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The Frontier in America History_Part 2 · The Frontier in America History

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Speaker 1: End of Section twenty three, Chapter six, The Significance of
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Speaker 1: the Mississippi Valley in American History, Part three. By this time,
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Speaker 1: the Mississippi Valley had grown in population and political power
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Speaker 1: so that it ranked with the older sections. The next
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Speaker 1: indication of its significance in American history, which I shall mention,
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Speaker 1: is its position in shaping the economic and political course
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Speaker 1: of the nation. Between the close of the War of
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Speaker 1: eighteen twelve and the slavery struggle. In seventeen ninety, the
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Speaker 1: Mississippi Valley had a population of about one hundred thousand,
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Speaker 1: or one fortieth of that of the United States as
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Speaker 1: a whole. By eighteen ten, it had over a million,
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Speaker 1: or one seventh. By eighteen thirty, it had three and
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Speaker 1: two thirds millions, or over one fourth. By eighteen forty,
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Speaker 1: over six millions, more than one third, While the Atlantic
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Speaker 1: coast increase only a million and a half souls. Between
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Speaker 1: eighteen thirty and eighteen forty, the Mississippi Valley gained nearly
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Speaker 1: three millions. Ohio virgin Wilderness in seventeen ninety was half
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Speaker 1: a century later nearly as populous as Pennsylvania and twice
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Speaker 1: as populous as Massachusetts, while Virginia, North Carolina, and South
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Speaker 1: Carolina were gaining sixty thousand souls between eighteen thirty and
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Speaker 1: eighteen forty. Illinois gained three hundred and eighteen thousand. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: the growth of this state alone excelled that of the
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Speaker 1: entire South Atlantic states. These figures showed the significance of
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Speaker 1: the Mississippi Valley in its pressure upon the older Section
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Speaker 1: by the competition of its cheap lands, its abundant harvests,
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Speaker 1: and its drainage of the labour supply. All of these
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Speaker 1: things meant an upward lift to the eastern wage earner,
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Speaker 1: but they meant also an increase of political power in
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Speaker 1: the Valley. Before the War of eighteen twelve, the Mississippi
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Speaker 1: Valley had six senators, New England ten, the Middle States ten,
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Speaker 1: and the South eight. By eighteen forty, the Mississippi Valley
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Speaker 1: had twenty two senators, double those of the Middle States
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Speaker 1: and New England come and nearly three times as many
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Speaker 1: as the Old South. While in the House of Representatives,
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Speaker 1: the Mississippi Valley outweighed any one of the old sections,
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Speaker 1: in eighteen ten, it had less than one third the
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Speaker 1: power of New England and the South together. In the
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Speaker 1: House in eighteen forty, it outweighed them both combined, and
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Speaker 1: because of its special circumstances, it held the balance of
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Speaker 1: the power. While the Mississippi Valley thus rose to superior
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Speaker 1: political power as compared with any of the old sections,
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Speaker 1: its economic development made it the inciting factor in the
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Speaker 1: industrial life of the nation. After the War of eighteen twelve,
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Speaker 1: the steamboat revolutionized the transportation facilities of the Mississippi Valley.
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Speaker 1: In each economic area, a surplus formed, demanding an outlet
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Speaker 1: and demanding returns in manufactures. The spread of cotton into
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Speaker 1: the Lower Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Plains had a
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Speaker 1: double significance. This transfer of the center of cotton production
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Speaker 1: away from the Atlantic South not only brought increasing hardship
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Speaker 1: and increasing unrest to the East as the competition of
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Speaker 1: the virgin soils depressed Atlantic land values and made Eastern
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Speaker 1: labour increasingly deer, but the price of cotton fell also
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Speaker 1: in due proportion to the increase in production by the
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Speaker 1: Mississippi Valley. While the transfer of economic power from the
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Speaker 1: seaboard South to the cotton kingdom of the Lower Mississippi
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Speaker 1: Valley was in progress, the Upper Mississippi Valley was leaping forward,
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Speaker 1: partly under the stimulus of a market for its surplus
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Speaker 1: in the plantations of the South, where an almost exclusive
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Speaker 1: cultivation of the Great Staples resulted in a lack of
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Speaker 1: foodstuffs and livestock. At the same time, the Great River
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Speaker 1: and its affluents became the highway of a commerce that
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Speaker 1: reached to the West Indies, the Atlantic Coast, Europe, and
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Speaker 1: South America. The Mississippi Valley was an industrial entity from
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Speaker 1: Pittsburgh and Santa Fe to New Orleans. It became the
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Speaker 1: most important influence in American politics and industry. Washington had
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Speaker 1: declared in seventeen eighty four that it was the part
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Speaker 1: of wisdom for Virginia to bind the West to the
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Speaker 1: East by ties of interest through internal improvement, thereby taking
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Speaker 1: advantage of the extensive and valuable trade of a rising empire.
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Speaker 1: This realization of the fact that an economic empire was
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Speaker 1: growing up beyond the mountains stimulated rival cities New York, Philadelphia,
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Speaker 1: and Baltimore to engage in a struggle to supply the
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Speaker 1: West with goods and receive its products. This resulted in
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Speaker 1: an attempt to break down the barrier of the Alleghenies
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Speaker 1: by internal improvements. The movement became especially active after the
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Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve, when New York carried out to
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Speaker 1: Wick Clinton's vast conception of making by the Erie Canal
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Speaker 1: a greater Hudson, which should drain to the port of
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Speaker 1: New York all the basin of the Great Lakes, and,
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Speaker 1: by means of other canals, even divert the traffic from
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Speaker 1: the tributaries of the Mississippi. New York City's commercial ascendancy
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Speaker 1: dates from this connection with interior New York and the
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Speaker 1: Mississippi Valley. A writer in Hunts Merchant's Magazine in eighteen
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Speaker 1: sixty nine makes the significance of this clearer by these
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Speaker 1: words quote. There was a period in the history of
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Speaker 1: the Seaboard cities when there was no west, and when
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Speaker 1: the Allegheny Mountains formed the frontier of settlement and agricultural production.
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Speaker 1: During that epoch, the Seaboard cities north and south grew
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Speaker 1: in proportion to the extent and fertility of the country
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Speaker 1: in their rear, and as Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and
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Speaker 1: Georgia were more productive in staples valuable to commerce than
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Speaker 1: the colonies north of them. The cities of Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston,
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Speaker 1: and Savannah enjoyed a greater trade and experienced a larger
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Speaker 1: growth than those on the northern seaboard end of quote.
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Speaker 1: He then classifies the periods of city development into three.
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Speaker 1: One the provincial limited to the Atlantic seaboard, two that
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Speaker 1: of Canal and Turnpike connected with the Mississippi Valley, and
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Speaker 1: three that of railroad connection. Thus he was able to
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Speaker 1: show how Norfolk, for example, was shut off from the
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Speaker 1: enriching currents of interior trade and was outstripped by New York.
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Speaker 1: The efforts of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and Savannah to divert
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Speaker 1: the trade of the Mississippi System to their own ports
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Speaker 1: on the Atlantic, and the rise or fall of these
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Speaker 1: cities in proportion as they succeeded, are a sufficient indication
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Speaker 1: of the meaning of the Mississippi Valley in American industrial life.
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Speaker 1: What colonial empire has been for London, that the Mississippi
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Speaker 1: Valley is to the seaboard cities of the United States,
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Speaker 1: awakening visions of industrial empire, systematic control of vast spaces,
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Speaker 1: producing the American type of the captain of industry. It
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Speaker 1: was not alone city rivalry that converged upon the Mississippi
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Speaker 1: Valley and sought its alliance. Sectional rivalry likewise saw that
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Speaker 1: the balance of power possessed by the interior furnished an
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Speaker 1: opportunity for combinations. This was a fundamental feature of Calhoun's
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Speaker 1: policy when he urged the seaboard south to complete a
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Speaker 1: railroad system to tap the Northwest. As Washington hope to
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Speaker 1: make Western trade seek its outlet in Virginia and build
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Speaker 1: up the industrial power of the Old Dominion by enriching
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Speaker 1: intercourse with the Mississippi Valley, as Monroe wished to bind
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Speaker 1: the West Virginia's political interests, and as DeWitt Clinton wished
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Speaker 1: to attach it to New York. So Calhoun and Heine
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Speaker 1: would make quote Georgia and Carolina the commercial center of
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Speaker 1: the Union and the two most powerful and influential members
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Speaker 1: of the Confederacy end of quote, by draining the Mississippi
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Speaker 1: Valley to their ports. I believe, said Calhoun, that the
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Speaker 1: success of a connection of the West is of the
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Speaker 1: last importance to us politically and commercially. I do verily
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Speaker 1: believe that Charleston has more advantages in her position for
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Speaker 1: the Western trade than any city on the Atlantic, but
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Speaker 1: to develop them we ought to look to the Tennessee
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Speaker 1: instead of the Ohio, and much farther to the west
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Speaker 1: than Cincinnati or Lexington. This was the secret of Calhoun's
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Speaker 1: advocacy in eighteen thirty six and eighteen thirty seven, both
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Speaker 1: of the distribution of the surplus thus revenue and of
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Speaker 1: the session of the public lands to the states in
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Speaker 1: which they lay, as an inducement to the West to
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Speaker 1: ally itself with Southern policies. And it is the key
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Speaker 1: to the readiness of Calhoun, even after he lost his nationalism,
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Speaker 1: to promote internal improvements which would foster the southward current
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Speaker 1: of trade on the Mississippi. Without going into details, I
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Speaker 1: may simply call your attention to the fact that Clay's
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Speaker 1: whole system of internal improvements and tariff was based upon
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Speaker 1: the place of the Mississippi Valley in American life. It
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Speaker 1: was the upper part of the valley, and especially the
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Speaker 1: Ohio Valley, that furnished the votes which carried the tariffs
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Speaker 1: of eighteen sixteen, eighteen twenty four, and eighteen twenty eight.
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Speaker 1: Its interests profoundly influenced the details of those tariffs and
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Speaker 1: its need of internal improvement constituted a basis for sectional bargaining.
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Speaker 1: In all the constructive legislation after the War of eighteen twelve,
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Speaker 1: New England, the Middle Region, and the South each sought
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Speaker 1: alliance with the growing section beyond the mountains. American legislation
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Speaker 1: bears the enduring evidence of these alliances. Even the National
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Speaker 1: Bank found in this valley the main sphere of its business.
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Speaker 1: The nation had turned its energies to internal exploitation, and
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Speaker 1: sections contended for the economic and political power derived from
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Speaker 1: connection with the interior. But already the Mississippi Valley was
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Speaker 1: beginning to stratify both socially and geographically. As the railroads
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Speaker 1: pushed across the mountains the tide of New England and
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Speaker 1: New York, colonists and German immigrants sought the basin of
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Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, and the Upper Mississippi, a distinct zone
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Speaker 1: industrially and socially connected with New England was forming. The
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Speaker 1: railroad reinforced the Erie Canal, and, as de Beaux put it,
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Speaker 1: turned back the tide of the Father of Waters so
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Speaker 1: that its outlet was in New York instead of New Orleans.
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Speaker 1: For a large part of the valley below the northern
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Speaker 1: zone was the border zone of the upland South, the
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Speaker 1: region of Compromise, including both banks of the Ohio and
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Speaker 1: the Missouri, and reaching down to the hills on the
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Speaker 1: north of the Gulf Plains. The cotton Kingdom, based on
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Speaker 1: slavery found its center in the fertile soils along the
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Speaker 1: lower Mississippi and the Black prairies of Georgia and Alabama,
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Speaker 1: and was settled largely by planners from the old cotton
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Speaker 1: lands of the Atlantic States. The Mississippi Valley had rejuvenated
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Speaker 1: slavery had given it an aggressive tone characteristic of Western life.
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Speaker 1: Thus the valley found itself in the midst of the
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Speaker 1: slavery struggle at the very time when its own society
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Speaker 1: had lost homogeneity. Let us allow two leaders, one of
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Speaker 1: the South and one of the North, to describe the situation,
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Speaker 1: and first let the South speak. Set Hammond of South Carolina,
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Speaker 1: in a speech in the Senate on March fourth, eighteen
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Speaker 1: fifty eight, quote, I think it not improper that I
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Speaker 1: should attempt to bring the North and South face to
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Speaker 1: face and see what resources each of us might have
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Speaker 1: in the contingency of separate organizations. Through the heart of
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Speaker 1: our country runs the Great Mississippi, the father of waters,
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Speaker 1: into whose bosom are poured thirty six thousand miles of
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Speaker 1: tributary streams, and beyond we have the desert prairie wastes
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Speaker 1: to protect us in our rear. Can you hem in
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Speaker 1: such a territory as that you talk of putting up
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Speaker 1: a wall of fire around eight hundred and fifty thousand
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Speaker 1: miles so situated, How absurd. But in this territory lies
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Speaker 1: the great Valley of the Mississippi, now the real and
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Speaker 1: soon to be the acknowledged seat of the Empire of
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Speaker 1: the world. The sway of that valley will be as
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Speaker 1: great as ever the Nile new in the earlier ages
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Speaker 1: of mankind. We own the most of it, the most
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Speaker 1: valuable part of it belongs to us now. And although
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Speaker 1: those who have settled above us are now opposed to us,
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Speaker 1: another generation will tell a different tale. They are ours
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Speaker 1: by all the laws of nature. Slave labor will go
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Speaker 1: to every foot of this great valley, where it will
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Speaker 1: be found profitable to use it, And some of those
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Speaker 1: who may not use it are soon to be united
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Speaker 1: with us by such ties as will make us one
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Speaker 1: and inseparable. The iron horse will soon be clattering over
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Speaker 1: the sunny plains of the South to bear the products
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Speaker 1: of its upper tributaries to our Atlantic, as it now
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Speaker 1: does through the ice bound North. There is the great
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Speaker 1: Mississippi bond of union, made by nature herself. She will
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Speaker 1: maintain it forever. End of quote. As the seaboard South
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Speaker 1: had transferred the mental leadership to Tennessee and then to
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Speaker 1: the Cotton Kingdom of the Lower Mississippi, so New England
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Speaker 1: and New York resigned their command to the northern half
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Speaker 1: of the Mississippi Valley and the basin of the Great
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Speaker 1: Lakes seward. The old time leader of the Eastern Whigs,
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Speaker 1: who had just lost the Republican nomination for the presidency
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Speaker 1: to Lincoln, may rightfully speak for the Northeast. In the
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Speaker 1: fall of eighteen sixty, addressing an audience at Madison, Wisconsin,
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Speaker 1: he declared, quote, the empire established at Washington is of
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Speaker 1: less than one hundred years formation. It was the empire
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Speaker 1: of thirteen Atlantic states. Still practically the mission of that
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Speaker 1: empire is fulfilled. The power that directs it is ready
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Speaker 1: to pass away from those thirteen states. And although held
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Speaker 1: and exercised under the same constitution and national form of government,
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Speaker 1: yet it is now in the very act of being
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Speaker 1: transferred from the thirteen states east of the Alleghany Mountains
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Speaker 1: and on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, to the
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Speaker 1: twenty states that lie west of the Alleghanies and stretch
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Speaker 1: away from their base to the base of the Rocky
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Speaker 1: mountains on the west. And you are the heirs to it.
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Speaker 1: When the next census shall reveal your power, you will
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Speaker 1: be found to be the masters of the United States
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Speaker 1: of America, and through them, the dominating political power of
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Speaker 1: the world. End of quote. Appealing to the Northwest on
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Speaker 1: the slavery issue, seward declared quote. The whole responsibility rests henceforth,
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Speaker 1: directly or indirectly on the people of the Northwest. There
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Speaker 1: can be no virtue in commercial and manufacturing communities to
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Speaker 1: maintain a democracy when the democracy themselves do not want
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Speaker 1: a democracy. There is no virtue in Pearl Street, in
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Speaker 1: Wall Street, in Court Street, in Chestnut Street, in any
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Speaker 1: other street of great commercial cities that can save the
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Speaker 1: great democratic government of ours when you cease to uphold
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Speaker 1: it with your intelligent votes, your strong and mighty hands.
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Speaker 1: You must therefore lead us as we heretofore reserved and
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Speaker 1: prepared the way for you. We resigned to you the
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Speaker 1: banner of human rights and human liberty on this continent,
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Speaker 1: and we bid you be firm, bold, and onward, and
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Speaker 1: then you may hope that we will be able to
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Speaker 1: follow you.
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Speaker 2: End of quote.
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Speaker 1: When we surveyed the course of the slavery struggle in
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Speaker 1: the United States, it is clear that the form the
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Speaker 1: question took was due to the Mississippi Valley, the Ordinance
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Speaker 1: of seventeen eighty seven, the Missouri Compromise, the Texas Question,
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Speaker 1: the Free Soil Agitation, the Compromise of eighteen fifty, the
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Speaker 1: Kansas Nebraska Bill, the dread Scott decision bleeding Kansas. These
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Speaker 1: are all Mississippi Valley questions, and the mere enumeration makes
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Speaker 1: it plain that it was the Mississippi Valley as an
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Speaker 1: area for expansion, which gave the slavery issue its significance
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Speaker 1: in American history. But for this field of expansion, slavery
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Speaker 1: might have fulfilled the expectation of the fathers and gradually
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Speaker 1: died away. Of the significance of the the Mississippi Valley
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Speaker 1: in the Civil War, it is unnecessary that I should
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Speaker 1: speak Illinois gave to the North its president Mississippi gave
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Speaker 1: to the South its president. Lincoln and Davis were both
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Speaker 1: born in Kentucky. Grant and Sherman, the northern generals, came
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Speaker 1: from the Mississippi Valley, and both of them believed that
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Speaker 1: when Vicksburg fell, the cause of the South was lost.
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Speaker 1: And so it must have been if the Confederacy had
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Speaker 1: been unable, after victories in the East, to regain the
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Speaker 1: Father of Waters. For as General Sherman said, quote whatever
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Speaker 1: power holds that river can govern this continent. End of quote.
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Speaker 1: With the close of the war, political power passed for
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Speaker 1: many years to the northern half of the Mississippi Valley,
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Speaker 1: as the names of Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley indicate.
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Speaker 1: The population of the valley grew from about fifteen millions
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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty to over forty millions in nineteen hundred,
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Speaker 1: over half the total population of the United States. The
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Speaker 1: significance of its industrial growth is not likely to be
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Speaker 1: overestimated or overlooked. On its northern border, from near Minnesota's
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Speaker 1: boundary line through the Great Lakes to Pittsburgh on its
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Speaker 1: eastern edge, runs a huge movement of iron from mine
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Speaker 1: to factory This industry is basal in American life, and
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Speaker 1: it has revolutionized the industry of the world. The United
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Speaker 1: States produces pig iron and steel in a mount equal
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Speaker 1: to where two greatest competitors combined, and the iron ores
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Speaker 1: for this product are chiefly in the Mississippi Valley. It
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Speaker 1: is the chief producer of coal, thereby enabling the United
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Speaker 1: States almost to equal the combined production of Germany and
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Speaker 1: Great Britain. And great oil fields of the nation are
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Speaker 1: in its midst The huge crops of wheat and corn
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Speaker 1: and its cattle are the main resources for the United States,
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Speaker 1: and are drawn upon by Europe. Its cotton furnishes two
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Speaker 1: thirds of the world's factory supply. Its railroad system constitutes
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Speaker 1: the greatest transportation network in the world. Again, it is
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Speaker 1: seeking industrial consolidation by demanding improvement of its vast water
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Speaker 1: system as a unit. If this design favored by Roosevelt
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Speaker 1: shall at some time be accomplished again, the bulk of
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Speaker 1: the commerce of the valley may flow along the old
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Speaker 1: routes to New Orleans and to Galveston by the development
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Speaker 1: of southern railroad outlets. After the building of the Panama Canal,
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Speaker 1: for the development and exploitation of these and of the
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Speaker 1: transportation and trade interests of the Middle West. Eastern capital
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Speaker 1: has been consolidated into huge corporations, trusts, and combinations. With
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Speaker 1: the influx of capital and the rise of cities and manufactures,
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Speaker 1: portions of the Mississippi Valley have become assimilated with the East.
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Speaker 1: With the end of the era of freelands, the basis
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Speaker 1: of its democratic society is passing away. The final topic
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Speaker 1: on which I shall briefly comment in this discussion of
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Speaker 1: the significance of the Mississippi Valley in American history is
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Speaker 1: a corollary of this condition. Has the Mississippi Valley a
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Speaker 1: permanent contribution to make to American society? Or is it
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Speaker 1: to be adjusted into a type characteristically Eastern and European?
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Speaker 1: In other words, has the United States itself an original
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Speaker 1: contribution to make to the history of society? This is
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Speaker 1: what it comes to. The most significant fact in the
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Speaker 1: Mississippi Valley is its ideals. Here has been developed not
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Speaker 1: by revolutionary theory, but by growth among free opportunities. The
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Speaker 1: conception of a vast democracy made up of mobile, ascending individuals,
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Speaker 1: conscious of their power and their responsibilities. Can these ideals
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Speaker 1: of individualism and democracy be reconciled and applied to the
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Speaker 1: twentieth century type of civilization. Other nations have been rich
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Speaker 1: and prosperous and powerful, art loving and empire building. No
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Speaker 1: other nation on a vast scale has been controlled by
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Speaker 1: a self conscious, self restrained democracy in the interests of
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Speaker 1: progress and freedom, industrial as well as political. It is
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Speaker 1: in the vast and level spaces of the Mississippi Valley,
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Speaker 1: if anywhere, that the forces of social transformation and the
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Speaker 1: moderlification of its democratic ideals may be arrested. Beginning with
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Speaker 1: competitive individualism as well as with belief and equality, the
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Speaker 1: farmers of the Mississippi Valley gradually learned that unrestrained competition
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Speaker 1: and combination meant the triumph of the strongest, the seizure
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Speaker 1: in the interest of a dominant class of the strategic
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Speaker 1: points of the nation's life. They learned that between the
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Speaker 1: ideal of individualism unrestrained by society, and the ideal of
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Speaker 1: democracy was an innate conflict, that their very ambitions and
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Speaker 1: forcefulness had endangered their democracy. The significance of the Mississippi
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Speaker 1: Valley in American history has lain partly in the fact
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Speaker 1: that it was a region of revolt. Here have arisen varied,
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Speaker 1: sometimes ill considered, but always devoted movements for ameliorating the
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Speaker 1: lot of the common man in the interests of democracy.
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Speaker 1: Out of the Mississippi Valley have come successive and related
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Speaker 1: tidal waves of popular demand for real or imagined legislative
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Speaker 1: safeguards to their right pas and their social ideals. The
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Speaker 1: Granger movement, the Greenback movement, the Populist movement, Brian Democracy,
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Speaker 1: and Roosevelt Republicanism all found their greatest strength in the
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Speaker 1: Mississippi Valley. They were Mississippi Valley ideals in action. Its
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Speaker 1: people were learning, by experiment and experience how to grapple
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Speaker 1: with the fundamental problem of creating a just social order
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Speaker 1: that shall sustain the free, progressive individual in a real democracy.
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Speaker 1: The Mississippi Valley is asking what shall it profit a
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Speaker 1: man if he gained the whole world and lose his
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Speaker 1: own soul. The Mississippi Valley has furnished a new social
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Speaker 1: order to America. Its universities have set new types of
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Speaker 1: institutions for social service and for the elevation of the
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Speaker 1: plain people. Its historians should recount its old ambitions and
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Speaker 1: inventory its ideals, as well as its resources for the
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Speaker 1: information of the present age, to the end that, building
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Speaker 1: on its past, the Mighty Valley may have a significance
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Speaker 1: in the life of the nation, even more profound than
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Speaker 1: any which I have recounted it. End of Section twenty four.
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Speaker 3: Chapter seven, The Problem of the West, Part one. The
21:08
Speaker 3: problem of the West is nothing less than the problem
21:10
Speaker 3: of American development. A glance at the map of the
21:14
Speaker 3: United States reveals the truth. To write of a Western
21:17
Speaker 3: sectionalism bounded on the east by the alleghenies, is in
21:21
Speaker 3: itself to proclaim the writer a provincial What is the West?
21:25
Speaker 3: What has it been? In American life? To have the
21:27
Speaker 3: answers to these questions is to understand the most significant
21:31
Speaker 3: features of the United States of today. The West, at bottom,
21:35
Speaker 3: is a form of society, rather than an area. It
21:38
Speaker 3: is the term applied to the region whose social conditions
21:41
Speaker 3: result from the application of older institutions and ideas to
21:44
Speaker 3: the transforming influences of free land. By this application, a
21:48
Speaker 3: new environment is suddenly entered. Freedom of opportunity is opened,
21:52
Speaker 3: the cake of custom is broken, and new activities, new
21:55
Speaker 3: lines of growth, new institutions, and new ideals are brought
21:58
Speaker 3: into existence. The wilderness disappears, the West proper passes on
22:03
Speaker 3: to a new frontier, and in the former area a
22:05
Speaker 3: new society has emerged from its contact with the backwards. Gradually,
22:10
Speaker 3: this society loses its primitive conditions and assimilates itself to
22:13
Speaker 3: the type of the older social conditions of the East,
22:16
Speaker 3: but it bears within it enduring and distinguishing survivals of
22:19
Speaker 3: its frontier experience. Decade after decade, West after West, this
22:23
Speaker 3: rebirth of American society has gone on, has left its
22:26
Speaker 3: traces behind it, and has reacted on the East. The
22:29
Speaker 3: history of our political institutions, our democracy, is not a
22:33
Speaker 3: history of imitation of simple borrowing. It is a history
22:36
Speaker 3: of the evolution and adaptation of organs in response to
22:39
Speaker 3: a changed environment, a history of the origin of new
22:42
Speaker 3: political species. In this sense, therefore, the West has been
22:46
Speaker 3: a constructive force of the highest significance in our life.
22:50
Speaker 3: To use the words of that acute and widely informed observer,
22:53
Speaker 3: mister Bryce, the West is the most American part of
22:56
Speaker 3: America what Europe is to Asia, what America is to England,
23:00
Speaker 3: that the Western states and territories are to the Atlantic States.
23:04
Speaker 3: The West, as a phase of social organization, began with
23:07
Speaker 3: the Atlantic coast and passed across the continent. But the
23:11
Speaker 3: colonial tidewater area was in close touch with the Old
23:14
Speaker 3: World and soon lost its Western aspects. In the middle
23:17
Speaker 3: of the eighteenth century, the newer social conditions appeared along
23:20
Speaker 3: the upper waters of the tributaries of the Atlantic. Here
23:24
Speaker 3: it was that the West took on its distinguishing features
23:26
Speaker 3: and transmitted frontier traits and ideals to this area in
23:29
Speaker 3: later days. On the coast were the fishermen and skippers,
23:33
Speaker 3: the merchants and planters, with eyes turned towards Europe. Beyond
23:37
Speaker 3: the falls of the rivers were the pioneer farmers, largely
23:40
Speaker 3: of non English stock, Scotch, Irish and German. They constituted
23:44
Speaker 3: a distinct people and may be regarded as an expansion
23:47
Speaker 3: of the social and economic life of the Middle region
23:49
Speaker 3: into the back country of the South. These frontiersmen were
23:53
Speaker 3: the ancestors of Boone, Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, Clay and Lincoln.
23:58
Speaker 3: Washington and Jefferson werefoundly affected by these frontier conditions. The
24:03
Speaker 3: forest clearings have been the seed plots of American character.
24:06
Speaker 3: In the revolutionary days, the settlers crossed the Alleghenies and
24:09
Speaker 3: put a barrier between them and the coast. They became
24:12
Speaker 3: to use their phrases the men of the western waters
24:15
Speaker 3: the heirs of the western world. In this era, the backwoodsmen,
24:20
Speaker 3: all along the western slopes of the mountains, with a
24:22
Speaker 3: keen sense of the difference between them and the dwellers
24:25
Speaker 3: on the coast, demanded organization into independent states of the Union.
24:29
Speaker 3: Self government was their ideal, said one of their rude
24:33
Speaker 3: but energetic petitions for statehood. Some of our fellow citizens
24:36
Speaker 3: may think we are not able to conduct our affairs
24:38
Speaker 3: and consult our interests. But if our society is rude,
24:42
Speaker 3: much wisdom is not necessary to supply our wants. And
24:44
Speaker 3: a fool can sometimes put on his clothes better than
24:47
Speaker 3: a wise man can do it for him. This forest
24:50
Speaker 3: philosophy is the philosophy of American democracy. But the men
24:53
Speaker 3: of the coast were not ready to admit its implications.
24:56
Speaker 3: They apportioned the state legislatures so that the property holding
24:59
Speaker 3: Miight not of the tide water lands, were able to
25:02
Speaker 3: outvote the more populous backcountries. A similar system was proposed
25:06
Speaker 3: by federalists in the Constitutional Convention of seventeen eighty seven,
25:10
Speaker 3: Governor Morris, arguing in favor of basing representation on property
25:14
Speaker 3: as well as numbers. Declared that he looked forward also
25:17
Speaker 3: to that range of new states which would soon be
25:20
Speaker 3: formed in the West. He thought the rule of representation
25:23
Speaker 3: ought to be so fixed as to secure to the
25:25
Speaker 3: Atlantic States at prevalence in the national councils. The new states, said,
25:30
Speaker 3: he will know less of the public interest than these
25:32
Speaker 3: will have an interest in many respects. Different in particular,
25:35
Speaker 3: will be little scrupulous of involving the community in wars,
25:39
Speaker 3: the burdens and operations of which would fall chiefly on
25:41
Speaker 3: the maritime states. Provision ought therefore to be made to
25:46
Speaker 3: prevent the maritime states from being hereafter outvoted by them.
25:50
Speaker 3: He added that the Western country would not be able
25:52
Speaker 3: to furnish men equally enlightened to share in the administration
25:55
Speaker 3: of our common interests. The busy haunts of men, not
25:58
Speaker 3: the remote wilderness, was the proper school of political talents.
26:02
Speaker 3: If the Western people get power into their hands, they
26:04
Speaker 3: will ruin the Atlantic interest. The back members are always
26:07
Speaker 3: most averse to the best measures. Add to these utterances
26:11
Speaker 3: of Governor Morris, the impassioned protest of Josiah Quincy of
26:14
Speaker 3: Massachusetts in the debates in the House of Representatives on
26:18
Speaker 3: the admission of Louisiana. Referring to the discussion over the
26:21
Speaker 3: slave votes and the West in the Constitutional Convention, he declared,
26:25
Speaker 3: suppose then that it had been distinctly foreseeing that in
26:28
Speaker 3: addition to the effect of this weight, the whole population
26:31
Speaker 3: of a world beyond the Mississippi was to be brought
26:33
Speaker 3: into this and the other branch of the legislature to
26:36
Speaker 3: form our laws, control our rights, and decide our destiny. Sir,
26:40
Speaker 3: can it be pretended that the patriots of that day
26:43
Speaker 3: would for one moment have listened to it, they had
26:46
Speaker 3: not taken degrees at the hospital of idiocy? Why, Sir,
26:50
Speaker 3: I have already heard of six states, and some say
26:52
Speaker 3: there will be at no great distant time more. I
26:56
Speaker 3: have also heard that the mouth of the Ohio will
26:59
Speaker 3: be far to the east of the center of the
27:00
Speaker 3: contemplated empire. You have no authority to throw the rights
27:04
Speaker 3: and property of this people into hotchpotch with the wild
27:07
Speaker 3: men on the Missouri, nor with the mixed, though more
27:10
Speaker 3: respectable race of Anglo Hispano Gallo Americans who bask on
27:14
Speaker 3: the sands in the mouth of the Mississippi. Do you
27:17
Speaker 3: suppose the people of the Northern and Atlantic states will
27:20
Speaker 3: or ought to look on with patients and see representatives
27:23
Speaker 3: and senators from the Red River and Missouri pouring themselves
27:26
Speaker 3: upon this and the other floor, managing the concerns of
27:29
Speaker 3: a seaboard fifteen hundred miles at least from their residence,
27:33
Speaker 3: and having a preponderancy in councils into which constitutionally they
27:37
Speaker 3: could never have been admitted. Like an echo from the
27:40
Speaker 3: fears expressed by the East at the close of the
27:42
Speaker 3: eighteenth century, come the words of an eminent Eastern man
27:45
Speaker 3: of letters at the end of the nineteenth century, in
27:47
Speaker 3: warning against the West, materialized in their temper with few
27:51
Speaker 3: ideals of an ennobling sort, little instructed in the lessons
27:54
Speaker 3: of history, save from exposure to the direct calamities and
27:57
Speaker 3: physical horrors of war. With undeveloped imaginations and sympathies, they
28:01
Speaker 3: form a community unfortunate and dangerous from the possession of
28:05
Speaker 3: power without a due sense of its corresponding responsibilities, a
28:08
Speaker 3: community in which the passion for war may easily be
28:11
Speaker 3: excited as the fancied means by which its greatness may
28:14
Speaker 3: be convincingly exhibited and its ambitions gratified. Some chance spark
28:18
Speaker 3: may fire the prairie. Here, then, is the problem of
28:22
Speaker 3: the West, as it looked to New England leaders of
28:24
Speaker 3: thought in the beginning at the end of this century.
28:27
Speaker 3: From the first it was recognized that a new type
28:30
Speaker 3: was growing up beyond the sea board, and that the
28:31
Speaker 3: time would come with the destiny of the nation would
28:34
Speaker 3: be in Western hands. The divergence of these societies became
28:37
Speaker 3: clear in the struggle over the ratification of the Federal Constitution.
28:41
Speaker 3: The upcountry agricultural regions, the communities that were in debt
28:45
Speaker 3: and desired paper money, with some Western exceptions, opposed the instrument,
28:49
Speaker 3: but the areas of intercourse and property carried the day.
28:52
Speaker 3: It is important to understand, therefore, what were some of
28:55
Speaker 3: the ideals of this early Western democracy. How did the
28:58
Speaker 3: frontiersmen differ from the man of the coast. The most
29:02
Speaker 3: obvious fact regarding the man of the western waters is
29:04
Speaker 3: that he had placed himself under influences destructive to many
29:07
Speaker 3: of the gains of civilization, remote from the opportunity for
29:11
Speaker 3: systematic education, substituting a log hut in the forest, clearing
29:14
Speaker 3: for the social comforts of the town. He suffered hardships
29:17
Speaker 3: and privations, and reverted in many ways to primitive conditions
29:21
Speaker 3: of life. Engaged in a struggle to subdue the forest.
29:24
Speaker 3: Working as an individual and with little speci or capital,
29:27
Speaker 3: his interests were with the debtor class. At each stage
29:30
Speaker 3: of its advance, the West has favored an expansion of
29:32
Speaker 3: the currency. The pioneer had boundless confidence in the future
29:36
Speaker 3: of his own community, and when seasons of financial contraction
29:39
Speaker 3: and depression occurred, he who had staked his all on
29:43
Speaker 3: confidence in Western development and had fought the savage for
29:46
Speaker 3: his home, was inclined to reproach the conservative sections and classes.
29:50
Speaker 3: To explain this antagonism requires more than denunciation of dishonesty, ignorance,
29:55
Speaker 3: and boorishness as fundamental Western traits. Legislation in the United
29:59
Speaker 3: States has had to deal with two distinct social conditions.
30:03
Speaker 3: In some portions of the country, there was and is
30:05
Speaker 3: an aggregation of property and vested rights are in the foreground.
30:09
Speaker 3: In others, capital is lacking. More primitive conditions prevail with
30:13
Speaker 3: different economic and social ideals, and the contentment of the
30:16
Speaker 3: average individual is placed in the foreground. That in the
30:19
Speaker 3: conflict between these two ideals and even hand has always
30:22
Speaker 3: been held by the government would be difficult to show.
30:25
Speaker 3: The separation of the Western man from the sea board
30:28
Speaker 3: and his environment made him, in a large degree free
30:31
Speaker 3: from European precedents and forces. He looked at things independently
30:35
Speaker 3: and with small regard or appreciation for the best old
30:37
Speaker 3: world experience.
30:39
Speaker 2: He had no.
30:39
Speaker 3: Ideal of a philosophical, eclectic nation that should advance civilization
30:43
Speaker 3: by intercourse with foreigners and familiarity with their point of
30:47
Speaker 3: view and readiness to adopt whatever is best and most
30:49
Speaker 3: suitable in their ideas, manners, and customs. His was rather
30:53
Speaker 3: the ideal of conserving and developing what was original and
30:56
Speaker 3: valuable in this new country. The entrance of old society
30:59
Speaker 3: upon on free lands meant to him opportunity for a
31:02
Speaker 3: new type of democracy and new popular ideals. The West
31:06
Speaker 3: was not conservative. Buoyant, self confidence and self assertion were
31:09
Speaker 3: distinguishing traits in its composition. It saw in its growth
31:13
Speaker 3: nothing less than a new order of society and state.
31:16
Speaker 3: In this conception were elements of evil and elements of good.
31:20
Speaker 3: But the fundamental fact in regard to this new society
31:22
Speaker 3: was its relation to land. Professor Bootemey has said of
31:26
Speaker 3: the United States, their one primary and predominant object is
31:30
Speaker 3: to cultivate and settle these prairies, forests, and vast wastelands.
31:34
Speaker 3: The striking and peculiar characteristic of American society is that
31:37
Speaker 3: it is not so much a democracy as a huge
31:40
Speaker 3: commercial company for the discovery, cultivation, and capitalization of its
31:44
Speaker 3: enormous territory. The United States are primarily a commercial society
31:48
Speaker 3: and only secondarily a nation. Of course, this involves a
31:52
Speaker 3: serious misapprehension by the very fact of the task he
31:55
Speaker 3: is set forth. Far reaching ideals of the state and
31:58
Speaker 3: of society have been evolved in the West, accompanied by
32:01
Speaker 3: loyalty to the nation representative of these ideals. But Mbhutme's
32:05
Speaker 3: description hits the substantial fact that the fundamental traits of
32:08
Speaker 3: the man of the interior were due to the free
32:10
Speaker 3: lands of the West. These turned his attention to the
32:13
Speaker 3: great task of subduing them to the purposes of civilization,
32:16
Speaker 3: and to the task of advancing his economic and social
32:19
Speaker 3: status in the new democracy which he was helping to create. Art, literature, refinement,
32:24
Speaker 3: scientific administration all had to give way to this titanic
32:28
Speaker 3: labor energy, incessant activity became the lot of this new American.
32:33
Speaker 3: Says a traveler at the time of Andrew Jackson, America
32:36
Speaker 3: is like a vast workshop, over the door of which
32:38
Speaker 3: is printed in blazing characters. No admittance here except on business.
32:43
Speaker 3: The West of our own day reminds mister Bryce of
32:46
Speaker 3: the crowd which Vathek found in the Hall of Eblis,
32:49
Speaker 3: each darting hither and thither, with swift steps and unquiet mien,
32:52
Speaker 3: driven to and fro by a fire in the heart.
32:56
Speaker 3: Time seems too short for what they have to do,
32:58
Speaker 3: and the result always to come short of their desire.
33:01
Speaker 3: But free lands and the consciousness of working out their
33:03
Speaker 3: social destiny did more than turn the westerner to material
33:06
Speaker 3: interests and devote him to a restless existence. They promoted
33:10
Speaker 3: a quality among the Western settlers and reacted as a
33:13
Speaker 3: check on the aristocratic influences.
33:15
Speaker 2: Of the East.
33:16
Speaker 3: Where everybody could have a farm almost for taking it,
33:19
Speaker 3: economic equality easily resulted, and this involved political equality, not
33:24
Speaker 3: without a struggle with the Western man abandoned this ideal,
33:26
Speaker 3: and it goes far to explain the unrest in the
33:28
Speaker 3: remote West today. Western democracy included individual liberty as well
33:33
Speaker 3: as equality. The frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He knew
33:38
Speaker 3: how to preserve order even in the absence of legal authority.
33:41
Speaker 3: If there were cattle thieves, lynch law was sudden and effective.
33:45
Speaker 3: The regulators of the Carolinas were the predecessors of the
33:47
Speaker 3: Claims Associations of Iowa and the vigilance committees of California.
33:52
Speaker 3: But the individual was not ready to submit to complex regulations.
33:55
Speaker 3: Population was sparse. There was no multitude of jostling interests
34:00
Speaker 3: in older settlements demanding an elaborate system of personal restraints.
34:04
Speaker 3: Society became atomic. There was a reproduction of the primitive
34:08
Speaker 3: idea of the personality of the law. A crime was
34:10
Speaker 3: more an offense against the victim than a violation of
34:13
Speaker 3: the law of the land. Substantial justice secured in the
34:16
Speaker 3: most direct way was the ideal of the backwoodsman. He
34:19
Speaker 3: had little patients with finely drawn distinctions or scruples of method.
34:23
Speaker 3: If the thing was one proper to be done, then
34:25
Speaker 3: the most immediate, rough and ready effective way was the
34:28
Speaker 3: best way. It followed from the lack of organized political life,
34:31
Speaker 3: from the atomic conditions of the backwards society, that the
34:34
Speaker 3: individual was exalted and given free play. The West was
34:38
Speaker 3: another name for opportunity. Here were minds to be seized,
34:41
Speaker 3: fertile valleys to be preempted, all the natural resources open
34:45
Speaker 3: to the shrewdest and boldest. The United States is unique
34:48
Speaker 3: in the extent to which the individual has been given
34:50
Speaker 3: an open field, unchecked by restraints of an old social
34:53
Speaker 3: order or of scientific administration of government. The self made
34:57
Speaker 3: man was. The Western Man's ideal was the kind demand
35:00
Speaker 3: that all men might become out of his wilderness experience,
35:03
Speaker 3: out of the freedom of his opportunities. He fashioned a
35:06
Speaker 3: formula for social regeneration, the freedom of the individual to
35:09
Speaker 3: seek his own He did not consider that his conditions
35:12
Speaker 3: were exceptional and temporary. Under such conditions, leadership easily develops,
35:17
Speaker 3: a leadership based on the possession of the qualities most
35:19
Speaker 3: serviceable to the young society. In the history of Western
35:23
Speaker 3: settlement we see each forted village following its local hero.
35:27
Speaker 3: Clay Jackson, Harrison, Lincoln were illustrations of this tendency in
35:31
Speaker 3: periods when the Western hero rose to the dignity of
35:34
Speaker 3: national hero. End of Section twenty five.
35:38
Speaker 1: Chapter seven, The Problem of the West, Part two. The
35:43
Speaker 1: Western man believed in the manifest destiny of his country.
35:46
Speaker 1: On his border and checking his advance were the Indian,
35:49
Speaker 1: the Spaniard, and the Englishman. He was indignant at the
35:53
Speaker 1: Eastern indifference and lack of sympathy with his view of
35:56
Speaker 1: his relations to these peoples, at the shortsightedness of Eastern policy.
36:01
Speaker 1: The closure of the Mississippi by Spain and the proposal
36:04
Speaker 1: to exchange our claim of freedom of navigating the river
36:07
Speaker 1: in return for commercial advantages to New England nearly led
36:11
Speaker 1: to the withdrawal of the West from the Union. It
36:14
Speaker 1: was the Western demands that brought about the purchase of
36:17
Speaker 1: Louisiana and turned the scale in favor of declaring the
36:20
Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve. Militant qualities were favored by the
36:24
Speaker 1: annual expansion of the settled area in the face of
36:27
Speaker 1: hostile Indians and the stubborn wilderness, The West caught the
36:31
Speaker 1: vision of the nation's continental destiny. Henry Adams, in his
36:35
Speaker 1: History of the United States, makes the American of eighteen
36:38
Speaker 1: hundred exclaim to the foreign visitor, quote, look at my wealth.
36:43
Speaker 1: See these solid mountains of salt and iron, of lead, copper,
36:47
Speaker 1: silver and gold. See these magnificent cities scattered broadcast to
36:51
Speaker 1: the Pacific. See my cornfields, rustling and waving in the
36:55
Speaker 1: summer breeze from ocean to ocean, so far that the
36:58
Speaker 1: sun itself is not high enough to to mark where
37:00
Speaker 1: the distant mountains bound my golden seas. Look at this
37:04
Speaker 1: continent of mine, fairest of created worlds, as she lies,
37:07
Speaker 1: turning up to the sun's never failing caress her broad
37:11
Speaker 1: and exuberant breasts, overflowing with milk for her hundred million children.
37:15
Speaker 1: End of and the foreigners saw only dreary deserts tenanted
37:19
Speaker 1: by sparse, aguy stricken pioneers and savages. The cities were
37:24
Speaker 1: log huts and gambling dens. But the frontiersman's dream was prophetic.
37:28
Speaker 1: In spite of his rude, gross nature, this early Western
37:32
Speaker 1: man was an idealist withal. He dreamed dreams and beheld visions.
37:36
Speaker 1: He had faith in man, hope for democracy, belief in
37:39
Speaker 1: America's destiny, unbounded, confidence in his ability to make his
37:43
Speaker 1: dreams come true. Said Harriet Martineau in eighteen thirty four quote,
37:48
Speaker 1: I regard the American people as a great embryo poet,
37:51
Speaker 1: now moody, now wild, but bringing out results of absolute
37:55
Speaker 1: good sense, restless and wayward in action, but with deep
37:59
Speaker 1: peace at his heart, exulting that he is caught the
38:02
Speaker 1: true aspect of things past and the depth of futurity
38:05
Speaker 1: which lies before him. Wherein to create something so magnificent
38:09
Speaker 1: as the world has scarcely begun to dream of, there
38:13
Speaker 1: is the strongest hope of a nation that is capable
38:15
Speaker 1: of being possessed with an idea end of quote. It
38:19
Speaker 1: is important to bear this idealism of the West and
38:22
Speaker 1: mind the very materialism that has been urged against the
38:25
Speaker 1: West was accompanied by ideals of equality, of the exaltation
38:29
Speaker 1: of the common man, of national expansion. That makes it
38:33
Speaker 1: a profound mistake to right of the West, as though
38:36
Speaker 1: it were engrossed in mere material ends. It has been
38:40
Speaker 1: and is pre eminently a region of ideals. Mistaken or not,
38:44
Speaker 1: it is obvious that these economic and social conditions were
38:48
Speaker 1: so fundamental in Western life that they might well dominate
38:51
Speaker 1: whatever accessions came to the West by immigration from the
38:54
Speaker 1: coast sections or from Europe. Nevertheless, the West cannot be
38:58
Speaker 1: understood without bearing in mind to the fact that it
39:02
Speaker 1: has received the great streams from the north and from
39:04
Speaker 1: the South, and that the Mississippi compelled these currents to intermingle.
39:09
Speaker 1: Here it was that sectionalism first gave way under the
39:12
Speaker 1: pressure of unification. Ultimately, the conflicting ideas and institutions of
39:17
Speaker 1: the old sections struggled for dominance in this area under
39:20
Speaker 1: the influence of the forces that made for uniformity. But
39:24
Speaker 1: this is merely another phase of the truth that the
39:26
Speaker 1: West must become unified, that it could not rest in
39:30
Speaker 1: sectional groupings. For precisely this reason, the struggle occurred in
39:34
Speaker 1: the period from the Revolution to the close of the
39:37
Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve. The democracy of the Southern and
39:40
Speaker 1: Middle States contributed the main streams of settlement and social
39:44
Speaker 1: influence to the West. Even in Ohio political power was
39:47
Speaker 1: soon lost by the New England leaders, the democratic spirit
39:51
Speaker 1: of the Middle region left an indelible impress on the
39:54
Speaker 1: West in this its formative period. After the War of
39:57
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve, New England MSNE, the carrying trade of the
40:01
Speaker 1: world having vanished, became a hive from which swarms of
40:04
Speaker 1: settlers went out to Western New York and the remoter regions.
40:09
Speaker 1: These settlers spread New England ideals of education and character
40:13
Speaker 1: and political institutions, and acted as eleven of great significance
40:17
Speaker 1: in the northwest. But it would be a mistake to
40:20
Speaker 1: believe that an unmixed New England influence took possession of
40:24
Speaker 1: the Northwest. These pioneers did not come from the class
40:28
Speaker 1: that conserved the type of New England civilization pure and undefiled.
