffrage Association, headed by Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, and in Ohio, the American Women's Suffrage Association directed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and George F. Hoare. In 1892, the two associations were merged into the American Women's Suffrage Association, of which the first two presidents were Miss Anthony and Mrs. Cary Chapman-Cat. The great political parties looked to scans at this movement without however directly antagonizing it. At the Republican National Convention in 1876, the delegates listened to an address from a woman, and at the Democratic conventions of 1876 and 1880, women were among the speakers. At the Democratic Convention of 1900, a woman delegate from Utah seconded the nomination of Mr. Bryan, yet even the populace declined to give their official approval to the doctrine of women's suffrage. On the other hand, the prohibition party, the greenback, labor and socialist parties, favored the right of women to vote, and the various labor organizations, especially the Knights of Labor, admitted women to membership. In some of the newer states, women succeeded in obtaining the franchise. Thus, prior to 1905, the full suffrage was given them in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, while in many states they obtained the right of municipal suffrage, school suffrage, and suffrage upon questions of taxation. In the older states, their efforts were unsuccessful, for there their petitions were met by counterpetitions signed by women who believed the grant of suffrage to their sex to be politically and socially inexpedient. Note 17, page 743. Far more important in its ultimate results than any attempt to secure political equality was a very widespread and persistent propaganda intended vaguely to give women an exceptional prominence in the national life. The most concrete evidence of this was found in the formation in the states and territories of women's clubs, not established with any one particular object, or at least with no objects specifically defined, but all tending to push women to the front and to lay stress upon the potentialities of the sex. Many of these clubs were literary in character. Others were interested in education, still others in local improvements, and a few in politics and legislation. The club movement, as one woman wrote, represents a tendency to associated effort. The club is the postgraduate school for the individual woman. One of the first of these organizations was Saurosis, established in 1868 by Miss Kate Field, Mrs. Bahta, and others. By the end of 1905, these clubs and federations had become so numerous and so influential as to constitute a distinct and very striking social phenomenon. Note 18, page 744. The agitation for suffrage and the attempted participation by women in every sphere of effort was but another remarkable sign of the social unrest which permeated the United States toward the end of the 19th century. It assumed various forms, but it meant in the end a profoundly important change in the relation of American women to the American social system. It represented an emancipation less from political restraint than from the social conventions which had prevailed for centuries. Like all far-reaching changes, it was fraught with both good and evil. The underlying tendencies of the woman movement were perhaps best set forth by one of its leaders, Mrs. Charlotte Stetson Gilman. Note 19, page 745. Mrs. Gilman's thesis was so interesting as to deserve serious attention, and it explains many important facts in the social history of the United States from 1885 to 1905. Two sentences of hers may be cited as representing her viewpoint and that of her followers. We have kept half humanity tied to the starting post while the other half ran. We have trained and bred one kind of qualities into one half of the species and another kind into the other half. In other words, according to Mrs. Gilman, everything in the past had been done to make men brave and socially important and also strong and intellectually creative. On the other hand, women were held by her to have been trained to become moral cowards and to develop in themselves only the minor virtues of personal usefulness. The sex relation had been exaggerated and the place of woman in society had been based entirely upon it, thus restricting her physical activities and dwarfing her power to think and to judge for herself. Throughout the centuries she had never had that moral freedom which would come to her from being mistress of her own actions and from learning what was right and what was wrong through the observation of consequences. Hence, woman, either as daughter or as wife, had been kept in a state of dependence upon man while her power of choosing the man most fitted for her had been limited by convention. Freedom of association such as men enjoyed had been restricted. Sentiment and emotion had been abnormally developed in her. The whole existence of woman had been made to center around those functions which had to do either directly or collaterally with the sex relation, so that at the best she was a plaything and at the worst, a drudge. Mrs. Gilman therefore advocated and it must be said with remarkable ability what she called economic independence for women, teaching that woman should be so trained as to subordinate the sex instinct to acquire the courage to stand alone against the world, to face life as men have always faced it, and to reject all thought of turning to another for comfort and protection. Should she marry, she should do so from practical considerations and in order to perpetuate the race. In marriage, her affair should be independent of her husband's and her partnership with him should be governed by considerations having no reference to sentiment. Without pausing to consider the soundness of these views, it may be said that they represented a feeling which more and more began to sway the minds and actions of American women. A desire for economic independence and an impatience of conventional restraint led to fundamental changes in the position of the women of the United States. Such stereotype phrases as, we must live our own lives, became common. Young women from remote parts of the country left the farm and village home where before they had been well cared for and contented and flocked to the cities with a