The Promise of American Life. Herbert David Croly
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it radical social changes. Even before the outbreak of the Civil War the rich and fertile states of the Middle West had become well populated. They had passed from an almost exclusively agricultural economy to one which was much more largely urban and industrial. The farms had become well-equipped; large cities were being built up; factories of various kinds were being established; and most important of all, the whole industrial organization of the country was being adjusted to transportation by means of the railroad. An industrial community, which was, comparatively speaking, well-organized and well-furnished with machinery, was taking the place of the agricultural community of 1830–1840, which was incoherent and scattered and which lacked everything except energy and opportunity. Such an increase of organization, capital, and equipment necessarily modified the outlook and interests of the people of the Middle West. While still retaining many of their local traits, their point of view had been approaching in certain respects that of the inhabitants of the East. They had ceased to be pioneers.
During the two decades after the Civil War, the territory, which was still in the early stage of agricultural development, was the first and second tier of states west of the Mississippi River. Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and finally the Dakotas were being opened for settlement; but in their case the effect and symptoms of this condition were not the same as they had been with the earlier pioneer states. Their economy was from the beginning adjusted to the railroad; and the railroad had made an essential difference. It worked in favor of a more comprehensive and definite organization and a more complete equipment. While the business interests of the new states were and still are predominantly agricultural, the railroads had transformed the occupation of farming. After 1870, the pioneer farmer was much less dependent than he had been upon local conditions and markets, and upon the unaided exertions of himself and his neighbors. He bought and sold in the markets of the world. He needed more capital and more machinery. He had to borrow money and make shrewd business calculations. From every standpoint his economic environment had become more complicated and more extended, and his success depended much more upon conditions which were beyond his control. He never was a pioneer in the sense that the early inhabitants of the Middle West and South had been pioneers; and he has never exercised any corresponding influence upon the American national temper. The pioneer had enjoyed his day, and his day was over. The Jack-of-all-trades no longer possessed an important economic function. The average farmer was, of course, still obliged to be many kinds of a rough mechanic, but for the most part he was nothing more than a farmer. Unskilled labor began to mean labor which was insignificant and badly paid. Industrial economy demanded the expert with his high and special standards of achievement. The railroads and factories could not be financed and operated without the assistance of well-paid and well-trained men, who could do one or two things remarkably well, and who did not pretend to do much of anything else. These men had to retain great flexibility and an easy adaptability of intelligence, because American industry and commerce remained very quick in its movements. The machinery which they handled was less permanent, and was intended to be less permanent than the machinery which was considered economical in Europe. But although they had to avoid routine and business rigidity on the penalty of utter failure, still they belonged essentially to a class of experts. Like all experts, they had to depend, not upon mere energy, untutored enthusiasm, and good-will, but upon careful training and single-minded devotion to a special task, and at the same time proper provision had to be made for coördinating the results of this highly specialized work. More complete organization necessarily accompanied specialization. The expert became a part of a great industrial machine. His individuality tended to disappear in his work. His interests became those of a group. Imperative economic necessities began to classify the individuals composing American society in the same way, if not to the same extent, that they had been classified in Europe.
This was a result which had never entered into the calculations of the pioneer Democrat. He had disliked specialization, because, as he thought, it narrowed and impoverished the individual; and he distrusted permanent and official forms of organization, because, as he thought, they hampered the individual. His whole political, social, and economic outlook embodied a society of energetic, optimistic, and prosperous democrats, united by much the same interests, occupations, and point of view. Each of these democrats was to be essentially an all-round man. His conception of all-round manhood was somewhat limited; but it meant at least a person who was expansive in feeling, who was enough of a business man successfully to pursue his own interests, and enough of a politician to prevent any infringement or perversion of his rights. He never doubted that the desired combination of business man, politician, and good fellow constituted an excellent ideal of democratic individuality, that it was sufficiently realized in the average Western American of the Jacksonian epoch, that it would continue to be the type of admirable manhood, and that the good democrats embodying this type would continue to merit and to obtain substantial and approximately equal pecuniary rewards. Moreover, for a long time the vision remained sufficiently true. The typical American democrat described by De Tocqueville corresponded very well with the vision of the pioneer; and he did not disappear during the succeeding generation. For many years millions of Americans of much the same pattern were rewarded for their democratic virtue in an approximately similar manner. Of course some people were poor, and some people were rich; but there was no class of the very rich, and the poverty of the poor was generally their own fault. Opportunity knocked at the door of every man, and the poor man of to-day was the prosperous householder of to-morrow. For a long time American social and economic conditions were not merely fluid, but consistent and homogeneous, and the vision of the pioneer was fulfilled. Nevertheless, this condition was essentially transient. It contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution and transformation; and this transformation made headway just as soon as, and just as far as, economic conditions began to prefer the man who was capable of specializing his work, and of organizing it with the work of his fellows.
The dominant note, consequently, of the pioneer period was an unformed national consistency, reached by means of a natural community of feeling and a general similarity of occupation and well-being. On the other hand, the dominant note of the period from 1870 until the present day has been the gradual disintegration of this early national consistency, brought about by economic forces making for specialization and organization in all practical affairs, for social classification, and finally for greater individual distinction. Moreover, the tendency towards specialization first began to undermine the very corner-stone of the pioneer's democratic edifice. If private interest and public weal were to be as harmonious as the pioneer assumed, every economic producer must be a practical politician, and there must be no deep-lying division between these primary activities. But the very first result of the specializing tendency was to send the man of business, the politician, and the lawyer off on separate tacks. Business interests became so absorbing that they demanded all of a man's time and energy; and he was obliged to neglect politics except in so far as politics affected business. In this same way, the successful lawyers after the War were less apt than formerly to become politicians and statesmen. They left public affairs largely to the unsuccessful lawyers. Politics itself became an occupation which made very exacting demands upon a man's time and upon his conscience. Public service or military success were no longer the best roads to public distinction. Men became renowned and distinguished quite as much, if not more, for achievements in their private and special occupations. Along with leadership of statesmen and generals, the American people began to recognize that of financiers, "captains of industry," corporation lawyers, political and labor "bosses," and these gentlemen assumed extremely important parts in the direction of American affairs. Officially, the new leaders were just like any other American citizen. No titles could be conferred upon them, and their position brought with it no necessary public responsibilities. Actually, however, they exercised in many cases more influence upon American social and political economy than did the official leaders. They were an intrusion, into the traditional economic political and social system, for which no provision had been made. Their special interests, and the necessities of their special tasks, made their manner of life different from that of other American citizens, and their peculiar opportunities enabled them to appropriate an unusually large share of the fruits of American economic development. Thus they seriously impaired the social and economic homogeneity, which the pioneer believed to be the essential quality of fruitful Americanism.
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