40:32
Speaker 1: They represented a less contented, less conservative influence. Moreover, by
40:37
Speaker 1: their sojourn in the Middle region. On their westward march,
40:40
Speaker 1: they underwent modification, and when the farther west received them,
40:44
Speaker 1: they suffered a forest change. Indeed, the westernized New England
40:48
Speaker 1: band was no longer the representative of the section that
40:51
Speaker 1: he left. He was less conservative, less provincial, more adaptable
40:55
Speaker 1: and approachable, less rigorous in his puritan ideals, less a
40:59
Speaker 1: man of culture, more a man of action, as might
41:03
Speaker 1: have been expected. Therefore, the Western Men in the era
41:06
Speaker 1: of Good Feeling had much homogeneity throughout the Mississippi Valley
41:10
Speaker 1: and began to stand as a new national type. Under
41:13
Speaker 1: the lead of Henry Clay, they invoked the National government
41:17
Speaker 1: to break down the mountain barrier by internal improvements, and
41:20
Speaker 1: thus to give their crops an outlet to the coast.
41:23
Speaker 1: Under him, they appealed to the National government for a
41:26
Speaker 1: protective tariff to create a home market. A group of
41:29
Speaker 1: frontier states entered the Union with democratic provisions, respecting the suffrage,
41:34
Speaker 1: and with devotion to the nation that had given them
41:36
Speaker 1: their lands, built their roads and canals, regulated their territorial life,
41:41
Speaker 1: and made them equals in the sisterhood of states. At last,
41:45
Speaker 1: these Western forces of aggressive nationalism and democracy took possession
41:50
Speaker 1: of the government in the person of the man who
41:52
Speaker 1: best embodied them, Andrew Jackson. This new democracy that captured
41:57
Speaker 1: the country and destroyed the ideals of statesmanship came from
42:01
Speaker 1: no theorist dreams of the German forest. It came stark
42:05
Speaker 1: and strong and full of life, from the American forest.
42:08
Speaker 1: But the triumph of this Western democracy revealed also the
42:12
Speaker 1: fact that it could rally to its aid the laboring
42:15
Speaker 1: classes of the coast, then just beginning to acquire self
42:18
Speaker 1: consciousness and organization. The next phase of Western development revealed
42:23
Speaker 1: forces of division between the northern and southern portions of
42:27
Speaker 1: the West. With the spread of the cotton culture, went
42:30
Speaker 1: the slave system and the great plantation. The small farmer
42:33
Speaker 1: in his log cabin raising varied crops was displaced by
42:37
Speaker 1: the planner raising cotton. In all except the mountainous areas.
42:41
Speaker 1: The industrial organization of the Tide Water took possession of
42:44
Speaker 1: the southwest. The unity of the back country was broken,
42:48
Speaker 1: and the solid South was formed. In the northwest, this
42:52
Speaker 1: was the era of railroads and canals, opening the region
42:55
Speaker 1: to the increasing stream of Middle State and New England settlement,
42:59
Speaker 1: and strengthening the upper position to slavery. A map showing
43:02
Speaker 1: the location of the men of New England ancestry in
43:05
Speaker 1: the northwest would represent also the counties in which the
43:08
Speaker 1: Free Soil Party cast its heaviest votes. The commercial connections
43:12
Speaker 1: of the Northwest, likewise, were reversed by the railroad. The
43:16
Speaker 1: result is stated by a writer in Debou's Review in
43:19
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two in these words, quote, what is New
43:23
Speaker 1: Orleans now? Where are her dreams of greatness and glory?
43:26
Speaker 1: Whilst she slept? An enemy has sowed tears in her
43:29
Speaker 1: most prolific fields. Armed with energy, enterprise, and an indomitable spirit,
43:35
Speaker 1: that enemy, by a system of bold, vigorous and sustained efforts,
43:39
Speaker 1: has succeeded in reversing the very laws of nature and
43:42
Speaker 1: of Nature's God. Rolled back the mighty tide of the
43:45
Speaker 1: Mississippi and its thousand tributary streams until their mouth practically
43:50
Speaker 1: and commercially is more at New York or Boston than
43:53
Speaker 1: at New Orleans. The West broke asunder, and the great
43:57
Speaker 1: struggle over the social system to be given in the
44:00
Speaker 1: lands beyond the Mississippi followed. In the Civil War, the
44:03
Speaker 1: Northwest furnished the national hero Lincoln, was the very flower
44:08
Speaker 1: of frontier training and ideals, and it also took into
44:11
Speaker 1: its hands the whole power of the government. Before the
44:14
Speaker 1: war closed, the West could claim the President, Vice President,
44:18
Speaker 1: Chief Justice, Speaker of the House, Secretary of the Treasury,
44:22
Speaker 1: Postmaster General, Attorney General, General of the Army, and Admiral
44:26
Speaker 1: of the Navy. The leading generals of the war had
44:29
Speaker 1: been furnished by the West. It was the region of action,
44:32
Speaker 1: and in the crisis it took the reins. The triumph
44:36
Speaker 1: of the nation was followed by a new era of
44:38
Speaker 1: Western development. The national forces projected themselves across the prairies
44:42
Speaker 1: and plains. Railroads fostered by government loans and land grants,
44:47
Speaker 1: opened the way for settlement and poured a flood of
44:50
Speaker 1: European immigrants and restless pioneers from all sections of the
44:54
Speaker 1: Union into the government lands. The army of the United
44:57
Speaker 1: States pushed back the Indian rectangular time. Territories were carved
45:01
Speaker 1: into checkerboard states, creations of the federal government, without a history,
45:06
Speaker 1: without physiographical unity, without particularistic ideas. The later frontiersmen leaned
45:12
Speaker 1: on the strong arm of national power. At the same time,
45:15
Speaker 1: the South underwent a revolution. The plantation based on slavery
45:20
Speaker 1: gave place to the farm the gentry, to the democratic elements.
45:24
Speaker 1: As in the West, new industries of mining and of
45:27
Speaker 1: manufacture sprang up as by magic. The new South, like
45:31
Speaker 1: the New West, was an area of construction, a debtor area,
45:35
Speaker 1: an area of unrest, and it too had learned the
45:39
Speaker 1: uses to which federal legislation might be put. In the meantime,
45:43
Speaker 1: the old Northwest passed through an economic and social transformation.
45:48
Speaker 1: The whole West furnished an area over which successive waves
45:51
Speaker 1: of economic development have passed. The state of Wisconsin, now,
45:55
Speaker 1: much like parts of the state of New York, was
45:58
Speaker 1: at an earlier period, like the state of Nebraska of today.
46:02
Speaker 1: The Granger movement and Greenback Party had for a time
46:05
Speaker 1: the ascendancy, and in the northern counties of the state,
46:08
Speaker 1: where there is sparser population and the country is being settled,
46:12
Speaker 1: its sympathies are still with the debtor class. Thus, the
46:16
Speaker 1: old Northwest is a region where the older frontier conditions
46:19
Speaker 1: survive in parts, and where the inherited ways of looking
46:22
Speaker 1: at things are largely to be traced to its frontier days.
46:26
Speaker 1: At the same time, it is a region in many
46:28
Speaker 1: ways assimilated to the East. It understands both sections. It
46:33
Speaker 1: is not entirely content with the existing structure of economic
46:36
Speaker 1: society in the sections where wealth is accumulated and corporate
46:40
Speaker 1: organizations are powerful. But neither has it seemed to feel
46:43
Speaker 1: that its interests lie in supporting the program of the
46:46
Speaker 1: prairies and the South. In the fifty third Congress, it
46:50
Speaker 1: voted for the income tax, but it rejected free coinage.
46:53
Speaker 1: It is still affected by the ideal of the self
46:56
Speaker 1: made man, rather than by the ideal of industrial nationalism.
47:00
Speaker 1: It is more American, but less cosmopolitan than the sea board.
47:04
Speaker 1: We are now in a position to see clearly some
47:07
Speaker 1: of the factors involved in the Western problem. For nearly
47:10
Speaker 1: three centuries, the dominant fact in American life has been expansion,
47:14
Speaker 1: with the settlement of the Pacific coast and the occupation
47:17
Speaker 1: of the free lands. This movement has come to a check.
47:21
Speaker 1: That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would
47:24
Speaker 1: be a rash prediction. And the demands for a vigorous
47:27
Speaker 1: foreign policy, for an inner oceanic canal, for a revival
47:31
Speaker 1: of our power upon the seas, and for the extension
47:34
Speaker 1: of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries are
47:38
Speaker 1: indications that the movement will continue. The stronghold of these
47:42
Speaker 1: demands lies west of the alleghanies. In the remoter west.
47:47
Speaker 1: The restless, rushing wave of settlement has broken with a
47:50
Speaker 1: shock against the arid plains. The free lands are gone,
47:53
Speaker 1: the continent is crossed, and all this push and energy
47:57
Speaker 1: is turning into channels of agitation. Failure in one area
48:00
Speaker 1: can no longer be made good by taking up land
48:03
Speaker 1: on a new frontier. The conditions of a settled society
48:07
Speaker 1: are being reached with suddenness and with confusion. The West
48:10
Speaker 1: has been built up with borrowed capital, and the question
48:14
Speaker 1: of the stability of gold as the standard of deferred
48:16
Speaker 1: payments is eagerly agitated by the dead or West, profoundly
48:20
Speaker 1: dissatisfied with the industrial conditions that confront it. And actuated
48:25
Speaker 1: by frontier directness and rigor in its remedies. For the
48:28
Speaker 1: most part, the men who built up the West beyond
48:31
Speaker 1: the Mississippi, and who are now leading the agitation, came
48:35
Speaker 1: as pioneers from the old Northwest in the days when
48:38
Speaker 1: it was just passing from the stage or a frontier section.
48:41
Speaker 1: For example, Senator Allen of Nebraska, president of the recent
48:45
Speaker 1: National Populist Convention, and a type of the political leaders
48:49
Speaker 1: of his section, was born in Ohio in the middle
48:51
Speaker 1: of the century, went in his youth to Iowa, and
48:54
Speaker 1: not long after the Civil War made his home in Nebraska.
48:57
Speaker 1: As a boy, he saw the buffalo driven out by
48:59
Speaker 1: the sec he saw the Indian retreat as the pioneer advanced.
49:04
Speaker 1: His training is that of the Old West in its
49:06
Speaker 1: frontier days, and now the frontier opportunities are gone, discontent
49:11
Speaker 1: is demanding an extension of governmental activity on its behalf.
49:15
Speaker 1: In these demands it finds itself in touch with the
49:18
Speaker 1: depressed agricultural classes and the workingmen of the South and East.
49:22
Speaker 1: The Western problem is no longer a sectional problem. It
49:26
Speaker 1: is a social problem on a national scale. The Greater West,
49:30
Speaker 1: extending from the alleghenies to the Pacific cannot be regarded
49:33
Speaker 1: as a unit. It requires analysis into regions and classes.
49:38
Speaker 1: But its area, its population, and its material resources would
49:42
Speaker 1: give force to his assertion that if there is a
49:45
Speaker 1: sectionalism in the country, the sectionalism is Eastern. The old
49:49
Speaker 1: West united to the new South would produce not a
49:52
Speaker 1: new Sectionalism, but a new Americanism. It would not mean
49:56
Speaker 1: sectional disunion, as some have speculated, but it might mean
50:00
Speaker 1: a drastic assertion of national government and imperial expansion under
50:04
Speaker 1: a popular hero. This, then, is the real situation. A
50:08
Speaker 1: people composed of heterogeneous materials with diverse and conflicting ideals
50:13
Speaker 1: and social interests, having passed from the task of filling
50:17
Speaker 1: up the vacant spaces of the continent, is now thrown
50:20
Speaker 1: back upon itself and is seeking an equilibrium. The diverse
50:24
Speaker 1: elements are being fused into national unity. The forces of
50:28
Speaker 1: reorganization are turbulent, and the nation seems like a witch's kettle.
50:32
Speaker 1: But the West has its own centers of industrial life
50:35
Speaker 1: and culture, not unlike those of the East. It has
50:38
Speaker 1: state universities rivaling in conservative and scientific economic instruction those
50:44
Speaker 1: of any other part of the Union, and its citizens
50:47
Speaker 1: more often visit the East than do Eastern men. The West,
50:50
Speaker 1: as time goes on, its industrial development will bring it
50:53
Speaker 1: more into harmony with the East. Moreover, the old Northwest
50:57
Speaker 1: holds the balance of power and is the battlefield on
51:00
Speaker 1: which these issues of American development are to be settled.
51:04
Speaker 1: It has more in common with all parts of the
51:06
Speaker 1: nation than has any other region. It understands the East
51:10
Speaker 1: as the East does not understand the West. The White City,
51:13
Speaker 1: which recently rose on the shores of Lake Michigan, fitly
51:16
Speaker 1: typified its growing culture, as well as its capacity for
51:20
Speaker 1: great achievement. Its complex and representative industrial organization and business ties,
51:25
Speaker 1: Its determination to hold fast to what is original and
51:28
Speaker 1: good in its Western experience, and its readiness to learn
51:32
Speaker 1: and receive the results of the experience of other sections
51:35
Speaker 1: and nations make it an open minded and safe arbiter
51:39
Speaker 1: of the American destiny. In the long run, the center
51:42
Speaker 1: of the Republic may be trusted to strike a wise
51:45
Speaker 1: balance between the contending ideals. But she does not deceive herself.
51:49
Speaker 1: She knows that the problem of the West means nothing
51:52
Speaker 1: less than the problem of working out original social ideals
51:56
Speaker 1: and social adjustments for the American nation. Of Section twenty six.
52:02
Speaker 3: Chapter eight, Dominant Forces in Western Life, Part one. The
52:08
Speaker 3: Old Northwest is a name which tells of the vestiges
52:10
Speaker 3: which the march of settlement across the American continent has
52:13
Speaker 3: left behind it. The New Northwest fronts the watery labyrinth
52:17
Speaker 3: of Puget Sound and awaits its destiny upon the Pacific.
52:21
Speaker 3: The Old Northwest, the historic Northwest Territory, is now the
52:25
Speaker 3: new Middle region of the United States. A century ago,
52:28
Speaker 3: it was a wilderness broken only by a few French
52:31
Speaker 3: settlements and the straggling American hamlets along the Ohio and
52:34
Speaker 3: its tributaries, while on the shore of Lake Erie, Moses
52:37
Speaker 3: Cleveland had just led a handful of men to the
52:40
Speaker 3: Connecticut Reserve. Today it is the keystone of the American Commonwealth.
52:45
Speaker 3: Since eighteen sixty the center of population of the United
52:48
Speaker 3: States has rested within its limits, and the center of
52:50
Speaker 3: manufacturing in the nation lies eight miles from President McKinley's
52:54
Speaker 3: Ohio home. Of the seven men who have been elected
52:57
Speaker 3: to the presidency of the United States since eighteen sixty,
53:00
Speaker 3: six have come from the Old Northwest, and the seventh
53:03
Speaker 3: came from the Kindred region of western New York. The
53:06
Speaker 3: Congressional representatives from these five states of the Old Northwest
53:10
Speaker 3: already outnumbered those from the Old Middle States, and are
53:13
Speaker 3: three times as numerous as those from New England. The
53:16
Speaker 3: elements that have contributed to the civilization of this region
53:18
Speaker 3: are therefore well worth consideration. To know the states that
53:22
Speaker 3: make up the Old Northwest Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin,
53:27
Speaker 3: one must understand their social origins. Eldest in this sisterhood
53:31
Speaker 3: was Ohio. New England gave the formative impulses to this
53:34
Speaker 3: state by the part which the Ohio Company played in
53:37
Speaker 3: securing the Ordinance of seventeen eighty seven, and at Marietta
53:41
Speaker 3: and Cleveland, Massachusetts and Connecticut planted enduring centers of Puritan influence.
53:46
Speaker 3: During the same period, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sent their
53:49
Speaker 3: colonists to the Sims Purchase, in which Cincinnati was the
53:53
Speaker 3: rallying point, while Virginians sought the military boundary lands in
53:57
Speaker 3: the region of Chillikov. The Middle States and the South,
54:00
Speaker 3: with their democratic ideas, constituted the dominant element in Ohio
54:04
Speaker 3: politics in the early part of her history. This dominance
54:07
Speaker 3: is shown by the nativity of the members of the
54:09
Speaker 3: Ohio legislature elected in eighteen twenty. New England furnished nine
54:13
Speaker 3: senators and sixteen representatives, chiefly from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
54:18
Speaker 3: and Pennsylvania seventeen senators and twenty one representatives, mostly from Pennsylvania,
54:24
Speaker 3: while the South furnished nine senators and twenty seven representatives,
54:27
Speaker 3: of whom the majority came from Virginia. Five of the
54:31
Speaker 3: representatives were native of Ireland, presumably Scotch Irishmen. In the
54:35
Speaker 3: Ohio Senate. Therefore, the Middle States had as many representatives
54:38
Speaker 3: as had New England and the South together, While the
54:41
Speaker 3: Southern men slightly outnumbered the Middle States men in the
54:44
Speaker 3: assembly together, the emigrants from the Democratic South and the
54:48
Speaker 3: Middle region outnumbered the Federalists New Englanders three to one.
54:52
Speaker 3: Although Ohio is popularly considered a child of New England,
54:56
Speaker 3: it is clear that in these formative years of her statehood,
54:58
Speaker 3: the Commonwealth was dominant by other forces. By the close
55:02
Speaker 3: of this early period in eighteen twenty, the settlement in
55:05
Speaker 3: Ohio had covered more or less fully all except the
55:08
Speaker 3: northwest corner of the state, and Indiana's formative period was
55:12
Speaker 3: well started here. As in Ohio, there was a large
55:15
Speaker 3: southern element. But while the southern stream that flowed into
55:18
Speaker 3: Ohio had its sources in Virginia, the main current that
55:21
Speaker 3: saw Indiana came from North Carolina, and these settlers were
55:24
Speaker 3: for the most part from the humbler classes. In the
55:27
Speaker 3: settlement of Indiana from the south, two separate elements are distinguishable,
55:31
Speaker 3: the Quaker migration from North Carolina, moving chiefly because of
55:35
Speaker 3: anti slavery convictions. The poor white stream, made up in
55:38
Speaker 3: part of restless hunters and thriftless pioneers moving without definite ambitions,
55:43
Speaker 3: and in part of other classes such as former overseers
55:46
Speaker 3: migrating to the new country with definite purpose of improving
55:49
Speaker 3: their fortunes. These elements constituted well marked features in the
55:53
Speaker 3: southern contribution to Indiana, and they explained why she has
55:56
Speaker 3: been named the Hoosier State. But it should, by no
55:59
Speaker 3: means be thought that all of the southern immigrants came
56:01
Speaker 3: under these classes, nor that these have been the normal
56:04
Speaker 3: elements in the development of the Indiana of today. In
56:07
Speaker 3: the Northwest, where interstate migration has been so continuous and widespread,
56:11
Speaker 3: the lack of typical state peculiarities is obvious, and the
56:15
Speaker 3: student of society, like the traveler is tempted, in his
56:18
Speaker 3: effort to distinguish the community from its neighbours, to exaggerate
56:21
Speaker 3: the odd and exceptional elements which give a particular flavor
56:24
Speaker 3: to the state. Indiana has suffered somewhat from this tendency,
56:28
Speaker 3: but it is undoubted that these peculiarities of origin left
56:31
Speaker 3: deep and abiding influences upon the state. In eighteen twenty,
56:35
Speaker 3: her settlement was chiefly in the southern counties, where Southern
56:38
Speaker 3: and Middle States influence was dominant. Her two United States
56:42
Speaker 3: senators were Virginians by birth, while her representative was from Pennsylvania.
56:47
Speaker 3: The southern element continued so powerful that one student of
56:50
Speaker 3: Indiana origins has estimated that in eighteen fifty one third
56:54
Speaker 3: of the population of the state were Native Carolinians and
56:57
Speaker 3: their children in the first generation. Not a few years
57:00
Speaker 3: before the Civil War did the northern current exert a
57:03
Speaker 3: decisive influence upon Indiana. She had no such lake ports
57:06
Speaker 3: as had her sister states. An extension of settlement into
57:09
Speaker 3: the state from ports like Chicago was interrupted by the
57:12
Speaker 3: less attractive area of the northwestern part of Indiana. Add
57:16
Speaker 3: to this the geological fact that the limestone ridges and
57:19
Speaker 3: the best soils ran in nearly perpendicular belts northward from
57:22
Speaker 3: the Ohio, and it will be seen how circumstances combined
57:25
Speaker 3: to diminish northern and to facilitate Southern influences in the state.
57:29
Speaker 3: Prior to the railroad development in Illinois, also, the current
57:33
Speaker 3: of migration was at first preponderantly southern, but the settlers
57:37
Speaker 3: were less often from the Atlantic coast. Kentucky and Tennessee
57:41
Speaker 3: were generous contributors, but many of the distinguished leaders came
57:44
Speaker 3: from Virginia, and it is worthy of note that in
57:47
Speaker 3: eighteen twenty the two United States senators of Illinois were
57:50
Speaker 3: a Maryland ancestry, while her representative was of Kentucky origin.
57:54
Speaker 3: The swarms of land seekers between eighteen twenty and eighteen
57:58
Speaker 3: thirty ascended the Illinois River and spread out between that
58:02
Speaker 3: river and the Mississippi. It was in this period that
58:05
Speaker 3: Abraham Lincoln's father, who had come from Kentucky to Indiana,
58:08
Speaker 3: again left his log cabin and traveled by ox team
58:11
Speaker 3: with his family to the popular Illinois county of Sangamon. Here,
58:15
Speaker 3: Lincoln split his famous rails to fence their land and
58:18
Speaker 3: grew up under the influences of this migration of the
58:21
Speaker 3: Southern pioneers to the prairies. They were not predominantly of
58:25
Speaker 3: the planta class. But the fierce contest of eighteen twenty
58:28
Speaker 3: four over the proposition to open Illinois to slavery was
58:31
Speaker 3: one for freedom by a narrow majority. Looking at the
58:35
Speaker 3: three states Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois prior to eighteen fifty,
58:39
Speaker 3: we perceive how important was the voice of the South here,
58:42
Speaker 3: and we can the more easily understand the early affiliation
58:46
Speaker 3: of the Northwest with her sister states to the South
58:48
Speaker 3: on the western waters. It was not without reason that
58:51
Speaker 3: the proposal of the Missouri Compromise came from Illinois, and
58:55
Speaker 3: it was a natural enthusiasm with which these states followed
58:58
Speaker 3: Henry Clay in the war policy of eighteen twelve. The
59:01
Speaker 3: combination of the South, the western portion of the Middle States,
59:04
Speaker 3: and the Mississippi Valley gave the ascendancy to the democratic
59:07
Speaker 3: ideals of the followers of Jefferson, and left New England
59:10
Speaker 3: a weakened and isolated section for nearly half a century.
59:14
Speaker 3: Many of the most characteristic elements in American life in
59:17
Speaker 3: the first part of the century were due to this
59:19
Speaker 3: relationship between the South and the trans Allegheny region. But
59:24
Speaker 3: even thus early, the Northwest had revealed strong predilections for
59:27
Speaker 3: the northern economic ideals as against the peculiar institution of
59:31
Speaker 3: the South, and this tendency grew with the increase of
59:34
Speaker 3: New England immigration. The northern two in this sisterhood of
59:38
Speaker 3: Northwestern states were the first to be entered by the French,
59:41
Speaker 3: but latest by the English settlers. Why Michigan was not
59:45
Speaker 3: occupied by New york Men at an earlier period is
59:48
Speaker 3: at first sight not easy to understand. Perhaps the adverse
59:51
Speaker 3: reports of surveyors who visited the interior of the state,
59:54
Speaker 3: the partial geographic isolation, and the unprogressive character of the
59:58
Speaker 3: French settlers account for the occupation of the area. Certain
1:00:02
Speaker 3: it is that while the southern tier of states was
1:00:04
Speaker 3: sought by swarms of settlers, Wisconsin and Michigan still echoed
1:00:08
Speaker 3: to Canadian boating songs, and voyagers paddled their birch canoes
1:00:12
Speaker 3: along the streams of the wilderness to traffic with the savages.
1:00:16
Speaker 3: Great Britain maintained the dominant position until after the War
1:00:19
Speaker 3: of eighteen twelve, and the real center of authority was
1:00:22
Speaker 3: in Canada. But after the digging of the Erie Canal
1:00:26
Speaker 3: settlement began to turn into Michigan. Between eighteen thirty and
1:00:30
Speaker 3: eighteen forty, the population of the state leaped from thirty
1:00:33
Speaker 3: one thousand to two hundred and twelve thousand, in the
1:00:36
Speaker 3: face of the fact that the heavy debt of the
1:00:38
Speaker 3: state and the crisis of eighteen thirty seven turned from
1:00:41
Speaker 3: her borders.
1:00:41
Speaker 2: Many of the.
1:00:42
Speaker 3: Thrifty debt hating Germans. The vast majority of the settlers
1:00:46
Speaker 3: were New Yorkers. Michigan is distinctly a child to the
1:00:49
Speaker 3: Empire State Canadians, both French and English, continued to come
1:00:53
Speaker 3: as the lumber interests of the region increased. By eighteen fifty,
1:00:57
Speaker 3: Michigan contained nearly four hundred thousand Dar inhabitants who occupied
1:01:01
Speaker 3: the southern half of the state, but she now found
1:01:04
Speaker 3: an active competitor for settlement in Wisconsin. In this region,
1:01:09
Speaker 3: two forces had attracted the earlier inhabitants. The fur trading
1:01:12
Speaker 3: posts of Green Bay, Prairie Duchiennes and Milwaukee constituted one
1:01:17
Speaker 3: element in which the French influence was continued. The lead
1:01:21
Speaker 3: region of the southwest corner of the state formed the
1:01:23
Speaker 3: center of attraction for Illinois and southern pioneers. The soldiers
1:01:27
Speaker 3: who followed Blackhawk's trail in eighteen thirty two reported the
1:01:31
Speaker 3: richness of the soil, and an era of immigration followed.
1:01:34
Speaker 3: To the port of Milwaukee. Came a combined migration from
1:01:38
Speaker 3: western New York and New England and spread along the
1:01:40
Speaker 3: southern tier of Prairie counties until it met the southern
1:01:43
Speaker 3: settlers in the lead region. Many of the early political
1:01:46
Speaker 3: contests in the state were connected, as in Ohio and Illinois,
1:01:50
Speaker 3: with the antagonisms between the sections thus brought together in
1:01:53
Speaker 3: a limited area. The other element in the formation of
1:01:57
Speaker 3: Wisconsin was that of the Germans, then just entering upon
1:02:00
Speaker 3: their vast immigration to the United States. Wisconsin was free
1:02:04
Speaker 3: from debt. She made a constitution of exceptional liberality to foreigners,
1:02:09
Speaker 3: and instead of treasuring her school lands or using them
1:02:11
Speaker 3: for internal improvements, she sold them for almost nothing to
1:02:14
Speaker 3: attract immigration. The result was that the prudent Germans, who
1:02:19
Speaker 3: loved light taxes in cheap hardwood lands, turned toward Wisconsin.
1:02:23
Speaker 3: Another volkwanderen from Milwaukee as a center. They spread north
1:02:28
Speaker 3: along the shore of Lake Michigan and later into northern
1:02:31
Speaker 3: central Wisconsin, following the belt.
1:02:33
Speaker 2: Of the hardwood forests.
1:02:34
Speaker 3: So considerable were their numbers that such an economist as
1:02:38
Speaker 3: Russia wrote of the feasibility of making Wisconsin a German state.
1:02:42
Speaker 3: They can plant the vine on the hills, cried Franz
1:02:45
Speaker 3: Lower in eighteen forty seven, and drink with happy song
1:02:48
Speaker 3: and dance. They can have German schools and universities, German
1:02:51
Speaker 3: literature and art, German science and philosophy, German courts and assemblies.
1:02:56
Speaker 3: In short, they can form a German state in which
1:02:59
Speaker 3: the German language will be as much the popular and
1:03:01
Speaker 3: official language as the English is now, and in which
1:03:04
Speaker 3: the German spirit shall rule. By eighteen sixty, the German
1:03:08
Speaker 3: born was sixteen percent of the population of the state,
1:03:12
Speaker 3: but the New York and New England stream proved even
1:03:14
Speaker 3: more broad and steady in its flow. In these years
1:03:17
Speaker 3: before the war, Wisconsin's population rose from thirty thousand in
1:03:21
Speaker 3: eighteen forty to three hundred thousand in eighteen fifty. The
1:03:26
Speaker 3: New England element that entered this state is probably typical
1:03:29
Speaker 3: of the same element in Wisconsin's neighboring states and demands.
1:03:32
Speaker 3: Notice it came, for the most part, not from the
1:03:35
Speaker 3: Sea Board of Massachusetts, which has so frequently represented New England.
1:03:39
Speaker 3: To the popular apprehension, a large element in this stock
1:03:42
Speaker 3: was the product of the migration that ascended the valleys
1:03:45
Speaker 3: of Connecticut and central Massachusetts through the Hills into Vermont
1:03:48
Speaker 3: and New York, a pioneer folk almost from the time
1:03:51
Speaker 3: of their origin. The Vermont colonists decidedly outnumbered those of
1:03:56
Speaker 3: Massachusetts in both Michigan and Wisconsin, and were far more
1:03:59
Speaker 3: news in other Northwestern states than the population of Vermont Warrenton.
1:04:04
Speaker 3: Together with this current came the settlers from western New York.
1:04:07
Speaker 3: These were generally descendants of the same pioneer New England stock,
1:04:11
Speaker 3: continuing into a remoter West the movement that had brought
1:04:14
Speaker 3: their parents to New York. The combined current from New
1:04:17
Speaker 3: England and New York thus constituted a distinctly modified New
1:04:21
Speaker 3: England stock, and was clearly the dominant native element in
1:04:24
Speaker 3: Michigan and Wisconsin. The decade of the forties was also
1:04:28
Speaker 3: the period of Iowa's rapid increase. Although not politically a
1:04:32
Speaker 3: part of the Old Northwest in history, she is closely
1:04:35
Speaker 3: related to that region. Her growth was by no means
1:04:38
Speaker 3: so rapid as was Wisconsin's. For the proportion of foreign
1:04:41
Speaker 3: immigration was less. Whereas in eighteen fifty more than one
1:04:44
Speaker 3: third of Wisconsin's population was foreign born, the proportion for
1:04:48
Speaker 3: Iowa was not much over one tenth. The main body
1:04:51
Speaker 3: of her people finally came from Middle States and Illinois
1:04:54
Speaker 3: and Ohio, but southern elements were well represented, particularly among
1:04:58
Speaker 3: her political leaders. End of Section twenty seven.
1:05:03
Speaker 1: Chapter eight, Dominant Forces in Western Life, Part two. The
1:05:08
Speaker 1: middle of this century was the turning point in the
1:05:11
Speaker 1: transfer of control in the Northwest. Below the line of
1:05:14
Speaker 1: the old National Turnpike, marked by the cities of Columbus, Indianapolis, Vandalia,
1:05:19
Speaker 1: and Saint Louis. The counties had acquired a stability of settlement,
1:05:23
Speaker 1: and partly because of the southern element, partly because of
1:05:26
Speaker 1: a natural tendency of new communities toward Jacksonian ideals. These
1:05:31
Speaker 1: counties were preponderantly democratic, but the southern migration had turned
1:05:35
Speaker 1: to the cotton areas of the Southwest, and the development
1:05:38
Speaker 1: of railroads and canals had broken the historic commercial ascendancy
1:05:42
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi River. New Orleans was yielding the scepter
1:05:46
Speaker 1: to New York. The tide of migration from the north
1:05:49
Speaker 1: poured along these newly open channels and occupied the less
1:05:53
Speaker 1: settled counties above the National Turnpike. In cities like Columbus
1:05:57
Speaker 1: and Indianapolis, where the two currents had run side by side,
1:06:00
Speaker 1: the combined elements were most clearly marked. But in the
1:06:03
Speaker 1: Northwest as a whole, a varied population had been formed.
1:06:07
Speaker 1: This region seemed to represent and understand the various parts
1:06:11
Speaker 1: of the Union. It was this aspect which mister Vinton
1:06:14
Speaker 1: of Ohio urged in Congress when he made his notable
1:06:17
Speaker 1: speech in favor of the admission of Iowa. He pleaded
1:06:21
Speaker 1: the mission of the Northwest as the mediator between the
1:06:23
Speaker 1: sections and the unifying agency in the nation, with such
1:06:27
Speaker 1: power and pathos as to thrill even John Quincy Adams.
1:06:31
Speaker 1: But there are some issues which cannot be settled by compromise, tendencies,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: one of which must conquer the other. Such an issue
1:06:39
Speaker 1: the slave power raised and raised too late for support.
1:06:42
Speaker 1: In the upper half of the Mississippi basin, the northern
1:06:45
Speaker 1: and southern elements found themselves in opposition to each other.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: A house divided against itself cannot stand, said Abraham Lincoln,
1:06:52
Speaker 1: a Northern leader of Southern origin. Douglas, a leader of
1:06:56
Speaker 1: the Southern forces, though coming from New England, declared his
1:06:59
Speaker 1: indifference whether slavery were voted up or down in the
1:07:02
Speaker 1: western territories. The historic debates between these two champions revealed
1:07:07
Speaker 1: the complex conditions in the Northwest and take on a
1:07:10
Speaker 1: new meaning when considered in the light of this contest
1:07:13
Speaker 1: between the northern and southern elements. The state that had
1:07:16
Speaker 1: been so potent for compromise was at last the battleground itself,
1:07:21
Speaker 1: and the places selected for the various debates of Lincoln
1:07:24
Speaker 1: and Douglas marked the strongholds and the outposts of the
1:07:27
Speaker 1: antagonistic forces. At this time, the kinship of western New
1:07:32
Speaker 1: York and the dominant element in the Northwest was clearly revealed.
1:07:36
Speaker 1: Speaking for the anti slavery forces at Madison, Wisconsin, in
1:07:40
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, Seward said, quote, the Northwest is by no
1:07:44
Speaker 1: means so small as you may think it. I speak
1:07:47
Speaker 1: to you because I feel that I am, and during
1:07:49
Speaker 1: all my mature life, have been one of you. Although
1:07:52
Speaker 1: of New York, I am still a citizen of the Northwest.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: The Northwest extends eastward to the base of the Alleghany Mountains,
1:08:00
Speaker 1: and does not all of western New York lie westward
1:08:02
Speaker 1: of the Alleghany Mountains. Whence comes all the inspiration of
1:08:06
Speaker 1: free soil, which spreads itself with such cheerful voices over
1:08:10
Speaker 1: all these plains. Why from New York westward of the
1:08:13
Speaker 1: Alleghany Mountains, the people before me, who are you but
1:08:16
Speaker 1: New York men? Why you are men of the Northwest.
1:08:21
Speaker 1: In the Civil War, Western New York and the Northwest
1:08:23
Speaker 1: were powerful in the forum and in the field. A
1:08:26
Speaker 1: million soldiers came from the states that the ordinance passed
1:08:30
Speaker 1: by southern votes had devoted to freedom. This was the
1:08:34
Speaker 1: first grave time of trial for the Northwest, and it
1:08:37
Speaker 1: did much eventually to give to the region a homogeneity
1:08:40
Speaker 1: and self consciousness. But at the close of the war,
1:08:43
Speaker 1: the region was still agricultural, only half developed, still breaking
1:08:48
Speaker 1: ground in northern forests, still receiving contributions of peoples which
1:08:52
Speaker 1: radically modified the social organism, and undergoing economic changes almost
1:08:57
Speaker 1: revolutionary in their rapidity and extent. The changes since the
1:09:01
Speaker 1: war are of more social importance in many respects than
1:09:05
Speaker 1: those in the years commonly referred to as the formative period.
1:09:08
Speaker 1: As a result, the Northwest finds herself again between contending forces,
1:09:13
Speaker 1: sharing the interests of the East and West. As once
1:09:16
Speaker 1: before those of North and South, and forced to give
1:09:19
Speaker 1: her voice on issues of equal significance for the destiny
1:09:23
Speaker 1: of the Republic in these transforming years. Since eighteen sixty, Ohio,
1:09:28
Speaker 1: finding the Magician's talismen that revealed the treasury of mineral wealth, gas,
1:09:33
Speaker 1: and petroleum beneath her fields, has leaped to a front
1:09:36
Speaker 1: rank among the manufacturing states of the Union, potential on
1:09:40
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes. By reason of reports of Toledo and
1:09:43
Speaker 1: Cleveland tapping the Ohio River artery of trade at Cincinnati
1:09:47
Speaker 1: and closely connected with all the vast material development of
1:09:51
Speaker 1: the upper waters of this river in western Pennsylvania and
1:09:54
Speaker 1: West Virginia, Ohio has become distinctly a part of the
1:09:57
Speaker 1: Eastern social organism, much less the state of Pennsylvania. The
1:10:01
Speaker 1: complexity of her origin still persists. Ohio has no preponderant
1:10:06
Speaker 1: social center. Her multiplicity of colleges and universities bears tribute
1:10:11
Speaker 1: to the diversity of the elements that have made the state.
1:10:14
Speaker 1: One third of her people are of foreign parentage, one
1:10:17
Speaker 1: or both parents foreign born, and the city of Cincinnati
1:10:20
Speaker 1: has been deeply affected by the German stock. While Cleveland
1:10:24
Speaker 1: strongly reflects the influence of the New England element. That
1:10:27
Speaker 1: influence is still very palpable, but it is New England
1:10:31
Speaker 1: in the presence of natural gas, iron and coal. New
1:10:34
Speaker 1: England shaped by blast and forge. The Middle State ideals
1:10:38
Speaker 1: will dominate Ohio's future. Bucolic Indiana, too, within the last decade,
1:10:43
Speaker 1: has come into the possession of gas fields and has
1:10:46
Speaker 1: increased the exploitation of her coals until she seems destined
1:10:50
Speaker 1: to share in the industrial type represented by Ohio. Cities
1:10:54
Speaker 1: have arisen like a dream on the sites of country villages,
1:10:58
Speaker 1: But Indiana has a much smaller proportion of foreign elements
1:11:01
Speaker 1: than any other state of the Old Northwest, and it
1:11:04
Speaker 1: is the southern element that still differentiates her from her sisters.
1:11:08
Speaker 1: While Ohio's political leaders still attest the Puritan migration, Indiana's
1:11:13
Speaker 1: class pans with the leaders from the south, the southern
1:11:16
Speaker 1: elements continue also to reveal themselves in the democratic southwestern
1:11:20
Speaker 1: counties of Illinois grouped like a broad delta of the
1:11:23
Speaker 1: Illinois River. While northern Illinois holds a larger proportion of
1:11:27
Speaker 1: descendants of the Middle States and New England, about one
1:11:30
Speaker 1: half her population is a foreign parentage, in which the
1:11:34
Speaker 1: German Irish and Scandinavians furnish the largest elements. She is
1:11:39
Speaker 1: a great agricultural state and a great manufacturing state, the
1:11:42
Speaker 1: connecting link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. Her metropolis, Chicago,
1:11:48
Speaker 1: is the very type of Northwestern development, for good and
1:11:51
Speaker 1: for evil. It is an epitome of her composite nationality.
1:11:55
Speaker 1: A recent writer analyzing the school census of Chicago points
1:11:59
Speaker 1: out that quote, only two cities in the German Empire,
1:12:03
Speaker 1: Berlin and Hamburg, have a greater German population than Chicago.
1:12:07
Speaker 1: Only two in Sweden, Stockholm and Gothborg have more Swedes,
1:12:12
Speaker 1: and only two in Norway Christiania and Bergen have more
1:12:16
Speaker 1: Norwegians end of quote, while the Irish, Polish, Bohemians, and
1:12:20
Speaker 1: Dutch elements are also largely represented. But in spite of
1:12:24
Speaker 1: her rapidity of growth and her complex elements, Chicago stands
1:12:28
Speaker 1: as the representative of the will power and genius for
1:12:31
Speaker 1: action of the Middle West, and the state of Illinois
1:12:33
Speaker 1: will be the battleground for social and economic ideals for
1:12:37
Speaker 1: the next generation. Michigan is two states, the northern peninsulas
1:12:42
Speaker 1: cut off from the southern physically, industrially, and in the
1:12:45
Speaker 1: history of settlement. It would seem that her natural destiny
1:12:49
Speaker 1: was with Wisconsin or some possible new state, embracing the
1:12:53
Speaker 1: iron and copper forest and shipping areas of Michigan, Wisconsin,
1:12:57
Speaker 1: and Minnesota on Lake Superior. Peninsula. Of Michigan is the
1:13:01
Speaker 1: daughter of New York, and over twelve percent of Michigan's
1:13:04
Speaker 1: present population were born in that state, and her traits
1:13:07
Speaker 1: are those of the parent state. Over half her population
1:13:11
Speaker 1: is a foreign parentage, of which Canada and England together
1:13:14
Speaker 1: have furnished one half, while the Germans outnumber any other
1:13:18
Speaker 1: single foreign element. The state has undergone a steady industrial development,
1:13:23
Speaker 1: exploiting her northern mines and forests, developing her lumber interests,
1:13:27
Speaker 1: with Saginaw as the center, raising fruits along the lake
1:13:30
Speaker 1: shore counties and producing grain in the middle trough of
1:13:33
Speaker 1: counties running from Saginaw Bay to the south of Lake Michigan.
1:13:37
Speaker 1: Her state University has been her peculiar glory, furnishing the
1:13:41
Speaker 1: first model for the state university, and it is the
1:13:44
Speaker 1: educational contribution of the Northwest to the nation. Wisconsin's future
1:13:49
Speaker 1: is dependent upon the influence of the large proportion of
1:13:51
Speaker 1: her population of foreign parentage. For nearly three fourths of
1:13:55
Speaker 1: her inhabitants are of that class. She thus has a
1:13:58
Speaker 1: smaller percentage of native population than any other of the
1:14:02
Speaker 1: states formed from the Old Northwest. Of this foreign element,
1:14:06
Speaker 1: the Germans constitute by far the largest part, with the
1:14:09
Speaker 1: Scandinavians second. Her American population born outside of Wisconsin comes
1:14:14
Speaker 1: chiefly from New York. In contrast with the Ohio River states,
1:14:18
Speaker 1: she lacks the southern element. Her greater foreign population and
1:14:22
Speaker 1: her dairy interests contrast with Michigans Canadian and English elements
1:14:26
Speaker 1: and fruit culture. Her relations are more Western than Michigans.
1:14:30
Speaker 1: By reason of her connection with the Mississippi and the
1:14:33
Speaker 1: Prairie States, her foreign element is slightly less than Minnesota's,
1:14:37
Speaker 1: and in the latter state the Scandinavians take the place
1:14:40
Speaker 1: held by the Germans. In Wisconsin, the facility with which
1:14:44
Speaker 1: the Scandinavians catch the spirit of Western America and assimilate
1:14:48
Speaker 1: with their neighbors is much greater than is the case
1:14:50
Speaker 1: with the Germans, so that Wisconsin seems to offer opportunity
1:14:54
Speaker 1: for non English influence in a greater degree than her
1:14:57
Speaker 1: sister on the West. While Minnesota's economic development has heretofore
1:15:01
Speaker 1: been closely dependent on the wheat producing prairies. The opening
1:15:05
Speaker 1: of the iron fields of the Mesabi and Vermilion Ranges,
1:15:08
Speaker 1: together with the development of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Duluth
1:15:12
Speaker 1: and West Superior, and the prospective achievement of a deep
1:15:15
Speaker 1: water communication with the Atlantic, seem to offer to that
1:15:18
Speaker 1: state a new and imperial industrial destiny. Between this stupendous
1:15:23
Speaker 1: economic future to the northwest and the colossal growth of
1:15:26
Speaker 1: Chicago on the southeast, Wisconsin seems likely to become a
1:15:30
Speaker 1: middle agricultural area, developing particularly into a dairy state. She
1:15:35
Speaker 1: is powerfully affected by the conservative tendencies of her German
1:15:39
Speaker 1: element in times of political agitation and of proposals of
1:15:42
Speaker 1: social change. Some of the social modifications in this state
1:15:47
Speaker 1: are more or less typical of important processes at work
1:15:50
Speaker 1: among the neighboring states of the Old Northwest. In the north,
1:15:54
Speaker 1: the men who built up the lumber interests of the state,
1:15:56
Speaker 1: who found it a mill town surrounded by the stumps
1:15:59
Speaker 1: of the pine forests which they exploited for the prairie markets,
1:16:02
Speaker 1: have acquired wealth and political power. The spacious and well
1:16:06
Speaker 1: appointed home of the town builder may now be seen
1:16:09
Speaker 1: in many a northern community in a group of less
1:16:11
Speaker 1: pretentious homes of operatives and tradesmen, the social distinctions between
1:16:15
Speaker 1: them emphasized by the difference in nationality. A few years before,
1:16:20
Speaker 1: this captain of industry was perhaps actively engaged in the
1:16:23
Speaker 1: task of seeking the best forties or directing the operations
1:16:26
Speaker 1: of his log drivers. His wife and daughters make extensive
1:16:30
Speaker 1: visits to Europe, his sons go to some university, and
1:16:33
Speaker 1: he himself is likely to acquire political position or to
1:16:37
Speaker 1: devote his energies to saving the town from industrial decline
1:16:40
Speaker 1: as the timbers cut away by transforming it into a
1:16:43
Speaker 1: manufacturing center for more finished products. Still others continue their
1:16:47
Speaker 1: activity among the forests of the south. This social history
1:16:51
Speaker 1: of the timber areas of Wisconsin has left clear indications
1:16:54
Speaker 1: in the development of the peculiar political leadership in the
1:16:58
Speaker 1: northern portion of the state. In the southern and middle
1:17:01
Speaker 1: counties of the state, the original settlement of the Native
1:17:04
Speaker 1: American pioneer farmer, a tendency is showing itself to divide
1:17:08
Speaker 1: the farms and to sell to thrifty Germans, or to
1:17:11
Speaker 1: cultivate the soil by tenants. While the farmer retires to
1:17:14
Speaker 1: live in the neighboring village, and perhaps to organize creameries
1:17:18
Speaker 1: and develop a dairy business. The result is that a
1:17:21
Speaker 1: replacement of nationalities is in progress. Townships and even counties
1:17:25
Speaker 1: once dominated by Native American farmers of New York extraction
1:17:29
Speaker 1: are now possessed by Germans or other European nationalities. Large
1:17:34
Speaker 1: portions of the retail trades of the towns are also
1:17:36
Speaker 1: passing into German hands. While the native element seeks the cities,
1:17:40
Speaker 1: the professions, or mercantile enterprises of larger character, the non
1:17:44
Speaker 1: native element shows distinct tendencies to dwell in groups. One
1:17:48
Speaker 1: of the most striking illustrations of this fact is the
1:17:51
Speaker 1: community of New Glarus in Wisconsin, formed by a carefully
1:17:55
Speaker 1: organized migration from Glarus in Switzerland, aided by the canton itself.
1:18:00
Speaker 1: For some years this community was a miniature Swiss canton
1:18:03
Speaker 1: in social organization and customs, but of late it has
1:18:06
Speaker 1: become increasingly assimilated to the American type and is left
1:18:10
Speaker 1: and impressed by transforming the county in which it is
1:18:13
Speaker 1: from a grain raising to a dairy region. From Milwaukee
1:18:16
Speaker 1: as a center. The influence of the Germans upon the
1:18:19
Speaker 1: social customs and ideals of Wisconsin has been marked. Milwaukee
1:18:23
Speaker 1: has many of the aspects of a German city and
1:18:26
Speaker 1: has furnished a stronghold of resistance to Native American efforts
1:18:30
Speaker 1: to enact rigid temperance legislation, laws regulative of parochial schools,
1:18:35
Speaker 1: and similar attempts to bend the German type to the
1:18:38
Speaker 1: social ideas of the pioneer American stock. In the last
1:18:41
Speaker 1: presidential election, the German area of the state deserted the
1:18:45
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, and its opposition to free silver was a
1:18:48
Speaker 1: decisive factor in the overwhelming victory of the Republicans in Wisconsin.
