Significance of the Frontier in American History," printed in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893, pp. 199-227. Compare p. 45 of the present volume. Professor Turner's main interest, in this and many later papers, was to trace the influence of frontier conditions, particularly the abundance of cheap lands, upon our historical development. The most important of these essays may be found in convenient form in his The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920). Although Professor Turner had reached his conclusions independently, it is a matter of interest that his main thesis had been set forth as early as January, 1865, by Ernest Lawrence Godkin in his article entitled “Aristocratic Opinions of Democracy" in the North American Review (reprinted in his Problems of Modern Democracy, New York, 1896).

Under Professor Turner's influence, a new direction was given to American historical research; and many articles and books have been written by students who sought to apply his viewpoint to particular periods or aspects of American history. A bibliography of these writings would be too extensive for inclusion here; but the mention of a few of the names of the authors will suggest the scope and character of the work that has been done: Reuben Gold Thwaites, Clarence W. Alvord, Solon J. Buck, Clarence E. Carter, Isaac J. Cox, Archibald Henderson, Homer C. Hockett, Frederic L. Paxson, Louis Pelzer and Milo M. Quaife. The Turner point of view is most felicitously presented in his own volume of essays, already cited; but excellent restatements may be found in Woodrow Wilson's "The Making of the Nation" in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. 80, pp. 1-14; Archibald Henderson's The Conquest of the Old Southwest (New York, 1920), pp. ix-xix; and Frederic L. Paxson's The Last American Frontier (New York, 1910), chap. i.

The Turner school of historians has tended to discuss American development in geographic terms and has generally avoided the expression, "economic interpretation of history"; it has, on the whole, paid little attention to the rôle of industrial capitalism and the wage system in American history. Indeed it was not until the early years of the twentieth century that students of history began, frankly and comprehensively, to apply an economic analysis to American history. A strong impulse in this direction was furnished by the manuals prepared by several economists interested in delineating the economic and industrial history of the country. Not counting the earlier work done by J. L. Bishop and A. S. Bolles, there appeared in a short space of years Carroll D. Wright's The Industrial Evolution of the United States (New York, 1895); Horace White's Money and Banking Illustrated by American History (Boston, 1895); Davis Rich Dewey's Financial History of the United States (New York, 1902); Katharine Coman's The Industrial History of the United States (New York, 1905); Ernest Ludlow Bogart's The Economic History of the United States (New York, 1907); and Guy Stevens Callender's Selections from the Economic History of the United States, 1765-1860, with Introductory Essays (Boston, 1909).

A number of Socialist writers now came forward as avowed

economic determinists and set themselves the task of justifying the Marxian view of historical development. A. M. Simons's Class Struggles in America (Chicago, 1903) and his Social Forces in American History (New York, 1912), Austin Lewis's The Rise of the American Proletarian (Chicago, 1907), James Oneal's The Workers in American History (New York, 1910; revised and enlarged in 1912 and in 1921), and Gustavus Myers's History of the Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago, 1912) are richly suggestive, though untrustworthy, surveys written from the standpoint of Marxian exegesis.

Not until 1913 did an American student of scholarly standing and scientific historical training undertake to apply the concept of economic interpretation to American history with careful documentation and infinite detailed analysis. In that year appeared Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York), the first of a series of volumes under the general title An Economic Interpretation of American Politics, of which the second appeared two years later, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1915). From this account it is not to be thought that other historians of our day have been unaware of the economic influence in American history, for most members of the modern school have recognized its existence in a greater or less degree. Charles McLean Andrews, for example, following in the footsteps of W. B. Weeden, P. A. Bruce and G. L. Beer, has gone a long way toward rewriting colonial history from an economic point of view; and delvers in the later periods of American history are constantly making greater use of an economic explanation of events and movements. Nevertheless, it is a significant fact that the standard Cyclopedia of American Government (3 v. edited by Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin and Albert Bushnell Hart; New York, 1913) does not include the economic interpretation of history among the subjects for treatment.

