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Names: Handelman, Howard, 1943–author
Title: Challenges of the developing world / Howard Handelman
Description: Eighth edition | Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2016 | Previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. under the title The challenge of third world development. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015043591 (print) | LCCN 2015044340 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442256873 (cloth : alk paper) | ISBN 9781442256880 (pbk : alk paper) | ISBN 9781442256897 (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: Developing countries Economic conditions | Developing countries Economic policy | Developing countries Politics and government. | Economic development.
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To Maggie, Alice, Phoebe, and Kris
Detailed Contents
List of Tables
Preface
1 Understanding Underdevelopment
Developing World Commonalities: The Nature of Underdevelopment
Economic Underdevelopment
Social Underdevelopment
Political Underdevelopment
Corruption: A Critical Obstacle to Political and Economic Development
Some Relationships between the Components of Development
A Major Consequence of Underdevelopment
Today: Mass Migration
The Causes of Underdevelopment
Modernization Theory and the Importance of Cultural Values
Dependency Theory: The Core and the Periphery
Modernization and Dependency Theories Compared
Contemporary Perspectives
How Much Progress Has Been Made?
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
2 The Surge and Partial Retreat of Democracy
Democracy Defined
Democratic Transition and Consolidation
Authoritarian Beginnings
Justifying Authoritarian Rule
The Third Wave and Its Effect on the Developing World
International Causes and Consequences of the Third Wave
The Prerequisites of Democracy in Individual Countries
Social and Economic Modernization
Class Structure
Political Culture
The Curse of Oil
Democratic Consolidation Examined
How Do Democracies Perform? Public Policy Compared
Improving the Quality of Democracy
Conclusion
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
3 Religion and Politics
The Meeting of Church and State
Great Religions of the Developing World
Religion, Modernity, and Secularization
Structural and Theological Bases of Church-State Relations
Religious Fundamentalism and Islamism
Defining and Explaining Fundamentalism (Revivalism)
Fundamentalists: Radical and Conservative
The Iranian Revolution: Radical Shia’ Islamism as a Reaction to Western-Style Modernization
al-Qaeda and Militant Islamism
Islamic State: The Terror State
Islamist Terrorists in Western Europe: A New Frontier
The Progressive Catholic Church
The Future of Religion and Politics in the Developing World
Religion and Democracy
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
4 The Politics of Cultural Pluralism and Ethnic Conflict
Defining Ethnicity
Ethnic and State Boundaries
Types of Ethnic and Cultural Divisions
Nationality
Tribe
Race
Religion
Dependency, Modernization, and Ethnic Conflict
Levels of Interethnic Conflict
Minimal Conflict
Uneasy Balance
Enforced Hierarchy (Ethnic Dominance)
Systematic Violence
Outcomes and Resolutions
Power Sharing: Federalism and Consociationalism
Secession
Outside Intervention
Settlement through Exhaustion
Toward a Peaceful Resolution of Conflict
Ethnic Pluralism and Democracy
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
5 Women and Development
The Political and Socioeconomic Status of Women in the LDCs
Women in the Economy: Rural and Urban
Women and Politics
Women’s Political Activism at the Grassroots Women as National Political Leaders
Reserved Seats and Quotas: Female Representation in Parliament
The Effect of Reaching a Critical Mass on Policy Outcomes
Women and Revolutionary Change
Modernization and the Status of Women
Democracy and the Role of Women in Society
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
6 The Politics of the Rural and Urban Poor
The Rural Poor: The Peasantry in the Developing World
Rural Class Structures
Peasant Politics
The Politics of Agrarian Reform
Patterns of Land Concentration
The Future of the Rural Poor
Rapid Urbanization and the Politics of the Urban Poor
The Developing World’s Urban Explosion
The Political Consequences of Urban Growth
The Search for Employment
The Urban Poor’s Struggle for Housing
Public Housing and the Role of the State
Spontaneous Housing Sites-and-Services Programs
The Problem of Urban Crime
The Politics of the Urban Poor: Conflicting Images
Forms of Political Expression among the Urban Poor
Individual Political Behavior
Collective Goals: Housing and Urban Services
Radical Political Behavior
Conclusion: The Role of the Rural and Urban Poor in Democratic Change
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
7 Revolutionary Change
Defining Revolution
Underlying Causes of Revolution
Inexorable Historical Forces
Regime Decay Challenges from Below
Explaining Islamist Uprising Causes of Revolution: A Summary Levels of Popular Support
Peasants as Revolutionaries Why Peasants Rebel Which Peasants Rebel
Revolutionary Leadership Revolutionaries in Power
Conclusion: Revolutionary Change and Democracy
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
8 Soldiers and Politics
The Causes of Military Intervention
The Nature of the Armed Forces
The Nature of Civil Society
Progressive Soldiers and Military Conservatives
The Types and Goals of Military Regimes
Personalistic Regimes
Institutional Military Regimes
Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Regimes
Revolutionary Military Regimes
The Accomplishments and Failures of Military Regimes
Combating Corruption
Defending Military Interests
Patterns in Military Spending
Establishing Stability
Improving the Economy
Military Withdrawal from Politics
New Roles for the Armed Forces
The Military as the Deciding Factor in the Arab Spring
Improving Civil-Military Relationships
Conclusion: Democracy and the Military
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
9 The Political Economy of the Developing World
The Role of the State
The Command Economy
Latin American Statism
East Asia’s Developmental State
The Neoliberal Model
Finding a Proper Role for the State
Industrialization Strategies
Import-Substituting Industrialization
Export-Oriented Industrialization
Growth with Equity
Economic Development and the Environment
The Costs of Growth
Environmental Decay as a Developing World Problem
Environmental Decay and Global Warming
The Search for Sustainable Development
Some Signs of Progress
Finding the Right Mix
The Effects of Globalization on Developing Nations
Conclusion: Democracy and Economic Development
Key Terms | Discussion Questions
Glossary Index About the Author
Tables ⋆ ⋆ ⋆
1.1 Income and Human Development
1.2 Income and Income Inequality
1.3 Human Development and Literacy
1.4 Quality of Life/Social Indicators
2 1 The Global Growth of Democracy
2.2 Democracy by Region
5.1 Women’s Literacy Rates Compared to Men’s
5.2 GII and Comparative Gender Literacy Rates
5.3 Measures of Gender Empowerment
5 4 Percentage of Women in National Parliaments: Regional Averages
6 1 Urbanization in Developed and Less Developed Countries
6.2 Percent of the Developing World’s Population in Urban Areas
6.3 Populations of "Developing World Metropolitan Areas, 1975–2025
6.4 Percent of the Population Living in Urban Areas
8 1 Trends in Military Expenditures, 1988–2010
8 2 Public Welfare (Health and Education) versus Military Expenditures as a Percentage of GDP
8.3 Trends in Military Expenditures as a Percentage of GDP
Preface ⋆ ⋆ ⋆
FOR MANY WESTERNERS, the politics, economics, and cultures of the less developed countries (LDCs) seem remote until a major event bursts into the news and demands our attention, such as the Islamic State and the Syrian civil war. Other events have attracted our attention more gradually, including the emergence of China and now India as major economic powers
The purpose of this book is to enhance our understanding of the political, economic, and cultural forces that lay behind these changes. With a combined population of over seven billion people, LDCs now account for nearly 90 percent of the world’s total population, and this proportion will rise in the coming decades. Challenges of the Developing World examines and analyzes the politics of developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East in order to better understand major phenomena such as: civil war in the Middle East, the rise of Islamic militancy (Islamism), the ongoing struggle to attain and retain democracy in the LDCs, the growing economic might of India and East Asia, and the changing role of women in the politics of the developing world
The list of LDCs includes desperately poor countries such as Nepal and Somalia and rapidly developing industrial powers such as China, Singapore, South Korea, and India. Some, like Jamaica and Costa Rica, are stable democracies; others, such as North Korea and Sudan, suffer under highly repressive dictatorships. All of them, however, share at least some of the aspects of political, economic, and social underdevelopment that this book evaluates
NEW TO THIS EDITION
Since the publication of the last edition of this text, there have been a number of major developments that have merited new or extended discussion in this new edition.
• Corruption: This is a growing problem in the developing world and a mounting source of citizens’ resentment that undermines the legitimacy of many governments. We explore the extent of such corruption and evaluate some attempts to reduce or contain it
• The Millennium Development Goals and economic progress in the LDCs: During the last decade or more, the growth of the developing world’s economies has lifted
hundreds of millions out of severe poverty, mostly in China and India. We discuss what these developments were, the extent that they have been met, and the ways in which setting the development goal helped developing nations advance. Yet, such gains can be reversed by a global economic downturn such as the one that drove an additional 60 million people into extreme poverty in 2008–2009.
• The emergence of the Islamic State as the world’s most powerful and brutal terrorist organization: We discuss the turmoil in Syria, Iraq, and Libya with a focus of the growing strength and militancy of Islamist groups.
• The persistence of ethnic conflict in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East: we examine some of the increased ethnic violence in the Arab World and parts of Africa.
• The continuing and growing role of women in the politics of the LDCs We update and expand analysis of women in parliaments and congresses
FEATURES
No text is capable of fully examining the individual political and socioeconomic systems of so many highly diverse countries. Instead, we will look for common issues, problems, and potential solutions.
