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THE 

NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 


Volume  240 


NEW  YORK 

597  MADISON  AVENUE 

1935 


Copyright  1935  by  the 
North  American  Review  Corporation 


5  0  O  O     Vo/,2  (4  o 


INDEX  TO  VOLUME  240 

ADAMS,  CHARLES  MAGEE.  Who  Bred  these  Utopias?  8;  Recovery  of 

What?  396. 
AGAR,  HERBERT.  Just  Why  Economics?  200. 

BURDEN,  M.  P.  Name  Five  Venezuelan  Ventriloquists!  Verse,  458. 
BRYANT,  WILLIAM  GULLEN,  Poem  (Thanatopsis)  by  One  of  our  Earli 
est  Contributors,  119. 

California  —  in  Thy  Fashion !  68. 

CHASE,  MARY  ELLEN.  A  Pinch  of  Snuff.  Story,  122. 

CHUBB,  THOMAS  CALDECOT.  How  Spring  Comes  in  Georgia.  Verse, 

45. 

COFFIN,  R.  P.  TRISTRAM.  Going  After  the  Cows  in  a  Fog.  Verse,  419. 
Contributors'  Column,  191,  383,  575. 

CORDELL,  WILLIAM.  Dark  Days  Ahead  for  King  Cotton,  284. 
CORDELL,  WM.  and  KATHRYN.  Unions  among  the  Unemployed,  498. 
Corporate  Reserves  vs.  Prosperity,  27. 
CROOK,  KILE.  Wickford  Gardens.  Verse,  264. 

Dark  Days  Ahead  for  King  Cotton,  284. 

Devotional.  Verse,  349. 

DICKINSON,  ELBRA.  Devotional.  Verse,  349. 

Emancipating  the  Novel,  318. 
ENGLE,  PAUL.  Prologue,  225. 
Essay  on  Essays,  An,  409. 

FIELD,  LOUISE  MAUNSELL.  Emancipating  the  Novel,  318. 

FIGART,  DAVID.  Corporate  Reserves  vs.  Prosperity,  27. 

FISHMAN,  JOSEPH  FULLING.  Old  Calamity,  470. 

FLOWER,  SYD  BLANSHARD.  The  Very  Last  Deal,  47. 

Foreword,  3,  195,  387. 

FROST,  FRANCES.  Road  through  New  Hampshire.  Verse,  85.  The  Plum 

Tree.  Verse,  511. 
Future  of  States'  Rights,  The,  238. 

GEROULD,  KATHARINE  FULLERTON.  An  Essay  on  Essays,  409. 

Going  after  the  Cows  in  a  Fog.  Verse,  419. 

"Good  Neighbor"  —  and  Cuba,  325. 

GORRELL,  DOROTHY.  Tumultuous  Cloister,  350. 

Grant  Wood,  Painter  in  Overalls,  271. 


[  iv  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVi 

HESSLER,  L.  B.  On  "Bad  Boy"  Criticism,  214. 
History  as  a  Major  Sport,  359. 
How  Spring  Comes  in  Georgia.  Verse,  45. 
HULL,  GEORGE,  JR.  Profit  Sharing,  425. 

In  Behalf  of  States'  Rights,  265. 
In  Defense  of  Horsehair,  355. 

JOHNSON,  BURGES.  A  Statistician's  Dream,  86. 
Just  Why  Economics?  200. 

KENT,  FRANK.  New  Deal  Catharsis,  421. 

Letter  to  Walter  Damrosch,  A,  278. 
Little  Girl's  Mark  Twain,  A,  342. 
Long  Way  to  Atlantis,  The,  106. 

McGIFFIN,  NORTON.  The  Long  Way  to  Atlantis,  106. 

Mahaley  Mullens.  Story,  512. 

Martinez,  and  Mexico's  Renaissance,  445. 

Mexican  Small  Town,  434. 

Mexico,  My  Beloved.  Verse,  433. 

MILTON,  GEORGE  FORT.  History  as  a  Major  Sport,  359. 

Miss  Craigie.  A  Glimpse,  314. 

Modern  American  Biography,  488. 

MOTT,  F.  L.  One  Hundred  and  Twenty  Years,  144. 

Name  Five  Venezuelan  Ventriloquists!  Verse,  458. 

New  Deal  Catharsis,  421. 

NICKERSON,  HOFFMAN.  In  Behalf  of  States'  Rights,  265. 

NIGGLI,  JOSEPHINE.  Mexico,  My  Beloved.  Verse,  433. 

ODEGARD,  PETER.  The  Future  of  States'  Rights,  238. 

Old  Calamity,  470. 

On  "Bad  Boy"  Criticism,  214. 

One  Hundred  and  Twenty  Years,  144. 

O'Neill  —  and  the  Poet's  Quest,  54. 

O'NEILL,  E.  H.  Modern  American  Biography,  488. 

One  Purple  Patch,  96. 

Our  Tipstaff  Police,  294. 

PELL,  HERBERT  C.  Reorganizing  these  United  States,  460. 
PELL,  JOHN.  Foreword,  3,  195,  387. 


INDEX  [v] 

PICKERING,  RUTH.  Grant  Wood,  Painter  in  Overalls,  271. 

Pinch  of  Snuff,  A.  Story,  122. 

Plum  Tree,  The.  Verse,  511. 

Poem.  Bryant's  Thanatopsis  (Reprinted)  119. 

Polyphemus,  20. 

Profit  Sharing,  425. 

Prologue,  225. 

QUICK,  DOROTHY.  A  Little  Girl's  Mark  Twain,  342. 

Radio,  and  Our  Future  Lives,  307. 

Recovery  of  What?  396. 

Reorganizing  these  United  States,  460. 

Road  through  New  Hampshire.  Verse,  85. 

ROBINSON,  HENRY  MORTON.  Our  Tipstaff  Police,  294. 

SCOTT,  WINFIELD  TOWNLEY.  Where  Ignorant  Armies.  Verse,  487. 
SHAW,  PAUL  VANORDEN.  "Good  Neighbor"  —  and  Cuba,  325. 
SKINNER,  RICHARD  DANA.  O'Neill  —  and  the  Poet's  Quest,  54;  A 

Letter  to  Walter  Damrosch,  278. 

SMITH,  CATHARINE  COOK.  In  Defense  of  Horsehair,  355. 
Songs  of  a  Mountain  Plowman,  391. 
Statistician's  Dream,  A,  86. 
STEIGMAN,  B.  M.  One  Purple  Patch,  96. 
STEVENSON,  PHILIP.  Mexican  Small  Town,  434. 
STUART,  JESSE.  Songs  of  a  Mountain  Plowman,  391. 
SUGRUE,  THOMAS.  California  —  in  Thy  Fashion !  68;  To  a  Pair  of  Gold 

Earrings.  Verse,  293. 

To  a  Pair  of  Gold  Earrings.  Verse,  293. 

TOWNE,  CHARLES  HANSON.  Miss  Craigie.  A  Glimpse,  314. 

Tumultuous  Cloister,  350. 

TURNEY,  ROBERT.  Mahaley  Mullens.  Story,  512. 

Unions  among  the  Unemployed,  498. 

VAN  DYCK,  ARTHUR.  Radio,  and  Our  Future  Lives,  307. 
Very  Last  Deal,  The,  47. 

WARING,  BROOKE.  Martinez,  and  Mexico's  Renaissance,  445. 
Where  Ignorant  Armies.  Verse,  487. 
Who  Bred  these  Utopias?  8. 
Wickford  Gardens.  Verse,  264. 
WOLFE,  THOMAS.  Polyphemus,  20. 


[  vi  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

BOOK  REVIEWS 

Andrews,  Charles  M.  The  Colonial  Period  of  American  History.  The  Settlements, 
366. 

Best  Short  Stories  of  1935,  The.  Edited  by  Edward  J.  O'Brien,  554. 
BOIE,  MILDRED.  Notes  of  Death  and  Life.  By  Theodore  Morrison,  571. 
BRICKELL,  HERSCHEL.  He  Sent  Forth  a  Raven.  By  Elizabeth  Madox 

Roberts,  177;  The  First  Century  of  American  Literature.  By  Fred  Lewis  Pattee, 

374;  //  Can't  Happen  Here.  By  Sinclair  Lewis,  543. 

BURNHAM,  PHILIP.  Lucius  Q.  C.  Lamar.  By  Wirt  Armistead  Gate,  564. 
BURTON,  RICHARD.  Eugene  O'Neill:  a  Poet's  Quest.  By  Richard  Dana 

Skinner,  568. 

Caldwell,  Erskine.  Kneel  to  the  Rising  Sun,  379. 

Carroll,  Gladys  Hasty.  A  Few  Foolish  Ones,  381. 

Gate,  Wirt  Armistead.  Lucius  Q.  C.  Lamar,  564. 

Gather,  Willa.  Lucy  Gayheart,  549. 

CORDELL,  WM.  and  KATHRYN.  The  Best  Short  Stories  of  1935.  Edited  by 

Edward  J.  O'Brien,  554. 
CHUBB,  THOMAS  CALDECOT.  The  Voice  of  Bugle  Ann.  By  MacKinlay 

Kantor,  550. 

DEBEVOISE,  DOUGLAS.  Black  Reconstruction.  By  Burghart  Du  Bois,  369. 
Du  Bois,  Burghart.  Black  Reconstruction.  369. 

FIELD,  LOUISE  MAUNSELL.  Time  Out  of  Mind.  By  Rachel  Field,  182; 
Deep  Dark  River.  By  Robert  Rylee;  Kneel  to  the  Rising  Sun.  By  Erskine  Cald 
well,  379;  Vein  of  Iron.  By  Ellen  Glasgow,  546. 

Field,  Rachel.  Time  Out  of  Mind,  182. 

Freeman,  Douglas  S.  Robert  E.  Lee,  184. 

Glasgow,  Ellen.  Vein  of  Iron,  546. 

Hesseltine,  William  B.  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Politician,  559. 
Hummel,  George  F.  Heritage,  381. 

Kantor,  MacKinlay.  The  Voice  of  Bugle  Ann,  550. 
Kittredge,  Henry  C.  Shipmasters  of  Cape  Cod,  368. 

Lewis,  Sinclair.  It  Can't  Happen  Here,  543. 

MITCHELL,  STEWART.  The  Founding  of  Harvard  College.  By  Samuel 
Eliot  Morison,  377. 


INDEX  [  vii  ] 

Morison,  Samuel  Eliot.  The  Founding  of  Harvard  College,  377. 

MORISON,  SAMUEL  E.  Shipmasters  of  Cape  Cod.  By  Henry  G.  Kittredge, 

368. 
Morrison,  Theodore.  Notes  of  Death  and  Life,  571. 

O'NEILL,  E.  H.  Robert  E.  Lee.  By  Douglas  S.  Freeman,  184;  The  Colonial 
Period  of  American  History.  The  Settlements.  By  Charles  M.  Andrews,  366; 
Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Politician.  By  William  B.  Hesseltine,  559. 

Pattee,  Fred  Lewis.  The  First  Century  of  American  Literature,  374. 

Renascent  Mexico.  Edited  by  Hubert  Herring  and  Herbert  Weinstock,  372. 
Roberts,  Elizabeth  Madox.  He  Sent  Forth  a  Raven,  111. 
Rylee,  Robert.  Deep  Dark  River,  379. 

SKINNER,  RICHARD  DANA.  Feliciana.  By  Stark  Young,  553. 

Skinner,  Richard  Dana.  Eugene  O'Neill:  A  Poet's  Quest,  568. 

SLOCUM,  JOHN.  Of  Time  and  the  River.  By  Thomas  Wolfe,  175;  Lucy 

Gayheart.  By  Willa  Gather,  549. 
Syke.  Hope  Williams.  Second  Hoeing,  381. 

VAN  ALEN,  ELEANOR  L.  Heaven's  My  Destination.  By  Thornton  Wilder, 
180;  Heritage.  By  George  F.  Hummel;  Second  Hoeing.  By  Hope  Williams 
Syke;  A  Few  Foolish  Ones.  By  Gladys  Hasty  Carroll,  381. 

Wilder,  Thornton.  Heaven's  My  Destination,  180. 

WILSON,  P.  W.  Renascent  Mexico.  Edited  by  Hubert  Herring  and  Herbert 

Weinstock,  372. 
Wolfe,  Thomas.  Of  Time  and  the  River,  175. 

Young,  Stark.  Feliciana,  553. 


THE 

NORTH 

AMERICAN 

REVIEW 


Founded  1815 


JOHN  PELL  Editor 
RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER  Associate  Editor 


VOLUME  240  JUNE  1935  NUMBER  1 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Foreword  J-  P.  3 

Who  Bred  these  Utopias?  CHARLES  MAGEE  ADAMS  8 

Polyphemus  THOMAS  WOLFE  20 

Corporate  Reserves  vs.  Prosperity  DAVID  FIGART  27 

How  Spring  Comes  in  Georgia.  Verse  THOMAS  GALDECOT  CHUBB  45 

The  Very  Last  Deal  SYD  BLANSHARD  FLOWER  47 

O'Neill  —  and  the  Poet's  Quest  RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER  54 

California  —  in  Thy  Fashion !  THOMAS  SUGRUE  68 

Road  through  New  Hampshire.  Verse  FRANCES  FROST  85 

A  Statistician's  Dream  SURGES  JOHNSON  86 

One  Purple  Patch  B.  M.  STEIGMAN  96 

The  Long  Way  to  Atlantis  NORTON  MCGIFFIN  106 

Poem                                                  ONE  OF  OUR  EARLIEST  CONTRIBUTORS  I  1 9 

A  Pinch  of  Snuff.  A  Story  MARY  ELLEN  CHASE  122 

One  Hundred  and  Twenty  Years  F.  L.  MOTT  144 
Book  Reviews 

Of  Time  and  the  River  JOHN  SLOCUM  1 75 

By  Thomas  Wolfe 

He  Sent  Forth  a  Raven  HERSCHEL  BRICKELL  1 77 

By  Elizabeth  Madox  Roberts 

Heaven's  My  Destination  ELEANOR  L.  VAN  ALEN  1 80 
By  Thornton  Wilder 

Time  Out  of  Mind  LOUISE  MAUNSELL  FIELD  1 82 

By  Rachel  Field 

Robert  E.  Lee  E.  H.  O'NEILL  184 

By  Douglas  S.  Freeman 

Contributors'  Column  191 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW:  Published  quarterly  by  the  North  American  Review  Corporation. 


of  March  3,  1879. 

Copyright,  1935,  by  the  North  American  Review  Corporation:  Walter  Butler  Mahony,  President; 


Copyright,  1935,  by  the  North  American  Revi 
David  M.  Flgart  Secretary;  John  Pell,  Treasurer. 
Title  registered  U.  8.  Patent  Office. 


THE    NORTH    AMERICAN   REVIEW 

VOLUME  240  JUNE,  1935  NUMBER  1 

Foreword 

T^HE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW  celebrates  its  one 
••"  hundred  and  twentieth  anniversary  with  this  issue.  During 
the  greater  part  of  its  long  existence  it  has  been  a  quarterly, 
although  at  times  it  has  been  a  monthly  and  a  bimonthly.  Its 
files  comprise  the  most  complete  chronicle  of  American  life  and 
letters  in  existence;  its  two  hundred  and  thirty-nine  volumes 
contain  work  of  most  of  the  poets,  statesmen,  and  economists 
that  our  nation  has  produced. 

The  function  of  a  review  may  be  defined  as  creative  criti 
cism.  The  method  which  we  propose  to  follow  is  twofold:  first, 
to  focus  the  attention  of  our  subscribers  on  the  important 
trends  of  thought  (rather  than  incidents)  which  are  con 
stantly  molding  and  refining  the  American  scene,  just  as  the 
Gulf  stream,  unseen  and  unknown  except  to  navigators,  fash 
ions  the  climate  of  the  British  Isles;  and  second,  to  define  the 
terms  and  phrases  which  profoundly  influence  these  trends, 
though  representing,  in  the  minds  of  many,  only  vague  emo 
tional  patterns.  There  are  professed  conservatives  who  have 
never  considered  what  part  of  American  life  they  would  con 
serve,  and  liberals  who  are  liberal  only  with  their  own  opin 
ions  and  the  taxpayer's  purse-strings. 

During  the  last  five  years,  there  has  been  an  astonishing 
increase  of  interest  in  American  institutions  and  American 
ideas.  One  of  the  blessings  of  the  depression  (and  there  are 
many)  is  the  slackening  of  the  pace  of  life:  freed  from  the 
slavery  of  the  stock- ticker  and  the  mad  scramble  of  "keeping 
up"  with  the  Jones's  we  have  time,  once  again,  to  discover 
ourselves  and  to  enjoy  human  intercourse.  Even  the  Jones's 

[3] 


[  4  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

have  turned  out  to  be  intelligent  and  kindly  people,  keenly 
interested  in  American  history  and  proud  of  America's  achieve 
ments  in  the  arts  and  sciences.  If  you  will  believe  it,  Jones  has 
become  something  of  an  economist:  he  says  he  can  put  his 
finger  on  what  is  wrong  today,  though,  to  tell  the  truth,  noth 
ing  is  really  wrong  any  longer,  so  far  as  Jones  himself  is 
concerned. 

This  newly  popularized  science  of  economics  deserves  more 
than  passing  comment.  There  was  a  time  when  priests  and 
lecturers,  senators  and  society  women  were  interested  in  re 
ligion  and  ethics,  art  and  human  happiness  —  but  now  all 
seem  to  be  concerned  exclusively  with  economics.  The  Royal 
Oak  Shrine  of  the  Little  Flower  might  better  be  called  the 
Temple  of  the  Paper  Dollar;  the  New  Deal  is  the  supreme  at 
tempt  to  solve  life's  problems  by  economic  experiments. 

In  a  recent  issue  of  the  "Atlantic  Monthly,"  Rexford  Tug- 
well  has  a  lucid  and  scholarly  essay  entitled  "The  Progressive 
Tradition."  This  statement  of  the  aims  and  ideals  of  the  New 
Deal  commands  both  sympathy  and  respect:  it  is  impossible  to 
doubt  the  sincerity  of  the  author.  "The  policies  which  are 
spoken  of  as  new,"  he  says,  "have  an  entirely  honorable  lineage 
in  American  history;  they  are  an  expression  of  American  faith 
.  .  .  Our  nation  came  into  existence  as  a  protest  against  the 
aristocratic,  ecclesiastical  and  commercial  privileges  of  the  old 
world  .  .  .  Both  natural  forces  and  social  privileges  have  been 
regarded,  with  us,  as  obstacles  to  be  overcome  for  some  deeper 
purpose  ...  To  define  this  deeper  thrusting  purpose  is  to  ap 
proach  the  realm  of  morals  and  religion,  and  to  deal  with  life 
itself.  The  law  of  nature  is  that  life  is  the  purpose  of  life.  .  .  . 
The  law  of  the  Western  religions  on  which  our  civilization  is 
based  is  that  virtue  —  the  good  life  —  is  the  object  of  life." 

Certainly  no  political  creed  can  claim  a  higher  purpose 
than  this;  so  complete  is  our  sympathy  with  it  that  we  are 
printing  in  this  issue  an  article  which  suggests  a  simple  but 
effective  plan  for  removing  one  of  the  most  disastrous  conse 
quences  of  a  certain  type  of  privilege.  Nevertheless,  we  per 
ceive  a  growing  attitude  of  disappointment  and  distress,  and  a 


FOREWORD  [  5  ] 

wide-spread  recognition  of  the  failure  of  the  New  Deal  to 
attain  its  objectives. 

The  alchemists  of  the  middle  ages  were  not  mistaken  in 
believing  that  the  production  of  gold  from  air  and  water  was 
desirable,  but  their  efforts  proved  fruitless  —  with  the  tools  and 
materials  at  hand,  the  trick  simply  could  not  be  turned.  Mod 
ern  economists  have  evolved  statistical  yardsticks  which  ap 
proximate  the  truth  with  marvelous  precision.  But  a  com 
modity  index,  for  example,  bears  at  best  the  same  relationship 
to  the  price  level  that  a  thermometer  bears  to  the  weather. 
You  can  control  the  thermometer  —  smash  it  on  the  ground  if 
it  does  not  behave  —  but  you  cannot  control  the  weather. 

The  New  Deal  represents  neither  a  carefully  prepared  eco 
nomic  program  which  has  benefited  from  the  experience  of  the 
past,  nor  a  philosophy  of  government  produced  by  deduction 
from  abstract  concepts,  such  as  Jefferson's  or  Wilson's.  It  is 
merely  a  slogan  which  aroused  the  hope  of  a  bewildered 
people  and  gained  their  sanction  for  a  series  of  unwarranted 
experiments.  It  is  political  pragmatism  and  nothing  more. 

When  the  branch  of  a  tree  is  rotten,  you  can  save  its  life  by 
pruning  the  dead  wood  but  you  save  nothing  by  chopping 
down  the  tree.  In  the  fabulous  'twenties  there  were  corrupt 
men  in  high  places  who  abused  their  privileges  and  betrayed 
their  trust.  Our  financial  institutions  needed  to  be  purged  but 
not  destroyed.  As  the  President  put  it,  replying  in  his  most 
recent  fireside  chat  to  critics  of  certain  abuses  which  have  ap 
peared  in  the  relief  program:  "It  should  be  remembered  that 
in  every  job  there  are  some  imperfections.  There  are  chiselers 
in  every  walk  of  life,  there  are  those  in  every  industry  who  are 
guilty  of  unfair  practices,  every  profession  has  its  black 
sheep." 

Might  it  not  be  wiser  to  concentrate  on  the  elimination  of 
the  chiselers,  rather  than  risk  destroying  the  industries  which 
they  happen  to  infest?  It  is  true  that  when  rats  are  found  in  a 
house  a  most  effective  way  of  removing  them  is  to  burn  the 
house,  but  that  necessitates  moving  to  a  new  house,  and  some 
times  rats  are  found  there,  too.  It  is  almost  time  for  the  New 


[  6  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Dealers  to  realize  that  government  is  needed  chiefly  to  protect 
our  liberties  from  foreign  invasions  and  from  the  ruthlessness 
of  predatory  individuals:  it  can  safeguard  our  freedom  and 
husband  the  countless  opportunities  of  an  abundant  land,  but 
it  cannot  provide  us  with  a  substitute  for  work.  Like  Gulliver, 
it  can  injure  its  Lilliputian  masters  by  a  gesture  or  a  sneeze,  but 
it  is  incapable  of  helping  them  to  help  themselves. 

Some  economists  talk  about  the  absence  of  demand,  the 
lack  of  purchasing  power.  The  fact  is  that  supply  creates  de 
mand  and  production  alone  creates  purchasing  power.  If  you 
question  this  statement  just  look  at  American  history.  In  1 800 
there  was  no  demand  for  rail  transportation  but  fifty  years 
later  railroads  had  become  a  necessary  part  of  our  life.  In  1 900 
there  was  no  demand  for  automobiles,  but  in  1935  a  single 
manufacturer  is  producing  a  million  cars  —  to  meet  the  "de 
mand."  Twenty  years  ago  there  was  no  demand  for  airplanes 
and  air-conditioning,  radios  and  electric  refrigerators,  rayon 
and  cellophane.  Today  there  is  no  real  demand  for  prefabri 
cated  houses  and  streamlined  trains,  television  and  transat 
lantic  air  service,  but  in  twenty  years  they  will  be  regarded  as 
necessities.  Remember  that  America  is  the  land  of  opportu 
nity,  but  also  remember  that  opportunity  and  security  are 
antipathetic,  and  that  the  buggy  business  was  made  highly 
insecure  by  the  automobile.  Even  opportunity  has  its  "just 
price." 

But  what  of  other  things  than  economics?  Really  it  is  curious 
that  the  science  of  money  should  occupy  such  a  prominent 
place  in  the  national  consciousness  at  a  time  when  the  real 
value  of  money  is  rapidly  declining.  Value  rests  partly  on 
scarcity,  but  mostly  on  prestige.  Copies  of  the  Gutenberg 
Bible  and  Shakespeare  folios  are  rare,  but  so  are  many  long 
forgotten  books.  Prestige  results  from  the  opinion  of  the  com 
munity:  fickle  in  many  respects,  it  is  strangely  consistent  in  its 
attitude  toward  the  masterpieces  of  art. 

A  generation  ago,  wealth  conferred  great  prestige  on  its 
possessors:  money  was  the  symbol  and  the  only  symbol  of 
success.  Did  anyone  question  the  importance  of  a  dowager  in 


FOREWORD  [  7  ] 

a  well  turned  out  victoria?  But  something  has  happened  to  the 
prestige  of  wealth.  If  our  standards  were  the  same  as  those  of 
our  parents,  movie  stars  would  outrank  bank  presidents,  and 
baseball  players  take  precedence  over  supreme  court  judges. 
In  the  last  few  years  racketeers  and  bootleggers  have  acquired 
fortunes,  only  to  discover  that  nobody  cares.  Kudos  can  no 
longer  be  bought  with  dollars  alone.  The  privileges  which  our 
reformers  seek  to  destroy  may  already  have  become  as  harm 
less  as  Don  Quixote's  windmills.  Even  without  the  undermin 
ing  efforts  of  communists  and  demagogues,  the  foundations  of 
aristocracy  are  as  insecure  as  quicksand  and  as  mutable  as  the 
fortunes  of  a  political  party. 

There  have  been  aristocracies  based  primarily  on  cultiva 
tion.  The  age  of  Pericles  and  the  age  of  Louis  XIV  afford 
examples.  Certainly  there  has  never  been  a  greater  interest  in 
American  culture  than  there  is  today.  In  the  small  towns  of 
the  east  and  middle-west  people  are  eagerly  listening  to  visit 
ing  lecturers  who  have  more  fundamental  knowledge  than  the 
old  Chatauquas.  Most  of  those  lecturers  who  have  recently 
been  out  through  the  country  report  that  they  are  moved  by 
the  simplicity  and  energy  of  this  interest.  An  American  ballet 
gave  its  first  performances  this  winter;  an  American  conducted 
the  New  York  Philharmonic  orchestra  for  the  first  time;  and 
an  American  impressario  was  chosen  to  head  the  Metropolitan 
Opera  Company. 

Is  it  possible  that  an  age  of  cultivation  is  about  to  dawn  in 
this  country? 


Who  Bred  These  Utopias? 

CHARLES    MAGEE    ADAMS 

rrX)  MANY  spectators  of  our  unfolding  national  drama 
•••  the  most  momentous  —  if  not  foreboding — socio-political 
resultant  of  the  economic  depression  is  the  emergence  of  a 
militant  mass  movement. 

The  phrasing  of  that  statement  may  tend  to  bog  it  down  in 
quibbling  over  terms.  At  best,  "mass"  is  an  ungracious  word. 
Those  whose  terminology  follows  the  hallowed  traditions  of 
stump  speaking  will  want  to  substitute  "the  common  peepul." 
Others  whose  philosophy  has  a  Marxian  inspiration  will  insist 
on  "the  proletariat."  While  still  others,  taking  their  cue  from 
Washington,  will  prefer  the  now  accepted  "underprivileged." 
However,  I  stand  by  "mass"  as  being  more  accurate,  despite 
its  curse  of  complacent  superiority.  And  regardless  of  terms, 
the  meaning  is  much  the  same.  In  the  sixth  year  of  the  de 
pression,  we  are  witnessing  perhaps  the  most  widespread 
manifestation  of  aggressive  mass-consciousness  that  has  ever 
developed  in  the  United  States.  No  one  who  is  aware  of  what 
is  afoot  can  be  insensible  of  that. 

This  mass  movement  of  course  takes  many  forms:  Upton 
Sinclair's  ill-fated  EPIC,  Utopia  Inc.,  the  Townsend  plan, 
Huey  Long's  Share-the-Wealth  society,  Father  Coughlin's 
National  Union  for  Social  Justice,  and  the  immediate  cash 
payment  of  the  veterans'  bonus,  not  to  mention  various 
agrarian  schemes.  Irrespective  of  differences  in  name  and 
detail,  all  these  have  one  element  in  common.  They  seek  to 
improve  the  economic  status  of  the  low-income  group  by  the 
more  or  less  disguised  expedient  of  taking  from  the  "haves" 
and  giving  to  the  "have-nots." 

To  anyone  who  can  separate  thinking  from  wishing  it  is 
scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  that,  even  granting  the 
highest  of  motives,  this  fell-swoop  solution  of  our  difficulties  is 
more  illusory  than  promising.  However,  the  fundamental 
problem  which  these  glittering  cure-alls  raise  is  not  economic 

[8] 


WHO  BRED  THESE  UTOPIAS?  [  9  ] 

but  human;  not  to  show  why  the  blue-prints  of  paradise 
would  prove  grim  futilities  if  carried  into  practice,  but  rather 
to  discover  why  such  impossible  schemes  have  become  the 
spearhead  of  what  gives  every  indication  of  being  the  greatest 
mass  movement  in  our  history. 

Superficially,  the  explanation  is  simple.  Whenever  any  con 
siderable  share  of  the  population  finds  itself  in  want,  chronic 
social  stresses  become  acute,  with  the  consequent  emergence 
of  schemes  calculated  to  cure  all  economic  ills.  Every  major 
depression  has  demonstrated  this.  During  the  hard  times  of 
the  'nineties,  for  example,  Populism  and  Free  Silver  served 
as  mouthpieces  for  mass  discontent.  The  present  mass  move 
ment  is  greater  than  its  predecessors  only  because  the  present 
depression  is  more  severe.  But  correct  as  this  diagnosis  is  with 
regard  to  root  cause,  it  does  not  explain  the  significant  pe 
culiarities  which  distinguish  the  current  mass  movement  from 
its  predecessors  —  notably,  its  scope  and  character. 

Taking  the  membership  claims  of  the  various  economic 
cults  at  anywhere  near  face  value,  it  would  appear  that  up 
wards  of  seventy-five  million  Americans  subscribe  to  (more 
important,  are  financially  supporting)  one  or  another  of  the 
current  millennial  "isms."  The  Populists  and  Free  Silverites 
never  recruited  any  such  host  as  that.  The  total  far  exceeds 
the  most  pessimistic  estimates  of  the  unemployed.  Neither  is  it 
likely  that  so  many  people  are  in  even  what  could  rightly  be 
called  straitened  circumstances  as  a  result  of  the  depression. 

The  character  of  the  present  mass  movement  is  still  more 
sharply  different  from  its  predecessors.  The  Townsendites, 
Utopians  and  Share-the-Wealthers  are  organized  with  a 
shrewd  thoroughness  that  makes  the  efforts  of  the  'nineties 
seem  crude  and  fumbling.  Further,  their  programs  are  ag 
gressive,  not  to  say  dictatorial.  There  is  nothing  of  abject 
pleading  about  $200  a  month,  a  $4,000  living  standard,  or 
the  Kingfish's  proposal  of  a  home,  food,  clothing,  a  radio  and 
a  car.  In  short,  the  1935  model  economic  cult  gives  ample 
indication  of  being  based  on  the  existence  of  a  coherent  and 
aroused  mob  opinion.  Clearly  then  the  present  situation  must 


[  io  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

contain  some  factor  or  other  which  accounts  for  the  distin 
guishing  extent  and  militancy  of  the  current  mass  movement. 

The  business  community  finds  this  factor  as  obvious  as  the 
proverbial  sore  thumb.  Leading  industrialists  and  financiers 
have  of  course  given  the  matter  much  attention.  Overwhelm 
ingly  orthodox  on  economic  doctrine,  they  are  meeting  the 
onslaught  of  the  millennial  cults  with  a  blast  of  denunciation 
which  betrays  deep  concern  over  the  possibilities  implicit  in 
the  situation.  And  according  to  the  conservative  tycoons,  the 
causes  responsible  for  the  disturbing  clamor  of  the  masses  are 
these:  Communist  propaganda,  "pink"  professors,  and  wild- 
eyed  demagogues.  Since  the  popular  unrest  has  been  blamed 
so  regularly  and  vociferously  on  this  infamous  trilogy,  it  may 
be  well  to  weigh  the  evidence  critically.  Any  statement  re 
peated  over  often  is  likely  to  repay  close  inspection. 

Begin  with  the  item  of  Communist  propaganda.  It  is  true 
that  there  is  a  Communist  party  in  the  United  States.  And 
like  all  other  parties  it  seeks  converts  to  its  doctrines.  It  is  also 
known  that  a  certain  amount  of  propaganda  has  reached 
America  from  Russian  sources.  But  notwithstanding  the 
"revelations"  of  congressional  committees,  it  is  unlikely  that 
the  sum  of  these  efforts  can  account  for  any  considerable  share 
of  the  present  mass  movement.  American  Communists  are  too 
few,  and  Russia  can  spare  little  energy  for  world  revolution. 

Consider  then  the  "pink"  professor.  Granted,  more  than  a 
few  of  the  instructors  at  our  universities  hold  economic  views 
which  are  liberal  under  any  construction  of  the  term.  They 
have  not  hesitated  to  express  these  views  through  media  other 
than  classroom  lectures.  To  assume,  however,  that  their  ut 
terances  have  played  any  important  part  in  fomenting  the 
masses  is  to  pay  them  an  undeserved  compliment.  The  gulf 
between  higher  education  and  "the  common  peepul"  is  for 
biddingly  wide.  Even  assuming  —  as  seems  the  conservatives' 
custom  —  that  every  collegian  automatically  becomes  a  carrier 
of  revolutionary  infection,  the  "pink"  professors'  wholesale  in 
oculation  of  the  masses  would  be  a  slow  and  doubtful  process. 
Remains  the  wild-eyed  demagogue.  Of  business'  three  fa- 


WHO  BRED  THESE  UTOPIAS?  [  n  ] 

vorite  scapegoats  the  case  against  him  is  possibly  best.  Thanks 
to  modern  communication  which  facilitates  the  marshalling 
of  mob  opinion,  he  is  a  more  potent  factor  than  in  previous 
depressions.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  type  of 
public  on  which  demagogues  thrive  is  proverbially  fickle. 
That  alone  reduces  their  effectiveness  to  a  surprising  extent. 

So  it  is  exceedingly  doubtful  whether  these  familiar  male 
factors  are  as  black  as  the  conservative  business  community 
likes  to  paint  them.  Together,  they  may  have  tipped  the  apple 
cart  of  popular  opinion.  But  they  have  not  upset  it.  For  the 
most  part  they  work  at  cross-purposes.  The  worst  that  can  be 
said  of  their  efforts  is  that  they  constitute  a  contributory  cause 
of  the  predicament  in  which  economic  orthodoxy  finds  itself. 
What  then  is  the  reason  for  the  situation?  Why  are  the  citadels 
of  conservatism  —  yes,  of  common  sense  and  logic  —  being 
besieged  by  a  swarming  mob,  following  as  fantastic  an  assort 
ment  of  banners  as  ever  deluded  the  unthinking  into  a  fore 
doomed  cause? 

It  seems  to  me  that  business  itself  supplies  a  considerable,  if 
not  the  major,  share  of  the  answer.  Admitted,  this  statement  is 
not  calculated  to  evoke  enthusiastic  cheers  from  the  United 
States  Chamber  of  Commerce.  Neither  is  it  intended  to  be 
universally  inclusive.  A  goodly  number  of  commercial  institu 
tions  could  be  mentioned  which  stand  out  as  heartening 
exceptions  to  the  rule.  In  the  main,  however,  I  think  a  con 
vincing  case  can  be  made  for  the  proposition  that  business 
has  —  ironically  —  played  an  important,  if  unwitting,  part 
in  creating  the  situation  it  now  finds  so  disturbing.  Further, 
the  case  can  be  made  without  resorting  to  evidence  beyond 
the  ken  of  the  intelligent  layman. 

As  has  been  indicated,  the  distinguishing  characteristics  of 
the  present  mass  resurgence  are  its  unprecedented  scope  and 
the  existence  of  a  coherent  and  assertive  mob  opinion.  Such 
things  do  not  "just  happen."  The  group  is  notoriously  inert, 
amorphous,  inarticulate.  Therefore  the  current  social  solution 
must  contain  some  catalyzer  heretofore  absent  which  has  had 
the  effect  of  awakening  and  spreading  the  sense  of  mass 


[  I2  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

consciousness.  Far  more  powerful  in  this  respect  than  the 
three  widely  publicized  ferments  is  the  reagent  business  has 
poured  into  the  national  test-tube:  namely,  mass  selling. 

'T'HERE  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  most  important  change 
-*-  which  has  taken  place  in  the  objective  and  method  of  Ameri 
can  business  since  the  last  major  depression  is  the  development 
of  volume  distribution.  At  first  thought  this  would  seem  to 
have  no  bearing  whatever  on  the  emergence  of  a  militant  mass 
movement.  Technically,  volume  distribution  is  predicated  on 
high  quality  merchandise  at  low  prices,  made  possible  by 
quantity  production.  Actually,  however,  it  involves  factors 
and  practices  which  have  had  a  profound  socio-political  effect, 
as  will  soon  become  evident  if  one  examines  the  subject  fur 
ther.  To  state  the  matter  in  broad  terms,  business  has  not  been 
content  to  build  volume  sales  on  the  appeal  of  aristocratic 
quality  at  plebeian  prices.  It  has  improved  on  fundamentals  by 
flattering  the  importance  of  the  mob. 

The  first  and  perhaps  most  damning  evidence  of  that  is  the 
fatuous  "the-customer-is-al ways-right"  philosophy.  Like  so 
many  of  the  other  sonorous  dogmas  in  the  public-relations  creed 
of  business,  this  is  a  dangerous  half-truth.  Sometimes  the  cus 
tomer  is  right.  But  more  often  he  is  wrong.  What  with  inten 
sive  specialization  and  willful  ignorance,  the  average  layman 
is  pretty  certain  to  lack  sufficient  information  to  judge  the 
merits  of  even  commonplace  commodities.  Yet  the  doctrine 
that  "the  customer  is  always  right"  is  the  implied,  if  not 
frankly  avowed,  premise  of  volume  merchandising. 

That  glorious  exponent  of  commercial  progress,  the  auto 
mobile  industry,  supplies  a  devastating  example  of  the  tragic 
length  to  which  this  spineless  principle  can  be  carried.  Anyone 
who  has  even  an  approximate  notion  of  automotive  costs  is 
well  aware  that  the  dire  need  of  the  American  motorist  is  a 
really  economical  car.  Given  a  free  hand,  the  engineers  could 
turn  out  such  a  vehicle;  one  selling  for  less  than  three  hundred 
dollars  and  assuring  at  least  forty  miles  to  the  gallon  of  fuel. 
But  no  such  car  is  to  be  had.  The  motor  magnates  go  on  sacri- 


WHO  BRED  THESE  UTOPIAS?  [  13  ] 

ficing  economy  —  and  public  safety  —  to  the  insatiable  god 
of  speed.  Their  defense  is  that  the  public  wants  faster  and  still 
faster  cars.  What  they  mean  is  that  they  lack  the  intestinal 
fortitude  to  tell  the  motoring  morons  that  they  are  criminally 
stupid  when  they  demand  eighty  miles  an  hour  or  more. 
Many  other  instances  of  the  same  grotesque  sort  could  be 
cited:  lighting  fixtures  blighted  by  considerations  of  style, 
home  radios  capable  of  delivering  auditorium  volume, 
houses  which  sacrifice  the  primary  necessities  of  shelter  to 
"front." 

Technicians  can  and  would  design  products  admirably 
suited  to  the  known  needs.  But  their  hands  are  tied  by  the 
master  minds  of  the  sales  departments.  To  these  eminently 
"practical"  gentlemen  the  first  and  greatest  commandment 
is  "give  the  public  what  it  wants,  regardless."  Which,  in 
practice,  becomes  "give  the  saps  what  they  want."  For  the 
moment  you  establish  the  principle  that  the  uninformed 
layman  —  not  the  trained  engineer  or  artist  —  is  the  arbiter 
of  technical  and  aesthetic  questions,  you  inevitably  elevate 
the  ignorant  to  a  position  of  dictating  the  wishes  of  the  buying 
public.  It  is  a  case  of  the  fleet  being  held  to  the  speed  of  the 
slowest  ship. 

But  the  cringing  premise  that  "the  customer  is  always  right" 
is  only  the  obscure  cornerstone  of  volume  selling.  The  gaudy 
superstructure  reared  on  this  insecure  foundation  affords 
more  direct  —  and  ironically  amusing  —  evidence  of  the 
ways  by  which  business  has  flattered  the  mass  into  assertive 
self-consciousness,  without  troubling  to  weigh  the  social  and 
political  consequences. 

Consider  for  example,  the  volume  merchandiser's  fixed  and 
narrow  conception  of  the  average  buyer.  To  the  mere  outsider 
it  would  appear  that,  even  though  a  manufacturer  wants  a 
quantity  market,  it  should  not  be  necessary  for  him  to  scale 
down  his  typical  prospect  to  a  predetermined  norm.  Appar 
ently  there  are  intelligent  as  well  as  stupid  people  who  might 
buy  his  product.  But  that  assumption  is  hopelessly  naive.  "To 
get  volume  you've  got  to  concentrate  on  the  common  people, 


[  i4  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

and  they're  just  a  lot  of  dim-wits."  So  runs  the  cynical  dictum 
of  the  sales  departments. 

The  fine  art  of  "talking  points"  shows  how  richly  this  thesis 
can  be  elaborated.  To  the  uninitiate,  a  product  is  sold  on  its 
intrinsic  merits:  utility,  desirability,  the  details  which  make  it 
superior  to  its  competitors.  The  modern  "creators"  of  consumer- 
demand,  however,  have  progressed  far  beyond  these  crude  con 
siderations.  They  hold  that  the  "common  people"  (of  whom 
the  Lord  providentially  made  so  many)  never  think,  they 
merely  feel.  To  sell  them,  you  must  appeal  not  to  reason,  but 
emotion;  preferably  vest  your  product  with  a  golden  aura  of 
romance,  outlined  against  a  backdrop  of  fear. 

Accordingly  by  reading  or  listening  to  really  advanced  ad 
vertising,  we  find  that  the  up-to-date  maiden  does  not  buy 
toilet  soaps,  dentifrices  and  antiseptic  solutions  for  the  sordid 
purpose  of  coping  with  dirt  and  germs.  She  employs  them  to 
ward  off  the  host  of  dread  menaces  —  all  bearing  horrific 
names  —  which  stand  between  her  and  her  coveted  goal,  the 
altar.  Once  she  has  "got  her  man"  she  buys  certain  foods,  not 
for  their  flavor  or  nutritive  value,  but  to  cajole  her  sulking 
mate  by  the  well-known  stomach-to-heart  route.  Of  course 
his  ill  temper  is  due  to  his  having  to  endure  that  torturing 
masculine  ordeal,  shaving;  and  any  of  the  certain  aids  to 
"starting  the  day  with  a  smile"  will  solve  the  problem.  In  the 
remote  event  that  happiness  still  eludes  them,  the  fine  ecstasy 
of  the  honeymoon  can  always  be  recaptured  by  the  use  of  an 
(of  course  not  habit-forming)  laxative.  And  should  there  be  a 
"blessed  event,"  the  heir  is  certain  to  become  an  athletic 
champion  if  he  eats  glowingly  endorsed  cereals. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  a  modicum  of  truth  in  these  glamorous 
claims.  There  is  also  a  modicum  of  truth  in  the  proposition 
that  war  brings  out  the  best  in  man.  Yet  thinking  people  are 
not  advocating  wholesale  carnage  for  that  reason. 

Such  advertising  —  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  — 
is  of  course  nothing  more  than  the  frank  exploitation  of  gul 
libility.  It  preys  on  shallow  emotions  and  prejudices,  not  to 
mention  superstition.  (One  manufacturer  of  an  avowedly 


WHO  BRED  THESE  UTOPIAS?  [15] 

scientific  product  has  even  used  astrology  to  "ballyhoo"  his 
wares.)  It  brazenly  caters  to  thoughtlessness  or  downright 
ignorance.  By  doing  so  it  inevitably,  if  unwittingly,  prepares 
the  soil  of  the  public  mind  for  the  growth  of  "crackpot" 
economic  cults. 

Nor  is  this  calculated  exploitation  of  vapid  sentimentality 
the  only  trick  in  the  volume  merchandiser's  capacious  bag. 
Another  which  is  still  more  powerful  in  molding  mass  opinion 
is  the  sort  of  living  standard  set  up  as  typical.  Examine  a 
dozen  or  hundred  random  specimens  of  our  best  advertising, 
not  for  specific  content,  but  for  atmosphere.  Is  there  any 
suggestion  that  the  millions  of  American  families  with  modest 
incomes  are  content  to  live  in  decent  simplicity;  any  faintest 
hint  that  millions  more  can  make  ends  meet  only  by  the 
practice  of  stern  frugality?  Spare  the  thought.  According  to 
the  advertisers,  the  "typical"  American  family  lives  in  a  riot 
of  luxury.  Every  detail  of  the  domestic  establishment,  from  the 
sublimated  kitchen  equipment  which  takes  the  "drudgery" 
out  of  housework  to  the  intimate  accessories  of  my  lady's  toilet, 
flaunts  the  hall-mark  of  an  almost  Lucullian  magnificence. 

Granted,  there  is  a  shred  of  justification  for  this  distorted 
picture.  The  desire  to  possess  is  a  powerful  incentive  to  work. 
Unfortunately,  however,  desire  and  ability  are  not  synony 
mous.  For  the  overwhelming  majority  of  Americans,  the 
standard  of  living  depicted  in  advertising  is  unattainable,  and 
will  continue  to  be  under  any  economic  system  which  can  be 
evolved  in  this  generation.  That  being  the  case,  dangling  such 
an  impossible  prize  before  those  who  cannot  win  it  is  not  only 
sardonic  cruelty:  it  has  profound  and  sure  social  consequences. 

The  "typical  prospect"  for  whom  the  volume  merchandiser 
is  gunning  does  not  pause  to  reflect  that  the  luxury  depicted  in 
advertising  is  as  unrepresentative  as  the  De  Mille  bathroom. 
She  —  for  a  woman  is  generally  the  chosen  target  —  more  or 
less  consciously  takes  it  for  granted  that  every  other  woman 
has  fur  coats,  evening  gowns,  filmy  under-things,  a  swanky 
car,  exquisite  furniture,  and  a  profusion  of  automatic  gadgets 
that  whisk  all  the  grubby  details  out  of  her  idyllic  existence. 


[  !6  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

From  this  assumption  it  is  only  a  short  step  to  the  credulous 
conviction  that  the  possession  of  such  an  earthly  paradise  is  a 
universal  and  inalienable  right. 

The  certain  result  is  a  rebellious  dissatisfaction,  of  the  kind 
that  breeds  envy  rather  than  ambition.  Moreover,  it  has  been 
intensified  by  a  fantastic  system  of  installment  selling  which 
seems  to  put  every  luxury  within  reach  of  those  whose  de 
mands  have  been  fanned  to  fever  pitch,  only  to  snatch  it  away 
when  the  day  of  reckoning  dawns.  To  put  the  matter  another 
way,  volume  merchandising  has,  for  reasons  of  short-sighted 
expediency,  created  a  composite  American  who  can  be  de 
scribed  about  as  follows:  well-groomed,  well-fed,  more  than  a 
little  vulgar  as  to  tastes,  "smart"  after  the  fashion  of  the 
"wisecrack,"  rather  frankly  sensual  and  possessing  a  mediocre 
mind  which  is  rarely  used. 

'T'HE  social  consequences  of  this  caricature  would  be  lamen- 
•*•  table  even  though  the  type  were  merely  an  occasional  individ 
ual.  But  again  for  reasons  of  short-sighted  expediency,  business 
has  glorified  its  importance  by  the  magic  of  multiplication. 
Consider  those  pet  phrases  of  the  "ballyhoo"  artist:  "the 
world's  fastest  selling  line,"  and  "ten  million  buyers  can't  be 
wrong."  It  is  "immaterial,  incompetent  and  irrelevant"  that 
the  "world's  fastest  selling  line"  has,  in  more  than  a  few  cases, 
been  shown  to  be  of  dubious  merit;  or  that  ten  million  buyers 
can  be  deluded  into  paying  fat  prices  for  inferior  goods.  The 
mere  fact  of  volume  sales  flatters  the  crowd  into  believing  that 
its  judgment  is  infallible.  Given  sufficient  numbers,  no  matter 
how  obtained,  any  error  of  opinion  takes  on  the  sanctity  of  the 
popular  will,  than  which  there  is  no  higher  law. 

If  this  transformation  of  a  mistaken  judgment  into  unques 
tioned  Tightness  by  the  magic  of  numbers  had  to  be  reckoned 
with  only  in  the  field  of  tangible  merchandise,  its  effect  on  the 
mass  mind  would  be  serious  enough.  But  the  impact  of  its 
wholesale  extension  into  the  intellectual  and  cultural  spheres 
dominated  by  commercial  considerations  shows  how  deadly 
the  fallacy  can  become.  Broadway  and  Hollywood  fairly 


WHO  BRED  THESE  UTOPIAS?  [17] 

bristle  with  "horrible"  examples.  It  would  be  futile,  for  in 
stance,  to  tell  the  average  boxoffice  patron  that  "Abie's 
Irish  Rose"  was  an  execrable  play.  Millions  packed  houses 
from  coast  to  coast  to  see  it.  Therefore  it  must  stand  as  one  of 
the  all-time  classics  of  drama. 

Similarly,  Zane  Grey  is  a  greater  novelist  than  Joseph 
Conrad;  Irving  Berlin  a  greater  composer  than  Ludwig  Bee 
thoven,  Edgar  Guest  a  greater  poet  than  John  Keats;  Aimee 
Semple  McPherson  a  greater  preacher  than  Harry  Emerson 
Fosdick;  and  Walter  B.  Pitkin  a  greater  savant  than  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  for  the  unassailable  reason  that  their  work  is 
more  popular.  The  multitude  can  never  be  wrong. 

Its  domineering  intolerance  of  anything  above  dead  level 
dogs  the  steps  of  everyone  engaged  in  writing  or  lecturing  for 
"popular  consumption."  If  technical  phrases  cannot  be 
avoided,  they  must  be  ridiculed.  Something  requiring  thought 
should  be  shunned  as  the  plague.  One  must  always  be  human 
and  interesting;  which  is  to  say,  obey  every  slightest  whim  of 
that  jealous  tyrant,  mediocrity. 

For  a  clear,  if  devastating,  picture  of  the  extreme  to  which 
this  philosophy  can  be  carried,  no  contemporary  illustration 
is  better  than  the  radio.  Here  we  have  a  perfect  conjunction  of 
the  two  factors  —  business,  in  the  person  of  the  commercial 
sponsor,  and  the  mass  audience.  The  result,  as  anyone  can 
observe  is  a  program  tailored  to  the  lowest  common  denomi 
nator  of  listener  taste. 

What  is  not  so  evident,  and  infinitely  more  significant,  is 
the  arrogance  of  the  group  whose  tastes  are  being  served. 
The  "mass"  listener  not  only  dotes  on  his  crooners,  low  come 
dians  and  syrupy  "philosophers,"  but  indignantly  resents  any 
suggestion  that  he  may  be  wrong.  If  a  poll  shows  ten  thousand 
listeners  want  blues  and  only  one  thousand  a  symphony,  a 
symphony  is  automatically  condemned.  It  is  a  betrayal  of 
democracy  —  nay,  a  sin  —  to  have  tastes  at  variance  with  the 
crowd.  In  other  words,  radio  exemplifies  the  full  flowering  of 
that  paradox  of  present-day  culture,  the  insufferable  snobbery 
of  the  overwhelming  mass. 


[  i8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Now,  running  true  to  form,  this  insufferable  snobbery  of  the 
crowd,  this  tyrannizing  mediocrity,  is  spreading  its  indomi 
table  sway  into  the  politico-economic  realm.  Why  not?  All  the 
elements  of  the  national  drama  make  that  the  logical  next  act. 
Glorified  and  kowtowed  to  in  every  other  department,  the 
mass  is  cocked  and  primed  to  accept  the  brood  of  mad  millen 
nial  adventures  which  charlatans  and  deluded  idealists  have 
spawned. 

To  venture  to  point  out  that  the  Townsend  plan  means 
certain  national  bankruptcy;  that  Long's  Share-the-Wealth 
menaces  the  middle-class  along  with  the  rich;  or  that  Cough- 
lin's  inflation  is  sure  to  make  the  poor  still  poorer,  is  to  brand 
the  dissenter  as  one  of  those  arch  public  enemies,  "traitorous 
Tories."  The  mob,  seventy-five  million  strong,  has  hailed 
these  schemes  as  the  infallible  means  to  salvation.  And  the 
irrefutable  logic  of  numbers  makes  anything  right.  So  the 
mob  will  brook  no  parleying  on  the  score  of  mere  reason. 

All  this,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  partial,  if  not  major,  explana 
tion  of  what  lies  behind  the  militant  mass  movement  we  are 
now  witnessing.  It  would  be  absurd,  of  course,  to  say  that  it 
is  the  only  cause.  The  situation  is  too  complex,  modern  society 
is  too  tightly  articulated,  to  warrant  any  such  claim. 

And  when  delving  for  basic  causes  one  stumbles  —  para 
doxically  —  on  the  factor  of  popular  education.  As  compared 
with  frontier  conditions  under  which  literacy  was  more  the 
exception  than  the  rule,  our  population  now  has  general,  if 
rudimentary  schooling.  But  true  to  the  principle  of  "a  little 
knowledge,"  this  has  had  the  ironic  effect  of  bringing  disdain, 
rather  than  added  respect,  on  the  scholar.  Save  in  the  techni 
cal  fields,  the  average  individual,  with  his  smattering  of 
information,  feels  himself  pretty  much  the  equal  of  the  gen 
uinely  trained  mind.  Certainly  this  must  be  set  down  as  a 
contributory  cause  of  the  situation.  In  the  main,  however,  I 
think  the  pragmatic  philosophy  of  business  with  respect  to 
mass  distribution  is  a  far  more  important  factor,  though  one 
which  thus  far  has  been  ignored. 

Assuredly,   by  its  sedulous  if  cynical   truckling   to  mass 


WHO  BRED  THESE  UTOPIAS?  [  19  ] 

moronity,  business  had  done  an  admirable  job  of  tilling  and 
fertilizing  the  soil  for  the  bumper  crop  of  economic  quackery 
now  so  near  to  bearing  thistles.  It  could  scarcely  be  otherwise, 
considering  the  time  and  skill  expended  on  preparation  and 
the  notorious  susceptibility  of  the  crowd. 

The  grim  humor  of  the  situation  is  that  business,  confronted 
with  the  imminent  possibility  that  its  very  life  may  be  trampled 
out  under  the  feet  of  the  mob  it  has  flattered  and  pampered 
into  self-consciousness,  is  frantically  adjuring  the  public  to 
pause  and  "think  straight."  The  appeal  seems  perilously  late. 

After  years  of  being  not  only  permitted  but  taught  to  be 
lieve  that  deadly  speed  is  the  prime  desideratum  in  a  car,  that 
cosmetics  are  the  key  to  personality,  that  the  "funnies"  are  the 
heart  of  a  newspaper,  that  crooning  is  great  music,  and  that 
luxury  is  the  common  birthright  of  all  Americans,  the  mass  is 
scarcely  in  a  position  to  think  straight  on  economic  funda 
mentals.  Under  such  circumstances,  any  wide-spread  recog 
nition  of  fallacies  would  be  more  than  amazing.  It  would  be  a 
social  miracle. 

True,  one  can  sympathize  with  the  alarm  of  the  tycoons. 
Every  thoughtful  person  recognizes  the  grave  dangers  implicit 
in  the  situation.  But  unfortunately,  the  law  of  cause  and  effect 
cannot  be  suspended  by  invoking  the  emergency  clause.  A 
spoiled  child  does  not  become  a  self-disciplined  adult  in  a 
twinkling.  If  the  onslaught  of  the  economic  cults  is  stopped 
short  of  our  common  destruction  it  will  be  in  spite  of  the 
decisive,  albeit  unwitting,  part  business  has  played  in  spawn 
ing  them. 


Polyphemus 

THOMAS    WOLFE 

A  ONE-EYED  Spaniard,  one  of  the  early  voyagers,  was 
•**•  beating  up  the  American  coasts  out  of  the  tropics,  per 
haps  on  his  way  back  home,  perhaps  only  to  see  what  could  be 
seen.  He  does  not  tell  us  in  the  record  he  has  left  of  the  voyage 
how  he  happened  to  be  there,  but  it  seems  likely  that  he  was 
on  his  way  home  and  had  been  driven  off  his  course.  Subse 
quent  events  show  that  he  was  in  a  very  dilapidated  condition, 
and  in  need  of  overhauling:  the  sails  were  rent,  the  ship  was 
leaking,  the  food  and  water  stores  were  almost  exhausted. 
During  the  night  in  a  storm  off  one  of  the  cruellest  and  most 
evilly  celebrated  of  the  Atlantic  capes,  the  one-eyed  Spaniard 
was  driven  in  and  almost  wrecked.  By  some  miracle  of  good 
fortune  he  got  through  one  of  the  inlets  in  the  dark,  and  when 
light  broke  he  found  himself  becalmed  in  an  enormous  inlet 
of  pearl-grey  water. 

As  the  light  grew  he  made  out  seawards  a  long  almost  un 
broken  line  of  sandy  shoals  and  islands  that  formed  a  desolate 
barrier  between  the  sea  and  the  mainland,  and  made  this  bay 
or  sound  in  which  he  found  himself.  Away  to  the  west  he 
descried  now  the  line  of  the  shore:  it  was  also  low,  sandy,  and 
desolate  looking.  The  cool  grey  water  of  morning  slapped 
gently  at  the  sides  of  his  ship:  he  had  come  from  the  howling 
immensity  of  the  sea  into  the  desert  monotony  of  this  coast. 
It  was  as  bleak  and  barren  a  coast  as  the  one-eyed  Spaniard 
had  ever  seen.  And  indeed,  for  a  man  who  had  come  up  so 
many  times  under  the  headlands  of  Europe,  and  had  seen  the 
worn  escarpments  of  chalk,  the  lush  greenery  of  the  hills,  and 
the  minute  striped  cultivation  of  the  earth  that  greet  the  sailor 
returning  from  a  long  and  dangerous  voyage  —  and  awaken 
in  him  the  unspeakable  emotion  of  earth  which  has  been 
tilled  and  used  for  so  many  centuries,  with  its  almost  personal 
bond  for  the  men  who  have  lived  there  on  it,  and  whose  dust 
is  buried  in  it  —  there  must  have  been  something  particu- 

[20] 


POLYPHEMUS  [21] 

larly  desolate  about  this  coast  which  stretched  away  with  the 
immense  indifference  of  nature  into  silence  and  wilderness. 
The  Spaniard  felt  this,  and  the  barren  and  desert  quality  of  the 
place  is  duly  recorded  in  his  log,  which,  for  the  most  part, 
is  pretty  dry  reading. 

But  here  a  strange  kind  of  exhilaration  seizes  the  Spaniard: 
it  gets  into  his  writing,  it  begins  to  color  and  pulse  through  the 
grey  stuff  of  his  record.  The  light  of  the  young  rising  sun 
reddened  delicately  upon  the  waters;  immense  and  golden  it 
came  up  from  the  sea  behind  the  line  of  the  sea-dunes,  and 
suddenly  he  heard  the  fast  drumming  of  the  wild  ducks  as 
they  crossed  his  ship  high  up,  flying  swift  and  straight  as  pro 
jectiles.  Great  heavy  gulls  of  a  size  and  kind  he  had  never  seen 
before  swung  over  his  ship  in  vast  circles,  making  their  eerie 
creaking  noises.  The  powerful  birds  soared  on  their  strong 
even  wings,  with  their  feet  tucked  neatly  in  below  their  bodies; 
or  they  dove  and  tumbled  through  the  air,  settling  to  the 
water  with  great  flutterings  and  their  haunted  creaking 
clamor:  they  seemed  to  orchestrate  this  desolation,  they  gave 
a  tongue  to  loneliness  and  they  filled  the  hearts  of  the  men 
who  had  come  there  with  a  strange  exultancy.  For,  as  if  some 
subtle  and  radical  changes  had  been  effected  in  the  chemistry 
of  their  flesh  and  blood  by  the  air  they  breathed,  a  kind  of 
wild  glee  now  possessed  the  one-eyed  Spaniard's  men.  They 
began  to  laugh  and  sing,  and  to  be,  as  he  says,  "marvelous 
merry." 

During  the  morning  the  wind  freshened  a  little;  the  Span 
iard  set  his  sails  and  stood  in  towards  the  land.  By  noon  he 
was  going  up  the  coast  quite  near  the  shore  and  by  night  he 
had  put  into  the  mouth  of  one  of  the  coastal  rivers.  He  took  in 
his  sails  and  anchored  there.  There  was  nearby  on  shore  a 
settlement  of  "the  race  that  inhabits  these  regions,"  and  it  was 
evident  that  his  arrival  had  caused  a  great  commotion  among 
the  inhabitants,  for  some  who  had  fled  away  into  the  woods 
were  now  returning,  and  others  were  running  up  and  down 
the  shore  pointing  and  gesticulating  and  making  a  great  deal 
of  noise.  But  the  one-eyed  Spaniard  had  seen  Indians  before: 


[  22  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

that  was  an  old  story  to  him  now,  he  was  not  disturbed.  As  for 
his  men,  the  strange  exuberance  that  had  seized  them  in  the 
morning  does  not  seem  to  have  worn  off,  they  shouted  ribald 
jokes  at  the  Indians,  and  "did  laugh  and  caper  as  if  they  had 
been  madde." 

Nevertheless,  they  did  not  go  ashore  that  day.  The  one-eyed 
Spaniard  was  worn  out,  and  the  crew  was  exhausted:  they  ate 
such  food  as  they  had,  some  raisins,  cheese,  and  wine,  and 
after  posting  a  watch  they  went  to  sleep,  unmindful  of  the  fires 
that  flickered  in  the  Indian  village,  of  sounds  and  chants  and 
rumors,  or  of  the  forms  that  padded  softly  up  and  down  the 
shore. 

Then  the  marvelous  moon  moved  up  into  the  skies,  and 
blank  and  full,  blazed  down  upon  the  quiet  waters  of  the 
sound,  and  upon  the  Indian  village.  It  blazed  upon  the  one- 
eyed  Spaniard  and  his  lonely  little  ship  and  crew,  on  their 
rich  dull  lamps,  and  on  their  swarthy  sleeping  faces;  it  blazed 
upon  all  the  dirty  richness  of  their  ragged  costumes,  and  on 
their  greedy  little  minds,  obsessed  then  as  now  by  the  Euro 
pean's  greedy  myth  about  America,  to  which  he  remains 
forever  faithful  with  an  unwearied  and  idiot  pertinacity: 
"Where  is  the  gold  in  the  streets?  Lead  us  to  the  emerald 
plantations,  the  diamond  bushes,  the  platinum  mountains, 
and  the  cliffs  of  pearl.  Brother,  let  us  gather  in  the  shade  of 
the  ham  and  mutton  trees,  by  the  shores  of  ambrosial  rivers: 
we  will  bathe  in  the  fountains  of  milk,  and  pluck  hot  buttered 
rolls  from  the  bread  vines." 

Early  the  next  morning  the  Spaniard  went  ashore  with 
several  of  his  men.  "When  we  reached  land,"  he  writes,  "our 
first  act  was  to  fall  down  on  our  knees  and  render  thanks  to 
God  and  the  Blessed  Virgin  without  whose  intervention  we 
had  all  been  dead  men."  Their  next  act  was  to  "take  posses 
sion"  of  this  land  in  the  name  of  the  King  of  Spain  and  to 
ground  the  flag.  As  we  read  today  of  this  solemn  ceremony, 
its  pathos  and  puny  arrogance  touches  us  with  pity.  For  what 
else  can  we  feel  for  this  handful  of  greedy  adventurers  "taking 
possession"  of  the  immortal  wilderness  in  the  name  of  another 


POLYPHEMUS  [  23  ] 

puny  fellow  four  thousand  miles  away,  who  had  never  seen  or 
heard  of  the  place  and  could  never  have  understood  it  any 
better  than  these  men.  For  the  earth  is  never  "taken  possession 
of":  it  possesses. 

At  any  rate,  having  accomplished  these  acts  of  piety  and 
devotion,  the  Spaniards  rose  from  their  prayers,  faced  the 
crowd  of  Indians  who  had  by  this  time  ventured  quite  close 
to  all  this  unctuous  rigmarole  and  discharged  a  volley  from 
their  muskets  at  them  ("lest  they  become  too  froward  and 
threatening").  Two  or  three  fell  sprawling  on  the  ground,  and 
the  others  ran  away  yelling  into  the  woods.  Thus,  at  one  blast, 
Christianity  and  government  were  established. 

