Introducing the American SpiritSteiner, Edward Alfred
General
Introducing the American Spirit
Steiner, Edward Alfred
National characteristics, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
The third doctrine of the California Confession of Faith is, that here
on the Pacific Coast the white race has been providentially placed to
defend this country against the encroachment of the "Yellow Peril." It
was illuminating though painful to find that race prejudice is as
intense here as in the South, and as unreasoning, and that one is as
helpless against it as against a flood or fire. All one seems to be able
to do is to accept it as a fact, and treat it like a contagious disease.
If there is any danger to the white race at the Pacific Coast, it is not
the presence of the Japanese or Chinese in limited numbers; it is the
attitude of mind which has been created among Americans there, and that
may bring its own vengeance.
It was a great joy to introduce my guests to California, its orange
groves and vineyards, its marvellous cities and palatial homes. It is a
state to glory in; but strange to say I was somewhat depressed when I
left it. The Herr Director said he missed my "brag and bluster."
Everything was beautiful and bountiful, even as the real estate agents
have advertised; yet there were some things I found and some things I
missed which took the "brag and bluster" out of me.
Its pioneer spirit is weakened by the accession of a large, leisure
class, and how or where the next generation will find a grappling place
for vigor of body, mind and spirit, is still a great question. To eat
one's bread by the sweat of some ancestor's brow, to be challenged daily
by the luxury of a limousine rather than by the hardships of the prairie
schooner, to have as the end and aim of one's day the winning of a Polo
match, or the making of a golf score, must ultimately bring about a
decadence of spirit, even though one retains for a while litheness of
body and activity of mind.
The boasted democracy of California is threatened, not only by the
presence of a large leisure class and the necessary serving if not
servant class, but also by a lack of faith in humanity, without which no
democracy is safe and enduring. To California has been transferred all
that unfaith gendered by the advent of the negro, and if there were ever
a chance to revive the institution of slavery, that state might offer
some hope for its revival.
The Californians who fear for the white race because of the presence of
the Oriental, whom that fear has made vain, boastful, ungenerous and
reckless of the feelings of others, need to know that a greater danger
threatens the race--the decay of the democratic spirit, which languishes
and perishes unless it permits to all men free access to the best it
holds, regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
Because I had lost my "brag and bluster" and wished to recover them, I
took my guests, who were now homeward bound, to the one place which
might fitly crown their experiences--the Grand Canyon, where one is apt
to forget humanity and its fretting problems.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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