We start in chapter 1 by exploring the nature of underdevelopment and then consider the leading theories attempting to explain underdevelopment and development This edition presents new analysis on political corruption as both a result and a cause of underdevelopment. It also discusses the magnitude of migration (both within and outside of the LDCs) caused by war and economic deprivation.
Chapter 2 discusses what has been one of the most important political changes in world politics during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the wave of democratic transitions that has swept over the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East (as well as southern Europe and the former Soviet bloc of nations) in the past four decades. But, this edition also analyzes the failures of the so-called Arab Spring and the continued inability of most of the Arab World to democratize.
Chapters 3–5, respectively, on religion and politics, ethnic conflict, and women and development, analyze religious, ethnic, and gender issues that have often divided developing nations, but also provide identities that can be helpful in the processes of political and economic development. This edition evaluates the importance of militant Islamism in the Middle East and discusses the origins and rise of the Islamic State, especially in Syria and Iraq Chapter 5, discussion on women and development, analyzes the socioeconomic status of women in the developing world and their growing role in the political system.
Chapter 6 discusses rural land concentration and poverty and their political consequences. It outlines the LDCs’ explosive urban growth and analyzes both the problems and opportunities presented by this huge demographic change It describes the many challenges the urban poor face regarding housing, employment, and crime and also their political activities. Next, chapter 7 on revolutionary change considers the definition of revolutions, how revolutions start, whether they succeed, and how they govern. We also examine the current and future prospects for revolution in the LDCs.
Chapter 8 on the military in politics updates data on the weight of military expenditures in national budgets and contains new coverage of the military’s declining, but continuing, role. Finally, chapter 9, dealing with the political economies of developing countries,
compares alternate paths to economic development and evaluates their relative effectiveness It also analyzes the costs and benefits of globalization in the developing world.
As the preceding pages indicate, in many ways there is now greater cause for optimism about the LDCs: the continued spread of democracy (albeit with important setbacks); growing world concern over human rights; the military’s declining political influence in many nations; ongoing economic growth in Asia and renewed vigor in Africa’s previously lackluster economies; and impressive reductions in world poverty, especially in Asia
At the same time, however, important problems persist or even worsen: ongoing internal and cross-national warfare continues to take too many lives in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; the wave of immigrants is flooding into Europe and to neighboring developing countries, especially those fleeing war-torn Syria and Afghanistan; many millions continue to die of preventable diseases, hunger, or even starvation, while many others lack adequate housing in urban centers or adequate farmland to feed their families in rural areas; corruption plagues both political and economic development in most countries, even in economic powerhouses like China and India; bureaucratic corruption is often matched by bureaucratic incompetence; and while women are beginning to play a greater role in the politics of the LDCs, gender gaps remain enormous in virtually all aspects of development and power, including horrors such as so-called female circumcisions and honor killings.
This text ’ s discussion and analysis will hopefully shed further light on these important developments.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Because of the broad geographic and conceptual scope of any book on politics in LDCs, I am particularly indebted to others for their kind help and advice.
I would like to thank the many people at Rowman & Littlefield who have worked with me. I particularly appreciate Traci Crowell and Molly White for their guidance and support on this edition.
I appreciated and benefited from the comments of the many reviewers of the book: Reverend Michael J. Connolly, Gonzaga University; Joseph M. Dondelinger, Augustana College; Thomas F Head, George Fox University; Edislav Manetovic, SUNY Old Westbury; David Penna, Gallaudet University; Holly Pottle, Texas Woman’s University; Paul S. Rowe, Trinity Western University; Azamat Sakiev, University of North Georgia; Richard Stahler-Sholk, Eastern Michigan University; Kathleen Staudt, University of Texas at El Paso; and Timothy J. White, Xavier University.
I owe a particular debt to my wife, Dr Kristin Ruggiero, for her insights and her careful proof reading and editing of the manuscript
The quality of this book benefited enormously from their many insights, suggestions, and corrections. The usual caveat, of course, applies: Any remaining errors of fact or interpretation are my own responsibility.
Howard Handelman Professor Emeritus University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
1 Understanding Underdevelopment ⋆ ⋆ ⋆
A rural village in the Indian state of Orissa About two-thirds of India’s population and almost half the population of all of the world’s LDCs live in villages such as this, where standards of living and literacy rates are lower than in urban areas. Robert Harding World Imagery/Alamy Stock Photo
MOST AMERICANS FOCUS INFREQUENTLY on the less developed countries (LDCs) of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Media coverage of these countries is sporadic and tends to concentrate on tragedies or disturbances of various magnitudes religious conflict and civil wars in the Middle East, a devastating earthquake in Haiti, ethnic conflict in Burma, and famine in North Korea. To almost any observer, the problems currently plaguing the developing world appear daunting Warfare, internal violence, and massive human suffering beset the most troubled countries in these regions: insurgency and religious extremism in Syria, poverty in Bangladesh, ethnically based massacres in Burma (Myanmar) * and the Central African Republic, and political repression in Vietnam and Egypt. Of course, some of these problems exist in industrialized democracies as well, though in a milder form. For example, in recent times, both Northern Ireland and the Basque region of Spain have experienced ethnic violence and terrorism. Portions of Washington, DC have higher infant mortality rates than do Cuba and
Singapore Nevertheless, it is the scope and persistence of the developing world’s political, economic, and social challenges that ultimately draw our attention.
Understanding the nature and causes of underdevelopment is a complex task complicated by theoretical debates between scholars and a profusion of terminology. Even the names given to the politically and economically less developed nations vary, with each having its own assumptions In order to avoid repetitious usage, I interchangeably use the terms “less developed countries” (or LDCs), “developing world,” “developing countries,” “developing nations,” and occasionally “Third World ”†
DEVELOPING WORLD COMMONALITIES: THE NATURE OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT
Despite the substantial differences among them, developing countries still share a number of common characteristics. All of them suffer from at least some aspects of political, economic, or social underdevelopment Although some of East Asia’s newly industrializing countries (NICs) for example, South Korea and Singapore are no longer economically underdeveloped, they still share a vulnerability to global economic forces and continue to suffer from aspects of political underdevelopment. On the other hand, Costa Rica and Uruguay are relatively well developed politically and socially but manifest a number of the problems of economic underdevelopment In short, while some developing countries are underdeveloped in all major aspects of modernization, others are far more advanced in some aspects of development than in others. As we shall see, economic, social, and political underdevelopments are closely related to each other, but they are not perfectly correlated. The basic disciplinary approach of this text is political science. However, it will also draw on theories and research from anthropology, economics, and sociology
Economic Underdevelopment
Perhaps the most salient characteristic of most developing countries is poverty. At the national level, this is manifested by some combination of low per capita income, very unequal income distribution, poor infrastructure (including communications and transportation), limited use of modern technology, and low consumption of hydrocarbon and hydroelectric power. At the grassroots level, economic underdevelopment connotes widespread scarcity, substantial unemployment, substandard housing, poor health conditions, low literacy and educational levels, and inadequate nutrition.
While most developing countries are much poorer than nations in Western Europe and North America, there is also considerable variation among them and between world regions. Table 1.1 compares the per capita gross national income (GNI), human development, and life expectancy of the developing world’s major regions with those of the United States. Purchasing power parity (PPP) means that, when two economies are compared, the exchange rate between their two currencies is adjusted so that the expenditure on a similar commodity (say, five pounds of rice) is the same in both currencies. As the first data column indicates, per capita income in the United States is more than three times higher than in the Arab States and more than sixteen times higher than Sub-Saharan Africa.‡ Of late, however, many developing nations especially those in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have been narrowing that gap by growing at a much faster economic rate than the United States and other developed countries.
Table
Source: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report a PPP (purchasing power parity) means that these per capita incomes are adjusted to account for the purchasing power in each region.
The second data column in Table 1.1 shows the Human Development Index (HDI) of these regions. HDI is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators. The highest possible HDI score a country may achieve is 1.000 and the lowest is .000 (though, in real life, no country is at either of these extremes).
Most development specialists consider the HDI to be a much better measure than per capita GNI of a nation’s quality of life For example, as the table shows, the Arab States have the highest per capita income of any developing region listed in the first data column. But their comparatively high GNI per capita ($15,817) is inflated by the huge oil income that the governments of many countries in the region earn (such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) and is not an accurate reflection of how well the average person lives We can see this in the HDI scores, where the Arab States fall well behind East Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean.
The last data column demonstrates that both male and female life expectancy in the developing world lag well behind those in the United States (and in other developed countries). Only East Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean come close. Given the Arab States’ high per capita income, it is instructive that it trails those two regions in both life expectancy and the HDI. In all three columns, South Asia (principally India and Pakistan) and especially Sub-Saharan Africa trail well behind.
Table 1.2 Income and Income Inequality
Source: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report; World Bank, World Development Indicators
Table 1.2 moves from the economic performance of developing world regions to an examination of individual countries in each of those areas: South Africa, Nigeria, and Mali (all in Sub-Saharan Africa); Iraq (an Arab State); Indonesia, Pakistan, and China (South and East Asia); Peru, Mexico, and Brazil (Latin America). The first data column in the table, GDP (gross domestic product) per capita indicates the annual dollar value of goods and services produced per person.§ The data illustrate the tremendous gap in living standards between most developed and less developed countries and the considerable variation within the developing world. On the one hand, the U.S. per capita GDP of approximately $55,000 (not in the table) is more than three times higher than the levels for Mexico or Brazil. On the other hand, the Mexican GDP per capita is about three times higher than Nigeria’s and about fourteen times as high as Mali’s.
