"The Author's object," said Dickens in the original preface to
_Nicholas Nickleby_, "in calling public attention to the system would
be very imperfectly fulfilled, if he did not state now, in his own
person, emphatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and his school
are faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality, purposely
subdued and kept down, lest they should be deemed impossible." In his
preface to the later editions, he speaks of the race of Yorkshire
schoolmasters in the past tense. "Though it has not yet finally
disappeared," he says, "it is dwindling daily. A long day's work
remains to be done about us in the way of education, Heaven knows; but
great improvements and facilities towards the attainment of a good one
have been furnished, of late years, to those who can afford to pay for
it."
But if, in his pursuit of this object, Dickens had drawn an
exaggerated picture of Dotheboys Hall--even if he had depicted as
representative of a type that which was, in point of fact, merely an
individual and abnormal instance of an evil which in general was far
less extreme--the only objection to such a course would have been the
general objection to any form of untruth; unless, indeed, we were to
add that manifest misrepresentation of this kind is less likely than a
truthful presentation of the case to be effective for its object.
Dickens was driving with all his might and main at a monstrous blot on
English civilization, a hideous inhumanity and cruelty, to which
hundreds of English children were subjected by heartless parents or
guardians, and by brutal, sordid, and ignorant schoolmasters. And if
in his zeal to wipe out that blot and to end that monstrous inhumanity
he had over-stepped the bounds of legitimate portrayal, there are few
who would not say that the offense was altogether pardonable. Yet he
felt it necessary to assure the world that he had not done this; and
in his preface he not only makes the general denial of such
exaggeration quoted above, but points explicitly to the observations
made by himself, and the records of courts of law, which form the
basis of his exposure.
When we say that even if Dickens had grossly exaggerated the character
of the Yorkshire schools there would have been no great harm in it, we
have in mind two points of contrast between the task on which he was
engaged and the spirit of his time, on the one hand, and the general
objective of present-day reform movements and the spirit of our time,
on the other. Upon the desirability of putting an end to Dotheboys
Halls, if they were but one tenth as evil as they are represented to
us in _Nicholas Nickleby_, there can be no difference of opinion among
decent human beings. The question of degree may be of scientific or
historical interest, it can have no practical bearing on the decision
to be reached. An overstatement of the case may intensify our
emotions, it can hardly mislead our judgment. To know that such a
state of things exists is to desire its extinction; such a thing as
the balancing of gain against loss, of immediate benefit against
collateral or ulterior injury, does not enter into the question at
all. Very different is the case with regard to most of the problems
that are enlisting the interest of those who to-day are striving for
the betterment of social conditions. There is hardly one of these
problems which does not have wide ramifications connecting it with the
whole economic and social system. In hardly one of them is it possible
to say: Here is a flagrant wrong whose existence no rightminded person
can tolerate, whose immediate removal is a clear duty, about whose
extinction we need not hesitate for a moment on the score of any evil
which may accompany the good. And this complexity of the problems
places the question of exaggeration, or misrepresentation, or false
perspective, upon an essentially different footing. As soon as the
question of cost--the question of what sacrifices, or what dangers, or
what ulterior evil effects, may be involved--enters into the
situation, the question of degree becomes of vital moment. To
represent a given evil as a vast affliction when in reality it is
confined within narrow bounds, to represent it as hideous, morally or
materially, without just basis, is in these cases much more than a
mere violation of the abstract requirements of truth. These issues
turn fundamentally on the weighing of the good to be gained against
the sacrifices or dangers which the proposal involves. And the
reformer who, however excellent his purposes, grossly magnifies the
evil deceives and misleads the public just as a merchant does who
weighs with false scales, or a gambler who plays with loaded dice.
