The historic props of class rule, according to Professor Edward
A. Ross, in his recent volume, “Social Control,” have been force,
superstition, fraud, pomp, and prescription. Our present seigniorial
class makes use, with fine discrimination as time and occasion require,
of each of these means of support, though unquestionably it sets the
greatest value upon the last named. Force is employed less openly,
less obviously; decreasingly by the direct imposition of the magnates,
increasingly through their ingenious manipulation of the powers of the
State. The superstition latent in most minds proves now, as ever, a
means of ready recourse; but though supernatural sanction to the acts
and authority of the magnates is cunningly deduced and volubly preached
from a thousand pulpits, the prop fails somewhat as a constant and sure
reliance. Even testimony so authoritative as that of President Baer
to the effect that the Great First Cause had intrusted to himself and
his co-magnates the control of the business interests of the country,
has been flouted in a number of places. The notion of supernatural
sanctions, as most people know, and as Professor Goldwin Smith has
repeatedly taken pains to point out, is losing its hold upon the
reason of mankind; and though it still has, and will ever have, a
certain potency, its best days are passed.
As for fraud, both of class against class, and individual against
individual, attempts to practise it no doubt increase; but the
tooth-and-claw struggle of the last generation has developed and
sharpened the wits of the combatants, so that it tends to become a
less profitable game. He would be a sharper indeed, according to the
proverb, who among the Turks of the Negropont, the Jews of Salonika, or
the Greeks of Athens could cheat his fellow: each knows by heart all
the tricks and devices of which the others are capable. Matters are not
yet at such a stage in free America: great frauds, both of the group
and of the individual, are still practised. But the almost infinite
possibilities of other days have been sadly restricted by the operation
of those natural laws which tend to fit beings to their environment.
Pomp, too, is less a factor of control than in past times. It has a
powerful grip on the imaginations of the poor, as the columns of our
“yellow” journals, which devote so large a space to the ceremonies of
the great, amply attest; but though it charms the more, it deceives the
less. It interests, it delights; but it does not overawe or subdue.
I
It is by prescription--by a constant appeal to the sanctity of custom,
a constant preaching of the validity of vested rights, and of the
beauty, order, inevitability, and righteousness of things as they
are--that the magnate class wins to its support the suffrages of the
people. Other influences aid, but this one is dominant. As Professor
Ross pertinently writes:--
“Those who have the sunny rooms in the social edifice have ... a
powerful ally in the suggestion of Things-as-they-are. With the aid of
a little narcotizing teaching and preaching, the denizens of the cellar
may be brought to find their lot proper and right, to look upon escape
as an outrage upon the rights of other classes, and to spurn with moral
indignation the agitator who would stir them to protest. Great is the
magic of precedent, and like the rebellious Helots, who cowered at
the sight of their masters’ whips, those who are used to dragging the
social chariot will meekly open their calloused mouths whenever the bit
is offered them.”
The magnates, as has been shown, brook small interference with
prevailing customs. Their near dependents, retainers, and “poor
relations” think as they think, and feel as they feel; and the great
majority of the professional moulders of opinion, drawing their
inspiration from above, preach and teach as the magnates would have
them. The general social passivity following the pressure of all these
influences upon the public mind is as certain and inescapable as a
mathematical conclusion.
II
A powerful auxiliary to the preaching of the sanctity of custom
is the extolling of individual “success.” At the very time when
socio-industrial processes are settling to a fixed routine and
socio-industrial forms to a fixed status,--when day by day there is
found less room at the top and more room at the bottom,--the chorus of
exhortation to the men of the land to bestir themselves reaches its
highest pitch. Meddle not with custom and the law, is the injunction;
leave those to abler and wiser heads--meaning, of course, the present
formulators and manipulators thereof. Meddle not with things as they
are, but while your companions sleep, “toil upward in the night,”
and carve out a career for yourself among the stars. Put no faith in
general social changes, except such as result from the combined effect
of each unit concerning himself solely with his own material salvation.
