 CHAPTER XII. The past decade has witnessed an extraordinary federal activity in limiting individual and corporate freedom for the benefit of society. To that decade belong the conservation congresses and the effective organization of the frontier service and the reclamation service. Taken together, these developments alone would mark a new era, for over 300 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 to the Constitution, if we exclude their Western claims, and these reserved lands are held for a more beneficial use of their forest, minerals, arid tracks 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 reclaimed by the government. Maps and analyzes 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 inspection, and the whole mass of regulative law under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, further illustrates 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 squatter 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 mutual hostility and contained the seeds of its dissolution. 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 extinction 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 persistence and the development of sectionalism. Whether we observe the grouping of votes in Congress and in the general elections, or the organization and utterances 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 intensity, 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 geographic provinces or sections. The votes on the tariff and in general the location of the strongholds of the progressive Republican movement illustrate this fact. The difficulty of a national adjustment of railway rates to the 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 formerly, the separate geographical interests have their leaders and spokesmen, that much congressional legislation is determined 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 durably 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. 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 habitual attitude of the masses of the people, the psychology 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 virtue 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 in isolation 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 investigation. 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've undertaken this rapid survey of recent history for two purposes. First because it is 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 doctrine that each age studies its history anew and with interest 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 investigator and writer is influenced by the times in which he lives and while this fact exposes the historian to a bias at the same time it affords him new instruments and new insight for dealing with this 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 inadequately 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 inquiry, new criteria of the perspective of the remitter past and moreover a just public opinion and a statesman-like 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 evacuate the portals of the Great Valley becomes the herald 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 a new meaning. Even in defeat he opened a road to what is now the center of the world's industrial energy. The modifications 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 retention or loss of beaver grounds. The historians hardly noticed 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 minor political parties and reform agitations? To the historian they have often seemed to be mere curious side eddies, vexatious distractions to the course of his literary craft as it navigated 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 concealed entrances to the main current, and the course which seemed to the central one has led to blind channels and stagnant waters, important in their day, but cut off like oxbow lakes from the mighty 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 vehement 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 throw on special privileges, quote, a special association of favorite individuals taken from the mass of society and invested with exemptions and surrounded by immunities and privileges, end of quote. Benton voiced the same contest 20 years later when he denounced the bank as, quote, 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, end of quote. Quote, and where, he asked, would all this power and money center in the great cities of the northeast, which have been for 40 years and by that force of federal legislation, the lion's den of southern and western money, that den into which all the tracks point inward, from which the returning track of a solitary dollar has never yet been seen, end of quote, declaring in words that have a very modern sound, that the bank tended to multiply Nabobs and Poppers, and that a great money 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 divergences against the nationalizing of capital. Quote, what a condition for a Confederacy of states, what grounds for alarm and terrible apprehension, when in a Confederacy of such a vast extent, so many rival commercial cities, so much sectional jealousy, such violent political parties, such fierce contests for power, there should be but one money tribunal before which all the rival and contending elements must appear, end of quote, 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 moneyed aristocracy of the few against the democracy of numbers, the prosperous to make the honest laborers 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 loco-foco champions of equal rights for all and special privileges for none, like Evans and Jock, BirdSaw 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 planks 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 humanitarian movement, strikingly similar to that of the present, arose in the years between 1830 and 1850, dealing with social forces in American life, animated 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 inundation for the time. After the war, other influences delayed the revival 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 guise, read the platforms of the greenback labor, the Granger and the populist parties, and you will find in those platforms discredited and reprobated by the major parties of the time, the basic proposals of the Democratic Party after its revolution under the leadership of Mr. Brian, 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 of these persistent tendencies to be checked by the advocates of more moderate measures. End of Section 39 Recording by Colleen McMahon Section 40 of The Frontier in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Colleen McMahon Chapter 12 Social Forces in American History Part 3 I have dealt with these fragments of party history, not, of course, with the purpose of expressing any present judgment 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 radical democracy and conservative interests, that they are rather a continuing expression of deep-seated forces than fragmentary and sporadic 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 doctrines and practices, the seizure of the best soils, the taking of public timber on the theory of a right to it by the labor expended 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 trespasses of the pioneer and the lumberman upon the public forest lands and denounced the paternal government that harassed 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 19th century and the present time, when we impose jail sentences upon congressmen caught in such violations of the land laws, a change came over the American conscience and the civic 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 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. 