what explanation would you offer to account for the American decision to take the Philippines?
friend Cecil Arthur Spring Rice: “I do not wonder that you sometimes feel depressed over the future both of our race and of our civilization,” he wrote. “ . . . I should be a fool if I did not see grave cause for anxiety in some of the social tendencies of the day: the growth of luxury throughout the English-speaking world; and especially the gradual diminishing birth rate; and certain other signs of like import are not pleasant to contemplate.” Fearful that the short Spanish-American War had not permanently rectified the softness wrought by industrialization, Roosevelt turned to empire as a more lasting remedy.
Imperialists like Roosevelt believed that holding colonies could prove to be a longer-term solution to modern civilization’s seemingly dangerous ten- dency to make young, middle-class, and wealthy men soft, self-seeking, and materialistic. They thought that the experience of holding colonies would create the kind of martial character so valued in the nation’s male citizens and political leaders (especially in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War), and that, in so doing, it would prevent national and racial degeneracy. James C. Fernald, who in less militant moments worked on abridging the Standard Dictionary, conveyed this idea in his expansionist tract The Impe- rial Republic, published in 1898. Imperial pursuits, he wrote, would “provide adventurous occupation for a host of sturdy men,” thereby preventing the United States from retrograding “toward Chinese immobility and decay.” Fervent imperialists joined with Fernald to contend that American men must embrace rigorous overseas challenges lest they lose their privileged position in a Darwinian world. “The law of evolution is pitiless and he who gets in its way will be run over,” wrote one expansionist to his senator. “There is no standing still, forward or backward we must go.” Sen. Jonathan Ross (R, Vt.) drew on similar logic in a speech advocating retention of the Philippines: “Stagnation is decay and ultimate death. Honest struggle, endeavor, and discussion bring light, growth, development, and strength.” To such men, colonies held the key to character.
Imperialists wanted to build manly character not only because they were concerned about American men’s standing relative to other races and na- tions but also because they were worried about American men’s position vis-à-vis women. Fernald illustrates this point. Seven years before publish- ing The Imperial Republic, he published a tract titled The New Womanhood that deplored women who did not devote themselves to maternity and home- making. In this tract, Fernald said that “for high manly health,” boys needed “a certain roughness and severity of exercise,” but that women would be destroyed by such strenuous endeavors. He was so committed to wom- anly delicacy that he deplored the style of dress that tried to give women the “high, square shoulders which are the beauty of the manly figure.” He went on, “The tendency of man is toward authority, command, and penalty; of woman, toward tenderness, persuasion and reward” and concluded that women should be sheltered from the wider world for their moral well-being.
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