So much for the nature of the specific questions at issue. But there
is a contrast far more important still, which turns upon the spirit of
the time. In our day no serious attack can be made upon any particular
evil in any way connected with the existing economic order, without
being regarded by great multitudes as part of a general indictment
against that order. At the center of the socialist movement there is
now, as there has been at any time in the past half-century, a body of
convinced believers in the inherent unfitness of the existing order to
serve man's material and moral needs, and in the feasibility of a new
order which shall replace it to the infinite improvement and elevation
of mankind. But the growth of socialistic and semi-socialistic
sentiment which has been going on at so extraordinarily rapid a rate
during the past decade, especially in this country, is due in only a
relatively small measure to the making of doctrinal converts. The
growth has been in the main, or at least primarily, not at the center,
but on the fringe, of the socialist body. It has come about, above
all, through that unprecedented stimulation of humanitarian interest
and humanitarian endeavor in connection with the problems of the poor
which is in itself a just cause both for pride and satisfaction in our
generation. Between this humanitarian activity, directed toward
various specific forms of social betterment, and that kind of
discontent with the existing order which lies at the basis of
socialism, there is at once a sharp contrast and an intimate
connection. The socialist--at least the socialist as he has
traditionally been--makes it the first tenet of his practical doctrine
that social-betterment endeavors are not only vain, but mischievous.
He holds that they tend to patch up a system which is hopelessly evil,
and to reconcile to its continuance those who, if they were not thus
deluded, would see that the only remedy lies in its extinction. In
reality, however, the worker for social-betterment schemes, while
helping to make the existing order sounder with one hand, is
constantly giving powerful aid to the socialists with the other. For
it is part of his task to concentrate public attention upon evils
which would otherwise remain unnoticed in the background; and it is
safe to say that in the impression made by these agitations upon
multitudes of sensitive natures lies the chief source of that enormous
recruiting of the forces making towards socialism which we have been
witnessing. In so far as this result is the natural accompaniment of
the unfolding of a truthful picture of society, it must be accepted as
an inevitable fact. Even so, it might be deplored that a development
so momentous should in so large a measure turn on the state of mind of
persons unequipped with such mental qualities, and such intellectual
training, as would fit them duly to weigh the defects against the
virtues of the existing order, and duly to consider the objections to
the proposed remedy as well as its allurements. But, as the matter
stands, what is actually being furnished to these susceptible minds
and hearts is in large measure a mass of distorted representations of
the truth. The falsity of the picture is often a matter of direct
exaggeration or misstatement, oftener it is a matter of false
perspective, chiefly taking the form of making a part pass virtually
for the whole. But however it is brought about, we have continually
before us the spectacle of numbers of well-meaning persons, through
careless exaggeration or distortion of the truth, misleading
multitudes of young and ardent spirits into a readiness to throw
overboard the fundamental institutions of society.
* * * * *
_Children of Strife. A Dramatic Story of Rich and Poor in New York._
Such is the title of a novel that is appearing in the _Delineator_, an
old-established journal of large circulation, devoted primarily to
fashions, housekeeping matters, and the like. It is very specially
"featured." Its first chapter is ushered in with this notice,
conspicuously printed in large type below the title: "Special Request:
Great things may hinge upon this novel. Just how great will depend
upon your reception of it. It is thrilling fiction but back of it is
something else. Will you watch for that something, keeping each
instalment by you for reference?" Those who dutifully follow this last
injunction will begin by keeping by them for reference a picture of
the ways of business that is extremely interesting. Chapter I is
entitled "The Corporation." Its opening scene is in the private office
of a flourishing capitalist. Many little touches are given to heighten
the stage effect, but the real point of interest concerns the giving
out of a contract relating to the construction of a twenty-one story
building. Griffiths, the capitalist, holds an impromptu meeting of the
construction company, the other directors being office dummies; the
question to be decided is whether steel columns or cast-iron columns
are to be used:
"What's the difference in cost?" asked Mr. Griffiths, shortly,
casting a cursory glance over the items.
"If we use the iron we'll save about eighteen thousand dollars,"
the secretary replied, "but the architect says we'll be taking a
risk."
"How _much_ of a risk?" Mr. Griffiths retorted quickly. "Doesn't
Littleton think the building will stand up?"
