THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY NEARLY nine years ago, after living for more than twenty years in the United States and studying its political and social institutions, I asked myself whether the American people were a new race with distinct racial characteristics and a developed psychology of their own or were simply the modification of a parent stock retaining the characteristics of their begetting. It was a question that has been widely discussed, but without an attempt, so far as I am aware, to reach a conclusion based on scientific deductions. I began the inquiry for my own satisfaction and without any preconceived idea of putting my conclusions in permanent form, and it is, I think, due both to writer and to reader that I should say the investigation was made without prejudice or bias; I had no theory to sustain by alleged facts; it was immaterial where the adventure ended, whether it led to the discovery of a new race or the rediscovery of an old race amidst new surroundings unmodified by its new conditions, or only so slightly modified that the species had remained uninfluenced by environment and other circumstances. With an open mind, in the spirit of the investigator and not of the advocate, I began the study. It seemed to offer no great difficulties, at least none that might not yield to reasonable intelligence and fair industry, but I was little to realize then how far I should wander, and how often I must retrace my steps and begin anew, before my quest was satisfied. There was a literature rich and voluminous and varied; a literature that showed much painstaking research and high ability, combined, in many instances, with a graceful and attractive style. In the writing of history treating of their country the Americans rank with any other modern nation; during the last quarter of a century America has been exploited by the literary entrepreneur, native as well as foreign, and the output has been thrown on the market in prodigious quantities; for the American loves to read about himself and is eager to see himself from the point of view of the foreigner, although he does not always agree with him; and the foreigner has found in America the romance of life that has long departed from Europe. America and the Americans were an undiscovered country and an unknown people, and each literary Columbus returned to feed the imagination with a newer and more untrustworthy tale. Now all this, while interesting, was unsatisfactory, and brought me no nearer to my objective. History |