prohibitionist agitators was simply their discovery of the incurable
cowardice and venality of the normal American politician--their shrewd
abandonment of logical and evidential propaganda for direct political
action. For years their cause had languished. Now and then a State
or part of a State went dry, but often it went wet again a few years
later. Those were the placid days of white-ribbon rallies, of wholesale
pledge-signings, of lectures by converted drunkards, of orgiastic
meetings in remote Baptist and Methodist churches, of a childish
reliance upon arguments that fetched only drunken men and their wives,
and so grew progressively feebler as the country became more sober.
The thing was scarcely even a nuisance; it tended steadily to descend
to the level of a joke. The prohibitionist vote for President hung
around a quarter of a million; it seemed impossible to pull it up to
a formidable figure, despite the stupendous labours of thousands of
eloquent dervishes, lay and clerical, male and female. But then, out
of nowhere, came the Anti-Saloon League, and--sis! boom! ah! Then came
the sudden shift of the fire from the people to the politicians--and
at once there was rapid progress. The people could only be wooed and
bamboozled, but the politicians could be threatened; their hold upon
their jobs could be shaken; they could be converted at wholesale and
by _force majeure_. The old prohibition weepers and gurglers were
quite incapable of this enterprise, but the new janissaries of the
Anti-Saloon League--sharp lawyers, ecclesiastics too ambitious to pound
mere pulpits, outlaw politicians seeking a way back to the trough--were
experts at every trick and dodge it demanded. They understood the
soul of the American politician. To him they applied the economic
interpretation of history, resolutely and with a great deal of genial
humour. They knew that his whole politics, his whole philosophy, his
whole concept of honesty and honour, was embraced in his single and
insatiable yearning for a job, and they showed him how, by playing
with them, he could get it and keep it, and how, by standing against
them, he could lose it. Prohibition was rammed into the constitution by
conquering the politicians; the people in general were amazed when the
thing was accomplished; it may take years to reconcile them to it.
It was the party system that gave the Anti-Saloon League manipulators
their chance, and they took advantage of it with great boldness and
cleverness. The two great parties divide the country almost equally;
it is difficult to predict, in a given year, whether the one or
the other musters the most votes. This division goes down into the
lowest electoral units; even in those backward areas where one party
has divine grace and the other is of the devil there are factional
differences that amount to the same thing. In other words, the average
American politician is never quite sure of his job. An election (and,
if not an election, then a primary) always exposes him to a definite
hazard, and he is eager to diminish it by getting help from outside
his own following, at whatever cost to the principles he commonly
professes. Here lies the opportunity for minorities willing to trade
on a realistic political basis. In the old days the prohibitionists
refused to trade, and in consequence they were disregarded, for their
fidelity to their own grotesque candidates protected the candidates
of both the regular parties. But with the coming of the Anti-Saloon
League they abandoned this fidelity and began to dicker in a forthright
and unashamed manner, quickly comprehensible to all professional
politicians. That is, they asked for a pledge on one specific issue,
and were willing to swallow any commitment on other issues. If
Beelzebub, running on one ticket, agreed to support prohibition, and
the Archangel Gabriel, running on another, found himself entertaining
conscientious doubts, they were instantly and solidly for Beelzebub,
and they not only gave him the votes that they directly controlled, but
they also gave him the benefit of a campaign support that was ruthless,
pertinacious, extraordinarily ingenious, and overwhelmingly effective.
Beelzebub, whatever his swinishness otherwise, was bathed in holy oils;
Gabriel’s name became a thing to scare children.
Obviously, the support thus offered was particularly tempting to
a politician who found himself facing public suspicion for his
general political practices--in brief, to the worst type of machine
professional. Such a politician is always acutely aware that it is
not positive merit that commonly gets a man into public office in the
United States, but simply disvulnerability. Even when they come to
nominate a President, the qualities the two great parties seek are
chiefly the negative ones; they want, not a candidate of forceful and
immovable ideas, but one whose ideas are vague and not too tenaciously
held, and in whose personality there is nothing to alarm or affront the
populace. Of two candidates, that one usually wins who least arouses
the distrusts and suspicions of the great masses of undifferentiated
men. This advantage of the safe and sane, the colourless and
unprovocative, the apparently stodgy and commonplace man extends to the
most trivial contests, and politicians are keen to make use of it. Thus
the job-seeker with an aura of past political misdemeanour about him
was eager to get the Christian immunity bath that the prohibitionists
offered him so generously, and in the first years of their fight they
dealt almost exclusively with such fellows. He, on his side, promised
simply to vote for prohibition--not even, in most cases, to pretend to
any personal belief in it. The prohibitionists, on their side, promised
to deliver the votes of their followers to him on election day, to cry
him up as one saved by a shining light, and, most important of all,
to denounce his opponent as an agent of hell. He was free, by this
agreement, to carry on his regular political business as usual. The
prohibitionists asked no patronage of him. They didn’t afflict him with
projects for other reforms. All they demanded was that he cast his vote
as agreed upon when the signal was given to him.
