

i 



CLIMAX: SUNNY PROGRESSIVISM 

 AND THE SHADOW OF WAR 



Doubtless the rise of science put much of the concept of "progress" 

 into the progressive faith. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president 

 after John Quincy Adams to show overt personal enthusiasm for science. 

 The conservationists of the early 1900's saw science as a substitute for 

 power politics, a means of determining the public interest in a truer 

 sense than the balancing of rival interests. Yet if science meant progress, 

 it also meant national power. The application of science to industry and 

 agriculture meant that it was becoming an essential factor in the strength 

 of the nation. Germany, which had led the way in the application of 

 science to industry and had been the admiration and model of scientifi- 

 cally ambitious Americans for half a century, now emerged as a threat 

 to the balance of power among nations partly because of her industrial 

 pre-eminence. When the British blockade cut off supplies of German 

 optical glass and German dyes, the products which depended on German 

 industrial research, Americans awakened to the importance of their re- 

 search establishment with a sense of shock. When Germany became the 

 enemy in 1917, Americans found themselves in a war of science as well 

 as a war of industry. The thoughtful statesman of 1918 could share with 

 the progressive of 1900 a feeling for the importance of science, but he 

 could less easily share the innocent belief in progress. 



Had the application of science to practical life revolutionized Amer- 

 ican life by 1918 or had the United States retained its colonial back- 

 wardness in organizing its scientific brainpower? Had Americans mas- 

 tered the art of organized innovation which could break the conservative 

 hold of tradition in technology which had reigned through most of 

 history? Had American democracy provided in its own fashion the insti- 

 tutions necessary to couple science and technology? Or was democracy 

 at a fatal disadvantage when pitted against an autocracy which could 

 pour resources into science without consulting an electorate ignorant of 

 the practical potentialities in the life of the mind? Clearly, two lines of 

 answers can be developed for each of these questions depending on your 



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