HOW FAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES
IMPERSONAL CHARACTER OF OPEN CLASSES—VARIOUS CLASSIFICATIONS—CLASSES,
AS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD, BASED ON OBVIOUS DISTINCTIONS—WEALTH AS
GENERALIZED POWER—ECONOMIC BETTERMENT AS AN IDEAL OF THE ILL-PAID
CLASSES—CONCLUSION.
Where classes do not mean separate currents of thought, as in the
case of caste, but are merely differentiations in a common mental
whole, there are likely to be several kinds of classes overlapping one
another, so that men who fall in the same class from one point of view
are separated in another. The groups are like circles which, instead of
standing apart, interlace with one another so that several of them may
pass through the same individual. Classes become numerous and, so to
speak, impersonal; that is, each one absorbs only a part of the life of
the individual and does not sufficiently dominate him to mould him to a
special type. This is one of the things that distinguish our American
order from that, say, of Germany, where caste is still so dominant as
to carry many other differences with it and create unmistakable types
of men. As a newspaper writer puts it, “The one thing we may be sure of
every day is that not a man whom we shall meet in it will belong to his
type. The purse-proud aristocrat turns out to be a humble-minded young
fellow anxiously envious of our knowledge of golf; the comic actor in
private life is dull and shy, and reddens to the tips of his ears when
he speaks; the murderer taken out of the dock in a quiet hob-and-nob
turns out to be a likable young chap who reminds you of your cousin
Bob.”
And this independence of particular classes should give one the more
opportunity to achieve a truly personal individuality by combining a
variety of class affiliations, each one suited to a particular phase of
his character.
It is, then, easy to see why different classifiers discover different
class divisions in our society, according to their points of view;
namely, because there are in fact an indefinite number of possible
collocations. This would not have been the case anywhere in the Middle
Ages, nor is it nearly as much the case in England at the present time
as in the United States.
We might, to take three of the most conspicuous lines of division,
classify the people about us according to trade or profession,
according to income, and according to culture. The first gives us
lawyers, grocers, plumbers, bankers and the like, and also, more
generally, the hand-laboring class, skilled and unskilled, the
mercantile class, the professional class and the farming class. The
division by income is, of course, related to this, though by no
means identical. We might reckon paupers, the poor, the comfortable,
the well-to-do and the rich. Culture and refinement have with us no
very close or essential connection with occupation or wealth, and
a classification based upon the former would show a very general
rearrangement. There are many scholars and philosophers among us who,
like Thoreau, follow humble trades and live upon the income of day
labor.
And virtue, the most important distinction of all, is independent alike
of wealth, calling and culture. The real upper class, that which is
doing the most for the onward movement of human life, is not to be
discerned by any visible sign. The more inward or spiritual a trait is,
the less it is dependent upon what are ordinarily understood as class
distinctions.
It is, however, upon the grosser and more obvious differences of wealth
and rank, and not upon intellectual or moral traits, that classes,
in the ordinary meaning of the word, are based. The reasons for this
are, first, that something obvious and unquestionable is requisite as
a symbol and unfailing mark of class, and, second, that the tangible
distinctions alone are usual matters of controversy. Culture and
character have more intrinsic importance, but are too uncertain to mark
a class, and even if they were stamped upon the forehead they are not
matter to quarrel over like wealth or titles; since those who have them
not cannot hope to get them by depriving those who have.
Income, for instance, classifies people through creating different
standards of living, those who fall into the same class in this respect
being likely to adopt about the same external mode of life. It usually
decides whether men live in one quarter of the city or another, what
sort of houses or apartments they inhabit, how they dress, whether
the wife “does all her own work” or employs household help (and, if
the latter, how much and of what sort), whether they keep a carriage,
whether they go into the country for the summer, whether they travel
abroad, whether they send their sons to college, and so on. And such
likeness leads to likeness of ideas, especially in that commonplace
sort of people—the most numerous of course—who have not sufficient
definiteness or energy of character to associate on any other basis.
Note how difficult it is for two people, congenial in other respects,
to converse freely when one has an income of $5,000, the other of $500.
Few topics can be touched upon without accentuating the superficial
but troublesome discrepancy. Amusements, household and the like are
hardly possible; the weather may supply a remark or two, perhaps also
politics, though here the economic point of view is likely to appear.
Religion or philosophy, if the parties could soar so high, would be
best of all. Of course, serious discussion should be all the more
practicable and fruitful because of difference of viewpoint. What I
mean, however, is light, offhand, sociable talk that does not stir any
depths. As between their wives the situation would be harder still, and
only an unusual tact and magnanimity would make it tolerable.
The result is that we ordinarily find it most comfortable to associate
on a basis of income, combined with and modified by the influence of
occupation, culture and special tastes. And yet to do this is perhaps
a confession of failure, a confession that we do not know how to cast
off the adventitious and meet as men. The most superficial differences,
being the most apparent, impose themselves upon our commonly indolent
and sensuous states of mind.
In proportion to their energy men will always seek power. It is,
perhaps, the deepest of instincts, resting directly on the primary need
for self-expression. But the kind of power sought will take many forms.
