A German Appraisal of the United States

SINCE the civil war, which disclosed the might of America, there has been begotten in Europe an intelligent curiosity as to the forms and meanings of American life. Scholars have turned to our great republic, and studied its law, history, and social characteristics, and men of practical politics and practical science have profited by our example or learned to shun our follies. Not to speak of more trivial investigations, Bryce, Carlier, and Von Holst have, in their respective languages, given to the world descriptions of the life, law, and history of the United States. Professor Ratzel’s book ¹ can well be classed with the works of these three ; for he has written much more than a dead geography of America. The book is more than scientific ; it is human. He feels that the United States has an immense moral influence upon the life of that new Germany which has begun to lift its head under the inspiring consciousness of a realized harmony, and to grope toward a social and industrial situation worthy of the nineteenth century, and befitting its political greatness and its political achievements. This feeling has given the book something of a German cast. His purposes have occasionally affected the accuracy of his scientific insight, but they have also brought his geography securely within the category of the humanities. He feels the meaning of American life so strongly that in his preface he thus confesses to his hopes : “ It may be asserted that the political intelligence of a people can be measured to-day by the amount of knowledge and appreciation they may possess of what is occurring, and is likely to occur, in America. We must therefore take care that Germany, which has already derived so much benefit from its knowledge of the United States, shall not be excelled by any people in this knowledge.” It is largely, also, because of such feeling that this second edition has become, as Professor Ratzel asserts, a new book. Not only have the facts and figures been altered to agree with the statistics of our last census ; the spirit of the book has been changed as well. The author more fully sympathizes in our manifest destiny, and has more minutely studied the influence of topography on character.

The word 舠 geography ” may conceal rather than reveal the scope of the work to the reader who has not noticed the trend of modern geographical study. All science has of course come under the sway of the evolutionary idea; and thus geography is no longer an account of the dwelling - place of man, but of his growing - place. It strives to give the physical facts which are making for human development and progress. Even when the exact correspondence between man and his physical environment cannot be determined, new interest is given to topography and climate because of the realization that these are telling facts in human history. No problems in politics, in law, in sociology, are foreign to the student of the subject, because all are at the most but the converse side of geography, the effect of physical forces. All earthy facts assume a spiritual signifi cance when touched by the wand of this most modern of sciences. Ratzel’s book is built upon this comprehension of the geographic science. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that it contains not simply a description of the American topography and climate, but a discussion of the race problem and of the emigration question, and a consideration of polities and society, of the physical, mental, and moral structure of the American man.

Professor Ratzel has not endeavored to trace out laboriously the effect of climate upon the energy, fancy, and bodily vigor of European emigrants to America. This is not because he depreciates the value of climate as an historical factor, but because he appreciates that hundreds of other things go to make up man’s environment. We find, also, little or no trace of the doctrine of the dynamic economists. And yet their ideas could, with no violence to the theories of the author, be classed as distinctly geographic rather than economic. Perhaps he does not see that an abundance of cheap food — evidently an earthy fact — has had at least as much force in our history as have rivers and lakes and snows. He has made, however, most valuable additions to our thinking upon the relations between physics and politics. As one reads the book, he is almost forced to the conclusion that American history must be rewritten, this time from the standpoint of geography, as before from that of politics or mysticism. Professor Ratzel states some wellknown facts so clearly that they have at once a new meaning for us, and show us how inevitably nature has conditioned our history and will shape our destiny. We are, he states, a Pacific as well as an Atlantic power; and this simple statement, clearly and forcibly made, causes us to realize that the Eastern question is for us a Western one. How much political significance is there in the fact that Wyoming holds within her limits the source of irrigation for her Eastern and Southern neighbors ? A land which has thus been bound together, the power of secession can never put asunder. But it is easy to give way too readily to the charm of finding sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks. All the energies of our history are not the immediate bequest of physical environment. We know full well, for instance, that the great motive ideas of Puritanism can no more be dug out of the New England drift than sunbeams can be made out of cucumbers.