The  Spaniards  now  turned  their  attention  to  the  Indian 
village  —  they  began  to  pill  and  sack  it  with  the  deftness  of 
long  experience;  but,  as  they  entered  one  hut  after  another 
and  found  no  coffers  of  nuggets  or  chests  of  emeralds,  and 
found  indeed  that  not  even  the  jugs  and  pots  and  cooking 
utensils  were  of  gold  or  silver,  but  had  been  crudely  fashioned 
from  baked  earth,  their  rage  grew;  they  felt  tricked  and 
cheated,  and  began  to  smash  and  destroy  all  that  came  within 
their  reach.  This  sense  of  injury,  this  virtuous  indignation  has 
crept  into  the  Spaniard's  record  —  indeed,  we  are  edified  with 
a  lot  of  early  American  criticism  which,  save  for  a  few  ar 
chaisms  of  phrasing,  has  a  strangely  familiar  ring,  and  might 
almost  have  been  written  yesterday:  "This  is  a  wild  and  bar 
barous  kind  of  race,  full  of  bloudie  ways,  it  exists  in  such  a 
base  and  vile  sort  of  living  that  is  worthier  of  wild  beestes  than 
men:  they  live  in  darkness  and  of  the  artes  of  living  as  we  know 
them  they  are  ignorant,  one  could  think  that  God  Himself  has 
forgot  them,  they  are  so  farre  remote  from  any  lighte." 

He  comments  with  disgust  on  the  dried  "stinkeing  fysshe" 
and  the  dried  meat  that  hung  in  all  the  huts,  and  on  the  al 
most  total  lack  of  metals,  but  he  saves  his  finest  disdain  for  a 
"kinde  of  weede  or  plante,"  which  they  also  found  in  con 
siderable  quantity  in  all  the  dwellings.  He  then  goes  on  to 
describe  this  "weede  or  plante"  in  considerable  detail:  its 
leaves  are  broad  and  coarse  and  when  dried  it  is  yellow  and 


[  24  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

has  a  strong  odor.  The  barbarous  natives,  he  says,  are  so  fond 
of  the  plant  that  he  has  seen  them  put  it  in  their  mouths  and 
chew  it;  when  his  own  men  tried  the  experience,  however, 
they  quickly  had  enough  of  it  and  some  were  seized  with 
retchings  and  a  puking  sickness.  The  final  use  to  which  the 
plant  is  put  seems  to  him  so  extraordinary  that  he  evidently 
fears  his  story  will  be  disbelieved,  for  he  goes  on,  with  many 
assurances  and  oaths  of  his  veracity,  to  describe  how  the  plant 
may  be  lighted  and  burned  and  how  "it  giveth  a  fowle 
stinkeing  smoak,"  and  most  wonderful  of  all,  how  these  na 
tives  have  a  way  of  setting  it  afire  and  drawing  in  its  fumes 
through  long  tubes  so  that  "the  smoak  cometh  out  again  by 
their  mouth  and  nostryls  in  such  wyse  that  you  mighte  thinke 
them  devils  out  of  helle  instead  of  mortyl  men." 

Before  we  leave  this  one-eyed  fellow,  it  is  ironic  to  note  with 
what  contempt  he  passes  over  "the  gold  in  the  streets"  for 
which  his  bowels  yearn.  As  an  example  of  one-eyed  blindness 
it  is  hard  to  beat.  For  here  was  gold,  the  inexhaustible  vein  of 
gold  which  the  marvelous  clay  of  the  region  could  endlessly 
produce,  and  which  mankind  would  endlessly  consume  and 
pay  for;  and  the  Spaniard,  devoured  by  his  lust  for  gold, 
ignores  it  with  a  grimace  of  disgust  and  a  scornful  dilation  of 
his  nostrils.  That  act  was  at  once  a  history  and  a  prophecy, 
and  in  it  is  all  the  story  of  Europe's  blundering  with  America. 

For  it  must  be  said  of  all  these  explorers  and  adventurers, 
the  early  ones  and  the  late  ones,  who  came  back  from  their 
voyages  to  the  Americas  embittered  because  they  did  not  find 
gold  strewn  on  the  earth,  that  they  failed  not  because  there 
was  no  gold,  but  because  they  did  not  know  where  and  how  to 
look  for  it,  and  because  they  did  not  recognize  it  when  they 
had  it  under  their  noses  —  because,  in  short,  they  were  one- 
eyed  men.  That  gold,  real  gold,  the  actual  honest  ore,  existed 
in  great  quantities,  and  often  upon  the  very  surface  of  the 
earth  as  these  men  supposed,  has  since  been  abundantly 
shown:  it  is  only  one  of  the  minor  and  less  interesting  episodes 
of  American  history  —  a  casual  confirmation  of  one  of 
Europe's  fairy  tales.  They  tried  to  think  of  the  most  wonderful 


POLYPHEMUS  [  25  ] 

fable  in  the  world,  these  money-haters,  and  they  evolved  the 
story  of  gold  on  the  ground. 

It  was  a  story  as  naive  and  not  as  beautiful  as  a  child's 
vision  of  the  lemonade  spring,  the  ice  cream  mountains,  the 
cake  and  candy  forests  but,  at  any  rate,  America  confirmed 
this  little  fable  about  gold  in  one  short  year  of  her  history,  and 
then  proceeded  to  unpocket  and  unearth  vast  stores  of  wealth 
that  made  the  visions  of  these  old  explorers  look  absurd.  For 
she  unearthed  rivers  of  rich  oil  and  flung  them  skywards,  she 
dug  mountains  of  coal  and  iron  and  copper  out  of  the  soil,  she 
harvested  each  year  two  thousand  miles  of  golden  wheat,  she 
flung  great  rails  across  the  desert,  she  bridged  the  continent 
with  the  thunder  of  great  wheels,  she  hewed  down  forests  of 
enormous  trees  and  floated  them  down  rivers,  she  grew  cotton 
for  the  world,  her  soil  was  full  of  sugars,  citric  pungencies,  of 
a  thousand  homely  and  exotic  things,  but  still  the  mystery  of 
her  earth  was  unrevealed,  her  greatest  wealth  and  potencies 
unknown. 

The  one-eyed  Spaniard,  however,  saw  none  of  these  things. 
He  looted  the  village,  murdered  a  few  of  the  Indians  and 
advanced  eighty  or  one  hundred  miles  inland,  squinting  about 
for  treasure.  He  found  a  desolate  region,  quite  flat,  with  soil  of 
a  sandy  marl,  a  coarse  and  undistinguished  landscape, 
haunted  by  a  lonely  austerity,  and  thickly  and  ruggedly 
forested  —  for  the  most  part  with  large  areas  of  long-leaf  pine. 
As  he  went  inland  the  soil  deepened  somewhat  in  hue  and 
texture:  it  had  a  clayey,  glutinous  composition,  and  when  rain 
fell  he  cursed  it.  It  grew  coarse  grasses  and  tough  thick  brush 
and  undergrowth:  it  could  also  grow  enough  of  the  pungent 
weed  whose  fumes  had  so  disgusted  him  to  fill  the  nostrils  of 
the  earth  with  smoke  forever.  There  was  abundance  of  wild 
game  and  fowl,  so  that  the  one-eyed  Spaniard  did  not  go 
hungry;  but  he  found  no  nuggets  and  not  even  a  single 
emerald. 

The  one-eyed  Spaniard  cursed,  and  again  turned  eastward 
toward  the  sea.  Swift  and  high  and  straight  as  bullets  the 
ducks  passed  over  him,  flying  toward  the  coastal  marshes. 


[  26  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

That  was  all.  The  enormous  earth  resumed  its  silence.  West 
ward  in  great  hills  that  he  had  never  seen,  cloud  shadows 
passed  above  the  timeless  wilderness,  the  trees  crashed  down 
at  night  athwart  the  broken  bowl  of  clean  steep  waters,  there 
was  the  flash  and  wink  of  a  billion  little  eyes,  the  glide  and 
thrumming  stir,  the  brooding  ululation  of  the  dark;  there  was 
the  thunder  of  the  wings,  the  symphony  of  the  wilderness, 
but  there  was  never  the  tread  of  a  booted  foot. 

The  Spaniard  took  to  his  ship,  and  set  sail  gladly.  He  was 
one-eyed  and  he  had  found  no  gold. 


Corporate  Reserves  vs.  Prosperity 

DAVID    FIGART 

"FEATHER  NIEUWLAND,  who  was  recently  awarded  the 
-••  highest  honors  of  the  American  Chemical  Society  for  his 
discoveries  in  synthetic  rubber,  said:  "It  is  surprisingly  easy 
...  to  persist  in  overlooking  the  simply  obvious."  This  study 
is  an  attempt  to  discover  the  obvious.  It  was  prompted  by  the 
diversity  of  recovery  measures  urged  upon  the  country.  Its  pur 
pose  is  to  show  to  what  extent  the  country's  welfare  depends 
upon  the  manner  in  which  industry  uses  its  financial  power,  as 
reflected  in  surpluses  and  reserves. 

Artificial  combinations  of  capital  and  labor,  as  represented 
by  the  corporate  form  of  organization,  grew  up  in  response  to 
the  need  for  more  efficient  means  of  producing  and  distribut 
ing  wealth.  But  a  corporate  society  of  necessity  involves  the 
shifting  of  certain  responsibilities  from  the  individual  to  the 
corporation.  A  man  in  primitive  society  produces  for  his  own 
needs;  but  when  hired  service  is  substituted  for  direct  effort, 
continuity  of  employment  becomes  essential  to  prosperity. 
Shifting  responsibility  for  maintaining  employment  from  in 
dustry,  where  it  belongs,  to  government,  is  the  basis  of  certain 
foreign  political  systems,  but  should  have  no  place  in  this  coun 
try.  It  is  not  our  government's  job  to  engage  in  industrial  opera 
tions  when  industry  fails  in  its  responsibility;  it  is  government's 
job  to  compel  industry  to  discharge  that  responsibility. 

Advocates  of  some  form  of  centralized  control  over  industry 
overlook  the  fact  that  there  are  certain  natural  economic 
forces  which,  if  allowed  to  operate,  automatically  maintain 
industry  on  a  reasonably  even  keel.  The  trouble  in  the  past 
has  been  that  human  forces  have  interfered  in  such  a  way  as  to 
cause  the  periodic  disturbance  of  our  economic  balance, 
whereupon  natural  forces  were  expected  to  restore  it  by  their 
certain  but  slow  and  painful  operation.  It  would  be  better  if 
the  natural  forces  were  allowed  to  operate  in  good  times  to 
maintain  prosperity,  so  that  they  would  not  have  to  be  de- 

[27] 


[  28]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

pended  upon  in  bad  times  to  restore  economic  equilibrium. 
If  we  are  to  reach  an  intelligent  appraisal  of  the  part  that 
corporate  surpluses  and  reserves  are  playing  in  our  eco 
nomic  well-being,  it  is  first  necessary  to  examine  some  of  the 
present  and  proposed  plans  for  restoring  employment  and 
prosperity. 

MONEY 

Taking  up  first  the  claims  of  the  inflationists,  it  is  said  that 
inflation  reduces  the  burden  of  debtors  by  decreasing  the  value 
of  the  money  in  which  they  will  eventually  pay  their  debts. 
The  theory  is  based  upon  the  false  premise  that  all  debtors  are 
poor  men  and  all  creditors  are  rich  men,  and  that  the  relation 
ship  between  debtors  and  creditors  is  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  factors  retarding  recovery.  Inflation  will  transfer  to 
debtors  wealth  belonging  to  creditors,  but  it  will  harm  the 
latter  to  the  extent  it  benefits  the  former. 

Another  theory  is  that  inflation  will  cause  a  rise  in  economic 
levels  by  cheapening  money,  and  that  buying  in  anticipation 
of  higher  prices  will  commence  —  creating  greater  demand, 
and  eventually  causing  the  factories  to  increase  production, 
gradually  abolish  unemployment,  and  increase  purchasing 
power.  The  first  effect  of  inflation,  however,  is  instantaneously 
to  cut  the  nation's  purchasing  power  by  the  extent  to  which 
the  inflation  is  effective.  It  does  not  seem  logical  that  to  in 
crease  purchasing  power  we  first  must  reduce  it.  Unless  re- 
employment  and  rising  wages  occur  faster  than  inflation  cuts 
the  value  of  money,  the  country  loses. 

One  theory  that  has  led  to  much  confusion  of  thought  is 
that  the  supply  of  money  or  credit  controls  the  state  of  busi 
ness.  The  reverse  would  seem  to  be  true.  The  money  system  of 
a  country  should  be  designed  so  that  credit  will  expand  with 
expanding  business,  and  contract  with  contracting  business. 
Inflating  or  deflating  the  monetary  medium  does  not  touch 
the  fundamental  problems  involved  in  the  economic  well- 
being  of  the  community.  Wealth  is  created  by  labor,  not  by 
the  printing  press.  Government  edict  can  shift  wealth  from 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITY  [  29  ] 

one  class  of  people  to  another,  but  it  cannot  create  wealth. 
Nor  can  industrial  output  be  stabilized  by  tinkering  with  the 
device  employed  for  exchanging  that  output;  but  if  there  is  an 
uninterrupted  flow  of  goods  from  producer  to  consumer,  the 
medium  of  exchange  will  automatically  stabilize  itself. 

If  a  country's  international  trade  is  vital  to  her  welfare, 
then  the  question  of  an  international  monetary  standard  be 
comes  of  great  importance  —  not  so  much  the  specific  kind  of 
standard,  but  whether  it  is  a  stable  or  a  fluctuating  measure. 
If  an  exporter  never  knows  from  day  to  day  what  price  his 
product  is  going  to  command,  his  activities  will  be  hampered. 
When  a  country  goes  in  for  inflation  it  reduces  the  value  of  its 
own  money  in  terms  of  other  currencies.  That  means  that  to 
acquire  foreign  goods  it  will  now  take  ten  or  twelve  hours  of 
labor  instead  of  eight  hours  as  before.  How  a  country  can 
grow  rich  by  giving  away  more  of  its  labor  in  exchange  for  the 
same  things  is  not  clear.  To  attribute  such  industrial  recovery 
as  England  has  experienced  to  a  broadening  home  demand 
seems  more  logical  than  to  attribute  it  to  monetary  manipu 
lation. 

As  the  result  of  a  recent  study,  Colonel  Ayres  says:  "Prob 
ably  it  is  fair  to  draw  the  inference  that  the  natural  forces  mak 
ing  for  recovery  tend  to  prevail  over  even  such  important  in 
fluences  as  those  of  the  money  systems." 

THE     REDISTRIBUTION     OF    WEALTH 

The  confiscation  of  all  wealth  above  a  certain  figure,  and  its 
redistribution,  would  not  solve  our  economic  problems.  The 
everyday  livelihood  of  our  people  comes,  not  from  past  accu 
mulated  wealth,  but  from  current  production  of  wealth.  If  we 
produce  much,  we  will  have  much  to  divide.  If  we  produce 
little,  there  will  be  little  to  divide.  How  we  should  allocate 
current  production,  rather  than  past  production,  is  the  prob 
lem  we  must  solve. 

The  extravagances  of  a  few  wealthy  persons  here  and  there, 
alongside  of  distressing  poverty,  may  offend  us,  but  such  cases 
are  too  limited  to  be  of  great  importance.  The  rich  can  eat  only 


[  3o  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

so  much,  wear  certain  clothes,  consume  a  limited  amount  of 
wealth.  In  their  expenditures  they  are  providing  employment 
for  others.  The  same  is  true  of  their  so-called  extravagances. 
Liquidate  the  wealthy,  as  the  Soviets  did  in  Russia,  and  you 
destroy  the  means  of  employment  of  certain  types  of  skilled 
labor  and  artisans. 

The  trouble  comes  not  with  what  the  rich  spend,  but  with 
what  they  do  not  spend  —  that  is,  with  what  they  invest  and 
how  they  invest  it.  It  is  not  their  possession  of  wealth  that  mat 
ters,  but  the  power  over  wealth  which  that  possession  gives, 
and  which  has  been  frequently  abused  —  sometimes  know 
ingly,  more  often  unknowingly.  That  those  in  control  of  great 
wealth  should  use  this  power  to  add  to  their  wealth  through 
unethical  methods,  such  as  market  manipulation,  watering  of 
stock,  or  the  destroying  of  competitors,  is  deplorable  and  should 
cease.  But  that  does  not  solve  the  problem  of  men  of  the  high 
est  standards  of  honesty,  motivated  by  a  desire  for  the  welfare 
of  the  community,  who  unwittingly  invest  their  excess  income 
in  undertakings  which  prove  harmful  in  the  end.  Our  indus 
trial  history  is  full  of  instances  of  new  investments  destroying 
old  investments  —  of  current  wealth  replacing  past  wealth,  in 
stead  of  adding  to  it. 

PUBLIC  WORKS 

The  fundamental  objection  to  any  government  relief  pro 
gram  is  that  it  violates  the  principle  of  industry's  responsibility 
for  its  workers  and  for  the  community  welfare.  Any  venture  of 
government  into  the  field  of  business  is  full  of  dangers.  Aside 
from  the  question  of  politics  which  is  bound  to  crop  up,  it  is 
extremely  difficult  for  government  either  to  enter  the  field  of 
private  industry  or  to  withdraw,  without  serious  disturbance 
to  those  whom  the  measures  are  designed  to  aid.  The  bigger 
the  program  the  worse  the  dislocation.  If  there  is  a  method  of 
insuring  that  industry  itself  shall  maintain  a  proper  economic 
balance,  it  is  far  better  that  government  should  keep  out  of 
business  altogether.  The  philosophy  of  the  Socialists  is  sound  in 
many  respects;  but  in  substituting  government  operations  for 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITT  [  31  ] 

private  initiative,  it  is  simply  substituting  unknown  evils  for 
known  evils. 

Public  works  must  be  paid  for  by  those  members  of  the  com 
munity  who  pay  taxes,  and  taxes  are  always  painful.  That  part 
of  our  income  which  is  taxed  for  public  works  is  equivalent  to 
savings  confiscated  by  government  and  spent  in  something  we 
may  or  may  not  think  is  of  benefit.  We  would  prefer  to  employ 
our  income  as  we  please,  to  save  it  or  spend  it;  and  if  we  save 
it,  we  want  to  choose  our  own  type  of  saving.  There  are  lots  of 
things  we  might  prefer  to  the  projects  upon  which  the  Govern 
ment  is  spending  billions. 

The  fallacy  of  "self-liquidating"  public  works  is  shown  in 
two  articles  by  David  Cushman  Goyle  in  Harper's  for  Decem 
ber  1934  and  January  1935.  "The  idea  was  that  such  projects 
paid  for  themselves,  because  the  people  who  paid  for  them 
were  not  visible.53  He  says  capital  invested  in  such  projects  is 
"distributed  to  the  consumer  with  one  hand  and  taken  away 
from  the  consumer  with  the  other  hand." 

GOVERNMENT    REGULATION    OF    INDUSTRY 

The  government  has  tried  to  regulate  industry  by  means  of 
anti-trust  laws.  But  these  should  take  into  consideration  items 
other  than  mere  size.  From  the  standpoint  of  service  to  the 
community  some  of  the  biggest  corporations  are  the  best,  some 
of  the  smallest  are  the  worst.  Where  large  corporations  are  less 
efficient  than  small,  it  is  generally  because  of  mismanagement. 
There  unquestionably  are  economies  in  large-scale  manage 
ment,  up  to  a  point;  and  such  economies  enable  the  bigger 
companies  to  undertake  the  invaluable  research  and  develop 
ment  work  which  has  contributed  so  much  to  America's  in 
dustrial  progress. 

Price-fixing  is  another  suggested  solution  of  industry's  prob 
lems.  This  is  impractical,  in  the  first  place,  since  no  one  man  is 
wise  enough  to  determine  the  proper  price  and  no  two  men 
would  agree.  Price  is  the  shadow,  not  the  substance.  That 
lowering  the  price  expands  the  market  is  true  only  insofar  as  it 
reflects  increased  efficiency.  The  price  at  which  goods  move 


[  32  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

from  producer  to  consumer  is  not  the  most  important  factor, 
since  price  to  the  consumer  is  wage  to  the  producer.  (By  wage 
is  meant  payment  to  labor,  management  and  capital.)  The 
fundamental  question  is  the  distribution  of  community  income 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  permit  consumption  of  the  goods  pro 
duced. 

To  delegate  power  over  the  complex  industrial  activities  of 
the  country  to  governmental  bodies,  code  authorities,  or  trade 
associations,  is  to  credit  human  nature  with  a  wisdom  which  it 
does  not  possess.  One  weakness  of  the  code  system  lies  in  an 
undue  reliance  upon  the  cooperation  of  individuals.  In  the 
stress  of  a  great  national  emergency,  our  shattered  morale  will 
lead  us  to  promise  almost  any  reform  —  but  as  the  emergency 
passes,  human  self-interest  will  begin  to  reassert  itself.  A  fur 
ther  weakness  in  the  code  system  is  the  principle  of  boycott  and 
coercion  of  one  group  by  another.  This  does  not  eliminate 
trouble;  it  breeds  trouble,  and  it  is  un-American. 

CAPITAL    INVESTMENTS 

Many  competent  observers  say  that  we  would  solve  our  de 
pression  problem  if  we  could  restore  employment  in  the  dur 
able  goods  industries.  But  if  recovery  is  to  come  through 
adding  to  a  capital  investment,  in  building  and  plant,  which  al 
ready  exceeds  our  present  needs,  are  we  not  simply  laying  the 
foundation  for  the  next  depression?  We  may  concede  that  the 
potential  consuming  power  of  this  country  is  much  larger  than 
we  have  ever  approached,  and  at  the  same  time  recognize 
that  as  a  practical  matter  the  capacity  to  produce  goods  in 
1929  considerably  exceeded  the  then-effective  demand.  One 
need  only  consult  a  few  corporation  executives  who  went 
through  the  cut-throat  period  preceding  the  crash  to  verify 
this  statement  —  if  it  needs  verification. 

To  bring  recovery  through  large  scale  investment  in  indus 
try  would  mean  adding  to  an  amount  of  debt  which  is  already 
burdensome.  If  we  cannot  earn  profits  on  present  capital,  it 
will  be  more  difficult  to  earn  on  an  enlarged  capital.  Yet  to 
scale  down  present  debt  to  make  room  for  new  debt  not  only 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITY  [  33  ] 

seems  illogical,  but  involves  the  sacrifice  of  one  section  of  the 
community  to  another.  We  might  better  strive  to  restore  in 
dustry  to  a  point  which  would  justify  present  capital  values. 

It  has  been  said  that  much  of  our  plant  has  become  obsolete 
during  the  last  four  years.  It  would  be  difficult  to  define  the 
term  "obsolete"  in  such  a  way  as  to  satisfy  everybody.  There  is 
a  point  where  the  modernization  of  plant  may  run  up  against 
the  law  of  diminishing  returns  —  where  the  cost  to  the  com 
munity  in  terms  of  capital  destruction,  or  increased  competi 
tion,  or  unemployment,  may  be  excessive.  Any  wholesale  re 
placement  of  plant  at  this  time  comes  in  the  same  category  as 
expansion  of  capacity,  and  would  be  a  questionable  policy 
until  we  have  shown  an  ability  to  use  our  present  capacity 
effectively. 

AGRICULTURE 

Chester  G.  Davis,  in  an  article  published  December  9,  1934, 
in  the  New  York  Times,  said:  "Gross  income  of  farmers  and 
total  factory  payrolls  are  almost  economic  twins.  .  .  .  In 
creases  in  farm  income  depend  largely  on  the  increased  buying- 
power  of  those  engaged  in  industry.  As  this  increase  develops, 
the  farm  income  will  be  boosted  both  through  higher  prices 
and  through  whatever  increase  in  production  can  be  con 
sumed  by  a  more  prosperous  industrial  community."  If  farm 
income  depends  on  factory  payrolls,  a  rise  in  farm  prices  with 
out  a  corresponding  rise  in  payrolls  simply  means  that  wage 
earners  no  longer  can  buy  as  much  as  before. 

It  is  known  that  in  our  most  prosperous  years  a  large  part  of 
our  population  was  insufficiently  nourished.  It  has  been  esti 
mated  that  instead  of  restricting  agricultural  acreage,  a  sub 
stantial  increase  would  be  necessary  properly  to  feed  all  our 
people.  There  are  a  few  crops  which  still  would  show  an  ex 
portable  surplus.  If  our  natural  conditions  are  so  favorable 
that  we  can  market  this  surplus  at  competitive  prices  abroad, 
no  readjustment  will  be  necessary.  If,  however,  we  cannot 
compete  with  world  prices,  or  if  countries  formerly  importing 
from  us  have  raised  tariff  barriers  behind  which  their  own 


[  34  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

agriculture  is  being  developed,  then  we  must  face  some  read 
justment. 

When  government  attempts  to  restrict  crops  wholesale,  it 
may  have  the  problem  of  transporting  entire  communities 
from  one  locality  to  another,  which  is  certain  to  disturb  seri 
ously  the  industrial  life  of  these  localities.  Such  readjustments 
would  come  automatically  and  naturally,  through  individual 
action,  if  government  did  not  interfere.  Government  can  help 
on  general  financial  policies,  and  in  raising  agricultural  stand 
ards.  To  go  farther  than  that,  to  invade  the  individual  freedom 
of  the  farmer  which  is  part  of  his  compensation  for  being  a 
farmer,  would  seem  to  be  overstepping  proper  bounds. 

No  doubt  part  of  the  so-called  farm  problem  lies  in  the  ex 
istence  of  so  many  marginal  farmers  —  men  attached  to  the 
soil,  loath  to  leave  it,  yet  without  any  reasonable  hope  of  mak 
ing  a  fair  living.  One  cannot  see  any  clear  future  for  such  men; 
but  if  industry  were  speeded  up  to  the  point  where  the  de 
mands  of  the  American  people  were  reasonably  well  satisfied, 
the  problem  of  the  marginal  farmer  might  solve  itself  —  either 
by  his  being  absorbed  by  industry,  or  by  his  being  enabled  to 
make  a  proper  living  through  greater  demand  for  his  crops. 
The  plans  of  Henry  Ford  looking  toward  the  provision  of  part- 
time  factory  work  for  agricultural  workers,  and  for  ascertain 
ing  new  uses  for  agricultural  crops  through  research,  may  con 
stitute  one  answer  to  this  problem. 

A  large  part  of  the  farmer's  problem  lies  in  speculative  pur 
chases  at  excessively  high  prices,  swamping  him  under  a  bur 
den  of  debt  from  which  it  is  difficult  if  not  impossible  to  escape. 
If  he  has  a  few  good  years  he  may  work  out.  If  not,  he  faces 
bankruptcy.  Extending  federal  aid  may  or  may  not  be  bene 
ficial.  When  a  man  is  suffering  from  too  much  debt,  increasing 
the  debt  may  not  be  the  logical  way  to  relieve  him. 

The  objection  to  any  artificial  restriction  of  a  product  neces 
sary  to  life  or  comfort  is  obvious.  Designed  to  increase  wealth, 
it  starts  out  by  reducing  it.  Theory  may  point  to  an  inevitable 
price  rise,  and  a  resulting  benefit  to  some  one  section  of  the 
community  for  the  time  being;  but  the  very  imposition  of  re- 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITY  [  35  ] 

strict! ve  measures  may  have  a  depressing  effect  on  consumers. 
It  advertises  either  an  existing  over-supply,  or  a  potential  over- 
supply  to  be  available  as  and  when  necessary;  so  why  pay 
more?  This  was  well  demonstrated  in  the  British  rubber  re 
striction  plan  of  1922. 

Any  restriction  plan  is  almost  certain  to  harm  the  people  it 
was  designed  to  benefit.  The  British  rubber  plan  caused  the 
substitution  of  reclaimed  rubber  for  plantation  rubber,  and 
led  to  intensive  planting  by  the  native  populations.  The  re 
striction  of  American  agricultural  crops  will  lead  to  the  sub 
stitution  of  foreign-grown  crops  and  the  permanent  loss  of  our 
market. 

Restriction  penalizes  the  efficient  producer  by  subsidizing 
the  inefficient.  It  makes  no  allowance  for  the  unexpected  — 
such  as  drought  and  floods.  The  supposed  need  for  restriction 
may  have  passed  by  the  time  the  measure  is  introduced.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  prove  that  the  increase  in  agricultural 
prices  last  year  was  due  to  crop  restriction  rather  than  to  the 
drought  and  other  natural  agencies. 

Moreover,  any  plan  involving  coercion  is  distasteful.  Suc 
cessful  administration  is  impossible.  As  bureaucratic  pressure 
increases,  evasion  increases.  Efforts  to  enforce  such  a  law  will 
stimulate  violations,  which  are  demoralizing  and  which  will 
nullify  the  law.  Instead  of  having  one  prohibition  problem  on 
our  hands,  we  will  have  hundreds.  It  would  seem  that  with  so 
many  objections  to  a  policy,  all  possible  alternatives  should  be 
exhausted  before  it  is  adopted. 

If  America  insists  on  growing  wheat  for  export  it  will  have 
to  sell  in  world  markets  and  compete  with  countries  possessing 
lower  living  standards.  Because  of  efficiency  of  production,  we 
can  do  this  in  many  manufactured  articles.  Can  we  do  it  in 
agriculture?  Certainly  not  by  reducing  output  and  increasing 
unit  costs.  To  attempt  to  maintain  one  price  for  domestic  con 
sumption  and  a  lower  price  for  foreign  consumption  offers 
almost  insurmountable  obstacles  from  the  standpoint  of  prac 
tical  business.  To  do  this  without  government  aid  seems 
impossible;  to  do  it  with  government  aid  brings  up  all  the 


[  36  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

problems  we  seek  to  avoid,  besides  still  further  problems  in 
international  relations. 

SIGNIFICANCE     OF    CORPORATE     RESERVES 

Modern  business  is  so  complex,  and  the  function  of  money 
so  confusing,  that  intelligent  and  honest  men,  reasoning  from 
the  same  set  of  facts,  reach  quite  different  conclusions.  But 
there  is  another  way  of  approaching  the  problem  —  that  is,  to 
reason  from  assumed  premises  which  are  drawn  with  such 
simplicity  that  the  underlying  principles  are  apparent  to  all. 
Since  industry  naturally  falls  into  two  main  classes,  (1)  con 
sumable  goods  and  (2)  durable  goods,  it  will  be  useful  for  this 
purpose  to  assume  two  isolated  communities,  the  first  a  fertile 
island  where  the  population  is  engaged  solely  in  the  produc 
tion  of  consumable  goods,  the  second  an  island  unsuited  to 
agriculture,  where  the  population  is  engaged  solely  in  the  pro 
duction  of  durable  goods  —  building  materials,  iron,  copper. 
It  will  further  simplify  matters  to  assume  that  the  affairs  of  the 
first  community  are  directed  by  one  manager. 

The  first  community  produces  consumption  goods  in  excess 
of  its  own  requirements,  and  exchanges  this  surplus  for  dura 
ble  goods  produced  by  the  second  community.  It  is  clear 
that  so  long  as  this  exchange  is  uninterrupted,  even  though 
demand  increases  rapidly,  both  communities  will  remain 
prosperous. 

If  the  manager  responsible  for  the  activities  of  the  first  com 
munity  is  guided  by  the  needs  of  his  people,  he  will  end  up 
each  year's  operations  with  his  storeroom  empty.  This  does 
not  mean  that  he  has  not  made  a  profit;  it  means  that  he  has 
distributed  the  profit.  If  he  turns  out  goods  which  he  prices  at 
one  hundred  thousand  dollars,  in  the  production  of  which  he 
has  spent  ninety  thousand  dollars  for  labor  and  materials,  he 
has  ten  thousand  dollars'  profit  for  his  stockholders.  Or,  in 
other  words,  he  has  accumulated  on  his  shelves  goods  worth 
ten  thousand  dollars.  These  belong  to  his  stockholders,  to 
whom  he  distributes  them  for  consumption. 

But  if  the  manager  forgets  about  demand,  and  begins  to 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITY  [  37  ] 

think  in  terms  of  "accumulated  profits"  or  "reserves"  or  "sur 
plus"  as  reflected  by  his  balance  sheet,  he  will  carry  over  un- 
consumed  stocks  of  goods  as  "inventory,"  which  will  increase 
from  year  to  year.  It  may  be  that  he  has  kept  half  of  his  com 
munity  on  the  verge  of  poverty  while  storing  up  the  very  goods 
they  helped  to  produce.  Finally  the  day  comes  when  these 
stocks  are  topheavy;  so  he  says  to  his  community:  "Operations 
must  be  reduced  until  stocks  are  wiped  out."  Since  his  citizens 
live  by  their  labor,  when  the  opportunity  to  work  is  now  denied 
them,  they  are  thrown  into  distress. 

Or  the  manager  may  aspire  to  outshine  his  predecessor  by 
building  a  bigger  factory.  So  he  withholds  increasing  quanti 
ties  of  consumable  goods  made  by  his  community,  to  exchange 
for  increasing  quantities  of  durable  goods  with  which  he  en 
larges  his  capacity.  If  he  builds  beyond  the  combined  needs  of 
both  communities,  but  does  not  utilize  this  increased  capacity 
to  accumulate  undistributed  inventories,  no  particular  harm 
will  be  done;  and  the  manager  will  be  able  to  point  with  pride 
to  a  fine  surplus  on  his  balance  sheet,  proof  of  the  "powerful 
financial  position"  of  his  undertaking.  His  citizens  might  feel 
that  they  would  have  liked  a  bigger  share  of  the  consumable 
goods  themselves,  but  the  manager  has  his  eye  on  the  balance 
sheet,  rather  than  on  community  welfare. 

The  real  trouble  is  going  to  come  when  the  manager  starts 
up  the  new  factory  on  his  "mass  production"  schedule,  with 
out  regard  to  demand;  when  he  attempts  to  operate  his  in 
creased  capacity  to  justify  the  increased  capital  employed. 
Then  he  will  find  inventories  overwhelming  him;  his  expan 
sion  program  will  collapse;  demand  for  durable  goods  will  dry 
up;  unemployment  will  be  general  in  both  communities. 

It  is  strange,  but  true,  that  the  manager  regards  his  power 
over  his  "reserves"  as  autocratic.  He  may  concede  that  they 
belong  to  his  stockholders,  but  will  probably  oppose  any  dis 
tribution  even  to  them.  It  does  not  occur  to  him  that  since  it 
was  the  labor  of  his  communities  which  contributed  most  to 
the  producing  of  the  goods,  these  very  same  workers  whom  he 
has  thrown  into  want  possess  a  substantial  equity  in  the  goods 


[  38  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

with  which  his  shelves  are  loaded  down.  At  best  he  is  bound  to 
go  through  some  period  of  readjustment  because  people  can 
not  suddenly  eat  a  lot  of  accumulated  food  or  wear  out  a  lot  of 
extra  clothes.  But  if  the  consumption  of  the  accumulated  goods 
is  facilitated  by  making  them  readily  available  to  the  needy, 
instead  of  discouraged  by  forcing  the  communities  on  to  a 
mere  existence  basis,  dependent  upon  charity,  the  period  of 
readjustment  will  be  short  instead  of  protracted. 

By  return  of  these  goods  to  the  community  at  the  first  sign  of 
depression  the  manager  could  prevent  the  suffering  which  his 
policies  have  brought  on.  But  he  would  oppose  such  a  policy 
because  he  objects  to  using  "reserves"  built  up  "to  protect  his 
business  in  times  of  stress."  Yet  events  compel  him  to  do  pre 
cisely  this  even  though  he  may  not  understand  what  is  hap 
pening.  As  the  depression  develops  he  is  forced,  through 
charitable  contributions,  through  idle  equipment,  through  dis 
posing  of  inventories  below  cost,  to  make  the  very  contribu 
tions  he  would  voluntarily  refuse;  he  is  forced  to  give  back  to 
the  communities  the  goods  which  the  communities  helped 
to  produce,  but  of  whose  use  they  were  deprived. 

What  is  the  way  out?  Since  his  present  factory  facilities  have 
been  such  as  to  create  an  apparent  over-supply  of  goods,  the 
manager  will  certainly  not  want  to  add  to  capacity,  nor  per 
haps  even  to  modernize  equipment  in  such  a  way  as  to  increase 
output  —  because  by  doing  so  he  will  be  setting  the  stage  for 
a  recurrence  of  his  present  troubles.  He  may  hit  upon  the  idea 
of  public  works;  and  to  the  extent  that  he  can  utilize  the  prod 
ucts  of  the  durable  goods  community  in  exchange  for  excess 
inventories  of  consumable  goods  he  may  be  justified  in  this 
measure.  However,  he  is  perhaps  unwarranted  in  deciding 
what  the  people  want  rather  than  letting  them  decide  for 
themselves.  It  may  be  that  they  would  rather  have  better 
homes  than  more  public  works.  Realizing  this,  the  manager 
may  plan  for  a  general  housing  program,  but  the  first  obstacle 
he  runs  up  against  is  that  those  members  of  the  communities 
most  in  need  of  new  homes  are  least  able  to  pay  for  them; 
they  are  unemployed,  and  lack  any  sense  of  security  for  the 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITT  [  39  ] 

future  which  would  encourage  them  to  assume  the  necessary 
obligations. 

Confronted  with  obstacles  whichever  way  he  turns,  the 
manager  may  finally  become  so  harassed  that  he  will  be  will 
ing  frankly  to  face  the  facts  of  his  relationship  and  obligations 
to  the  communities,  and  to  review  his  operations  in  that  light. 
It  may  shock  him  to  realize  that  his  former  ideas  of  successful 
management  were  pretty  inadequate.  In  terms  of  accounting 
and  finance,  he  has  been  a  great  success:  for  he  has  shown  con 
sistent  profits  and  mounting  reserves  and  surplus.  Yet  he  has 
conducted  operations  in  such  a  way  that  both  communities 
have  been  thrown  into  turmoil.  From  the  standpoint  of  his  ob 
ligations,  as  the  chosen  representative  of  the  community,  to 
direct  its  industrial  activities  for  the  general  welfare,  he  has 
failed.  He  will  discover  that  all  his  trouble  arose  through  the 
unwise  employment  of  what  he  terms  "profits  and  reserves"; 
that  the  more  he  attempts  to  pile  up  profits  and  reserves,  the 
bigger  the  readjustment  he  will  have  to  go  through;  that  in 
stead  of  accumulated  profits  and  reserves  being  the  goal  of 
business,  they  are  something  that  must  actually  be  avoided. 

REMOVING    THE     BARRIERS    TO    DISTRIBUTION 

The  even  flow  of  goods  from  producer  to  consumer  must  be 
insured  in  order  to  prevent  periodical  accumulation  —  result 
ing  in  industrial  chaos  and  unemployment.  This  could  be  ac 
complished  by  distributing  corporate  earnings  after  allowing 
reasonable  reserves  for  unemployment  and  dividend  insur 
ance,  for  adequate  depreciation  of  plant  and  machinery,  and 
for  special  purposes  such  as  research  and  development.  A 
modest  reserve  for  emergencies  should  be  allowed,  sufficient  to 
carry  the  corporation  through  a  brief  period  of  stress,  but  not 
sufficient  to  disturb  the  economic  balance  of  the  community. 

Possibly  the  simplest  means  of  insuring  the  distribution  of 
earnings  would  be  by  imposing  a  prohibitive  tax  on  all  un 
distributed  earnings  in  excess  of  permitted  reserves.  Since  a 
few  large  corporations  are  responsible  for  the  employment  of 
most  of  our  industrial  workers,  the  exemption  of  the  smaller 


.**  * 


[  4o  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

corporations  —  to  simplify  administration  —  could  be  con 
sidered,  as  well  as  the  exemption  of  public  utilities  and  rail 
roads,  and  corporations  engaged  in  working  natural  resources. 
This  is  not  a  revenue  measure.  The  proposed  tax  would  prob 
ably  never  be  collected.  The  purpose  is  control  of  corporate 
activities  to  safeguard  employment,  taxation  being  the  device 
by  which  this  control  would  operate  automatically. 

The  policy  of  accumulating  reserves  and  surplus  as  an  in 
surance  against  emergency  conditions  is  sound  and  commend 
able.  The  error  has  been  in  not  earmarking  these  reserves  for 
specific  purposes,  such  as  unemployment  and  dividend  insur 
ance,  so  that  when  an  emergency  arose,  distribution  of  the  re 
serves  would  begin  automatically,  thus  maintaining  commu 
nity  purchasing  power  and  providing  a  measure  of  security  to 
both  workers  and  stockholders. 

Corporations  will  point  out  that  they  must  have  capital 
available  to  modernize  their  plants  and  to  expand  in  order  to 
meet  demand  for  new  business.  The  device  outlined  above 
would  not  interfere  with  the  legitimate  growth  of  business,  but 
would  make  the  volume  of  community  savings  reinvested  in  a 
business  depend  solely  upon  the  utility  of  that  business  to  the 
community  —  as  indicated  by  whether  or  not  it  was  operating 
at  a  profit  —  instead  of  permitting  the  reinvestment  to  be  dic 
tated  by  motives  unrelated  to  community  welfare. 

To  limit  the  power  of  corporate  management  to  withhold 
and  reinvest  earnings  would  not  interfere  with  earning  ability, 
but  should  enhance  it  by  forcing  the  increase  of  effective  com 
munity  purchasing  power  through  larger  dividends  and 
wages,  since  all  earnings  above  the  legal  reserves  would  be 
distributed  rather  than  reinvested  in  doubtful  enterprise. 
Corporations  could  invite  the  immediate  reinvestment  of  such 
earnings  for  purposes  of  expansion;  but  corporate  manage 
ment  would  be  obliged  to  show  an  earning  history,  or  a  reason 
able  prospect  of  future  earnings,  to  make  the  shares  attractive 
to  prospective  investors.  This  proposal  would  compel  corpo 
rate  managers  to  operate  at  a  profit  or  answer  to  their  stock 
holders,  and  it  would  build  up  a  type  of  management  based  on 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITY  [41  ] 

efficiency  and  integrity,  rather  than  on  autocratic  financial 
power. 

To  the  argument  that  an  enforced  distribution  of  earnings 
would  penalize  the  efficient  units  in  industry,  it  might  be 
pointed  out  that  efficiency  by  no  means  determines  survival 
in  every  instance.  Often  a  financially  powerful  but  inefficient 
concern  will  crush  out  a  more  efficient  rival. 

A  great  deal  of  commercial  distress  has  been  caused  in  the 
past  by  the  small  margin  of  profit  —  and  at  times  loss  —  en 
forced  upon  manufacturers  by  large  buyers.  Under  the  plan 
suggested  this  would  no  longer  be  possible.  Without  reserves 
to  absorb  losses  of  this  kind,  no  manufacturer  could  afford  to 
sell  to  large  buyers  at  an  inadequate  profit.  The  buyers  would 
have  no  alternative  but  to  pay  the  profit:  since  they  would  not 
possess  the  necessary  reserves  to  enable  them  to  manufacture 
the  product  themselves,  and  could  not  raise  the  needed  capital 
unless  there  were  marked  inefficiency  in  existing  plants  or  in 
adequate  sources  of  supply. 

Without  reserves  to  finance  over-expansion  and  destructive 
competition,  corporate  management  would  be  obliged  to 
shape  policies  with  a  view  to  continuous  earnings.  In  case  of 
losses  they  could  no  longer  fall  back  upon  reserves,  dissipating 
the  assets  of  the  community,  but  would  be  compelled  to  take 
corrective  measures  without  delay. 

It  may  be  regarded  as  too  hazardous  a  policy  to  place  the 
burden  of  new  capital  construction  directly  upon  the  com 
munity  rather  than  upon  industry  itself,  on  the  grounds  that 
adequate  capital  for  plant  expansion  might  not  be  provided  as 
and  when  needed.  The  fear  is  probably  not  well  founded.  The 
aggregate  intelligence  of  the  community,  as  reflected  by  its 
willingness  or  unwillingness  to  buy  a  certain  product,  should 
be  fully  as  reliable  as  the  intelligence  of  corporate  manage 
ment.  If  the  time  comes  when  all  the  factories  in  this  country 
are  operating  at  capacity  to  supply  the  wants  of  our  people, 
and  no  capital  seems  available  for  industrial  expansion,  the 
situation  can  be  reviewed. 

Most  of  the  leading  corporations  in  America  now  possess 


[  42  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

large  surpluses  and  reserves.  The  effect  of  the  proposed  legis 
lation —  where  present  surpluses  and  reserves  aggregate  the 
maximum  which  could  be  set  up  under  the  law  —  would  be  to 
compel  the  distribution  of  future  earnings  in  their  totality. 
How  such  earnings  should  be  divided  between  stockholders 
and  employees  might  be  left  to  work  itself  out  equitably.  If  too 
large  a  share  is  distributed  to  stockholders,  in  the  form  of  high 
dividends,  the  corporation  will  be  making  itself  a  target  for 
new  competition.  The  higher  the  profit,  the  more  people  will 
want  to  get  into  the  game.  Labor  is  likely  to  become  restive 
under  such  a  policy,  feeling  that  its  share  is  unduly  low,  and 
labor  troubles  may  nullify  a  previous  good  earning  history. 

If  the  management  of  the  corporation  appreciates  that  its 
prosperity  will  depend  on  the  purchasing  power  of  the  com 
munity,  derived  for  the  most  part  from  wages,  it  will  want  to 
share  profits  fairly  with  labor  in  order  to  protect  its  market.  It 
may  do  this  either  through  high  wages,  or  through  recurrent 
wage  bonuses.  It  would  be  to  the  interest  of  corporations  to 
pay  labor  all  the  traffic  would  bear;  and  since  labor  obviously 
could  not  demand  a  share  in  earnings  when  there  were 
no  earnings  to  share,  the  opportunity  for  misunderstandings 
and  conflict  would  diminish. 

EFFECTS     OF    DISTRIBUTING     SURPLUSES 

The  ownership  of  American  corporations  is  becoming  wide 
spread,  and  any  policy  looking  toward  a  better  dividend  his 
tory  will  benefit  the  entire  community.  As  shares  in  industrial 
concerns  become  more  stable  in  their  dividend  policy,  they  be 
come  more  attractive  to  the  workers  as  a  means  of  saving;  and 
as  workers  become  stockholders,  solving  of  industrial  disputes 
becomes  less  difficult. 

Depriving  a  corporation  of  reserves  excepting  those  set  up 
for  specific  earmarked  purposes  would  leave  no  incentive  for 
either  corporate  or  individual  speculation  such  as  the  country 
experienced  in  1928  and  1929.  Financial  practices  have  been 
such  that  the  owner  of  common  stock  is  forced  to  be  a  gambler. 
Sometimes  he  buys  stock  because  it  has  shown  an  earning  his- 


CORPORATE  RESERVES  VS.  PROSPERITY  [43] 

tory.  Sometimes  he  is  asked  to  add  to  his  holdings  in  an  in 
solvent  concern  with  the  idea  of  making  it  solvent.  Most  fre 
quently  he  buys  stock  because  he  expects  to  sell  it  for  more 
than  he  paid.  The  money  that  owners  of  common  stocks  have 
lost  must  amount  to  astronomical  figures.  If  income  were  the 
controlling  factor  in  investment,  the  field  for  artificial  manipu 
lation  of  any  kind  —  well-intentioned  or  otherwise  —  would 
be  eliminated. 

The  form  which  such  legislation  should  take,  the  amount  of 
detail  to  be  included  and  to  be  left  to  administration  officials, 
could  be  worked  out  without  great  difficulty.  A  maximum 
limit  on  the  amount  that  could  be  placed  to  reserve  should 
probably  be  fixed  as  some  percentage  of  the  capital  issued. 
Perhaps  this  percentage  should  differ  for  different  industries. 
There  probably  should  be  a  minimum  provided  for,  as  well. 
The  question  should  be  treated  on  broad  lines,  as  the  principle 
of  earmarking  reserves  for  specific  purposes  is  the  important 
thing,  rather  than  the  exact  amount  of  such  reserves.  The  ad 
ministration  problem  raised  by  the  proposed  law  would  offer 
little  difficulty,  since  it  means  only  a  slight  modification  in  the 
duties  of  tax  officials. 

The  size  of  a  corporation's  issued  capital  probably  would 
not  matter  so  far  as  the  operation  of  the  law  was  concerned.  If 
the  capital  is  large,  the  reserves  permitted  would  be  propor 
tionately  large,  but  the  corporation  would  be  in  a  weaker  posi 
tion  competitively  from  the  standpoint  of  earnings  on  an  in 
flated  capital.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  capital  were  small,  the 
corporation  would  be  in  a  better  competitive  position,  but  the 
proportionately  smaller  reserves  would  give  it  less  leeway  in 
time  of  trouble. 

Uniform  accounting  methods  are  desirable,  and  probably 
will  come;  but  for  the  purposes  of  this  law  they  would  not  seem 
to  be  essential  so  long  as  accounts  are  kept  on  the  same  basis 
from  year  to  year.  When  uniform  accounting  methods  are 
finally  made  compulsory,  they  should  provide  for  proper 
methods  of  capitalizing  an  undertaking.  At  the  present  time 
new  owners  can  take  over  bankrupt  properties  and  operate 


[  44  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

them  at  a  level  of  income  so  low  as  to  kill  off  competing  own 
ers,  who  have  acquired  their  properties  at  reasonable  values 
and  operated  them  on  sound  business  methods.  Properties  ac 
quired  through  bankruptcies  or  receiverships  or  at  sacrifice 
values  should  be  capitalized  at  a  figure  which  would  be  fair  to 
competitors  —  perhaps  at  replacement  values.  The  voluntary 
adoption  of  such  a  practice  has  been  under  consideration  by 
one  of  our  larger  industries. 

Uniform  accounting  methods  should  probably  provide  that 
each  major  department  of  a  large  corporation  should  show  its 
operations  separately.  A  corporation  which  makes  little  or  no 
profit  in  one  department  or,  as  sometimes  happens,  consistent 
losses,  which  are  charged  up  against  the  profits  of  other  de 
partments,  is  competing  unfairly  in  that  particular  department 
and  may  disrupt  a  whole  industry  through  such  policies.  We 
have  had  outstanding  examples  of  this  in  recent  years. 

CONCLUSION 

Corporate  management  thinks  of  profits  and  reserves  in 
terms  of  money.  But  money  itself  is  not  wealth;  it  is  only  the 
means  of  exchanging  wealth.  If  corporations  thought  in  terms 
of  goods  instead  of  money,  profits  and  reserves  would  assume 
an  entirely  different  aspect.  Thus  a  corporation  with  ten  mil 
lion  dollars  of  accumulated  profits,  called  reserves  or  surplus, 
instead  of  considering  itself  in  a  sound  financial  position, 
could  see  that  it  might  be  blocking  progress  in  good  times,  and 
discouraging  recovery  in  bad  times,  by  the  possession  of  ten 
million  dollars  worth  of  unconsumed  inventories  and  of  idle 
plant  and  machinery.  Corporations  do  not  have  dollars  in  re 
serve:  they  have  goods  and  plant;  and  it  is  unconsumed  goods 
and  idle  plant  —  represented  in  the  balance  sheet  by  dollars 
—  that  bring  bad  times. 


How  Spring  Gomes  in  Georgia 

THOMAS  CALDEGOT  CHUBB 
•  • 

This  is  the  way  that  Spring  comes  in  Connecticut. 

Early  in  March  the  ice,  set  free,  starts  to  drift  down  the  river, 

But  then  it  is  cold  again; 

There  is  sleet;  there  is  freezing  weather  — 

Winter's  overlong  pain. 

Late  in  March,  the  sap  stirs  in  the  elm-trees  and  birch-trees. 

The  cowslips  bloom  hopefully. 

Sometimes  you  see  a  bluet. 

And  then  the  wind  swings  back  to  the  north-northeast, 

And  is  wet  with  freezing  rain ! 

In  Georgia,  there  is  no  such  sarcastic  mockery. 

In  Georgia,  Spring  is  a  gracious  lady. 

She  rides  a  white  palfrey  of  dogwood. 

She  wears  a  frail  garment  of  plum  blossoms. 

Her  hair  is  the  golden  jasmine  that  trails  through  the  pine 
trees. 

And  even  in  February 

(Then  in  Connecticut  snow  is  still  blue  on  the  shadowed  hill 
sides) 

You  hear,  like  the  bells  on  her  bridle, 

The  shaken  bells  of  the  hylas 

Chime  their  refrain. — 

[45] 


[  46  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

This  is  the  way  that  Spring  comes  in  Connecticut. 

Early  in  April,  the  sudden  warmth  of  swift  showers 

Soothes  the  rich  brown  of  the  earth  with  gentle  fingers, 

Promises  roses. 

Promises  lilacs  abundant 

As  some  fragrant  soft  haze. 

But  then  — 

The  promise  is  broken. 

It  is  a  lie  given  by  a  shrewd  trader  who  vends  his  goods  to  you, 

A  lie  told  by  a  Yankee  who  sells  wooden  nutmegs. 

Spring  in  Connecticut  is  a  bargain  not  kept. 

It  is  a  pledge  one  makes  to  secure  some  advantage, 

And  later  betrays. 

But  oh,  in  Georgia  how  different ! 

And  oh,  in  Georgia  what  glory ! 

This  is  how  Spring  comes  in  Georgia. 

It  comes  like  the  song  of  a  mocking-bird  poised  on  a  branch  of 

wistaria  and  swelling  his  throat  in  the  moonlight. 
It  comes  like  the  flight  of  a  cardinal. 
It  comes  like  the  bob-white  love  call 
Or  a  fluffy  young  baby  white  heron. 
Yet  Spring  is  none  of  these. 
Spring  in  Georgia  is  an  old  time  southern  belle  made  dainty 

with  crinoline. 

She  walks  with  soft  step  in  the  shadows  under  magnolias. 
Her  arms  carry  Cherokee  roses, 
And  magnificent  days. 


The  Very  Last  Deal 

SYD    BLANSHARD    FLOWER 

"T  A7E  LIVE  in  a  swift  age,  gentlemen,"  said  the  Oldest 

*  *  Member,  settling  himself  more  comfortably  in  his 
chair.  He  took  a  sip  from  his  glass  and  seemed  to  ponder. 

We  waited.  He  frowned. 

"But  not  swift  enough,"  he  added,  and  drained  his  glass. 

"It  seems  to  you  that  we  are  a  little  slow?"  someone  in 
quired,  with  a  hint  of  satire  in  his  tone. 

"Not  slow,"  amended  the  Oldest  Member:  "Blind!  Blind, 
because,  in  spite  of  our  willingness,  even  our  haste,  to  mort 
gage  our  future  to  a  public  debt  of  hundreds  of  billions  of  dol 
lars,  we  do  nothing  about  the  greatest  of  all  possible  human 
undertakings." 

"Which  is  — ?" 

"Changing  the  climate  of  the  world,  gentlemen,"  said  the 
Oldest  Member,  impressively. 

"The  climate!" 

"Of  the  world?" 

"We  have  done  some  pretty  big  things,  sir,"  said  a  younger 
man,  "but  when  you  speak  of  changing  the  climate  of  the 
whole  world,  really  I  suspect  humor." 

"I  was  never  more  serious,"  said  the  Oldest  Member, 
solemnly.  "But,  come,  you  might  like  to  hear  how,  why, 
when,  where?" 

"Very  much,"  we  said  in  chorus. 

"It  is  a  matter  I  have  thought  out  very  carefully,"  said  the 
Oldest  Member,  "and  in  telling  it  I  may  seem  to  monopolize 
the  conversation,  but,  if  you  don't  mind  that,  I  shall  really  be 
glad  of  this  chance  to  lay  the  thing  before  you.  It  seems  to  me 
important,  and  quite  in  the  spirit  of  the  times.  Let  us  be  glad, 
gentlemen,  that  we  live  in  an  age  when  nothing  is  too  big  for 
the  United  States  to  undertake." 

"And,  perhaps,  bring  to  a  successful  issue?" 

"Perhaps." 

[47] 


[  48  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"To  change  the  climate  of  the  globe  should  be  big  enough 
to  satisfy  us,"  it  was  suggested. 

The  Oldest  Member  nodded  to  the  last  speaker. 

"It  should,"  he  said.  "Gentlemen,  I  shall  take  you  into  the 
thick  of  it  at  once.  Are  you  all  comfortable?  Good." 

"The  north  polar  circle  of  our  earth  is  depressed,  like  the 
flat  top  of  an  orange.  It  is  actually  below  the  present  sea-level. 
The  north  polar  region  is  therefore  nearer  to  the  molten  center 
of  the  earth  than  any  other  spot  upon  the  earth's  surface.  Do 
you  see  that?" 

"Quite,"  we  said. 

"There  is  enough  glacier,  berg,  and  pack  ice  in  the  north 
polar  basin  to  raise  the  oceans  of  the  globe  six  hundred  feet 
above  their  present  level,  if  that  ice  were  all  melted" 

"How  do  you  know  that?" 

"I  have  measured  it,"  he  replied,  simply.  "This  ice  has  been 
often  melted  in  past  eons  of  time,  following  the  successive  Ice 
Ages,  as  every  geologist  knows.  I  say  it  can  be  melted  today  by 
boring  holes  to  tap  the  heat  that  lies  below  the  crust  of  the 
earth.  One  hundred  of  these  holes,  each  five  miles  from  the 
next,  will  start  this  melting  over  a  sufficiently  wide  area.  Once 
started,  it  will  keep  going  of  itself,  enlarging  the  vents  by  heat 
and  pressure  from  below.  Ten  miles  depth  will  do." 

"But,  good  gosh,  no  drill  could  bore  at  that  depth!" 

"On  the  contrary,  American,  British,  Swedish,  Japanese, 
Italian,  Russian,  German  engineers  will  bear  me  out  that 
harder  drill-tools,  resistant  to  heat,  are  coming,  and  that 
these,  assisted  by  dynamite,  will  give  us  this  boring  to  a  depth 
of  ten  miles!" 

"But,  look  here  .  .  .   !" 

"I  have  said  that  there  is  enough  glacier,  berg  and  pack  ice 
in  the  North  Polar  basin,"  the  speaker  continued  calmly,  "to 
raise  the  seas  of  the  globe  six  hundred  feet  above  the  present 
ocean  level,  if  that  ice  were  all  melted.  Gentlemen,  it  has  been 
melted  before,  with  the  effect,  invariably,  of  deepening  the 
existing  oceans  as  the  floods  found  their  way  at  last  to  the  sea. 
I  propose  now  merely  to  melt  our  northern  ice-cap,  and  to 


THE  VERT  LAST  DEAL  [  49  ] 

melt  it  finally,  so  that  there  will  be  no  more  ice-caps  on  the 
north  end  of  our  globe,  and  this  time,  gentlemen,  the  melting 
will  be  done  under  intelligent  human  direction,  to  subserve 
human  ends,  human  aims,  human  needs.  This,  I  think,  is  en 
tirely  in  line  with  the  spirit  of  the  New  Deal.  Am  I  right?" 

"Yes,  but  ...  ?" 

"This  melting  will  raise  the  ocean  level,  slowly,  at  the  rate 
of  eight  feet  a  year,  proceeding  continuously,  summer  and 
winter.  In  seventy-five  years,  therefore,  the  British  Isles,  and 
the  greater  part  of  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  America  and  Aus 
tralia,  will  again  be  six  hundred  feet  beneath  the  sea.  The 
Sahara  Desert,  the  Gobi  Desert,  the  Mississippi  Valley  and 
Great  Lakes  country  will  all,  again,  be  mighty  inland  seas,  as 
once  they  were." 

"Yes,  but  look  here.  New  York  .  .  .  ?" 

"Boston?" 

".  .  .  Philadelphia?" 

"...  Chicago?" 

"...  San  Francisco  and  Los  Angeles?" 

"...  Paris,  London,  Berlin?" 

"Gentlemen,  please!  You  interrupt  the  narrative.  All  the 
great  sea-level  cities  of  the  world  will  naturally  have  ended 
themselves  in  face  of  the  advancing  waters." 

"What  about  your  precious  climates  then?" 

"The  bitter  cold  of  Alaska,  Siberia,  Labrador,  Greenland, 
Poland,  Lapland,  Finland,  gives  way  to  the  grateful  warmth 
of  the  Garden  of  Eden.  Again  man  r centers  Paradise,  so  to 
speak,  retrieving  Adam's  blunder." 

"What  about  the  Gulf  Stream?" 

"That  is  unimportant,  gentlemen.  The  courses  of  the  Gulf 
Stream  and  the  Japan  Current  will  be  switched.  It  is  immate 
rial  what  becomes  of  them.  The  world  will  no  longer  have 
need  of  Gulf  Streams.  England,  sunk  fathoms  deep,  will  not  be 
interested,  and  Japan,  having  left  her  island  chain  to  be  the 
sport  of  earthquake,  volcano,  and  the  high  seas,  will  be  busy  on 
the  mainland  of  Asia,  developing  Manchuria,  Mongolia, 
Korea.  I  wish  Japan  would  realize  that  with  an  ocean  pressure 


[  50  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  five  miles'  depth  today,  right  against  her  shores,  she  is  apt  at 
any  moment  to  be  blown  into  fragments,  without  an  instant's 
warning.  Was  Lisbon  warned?  Was  Martinique?  Was  San 
Francisco?  The  sacred  Fujiyama  may  blow  her  head  off  to 
morrow.  Japan  is  like  a  child  playing  with  matches.  She 
makes  me  nervous." 

"Can't  you  have  an  earthquake  without  deep  ocean  pres 
sure?" 

"Certainly  not.  All  earthquakes  and  volcanoes  are  due  to 
deep  ocean  pressures  which  generate  enormous  heat,  melting 
rock,  and  thrusting  magma  sideways  and  up  into  the  shudder 
ing  crust.  This  proposed  addition  to  the  oceans,  of  billions  of 
tons  of  fresh  water  from  the  newly  melted  snow  and  ice  of  the 
frozen  north,  will  certainly  ring  every  continent  with  new 
shorelines  of  active  volcanoes,  shattering  old  coasts,  exploding 
new.  There  will  be  abrupt  changes:  lands  will  go,  their  people 
moving  to  more  solid  ground." 

"In  effect,  to  higher  ground?" 

"Exactly.  To  higher  ground  —  not  less  than  six  hundred 
feet  above  the  present  sea-level.  Any  physiographic  map  of  the 
world  will  show  you  where  these  people  must  come  to  rest. 
Arizona,  Nevada,  Utah,  New  Mexico,  Colorado,  averaging 
three  thousand  feet  in  altitude,  become  of  course  the  most 
densely  populated  parts  of  the  United  States." 

"Do  I  understand  that  the  British  Isles  will  be  completely 
submerged,  sir?" 

"Naturally.  Of  course,  a  peak  or  two  will  show.  But  not 
many." 

"Do  you  assume  that  England  will  mildly  await  this  end 
ing?" 

"Gentlemen,"  said  the  Oldest  Member,  "we  live  in  a  rea 
sonable  age,  I  hope.  We  are  familiar  with  changes  undertaken 
in  a  commendable  spirit  of  good  fellowship.  England  will, 
perhaps,  object  to  total  submergence  for  the  sake  of  the  im 
provement  of  climates  in  general,  but  I  feel  sure  that  the  com 
mon  sense  of  all  nations,  echoing  the  altruism  of  our  example, 
will  urge  upon  England  that  in  this  matter  of  world-benefit  the 


THE  VERY  LAST  DEAL  [  51  ] 

narrow,  selfish,  insular  view  must  not  intrude;  that  the  great 
est  good  of  the  greatest  number  must  be  sought  as  the  guiding 
principle;  that  her  present  climate  is  far  from  agreeable;  that 
her  present  land  area,  even  including  Scotland  and  Wales,  is 
ridiculously  tiny;  that  her  people  are  now  unhealthily  crowded; 
that  she  will  have  room  to  expand  in  the  new  land  of  her 
choice,  wherever  that  may  be." 

"Where,  sir,  would  you  suggest  that  England  make  her 
home?" 

"That  is  immaterial.  In  the  New  Day  that  is  at  hand  all 
lands  will  be  equally  agreeable,  equally  attractive." 

"Such  as  remain  above  the  sea,  of  course?" 

"Exactly.  England  will  have  room  to  expand  in  northern 
Canada  where,  in  the  new  climate,  palms  and  orange-blos 
soms  will  make  sweet  the  air,  where  the  sun  will  shine,  where 
magnolias  will  bloom.  In  the  course  of  seventy-five  years  she 
will  have  ample  time  to  determine  whether  Canada,  South 
Africa,  Siberia,  Australia,  or  Alaska,  would  best  suit  her." 

"Is  it  not  remarkable,  sir,  that  you  seem  to  have  exactly 
caught  the  invigorating  spirit  of  change  that  affects  all  con 
nected  in  any  way  with  the  New  Deal?  Is  that,  too,  a  sign  of 
the  times?" 

"Apparently.  Yes.  England,  in  moving  her  people  and 
goods  to  fairer  surroundings,  will  not  be  parted  from  her 
treasures,  however  such  treasures  may  have  come  into  her 
possession.  I  am  thinking  of  Cleopatra's  Needle  and  the  Elgin 
Marbles  particularly.  On  the  other  hand,  she  will  be  well  rid 
of  her  hideous  native  statuary  and  squat  buildings,  which  she 
leaves  behind  her  with  her  slums,  her  fogs,  her  gloom.  A  hap 
pier  day  dawns  for  England.  Her  migration  to  this  or  that 
continent  will  be  not  only  a  blessing  to  herself,  but  an  ad 
vantage  to  the  native  stocks,  ensuring  her  a  warm  welcome, 
notably  from  Soviet  Russia,  where  the  mass-intermarriage  of 
the  Celt,  the  Saxon,  the  Norman,  the  Scot,  and  the  Pict,  with 
the  Slav,  the  Circassian,  the  Georgian,  the  Mongol  and  the 
Tartar,  will  be  watched  with  the  friendliest  interest  by  all 
ethnologists,  anthropologists  and  eugenists.  In  short,  as  her 


[  52  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Byron  so  well  said,  she  can  look  around  and  choose  her  ground 
—  and  take  her  rest  practically  anywhere,  sure  of  a  welcome." 