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 virgin 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 devoted to single cropping of wheat were forced to turn to varied and intensive agriculture and to diversified 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 overproduction of wheat in the provinces thus rapidly colonized and in the overproduction of silver in the mountain provinces which were contemporaneously exploited. Important explanations of the peculiar form which American politics took in the period when Mr. Brian 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 elucidate, namely that a comprehension of the United States of today and 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 20 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 investigations upon the relations and the goal of history. It has become a precedent fairly well established by the distinguished 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 degradation. It is not given to all to bend the bow of Ulysses. I shall attempt a lesser task. 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, electrochemistry, geophysics, astrophysics, and a variety of other scientific unions have led to audacious hypotheses, veritable flashes of vision, which open new regions of activity for a generation of investigators. 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 geologist aims to describe the inorganic earth dynamically in terms of natural law using chemistry, physics, mathematics, and even botany and zoology as 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 warping 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 interpretation 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 the other special historians. Those who insist the 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 fixed conditions. It is in the midst and is itself a part of the changing currents, the complex and interacting influences of the time, deriving 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 justificatory appendixes to his conclusions. An American economist of high rank has recently expressed his conception of the full relation of economic theory, statistics and history in these words quote, a principle is formulated 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 narrative 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 derives its final confirmation 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 almost invariably do make in connection with their narrations. End of quote. 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 wrecks of the known and acknowledged truths of economic law do not only to defective analysis and imperfect statistics but also to the lack of critical historical methods of insufficient 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 sociologist the geographer 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 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 followers of the sister studies must likewise familiarize themselves and their students with the work and the methods of the historians and cooperate 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 an 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 cultures 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 end of section 40 recording by Colleen McMahon section 41 of the frontier in american history this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the frontier in american history by Frederick Jackson Turner chapter 13 middle western pioneer democracy part one in time of war when all that this nation has stood for all the things in which it passionately believes are at stake we have met to dedicate this beautiful home for history there is a fitness in the occasion it is for historic ideals that we are fighting if this nation is one for which we should pour out our savings postpone our differences go hungry and even give up life itself it is not because it is a rich extensive well-fared and populace nation it is because from its early days america has pressed onward toward a goal of its own that it has followed an ideal the ideal of a democracy developing under conditions unlike those of any other age or country we are fighting not for an old world ideal not for an abstraction not for a philosophical revolution broad and generous as are our sympathies widely scattered in origin as are our people keenly as we feel the call of kinship the thrill of sympathy with the stricken nations across the atlantic we are fighting for the historic ideals of the united states for the continued existence of the type of society in which we believe because we have proved it good for the things which drew european exiles to our shores and which inspired the hopes of the pioneers we are at war that the history of the united states rich with the record of high human purposes and a faith in the destiny of the common man under freedom filled with the promises of a better world may not become the lost and tragic story of a futile dream yes it is an american ideal and an american example for which we fight but in that ideal and example lies medicine for the healing of the nations it is the best we have to give to europe and it is a matter of vital import that we shall safeguard and preserve our power to serve the world and not be overwhelmed in the flood of imperialistic force that wills the death of democracy and would send the freemen under the yoke essential as are our contributions of wealth the work of our scientists the toil of our farmers and our workmen in factory and shipyard priceless as is the stream of young american manhood which we pour forth to stop the flood which flows like molten lava across the green fields and peaceful hamlets of europe toward the sea and turns to ashes and death all that it covers these