STATE-BLINDNESS
I
Sense of the State
In what I have written so far, I have tried to get the effect of the
American outlook, the American task, the American problem as a whole,
as it has presented itself to me. Clearly, as I see it, it is a mental
and moral issue. There seems to me an economic process going on that
tends to concentrate first wealth and then power in the hands of a
small number of adventurous individuals of no very high intellectual
type, a huge importation of alien and unassimilable workers, and a
sustained disorder of local and political administration. Correlated
with this is a great increase in personal luxury and need. In all these
respects there is a strong parallelism between the present condition
of the United States and the Roman Republic in the time of the early
Cæsars; and arguing from these alone one might venture to forecast
the steady development of an exploiting and devastating plutocracy,
leading perhaps to Cæsarism, and a progressive decline in civilization
and social solidarity. But there are forces of recuperation and
construction in America such as the earlier instance did not display.
There is infinitely more original and originating thought in the
state, there are the organized forces of science, a habit of progress,
clearer and wider knowledge among the general mass of the people. These
promise, and must, indeed, inevitably make, some synthetic effort of
greater or less homogeneity and force. It is upon that synthetic effort
that the distinctive destiny of America depends.
I propose to go on now to discuss the mental quality of America as I
have been able to focus it. (Remember always that I am an undiplomatic
tourist of no special knowledge or authority, who came, moreover, to
America with certain prepossessions.) And first, and chiefly, I have
to convey what seems to me the most significant and pregnant thing of
all. It is a matter of something wanting, that the American shares
with the great mass of prosperous middle-class people in England. I
think it is best indicated by saying that the typical American has no
"sense of the state." I do not mean that he is not passionately and
vigorously patriotic. But I mean that he has no perception that his
business activities, his private employments, are constituents in a
large collective process; that they affect other people and the world
forever, and cannot, as he imagines, begin and end with him. He sees
the world in fragments; it is to him a multitudinous collection of
individual "stories"--as the newspapers put it. If one studies an
American newspaper, one discovers it is all individuality, all a matter
of personal doings, of what so and so said and how so and so felt. And
all these individualities are unfused. Not a touch of abstraction or
generalization, no thinnest atmosphere of reflection, mitigates these
harsh, emphatic, isolated happenings. The American, it seems to me,
has yet to achieve what is, after all, the product of education and
thought, the conception of a whole to which all individual acts and
happenings are subordinate and contributory.
When I say this much, I do not mean to insinuate that any other nation
in the world has any superiority in this matter. But I do want to urge
that the American problem is pre-eminently one that must be met by
broad ways of thinking, by creative, synthetic, and merging ideas, and
that a great number of Americans seem to lack these altogether.
II
A Sample American
Let me by way of illustration give a specimen American mind. It is not
the mind of a writer or philosopher, it is just a plain successful
business-man who exposes himself, and makes it clear that this want of
any sense of the state of any large duty of constructive loyalty, is
not an idiosyncrasy, but the quality of all his circle, his friends,
his religious teacher....
I found my specimen in a book called _With John Bull and Jonathan_.
It contains the rather rambling reminiscences of Mr. J. Morgan
Richards, the wealthy and successful London agent of a great number of
well-advertised American proprietary articles, and I read it first, I
will confess, chiefly in search of such delightful phrases as the one
"mammoth in character" I have already quoted. But there were few to
equal that first moment's bright discovery. What I got from it finally
wasn't so much that sort of thing as this realization of Mr. Richards's
peculiar quality, this acute sense of all that he hadn't got. Mr.
Richards told of advertising enterprises, of contracts and journeyings,
of his great friendship with the late Dr. Parker, of his domestic
affairs, and all the changes in the world that had struck him, and of a
remarkable dining club, called (paradoxically) the _Sphinx_, in which
the giants (or are they the mammoths?) of the world of advertisement
foregather. He gave his portrait, and the end-paper presented him
playfully as the jolly president of the Sphinx Club, champagne-bottle
crowned, but else an Egyptian monarch; and on the cover are two gilt
hands clasped across a gilt ripple of sea ("hands across the sea"),
under intertwining English and American flags. From the book one got
an effect, garrulous perhaps, but on the whole not unpleasing, of an
elderly but still active business personality quite satisfied by his
achievements, and representative of I know not what proportion, but at
any rate a considerable proportion, of his fellow-countrymen. And one
got an effect of a being not simply indifferent to the health and vigor
and growth of the community of which he was a part, but unaware of its
existence.