"Yes,  sir,  but  if  you'll  pardon  me  .  .  ." 

"In  thus  benefiting  herself,"  continued  the  old  gentleman, 
"England  will  have  the  opportunity  once  more  to  inject  into 
the  affair  that  tone  of  high  moral  purpose,  as  of  one  perform 
ing  a  duty  to  God,  to  King,  and  to  Country,  without  which 
England  never  makes  a  move  of  any  kind,  to  the  enormous 
merriment  of  her  neighbors,  France  and  Germany,  who  have 
cursed  her  heartily  through  the  centuries  for  a  bare-faced  old 
liar  and  a  hyprocrite  of  the  blackest,  while  envying  her  cun 
ning.  In  brief,  this  is  another  golden  opportunity  for  Eng 
land  to  spread  the  blessing  of  the  British  Crown  among  the 
heathen,  with  a  fat  commercial  profit  to  herself  on  the  side!" 

"But  who,  sir,  can  be  found  to  direct  this  stupendous 
hegira?" 

"The  hour  and  the  man!  Can  you  ask?  The  Right  Hon. 
Winston  Churchill,  a  most  capable  mover,  will,  I  doubt  not, 
take  complete  charge.  That  is  a  way  he  has.  Standing,  with 
reluctant  feet,  where  new  land  and  ocean  meet,  Winston  will 
not  hesitate,  I  think,  to  urge  England  to  embark.  He  is  no 
stranger  to  mobilizing  fleets.  And  here  at  last  is  a  right  use 
for  Britain's  Navy.  To  what  worthier  purpose  than  to  this 
national  moving  job  could  its  aid  be  lent?  Moreover,  there  is 
no  hurry.  This  is  no  scramble,  like  Mahomet's  hegira  to 
Medina,  but  a  leisurely  transit.  Much  can  be  done,  in  the  way 
of  moving,  in  seventy-five  years  when  your  heart's  in  the 
work." 

"Don't  you  think,  sir,  that  life  can  be  made  too  easy  for  the 
undeserving?" 

"I  do  not.  In  the  Lexicon  of  the  New  Deal  there  are  no  un 
deserving.  And  what  a  lot  of  trouble  that  saves !  But  I  see  your 
objections.  You  would  say  that  if  life  were  made  easy  and 
pleasant  for  the  mass  of  mankind  there  would  be  an  end  of 
ambition.  On  the  contrary,  I  feel  sure  that  whatever  this  new 
earth  and  new  climate  may  offer,  monotony  will  be  no  part  of 
it.  We  do  not  picture  the  leaping  lizard  a  prey  to  boredom.  As 


THE  VERT  LAST  DEAL  [  53  ] 

I  see  this  Great  Movement  of  the  Nations  it  is  full  of  pleasant 
activity  for  everybody." 

"For  everyone  that's  left,  sir?" 

"Of  course." 

"But  how  about  national  rivalries,  sir,  when  every  big  na 
tion  is  boring  its  own  hole  in  the  Arctic  Circle  to  tap  the  in 
terior  heat?" 

"Ah,  yes.  That  calls  for  firmness,  of  course.  Firmness  with 
tact.  But  I  anticipate  no  trouble  on  that  score.  The  nations 
will  be  rather  thoroughly  occupied  in  getting  to  higher 
ground,  I  think." 

"If  that  interior  heat  is  allowed  to  work  on  the  waters  of  the 
earth  unchecked,  the  effect  will  be  ultimately  a  boiling  ocean, 
will  it  not,  sir?" 

"Undoubtedly.  Yes.  If  unchecked.  But,  you  remember,  we 
have  left  the  South  Pole  out  of  this  work  of  alteration  of  the 
world's  climate,  and  this  for  a  two-fold  reason.  First,  because 
the  South  Pole  stands  some  ten  thousand  feet  above  present 
sea-level,  and  secondly,  because  we  need  the  South  Pole  for  a 
control,  furnishing  the  brake  that  science  demands.  Even 
though  we  move  to  the  liberation  of  an  earth  from  its  glacial 
incubus,  we  move,  I  hope,  with  none  of  the  rash  enthusiasm 
of  the  amateur,  reckless  of  consequences.  That  is  not  our  way. 
We  are  scientists  first." 

"Well,  really,  sir,  I  am  speaking  for  all  of  us,  I  am  sure, 
when  I  say  that  you  have  given  us  something  to  ponder  upon 
tonight." 

The  Oldest  Member  bowed  graciously. 

"You  are  entirely  welcome,"  he  said.  "The  world  does 
move,  gentlemen,  as  Galileo  was  first  to  observe.  Let  it  be  the 
proud  boast  of  this  Newest  of  New  Deals  that  it  has  taught 
the  world  the  grandeur  of  moving  on  a  big  scale  —  in  short, 
an  approximation  to  Perpetual  Motion.  Good-night." 


O'Neill — and  the  Poet's  Quest 

RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER 

THE  PLAYS  of  Eugene  O'Neill  have  never  seemed  to  be 
solely  of  the  theatre.  They  have,  as  it  were,  followed  one 
out  into  the  noisy  streets  and  into  the  privacy  of  one's  room, 
into  the  greater  privacy,  even,  of  one's  inner  thoughts  and 
feelings  —  and  not  for  a  few  hours  or  days,  but  with  a  certain 
timeless  insistency.  They  have  become  a  part  of  the  real  world 
as  well  as  the  world  of  make-believe.  They  simply  refuse  to 
stay  locked  within  the  walls  of  the  theatre.  Nor,  in  this  bursting 
of  traditional  bounds,  do  they  confine  themselves  to  one  seg 
ment  or  another  of  realistic  affairs. 

Bernard  Shaw  was  once  capable  of  writing  a  play  that 
mixed  itself  up  later  on  with  the  actual  doings  of  Fabian 
socialists;  and  Ibsen  wrote  many  plays  that  prompted  clinical 
quests  into  actual  heredity  or  made  one  speculate  moodily 
about  false  pride  and  the  social  order.  But  neither  Shaw  nor 
Ibsen  had  the  poet's  gift  of  reaching  to  the  emotional  and 
moral  inwardness  of  life  without  any  relation  to  specific  events 
or  times  or  people.  O'Neill  has  that  gift  in  abundance.  His 
plays  are  neither  social  sermons  nor  contemporary  satire. 
They  are  more  like  parables. 

Parables  of  course  are  dangerous  weapons  in  the  hands  of  a 
poet  of  real  stature.  They  are  enormously  effective  in  implant 
ing  an  idea;  but  the  idea  itself  may  be  a  false  one,  or  those 
listening  to  the  parable  may  apply  it  in  many  ways  never 
intended  by  the  teller  of  the  tale.  O'Neill's  plays  have  suffered, 
as  parables,  both  from  the  confusion  and  variety  of  his  own 
ideas  and  from  the  many  interpretations  audiences  have  read 
into  them.  As  an  individual  poet,  O'Neill  has  gone  through 
countless  phases  of  thought  and  emotion,  many  of  them  con 
tradictory  and  many  of  them  tortured  with  alternating  doubt 
and  premature  discovery  of  spiritual  solvents.  All  of  this  has 
found  expression  in  his  plays  and  has  carried  through,  for 
good  or  ill,  to  vast  audiences.  He  has  been  accused  of  every- 

[54] 


O'NEILL  —  AND  THE  POETS  QUEST  [  55  ] 

thing  from  charlatanism  to  extreme  morbidity  and  immoral 
ity,  and  has  been  praised  for  everything  from  supreme  tragic 
expression  to  profound  philosophical  insight.  But  there  is 
another  way  to  appraise  and  eventually  to  revere  the  O'Neill 
plays,  and  that  is  in  their  singular  continuity  as  the  expression 
of  the  immemorial  "poet's  pilgrimage"  —  as  the  representa 
tion  in  outer  and  objective  form  of  certain  elemental  struggles 
and  conflicts  which  were  as  much  a  part  of  the  humanity  and 
the  poetry  of  China,  Palestine  and  Greece  as  they  are  of  the 
tumultuous  life  of  our  own  day. 

The  poet  lives  a  vastly  larger  life  than  the  man.  He  lives  to 
the  utmost  possibilities  of  human  nature,  both  in  good  and  in 
evil.  He  may  be  the  summation  of  all  virtues  in  his  private  life 
and  yet  experience  in  his  poetic  imagination  the  nadir  of 
moral  degradation.  He  may  pass  his  entire  life  in  a  country 
village  and  yet  encompass  the  catastrophe  of  an  empire.  His 
parables  are  not  the  outline  of  himself  but  the  rhythm  and 
splendor,  and  often  the  terror,  of  something  far  above  and 
beyond  his  personal  experience. 

Eugene  O'Neill  has  written  many  plays  in  which  the  ma 
terial  obviously  results  from  the  impact  of  personal  experience 
—  his  early  plays  of  the  sea,  for  example.  In  other  plays,  a 
personal  moral  conflict  is  clearly  indicated,  not  in  the  outer 
material  but  in  the  theme.  Yet  through  all  these  plays,  as  well 
as  through  his  more  highly  imaginative  creations,  there  is  a 
larger  unity,  almost  like  the  movements  of  a  symphony,  which 
expresses  the  larger  life  of  the  poet  as  distinct  from  the  per 
sonal  life  and  problems  of  the  man.  It  is  this  larger  aspect  of 
the  O'Neill  plays  which  has  always  seemed  to  be  not  merely 
of  the  theatre,  but  also  part  of  the  great  stream  of  poetic 
literature  coursing  through  all  history  and  legend.  It  follows, 
in  many  extraordinary  details,  a  universal  theme  found  in  all 
deeply  rooted  folk-lore,  and  in  the  innermost  experiences  of 
great  mystics.  In  its  simplest  sense,  it  is  the  conflict  of  good  and 
evil  —  a  picture  in  objective  form  of  the  stretching  and  tearing 
of  a  soul  between  a  will  toward  the  good  and  an  appetite  for 
the  revolt  of  sin.  In  its  deeper  sense,  it  is  the  quest  for  a  resolu- 


[  56  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

tion  of  this  conflict  and  for  ultimate  peace  and  inner  unity. 

Folk-lore,  as  the  poetry  of  a  race,  abounds  in  examples  of 
this  major  theme.  The  dragon  or  the  beast  must  be  conquered 
before  the  peace  of  love  can  be  achieved.  The  princess  of 
legend  is  not  content  to  let  her  knight  languish  at  her  feet  in 
an  ecstasy  of  love.  A  dragon  is  destroying  the  countryside. 
Her  knight  must  go  forth  into  the  slime  and  terrors  of  this 
reality  outside,  before  he  can  claim  the  perfection  of  her  love. 
Often  the  dragon  is  a  beast  of  many  heads  and  many  lives, 
like  the  multiplicity  of  evil  to  be  conquered  in  the  soul.  Again, 
we  have  the  whole  series  of  legends,  like  "Beauty  and  the 
Beast,"  in  which  the  struggle  is  not  so  much  to  conquer  evil 
as  to  attain  that  maturity  which  transforms  the  fears  and  the 
monsters  of  youth  into  instruments  of  peace  and  beauty.  A 
child  is  allowed  to  grow  up  with  a  vague  horror  of  sex,  as 
something  evil  in  itself,  only  to  discover  later  that  it  can  be 
come  the  supreme  physical  expression  of  man's  creative  im 
pulses.  The  "beast"  can  be  won,  through  love  and  under 
standing,  to  an  end  of  beauty.  In  still  another  group  of  legends 
we  have  the  fears  of  immaturity  appearing  as  giants  blocking 
the  path  to  manhood.  The  Jacks  must  kill  the  giants  of  fear, 
before  the  world  is  fit  to  live  in.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  delve 
into  the  intricate  theories  of  racial  subconsciousness  to  see  how 
universally  mankind  objectifies  in  legend  and  story,  the  com 
mon  experiences  and  the  terrifying  inner  struggles  of  the 
pilgrimage  from  tortured  youth  to  peaceful  maturity. 

Poets  are  peculiarly  sensitive  to  the  almost  infinite  varia 
tions  of  this  inner  conflict.  No  matter  how  objective  in  detail 
the  poet's  story  may  seem,  he  is  almost  certain,  in  his  major 
works,  to  catch  up  the  fury  and  agony  of  inner  strife  to  attain 
that  ultimate  virtue  which  will  bring  the  warring  elements 
into  harmony.  We  find  this  in  the  wanderings  of  the  Homeric 
heroes,  in  the  Virgilian  descent  into  Hades,  in  Dante's  progress 
through  the  Inferno  and  Purgatory  into  a  paradise  filled  with 
that  love  "which  moves  the  sun  and  the  other  stars."  We  find 
it  again  in  Milton,  in  Francis  Thompson's  "Hound  of  Heaven," 
and  in  Richard  Wagner's  cycle,  in  the  "Ring"  tragedy, 


O'NEILL  —  AND  THE  POETS  QUEST  [  57  ] 

culminating  in  the  exaltation  of  Parsifal.  Blake  found  in  his 
"Book  of  Job"  another  expression  of  the  universal  conflict  and 
quest.  Shakespeare  was  never  a  more  universal  poet  than  in 
probing  the  soul  of  the  searching  Hamlet.  The  Greek  drama 
tists  thought  and  wrote  of  little  else  than  the  fates,  furies  and 
conflicting  obligations  which  beset  every  human  action  and 
decision. 

In  a  still  larger  sense,  the  peoples  of  the  earth  have  fought 
and  lived  almost  as  if  they  were  acting  out  a  poet's  dream. 
They  have  reached  a  summit  of  achievement  and  discovered 
the  pride  that  follows  it,  only  to  sink  again  into  blackness 
and  despair  and  the  terrors  of  a  mighty  purging.  Greece,  and 
the  shadowy  imitation  of  Greece  that  was  Rome,  fell  into  the 
dark  night  of  Europe,  to  reawaken  for  a  short  period  of 
incandescence  in  the  thirteenth  century.  Then  came  pride  of 
intellect  in  a  new  form,  the  renascence  of  a  Greek  culture 
that  no  longer  fitted  the  souls  of  men,  and  the  new  terrors  of 
the  dark  age  of  science  which  was  destined  to  last  another  five 
centuries. 

Science,  which  was  to  liberate  man  through  his  own  intel 
lect,  became  the  master  instead  of  the  servant.  Instead  of 
exalting  man,  each  new  discovery,  like  a  mystical  increase  in 
the  "knowledge  of  good  and  evil,"  made  man  smaller  and 
smaller  in  his  own  eyes.  It  multiplied  his  problems  of  good  and 
evil  a  thousandfold.  It  threw  him  into  the  wild  and  tortured 
confusion  and  savagery  that  reached  their  first  grotesque 
crisis  in  the  Great  War.  Mankind  finds  itself  today  a  chained 
Prometheus  for  having  brought  the  new  fire  of  science  to 
disrupt  the  soul.  The  problem  of  humanity  today,  as  the  poet 
would  feel  and  describe  it,  is  to  discover  the  humility  which 
can  make  man  master  of  his  new  science.  A  paradox,  certainly 
—  but  not  a  new  one.  It  is  "Beauty  and  the  Beast"  all  over 
again.  It  is  not  science  that  is  wrong,  but  the  pride  with  which 
men  have  used  science.  It  is  men  who  have  made  science  their 
beast;  and  the  beast  can  be  transformed  only  through  a  new 
humility  among  men  themselves.  It  was  in  Palestine  that  the 
words  of  a  parable  rang  forth  —  "he  that  humbleth  himself 


[  58  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

shall  be  exalted."  These  words  were  wholly  forgotten  when 
man  proudly  set  out  to  free  himself  through  his  scientific 
intellect  alone. 

It  is  because  Eugene  O'Neill  is  of  the  very  stuff  and  fibre  of 
this  age  that  his  poetic  intuitions  are  of  immeasurable  im 
portance  to  us,  as  a  reflection  of  what  we  are  as  individuals  and 
as  a  rumor  of  what  we  may  become.  He  is  part  of  an  age  which, 
if  we  were  not  living  in  it  ourselves  and  filled  with  the  egotism 
of  it,  we  would  recognize  as  a  darker  night  of  civilization  than 
the  world  has  known  for  many  long  centuries.  What  man  is 
there  living,  unless  he  be  supernaturally  inspired,  who  will  tell 
you  that  he  sees  clearly  the  road  ahead?  The  very  multiplicity 
of  our  knowledge  of  detail  has  obscured  our  vision  of  the 
whole  with  a  veil  as  black  as  midnight.  Wars,  conflicts,  riots, 
revolutions,  racial  deities,  sullen  envy  —  are  these  the  day 
light  of  civilization,  or  rather  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of 
humanity's  dreams? 

O'Neill  is  not,  in  the  accepted  sense,  a  poet  of  his  times. 
That  is,  he  rarely  attempts  consciously  to  write  of  current 
conditions  or  problems.  When  he  does,  as  in  his  play,  "Dyna 
mo,"  the  result  is  not  always  happy,  for  he  is  not  that  rarest  of 
all  persons,  a  poet  who  is  also  a  philosopher.  But  in  the  sense 
common  to  all  poets,  the  problems  that  he  objectifies  in  the 
characters  of  his  plays  are  those  of  peculiar  moment  to  the 
present  day;  and  in  an  age  which  thought  it  had  discarded 
morals,  these  problems  turn  out  to  be  moral  ones!  It  is  pre 
cisely  in  this  fact  that  his  intuitions  are  probably  far  keener 
than  those  of  the  essayists  and  the  philosophers.  In  an  age 
which  superficially  deifies  science  and  amorality,  O'Neill  is 
obsessed  with  questions  of  good  and  evil.  In  a  world  still  given 
over  to  economic  determinism,  he  writes  of  sin  and  retribution 
—  and  what  he  writes  proves  to  be  of  absorbing  interest  to 
millions ! 

What  O'Neill  has  done,  after  the  historic  fashion  of  poets, 
is  to  sense  far  in  advance  of  the  intellectualists  a  deep  change 
in  the  currents  of  individual  men's  thoughts  and  emotions.  In 
that  curious  super-life  which  the  poet  leads,  which  may  be  in 


O'NEILL  —  AND  THE  POETS  QUEST  [  59  ] 

almost  absurd  contrast  with  his  actual  life  as  an  individual 
man,  the  hunger  and  pain  and  doubt  of  great  masses  of  people 
may  of  course  seem  very  personal.  He  finds  himself  fascinated 
with  the  titanic  pride  of  such  a  man  as  Emperor  Jones,  and 
writes  of  his  tragic  downfall  with  perhaps  little  thought  that 
he  is  prophesying  the  collapse  of  a  whole  era  of  proud  in 
dividualists.  Or,  again,  the  incest  problem  of  the  old  Greek 
plays  becomes  strangely  urgent.  It  may  never  occur  to  him 
that  incest  is  in  one  sense  a  symbol  of  self-worship  and  self- 
seeking,  and  that  this  has  become  the  besetting  sin  of  a  genera 
tion  that  denies  any  power  greater  than  humanity,  and  so 
moves  on  to  slow  death  through  man's  worship  of  mankind. 
The  play  is  written  as  a  story  of  individuals.  But  in  the  doom 
of  its  characters  can  be  read  the  fate  of  nations. 

Yet  it  would  be  a  grave  mistake  to  think  of  O'Neill  chiefly 
as  the  poet  of  a  social  order  in  process  of  vast  change.  That 
would  exaggerate  the  faint  though  discernible  connection 
between  his  instinct  for  moral  issues  and  the  social  character 
istics  of  the  day.  He  is,  above  all  else,  the  poet  of  the  individual 
soul,  torn  and  warped,  perhaps,  by  the  surrounding  mass 
currents  —  but  still  supremely  the  master  of  its  individual 
choice.  The  Ibsens  and  the  Shaws  have  used  individuals  to 
express  the  problems  of  masses  or  of  a  social  system.  Their 
characters  have  been  almost  passive  victims  of  inheritance,  or 
of  a  convention,  or  of  mass  view-point.  But  with  O'Neill,  the 
problem  of  the  individual  as  a  soul  in  distress  or  torment  has 
been  clearly  supreme.  It  is  the  individual's  rebellion  against 
the  mass,  or  his  abject  surrender  to  it  that  counts,  rather  than 
the  action  of  the  individual  as  representing  the  mass.  O'Neill 
as  a  poet  does  carry  something  of  the  force  of  a  prophet  in  his 
writings,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  achievements  of  his  charac 
ters  prophesy  the  types  of  individuals  likely  to  be  bred  from 
the  anarchy  of  our  times,  rather  than  the  mass  types  and  the 
collective  trends. 

One  might  ask,  for  example,  "Are  the  days  ahead  of  us  apt 
to  bring  forth  a  new  Francis  of  Assisi?"  and  hope  to  find  a  hint 
of  the  true  answer  in  O'Neill's  work.  But  one  could  spend  no 


[  6o  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

end  of  futile  days  trying  to  discover  a  rumor  of  the  typical 
business  man,  or  factory  worker,  or  politician,  or  middle-class 
householder  of  the  next  generation.  Looking  backward,  we  can 
say  that  the  long  night  of  Europe  did  eventually  produce  a 
Saint  Francis,  a  Dante,  a  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  a  Leonardo 
da  Vinci.  If  we  had  lived  in  the  tenth  or  eleventh  centuries,  we 
might  have  gathered  this  in  advance  from  the  poets  of  the  day. 
The  Troubadours  of  Provence,  strangely  enough,  foreshad 
owed  not  a  little  of  the  Franciscan  idea  of  love.  But  to  discover 
what  the  mass  population  of  Europe  was  going  to  be  like,  the 
poets  would  have  helped  us  very  little.  In  the  clear  progressive 
unity  of  O'Neill's  writings,  we  can  discover  a  great  deal  con 
cerning  certain  rare  individual  types  likely  to  emerge  from  our 
discouraging  present.  But  to  try  to  make  a  social  philosopher 
out  of  him,  as  some  have  tried,  is  to  miss  the  whole  point  of  his 
special  genius.  He  is  the  poet  of  the  individual  soul,  of  its 
agony,  of  its  evil  will,  of  its  pride,  and  its  lusts  —  of  its  rare 
moments  of  illumination,  of  its  stumblings  and  gropings  in 
surrounding  darkness,  and  of  its  superbly  romantic  quest  for 
deliverance  through  loving  surrender. 

'  I  \HE  preoccupation  of  Eugene  O'Neill's  plays  with  good  and 
-*•  evil  gives  them  at  once  their  singular  inner  unity  and  their 
universal  impact.  Just  as  no  European  could  have  written 
these  plays,  because  of  their  sensitive  reflection  of  impending 
changes  in  American  life  and  mood,  so  no  European  could  fail 
to  understand  them,  because  they  pass  far  beyond  the  limi 
tations  of  the  American  scene  and  vibrate  with  the  intensity 
of  the  universal  life-struggle.  Had  O'Neill  merely  mirrored 
back  the  American  soul  to  itself,  he  would  have  remained  a 
minor  poet.  But  he  has  searched  instead  into  the  depths  of  the 
larger  soul  of  mankind  itself. 

It  would  be  exceedingly  difficult  to  catch  the  deeper  notes 
of  O'Neill's  work  without  attempting  to  understand  the  quality 
of  some  of  those  rich  and  terrifying  inner  experiences  which 
the  poets  and  mystics  of  all  ages  have  tried  to  express.  The 
greatest  of  them  have  ultimately  passed  beyond  the  turmoil  of 


O'NEILL  —  AND  THE  POETS  QUEST  [  61  ] 

doubts  and  fears  and  divided  selves,  into  something  resembling 
a  peaceful  unity  of  mind  and  soul.  They  have  actually  moved 
from  inner  discord  to  inner  harmony,  and  what  they  have 
learned  has  the  value  of  perspective. 

They  tell  us,  with  almost  one  voice,  of  a  first  state  when  they 
seemed  to  be  two  distinct  persons,  if  not  the  tumult  of  a  whole 
mob.  Yet  they  were  like  two  persons  welded  together  with  un 
breakable  chains.  Their  two  selves  could  not  live  in  peace  — 
yet  they  could  not  live  apart.  They  were  dimly  conscious  that 
the  binding  chain  itself  was  also  a  part  of  them.  It  was  their 
soul  and  their  will,  the  animating  principle  of  their  lives,  torn 
and  twisted  and  stretched  between  the  two  contending  selves 
—  a  state  which  the  saints,  at  least,  called  very  simply, 
"temptation."  From  this  point,  their  progress  might  be  termed 
the  process  of  making  the  chain  into  a  harness,  light,  flexible 
and  sensitive,  guiding  the  two  selves  into  one  path  ahead. 

It  is  the  first  instinct  of  the  poet  to  put  this  struggle  of  the 
selves  into  words  and,  if  possible,  into  objective  characters.  In 
the  old  morality  plays,  the  authors  freely  labeled  their  char 
acters  with  the  names  of  sins  and  corresponding  virtues. 
Bunyon  carried  on  the  tradition  in  English  literature.  The 
poets  of  our  own  day,  like  O'Neill,  are  often  less  keenly  aware 
of  what  they  are  doing  when  they  "create"  characters  which 
represent  the  many  "selves"  of  a  single  person.  The  poet,  let  us 
say,  is  acutely  disturbed  by  signs  of  his  own  potential  weak 
nesses  in  people  he  sees  about  him.  He  suffers  a  sort  of  agony  in 
the  presence  of  a  proud  man,  but  quite  possibly  because  he 
knows  only  too  well  the  destructive  effect  of  pride  to  his  own 
inner  peace.  He  knows  the  imperative  need  of  checking  his 
own  pride  and  so  resents  furiously  the  pride  he  sees  in  others. 
He  decides  to  write  a  play  about  the  destructive  force  a  proud 
man  creates  in  his  own  world  of  friends.  But  almost  inevitably, 
the  poet  will  find  another  character  to  represent  his  own  ideal 
"self,"  either  as  the  victim  or  the  protagonist  of  the  proud  man. 
Then  other  characters  will  be  added,  each  representing  parts 
of  the  poet's  personality  which  pride  endangers.  For  he  knows 
how  devastatingly  pride  may  reach  into  every  corner  of  his 


[  62  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

being,  into  his  love-life,  into  his  feminine  tenderness  and 
mercy,  into  his  male  forthrightness,  into  his  spirit  of  friend 
ship,  even  into  his  very  creative  ability  as  a  poet.  The  play 
ends  by  being  a  complete  description  of  his  fear  of  the  effect 
of  pride. 

The  more  sensitive  the  poet,  the  more  apt  he  is  to  "project" 
after  this  fashion  a  great  diversity  of  struggles  between  the 
divided  selves.  An  ordinary  mortal  suffers  from  one  or  two 
major  temptations  throughout  most  of  his  life,  and  hardly 
notices  his  other  faults.  But  the  poet,  very  much  like  the  saint, 
recognizes  himself  as  beset  with  all  the  temptations  in  varying 
degrees.  He  lacks  the  smugness  of  the  vegetable  being  which 
can  say,  "I  am  naturally  honest  and  kind,  and  I  have  con 
quered  most  of  my  evil  inclinations."  On  the  contrary,  the 
poet  says  to  himself: 

"I  am  a  strange  mixture  of  all  possible  beings.  Given  suffi 
cient  temptation,  I  could  be  a  murderer  or  a  pervert.  I  could 
dominate  nations  with  my  pride,  if  fate  led  me  to  be  a  ruler. 
My  envy  of  others'  talents  and  abilities  is  enough  to  make  me 
lie  and  cheat  to  destroy  them.  I  am  not  certain  of  my  honesty 
and  integrity  if  they  were  put  to  a  real  test.  I  am  utterly  weak- 
willed  before  the  onslaught  of  my  passions;  and  what  little 
virtue  I  maintain  is  merely  by  strictly  avoiding  the  occasions 
of  lust.  I  love  to  possess  both  people  and  things.  I  am  all  these 
things  in  my  mind  and  soul,  and  I  despise  myself  for  these 
hidden  things  which  are  really  just  as  much  myself  as  the  kind, 
sympathetic,  upright  person  my  friends  think  me  to  be.  My 
soul  is  stretched  like  a  taut  wire  between  all  the  evil  I  am 
capable  of,  and  the  good  I  desire.  I  know  myself  for  what  I 
might  so  easily  be;  and  I  run  cold  with  fear  when  I  see  this 
possible  self  in  others."  Sometimes  the  poet  is  incapable  of 
putting  these  torturing  thoughts  into  words.  He  shuns  them  as 
realities,  but  he  cannot  escape  from  the  vague  and  terrifying 
consciousness  of  their  truth. 

In  his  mind,  if  not  in  his  actual  daily  life,  the  poet  lives  the 
tragedy  of  the  proud  man,  or  the  hounding  fate  of  the  mur 
derer,  or  the  shame  of  the  unnatural  monster;  and  whether 


O'NEILL  —  AND  THE  POETS  QUEST  [  63  ] 

his  medium  of  making  these  inner  struggles  objective  be  paint 
ing  or  sculpture,  or  the  written  word  or  a  play,  he  "creates" 
the  very  thing  that  torments  him  secretly.  He  projects  it  from 
his  inner  being  to  an  outer  form  of  expression.  The  number  of 
such  struggles  which  he  gives  us  in  his  art  is  limited  only  by 
the  possible  selves  to  which  he  is  still  blind. 

Those  who  do  not  concern  themselves  overmuch  with  the 
way  of  a  poet,  often  ask  why  he  chooses  this  or  that  "grue 
some"  or  "morbid"  subject  for  a  novel  or  a  painting  or  a  play. 
On  meeting  the  poet  in  the  flesh,  they  are  surprised  to  find 
that  he  may  be  a  very  affable  and  reasonable  human  being  — 
"quite  unlike  the  terrible  people  he  writes  about."  There  are 
many  good  people  today  who  probably  believe  that  the 
author  of  "Mourning  Becomes  Electra"  must  show  in  daily 
life  the  effects  of  a  diseased  mind.  They  do  not  understand  the 
gulf  between  the  potential  evil  in  all  souls,  and  actual  wrong 
doing.  They  do  not  understand  (to  revert  to  the  terminology 
of  the  saints)  the  difference  between  temptation  and  sin.  In 
fact,  they  understand  very  little  of  any  of  the  deeper  currents 
of  life  surging  about  them.  Yet  it  is  precisely  because  the  poet 
reacts  as  he  does  to  his  own  potential  weaknesses  that  he  is 
able  to  create  the  objective  material  for  his  work  of  art.  Like 
the  saints,  he,  above  most  other  men,  understands  the  sinner 
and  fears  the  sin. 

In  the  second  stage  of  their  pilgrimage,  the  great  mystics 
tell  us  even  more  that  is  helpful  in  understanding  the  poet. 
The  phenomenon  of  the  divided  self  gradually  gives  way  to  a 
moment  of  apparent  peace  and  discovery.  The  saint  is  a 
convert  in  more  senses  than  one.  He  actually  succeeds  in  con 
verting  the  potential  evil  in  his  soul  to  a  good  end,  recalling 
again  the  folk-lore  analogy  of  "Beauty  and  the  Beast."  He 
accepts  the  facts  of  his  nature,  and  through  accepting  them 
discovers  that  the  wild  beasts  can  be  tamed.  They  are  danger 
ous  only  so  long  as  he  fears  them  —  and  the  saints  have  a 
way  of  seeking  the  end  of  fear  through  reliance  on  a  spiritual 
power  greater  than  themselves.  They  have  called  this  power 
through  the  centuries  Divine  Grace;  and  the  source  of  that 


[  64  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

power,  God.  But  we  are  concerned  only  in  passing  with  the 
supernatural  life  of  the  saints.  It  is  sufficient  to  record  as  a  fact 
(though  wholly  inadequate  as  an  explanation)  that  the  saints 
do  find  a  way  of  overcoming  the  fear  of  their  own  evil  inclina 
tions,  and  of  harnessing  them  in  such  a  way  as  to  draw  the  soul 
forward  on  its  chosen  road.  For  a  time  the  saints  find  unity 
instead  of  discord.  They  do  this  and  have  been  doing  it  for 
centuries  without  ever  hearing  of  the  word  "sublimation." 

Unfortunately  the  saints  have  also  discovered  that  the  first 
taming  of  the  beast  is  a  transient  victory.  The  beast  has  many 
forms.  The  saint  may  have  tamed  his  beast  in  the  form  of  lust, 
only  to  find  that  the  same  beast  has  grown  twice  as  strong  in 
the  form  of  untamed  pride.  His  renewed  onslaught  comes  with 
astounding  violence.  The  saint  is  plunged  again  in  darkness 
and  fear,  and  sometimes  in  that  strange  thing  which  is  worse 
than  fear  —  utter  and  devastating  dryness  of  soul.  What  re 
sistance  he  offers  is  reduced  to  a  pure  act  of  will  unaided  by 
emotional  stimuli.  In  the  writings  of  the  mystics,  we  find  this 
referred  to  as  "the  temporary  withdrawal  of  Divine  assist 
ance"  ;  as  if  the  convert  were  being  tested  as  to  his  own  strength, 
or  were  being  shown  once  and  for  all  his  dependence  on  God. 
But,  again,  we  are  not  chiefly  concerned  with  the  supernatural 
life.  This  familiar  "dark  night  of  the  soul"  has  its  counterpart 
and  foundation  in  purely  natural  religion,  and  in  the  experi 
ence  of  the  poet  as  well  as  the  saint. 

One  reason  for  assigning  Eugene  O'Neill  an  exceptionally 
high  place  among  the  poets  of  history,  is  precisely  because  his 
poetic  experiences,  as  objectified  in  his  plays,  correspond  with 
such  depth  and  intensity  to  the  universal  pattern  of  the  mys 
tical  experience  of  the  saints.  This  does  not  imply,  even  re 
motely,  that  Eugene  O'Neill  as  a  man  is  in  the  process  of 
becoming  a  saint !  It  merely  implies  that,  as  a  poet,  giving  free 
rein  to  his  creative  imagination,  he  understands,  partly  by 
direct  experience,  of  course,  but  even  more  by  magnificent 
intuition  the  universal  character  of  the  struggle  between  good 
and  evil  and  the  clearly  marked  stages  in  the  pilgrimage  from 
turmoil  to  peace.  He  has  made,  or  rather,  his  characters  have 


•">    I   ' 

'   -  '*^ 


O'NEILL  —  AND  THE  POETS  QUEST  [  65  ] 

'****i*»iaimiB» ; 

made  some  superb  spiritual  discoveries,  even  in  his  earlier 
plays.  But  the  same  characters,  with  different  names,  have 
again  found  themselves  later  on  in  darkness.  Like  the  saints, 
they  have  reached  a  first  crest,  only  to  sink  into  another  valley 
where  new  fears  attack  them  and  where  the  night  is  very  black 
and  without  stars. 

This  is  the  universal  language  of  the  human  quest,  as  the 
poets  have  always  understood  it.  Odysseus  found  the  long  road 
home  beset  with  greater  and  greater  terrors  as  he  neared  his 
goal.  The  generations  of  the  House  of  Atreus  found  no  abate 
ment  in  the  attack  of  the  furies  as  they  sought  expiation  for 
primal  guilt.  Dante  went  down  into  the  pit  of  the  Inferno 
before  he  found  himself  pure  and  ready  to  ascend  to  the  stars. 
The  poetic  genius  of  Richard  Wagner,  adapting  folk-lore  to  his 
mystical  intuitions,  found  ultimate  release  from  the  incest- 
cycle  of  the  "Ring"  only  in  the  death  of  the  hero  and  of  the 
gods  themselves.  Not  until  Siegfried  was  dead  to  his  old  self, 
could  he  live  again  as  Parsifal,  the  pure  fool  who  could  attain 
the  Grail. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  say  that  there  is  no  connection  between 
the  "Niebelungen  Ring"  and  "Parsifal,"  that  they  were  sep 
arate  poetic  concepts.  But  the  unhappy  Nietzsche  knew  other 
wise.  He  felt  the  "betrayal"  of  the  poetic  concept  of  the 
superman  when  Wagner  brought  his  hero  back  to  life  as  a 
knight  of  the  Grail,  humble  before  God.  It  was  not  till  then 
that  Nietzsche's  adored  Wagner  became  "human,  all  too 
human."  The  whole  point  is  that  Wagner  did  become  human! 
He  became  the  universal  poet  of  human  experience,  instead  of 
remaining  with  Nietzsche  in  the  twilight  of  dead  gods,  fash 
ioned  in  man's  own  image.  The  universal  poet  seeks,  with  the 
saints,  the  resurrection  from  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death 
—  a  release  in  humble  surrender,  or  in  death  to  the  old  self, 
from  that  strangely  insistent  pursuit  "down  the  arches  of  the 
years." 

In  the  truly  great  poet,  then,  we  may  expect  to  find  a 
spiritual  progression  corresponding  very  closely  to  age-old 
inner  struggles  of  the  human  race.  This  provides  the  inner 


[  66  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

unity  to  the  poet's  work.  In  the  case  of  a  playwright,  we  may 
expect  to  find  the  plots  and  materials  of  his  plays  widely  diver 
sified.  There  is  no  outer  or  objective  unity  between  the  hero  of 
one  play  and  the  heroes  of  a  dozen  succeeding  plays.  Even  the 
theme  problems  will  vary,  ranging  through  all  the  forms  of 
sin  and  virtue.  The  choice  of  a  theme  problem  will  depend  on 
which  of  the  infinitely  varied  struggles  of  the  two  selves  hap 
pens  to  be  uppermost  in  the  playwright's  emotional  life  at  the 
time  he  writes.  The  higher  poetic  unity  between  the  plays  will 
come  out  in  the  way  the  poet,  through  his  objective  characters, 
meets  the  successive  problems. 

In  the  case  of  Eugene  O'Neill,  it  is  very  plain  that  the 
changing  conditions  of  American  life  from  the  'nineties  to  the 
present  have  largely  conditioned  his  choice  both  of  plot  and 
theme.  Environment  has  naturally  made  him  more  acutely 
conscious  of  certain  inner  problems  than  of  others.  The  strug 
gle  of  the  'nineties  between  a  general  smug  complacency  and  a 
limited  but  intense  idealism  and  devotion  to  beauty  and  art; 
the  philosophic  unrest  and  discontent  of  the  succeeding  decade 
with  its  intellectual  pride;  the  defeat  of  scientific  materialism 
in  the  great  war,  and  the  impulse  to  a  new  maturity  in  the  dis 
astrous  years  after  the  war  —  all  of  these  national  currents  of 
mind  and  soul  have  influenced  profoundly  his  consciousness  of 
special  forms  of  human  struggle.  But  as  a  poet  in  the  larger 
sense,  he  has  also,  in  his  successive  handling  of  these  problems, 
reflected  the  inner  development  in  his  own  soul  of  the  univer 
sal  poet's  quest.  Moreover,  we  may  well  believe  that  his  poetic 
progress  is  deeply  prophetic  of  changes  about  to  take  place  in 
the  deeper  sources  of  American  life  and  emotions. 

With  the  poet,  reflecting  intuitively  the  experience  of  the 
saints,  our  real  concern  is  with  the  new  forces  of  will,  under 
standing  and  charity  we  can  discover  at  work  in  the  objective 
form  of  his  characters.  Suppose  we  were  to  say  to  ourselves, 
Robert  Mayo,  the  Hairy  Ape,  and  Bill  Brown  and  Nina  Leeds 
and  Abbie  Putnam,  and  Brutus  Jones  and  John  Loving  and 
Young  Richard  Miller  are  all  one  person  —  one  many-sided 
person  trying  to  find  a  way  through  the  maze  of  life's  emotions, 


O'NEILL  —  AND  THE  POETS  QUEST  [  67  ] 

temptations,  sins,  victories  over  self,  storms  of  false  pride  and 
moments  of  great  peace.  At  first  it  would  seem  preposterous. 
Then,  as  we  caught  the  feeling  of  a  great  poet,  as  we  began  to 
understand  his  strange  inner  union  with  the  highest  and  lowest 
in  human  emotions,  we  might  know  in  our  hearts  that  it  was 
not  preposterous  at  all,  but  the  simple  statement  of  a  towering 
truth.  We  might  begin  to  see  his  plays  in  an  entirely  new  aspect 
as  a  progressive  document  of  the  immemorial  experience  of 
mankind.  We  might  see  about  them  the  flickering  shadow  of 
our  own  day  and  times.  We  might  also  see  something  of  the 
poet  himself  as  an  individual,  living  in  our  times,  and  inspired 
or  distressed  or  angered  by  them  —  even  limited  and  warped 
by  them  —  but  struggling  constantly  to  rise  above  them  to  a 
life  as  broad  and  unlimited  as  the  souls  of  men  have  ever 
known. 

We  would  surely  see  something  we  had  not  seen  as  clearly 
before,  of  good  and  evil  in  mortal  conflict;  of  human  will  gird 
ing  itself  for  the  passage  through  the  valley  of  tears;  of  the 
human  soul  crying  aloud  for  help  from  a  power  greater  than 
itself.  Our  charity  might  be  stirred  at  the  sight  of  repeated 
failures,  and  our  admiration  unleashed  at  the  sight  of  renewed 
struggle  and  increasing  courage.  Certainly  our  own  problems 
would  become  clearer  from  this  better  understanding  of  one 
who  is  part  of  our  own  life.  Eugene  O'Neill  is  neither  prophet 
nor  saint.  As  his  characters  tell  us,  he  has  often,  even  as  a  poet, 
been  deeply  confused.  Many  of  his  darkest  doubts  and  many 
of  his  most  tragic  defeats  have  sprung  from  immature  emo 
tions.  But  so  have  most  of  our  own  temptations  and  failures, 
not  only  as  individuals  but  also  as  a  nation.  We  should  accept 
O'Neill  as  a  companion  on  our  own  pilgrimage  rather  than  as 
a  leader  —  but  surely  as  a  companion  whose  poetic  insight  is 
deep,  whose  consciousness  of  our  moral  problems  is  vibrant, 
whose  experience  of  the  soul's  conflict  is  sharper  through 
intuition  than  most  men's,  and  whose  willingness  to  seek  a 
path  even  in  the  darkest  shadows  marks  an  extraordinary 
tenacity  and  the  quality  of  a  high  romance. 


California  —  in  Thy  Fashion ! 

THOMAS    SUGRUE 

rT1O  THE  axiom  that  anything  can  happen  in  love,  war 
-••  and  politics,  there  has  been  added  by  popular  consent: 
"or  in  California." 

California  is  the  home  of  Aimee  Semple  McPherson,  the 
Reverend  Bob  Shuler,  the  entire  population  of  Hollywood  and 
Max  Adelbert  Baer.  It  is  the  place  wherein  the  late  Luther 
Burbank  succeeded  in  turning  the  biology  of  fruit  inside  out, 
and  wherein  the  late  Mr.  Wrigley  bought  an  island  and 
offered  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  to  the  person  who  could 
swim  from  it  to  the  mainland  faster  than  anyone  else.  It  is  the 
place  where,  when  it  rains,  cities  are  flooded;  and  where, 
when  it  does  not  rain,  there  is  apt  to  be  fog,  an  earthquake 
or  a  tidal  wave.  It  is  the  place  which  possesses  at  one  and  the 
same  time  the  highest  and  lowest  geographical  points  in  the 
United  States,  the  largest  landlocked  harbor  in  the  world,  the 
biggest  and  oldest  trees  on  earth,  the  nation's  only  active 
volcano,  the  highest  waterfalls  known  to  man,  and  the  most 
publicized  people  on  the  globe  —  the  movie  actors. 

It  is  the  place  wherein  Al  Levy  invented  the  oyster  cocktail 
and  Walt  Disney  discovered  Mickey  Mouse;  wherein  will  be 
found  every  known  phase  of  surface  geographical  character, 
every  geological  peculiarity  of  the  North  and  South  American 
continents,  every  kind  of  soil  known  to  temperate  and  semi- 
tropical  zones,  and  all  climates  except  the  tropical.  Soon  it 
will  have,  between  San  Francisco  and  Oakland,  the  longest 
suspension  bridge  in  the  world.  Already  it  has  the  longest 
motor  highway  bridge  in  the  world,  the  San  Mateo.  Yet  its 
population  is  less  than  that  of  the  city  of  New  York,  and  its 
government  is  facing  a  deficit  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-nine 
million  dollars  in  the  1935-1937  budget. 

Its  basic  income  dropped  more  than  a  billion  dollars  be 
tween  1929  and  1931 ;  its  exports  dropped  two  hundred  millions 
between|l929  and  1933,  with  an  equal  decline  in  imports. 

068] 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THT  FASHION!  [  69  ] 

Income  from  agriculture,  its  most  highly  developed  industry, 
has  been  cut  in  half  since  the  depression,  and  the  small,  in 
dividual  farmers  and  ranchers  are  literally  starving.  Bank 
debits  have  dropped  twenty-five  billions  since  the  boom  years. 
During  this  period  the  cost  of  living  for  wage-earners  and  low- 
salaried  workers  dropped  from  eighteen  to  twenty-two  per 
cent,  but  it  is  still  twenty-  two  percent  higher  than  in  1914. 
And  in  1934  one  tenth  of  the  population  was  unemployed. 


state  of  California  has  been  an  enigma  to  the  rest  of 
the  United  States  since  a  bleak  day  in  November,  1916, 
when  it  tardily  announced  that  Woodrow  Wilson,  the  incum 
bent,  not  Charles  Evans  Hughes,  the  challenger,  was  to  be  the 
next  President.  Thin-cheeked,  denim-wrapped  men  in  Maine 
on  that  occasion  gathered  in  groups  and  whispered  of  a  madness 
beyond  the  Sierras.  In  Boston,  school-teachers  whipped  the 
pages  of  the  World  Almanac  in  a  frantic  effort  to  discover  the 
date  on  which  Sutter's  Mill  was  admitted  to  the  union.  There 
was  wild  talk  of  the  new  industry  of  motion  pictures,  the  Mexi 
can  influence  and  the  Yellow  Peril.  New  England,  scowling, 
faced  a  disillusionment. 

I  remember  how  my  grandfather,  reading  the  news  at 
breakfast,  looked  dreamily  past  my  grandmother  and  mused. 
He  had  not  yet  recovered  from  the  shock  of  the  Titanic  disas 
ter,  which  he  considered  in  extremely  bad  taste,  and  this  new 
catastrophe  was  almost  more  than  he  could  stand.  "Those 
people  beyond  the  Alleghenies,"  he  said  finally,  "are  going  to 
be  troublesome.  I  had  better  have  another  egg." 

After  that  we  forgot  about  California  and  concentrated  on 
the  war,  and  when  the  war  was  over  we  concentrated  on  the 
coming  of  prohibition.  Grandfather  said  it  wouldn't  work, 
completed  his  map  of  the  tactical  movements  of  the  battle  of 
Shiloh,  and  died.  Senator  Lodge  became  a  figure  and  the 
League  of  Nations  an  issue;  Rex  Beach,  Zane  Grey,  and  other 
popular  literary  chefs  began  to  serve  a  marvelous  dish  of 
romance  and  love;  Arthur  Guy  Empey  wrote  a  book  about  the 
war;  sturdy  Democrats  hung  a  new  portrait  next  to  that  of 


[  yo  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Washington,  from  which  the  bland  and^dreamy-eyed  physi 
ognomy  of  the  war  President  stared,  somewhat  fruitlessly, 
at  an  American  flag.  Suddenly,  like  a  comet  streaking  across 
the  track  of  a  telescope,  everything  was  going  to  be  all  right. 

It  was  with  this  conviction  that  the  state  of  California  came 
back  to  the  consciousness  of  its  sister  commonwealths.  America 
had  saved  the  world  for  democracy.  There  was  plenty  of 
money,  and  both  liquor  and  prohibition.  Women  were  al 
lowed  to  smoke  and  show  their  knees,  and  to  retain  the  jobs 
they  had  acquired  during  the  war.  The  American  Legion  be 
came  an  integral  part  of  civilian  life;  savings  banks  began  to 
pay  higher  and  higher  interest;  building  and  loan  associa 
tions  promised  every  man  his  own  home;  the  Notre  Dame- 
Army  football  game  was  given  the  preferred  position  on  the 
front  page  of  New  York  newspapers;  Mr.  Grantland  Rice  com 
pared  Mr.  Rockne's  backfield  to  the  Four  Horsemen  of  the 
Apocalypse. 

Into  such  a  setting  walked  California  in  the  role  of  a  land 
beyond  the  Jordan,  holding  out  hands  yellow  with  manna  and 
speaking  of  the  leaven  of  peace.  From  her  mouth,  as  she  spoke, 
rolled  a  sea,  a  rash,  a  plague  of  facts  and  adjectives  and  photo 
graphs  taken  with  a  red  filter  over  the  lens.  Through  the 
national  magazines,  the  United  States  post-office  and  by  word 
of  mouth,  the  information  went  forth  that  heaven  had  taken 
up  residence  on  earth,  and  was  at  home  to  friends  from  the 
Oregon  state-line  to  the  Republic  of  Mexico,  and  from  the 
Sierra  Nevada  mountains  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  It  was  a 
splendid  and  an  edifying  announcement  and  everyone  said  it 
was  undoubtedly  true. 

The  population  of  the  state  of  California  increased  sixty- 
five  and  a  half  percent  between  1920  and  1930.  The  city  of 
Los  Angeles  became,  in  area,  the  largest  municipality  in  the 
world.  More  motor  cars  per  capita  were  reported  in  the  state 
than  anywhere  else  in  the  country.  The  Tournament  of  Roses 
was  begun,  and  the  Rose  Bowl  football  game  on  New  Year's 
Day  became  an  event  of  national  significance.  The  University 
of  Southern  California  turned  out  a  championship  football 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THY  FASHION!  [  71  ] 

team.  It  was  decided  to  hold  the  1932  Olympic  games  in  Los 
Angeles.  The  Corning  Glass  Works  in  Corning,  New  York, 
began  to  make  the  largest  telescopic  lens  in  the  world  for 
Mount  Wilson  Observatory  in  Pasadena.  The  Mayor  of  New 
York  visited  the  state  to  plead  for  the  freedom  of  Thomas 
Mooney,  a  prisoner  in  San  Quentin.  My  sister's  godfather 
took  up  permanent  residence  in  Los  Angeles. 

Then,  almost  simultaneously,  the  depression  and  talking 
pictures  arrived.  Hollywood,  which  had  barely  held  its  own 
with  the  climate  and  business  opportunities  as  a  lure,  surged 
to  the  front.  Newspapermen,  hack  writers,  Tin-Pan-Alley 
bards  and  tap  dancers  flooded  the  studios.  Dream  women  of 
the  silver  screen  came  to  life  and  spoke  to  the  millions  who 
adored  them.  A  new  type  of  advertisement,  the  "trailer," 
inundated  the  movie  palaces,  showing  enticing  bits  from  forth 
coming  attractions  which  suppressed  literary  geniuses,  for  a 
hundred  dollars  a  week,  described  as  Stupendous,  Amazing, 
Epic,  Smashing,  Daring,  and  Grim.  New  stars  appeared, 
varying  in  age  from  six  months  to  sixty  years.  The  loves  and 
lives  of  kings  and  queens  came  to  the  public  in  a  silver  chafing- 
dish.  The  newspapermen  and  hack  writers  rewrote  Shake 
speare  and  Dickens;  the  Tin-Pan-Alley  bards  composed  torch 
songs  for  Roman  courtesans;  one  of  the  suppressed  literary 
geniuses,  finding  that  Ernest  Dowson's  line,  "I  have  been 
faithful  to  thee,  Cynara,  in  my  fashion,"  did  not  quite  fit  the 
allotted  space,  changed  "faithful"  to  "true,"  and  remarked 
that  he  considered  the  change  an  improvement. 

Meanwhile  the  eternal  sunshine,  the  manna,  and  the  leaven 
of  peace  became  a  bit  tarnished.  Rumblings  of  discontent 
came  from  the  caravans  encamped  in  heaven,  and  short 
answers  were  given  to  newcomers  who  innocently  asked  the 
way  to  the  Elysian  Fields.  The  sale  of  motor  cars  fell  off,  a 
state  sales  tax  was  greeted  with  snarls,  and  the  Utopian  So 
ciety  of  America  came  into  being.  Mr.  Upton  Sinclair,  the 
writer,  after  sixteen  years  of  quiet  residence  in  Pasadena,  de 
cided  that  the  iron  was  hot  and  devised  an  EPIC  plan  to  end 
poverty  in  California,  with  which  he  struck  terror  into  the 


[  72  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

hearts  of  capitalists,  Republicans  and  Democrats  alike.  Only 
after  a  campaign  in  which  he  was  the  target  for  mud-slinging 
such  as  has  seldom  been  seen  in  America  was  Mr.  Sinclair 
defeated  by  the  incumbent,  Frank  F.  Merriam,  for  whom 
Republicans,  in  their  verbal  and  individual  campaigns, 
sincerely  apologized. 

With  that  over,  California  faced  the  reward  of  her  folly.  In 
the  land  which  she  advertised  as  heaven  are  some  two  million 
malcontents,  each  sorry  for  the  day  he  left  his  home  in  Iowa, 
Nebraska,  Texas  or  wherever  it  was,  to  settle  down  and  await 
eternity  on  the  blessed  slopes  of  the  Sierras  and  along  the 
shores  of  the  Pacific.  The  savings  they  brought  with  them  have, 
for  the  most  part,  been  swept  away.  Many  have  lost  the  homes 
they  built  or  bought.  They  drive  the  cars  they  had  in  1 928  and 
1929  because  it  is  an  economic  necessity  to  have  a  car  in 
California.  They  came  to  retire,  so  they  have  no  jobs,  and 
even  if  jobs  were  available  most  of  them  would  be  incompe 
tent.  Their  only  accomplishments  are  horseshoe-pitching  and 
the  drawing  of  astrological  charts.  They  have  few  friends 
among  themselves,  and  none  who  are  any  better  off.  Some  of 
them  are  starving,  some  are  despondent,  some  are  hopelessly 
ill.  All,  to  a  man,  woman  and  child,  want  a  change.  Something,  . 
no  matter  what  it  is,  has  got  to  be  done. 

The  larger  portion  of  this  unemployed  population  is  in 
southern  California,  along  with  a  complementary  group  of 
unemployed  which  is  not  included  in  the  statistics  of  the 
labor  department.  This  latter  comprises  those  who  came  to 
California  to  retire  and  who  are  now  forced,  through  the 
dwindling  of  their  incomes,  to  seek  a  means  of  livelihood. 
The  majority  of  both  of  these  groups  reside  in  and  around 
Los  Angeles  county,  where  the  Sinclair  vote  was  heaviest,  and 
where  the  Utopians  are  strongest. 

Los  Angeles  is  the  boom  city  of  the  state.  It  was  founded  in 
1781  by  the  Spaniards,  and  its  first  census  listed  forty-four 
residents.  By  1910  it  had  over  three  hundred  thousand;  by 
1920  it  had  nearly  six  hundred  thousand;  the  1930  census 
showed  a  population  of  well  over  a  million,  an  increase  of 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THY  FASHION!  [  73  ] 

almost  one  hundred  percent  in  ten  years.  By  1933  it  had  a 
budget  of  seventeen  million  dollars,  a  debt  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty-five  million  dollars,  and  an  assessed  realty  valuation  of 
slightly  more  than  a  billion.  It  also  possessed  in  1933  the  third 
largest  stadium  in  America;  an  aqueduct  as  long  as  the  state 
of  Massachusetts  is  wide;  more  people  over  the  age  of  seventy- 
five  than  any  other  American  city  except  New  York,  Chicago 
and  Philadelphia;  and  eighteen  thousand,  five  hundred 
illiterates. 

Unofficially  (for  statistics  are  not  kept  in  such  enterprises) 
Los  Angeles  has  more  psychic  mediums,  more  spiritualists, 
more  astrologers,  more  fortune-tellers,  more  esoteric  cults  and 
more  bizarre  religions  than  any  other  city  in  the  country,  not 
even  excluding  New  York.  Also,  and  again  unofficially,  it  has 
the  most  baroque  and  variegated  architecture,  the  oddest 
specimens  of  humankind,  the  greatest  degree  of  self-absorp 
tion,  and  the  most  complete  imperviousness  to  the  realities  of 
existence  of  any  other  city,  town,  village  or  nation  on  earth. 
It  is  in  Los  Angeles,  really,  that  anything  can  happen.  By 
comparison,  the  rest  of  California  is  a  model  of  sophistication 
and  cultural  repose  beside  a  farrago  of  nonsense  and  banal 
absurdities.  Southern  California,  which  revolves  about  Los 
Angeles  as  the  earth  revolves  about  the  sun,  is  not  what  it  said 
it  was,  back  in  the  early  'twenties,  when  it  set  out  on  a  career 
of  self-exploitation.  Neither  climatically,  geographically,  artis 
tically  nor  pleasurably  does  it  fulfill  its  own  prophecy. 

Instead,  and  paradoxically,  it  fulfills  a  much  older  and 
greater  prophecy. 


state  of  California  begins  at  the  top  of  the  Sierra 
-*•  Nevada  mountains  and  slopes  to  the  Pacific  ocean.  From 
tip  to  tip  it  is  a  thousand  miles  long  and  half  of  this,  roughly, 
is  southern  California.  The  northern  half  for  the  most  part  is 
well  forested,  sparsely  populated,  and  given  over  to  mining, 
agriculture,  the  city  of  San  Francisco  and  the  state  capital  of 
Sacramento.  It  conducts  itself  calmly  and  in  good  taste,  looks 
after  its  affairs  without  fuss  and  keeps  its  house  in  order.  Most 


[  74  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  the  native  Californians  (rare  specimens  nowaday)  reside 
there,  and  in  the  annals  of  American  history  and  the  minds  of 
American  people  it  occupies  an  honorable  and  well-thought-of 
position. 

Southern  California  is  a  desert.  Where  there  are  hills,  they 
are  denuded,  and  when  rain  falls  there  is  nothing  to  hold  it  in 
the  mountains  or  on  the  slopes.  Agriculture  proceeds  by 
irrigation,  and  the  water  supply  is  piped  from  a  stream  that 
begins  high  in  the  mountains,  near  Yosemite.  The  eternal 
sunshine  beats  down  pitilessly  during  most  of  the  year,  blast 
ing  every  vestige  of  color  and  feeling  from  the  earth  beneath. 
The  trees  that  grow  are  those  that  need  no  rain  —  the 
eucalyptus,  orange,  fig,  pomegranate  and  palm.  There  is  no 
spring,  no  summer,  no  autumn,  no  winter.  Every  day,  all  day, 
the  land  is  colorless,  the  ocean  slate  grey,  the  sky  a  faded  blue. 
The  grass  and  flowers  and  trees  and  all  things  that  should  be 
green  are  anaemic.  The  white  houses  shine  like  the  faces  of 
tenement  children.  The  oranges  are  only  oranges;  the  roses 
have  no  odor;  the  women  are  only  women,  doubly  plain. 

It  was  to  this  that  a  million  people  came  between  1 920  and 
1934,  leaving  behind  them  their  homes  and  their  roots, 
seeking  a  heaven  on  earth.  They  had  lived  in  the  cities  and . 
towns  of  the  middle-west,  the  east,  and  the  south,  and  the 
families  of  some  had  not  moved  for  generations.  Some  of  them 
had  amassed  tiny  fortunes,  and  were  old;  some  had  made 
nothing  of  life,  and  were  young.  Among  them  were  pioneers, 
idealists  and  perennial  malcontents.  None  among  them  was 
great;  none  was  a  genius.  Mediocrity  pervaded  the  lives  of  all, 
and  a  terrible  gnawing.  Yet  they  all  believed  in  God;  they  all 
believed  in  heaven;  they  all  believed  in  the  Bible. 

The  Bible  told  them  that  the  lot  of  man  was  happiness,  that 
virtue  was  its  own  reward,  that  the  meek  shall  inherit  the 
earth.  They  were  human,  they  were  virtuous,  they  were  meek. 
So  when  the  word  came  that  California  was  waiting  —  a 
Valhalla,  Nirvana  and  heaven  all  in  one  —  they  girded  them 
selves  with  the  belief  in  happiness  on  earth,  and  strength  of 
virtue,  and  the  frightening  faith  of  the  meek.  They  came  like  an 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THY  FASHION!  [  75  ] 

army  in  armor,  with  trailers  behind  their  shiny  automobiles 
and  travelers  checks  in  their  pockets.  Quickly  they  built  their 
homes,  sent  to  mail  order  houses  for  furniture,  erected  churches, 
voted  for  more  schools,  organized  chambers  of  commerce, 
canvassed  from  house  to  house  for  the  community  chest, 
attended  strawberry  festivals  and  entered  teams  in  the  horse 
shoe-pitching  tournaments.  This  done  they  relaxed,  examined 
the  sky,  and  nodded.  Soon  they  wrote  letters  back  home  saying 
that  everything  was  as  advertised. 

The  wave  that  followed^this  news  was  not  up  to  the  standard 
of  the  first  influx.  In  it  were  the  halt,  the  lame,  and  the  blind 
of  intellect;  the  punch-drunk,  the  weary,  the  defeated  and  the 
mad.  Babbling  of  Elysia,  they  came  in  broken-down  motor 
cars,  shorn  of  fenders,  with  patched  tires.  They  lived  off  the 
land  as  they  came  along,  and  they  lived  off  their  friends  when 
they  arrived.  But  their  friends,  with  faith  unshaken,  explained 
that  their  living  was  for  everybody,  and  soon  even  the  most 
worthless  were  maintaining  themselves:  selling  hot  dogs, 
pumping  gasoline,  training  kinkajous,  guiding  tourists  through 
the  homes  of  movie  stars,  selling  trinkets  on  the  street  corners. 

They  were  not,  in  any  sense,  a  united  group  of  people.  The 
lowans  took  over  Long  Beach,  a  hundred  and  twenty-five 
thousand  strong,  and  the  Minnesotans  and  Nebraskans  herded 
together  in  various  spots.  They  all  became  ardent  southern 
Californians,  but  this  was  the  only  exoteric  bond.  Esoterically 
they  shared  a  single  belief,  but  they  were  not  aware  of  it.  One 
man  could  not  see  the  mote  in  his  brother's  eye  because  his 
own  eye  was  stricken  with  a  beam.  Yet  they  all  held  this 
common,  and  nowadays  singular  belief:  they  were  certain 
that  they  deserved  happiness  on  earth  and  in  heaven,  re 
gardless  of  what  they  did  to  attain  it.  They  did  not,  in  fact, 
believe  that  it  had  to  be  attained.  To  them  it  was  a  birthright, 
granted  by  God  to  all  children  on  His  earth. 

The  average  man  realizes,  or  feels  intuitively,  that  happiness 
is  something  to  be  attained.  That  is  why  he  labors,  suffers  pain, 
gives  to  charity,  and  prays  for  his  own  and  his  brother's  soul. 
That  is  why,  too,  he  is  able  to  laugh.  Man's  humor  is  founded 


[  76  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

on  man's  understanding  of  his  own  incompetence,  his  own  un 
importance  in  the  scale  of  the  universe,  the  ridiculousness  of 
his  vanity.  The  people  who  migrated  to  southern  California 
did  not  have  this  understanding.  They  believed  that  in  the 
scale  of  the  universe  each  occupied  a  small  but  very  important 
place,  and  they  did  not  consider  it  a  laughing  matter. 

Nor  would  they,  after  they  had  arrived,  believe  the  testi 
mony  of  their  senses.  They  would  not  admit  the  colorlessness 
of  the  desert  in  which  they  lived,  the  drabness  of  the  climate. 
They  agreed  that  it  was  necessary  to  wear  a  topcoat  on  almost 
any  night  during  the  year,  but  they  said  such  cool  evenings 
made  sleeping  more  enjoyable.  They  admitted  that  the  small 
oysters  which  come  from  the  Pacific  ocean  were  not  tasty,  but 
they  said  that  they  did  not  care  for  oysters  anyhow.  They 
could  not  deny  that  the  roses  had  no  odor,  but  they  argued 
that  sight  is  more  important  than  smell  in  the  matter  of  a  rose. 

To  offset  the  pitiless  sunshine  and  the  colorlessness  of  the 
earth  they  set  about  artificially  enlivening  the  landscape. 
They  built  gasoline  stations,  rest  rooms,  hot  dog  stands,  way 
side  cabins,  markets,  fruit  stands,  movie  theaters  and  animal 
hospitals,  in  the  most  baroque  forms  their  minds  could  con 
ceive.  They  built  them  in  the  shapes  of  derby  hats,  howling 
dogs,  weeping  pigs,  spouting  coffee-pots,  crouching  monkeys, 
coiled  cobras,  automobiles,  old  hats,  tin  cans  and  Mother 
Hubbards.  They  colored  them  red,  green,  blue,  sapphire, 
orange,  yellow,  or  not  at  all.  On  the  menus  of  their  restaurants 
they  jestingly  called  food  "grub,"  spelled  egg  "aig,"  and  ad 
vised  the  use  of  bicarbonate  of  soda  after  eating.  (Strangely 
enough  this  is  sound  advice  in  most  instances!) 

