The Call of the Twentieth Century
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David Starr Jordan >> The Call of the Twentieth Century
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THE CALL OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
An Address to Young Men
By DAVID STARR JORDAN
Chancellor of Leland Stanford Junior University
1903
To Vernon Lyman Kellogg
_So
live that
your afterself--
the man you ought
to be--may in his time
be possible and actual. Far
away in the twenties, the thirties
of the Twentieth Century, he is awaiting
his turn. His body, his brain, his soul are in
your boyish hands. He cannot help himself. What will
you leave for him? Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or
dissipation, a mind trained to think and act, a nervous system
true as a dial in its response to the truth about you? Will you,
boy of the Twentieth Century, let him come as a man among men
in his time, or will you throw away his inheritance before
he has had the chance to touch it? Will you let him come,
taking your place, gaining through your experiences,
hallowed through your joys, building on them his
own, or will you fling his hope away,
decreeing, wanton-like, that the man
you might have been shall never
be?_
The new century has come upon us with a rush of energy that no century has
shown before. Let us stand aside for a moment that we may see what kind of
a century it is to be, what is the work it has to do, and what manner of
men it will demand to do it.
In most regards one century is like another. Just as men are men, so times
are times. In the Twentieth Century there will be the same joys, the same
sorrows, the same marrying and giving in marriage, the same round of work
and play, of wisdom and duty, of folly and distress which other centuries
have seen. Just as each individual man has the same organs, the same
passions, the same functions as all others, so it is with all the
centuries. But we know men not by their likenesses, which are many, but by
differences in emphasis, by individual traits which are slight and subtle,
but all-important in determining our likes and dislikes, our friendships,
loves, and hates. So with the centuries; we remember those which are past
not by the mass of common traits in history and development, but by the few
events or thoughts unnoticed at the time, but which stand out like mountain
peaks raised "above oblivion's sea," when the times are all gathered in and
the century begins to blend with the "infinite azure of the past." Not wars
and conquests mark a century. The hosts grow small in the vanishing
perspective, "the captains and the kings depart," but the thoughts of men,
their attitude toward their environment, their struggles toward
duty,--these are the things which endure.
Compared with the centuries that are past, the Twentieth Century in its
broad outlines will be like the rest. It will be selfish, generous,
careless, devoted, fatuous, efficient. But three of its traits must stand
out above all others, each raised to a higher degree than any other century
has known. The Twentieth Century above all others will be _strenuous,
complex_, and _democratic_. Strenuous the century must be, of
course. This we can all see, and we have to thank the young man of the
Twentieth Century who gave us the watchword of "the strenuous life," and
who has raised the apt phrase to the dignity of a national purpose. Our
century has a host of things to do, bold things, noble things, tedious
things, difficult things, enduring things. It has only a hundred years to
do them in, and two of these years are gone already. We must be up and
bestir ourselves. If we are called to help in this work, there is no time
for an idle minute. Idle men and idle women no doubt will cumber our way,
for there are many who have never heard of the work to do, many who will
never know that there has been a new century. These the century will pass
by with the gentle tolerance she shows to clams and squirrels, but on those
of us she calls to her service she will lay heavy burdens of duty. "The
color of life is red." Already the fad of the drooping spirit, the
end-of-the-century pose, has given way to the rush of the strenuous life,
to the feeling that struggle brings its own reward. The men who are doing
ask no favor at the end. Life is repaid by the joy of living it.
As the century is strenuous so will it be complex. The applications of
science have made the great world small, while every part of it has grown
insistent. As the earth has shrunk to come within our grasp, so has our own
world expanded to receive it. "My mind to me a kingdom is," and to this
kingdom all the other kingdoms of the earth now send their embassadors. The
complexity of life is shown by the extension of the necessity of choice.