1:18:53
Speaker 1: With all the evidence of the persistence of the influence
1:18:56
Speaker 1: of this nationality, it is nevertheless clear that each decade
1:19:00
Speaker 1: marks an increased assimilation and homogeneity in the state, But
1:19:03
Speaker 1: the result is a compromise and not a conquest by
1:19:07
Speaker 1: either element. End of Section twenty eight, Chapter eight Dominant
1:19:12
Speaker 1: Forces in Western Life, Part three. The states of the
1:19:17
Speaker 1: Old Northwest gave to McKinley a plurality of over three
1:19:20
Speaker 1: hundred sixty seven thousand out of a total vote of
1:19:23
Speaker 1: about three million, seven hundred thirty four thousand. New England
1:19:27
Speaker 1: and the Middle States together gave him a plurality of
1:19:30
Speaker 1: nine hundred seventy nine thousand in about the same vote,
1:19:33
Speaker 1: while the farther west gave to Brian a decisive net plurality.
1:19:38
Speaker 1: It thus appears that the Old Northwest occupied the position
1:19:41
Speaker 1: of a political middle region between East and West. The
1:19:45
Speaker 1: significance of this position is manifest when it is recalled
1:19:48
Speaker 1: that this section is the child of the East and
1:19:51
Speaker 1: the mother of the populistic West. The occupation of the
1:19:54
Speaker 1: Western Prairies was determined by forces similar to those which
1:19:58
Speaker 1: settled the Old Northwest in the decade before the war.
1:20:02
Speaker 1: Minnesota succeeded to the place held by Wisconsin as the
1:20:05
Speaker 1: mecca of settlers in the prior decade. To Wisconsin and
1:20:09
Speaker 1: New York, she owes the largest proportion of her native
1:20:11
Speaker 1: settlers born outside of the state. Kansas and Nebraska were
1:20:15
Speaker 1: settled most rapidly in the decade following the war, and
1:20:18
Speaker 1: had a large proportion of soldiers in their American immigrants.
1:20:22
Speaker 1: Illinois and Ohio together furnished about one third of the
1:20:25
Speaker 1: native settlers of these states, but the element coming from
1:20:29
Speaker 1: Southern states was stronger in Kansas than in Nebraska. Both
1:20:33
Speaker 1: these states have an exceptionally large proportion of Native whites
1:20:36
Speaker 1: as compared with their neighbors. Among the prairie states, Kansas,
1:20:40
Speaker 1: for example, has about twenty six percent of persons of
1:20:43
Speaker 1: foreign parentage, while Nebraska has about forty two, Iowa forty three,
1:20:47
Speaker 1: South Dakota sixty, Wisconsin seventy three, Minnesota seventy five, and
1:20:52
Speaker 1: North Dakota seventy nine. North Dakota's development was greatest in
1:20:57
Speaker 1: the decade prior to eighteen ninety. State came in largest
1:21:01
Speaker 1: numbers from Wisconsin, with New York, Minnesota, and Iowa next
1:21:05
Speaker 1: in order. The growth of South Dakota occupied the two
1:21:08
Speaker 1: decades prior to the census of eighteen ninety, and she
1:21:11
Speaker 1: has recruited her native element from Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and
1:21:15
Speaker 1: New York. In consequence of the large migration from the
1:21:19
Speaker 1: states of the Old Northwest to the virgin soils of
1:21:22
Speaker 1: these prairie states, many counties in the parent states show
1:21:26
Speaker 1: a considerable declining growth in the decade before eighteen ninety.
1:21:30
Speaker 1: There is significance in the fact that, with the exception
1:21:33
Speaker 1: of Iowa, these prairie states, the colonies of the Old
1:21:36
Speaker 1: Northwest gave Brian votes in the election of eighteen ninety
1:21:40
Speaker 1: six in the ratio of their proportion of persons of
1:21:43
Speaker 1: native parentage. North Dakota, with the heaviest foreign element, was
1:21:47
Speaker 1: carried from McKinley, while South Dakota, with a much smaller
1:21:50
Speaker 1: foreign vote, went for Bryant. Kansas and Nebraska ranked with
1:21:54
Speaker 1: Ohio in their native percentage, and they were the center
1:21:57
Speaker 1: of Prairie populism. Of course, there were other important local,
1:22:01
Speaker 1: economic and political explanations for this ratio, but it seems
1:22:05
Speaker 1: to have a basis of real meaning. Certain it is
1:22:08
Speaker 1: that the leaders of the Silver movement came from the
1:22:10
Speaker 1: native element furnished by the Old Northwest. The original populace
1:22:15
Speaker 1: in the Kansas Legislature of eighteen ninety one were born
1:22:18
Speaker 1: in different states as follows in Ohio twelve, Indiana six,
1:22:23
Speaker 1: Illinois five, New York four, Pennsylvania two, Connecticut, Vermont and
1:22:29
Speaker 1: Maine one each, making a total for the Northern current
1:22:32
Speaker 1: of thirty two of the remaining eighteen thirteen were from
1:22:36
Speaker 1: the South, and one each from Kansas, Missouri, California, England,
1:22:41
Speaker 1: and Ireland. Nearly all were Methodists and former Republicans. Looking
1:22:46
Speaker 1: at the Silver Movement more largely, we find that of
1:22:49
Speaker 1: the Kansas delegation in the fifty fourth Congress. One was
1:22:52
Speaker 1: born in Kansas, and the rest in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
1:22:57
Speaker 1: West Virginia, and Maine. All of the Nebraska delegation in
1:23:00
Speaker 1: the House came from the Old Northwest or from Iowa.
1:23:03
Speaker 1: The biographies of the two representatives from the state of
1:23:07
Speaker 1: Washington tell an interesting story. These men came as children
1:23:11
Speaker 1: to the pine woods of Wisconsin, took up public lands,
1:23:14
Speaker 1: and worked on the farm and in the pineries. One
1:23:17
Speaker 1: passed on to a homestead in Nebraska before settling in Washington.
1:23:21
Speaker 1: Thus they kept one stage ahead of the social transformations
1:23:24
Speaker 1: of the West. This is the usual training of the
1:23:27
Speaker 1: Western politicians. If the reader would see a picture of
1:23:31
Speaker 1: the representative Kansas populist, let him examine the family portraits
1:23:35
Speaker 1: of the Ohio farmer in the middle of the century.
1:23:38
Speaker 1: In a word, the populist is the American farmer who
1:23:41
Speaker 1: has kept in advance of the economic and social transformations
1:23:45
Speaker 1: that have overtaken those who remained behind. While doubtless investigation
1:23:50
Speaker 1: into the ancestry of the populists and silvermen who came
1:23:53
Speaker 1: to the prairies from the Old Northwest would show a
1:23:56
Speaker 1: large proportion of Southern origin. Yet the center of discontent
1:24:00
Speaker 1: seems to have been among the men of New England
1:24:02
Speaker 1: and New York. Current. If New England looks with Carothy's men,
1:24:05
Speaker 1: she may recognize in them the familiar lineaments of the
1:24:08
Speaker 1: embattled farmers who fired the shot heard round the world.
1:24:12
Speaker 1: The continuous advance of this pioneer stock from New England
1:24:15
Speaker 1: has preserved for us the older type of the pioneer
1:24:18
Speaker 1: of frontier New England. I do not overlook the transforming
1:24:22
Speaker 1: influences of the wilderness on this stock, ever since it
1:24:26
Speaker 1: left the earlier frontier to follow up the valleys of
1:24:28
Speaker 1: western Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, into western New York, into Ohio,
1:24:34
Speaker 1: into Iowa, and out to the arid plains of western
1:24:36
Speaker 1: Kansas and Nebraska. Nor do I overlook the peculiar industrial
1:24:40
Speaker 1: conditions of the Prairie states. But I desire to insist
1:24:44
Speaker 1: upon the other truth also, that these westward immigrants, keeping
1:24:48
Speaker 1: for generations in advance of the transforming industrial and social
1:24:52
Speaker 1: forces that have wrought so vast a revolution in the
1:24:55
Speaker 1: older regions of the East which they left, could not
1:24:58
Speaker 1: but preserve important aspects of the older farmer type in
1:25:02
Speaker 1: the arid West. These pioneers have halted and have turned
1:25:05
Speaker 1: to perceive an altered nation and changed social ideals. They
1:25:09
Speaker 1: see the sharp contrast between their traditional idea of America
1:25:13
Speaker 1: as the land of opportunity, the land of the self
1:25:16
Speaker 1: made man, free from class distinctions and from the power
1:25:19
Speaker 1: of wealth, and the existing America so unlike the earlier ideal.
1:25:24
Speaker 1: If we follow back the line of march of the
1:25:26
Speaker 1: Puritan farmer, we shall see how responsive he has always
1:25:30
Speaker 1: been to Isam's and how persistently he has resisted encroachments
1:25:34
Speaker 1: on his ideals of individual opportunity and democracy. He is
1:25:38
Speaker 1: the prophet of the higher law in Kansas before the
1:25:41
Speaker 1: Civil War. He is the prohibitionist of Iowa and Wisconsin,
1:25:45
Speaker 1: crying out against German customs as an invasion of his
1:25:48
Speaker 1: traditional ideals. He is the granger of Wisconsin, passing restrictive
1:25:52
Speaker 1: railroad legislation. He is the abolitionist, the anti Mason, the Millerite,
1:25:57
Speaker 1: the woman suffragist, the spiritual life the Mormon of Western
1:26:01
Speaker 1: New York. Follow him to his New England home. In
1:26:04
Speaker 1: the turbulent days of Shay's rebellion, paper money, stay and
1:26:08
Speaker 1: tender laws and land banks the radicals among these New
1:26:11
Speaker 1: England farmers hated lawyers and capitalists. Quote. I would not
1:26:16
Speaker 1: trust them, said Abraham White in the ratification Convention of
1:26:19
Speaker 1: Massachusetts in seventeen eighty eight. Though every one of them
1:26:22
Speaker 1: should be a Moses end of quote. Quote. These lawyers, cried,
1:26:26
Speaker 1: amos singletary, and men of learning and moneyed men that
1:26:30
Speaker 1: talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly to
1:26:33
Speaker 1: make us poor, illiterate people swallow the pill, expect to
1:26:36
Speaker 1: get into Congress themselves. They mean to get all the
1:26:39
Speaker 1: money into their hands, and then they will swallow up
1:26:42
Speaker 1: all us little folk, like the Leviathan. Mister President yea,
1:26:46
Speaker 1: just as the whale swallowed up Jonah end of quote.
1:26:49
Speaker 1: If the voice of Mary Ellen Lease sounds raucous to
1:26:52
Speaker 1: the New England man today, while it is sweet music
1:26:55
Speaker 1: in the ears of the Kansas farmer, let him ponder
1:26:58
Speaker 1: the utterances of these frontier four arms in the days
1:27:01
Speaker 1: of the Revolution. And if he is still doubtful of
1:27:03
Speaker 1: this spiritual kinship, let him read the words of the
1:27:06
Speaker 1: levelers and sectaries of Cromwell's army, the story of the
1:27:10
Speaker 1: political leaders who remained in the place of their birth
1:27:13
Speaker 1: and shared its economic changes. Differs from the story of
1:27:16
Speaker 1: those who, by moving to the west, continued on a
1:27:19
Speaker 1: new area the old social type in the throng of
1:27:23
Speaker 1: Scotch Irish pioneers that entered the uplands of the Carolinas
1:27:27
Speaker 1: in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, where the
1:27:29
Speaker 1: ancestors of Calhoun and of Andrew Jackson remaining in this region,
1:27:33
Speaker 1: Calhoun shared the transformations of the South Carolina interior. He
1:27:38
Speaker 1: saw it change from the area of the pioneer farmers
1:27:41
Speaker 1: to an area of great planners raising cotton by slave labor.
1:27:45
Speaker 1: This explains the transformation of the nationalist and protectionist Calhoun
1:27:49
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixteen into the state sovereignty and free trade.
1:27:53
Speaker 1: Calhoun Jackson, on the other hand, left the region while
1:27:56
Speaker 1: it was still a frontier, shared the frontier life of
1:27:59
Speaker 1: Tennessee and reflected the democracy and nationalism of his people.
1:28:04
Speaker 1: Henry Clay lived long enough in the kindred state of
1:28:06
Speaker 1: Kentucky to see it pass from a frontier to a
1:28:09
Speaker 1: settled community, and his views on slavery reflected the transitional
1:28:13
Speaker 1: history of that state. Lincoln, on the other hand, born
1:28:16
Speaker 1: in Kentucky in eighteen o nine, while the state was
1:28:19
Speaker 1: still under frontier conditions. Migrated in eighteen sixteen to Indiana
1:28:23
Speaker 1: and in eighteen thirty to Illinois. The pioneer influences of
1:28:27
Speaker 1: his community did much to shape his life, and the
1:28:30
Speaker 1: development of the raw frontiersmen into the statesman was not
1:28:34
Speaker 1: unlike the development of his own state. Political leaders who
1:28:37
Speaker 1: experienced the later growth of the Northwest, like Garfield, Hayes, Harrison,
1:28:42
Speaker 1: and mc kinley, show clearly the continued transformations of the section.
1:28:46
Speaker 1: But in the days when the Northwest was still in
1:28:49
Speaker 1: the gristle, she sent her sons into the newer West
1:28:52
Speaker 1: to continue the views of life and the policies of
1:28:55
Speaker 1: the half frontier region they had left. Today, the Northwest,
1:28:59
Speaker 1: standing betowred in her ancestral connections in the East and
1:29:02
Speaker 1: her children in the West, partly like the East, partly
1:29:05
Speaker 1: like the West, finds herself in a position strangely like
1:29:09
Speaker 1: that in the days of the slavery struggle, when her
1:29:11
Speaker 1: origins presented her a divided duty. But these issues are
1:29:15
Speaker 1: not with the same imperious which as was the issue
1:29:18
Speaker 1: of freedom or slavery. Looking at the Northwest as a whole,
1:29:22
Speaker 1: one sees in the character of its industries and in
1:29:25
Speaker 1: the elements of its population. It is identified on the
1:29:28
Speaker 1: east with the zone of states, including the Middle Region
1:29:31
Speaker 1: and New England. Cotton culture and the Negro make a
1:29:35
Speaker 1: clear line of division between the Old Northwest and the South,
1:29:39
Speaker 1: and yet in important historical ideals in the process of expansion,
1:29:43
Speaker 1: in the persistence of agricultural interests, in impulsiveness, in imperialistic
1:29:48
Speaker 1: ways of looking at the American destiny, in hero worship,
1:29:52
Speaker 1: in the newness of its present social structure, the Old
1:29:56
Speaker 1: Northwest has much in common with the South and the
1:29:58
Speaker 1: Far West. Behind her is the old pioneer past of
1:30:02
Speaker 1: simple democratic conditions and freedom of opportunity for all men.
1:30:07
Speaker 1: Before her is a superb industrial development, the brilliancy of
1:30:11
Speaker 1: success as evinced in a vast population, aggregate wealth and
1:30:15
Speaker 1: sectional power. End of Section twenty nine, Chapter nine, Contributions
1:30:21
Speaker 1: of the West to American Democracy, Part one. Political thought
1:30:26
Speaker 1: in the period of the French Revolution tended to treat
1:30:28
Speaker 1: democracy as an absolute system applicable to all times and
1:30:32
Speaker 1: to all peoples, a system that was to be created
1:30:35
Speaker 1: by the act of the people themselves on philosophical principles.
1:30:39
Speaker 1: Ever since that era, there has been an inclination on
1:30:42
Speaker 1: the part of writers on democracy to emphasize the analytical
1:30:45
Speaker 1: and theoretical treatment to the neglect of the underlying factors
1:30:49
Speaker 1: of historical development. If, however, we consider the underlying conditions
1:30:54
Speaker 1: and forces that create the democratic type of government, and
1:30:58
Speaker 1: at times contradict the external feth to which the name
1:31:01
Speaker 1: democracy is applied, we shall find that under this name
1:31:04
Speaker 1: there have appeared a multitude of political types radically unlike
1:31:08
Speaker 1: in fact. The careful student of history must therefore seek
1:31:13
Speaker 1: the explanation of the forms and changes of political institutions
1:31:17
Speaker 1: in the social and economic forces that determine them. To
1:31:20
Speaker 1: note that at any one time a nation may be
1:31:23
Speaker 1: called a democracy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy. Is not
1:31:27
Speaker 1: so important as to know what are the social and
1:31:30
Speaker 1: economic tendencies of the state. These are the vital forces
1:31:34
Speaker 1: that work beneath the surface and dominate the external form.
1:31:37
Speaker 1: It is to changes in the economic and social life
1:31:40
Speaker 1: of a people that we must look for the forces
1:31:43
Speaker 1: that ultimately create and modify organs of political action. For
1:31:48
Speaker 1: the time adaptation of political structure may be incomplete or concealed,
1:31:53
Speaker 1: old organs will be utilized to express new forces, and
1:31:56
Speaker 1: so gradual and subtle will be the change that it
1:31:58
Speaker 1: may hardly be recognized. The pseudo democracies under the Medici
1:32:03
Speaker 1: at Florence and under Augustus at Rome are familiar examples
1:32:06
Speaker 1: of this type. Or again, if the political structure be rigid,
1:32:11
Speaker 1: incapable of responding to the changes demanded by growth, the
1:32:14
Speaker 1: expensive forces of social and economic transformation may render it
1:32:18
Speaker 1: in some catastrophe like that of the French Revolution. In
1:32:22
Speaker 1: all these changes, both conscious ideals and unconscious social reorganization
1:32:27
Speaker 1: are at work. These facts are familiar to the student,
1:32:30
Speaker 1: and yet it is doubtful if they have been fully
1:32:33
Speaker 1: considered in connection with American democracy. For a century, at
1:32:37
Speaker 1: least in conventional expression, Americans have referred to a glorious
1:32:41
Speaker 1: constitution in explaining the stability and prosperity of their democracy.
1:32:46
Speaker 1: We have believed as a nation that other peoples had
1:32:49
Speaker 1: only to will our democratic institutions in order to repeat
1:32:53
Speaker 1: our own career. In dealing with Western contributions to democracy,
1:32:58
Speaker 1: it is essential that the considers which have just been
1:33:01
Speaker 1: mentioned shall be kept in mind. Whatever these contributions may
1:33:05
Speaker 1: have been, we find ourselves at the present time in
1:33:08
Speaker 1: an era of such profound economic and social transformation as
1:33:13
Speaker 1: to raise the question of the effect of these changes
1:33:15
Speaker 1: upon the democratic institutions of the United States. Within a decade,
1:33:20
Speaker 1: four marked changes have occurred in our national development. Taken together,
1:33:25
Speaker 1: they constitute a revolution. First, there is the exhaustion of
1:33:30
Speaker 1: the supply of free land and the closing of the
1:33:32
Speaker 1: movement of Western advance as an effective factor in American development.
1:33:37
Speaker 1: The first rough conquest of the wilderness is accomplished, and
1:33:40
Speaker 1: that great supply of free lands, which year after year
1:33:44
Speaker 1: has served to reinforce the democratic influences in the United States,
1:33:48
Speaker 1: is exhausted. It is true that vast tracts of government
1:33:52
Speaker 1: land are still untaken, but they constitute the mountain and
1:33:56
Speaker 1: arid regions. Only a small fraction of them capable of conquest,
1:34:00
Speaker 1: and then only by the application of capital and combined effort.
1:34:04
Speaker 1: The free lands that made the American pioneer have gone.
1:34:08
Speaker 1: In the second place, contemporaneously with this, there has been
1:34:11
Speaker 1: such a concentration of capital in the control of fundamental
1:34:14
Speaker 1: industries as to make a new epoch in the economic
1:34:18
Speaker 1: development of the United States. The iron, the coal, and
1:34:21
Speaker 1: the cattle of the country have all fallen under the
1:34:24
Speaker 1: domination of a few great corporations, with allied interests, and
1:34:28
Speaker 1: by the rapid combination of the important railroad systems and
1:34:31
Speaker 1: steamship lines. In concert with these same forces, even the
1:34:35
Speaker 1: bread stuffs and the manufactures of the nation are to
1:34:38
Speaker 1: some degree controlled in a similar way. This is largely
1:34:41
Speaker 1: the work of the last decade. The development of the
1:34:44
Speaker 1: great iron mines of Lake Superior occurred in the early nineties,
1:34:48
Speaker 1: and in the same decade came the combination by which
1:34:51
Speaker 1: the coal and the coke of the country, and the
1:34:53
Speaker 1: transportation systems that connect them with the iron mines, have
1:34:57
Speaker 1: been brought under a few concentrated management. Side by side
1:35:01
Speaker 1: with this concentration of capital has gone the combination of
1:35:05
Speaker 1: labour in the same vast industries. The one is, in
1:35:09
Speaker 1: a certain sense the concomitant of the other, but the
1:35:12
Speaker 1: movement acquires an additional significance because of the fact that
1:35:15
Speaker 1: during the past fifteen years the labour class has been
1:35:18
Speaker 1: so recruited by a tide of foreign immigration that this
1:35:22
Speaker 1: class is now largely made up of persons of foreign parentage.
1:35:26
Speaker 1: And the lines of cleavage which begin to appear in
1:35:28
Speaker 1: this country between capital and labour have been accentuated by
1:35:32
Speaker 1: distinctions of nationality. A third phenomenon, connected with the two
1:35:37
Speaker 1: just mentioned, is the expansion of the United States politically
1:35:40
Speaker 1: and commercially into lands beyond the seas. A cycle of
1:35:44
Speaker 1: American development has been completed. Up to the close of
1:35:47
Speaker 1: the War of eighteen twelve, this country was involved in
1:35:50
Speaker 1: the fortunes of the European state system. The first quarter
1:35:54
Speaker 1: of a century of our national existence was almost a
1:35:56
Speaker 1: continual struggle to prevent ourselves being drawn in to the
1:36:00
Speaker 1: European wars. At the close of that era of conflict,
1:36:04
Speaker 1: the United States set its face toward the West. It
1:36:07
Speaker 1: began the settlement and improvement of the vast interior of
1:36:10
Speaker 1: the country. Here was the field of our colonization, Here
1:36:14
Speaker 1: the field of our political activity. This process being completed,
1:36:18
Speaker 1: it is not strange that we find the United States
1:36:20
Speaker 1: again involved in world politics. The revolution that occurred four
1:36:25
Speaker 1: years ago, when the United States struck down that ancient
1:36:28
Speaker 1: nation under whose auspices the new World was discovered, is
1:36:32
Speaker 1: hardly yet more than dimly understood. The insular wreckage of
1:36:36
Speaker 1: the Spanish War, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, with the
1:36:39
Speaker 1: problems presented by the Hawaiian Islands, Cuba, the Isthmian Canal
1:36:43
Speaker 1: and China. All are indications of the new direction of
1:36:47
Speaker 1: the ship of state. And while we thus turn our
1:36:49
Speaker 1: attention overseas, our concentrated industrial strength has given us a
1:36:53
Speaker 1: striking power against the commerce of Europe that is already
1:36:56
Speaker 1: producing consternation in the Old World. Having completed the conquest
1:37:00
Speaker 1: of the wilderness, and having consolidated our interests, we are
1:37:04
Speaker 1: beginning to consider the relations of democracy and empire. And Fourth,
1:37:09
Speaker 1: the political parties of the United States now tend to
1:37:12
Speaker 1: divide on issues that involved the question of socialism. The
1:37:15
Speaker 1: rise of the Populist Party in the last decade and
1:37:18
Speaker 1: the acceptance of so many of its principles by the
1:37:21
Speaker 1: Democratic Party under the leadership of mister Bryan, show in
1:37:25
Speaker 1: striking manner the birth of new political ideas the reformation
1:37:29
Speaker 1: of the lines of political conflict. It is doubtful if
1:37:33
Speaker 1: in any ten years of American history more significant factors
1:37:36
Speaker 1: in our growth have revealed themselves. The struggle of the
1:37:40
Speaker 1: pioneer farmers to subdue the arid lands of the Great
1:37:43
Speaker 1: Plains in the eighties was followed by the official announcement
1:37:46
Speaker 1: of the extinction of the frontier line in eighteen ninety.
1:37:49
Speaker 1: The dramatic outcome of the Chicago Convention of eighteen ninety
1:37:52
Speaker 1: six marked the rise and power of the representatives of
1:37:56
Speaker 1: populistic change. Two years later came the Battle of Manila,
1:38:00
Speaker 1: which broke down the old isolation of the nation and
1:38:03
Speaker 1: started it on a path the goal of which no
1:38:05
Speaker 1: man can foretell. And finally, but two years ago, came
1:38:08
Speaker 1: that concentration of which the billion and a half dollar
1:38:12
Speaker 1: Steel Trust on the Union of the Northern Continental Railways
1:38:15
Speaker 1: are stupendous examples. Is it not obvious, then, that the
1:38:19
Speaker 1: student who seeks for the explanation of democracy in the
1:38:22
Speaker 1: social and economic forces that underlie political forms must make
1:38:27
Speaker 1: inquiry into the conditions that have produced our democratic institutions
1:38:32
Speaker 1: if he would estimate the effect of these vast changes.
1:38:35
Speaker 1: As a contribution to this inquiry, let us now turn
1:38:38
Speaker 1: to an examination of the part that the West has
1:38:40
Speaker 1: played in shaping our democracy. From the beginning of the
1:38:44
Speaker 1: settlement of America, the frontier regions have exercised a steady
1:38:48
Speaker 1: influence toward democracy. In Virginia, to take an example, it
1:38:52
Speaker 1: can be traced as early as the period of Bacon's
1:38:55
Speaker 1: Rebellion one hundred years before our declaration of independence. The
1:38:59
Speaker 1: small landholders, seeing that their powers were steadily passing into
1:39:02
Speaker 1: the hands of the wealthy planters who controlled church and
1:39:05
Speaker 1: state and lands, rose in revolt. A generation later, in
1:39:09
Speaker 1: the governorship of Alexander Spotswood, we find a contest between
1:39:13
Speaker 1: the frontier settlers and the property holding classes of the coast.
1:39:17
Speaker 1: The democracy with which Spotswood had to struggle, and of
1:39:20
Speaker 1: which he so bitterly complained, was a democracy made up
1:39:23
Speaker 1: of small landholders, of the newer immigrants, and of indented servants, who,
1:39:27
Speaker 1: at the expiration of their time of servitude, passing into
1:39:31
Speaker 1: the interior to take up lands and engage in pioneer farming.
1:39:34
Speaker 1: The War of the Regulation, just on the eve of
1:39:37
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, shows the steady persistence of this struggle
1:39:41
Speaker 1: between the classes of the interior and those of the coast.
1:39:44
Speaker 1: The Declaration of Grievances which the back counties of the
1:39:48
Speaker 1: Carolinas then drew up against the aristocracy that dominated the
1:39:51
Speaker 1: politics of those colonies exhibits the contest between the democracy
1:39:56
Speaker 1: of the frontier and the established classes, who apportioned to
1:39:59
Speaker 1: the legislature in such fashion as to secure effective control
1:40:03
Speaker 1: of the government. Indeed, in a period before the outbreak
1:40:06
Speaker 1: of the American Revolution, one can trace a distinct belt
1:40:09
Speaker 1: of democratic territory extending from the back country of New
1:40:13
Speaker 1: England down through western New York, Pennsylvania, and the South.
1:40:18
Speaker 1: In each colony, this region was in conflict with the
1:40:20
Speaker 1: dominant classes of the coast. It constituted a quasi revolutionary
1:40:25
Speaker 1: area before the days of the Revolution, and it formed
1:40:28
Speaker 1: the basis on which the Democratic Party was afterwards established.
1:40:32
Speaker 1: It was therefore, in the West, as it was in
1:40:35
Speaker 1: the period before the Declaration of Independence, that the struggle
1:40:39
Speaker 1: for democratic development first revealed itself, and in that area
1:40:42
Speaker 1: the essential ideas of American democracy had already appeared through
1:40:46
Speaker 1: the period of the Revolution and of the Confederation. A
1:40:49
Speaker 1: similar contest can be noted on the frontier of New England,
1:40:53
Speaker 1: along the western border of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas,
1:40:57
Speaker 1: and in the communities beyond the Alleghany Mountains. There arose
1:41:01
Speaker 1: a demand of the frontier settlers for independent statehood based
1:41:05
Speaker 1: on democratic provisions. There is a strain of fierceness in
1:41:09
Speaker 1: their energetic petitions demanding self government under the theory that
1:41:13
Speaker 1: every people have the right to establish their own political
1:41:15
Speaker 1: institutions in an area which they have won from the wilderness.
1:41:20
Speaker 1: Those revolutionary principles based on natural rights for which the
1:41:24
Speaker 1: seaboard colonies were contending were taken up with frontier energy
1:41:28
Speaker 1: in an attempt to apply them to the lands of
1:41:30
Speaker 1: the west. No one can read their petitions denouncing the
1:41:33
Speaker 1: control exercised by the wealthy landholders of the coast, appealing
1:41:37
Speaker 1: to the record of their conquest of the wilderness, and
1:41:40
Speaker 1: demanding the possession of the lands for which they have
1:41:43
Speaker 1: fought the Indians and which they had reduced by their
1:41:46
Speaker 1: acts to civilization, without recognizing in these frontier communities the
1:41:50
Speaker 1: cradle of a belligerent Western democracy. A fool can sometimes
1:41:55
Speaker 1: put on his coat better than a wise man can
1:41:57
Speaker 1: do it for him. Such is the philosophy of its
1:41:59
Speaker 1: tas petitioners. In this period also came the contests of
1:42:03
Speaker 1: the interior agricultural portion of New England against the coastwise
1:42:07
Speaker 1: merchants and property holders, of which Chay's rebellion is the
1:42:11
Speaker 1: best known, though by no means an isolated instance. By
1:42:15
Speaker 1: the time of the Constitutional Convention, this struggle for democracy
1:42:18
Speaker 1: had affected a fairly well defined division into parties. Although
1:42:22
Speaker 1: these parties did not at first recognize their inner state connections.
1:42:27
Speaker 1: There were similar issues on which they split in almost
1:42:29
Speaker 1: all the states. The demands for an issue of paper money,
1:42:33
Speaker 1: this stay of execution against debtors, and the relief against
1:42:37
Speaker 1: excessive taxation were found in every colony. In the interior
1:42:40
Speaker 1: agricultural regions. The rise of this significant movement wakened the
1:42:44
Speaker 1: apprehensions of the men of means, and in the debates
1:42:47
Speaker 1: over the basis of suffrage for the House of Representatives
1:42:50
Speaker 1: in the Constitutional Convention of seventeen eighty seven, leaders of
1:42:54
Speaker 1: the Conservative Party did not hesitate to demand that safeguards
1:42:58
Speaker 1: to the property should be furnished the coast against the interior.
1:43:02
Speaker 1: The outcome of the debate left the question of suffrage
1:43:04
Speaker 1: for the House of Representatives dependent upon the policy of
1:43:07
Speaker 1: the separate states. This was an effect imposing a property
1:43:11
Speaker 1: qualification throughout the nation as a whole, and it was
1:43:13
Speaker 1: only as the interior of the country developed that these
1:43:16
Speaker 1: restrictions gradually gave way in the direction of manhood suffrage.
1:43:22
Speaker 1: End of Section thirty, Chapter nine, Contributions of the West
1:43:26
Speaker 1: to American Democracy, Part two. All of these scattered democratic
1:43:31
Speaker 1: tendencies Jefferson combined in the period of Washington's presidency into
1:43:36
Speaker 1: the Democratic Republican Party. Jefferson was the first prophet of
1:43:40
Speaker 1: American democracy, and when we analyzed the essential features of
1:43:43
Speaker 1: his gospel, it is clear that the Western influence was
1:43:46
Speaker 1: the dominant element. Jefferson himself was born in the frontier
1:43:50
Speaker 1: region of Virginia, on the edge of the Blue Ridge
1:43:53
Speaker 1: in the middle of the eighteenth century. His father was
1:43:55
Speaker 1: a pioneer. Jefferson's notes on Virginia revealed clearly his head
1:44:00
Speaker 1: conception the democracy should have an agricultural basis, and that manufacturing,
1:44:05
Speaker 1: development and city life were dangerous to the purity of
1:44:08
Speaker 1: the body. Politic simplicity and economy and government. The right
1:44:12
Speaker 1: of revolution, the freedom of the individual, the belief that
1:44:15
Speaker 1: those who win the vacant lands are entitled to shape
1:44:18
Speaker 1: their own government in their own way. These are all
1:44:21
Speaker 1: parts of the platform of political principles to which he
1:44:24
Speaker 1: gave his adhesion, and they are all elements eminently characteristic
1:44:28
Speaker 1: of the Western democracy into which he was born. In
1:44:31
Speaker 1: the period of the Revolution, he had brought in a
1:44:33
Speaker 1: series of measures which tended to throw the power of
1:44:36
Speaker 1: Virginia into the hands of the settlers in the interior
1:44:39
Speaker 1: rather than of the coastwise aristocracy. The repeal of the
1:44:43
Speaker 1: laws of entail and primogeniture would have destroyed the great
1:44:46
Speaker 1: states on which the planning aristocracy based its power. The
1:44:50
Speaker 1: abolition of the established Church would still further have diminished
1:44:54
Speaker 1: the influence of the coastwise party in favor of the
1:44:56
Speaker 1: dissenting sects of the interior. His scheme of genera public
1:45:00
Speaker 1: education reflected the same tendency, and his demand for the
1:45:04
Speaker 1: abolition of slavery was characteristic of a representative of the
1:45:08
Speaker 1: west rather than of the old time aristocracy of the coast.
1:45:12
Speaker 1: His sympathy with the Western expansion culminated in the Louisiana purchase.
1:45:16
Speaker 1: In short, the tendencies of Jefferson's legislation were to replace
1:45:20
Speaker 1: the dominance of the planting aristocracy by the dominance of
1:45:24
Speaker 1: the interior class, which had sought in vain to achieve
1:45:27
Speaker 1: its liberties in the period of Bacon's rebellion. Nevertheless, Thomas
1:45:31
Speaker 1: Jefferson was the John the Baptist of democracy, not its Moses.
1:45:36
Speaker 1: Only with the slow setting of the tide of settlement
1:45:38
Speaker 1: farther and farther toward the interior did the democratic influence
1:45:42
Speaker 1: grow strong enough to take actual possession of the government.
1:45:45
Speaker 1: The period from eighteen hundred to eighteen twenty saw a
1:45:48
Speaker 1: steady increase in these tendencies. The established classes in New
1:45:52
Speaker 1: England and the South began to take alarm. Perhaps no
1:45:55
Speaker 1: better illustration of the apprehensions of the old time federal
1:45:59
Speaker 1: conservative can be given than these utterances of President Dwight
1:46:02
Speaker 1: of Yale College in the Book of Travels which he
1:46:05
Speaker 1: published in that period. The class of pioneers cannot live
1:46:09
Speaker 1: in regular society. They are too idle, too talkative, too passionate,
1:46:13
Speaker 1: too prodigal, and too shiftless to acquire either property or character.
1:46:18
Speaker 1: They are impatient of the restraints of law, religion, and morality,
1:46:21
Speaker 1: and grumble about the taxes by which the rulers, ministers,
1:46:25
Speaker 1: and schoolmasters are supported. After exposing the injustice of the
1:46:29
Speaker 1: community in neglecting to invest persons of such superior merit
1:46:33
Speaker 1: in public offices, in many an eloquent harangue, uttered by
1:46:37
Speaker 1: many a kitchen fire in every blacksmith's shop, in every
1:46:40
Speaker 1: corner of the streets, and finding all their efforts vain,
1:46:43
Speaker 1: they become at length discouraged, and under the pressure of poverty,
1:46:47
Speaker 1: the fear of the jail and consciousness of public contempt,
1:46:51
Speaker 1: leave their native places and betake themselves to the wilderness.
1:46:55
Speaker 1: End of such was a conservative's impression of that pioneer
1:46:59
Speaker 1: movement of New England colonists who had spread up the
1:47:02
Speaker 1: valley of the Connecticut into New Hampshire, Vermont, and western
1:47:05
Speaker 1: New York in the period of which he wrote, and
1:47:07
Speaker 1: who afterwards went on to possess the northwest. New England.
1:47:11
Speaker 1: Federalism looked with a shudder at the democratic ideas of
1:47:14
Speaker 1: those who refused to recognize the established order. But in
1:47:18
Speaker 1: that period there came into the Union a sisterhood of
1:47:20
Speaker 1: frontier states Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, with provisions for the
1:47:25
Speaker 1: franchise that brought in complete democracy. Even the newly created
1:47:30
Speaker 1: states of the Southwest showed the tendency. The wind of
1:47:33
Speaker 1: democracy blew so strongly from the West that even in
1:47:36
Speaker 1: the older states of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia,
1:47:40
Speaker 1: conventions were called which liberalized their constitutions by strengthening the
1:47:45
Speaker 1: democratic basis of the state. In the same time, the
1:47:48
Speaker 1: labor population of the cities began to assert its power
1:47:51
Speaker 1: and its determination to share in government. Of this frontier
1:47:54
Speaker 1: democracy which now took possession of the nation. Andrew Jackson
1:47:58
Speaker 1: was the very personification. He was born in the backwoods
1:48:01
Speaker 1: of the Carolinas, in the midst of the turbulent democracy
1:48:04
Speaker 1: that preceded the Revolution, and he grew up in the
1:48:07
Speaker 1: frontier state of Tennessee, in the midst of this region
1:48:10
Speaker 1: of personal feuds and frontier ideals of law. He quickly
1:48:13
Speaker 1: rose to leadership. The appearance of this frontiersman on the
1:48:17
Speaker 1: floor of Congress was an omen full of significance. He
1:48:20
Speaker 1: reached Philadelphia at the close of Washington's administration, having ridden
1:48:24
Speaker 1: on horseback nearly eight hundred miles to his destination. Gallatin, himself,
1:48:29
Speaker 1: a western man, describes Jackson as he entered the halls
1:48:32
Speaker 1: of Congress. Quote a tall, lank, uncouth looking personage, with
1:48:37
Speaker 1: long locks of hair hanging over his face and a
1:48:40
Speaker 1: cue down his back, tied in an eel skin, his
1:48:43
Speaker 1: dress singular, his manners those of a rough backwoodsman.
1:48:46
Speaker 2: End of quote.
1:48:47
Speaker 1: And Jefferson testified quote, when I was President of the Senate,
1:48:51
Speaker 1: he was a senator, and he could never speak on
1:48:54
Speaker 1: account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen
1:48:56
Speaker 1: him attempt it repeatedly and as often choke with rage.
1:49:01
Speaker 1: At last, the frontier, in the person of its typical man,
1:49:04
Speaker 1: had found a place in the government. The six foot
1:49:06
Speaker 1: backwoodsmen with blue eyes that could blaze on occasion. This choleric, impetuous,
1:49:11
Speaker 1: self willed, Scotch Irish leader of men, This expert, duellist
1:49:15
Speaker 1: and ready fighter, this embodiment of the tenacious, vehement personal West,
1:49:21
Speaker 1: was in politics to stay. The frontier democracy of that
1:49:24
Speaker 1: time had the instincts of the clansmen in the days
1:49:27
Speaker 1: of Scotch border warfare, vehement and tenacious. As the democracy
1:49:32
Speaker 1: was strenuously as each man contended with his neighbor for
1:49:35
Speaker 1: the spoils of the new country that opened before them,
1:49:38
Speaker 1: they all had respect for the man who best expressed
1:49:41
Speaker 1: their aspirations and their ideas. Every community had its hero.
1:49:45
Speaker 1: In the War of eighteen twelve and the subsequent Indian fighting,
1:49:49
Speaker 1: Jackson made good his claim not only to the loyalty
1:49:52
Speaker 1: of the people of Tennessee, but of the whole West,
1:49:54
Speaker 1: and even of the nation. He had the essential traits
1:49:57
Speaker 1: of the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier. It was a frontier
1:50:01
Speaker 1: free from the influence of European ideas and institutions. The
1:50:05
Speaker 1: men of the Western world turned their backs upon the
1:50:07
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean, and with a grim energy and self reliance,
1:50:11
Speaker 1: began to build up a society free from the dominance
1:50:14
Speaker 1: of ancient forms. The westerner defended himself and resented governmental restrictions.
1:50:19
Speaker 1: The duel and the blood feud found congenial soil in
1:50:23
Speaker 1: Kentucky and Tennessee. The idea of the personality of law
1:50:26
Speaker 1: was often dominant over the organized machinery of justice. That
1:50:30
Speaker 1: method was best, which was most direct and effective. The
1:50:33
Speaker 1: backwoodsman was intolerant of men who split hairs or scrupled
1:50:37
Speaker 1: over the method of reaching the right. In a word,
1:50:40
Speaker 1: the unchecked development of the individual was the significant product
1:50:44
Speaker 1: of this frontier democracy. It sought rather to express itself
1:50:47
Speaker 1: by choosing a man of the people than by the
1:50:50
Speaker 1: formation of elaborate governmental institutions. It was because Andrew Jackson
1:50:55
Speaker 1: personified these essential Western traits that in his presidency he
1:50:59
Speaker 1: became the idle and the mouthpiece of the popular will.
1:51:02
Speaker 1: In his assault upon the bank as an engine of aristocracy,
1:51:06
Speaker 1: and in his denunciation of nullification, he went directly to
1:51:09
Speaker 1: his object with the ruthless energy of a frontiersman. For
1:51:13
Speaker 1: formal law and the subtleties of state sovereignty, he had
1:51:16
Speaker 1: the contempt of a backwoodsman. Nor is it without significance
1:51:20
Speaker 1: that this typical man of the new democracy will always
1:51:23
Speaker 1: be associated with the triumph of the spoils system in
1:51:26
Speaker 1: national politics. To the new Democracy of the West, office
1:51:30
Speaker 1: was an opportunity to exercise natural rights as an equal
1:51:33
Speaker 1: citizen of the community. Rotation in office served not simply
1:51:37
Speaker 1: to allow the successful man to punish his enemies and
1:51:40
Speaker 1: reward his friends, but it also furnished the training in
1:51:43
Speaker 1: the actual conduct of political affairs which every American claimed
1:51:47
Speaker 1: as his birthright. Only in a primitive democracy of the
1:51:50
Speaker 1: type of the United States in eighteen thirty could such
1:51:53
Speaker 1: a system have existed without the ruin of the state.
1:51:56
Speaker 1: National government in that period was no complex and nicely
1:52:00
Speaker 1: adjusted machine, and the evils of the system were long
1:52:03
Speaker 1: in making themselves fully apparent. The triumph of Andrew Jackson
1:52:07
Speaker 1: marked the end of the old era of trained statesmen,
1:52:10
Speaker 1: for the presidency. With him began the era of the
1:52:13
Speaker 1: popular hero. Even Martin van Buren, whom we think of
1:52:16
Speaker 1: in connection with the East, was born in a log
1:52:19
Speaker 1: house under conditions that were not unlike parts of the
1:52:22
Speaker 1: older West. Harrison was the hero of the Northwest, as
1:52:25
Speaker 1: Jackson had been of the Southwest. Polk was a typical
1:52:28
Speaker 1: tennesseean eager to expand the nation, and Zachary Taylor was
1:52:32
Speaker 1: what Webster called a frontier colonel. During the period that
1:52:35
Speaker 1: followed Jackson, power passed from the region of Kentucky and
1:52:39
Speaker 1: Tennessee to the border of the Mississippi. The natural democratic
1:52:42
Speaker 1: tendencies that had earlier shown themselves in the Gulf States
1:52:45
Speaker 1: were destroyed, however, by the spread of cotton culture and
1:52:49
Speaker 1: the development of great plantations in that region. What had
1:52:52
Speaker 1: been typical of the democracy of the revolutionary frontier and
1:52:56
Speaker 1: of the frontier of Andrew Jackson was now to be
1:52:59
Speaker 1: seen in the states between the Ohio and the Mississippi.
1:53:02
Speaker 1: As Andrew Jackson is the typical democrat of the former region,
1:53:06
Speaker 1: so Abraham Lincoln is the very embodiment of the pioneer
1:53:09
Speaker 1: period of the old Northwest. Indeed, he is the embodiment
1:53:13
Speaker 1: of the democracy of the West. How can one speak
1:53:16
Speaker 1: of him except in the words of Lowell's great commemoration
1:53:19
Speaker 1: ode quote for him. Her old world molds aside, she threw, and,
1:53:24
Speaker 1: choosing sweet clay from the breast of the unexhausted West,
1:53:28
Speaker 1: with stuff untainted, shaped a hero new wise, steadfast in
1:53:32
Speaker 1: the strength of God and true. His was no lonely
1:53:36
Speaker 1: mountain peak of mind thrusting to thin air. Are our
1:53:39
Speaker 1: cloudy bars, a sea mark now now lost in vapors, blind,
1:53:43
Speaker 1: broad prairie, rather genial, level lined, fruitful and friendly for
1:53:47
Speaker 1: all human kind, yet also nigh to Heaven and loved
1:53:51
Speaker 1: of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here or then of
1:53:55
Speaker 1: Europe fronting mornwards still ere any names of serf and
1:53:59
Speaker 1: peer could nature's equal scheme to face new birth of
1:54:03
Speaker 1: our new soil the first American end The pioneer life
1:54:07
Speaker 1: from which Lincoln came differed in important respects from the
1:54:10
Speaker 1: frontier democracy typified by Andrew Jackson. Jackson's democracy was contentious, individualistic,
1:54:17
Speaker 1: and it sought the ideal of local government and expansion.
1:54:20
Speaker 1: Lincoln represents rather the pioneer folk who entered the forest
1:54:24
Speaker 1: of the Great Northwest to chop out a home to
1:54:27
Speaker 1: build up their fortunes in the midst of a continually
1:54:30
Speaker 1: ascending industrial movement. In the democracy of the Southwest, industrial
1:54:34
Speaker 1: development and city life were only minor factors, but to
1:54:37
Speaker 1: the democracy of the Northwest, they were its very life.
1:54:41
Speaker 1: To widen the area of the clearing, to contend with
1:54:44
Speaker 1: one another for the mastery of the industrial resources of
1:54:47
Speaker 1: the rich provinces, to struggle for a place in the
1:54:50
Speaker 1: ascending movement of society. To transmit to one's offspring the
1:54:54
Speaker 1: chance for education, for industrial betterment, for the rise in
1:54:57
Speaker 1: life which the hardships of the pioneer existed, denied to
1:55:00
Speaker 1: the pioneer himself. These were some of the ideals of
1:55:03
Speaker 1: the region to which Lincoln came. The men were commonwealth builders,
1:55:07
Speaker 1: industry builders. Whereas the type of hero in the Southwest
1:55:11
Speaker 1: was militant, in the Northwest, he was industrial. It was
1:55:15
Speaker 1: in the midst of these plain people, as he loved
1:55:17
Speaker 1: to call them, that Lincoln grew to manhood. As Emerson says, quote,
1:55:22
Speaker 1: he is the true history of the American people in
1:55:24
Speaker 1: his time, end of quote. The years of his early
1:55:27
Speaker 1: life were the years when the democracy of the Northwest
1:55:30
Speaker 1: came into struggle with the institution of slavery, which threatened
1:55:34
Speaker 1: to forbid the expansion of the democratic pioneer life in
1:55:37
Speaker 1: the West. In President Eliot's essay on five American Contributions
1:55:41
Speaker 1: to Civilization. He instances as one of the supreme tests
1:55:45
Speaker 1: of American democracy its attitude upon the question of slavery.