There is no social betterment without precedent individual betterment,
it is urged. “You cannot make a bad man good by legislation,” is the
admonitory adage, and “You cannot make a poor man rich by legislation”
is its twin. If certain persons hold to the theory that corrective laws
have a definite reaction upon character, and that in every civilization
worthy the name there are social institutions, founded in law, which
are immeasurably in advance of the general average of sanity, sobriety,
and honesty of the citizenship, such persons are but dreamers, and are
not to be taken too seriously. So, too, with the dictum regarding the
statutory enhancement of riches. There are those who insinuate that
it is heard most often from the lips of the industrial magnates, the
majority of whom are living examples of the fact that riches may be
garnered by means of tariffs and other privilege-giving laws; and from
the _laissez-faire_ tariff reformers, whose reiterated argument against
protective duties is that they are law-given privileges by which the
few gain wealth at the expense of the many. But persons who question
this profound adage are unsophisticated. They fail to discriminate
properly. The adage is one which, like a simile or metaphor, should not
be stretched too far. It has its true and legitimate bearing only when
it is applied to the very poor.
Personal endeavor toward the goal of “success” is the urgent
exhortation. Scarcely one of the magnates who have recently entered
literature, or who, avoiding that province, have on occasion unbosomed
themselves to the interviewer, but takes pains to declare how numerous
and how mighty are the possibilities in the path of the energetic.
All that is needed, according to most of the seigniorial recipes,
are brains and health; honesty, it is true, is often included as an
ingredient in the compound, but its mention is possibly ironical, and
need not concern us. Brains and health are thus the two things needful;
and though pursuing Satan may gather in, with his drag-net, a vast
army of the hindmost, the fortunate possessors of these two boons will
inevitably forge to the front in the headlong race.
It is by no accident that this particular counsel from the magnates
is heard now more frequently than any other. It is one that of course
has been given in all times; but it has never been given with such
frequency and unction as now. Consciously or subconsciously, it is
an expression of class feeling--a revelation of the community of
interests and purposes of a particular division of our society. In
whatever cases its utterance is prompted by a general social motive,
that motive is the defence of class control. It is counsel that makes
for the acquiescence of the lower orders and the increased security of
the upper. “The heaving and straining of the wretches pent up in the
hold of the slaver is less,” writes Professor Ross again, “if now and
then a few of the most redoubtable are let up on deck. Likewise the
admitting of a few brave, talented, or successful commoners into the
charmed circle above has a wonderful effect in calming the rage and
envy of the exploited, and thereby prolonging the life of the parasitic
system.” This counsel of endeavor, promulgated by the few who have
striven and “succeeded,” is thus a social sedative of great efficacy.
The professional moulders of opinion take their cue from these
exhortations of the magnates, improve, elaborate, and redistribute
them. The professors, the editors, and the orators lead, and the
hortatory pronouncements of the pulpit follow closely. The Carpenter of
Nazareth, it is true, held other views of “success”; but his precepts
would seem to have gone out of fashion in the fanes and tabernacles
ostensibly devoted to his worship. With all ranks and conditions
Success becomes the great god; and as though there were not already
priests and votaries enough for his proper worship, a special class
of publications has recently arisen, which serve as his vowed and
consecrated ministers. These teach to the devout but unsophisticated
followers of the great god the particular means best adapted to win
his grace; how his frown may be averted; or, if his anger be kindled,
by what penances and other rites he is to be propitiated. They chant
the praises and recite the life-incidents of those who have been most
conspicuously blessed, and to all the rest of mankind they shout,
“Follow our counsel, and some day you shall be even like unto these.”
It is a glittering lure, and it is eagerly pursued. Sometimes, indeed,
not without doubts and misgivings; for a recognition that “all the
gates are thronged with suitors,” that “all the markets overflow,”
and that the settling and hardening of socio-industrial processes has
already begun, becomes more general, and leads many to essay the trial
of fortune’s pathway only as a desperate and forlorn adventure. But
these are the exceptions; the majority are still to be caught by limed
twigs. The gods denied mankind many gifts, and attached hard conditions
to most of those which they granted. But for all their withholding of
certain gifts and their tainting of others, they sought to compensate
by giving an extra allowance of credulity.