Each of us has to render a decision, to say yes or no a hundred times when
our grandfathers were called upon a single time. We must say yes or no to
our neighbors' theories or plans or desires, and whoever has lived or lives
or may yet live in any land or on any island of the sea has become our
neighbor. Through modern civilization we are coming into our inheritance,
and this heirloom includes the best that any man has done or thought since
history and literature and art began. It includes, too, all the arts and
inventions by which any men of any time have separated truth from error. Of
one blood are all the people of the earth, and whatsoever is done to the
least of these little ones in some degree comes to me. We suffer from the
miasma of the Indian jungles; we starve with the savages of the harvestless
islands; we grow weak with the abused peasants of the Russian steppes, who
leave us the legacy of their grippe. The great volcano which buries far off
cities at its foot casts its pitying dust over us. It is said that through
the bonds of commerce, common trade, and common need, there is growing up
the fund of a great "bank of human kindness," no genuine draft on which is
ever left dishonored. Whoever is in need of help the world over, by that
token has a claim on us.
In our material life we draw our resources from every land. Clothing,
spices, fruits, toys, household furniture,--we lay contributions on the
whole world for the most frugal meal, for the humblest dwelling. We need
the best work of every nation and every nation asks our best of us. The day
of home-brewed ale, of home-made bread, and home-spun clothing is already
past with us. Better than we can do, our neighbors send us, and we must
send our own best in return. With home-made garments also pass away
inherited politics and hereditary religion, with all the support of caste
and with all its barriers. We must work all this out for ourselves; we must
make our own place in society; we must frame our own creeds; we must live
our own religion; for no longer can one man's religion be taken
unquestionably by any other. As the world has been unified, so is the
individual unit exalted. With all this, the simplicity of life is passing
away. Our front doors are wide open as the trains go by. The caravan
traverses our front yard. We speak to millions, millions speak to us; and
we must cultivate the social tact, the gentleness, the adroitness, the
firmness necessary to carry out our own designs without thwarting those of
others. Time no longer flows on evenly. We must count our moments, so much
for ourselves, so much for the world we serve and which serves us in
return. We must be swift and accurate in the part we play in a drama so
mighty, so strenuous, and so complex.
More than any of the others, the Twentieth Century will be democratic. The
greatest discovery of the Nineteenth Century was that of the reality of
external things. That of the Twentieth Century will be this axiom in social
geometry: "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points." If
something needs doing, do it; the more plainly, directly, honestly, the
better.
The earlier centuries cared little for the life of a man. Hence they failed
to discriminate. In masses and mobs they needed kings and rulers but could
not choose them. Hence the device of selecting as ruler the elder son of
the last ruler, whatever his nature might be. A child, a lunatic, a
monster, a sage,--it was all the same to these unheeding centuries. The
people could not follow those they understood or who understood them. They
must trust all to the blind chance of heredity. Tyrant or figurehead, the
mob, which from its own indifference creates the pomp of royalty, threw up
its caps for the king, and blindly died for him in his courage or in his
folly with the same unquestioning loyalty. In like manner did the mob
fashion lords and princes, each in its own image. Not the man who would do
or think or help, but the eldest son of a former lord was chosen for its
homage. The result of it all was that no use was made of the forces of
nature, for those who might have learned to control them were hunted to
their death. The men who could think and act for themselves were in no
position to give their actions leverage.
When a people really means to do something, it must resort to democracy. It
must value men as men, not as functions of a chain of conventionalities.
"America," says Emerson, "means opportunity;" opportunity for work,
opportunity for training, opportunity for influence. Democracy exalts the
individual. It realizes that of all the treasures of the nation, the talent
of its individual men is the most important. It realizes that its first
duty is to waste none of this. It cannot afford to leave its Miltons mute
and inglorious nor to let its village Hampdens waste their strength on
petty obstacles while it has great tasks for them to accomplish. In a
democracy, when work is to be done men rise to do it. No matter what the
origin of our Washingtons and Lincolns, our Grants and our Shermans, our
Clevelands or our Roosevelts, our Eliots, our Hadleys, or our Remsens, we
know that they are being made ready for every crisis which may need their
hand, for every work we would have them carry through. To give each man the
training he deserves is to bring the right man face to face with his own
opportunity. The straight line is the shortest distance between two points
in life as in geometry. For the work of a nation we may not call on Lord
This or Earl That, whose ancestors have lain on velvet for a thousand
years; we want the man who can do the work, who can face the dragon, or
carry the message to Garcia. A man whose nerves are not relaxed by
centuries of luxury will serve us best. Give him a fair chance to try; give
us a fair chance to try him. This is the meaning of democracy; not fuss and
feathers, pomp and gold lace, but accomplishment.
