Four American Leaders | Page 7

these functions, any one of which, well discharged, has in times past
commanded the habitual respect of mankind. It is a grave misfortune
for our country, and especially for our rich men, that the modern forms
of property,--namely, stocks and bonds, mortgages, and city
buildings--do not carry with them any inevitable responsibilities to the
state, or involve their owner in personal risks and charges as a leader or
commander of the people. The most enviable rich man to-day is the
intelligent industrial or commercial adventurer or promoter, in the good
sense of those terms. He takes risks and assumes burdens on a large
scale, and has a chance to develop will, mind, and character, just as
Queen Elizabeth's adventurers did all over the then known world.
Again, Washington, as I have already indicated, was an economical
person, careful about little expenditures as well as great, averse to
borrowing money, and utterly impatient of waste. If a slave were
hopelessly ill, he did not call a doctor, because it would be a useless
expenditure. He insisted that the sewing woman, Carolina, who had
only made five shirts in a week, not being sick, should make nine. He
entered in his account "thread and needle, one penny," and used said
thread and needle himself. All this closeness and contempt for
shiftlessness and prodigality were perfectly consistent with a large and
hospitable way of living; for during many years of his life he kept open
house at Mt. Vernon. This frugal and prudent man knew exactly what it

meant to devote his "life and fortune to the cause we are engaged in, if
needful," as he wrote in 1774. This was not an exaggerated or
emotional phrase. It was moderate, but it meant business. He risked his
whole fortune. What he lost through his service in the Revolutionary
War is clearly stated in a letter written from Mt. Vernon in 1784: "I
made no money from my estate during the nine years I was absent from
it, and brought none home with me. Those who owed me, for the most
part, took advantage of the depreciation, and paid me off with sixpence
in the pound. Those to whom I was indebted, I have yet to pay, without
other means, if they will wait, than selling part of my estate, or
distressing those who were too honest to take advantage of the tender
laws to quit scores with me." Should we not all be glad if to-day a
hundred or two multi-millionaires could give such an account as that of
their losses incurred in the public service, even if they had not, like
Washington, risked their lives as well? In our times we have come to
think that a rich man should not be frugal or economical, but rather
wasteful or extravagant. We have even been asked to believe that a
cheap coat makes a cheap man. If there were a fixed relation between a
man's character and the price of his clothes, what improvement we
should have seen in the national character since 1893! At Harvard
University, twelve hundred students take three meals a day in the great
dining-room of Memorial Hall, and manage the business themselves
through an elected President and Board of Directors. These officers
proscribe stews, apparently because it is a form in which cheap meat
may be offered them, neglecting the more important fact that the stew
is the most nutritious and digestible form in which meats can be eaten.
Mr. Edward Atkinson, the economist, invented an oven in which
various kinds of foods may be cheaply and well prepared with a
minimum of attention to the process. The workingmen, among whom
he attempted to introduce it, took no interest in it whatever, because it
was recommended to them as a cheap way of preparing inexpensive
though excellent foods. This modern temper affords a most striking
contrast to the practices and sentiments of Washington, sentiments and
practices which underlay his whole public life as well as his private
life.
If he were alive to-day, would he not be bewildered by much of our talk

about the rights of men and animals? Washington's mind dwelt very
little on rights and very much on duties. For him, patriotism was a duty;
good citizenship was a duty; and for the masses of mankind it was a
duty to clear away the forest, till the ground, and plant fruit trees, just
as he prescribed to the hoped-for tenants on his Ohio and Kanawha
lands. For men and women in general he thought it a duty to increase
and multiply, and to make the wilderness glad with rustling crops,
lowing herds, and children's voices. When he retired from the
Presidency, he expressed the hope that he might "make and sell a little
flour annually." For the