heavily retarded by the insular forces that, as in no other theatre
save the English, operate in the Republic. The fight against outworn
convention is a brave and bitter fight, but victory still rests
mainly on the banners of the Philistines. The drama that dismisses
sentimentality for truth, that seeks to face squarely the tragedy
and comedy of love and life, that declines to pigeon-hole itself,
and that hazards to view the American scene with cosmopolitan eyes,
is confronted at every turn by the native Puritanism (as often
shammed as inborn), and by the native parochialism and hypocrisy. The
production that derides all stereotype--all the ridiculous and mossy
rubber-stamps--is in turn derided. The actor or actress who essays to
filter a rôle through the mind of a human being instead of through the
mind of a rouged marionette is made mock of. Here, the playgoing public
finds its leaders in three-fourths of the newspaper reviewing chairs,
chairs influenced, directly or indirectly, by an intrinsic inexperience
and ignorance, or by an extrinsic suggestion of “policy.”
The American theatre and drama have long suffered from being slaves
to the national hypocrisy. Only on rare occasions have they been
successful in casting off the shackles, and then but momentarily. The
pull against them is stubborn, strong. Cracking the black snake across
their backs are a hundred padrones: newspapers trembling at the thought
of offending their advertisers, religious orders poking their noses
into what should not concern them, corrupt moral uplift organizations
and lecherous anti-vice societies itching for the gauds of publicity,
meddling college professors augmenting their humble wage by writing
twenty-dollar articles on subjects they know nothing about for the
Sunday supplements, ex-real estate reporters and divorcée interviewers
become “dramatic critics,” notoriety seeking clergymen, snide
producers trying to protect their snide enterprises from the dangers
of the invasion of truth and beauty. Let a group of drama-loving and
theatre-loving young men, resourceful, skilful, and successful, come
upon the scene, as the Washington Square Players came, let them bring
flashes of authentic dramatic art into their native theatre, and
against them is promptly hurled the jealous irony of the Old Guard
that is dead, but never surrenders. Let a young playwright like Zoë
Akins write an admirable fantastic comedy (“Papa”), and against her
are brought all the weapons of the morals-in-art mountebanks. Let a
producer like Hopkins break away from the mantel-leaning histrionism
and palm-pot investiture, and against him is brought up the curt
dismissal of freakishness.
The native theatre, for all the fact that it is on the way, is not yet
ready for such things as demand a degree of civilization for receptive
and remunerative appreciation. The “Pegs o’ My Heart” and “Pollyannas,”
the “Turn to the Rights” and “Lightnin’s” still make millions, while
the bulk of finer things languish and perish. I speak, remember, not of
the theatre of one city, but of the theatre of the land. This theatre,
considering it in so far as possible as a unit, is still not much above
the Midway Plaisance, the honk-a-tonk, the Sunday School charade. That
one, or maybe two, foreign national theatres may not be much better is
no apology. Such foreign theatres--the French, say--are less national
theatres than one-city theatres, for Paris is France. But the American
theatre spreads from coast to coast. What it spreads, I have herein
tried to suggest.
GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
ECONOMIC OPINION
IF there were conscious restriction upon the expression of opinion in
America, this essay would possess the pompous certainty of an official
document. Instead of threading its hazardous way through a mass of
confused thought, it would record in formal terms acceptable utterance.
In fact, the very restrictions upon thought and speech, with the aid
of scissors and a license to speech, could easily be turned into a
statement of the reputable theory of the welfare of the community.
Unluckily, however, American life has not been arranged to make
matters easy for the interpreter of economic opinion. Every American
is conscious of a right to his own opinion about “why all of us taken
together are as well off as we are” and “why some of us are better
off and others of us worse off than the average of us.” Whether this
privilege comes from the Bill of Rights, the constitution of the United
States, or his Simian ancestry, he could not say; but he is fully
assured that it is “inalienable” and “indefeasible.” No restriction of
birth, breeding, position, or wealth limits his right to an opinion
or persuades him to esteem his more fortunate neighbour’s more highly
than his own. Nor do intellectual limitations check the flow of words
and of ideas. No one is examined upon the growth of industrialism, the
institutions which make up the economic order, or the nature of an
industrial problem before he is allowed to speak. In fact, the idea
that a knowledge of the facts about the subject under discussion,
or of the principles to be applied to it, is essential to the right
to an opinion is a strange notion little understood here. Even if
occasionally some potentate attempts a mild restriction upon the
spoken or the written word, it checks only those who talk directly and
therefore clumsily. Its principal effect is through provocation to add
mightily to the volume of opinion.
