II
FACTS AND MOTIVES IN THE MODERN WORLD
Like every other European, I had gone to North America with the fixed idea that it was the country of the practical spirit par excellence, and that the Americans were all men who did not lose themselves in dreams, but lived in reality, intent on shaping it to their own ends, and acquiring by the most rapid means the tangible and sure blessings of life—riches, prosperity, power, and the mastery over nature. I was convinced that they knew better than anyone else the art of increasing the comforts, and diminishing the difficulties, of life by the intelligent use of the means furnished by nature, fortune, and preceding generations. I expected, therefore, to find in America, many facts and few ideas; an intelligent and vigorous egoism omnipresent; scanty traces of idealism, and but little faith in the transcendent principles which so often lead dreamers—individuals and nations—to toil and fight for fair but unreal chimeras, in the vain hope of distant glory or grandeur.
So my first surprise, and a very great one it was, arose from my examination at close quarters, of the policy pursued by the United States in dealing with the immense herds of immigrants, who yearly pour into their harbours from all parts of the Old World. In South America, I had closely observed the cautious prudence and really practical sagacity with which the republics try to prevent the continual immigration of foreigners from disturbing too profoundly the political balance of the State, by reserving the government to small oligarchies born and educated in the country, and therefore capable of directing public affairs with a certain continuity of projects and of national spirit. This policy of the South American republics is, I know, severely criticised in Europe, and especially in Italy, by too many persons who judge the affairs of the New World by the standard of the ideas of the Old. But to a historian of Rome, like myself, to whom history has taught the great internal difficulties which were caused in every ancient state by the μέτοιχοι or peregrini, this policy seemed practical and reasonable, at least if it be granted that the principal task of every state is that of solving in the best possible way the problems of the hour and leaving to the future its own problems.
To grant every year citizenship in a new state to a great number of men born and educated in distant lands, who come stuffed with ideas and tendencies, opinions which correspond in no wise with the utterly different situation they find in the new country; to give them political rights which they do not want or give a thought to; to make them, almost by force, the pillars of a political constitution which they generally do not understand; to hope to transform them in a flash from subjects of ancient European monarchies into citizens of young American republics—is not all this to do violence to the practical ideas of government, and to multiply the already great difficulties among which every representative régime works, without any compensating advantage, not even that of planting the immigrants firmly in the new country? The vast multitudes which are to-day crossing from Europe to America no longer go, as they did once, in search of liberty beyond the ocean. They go in search of higher salaries, an easier and larger existence, and greater probability of bettering themselves. To open to the children of immigrants on the same terms as to home-born children the high schools, the professions, and the public offices—in short, all the roads by which the son of a peasant or artisan can climb to the higher bourgeoisie—is a surer means of planting firmly in the country the crowds carried to America on the wave of emigration than the concession to them of electoral rights. And that is just what the states of South America, with their practical spirit, have done and are doing.
With these impressions and opinions, I arrived from South America in the America which symbolises in the eyes of the world the practical spirit. And in this America, to my no small surprise, I found the opposite policy to this in actual operation, with all the effects which I imagined must follow it; in particular, the growing difficulty of making democratic institutions work smoothly, with an electoral body so swollen, so enormous, and so varied and heterogeneous. I often had occasion, when speaking or writing in the United States, to remember that the cosmopolitan electoral body which is the base of the democracy of the United States recalls that of Rome, where the freedmen—the immigrants of the time—became citizens, and were inscribed in the electoral lists, whatever their national origin, and even if they were all foreigners, barbarians some of them, uncivilised the rest. Nevertheless, there is between the United States and Ancient Rome one essential difference; and that is, that in the Roman Republic, the electoral operations were concentrated in the capital, so that the number of persons who took part in them, the really active electoral body, was extremely small; while in the United States, the electors are numbered by millions, and are scattered over a continent. Do not most of the difficulties and inconveniences of which I have heard America complain in connection with its internal politics arise from the enormous size of the electoral body and from its heterogeneity? For both of these are unique phenomena in the history of the world, as until now every democracy has governed small, and often the tiniest of, states. So this experiment, which America is making, without being compelled to do so by any historical necessity, is a new and bold one, the final result of which it is difficult to foretell. As a matter of fact, the ancient national oligarchies, which governed North America, for so many years after it had gained its independence, did not open the doors of the constitution to the immigrant multitudes who threatened, if admitted, to swamp them. It would have been easy to keep at least the first Europe-born generation out of politics, because—as I have already said—the greater number of immigrants arrive in America without the vaguest idea, much less ambition, of obtaining what, in a democracy, are the political rights of a citizen, and only want big salaries.
