The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

If one were to name a single person who should typically represent this new aristocracy, it would be Theodore Roosevelt. In the year 1649, Claes Roosevelt settled in New Netherlands, which is now New York, and from generation to generation his sturdy descendants have worked for the public good. James Roosevelt, the great-grandfather of the President, gave his services without remuneration to the Continental Army in the war for independence; the grandfather left the largest part of his fortune to charitable purposes; and the father was tirelessly active in furthering patriotic undertakings during the Civil War. And as this family inherited its public spirit, so also it inherited substance and a taste for sport and social life.

Now this product of old family traditions has been greatly influenced by the best intellectual culture of New England. Theodore Roosevelt is distinctly a Harvard graduate; all the elements of his nature got new strength from the classic world of Harvard. The history of his nation has been his favourite study, and he has written historical treatises of great breadth of view. Therewith he possesses a strong talent for administration, and has advanced rapidly by reason of his actual achievements. And thus education, public service, wealth, and family traditions have combined to make a character which exalts this man socially much higher than the Presidential office alone could do. McKinley was in some ways greater, perhaps—but in McKinley’s world there was no third dimension of aristocratic differentiation; it was a flat picture, where one might not ask nor expect any diversification in the other dimension. Roosevelt is the first aristocrat since many years, to come into the White House.

Aristocratic shadings can occur in a country that is so firmly grounded in democracy only when the movement goes in both directions, upward and downward, and when it evolves on both sides. If it were a question on the one side of demanding rights and forcing credence in pretentious display, and on the other side of demanding any sort of submission from less favoured persons or assigning them an inferior position, the whole effort would be hopeless. The claim to prerogative which is supported by an ostentation calculated to hypnotize the vulgar and a corresponding obsequiousness of the weak, can do nothing more than perhaps to preserve aristocracy after it has taken deep historic root. But such a degenerate form cannot be the first stage of aristocracy in a new country. When a new aristocracy is formed, it must boast not of prerogatives, but of duties, and the feeling of those not included cannot be one of inferiority, but of confidence. And this is the mood which is growing in America.

Such duties are most clearly recognized by wealth, and wealth has perhaps contributed most to begin the aristocratic differentiation in American society; but it has not been the wealth which goes into extravagant display or other arrogant demonstration, but the wealth which works toward the civilized advance of the nation. However much it may contradict the prejudices of the Old World, wealth alone does not confer a social status in America. Of course, property everywhere makes independence; but so long as it remains merely the power to hire things done, it creates no social differentiation. The American does not regard a man with awe because he stands well with trades-people and stock-brokers, but discriminates sharply between the possessions and the possessor. In his business life he is so accustomed to dealing with impersonal corporations, that the power to dispense large sums of money gives a man no personal dignity in his eyes. Just in the Western cities, where society centres about questions of money much more than in the East, the notion of property differentiation between men is developed least of all so far as it concerns social station. The mere circumstance that one man has speculated fortunately and the other unfortunately, that the real estate of one has appreciated and of the other deteriorated in value, occasions no belief in the inner difference of the two men; the changes are purely economic, and suggest nothing of a social difference.

At most there is a certain curiosity, since property opens up a world of possibilities to a man; and he is considerably scrutinized by his neighbours to see what he will do. In this sense especially in the small and middle-sized cities, the local magnates are the centre of public interest, just as the billionaires are in large cities. But to be the object of such newspaper curiosity does not mean to be elevated in the general respect. The millionaire is in this respect very much like the operatic tenor; or, to put it less graciously, the hero of the last poisoning case. It is the more a question of a mere stimulation to the public fancy, since in reality the differences are surprisingly small.

If one looks away from the extravagant eccentricities of small circles, the difference in general mode of life is on the whole very little in evidence. The many citizens in the large American city who have a property of five to ten million dollars seem to live hardly differently from the unfortunate many who have to get on with only a simple million. On the other hand, the average man with a modest income exerts all his strength to appear in clothing and social habits as rich as possible. He does not take care to store up a dowry for his children, and he lays by little because he does not care to become a bond-holder; he would rather work to his dying day, and teach his children while they are young to stand on their own feet. So it happens that the differences which actually exist are very little in evidence; the banker has his palace and his coach, and his wife wears sealskin; but his shoe-maker has also his own house, his horse and buggy, and his wife wears a very good imitation of seal—which one has to rub against in order to recognize.

