Away back in the centuries, Asia’s most vigorous fled from her into Europe—and Asia sank into the slough of despotism and Europe became great and strong, advancing in all the arts. Now-a-days—to-day no less than when Salem and Jamestown and New Amsterdam and New Orleans were founding—Europe is causing her best to fly to us. Her best, indeed! We must be American enough, democratic enough, to disregard the snob standards of our weak wanderers off after European caste and culture; we must look at men in the true American fashion—must look at men as men.
From the common people our Democracy—like all Democracy—sprang; by the common people is it nourished; by the common people will it prevail. And these newcomers are of the common people, the custodians of the highest ideals that irradiate the human imagination. Unimportant indeed is the traffic of individuals and ideas that goes first-class between America and Europe, in the comparison with the traffic that goes steerage.
CHAPTER XVI
THE REAL AMERICAN WOMAN
The American woman is regarded both here and abroad as the strongest and subtlest enemy of the American Democracy. She is pictured in the imaginations of students of our life as ignorant of politics, interested only in her own sovereignty over the American man, or, rather, over his pocketbook, a snob and a climber and a worshiper of European aristocratic institutions; a poor housekeeper and a reluctant mother, and a very vampire for luxury and show, she hides her superficiality and cold-heartedness under a mask that is fair and fascinating. She is a born caste-worshiper, an instinctive hater of Democracy.
What truth, if any, is there in these hardy criticisms?
We have noted how, under the leadership and inspiration of the capital of plutocracy, New York, every city in the country is, with true American rapidity, developing its individual fashionable society. It is directed by the wives and daughters of rich men; it is, as we have seen, devoted chiefly to spending time and money in unproductive and more or less frivolous forms of self-amusement. The character of this “set” varies slightly for each locality—but only slightly. In the West the wealth-worship is franker; in the East more hypocritical, more beslimed and bemessed with cant about birth and culture. But whether Mammon is naked and unashamed or is draped and decorated, he is still Mammon. The monotonous sameness of the people comprising each division of the set, the sameness of their opportunities and aims, the world-neighborliness which railways and telegraph and printing press have brought about, prevent any notable differences. To dress, to talk, to eat, to drive, to entertain, to bring up one’s children, all in accord with the standards of “good form” established by the aristocratic societies of Europe; to spend each day in pleasures that permit one to shift most of the labor and all the thinking and providing to hirelings of divers degrees, from lawyers and industrial managers to secretaries, housekeepers, butlers, valets and maids; to live worthlessly without useful work—these are the aims, East, West, and South. And in rapidly increasing measure the aims are accomplished.
Universal freedom, universal opportunity, all but universal toil, have indeed very suddenly brought vast riches to America, vast wealth to a few. This sudden wealth, coming to a people whose characteristics are energy, restlessness and lightning-like adaptability, has all in a day relieved a relatively small but, in another aspect, very numerous and most influential part of each large community from the necessity to labor. Many, a great many, of these continue to strive to cherish the ideals of a life of useful labor, continue to strive to set a worthy example to their children and to their fellow-citizens—that is, to remain sane and American. But a great many others have eagerly adopted those alien ideals of the aristocracy of idleness and the vulgarity of toil which appeal so strongly to the vanity and other ancient weaknesses of the human animal the world over.
For this state of affairs women, imperfectly educated, wrongly, sillily educated, in fact, practically uneducated, are in the main responsible. Our women, like our men, inherit the American energy and restlessness. Where circumstances compel, they work in the home, the shop, the factory, the office, in the fine American way. But where circumstances do not compel they seek other outlets for their restless energy. And thus we find rich wives and daughters organizing elaborate establishments and fashionable sets and international circuits, and devoting themselves to erecting the life of frivolity and show into a career that will at once fill their idle hours, gratify their vanity, and give them the sense of doing something ambitious, of “getting on in the world.”
Among a people who have always yielded a commanding position to women, the power of this new American woman—attractive in dress and in surroundings, so often fascinating in personality, usually clever and so plausible that she deceives no one more completely than herself—could not but be enormous. Is it strange that she weakens the hold of the old ideals upon her husband and upon the men who are drawn to her attractive house? Is it strange that they persuade their consciences to let them neglect to-day’s duties while they help her amuse them and herself? Is it strange that she has sons and daughters devoted to her ideals? Is it strange that she gathers about her more and more backsliders from the democratic conception of life?