Take if you please the reaction of the library on the two sides of the water to the inevitable result of opening it to home-circulation—­the necessity of knowing whether a given book is or is not on the shelves.  The American response was to open the shelves, the British, to create an additional piece of machinery—­the indicator.  These two results might have been predicted in advance by one familiar with the temper of the two peoples.  It has shown itself in scores of instances, in the front yards of residences, for instance—­walled off in England and open to the street in the United States.

I shall be reminded, I suppose, that there are plenty of open shelves in English libraries and that the open shelf is gaining in favor.  True; England is becoming “Americanized” in more respects than this one.  But I am speaking of the immediate reaction to the stimulus of popular demand, and this was as I have stated it.  In each case the reaction, temporarily at least, satisfied the demand; showing that the difference was not of administrative habit alone, but of community feeling.

This rapid review of modern American tendencies, however confusing the impression that it may give, will at any rate convince us, I think, of one thing—­the absurdity of objecting to anything whatever on the ground that it is un-American.  We are the most receptive people in the world.  We “take our good things where we find them,” and what we take becomes “American” as soon as it gets into our hands.  And yet, if anything new does not happen to suit any of us, the favorite method of attack is to denounce it as “un-American.”  Pretty nearly every element of our present social fabric has been thus denounced, at one time or another, and as it goes on changing, every change is similarly attacked.

The makers of our Constitution were good conservative Americans—­much too conservative, some of our modern radicals say—­yet they provided for altering that Constitution, and set absolutely no limits on the alterations that might be made, provided that they were made in the manner specified in the instrument.  We can make over our government into a monarchy tomorrow, if we want, or decree that no one in Chicago shall wear a silk hat on New Year’s Day.  It was recently the fashion to complain that the amendment of the Constitution has become so difficult as to be now practically a dead letter.  And yet we have done so radical a thing as to change absolutely the method of electing senators of the United States; and we did it as easily and quietly as buying a hat—­vastly more easily than changing a cook.  The only obstacle to changing our Constitution, no matter how radically and fundamentally, is the opposition of the people themselves.  As soon as they want the change, it comes quickly and simply.  Changes like these are not un-American if the American people like them well enough to make them.  They, and they alone, are the judges of what peculiarities they shall adopt as their own customs and characteristics.  So that when we hear that this or that is un-American, we may agree only in so far as it is not yet an American characteristic.  That we do not care for it today is no sign that we may not take up with it tomorrow, and it is no legitimate argument against our doing so, if we think proper.