At the start, of course, such scoundrels frequently violated their
agreements. In the South, in particular, dry legislature after dry
legislature sold out to the liquor lobby, which, in those days, still
had plenty of money. An assemblyman would be elected with the aid of
the prohibitionists, make a few maudlin speeches against the curse
of drink, and then, at the last minute, vote wet for some thin and
specious reason, or for no avowed reason at all. But the prohibition
manipulators, as I have said, were excellent politicians, and so they
knew how to put down that sort of treason. At the next election they
transferred their favour to the opposition candidate, and inasmuch as
he had seen the traitor elected at the last election he was commonly
very eager to do business. The punishment for the treason was condign
and merciless. The dry rabble-rousers, lay and clerical, trumpeted
news of it from end to end of the constituency. What was a new and
gratifying disvulnerability was transformed into a vulnerability of the
worst sort; the recreant one became the county Harry Thaw, Oscar Wilde,
Captain Boy-Ed, and Debs. A few such salutary examples, and treason
became rare. The prohibitionists, indeed, came to prefer dealing with
such victims of their reprisals. They could trust them perfectly,
once the lesson had been learned; they were actually more trustworthy
than honest believers, for the latter usually had ideas of their own
and interfered with the official plans of campaign. Thus, in the end,
the professional politicians of both parties came under the yoke. The
final battle in Congress transcended all party lines; democrats and
republicans fought alike for places on the band-wagon. The spectacle
offered a searching and not unhumorous commentary on the party system,
and on the honour of American politicians no less. Two-thirds, at
least, of the votes for the amendment were cast by men who did not
believe in it, and who cherished a hearty hope, to the last moment,
that some act of God would bring about its defeat.
Such holocausts of frankness and decency are certainly not rare in
American politics; on the contrary, they glow with normalcy. The
typical legislative situation among us--and the typical administrative
situation as well--is one in which men wholly devoid of inner
integrity, facing a minority that is resolutely determined to get
its will, yield up their ideas, their freedom, and their honour
in order to save their jobs. I say administrative situation as
well; what I mean is that in these later days the pusillanimity of
the actual law-maker is fully matched by the pusillanimity of the
enforcing officer, whether humble assistant district attorney or
powerful judge. The war, with its obliteration of customary pretences
and loosening of fundamental forces, threw up the whole process
into high relief. For nearly two long years there was a complete
abandonment of sense and self-respect. Rowelled and intimidated by
minorities that finally coalesced into a frantic majority, legislators
allowed themselves to be forced into imbecility after imbecility, and
administrative officers, including some of the highest judges in the
land, followed them helter-skelter. In the lower house of Congress
there was one man--already forgotten--who showed the stature of a
man. He resigned his seat and went home to his self-respect. The rest
had no self-respect to go home to. Eager beyond all to hold their
places, at whatever cost to principle, and uneasily conscious of their
vulnerability to attack, however frenzied and unjust, they surrendered
abjectly and repeatedly--to the White House, to the newspapers, to
any group enterprising enough to issue orders to them and resolute
enough to flourish weapons before them. It was a spectacle full of
indecency--there are even congressmen who blush when they think of
it to-day--but it was nevertheless a spectacle that was typical. The
fortunes of politics, as they now run, make it overwhelmingly probable
that every new recruit to public office will be just such a poltroon.
The odds are enormously in favour of him, and enormously against the
man of honour. Such a man of honour may occasionally drift in, taken
almost unawares by some political accident, but it is the pushing,
bumptious, unconscionable bounder who is constantly _fighting_ to get
in, and only too often he succeeds. The rules of the game are made to
fit his taste and his talents. He can survive as a hog can survive in
the swill-yard.
Go to the Congressional Directory and investigate the origins and
past performances of the present members of the lower house--our
typical assemblage of typical politicians, the cornerstone of our
whole representative system, the symbol of our democracy. You will
find that well over half of them are obscure lawyers, school-teachers,
and mortgage-sharks out of almost anonymous towns--men of common
traditions, sordid aspirations, and no attainments at all. One and
all, the members of this majority--and it is constant, no matter what
party is in power--are plastered with the brass ornaments of the
more brummagem fraternal orders. One and all, they are devoid of any
contact with what passes for culture, even in their remote bailiwicks.
One and all their careers are bare of civilizing influences.... Such
is the American _Witenagemot_ in this 146th year of the Republic. Such
are the men who make the laws that all of us must obey, and who carry
on our dealings with the world. Go to their debates, and you will
discover what equipment they bring to their high business. What they
know of sound literature is what one may get out of McGuffey’s Fifth
Reader. What they know of political science is the nonsense preached
in the chautauquas and on the stump. What they know of history is the
childish stuff taught in grammar-schools. What they know of the arts
and sciences--of all the great body of knowledge that is the chief
intellectual baggage of modern man--is absolutely nothing.