"He _thinks_ so," Williams rejoined deprecatingly. "There are
houses on both sides. He _thinks_ it'll stand up. It ought to."
"Well," said Mr. Griffiths, pushing back his chair. "Nothing
venture, nothing have. Eh, Williams?"
Williams smiled a perfunctory smile in response to his employer's
little jest.
"Let's get to work," went on Mr. Griffiths. "Call the roll. All
present--full board. (Note that.) We waive reading the minutes of
the last meeting, and there are no reports. Mr. Flynt offers the
following resolution: Resolved, That the secretary be and hereby
is empowered to accept and ratify the contract heretofore drawn
up with Peck & Simpson, for iron columns (By the way, Williams,
White is the chief inspector for that district. You can handle
him, eh?), and to execute the same on behalf of the Company. All
in favor say 'Aye;' contrary minded, 'No.'" The chair canvassed
the vote and reported that a majority of votes were in favor of
the resolution. It was so voted. "That's all. Meeting adjourned.
Good morning."
What happens in Chapter III will surprise nobody. Griffiths' little
daughter is with her father in his luxurious library, absorbed in a
story-book, both of them enveloped in a delicious silence. But the
silence is suddenly broken by a curious and startling sound:
The sound had suggested a sliding, the collapse of something; it
was like the falling in of a gigantic house of cards. Fascinated,
Ruth's eyes sought her father's face. It was transformed, livid;
his hands clutched his chair--clutched it so convulsively that,
plump though they were, the veins stood out on them in purple
knots.
"The building," he whispered with bloodless lips. "It's gone."
The sliding stopped momentarily; the very air seemed to stay
still in an awful hush of expectation; then it caught up a new
sound--a sound that far exceeded the sliding in horror; a sound
to freeze the blood, even the warm, quick blood of a child; a
sound big with every emotion ever evoked by the voice of any
tenor who ever has sung--the inarticulate protest of men about to
be smothered--the wail of human beings caught in a trap, like
rats.
Now, it would of course be preposterous to regard a cheap melodramatic
novel in a fashion magazine as a subject for serious criticism; and it
would be equally absurd to make the policy of such a magazine, taken
in itself, an occasion for solemn moralizing or rebuke. But in
publishing this rubbish, the _Delineator_ is a magazine of fashion in
more senses than one; it is but following, according to its lights, a
fashion current in much higher circles of "uplift" literature. That
this grotesque presentation of the ways of business appears, and is
given all possible prominence and emphasis, not in a journal devoted
to reform but in one which seeks its circulation among the women of
the average "bourgeois" home, is precisely what gives significance to
a piece of fiction otherwise too insignificant to mention. Evidently
the editor of this magazine imagines, rightly or wrongly, that the
state of mind prevailing among his readers is such as to make a thing
of this kind go. They have become so accustomed to a diet of
sensationalism and exaggeration, he may well reason, that they will
never stop to inquire whether the building of collapsible skyscrapers
is a common practice--whether indeed such a thing has ever happened at
all--or in any other way to question the truth of a portrait evidently
designed to represent a large part of the capitalist class. To ask
whether either writer or editor really believes the picture to be
true--to hark back to Dickens's solemn assurance of the truthfulness
of his indictments against the evils he attacked--is the most that
need be said on the subject, to anyone accustomed to sober or
responsible thinking. But among the millions of defenceless
people--young, half-educated, well-intentioned, untrained to serious
thought--to whom such stuff is being fed every day, there is a vast
number that are misled by it into a false view of the world, and into
a state of mind that is most unwholesome and deplorable.
What is thus dealt out in popular fiction, what was for a time to be
seen filling the pages of nearly every popular magazine professedly as
plain fact, is met with in a hundred forms in the daily
newspapers--even those of a good type--and in the outgivings of many
excellent persons, and many worthy associations, engaged in
social-betterment work. A very few instances must suffice for
illustration.
