If you would understand the driving power of America, you must understand "the divers discontented and impatient young men " who in each generation have found in the American wilderness an outlet for their energies. In the rough contacts with untamed Nature they learned to be resourceful. Emerson declared that the country went on most satisfactorily, not when it was in the hands of the respectable Whigs, but when in the hands of "these rough riders—legislators in shirt-sleeves—Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger—or whatever hard-head Arkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, half-orator, half-assassin, to represent its wrath and cupidity at Washington."
The men who made America had an "excess of virility." "Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies; cannot read novels and play whist; cannot satisfy all their wants at the Thursday Lecture and the Boston Athenæum. They pine for adventure and must go to Pike's Peak; had rather die by the hatchet of the Pawnee than sit all day and every day at the counting-room desk. They are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing, and the joy of eventful living."
In Emerson's day there was ample scope for all these varied energies on the frontier. "There are Oregons, Californias, and Exploring Expeditions enough appertaining to America to find them in files to gnaw and crocodiles to eat."
But it must have occurred to some one to ask, "What will happen when the Oregons and Californias are filled up?" Well, the answer is, "See what is happening now." Instead of settling down to herb-tea and elegies, Young America, having finished one big job, is looking for another. The noises which disturb you are not the cries of an angry proletariat, but are the shouts of eager young fellows who are finding new opportunities. They have the same desire to do big things, the same joy in eventful living, that you had thirty years ago. Only the tasks that challenge them have taken a different form.
When you hear the words "Conservation," "Social Service," "Social Justice," and the like, you are apt to dismiss them as mere fads. You think of the catchwords of ineffective reformers whom you have known from your youth. But the fact is that they represent to-day the enthusiasms of a new generation. They are big things, with big men behind them. They represent the Oregons and Californias toward which sturdy pioneers are moving, undeterred by obstacles.
The live questions to-day concern not the material so much as the moral development of the nation. For it is seen that the future welfare of the people depends on the creation of a finer type of civic life. Is this still to be a land of opportunity? Ninety millions of people are already here. What shall be done with the next ninety millions? That wealth is to increase goes without saying. But how is it to be distributed? Are we tending to a Plutocracy, or can a real Democracy hold its own? Powerful machinery has been invented. How can this machinery be controlled and used for truly human ends? We have learned the economies that result from organization. Who is to get the benefit of these economies?
So long as such questions were merely academic, practical persons like yourself paid little attention to them. Now they are being asked by persons as practical as yourself who are intent on 'getting results.' And what is more, they employ the instruments of precision furnished by modern science.
You have been pleased over the millions of dollars which have been lavished on education. The fruits of this are now being seen. Hosts of able young men have been studying Government and Sociology and Economics and History. These have been the most popular courses in all our colleges. And they have been studied in a new way. The old formulas and the old methods have been fearlessly criticized. New standards of efficiency have been presented. The scientific method has been extended to the sphere of moral relations. It has been demonstrated to these young men that the resources of the country may be indefinitely increased by the continuous application of trained intelligence to definite ends. The old Malthusian doctrine has given way before applied science. The population may be doubled and the standard of living increased at the same time, if we plan intelligently. The expert can serve the public as efficiently as he has served private interests, if only the public can be educated to appreciate him, and persuaded to employ him.
This is what the "social unrest" means in America. It is not the unrest of the weak and the unsuccessful. It is the unrest of the strong and ambitious. You cannot still it by talking about prosperity: of course we are prosperous, after a fashion, but it is a fashion that no longer pleases us. We want something better and we propose to get it. What disturbs you is the appearance in force of a generation that has turned its attention to a new set of problems, and is attempting to solve them by scientific methods. It is believed that there is a Science of Government as well as an Art of Politics. The new generation has a respect, born of experience, for the expert. It seeks the man who knows rather than the clever manager. It demands of public servants not simply that they be honest, but that they be efficient.
Its attitude to the political boss is decidedly less respectful than that to which you were accustomed. You looked upon him as a remarkably astute character, and you attributed to him an uncanny ability to forecast the future. These young men have discovered that his ability is only a vulgar error. Remove the conditions created by public indifference and ignorance, and he vanishes. In restoring power to the people, they find that a hundred useful things can be done which the political wiseacres declared to be impossible.