And  then,  with  nothing  else  to  do,  they  became  dilettantes. 
They  had  come  to  retire,  many  of  them,  and  yet  they  wanted 
something  to  occupy  their  time.  So  they  began  to  grow  dates, 
bottle  olives,  train  canaries,  breed  rabbits,  and  talk  over  the 
back  fence  about  astrology  and  the  great  adventure  that  was 
still  before  them.  Religion  had  naturally  played  an  important 
part  in  their  lives  before  coming  to  California,  but  there  were 
not  many  who  clung  steadfastly  to  one  creed.  Having  found 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THY  FASHION!  [  77  ] 

happiness  and  heaven  on  earth  they  turned  naturally  to  the 
next  step.  Egotists  all,  their  ectoplasm  began  to  bother  them  — 
oozing  out  in  the  night  when,  had  they  worked  hard  during 
the  day,  they  would  have  been  asleep.  Little  groups  began  to 
gather  and  to  draw  each  other's  horoscopes. 

Very  quickly  southern  California  became  a  stamping  ground 
for  all  kinds  of  psychic  and  medicinal  quackery.  Theosophy, 
Buddhism,  Mohammedism,  Brahmanism  and  Reincarnation- 
ism  forged  to  the  front,  and  Aimee  Semple  Macpherson 
built  Angelus  Temple.  The  Rosicrucians  sprang  up  in  a  dozen 
different  places,  and  astrologers  and  numerologists  flocked  to 
the  country.  Palmists,  spiritualists,  ordinary  fortune-tellers  and 
hypnotists  found  themselves  in  a  paradise,  and  every  book 
store,  magazine  counter,  novelty  shop  and  newspaper  stand 
stocked  up  on  religious  books,  astrology  handbooks  and  charts, 
and  tomes  on  magic.  A  great  friendship  with  the  "Beyond" 
grew  up,  and  the  newspapers,  cognizant  of  it,  tabued  the  verb 
"to  die"  and  referred  to  those  who  had  left  the  world  as  having 
"passed  on."  Queer  cases  began  to  drift  into  the  District 
Attorney's  office,  and  the  police  began  to  scratch  their  heads 
over  strange  crimes. 

Alongside  the  white  magic  there  grew  up,  of  course,  a  good 
deal  of  black  magic.  The  Eleusinian  mysteries  arrived  side  by 
side  with  the  Akasic  records,  malism,  black  cats  and  the 
swastika  (not  the  Nazi  variety,  but  that  of  Hermes) .  Swamis, 
Yogis,  Water  Wizards,  Levitators  and  Messiahs  sprang  up  by 
the  hundreds,  and  those  who  had  "passed  on"  came  back  to 
run  the  affairs  of  those  still  living. 

A  group  of  believers  pickled  a  corpse  in  alcohol,  nursed  it  as 
an  invalid,  seated  it  at  the  dinner  table,  took  it  riding  in  the 
afternoon,  and  each  night  waited  for  the  soul  to  return.  A  man 
built  a  seven-branched  candlestick  of  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  pieces  in  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  hours  according  to 
an  order  received  in  a  dream,  and  sat  down  to  await  an  ex 
planation.  Dominick  Craddock  owned  four  houses  and  six 
black  cats — turned  off  the  water,  gas,  and  electricity,  and  died. 
His  sister  tried  to  nurse  him  back  to  life  at  the  request  of 


[  78  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

spirits.  Dominick  had  been  dead  for  twelve  days  when  police 
arrived. 

Reincarnationists  have  discovered  that  Geraldine  Farrar 
was  Joan  of  Arc,  that  Elinor  Glyn  was  an  Egyptian  queen  who 
was  buried  alive,  that  June  Mathis  was  Valentino's  mother. 
Psychics  have  divined  that  ninety-two  million  dollars  from 
the  old  San  Gabriel  mission  were  buried  under  Coyote  Pass, 
in  Monterey  Park.  People  appear  in  court  almost  every  day 
to  have  their  names  officially  changed  so  that  they  can  avoid  a 
numerological  curse  in  the  letters. 

Hypnotists  regulate  women's  diets,  so  that  they  can  become 
slim  without  effort;  one  hypnotist  forced  a  woman  to  approach 
a  seventy-year-old  man,  then  blackmailed  the  gentleman  with 
letters  signed,  "The  Vengeance  Club  of  Southern  California." 
There  was,  and  is,  the  Spiritual  Psychic  Science  Church,  Inc., 
with  four  hundred  and  fifty  branches  throughout  the  world. 
The  Better  Business  Bureau  of  Los  Angeles,  investigating  it, 
found  that  for  ten  dollars  one  can  become  a  minister  in  the 
church,  for  five  additional  dollars  a  doctor  of  divinity,  and 
for  twenty-five  dollars  a  bishop. 

In  a  single  building  in  the  heart  of  Los  Angeles,  the  follow 
ing  are  listed  as  tenants  —  "Spiritual  Mystic  Astrologer; 
Spiritual  Psychic  Science  Church,  number  450,  Service  Daiiy, 
Message  Circles,  Trumpet  Thursday,  8  p.m.;  Circle  of  Truth 
Church;  Spiritual  Psychic  Science  Church,  number  166; 
First  Church  Divine  Love  and  Wisdom,  Message  Service 
Wednesday  and  Friday;  Reverend  Eva  Coram,  Giving  Her 
Wonderful  Cosmic  Readings,  Divine  Healing  Daily;  Spiritual 
Science  Church  of  the  Master,  Special  Rose  Light  Circle; 
233  South  Hill  Street,  Nothing  Impossible."  Los  Angeles 
also  encompasses  the  Church  of  Applied  Psychology,  the 
First  Church  and  Academy  of  Astrology,  the  First  Church 
of  Christian  Metaphysics,  the  Truth  Center  of  Hollywood, 
Jehovah's  Witnesses,  and  the  Unity  Church  of  Divine  Healing. 

The  most  popular  and  respected  astrologer  in  the  Los 
Angeles  district  not  long  ago  gave  out  the  information  that, 
according  to  her  calculations,  the  next  President  will  be  a 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THT  FASHION!  [  79  ] 

Republican,  there  will  be  a  revolution  in  America  between 
1941  and  1942  ending  with  a  dictator  behind  a  puppet  Presi 
dent,  Hitler  will  be  assassinated  by  the  spring  of  1936,  the 
United  States  will  never  have  a  war  with  Japan,  there- will  be 
a  war  in  Europe  in  1936,  Mussolini  and  Italy  are  under  the 
benign  rule  of  Leo,  as  is  also  a  leading  motion  picture  com 
pany.  This  astrologer  has  been  serving  screen  stars,  producers, 
and  ordinary  civilians  of  the  community  for  twenty-eight 
years.  Her  opinions,  as  mentioned  above,  were  printed  in  the 
Sunday  Magazine  of  the  Los  Angeles  Times,  which  has  a 
wide  circulation.  What  is  a  person's  attitude  toward  life,  his 
country,  and  his  job  when  he  believes  the  above? 

On  the  other  hand,  what  is  the  attitude  of  more  than  a 
million  people  who  believe  themselves  to  be  victims  of  a  great 
injustice,  to  revenge  which  the  Hand  of  God  will  assist  them? 
Some  indication  of  their  attitude  was  given  in  the  Sinclair- 
Merriam  campaign  last  year,  when  they  rallied  behind  the 
EPIC  candidate.  The  power  and  the  faith  and  the  fanatical 
belief  in  predestined  happiness  on  earth  was  gathered  from 
the  swamps  of  psychic  quackery  and  the  Nirvana  of  Hoover 
Republicanism,  molded  by  hunger  and  poverty  into  a  single 
entity,  and  sent  forth  to  cry  "Wolf!"  at  the  door  of  every  land 
holder,  every  jobholder  and  every  capitalist  in  the  state.  From 
north,  east,  south  and  west  of  California  the  jobless  and  the 
malcontent  swarmed,  ready  to  hold  the  banner  aloft  for  a 
New  Day,  and  a  New  Deal  that  Washington  never  dreamed 
about  in  its  wildest  New  Deal  days. 

It  was  a  close  call,  and  the  victory  may  only  be  temporary. 
Southern  California  today  is  marching  toward  a  prophecy  it 
had  not  anticipated.  Like  the  Promised  Land  of  the  Israelites, 
it  is  a  desert.  It  has  a  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness.  It  is 
hungry  and  restless.  United,  it  can  out-vote  northern  Califor 
nia  and  rule  the  state.  It  is  ready  to  try  anything.  Anything 
can  happen,  and  probably  will. 

r~T1HERE  are  other  things  which  contribute  to  the  scene  of 
•*•  California  to   make  it  an  enigma,   an  anachronism,   a 


[  8o  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

fabulous  country  with  a  charm  that  comes,  not  from  its  scenery 
or  people,  but  from  the  spiritual  undercurrent  which  drives 
it  forward. 

The  people  themselves  seem  lost,  as  exiles.  They  are  friendly 
on  the  street  and  in  public  places,  but  they  go  to  their  homes 
alone,  and  seldom  invite  a  stranger  or  mere  acquaintance  to 
visit  them.  Perhaps  it  is  because  the  roots  of  their  homes  are 
elsewhere,  or  because  they  are  tired  of  the  mail  order  furniture 
which  makes  one  house  look  exactly  like  another.  Anyhow, 
they  do  not  invite.  They  meet  you  in  the  lobby  of  your  hotel. 

They  speak  a  strange  tongue  which  many  observers,  hearing 
casually,  report  as  excellent  English.  On  the  surface  it  seems 
so,  because  there  is  little  broken  English.  The  people  were 
born  in  America,  of  American  parents,  and  they  all  attended 
public  school.  But  their  speech  is  clotted  with  malapropisms, 
their  vocabulary  extends  hardly  beyond  arm's  length,  and  their 
grammar  on  many  ordinary  points  is  bad.  In  three  months  of 
intense  listening  I  did  not  hear  a  single  Galifornian,  not  even 
Upton  Sinclair,  say,  "If  I  were."  Every  one  of  them,  Mr. 
Sinclair  twice  in  five  minutes,  said,  "If  I  was."  I  was  not  able 
to  find  out  whether  the  form  is  taught  thus  in  the  schools. 

On  the  average  they  dress  plainly,  conservatively,  and  in 
absence  of  taste.  What  chic  there  is  comes  from  Hollywood 
designers,  and  is  more  bizarre  than  tasty.  Nobody  bothers  to 
observe  the  ordinary  rules  of  dress  for  morning,  afternoon  and 
evening  wear.  At  a  Sunday  night  supper  which  I  attended,  one 
girl  appeared  in  riding  habit,  another  in  a  tea  gown,  another 
in  a  sports  outfit.  Other  than  myself,  only  one  man  wore  a  tie. 
Women  wear  evening  clothes  to  the  night  clubs,  but  the  men 
usually  wear  sports  clothes  or  business  suits.  Black  ties  with 
tails  and  white  ties  with  dinner  jackets  are  common. 

The  average  drink  is  Bourbon  or  rye  with  gingerale.  Lemon 
is  served  with  Scotch  and  soda,  unless  otherwise  demanded. 
Little  attention  is  paid  to  brand  or  age.  Most  people  choose  by 
price.  If  they  are  new-rich  or  out  for  a  night  they  choose  the 
most  expensive  drinks;  otherwise  they  take  the  cheapest.  They 
seem  to  have  chromium-plated  stomachs,  and  the  women 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THY  FASHION!  [  81  ] 

never  suffer  from  hangover.  Next  morning  they  ride  horse 
back,  swim  a  few  miles,  or  perhaps  go  out  to  the  rifle  range  and 
ruin  a  few  bull's-eyes.  Their  complexions,  because  of  the 
climate  and  the  incessant  sun,  are  brown  and  dry.  Few  of 
them  are  beautiful,  none  exotic. 

Except  for  Pierre's,  in  San  Francisco,  and  a  few  of  the  hotels 
in  that  city  and  in  Los  Angeles,  there  are  no  good  food  spots  in 
the  state.  The  food  is  plain,  the  beef  is  local  and  second-rate, 
and  the  cooking  very  dull,  without  relishes  or  sauces. 

The  service  in  restaurants  is  amusing  —  if  you  are  not  in  a 
hurry.  There  is  no  servant  class  among  the  white  people  in 
the  state,  and  the  waiters  and  waitresses  have  very  little  in 
terest  in  their  work.  They  are  thinking  of  other  things  as  they 
amble  about  among  the  tables,  and  they  resent  their  menial 
position.  The  chefs  apparently  are  in  the  same  fix,  because  the 
average  time  for  a  simple  four-course  dinner  is  an  hour  and  a 
half,  and  there  is  seldom  anything  palatable.  The  whole  scene 
gives  the  impression  of  an  I-am-doing-you-a-favor-by-feeding- 
you  attitude,  and  after  a  while  you  get  to  believe  it  yourself. 

Much  of  the  food  situation  can  be  traced  to  the  local  beef 
and  to  the  unfortunate  Pacific,  which  besides  being  slate  grey 
in  color  seems  cursed  with  an  inability  to  impart  tastiness  to 
its  inhabitants.  Except  for  the  filet  of  Gatalina  sand  dab,  which 
is  honey  sweet,  and  such  dishes  as  baby  barracuda  and  sea 
bass,  the  things  that  come  out  of  the  Pacific  are  not  fit  to  eat. 
Eastern  oysters  are  brought  here  and  transplanted,  but  even 
such  a  short  life  in  Pacific  waters  seems  to  rob  them  of  their  taste. 

The  prosperity  of  the  place,  like  its  beauty,  is  largely  myth 
ical.  Just  as  the  homes,  except  the  rococo  castles  of  the  movie 
stars  in  Beverly  Hills,  are  a  hodge-podge  of  freak  architecture, 
so  are  they  cheaply  built  and  cheaply  furnished.  Things  that 
easterners  consider  necessary  to  the  comfort  and  dignity  of  a 
home  are  lacking,  such  as  bookcases,  a  den,  or  etchings  and 
paintings  for  the  walls.  The  Galifornians  have  their  cars, 
tennis  rackets,  golf  clubs  and  slacks,  but  they  have  none  of 
the  other  things.  Culture  is  still  a  word  in  the  dictionary  that 
is  sometimes  bandied  about  by  professors  in  lecture  rooms. 


[  82  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Yet  California  has  a  public  school  for  every  one  hundred 
inhabitants,  and  thirteen  colleges  and  universities.  The  only 
cultural  bulwark  I  found  was  the  Henry  E.  Huntington  li 
brary  in  San  Marino,  near  Pasadena,  with  its  privately 
assembled  collection  of  a  million  and  a  quarter  original  manu 
scripts  and  its  two  hundred  thousand  rare  books.  In  San 
Francisco  I  found  only  six  bookstores  for  its  seven  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  people.  In  attempting  to  elicit,  from  a  young 
lady  clerk  in  one  of  these  stores,  information  about  the  reading 
habits  of  San  Franciscans,  I  asked  her  how  many  copies  of 
James  Joyce's  "Ulysses"  the  store  sold  every  month. 

"About  one  every  two  months,"  she  said.  "We  don't  go  in 
for  snob  literature  out  here.  The  people  prefer  Galiforniana." 

Daily  newspapers  in  California  cost  five  cents,  and  there  is 
little  in  them.  National  news  is  treated  briefly,  and  the  local 
news  is  handled  according  to  the  policies  and  prejudices  of 
the  paper  and  its  owners.  A  story  which  makes  the  front  page 
of  one  newspaper  may  not  even  be  mentioned  in  the  pages  of 
its  rival's  edition.  Newsprint  is  bad  and  the  quality  of  the  paper 
used  is  low.  Sports  pages  occupy  a  prominent  place,  and  during 
the  football  season  coaches  and  players  of  prominence  in  the 
local  colleges  have  daily  columns,  written  by  ghost  writers  who 
sometimes  hire  ghost  writers  to  ghost  for  them. 

The  town  of  Carmel,  near  the  old  capital  city  of  Monterey, 
on  the  coast  a  hundred  miles  south  of  San  Francisco,  takes 
precedence  as  the  cultural  seat  of  the  state.  It  is  inhabited  by 
Lincoln  Steffens,  Robinson  Jeffers,  and  a  few  hundred  artists 
who  live  quietly  in  a  wholesome  community  spirit.  I  spent  a 
day  examining  the  town,  charmed  by  its  woodland  beauty,  but 
I  could  not  find  any  of  the  artists  at  work.  A  few  dull  still-lifes 
were  in  the  shop  windows  for  sale,  and  a  few  books  and  pam 
phlets,  written  by  residents,  were  also  on  sale.  That  was  all.  One 
of  the  most  pretentious  offices  was  that  of  an  astrologer.  On 
the  bill-board  at  the  post-office  were  a  dozen  requests  for  rides 
to  San  Francisco  over  the  week-end,  nothing  else. 

Monterey  itself  was  still  and  drab  when  I  got  there.  At  the 
hotel  bar,  after  dinner,  one  of  the  members  of  the  Junior 


CALIFORNIA  —  IN  THY  FASHION!  [  83  ] 

Chamber  of  Commerce  was  telling  a  few  friends  why  the  town 
was  dying. 

"We  don't  capitalize  on  our  Spanish  history,"  he  informed 
them.  "We  got  to  make  our  town  all  Spanish  architecture, 
see?  Make  this  hotel  Spanish.  Get  some  Mexicans  here.  Plant 
a  lot  of  roses.  Write  books  about  our  Spanish  history,  see?  Then 
we'll  get  the  Eastern  tourists.  Those  guys  got  a  lot  of  dough." 

Other  towns,  such  as  Santa  Barbara  and  San  Diego,  do 
capitalize  on  their  Spanish  history,  holding  Spanish  festivals 
every  year.  Everybody  goes  and  gets  drunk. 

T^ROM  one  end  to  the  other,  and  from  the  Sierras  to  the 
-*•  Pacific,  California  is  a  colorful  state.  San  Francisco  has  lost 
the  flush  of  its  youthful,  bawdy  days,  but  it  still  has  its  fascinat 
ing  waterfront,  its  Nob  Hill,  and  its  Chinatown  and  cable-cars. 
Los  Angeles  is  a  pipe  dream  of  pop-eyed  wonders,  with  people 
who  peep  at  life  as  a  kangaroo  looking  timidly  from  its  built-in 
papoosery .  The  lovely  valleys  of  San  Gabriel  and  San  Fernando 
lull  the  eye  with  endless  miles  of  orchards.  Yosemite,  General 
Grant  and  Sequoia  national  parks  are  superb  works  of  natural 
art,  ideal  vacation  lands.  Hollywood  is  a  madhouse.  I  watched 
the  shooting  of  two  scenes  and  fled. 

Last  night  I  visited  a  young  man  there  who  has  taken  a 
house  on  a  high,  almost  inaccessible  hill.  As  we  sat  before  the 
log  fire,  trying  to  keep  warm  in  the  "ideal"  California  weather, 
there  was  a  knock  at  the  door.  My  host  admitted  two  men  in 
khaki  uniforms.  They  said  they  belonged  to  a  private  police 
force  which  patrols  the  district,  and  wished  to  offer  their 
services  for  a  stipulated  sum.  My  host  said  he  did  not  own  the 
house  and  considered  the  matter  up  to  the  landlord.  The 
policemen  said  it  was  a  matter  of  the  tenant.  My  host  refused 
the  offer  of  help. 

"We'll  come  back  again  when  you've  had  a  chance  to  think 
it  over,"  one  of  them  said.  "You'll  need  protection." 

When  they  had  gone  my  host  scratched  his  head. 

"The  last  two  district  attorneys  of  Los  Angeles  were  in 
dicted  on  pretty  serious  charges,  you  know,"  he  said. 


[  84  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Yet  all  of  the  foregoing  has  served  but  to  fortify  my  belief 
that  something  great  will  come  out  of  California.  It  has  been 
the  observation  of  many  visitors  that  the  beauty  of  California 
deserves  better  people  than  inhabit  it.  Perhaps  the  people  will 
be  worthy  of  it  when  they  get  together  and  become  part  of  it. 
And  the  word  beauty,  I  think,  is  here  misused.  Beauty  does 
not  overawe  and  compel.  Beauty  is  not  a  desert  without  color, 
demanding  irrigation  and  constant  care.  I  think  instead  that 
California  is  a  promised  land,  waiting  for  its  people  to  catch 
up  with  it. 

I  began  to  believe  that,  when  I  was  returning  from  Monterey 
to  San  Francisco.  We  stopped  at  a  place  in  the  mountains 
which  called  itself,  in  signs  ten  feet  high,  the  Holy  City.  We 
stopped  to  eat  sandwiches  and  discover  the  holiness. 

It  was  only  another  cult,  but  there  was  something  grand  in 
its  isolation  on  a  mountain,  and  in  its  stern  credo.  Tersely,  the 
sandwich  man  informed  me  that  the  white  Christian  male  alone 
is  supreme  on  earth,  and  that  all  other  races  and  creeds  are 
beneath  him  and  fit  only  to  act  as  his  menials.  Women,  he 
added,  were  also  inferior  animals,  to  be  used  as  slaves. 

"Have  you  no  women  here?"  I  asked. 

"Yes,  but  we  don't  marry  them  and  we  don't  live  with  them. 
We  are  above  them." 

"What  do  you  do  with  them?" 

"Make  them  work." 

Yes,  I  think  that  something  great  will  come  out  of  Cali 
fornia. 


Road  through  New  Hampshire 

FRANCES    FROST 

There  was  a  road  through  summer;  and  the  first 
green  field,  by  Indian-paintbrush  flecked  to  red, 
faded  to  mustard-gold;  a  cornfield's  thirst 
was  quenched  by  slanting  rain  from  a  thunder-head. 

The  road  curved  into  weeds,  and  there  the  shadow 
moved  over  the  white,  five-petalled  starry  flower, 
and  there  an  infant  fox,  a  russet  fellow, 
sped  in  a  windy  hemlock-colored  hour. 

And  grassy  stubble,  golden  in  the  sun, 
abandoned  by  the  mowers,  sloped  between 
forest  and  forest,  and  the  road  went  down 
seeking  the  secrets  of  the  further  green. 

And  Indian-pipes  their  ghostly  whiteness  lifted 
from  ancient  moulder,  and  the  maple-thickets 
flushed  while  the  dappled  waning  sunlight  drifted 
over  low  mushrooms  orange-thatched  for  crickets. 

And  the  leopard-lily,  bronze  and  spotted  gold, 
rose  upon  her  tall  and  emerald  stem, 
and  silvered  by  the  swift  September  cold 
hung  pinched  for  summer's  silent  requiem. 

There  was  a  road  through  summer:  where  it  went 

onward  through  scarlet  autumn  and  was  lost, 

I  cannot  tell:  I  know  the  grass  was  bent 

with  glitter  and  sumac-leaves  were  stroked  by  frost. 

[85] 


A  Statistician's  Dream 

SURGES   JOHNSON 

r"T1HERE  is  no  such  thing  anywhere  on  this  footstool  as  a  two; 
-*•  nowhere  can  there  be  found,  in  the  heavens  above,  or  in 
the  earth  beneath,  or  in  the  waters  under  the  earth,  a  three  or 
a  four.  These  are  not  things  —  they  are  figments  of  a  mathe 
matician's  dream.  When  the  user  of  them  constantly  remem 
bers  that  they  represent  or  qualify  things,  he  may  arrive  at 
Truth  by  means  of  them.  But  if  he  continues  to  use  them  after 
they  have  ceased  to  represent  anything  in  his  mind,  the  result 
may  be  nonsense. 

"If  one  man  can  do  a  piece  of  work  in  twelve  hours,  how 
long  will  it  take  two  men  to  do  it?"  asks  the  teacher.  Is  a  child 
permitted  to  bring  his  native  common  sense  into  action  and 
ask  "What  kind  of  work?"  No  indeed.  He  is  taught  to  divide 
twelve  by  two.  That  two  men  will  do  a  piece  of  work  in  half 
the  time  that  it  takes  one  man  to  do  it  is  an  absurd  fallacy.  If 
physical  labor  is  meant,  two  men  can  do  it  in  less  than  half  the 
time;  if  mental  labor,  then  one  can  work  faster  than  two.  One 
may  work  faster  than  a  hundred. 

It  is  the  habit  of  statisticians  to  collect  the  figures  that  are 
attached  to  objects,  separate  them  from  the  things  to  which 
they  are  attached,  deal  with  them  in  various  mysterious  ways, 
then  attach  the  results  to  the  objects  again  and  think  that 
they  have  truth.  A  boy  in  a  tree  can  pick  six  quarts  of  cherries 
in  half  an  hour;  then  let  the  farmer  borrow  the  services  of  his 
neighbor's  daughter,  and  the  boy  and  girl,  so  he  is  told,  can 
pick  six  quarts  of  cherries  in  fifteen  minutes.  But  any  child 
knows  that  if  you  put  a  boy  and  a  girl  together  in  a  tree  they 
may  not  pick  six  quarts  of  cherries  all  day. 

Mr.  Wilbur  Nesbit  did  a  most  excellent  piece  of  figuring 
when  he  asserted  that  if  a  fox  terrier  two  feet  long,  with  a 
three  inch  tail,  could  dig  a  hole  three  feet  deep  in  half  an 
hour,  then  to  dig  the  Panama  Canal  in  a  single  year  would 
require  only  one  fox  terrier  a  mile  and  a  half  long,  with  an 

[86] 


A  STATISTICIANS  DREAM  [  87  ] 

eighty  foot  tail.  Any  statistician  would  gravely  consider  this 
statement,  do  a  bit  of  figuring  and  assure  you  it  is  true;  but  a 
child  would  doubt  it.  He  would  question  whether  that  kind  of 
a  fox  terrier  would  dig  where  he  was  told. 

It  was  once  my  pleasant  fortune  to  be  attached  to  a  college 
for  women  (an  attachment,  may  I  add  parenthetically,  which 
in  my  heart  still  continues).  In  those  days  a  statistician  who 
lived  in  Pittsburgh,  or  some  such  place,  announced  that  he 
had  been  making  a  study  of  the  vital  statistics  of  segregated 
colleges.  He  had  discovered  that  the  graduates  of  Vassar  pro 
duced  three-quarters  of  a  child  apiece,  and  the  graduates  of 
Harvard  contributed  to  posterity  only  half  a  child  per  gradu 
ate.  From  this  he  deduced  that  such  colleges  not  only  were  not 
reproducing  themselves  and  must  therefore  cease  to  exist,  but 
that  they  were  a  menace  to  civilization  because  they  tended  to 
reduce,  generation  by  generation,  the  total  number  of  edu 
cated  people. 

I  was  deeply  interested  in  this;  and  my  depraved  fancy 
led  me  to  wonder  what  gruesome  fraction  of  an  infant  might 
come  into  the  world  if  a  graduate  of  Harvard  married  a  gradu 
ate  of  Vassar.  But  as  a  more  serious  inquiry,  I  sought  the 
source  of  the  numerical  symbols  to  which  his  mind  had  ap 
plied  itself.  I  found  that  he  worked  with  reports  supplied  by 
the  colleges  whose  figures  were  obtained  by  "questionnaires" 
addressed  to  graduates.  He  had  found  the  total  number  of 
graduates  who  had  answered,  and  the  total  number  of  chil 
dren  that  they  had  reported,  and  had  conscientiously  divided 
one  figure  by  the  other. 

But  a  study  of  the  letter-writing  habits  of  college  graduates, 
quite  apart  from  any  symbolic  figures,  reveals  this  interesting 
truth:  that  a  young  graduate  who  marries  and  acquires  her 
first  baby  is  very  likely  to  write  promptly  to  the  alumnae  secre 
tary,  or  even  wire  the  dean.  When  the  second  arrives,  a  be 
lated  postcard  announces  the  fact.  But  after  there  are  three  or 
four  in  the  family,  the  parent  may  forget  to  write  at  all.  More 
over,  such  statistics  are  assembled  from  living  graduates, 
seventy-five  percent  of  whom  are  still  physically  able  to  bear 


[  88  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

more  children.  Such  data  would  be  of  value  only  if  it  dealt 
with  those  alumni  who  have  been  out  of  college  for  forty  years 
or  more,  or  are  dead. 

But  the  statistician  is  interested  in  figures  rather  than  hu 
man  behavior.  Having  detached  his  symbols  from  living 
things,  manipulated  them,  and  then  reattached  them,  he 
finds  that  such  colleges  must  eventually  disappear  through 
failure  to  reproduce  themselves.  This  is  based  on  the  assump 
tion  that  all  future  students  are  produced  only  by  former  ones. 
Granting  that  absurdity,  it  would  still  be  questionable  whether 
such  colleges  menace  our  civilization!  Common  sense  points 
out,  on  the  contrary,  that  if  Harvard  and  Vassar  were  clois 
tered  spots,  sending  out  trained  graduates  pledged  to  celibacy, 
devoting  their  lives  to  teaching  and  social  service,  civilization 
still  might  benefit  from  their  existence,  or  even  be  more 
greatly  benefited  than  at  present. 

I  recall  that  in  that  far-away  time  I  wrote  to  the  gentleman 
in  Pittsburgh,  pointing  out  some  of  the  facts  cited  above,  and 
added  that  my  own  researches  revealed  that  statisticians  were 
producing  a  quarter  of  a  child  apiece  and  that  therefore  in 
sixty  years  or  so  there  would  be  no  more  statisticians,  for  which 
heaven  be  praised.  I  am  still  awaiting  his  reply. 

Statisticians  would  do  little  harm  if  they  avoided  disguises. 
The  mere  preparing  of  statistical  tables  may  perhaps  keep 
them  out  of  worse  mischief.  But  it  is  when  the  statistician 
calls  himself  an  efficiency  expert  that  I  most  fear  him.  For 
then  he  takes  his  facts,  detaches  them  from  reality,  manipu 
lates  them,  and  attaches  them  again,  with  some  sort  of  vested 
authority  to  operate  in  human  affairs.  There  is,  for  instance,  the 
famous  bricklayer  and  the  stop  watch.  The  efficiency  expert 
observes  the  habits  of  the  humble  layer  of  bricks  and  times  his 
motions.  He  discovers  that  the  man  picks  up  the  brick,  turns 
it  over  two  or  three  times  in  his  hands  in  order  to  get  the  facing 
uppermost,  spoons  up  a  little  mortar  with  his  trowel,  perhaps 
even  shifts  his  implement  and  his  brick  from  one  hand  to  the 
other,  pauses  to  spit,  and  then  puts  the  brick  in  place. 

"If  you  will  cut  out  three  unnecessary  motions,"  says  the 


A  STA  TISTICIAWS  DREAM  [  89  ] 

efficiency  man,  "you  can  lay  twenty  more  bricks  in  an  hour.  If 
you  can  make  your  helper  place  the  bricks  in  his  hod  with  their 
faces  up  you  can  lay  thirty  more  bricks  in  an  hour."  Figures 
are  just  as  true  in  this  instance  as  in  the  case  of  the  fox  terrier. 
How  the  bricklayer  may  feel  when  his  behavior  is  thus  mecha 
nized  is  not  the  concern  of  the  efficiency  expert.  How  much  a 
man  wants  to  hurry  with  his  work  is  not  a  ponderable  force.  It 
cannot  be  added  or  subtracted  or  multiplied  into  the  equation. 
So  forty  bricklayers  lay  thirty  more  bricks  apiece  per  hour,  for 
one  week,  and  go  on  strike  at  the  beginning  of  the  second 
week,  and  that's  that. 

This  is  not  a  fanciful  picture.  At  a  certain  canning  factory 
within  my  ken  a  number  of  non-English-speaking  women 
were  employed  at  manual  labor.  Their  employer  had  recently 
read  about  that  converted  bricklayer  and  was  himself  con 
verted;  so  he  sent  for  an  efficiency  engineer.  First  of  all  the 
factory  was  rearranged  so  that  the  several  processes  would  be 
housed  in  logical  order  —  the  filled  cans  finally  landing  at  the 
very  doors  of  the  freight  cars.  All  that  was  well  and  good;  the 
cans  seemed  to  be  as  happy  as  ever,  and  production  was  in 
creased. 

But  then  the  engineer  began  upon  the  lady  Lithuanians.  He 
studied  their  idiosyncracies  and  found  that  some  discerned 
color  more  quickly  than  others,  and  some  had  speedier  mus 
cular  reactions.  So  he  jumped  them  about,  until  those  who 
best  distinguished  colors  selected  labels  for  cans,  and  those 
whose  feet  moved  most  quickly  operated  foot-power  ma 
chines,  and  so  on.  Then  the  wage  was  based  upon  a  minimum 
output  per  individual,  and  a  bonus  offered  for  results  in  excess 
of  that. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  week  a  large  number  of  these  women 
earned  a  bonus  and  immediately  struck.  No  one  in  the  place 
could  discover  the  reason.  It  was  too  subtle  for  the  regular 
interpreter.  But  a  priest  was  found  in  a  neighboring  city  who 
spoke  their  tongue  and  he  got  at  the  root  of  the  trouble.  They 
had  struck  because  they  were  overworked,  but  they  did  not 
know  they  were  overworked  until  they  were  paid  so  much. 


[  go  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

The  efficiency  engineer  departed  in  disgust.  There  was  some 
thing  there  in  addition  to  his  figures  which  he  could  not  add 
up. 

Let  this  be  credited  to  the  teacher  of  elementary  arithmetic, 
that  he  never  urges  a  child  to  multiply  six  apples  by  two 
hippopotamuses  in  the  belief  that  he  will  get  twelve  of  either. 
Only  a  very  stupid  teacher  would  ask  a  child  to  divide,  even 
on  paper,  one  bone  among  six  dogs  and  determine  the  frac 
tional  result,  either  in  dogs  or  bones.  He  would  fear  a  recru 
descence  of  the  child's  common  sense.  It  is  only  after  the  teacher 
has  become  a  statistician  that  he  can  subtract  this  year's  white 
birthrate  from  this  year's  black  birthrate,  multiply  by  fifty 
years,  and  then  frighten  us  with  a  rising  tide  of  color. 

I  recall  the  pathetic  instance  of  one  such  delver  in  digits 
who  had  spent  years  assembling  figures  relating  to  farm  prod 
uce  in  a  certain  area.  Finally  he  achieved  his  goal,  which 
was  to  determine  the  average  annual  production.  But  by  that 
time  the  inhabitants  had  begun  raising  something  else. 

"GTROM  the  foregoing  you  may  assume  that  I  entertain  a  mild 
•*•  prejudice  against  statisticians.  But  there  is  nothing  personal 
about  it;  and  I  admit  it  proves  me  no  whit  wiser  than  the 
average  of  my  fellow  citizens.  For  a  statistician  is  merely  one 
kind  of  an  expert.  And  it  is  a  weakness  of  democracy  to  dis 
trust  its  experts. 

Let  me  be  frank  with  myself  and  the  rest  of  us:  this  distrust 
is  due  in  part  to  jealousy  rather  than  ignorance.  It  is  our 
democratic  tradition  that  success  comes  naturally  as  a  result 
of  dogged,  plodding  labor,  or  "sweat."  We  also  allow  for  luck, 
or  "striking  it  rich."  Rail-splitting  to  our  mind  is  the  ideal 
background;  if  this  is  accompanied  by  the  study  of  a  few  books, 
preferably  by  candle-light,  so  much  the  better.  That  much 
learning  is  within  anyone's  reach!  But  the  intellectual  expert 
has  acquired  a  superiority  which  cannot  be  secured  through 
mere  plodding,  or  luck,  or  money,  or  votes;  so  we  regard  him 
with  suspicion,  and  feel  that  there  must  be  something  un 
democratic  about  him. 


A  STATISTICIAN'S  DREAM  [  91  ] 

Most  of  my  fellow  democrats  will  explain  that  what  they 
really  distrust  is  a  theorist.  No  man,  they  say,  can  gain  special 
knowledge  of  a  subject  by  reasoning  about  it;  practice  is  the 
only  teacher.  Josh  Billings  is  their  prophet  when  he  cries  out, 
"It  is  better  not  to  know  so  much,  than  to  know  so  many  things 
that  ain't  so."  Bankers  and  insurance  men,  railroad  presidents, 
soldiers,  journalists,  and  farmers  boast  that  their  fathers  at 
tained  success  by  a  process  of  trial  and  error;  so  the  sons  who 
are  spared  the  trials  assert  their  right  to  continue  the  errors  — 
theorists  to  the  contrary,  notwithstanding. 

But  having  conceded  this  much,  let  me  get  back  to  my 
statisticians  and  assert  that  we  distrust  our  experts  mostly 
because  of  their  own  faults.  First,  they  won't  speak  our  lan 
guage;  second,  they  are  likely  to  talk  too  much  at  the  wrong 
time;  and  third,  they  devote  their  minds  so  undividedly  to  one 
pursuit  that  they  lose  their  common  sense. 

When  an  expert  so  exalts  his  favorite  idea  that  he  cannot 
see  around  it  or  over  it  —  whether  it  be  a  tonsil,  or  a  grain 
of  wheat,  or  a  submarine,  or  a  collection  of  digits  —  then  he 
gains  his  only  social  pleasure  from  conversation  with  other 
specialists  of  his  own  kind  about  their  common  subject.  The 
next  step  is  inevitable:  a  new  language  is  born.  For  it  is  natural 
that  in  such  conversations  a  sort  of  verbal  short-hand  should 
develop  which  makes  for  scientific  accuracy,  and  saves  time. 

But  if  the  truth  were  told,  accuracy  and  time-saving  soon 
come  to  be  secondary  reasons  for  using  this  patter.  It  serves  as 
a  mystic  symbol,  a  fraternal  "high-sign,"  an  abracadabra 
admitting  initiates  into  a  secret  brotherhood,  and  effectively 
excluding  barbarians.  It  is  an  awesome  experience  for  any 
common  man  to  overhear  the  conversation  between  two  pro 
found  specialists  in  penology,  let  us  say,  or  adenoids,  or  foreign 
exchange.  I  omit  mention  of  the  higher  orders  of  statis 
ticians,  because  they  have  probably  gotten  beyond  the  need 
for  words  of  any  sort,  and  talk  to  one  another  only  on  their 
figures.  The  common  man  shrinks  from  the  sound  of  this 
esoteric  vocabulary  as  though  it  were  a  malign  incantation, 
or  resents  it  as  though  it  were  a  taunt.  He  begins  to  feel  like 


[  92  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

rejecting  the  expert's  opinion  even  when  he  can  understand  it. 

It  is  my  observation  that  the  more  narrowly  confined  a 
specialist  has  become,  the  more  he  has  recourse  to  this  special 
jargon;  with  the  unfortunate  effect  that  he  builds  up  for  him 
self  one  more  barrier  between  his  mind  and  the  common 
human  mind,  exchanges  less  and  less  the  currency  of  common 
ideas,  and  so  is  likely  to  reduce  still  further  his  own  quota  of 
common  sense.  While  he  must  retain  the  ability  to  translate 
into  his  own  tongue  the  material  for  his  problems,  he  loses  all 
ability  to  translate  his  results  back  again  into  the  vernacular. 

Of  course  Heaven  sends  us  in  every  decade  a  few  specialists 
who  keep  themselves  generally  informed,  and  have  a  com 
mand  of  common,  everyday  English;  but  they  are  often 
martyred,  and  oddly  enough  it  is  their  own  fellow  specialists 
who  hurl  the  first  stones.  But  the  narrower  ones  —  those  who 
fill  their  minds  so  full  of  uncommon  knowledge  that  there  is 
no  room  left  for  common  sense  —  are  the  ones  who  help  to 
destroy  popular  confidence  in  experts,  by  talking  out  of  turn. 
Perhaps  one  wins  world-wide  recognition  as  a  builder  of 
locomotives,  or  as  a  leader  of  armies.  This  recognized  special 
knowledge  gives  to  any  of  his  pronouncements  a  wide  hearing. 
Whereupon  he  is  induced  to  voice  silly  views  of  art  or  history 
or  politics;  and  a  scornful  public  cries  "I  told  you  so,"  and  be 
gins  at  once  to  distrust  even  the  man's  profound  special 
knowledge,  and  the  profundity  of  all  other  experts  as  well. 

But  democracy  is  in  most  woeful  need  of  all  the  expert 
theorists  it  can  produce.  It  has  bumbled  along  too  far  already 
without  enough  of  them.  In  a  monarchy  or  a  despotism  this  is 
not  the  case  (and  if  that  be  treason,  make  the  most  of  it). 
Supreme  authority  scrutinizes  its  resources,  discovers  special 
ists  in  this  or  that,  and  summons  them  to  the  service  of  the 
state;  and  the  populace  does  not  resent  this  any  more  than 
other  acts  of  omnipotence.  On  the  contrary  it  is  inclined  to  be 
boastful  of  its  experts,  making  the  same  sort  of  fuss  over  them 
that  it  does  over  a  royal  family. 

Certainly  we  democrats  ought  to  have  learned  by  this 
time  what  the  expert  theorist  can  do  for  us  when  we  give  him 


A  STATISTICIAN'S  DREAM  [  93  ] 

a  chance.  There  is,  for  instance,  a  wide-spread  and  apparently 
well-founded  belief  that  our  bankers  have  been  saved  from 
final  discredit  by  men  who  are  pure  theorists,  so  far  as  banking 
is  concerned.  Insurance  men  once  went  through  their  own 
valley  of  the  shadow,  when  they  suddenly  learned  that  the 
world  had  been  changing  around  the  insurance  business,  and 
it  was  necessary  for  a  theorist  to  tell  them  about  it. 

Our  railroads  inevitably  prospered,  as  migratory  peoples 
flowed  in  along  their  rights-of-way;  and  railroad  executives, 
while  cheerfully  paralleling  one  another's  lines,  claimed 
credit,  like  Father  Abraham,  even  for  the  populations,  and 
for  a  hundred  years  allowed  an  obsolete  type  of  stage  coach  to 
determine  the  shape  of  a  railway  car.  But  at  last  when  popu 
lations  stopped  flowing  and  business  fell  off  they  welcomed  the 
counsel  of  government  theorists. 

But  it  is  more  tactful  of  me  to  write  about  farmers.  They  are 
thick-skinned  fellows  who  do  not  mind  being  written  about. 
Several  years  ago  an  elderly  theorist  retired  to  his  estate  in  an 
eastern  farming  section.  He  was  depressed  by  the  depleted 
soil  and  inferior  stock  and  antiquated  methods  of  his  farmer 
neighbors,  and  eagerly  desired  to  be  of  practical  use  to  them. 
He  suggested  the  introduction  of  another  breed  of  cattle  as 
best  suited  to  their  hillsides;  and  certain  European  tricks  of 
viniculture  that  promised  better  results.  But  they  would  have 
none  of  it.  Finally  his  farm  manager,  who  was  a  native  and 
knew  his  own  people,  suggested  building  a  good  fence  around 
everything,  and  then  following  a  policy  of  extreme  reticence. 
The  plan  worked.  Neighbors  climbed  the  fence  by  night  and 
borrowed  the  ideas,  as  well  as  a  little  breeding  from  the  foreign 
stock.  The  whole  neighborhood  was  greatly  benefited,  and  every 
farmer  felt  that  it  was  a  result  of  his  own  rugged  individual 
ism.  Experts  be  durned. 

I  met  a  young  stage  driver  in  South  Dakota  who  pointed 
across  the  distant  prairies  to  his  home  farm,  and  I  asked  why 
he  had  not  followed  in  his  father's  footsteps.  "Because  farmers 
haven't  any  sense,"  he  answered.  "Even  after  the  state  granted 
tree  claims,  you  couldn't  get  some  of  these  farmers  to  plant 


[  94  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

trees.  They  never  had  planted  trees  before  and  why  should 
they  now?  Wheat  was  what  they  planted,  and  they  knew  all 
they  needed  to  know  about  that.  When  the  state  offered  to 
give  a  squatter  full  title  to  a  piece  of  land  if  he  would  plant 
trees  and  stay  until  they  had  grown  into  a  storm  barrier,  a 
few  outsiders  came  in  and  took  advantage  of  the  offer.  But  my 
dad  never  would,  and  he's  had  all  his  savings  swept  away 
twice  by  wind  storms. 

"Take  pigs,"  continued  the  lad.  "When  I  was  a  youngster 
we  always  kept  one  family  of  pigs  around  the  back  door.  They 
used  up  the  family  swill  and  we  killed  them  when  they  got  big 
enough.  One  family  of  pigs  was  enough  for  one  farmhouse. 
We  knew  they  would  thrive  in  this  climate,  but  that  didn't 
suggest  anything  to  a  farmer.  All  he  could  see  was  wheat.  It 
took  some  crazy  expert  from  the  state  college  to  pound  into 
the  farmers'  heads  the  idea  that  they  might  raise  more  pigs, 
and  they  resisted  the  idea  as  long  as  they  could.  Now  a  big 
part  of  the  state's  wealth  is  pork  products." 

TT  LOOKS  as  though  democracy  might  get  along  better  if 
•*•  the  specialist  and  the  practical  man  of  affairs  could  work 
together  in  hearty  cooperation,  each  supplementing  the  other. 
This  might  happen  if  any  one  of  the  following  conditions  could 
be  brought  about:  first,  if  every  practical  man  of  affairs  were 
also  a  specialist;  second,  if  every  specialist  were  a  practical 
man  of  affairs;  third,  if  we  could  train  up  a  trusted  and  trust 
worthy  body  of  interpreters. 

The  first  condition  will  come  about  when  every  citizen  is 
possessed  of  so  thorough  a  knowledge  in  some  one  field  that, 
with  the  humility  of  the  true  scholar,  he  respects  the  learning 
of  others.  This  presupposes  universal  education,  and  the 
millennium.  The  second  might  come  about  if  we  could  pass 
laws  requiring  every  specialist  to  spend  three  days  of  every 
week  in  general  reading  or  mingling  with  his  fellow  men  and 
striving  to  understand  them.  This  seems  equally  difficult !  The 
third  condition  is  a  matter  for  the  press.  The  newspaperman  is 
our  interpreter.  If  our  experiment  in  democracy  is  to  work, 


A  STATISTICIAN'S  DREAM  [  95  ] 

we  must  be  able  to  count  on  his  integrity,  high  purpose  and 
good  sense. 

Unfortunately,  the  newspaperman  has  become,  to  a  con 
siderable  extent,  merely  a  dealer  in  a  commodity  called  Sen 
sation.  Instead  of  searching  out  the  expert  in  order  to  explain 
his  profound  discoveries  to  common  men,  he  persuades  him  to 
say  something  silly,  and  gives  that  to  the  world  in  letters  an 
inch  high.  He  teaches  wise  men  to  distrust  newspapers  and  the 
public  to  distrust  wise  men.  He  might  save  experts  for  democ 
racy;  he  might,  and  should,  save  democracy  for  itself. 


One  Purple  Patch 

B.    M.    STEIGMAN 

"C*VERYTHING  that  man  wears  today  reaches  him  in  a 
-"  more  or  less  completely  manufactured  state.  When  he 
dresses  he  merely  assembles,  mechanically  speaking,  a  number 
of  standardized  parts.  A  few  bolts  and  buttons  —  and  he  is 
ready  to  be  shipped  from  his  dressing-room.  There  seems  to 
be  hardly  anything  that  is  actually  constructed  on  the 
premises. 

Not  so  in  days  of  yore.  The  Roman  cast  his  toga  about  him 
and  experimented  like  a  curtain  draper  before  he  was  satisfied 
with  the  effect.  The  Indian  made  a  heaping  big  mess  with 
paint  and  feathers  and  wampum-beads  before  he  strutted  out 
to  make  a  killing.  The  Turk  passed  hours  in  swathing  his 
turban;  the  Jap  took  days  to  make  honorable  his  coif,  and 
spent  months,  years,  in  embellishing  his  unworthy  kimono. 
The  Assyrians  and  Phoenicians  unfortunately  were  completely 
covered  (the  present  investigator  has  found,  after  a  visit  to  the 
museum)  with  square  stone  beards,  beneath  which  consider 
able  excavations  must  still  be  made  if  further  corroborative 
evidence  is  to  be  bared. 

Modern  man  is  easier  to  investigate,  for  he  makes  no  at 
tempt  to  hide  behind  an  unshaven  hedge  and  —  except  for  an 
occasional  Frenchman,  sensitive  to  style  —  exposes  unob- 
structedly,  from  the  chin  down,  how  completely  he  has  sur 
rendered  the  liberty  he  originally  took  with  his  apparel.  Gone, 
gone  is  his  gaudy  freedom  of  choice  as  to  the  color  and  cut  of 
his  doublet  and  hose.  Two  centuries  ago  he  could  still  dazzle 
his  damsel  with  scarlet  breeches  and  a  flouncing  profusion  of 
ruffles  and  lace;  and  even  a  hundred  years  ago  he  was  expected 
to  come  courting  her  in  a  cobalt  topper  and  a  canary-colored 
waistcoat. 

Today,  however,  he  is  a  drab  vestiarian  robot  whose  stiff, 
creased  front  of  dingy  tweed  has  been  prescribed  for  him  to  the 
last  fixed  seam.  He  has  been  "brooks-brothered"  and  "rogers- 

[96] 


ONE  PURPLE  PA  TGH  [  97  ] 

peeted"  into  a  sack  suit:  and  there  he  must  stay,  and  to  that 
he  must  be  true,  or  he  will  be  despised  as  a  turncoat. 

THE    GOAT 

There  he  must  stay:  for  it  is  virtually  a  social  epidermis 
into  which  man  slips  in  the  morning,  so  unremovable  is  his 
coat  even  on  the  hottest  day.  Only  when  in  wrath  all  decorum 
is  flung  to  the  winds,  and  eyes  blaze  and  fists  clench,  is  the 
ultimate  challenge  hurled  to  a  scoundrel  to  take  off  his  coat,  to 
shed  his  twentieth  century  being,  for  you  desire  to  deal  with 
him  as  Neanderthal  man  to  man.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
more  civilized  the  form  of  activity  you  undertake,  as  when  you 
are  called  upon,  say,  to  do  a  tap-dance  or  address  a  political 
meeting,  the  more  obvious  becomes  the  instinct  to  make 
secure  your  unobtrusive  and  impeccable  self  by  buttoning  it 
up  as  you  get  into  action. 

Unobtrusive  oxford  grey,  navy  blue,  dark  brown  —  im 
peccably  sober,  unromantically  sombre,  damnably  dull! 
Redcoats  at  one  time  dashed  brightly  across  the  Boston  Com 
mon  and  clattered  gloriously  up  (and  down)  Bunker  Hill; 
and  though  their  crimson  raiment  made  them,  alas,  easy  tar 
gets  for  ragged  rebels,  they  are  assured  a  colorful  page  in 
history  for  their  gallant  sacrifice  to  sartorial  splendor !  The  red 
coats  are,  of  course,  still  worn  on  occasion  in  England;  for  the 
British  are  quick  to  learn,  and  the  ease  with  which  their 
ancestors  could  be  sighted  and  popped  off  by  an  enemy  has 
taught  them  how  to  safeguard  themselves  against  any  ex 
ploratory  marksmanship  of  their  fellow  hunters.  Another  trib 
ute  to  British  ingenuity! 

But  generally  a  garish  coat  is  the  pride  merely  of  the 
doormen  of  our  modern  world.  Strange  colors  are  not  ad 
mitted  —  however  significant  in  the  pages  of  romance  or 
sociology  may  be  the  wearing  of  Lincoln-green  in  the  north 
woods,  of  the  yellow  jacket  in  the  east,  or  a  coat  of  dark  tan  at 
the  equator.  We  moderns  are  not  alone  in  this  prejudice, 
however.  A  streak  of  it  can  perhaps  be  traced  even  as  far  back 
as  Biblical  days,  when  Joseph  tried  to  sport  a  coat  of  many 


[  98  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

colors,  and  found  himself  promptly  ditched  by  his  preco 
ciously  hard-boiled  brethren. 

The  gunny-sack  cut  of  our  coat  is  no  less  rigidly  prescribed 
for  us  than  is  its  gloomy  hue.  One  choice  at  least  we  are  given, 
dating  from  the  time  a  Napoleonic  tailor's  scissors  snipped  the 
great  schism  that  has  since  divided  all  men  into  the  dichotomy 
of  the  single-breasted  and  the  double-breasted.  This  breach  in 
our  regimented  manhood  seems  a  veritable  chasm.  By  im 
plication  it  becomes  clear  why  our  stable  social  order  dis 
courages  any  rugged  habilimentary  individualism. 

•For  we  see  everyday  how  weak-chinned,  weak-kneed  men  of 
manifest  intestinal  paucity  are  operated  upon  by  an  enter 
prising  tailor's  shears  and  emerge  clipped  and  slashed,  and 
transformed  from  their  simpish,  single-breasted  selves  into 
seemingly  tremendous,  double-breasted  supermen.  There  is  no 
mistaking  those  who  have  undergone  the  operation.  You  can 
see  them  from  afar,  bulging  and  of  twice  the  common  single- 
breasted  chestiness.  You  can  hear  them  farther  yet:  their 
thoracic  compartment  having  been  made  duplex,  they  are 
capable  of  twice  an  ordinary  pulmonary  performance.  But 
it  is  especially  when  they  manage  to  lay  their  hands  on  you 
that  you  appreciate  their  gifts  —  for  the  heartiness  of  their 
salutation  cannot  possibly  be  pumped  by  a  single  aorta. 
You  are  convinced  that  they  have  become  automatically 
double-breasted. 

You  may  feel  no  great  enthusiasm  over  such  transformation 
in  your  unavoidable  neighbors.  You  may  consider  it  all  very 
well  for  Napoleon,  say,  to  have  strutted  about  that  way,  his 
arm  inside  his  huge  lapel,  for  his  colossal  spirit  could  hardly 
have  been  encased  within  a  single-breasted  coat.  Or  you  may 
have  a  picture  of  Washington  standing  upright  in  the  rowboat, 
as  his  men  pushed  it  through  the  icy  Delaware  (though  in  this 
case  the  two  rows  of  buttons  may  have  been  put  on  his  coat 
in  a  desperate  effort  to  help  him  maintain  his  balance!).  To 
such,  you  concede,  the  double-breasted  coat  may  be  an  excel 
lent  fit  —  a  sartorial  sacrament  that  is  an  outward  and  visible 
sign  of  an  inward  and  extraordinary  expanse.  But  whether  you 


ONE  PURPLE  PA  TCH  [  99  ] 

are  radical  or  conservative  on  the  subject,  whether  you  take 
the  left  side  or  the  right  side  of  the  double-breasted  coat 
(which,  unless  it's  a  misfit,  makes  hardly  any  difference),  you 
are  bound  to  be  impressed  with  the  tremendous  potentialities 
of  a  complete  liberation  of  man's  drab,  gunny-sack  coated 
spirit. 

THE   VEST 

The  failure  of  the  vest  to  maintain  a  spectral  independence 
of  the  coat  and  trousers  is  of  anthropologic  interest.  Stripping 
the  subject  bare  that  we  may  disclose  the  naked  truth,  we 
discover  that  man  in  his  primordial  state  was  furnished  by 
nature  with  a  hirsute  covering  on  the  site  now  occupied  by  the 
vest.  In  those  savage  and  pre-cheviot  days,  the  hair  was  in 
tended  to  protect  his  lungs.  Now  it  serves  him  merely  for 
occasional  reference  and  self-patting,  to  make  him  feel  that  he 
is  still  robust  and  he-manly  and  close  to  nature.  It  is  in  a  class 
with  his  camping  outfit. 

But  some  of  its  properties  have  passed  through  to  its  "hair- 
apparent,"  as  the  vest  might  be  called.  We  discover  here,  too, 
a  subdued,  protective  coloration.  We  discover,  again,  a  woolly 
expanse  in  front  but  not  in  back.  We  discover,  once  more,  an 
unshedable  attachment  during  all  seasons.  Just  the  same,  the 
owner  of  a  vest  must  concede  it  to  be  less  impressive  as  a  he- 
masculine  attribute  than  the  shaggy,  forebearish  hair  on  a 
primitive  chest.  Fortunately  for  his  shrinking  ego,  his  defense 
mechanism  has  deftly  cut  armholes  in  his  vest,  where  his 
thumbs  may  repose,  much  to  his  own  aggrandizement.  He 
thrusts  his  chest  forward  as  if  it  still  exposed  his  aboriginal 
virility  rather  than  a  manufactured  expanse  of  tweed  or 
worsted 

Historically  the  vest  has  proved  of  vast  importance.  When 
Disraeli  made  his  first  appearance  before  the  House  of  Com 
mons,  he  was  hooted  and  razzed  and  would  have  been  hope 
lessly  lost  had  he  not  made  a  last  desperate  stand  and  in 
trenched  himself  within  the  armholes  of  his  vest.  For  the  rest 
of  his  days  thereafter,  that  became  his  fighting  front,  from 


[  ioo  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

which  he  put  his  opponents  to  rout.  His  position,  to  be  sure, 
was  greatly  strengthened  by  the  array  of  gold  chains  and  seals 
and  keys  that  dangled  formidably  at  his  every  movement.  And 
the  disconcerting  color  of  the  vests  he  brought  into  action 
could  hardly  have  been  of  aid  and  comfort  to  an  enemy. 
Yet  they  are  generally  ignored  by  students  of  Disraeli's 
parliamentary  strategy,  who  instead  pore  futilely  over  musty 
volumes  of  his  speeches. 

Someday  history  may  be  rewritten  in  terms  of  this  significant 
garment.  The  evolution  from  bearskin  to  white  dress  vest  is  the 
story  of  civilization.  It  centers  about  such  conflicts  as  that 
between  the  polished  steel  breastplate  and  the  homespun  in  the 
feudal  age,  and  the  leather  jerkin  and  the  shirt  frills  some  cen 
turies  later.  Compare  the  pictues  of  Cromwell  and  of  Charles 
I,  and  see  where  their  essential  difference  lies.  The  French 
revolutionist  watched  with  contempt  how  the  noblemen 
flaunted  their  flimsy  silken  ruffles;  he  banged  his  fist  on  his 
own  hairy  chest  and  walked  off  to  the  market  place  to  set  up 
the  guillotine. 

Economically  the  vest  achieves  importance  in  the  mind  of  an 
American  at  a  very  early  age.  He  sees  cartoons  of  wretched 
little  creatures  marked  "Taxpayer"  or  "Common  People," 
crushed  down  by  a  huge  man  whose  balloon-like  vest  bears 
the  label  "Vested  Interest."  The  name  sticks  in  his  mind.  He 
discovers  several  meanings  also  in  the  label  "Corporation." 
Behaviorist  psychology  might  point  moreover  to  his  association 
of  property  with  the  four  pockets  of  the  vest,  to  which  he  sees 
grown-up  men  have  recourse  for  most  of  their  really  serviceable 
belongings  —  watch,  knife,  pen,  matches,  and  especially  the 
coveted  dime  or  quarter.  There  may  be  childish  images  in  his 
mind  when  he  is  told  the  meaning  of  the  term  "investment." 

Perhaps  that  is  why  the  vest  clings  to  him  so  when  he  has 
grown  up,  and  why  liberal  and  liberating  arguments  on  the 
subject  are  to  him  wild  talk  which  he  resists  desperately,  like 
the  man  in  the  fable  when  the  hard-blowing  wind  tried  to 
make  him  disrobe.  By  contrast,  woman  must  have  seemed 
reckless  when  she  made  her  sensational  break  from  corsets  and 


ONE  PURPLE  PATCH  [  101  ] 

all  those  barricades  and  bulwarks  of  padding,  hoops,  founda 
tions,  and  endless  petticoats  to  appear  in  the  rotogravure 
section  of  today,  almost  wholly  liberated,  submitting  to  noth 
ing  but  a  flimsy  little  butterfly  thing,  over  whose  precarious 
hold  she  smiles  in  triumph. 

We  return,  hastily,  to  the  cautious  coloration  of  the  vest. 
We  prefer  to  keep  our  vested  selves  unobtrusive  at  all  times. 
Some  twenty  years  ago  there  was  a  brief  efflorescence  of  the 
vest:  but  the  bold  blades  who  sought  by  their  own  resplendent 
example  to  rally  our  somber-bosomed  American  manhood 
behind  an  array  of  flowered  mauve  and  heliotrope,  soon  lost 
heart,  and  surrendered  that  most  brightly  promising  vestment 
to  be  a  mere  auxiliary  to  the  coat  and  pants. 

THE     PANTS 

Not  the  trousers  —  for  those  severely  respectable  habili 
ments  could  never  offer  us  any  bright-colored  hopes.  The 
pantaloons,  named  so  for  gracing  the  shanks  of  San  Pantaleone, 
patron  saint  of  glamorous  Venice,  might  lead  one  to  cheerier 
expectations.  The  word  trails  carnival  color  and  abandon;  but 
alas,  the  garment  degenerated  to  serve  mere  circus  buffoonery. 
When  the  ignominious  last  syllable  of  the  word  was  lopped 
off,  the  remainder  was  no  longer  an  attribute  of  clowning, 
nor  conceivably  of  romance.  It  was  assigned  instead  to  cover 
the  plodding  legs  and  sedentary  seat  of  a  working  world. 

No,  not  the  pants.  Man's  nether  self  is  something  he  has 
been  taught  to  consider  quite  beneath  him.  He  had  better 
draw  a  curtain  about  it  of  noncommittal  cloth:  he  had  better 
lengthen  his  coat  to  cover  his  hips  and  envelop  his  limbs  so 
that  not  a  curve  of  calf  or  thigh  is  visible.  The  legs  are  for 
utility,  not  for  ornament.  Some  years  ago  there  was  much  to-do 
in  our  papers  about  whether  Charles  G.  Dawes,  ambassador  to 
England,  would  or  would  not  don  silken  breeches  and  stock 
ings  at  the  court  of  St.  James.  Opposition  to  such  a  rare  re 
maining  display  of  the  cavalierish  grace  that  whilom  did 
tread  all  the  courts  of  Europe,  could  have  arisen  only  in  a 
country  where  legs  from  the  very  start  were  relegated  to  path- 


L  102  J  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

finding,  trekking,  claim-staking,  and  then  to  a  restless  climbing 
of  the  ladder  of  success. 

It  has  become  universal,  that  strange  aversion  of  ours  to  the 
curves  and  symmetries  from  the  hips  down  to  the  toes.  We 
drape  a  round  worsted  curtain  around  each  leg,  and  then  we 
have  these  creased  and  flattened  lest  we  be  suspected  of  even 
cylindrical  rotundity.  Ornamental  effects  are  unheard  of. 
Youth  recklessly  dons  white  flannels.  And  on  gala  dress  occa 
sions,  by  way  of  festive  effect,  we  do  permit  ourselves  grey 
stripes  below  the  cut-away.  In  certain  parts  of  Brittany  the 
fishermen  wear  red  pants.  Tourists  come  from  all  over  the 
world  to  see  them. 

For  a  while  it  seemed  that  the  World  War,  which  could 
achieve  the  emancipation  of  the  veiled  face  of  Oriental  woman, 
might  do  something  for  the  ankle  and  calf  of  Occidental  man. 
The  advent  of  leggings  and  puttees  seemed  to  restore  to  us  the 
eighteenth  century  age  of  reason  with  its  monumental  dis 
covery  that  man's  leg  is  logically  divided  at  the  knee.  The 
world  would  be  made  safe,  we  felt,  as  we  pulled  on  our  tight 
khaki  breeches,  for  democracy's  return  to  the  free  and  ostenta 
tious  thigh,  and  the  romantically  clasped,  knightly  gartered 
knee.  When  the  war  was  over  the  silken  clad  leg  would  be 
stepping  out;  and  then  just  watch  the  line  it  would  have  to 
offer  the  damosels  —  of  eloquence,  of  ardor,  of  ineluctable 
impudence,  yea,  of  triumph ! 

Yea?  When  the  war  was  over  we  had  had  enough  of  trapes 
ing  about  in  outlandish  outfits,  and  were  all  for  respectability 
and  trousers.  And  for  our  more  playful  moods  there  began  to 
appear  a  misbegotten  offspring  of  the  breeches  and  pants, 
destitute  of  function,  style,  comfort  or  proportion,  abortively 
called  "knickers".  As  if  that  (certainly  not  the  least  horrible) 
consequence  of  the  war  were  not  appalling  enough,  its 
ungodly  perpetrator  extended  it  into  incredible  monstrosities 
that  are  named  "plus  fours",  "plus  sixes"  -  an  arithmetic 
progression  downward  to  the  ankles,  beneath  which  small, 
bewildered-looking  feet  emerge  like  turtle  necks  from  out  of 
their  staggering  hulks.  The  next  war,  according  to  all  author- 


ONE  PURPLE  PATCH  [  103  ] 

ities,  will  be  even  more  horrible:  it  will  wipe  out  everything. 
Here,  surely,  is  a  potent  argument  for  world  peace ! 

THE    GALLANT    CRAVAT 

We  may  ignore  the  shirt.  The  most  powerful  dictators  have 
succeeded  in  establishing  only  the  usual  dismal  tones  of  brown 
or  black.  Those  who  humbly  wear  them,  we  suspect,  are  not 
happy:  for  we  remember  how  many  of  those  who  came  here  as 
immigrant  workers,  in  the  legendary  days  before  1929,  let 
loose  when  they  found  themselves  in  possession  of  an  abun 
dance  of  liberty  and  cash,  and  paraded  silk  shirts  of  riotous, 
revolutionary  hues.  The  vertiginous  memory  of  those  colors 
does  something  at  least  to  explain  the  present  acceptance 
abroad  of  Fascism.  When  will  mankind  manage  to  emerge 
from  the  alternatives  of  drunkenness  and  prohibition? 

