In teaching children it will be hard to treat the subject in the way just indicated. Probably a little analysis of the causes of this “fall of Rome” will seem logically necessary. Some such outline as the following might be tolerated. But let the teacher bear in mind that no historian has yet succeeded in giving such a set of reasons for this fall as will satisfy any other historian. The child mind, however, is not critical, and may be helped by a catalogue of forces.
Lack of home rule, and of representation.
The administrative division of the empire.
Steady decline in population, resulting from vice, war, pestilence and Christian asceticism.
Slavery, as depicted in the preceding article, and now grown still more dreadful.
Taxation, so oppressive that a Christian writer says there were more collectors than payers of taxes.
The cessation of military service by Italians and the use of Germanic soldiers.
The general decline of morals among a weakened and disheartened people.
Over against all these are to be set the numbers, the virility, the comparative freedom from civilized vices, of the sturdy barbarians; and most of all their capacity for absorbing the worthiest things among the people whom they conquered.
By the year 1876 or 1877, the period of Reconstruction may be said to have come to an end. From that time on the people of the United States were busy developing new ideas and attempting to settle new problems. Only gradually, however, did they recognize this fact; not till the end of the nineteenth century did the country awake to a full realization that the old order was no more, that a new order had come into existence. Just because this new order has been so recently born, however, because so many of its elements are so imperfectly understood, the teacher will probably find special difficulties in teaching it to his classes.
The Age of Extra-Continental Expansion and of New Economic Development.
To begin with, the student must be taught that this last generation in America has witnessed two almost entirely new developments: (1) the extra-continental expansion of the United States, and (2) the growth of enormous combinations of labor and of capital. The first reached its climax in the Spanish-American War, the acquisition of the Philippines and of Porto Rico, the assumption of a quasi-protectorate over the republics of Central America, and the interference in the affairs of China and Japan. With the details of this movement we shall not attempt to deal in this article. Instead we shall devote all of our space to a consideration of the second series of events.