III
Not only by the showering of precepts, by the encouragement of
individual effort, and by the dangling of more or less illusory prizes
before the wistful multitude does the ruling class maintain its hold.
It invites, to some extent, a participation in the harvest. The growth
of the shareholding class, of which mention has already been made, is
by no means wholly fortuitous. New companies of small initial capital,
and with somewhat dubious chances in the great struggle, may be glad
enough to market their shares wheresoever they can; but something of
seigniorial grace and condescension, though not entirely unmixed with
calculating foresight, is apparent in the opening of opportunities
for small investment in the larger and more stable corporations.
Mr. John B. C. Kershaw, in the _Fortnightly Review_ for May, 1900,
gives an interesting account of this fostering of share-investment in
England. The industrial magnates, he says, saw that the best policy for
preventing the growth of a public sentiment favoring the encroachments
of labor would be to increase the number of _bourgeoisie_ interested in
industrial affairs. Accordingly they encouraged popular share-buying,
with the result that “a large and increasing proportion of the general
public is now financially involved in all industrial struggles, and our
manufacturers feel assured that the danger lest the workers should be
backed by a solid and enthusiastic public opinion in their demands for
shorter hours or increased pay no longer exists.”
As in England, so also here. The movement toward corporate ownership
is probably more pronounced in the United States than in the older
country, and it has been equally encouraged from above. Joint-stock
concerns increased in England from 9344 in 1885 to 25,267 in 1898. In
Massachusetts, the State in which the preparation of statistics most
nearly approaches the methods of science, corporations are reported
to have increased during the years 1885-95 by more than 77 per cent.
As for shareholders, the nine principal manufacturing industries of
Massachusetts for the same period show percentages of increase ranging
from 13.87 in tapestry to 637.74 in leather, saddles, and harness. The
entire country has shown a marked growth in the number of this class,
and it would seem that no one is too poor to hold a share in some
corporation. Indeed, to read the arguments of the legal retainers of
the magnates in the Income Tax case, and in the various trust cases
that from time to time arise, one would think that the main body of
the shareholders of the nation was composed of workingmen, widows, and
orphans. In no time since the prophet Ezekiel’s day have there been
uttered words of such tender consideration for the poor and needy,
the widow and the orphan, and of such bitter denunciation for their
would-be despoilers as were tearfully put forth in opposing the income
tax.
A great number of shareholders in a particular company would seem,
on first thought, to be something of a nuisance. Unquestionably they
would represent a wide range of conflicting views and antagonistic
purposes, all bearing upon the one problem of the proper operation
of the company’s property; and would thus give salient instances of
that unwisdom which is too often found in a multitude of counsellors.
At least this is the seigniorial argument against national
collectivism--an argument which one might naturally suppose to be quite
as applicable to the particular collectivism of the stock company. But
it does not so apply; the solid advantages of diffused shareholding in
assuring general public sanction to the acts of the magnates outweigh
the confusion and danger which are alleged to lie in public ownership.
The social and political effect of this general participation in the
ownership of industries may be readily observed by all but the blind.
“If the truth were known,” wrote that keen-witted financier, Mr.
Russell Sage, in a magazine article published last May, “concentration
of wealth is popular with the masses.” Partners in the great
enterprises, the multitude of petty shareholders are led more and more
to consider economic questions from the employers’ standpoint. In the
controversies between labor and capital ten years ago the average
citizen was but an onlooker, sometimes a weak partisan of capital, but
very often a neutral, with a strong latent sympathy for the “under
dog.” To-day, thanks to his holding of a single share in the steel
corporation or of two or three shares in some street railway company,
he is an employer, one of the men “to whom God, in His infinite wisdom,
has given the control of the property interests of the country.” He
sees, thinks, and feels as a member, however humble, of the employing
class; and what the magnates think and do is to him all the law and
the prophets. “Bound by gold chains about the feet” of his feudatory
lords, he is at the same time a sharer in their responsibilities and a
faithful retainer in their service.