While per capita income and product are useful indicators of a country ’ s living standard, they do not give us a complete picture because they fail to take into account how equitably those quantities are distributed. For example, hypothetically, two nations may have the same per capita incomes, say $20,000 annually. However, in country “A,” 40 percent of the population is poor, with annual incomes lower than $7,000, while the wealthiest 25 percent of the populace has an average income of $75,000 On the other hand, in country “B,” with the same average income, earnings are far more evenly distributed, with almost everyone making between $15,000 and $25,000 annually. Thus, while the countries have the same average incomes, country A has far more poor people.
If we look at Table 1.2, we find that the countries with the lowest per capita GDPs tend to have the most severe poverty So, for example, Mali has a far lower average GDP than Mexico and a far greater percentage of its population living in severe poverty But there are some clear exceptions to this pattern. Nigeria has a higher per capita GDP than Pakistan and far higher than Mali. Yet it has a larger share of its population in poverty than either. Similarly, while South Africa has a higher per capita GDP than Peru, it has more than three times as large a portion of its population living in poverty. The reason for anomalies such as these lies in how equally (or unequally) income is distributed in each country Looking at the last data column reveals that the richest 20 percent of the Nigerian population (“the
rich”) earn almost half (48.9 percent) of their country ’ s total income, while in South Africa the rich earn more than two-thirds (69.9 percent) of the national income. Correspondingly, the poorest portion of each population earns a very small percentage of national income (5.4 percent in Nigeria and a mere 2.4 percent in South Africa). In short, the extent of poverty in any country is a function of both its average income and how equally that income is distributed
Social Underdevelopment
Poverty in the LDCs tends to correlate with poor social conditions such as high infant mortality and low literacy rates, which in turn reduces opportunities for human development in other areas If LDCs are to modernize and develop economically, politically, and socially, they must extend and improve their educational systems and, thereby, raise the rate of literacy. An educated workforce contributes to higher labor productivity. Moreover, improved education also expands mass political participation and contributes to greater government accountability to the governed. Thus, not surprisingly, political scientists have found that countries with higher literacy rates are more likely to attain and maintain democratic governments.1
Table 1 3 presents data on several important indicators of social development and compares a number of LDCs with the United States. The first data column lists each country ’ s HDI, which, as we saw earlier, is a composite measure of education, adult literacy, life expectancy, and per capita income. Alongside of the HDI scores, the numbers in parentheses show how each country ’ s score ranks among almost two hundred nations in the world Thus, for example, the United States’ HDI of 0 914 ranks it fifth in the world (behind Norway, Australia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands).
Table 1 3 Human Development and Literacy
Source: UNDP, Human Development Report; CIA, The World Book Factbook.
Countries with greater average incomes, not surprisingly, tend to have higher HDIs, but that is not always true. The next column shows each country ’ s world ranking on average income minus its rankings on HDI. Thus, for example, the United States has the fourteenth highest per capita income in the world (not shown in the table), but the fifth highest HDI So, it is an “overachiever” in that its HDI ranking (fifth) is higher than we would have predicted based on its average income (fourteenth), giving it a score of (14 5
or +9). In this column, any country with a positive score has “overachieved” (i.e., its HDI rank is higher than we might have predicted based on its GNI rank) and, conversely, any country with a negative score has “underachieved.”¶ The primary reason why a country overachieves is that its government has allocated an above average percentage of its spending toward improving health, sanitation, and education, while underachieving governments have spent a lower percentage of their revenue on improving these services. Peru (+33) is the greatest overachiever in the table, followed by Mali and Mexico. So, Mali, though a desperately poor country, has a much higher than expected HDI score Among all of the world’s developing nations, the two highest overachievers are Cuba (+52) which is known for its strong government educational and public health programs and Grenada (+30).
Table 1.4 Quality of Life/Social Indicators
Source: CIA, The World Book Factbook; The World Bank, Databank. a The World Factbook rated 138 developed and developing countries for their rate of childhood malnutrition The figures in parentheses express where each country ranked in terms of the most malnutrition
On the other end of the spectrum, Iraq ( 23) is the greatest underachiever in the table, an indication of how years of war and civil conflict have decimated the educational and health systems Looking more broadly at all the LDCs, the greatest underachievers tend to be Middle Eastern countries deriving the major portion of their income from exporting oil. That income primarily benefits the government and the economic elite, while the country ’ s educational and health facilities fail to receive a commensurate share. These countries include Kuwait ( 57), Oman ( 50), Qatar ( 36), and Saudi Arabia ( 19). But the world’s greatest underachiever is the tiny West African nation of Equatorial Guinea (the thirdlargest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa) While its oil wealth allows it to rank forty-fifth in the world in GNI per capita, it is an abysmal 136th on HDI, giving it a GNI HDI score of 91. Much of its oil income falls into the hands of its brutal dictator, who has ruled the country since 1979 (making him one of the longest serving heads of state in the world), and is worth an estimated $600 million, while most of his subjects live in abject poverty.
The last column again shows how widely social conditions vary among LDCs, with Mali having an adult literacy rate of only 39 percent, while Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Indonesia,
China, and South Africa all are 93–96 percent literate. In recent decades many developing nations have raised their literacy rates dramatically, with almost half of all LDCs currently exceeding 90 percent literacy and all but thirteen now over 50 literate.
Finally, Table 1.4 presents additional measures of the quality of people’s lives: life expectancy, child malnutrition, and school enrollment. The first data column reveals how much lower life expectancy is in most African nations (as illustrated by Mali, Nigeria, and South Africa) While malnutrition, deadly diseases such as malaria, and, in some cases, civil violence account for much of that, a number of African countries have experienced sharp declines in life expectancy because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This was especially true of South Africa, which has the highest infection rate in the world. Overall life expectancy in that country (for females and males combined) had climbed to sixty-two years in the early 1990s and then began to fall because of AIDS to a low of fifty-two by 2007 That decline was accelerated by then president Thabo Mbeki (1999–2008), who denied that the disease was caused by a virus, refused foreign medical assistance, and failed to establish prevention or treatment programs. Experts at Harvard Medical School have estimated that 330,000 additional people died during Mbeki’s administration as a result of his denial of scientific evidence.2
Since he left office, the new administration has adopted a very strong antiretroviral policy, reduced AIDS deaths dramatically and thereby increased life expectancy by more than four years, with similar improvements happening throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) reports that “the increasing availability of antiretroviral therapy has reduced the spread of the epidemic, and the mortality due to AIDS has been decreasing since about 2005 [allowing African life expectancy at birth to increase from 50 years in 2000 to 58 years in 2013].”3 Elsewhere in the developing world, life expectancy has increased steadily in recent decades, especially in East Asia and Latin America
The next column presents the percent of children under five who are seriously underweight, a clear indicator of malnutrition. The numbers in parentheses following the percentage of malnourished children in each country show how the country ranks among 138 developed and developing nations. Thus, Pakistan, with nearly 32 percent of its children under age five suffering from malnutrition, ranks as the twelfth most malnourished of the 138 countries in the group. China and Brazil have both lowered child malnutrition impressively recently China by introducing free-market practices that have raised the living standards of its huge rural population and Brazil through its Bolsa Familia, a highly successful government antipoverty program.
The last column presents the percentage of school-aged children enrolled in primary school. Here also there have been substantial improvements through most of the developing world, so that even in a very poor country, such as Mali, 64 percent of schoolaged children are enrolled in school. Some of the most dramatic gains in the LDCs have been in education and literacy. At the same time, many Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, have lower school enrollments than their socioeconomic conditions would have us predict, because girls are less likely to attend school But the high enrollment for Indonesia the world’s most populous Muslim country demonstrated that this is not always true.
Political Underdevelopment
When Western political scientists first began to study LDCs systematically, they soon
recognized that evaluating political systems in cultural and socioeconomic settings very different from their own was extremely challenging. While many modernization theorists believed that governments in the developing world should model themselves after Western industrialized democracies, they were also mindful of important differences between the regions that limited that possibility. For example, recognizing that most Western European countries did not fully democratize until they were well along the path to industrial development, scholars were often reluctant to criticize authoritarian governments in countries still at the early stages of economic development. A number of African social scientists added to the debate by arguing that their continent had extensive village- and tribal-based democracy that adequately substituted for competitive elections at the national level Others feared that, in the ethnically divided countries of Africa and Asia, multiparty systems would inevitably develop along ethnic lines, further contributing to national disintegration.
