motives which a foreigner was free from; and the force which impelled so gifted a woman as she was to work for years to obtain entrance to a social set which, with all her effort, she could not get into, must be, if it continues to animate many people, a force well worth study.

I also remember a certain significant remark of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who did not belong to the "best society" any more than Theodore Parker did, but who knew the circle better, perhaps. Dr. Holmes said (in 1886) that class distinctions are more sharply drawn in the United States than they are in England, though they are also harder to define. The remark seems paradoxical; but the contradiction is only in its terms: it is true enough in fact. The line is sharply drawn to exclude people; it leaves definitely enough one man on one side of it and another on the other. But the qualification of the man who is within may be very vague indeed; it may require an expert to tell why he is in and the other is out. It is actually true that the man who is left outside may have better blood as well as more wealth than the man within, and those within will not for a moment think of questioning his claim to a more illustrious descent. He may be the Governor of the State, Federal senator, even President; but the bar of this little circle will be resolutely kept up against him and his family. It is a question of interest to seek the reason for such a distinction.

American social classes or castes are mainly in a state of formation, but the grade which is commonly recognized as the highest social set is probably nearer to a state of crystallization than any other. It has long possessed certain aids toward the establishment of a peculiarly exclusive and self renewing circle which are really not possessed by the fashionable society of a country like England, which is at once aristocratic, national and distinguished. The British aristocracy is often reinforced by government appointment; the personal arrangements of English high society are in a sense overseen and in certain particulars sometimes upset by in fluence and authority above and beyond it; and it is compelled, at least in a way,

to recognize the public distinction which is always coming to new people.

In the United States there is nothing national about the upper grade of society. The official society of Washington is a thing quite apart from the "Society" of New York or Boston, and has merely accidental relations with it. American "Society" consists of a number of local circles, each controlled by any force above or below it, whose members may be said to nominate their own successors. Public distinction establishes no claim for even momentary admission to it. The separate circles may be as close corporations as their members wish, drawing their lines as sharply as they will. Once firmly founded, a social set so utterly uncontrolled may be as exclusive and selfperpetuating as the College of Cardinals. But any group of people may set up a social circle of their own; hundreds of such groups do set up their own circles. Why has any one group been able to arrogate to itself the name of Society? In itself this is an interesting question; and the broader one, which should concern itself with the actual division of the population into all its social castes, whether high or low, in a republic where all members of society in the large sense are supposed to be equal in privilege, is still more worthy of the attention of the student of sociology. The general struggle to get into a superior set may be a laughable thing, but it is also something more. Let us see how large a thing it may signify in a republic where rank and title are not officially recognized, and in which democracy is supposed to be triumphant.

Through their government, the American people have set up certain political arrangements, relying on these to effect certain objects essentially social in their character. Having done this, and proclaimed their purpose with great emphasis and undoubted earnestness, they then go on to create, by a perfectly voluntary process of social gravitation working quite outside of government, a social arrangement which neutralizes, so far as each citizen's ease, peace of mind, and daily endeavor and "pursuit of happiness" are concerned, their political system. It seems to me idle to as

sume that this social arrangement is of no consequence compared with political equality. Most men's daily toil and worry (not alone in the United States, I may remark, but in European countries as well, though this inquiry is concerned with the United States) are spent in doing things which have reference, in a way direct or indirect, to what is called the social position and appearance of themselves or their families. The majority of people, including women in the count, are, save in some exceptional moment of war or great public excitement, thinking much more about some fact, accessory, or appearance connected with their own or their children's social position than they are about anything connected with government or politics. It comes to this, that men risk their lives to secure free political institutions, or possibly to avoid the payment of threepence a pound on tea, to the imposition of which they have not consented, and then tie themselves hand and foot in a long bondage to a social or family ambition quite out of harmony with their political pretensions. It is a common estimate, and I think a fair one, that two-thirds of the toil of the head of a family at the present day goes to the obtaining of superfluities, practically all of which are connected with social appearance. We all live more or less slavishly and unhap pily for the sake of working our way along in a social movement toward an apex represented by a circle which we often affect to despise, and sometimes really do despise. Is the motive behind all this merely our own universal weakness and vanity, or something else?

Our situation is very cleverly represented by the French rural mayor whose story is told by M. C. Wagner in his admirable book, "La Vie Simple." This worthy man was the principal functionary of a village which was close by a watering-place sometimes visited by the Emperor Napoleon the Third. He had gone on for many years living contentedly in a good house such as the people of his village ordinarily inhabited; but when he became possessed of the notion that some day the emperor would come to visit the place, and

that as mayor he should receive the head of the State, his surroundings grew in his own eyes altogether too mean for such a presence. So he called the masons and carpenters; he replaced his wooden staircase with one of marble, and pulled down the partitions of his rooms, converting three muchneeded domestic apartments into one grand salon, which he furnished pretentiously. Then, with his family, he withdrew into one small room, to live in a wretched huddle. Having emptied his purse and destroyed his comfort, he waited for his imperial guest. Alas! the fall of the Empire came, but never the emperor.