1:55:50
Speaker 1: But if democracy chose wisely and worked effectively toward the
1:55:53
Speaker 1: solution of this problem, it must be remembered that Western
1:55:56
Speaker 1: democracy took the lead. The rail splitter himself became the
1:56:00
Speaker 1: nation's president in that fierce time of struggle, and armies
1:56:04
Speaker 1: of the woodsmen and pioneer farmers recruited in the old
1:56:07
Speaker 1: Northwest made free. The Father of Waters marched through Georgia
1:56:11
Speaker 1: and helped to force the struggle to a conclusion. At Appomattox,
1:56:15
Speaker 1: the free pioneer democracy struck down the slaveholding aristocracy on
1:56:20
Speaker 1: its march to the West. The last chapter in the
1:56:23
Speaker 1: development of Western democracy is the one that deals with
1:56:26
Speaker 1: its conquest over the vast spaces of the New West.
1:56:30
Speaker 1: At each new stage of Western development, the people have
1:56:33
Speaker 1: had to grapple with larger areas with bigger combinations. The
1:56:37
Speaker 1: little colony of Massachusetts veterans that settled at Marietta received
1:56:41
Speaker 1: a land grant as large as the state of Rhode Island.
1:56:44
Speaker 1: The Band of Connecticut pioneers that followed Moses Cleveland to
1:56:48
Speaker 1: the Connecticut Reserve occupied a region as large as the
1:56:51
Speaker 1: parent state. The area which settlers of New England stock
1:56:54
Speaker 1: occupied on the prairies of northern Illinois surpassed the combined
1:56:58
Speaker 1: area of Massachuset, Its, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Men who
1:57:02
Speaker 1: had become accustomed to the narrow valleys and the little
1:57:05
Speaker 1: towns of the East found themselves out on the boundless
1:57:08
Speaker 1: spaces of the West, dealing with units of such magnitude
1:57:11
Speaker 1: as dwarfed their former experience. The Great Lakes, the Prairies,
1:57:15
Speaker 1: the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi, and the
1:57:18
Speaker 1: Missouri furnished new standards of measurement. For the achievement of
1:57:22
Speaker 1: this industrial democracy, Individualism began to give way to cooperation
1:57:27
Speaker 1: and to governmental activity. Even in the earlier days of
1:57:31
Speaker 1: the democratic conquest of the wilderness, demands had been made
1:57:34
Speaker 1: upon the government for support and internal improvements, But this
1:57:38
Speaker 1: new West showed a growing tendency to call to its
1:57:41
Speaker 1: assistance the powerful arm of national authority. In the period
1:57:45
Speaker 1: since the Civil War, the vast public domain has been
1:57:48
Speaker 1: donated to the individual farmer, to states for education, to
1:57:52
Speaker 1: railroads for the construction of transportation lines. Moreover, with the
1:57:57
Speaker 1: advent of democracy in the last fifteen years upon on
1:58:00
Speaker 1: the Great Plains, new physical conditions have presented themselves which
1:58:04
Speaker 1: have accelerated the social tendency of Western democracy. The pioneer
1:58:08
Speaker 1: farmer of the days of Lincoln could place his family
1:58:11
Speaker 1: on a flatboat, strike into the wilderness, cut out his clearing,
1:58:15
Speaker 1: and with little or no capital, go on to the
1:58:17
Speaker 1: achievement of industrial independence. Even the homesteader on the western
1:58:21
Speaker 1: prairies found it possible to work out a similar independent destiny,
1:58:25
Speaker 1: although the factor of transportation made a serious and increasing
1:58:29
Speaker 1: impediment to the free working out of his individual career.
1:58:32
Speaker 1: But when the arid lands and the mineral resources of
1:58:35
Speaker 1: the far West were reached, no conquest was possible by
1:58:38
Speaker 1: the old individual pioneer methods. Here, expensive irrigation works must
1:58:43
Speaker 1: be constructed. Cooperative activity was demanded in utilization of the
1:58:47
Speaker 1: water supply. Capital beyond reach of the small farmer was required.
1:58:52
Speaker 1: In a word, the physiographic province itself decreed that the
1:58:55
Speaker 1: destiny of this new frontier should be social rather than individual.
1:59:01
Speaker 1: End of Section thirty one, Chapter nine, Contributions of the
1:59:05
Speaker 1: West to American democracy. Part three. Magnitude of social achievement
1:59:11
Speaker 1: is the watchword of the democracy since the Civil War.
1:59:14
Speaker 1: From petty towns built in the Marshes, cities arose whose
1:59:18
Speaker 1: greatness and industrial power are the wonder of our time.
1:59:21
Speaker 1: The conditions were ideal for the production of captains of industry.
1:59:26
Speaker 1: The old democratic admiration for the self made man, its
1:59:29
Speaker 1: old deference to the rights of competitive individual development, together
1:59:34
Speaker 1: with the stupendous natural resources that opened to the conquest
1:59:37
Speaker 1: of the keenest and the strongest, gave such conditions of
1:59:41
Speaker 1: mobility as enabled the development of the large corporate industries
1:59:45
Speaker 1: which in our own decade have marked the West. Thus,
1:59:49
Speaker 1: in brief have been outlined the chief phases of the
1:59:51
Speaker 1: development of Western democracy in the different areas which it
1:59:55
Speaker 1: is conquered. There has been a steady development of the
1:59:58
Speaker 1: industrial ideal and a steady inc of the social tendency
2:00:02
Speaker 1: in this later movement of Western democracy. While the individualism
2:00:06
Speaker 1: of the frontier, so prominent in the earliest days of
2:00:08
Speaker 1: the Western advance, has been preserved as an ideal, More
2:00:12
Speaker 1: and more these individuals, struggling each with the other, dealing
2:00:16
Speaker 1: with vaster and vaster areas with larger and larger problems
2:00:20
Speaker 1: have found it necessary to combine under the leadership of
2:00:23
Speaker 1: the strongest. This is the explanation of the rise of
2:00:26
Speaker 1: those pre eminent captains of industry whose genius has concentrated
2:00:30
Speaker 1: capital to control the fundamental resources of the nation. If now,
2:00:34
Speaker 1: in the way of recapitulation, we try to pick out
2:00:37
Speaker 1: from the influences that have gone to the making of
2:00:39
Speaker 1: Western democracy the factors which constitute the net result of
2:00:43
Speaker 1: this movement, we shall have to mention at least the following.
2:00:47
Speaker 1: Most important of all has been the fact that an
2:00:49
Speaker 1: area of freeland has continually lain on the western border
2:00:53
Speaker 1: of the settled area of the United States. Whenever social
2:00:56
Speaker 1: conditions tended to crystallize in the east, or capital tended
2:01:01
Speaker 1: to press upon labor or political restraints to impede the
2:01:04
Speaker 1: freedom of the mass, there was this gate of escape
2:01:08
Speaker 1: to the free conditions of the frontier. These free lands
2:01:11
Speaker 1: promoted individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise democracy. Men would
2:01:17
Speaker 1: not accept inferior wages and a permanent position of social subordination.
2:01:22
Speaker 1: When this promised land of freedom and equality was theirs
2:01:25
Speaker 1: for the taking. Who would rest content under oppressive legislative conditions,
2:01:30
Speaker 1: when with a slight effort he might reach a land
2:01:32
Speaker 1: wherein to become a coworker in the building of free
2:01:35
Speaker 1: cities and free states on the lines of his own ideal.
2:01:38
Speaker 1: In a word, then free lands meant free opportunities. Their
2:01:42
Speaker 1: existence has differentiated the American democracy from the democracies which
2:01:47
Speaker 1: have preceded it, because, ever as democracy in the East
2:01:50
Speaker 1: took the form of highly specialized and complicated industrial society,
2:01:55
Speaker 1: in the West it kept in touch with primitive conditions,
2:01:58
Speaker 1: and by action and reaction, these two forces have shaped
2:02:01
Speaker 1: our history. In the next place, these free lands and
2:02:05
Speaker 1: this treasury of industrial resources have existed over such vast
2:02:09
Speaker 1: spaces that they have demanded of democracy, increasing spaciousness of
2:02:14
Speaker 1: design and power of execution. Western democracy is contrasted with
2:02:18
Speaker 1: the democracy of all other times in the largeness of
2:02:21
Speaker 1: the tasks to which it is set at hand, and
2:02:24
Speaker 1: in the vast achievements which it is wrought out in
2:02:26
Speaker 1: the control of nature and of politics. It would be
2:02:30
Speaker 1: difficult to overemphasize the importance of this training upon democracy.
2:02:34
Speaker 1: Never before in the history of the world has a
2:02:36
Speaker 1: democracy existed on so vast an area and handled things
2:02:40
Speaker 1: in the gross with such success, with such largeness of
2:02:44
Speaker 1: design and such grasp upon the means of execution. In short,
2:02:48
Speaker 1: democracy has learned in the West of the United States
2:02:52
Speaker 1: how to deal with the problem of magnitude. The old
2:02:55
Speaker 1: historic democracies were but little states with primitive economic conditions.
2:03:00
Speaker 1: But the very task of dealing with vast resources over
2:03:04
Speaker 1: vast areas under the conditions of free competition furnished by
2:03:08
Speaker 1: the West has produced the rise of those captains of industry,
2:03:12
Speaker 1: whose success in consolidating economic power now raises the question
2:03:17
Speaker 1: as to whether democracy under such conditions can survive. For
2:03:21
Speaker 1: the old military type of Western leaders like George Rogers Clark,
2:03:25
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson, and William Henry Harrison have been substituted such
2:03:30
Speaker 1: industrial leaders as James J. Hill, John D. Rockefeller, and
2:03:34
Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie. The question is imperative, then, what ideals persist
2:03:39
Speaker 1: from this democratic experience of the West, And have they
2:03:42
Speaker 1: acquired sufficient momentum to sustain themselves under conditions so radically
2:03:47
Speaker 1: unlike those in the days of their origin. In other words,
2:03:51
Speaker 1: the question put at the beginning of this discussion becomes pertinent.
2:03:55
Speaker 1: Under the forms of the American democracy, is there, in
2:03:58
Speaker 1: reality evolving such as a concentration of economic and social
2:04:02
Speaker 1: power in the hands of a comparatively few men, as
2:04:05
Speaker 1: may make political democracy and appearance rather than a reality.
2:04:09
Speaker 1: The free lands are gone. The material forces that gave
2:04:13
Speaker 1: vitality to Western democracy are passing away. It is to
2:04:17
Speaker 1: the realm of the spirit, to the domain of ideals
2:04:20
Speaker 1: and legislation, that we must look for Western influence upon
2:04:24
Speaker 1: democracy in our own days. Western democracy has been from
2:04:28
Speaker 1: the time of its birth idealistic. The very fact of
2:04:32
Speaker 1: the wilderness appealed to men as a fair blank page
2:04:35
Speaker 1: on which to write a new chapter in the story
2:04:37
Speaker 1: of men's struggle for a higher type of society. The
2:04:40
Speaker 1: Western wilds, from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, constituted the
2:04:44
Speaker 1: richest free gift that was ever spread out before civilized
2:04:48
Speaker 1: man to the peasant and artisan of the old world,
2:04:51
Speaker 1: bound by the chains of social class, as old as
2:04:54
Speaker 1: custom and as inevitable as fate, the West offered an
2:04:58
Speaker 1: exit into a free life and greater well being among
2:05:01
Speaker 1: the bounties of nature, into the midst of resources that
2:05:05
Speaker 1: demanded manly exertion, and that gave in return the chance
2:05:09
Speaker 1: for indefinite assent in the scale of social advance to
2:05:13
Speaker 1: each she offered gifts after his will. Never again can
2:05:16
Speaker 1: such an opportunity come to the sons of men. It
2:05:19
Speaker 1: was unique, and the thing is so near us, so
2:05:22
Speaker 1: much a part of our lives, that we do not
2:05:24
Speaker 1: even yet comprehend its full significance. The existence of this
2:05:28
Speaker 1: land of opportunity has made America the goal of idealists
2:05:32
Speaker 1: from the days of the pilgrim Fathers. With all the
2:05:35
Speaker 1: materialism of the pioneer movements, this idealistic conception of the
2:05:40
Speaker 1: vacant lands as an opportunity for a new order of
2:05:42
Speaker 1: things is unmistakably present. Kipling's Song of the English has
2:05:47
Speaker 1: given it expression quote, we were dreamers, dreaming greatly in
2:05:51
Speaker 1: the man's stifled town. We yearned beyond the skyline where
2:05:55
Speaker 1: the strange roads go down. Came the whisper, came the vision,
2:05:59
Speaker 1: came the power with the need, till the soul that
2:06:02
Speaker 1: is not man's soul was lent us to lead as
2:06:05
Speaker 1: the deer breaks, as the steer breaks from the herd
2:06:08
Speaker 1: where they graze. In the faith of little children, we
2:06:10
Speaker 1: went on our ways. Then the wood failed, then the
2:06:14
Speaker 1: food failed, Then the last water dried. In the faith
2:06:17
Speaker 1: of little children, We lay down and died on the
2:06:21
Speaker 1: sand drift on the veldt side, in the fern scrub.
2:06:24
Speaker 1: We lay that our sons might follow after by the
2:06:26
Speaker 1: bones on the way. Follow after. Follow after we have
2:06:30
Speaker 1: watered the root, and the bud has come to blossom
2:06:33
Speaker 1: that ripens for fruit.
2:06:35
Speaker 3: Follow after.
2:06:36
Speaker 1: We are waiting by the trails that we lost, for
2:06:38
Speaker 1: the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a
2:06:41
Speaker 1: host follow after, follow after, For the harvest is sown
2:06:46
Speaker 1: by the bones about the wayside, ye shall come to
2:06:48
Speaker 1: your own end of quote. That was the vision that
2:06:52
Speaker 1: called to Roger Williams that prophetic soul ravished of truth, disembodied,
2:06:57
Speaker 1: unable to enter into treaty with its environment, and forced
2:07:00
Speaker 1: to seek the wilderness. Oh how sweet, wrote William Penn
2:07:04
Speaker 1: from his forest Refuge is the quiet of these parts,
2:07:08
Speaker 1: freed from the troubles and perplexities of woeful Europe. And
2:07:12
Speaker 1: here he projected what he called his holy experiment in government.
2:07:16
Speaker 1: If the later West offers few such striking illustrations of
2:07:20
Speaker 1: the relation of the wilderness to idealistic schemes, and if
2:07:24
Speaker 1: some of the designs were fantastic and abortive, nonetheless, the
2:07:28
Speaker 1: influence is a fact hardly a Western state, but has
2:07:31
Speaker 1: been the mecca of some sect or band of social
2:07:34
Speaker 1: reformers anxious to put into practice their ideals in vacant
2:07:38
Speaker 1: land far removed from the checks of a settled form
2:07:41
Speaker 1: of social organization. Consider the Dunkards, the Icarians, the Fourierists,
2:07:46
Speaker 1: the Mormons, and similar idealists who sought our western wilds.
2:07:50
Speaker 1: But the idealistic influence is not limited to the dreamer's
2:07:54
Speaker 1: conception of a new state. It gave to the pioneer,
2:07:56
Speaker 1: farmer and city builder a restless energy, a quick capacity
2:08:00
Speaker 1: for judgment and action, a belief in liberty, freedom of opportunity,
2:08:05
Speaker 1: and a resistance to the domination of class, which infused
2:08:08
Speaker 1: a vitality and power into the individual atoms of this
2:08:11
Speaker 1: democratic mass. Even as he dwelt among the stumps of
2:08:15
Speaker 1: his newly cut clearing, the pioneer had the creative vision
2:08:19
Speaker 1: of a new order of society. In imagination. He pushed
2:08:22
Speaker 1: back the forest boundary to the confines of a mighty commonwealth.
2:08:26
Speaker 1: He willed that log cabins should become the lofty buildings
2:08:29
Speaker 1: of great cities. He decreed that his children should enter
2:08:32
Speaker 1: into a heritage of education, comfort, and social welfare. And
2:08:36
Speaker 1: for this ideal he bore the scars of the wilderness.
2:08:40
Speaker 1: Possessed with this idea, he ennobled his task and laid
2:08:43
Speaker 1: deep foundations for a democratic state. Nor was this idealism
2:08:48
Speaker 1: by any means limited to the American pioneer. To the
2:08:51
Speaker 1: old native democratic stock has been added a vast army
2:08:54
Speaker 1: of recruits from the Old World. There are in the
2:08:57
Speaker 1: Middle West alone four million persons of German parentage, out
2:09:01
Speaker 1: of a total of seven millions in the country. Over
2:09:03
Speaker 1: a million persons of Scandinavian parentage live in the same region.
2:09:08
Speaker 1: The democracy of the Newer West is deeply affected by
2:09:11
Speaker 1: the ideals brought by these immigrants from the Old World.
2:09:14
Speaker 1: To them, America was not simply a new home. It
2:09:17
Speaker 1: was a land of opportunity, of freedom, of democracy. It
2:09:21
Speaker 1: meant to them, as to the American pioneer that preceded them,
2:09:25
Speaker 1: the opportunity to destroy the bonds of social caste that
2:09:29
Speaker 1: bound them in their older home, to hew out for
2:09:31
Speaker 1: themselves in a new country, a destiny proportioned to the
2:09:35
Speaker 1: powers that God had given them, a chance to place
2:09:38
Speaker 1: their families under better conditions and to win a larger
2:09:42
Speaker 1: life than the life that they had left behind. He
2:09:45
Speaker 1: who believes that even the hordes of recent immigrants from
2:09:48
Speaker 1: southern Italy are drawn to these shores by nothing more
2:09:52
Speaker 1: than a dull and blind materialism has not penetrated into
2:09:56
Speaker 1: the heart of the problem. The idealism and expectation of
2:09:59
Speaker 1: these child ldren of the old world. The hopes which
2:10:02
Speaker 1: they have formed for a newer and freer life across
2:10:05
Speaker 1: the seas, are almost pathetic when one considers how far
2:10:08
Speaker 1: they are from the possibility of fruition. He who would
2:10:12
Speaker 1: take stock of American democracy must not forget the accumulation
2:10:16
Speaker 1: of human purposes and ideals which immigration is added to
2:10:20
Speaker 1: the American populace. In this connection, it must also be
2:10:23
Speaker 1: remembered that these democratic ideals have existed at each stage
2:10:27
Speaker 1: of the advance of the frontier, and have left behind
2:10:30
Speaker 1: them deep and enduring effects on the thinking of the
2:10:32
Speaker 1: whole country. Long after the frontier period of a particular
2:10:36
Speaker 1: region of the United States has passed away, the conception
2:10:39
Speaker 1: of society, the ideals and aspirations which it produced persist
2:10:44
Speaker 1: in the minds of the people. So recent has been
2:10:47
Speaker 1: the transition of the greater portion of the United States,
2:10:50
Speaker 1: from frontier conditions to conditions of settled life. That we
2:10:54
Speaker 1: are over the large portion of the United States hardly
2:10:57
Speaker 1: a generation removed from the primitive conditions of the West.
2:11:02
Speaker 1: If indeed we ourselves were not pioneers, our fathers were,
2:11:06
Speaker 1: and the inherited ways of looking at things, the fundamental
2:11:09
Speaker 1: assumptions of the American people have all been shaped by
2:11:13
Speaker 1: this experience of democracy on its westward march. This experience
2:11:17
Speaker 1: has been wrought into the very warp and wolf of
2:11:20
Speaker 1: American thought. Even those masters of industry and capital who
2:11:24
Speaker 1: have risen to power by the conquest of Western resources
2:11:28
Speaker 1: came from the midst of this society and still profess
2:11:31
Speaker 1: its principles. John D. Rockefeller was born on a New
2:11:34
Speaker 1: York farm and began his career as a young businessman
2:11:38
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis. Marcus Hannah was a Cleveland grocer's clerk.
2:11:41
Speaker 1: At the age of twenty. Klaus Spreckels, the Sugar King,
2:11:45
Speaker 1: came from Germany as a steerage passenger to the United
2:11:48
Speaker 1: States in eighteen forty eight. Marshall Field was a farmer
2:11:52
Speaker 1: boy in Conway, Massachusetts, until he left to grow up
2:11:55
Speaker 1: with the young Chicago Andrew Carnegie came as a ten
2:11:58
Speaker 1: year old boy from Scotland to Pittsburgh, then a distinctively
2:12:02
Speaker 1: western town. He built up his fortunes through successive grades,
2:12:05
Speaker 1: until he became the dominating factor in the great iron
2:12:08
Speaker 1: industries and paved the way for that colossal achievement, the
2:12:12
Speaker 1: Steel Trust. Whatever may be the tendencies of this corporation,
2:12:17
Speaker 1: there can be little doubt of the democratic ideals of
2:12:19
Speaker 1: mister Carnegie himself. With lavish hand, he has strewn millions
2:12:23
Speaker 1: through the United States for the promotion of libraries. The
2:12:27
Speaker 1: effect of this library movement in perpetuating the democracy that
2:12:30
Speaker 1: comes from an intelligent and self respecting people can hardly
2:12:34
Speaker 1: be measured. In his Triumphant Democracy, published in eighteen eighty six,
2:12:39
Speaker 1: mister Carnegie, the Iron Master said, in reference to the
2:12:43
Speaker 1: mineral wealth of the United States, thank God these treasures
2:12:47
Speaker 1: are in the hands of an intelligent people. The democracy
2:12:51
Speaker 1: to be used for the general good of the masses,
2:12:53
Speaker 1: and not made the spoils of monarchs, courts, and aristocracy
2:12:57
Speaker 1: to be turned to the base and selfish ends of
2:13:00
Speaker 1: a privileged hereditary class. End of quote. It would be
2:13:04
Speaker 1: hard to find a more rigorous assertion of democratic doctrine
2:13:07
Speaker 1: than the celebrated utterance attributed to the same man that
2:13:11
Speaker 1: he should feel a disgrace to die rich In enumerting
2:13:15
Speaker 1: the services of American democracy, President Eliot included the corporation
2:13:19
Speaker 1: as one of its achievements, declaring that quote freedom of incorporation,
2:13:24
Speaker 1: though no longer exclusively a democratic agency, has given a
2:13:28
Speaker 1: strong support to democratic institutions end of In one sense,
2:13:33
Speaker 1: this is doubtless true, since the corporation has been one
2:13:37
Speaker 1: of the means by which small properties can be aggregated
2:13:40
Speaker 1: into an effective working body. Socialistic writers have long been
2:13:44
Speaker 1: fond of pointing out also that these various concentrations pave
2:13:48
Speaker 1: the way for and make possible social control. From this
2:13:52
Speaker 1: point of view, it is possible that the masters of
2:13:54
Speaker 1: industry may prove to be not so much an incipient
2:13:57
Speaker 1: aristocracy as the path finders for democracy in reducing the
2:14:02
Speaker 1: industrial world to systematic consolidation suited to democratic control. The
2:14:07
Speaker 1: great geniuses that have built up the modern industrial concentration
2:14:11
Speaker 1: were trained in the midst of democratic society. They were
2:14:15
Speaker 1: the product of these democratic conditions. Freedom to rise was
2:14:19
Speaker 1: the very condition of their existence. Whether they will be
2:14:23
Speaker 1: followed by successors. Who will adopt the exploitation of the masses,
2:14:27
Speaker 1: and who will be capable of retaining under efficient control
2:14:30
Speaker 1: these vast resources is one of the questions which we
2:14:33
Speaker 1: shall have to face. This, at least is clear. American
2:14:38
Speaker 1: democracy is fundamentally the outcome of the experiences of the
2:14:41
Speaker 1: American people in dealing with the West. Western democracy, through
2:14:46
Speaker 1: the whole of its earlier period, tended to the production
2:14:49
Speaker 1: of a society of which the most distinctive fact was
2:14:52
Speaker 1: the freedom of the individual to rise under conditions of
2:14:55
Speaker 1: social mobility, and whose ambition was the liberty and well
2:14:59
Speaker 1: being of the masses. This conception has vitalized all American
2:15:03
Speaker 1: democracy and has brought it into sharp contrasts with the
2:15:06
Speaker 1: democracies of history and with those modern efforts of Europe
2:15:10
Speaker 1: to create an artificial democratic order by legislation. The problem
2:15:15
Speaker 1: of the United States is not to create democracy, but
2:15:18
Speaker 1: to conserve democratic institutions and ideals. In the later period
2:15:23
Speaker 1: of its development, Western democracy has been gaining experience in
2:15:27
Speaker 1: the problem of social control. It is steadily enlarged the
2:15:31
Speaker 1: sphere of its action and the instruments for its perpetuation
2:15:35
Speaker 1: by its system of public schools. From the grades to
2:15:37
Speaker 1: the graduate work of the great universities. The West has
2:15:41
Speaker 1: created a larger single body of intelligent, plain people than
2:15:45
Speaker 1: can be found elsewhere in the world. Its political tendencies,
2:15:49
Speaker 1: whether we consider democracy, populism, or republicanism, are distinctly in
2:15:54
Speaker 1: the direction of greater social control and the conservation of
2:15:57
Speaker 1: the old democratic ideals. To these ideals, the West adherers
2:16:02
Speaker 1: with even a passionate determination if in working out its
2:16:05
Speaker 1: mastery of the resources of the interior, it is produced
2:16:08
Speaker 1: a type of industrial leader so powerful as to be
2:16:11
Speaker 1: the wonder of the world. Nevertheless, it is still to
2:16:15
Speaker 1: be determined whether these men constitute a menace to democratic
2:16:18
Speaker 1: institutions or the most efficient factor for adjusting democratic control
2:16:23
Speaker 1: to the new conditions. Whatever shall be the outcome of
2:16:27
Speaker 1: the rush of this huge, industrial modern United States to
2:16:30
Speaker 1: its place among the nations of the earth, the formation
2:16:34
Speaker 1: of its Western democracy will always remain one of the
2:16:37
Speaker 1: wonderful chapters in the history of the human race. Into
2:16:40
Speaker 1: this vast, shaggy continent of ours poured the first feeble
2:16:44
Speaker 1: tide of European settlement. European men, institutions, and ideas were
2:16:49
Speaker 1: lodged in the American wilderness and this great American West
2:16:52
Speaker 1: took them to her bosom, taught them a new way
2:16:55
Speaker 1: of looking upon the destiny of the common man, trained
2:16:58
Speaker 1: them in adaptation to the condition of the new world,
2:17:01
Speaker 1: to the creation of new institutions to meet new needs.
2:17:05
Speaker 1: And ever a society on her eastern border grew to
2:17:08
Speaker 1: resemble the old world in its social forms and its industry. Ever,
2:17:12
Speaker 1: as it began to lose faith in the ideals of democracy,
2:17:16
Speaker 1: she opened new provinces and dowered new democracies in her
2:17:20
Speaker 1: most distant domains with her material treasures and with the
2:17:23
Speaker 1: ennobling influence that the fierce love of freedom, the strength
2:17:27
Speaker 1: that came from hewing out a home, making a school
2:17:30
Speaker 1: in a church, and creating a higher future for his
2:17:33
Speaker 1: family furnished to the pioneer. She gave to the world
2:17:37
Speaker 1: such types as the farmer Thomas Jefferson, with his declaration
2:17:41
Speaker 1: of independence, his statute for religious toleration, and his purchase
2:17:45
Speaker 1: of Louisiana. She gave us Andrew Jackson, that fierce Tennessee
2:17:49
Speaker 1: spirit who broke down the traditions of conservative rule, swept
2:17:53
Speaker 1: away the privacies and privileges of officialdom, and like a
2:17:57
Speaker 1: Gothic leader opened the temple of the nation to the Pawcatus.
2:18:01
Speaker 1: She gave us Abraham Lincoln, whose gaunt, frontier form and
2:18:04
Speaker 1: gnarled massive hand told of the conflict with the forest,
2:18:08
Speaker 1: whose grasp of the axe handle of the Pioneer was
2:18:11
Speaker 1: no firmer than his grasp of the helm of the
2:18:13
Speaker 1: ship of state as it breasted the seas of civil war.
2:18:17
Speaker 1: She is furnished to this new democracy, her stores of
2:18:20
Speaker 1: mineral wealth that dwarf those of the old World, and
2:18:23
Speaker 1: her provinces that in themselves are vaster and more productive
2:18:27
Speaker 1: than most of the nations of Europe. Out of her
2:18:29
Speaker 1: bounty is common Nation, whose industrial competition alarms the old world,
2:18:34
Speaker 1: and the masters of whose resources wield wealth and power
2:18:37
Speaker 1: vaster than the wealth and power of kings. Best of all,
2:18:41
Speaker 1: the West gave not only to the American, but to
2:18:44
Speaker 1: the unhappy and oppressed of all lands a vision of
2:18:48
Speaker 1: hope and assurance that the world held a place where
2:18:51
Speaker 1: were to be found high faith in man, and the
2:18:54
Speaker 1: will and power to furnish him the opportunity to grow
2:18:57
Speaker 1: to the full measure of his own capacity. Great and powerful,
2:19:00
Speaker 1: as are the new sons of her loins, the Republic
2:19:03
Speaker 1: is greater than they. The paths of the Pioneer have
2:19:06
Speaker 1: widened into broad highways, the forest clearing has expanded into
2:19:10
Speaker 1: affluent commonwealths. Let us see to it that the ideals
2:19:14
Speaker 1: of the Pioneer in his log cabin shall enlarge into
2:19:17
Speaker 1: the spiritual life of a democracy, where civic power shall
2:19:21
Speaker 1: dominate and utilize individual achievement for the common good. End
2:19:26
Speaker 1: of Section thirty two, Chapter ten, Pioneer Ideals and the
2:19:31
Speaker 1: State University, Part one footnote commencement address at the University
2:19:36
Speaker 1: of Indiana, nineteen ten. End of footnote. The ideals of
2:19:41
Speaker 1: the people, their aspirations and convictions, their hopes and ambitions,
2:19:45
Speaker 1: their dreams and determinations are assets in their civilization, as
2:19:50
Speaker 1: real and important as per capital, wealth or industrial skill.
2:19:54
Speaker 1: This nation was formed under Pioneer ideals during three centuries
2:19:59
Speaker 1: after Captain JOHNS. Smith struck the first blow at the
2:20:02
Speaker 1: American Forest on the eastern edge of the continent. The
2:20:05
Speaker 1: Pioneers were abandoning settled society for the wilderness, seeking for
2:20:10
Speaker 1: generation after generation new frontiers. Their experiences left abiding influences
2:20:16
Speaker 1: upon the ideas and purposes of the nation. Indeed, the
2:20:19
Speaker 1: older settled regions themselves were shaped profoundly by the very
2:20:23
Speaker 1: fact that the whole nation was pioneering, and that in
2:20:26
Speaker 1: the development of the west, the east had its own part.
2:20:30
Speaker 1: The first ideal of the pioneer was that of conquest.
2:20:33
Speaker 1: It was his task to fight with nature for the
2:20:36
Speaker 1: chance to exist. Not, as in older countries, did this
2:20:39
Speaker 1: contest take place in a mythical past told in folklore
2:20:42
Speaker 1: and epic. It has been continuous to our own day.
2:20:46
Speaker 1: Facing each generation of pioneers was the unmastered continent. Vast
2:20:51
Speaker 1: forests blocked the way. Mountainous ramparts, interposed, desolate grass clad prairies,
2:20:56
Speaker 1: barren oceans of rolling plains, arid deserts, and a fierce
2:21:00
Speaker 1: race of savages. All had to be met and defeated.
2:21:03
Speaker 1: The rifle and the axe are the symbols of the
2:21:06
Speaker 1: backwoods pioneer. They meant a training in aggressive courage and domination,
2:21:10
Speaker 1: in directness of action, in destructiveness. To the pioneer, the
2:21:15
Speaker 1: forest was no friendly resource for posterity, no object of
2:21:19
Speaker 1: careful economy. He must wage a hand to hand war
2:21:22
Speaker 1: upon it, cutting and burning a little space to let
2:21:25
Speaker 1: in the light upon a dozen acres of hard won
2:21:28
Speaker 1: soil and year after year, expanding the clearing into new
2:21:31
Speaker 1: woodlands against the stubborn resistance of primeval trunks and matted roots.
2:21:36
Speaker 1: He made war against the rank fertility of the soil,
2:21:39
Speaker 1: while new worlds of virgin land lay, ever, just beyond.
2:21:42
Speaker 1: It was idle to expect the pioneer to stay his
2:21:45
Speaker 1: hand and turn to scientific farming. Indeed, as Secretary Wilson
2:21:49
Speaker 1: has said, the pioneer would in that case have raised
2:21:52
Speaker 1: wheat that no one wanted to eat, corned store on
2:21:55
Speaker 1: the farm, and cotton not worth the picking. Thus fired
2:21:58
Speaker 1: with the ideal of subduing the wilderness, the destroying pioneer
2:22:02
Speaker 1: fought his way across the continent, masterful and wasteful, preparing
2:22:06
Speaker 1: the way by seeking the immediate thing, rejoicing in rude
2:22:10
Speaker 1: strength and wilful achievement. But even this backwoodsman was more
2:22:14
Speaker 1: than a mere destroyer. He had visions. He was finder
2:22:18
Speaker 1: as well as fighter, the trail maker for civilization, the
2:22:21
Speaker 1: inventor of new ways. Although Rudyard Kipling's Foreloper deals with
2:22:26
Speaker 1: the English pioneer and lands beneath the Southern Cross, yet
2:22:29
Speaker 1: the poem portrays American traits as well. Quote the Gull
2:22:34
Speaker 1: shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break and fire.
2:22:37
Speaker 1: He shall fulfill God's utmost will on knowing his desire,
2:22:42
Speaker 1: and he shall see old planets pass and Elien's stars rise,
2:22:46
Speaker 1: and give the gale his reckless sail in shadow of
2:22:49
Speaker 1: new skies. Strong lustive gear shall drive him out, and
2:22:53
Speaker 1: hunger arm his hand to wring food from desert, nude
2:22:57
Speaker 1: his foothold from the sand. His neighbors smoke, shall vex
2:23:01
Speaker 1: his eyes, their voices break his rest. He shall go
2:23:04
Speaker 1: forth till South is North, sullen and dispossessed. He shall
2:23:09
Speaker 1: desire loneliness, and his desires shall bring hard on his heels,
2:23:13
Speaker 1: a thousand wheels, a people, and a king. He shall
2:23:16
Speaker 1: come back on his own track, and by his scarce
2:23:19
Speaker 1: cold camp there shall he meet the roaring street, the derrick,
2:23:23
Speaker 1: and the stamp. For he must blaze a nation's way
2:23:26
Speaker 1: with hatchet and with brand, till on his last one
2:23:30
Speaker 1: wilderness an empire's bulwarks stand. End of quote. This quest
2:23:35
Speaker 1: after the unknown, this yearning beyond the skyline, where the
2:23:39
Speaker 1: strange roads go down, is of the very essence of
2:23:42
Speaker 1: the Backwoods pioneer, even though he was unconscious of its
2:23:46
Speaker 1: spiritual significance. The pioneer was taught in the school of
2:23:50
Speaker 1: experience that the crops of one area would not do
2:23:53
Speaker 1: for a new frontier, that the scythe of the clearing
2:23:56
Speaker 1: must be replaced by the reaper of the prairies. He
2:23:59
Speaker 1: was forced to to make old tools serve new uses,
2:24:02
Speaker 1: to shape former habits, institutions, and ideas to changed conditions,
2:24:07
Speaker 1: and to find new means when the old proved inapplicable.
2:24:11
Speaker 1: He was building a new society as well as breaking
2:24:13
Speaker 1: new soil. He had the ideal of nonconformity and of change.
2:24:18
Speaker 1: He rebelled against the conventional. Besides the ideals of conquest
2:24:22
Speaker 1: and of discovery, the pioneer had the ideal of personal development,
2:24:26
Speaker 1: free from social and governmental constraint. He came from a
2:24:30
Speaker 1: civilization based on individual competition, and he brought the conception
2:24:34
Speaker 1: with him to the wilderness, where a wealth of resources
2:24:37
Speaker 1: and innumerable opportunities gave it a new scope. The prizes
2:24:41
Speaker 1: were for the keenest and the strongest. For them were
2:24:44
Speaker 1: the best bottom lands, the finest timber tracks, the best
2:24:48
Speaker 1: salt springs, the.
2:24:49
Speaker 2: Richest or beds.
2:24:51
Speaker 1: And not only these natural gifts, but also the opportunities
2:24:54
Speaker 1: afforded in the midst of a forming society. Here were
2:24:57
Speaker 1: mill sites, town sites, transportation in lines, banking centers, openings
2:25:02
Speaker 1: in the law and politics, all the varied chances for
2:25:06
Speaker 1: advancement afforded in a rapidly developing society, where everything was
2:25:10
Speaker 1: open to him who knew how to seize the opportunity.
2:25:13
Speaker 1: The squatter enforced his claim to lands, even against the
2:25:16
Speaker 1: government's title, by the use of extra legal combinations and force.
2:25:21
Speaker 1: He appealed to lynch law with little hesitation. He was
2:25:24
Speaker 1: impatient of any governmental restriction upon his individual right to
2:25:28
Speaker 1: deal with the wilderness. In our own day we sometimes
2:25:31
Speaker 1: hear of congressmen sent to jail for violating land laws.
2:25:34
Speaker 1: But the different spirit in the pioneer days may be
2:25:37
Speaker 1: illustrated by a speech of Delegate Sibley of Minnesota in
2:25:41
Speaker 1: Congress in eighteen fifty two. In view of the fact
2:25:44
Speaker 1: that he became the state's first governor, a regent of
2:25:47
Speaker 1: its university, president of its historical society, and a doctor
2:25:52
Speaker 1: of laws of Princeton, we may assume that he was
2:25:55
Speaker 1: a pillar of society. And he said, quote, the government
2:25:59
Speaker 1: has watched its public domain with jealous eye and there
2:26:02
Speaker 1: are now enactments upon your statute books aimed at the
2:26:05
Speaker 1: trespassers upon it, which should be expunged as a disgrace
2:26:09
Speaker 1: to the country and to the nineteenth century, especially as
2:26:13
Speaker 1: he pursued with unrelenting severity, who has dared to break
2:26:16
Speaker 1: the silence of the primeval forest by the blows of
2:26:19
Speaker 1: the American acts. The hardy lumberman, who is penetrated to
2:26:23
Speaker 1: the remotest wilds of the Northwest to drag from their
2:26:26
Speaker 1: recesses the materials for building up towns and cities in
2:26:30
Speaker 1: the great Valley of the Mississippi, has been particularly marked
2:26:33
Speaker 1: out as a victim. After enduring all the privations and
2:26:37
Speaker 1: subjecting himself to all the perils incident to his vocation,
2:26:42
Speaker 1: when he is toiled for months to add by his
2:26:44
Speaker 1: honest labour, to the comfort of his fellow man and
2:26:47
Speaker 1: to the aggregate wealth of the nation, he finds himself
2:26:50
Speaker 1: suddenly in the clutches of the law for trespassing on
2:26:53
Speaker 1: the public domain. The proceeds of his long winter's work
2:26:56
Speaker 1: are reft from him and exposed a public sale for
2:26:59
Speaker 1: the best of his paternal government. And the object of
2:27:03
Speaker 1: this oppression and wrong is further harassed by vexatious law
2:27:06
Speaker 1: proceedings against him and Sibley's protesting Congress. Against these outrages
2:27:13
Speaker 1: by which the Northern lumbermen were harassed in their work
2:27:16
Speaker 1: of what would now be called stealing government, Timber aroused
2:27:19
Speaker 1: no protest from his colleagues. No president called this congressman
2:27:23
Speaker 1: an undesirable citizen, or gave him over to the courts. Thus,
2:27:28
Speaker 1: many of the pioneers, following the ideal of the right
2:27:31
Speaker 1: of the individual to rise, subordinated the rights of the
2:27:34
Speaker 1: nation and posterity to the desire that the country should
2:27:37
Speaker 1: be developed and that the individual should advance with as
2:27:40
Speaker 1: little interference as possible. Squatter doctrines and individualism have left
2:27:45
Speaker 1: deep traces upon American conceptions, but quite as deeply fixed
2:27:50
Speaker 1: in the pioneer's mind as the ideal of individualism was
2:27:53
Speaker 1: the ideal of democracy. He had a passionate hatred for aristocracy, monopoly,
2:27:59
Speaker 1: in special privilege. He believed in simplicity economy, and in
2:28:03
Speaker 1: the rule of the people. It is true that he
2:28:05
Speaker 1: honored the successful man, and that he strove in all
2:28:08
Speaker 1: ways to advance himself. But the West was so free
2:28:11
Speaker 1: and so vast, the barriers to individual achievement were so
2:28:14
Speaker 1: remote that the Pioneer was hardly conscious that any danger
2:28:18
Speaker 1: to equality could come from his competition for natural resources.
2:28:22
Speaker 1: He thought of democracy as in some way the results
2:28:25
Speaker 1: of our political institutions, and he failed to see that
2:28:29
Speaker 1: it was primarily the result of the free lands and
2:28:31
Speaker 1: immense opportunities which surrounded him. Occasional statesmen voiced the idea
2:28:36
Speaker 1: that American democracy was based on the abundance of unoccupied land,
2:28:40
Speaker 1: even in the first debates on the public domain. This
2:28:44
Speaker 1: early recognition of the influence of abundance of land in
2:28:47
Speaker 1: shaping the economic conditions of American democracy is peculiarly significant
2:28:52
Speaker 1: today in view of the practical exhaustion of the supply
2:28:56
Speaker 1: of cheap, arable public lands open to the poor man,
2:28:59
Speaker 1: and the incident development of labor unions to keep up wages.
2:29:03
Speaker 1: Certain it is that the strength of democratic movements has
2:29:07
Speaker 1: chiefly lain in the regions of the Pioneer. Our governments
2:29:10
Speaker 1: tend too much to democracy, wrote Tizard of South Carolina
2:29:14
Speaker 1: to Jefferson in seventeen eighty five. A handicraftsman thinks an
2:29:18
Speaker 1: apprenticeship necessary to make him acquainted with his business. That
2:29:21
Speaker 1: our back country men are of the opinion that a
2:29:23
Speaker 1: politician may be born just as well as a poet.
2:29:27
Speaker 1: The revolutionary ideas, of course, gave a great impetus to democracy,
2:29:31
Speaker 1: and in substantially every colony there was a double revolution,
2:29:35
Speaker 1: one for independence and the other for the overthrow of
2:29:38
Speaker 1: aristocratic control. But in the long run, the effective force
2:29:42
Speaker 1: behind American democracy was the presence of the practically free
2:29:46
Speaker 1: land into which men might escape from the oppression or
2:29:49
Speaker 1: inequalities which burdened them in the older settlements. This possibility
2:29:53
Speaker 1: compelled the coastwise states to liberalize the franchise, and it
2:29:57
Speaker 1: prevented the formation of a dominant class, whether based on
2:30:00
Speaker 1: property or on custom. Among the pioneers, one man was
2:30:04
Speaker 1: as good as his neighbour. He had the same chance.
2:30:07
Speaker 1: Conditions were simple and free. Economic equality fostered political equality.
2:30:13
Speaker 1: An optimistic and buoyant belief in the worth of the
2:30:15
Speaker 1: plain people, a devout faith in man prevailed.
2:30:19
Speaker 2: In the West.
2:30:20
Speaker 1: Democracy became almost the religion of the pioneer. He held
2:30:24
Speaker 1: with passionate devotion the idea that he was building under freedom,
2:30:28
Speaker 1: a new society based on self government and for the
2:30:31
Speaker 1: welfare of the average man, and Yet even as he
2:30:34
Speaker 1: proclaimed the gospel of democracy, the pioneer showed a vague
2:30:38
Speaker 1: apprehension lest the time be short less, equality should not endure,
2:30:42
Speaker 1: lest he might fall behind in the ascending movement of
2:30:45
Speaker 1: Western society. This led him on in feverish haste to
2:30:49
Speaker 1: acquire advantages, as though he only half believed his dream
2:30:53
Speaker 1: before him lies a boundless continent. Wrote to Tokeville in
2:30:56
Speaker 1: the days when Pioneer democracy was triumphant under Jackson, and
2:31:00
Speaker 1: he urges forward as if time pressed, and he was
2:31:03
Speaker 1: afraid of finding no room for his exertions. Even while
2:31:06
Speaker 1: Jackson lived, labor leaders and speculative thinkers were demanding legislation
2:31:11
Speaker 1: to place a limit on the amount of land which
2:31:13
Speaker 1: one person might acquire and to provide free farms. Detouville
2:31:18
Speaker 1: saw the signs of change. Quote between the workmen and
2:31:21
Speaker 1: the master. He said, there are frequent relations, but no
2:31:25
Speaker 1: real association. I am of the opinion upon the whole
2:31:29
Speaker 1: that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our
2:31:32
Speaker 1: eyes is one of the harshest which ever existed in
2:31:35
Speaker 1: the world. If ever a permanent inequality of conditions and
2:31:39
Speaker 1: aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may be predicted
2:31:43
Speaker 1: that this is the gate by which they will enter.
2:31:45
Speaker 1: End of quote. But the sensitive influences of the free
2:31:49
Speaker 1: spaces of the West were destined to ameliorate labour's condition,
2:31:53
Speaker 1: to afford new hopes and new faith to pioneer democracy,
2:31:57
Speaker 1: and to postpone the problem. As the settlers advanced into
2:32:01
Speaker 1: provinces whose area dwarfed that of the older sections, Pioneer
2:32:05
Speaker 1: democracy itself began to undergo changes, both in its composition
2:32:09
Speaker 1: and in its processes of expansion. At the close of
2:32:12
Speaker 1: the Civil War, when settlement was spreading with greatest vigor
2:32:16
Speaker 1: across the Mississippi, the railways began their work as colonists.
2:32:20
Speaker 1: Their land grants from the government, amounting altogether by eighteen
2:32:24
Speaker 1: seventy one to an area five times that of the
2:32:26
Speaker 1: state of Pennsylvania, demanded purchasers, and so the railroads pioneered
2:32:31
Speaker 1: the way for the pioneer The homestead law increased the
2:32:35
Speaker 1: tide of settlers. The improved farm machinery made it possible
2:32:39
Speaker 1: for him to go boldly out onto the prairie and
2:32:41
Speaker 1: to deal effectively with virgin soil in farms whose cultivated
2:32:45
Speaker 1: area made the old clearings of the backwoodsmen seem like
2:32:48
Speaker 1: mere garden plots. Two things resulted from these conditions which
2:32:53
Speaker 1: profoundly modified pioneer ideals. In the first place, the new
2:32:57
Speaker 1: form of colonization demanded an increasing use of capital, and
2:33:01
Speaker 1: the rapidity of the formation of towns. The speed with
2:33:04
Speaker 1: which society developed made men the more eager to secure
2:33:08
Speaker 1: bank credit to deal with the new West. This made
2:33:11
Speaker 1: the pioneer more dependent on the eastern economic forces. In
2:33:15
Speaker 1: the second place, the farmer became dependent as never before
2:33:18
Speaker 1: on transportation companies. In this speculative movement. The railroads, finding
2:33:23
Speaker 1: that they had pressed too far in advance and it
2:33:26
Speaker 1: issued stock too freely for their earnings to justify the
2:33:30
Speaker 1: face of the investment, came into collision with the pioneer
2:33:33
Speaker 1: on the question of rates and of discriminations. The greenback
2:33:37
Speaker 1: movement and the Granger movements were appeals to government to
2:33:40
Speaker 1: prevent what the Pioneer thought to be invasions of pioneer democracy.