Conscious of such land mines, many political scientists proposed political standards that they felt were free of ideological and cultural biases. Political development, they suggested, involves the creation of specialized and differentiated government institutions that effectively carry out necessary functions, such as collecting tax revenues, defending national borders, maintaining political stability, stimulating economic development, improving the quality of human life, and communicating with the citizenry. In addition, they argued, developed governments are responsive to a broad segment of society and respect the population’s fundamental freedoms and civil rights. Presumably, any government satisfying these standards would enjoy a reasonable level of legitimacy (i e , its own citizens would endorse its right to govern), which encourages individuals and groups to pursue their political objectives peacefully through established political institutions rather than through violent or other illegal channels. But, too many LDCs, Paul Collier notes, suffer from “bad governance ” a combination of corruption, catering to special interests and mismanagement.4
But while analysts agreed that governments should be responsive, representative, and nonrepressive, many of them also believed that a political system could be considered developed even if it was not democratic, at least as that term is defined in the West. Definitions of “full democracy” generally encompass the following basic components: fair and competitive elections in which opposition parties have a realistic chance of winning; universal or nearly universal adult suffrage; widespread opportunities for political participation; free and open mass media; and government respect for human rights, including minority rights.5 Many political scientists initially felt that it was unrealistic and perhaps culturally biased to expect that level of democracy to quickly flourish in developing countries. Similarly, others argued that many developing nations were not ready for democracy. Concerned about the high levels of violence and instability in those political systems, they claimed that the LDCs’ first priority had to be political stability, even if that might initially require military rule or other forms of authoritarian government.6
More recently, however, troubled by extensive government repression in the developing world and the obvious failures of most authoritarian regimes, political scientists have begun to insist that democracy and some degree of socioeconomic equality must be understood as integral parts of political development.7 The collapse of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and more recently the overthrow of decades-old dictatorships
in the Arab World exposed additional weaknesses in authoritarian systems Beyond its obvious ethical attractions, democracy also has pragmatic appeal. For example, governments whose citizens hold them accountable through competitive elections are more likely to be more efficient and honest (although the disappointing records of democratic governments in countries such as Kenya and the Philippines demonstrate that there are no guarantees) Similarly, free and independent forms of mass media also help keep governments accountable The disintegration of the Soviet bloc and the fall of many dictatorships throughout the developing world suggest that authoritarian regimes may be stable in the short run but are fragile in the long term. Thus, there is not necessarily a tradeoff between democracy and political stability, as many had imagined. In fact, democracies are generally (but not always) immune to revolutionary insurrection and less susceptible to other forms of mass violence
Only a restricted number of developing countries have fully met the standards of political development and democracy just listed for example, the Bahamas, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. Others such as Argentina, India, South Korea, and Taiwan currently satisfy most of the criteria. Even a cursory review of the LDCs, however, reveals that most governments still fall short At one extreme in nations such as Somalia and Yemen rebel groups or warlords have divided control over their country or rebels and corruption have so undermined the national governments that political scientists label them “failed states. ” Elsewhere in the developing world, many governments respond disproportionately to the demands of an affluent minority. Self-perpetuating and self-serving elites have ruled many Middle Eastern and North African nations, while some Sub-Saharan African governments serve the interests of dominant ethnic groups (ethnicities). Political corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and police repression are all endemic to much of the LDCs.
In the recent past, class-based revolutionary movements have erupted in various Asian and Latin American nations, and a number of African countries have been torn apart by ethnic civil wars (with some countries still suffering from such conflicts) Thus, until recently most LDCs were not democratic, stable, or legitimate In the last decades of the twentieth century, however, democracy (and with it, government legitimacy) advanced in much of the developing world, most notably in Latin America and East Asia (see chapter 2).
Corruption: A Critical Obstacle to Political and Economic Development
Government corruption has been a problem in nearly every country in the world, developed and underdeveloped alike. But, it is particularly problematic in many developing nations, both because the scale has been so extensive and because its pervasiveness is more shocking in view of widespread poverty in their countries Culprits vary widely: from highranking officials of Petrobras (the Brazilian state petroleum giant) who colluded with private contractors to steal millions of dollars in kickback schemes to Mexican traffic police shaking down innocent motorists for imagined traffic violations. Transparency International (TI), an independent organization that evaluates the level of corruption in nations worldwide based on surveys of public opinion and on analysis by experts issues an annual report ranking developed and developing countries according to their perceived level of corruption. In its latest (2015) ratings of 176 nations, TI ranked six developing countries two in Asia (North Korea and Afghanistan), two in Sub-Saharan Africa (Somalia and South Sudan), one in North Africa (Sudan), and one in the Middle East
(Iraq) as the world’s worst offenders Only one LDC (Singapore) was rated among the ten least corrupt nations. **
At the highest level of government, former Nigerian president Sani Abacha apparently siphoned off $1.1 billion from funds allocated to the country ’ s armed forces, leaving the military ill-equipped to fight the powerful Boko Haram terrorists. At the local level, after the Indian parliament passed affirmative action legislation, setting aside seats at universities for lower-caste applicants, many of these seats were soon sold by corrupt school officials to more affluent students The World Bank has estimated that up to 80 percent of Peru’s logging exports are illegally harvested, much of it by loggers who bribe local officials to bypass laws protecting the rain forest. And in 2013, a respected Indian research institute reported that 30 percent of the winners in national and regional elections during the previous five years had faced subsequent criminal charges so far. Meanwhile, many of these convicted government officials can (and do) remain in office while they appeal their convictions, a process in India’s incredibly slow court system that often takes ten to fifteen years to complete.
Government corruption has long been an impediment to economic growth, and a huge financial burden on millions of urban businessmen and village peasants, among others. It has also made people highly cynical about their political system and caused governments to lose legitimacy But many people in the developing world grudgingly accept government corruption as an inescapable burden of life or, in some cases, refuse to believe that a beloved official could be capable of that crime. In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu a longtime political boss the chief minister of the state known for giving handouts to the poor, is adored by many of her constituents despite her obvious dishonesty. “In 1995, during a period when she professed to earn a salary of 1 rupee per month, she staged an opulent waterfront wedding for her foster son that included 40,000 guests and a formal sit-down dinner for 12,800.” When she was eventually sentenced (in 2014) to four years in jail, many of her followers reacted hysterically.
On the day the verdict was read, a 58-year-old electrician named Venkateshan walked out of the shop where he had been watching the news coverage all morning, soaked himself with gasoline and set himself on fire, shouting, “My Amma [meaning ‘Mother,’ as she is known to her followers] has failed in the court ”8
Lately, however, elsewhere in India and in other developing countries, citizens have reacted by holding protests and electing a number of officials from anticorruption political parties In 2015, in response to massive citizen protests, the Guatemalan Congress unanimously voted to strip national president, Otto Pérez Molina, of his office’s immunity from charges that he and high-ranking officials in his administration had routinely taken bribes in exchange for lowering tariffs on companies importing large amounts of goods. Within days, Pérez Molina resigned from office after months of saying he would not and was promptly arrested Earlier, the vice president had been detained on the same charges These developments came in the wake of mass anticorruption demonstrations in a country not far removed from a series of dictatorships during which such protests would have been brutally repressed.
In countries as far-flung as India, Iraq, Mexico, Nigeria, and the Philippines, voters are increasingly supporting anticorruption candidates and joining anticorruption rallies The issue has become one of the public’s major political irritants. Even in dictatorships, the people’s revulsion with corruption has forced the government some real or cosmetic action.
When he first took office in 2012, China’s president Xi Jinping realized that such extensive dishonesty had eroded the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy. He soon unleashed a massive anticorruption campaign that charged and disciplined 72,000 officials in 2014 alone. Their punishment ranged from removal from office, to imprisonment, to the death penalty for some high-ranking officials who had been enormously corrupt. As a result, President Xi’s popularity soared, but many Chinese continued to doubt that the campaign would have any permanent or even long-lasting effect
People have good reason to be skeptical. Many developing countries have held government anticorruption investigations and appointed special prosecutors over the years. In most cases, they turn out to be cosmetic, with a few high-profile cases meant to impress the public Even when they are real, they usually turn out to be short-lived And when truly fearless and diligent anticorruption officials do come along, they are often subjected to death threats or actual assassination. Nuhu Ribadu, one of the rare chairmen of Nigeria’s anticorruption commission who actually investigated and brought charges against highranking politicians, was forced to flee the country after he had received death threats and had survived a drive-by shooting. Later, after he had returned to Nigeria, the government brought false anticorruption charges against him (however, he was acquitted)
The rare success of the Indian state of Bihar shows that pervasive corruption can be brought under control by honest and courageous government leaders. It also demonstrates the benefits that cleaner governments can bring. Bihar, with a population of 103 million, has long been one of the poorest states in India. Moreover, in 2005 TI named it the most politically corrupt of India’s twenty-eight states At the same time, the state economy stagnated, with its GNP (gross national product) growing at about half the national rate.
In that year, Nitish Kumar, an anticorruption crusader, was elected Bihar’s chief minister. Upon taking office he made public all of his financial assets and required other state ministers to do the same. In 2011, after pushing through a series of other reforms, he enacted a law giving the state government the right “ to confiscate any [state official’s] illgotten property, pending trial, and turn it into a school or health clinic.”9 A number of officials, including the former chief of the state police, lost their property If an accused official was later found innocent, he/she would get the property back with interest. Whistle-blowers whose tips led to a conviction got rewards of up to $10,000. Because of these reforms and many others like it, TI changed its ranking of Bihar from India’s most corrupt state to its least corrupt. At the same time, the state ’ s economy, which had grown at a sluggish annual rate of 3 5 percent in the five years before Kumar was elected, rose to 7 5 percent growth in his first five years in office, making it the nation’s fastest-growing state economy.
