The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-07-19
WHAT COMMON AMERICANS NEED.
Whatever 1t May Be 1t Is Not Change
from Democracy.
W. D. Howells, in Harper,

W. D. Howells in Harper.
On the threshold of a new century, the
portal ofethe future, we see more clearly
than ever that America is the home of
work of endeavor, of the busy effort in
which man loses the heavy sense of self
he in no pleasure, and tastes the
happiness of doing something, making
something, creating something. Our prob
lem is how to keep the chance of this free
to all; how to find work for all; how to rem
der drones impossible, either rich drones or
poor drOneS, voluntary or involuntary.
Perhaps the yastness of this problem is
what has rendered us less self-satisfied in
the presence of others difficulties such
difficulties as we surmounted when we left
royalty and rank behind and trusted our
lives, our fortunes and our sacred 1honor
to the common good will of common men.
They are still confronted over there in the
old world with questions which we solved
century ago; but our problem is none the
less serious for that. We do not feel the
gay buoyancy of our homage under the bur-
den, but we are not discouraged, though we
are much more serious. We have been
a little drunk with our prosperity; our luck
has gone to our heads, perhaps; but we
have not forgotten our duty, which is not
the duty of people to prince of class to
class, but of man to man. We recognize
fully that we are in each others keeping
as no people ever were before, and that if
we are true to ourselves, equal to our op-
pOrtunitieS there is no good that we may
not achieve for the common advantage.
which has characterized us in these later,
these wiser years is an effect of the un-
fathOmaDle confidence we nave IN our deS-
tiny which is one with our duty as well as
our glory. We have it laid upon us to
leave no question unasked which, if an
swered, may help us to know our duty.
What has been our fault that we have any
knotty problem after a hundred years of
absolute freedom and of almost unbroken
prosperity? In what have we been false
to ourselves? How have we failed to re-
member that there is no good but the good
of all? What are the recoverable chances
that we have thrown away? What is the
secret of our stupidity, our heedlessness,
our blindness?
We ask all this in terms of greater or
less severity, but whatever we find the
answer to be, not one of us dreams of
looking for the remedy outside of democ-
racy No one proposes to revert to
former condition, of any sort whatever. 1t
is not pretended even in the widest bur-
lesque that we could by any manner of
means help ourselves, or save ourselves,
through monarchy or arstocracy or autoc-
racy These things are logically i'm
possible for us that we are not even afraid
of them. We intend the good of all; that
is what we understand America to mean;
and those forms have been found by quite
SUFFICIENT experiment never to be for the
good of any Would a change "a wholly
unimaginabe change) to them put food in
the mouths clothes on the backs, knowl-
edge in the heads of the common people?
We ourselves are the common people, and
we know what the common people need.