"The outstanding infamy of certain of our modern industries is the
linking to the belts of factories and mills of two million children."
This statement, and variants of it which pile up the agony now in one
direction now in another, we find continually cropping up in the high
places of social reform. The quotation is from an address made a year
ago by William B. Patterson, secretary of the commission on social
service of the Philadelphia Federation of Churches. He was speaking
before the first annual Progressive Conference of Pennsylvania, and
presumably his object was to show the dire need of the Progressive
movement for the remedy of a stupendous evil. But we turn to an
article on child labor in the United States by Dr. Jacob S. Raisin, a
Troy rabbi, printed very prominently in the _Knickerbocker Press_, for
a more vivid realization of this gigantic horror. Here are some
extracts from the article:
Two million children are virtually enslaved in our cotton mills,
coal mines and sweat-shops over the breadth and length of our
country--two million little ones!
At the same time that thousands of children in our city enjoyed
their Christmas vacation and rejoiced over their newly acquired
presents, two million children of the same tender age, of the
same Caucasian race and citizens of the same prosperous land,
were pining away in the dark subterranean caves of the coal mines
in the east, in the dangerous cotton mills and tobacco factories
of the south and the sweat-shops everywhere.
Two million souls are annually sacrificed to commerce and to
greed. Parents do not get sufficient to keep the souls and bodies
of their little ones together. Mothers must leave their suckling
babes to seek for their livelihood, and these infants, in turn,
if they survive until they are six, must begin the battle of life
on their own account.
The United States Census of 1910 gives the total number of
mine-workers under sixteen years of age in 1909 as 8,151, of whom
3,117 were working below ground and 5,034 above ground. The number of
wage-earners under sixteen years of age in manufacturing industries is
stated as 161,493; and it is shown that the percentage of workers
under sixteen to the whole number of workers in these industries fell
from 3.4 per cent. in 1899 to 2.9 per cent. in 1904 and 2.4 per cent.
in 1909. Figures concerning sweat-shops are not given.
What we have before us, therefore, is a gross overstatement, on the
face of it; after making all possible allowance for false returns of
age in the census, it is evident that, merely as a matter of the
surface figures, the case is enormously exaggerated. But this is not
all. The impression is always sought to be conveyed that these two
millions are, in large part at least _little_ children; whereas even
of the (say) two hundred thousand workers under sixteen who are
actually "linked to the belts of factories and mills," and of the
(say) four thousand who are laboring "in the dark subterranean caves
of the coal mines," it is obvious that only a small fraction can be
under fourteen. That there ought not to be a single one may be true
enough; but unless we are to throw reason overboard altogether, we
must make a distinction between a question concerning a few hundreds,
or a few thousands, of little children, and one concerning two
million. And these very agitators _do_ recognize the distinction; else
why make all this noise about the figures? Driven into a corner, they
would doubtless fall back on the iniquity of having even a single
child in all the land deprived of its birthright of happiness; but in
the meanwhile they work the two million for all it is worth. As for
the violation of the Ninth Commandment, the true Progressive, whether
Christian or Jew, presumably finds in the principles of the New
Morality ample exemption from any acute pangs of conscience on that
score.
* * * * *
In the early part of the year 1910, the Consumers' League of New York
obtained permission from the _American Magazine_ to reprint as a
leaflet a little article of two pages which had appeared in the
January number of that periodical under the title _Some Dangers from
High Prices_. The article which the excellent persons who conduct the
work of that League considered so important a document was devoted in
the first place to a very precise account of what had happened in a
certain restaurant with which the writer was familiar, and which was
frequented in part by shop-girls; and secondly to the issuing of a
most solemn and tragic warning as to what this country was threatened
with as a consequence of the situation which this happening indicated.