Democracy does not mean equality--just the reverse of this, it means
individual responsibility, equality before the law, of course--equality of
opportunity, but no other equality save that won by faithful service. That
social system which bids men rise must also let them fall if they cannot
maintain themselves. To choose the right man means the dismissal of the
wrong. The weak, the incompetent, the untrained, the dissipated find no
growing welcome in the century which is coming. It will have no place for
unskilled laborers. A bucket of water and a basket of coal will do all that
the unskilled laborer can do if we have skilled men to direct them. The
unskilled laborer is no product of democracy. He exists in spite of
democracy. The children of the republic are entitled to something better. A
generous education, a well-directed education, should be the birthright of
each one of them. Democracy may even intensify natural inequalities. The
man who cannot say no to cheap and vulgar temptations falls all the lower
in the degree to which he is a free agent. In competition with men alert,
loyal, trained and creative, the dullard is condemned to a lifetime of hard
labor, through no direct fault of his own. Keep the capable man down and
you may level the incapable one up. But this the Twentieth Century will not
do. This democracy will not do; this it is not now doing, and this it never
will attempt. The social condition which would give all men equal reward,
equal enjoyment, equal responsibility, may be a condition to dream of. It
may be Utopia; it is not democracy. Sir Henry Maine describes the process
of civilization as the "movement from status to contract." This is the
movement from mass to man, from subservience to individualism, from
tradition to democracy, from pomp and circumstance of non-essentials to the
method of achievement.
Owen Wister in "The Virginian" says: "All America is divided into two
classes,--the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize
the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear
nothing but kings. It was through the Declaration of Independence that we
Americans acknowledged the _eternal inequality_ of man. For by it we
abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially
held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places,
and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature.
Therefore we decreed that every man should, thenceforth have equal liberty
to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom
to true aristocracy, saying, 'Let the best man win, whoever he is.' Let the
best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true
democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody
cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight."
_Paucis vivat humanum genus_: "for the few the race should live,"--this
is the discarded motto of another age. The few live for the many.
The clean and strong enrich the life of all with their wisdom, with their
conquests. It is to bring about the larger equalities of opportunity, or
purpose, that we exalt the talents of the few.
This has not always been clear, even the history of the Republic. My own
great grandfather, John Elderkin Waldo, said at Tolland, Connecticut, more
than a century ago: "Times are hard with us in New England. They will never
be any better until each farm laborer in Connecticut is willing to work all
day for a sheep's head and pluck," just as they used to do before the red
schoolhouses on the hills began to preach their doctrines of sedition and
equality. There could never be good times again, so he thought, till the
many again lived for the few.
It is in the saving of the few who serve the many that the progress of
civilization lies. In the march of the common man, and in the influence of
the man uncommon who rises freely from the ranks, we have all of history
that counts.
In a picture gallery at Brussels there is a painting by Wiertz, most
cynical of artists, representing the man of the Future and the things of
the Past. A naturalist holds in his right hand a magnifying glass, and in
the other a handful of Napoleon and his marshals, guns, and
battle-flags,--tiny objects swelling with meaningless glory. He examines
these intensely, while a child at his side looks on in open-eyed wonder.
She cannot understand what a grown man can find in these curious trifles
that he should take the trouble to study them.
