Modern Society

by Julia Ward Howe

In our America, ay, even in our Puritan New England, the day has come in which economy is a discredit and poverty a disgrace. With the common school ever at work to lift the social level, unfolding to the child of the day-laborer the page which instructs the son of the peer, the cry is still that money is God, and that there is none other. One may ask, in the business streets, whether rich people have any faults, or poor people any virtues. A woman who sells her beauty for a rich dower is honored in church and in State. Both alike bow to the money in her hand. One proverb says that Time is money, as if it were

"Only that, and nothing more."

Another proverb says that Money is power. And in this form, no doubt, it receives the most fervent worship, for luxury palls sooner or later, while ambition is never satisfied. But we constantly meet, on the other hand, with instances in which money is not power. Money does not give talent or intelligence. You cannot buy good government, good manners, or good taste: You cannot buy health or life. Do some of you remember the shipwreck, some twenty years ago, of a steamer homeward-bound from California? The few survivors told how the desperate passengers brought their belts and bags of gold to the cabin, and threw them about with a bitter contempt of their worthlessness. States have such shipwrecks, in which avenging Fate seems to say to those who have sacrificed all for wealth, "Thy money perish with thee."

The heroics of history are full of the story of great ends, accomplished by very small means. Now a handful of resolute men hold the forces of a great empire in check, and beat back the ocean surge of barbarism from the marble of their strong will. Now a single martyr turns the scale of the world's affection by throwing into the balance the weight of one small life. Now a State with every disadvantage of territory, cursed with sterility, or exposed to the murderous overflow of the salt sea, takes its stand upon the simple determination to conquer for itself a free and worthy existence. Frederick of Prussia and his small army, Washington, with his handful of men, in these and so many other instances, we admire the attainment of mighty ends through means which seem infinitesimal in proportion to them. How shall it be in our country, to which Nature has given the widest variety of climate, soil, and production? Shall we become a lesson to the world in the opposite direction? Shall we show how little a people may accomplish with every circumstance in its favor, and with nothing wanting to its success but the careful mind and resolute spirit? God forbid!

The belief in pacific methods of settling international differences has made a noticeable progress in my time.

In my school-days I remember a grave Presbyterian household at whose fireside I one day saw an elderly man seat himself, with little notice from the members of the family. I inquired who he might be, and was told, with some good-natured laughter, that this old gentleman was the American Peace Society, i.e., the last surviving member of that association. This was a humorous exaggeration of the truth. Judge Jay, of New York, was living at that time, and all the enthusiasm of the peace cause lived in him, and no doubt in many others. I have remembered the incident, nevertheless; and when I have seen the stately Peace Congresses held in Europe and elsewhere, when I have seen rapacious England submitting to arbitration, when I have seen the flag of military prestige go down before the white banner of Peace, as in the late change of the ministry in that country, I have remembered that day of small things, and have learned that the faith of individuals is the small seed from which spring the mighty growths of popular conviction and sympathy.

The extensive wars which have taken place within the last forty years, as extensive and as deadly as any the world ever saw, are sometimes quoted in derision of those who believe, as I do, in the sober, steady growth of the pacific spirit among people of intelligence. The reasons for this advance lie deeper than the vision of the careless observer may reach. Within the period of our own century the value of human life to the individual has been greatly increased by the wide diffusion of the advantages of civilization. The value of the individual to the State has become greatly increased by the multiplication of industrial resources, and by the immense emigration which at times threatens to drain the older society of its working population. The spread of education has at once undermined the blind belief of the multitude in military leaders, and toned down the blind ferocity of instinct to which those leaders are forced to appeal. Wars of mere spoliation are scarcely permitted to-day. Wars of pure offence are deeply disapproved of.

The military and diplomatic injustice of past times has left unsettled many questions of territory and boundary which will not rest until they shall be set right. The populations which war has plundered and subjugated, lay their cause before the world's tribunal. In aid of this, the friends of the true law and order are ever busy in forming a nucleus of moral power, which governments will be forced to respect. Thus, though the war-demon dies hard, he is doomed, and we shall yet see the battlements of his grim cathedrals places for lovers to woo and for babes to play in.

In religion I have seen the dark ministrations of terror give way before the radiant gospel of hope. I remember when Doctrine sat beside the bed of death, and offered its flimsy synonym to the eyes upon which the awful, eternal truth was about to dawn. I remember when a man with a poor diploma and a human commission assumed to hold the keys of heaven and hell in his hands, and to dispense to those who would listen to him such immortality as he thought fit. I remember when it went hard with those who, in forming their religious opinions, persisted in daring to use the critical power of their own judgment. They were lonely saints; they wandered in highways and byways, unrecognized, excommunicated of men. No one had power to burn their bodies, but it was hoped that their souls would not escape the torment of eternal flame. I have seen this time, and I have lived to see a time in which these rejected stones, hewn and polished by God's hand, have come to be recognized as corner-stones in the practical religious building of the age. What a discredit was it once to hear Theodore Parker! How happy are they now esteemed who have heard him! Let not Mr. Emerson's urbanity lead him to forget the days in which polite Boston laughed him to scorn. Brook Farm was once looked upon as a most amusing caricature. But when the world learned something about Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Ripley, William Henry Channing, John Dwight, and George William Curtis, the public heart bowed itself with remorseful homage before the ruined threshold of what was, with all its shortcomings, a blameless temple to ideal humanity.

It is quite true that every change which I have seen in the society of my time cannot be said to be, in itself, for the better. The price of progress, like that of liberty, is eternal vigilance.