“He has heard that Socialism proposes to acknowledge woman’s service to the State by paying her a weekly wage according to the number of children that she bears and rears.  I don’t propose to repeat his objections to the idea; they could hardly be called objections.  There is an ugly look comes into his eyes; something quite undefinable, prehistoric, almost dangerous, looks out of them....  In talking to him on this subject you do not seem to be talking to a man.  It is as if you had come face to face with something behind civilisation, behind humanity, something deeper down still among the dim beginnings of creation....”

Now, no doubt Mr. Jerome is writing with emphasis here.  But there is sufficient truth in the passage for it to stand here as a rough symbol of another factor in this question.  John Smithism, that manly and individualist element in the citizen, stands over against and resists all the forces of organisation that would subjugate it to a collective purpose.  It is careless of coming national cessation and depopulation, careless of the insurgent spirit beneath the acquiescences of Mrs. Smith, careless of its own inevitable defeat in the economic struggle, careless because it can understand none of these things; it is obstinately muddle-headed, asserting what it conceives to be itself against the universe and all other John Smiths whatsoever.  It is a factor with all other factors.  The creative, acquisitive, aggressive spirit of those bigger John Smiths who succeed as against the myriads of John Smiths who fail, the wider horizons and more efficient methods of the educated man, the awakening class-consciousness of women, the inevitable futility of John Smithism, the sturdy independence that makes John Smith resent even disciplined co-operation with Tom Brown to achieve a common end, his essential incapacity, indeed, for collective action; all these things are against the ultimate triumph, and make for the ultimate civilisation even of John Smith.

Sec. 11

It may be doubted if the increasing collective organisation of society to which the United States of America, in common with all the rest of the world, seem to be tending will be to any very large extent a national organisation.  The constitution is an immense and complicated barrier to effectual centralisation.  There are many reasons for supposing the national government will always remain a little ineffectual and detached from the full flow of American life, and this notwithstanding the very great powers with which the President is endowed.

One of these reasons is certainly the peculiar accident that has placed the seat of government upon the Potomac.  To the thoughtful visitor to the United States this hiding away of the central government in a minute district remote from all the great centres of thought, population and business activity becomes more remarkable more perplexing, more suggestive of an incurable weakness in the national government as he grasps more firmly the peculiarities of the American situation.