IV
It would be idle to declare that all the tendencies make toward
acquiescence. Just as in the atmosphere a prevailing drift of the
wind is accompanied by cross currents, flurries, and rotatory motions,
so the dominant tendency discoverable in social industry is qualified
by many complex processes. Of the cross currents here to be briefly
noted, some are but trifling, while others undoubtedly reveal a
certain force and constancy. A small part of the public is ever in a
state of ferment over imputed social evils, and at rare times this
ferment becomes general. Recurring labor troubles indicate that the
spirit of resistance, if it really be dying, dies hard. Strikes of the
magnitude of those at Homestead and in the Tennessee mines in 1892,
at Chicago and other railroad centres in 1894, the several anthracite
coal strikes of 1897, 1900, and 1902, and the steel strike of 1901
prove that organized labor has not wholly succumbed to the encompassing
forces about it. The remarkable growth in numbers, these last two
years, of the unions composing the American Federation of Labor, is
confirmatory testimony. Radical political movements, furthermore, have
not been wanting. The Socialists have increased their voting strength
in the nation from some 2000 ballots in 1888 to upward of 130,000 in
1900. The Farmers’ Alliance made tremendous headway in the election
of 1890, and its political successor, the People’s party, secured
by fusion more than 1,000,000 votes in 1892 and nearly 2,000,000 in
1894. “Labor” mayors and even Socialist mayors have been elected
in several cities, and the polling of 106,721 votes for Samuel M.
Jones for Governor of Ohio in 1899 was a truly remarkable showing
of the residual independence of the citizenship. There are also
general social movements to chronicle. Reform societies and clubs are
occasionally heard of; arbitration movements have met with some favor;
there has been a considerable growth in the number of university and
college settlements; and anti-trust conferences and things of that
sort have frequently met, talked, and dispersed. Indeed, all of us
at times grumble and find fault with general conditions. Even Mr.
Russell Sage, in the face of his exultant panegyric on the beneficence
of combination, has very recently given to the press a statement
denouncing the further consolidation of industry, and predicting, in
case his words are not heeded, “widespread revolt of the people and
subsequent financial ruin unequalled in the history of the world.”
Though only a few of us are irreconcilable at all times, all of us
are disaffected sometimes--especially when our particular interests
are pinched. We talk threateningly of instituting referendums to
curb excessive power, of levying income taxes, or of compelling the
Government to acquire the railroads and the telegraphs. We subscribe
to newspapers and other publications which criticise the acts of the
great corporations, and we hail as a new Gracchus the ardent reformer
who occasionally comes forth for a season to do battle for the popular
cause.
V
It must be confessed, however, that this revolt is, for the most part,
sentimental; it is a mental attitude only occasionally transmutable
into terms of action. It is, moreover, sporadic and flickering; it
dies out, after a time, and we revert to our usual moods, concerning
ourselves with our particular interests, and letting the rest of
the world wag as it will. The specific social reaction of the last
few years has been especially marked. It has shown itself in the
weakening or disruption of radical political movements, in the more
hesitant attitude of the trade-unionists, in the decline of factory
legislation,--in fact, of all legislation tending to the protection
of the weaker and the regulation of the stronger,--and in a general
feeling of the futility of social effort. The Anti-imperialists will
have it that this admitted reaction is due to the South African and
Philippine wars, to a lust of empire and a contempt for the rights
of weaker peoples. It is a pretty theory, but unfortunately it has
small basis in chronology. For the reaction had already become
apparent before either war was waged. The date of its beginning may
be variously guessed at; but it is probable that the time assigned
to it in Chapter V--somewhere within the two years 1896-97--is not
far wrong. Before that time a very large part of the public could
occasionally be interested in social measures and movements, and in
social literature. Thousands of even the most hardened philistines read
Mr. George’s “Progress and Poverty,” Mr. Bellamy’s “Looking Backward,”
and Mr. Kidd’s “Social Evolution.” And as for that minor section of
the public, the social reformers, there was then to be found among
them a radicalism of belief, a definiteness of aim, an ardency and
determination of spirit that are sadly wanting now. Doubtless to every
one of these, as he ruefully compares the two periods, there recurs the
sentiment of the Wordsworthian recollection,--
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.”
