With all his faults, those big, daring, yawning fissures in him, he is news about us, faults and all. Though I may be, as I certainly am much of the time, standing and looking across at him, across an abyss of temperament that G.o.d cut down between us thousands of years ago, and while he may have a score of traits I would not like and others that no one would like in any one else, there he is storming out at me with his goodness! It is his way--G.o.d help him!--G.o.d be praised for him! There he is!
I know an American when I see one. He is a man who is singing.
A man who is singing is a man who is so shrewd about people that he sees more in them than they see in themselves and who does things so shrewdly in behalf of G.o.d, that when G.o.d looks upon him he delights in him. Then G.o.d falls to of course and helps him do them.
When American men saw that there was a man among them who was taking a thing like the Presidency of the United States (that most people never run risks with) and putting it up before everybody, and using it grimly as a magnificent bet on the people, they looked up. Millions of men leaped in their hearts and as they saw him they knew that they were like him!
So did Theodore Roosevelt become news about Us.
CHAPTER X
AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT
I would like to say more specifically what I mean by an American or singing government.
The thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament. A German government succeeds by having the German temperament. An American government must have the American temperament.
If we are fortunate enough to have in America a government with an American temperament what would it be like? And how would it differ from the traditional or conventional temperament, governments are usually allowed to have?
If I were confined to one or two words I would put it like this:
If a government has the conventional temperament, it says "NO."
If it has the American Temperament it says, "YES, BUT ..."
The whole policy and temper of a true American government is summed up in its saying as it looks about it--now to this business man and now to that, just in time, "YES BUT."
Louis Brandeis, of Boston, when he was made attorney for the Gas Company of Boston to defend the company from the criticisms of the people, sent suddenly scores of men all about canva.s.sing the city and looking up people to find fault with the gas.
He spent thousands of dollars a month of the Gas Company"s money for a while in helping people to be disagreeable, until they had it attended to and got over it.
The Gas Company had the canva.s.sers show the people how they could burn less gas for what they got for it, and tried to help them cut their bills in two. Incidentally, of course, they got to thinking about gas and about what they got for it, and about other ways they could afford to use it, and began to have the gas habit--used it for cooking and heating.
The people found they wanted to use four times as much gas.
The Boston Gas Company smiled sweetly.
Boston smiled sweetly.
Not many months had pa.s.sed and two things had happened in Boston.
The Boston Gas Company, with precisely the same directors in it, had made over the directors into new men, and all the people in Boston (all who used gas) apparently had been made over into new people.
What had happened was Brandeis--a man with an American temperament.
Mr. Brandeis had defended his company from the people by going the people"s way and helping them until they helped him.
Mr. Brandeis gave gas a soul in Boston.
Before a gas corporation has a soul, it would be American for a government to treat it in one way. After it has one it would be American to treat it in another. There are two complete sets of conduct, principles, and visions in dealing with a corporation before and after its having a soul.
Preserving the females of the species and killing males as a method of discrimination has been applied to all animals except human beings. This is suggestive of a method of discrimination in dealing with corporations. A corporation that has a soul and that is the most likely to keep reproducing souls in others should be treated in one way, and a corporation that has not should be treated in another.
There are two a.s.sumptions underneath everybody"s thought, underneath every action of our government: Which is the American a.s.sumption?
People are going to be bad if they can.
People are going to be good if they can.
Men who want to arrange laws and adjust life on the a.s.sumption that business men will be bad if they can, it seems to some of us, are inefficient and unscientific. It seems to us that they are off on the main and controlling facts in American human nature. It is not true that American business men will be bad if they can. They will be good if they can.
This is my a.s.sertion. I cannot prove it.
What we seem to need next in this country in order to be clear-headed and to go ahead, is to prove it. We want a competent census of human nature.
Lacking a census of human nature, the next best thing we can do is to watch the men who seem to know the most about human nature.
We put ourselves in their hands.
These men seem to believe, judging from their actions, that there is really nothing that suits our temperament better in America than being good. If we can manage to have some way of being good that we have thought of ourselves, we like it still better. We dote on goodness when it is ours and when we are allowed to put some punch into it. We want to be good, to express our practical, our doing-idealism, but we will not be driven to being good and people who think they can drive us to being good in a government or out of it are incompetent people. They do not know who we are.
We say they shall not have their way with us.
Let them get us right first. Then they can do other things.
What is our American temperament?
Here are a few American reflections.
The government of the next boys" school of importance in this country is going to determine the cuts and free hours, and privileges not by marks, but by its genius for seeing through boys.
And instead of making rules for two hundred pupils because just twenty pupils need them, they will make the rules for just twenty pupils.
Pupils who can use their souls and can do better by telling themselves what to do, will be allowed to do better. Why should two hundred boys who want to be men be bullied into being babies by twenty infants who can scare a school government into rules, _i.e._, scare their teachers into being small and mean and second-rate?
A government that goes on this principle with business men, and that does it in a spirit of mutual understanding for those who are not yet free from rules, and in a spirit of confidence and expectation and of talking it over, will be a government with an American temperament.
The first trait of a great government is going to be that it will recognize that the basis of a true government in a democracy is privilege and not treating all people alike. It is going to see that is it a cowardly, lazy, brutal, and mechanical-minded thing for a government which is trying to serve a great people--to treat all the people alike. The basis of a great government like the basis of a great man (or even the basis of a good digestion) is discrimination, and the habit of acting according to facts. We will have rules or laws for people who need them, and men in the same business who amount to enough and are American enough to be safe as laws to themselves, will continue to have their initiative and to make their business a profession, a mould, an art form into which they pour their lives. The pouring of the lives of men like this into their business is the one thing that the business and the government want.
Several things are going to happen when what a good government seeks each for a man"s business, is to let him express himself in it.
When a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level of motives, and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work, the government is going to give him a higher level of rights, liberties, and immunities. The government will give special liberties on a sliding scale and with shrewd provision for the future. The government will not give special liberties to the man with higher motives than other men have, who has not higher abilities to make his motives work, nor will it give special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which could make higher motives work, but who has not the higher motives.
Men who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that they can make new kinds and new sizes of bargains, that they can make (for the same money) new kinds and new sizes of goods, and who incidentally make new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy the goods, men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by their own initiative, will be allowed by the government to have all the initiative they want, and immunities from fretful rules as long as they resemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do.