The Spirit of America

by Henry Van Dyke

Popular recreations and amusements, pleasures of the simpler kind such as are shared by masses of people on public holidays, do not seem to afford as much relaxation and refreshment in America as they do in Germany or France. Children do not take as much part in them. There is an air of effort about them, as if the minds of the people were not quite free from care. The Englishman is said to take his pleasure sadly. The American is apt to take his strenuously.

Understand, in all this I am speaking in the most general way, and of impressions which can hardly be defined, and which certainly cannot be mathematically verified. I know very well that there are many exceptions to what I have been saying. There are plenty of quiet rooms in America, club-rooms, college-rooms, book-rooms, parlours, where you will find the best kind of talk. There are houses full of children who are both well-bred and happy. There are people who know how to play, with a free heart, not for the sake of winning, but for the pleasure of the game.

Yet I think it true that a strong will-power directed chiefly to industrial success has had a hardening effect upon the general tone of life. Unless you really love work for its own sake, you will not be very happy in America. The idea of a leisure class is not fully acclimatized there. Men take it for granted that there must be something useful for them to do in the world, even though they may not have to earn a living.

This brings me to the last point of which I wish to speak: the result of will-power and work in the production of wealth, and the real status of the Almighty Dollar in the United States.

The enormous increase of wealth has been accompanied by an extraordinary concentration of it in forms which make it more powerful and impressive. Moody’s Manual of Corporation Statistics says that there are four hundred and forty large industrial, franchise, and transportation trusts, of an important and active character, with a floating capital of over twenty billion dollars. When we remember that each of these corporations is in the eye of the law a person, and is able to act as a person in financial, industrial, and political affairs, we begin to see the tremendous significance of the figures.

But we must remember also that the growth of individual fortunes and of family estates has been equally extraordinary. Millionnaires are no longer counted. It is the multi-millionnaires who hold the centre of the stage. The New York World Almanac gives a list of sixteen of these families of vast wealth, tracing the descent of their children and grandchildren with scrupulous care, as if for an Almanach de Gotha. I suppose that another list might be made twice as large,—three or four times as large,—who knows how large,—of people whose fortune runs up into the tens of millions.

These men have a vast power in American finance and industry, not only by the personal possession of money, but also through the control of the great trusts, railroads, banks, in which they have invested it. The names of many of them are familiar throughout the country. Their comings and goings, their doings, opinions, and tastes are set forth in the newspapers. Their houses, their establishments, in some cases are palatial; in other cases they are astonishingly plain and modest. But however that may be, the men themselves, as a class, are prominent, they are talked about, they hold the public attention.

What is the nature of this attention? Is it the culminating rite in the worship of the Almighty Dollar? No; it is an attention of curiosity, of natural interest, of critical consideration.

The dollar per se is no more almighty in America than it is anywhere else. It has just the same kind of power that the franc has in France, that the pound has in England: the power to buy the things that can be bought. There are foolish people in every country who worship money for its own sake. There are ambitious people in every country who worship money because they have an exaggerated idea of what it can buy. But the characteristic thing in the attitude of the Americans toward money is this: not that they adore the dollar, but that they admire the energy, the will-power, by which the dollar has been won.

They consider the multi-millionnaire much less as the possessor of an enormous fortune than as the successful leader of great enterprises in the world of affairs, a master of the steel industry, the head of a great railway system, the developer of the production of mineral oil, the organizer of large concerns which promote general prosperity. He represents to them achievement, force, courage, tireless will-power.