contributions have their deeper meaning in the american spirit they are born of the love of democracy long ago in prophetic words walt wittman voiced the meaning of our present sacrifices sail sail thy best ship ship of democracy a value is thy freight it is not the present only the past is also stored in thee thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone not of the western continent alone earth's resume entire floats on thy keel oh ship is steadied by thy spars with thee time voyages in trust the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee with all their ancient struggles martyrs heroes epics wars thou bearest the other continents theirs theirs as much as thine the destination port triumphant shortly before the civil war a great german exiled from his native land for his love of freedom came from his new home among the pioneers of the middle west to set forth in fangirl hill the cradle of liberty in boston his vision of the young america that was forming in the west the last depository of the hopes of all true friends of humanity speaking of the contrast between the migrations to the mississippi valley and those of the old world in other centuries he said it is now not a barbarous multitude pouncing upon old and decrepit empires not a violent concussion of tribes accompanied by all the horrors of general destruction but we see the vigorous elements peaceably congregating and mingling together on virgin soil led together by the irresistible attraction of free and broad principles undertaking to commence a new era in the history of the world without first destroying the results of the progress of past periods undertaking to found a cosmopolitan nation without marching over the dead bodies of slain millions if carl shores had lived to see the outcome of that germany from which he was sent as an exile in the days when prussian bayonets dispersed the legislatures and stamped out the beginnings of democratic rule in his former country could he have better pictured the contrast between the prussian and the american spirit he went on to say thus was founded the great colony of free humanity which has not old england alone but the world for its mother country and in the colony of free humanity whose mother country is the world they established the republic of equal rights where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship my friends if i had a thousand tongues and a voice as strong as the thunder of heaven they would not be sufficient to impress upon your minds forcibly enough the greatness of this idea the overshadowing glory of this result this was the dream of the truest friends of man from the beginning for this the noblest blood of martyrs has been shed for this has mankind waited through seas of blood and tears there it is now there it stands the noble fabric in all the splendor of reality it is in a solemn and inspiring time therefore that we meet to dedicate this building and the occasion is fitting to the time we may now see as never before the deeper significance the larger meaning of these pioneers whose plain lives and homely annals are glorified as a part of the story of the building of a better system of social justice under freedom a broader and as we fervently hope a more enduring foundation for the welfare and progress under individual liberty of the common man an example of federation of peaceful adjustments by compromise and concession under a self-governing republic where sections replace nations over a union as large as europe where party discussions take place of warring countries where the packs americana furnishes an example for a better world as our forefathers the pioneers gathered in their neighborhood to raise the log cabin and sanctioned it by the name of home the dwelling place of pioneer ideals so we meet to celebrate the raising of this home this shrine of minnesota's historic life it symbolizes the conviction that the past and the future of this people are tied together that this historical society is the keeper of the records of a noteworthy movement in the progress of mankind that these records are not unmeaning and antiquarian but even in their details are worthy of preservation for their revelation of the beginnings of society in the midst of a nation caught by the vision of a better future for the world let me repeat the words of harriet martineau who portrayed the american of the thirties i regard the american people as a great embryo poet now moody now wild but bringing out results of absolute good sense restless and wayward in action but with deep peace at his heart exalting that he has caught the true aspect of things past and the depth of futurity which lies before him wherein to create something so magnificent as the world has scarcely begun to dream of there is the strongest hope of a nation that is capable of being possessed with an idea and recall her appeal to the american people to cherish their high democratic hope their faith in man the older they grow the more they must reverence the dreams of their youth the dreams of their youth here they shall be preserved and the achievements as well as the aspirations of the men who made the state the men who built on their foundations the men with large vision and power of action the lesser men in the mass the leaders who served the state and nation with devotion to the cause here shall be preserved the record of the men who failed to see the larger vision and worked impatiently with narrow or selfish or class ends as well as of those who labored with patience and sympathy and mutual concession with readiness to make adjustments and to subordinate their immediate interest to the larger good and the immediate safety of the nation in the archives of such an old institution is that of the historical society of massachusetts whose treasures run to the beginning of the puritan colonization the students cannot fail to find the evidence that a state historical society is a book of judgment wherein is made up the record of a people and its leaders so as time unfolds shall be the collections of this society the depository of the material that shall preserve the memory of this people each section of this widely extended and varied nation has its own peculiar past its special form of society its traits and its leaders it were a pity of any section left its annals solely to the collectors of a remote region and it were a pity if its collections were not transformed into printed documents and monographic studies which can go to the libraries of all the parts of the union and thus enable the student to see the nation as a whole in its past as well as in its present this society finds its special field of activity in a great state of the middle west so new as history reckons time that its annals are still predominantly those of