While in the bosom of every devotee of Things-as-they-are there rises
the sentiment of thankfulness that the mass of the people have learned
the wisdom of letting well enough alone.
Political radicalism reached its culminating point in the election
of 1896. Despite certain foolish and mischievous notions embodied in
the two radical platforms of that year, the combined movement was
yet a consistent and unified attack upon class rule. The elections
of the next two years revealed a waning of Populist and Democratic
strength, and in 1900 a fine sense of caution prompted the Fusionists
to subordinate the industrial demands of their platforms to the issue
of Imperialism. The Socialists, it is true, usually increase their
vote; but the admitted fact of a great growth of Socialist conviction
throughout the land makes these slight increases at the polls appear
but trivial, and only further confirms the view that such radicalism
is sentimental rather than potential. Anti-trust conferences are not
without an element of humor; at least, they are the cause of much
humor in outsiders; and the widely heralded arbitration court of the
National Civic Federation breaks down on the very occasion when most is
expected of it--that of the anthracite coal strike. Organized labor,
despite its greater numerical strength, is far less aggressive than
of old; and except in isolated instances, it observes a caution which
would have further distinguished Fabius. As for the growth of college
settlements, the fact is only an added proof of reaction. They do a
great good, unquestionably; but their basis is philanthropy and not
social adjustment.
As a people, we have heard enough, for the time, about social
problems, and prefer to interest ourselves in other matters.
Professor Walter A. Wyckoff, who has recently changed the scene of
his optimistic observances from America to England, has an article
in the September _Scribner’s_ on the English social situation. “The
condition-of-the-people problem,” he writes, “lacks vitality for the
moment because, as one shrewd observer remarked, ‘the public has
grown tired of the poor.’” We are feeling the same weariness here.
Our benevolence somewhat increases, and we are willing to give, and
more than willing that the magnates shall give freely; but we want to
be troubled no more with remedial schemes. Rather, we are disposed to
trust to seigniorial wisdom and virtue to set things right. Some of us
will perhaps decline to go so far in our trust as a certain prominent
Massachusetts lady who proposed to abolish working-class suffrage. “I
think,” said this lady in an address to a club of working girls, “many
of the troubles between employer and men might be swept away if the
men could not vote. If he felt that they did not stand on just the
same footing as himself, that they had not quite so many privileges as
he, the employer might have a chivalric feeling toward them.” Some of
us may hesitate at this project, but withal we are willing to trust
largely to seigniorial guidance.
Instead of the personal fidelity that characterized the older
Feudalism, we are rapidly developing a class fidelity. History may
repeat itself, as the adage runs; but not by identical forms and
events. It is not likely that personal fidelity, as once known, can
ever be restored: the long period of dislodgment from the land, the
diffusion of learning, the exercise of the franchise, and the training
in individual effort have left a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between
the past and the present forms. But though personal fidelity, in the
old sense, is improbable, group fidelity, founded upon the conscious
dependence of a class, is already observable, and it grows apace. Out
of the sense of class dependence arises the extreme deference which we
yield, the rapt homage which we pay--not as individuals, but as units
of a class--to the men of wealth. We do not know them personally, and
we have no sense of personal attachment. But in most things we grant
them priority. We send them or their legates to the Senate to make our
laws; we permit them to name our administrators and our judiciary; we
listen with eager attention to their utterances, and we abide by their
judgment. When the venerable Mr. Hewitt, brought forth like the holy
man Onias, in the Judean civil war between Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, to
denounce the opposing faction, utters his anathema against the minions
of Mr. Mitchell, we listen in awe and are convinced. A three-line
interview with the chief of the magnates is read with an eagerness
wholly wanting in our perusal of an official pronunciamento by the
most strenuous of Presidents. Our racial sense of humor, it must be
confessed, saves us from the more slavish forms of deference; we jest
about solemn themes and take in vain the names of great beings. Even
the name of the great magnate is more or less humorously played upon;
and our latest national pastime of “trust-busting” reveals a like
levity, though an innocent one. It shows, moreover, how far we have
reacted from our Puritan forefathers. For it is pursued not on account
of the pain it gives the trusts, but for the harmless pleasure it gives
both participants and spectators. But our subserviency, though less
formal than that of old, is withal more real and fundamental.
