The American Danger: A Turn-of-the-Century Manifesto
A jingoistic editorial from the Tacoma Times defining the nation's sense of self and global superiority in 1904.
The census bureau at Washington estimates the population of the United States at eighty million. Looked at from the point of view of the earth's total population, the figures do not appear large. Eighty million is about 5 percent of the population of the globe. Compared with the populations of other countries, however, the magnitude appears. The United States has a larger population than any other nation save two, Russia and China. It is the unit of population that counts. Because of his higher capacity and by the use of the apparatus which he has invented, the American can do as much in a day as a dozen Chinamen or a half-dozen Russians. The American workingman enjoys luxuries such as the Russian peasant and the Chinese coolie never dreamed of. We are the most humane people now living. We spend more money for education than any other country, and more also in philanthropy. In Europe, they call us 'The American Danger.'
“In Europe, they call us 'The American Danger.'”
This editorial encapsulates the 'American Exceptionalism' that fueled early 20th-century geopolitical expansionism. It stands as a stark artifact of the era's racialized economic nationalism, contrasting sharply with current globalized anxieties about labor and industrial decline.
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