the pioneers but so rapidly growing that already the era of pioneers is a part of the history of the past capable of being handled objectively seen in a perspective that is not possible to the observer of the present conditions because of these facts i have taken the special theme of this address the middle western pioneer democracy which i would sketch in some of its outstanding aspects and chiefly in the generation before the civil war for it was from those pioneers that the later colonization to the newer parts of the mississippi valley derived much of their traits and from whom large numbers of them came the north central states as a whole is a region comparable to all of central europe of these states a large part of the old northwest ohio indiana illinois michigan and wisconsin and their sisters beyond the mississippi missouri iowa and minnesota were still in the middle of the 19th century the home of an essentially pioneer society within the lifetime of many living men wisconsin was called the far west and minnesota was a land of the indian and the fur traders a wilderness of forest and prairie beyond the edge of cultivation that portion of this great region which was still in the pioneering period of settlement by 1850 was alone about as extensive as the old 13 states or germany and austria-hungary combined the region was a huge geographic mold for a new society modeled by nature on the scale of the great lakes the ohio valley the upper mississippi and the missouri simple and majestic in its vast outlines it was graven into a variety that in its detail also had a largeness of design from the great lakes extended the massive glacial sheet which covered that mighty basin and laid down treasures of soil vast forests of pine shrouded its upper zone breaking into hardwood and the oak openings as they neared the ocean like expanses of the prairies forests again along the ohio valley and beyond to the west lay the levels of the great plains within the earth were unexploited treasures of coal and lead copper and iron in such form and quantity as were to revolutionize the industrial processes of the world but nature's revelations are progressive and it was rather the marvelous adaptation of the soil to the raising of corn and wheat that drew the pioneers to this land of promise and made a new era of colonization in the unity with variety of this pioneer empire and in its broad levels we have a promise of its society end of section 41 section 42 of the frontier in american history this libra vox recording is in the public domain the frontier in american history by frederick jackson turner chapter 13 part 2 first had come the children of the interior of the south and with axon rifle in hand had cut their clearings in the forest raised their log cabins fought the indians and by 1830 had pushed their way to the very edge of the prairies along the ohio and missouri valleys leaving unoccupied most of the basin of the great lakes these slashes of the forest these self-sufficing pioneers raising the corn and livestock for their own need living scattered and apart had at first small interest in town life or a share in markets they were passionately devoted to the ideal of equality but it was an ideal which assumed that under free conditions in the midst of unlimited resources the homogeneous society of the pioneers must result in equality what they objected to was arbitrary obstacles artificial limitations upon the freedom of each member of this frontier folk to work out his own career without fear or favor what they instinctively opposed was the crystallization of differences the monopolization of opportunity and the fixing of that monopoly by government or by social customs the road must be open the game must be played according to the rules there must be no artificial stifling of equality of opportunity no closed doors to the able no stopping the free game before it was played to the end more than that there was an unformulated perhaps but very real feeling that mere success in the game by which the abler men were able to achieve preeminence gave the successful ones no right to look down upon their neighbors no vested title to assert superiority as a matter of pride and to the diminution of the equal right and dignity of the less successful if this democracy of southern pioneers this jacksonian democracy was as its socialist critics have called it in reality a democracy of expectant capitalists it was not one which expected or acknowledged on the part of the successful ones the right to harden their triumphs into the rule of a privileged class in short if it is indeed true that the backwards democracy was based upon equality of opportunity it is also true that it represented the conception that opportunity under competition should result in the hopeless inequality or rule of class ever a new clearing must be possible and because the wilderness seemed so unending the menace to the enjoyment of this ideal seemed rather to be feared from government within or without than from the operations of internal evolution from the first it became evident that these men had means of supplementing their individual activity by informal combinations one of the things that impressed all early travelers in the united states was the capacity for extra legal voluntary association this was natural enough in all america we can study the process by which in a new land social customs form and crystallize into law we can even see how the personal leader becomes the governmental official this power of the newly arrived pioneers to join together for a common end without the intervention of governmental institutions was one of their marked characteristics the log rolling the house raising the husking bee the apple pairing and the squatters associations whereby they protected themselves against the speculators and securing title to their clearings on the public domain the camp meeting the mining camp the vigilantes the cattle raisers associations the gentlemen's agreements are a few of the indications of this attitude it is well to emphasize this american trait because in a modified way it has come to be one of the most characteristic and important features of the united states of today america does through informal association and understandings on the part of the people many of the things which in the old world are and can be done only by governmental intervention and compulsion these associations were in america not due to immemorial custom of tribe or village community they were exemptorized by voluntary action the actions of these associations had an authority akin to that of law they were usually not so much evidences of a disrespect for law and order as the only means by which real law and order were possible in a region where settlement and society had