If we had been able to enter into this rural functionary's heart, and learn there what motive it was that led him to make a fool of himself, we should probably have learned that it was not himself, nor his blushing honors of an hour, that he was thinking of, but his family. The little touch into which he expected to come with the head of the State would have greatly distinguished his family for a long time among his neighbors, and, judging by the ordinary standard of opinion, would have rendered his grand salon a profitable investment.

The motive of American social struggle is practically the same. The credit and advancement of the family is not only the spring of our action-it is the foundation of the circle which is the apex of the American social pyramid. How was our fashionable society formed? Clearly, it was supplied with a nucleus by a tradition that certain families of more or less inherited wealth had always occupied a superior position in the community; to this nucleus have been added from time to time certain other families who for a sufficient period, by no means determinable, have been habitually associated with the indubitably "old" ones in their social pleasures and solemnities, and who are rich enough to give the entertainments in which the members of the little set are gathered and, in a way, numbered. If from time to time the ranks of this society are recruited, the recruiting is done, I believe, so far as people living

in the same town are concerned, by the admission of some family of wealth which has undergone a sort of probation satisfactory to those who are already members of the circle. Bachelors are found in the circle, of course, and are admitted to it, but there must have been a satisfactory family behind them somewhere; they scarcely come into permanent membership as individual raw recruits. In Boston, at least, people who are definitely outside the circle can hardly hope to get into it in their own persons; but they often cherish a hope of getting their children into it. There the key of fashionable society has been, it is said, found in the admission of children to a certain dancing-class; so that women have been known to spend the energy of years, with an almost incredible amount of careful cultivation of appearances and diplomátic improvement of acquaintances, to obtain admission for their children to a class which met at a certain hall at five o'clock, rather than to one which met at the same hall, with the same master, at four o'clock. The victory of this admission won at last, the children might some time, if all subsequent endeavor went well, and especially if each one were married to a person who had reached at least the same round in the ladder of social ascent, hope to be enrolled in the list of the most select circle. Very likely even then the parents would but hang on the remotest verge of society, appearing at certain "functions," but being excluded as completely as ever from the more or less official lists that occasionally come before the public. But the position attained for the children would be definite enough, and with difficulty forfeited, so long as the new family retained its

wealth.

Some considerable degree of wealth, or at least of access to ready money, is essential to more than latent membership in the circle, for, though it is far from being a company of the millionaires of the United States-many more millionaires being found outside it than within it-some wealth is necessary, as I have said, for the entertainments which are to a considerable extent the constitution of this grade of society.

The members of society are not the only persons who appear at its entertainments. Those who belong to the set are not content with seeing merely the members of their own and one another's families on all occasions. Certain receptions of some of them are quite "miscellaneous." But invariable invitations ticket the member of the set; and certain social ceremonies in the course of a year quite rigidly shut out all resident persons who do not belong to "Society," performing thus a function analogous to that of the round-up on the Western plains, at which all cattle which are found not to bear the brand of a certain establishment are summarily excluded.

This sifting process, together with the jealousy of new-comers, keeps each local circle down to a small number. One of the members of fashionable society in New York, who was sometimes quoted as an authority on matters connected with its usages and its enrolment, said a few years ago that society in New York did not consist of more than one hundred and fifty families. Probably no local set of the exclusive sort is larger than this, although the size of the town has extremely little to do with the size of the circle. I am credibly told that in Chicago, society does not in strictness include more than forty families, and that these families are poor, as compared with thousands of commercial people outside the circle. In the teeming and shifting life of a new and great city like Chicago, where society of any sort had no existence until late in the present century, and where enormous fortunes have been continually making, should not only repeat but accentuate the exclusive conditions found in the old cities of the East, with many millionaire families below striving to get into the select upper circle, the case would be peculiarly instructive as to the tendency of social hankerings to neutralize democratic conditions in politics and democratic influences in commerce and daily affairs.

But to establish completely the significance of this state of things anywhere, i would first be necessary to ascertain whether it were true that the majority of people outside this supposed socially

highest circle were engaged, either purposely or not, in an attempt to work themselves along through the social grades which have their apex in such a circle. This can be ascertained only by means of such observation as individuals who have chosen to study such social phenomena may give the subject. It is hardly a question that can be answered by statistics, since social ambition, though a tremendous force in life, is outside the field of the census enumerator. Observers are likely to be in terested and partial, and as yet authorities on the subject scarcely have any existence. And yet, so far as America is concerned, any candid person who has lived an active life, social in the broad sense, who has not been content to spend his existence in the community in which he was born, and who in various places had been studious of social phenomena, may contribute data which will help to answer the question.

In a broad way, the question is, Do people care rather more for the chance of getting on in the world in the respects of appearance and social estimation, and for helping their families to a position of increasing consequence or distinction in the community, than they care for the doctrine of the freedom and equal right of all persons? A question which goes with this-perhaps it is really the primary one, and the other the dependent one-is the one whether the family spirit does not necessarily neutralize democratic institutions

wherever it prevails.

