DARK PROBLEMS 179

Dreiser the whole America, or the real America,
I should not want to reform it, as Mr, Dreiser
does, by substituting communism for capitalism,
or alternatively by setting up a dictator. I should
regard it as irredeemably past reforming or even
praying for. With a community composed, it
would seem, of knaves exploiting fools, and fools
submitting to be exploited by knaves, nothing
can be done but leave it to its fate. The reaction
to such a picture is not reforming zeal but despair,
profound and cynical. With such material to
build with, nothing can be built. The change
from capitalism to communism, or to any other
" ism" would merely be a change from one
mess to another, from one hell to a hotter, and
the dictator, were he to appear, would be betrayed
to-night and " bumped off " to-morrow morning.
Reformatory treatment is out of the question
for a culprit so deeply stained by every imaginable
meanness and crime. The death sentence alone
is fitting, arfd the sooner nature—sternest of
hanging judges—puts on the black cap the better
for the world.

That Mr. Dreiser's picture of Tragic America
is widely accepted as true by Americans, and that
cynicism rather than reforming zeal, results from
it, thereby defeating its own object, I have heard
much to prove. The following trifle may serve
as an illustration.

This morning I fell into conversation with the
barber (indistinguishable from a college man)