The Spirit of America

by Henry Van Dyke

But while the spirit of “the large scale” is gaining all over the world, among the Americans it seems to be innate and most characteristic. Perhaps the very size of their country may have had something to do with this. The habit of dealing with land in terms of the square mile and the quarter-section, instead of in the terms of the are and the hectare; the subconscious effect of owning the longest river and the largest lakes in the world may have developed a half-humorous, half-serious sense of necessity for doing things magnificently in order to keep in proportion with the natural surroundings. A well-known American wit, who had a slight impediment in his speech, moved his residence from Baltimore to New York. “Do you make as many jokes here,” asked a friend, “as you used to make in Baltimore?” “M-m-more!” he answered; “b-b-bigger town!”

To produce more corn and cotton than all the rest of the world together, to have a wheat crop which is more than double that of any other country; to mine a million tons of coal a year in excess of any rival; to double Germany’s output of steel and iron and to treble Great Britain’s output,—these are things which give the American spirit the sense of living up to its opportunities.

It likes to have the tallest buildings in the world. New York alone contains more than twenty-five architectural eruptions of more than twenty stories each. There is an edifice now completed which is 909 feet in height. One is planned which will be 1000 feet tall, 16 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. This new building will not be merely to gratify (or to shock) the eye like the Parisian monument of magnificence in architecture. “The Eiffel Tower,” says the American, “is not a real sky-scraper, gratte-ciel; it is only a sky-tickler, chatouille-ciel; nothing more than a jeu d’esprit which man has played with the law of gravitation. But our American tall building will be strictly for business, a serious affair, the office of a great life-insurance company.” There is a single American factory which makes 1500 railway locomotives every year. There is a company for the manufacture of harvesting-machines in Chicago whose plant covers 140 acres, whose employees number 24,000, and whose products go all over the world.

Undoubtedly it was the desire to promote industrial development that led to the adoption of the protective tariff as an American policy. The people wanted to do things, to do all sorts of things, and to do them on a large scale. They were not satisfied to be merely farmers, or miners, or fishermen, or sailors, or lumbermen. They wished to exercise their energy in all possible ways, and to secure their prosperity by learning how to do everything necessary for themselves. They began to lay duties upon goods manufactured in Europe in order to make a better market at home for goods manufactured in America. “Protection of infant industries” was the idea that guided them. There have been occasional intervals when the other idea, that of liberty for needy consumers to buy in the cheapest market, has prevailed, and tariffs have been reduced. But in general the effort has been not only to raise a large part of the national income by duties on imports, but also to enhance the profits of native industries by putting a handicap on foreign competition.

There can be no question that the result has been to foster the weaker industries and make them strong, and actually to create some new fields for American energy to work in. For example, in 1891 there was not a pound of tin-plate made in the United States, and 1,000,000,000 pounds a year were imported. The McKinley tariff put on an import duty of 70 per cent. In 1901 only a little over 100,000,000 pounds of tin-plate were imported, and nearly 900,000,000 pounds were made in America. The same thing happened in the manufacture of watches. A duty of 25 per cent on the foreign article gave the native manufacturer a profit, encouraged the development of better machinery, and made the American watch tick busily around the world. Now (1908) the duty is 40 per cent ad valorem.

No one in the United States would deny these facts. No one, outside of academic circles, would call himself an absolute, unmitigated, and immediate free-trader. But a great many people, probably the majority of the Democratic party, and a considerable number in the Republican party, say to-day that many of the protective features of the tariff have largely accomplished their purpose and gone beyond it; that they have not only nourished weak industries, but have also overstimulated strong ones; that their continuance creates special privileges in the commercial world, raises the cost of the necessities of life to the poor man, tends to the promotion of gigantic trusts and monopolies, and encourages overproduction, with all its attendant evils enhanced by an artificially sustained market.

They ask why a ton of American steel rail should cost twenty-six or twenty-seven dollars in the country where it is made, and only twenty dollars in Europe. They inquire why a citizen of Chicago or St. Louis has to pay more for an American sewing-machine or clock than a citizen of Stockholm or Copenhagen pays for the same article. They say that a heavy burden has been laid upon the common people by a system of indirect taxation, adopted for a special purpose, and maintained long after that purpose has been fulfilled. They claim that for every dollar which this system yields to the national revenue it adds four or five dollars to the profits of the trusts and corporations. If they are cautious by temperament, they say that they are in favour of moderate tariff revision. If they are bold, they announce their adherence to the doctrine of “tariff for revenue only.”

The extent to which these views have gained ground among the American people may be seen in the platforms of both political parties in the presidential contest of 1908. Both declare in favour of a reduction in the tariff. The Republicans are for continued protective duties, with revision of the schedules and the adoption of maximum and minimum rates, to be used in obtaining advantages from other nations. The Democrats are for placing products which are controlled by trusts on the free list; for lowering the duty upon all the necessaries of life at once; and for a gradual reduction of the schedules to a revenue basis. The Democrats are a shade more radical than the Republicans. But both sides are a little reserved, a little afraid to declare themselves frankly and unequivocally, a good deal inclined to make their first appeal to the American passion for industrial activity and prosperity.

Personally I should like to see this reserve vanish. I should like to see an out-and-out campaign on the protection which our industries need compared with that which they want and get. It would clear the air. It would be a campaign of education. I remember what the greatest iron-master of America—Mr. Andrew Carnegie—said to me in 1893 when I was travelling with him in Egypt. It was in the second term of Cleveland’s administration, when the prospect of tariff reduction was imminent. I asked him if he was not afraid that the duty on steel would be reduced to a point that would ruin his business. “Not a bit,” he answered, “and I have told the President so. The tariff was made for the protection of infant industries. But the steel business of America is not an infant. It is a giant. It can take care of itself.” Since that time the United States Steel Corporation has been formed, with a capitalization of about fifteen hundred million dollars of bonds and stock, and the import duty on manufactured iron and steel is 45 per cent ad valorem.

Another effect of the direction of American energy to industrial affairs has been important not only to the United States but to all the nations of the world. I mean the powerful stimulus which it has given to invention. People with restless minds and a strong turn for business are always on the lookout for new things to do and new ways of doing them. The natural world seems to them like a treasure-house with locked doors which it is their duty and privilege to unlock. No sooner is a new force discovered than they want to slip a collar over it and put it to work. No sooner is a new machine made than they are anxious to improve it.