The Survival of Ability

ALL the way from Cherbourg, the three had, in their after-lunch corner, emitted more talk than smoke. By the time they were nearing New York, they had reknit old friendships and had arrived at a fair notion of each other’s way of looking at the world. It was at their final foregathering in the smoking-room, the last day out, that Burgherson remarked to Gray, —

‘You’ll hardly know your own country, after living abroad twenty years.’

‘Oh,’ said Gray, ‘I’ve tried to keep myself posted. You must n’t think that you’ve grown and changed “unbeknownst.” Even in Madrid we are pretty familiar with the way lower New York looks to-day. The camera and the illustrated papers don’t let one fall far behind the times. If I give any little gasps of surprise as we approach the Battery, it will be out of a polite regard for your expectations, not because I shall be seeing so much that is startlingly novel to me.’

‘But, my dear fellow,’ protested Burgherson, ‘it’s not that kind of thing I mean at all. What I had in mind was that you will find the spirit of the American people, the trend of public sentiment, entirely different from what you knew when you went away in 1892.’

‘Have you changed all that?’ asked Gray lightly.

‘Yes,’ broke in Erskine, ‘and the more we have changed it, the more it has remained the same thing.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ warned Burgherson. ‘We have done much more than alter in externals during the past twenty years. Our whole national consciousness has been transformed. We have acquired skyscrapers, to be sure, and subways and parks and all that, but the great thing is that we have acquired a new soul. That’s something the camera can’t tell you anything about.’

‘Very true,’ said Gray, ‘yet you know that I have been in the habit of meeting an occasional fellow countryman in Europe. He usually brings his new soul along with him.’

‘Yes,’ observed Erskine, ‘I saw more than one of him this summer making an indecent exposure of his soul.’

‘No one man can exhibit to you the soul I am speaking of,’ cried Burgherson. ‘It is a collective thing. The change that Gray, here, will find is one in the air that we all breathe, in that attitude of tout le monde which is more significant, if not wiser, than that of any single man or group of men.’

‘Examples, please,’ said Erskine dryly.

‘Why,’ rejoined Burgherson, ‘you know them well enough. Take the new view of corporations that has come in like a flood. Consider the way in which the community now looks upon wealth. We have a common point of view in all these matters entirely changed from what it was a generation ago.’

‘ I asked for bread, and you gave me a stone,’ interposed Erskine. ‘I asked for examples and you gave me abstractions. Do come down to the concrete, if you can. Put the thing personally, so that Gray will know what you are driving at.’

‘I will,’ said Burgherson. ‘It was his father, was n’t it, who built the Bay to Forest railroad? Gray has told us how the people of the region could n’t do enough for his father. They praised him and fêted him and gave him the freedom of their cities and made him presents. That was scarcely thirty years since. Well, where can you find anything like that attitude to-day manifested toward a railway promoter or manager? It is dead and gone. If Carlyle were alive, he would n’t need to utter vociferous laments over the monuments erected to railroad kings like Hudson.’

‘That’s true,’ said Erskine, ‘what they want to erect now is a gallows.’

‘Do you mean to say,’inquired Gray, laughing, ‘ that if I went to the scene of my father’s triumphs, they would want to hang me?’

‘Oh, no,’ replied Erskine, ‘you are not the original malefactor. All that Burgherson and his kind would wish to do to the second generation is to take away their property.’

‘But the Constitution still forbids confiscation, does n’t it?’

‘Tax, the wise it call. Of course,’ went on Erskine, ‘they won’t strip you of everything. You can fight them off during your lifetime, but I don’t know what Burgherson will tell you is likely to happen to your son.'

‘He will have to do some useful work,’ said Burgherson warmly, ‘be a genuine producer and of actual value to society, or else society, instead of letting him clip coupons, will clip his wings for him. Seriously, my dear Gray, I’m not such a desperate radical as Erskine is pleased to make me out, but I see what I see. When the whole world has had the new element injected into its blood it is not to be supposed that the United States can stand apart, immune. We, too, are in for mighty changes. They are already upon us, in fact.’

‘Música! música! as Gray’s Spaniards say,’ exclaimed Erskine. ‘Again I ask for particulars. I know that the miserable details are anguish to fellows like Burgherson, but, really, we can’t get on without them. Let us take the case of Gray’s boy. Being his father’s son, we are bound to believe that he has great talent and boundless energy. Oh, don’t mention it! I don’t know the young rascal, but, for the sake of argument, I am willing to assume that his little finger is thicker than his father’s loins. And what I want you to tell me, Burgherson, is exactly what has happened since his grandfather’s day, to prevent his ability and ambition from having room and verge enough in the United States.’