Elsewhere in the developing world, LDCs wanting similar success stories will need to create a more educated, more politically aware public, who will elect this type of honest and dedicated government officials
Some Relationships between the Components of Development
It is logical to assume that political, economic, and social underdevelopment are interrelated. More economically advanced countries can better educate their populations and provide them with superior health care An educated citizenry, in turn, contributes to further economic growth and participates in politics more responsibly. Responsive and legitimate governments, constrained by competitive elections, are more likely to educate
their citizens and to make informed economic decisions Indeed, these logical intuitions are supported by empirical evidence. Wealthier countries tend to have greater life expectancies, higher literacy rates, and more stable and democratic governments. However, these correlations are not absolute. For example, a country ’ s literacy and infant mortality rates depend not only on its economic resources but also on government policies in the areas of education, public health, and welfare Thus, elitist government policies in some countries have contributed to worse social conditions (as measured by their HDIs) than in other nations with comparable or fewer economic resources. “Underachievers” include many petroleum-rich states, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. On the other hand, governments in Cuba and Chile with strong commitments to social welfare programs have generated higher life expectancy rates and educational levels than their economic resources alone would lead us to predict (“overachievers”)
Both economic and social development tend to correlate with political development. Wealthier, more educated LDCs such as Barbados, Botswana, Costa Rica, and Taiwan tend to have more politically stable, responsive, and democratic governments than poorer nations such as Mozambique, Haiti, and Cambodia. Indeed, developing countries are not likely to become democracies or to maintain democracy unless they have reached a minimal threshold of socioeconomic development 10 However, as countries undergo the process of becoming more economically developed, there is not necessarily a smooth progression toward greater political stability or democracy. On the contrary, Samuel Huntington has observed that while the most affluent countries in the world (e.g., Switzerland and Canada) are politically stable and the poorest countries (such as Afghanistan and Burundi) are generally politically unstable, countries that are in the mid-stages of economic development often become more unstable as their economies develop.11 Thus, for example, some of Latin America’s most economically advanced countries (including Argentina and Chile) experienced internal conflicts and political unrest in the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in the collapse of their democratic governments and the emergence of highly repressive military dictatorships. In 2001–2002, nearly two decades after the restoration of democratic government, Argentina experienced an economic crisis, urban rioting, and political instability that produced five presidents in the span of less than a month. Huntington explained this political instability in mid-level developing nations by suggesting that as countries modernize, the spread of urbanization, education, and mass media consumption produces an increasingly politically aware and mobilized society, whose citizens make greater demands on the government. All too often, however, political institutions, particularly political parties, are not strengthened quickly enough to channel and respond to this rising tide of demands Or the government may lack the economic resources to address all these demands. As a result, he maintained, the system becomes overloaded and unstable.
Guillermo O’Donnell posited another theory explaining the rise of extremely repressive dictatorships in South America’s more economically advanced nations during the 1960s and 1970s He suggested that as those countries moved toward a higher stage of industrial growth, they required extensive new investment that they could secure only by attracting foreign capital. Such foreign investment, in turn, would materialize only if the government controlled labor unions and kept down workers’ wage demands. In order to achieve those goals, the nations’ business leaders and technocrats turned to repressive military rule
through what he called “bureaucratic-authoritarian states.”12
Similarly, some scholars have argued that an authoritarian government might be helpful in the early to middle stages of industrialization in order to control labor unions and workers’ wages, thereby increasing company profits and attracting new external investment. They point out that the Asian countries that enjoyed the most spectacular economic growth from the 1970s to the mid-1990s Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea were all governed by authoritarian regimes during their economic takeoffs. Although these theories have since been challenged, they indicate that the relationships between political, economic, and social development are complex. While, at least in the long run, the three generally go hand in hand, they need not progress at the same rate. Moreover, for some periods of time, they may even move in different directions.
A Major Consequence of Underdevelopment Today: Mass Migration
For much of modern history, international and civil wars, natural disasters, famine, political repression, and the search for a better life have given rise to large-scale human migration. These population movements have happened within individual LDCs, from LDCs to more developed areas (such as Western Europe) and from one developing country to another (such as the migration of many thousands of Afghan refugees to Pakistan) Mass migration is not a defining characteristic of underdevelopment but, rather, a consequence of it.
For over one hundred years, people have emigrated from the developing world to destinations such as the United States, Australia, and Western Europe. But, in the past few decades, migration has become a major issue in world politics. As modern technology and mass media have made millions of the developing world’s poor, war-weary, and persecuted or repressed peoples more aware of opportunities elsewhere, millions have embarked on the, often treacherous, path of emigration 13 And the tide has risen sharply in recent years As of August, 2015, the number of migrants (mostly from Africa and the Middle East) that had arrived in Greece by sea since the start of that year had reached 158,000; an additional 90,000 had landed in Italy; and perhaps 150,000 more had arrived by land or sea in other countries on Europe’s external borders. During that time, over 2,000 had drowned at sea, most of them having embarked on rickety boats sold to them by unscrupulous human traffickers. Once they have reached those countries, they usually try to move on to countries such as Germany, France, and Britain, where they believe there are more economic opportunities. Germany expected some 800,000 asylum seekers to arrive there in 2015.14 This deluge has been caused by armed conflict and poverty in Northern and SubSaharan Africa. It has led to an anti-immigrant backlash in much of the European Union and has raised electoral support for racist and other far-right-wing political parties, such as France’s National Front and the Freedom Party of Austria
Similarly, millions of Latin American immigrants to the United States, mostly from Mexico, have lifted the percentage of Latinos in the U.S. population to more than 15 percent. As in Europe, many Americans have reacted very negatively to illegal immigration, although polls have shown that “ more than 7 in 10 Americans (71 percent) say there should be a way for people in the United States illegally to remain in this country if they meet certain requirements.”15 But, the percentage of opponents is much higher among Republicans and backlash against illegal immigration has become a major issue in the Republican run-up to the 2016 presidential elections
While illegal immigration to the United States, Europe and Australia has attracted substantial attention in the West, the recent, massive migration within the LDCs has attracted less consideration, even though it has created a far greater crisis. The cumulative number of Syrian refugees fleeing their country ’ s four-year-old civil war surpassed four million people by mid-2015 (almost 20 percent of that country ’ s entire population). At that time, neighboring Turkey housed about 1 8 million of them, Lebanon (with a native population of less than 5 million) had almost 1 2 million, and Jordan had received over 600,000. Those numbers have placed a tremendous economic burden on all three countries, who have far fewer resources than do Western, industrialized nations. Pakistan has had the only comparable refugee crisis, where millions of Afghans have fled since the Soviet invasion (1978–1989) and the wars since then
THE CAUSES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT
Our initial discussion suggested that there is some debate concerning the very definitions of political and socioeconomic underdevelopment. Social scientists disagree even more intensely over the underlying causes of underdevelopment and the most promising pathways to change. How, for example, do we account for constant military intervention in Pakistani politics, political turmoil in Somalia, government repression in Syria, and periodic financial crises in Argentina? Do these problems originate from internal factors such as authoritarian cultural values, weak political parties, or misguided economic planning? Or, did foreign domination stretching from the colonial era to today’s age of multinational corporations (MNCs) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cause many of these difficulties?
Questions about the cause of underdevelopment and pathways to development elicit very different responses from scholarly analysts Frequently, their evaluations reflect their personal background, country of origin, or ideology. Thus, for example, theories that attribute developing world political unrest or economic backwardness to traditional cultural values generally have emanated from the United States or from other developed nations. On the other hand, approaches such as dependency theory and world systems theory, which view Western exploitation as the root cause of underdevelopment, have been particularly popular among Latin American and African analysts. Similarly, liberal, conservative, and Marxist analysts are each drawn to different explanations.
For years, two competing paradigms shaped scholarly analyses of politics and economic change in LDCs. The first, modernization theory, emerged in the early 1960s as American political science’s leading interpretation of underdevelopment The second, dependency theory, originated in Latin America in the 1970s and offered a more radical perspective on development, one particularly popular among scholars in developing nations.
Modernization Theory and the Importance of Cultural Values
During the 1950s and 1960s, as the demise of European colonialism produced a host of newly independent nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, Western social scientists began to study politics and economics in the developing world more intensively. That interest produced a complex conceptual model of underdevelopment and development known as modernization theory. Its proponents included some of the most prominent figures in the study of comparative politics For a decade or more, modernization theory reigned supreme in the study of political and economic development. Though later challenged, it has continued to influence our understanding of developing nations. While
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On the way up Keith said:
“What’s all this mystery about mother?”
“She’s pretty sick, my boy. You’ll find her changed a good deal. You’ll pretend not to notice, of course. She’s proud, you know.”
Then the grisled colonel, who had grown patient with so much that was terrible, looked at his father as he had looked sometimes when he woke from bad dreams, screaming “Mamma! Papa!”
He turned his frightened eyes away from what he saw in his father’s eyes.
Quietly, since it was an old, old story to him, RoBards told him the truth, and Keith wrung his hands to keep from startling the passengers in the crowded car with the mad gestures of protest he would else have flung out.
He wanted to charge the clouds and battle in his mother’s behalf.
But when he entered her room he was as brave and calm as at a dress parade. He smiled and caressed and spoke flatteries that cut his throat and burned his lips.
He hurried back to disband his regiment, then brought Frances and his son up to Tuliptree with him, and established himself in the nearest room to his mother’s. He tucked her in and babied her as she had babied him when she was younger than he was now.
Patty’s famous hair was her only remaining pride, the inheritance from the Patty Jessamine who had combed and brushed and coiled it and wrapped it in strange designs about her little head.