This painting is a parable designed to show Napoleon's real place in
history. It was painted within a dozen miles of the field of Waterloo, and
not many years after the noise of its cannon had died away. It shows the
point of view of the man of the future. Save in the degradation of France,
through the impoverishment of its life-blood, there is little in human
civilization to recall the disastrous incident of Napoleon's existence.
_Paucis vivat humanum genus_: "the many live for the few." This shall
be true no longer. The earth belongs to him who can use it and the only
force which lasts is that which is used to make men free.
"Triumphant America," says George Horace Lorimer, "certainly does not mean
each and every one of our seventy-eight millions. For instance, it does not
include the admitted idiots and lunatics, the registered paupers and
parasites, the caged criminals, the six million illiterates. In a sense, it
includes the twenty-five to thirty million children, for they exert a
tremendous influence upon the grown people. But in no sense does it include
the whittlers on dry-goods boxes, the bar-room loafers, the fellows that
listen all day long for the whistle to blow, those who are the first to be
mentioned whenever there is talk of cutting down the force. It does not
include those of our statesmen who spend their time in promoting corrupt
jobs, or in hunting places for lazy heelers. It does not include the
doctors who reach their high-water mark for professional knowledge on the
day they graduate, or the lawyers who lie and cheat and procure injustice
for the sake of fees.
"Most of these--even the idiots and criminals--do a little something
towards progress. This world is so happily ordered that it is impossible
for one man to do much harm or to avoid doing some good; and one of the
greatest forces for good is the power of a bad example. Still it is not our
bad examples that make us get on and earn us these smothers of flowery
compliment.
"Some of us are tall and others short, some straight and others crooked,
some strong, others feeble; some of us run, others walk, others snail it.
But all, all have their feet upon the same level of the common earth. And
America's worst enemy is he--or she--who by word or look encourages another
to think otherwise. Head as high as you please; but feet always upon the
common ground, never upon anybody's shoulders or neck, even though he be
weak or willing."
So in this strenuous and complex age, this age of "fierce democracy," what
have we to do, and with what manner of men shall we work? Young men of the
Twentieth Century, will your times find place for you? There is plenty to
do in every direction. That is plain enough. All the pages in this little
book, or in a very large one, would be filled by a mere enumeration. In
agriculture a whole great empire is yet to be won in the arid west, and the
west that is not arid and the east that was never so must be turned into
one vast market-garden. The Twentieth Century will treat a farm as a
friend, and it will yield rich returns for such friendship. In the
Twentieth Century vast regions will be fitted to civilization, not by
imperialism, which blasts, but by permeation, which reclaims.
The table-lands of Mexico, the plains of Manchuria, the Pampas of
Argentine, the moors of Northern Japan, all these regions in our own
temperate zone offer a welcome to the Anglo-Saxon farmer. The great tropics
are less hopeful, but they have never had a fair trial. The northern
nations have tried to exploit them in haste, and then to get away, never to
stay with them and work patiently to find out their best. Some day the
possibilities of the Torrid Zone may come to us as a great discovery.
There is need of men in forestry; for we must win back the trees we have
slain with such ruthless hand. The lumberman of the future will pick ripe
trees and save the rest as carefully as the herdsman selects his stock. In
engineering, in mining, in invention, there are endless possibilities.
Every man who masters what is already known in any one branch of applied
science, makes his own fortune. He who can add a little, save a little, do
something better or something cheaper, makes the fortune of a hundred
others. "There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for
many."
Andrew Carnegie once said that the foundation of his fortune lay in the
employment of trained chemists, while other men made steel by rule of
thumb. Trained chemists made better steel, just a little. They devised ways
to make it cheaper, just a little, and they found means to utilize the
slag. All this means hundreds of millions of dollars, if done on a large
enough scale.
There is no limit to the demands of engineering. A million waterfalls dash
down the slopes of the Sierras. The patient sun has hauled the water up
from the sea and spread it in snow over the mountains. The same sun will
melt the snow, and as the water falls back to the sea it will yield again
the force it cost to bring it to its heights. Thus sunshine and falling
water can be transmuted into power. This power already lights the cities of
California, and some day it may be changed into the heat which moves a
thousand factories. All these are the problems of the Electrical Engineer.
