Frontier in American History — XI - The West and American Ideals - Part 3

Side by side with this westward marching army of individualistic liberty-loving democratic backwoodsmen, went a more northern stream of pioneers, who cherished similar ideas, but added to them the desire to create new industrial centers, to build up factories, to build railroads, and to develop the country by founding cities and extending prosperity.

They were ready to call upon legislatures to aid in this, by subscriptions to stock, grants of franchises, promotion of banking and internal improvements.

These were the Whig followers of that other Western leader, Henry Clay, and their early strength lay in the Ohio Valley, and particularly among the well-to-do.

In the South their strength was found among the aristocracy of the Cotton Kingdom.

Both of these Western groups, Whigs and Democrats alike, had one common ideal: the desire to leave their children a better heritage than they themselves had received, and both were fired with devotion to the ideal of creating in this New World a home more worthy of mankind.

Both were ready to break with the past, to boldly strike out new lines of social endeavor, and both believed in American expansion.

Before these tendencies had worked themselves out, three new forces entered.

In the sudden extension of our boundaries to the Pacific Coast, which took place in the forties, the nation won so vast a domain that its resources seemed illimitable and its society seemed able to throw off all its maladies by the very presence of these vast new spaces.

At the same period the great activity of railroad building to the Mississippi Valley occurred, making these lands available and diverting attention to the task of economic construction.

The third influence was the slavery question which, becoming acute, shaped the American ideals and public discussion for nearly a generation.

Viewed from one angle, this struggle involved the great question of national unity.

From another it involved the question of the relations of labor and capital, democracy and aristocracy.

It was not without significance that Abraham Lincoln became the very type of American pioneer democracy, the first adequate and elemental demonstration to the world that that democracy could produce a man who belonged to the ages.

After the war, new national energies were set loose, and new construction and development engaged the attention of the Westerners as they occupied prairies and Great Plains and mountains.

Democracy and capitalistic development did not seem antagonistic.

With the passing of the frontier, Western social and political ideals took new form.

Capital began to consolidate in even greater masses, and increasingly attempted to reduce to system and control the processes of industrial development.

Labor with equal step organized its forces to destroy the old competitive system.

It is not strange that the Western pioneers took alarm for their ideals of democracy as the outcome of the free struggle for the national resources became apparent.

They espoused the cause of governmental activity.

It was a new gospel, for the Western radical became convinced that he must sacrifice his ideal of individualism and free competition in order to maintain his ideal of democracy.

Under this conviction the Populist revised the pioneer conception of government.

He saw in government no longer something outside of him, but the people themselves shaping their own affairs.

He demanded therefore an extension of the powers of governments in the interest of his historic ideal of democratic society.

He demanded not only free silver, but the ownership of the agencies of communication and transportation, the income tax, the postal savings bank, the provision of means of credit for agriculture, the construction of more effective devices to express the will of the people, primary nominations, direct elections, initiative, referendum and recall.

In a word, capital, labor, and the Western pioneer, all deserted the ideal of competitive individualism in order to organize their interests in more effective combinations.

The disappearance of the frontier, the closing of the era which was marked by the influence of the West as a form of society, brings with it new problems of social adjustment, new demands for considering our past ideals and our present needs.

Let us recall the conditions of the foreign relations along our borders, the dangers that wait us if we fail to unite in the solution of our domestic problems.

Let us recall those internal evidences of the destruction of our old social order.

If we take to heart this warning, we shall do well also to recount our historic ideals, to take stock of those purposes, and fundamental assumptions that have gone to make the American spirit and the meaning of America in world history.

First of all, there was the ideal of discovery, the courageous determination to break new paths, indifference to the dogma that because an institution or a condition exists, it must remain.

All American experience has gone to the making of the spirit of innovation; it is in the blood and will not be repressed.

Then, there was the ideal of democracy, the ideal of a free self-directing people, responsive to leadership in the forming of programs and their execution, but insistent that the procedure should be that of free choice, not of compulsion.

But there was also the ideal of individualism.

This democratic society was not a disciplined army, where all must keep step and where the collective interests destroyed individual will and work.

Rather it was a mobile mass of freely circulating atoms, each seeking its own place and finding play for its own powers and for its own original initiative.

We cannot lay too much stress upon this point, for it was at the very heart of the whole American movement.

The world was to be made a better world by the example of a democracy in which there was freedom of the individual, in which there was the vitality and mobility productive of originality and variety.

