THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.* To attempt an analysis of the psychology
of a people num- bering more than a hundred million souls, and exhibiting a wide variety of types, demands a courage beyond the ordinary and an intimate knowledge which could Only be acquired by long residence among them. Mr. Maurice Low has already proved both his courage and his capacity for the task in his previous volume on the Planting of a Nation. The sub-title chosen for his new volume is "The Harvesting of a Nation,' which—we may remark in passing—is perhaps somewhat misleading, for there is little in the book to indicate that the American people have yet ripened into a homogeneous nation, though there is plenty of evidence that the ripening process is rapidly proceeding. It may be that, as Mr. Burbank (quoted by Mr. Low, p. 267) says, "the weeding-out process will, . . . by selection and environmental influences, leave the finest human product ever known, . . . the noble composite, the American of the future." This Mr. Low seems to approve as "the dictum of the scientist" (it is hard, after this, to read 573—that "it is the American way" to take all that science gives and have rather a contempt for the scientist). But this super-American is still in the future ; while the " unripeness " of the nation as an organized society is shown by that absence of uniformity in the laws of the various States which, while it may, as Mr. Low asserts, give a great advantage over other countries to the United States in providing a sociological laboratory for "carrying on experi- mental research and the practical demonstration of theories," has also incidentally led to the fact that in America there are " more laws and less law than in any other country in the world." The fascinating interest of America, indeed, lies just in the fact that the new type of civilization which it is developing is not ripe ; that it presents a vast experiment in modern democracy and in the assimilation of races and nationalities, the success of which will help in the solution of many problems that still vex the Old World.
The United States, then, being, as it were, a huge crucible in which the most various racial elements are still in process of being mixed to form a new amalgam, the question arises : "Is there an American nation ? " and this raises the further question, "What constitutes a nation?" Mr. Low devotes the first chapter of his new volume to a refutation of those critics who denied, or would accept only with considerable modification, his thesis that there is an American nation, and he proceeds to define what he considers to be the essentials • Thd American Peopie : a Study in Nal4eval Prycholoov. The Ilarveeting of a Motion. Ey A. Maurice Low. London: T Fisher Euwin. [8a ticl. vet.] of nationality. With his main thesis we are in absolute agreement. No one who knows the United States could doubt that, however heterogeneous the elements of its population, the feeling—one might almost say the pas- sion—of American nationality is everywhere supreme. When, however, Mr. Low goes on to argue that this common national feeling is above all due to the existence of a common language, and that community of language is a sine qua non. of national unity, he seems to us to be hopelessly wrong. For none of the great nations of Europe are homogeneous either in race or language. The truth is that community of language is more apt to be a consequence than a cause of national feeling. The growth of the Czech language in Bohemia, for instance, has proceeded pan i poem with the Bohemian nationalist movement. All experience, too, proves the futility of the attempt to impose a language from above on an unwilling population—witness the failure of Prussia to Germanize North Schleswig or Posen. If, then, the foreign immigrants into the United States speak English, and often English only, in the second and third generations, this is not the cause but the consequence of their absorption into the American nation. Otherwise it might be more difficult than it is to concede the fact of the existence of such a nation under present conditions ; for the process of absorption, though rapid, is less rapid than it was before the mass- immigration of non-Teutonic stooks. Chicago is not America, and is, perhaps, not even typical of America ; it is none the less significant that thirty-eight different languages are spoken in as many different quarters of the vast city. The impressive thing is that these people, whatever their dialect, are for the most part proud of their American nationality.
