CAUSES OF MANUFACTURERS' SUCCESS 287 



their whole life is absorbed in their business; their conversa- 

 tion hardly ever gets beyond the radius of how more dollars 

 can be made. You can never forget that here are men who 

 give every moment of their life to their work. I do not put it 

 forward as a noble life, but it is the life that makes successful 

 business men. 



The American is a polyglot composition. We British 

 folk chaff him on his habit of "blowing/' of always making 

 out his firm as twice as successful as it really is, and of declar- 

 ing his machine will do three times as much as it can actually 

 do. Still, we have a fondness for the American. But the 

 fondness is not returned. Ambassadors, I know, say agree- 

 able things in after-dinner speeches at fourth of July cele- 

 brations. Go, however, among the common people and there 

 you will find a resentment toward the nations of Europe. 

 There is nothing of this to be seen in the pleasant social cir- 

 cles to which the average visiting Briton is introduced. It 

 exists strongly, undeniably, among the masses, and these 

 are the people, more than in any other country, who count 

 in America. The reason is not far to seek. The majority 

 of Americans are not more than a single generation removed 

 from being Europeans themselves. They left the old coun- 

 tries with no love in their hearts. For a long time they have 

 been the butt of ridicule to polite society in Europe. They 

 have felt as the new rich always feel— that in manners they 

 are not standing on safe ground ; they have resented the con- 

 temptuous smile of the other countries, and they have con- 

 vinced themselves that European countries "are back num- 

 bers anyhow, and don't cut no ice!" 



It has not been the paupers of Europe who have gone to 

 make the American people, but rather men determined, and 

 maybe a little rancorous under a sense of curbed ambition, 

 who have thrown off old ties. The immigrant races are mixed 

 by marriage. So a new race — not a branch of the Anglo- 

 Saxon at all— has sprung into existence with that alertness of 

 brain you invariably find in the offspring of mixed peoples. 

 They start fresh, with no local customs, with no traditions, 

 with nothing but the feeling they are a new nation, somewhat 

 sneered at by the other nations of which they have to get 