gone in advance of the institutions and instrumentalities of organized society because of these elements of individualistic competition and the power of spontaneous association pioneers were responsive to leadership the backwards men knew that under the free opportunities of his life the abler man would reveal himself and show them the way by free choice and not by compulsion by spontaneous impulse and not by the domination of a case they rallied around a cause they supported an issue they yielded to the principle of government by agreement and they hated the doctrine of autocracy even before it gained a name they looked forward to the extension of their american principles to the old world and their keenest apprehensions came from the possibility of the extension of the old world system of arbitrary rule its class wars and rivalries and interventions to the destruction of the free states and democratic institutions which they were building in the forests of america if we add to these aspects of early backwards democracy its spiritual qualities we shall more easily understand them these men were emotional as they wrestled their clearing from the woods and from the savages who surrounded them as they expanded that clearing and saw the beginnings of commonwealths where only little communities had been and as they saw these communities touch hands with each other along the great course of the mississippi river they became enthusiastically optimistic and confident of the continued expansion of this democracy they had faith in themselves and their destiny and that optimistic faith was responsible both for their confidence in their own ability to rule and for the passion for expansion they looked to the future others appealed to history an american appeals to prophecy and with mouthless in one hand and a map of the back country and the other he boldly defies us to a comparison with america as she is to be said london periodical in 1821 just because perhaps of the usual isolation of their lives when they came together in associations whether of the camp meeting or of the political gathering they felt the influence of a common emotion and enthusiasm whether scotch irish presbyterian baptist or methodist these people saturated their region and their politics with feeling both the stump and the pulpit were centers of energy electric cells capable of starting widespreading fires they felt both their religion and their democracy and were ready to fight for it this democracy was one that involved a real feeling of social comradeship among its widespread members justice catron who came from arkansas to the supreme court in the presidency of jackson said the people of new orleans and st louis our next neighbors if we desire to know a man in any quarter of the union we inquire of our next neighbor who but the other day lived by him exaggerated as this is it nevertheless had a surprising measure of truth for the middle west as well for the mississippi river was the great highway down which groups of pioneers like abraham lincoln on their rafts and flat boats brought the little neighborhood surplus after the steamboat came to the western waters the voyages up and down by merchants and by farmers shifting their homes brought people into contact with each other over wide areas this enlarged neighborhood democracy was determined not by a reluctant admission that under the law one man is as good as another it was based upon good fellowship sympathy and understanding they were of a stock more over which sought new trails and were ready to follow where the trail led innovators in society as well as finders of new lands by 1830 the southern inundation ebbed in a different tide flowed in from the northeast by way of the eerie canal and steam navigation on the great lakes to occupy the zone unreached by southern settlement this new tide spread along the margins of the great lakes found the oak openings and small prairie islands of southern michigan and wisconsin followed the fertile forested ribbons along the river courses far into the prairie lands and by the end of the forties began to venture into the margin of the open prairie in 1830 the middle west contained a little over a million and a half people in 1840 over three and a third millions in 1815 nearly five and a half millions although in 1830 the north atlantic states numbered between three and four times as many people as the middle west yet in those two decades the middle west made an actual gain of several hundred thousand more than did the old section counties in the newer states rose from a few hundred to ten or fifteen thousand people in the space of less than five years suddenly with astonishing rapidity and volume a new people was forming with varied elements ideals and institutions drawn from all over this nation and from europe they were confronted with the problem of adjusting different stocks varied customs and habits to their new home in comparison with the ohio valley the peculiarity of the occupation of the northern zone of the middle west lay in the fact that the native element was predominantly from the older settlements of the middle west itself and from new york new england but it was from the central and western counties of new york and from the western northern parts of new england the rural regions of declining agricultural prosperity that the bulk of this element came thus the influence of the middle west stretched into the northeast and attracted a farming population already suffering from western competition the advantage of abundant fertile and cheap land the richer agricultural returns and especially the opportunities for youth to rise in all the trades and professions gave strength to this competition buy it new england was profoundly and permanently modified this yankee stock carried with it a habit of community life in contrast with the individualistic democracy of the southern element the colonizing land companies the town the school the church the feeling of local unity furnish the evidences of this instinct for communities this instinct was accompanied by the creation of cities the production of a surplus for market the reaching out to connections with the trading centers of the east the evolution of a more complex and at the same time a more integrated industrial society in that of the southern pioneer but they did not carry with them the unmodified new england institutions and traits they came at a time and from a people less satisfied with the old order than were their neighbors in the east they were the young men with initiative with discontent the new york element especially was affected by the radicalism of loco foco democracy which was in itself a protest against the established order the winds of the prairie swept away almost at once a mass of old habits