The Two Americas 195 



wonderful mechanical skill and inventiveness of our 

 people. In all of this we have legitimate cause to feel 

 a noble pride, and a still nobler pride in the showing 

 made of what we have done in such matters as our 

 system of widespread popular education and in the 

 field of philanthropy, especially in that best kind of 

 philanthropy which teaches each man to help lift both 

 himself and his neighbor by joining with that neigh 

 bor hand in hand in a common effort for the common 

 good. 



But we should err greatly, we should err in the 

 most fatal of ways, by wilful blindness to whatever 

 is not pleasant, if, while justly proud of our achieve 

 ments, we failed to realize that we had plenty of 

 shortcomings to remedy, that there are terrible prob 

 lems before us, which we must work out right, under 

 the gravest national penalties if we fail. It can not 

 be too often repeated that there is no patent device 

 for securing good government ; that after all is said 

 and done, after we have given full credit to every 

 scheme for increasing our material prosperity, to 

 every effort of the lawmaker to provide a system 

 under which each man shall be best secured in his 

 own rights, it yet remains true that the great factor 

 in working out the success of this giant Republic of 

 the Western Continent must be the possession of those 

 qualities of essential virtue and essential manliness 

 which have built up every great and mighty people 