The  American  shirt  is  sober  enough,  humdrum  in  fact,  and 
vapid,  so  that  per  se  a  stuffed  shirt  is  without  even  pictorial 
interest.  The  trouble  is  that  we  have  been  too  much  concerned 
with  industry  to  use  shirts  for  parade  or  finery,  and  instead 
just  want  to  roll  our  shirt  sleeves  up  and  get  to  work.  Broad 
cloth,  linen,  silk  or  percale  is  to  us  just  so  much  essential 
covering  of  one's  nakedness,  one's  ne  plus  ultra:  to  lose  one's 
shirt  is  to  lose  everything.  So  we  stick  to  "solid"  colors  that 
are  supposed  to  look  substantial,  or  concede  an  undeviating 
stripe  for  "fancy"  effect.  Perhaps  the  enforced  tranquillity  of 
shirt  sleeves  during  the  depression  will  give  them  a  chance  for 
aesthetic  cultivation,  leading  —  who  knows?  —  to  a  burgeon 
ing,  a  renascence  of  the  lace  and  silver  gauntlets  of  the  lordly 
cavalier  on  a  canvas  by  Van  Dyck  or  Velasquez. 

In  the  meantime  there  is  unto  art  in  male  attire  but  one 
concession,  one  challenge  to  technocratic  raiment,  one  purple 
patch  in  the  prosy  account  of  what  our  ill-dressed  man  must 
wear.  Given  his  wardrobe,  apparently  the  modern  beau  can  no 
more  modify  the  total  effect  than  can  the  assembler  of  a  factory 
piano  or  a  Ford  car.  But  one  reservation  he  does  make,  which 
thereby  assumes  vast  significance:  he  takes  the  flat  and 
shapeless  material  he  gets  at  the  haberdasher's,  and  with  his 


[  104  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

own  hands  he  constructs  the  necktie  he  is  to  wear  for  the  day. 

This  seems  the  last  stand  of  modern  man  against  being 
turned  into  a  clothes-rack  by  our  mechanistic  age.  His  neck 
wear  gives  him  one  slender  outlet  for  whatever  he  has  left  of 
individual  expression.  That  is  why,  according  to  story  writers, 
he  must  stand  so  long  before  the  mirror  before  he  meets  his 
love:  he  is  preening  his  one  feather,  he  is  making  his  throat 
articulate  with  sonorous  color.  More,  the  artist  in  him  is 
aroused:  he  seeks  perfection  by  repeated  efforts,  modifying, 
rejecting,  beginning  afresh.  He  undergoes  cravatorial  creative 
throes. 

He  has  become  a  specialist  in  his  selection  of  the  four-in- 
hand  —  his  raw  material,  his  canvas,  his  plastic  clay.  He  is  a 
connoisseur  of  foulard  and  rep  and  grenadine;  he  discourses 
learnedly  on  Spitalfields  patterns  and  Barathea  weaves;  he 
has  achieved  cosmopolitan  taste  for  Swiss  moires,  Italian 
twills,  British  handblocks,  French  jacquard  warps.  He  is 
absorbed  too  in  structural  considerations,  and  tests  and  twists 
and  makes  a  great  to-do  about  dispansion,  resilience,  tractility, 
sequaciousness.  .  .  .  There  is  dolorous  truth  in  the  cartoon  of 
how  he  wails  in  anguish  when  he  receives  Christmas  ties 
selected  by  well-meaning,  no  doubt,  but  appallingly  un 
initiated  females. 

Better  let  eternal  masculine  vigilance  be  aroused  in  behalf 
of  the  liberty  of  the  cravat.  For  even  this  sole  remaining  link 
with  the  more  brave  and  haberdashing  periods  of  history  is 
continually  in  danger  of  snapping,  tugged  at  as  it  is  by  modern 
machines.  It  snapped  in  the  days  of  our  great-grandfathers, 
who  for  a  time  abandoned  their  tracheas  to  stiff,  starched 
stocks.  It  snapped  again  when  our  grandfathers  took  to  their 
bosom  the  bulky  Ascot  tie.  Even  in  our  own  days  there  is  a 
constant  straining,  and  an  ominous  clatter  of  machinery  in  the 
direction  of  our  freemen's  necks.  We  can  still  remember  when 
we  were  clutched  at  the  throat  with  ready-made  dress  ties. 
Aux  armes,  mes  enfants! 

For  should  the  glory  of  the  cravat  ever  be  dimmed,  and 
made  to  pass  the  way  of  the  silk  breeches  and  the  buckled 


ONE  PURPLE  PATCH  [  105  ] 

shoes,  man's  bareness  would  be  a  natural  calamity  —  much 
like  the  loss  of  its  antlers  to  the  deer,  or  its  comb  and  showy 
crowing  to  the  cock.  As  it  is,  man  has  shrunk  his  personality 
into  the  insignificance  of  the  dull  cloth  he  selects  for  his 
garments.  In  vain  has  he  been  urged  to  restore  something  of 
the  gaiety  and  splendor  of  the  days  of  powdered  wigs  and 
jeweled  swords.  To  remove  his  one  remaining  touch  of  bright 
ness  would  be  to  have  him  undergo  a  total  eclipse.  Against  the 
powers  of  darkness  every  enlightened  man  should  hasten,  in 
defense  of  the  gallant  cravat! 


The  Long  Way  to  Atlantis 
NORTON  MGGIFFIN 

A  CLOUD,  no  larger  than  a  man's  hand  as  yet,  is  rising  in  the 
-^^  Southwest  and  bringing  promise  of  a  deluge  which  may 
engulf  the  Roosevelt  administration.  Huey  Long,  the  Creole 
King  of  the  Canebrakes,  the  self-confessed  tribune  of  the  peo 
ple,  is  its  personification  and  threatens,  in  his  own  inimitable 
fashion,  to  prick  the  complacency  of  James  A.  Farley.  Having 
proceeded  to  make  Louisiana  a  satrapy  of  his  own  with  an 
obsequious  state  legislature  bowing  to  his  every  whim,  he 
seeks  new  worlds  to  conquer,  projecting  himself  into  the  center 
of  the  national  political  picture  with  vindictive  determination, 
the  most  persistent  gadfly  yet  to  plague  the  Roosevelt  regime. 
What  Huey  Long  intends  to  do  between  now  and  the  ides  of 
November,  1936,  perhaps  not  even  Huey  Long  knows.  He  is 
the  man  who  would  be  king  of  a  new  political  dynasty  which 
would  climb  to  power  over  the  broad  backs  of  the  men  with 
the  hoes  and  the  picks  and  the  shovels,  the  submerged  and 
underprivileged  segment  of  America's  voting  population 
which  is  not  yet  aware  of  its  strength.  The  Louisiana  Kingfish 
is  the  embryonic  Hitler  who  undoubtedly  plans  a  putsch  which 
will  ultimately  carry  him  into  the  White  House,  who  has  not 
yet  decided  in  his  own  mind  when  and  how  the  attempt  shall 
be  made. 

General  Hugh  Johnson  has,  with  characteristic  vigor,  posi 
tively  identified  the  senator  from  the  bayous  as  America's 
Political  Enemy  Number  One,  at  the  same  time  linking  him  to 
his  political  soul-mate,  the  radio  priest,  Father  Charles  E. 
Coughlin.  Pungently  and  aptly  he  has  labeled  this  duo  the 
Siamese  Twins  of  chaos,  calling  on  the  economically  sane  ele 
ment  of  the  nation  to  be  on  guard.  His  analysis  indicates  quite 
conclusively  that  the  administration  lost  a  shrewd  and  pene 
trating  student  of  political  conditions  when  it  decided  to  exile 
Johnson  to  Elba.  The  former  NRA  chief,  with  a  boldness 
truly  Napoleonic,  has  pointed  the  way  for  the  Roosevelt  board 

[106] 


THE  LONG  WAT  TO  ATLANTIS  [  107  ] 

of  strategy  to  follow,  in  seeking  the  President's  reelection  in 
1936.  By  taking  the  offensive,  the  administration  might  pos 
sibly  wreck  the  Republican  campaign  —  posing  as  the  cham 
pion  of  conservatism,  as  the  chief  antagonist  of  the  left-wingers. 
If  the  President  can  make  the  American  people  believe  that 
the  battle  is,  in  effect,  a  choice  between  himself  and  Huey  Long, 
that  a  vote  for  the  Republican  candidate  is  half  a  vote  for  the 
Kingfish,  he  need  have  no  fear  of  the  result.  The  members  of 
the  Union  League  Club,  fearing  the  onward  march  of  the 
Share-the- Wealth  crusader,  would  hold  their  high-bred  noses 
and  vote  for  Groton  and  Harvard's  gift  to  the  nation  as  being 
the  lesser  of  two  evils. 

That  type  of  strategy  would  undoubtedly  be  forthcoming 
if  the  administration  had  political  chiefs  half  as  clever  as  they 
have  been  touted,  yet  the  casual  manner  in  which  the  bright 
young  men  have  addressed  themselves  to  the  task  of  squelching 
the  prickly  pear  from  Louisiana  would  seem  to  indicate  that 
they  vastly  underrate  their  opponent.  The  suave  Mr.  Farley 
has  only  recently  taken  official  cognizance  of  the  Kingfish 
jibes.  Seemingly  without  a  care  in  the  world,  he  has  assumed 
the  attitude  that  the  election  of  1936,  to  use  a  sporting  par 
lance  so  dear  to  his  heart,  is  already  "in  the  bag."  Yet  the 
Washington  correspondents  are  already  talking  about  a  third 
party  of  forgotten  men  which  will  gather  Father  Goughlin's 
lambs  into  the  same  sheepfold  with  the  humble  Dixie  tenant 
farmers  who  see  in  Huey  a  Messiah  of  the  masses,  a  lowly 
David  tossing  rocks  at  the  Goliath  of  Greed. 

It  is  a  tragic  truism  that  Huey  Long  could  never  have 
slugged  his  way  to  a  position  of  power  in  Louisiana  and  in 
neighboring  southern  states  if  the  maladjustments  of  the  de 
pression  had  not  shaken  the  faith  the  plain  people  of  America 
have  always  had  in  rugged  individualism.  Five-cent  cotton 
piled  on  the  wharves  of  New  Orleans  and  Galveston  and 
Houston  long  ago  sent  heated  temperatures  to  a  new  high  in 
the  "potlikker"  precincts  of  the  Deep  South.  A  series  of  evic 
tions  and  a  restriction  of  credit  added  fuel  to  the  flames  of  the 
revolt  against  reason.  The  penalty  placed  upon  the  tenant 


[  io8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

farmer  by  the  great  minds  of  the  AAA  was  the  final  straw.  The 
boys  at  the  forks  of  the  creeks  in  Louisiana  and  Mississippi  and 
Arkansas  are  now  Democrats  in  name  only.  Still  enduring 
miseries  which  the  rest  of  the  country  has  to  some  extent  for 
gotten,  they  are  ready  to  "kick  the  dog"  —  to  shake  hands 
with  the  devil  if  his  Satanic  Majesty  can  contribute  in  any 
way  to  a  lightening  of  their  burdens.  Since  the  Honorable 
Huey  is  considered  in  Louisiana  the  devil's  own  diplomatic 
representative  here  on  earth,  the  "cajuns"  and  the  crackers 
turn  naturally  to  him  for  aid  and  comfort. 

Just  how  can  Huey  Long  prove  to  be  the  bete  noire  of 
Franklin  D.  Roosevelt  in  1 936?  The  answer  is  simple  to  those 
who  recall  with  clarity  the  political  election  of  1924.  At  that 
time  John  W.  Davis,  the  Democratic  candidate,  was  ground 
between  the  upper  millstone  of  Calvin  Coolidge  and  the 
nether  millstone  of  Robert  Marion  La  Follette.  The  latter, 
without  any  considerable  supply  of  sugar  to  sweeten  the  coffee 
of  the  politicians,  yet  went  out  into  the  highways  and  the 
byways,  corralling  five  million  votes  with  the  aid  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor,  cutting  so  deeply  into  Demo 
cratic  strength  in  states  ordinarily  loyal  to  the  party  that 
Goolidge  won  an  overwhelming  victory.  Roosevelt  today 
finds  himself  where  John  W.  Davis  was  a  decade  ago,  facing 
two  ways  to  meet  the  assaults  of  a  Republican  and  a  radical, 
the  latter  the  self-starting  Huey  Long.  The  menace  to  the 
President  is  obvious  to  all  except  that  choice  coterie  of  White 
House  yes-men  who  seek  to  maintain  the  fiction  that  the 
Democratic  party  is  a  harmonious  political  entity. 

There  are  those  who  hold  that  the  history  of  that  Davis 
campaign  can  never  be  duplicated,  that  times  have  changed. 
It  is  true  that  the  Republican  party  is  at  present  drifting  like  a 
rudderless  ship  in  a  typhoon,  yet  the  strength  of  the  organiza 
tion  remains  unchanged,  conserved  by  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
voters.  In  1934,  the  conservatives  of  the  country,  for  lack  of  a 
better  name,  polled  thirteen  and  a  half  million  ballots,  which 
would  seem  to  be  an  irreducible  minimum.  That  same  year 
the  Roosevelt  vote  totaled  seventeen  and  a  half  million,  at 


THE  LONG  WAT  TO  ATLANTIS  [  109] 

least  one  third  of  whom  were  leftists  who  still  worshiped  the 
President  as  the  stanch  foe  of  predatory  privilege.  Today 
that  large  group  curse  and  condemn  Mr.  Roosevelt  for  not 
sponsoring  the  Townsend  plan  and  the  "Every-Man-a-King" 
movement  of  Huey,  and  other  crackpot  schemes  for  the  better 
ment  of  the  helot  classes. 

An  audacious  man  could  stir  this  left  wing  of  the  Democratic 
party  to  a  frenzy,  could  inspire  them  to  turn  on  Roosevelt  in  a 
mad  attempt  to  ruin  him,  and  Huey  Long  is  nothing  if  not 
audacious.  He  has  everything  to  gain  and  nothing  to  lose 
from  the  attempt.  Smarting  under  the  efforts  of  the  Farley 
postmasters  to  undermine  his  political  power  in  Louisiana  — 
resenting  to  the  utmost  the  intrusion  of  Federal  agents  engaged 
in  the  task  of  "getting"  the  Kingfish  for  alleged  income  tax 
invasions  in  Louisiana  —  hating  the  present  occupant  of  the 
White  House  for  the  political  ingratitude  he  now  displays  in 
"persecuting"  the  man  who  stood  at  Armageddon  and  battled 
for  him  in  the  Democratic  national  convention  of  1932  — 
Huey  is  the  logical  spearhead  of  the  attack  which  the  enthu 
siasts  of  the  left  may  launch  at  the  President  in  1936. 

On  the  basis  of  the  1 934  election  returns,  Huey  Long  as  the 
Poor  Man's  choice  for  President  next  year  would  have  to  draw 
only  five  million  votes  away  from  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  elect  a 
Republican,  assuming  that  the  party  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
does  not  perform  the  politically  stupid  act  of  nominating  a 
rank  reactionary  as  its  standard-bearer  in  1936.  A  middle-of- 
the-road  progressive,  of  the  Arthur  H.  Vandenberg  or  Charles 
L.  McNary  type,  could  turn  the  trick,  holding  the  entire 
strength  of  the  Grand  Old  Party  as  mustered  last  year,  and 
chiseling  another  two  million  voters  from  the  Roosevelt  right 
wing  —  rugged  individuals  of  the  Alfred  E.  Smith  type  who 
felt  that  Herbert  Hoover  did  too  little,  and  who  feel  that  his 
successor  is  doing  too  much,  and  in  too  many  different  ways. 
So,  if  the  senator  from  Louisiana  starts  to  bore  from  within;  if 
this  Pied  Piper  of  Creoledom  woos  and  wins  that  element 
which  supported  La  Follette  in  1924  and  Roosevelt  in  1932, 
Mr.  Farley's  complacency  may  receive  a  rude  jolt  long  before 


[  i  io  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

the  election  returns  can  be  brought  in  and  counted  in  1936. 
All  political  realists,  observing  the  country's  present  state 
of  mind,  will  agree  that  the  times  are  out  of  joint,  that  the 
electorate  is  in  an  essentially  emotional  mood,  ripe  for  eco 
nomic  mischief,  ready  to  listen  to  any  demagogue  if  his  plea 
be  plausible  enough.  The  continuance  of  the  depression,  the 
presence  of  twenty  million  people  on  the  relief  rolls,  constitute 
a  trenchant  challenge  to  the  administration.  If  the  nation's 
condition  is  not  radically  and  rapidly  improved  between  now 
and  1936,  Mr.  Roosevelt  will  be  in  a  perilous  position. 
Primitive  tribes  used  to  cut  off  the  heads  of  rain-makers  who 
failed  to  inundate  the  land  after  proper  prayers  had  been 
offered.  The  President  is  in  the  position  of  the  ancient  rain 
maker,  with  the  senator  from  Louisiana  enacting  the  role  of 
rival  witch-doctor. 

TT  IS  patently  impossible  for  the  conventionally  educated 
-••  citizens  of  America's  upper-middle  class  to  realize  how  real 
and  remarkable  is  the  appeal  Huey  Long  makes  to  what  Wil 
liam  Allen  White  has  so  aptly  labeled  "the  moron  mind." 
Kansas  is  a  staid  and  conservative  state  in  ordinary  years,  yet 
in  1930  the  "goat-gland"  expert,  Dr.  John  R.  Brinkley,  ran 
such  a  hectic  third  in  the  race  for  governor  that  the  politicians 
along  the  Kaw  have  not  yet  recovered  their  balance.  Huey 
Long  is  a  far  more  potent  leader  than  was  the  Kansan.  In 
fact,  the  nation  has  never  seen  a  more  accomplished  rabble- 
rouser  in  action.  Compared  to  the  Kingfish,  the  Populist 
prophets  of  a  bygone  day  were  errand  boys  for  the  House  of 
Morgan.  He  is  far  more  dangerous,  because  the  popular  mind 
of  America  is  now  more  receptive  to  strange  panaceas  and 
cures  for  economic  ills  than  it  was  when  "Sockless  Jerry" 
Simpson  and  Mary  Ellen  Lease  and  other  trust-busting  sod- 
busters  were  setting  the  prairies  afire  in  the  gay  'nineties. 

Even  though  Huey  evades  answering  the  question  of  his 
presidential  candidacy  in  1 936,  it  is  fair  to  assume  he  will  be 
entered  in  the  race.  The  politically  uninitiated  will  deem  the 
man  mad,  yet  there  is  method  in  his  temerity.  He  has,  as  a 


THE  LONG  WAY  TO  ATLANTIS  [  in  ] 

candidate  of  a  third  party  next  year,  a  unique  opportunity  to 
punish  and  humiliate  the  present  occupant  of  the  White 
House.  What  are  the  possibilities?  Mr.  Roosevelt  may  win  a 
majority  of  the  electoral  votes  in  a  three-cornered  fight.  If  so, 
the  senator  will  remain  on  Capitol  Hill,  his  bitter  and  most 
unrelenting  critic.  Mr.  Roosevelt  may  be  defeated  by  a 
Republican,  the  Kingfish  drawing  away  from  the  President 
enough  votes  to  beat  him  in  doubtful  states  with  large  electoral 
votes.  If  that  development  ensues,  Huey  will  not  hesitate  to 
claim  credit  for  the  Roosevelt  downfall,  and  will  be  in  an 
excellent  position  to  pack  the  Democratic  national  convention 
of  1 940  with  radicals,  and  to  win  a  nomination. 

It  is  also  more  than  possible  that  a  three-cornered  contest 
next  year  will  end  in  a  stalemate,  no  presidential  candidate 
having  captured  a  majority  of  the  Electoral  College.  This 
denouement  will  depress  Senator  George  W.  Norris,  who  will 
feel  that  "there  ought  to  be  a  law,"  but  its  immediate  prac 
tical  effect  will  be  to  throw  the  election  into  the  House  of 
Representatives.  Since  that  body  is  overwhelmingly  Demo 
cratic,  Mr.  Roosevelt  will  be  sure  of  another  four  years  in  the 
White  House,  but  at  what  a  price !  The  Democratic  sons  of  the 
wild  jackass  will  make  him  promise  much  in  return  for  their 
allegiance  and  support.  Nor  will  the  Kingfish  permit  the  public 
to  forget  that  he  was  the  deus  ex  machina  who  engineered  the 
debacle.  Modesty  is  not  the  senator's  most  charming  trait. 

A  Republican,  elected  President  in  1936,  would  un 
doubtedly  find  himself  deadlocked  with  a  hostile  House  and 
Senate.  The  latter  body  will  be  indubitably  Democratic,  the  col 
lapse  of  the  G.O.P.  campaign  last  year  insuring  its  adherence 
to  Rooseveltian  principles  until  1938  at  least.  The  House  might 
possibly  be  Republican,  but  it  will  more  likely  contain  a 
variegated  assortment  of  factional  minorities,  conservative, 
liberal  and  radical,  all  masquerading  under  improper  and 
illogical  names,  each  desperately  determined  to  secure  for  its 
adherents  the  greatest  possible  subsidy  out  of  the  Federal 
treasury.  Under  the  circumstances,  it  is  easy  to  foresee  a 
Republican  President  —  hopelessly  handicapped  as  he  tries  to 


[  1 12  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

formulate  a  social  and  economic  program  —  sharing  the  fate 
of  Herbert  Hoover  who  was  so  unfortunately  saddled  with 
a  hostile  House  after  the  election  of  1930.  If  Mr.  Roosevelt  is 
defeated  in  1936,  beaten  by  a  G.O.P.  candidate  who  cannot 
secure  for  himself  the  united  support  of  Congress,  the  depres 
sion  may  deepen  in  intensity  (unless  industry,  ignoring  polit 
ical  complications,  can  lift  itself  out  of  the  abyss  by  its  own 
bootstraps!).  Then,  with  the  machinery  of  recovery  hopelessly 
clogged,  Huey  Long's  hour  will  strike. 

If  the  Kingfish  polls  as  many  as  five  million  votes  in  the 
coming  campaign  of  1936,  he  will  be  a  power  to  reckon  with 
in  1940.  Time  was  when  the  younger  La  Follette,  the  eldest 
son  of  "Fighting  Bob,"  was  considered  the  white  hope  of  the 
radicals.  Wisconsin  has  always  felt  that  its  senior  senator  would 
ultimately  reach  the  White  House  goal  which  eluded  his 
father;  but  wiseacres  at  Washington  know  that  Huey  Long 
has  overshadowed  the  heir  to  the  La  Follette  tradition, 
bestriding  the  radical  movement  like  a  colossus.  With  all  his 
leftist  leanings,  "Young  Bob"  is  conventional  in  his  approach 
to  social  and  economic  problems,  whereas  his  Dixie  rival  is 
not  confined  to  reality.  He  can  promise  the  proletariat  the 
moon  with  a  fence  around  it,  and  such  is  the  power  of  his 
personality  that  millions  of  addled  Americans  will  rise  up  to 
call  him  blessed. 

Admittedly  Huey  must  appeal  to  the  radical  element  of  the 
Northwest,  and  to  the  industrial  workers  of  the  urban  areas, 
if  he  is  to  check  and  defeat  Mr.  Roosevelt  in  1936.  Will  the 
Farmer-Laborites  of  Minnesota,  the  Progressives  of  Wisconsin, 
make  common  cause  with  a  man  whom  honest  Socialists 
distrust  as  a  mountebank  and  demagogue  of  the  lowest  polit 
ical  order?  None  can  now  say.  If  the  President  continues  to 
"purge"  the  administration  of  its  radicals,  the  sons  of  mort 
gaged  soil  will  begin  to  believe  that  somebody  has  sold  them 
out.  In  the  first  flush  of  their  resentment  at  the  man  who 
promised  them  much  at  Green  Bay,  Wisconsin,  last  year,  they 
will  strike  blindly,  not  stopping  to  decide  whether  Huey  is  a 
bona-fide  radical,  but  using  him  to  hurt  Roosevelt. 


THE  LONG  WAY  TO  ATLANTIS  [  113] 

And  what  of  the  lunatic  fringe  which  adheres  to  the  Town- 
send  plan?  These  will  be  in  the  Kingfish  camp,  especially  if 
the  social  security  program  sponsored  by  the  present  Congress 
proves  disappointing,  as  undoubtedly  it  will.  Huey  need  not 
promise  the  fanatical  followers  of  the  Long  Beach  physician  a 
single  substantial  thing.  All  he  needs  to  do  is  to  talk  vaguely, 
but  tearfully,  of  his  "Every-Man-a-King"  plan,  to  win  the 
enthusiastic  support  of  those  pitiable  aged  who  feel  that  the 
good  things  of  life  have  been  withheld  from  them  through  no 
fault  of  their  own,  and  who  have  been  told  that  America  and 
some  Americans  are  thoroughly  able  to  provide  for  their 
luxurious  welfare. 

Will  not  the  fervent  disciples  of  Father  Coughlin  be  simi 
larly  infected  with  the  Long  virus?  It  is  reasonable  to  believe 
that  they  will,  especially  since  Father  Goughlin  shows  no 
inclination  whatever  to  thrust  himself  as  a  candidate  into  the 
arena  of  American  politics.  With  the  reverend  sir  a  spectator 
rather  than  a  participant,  Huey  seems  fated  to  win  the  political 
support  of  the  priest's  followers,  especially  since  it  is  hard  to 
discover  where  Father  Goughlin's  army  leaves  off  and  the 
Kingfish  horde  begins.  There  are  undoubtedly  overlapping 
boundaries  which  surround  millions  of  economically  infantile 
—  but  politically  formidable  —  persons  who  are  prepared  to 
back  either  or  both  saints  of  the  submerged,  to  the  last  ditch. 

A  coalition  which  includes  the  Long  and  Goughlin  follow- 
ings  seems  inevitable  and,  in  its  peculiar  way,  logical.  It  is  not 
unfair  to  make  the  point  that  neither  is  flesh,  fowl,  nor  herring. 
No  one  can  tell  if  either  is  republican,  communist  or  fascist;  no 
one  has  plumbed  the  depths  of  their  political  philosophies; 
nor  has  anyone  been  able  adequately  to  interpret  their 
economic  beliefs.  There  is  a  bond  of  kinship,  there,  which  may 
be  made  manifest  in  1936  when  the  unemployed  automobile 
workers  of  Detroit  will,  perchance,  tune  in  on  the  radio  sets 
which  have  not  yet  been  repossessed,  and  hear  the  Canadian- 
born  spiritual  confessor  of  the  ether  waves  confer  an  eccle 
siastical  blessing  upon  the  Dixie  politician  —  who  owed  his 
earliest  election  victories  in  Louisiana  to  the  massed  and 


[  1 14  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

machine-like  support  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan.  But  those  who 
think  Huey  cannot  explain  away  this  embarrassing  highlight 
in  his  hectic  political  career  cannot  begin  to  fathom  the 
mental  ingenuity  of  the  Kingfish.  He  has  an  answer  for  every 
question,  he  is  as  slippery  as  an  eel,  and  those  administration 
stalwarts  who  would  fry  him  for  their  delectation  are  just 
beginning  to  find  it  out. 

Consider,  if  you  will,  the  brass-bound  nerve  of  the  man.  In 
his  earlier  days,  the  Kingfish  roused  the  hot  hatred  of  many  a 
Creole  foe,  yet  Fate  must  have  destined  him  for  higher  things 
because  no  questing  bullet  ever  found  its  mark  in  his  body.  He 
has  the  proverbial  lives  of  a  cat,  and  today  safeguards  his 
precious  person  with  all  the  care  of  a  Caesar  who  fears  the 
lurking  dagger  of  outraged  civic  virtue.  Time  was  when  Huey 
essayed  to  walk  the  streets  of  his  native  village,  Winnfield, 
Louisiana,  or  of  Shreveport  or  New  Orleans,  unescorted  — 
but  those  days  are  gone  forever.  Now,  in  his  native  state  or  in 
the  national  capital,  he  strides  forth  flanked  by  a  shotgun 
brigade  of  personal  attendants,  who  do  not  hesitate  to  thwack 
foes  of  the  Kingfish  over  their  hard  heads  at  a  curt  word  of 
command.  Chief  of  this  bodyguard,  Joe  Messina,  is  Huey's 
"Man  Friday,"  one  of  the  most  adept  "pistol- whippers"  who 
ever  cracked  down  on  the  unprotected  skulls  of  those  who 
dared  to  differ  with  the  Creole  man  of  destiny. 

The  use  of  this  standing  army  by  any  other  public  character 
in  America  would  be  considered  outrageously  indecent  or  too 
ludicrous  for  words.  The  Kingfish  gets  away  with  it  because  he 
has  that  ability  to  dramatize  himself  which  is  a  necessary  art 
for  any  would-be  dictator.  In  Louisiana,  or  in  the  United 
States  at  large,  he  can  point  to  this  entourage  of  plug-uglies, 
and  feelingly  inform  the  plain  people  that  they  are  the  sole 
bulwarks  between  the  champion  of  the  masses  and  assassina 
tion.  The  Kingfish  even  manages  to  explain  away  that  innate 
caution  which  causes  him  shyly  to  retreat  when  fists  are 
swinging.  Thus  the  sad  affair  at  Sands  Point,  which  ended  in 
the  Huey  eye  being  thoroughly  blacked,  became,  to  hear  the 
Kingfish  tell  it,  a  sinister  attempt  to  end  the  career  of  one 


THE  LONG  WAY  TO  ATLANTIS  [115] 

whose  heart  beats  for  the  poor.  The  senator  did  not  attempt 
to  explain  just  how  he  happened  to  be  consorting  with  the 
ungodly  rich  on  that  fatal  evening  —  he  did  not  have  to.  The 
hill-billies  understood;  he  was  spying  out  the  Promised  Land, 
their  Moses,  their  mentor,  guide  and  friend. 

TN  MAKING  the  inevitable  comparison  between  Huey  and 
•*•  Hitler,  one  striking  point  of  dissimilarity  needs  emphasizing. 
The  Austrian  house-painter  who  is  today  dictator  of  the  Third 
Reich  served  humbly,  but  bravely,  as  a  lance-corporal  in  a 
Bavarian  infantry  regiment  during  the  World  War.  Huey,  in 
contrast,  though  a  most  ardent  advocate  of  the  bonus,  did  not 
serve  his  native  country  in  any  capacity  whatsoever  when 
five  million  other  citizens  donned  uniforms  and  went  forth  to 
make  the  world  safe  for  the  Democratic  party.  The  Kingfish 
is  refreshingly  frank  about  this  episode  in  his  career.  He  has 
told  senatorial  critics  that  he  did  not  think  the  late  unpleasant 
ness  was  any  of  America's  business  anyhow.  Huey  did  not  lose 
caste  with  Louisiana's  voters  because  he  did  not  rush  to  the  aid 
of  Woodrow  Wilson.  On  the  contrary,  the  majority  has 
whooped  its  ecstatic  approval  of  his  every  official  act  since  1921 
when  he  first  started  to  solicit  the  electorate's  ballots. 

Americans  inclined  to  jeer,  rather  than  cheer,  the  antics  of 
Huey  would  do  well  not  to  put  him  down  for  a  clown.  He  is 
anything  but  that.  The  inelegant  exterior  masks  a  hair-trigger 
brain.  As  an  attorney,  he  has  been  the  admiration  and  despair 
of  lesser  legal  lights.  Some  of  his  briefs,  written  in  limpid  and 
concise  English,  have  found  their  way  into  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States.  The  ridiculous  postures  he  assumes  at  will 
are  made  to  impress  the  mob,  not  the  millionaire.  Huey  knows 
that  the  multitude  have  more  votes  than  the  Mellons  and  he 
plays  his  cards  accordingly,  his  Louisiana  legislature  abolishing 
the  poll-tax  receipt  which  once  kept  thousands  of  potential 
Long  supporters  from  exercising  the  God-given  right  of 
suffrage.  Those  who  deride  him  as  a  buffoon  would  do  well  to 
recall  that  other  political  comedian,  Adolph  Hitler  with  the 
Charlie  Chaplin  mustache,  who  was,  only  a  few  short  years 


[  1 16  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ago,  the  butt  of  every  joke  which  fell  from  the  lips  of  official 
Germany.  Today  the  Austrian  is  supreme.  Heads  have  rolled 
since  the  Munich  manoeuvres  of  1923. 

A  good  quarter  of  America's  population,  it  is  safe  to  say,  sees 
Huey  Long  as  a  pudgy  Saint  George  slaying  the  dragons  of 
privilege.  When  he  surrounds  himself  with  bodyguards,  the 
average  tenant  farmer  in  the  South  considers  the  precaution 
reasonable,  and  intensifies  his  hatred  for  the  landlord.  When 
he  engages  disastrously  in  fisticuffs  with  some  blueblood  who 
prefers  to  remain  incognito,  the  humble  clerk,  who  shrinks 
from  the  menacing  glance  of  his  superior,  feels  curiously  akin. 
There  is  an  element  of  pathos  in  the  man's  make-up.  The 
Uriah  Keeps  of  the  nation,  the  bookkeepers  who  would  like 
to  give  their  boss  the  Bronx  cheer  but  dare  not,  the  cotton- 
pickers  who  feel  that  about  all  they  will  get  out  of  this  life  is 
cornpone  and  mustard  greens,  the  pitifully  impoverished  cogs 
in  the  nation's  industrial  machine  —  these  are  all  grist  for  the 
Long  mill. 

As  a  spokesman  for  the  poor,  deserving  or  not,  Huey  is  in 
a  class  all  by  himself.  He  can  quote  Holy  Writ  with  all  the 
fervor  of  an  Aimee  Semple  McPherson.  He  can  gyrate  around 
a  political  platform  in  a  fashion  to  cause  rural  audiences  to 
slap  their  knee  with  a  collective  hand,  and  vow  Huey  a 
"card"  and  a  heap  smarter  than  most  men  who  have  been 
exposed  to  a  college  education.  He  can  invigorate  the  city 
toiler  with  a  rude  eloquence  which  makes  him  class-conscious 
and  ready  to  man  the  barricades. 

The  red  thread  of  revolution  runs  through  his  entire  dis 
course,  whether  it  be  delivered  in  the  heart  of  the  deep  piney 
woods  of  Louisiana  or  in  an  urban  labor  temple.  Oratory 
which  would  repel  the  classes  sounds  like  sweet  music  in  the 
ears  of  the  masses.  Like  Texas'  only  impeached  governor, 
James  A.  (Farmer  Jim)  Ferguson,  Huey  can  express  his 
thoughts  in  sonorous  and  classical  English.  He  proved  that,  at 
the  Democratic  national  convention  in  1932,  when  he  put  his 
best  rhetorical  foot  foremost  in  defending  his  state  delegation's 
right  to  cast  its  votes  for  Roosevelt  at  Chicago.  Like  "Pa" 


THE  LONG  WAT  TO  ATLANTIS  [  117] 

Ferguson,  Huey  can  appeal  to  the  intellectual  or  to  the  emo 
tional  at  will.  He  weeps  with  the  afflicted,  jests  with  the  jolly, 
storms  with  the  vindictive,  argues  gravely  with  the  mentally 
alert,  and,  in  general,  comports  himself  like  a  politician  who  is 
all  things  to  all  men. 

Snubbed  and  scorned  by  the  Garter  Glasses  of  the  United 
States  Senate,  he  has  bounded  back  from  the  stony  wall  of 
their  ostracism  with  all  the  resiliency  of  a  rubber  ball.  He  has 
been  scored  as  an  errant  rabble-rouser  without  a  spark  of 
civic  conscience  by  the  sedate  and  more  sober  members  of  the 
body  politic,  yet  he  has  managed  to  enslave  the  imaginations 
of  twenty-five  percent  of  the  nation's  voters.  A  political 
alliance  which  would  include  the  tenant  farmers  of  the  South, 
the  Townsend  dreamers  of  the  North,  the  Goughlin  Union  for 
Social  Justice,  and  all  the  other  starry-eyed  addicts  of  Utopian 
narcotics  is  in  the  making  —  and  coming  months  will  see  its 
parts  welded  into  a  homogeneous  whole  by  the  masterful 
hand  of  Louisiana's  Long.  That  is  the  unpleasant  prospect 
facing  those  Americans  who  still  believe  that  all  voters  are 
moved  not  by  prejudice  but  by  conviction  —  the  simple  souls 
who  cherish  the  delusion  that  the  political  leaders  of  today,  as 
of  yesterday,  seek  the  common  good  and  not  the  enrichment  of 
the  predatory  rich  or  of  the  equally  predatory  poor. 

If  it  be  possible  to  unite  all  the  groups  in  the  nation  which 
repudiate  the  safe  and  sane  tactics  of  those  who  are  trying 
desperately  to  resuscitate  the  private  profit  system,  Huey 
Long  is  undoubtedly  the  proper  man  for  the  job.  He  has 
humor  and  imagination  and  daring  beyond  the  ken  of  states 
men  who  timidly  cling  to  Constitutional  safeguards.  He  is  not 
overly-burdened  with  scruples  where  politics  are  concerned, 
is  a  good  hater  after  the  fashion  of  the  fanatic,  has  a  memory 
like  an  elephant,  and  an  effective  way  of  rewarding  his  friends 
and  punishing  his  enemies. 

An  actor  to  his  finger-tips,  the  Kingfish  possesses  color 
galore,  as  well  as  a  vaulting  ambition  which  will  stop  at  no 
obstacle  in  the  furtherance  of  his  desires.  Under  the  motley 
array  of  the  court-jester,  shrewd  observers  may,  if  they  will, 


[  1 1 8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

discern  the  outlines  of  a  rugged  mail  shirt  —  which  clothes  one 
who  believes  implicitly  that  he  has  a  rendezvous  with 
Destiny.  Huey  Long,  however  much  he  may  appear  the  clown, 
is  firmly  convinced  that  he  is  Fortune's  Fool,  and  waits  im 
patiently  for  the  day  when  he  can  call  the  storm  troopers  of  a 
newer  deal  into  action,  for  a  purge  which  will  remove  from 
America  all  vestiges  of  the  old  and  established  order.  This  man 
has  faith  in  his  star,  even  though  some  there  are  who  call  that 
star  evil. 


Librar    V 


T> 

roem 


BY  ONE  OF  OUR  EARLIEST  CONTRIBUTORS 

Not  that  from  life,  and  all  its  woes 
The  hand  of  death  shall  set  me  free; 
Not  that  this  head,  shall  then  repose 
In  the  low  vale  most  peacefully. 

Ah,  when  I  touch  time's  farthest  brink, 

A  kinder  solace  must  attend; 

It  chills  my  very  soul,  to  think 

On  that  dread  hour  when  life  must  end. 

In  vain  the  flatt'ring  verse  may  breathe, 
Of  ease  from  pain,  and  rest  from  strife, 
There  is  a  sacred  dread  of  death 
Inwoven  with  the  strings  of  life. 

This  bitter  cup  at  first  was  given 
When  angry  justice  frown'd  severe, 
And  'tis  th'  eternal  doom  of  heaven 
That  man  must  view  the  grave  with  fear. 

.     .     .     .     Yet  a  few  days,  and  thee, 
The  all-beholding  sun,  shall  see  no  more, 
In  all  his  course;  nor  yet  in  the  cold  ground, 
Where  thy  pale  form  was  laid,  with  many  tears, 
Nor  in  th'  embrace  of  ocean  shall  exist 
Thy  image.  Earth,  that  nourished  thee,  shall  claim 

[119] 


[  120  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Thy  growth,  to  be  resolv'd  to  earth  again; 
And,  lost  each  human  trace,  surrend'ring  up 
Thine  individual  being,  shalt  thou  go 
To  mix  forever  with  the  elements, 
To  be  a  brother  to  th'  insensible  rock 
And  to  the  sluggish  clod,  which  the  rude  swain 
Turns  with  his  share,  and  treads  upon.  The  oak 
Shall  send  his  roots  abroad,  and  pierce  thy  mould. 
Yet  not  to  thy  eternal  resting  place 
Shalt  thou  retire  alone  —  nor  couldst  thou  wish 
Couch  more  magnificent.  Thou  shalt  lie  down 
With  patriarchs  of  the  infant  world  —  with  kings 
The  powerful  of  the  earth  —  the  wise,  the  good, 
Fair  forms,  and  hoary  seers  of  ages  past, 
All  in  one  mighty  sepulchre.  —  The  hills, 
Rock-ribb'd  and  ancient  as  the  sun,  —  the  vales 
Stretching  in  pensive  quietness  between; 
The  venerable  woods  —  the  floods  that  move 
In  majesty,  —  and  the  complaining  brooks, 
That  wind  among  the  meads,  and  make  them  green, 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all, 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man.  —  The  golden  sun, 
The  planets,  all  the  infinite  host  of  heaven 
Are  glowing  on  the  sad  abodes  of  death, 
Through  the  still  lapse  of  ages.  All  that  tread 
The  globe  are  but  a  handful  to  the  tribes 
That  slumber  in  its  bosom.  —  Take  the  wings 
Of  morning  —  and  the  Borean  desert  pierce  — 
Or  lose  thyself  in  the  continuous  woods 


POEM  [  121  ] 

That  veil  Oregon,  where  he  hears  no  sound 

Save  his  own  dashings  —  yet  —  the  dead  are  there, 

And  millions  in  those  solitudes,  since  first 

The  flight  of  years  began,  have  laid  them  down 

In  their  last  sleep  —  the  dead  reign  there  alone.  — 

So  shalt  thou  rest  —  and  what  if  thou  shalt  fall 

Unnoticed  by  the  living  —  and  no  friend 

Take  note  of  thy  departure?   Thousands  more 

Will  share  thy  destiny.  —  The  tittering  world 

Dance  to  the  grave.  The  busy  brood  of  care 

Plod  on,  and  each  one  chases  as  before 

His  favourite  phantom.  —  Yet  all  these  shall  leave 

Their  mirth  and  their  employments,  and  shall  come 

And  make  their  bed  with  thee ! 


A  Pinch  of  Snuff 

MARY  ELLEN  CHASE 

THERE  was  a  premature  hint  of  October  in  the  air  that 
Saturday  morning  in  late  August  when  Judith  Blair  fol 
lowed  the  family  cow  from  barn  to  pasture.  The  high  song  of 
the  crickets  was  thin  and  clear,  and  not  the  most  vagrant  of 
breezes  disturbed  the  smoke  ascending  so  lazily  from  all  the 
kitchen  fires.  The  fog  and  mist  of  dog-days  had  vanished  long 
before  their  allotted  time.  A  quiet  brooded  over  the  fields  and 
hills.  Even  Constancy,  the  cow,  seemed  absorbed  by  a  peace 
and  contemplation  sadly  at  variance  with  the  tumult  which 
was  assailing  Judith's  mind  and  heart. 

To  the  outward  eye  she,  too,  following  the  cow  in  her  blue 
gingham  dress,  looked  calm  and  uneventful  enough.  Only  the 
most  searching  of  gazes  might  have  detected  an  anxious  look 
about  her  mouth  and  eyes,  might  have  noticed  that  she  did  not 
swing  her  berry-pail  or  lift  her  feet  in  just  the  most  spritely 
fashion.  Mr.  Robinson,  the  druggist,  going  early  to  open  his 
store  for  the  trade  which  Monday's  commencement  of  school 
threatened,  could  not  possibly  have  known  that  her  good- 
morning,  especially  to  him,  was  fraught  with  misgiving.  Nor 
could  Mrs.  Meeker,  the  minister's  wife,  hanging  on  the  line 
the  last  of  a  washing  which  had  dawdled  all  through  the  week, 
have  possibly  detected  anything  but  friendliness  in  the  wave 
of  her  hand. 

Just  before  leaving  the  parsonage  and  church  on  her  left 
as  she  ascended  the  hill,  she  stopped  for  a  moment  to  shoo  back 
into  the  house  one  of  the  youngest  Meekers,  evidently  escaped 
unclad  from  whomever  was  dressing  him  for  the  day.  It  was  a 
bit  of  that  responsibility  which  all  the  church  felt  for  the 
minister's  large  and  ever-increasing  family;  and  for  an  instant 
Judith  forgot  her  own  anxieties  in  undertaking  it.  As  she 
turned  again  toward  Constancy,  she  heard  from  Mr.  Meeker 's 
study  a  resounding  sneeze,  followed  by  others  in  quick  suc 
cession.  There  was  an  odd,  triumphant  quality  about  them 

[122] 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  123  ] 

which  unmistakably  denied  that  Mr.  Meeker  was  suffering 
from  a  cold.  In  spite  of  the  sinking  of  her  heart  which  these 
sounds  occasioned,  Judith  forgot  herself  sufficiently  for  the 
moment  to  hope  her  mother  had  not  heard  them  across  the 
intervening  field.  Only  the  evening  before,  she  knew,  certain 
influential  members  of  the  parish  had  met  to  discuss  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Meeker 's  failings  as  a  pastor,  among  which,  to 
climax  an  ineffective  wife  and  a  family  of  nine,  was  the  dis 
gusting  habit  of  snuff-taking.  Hard  pressed  by  her  own 
imminent  problems,  Judith  felt  suddenly  sorry  for  the  min 
ister.  Life,  she  told  herself,  was  at  times  a  dark  and  perplexing 
experience,  and  one's  own  sufferings,  whatever  they  were, 
engendered  sympathy  for  others. 

She  almost  forgot  the  berry-pail  in  letting  down  the  pasture 
bars  for  Constancy,  and  had  to  retrace  her  steps  along  the  path. 
Her  cheeks  were  crimson  as  she  stooped  for  it  among  the  bay- 
berries.  She  had  asked  permission  to  linger  an  hour  or  two  to 
search  for  blackberries  in  a  burned-over  place  farther  up  the 
hill.  The  tangled  web  of  deceit  was  tightening  fast  about  her 
as  she  resolutely  turned  in  the  other  direction  and,  with  one 
startled  glance  behind  her,  began  to  traverse  a  path  which  led 
downward  through  a  rocky,  brook-swept  gulley  and  thence 
into  the  deep  fir  woods  of  the  lower  pasture. 

It  would  be  at  least  half  an  hour  before  Benny  could  possibly 
join  her  at  the  place  agreed  upon  in  the  fir  thicket.  And  then 
only  under  the  most  propitious  of  circumstances.  His  own  cow 
must  first  be  safely  pastured  and  his  errand  to  the  drug  store 
successfully  completed.  Probably,  however,  he  would  not 
have  to  ask  permission  at  home  for  his  morning's  absence.  In 
such  matters  boys  were  more  free  than  girls.  She  bit  her  lip 
both  at  the  vexatious  admission  and  at  the  remembrance  of 
the  controversy  which  it  brought  in  its  wake.  Had  it  not  been 
for  Benny's  accusation  that  girls  could  never  be  depended  on 
to  stand  by  in  a  tight  place,  she  might  at  this  moment  be 
reading  "Great  Expectations"  in  the  crotch  of  the  old  pear- 
tree  instead  of  enduring  this  dreadful  quaking  sensation  in 
the  pit  of  her  stomach. 


[  124]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

But  she  had  given  her  word  and  here  she  was !  Come  what 
might  she  would  stand  firm.  Discovery  and  punishment  were 
almost  certain.  She  would  endure  them!  Inevitably  she  must 
disgrace  and  disappoint  her  family.  What  must  be  should  be ! 
Visions  of  dauntless  women  —  Queen  Zenobia  before  Pal 
myra,  Joan  of  Arc  at  Orleans  —  came  before  her  eyes  for  an 
instant,  summoned  doubtless  by  the  ring  in  her  ears  of  her 
unuttered  words,  but  all  too  suddenly  they  vanished,  and  the 
quaking  returned. 

From  the  sunny  hill-slope  above  her  a  crimson  streak  cut 
the  bright  air,  and  a  scarlet  tanager  began  to  bathe  in  the 
amber  water  of  the  brook.  At  another  time  she  had  stood  in 
rapturous  entrancement  at  seeing  his  brilliant,  fluttering 
plumage  starred  with  crystal  drops.  Now  she  thought  only 
of  Benny  and  his  strange  commission.  Surely,  even  Mr.  Robin 
son,  the  dullest  of  men,  would  be  suspicious  of  such  a  purchase. 
The  tanager  flew  away.  Two  white  and  friendly  butterflies, 
circling  about  each  other,  settled  for  an  instant  on  a  tall  stalk 
of  Joe-Pye  weed  by  the  water.  She  envied  them  their  careless 
ness.  What  should  she  do  if  by  some  hateful  chance  the  third 
and  fated  creature  of  this  assignation  should  come  first? 
How  could  she  herself,  inwardly  protesting  against  the  whole 
matter,  meet  such  a  complication? 

She  was  mercifully  spared  such  a  solution.  By  the  time  she  had 
entered  the  fir  woods  and  braced  her  back  for  strength  against 
the  great  boulder  there,  a  crashing  through  the  huckleberries 
at  the  other  end  of  the  thicket  gave  immediate  place  to  a 
hurrying  boy,  whose  flushed  and  perspiring  face  showed  signs 
of  relief  as  he  joined  her  by  the  rock. 

"If  you  hadn't  come,  Judy,  I'd  .  .  .  after  all  you've 
promised." 

She  glared  back  at  him.  "Didn't  I  tell  you  I'd  come?" 

"Don't  get  huffy!  I  know  girls.  And  anyway  I've  had  the 
dirty  work  to  do.  I  thought  at  first  Robinson  wouldn't  give 
it  to  me." 

She  bolstered  herself  against  her  own  fears.  "But  you  had 
the  money,  and  he  didn't  know  who  'twas  for." 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  125  ] 

Something  in  his  face  lent  indecision  to  her  last  clause.  Her 
eyes  widened  with  suspicion. 

"Did  it  cost  more  than  ten  cents?" 

He  reddened  to  his  ears  and  fumbled  among  his  pockets  for 
the  dirtiest  of  handkerchiefs  while  she  stared  mercilessly  at 
him.  He  gulped  with  the  burden  of  the  explanation. 

"Don't  be  mad.  I'll  tell  you.  Dick  Reed  was  waiting  for  me 
at  the  pasture.  I've  owed  him  a  dime  since  June  and  he  threat 
ened  me  with  telling  something  we  did  two  weeks  ago.  What 
could  I  do?  I  didn't  have  a  bit  of  a  come-back  with  his  folks 
away  until  Christmas.  Anyone  could  see  that.  With  all  the 
trouble  I've  been  in  lately,  what  else  could  I  do  but  give  it 
to  him?" 

She  was  staring  now,  not  at  him  but  at  a  bulging  pocket. 
Her  mouth  felt  dry  and  queer. 

"But  you  got  it!  How?" 

He  brightened.  Whatever  the  odds,  he  had  not  been  beaten. 
He  looked  at  her  with  sly  triumph. 

"I  charged  it  —  to  Mr.  Meeker." 

"Benny!"  The  enormity  of  what  he  had  done  was  too  over 
powering  for  more  words. 

His  own  sense  of  disaster  was  still  dulled  by  this  master 
stroke  of  diplomacy. 

"Well,  I  had  to  have  it,  didn't  I,  with  the  plans  all  made  and 
him  coming?"  His  voice  took  on  a  tone  of  patronage.  "Now 
don't  worry.  We've  got  our  hands  full  enough  without  worry 
ing  about  that.  Robinson  was  all  right  after  he'd  eyed  me  for  a 
minute  and  I'd  eyed  him  back.  Meeker  always  charges  it. 
Haven't  I  heard  him  say  a  hundred  times,  'And- I'll  thank  you 
kindly,  Mr.  Robinson,  to  put  this  on  my  account.'  If  worse 
comes  to  worst,  I'll  fix  it  up  with  Mr.  Meeker.  I'll  —  I'll 
even  apologize." 

His  magnanimity  could  not  dull  the  sickening  fear  in 
Judith's  heart.  She  braced  herself  again  for  support  against 
the  boulder.  And  then  the  distant  thud  of  a  falling  log  brought 
them  both  to  the  affair  of  the  moment. 

"That's  Boshy,"  said  Benny  in  a  high,  excited  whisper. 


[  126  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"That's  him.  Any  other  fellow' d  climb  the  fence.  Now  remem 
ber,  Judy,  you've  made  a  bet  that  you  can  help  me.  Remember 
there's  half  a  dozen  kids  that  would  ha'  been  glad  of  the 
chance,  but  I  chose  you  because  he's  got  you  in  bad,  too,  and 
because  you  said  you  was  as  good  as  any  boy.  Don't  lose  your 
nerve!  Just  do  as  I  tell  you,  and  when.  We  aren't  going  to 
hurt  him  to  speak  of,  and  he  deserves  it  all." 

As  the  sound  of  approaching  footsteps  on  the  gravel  of  the 
gulley  grew  unmistakably  nearer,  Judith's  doubts  and  fears 
gave  place  to  a  terrifying  and  yet  not  entirely  unpleasurable 
excitement.  There  was,  in  spite  of  her  misgivings,  a  kind  of 
tumultuous  satisfaction  in  this  dearly-bought  vengeance  upon 
one  whom  she  heartily  detested  as  a  whiner  and  a  tell-tale. 
There  was,  too,  a  guilty  sense  of  admiration  of  Benny's 
daring,  his  readiness  to  risk  cataclysmic  disaster  for  the  sake 
of  revenge.  The  sinking  feeling  in  her  stomach  gave  way  to  a 
shivery,  prickly  sensation  from  her  head  to  her  toes.  She  drew 
nearer  her  chief.  Now  that  the  moment  was  coming,  she  knew 
she  should  not  fail. 

"What  was  the  warning?"  she  whispered,  pleasantly  con 
scious  for  the  moment  of  her  part  in  the  conspiracy.  "The 
black  spot  or  the  skull  and  bones?" 

"Both,"  said  Benny,  his  voice  sepulchral  and  his  eyes  like 
two  points  of  light  in  the  shadow  of  the  trees.  "I  gave  him  the 
paper  this  morning.  The  spot  above  and  the  skull  below  and  a 
red  hand  pointing  to  where  it  said  we'd  burn  his  buildings  if 
he  didn't  come  or  if  he  dared  tell.  He'll  be  here  in  a  minute. 
I'll  speak  first,  Judy,  and  then  you  can,  and  then  I'll  hold  him 
upside  down  because  that'll  be  hardest  while  you  give  it 
to  him." 

For  an  instant  Judith  pondered  the  relative  guilt  of  their 
behavior,  but  only  for  an  instant.  There  was  no  time  for  a 
possible  reapportionment  of  responsibility.  A  blue  blouse 
slunk  through  the  juniper  and  a  boy  stumbled  into  the  thicket 
and  looked  with  pale,  frightened  eyes  upon  his  summoners 
and  accusers.  Judith  felt  a  sudden  and  confusing  rush  of  pity. 
Hateful  as  he  was,  he  seemed  small  and  weak  prey  for  such 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  127  ] 

initiative  and  courage  as  hers  and  Benny's.  She  wished  he 
would  fight  for  himself,  but  she  knew  him,  alas,  too  well.  He 
stood,  furtive  and  whimpering  before  them  like  some  cornered 
animal  who  knows  that  running  is  of  no  avail. 

Benny,  rummaging  in  another  pocket,  drew  forth  a  paper. 
For  a  moment  Judith's  sympathy  for  the  captive  gave  way  to  a 
sudden  fury  of  envy.  That  was  like  Benny  —  not  to  give  her  an 
equal  chance.  She  could  have  written  her  charges  as  well  as  he. 
She  hated  him,  as,  mounting  hurriedly  upon  a  shelf  of  the 
boulder,  he  began  to  read,  and  yet  there  was  bitter  admiration 
even  in  her  hatred.  No  wonder  that  his  teachers  said  he  was 
equal  to  any  occasion. 

"William,  better  known  as  Boshy  Dobbins,"  he  began  in  the 
high,  masterful  voice  he  reserved  for  school  recitals  and 
debates,  "you  are  brought  before  us  to  speak  for  yourself.  We 
accuse  you,  but  we  are  fair  judges.  I  will  speak  first  and  then," 
with  a  magnanimous  wave  of  his  hand  in  the  direction  of 
Judith,  "this  lady.  You  will  not  be  punished  unfairly.  Sir,  I 
accuse  you  of  snooping  on  me  and  telling  tales.  In  the  six 
months  you  have  lived  in  our  midst  you  have  three  times  in 
jured  my  reputation."  (In  spite  of  herself  Judith  glowed 
with  pride  at  Benny's  dignity!)  "You  have  lied,  sir,  to  my 
father,  once  about  my  stealing  your  Sunday-school  money, 
which  you  gave  me  of  your  own  free  will,  and  once"  —  here 
Benny  looked  up  from  his  paper  and  eyed  the  prisoner  with  a 
black  and  awful  glance  —  "about  the  cookies  you  stole  your 
self  from  your  own  kitchen.  But  yesterday  you  did  a  worse 
thing.  After  we  had  let  you  in  on  the  plan  to  scare  the  new 
teacher  and  sworn  you  to  solemn  secrecy,  you  gave  us  all 
away."  (Again  that  black  look  at  the  trembling  Boshy,  and 
again  that  persistent,  clutching  admiration  in  Judith's  throat. 
Could  this  be  Benny  whose  cries  only  last  evening  from  his  own 
stable  had  so  chilled  her  sympathetic  heart?)  "What  have  you 
to  say  for  yourself?  Speak !  We  are  ready  to  listen." 

His  first  sins  forgotten  and  overshadowed,  the  accused 
strove  to  clear  himself  of  the  enormity  of  the  last.  Plucking  at  a 
leg  of  his  trousers  with  one  dirty  hand,  he  used  the  other  to 


[  128  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

wipe  away  his  tears,  leaving  grimy  streaks  all  over  his  face. 

"I  only  s-s-sneezed,"  he  blubbered.  Stuttering  was  one  of 
the  countless  infirmities  which  made  him  so  generally  in 
tolerable. 

His  written  accusation  at  an  end,  Benny  folded  the  paper 
before  he  proceeded  to  trust  to  oral  inspiration. 

"Only!"  he  cried.  "Was'nt  that  enough?  You're  always 
sneezing  in  the  wrong  places  and  at  the  wrong  times,  and  it's 
got  to  stop!" 

He  took  a  menacing  lunge  forward,  but  Judith,  too,  moved 
suddenly,  determined  that  he  should  not  forget  her  part  in  the 
occasion.  Boshy  slunk  backward  toward  the  juniper  where  he 
made  a  last  stand.  A  hint  of  Benny's  rhetoric  crept  into  his 
tearful  voice. 

"Can  I  help  sneezing?"  he  cried.  "It's  an  af-affliction.  My 
mother  says  so.  It's  nerves,  that's  what  it  is." 

"Nonsense,"  said  Benny,  his  voice  frigid.  Judith  laid  a 
detaining  hand  upon  his  arm.  He  greeted  it  with  annoying 
patronage. 

"All  right,  you  can  speak  now.  William  Dobbin,  the  lady 
will  speak.  Go  on,  Judy." 

Judith  backed  against  the  boulder.  Evidently  Benny  did  not 
intend  to  relinquish  the  platform  to  her.  Still  resentful  of  the 
march  he  had  stolen,  she  chose  her  words  with  care. 

"William  Dobbin,  I  accuse  you,  too.  Three  days  ago  in  our 
attic  when  we  were  reading  the  murder  story  and  when  we'd 
all  promised  to  whisper,  you  sneezed  so  loud  that  the  whole 
house  heard.  We've  told  you  how  to  stop  sneezing,  but  you 
won't  do  it.  We  play  with  you  because  your  father's  dead  and 
your  mother's  sick,  and  then  you  disgrace  us!"  She  stopped 
suddenly  and  looked  to  Benny  for  commendation,  but  he  was 
not  looking  at  her  at  all.  She  flushed  with  added  annoyance 
and  chagrin.  "It  cannot  longer  be  borne!"  she  cried  in  an 
impressive  climax  that  echoed  through  the  quiet  thicket. 

If  Benny  felt  approbation,  he  evinced  none,  but  her  dis 
appointment  was  for  the  moment  dulled  by  his  call  for  action. 
His  pronouncement  of  the  sentence  was  brief  and  lacked  the 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  129  ] 

dignity  of  the  carefully  prepared  accusation.  He  grimaced. 

"And  now  you're  going  to  sneeze  till  you're  tired,  till  you're 
all  sneezed  out!" 

Judith's  misgivings  returned,  increased  one  hundredfold,  as, 
jumping  from  the  platform  of  the  boulder,  he  seized  the  crimi 
nal  who  by  this  time  was  white  with  terror.  How  could  she  be 
a  party  to  anything  so  terrible  as  this  which  her  unwilling 
hands  were  even  now  helping  to  perform?  Benny  was  holding 
the  struggling  offender  backward  so  that  his  poor,  rabbit-like 
nose  formed  an  easy  receptacle  for  the  brown  powder  which 
she  held.  And  she,  loathing  her  every  act,  was  stuffing  it 
generously  into  his  wet  and  quivering  nostrils. 

Its  almost  immediate  effectiveness  staid  her  hand.  Poor 
Boshy's  strugglings  gave  way  to  splutterings  and  chokings. 
There  ensued  sneezings  so  alarming  in  their  swift  succession 
and  in  their  portentous  character  that  she  herself  became  pale 
with  awful  dread.  What  if  he  could  never  stop?  What  if  those 
long  and  horrible  stranglings  which  seemed  to  come  from  his 
very  toes  should  kill  him  there  in  the  thicket?  She  looked 
imploringly  at  Benny.  He  stood  like  one  completely  satisfied 
with  the  working  out  of  an  incomparable  strategy.  Not  a  hint 
of  remorse  or  fear  lurked  about  his  face  as  he  watched  the 
hurtling,  stertorous  boy  striving  to  keep  his  feet  among  the 
junipers  and  huckleberries.  She  was  swept  again  with  hatred 
for  him,  for  all  boys  and  their  cruelties. 

But  after  five  minutes  of  unintermittent  sneezing  —  sneezing 
which  smote  the  quiet  air  with  rhythmic  concussions  forboding 
ominous  echoes  of  sound  —  even  Benny  was  alarmed.  He 
offered  no  objection  to  her  frantic  proposal  that  they  lead  the 
sufferer  along  the  path  to  the  brook.  In  fact,  he  proffered  a 
hand  for  so  doing,  although  his  air  of  impatient  nonchalance 
conveyed  unmistakably  his  scorn  of  her  more  merciful  fears. 
Obviously  his  one  concern  was  not  for  Boshy,  but  only  lest 
this  unnecessary  and  unexpected  uproar  should  travel  farther 
than  he  had  anticipated.  Indeed,  at  the  brook  he  would 
carelessly  have  added  drowning  to  suffocation  in  the  list  of  his 
mortal  sins,  had  not  Judith,  hurling  the  package  of  snuff  in  the 


[  1 30  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

grass  at  the  water's  edge,  insisted  upon  humane  treatment  and 
used  her  own  berry-pail  and  handkerchief  in  an  attempt  to 
extricate  from  Boshy's  nose  the  few  accessible  grains  of  powder. 
To  her  the  few  minutes  required  for  even  a  relative  recovery 
seemed  an  eternity.  The  "nerves"  which  Boshy  had  advanced 
as  the  cause  of  his  affliction  in  its  natural  state  doubtless  played 
their  part  in  this,  its  preternatural.  Judith  felt  sure  that  had 
each  separate  grain  of  snuff  brought  forth  by  itself  one  sneeze, 
all  had  long  since  been  accounted  for!  But  by  interminable 
degrees  the  culprit,  whose  guilt  to  her  mind  seemed  expiated 
forevermore,  grew  at  last  quiet  and  was  induced  by  his 
accusers  to  ascend  the  hill  toward  a  warm,  bright  blueberry 
patch  there  to  dry  himself  and  his  tears. 

SITTING  there  in  the  sunshine  Judith  became  again  painfully 
aware  of  the  contrast  between  the  peace  of  the  quiet  pasture 
and  the  confusion  of  at  least  two  of  its  inmates.  Benny,  she 
knew,  was  still  obdurate,  though  she  saw  by  his  manner  that 
he  had  some  plan  of  reconciliation  well  in  mind.  She  had  seen 
him  in  too  many  exigencies  not  to  be  reasonably  certain  that 
he  would  arrange  as  skillfully  as  might  be  for  his  own  security 
against  possibly  disastrous  consequences.  She  hated  the 
reluctant  admiration,  which  she  could  not  control,  for  his 
apparent  coolness  in  the  face  of  this  superlative  effectiveness 
of  their  carefully  laid  plans,  and  hated  more  her  dependence 
upon  him.  Something  deep  within  her,  deeper  even  than 
hatred,  made  her  long  to  comfort  the  weary  Boshy,  whose 
sneezing  and  sobs  alike  had  given  place  to  injured  humility 
and  acquiescence.  But  she  dared  not  move  or  speak.  One  last 
surreptitious  sneeze,  hastily  buried  among  the  blueberries, 
gave  the  signal  for  Benny  to  close  the  final  scene  of  an  overlong 
tragedy. 