How, then, has the United States come to this pass? Certainly historical accidents have contributed to set the Union in this direction. Historical accidents would, however, not have sufficed, if they had not been helped by that conception of democracy, not practical but mystical, so to speak, which I have found obtains among so many Americans. The rights of the people are not in America a political doctrine, to be employed by the nation and its governors in compassing certain ends of general utility, and to be applied only in the measure and with the limitations and qualifications which make it fruitful of good results and prevent it from giving rise to inconveniences. It is a transcendent principle, an article of faith, as it were, to be applied and developed without too much regard to the immediate consequences, which must be endured with patience if they are for the moment unpleasant or dangerous, in the conviction that the principle, being just and true, must finally produce beneficial effects.
So, little by little, I was led to ask myself whether by chance, in politics at any rate, the South Americans and the Europeans were not more practical than the North Americans, and whether the North Americans, on the other hand, were not great idealists; at least, if by the practical spirit is understood the art of solving present difficulties by the quickest and simplest devices with only an immediately realisable benefit in view, instead of multiplying difficulties with future benefits in view or for love of an idea or a principle. The amazement and uncertainty caused by this preliminary survey of the very foundations of the American constitution were increased, however, by my subsequent observation of the numberless philanthropic works, educational institutions, intellectual, political, or social foundations which owe their existence to the inexhaustible generosity of the American upper classes. For though Europeans may think that every American thinks only of making money, a few weeks of travel and of observation were enough to convince me that America is quite as richly, perhaps more richly endowed than Europe with wealthy men whose only thought it is to spend their money for the good of their fellows, for the progress of the nation, in a word, for objects of public utility.
However, though American philanthropic works may equal and often exceed those of Europe in number and in value, I have often had occasion to notice one difference between those of the two continents: and that is, that the American works are not unusually inspired by a more intense, I might almost say a more ingenuous faith in the power of man over the miseries and difficulties of life. The American often addresses himself with fervour, energy, and great intellectual and pecuniary effort to the eradication of ills which the European regards as incurable and irresponsive to treatment. And this American faith in the power to rectify, revive, and purify nature often struck me, no less than many other Europeans, as fringing on the chimerical. In short, even in what are called social works, the American often seemed to me more idealist, more of a dreamer, and less practical than the European; more ready, that is to say, to venture on a struggle against the innumerable ills of life without being quite sure of possessing adequate means for conquering them, at the summons of a mystical faith in the progress of the world.
As the result of all my observations, I kept asking myself whether by chance the United States, notwithstanding their great practical activity, might not be a much more mystical, idealistic, and visionary people than the European gives them credit for. But I did not dare answer the question with a resolute Yes or No. I could not answer No, because that would have involved ignoring facts which were daily obtruding themselves on my notice. On the other hand, I dared not answer Yes, because I was afraid of being accused of excessive fondness for paradoxes, and of wishing to do violence to current opinions at every opportunity and at all costs. So I went groping around for a truth which so far I conjectured rather than saw.