2:33:45
Speaker 1: As the western settler began to face the problems of
2:33:48
Speaker 1: magnitude in the areas he was occupying, as he began
2:33:51
Speaker 1: to adjust his life to the modern forces of capital
2:33:54
Speaker 1: and to complex productive processes, as he began to see
2:33:58
Speaker 1: that go where he won. The question of credit and currency,
2:34:02
Speaker 1: of transportation and distribution in general conditioned his success. He
2:34:07
Speaker 1: sought relief by legislation. He began to lose his primitive
2:34:11
Speaker 1: attitude of individualism. Government began to look less like a
2:34:15
Speaker 1: necessary evil and more like an instrument for the perpetuation
2:34:19
Speaker 1: of his democratic ideals. In brief, the defenses of the
2:34:22
Speaker 1: pioneer democrat began to shift from freeland to legislation, from
2:34:27
Speaker 1: the ideal of individualism to the ideal of social control
2:34:31
Speaker 1: through regulation by law. He had no sympathy with a
2:34:34
Speaker 1: radical reconstruction of society by the revolution of socialism. Even
2:34:38
Speaker 1: his alliances with the movement of organized labor, which paralleled
2:34:42
Speaker 1: that of organized capital in the East, were only half hearted.
2:34:45
Speaker 1: But he was becoming alarmed over the future of the
2:34:48
Speaker 1: free democratic ideal. The wisdom of his legislation it is
2:34:52
Speaker 1: not necessary to discuss here. The essential point is that
2:34:56
Speaker 1: his conception of the right of government to control social
2:34:59
Speaker 1: process had undergone a change. He was coming to regard
2:35:03
Speaker 1: legislation as an instrument of social construction. The individualism of
2:35:07
Speaker 1: the Kentucky Pioneer of seventeen ninety six was giving way
2:35:11
Speaker 1: to the populism of the Kansas Pioneer of eighteen ninety six.
2:35:15
Speaker 1: The later days of Pioneer democracy are too familiar to
2:35:18
Speaker 1: require much exposition, but they are profoundly significant, as the
2:35:23
Speaker 1: Pioneer doctrine of free competition for the resources of the
2:35:26
Speaker 1: nation revealed its tendencies as individual corporation and trust, like
2:35:31
Speaker 1: the Pioneer, turned increasingly to legal devices to promote their
2:35:35
Speaker 1: contrasting ideals. The natural resources were falling into private possession.
2:35:40
Speaker 1: Tides of alien immigrants were surging into the country to
2:35:44
Speaker 1: replace the old American stock in the labour market, to
2:35:47
Speaker 1: lower the standard of living, and to increase the pressure
2:35:50
Speaker 1: of population upon the land. These recent foreigners have lodged
2:35:54
Speaker 1: almost exclusively in the dozen great centers of industrial life,
2:35:58
Speaker 1: and there they have accented the entireaganisms between capital and labour.
2:36:02
Speaker 1: By the fact that the labour supply has become increasingly
2:36:05
Speaker 1: foreign born and recruited from nationalities who arouse no sympathy
2:36:09
Speaker 1: on the part of capital and little on the part
2:36:11
Speaker 1: of the general public. Class distinctions are accented by national prejudices,
2:36:16
Speaker 1: and democracy is thereby invaded. But even in the dull
2:36:20
Speaker 1: brains of great masses, of these unfortunates from southern and
2:36:23
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. The idea of America as the land of
2:36:26
Speaker 1: freedom and of opportunity to rise, the land of pioneer
2:36:30
Speaker 1: democratic ideals, has found lodgment, and if it is given
2:36:34
Speaker 1: time and is not turned into revolutionary lines, it will fructify.
2:36:39
Speaker 1: As the American pioneer passed on in advance of this
2:36:42
Speaker 1: new tide of European immigration, he found lands increasingly limited.
2:36:46
Speaker 1: In place of the old lavish opportunity for the settler
2:36:49
Speaker 1: to set his stakes where he would. There were frantic
2:36:52
Speaker 1: rushes of thousands of eager pioneers across the line of
2:36:55
Speaker 1: newly opened Indian reservations. Even in eighteen eighty nine, when
2:37:00
Speaker 1: Oklahoma was open to settlement, twenty thousand settlers crowded at
2:37:04
Speaker 1: the boundaries like straining athletes, waiting the bugle note that
2:37:07
Speaker 1: should start the race across the line. Today, great crowds
2:37:11
Speaker 1: gather at the land lotteries of the government as the
2:37:13
Speaker 1: remaining fragments of the public domain are flung to hungry settlers.
2:37:18
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of pioneers from the Middle West have
2:37:21
Speaker 1: crossed the national boundary into Canadian wheat fields. Eager to
2:37:24
Speaker 1: find farms for their children, although under an alien flag.
2:37:28
Speaker 1: And finally, the government has taken to itself great areas
2:37:31
Speaker 1: of arid land to reclamation by costly irrigation projects, whereby
2:37:36
Speaker 1: to furnish twenty acre tracks in the desert to settlers
2:37:39
Speaker 1: under careful regulation of water rights. The government supplies the
2:37:43
Speaker 1: capital for huge irrigation dams and reservoirs and builds them itself.
2:37:48
Speaker 1: It owns and operates quarries, coal mines, and timber to
2:37:52
Speaker 1: facilitate this work. It seeks the remotest regions of the
2:37:56
Speaker 1: earth for crops suitable for those areas. It analyzes them
2:38:00
Speaker 1: the soils, and tells the farmer what and when and
2:38:02
Speaker 1: how to plant. It is even considered the rental to
2:38:06
Speaker 1: manufacturers of the surplus water, electrical and steam power generated
2:38:10
Speaker 1: in its irrigation works, and the utilization of this power
2:38:14
Speaker 1: to extract nitrates from the air to replenish worn out soils.
2:38:18
Speaker 1: The pioneer of the arid regions must be both a
2:38:21
Speaker 1: capitalist and the protege of the government. End of Section
2:38:25
Speaker 1: thirty three, Chapter ten. Pioneer Ideals and the State University,
2:38:30
Speaker 1: Part two. Consider the contrast between the conditions of the
2:38:35
Speaker 1: pioneers at the beginning and at the end of this
2:38:38
Speaker 1: period of development. Three hundred years ago, adventurous Englishmen on
2:38:42
Speaker 1: the coast of Virginia began the attack on the wilderness.
2:38:45
Speaker 1: Three years ago, the President of the United States summoned
2:38:48
Speaker 1: the governors of forty six states to deliberate upon the
2:38:52
Speaker 1: danger of the exhaustion of the natural resources of the nation.
2:38:56
Speaker 1: The pressure of population upon the food supply is already felt.
2:39:00
Speaker 1: We are at the beginning only of this transformation. It
2:39:03
Speaker 1: is profoundly significant that at the very time when American
2:39:06
Speaker 1: democracy is becoming conscious that its pioneer basis of free
2:39:10
Speaker 1: land and sparse population is giving way, it is also
2:39:14
Speaker 1: brought face to face with the startling outcome of its
2:39:17
Speaker 1: old ideals of individualism and exploitation under competition uncontrolled by government.
2:39:23
Speaker 1: Pioneer society was not sufficiently sophisticated to work out to
2:39:27
Speaker 1: its logical result the conception of the self made man.
2:39:30
Speaker 1: But the captains of industry, by applying squatter doctrines to
2:39:34
Speaker 1: the evolution of American industrial society, have made the process
2:39:38
Speaker 1: so clear that he who runs may read contests imply
2:39:41
Speaker 1: alliances as well as rivalries. The increasing magnitude of the
2:39:45
Speaker 1: areas to be dealt with, and the occurrences of times
2:39:48
Speaker 1: of industrial stress furnished occasion for such unions. The panic
2:39:52
Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy three was followed by an unprecedented combination
2:39:56
Speaker 1: of individual businesses and partnerships into corporations. The Panic of
2:40:00
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three marked to the beginning of an extraordinary
2:40:04
Speaker 1: development of corporate combinations into pools and trusts, agreements, and absorptions,
2:40:09
Speaker 1: until by the time of the Panic of nineteen o
2:40:12
Speaker 1: seven it seemed not impossible that the outcome of free
2:40:15
Speaker 1: competition under individualism was to be monopoly of the most
2:40:19
Speaker 1: important natural resources and processes by a limited group of men,
2:40:24
Speaker 1: whose vast fortunes were so invested in allied and dependent
2:40:28
Speaker 1: industries that they constituted the dominating force in the industrial
2:40:32
Speaker 1: life of the nation. The development of large scale factory production,
2:40:36
Speaker 1: the benefit of combination in the competitive struggle, and the
2:40:39
Speaker 1: tremendous advantage of concentration in securing possession of the unoccupied
2:40:44
Speaker 1: opportunities were so great that vast accumulations of capital became
2:40:48
Speaker 1: the normal agency of the industrial world in almost exact
2:40:53
Speaker 1: ratio to the diminution of the supply of unpossessed resources.
2:40:57
Speaker 1: Combinations of capital have increased in magnitude and an efficiency
2:41:01
Speaker 1: of conquest. The solitary backwoodsman wielding his axe at the
2:41:04
Speaker 1: edge of a measureless forest is replaced by companies capitalized
2:41:08
Speaker 1: at millions, operating railroads, sawmills, and all the enginery of
2:41:13
Speaker 1: modern machinery to harvest the remaining trees. A new national
2:41:17
Speaker 1: development is before us without the former safety valve of
2:41:21
Speaker 1: abundant resources open to him. Who would take classes are
2:41:24
Speaker 1: becoming alarmingly distinct. There is the demand, on the one side,
2:41:28
Speaker 1: voiced by mister Harriman so well and by others, sense
2:41:32
Speaker 1: that nothing must be done to interfere with the early
2:41:34
Speaker 1: pioneer ideals of the exploitation and the development of the
2:41:38
Speaker 1: country's wealth, That restrictive and reforming legislation must on no
2:41:42
Speaker 1: account threaten prosperity even for a moment. In fact, we
2:41:46
Speaker 1: sometimes hear in these days from men of influence, serious
2:41:49
Speaker 1: doubts of democracy and intimations that the country would be
2:41:53
Speaker 1: better off if it freely resigned itself to guidance by
2:41:56
Speaker 1: the geniuses who are mastering the economic forces of the nation,
2:42:00
Speaker 1: and who it is alleged would work out the prosperity
2:42:03
Speaker 1: of the United States more effectively if unvexed by politicians
2:42:06
Speaker 1: and people. On the other hand, an inharmonious group of
2:42:10
Speaker 1: reformers are sounding the warning that American democratic ideals and
2:42:14
Speaker 1: society are menaced and already invaded by the very conditions
2:42:18
Speaker 1: that make this apparent prosperity, That the economic resources are
2:42:21
Speaker 1: no longer limitless and free, that the aggregate national wealth
2:42:25
Speaker 1: is increasing at the cost of present social justice and
2:42:29
Speaker 1: moral health, and the future well being of the American people.
2:42:32
Speaker 1: The granger and the populist were profits of this reform movement.
2:42:36
Speaker 1: Mister Bryan's democracy, mister Deb's socialism, and mister Roosevelt's republicanism
2:42:42
Speaker 1: all had in common the emphasis upon the need of
2:42:45
Speaker 1: governmental regulation of industrial tendencies in the interest of the
2:42:49
Speaker 1: common man, the checking of the power of those business
2:42:52
Speaker 1: titans who emerged successful out of the competitive individualism of
2:42:56
Speaker 1: pioneer America. As land values rise, as meat and bread
2:43:00
Speaker 1: grow dearer, as the process of industrial consolidation goes on,
2:43:05
Speaker 1: and as Eastern industrial conditions spread across the West, the
2:43:09
Speaker 1: problems of traditional American democracy will become increasingly grave. The
2:43:14
Speaker 1: time has come when university men may well consider pioneer ideals.
2:43:18
Speaker 1: For American society has reached the end of the first
2:43:21
Speaker 1: great period in its formation, it must survey itself, reflect
2:43:25
Speaker 1: upon its origins. Consider what fratage of purposes it carried
2:43:29
Speaker 1: in its long march across the continent, What ambitions it
2:43:33
Speaker 1: had for the man? What role it would play in
2:43:35
Speaker 1: the world. How shall we conserve what was best in
2:43:38
Speaker 1: pioneer ideals? How adjusts the old conceptions to the changed
2:43:42
Speaker 1: conditions of modern life. Other nations have been rich and
2:43:46
Speaker 1: prosperous and powerful, But the United States has believed that
2:43:51
Speaker 1: it had an original contribution to make to the history
2:43:54
Speaker 1: of society by the production of a self determining, self restrained,
2:43:57
Speaker 1: intelligent democracy. It is in the Middle West that society
2:44:02
Speaker 1: has formed on lines least like those of Europe. It
2:44:05
Speaker 1: is here, if anywhere, that American democracy will make its
2:44:08
Speaker 1: stand against the tendency to adjust to a European type.
2:44:12
Speaker 1: This consideration gives importance to my final topic, the relation
2:44:16
Speaker 1: of the university to pioneer ideals and to the changing
2:44:20
Speaker 1: conditions of American democracy. President Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation
2:44:24
Speaker 1: has recently declared that in no other form of popular
2:44:28
Speaker 1: activity does a nation or state so clearly reveal its
2:44:31
Speaker 1: ideals or the quality of its civilization as in its
2:44:35
Speaker 1: system of education. And he finds, especially in the state university,
2:44:39
Speaker 1: a conception of education from the standpoint of the whole people.
2:44:43
Speaker 1: If our American democracy were today called to give proof
2:44:46
Speaker 1: of its constructive ability, he says, the state university and
2:44:50
Speaker 1: the public school system which it crowns, would be the
2:44:53
Speaker 1: strongest evidence of its fitness which it could offer. It
2:44:57
Speaker 1: may at least be conceded that an essential care characteristic
2:45:00
Speaker 1: of the state university is its democracy in the largest sense.
2:45:04
Speaker 1: The provision in the Constitution of Indiana of eighteen sixteen
2:45:08
Speaker 1: so familiar to you all, for a quote general system
2:45:12
Speaker 1: of education ascending in regular gradations from township schools to
2:45:16
Speaker 1: a state university, wherein tuition shall be gradis and equally
2:45:20
Speaker 1: open to all end of expresses. The Middle Western conception
2:45:25
Speaker 1: born in the days of pioneer society, and doubtless deeply
2:45:28
Speaker 1: influenced by Jeffersonian democracy. The most obvious fact about these
2:45:33
Speaker 1: universities perhaps lies in their integral relation with the public schools,
2:45:38
Speaker 1: whereby the pupil has pressed upon him the question whether
2:45:42
Speaker 1: he shall go to college, and whereby the road is
2:45:44
Speaker 1: made open and direct to the highest training. By this means,
2:45:48
Speaker 1: the state offers to every class the means of education,
2:45:51
Speaker 1: and even engages in propaganda to induce students to continue.
2:45:55
Speaker 1: It sinks deep shafts through the social strata to find
2:45:59
Speaker 1: the gold of reality in the underlying rock of the masses.
2:46:02
Speaker 1: It fosters that due degree of individualism, which is implied
2:46:06
Speaker 1: in the right of every human being to have the
2:46:08
Speaker 1: opportunity to rise in whatever directions his peculiar abilities entitle
2:46:13
Speaker 1: him to go subordinate to the welfare of the state.
2:46:16
Speaker 1: It keeps the avenues of promotion to the highest offices,
2:46:19
Speaker 1: the highest honors, open to the humblest and most obscure
2:46:22
Speaker 1: lad who has the natural gifts. At the same time
2:46:26
Speaker 1: that it aids in the improvement of the masses. Nothing
2:46:29
Speaker 1: in our educational history is more striking than the steady
2:46:32
Speaker 1: pressure of democracy upon its universities to adapt them to
2:46:36
Speaker 1: the requirements of all the people. From the state universities
2:46:39
Speaker 1: of the Middle West, shaped under pioneer ideals, have come
2:46:43
Speaker 1: the fuller recognition of scientific studies, and especially those of
2:46:47
Speaker 1: applied science devoted to the conquest of nature, the breaking
2:46:51
Speaker 1: down of the traditional required curriculum, the union of vocational
2:46:55
Speaker 1: and college work in the same institution, the development of
2:46:58
Speaker 1: agricultural and engineering colleges and business courses, the training of lawyers, administrators,
2:47:04
Speaker 1: public men, and journalists, all under the ideal of service
2:47:08
Speaker 1: to democracy rather than of individual advancement alone. Other universities
2:47:13
Speaker 1: do the same thing. But the head springs and the
2:47:15
Speaker 1: main current of this great stream of tendency come from
2:47:18
Speaker 1: the land of the pioneers. The democratic states of the
2:47:21
Speaker 1: Middle West, and the people themselves, through their boards of
2:47:24
Speaker 1: trustees and the legislature, are in the last resort the
2:47:28
Speaker 1: court of appeal as to the directions and conditions of growth,
2:47:32
Speaker 1: as well as have the fountain of income from which
2:47:34
Speaker 1: these universities derive their existence. The state university has thus
2:47:39
Speaker 1: both a peculiar power in the directness of its influence
2:47:43
Speaker 1: upon the whole people, and a peculiar limitation in its
2:47:46
Speaker 1: dependence upon the people. The ideals of the people constitute
2:47:50
Speaker 1: the atmosphere in which it moves. Though it can itself
2:47:53
Speaker 1: affect this atmosphere, herein is the source of its strength
2:47:57
Speaker 1: and the direction of its difficulties fulfill its mission of
2:48:01
Speaker 1: uplifting the state to continuously higher levels. The university must,
2:48:06
Speaker 1: in the words of mister Bryce, serve the time without
2:48:09
Speaker 1: yielding to it. It must recognize new needs without becoming
2:48:12
Speaker 1: subordinate to the immediately practical, to the short sightedly expedient.
2:48:17
Speaker 1: It must not sacrifice the higher efficiency for the more
2:48:20
Speaker 1: obvious but lower efficiency. It must have the wisdom to
2:48:24
Speaker 1: make expenditures for results which pay manifold and the enrichment
2:48:28
Speaker 1: of civilization, but which are not immediate and palpable. In
2:48:33
Speaker 1: the transitional condition of American democracy, which I have tried
2:48:36
Speaker 1: to indicate, the mission of the university is most important.
2:48:40
Speaker 1: The times call for educated leaders. General experience and role
2:48:44
Speaker 1: of thumb information are inadequate for the solution of the
2:48:47
Speaker 1: problems of a democracy which no longer owns the safety
2:48:51
Speaker 1: fund of an unlimited quantity of untouched resources. Scientific farming
2:48:56
Speaker 1: must increase the yield of the field. Scientific forestry must
2:48:59
Speaker 1: ecconomized the woodlands. Scientific experiment and construction by chemist, physicists, biologists,
2:49:06
Speaker 1: and engineer must be applied to all of nature's forces.
2:49:10
Speaker 1: In our complex modern society. The test tube and the
2:49:13
Speaker 1: microscope are needed rather than the acts and rifle in
2:49:16
Speaker 1: this new ideal of conquest. The varied discoveries of science
2:49:20
Speaker 1: in such fields as public health and the manufacturing processes
2:49:24
Speaker 1: have made it necessary to depend upon the expert, and
2:49:27
Speaker 1: if the ranks of experts are to be recruited broadly
2:49:31
Speaker 1: from the democratic masses as well as from those of
2:49:33
Speaker 1: larger means, the state universities must furnish at least as
2:49:37
Speaker 1: liberal opportunities for research and training as the universities based
2:49:42
Speaker 1: on private endowments furnish. It needs no argument to show
2:49:46
Speaker 1: that it is not to the advantage of democracy to
2:49:49
Speaker 1: give over the training of the expert exclusively to privately
2:49:52
Speaker 1: endowed institutions, but quite as much in the field of
2:49:56
Speaker 1: legislation and of public life in general as in the
2:49:59
Speaker 1: industrial as the expert needed. The industrial conditions which shape
2:50:03
Speaker 1: society are too complex, problems of labour, finance, and social
2:50:08
Speaker 1: reform too difficult to be dealt with intelligently and wisely
2:50:12
Speaker 1: without the leadership of highly educated men familiar with the
2:50:16
Speaker 1: legislation and literature on social questions in other states and nations.
2:50:22
Speaker 1: By training in science, in law, politics, economics, and history,
2:50:27
Speaker 1: the universities may supply from the ranks of democracy, administrators, legislators, judges,
2:50:33
Speaker 1: and experts for commissions, who shall disinterestedly and intelligently mediate
2:50:37
Speaker 1: between contending interests. When the words capitalistic classes and the
2:50:42
Speaker 1: proletariat can be used and understood, in America, it is
2:50:46
Speaker 1: surely time to develop such men with the ideal of
2:50:49
Speaker 1: service to the state, who may help to break the
2:50:52
Speaker 1: force of these collisions, to find common grounds between the contestants,
2:50:57
Speaker 1: and to possess the respect and confidence of all parties
2:51:00
Speaker 1: which are genuinely loyal to the best American ideals. The
2:51:04
Speaker 1: signs of such a development are already plain in the
2:51:07
Speaker 1: expert commissions of some states, in the increasing proportion of
2:51:11
Speaker 1: university men and legislatures. In the university men's influence in
2:51:15
Speaker 1: federal departments and commissions, it is hardly too much to
2:51:19
Speaker 1: say that the best hope of intelligent and principal progress
2:51:22
Speaker 1: in economic and social legislation and administration lies in the
2:51:26
Speaker 1: increasing influence of American universities. By sending out these open
2:51:31
Speaker 1: minded experts, by furnishing well fitted legislators, public leaders, and teachers,
2:51:37
Speaker 1: by graduating successive armies of enlightened citizens accustomed to deal
2:51:42
Speaker 1: dispassionately with the problems of modern life, able to think
2:51:46
Speaker 1: for themselves, governed not by ignorance, by prejudice, or by impulse,
2:51:51
Speaker 1: but by knowledge and reason and high mindedness, The state
2:51:54
Speaker 1: universities will safeguard democracy Without such leaders and followers, Democratic
2:51:59
Speaker 1: reacs actions may create revolutions, but they will not be
2:52:03
Speaker 1: able to produce industrial and social progress. America's problem is
2:52:07
Speaker 1: not violently to introduce democratic ideals, but to preserve and
2:52:12
Speaker 1: entrench them by courageous adaptation to new conditions. Educated leadership
2:52:17
Speaker 1: sets bulwarks against both the passionate impulses of the mob
2:52:21
Speaker 1: and the sinister designs of those who would subordinate public
2:52:24
Speaker 1: welfare to private greed. Lord Bacon's splendid utterance still rings true.
2:52:29
Speaker 1: Quote the learning of the few is despotism. The learning
2:52:33
Speaker 1: of the many is liberty and intelligent and principled. Liberty
2:52:37
Speaker 1: is fame, wisdom, and power, and of quote. There is
2:52:40
Speaker 1: a danger to the universities in this very opportunity. At first,
2:52:44
Speaker 1: pioneer democracy had scant respect for the expert. He believed
2:52:49
Speaker 1: that a fool can put on his coat better than
2:52:51
Speaker 1: a wise man can do it for him. There is
2:52:53
Speaker 1: much truth in the belief, and the educated leader, even
2:52:56
Speaker 1: he who has been trained under present university conditions in
2:53:00
Speaker 1: direct contact with the world about him, will still have
2:53:03
Speaker 1: to contend with this inherited suspicion of the expert. But
2:53:07
Speaker 1: if he be well trained and worthy of his training,
2:53:09
Speaker 1: if he be endowed with creative imagination and personality, he
2:53:13
Speaker 1: will make good his leadership. A more serious danger will
2:53:17
Speaker 1: come when the universities are fully recognized as powerful factors
2:53:21
Speaker 1: in shaping the life of the state, not mere cloisters
2:53:24
Speaker 1: remote from its life, but an influential element in its life.
2:53:28
Speaker 1: Then it may easily happen that the smoke of the
2:53:31
Speaker 1: battlefield of political and social controversy will obscure their pure air,
2:53:36
Speaker 1: that efforts will be made to stamp out the exceptional
2:53:38
Speaker 1: doctrine and the exceptional man. Those who investigate and teach
2:53:42
Speaker 1: within the university walls must respond to the injunction of
2:53:46
Speaker 1: the church, sirsum corda lift up the heart to high
2:53:49
Speaker 1: thinking and impartial search for the unsolid truth in the
2:53:53
Speaker 1: interests of all the people. This is the holy grail
2:53:56
Speaker 1: of the universities. That they may perform their work. They
2:53:59
Speaker 1: must be left free, as the pioneer was free to
2:54:02
Speaker 1: explore new regions and to report what they find. For,
2:54:06
Speaker 1: like the pioneers, they have the ideal of investigation. They
2:54:10
Speaker 1: seek new horizons. They are not tied to past knowledge.
2:54:14
Speaker 1: They recognize the fact that the universe still abounds in mystery,
2:54:18
Speaker 1: that science and society have not crystallized, but are still
2:54:21
Speaker 1: growing and need their pioneer trail makers. New and beneficent
2:54:25
Speaker 1: discoveries in nature, new and beneficial discoveries in the processes
2:54:30
Speaker 1: and directions of the growth of society, substitutes for the
2:54:34
Speaker 1: vanishing material basis of pioneer democracy may be expected if
2:54:38
Speaker 1: the university pioneers are left free to seek the trail.
2:54:42
Speaker 1: In conclusion, the university has a duty in adjusting pioneer
2:54:46
Speaker 1: ideals to the new requirements of American democracy, even more
2:54:49
Speaker 1: important than those which I have named. The early pioneer
2:54:53
Speaker 1: was an individualist and a seeker after the undiscovered. But
2:54:57
Speaker 1: he did not understand the richness and complexity of life
2:55:00
Speaker 1: as a whole. He did not fully realize his opportunities
2:55:03
Speaker 1: of individualism and discovery. He stood in his somber forest
2:55:07
Speaker 1: as the traveler sometimes stands in a village on the
2:55:10
Speaker 1: Alps when the mist has shrouded everything, and only the
2:55:13
Speaker 1: squalid hut, the stony field, the muddy pathway are in view.
2:55:17
Speaker 1: But suddenly a wind sweeps the fog away. Vast fields
2:55:21
Speaker 1: of radiant snow and sparkling ice lie before him. Profound
2:55:25
Speaker 1: abysses open at his feet, And as he lifts his eyes,
2:55:28
Speaker 1: the unimaginable peak of the matterhorn cleaves the thin air
2:55:31
Speaker 1: far far above. A new and unsuspected world is revealed
2:55:35
Speaker 1: all about him. Thus it is the function of the
2:55:38
Speaker 1: university to reveal to the individual the mystery and the
2:55:41
Speaker 1: glory of life as a whole, to open all the
2:55:43
Speaker 1: realms of rational human enjoyment and achievement, to preserve the
2:55:47
Speaker 1: consciousness of the past, to spread before the eye the
2:55:51
Speaker 1: beauty of the universe, and to throw wide its portals
2:55:54
Speaker 1: of duty and of power to the human soul. It
2:55:57
Speaker 1: must honor the poet and the painter, the right and
2:56:00
Speaker 1: the teacher, the scientist and the inventor, the musician, and
2:56:04
Speaker 1: the profit of righteousness, the men of genius in all fields,
2:56:08
Speaker 1: who make life nobler. It must call forth anew and
2:56:11
Speaker 1: for finer uses, the pioneer's love of creative individualism, and
2:56:16
Speaker 1: provide for it a spiritual atmosphere friendly to the development
2:56:19
Speaker 1: of personality in all uplifting ways. It must check the
2:56:23
Speaker 1: tendency to act in mediocre social masses with undue emphasis
2:56:27
Speaker 1: upon the ideals of prosperity in politics. In short, it
2:56:31
Speaker 1: must summon ability of all kinds to joyous and earnest
2:56:35
Speaker 1: effort for the welfare and the spiritual enrichment of society.
2:56:38
Speaker 1: It must awaken new tastes and ambitions among the people.
2:56:42
Speaker 1: The light of these university watchtowers should flash from state
2:56:46
Speaker 1: to state until American democracy itself is illuminated with higher
2:56:50
Speaker 1: and broader ideals of what constitutes service to the state
2:56:54
Speaker 1: and to mankind, of what are prizes, of what is
2:56:57
Speaker 1: worthy of praise and reward? Long is success in amassing
2:57:01
Speaker 1: great wealth for the aggrandizement of the individual is the
2:57:04
Speaker 1: exclusive or the dominant standard of success. So long as
2:57:08
Speaker 1: material prosperity, regardless of the conditions of its cost, or
2:57:13
Speaker 1: the civilization which results, is the shibbeleh American democracy. That
2:57:18
Speaker 1: faith in the common man, which the pioneer cherishes is
2:57:21
Speaker 1: in danger, for the strongest will make their way unerringly
2:57:24
Speaker 1: to whatever goal society sets up as the mark of
2:57:27
Speaker 1: conceited preeminence. What more effective agency is there for the
2:57:32
Speaker 1: cultivation of the seed wheat of ideals than the university?
2:57:36
Speaker 1: Where can we find a more promising body of sowers
2:57:38
Speaker 1: of the grain? The pioneer's clearing must be broadened into
2:57:43
Speaker 1: a domain where all that is worthy of human endeavor
2:57:45
Speaker 1: may find fertile soil on which to grow. And America
2:57:49
Speaker 1: must exact of the constructive business geniuses who owe their
2:57:52
Speaker 1: rise to the freedom of pioneer democracy, supreme allegiance, and
2:57:57
Speaker 1: devotion to the common will in fostering such an hour,
2:58:00
Speaker 1: and in tempering the asperities of the conflicts that must
2:58:03
Speaker 1: precede its fulfillment. The nation has no more promising agency
2:58:08
Speaker 1: than the state universities, no more hopeful product than their graduates.
2:58:14
Speaker 1: End of Section thirty.
2:58:15
Speaker 3: Four, Chapter eleven, The West and American Ideals, Part one.
2:58:21
Speaker 3: True to American traditions that each succeeding generation ought to
2:58:25
Speaker 3: find in the Republic a better home. Once in every year,
2:58:28
Speaker 3: the colleges and universities summon the nation to lift its
2:58:31
Speaker 3: eyes from the routine of work in order to take
2:58:33
Speaker 3: stock of the country's purposes and achievements, to examine its
2:58:36
Speaker 3: past and consider its future. This attitude of self examination
2:58:41
Speaker 3: is hardly characteristic of the people as a whole, particularly,
2:58:44
Speaker 3: is not characteristic of the historic American. He has been
2:58:48
Speaker 3: an opportunist rather than a dealer in general ideas. Destiny
2:58:52
Speaker 3: set him in a current which bore him swiftly along
2:58:55
Speaker 3: through such a wealth of opportunity that reflection and well
2:58:58
Speaker 3: considered planning seemed wasted time. He knew not where he
2:59:02
Speaker 3: was going, but he was on his way, cheerful, optimistic, busy,
2:59:06
Speaker 3: and buoyant. Today we are reaching a changed condition, less
2:59:11
Speaker 3: apparent perhaps in the newer regions than in the old,
2:59:13
Speaker 3: but sufficiently obvious to extend the commencement frame of mind
2:59:17
Speaker 3: from the college to the country as a whole. The
2:59:20
Speaker 3: swift and inevitable current of the upper reaches of the
2:59:23
Speaker 3: nation's history has borne it to the broader expanse and
2:59:26
Speaker 3: slower stretches which mark the nearness of the level sea.
2:59:29
Speaker 3: The vessel, no longer carried along by the rushing waters,
2:59:32
Speaker 3: finds it necessary to determine its own directions on this
2:59:35
Speaker 3: new ocean of its future, to give conscious consideration to
2:59:38
Speaker 3: its motive power and to its steering gear. It matters
2:59:42
Speaker 3: not so much that those who address these college men
2:59:44
Speaker 3: and women upon life give conflicting answers to the questions
2:59:47
Speaker 3: of whence and whither? The pores for remembrance, for reflection,
2:59:51
Speaker 3: and for aspiration is wholesome in itself. Although the American
2:59:55
Speaker 3: people are becoming more self conscious, more responsive to the
2:59:58
Speaker 3: appeal to act by the delay choices, we should be
3:00:02
Speaker 3: over sanguine if we believe that, even in this new day,
3:00:05
Speaker 3: these commencement surveys were taken to heart by the general public,
3:00:08
Speaker 3: or that they were directly and immediately influential upon national
3:00:11
Speaker 3: thought and action. But even while we check our enthusiasm
3:00:15
Speaker 3: by this realization of the common thought, we must take heart.
3:00:19
Speaker 3: The university's peculiar privilege and distinction lie in the fact
3:00:22
Speaker 3: that it is not the passive instrument of the state
3:00:24
Speaker 3: to voice its current ideas. Its problem is not that
3:00:27
Speaker 3: of expressing tendencies. Its mission is to create tendencies and
3:00:31
Speaker 3: to direct them. Its problem is that of leadership and
3:00:34
Speaker 3: of ideals. It is called, of course, to justify the
3:00:38
Speaker 3: support which the public gives it by working in close
3:00:41
Speaker 3: and sympathetic touch with those it serves. More than that
3:00:44
Speaker 3: it would lose important element of strength if it failed
3:00:47
Speaker 3: to recognize the fact that improvement and creative movement often
3:00:50
Speaker 3: come from the masses themselves, instinctively moving toward a better order.
3:00:55
Speaker 3: The university's graduates must be fitted to take their places
3:00:58
Speaker 3: naturally and effectually in the common life of the time.
3:01:02
Speaker 3: But the university is called especially to justify its existence
3:01:05
Speaker 3: by giving to its sons and daughters something which they
3:01:07
Speaker 3: could not well have gotten through the ordinary experiences of
3:01:10
Speaker 3: the life outside its walls. It is called to serve
3:01:13
Speaker 3: the time by independent research and by original thought. If
3:01:17
Speaker 3: it were a mere recording instrument of conventional opinion and
3:01:20
Speaker 3: average information, it is hard to see why the university
3:01:23
Speaker 3: should exist at all. To clap hands with the common
3:01:26
Speaker 3: life in order that it may lift that life to
3:01:28
Speaker 3: be a radiant center in kindling the society in which
3:01:31
Speaker 3: it has its being. These are primary duties of the university.
3:01:35
Speaker 3: Fortunate the state which gives free play to this spirit
3:01:38
Speaker 3: of inquiry, let it grub stake its intellectual prospectors and
3:01:42
Speaker 3: send them forth where the trails run out and stop.
3:01:45
Speaker 3: A famous scientist holds that the universal ether bears vital
3:01:49
Speaker 3: germs which, impinging upon a dead world, would bring life
3:01:52
Speaker 3: to it. So at least it is in the world
3:01:55
Speaker 3: of thought where energized ideals put in the air and
3:01:57
Speaker 3: carried here and there by the waves and currents of
3:01:59
Speaker 3: the u S intellectual atmosphere fertilize vast inert areas. The
3:02:04
Speaker 3: university therefore has a double duty. On one hand, it
3:02:08
Speaker 3: must aid in the improvement of the general economic and
3:02:11
Speaker 3: social environment. It must help on in the work of
3:02:14
Speaker 3: scientific discovery and of making such conditions of existence, economic, political,
3:02:19
Speaker 3: and social as will produce more fertile and responsive soil
3:02:23
Speaker 3: for a higher and better life. It must stimulate a
3:02:26
Speaker 3: wider demand on the part of the public for right leadership.
3:02:29
Speaker 3: It must extend its operations more widely among the people
3:02:33
Speaker 3: and think deeper shafts through social strata to find new
3:02:36
Speaker 3: supplies of intellectual gold in popular levels yet untouched. And
3:02:40
Speaker 3: on the other hand, it must find and fit men
3:02:42
Speaker 3: and women for leadership. It must both awaken new demands,
3:02:46
Speaker 3: and it must satisfy those demands by trained leaders with
3:02:49
Speaker 3: new motives, with new incentives to ambition, with higher and
3:02:52
Speaker 3: broader conception of what constitute the prize in life, of
3:02:55
Speaker 3: what constitutes success. The university has to deal with both
3:02:59
Speaker 3: the soil and sifted seed in the agriculture of the
3:03:02
Speaker 3: human spirit. Its efficiency is not the efficiency which the
3:03:05
Speaker 3: business engineer is fitted to a praise. If it is
3:03:08
Speaker 3: a training ship, it is a training ship bound on
3:03:11
Speaker 3: a voyage of discovery, seeking new horizons. The economy of
3:03:14
Speaker 3: the university's consumption can only be rightly measured by the
3:03:17
Speaker 3: later times which shall possess those new realms of the
3:03:20
Speaker 3: spirit which its voyage shall reveal. If the ships of
3:03:23
Speaker 3: Columbus had engaged in a profitable coastwise traffic between Pallos
3:03:27
Speaker 3: and Cadiz, they might have saved sail cloth, but their
3:03:30
Speaker 3: keels would never have grated on the.
3:03:31
Speaker 2: Shores of a new world. The appeal of.
3:03:34
Speaker 3: The undiscovered is strong in America. For three centuries, the
3:03:37
Speaker 3: fundamental process in its history was the westward movement, the
3:03:41
Speaker 3: discovery and occupation of the vast free spaces.
3:03:43
Speaker 2: Of the continent.
3:03:45
Speaker 3: We are the first generation of Americans who can look
3:03:47
Speaker 3: back upon that era as a historic movement now coming
3:03:50
Speaker 3: to its end. Other generations have been so much a
3:03:53
Speaker 3: part of it that they could hardly comprehend its significance.
3:03:57
Speaker 3: To them, it seemed inevitable. The free land and the
3:04:00
Speaker 3: natural resources seemed practically inexhaustible. Nor were they aware of
3:04:04
Speaker 3: the fact that their most fundamental traits, their institutions, even
3:04:07
Speaker 3: their ideals, were shaped by this interaction between the wilderness
3:04:11
Speaker 3: and themselves. American democracy was born of no theorist s dream.
3:04:15
Speaker 3: It was not carried into the Susan Constant to Virginia,
3:04:18
Speaker 3: nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of
3:04:22
Speaker 3: the American forest, and it gained new strength each time
3:04:25
Speaker 3: it touched a new frontier. Not the constitution, but free
3:04:29
Speaker 3: land and an abundance of natural resources open to a
3:04:31
Speaker 3: fit people made the democratic type of society in America
3:04:34
Speaker 3: for three centuries while it occupied its empire. Today we
3:04:38
Speaker 3: are looking with a shock upon a changed world. The
3:04:41
Speaker 3: national problem is no longer how to cut and burn
3:04:43
Speaker 3: away the vast screen of the dense and daunting forest.
3:04:46
Speaker 3: It is how to save and wisely use the remaining timber.
3:04:50
Speaker 3: It is no longer how to get the great spaces
3:04:52
Speaker 3: of fertile prairie land in human zones out of the
3:04:54
Speaker 3: hands of the government into the hands of the pioneer.
3:04:57
Speaker 3: These lands have already passed into private pass No longer
3:05:01
Speaker 3: is it a question of how to avoid or cross
3:05:03
Speaker 3: the great plains in the arid desert. It is a
3:05:05
Speaker 3: question of how to conquer those rejected lands by new
3:05:08
Speaker 3: method of farming and by cultivating new crops from seed
3:05:11
Speaker 3: collected by the government and by scientists. From the cold,
3:05:14
Speaker 3: dry steps of Siberia, the burning sands of Egypt, and
3:05:17
Speaker 3: the remote interior of China.
3:05:20
Speaker 2: It is a problem of.
3:05:21
Speaker 3: How to bring the precious rills of water on the
3:05:23
Speaker 3: Alkali and sage brush. Population is increasing faster than the
3:05:27
Speaker 3: food supply. New farmlands no longer increase decade after decade
3:05:31
Speaker 3: in areas equal to those of European states, while the
3:05:35
Speaker 3: ratio of increase of improved land declines, the value of
3:05:39
Speaker 3: farm lands rise, and the price of food leaps upward,
3:05:42
Speaker 3: reversing the old ratio between the two. The cry of
3:05:45
Speaker 3: scientific farming and the conservation of natural resources replaces the
3:05:49
Speaker 3: cry of rapid conquest of the wilderness. We have so
3:05:52
Speaker 3: far won our national home, rested from it its first
3:05:55
Speaker 3: rich treasures, and drawn to it the unfortunate of other
3:05:58
Speaker 3: lands that we are already obliged to compare ourselves with
3:06:01
Speaker 3: settled states of the Old World. In place of our
3:06:04
Speaker 3: attitude of contemptuous indifference to the legislation of such countries
3:06:08
Speaker 3: as Germany and England. Even Western states like Wisconsin send
3:06:11
Speaker 3: commissions to study their systems of taxation, workingmen's insurance, old
3:06:16
Speaker 3: age pensions, and a great variety of other remedies of
3:06:19
Speaker 3: social ills. If we look about the periphery of the nation,
3:06:23
Speaker 3: everywhere we see the indications that our world is changing.
3:06:27
Speaker 3: On the streets of Northeastern cities like Boston and New York,
3:06:30
Speaker 3: the faces which we meet are to a surprising extent,
3:06:33
Speaker 3: those of Southeastern Europe. Puritan New England, which turned its
3:06:37
Speaker 3: capital into factories and mills, and drew to its shaws
3:06:39
Speaker 3: an army of cheap labour govern these people for a
3:06:42
Speaker 3: time by a ruling class, like an upper stratum, between
3:06:45
Speaker 3: which and the lower strata. There was no assimilation. There
3:06:48
Speaker 3: was no such evolution into an assimilated commonwealth as is
3:06:52
Speaker 3: seen in Middle Western agricultural states, where immigrant and old
3:06:55
Speaker 3: native stock came in together and built up a homogeneous
3:06:58
Speaker 3: society on the principle of give and take. But now
3:07:01
Speaker 3: the Northeastern coast finds its destiny politically and economically, passing
3:07:06
Speaker 3: away from the descendants of the Puritans. It is the
3:07:08
Speaker 3: little Jewish boy the Greek or the Sicilian, who takes
3:07:12
Speaker 3: the traveler through historic streets now the home of these
3:07:15
Speaker 3: newer people, to the old North Church, or to Paul
3:07:17
Speaker 3: Revere's house, or to Tee Wharf, and tells you in
3:07:20
Speaker 3: his strange patois the story of revolution against oppression along
3:07:24
Speaker 3: the southern Atlantic and the Gulf Coast. In spite of
3:07:27
Speaker 3: the preservative influence of the Negro, whose presence has always
3:07:30
Speaker 3: called out resistance to change on the part of the whites,
3:07:33
Speaker 3: the forces of social and industrial transformation are at work.
3:07:37
Speaker 3: The old Tidewater aristocracy has surrendered to the upcountry democrats
3:07:42
Speaker 3: along the line of the Alleghenies. Like an advancing column.
3:07:45
Speaker 3: The forces of northern capital, textile and steel mills, year
3:07:48
Speaker 3: after year extend their invasion into the lower South. New Orleans,
3:07:53
Speaker 3: once the mistress of the commerce of the Mississippi Valley,
3:07:56
Speaker 3: is awakening to new dreams of world commerce on the
3:07:59
Speaker 3: southern border. Similar invasions of American capital have been entering Mexico.
3:08:04
Speaker 3: At the same time. The opening of the Panama Canal
3:08:06
Speaker 3: has completed the dream of the ages of the Straits
3:08:09
Speaker 3: of Nyan between Atlantic and Pacific. Four hundred years ago,
3:08:13
Speaker 3: Balboa raised the flag of Spain at the edge of
3:08:15
Speaker 3: the Sea of the West, and we are now preparing
3:08:18
Speaker 3: to celebrate both that anniversary and the piercing of the continent.
3:08:22
Speaker 3: New relations have been created between Spanish America and the
3:08:25
Speaker 3: United States, and the world is watching the mediation of Argentina,
3:08:29
Speaker 3: Brazil and Chile between the contending forces of Mexico and
3:08:32
Speaker 3: the Union. Once more, alien national interests lie threatening at
3:08:36
Speaker 3: our borders, but we no longer appeal to the Monroe
3:08:39
Speaker 3: doctrine and send our armies of frontiersmen to settle our concerns.
3:08:42
Speaker 3: Off hand, we take council with European nations and with
3:08:45
Speaker 3: the Sisterhood of South America, and propose a remedy of
3:08:48
Speaker 3: social reorganization in place of imperious will and force. Whether
3:08:53
Speaker 3: the effort will succeed or not, it is a significant
3:08:55
Speaker 3: indication that an old order is passing away when such
3:08:59
Speaker 3: a solution is under t sagan by a President of
3:09:01
Speaker 3: Scotch Presbyterian stock born in the state of Virginia. End
3:09:06
Speaker 3: of Section thirty five, Chapter eleven, Part two. If we
3:09:11
Speaker 3: turn to the northern border, where we are about to
3:09:13
Speaker 3: celebrate a century of peace with England, we see in progress,
3:09:17
Speaker 3: like a belated procession of our own history, the spread
3:09:20
Speaker 3: of pioneers, the opening of new wildernesses, the building of
3:09:23
Speaker 3: new cities, the growth of a new and mighty nation.
3:09:27
Speaker 3: That old American advance of the wheat farmer, from the
3:09:29
Speaker 3: Connecticut to the Mohawk and the Genesee, from the Great
3:09:33
Speaker 3: Valley of Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley and the prairies
3:09:36
Speaker 3: of the Middle West, is now by its own momentum,
3:09:38
Speaker 3: and under the stimulus of Canadian homesteads and the high
3:09:41
Speaker 3: price of wheat carried across the national border to the
3:09:44
Speaker 3: once lone Plains, where the Hudson Bay Dog Trains cross
3:09:47
Speaker 3: the desolate snows.
3:09:48
Speaker 2: Of the wild north Land.
3:09:50
Speaker 3: In the Pacific Northwest. The era of construction has not ended,
3:09:54
Speaker 3: but it is so rapidly in progress that we can
3:09:56
Speaker 3: already see the closing of the age of the pioneer. Already,
3:10:00
Speaker 3: Alaska beckons on the north and, pointing to her wealth
3:10:03
Speaker 3: of natural resources, asked the nation on what new terms
3:10:06
Speaker 3: the new age will deal with her. Across the Pacific looms.
3:10:10
Speaker 3: Asia no longer a remote vision and a symbol of
3:10:12
Speaker 3: the unchanging, but born as by mirage close to our
3:10:16
Speaker 3: shores and raising grave questions of the common destiny of
3:10:19
Speaker 3: the people of the ocean. The dreams of Benton and
3:10:22
Speaker 3: of Seward, of a regenerated orient when the long march
3:10:25
Speaker 3: of westward civilization should complete its circle, seem almost to
3:10:29
Speaker 3: be in process of realization.
3:10:31
Speaker 2: The age of.
3:10:32
Speaker 3: The Pacific Ocean begins, mysterious and unfathomable in its meaning.
3:10:36
Speaker 2: For our own future.