Wealth stands, in modern society, for nearly all the grosser and
more tangible forms; for power over material goods, primarily, and
secondarily over the more purchasable kinds of human activity—hand
labor, professional services, newspaper commendation, political
assiduity and so on. The class that has it is, in all such matters, the
strong class, and naturally our coarser thought concludes that this is
the kind of power most worth consideration. In all the obvious details
of life, in that seeking for petty advantages and immunities in which
most of our time is passed, at the store or the railway station, we are
measured by money and are apt to measure others so. The ascendency of
wealth is too natural to disappear. Children prize possessions before
they can talk, and readily learn that money is possession generalized.
Indeed, only the taste for finer possessions can or should drive out
that for lower.
And yet all clear minds, or rather all minds in their clearer moments,
may see that wealth is not the chief good that the commonplace and
superficial estimate makes it. It is simply a low form of power,
important in measure to the group and to the individual, but easily
preoccupying the mind beyond its just claim. If society gets material
prosperity too fast, its spiritual life suffers, as is somewhat the
case in our day: and the individual is in peril of moral isolation and
decay as soon as he seeks to get richer than his fellows.
The finest and, in the long run, the most influential minds, have for
the most part not cared for riches, or not cared enough to go out of
their way to seek them, preferring to live on bare necessities if
they must rather than spend their lives in an uncongenial scramble.
And the distinctively spiritual leaders have always regarded them as
inconsistent with their aims. “Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor
brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats,
neither shoes, nor yet staves.” Not that Christianity is opposed to
industrial prosperity—the contrary is the case—but that Christian
leadership required the explicit renunciation of prosperity’s besetting
sin. In our day the life of Thoreau, among others, illustrates how
a man may have the finer products of wealth—the culture of all
times—while preferring to remain individually poor. He held that for an
unmarried student, wishing first of all to preserve the independence of
his mind, occasional day labor, which one can do and have done with,
is the best way of getting a living. “A man is rich in proportion to
the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” “It makes but
little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county
jail.”[115] The thoroughgoing way in which this doctrine is developed
in his Walden and other books makes them a _vade mecum_ for the
impecunious idealist.
Professor William James asserts that the prevalent fear of poverty
among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which
civilization suffers, paralyzing their ideal force. “Think of the
strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we
were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues
or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks
might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club
doors close in our faces; yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably
bear witness to the spirit, and our example would help to set free our
generation.”[116]
If these considerations do not keep us from greed, it is because most
of us have only flashes of the higher ambition. We may believe that we
could reconcile ourselves to poverty if we had to—even that it might be
good for us—but we do our best to avoid it.
For the ill-paid classes, certainly, the desire for money does not
mean “materialism” in any reproachful sense, but is chiefly the means
by which they hope to realize, first, health and decency, and then
a better chance at the higher life—books, leisure, education and
refinement. They are necessarily materialized in a certain sense by
the fact that their most strenuous thought must be fixed upon work and
product in relation to material needs. It is in those who are already
well-to-do that the preoccupation with money is most degrading—as not
justified by primary wants. “Meat is sweetest when it is nearest the
bone,” and it is good to long and strive for money when you have an
urgent human need for it; but to do this for accumulation, luxury, or a
remote security is not wholesome. This cold-blooded storing up in banks
and tin boxes is perilous to the soul, often becoming a kind of secret
vice, a disease of narrow minds, feeble imaginations and contracted
living.[117]
In modern life, then, and in a country without formal privilege, the
question of classes is practically one of wealth, and of occupation
considered in relation to wealth; the reason being not that this
distinction really dominates life, but that it is the focus of the
more definite and urgent class controversies. Other aims are pursued
in peace; wealth, because it is material and appropriable, involves
conflict. We may then accept the economic standpoint for this purpose
without at all agreeing with those who regard it as more fundamental
than others.[118]
FOOTNOTES:
[115] Walden, 89, 91.
[116] The Varieties of Religious Experience, 368.
[117] I will not here discuss the question just how far it serves a
useful purpose in the economic system.
[118] If the reader cares to know my opinion of that doctrine—sometimes
called the economic interpretation of history—which teaches that
economic conditions are in a peculiar sense the primary and determining
factor in society, he will find it in the following passages:
“The organic view of history [which I hold] denies that any factor
or factors are more ultimate than others. Indeed it denies that the
so-called factors—such as the mind, the various institutions, the
physical environment and so on—have any real existence apart from a
total life in which all share in the same way that the members of
the body share in the life of the animal organism. It looks upon
mind and matter, soil, climate, flora, fauna, thought, language and
institutions as aspects of a single rounded whole, one total growth.
We may concentrate attention upon some one of these things, but this
concentration should never go so far as to overlook the subordination
of each to the whole, or to conceive one as precedent to others.”
“I cannot see that the getting of food, or whatever else the economic
activities may be defined to be, is any more the logical basis of
existence than the ideal activities. It is true that there could be no
ideas and institutions without a food supply; but no more could we get
food if we did not have ideas and institutions. All work together, and
each of the principal functions is essential to every other.”
“History is not like a tangled skein which you may straighten out
by getting hold of the right end and following it with sufficient
persistence. It has no straightness, no merely lineal continuity, in
its nature. It is a living thing, to be known by sharing its life,
very much as you know a person. In the organic world—that is to say in
real life—each function is a centre from which causes radiate and to
which they converge; all is alike cause and effect; there is no logical
primacy, no independent variable, no place where the thread begins. As
in the fable of the belly and the members, each is dependent upon all
the others. You must see the whole or you do not truly see anything.”
(Publications of the American Economic Association, Third Series, vol.
v, 426 _ff._)