But the situation becomes very different when it is a question of wealth, not as a means of actual enjoyment, but as a measure of the personal capacities that have earned it. Then the whole importance of the possession is indeed transferred to the possessor. We must again emphasize the fact that this is the real impulse underlying American economic life—wealth is the criterion of individual achievements, of self-initiative; and since the whole nation stretches every nerve in a restless demonstration of this self-initiative, the person who is more successful than his neighbours gains necessarily their instinctive admiration. The wealth won by lucky gambles in stocks, or inherited, or derived from a merely accidental appreciation of values or by a chance monopoly, is not respected; but the wealth amassed by caution and brilliant foresight, by indomitable energy and tireless initiative, or by fascinating originality and courage, meets with full recognition. The American sees in such a creator of material wealth the model of his pioneer virtues, the born leader of economic progress, and he looks up to him in sincere admiration, and respects him far higher than his neighbour in the next palace who has accidentally fallen heir to a tenfold larger sum. It is not the power which wealth confers, but the power which has conferred wealth, that is respected.

And then there is a more important factor—the respect for that force of mind which puts wealth, even if it is only a modest amount, in the service of higher ends. Men have different tastes; one who builds hospitals may not understand the importance of patronizing the fine arts; one who supports universities may do very little for the church; or another who collects sculptures may have no interest in the education of the negro. But the fundamental dogma of American society is that wealth confers distinction only on a man who works for ideal ends; and perhaps the deepest impulse toward the accumulation of wealth, after the economic power which it confers, is the desire for just this sort of dignity. And this desire is deeper undoubtedly than the wish for pleasure, which anyhow is somewhat limited by the outward uniformity of American life. How far social recognition is gotten by public-spirited activities and how far social recognition incites men to such activity, is in any particular case hard to decide. But as a matter of fact, a social condition has come about in which the noblesse oblige of property is recognized on all sides, and in which public opinion is more discriminating as to the social respect which should be meted out to this or that public deed, than it could be if it were a question of conferring with the greatest nicety orders and titles of different values.

The right of the individual to specialize in various directions, to focus his benefactions on Catholic deaf-mutes or on students of insects, on church windows, or clay cylinders with cuneiform inscriptions, is recognized fully. Confident of the good-will of men of property, so many diverse claims have arisen, that it would be quite impossible for a single man out of mere general sympathy with civilization to lend a helping hand in all directions. The Americans esteem just that carefulness with which the rich man sees to it that his property is applied according to his personal ideas and knowledge. It is only thereby that his gifts have a profound personal significance, and are fundamentally distinguished from sentimental sacrifice or from ostentatious patronage. Giving is a serious matter, to which wealthy men daily and hourly devote conscientious labour. A man like Carnegie, whose useful bequests already amount to more than a hundred million dollars, could dispose at once of his entire property if he were in a single week to respond favourably to all the calls which are made on him. He receives every day hundreds of such letters of request, and gives almost his entire strength to carrying out his benevolent plans.

And the same is true on a smaller scale of all classes. Every true American feels that his wealth puts him in a position of public confidence, and the intensity with which he manifests this conviction decides the social esteem in which his property is held. The real aristocrats of wealth in this part of the world are those men whom public opinion respects both for the gaining and the using of their property; both factors, in a way, have to be united. The admirable personal talents which accumulate large properties, and the lofty ideals which put them to the best uses, may appear to be quite independent matters, and indeed they sometimes do exclude each other, but the aristocratic ideal demands the two together. And the Americans notice when either one is absent; they notice when wealth is amassed in imposing quantities, but then employed trivially or selfishly; or, on the other hand, when it is employed for the very highest ends, but in the opinion of competent men has been accumulated improperly. The public feels more and more inclined to look into the business methods of men who make large gifts. The American does not recognize the non olet, and there have often been lively discussions when ill-gotten wealth has been offered in public benefaction.