3:10:38
Speaker 3: Turning to the interior, we see the same picture of
3:10:41
Speaker 3: change when the Superintendent of the Census in eighteen ninety
3:10:45
Speaker 3: declared the frontier line no longer traceable. The beginning of
3:10:48
Speaker 3: the rush into Oklahoma had just occurred. Here, where the
3:10:52
Speaker 3: broken fragments of Indian nations from the east had been gathered,
3:10:55
Speaker 3: and where the wilder tribes of the Southwest were being settled,
3:10:58
Speaker 3: came the rush of the land hungry pioneer. Almost at
3:11:02
Speaker 3: a blow, the old Indian territory passed away, populous cities
3:11:06
Speaker 3: came into being, and it was not long before gushing
3:11:08
Speaker 3: oil wells made a new era of sudden wealth. The
3:11:12
Speaker 3: farm lands of the Middle West, taken as free homesteads
3:11:14
Speaker 3: or bought for a mere pittance, have risen so in
3:11:17
Speaker 3: value that the original owners have in an increasing degree
3:11:20
Speaker 3: either sold them in order to reinvest in the newer,
3:11:23
Speaker 3: cheap lands of the west, or have moved into the
3:11:25
Speaker 3: town and have left the tillage to tenant farmers. The
3:11:29
Speaker 3: growth of absentee ownership of the soil is producing a
3:11:31
Speaker 3: serious problem in the former centres of the granger and
3:11:34
Speaker 3: the populist. Along the old northwestern the Great Lakes are
3:11:38
Speaker 3: becoming a new Mediterranean Sea, joining the realms of wheat
3:11:41
Speaker 3: and iron ore at one end with the coal and
3:11:43
Speaker 3: furnaces of the forks of the Ohio, where the most
3:11:46
Speaker 3: intensive and wide reaching center of industrial energy exists. City
3:11:51
Speaker 3: life like that of the East, manufactures and accumulated capital
3:11:55
Speaker 3: seem to be reproducing in the center of the Republic,
3:11:57
Speaker 3: the tendencies already so plain. On the Atlantic coast. Across
3:12:02
Speaker 3: the Great Plains, where Buffalo and Indian held sway, successive
3:12:06
Speaker 3: industrial waves are passing. The old free range gave place
3:12:10
Speaker 3: to the ranch, the ranch to the homestead, and now
3:12:12
Speaker 3: in places in the arid lands, the homestead is replaced
3:12:15
Speaker 3: by the ten or twenty acre irrigated fruit farm. The
3:12:18
Speaker 3: age of cheap land, cheap corn and wheat, and cheap
3:12:21
Speaker 3: cattle has gone forever. The federal government has undertaken vast
3:12:25
Speaker 3: paternal enterprises of reclamation of the desert. In the Rocky Mountains,
3:12:29
Speaker 3: where at the time of Civil War the first important
3:12:32
Speaker 3: rushes to gold and silver mines carried the frontier backward
3:12:35
Speaker 3: on a march toward the east. The most amazing transformations
3:12:39
Speaker 3: have occurred here, where prospectors made new trails and lived
3:12:42
Speaker 3: the wild, free life of mountain men. Here where the
3:12:45
Speaker 3: human spirit seemed likely to attain the largest measure of
3:12:48
Speaker 3: individual freedom, and where fortune beckoned to the common man,
3:12:52
Speaker 3: have come revolutions wrought by the demand for organized industry
3:12:56
Speaker 3: and capital. In the regions where the popular, tribunal and
3:12:59
Speaker 3: the free competitive life flourished, we have seen law and
3:13:02
Speaker 3: order break down in the unmitigated collision of great aggregations
3:13:06
Speaker 3: of capital with each other and with organized socialistic labour.
3:13:11
Speaker 2: The Cripple Creek strikes, the.
3:13:13
Speaker 3: Contests at Butte, the Goldfield mobs, the recent Colorado fighting
3:13:17
Speaker 3: all tell a similar story. The solid impact of contending
3:13:20
Speaker 3: forces in regions where civic power and loyalty to the
3:13:24
Speaker 3: state have never fully developed, like the Grand Canyon, where
3:13:28
Speaker 3: in dazzling light, the huge geologic history is written so
3:13:31
Speaker 3: large that none may fail to read it. So in
3:13:34
Speaker 3: the Rocky Mountains the dangers of modern American industrial tendencies
3:13:37
Speaker 3: have been exposed. As we crossed the Cascades on our
3:13:41
Speaker 3: way to Seattle, one of the passengers was moved to
3:13:43
Speaker 3: explain his feeling on the excellence of Peudet Sound in
3:13:47
Speaker 3: contrast with the remaining visible universe. He did it well,
3:13:51
Speaker 3: in spite of irreverent interruptions from those fellow travelers who
3:13:54
Speaker 3: were unconverted children of the East.
3:13:56
Speaker 2: And at last he.
3:13:57
Speaker 3: Broke forth in passionate challenge, why should I not Seattle.
3:14:01
Speaker 3: It took me from the slums of the Atlantic Coast,
3:14:03
Speaker 3: a poor Swedish boy with hardly fifteen dollars in my pocket.
3:14:07
Speaker 3: It gave me a home by the beautiful sea. It
3:14:09
Speaker 3: spread before my eyes a vision of snow capped peaks
3:14:12
Speaker 3: and smiling fields. It brought abundance and a new life
3:14:15
Speaker 3: to me and my children. And I love it.
3:14:17
Speaker 2: I love it.
3:14:18
Speaker 3: If I were a multi millionaire, I would chart of
3:14:21
Speaker 3: freight cars and carry away from the crowded tenements and
3:14:23
Speaker 3: noisome alleys of the Eastern cities and the old world,
3:14:27
Speaker 3: the toiling masses and let them loose in our vast
3:14:29
Speaker 3: forests and ore laded mountains to learn what life really is.
3:14:33
Speaker 3: And my heart was stirred by his words and by
3:14:36
Speaker 3: the whirling spaces of woods and peaks through which we passed.
3:14:39
Speaker 3: But as I looked and listened to his passionate outcry,
3:14:42
Speaker 3: I remembered the words of Talleyrand, the exiled Bishop of
3:14:45
Speaker 3: Auton in Washington's administration, looking down from an eminence not
3:14:50
Speaker 3: far from Philadelphia, upon a wilderness which is now in
3:14:53
Speaker 3: the heart of that huge industrial society, where population presses
3:14:56
Speaker 3: on the means of life. Even the cold blooded and
3:14:59
Speaker 3: cynical Taluran, and gazing upon those unpeopled hills and forests,
3:15:03
Speaker 3: kindled with the vision of coming clearings, the smiling farms
3:15:06
Speaker 3: and grazing herds that were to be, the populous towns
3:15:09
Speaker 3: that should be built, the newer and finer social organization
3:15:13
Speaker 3: that should be their arise. And then I remembered the
3:15:16
Speaker 3: hall in Harvard's Museum of Social Ethics through which I
3:15:19
Speaker 3: passed to my lecture room when I speak on the
3:15:21
Speaker 3: history of the Westward Movement. That hall is covered with
3:15:24
Speaker 3: an exhibit of the work in Pittsburgh steel mills, and
3:15:27
Speaker 3: of the congested tenements. Its charts and diagrams tell of
3:15:31
Speaker 3: the long hours of work, the death rate, the relation
3:15:34
Speaker 3: of typhoid to the slums, the gathering of the poor
3:15:37
Speaker 3: of all southeastern Europe to make a civilization at that
3:15:40
Speaker 3: center of American industrial industry and vast capital, that is
3:15:43
Speaker 3: a social tragedy. As they enter my lecture room through
3:15:46
Speaker 3: that hall, I speak of the young Washington leading his
3:15:49
Speaker 3: Virginia frontiersmen to the magnificent forest at the forks of
3:15:52
Speaker 3: the Ohio, where Braddock and his men, carving across on
3:15:56
Speaker 3: the wilderness rim were struck by the painted savages. In
3:15:59
Speaker 3: the primeval woods, huge furnaces belch forth, perpetual fires, and
3:16:03
Speaker 3: huns and bulgars, Poles and Sicilians struggle for a chance
3:16:07
Speaker 3: to earn their daily bread and live a brutal and
3:16:10
Speaker 3: degraded life. Irresistibly, there rushed across my mind the memorable
3:16:14
Speaker 3: words of Huxley. Even the best of modern civilization appears
3:16:18
Speaker 3: to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither
3:16:21
Speaker 3: embodies any worthy ideal, nor even possesses the merit of stability.
3:16:25
Speaker 3: I do not hesitate to express the opinion that if
3:16:27
Speaker 3: there is no hope of a large improvement of the
3:16:30
Speaker 3: condition of the greater part of the human family. If
3:16:32
Speaker 3: it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning
3:16:35
Speaker 3: of a greater dominion over nature, which is its consequence,
3:16:38
Speaker 3: and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to
3:16:40
Speaker 3: make no difference in the extent and the intensity of
3:16:43
Speaker 3: the want, with its concomital physical and moral degradation among
3:16:48
Speaker 3: the masses of the people, I should hail the advent
3:16:51
Speaker 3: of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away,
3:16:54
Speaker 3: as a desirable consummation. But if there is dissolution and
3:16:58
Speaker 3: shock and apprehension as we come to realize these changes
3:17:01
Speaker 3: to strong men and women, there is challenge and inspiration
3:17:04
Speaker 3: in them too. In place of old frontiers of wilderness,
3:17:07
Speaker 3: there are new frontiers of unworon fields of science fruitful
3:17:10
Speaker 3: for the needs of the race. There are frontiers of
3:17:13
Speaker 3: better social domains yet unexplored. Let us hold to our
3:17:16
Speaker 3: attitude of faith and courage and creative zeal. Let us
3:17:19
Speaker 3: dream as our fathers dreamt, and let us make our
3:17:22
Speaker 3: dreams come true. Daughters of time, the hypocritic days, muffled
3:17:26
Speaker 3: and dumb like barefoot dervishes and marching single in an
3:17:29
Speaker 3: endless life, bear diadems and faggots in their hands. To
3:17:33
Speaker 3: each they offer gifts after His will, bred kingdoms, stars
3:17:37
Speaker 3: and sky that hold them all. I in my pleached garden,
3:17:40
Speaker 3: watch the pomp forgot my mourning wishes, hastily took a
3:17:43
Speaker 3: few herbs and apples, and the day turned and departed silent.
3:17:47
Speaker 3: I too late, under her solemn filet saw the scorn.
3:17:52
Speaker 3: What were America's mourning wishes? From the beginning of that
3:17:55
Speaker 3: long westward march of the American people, America has never
3:17:58
Speaker 3: been the home of mere, contented materialism. It has continuously
3:18:02
Speaker 3: sought new ways and dreamed of a perfected social type.
3:18:06
Speaker 3: In the fifteenth century, when men dealt with the new
3:18:08
Speaker 3: world which Columbus found, the ideal of discovery was dominant.
3:18:12
Speaker 3: Here was placed within the reach of men whose ideas
3:18:15
Speaker 3: had been bounded by the Atlantic, new realms to be explored.
3:18:18
Speaker 3: America became the land of European dreams. Its fortunate islands
3:18:22
Speaker 3: were made real, where in the imagination of old Europe,
3:18:25
Speaker 3: peace and happiness, as well as riches and eternal youth,
3:18:28
Speaker 3: were to be found.
3:18:29
Speaker 2: To Sir Edwin.
3:18:30
Speaker 3: Sandy's and his friends of the London Company, Virginia offered
3:18:33
Speaker 3: an opportunity to erect the republic for which they had
3:18:35
Speaker 3: longed in Vain in England. To the Puritans, New England
3:18:39
Speaker 3: was the new land of freedom, wherein they might establish
3:18:42
Speaker 3: the institutions of God according to their own faith. As
3:18:45
Speaker 3: the vision died away in Virginia toward the close of
3:18:48
Speaker 3: the seventeenth century, it was taken up anew by the
3:18:50
Speaker 3: fiery Bacon with his revolution, to establish a real democracy
3:18:54
Speaker 3: in place of the rule of the planter aristocracy that
3:18:57
Speaker 3: formed along the coast. Hardly had he been overthrown when
3:19:01
Speaker 3: in the eighteenth century the democratic ideal was rejuvenated by
3:19:04
Speaker 3: the strong frontiersmen who pressed beyond the New England coast
3:19:07
Speaker 3: into the Berkshires and up into the valleys of the
3:19:09
Speaker 3: Green Mountains of Vermont, and by the scotch Irish and
3:19:12
Speaker 3: German pioneers who followed the Great Valley from Pennsylvania into
3:19:15
Speaker 3: the Upland South. In both the Yankee frontiersmen and the
3:19:19
Speaker 3: scotch Irish Presbyterians of the South, the Calvinistic conception of
3:19:22
Speaker 3: the importance of the individual bound by free covenant to
3:19:25
Speaker 3: his fellow men and to God was a compelling influence,
3:19:29
Speaker 3: and all their wilderness experience combined to emphasize the ideals
3:19:32
Speaker 3: of opening new ways, of giving freer play to the individual,
3:19:36
Speaker 3: and of constructing democratic society. When the backwoodsmen crossed the Alleghenies,
3:19:41
Speaker 3: they put between themselves on the Atlantic coast a barrier
3:19:44
Speaker 3: which seemed to separate them from a region already too
3:19:46
Speaker 3: much like the Europe they had left. And as they
3:19:48
Speaker 3: followed the courses of the rivers that flowed to the Mississippi,
3:19:51
Speaker 3: they called themselves men of the Western Waters, and their
3:19:54
Speaker 3: new home in the Mississippi Valley was the Western World.
3:19:57
Speaker 3: Here by the thirties, Jacksonian democrats flourished strong in the
3:20:01
Speaker 3: faith of the intrinsic excellence of the common man, in
3:20:04
Speaker 3: his right to make his own place in the world,
3:20:06
Speaker 3: and in his capacity to share in government. But while
3:20:09
Speaker 3: Jacksonian democracy demanded these rights, it was also loyal to leadership.
3:20:13
Speaker 3: As the very name implies, it was ready to follow
3:20:16
Speaker 3: to the uttermost the man in whom it placed its trust,
3:20:19
Speaker 3: whether the hero were frontier, fighter or president, and it
3:20:22
Speaker 3: even rebuked and limited its own legislative representatives and recalled
3:20:26
Speaker 3: its senators when they ran counter to their chosen executive.
3:20:29
Speaker 3: Jacksonian democracy was essentially rule. It was based on the
3:20:33
Speaker 3: good fellowship and genuine social feeling of the frontier, in
3:20:36
Speaker 3: which classes and inequalities of fortune played little part. But
3:20:40
Speaker 3: it did not demand equality of condition, for there was
3:20:43
Speaker 3: abundance of natural resources, and the belief that the self
3:20:46
Speaker 3: made man had a right to his success in the
3:20:48
Speaker 3: free competition which Western life afforded was as prominent in
3:20:52
Speaker 3: their thought as was the love of democracy. On the
3:20:56
Speaker 3: other hand, they viewed governmental restraints with suspicion as a
3:20:59
Speaker 3: limit on their right to work out their own individuality.
3:21:03
Speaker 3: For the banking institutions and capitalists of the East, they
3:21:06
Speaker 3: had an instinctive antipathy already. They feared that the money power,
3:21:10
Speaker 3: as Jackson called it, was planning to make huers of
3:21:13
Speaker 3: wood and drawers of water of.
3:21:14
Speaker 2: The common people.
3:21:16
Speaker 3: In this view they found allies among the labour leaders
3:21:19
Speaker 3: of the East, who in the same period began their
3:21:21
Speaker 3: fight for better conditions of the way journal. Those local
3:21:25
Speaker 3: phocos were the first Americans to demand fundamental social change
3:21:28
Speaker 3: for the benefit of the workers in the cities. Like
3:21:31
Speaker 3: the Western pioneers, they protested against monopolies and special privilege.
3:21:35
Speaker 3: But they also had a constructive policy, whereby society was
3:21:38
Speaker 3: to be kept democratic by free gifts of the public land,
3:21:42
Speaker 3: so that surplus labour might not be it against itself,
3:21:44
Speaker 3: but might find an outlet in the west. Thus, to
3:21:48
Speaker 3: both the labour theorist and the practical pioneer, the existence
3:21:51
Speaker 3: of what seemed inexhaustible, cheap land and unpossessed resources was
3:21:55
Speaker 3: the condition of democracy. In those years of the thirties
3:21:58
Speaker 3: and forties, Western demo took on its own distinctive form.
3:22:02
Speaker 3: Travelers like to Tocqueville and Harrett Martineau came to study
3:22:06
Speaker 3: and to report it enthusiastically to Europe end of Section
3:22:10
Speaker 3: thirty six, Chapter eleven, Part three. Side by side with
3:22:16
Speaker 3: this westward marching army of individualistic, liberty loving democratic backwardsmen
3:22:21
Speaker 3: went a more northern stream of pioneers who cherished similar ideas,
3:22:26
Speaker 3: but added to them the desire to create new industrial centers,
3:22:29
Speaker 3: to build up factories, to build railroads, and to develop
3:22:32
Speaker 3: the country by founding cities and extending prosperity. They were
3:22:37
Speaker 3: ready to call upon legislatures to aid in this by
3:22:40
Speaker 3: subscriptions to stock grants of franchises, promotion of banking, and
3:22:44
Speaker 3: internal improvements. These were the Whig followers of that other
3:22:47
Speaker 3: Western leader, Henry Clay, and their early strength lay in
3:22:51
Speaker 3: the Ohio Valley and particularly among the well to do
3:22:54
Speaker 3: in the South. Their strength was found among the aristocracy
3:22:57
Speaker 3: of the Cotton Kingdom. Of these Western groups, Whigs and
3:23:01
Speaker 3: Democrats alike had one common ideal, the desire to leave
3:23:05
Speaker 3: their children a better heritage than they themselves had received,
3:23:08
Speaker 3: and both were fired with devotion to the ideal of
3:23:11
Speaker 3: creating in this new world a home more worthy of mankind.
3:23:15
Speaker 3: Both were ready to break with the past to boldly
3:23:17
Speaker 3: strike out new lines of social endeavor, and both believed
3:23:20
Speaker 3: in American expansion. Before these tendencies had worked themselves out,
3:23:25
Speaker 3: three new forces entered in the sudden extension of our
3:23:28
Speaker 3: boundaries to the Pacific coast, which took place in the forties.
3:23:32
Speaker 3: The nation one so vast a domain that its resources
3:23:34
Speaker 3: seemed illimitable, and its society seemed able to throw off
3:23:38
Speaker 3: all its maladies by the very presence of these vast
3:23:41
Speaker 3: new spaces. At the same period, the great activity of
3:23:44
Speaker 3: railroad building to the Mississippi Valley occurred, making these lands
3:23:47
Speaker 3: available and diverting attention to the task of economic construction.
3:23:52
Speaker 3: The third influence was the slavery question, which, becoming acute,
3:23:55
Speaker 3: shaped the American ideals and public discussion for nearly a generation.
3:24:00
Speaker 3: Viewed from one angle, this struggle involved the great question
3:24:03
Speaker 3: of national unity. From another, it involved the question of
3:24:06
Speaker 3: the relations of labour and capital, democracy and aristocracy. It
3:24:10
Speaker 3: was not without significance that Abraham Lincoln became the very
3:24:13
Speaker 3: type of American pioneer democracy, the first adequate and elemental
3:24:17
Speaker 3: demonstration to the world that democracy could produce a man
3:24:20
Speaker 3: who belonged to the ages. After the war, new national
3:24:24
Speaker 3: energies were set loose, and new construction and development engaged
3:24:28
Speaker 3: the attention of the Westerners as they occupied prairies in
3:24:31
Speaker 3: great plains and mountains. Democracy and capitalistic development did not
3:24:35
Speaker 3: seem antagonistic. With the passing of the frontier, Western social
3:24:39
Speaker 3: and political ideals took new form. Capital began to consolidate
3:24:43
Speaker 3: in even greater masses and increasingly attempted to reduce to
3:24:46
Speaker 3: system and control the processes of industrial development. Labour, with
3:24:51
Speaker 3: equal step, organised its forces to destroy the old competitive system.
3:24:55
Speaker 3: It is not strange that the Western pioneers took alarm
3:24:58
Speaker 3: for their ideals of democracy. As the outcome of the
3:25:01
Speaker 3: free struggle for the national resources became the parent they
3:25:05
Speaker 3: espoused the cause of governmental activity. It was a new
3:25:09
Speaker 3: gospel for the Western radical became convinced that he must
3:25:12
Speaker 3: sacrifice his ideal of individualism and free competition in order
3:25:16
Speaker 3: to maintain his ideal of democracy. Under this conviction, the
3:25:20
Speaker 3: populace revised the pioneer conception of government. He saw in
3:25:24
Speaker 3: government no longer something outside of him, but the people
3:25:27
Speaker 3: themselves shaping their own affairs. He demanded, therefore, an extension
3:25:30
Speaker 3: of the powers of governments.
3:25:32
Speaker 2: In the interest of his historic.
3:25:33
Speaker 3: Ideal of democratic society. He demanded not only free silver,
3:25:38
Speaker 3: but the ownership of the agencies of communication and transportation,
3:25:42
Speaker 3: the income tax, the postal savings bank, the provision of
3:25:45
Speaker 3: means of credit for agriculture, the construction of more effective
3:25:48
Speaker 3: devices to express the will of the people, primary nominations,
3:25:52
Speaker 3: direct elections, initiative, referendum, and recall. In a word, capital,
3:25:57
Speaker 3: labour and the Western pioneer all deserve the ideal of
3:26:00
Speaker 3: competitive individualism in order to organize their interests in more
3:26:04
Speaker 3: effective combinations. The disappearance of the frontier. The closing of
3:26:08
Speaker 3: the error, which was marked by the influence of the
3:26:10
Speaker 3: West as a form of society, brings with it new
3:26:13
Speaker 3: problems of social adjustment, new demands for considering our past
3:26:17
Speaker 3: ideals and our present needs. Let us recall the conditions
3:26:20
Speaker 3: of the foreign relations along our borders, the dangers that
3:26:23
Speaker 3: wait us if we fail to unite in the solution
3:26:25
Speaker 3: about domestic problems. Let us recall those internal evidences of
3:26:30
Speaker 3: the destruction of our old social order. If we take
3:26:33
Speaker 3: to heart this warning, we shall do well also to
3:26:36
Speaker 3: recount our historic ideals, to take stock of those purposes
3:26:39
Speaker 3: and the fundamental assumptions that have gone to make the
3:26:42
Speaker 3: American spirit and the meaning of America in world history.
3:26:46
Speaker 3: First of all, there was the ideal of discovery, the
3:26:49
Speaker 3: courageous determination to break new parts, indifference to the dogma
3:26:53
Speaker 3: that because an institution or a condition exists, it must remain.
3:26:57
Speaker 3: All American experience has gone to the making of the
3:26:59
Speaker 3: spirit of innovation.
3:27:01
Speaker 2: It is in the.
3:27:01
Speaker 3: Blood and will not be repressed. Then there was the
3:27:05
Speaker 3: ideal of democracy, the ideal of a free self directing
3:27:08
Speaker 3: people responsive to leadership in the forming of programs, in
3:27:11
Speaker 3: their execution but insistent that the procedures should be that
3:27:14
Speaker 3: of free choice, not of compulsion. But there was also
3:27:18
Speaker 3: the ideal of individualism. This democratic society was not a
3:27:22
Speaker 3: disciplined army where all must keep step, and where the
3:27:25
Speaker 3: collective interests destroyed individual will and work. Rather, it was
3:27:29
Speaker 3: a mobile mass of freely circulating atoms, each seeking its
3:27:33
Speaker 3: own place and finding play for its own powers and
3:27:36
Speaker 3: for its own original initiative. We cannot lay too much
3:27:39
Speaker 3: stress upon this point, for it was at the very
3:27:41
Speaker 3: heart of the whole American movement. The world was to
3:27:45
Speaker 3: be made a better world by the example of a
3:27:47
Speaker 3: democracy in which there was freedom of the individual, in
3:27:50
Speaker 3: which there was the vitality and mobility productive of originality
3:27:54
Speaker 3: and variety. Bearing in mind the far reaching influence of
3:27:58
Speaker 3: the disappearance of amund limit limited resources open to all
3:28:01
Speaker 3: men for the taking, and considering the recoil of the
3:28:04
Speaker 3: common man when he saw the outcome of the competitive
3:28:06
Speaker 3: struggle for those resources as the supply came to its
3:28:10
Speaker 3: end over most of the nation, we can understand the
3:28:12
Speaker 3: reaction against individualism and in favor of drastic assertion of
3:28:16
Speaker 3: the powers of government. Legislation is taking the place of
3:28:19
Speaker 3: the free lands as the means of preserving the ideal
3:28:22
Speaker 3: of democracy, but at the same time it is endangering
3:28:25
Speaker 3: the other pioneer ideal of creative and competitive individualism. Both
3:28:30
Speaker 3: were essential and constituted what was best in America's contribution
3:28:34
Speaker 3: to history and to progress. Both must be preserved if
3:28:37
Speaker 3: the nation would be true to its past and would
3:28:39
Speaker 3: fulfill its highest destiny. It would be a grave misfortune
3:28:43
Speaker 3: if these people, so rich an experience in self confidence
3:28:46
Speaker 3: and aspiration in creative genius, should turn to some old
3:28:50
Speaker 3: world discipline of socialism, or plutocracy, or despotic rule, whether
3:28:55
Speaker 3: by class or by dictator. Nor shall we be driven
3:28:58
Speaker 3: to these alternatives. Our ancient hopes, our courageous faith, our
3:29:02
Speaker 3: underlying good humor, and love of fair play will triumph.
3:29:05
Speaker 3: In the end, there will be give and take in
3:29:08
Speaker 3: all directions. There will be disinterested leadership under loyalty to
3:29:11
Speaker 3: the best American ideals. Nowhere is this leadership more likely
3:29:15
Speaker 3: to arise than among the men trained in the universities.
3:29:19
Speaker 3: Aware of the promise of the past and the possibilities
3:29:21
Speaker 3: of the future, the times call for new ambitions and
3:29:24
Speaker 3: new motives. In a most suggestive essay on the problems
3:29:28
Speaker 3: of modern democracy. Mister Godkin has said. M. De Tocqueville
3:29:33
Speaker 3: and all his followers take it for granted that the
3:29:35
Speaker 3: great incentive to excellence in all countries in which excellence
3:29:38
Speaker 3: is found is the patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy.
3:29:43
Speaker 3: The democracy is generally content with mediocrity. But where is
3:29:47
Speaker 3: the proof of this? The incentive to exertion, which is widest,
3:29:51
Speaker 3: most constant, and most powerful in its operations in all
3:29:54
Speaker 3: civilized countries, is the desire of distinction. And this may
3:29:58
Speaker 3: be composed either of life of fame or love.
3:30:01
Speaker 2: Of wealth, or of both.
3:30:03
Speaker 3: In literary and artistic and scientific pursuits, sometimes the strongest
3:30:07
Speaker 3: influence is exerted by a love of the subject. But
3:30:11
Speaker 3: it may safely be said that no man has ever
3:30:13
Speaker 3: labored in any of the higher colleges to whom the
3:30:16
Speaker 3: applause and appreciation of his fellows was not one of
3:30:19
Speaker 3: the sweetest rewards of his exertions. What is there, we
3:30:23
Speaker 3: would ask, in the nature of democratic institutions that should
3:30:27
Speaker 3: render this great spring of action powerless, that should deprive
3:30:30
Speaker 3: glory of all radiance and put ambition to sleep. Is
3:30:34
Speaker 3: it not notorious on the contrary that one of the
3:30:37
Speaker 3: most marked peculiarities of democratic society, or of a society
3:30:41
Speaker 3: drifting toward democracy, is the fire of competition which rages
3:30:45
Speaker 3: in it, the fevered anxiety which possesses all its members
3:30:49
Speaker 3: to rise above the dead level to which the law
3:30:51
Speaker 3: is ever seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant stroke,
3:30:54
Speaker 3: becomes something higher and more remarkable than their fellows. The
3:30:58
Speaker 3: secret of that great res uselessness, which is one of
3:31:01
Speaker 3: the most disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic countries, is
3:31:05
Speaker 3: in fact due to the eagerness of everybody to grasp
3:31:08
Speaker 3: the prizes of which in aristocratic countries only the few
3:31:12
Speaker 3: have much chance. And in no other society is success
3:31:15
Speaker 3: more worshiped, its distinction of any kind more widely flattered
3:31:19
Speaker 3: and caressed in democratic societies. In fact, excellence is the
3:31:23
Speaker 3: first title to distinction in aristocratic ones. There are two
3:31:27
Speaker 3: or three others which are far stronger, and which must
3:31:29
Speaker 3: be stronger, or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you
3:31:33
Speaker 3: acknowledge that the highest social position ought to be the
3:31:35
Speaker 3: reward of the man who has the most talent, you
3:31:38
Speaker 3: make aristocratic institutions impossible. All that was buoyant and creative
3:31:44
Speaker 3: in American life would be lost if we gave up
3:31:46
Speaker 3: the respect for distinct personality and variety in genius, and
3:31:49
Speaker 3: came to the dead level of common standards. To be
3:31:53
Speaker 3: socialized into an average and placed under the tutelage of
3:31:56
Speaker 3: the mass of us, as a recent writer has put it,
3:31:59
Speaker 3: would be in irreparable loss. Nor is it necessary in
3:32:02
Speaker 3: a democracy, As these words of God can well disclose.
3:32:06
Speaker 3: What is needed is the multiplication of motives for ambition,
3:32:10
Speaker 3: and the opening of new lines of achievement for the strongest.
3:32:13
Speaker 3: As we turn from the task of the first rough
3:32:16
Speaker 3: conquest of the continent, there lies before us a whole
3:32:19
Speaker 3: wealth of unexploited resources in the realm of the spirit,
3:32:23
Speaker 3: arts and letters, science and better social creation, loyalty and
3:32:26
Speaker 3: political service.
3:32:27
Speaker 2: To the commonwealth.
3:32:29
Speaker 3: These and a thousand other directions of activity are open
3:32:33
Speaker 3: to the men who, formerly, under the incentive of attaining
3:32:36
Speaker 3: distinction by amassing extraordinary wealth, saw success only in material display.
3:32:42
Speaker 3: Newer and finer careers will open to the ambitious, when
3:32:45
Speaker 3: once public opinion shall award the laurels to those who
3:32:48
Speaker 3: rise above their fellows in these new fields of labor.
3:32:51
Speaker 3: It has not been the gold but the getting of
3:32:54
Speaker 3: the gold that has caught the imaginations of our captains
3:32:57
Speaker 3: of industry. Their real enjoyment lay not in the luxuries
3:33:00
Speaker 3: which wealth brought, but in the work of construction and
3:33:03
Speaker 3: in the place which society awarded them. A new era
3:33:06
Speaker 3: will come if schools and universities can only widen the
3:33:10
Speaker 3: intellectual horizon of the people, help delay the foundations of
3:33:13
Speaker 3: a better industrial life, show them new goals for endeavor,
3:33:17
Speaker 3: inspire them with more varied and higher ideals. The Western
3:33:21
Speaker 3: spirit must be invoked for new and nobler achievements of
3:33:25
Speaker 3: that matured Western spirit. Tennyson's Ulysses is a symbol I
3:33:30
Speaker 3: am become a name for always roaming with unhungry heart.
3:33:34
Speaker 3: Much have I seen and known. I am a part
3:33:36
Speaker 3: of all that I have met, yet all experiences in art,
3:33:40
Speaker 3: where through gleams at that untraveled world whose margin fades
3:33:43
Speaker 3: forever and forever when I move. How dull it is
3:33:46
Speaker 3: to pause, to make an end, to rust, unburnished, not
3:33:50
Speaker 3: to shine in use. And this gray spirit, yearning in
3:33:54
Speaker 3: desire to follow knowledge, like a shining star beyond the
3:33:57
Speaker 3: utmost hound of human thought, my friends, tis not too
3:34:01
Speaker 3: late to seek a newer world. Push off and sitting
3:34:04
Speaker 3: well in order smite the sounding furrows. For my purpose
3:34:08
Speaker 3: holds to sail beyond the sunset and the bards of
3:34:11
Speaker 3: all the western stars, until I die, to strive, to seek,
3:34:15
Speaker 3: to find, and not to yield. End of Section thirty.
3:34:19
Speaker 1: Seven, Chapter twelve, Social Forces in American History, Part one
3:34:25
Speaker 1: footnote Annual Address as the President of the American Historical Association,
3:34:30
Speaker 1: delivered at Indianapolis, December twenty eighth, nineteen ten.
3:34:34
Speaker 2: End of footnote.
3:34:36
Speaker 1: The transformations through which the United States is passing in
3:34:40
Speaker 1: our own day are so profound, so far reaching, that
3:34:43
Speaker 1: it is hardly an exaggeration to say that we are
3:34:46
Speaker 1: witnessing the birth of a new nation in America. The
3:34:49
Speaker 1: revolution in the social and economic structure of this country
3:34:52
Speaker 1: during the past two decades is comparable to what occurred
3:34:55
Speaker 1: when independence was declared and the Constitution was formed, or
3:34:59
Speaker 1: to the changes wrought by the era which began half
3:35:02
Speaker 1: a century ago, the era of civil war and reconstruction.
3:35:06
Speaker 1: These changes have been long in preparation and are in
3:35:09
Speaker 1: part the result of worldwide forces of reorganization incident to
3:35:13
Speaker 1: the age of steam production and large scale industry, and
3:35:17
Speaker 1: in part the result of the closing of the period
3:35:19
Speaker 1: of the colonization of the West. They have been prophesied,
3:35:23
Speaker 1: and the course of the movement partly described by students
3:35:26
Speaker 1: of American development. But after all it is with a
3:35:29
Speaker 1: shock that the people of the United States are coming
3:35:32
Speaker 1: to realize that the fundamental forces which have shaped their
3:35:35
Speaker 1: society up to the present are disappearing. Twenty years ago,
3:35:39
Speaker 1: as I have before had occasion to point out, the
3:35:42
Speaker 1: Superintendent of the Census declared that the frontier line, which
3:35:46
Speaker 1: its maps had depicted for decade after decade of the
3:35:49
Speaker 1: westward march of the nation, could no longer be described. Today.
3:35:53
Speaker 1: We must add that the age of free competition of
3:35:56
Speaker 1: individuals for the unpossessed resources of the nation is new.
3:36:00
Speaker 1: During its end, it is taking less than a generation
3:36:03
Speaker 1: to write the chapter which began with the disappearance of
3:36:06
Speaker 1: the line of the frontier, the last chapter in the
3:36:09
Speaker 1: history of the colonization of the United States, the conclusion
3:36:13
Speaker 1: to the annals of its pioneer democracy. It is a
3:36:16
Speaker 1: wonderful chapter, this final rush of American energy upon the
3:36:20
Speaker 1: remaining wilderness. Even the bare statistics become eloquent of a
3:36:24
Speaker 1: new era. They no longer derive their significance from the
3:36:28
Speaker 1: exhibit of vast proportions of the public domain transferred to agriculture,
3:36:33
Speaker 1: of wildernesses equal to European nations, changed decade after decade
3:36:37
Speaker 1: into the farm area of the United States. It is
3:36:40
Speaker 1: true there was added to the farms of the nation
3:36:43
Speaker 1: between eighteen seventy and eighteen eighty a territory equal to
3:36:47
Speaker 1: that of France, and between eighteen eighty and nineteen hundred
3:36:51
Speaker 1: a territory equal to the European area of France, Germany, England,
3:36:55
Speaker 1: and Wales combined. The records of nineteen ten are not
3:36:58
Speaker 1: yet available, but whatever or they reveal, they will not
3:37:01
Speaker 1: be so full of meaning as the figures which tell
3:37:04
Speaker 1: of upleaping wealth and organization and concentration of industrial power
3:37:08
Speaker 1: in the East in the last decade. As the final
3:37:11
Speaker 1: provinces of the Western Empire have been subdued to the
3:37:14
Speaker 1: purposes of civilization and have yielded their spoils, as the
3:37:18
Speaker 1: spheres of operation of the great industrial corporations have extended.
3:37:22
Speaker 1: With the extension of American settlement, production and wealth have
3:37:26
Speaker 1: increased beyond all precedent. The total deposits in all national
3:37:30
Speaker 1: banks have more than trebled in the present decade. The
3:37:34
Speaker 1: money in circulation has doubled since eighteen ninety. The flood
3:37:38
Speaker 1: of gold makes it difficult to gauge the full meaning
3:37:41
Speaker 1: of the incredible increase in values, For in the decade
3:37:44
Speaker 1: ending with nineteen oh nine, over forty one million, six
3:37:47
Speaker 1: hundred thousand ounces of gold were mined in the United
3:37:50
Speaker 1: States alone. Over four million ounces have been produced every
3:37:54
Speaker 1: year since nineteen oh five, whereas between eighteen eighty and
3:37:57
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four no year showed production of two million ounces.
3:38:02
Speaker 1: As a result of this swelling stream of gold and
3:38:05
Speaker 1: instruments of credit, aided by a variety of other causes,
3:38:09
Speaker 1: prices have risen until their height has become one of
3:38:11
Speaker 1: the most marked features and influential factors in American life,
3:38:15
Speaker 1: producing social readjustments and contributing effectively to party revolutions.
3:38:21
Speaker 2: But if we.
3:38:21
Speaker 1: Avoid those statistics, which require analysis because of the changing
3:38:25
Speaker 1: standard of value, we still find that the decade occupies
3:38:29
Speaker 1: an exceptional place in American history. More coal was mined
3:38:33
Speaker 1: in the United States in the ten years after eighteen
3:38:36
Speaker 1: ninety seven than in all the life of the nation
3:38:39
Speaker 1: before that time. Fifty years ago, we mined less than
3:38:42
Speaker 1: fifteen million long tons of coal. In nineteen oh seven,
3:38:46
Speaker 1: we mined nearly four hundred and twenty nine million. At
3:38:49
Speaker 1: the present rate, it is estimated that the supply of
3:38:51
Speaker 1: coal would be exhausted at a date no farther in
3:38:54
Speaker 1: the future than the formation of the Constitution is in
3:38:57
Speaker 1: the past. Iron and coal are the measure of industrial power.
3:39:01
Speaker 1: The nation has produced three times as much iron ore
3:39:04
Speaker 1: in the past two decades as in all its previous history.
3:39:08
Speaker 1: The production of the past ten years was more than
3:39:11
Speaker 1: double that of the prior decade. Pig iron production is
3:39:14
Speaker 1: admitted to be an excellent barometer of manufacture and of transportation.
3:39:18
Speaker 1: Never until eighteen ninety eight had this reached an annual
3:39:21
Speaker 1: total of ten million long tons, but in the five
3:39:25
Speaker 1: years beginning with nineteen oh four, it averaged over twice that.
3:39:28
Speaker 1: By nineteen oh seven, the United States had surpassed Great Britain, Germany,
3:39:33
Speaker 1: and France combined in the production of pig iron and
3:39:35
Speaker 1: steel together, and in the same decade, a single great
3:39:39
Speaker 1: corporation has established its domination over the iron mines and
3:39:43
Speaker 1: steel manufacture of the United States. It is more than
3:39:46
Speaker 1: a mere accident that the United States steel corporation, with
3:39:50
Speaker 1: its stocks and bonds aggregating one billion, four hundred million dollars,
3:39:55
Speaker 1: was organized at the beginning of the present decade. The
3:39:58
Speaker 1: former wilderness about Lake super has principally in the past
3:40:02
Speaker 1: two decades established its position as overwhelmingly the preponderant source
3:40:07
Speaker 1: of iron ore, present and perspective in the United States,
3:40:11
Speaker 1: a treasury from which Pittsburgh has drawn wealth and extended
3:40:14
Speaker 1: its unparalleled industrial empire in these years. The tremendous energies
3:40:19
Speaker 1: thus liberated at this center of industrial power in the
3:40:22
Speaker 1: United States, revolutionized methods of manufacture in general, and in
3:40:26
Speaker 1: many indirect ways, profoundly influenced the life of the nation.
3:40:31
Speaker 1: Railroad statistics also exhibit unprecedented development the formation of a
3:40:36
Speaker 1: new industrial society. The number of passengers carried one mile
3:40:40
Speaker 1: more than doubled between eighteen ninety and nineteen oh eight.
3:40:44
Speaker 1: Freight carried one mile has nearly trebled in the same
3:40:47
Speaker 1: period and is doubled in the past decade. Agricultural products
3:40:51
Speaker 1: tell a different story. The corn crop has only risen
3:40:54
Speaker 1: from about two billion bushels in eighteen ninety one to
3:40:57
Speaker 1: two and seven tenths billions in nineteen nine nine wheat
3:41:01
Speaker 1: from six hundred and eleven million bushels in eighteen ninety
3:41:03
Speaker 1: one to only seven hundred and thirty seven million in
3:41:06
Speaker 1: nineteen oh nine, and cotton from about nine million bales
3:41:10
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety one to ten and three tenths million
3:41:13
Speaker 1: bales in nineteen oh nine. Population has increased in the
3:41:16
Speaker 1: United States proper, from about sixty two and one half
3:41:19
Speaker 1: millions in eighteen ninety to seventy five and one half
3:41:22
Speaker 1: millions in nineteen hundred to over ninety millions in nineteen ten.
3:41:27
Speaker 1: It is clear from these statistics that the ratio of
3:41:30
Speaker 1: the nation's increased production of immediate wealth by the enormously
3:41:34
Speaker 1: increased exploitation of its remaining natural resources vastly exceeds the
3:41:39
Speaker 1: ratio of increase of population, and still more strikingly exceeds
3:41:43
Speaker 1: the ratio of increase of agricultural products. Already, population is
3:41:48
Speaker 1: pressing upon the food supply while capital consolidates in billion
3:41:52
Speaker 1: dollar organizations. The triumphant democracy, whose achievements the Iron Master celebrated,
3:41:58
Speaker 1: has reached a statue even more imposing than he could
3:42:01
Speaker 1: have foreseen, but still less did he perceive the changes
3:42:05
Speaker 1: in democracy itself and the conditions of its life which
3:42:08
Speaker 1: have accompanied this material growth. Having colonized to the far West,
3:42:13
Speaker 1: having mastered its internal resources, the nation turned, at the
3:42:17
Speaker 1: conclusion of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
3:42:20
Speaker 1: century to deal with the far East, to engage in
3:42:23
Speaker 1: the world politics of the Pacific Ocean, having continued its
3:42:27
Speaker 1: historic expansion into the lands of the old Spanish Empire.
3:42:30
Speaker 1: By the successful outcome of the recent war, the United
3:42:33
Speaker 1: States became the mistress of the Philippines at the same
3:42:36
Speaker 1: time that it came into possession of the Hawaiian Islands
3:42:40
Speaker 1: and the controlling influence in the Gulf of Mexico it
3:42:43
Speaker 1: provided early in the present decade for connecting its Atlantic
3:42:46
Speaker 1: and Pacific coasts by the Isthmian Canal, and became an
3:42:50
Speaker 1: imperial republic with dependencies and protectorates, admittedly a new world
3:42:55
Speaker 1: power with the potential voice in the problems of Europe,
3:42:58
Speaker 1: Asia and Africa. This extension of power, this undertaking of
3:43:03
Speaker 1: grave responsibilities in new fields, this entry into the sisterhood
3:43:07
Speaker 1: of world states, was no isolated event. It was, indeed,
3:43:11
Speaker 1: in some respects, the logical outcome of the nations marched
3:43:14
Speaker 1: to the Pacific, the sequence to the era in which
3:43:17
Speaker 1: it was engaged in occupying the free lands and exploiting
3:43:21
Speaker 1: the resources of the West. When it had achieved this
3:43:24
Speaker 1: position among the nations of the Earth, the United States
3:43:27
Speaker 1: found itself confronted also with the need of constitutional readjustment
3:43:32
Speaker 1: arising from the relations of federal government and territorial acquisitions.
3:43:36
Speaker 1: It was obliged to reconsider questions of the rights of
3:43:40
Speaker 1: man and traditional American ideals of liberty and democracy in
3:43:44
Speaker 1: view of the task of government of other races politically
3:43:47
Speaker 1: inexperienced and undeveloped. If we turn to consider the effect
3:43:52
Speaker 1: upon American society and domestic policy in these two decades
3:43:56
Speaker 1: of transition, we are met with palpable evidences of the
3:43:59
Speaker 1: invasion of the old pioneer democratic order. Obvious among them
3:44:04
Speaker 1: is the effect of unprecedented immigration to supply the mobile
3:44:07
Speaker 1: army of cheap labor for the centers of industrial life.
3:44:10
Speaker 1: In the past ten years, beginning with nineteen hundred, over
3:44:14
Speaker 1: eight million immigrants have arrived. The newcomers of the eight
3:44:18
Speaker 1: years since nineteen hundred, would, according to a writer in
3:44:21
Speaker 1: nineteen oh eight, quote, repopulate all the five older New
3:44:24
Speaker 1: England states as they stand today, or if properly disseminated
3:44:29
Speaker 1: over the newer parts of the country, they would serve
3:44:31
Speaker 1: to populate no less than nineteen states of the Union
3:44:34
Speaker 1: as they stand end of quote. In nineteen oh seven quote,
3:44:38
Speaker 1: there were one and one quarter million arrivals. This number
3:44:42
Speaker 1: would entirely populate both New Hampshire and Maine, two of
3:44:45
Speaker 1: our oldest states. The arrivals of this one year would
3:44:49
Speaker 1: found a state with more inhabitants than any one of
3:44:52
Speaker 1: the twenty one of our other existing commonwealths which could
3:44:55
Speaker 1: be named end of quote. Not only has the addition
3:44:58
Speaker 1: to the population from Europe been thus extraordinary, it has
3:45:02
Speaker 1: come an increasing measure from southern and Eastern Europe. For
3:45:06
Speaker 1: the year nineteen oh seven. Professor Ripley, whom I am quoting,
3:45:09
Speaker 1: has redistributed the incomers on the basis of physical type,
3:45:13
Speaker 1: and finds that one quarter of them were of the
3:45:16
Speaker 1: Mediterranean race, one quarter of the Slavic race, one eighth Jewish,
3:45:21
Speaker 1: and only one sixth of the Alpine and six of
3:45:24
Speaker 1: the Teutonic. In eighteen eighty two, Germans had come to
3:45:27
Speaker 1: the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand. In nineteen
3:45:30
Speaker 1: oh seven, they were replaced by three hundred and thirty
3:45:33
Speaker 1: thousand South Italians. Thus, it is evident that the ethnic
3:45:37
Speaker 1: elements of the United States have undergone startling changes, and
3:45:41
Speaker 1: instead of spreading over the nation, these immigrants have concentrated,
3:45:44
Speaker 1: especially in the cities and great industrial centers. In the
3:45:47
Speaker 1: past decade. The composition of the labour class and its
3:45:51
Speaker 1: relation to wages and to the native American employer have
3:45:55
Speaker 1: been deeply influenced. Thereby, the sympathy of the employers with
3:45:59
Speaker 1: labour has been unfavorably affected by the pressure of great
3:46:02
Speaker 1: numbers of immigrants, of alien nationality, and of lower standards
3:46:06
Speaker 1: of life. The familiar facts of the massing of population
3:46:10
Speaker 1: in the cities, and the contemporaneous increase of urban power,
3:46:14
Speaker 1: and of the massing of capital and production in fewer
3:46:17
Speaker 1: and vastly greater industrial units, especially attest the revolution quote.
3:46:23
Speaker 1: It is a proposition too plain to require elucidation, wrote
3:46:27
Speaker 1: Richard Rush, Secretary of the Treasury, in his report of
3:46:30
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty seven, that the creation of capital is retarded,
3:46:33
Speaker 1: rather than accelerated, by the diffusion of a thin population
3:46:37
Speaker 1: over a great surface of soil. End of thirty years
3:46:41
Speaker 1: before Rush wrote these words, Albert Gallatin declared in Congress
3:46:45
Speaker 1: that quote, if the cause of the happiness of this
3:46:48
Speaker 1: country were examined into, it would be found to arise
3:46:51
Speaker 1: as much from the great plenty of land in proportion
3:46:54
Speaker 1: to the inhabitants which their citizens enjoyed, as from the
3:46:57
Speaker 1: wisdom of their political institutions. Possibly both of these Pennsylvania
3:47:03
Speaker 1: financiers were right under the conditions of the time, but
3:47:07
Speaker 1: it is at least significant that the capital and labour
3:47:10
Speaker 1: entered upon a new era as the end of the
3:47:12
Speaker 1: free lance approached. A contemporary of Gallatin and Congress had
3:47:16
Speaker 1: replied to the argument that cheap lands would depopulate the
3:47:20
Speaker 1: Atlantic coast by saying that if a law were framed
3:47:23
Speaker 1: to prevent ready access to western lands, it would be
3:47:27
Speaker 1: tantamount to saying that there is some class which must
3:47:30
Speaker 1: remain quote and by law be obliged to serve the
3:47:33
Speaker 1: others for such wages as they pleased to give. End.