and prepossessions said one of these pioneers in a letter to friends in the east if you value ease more than money or prosperity don't come hands are too few for the work houses for the inhabitants and days for the day's work to be done next if you can't stand seeing your old new england ideas ways of doing and living and in fact all of the good old yankee fashions knocked out of shape and altered or thrown by as unsuited to the climate don't be caught out here but if you can bear grief with a smile can put up with a scale of accommodations ranging from the soft side of a plank before the fire and perhaps three in a bed at that down through the middling and inferior grades if you are never at a loss for ways to do the most unpractical things without tools if you can do all this and some more come on it is a universal rule here to help one another each one keeping an eye single to his own business they knew that they were leaving many dear associations of the old home giving up many of the comforts of life sacrificing things which those who remain thought too vital to civilization to be left but they were not mere materialists ready to surrender all that life is worth for immediate gain they were idealists themselves sacrificing the ease of the immediate future for the welfare of their children and convinced of the possibility of helping to bring about a better social order and a freer life they were social idealists but they base their ideals on trust in the common man and the readiness to make adjustments not on the rule of a benevolent despot or a controlling class end of section 42 section 43 of the frontier in american history by frederick jackson turner this liber box recording is in the public domain recording by colleen mcman chapter 13 middle western pioneer democracy part 3 the attraction of this new home reached also into the old world and gave a new hope and new impulses to the people of germany of england of ireland and of scandinavia both economic influences and revolutionary discontent promoted german migration at this time economic causes brought the larger volume but the quest for liberty brought the leaders many of whom were german political exiles while the latter urged with varying degrees of emphasis that their own contribution should be preserved in their new surroundings and a few visionaries even talked of a german state in the federal system what was noteworthy was the adjustment of the emigrants of the thirties and forties to middle western conditions the response to the opportunity to create a new type of society in which all gave and all received and no element remained isolated society was plastic in the midst of more or less antagonism between buoy knife southerners cow milking yankee puritans beer drinking germans wild irishman a process of mutual education a giving and taking was at work in the outcome in spite of slowness of assimilation where different groups were compact and isolated from the others and a certain persistence of inherited morale there was the creation of a new type which was neither the sum of all its elements nor a complete fusion in a melting pot they were american pioneers not outlying fragments of new england of germany or of norway the germans were our most strongly represented in the missouri valley in st lewis in illinois opposite that city and in the lakeshore counties of eastern wisconsin north from milwaukee in cincinnati and cleveland there were many germans while in nearly half the counties of ohio the german immigrants and the pennsylvania germans held nearly or quite the balance of political power the irish came primarily as workers on turnpikes canals and railroads and tended to remain along such lines or together in the growing cities the scandinavians of whom the largest proportion were norwegians founded their colonies in northern illinois and in southern wisconsin about the fox and the headwaters of rock river whence in later years they spread into iowa minnesota and north dakota by 1850 about one sixth of the people of the middle west were of north atlantic birth about one eighth of southern birth and a like fraction of foreign birth of whom the germans were twice as numerous as the irish and the scandinavians only slightly more numerous than the welsh and fewer than the scotch there were only a dozen scandinavians in minnesota the natives of the british islands together with the natives of british north america in the middle west numbered nearly as many as the natives of german lands but in 1850 almost three-fifths of the population were natives of the middle west itself and over a third of the population lived in ohio the cities were especially a mixture of peoples in the five larger cities of the section natives and foreigners were nearly balanced in chicago the irish germans and natives of the north atlantic states about equaled each other but in all the other cities the germans exceeded the irish in varying proportions there were nearly three to one in milwaukee it is not merely that the section was growing rapidly and was made up of various stocks with many different cultures sectional and european what is more significant is that these elements did not remain as separate strata underneath an established ruling order as was the case particularly in new england all were accepted and intermingling components of a forming society plastic and absorptive the characteristic of the section as a good mixer became fixed before the large immigrations of the eighties the foundations of the section were laid firmly in a period when the foreign elements were particularly free and eager to contribute to a new society and to receive an impress from the country which offered them a liberty denied abroad significant as is this fact an influential in the solution of america's present problems it is no more important than the fact that in the decade before the civil war the southern element in the middle west had also had nearly two generations of direct association with the northern and had finally been engulfed in a tide of northeastern and old world settlers in this society of pioneers men learned to drop their old national animosities one of the immigrant guides of the fifties urged the newcomers to abandon their racial animosities the american laughs at these steerage quarrels said the author thus the middle west was teaching a lesson of national cross fertilization instead of national enmities the possibility of a newer and richer civilization not by preserving unmodified or isolated the old component elements but by breaking down the line fences by merging the individual life in the common product a new product which held the promise of world brotherhood if the pioneers divided their allegiance between various parties wig democrat free soil or republican it does not