I had reached this point in my reflections and observations when I was invited to luncheon by our friend the author and journalist whom I have mentioned in the preceding chapter. When I saw her home and mode of life, I could not help asking myself: For what reason is the general standard of wealth higher, while that of living is no higher, in America than in Europe? Why are dwellings in the great American cities so small, the distances so great, the communications so difficult, provisions so dear, that notwithstanding the vast riches of the country, life is for the masses and the middle classes more expensive and difficult than in many much less wealthy cities of Europe? The primary answer was not difficult: Because the cities have become too big and populous, because their growth has been too rapid in comparison with the progress of agriculture, and because a section at least of their inhabitants has contracted too expensive habits and is accustomed to a life of too great luxury. This primary answer, however, gave rise to a second question: Why have the cities grown so rapidly, and with the cities the luxury of every class? This too was easily explained: Because of the rapid development of industries. America is a vast continent of great natural wealth, where capital accumulates rapidly. Owing to her ability to accumulate capital readily, and to find work for the numberless hands which the overcrowded districts of Europe have been supplying for the last hundred years to those American countries which have need of them, America has been able, not only to extend her agriculture rapidly and to exploit her mines, but also, and in particular, to multiply her industries to the point of packing her larger cities with so dense a crowd of inhabitants that life has become difficult for the majority of the town populations.
At this point, however, one conclusion seemed to emerge from the preceding observations. Suppose North America, instead of employing all the capital at her disposal in her many industries, as well as the capital borrowed from European countries poorer than herself, had done as France is doing in Europe, namely, had invested part of her capital in foreign countries, in loans to governments, cities, railways, industries, trades, and agricultural enterprises, what would have happened? The demand for labour would doubtless have been less in America, and therefore the emigration to it would not have been so startling. Her industries would have developed less, and her cities would not have increased so rapidly. The United States would now have a smaller population to support, and one better distributed between the cities and the country; would have fewer cities, and those smaller. The band of fortunates who have made huge wealth out of the rapid and prodigious development of the cities would be smaller, but the middle and lower classes would enjoy a more comfortable and easier existence. Their condition would resemble much more closely that of the middle and lower classes in Europe. They would earn lower wages, but those wages, though numerically less, would procure them greater comforts and pleasures.
It was now that, after my many discussions with others, and my extended solitary meditation on the difficult problem, I thought that I had finally confuted the troublesome doctrine of American progress. What is that progress of which the Americans are so proud but the unbridled rush of enterprise which has so rapidly multiplied the industries, enlarged the cities, and increased the population and wealth of the United States? But in that case it was clear that American progress contradicted itself. By inciting the American people to gather together capital and workers, to open their gates to millions of European emigrants, to invest their gains in new enterprises or in the enlargement of old enterprises, to redouble and multiply in every direction efforts and enterprises, so as to form of them a mountain with which to scale the heavens, the spirit of progress had created in America an opulence which teemed with difficulties, contradictions, and embarrassments, and which meant for a large part of the population a condition somewhat resembling that of King Midas: seeing riches all round him, and not being able to enjoy them. But to produce riches with no prospect of enjoying them is an absurdity. Much wiser, therefore, was old Europe, which, taught by the experience of centuries, refused to let herself be dazzled by this idea of progress, and instead of heaping up riches at top speed as does the New World, was more careful in her choice of new riches to create so that she might enjoy them; so that she might make of them a fount of well-being, not a cause of difficulty for mankind.
This was the moment at which I was inclined to think that all the ideas of America and the optimistic spirit which animates them, beginning with the idea of progress, could only be a passing ebullition and the merry madness of youth. This nation, I said to myself, favoured as it is at the moment by unusual facilities for the creation of wealth, has been so much carried away by its success as to make of riches, which are and can be only a means, an end in themselves. A longer experience of history will convince America of its mistake. One day, however, as I was again pondering intently over the facts I had observed, which seemed to prove that the Americans were often dreamers, idealists, almost mystics in matters in which the Europeans show themselves eminently practical, an idea flashed across my mind. What if American progress, which to me had seemed up to then to be but a youthful madness, should prove, if thoroughly analysed, to be only an idealistic and semi-mystical conception of wealth itself? What if this nation, accused of desiring only the immediate possession of worldly goods, was wearing itself out in an unbridled and diabolical activity from dawn till sundown, not with the object of increasing its happiness and pleasure, but for a distant end, transcending the egoism and even the consciousness of the individual? What if all, without knowing it, or impelled as it were by a superior, if not directly mystical force, were labouring and even suffering for this end—a new end, to which history can show us no parallel; the conquest of an immense continent from one sea to the other, by means of a new instrument unknown to our forefathers: steam- or electricity-driven machinery?