VI
Current passivity has, however, a reverse side. To many persons a
recognition of the changing conditions brings demoralization or
despair. All are not won by the lure of “success.” To an increasing
number the dangling prize in the distance is but a mirage, and
oppressed by a sense of the bankruptcy of life they seek an oblivious
relief. There is a drift toward the twin dissipations of drink and
gambling, and there is an increase of suicide. The greater drink
consumption is a matter of common observation, and it is amply attested
by statistics. Mr. J. Holt Schooling’s figures in a recent issue of the
_Fortnightly Review_ show an increased consumption in the United States
of 20 per cent for the years 1896-1900, as against the years 1886-90.
The percentage of increase is slightly less than that of those
industrially exploited nations, Germany and France, but considerably
more than that of Great Britain and Ireland. The annual figures
published in the _World Almanac_ for 1902 give more pertinent lessons.
The unsettled and troublous year, 1893, witnessed an enormous increase
in drink consumption; but the succeeding hard times of 1894 and 1895,
when drink-money was increasingly hard to obtain, induced a greater
sobriety. With 1896 drinking became more general, or at least more
energetic; and except for a slight falling off in 1899, the consumption
of liquors and wines has risen steadily, reaching the enormous total
of 1,349,176,033 gallons in 1900. Much of this gain is confined to
beer, the cheapest of alcoholic beverages; but there has also been a
phenomenal increase in the consumption of spirits. From 71,051,877
gallons consumed in 1896 there has been a steady annual rise to the
total of 97,248,382 gallons in 1900, a gain of 36.8 per cent.
The recent increase of petty gambling is still more noticeable. Playing
for high stakes, a custom common enough in the late years of the
eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth, has long
been given over or transferred to the domain of “business.” But what
is colloquially known as “tin-horn” gambling has advanced, these last
five years, by leaps and bounds. Doubtless the high precedent of our
national Monte Carlos, the stock exchanges, is ample cause for much
of it; but other causes are also in operation. With those persons
that hearken to, but heed not, the seigniorial exhortation to bestir
themselves and conquer “success,” petty gambling is an expression of
unbelief. They know that the prizes advertised in the great industrial
game are not to be won; they see nothing ahead but a dull routine
of poorly remunerated labor, and they turn to gambling partly for
recreation and partly for profit. With those, on the other hand, who
not only hearken but heed, gambling is merely the application of their
ambitious plans to the branch of industry which promises, however
vainly, the most immediate returns.
Faro, keno, and roulette may have suffered some decline in favor. If
so, statutes and the police, instead of a growing aversion to gambling,
must be held responsible. It is one of those conventional puzzles which
none can explain, that it is possible in our cities to restrict table
and wheel gambling, but seemingly impossible to restrict certain other
forms. Poker, for instance, maintains its hold, unawed by statute and
unhampered by authority; while policy and race-betting, the special
refuges of the desperately poor and the desperately fatuous, win new
and lasting converts day by day. Indeed, the growth of race-betting is
one of the striking phenomena of our time. It has become a habit, a
disease; and its confirmed victims are held in as slavish a thraldom
as are the victims of opium and hasheesh. One need not penetrate
to a pool-room or journey to a race-track to discover evidences of
its general diffusion. He may hear of it on every side, and he may
find definitive proof in the daily journals. In nearly all of these
the space given to the reports of races, the lists of betting odds
and accounts of great winnings, is generous; and in some three or
four of the metropolitan dailies the subject rises to the rank of a
specialty. The flaunting advertisements of the “tipsters” in one of
these newspapers rival in extent of space used and opulence of bargains
offered, the announcements of the dry-goods merchants. The glittering
lures dangled before the multitude by the seigniors seem trivial by
comparison. Uncertain, and at best remote, they prove no match for the
near-at-hand prizes to be won in gambling; and as a consequence tens
of thousands pin their hope of “success” in this world to a series of
fortunate winnings.