She was always fondling it as if it were a fairy turban, a scarf of strange silk. Even in her bitterest paroxysms she would not tear at her hair.
The nurse would braid it and draw two long cables down her shoulders and praise it, and Patty would not brag a little, saying:
“It is nice, isn’t it?”
The fate that took away every other comfort and beauty and every last luxury spared her tresses.
They had not even turned white except for certain little streaks—a fine line of silver here and there that glistened like the threads of the dome-spider’s gossamer shining in the morning dew when the sunbeams just rake the lawn.
She would lay her hair against her cheeks and against her lips and she would hold it up to RoBards to kiss, and laugh a wild little laugh.
He loved it as she did, and thought it miraculous that so many strands of such weave should be spun from that head of hers to drip about her beauty.
Then she would forget it in another call to martyrdom. Her bravery astounded her husband and her brave son. It was the courage of the ancient heretic women who had smiled amid the flames of the slow green fagots that zealots chose for their peculiar wretchedness.
Sometimes she would seem to be whispering something to herself and RoBards would bend down to catch the words. Usually she was crooning that song:
“We-e-e-eave no mo-o-ore silks, ye Ly-y-y-ons loo-ooooms.
To deck our girls for ga-a-ay delights.”
The war was over, the looms were astream with silks again, but not for Patty Jessamine RoBards.
One night when he had fallen asleep from sheer fag, drained like an emptied reservoir, RoBards was wakened by her seizure upon his arm. It terrified him from some dream of a lawsuit. He was a moment or two in realizing that it was Patty who had seized him. The lamp had gone out, the dawn was stealing in. She was babbling:
“I can’t stand it any more. Not another day! Oh, God, not another day! Don’t ask me that, dear God!”
He tried to take her out of herself on to his own galled shoulders. He seized her hands and put his face in front of her glazed eyes and cried to her to talk to him and let him help her through this one more Gethsemane.
Her desperate eyes stared past him for a while. Then their blurred gaze slowly focussed upon him. She nodded in recognition and talked to him, not to God:
“I’d ask you to give me a knife or a pistol or something to kill myself with, but I’m afraid. Dr. Chirnside said once that self-murder was a sin, a cowardly sin, and that hell waited for the craven one. Hell would be even worse than this, I suppose, and it would never end—never. Isn’t it funny that God could build hell and keep it burning from eternity to eternity? Why if you were God, and there were only me in hell, you’d weep so many tears they would put out the fires, wouldn’t you? And you’d lift me up in your arms and comfort my poor scorched body. For you love me. But oh, if only somebody would love me enough to kill me. No, I don’t mean that. You would, if I asked you. You’d go to hell for me forever. I know you, Mist’ RoBards—Davie. You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t let you, though. No! If hell must be gone through I’d rather be the one. To be there in hell and think of you in heaven feeling sorry for me would help a little.
“But if only some of these burglars that kill strange people would shoot me by accident! If only an earthquake should come or a fire should break out, so that I could be killed honestly! If only—if only— oh, I can’t stand another day, Davie! I just can’t. That’s all there is about it. I can’t.”
Then she forgot her thoughts, her theology, her hopes in the utter absorption of her soul in her body’s torment. She was very busy with being crucified.
RoBards suddenly realized that an opportunity was offered him to cure this unpitied sufferer. A choice that had long been before him was only now disclosed to his clouded soul. He wondered at his long
delay in recognizing how simple a remedy there was for the disease called life.
He did not know that his son Keith had risen from his bed, and stolen from his room to pace the hall outside his mother’s door. He did not know that Keith had been eavesdropping upon this sacred communion of theirs.
Keith was a soldier. He had been killing his fellow-Americans in great numbers for their own sakes and their country’s. He had been sending his own beloved men into traps of death and had acquired a godlike repose in the presence of multitudinous agonies.
He, too, when he heard Patty’s appeal for release, wondered why he had been so dull and so slow, so unmerciful through brutish stupidity.
He had not hesitated in the field to cry “Charge!” and lead the long line like a breaker pursuing a fleet rider up a beach, a breaker crested with bright bayonets. This duty before him was not so easy to meet. Yet it seemed a more certain duty than his lately finished task of slaying Southern men.
If he did not kill his mother, his father must. He could save them both by one brief gesture. Yet he shrank from it, fought within himself a war of loves and duties. Then he heard his mother’s wailing again and he set his teeth together fiercely, laid his hand upon the knob, turned it softly, and softly thrust the door ajar.
CHAPTER L
WHEN he had been confronted with the opportunity to end the life of Immy’s baby and with it numberless perils, RoBards had hesitated until the chance was taken from him.
But now he did not even question the high necessity for action. Whether he were insane from the laceration of his sympathies or superhumanly wise, his mind was made up the instant the idea came to him.
As if some exterior power considered and ordained the deed, his mind was made up for him. He felt it his solemn duty to give Patty surcease of existence. He wondered only at his long delay in recognizing the compulsion.
The patriarch Abraham in the Old Testament had heard a voice in the air bidding him despatch his only son for a burnt offering; he did not waver, but clave wood and piled it upon his son’s back and lured him to an altar and drew his knife against him. The curious god who could take pleasure in a child’s blood was amused at the last moment to send an angel to order the tortured old man to substitute a ram caught by his horns in the thicket. And the poor ram was burned instead. But Abraham had been ready to slash his boy’s young throat across at the divine whim and to watch him roast.
There was a priestliness in RoBards’ soul, too; but he was not going to slay his wife to appease any cloudy deity. She was already a burnt offering alive and he was ordered to sacrifice her flesh to end its tyranny over her hopeless soul.
He was puzzled only about the means.
His brain ran along an array of weapons; knife, poison, pistol, throttling fingers. He read the list as if a hand held a scrolled catalogue before his eyes. He discarded each as it came. It was too brutal.
He stared at Patty, tossing there alone, and his heart sickened with love. Then he was more than ever afraid for her. For now she was in such an extreme of blind woe that she was snatching at her hair!
She had lost her last interest in beauty. She was tearing at her hair, crisscrossing it over her face, biting and gnawing at it, sawing it through her teeth.
He ran to her to rescue that final grace. He took her hands from it and smoothed it back from her brow. It was soft beyond belief beneath his palm. It was deep and dense and voluptuously velvety
He knelt and, holding her hands tight, kissed her lips and her cheeks and kissed her eyelids, as if he were weighting them finally with pennies. And he groaned: “Good-by, honey!”
Her eyelids opened under the kisses he had left upon them. She gasped:
“Good-by? You’re not going to leave me? Don’t! ah, don’t!”
He shook his head and groaned:
“I’m not going to leave you, it’s you—it’s you that are—it’s you that are leaving me. And may God send somebody to meet and care for you on the long lonely road, oh, my beloved, my blessed, my baby, my beautiful!”
She seemed to understand. Whether she thought with fear of the hell he was damning himself to, or dreaded after all to let go of life, the one thing certain, however evil, she shook her head in a panic of terror, and fluttered,
“No, No! No!”
He knew that his deed must be done swiftly. At once, or never. So he reached above her and took into his hands all the treasure of her hair where he had spread and smoothed it across her pillow. He drew it down like a heap of carded silk and swept it across her face, smothering her with it.
She struggled and writhed, writhed to escape from under it. She seized his hands and tugged at them, dug her nails into them.
Her breast beat up and down for breath; her heart must have plunged like a trapped bird. But he gathered the hair more and more thickly across her mouth. He bent down once and kissed her hot, panting lips. Her mouth was like a rose in a tangled skein of floss. Then he closed a double handful of her hair over her face and held it fast.
It was cruel hard that after so long a life of devotion her last look at him should be one of horror; her farewell caresses given with her nails. But love asked this proof.
His chief concern was whether his strength would abide the end. Her hands fought at his hands more and more feebly. It was easier to resist their battle than their surrender. When her hands loosened, that was the hardest time. He imagined the prayers she was screaming dumbly at him and at God. But his love prevailed over his humanity, and he watched over her gaunt white bosom as the storm subsided from tempest to slumber, to sleep.
He held her, drowned in her own hair, long after the ultimate pallor had snowed her flesh; long, long after her hands had fallen limp and wan, their empty palms upward like an unpitied beggar’s.
When at last he was sure that she would never groan under another of this earth’s fardels, he lifted away her wanton tresses, as if he raised her veil.
The first sight of her soulless face broke him like a thunderbolt.
Tears came gushing from him in shattered rain. He drew her hands prayer-wise across her bosom, and fell across her body, loving it, clutching at it. He could not cling, but he sank by the bed and spilled his limbs along the floor in a brief death.
As if his soul had run after hers to make sure that it got home safe.
CHAPTER LI
ALL this while Keith had stood watching, as motionless as a statue, and with as little will.
He had opened the door just as his father bent and kissed his mother through her hair He had understood what was being done, and saw that his intervention was too late. He could not save his mother as he had planned. He had to watch her hands blindly fighting for escape, and to abstain from help. He could not rescue his father from that ineffable guilt, or rob him of his divine prerogative.
He felt as if he had stumbled upon a parental nakedness and must be forever accursed; but he could move neither forward nor back, to prevent or retreat.
The first thing that recalled his power to move was the touch of Aletta, the widow of David Junior. After hours on a rack of sympathy, she had fallen asleep at last with the covers stuffed over her ears to shut out the wails of her husband’s mother, whom she had learned to call “Mamma.”