From progress, from the democratic and philanthropic ideality of the Americans, from the economic difficulties with which our kind hostess had to wrestle, to machinery and to the conquest of the great territory of the United States, may seem a risky, violent, and unexpected transition or transitions. As a matter of fact, I could not have executed so bold a transition unaided. I was helped by my wife, in an indirect, but, for that very reason, strange and decisive way. In fact, without her help I should not have succeeded in finding my bearings in the chaos of my American experiences, nor in understanding how and to what extent the Old World and the New World are opposed to each other; as a result, I could not have written the philosophical dialogue on Europe and America, which will be published shortly. It seems to me necessary, then, to recount how this help was given me; and I hope that my brief account will not be read without interest.
Several years before we embarked on our journeys to the two Americas, my wife had begun a long and deep study of modern machinery and of the great mechanical industry. Though a daughter of Cesare Lombroso, who was a great inventor, she is temperamentally inclined to the ancient more than to the new, and therefore little disposed by nature to admire the gigantic disorder of modern society which other minds find so intoxicating. Her innate antipathy to the civilisation of steam and electricity had been increased a thousandfold by observation of the profound perturbation which the great mechanical industry has caused in a country of ancient civilisation like Italy, densely populated and living on the resources of a small territory devoid of great natural riches. But when she at last made of machinery an object of methodical study, her researches and the evidence she had patiently accumulated transformed this antipathy into a complex and bold theory, the cardinal idea of which I think I can express as follows. Machinery produces only apparent wealth and prosperity, because instead of diminishing the effort necessary to produce the things we need, and therefore their price, in reality it increases it. The mechanical industry demands immense capital to construct the machines and set them going; immense quantities of raw material to keep the machinery always busy; the concentration of the industry in places where combustibles or the motive forces abound; consequently an enormous development in the means of communication, for the exchange of products and raw materials, and a dense population accustomed to produce and consume as much as possible. Therefore, the civilisation of steam- or electricity-driven machines cannot develop without rapidly exhausting nature, so to speak—mines, or forests, or the fertility of the soil. That explains why it flourishes chiefly in vast and naturally wealthy territories, which it rapidly exploits and impoverishes. Indeed, it explains why it is always seeking for new, rich territories, seeking to penetrate unexplored continents, like Africa, as soon as it has conquered America. Nor is it difficult to understand why nations which live in countries of limited natural resources get more harm than good, and often become involved in vexatious crises, from the introduction of mechanical civilisation. It is clear, too, how that civilisation must result in making life ever more and more expensive, and therefore forcing men to despoil the earth and to work ever harder, without ever attaining to satisfaction.
These ideas were the subject of long and lively discussions between my wife, her father, and myself. These discussions, as was natural with discussions arising out of a doctrine which was maturing in the mind of a patient seeker after truth, were, so to speak, eccentric; they revolved now round one point, now round another. Nevertheless, the central point round which they ultimately revolved was this: whether the wealth for which man has to thank machinery is real or apparent. I said that, since machinery produces much and at great speed, there seemed to me no room for doubt that it increased the sum of benefits at man’s disposal, and therefore enriched the world. My wife replied that if machinery produces much, it also consumes enormously, more indeed than it produces, so that a mechanical civilisation must always feel itself tormented by the necessity of having more than it possesses, and, therefore, must be always in a state of indigence. So the discussions went on, lively and long, without either of the parties convincing the other; and at last I came to the conclusion that our amour propre must be making us persist in the sophistical discussion of an unreal question.