"That'll  do,  Boshy!"  he  said  sternly.  "That's  the  last.  We've 
both  told  you  how  to  stop  them.  Hold  on  to  your  mouth  and 
think  of  something  else.  And  now  everything's  over,  we're 
ready  to  be  friends  with  you.  Aren't  we,  Judy?" 

"Yes,"  faltered  Judith.  Involuntarily  she  put  out  her  hand 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  131  ] 

toward  Boshy,  but  drew  it  back  before  Benny's  scornful 
glance. 

"That  is,  we're  willing  on  one  condition.  You  tell  one  word 
of  what's  happened  this  morning  and  we  become  your  ene 
mies,  ready  for  anything.  You  don't  know  this  village  and 
what's  happened  here.  Right  in  this  pasture  there  was  a  man 
hanged  to  a  tree.  For  what?  For  stealing  and  telling  lies!  And 
another  was  left  out  here  all  night  tied  hand  and  foot.  And 
when  they  came  for  him  in  the  morning,  could  they  find  him? 
I'm  here  to  tell  you  NO!" 

Boshy,  sitting  up  pale  and  trembling,  glanced  apprehen 
sively  about  the  pasture — at  the  hazels  reddening  under  the 
late  August  sun,  at  the  brown,  rock-strewn  hummocks,  and  at 
Constancy  meandering  heavily  toward  the  brook  for  a  drink 
in  the  pool.  Its  outward  semblance  suggested  no  such  horrors. 

"William  Dobbin,"  continued  Benny,  feeling  for  his  paper 
as  though  the  renewed  force  of  his  eloquence  must  be  miracu 
lously  inscribing  words  thereon,  "stand  up  like  a  man.  Cross 
your  heart  and  repeat  after  me  these  words:  I  swear  never  to 
breathe  by  word  or  look  what  has  justly  happened  to  me  this  morning" 

Judith  listened,  still  tormented,  in  spite  of  her  sickening 
desire  to  be  done  with  a  bad  business,  by  that  irritating  pride 
in  Benny,  while  Boshy  took  the  oath.  Then  she  followed 
Benny's  lead  in  grasping  his  limp  hand. 

"Now  we  are  friends,"  announced  the  master  of  ceremonies. 
"And,  William  Dobbin,  that  is  no  slight  thing.  Judy  and  I  can 
make  things  easy  for  you  in  this  village,  or  we  can  make  them 
hard.  We've  got  followers  here  who'll  do  as  we  say.  We  .  .  ." 

A  strange  and  terrifying  sound,  reverberating  through  the 
stillness,  shattered  his  words  into  bits.  It  was  a  sound,  ante 
diluvian,  prehistoric,  a  sound  that  might  have  mangled  the 
atmosphere  of  an  older  world  before  man  had  begun  to  run 
his  sad,  and  woman  her  sadder,  race  thereon.  One  knew 
instinctively  that  it  was  no  human  sound.  Those  mighty 
heavings,  those  horrible,  deep-mouthed  exhalations,  those 
stertorous,  ear-splitting  strangles  —  they  came  from  the  ani 
mal  world  and  might  well  have  pierced  and  ruptured  its 


[  i32  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ancient    and   awful    peace  before  God    had  created    Man. 

For  a  few  frightful  seconds  the  children  on  the  hillside  were 
frozen  with  fear.  Brought  up  in  an  unrelenting  creed  that 
taught  the  interposition  of  God  in  the  affairs  of  men,  they 
were  at  first  seized  with  the  thought  of  a  swift  and  heavenly 
punishment.  And  then  Judith  detected  through  the  intricacies 
of  those  unfamiliar  reverberations  the  unmistakable  accents 
of  a  voice  she  knew  and  loved.  The  glimpse  through  a  clump 
of  birches  by  the  brook  of  a  dun-colored  hide  which  rose  and 
fell  in  portentous  motion  confirmed  her  worst  fears.  Constancy 
had  discovered  and  subsequently  consumed  the  generous 
remainder  of  the  bag  of  snuff! 

With  white  lips,  and  legs  which  almost  refused  to  carry  her, 
she  tore  down  the  hill  followed  by  the  two  boys,  who  forgot 
the  past  in  the  unexpected  and  awful  catastrophe  of  the 
present.  Benny,  now  that  the  first  moment  of  fright  was  over, 
was  irritated  beyond  expression  by  this  unfortunate  turn  in 
affairs  which  portended  almost  inevitable  discovery;  Boshy 
knew  no  emotion  except  increasing  terror;  Judith  was  struck 
by  a  remorse  so  great  that  the  worst  of  punishments  seemed 
infinitesimal  indeed. 

Constancy  stood  among  the  birches  near  the  brook.  Her 
first  paroxysms  had  given  place  to  those  of  lesser  volume  and 
frequency.  She  was  calm  and  contemplative  even  in  the  midst 
of  tribulation.  Whenever  her  spasms  permitted  the  indulgence, 
she  chewed  her  cud  quite  as  though  nothing  extraordinary 
had  occurred.  As  he  noted  these  signs  of  improvement  in  her 
condition,  Benny's  courage  rose.  But  Judith  saw  in  her  mild 
gaze  only  disillusionment  and  reproach,  and,  her  self-control 
completely  at  an  end,  burst  into  a  torrent  of  tears. 

Benny,  be  it  said  to  his  diminishing  credit,  stooped  (and 
on  the  whole  not  ungraciously)  to  the  role  of  comforter. 

"Don't  worry,  Judy,"  he  begged.  "She's  all  right.  A  dime's 
worth  of  snuff  can't  hurt  a  great  old  cow  like  her.  She  got  an 
extra  dose  where  you  threw  it  all  in  the  grass  —  I  must  say 
'twas  careless  of  you  —  and  it  probably  scared  her,  too,  like 
Boshy  and  made  her  nervous." 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  133  ] 

He  spied  the  empty  berry-pail  floating  unconcernedly  on 
the  pool  and  began  to  fill  it  with  water,  while  Judith  stood 
with  her  arm  around  the  neck  of  Constancy.  The  cow  sub 
mitted  to  a  generous  nasal  irrigation  and  after  ten  minutes, 
broken  only  occasionally  by  deep-throated  coughs,  seemed 
wholly  restored  to  her  former  placidity. 

Still  suffering  his  tone  to  be  gentle  as  he  saw  that  Judith's 
grief  was  unabated,  Benny  prepared  to  lead  Constancy  deeper 
into  the  pasture. 

"We'll  take  her  to  the  fir  thicket,"  he  said,  "where  she  can't 
be  heard  if  she  starts  another  racket.  And  then  if  we  don't 
want  to  be  suspected  of  anything,  we'd  better  get  home.  I've 
got  the  lawn  to  mow.  You  can  help  me,  Boshy,  if  you  like,"  he 
added  graciously. 

Swept  by  a  host  of  conflicting  emotions  and  impulses,  Judith 
followed  the  procession  into  the  thicket.  In  spite  of  Constancy's 
apparent  restoration  to  health,  she  knew  she  ought  to  confess 
the  whole  miserable  affair  to  her  father  lest  the  injury  to  the 
cow  should  prove  more  than  superficial.  But  that  she  could 
not  do  without  involving  Benny  and  reaping  his  neglect  and 
scorn,  the  latter  not  only  for  herself  but  for  the  whole  race  of 
girls.  Self-preservation,  too,  was  strong  within  her.  Punish 
ment  in  itself  was  bad  enough,  but  the  long  days  of  subsequent 
embarrassment  and  disgrace  were  more  than  she  could  bear. 
And  finally,  not  the  strongest  and  yet  the  most  insistent  and 
painful  of  her  griefs,  was  the  wrong  done  to  Constancy  herself, 
for  whom  years  of  guardianship  and  protection  had  woven  an 
indissoluble  affection  and  friendship. 

Ashamed,  yet  governed  by  a  miserable  necessity  and  fear, 
she  acquiesced  in  the  tethering  of  the  cow  to  a  fir-stump,  and 
left  the  pasture  with  the  boys  by  a  short  cut  through  the 
huckleberries.  Nor  were  her  feelings  assuaged  by  the  recogni 
tion  of  a  tacit  understanding  between  them,  which  her  recent 
tears  and  her  sympathy  for  Constancy  had  evidently  engen 
dered.  More  than  once  on  their  way  down  the  hill  she  caught 
a  sly  wink  from  Benny  and  its  eager  reception  by  Boshy,  now 
totally  restored  to  favor  and  compliance. 


[  134  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

At  the  parsonage  they  were  halted  by  the  sudden  appear 
ance  at  the  gate  of  Mr.  Meeker.  Boshy,  in  spite  of  real  effort, 
could  not  check  several  nervous  sneezes.  As  her  own  heart 
stilled,  Judith  saw  Benny's  ears  crimson  to  their  tips.  The 
interview,  brief  and  not  unkindly,  was  fraught  with  uneasiness 
and  suspicion. 

"It  would  give  me  pleasure,"  said  Mr.  Meeker,  always 
formal  in  his  address,  "to  see  you  three  young  people  in  my 
study  this  evening.  Eight  will  be  the  hour." 

They  did  not  speak  as  they  trailed  homeward.  Not  until 
they  reached  the  driveway  at  Benny's  house  was  a  word  said. 
But  during  that  portentous  silence  at  least  one  mind  had  been 
operative,  for  Benny,  as  Judith  started  on,  spoke  in  a  husky 
whisper. 

"I'm  spokesman  tonight,  and  you  two  follow  my  lead. 
Don't  forget  now.  And,  Boshy,  your  part  is  to  keep  quiet. 
There's  only  one  thing  you  can  do  and  that's  to  lend  me  a 
dime.  And  have  it  tonight  without  fail,  do  you  hear?" 

Fifteen  minutes  later  Judith,  hearing  from  the  crotch  of  the 
pear-tree  the  click  of  the  lawn-mower,  knew  that  for  the 
moment  all  was  outwardly  well.  She  herself  had  been  saved 
from  too  pertinent  questioning  as  to  her  empty  berry-pail  by 
her  mother's  preparation  for  the  church  sewing-circle,  meet 
ing  that  afternoon.  The  morning  passed,  filled  with  appre 
hensions  and  the  straining  of  wary  ears  toward  the  distant 
pasture.  Dinner  brought  only  a  passing  comment  on  her 
flushed  cheeks  and  lack  of  appetite.  The  afternoon  found  her 
again  in  the  old  tree,  apparently  deep  in  "Great  Expecta 
tions"  but  in  reality  torn  by  the  consciousness  that  Pip,  in 
spite  of  grave  robbers  and  even  of  Quilp,  had  endured  no  such 
torture  as  that  which  she  was  forced  to  undergo.  At  two,  her 
mother  called  to  her  from  half-way  down  the  street.  She  had 
forgotten  her  thimble.  Would  Judith  procure  it  from  her 
sewing-basket  and  bring  it  at  once  to  the  church? 

In  a  few  minutes  time  Judith  was  standing,  thimble  in  hand, 
in  the  church  vestry,  on  the  outskirts  of  a  hollow  square 
bordered  and  bounded  by  the  industrious  ladies  of  the  parish 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  135  ] 

with  their  various  handiwork.  Unnoticed  by  her  mother  and 
careful  lest  she  interrupt,  she  stood  quietly  by  while  Mrs. 
Meeker,  who  as  wife  of  the  minister  acted  as  chairman  of  the 
gathering,  opened  the  preliminary  business  meeting.  Mrs. 
Meeker,  it  was  plain  to  be  seen,  was  nervous.  Something  more 
serious  than  the  knowledge  that  she  had  dressed  too  hastily 
after  the  completion  of  her  Monday's  wash,  done  on  Saturday, 
was  causing  this  fluttering  of  her  hands,  this  unseasonal  moist 
ure  on  her  wide  forehead.  The  ladies,  busy  with  threading 
their  needles  and  with  distributing  the  tools  of  their  trade  be 
side  themselves  on  the  long  settees,  were  less  aware  than  Judith 
of  her  extreme  self-consciousness.  It  is  not  surprising  then 
that  at  her  first  words  there  came  a  simultaneous  dropping  of 
implements,  of  tatting  and  knitting  and  crochet,  of  aprons, 
undergarments,  and  towels,  and  a  simultaneous  lifting  of 
astonished  eyes  to  Mrs.  Meeker 's  flushed  and  perspiring  face. 

"Mr.  Meeker  and  I  think  it  fitting  at  this  time  that  I  an 
nounce  to  —  to  the  ladies  of  the  sewing  circle  that  he  has 
willingly  given  up  the  —  the  one  indulgence  which  has 
possibly  stood  in  the  way  of  his  finest  influence  in  the  parish. 
The  habit  of  snuff- taking  was  inherited;  but  it  is  now,  due  to 
Mr.  Meeker 's  sense  of  his  responsibility  a  thing  of  the  past." 
Mrs.  Meeker  cleared  her  throat  impressively  and  wiped  her 
forehead.  "'If  meat  cause  my  brother  to  offend,'  she  quoted 
clearly,  and  with  precisely  the  right  emphasis,  CI  will  eat  no 
meat.'" 

Judith  dropped  the  thimble  into  her  mother's  lap  and 
hurriedly  tiptoed  from  the  room.  What  she  had  heard  was 
enough;  the  consequences  of  what  was  doubtless  forthcoming 
she  must  endure  later.  She  ran  through  the  field  that  stretched 
from  the  rear  of  the  church  to  the  fence  of  Constancy's  pasture, 
crawled  between  the  rails,  and  made  her  miserable  way  to  the 
fir  thicket.  There  was  Constancy,  to  all  appearances  in  ex 
cellent  health,  still  patiently  tethered  to  the  fir  stump. 

TTOW  she  spent  the  long  hours  of  that  wretched  afternoon 
•*••••  Judith  never  quite  remembered.  Tears,  she  recalled  in 


[  136  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

later  years,  and  long  and  relentless  self-accusations.  She  recalled, 
too,  the  gathering  of  tender  and  succulent  grasses  and  clover 
from  the  adjoining  field  and  her  feeding  them  to  the  cow 
whom  she  did  not  dare  untether  before  the  fateful  milking- 
time  lest  a  return  of  her  malady  might  penetrate  beyond  the 
pasture.  But  when  the  church  clock  struck  six,  she  knew  she 
could  delay  no  longer,  and  she  and  Constancy  started  on  their 
homeward  way. 

Without  accident  or  incident  they  reached  the  barn,  nor 
could  Judith  discern  aught  amiss  in  her  father  as  he  received 
them,  or  in  her  mother  as  she  helped  prepare  supper.  Had  Mrs. 
Meeker  then  not  explained  to  whom  offense  had  been  given? 

"I  have  news  for  you,"  said  Mrs.  Blair  after  the  family  was 
safely  launched  on  beans  and  brown  bread.  Obviously  she 
spoke  to  her  husband,  but  the  four  young  Blairs  suspended 
eating.  The  eldest  of  them,  unseen  by  the  others,  steadied 
herself  against  her  chair.  "Mr.  Meeker  has  given  up  his 
snuff." 

Mr.  Blair  dropped  his  fork. 

"Well,  I'll  be  ...   !" 

"John!"  warned  Mrs.  Blair,  the  dismay  and  protection 
alike  in  her  voice  which  Judith  had  heard  so  often. 

"What's  struck  him?"  asked  Mr.  Blair.  One  could  tell  from 
his  tone  that  he  looked  upon  Mr.  Meeker  as  a  creature  from 
another  planet. 

"He  thinks  it's  a  bad  influence  on  some  people,  that  it's 
causing  them  to  offend,  as  Mrs.  Meeker  said.  Oh,  Judy,  dear! 
Do  be  more  careful!" 

Judith  rose  from  her  seat  to  repair  the  damage  from  her 
overturned  glass,  thankful  for  the  added  confusion  that  might 
well  explain  her  flushed  face. 

"Well,  it's  d all-fired  offensive  the  way  he  takes  it, 

I'll  say  that.  Grandfather  Blair  took  snuff  for  years  —  I've 
seen  him  take  it  by  handfuls  —  without  a  single  sneeze." 

Judith  found  her  voice. 

"Is  —  is  it  just  the  first  time,  father,  that  makes  them 
sneeze?  Won't  it  last?" 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  137  ] 

Her  father  laughed  until  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  her  face. 

"I  don't  know,  my  dear.  Nowadays  decent  people  smoke. 
What's  wrong,  Judy?  You  look  tired.  You're  growing  too  fast." 

The  kindness  in  his  voice  brought  tears  to  her  eyes  and 
throat,  but  she  choked  them  back.  This  day's  business  was  not 
yet  over  for  her.  The  time  was  coming,  and  that  soon,  when 
he  would  not  be  so  kind. 

The  dishes  washed  and  the  younger  Blairs  in  bed,  Fate  cast 
a  single  blessing  in  the  removal  of  her  parents,  who  were  in 
vited  to  drive  by  unsuspecting  neighbors.  She  met  Benny  and 
Boshy  at  the  gate  outside  the  parsonage,  in  which  confusion 
above-stairs  betokened  the  bed-time  of  the  young  Meekers. 
A  swift  passage  from  Boshy 's  hand  to  Benny's  proved  that  the 
former  had  been  faithful  to  his  trust.  There  was  a  whispered 
warning  from  Benny  as  they  traversed  the  worn  planks  of 
the  front  walk.  The  minister,  somewhat  dishevelled  from 
domestic  duties,  ushered  them  into  the  study. 

Now  Mr.  Meeker  with  fewer  children,  a  different  wife,  and 
more  time  for  contemplation,  would  not,  it  is  safe  to  say,  have 
been  a  man  entirely  devoid  of  humor.  A  more  circumspect 
gaze  than  any  which  the  three  before  him  were  able  to  give 
at  that  moment  would,  indeed,  have  revealed  a  slight  quiver 
ing  about  his  thin  lips  as  he  motioned  them  to  be  seated.  He 
himself  stood,  his  coat  awry,  his  thumbs  in  the  armholes  of  his 
waistcoat,  and  studied  their  downcast  faces.  It  was  he  who 
now  held  the  balance  of  power,  he  who  could,  or  would  not, 
maintain  the  status  quo! 

"I  shall  not  keep  you  long,"  he  said.  "It  will  soon  be  your 
bed- time.  But  I  need  help  in  my  work,  and  I  am  asking  you  to 
give  it.  I  am  constrained  to  do  so  by  my  friend,  Mr.  Robinson, 
the  druggist.  He  told  me  only  this  morning,  in  fact,  that  you 
in  particular,  Benjamin,  are  a  lad  of  rare  initiative  and  leader 
ship.  The  Christian  Endeavor  Society  is  sadly  in  need  of 
recuperation  and  new  energy,  and  I  have  chosen  you  with 
these  others  to  give  it  that  new  life.  The  pledges  are  on  the 
table,  and  here  is  my  pen." 

Benny,  who  in  spite  of  his  self-appointment  to  the  position 


[  138  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  spokesman  seemed  to  have  nothing  to  say,  was  the  first  to 
sign.  And  yet  he  walked  toward  the  table  with  eagerness  in 
his  step.  Could  he,  thought  Judith  to  herself,  be  feeling  as  she 
felt?  Was  it  possible  that  his  heart  under  his  clean  white  blouse 
was  beating  like  her  own?  One  might  have  thought,  as  he 
seized  Mr.  Meeker' s  pen,  that  he  himself  had  written  the 
pledges,  that  his  signature  was  merely  an  added  affidavit  of 
his  zeal  for  the  Christian  Endeavor  Society!  He  wrote  his 
name  in  large,  round  letters,  gazed  at  it  appraisingly,  redotted 
the  i  in  "Benjamin,"  and  gave  the  pen  with  an  air  of  conde 
scension  into  her  trembling  fingers. 

They  almost  forgot  Boshy  in  the  signing.  People  always  did 
forget  Boshy  except  when  he  thwarted  their  plans  by  his 
stupidity  and  weakness.  And  yet  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  one 
name  signed  with  any  enthusiasm  was  that  of  William  Dob 
bin,  who  was  actually  beginning  to  realize  that  for  him  out  of 
adversity  was  springing  a  new  life  of  unlocked  for  recognition 
and  importance. 

"I  think  that  is  all,"  said  Mr.  Meeker  at  last,  still  towering 
above  them,  his  great,  ungainly  shadow  in  the  light  of  the 
lamp,  stretching  along  the  wall.  "It's  well  to  feel  responsibility 
early,  so  I  shall  ask  you,  Benjamin,  to  lead  the  meeting  on 
Wednesday  evening  next.  Good-evening,  young  friends." 

They  turned  to  go.  Could  she  ever  wait  to  get  out-of-doors 
again?  But  Benny,  his  hand  on  the  knob,  hesitated.  Judith 
could  feel  his  tremendous  summoning  of  courage  from  far 
down  in  the  depths  of  his  being.  He  turned  toward  Mr.  Meeker 
without  a  word  and  held  out  his  hand. 

Mr.  Meeker  bowed  gravely  as  he  took  the  proffered  dime. 
Then  a  look  passed  between  him  and  Benny,  a  look  as  between 
man  and  man.  Boshy,  who  had  supplied  the  capital,  was 
forgotten.  Again  he  did  not  count. 

Judith,  reaching  home,  could  not  get  too  quickly  to  bed. 
Lying  in  the  dark  of  her  room  next  to  that  of  her  father  and 
mother,  she  longed  for  kindly  sleep  which  should  blot  out  all 
events  of  that  cruel  day.  She  had  tiptoed  to  the  barn  before 
coming  upstairs  and  felt  reassured  by  Constancy's  quiet 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  139  ] 

breathing.  The  night  air  was  chill  and  clear:  there  would  be 
an  early  frost.  The  crickets  sang  in  high  rhythms  that  grew 
fainter  and  fainter  in  her  tired  ears.  She  heard  vaguely  through 
a  warm  and  comforting  mist  her  father  and  mother  come 
upstairs. 

And  then,  after  a  black  eternity  had  passed,  she  was  in 
another  world  —  a  world  of  noise  and  uproar,  of  awful  rolling 
reverberations  of  thrice-awful  sounds  —  a  world  in  which 
strange  and  wallowing  animals  plunged  after  one  through 
seas  of  mud.  Only  her  father's  frightened  voice  had  any 
semblance  of  reality. 

"It's  the  cow!'  she  heard  him  cry.  "Something's  wrong!" 
And  then  his  hurrying  footsteps  on  the  stairs. 

Terrified,  she  resorted  to  prayer  —  prayer  that  some  kind 
Providence,  assigned  to  animals,  might  save  Constancy  from 
further  paroxysms,  prayer  that  her  father  might  remain  in 
ignorance,  prayer  that  she  herself  might  be  long  spared  to 
atone  for  her  sins  by  zeal  in  the  Christian  Endeavor.  She  lay, 
clutching  the  sheets  and  listening  above  her  petitions  for 
sounds  from  the  barn.  There  was  some  relief  in  the  knowledge 
that  Constancy's  attack  was  far  milder  than  that  of  the  morn 
ing.  After  a  dozen  wheezing,  spluttering  coughs,  she  was  once 
more  silent. 

She  heard  her  father  moving  awkwardly  about  in  the 
kitchen  and  steeled  herself  against  his  return.  The  half  hour 
seemed  a  day  in  length. 

"I've  made  a  bran  mash,"  she  heard  him  say  at  last.  "I 
can't  imagine  what's  wrong.  She  didn't  give  down  her  milk 
right  tonight  either.  'Twas  just  as  though  she  hadn't  eaten 
enough  all  day.  I  don't  like  it.  I'm  afraid  she's  taken  cold." 

"Don't  worry,  dear,"  rejoined  her  mother's  sleepy  voice. 
"It's  probably  nothing.  She'll  be  all  right  in  the  morning." 

Her  father  was  a  trifle  petulant.  It  was  sympathy  he  wanted, 
not  reassurance. 

"Well,  a  cold's  a  cold,  and  a  pure-bred  Jersey  is  a  pure-bred 
Jersey,"  he  said  with  finality.  "If  she's  not  all  right  in  the 
morning,  I'll  have  Robinson  over,  though  I  haven't  much 


[  140  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

faith  in  him.  You  can't  be  two  things  at  once  in  this  world, 
and  he's  a  better  druggist  than  veterinarian." 

Incredible  that  in  view  of  such  further  complications  Judith 
should  have  slept.  But  she  did,  the  heavy  sleep  of  sheer  ex 
haustion.  The  Sunday  sun  was  high  when  she  started  re 
luctantly  toward  the  barn  for  Constancy.  She  could  not  be 
sufficiently  grateful  that  her  father  was  at  that  moment  talking 
with  Benny's  across  the  garden  fence. 

"Drive  her  slowly,  Judith,"  he  called.  "She  was  sick  last 
night." 

Judith's  eyes  were  moist  as  she  walked  by  Constancy,  in 
whose  own  brown  orbs  she  imagined  added  reproach  and 
disappointment.  Not  content  to  leave  the  cow  by  the  pasture 
bars,  she  led  her  to  a  grassy  spot  in  the  shadow  of  some  trees. 
How  tranquilly  she  cropped  the  hillside !  Could  it  be  that  she 
was  blessed  with  no  memory,  that  even  the  most  painful  ex 
periences  left  her  consciousness  as  soon  as  they  were  over? 
The  nine  o'clock  bells  rang  out  their  call  to  church.  In  the 
distance  Judith  could  hear  the  shouts  and  cries  of  the  young 
Meekers  as  they  were  prepared  for  Sunday-school.  There  was 
peace  in  the  pasture.  Might  it  be  that  the  twenty-four  hours  so 
charged  and  freighted  with  misery  were,  indeed,  past  and 
gone? 

Two  hours  later  she  sat  in  church  next  her  mother,  her 
father  at  the  head  of  the  pew,  the  younger  children  between. 
Benny  was  there,  clean  and  stiff  and  silent,  beside  his  father. 
Boshy  was  there,  pale  and  ineffective,  between  his  mother  and 
his;  grandmother.  The  Meekers  were  there,  seven  in  number, 
awry  as  to  clothing  and  wriggling  with  uneasiness.  The  hymns 
were  sung,  the  long  prayer  ended.  Mr.  Meeker  arose  to  give 
his  announcements.  Was  there  an  added  interest  in  view  of 
his  recent  sacrifice,  already  heralded  about  the  parish? 

"It  gives  me  great  pleasure,"  said  Mr.  Meeker,  "to  an 
nounce  a  new  interest  among  the  young  people  in  the  Chris 
tian  Endeavor  Society.  Three  new  members  have  joined  our 
ranks  with  real  enthusiasm  —  Judith  Blair,  William  Dobbin, 
and  Benjamin  Webster." 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  141  ] 

Her  mother  pressed  her  hand  with  surprise  and  approbation. 
Perhaps  it  was  the  seriousness  of  this  step  which  had  made  the 
child  so  sober  of  late.  Her  father  looked  slyly  at  her,  a  look 
which  being  interpreted  might  mean  anything  at  all.  Judith 
glanced  toward  the  Webster  pew.  Benny  was  staring  straight 
ahead,  refusing  to  recognize  his  father's  astonishment.  Boshy's 
grandmother  had  placed  her  arm  across  his  shoulders,  and 
he  was  actually  edging  away  with  a  new  impatience.  Judith 
was  conscious  of  sly  and  not  altogether  serious  glances,  espe 
cially  in  Benny's  direction,  from  sundry  other  boys  in  the 
congregation.  Mr.  Meeker  continued: 

"The  Wednesday  evening  service  will  be  led  by  one  of  these 
eager  recruits,  Benjamin  Webster.  Subject:  AM  I  MY  BROTHER'S 

KEEPER?" 

His  words  were  echoed  by  violent  and  staccato  sneezes  from 
the  Dobbin  pew.  Judith  knew  that  Benny's  hot  stare  was 
following  her  own.  She  saw  Boshy  manfully  holding  his 
mouth  in  accordance  with  directions  and  with  the  other  hand 
as  manfully  throwing  aside  the  black  shoulder-cape  with 
which  his  grandmother  would  have  enveloped  him.  The 
spasm  was  mercifully  of  short  duration.  Did  she  see,  as  she 
looked  apprehensively  toward  Mr.  Meeker,  a  smile  trying  to 
capture  his  face? 

'  I  1HAT  afternoon  Judith  asked  permission  to  go  to  the  pas- 
-*•  ture.  Her  mother,  thinking  rightly  enough  that  she  wished 
to  be  alone,  willingly  granted  it.  One  did  seek  solitude  in 
these  turning-points  of  thought  and  new  resolve.  But  she  was 
not  destined  to  enjoy  that  solitude  for  long.  Before  half  an 
hour  had  passed  in  the  fir  thicket  with  Constancy  chewing 
nearby,  a  trampling  among  the  huckleberries  announced  the 
approach  of  Benny.  As  he  came  toward  her,  she  knew  him  to 
be  unrepentant  and  unchastened.  But  he  was  clearly  relieved 
and,  for  the  first  moments,  perhaps  a  trifle  sheepish. 

"Well,  it's  over,"  he  said,  straightening  his  Sunday  tie, 
"and  it's  all  come  out  for  the  best.  Boshy's  got  more  sand  than 
I  gave  him  credit  for,  and  he  sure  helped  me  out  with  the 


[  i42  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

dime.  I'm  not  forgetting,"  he  added  magnanimously,  "that 
five  cents  is  yours,  Judy." 

Looking  at  him,  she  could  not  answer.  What  was  this 
mysterious  difference  between  him  and  her?  Between  boys  and 
girls? 

"Of  course,"  he  continued,  "I  wasn't  reckoning  on  Mr. 
Meeker's  roping  us  in  the  way  he  did.  I  hadn't  planned  on 
joining  the  Christian  Endeavor  just  now.  But  now  I'm  in,  I'm 
in!"  A  fierceness  had  crept  into  his  voice,  hardly  compatible 
with  Christian  Endeavor  ideals.  "And  you  wait,  Judy!  You 
watch  me.  That's  going  to  be  the  peppiest  Christian  Endeavor 
in  this  county,  yes,  sir,  in  this  state!  Let  those  fellows  who 
dared  grin  this  morning,  grin  away.  I'll  give  them  two  weeks 
to  stay  out!" 

That  old,  reluctant  admiration  for  him  was  again  seizing 
her.  Was  he  never  vanquished? 

"I'm  staging  a  picnic  this  week  at  Noyes  Pond,  with  races 
and  everything.  My  father's  lending  me  one  of  his  trucks  for 
the  crowd,  and  no  one's  allowed  who  doesn't  belong.  And 
next  week  there's  going  to  be  a  circus,  and  none  of  your  tame 
affairs  either.  I'll  show  them!  They'll  be  falling  over  each 
other  to  sign  the  pledge  before  the  week's  up." 

Someone  had  said  once  that  Benny  would  be  President 
someday,  or  at  least  a  statesman.  She  believed  it. 

"Did  you  know  about  Mr.  Meeker's  salary?"  he  went  on. 
"It's  been  raised  a  hundred  dollars  on  account  of  his  interest 
in  the  young  people.  I  heard  my  mother  say  so.  The  circle 
had  a  special  meeting  after  church  and  decided.  My  father 
said  you  could  trust  the  women  to  be  sentimental!"  He 
laughed  a  deprecating  laugh  but  stopped  suddenly  before 
the  look  in  Judith's  face.  An  unwonted  flush  came  into  his 
own.  Turning  away,  he  began  to  fumble  with  the  fir  cones. 

"But  I  want  to  say,  Judy,  that  you  stood  by  me  fine.  Most 
girls  wouldn't  have  done  it,  but  you  did.  And  I'll  tell  you 
something."  His  words  were  catching  in  his  throat,  but  he 
freed  them  with  an  effort.  "By  and  by  when  I'm  older  — 
when  I  —  when  I  take  girls  out  to  things,  you  can  be  pretty 


A  PINCH  OF  SNUFF  [  143  ] 

sure  you'll  be  who  I'll  ask.  You  know  it  will  be  you,  Judy!" 

Summoning  his  courage,  not  at  its  best  in  this  new  situation, 
he  looked  shyly  at  her,  at  her  short  brown  hair  curling  about 
her  face,  her  wide  grey  eyes  and  pink  Sunday  frock.  Some 
thing  strange  was  happening  to  him.  For  the  first  time  in  his 
life  he  was  painfully  conscious  of  someone  invading  his  experi 
ence  in  a  queer,  new  way. 

But  a  stranger  thing  was  happening  to  Judith.  Why  did  she 
suddenly  feel  years  older  than  Benny?  How  was  it  that  all  at 
once  he  had  become  someone  to  be  protected  and  understood 
and  smiled  at,  in  private?  Swift  visions  passed  through  her 
mind  there  in  the  fir  thicket  —  of  her  mother  guarding  her 
father's  speech,  of  Mrs.  Meeker  apologizing  for  her  husband, 
of  —  yes,  of  Constancy  paying  dearly  for  mistakes  not  her 
own. 

Long  after  Benny  had  crashed  his  self-conscious  way 
through  the  huckleberries,  she  sat  quietly  on.  The  shadows  of 
the  firs  grew  longer  on  the  brown  needles.  A  thrush  called. 
Another  answered.  Constancy  chewed  on  with  a  rhythmic 
precision  which  seemed  neither  to  begin  nor  end.  When  the 
village  clock  struck  six,  Judith  led  her  homewards,  out  of  the 
thicket,  up  the  gulley,  past  the  brook.  The  cow  stumbled  in 
stepping  across  the  bars,  and  she  placed  a  reassuring  hand  on 
her  heavy,  lumbering  shoulder.  Again  she  was  stung  by  re 
morse,  only  now  it  had  incomprehensibly  widened  into  pity 
and  a  strange,  new  understanding. 

"There's  something  queer,  Constancy,"  she  whispered. 
"I  don't  know  why,  but  it's  not  just  ourselves  we  have  to  look 
after  and  feel  bad  for.  It's  all  the  men  folks  too!" 


One  Hundred  and  Twenty  Years 

F.    L.    MOTT 

1IA7HEN  that  group  of  young  professional  men  of  Boston  and  Cam- 
»  »  bridge  who  supported  the  Monthly  Anthology  decided  to  give 
up  their  periodical,  they  must  have  done  so  with  deep  regret.  True, 
it  had  never  produced  sufficient  profits  even  to  pay  for  the  club's 
weekly  suppers;  and  when  slight  profits  became  large  deficits,  the 
end  was  indicated.  And  whatever  the  pride  in  the  Anthology  may 
have  been,  those  suppers  of  "widgeon  and  teal,"  "very  good  claret, 
without  ice  (tantpis)"  "segars,"  and  "much  pleasant  talk  and  good 
humor"  were  occasions  which  supplied  a  flow  of  wit  and  scholarship 
all  too  rare  even  in  Boston. 

Therefore  the  bonds  of  the  fellowship  which  the  Anthology  had 
created  were  not  entirely  dissolved  when  the  magazine  was  sus 
pended.  The  group  saw  the  founding  of  Andrews  Norton's  General 
Repository  six  months  after  the  abandonment  of  the  Anthology,  and 
assisted  the  editor  in  filling  its  Unitarian  pages;  indeed  some  of  the 
members  of  the  old  group  edited  the  last  two  numbers  of  the  Reposi 
tory.  But  it  lasted  only  two  years.  After  the  Repository  was  given  up 
in  1813,  members  of  the  old  Anthology  group  planned  a  new  maga 
zine  to  be  called  the  New  England  Magazine  and  Review  and  to  be 
edited  by  Willard  Phillips  —  then  a  young  Harvard  tutor  but  later  a 
prominent  lawyer.  This  project,  apparently  originated  by  President 
Kirkland  and  Professor  Channing,  of  Harvard,  met  with  opposition 
when  William  Tudor,  another  member  of  the  old  group,  returned 
from  abroad  with  his  head  full  of  plans  for  starting  such  a  magazine 
himself.  It  was  agreed  to  leave  the  field  to  Tudor;  and  accordingly 
the  North-American  Review  and  Miscellaneous  Journal,  a  bi 
monthly,  appeared  in  May,  1815,  with  Tudor  as  editor  and  Wells 
and  Lilly  as  publishers. 

The  new  journal  was  a  neat  duodecimo  of  one  hundred  and  forty- 
four  pages,  issued  at  four  dollars  a  year.  Its  contents  were  far  more 
varied  than  in  later  years.  It  swung  between  the  English  review  type, 
as  exemplified  by  the  Edinburgh,  and  the  more  miscellaneous  maga 
zines  such  as  the  London  Gentleman's  and  the  Philadelphia  Port 
Folio.  On  the  whole,  the  magazine  tendency  had  rather  the  better  of 
it  for  the  first  two  or  three  years. 

The  initial  number  began  with  a  series  of  comments  on  old  Ameri 
can  books  and  pamphlets,  written  by  Tudor.  This  "catalogue  rai- 
sonee"  ran  serially  through  the  numbers  of  the  first  three  years  of  the 
magazine;  two  seventeenth  century  pamphlets  on  Virginia  were  con- 

[144] 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  TEARS  [  145  ] 

sidered  in  the  first  number,  and  later  other  colonial  guidebooks  and 
such  histories  as  Hubbard's  "Indian  Wars,"  Price's  "New  England," 
and  Mather's  "Magnalia"  were  reviewed.  This  was  under  the  title 
"Books  Relating  to  America,"  and  it  was  followed,  in  that  initial 
number,  by  several  brief  letters  to  the  editor  signed  by  such  names  as 
"Scipio  Africanus,"  and  "A  Friend  to  Improvement."  One  of  these 
proposed  to  change  the  second  Sunday  service  from  afternoon  to  eve 
ning,  averring  that  "the  middle  of  the  day,  so  oppressive  in  summer, 
should  be  left  to  meditation  and  repose." 

This  apparent  surrender  of  sanctity  to  somnolence  may  have  been 
one  of  the  items  that  caused  Robert  Walsh  to  condemn  the  new 
journal  in  his  National  Gazette  as  "lax  in  its  religious  tone."  Or  per 
haps  it  was  the  letter  of  "G.G."  objecting  to  the  application  offeree 
by  officers  called  "tythingmen"  to  compel  attendance  at  church,  or 
indeed  the  request  of  another  unknown  to  be  supplied  with  a  list  of  all 
the  plays  thus  far  produced  in  America.  Certainly  none  could  object 
to  the  censorious  words  of  "Charles  Surface"  anent  "idle  gossip  and 
mischievous  tattling,"  or  to  the  remarks  of  "Aristippus"  against 
sitting  crosslegged  in  company  or  using  a  soiled  silk  handkerchief  for 
a  napkin. 

"No  gentleman,"  dogmatizes  "Aristippus,"  "is  to  lean  back  to 
support  his  chair  on  its  hind  legs,  except  in  his  own  room:  in  a  parlour 
with  a  small  circle  it  borders  on  extreme  familiarity,  and  in  a  drawing 
room  filled  with  company,  it  betokens  a  complete  want  of  respect  for 
society.  Besides,  it  weakens  the  chairs,  and  with  perseverance,  in 
fallibly  makes  a  hole  in  the  carpet." 

Other  communications  in  this  first  number  are  scientific  and  agri 
cultural  in  character.  The  letters  are  followed  by  two  mediocre 
poems  —  a  satire  and  a  descriptive  piece.  Then  comes  a  thirty- two 
page  notice  of  Baron  de  Grimm's  "Memoirs,"  much  of  it  devoted  to 
anecdotes  extracted  from  that  work.  Similar  space  is  given  to  the 
Quarterly  Review's  attack  on  American  manners  and  morals  in  its 
famous  review  of  "Inchiquin's  Letters"  —  the  article  using  James  K. 
Paulding's  contribution  to  the  controversy,  "The  United  States  and 
England,"  as  its  basis.  Thus  the  North  American  began  in  its  very 
first  number  its  participation  in  the  third  war  with  England  —  the 
paper  war. 

The  other  two  reviews  deal  with  the  political  situation  in  France, 
and  with  Lydia  Huntley's  poems.  Nine  of  Miss  Huntley's  poems  are 
printed,  which,  "if  not  sublime,"  are  at  least  allowed  to  be  "ex 
quisitely  beautiful  and  pathetick."  Miss  Huntley  (later  Mrs.  Sigour- 
ney)  came  to  be,  in  the  next  year,  a  contributor  of  original  verse  to 
the  North  American.  The  reviews  are  followed  by  four  or  five  pages 
of  meteorological  tables,  after  which  the  number  is  closed  by  fourteen 


[  146  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

pages  of  "Miscellaneous  and  Literary  Intelligence"  and  four  of 
obituaries.  The  "Intelligence"  department  contains  an  account  of 
the  induction  of  the  Reverend  Edward  Everett  (then  twenty-one  years 
old)  into  a  new  Greek  professorship  at  Harvard,  as  well  as  the  an 
nouncements  of  Boston  publishers.  The  obituaries  are  all  from 
abroad,  and  include  that  of  Lady  Hamilton,  "famous  for  her  beauty, 
her  accomplishments,  and  her  frailty." 

Practically  all  of  this  first  number,  and  a  good  three-fourths  of  the 
first  four  volumes,  were  written  by  the  editor  himself.  "I  began  it 
without  arrangement  for  aid  from  others,"  he  wrote  later,  "and  was 
in  consequence  obliged  to  write  more  myself  than  was  suitable  for  a 
work  of  this  description."  The  magazine  was  Bostonian,  Harvardian, 
Unitarian.  "My  object,"  wrote  Tudor,  "was  to  abstract  myself  from 
the  narrow  prejudices  of  locality,  however  I  might  feel  them.  I  con 
sidered  the  work  written  for  the  citizens  of  the  United  States,  and  not 
for  the  district  of  New  England." 

As  to  how  well  he  succeeded  in  giving  a  national  scope  to  the  re 
view,  opinions  may  differ.  Too  much  attention  was  given  to  Harvard, 
to  Boston  publishers,  to  New  England  writers,  and  to  the  proceedings 
of  learned  societies  in  Boston  and  Cambridge.  This  indeed  continued 
long  after  Tudor  had  relinquished  all  connection  with  the  magazine: 
the  March,  1818,  number  carried  the  entire  prospectus  of  Harvard, 
the  Harvard  Phi  Beta  Kappa  addresses  were  frequently  printed,  and 
Harvard  professors  continued  to  edit  the  journal  for  more  than  half  a 
century.  This  devotion  to  its  college  and  city  angered  its  critics,  and 
for  many  years  they  called  it  "provincial  and  parochial."  Said  the 
New  York  Broadway  Journal  in  1845:  "That  the  North  American 
Review  has  worked  religiously  for  New  England,  her  sons,  her  insti 
tutions,  her  claims  of  every  sort,  there  is  no  question."  Simms's 
Southern  and  Western  Magazine  echoed  the  accusation:  "None  can 
deny  the  exclusive  and  jealous  vigilance  with  which  it  insists  on  the 
pretensions  of  Massachusetts  Bay." 

On  the  other  hand,  Tudor  did  give  some  attention  to  other  parts  of 
the  country;  and,  as  we  shall  see,  Sparks  later  made  an  especial  effort 
to  broaden  the  geographical  scope  of  the  journal.  From  the  beginning 
foreign  affairs  were  watched  with  interest.  Tudor  even  went  so  far  as 
to  clip  generously  from  foreign  periodicals  because  of  his  lack  of 
correspondents  abroad;  fortunately  for  the  Review,  however,  scissor 
ing  did  not  become  a  permanent  policy.  And  in  one  other  respect  the 
magazine  did  achieve  a  national  scope:  it  was  a  spokesman  for  na 
tionality,  not  only  against  the  attacks  of  the  English  reviews  upon 
American  life  and  character,  but  also  in  its  advocacy  of  a  national 
literature  and  a  national  art. 

At  the  end  of  his  first  year's  editorship,  Tudor  transferred  the 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  TEARS  [  147  ] 

ownership  of  the  North  American  to  the  old  literary  group  which  had 
descended  from  Anthology  days.  This  now  consisted  of  John  Gallison, 
a  lawyer  and  newspaper  editor;  Nathan  Hale,  editor  of  the  Boston 
Daily  Advertiser;  Richard  Henry  Dana,  a  young  lawyer  of  high 
literary  promise;  Edward  T.  Channing,  another  young  lawyer  of 
literary  proclivities,  Dana's  cousin  and  a  brother  of  William  Ellery 
Ghanning;  William  P.  Mason,  a  fourth  lawyer;  Jared  Sparks,  a 
Harvard  tutor;  and  Willard  Phillips,  who  had  been  a  tutor  at  Har 
vard,  but  had  just  entered  the  practice  of  law.  F.  G.  Gray  was  not  a 
member,  but  often  attended. 

"We  held  weekly  meetings,"  wrote  Judge  Phillips  many  years 
later,  "at  Gallison's  rooms,  at  which  our  own  articles  and  those  of 
friends  and  correspondents  were  read,  criticized,  and  decided  upon. 
.  .  .  We  also  solicited  articles  upon  particular  subjects  from  literary 
friends  at  a  distance." 

Tudor  remained  as  managing  editor  without  pay  for  another  year, 
though  the  club  took  the  responsibility  of  providing  a  large  part  of 
the  reviews  and  of  supporting  the  venture  financially.  In  1817,  how 
ever,  he  severed  his  connection  with  the  journal.  It  is  frequently  said 
that  he  was  succeeded  by  Phillips;  but  it  is  certain  that,  though 
Phillips  was  the  club's  leader,  the  managing  editorship  devolved 
upon  Sparks.  Sparks  wrote  to  his  life-long  friend,  Miss  Storrow,  on 
February  21,  1817:  ".  .  .  I  have  engaged  to  take  charge  of  the 
North  American  Review  after  the  next  number,  when  Mr.  Tudor  re 
signs.  I  was  desired  to  do  this  by  several  gentlemen,  and  by  the  par 
ticular  advice  of  the  president.  Mr.  Phillips  declines,  as  it  interferes 
too  much  with  his  profession." 

Sparks  remained  editor  for  only  one  year,  although  he  was  later  to 
return  for  a  more  extended  and  distinguished  editorship;  at  this  time 
he  was  drawn  away  from  editorial  work  by  his  desire  to  devote  him 
self  to  theology.  His  impress  upon  the  North  American  of  1817-18  is 
seen  chiefly  in  the  emphasis  on  American  history  and  on  travels  in 
Africa,  in  both  of  which  fields  he  had  an  enthusiastic  personal  inter 
est. 

As  we  now  look  back  upon  Sparks'  six  bimonthly  numbers,  it  is 
easy  for  us  to  see  that  the  most  important  single  piece  in  them  was 
Bryant's  "Thanatopsis."  This  poem,  which  had  been  written  some 
six  years  earlier,  was  left  at  Phillips'  home  in  the  summer  of  1817  by 
the  poet's  father,  without  title  or  author's  name,  one  of  a  group  of 
five  submitted  for  publication.  Two  of  these,  "Thanatopsis"  and  four 
stanzas  on  death,  were  in  the  father's  handwriting;  and  Phillips,  who 
knew  both  father  and  son,  supposed  the  two  were  by  Dr.  Bryant  and 
the  other  three  by  Cullen. 

At  any  rate,  the  club  was  delighted  by  all  of  them.  When  Dana 


[  148  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

heard  "Thanatopsis"  read,  he  interrupted  with  the  exclamation, 
"That  was  never  written  on  this  side  of  the  water!"  They  gave  the 
poem  its  title  "Thanatopsis,"  but  they  supposed  the  lines  on  death 
were  intended  as  a  prelude  to  the  blank  verse  and  so  printed  them; 
and  in  the  same  number  —  that  for  September,  1817  —  they  pub 
lished  the  other  three.  All  were,  of  course,  like  everything  else  in  the 
North  American,  anonymous;  and  not  until  after  the  poems  were 
published  did  any  member  of  the  club  know  that  all  five  poems  were 
by  William  Gullen  Bryant.  "To  a  Waterfowl"  was  published  in  the 
North  American  in  March,  1818;  and  four  reviews  from  Bryant's  pen 
appeared  within  the  next  two  years. 

Channing  followed  Sparks  as  editor.  The  Review  had  been  grow 
ing  less  and  less  magazinish;  and  in  December,  1818,  it  discarded  its 
news  notes,  general  essays,  and  poetry,  and  adopted  quarterly  pub 
lication,  though  it  retained  its  subtitle  "and  Miscellaneous  Journal" 
for  three  years  longer.  The  change  was  scarcely  perceptible.  Chan 
ning  was  elected  Boylston  professor  of  rhetoric  and  oratory  at  Har 
vard  at  the  end  of  1819.  Dana,  who  had  been  his  chief  assistant, 
expected  to  be  appointed  editor  in  his  stead,  but  the  club  thought 
Dana  too  unpopular  among  probable  contributors  to  make  a  success 
ful  editor.  He  naturally  resented  this  decision,  and  he  and  Ghanning 
left  the  club.  Some  of  his  friends  also  resented  it  —  among  them 
Bryant,  who  said  that  if  the  North  American  "had  remained  in 
Dana's  hands,  he  would  have  imparted  a  character  of  originality  and 
decision  to  its  critical  articles  which  no  other  man  of  the  country  was 
at  that  time  qualified  to  give  it."  And  for  many  years  the  critics  of  the 
North  American  —  or  at  least  those  of  them  who  knew  about  this 
episode — .were  wont  to  exclaim,  "What  a  wonderful  journal  it 
might  have  been  if  only  the  poet  Dana  had  been  made  editor  back  in 
1820!" 

"DUT  IT  was  upon  a  brilliant  young  Greek  professor  that  the  choice 
fell — Edward  Everett.The  new  editor  had  gained  remarkable  pres 
tige  as  a  scholar,  orator,  and  writer.  John  Neal  wrote  in  Blackwood's 
that  Everett  was  "among  the  first  young  men  of  the  age"  —  a  high- 
sounding  but  rather  cloudy  phrase.  Hall,  of  the  Port  Folio,  was  more 
definite:  he  said  that  Everett  possessed  "a  combination  of  talents 
surpassing  anything  that  has  been  exhibited  in  the  brief  annals  of  our 
literature  in  the  person  of  any  individual."  Of  course  there  were  mal 
contents,  even  aside  from  those  displeased  by  the  slap  at  Dana;  the 
critic  W.  A.  Jones,  of  Arcturus,  called  Everett,  some  years  later,  "an 
incarnation  of  the  very  spirit  of  elegance"  —  which  sounds  well 
enough  until  one  reads  Jones'  definition  of  "elegance"  as  "safe 
mediocrity,  'content  to  dwell  in  decencies  forever.'" 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  TEARS  [  149  ] 

Everett  was  the  most  successful  of  the  Review's  editors  up  to 
that  time.  Griswold,  in  his  "Prose  Writers,"  speaks  of  the  "un 
precedented  popularity"  of  the  journal  under  Everett.  Certainly  the 
number  of  readers  increased.  Everett  himself  later  wrote  that  it  had 
five  or  six  hundred  circulation  when  he  took  it  over;  it  had  some 
twenty-five  hundred  two  years  later,  and  continued  to  increase 
slightly.  The  publishing  responsibility,  which  the  club  had  placed  in 
the  hands  of  Gummings  and  Hilliard  shortly  after  Wells  and  Lilly 
gave  it  up  in  1816,  Everett  transferred  to  his  brother  Oliver,  who  had 
a  large  family  and  was  in  indigent  circumstances. 

Everett  himself  was  a  voluminous  writer  for  the  Review.  He  heads 
the  Boston  Journal  list  of  contributors  to  the  first  forty-five  years  of 
the  Review  with  one  hundred  and  sixteen  articles.  Moreover,  he 
brought  into  his  journal  some  important  new  contributors.  Before  his 
editorship,  the  following  writers,  in  addition  to  the  members  of  the 
club  already  listed  and  the  editors,  had  done  most  of  the  writing: 
Everett  himself,  who  was  an  important  contributor  before  he  was 
made  editor;  his  brother  Alexander  H.,  a  later  owner  and  editor; 
John  G.  Palfrey,  who  was  also  a  later  editor;  ex- President  John 
Adams;  Judge  Joseph  Story;  Andrews  Norton,  the  famous  Unitarian; 
Dr.  Walter  Channing,  a  brother  of  Edward  T.;  Dr.  Enoch  Hale,  a 
brother  of  Nathan,  one  of  the  club  members;  Francis  G.  Gray,  a  Bos 
ton  lawyer  who  had  been  John  Quincy  Adams'  secretary  in  his  mis 
sion  to  Russia;  George  Ticknor,  professor  of  modern  languages  at 
Harvard;  Samuel  Gilman,  a  Harvard  tutor  who  became  the  Uni 
tarian  minister  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina;  Sidney  Willard,  pro 
fessor  of  Hebrew  at  Harvard;  Theophilus  Parsons  and  Franklin 
Dexter,  literary  Boston  lawyers;  John  Farrar,  professor  of  mathe 
matics  at  Harvard;  and  John  Pickering,  Salem  lawyer  and  philolo 
gist.  Daniel  Webster  contributed  a  few  articles,  notably  one  on 
Bunker  Hill  in  July,  1818. 

Everett  introduced  into  the  pages  of  the  North  American  such 
writers  as  Caleb  Gushing,  then  a  Newburyport  lawyer,  who  wrote  on 
topics  in  many  fields;  W.  H.  Prescott,  who  wrote  a  great  deal  of 
what  he  himself  referred  to  rather  too  contemptuously  as  "thin 
porridge"  for  the  "Old  North";  Nathaniel  Bowditch,  famous  Salem 
mathematician;  Professor  John  W.  Webster,  of  the  Harvard  chair  of 
chemistry  and  mineralogy;  Joseph  G.  Cogswell,  Harvard  professor  of 
geology  and  later  master  of  the  Round  Hill  School;  and  Charles  W. 
Upham,  a  Salem  clergyman. 

The  type  of  contents  continued  much  the  same  as  under  Sparks 
and  Channing.  The  club  was  still  active;  Everett  was  inclined  to  re 
sent  its  overlordship,  and  gradually  achieved  an  independence  from 
it.  "The  sole  editorship  gradually  passed  into  my  hands,"  he  wrote 


[  i5o  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

later.  Of  politics,  the  Review  published  comparatively  little,  except 
as  certain  social  and  economic  discussions  verged  upon  the  political. 
Perhaps  the  most  important  ventures  in  that  field  were  two  discus 
sions  published  in  1820:  Chief  Justice  Lemuel  Shaw's  article  on 
"Slavery  and  the  Missouri  Question"  appeared  in  January  of  that 
year,  and  James  T.  Austin's  "The  American  Tariff"  in  October. 

Of  science  there  was  more,  especially  in  the  field  of  geology.  F.  C. 
Gray  had  an  elaborate  review  of  "Systems  of  Geology"  in  the  number 
for  March,  1819,  which  closed  with  the  expression  of  a  hope  that  "our 
University  will  soon  be  roused  from  its  long  neglect  of  this  study."  It 
was.  Dr.  John  Ware  wrote  occasionally  on  medical  and  chemical 
subjects;  and  Gushing,  who  had  taught  natural  history  at  Harvard, 
sometimes  wrote  on  botany.  Law  was  a  well  tilled  field  in  the  Review: 
Joseph  Story,  Henry  Wheaton,  and  Theron  Metcalf  composed,  with 
the  lawyer  members  of  the  Club,  a  distinguished  legal  staff  for  the 
journal.  Travel  books  received  much  attention. 

European  literature,  society,  and  politics  occupied  hundreds  and 
eventually  thousands,  of  pages  of  the  North  American.  Everett  came 
to  his  editorship  fresh  from  European  travel  and  with  his  head  full  of 
European  ideas.  A  typical  number  —  that  for  July,  1 822  —  con 
tained  articles  on  Rousseau's  life  and  Mirabeau's  speeches  by  Alexan 
der  H.  Everett,  a  review  of  Sismondi's  "Julia  Severa"  by  Edward 
Everett,  a  disquisition  on  Italian  literature  by  James  Marsh,  a  review 
of  C.  A.  G.  Goede's  "England"  by  Edward  Brooks,  and  one  of 
"Europe,  by  a  Citizen  of  the  United  States,"  by  F.  C.  Gray.  To  show 
the  attempt  to  balance  the  foreign  cargo  by  American  materials,  the 
remainder  of  the  contents  of  the  number  should  be  listed  —  Edward 
Everett's  review  of  "Bracebridge  Hall,"  William  Howard  Gardiner's 
review  of  "The  Spy,"  J.  G.  Cogswell  on  "Schoolcraft's  Journal," 
Caleb  Gushing  on  Webster's  Plymouth  oration,  and  Theron  Met 
calf  s  review  of  Greenleaf's  "Cases  Overruled." 

That  Everett  recognized  his  neglect  of  American  themes  there  can 
be  no  question;  but  he  was  Europe-minded  in  these  years,  and  so 
were  his  associates.  When  Sparks  wrote  him  from  Baltimore  criticiz 
ing  the  Review  for  want  of  Americanism,  Everett  arranged  his  de 
fence  under  three  points: 

"First.  You  cannot  pour  anything  out  of  a  vessel  but  what  is  in  it. 
I  am  obliged  to  depend  on  myself  more  than  on  any  other  person, 
and  I  must  write  that  which  will  run  fastest. 

"Second.  There  is  really  a  dearth  of  American  topics;  the  Ameri 
can  books  are  too  poor  to  praise,  and  to  abuse  them  will  not  do. 

"Third.  The  people  here,  our  most  numerous  and  oldest  friends, 
have  not  the  raging  Americanism  that  reigns  in  your  quarter." 

This  seems  an  expression  of  unbelievable  narrowness.  A  dearth  of 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  YEARS  [  151  ] 

American  topics !  It  was  the  period  of  vast  westward  movement,  of 
the  Monroe  doctrine,  of  sectional  rivalry,  of  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise,  of  the  United  States  Bank  question  and  early  anti-slavery  agita 
tion.  American  books  were,  of  course,  few  —  though  it  was  the  day  of 
Irving,  Cooper,  and  Bryant. 

But  Everett  did  not,  after  all,  completely  forget  the  doctrine  of  the 
exploitation  of  nationality  upon  which  Tudor  and  Sparks  had 
founded  the  review  which  he  now  edited.  He  never  quite  made  it  de 
serve  the  title,  the  "North  Unamerican."  He  ran  a  series  of  articles  on 
internal  improvements  in  the  southern  states.  He  gave  attention  to 
the  work  being  done  in  American  history  and  biography.  He  pub 
lished  many  articles  on  American  science  and  American  law.  He  be 
came  one  of  the  leaders  in  the  curiously  undignified  controversy  be 
tween  English  and  American  journalists  over  the  question  of  whether 
the  Quarterly  Review's  declaration  that  Americans  were  "in 
herently  inferior"  to  Englishmen  was  sound,  defending  American 
ideals  with  vigor. 

The  North  American's  literary  criticism,  if  not  always  acute,  if 
sometimes  warped  by  the  prejudices  of  its  special  culture-group,  was 
generally  discriminating  and  honest.  There  was  no  outstanding 
literary  critic  among  the  review's  writers,  but  most  of  them  wrote  on 
belles-lettres  occasionally.  One  modern  reader  of  the  old  volumes  of 
our  review  believes  that  "the  work  of  these  men  is  so  homogeneous 
that  one  can  almost  treat  them  as  a  composite  critic."  This  is  itself 
uncritical,  though  it  is  true  that  prejudices  and  predilections  alike 
were  often  shared. 

Bryant's  few  reviews,  notable  for  their  plain  speaking  and  clear  ap 
prehension  of  standards,  and  Dana's,  not  much  more  numerous,  re 
quire  special  mention.  Everett  was  more  inclined  to  speak  of  faults 
lightly  while  he  showed  enthusiasm  for  features  he  could  praise;  like 
many  another  critic  of  the  time  he  felt  that  he  was  watering  a  grow 
ing  plant.  Franklin  Dexter  said  of  Pierpont's  "Airs  of  Palestine": 
"the  applause  it  has  received  is  given  as  much  to  animate  as  to  re 
ward."  Most  of  these  writers  plead,  sometimes  rather  naively,  for 
more  and  better  American  literature. 

Among  English  writers,  Scott  was  upheld  as  the  great  figure,  in  a 
series  of  reviews  by  various  pens.  Toward  Byron  the  attitude  was  not 
consistent:  Tudor  condemned  him  for  his  morals,  Phillips  rebuked 
his  disorder  and  disproportion,  and  A.  H.  Everett  praised  him  be 
yond  the  liking  of  many  readers.  Moore's  verse,  though  popular,  was 
said  by  Channing  to  be  "little  more  than  a  mixture  of  musick,  con 
ceit,  and  debauchery."  One  article  on  German  literature  must  be 
mentioned  —  Edward  Everett's  masterly  review  of  Goethe's  "Dich- 
tung  und  Wahrheit"  in  the  number  for  January,  1817. 


[  152  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Everett  worked  hard  at  his  editorial  task.  After  he  had  relinquished 
it,  he  wrote  to  his  successor:  "You  must  do  what  your  predecessor 
did  —  sit  down  with  tired  fingers,  aching  head,  and  sad  heart,  and 
write  for  your  life."  And  later:  "On  one  occasion,  being  desirous  of 
reviewing  Dean  Funes5  'History  of  Paraguay'  .  .  .  and  having  no 
knowledge  of  Spanish,  I  took  lessons  for  three  weeks  .  .  .  and  at  the 
end  of  that  time  the  article  was  written."  But  he  had  his  reward,  not 
only  in  the  growing  power  and  prosperity  of  his  journal,  but  in  such 
praises  as  that  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  which  declared  that  the 
North  American  was  "by  far  the  best  and  most  promising  production 
of  the  press  of  that  country  that  has  ever  come  to  our  hands.  It  is 
written  with  great  spirit,  learning,  and  ability,  on  a  great  variety  of 
subjects." 

The  praise  of  the  master. 

But  the  ambitious  Everett  could  not  be  satisfied  long  in  the  con 
finement  of  editorial  work,  and  at  the  end  of  1823  he  resigned  to  enter 
politics.  Jared  Sparks,  who  had  been  in  charge  of  a  Unitarian  con 
gregation  at  Baltimore,  was  thereupon  invited  to  return  to  the  post  he 
had  occupied  in  1817—18.  He  accepted,  on  condition  that  he  be  al 
lowed  to  purchase  the  property  from  the  Club;  the  purchase  was 
made,  at  ten  thousand,  nine  hundred  dollars  —  approximately  the 
annual  receipts  from  subscriptions.  Three  years  later  Sparks  sold  a 
quarter  interest  to  F.  T.  Gray,  his  publisher,  for  four  thousand  dol 
lars.  The  circulation  increased  slightly  throughout  Sparks'  editor 
ship:  it  was  slightly  less  than  three  thousand  in  1826,  and  about  three 
thousand,  two  hundred  in  1830.  The  last  figure  was  destined  to  re 
main  the  high  point  of  the  Review's  subscription  list  until  after  the 
Civil  War. 

TN  SPITE  of  a  circulation  that  now  seems  of  negligible  size,  the 
•*•  North  American  had  reached  a  position  of  acknowledged  power 
and  influence  in  the  country.  It  was  read  by  the  leading  men,  and 
was  available  in  all  the  important  reading-rooms.  Over  a  hundred 
copies  went  to  England,  but  it  was  banned  in  France  by  the  Bourbon 
monarchy.  A.  H.  Everett,  now  minister  to  Spain,  wrote  Sparks  that 
its  editorship  was  an  office  honorable  enough  to  "satisfy  the  ambi 
tions  of  any  individual,"  and  thought  it  better  than  the  old  Edin 
burgh.  Governor  Cass  wrote  from  Detroit:  "The  reputation  of  the 
North  American  Review  is  the  property  of  the  nation."  George  Tick- 
nor,  visiting  in  Philadelphia,  told  of  the  high  respect  for  it  there. 

Sparks,  emphasizing  American  topics  more  than  Everett  had,  re 
taining  most  of  the  older  spheres  of  interest  and  developing  new  ones, 
kept  quite  as  high  a  standard  as  his  predecessor.  The  policy  of  paying 
a  dollar  a  page  to  contributors,  adopted  in  1823  as  a  substitute  for  the 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  TEARS  [153] 

gentlemanly  custom  of  unrewarded  literary  labor,  apparently  had 
little  effect  on  the  contents  of  the  journal.  The  older,  prized  contribu 
tors  continued  —  the  Everetts,  Story  (who  refused  his  dollar  a  page), 
the  Hales,  Ticknor,  Prescott,  Gushing,  Cogswell.  George  Bancroft, 
who  had  made  his  first  contribution  just  before  Sparks  took  charge, 
became  a  valued  writer  of  articles  and  book  reviews  in  the  next  few 
years.  Lewis  Cass  wrote  some  influential  articles  on  the  American 
Indian  policy.  F.  W.  P.  Greenwood,  Sparks5  successor  as  Unitarian 
minister  at  Baltimore,  wrote  for  the  April,  1 824,  number  an  article  on 
Wordsworth  which  was  at  the  same  time  appreciative  and  discrimi 
nating;  this  was  the  first  of  several  good  essays  in  literary  criticism  by 
Greenwood,  who  was  under  contract  for  fifty  pages  a  year. 

Peter  Hoffman  Cruse,  also  of  Baltimore,  and  editor  of  The  Ameri 
can  there,  was  another  valuable  and  regular  contributor.  Other  new 
comers  were  Orville  Dewey,  Unitarian  minister  at  New  Bedford; 
Jeremiah  Evarts,  editor  of  the  Missionary  Herald;  Samuel  A.  Eliot,  a 
Boston  merchant  and  politician;  J.  L.  Kingsley,  professor  of  ancient 
languages  at  Yale;  Moses  Stuart,  professor  of  sacred  literature  at 
Andover;  and  Captain  (later  General)  Henry  Whiting.  The  Tuesday 
Evening  Club,  of  which  Prescott,  his  brother-in-law  Franklin  Dexter, 
and  W.  H.  Gardiner  were  leading  spirits,  helped  supply  material. 