The silence had startled her awake, the strange unusual peace, the deep comfort of the absence of outcry. She had leaped from the bed and hurried barefoot to the room.
She encountered Keith rigid on the sill and, glancing past, saw RoBards on the floor. She thought he had fallen asleep from exhaustion. In the bed Patty lay blissful.
Aletta whispered:
“Poor Mamma! She’s sleeping, isn’t she?”
Keith turned as if his neck were of marble and stared with a statue’s eyes. She ran past him and knelt by RoBards. He protected his eyes from the innocent trust in hers by drawing his eyelids over them.
Then he hoisted himself to his feet. Life came back to his every member in a searing current. His mind turned traitor to itself, and he felt that he was the most hideous criminal that ever soiled the earth.
To make sure that he had not merely dreamed it all, he bent and touched the hand of Patty, set his finger where her pulse had once throbbed like a little heart, felt no stir there; kissed her lips and found them cold.
He turned to Aletta and said:
“Your mamma—your mamma—our darling is—is——”
Aletta screamed and ran to the bed and verified the message, then dashed from the room aghast, crying for help. Soon the house was awake, trembling with feet. Lamps were lighted, children whimpered questions sleepily.
Keith took his father’s hand and murmured before anyone else could come:
“I saw what you did.”
His father recoiled in horror, but Keith said:
“I came too late to save you by doing it myself.”
RoBards needed, above all things just then, someone to understand, to accept, to approve. He was like a man dying of thirst in a desert when he looks up and sees a friend standing by with water and food and strong arms.
He fell into his son’s embrace and clenched him tight, and was clenched tight. There was no need for RoBards to ask his boy to keep this secret. The child was a father and a husband and he understood. They fell back and wrung hands, and RoBards winced as he saw that the backs of his hands were bleeding from the marks of Patty’s fingernails.
Then the room filled with the hurried family drowsily regarding death: Keith’s wife with her child toddling, upheld by a clutch of her nightgown; Aletta and the tiny Jessamine, whom Patty had named; the old nurse whom RoBards had sent off to bed hours ago.
Everybody was ashamed of the thought that it was best for Patty to be no more, for it was too hideous a thing to say of a soul. It was a villainous thought even to think that Patty was better dead.
When the venerable Doctor Matson was fetched at last, RoBards was glad to have Aletta tell him how she came in and what she saw:
The Doctor looked unconvinced, puzzled, then convinced. RoBards feared that Matson would look at him with dismay. In the morning, before a stranger, his passionate deed did not look so tender, so devoted as in the night. But the Doctor avoided any challenge of RoBards’ gaze and contented himself with saying:
“She was a beautiful little lady.”
And that made RoBards remember how Patty had looked when she read in the paper the terrible word, “was”—a terrible word for beauty, youth, joy, but a beautiful one for pain, weeping, and being afraid.
Though new churches were being established in Kensico, with their ex-members asleep about them, RoBards wanted Patty near him and the children in the little yard where the tulip trees had grown high.
The funeral was held in the house, and there was a throng. The road was choked with carriages. It was Patty’s last party.
Even Mrs. Lasher hobbled over in a new black dress. Her daughter Aletta had seen to her comfort; and the pride she took in being related to the RoBardses was so great that her tears were almost boastful.
Since the famous son-in-law, Harry Chalender, Major-General of Volunteers, was still in the East, of course he was present at the obsequies. RoBards watched him with the eyes of a crippled wolf seeing his rival stalwart. The insolent dared even to ask if he might stay the night at the house, and RoBards could not turn him out.
But the thought of Chalender added gall to his grief. He was standing by his window late that night, looking out at the tulip trees under whose enlarging branches his family was slowly assembling,
when there came a knock at the door He turned. It was Chalender— coming right in. He wore that wheedling look of his as he said:
“I can’t sleep either, Davie. By God, I am afraid to be alone. Do you mind if I sit with you awhile?”
He did not wait for permission, but sank down on the old couch. It creaked and almost gave way under him.
“Don’t sit there!” RoBards shouted, as if he feared an accident, but really because he could not endure the memory of the time he had seen Chalender there with Patty kneeling by him. It leaped back at him, rejuvenating his forgotten wrath. Again he wanted to hurl himself at Chalender’s throat. And again he did not.
Chalender, perhaps remembering too, shivered, rose, and went to the fireplace, thrusting his hands out, and washing them in the warm air as he mumbled:
“Many’s the cold night I’ve stood by the camp fire and tried to get my hands warm. That’s the only sign of my age, Davie: it’s hard to keep my hands warm. They’re half frozen all the time.”
He did not note that RoBards made no comment. He was thinking of that circle in Dante’s Inferno where the damned lie imbedded in ice. But Chalender glanced down at the hearthstone and asked:
“Isn’t that the marble I brought over from Sing Sing when I was an engineer on the aqueduct? Why, I believe it is! There was a poem I started to write. I have always been a poet at heart, Davie, plucking the lyre with hands all thumbs, trying to make life rhyme and run to meter But I had no gift of words.
“I spent half a night and fifteen miles trying to write a poem to go with that slab. It ran something like—like—ah, I have it!—
“Marble,
marble, I could never mould you
To the
beauteous
image of
my love, So keep the blissful secret that I told you Tell it only to—
“And there I stuck and couldn’t get on to save me.”
He bent his arm along the mantel and laid his forehead on it as he said with an unusual absence of flippancy:
“I loved her, Davie. You stole her from me when I was dying. You ran away with her to this place. When I called for her and they told me she had married you, my heart died. I got well. My body got well. But my soul was always sick. I laughed and pretended, flirted and reveled, but I never loved anybody else—only Patty—always only Patty.
“And she—when she was afraid of life or death, she ran to you; but when she wasn’t afraid of life——”
As he struck his chest and opened his mouth to proceed, RoBards yelled:
“You say it and I’ll kill you!”
“You—kill anybody?” Chalender sneered, and RoBards sneered again:
“Oh, I’ve killed one or two in my day.”
Chalender apparently did not hear this mad brag, for he was bragging on his own account:
“You couldn’t kill me; nor could ten men like you. Thousands have tried to kill me. For four years the Rebels kept shooting at me and whacking at me with their sabers, jabbing with their bayonets and searching for me with grape and canister, but I didn’t die. It seems I shall never die. Maybe that’s because I’ve never quite lived. I loved Patty and you got her. You oughtn’t to be hurt to learn that another man loved your love. But if it makes you mad to hear me say it, maybe you could kill me. Then my blood would run out on this marble that I brought to her when she was young and pretty. Oh, but she was pretty, a pretty thing, a sweet thing. What a damned, ugly world, to let a pretty thing like Patty Jessamine suffer and die!
“Oh, Davie, Davie, what a darling she was, in what a dirty world!”
He put out his hand hungrily in the air and something—as if it were Patty’s ghost smiling irresistibly—persuaded RoBards’ hand forward to take Chalender’s and wring it with sympathy.
So two souls, two enemies on earth, meeting in hell, might gaze into each other’s eyes and find such agony there that they would lock hands in mutual pity.
RoBards and Chalender looked straight at one another for the first time perhaps; and each wondered at the other’s sorrow.
By and by Chalender sighed and murmured:
“Thank you, David. I think I shall sleep now. Good night, old man; and God help us all.”
CHAPTER LII
FLEEING from the oppressiveness of the farm, RoBards returned to St. John’s Park to find it alive with memories of Patty. He loved to recall their quarrels, her vanities, her extravagances, her fierce unreasonable tempers, the impudent advantages she took of his love, her hostility to all laws and orders, the flitting graces she revealed. He loved her for them, more than for her earnest moods, her noble whims, her instants of grandeur. A swallow for its wildness, a humming bird for its teasing, a kitten for its scampers—a woman for her unlikeness to a man’s ideals—we love them for what they will not give us!
Only a little while could RoBards revel in his lavendered memories, for St. John’s Park was taken over by a railroad company as the site for a big freight station. All of the inhabitants were evicted like paupers from a tenement. The quondam retreat of gentility in search of peace was now a bedlam of noisy commerce, of thudding cars and squeaking brakes.
RoBards wanted to seal the house like a sacred casket of remembrances, but it was torn down in spite of him and the place of it knew it no more.
The city seemed to pursue RoBards. The people swarmed after him and never retreated. Keith took a house in town, and asked his father to live with him, but RoBards, thinking of what a burden old Jessamine had been in his own home, would not risk a repetition of that offense.
Again he lived at a hotel and at his office. Having nothing else to fill his heart, he gave all his soul to the law and became a mighty pleader in the courts. As the city grew, great businesses developed and ponderous litigations increased, involving enormous sums. His fees were in proportion and, finding that his value seemed to be measured by the size of his charges, he flattered his clients by his exorbitance.
For his own satisfaction he took up now and then the defense of a criminal, a murderer, a murderess, anybody who had passionately smashed the laws of God and man. And it fascinated him to rescue the culprit from penalty of any sort; to play upon the public and its twelve senators in the jury box until they all forgave the offense and made a martyr of the offender, applauded the verdict of “Not Guilty.”
After all, RoBards thought, justifying his seeming anarchy: who is truly guilty of anything? Who would shoot or poison another except under the maddening torment of some spiritual plague?
