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Page 52
In the first half of the last century, a party of twenty young men from
Cambridge, Massachusetts, started on what at that time was a great
adventure, the overland journey to Oregon. The preface to Wyeth's
"Oregon Expedition" throws light on the ideas of those who were not
statesmen or captains of industry, but only plain American citizens
sharing the vision which was common.
"The spot where our adventurer was born and grew up had many peculiar
and desirable advantages over most others in the County of Middlesex.
Besides rich pasturage, numerous dairies, and profitable orchards, it
possessed the luxuries of well-cultivated gardens of all sorts of
culinary vegetables, and all within three miles of Boston Market House,
and two miles of the largest live-cattle market in New England." Besides
these blessings there is enumerated "a body of water commonly called
Fresh Pond."
"But Mr. Wyeth said, 'All this availeth me nothing, so long as I read
books in which I find that by going only about four thousand miles
overland, from the shore of our Atlantic to the shore of the Pacific,
after we have there entrapped and killed the beavers and otters, we
shall be able, after building vessels for the purpose, to carry our most
valuable peltry to China and Cochin China, our sealskins to Japan, and
our superfluous grain to various Asiatic ports, and lumber to the
Spanish settlements on the Pacific; and to become rich by underworking
and underselling the people of Hindustan; and, to crown all, to extend
far and wide the traffic in oil, by killing tame whales on the spot,
instead of sailing around the stormy region of Cape Horn.'
"All these advantages and more were suggested to divers discontented and
impatient young men. Talk to them of the great labor, toil, risk, and
they would turn a deaf ear to you; argue with them and you might as well
reason with a snowstorm."
If you would understand the driving power of America, you must
understand "the divers discontented and impatient young men" who in each
generation have found in the American wilderness an outlet for their
energies. In the rough contacts with untamed Nature they learned to be
resourceful. Emerson declared that the country went on most
satisfactorily, not when it was in the hands of the respectable Whigs,
but when in the hands of "these rough riders--legislators in
shirt-sleeves--Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger--or whatever hard-head
Arkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, half-orator, half-assassin, to
represent its wrath and cupidity at Washington."
The men who made America had an "excess of virility." "Men of this
surcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies;
cannot read novels and play whist; cannot satisfy all their wants at the
Thursday Lecture and the Boston Athen�um. They pine for adventure and
must go to Pike's Peak; had rather die by the hatchet of the Pawnee than
sit all day and every day at the counting-room desk. They are made for
war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing, and the joy of
eventful living."
In Emerson's day there was ample scope for all these varied energies on
the frontier. "There are Oregons, Californias, and Exploring Expeditions
enough appertaining to America to find them in files to gnaw and
crocodiles to eat."
But it must have occurred to some one to ask, "What will happen when the
Oregons and Californias are filled up?" Well, the answer is, "See what
is happening now." Instead of settling down to herb-tea and elegies,
Young America, having finished one big job, is looking for another. The
noises which disturb you are not the cries of an angry proletariat, but
are the shouts of eager young fellows who are finding new opportunities.
They have the same desire to do big things, the same joy in eventful
living, that you had thirty years ago. Only the tasks that challenge
them have taken a different form.
When you hear the words "Conservation," "Social Service," "Social
Justice," and the like, you are apt to dismiss them as mere fads. You
think of the catchwords of ineffective reformers whom you have known
from your youth. But the fact is that they represent to-day the
enthusiasms of a new generation. They are big things, with big men
behind them. They represent the Oregons and Californias toward which
sturdy pioneers are moving, undeterred by obstacles.
The live questions to-day concern not the material so much as the moral
development of the nation. For it is seen that the future welfare of the
people depends on the creation of a finer type of civic life. Is this
still to be a land of opportunity? Ninety millions of people are already
here. What shall be done with the next ninety millions? That wealth is
to increase goes without saying. But how is it to be distributed? Are we
tending to a Plutocracy, or can a real Democracy hold its own? Powerful
machinery has been invented. How can this machinery be controlled and
used for truly human ends? We have learned the economies that result
from organization. Who is to get the benefit of these economies?
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