The result is a conglomerate mass of opinion that sprawls through
the known realm of economics and into regions uncharted. The mighty
men of finance spin a theory of national welfare in terms of foreign
concessions no more glibly than the knights of the road in solemn
convention solve with words the riddle of unemployment. The newly
enfranchised women compete with the members of the Dynamite Club in
proposals for setting the industrial cosmos in order. Economic opinion
bobs up in the financial journals, “the labour press,” the periodicals
of the “learned” societies, and in all the “Christian” advocates. It
shows itself boldly in political speeches, in directors’ reports, in
public hearings, and in propagandist sheets. It lurks craftily in
editorials, moving pictures, drawing-room lectures, poems, cartoons,
and hymns. It ranges from the sonorous apologies for the existing order
voiced by the Aaron Baal Professor of Christian Homiletics in the
Midas Theological Seminary to the staccato denunciation of what is by
the Sons of Martha Professor of Proletarian Tactics in the Karl Marx
College for Workers.
A mere semblance of order is given to this heterogeneous mass of
opinion by the conditions which make it. A common system of legal,
business, and social usages is to be found the country over. This
has left its impress too firmly in the assumptions which underlie
thought to allow this material to be separate bits from so many mental
universes. The prevailing scheme of economic life is so definitely
established as to force its imprint upon the opinion that moves about
it. Acceptable opinion is created in its likeness, and unacceptable
opinion becomes acceptable opinion when the negatives are skilfully
extracted. Protestants are concerned rather with eliminating the
“evils” of “capitalism” than with eradicating it root and branch.
Protestantism is rather a variant of orthodox doctrine than an
independent system of thought. Radical opinion that is likely to pass
the decent bounds of negation is kept small in volume by a press which
allows it little upon which to feed. Accordingly, varied doctrines wear
the semblance of unity.
Such elements, however, do not free this adventure into speculation
from its perils. They merely make the hazards mortal. In the paragraphs
below the economic opinion in America is recklessly resolved into four
main classes. These are the _laissez-faire_ opinion of the mid-19th
century, the conventional “case for capitalism,” the protestant demand
for “control,” and the academic insistence upon conscious “direction”
of industrial change. Radical opinion gets a competent judgment
elsewhere in this volume. Even in this bold outline the opinions of
small minorities are lost to sight, and views and doctrines, seemingly
alien to the authors who know their subtle differences, are often
blurred into a single picture. To avoid the charge that the lion and
the lamb have been pictured as one, no names have been called. Here as
elsewhere particulars will rise up to curse their generalizations, and
the whole will be found to be entirely too scanty to be disbursed into
its parts. But the chance must be taken, and, after all, truth does not
reside in copy-book mottoes.
I
The current types of economic opinion in this country all have a common
origin. The men who express them are but a scant generation or two
removed from the country or the small town. The opinions are so many
variants of a stream of thought which goes back to a mid-19th century
America of small towns and open country. This primitive economic
opinion was formed out of the dust of the ground in the likeness of
an exploitative America. The conditions which shaped it might be set
forth in two lines of a school history thus: First, abundant natural
resources; second, a scanty population; and third, the principle of
letting the individual alone.
It was a chance at an economic opportunity which made America of the
19th century the “land of promise.” The raw materials of personal
wealth were here in soil, stream, and mine. The equipment necessary to
the crude exploitative farming of the time was easy to possess. Since
there was an abundance, the resources essential to a chance at a living
were to be had for the asking. One with enterprise enough to “go it
alone” lived upon what he himself and his wealth in wife and children
produced. He did not have to drive a shrewd bargain for the sale of his
labour nor purchase the wherewithal to be fed and clothed in a market.
There was no confusing scheme of prices to break the connection between
effort and reward; opportunity and responsibility went hand in hand;
success or failure was of one’s own fashioning. Where nature does most,
man claims all; and in rural America men were quite disposed to claim
personal credit for nature’s accomplishments. Since ample resources
smothered even mediocre effort in plenty, the voice of chronic failure
which blamed circumstance, fate, or “the system” was unheard. A freedom
to have and to hold economic resources plentiful enough to supply all
was the condition of material prosperity.
Even when the lure of natural resources drew men from agriculture to
industrial exploitation conditions did not change materially. The
population of the new towns for a while kept at least one foot upon
the soil. When at last the city possessed its people, aliens came out
of Southeastern Europe to do the “dirty work,” and the native born
passed up into administrative, clerical, or professional positions.