The meaning of the increase of suicide is clouded by a number of
factors, and it is impossible to ascribe the tendency to one cause
alone. Were we to accept the explanation of the pulpit, we should see
in it the awful consequences of the decline of faith. Pathologists,
however, while not denying this influence, enumerate many others.
Racial and temperamental factors, drink and vice, are all concerned in
the matter, and even climates and seasons are influential. But whatever
the effect of these may be, the intensifying struggle for life these
last few years, and what appears to many minds a darkening outlook for
the future, must be acknowledged as powerful agents in increasing the
rate of self-destruction. The rate is highest in the great industrial
centres, where the struggle is fiercest, where the richest stakes are
won and lost, where luxury is most flaunting and poverty most galling;
and it is least where the struggle is in some measure relaxed. The
recent census shows for the decade an increased rate per 100,000 of
population from 8.8 to 9.9 in the States where registration of deaths
is required, from 11 to 12.7 in registration cities, and from 10.3 to
11.8 for the entire registration record. There are a few anomalies
in the figures which are difficult of explanation; the workaday
cities of Fall River and Allegheny have low rates of suicide, the
residence city of Los Angeles a high rate, while San Francisco reveals
the abnormal rate of 49 per 100,000. With all allowances, however,
the rule holds good: the more distinctly industrial and commercial
cities have remarkably high rates, the less distinctly industrial
and commercial cities remarkably low rates. In the first group are
Chicago, with a rate of 21.8; Milwaukee, 21; St. Louis, 19.1; Boston,
14.4; Cincinnati, 13.5; New York, 13.1; Philadelphia, 12.2; Baltimore,
12; Pittsburg, 9.3. In the second group may be instanced Atlanta,
with a rate of 6.6; Denver, 6; Albany, 3.2; Hartford, 1.3; Richmond,
1.2. These suicides are the unfit, say the complacent philosophers of
the day, and are quite as well off dead as alive; but they prove at
least that some slight qualification is needed to Professor Sumner’s
optimistic generalization that “an air of contentment and enthusiastic
cheerfulness ... characterizes our society.” The winners in the race
are doubtless enthusiastically cheerful, and the great mass that keeps
steadily on, fed by the delusion of ultimate “success,” are at least
cheerful without enthusiasm; but back of these are the losers and the
many who have seen the hollowness of the world’s promise, whose outlook
upon life is one of intensifying despair.
VII
All of our general institutions reflect the changes in public thought,
taste, and feeling consequent upon the changing conditions of the
social régime. But on none of them are these changes writ more clearly
or in larger characters than on the institution of letters. Along with
the morganization of industry steadily proceeds the munseyization of
literature. We are a free people, our politicians tell us, and are
strenuously resolved to remain so. But if we are to be judged by our
popular literature, the verdict can hardly be other than that we have
reached an advanced stage of subserviency, and that the normal mood
of the overwhelming majority is one of complacence with its lot. Our
popular magazines regularly keep before us a justification, actual or
inferential, of things as they are; and though it is couched in less
argumentative phrasing than that of the newspapers, it is, no doubt,
for that very reason, a more plausible and effective expression of
the plea. There are panegyrics on our captains of industry, tales
of their exploits in the great industrial battle, descriptions of
their town-houses and country-seats,--all, in fact, that makes for
the emulation of their wisdom and virtues, and particularly of their
faculty of acquisitiveness,--with a multitude of recipes for the
winning of “success.” Along with this is provided a vaudeville of idle
entertainment: wonder tales, short stories, a gallery of pictures of
stage-folk, who, whatever their merits may be, bear but a problematic
relation to literature; and finally an amorphous compound of sedative
miscellany that not only charms the mind from serious thinking, but in
time paralyzes the very power of thought.
Such of these publications as indulge in the gentle art of reviewing
give further evidence of changing conditions. Reviewing, as now
practised, studies the amenities of life, with a particular regard
for the counting office, “wherein doth sit the dread and fear” of
the publisher who has advertising to distribute. With a few notable
exceptions the reviewing journals make it their business to be “nice.”