H. L. MENCKEN
JOURNALISM
According to the _World Almanac_ for 1921 the daily circulation of
newspapers in the big cities of the United States in 1914 (evidently
the most recent year for which the figures have been compiled) was
more than forty million. For the six months ending April 1, 1920,
the average daily circulation of five morning newspapers and eleven
evening newspapers in Greater New York City was, as shown by sworn
statements, more than three and a third million. These statistics cover
only daily newspapers, not weekly or monthly journals; and the figures
for New York do not include papers in languages other than English.
The American certainly buys newspapers. To what extent he reads them
it is impossible to determine. But we may fairly assume that the great
majority of literate inhabitants of the United States of all ages are
every day subjected in some measure to the influence of the newspaper.
No other institution approaches the newspaper in universality,
persistence, continuity of influence. Not the public school, with all
other schools added to it, has such power over the national mind; for
in the lives of most people formal schooling is of relatively short
duration, ceasing with adolescence or earlier. The church? Millions of
people never go to church, and the day when the clergy dominated human
thought is gone for ever. If we add to the daily press the weekly and
monthly periodicals, with a total circulation per issue of two hundred
million (for the year 1914), we shall not be far wrong in saying that
the journalist, with the powers behind him, has more to do, for good
or for evil, than the member of any other profession, in creating and
shaping the thoughts of the multitude. Compared with him the teacher,
the preacher, the artist, the politician, the man of science, are
restricted, interrupted, indirect in reaching the minds of their
fellow-men.
So that in estimating the capacities and contents of the American
mind, which we have no means of lining up in its hundred million
individual manifestations and examining directly, an analysis of the
American newspaper is a fair rough-and-ready method. What everybody
reads does not tell the whole story of what everybody is, but it tells
a good deal. Moreover, it is not necessary to analyze any one newspaper
or to separate its clientèle from that of any other newspaper. For
though everybody knows that the New York _Tribune_ and the New York
_World_ have distinct qualities which differentiate them from each
other, that some papers are better and some are worse, yet on the whole
the American newspaper is amazingly uniform from Portland, Maine, to
Portland, Oregon. It is, indeed, a more or less unified institution fed
by the same news services and dominated by kindred financial interests.
If you travel much, as actors do, without interest in local affairs,
when you go to the hotel news-stand in the morning, you cannot tell
from the general aspect of the newspaper you pick up what city you
are in; and in a small city it is likely to be a metropolitan paper
that has come a hundred miles or more during the night. Indeed, this
is the first thing to be learned about the American from a study of
his newspapers, that he lacks individuality, is tediously uniform, and
cut according to one intellectual pattern. He may have his “favourite”
newspaper, and with no sense that his confession of habitude is
shameful he may write the editor that he has read it constantly for
forty years. But if it goes out of existence, like his favourite brand
of chewing-gum or cigarettes, there is no aching void which cannot be
comfortably filled by a surviving competitor. Editors, except those in
charge of local news, move with perfect ease from one city to another;
it is the same old job at a different desk.
The standardization of the newspaper reader and the standardization
of the journalist are two aspects of the same thing. As a citizen, a
workman, a human being, the journalist is simply one of us, a victim of
the conformity which has overwhelmed the American. When we speak of the
influence of the journalist, we are not speaking of an individual, but
of “the powers behind him,” of which he is nothing but the wage-earning
servant, as impotent and unimportant, considered as an individual, as
a mill-hand. Journalism in America is no longer a profession, through
which a man can win to a place of real dignity among his neighbours. If
we had a Horace Greeley to-day, he would not be editor of a newspaper.
He would not wish to be, and he would not be allowed to be. Certainly
his vigorous integrity would not be tolerated in the modern unworthy
successor of the newspaper which he founded. The editor of a newspaper
is no doubt often a man of intelligence and experience and he may be
well paid, like the manager of a department store; but he is usually
submerged in anonymity except that from time to time the law requires
the newspaper to publish his name. His subordinates, assistant editors,
newswriters, reporters, and the rest, are as nameless as floor-walkers,
shipping clerks, salesladies, and ladies engaged in more ancient forms
of commerce.
It is true that during the last generation there has been a tendency in
the newspaper to “feature” individuals, such as cartoonists, conductors
of columns, writers on sport, dramatic critics, and so on. But these
men are artists, some of them very clever, who have nothing to do with
the news but contribute to the paper its vaudeville entertainment.
