INTRODUCTION
There is an old story, told in many countries through the Middle Ages, of a knight who got into trouble, and was offered pardon if within a year he brought the correct answer to the question, “What do women most desire?” At the last moment he saved himself by answering, “Their own way,” or words to that effect.
This is a man’s story, and scores the man’s point in the perennial strife of wits between the sexes; but the answer needs but little modification to hold good of men and women alike. When one takes up a book like this, dealing with the lives of men who deliberately and voluntarily left the homes of their fathers to become citizens of a strange land, one naturally asks what they wanted, and equally naturally goes on to ask what men in general want most in life.
Many answers have been given to the question, and none can be final, because men and circumstances differ so widely. But I should like to propose one that seems to me of more general application than most. Men want most to count among their fellows for what they are worth. This desire is more persistent than love, more universal than the thirst for wealth or power, more fundamental than the demand for pleasure. It shows itself in early childhood, it steers the ambitions of manhood, its fulfillment is the crown of old age. The degree of the chance to achieve it isthe measure of the desirability of a country as a place to live in; and it is fair to say that the men whose lives are told in this book, and we others who have come to America of our own accord, have done so because we believed that these United States, above all countries of the world, give men this chance to make the most of themselves.
“To count among their fellows for what they are worth”—see what this implies. First, and most superficially, it means recognition of ability and character by society. Carried to the highest point, it would mean the absence of handicaps, of privilege, of “pull”—the equality of opportunity for achieving distinction which has always been the theory of this democracy. Of course, neither here nor elsewhere is this perfect condition reached; but the biographies in this book tend to show that there has long been a large degree of it here, and our social progress has this condition frankly accepted as a goal.
Secondly, it implies a basis for self-respect. Deeper than the grudge that a man has against the society which refuses him due credit for his achievement is the grudge that a man feels when he has to admit to himself that his achievement is not really creditable. The worst curse of slavery was not its external restrictions, but its effect in crushing the slave’s sense of the potential nobility of his own soul. The feeling that a man has a fair chance to be taken at his full value is an exhilarating feeling, liberating his powers, freeing him from the gnawing pains of mortified vanity, impelling him to hold his head up and look his neighbor in the eye.
Thirdly, it means a chance to do one’s job—one’s own job—and to do it to the limit of one’s capacity. This is the foundation on which both recognition and self-respect must be built. “Blessed is the man,” says Carlyle, “who has found his work; let him seek no other blessedness.” Because a man is freer in America to pass from one calling to another, from one class to another, from one region to another; because here people are willing to be shown what he can do; the chances are greater than elsewhere that he will find the task and circumstances which fit him best and let him count for most.
If you read through these nine lives, you will see that what each of these men was really after, and what each found more fully here than in the old world, was not wealth or power or pleasure of the senses, but the chance to do the biggest job of which he was capable. Three of them, indeed, did gather great wealth, but it was either a by-product of the main achievement of their lives, or the instrument of that achievement. The vision that inspired James J. Hill was not a colossal fortune, but the opening up and populating of a great territory with farmers leading large, wholesome, and prosperous lives. Two of the nine were artists, who neither asked nor received great financial rewards, but who found here the chance to create beauty and to form taste, and in seizing this chance they found their supreme satisfaction.
Of these nine men I have known only one, Augustus Saint-Gaudens; but none could have illustrated better the spirit in which work has to be done if it is to yieldits greatest reward. What struck me in watching Saint-Gaudens work was his absolute indifference to what a statue would cost him in pains or in time, or to what it would bring him in money, and his complete absorption in making it as nearly perfect as he could. He did not “count the mortal years it takes to mould the immortal forms.” He would work for hours on the modeling of an inch of surface, seeking for an exactness of result imperceptible to the lay bystander. He would never be hurried—and he found America willing to wait.
The same spirit worked in Ericsson in his inventions, in Carl Schurz in his unceasing quest for political justice, in Riis in his cleaning up of New York City. Some of these men were not outstanding intellects, but each cared intensely about his job, and to each America gave his chance.
I have a quarrel with the title of this book. “Americans by Choice” it should be, not “Americans by Adoption.” “Adoption” suggests that America adopt us. We who have of our own accord left the old world and taken up citizenship in the new know that we have chosen her, not she us. We can leave to the native-born their natural pride in their birthright, but we can claim that we pay a greater compliment to this land than can these others, for our citizenship is not the result of an accident but of our free choice. And we have paid our price. We, and we alone, know what it has cost to leave behind scenes and traditions and affections which clung close to the heart. But that we have left them is proof that weprized still more highly the opportunity that America offered us to count for what we are worth.
In the face of this proof we have no apologies to make. We call our nine worthies to witness; and, while not forgetting our due of gratitude for our chance, we point to the use we make of the chance, and ask the native-born to acknowledge that the balance swings level. More than this we cannot ask; less than this we will not take. Granted this, without grudging and without condescension, we can quiet all fears of divided allegiance, and work with our fellow citizens for the perfecting of the social order in which these wise and worthy men found an environment for accomplishment of the first rank, and with which we have thrown in our lot in becoming Americans by choice.
W. A. Neilson.
Northampton, MassachusettsMarch, 1920