Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1888-04-26
THE MAKING OF THESE STATES
From the London Times.

AS we have already intimated, the clew
to the making of the United States is to be
sought not so much at New York, Penn
sylvania or Chicago as in the little New
England towns, with their Puritan chapels
and their elm-arcaded streets. They would
90 but a little way toward solving the
problem if they were, as is popularity sup
posed, all of the self-same texture. The
miracle of the indefatigable and inexhaust-
ible elasticity of the American character
would then remain still unexplained. An
observer need but travel upand down New
England, and examine for himself, as our
correspondent has travelled and examined
he will discover perfect magazine of dis
tinct powers, tendencies, and ambitions
out of which for generations America has
drawn the engines for apprOpriating and
realizing the mine of wealth reserved by
nature for the enjoyment of the Anglo
Saxon race. New England has contrib
uted its full share to the profession of
politics The list contains many dis
tinguished names besides that of
Daniel Webster, whom our corre-
spondent extols, perhaps with some exag-
geratiOn. La other and less tumultuOus
departments of intelligence New England
has been ever in the front of national pro-
gress. In literature, law, theology and
science it represents America in the world.
Yet the New Englauders who have
achieved acknowledged Ienown-theE Emer-
sons, Longfellows, Hawthornes, Bancrofts,
Websters Lowells, Prescotts, Motleys-
have done less for the nation than the rank
and file of their countrymen, unrecorded
and unknown. The hungry soil to which
the Mag flower brought its pilgrims is a
better mother of keen, brave men than
caterer for their material wants. Massa-
chusetts end the sister States have been a
perpetual nursury whence the continent
has supplied itself with pioneers of indus
try and agriculture. WhatJv diversity
of treatment the infinite variety of Ameri-
can circumstances required the exact in
strument demanded has always been found
ready in the arsenal of New England
shrewdness, stubbOrnness and mother wit.
America is neither fragmentary or mo-
notonous. 1t comprises within itself root
and basis of specific nationality, and is
maturing in conformity with laws of its
own. In some respects the hugeness of its
area. and the rapidity with which popula-
tion is filling it, expose it to disadvantage
in the eyes of foreign spectators. They
measure it as the continent it is, by the
side of the Old World. They seem to
expect it to equal in century or two the
fruits of tenfOld the time. Judged by such
a standard it wears a garish, and sometimes
a vulgar look. Tints are not properly sub
dued and harmonized. The task of pilipg
up riches has outstripped the science
of spending them. Society appears
eager to enjoy before it has
learned the art. But the amount done is
for the time miraculous. 1t would be in
conceivable but for such evidence as our
correspondent has collected of the present,
rather in the back ground and out of view,
of a much more elaborate human mechan-
ism CT brains, gifts, and aspirations, with
multifarious, natural and geographical re-
sources to minister to them and be ad-
ministered to, than is commonly visible or
understood. America, though it has plenty
still to learn of Europe, has something to
teach Europeans, and especially about it.
self. Few foreigners as yet comprehend
the reason Of its growth or the nature Of
the future in store for it.