The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1897-07-06
WHAT COMMON AMERICANS
NEED,
CIV. D. Howells in Harper's Magazine
for July)

| CIV. D. Howells in Harper's Maya zine
for July)
On the threshold of a new century,
the portal of the 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 as he can in no pleasure,
and tastes the happiness of doing some
thing, making something, creating
something.
Our problem is how to keep the
chance of this free to all; how to find
work for all: how to render drones i'm
possible, either rich drones or poor
drones. voluntary or involuntary. Per-
maps the vaStness 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 honor to the common good
will of common men.
They are still confronted over there
in the old world with questions which
we solved a century ago; but our prob
lem is none the less serious for that.
We do not feel the gay buoyancy of our
homage under the burden, but we are
not discourag ed, though we are SO much
more serious.
We have been a little drunk with our
prosperity; our luck had gone to our
heads. perhaps; but we have not for
gotten 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 8
no people ever were before; and that if
we are true to ourselves, equal to our
opportunities, there is no good that we
may not achieve for the common adj
vantage.
I think that much of the self criticism
which has characterized us in these la
ter, these wiser years is an effect of
the unfathomable confidence we have
in our destiny, which is one with our
duty as well as our glory. We have it
1Cs1 80 Lao Hon
/ asked, which, if answered, may help us
to know our duty.
What has been our fault that we
have any knotty problem after one
hundred years of absolute freedom and
of almost unbroken prosperity?
In what have we been false to our
selves?
How have we failed to remember 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 @smedy outside of
democracy.
No one proposes to revert to a former
condition, of any sort whatever. 1t
is not pretended, even in the widest
burlesque, that we could by any man
ner of means help ourselves or save
ourselves, through monarchy or aristoc-
racy Or autocracy.
These things are logically so i'm
possible for US that we are not even
afraid of them. We intend the good of
all; that is what we understand Ameri-
ca 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 unimaginable
change) to them put food in the mouths
and clothes on the backs and knowl-
edge in the heads of the common peo-
pie?
We ourselves are the common people,
and we know what the common people
need