BETTER AMERICAN FAMILIES—IV 
A Brief Story of Several American Families Which Have Contributed Note- 
worthy Leaders in the Development of Our 
National Life! 
WILHELMINE E. Key 
Race Betterment Foundation, Battle Creek, Mich. 
ANY of us, as we look into the 
face of America today are won- 
dering what this face will be 
like a few generations hence. Such 
a confusion of prophecies strikes 
our ears, prophecies in which the cus- 
tomary optimistic note is discourag- 
ingly lacking! In the turmoil that has 
succeeded the war, ugly elements have 
come to the surface of our national life, 
menacing possibilities which never be- 
fore were suspected of existing here. 
Earnest people are everywhere ask- 
ing: “‘Is this, our boasted many-sided 
civilization, to prove a_ scandalous 
failure in the hour of its greatest suc- 
cess? How shallwe bring harmony into 
warring ideals and unity into the di- 
vergent purposes of our multitudinous 
population? How are we to so solidify 
our national life as to present an im- 
movable bulwark to a foe that con- 
tinues to threaten now within as well 
as without our gates? For we know 
that on our success in conferring a 
genuine naturalization on the alien, de- 
pends our success in the experiment of 
making democracy safe for ourselves 
and the world. 
WHAT FORCES ARE SHAPING 
THE NATION? 
The half century that succeeded the 
Civil War marked a fabulous growth 
in national wealth and power; it wit- 
nessed an astounding march of settle- 
ment till a vast continent was subdued, 
and an extension of industry, through a 
rule of coal-barons and steel-kings over 
millions of aliens thrust full-grown into 
the fabric of our national life. This 
has meant, largely, progress by masses 
of mechanical power, the furnace, 
steam and electricity. While the work- 
ers show capacity to manage these 
forces, the function of internal govern- 
ment has become the task of controlling 
these men, many of whom have re- 
mained as remote froma truly American 
spirit as though they had never touched 
our shores. If our present time of 
“taking stock”’ brings us any vision of 
the forces that have made America, 
and the processes that should shape a 
nation, if it ever so slightly directs our 
wills to a conscious shaping of these 
processes, it will have been worth all 
the agonies it is costing us. 
It is perhaps not generally known 
that this nation passed through a simi- 
lar period of turbulence in the years 
following the Revolution, particularly 
in the period of French Terrorism. 
The Constitution was adopted and the 
present government put into operation 
at a time when there was not a gram- 
mar, a geography or a history of any 
kind in the schools, and when a teacher 
who could compute interest was con- 
sidered ‘‘great in figures.’’ In thrifty 
New England, idle men loafed on street 
corners while women and children went 
in rags; the outposts of settlement were 
largely held by a nomad race, part 
farmer, but mostly hunter, who housed 
there numerous broods in filthy cabins, 
and held as the highest ideal, complete 
unrestraint from all social and govern- 
mental control. Franklin declared the 
press of the day was supported by 
human depravity, and Knox wrote 
Washington that in Massachusetts, 
those who opposed the Constitution 
acted ‘‘from deadly principle levelled 
'This is the fourth in a series of five articles on this subject by the same author, the former papers 
having appeared respectively in the January, February and March 1919 numbers of the JOURNAL 
oF Herepity.—Editor. 
358 