When I got to America, however, I saw that the question we were discussing was anything but unreal; for it was these ideas and discussions which enabled me to collate our friend’s economic difficulties with the mystical spirit which pervades so large a part of American life, and to understand the nature of American progress. Were not the economic difficulties encountered especially in the big cities, notwithstanding the immense wealth of the country, by the most numerous classes of America, the decisive proof that really, as my wife asserted, the wealth created by a mechanical civilisation is to some extent only apparent? That notwithstanding the great depredation of nature carried out with means furnished by science, men’s needs increase faster than their riches; therefore that mechanical civilisation revolves in the vicious circle of an insoluble contradiction? All the same, if America had set herself with less eagerness to exploit by means of machinery her immense natural resources; if she had not welcomed so many millions of men from all parts of the world; if she had not invested in machinery and industries and railways such a vast amount of capital, without a doubt we should find a smaller number of people living, and living more comfortably, in America to-day; but the conquest of the vast continent would not have reached its present pitch, and the world would not have witnessed that unparalleled event in its history, the bewildering development of the United States.
In fact, we must not forget, if we wish to realise what a miracle the civilisation of machinery has succeeded in accomplishing in the New World, how slow and difficult was the expansion of mankind over the world up to the end of the eighteenth century, that is, during a period when men worked with their hands and travelled over their planet on their own legs, or on those of animals little swifter than themselves. The great plains acted as so many great barriers in the way of men’s occupation of the land, because men lost their way in them. Consequently men tended to settle on little tracts of land, in such a way as to be near one another, to be able to communicate easily with one another, and to exchange their products. Everybody knows how slow has been in Europe the advance of civilisation from south to north; how many centuries were required for the passage of the Alps and expansion into Gaul, how many for the crossing of the Rhine and extension as far as the Elbe, and again for the passage of the Elbe and the advance towards the Vistula and the great plains of Eastern Europe. In America itself—in the South as well as in the North—up to the end of the eighteenth century, the progress of population and civilisation was very slow and difficult.
In the twentieth century, on the other hand, a prodigy occurred, thanks to steam-engines and all the other machines of which the steam-engine is the parent. With these machines, men can exploit more rapidly and thoroughly all the wealth of the earth, and with the railways can export the wealth produced, even from the most remote and buried regions, which thus can be peopled and exploited. Civilisation, following the railway-lines, and armed with fire and machines, in little more than fifty years extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, crossing and occupying, however summarily, the immense territories of the interior, and binding together with a network of communications and interests, cities, climates, and territories without number from east to west, from north to south. But machinery is an inanimate instrument, only to be imbued with creative force by the thought and will of man. In consequence, this miracle of history would not have come about if a bold and energetic people had not multiplied machines with extraordinary rapidity over the whole immensity of their territory; if they had not subordinated to this supreme end every other good, æsthetic beauty, the preservation of traditions, the purity of the national spirit, and even the conveniences of life which wealth can give. American progress is then a transcendent and mystical idea which inflames America with passion and impels it to accomplish the new and rapid conquest of its own territory. And logic wastes its time looking for and laying bare contradictions in it savouring of the absurd. Doubtless, to work with frenzied zeal at creating riches in order to be unable to enjoy them is an absurdity if judged in the light of the interest of each individual; but are not all ideals absurd, when judged in the light of the interest of the individual? What does it matter to the soldier who dies in battle that his country emerges victorious from the conflict in which it is engaged, seeing that he will not be able to enjoy the fruits of the victory? From the point of view of personal interest, it is better to live in a country disgraced and diminished by a defeat than to die in a country aggrandised by a victory. So the privations to which I had seen exposed in the intimacy of her home, that kind hostess of ours, who had offered us luncheon in her modest flat, no longer seemed an absurd contradiction of life. Her privations were transfigured into a small personal sacrifice necessary for the fulfilment of a great national work, transcending the interest and the wishes of every individual American.
