The Washington Historical Quarterly, Volume V, 1914Various
History
The Washington Historical Quarterly, Volume V, 1914
Various
Northwest, Pacific -- History -- Periodicals
If we look about the periphery of the nation everywhere we see the
indications that our world is changing. On the streets of Northeastern
cities like New York and Boston, the faces which we meet are to a
surprising extent those of Southeastern Europe. Puritan New England,
which turned its capital into factories and mills and drew to its
shores the vast army of cheap labor, governed these people for a time
by a ruling class like an upper stratum between which and the lower
strata there was no assimilation. There was no such evolution into an
assimilated commonwealth as is seen in Middle Western agricultural
states, where immigrant and old native stock came in together and built
up a homogeneous society on the principle of give and take. But now the
Northeastern Coast finds its destiny, politically and economically,
passing away from the descendants of the Puritans. It is the little
Polish or Jewish boy, the Greek or the Sicilian, who takes the
traveller through historic streets, now the home of these newer people
to the Old North Church or to Paul Revere's house, or to Tea Wharf,
and tells you in his strange patois the story of revolution against
oppression.
Along the Southern Atlantic and the Gulf Coast, in spite of the
preservative influence of the negro, whose presence has always called
out resistance to change on the part of the whites, the forces of
social and industrial transformation are at work. The old tidewater
aristocracy has surrendered to the up country democrats. Along the line
of the Alleghanies like an advancing column, the forces of Northern
capital, textile and steel mills, year after year extend their invasion
into the lower South. New Orleans, once the mistress of the commerce of
the Mississippi Valley, is awakening to new dreams of world commerce.
On the southern border, similar invasions of American capital have
been entering Mexico. At the same time, the opening of the Panama Canal
has completed the dream of the ages of the Straits of Anian between
Atlantic and Pacific. Four hundred years ago, Balboa raised the flag
of Spain at the edge of the sea of the West and we are now preparing
to celebrate both that anniversary, and the piercing of the continent.
New relations have been created between Spanish America and the United
States and the world is watching the mediation of Argentina, Brazil
and Chili between the contending forces of Mexico and the Union. Once
more alien national interests lie threatening at our borders, but we no
longer appeal to the Monroe Doctrine and send our armies of frontier
men to settle our concerns off hand. We take council with European
nations and with the sisterhood of South America, and propose a remedy
of social reorganization in place of imperious will and force. Whether
the effort will succeed or not, it is a significant indication that
an old order is passing away, when such a solution is undertaken by
a President of Scotch-Irish stock, born in the fiery state of South
Carolina.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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