He displays this irresponsibility of the commercial mind so
illuminatingly because he does in a way attempt to tell something
more than his personal story. He notes the changes in the world about
him, how this has improved and that progressed, which contrasts
between England and America struck upon his mind. That he himself
is responsible amid these changes never seems to dawn upon him.
His freedom from any sense of duty to the world as a whole, of any
subordination of trading to great ideas, is naïve and fundamental.
He tells of how he arranged with the authorities in charge of the
Independence Day celebrations on Boston Common to display "three large
pieces" containing the name of a certain "bitters," which they did, and
how this no doubt very desirable commodity was first largely advertised
throughout the United States in the fall of 1861, and rapidly became
the success of the day, because of the enormous amount of placarding
given to the cabalistic characters 'S-T-1860-X.' Those strange letters
and figures stared upon people from wall and fence and tree, in every
leading town throughout the United States. They were painted on the
rocks of the Hudson River to such an extent that the attention of the
Legislature was drawn to the fact, and a law was passed to prevent the
further disfigurement of river scenery.
He calls this "cute." He tells, too, of his educational work upon
the English press, how he won it over to "display" advertisements,
and devised "the first sixteen-sheet double-demy poster ever seen
in England in connection with a proprietary article." He introduced
the smoking of cigarettes into England against great opposition.
Mr. Richards finds no incongruity, but apparently a very delightful
association, in the fact that this great victory for the adolescent's
cigarette was won on the site of Strudwick's house, wherein John Bunyan
died, and hard by the path of the Smithfield martyrs to their fiery
sacrifice. Both they and Mr. Richards "lit such a candle in England--"
Well, my business is not to tell of the feats by which Mr. Richards
grew wealthy and important as a tree may grow and flourish amid the
masonry it helps to disintegrate. My business is purely with his
insensibility to the state as an aspect of his personal life. It is
insensibility--not disregard or hostility. One gets an impression from
this book that if Mr. Richards had lived in a different culture, he
would have been a generous giver of himself. In spite of his curious
incapacity to appreciate any issues larger than large enterprises in
selling, he is very evidently a religious man. He sat under the late
Dr. Parker of the rich and prosperous City Temple, and that reverend
gentleman's leonine visage adorns the book. Its really the light one
gets on Dr. Parker and his teaching that appeals to me most in this
volume. For this gentleman Mr. Richards seems to have entertained a
feeling approaching reverence. He notes such details as:
"At the conclusion of an invocation or prayer, his habit always was to
make a pause of a few seconds before pronouncing 'Amen.' This was most
impressive....
"He spoke such words as 'God,' 'Jesus Christ,' 'No,' 'Yes,' 'Nothing,'
in a way to give more value to each word than any speaker I have ever
heard."
They became great friends, rarely a week passed without their meeting,
and, says Mr. Richards, he "was pleased, in the course of time,
to honor me with his confidence in a marked degree, as though he
recognized in me some quality which satisfied his judgment, that I
could be trusted in business questions quite apart from those relating
to his church. He was not only a born preacher, but possessed a
marvellous grasp of sound, practical knowledge upon the affairs of
the day. I often consulted with him regarding my own affairs, always
getting the most practical help."
When Dr. Parker came to America, the two friends corresponded warmly,
and several of the letters are quoted. Even "£5000 a year easily made"
could not tempt him from London and the modest opulence of the City
Temple....