This is the experience:
Five and six years ago I used to go to a restaurant which fed
about three hundred shop-girls a day.... I used to write down
what they could get for 15 cents. Here are three dishes each of
which then cost 15 cents. Two eggs on toast, with bread; a nice
little meat pie, hot and appetizing; chicken on toast with a rice
border. The chicken was all dark meat, to be sure, but it was
meat and the rice border was generous. In short, in that
restaurant six years ago there was for 15 cents honest
nourishment fitted to build up an honest constitution such as the
trunk class of America ought to have. And in the long run those
girls chose the nourishing food. Two years ago a change came. I
noticed a habit of lunching off a potato salad. I soon saw the
reason. The little meat pie had moved up to 25 cents, the chicken
on toast to 30 cents. Potato salad, one of the girls told me, was
the only "interesting" thing left for 15 cents. Going there last
September I said to one of the waitresses:
"What are these girls eating now?"
"Ah," she sighed, "it is dreadful! They ought not to pay more
than 15 cents; so many of them just have griddle cakes, or sweets
and coffee. They can have two cream cakes and coffee or an eclair
and coffee for 15 cents."
Please notice the sliding scale of nourishment therein displayed
in six short years. From chicken on toast with a wholesome rice
border to potato salad and from potato salad to an eclair and
coffee. One can fairly see the nourishment ooze out! It is only
fair to add, however, that the manager told me that they were
losing their shop-girls somewhat: they were going where there
were no waitresses, where they served themselves at counters.
There one could get real nourishment for 20 cents.
Upon the basis of this interesting little story, and of the loose talk
of "a dealer in milk" with whom she had conversed, the writer finds
that there is a "canker at the heart of our prosperity," that "our
great, prosperous country is at the parting of the ways." "A little
more," she warns us, "and you will have the trunk class of America an
underfed class, being slowly but surely forced down in the social
scale." And so forth.
Now it is nothing that such an article should have appeared in a
popular magazine; nor is it perhaps a matter worth finding fault with
that the managers of an important humanitarian organization, which is
in many ways doing excellent work, should have had so little critical
judgment as to regard as an exceptionally important contribution to
public discussion what is so manifestly the mere expression of one
person's superficial observations and impressions. What _does_ give
significance to the Consumers' League's performance is that it
demonstrates an indifference to facts--a lack of the sense of
responsibility for the essential veracity of anything to which one
gives one's name and which one actively disseminates among the
public--that would be amazing were it not unfortunately so common. In
half an hour, any officer of the Consumers' League could have
discovered that in New York "honest nourishment" of precisely the kind
referred to in the _American_ article was to be obtained for
fifteen cents in any one of hundreds of clean, roomy, cheerful
restaurants--not "where they served themselves at counters," but with
good waiting by a fine type of waitresses. At the time the leaflet was
issued, there had been no rise of prices at all in this class of
restaurants in New York; since then there has been a rise in some of
them, affecting certain dishes; but in no case, I believe, has the
rise been more than that from fifteen to twenty cents. The _great_
rise in food prices has taken place in the four years _since_ January,
1910; and yet to this day one can get, in any one of the scores of
handsome popular restaurants scattered all over the business section
of New York, a nourishing meat or egg luncheon, well served, for
fifteen or twenty cents, according to choice.
This may seem very homely matter, beneath the dignity of a quarterly
REVIEW. But the homeliness, or insignificance, is only on the surface.
The thing I am concerned with is not the bread and meat I am talking
about, but the state of mind of a class of men and women considerable
in point of mere numbers and tremendously important in their influence
on the political and social currents of the time. With a
responsibility resting on them a thousandfold greater than any that
belonged to reformers like Dickens--a thousandfold greater both
because the problems they touch are incomparably more complex and
because the consequences of their agitation spread out immeasurably
beyond the particular problems they touch--with this responsibility
for truthful representation upon them, how far are they from that
realization of it which is so solemnly avowed by the author of
_Nicholas Nickleby_! And in this matter of the luncheon, small as it
may seem in itself, the moral obtrudes itself with peculiar
distinctness. For here everything turns absolutely on degree. If the
shop-girl can get to-day for twenty cents the luncheon she could
formerly get for fifteen, the whole terror disappears; for five cents
a day is thirty cents a week, and surely it is not out of the question
that there has been a rise of wages sufficient to cover this
difference. Yet these good people evidently think it no harm to give
out a solemn warning of national degeneration and ruin, based on
figures which a few minutes' inquiry would have compelled them to
reject, and on an allegation of fact as to the actual fare of working
girls which a half-day's tour of the restaurants of New York would
have shown to have no substantial basis. That the rise of prices has
been hard on working people, that if it takes place without
compensating rise of wages it must have serious consequences, is true
enough; but between this and the sort of thing we have been discussing
there is precisely the difference that there is between reason and
unreason, between responsibility and recklessness.
