THE NEW IDEALISM
The New Idealism By FRANK TRACY CARLTON THE YOUTH of all lands and all ages live in a realm of idealism. As a rule the potency of ideals and ambitions diminishes as youth passes into maturity and...
...Verily, "the old order changeth...
...Not land and bonds, but efficiency and expertness are in the future to be the standards for measuring success...
...Service: The New Standard WHAT is implied by service...
...Social inertia is a powerful and often a dangerous and insidious force...
...The Western frontier line fades...
...BUT, WATCH, gradually this well-known path of the ardent American youth toward personal independence and material prosperity becomes more difficult for the newcomer...
...As a rule the potency of ideals and ambitions diminishes as youth passes into maturity and finally into old age...
...Combat becomes competition...
...he is impatient of vested rights, legal technicalities and time-honored traditions...
...Wealth as the significant ideal of American manhood is being thrust aside by the force of circumstances...
...As the keynote of both of these organizations was unquestioning obedience to authority, the inevitable effect was to press back any latent tendency toward radicalism and toward progressive thought...
...As the robber baron was characteristic of the political Middle Ages, the captain of industry who rides rough shod over men, women and children is representative of the passing industrial middle ages...
...Ideals, ambitiens and opportunities are not the same yesterday, now and forever...
...The ideals of the youth of yesterday are not, however, those of the youth of today...
...land and natural resources are bound to a few by legal ties...
...What Have You Done...
...The young men and young women of the present era will interpret their daily experiences somewhat differently than did their fathers and their mothers a generation ago...
...This is not the goal of wealth, but of service to fellow men...
...The ideal of the average railway magnate, for example, is large profits, not the comfort and safety of the passengers or the employees cf the company...
...No longer in industry, commeice and finance can the average youth of today find the stuff out of which to feed his ambitions and to construct his ideals...
...but, let us remember, the old dies hard...
...This is the hope of democracy and of Christian civilization...
...The opportunities for the youth now on the threshold of life are very different from those which a generation ago confronted the gray hairs of today...
...The era of the much-lauded "self-made" man is rapidly drawing to a close...
...The vividness of the old, sordid, individualistic ideal fades...
...Big business is muffling the voice or perverting the utterance of the young men who are eagerly pressing forward for distinction and for "success...
...The ideal of service is a working cl?.ss ideal...
...This transformation brings them into close and sympathetic touch with the working class...
...but while they are thus busily engaged, forces, unseen by them, are undermining the bssis of the evils they deplore...
...In a generation or two, one will seem as crude and as bloodthirsty as the other...
...Slowly the military power bowed to commerce and industry...
...It is,— "What have you done...
...but the emphasizing of pride in professional skill and attainments, —the placing of professional reputation above monetary rewards...
...Mature men furnish the social inertia which apparently retards the rate of human progress...
...anbther higher up is seen gradually to brighten...
...The world glories in the captains of industry and the millionaires...
...The young provide the potent push toward new conditions...
...Today's bright and shining mark Willi look faded and gray in the light of tomorrow's sun to the young men and young women of that new day...
...The ideals of Athens in her golden era were not those of the Middle Ages...
...The way for the many to the familiar goal is seen to be blocked...
...Human lights will tardily begin to take precedence over property rights...
...The youth finds in these his guides...
...Our young men and young women are seeing new visions...
...This is not because the youth of today is so much superior to his immediate predecessor, or so much more sympathetic...
...The machinery of obstruction, part Republican and part Democratic, the bipartisan bulwark of privilege, i3 breaking up rapidly...
...the saloon-, keeper and the brewer are passing outside...
...Now it is the narrowing, absolutely and relatively to numbers, of the road leading to wealth getting which is to cause a new outburst of enthusiasm for reform and humanitarianism...
...The rich or the midde-class man who adulterates food stuffs, refuses to properly guard his dangerous machinery, allows his employees to work under insanitary conditions, or employees' children in factories or in mines, will be placed in the same category as the highly individualistic men of bygone generations,—the robber baron, the slave driver, the bandit and the buccaneer...
...The new inspiration is not that which leads individuals to die for king and country...
...He would travel the same route they have traveled...
...The great reform movements of the day do offer this material in abundance...
...but to live for God and humanity in earth's crowded places...
...The ostrichlike conservatism of obstruction g.ve» way to the enlightened conservatism of Root, and militant progressives like Cummins, Beveridge, and La Follette extend and solidify their influence In congress and in the party councils...
...Their plan to send out an army of stand pat propagandists to fight insurgency is Inexcusable folly or-deliberate parly treason...
...but the middle class is only beginning to adopt it,—possibly because this class is threatened by extinction, probably because it is being quietly but surely shoved out of the realm in which independent business careers are possible into the class of salaried workers...
...Today young men and young women are turning from the ideal of wealth-getting as the chief aim of life to the fascinating ideal of service to mankind, of the promotion of peace and goodwill...
...he is inclined to be a fatalist, and usually desires to curb the impetuosity of youth...
...Block the youth's path at this point and he turns eagerly and passionately in another direction...
...the business man who slowly kills his workmen by overwork in insanitary buildings or murders the consumer with his unwholesome or poisonous products, and the landlord who rents the disease-breeding firetrap, will soon be unable to buy their way into decent society...
