United States by Spain (1898), Schurz's American Imperialist (1899), and Hoar's No Power to Conquer Foreign Nations (1899).

These protests were ineffectual. The triumph of the manufacturing and commercial interests in shaping public policy was well illustrated by two practical problems: Did the Constitution and the laws of the United States apply to conquered territory without special legislation by Congress? Was Congress bound by all of the principles of the Constitution in legislating for the territories? Regarding the first of these the policy of the President was negative, and Congress took a similar position in regard to the second. The issue involved was the application of tariff duties to goods coming from the newly acquired territories, the beet sugar and other trade interests opposing free competition and demanding the application of tariff duties to Porto Rican and Philippine products. The position of the executive and the legislature was upheld by the Supreme Court in the celebrated Insular Cases, but the reasoning of the majority opinions was notoriously confusing and unsatisfactory from the standpoint of constitutional law.

Imperialism did not allay criticism of the existing order. Gradually public opinion concerning the scope and purpose of government in its relation to the general welfare underwent a transformation. The view which had long been dominant was that national prosperity depended upon the prosperity of the manufacturing and commercial classes of the country; when they flourished the labourer would enjoy a "full dinner pail," the shopkeeper a good trade, the farmers high markets, and the professional classes would collect their fees; consequently it was only right that such important matters as the tariff and monetary standards should be determined according to the ideals of the great business interests of the country. The new view was that the object of legislation should be to aid all citizens with no special privilege or regard to any one class. Its birth was in the Granger movement. It was more widely disseminated by Populism, but its ablest presentation was by William Jennings Bryan, notably in his speech before the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1896:

You have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. A man who is employed for wages is as much a

business man as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business man as a merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day-who begins in the spring and toils all summer-and who, by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country, creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding place the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade, are as much business men as the few financial magnates, who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.

This ideal, rejected by the dominant political parties, led to a revolt. Elaborated into a definite programme with definite methods, it became known as Progressivism, possessing three aims: to remove special, minority, or corrupt influences in the government and to revise the political machinery; to enlarge the functions of government by exercising greater authority over individual and corporate activities; and to provide measures of relief for the less fortunate citizens. The first triumphs of its origins and conflicts, in Wisconsin, are well told in Robert M. La Follette's Autobiography (1911) and its definite programme in the same State in McCarthy's The Wisconsin Idea (1912); while progressive achievements along the Pacific coast are described in Hichborn's Story of the California Legislature of 1911 and Barnett's Oregon Plan. In municipal affairs the Progressives looked to stricter control of franchises and the commission and managerial forms of government; in the literature of this phase of the movement, Tom L. Johnson's My Story (1913) is pre-eminent. In national government it brought about stricter Federal control of railways, a definition of restraint of trade, a more democratic banking system, and efforts toward conservation of natural resources. Progressivism was the dominant issue in the presidential campaign of 1912. Its arguments as set forth at that time may be found in Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism and Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom. Less popular but more profound presentation of its philosophy is given in the writings of Walter Weyl and Herbert Croly.

Aside from its practical merits and achievements, Progressivism marked something of a revolution in American political ideals. Representative government, as understood by the old schools of thought, was to be replaced by direct government; the supremacy of the judiciary was to be questioned if not overthrown; the last limits of government interference in private rights and property were to be removed; and with the breaking of the alliance of business interests with the government, a new type of leader and public servant was to appear upon the scene. The World War, however, so greatly confused the issues and involved the policies of the nation that at the moment Progressivism appears under very different colours from those it wore even two or three years ago, and judgment upon the movement cannot safely be passed.

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CHAPTER XXII

Lincoln

HE man of many minds who upon the surface, at least, is variable is not thought of ordinarily as a great leader. And yet in some of the greatest of men a surface variableness has not in the long run prevented a consummate achievement. There is Cæsar, to be pondered upon by all who consider such men second rate. And in American history, there is Lincoln. His life as man of action brings this out well enough. He wavered during many years, hesitating between politics and law, not drivingly conscious of his main bent. Still more clearly is this brought out by his personal life and by those literary and mystical phases that are linked so intimately with the personal. The changes of his mood are at times bewildering. He is often like a wayfarer passing through successive strata of light and darkness, the existence of which does not seem to be explained by circumstance, of whose causes neither he nor his observers. have explanation. Did they arise from obscure powers within? Were they the reaction of an ultra-sensitive nature to things without that most people were not able to perceive? He speaks of himself in one of his letters as superstitious. Should the word give us a hint? Whatever theory of him shall eventually prevail, it is sure to rest on this fact: he was a shrouded and a mysterious character, a man apart, intensely reticent, very little of whose inner life has been opened to the world.

It is significant that he was not precocious. The touching picture, preserved in several memories—the lonely, illiterate boy with a passion for reading, indulging the passion at night by a cabin fire this picture has nothing of early cleverness. Of the qualities that appear after his advent, it is the moral not the mental ones that were clearly foreshadowed in his youth. The

simplicity, the kindliness, the courage, the moderation of the matured man have their evident beginnings in the boy. His purely mental characteristics appeared so gradually, so unostentatiously, that his neighbours did not note their coming. Today, seen in the perspective of his career, their approach is more discernible. To one who goes carefully through the twelve volumes of the chronological edition of Lincoln's writings, though the transition from characterlessness to individuality is nowhere sudden, the consciousness of a steady progress in mental power, of a subtle evolution of the literary sense, is unmistakable. The revelation gains in celerity as one proceeds. But there is no sunburst, no sudden change of direction. And yet, for all the equivocality of the early years, one ends by wondering why the process has seemed vague. It is like that type of play whose secret is not disclosed until just before the curtain but which, once disclosed, brings all preceding it into harmony.

So of the literary Lincoln. Looking back from the few great performances of his fruition, why did we not earlier foresee them? There are gleams all along that now strike us as the careless hints of a great unseen power that was approaching. But why-considering the greatness of the final achievementwere they no more than gleams?

Here is an original literary artist who never did any deliberate literary work, who enriched English style in spite of himself under pressure of circumstances. His style is but the flexibility with which his expression follows the movements of a peculiar mind. And as the mind slowly unfolds, becomes overcast, recedes, advances, so, in the main, does the style. The usual symptoms of the literary impulse are all to seek. He is wholly preoccupied with the thing behind the style. Again the idea of a nature shrouded, withdrawn, that dwells within, that emerges mysteriously. His youth, indeed, has a scattered, unemphatic intimation of something else. What might be called the juvenilia of this inscrutable mind include some attempts at verse. They have no literary value. More significant than his own attempts is the fact that verse early laid a strong hold upon him. Years later, when the period of his juvenilia may be counted in the past, as late as 1846, in denying the authorship of a newspaper poem he added: "I would give all I am