During the war there was a great increase in the amount of signed
cable matter and correspondence. This was due to the necessity of the
prosperous newspaper to show its enterprise and to cajole its readers
into believing that it had men of special ability in close touch with
diplomats and major-generals collecting and cabling at great expense
intimate information and expert opinion. The circumstances were so
difficult that the wisest and most honest man could not do much, except
lose his position, and nobody will blame the correspondents. But it
is significant that not a single American correspondent emerged from
the conflict who is memorable, from the point of view of a more or
less careful reader, as having been different from the rest. If from a
miscellaneous collection of clippings we should cut off the dates, the
alleged place of origin and the names of the correspondents, nobody
but an editor with a long and detailed memory could tell t’other from
which, or be sure whether the despatch was from Mr. Jones, the special
correspondent of the _Christian Science Monitor_ (copyright by the
Chicago _News_) or an anonymous cable from the London office of the
Associated Press. And even the editor, who may be assumed to know the
names of hundreds of his colleagues and competitors, would begin his
attempt at identification by examining the style of type to see if it
looked like a column from the _Sun_ or from the _World_. Almost all the
war news was a hopeless confusion of impressions, of reports of what
somebody said somebody else, “of unquestionable authority,” had heard
from reliable sources, and of sheer mendacity adapted to the momentary
prejudices of the individual managing editor, the American press as
a whole, and the American people. And this is a rough recipe for all
the news even in times of peace, for the war merely aggravated the
prevalent diseases of the newspapers.
Since the purpose of this book is to discuss peculiarly American
characteristics, it should be said at once that the tendency of
the newspaper to obliterate the journalist as a person immediately
responsible to the public is not confined to America. Economic
conditions in Europe and America are fundamentally alike, and the
modern newspaper in every country must be a business institution,
heavily capitalized, and conducted for profit. In England the decline
of journalism as a profession and the rise of the “stunt” press has
been noted and deplored by Englishmen. Years ago it meant something
to be editor of the London _Times_, and the appointment of a new man
to the position was an event not less important than a change in the
cabinet. Who is editor of the _Times_ now is a matter of no consequence
except to the man who receives the salary check. English journalism
is in almost as bad a case as American. In England, however, there
is at least one exception which has no counterpart in America, the
Manchester Guardian; this admirable newspaper has the good fortune to
be owned by people who are so rich that they are not obliged, and so
honest that they are not willing, to sell out. It is this fact which
has afforded Mr. Scott, the editor-in-chief for nearly half a century,
an opportunity adequate to his courage and ability. There are few such
opportunities in England, and none in America. Even the Springfield
_Republican_ has largely lost its old character.
As for the continental papers, one who does not read any of them
regularly is in no position to judge. In 1900 William James, a shrewd
observer, wrote in a letter: “The Continental papers of course are
‘nowhere.’ As for our yellow papers--every country has its criminal
classes, and with us and in France, they have simply got into
journalism as part of their professional evolution, and they must be
got out. Mr. Bosanquet somewhere says that so far from the ‘dark ages’
being over, we are just at the beginning of a new dark-age period. He
means that ignorance and unculture, which then were merely brutal,
are now articulate and possessed of a literary voice, and the fight
is transferred from fields and castles and town walls to ‘organs of
publicity.’” This is only a passing remark in an informal letter. But
it is a partial explanation of American yellow journalism which in
twenty years has swamped the whole press, including papers that pretend
to be respectable, and it suggests what the state of things was, and
is, in France.
It should be noted, however, that personal journalism has not entirely
disappeared in France, that the editor can still be brought to account,
sometimes at the point of a pistol, for lies and slander, and that a
young French _littérateur_, before he has won his spurs in poetry,
drama, or fiction, can regard journalism as an honourable occupation in
which it is worth while to make a name.
With the decadence in all countries, certainly in America, of the
journalist as a professional man in an honourable craft, there might
conceivably have been a gain in objectivity, in the right sort of
impersonality. Anonymity might have ensured a dispassionate fidelity
to facts. But there has been no such gain. Responsibility has been
transferred from the journalist to his employers, and he is on his
mettle to please his employers, to cultivate whatever virtues are
possible to journalism, accuracy, clearness of expression, zeal in
searching out and interpreting facts, only in so far forth as his
employers demand them, only as his livelihood and chances of promotion
depend on them. The ordinary journalist, being an ordinary human
being, must prefer to do honest work; for there is no pleasure in
lying, though there is a temptation to fill space with unfounded or
unverified statements. And if his manager orders him to find a story
where there is no story, or to find a story of a certain kind where
the facts lead to a story of another kind, he will not come back
empty-handed lest he go away empty-handed on pay-day. Any one who has
worked in a newspaper office knows that the older men are likely to be
weary and cynical and that the younger men fall into two classes, those
who are too stupid to be discontented with any aspect of their position
except the size of their salaries, and those who hope either to rise to
the better paid positions, or to “graduate,” as they put it, from daily
journalism to other kinds of literary work.