* * * * *
To _prove_ that exaggeration and distortion and misleading
presentation abound in the reform literature of our time is not the
purpose of this paper; even if fifty examples were adduced, it would
prove nothing. What I am endeavoring to do is to cite a very few
illustrations, which I believe that intelligent readers will recognize
as typical, and to bring out their significance as bearing on a
widespread state of mind. In this regard, the next instance is
peculiarly instructive. In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for March, 1910,
there is an article by E. A. Ross, entitled _The Suppression of
Important News_. The _Atlantic_ is not a "muckraking" magazine, and
the writer is not a "muckraker;" he is a man of national note, and a
professor in the Department of Economics in the University of
Wisconsin. Much that he says about the shortcomings of newspapers is
true; but the article gives a preposterously false impression of the
conduct of the press of this country as a whole. However, I do not ask
the readers of this REVIEW to take my word for this; neither can I
enter upon what would be the very considerable task of proving my
assertion. I wish only to call attention to a single short paragraph
in Prof. Ross's article:
The party system is a "sacred cow." When a county district court
declared that the Initiative and Referendum amendment to the
Oregon Constitution was invalid, the item was spread broadcast.
But when later the Supreme Court of Oregon reversed that
decision, the fact was too trivial to be put on the wires.
Now, if this means anything, it means that it is the policy of the
Associated Press, in regard to such a matter as the Initiative and
Referendum system in Oregon, to endeavor to conceal from the American
public the fact that the attempt to overthrow it in the courts of the
State had failed. To characterize such a notion as silly would be to
place it on far too high a plane. That a person of Prof. Ross's
training, and position in the country, should find it possible to
believe such a thing is melancholy to think of; and, what is more to
the purpose, it betrays a state of mind that is fraught with all
manner of evil possibilities. For it is a state of mind in which
probability, that indispensable guide of sane thinking, is dismissed
from its place; in which whatever seems to point toward a preconceived
thesis is accepted without scrutiny and carefully treasured up, and
whatever points the other way gets scant attention; in which the sense
of the true proportions of things is hopelessly lost. What the actual
facts were about the transmission of that news from Oregon makes no
difference; the failure "to put it on the wires," which Professor Ross
alleges, may possibly have taken place. But no intelligent human being
waits to find out whether Beiliss actually did or did not murder a
child in order to reject with scorn and contempt the idea that the
blood of murdered Christian children forms part in the ritual of the
Jewish Passover; we need no evidence on the subject--it is disposed of
by its intrinsic absurdity. That Prof. Ross should have failed to see
the intrinsic absurdity of such a notion of the newspaper press of the
United States as is implied in the paragraph above quoted--that others
who talk about the suppression of news should betray similar want of
sane perception--is, to my mind, one of the most significant
illustrations of the general phenomenon that I am discussing.
If these illustrations have served to bring out some of the chief
aspects of the state of mind which underlies the exaggeration that
disfigures the reform agitations of our time, the purpose for which
they have been cited has been fulfilled. As evidence of the fact that
such exaggeration is widely current they of course amount to nothing;
nor, as I have already said, would the piling up of a large number of
examples have any probative force. There is a great deal of sober and
responsible writing in reform quarters, and there is a great deal of
the opposite kind. It would be idle to attempt to form any estimate of
the ratio between the one kind and the other. But every reader must
recognize that the type of thing which I have been discussing is
abundant, and that it plays an important part in influencing the
opinions of large bodies of well-meaning people. It may not be amiss,
however, to make brief mention of a few more examples illustrating
various phases of the phenomenon.
