Part 17 (1/2)

For him this result was clear, and if he erred, he erred in coton, for there was little difference on the merits Adams was sure to learn backwards, but the case seemed entirely different with Cameron, a typical Pennsylvanian, a practical politician, who all the Adamses, had abused for a lifetime for subservience to o with the banks and corporations which had made and sustained hi champion of silver in the East

The refor Post and Godkin, whose personal interests lay with the gold standard, at once assumed that Senator Cameron had a personal interest in silver, and denounced his corruption as hotly as though he had been convicted of taking a bribe

More than silver and gold, the moral standard interested Adaold, but he supported silver; the Evening Post's and Godkin's interests ith gold, and they frankly said so, yet they avowedly pursued their interests even into politics; Cameron's interests had always been with the corporations, yet he supported silver Thus ainst his interests; that Godkin was virtuous in following his interests; and that Ca that one of the three was a moral idiot, which was it:--Adaress or the newspapers or a popular election has decided a question of doubtfulmoney into their own pockets; but in deives law To any one who knew the relative popularity of Cameron and Godkin, the idea of a popular vote between them seemed excessively huainst Cameron, for Godkin

The Boston moralist and reformer went on, as always, like Dr

Johnson, i his interests, or his antipathies; but the true Aroped in the dark to discover where his greater interest lay As usual, the banks taught hiht one rateful whether it liked them or not; but of all the lessons Adams learned from them, none compared in dra silver all the -carriage crossing the Furka Pass, they reached Lucerne in the afternoon, where Ada his immediate return to Boston because the coar

If he wanted education, he knew no quickerstruck on the head by it; and yet he was himself surprised at his own slowness to understand what had struck hiht was of beggary of nerves, and he h his mind tried to wrestle with the problem how any man could be ruined who had, months before, paid off every dollar of debt he knew hiave up that insoluble riddle in order to fall back on the larger principle that beggary could be no more for him than it was for others ere more valuable ood citizen, and the next day started for Quincy where he arrived August 7

As a starting-point for a new education at fifty-five years old, the shock of finding one's self suspended, for several ot there, or how to get away, is to be strongly recorees the situation dawned on hi others, some money--thousands ofothers, was responsible and of which he knew no more than they The humor of this situation seemed to hih at hie to As far as he could co to lose that he cared about, but the banks stood to lose their existence Money mattered as little to him as to anybody, but money was their life For the first tih; and the whole cohed All sat down on the banks and asked what the banks were going to do about it To Adams the situation seemed farcical, but the more he saw of it, the less he understood it He was quite sure that nobody understood it y was at work, doing so that nobody wanted done When Adams went to his bank to draw a hundred dollars of his own money on deposit, the cashi+er refused to let him have more than fifty, and Adams accepted the fifty without co to let the banks have soed to them Each wanted to help the other, yet both refused to pay their debts, and he could find no answer to the question which was responsible for getting the other into the situation, since lenders and borroere the same interest and socially the same person Evidently the force was one; its operation was mechanical; its effect must be proportional to its power; but no one knehat it meant, and most people dis

Men died like flies under the strain, and Boston grew suddenly old, haggard, and thin Adaot hold of his world and could finish his education, interrupted for twenty years He cared not whether it orth finishi+ng, if only it amused; but he see new and curious was about to happen to the world Great changes had taken place since 1870 in the forces at work; the old machine ran far behind its duty; somewhere--somehow--it was bound to break down, and if it happened to break precisely over one's head, it gave the better chance for study

For the first time in several years he saw much of his brother Brooks in Quincy, and was surprised to find him absorbed in the same perplexities Brooks was then a orous thinker who irritated too many Boston conventions ever to suit the atmosphere; but the two brothers could talk to each other without atmosphere and were used to audiences of one Brooks had discovered or developed a law of history that civilization followed the exchanges, and having worked it out for the Mediterranean orking it out for the Atlantic Everything As European and Asiatic, beca new equilibriu paradox, Brooks, with the advantages of ten years' study, had swept away ht for himself, but he found that no paradox compared with that of daily events The facts were constantly outrunning his thoughts The instability was greater than he calculated; the speed of acceleration passed bounds Aeneral rules he laid down the paradox that, in the social disequilibriuical outcome was not collectivism, but anarchisot back to Washi+ngton on Septe partly blown over, life had taken on a new face, and one so interesting that he set off to Chicago to study the Exposition again, and stayed there a fortnight absorbed in it He found matter of study to fill a hundred years, and his education spread over chaos