And if one must say, as the pious pleaded, that Heaven was allwise and all-merciful and all-loving even though it sent cancer and cholera and mania and jealousy to prey upon helpless humans, why should one abhor a human being who followed that high example and destroyed with ruthlessness?
In this ironic bitterness, RoBards saved from further punishment many a scandalous rebel and felt that he was wreaking a little revenge on the hateful world for its cruelty to Patty, saving other wretches from the long, slow tortures she endured.
But nothing mattered much. His riches annoyed him, since they came too late to make Patty happy with luxuries. It was another sarcasm of the world.
It amused him dismally to furnish old Mrs. Lasher with money to spend; with a coat of paint and new shingles for her house, and credit at A. T. Stewart’s big store. This gave her a parting glimpse of the life she had missed; and when she died, he provided her with a funeral that put a final smile on her old face.
This was not in penance for what he had done to her son. That was only a dim episode now, with condemnation, forgiveness, and atonement all outlawed beyond the statutory limitations. Time does our atoning for us by smoothing sins and virtues to one common level.
Aletta was a more profitable investment for money. He made her so handsome that she attracted suitors. And one day she tearfully confessed that she was in love with a man who besought her in
marriage. This meant that Mrs. David RoBards, Junior, would cease to keep that sacred name alive, and when Junior’s daughter should grow up she would also shed the family name.
But nothing mattered much—except that people should get what they wanted as fully and as often as possible. He made over to Aletta a large sum of money, on the condition that she should keep its source a secret.
The habit of secrecy concerning deeds of evil grew to a habit of secrecy concerning deeds of kindliness. He tended more and more to keep everything close, the least important things as well as the most.
He could not be generous often to his son Keith; Keith was too proud of his own success to take tips. He had chosen wisely when he made a career of hydraulic engineering, for water seemed to be the one thing that New York could never buy enough of.
The reservoir in Central Park, Lake Manahatta, had been opened in the second year of the war and though it held a thousand and thirty million gallons, it sufficed but briefly. Sometimes, riding a horse in the new pleasance, RoBards would make the circuit of that little artificial sea and, pausing to stare down into its glass, try to recall that once it had been a ravine where squatters kept their squalid homes.
The insatiable city was drowning land everywhere with dammedup water, but the undammed people were flowing outward like water. In 1869 there was a drought and the four great reservoirs were all empty. No water came in at all save from the Croton River. A new reservoir was established at High Bridge to take care of the colony increasing in Washington Heights. A reservoir was made at Boyd’s Corner to hold nearly three hundred million gallons.
The next year the city laid its great hands upon a part of Westchester County, and not content to reach out for water annexed the land as well.
Recalling when it had seemed a ridiculous boast that New York would one day reach the Harlem River, RoBards already saw its
boundary pushed north to Yonkers and eastward along the banks of his Bronx.
He felt as if the city were some huge beast clumsily advancing toward his home.
Its thirst was its excuse, and when the next shortage of water forced the town to make a house-to-house inspection of plumbing to cut down the waste, the engineers went out to hunt new ponds, while its ambassadors marched on Albany and forced the state to cede it three more lakes in the Croton watershed.
The property owners on their shores filled up the outlets and fought the octopus in vain; and RoBards once more distinguished himself for his brilliant rear-guard actions, ending always with defeat in the courts.
At Middle Branch on the Croton, a reservoir of four thousand million gallons failed to satisfy the town, and in 1880 began the two driest years ever heard of. All the reservoirs were drained and even the Croton wearied. The thirty million gallons a day it poured into the city’s dusty gullet fell to ten million. The public fountains were sealed, the hydrants turned off, the Mayor urged the citizens to thrift, thrift, thrift.
Isaac Newton, the Chief Engineer, proposed a second aqueduct to drain the Croton region, a great dam below the old, a tunnel, the longest in the world, to the city and a great inverted siphon under the Harlem’s oozy bed. And this was decreed; and in time accomplished under Engineer Fteley
But the promise of these two hundred and fifty million gallons a day was not enough; and now the city turned its eyes to the Bronx River, and RoBards felt that his doom was announced. The sacred stream had kept its liberty in the face of greedy projects since it was first named in 1798 as a victim of the all-swallowing town.
In place of the sixty thousand population then, there were twelve hundred thousand people now, and buildings were lifted so high that people were living six stories in air. They expected the city to pump water to their faucets. It did, while the supply held.
Up the railroad came an army of engineers with Keith high among them to stretch a dam at the very edge of Kensico, trapping the Bronx and its cousin the Byram stream. With the engineers came the laborers, a horde of Italians and all the muck and vermin that had marked the building of the Croton dam.
The Kensico dam would impound only sixteen hundred and twenty million gallons and there were sixteen hundred thousand people in New York by the time it was finished. The two Rye ponds dammed and a Byram reservoir completed and the Gun Hill reservoir at Williamsbridge raised the total to three and a half billion gallons, but RoBards saw that nothing could check the inevitable command to build a higher parapet at Kensico and spread a tributary lake across his farm and his tulip trees, his home, and his graves.
Meanwhile, as the townspeople inundated the country all about, the greater tides of the republic overflowed all the continent. When Immy had married Chalender, she had had to sail around the peak of South America to San Francisco. But now the lands between were filled with cities, and the farmers were pushing out to retrieve the deserts from sterility
Railroads were shuttling from ocean to ocean and it took hardly more days now than months then for letters and people to go and come.
Letters from Immy had not been many nor expressed much joy in the romance of the Pacific colonists. The return of Chalender to San Francisco seemed rather to cause a recrudescence of unhappiness.
After Patty’s death a letter came, addressed to her, that RoBards opened as her earthly proxy and read with tangled feelings:
“My husband is what he always was, a flirt incorrigible, a rake for all his loss of teeth He still kisses the old ladies’ hands and gives them a charitable thrill And he kisses all the young girls’ lips that he can reach
“But I can’t complain. I was shopworn when he took me from the shelf. I am so domestic that I can hardly believe my own eventless diary. I am plain and plump and my husband, such as he is, brings home so many stories that I don’t miss the novels much.
“The neighbors run in with scandals, but I can usually say that Harry told me first. He is a beast but a lot of fun. For the children’s sake, I endure I grow very homesick, though, and cry myself to sleep after my children have cried themselves to sleep But oh, to have you tuck me in again, my pretty, my darling Mamma, and oh, to look into Papa’s sad, sweet eyes, and the unwavering love that seemed to grow the greater as I deserved it less and less!”
Finishing the letter RoBards was glad, for some reason, that Patty had never seen it. She might have hated Chalender for being so fickle, but RoBards had heard him cry out in his loneliness and he could never hate him any more.
He could not have sent him to hell or kept him there if he had been God, even the jealous God of Genesis. Yet if Chalender were not to go to hell, who could be sent?
So feeble grew RoBards’ grudge that when he received a telegram all the way from San Francisco that Harry Chalender had died, he felt lonely; and tears ran down into his tremulous mouth. As always, Chalender had been engaged on a work of public benefaction. He had thrown himself, heart and soul, into the irrigation projects that were rescuing the Golden State into a paradise of vines and figtrees, almonds and oranges and palms. Overwork and overexertion in the mountains broke his old heart. It was quaintly appropriate that his ever-driven heart should crack.
Like so many of the republic’s heroes, his public morals were as pure as his private were sullied, and his funeral brought forth eulogium all across the continent. The public said, “He was a patriot!” and none knew how many women keened, “Harry was a darling, a darling, a darling.”
The departure of Chalender took a prop from RoBards. He had outlived the rival who had saved his life and embittered it, and had confessed that RoBards had done him greater injury.
He, RoBards, was ready now to go, and merely waited. The only thing he wished to see was Immy. She wrote that she would come to live with him as soon as she could close up her husband’s mixed affairs and learn whether she were rich or poor.
As an earnest of her coming she sent along a daughter, to go to an Eastern finishing school. She had been named Patty, and the girl had grown to such likeness that when she stood at last before RoBards he almost fell to his knees to welcome a revenant ghost to his arms.
She stood mischievous, exquisite, ambrosially winsome, ready to laugh or cry, threaten or take flight, according to whichever stratagem she could best use to gain her whim.
She ran into her grandfather’s bosom and set his old heart to clamoring like a firebell in the night. Her lips tasted like Patty’s lips. Her flesh beneath his caress had the same peachy mellowness.
So there was a new Patty in the world! The world would never lack for Patty Jessamines.
Nor for David RoBardses, either, it seemed; for every body said that Keith’s son, Ward, was just like his grandfather. But only in looks, for Ward was already an engineer in his father’s office and even more zealous to build inland seas upon other people’s lands for the sake of the infinite New York he loved.
Ward fought his grandfather, called him an old fogy, a poor Canute who wanted to check the world’s greatest city; and in his very ardor resembled RoBards more than either realized.
He resembled him, too, in his response to the fascination of this new Patty. They were cousins, and in RoBards’ youth that had implied a love-affair. But nowadays such alliances were looked upon as perilous and scandalous.
So Ward gave Patty merely the glance of admiration a temperate man casts upon a jeweler’s window and resumed his efforts to convert his grandfather to the justice of making Westchester a mere cistern for New York.
The young man knew nothing of the meaning of the land to RoBards; he knew nothing of the secrets the house retained like a strong vault. He had the imperial eye of youth, a hawk’s look to far horizons.
