Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/262

250 high light in which all things American are portrayed. Here we touch directly the question of relativity. Is it not necessary to heighten light and shade in order to produce approximately true effects in minds preoccupied by unfavorable ideas? Quite likely. For our own use, however, the picture must be ruthlessly toned down.

"The American newspaper man is a gentleman, upon whose discretion one may rely" (I, 239). "The negro question is the one really black cloud on the horizon of the public life of the American nation" (I, 282). "The American does not value money-getting if it is not the result of his own labor" (I, 338). "'Envy' is the one word that has never occurred in the American's dictionary" (I, 358). " Nowhere in the world are so many books read as in America" (II, 124). [But suppose they are weighed rather than counted!] "Envy and jealousy have no place in the optimistic nature of the American, who always rejoices in another's prosperity" (II, 189). "The American grows up in knowledge of the Bible" (II, 190). "The influence of the ministers in the small towns is profounder than in Germany " (II, 191). "But how seldom is infidelity the motive [for divorce]; it is the democratic spirit of self-determination which demands that a bond shall be dissolved if it no longer accords with free choice. One may almost say that it is a higher individual morality which will no longer tolerate a union that has become essentially unsanctified. American divorce does not impeach the morality of the conjugal relation" (II, 217). "It has been rightly said that the American has no talent for lying, and the European distrust of the word of others affects the Yankee as peculiarly European. ... Everybody accepts the check of a stranger, and the largest mercantile transactions are closed by verbal agreement or a nod of the head. ... In Europe a school pupil who lies to the teacher often has his classmates on his side; in America they are always against him" (II, 220, 221). "The American will take no advantage of the weakness or misfortune of others" (II, 247). [This will be encouraging news to our fellow-citizens who had suspected the contrary in the case of trusts!] "The individual, like the nation, has no talent for getting thoroughly angry" (II, 256). "The bluestocking, the unsexed woman who has lost her feminine charm, does not exist among the products of the higher education of women in America" (II, 289). "Wealth alone confers in the New World no social position" (II, 306). "The nation has reached a maturity at which the masses are actually ready to be led by the more competent" (II, 318).

It would be entirely misleading to say that these quotations give a fair idea of the book. They most certainly do not. There is always a context which qualifies them. They merely give an idea of the key in which the argument is pitched. Respect for America, on very high grounds, is the constant theme. The treatment covers