Indeed, it seeh, this year, education went mad The silver question, thorny as it was, fell into relations as simple as words of one syllable, coe that cao, educational ga, and ran out of sight a thousands of its kind before one could mark its burrow The Exposition itself defied philosophy One ate closed, one could still explain nothing that needed explanation As a scenic display, Paris had never approached it, but the inconceivable scenic display consisted in its being there at all-- else on the continent, Niagara Falls, the Yellowstone Geysers, and the whole railway system thrown in, since these were all natural products in their place; while, since Noah's Ark, no such Babel of loose and ill joined, such vague and ill-defined and unrelated thoughts and half-thoughts and experimental outcries as the Exposition, had ever ruffled the surface of the Lakes

The first astonishreater every day That the Exposition should be a natural growth and product of the Northwest offered a step in evolution to startle Darwin; but that it should be anything else see it were not--adrowth and product of the Beaux Arts artistically induced to pass the suan--could it be made to seem at home there?

Was the American made to see it as though it were all his own; he felt it was good; he was proud of it; for the h he had passed his life in landscape gardening and architectural decoration If he had not done it hiet it done to suit hihters dressed at Worth's or Paquin's

Perhaps he could not do it again; the next time he would want to do it himself and would show his own faults; but for the moment he seemed to have leaped directly from Corinth and Syracuse and Venice, over the heads of London and New York, to io Critics had no trouble in criticising the classicis cities had always shown traders' taste, and, to the stern purist of religious faith, no art was thinner than Venetian Gothic All trader's taste sive her taste a look of unity

One sat down to ponder on the steps beneath Richard Hunt's dome almost as deeply as on the steps of Ara Coeli, and much to the same purpose Here was a breach of continuity--a rupture in historical sequence! Was it real, or only apparent? One's personal universe hung on the answer, for, if the rupture was real and the new American world could take this sharp and conscious twist towards ideals, one's personal friends would coreat American chariot-race for faood when they saw it, they would soe and St Gaudens, Burnham and McKim, and Stanford White when their politicians and otten The artists and architects who had done the work offered little encourageh, but not in terms that one cared to quote; and to theh they worked only for thee decoration; a diamond shi+rt-stud; a paper collar; but possibly the architects of Paestuenti had talked in the sa of Seo

Jostled by these hopes and doubts, one turned to the exhibits for help, and found it The industrial schools tried to teach so much and so quickly that the instruction ran to waste Some millions of other people felt the sa education, and to therown up in the habit of thinking a steaine or a dynamo as natural as the sun, and expected to understand one as little as the other For the historian alone the Exposition made a serious effort

Historical exhibits were cohly worked out One of the best was that of the Cunard steary for results found hied to waste a pencil and several sheets of paper trying to calculate exactly when, according to the given increase of power, tonnage, and speed, the growth of the ocean steaht, to the year 1927; another generation to spare before force, space, and time should ulation into the future, because it was the nearest of ht less because they seemed already finished except for ht most, but needed a tribe of chemists, physicists, and ht least because it had barely reached infancy, and, if its progress was to be constant at the rate of the last ten years, it would result in infinite costless energy within a generation One lingered long aave to history a new phase Men of science could never understand the ignorance and naivete; of the historian, hen he came suddenly on a neer, asked naturally what it was; did it pull or did it push? Was it a screw or thrust? Did it flow or vibrate? Was it a wire or a mathematical line? And a score of such questions to which he expected answers and was astonished to get none