But my business now is not to dwell on these characteristic details,
but to point out that Mr. Richards does not stand alone in the entire
detachment, not only of his worldly achievements, but of his spiritual
life, from any creative solicitude for the state. If he was merely an
isolated "character" I should have no concern with him. His association
with Dr. Parker shows most luminously that he presents a whole cult
of English and American rich traders, who in America "sat under" such
men as the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, for example, who evidently stand
for much more in America than in England, and who, so far as the
state and political and social work go, are scarcely of more use, are
probably more hindrance, than any organization of selfish voluptuaries
of equal wealth and numbers. It is a cult, it has its teachers and its
books. I have had a glimpse of one of its manuals. I find Mr. Richards
quoting with approval Dr. Parker's "Ten General Commandments for Men of
Business," commandments which strike me as not only State-blind, but
utterly God-blind, which are, indeed, no more than shrewd counsels for
"getting on." It is really quite horrible stuff morally. "Thou shalt
not hobnob with idle persons," parodies Dr. Parker in commandment V.,
so glossing richly upon the teachings of Him who ate with publicans
and sinners, and (no doubt to instil the advisability of keeping one's
more delicate business procedure in one's own hands), "Thou shalt not
forget that a servant who can tell lies _for_ thee, may one day tell
lies _to_ thee."...
I am not throwing any doubt upon the sincerity of Dr. Parker and Mr.
Richards. I believe that nothing could exceed the transparent honesty
that ends this record which tells of a certain bitters pushed at
the sacrifice of beautiful scenery, of a successful propaganda of
cigarette-smoking, and of all sorts of proprietary articles landed
well home in their gastric target of a whole life lost, indeed, in
commercial self-seeking, with "What shall I render unto the Lord for
all his benefits?"
"The Now is an atom of Sand,
And the Near is a perishing Clod,
But Afar is a fairyland,
And Beyond is the Bosom of God."
What I have to insist upon now is that this is a sample, and, so
far as I can tell, a fair sample, of the quality and trend of the
mind-stuff and the breadth and height of the tradition of a large and
I know not how influential mass of prosperous middle-class English,
and of a much more prosperous and influential and important section of
Americans. They represent much energy, they represent much property,
they are a factor to reckon with. They present a powerful opposing
force to anything that will suppress their disgusting notice-boards
or analyze their ambiguous "proprietary articles," or tax their
gettings for any decent public purpose. And here I find them selling
poisons as pain-killers, and alcohol as tonics, and fighting ably and
boldly to silence adverse discussion. In the face of the great needs
that lie before America their active trivality of soul, their energy
and often unscrupulous activity, and their quantitative importance
become, to my mind, adverse and threatening, a stumbling-block for
hope. For the impression I have got by going to and fro in America
is that Mr. Richards is a fair sample of at least the older type of
American. So far as I can learn, Mr. J.D. Rockefeller is just another
product of the same cult. You meet these older types everywhere,
they range from fervent piety and temperance to a hearty drinking,
"story"-telling, poker-playing type, but they have in common a sharp,
shrewd, narrow, business habit of mind that ignores the future and
the state altogether. But I do not find the younger men are following
in their lines. Some are. But just how many and to what extent, I do
not know. It is very hard for a literary man to estimate the quantity
and importance of ideas in a community. The people he meets naturally
all entertain ideas, or they would not come in his way. The people
who have new ideas talk; those who have not, go about their business.
But I hazard an opinion that Young America now presents an altogether
different type from the young men of enterprise and sound Baptist
and business principles who were the backbone of the irresponsible
commercial America of yesterday, the America that rebuilt Chicago on
"floating foundations," covered the world with advertisement boards,
gave the great cities the elevated railroads, and organized the trusts.
III
Oneida
I spent a curious day amid the memories of that strangely interesting
social experiment, the Oneida Community, and met a most significant
contemporary, "live American" of the newer school, in the son of the
founder and the present head of "Oneida Limited."
There are moments when that visit I paid to Oneida seems to me to
stand for all America. The place, you know, was once the seat of a
perfectionist community; the large red community buildings stand now
among green lawns and ripening trees, and I dined in the communal
dining-room, and visited the library, and saw the chain and trap
factory, and the silk-spinning factory and something of all its
industries. I talked to old and middle-aged people who told me all
sorts of interesting things of "community days," looked through curious
old-fashioned albums of photographs, showing the women in their
bloomers and cropped hair, and the men in the ill-fitting frock-coats
of the respectable mediocre person in early Victorian times. I think
that some of the reminiscences I awakened had been voiceless for some
time. At moments it was like hearing the story of a flattened, dry,
and colorless flower between the pages of a book, of a verse written
in faded ink, or of some daguerreotype spotted and faint beyond
recognition. It was extraordinarily New England in its quality as I
looked back at it all. They claimed a quiet perfection of soul, they
searched one another marvellously for spiritual chastening, they defied
custom and opinion, they followed their reasoning and their theology
to the inmost amazing abnegations--and they kept themselves solvent by
the manufacture of steel traps that catch the legs of beasts in their
strong and pitiless jaws....
