THE FUTURE IN AMERICA.* Mn. WELLS, who has hitherto concerned
himself with imaginary commonwealths, has brought his mind back to the present and the tangible, and has written a study of the American people. Another brilliant writer has already per- formed the same task, but between the works of Professor Miinsterberg and Mr. Wells there is a profound difference of aim. The former analyses the American mind as a finished product, and speculates not at all on the future ; the latter looks for signs of change, motive forces, a national ideal,—in his own words, his is a "search after realities." The one book is the work of a dispassionate scientific observer, the other is the expression of an original temperament, filled with dreams of a World-State, a Utopia of Pure Reason, a Socialism so divorced from the current creed that be may rightly claim it as a private cult. Mr. Wells sets out on his inquiry in the mood of happy wonder. The marvellous is perpetually in his eyes, but it is not what the world so labels. "The pomp and splendour of established order, the braying triumphs, cere- monies, consummations, one sees these glittering shows for -what they are—through their threadbare grandeur shine the little significant things that will make the future." For all his science, he is not scientific. "Insight is of more account than induction, and the perception of fine tones than the counting of heads." Hence the things in America which impress the common observer go with him for little. He is not dazzled by mercantile bigness or by superfine culture. He asks, not what the nation has done, but what it will do, what is the quality of its will, the form of its purpose. His hero, as he confesses, "in the confused drama of human life is intelligence ; intelligence inspired by constructive passion." And he is undeniably right. A study of a national life which takes the present as the ultimate achievement is doomed to barrenness. The business of the student is to disentangle the lines of development, and, if he be bold, to forecast their issue. Again, in the study of a nation it is the civic qualities that matter, not irrelevant triumphs in art or letters or social amenities. But, if we may suggest a criticism, it is possible to interpret such civic qualities too narrowly. Mr. Wells is occasionally as blatantly utilitarian as the mercantile community he con- demns. Why, for example, should it be necessary, in urging the need for rational and broad-minded education, to sneer at Greek because it is a dead tongue ? But such small defects scarcely detract from the interest of a most remarkable book. No bird's-eye view of a nation that we know has a keener imaginative insight. The Socialism which Mr. Wells uses as his touchstone is no abstract dogma, but merely the antithesis of his "State-blindness," the sense of a supreme corporate duty. We should call it" patriotism" for clearness' sake, but any man is free to make his own definitions. The book is illuminating in the fullest sense, a criticism not only of America, but of all civilised society, and it is written in a style which is always attractive and rises now and then to uncommon beauty and power. For Mr. Wells is as much poet as sociologist. He sees his data not greyly set out on a laboratory table, but touched with the eternal mystery of human hopes and fears.
The first impression is one of tremendous material size. The immense population, growing at an unprecedented rate, is yet strung out in so vast a country that America may be said to be thinly settled. The second, according to Mr. Wells, is of the strange simplicity of it all. The social relationships are all elementary and uncomplicated, the problems those of a modern middle-class individualistic society. "It is the central part of the European organism without either the dreaming head or the subjugated feet." The State, in the view of such individualism, is something to be escaped from, to be kept at arm's length. Every man is to have a fair chance to get rich ; but beyond ensuring such a barren liberty, the State has no further claim on him or duty towards him. Such an attitude in the long run defeats its own purpose. "Patriotism has become a mere national self-assertion, a sentimentality of flag- cheering, with no constructive duties." Great fortunes carry no social responsibilities, and, moreover, since it is part of the theory of American politics not to interfere with the indi- vidual, vast accumulations are permitted, and become permanent centres for the further concentration of wealth.
• The Future in America: a Search after Realities. By H. G. Wells. London : Chapman and Hall. [10a. 6d, net.1
The result is that the traditional "equality of opportunity" is disappearing. Large sections of the American public "are developing the consciousness of an expropriated class." The unsocial character of great wealth is not redeemed by vast spasmodic benefactions. Of these and of their makers Mr. Wells gives a series of witty, biting sketches. These great magnates are not unscrupulous bandits, though their methods may smack of brigandage. They are the products of the "ignoble tradition which links economy and earning with piety and honour," because in that moral country one lust, the lust of acquisition, has been raised to the pinnacle of a virtue. As specimens of half-kindly, half-contemptuous, and most incisive character-study, we commend Mr. Wells's portraits
of Mr. J. D. Rockefeller and his brother-millionaires, and, best of all, his picture of Mr. Morgan Richards. Having diagnosed this irresponsible individualism, which he calls "State-blind.
nese," as the worm in the bud of American success, Mr. Wells set himself to look for its results. He found the condition of child and woman labour to resemble on a greater scale England before the Factory Acts. How, indeed, he asks, could it be otherwise, for the American theory of liberty, that all men are free and equal, assumes as its corollary that they are all "adult and immortal," and well able to look after themselves ?
There are one million seven hundred thousand children under fifteen years of age toiling in mines and factories. "This is the bottommost end of the scale that at the top has all the lavish spending of Fifth Avenue, the joyous wanton giving of Mr. Andrew Carnegie."