Education ran riot at Chicago, at least for retarded minds which had never faced in concrete fornorant Men who knew nothing whatever--who had never run a steaine, the simplest of forces--who had never put their hands on a lever--had never touched an electric battery--never talked through a telephone, and had not the shadow of a notion what a, or any other term of measurement introduced within a hundred years--had no choice but to sit down on the steps and brood as they had never brooded on the benches of Harvard College, either as student or professor, aghast at what they had said and done in all these years, and stillfutility of the society that let them say and do it The historical mind can think only in historical processes, and probably this was the first time since historians existed, that any of them had sat down helpless before a ical or a political sequence, le clue to which they had hitherto trusted was the unity of natural force

Did he himself quite knohat he h to state his probleo asked in 1893 for the first time the question whether the A Adams answered, for one, that he did not know, but would try to find out On reflecting sufficiently deeply, under the shadow of Richard Hunt's architecture, he decided that the American people probably knew noor drifting unconsciously to soht, as their solar syste towards soh could be observed, this point o was the first expression of Aht as a unity; one ton was the second When he got back there, he fell headlong into the extra session of Congress called to repeal the Silver Act The silver minority made an obstinate attempt to prevent it, and most of the old standard The banks alone, and the dealers in exchange, insisted upon it; the political parties divided according to capitalistic geographical lines, Senator Ca alood-temper, and made liberal allowance for each others' actions and le was rather less irritable than such struggles generally were, and it ended like a co of the final vote, Senator Cameron came back froe, and Moreton Frewen, all in the gayest of huh they were rid of a heavy responsibility Adaht in hteenth century, his Constitution of 1789, his George Washi+ngton, his Harvard College, his Quincy, and his Ply as any one would stand up with him He had said it was hopeless twenty years before, but he had kept on, in the same old attitude, by habit and taste, until he found hied his antiquated dislike of bankers and capitalistic society until he had become little better than a crank He had known for years that he reat e, senility, and death--against which one made what little resistance one could The matter was settled at last by the people For a hundred years, between 1793 and 1893, the American people had hesitated, vacillated, swayed forward and back, between two forces, one si, and old standard, and the majority at last declared itself, once for all, in favor of the capitalistic system with all its necessary machinery All one's friends, all one's best citizens, refores, educated classes, had joined the banks to force sub foreseen by the overnment, this was the one he liked least, but his likes or dislikes were as antiquated as the rebel doctrine of State rights A capitalistic system had been adopted, and if it were to be run at all, it must be run by capital and by capitalisticto run so complex and so concentrated a rotesque alliance with city day-laborers, as had been tried in 1800 and 1828, and had failed even under simple conditions

There, education in doear; of running machinery; of economy; and involved no disputed principle Once adht dispute in what social interest it should be run, but in any case it reat revolutions co in politics ever surprised Henry Adams more than the ease hich he and his silver friends slipped across the chasold standard and the capitalistic system with its methods; the protective tariff; the corporations and trusts; the trades-unions and socialistic paternalism which necessarily made their complement; the whole mechanical consolidation of force, which ruthlessly stamped out the life of the class into which Ada the new energies that A into the ash-heap these cinders of are and how far!

CHAPTER XXIII

SILENCE (1894-1898)

The convulsion of 1893 left its victims in dead-water, and closed much education While the country braced itself up to an effort such as no one had thought within its powers, the individual crawled as he best could, through the wreck, and foundthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the four years, 1893 to 1897, had no value in the draht be left out

Much that had made life pleasant between 1870 and 1890 perished in the ruin, and ae had been the fortunes of Clarence King The lesson taught whatever the bystander chose to read in it; but to Adaularly full of ht King's education ideal, and his personal fitness unrivalled No other young American approached hiy, social standing, eniality, and science, that see His nearest rival was Alexander Agassiz, and, as far as their friends knew, no one else could be classed with the The result of twenty years' effort proved that the theory of scientific education failed where most theory fails--for want of ht, quite outside of every possible financial risk, had been caught in the cogs, and held for ulf of bankruptcy, saved only by the chance that the whole class of millionaires were more or less bankrupt too, and the banks were forced to let the mice escape with the rats; but, in sum, education without capital could always be taken by the throat and forced to disgorge its gains, nor was it helped by the knowledge that no one intended it, but that all alike suffered

Whether voluntary or mechanical the result for education was the same