tations to malfeasance or
dishonesty are reduced to the minimum. On the other hand, in a country
where intelligence and training have no surety that they are to
carry the day against stupidity and inefficiency, the incentives to
dishonourable conduct are overpowering. The result in our own political
life is that the best men are driven in disgust from politics, and thus
one of the noblest fields for the culture of the whole man is given
over to be worked by swindlers and charlatans. To an Athenian such a
severance of the highest culture from political life would have been
utterly inconceivable. Obviously the deepest explanation of all this
lies in our lack of belief in the necessity for high and thorough
training. We do not value culture enough to keep it in our employ or to
pay it for its services; and what is this short-sighted negligence but
the outcome of the universal shiftlessness begotten of the habit of
doing everything in a hurry? On every hand we may see the fruits of
this shiftlessness, from buildings that tumble in, switches that are
misplaced, furnaces that are ill-protected, fire-brigades that are
without discipline, up to unauthorized meddlings with the currency, and
revenue laws which defeat their own purpose.

I said above that the attributes of American life which we should find
it necessary for our purpose to signalize are simply the attributes
of modern life in their most exaggerated phase. Is there not a certain
sense in which all modern handiwork is hastily and imperfectly done?
To begin with common household arts, does not every one know that old
things are more durable than new things? Our grandfathers wore better
shoes than we wear, because there was leisure enough to cure the leather
properly. In old times a chair was made of seasoned wood, and its joints
carefully fitted; its maker had leisure to see that it was well put
together. Now a thousand are turned off at once by machinery, out of
green wood, and, with their backs glued on, are hurried off to their
evil fate,--destined to drop in pieces if they happen to stand near the
fireplace, and liable to collapse under the weight of a heavy man.
Some of us still preserve, as heirlooms, old tables and bedsteads of
Cromwellian times: in the twenty-first century what will have become of
our machine-made bedsteads and tables?

Perhaps it may seem odd to talk about tanning and joinery in connection
with culture, but indeed there is a subtle bond of u