love for the æsthetic.1 "Life in the plains and backwoods had become second nature to men from whom the need of luxury had been eliminated. Mere space, unconstrained existence, a buffalo hunt or an Indian fray was pleasure enough. In the large, fresh environment of the American continent the English race had been born again, and now was animated with the irrepressible vigor of a youthful people. A constant change of environment had given them the adaptability of youth, vast opportunity had bred the spirit of venture and enterprise. Nothing seemed impossible and therefore little was impossible." It was related of an Englishman, the governor of a black province in the wilds of Africa, who for six months never saw a white man, that he dressed every night for dinner "for the mental discipline." The Americans have never practiced this sort of mental discipline because there was never a time when it seemed desirable, and conditions made it impossible. "The forty-eight men who came down the Ohio in the Mayflower to Marietta "3

1 "In talking to a Japanese of high standard and culture who was in this country on governmental business, the impression we make upon an Oriental was finally extracted.

After evading a long time and paying suave compliments, commenting on our energy and commercial enterprise, he finally confessed that the two most striking characteristics seemed to him to be bad manners and bad taste. “No one remains long in our land without learning that our bad manners are but the result of overfilling the hours with activity, and that they hide a generosity, a real kindliness of heart, that it would be difficult to duplicate elsewhere in the world; but the bad taste is undoubtedly here." - Harper's Weekly, quoted in the Washington Post, October 25, 1909.

2 Semple: American History and its Geographic Conditions, p. 230. 3 Hoar: Op. cit., p. 9.

brought no dress-suits with them any more than did those so soon to follow who "effected their removal on horses furnished with pack-saddles," which was the more easily done, "as but few of these early adventurers into the wilderness were encumbered with much baggage";1 or than the California Argonauts impeded themselves with superfluous clothing when it was with difficulty they were able to drag absolutely necessary articles over the blistering plains and the mountains that challenged them.

To the fact that there has never been a capital, with its governing class, its inherited wealth and traditions of caste and aristocracy, may be traced both social and political consequences. To its absence may be attributed that carelessness of social observance, that blatant and rather boyish contempt for manners, that pride in brusqueness, that nervous assertion of equality2 which so strikingly impresses every foreigner, and leads him from a superficial acquaintance to misrepresent both American character and American institutions. There is a certain amount of truth - but a partial truth only contained in the assertion "that you

1 Doddridge, in Hart's American History Told by Contemporaries, vol. II, p. 387.

2 "Their idea of Equality was equality with people who pretended to be of superior rank to them. As was said sixty years later by Tocqueville, than whom none knew better the true results of the Revolution, the word Equality on the lips of a French politician signifies, 'No one shall be in a better position than mine.' Camille Desmoulins wrote privately 'My motto is that of all honest folks, "no superior. Bodley: France, vol. I, p. 168.

cannot revolutionize classes and their relations without revolutionizing culture. It is idle to suppose you can communicate to a democracy the heritage of an aristocracy. You may give them books, show them pictures, offer them examples. In vain! The seed cannot grow in the new soil. The masses will never be educated in the sense that the classes were. You may rejoice in the fact, or you may regret it; but at least it should be recognized." The same conviction was expressed by Gouverneur Morris, a hundred years earlier, when he told his fellow delegates to the Constitutional Convention that "as to the alarm sounded of an aristocracy, his creed was that there never was, nor ever will be a civilized society without an aristocracy."2

The political effect of decentralization is seen in the spirit that made Americans, first as colonists and later as a nation, regard the community, the colony or the state, rather than the capital, as the seat and source of authority, and made the doctrine of state rights not merely a political principle but an unconscious conviction, all the more deep-seated because it springs from an inherited instinct. It is to be noted, however, that as American conditions change, and Americans become subject to the same influences that have affected older civilizations, the domination of the capital, both socially and politically, makes itself felt. The last decade or two has

1 Dickinson: A Modern Symposium, p. 135.

2 Documentary History of the Constitution, vol. 11, p. 287.

seen a great impetus toward centralization, and a weakening of the extreme doctrine of the rights of the states to be independent of the control of the central government; and it is recognized that certain things, heretofore regarded as matters purely of state administration, properly come within the purview of the general government. The extinction of a destructive moth in Massachusetts, for example, or a cotton parasite in Texas, it is now seen can more efficiently be undertaken by the central government, not alone for the benefit of the state but for the whole country, than by any one commonwealth. With this orientation of the American mind there has been brought about an acceptance of the capital as a social centre, and a desire that it shall have a regard for social dignity and an observance of etiquette; and the habits and customs of the capital, modified to suit local conditions, are imitated in outlying places. At this time it is not necessary to do more than mention this very striking change, as it belongs to a much later period in American development, and was the natural sequence of the modification of political and social conditions.

CHAPTER VI

WHERE WOMAN NEITHER REIGNS NOR RULES

Nor less important than the absence of a capital in shaping the mind and influencing the development of a people is the fact that in the social system of the United States woman plays no part. This, I am aware, is contrary to the general belief not only of foreigners but of Americans themselves; for America is supposed to be the paradise of woman, and in America it is thought that woman dominates. Yet America is the one country, civilized or barbarous, in which woman has never exercised the slightest influence on its affairs or in the least degree affected its policies or its politics; who has never been the great social force that she has been in Europe in modern times, or was in the East when the world was young and women wrecked dynasties and made work for the map-makers.

In all the history of America, from the landing of the Jamestown adventurers to our own times, there have been two- and two women only whose names are rescued from oblivion. One was Mistress Anne Hutchinson in the early days of the Bay Colony, whose influence upon the thought of her time has been referred to in the first volume.1 The

1 See page 358 et seq.