‘I said nothing,’ answered Burgherson, ‘to imply that any man is hampered in the vigorous use of his powers, whatever they may be. All I contend for is that the common stock is now the first consideration, and the personal achievement, with the personal reward that goes with it, of less account. If it follows from this that the career is not so open to talent as it once was, then so be it. We cannot be blind to the process going on before our eyes, the individual withering and the community becoming more and more.’

‘That sounds very modern,’ said Erskine, ‘but you will admit that it dates back to that exceedingly antiquated and objectionable person, Early Victoria.’

‘What I admit,’ rejoined Burgherson, ‘is that there were, of course, Socialists before Socialism. But what I want you to admit is that the times have so changed that the individual can no longer run riot. Come now, give us your views about the whole matter. Do it as the last of the individualists.’

‘Oh, don’t for goodness’ sake, call me anything so archaic as that,’ protested Erskine. ‘I like to think of myself simply as a realist.’

‘By that,’ said Burgherson, ‘I suppose you mean that you keep a keen eye on the actual fact. Very well, go ahead upon that basis. Tell us what you think of the present outlook for high individual endowment and great personal energy as compared with their opportunities forty years ago.’

‘I am afraid,’ said Erskine, ‘that I should only bore you — or else make you angry. However —’

‘Let me add my pleadings,’ interposed Gray. ‘Here I am returning to my own, my native land, and I don’t know whether my heart ought to be burning with joy or fear. Enlighten me.'

‘I doubt if I can do anything for you,’ said Erskine. ‘You and I are too old. But there is your Wunderkind to think of, and you might pass on to him what I say to you. Well, then, let us suppose, to begin with, that the miraculous son of a commonplace father wants to fling himself into public life. Is there anything in all this stuff that Burgherson has been getting off his chest to show that the very highest political power is less within reach of the political genius to-day than it was in our fathers’ time? The pieces on the board have changed, I admit, but the game is what it always was, and the skillful player can win as before. I grant you that nowadays the born political manager has to adopt new methods. He now studies how to deal with masses rather than units. You remember, Gray, your father’s friend, Blaine. He was an adroit politician, in his day, but he worked, as it were, on the atomic theory. It was his boast that he could detach here and there an individual voter from the ranks of his opponents. Much was made in 1884 of the occasional ‘Blaine Irishman’—a sort of unnatural monster. Well, we have lived to see a successor of Blaine in the leadership of the Republican party who reached out and annexed Irish Democrats by the thousand, who got the support of not merely a stray priest or two but of nearly the whole Catholic hierarchy, and who stretched forth his hand and captured the Hebrew vote in huge blocks. That consummate political talent did n’t find himself hampered by the new conditions, did he? ’

‘No,’ answered Burgherson, ‘but he confirmed what I say about the vast popular movements of the day being the things that make the biggest political leader look puny. Roosevelt knew how to swim with the tide.’

‘Yes,’ went on Erskine, ‘but he made a big suction where he was swimming. The flotsam felt it! It is not impossible to appear to be merely going with the people when you are really making them follow you. Don’t forget what Emerson said about the man of native force being able to bend the oldest and mouldiest conventions to his will. So he can the newest and most dewy reform contrivances. I sometimes smile to think how all those newfangled popular elections and direct primaries and solemn consultations of the people’s will at every turn may be but so many tools in the hands of great political manipulators. If I were a boss I should chuckle over them as devices at once to solidify my power and to give it at the same time a kind of holy authority.’

‘Ah,’ objected Gray, ‘but it must be a ticklish thing to profess to be guided in all things by the people, and yet to shut out the crowd long enough to do your own thinking and planning.’

‘Not at all,’ rejoined Erskine, ‘if you only shut out the crowd in the name of service to the crowd! I seem to recall that our latest President used to assure the people that he would want them all at the White House, yet they say that he keeps himself very close to his job, and will see only those who he thinks will help him to get on with it.’

‘Well, I must say,’ remarked Burgherson, ‘that I don’t see anything very admirable in that.’

‘Not at all admirable,’ said Erskine, ‘to have given the impression that he could do his work in the midst of a mob, but highly admirable to ignore what he had said in order to wreak himself upon the thing to be done. But all this is not to the point. What I was arguing was that your surging masses could be handled as easily by the man with a gift for it as can your separate individuals and your smaller groups. If you accustom yourself to thinking in terms of the million, your problem works out as readily as if you were figuring with hundreds. Human nature remains human nature even among the Brobdingnags.’