Bearing in mind the far-reaching influence of the disappearance of unlimited resources open to all men for the taking, and considering the recoil of the common man when he saw the outcome of the competitive struggle for these resources as the supply came to its end over most of the nation, we can understand the reaction against individualism and in favor of drastic assertion of the powers of government.

Legislation is taking the place of the free lands as the means of preserving the ideal of democracy.

But at the same time it is endangering the other pioneer ideal of creative and competitive individualism.

Both were essential and constituted what was best in America's contribution to history and to progress.

Both must be preserved if the nation would be true to its past, and would fulfil its highest destiny.

It would be a grave misfortune if these people so rich in experience, in self-confidence and aspiration, in creative genius, should turn to some Old World discipline of socialism or plutocracy, or despotic rule, whether by class or by dictator.

Nor shall we be driven to these alternatives.

Our ancient hopes, our courageous faith, our underlying good humor and love of fair play will triumph in the end.

There will be give and take in all directions.

There will be disinterested leadership, under loyalty to the best American ideals.

Nowhere is this leadership more likely to arise than among the men trained in the Universities, aware of the promise of the past and the possibilities of the future.

The times call for new ambitions and new motives.

In a most suggestive essay on the Problems of Modern Democracy, Mr. Godkin has said: M.

de Tocqueville and all his followers take it for granted that the great incentive to excellence, in all countries in which excellence is found, is the patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy; that democracy is generally content with mediocrity.

But where is the proof of this?

The incentive to exertion which is widest, most constant, and most powerful in its operations in all civilized countries, is the desire of distinction; and this may be composed either of love of fame or love of wealth or of both.

In literary and artistic and scientific pursuits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted by a love of the subject.

But it may safely be said that no man has ever labored in any of the higher colleges to whom the applause and appreciation of his fellows was not one of the sweetest rewards of his exertions.

What is there we would ask, in the nature of democratic institutions, that should render this great spring of action powerless, that should deprive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to sleep?

Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that one of the most marked peculiarities of democratic society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, is the fire of competition which rages in it, the fevered anxiety which possesses all its members to rise above the dead level to which the law is ever seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant stroke become something higher and more remarkable than their fellows?

The secret of that great restlessness which is one of the most disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic countries, is in fact due to the eagerness of everybody to grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic countries, only the few have much chance.

And in no other society is success more worshiped, is distinction of any kind more widely flattered and caressed.

In democratic societies, in fact, excellence is the first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones there are two or three others which are far stronger and which must be stronger or aristocracy could not exist.

The moment you acknowledge that the highest social position ought to be the reward of the man who has the most talent, you make aristocratic institutions impossible.

All that was buoyant and creative in American life would be lost if we gave up the respect for distinct personality, and variety in genius, and came to the dead level of common standards.

To be "socialized into an average" and placed "under the tutelage of the mass of us," as a recent writer has put it, would be an irreparable loss.

Nor is it necessary in a democracy, as these words of Godkin well disclose.

What is needed is the multiplication of motives for ambition and the opening of new lines of achievement for the strongest.

As we turn from the task of the first rough conquest of the continent there lies before us a whole wealth of unexploited resources in the realm of the spirit.

Arts and letters, science and better social creation, loyalty and political service to the commonweal,--these and a thousand other directions of activity are open to the men, who formerly under the incentive of attaining distinction by amassing extraordinary wealth, saw success only in material display.

Newer and finer careers will open to the ambitious when once public opinion shall award the laurels to those who rise above their fellows in these new fields of labor.

It has not been the gold, but the getting of the gold, that has caught the imaginations of our captains of industry.

Their real enjoyment lay not in the luxuries which wealth brought, but in the work of construction and in the place which society awarded them.

A new era will come if schools and universities can only widen the intellectual horizon of the people, help to lay the foundations of a better industrial life, show them new goals for endeavor, inspire them with more varied and higher ideals.

The Western spirit must be invoked for new and nobler achievements.

Of that matured Western spirit, Tennyson's Ulysses is a symbol.

".

.

.

I am become a name For always roaming with an hungry heart, Much have I seen and known .

.

.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch, where thro' Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

* * * * * And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a shining star Beyond the utmost hound of human thought.

.

.

.

Come my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the Western stars until I die * * * * * To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."

FOOTNOTES:

[290:1] Commencement Address, University of Washington, June 17, 1914. Reprinted by permission from _The Washington Historical Quarterly_, October, 1914. XII