BETTER AMERICAN FAMILIES— V 



Some Leaders of American Thought, Offshoots of Superior Families, Who 



Helped to Form American Ideals and Shape Its Political 



and Social History 



WiLHELMINE E. KeY 



Race Betterment Foundation, Battle Creek, Mich. 



AMERICA still awaits the poet who 

 shall write her supreme epic. The 

 story of the conquest of a conti- 

 nent through sacrifice and hardihood is 

 not the only one that our history re- 

 cords. Rather it should be the story 

 of the march of new and vital ideas, 

 conceived by the chosen few, but now 

 the possession of the many. For ma- 

 terialistic America, swinging alter- 

 nately between rule of money-king and 

 grasping money-loving masses is yet 

 incurably idealistic. This idealism had 

 its share in the winning of the world 

 war, in the spiritual re-enforcement 

 which the American troops, pugna- 

 cious, profane and coarse-fibred as 

 many of them no doubt were, brought 

 to the winning of the great cause. 



This idealism is largely the inheri- 

 tance from the early settlers on Massa- 

 chusetts Bay. These settlers, drawn 

 from some of the most virile stocks of 

 old England, gave to the experiment in 

 democracy not only physical virility 

 but a set of virile ideas. Puritanism is 

 not so much a religious dogma as a con- 

 tinuing social force. It took only a 

 century for a new race to be born here. 

 This was a race formed by a new and 

 adverse environment and molded by 

 countless novel experiences, but more 

 than all vitalized by one or two great 

 ideas, caught from great leaders in our 

 social, religious and political life. 



EARLY AMERICAN LEADERS 



Turning now to this, the more purely 

 idealistic field of American develop- 

 ment, let us review briefly some types 

 of leadership as exemplified in such 

 families as the Beecher, Abbott, Ed- 

 wards, Adams, Lowell and Lawrence 

 Families. These men carried the cour- 

 age and resourcefulness of the pioneer 

 into the realms of politics, religion and 



education, predestined, we might say, 

 to leadership by virtue of birth and the 

 social heritage which was theirs. The 

 regnant personalities here described 

 are the offshoots of superior stocks, 

 gifted far above the average in insight, 

 altruism and love of truth. They have 

 found their followers in hundreds of 

 lesser individuals belonging to less dis- 

 tinguished families, whose adherence 

 was nevertheless of equal importance 

 with their own part in the realization 

 of their aims. It is this infiltration of 

 ideas into families and races, whether 

 better or worse than the average, who 

 however catch the spirit and feel them- 

 selves to be superior and act accord- 

 ingly, that constitutes the essence of 

 Americanism. 



THE ADAMS FAMILY 



In the field of statecraft, no family 

 stands out more conspicuously for its 

 services than does the Adams family. 

 Just because it is so well known, it will 

 not need to be considered at great 

 length. It is the only American fam- 

 ily that furnishes twt> names to the list 

 of the first thousand who are distin- 

 guished in human history. John 

 Adams, second president of the United 

 States is counted among the first five 

 hundred, aiid John Quincy Adams, his 

 son, is included in the second five hun- 

 dred. The earliest representative of 

 the family to enter public life was Sam- 

 uel Adams, the "Father of the Ameri- 

 can Revolution." He had the well- 

 known Adams characteristics. "Such 

 is the obstinacy and inflexible disposi- 

 tion of the man, that he can never be 

 conciliated by any office or gift what- 

 soever." .... "I should advise 

 persisting in our struggle for liberty, 

 though it were re\eale(l from heaven 

 that nine hundred and ninety nine were 



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