curious willingness to regard the excitements of urban life as a compensation for hardships for affronts and for the diminished respect with which they were now regarded. Many of them unhappily cherished ambitions far beyond the range of their abilities and these after bitter disappointments dropped into the ranks of humble workers or were forced to lead a life of shame. Those who followed whether consciously or unconsciously the teachings of Mrs. Gilman received the nicknames of New Women and Bachelor Girls. The great majority of them entered occupations in which they were obliged to compete with men and because of their physical inferiority they were forced to do so for a smaller compensation than men received. In spite of all discouragement however there was a steady influx of women workers in almost every occupation including even the professions. The census of 1900 showed that 5,329,807 women were in that year engaged in self-supporting pursuits. Note 20, page 747. The ultimate effect upon the community of this revolutionary change in the position of women could not of course be fitly estimated at the end of a short period of time. Opinions therefore were divided. Many observers held that on the whole women themselves and society at large had gained because of the moral training imparted by self-support to so many thousands who had hitherto occupied a position of dependence. It was asserted that women also as a sex profited by an extension of social in place of personal relations and by the development of special abilities and technical skill. On the other hand there were many who regarded the change as both economically and morally detrimental. It was economically detrimental because a woman owing to the expectation of marriage was as a rule inadequately equipped for self-support and by reason of her loss of time through illness her competition with men was carried under inevitable disadvantages. Hence she must usually receive a lower rate of compensation. In most occupations the labor of women was but another form of cheap labor and its introduction involved a lowering of the scale of wages for the man as well as for the woman. As was said the female competitor brings the earnings down to a point where the man is too poor to marry her. Students of social phenomena declared that in consequence of this fact marriage was growing more infrequent and that the decline of marriage necessarily meant the spread of immorality. Again the circumstance that women now worked with men and as in shops and factories incomplete subordination to men was a cause of incessant temptation and a menace to chastity. Note 21, page 748 Another and a less tangible ground of objection was noted in the sphere of education. In the primary schools the teaching was given more and more into the hands of women and even in the high schools they formed a large majority of the teaching staff. The result was said to be a gradual feminization of American mental training which was enhanced by the entrance of women into the sphere of the higher education. An acute investigator of German nationality who had spent many years in the United States wrote the following suggestive words with regard to this phase of the woman movement in America. If we keep up an artificial equality through the higher development of the present day American intellectual work will be kept down by the women and will never become a world power. How differently when compared with that of men of the same class the female mind works we see daily around us when we turn our eyes from the educated level down toward the half educated multitude. Here we are confronted with the woman who antagonizes serious medicine through her belief in patent medicines and quackery the woman who undermines moral philosophy through her rushing into spiritualism and every superstition of the day the woman who injures the progress of thought and reform by running with hysterical zeal after every new fad and fashion introduced with a catchy phrase. A lack of respect for really strenuous thought characterizes women in general. Dilatantism is the key note. The half educated man is much more inclined to show an instinctive respect for trained thought and to abstain from opinions where he is ignorant. But the half educated woman cannot discriminate between the superficial and the profound and without the slightest hesitation she effuses like a bit of gossip. Her views on Greek art or on Darwinism or on the human soul between two spoonfuls of ice cream. Even that is almost refreshing as a softening supplement to the manly work of civilization. But it would be a misfortune if such a spirit were to gain the controlling influence. Note 22 page 749. In the period under discussion, the United States exhibited a remarkable advance in the development of education. Americans had always shown a high regard for mental training. Both the individual states and the national government had been extremely generous to educational institutions of every grade making large gifts of public lands and grants of public money to maintain them on a liberal scale. The diffusion of wealth led many private citizens to supplement these grants by the most lavish benefactions and endowments. Hence on the material side from 1885 to 1905 the cause of education was markedly advanced. For the first time the United States came to possess great universities which in the magnificence of their buildings and in the completeness of their equipment were comparable to the historic universities of Europe. The unstinted generosity which supplied their needs was indeed the marvel and despair of foreign visitors. The Stanford University founded in California by Senator Stanford and his wife in 1885 was endowed with the enormous sum of 30 million dollars. Mr. John D. Rockefeller made gifts to the University of Chicago amounting to more than 12 million dollars while to Yale University he presented a million dollars in a single gift. A stream of benefactions from individuals made possible a steady growth of the other universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell. Many of the state universities notably the University of Michigan, the University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin were enabled to develop their activities so rapidly as to take rank with the oldest of their sister institutions. The colleges also