Category: The Future in America

(At a writing-desk in Sandgate)

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The Question

“Are you a Polygamist?”

“Are you an Anarchist?”

The questions seem impertinent. They are part of a long paper of interrogations I must answer satisfactorily if I am to be regarded as … Read the rest

And at last I am back in my study by the sea. It is high June. When I said good-bye to things it was March, a March warm and eager to begin with, and then dashed with sleet and wind; … Read the rest

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Washington as Anti-climax

I came to Washington full of expectations and curiosities. Here, I felt, so far as it could exist visibly and palpably anywhere, was the head and mind of this colossal America over which my observant curiosities … Read the rest

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The Boston Enchantment

Yet even as I write of the universities as the central intellectual organ of a modern state, as I sit implying salvation by schools, there comes into my mind a mass of qualification. The devil in … Read the rest

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Recapitulatory

I do not know if I am conveying to any extent the picture of America as I see it, the vast rich various continent, the gigantic energetic process of development, the acquisitive successes, the striving failures, the multitudes … Read the rest

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Harsh Judgments

I seem to find the same hastiness and something of the same note of harshness that strike me in the cases of MacQueen and Gorky in America’s treatment of her colored population. I am aware how intricate, … Read the rest

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The Riddle of Intolerance

In considering the quality of the American mind (upon which, as I believe, the ultimate destiny of America entirely depends), it has been necessary to point out that, considered as one whole, it still seems … Read the rest

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Sense of the State

In what I have written so far, I have tried to get the effect of the American outlook, the American task, the American problem as a whole, as it has presented itself to me. Clearly, … Read the rest

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The Flood

My picture of America assumes now a certain definite form. I have tried to convey the effect of a great and energetic English-speaking population strewn across a continent so vast as to make it seem small and … Read the rest

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The Problem of the Nation

So, it seems to me, in this new crude continental commonwealth, there is going on the same economic process, on a grander scale, indeed, than has gone so far in our own island. There … Read the rest