...and the handicaps in favor of certain individuals are too great...
...The party and the people at large demand a tariff revision that will not have to be explained with blue prints...
...There will be little or no undervaluation of comfort and of beauty...
...The wave of Insurgency that is washing Senator Hale high and dry on the shores of political desuetude—that wave is spreading over the lantf...
...The little spectacular New England movement of the forties and fifties is to be writ nation-wide...
...The members of the working and middle classes are debarred from the prospect of large incomes...
...If these are corrupted, then are the hands of progress retarded...
...will be the oft-repeated query...
...A large percentage of the wealth of the nation has been concentrated in the hands of a small minority...
...The scene changes...
...The mainspring of democracy is in the school and the college...
...They are changeable...
...but they smooth the road and prevent disaster in untried and treacherous paths...
...but the great prizes of the coming generation will go to those who unwaveringly stand for the abolition of special privileges and for equality of opportunity...
...Yet, the hope of the world lies in a new generation,—a generation having adequate knowledge of the experience of those preceding, a generation saturated with high ideals and fond ambitions, a generation which is not burdened with the fatalism and the cynicism of one which has fought its long and bitter fight upon life's tumultuous battlefield...
...If our vision is clear and the friends of humanity strong-hearted, not much longer shall the names of men of wealth,— Rothschild, Vanderbilt, Astor, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and of the politicians who do their bidding—attract the manly young men of the nation, Instead the names of Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Emerson, Pasteur, and the men of today who are fighting the battle for civic righteousness and against disease, accident and injustice, will stir the blood and quicken the pulses of the eager youth...
...and will make the possessor of such ill-gotten gains a social outcast...
...Orators and writers are still bemoaning the crass materialism of the age...
...The Old Order Changeth" THE NEXT quarter or half of a century is to witness a great humanitarian outburst...
...The blocking of the path to commercial pursuits in New England caused that famous historic era to appear...
...Let us have a specimen of that virtue from them nan...
...Wealth—the control of natural resources and natural forces— now gives power and influence...
...The new morality will condemn the man who coins wealth out of human life...
...The new criterion is not,—"How much have you made...
...It does not imply the willingness to accept year after year a low and inadequate compensation for services...
...the multi-millionaire appears...
...In the Republican party the progressives are the men who have led in spite of obstruction and whose control over the party every day grows more complete and unchallengeable...
...The evanescent goal of success is now found by following this path...
...The financier, the canal and railway builder, the steel manufacturer and the oil producer displace the warrior...
...The rich prizes are only for a few...
...The elections in the Fourteenth Massachusetts and in the Thirty-second New York have driven It home...
...The lure of gold is still strong...
...They will earnestly uphold the new ideals, and with the ardor of an iconoclast shatter the old idols of the past...
...How and where did you get it...
...And as for the standpatters who remain In the high councils of the party, It they bold to their present purposes they will prove beyond any question that they are will In* to sacrifice the party to their own personal willfulness or their own ulterior Interests...
...The mature man is more cautious and conservative...
...but rather because the old goals are not to be reached...
...Instead, men will more highly value justice and fair treatment to fellow men...
...In the Middle Ages military service and the priesthood monopolized the energies of all the men of ability...
...The small and medium-sized businesses are being absorbed by the large industrial unit...
...The corporation stands like a gilded siren alluring them from the rugged path of duty to fellow men, and is insidiously and plausibly inducing them to surrender their allegiance to ideals of manliness and of independence...
...They demand substantial relief from the exactions of high protection on the necessaries...
...The youth is naturally and normally a reformer and a radical...
...They demand a downward revision observable to the naked eye...
...Whpn the railway manager imbibes the latter—the wotking class—ideal, traveling will become safer and more pleasant...
...The robber and the slave owner are now outside the pale...
...The ideal of service is but the recrudescence of the craftsman's idea of good and true wcrk...
...Today corporate interests are attracting the most ambitious young men into their service...
...The Chicago Tribune Says:— ''THE people do not approve the Aldrich-Payne tariff act The Tribune poil of editors went a long way toward showing that...
...Not work without adequate recompense, although many seem to hold this view...
...They are prating ahout party loyalty...
...and a new one is at hand when poverty, the slum and overwork shall be driven from the land...
...Cannontsm lingers, but totters toward the door...
...The ideals of frontier and expanding America are not those of the industrial and urbanized America of today...
...The skilled worker has for centuries had this standard of success...
...The giant corporation, while luring the many, plants insurmountable obstacles in front of all but a chosen few...
...and now by traveling another road...
...Aldrich and Hale depart...
...The president Is un comment-< 111 advised It he does not recognize this, if he oppoiei* ft...
...To preserve the public school system from the dry rot of red-tape, routine, excessive systematization, overcrowding and narrow specialization is a matter of vital importance to the nation...
...A few men hold the economic machinery of the nation in their firm grasp...
...Man will gradually displace the dollar as the end of economic activities...
...Human Rights Above Property Rights THERE will be no return to asceticism...
...On the other nand, the ideal of the skilled locomotive engineer is to bring his train through in safety and on time...
Vol. 2 • April 1910 • No. 17