Professor Ratzel has sought, perhaps not in vain, for one physical fact the effect of which will account for certain evident characteristics common to the whole American people. Spite of the diversities of climate and topography, the men of the United States, wheresoever they may live, are not unlike. He finds one all-pervading influence affecting the social, industrial, and purely intellectual life. This comes from the size or Spaciousness (Raum) of the country. “ The breadth of the land has given to the American spirit something of its own size.” This conception of space has stimulated the imagination; it has begotten the idea of manifest destiny, and has thus directly affected our politics and our diplomacy ; it has had its enlivening effect not only in commerce and government, but in morals and religion; it has stamped upon the mind of the common man a lasting brand of optimism ; it has given to American democracy a peculiar fatalism, which makes us tolerant of political abuses and corruption, and hopeful in the midst of disaster ; it has caused the people to give time, energy, and money to schools and colleges, and has made the typical American parent indulgent toward his children, because the manifest destiny of the undeveloped country lies in the mind and brain of the coming generation. The use which the author makes of this idea is so suggestive that one hesitates to criticise it. Yet it is doubtful if the proverbial good nature — I do not mean gayety or frolicsomeness — of the American people can be so intimately connected with spaciousness as Professor Ratzel would have us believe. Better and more abundant food, a more stimulating climate, more reasonable political and social conditions, help to differentiate the American from the inhabitant of northern Germany. One who has passed a winter beneath the lowering skies of Saxony, or even Prussia, need not be told that sunshine has its direct physical effect upon the spirits. If the statistics of 1890 are trustworthy, suicides in the states of north and middle Germany are from five to six times as frequent as in the states of America. California alone approaches Germany in the percentage of suicides, but that is because the Chinaman has a peculiar facility in making his quietus with a bare bodkin.

Perhaps the most interesting portions of this book are those which treat of the social and intellectual characteristics of Americans. It must be said that Professor Ratzel is eminently fair, although at times he has failed to sympathize. In fact, one feels that he has seen, but not felt; that he has the cool insight of the surgeon without the compassionate appreciation of the physician. Bryce has shown us that sympathy need not insure commendation. Ratzel does not feel sympathy, fellow-feeling, even when he commends. Yet at times he is fairer toward us than are many of us toward ourselves. He does not hesitate to say, for instance, that the American is bodily and mentally more refined and mobile than the European ; that he thinks and acts more quickly than the German ; that he is richer in fantasy and less restrained by precedent; that although the American gentleman is often cross (verdriesslich), he is on the whole more coolly polished and polite than his European counterpart.

It is to be hoped that some of the plain statements of fact which this book contains may penetrate some German brain which firmly holds the illusion that all learning is Teutonic in origin. The author knows America too well to believe that our thoughts and our genius are all absorbed in petty ingenuity, in inventing new mousetraps or useless paraphernalia for kitchen shelves. The so-called American inventiveness is more than a perverted, paltry ingenuity. At times it is the application of common sense to the simplifying of problems of living; but much of it is genuine scientific research. In some fields, for instance electricity, it is not now necessary for the German savant to say, “ It is good,” before the world will recognize that something has been done. In astronomy, in geology, in many lines of pure science, the Americans are and have been making contributions to learning. Ratzel knows this, because he himself knew the great Agassiz. He knows enough, too, to repel the assertion of the a priori German who ridiculed the possibility of real historical work among us, because, forsooth, so many thousands of Gibbon’s Rome were sold yearly in the United States. He spurns, also, the idea that the American mind is deficient in fancy; on the contrary, mobility and airiness are its characteristics. He believes that we love nature ; our poetry is the poetry of nature, and our prose betrays its influence. This open-hearted love of nature, as one sees it in its simplicity and grandeur, gives to all our literature a flavor distinguishing it from the literature of modern Europe. Geography has impressed itself upon the heart and soul of the man of letters. We have no ruins or historic minsters, but we have inspiring anticipations of a coming empire, and thus the imagination feels the stimulus of hope.

That America is industrially one of the leaders of the world, and that Germany, much as she has profited by example, has much to learn, no thinking and reading German now denies. This superiority Professor Ratzel takes for granted. His explanation of its cause is somewhat unique. He attributes our industrial energy and productiveness not simply to the richness of the soil, and the unbounded opportunity our spacious country offers for remunerative work. The publicans of South America have the same privilege. Even the stimulating climate and race mixture are not dwelt upon as the main causes. He seems to stop short of such physical reasons, and contents himself with what would appear to be a secondary rather than a primary cause. He finds the secret of our industrial energy in the early maturity of our young people. As producers in the economic field, our young men begin to work some five years earlier than in Germany. Statisticians in the latter country place the beginning of the productive age at twenty-five, but our author well says that here it is not later than twenty. 舠 Therein lies the great industrial gain, — that the families are more quickly relieved from the burden of supporting the children, and the young people at an earlier age enter the lists of those who are working to increase the national wealth.” If the evolutionary idea that progress has come from lengthening the plastic period of childhood hold true in the more advanced stages of evolution, we may perhaps doubt whether this early maturity is an advantage to our race. The author thinks, however, that the American character is expanded and enriched by the fact that youthful dependence, weakness, and irresolution do not extend far down into the age of manhood. The only evil which he sees is one which attests the fact that, with all his keenness and fairness, he is a foreigner, and a German foreigner still: he laments that the politician uses the youthful voter for his own sad ends, and that young men’s political clubs have too much influence in guiding tile ship of state. We all might wish that the thoughtlessness of youth were the greatest danger threatening the sensible navigation of our somewhat leaky craft.

