THE BOURGEOIS AMERICAN
In the preceding chapters there has been much said of conservatism and
radicalism, of idealism and the religious instinct, of literature that
expresses the soul of a race. Nevertheless, when we look about in this
our America, it is painfully clear that not these absolutes but man who
makes and possesses them must chiefly concern us. It is the American
who will make or break his religion, his literature, his politics. He
is the entity. He is our destiny.
And therefore one comes back after a survey of American traits, their
strengths, and their weaknesses, to the man himself. Can we name him in
this hive of millions? Can we find an everyday American that will be
accepted here as typical, and be recognized abroad? If there is such
a type, it will be among the middle class, the bourgeois Americans,
that we shall discover it. The landholding aristocracy has passed. The
moneyed aristocracy is in the best (and sometimes in the worst) sense
bourgeois. Cosmopolitans are few. The intellectual aristocracy is but
half emerged, like a statue of Rodin’s, from the common clay.
What we find now is the middle class incarnate. What we may expect
soon is the finished product of bourgeois life in America. For it is
clear that this life is now in full career. We exult in it, and its
characteristic virtues. We deprecate aristocracy. We heap scorn upon
the proletariat and persecute its prophets. Better evidence still, no
sooner does a new group rise to security in our social system than
it becomes visibly bourgeois, and, what is more important, mentally
bourgeois. This has been true of the railway employees, the carpenters,
the plumbers, the tenant farmers, and many others. It has been also
true of the “aristocracy” in the old sense of the word, whether native
or European. They have come into the fold, sometimes reluctantly,
sometimes at a run with poverty barking behind them. All these groups
have been captured by the dominant class. And if the nature of our
industrial system still keeps them in alignment against the capitalist
(who is the soul of bourgeoisie) or dependent upon him, nevertheless
they think as he does on all questions not involving work and wages,
and especially in religion, politics, and morality. They act as he
does; and the labor groups are coming to fight as he does, and for the
same ends.
All major influences in our American life seem to be directed toward
this consummation, which is triumphant, or dismal, according to your
point of view. The racial factor may seem to be an exception, but is
not. It is true that as the old American assimilates more and more
non-Teutonic and non-Latin races to his way of living, his psychology
alters, and his habits are likely to follow. It is also true that the
immigrant belongs prevailingly to the peasantry or the proletariat. But
the immigrant has substantially no influence upon the dominant class
until he is Americanized. And he is not Americanized in any true sense
until he leaves his quarter and begins to read the papers, go to the
theatres, eat the food, talk the talk, and think the thoughts of the
American; in a word, until he becomes bourgeois. And in the majority of
cases this takes at least one generation.
Economic conditions, on the other hand, favor this triumph of the
bourgeoisie. We seem to be entering upon a period when a vastly greater
number of men and women will have reasonable security of moderate
income. But security of a moderate income, which means a guaranteed
mediocrity, is the mainstay, is almost the cause, of the bourgeois
spirit, just as privilege was the support of the aristocracy. And if
in the next generation ten times as many families can count on a cost
plus basis of living, this will but increase the middle class. It will
make, to be sure, more education, more refinement, and perhaps more
cerebration possible; but such a circumstance will not radically affect
the character of the typical American.
Culturally, we already see the results of the many influences which
are making the United States bourgeois in warp and woof. Our traits
are not the fine exclusiveness, the discrimination, the selfishness of
an aristocracy. Nor are they the social solidarity, the intellectual
democracy, the intolerance of a proletariat. One finds rather
individualism in opinion and unity in thought. One finds conservatism
in institutions and radicalism in personal ambitions. One finds a
solid, though dull morality, a distrust of ideas, a plentiful lack of
taste, an abundance of the homely virtues of industry, truth telling,
optimism, idealism, and charity, which, in an age that suits such
talents, make a man healthy, wealthy, and, in his own generation,
wise. Such a cultural level, and such a national character are becoming
more and more familiar in America.
There must be some peak ahead; some top of the curve when the bourgeois
spirit, even in the United States, will have reached the climax of
its power, and the height of its vigor, and will begin to lose its
sharpness of outline, and to give way to the spirit of the next age, be
that what it may.
This peak is perhaps nearer than we suppose. What will happen
afterwards lies in darkness, but must depend in some measure upon the
temper of the bourgeoisie; and as America bids fair to be the capital
of Bourgeoisia, upon the temper of America. The question may be posed
this way. Are we, who are no longer the middle class, since there is no
power other than spiritual or intellectual above us, are we proposing
to imperialize, or to federalize the world which we dominate?
Is the bourgeois conception of security for all, and superiority
(other than economic) for none, to be forced upon the years ahead? Is
our democracy, as Brooks Adams thinks, a democracy of degradation, a
level to which all must be either lifted, or lowered? Will we hold
back, as long as our power lasts, the proletariat, feeding them,
clothing them, converting them, but suppressing them, so that we may
be secure? Will we tyrannize the exceptional in art, in literature, in
statesmanship, in pure thinking, freezing it by distrust, or exploiting
it for sensation and reducing its fruits to vulgarity? Will we resolve
religion into a social emotion and poetry to rhythmic prose? Must the
poor fragments of the privileged classes that still remain, and the
little shopkeepers, and the teachers with their hankerings after an
intellectual aristocracy, and the skilled workman with the feverish
zeal of a new convert to security still upon him--must they all unite
with the industrial magnate in a holy alliance of things as they are
to crush into uniformity a humanity where only rebels against our
authority and the uncivilized remain?
This would be the imperialism of the bourgeoisie. And neither our
churches, which are rigidly bourgeois, nor our universities, which are
ponderously bourgeois, and both trading in security, offer leadership
that guarantees escape.
Or will we attempt to federalize this world that apparently we have
conquered, allowing autonomy for races of ideas, nations of customs,
and room enough for plantations of new desires in our fat fields?
Will we tolerate fineness, encourage variety, permit heresy, prepare
for change? It is said by way of compliment that here in America we
have neither aristocrats nor peasants. Will we preserve, or destroy,
the peasant virtues, the ideas of the aristocrat, the desires of the
intellectual. Will we make possible a nation where to be average is not
the highest good?
I have no answer, naturally. There is no reply that can now be
formulated. But the solution is already present in the problem itself.
It is to be found in men and women, in boys and girls especially, who
will belong to the new order and who will answer in their time. If you
wish to speculate upon what will become of the post-bellum American,
whose traits as they exist to-day have been the subject of this book,
study, on the one hand, the younger leaders in the labor parties, and
on the other, the college undergraduates. In them lies the future.
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Transcriber’s note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.
The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and
is entered into the public domain.