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This great splendor has never been America's, and America's it can never be. Because there has been no splendor in this sense, there has been no decay; there can be no decay brought about through the poor being debased by the rich and their moral fibre destroyed. Critics have seen atavism in the prodigal benefactions of American millionaires, in their endowments of hospitals and universities and libraries, in their purchase of art treasures, in their munificence as patrons the American captain of industry self-made is the Roman patrician of the twentieth century. Curiously enough, - and it is this that breaks the parallel and destroys the danger, the American millionaire who is philanthropist or patron is never politician, he is never ambitious for honors or office, his gifts buy no rewards. An instructive essay might be written on this extraordinary phase of American character, the like of which no other nation can offer. The essayist, if he had made a careful study of American social conditions and was familiar with those in Europe, would doubtless point out, not in the way of criticism but as a sociological phase worthy of the investigator, that in England, for instance, philanthropy is one of the surest foundations for the creation of a family name, for if the benefaction is sufficiently large national gratitude will find its expression in a peerage; or, insufficient to earn nobiliary honors, it may be capitalized into political preferment;1 in France 1 "For in England great wealth can, by using the appropriate methods, a gift to the state may win the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor; in every European country there is a sure reward for public service. For the American there can be no national honors, unless it be a statue after his death or a post-office named in his honor while he is living; he has closed the door to a political career when he becomes a public benefactor. The late Secretary Hay once humorously remarked to me, when a volunteer officer had been appointed a brigadier-general in the regular establishment for a sensational exploit that appealed to popular imagination, "In this country we have no ribbon; we either make a man a brigadier-general or an LL.D."

To-day there is not a single man in public life distinguished because of his magnificent charity or munificent patronage; not one of the men who have founded schools or built libraries or endowed hospitals with royal disregard of cost is a member of the Cabinet, or in either House of Congress, or in the diplomatic service. To forestall the superficial critic, the essayist will demolish the absurd theory that politicians are of a different class or of a lower order morally than philanthropists, or that public service and philanthropy are incompatible in a republic; for he will be able to show that there are in Congress many men who have given generously in proportion to their means and who subscribe to many good causes, but who make no parade of their

practically buy rank from those who bestow it." - Bryce: The American Commonwealth, vol. II, p. 749.

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beneficence, and who have not used charity to advance their political fortunes.

Seeking for a reason, he shall perhaps discover that it is to be found in that complex and contradictory structure of the American mind, which is as ingenuous as it is suspicious, and as magnanimous as it is envious. The American is jealous of his independence; he is so distrustful lest his political integrity be tampered with not his personal political integrity, which is a thing between every man and his conscience, but the integrity of his political institutions - that he will not tolerate wholesale bribery in the form of disinterested benevolence, because if so it would be easy for the rich man to buy the office he wants. It is practical common sense which makes the American keep politics and philanthropy apart. Our essayist, to exhaust his theme, would show there are other reasons.

In America millionaires are too unpopular to make it possible for them to hope for political success; in the acquisition of their fortunes they have too often trampled on the weak and aroused the resentment of the people; the power of money has made them scornful of public opinion; the apocryphal rejoinder attributed to a captain of industry - "the public be damned" was the popular understanding of the millionaire's ethical code and accepted as concretely representing his utter indifference to the rights of the people. In his pursuit of fortune the very rich man has given his opponents too

many weapons to use against him, he has given the demagogue the one unanswerable argument his wealth; for in a democracy more than anywhere else, in a land of great opportunity where until recently fortunes were made and not inherited, the possession of great wealth arouses the passions of the less successful, who, having sought their opportunity and missed it, decry the successful man and accuse him of dishonesty to salve their own failure, and make of poverty the handmaiden of virtue. It follows that the state is deprived of the services of many men of eminent abilities and unblemished private life, whose training peculiarly fits them to take part in the business of government, who would give to the people the same devotion which they had used for their own profit, - often at the expense of the people.

A sociological investigator, no matter how conscientious and painstaking his work, faces two dangers. There is always a tendency to generalize, than which nothing can be more misleading; and he is betrayed into believing that conditions are peculiar to political or social institutions, whereas they are world-wide and universal phenomena. It is not alone in America that the business man, the commercial man of affairs, holds aloof from politics. Bodley explains at some length why a French manufacturer prefers not to offer himself as a candidate for the Palais Bourbon,1 and his reasons are 1 Bodley: France, vol. 1, p. 177 et seq.

not greatly dissimilar to those which restrain the American of corresponding type. "Modern industrial communities," an English writer says, referring to Parliamentary representation, "have so far not been very successful in bringing to bear on the work of government any large share of the talent which has been devoted to science, commerce, learning, and finance." 1

While in America the public accepts gifts from its rich men, they are, as a rule, accepted with sullenness rather than with gratitude, with the feeling that the public is only getting back its tithe of what has been wrung from it, but it is not taking a bribe to be paid for later in civic honors. Perhaps, as the idealism of the American would suggest, there is the further feeling, both on the part of the public and millionaire, that well-doing deserves no other reward than its own gratification, and opportunity imposes its obligation. The rich man who left his native village a bare-footed boy gives to it park and church and library, because for the place of his birth he cherishes a deep and abiding affection; the millionaire endows hospital or university because he has suffered with the poor and struggled with the ambitious; and although he may take advantage of the poor in business, - which is the material, his idealism must find its expression. It is not the atavism of the Roman but the atavism of the Puritan, whose rule of iron was illiberal and narrowing, 1 Low: The Governance of England, p. 304.

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