were not forgotten. It was natural given the practical characteristics of the American people and the materializing influences of this period that the higher education while making an immense advance should still have been retarded into some extent injured by the conditions of the time that it should often have subordinated to mere size and numbers and display the fine idealism of earlier years. Great stress was laid upon the more utilitarian branches of study while those of a humanistic character were for a while at least less highly valued. There was a disposition to lessen the culture and to devise shortcuts by which the ambitious student could earlier begin preparing directly for a professional career. This tendency was most noticeable in the greater universities where not unnaturally the work of the graduate schools was stimulated at the expense of the undergraduate life. The prosecution of original research was fostered and encouraged in every possible way and American specialists began to win deserved distinction some of them being called to chairs in foreign universities. A very significant proof of a growing appreciation of highly scientific work was seen in the noble gift by Mr. Andrew Carnegie for the foundation of the Carnegie institution in Washington which he endowed with the sum of ten million dollars for the encouragement of original investigation in any and every department of science. It seemed likely however that the dissemination of liberal culture must more and more become the peculiar mission of the smaller institutions which wisely refrained from styling themselves universities and which still preserve the old traditions of broad culture and intellectual discipline as an end entirely apart from an intense specialization. Note 23, page 751. In the sphere of secondary and technical education the United States displayed an extraordinary development surpassing that of its whole previous history. Not merely was the number of common schools multiplied, not merely did high schools and normal schools and colleges for the training of teachers spring up on every hand but great attention was paid to educational methods and to the application of psychology to teaching. Manual training took its place in the educational scheme and a large number of technical schools were established. University extension courses were carried on in every part of the country. Many of the great universities opened their laboratories and lecture rooms during the summer months. Nowhere in the world was so full and so free an opportunity given to the young for instruction ranging from the most elementary subjects to those which involve the most advanced and scientific methods of research. Note 24, page 752. If we turn to the field of American literature during the period under consideration its most significant feature will be found in the fact that it exhibits very strikingly the nationalizing tendency. Until the year 1880 while the United States had certainly produced many writers of great merit and of real distinction and while their themes had often been American, still their spirit and especially their technique reflected unmistakably the influence of Europe and above all of England. Only a very few of them, notably Mr. Clemens, Mark Twain and Brett Hart, had exhibited a wholly new and national inspiration. But after the year that has been mentioned, American literature, using the word in its broadest sense, became truly and undeniably American. One finds this exemplified first of all in the growing interest which was then shown in the study of American history and of American historical, political and social problems. History had always been a subject to attract the attention of native authors and investigators. Yet many of these had followed old world models and, like Prescott and Motley, had found their subjects in the field of European history. Now, however, material was drawn from sources less remote. Contemporaneous events, or those that were nearly contemporaneous, were seized upon with enthusiasm, while the phenomena of American life itself were regarded as worthy of the most painstaking study. In 1883 there appeared the first volume of Professor John Bach, McMaster's history of the people of the United States, intended by its author to cover the period beginning with 1783 and to end with the outbreak of the Civil War. Professor McMaster, in his treatment of his theme, derived from Lord Macaulay through John Richard Green, and his style possessed many of the defects and not a few of the merits of both those widely read historians. His work is a mine of information drawn from sources not easily accessible and exhibiting every evidence of elaborate investigation. Still more remarkable was the great history of the United States from the compromise of 1850 to 1877 by Mr. James Ford Rhodes, the most important and interesting analytical narrative yet written of the events of that momentous period. The first two volumes appeared in 1898, and the fifth, which reached the period of reconstruction in 1904. No treatise on American history had ever been so richly documented, as none was ever so temperate and impartial in its treatment of events regarding which contemporary feeling was still stirred by prejudice and political passion. In the exposition of constitutional history, chiefly that of the United States, Professor John W. Burgess published treatises which became classics in the lifetime of their author. Note 25, page 753. Other names which made this period memorable in the annals of historical and political research are those of Hart, Fisk, Schuller, Henry Adams, Dunning, Foster, and Mayhem. Nor would any enumeration be complete which failed to mention Professor William Milligan Sloan, who won for his country the honor of having produced the definitive life of Napoleon, an enduring monument of profound research and a philosophical analysis. Note 26, page 754. Political economy was enriched during the same period by many notable contributions. Popular attention had been fixed upon economic questions so eagerly as to make this inevitable. Therefore, the work of such man as F. A. Walker, W. G. Sumner, and Horace White of the older generation was ably supplemented by that of others who dealt with still newer problems, Clark and Eli, for instance, with a trust, Tosig with the tariff, Seligman with