The alternative of farm employment and the rapid expansion of industry
fixed a rough minimum beneath which wages could not fall. The expanding
machine technique with large scale production by quantity methods
turned out an abundance of goods evidenced alike in lower prices and in
higher standards of living. The “captains of industry” were regarded by
the community as the creators of the jobs which they dispensed and as
the efficient cause of the prosperity of the neighbourhood. The trickle
of immigration that swelled to a “stream” and rose to a “tide” is an
eloquent testimonial of the time paid by the peasantry of Europe to the
success of the American system of letting the individual alone in his
business.
These conditions brought forth the lay economic theory acceptable to
the national community. Its precepts came from experience, rather
than from books; by intuition, rather than by reason. The welfare of
the individual and the wealth of the nation were alike due to free
institutions. In business and industry the individual was to be free to
do as he pleased unless specifically forbidden by the State. The State
was powerless to interfere with the individual unless granted specific
“constitutional” authority to do so. Each knew what he wanted and was
able to take care of himself. The interests of all were an aggregate of
the interests of individuals. The prevailing scheme of institutions
was accepted as a part of the immutable world of nature. Private
property, if defended at all, was good because it gave the individual
security and enabled him to enjoy the fruits of his own labour. The
right of contract, exercised in a market characterized by “higgling,”
gave one an occasional adventure beyond the horizon of a household
economy. If perchance the individual stumbled into a bad bargain
occasionally, so much the better. The mistake was a useful exercise
in the development of the cardinal virtue of self-reliance. When the
coming of industrialism made contract the basis of all industrial
relations, the older justification was still used. Competition, with
which it was always associated, was regarded as the prime agency in the
organization of industry. It forced the elements of production into
order and exercised a moral restraint over them. Under its régime men
were rewarded in accordance with their deserts. In general, it was true
beyond peradventure that “opportunity” knocked once “at every gate”;
that there was “plenty of room at the top”; that each built the ladder
by which he rose; and that even the humblest was “master of his fate.”
Out of such raw materials there was fashioned a body of professional
economic theory. In a sense it was an imported product; for its earlier
statement was that of English “classical” economics. But in reality
it was the return of an earlier export, for accepted theory had been
made from crude individualistic notions which England had got from
America. In addition, at the hands of American economists it received
a far more elaborate and articulate statement than had been given it
overseas. These theorists used subtle analysis, ponderous logic, and
circumlocution; but their decorous processes brought them to much
the same conclusions that practical men gained from their limited
experiences. Its strength and its acceptability were wholly due to
the precision and verbiage with which it reduced to formal terms the
common-sense economics of the day.
In its terms the economic order is made up of individuals. Each of
these is actuated by the motive of self-interest. Each has for disposal
personal services, goods, or property rights. Each must live upon
goods and services purchased from others. Each must compete with his
fellows in the sale of his wares and the purchase of his articles of
livelihood. Because of the competition of sellers the wages of labour,
the profits of capital, and the prices of goods cannot be forced to
untoward heights. Because of the competition of buyers they cannot be
driven too low. The equilibrium of this double competitive process
assures to each a return which represents the just value of the
service, the property right, or the good. Prices, by moving up and down
in response to changing conditions, stimulate and retard consumption
and production. Their very movement constantly reallocates resources
to the production of a variety of goods and services in just the
proportion which the consumers demand. In this theory the institutions
which comprise the framework of the economic order are taken for
granted. It has no place for an interference by the State with “private
business.” It regards monopoly as a thing to be abjured, whether
appearing as a capitalistic combine or as a union of workingmen. In
the Eden of free enterprise the community’s resources yield all they
have and competition rewards justly all the faithful who by serving
themselves serve society. It is small wonder that sermons were preached
upon “The Relation of Political Economy to Natural Theology.”
II
The conditions which made the economic opinion of the America of small
towns and open country are gone. With their passing the older theories
have been reshaped to new purposes. There are no longer free economic
opportunities for all comers. Natural resources have been appropriated,
and the natural differences between men have been enhanced by the
artificial ones of ownership and inheritance. Wealth and control have
alike been stripped from the many and concentrated in the few. The
prevailing unit in business is the corporation. Establishments have
been gathered into industries, and these have been articulated into a
mighty industrial system, with its established rights, its customary
ways of doing things, and its compulsions upon those who serve it.
