The Promise of American Life | Page 9

and the actual
achievement of the American nation points towards an adequate and
fruitful definition of the democratic ideal. Americans are usually

satisfied by a most inadequate verbal description of democracy, but
their national achievement implies one which is much more
comprehensive and formative. In order to be true to their past, the
increasing comfort and economic independence of an ever increasing
proportion of the population must be secured, and it must be secured by
a combination of individual effort and proper political organization.
Above all, however, this economic and political system must be made
to secure results of moral and social value. It is the seeking of such
results which converts democracy from a political system into a
constructive social ideal; and the more the ideal significance of the
American national Promise is asserted and emphasized, the greater will
become the importance of securing these moral and social benefits.
The fault in the vision of our national future possessed by the ordinary
American does not consist in the expectation of some continuity of
achievement. It consists rather in the expectation that the familiar
benefits will continue to accumulate automatically. In his mind the
ideal Promise is identified with the processes and conditions which
hitherto have very much simplified its fulfillment, and he fails
sufficiently to realize that the conditions and processes are one thing
and the ideal Promise quite another. Moreover, these underlying social
and economic conditions are themselves changing, in such wise that
hereafter the ideal Promise, instead of being automatically fulfilled,
may well be automatically stifled. For two generations and more the
American people were, from the economic point of view, most happily
situated. They were able, in a sense, to slide down hill into the valley of
fulfillment. Economic conditions were such that, given a fair start, they
could scarcely avoid reaching a desirable goal. But such is no longer
the case. Economic conditions have been profoundly modified, and
American political and social problems have been modified with them.
The Promise of American life must depend less than it did upon the
virgin wilderness and the Atlantic Ocean, for the virgin wilderness has
disappeared, and the Atlantic Ocean has become merely a big channel.
The same results can no longer be achieved by the same easy methods.
Ugly obstacles have jumped into view, and ugly obstacles are
peculiarly dangerous to a person who is sliding down hill. The man
who is clambering up hill is in a much better position to evade or

overcome them. Americans will possess a safer as well as a worthier
vision of their national Promise as soon as they give it a house on a
hill-top rather than in a valley.
The very genuine experience upon which American optimistic fatalism
rests, is equivalent, because of its limitations, to a dangerous
inexperience, and of late years an increasing number of Americans
have been drawing this inference. They have been coming to see
themselves more as others see them; and as an introduction to a
consideration of this more critical frame of mind, I am going to quote
another foreigner's view of American life,--the foreigner in this case
being an Englishman and writing in 1893.
"The American note," says Mr. James Muirhead in his "Land of
Contrasts," "includes a sense of illimitable expansion and possibility,
an almost childlike confidence in human ability and fearlessness of
both the present and the future, a wider realization of human
brotherhood than has yet existed, a greater theoretical willingness to
judge by the individual than by the class, a breezy indifference to
authority and a positive predilection for innovation, a marked alertness
of mind, and a manifold variety of interest--above all, an
inextinguishable hopefulness and courage. It is easy to lay one's finger
in America upon almost every one of the great defects of
civilization--even those defects which are specially characteristic of the
civilization of the Old World. The United States cannot claim to be
exempt from manifestations of economic slavery, of grinding the faces
of the poor, of exploitation of the weak, of unfair distribution of wealth,
of unjust monopoly, of unequal laws, of industrial and commercial
chicanery, of disgraceful ignorance, of economic fallacies, of public
corruption, of interested legislation, of want of public spirit, of vulgar
boasting and chauvinism, of snobbery, of class prejudice, of respect of
persons, and of a preference of the material over the spiritual. In a word,
America has not attained, or nearly attained, perfection. But below and
behind, and beyond all its weakness and evils, there is the grand fact of
a noble national theory founded on reason and conscience." The reader
will remark in the foregoing quotation that Mr. Muirhead is equally
emphatic in his approval and in his disapproval. He generously

recognizes almost as much that is good about Americans and