There is specially a thorough-going distrust of militarism, and an instinctive fear that it works against democracy and favours despotism; and there is, indeed, no doubt that the increasingly important relations between this country and foreign powers put more authority into the hands of the Presidential and Senatorial oligarchy than the general public likes to see. Every slightest concealment on the part of the President or his Cabinet goes against the feelings of the nation, and this state of feeling will hardly alter; it comes from the depths of the American character. On the other hand, it is combined with a positive belief in the moral mission of the United States, which are destined to gain their world-wide influence, not by might, but by the force of exemplary attainment, of complete freedom, admirable organization, and hard work. Any one who observes the profound sources of this belief will be convinced that any different feelings in the public soul, any greed of power, and any imperialistic instincts, are only a passing intoxication. In its profoundest being, America is a power for peace and for ethical ideals.
CHAPTER ELEVEN _The Spirit of Self-Initiative_
“The spirit aids! from anxious scruples freed, I write, ‘In the beginning was the deed!’” Others might write: In the beginning was the inexhaustible wealth of the soil; and still others, if their memory is short, might be tempted to say: In the beginning were the trusts! One who wishes to understand the almost fabulous economic development of the United States must, indeed, not simply consider its ore deposits and gold mines, its coal and oil fields, its wheat lands and cotton districts, its great forests and the supplies of water. The South Americans live no less in a country prospered by nature, and so also do the Chinese. South Africa offers entirely similar conditions to those of the North American continent, and yet its development has been a very different one; and, finally, a consideration of the peculiar forms of American industrial organization, as, for instance, the trusts, reveals merely symptoms and not the real causes which have been at work.
The colossal industrial successes, along with the great evils and dangers which have come with them, must be understood from the make-up of the American character. Just as we have traced the political life of America back to a powerful instinct for self-determination, the free self-guidance of the individual, so we shall here find that it is the instinct for free self-initiative which has set in motion this tremendous economic fly-wheel. The pressure to be up and doing has opened the earth, tilled the fields, created industries, and developed such technical skill as to-day may even dream of dominating the world.