follow that the western wig was like the eastern wig there was an infiltration of a western quality into all of these the western wig supported harrison more because he was a pioneer than because he was a wig it's all in him a legitimate successor of andrew jackson the campaign of 1840 was a middle western camp meeting on a huge scale the log cabins the cider and the koon skins were the symbols of the triumph of middle western ideas and were carried with misgivings by the merchants the bankers and the manufacturers of the east in like fashion the middle western wing of the democratic party was as different from the southern wing wherein lay its strength as douglas was from calhoun it had little in common with the slaveholding classes of the south even while it felt the kinship of the pioneer with the people of the southern upland stock from which so many westerners were descended in the later forties and early fifties most of the middle western states made constitutions the debates in their conventions and the results embodied in the constitutions themselves tell the story of their political ideals of course they based the franchise on the principle of manhood suffrage but they also provided for an elective judiciary for restrictions on the borrowing power of the state lest it fall under the control of what they feared as the money power and several of them either provided for the extinguishment of banks of issue or rigidly restrained them some of them exempted the homestead from forced sale for debt married women's legal rights were prominent topics in the debates of the conventions and wisconsin led off by permitting the alien to vote after a year's residence it welcomed the newcomer to freedom and to the obligations of american citizenship although this pioneer society was preponderantly an agricultural society it was rapidly learning that agriculture alone was not sufficient for its life it was developing manufacturers trade mining the professions and becoming conscious that in a progressive modern state it was possible to pass from one industry to another and that all were bound by common ties but it is significant that in the census of 1850 ohio out of a population of two millions reported only a thousand servants iowa only 10 in 200 000 and minnesota 15 in its 6000 in the intellectual life of this new democracy there was already the promise of original contributions even in the midst of the engrossing toil and hard life of the pioneer the country editor was a leader of his people not a patent insides recorder of social functions but a vigorous and independent thinker and writer the subscribers to the newspaper published in the section were higher in proportion to population than in the state of new york and not greatly inferior to those of new england although such eastern papers as the new york tribune had an extensive circulation throughout the middle west the agricultural press presupposed in its articles and contributions a level of general intelligence and interest above that of the later farmers of the section at least before the present day farmer boys walked behind the plow with their book in hand and sometimes forgot to turn at the end of the furrow even rare boys who like the young howls limped barefoot by his father's side with his eyes on the cow and his mind on servantes and shakespeare periodicals flourished and faded like the prairie flowers some of emerson's best poems first appeared in one of these ohio valley magazines but for the most part the literature of the region and the period was imitative or reflective of the common things in a not uncommon way it is to its children that the middle west had to look for the expression of its life and its ideals rather than to the busy pioneer who was breaking a prairie farm or building up a new community illiteracy was leased among the yankee pioneers and highest among the southern element when illiteracy is mapped for 1850 by percentages there appears two distinct zones the one extending from new england the other from the south the influence of new england men was strong in the yankee regions of the middle west home missionaries and representatives of societies for the promotion of education in the west both in the common school and denominational colleges scattered themselves throughout the region and left a deep impress in all these states the conception was firmly fixed in the 30s and 40s that the west was the coming power in the union that the fate of civilization was in its hands and therefore rival sex and rival sections strove to influence it to their own types but the middle west shaped all these educational contributions according to her own needs and ideals the state universities were for the most part the result of agitation and proposals of men of new england origin but they became characteristic products of middle western society where the community as a whole rather than wealthy benefactors supported these institutions in the end the community determined their directions in accord with popular ideals they reached down more deeply into the ranks of the common people than did the new england or middle state colleges they laid more emphasis upon the obviously useful and became coeducational at an early date this dominance of the community ideals had dangers for the universities which were called to raise ideals and to point new ways rather than to conform challenging the spaces of the west struck by the rapidity with which a new society was unfolding under their gaze it is not strange that the pioneers dealt in the superlative and saw their destiny with optimistic eyes the meadow lot of the small interval had become the prairie stretching farther than their gaze could reach all was motion and change arrestlessness was universal men moved in their single life from vermont to new york from new york to ohio from ohio to wisconsin from wisconsin to california and longed for the hawaiian islands when the bark started from their fence rails they felt the called change they were conscious of the mobility of their society and gloried in it they broke with the past and thought to create something finer more fitting for humanity more beneficial for the average man than the world had ever seen quote with the past we have literally nothing to do said b gratz brown in a Missouri fourth of july oration in 1850 save to dream of it its lessons are lost and its tongue is silent we are ourselves at the head and front of all political experience precedents have lost their virtue and all their authority is gone experience can profit us only to guard from antiquated delusions end of quote quote the yoke of opinion wrote chanting to a western friend speaking of new england is a heavy one often crushing individuality of judgment and action end of quote and he added that