Emerson was the perfect star-attraction for this system. He was antielitist. He thought
American culture must be egalitarian and democratic. Self-help was vital, in this as in all fields.
He said that the first American who read Homer in a farm-house' performeda great service to
the United States.' If he found a man out West, he said, reading a good book on a train, I wanted to hug him.' His own economic and political philosophy was identical with the public philosophy pushing Americans across the continent to fulfill their manifest destiny. Emerson laid down the maxims of this expansion:The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and
supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. Give no
bounties, make equal laws, secure life and property, and you do not need to give alms. Open the
doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they do themselves justice; property will not be in
bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile to the
industrious, brave and persevering.'
It would be difficult to think of any doctrine more diametrically opposed to what was being
preached in Europe at the same time, notably by Emerson's younger contemporary, Karl Marx.
And Emerson's experience in the field repeatedly contradicted the way in which Marx said
capitalists not only did but must behave. American owners and managers, said Marx, were bound
to oppose their workers' quest for enlightenment. But when Emerson came to Pittsburgh in 185I,
for example, firms closed early so the young clerks could go to hear him. His courses were not
obviously designed to reinforce the entrepreneurial spirit: The Identity of Thought with Nature,' The Natural History of Intellect,' Instinct and Inspiration,' and so on. But one of the thrusts of his arguments was that knowledge, plus moral character, tended to promote business success. Many who attended expecting to be bewildered by the eminent philosopher found he preached what they thought was common sense. The Cincinnati Gazette described him asunpretending ...
as a good old grandfather over his Bible.'
Emerson was a marvelous manufacturer of short sayings and pithy obiter dicta, many of
which-'Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer,' Life is the search after power,' [Man] is by constitution expensive and ought to be rich,' A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,' 'Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,'Hitch your waggon to a star'-
struck his listeners as true, and when simplified and taken out of context by the newspapers
passed into the common stock of American popular wisdom. It did not seem odd that Emerson
was often associated in the same lecture series with P. T. Barnum, speaking on The Art of Money Getting' andSuccess in Life.' To listen to Emerson was a sure sign of cultural aspiration
and elevated taste: he became, to millions of Americans, the embodiment of Thinking Man. At
his last lecture in Chicago in November 1871, the Chicago Tribune summed it up: The applause ... bespoke the culture of the audience.' To a nation which pursued moral and mental improvement with the same enthusiasm as money, and regarded both as essential to the creation of its new civilization, Emerson was by the I87os a national hero (though it is as well to recall his own saying,Every hero is a bore at last').
Washington Irving attained success by culture-cringing and getting a condescending nod of
approval from the English literary elite. Emerson played the anti-English card and went all out to
reflect the basic American ethos. But the first writer who managed to appeal equally both to
simple American hearts and to the sophisticated audience of the entire English-speaking world
was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-82). He was a prodigy, born in Portland, Maine,
educated privately, publishing his first poem at thirteen, and then at Bowdoin where, while still a
student, he was told he was needed to teach languages and literature provided he went to Europe