gave to the Governor greater appointive power and put on him the responsibility for good government. abolished many independent departments, increased city and county home rule, and relieved the voters from multiplicity of details. The defeat of that proposed constitution was chiefly due to other causes. The best features of it have now been adopted by amendment of the present constitution and by laws enacted in 1926.

All of these facts show a democracy wrestling with the problems of government. And whoso has confidence in America has confidence that new remedies will be devised to meet present and future governmental delinquencies. We have forty-eight state governments and one federal, experimenting all the time on the way to reach good government. The experiments are costly and many of them are failures, but they are worth the price.

C

THE SAFEGUARDS OF THE REPUBLIC

THERE are five: the character of the whole people; the type called the "Westerner"; education; the farmer; the leaders of the people.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE

THE elements and different nationalities making up the American people have already been considered. The present American character remains to be considered. First it is well to consider what the American people are not. They have produced little in painting, sculpture, composition of music, and original architecture. They produced the colonial style of architecture, but the type was temporary. They have produced the skyscraper with steel frame, and that type certainly has a distant beauty, but it is the beauty of the cathedral. In sculpture America can claim little; in painting less, except Sargent; in composition of music practically none. The artistic temperament seems to dwell with the Latin races. The sober, serious, practical spirit of America, due partly to its puritan origin, partly to the hard work of subduing a continent, does not lead to the arts. Some nations are artistic by nature, like the Greeks and French. America is not.

In literature Emerson has redeemed America from the European taunt that no one reads an American book. Emerson is becoming recognized as one of the foremost literary men of the

nineteenth century. His "English Traits" are in the highest type of literary art forceful, simple, direct, Shakespearian — Bible English. It is a joy to read it. Aside from Emerson, however, America has not produced a first-class literary genius. In the course of time America may turn to literature and if it does it will excel, not in taking European subjects for the drama or the short story (America's greatest contribution to the world's literature, according to Professor Schlesinger of Harvard),1 or humor, or satire, or romance, but in taking American subjects. The adventures of Clark, Boone, and other frontiersmen furnish materials for epics; the struggles of the republic constitute a great drama.

Great scientific discoveries have not originated in America. There have been too many other things to do; too many practical pursuits; too great rewards in other directions. American talent has not yet turned in a large way to pure science, as compared with European scientific discoveries of the past three centuries. Brander Mathews laments the fact that of twelve fundamental discoveries, as specified by Wallace, America did not discover one, although it did take the lead in applying them. The details are given in the note hereto.2 But the tide is turning. Great fortunes no longer allure as they did. Public service, self-abnegation, devotion to duty are again becoming ideals. And with these pure science will be sought, because the pursuit of science is spiritual although its use is generally materialistic — the well being of man. Pure science leads upward, trying to answer the unanswerable questions: Who are we; Where are we; Whence came we; Whither are we tending, and What is the First Cause of all this?

The standing of a nation also depends largely on its great men in different walks of life. America in government has produced two great men, Washington and Lincoln. Neither of them had the unscrupulous ambition which marked Cæsar and Napoleon, nor the same tragic end, but both of them had a profound in

fluence on the governmental institutions of the world. It must be conceded, however, so far as individual men are concerned, that there is little that is really spectacular in the history of America. It is the nation's ideals as a whole that take the place of so-called great men. Carlyle brutally wrote of the Americans in 1850, "What great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing that one could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there? None. . . . What have they done?. . . They have doubled their population every twenty years. They have begotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded example, Eighteen Millions of the greatest bores [italics his] ever seen in this world before — that hitherto is their feat in History." 1 This fierce and boorish invective was perhaps justified to the extent that it is true that the average American has no conversational powers other than talk of business and the routine of life. Emerson expressed this when he said "New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence."2 It is natural that men whose thoughts are insistently on details of daily existence have no intellectual appreciation of books or the intellectual movements of the age or even of governmental questions except by instinct, intuition, and settled principles. In England business men do not make up society. It formerly was a social handicap to be even engaged in business. Hence social conversation avoided all business as vulgar and centered on government, politics, distinguished persons, important events, literature, and art. No wonder that English conversational powers and topics were and are superior to those of America. America has been busy ever since its origin in materialistic affairs, subduing and settling a continent, building cities, making inventions, cheapening production, and supplying the comforts and luxuries of life. The accumulation of a fortune has been the goal of its most active men. A change is at hand, however, and this reproach will not continue indefinitely.

Already there is a stirring of the waters in subordinating business to intellectual pursuits and in the production of books and in more intensive study. The modern American is neither a British Philistine nor a London man of the world. But he is a man, and Washington and Lincoln represent his manly qualities. Most English writers refuse to recognize the greatness of Washington, the reason being that he was the chief factor in England's losing America. On the other hand, Trevelyan, Green, and Bryce appreciated Americans, and the Americans appreciate them. And one thing is certain. Before England can get the cordial coöperation of America the English must recognize Washington as the great American hero, and whoso attacks him attacks us. Bryce pointed out that Washington and Lincoln furnish a tradition to all Americans of all that is highest and purest in statesmanship and unselfish patriotism and faith in the power of freedom.1 America wants no biographies setting forth the failings of these two men. They are King Arthurs to the American people.

The above describes a few of the things which the Americans are not. Turning now to what Americans are, the first general fact is that America is essentially Puritan. "The Puritans of New England," says Lord, "the Hollanders of New York, Penn's Quaker colony in Pennsylvania, the Huguenots of South Carolina, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, were all of Calvinistic training, and came from European persecutions. All were rigidly Puritanical in their social and Sabbatarian observances. Even the Episcopalians of Virginia, where a larger NormanEnglish stock was settled, with infusions of French-Huguenot blood, and where slavery bred more men of wealth and broader social distinctions, were sternly religious in their laws." 2 The essence of Puritanism is self-government and the realm of Puritanism is not art, science, literature, philosophy, but the government of one's self and of one's own government. Hence it is that