Advocates of the theory of economic determinism do not usually deny the existence of geographic, moral, religious and other forces in history nor the contributions made by great men. But, following Engels, Marx's collaborator, they hold that even the ideas and ethical code of any age are influenced, and in the long run controlled, by its economic background, although the acceptance of new standards may be delayed by the transmitted conceptions of a former age, which in turn had been the product of economic conditions once prevailing. As for the superman in history, they assert that, while his appearance at a particular crisis may seem to be a matter of chance, he is able to influence society only when society is ready for him. If conditions are not ripe, he is called, not a great man, but a mad man or a visionary. The best critique by an American of the economic theory of historical development is Edwin R. A. Seligman's The Economic Interpretation of History (2d ed., revised, New York, 1917).

CHAPTER IV

THE DECLINE OF ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA

Aristocracy is something more than a form of govern. mental organization. It is an outlook on life that infuses its peculiar spirit of exclusiveness and superiority, of self-pride and special privilege, into all phases of human relationship. It is mirrored in the manners and morals of people, in their religious organization and beliefs, in their provisions for education, in their language and their literature, in their labor system, and in the relations of the sexes to each other, as well as in their system of government and law. To Americans of today the most inspiring theme in American history is the story of the successive advances of the common man into rights and powers and opportunities previously monopolized by an exclusive class; we call it the rise of democracy. But to our anxious ancestors watching with deep misgivings the restless stirrings and recurrent upheavals of the nether strata of society, the changes that occurred appeared not as the working out of a beneficent destiny but as the degradation of all that seemed good and stable in the world. In their eyes each new victory won by the masses, whether in government or education or in some other department of life, signified the yielding of aristocracy to the combined forces of ignorance, avarice and mobocracy.

The story of the struggle of aristocracy against democracy is a complex one, touching the life of the past generations of American society at many vital points and throwing much light upon the processes of human progress. In the sketch

that follows it is only possible to dwell upon some of the outstanding phases of this long conflict.

I

Judged by our present-day standards, the aristocratic idea was firmly enthroned in the life of the people in colonial times. At the apex of the social pyramid stood the colonial governor with the official class that surrounded him, constituting a caste that looked to England not only for its governmental authority but also for its models and standards of social conduct. Life at the governor's court was gay and extravagant, and frequently brilliant; to become members of the charmed circle was the aspiration, and sometimes the despair, of the colonial aristocracy which ranked next in the social scale.

In every province such a native aristocratic class had developed irrespective of the lowly European antecedents of the original settlers. Social and political leadership in New England belonged as a matter of custom to the "well-born"the clergy, the professional classes, and the wealthier merchants. Seats in the meeting-houses, places at the table and in processions, were regulated with a nice regard for social differentiation. Even at Harvard College students were seated according to social rank, whereby John Adams found himself fourteenth in a class of twenty-four. In New York, pre-eminence belonged to the landed gentry, living in feudal elegance on their great estates along the Hudson, and dominating the affairs of the province by the aid of their connections, through business or marriage, with the wealthy merchant families of New York city. In the neighboring province of Pennsylvania a similar position was occupied by a compact group of rich Quaker families dwelling in the eastern counties of the province.

Class distinctions were even more rigidly maintained in

the provinces to the south. In those parts was to be found an aristocracy of birth and manners which more nearly approached its counterpart in England than anything else to be found in America. Composed of the owners of great plantations and resting on a vital distinction between slave labor and gentlemanly leisure, the members of this exclusive order lived a life of luxurious ease, educated their sons abroad, and prided themselves on keeping abreast the modish fashions of London society.

As befitted their social position, the aristocratic class in all the colonies occupied the seats of power in provincial politics. In order to insure their control they did not rely solely upon a popular acceptance of their superior qualifications, for they entertained no exalted notions as to the mental acuteness of the average man. Hence the right to vote was nowhere bestowed upon all men, only on such white adult men as possessed stated amount of property; and in most provinces they must in addition subscribe to certain religious tenets. For fear that the ease of acquiring land might render some of these restrictions nugatory in the outlying districts, the ruling class employed certain additional devices to safeguard their privileged position. A favorite method was to postpone the political organization of the new communities as long as possible, and then to allow them a disproportionately small representation in the provincial legislature. As a result of such practices, the mass of the population in every province was excluded from participation in the government, to the great glory of the aristocracy.

Traces of the aristocratic principle were likewise to be I found in education and religion. In Massachusetts and Connecticut alone was a system of public education established; and in Pennsylvania and Virginia, several free elementary schools for the poor had been founded under private auspices. It was in large degree true elsewhere that