for it on the field of battle. But this is not enough; every one of us must give his time and strength to the Nation in the field of politics. The man who will not do this does not deserve those rights which his indifference compels others to win for him. The young man who will not take part in the Nation's civil struggles for honesty and righteousness is unworthy of his fathers, who gave not only their time and strength in the same struggle, but gave their blood and lives on war's red fields for the same great purpose.

THE NEW WEALTH

WALTER E. WEYL

[From Harper's Magazine, by permission of the author and the publishers.]

WHETHER We use our new wealth wisely or unwisely, however, there are many who believe that its mere increase will intensify our proverbial American materialism. For many decades we have been upbraided for our flaunting of gold, for our naked worship of wealth, for our applying merely pecuniary standards to the highest and the best.

It is doubtful, however, whether America really grows more materialistic as it grows wealthier. Are rich nations more mercenary than poor? Do peoples strive harder for what they have than for what they lack? Are we more materialistic than French, Italians, or Swiss, or more openly and crassly materialistic than were the Americans of Grant's day or Washington's? Ours is still "The Land of Dollars," but surely our present materialism is at least somewhat tempered by idealism. Here and there in our American life we encounter an idealism, linked seemingly with our wealth, practical, business-like, but sincere, almost sentimental, almost romantic.

A curious illustration of a certain over-moneyed idealism is found in the benefactions of some of our very wealthy men. In America, where class sentiment is weak and men have no

peerage to which to aspire, and no well-defined leisure-class opinion to which to appeal, even the wealthiest are not entirely above the common judgment of the nation, nor beyond the need of the approval of their fellow-citizens. We consequently find that multimillionaires, who have acquired their wealth legally and illegally, morally and immorally, make wise donations to hospitals, libraries, research laboratories, art-museums, and other works of social progress. These benefactions have their evil as well as their good side, but no fair man can doubt their impulse. A little vain-glory, a little ostentation in competitive benevolence, weighs but lightly against the real sense of social obligation which these gifts reveal.

It is not, however, by donations and benefactions, munificent as these may be, that the great new wealth of America can be applied so as to bring to the nation the maximum of advantage and the minimum of harm. The final influence of American wealth upon American character must depend upon its distribution. We have paid too scant attention to the channels through which this vast wealth flows, and are only now learning, to our cost, that wealth which spurts and gushes and trickles uncertainly, a torrent here, a trickling, dying stream there, may do damage as well as good.

To-day opposing tendencies reveal themselves in the concentration and in the diffusion of this national wealth. We have intangible, elusive fortunes, with the fluidity of quicksilver, daily, stupendously growing, We see dismaying contrasts between men who have more than they need, and men who need more than they have; between multimillionaires, bewildered by the magnitude of their possessions, and abject wretches brutalized by want. And yet these spectacular contrasts tell only part of the story. Simultaneously there occurs a slow but immense diffusion of our national wealth.

An ever larger section of the people is emerging from former poverty, is getting into a position where life may be faced from the vantage-ground of a high wage or of a small property. This

diffusion means a far higher standard of comfort in country as in city, among well-to-do, comfortable, and moderately poor people. It means a lessening death-rate. It means that babies can be more carefully treated by physicians and nurses, and can be assured of a better diet. It means that the children of America may be better fed, better clad, better housed, better amused, better educated than before. The new wealth, to the extent of its diffusion and to the extent of its social utilization, means a better school attendance at better schools, an enormous increase in secondary education, a far wider spread and democratization of university education.

Even our inequality in wealth, enormous and incomprehensible though it is, does not deflect all advantages from the masses. Our income is far less unequally divided, and the use of wealth is more general than its possession. The rents of the great city landowner are paid to him; his houses are used by the people. Directly or indirectly, modern wealth goes largely to supply the needs, improve the position, and increase the power of the great mass of the population.

If America were to go into the hands of a receiver, if our total assets were to be taken over by one single intelligence, interested uniquely in making the best use of our hundred and eighty-seven billions of wealth, we should doubtless find, after a few decades of such stewardship, that America had changed and American characteristics, qualities, and aspects had changed equally. Our vast new wealth, wisely applied, would mean the passing of illiteracy, the abolition of pathological child labor, the careful preparation of our entire population for all the different requirements of modern life. It would mean the end of low wages, of dangerous and unsanitary factories, of excessive or deleterious toil, of unemployment, of underemployment, of industrial uncertainty, and that long train of vices which follow casual labor. It would mean the end of evil housing conditions; the building of new and healthful, if not always beautiful, suburbs; a bold and successful cam

paign against typhoid, tuberculosis, and other plagues; a diminution of city mortality, an increase in the amount and a betterment of the quality of life. It would mean improved recreation, enlarged pleasure, a diminution of drunkenness and disease, and an escape from that haunting fear of poverty which so accentuates the gambling element in our civilization. It would lessen that ruthlessness, recklessness, and cynical egotism with which our present-day wealth is so intimately associated.

What is required is a change in our attitude toward society, responsibility on the part of each for the wealth that each possesses, a responsibility on the part of all for the social and equitable distribution of the new wealth as it pours out unceasingly.

A better distribution and a better utilization of our present wealth would mean an increase in the intelligence and the capacity of the people who acquire wealth, than which no better investment could be made. Measured by the men of the coming generations, we are to-day singularly unproductive. We are still pitifully ignorant of natural science, pitifully ignorant of social science. . . . We are only slowly - very slowlylearning.

As we look forward, we are overcome with the sheer magnitude of our probable future wealth and with our uncomprehended responsibility for its use. What we now have is but an earnest of the incomparably greater stores beyond. We have not yet begun to exploit the resources of our continent. We have not begun to learn from science the magic which will open the earth to our needs. We have hardly approached the study of those great problems of social reorganization and of popular education which will make of these gifts of nature a blessing and not a curse. We are like an ignorant savage starving in the midst of fertile fields; like the pioneer Balboa, wading timidly into an ocean upon which great vessels are destined to sail.

PART X

OPPORTUNITY

AMERICA IS THE HOME OF MAN

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

[From a lecture read in Boston in 1844. It called on the American people to be alert, independent, and progressive. This is the dominant note in much of Emerson's writing at this period. It was a time of national self-complacency and intellectual and moral sluggishness. It needed Emerson's quickening power.]

THE development of our American internal resources, the extension to the utmost of the commercial system, and the appearance of new moral causes which are to modify the State are giving an aspect of greatness to the Future, which the imagination fears to open. One thing is plain for all men of common sense and common conscience, that here, here in America, is the home of man.

After all the deductions which are to be made for our pitiful politics, which stake every gravest national question on the silly die whether James or whether Robert shall sit in the chair and hold the purse; after all the deduction is made for our frivolities and insanities, there still remains an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses its balance, redresses itself presently, which offers opportunity to the human mind not known in any other region.

It is true the public mind wants self-respect. We are ful of vanity, of which the most signal proof is our sensitiveness to foreign and especially English censure. One cause of this is our immense reading, and that reading chiefly confined to the productions of the English press. It is also true that to