The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 3

Nineteenth Century was that of the reality
of external things. That of the Twentieth Century will be this axiom in
social geometry: "A straight line is the shortest distance between two
points." If something needs doing, do it; the more plainly, directly,
honestly, the better.
The earlier centuries cared little for the life of a man. Hence they failed
to discriminate. In masses and mobs they needed kings and rulers but
could not choose them. Hence the device of selecting as ruler the elder
son of the last ruler, whatever his nature might be. A child, a lunatic, a
monster, a sage,--it was all the same to these unheeding centuries. The
people could not follow those they understood or who understood them.
They must trust all to the blind chance of heredity. Tyrant or figurehead,
the mob, which from its own indifference creates the pomp of royalty,
threw up its caps for the king, and blindly died for him in his courage
or in his folly with the same unquestioning loyalty. In like manner did
the mob fashion lords and princes, each in its own image. Not the man
who would do or think or help, but the eldest son of a former lord was
chosen for its homage. The result of it all was that no use was made of
the forces of nature, for those who might have learned to control them

were hunted to their death. The men who could think and act for
themselves were in no position to give their actions leverage.
When a people really means to do something, it must resort to
democracy. It must value men as men, not as functions of a chain of
conventionalities. "America," says Emerson, "means opportunity;"
opportunity for work, opportunity for training, opportunity for
influence. Democracy exalts the individual. It realizes that of all the
treasures of the nation, the talent of its individual men is the most
important. It realizes that its first duty is to waste none of this. It cannot
afford to leave its Miltons mute and inglorious nor to let its village
Hampdens waste their strength on petty obstacles while it has great
tasks for them to accomplish. In a democracy, when work is to be done
men rise to do it. No matter what the origin of our Washingtons and
Lincolns, our Grants and our Shermans, our Clevelands or our
Roosevelts, our Eliots, our Hadleys, or our Remsens, we know that
they are being made ready for every crisis which may need their hand,
for every work we would have them carry through. To give each man
the training he deserves is to bring the right man face to face with his
own opportunity. The straight line is the shortest distance between two
points in life as in geometry. For the work of a nation we may not call
on Lord This or Earl That, whose ancestors have lain on velvet for a
thousand years; we want the man who can do the work, who can face
the dragon, or carry the message to García. A man whose nerves are not
relaxed by centuries of luxury will serve us best. Give him a fair chance
to try; give us a fair chance to try him. This is the meaning of
democracy; not fuss and feathers, pomp and gold lace, but
accomplishment.
Democracy does not mean equality--just the reverse of this, it means
individual responsibility, equality before the law, of course--equality of
opportunity, but no other equality save that won by faithful service.
That social system which bids men rise must also let them fall if they
cannot maintain themselves. To choose the right man means the
dismissal of the wrong. The weak, the incompetent, the untrained, the
dissipated find no growing welcome in the century which is coming. It
will have no place for unskilled laborers. A bucket of water and a
basket of coal will do all that the unskilled laborer can do if we have
skilled men to direct them. The unskilled laborer is no product of

democracy. He exists in spite of democracy. The children of the
republic are entitled to something better. A generous education, a
well-directed education, should be the birthright of each one of them.
Democracy may even intensify natural inequalities. The man who
cannot say no to cheap and vulgar temptations falls all the lower in the
degree to which he is a free agent. In competition with men alert, loyal,
trained and creative, the dullard is condemned to a lifetime of hard
labor, through no direct fault of his own. Keep the capable man down
and you may level the incapable one up. But this the Twentieth Century
will not do. This democracy will not do; this it is not now doing, and
this it never