Modern American Prose Selections

Modern American Prose
Selections, by Various

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Title: Modern American Prose Selections
Author: Various
Editor: Byron Johnson Rees
Release Date: November 8, 2006 [EBook #19739]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AMERICAN PROSE SELECTIONS ***

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*************** Transcriber's Notes: In the Woodrow Wilson
selection, the word 'altrusion' was changed to 'altruism' based on
consultation with the original text from which the passage was taken
for this book.
In the Jacob Riis selection, the phrase "It it none too fine yet" was
replaced with "It is none too fine yet" after consultation with the
original text from which the passage was taken for this book.
Other minor typos were also corrected. Hyphenation was left consistent
with how it appears in the book. ***************

MODERN AMERICAN PROSE SELECTIONS
EDITED BY
BYRON JOHNSON REES PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT
WILLIAMS COLLEGE
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 1920

THE PLIMPTON PRESS NORWOOD MASS U. S. A.

CONTENTS
PAGE PREFACE vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
Abraham Lincoln Theodore Roosevelt 3
American Tradition Franklin K. Lane 8
America's Heritage Franklin K. Lane 17

Address at the College of the Holy Cross Calvin Coolidge 25
Our Future Immigration Policy Frederic C. Howe 31
A New Relationship between Capital and Labor John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
42
My Uncle Alvin Johnson 48
When a Man Comes to Himself Woodrow Wilson 53
Education through Occupations William Lowe Bryan 68
The Fallow John Agricola 81
Writing and Reading John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert 87
James Russell Lowell Bliss Perry 94
The Education of Henry Adams Carl Becker 109
The Struggle for an Education Booker T. Washington 119
Entering Journalism Jacob A. Riis 128
Bound Coastwise Ralph D. Paine 135
The Democratization of the Automobile Burton J. Hendrick 145
Traveling Afoot John Finley 157
Old Boats Walter Prichard Eaton 165
Zeppelinitis Philip Littell 177

TO E., C., AND H. STUDENTS AND FRIENDS

PREFACE
As the reader, if he wishes, may discover without undue delay, the little
volume of modern prose selections that he has before him is the result
of no ambitious or pretentious design. It is not a collection of the best
things that have lately been known and thought in the American world;
it is not an anthology in which "all our best authors" are represented by
striking or celebrated passages. The editor planned nothing either so
precious or so eclectic. His purpose rather was to bring together some
twenty examples of typical contemporary prose, in which writers who
know whereof they write discuss certain present-day themes in readable
fashion. In choosing material he has sought to include nothing merely
because of the name of the author, and he has demanded of each
selection that it should be of such a character, both in subject and style,
as to impress normal and wholesome Americans as well worth reading.
The earlier selections--President Roosevelt's noble eulogy upon
Lincoln, Secretary Lane's two addresses on American tradition and
heritage, and Governor Coolidge's address at Holy Cross--remind the
reader of the high significance of our national past and indicate the
promise of a rightly apprehended future. There follow two
articles--"Our Future Immigration Policy," by Commissioner Frederic
C. Howe, and "A New Relationship between Capital and Labor," by Mr.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.--on subjects that press for earnest
consideration on the part of all who are intent upon the solution of our
problems. Mr. Alvin Johnson's playful yet serious essay on "the biggest,
kindliest, most honest and honorable tribal head that ever lived"
completes the group of what may be termed "Americanization" Papers.
Perhaps the best of the many magazine articles that President Wilson
has written is that which serves as a link--for those to whom links, even
in a miscellany, are a satisfaction--between the earlier selections and
those that follow. "When a Man Comes to Himself," expressing as it
does in English of distinction the best thought of the best Americans
concerning the individual's relation to society and to the state, will
probably be widely read, with attention and gratitude, for many years to
come. Associated with Mr. Wilson's article are three selections

presenting various aspects of self-realization in education. One of them,
"The Fallow," deals in signally happy manner with the insistent and
vital question of the study of the Classics.
That scholarly and competent literary