Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Visit to Sweden in 1868–1869—The Object of my Journey—Experiences and Observations During the Same—Difference Between American and Swedish Customs—My Birth-place—Arrival and Visit There—Visit to Christianstad—Visit to Stockholm—The Swedish Parliament—My Return to America—Reflections on and Impressions of the Condition of the Bureaucracy of Sweden
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Story of an Emigrant.
3 35
military demi-god. To command a company, or even a
regiment, in modern warfare, especially in times of peace,
requires but little tact and skill compared with former times,
when such commander often had to act independently and
at his own risk, whereas now there is scarcely any branch
of business which does not require more talent for its proper
management than the command of a company or a regiment.
It is therefore not on account of superior merits, but on
account of old fogy notions and prejudices that the
bureaucracy, military and civil, consider themselves to be of such
immeasurable importance. My experience in life has taught
me that individually men do not count for much in the
world; that no man amounts to a great deal by himself;
and that the highest as well as the lowest is dependent largely
upon his fellows.
What has been said about the military officers applies, in
many cases, equally well to the civil officers, or rather, to a
class of men holding life tenure offices in the civil
service. Just now civil service reform is the question in
American politics, and it means that officers in the civil
service shall be appointed for life. I have always, for my
part, doubted the wisdom of this reform, because I have seen
so much evil growing out of that system in Sweden, England
and India. To be sure, there would be much good springing
from it, but it is very questionable whether the evil results
would not be still greater.
We Americans hold that all power of government
emanates from the people (as it certainly does with us), and
that the officers of the government, from the president down
to the village constable, are merely the servants of the
people, whose duty it is to enforce the laws and preserve good
order. In the other countries named it is still, to a certain
extent, supposed that God in his wisdom appoints the ruler,
that all power lies in him, and that whatever privileges
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