3:47:37
Speaker 1: The passage of the arable public domain into private possession
3:47:40
Speaker 1: has raised this question in a new form and has
3:47:43
Speaker 1: brought forth new answers. This is peculiarly the era when
3:47:47
Speaker 1: competitive individualism, in the midst of vast unappropriated opportunities changed
3:47:52
Speaker 1: into the monopoly of the fundamental industrial processes by huge
3:47:56
Speaker 1: aggregations of capital. As the free lands disappeared. All the
3:48:00
Speaker 1: tendencies of the large scale production of the twentieth century,
3:48:04
Speaker 1: all the trend to the massing of capital in large combinations,
3:48:08
Speaker 1: all of the energies of the age of steam found
3:48:11
Speaker 1: in America exceptional freedom of action, and were offered regions
3:48:15
Speaker 1: of activity equal to the states of all Western Europe.
3:48:18
Speaker 1: Here they reached their highest development. The decade following eighteen
3:48:23
Speaker 1: ninety seven is marked by the work of mister Harriman
3:48:25
Speaker 1: and his rivals in building up the various railroads into
3:48:29
Speaker 1: a few great groups, a process that had gone so
3:48:32
Speaker 1: far that before his death mister Harriman was ambitious to
3:48:35
Speaker 1: concentrate them all under his single control. High Finance, under
3:48:39
Speaker 1: the leadership of mister Morgan, steadily achieved the consolidation of
3:48:43
Speaker 1: the greater industries into trusts or combinations, and affected a
3:48:47
Speaker 1: community of interests between them and a few dominant banking organizations.
3:48:52
Speaker 1: With allied insurance companies and trust companies in New York
3:48:56
Speaker 1: City have been centered as never before the banking reserves
3:48:59
Speaker 1: of the nation, and here by the financial management of
3:49:02
Speaker 1: capital and speculative promotion. There has grown up a unified
3:49:06
Speaker 1: control over the nation's industrial life. Colossal private fortunes have arisen.
3:49:12
Speaker 1: No longer is the per capital wealth of the nation
3:49:14
Speaker 1: a real index to the prosperity of the average man. Labour,
3:49:18
Speaker 1: on the other hand, has shown an increasing self consciousness,
3:49:22
Speaker 1: is combining and increasing its demands. In a word, the
3:49:25
Speaker 1: old pioneer individualism is disappearing, while the forces of social
3:49:29
Speaker 1: combination are manifesting themselves as never before. The self made
3:49:34
Speaker 1: man has become in popular speech, the coll baron, the
3:49:37
Speaker 1: steel king, the oil king, the cattle king, the railroad magnet,
3:49:41
Speaker 1: the master of high finance, the monarch of trusts. The
3:49:44
Speaker 1: world has never before seen such huge fortunes exercising combined
3:49:48
Speaker 1: control over the economic life of a people, and such
3:49:51
Speaker 1: luxury as has come out of the individualistic pioneer democracy
3:49:55
Speaker 1: of America in the course of competitive evolution. At the
3:49:59
Speaker 1: same time, the masters of industry, who control interests which
3:50:03
Speaker 1: represent billions of dollars, do not admit that they have
3:50:06
Speaker 1: broken with pioneer ideals. They regard themselves as pioneers under
3:50:10
Speaker 1: changed conditions, carrying on the old work of developing the
3:50:14
Speaker 1: natural resources of the nation, compelled by the constructive fever
3:50:18
Speaker 1: in their veins, even in ill health and old age,
3:50:21
Speaker 1: and after the accumulation of wealth beyond their power to enjoy,
3:50:25
Speaker 1: to seek new avenues of action and of power to
3:50:28
Speaker 1: chop new clearings, to find new trails, to expand the
3:50:32
Speaker 1: horizon of the nation's activity, and to extend the scope
3:50:36
Speaker 1: of their dominion.
3:50:37
Speaker 3: Quote.
3:50:38
Speaker 1: This country, said the late mister Harriman in an interview
3:50:41
Speaker 1: a few years ago, has been developed by a wonderful people,
3:50:44
Speaker 1: flesh with enthusiasm, imagination, and speculative bent. They have been
3:50:49
Speaker 1: magnificent pioneers. They saw into the future and adapted their
3:50:53
Speaker 1: work to the possibilities. Stifle that enthusiasm, deaden that imagination,
3:50:59
Speaker 1: and prohibit bit that speculation by restrictive and cramping conservative law,
3:51:04
Speaker 1: and you tend to produce a warabund and conservative people
3:51:07
Speaker 1: and country. End of this is an appeal to the
3:51:10
Speaker 1: historic ideals of Americans who viewed the Republic as the
3:51:14
Speaker 1: guardian of individual freedom to compete for the control of
3:51:17
Speaker 1: the natural resources of the nation. On the other hand,
3:51:21
Speaker 1: we have the voice of the insurgent West, recently given
3:51:24
Speaker 1: utterance in the new nationalism of ex President Roosevelt, demanding
3:51:28
Speaker 1: increase of federal authority to curb the special interests, the
3:51:32
Speaker 1: powerful industrial organizations, and the monopolies for the sake of
3:51:36
Speaker 1: the conservation of our natural resources and the preservation of
3:51:39
Speaker 1: American democracy. End of Section thirty eight, Chapter twelve, Social
3:51:45
Speaker 1: Forces in American History, Part two. The past decade has
3:51:49
Speaker 1: witnessed an extraordinary federal activity in limiting individual and corporate
3:51:54
Speaker 1: freedom for the benefit of society. To that decade belong
3:51:58
Speaker 1: the Conservation Congresses and the effective organization of the Frontier
3:52:02
Speaker 1: Service and the Reclamation Service. Taken together, these developments alone
3:52:06
Speaker 1: would mark a new era for over three hundred million
3:52:09
Speaker 1: acres are as a result of this policy reserved from
3:52:13
Speaker 1: entry and sale, an area more than equal to that
3:52:16
Speaker 1: of all the states which established the Constitution, if we
3:52:19
Speaker 1: exclude their Western claims, and these reserved lands are held
3:52:23
Speaker 1: for a more beneficial use of their forests, minerals, arid tracts,
3:52:26
Speaker 1: and water rights by the nation as a whole. Another
3:52:29
Speaker 1: example is the extension of the activity of the Department
3:52:32
Speaker 1: of Agriculture, which seeks the remotest regions of the earth
3:52:35
Speaker 1: for crops suitable to the areas reclaimed by the government,
3:52:39
Speaker 1: maps and analyzes the soils fosters the improvement of seeds
3:52:43
Speaker 1: and animals, tells the farmer when and how and what
3:52:46
Speaker 1: to plant, and makes war upon diseases of plants and
3:52:49
Speaker 1: animals and insect pests. The recent legislation for pure food
3:52:53
Speaker 1: and meat inspection, and the whole mass of regulative law
3:52:57
Speaker 1: under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution further illustrates
3:53:01
Speaker 1: the same tendency. Two ideals were fundamental in traditional American thought,
3:53:06
Speaker 1: ideals that developed in the Pioneer era. One was that
3:53:10
Speaker 1: of individual freedom to compete unrestrictedly for the resources of
3:53:13
Speaker 1: a continent. The squatter ideal, to the pioneer government was
3:53:17
Speaker 1: an evil. The other was the ideal of a democracy,
3:53:20
Speaker 1: government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
3:53:24
Speaker 1: The operation of these ideals took place contemporaneously with the
3:53:28
Speaker 1: passing into private possession of the free public domain and
3:53:31
Speaker 1: the natural resources of the United States. But American democracy
3:53:35
Speaker 1: was based on an abundance of free lands. These were
3:53:39
Speaker 1: the very conditions that shaped its growth and its fundamental traits. Thus,
3:53:43
Speaker 1: time has revealed that these two ideals of pioneer democracy
3:53:47
Speaker 1: had elements of mutual hostility and contain the seeds of
3:53:51
Speaker 1: its dissolution. The present finds itself engaged in the task
3:53:54
Speaker 1: of readjusting its old ideals to new conditions, and is
3:53:58
Speaker 1: turning increasingly to govern to preserve its traditional democracy. It
3:54:03
Speaker 1: is not surprising that socialism shows noteworthy gains as elections continue,
3:54:08
Speaker 1: that parties are forming on new lines, that the demand
3:54:11
Speaker 1: for primary elections, for popular choice of senators, initiative referendum
3:54:16
Speaker 1: and recall is spreading, and that the regions once the
3:54:19
Speaker 1: center of pioneer democracy exhibit these tendencies in the most
3:54:23
Speaker 1: marked degree. They are efforts to find substitutes for that
3:54:27
Speaker 1: former safeguard of democracy, the disappearing free lands. They are
3:54:31
Speaker 1: the sequence to the extinction of the frontier. It is
3:54:35
Speaker 1: necessary next to notice that in the midst of all
3:54:38
Speaker 1: this national energy, and contemporaneous with the tendency to turn
3:54:42
Speaker 1: to the national government for protection to democracy, there is
3:54:45
Speaker 1: clear evidence of the persistence and the development of sectionalism,
3:54:49
Speaker 1: Whether we observe the grouping of votes in Congress and
3:54:52
Speaker 1: in the general elections, or the organization and utterances of
3:54:56
Speaker 1: business leaders, or the association of scholars, churches or other
3:55:00
Speaker 1: representatives of the things of the spirit. We find that
3:55:04
Speaker 1: American life is not only increasing in its national intensity,
3:55:07
Speaker 1: but that it is integrating by sections. In part this
3:55:11
Speaker 1: is due to the factor of great spaces, which make
3:55:13
Speaker 1: sectional rather the national organization the line of least resistance.
3:55:18
Speaker 1: But in part it is also the expression of the
3:55:20
Speaker 1: separate economic, political, and social interests and the separate spiritual
3:55:25
Speaker 1: life of the various geographic provinces or sections. The votes
3:55:29
Speaker 1: on the tariff and in general, the location of the
3:55:32
Speaker 1: strongholds of the progressive Republican movement illustrate this fact. The
3:55:36
Speaker 1: difficulty of a national adjustment of railway rates to the
3:55:40
Speaker 1: diverse interests of different sections is another example. Without attempting
3:55:44
Speaker 1: to enter upon a more extensive discussion of sectionalism, I
3:55:48
Speaker 1: desire simply to point out that there are evidences that
3:55:51
Speaker 1: now as formerly, the separate geographical interests have their leaders
3:55:55
Speaker 1: and spokesmen, that much congressional legislation is determined by the
3:55:59
Speaker 1: kind tests, triumphs, or compromises between the rival sections, and
3:56:04
Speaker 1: that the real federal relations of the United States are
3:56:07
Speaker 1: shaped by the inner play of sectional with national forces
3:56:10
Speaker 1: rather than by the relation of state and nation. As
3:56:13
Speaker 1: time goes on, and the nation adjusts itself more durably
3:56:16
Speaker 1: to the conditions of the differing geographic sections which make
3:56:20
Speaker 1: it up. They are coming to a new self consciousness
3:56:23
Speaker 1: and a revived self assertion. Our national character is a
3:56:26
Speaker 1: composite of these sections. Obviously, in attempting to indicate even
3:56:31
Speaker 1: a portion of the significant features of our recent history,
3:56:35
Speaker 1: we have been obliged to take note of a complex
3:56:37
Speaker 1: of forces. The times are so close at hand that
3:56:40
Speaker 1: the relations between events and tendencies force themselves upon our attention.
3:56:45
Speaker 1: We have had to deal with the connections of geography,
3:56:48
Speaker 1: industrial growth, politics, and government. With these we must take
3:56:52
Speaker 1: into consideration the changing social composition, the inherited beliefs and
3:56:57
Speaker 1: habitual attitude of the masses of the people. This psychology
3:57:00
Speaker 1: of the nation and of the separate sections, as well
3:57:03
Speaker 1: as of the leaders. We must see how these leaders
3:57:06
Speaker 1: are shaped partly by their time and section, and how
3:57:09
Speaker 1: they are in part original creative by virtue of their
3:57:12
Speaker 1: own genius and initiative. We cannot neglect the moral tendencies
3:57:17
Speaker 1: and the ideals. All are related parts of the same subject,
3:57:20
Speaker 1: and can no more be properly understood in isolation than
3:57:24
Speaker 1: the movement as a whole can be understood by neglecting
3:57:27
Speaker 1: some of these important factors, or by the use of
3:57:30
Speaker 1: a single method of investigation. Whatever be the truth regarding
3:57:33
Speaker 1: European history, American history is chiefly concerned with social forces
3:57:38
Speaker 1: shaping and reshaping under the conditions of a nation changing
3:57:42
Speaker 1: as it adjusts to its environment, and this environment progressively
3:57:46
Speaker 1: reveals new aspects of itself, exerts new influences, and calls
3:57:50
Speaker 1: out new social organs and functions. I have undertaken this
3:57:55
Speaker 1: rapid survey of recent history for two purposes. First because
3:57:59
Speaker 1: it seemed to fit to emphasize the significance of American
3:58:02
Speaker 1: development since the passing of the Frontier, and second because
3:58:06
Speaker 1: in the observation of present conditions we may find assistance
3:58:10
Speaker 1: in our study of the past. It is a familiar
3:58:13
Speaker 1: doctrine that each age studies its history anew and with
3:58:17
Speaker 1: interest determined by the spirit of the time. Each age
3:58:20
Speaker 1: finds it necessary to reconsider at least some portion of
3:58:23
Speaker 1: the past from points of view furnished by new conditions,
3:58:27
Speaker 1: which reveal the influence and significance of forces not adequately
3:58:31
Speaker 1: known by the historians of the previous generation. Unquestionably, each
3:58:35
Speaker 1: investigator and writer is influenced by the times in which
3:58:39
Speaker 1: he lives, and while this fact exposes the historian to
3:58:42
Speaker 1: a bias, at the same time it affords him new
3:58:45
Speaker 1: instruments and new insight for dealing with this subject. If
3:58:48
Speaker 1: recent history then gives new meaning to past events, if
3:58:52
Speaker 1: it has to deal with the rise into a commanding
3:58:54
Speaker 1: position of forces, the origin and growth of which may
3:58:58
Speaker 1: have been inadequately described, even overlooked by historians of the
3:59:02
Speaker 1: previous generation, it is important to study the present and
3:59:05
Speaker 1: the recent past not only for themselves, but also as
3:59:09
Speaker 1: the source of new hypotheses, new lines of inquiry, new
3:59:12
Speaker 1: criteria of the perspective of the remoter past. And moreover,
3:59:17
Speaker 1: a just public opinion and a statesmanlike treatment of present
3:59:20
Speaker 1: problems demand that they be seen in their historical relations
3:59:24
Speaker 1: in order that history may hold the lamp for conservative reform.
3:59:28
Speaker 1: Seen from the vantage ground of present developments, what new
3:59:32
Speaker 1: light falls upon past events when we consider what the
3:59:35
Speaker 1: Mississippi Valley has come to be in American life, and
3:59:38
Speaker 1: when we consider what it is yet to be. The
3:59:41
Speaker 1: young Washington crossing the snows of the wilderness to summon
3:59:44
Speaker 1: the French to evacuate the portals of the Great Valley
3:59:48
Speaker 1: becomes the herald of an empire. When we recall the
3:59:51
Speaker 1: huge industrial power that has centered at Pittsburgh, Braddock's advance
3:59:55
Speaker 1: to the forks of the Ohio takes on a new meaning.
3:59:58
Speaker 1: Even in defeat, he opened a road to what is
4:00:00
Speaker 1: now the center of the world's industrial energy. The modifications
4:00:04
Speaker 1: which England proposed in seventeen ninety four to John Jay
4:00:07
Speaker 1: in the northwestern boundary of the United States from the
4:00:10
Speaker 1: Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi seemed to him
4:00:14
Speaker 1: doubtless significant, chiefly as a matter of principle and as
4:00:18
Speaker 1: a question of the retention or loss of beaver grounds.
4:00:21
Speaker 1: The historians hardly noticed the proposals, but they involved, in
4:00:25
Speaker 1: fact the ownership of the richest and most extensive deposits
4:00:29
Speaker 1: of iron ore in America, the all important source of
4:00:32
Speaker 1: a fundamental industry of the United States, the occasion for
4:00:35
Speaker 1: the rise of some of the most influential forces of
4:00:38
Speaker 1: our time. What continuity and meaning are furnished by the
4:00:42
Speaker 1: outcome in present times of the movements of minor political
4:00:45
Speaker 1: parties and reform agitations. To the historian, they have often
4:00:49
Speaker 1: seemed to be mere curious side eddies vexatious distractions to
4:00:53
Speaker 1: the course of his literary craft as it navigated the
4:00:57
Speaker 1: stream of historical tendency. And yet, by the revelation of
4:01:00
Speaker 1: the present, what seemed to be side eddies have not
4:01:04
Speaker 1: seldom proven to be concealed entrances to the main current,
4:01:07
Speaker 1: and the course which seemed the central one, has led
4:01:10
Speaker 1: to blind channels and stagnant waters, important in their day,
4:01:14
Speaker 1: but cut off, like Oxbow Lakes, from the mighty river
4:01:17
Speaker 1: of historical progress. By the mere, permanent and compelling forces
4:01:21
Speaker 1: of the neglected currents. We may trace the contest between
4:01:25
Speaker 1: the capitalists and the democratic pioneer from the earliest colonial days.
4:01:29
Speaker 1: It is influential in colonial parties. It is seen in
4:01:33
Speaker 1: the vehement protests of Kentucky frontiersmen in petition after petition
4:01:37
Speaker 1: to the Congress of the Confederation against the nabobs and
4:01:41
Speaker 1: men of wealth who took out titles to the pioneer's
4:01:43
Speaker 1: farms while they themselves were too busy defending those farms
4:01:47
Speaker 1: from the Indians to perfect their claims. It is seen
4:01:50
Speaker 1: in the attitude of the Ohio Valley in its backwoods
4:01:53
Speaker 1: days before the rise of the Whig Party, as when
4:01:55
Speaker 1: in eighteen eleven, Henry Clay denounced the Bank of the
4:01:58
Speaker 1: United States as a court corporation which throve on special
4:02:02
Speaker 1: privileges quote, a special association of favored individuals, taken from
4:02:07
Speaker 1: the massive society and invested with exemptions, and surrounded by
4:02:11
Speaker 1: immunities and privileges. End of quote. Benton voiced the same
4:02:15
Speaker 1: contest twenty years later when he denounced the Bank as
4:02:18
Speaker 1: quote a company of private individuals, many of them foreigners,
4:02:22
Speaker 1: and the mass of them residing in a remote and
4:02:25
Speaker 1: narrow corner of the Union, unconnected by any sympathy with
4:02:28
Speaker 1: the fertile regions of the great Valley, in which the
4:02:31
Speaker 1: natural power of this union, the power of numbers, will
4:02:34
Speaker 1: be found to reside, long before the renewed term of
4:02:37
Speaker 1: the Second Charter would expire. End of quote. Quote and where,
4:02:41
Speaker 1: he asked, would all this power and money center in
4:02:44
Speaker 1: the great cities of the Northeast, which have been for
4:02:48
Speaker 1: forty years, and by that force of federal legislation the
4:02:51
Speaker 1: lion's den of Southern and Western money, that den into
4:02:55
Speaker 1: which all the tracks point inward from which the returning
4:02:58
Speaker 1: track of a solitary doll has never yet been seen.
4:03:01
Speaker 1: End of quote, declaring in words that have a very
4:03:04
Speaker 1: modern sound, that the bank tended to multiply nabobs and paupers,
4:03:09
Speaker 1: and that a great money power is favorable to great capitalists,
4:03:12
Speaker 1: for it is the principle of capital to favor capital.
4:03:16
Speaker 1: He appealed to the fact of the country's extent and
4:03:18
Speaker 1: its sectional divergences against the nationalizing of capital. Quote what
4:03:23
Speaker 1: a condition for a confederacy of states? What grounds for
4:03:27
Speaker 1: alarm and terrible apprehension? When in a confederacy of such
4:03:30
Speaker 1: vast extent, so many rival commercial cities, so much sectional jealousy,
4:03:36
Speaker 1: such violent political parties, such fierce contests for power, There
4:03:40
Speaker 1: should be but one money tribunal, before which all the
4:03:43
Speaker 1: rival and contending elements must appear end of quote. Even
4:03:47
Speaker 1: more vehement were the words of Jackson in eighteen thirty seven.
4:03:51
Speaker 1: It is now plain he wrote that the war is
4:03:53
Speaker 1: to be carried on by the moneyed aristocracy of the
4:03:56
Speaker 1: few against the democracy of numbers, the prosperous to make
4:04:00
Speaker 1: the honest laborers hewers of wood and drawers of water
4:04:03
Speaker 1: through the credit and paper system. Van Buren's administration is
4:04:07
Speaker 1: usually passed hastily over with hardly more than mention of
4:04:11
Speaker 1: his Independent Treasury Plan, and with particular consideration of the
4:04:15
Speaker 1: slavery discussion. But some of the most important movements in
4:04:18
Speaker 1: American social and political history began in these years of
4:04:22
Speaker 1: Jackson and van Buren. Read the demands of the obscure
4:04:25
Speaker 1: labor papers and the reports of labour's open air meetings
4:04:28
Speaker 1: anew and you will find in the utterances of so
4:04:31
Speaker 1: called labor visionaries and the loco foco champions of equal
4:04:35
Speaker 1: rights for all and special privileges for none, like Evans
4:04:38
Speaker 1: and Jacques, Birdsall and Leggett. The finger points to the
4:04:42
Speaker 1: currents that now make the main channel of our history.
4:04:45
Speaker 1: You will find in them some of the important planks
4:04:48
Speaker 1: of the platforms of the triumphant parties of our own day.
4:04:51
Speaker 1: As Professor Commons has shown by his papers and the
4:04:54
Speaker 1: documents which he has published on labor history, an idealistic
4:04:58
Speaker 1: but widespread and influential humanitarian movement strikingly similar to that
4:05:02
Speaker 1: of the present arose in the years between eighteen thirty
4:05:06
Speaker 1: and eighteen fifty, dealing with social forces in American life,
4:05:10
Speaker 1: Animated by a desire to apply the public lands to
4:05:13
Speaker 1: social amelioration, Eager to find new forms of democratic development,
4:05:18
Speaker 1: but the flood of the slavery struggle swept all of
4:05:20
Speaker 1: these movements into its mighty inundation. For the time after
4:05:24
Speaker 1: the war, other influences delayed the revival of the movement.
4:05:28
Speaker 1: The railroads opened to the wide prairies after eighteen fifty
4:05:31
Speaker 1: and made it easy to reach them, and decade after
4:05:33
Speaker 1: decade new sections were reduced. To the purposes of civilization
4:05:38
Speaker 1: and to the advantages of the common man, as well
4:05:40
Speaker 1: as the promotion of great individual fortunes. The nation centered
4:05:44
Speaker 1: its interests in the development of the West. It is
4:05:47
Speaker 1: only in our own day that this humanitarian democratic wave
4:05:51
Speaker 1: has reached the level of those earlier years. But in
4:05:54
Speaker 1: the meantime there are clear evidences of the persistence of
4:05:57
Speaker 1: the forces, even though under strange guys. Read the platforms
4:06:01
Speaker 1: of the Greenback, Labor, the Granger and the populist parties,
4:06:05
Speaker 1: and you will find in those platforms discredited and reprobated
4:06:09
Speaker 1: by the major parties of the time the basic proposals
4:06:12
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party after its revolution under the leadership
4:06:15
Speaker 1: of mister Bryan, and of the Republican Party after its
4:06:18
Speaker 1: revolution by mister Roosevelt. The insurgent movement is so clearly
4:06:22
Speaker 1: related to the areas and elements that gave strength to
4:06:25
Speaker 1: this progressive assertion of old democratic ideals with new weapons,
4:06:29
Speaker 1: that it must be regarded as the organized refusal of
4:06:32
Speaker 1: these persistent tendencies to be checked by the advocates of
4:06:36
Speaker 1: more moderate measures. End of Section thirty nine, Chapter twelve,
4:06:41
Speaker 1: Social Forces in American History, Part three. I have dealt
4:06:46
Speaker 1: with these fragments of party history, not of course, with
4:06:49
Speaker 1: the purpose of expressing any present judgment upon them, but
4:06:52
Speaker 1: to emphasize and give concreteness to the fact that there
4:06:56
Speaker 1: is disclosed by present events a new significance to these
4:06:59
Speaker 1: contests of radical democracy and conservative interests, that they are
4:07:03
Speaker 1: rather a continuing expression of deep seated forces than fragmentary
4:07:08
Speaker 1: and sporadic curios for the historical museum. If we should
4:07:12
Speaker 1: survey the history of our lands from a similar point
4:07:14
Speaker 1: of view, considering the relations of legislation and administration of
4:07:19
Speaker 1: the public domain to the structure of American democracy, it
4:07:22
Speaker 1: would yield a return far beyond that offered by the
4:07:25
Speaker 1: formal treatment of the subject in most of our histories.
4:07:28
Speaker 1: We should find in the squatter doctrines and practices, the
4:07:32
Speaker 1: seizure of the best soils. The taking of public timber
4:07:36
Speaker 1: on the theory of a right to it by the
4:07:37
Speaker 1: labor expended on it fruitful material for understanding the atmosphere
4:07:42
Speaker 1: and ideals under which the great corporations developed. The west Men,
4:07:46
Speaker 1: like Senator Benton and Delegate Sibly in successive generations, defended
4:07:51
Speaker 1: the trespasses of the pioneer and the lumbermen upon the
4:07:54
Speaker 1: public forest lands, and denounced the paternal government that harassed
4:07:58
Speaker 1: these men, who were engaged in what we should call
4:08:01
Speaker 1: stealing government timber. It is evident that at some time
4:08:04
Speaker 1: between the middle of the nineteenth century and the present time,
4:08:08
Speaker 1: when we impose jail sentences upon congressmen caught in such
4:08:11
Speaker 1: violations of the land laws, a change came over the
4:08:14
Speaker 1: American conscience, and the civic ideals were modified. That our
4:08:18
Speaker 1: great industrial enterprises developed in the midst of these changing
4:08:22
Speaker 1: ideals is important to recall when we write the history
4:08:25
Speaker 1: of their activity. We should find also that we cannot
4:08:28
Speaker 1: understand the land question without seeing its relations to the
4:08:32
Speaker 1: struggle of sections and classes bidding against each other, and
4:08:36
Speaker 1: finding in the public domain a most important topic of
4:08:39
Speaker 1: political bargaining. We should find too that the settlement of
4:08:42
Speaker 1: unlike geographic areas in the course of the nation's progress,
4:08:46
Speaker 1: resulted in changes in the effect of the land laws,
4:08:49
Speaker 1: that a system intended for the humid prairies was ill
4:08:52
Speaker 1: adjusted to the grazy glands and coal fields and to
4:08:55
Speaker 1: the forests in the days of large scale exploitation by
4:08:58
Speaker 1: corporations commanding great CAAs capital. Thus changing geographic factors as
4:09:03
Speaker 1: well as the changing character of the forces which occupied
4:09:06
Speaker 1: the public domain, must be considered if we would understand
4:09:09
Speaker 1: the bearing of legislation and policy in this field. It
4:09:13
Speaker 1: is fortunate that suggestive studies of democracy and the land
4:09:16
Speaker 1: policy have already begun to appear. The whole subject of
4:09:20
Speaker 1: American agriculture viewed in relation to the economic, political, and
4:09:24
Speaker 1: social life of the nation, has important contributions to make. If,
4:09:28
Speaker 1: for example, we study the maps showing the transition of
4:09:31
Speaker 1: the wheat belt from the east to the west as
4:09:34
Speaker 1: the virgin soils were conquered and made new bases for
4:09:37
Speaker 1: destructive competition with the older wheat states, we shall see
4:09:41
Speaker 1: how deeply they affected not only land values, railroad building,
4:09:45
Speaker 1: the movement of population, and the supply of cheap food,
4:09:48
Speaker 1: but also how the regions once devoted to single cropping
4:09:52
Speaker 1: of wheat, were forced to turn to varied and intensive
4:09:55
Speaker 1: agriculture and to diversified industry. And we shall see also
4:10:00
Speaker 1: how these transformations affected party politics and even the ideals
4:10:04
Speaker 1: of the Americans of the regions thus changed. We shall
4:10:07
Speaker 1: find in the overproduction of wheat in the provinces thus
4:10:10
Speaker 1: rapidly colonized, and in the overproduction of silver in the
4:10:14
Speaker 1: mountain provinces which were contemporaneously exploited, important explanations of the
4:10:19
Speaker 1: peculiar form which American politics took in the period when
4:10:22
Speaker 1: mister Bryan mastered the Democratic Party, just as we shall
4:10:26
Speaker 1: find in the opening of the new gold fields in
4:10:29
Speaker 1: the years immediately following, and in the passing of the
4:10:31
Speaker 1: era of almost free virgin wheat soils, explanations of the
4:10:36
Speaker 1: more recent period, when high prices are giving new energy
4:10:39
Speaker 1: and aggressiveness to the demands of the new American industrial democracy.
4:10:44
Speaker 1: Enough has been said, it may be assumed to make
4:10:46
Speaker 1: clear the point which I am trying to elucidate, namely,
4:10:49
Speaker 1: that a comprehension of the United States of today, an
4:10:53
Speaker 1: understanding of the rise and progress of the forces which
4:10:56
Speaker 1: have made it what it is, demands that we should
4:10:58
Speaker 1: rework our history from the new points of view afforded
4:11:01
Speaker 1: by the present. If this is done, it will be seen,
4:11:04
Speaker 1: for example, that the progress of the struggle between North
4:11:08
Speaker 1: and South over slavery and the freed Negro, which held
4:11:11
Speaker 1: the principal place in American interest in the two decades
4:11:14
Speaker 1: after eighteen fifty, was after all only one of the
4:11:17
Speaker 1: interests in the time. The pages of the congressional debates,
4:11:21
Speaker 1: the contemporary newspapers, the public documents of those twenty years
4:11:26
Speaker 1: remain a rich mind for those who will seek therein
4:11:28
Speaker 1: the sources of movements dominant in the present day. The
4:11:32
Speaker 1: final consideration to which I ask your attention in this
4:11:35
Speaker 1: discussion of social forces in American life is with reference
4:11:39
Speaker 1: to the mode of investigating them, and the bearing of
4:11:42
Speaker 1: these investigations upon the relations and the goal of history.
4:11:45
Speaker 1: It is become a precedent fairly well established by the
4:11:49
Speaker 1: distinguished scholars who have held the office which I am
4:11:52
Speaker 1: about to lay down, to state a position with reference
4:11:55
Speaker 1: to the relations of history and its sister studies, and
4:11:58
Speaker 1: even to raise the question of them the attitude of
4:12:00
Speaker 1: the historian towards the laws of thermodynamics, and to seek
4:12:04
Speaker 1: to find the key of historical development or of historical degradation.
4:12:08
Speaker 1: It is not given to all to bend the bow
4:12:10
Speaker 1: of Ulysses. I shall attempt a lesser task. We may
4:12:14
Speaker 1: take some lessons from the scientists. He is enriched knowledge,
4:12:18
Speaker 1: especially in recent years, by attacking the no man's lands
4:12:21
Speaker 1: left unexplored by the too sharp de limitation of spheres
4:12:24
Speaker 1: of activity. These new conquests have been especially achieved by
4:12:28
Speaker 1: the combination of old sciences physical chemistry, electrochemistry, geophysics, astrophysics,
4:12:35
Speaker 1: and a variety of other scientific unions. Have led to
4:12:38
Speaker 1: audacious hypotheses, veritable flashes of vision which open new regions
4:12:43
Speaker 1: of activity for a generation of investigators. Moreover, they have
4:12:47
Speaker 1: promoted such investigations by furnishing new instruments of research. Now,
4:12:52
Speaker 1: in some respects, there is an analogy between geology and history.
4:12:56
Speaker 1: The new geologist aims to describe the inorganic earth dynamic
4:13:00
Speaker 1: in terms of natural law, using chemistry, physics, mathematics, and
4:13:04
Speaker 1: even botany and zoology as far as they relate to paleontology.
4:13:09
Speaker 1: But he does not insist that the relative importance of
4:13:12
Speaker 1: physical or chemical factors shall be determined before he applies
4:13:16
Speaker 1: the methods and data of these sciences to his problem. Indeed,
4:13:19
Speaker 1: he has learned that a geological area is too complex
4:13:23
Speaker 1: a thing to be reduced to a single explanation. He
4:13:26
Speaker 1: has abandoned to the single hypothesis for the multiple hypothesis.
4:13:30
Speaker 1: He creates a whole family of possible explanations of a
4:13:33
Speaker 1: given problem, and thus avoids the warping influence of partiality
4:13:37
Speaker 1: for simple theory. Have we not here an illustration of
4:13:41
Speaker 1: what is possible and necessary for the historian? Is it
4:13:44
Speaker 1: not well, before attempting to decide whether history requires an
4:13:47
Speaker 1: economic interpretation, or psychological or any other ultimate interpretation, to
4:13:53
Speaker 1: recognize that the factors in human society are varied and complex,
4:13:58
Speaker 1: that the political historian handles his subject in isolation is
4:14:02
Speaker 1: certain to miss fundamental facts and relations in his treatment
4:14:05
Speaker 1: of a given age or nation. That the economic historian
4:14:08
Speaker 1: is exposed to the same danger, and so of all
4:14:11
Speaker 1: the other special historians. Those who insist the history is
4:14:16
Speaker 1: simply the effort to tell the thing exactly as it
4:14:19
Speaker 1: was to state the facts are confronted with the difficulty
4:14:23
Speaker 1: that the fact which they would represent is not planted
4:14:26
Speaker 1: on the solid ground of fixed conditions. It is in
4:14:29
Speaker 1: the midst and is itself a part of the changing
4:14:32
Speaker 1: currents the complex and interacting influences of the time, deriving
4:14:37
Speaker 1: its significance as a fact from its relations to the
4:14:40
Speaker 1: deeper seated movements of the age, movements so gradual that
4:14:44
Speaker 1: often only the passing years can reveal the truth about
4:14:47
Speaker 1: the fact and its right to a place on the
4:14:49
Speaker 1: historian's page. The economic historian is in danger of making
4:14:53
Speaker 1: his analysis and his statement of a law on the
4:14:56
Speaker 1: basis of present conditions, and then passing to history for
4:15:00
Speaker 1: justificatory appendixes to his conclusions. An American economist of high
4:15:04
Speaker 1: rank has recently expressed his conception of the full relation
4:15:08
Speaker 1: of economic theory, statistics, and history. In these words, a
4:15:13
Speaker 1: principle is formulated by a priori reasoning concerning facts of
4:15:16
Speaker 1: common experience. It is then tested by statistics and promoted
4:15:21
Speaker 1: to the rank of a known and acknowledged truth. Illustrations
4:15:25
Speaker 1: of its action are then found in narrative history, and
4:15:28
Speaker 1: on the other hand, the economic law becomes the interpreter
4:15:31
Speaker 1: of records that would otherwise be confusing and comparatively valueless.
4:15:36
Speaker 1: The law itself derives its final confirmation from the illustrations
4:15:40
Speaker 1: of its working which the records afford. But what is
4:15:44
Speaker 1: at least of equal importance is the parallel fact that
4:15:47
Speaker 1: the law affords the decisive test of the correctness of
4:15:50
Speaker 1: those assertions concerning the causes and the effects of past events,
4:15:55
Speaker 1: which it is second nature to make, and which historians
4:15:58
Speaker 1: almost invariably do make in connection with their narrations. End,
4:16:03
Speaker 1: there is much in this statement by which the historian
4:16:06
Speaker 1: may profit, But he may doubt also whether the past
4:16:09
Speaker 1: should serve merely as the illustration by which to confirm
4:16:13
Speaker 1: the law deduced from common experience by a priori reasoning
4:16:17
Speaker 1: tested by statistics. In fact, the pathway of history is
4:16:20
Speaker 1: strewn with the wrecks of the known and acknowledged truths
4:16:23
Speaker 1: of economic law, due not only to defective analysis and
4:16:27
Speaker 1: imperfect statistics, but also to the lack of critical historical methods,
4:16:32
Speaker 1: of insufficient historical mindedness on the part of the economists,
4:16:36
Speaker 1: to failure to give due attention to the relativity and
4:16:39
Speaker 1: transiency of the conditions from which his laws were deduced.
4:16:43
Speaker 1: But the point on which I would lay stress is
4:16:46
Speaker 1: this the economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the sociologist,
4:16:51
Speaker 1: the geographer, the student of literature, of art of religion.
4:16:55
Speaker 1: All the allied laborers in the study of society have
4:16:59
Speaker 1: contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. These
4:17:02
Speaker 1: contributions are partly of material, partly of tools, partly of
4:17:07
Speaker 1: new points of view, new hypotheses, new suggestions of relations,
4:17:11
Speaker 1: causes an emphasis. Each of these special students is in
4:17:15
Speaker 1: some danger of bias by his particular point of view,
4:17:18
Speaker 1: by his exposure to see simply the thing in which
4:17:21
Speaker 1: he is primarily interested, and also by his effort to
4:17:25
Speaker 1: deduce the universal laws of his separate science. The historian,
4:17:29
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is exposed to the danger of
4:17:31
Speaker 1: dealing with the complex and interacting social forces of a
4:17:35
Speaker 1: period or of a country from some single point of
4:17:38
Speaker 1: view to which his special training or interest inclines him.
4:17:41
Speaker 1: If the truth is to be made known, the historian
4:17:44
Speaker 1: must so far familiarize himself with the work and equip
4:17:48
Speaker 1: himself with the training of his sister's subjects, that he
4:17:51
Speaker 1: can at least avail himself of their results and in
4:17:54
Speaker 1: some reasonable degree master the essential tools of their trade.
4:17:58
Speaker 1: And the followers of the CIS studies must likewise familiarize
4:18:02
Speaker 1: themselves and their students with the work and the methods
4:18:05
Speaker 1: of the historians and cooperate in the difficult task. It
4:18:09
Speaker 1: is necessary that the American historians shall aim at this equipment,
4:18:13
Speaker 1: not so much that he may possess the key to
4:18:16
Speaker 1: history or satisfy himself in regard to its ultimate laws.
4:18:20
Speaker 1: At present, a different duty is before him. He must
4:18:23
Speaker 1: see an American society, with its vast spaces, its sections
4:18:27
Speaker 1: equal to European nations, its geographic influences, its brief period
4:18:32
Speaker 1: of development, its variety of nationalities and races, its extraordinary
4:18:37
Speaker 1: industrial growth under the conditions of freedom, its institutions, cultures, ideals,
4:18:43
Speaker 1: social psychology, and even its religions, forming and changing almost
4:18:48
Speaker 1: under his eyes. One of the richest fields ever offered
4:18:51
Speaker 1: for the preliminary recognition and study of the forces that
4:18:55
Speaker 1: operate and interplay in the making of society. End of
4:18:59
Speaker 1: Section forty.
4:19:00
Speaker 3: Chapter thirteen. Middle Western Pioneer Democracy, Part one.
4:19:06
Speaker 2: In time of war, when.
4:19:07
Speaker 3: All that this nation has stood, for all the things
4:19:10
Speaker 3: in which it passionately believes, are at stake, we have
4:19:13
Speaker 3: met to dedicate this beautiful home for history. There is
4:19:16
Speaker 3: a fitness in the occasion. It is for historic ideals
4:19:19
Speaker 3: that we are fighting. If this nation is one for
4:19:22
Speaker 3: which we should pour out our savings, postpone our differences,
4:19:25
Speaker 3: go hungry, and even give up life itself. It is
4:19:28
Speaker 3: not because it is a rich, extensive, welfared, and populous nation.
4:19:32
Speaker 3: It is because from its early days America has pressed
4:19:34
Speaker 3: onward toward a goal of its own, that it has
4:19:37
Speaker 3: followed an ideal, the ideal of a democracy developing under
4:19:40
Speaker 3: conditions unlike those of any other age or country. We
4:19:44
Speaker 3: are fighting not for an old world ideal, not for
4:19:47
Speaker 3: an abstraction, not.
4:19:48
Speaker 2: For a philosophical revolution.
4:19:50
Speaker 3: Broad and generous as are our sympathies widely scattered in origin,
4:19:54
Speaker 3: as are our people keenly as we feel the call
4:19:57
Speaker 3: of kinship, the thrill of sympathy with the stricken nation
4:20:00
Speaker 3: across the Atlantic. We are fighting for the historic ideals
4:20:03
Speaker 3: of the United States, for the continued existence of the
4:20:06
Speaker 3: type of society in which we believe, because we have
4:20:08
Speaker 3: proved it good, for the things which drew European exiles
4:20:11
Speaker 3: to our shores and which inspired the hopes of the pioneers.
4:20:15
Speaker 3: We are at war that the history of the United States,
4:20:18
Speaker 3: rich with the record of high human purposes and of
4:20:21
Speaker 3: faith in the destiny of the common man, under freedom,
4:20:24
Speaker 3: filled with the promises of a better world, may not
4:20:26
Speaker 3: become the lost and tragic.
4:20:28
Speaker 2: Story of a futile dream.
4:20:30
Speaker 3: Yes, it is an American ideal and an American example
4:20:33
Speaker 3: for which we fight. But in that ideal and example
4:20:36
Speaker 3: lies medicine for the healing of the nations. It is
4:20:39
Speaker 3: the best we have to give to Europe, and it
4:20:41
Speaker 3: is a matter of vital import that we shall safeguard
4:20:44
Speaker 3: and preserve our power to serve the world and not
4:20:46
Speaker 3: be overwhelmed in the flood of imperialistic force that wills
4:20:50
Speaker 3: the death of democracy and would send the freemen under
4:20:52
Speaker 3: the yoke. Essential as are our contributions of wealth, the
4:20:56
Speaker 3: work of our scientists, the toil of our farmers, and
4:20:59
Speaker 3: our workmen in factory and shipyard, priceless, as is the
4:21:02
Speaker 3: stream of young American manhood, which we pour forth to
4:21:05
Speaker 3: stop the flood which flows like molten lava across the
4:21:07
Speaker 3: green fields and peaceful hamlets of Europe toward the sea
4:21:11
Speaker 3: and turns to ashes and death all that it covers.
4:21:14
Speaker 3: These contributions have their deeper meaning in the American spirit.
4:21:18
Speaker 3: They are born of the love of democracy long ago.
4:21:21
Speaker 3: In prophetic words, Walt Whitman voiced the meaning of our
4:21:24
Speaker 3: present sacrifices. Sail, sail thy best ship, ship of democracy.
4:21:29
Speaker 3: A value is thy frate tis not the present only
4:21:31
Speaker 3: the past is also stored in THEE. Thou holdest, not
4:21:34
Speaker 3: the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western continent alone.
4:21:38
Speaker 3: Earth's resume may entire floats on thy keel. O ship
4:21:42
Speaker 3: is steadied by thy spars with THEE, time voyages in trust.
4:21:46
Speaker 3: The antescedent nations sink or swim with THEE, with all
4:21:49
Speaker 3: their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epyx wars. Thou bearest the
4:21:53
Speaker 3: other continents, theirs, theirs as much as thine. The destination
4:21:57
Speaker 3: port triumphant. Shortly before the Civil War, a great German,
4:22:02
Speaker 3: exiled from his native land for his love of freedom,
4:22:05
Speaker 3: came from his new home among the pioneers of the
4:22:07
Speaker 3: Middle West to set forth in Fangiel Hill, the Cradle
4:22:10
Speaker 3: of Liberty in Boston, his vision of the young America
4:22:13
Speaker 3: that was forming in the West, the last depositary of
4:22:16
Speaker 3: the hopes of all true friends of humanity. Speaking of
4:22:19
Speaker 3: the contrast between the migrations to the Mississippi Valley and
4:22:22
Speaker 3: those of the old world in other centuries, he said
4:22:25
Speaker 3: it is now not a barbarous multitude pouncing upon old
4:22:28
Speaker 3: and decrepit empires, not a violent concussion of tribes accompanied
4:22:32
Speaker 3: by all the horrors of general destruction. But we see
4:22:35
Speaker 3: the vigorous elements, peaceably congregating and mingling together on virgin soil,
4:22:40
Speaker 3: led together by the irresistible attraction of free and broad principles,
4:22:44
Speaker 3: undertaking to commence a new error in the history of
4:22:47
Speaker 3: the world without first destroying the results of the progress
4:22:50
Speaker 3: of past periods, undertaking to found a cosmopolitan nation, without
4:22:54
Speaker 3: marching over the dead bodies of slain millions. If Carl
4:22:58
Speaker 3: Schus had lived to see the outblot of that Germany
4:23:00
Speaker 3: from which he was sent as in exile, in the
4:23:03
Speaker 3: days when Prussian bayonets dispersed the legislatures and stamped out
4:23:06
Speaker 3: the beginnings of democratic rule in his former country, could
4:23:09
Speaker 3: he have better pictured the contrast between the Prussian and
4:23:12
Speaker 3: the American spirit. He went on to say, thus was
4:23:15
Speaker 3: founded the great colony of free humanity, which has not
4:23:19
Speaker 3: Old England alone, but the world for its mother country.
4:23:22
Speaker 3: And in the colony of free humanity, whose mother country
4:23:25
Speaker 3: is the world, they established the Republic of Equal Rights,
4:23:28
Speaker 3: where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship.
4:23:31
Speaker 3: My friends, if I had a thousand tongues and a
4:23:34
Speaker 3: voice as strong as the thunder of heaven, they would
4:23:37
Speaker 3: not be sufficient to impress upon your minds forcibly enough
4:23:40
Speaker 3: the greatness of this idea, the overshadowing glory of this result.
4:23:44
Speaker 3: This was the dream of the truest friends of man
4:23:46
Speaker 3: from the beginning. For this, the noblest blood of martyrs
4:23:49
Speaker 3: has been shed. For this has mankind waded through seas
4:23:52
Speaker 3: of blood and tears. There it is now there, it stands,
4:23:56
Speaker 3: the noble fabric in all the splendor of reality. It
4:24:00
Speaker 3: is in a solemn and inspiring time. Therefore that we
4:24:03
Speaker 3: meet to dedicate this building, and the occasion is fitting
4:24:06
Speaker 3: to the time. We may now see as never before,
4:24:09
Speaker 3: the deepest significance, the larger meaning of these pioneers, whose
4:24:12
Speaker 3: plain lives and homely annals are glorified as a part
4:24:15
Speaker 3: of the story of the building of a better system
4:24:17
Speaker 3: of social justice under freedom, a broader and, as we
4:24:21
Speaker 3: fervently hope, a more enduring foundation for the welfare and
4:24:24
Speaker 3: progress under individual liberty of the common man. An example
4:24:28
Speaker 3: of federation of peaceful adjustments by compromise and concession under
4:24:32
Speaker 3: a self governing republic where sections replace nations, over a
4:24:36
Speaker 3: union as large as Europe, where party discussions take place
4:24:40
Speaker 3: of warring countries, where the Pax Americana furnishes an.
4:24:43
Speaker 2: Example for a better world.
4:24:46
Speaker 3: As our forefathers, the Pioneers gathered in their neighborhood to
4:24:49
Speaker 3: raise the log cabin and sanctioned it by the name
4:24:52
Speaker 3: of home, the dwelling place of pioneer ideals. So we
4:24:55
Speaker 3: meet to celebrate the raising of this home, this shrine
4:24:58
Speaker 3: of Minnesota's historic life. It symbolizes the conviction that the
4:25:02
Speaker 3: past and the future of this people are tied together.
4:25:05
Speaker 3: That this historical society is the keeper of the records
4:25:07
Speaker 3: of a noteworthy movement in the progress of mankind. That
4:25:10
Speaker 3: these records are not unmeaning and antiquarian, but even in
4:25:14
Speaker 3: their details, are worthy of preservation for their revelation of
4:25:17
Speaker 3: the beginnings of society in the midst of a nation
4:25:19
Speaker 3: caught by the vision of a better future for the world.
