Theodore Roosevelt [54]
intervened to deflect Europe from her march towards Democracy and to convert her into the servant of his personal ambition.
Over here, in spite of the hideous contradiction of slavery, which ate like a black ulcer into a part of our body politic, the Democratic ideal not only prevailed, but came to be taken for granted as a heaven-revealed truth, which only fools would question or dispute. In Europe, the monarchs of the Old Regime made a desperate rally and put down Napoleon, thinking that by smashing him they would smash also the tremendous Democratic forces by which he had gained his supremacy. They put back, so far as they could, the old feudal bases of privilege and of more or less disguised tyranny. The Restoration could not slumber quietly, for the forces of the Revolution burst out from time to time. They wished to realize the liberty of which they had had a glimpse in 1789 and which the Old Regime had snatched away from them. The Spirit of Nationality now strengthened their efforts for independence and liberty and another Spirit came stalking after both. This was the Social Revolution, which refusing to be satisfied by a merely political victory boldly preached Internationalism as a higher ideal than Nationalism. Truly, Time still devours all his children, and the hysterical desires bred by half-truths prevent the coming and triumphant reign of Truth. While these various and mutually clashing motives swept Europe along during the first half of the nineteenth century, a different current hurried the United States into the rapids. Should they continue to exist as one Union binding together sections with different interests, or should the Union be dissolved and those sections attempt to lead a separate political existence? Fortunately, for the preservation of the Union, the question of slavery was uppermost in one of the sections. Slavery could not be dismissed as a merely economic question. Many Americans declared that it was primarily a moral issue. And this transformed what the Southern section would gladly have limited to economics into a war for a moral ideal. With the destruction of slavery in the South the preservation of the Union came as a matter of course.
The Civil War itself had given a great stimulus to industry, to the need of providing military equipment and supplies, and of extending, as rapidly as possible, the railroads which were the chief means of transportation. When the war ended in 1865, this expansion went on at an increasing rate. The energy which had been devoted to military purposes was now directed to commerce and industry, to developing the vast unpeopled tracts from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and to exploiting the hitherto neglected or unknown natural resources of the country. Every year science furnished new methods of converting nature's products into man's wealth. Chemistry, the doubtful science, Midas-like, turned into gold every thing that it touched. There were not native workers enough, and so a steady stream of foreign immigrants flocked over from abroad. They came at first to better their own fortunes by sharing in the unlimited American harvests. Later, our Captains of Industry, regardless of the quality of the new comers, and intent only on securing cheap labor to multiply their hoards, combed the lowest political and social levels of southern Europe and of western Asia for employees. The immigrants ceased to look upon America as the Land of Promise, the land where they intended to settle, to make their homes, and to rear their children; it became for them only a huge factory where they earned a living and for which they felt no affection. On the contrary, many of them looked forward to returning to their native country as soon as they had saved up a little competence here. The politicians, equally negligent of the real welfare of the United States, gave to these masses of foreigners quick and unscrutinized naturalization as American citizens.
So it fell out that before the end of the nineteenth century a great gulf was opening between Labor and Capital. Now a community
Over here, in spite of the hideous contradiction of slavery, which ate like a black ulcer into a part of our body politic, the Democratic ideal not only prevailed, but came to be taken for granted as a heaven-revealed truth, which only fools would question or dispute. In Europe, the monarchs of the Old Regime made a desperate rally and put down Napoleon, thinking that by smashing him they would smash also the tremendous Democratic forces by which he had gained his supremacy. They put back, so far as they could, the old feudal bases of privilege and of more or less disguised tyranny. The Restoration could not slumber quietly, for the forces of the Revolution burst out from time to time. They wished to realize the liberty of which they had had a glimpse in 1789 and which the Old Regime had snatched away from them. The Spirit of Nationality now strengthened their efforts for independence and liberty and another Spirit came stalking after both. This was the Social Revolution, which refusing to be satisfied by a merely political victory boldly preached Internationalism as a higher ideal than Nationalism. Truly, Time still devours all his children, and the hysterical desires bred by half-truths prevent the coming and triumphant reign of Truth. While these various and mutually clashing motives swept Europe along during the first half of the nineteenth century, a different current hurried the United States into the rapids. Should they continue to exist as one Union binding together sections with different interests, or should the Union be dissolved and those sections attempt to lead a separate political existence? Fortunately, for the preservation of the Union, the question of slavery was uppermost in one of the sections. Slavery could not be dismissed as a merely economic question. Many Americans declared that it was primarily a moral issue. And this transformed what the Southern section would gladly have limited to economics into a war for a moral ideal. With the destruction of slavery in the South the preservation of the Union came as a matter of course.
The Civil War itself had given a great stimulus to industry, to the need of providing military equipment and supplies, and of extending, as rapidly as possible, the railroads which were the chief means of transportation. When the war ended in 1865, this expansion went on at an increasing rate. The energy which had been devoted to military purposes was now directed to commerce and industry, to developing the vast unpeopled tracts from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and to exploiting the hitherto neglected or unknown natural resources of the country. Every year science furnished new methods of converting nature's products into man's wealth. Chemistry, the doubtful science, Midas-like, turned into gold every thing that it touched. There were not native workers enough, and so a steady stream of foreign immigrants flocked over from abroad. They came at first to better their own fortunes by sharing in the unlimited American harvests. Later, our Captains of Industry, regardless of the quality of the new comers, and intent only on securing cheap labor to multiply their hoards, combed the lowest political and social levels of southern Europe and of western Asia for employees. The immigrants ceased to look upon America as the Land of Promise, the land where they intended to settle, to make their homes, and to rear their children; it became for them only a huge factory where they earned a living and for which they felt no affection. On the contrary, many of them looked forward to returning to their native country as soon as they had saved up a little competence here. The politicians, equally negligent of the real welfare of the United States, gave to these masses of foreigners quick and unscrutinized naturalization as American citizens.
So it fell out that before the end of the nineteenth century a great gulf was opening between Labor and Capital. Now a community