Sparks  himself  wrote  much  on  South  American  countries,  and  on 
Mexico  and  Panama.  He  learned  Spanish  and  kept  up  a  correspond 
ence  with  several  men  in  South  America.  R.  C.  Anderson,  American 
minister  to  Colombia,  had  an  article  on  the  constitution  of  that  coun 
try  in  the  number  for  October,  1826.  Sparks  also  wrote  a  number  of 
articles  on  colonization  of  the  blacks.  He  gave  no  little  attention  to 
the  South;  his  article  on  Baltimore  in  January,  1825,  won  much  favor. 
He  advocated  the  hands-off  policy  with  regard  to  slavery  —  an  atti 
tude  maintained  by  the  North  American  for  many  years.  Samuel 
Gilman,  of  Charleston,  was  a  frequent  contributor. 

Travel,  history  and  biography,  political  economy,  science,  philoso 
phy,  poetry,  and  fiction  were  prominent  topics  in  Sparks'  North 
American.  European  affairs  had  less  space  than  formerly,  though 
both  Everetts  wrote  upon  them.  But  Edward  Everett  wrote  also  on 
American  questions;  his  argument  against  the  protective  tariff  in  the 
number  for  July,  1824,  became  almost  a  classic. 

Sparks  traveled  much  during  his  editorship,  and  his  editorial  work 
was  done  in  his  absence  by  Palfrey,  Gray,  or  Folsom.  During  his  so 
journ  in  Europe  in  1828,  Edward  Everett  had  charge.  In  1830 
Sparks  sold  his  three-quarters  interest  in  the  Review  to  A.  H.  Everett 
for  fifteen  thousand  dollars.  Sparks  had  become  engrossed  in  histori 
cal  projects;  Everett  had  just  returned  from  Spain,  where  he  had  been 
minister  from  the  United  States. 


[  i54  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Alexander  Hill  Everett  made  the  years  1830  to  1836  the  high  point 
of  the  North  American's  first  half  century.  He  surpassed  his  brother's 
editorship  by  keeping  the  journal  abreast  of  American  political  prob 
lems,  and  he  excelled  Sparks  by  his  more  adequate  treatment  of 
European  topics.  "In  every  respect,"  said  the  Knickerbocker  Maga 
zine  in  1835,  "the  North  American  Review  is  an  honor  to  the  coun 
try.  In  politics  it  is  liberal  and  impartial.  We  hail  it  as  the  sole  ex 
ponent,  in  its  peculiar  sphere,  of  our  national  mind,  character  and 
progress;  and  are  proud  to  see  it  sent  abroad  ...  as  an  evidence  of 
indigenous  talent,  high  moral  worth,  and  republican  feeling." 

In  the  second  number  under  the  new  editor,  Edward  Everett,  now 
a  member  of  Congress,  wrote  a  long  article  on  the  double  subject  of 
the  Webster-Hayne  debate  and  nullification;  it  filled  eighty-four 
pages.  In  January,  1831,  the  editor  discussed  "The  American  Sys 
tem"  and  Bancroft  wrote  on  "The  Bank  of  the  United  States."  The 
latter  article  was  followed  in  April  by  a  discussion  of  the  same  subject 
from  the  pen  of  William  B.  Lawrence,  of  New  York,  who  was  just  be 
ginning  a  distinguished  legal  and  political  career.  In  January,  1833, 
the  editor  printed  his  seventy-page  dissertation  on  nullification,  and 
in  July  of  that  year  a  strong  article  on  "The  Union  and  the  States." 
These  had  the  same  theme,  which  may  be  expressed  in  the  Jacksonian 
phrase  with  which  the  former  ended:  "THE  FEDERAL  UNION:  IT 

MUST  BE  PRESERVED." 

Two  years  later  the  Review  published  a  discussion  of  Mrs.  Child's 
"Appeal"  by  Emory  Washburn,  a  Worcester  lawyer,  which  con 
tained  language  which  defines  the  position  of  the  journal  at  this 
time:  "That  we  must  be  rid  of  slavery  someday  seems  to  be  the  de 
cided  conviction  of  almost  every  honest  mind.  If  in  a  struggle  for  this 
end  the  Union  should  be  dissolved,  it  needs  not  the  gift  of  prophecy 
to  foresee  that  our  country  will  be  plunged  into  that  gulf  which,  in 
the  language  of  another,  'is  full  of  the  fire  and  the  blood  of  civil  war, 
and  of  the  thick  darkness  of  general  political  disgrace,  ignominy,  and 
ruin.'  .  .  .  We  regret  to  see  the  abolitionists  of  the  day  seizing  upon 
the  cruelties  and  abuses  of  power  by  a  few  slave-owners  in  regard  to 
their  slaves  in  order  to  excite  odium  against  slave-holders  as  a  class." 

It  was  an  attempt,  not  too  successful,  to  wed  anti-slavery  idealism 
with  anti-abolition  moderation,  and  its  main  purpose  was  to  record 
the  North  American's  opposition  to  immediate  emancipation. 

The  editor,  who  had  come  home  with  well  filled  notebooks, 
wrote  much  of  European  politics,  personalities,  and  literature.  In 
April,  1830,  after  he  had  bought  the  review  but  before  he  had  wholly 
taken  over  its  editorship,  he  had  a  general  article  on  "The  Politics  of 
Europe."  In  the  next  number  he  published  his  discussion  of  "The 
Tone  of  British  Criticism,"  which  ended  the  truce  which  Sparks  had 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  TEARS  [  155  ] 

declared  between  the  North  American  and  the  English  reviews. 
Irving  made  his  sole  contribution  to  the  North  American  in  October, 
1832,  when  he  wrote  on  the  history  of  the  Northmen.  Longfellow 
made  his  debut  in  the  journal  in  April,  1831,  with  an  article  on  the 
history  of  the  French  language;  this  was  followed  by  articles  on  Ital 
ian,  Spanish,  and  Anglo-Saxon  languages,  and  a  much  more  inter 
esting  "Defence  of  Poetry"  in  January,  1832. 

Two  other  literary  critics  who  became  constant  contributors  to  the 
Review  in  the  thirties  were  the  twin  brothers,  W.  B.  O.  and  O.  W.  B. 
Peabody.  "They  were  identical,"  wrote  Palfrey  later,  "in  handwrit 
ing,  face,  form,  mien,  voice,  manner.  I  never  knew  them  apart.  Both 
were  copious  writers  in  poetry  and  prose.  Their  style  was  very 
marked  .  .  .  but  it  seemed  absolutely  the  same  in  both." 

W.  B.  O.  contributed  an  article  on  "The  Decline  of  Poetry"  to  the 
January,  1829,  number  of  the  Review;  but  his  brother  did  not  ap 
pear  until  October,  1830,  when  he  contributed  "Studies  in  Poetry." 
O.  W.  B.  was  a  brother-in-law  of  the  new  editor,  and  became  his  as 
sistant.  Though  conservative  and  lacking  in  originality,  the  Pea- 
body  s  were  capable  reviewers. 

Other  writers  of  importance  who  matriculated  in  the  North 
American  during  A.  H.  Everett's  editorship  were  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  who  wrote  on  history  and  economics;  Professor  C.  G.  Felton, 
most  of  whose  work  was  in  the  field  of  literary  criticism;  and  George 
S.  Hillard,  whose  forte  was  biography. 

It  was  shortly  before  the  end  of  Everett's  editorship  that  his  curious 
article  on  "Sartor  Resartus"  was  published  (October,  1835).  "It  was 
not  at  all  an  unfriendly  review,"  wrote  Garlyle  to  Emerson,  "but  had 
an  opacity  of  matter-of-fact  in  it  that  filled  me  with  amazement. 
Since  the  Irish  bishop  who  said  there  were  some  things  in  Gulliver  on 
which  he  for  one  would  keep  his  belief  suspended,  nothing  equal  to  it, 
on  that  side,  has  come  athwart  us.  However,  he  has  made  out  that 
Teufelsdrockh  is,  in  all  human  probability,  a  fictitious  character, 
which  is  always  something,  for  an  inquirer  into  Truth." 

It  does  seem,  indeed,  that  the  reviewer  feels  that  he  has  done  a 
tremendously  clever  piece  of  literary  detective  work  in  discovering 
that  the  character  of  Teufelsdrockh  is  fictitious.  Perhaps,  however,  he 
is  only  giving  a  rather  heavily  humorous  account  of  the  mystification 
element  in  "Sartor."  This  review  is  the  only  favorable  notice  of 
Carlyle  that  appeared  in  the  North  American,  which  was  not  kind  to 
transcendentalism. 

Throughout  his  editorship,  Everett  was  a  member  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  senate,  and  in  1836  he  sold  his  holdings  in  the  Review  and 
withdrew  from  editorial  work  on  it,  in  order  to  become  a  candidate 
for  Congress.  The  new  editor  and  chief  proprietor  was  John  Gorham 


[  156  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Palfrey,  a  Harvard  graduate,  the  successor  of  Edward  Everett  as 
minister  of  the  Brattle  Street  Unitarian  Church,  Boston,  and  now 
professor  of  sacred  literature  at  Harvard. 

Palfrey,  like  Sparks,  was  much  interested  in  historical  studies;  and 
he  sometimes  allowed  too  much  space  to  articles  in  this  favorite  field. 
In  April,  1838,  for  a  typical  example,  there  were  papers  on  "Histori 
cal  Romance  in  Italy,"  "Periodical  Essays  of  the  Age  of  Anne," 
"The  Last  Years  of  Maria  Louisa,"  "The  Early  History  of  Canada," 
"Memoirs  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,"  and  "The  Documentary  History  of 
the  Revolution."  Only  two  other  articles  appeared  in  this  number,  in 
addition  to  the  brief  "Critical  Notices"  —  one  on  a  Hebrew  lexicon, 
and  the  other  on  a  geographical  topic.  Sparks,  Prescott,  C.  F.  Adams, 
and  the  editor  himself  were  among  the  leading  contributors  of  his 
torical  material. 

Politics,  which  had  occupied  unusual  space  under  his  predecessor, 
Palfrey  saw  fit  in  the  main  to  exclude.  It  was  not  that  he  was  uninter 
ested  in  such  matters,  for  when  he  finally  withdrew  from  his  editor 
ship  it  was  to  follow  the  example  of  the  two  Everetts  and  enter  active 
politics;  but  he  apparently  thought  to  place  the  Review  outside  con 
troversy  and  partisanship. 

Next  to  history,  literature  occupied  the  most  space  in  Palfrey's 
North  American.  Professor  Felton,  who  seems  to  have  been  an  as 
sistant  editor,  wrote  frequent  reviews  of  novels,  poetry,  and  essays. 
Felton  was  not  well  equipped  for  the  criticism  of  belles-lettres;  he 
judged  too  often  according  to  standards  not  at  all  literary.  He  was  in 
the  habit  of  quoting  at  length,  which  often  made  his  articles  readable, 
but  gave  them  the  appearance  of  magazine  hack-work  rather  than 
the  dignity  of  criticism.  Palfrey  often  followed  the  same  method. 

Longfellow's  reviewing  was  sometimes  incisive  and  forthright: 
note  the  introduction  to  his  article  on  a  book  about  London:  "'Any 
amusement  which  is  innocent,'  says  Palfrey,  'is  better  than  none;  as  the 
writing  of  a  book,  the  building  of  a  house,  the  laying  out  of  a  garden, 
the  digging  of  a  fish-pond,  even  the  raising  of  a  cucumber.'  If  these 
are  the  pastimes  which  the  author  of  'The  Great  Metropolis'  has 
within  his  reach,  our  opinion  is,  that,  when  he  is  next  in  want  of  an 
innocent  amusement,  he  had  better  raise  a  cucumber." 

This  is,  at  least,  much  cleverer  than  the  great  body  of  North 
American  writing;  most  of  the  reviewers  for  that  journal  would  have 
felt  called  upon  to  go  back  to  the  founding  of  London  by  the  ancient 
Britons,  and  to  trace  its  history  laboriously  down  to  the  nineteenth 
century.  Palfrey  published  one  article  ninety  pages  in  length  — 
Gardiner's  review  of  Prescott's  "Ferdinand  and  Isabella." 

Palfrey  established  the  department  of  shorter  "Critical  Notices" 
which  continued  for  many  decades  to  fill  the  "back  of  the  book." 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  TEARS  [  157  ] 

Some  of  the  old  Club  members  continued  to  write  for  the  Review  — 
Tudor,  Phillips,  Channing,  Hale,  Edward  Everett.  But  there  were 
also  some  new  recruits,  of  whom  perhaps  the  most  important,  as 
events  turned  out,  was  Francis  Bo  wen,  Harvard  teacher  of  "in 
tellectual  philosophy"  and  political  economy,  who  wrote  chiefly  on 
philosophical  subjects  for  these  first  contributions.  Andrew  P.  Pea- 
body,  another  later  editor,  also  became  a  contributor  in  these  years; 
as  did  Henry  T.  Tuckerman,  who  was  later  to  achieve  a  high  reputa 
tion  as  literary  and  art  critic. 

Henry  R.  Cleveland,  one  of  the  "Five  of  Clubs"  at  Cambridge 
(the  other  four  being  Longfellow,  Sumner,  Felton,  and  Hillard)  was 
another  newcomer  to  the  Review,  with  J.  H.  Perkins,  of  Cincinnati, 
William  B.  Reed,  of  Philadelphia,  and  George  W.  Greene,  consul  at 
Rome.  The  first  woman  to  contribute  extensively  to  the  Review  was 
Mrs.  Therese  A.  L.  von  J.  Robinson,  wife  of  Edward  Robinson,  the 
biblical  scholar;  she  was  a  talented  writer  and  had  an  excellent 
knowledge  of  both  German  and  Russian.  Some  of  the  lectures  which 
Signer  L.  Mariotti  delivered  in  Boston  in  1840  were  printed  in  the 
Review. 

Emerson's  lecture  on  Michael  Angelo  was  published  in  the  number 
for  January,  1837,  and  one  on  Milton  in  that  for  July  of  the  next 
year.  Otherwise,  there  was  little  echo  from  the  movement  that  was 
being  called  transcendentalism.  There  was  a  deep  gulf  fixed  between 
the  group  that  supported  the  North  American  Review  and  that 
which  projected  and  wrote  The  Dial  in  1840  to  1844.  One  looks  in 
vain  for  the  names  of  Margaret  Fuller,  Alcott,  Ripley,  Parker, 
Thoreau,  and  Cranch  in  Review  indexes. 

Clearly,  the  North  American  lost  ground  while  Palfrey  was  editor. 
It  reflected  great  contemporary  movements  less  adequately;  it  prob 
ably  declined  somewhat  in  circulation.  There  is  some  truth  in  Miss 
Martineau's  arraignment  of  it,  in  her  book  on  America:  "The  North 
American  had  once  some  reputation  in  England;  but  it  has  sunk  at 
home  and  abroad,  less  from  want  of  talent  than  of  principle.  If  it  has 
any  principle  whatever  at  present,  it  is  to  praise  every  book  it  men 
tions,  and  to  fall  in  as  dexterously  as  possible  with  popular  preju 
dices." 

Even  Parkman,  a  leading  contributor,  found  the  number  for  the 
Fall  of  1837  "uncommonly  weak  and  waterish."  He  thought  this  due 
in  part  to  the  "paltry  price  The  North  pays  (all  it  can  bear,  too,  I  be 
lieve)"  yet  "for  a5  that,  the  Old  North  is  the  best  periodical  we 
have  ever  had."  The  London  Monthly  Review  presented  some  refuta 
tion  of  such  criticisms  by  cribbing  wholesale  from  its  American  con 
temporary  —  a  proceeding  which  Palfrey  exposes  with  some  glee  in 
the  number  for  October,  1842. 


[  158  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"PRANCIS  BO  WEN  purchased  the  controlling  interest  in  the  North 
•*•  American  at  the  end  of  1842.  He  had  returned  to  Cambridge  in 
1841  from  a  two  years'  European  residence.  He  was  a  man  of  broad 
learning  and  varied  interests;  but  he  was  prejudiced,  belligerent,  and 
far  too  unmindful  of  his  audience.  He  was  anti-low-tariff,  anti- 
transcendental,  anti-British.  He  retained  the  editorship,  however, 
longer  than  any  of  his  predecessors  —  a  full  decade,  whereas  the 
others  had  averaged  less  than  four  years. 

Bowen,  supported  by  Felton  who  continued  active  as  a  staff  con 
tributor,  carried  on  against  the  English  traducers  of  America,  trying 
to  beat  them  at  their  own  game.  An  article  by  the  two  called  "Mor 
als,  Manners  and  Poetry  of  England"  in  July,  1844,  begins:  "The 
earliest  notices  we  have  of  Britain  represent  it  as  fruitful  in  barbarians, 
tin,  and  lead.  It  has  continued  so  ever  since."  This  was  probably 
popular  enough;  but  when  in  January,  1850,  Bowen  published  a 
long  article  attacking  the  Hungarian  patriots  at  the  very  time  that 
Kossuth  was  being  hailed  in  America  —  and  in  Boston  itself  —  as 
an  apostle  of  human  liberty,  the  North  American  suffered  much 
criticism.  Robert  Carter,  brilliant  Boston  journalist,  published  a 
series  of  articles  in  the  Boston  Atlas  refuting  Bowen's  arguments. 
This  came  just  at  the  moment  of  Bowen's  election  to  the  McLean 
chair  of  history  at  Harvard;  and  the  overseers  of  the  college,  im 
pressed  by  the  attack  on  the  candidate's  learning,  vetoed  the  election. 

Bowen's  literary  criticism  was  also  sometimes  of  the  tomahawk 
variety.  Cooper  was  his  bete  noire.  His  first  article  in  the  North  Ameri 
can,  in  January,  1838,  had  been  a  review  of  Cooper's  "Gleanings 
from  Europe";  this  was  a  general  criticism  of  Cooper's  work,  wilfully 
oblivious  to  the  better  qualities  of  the  novelist.  This  was  followed  by 
other  reviews  of  Cooper  in  a  similar  spirit,  and  by  a  prejudiced  arti 
cle  on  the  "Naval  History"  by  A.  S.  Mackenzie.  Felton  also  wielded 
the  tomahawk,  notably  upon  William  Gilmore  Simms  in  October, 
1846. 

Bowen  had  a  taste  for  French  fiction.  He  reviewed  George  Sand, 
Paul  de  Kock,  and  Dumas  with  a  good  deal  of  appreciation  in  the 
North  American,  and  printed  a  really  distinguished  article  on  Balzac 
by  Motley  in  his  number  for  July,  1847.  Reviews  of  novels  were  com 
paratively  prominent  in  these  years.  Lowell's  first  contribution  was 
an  article  on  Fredrika  Bremer's  work.  E.  P.  Whipple  made  his  first 
appearance  in  the  Review  of  1843,  and  soon  became  its  best  reviewer 
of  fiction  and  poetry;  he  took  criticism  itself  seriously,  he  had  a  his 
torical  sense,  and  he  wrote  well. 

There  were  a  number  of  articles  in  these  years  on  charities,  includ 
ing  the  provision  for  the  blind  and  the  insane.  Papers  on  educational 
topics  and  on  military  affairs  were  not  infrequent.  Lorenzo  Sabine 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  YEARS  [159] 

wrote  occasionally  on  various  industries.  Politics  were  sometimes 
touched  upon,  though  not  regularly:  when  the  Oregon  question  came 
up  with  England,  Bowen  demonstrated  at  length  that  the  Oregon 
country  was  "a  contemptible  possession"  and  not  worth  fighting  over. 
"Slavery  in  the  United  States"  was  reconsidered  in  October,  1851,  in 
an  article  by  Ephraim  Peabody,  and  the  former  position  re-stated. 
Edward  Everett  Hale,  who  had  first  written  for  the  Review  in  1840, 
at  eighteen  years  of  age,  continued  in  its  pages.  George  E.  Ellis,  the 
Unitarian  leader,  first  appeared  there  in  1846.  Mrs.  Mary  Lowell 
Putnam  began  a  series  of  articles  on  Hungarian  and  Polish  literature 
in  1848. 

But  "the  torpid  and  respectable  North  American  Review,"  as  the 
Literary  World  called  it,  was  getting  a  bad  name  for  dullness.  An 
occasional  brandishing  of  the  tomahawk  was  not  enough  to  arouse 
any  general  interest  in  the  current  numbers.  The  men  who  had 
grown  up  with  it  still  swore  by  it,  but  the  bright  young  men  were 
more  likely  to  swear  at  it.  Said  a  satirist  in  the  Boston  Chronotype  in 
1849: 

"The  N.A.  is  a  slow  coach,  yet  it  certainly  goes  ahead,  as  any  man 
may  satisfy  himself  by  taking  a  series  of  observations  for  a  few  years. 
As  we  look  in  at  the  coach  window  at  the  present  time,  to  be  sure,  the 
passengers  seem  to  have  been  taking  a  social  nap,  and  the  driver 
probably  held  up,  not  to  disturb  their  slumbers.  Europe  is  on  fire, 
and  questions  of  moment  are  welding  hot  in  our  own  country,  yet 
this  North  American  Review  is  either  admiring  the  tails  of  tenth- 
rate  comets,  or  sprinkling  a  little  Attic  salt  without  any  pepper  on  a 
dish  of  cucumbers." 

Other  contemporaries  joined  the  chorus  of  insult:  "What  vener 
able  cobweb  is  that,"  asked  Thoreau,  who  had  boasted  that  he  never 
wrote  for  the  Review,  "which  has  hitherto  escaped  the  broom  .  .  . 
but  the  North  American  Review?" 

Bowen  was  appointed  to  a  Harvard  professorship  in  1853,  and  this 
time  unanimously  confirmed  by  the  overseers;  he  thereupon  sold  the 
North  American  to  Crosby,  Nichols  and  Company,  Boston  publish 
ers,  who  named  as  the  new  editor  Andrew  P.  Peabody,  Unitarian 
minister  in  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire.  He  too  was  appointed  to  a 
Harvard  professorship,  in  1860;  but  he  filled  out  his  decade  as  editor. 
Peabody  was  an  improvement  on  Bowen,  but  he  could  not  lift  the 
pall  of  general  dullness  that  had  settled  upon  it.  Perhaps  it  was  really 
no  duller  than  it  had  been  from  the  first,  if  it  were  possible  to  measure 
such  things  by  an  absolute  standard;  but  it  suffered  from  the  brighter 
magazines  that  sprang  up  and  won  readers  away  from  it,  while  it 
continued  to  rely  upon  the  old  ponderous  review  style  and  the  old 
ponderous  academic  subjects. 


[  160  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Readers  who  had  taxed  their  eyesight  for  forty  years  on  the  oph- 
thalmologically  vile  pages  of  the  North  American  were  encouraged, 
however,  by  a  change  to  large,  easily  read  type;  and  Norton's  Liter 
ary  Gazette  observed  with  pleasure  in  1854  that  the  new  editorship 
had  been  "marked  by  a  wider  range  of  material."  One  of  the  most 
important  of  the  early  articles  was  Sidney  G.  Fisher's  review  of 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  in  October,  1853,  which  accepted  the  doc 
trine  that  the  negro  was  "naturally  the  servant  of  the  white  man," 
found  emancipation  therefore  impossible,  and  proposed  legal  reme 
dies  for  abuses  of  slaves.  Edward  Everett  Hale's  article  on  "Kansas 
and  Nebraska,"  however,  in  January,  1855,  encouraged  the  emigra 
tion  of  "freemen"  to  that  battleground.  Two  years  later  Judge  Timo 
thy  Farrar  attacked  the  Taney  decision  in  the  Dred  Scott  case  with 
vigor  and  dignity.  As  late  as  April,  1861,  another  of  the  Review's 
labored  articles  on  the  institution  of  slavery  re-stated  the  now  tradi 
tional  position  of  the  journal  against  immediate  emancipation;  and  a 
year  later  the  exigencies  of  war  had  driven  it  only  to  a  lukewarm  as 
sent  to  an  emancipation  limited  to  blacks  fighting  in  the  union 
army.  During  the  war  there  was  a  political  or  war  article  in  nearly 
every  number,  occasionally  critical  of  the  conduct  of  military  affairs. 

In  literary  criticism,  Whipple  continued  to  do  the  North  Ameri 
can's  best  work.  Professor  C.  C.  Everett  wrote  on  Ruskin,  Mrs. 
Browning,  and  others.  A  Mrs.  E.  V.  Smith  wrote  on  Poe  in  1856;  it 
was  a  true  Bostonian  view  of  Poe,  relying  on  Griswold  for  facts  of  per 
sonal  life,  shocked  by  some  of  the  extreme  Gothic  elements  in  Poe's 
work,  admiring  "The  Raven"  and  "Annabelle  Lee."  It  ended  with 
the  tender-minded  declaration:  "Rather  than  remember  all,  we 
would  choose  to  forget  all  that  he  has  ever  written."  French  literature 
was  given  very  special  attention  for  several  years,  with  the  Countess 
De  Bury  as  the  chief  writer  in  this  field. 

There  was  some  science.  Dr.  O.  W.  Holmes  contributed  a  phsyio- 
logical  article  or  two;  Bowen  argued  against  Darwin's  new  "Origin 
of  Species"  in  April,  1860;  Wilson  Flagg  wrote  some  delightful  essays 
on  nature,  landscape  art,  and  such  topics;  Asa  Gray  wrote  on 
botany. 

More  and  more  one  finds  unknown  and  fifth-rate  writers  in  the 
pages  of  the  "Old  North."  The  new  Atlantic  Monthly  was  attracting 
some  of  the  articles  that  would  normally  have  gone  into  the  older 
periodical;  yet  writers  like  Motley,  Holmes,  Whipple,  Norton,  and 
the  new  Richard  Henry  Dana,  Jr.,  and  Thomas  Wentworth  Higgin- 
son,  with  Arthur  Hugh  Clough  from  England,  did  much  to  raise  the 
average. 

But  the  energy  and  genius  commonly  required  to  give  flying  starts 
to  as  many  as  three  new  magazines  will  usually  fail  to  rejuvenate  a 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTT  TEARS  [  161  ] 

single  moribund  journal.  What  to  do  with  a  periodical  which  Carl 
Benson  could  casually  refer  to  as  "that  singular  fossil,  the  North 
American  Review?"  Argument,  indignation  only  advertised  the  libel. 
What  the  publishers  did  do  was  to  secure  as  editors  two  men  of  very 
high  literary  standing.  James  Russell  Lowell  was  one  of  the  three  or 
four  most  important  literary  men  in  America;  Charles  Eliot  Norton 
had  won  a  reputation  as  a  writer  on  social  questions  and  on  Italian 
literature,  and  as  an  industrious  editor.  Their  work  on  the  North 
American  began  with  the  issue  for  January,  1864. 

T  OWELL  declared  later  that  all  he  had  promised  Crosby  and 
•^  Nichols  "was  my  name  on  the  cover."  What  he  actually  de 
livered  was  a  small  amount  of  editorial  work  and  two  series  of  no 
table  articles,  the  first  political  in  nature  and  the  second  literary.  His 
editorial  work  began  with  a  few  letters  to  prospective  contributors  of 
importance.  To  Motley  he  wrote  some  months  after  a  beginning  had 
been  made: 

"You  have  heard  that  Norton  and  I  have  undertaken  to  edit  the 
North  American  —  a  rather  Sisyphian  job,  you  will  say.  It  wanted 
three  chief  elements  to  be  successful.  It  wasn't  thoroughly,  that  is, 
thickly  and  thinly,  loyal,  it  wasn't  lively,  and  it  had  no  particular 
opinions  on  any  particular  subject.  It  was  an  eminently  safe  periodi 
cal,  and  accordingly  was  in  great  danger  of  running  aground.  It  was 
an  easy  matter,  of  course,  to  make  it  loyal,  even  to  give  it  opinions 
(such  as  they  were),  but  to  make  it  alive  is  more  difficult." 

Through  the  efforts  of  Norton  and  Lowell,  a  staff  of  contributors 
was  built  up  which  rivalled  that  of  earlier  years:  Edwin  L.  Godkin,  of 
The  Nation,  which  Norton  had  helped  to  found;  Emerson,  who  now 
followed  his  two  earlier  contributions  with  a  second  essay  on  "Char 
acter"  and  one  on  "Quotation  and  Originality";  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  Jr.,  whose  articles  on  railroads  were  genuinely  important; 
James  Parton,  writing  on  political  and  biographical  topics;  George 
William  Curtis,  editor  of  Harper's  Weekly;  Goldwin  Smith,  English 
publicist,  who  visited  the  United  States  in  1864  —  and  many  others 
of  equal  weight.  Payment  to  contributors  was  increased  from  two  and 
a  half  to  five  dollars  a  page ;  other  high-class  magazines  were  paying 
ten.  As  the  clever  Theodore  Tilton  remarked  of  the  Review's  rate  of 
payment  to  contributors  in  1866:  "In  this  respect  it  labors,  like 
Rabelais'  panurge  'under  an  incurable  disease,  which  at  that  time 
they  called  lack  of  money."5 

Lowell's  own  articles  were  of  prime  importance.  His  first  was  an 
estimate  of  Lincoln,  in  the  first  number  under  the  new  editorship; 
in  the  second  number  he  assesses  General  McClellan;  and  in  the 
fourth  number,  which  appeared  on  the  eve  of  the  presidential  elec- 


[  i6a  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

tion,  he  answers  his  question  "Lincoln  or  McClellan?"  in  favor  of  the 
former.  A  noble  paper  on  "Reconstruction"  came  in  April,  1865;  and 
in  July,  a  rather  discursive  essay  entitled  "Scotch  the  Snake,  or  Kill 
It?"  centered  upon  the  problem  of  the  freedmen.  Two  papers  on 
President  Johnson's  troubles  were  published  in  1866. 

"After  the  pressure  of  war-time  was  lifted,"  says  Lowell's  biog 
rapher,  "he  made  the  Review  the  vehicle  for  more  strictly  literary 
articles;  and  it  was  plainly  a  relief  to  him  to  spring  back  to  subjects 
more  congenial  to  his  nature."  The  first  of  these  was  his  review,  in 
January,  1865,  of  the  third  volume  of  Palfrey's  "History  of  New  Eng 
land";  it  is  a  remarkable  summation  of  the  New  England  creed. 
Then  followed  a  series  of  essays  on  Lessing,  Rousseau,  Dante,  Shake 
speare,  Milton,  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Dryden,  Pope,  Wordsworth, 
Carlyle,  and  Emerson  —  drawn  largely  from  his  lecture  notes  — 
which  made  the  foundation  for  Lowell's  reputation  as  a  critic. 

Norton,  besides  doing  most  of  the  editorial  work,  wrote  a  number 
of  articles  himself.  In  January,  1864,  there  was  a  paper  of  his  on 
"Immorality  in  Politics"  which  combated  the  biblical  defences  of 
slavery;  in  July,  1864,  an  article  about  the  heroism  of  soldiers  in  the 
field;  in  January,  1865,  a  paper  on  Lincoln;  and  in  the  following 
October  one  entitled  "American  Political  Ideals." 

In  October,  1864,  Ticknor  and  Fields,  leading  Boston  publishers 
and  owners  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  purchased  the  Review.  They 
were  doubtless  encouraged  to  make  the  venture  by  what  Norton 
called  the  efforts  "to  put  some  life  into  the  old  dry  bones  of  the 
quarterly."  Norton  had  high  editorial  ideals;  he  saw  before  him  "an 
opportunity  now  to  make  the  North  American  one  of  the  means  of 
developing  the  nation,  of  stimulating  its  better  sense,  of  holding  up  to 
it  its  own  ideal.  But  he  despaired  of  lightening  the  sheer  specific 
gravity  of  the  Review's  pages.  He  wrote  to  Lowell  in  July,  1864:  "The 
July  North  American  seems  to  me  good,  but  too  heavy.  How  can  we 
make  it  lighter?  People  will  write  on  the  heavy  subjects;  and  all  our 
authors  are  destitute  of  humor.  Nobody  but  you  knows  how  to  say 
witty  things  lightly." 

In  the  summer  of  1868,  Norton  resigned  to  go  abroad  on  a  literary 
mission,  and  Professor  E.  W.  Gurney  was  put  in  his  place.  At  once 
troubles  began  to  accumulate.  But  let  us  allow  Lowell's  playful  but 
vexed  letter  to  his  publisher  tell  the  story: 

"The  express  has  just  brought  your  note  asking  for  the  log  of  the 
North  American  on  her  present  voyage.  The  N.  A.  is  teak-built,  her 
extreme  length  from  stem  to  stern-post  299  feet  6  inches,  and  her 
beam  (I  mean  her  breadth  of  beam)  286  feet  7  inches  and  a  quarter. 
She  is  an  A-l  risk  at  the  Antediluvian.  These  statements  will  enable 
you  to  reckon  her  possible  rate  of  sailing.  During  the  present  trip  I 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  YEARS  [  163  ] 

should  say  that  all  the  knots  she  made  were  Gordian,  and  of  the 
tightest  sort.  I  extract  from  log  as  follows: 

"'11  July.  Lat.  42°  1',  the  first  officer,  Mr.  Norton,  lost  over 
board  in  a  fog,  with  the  compass,  caboose,  and  studden-sails  in  his 
pocket,  also  the  key  of  the  spirit-room. 

'"25  July.  Lat.  42°  10',  spoke  the  Ark,  Captain  Noah,  and  got 
the  latest  news.  26,  27,  28,  dead  calm.  29,  30,  31,  and  1  August,  head 
winds  N.N.E.  to  N.E.  by  N.  15  August.  Double  reef  in  foretopsl, 
spoke  the  good  ship  Argo,  Jason  commander,  from  Colchis  with 
wool. 

"  '17  August,  dead  calm,  Schooner  Pinta,  Capt.  Columbus,  bound 
for  the  New  World,  and  a  market,  bearing  Sou  Sou  West  half  South 
on  our  weather  bow.  Got  some  stores  from  him. 

"'20.  Capt.  Lowell  cut  his  throat  with  the  fluke  of  the  sheet 
anchor.5 

"So  far  the  log. 

"Now  for  the  comment.  Toward  the  1st  September  I  received 
notice  that  the  Review  was  at  a  standstill.  Mr.  Gurney  was  at  Bev 
erly,  ill  and  engaged  to  be  married.  I  had  not  a  line  of  copy,  nor 
knew  where  to  get  one.  I  communicated  with  G.  and  got  what  he 
had  —  viz :  two  articles,  one  on  Herbert  Spencer,  and  t'other  on 
Leibnitz.  I  put  the  former  in  type,  but  did  not  dare  follow  with  the 
latter,  for  I  thought  it  would  be  too  much  even  for  the  readers  of  the 
N.A.  By  and  by,  I  raked  together  one  or  two  more  —  not  what  I 
would  have  but  what  I  could.  ...  We  want  something  interesting,  and 
we  must  have  some  literary  notices.  .  .  ." 

A  few  days  later  he  wrote  to  Fields  again: 

"Correct  estimates  from  log  thus:  '25  September.  Lat.  42°  10'. 
Captain  Lowell  committed  suicide  by  blowing  out  his  brains  with  the 
gaff-topsl  halyards.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  fact,  as  the  2d 
officer  recognized  the  brains  for  his  (Cap.  L.'s),  he  being  familiar 
with  them. 

"'30  September.  Captain  L.  reappeared  on  deck,  having  been 
below  only  to  oversee  the  storage  of  ballast,  whereof  on  this  trip  the 
lading  mainly  consists.  What  was  thought  to  be  his  brains  turns  out  to 
be  pumpkin  pie,  though  the  second  officer  was  unconvinced  and  the 
Captain  himself  could  not  make  up  his  mind.' 

"The  fact  is  I  was  cross,  and  did  not  quite  like  being  brought  up 
with  such  a  round  turn  at  my  time  of  life.  .  .  .  Gurney  will  take 
hold  of  the  next  number,  and  it  will  all  go  right."  Gurney  did  "take 
hold,"  and  kept  hold  for  two  years,  after  which  he  surrendered  his 
grasp  of  the  tiller  to  young  Henry  Adams. 

The  new  editor  was  a  grandson  of  President  John  Adams,  who  had 
been  a  contributor  to  the  North  American  Review  in  1817;  a  son  of 


[  1 64  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Charles  Francis  Adams  the  elder,  who  had  written  more  than  a  dozen 
articles  for  the  journal;  and  a  brother  of  the  second  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  now  doing  papers  on  the  railroads  for  it.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
he  regarded  the  "Old  North  as  a  kind  of  family  heirloom";  he  wrote 
to  a  friend  that  it  was  "a  species  of  mediaeval  relic,  handed  down  as  a 
sacred  trust  from  the  times  of  our  remotest  ancestors." 

Lowell  and  Norton  had  done  much  to  restore  the  former  public 
esteem  for  it;  but  it  was  still  an  unprofitable  "relic,"  with  a  circula 
tion  of  three  or  four  hundred  and  an  annual  deficit.  Its  articles  were 
still  long  and  heavy.  Henry  Adams  wrote,  years  later,  in  his  auto 
biography:  "Not  many  men  even  in  England  or  France  could  write  a 
good  thirty-page  article,  and  practically  no  one  in  America  read 
them."  His  brother  accomplished  it  in  July,  1869,  with  "A  Chapter 
of  Erie,"  followed  by  "An  Erie  Raid"  two  years  later  —  written 
"with  infinite  pains,  sparing  no  labor,"  and  later  published  in  book 
form  for  a  larger  audience. 

In  1872  Lowell  went  abroad,  resigning  his  connection  with  the 
North  American.  Adams  was  now  left  in  full  charge;  but  he,  too,  soon 
went  off  to  Europe,  leaving  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry  to  get  out  three 
numbers  in  1872—73.  Returning  in  the  summer  of  1873,  Adams  made 
his  former  pupil  in  history,  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  assistant  editor,  and 
the  two  edited  the  journal  through  1876. 

Again  the  Review  emphasized  history.  The  editors  were  special 
ists  in  that  field,  and  they  had  help  from  Parkman,  Fiske,  Charles 
Kendall  Adams,  and  others.  The  first  number  in  1876,  contained  a 
remarkable  series  of  articles  on  American  historical  topics  to  celebrate 
the  centennial.  But  the  Review  was  not  devoted  to  history  to  the 
exclusion  of  other  material.  Indeed,  Adams  gave  it  more  bite  than  it 
had  had  for  a  long  time  —  perhaps  more  than  it  had  ever  had  before. 
Lowell  remarked  that  Adams  was  making  the  old  teakettle  think  it 
was  a  steam  engine. 

There  were  political  articles  in  nearly  every  number  by  the  editor, 
his  brother  and  others.  Charles  F.  Wingate  summed  up  the  battle 
against  the  Tammany  Ring  in  a  series  in  1874-76.  Chauncy  Wright 
wrote  his  brilliant  contributions  to  the  developing  theory  of  evolution 
for  the  North  American  in  the  late  'sixties  and  early  'seventies.  Simon 
Newcomb  wrote  on  science  and  W.  D.  Whitney  on  philology. 
Among  the  leading  writers  of  literary  criticism  were  Francis  A. 
Palgrave,  William  Dean  Howells,  Henry  James,  Karl  Hillebrand, 
and  H.  H.  Boyesen.  The  book  notices  at  the  end  of  each  number 
were  often  distinguished:  "Not  seldom,"  said  The  Nation,  such  a 
review  was  "a  literary  product  capable  of  standing  by  itself."  No 
longer  was  the  reader  in  doubt  as  to  authorship,  for  the  cloak  of 
anonymity  was  lifted  in  1868. 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  YEARS  [  165  ] 

But  it  was  all  hackwork  —  "hopeless  drudgery"  —  to  Adams.  He 
saw  no  future  in  it:  "My  terror,"  he  once  wrote  to  his  assistant,  "is 
lest  it  should  die  on  my  hands."  The  publishers,  now  James  R. 
Osgood  and  Company,  sometimes  interfered  with  the  editor,  as 
when  Adams  was  not  kind  enough  to  Bayard  Taylor's  "Faust," 
which  Osgood  had  published.  In  October,  1876,  Adams  published  a 
political  article,  "The  Independents  in  the  Political  Canvass,"  which 
advocated  support  of  Tilden  by  the  new  non-partisan  group.  To  this 
number  which  was  nearly  all  politics  and  history,  the  publishers 
attached  a  disclaimer,  and  a  notice  that  the  editors  had  resigned. 
The  young  editors  had  run  away  with  the  old  "relic"  —  though 
miraculously  they  had  almost  brought  it  to  life. 

TT  HAD  been  known  in  publishing  circles  for  several  years  that  the 
-*•  North  American  was  for  sale,  though  all  it  had  to  sell  was  a 
historic  name  and  an  annual  deficit.  It  was  offered  to  Edward  Everett 
Hale  when  he  started  Old  and  New  in  1870.  Henry  Holt  and  E.  L. 
Godkin  were  planning  to  buy  it  and  bring  it  to  New  York,  when 
Osgood  suddenly  announced  that  it  had  been  sold  to  Allen  Thorn- 
dike  Rice.  Rice  was  a  young  man  of  twenty- three,  Boston-born  but  a 
recent  graduate  of  Oxford,  wealthy,  energetic,  and  lively-minded. 
Gladstone  called  him  "the  most  fascinating"  young  man  he  had  ever 
met.  He  paid  three  thousand  dollars  for  the  old  journal,  which  now 
had  a  circulation  of  twelve  hundred.  At  once  he  made  it  a  bimonthly. 

Julius  H.  Ward,  an  Episcopal  clergyman  who  had  been  nominated 
by  Osgood  to  succeed  Adams,  was  Rice's  first  managing  editor;  after 
a  few  months  he  was  followed  by  Laurence  Oliphant,  English  author 
and  communist  then  residing  in  America.  Then  in  1878,  Rice  moved 
the  magazine  to  New  York;  and  L.  S.  Metcalf,  a  trained  journalist, 
took  charge  of  the  editorial  work.  D.  Apple  ton  and  Company  suc 
ceeded  James  R.  Osgood  and  Company  as  "publishers."  Finally,  in 
1879  the  magazine  was  made  a  monthly. 

Thus  were  the  successive  stages  of  the  revolution  accomplished. 
Boston  was  left  sorrowing  for  her  errant  daughter,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  sixty  years  men  who  had  never  entered  Harvard  Square  were 
in  charge.  But  the  significant  feature  of  the  change  was  not  geo 
graphical  or  institutional:  the  really  important  alteration  was  in  the 
contents  of  the  magazine.  Within  a  year  or  two  the  North  American 
became  a  free  forum,  welcoming  all  important  expressions  of  opinion. 
It  was  almost  as  close  to  current  events  as  a  newspaper. 

Rice's  frequently  expressed  aim  was  "to  make  the  Review  an  arena 
wherein  any  man  having  something  valuable  to  say  could  be  heard." 
If  "Old  North"  had  been  for  decades  dignified  and  retiring,  it  was 
now  plunged  bodily  into  the  very  maelstrom  of  contemporaneity, 


[  166  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

sucked  into  controversy,  bobbing  on  the  surge  of  the  latest  doctrine. 
Metcalfe,  who  was  allowed  the  fullest  liberty  in  the  selection  of 
material,  said  later:  "But  I  knew  that  there  was  a  certain  preference 
for  articles  which  tended  to  the  sensational,  and  I  allowed  myself  to 
be  considerably  influenced  by  Mr.  Rice's  undoubted  belief  in  the 
practical  business  advantage  of  such  contributions." 

This  sounds  very  commercial;  but  it  should  be  noted  that  Rice  had 
a  free  mind  himself  and  desired  to  promote  free  discussion.  Further, 
for  the  word  "sensational"  it  would  be  better  to  substitute  such  terms 
as  "unconventional"  and  "intellectually  exciting."  Of  course,  it  is 
obvious  that  Rice  thought  that  fresh  writing  on  lively  topics  would  be 
profitable:  his  whole  venture  was  founded  upon  that  belief. 

So  far  as  partisan  politics  were  concerned,  Rice  kept  the  Review 
more  or  less  neutral,  presenting  both  sides  of  most  questions.  There  is 
some  Republican  bias  to  be  seen  in  the  presidential  campaign  of 
1880,  and  some  opposition  to  Blaine  in  1884.  The  Review  was  stoutly 
against  Cleveland's  anti-protectionism,  however;  and  in  1888  it 
printed  several  articles  on  the  Republican  side  and  only  one  with 
Democratic  leanings.  By  this  time  Metcalfe  had  left  to  found  The 
Forum;  and  James  Redpath,  journalist  and  lyceum  organizer,  had 
become,  in  1886,  managing  editor  of  the  Review. 

But  political  discussion  was  not  limited  to  the  presidential  cam 
paigns,  and  every  number  included  politics  and  economics.  Radical 
views  were  presented  along  with  conservative  opinions,  and  con 
troversy  became  the  settled  policy  of  the  magazine.  For  example, 
when  Judge  Jeremiah  S.  Black  presented  the  Tilden  side  of  the 
electoral  question  in  July,  1877,  E.  W.  Stoughton,  one  of  the  Hayes 
counsel,  set  forth  the  other  side  in  the  next  number.  The  symposium 

—  a  device  for  presenting  variant  attitudes  and  views  concurrently 

—  made  its  appearance  as  the  vehicle  of  a  discussion  of  the  resump 
tion  of  specie  payments  in  November,  1877. 

The  writers  in  the  North  American's  symposia  were  authorities  — 
or  at  least  well  known.  In  the  one  on  resumption,  for  example,  there 
were  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  Sherman,  Former  Secretary  Mc- 
Gulloch,  Congressmen  William  D.  Kelley  and  Thomas  Ewing,  and 
the  well  known  economist  David  A.  Wells.  There  was  no  waiting 
upon  voluntary  contributions  now;  the  editors  chose  their  men  and 
offered  adequate  remuneration  —  and  thus  were  able  to  present  a 
monthly  array  of  names  known  to  all  their  readers.  Among  political 
matters  frequently  discussed  were  the  silver  question,  civil  service 
reform,  and  the  third  presidential  term.  The  "Southern  question" 
was  reviewed  by  Southerners  as  well  as  by  Northerners. 

Related  industrial  and  social  problems  crowded  the  pages  of  the 
new  North  American.  "A  Striker"  and  the  president  of  the  Pennsyl- 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  YEARS  [  167  ] 

vania  Railroad  appeared  in  the  same  number  —  September,  1877. 
"Land  and  Taxation:  a  Conversation"  was  the  joint  production  of 
two  frequent  contributors  —  Henry  George  and  David  Dudley 
Field.  An  attack  on  woman  suffrage  by  Parkman  in  October,  1879, 
drew  forth  a  symposium  of  replies  in  the  next  number  by  Julia  Ward 
Howe,  T.  W.  Higginson,  Lucy  Stone,  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  and 
Wendell  Phillips;  a  rejoinder  by  Parkman  followed  in  January,  1880. 
Many  articles  on  women  and  their  position  appeared  in  the  'eighties: 
their  dress,  health,  occupations,  religion  were  discussed. 

Religion  ranked  next  to  politics  in  Rice's  magazine.  Beginning 
with  an  article  on  "Reformed  Judaism"  by  Felix  Adler  in  July,  1877, 
discussion  ran  the  gamut  of  belief  and  unbelief.  A  symposium  on 
"The  Doctrine  of  Eternal  Punishment"  in  March,  1878,  and  another 
on  "What  is  Inspiration?"  in  September  of  the  same  year  enlisted 
some  of  the  leading  clerical  writers  of  America.  The  question  of 
evolution  was  linked  with  theology  in  "An  Advertisement  for  a  New 
Religion  by  an  Evolutionist"  in  July,  1878,  and  in  the  symposium 
"Law  and  Design  in  Nature"  in  June,  1879.  J.  A.  Froude's  two-part 
article  on  "Romanism  and  the  Irish  Race  in  the  United  States"  was 
balanced  by  Cardinal  Manning's  "The  Catholic  Church  and 
Modern  Society."  Sunday  observance  was  discussed  more  than  once. 

Freethinkers  and  infidels  were  represented  repeatedly  in  the  late 
'seventies,  and  in  August,  1881,  Robert  G.  Ingersoll  and  Jeremiah  S. 
Black,  two  famous  lawyers,  debated  the  Christian  religion.  Black, 
who  had  shown  some  temper  in  the  debate,  showed  more  when  he 
was  unable  to  get  his  rejoinder  to  the  second  part  of  IngersolPs  argu 
ment  into  the  same  number  with  it;  he  refused  to  go  on,  but  wrote  an 
angry  letter  to  the  Philadelphia  Press  calling  the  North  American  "a 
treacherous  concern."  Loud  were  the  protests,  indeed,  against  the 
Ingersoll  articles  from  all  quarters.  "The  North  American  Review 
has  sold  out  to  Ingersoll,"  said  the  Chautauquan,  and  predicted  a 
great  loss  of  subscriptions.  The  Rev.  George  P.  Fisher  contributed  a 
reply  to  Ingersoll  which  he  said  was  not  a  reply,  in  the  number  of 
February,  1882. 

Hostilities  were  renewed  five  years  later  when  Henry  M.  Field, 
editor  of  The  Evangelist,  addressed  an  open  letter  in  the  North  Ameri 
can  to  the  now  famous  agnostic.  The  debate  which  followed  was 
climaxed  by  a  review  of  the  subject  by  William  E.  Gladstone.  Glad 
stone  was  one  of  the  greatest  figures  in  the  English-speaking  world, 
and  the  publication  of  a  paper  on  Christianity  by  him,  as  a  part  of 
this  debate,  was  one  of  the  greatest  "hits"  ever  made  by  the  Review. 
One  other  religious  series  excited  some  interest:  in  it  various  well 
known  persons  gave  reasons  for  the  faith  that  was  in  them.  It  began 
in  1886  with  Edward  Everett  Hale's  "Why  I  Am  a  Unitarian"  and 


[  i68  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ran  for  four  years.  It  included  even  "Why  I  Am  a  Heathen,"  by 
Wong  Chin  Foo;  and  it  ended  with  Ingersoll's  "Why  I  Am  an 
Agnostic"  in  1890,  with  its  aftermath  of  replies  by  Canon  Farrar, 
Lyman  Abbott,  and  others. 

More  literary  phases  were  not  entirely  neglected.  Three  of  Emer 
son's  later  lectures  were  published  in  1877-78,  Bryant's  essay  on 
Cowley  in  May,  1877,  and  Taylor's  on  Halleck  in  the  following 
number.  Whitman  contributed  several  essays  in  the  'eighties.  The 
Shakespeare-Bacon  controversy  was  exploited  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
same  decade,  Ignatius  Donnelly  being  the  chief  exploiter.  The  tradi 
tional  section  of  brief  book  notices  was  abandoned  in  1881;  a  later 
review  department  was  conducted  through  1887-89. 

The  drama  was  given  some  attention,  from  Boucicault's  articles, 
which  began  in  1878,  onward.  Richard  Wagner  contributed  a  two- 
part  autobiographical  article  in  1879.  There  were  articles  on  science 
(especially  on  the  evolutionary  hypothesis),  on  educational  problems, 
on  art,  and  on  foreign  affairs.  The  list  of  foreign  contributors  was  led 
by  Gladstone,  whose  first  article,  on  "Kin  Beyond  the  Sea"  in  Sep 
tember,  1878,  was  followed  by  perhaps  a  dozen  more  in  later  years; 
Froude,  Trollope,  Bryce,  and  Goldwin  Smith  were  other  English 
writers  prominent  in  the  magazine  in  the  'eighties.  The  North  Amer 
ican  also  caught  the  fever,  then  epidemic  among  the  magazines,  of 
publishing  Civil  War  memoirs;  it  printed  General  Beauregard's 
reminiscences,  and  a  number  of  letters  dealing  with  the  struggle. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  Rice's  magazine  had  incalculably  more 
variety  than  the  "Old  North."  It  even  went  so  far,  in  April,  1888,  as 
to  publish  a  lively  defence  of  prizefighting  by  Dufneld  Osborne.  A 
typical  number  in  the  early  'eighties  (February,  1881)  contained  the 
following  leading  articles:  "The  Nicaragua  Canal,"  by  U.  S.  Grant; 
"The  Pulpit  and  the  Pew,"  by  O.  W.  Holmes;  "Aaron's  Rod  in 
Politics"  (advocating  public  education  in  the  South),  by  A.  W. 
Tourgee;  "Did  Shakespeare  Write  Bacon's  Works?"  by  J.  F.  Clarke; 
"Partisanship  in  the  Supreme  Court,"  by  Senator  John  T.  Morgan; 
an  installment  of  her  "Ruins  of  Central  America"  (result  of  an  ex 
pedition  partially  financed  by  the  Review),  by  Desire  Charnay; 
"The  Poetry  of  the  Future,"  by  Walt  Whitman. 

The  magazine's  circulation  advanced  to  seven  thousand,  five 
hundred  by  1880,  and  to  seventeen  thousand  by  the  date  of  Rice's 
untimely  death  in  1889.  It  was  then  making  its  owner  an  annual 
profit  of  fifty  thousand  dollars.  Rice  left  a  controlling  interest  in  the 
Review  to  Lloyd  Bryce,  who  had  been  a  friend  of  his  at  Oxford ;  and 
Bryce  immediately  purchased  the  remaining  stock. 

Bryce  was  a  Democrat  in  politics,  while  his  predecessor  had  been  a 
Republican;  but  the  Review  was  kept  nonpar tisan  —  or  rather  bi- 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  TEARS  [  169  ] 

partisan,  for  it  continued  to  present  both  sides  of  most  controversial 
questions.  The  new  editor  was  a  man  of  wealth,  a  novelist,  a  liberal, 
and  a  member  of  Congress  from  New  York.  From  Rice's  regime  he 
inherited  the  journalist,  William  H.  Rideing,  as  managing  editor;  and 
David  A.  Munro,  who  had  received  his  earlier  training  in  Harper's 
publishing  house,  was  later  added  to  the  staff. 

There  was  little  or  no  change  of  policy  in  the  Review  under  Bryce. 
The  same  emphasis  on  controversy,  the  same  use  of  the  symposium 
and  joint  debate,  the  same  exploitation  of  problems  from  forum  and 
market-place  continued  to  characterize  the  magazine.  There  was, 
perhaps,  more  discussion  of  foreign  affairs  than  formerly,  especially 
by  the  middle  'nineties.  In  the  number  for  January,  1895,  for  ex 
ample,  exactly  half  the  pages  are  devoted  to  foreign  questions.  One  of 
the  big  features  of  Bryce's  earlier  editorship  was  the  debate  on  free 
trade  by  Gladstone  and  Blaine,  in  the  number  for  January,  1890;  it 
was  followed  by  articles  on  the  same  subject  by  Roger  Q.  Mills  and 
Joseph  S.  Morrill.  Another  was  the  debate  between  the  Duke  of 
Argyll  and  Gladstone  on  home  rule  for  Ireland  in  August  and  Octo 
ber,  1892.  Gladstone's  series  on  immortality  in  1896  also  attracted 
wide  attention.  Other  leading  English  writers  were  Balfour,  Mc 
Carthy,  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  James  Bryce,  Labouchere,  Lang,  and 
Gosse. 

Prominent  American  topics  were  the  powers  of  the  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  discussed  by  Speaker  Reed,  a  favorite 
contributor,  and  others;  labor  questions,  on  which  T.  V.  Powderly, 
also  a  frequent  writer  for  the  Review,  was  an  authority;  free  silver,  in 
the  discussion  of  which  the  editor  seems  to  have  given  the  advantage 
to  the  gold  men;  immigration,  Catholicism,  military  and  naval 
armaments,  life  insurance,  the  Columbian  Exposition,  and  Hawaiian 
annexation.  When  the  Venezuelan  question  came  up,  James  Bryce 
and  Andrew  Carnegie,  both  frequent  writers  on  Anglo-American 
relations,  discussed  it  with  sanity  and  insight. 

The  Review  came  more  and  more  to  cultivate  a  clever  and  some 
what  sophisticated  type  of  essay  on  contemporary  social  life,  man 
ners,  and  fads.  Gail  Hamilton  had  become  a  regular  contributor  in 
1886.  Ouida  came  a  few  years  later;  and  Max  O'Rell,  Jules  Claretie, 
Sarah  Grand,  and  Grant  Allen  wrote  such  pieces.  The  servant-girl 
problem,  the  man  and  the  girl  "of  the  period,"  courtship  and  mar 
riage,  and  the  amusements  and  sports  of  the  day  furnished  unlimited 
opportunities  for  this  kind  of  writing.  More  serious  was  the  discussion 
of  divorce,  which  was  analyzed  in  more  than  one  symposium.  Mark 
Twain,  who  had  once  called  the  Review  "grandmotherly,"  now 
became  one  of  its  most  valued  contributors;  most  of  his  writing  done 
for  its  pages  was  basically  serious,  and  even  bitter  —  though  com- 


[  iyo  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

rnonly  winged  with  barbs  of  wit.  His  "In  Defense  of  Harriet  Shelley" 
and  his  "Fenimore  Cooper's  Literary  Offences"  belong  to  the  middle 
'nineties.  The  chief  literary  critics  were  Howells,  Gosse,  and  Lang; 
but  the  magazine  did  not  make  a  practice  of  reviewing  new  books. 

By  1891  the  Review  had  reached  its  high  peak  of  circulation,  at 
seventy-six  thousand  with  a  subscription  price  of  five  dollars.  In  that 
year  the  Review  of  Reviews  said:  "It  is  unquestionably  true  that  the 
North  American  is  regarded  by  more  people,  in  all  parts  of  the 
country,  as  at  once  the  highest  and  most  impartial  platform  upon 
which  current  public  issues  can  be  discussed,  than  is  any  other 
magazine  or  review."  It  lost  circulation,  however,  in  the  hard  times 
of  the  middle  'nineties. 

In  1895  the  publishing  company  was  reorganized;  and  the  next 
year  Bryce  turned  the  editorship  over  to  Munro,  who  conducted  the 
magazine  for  the  next  three  years.  Though  still  filled  with  valuable 
material,  the  North  American  under  Munro  declined  in  freshness 
and  vitality.  There  were  few  exciting  articles,  and  some  tendency  to 
get  in  a  rut  and  stay  there.  Cuba  was,  of  course,  an  absorbing  topic; 
and  the  expansion  question  occupied  many  pages.  General  Miles' 
review  of  the  Spanish  War  was  one  of  the  best  features.  Symposia 
were  less  frequent,  and  the  Review's  pages  were  no  longer  an  arena 
for  single  combats  and  group  melees. 

HPHEN  in  1899,  Colonel  George  Harvey  bought  a  controlling 
•*•  interest  in  the  North  American  and  became  its  editor.  Harvey 
had  been  managing  editor  of  Pulitzer's  World  in  the  early  'nineties 
and  had  later  made  a  fortune  in  electric  railways.  The  next  year 
after  he  purchased  the  North  American  he  became  president  of  the 
reorganized  Harper  and  Brothers,  but  he  did  not  publish  his  maga 
zine  under  the  aegis  of  that  house.  He  did  become  editor  of  Harper's 
Weekly  from  1901  to  1913,  however,  conducting  the  two  periodicals 
simultaneously. 

Harvey's  first  number  —  that  for  July,  1899  —  opened  with  a  long 
poem  by  Swinburne.  He  continued  to  publish  poems,  usually  rather 
long  ones,  throughout  his  editorship.  He  published  Henley  and 
Yeats  in  his  first  year;  but  probably  the  most  famous  poem  he  ever 
printed  was  Alan  Seeger's  "I  Have  a  Rendezvous  with  Death"  in 
October,  1916. 

For  the  first  year  or  two,  the  topic  which  was  featured  was  Eng 
land's  war  with  the  Boers,  which  was  treated  from  the  various  inter 
national  points  of  view  by  European  and  American  writers.  The 
Philippine  question  was  also  prominent;  Harvey  made  a  special 
effort  to  put  the  Filipino  attitude  before  the  American  people.  In 
October,  1900,  there  was  an  old-fashioned  symposium  on  the  presi- 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  YEARS  [  171  ] 

dential  issues;  but  Bryan's  articles  before  and  after  the  election  give 
the  Review  of  this  year  a  definitely  Democratic  bias. 

In  the  meantime  there  had  been  much  foreign  material  —  not 
only  foreign  politics,  but  European  letters  and  art.  Tolstoy,  d'An- 
nunzio,  and  Maeterlinck  became  contributors.  H.  G.  Wells'  "Antici 
pations:  An  Adventure  in  Prophecy,"  a  serial  of  1901,  is  even  more 
interesting  a  third  of  a  century  after  its  writing  than  it  could  have 
been  to  its  first  readers  in  the  Review.  A  "World  Politics"  depart 
ment  was  begun  in  1904,  with  correspondence  from  the  leading 
European  capitals. 

Three  of  the  chief  American  contributors  in  these  years  were 
Howells,  James,  and  Mark  Twain.  Mark  wrote  his  famous  "To  the 
Person  Sitting  in  Darkness"  for  the  February,  1901  number.  It  was 
one  of  the  bitterest  excoriations  of  "civilization"  ever  printed;  it 
made  a  great  furor,  and  called  for  a  second  address  "To  My  Mission 
ary  Critics"  in  a  later  number.  His  "Chapters  from  My  Autobiog 
raphy"  appeared  in  1906  and  1907. 

It  was  three  years  before  that  that  the  North  American  serialized 
Henry  James'  "The  Ambassadors"  —  its  first  work  of  fiction  in 
nearly  a  century  of  existence.  James  was  far  from  popular,  but  he 
seemed  to  belong  to  the  North  American:  "He  has  come  to  his  own," 
said  Life,  "and  his  own  has  taken  him  in."  "The  Ambassadors"  was 
followed  by  Howells'  "A  Son  of  Royal  Langbrith,"  and  Conrad's 
"Under  Western  Eyes"  appeared  in  1910-11.  At  about  this  time 
Harvey  became  interested  in  the  promotion  of  Esperanto  as  an 
international  language,  and  for  several  years  he  published  supple 
ments  to  the  Review  designed  to  forward  this  cause. 

The  campaign  of  1904  found  the  North  American  clearly  sym 
pathetic  to  the  candidacy  of  Theodore  Roosevelt,  though  trying,  as 
usual,  to  present  both  sides  of  the  contest  to  its  readers.  Trusts  were 
the  theme  of  many  articles  in  these  years.  A  notable  symposium  dis 
cussed  the  Supreme  Court  decision  in  the  Standard  Oil  Case  in  1911. 
But  in  1906,  Harvey  had  turned  against  "T.  R."  and  his  high-handed 
ways. 

In  that  year  the  Review  became  a  fortnightly,  and  began  a 
regular  editorial  department  called  "The  Editor's  Diary."  It  was  a 
very  readable  department;  its  editorial  comments  ranged  from  dis 
quisitions  on  constitutional  questions  to  essays  on  such  topics  as 
"The  Theory  and  Practice  of  Osculation."  Thus  Harvey  made  the 
North  American,  as  his  biographer  observes,  a  personal  organ  for  the 
first  time  in  its  history.  A  new  department  of  book  reviews  was  begun 
at  the  same  time.  But  fortnightly  publication  lasted  only  a  year, 
after  which  the  Review  once  more  became  a  monthly.  The  editorial 
department,  however,  was  retained  until  1909.  The  campaign  of 


[  172  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

1908  did  not  interest  the  Review  very  much;  indeed  there  was  a 
distinct  decline  in  the  enterprise  and  liveliness  of  the  magazine 
beginning  at  about  this  time.  The  circulation  appears  to  have  been 
stationary  at  about  twenty-five  thousand.  A  larger  type  was  adopted 
at  the  end  of  1910,  but  the  printing  was  sometimes  inferior. 

In  April,  1906,  Harvey  had  published  an  article  called  "Whom 
Will  the  Democrats  Next  Nominate  for  President?"  in  which  Mayo 
W.  Hazeltine  suggested  the  name  of  Woodrow  Wilson,  of  Princeton 
University,  for  that  office.  This  was  more  than  six  years  before 
Wilson's  actual  nomination,  but  only  a  month  after  Harvey  had 
first  conspicuously  pointed  out  his  availability.  The  North  American, 
with  Harper's  Weekly,  continued  to  build  up  the  Wilsonian  can 
didacy.  In  the  quadrennial  presidential  candidates'  symposium  in 
October,  1912,  there  were  articles  for  Taft,  Roosevelt,  and  Wilson; 
but  editorially  the  Review  was  Democratic. 

A  year  later  Harvey  began  the  custom  of  making  the  first  article  in 
his  magazine  an  editorial  pronouncement,  usually  political.  He  was 
greatly  disturbed  by  Wilson's  handling  of  the  Mexican  situation,  and 
by  the  war  against  Villa;  and  the  campaign  of  1916  found  him 
supporting  Hughes  and  condemning  Wilson  for  meddlesomeness  in 
Mexico,  for  violations  of  the  merit  system,  and  for  what  he  called  in 
his  summing-up  article  in  October,  "a  fatuous  timidity  in  dealing 
with  belligerent  [European]  powers." 