Thus at last I had grasped American progress and its apparent incongruities. It was an ideal of life, born and rapidly matured in a new continent during the past half century, at a time when the conquest of the vast territory by means of machinery was becoming more widespread and more intense. It was the ideal of life which, overshadowing all the others, had called forth from the depths of American society the marvellous energy which has staggered the world. When I had once found the key to this enigma, many phenomena of American life seemed to me clearer. I could easily explain to myself why the public attached less weight to politics on that side than in Europe, and regarded the defects and shortcomings in its political institutions with an indifference which to Europeans seems strange; in particular, why it preferred having them in a condition full of defects and inconveniences rather than any reform which increased the power of the State and limited the initiative of the individual. I could explain also how it had succeeded in keeping alive that spirit of liberty, not in politics only, but in religion, administration, customs, and culture which often strikes Europeans as either excessive or bizarre. The great national work—the conquest of the continent—is accomplished much more by personal initiative than with the help and under the direction of the State; the important point, therefore, is that personal energy should be subjected in this great work to the smallest possible number of limits and restrictions.
Lastly, I could explain why in American society, to borrow a rather quaint philosophical expression, the category of quantity prevails over that of quality. During my first few weeks in America, I used to smile when I heard some Americans go into ecstasies at the thought that everything in America was big, from the country to the cities, the factories, and the statistics of population; when they gloated over comparisons between their own country and the little countries of Europe, and statements of the comparative superiority in size of things in their own country. I no longer smiled, however, when I realised what American progress represented. A civilisation, whose principal instrument for the accomplishment of its work and for establishing itself in the world is machinery, must necessarily consider the quantitative criterion the supreme criterion of perfection. In what respect, indeed, is machinery, regarded as an instrument of production, superior to the human hand? Everybody knows that its superiority consists not in quality, but in the quantity, of its output. Machinery produces much and quickly. The hand produces little and slowly. The hand, however, can attain a standard of perfection which is denied machinery. Man will never succeed in constructing a machine capable of sculpturing the Venus of Milo or of weaving the marvellous tapestries which we admire in the museums of Europe. Everything of a high degree of perfection is exclusively handmade; vice versa, the hand, however, it may strive and labour and practise, will never succeed in attaining in its work the giddy rapidity of which steam- and electricity-driven machines are capable, or in producing in so short a time so many good things. Consequently, in a civilisation in which machinery predominates, men will be continually making fresh efforts to live faster and faster, and to produce and consume more and more rapidly. They will not be, on the other hand, too exacting on the score of quality. They will be content with things which look nice, without demanding extraordinary excellence or finish in details. They will be better pleased to consume many examples of products of inferior durability than one single example of products of great perfection. Consequently, vagaries of taste, continual movement, ready forgetfulness of traditions, and abundance of mediocrity, will be salient characteristics of machine-ruled civilisation. The great works of art which were the glory of past régimes will disappear for the present, which will see them replaced by objects of medium quality offered in greater quantity.
As a matter of fact, I found all these characteristics in North America, and they no longer offended me. They seemed to me necessary qualities of a society which sets out to conquer a boundless territory with machinery. Nevertheless, at this point, having solved the American problem, I was confronted with the European problem under a new aspect. If American progress, if machinery, if the quantitative criterion of perfection are necessary weapons for the accomplishment of the great historical work to which the United States have set themselves, how are we to explain the fact that in the states of Europe also machines are being multiplied, the American idea of progress is spreading, and the quantitative criterion of perfection is prevailing gradually? All of them except Russia, which in many respects resembles the United States, are countries of an old civilisation, live in small tracts of territory, and have not immense continents to exploit.
At this point I saw hovering over Europe and America a new, vaster, and more general problem, which dominates the two worlds and bestrides the Atlantic like a great bridge: the struggle between quantity and quality.