taxation, Wright and Mayo Smith with statistics, Laughlin with finance, and Bemis with municipal ownership. In literature of a less serious character there appears the same unmistakable preoccupation with subjects distinctly national. In fiction, after the year 1890, American books delineating American life banished from popular favor the novel of English manners. Historical romances relating to the colonial period enjoyed a remarkable vogue, but of more significance were the works of those authors who depicted with artistic fidelity the peculiar conditions of contemporary America. Thus, just as Bret Hart had drawn the California of 1849, so with a far more realistic pen, did Mr. Hamlin Garland reveal the life of the Northwest, while Miss Mary Wilkins etched with exquisite art the New England Hamlets. Mr. Harold Frederick's novels were studies in the village life of Central New York. Mr. Cable told sympathetically of Creole, Louisiana. Mr. Robert Grant wrote one book, Unleavened Bread, which is a masterpiece in drawing to the very life of peculiarly American type of woman, hard, crude, and ignorantly pretentious. Cowboy Life in the West, already vanishing before the march of civilization, was caught and fixed in the pages of Owen Wister. The rough and lawless existence of the Gold Hunters of Alaska was described in a no less rough and lawless style by Mr. London. The subjects which stirred the interest of the American people at this time were turned to the purposes of fiction by a hundred writers who found material in the trusts, in municipal corruption, in the new wealth, and in the slum life of American cities. The ciberitic luxury of the new American aristocracy, its manners and its morals, were drawn with delicate art and a sophisticated psychology by Mrs. Edith Wharton, whose style attained a preciosity unlike that of any other American writer. American literature found a singularly acute and discriminating historian in Professor Barrett Wendell of Harvard University. Note 27, page 755. The one representative of Belletre, whose importance was more than literary, was Mr. William Dean Howells, by far the most eminent of American novelists at that time. As an essayist and poet, his writings were characterized by a too intense individualism, but as a portrayer of the American life of his generation and of contemporary types, he had so far been unequaled. With a keen eye for what was striking in individuals or in life, with a wonderful photographic instinct for detail, with a shrewd insight into human motives, with a pervasive sense of humor and a subtle gift of language, he possessed an experience so broad as to be national rather than sectional, with the advantages of an international point of view. He gave, to American literature, a series of books which constitute what may be called a national portrait gallery, thus providing for future generations a clue to American civilization while in a state of flux. The social conditions which he depicted were those which to a foreigner were quite inexplicable and which will ultimately present almost equal difficulties to Americans of the future. In this way his novels have a distinct historical value and taken together may be not unreasonably compared with Balzac's Comedie Humaine. It was in 1885 that he published The Rise of Silas Lapham, which embodies a piece of portraiture attaining to the proportions of a broadly national type. The self-made man who works his way up to material prosperity was never more convincingly depicted and the portrait is one that is true of the Native American everywhere in the East as well as in the West. Rooted in the soil of the farm, this homely figure with its heaviness and gentleness, its simplicity and shrewdness, its rugged honesty and worldly wisdom, its uncouthness and native humor, its quaint conceit and innocent pride tempered always with a hesitating self-depreciation, its eye to the main chance, and its haunting and unpitying conscientiousness, one finds them all in this amusing yet profoundly touching creation, which is as vital as anything that human art has ever limbed. This book, together with a modern instance, The Lady of Aristotle, April Hopes, and the Kentons, contains invaluable human documents over which the student of American conditions will hear after linger with delight and gratitude. During this period the United States produced nothing of lasting importance in other departments of literature. Many Americans had acquired a facile technique, and the level of literary excellence was a high one. Nevertheless, there arose no poet of real distinction, no great essayist, and no constructive philosopher. Stimulated, however, by the demands of education, an immense deal of interesting experimentation was carried on in psychological laboratories, and at least one psychologist, Professor William James of Harvard, left a mark upon the records of that science. A survey of literature would be incomplete without some notice of American journalism, since even when regarded in a narrow way, journalism and literature are intimately associated. The influence of the press in the United States had always been extremely great. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, however, that influence may be said to have declined to some extent owing to the changes wrought in the conditions under which journalism was carried on. Until about 1885, the great newspaper had been the mouthpiece of some single dominant personality, well-known instances of which are to be found in the New York Tribune under Greeley, the New York Times under Raymond, the New York Sun under Dana, and the New York Evening Post under Gotkin. Right or wrong, these men lent each a powerful individuality to the newspapers whose politics they swayed, and each of them practically compelled the adhesion of his readers to the causes which he advocated. Presently, however, many newspapers became great properties purchased by wealthy men and used by them to further their own interests, political, financial, or social. The editorial page then represented not a single personality but a syndicate, the members of which were unknown to the public and were simply employees who wrote as they were directed to write, and who came and went at the pleasure of the owner. In this way, the newspaper staff lost its esprit de cal, and so far as the editorial page was concerned, its influence. Note 28, page 758. In 1905, there remained only one editor of national renown to continue for a time the old traditions of personality and journalism, Mr. Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier Journal. In place, however, of the kind of journalism which he typified and side by side with a somewhat colorless journalism of the syndicate, there arose a third class of newspapers which succeeded to much of the power that had been wielded by the great journalists of former years. In 1883, Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian by birth but long resident in the United States, purchased the New York world, a paper which had for years been dwindling in circulation. Mr. Pulitzer and his conduct of the world introduced methods and policies which were not altogether new, since they had been foreshadowed long before by the Bennets, but which were now carried out upon so startling a scale as to command general attention. Sensational journalism was not a new thing. Mr. Pulitzer's development of it was. In his hands, the newspaper not merely sought to procure news, but to create it. A reporter would be instructed to feign insanity in order to gain access to an asylum and then secure material for vivid exploitation in the columns of the paper. A young woman was sent off at an hour's notice to make a circuit of the world, with instructions to accomplish it in less than the 80 days required by Jules Verne's hero. Every stage of her journey across the continent was made in a special train decorated with banners and received at various points with music and the cheers of the multitude. Anything and everything that could startle and cause talk was eagerly caught at by what presently came to be known as yellow journalism. Note 29, page 759. The example set by Mr. Pulitzer was followed with even greater energy and unrestraint by Mr. W. R. Hurst who in 1895 bought the New York Journal for Mr. Albert Pulitzer and soon after issued an evening edition of the same paper. The methods of Mr. Hurst were mainly those of Mr. Pulitzer, but they were exemplified upon a still larger and more striking scale. Mr. Hurst, however, added the force of personality to that of the spectacular when he secured as his principal editorial writer, Mr. Arthur Brisbane. Mr. Brisbane possessed a style of wonderful effectiveness. Short, pithy sentences and a strong Saxon vocabulary won him readers everywhere. Mr. Hurst founded other newspapers in various parts of the country and in all of them the Brisbane editorials appeared. Finally, Mr. Hart's six organs came to be read every day in the year by more than a million voters, most of whom read no other papers. It became impossible to ignore the power which was thus exerted, especially as Mr. Hurst and Mr. Brisbane advocated the socialistic doctrines that were everywhere permeating the masses of the people. So marked became this influence that many persons actually believed the Spanish war to have been brought on by the so called yellow press. On this point the nation said our cheap press today speaks in tones never before heard outside of Paris. It urges upon ignorant people schemes more savage disregard of either policy or justice or experience more complete than the modern world has witnessed since the French Revolution. It is true it addresses the multitude mainly or only. The wise and learned and the pious and industrious do not read it but it is the multitude and not the wise and learned and industrious who now set fleets and armies in motion who impose silence and acquiescence on all as soon as the word war is mentioned and insist successfully that this shall not be interfered with by either voice or vote until they have had their fill of fighting. They have already established a regime in which a boy with several millions of dollars at his disposal has more influence on the use a great nation may make of its credit of its army and navy of its name and traditions then all the statesmen and philosophers and professors in the country note 30 page 760 These words are savage and bitter but they concede so much in the way of fact as to constitute a reluctant tribute to undoubted power. Summing up the underlying tendencies of these 20 years of the nation's life it seems plain that the exhibited a change through which the civilization of the United States was becoming rapidly assimilated to the civilization of Europe in place of an agglomeration of heterogeneous communities having but few interests in common and moved by no single dominant idea there was emerging a compact and highly complex state with all the characteristics of the old world monarchies political power was centralized social distinctions were accentuated the lines between class and class were every year more rigorously drawn luxury and all the refinements that great wealth could give were seen on every side as were also at the other extreme the squalors and the suffering of pauperism the american republic was in fact responding to the play of those powerful forces which have shaped the destinies and the character of all great nations it was yielding to the inexorable law of evolution those who looked with a myopic eye upon the evils which accompanied this process recoiled and prophesied a future full of woe corruption defiance or evasion of the law social selfishness and a denial of the fundamental rights of man were everywhere to be detected yet far more significant than all these things was the fact made clear by a thousand evidences that the heart of the nation at its core was sound that there still existed the capacity for strong indignation which springs from righteousness that every evil raised up swift avengers and that all the blots upon the escutcheon of the republic failed utterly to dim its brightness the hope of the future lay in the racial characteristics of the American himself in his sense of justice in his courage his humor his capacity for high achievement and his invincible love of country such therefore as were not blighted and blinded by a quarrelous pessimism could still make their own the noble words of Lincoln and could say with him why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people is there any better or any equal hope in the whole world end of chapter 16 end of 20 years of the republic 1885 to 1905 by Harry Thurston Peck recorded by Céline Majore