‘ You talk as if you had been among them,’ said Gray, ‘for, like Gulliver after he had got back, everything looks small to you. But I will concede you the politics of it, if you like. I doubt if any son of mine could be so little true to type as to be able to get on in public life under any conceivable conditions. Business is another affair, however. And I wish you would tell me honestly what you think of Burgherson’s views on that subject. Is it the fact that the old chances are gone forever? Some of my father’s old friends have written me occasionally about this in the most dejected way. No more big fortunes to be hewed out; hampering laws; an air of general suspicion and jealousy of great wealth; attacks on property rights; the powers of corporations sheared away — and so on. What about all that?’

‘You said old friends,’ replied Erskine, ‘and I can well believe you. That is the way the men of seventy talk. They recall the “glorious days " of your father, when railroad presidents, as I have heard one of them say, had no law of either State or Nation to bother them, and could be both the law and the profits unto themselves; and because that special kind of opportunity has passed, these men, of lowered vitality and narrowed outlook, think that there will be no more cakes and ale. But you don’t hear the men in big business who are under forty talk that way. As a matter of fact, they are not talking very much at all, but they are thinking hard, keeping their eyes open, and their wits about them, and are, so far as I can see, just as hopeful of large achievement, with its fitting reward, as were their fathers before them.’

‘If they are,’ protested Burgherson, ‘they are living in a fool’s paradise. However it may be with politics, and, mark you, I do not give in even there so weakly as Gray did, the spirit of a new life has been breathed over business. The old greed and selfishness and extortion and preying upon the needs of the feebler, and exploitation of the common resources, and monopolistic practices, have gone for good. They are not even defended any more. A new civic conscience has been created under the ribs of death, and even if a man were able to-day to coin money out of the wrongs and sufferings of his fellows, he would be ashamed to do it. He could not hold up his head in the community. Piling up wealth without any sense of social obligation or any service to humanity has become the great modern turpitude.’

‘Hold on!’ cried Erskine, ‘Let us stick to the argument. I am not talking about what a man is to do with his money after he has made it. He may give half his goods to feed the poor and found theological seminaries at will, for all I care. What we were discussing is the question whether the skillful man of affairs can accumulate a fortune today and to-morrow as easily as the trick was turned yesterday. It comes down to this: given a brain applied to business, will not the superior brain prove really superior? To deny it is to deny the survival of ability. And ability in large business at present is in no way more clearly shown than in adjusting itself to existing conditions. Gray’s father, in building his railroad, had to think only of cuts and fills and tunnels. Railroad managers of the present find their obstacles of a less physical sort — laws, commissions, public opinion. But the latter can be surmounted as were the former; and the new-style railway men are learning how to do it. The great thing is command of the material with which you have to work. It is of one kind for one generation and another for another, but the really able man in either knows how to get along. Never fear that the world will cease to be organized with the better brain on top. And if Burgherson is so sure of all the new spirit having come in, he must n’t suppose that the astute and attentive minds in the great business are not as fully aware of it. They know that they must reckon with it and make their plans to accommodate themselves to it; and that is exactly what they have been doing. The new civic conscience? Bless your simple heart! They understand all about that. They are already capitalizing it! Have n’t you noticed that the cleverer among them are now talking nothing but full publicity for all corporations? Why, they fairly pine for it, Burgherson, and you must not deceive yourself into thinking that they do not know precisely what profit they are going to get out of it. Your devotion to the service of society does not exceed theirs a whit. It is almost laughable to note how the current shibboleths are being caught up and put into financial prospectuses and annual reports. The thing gets even into names. One of the snuggest little monopolies I know calls itself the Public Service Corporation. You think this impudence? No, it is only art, though not very magnificent. Have n’t you seen more than one People’s Bank, or Mutual Trust Company? They are merely trifling signs of the thing I mean — the infinite adaptability of a genius for business to changed conditions. You can’t get away from it. The clearest head and strongest wills of any generation simply will be the clearest and strongest. When you concede that, you concede that they will outstrip the men who are muddled and uncertain. None of your changes or artifices can prevent power from cleaving to him who power exerts. If that is obsolete individualism, make the most of it. It will certainly make the most of you.’

‘Your doctrine,’ said Gray, ‘is more hard than comforting. I don’t know whether it is good news for my son or not.’

‘You remind me,’ said Erskine with a smile, ‘of old Thomas Fuller poring over the genealogies of the Hebrew kings, and discovering that a bad father might have a good son, which, he said, is good news for my son. But I suspect that we’ll have to leave that youth of yours to open his own oyster. Nothing is more likely, however, than that, when he is an old man, he will look back upon these decadent and despondent times as a period when it was bliss to be alive and very heaven to be young. But my cigar is out, and my Lied was aus long ago. So now for a last turn on the deck and meet you at dinner.’