In 1719 an anonymous New England author who signed himself, rather oddly, “your friend among the Oakes and Pines,” gave voice to the doctrine that America was young. Speaking for his day, he said, “The Plow-Man that raiseth Grain is more serviceable to Mankind than the Painter who draws only to please the Eye.... The Carpenter who builds a good house to defend us from Wind and Weather is more serviceable than the curious Carver, who employs his Art to please the Fancy.” Only, he continues, after further praise of labor, “when a People grow numerous, and part are sufficient to raise necessaries for the whole, then ’tis allowable and laudable, that some should be imployed in innocent Arts more for ornament than Necessity; any innocent business that gets an honest penny, is better than Idleness.” When this anonymous social critic made his comments on the needs of America there was but little more than a fringe of settlement along the Atlantic coast. Boston, with a population of eleven thousand, was about twice as populous as either of its two rivals, Philadelphia and New York. The entire white population of North America was considerably under half a million people. There were scarcely any roads and no public means of transportation. Beyond the scattered coastal settlements, the wilderness stretched three thousand[Pg 242] miles to the Pacific. Inhabited by savages and almost interminable in extent, the work of subduing it to the needs of civilized man seemed to call, not for centuries, but for millennia of physical effort. Owing partly to the indomitable courage and partly to the insatiable greed of the American people, but even more to the inventions of science, what seemed a task for the ages has been accomplished in six generations. On the Pacific coast to-day there are cities as populous as were the greatest in Europe when our New Englander promulgated his doctrine that America was young. Yet that doctrine is as firmly embedded in the popular mind as ever. This is so obvious as hardly to need emphasizing by example, but I may mention what I have noted within a few three days. When speaking to an American boy of seventeen in regard to certain aspects of American life, he countered immediately with: “But America is young. We are really only about a hundred and fifty years old.” In the course of conversation only yesterday with an Englishman, the son of one of the great friends America had in England during our Civil War, he said: “Of course you are young. We must wait.” In a letter just received from a friend at home I find the same idea reiterated. “We are three hundred years old,” he writes, “England a thousand years old. Will you venture the prophecy that in seven hundred more years, when people have a competency, we shall not educate our sons and daughters for service that does not have immediate economic returns?”