the habits rules and criticisms under which he had grown up had not left him the freedom and courage which are needed in the style of the dress best suited to the western people chanting no doubt unduly stressed of the freedom of the west in this respect the frontier had its own conventions and prejudices and new england was breaking its own cake of custom and proclaiming a new liberty at the very time he wrote but there was truth in the eastern thought of the west as a land of intellectual toleration one which questioned the old order of things and made innovation its very creed the west laid emphasis upon the practical and demanded that ideals should be put to work for useful ends ideals were tested by their direct contributions to the betterment of the average man rather than by the production of the man of exceptional genius and distinction for and fine this was the goal of the middle west the welfare of the average man not only the man of the south or of the east the yankee or the irish men or the german but all men in one common fellowship this was the hope of their youth of that youth when abraham lincoln rose from rail splitter to country lawyer from illinois legislator to congressman and from congressman to president it is not strange that in all this flux and freedom and novelty and vast spaces the pioneer did not sufficiently consider the need of discipline devotion to the government which he himself created and operated but the name of lincoln and the response of the pioneer to the duties of the civil war to the sacrifices and the restraints on freedom which had entailed under his presidency reminds us that they knew how to take part in a common cause even while they knew that war's conditions were destructive of many of the things for which they worked there are two kinds of governmental discipline that which proceeds from free choice in the conviction that restraint of individual or class interest is necessary for the common good and that which is imposed by a dominant class upon a subjected and helpless people the latter is prussian discipline the discipline of a harsh machine-like logical organization based on the rule of a military autocracy it assumes that if you do not crush your opponent first he will crush you it is the discipline of a nation ruled by its general staff assuming war as the normal condition of peoples and attempting with remorseless logic to extend its operations to the destruction of freedom everywhere it can only be met by the discipline of a people who use their own government for worthy ends who preserve individuality and mobility in society and respect the rights of others who follow the dictates of humanity in fair play the principles of give and take the prussian discipline is the discipline of thor the war god against the discipline of the white christ pioneer democracy has had to learn lessons by experience the lesson the government on principles of free democracy can accomplish many things which the men of the middle of the 19th century did not realize were even possible they've had to sacrifice something of their passion for individual unrestrained they've had to learn that the specially trained man the man fitted for his calling by education and experience whether in the field of science or of industry has a place in government that the rule of the people is effective and enduring only as it incorporates the trained specialist into the organization of that government whether as umpire between contending interests or as the efficient instrument in the hands of democracy organized democracy after the era of free land has learned that popular government to be successful must not only be legitimately the choice of the whole people that the offices of that government must not only be open to all but that in the fierce struggle of nations in the field of economic competition and in the field of war the salvation and perpetuity of the republic depend upon recognition of the fact that specialization of the organs of the government the choice of the fit and the capable for office is quite as important as the extension of popular control when we lost our free lands and our isolation from the old world we lost our immunity from the results of mistakes of waste of inefficiency and of inexperience in our government but in the present day we're also learning another lesson which was better known to the pioneers than to their immediate successors we are learning that the distinction arising from devotion to the interests of the commonwealth is a higher distinction than mere success in economic competition america is now awarding laurels to the men who sacrifice their triumphs in the rivalry of business in order to give their service to the cause of a liberty loving nation their wealth and their genius to the success of her ideals that craving for distinction which once drew men to pile up wealth and exhibit power over the industrial processes of the nation is now finding a new outlet in the craving for distinction that comes from service to the union in satisfaction in the use of great talent for the good of the republic and all over the nation in voluntary organizations for aid to the government is being shown the pioneer principle of association that was expressed in the house raising it is shown in the red cross the ymca the knights of columbus the councils and boards of science commerce labor agriculture and in all the countless other types from the association of women in their kitchen who carry out the recommendations of the food director and revive the plain living of the pioneer to the boy scouts who are laying the foundations for a self-disciplined and virile generation worthy to follow the trail of the back woodsmen it is an inspiring prophecy of the revival of the old pioneer conception of the obligations and opportunities of neighborliness broadening to a national and even to an international scope the promise of what that wise and lamented philosopher josea rois called the beloved community in the spirit of the pioneers house raising lies the salvation of the republic this then is the heritage of pioneer experience a passionate belief that a democracy was possible which should leave the individual apart to play in free society and not make him a cog in a machine operated from above which trusted in the common man in his tolerance his ability to adjust differences with good humor and to work out an american type from the contributions of all nations a type for which he would fight against those who challenged it in arms and for which in time of war he would make sacrifices even the temporary sacrifice of individual freedom and his life lest that freedom be lost forever end of section 43 recording by colleen mcman end of the frontier in american history by frederick jackson turner