The disposition of prosperity to look down on poverty, to drift out of _brotherly_ sympathy with it, to misunderstand it, is as old as property rights. The disposition of the so-called educated to look down on the less educated, to mistake knowledge for intellect, absurdly to exaggerate the practical and even the æsthetic value of “polite learning,” to under-estimate the all-round importance of that real education which is got only in the school of rude experience--this supercilious disposition is as old as human vanity. It insinuates itself into the sanest characters; it makes fools and incompetents and snobs of many promising young men. And these two errors--the one, through prosperity; the other, through false education--are responsible for the failure of such a large section of our “elegantly articulate” to appreciate that we are to-day getting from abroad the best in brain and in vitality that we have ever got. What differentiates the immigrant from those he left behind him? Why, he had the enterprise, the courage to protest against the slavery in which militarism and despotism were enwrapping all. He left; he made the long and arduous journey into this remote and unknown land. He did not give up when conditions became too hard, did not sink into serfdom; he boldly made a hazard of new fortunes. Away back in the centuries, Asia’s most vigorous fled from her into Europe--and Asia sank into the slough of despotism and Europe became great and strong, advancing in all the arts. Now-a-days--to-day no less than when Salem and Jamestown and New Amsterdam and New Orleans were founding--Europe is causing her best to fly to us. Her best, indeed! We must be American enough, democratic enough, to disregard the snob standards of our weak wanderers off after European caste and culture; we must look at men in the true American fashion--must look at men as _men_. From the common people our Democracy--like all Democracy--sprang; by the common people is it nourished; by the common people will it prevail. And these newcomers are of the common people, the custodians of the highest ideals that irradiate the human imagination. Unimportant indeed is the traffic of individuals and ideas that goes first-class between America and Europe, in the comparison with the traffic that goes steerage. CHAPTER XVI THE REAL AMERICAN WOMAN The American woman is regarded both here and abroad as the strongest and subtlest enemy of the American Democracy. She is pictured in the imaginations of students of our life as ignorant of politics, interested only in her own sovereignty over the American man, or, rather, over his pocketbook, a snob and a climber and a worshiper of European aristocratic institutions; a poor housekeeper and a reluctant mother, and a very vampire for luxury and show, she hides her superficiality and cold-heartedness under a mask that is fair and fascinating. She is a born caste-worshiper, an instinctive hater of Democracy.