Such are some of Mr. Wells's conclusions, and they are con- firmed by a score of authoritative American writers. Reform is difficult, because the country is in the grip of the most unworkable, cast-iron Constitution ever devised by the wit of man, and a political system which reproduces the qualities of the mercantile. On the question of corruption Mr. Wells is tolerant. The average American is "fundamentally honest, but a little confused ethically." To put it fairly, he is " com- mercialised " all round. Where every one is intent on business, there is no one left to watch the politicians. This individualism run mad is the spiritual drawback from which the nation is suffering. She has also two very concrete difficulties in the way of her future,—the immigrants and the coloured popula- tion. Nearly a million newcomers enter the country annually, most of them the sweepings of Eastern Europe,—labourers, not economically independent settlers. Mr. Wells thinks that America is ceasing to absorb this influx. On the coloured question be seems to despair of a solution. Unlike Mr. Booker Washington, who wishes the coloured race to have its own culture and opportunities, but to remain distinct from the white, Mr. Wells advocates a merging of the two peoples. In this chapter the general good sense of his criticism is largely at fault. He is judging the present by too abstract and sublimated a standard, and we are certainly on the side of Mr. Washington. But he does well in calling attention to the heroism of the task which the coloured leaders have set themselves :—
" Whatever America has to show in heroic living to-day. I doubt if she can show anything finer than the quality of the resolve, the steadfast effort hundreds of black and coloured men are making to-day to live blamelessly, honourably, and patiently, getting for themselves what scraps of refinement, learning, and beauty they may, keeping their hold on a civilisation they are grudged and denied."
The other side—the non-mercantile cultured people of Boston and the Universities—Mr. Wells thinks a little blind to the world around them. In Boston he is very unhappy : "canned culture" does not agree with him, and "the frozen stride" of the Nike of Samothrace—whose autotype is omni- present on Boston walls—pursues him into his dreams. He does not care for "pleasant ladies in chaste, high-necked, expensive dresses, and refined, attentive, appreciative, bald or iron-grey men." Culture in America he finds too old, too self-satisfied, too mellow. It seems as if the mind of the world was dead, and all that was left was a distribution of souvenirs. America has too long an historical perspective. The older nations close up theirs from time to time and begin again, but she goes back without a break to the War of Independence. Her crying need, he says in a paradox which is more than half a truth, is that she should as a nation be brought up to date and democratised. It is a striking piece of candid, kindly meant, if unkindly expressed, and trenchant criticism. And yet Mr. Wells is hopeful. There is a nation in America, neither capitalist nor proletariat, hidden away behind the magnates and the " bosses " and the cultivated dilettanti. The first need is political reform, that the State may come to its own again. Everywhere from the Universities are coming forth young men, trained in a nobler tradition, who have the true civic sense,—very different from "the young men of enterprise and sound Baptist and business principles who were the backbone of the irresponsible com- mercial America of yesterday, the America that rebuilt Chicago on floating foundations,' covered the world with advertisement boards, gave the great cities the elevated rail-
roads, and organised the trusts." For the American is a creator, a bold and splendid maker, and some day he must turn his powers to the making of a better State. America is becoming critical, and hot with the passion for reform. When, indeed, he has said all the hard things that his conscience compels him to say, we find that Mr. Wells is at heart keenly appreciative. "In America, by sheer virtue of its size, its free traditions, and the habit of initiative in its people, the leadership of progress must ultimately rest." Above all, there is an unfailing fount of optimism, without which no national endeavour can succeed. He tells of a conversation with Mr.
Roosevelt, when the President combated the pessimism which sees no hope of ultimate progress for humanity. "That doesn't matter now. The effort's real. It's worth going on with." We may quote, in conclusion, this passage on the greatest of living Americans :—
" I can see him now and hear his unmusical voice saying, The effort—the effort's worth it,' and see the gesture of his clenched hand and the—how can I describe it ?—the friendly peering snarl of his face, like a man with the sun in his eyes. He sticks in my mind at that, as a very symbol of the creative will in man, in its limitations, its doubtful adequacy, its valiant persistence amidst perplexities and confusions. He breaks out, assertive against his setting—and his setting is the White House with a background of all America. I could almost write, with a background of all the world; for I know of no other a tithe so representative of the creative purpose, the goodwiLl in men as he. In his undisciplined hastiness, his limitations, his prejudices, his unfairness, his frequent errors, just as much as in his force, his sustained courage, his integrity, kis open intelligence, he stands for his people and their kind."
We have placed in detail before our readers Mr. Wells's out- look on America, and defined his point of view; but it must not be supposed that it is altogether ours. Though we endorse his demand for reform in many directions, we are bound to condemn his frequent exaggerations, the shrillness, nay feverishness, of his criticism, and his want of a sense of proportion. He is essentially a dealer in generalisations, and generalisations in gross are often unjust and always misleading. He says many true things about the United States, but his picture as a whole is false. It is not a malicious caricature, but is none the less a caricature, and will, we fear, do a great deal of harm if not corrected. We would ask his American readers to remember that the book is essentially the apprecia- tion of a critic whose quick, nay febrile, imagination is always tending to lead him into overstatement. If we may parody the saying of the Frenchman : " Splendide, magnilique,—what you call 'pretty good," it would run in the case of Mr. Wells : "Horrible, appalling,—what you call 'not wholly satisfactory." Americans must remember also that if Mr. Wells is critical of them, he is quite as critical and quite as pessimistic in regard to his own country and countrymen. We are represented as in quite as parlous a state as they are. That his criticism is good for us both we do not doubt. The noble horse of the State in both cases needs the Socratic gadfly to sting it into action, and to prevent it growing fat and lazy in its rich pastures.
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