Mr. Low argues that this assimilation of foreign elements has not modified the characteristics of the American pooplo in their fundamental essence, which is English and Puritan. So far from this immigration tending to debase the native stock, moreover, he holds that the exact reverse is the case, each successive influx of cheap labour forcing the class with which it comes into competition to aspire to a higher level ; thus the Irish, who once oompesed the mass of the unskilled labourers, are now found mainly among the middle and. wealthier classes, the Italians having taken the 'position formerly occupied by them. None the less, the fact that Mr. Low thinks it necessary to argue the case shows that there is another aide to it. It is no doubt entirely true that the founda- tions of the American nation are English, and must remain so ; but will this be always true of the superstructure ? Is it true even now ? Certainly among Americans of the old stock—as Mr. Low himself admits—there is serious misgiving as to the ultimate effect of the vast immigration of peoples of inferior social and racial type. Nor is this misgiving wholly without. justification. The political corruption which is made easy by the constant reinforcement of the electorate, at least in the large cities, by crowds of utterly ignorant and quite venal voters may be but a passing phase. More serious, as it seems to us, is the effect of this influx on the intellectual life of the nation, notably, as a result of the great power it has given in many localities to the Roman Catholic Church. Of this Mr. Low says nothing. To the present writer it was one of the most startling and portentous facts he noticed during his visit.to America. People think of the Roman Church with some dim and confused recollections of "Americanism "as having suffered a sea-change in crossing the Atlantic. They may be surprised to learn not only that it has not abated one jot or tittle of its claim to dominate the consoience and intellect of men, but that wherever—through the Irish, Italian, or Catholic Slav vote—it has the power to do so, it effectively asserts this claim. Boston, once the American Geneva, is now a Roman Catholic city; from the text-books of history used in its public schools all mention of the Reformation is excluded. New York is only saved from the same fate by the fact that the Catholic vote is counterbalanced by that of a million Jews. Nor is this influence confined to places where the Catholic vote is strong. Though the Roman Catholics support their own denomi- national schools, they claim and are allowed to exercise a, certain censorship over all text-books used in the State schools on the ground that they contribute to their support. They also boast of their success in excluding books "offen- sive" to their religious opinions from the libraries of public institutions. "No one thing," says Mr. Low of America, "has tended to greater progress and freedom from intellectual superstition than when she sat her feet firmly on the road that leads to morality unmarked by the mile-stones of a State- supported Church." A Church is "State-supported" when it is allowed, as such, to exercise political power.
It is impossible to discuss all the points raised in Mr. Low's interesting volume. With some of his particular judgments we are inclined to quarrel. During the present writer's travels in America he met with most singular courtesy from Americans of all classes ; and we are not prepared with Mr. Low to indict the manners of the whole people. American manners are not European manners ; but then neither are English manners the same as those of France and Germany, where Englishmen have a quite unfounded repu- tation for native rudeness because they often innocently offend against national conventions. In all nations there are many mannerless people, and that there are more in America than elsewhere Mr. Low explains partly as the result of the early lonely frontier life of the colonists, partly as that of the great alien immigration, which has led to a certain class contempt and to an often necessary brusqueness of speech. The people of New York, according to the Gazetteer of the Reverend Jedediah Morse, were at the close of the eighteenth century distinguished by the urbanity of their manners. The New Yorker of those days, like the modern Andalusian, had leisure to cultivate the graces of social intercourse ; but in the cruel competition of modern America there is for most people no such leisure. Mr. Low tells us, moreover, that the American is "frank, outspoken, little given to suspicion, . . . incapable of understanding or practising subtlety," a statement we were prepared to criticise had not Mr. Low contra- dieted himself on the very next page (291) by saying that this "surface bluntness has not destroyed a tendency to suspicion." He goes on (p. 298) to speak of the suspicion shown by the makers of the Constitution, and adds that it is "remarkable that the same mistrust has been transmitted to their descendants." It would be interesting to estimate the influence of this suspicious temper, and of the factors in the national life and character which have largely justified it, in retarding the development of the United States. "Time Americans," says Mr. Coolidge in his United States as a World Power," would be more than human if they had not at times lost their heads in the midst of their unparalleled achieve- ments." The American people started with a vast "clean slate" on which to draw a pattern for the world of what the ideal modern civilization should be : they had behind them all the experience of the ages by way of example and warning. The result is the United States of to-day; a wonderful achievement, it is true, but one that should have been incom- Parably more wonderful, and would have been so but for some of those less amiable national characteristics to which Air. Low calls attention.
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