In the report of the first of a series of lectures on sex hygiene
recently given to fathers and mothers in the public school buildings
of Chicago, we find the lecturer saying: "The American mothers are
unable to nurse their children for the necessary nine months. This is
the cause of all the infant mortality we hear so much about." And it
is to the economic conditions of "the last fifty years" that this
deplorable state of things is ascribed. Now persons who are conversant
with mortality statistics, either at first hand or through the columns
of the newspapers, know that while it is true that "we hear so much
about" infant mortality, what we hear is not that it is increasing but
that it is declining--declining in the City of New York especially, at
a rate so steady and so rapid as would have been pronounced incredible
a quarter of a century ago. But the mothers who were drinking in the
lecturer's words were led to believe that our modern society is
responsible for an ever-increasing slaughter of the innocents. Nor is
this an isolated case, either in regard to the particular subject
concerned, or to questions of social welfare generally. The mere fact
that the evil of avoidable infant mortality is dwelt upon in our time
as never before was taken by this lecturer--and has been taken by
others--as meaning that that evil is growing ever worse; whereas the
real reason of its prominence is precisely that it is now for the
first time being hopefully and successfully attacked by comprehensive
and systematic efforts. And this substitution of the assertion that an
evil is growing worse for the mere fact that it exists, so far from
being uncommon, is met with in connection with almost every branch of
social-betterment agitation.
One of the most striking manifestations of this was furnished by
Alfred Russel Wallace in his book, _Social Environment and Moral
Progress_, which appeared shortly before his death. "It is not too
much to say," he declares, "that our whole system of society is rotten
from top to bottom, and the social environment as a whole, in relation
to our possibilities and claims, is the worst that the world has ever
seen." In support of this assertion the book as a whole does nothing
but present in eloquent language various deplorable features of our
existing civilization; apparently the idea that in order to justify
his conclusion comparison with former states of the world is essential
hardly crosses Mr. Wallace's mind. That it did obtrude itself in a
measure appears, however, from the devotion of one little chapter to
the subject of "Indications of Increasing Moral Degradation." These
indications are three in number; and not only are they pitifully
inadequate for the support of his statement, but his interpretation of
the statistics cited, in regard to the matter to which he gives most
prominence, can be easily shown to be utterly superficial and
inconclusive. The three matters to which the statistics relate are
deaths from alcoholism, suicide, and deaths of infants soon after
birth. The increase of deaths from alcoholism in the past half-century
is given the leading place. This increase has been, roughly, 25 per
million inhabitants--from 40 per million annually to 65 per million
annually; and it does not occur to Mr. Wallace that modern advances in
medicine and sanitation may account for far more than 25 drunkards per
million inhabitants who in former times would have been carried off by
all sorts of diseases but who now survive long enough to die of
"alcoholism." The temper of the man of science wholly fails to assert
itself in the weighing of facts which his zeal as a reformer impels
him to view in the light of a preconceived judgment.