The older personal relation of “master” and “servant” abides only in
indices of the records of the law courts. The contract of employment
is now between a “soulless” but “legal entity” and a mere creature of
flesh and blood. The more human individual, the survival of a less
mechanical age, no longer lives upon the fruit of his individual
toil. His welfare is pent in between his wages and the prices which
he must pay for his necessities. Beyond this immediate bargain lies a
mysterious economic system filled with unknown causes which threaten
his income and even his employment. Those who possess have come into
succession to those who ventured. In short, free enterprise has given
way to an established system.
These events have left their mark upon economic opinion. It is
altogether fitting that those who fell heir to the wealth piled up by
free enterprise should gain its outer defences of theory and dialectic.
So the older economics, with its logic and its blessing, has come
as a legacy to those who have. Its newer statement, because of its
well-known objective, may be called “the case for capitalism.” In its
revision the adventurous militarism bent upon exploitation has given
way to a pacifistic defence of security, possession, and things as they
are.
In outward form few changes were necessary to convert the older theory
of _laissez-faire_ into a presentable case for capitalism. A more
rigid and absolute statement of the classical doctrine was almost
enough. In its terms the economic order is independent of other social
arrangements. It is an automatic, self-regulating mechanism. Over it
there rules an immutable and natural “law of supply and demand.” This
maintains just prices, prevents exploitation, adjusts production and
consumption to each other, secures the maximum of goods and services
from the resources at hand, and disburses incomes in accordance with
the merits of men and the verity of things. So just and impartial is
the operation of this law that interference by the State amounts to
meddlesome muddling. It cannot override natural law; therefore it
should not.
It differs most from the older economics in the more explicit statement
of the function of institutions. The growing inequality of income,
of control, and of opportunity have presented facts that have to be
faced. But even here, instead of contriving new defences, the advocates
of capitalism have refurbished the older ones. The thing that is
finds its justification in that which was. Property rights are to be
preserved intact, because private property is essential to personal
opportunity; just as if the propertyless did not exist and each was
to win his living from his own acres or his own shop. The right of
contract is not to be abridged, because the interests of both parties
are advanced by a bargain between equals; just as if the corporate
employer and the individual employé were alike in their freedom, their
capacity to wait, and their power to shape the terms of the bargain.
Prices are to be self-determined in open market, because competition
will best reconcile the conflicting interests of buyers and sellers;
just as if there was no semblance of monopoly among producers, no open
price agreements, and no informal understandings. Individual initiative
is not to be abridged, because it creates the wealth of the nation;
just as if routine had no value for efficiency and the masses of men
still had discretion in economic matters. The arrangements which make
up the economic order find their validity in the symbolic language of
ritual rather than in a prosaic recital of current fact.
This defence crosses the frontier which separates the economic from the
political order only to appropriate the prestige of democracy. Its real
concern is the preservation of the prevailing system wherein business
controls industry for purposes of profit. Its formal solicitation
is lest “the form of government” be changed. This concern finds
expression in veneration for the work of the “fathers” (rather young
men, by the way), not of machine technology and business enterprise,
but of “representative government” and of “constitutional authority.”
Its creed becomes propaganda, not for the defence of business, the
security of corporations, or the preservation of managerial immunities,
but for the defence of the nation, the security of America, and
the preservation of “constitutional” rights. The newer economic
arrangements are masked behind political rights and given the values
of the political institutions which antedate them by many decades. In
short, the staunchest defenders of the prevailing economic system
believe that “their economic preferences are shared by the constitution
of the United States.”
If we may borrow a term from its advocates, this body of opinion
must be pronounced “theoretical.” In their speech a “theory” is a
generalization which goes much further than its particulars warrant.
In that sense their conclusions are not “practical.” The essential
question with which this body of opinion is concerned is whether the
scheme of institutions which focus upon profit-making make the members
of the community, severally and collectively, as well off as they ought
to be. It seems offhand that a realistic defence of the prevailing
order might be convincingly formulated. At any rate, “the case for
capitalism” is good enough to get into the records. Instead, its
advocates have confused their own pecuniary success with the well-being
of the community and have argued that because profits have been made
the system is good. Like the classical economists they vindicate the
system by assumption.
III
In the wake of the new industrialism there has come an economic opinion
of protest. It is being gradually formulated by professional men, by
farmers, by trade unionists, and by the younger business men who have
escaped being “self-made.” Its hesitating and confused statement is
due to the disturbed conditions out of which it comes. The varied
interests of its many authors prevents unity of words or of principles.
Its origin in the contact of minds steeped in the older individualism
with the arresting facts of the newer economic order explains its
current inarticulate expression. It can be set forth briefly only
by subordinating the reality of variety to the tendencies which are
clearly inherent within it.