Early maturity might establish a presumption of early decay. Professor Ratzel is somewhat misty on this subject. We have heard so much about the American man’s burning his candle at both ends that the metaphor has been completely domesticated. Yet our author, while not denying that old age comes early here, asserts that this is true only of the body, not of the mind, — a curious piece of spiritualism to come from a physical scientist. We are asked to believe that after the physique is worn and battered by the stress and storm of life, the mind goes marching on in unabated vigor, — an assertion, in reality, that the cells of the brain have not felt the wear and tear that have broken down the rest of the body. The fact of the matter is, that these theories about the early death of the American man or his early decrepitude are still very nebulous. One would like to see in a scientific book some figures that would materialize or dissipate this misty superstition. The author quotes with apparent approval the remarks of Sir Charles Dilke, who is much shocked at the pale, strained, and haggard faces that he meets on the streets of Boston ; but such a sigh might find its echo from the American who walks toweringly among the little men who haunt Hyde Park on a Sunday afternoon to enjoy the music or listen to socialistic harangues. Do the figures of life insurance companies show that the European lives longer than the American ? Do the reports from hospitals or the hospital tent show the American less enduring under suffering, a more delicate and dangerous subject for the surgeon ? Do army measurements show that he is more narrowchested and has less lung capacity in proportion to his size, —one of the crucial tests of vitality made by our professors of physical culture ? The answer must needs be “ no ” to all these inquiries. Moreover, where the early English stock has been allowed naturally to develop unmixed with the recent emigrations from Continental Europe, the inhabitants of this continent are models of physical manhood. Professor Ratze! himself makes the statement that American babies are larger than those of Europe. Measurements taken at Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge, England, prove that the New England collegian is larger than the scion of the old English university. All these facts must be admitted. And yet one is asked to believe that, figures to the contrary, these advantages of the American youth are early wasted and frittered away. It must be time to revise these statements about American leanness. Many of them had their origin sixty years ago, or more, when, it may be, the typical Yankee was not caricatured in the figure given to Uncle Sam as he has always appeared in comic cartoons. Possibly the picture was not a libel on many of the farmers and woodsmen, who, in the earlier history of our land, were not fed by the produce of a developed country, but nursed dyspepsia and neurasthenia on salt pork, corn bread, and maple syrup.

Professor Ratzel is seen at his best and at his worst in his chapter on the church : at his best, because it shows a most careful gathering and handling of material; at his worst, because it is impossible in one chapter to characterize the complicated religious life of America. There is something misleading even in the title of the chapter, Die Kirche. In no sense have we the church. We have neither a leading denomination nor an established hierarchy ; and a combination of all the religious bodies does not form the church, if one gives to that term the meaning which it has in the life of any European state. At his worst he is, too, because the most liberal and open-minded foreigner cannot come to an appreciation of the vitality of American religion through a study of statistics. Yet the author’s keenness of vision and philosophic aptitude for his task are so clearly shown that this chapter is fascinating ; especially, it may be, because one is intensely interested in seeing the churches of America through the spectacles of a German professor. His opening sentences are amusingly antithetical and pungent. Turning from a gloomy sketch of the dark and devious labyrinth of American politics, he says : 舠 It has been said that the Americans possess a talent for politics. Their talent for religion is perhaps greater. The American has received as an Anglo-Saxon heritage this gift closely connected with earnestness in living, fidelity to duty, and practical sense. Together with his political sense of freedom he has a regard for everything which is generally recognized as worthy of reverence.”

The philosophical observer of America has at no time had difficulty in discovering that at least in our newer Western life the motives and impulses of men were closely associated with the moods and teachings of nature, their constant companion and friend. Professor Ratzel has thrown new light upon the subject, and even when stating ordinary facts has helped us to trace more exactly the subtle threads of influence which, coming from the tangible things about us, have been woven into the warp and woof of character. He shows that, although there is now no great unredeemed West to spur the imagination with the thought of material conquest, the consciousness of empire and visions of coming power have cast the warmth of optimism upon the American mind ; and in describing our present industrial status, he too yields to the contagion of hopefulness. Especially to Americans geography should be a subject of continuing interest. It must take its place in our college curriculum as one of the fundamental studies in preparation for intelligent citizenship and public service. Modern as it is in its generous phase, it is in its essence the mother of physical sciences, and such a work as this proves that it is the mother of political and social science as well.