Some recent phenomena in the field of public discussion in our country
have shown on a large scale the kind of loose thinking in regard to
facts which is at the bottom of the exaggerating spirit. When the
McNamara dynamitings were revealed, a wave of excitement swept off
their feet a large part of our whole humanitarian army. They had been
so filled with the idea that we are living in a strange and awful
time, that this series of crimes, committed in secret by members of a
single trade union, was acclaimed as something new under the sun, a
fearful sign and portent. The tremendous railroad riots and burnings
of 1877; the anarchist troubles at Chicago, culminating in the
Haymarket massacre; the widespread and ominous railroad labor struggle
of 1894, which took on an aspect bordering upon civil war--all these
things were forgotten, and it was solemnly asserted that we were
confronted with a crisis quite without precedent or parallel, which
demanded a new and radical examination of the very foundations of the
social order. The swift spread over the country a year ago of the
notion that starvation wages for women were, if not the sole, at least
incomparably the chief, cause of female vice and degradation, was a
somewhat similar phenomenon. One that at first sight presents no
resemblance to it, but which strikes me as a peculiarly interesting
manifestation of the same thing, is to be found in the domain of
ordinary politics. A leading feature of the Progressive crusade was
the identification of the "reactionaries"--the business world and the
conservative newspaper press--with bossism and the corruption of
politics generally. Mr. Roosevelt continually talked as though there
were a cynical alliance between all the leading New York newspapers on
the one hand, and Murphy and Barnes and the whole system of political
corruption on the other; and doubtless there were millions of good
people who completely forgot not only that a large proportion of these
papers had persistently fought for civil service reform and tariff
reform and election reform, but that they were waging an
uncompromising war against the whole brood of bosses, whether
Republican or Democratic, for many years during which Mr. Roosevelt
was an excellent friend of Quay, got along very fairly with Platt, and
did not find it in his heart even to lift a finger against the
unspeakable Addicks.
* * * * *
Now all these various forms of exaggeration, distortion and
misrepresentation converge in our time upon one object, contribute
toward one common effect. Whatever be the purpose held in view by any
particular reformer or exhorter, however far from his desire it may be
to foment dangerous unrest or to promote a revolutionary propaganda,
every extravagant picture that he draws of the depravity or the
wretchedness of our time inevitably does produce these effects, and
that upon a large scale. There are a great number of people of all
ages, and especially of young people, who, without having thought
deeply upon the problems of society, feel about them very deeply
indeed. Many of them attest the sincerity of their interest by useful
and noble work; the world has certainly never seen anything like so
widespread a devotion of the energies of young men and women among the
fortunate classes to the betterment of the lot of the unfortunate. A
far greater number, without devoting themselves to such work, are
stirred by the same emotions of sympathy and good-will. Upon these
minds and hearts the depiction of evils associated with the existing
economic order produces more than a mere transient pang of distress or
regret. What is wrong in the world they do not merely deplore; they
wish to set it right. And if the wrong is so pervasive, the evil so
deep-seated, the depravity so general, as these manifold presentments
make it out, what more natural than that they should sum up the whole
case in the conviction that the existing order of society is a
failure, and be ready to welcome almost any experiment that holds out
the promise of something better?
It is for this reason, above all others, that he who recklessly or
thoughtlessly distorts or exaggerates the facts of our time assumes a
grievous responsibility. Even in regard to each particular question,
the element of degree may be of vital consequence: what measures ought
to be taken, what objections ought to be weighed, what collateral
consequences ought to be ignored, in regard to such a matter as the
minimum wage, or unemployment insurance, or child labor, may depend
essentially both upon the present extent of the evil and upon the
influences already acting upon it. But it is the larger question that
is most deeply involved, the question whether the institutions and
traditions which have been slowly built up by ages of human effort and
trial and struggle are to be thrown aside as worthless. To the
reformer bent upon his own specific purpose it may seem a venial
offense to depict poverty as increasing, when it is really
diminishing, so long as there _is_ poverty; to represent the press of
the country in general as deliberately suppressing ordinary news of
public affairs, so long as there are some newspapers which suppress
some kinds of news; to talk of two millions of children linked to the
belts of factories and mills or pining underground in mines, so long
as there is child labor; to speak of avoidable infant mortality as an
evil peculiar to our time though the reverse is the truth, so long as
there is infant mortality which is avoidable. But between seeing
these things as they are and seeing them as they are not, the
difference is not trifling, but fundamental. For upon that difference
turns the whole issue between conservative improvement and reckless
innovation. The world is full of persons who are eager enough to prove
all things, but who seem to forget the other half of the injunction.
If we apply the probe carelessly, if we report what we find
untruthfully, how can we hope to hold fast that which is good?