American Ideals 29 



ideal of the men "whose fatherland is the till," is in 

 its very essence debasing and lowering. It is as true 

 now as ever it was that no man and no nation shall 

 live by bread alone. Thrift and industry are indis- 

 pensable virtues ; but they are not all-sufficient. We 

 must base our appeals for civic and national better- 

 ment on nobler grounds than those of mere business 

 expediency. 



We have examples enough and to spare that tend 

 to evil; nevertheless, for our good fortune, the men 

 who have most impressed themselves upon the 

 thought of the nation have left behind them careers 

 the influence of which must tell for good. The un- 

 scrupulous speculator who rises to enormous wealth 

 by swindling his neighbor; the capitalist who op- 

 presses the workingman; the agitator who wrongs 

 the workingman yet more deeply by trying to teach 

 him to rely not upon himself, but partly upon the 

 charity of individuals or of the state and partly upon 

 mob violence ; the man in public life who is a dema- 

 gogue or corrupt, and the newspaper writer who 

 fails to attack him because of his corruption, or who 

 slanderously assails him when he is honest; the po- 

 litical leader who, cursed by some obliquity of moral 

 or of mental vision, seeks to produce sectional or 

 social strife all these, though important in their 

 day, have hitherto failed to leave any lasting im- 

 press upon the life of the nation. The men who have 

 profoundly influenced the growth of our national 

 character have been in most cases precisely those 

 men whose influence was for the best and was 