Equally rich are the opportunities in other forms of engineering. There is
no need to be in haste, perhaps, but the Twentieth Century is eager in its
quest for gold. The mother lode runs along the foothills from Bering
Straits to Cape Horn. From end to end of the continent the Twentieth
Century will bring this gold to light, and carry it all away. The Mining
Engineer who knows the mountains best finds his fortune ready to his hand.
Civil Engineers, Steam Engineers, Naval Engineers, whoever knows how to
manage things or men, even Social Engineers, Labor Engineers, all find an
eager welcome. There are never too many of those who know how; but the day
of the rule of thumb has long since past. The Engineer of to-day must
create, not imitate. And to him who can create, this last century we call
the Twentieth is yet part of the first day of Creation.
In commerce the field is always open for young men. The world's trade is
barely yet begun. We hear people whining over the spread of the commercial
spirit, but what they mean is not the spirit of commerce. It is persistence
of provincial selfishness, a spirit which has been with us since the fall
of Adam, and which the centuries of whitening sails has as yet not
eradicated. The spirit of fair commerce is a noble spirit. Through commerce
the world is unified. Through commerce grows tolerance, and through
tolerance, peace and solidarity. Commerce is world-wide barter, each nation
giving what it can best produce for what is best among others. Freedom
breeds commerce as commerce demands freedom. Only free men can buy and
sell; for without selling no man nor nation has means to buy. When China is
a nation, her people will be no longer a "yellow peril." It is poverty,
slavery, misery, which makes men dangerous. In the words of "Joss
Chinchingoss," the Kipling of Singapore, we have only to give the Chinaman
"The chance at home that he makes for himself elsewhere,
And the star of the Jelly-fish nation mid others shall shine as fair."
Since the day, twenty-three years ago, on which I first passed through the
Golden Gate of California, I have seen the steady increase of the shipping
which enters that channel. There are ten vessels to-day passing in and out
to one in 1880. Another twenty-five years will see a hundred times as many.
We have discovered the Orient, and even more, the Orient has discovered us.
We may not rule it by force of arms; for that counts nothing in trade or
civilization. Commerce follows the flag only when the flag flies on
merchant ships. It has no interest in following the flag to see a fight.
Commerce follows fair play and mutual service. Through the centuries of war
men have only played at commerce. The Twentieth Century will take it
seriously, and it will call for men to do its work. It will call more
loudly than war has ever done, but it will ask its men not to die bravely,
but to live wisely, and above all truthfully to watch their accounts.
The Twentieth Century will find room for pure science as well as for
applied science and ingenious invention. Each Helmholtz of the future will
give rise to a thousand Edisons. Exact knowledge must precede any form of
applications. The reward of pure science will be, in the future as in the
past, of its own kind, not fame nor money, but the joy of finding truth. To
this joy no favor of fortune can add. The student of nature in all the ages
has taken the vow of poverty. To him money, his own or others, means only
the power to do more or better work.
The Twentieth Century will have its share in literature and art. Most of
the books it will print will not be literature, for idle books are written
for idle people, and many idle people are left over from less insistent
times. The books sold by the hundred thousands to men and women not trained
to make time count, will be forgotten before the century is half over. The
books it saves will be books of its own kind, plain, straightforward,
clear-cut, marked by that "fanaticism for veracity" which means everything
else that is good in the intellectual and moral development of man. The
literature of form is giving way already to the literature of power. We
care less and less for the surprises and scintillations of clever fellows;
we care more and more for the real thoughts of real men. We find that the
deepest thoughts can be expressed in the simplest language. "A straight
line is the shortest distance between two points" in literature as well as
in mechanics. "In simplicity is strength," as Watt said of machinery, and
it is true in art as well as in mechanics.