THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC—ITS GLORIES AND ITS DANGERS.
THE remarkable growth of the American Republic is without a parallel in the history of the world.
A hundred years ago she was a feeble nation—in her infancy, and scarcely recognized by the other nations of the earth. Now she stands foremost among the governments of the world, and leads the nations in almost everything.
Her territory is extensive and contiguous, lying between two great oceans, and bounded on the north and south by navigable lakes and seas.
Her resources are almost boundless. She gluts the markets of the world with her silver and gold. Her iron and copper ores are rich and abundant, nearly all the metals needed for the use of her people may be had for the digging, and she may bedeck her children with the jewels gathered from her own fields.
She can produce an abundance of cotton, wool, flax, hemp, and silk. She is already the chief competitor in the cotton markets of Asia, and from her own looms is clothing her people in muslins and fine linen, and her daughters in royal purple from her silk factories. Her food supply is immense. Her grain-fields are broad and rich enough to supply bread to the millions of her own people, and to meet the needs of the needy nations of the earth. Her meat supply is so large that she is glad to share it with all the world. Her fruit yield is ample, sufficient in variety and abundance to meet the needs of all. Only a few luxuries are denied her. She could shut herself in, and live luxuriously on her own products. There is not one thing that comes from abroad that her people could not live comfortably without. Tea, coffee, spices, and tropical fruits are not necessary to human life.
Her woods are abundant and fine, equal to any reasonable demand. Her furniture goes to the ends of the earth.
Her building material is abundant and of superior quality. She has granite and marble in variety, nearly all kinds of valuable building-stones, and clays of almost every description. Her potteries are now doing credible work, and her china and glass wares are attracting attention in other lands. The new process by which glass china is produced is a marvellous success.
Her people are intelligent and enterprising. The rich resources of the country have stimulated their activities and awakened their inventive genius till they are the leaders in the work of the world, and the most thrifty and enterprising nation on the face of the globe.
They have tunnelled the mountains; bridged the rivers; created water-ways; made the wilderness to bloom; and chained steam and electricity as motive powers to their chariot-wheels, to do their bidding on the land and under the sea.
A system of government has been established superior to any other known before among men; and a system of free schools that has no parallel on the face of the earth has made the people intelligent and efficient for the practical work of life, far beyond other nations, taken as a mass. And yet with all these blessings, dangers threaten her.
One of the dangers that threaten this glorious Republic is the foreign emigration. Attracted by her rich resources and the marvellous stories of her wealth, the people of other nations are coming to share our blessings. The danger is not in the number who come, but in the character of many of these new-comers.
They come to a new nation with old habits, and old prejudices, and another language. They are a misfit. They care nothing for the American Republic and her free institutions, only as they will add to their physical comfort and personal aggrandizement. They do not assimilate or become Americanized. Many of them are ignorant and brutish. They huddle together; they are as much foreigners as they were in Hungary or Sicily. They remain foreigners, and they have nothing in common with us except their physical needs.
Among them are the vicious and the idle. Our thoroughfares are filled with tramps and beggars. The prisons of our cities are crowded with foreign criminals and paupers. Almost two-thirds of all the criminals and paupers in our large cities are foreign born. Criminals flying from justice; paupers who, from infirmities of body and mind, or from idle and dissolute habits, must be supported,—find a refuge here.
Statesmen may well question as to how long this Republic can take into her bosom, and accord all the rights of citizenship to, the criminals and paupers of the world, without danger.
But there is danger from our own people. The accumulation of great wealth, without a corresponding increase of brains and culture, is giving us an undesirable aristocracy. They ape the old, effete aristocracies of the Old World.
They discount American institutions, and “adore a title.” They try to rule business, politics, and social life. But this evil will be overcome.
In this country, where there are no entailed estates, death equalizes wealth and power every few years.