If any American observer of the sort I have just spoken of goes back over his own social experience and I repeat that the science of this subject has not progressed beyond the point where it is greatly in need of personal evidence-it must resolve itself into significant incidents and illustrative occurrences. For instance, I derive my own earliest recollections in this field from what is probably still the most democratic society, in the respects of its political arrangements and the customs of personal intercourse, in the United States-a rural community in Vermont, where no poor foreign or rich native element has yet obtained a foothold. In this community all persons who have "support"

for themselves or their families-if they maintain themselves fairly by their own or inherited resources-are apparently on an equal footing socially as well as politically; if they require the help of the community in the material struggle of life they sink beneath contempt. I say they are apparently on an equality; certainly there is no formal outward deference of a sort that instantly implies the inferiority of one person to another. I remember that, a good many years ago, when I had returned to the neighborhood to which I have referred after a considerable absence, I was invited to attend a "sugar party”—a vernal festivity, in this case given by the wife of a farmer on a hill farm, at which the guests were to take part in the enjoyment of spreading the hot wax of maple syrup on snow smoothly packed in pans, and partaking of this delicacy. Among the guests was the governor of the state, who happened to be a resident of the neighboring village. The governor drove to the farmhouse in his own "buggy," which was of the same one-horse, four-wheeled and covered type as the conveyances driven by most of the farmers; two or three of the farmers, I noticed with no little pride in my kinsmen of the hills, had better buggies than the governor. The man who was entitled by our usages to be addressed as His Excellency, but who certainly was not so addressed by any of these people, himself took his horse out of the vehicle, though he was assisted by one or two of the farmers in unfastening the traces and unbuckling straps, as they had assisted one another. With his own hands the governor tied his horse under a shed and blanketed the animal; then he went into the house with two or three of the farmers and went directly to the kitchen-sink to wash his hands at the tap. He and the farmers took their turns at this. To me the spectacle of such democratic simplicity was inspiring; but presently my notions were to receive a distinct shock. The governor had engaged me in conversation, and together we had gone into the parlor, where half-a-dozen or more persons were already sitting and talking. Presently an inquiry for me in the next room came to my ears through

the open door; and I heard my hostess, the farmer's wife, say in reply, in a somewhat hushed tone, "Oh, he's settin' in the parlor with the Quality."

I learned that not

I had never heard this word "quality" used in actual homely speech in this sense, though I had heard it in cities in connection with bitter allusions to aristocrats, swells, and the like. This woman was in every sense a simple country woman, and I knew she did not borrow the word from books or use it in any scornful sense, but spoke it deferentially and also as a matter of course. I became convinced by inquiry, too, that it had not reference wholly to the governor's presence. only was there in the neighborhood a considerable self-supporting element which was not represented at this party, being deemed of insufficient social importance for invitation, but that within the assemblage itself a certain social distinction was without question allowed to be set up. Subsequently I was able to observe that the people of this most democratic of communities were strongly influenced by considerations of one another's relative social importance. In the local estimation, every family was definitely assigned to an ascertained niche; and as a rule people remained in their niches. Certain young men, indeed, earned approbation for an attempt to advance from the less respectable local element to the more respectable; but their definite promotion seemed to depend on their "marrying the right sort of girl." While the lines of social caste did not appear to be drawn relentlessly, and did actually seem to depend in a degree on a certain local standard of merit in "respectability," the principle of social superiority residing in a particular circle, and founded on marriage and the family, was distinctly recognized; and it was evident that, taking the year through, the majority of the members of the community thought much more about social appearance, respectability, convention, and position than they did of political questions of any kind. Though every man had a vote, it was undeniable that the voter who belonged to one of the families who were little regarded failed of equality of political

influence and material opportunity when compared with the man of one of the more highly regarded families. To this extent, certainly important to the individual, social consideration had given the lie to the current political assumption in the most simple and supposably democratic of communities.

Afterward I had an opportunity to study class conditions in a town whose social arrangements are apparently the opposite of the Vermont rural community. This town was Newport, in Rhode Island. To Newport a section of fashionable New York society is transplanted every summer; it comes into contact there, and to a considerable extent, coalesces, with a section of the fashionable society of Boston. These elements are joined by a few fashionable people from Philadelphia and other cities; and they fuse into one "aristocratic" group representing many parts of the country more distinctly, I believe, than they ever do in any other place-surely more than in Washington. In the same town live descendants of colonial governors and "old families" famous in the history of the little State. There are officers of the United States army and navy; there are resident and sojourning nouveaux riches; there are representatives of the American typical "business man" or bourgeois class; and I found there something which is very unusual in New England, adult native Americans, of Yankee race, who could not read or write. At the time of my residence at Newport there were families or clans whose voting members were bought in a bunch, so to speak, the political head of the family-not usually the head of the family in the Old World sense, but rather a self-constituted "boss"-disposing of its whole vote for money and dividing the spoil with the voters. I have reason to believe that at the present time this feudal practice has been superseded, at least to a great extent, by the methods of political influence more customary in American towns. There were in Newport also several varieties of foreigners (including German and Polish Jews whom the absentee descendants of the Sephardim or Portuguese Jews who founded the local synagogue in the last century