But this book is not about the things that concerned Oneida in
community days, and I mention them here only because of the curious
developments of the present time. Years ago, when the founder, John
Humphrey Noyes, grew old and unable to control the new dissensions
that arose out of the sceptical attitude of the younger generation
towards his ingenious theology, and such-like stresses, communism was
abandoned, the religious life and services discontinued, the concern
turned into a joint-stock company, and the members made shareholders on
strictly commercial lines. For some years its prosperity declined. Many
of the members went away. But a nucleus remained as residents in the
old buildings, and after a time there were returns. I was told that in
the early days of the new period there was a violent reaction against
communistic methods, a jealous inexperienced insistence upon property.
"It was difficult to borrow a hammer," said one of my informants.
Then, as the new generation began to feel its feet, came a fresh
development of vitality. The Oneida company began to set up new
machinery, to seek wider markets, to advertise and fight competitors.
This Mr. P.B. Noyes was the leader into the new paths. He possesses all
the force of character, the constructive passion, the imaginative power
of his progenitor, and it has all gone into business competition. I
have heard much talk of the romance of business, chiefly from people I
heartily despised, but in Mr. Noyes I found business indeed romantic.
It had get hold of him, it possessed him like a passion. He has
inspired all his half-brothers and cousins and younger fellow-members
of the community with his own imaginative motive. They, too, are
enthusiasts for business.
Mr. Noyes is a tall man, who looks down when he talks to one. He showed
me over the associated factories, told me how the trap trade of all
North America is in Oneida's hands, told me of how they fight and win
against the British traps in South America and Burmah. He showed me
photographs of panthers in traps, tigers in traps, bears snarling at
death, unfortunate deer, foxes caught by the paws....
I did my best to forget those photographs at once in the interest of
his admirable machinery, which busied itself with chain-making as
though it had eyes and hands. I went beside him, full of that respect
that a literary man must needs feel when a creative business controller
displays his quality.
"But the old religion of Oneida?" I would interpolate.
"Each one of us is free to follow his own religion. Here is a new sort
of chain we are making for hanging-lamps. Hitherto--"
Presently I would try again. "Are the workers here in any way members
of the community?"
"Oh no! Many of them are Italian immigrants. We think of building a
school for them.... No, we get no labor troubles. We pay always above
the trade-union rates, and so we get the pick of the workmen. Our class
of work can't be sweated."...
Yes, he was an astonishing personality, so immensely concentrated on
these efficient manufacturing and trading developments, so evidently
careless of theology, philosophy, social speculation, beauty.
"Your father was a philosopher," I said.
"I think in ten years' time I may give up the control here," he threw
out, "and write something."
"I've thought of the publishing trade myself," I said, "when my wits
are old and stiff."...
I never met a man before so firmly gripped by the romantic constructive
and adventurous element of business, so little concerned about
personal riches or the accumulation of wealth. He illuminated much
that had been dark to me in the American character. I think better
of business by reason of him. And time after time I tried him upon
politics. It came to nothing. Making a new world was, he thought,
a rhetorical flourish about futile and troublesome activities, and
politicians merely a disreputable sort of parasite upon honorable
people who made chains and plated spoons. All his constructive
instincts, all his devotion, were for Oneida and its enterprises.
America was just the impartial space, the large liberty, in which
Oneida grew, the Stars and Stripes a wide sanction akin to the
impartial irresponsible harboring sky overhead. Sense of the State had
never grown in him--can now, I felt convinced, never grow....
But some day, I like to imagine, the World State, and not Oneida
corporations, and a nobler trade than traps, will command such services
as his.