4:25:23
Speaker 3: Let me repeat the words of Harriet Martineau, who portrayed
4:25:26
Speaker 3: the American of the thirties. I regard the American people
4:25:30
Speaker 3: as a great embryo poet now Moody now wild, but
4:25:33
Speaker 3: bringing out results of absolute good sense, Restless and wayward
4:25:37
Speaker 3: in action, but with deep peace at his heart, exalting
4:25:40
Speaker 3: that he has caught the true aspect of things past
4:25:43
Speaker 3: and the depth of futurity which lies before him. Wherein
4:25:46
Speaker 3: to create something so magnificent as the world has scarcely
4:25:49
Speaker 3: begun to dream of. There is the strongest hope of
4:25:51
Speaker 3: a nation that is capable of being possessed with an idea.
4:25:55
Speaker 3: And recall her appeal to the American people to cherish
4:25:58
Speaker 3: their high democratic hope, the faith in man. The older
4:26:01
Speaker 3: they grow, the more they must reverence the dreams of
4:26:03
Speaker 3: their youth. The dreams of their youth, Here they shall
4:26:07
Speaker 3: be preserved, and the achievements, as well as the aspirations
4:26:10
Speaker 3: of the men who made the state, the men who
4:26:12
Speaker 3: built on their foundations, the men with large vision and
4:26:14
Speaker 3: power of action, the lesser men in the mass, the
4:26:17
Speaker 3: leaders who serve the state and nation with devotion to
4:26:19
Speaker 3: the cause. Here shall be preserved the record of the
4:26:23
Speaker 3: men who failed to see the larger vision and worked
4:26:25
Speaker 3: impatiently with narrow or selfish or class ends, as well
4:26:29
Speaker 3: as of those who laboured with patience and sympathy and
4:26:31
Speaker 3: mutual concession, with readiness to make adjustments and to subordinate
4:26:35
Speaker 3: their immediate interests to the larger good and the immediate
4:26:38
Speaker 3: safety of the nation. In the archives of such an
4:26:41
Speaker 3: old institution as that of the Historical Society of Massachusetts,
4:26:44
Speaker 3: whose treasures run to the beginning of the Puritan colonization,
4:26:47
Speaker 3: the students cannot fail to find the evidence that a
4:26:50
Speaker 3: state historical society is a book of judgment, wherein is
4:26:53
Speaker 3: made up the record of a people and its leaders.
4:26:56
Speaker 3: So as time unfolds, shall be the collections of this
4:26:59
Speaker 3: society the depository of the material that shall preserve the
4:27:02
Speaker 3: memory of this people. Each section of this widely extended
4:27:06
Speaker 3: and varied nation has its own peculiar past, its special
4:27:09
Speaker 3: form of society, its traits, and its leaders. It were
4:27:12
Speaker 3: a pity of any section left its anals solely to
4:27:16
Speaker 3: the collectors of a remote region, And it were a
4:27:18
Speaker 3: pity if its collections were not transformed into printed documents
4:27:21
Speaker 3: and monographic studies, which can go to the libraries of
4:27:24
Speaker 3: all the parts of the Union, and thus enable the
4:27:26
Speaker 3: student to see the nation as a whole. In its
4:27:29
Speaker 3: past as well as in its present. This society finds
4:27:33
Speaker 3: its special field of activity in a great state of
4:27:35
Speaker 3: the Middle West, so new as history reckons time that
4:27:39
Speaker 3: its annals are still predominantly those of the pioneers, but
4:27:42
Speaker 3: so rapidly growing that already the era of pioneers is
4:27:45
Speaker 3: a part of the history of the past, capable of
4:27:48
Speaker 3: being handled objectively, seen in a perspective that is not
4:27:51
Speaker 3: possible to the observer of the present conditions. Because of
4:27:54
Speaker 3: these facts, I have taken the special theme of this
4:27:56
Speaker 3: address the Middle Western pioneer democracy, which I I would
4:28:00
Speaker 3: sketch in some of its outstanding aspects, and chiefly in
4:28:03
Speaker 3: the generation before the Civil War. For it was from
4:28:06
Speaker 3: those pioneers that the later colonization to the newer parts
4:28:08
Speaker 3: of the Mississippi Valley derived much of their traits, and
4:28:11
Speaker 3: from whom large numbers of them came the North Central
4:28:15
Speaker 3: States as a whole, as a region comparable to all
4:28:17
Speaker 3: of Central Europe. Of these states, a large part of
4:28:20
Speaker 3: the old Northwest Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and
4:28:25
Speaker 3: their sisters beyond the Mississippi, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota were
4:28:29
Speaker 3: still in the middle of the nineteenth century the home
4:28:32
Speaker 3: of an essentially pioneer society. Within the lifetime of many
4:28:36
Speaker 3: living men. Wisconsin was called the Far West, and Minnesota
4:28:39
Speaker 3: was a land of the Indian and the fur traders,
4:28:42
Speaker 3: a wilderness of forest and prairie beyond the edge of cultivation.
4:28:46
Speaker 3: That portion of this great region, which was still in
4:28:48
Speaker 3: the pioneering period of settlement by eighteen fifty, was alone
4:28:51
Speaker 3: about as extensive as the Old Thirteen States or Germany
4:28:55
Speaker 3: and Austria Hungary combined. The region was a huge geographic
4:28:59
Speaker 3: mold for a new society, modeled by nature on the
4:29:01
Speaker 3: scale of the Great Lakes, the Ohio Valley, the Upper Mississippi,
4:29:04
Speaker 3: and the Missouri. Simple and majestic in its vast outlines,
4:29:08
Speaker 3: it was graven into a variety that in its detail
4:29:10
Speaker 3: also had a largeness of design. From the Great Lakes
4:29:14
Speaker 3: extended the massive glacial sheet which covered that mighty basin
4:29:17
Speaker 3: and laid down.
4:29:18
Speaker 2: Treasures of soil.
4:29:19
Speaker 3: Vast forests of pine shrouded its upper zone, breaking into
4:29:23
Speaker 3: hardwood and the oak openings as they neared the ocean
4:29:25
Speaker 3: like expanses of the prairies. Forests again along the Ohio
4:29:29
Speaker 3: Valley and beyond to the west lay the levels of
4:29:32
Speaker 3: the great plains within the earth were unexploited treasures of
4:29:35
Speaker 3: coal and lead, copper and iron in such form and
4:29:38
Speaker 3: quantity as were to revolutionize the industrial processes of the world.
4:29:42
Speaker 3: But nature's revelations are progressive, and it was rather the
4:29:45
Speaker 3: marvelous adaptation of the soil to the raising of corn
4:29:48
Speaker 3: and wheat that drew the pioneers to this land of promise,
4:29:51
Speaker 3: and made a new era of colonization. In the unity
4:29:54
Speaker 3: with variety of this pioneer empire, and in its broad levels,
4:29:57
Speaker 3: we have a promise.
4:29:58
Speaker 2: Of its society.
4:30:01
Speaker 3: End of Section forty one, Chapter thirteen, Part two. First
4:30:07
Speaker 3: had come the children of the interior of the South,
4:30:09
Speaker 3: and with axe and rifle in hand, had cut their
4:30:12
Speaker 3: clearings in the forest, raised their log cabins, fought the Indians,
4:30:15
Speaker 3: and by eighteen thirty had pushed their way to the
4:30:18
Speaker 3: very edge of the prairies along the Ohio and Missouri valleys,
4:30:21
Speaker 3: leaving unoccupied most of the basin of the Great Lakes
4:30:25
Speaker 3: these slashes of the forest. These self sufficing pioneers, raising
4:30:29
Speaker 3: the corn and livestock for their own need, living scattered
4:30:32
Speaker 3: and apart, had at first small interest in town life
4:30:35
Speaker 3: or a share in markets. They were passionately devoted to
4:30:38
Speaker 3: the ideal of equality. But it was an ideal which
4:30:41
Speaker 3: assumed that, under free conditions, in the midst of unlimited resources,
4:30:44
Speaker 3: the homogeneous society of the pioneers must result in equality.
4:30:49
Speaker 3: What they objected to was arbitrary obstacles, artificial limitations upon
4:30:53
Speaker 3: the freedom of each member of this frontier folk to
4:30:55
Speaker 3: work out his own career without fear or favor. What
4:30:59
Speaker 3: they instinctively posed was the crystallization of differences, the monopolization
4:31:03
Speaker 3: of opportunity, and the fixing of that monopoly by government
4:31:06
Speaker 3: or by social customs. The road must be open, the
4:31:10
Speaker 3: game must be played according to the rules. There must
4:31:13
Speaker 3: be no artificial stifling of equality of opportunity, no closed
4:31:17
Speaker 3: doors to the able, no stopping the free game before
4:31:19
Speaker 3: it was played to the end. More than that, there
4:31:22
Speaker 3: was an unformulated, perhaps but very real feeling that mere
4:31:26
Speaker 3: success in the game, by which the abler men were
4:31:28
Speaker 3: able to achieve pre eminence, gave the successful ones no
4:31:32
Speaker 3: right to look down upon their neighbours, no vested title
4:31:35
Speaker 3: to assert superiority as a matter of pride, and to
4:31:38
Speaker 3: the diminution of the equal right and dignity of the
4:31:40
Speaker 3: less successful. If this democracy of Southern pioneers. This Jacksonian
4:31:45
Speaker 3: democracy was, as its socialist critics have called it, in reality,
4:31:49
Speaker 3: a democracy of expectant capitalists. It was not one which
4:31:53
Speaker 3: expected or acknowledged on the part of the successful ones
4:31:56
Speaker 3: the right to harden their triumphs into the rule of
4:31:58
Speaker 3: a privileged class. In short, if it is indeed true
4:32:02
Speaker 3: that the backwoods democracy was based upon equality of opportunity,
4:32:05
Speaker 3: it is also true that it represented the conception that
4:32:08
Speaker 3: opportunity under competition should result in the hopeless inequality or
4:32:13
Speaker 3: rule of class. Ever, a new clearing must be possible,
4:32:17
Speaker 3: And because the wilderness seemed so unending, the menace to
4:32:20
Speaker 3: the enjoyment of this ideal seemed rather to be feared
4:32:22
Speaker 3: from government within or without, than from the operations of
4:32:26
Speaker 3: internal evolution. From the first it became evident that these
4:32:30
Speaker 3: men had means of supplementing their individual activity by informal combinations.
4:32:35
Speaker 3: One of the things that impressed all early travelers in
4:32:37
Speaker 3: the United States was the capacity for extra legal voluntary association.
4:32:42
Speaker 3: This was natural enough in all America. We can study
4:32:45
Speaker 3: the process by which in a new land social customs
4:32:48
Speaker 3: form and crystallize into law. We can even see how
4:32:51
Speaker 3: the personal leader becomes the governmental official. This power of
4:32:54
Speaker 3: the newly arrived pioneers to join together for a common
4:32:57
Speaker 3: end without the intervention of governmental institution was one of
4:33:00
Speaker 3: their marked characteristics. The log rolling, the house raising, the
4:33:05
Speaker 3: husking bee, the apple pairing, and the squatter's associations, whereby
4:33:08
Speaker 3: they protected themselves against the speculators in securing title to
4:33:12
Speaker 3: their clearings on the public domain. The camp meeting, the
4:33:15
Speaker 3: mining camp, the vigilantes, the cattle raisers associations, the gentlemen's
4:33:20
Speaker 3: agreements are a few of the indications of this attitude.
4:33:23
Speaker 3: It is well to emphasize this American trait because, in
4:33:26
Speaker 3: a modified way, it has come to be one of
4:33:28
Speaker 3: the most characteristic and important features of the United States
4:33:31
Speaker 3: of today. America does, through informal association and understandings on
4:33:36
Speaker 3: the part of the people, many of the things which
4:33:38
Speaker 3: in the old world are and can be done only
4:33:40
Speaker 3: by governmental intervention and compulsion. These associations were in America
4:33:45
Speaker 3: not due to the immemorial custom of tribe or village community.
4:33:49
Speaker 3: They were exemptorized by voluntary action. The actions of these
4:33:53
Speaker 3: associations had an authority akin to that of law. They
4:33:56
Speaker 3: were usually not so much evidence as of a disrespectful
4:33:59
Speaker 3: law and order as the only means by which real
4:34:02
Speaker 3: law and order were possible in a region where settlement
4:34:05
Speaker 3: and society had gone in advance of the institutions and
4:34:08
Speaker 3: instrumentalities of organized society. Because of these elements of individualistic
4:34:13
Speaker 3: competition and the power of spontaneous association, pioneers were responsive
4:34:17
Speaker 3: to leadership. The backwards men knew that under the free
4:34:20
Speaker 3: opportunities of his life, the abler man would reveal himself
4:34:24
Speaker 3: and show them the way by free choice and not
4:34:26
Speaker 3: by compulsion, by spontaneous impulse, and not by the domination
4:34:30
Speaker 3: of a caste. They rallied around a cause, they supported
4:34:33
Speaker 3: an issue, They yielded to the principle of government by agreement,
4:34:37
Speaker 3: and they hated the doctrine of autocracy even before it
4:34:40
Speaker 3: gained a name. They looked forward to the extension of
4:34:43
Speaker 3: their American principles to the Old World, and their keenest
4:34:46
Speaker 3: apprehensions came from the possibility of the extension of the
4:34:49
Speaker 3: Old World system of arbitrary rule, its class wars and rivalries,
4:34:53
Speaker 3: and interventions, to the destruction of the free states and
4:34:56
Speaker 3: democratic institutions which they were building in the forests of America.
4:35:00
Speaker 3: If we add to these aspects of early backwards democracy
4:35:03
Speaker 3: its spiritual qualities, we shall more easily understand them. These
4:35:08
Speaker 3: men were emotional as they wrestled their clearing from the
4:35:11
Speaker 3: woods and from the savages who surrounded them. As they
4:35:13
Speaker 3: expanded that clearing and saw the beginnings of commonwealth where
4:35:17
Speaker 3: only little communities had been, and as they saw these
4:35:20
Speaker 3: communities touch hands with each other along the great course
4:35:22
Speaker 3: of the Mississippi River, they became enthusiastically optimistic and confident
4:35:27
Speaker 3: of the continued expansion of this democracy. They had faith
4:35:30
Speaker 3: in themselves and their destiny, and that optimistic faith was
4:35:34
Speaker 3: responsible both for their confidence in their own ability to
4:35:36
Speaker 3: rule and for the passion for expansion. They looked to
4:35:39
Speaker 3: the future. Others appealed to history. An American appeals to prophecy,
4:35:44
Speaker 3: And with Malthus in one hand and a map of
4:35:46
Speaker 3: the back country and the other, he boldly defies us
4:35:49
Speaker 3: to a comparison with America as she is to be,
4:35:52
Speaker 3: said London Periodical in eighteen twenty one. Just because perhaps
4:35:56
Speaker 3: of the usual isolation of their lives when they came
4:35:59
Speaker 3: together in a sociations, whether of the camp meeting or
4:36:01
Speaker 3: of the political gathering, they felt the influence of a
4:36:04
Speaker 3: common emotion and enthusiasm where the Scotch, Irish, Presbyterian, Baptist
4:36:09
Speaker 3: or Methodist. These people saturated their region and their politics
4:36:12
Speaker 3: with feeling. Both the stump and the pulpit were centers
4:36:15
Speaker 3: of energy, electric cells capable of starting wide spreading fires.
4:36:20
Speaker 3: They felt both their religion and their democracy and were
4:36:23
Speaker 3: ready to fight for it. This democracy was one that
4:36:26
Speaker 3: involved a real feeling of social comradeship among its widespread members.
4:36:31
Speaker 3: Justice Catron, who came from Arkansas to the Supreme Court
4:36:34
Speaker 3: in the presidency of Jackson, said, the people of New
4:36:37
Speaker 3: Orleans and Saint Louis are next neighbors. If we desire
4:36:41
Speaker 3: to know a man in any quarter of the Union,
4:36:43
Speaker 3: we inquire of our next neighbor, who but the other
4:36:45
Speaker 3: day lived by him. Exaggerated as this is, it nevertheless
4:36:49
Speaker 3: had a surprising measure of truth for the Middle West
4:36:52
Speaker 3: as well. For the Mississippi River was the great highway
4:36:55
Speaker 3: down which groups of pioneers like Abraham Lincoln, on their
4:36:58
Speaker 3: rafts and flatboats, brought the little neighborhood surplus. After the
4:37:02
Speaker 3: steamboat came to the western waters, the voyagers up and
4:37:05
Speaker 3: down by merchants and by farmers shifting their homes brought
4:37:08
Speaker 3: people into contact with each other over wide areas. This
4:37:12
Speaker 3: enlarged neighbourhood democracy was determined not by a reluctant admission
4:37:16
Speaker 3: that under the law one man is as good as another.
4:37:19
Speaker 3: It was based upon good fellowship, sympathy, and understanding. They
4:37:24
Speaker 3: were of a stock moreover, which sought new trails and
4:37:26
Speaker 3: were ready to follow where the trail led, innovators in
4:37:29
Speaker 3: society as well as finders of new lands. By eighteen thirty,
4:37:33
Speaker 3: the southern inundation ebbed, and a different tide flowed in
4:37:36
Speaker 3: from the northeast by way of the Erie Canal and
4:37:38
Speaker 3: steam navigation on the Great Lakes to occupy the zone
4:37:41
Speaker 3: unreached by southern settlement. This new tide spread along the
4:37:45
Speaker 3: margins of the Great Lakes, found the oak openings and
4:37:47
Speaker 3: small prairie islands of southern Michigan and Wisconsin. Followed the
4:37:51
Speaker 3: fertile forested ribbons along the river courses far into the
4:37:54
Speaker 3: prairie lands, and by the end of the forties began
4:37:56
Speaker 3: to venture into the margin of the open prairie. In
4:38:00
Speaker 3: eighteen thirty, the Middle West contained a little over a
4:38:02
Speaker 3: million and a half people, in eighteen forty over three
4:38:06
Speaker 3: and a third millions, in eighteen fifteen nearly five and
4:38:09
Speaker 3: a half millions. Although in eighteen thirty the North Atlantic
4:38:12
Speaker 3: States numbered between three and four times as many people
4:38:15
Speaker 3: as the Middle West, yet in those two decades the
4:38:17
Speaker 3: Middle West made an actual gain of several one hundred
4:38:20
Speaker 3: thousand more than did the old section. Counties in the
4:38:23
Speaker 3: new estates rose from a few hundred to ten or
4:38:26
Speaker 3: fifteen thousand people in the space of less than five years. Suddenly,
4:38:30
Speaker 3: with astonishing rapidity and volume, a new people was forming,
4:38:33
Speaker 3: with varied elements, ideals, and institutions drawn from all over
4:38:37
Speaker 3: this nation and from Europe. They were confronted with the
4:38:39
Speaker 3: problem of adjusting different stocks, varied customs, and habits to
4:38:43
Speaker 3: their new home. In comparison with the Ohio Valley, the
4:38:47
Speaker 3: peculiarity of the occupation of the northern zone of the
4:38:49
Speaker 3: Middle West lay in the fact that the native element
4:38:51
Speaker 3: was predominantly from the older settlements of the Middle West
4:38:54
Speaker 3: itself and from New York and New England. But it
4:38:57
Speaker 3: was from the central and western counties of New York
4:38:59
Speaker 3: and from the wad western and northern parts of New England.
4:39:02
Speaker 3: The rural regions of declining agricultural prosperity that the bulk
4:39:05
Speaker 3: of this element came. Thus, the influence of the Middle
4:39:09
Speaker 3: West stretched into the Northeast and attracted a farming population
4:39:12
Speaker 3: already suffering from Western competition. The advantage of abundant, fertile
4:39:17
Speaker 3: and cheap land, the richer agricultural returns, and especially the
4:39:21
Speaker 3: opportunities for youth to rise in all the trades and professions,
4:39:25
Speaker 3: gave strength to this competition. By it New England was
4:39:28
Speaker 3: profoundly and permanently modified. This Yankee stock carried with it
4:39:32
Speaker 3: a habit of community life, in contrast with the individualistic
4:39:36
Speaker 3: democracy of the Southern element. The colonizing land companies, the town,
4:39:40
Speaker 3: the school, the church. The feeling of local unity furnished
4:39:43
Speaker 3: the evidences of this instinct for communities. This instinct was
4:39:47
Speaker 3: accompanied by the creation of cities, the production of a
4:39:50
Speaker 3: surplus for market, the reaching out to connections with the
4:39:53
Speaker 3: trading centers of the East, the evolution of a more
4:39:56
Speaker 3: complex and at the same time a more integrated industrial
4:39:59
Speaker 3: society that of the Southern pioneer. But they did not
4:40:03
Speaker 3: carry with them the unmodified New England institutions and traits.
4:40:06
Speaker 3: They came at a time, and from a people less
4:40:08
Speaker 3: satisfied with the old order than were their neighbors.
4:40:11
Speaker 2: In the East.
4:40:12
Speaker 3: There were the young men with initiative, with discontent. The
4:40:15
Speaker 3: New York element especially was affected by the radicalism of
4:40:18
Speaker 3: loco foco democracy, which was in itself a protest against
4:40:21
Speaker 3: the established order.
4:40:23
Speaker 2: The winds of the.
4:40:23
Speaker 3: Prairie swept away almost at once a mass of old
4:40:26
Speaker 3: habits and prepossessions, said one of these pioneers in a
4:40:30
Speaker 3: letter to friends in the East. If you value ease
4:40:32
Speaker 3: more than money or prosperity, don't come. Hands are too
4:40:36
Speaker 3: few for the work, houses for the inhabitants, and days
4:40:39
Speaker 3: for the day's work to be done. Next, if you
4:40:42
Speaker 3: can't stand seeing your old New England ideas, ways of
4:40:45
Speaker 3: doing and living, and in fact all of the good
4:40:47
Speaker 3: old Yankee fashions knocked out of shape and altered or
4:40:50
Speaker 3: thrown by as unsuited to the climate, don't.
4:40:52
Speaker 2: Be caught out here.
4:40:54
Speaker 3: But if you can bear grief with a smile, can
4:40:56
Speaker 3: put up with a scale of accommodations ranging from the
4:40:58
Speaker 3: soft side of a plank before the fire, and perhaps
4:41:01
Speaker 3: three in a bed at that down through the middling
4:41:04
Speaker 3: and inferior grades. If you are never at a loss
4:41:06
Speaker 3: for ways to do the most unpractical things without tools.
4:41:10
Speaker 3: If you can do all this and some more, come on.
4:41:13
Speaker 3: It is a universal rule here to help one another,
4:41:15
Speaker 3: each one keeping an eye single to his own business.
4:41:19
Speaker 3: They knew that they were leaving many dear associations of
4:41:22
Speaker 3: the old home, giving up many of the comforts of life,
4:41:25
Speaker 3: sacrificing things which those who remain thought too vital to
4:41:27
Speaker 3: civilization to be left. But they were not mere materialists,
4:41:31
Speaker 3: ready to surrender all that life is worth for immediate gain.
4:41:35
Speaker 3: They were idealists themselves, sacrificing the ease of the immediate
4:41:38
Speaker 3: future for the welfare of their children, and convinced of
4:41:41
Speaker 3: the possibility of helping to bring about a better social
4:41:43
Speaker 3: order and a freer life. They were social idealists, but
4:41:47
Speaker 3: they based their ideals on trust in the common man
4:41:49
Speaker 3: and the readiness to make adjustments, not on the rule
4:41:52
Speaker 3: of a benevolent despot or a controlling class.
4:41:56
Speaker 2: End of Section forty two.
4:41:58
Speaker 1: Chapter thirteen, Middle Western Pioneer Democracy, Part three. The attraction
4:42:04
Speaker 1: of this new home reached also into the old world
4:42:07
Speaker 1: and gave a new hope and new impulses to the
4:42:09
Speaker 1: people of Germany, of England, of Ireland, and of Scandinavia.
4:42:13
Speaker 1: Both economic influences and revolutionary discontent promoted German migration at
4:42:19
Speaker 1: this time. Economic causes brought the larger volume, but the
4:42:23
Speaker 1: quest for liberty brought the leaders, many of whom were
4:42:26
Speaker 1: German political exiles, while the latter urged with varying degrees
4:42:30
Speaker 1: of emphasis that their own contribution should be preserved in
4:42:34
Speaker 1: their new surroundings, and a few visionaries even talked of
4:42:37
Speaker 1: a German state in the federal system. What was noteworthy
4:42:41
Speaker 1: was the adjustment of the emigrants of the thirties and
4:42:43
Speaker 1: forties to Middle Western conditions. The response to the opportunity
4:42:47
Speaker 1: to create a new type of society in which all
4:42:50
Speaker 1: gave and all received, and no element remained isolated. Society
4:42:55
Speaker 1: was plastic. In the midst of more or less antagonism
4:42:58
Speaker 1: between Bowie Knife's Sunlenurse, cow milking Yankee Puritans, beer drinking
4:43:03
Speaker 1: Germans wild Irishmen, a process of mutual education, a giving
4:43:08
Speaker 1: and taking, was at work in the outcome, in spite
4:43:11
Speaker 1: of slowness of assimilation, where different groups were compact and
4:43:15
Speaker 1: isolated from the others, and a certain persistence of inherited morale.
4:43:19
Speaker 1: There was the creation of a new type, which was
4:43:22
Speaker 1: neither the sum of all its elements nor a complete
4:43:25
Speaker 1: fusion in a melting pot. They were American pioneers, not
4:43:29
Speaker 1: outlying fragments of New England, of Germany, or of Norway.
4:43:33
Speaker 1: The Germans were most strongly represented in the Missouri Valley,
4:43:36
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis and Illinois opposite that city, and in
4:43:40
Speaker 1: the Lake Shore counties of eastern Wisconsin north from Milwaukee.
4:43:43
Speaker 1: In Cincinnati and Cleveland there were many Germans, while in
4:43:47
Speaker 1: nearly half the counties of Ohio, the German immigrants and
4:43:50
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania Germans held nearly or quite the balance of
4:43:54
Speaker 1: political power. The Irish came primarily as workers on turnpikes, canals,
4:43:58
Speaker 1: and railroads, and tend to remain along such lines or
4:44:02
Speaker 1: to gather in the growing cities. The Scandinavians, of whom
4:44:06
Speaker 1: the largest proportion were Norwegians, founded their colonies in northern
4:44:10
Speaker 1: Illinois and in southern Wisconsin about the Fox and the
4:44:13
Speaker 1: headwaters of Rock River. Whence, in later years they spread
4:44:17
Speaker 1: into Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota. By eighteen fifty, about
4:44:21
Speaker 1: one six of the people of the Middle West were
4:44:24
Speaker 1: of North Atlantic birth, about one eighth of Southern birth,
4:44:27
Speaker 1: and a like fraction of foreign birth, of whom the
4:44:30
Speaker 1: Germans were twice as numerous as the Irish, and the
4:44:33
Speaker 1: Scandinavians only slightly more numerous than the Welsh and fewer
4:44:37
Speaker 1: than the Scotch There were only a dozen Scandinavians in Minnesota.
4:44:40
Speaker 1: The natives of the British Islands, together with the natives
4:44:43
Speaker 1: of British North America in the Middle West, numbered nearly
4:44:47
Speaker 1: as many as the natives of German Lands, but in
4:44:50
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty almost three fifths of the population were natives
4:44:53
Speaker 1: of the Middle West itself, and over a third of
4:44:55
Speaker 1: the population lived in Ohio. The cities were especially a
4:44:59
Speaker 1: mixed peoples. In the five larger cities of the section,
4:45:03
Speaker 1: natives and foreigners were nearly balanced. In Chicago, the Irish,
4:45:07
Speaker 1: Germans and natives of the North Atlantic States about equaled
4:45:11
Speaker 1: each other, but in all the other cities the Germans
4:45:14
Speaker 1: exceeded the Irish in varying proportions. There were nearly three
4:45:18
Speaker 1: to one in Milwaukee. It is not merely that the
4:45:21
Speaker 1: section was growing rapidly and was made up of various stocks,
4:45:24
Speaker 1: with many different cultures, sectional and European. What is more
4:45:28
Speaker 1: significant is that these elements did not remain as separate
4:45:32
Speaker 1: strata underneath an established ruling order, as was the case
4:45:35
Speaker 1: particularly in New England. All were accepted and intermingling components
4:45:40
Speaker 1: of a forming society. Plastic and absorptive. The characteristic of
4:45:44
Speaker 1: the section as a good mixer became fixed before the
4:45:47
Speaker 1: large immigrations of the eighties. The foundations of the section
4:45:51
Speaker 1: were laid firmly in a period when the foreign elements
4:45:54
Speaker 1: were particularly free and eager to contribute to a new
4:45:57
Speaker 1: society and to receive an impress from the country which
4:46:00
Speaker 1: offered them a liberty denied abroad. Significant as is this
4:46:04
Speaker 1: fact and influential in the solution of America's present problems,
4:46:09
Speaker 1: it is no more important than the fact that, in
4:46:11
Speaker 1: the decade before the Civil War, the southern element in
4:46:14
Speaker 1: the Middle West had also had nearly two generations of
4:46:17
Speaker 1: direct association with the northern and had finally been engulfed
4:46:21
Speaker 1: in a tide of Northeastern and Old World settlers. In
4:46:24
Speaker 1: this society of pioneers, men learned to drop their old
4:46:28
Speaker 1: national animosities. One of the immigrant guides of the fifties
4:46:31
Speaker 1: urged the newcomers to abandon their racial animosities. The American
4:46:35
Speaker 1: laughs at these steerage quarrels, said the author. Thus, the
4:46:39
Speaker 1: Middle West was teaching a lesson of national cross fertilization
4:46:43
Speaker 1: instead of national enmities. The possibility of a newer and
4:46:46
Speaker 1: richer civilization not by preserving, unmodified or isolated the old
4:46:51
Speaker 1: component elements, but by breaking down the line fences, by
4:46:55
Speaker 1: merging the individual life and the common product, a new
4:46:58
Speaker 1: product which held the promise of world brotherhood. If the
4:47:01
Speaker 1: Pioneers divided their allegiance between various parties Whig, Democrat, Free
4:47:07
Speaker 1: Soil or Republican, it does not follow that the Western
4:47:10
Speaker 1: Whig was like the Eastern Whig. There was an infiltration
4:47:13
Speaker 1: of a Western quality into all of these. The Western
4:47:16
Speaker 1: Whigs supported Harrison more because he was a Pioneer than
4:47:19
Speaker 1: because he was a Whig. It saw in him a
4:47:22
Speaker 1: legitimate successor of Andrew Jackson. The campaign of eighteen forty
4:47:26
Speaker 1: was a Middle Western camp meeting on a huge scale.
4:47:29
Speaker 1: The log Cabins, the cider, and the Coonskins were the
4:47:32
Speaker 1: symbols of the triumph of Middle Western ideas and were
4:47:35
Speaker 1: carried with misgivings by the merchants, the bankers, and the
4:47:38
Speaker 1: manufacturers of the East. In like fashion, the middle Western
4:47:42
Speaker 1: wing of the Democratic Party was as different from the
4:47:45
Speaker 1: southern wing, wherein lay its strength, as Douglas was from Calhoun.
4:47:49
Speaker 1: It had little in common with the slaveholding classes of
4:47:52
Speaker 1: the South, even while it felt the kinship of the
4:47:55
Speaker 1: pioneer with the people of the southern upland stock from
4:47:58
Speaker 1: which so many Westerners were ended. In the later forties
4:48:02
Speaker 1: and early fifties, most of the middle Western states made constitutions.
4:48:06
Speaker 1: The debates in their conventions and the results embodied in
4:48:09
Speaker 1: the constitutions themselves, tell the story of their political ideals.
4:48:14
Speaker 1: Of course, they based the franchise on the principle of
4:48:16
Speaker 1: manhood's suffrage, but they also provided for an elective judiciary
4:48:21
Speaker 1: for restrictions on the borrowing power of the state, lest
4:48:24
Speaker 1: it fall under the control of what they feared as
4:48:26
Speaker 1: the money power, and several of them either provided for
4:48:29
Speaker 1: the extinguishment of banks of issue or rigidly restrained them.
4:48:33
Speaker 1: Some of them exempted the homestead from forced to sale
4:48:36
Speaker 1: for debt. Married women's legal rights were prominent topics in
4:48:39
Speaker 1: the debates of the conventions, and Wisconsin led off by
4:48:42
Speaker 1: permitting the alien to vote after a year's residence. It
4:48:46
Speaker 1: welcomed the newcomer to freedom and to the obligations of
4:48:49
Speaker 1: American citizenship. Although this pioneer society was preponderantly an agricultural society,
4:48:55
Speaker 1: it was rapidly learning that agriculture alone was not sufficient
4:48:58
Speaker 1: for its life. It was developing manufactures, trade, mining the professions,
4:49:03
Speaker 1: and becoming conscious that in a progressive, modern state, it
4:49:07
Speaker 1: was possible to pass from one industry to another, and
4:49:10
Speaker 1: that all were bound by common ties. But it is
4:49:13
Speaker 1: significant that in the census of eighteen fifty, Ohio, out
4:49:16
Speaker 1: of a population of two millions, reported only one thousand servants,
4:49:21
Speaker 1: Iowa only ten in two hundred thousand, and Minnesota fifteen
4:49:25
Speaker 1: in its six thousand. In the intellectual life of this
4:49:28
Speaker 1: new democracy, there was already the promise of original contributions,
4:49:33
Speaker 1: even in the midst of the engrossing toil and hard
4:49:35
Speaker 1: life of the pioneer. The country editor was a leader
4:49:38
Speaker 1: of his people, not a patent inside's recorder of social functions,
4:49:42
Speaker 1: but a vigorous and independent thinker and writer. The subscribers
4:49:46
Speaker 1: to the newspaper published in the section were higher in
4:49:49
Speaker 1: proportioned population than in the state of New York, and
4:49:52
Speaker 1: not greatly inferior to those of New England. Although such
4:49:56
Speaker 1: Eastern papers as the New York Tribune had an extensive
4:49:59
Speaker 1: circulation throughout the Middle West, the agricultural press presupposed, in
4:50:03
Speaker 1: its articles and contributions, a level of general intelligence and
4:50:07
Speaker 1: interest above that of the later farmers of the section.
4:50:10
Speaker 1: At least before the present day farmer boys walked behind
4:50:14
Speaker 1: the plow with their book in hand, and sometimes forgot
4:50:17
Speaker 1: to turn at the end of the pharaoh, even rare boys, who,
4:50:20
Speaker 1: like the young Howels, limped barefoot by his father's side,
4:50:23
Speaker 1: with his eyes on the cow and his mind on
4:50:25
Speaker 1: servants and Shakespeare periodicals flourished and faded like the prairie flowers.
4:50:30
Speaker 1: Some of Emerson's best poems first appeared in one of
4:50:33
Speaker 1: these Ohio Valley magazines. But for the most part, the
4:50:36
Speaker 1: literature of the region and the period was imitative or
4:50:39
Speaker 1: reflective of the common things in a not uncommon way.
4:50:43
Speaker 1: It is to its children that the Middle West had
4:50:45
Speaker 1: to look for the expression of its life and its ideals,
4:50:48
Speaker 1: rather than to the busy pioneer who was breaking a
4:50:51
Speaker 1: prairie farm or building up a new community. Illiteracy was
4:50:54
Speaker 1: leased among the Yankee pioneers and highest among the Southern element.
4:50:59
Speaker 1: When mapped for eighteen fifty by percentages, there appears two
4:51:03
Speaker 1: distinct zones, the one extending from New England, the other
4:51:07
Speaker 1: from the South. The influence of New England men was
4:51:10
Speaker 1: strong in the Yankee regions of the Middle West. Home
4:51:13
Speaker 1: missionaries and representatives of societies for the promotion of education
4:51:17
Speaker 1: in the West, both in the common school and denominational colleges,
4:51:21
Speaker 1: scattered themselves throughout the region and left a deep impress
4:51:25
Speaker 1: in all these states. The conception was firmly fixed in
4:51:28
Speaker 1: the thirties and forties that the West was the coming
4:51:31
Speaker 1: power in the Union, that the fate of civilization was
4:51:35
Speaker 1: in its hands, and therefore rival sex and rival sections
4:51:38
Speaker 1: strove to influence it to their own types. But the
4:51:41
Speaker 1: Middle West shaped all these educational contributions according to her
4:51:44
Speaker 1: own needs and ideals. The state universities were for the
4:51:48
Speaker 1: most part the result of agitation and proposals of men
4:51:52
Speaker 1: of New England origin, but they became characteristic products of
4:51:55
Speaker 1: Middle Western society, where the community as a whole, rather
4:51:59
Speaker 1: than wealthy benefactors, supported these institutions. In the end, the
4:52:03
Speaker 1: community determined their directions in accord with popular ideals. They
4:52:07
Speaker 1: reached down more deeply into the ranks of the common
4:52:10
Speaker 1: people than did the New England or Middle State colleges.
4:52:14
Speaker 1: They laid more emphasis upon the obviously useful, and became
4:52:17
Speaker 1: co educational at an early date. This dominance of the
4:52:20
Speaker 1: community ideals had dangers for the universities, which were called
4:52:24
Speaker 1: to raise ideals and to point new ways rather than
4:52:27
Speaker 1: to conform. Challenging the spaces of the West. Struck by
4:52:31
Speaker 1: the rapidity with which a new society was unfolding under
4:52:34
Speaker 1: their gaze, it is not strange that the pioneers dealt
4:52:37
Speaker 1: in the superlative and saw their destiny with optimistic eyes.
4:52:41
Speaker 1: The meadow lot of the small interval had become the prairie,
4:52:44
Speaker 1: stretching farther than their gaze could reach. All was motion
4:52:48
Speaker 1: and change. A restlessness was universal. Men moved in their
4:52:52
Speaker 1: single life from Vermont to New York, from New York
4:52:55
Speaker 1: to Ohio, from Ohio to Wisconsin, from Wisconsin to California,
4:52:59
Speaker 1: and longed for the Hawaiian Islands. When the bark started
4:53:02
Speaker 1: from their fence rails, they felt the call to change.
4:53:05
Speaker 1: They were conscious of the mobility of their society and
4:53:08
Speaker 1: gloried in it. They broke with the past and thought
4:53:10
Speaker 1: to create something finer, more fitting for humanity, more beneficial
4:53:14
Speaker 1: for the average man, than the world had ever seen. Quote.
4:53:18
Speaker 1: With the past, we have literally nothing to do, said B.
4:53:21
Speaker 1: Gratz Brown in a Missouri Fourth of July oration in
4:53:24
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, save to dream of it. Its lessons are
4:53:27
Speaker 1: lost and its tongue is silent. We are ourselves at
4:53:31
Speaker 1: the head and front of all political experience. Precedents have
4:53:34
Speaker 1: lost their virtue, and all their authority is gone. Experience
4:53:38
Speaker 1: can profit us only to guard from antiquated delusions. End
4:53:42
Speaker 1: of quote.
4:53:43
Speaker 2: Quote.
4:53:43
Speaker 1: The yoke of opinion, wrote Channing to a Western friend
4:53:46
Speaker 1: speaking of New England is a heavy one, often crushing
4:53:49
Speaker 1: individuality of judgment and action. End of quote. And he
4:53:52
Speaker 1: added that the habits, rules, and criticisms under which he
4:53:56
Speaker 1: had grown up had not left him the freedom and
4:53:58
Speaker 1: carriage which are needed. In the style of address best
4:54:01
Speaker 1: suited to the Western people, Channing no doubt unduly stressed
4:54:05
Speaker 1: to the freedom of the West in this respect. The
4:54:07
Speaker 1: frontier had its own conventions and prejudices, and New England
4:54:11
Speaker 1: was breaking its own cake. Of custom and proclaiming a
4:54:14
Speaker 1: new liberty at the very time he wrote, but there
4:54:17
Speaker 1: was truth in the Eastern thought of the West as
4:54:19
Speaker 1: a land of intellectual toleration, one which questioned the old
4:54:23
Speaker 1: order of things and made innovation its very creed. The
4:54:26
Speaker 1: West laid emphasis upon the practical and demanded that ideals
4:54:30
Speaker 1: should be put to work for useful ends. Ideals were
4:54:33
Speaker 1: tested by their direct contributions to the betterment of the
4:54:36
Speaker 1: average man, rather than by the production of the man
4:54:39
Speaker 1: of exceptional genius and distinction. For in fine this was
4:54:43
Speaker 1: the goal of the Middle West, the welfare of the
4:54:46
Speaker 1: average man, not only the man of the South or
4:54:48
Speaker 1: of the East, the Yankee, or the Irishman, or the German,
4:54:51
Speaker 1: but all men in one common fellowship. This was the
4:54:55
Speaker 1: hope of their youth, of that youth when Abraham Lincoln
4:54:58
Speaker 1: rose from rail splitter to country try lawyer, from Illinois
4:55:01
Speaker 1: legislator to congressmen, and from congressman to president, it is
4:55:05
Speaker 1: not strange that in all this flux and freedom, and
4:55:08
Speaker 1: novelty and vast spaces, the pioneer did not sufficiently consider
4:55:12
Speaker 1: the need of discipline, devotion to the government which he
4:55:15
Speaker 1: himself created and operated. But the name of Lincoln and
4:55:18
Speaker 1: the response of the pioneer to the duties of the
4:55:21
Speaker 1: Civil War, to the sacrifices and the restraints on freedom
4:55:24
Speaker 1: which it entailed under his presidency, reminds us that they
4:55:28
Speaker 1: knew how to take part in a common cause, even
4:55:31
Speaker 1: while they knew that war's conditions were destructive of many
4:55:34
Speaker 1: of the things for which they worked. There are two
4:55:37
Speaker 1: kinds of governmental discipline, that which proceeds from free choice
4:55:41
Speaker 1: in the conviction that restraint of individual or class interests
4:55:44
Speaker 1: is necessary for the common good, and that which is
4:55:47
Speaker 1: imposed by a dominant class upon a subjected and helpless people.
4:55:51
Speaker 1: The latter is Prussian discipline, the discipline of a harsh,
4:55:55
Speaker 1: machine like logical organization based on the rule of a
4:55:58
Speaker 1: military autocracy. It assumes that if you do not crush
4:56:02
Speaker 1: your opponent first, he will crush you. It is the
4:56:04
Speaker 1: discipline of a nation ruled by its general staff, assuming
4:56:08
Speaker 1: war as the normal condition of peoples, and attempting with
4:56:11
Speaker 1: remorseless logic to extend its operations to the destruction of
4:56:15
Speaker 1: freedom everywhere. It can only be met by the discipline
4:56:18
Speaker 1: of a people who use their own government for worthy ends,
4:56:21
Speaker 1: who preserve individuality and mobility in society, and respect the
4:56:25
Speaker 1: rights of others who followed the dictates of humanity and
4:56:28
Speaker 1: fair play, the principles of give and take. The Prussian
4:56:32
Speaker 1: discipline is the discipline of Thor the war God, against
4:56:35
Speaker 1: the discipline of the White christ. Pioneer democracy has had
4:56:39
Speaker 1: to learn lessons by experience. The lesson the government on
4:56:43
Speaker 1: principles of free democracy can accomplish many things which the
4:56:46
Speaker 1: men of the middle of the nineteenth century did not
4:56:49
Speaker 1: realize were even possible. They've had to sacrifice something of
4:56:52
Speaker 1: their passion for individual unrestraint. They've had to learn that
4:56:56
Speaker 1: the specially trained man, the man fitted for his calling
4:56:59
Speaker 1: by agua cation and experience, whether in the field of
4:57:02
Speaker 1: science or of industry, has a place in government. That
4:57:05
Speaker 1: the rule of the people is effective and enduring only
4:57:08
Speaker 1: as it incorporates the trained specialist into the organization of
4:57:12
Speaker 1: that government, whether as umpire between contending interests or as
4:57:16
Speaker 1: the efficient instrument in the hands of democracy. Organized democracy
4:57:20
Speaker 1: after the era of Freeland has learned that popular government,
4:57:24
Speaker 1: to be successful must not only be legitimately the choice
4:57:27
Speaker 1: of the whole people, That the offices of that government
4:57:30
Speaker 1: must not only be open to all, but that in
4:57:32
Speaker 1: the fierce struggle of nations, in the field of economic competition,
4:57:36
Speaker 1: and in the field of war, the salvation and perpetuity
4:57:39
Speaker 1: of the republic depend upon recognition of the fact that
4:57:43
Speaker 1: specialization of the organs of the government, the choice of
4:57:46
Speaker 1: the fit and the capable for office, is quite as
4:57:49
Speaker 1: important as the extension of popular control. When we lost
4:57:53
Speaker 1: our free lands and our isolation from the old world,
4:57:55
Speaker 1: we lost our immunity from the results of mistakes, of waste,
4:57:59
Speaker 1: of inefficient and of inexperience in our government. But in
4:58:03
Speaker 1: the present day we are also learning another lesson which
4:58:06
Speaker 1: was better known to the pioneers than to their immediate successors.
4:58:09
Speaker 1: We are learning that the distinction arising from devotion to
4:58:13
Speaker 1: the interests of the commonwealth is a higher distinction than
4:58:16
Speaker 1: mere success in economic competition. America is now awarding laurels
4:58:21
Speaker 1: to the men who sacrifice their triumphs in the rivalry
4:58:23
Speaker 1: of business in order to give their service to the
4:58:26
Speaker 1: cause of a liberty loving nation, their wealth and their
4:58:29
Speaker 1: genius to the success of her ideals. That craving for
4:58:33
Speaker 1: distinction which once drew men to pile up wealth and
4:58:36
Speaker 1: exhibit power over the industrial processes of the nation is
4:58:39
Speaker 1: now finding a new outlet in the craving for distinction
4:58:42
Speaker 1: that comes from service to the Union, in satisfaction in
4:58:46
Speaker 1: the use of great talent for the good of the Republic,
4:58:49
Speaker 1: and all over the nation in voluntary organizations for aid
4:58:52
Speaker 1: to the government is being shown the pioneer principle of
4:58:55
Speaker 1: association that was expressed in the House Raising. It is
4:58:58
Speaker 1: shown in the Red Cross, the YMCA, the Knights of Columbus,
4:59:02
Speaker 1: the councils and boards of Science, Commerce, labor, agriculture, and
4:59:06
Speaker 1: in all the countless other types. From the association of
4:59:09
Speaker 1: women in their kitchen who carry out the recommendations of
4:59:12
Speaker 1: the Food Director and revive the plain living of the Pioneer,
4:59:15
Speaker 1: to the Boy Scouts who are laying the foundations for
4:59:18
Speaker 1: a self disciplined and virile generation worthy to follow the
4:59:21
Speaker 1: trail of the backwoodsmen. It is an inspiring prophecy of
4:59:25
Speaker 1: the revival of the old pioneer conception of the obligations
4:59:28
Speaker 1: and opportunities of neighborliness, broadening to a national and even
4:59:33
Speaker 1: to an international scope. The promise of what that wise
4:59:36
Speaker 1: and lamented philosopher Josiah Royce called the beloved community in
4:59:40
Speaker 1: the spirit of the pioneer's house raising lies the salvation
4:59:43
Speaker 1: of the republic. This, then, is the heritage of pioneer experience,
4:59:48
Speaker 1: a passionate belief that a democracy was possible, which should
4:59:51
Speaker 1: leave the individual apart to play in free society, and
4:59:54
Speaker 1: not make him a cog in a machine operated from above,
4:59:58
Speaker 1: which trusted in the common man, in his tolerance, his
5:00:01
Speaker 1: ability to adjust differences with good humor, and to work
5:00:04
Speaker 1: out an American type from the contributions of all nations,
5:00:08
Speaker 1: a type for which he would fight against those who
5:00:10
Speaker 1: challenged it in arms, and for which, in time of war,
5:00:14
Speaker 1: he would make sacrifices, even the temporary sacrifice of individual
5:00:18
Speaker 1: freedom and his life, lest that freedom be lost forever.
5:00:22
Speaker 1: End of Section forty three.