They do not damn, not even with faint praise; they commend or extol.
It is not that they praise insincerely a bad book--reviewing is too
highly developed a craft for such crudity. But in a bad book all
that the widest exercise of charity can pronounce even passably good
comes in for praise; and what is weak or poor, or inclusive under
old John Dennis’s favorite term of “clotted nonsense,” is mercifully
omitted from mention. So it is when the advertising publisher is a
factor in the game. But a reviewing journal must uphold a reputation
for impartial judgment, and must thus mingle blame with praise. Its
opportunity comes when some inglorious Milton of Penobscot or Butte
prints his verses at home at his own expense. A copy drifts into the
reviewing office and effects a transformation. The angelic temper upon
which so many and such large drafts are made becomes exhausted, and
the humble poet is treated to the sort of thing which Gifford used to
deal out to the Della Cruscans and the ireful Dennis to the poetasters
of Queen Anne’s time. It was perhaps the last regret of the late J.
Gordon Coogler, of Columbia, S.C., that instead of printing his amiable
verses on his own press, he had not guaranteed the cost of their
production, and secured their publication by a metropolitan firm.
The literary distinction of former days has taken wings. Whether or
not Wordsworth was right in his lament over the state of England in
1803 may be questioned; but a like lament uttered for our own land and
time would be in large part justified. We have the two extremes of
exceedingly plain living and of wildly extravagant living; but high
thinking seems to be the accompaniment of neither. For several years
the only really salable books have been novels, and among these popular
favor has centred almost wholly on the kind called historical--called
so not because the stories bear any relation to history, but because
in them the action is put in a past time. Lately, it is true, there
have been signs of a reaction; but let none imagine that it is due to a
growing taste for stronger meat. Rather it is an evidence that in our
love of novelty we have tired of one trifle and now demand another in
its stead.
For the recent indications of declining favor for the historical novel
are accompanied by no signs of reviving favor for more serious works.
The Huxley Memoirs, it is true, unexpectedly achieved the degree of
favor usually given to a fifth-rate novel; but the work, despite its
science, philosophy, and religious controversy, was yet an entertaining
story, and won its way for that reason. No more in fiction than in
other branches of literature is there promise of better things. Even
the “problem” novel, which, though often crude or hysterical, was yet
an attempt to deal with some of the deeper facts of life, has been
banished, and is not to be permitted to return. “Our publishers,” says
the well-known literary supplement of a New York daily newspaper, “are
seeking on all sides for wholesome stories, dealing optimistically
with life, and reaching happy conclusions.” It is a true judgment, and
reveals most clearly the present standards of public taste.
Our popular magazines most accurately reflect the public mind.
Pictures and stories are the substance of its childish delight. Among
periodicals we have nothing in any way comparable to the _Edinburgh_,
the _Quarterly_, the _Nineteenth Century_, the _Fortnightly_, the
_Contemporary_, the _Athenæum_, the _Spectator_, the _Saturday Review_,
or even the _Academy_. Whatever tendencies of late have seemed to
indicate the future planting of such reviews on these shores, have very
recently been extinguished. Of three publications in which articles of
some thought and some importance were occasionally printed, two have
recently found a monthly issue more frequent than the public taste
required, and have accordingly transformed themselves into quarterlies,
while the third has been forced to make concessions to the general
demand for “lightness and brightness.” For these are the qualities
which pay. “Make it light and bright,” is the order which the literary
contributor hears in the editorial offices when he submits his wares;
and though the terms may be variously interpreted, he understands
what is meant: he must write down to the level of childish minds and
complacent natures. Accordingly, he writes so, to the best of his
ability, and so, to that limit, do all his fellows. The collective
result is seen in the character of the greater number of our books, our
magazines, our Saturday and Sunday supplements. On all sides is poured
forth a flood of print which deludes the hope or flatters the vanity
of the mass, and which insures a state of mental subserviency,--the
necessary requisite of the economic subserviency imposed by the ruling
class.