Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1881-12-03

From the New York Times.
II the reader will run over in his mind the
names Of the leading citizens of New York who
are fairly entitled to be called leading men,
he will find hardly one who was born in the city,
The great majority were born and reared in the
country. A large proportion of them havecome
here from New England.
Nor is it true alone of citizens who occupy
large place in public estimation that they were
born elsewhere than in New York. The pro-
portion of country-born and country-bred men
in the solid but ineonspicuous business circles
Is very large. It would be invidious to men,
ton by name the men whom the well-in-
formed reader will have in his mind while this
suggestion is being considered But we are
confident that a census of the most prosperous
and successful business men of New York
would reveal the fact that very few of them,
comparatively speaking are of city birth Here
and there, to be sure, we find mighty million
aires who are proud to claim New York city as
their birthplace. But in nearly all such in
stances it is true of them that they inherited
their vast wealth. with all its potentialities. AS
it is an old maxim that ''money makes money!
it does not affect the general question to in
stance as highly successful cty-born men, the
milionaires who owe their fortunes TO the
sagacity. industry. and enterprise of their faith
ers. who brought to the city habits of frugality
and thrift of which their children know nothing
whatever. The truth is still more wildly i'm
pressed on the mind by citing these inheritOrs of
the fruits of other mems labors. The founders
of the colossal fortunes of New York were coun-
try born: some of them even were of alien
birth. Their heirs may have proved themselves
prudent and careful of that which has fallen
to them. They have originated next to nothing
Perhaps an apology should be made for thus
dwelling on the possession of wealth as an indi-
cation of greatness. But the average New
Yorker, when confronted with the proposition
that his leading fellOw-citiZens are not city
born. will think of the very rich men the first
to be tried by this standard. Who are our lead
ing men if they are not those whose names lead
in the list of millionaires? 1t is this mamlnon
worship which stunts mental growth dwarfS
the noblest ambition, and makes individuality
impossible. In the city, fashion and the strug
gle for the possession of wealth engross the
thoughts OF the young. These they drink in
with the imported milk of infancy. Fashion re-
duces all young men and women to the same
dull and embarrassing level. New York is now
an Old city lthas produced generations of men.
How few of them have ever made their mark
here or elsewhere! 1t cannot be said that they
go into other parts of the country and there de-
yelOp the higher forms of manhood They are
never heard OF except in the aggregated. con-
crete form of ''Our felOw-citZens' How much
OF man is due to qualities born i'm him. and
how much to his early environment no phiioso-
pher has been able to tell us. But it is impos-
sibie to conceive of a sa9acious intellect like
that Oh Lincoln. or glorious mind like Web
sters. emerging from the false glitter and noisy
commotiOn of the city. We think of Washing
ton, the patrician sage. pacing among the
stately oaks of Old Virginia. of jefferson i'm his
country seat. and of John Adams ting his
farm in Massachusetts. These men. it is true.
fOurished in time when there were no biz
cities in the United States. But later on We
see Lincoln. Grant and Garfield reaching the
tOpmOst round of flames ladder from the OBJ
security of country homes. Not one American
President from first to last, was born in a city.
1t IS from the country that the city draws its
best blood. Into the silence. darkness and
moral ignominy of the cruel city how much of
the country's promise has sunk. We can only
guess The men and women whom the temp
tatiOns of the city have wrecked and the fierce
conflicts of city competition have crushed, are
great multitude. But the men who have nodded
public opinion, the men who have led the peO-
pie in great crises, and who have given the city
its greatest honor have come into it from
country homes. From country homes where
mothers not nursery-maids. rear the young:
from country homes where there is opportunity
for tranquil thought, reflection. high resolve.
and communion with the subtle influences and
visible forms of nature. OF the Americans who
nave exercised the widest influence uDon modern
thought. we may mention Emerson. 4 city
born Emerson would be an anomalous impossi-
blty. Hawthorne was the subteSt of Ameri-
can novelists. Born and bred in a CITY, he would
never have been heard OF.
For the condition of things of which we speak
there is no apparent remedy. The influences of
any city are not creative. They cannot be made
other than they are; nor can their currents be
changed. The New York boy. whatever may
De the example of his cOuntry-born parents.
whatever the cOunses that fall from their
revered lips. is continually spurred to enula-
ton. Not to the emulation of the larger minds
that dominate the whole country and whose
names viii endure when the merely rich are
forgotten, but to the emulation of those who
build palaces for themselves. display glittering
e1uipages, and make great show with the
pOmps and vanities Of fashionable city life. Out
in the wide spaces of the country in the sug-
Sestiye solitudes of forests and fields where
boys and young men are unconsciously absorb
ing the influences of nature. doing their own
thinking and slowly forming individual char
acter-there We must look for the coming men
who Will govern the politics, society, morality,
and thought of the CITY