The  Review  was  a  fighting  magazine  during  the  war.  "Our  chief 
duty  before  God  and  man  is  to  KILL  HUNS,"  Harvey  shouted. 
Impatient  of  monthly  publication,  he  began  the  North  American 
Review's  War  Weekly,  later  called  Harvey's  Weekly  (1918-20). 
He  disapproved  of  Wilson's  "fourteen  commandments,"  his  work  at 
Versailles,  and  the  formation  of  the  League.  He  supported  Harding 
in  1920,  and  was  the  next  year  appointed  ambassador  to  Great 
Britain. 

While  he  was  abroad,  Elizabeth  B.  Gutting,  who  had  been  an  as 
sociate  editor  since  1910,  edited  the  Review.  Lawrence  Gilman,  who 
had  been  with  the  magazine  since  1915,  continued  as  literary  and 
dramatic  critic;  and  Willis  Fletcher  Johnson  was  an  associate  editor. 
David  Jayne  Hill,  an  authority  on  international  questions,  wrote 
many  of  the  leading  articles.  Harvey  returned  to  New  York  in  time 
to  take  part  in  the  presidential  canvass  of  1924;  his  leading  North 
American  campaign  article  was  entitled  "Coolidge  or  Chaos."  The 
chief  feature  of  the  following  year  consisted  of  two  symposia  on 
"Five  Years  of  Prohibition" ;  to  the  one  in  June  the  drys  contributed, 
and  the  wets  were  heard  in  September. 

When  Harvey  came  home  in  1924,  he  found  the  Review's  circula 
tion  down  to  thirteen  thousand.  In  the  Fall  of  that  year  he  changed  to 


ONE  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY  YEARS  [  173  ] 

quarterly  publication,  at  four  dollars;  this  took  the  magazine  off  the 
news-stands,  which  have  seldom  been  friendly  to  quarterlies. 

In  1926  the  Review  was  purchased  by  Walter  Butler  Mahony, 
lawyer  and  financier,  who  made  it  a  monthly  again  in  the  following 
year,  and  much  more  attractive  typographically.  Associated  with 
him  in  the  editorship  have  been  Miss  Gutting,  who  remained  until 
1927;  W.  F.  Johnson,  who  continued  as  a  contributing  editor;  Her- 
schel  Brickell,  who  became  the  magazine's  chief  reviewer  in  1927; 
and  Kenneth  Wilcox  Payne,  who  came  to  the  Review  in  1928  from 
McClure's  and  other  magazines. 

The  magazine  under  Mahony  was  devoted  to  articles  on  social, 
economic,  political,  literary  and  art  problems,  with  a  few  short 
stories  in  each  number  and  departments  of  book  reviews,  light  essays, 
and  finance.  It  printed  many  well  known  writers,  but  in  general  it 
followed  the  policy  of  seeking  new  and  various  talent  rather  than 
repeating  authors.  In  an  era  of  social,  financial  and  political  upset, 
the  Review  kept  an  extraordinarily  even  keel,  swinging  far  neither  to 
the  right  nor  to  the  left,  interpreting  situations  and  tendencies  quietly 
and  interestingly  month  after  month.  Among  its  political  commenta 
tors  were  Vice-President  Dawes,  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Jr.,  and  Sena 
tors  Albert  C.  Ritchie,  Atlee  Pomerene,  Arthur  Capper,  and  George 
H.  Moses.  Such  English  writers  as  Dean  W.  R.  Inge,  V.  Sackville- 
West,  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton,  and  Siegfried  Sassoon  contributed  to  its 
pages;  and  Conrad  Aiken,  Amy  Lowell,  Lincoln  Steffens,  Struthers 
Burt,  and  John  Erskine  lent  distinction  to  its  tables  of  contents  from 
time  to  time. 

The  Review  now  comes  under  the  control  of  John  H.  G.  Pell, 
known  for  his  writings  on  early  American  history,  and  a  great-great- 
grandson  of  Edward  T.  Channing,  third  editor  of  the  magazine.  The 
associate  editor  is  Richard  Dana  Skinner,  formerly  dramatic  editor  of 
The  Commonweal  and  a  great-grandson  of  that  Richard  Henry 
Dana  who,  as  so  many  thought,  should  have  been  the  Review's 
fourth  editor.  Quarterly  publication,  which  has  been  the  rule  for  a 
little  more  than  half  the  magazine's  history,  is  resumed. 

HP  HE  hundred  and  twenty  years  of  the  North  American  Review 
•*•  were  cut  precisely  in  half  by  the  revolution  effected  in  its  policies 
by  Allen  Thorndike  Rice  in  1876.  In  its  first  sixty  years  it  was  digni 
fied,  ponderous,  respected;  its  list  of  contributors  contained  the 
names  of  most  New  Englanders  who  were  prominent  in  literature, 
scholarship,  and  public  affairs.  Though  it  occasionally  tried  to  widen 
its  horizons,  it  was  definitely  provincial,  maintaining  close  relation 
ships  with  Harvard  College  and  Boston.  It  was  often  really  scholarly, 
though  sometimes  an  encyclopaedic  dullness  masqueraded  as  learning 


[  174  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

in  its  pages.  Under  Sparks  and  the  Everetts  it  achieved  a  fair  cir 
culation  for  the  times,  after  which  its  business  affairs  declined  —  in 
spite  of  the  brilliance  of  Lowell,  Norton,  and  Adams  —  past  helping 
by  anything  short  of  radical  change. 

After  such  a  change  in  1876,  it  became  a  scintillating  and  lively 
journal,  featuring  many  of  the  world's  great  names,  and  filled  with 
clash  of  opinion  on  politics,  economics,  science,  religion,  and  social 
problems.  It  reached  its  peak  of  prosperity  in  the  'eighties,  though  it 
was  later  distinguished  through  the  long  editorship  of  George  Harvey 
for  its  political  influence  and  its  international  outlook.  Its  total  file, 
amounting  now  to  approximately  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand 
pages,  is  a  remarkable  repository,  unmatched  by  that  of  any  other 
magazine,  of  American  thought  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  quarter. 


Book  Reviews 

OF  TIME  AND  THE  RIVER.  By  Thomas  Wolfe.  ScribneSs,  $3.00. 

TA7HEN  Thomas  Wolfe  published  "Look  Homeward  Angel"  in 
"  *  1929,  he  was  hailed  as  the  novelist  of  young  America.  Critics 
congratulated  themselves  on  having  discovered  an  author  who  was 
capable  of  portraying  "the  American  Scene."  Here  was  the  long 
needed  fury,  gusto,  tradition,  and  breadth  of  canvas.  And  not  since 
Whitman  had  America  been  so  sincerely  thundered  in  every  word  of 
a  long  work. 

These  critics  were  partially  right.  Wolfe  was  a  sensitive  young 
man  who  had  written  an  autobiographical  novel  covering  the  first 
nineteen  years  of  his  life  in  Asheville  and  later  at  Chapel  Hill.  He  had 
completed  the  first  part  of  his  education,  had  severed  his  childhood 
family  ties,  and  was  prepared  to  face  the  world  and  graduate  work  at 
Harvard.  We  leave  him  with  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  struggle  of 
his  sensitive  nature  to  substantiate  itself  in  the  face  of  his  vital,  garish, 
and  unsensitive  family.  In  the  course  of  his  development  the  whole 
town,  a  great  number  of  individuals,  and  beyond  them  the  whole 
South,  have  had  a  perceptible  influence  on  his  personality.  There  are 
a  few  characters  who  are  not  easy  to  forget  —  his  mother  and  father, 
his  brother  Ben,  and  a  girl  he  momentarily  loves,  Laura  James.  But 
as  for  the  American  Scene,  he  has  not  covered  it,  because  it  cannot  be 
covered.  What  is  still  better,  he  has  not  even  attempted  it.  He  has 
vividly  portrayed  the  section  of  America  with  which  he  is  familiar. 

One  of  the  most  unfortunate  tendencies  in  American  criticism, 
which  dates  back  even  before  the  Local  Colorists  of  the  'seventies  and 
'eighties,  is  the  demand  for  national  consciousness  in  creative  writing. 
Pressure  is  put  on  the  young  artist  to  shout  America;  he  is  made  con 
scious  of  his  slightest  use  of  a  continent-wide  theme,  and  unless  he  is 
a  great  artist  he  succumbs  to  geographical  jingoism.  Paul  Engle,  last 
summer's  poet,  was  an  example  of  a  young  writer  who  had  become  a 
victim  of  this  tradition.  "Of  Time  and  the  River"  shows  that  Wolfe 
has  not  altogether  escaped  from  the  influence  of  the  critics.  In  an 
orgiastic  passage  on  page  155,  with  the  aid  of  purple  adjectives  and 
italics,  he  covers  the  country  from  Maine  to  southern  California  and 
back  again. 

"It  is  the  place  of  the  immense  and  lonely  earth,  the  place  of  fat 
ears  and  abundance  where  they  grow  cotton,  corn,  and  wheat,  the 
wine-red  apples  of  October,  and  the  good  tobacco."  This  goes  on  for 
pages  and  pages  until  America  becomes  a  gigantic  hoax  rather  than  a 
real  and  living  country. 


[  176  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

This  fragment  of  prose  fiction  which  takes  Thomas  Wolfe,  or 
Eugene  Gant,  from  his  twentieth  to  his  twenty-fifth  year,  can  be 
called  neither  prose  nor  fiction  —  for  the  characters  from  Jack  Cecil  to 
Professor  Baker  have  been  changed  very  little  from  actual  life,  and 
the  style  often  approaches  rhapsodic  free  verse.  The  author  shows  a 
great  mastery  of  conversation  and  an  ability  to  delineate  unforget 
table  characters  in  a  few  vivid  strokes.  Then  he  goes  on  for  pages  and 
pages  to  describe  them  further,  or  they  drop  out  of  the  story  forever. 

The  result  is  that  the  principal  characters,  with  the  exception  of 
old  Gant,  who  is  a  truly  heroic  figure,  tend  to  become  caricatures. 
Bascom  Pentland,  Eugene's  Boston  uncle,  starts  as  a  Dickensonian 
New  Englander  and  ends  a  madman.  Even  the  middle-class  people 
who  live  in  Melrose  grow  absurd  when  they  defend  their  middle-class 
attitude.  The  hordes  of  men  and  women  who  have  had  a  molding  in 
fluence  on  Wolfe's  life  seem  in  a  large  part  disturbing  and  irrelevant. 
During  his  adolescence,  these  influences  were  more  perceptible,  and 
these  characters  were  indispensable.  But  with  his  first  maturity,  their 
importance  becomes  less  and  less.  Eugene  is  a  colossal  egoist  and  is 
more  apt  to  influence  than  to  be  influenced.  Thus  the  necessity  for 
them  is  destroyed,  and  he  often  appears  in  the  role  of  a  newspaper 
reporter  rather  than  of  a  developing  personality. 

These  characters  spring  from  all  classes  of  society,  from  the  Shanty- 
Irish  to  the  very  wealthy  on  the  Hudson,  or  to  Oxford  undergradu 
ates.  They  are  sometimes  given  significance  by  having  some  strange 
fascination  for  Eugene,  but  what  this  is  cannot  be  discovered.  In  the 
case  of  the  Coulstons,  the  mysteriously  disgraced  Oxford  family, 
Eugene  finds  himself  in  sympathy  with  the  daughter.  They  declare 
their  affection  for  one  another  and  part;  there  is  no  explanation,  only 
the  impression  of  some  vague  external  force  at  work. 

Wolfe  does  much  of  his  best  writing  of  Eugene's  childhood  in  retro 
spect.  There  is  a  fine  scene  of  his  brother  Ben  presenting  him  with  his 
first  watch,  and  another  of  Gant,  the  master-mason  at  work.  Prob 
ably  the  greatest  incident  in  the  whole  book  is  the  death  of  Gant,  but 
it  is  also  unbearable  because  of  its  length.  The  scene  of  his  helpless 
ness  during  a  haemorrhage  is  probably  one  of  the  most  moving  in 
modern  fiction,  but  a  reader  is  capable  of  only  so  much  strong  emo 
tion.  The  tension  is  too  great,  and  his  death,  when  it  finally  does 
come,  instead  of  being  a  tragedy  is  almost  a  relief.  But  the  dignity  of 
the  situation  is  saved  by  a  consideration  of  his  dead  hands  which  are 
expressive  of  his  character  both  in  life  and  death. 

Even  in  this  scene  his  words  carry  too  much  impact;  he  has  set  the 
timbre  too  high.  Instead  of  being  vivid  his  words  are  like  a  confused 
roar.  When  he  says,  "Spring  came  that  year  like  a  triumph  and  like  a 
prophecy  ...  it  sang  and  shifted  like  a  moth  of  light  before  the 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [i??] 

youth,  but  he  was  sure  that  it  would  bring  him  a  glory  and  fulfill 
ment  he  had  never  known,"  there  is  not  much  left  for  him  in  describ 
ing  a  circumstance  a  little  out  of  the  ordinary. 

Bernard  De  Voto  has  called  "Of  Time  and  the  River"  an  ex 
ample  of  manic  depression,  infantile  regression,  and  a  compulsion 
neurosis.  This  is  hardly  literary  criticism,  but  there  are  certainly 
many  symptoms  of  all  of  these.  Eugene  on  his  first  coming  to  Harvard 
is  driven  to  reading  with  a  maniacal  fury.  Later,  in  Dijon,  when  he 
has  left  his  weak  friend  Starwick,  he  writes  with  the  same  impetus  for 
fourteen  to  twenty  hours  a  day.  People  never  talk  in  quiet  voices, 
they  shout,  howl,  or  cackle  at  the  slightest  happening,  and  the  steak 
at  Durgin  Park  is  described  with  the  same  finality  as  his  dead  father's 
hands. 

But  Wolfe  cannot  be  dismissed  a  psychological  freak.  In  many 
isolated  passages  he  shows  his  ability  to  be  of  a  high  order.  When  he 
has  finished  this  novel  of  his  life,  for  it  appears  from  the  title  page  that 
there  are  many  volumes  forthcoming,  he  may  have  objectified  his 
experience  to  the  extent  of  being  able  to  create  many  inter-related 
characters,  which  will  be  the  better  for  having  been  founded  on  so 
many  sensitively  absorbed  personalities. 

With  the  widening  of  his  experience  his  view  of  America  will  be 
come  less  self-conscious,  and  if  he  shows  the  same  common  sense  that 
he  used  in  fleeing  to  Europe  from  lionization  this  last  March,  there  is 
no  reason  why  he  cannot  go  farther  toward  expressing  Romantic 
America  than  any  novelist  living  today. 

JOHN  SLOCUM 

HE  SENT  FORTH  A  RAVEN.  By  Elizabeth  Madox  Roberts.  Viking, 
$2.50. 

nPWO,  at  least,  of  the  genuinely  distinguished  novels  of  our  genera- 
•*-  tion  have  been  written  by  Elizabeth  Madox  Roberts,  one  histori 
cal,  the  other  contemporary,  and  both  of  her  native  Kentucky. 
These  are  "The  Great  Meadow"  and  "The  Time  of  Man,"  the  sec 
ond  of  which  has  just  now  made  its  appearance  in  the  Modern 
Library  with  a  fine  introduction  by  J.  Donald  Adams. 

With  this  securely  established  reputation,  both  keen  interest  and 
high  expectations  awaited  the  publication  of  Miss  Roberts'  recent 
work  of  long  fiction,  "He  Sent  Forth  a  Raven."  It  is  a  book  which  she 
polished  and  repolished  for  five  years,  and  in  seeking  a  reason  for  its 
obscurities  I  thought  that  perhaps  it  lost  its  edge  somewhere  along 
the  way,  as  the  writer's  subtly  suggestive  method  became  more  and 
more  refined  in  working  it  over.  For  it  must  be  said  that,  in  spite  of 
certain  obvious  good  qualities  —  such  as  the  mellifluous  prose,  in 


[  i78  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

which  the  brief  descriptive  passages  have  the  evocative  power  of 
poetry  —  Miss  Roberts  has  drifted  in  this  novel  so  far  from  the 
world  of  common  things  and  average  experiences  that  it  will,  I  be 
lieve,  puzzle  more  readers  than  it  satisfies  and  edifies. 

In  some  of  her  minor  fiction  and  in  a  good  many  of  her  short 
stories  this  tendency  has  been  patent  for  a  long  time,  and  it  is,  per 
haps  inherent  in  the  kind  of  fusion  of  poetry  and  realism  that  is  the 
core  of  her  method.  My  own  feeling  is  that  the  essential  truth  of  life 
is  best  realized  in  art  by  this  very  blending  which,  when  most  success 
ful,  makes  for  writing  of  profound  power  to  move  and  stir  both  the 
intellect  and  the  emotions. 

But  if  we  may  take  it  as  a  fair  statement  that  an  author  should 
make  his  meaning  reasonably  clear,  should  put  his  intention  into 
such  terms  as  do  not  make  severe  and  unreasonable  demands  upon 
the  sensibility  and  understanding  of  the  reader,  I  think  there  is  no 
other  verdict  to  be  reached  upon  "He  Sent  Forth  a  Raven"  than  that 
it  is  an  artistic  failure,  and  that  Miss  Roberts  runs  into  the  serious 
danger  of  losing  her  following  if  she  continues  in  her  present  vein. 
This  would  be  a  loss  to  literature  of  no  mean  proportions  and  one  to 
be  greatly  deplored.  For  without  the  completion  of  the  circle  — 
without,  that  is,  appreciation  and  understanding  from  the  reader  — 
the  writer's  task  is  not  done,  nor  can  it  bring  the  right  sort  of  satisfac 
tion  merely  because  the  creator  himself  understands  his  work. 

Because  of  my  profound  respect  for  Miss  Roberts'  talents  I  read 
the  present  novel  twice  over  and  with  concentrated  care;  at  the  end  I 
was  still  baffled.  A  glimpse  of  meaning  here  and  there,  some  recogni 
tion  of  the  symbolism,  some  suspicion  that  perhaps  I  knew  what  the 
author  was  trying  to  say  was,  to  be  entirely  frank,  the  most  I  was  able 
to  get.  There  is  always  a  chance  that  a  reviewer  may  be  insensitive  to 
a  certain  writer's  manner  of  speech,  but  after  I  had  completed  my 
second  reading  of  "He  Sent  Forth  a  Raven,"  I  read  a  number  of  re 
views  and  found  that  the  issue  was  either  entirely  evaded  or  else  the 
reviewer  admitted  that  while  he  liked  Miss  Roberts'  writing  her  aim 
was  not  disclosed. 

One  of  the  features  of  the  book  that  lifts  it  at  once  from  the  realm 
of  reality  is  the  strangeness  of  its  characters.  Stoner  Drake,  about 
whom  the  story  is  built,  is  a  successful  farmer,  a  man  of  strength  and 
ability,  who  upon  the  death  of  his  second  wife  takes  an  oath  that  he 
will  never  set  foot  upon  the  ground  again.  His  peculiarity  is  not 
limited  to  this  quirk.  On  one  occasion  when  his  daughter,  Martha, 
returns  from  a  horseback  ride  with  her  sweetheart,  he  abuses  her 
beyond  measure,  and  the  lover  withdraws  like  a  soundly  whipped 
dog,  leaving  the  girl  completely  at  the  mercy  of  her  psychopathic 
parent.  One  of  Drake's  companions  is  a  carpenter  who  has  written 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [179] 

a  book  on  the  universe  called  "The  Cosmograph"  and  who  talks  such 
wild  and  high-flown  language  as  would  mark  him  at  once  as  madder, 
perhaps,  even  than  Drake.  Still  another  is  a  queer  wandering 
preacher  named  Johnny  Briggs. 

The  period  covered  is  the  early  years  of  the  century  up  through  the 
war,  and  there  is  a  running  commentary  on  farming  in  its  relation  to 
world  affairs  —  a  sort  of  brief  history  of  Kentucky  agriculture  which 
can  hardly  be  considered  of  any  importance  for  itself.  Miss  Roberts 
shuttles  back  and  forth  in  time  in  a  manner  that  does  not  make  her 
book  any  easier  to  understand;  it  is  an  effort  to  keep  up  with  these 
flittings  which  do  not  seem  to  have  any  other  sound  reason  except 
that  the  narrative  is  badly  organized. 

Sharing  the  honors  of  the  center  of  the  stage  with  Drake  is  his 
granddaughter  Jocelle,  and  it  is  the  developing  of  this  girl,  charming, 
but  as  a  character  very  shadowy,  which  gives  the  tale  what  unity 
it  has.  Jocelle  is  the  raven,  Drake  the  Noah;  it  is  his  habit  to  fire  odd 
questions  at  her.  At  the  last  she  wins  through  the  old  man's  tyranny 
to  her  lover,  Logan  Treer,  who  is  a  conscientious  objector  in  the  war, 
and  who  is  about  to  take  over  the  farm  when  the  book  closes. 

As  an  example  of  what  I  mean  by  Miss  Roberts'  slantwise  and 
somewhat  too  subtle  suggestiveness,  let  me  cite  just  one  example  — 
the  strange  family  has  just  been  discussing  the  war: 

"Jocelle  did  not  speak  to  them  then,  loving  all  of  them  in  quiet. 
Logan  and  Walter  had  taken  off  their  leather  jackets  and  they  trailed 
them  under  an  arm.  Logan's  leather  vest  was  pulled  open.  He  would 
shake  his  head  now,  his  hat  off,  tossing  back  long  imaginary  locks.  He 
seems  to  be  riding  a  cantering  animal,  making  laughter  with  Martha. 
Out  of  his  centaur  mouth  gracious  words  were  flowing.  He  was  riding 
unshod,  on  swift  horse  limbs,  little  feet,  thin  shanks,  strong  thighs,  his 
hair  thrown  up  in  a  wind.  He  was  standing,  feet  drawn  together, 
Chiron,  the  good  centaur,  chanting  a  line,  outstanding  before  Martha 
who  was  slowly  dying,  a  lovely  girl,  the  sun  bright  now  on  her  dark 
hair  and  his  rippling  mouth: 

'Give  me  a  spark  of  Nature's  fire, 
That's  all  the  learning  I  desire; 
And  tho'  I  drudge  thro5  dub  and  mire 
At  plough  .  .  .  plough  .  .  .  plow.  .  .  .' 

'What's  dub?' 

'Dub's  Scotch.  Scotch  for  water  hole.  Drudge  through  a  Kentucky 
water-hole,  by  George !' 
'What  George?' 

'The  Father  of  the  Country,  by  Hec!' 
'What  Hec?' " 


[  180]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Miss  Roberts  has  the  right,  of  course,  to  create  a  world  of  her  own 
and  to  people  it  with  her  own  creatures;  the  trouble  here  is  that  she 
has  written  about  the  everyday  world  in  such  a  way  as  to  cause  more 
confusion  and  puzzlement  than  pleasure. 

HERSGHEL  BRIGKELL 


HEAVENS  MY  DESTINATION.   By    Thornton    Wilder.   Harper's, 
$2.50. 

"George  Brush  is  my  name, 
America's  my  nation 
Ludington's  my  dwelling  place 
And  Heaven's  my  destination." 

'""PHUS  goes  the  doggerel  about  the  hero  who  was  dubbed  by  glow- 
•*•  ing  advance  critics  as  the  Don  Quixote  of  this  tale.  But  a  second 
quotation  from  one  of  Mr.  Wilder's  other  books  furnishes  the  key  to 
his  evangelical  character:  "Of  all  forms  of  genius,  goodness  has  the 
longest  awkward  age."  The  reader  must  judge  for  himself  the  degree 
of  satirical  interest  in  this  study.  Many  of  the  moralistic  ideas  personi 
fied  in  Brush  can  be  traced  to  the  Oxford  movement,  but  Brush,  un 
like  Buchman,  thoroughly  dislikes  organized  religion. 

Readers  of  Mr.  Wilder's  work  can  never  forget  him.  They  may  not 
be  in  tune  with  his  classical  philosophy  but  they  will  be  hard  put  to 
gainsay  the  grave  beauty  of  his  style.  His  comic  interpretation  of 
human  beings  in  universal  situations,  his  concern  with  man's  destiny, 
provoke  endless  discussion.  Like  the  ancient  Greeks  whom  he  so  ob 
viously  admires,  Thornton  Wilder  cultivates  art  without  loss  of  manli 
ness.  He  is  a  "lover  of  the  beautiful  and  simple  in  his  tastes,"  as  is 
shown  in  "The  Woman  of  Andros,"  and  "The  Bridge  of  San  Luis 
Rey." 

In  "Heaven's  My  Destination,"  the  author  returns  to  the  manner 
of  his  earlier  novel,  "The  Cabala."  He  is  aiming  the  shaft  of  his  in 
sight,  not  this  time  at  a  decadent  group  of  Romans  with  a  precious 
culture,  but  at  goodness  in  raw  undigested  proportions,  as  exemplified 
in  the  person  of  a  lanky  midwestern  American.  Yet  the  book  is  satire 
which  does  not  quite  come  off.  The  writer's  heart  is  not  really  in  it. 
Since  he  has  penned  more  of  a  fantasy  than  satire,  this  portrait  of  a 
zealot  does  not  add  to  Mr.  Wilder's  stature  as  an  artist.  It  adds  im 
measurably,  however,  to  his  reputation  as  a  profound  humorist  and 
ironist. 

George  Brush  is  a  human,  enigmatic  and  funny,  yet  peculiarly  un 
lovable  figure,  who  wishes  desperately  to  be  taken  seriously.  Spicy 
and  often  raucous  dialogue  punctuates  the  peregrinations  of  this 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  181  ] 

young  reformer  who  sells  school  text-books  through  the  corn  belt 
while  he  tries  to  imitate  Gandhi.  His  behavior  disgusts  the  vulgar,  be 
wilders  the  worldly  and  annoys  the  defenders  of  the  law.  He  pursues 
a  doggedly  righteous  course,  defacing  the  blotters  of  second  rate  hotels 
with  Biblical  texts.  He  prays  in  the  aisles  of  smokers.  He  suffers  arrest 
again  and  again  for  such  weird  offences  as  practising  his  belief  in 
Voluntary  Poverty  on  a  failing  bank,  by  reviling  the  system  of  savings 
for  depositors.  He  attempts  to  influence  newspapermen  and  their 
rowdy  companions  to  keep  to  the  straight  and  narrow.  He  hands  over 
money  to  a  hold-up  man  for  Ahimsa's  sake.  He  treats  the  inmates  of  a 
bawdy  house  with  the  respect  usually  accorded  the  pupils  of  a  young 
ladies'  seminary. 

Nevertheless  the  most  hard-boiled  people  he  encounters  find  some 
thing  in  him  to  respect.  Perhaps  it  is  the  frightening  sincerity  of  the 
logical  man  with  the  closed  mind  —  which  shakes  their's  and  the 
reader's  confidence  in  the  conventional  view  of  a  madman,  tilting 
vainly  at  the  windmills  of  petty  vice,  graft,  hypocrisy  and  impurity. 
Only  twice  is  Brush  himself  badly  shaken.  Once  when  he  tries  to 
make  an  honest  girl  of  a  protesting  young  farmer's  daughter  whom 
he  has  gone  so  far  as  to  seduce,  and  discovers  that  the  Great  Ameri 
can  Home  of  his  dreams  cannot  be  brought  about  by  sheer  good  will. 
And  another  time  when  he  refuses  to  debate  agnosticism  versus  faith 
with  the  doubting  Thomas  Burkin.  Here  is  Brush,  "I  think  I  know 
what  you  meant  by  saying  I  was  a  prig  —  I  don't  mean  to  be  one. 
That  is  the  only  way  I  can  be,  and  will  hold  on  to  my  main  ideas 
about  life."  He  illustrates  the  truism  that  reformers  and  fanatics  are 
seldom  thinkers.  They  cannot  afford  that  luxury.  He  plays  anew  the 
eternal  pathetic  comedy  of  a  small  personality's  effort  to  reach  the 
sublime  when  it  is  capable  only  of  the  ridiculous  and  irritating. 

The  book  is  stimulating  because  it  contains  the  essence  and  spirit 
of  the  vast  Middle  West,  unlike  the  literature  of  regionalism  which 
has  been  sweeping  the  country  like  a  dust  storm.  The  author  accom 
plishes  in  a  few  bold  strokes  what  scores  of  meticulous,  lengthy  writers 
have  failed  to  encompass  in  thousands  of  words,  a  feeling  of  the  main 
stream,  if  not  street  of  the  American  scene.  This  he  conveys  by  a  style 
as  functional  and  sheer ly  communicative  as  can  be  conceived.  He  re 
veals  the  soulless  characteristics  of  much  of  the  United  States.  He 
places  a  finger  on  the  hair-trigger  of  what  fellow  writers  like  Thomas 
Wolfe  seem  to  be  groping  for  in  this  country  —  a  sort  of  spiritual 
security  that  is  lacking  in  our  civilization. 

The  picture  of  Camp  Morgan,  a  summer  recreational  spot,  run  by 
a  hearty  politician  who  takes  a  great  fancy  to  Brush  is  one  of  the  out 
standing  scenes.  The  burlesqued  court-room  vignette  is  no  less  out  of 
life.  Twin  wonders  are  left  in  the  reader's  mind.  They  revolve  around 


[  i8a  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Brush  and  his  uncompromising,  unflinching,  literal  Christianity,  and 
around  the  fact  that  a  classical  scholar  and  individualist  should  have 
produced  this  puzzling  book. 

ELEANOR  L.  VAN  ALEN 


TIME  OUT  OF  MIND.  By  Rachel  Field.  Macmillan,  $2.50. 

r|~'HAT  nostalgic  mood  whose  influence  is  apparent  in  so  much  of 
•*•  our  recent  American  fiction  dominates  Rachel  Field's  well 
wrought  but  very  conventional  novel,  "Time  Out  of  Mind."  Told 
in  the  first  person  by  its  heroine,  Kate  Fernald,  and  purporting  to  be 
the  story  of  her  youth  as  she  remembers  and  writes  it  down  in  her  old 
age,  it  is  also  to  some  extent  the  story  of  the  Maine  village  of  Little 
Prospect,  and  the  decay  of  the  New  England  shipping  industry. 

In  the  days  when  Kate  Fernald,  a  stocky,  sandy-haired  child  of 
ten,  and  her  widowed  mother  first  came  to  Fortune's  Folly  —  the  big 
house  which  was  the  home  of  the  most  important  people  in  Little 
Prospect  —  Major  Fortune  was  still  trying  to  close  his  eyes  to  the  fast- 
increasing  menace  of  steam.  Through  more  than  one  generation  the 
name  of  Fortune  had  stood  for  great  clipper  ships  whose  towering 
masts  were  familiar  sights  in  every  large  port,  and  the  stern,  proud 
major  refused  to  realize  that  such  ships  now  belonged  to  the  past. 
Defiantly  he  built  the  splendid  clipper  Rainbow,  the  scene  of  whose 
launching  is  one  of  the  best  in  the  book.  She  took  the  water  by  moon 
light:  "Flaring  torches  had  been  lit  and  in  the  yellow,  flickering  light 
the  shipyard  looked  vast  and  strange."  Perhaps  that  flickering  light 
had  something  to  do  with  the  accident  that  marked  her  for  what  she 
was  —  a  doomed  ship,  despite  her  "long,  lovely  shape,"  and  the 
white  wonder  of  her  sails. 

The  novel  is  principally  concerned  with  Kate  herself,  and  her  rela 
tions  to  the  major's  children,  Nat  and  Rissa.  Different  as  they  were, 
these  two  were  yet  bound  together  by  "the  same  delicate,  high  pride," 
which  one  shrewd  woman  called  "the  Fortune  in  them."  Nat,  one  of 
those  musical  genuises  so  numerous  in  fiction,  delicate,  neurotic,  a 
weakling,  was  the  very  core  of  his  sister's  heart;  while  Kate  fell  in 
love  with  him  almost  immediately,  though  she  remained  unaware  of 
it  until  years  later.  Rissa  wanted  to  mold  Nat  in  accordance  with  her 
own  strong  will  —  she  would  give  him  his  desire,  but  it  must  be  in  her 
way,  not  his;  Kate  would  rejoice  to  give  him  anything  he  wanted, 
without  question  or  qualification.  Their  two  ways  of  love  inevitably 
clashed,  though  not  before  Nat  married  the  usual  pretty,  rich  and 
shallow  girl,  whose  demands  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  go  on  with 
his  music,  and  so  thwarted  the  career  brilliantly  begun. 

As  children,  the  three  had  been  closely  bound  together;  but  once 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  183  ] 

they  began  to  grow  up,  differences  quickly  appeared.  It  was  not  only 
that  Kate  was  poor,  and  her  mother  little  more  than  an  upper  servant 
at  Fortune's  Folly,  nor  that  she  had  gone  to  the  village  school,  while 
Nat  and  Rissa  were  carefully  educated.  It  was  that  while  the  For 
tunes  belonged  to  those  who  do  not  precisely  take,  but  rather  casu 
ally  accept,  Kate  was  altogether  of  those  who  give.  Of  a  rare  and  fine 
loyalty,  both  to  places  and  to  persons,  she  gave  herself  without  stint, 
feeling  richly  rewarded  by  the  mere  acceptance  of  her  gift.  Only  once 
in  her  life  did  she  leave  Little  Prospect;  that  was  when  Nat  conducted 
a  great  orchestra  through  the  stirring  measures  of  his  "Ship  Sym 
phony,"  and  for  keeping  her  promise  to  be  there  she  paid  with  the 
security,  the  husband,  the  home  and  children  she  might  have  had. 

Through  all  these  years,  changes  came  to  Little  Prospect  —  the 
changes  which  came  to  many  New  England  coast  villages.  What  had 
been  a  ship-building,  sea-faring  community  evolved  into  one  whose 
principal  business  was  catering  to  the  summer  sojourners,  the  "rusti- 
cators,"  as  they  were  called  at  first,  in  retaliation  for  their  habit  of 
referring  to  the  residents  as  "natives."  Land  prices  soared,  especially 
for  lots  along  the  once  despised  rocky  shore  with  its  view  of  the  sea, 
and  the  shrewder  folk  profited  as  did  that  Jake  Bullard  whom  Kate 
once  promised  to  marry.  These  changes  provide  the  background  for 
unchanging  Kate,  who  suffered  when  she  saw  the  trees  sacrificed, 
and  the  road  cut  like  a  gash  in  the  side  of  the  mountain.  The  book  is 
full  of  exquisitely  simple  pen-pictures  of  that  out-of-doors  world 
wherein  Kate  was  most  at  home:  "A  feeling  of  frost  was  in  the  air  and 
the  mingled  smell  of  low  tide  and  fallen  apples.  In  a  few  moments  the 
sun  would  be  dropping  behind  Jubilee  Mountain,  but  it  struck  into 
the  spruce  woods  as  I  set  my  feet  to  the  path,  touching  those  brown 
trunks  with  peculiar  light.  They  burned  red  as  if  each  were  a  hollow 
shaft  of  fire." 

Like  its  heroine,  the  novel  is  thoroughly  old-fashioned,  romantic, 
packed  with  sentiment,  slow-moving,  much  too  long,  altogether  con 
ventional  in  its  incidents  and  their  development.  The  narrative 
method  employed  not  merely  justifies  but  necessitates  a  good  deal  of 
this,  but  it  does  seem  a  pity  that  the  events  should  follow  stereotyped 
patterns  quite  so  closely.  In  its  emotional  quality,  the  book  is  often 
fine  and  moving;  it  has  soundness  of  purpose,  a  sincerity  and  depth 
of  sympathy  which  are  something  more  than  praise- worthy.  Yet  its 
very  considerable  power  over  the  reader's  imagination  is  due  to  less 
any  of  these  than  to  its  gusto  for  life,  the  sense  it  gives  of  that  warm 
blooded  enjoyment  of  living  in  which  almost  all  of  our  modern  fiction 
is  so  noticeably  lacking.  At  a  time  when  the  literary  spirit  seems 
steeped  in  despair,  it  is  not  strange  that  there  should  be  enthusiastic 
welcome  for  a  very  well-written  novel  which  regards  the  general 


[  184  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

worth- whileness  of  life  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  not  as  a  stupid,  naive 
delusion. 

LOUISE  MAUNSELL  FIELD 

ROBERT  E.  LEE.  By  Douglas  S.  Freeman.  Scribner's,  4  volumes,  $15.00. 

seventy  years,  Robert  E.  Lee  was  viewed  by  his  numerous 

biographers  through  the  rose-tinted  glasses  of  romance.  Douglas 
S.  Freeman,  in  his  "Robert  E.  Lee;  a  Biography,"  has  focused  on 
him  the  pure  white  light  of  reality,  revealing  the  man  as  he  was 
rather  than  as  we  would  like  to  have  had  him.  In  completeness  and 
detail  the  four  volumes  of  "Robert  E.  Lee"  can  be  matched  in  Ameri 
can  biography  only  by  Beveridge's  "Life  of  John  Marshall."  They 
equal  that  superb  biography  not  only  in  quantity  but  in  quality. 

When  the  first  two  volumes  were  published  in  the  Fall  of  1934,  it 
was  evident  that  the  definitive  life  of  Lee  had  been  written;  the  ap 
pearance  of  the  last  two  volumes  in  February,  1935,  placed  "Robert 
E.  Lee"  among  the  foremost  biographies  of  our  literature. 

In  1915  Mr.  Freeman  was  asked  by  the  publishers  to  write  an 
authoritative  biography  of  the  military  leader  of  the  Confederacy. 
He  accepted  the  invitation  unaware  of  the  enormity  of  the  task  that 
had  been  set  for  him.  Upon  examining  the  published  lives  of  Lee, 
Freeman  found  that  little  original  research  had  been  done  on  the  sub 
ject,  that  few  of  the  public  or  private  collections  of  Civil  War  mate 
rial  in  the  South  had  been  examined,  that  Lee's  life  before  and  after 
the  Civil  War  had  been  almost  entirely  neglected,  that  Lee's  earlier 
biographers  were  either  inexperienced  in  the  writing  of  military  his 
tory,  or  had  depended  upon  the  accounts  written  by  Lee's  com 
manders  after  the  war.  Lee  wrote  nothing  concerning  the  war  him 
self. 

The  task  of  collecting  and  arranging  the  material,  of  digesting  and 
passing  judgment  upon  the  official  and  unofficial  accounts  of  the  bat 
tles  in  which  Lee  participated,  and  of  writing  the  narrative  occupied 
all  the  free  time  of  Mr.  Freeman  between  1915  and  the  publication  of 
the  first  volumes  in  1934. 

The  thoroughness  with  which  the  author  tells  the  story  of  Lee's  life 
and  career  is  by  no  means  its  only  recommendation.  In  the  strictly 
biographical  parts  of  the  book,  Freeman  adopted  the  best  methods  of 
life-writing,  interpretive  narrative,  reinforced  by  Lee's  own  letters 
and  reports  wherever  possible.  It  is,  however,  in  the  narration  of 
Lee's  part  in  the  Civil  War  that  Mr.  Freeman  has  made  a  definite 
contribution  to  the  technique  of  military  biography  and  history.  He 
has  placed  his  reader  at  Lee's  side  throughout  the  war,  giving  him 
the  same  information  that  Lee  had  regarding  the  size  and  movements 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  185  ] 

of  the  Federal  army  from  1861  to  1865.  By  this  method,  the  reader 
can  use  his  own  judgment  as  to  the  success  or  failure  of  Lee  as  a 
general.  This  method  is  not  only  striking  in  its  originality,  it  makes 
the  reader  an  actual  participant  in  each  battle. 

The  first  two  volumes  carry  Lee's  story  from  his  birth  in  1807  to 
the  loss  of  his  principal  lieutenant,  Thomas  J.  (Stonewall)  Jackson  at 
Chancellorsville  in  May,  1863.  In  the  first  volume  we  are  given  a  re 
markable  insight  into  the  details  of  his  early  life  and  the  formation  of 
his  character.  The  son  of  "Light-Horse"  Harry  Lee  of  Revolutionary 
fame,  Robert  E.  Lee  was  born  a  soldier  and  a  Virginia  gentleman.  If 
we  add  to  this  inheritance  the  fact  that  he  married  a  daughter  of 
George  Washington  Parke  Custis,  a  grandson  of  Martha  Washington, 
we  can  readily  understand  the  traditions  and  the  standards  that  went 
to  the  formation  of  Lee's  character.  He  fashioned  his  own  life  as  far  as 
possible  on  that  of  Washington,  though  his  sectional  point  of  view,  his 
blind  loyalty  to  his  state  would  never  have  swerved  the  first  President 
from  his  primary  allegiance  to  his  country. 

Lee  received  the  best  education  available  in  Virginia  in  his  youth. 
Latin,  Greek  and  mathematics  formed  the  basis  of  the  curriculum, 
and  in  the  latter  Lee  was  particularly  proficient.  The  straitened  finan 
cial  circumstances  of  the  family  would  have  prevented  young  Lee 
from  securing  anything  more  than  a  good  secondary  education  had 
not  West  Point  been  available  and  most  desirable,  for  did  not  Robert 
E.  Lee  come  from  a  family  of  soldiers? 

Lee's  career  at  West  Point  was  brilliant  but  uneventful.  He  was 
second  or  third  in  his  class  throughout  the  four  years,  on  his  gradua 
tion  receiving  a  commission  in  the  engineers,  a  branch  of  the  service 
open  only  to  the  best  students. 

Before  the  publication  of  Mr.  Freeman's  volume,  we  knew  com 
paratively  little  of  Lee's  life  from  his  graduation  to  the  opening  of  the 
Civil  War.  We  can  now  follow  him  as  he  entered  upon  one  tour  of 
duty  after  another  in  the  Engineer  Corps  of  the  United  States  Army. 
He  repaired  and  built  forts  in  Georgia  and  Maryland  and  New  York; 
he  built  permanent  dykes  opposite  St.  Louis  which  were  intended  to 
restore  the  Mississippi  to  its  original  channel.  He  was  doing  the  ordi 
nary  routine  duty  of  an  engineering  officer,  getting  experience  of  a 
kind,  but  not  the  kind  of  which  he  would  stand  most  in  need  when  he 
came  to  direct  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia. 

Even  the  Mexican  War  gave  him  precious  little  experience  in  ac 
tual  fighting.  It  did,  however,  offer  him  an  opportunity  to  exhibit  his 
abilities  to  General  Scott,  the  commanding  general  of  the  American 
army  then  as  he  was  to  be  at  the  opening  of  the  Civil  War.  Lee's 
services  as  engineer  and  intelligence  officer  were  extremely  valuable 
and  thoroughly  appreciated  not  only  by  Scott  but  by  every  field  offi- 


[  1 86  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

cer  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  Lee  returned  from  Mexico  a 
thoroughly  experienced  staff  officer.  He  learned  many  phases  of  the 
science  of  war  which  would  be  of  inestimable  value  to  him  in  the 
great  years  to  come,  and  he  learned  one  thing,  General  Scott's  theory 
of  high  command,  which  would  be  a  contributing  factor  to  the  final 
defeat  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia  in  1865. 

General  Scott  believed  that  it  was  the  business  of  the  conmanding 
general  to  prepare  an  army  for  fighting,  to  provide  transportation 
and  supplies,  to  map  out  a  campaign  and  to  have  the  army  at  the 
proper  place  at  the  proper  time.  He  further  believed  that  it  was  then 
the  duty  of  his  commanders  to  fight  the  battles.  Mr.  Freeman  is  very 
careful  to  bring  out  this  theory  at  this  point  in  the  narrative  because 
it  is  to  mean  so  much  to  Lee  and  the  Confederacy  later  on. 

The  years  between  the  Mexican  and  Civil  Wars  were  busy  ones 
for  Major  and  later  Lieutenant-Colonel  Lee.  Among  his  assignments 
during  this  period  was  his  super intendency  of  West  Point.  The  place 
had  seen  many  changes  since  Lee's  day  and  he  made  several  himself, 
with  the  purpose  of  improving  the  scholastic  standards.  Lee  made  an 
ideal  superintendent:  he  liked  to  deal  with  young  men,  he  was  in 
tensely  interested  in  improving  the  quality  of  the  officer  material  in 
the  army,  and  he  was  equally  the  soldier  and  the  gentleman  in  his 
relations  with  the  cadets  and  with  his  brother  officers. 

A  reorganization  of  the  cavalry  was  responsible  for  Lee's  transfer 
from  West  Point  to  active  service.  Promotion  was  very  slow  in  the 
engineers,  and  when  the  offer  of  a  lieutenant-colonelcy  in  a  cavalry 
regiment  came  it  could  not  be  turned  down,  though  it  meant  separa 
tion  from  his  family  and  the  hard  life  of  a  frontier  post  in  the  West. 
Actually  he  was  in  Texas  during  the  remainder  of  his  service  in  the 
United  States  Army,  a  service  largely  devoted  to  Indian  fighting,  the 
only  active  field  service  in  which  Lee  was  ever  engaged  before  the 
Civil  War. 

Meanwhile  the  "irrepressible  conflict"  was  moving  to  a  decision 
by  arms.  Lee,  like  almost  every  other  soldier  before  or  since,  knew 
nothing  about  politics  and  cared  less.  I  doubt  if  he  had  ever  given  the 
matter  much  thought.  As  an  officer  in  the  army  he  was  a  staunch  up 
holder  of  the  federal  government,  as  a  Lee  he  was  a  loyal  son  of  the 
sovereign  state  of  Virginia.  When  secession  was  first  spoken  of,  Lee 
was  unalterably  opposed  to  it  and  sincerely  hoped  that  Virginia  would 
not  leave  the  Union.  When  she  did,  Lee's  decision  was  soon  made. 
He  must  go  with  her. 

Lee  did  not  resign  from  the  army  because  the  institution  of  slavery 
was  being  threatened,  for  he  did  not  believe  in  slavery.  He  did  not 
resign  because  the  federal  government  was  attempting  to  dictate  to 
the  several  states,  for,  although  he  believed  in  the  theory  of  states' 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [187] 

rights,  he  had  not  thought  out  the  matter  to  any  definite  conclusion. 
He  gave  up  his  commission  and  his  career  because  to  do  anything 
else  was  incompatible  with  his  idea  as  to  the  manner  in  which  a  Vir 
ginia  gentleman,  a  Lee,  a  connection  of  the  great  Washington,  should 
act.  After  reading  Freeman's  brilliant  chapter,  "On  a  Train  Enroute 
to  Richmond"  one  is  keenly  aware  of  the  simplicity  and  nobility  of 
Robert  E.  Lee's  character. 

With  Lee's  arrival  in  Richmond,  events  began  to  move  rapidly. 
He  offered  his  services  and  was  placed  in  command  of  the  military 
affairs  of  the  state.  Conditions  were  chaotic;  the  provisional  govern 
ment  of  the  Confederacy  was  at  Montgomery,  Alabama;  the  seat  of 
the  war  was  northern  Virginia.  Armies  had  to  be  recruited,  officered, 
outfitted  and  provisioned  before  a  war  could  be  carried  on.  Lee  was 
not  only  in  command  of  Virginia's  army,  he  was  also  responsible  for 
the  protection  of  her  seacoast.  Hastily  assembling  a  staff,  he  began 
the  creation  of  that  fighting  force  that  became  known  as  the  Army  of 
Northern  Virginia,  that  in  the  last  desperate  days  of  the  struggle 
called  itself  Lee's  Miserables. 

After  the  removal  of  the  capital  of  the  Confederacy  to  Richmond, 
and  after  the  appointment  of  four  full  generals  of  the  Confederate 
army,  of  whom  Lee  was  second  in  seniority,  later  becoming  the 
senior  general,  he  was  placed  in  command  of  the  Army  of  Northern 
Virginia.  This  was  the  most  important  unit  of  the  whole  fighting 
force,  for  upon  it  depended  the  safety  of  Richmond.  Relieved  of  the 
numerous  duties  that  occupied  him  in  the  first  weeks  of  the  war,  Lee 
began  his  permanent  organization.  He  gathered  about  him  the  best 
staff  and  commanders  that  he  could  find,  relying  on  defensive  tactics 
and  the  equally  unsettled  condition  of  the  Northern  army  to  protect 
him  until  he  could  perfect  his  plans  for  offensive  operations. 

The  story  of  the  first  two  years  of  the  Civil  War,  which  occupies  the 
latter  part  of  the  first  and  the  whole  of  the  second  volume  of  Free 
man's  biography,  is  comparatively  well  known.  The  first  year  saw 
the  Confederates  generally  successful,  though  they  could  not  deci 
sively  defeat  the  North  or  capture  Washington.  Their  success  was 
partly  due  to  the  inefficiency  of  the  Northern  commanders  and  the 
rawness  of  the  armies  they  led.  The  Confederate  army  was  equally 
raw  but  it  was  led  by  more  experienced  officers  and  the  men  seemed 
to  put  more  energy  into  their  attacks  than  did  the  rank  and  file  in  the 
North. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  go  into  details  of  the  principal  engage 
ments  at  which  Lee  commanded.  Mr.  Freeman  proves,  in  case  after 
case,  that  Lee  carefully  planned  his  battles,  doing  everything  in  his 
power  to  achieve  victory.  He  did  win  at  times  but  gradually  his  losses 
became  more  frequent  and  more  important.  And  he  was  not  respon- 


[  i88  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

sible  for  some  of  them,  though  he  always  took  complete  responsibility. 
His  first  great  loss  occurred  at  Chancellor sville.  Here  he  lost,  not  a 
battle  —  he  won  that  —  but  the  services  of  his  greatest  commander 
Lieutenant-General  Jackson.  Though  Jackson  was  not  the  only  com 
mander  lost,  he  was  the  most  important,  for  he  was  the  greatest 
fighter  the  South  had  and  one  of  the  greatest  strategists  and  tacticians 
produced  by  the  Civil  War.  After  his  death,  General  Lee  was  com 
pelled  to  reorganize  his  entire  army,  giving  divisions  and  corps  to 
men  not  really  capable  of  handling  them. 

Chancellorsville  was  Lee's  last  great  victory,  Gettysburg  his  first 
great  defeat.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  in  winning  the  former  he  lost  the 
man  who  might  have  made  victory  possible  in  the  latter.  Many  rea 
sons  have  been  advanced  by  others  and  are  advanced  by  Mr.  Free 
man  for  Lee's  failure  to  win  at  Gettysburg,  the  latter's  being  bril 
liantly  explained  in  the  chapter  titled  "Why  Was  Gettysburg  Lost?" 
in  Volume  III.  Perhaps  the  greatest  reason  was  the  one  which  Lee 
took  completely  to  himself,  that  he  had  expected  more  from  his  men 
than  flesh  and  blood  were  capable  of  giving. 

Whatever  the  reasons  may  have  been,  Gettysburg  was  the  high 
point  of  the  Civil  War.  It  brought  confidence  to  the  North  and,  to  a 
certain  extent,  lowered  morale  to  the  South.  Though  Lincoln  had  not 
yet  found  the  ideal  commander  he  knew  that  he  had  an  army  that 
would  fight  when  properly  led.  On  the  other  hand,  the  South  began 
to  feel  that  the  man-power  and  wealth  of  the  North  would  gradually 
win  the  war.  With  the  Mississippi  controlled  by  the  North,  Sherman 
about  to  begin  his  terrible  march  through  the  deep  South,  and 
Grant  winning  victory  after  victory  in  the  West,  the  South  must  have 
recognized  the  beginning  of  the  end. 

General  Lee  was  never  able  to  take  the  offensive  again  after  Gettys 
burg.  He  would  win  other  battles  but  they  would  be  relatively  in 
significant.  His  army  would  show  time  and  time  again  the  stuff  of 
which  it  was  made,  but  it  would  be  fighting  a  losing  battle.  He  would 
soon  have  pitted  against  him  a  man  who  had  only  one  plan  of  battle : 
to  strike  and  strike  and  strike  until  the  enemy  must  surrender.  Fortu 
nately  for  his  plan  and  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  Union,  General 
Grant  had  almost  unlimited  resources  at  his  disposal.  General  Lee 
would  have  to  watch  his  army  disappearing  before  his  eyes.  Losses  in 
battle  were  great;  losses  from  disease,  lack  of  equipment  and  deser 
tion  were  equally  great. 

During  the  last  year  of  the  Civil  War  General  Lee  was  confronted 
with  the  same  problems  that  harassed  General  Washington  during 
the  whole  of  the  Revolution.  The  winter  of  1864-65  found  the  Con 
federate  army  frequently  without  food  or  clothing  or  supplies  of  any 
kind.  The  soldiers  of  Lee's  army  loved  him  as  few  military  com- 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [189] 

manders  have  been  loved  by  the  men  they  led,  but  even  that  love  did 
not  prevent  wholesale  desertions  as  the  army  realized  that  the  cause 
for  which  it  was  fighting  and  suffering  was  lost. 

Early  in  1865  it  became  apparent  that  the  war  must  soon  end.  The 
North  had  men,  supplies,  the  determination  to  win  and  a  com 
mander  who  counted  not  the  cost  when  victory  was  in  his  grasp.  The 
South  had  only  the  shadow  of  an  army,  practically  no  supplies  and  a 
courageous  commander  who  knew  that  courage  alone  could  not 
stem  the  tide  that  was  set  against  him.  The  idea  of  surrender  was 
painful  to  Robert  E.  Lee,  the  sight  of  the  army  starved  and  half 
naked  was  even  more  painful.  Negotiations  were  opened,  they  failed, 
and  finally  on  the  afternoon  of  April  9,  1865,  General  Lee  and 
General  Grant  met  at  the  McLean  house  near  Appomatox  Court 
house  where  General  Lee  formally  surrendered  the  Army  of  North 
ern  Virginia.  The  Civil  War  was  over. 

The  last  five  years  of  Lee's  life  were  in  the  nature  of  an  anti-climax. 
He  performed  a  valuable  service  as  President  of  Washington  College 
(later  named  Washington  and  Lee)  at  Lexington,  Virginia,  and  by 
example  helped  the  southern  soldier  to  adjust  himself  to  changed 
conditions  after  the  war. 

In  the  chapter  which  has  for  its  title,  "The  Sword  of  Robert  E. 
Lee,"  Mr.  Freeman  has  given  one  of  the  most  magnificent  summaries 
of  a  man  that  it  has  ever  been  my  privilege  to  read.  He  shows  us  that 
Lee  was  a  master  of  strategy  as  became  a  student  of  the  art  of  war 
and  an  engineer,  though  his  tactics  left  much  to  be  desired  until  near 
the  end  of  the  war.  He  proves  conclusively  that  Lee's  theory  of  com 
mand,  inherited  from  General  Scott,  proved  disastrous  on  more  than 
one  occasion  because  his  commanders  sometimes  lacked  the  self- 
confidence  and  the  ability  to  carry  out  his  plans.  His  third  handicap 
lay  in  the  gentleness  of  his  nature.  General  Lee  had  learned  obedience, 
submission  to  authority,  cooperation;  he  could  not  enforce  these 
necessary  traits  on  his  subordinates.  The  men  of  the  South  carried 
their  political  ideas  into  the  army,  resenting  any  authority  but  their 
own.  Sullenness,  jealousy,  sheer  obstinacy  were  obstacles  which  Lee 
hesitated  to  remove  because  he  wished  to  treat  his  commanders  as 
gentlemen  rather  than  as  subordinates.  His  patience  was  constantly 
strained,  his  failure  to  enforce  his  will  lost  more  than  one  battle. 

To  balance  these  faults  General  Lee  had  the  one  great  virtue  of 
loyalty.  He  was  a  consummate  organizer  and  administrator;  his 
work  in  Virginia  in  the  first  weeks  of  the  war  is  ample  evidence  of 
these  qualities.  Furthermore,  he  was  able  to  work  in  harmony  with 
his  superiors  and  to  handle  graciously  the  multitudinous  civilian  mat 
ters  that  occupied  too  large  a  portion  of  the  time  of  the  commanding 
general  of  an  army  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Finally  and  most  im- 


[  igo  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

portant,  he  had  the  confidence  of  his  own  men.  It  was  the  personal 
qualities  of  Lee  that  held  the  Confederate  forces  together  for  almost 
a  year  before  Appomatox.  The  rank  and  file  would  go  anywhere  if 
they  were  led  by  Lee.  No  commander  can  ask  more  than  that. 

When  we  have  finished  Freeman's  "Robert  E.  Lee,"  we  know  the 
whole  story  of  the  life  and  career  of  a  great  and  simple  man.  We  have 
followed  him  from  birth  to  death,  and  we  are  no  longer  in  doubt  as  to 
what  manner  of  man  and  soldier  he  was.  Mr.  Freeman  has  combined 
the  best  methods  of  biography  and  history  to  make  a  study  that  will 
not  be  forgotten.  Carefully  avoiding  the  many  pitfalls  that  line  the 
path  of  the  modern  biographer,  Mr.  Freeman  has  given  us  Robert  E. 
Lee  as  he  lived  and  was.  The  tempo  of  the  narrative  rises  and  falls 
with  the  tides  of  Lee's  career,  and  we  are  always  conscious  that  we 
are  reading  the  biography  of  a  man  who  led  one  of  the  greatest 
armies  the  world  has  seen. 

There  will  be  other  books  written  on  some  or  all  of  the  phases  of 
Lee's  life  and  career,  but  there  will  be  none  which  in  power,  vivid 
ness  and  accuracy  will  supersede  the  subject  of  this  review. 

E.  H.  O'NEILL 


Contributor's  Column 

Charles  Magee  Adams  will  be  remembered  by  North  American  Review 
readers  for  his  article  in  the  February  issue  of  this  year,  entitled  "Exit  the 
Small  Town." 

Thomas  Wolfe  who  wrote  "Of  Time  and  the  River"  and  its  predecessor  in 
the  series,  "Look  Homeward  Angel,"  is  planning  to  use  "Polyphemus"  as  the 
preface  to  one  of  his  forthcoming  books. 

David  Figart  is  an  authority  on  rubber  and  oil.  Like  several  other  men  in 
special  fields,  he  is  showing  himself  to  be  both  original  and  convincing  in  his 
approach  to  general  economic  problems. 

Thomas  Caldecot  Chubb  is  the  author  of  several  books  of  verse  and  historical 
works,  among  them  "Ships  and  Lovers"  and  "Aretino,  the  Scourge  of 
Princes."  He  lives  in  Georgia. 

Syd  Blanshard  Flower  is  an  old-time  newspaperman,  who  was  the  star  reporter 
of  the  Manitoba  Free  Press  in  the  middle  nineties.  He  is  known  in  the 
United  States  as  sportsman,  editor  and  satirist. 

Richard  Dana  Skinner  was  formerly  the  dramatic  critic  of  The  Commonweal, 
and  is  now  associate  editor  of  this  review.  "O'Neill  —  and  the  Poet's  Quest" 
will  form  the  introductory  chapters  to  his  book  on  Eugene  O'Neill,  to  be 
published  this  Fall  by  Longmans  Green. 

Thomas  Sugrue  has  done  everything  from  selling  soap  to  "ghost-writing"  for  a 
yogi.  He  is  a  staff  writer  for  American  Magazine,  plays  the  violin,  and  claims 
to  be  the  only  Irishman  not  descended  from  a  king. 

Frances  Frost  is  well  known  as  a  writer  of  poetry  for  current  periodicals.  She 
spends  her  summers  in  New  Hampshire. 

Surges  Johnson  was  formerly  a  newspaperman.  Since  1915,  however,  he  has 
been  professor  of  English  first  at  Vassar,  and  later  at  Syracuse  University. 

B.  M.  Steigman  was  born  in  Sweden,  is  chairman  of  the  English  Department 
of  the  Seward  Park  High  School,  and  is  the  author  of  "The  Unconquerable 
Tristan:  The  Story  of  Richard  Wagner." 

Norton  McGiffin  writes  editorials  on  national  politics  for  the  Buffalo  Evening 
News.  Before  that,  he  was  editor  of  the  Jefferson  City  Post-Tribune,  and 
political  reporter  for  the  Kansas  City  Star. 

Mary  Ellen  Chase  is  the  author  of  "Mary  Peters."  She  was  born  and  brought 
up  in  Maine.  Since  1 929,  she  has  been  associate  professor  of  English  Litera 
ture  at  Smith  College. 

F.  L.  Mott  is  the  director  of  the  School  of  Journalism  at  Iowa  State  Uni 
versity.  "One  Hundred  and  Twenty  Years"  will  be  the  chapter  on  the 
North  American  Review  in  the  second  volume  of  his  "History  of  American 
Magazines." 


[191] 


The  Editors  of  the  North  American  Review  would 
welcome  the  comments  of  subscribers  on  the  new  format 
of  the  Review  as  a  quarterly. 

The  Editors  would  also  welcome  comment  on  the 
Poem  by  "one  of  our  earliest  contributors."  It  appears 
in  the  original  form,  as  first  published  in  the  North 
American  well  over  a  century  ago. 


[192] 


THE 

f    NORTH 
AMERICAN 
REVIEW 


Founded  1815 

''\   £, 
'^JJKJ-NCE, 


JOHN  PELL  Editor 
RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER  Associate  Editor 


VOLUME  240  SEPTEMBER  1935  NUMBER  2 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Foreword                                                                                  j.  p.  195 

Just  Why  Economics?                                            HERBERT  AGAR  200 

On  "Bad  Boy"  Criticism                                          L.  B.  HESSLER  214 

Prologue                                                                     PAUL  ENGLE  225 

The  Future  of  States'  Rights                              PETER  ODEGARD  238 

Wickford  Gardens.  Verse                                             KILE  CROOK  264 

In  Behalf  of  States'  Rights                           HOFFMAN  NICKERSON  265 

Grant  Wood,  Painter  in  Overalls                      RUTH  PICKERING  271 

A  Letter  to  Walter  Damrosch                RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER  278 

Dark  Days  Ahead  for  King  Cotton                 WILLIAM  CORDELL  284 

To  a  Pair  of  Gold  Earrings.  Verse                        THOMAS  SUGRUE  293 

Our  Tipstaff  Police                              HENRY  MORTON  ROBINSON  294 

Radio,  and  Our  Future  Lives                        ARTHUR  VAN  DYCK  307 

Miss  Craigie.  A  Glimpse                          CHARLES  HANSON  TOWNE  314 

Emancipating  the  Novel                         LOUISE  MAUNSELL  FIELD  3 1 8 

"Good  Neighbor"  —  and  Cuba              PAUL  VANORDEN  SHAW  325 

A  Little  Girl's  Mark  Twain                                DOROTHY  QUICK  342 

Devotional.  Verse                                               ELBRA  DICKINSON  349 

Tumultuous  Cloister                                       DOROTHY  GORRELL  350 

In  Defense  of  Horsehair                          CATHARINE  COOK  SMITH  355 

History  as  a  Major  Sport  HENRY  FORT  MILTON  359 
Book  Reviews 

The  Colonial  Period  of  American  History.  The  Settlements 

By  Charles  M.  Andrews                                                    E.  H.  O'NEILL  366 

Shipmasters  of  Cape  Cod 

By  Henry  C.  Kittredge                                          SAMUEL  E.  MORISON  368 

Black  Reconstruction 

By  Burghart  Du  Bois                                               DOUGLAS  DEBEVOISE  369 

Renascent  Mexico 

Edited  by  Hubert  Herring  and  Herbert  Weinstock     P.  W.  WILSON  372 

The  First  Century  of  American  Literature 

By  Fred  Lewis  Pattee                                             HERSCHEL  BRICKELL  374 

The  Founding  of  Harvard  College 

By  Samuel  Eliot  Morison                                       STEWART  MITCHELL  377 

Deep  Dark  River.  By  Robert  Rylee 

Kneel  to  the  Rising  Sun.    By  Erskine  Galdwell    LOUISE  MAUNSELL  FIELD  3  79 

Heritage.  By  George  F.  Hummel 

Second  Hoeing.  By  Hope  Williams  Syke 

A  Few  Foolish  Ones.  By  Gladys  Hasty  Carroll    ELEANOR  L.  VAN  ALEN  381 

Contributors'  Column  383 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW:  Published  quarterly  by  the  North  American  Review  Corporation. 
Publication  office,  Rumford  Building,  Concord,  N.  H.  Editorial  and  executive  office,  597  Madison 

Avenue,  New  York,  N.  Y.  Price  $1.00  a  copy;  $4.00  per  year;  Canada,  $4.25;  foreign  countries.  $4.50. 
Entered  as  second-class  matter  Dec.  18,  1920,  at  the  post  office  at  Concord,  N.  H.,  under  Act  of  Congress 
of  March  3,  1879. 

Copyright,  1935,  by  the  North  American  Review  Corporation:  Walter  Butler  Mahony.  President: 
David  M.  Figart.  Secretary;  John  Pell,  Treasurer. 

Title  registered  U.  8.  Patent  Offica, 


V-, 

—  •  -   - 

THE    NORTH    AMERICAN   REVIEW 

VOLUME  240  SEPTEMBER,  1935  NUMBER  2 

Foreword 

A  MERICA  is  the  land  of  forgotten  enthusiasms  and  shat- 
•**•  tered  idols.  Year  after  year  new  slogans  bring  palpitations 
to  our  composite  heart,  soon  to  be  replaced  by  even  newer 
dreams.  Panaceas  jostle  each  other  in  the  endless  scramble  to 
save  us  from  the  consequences  of  our  own  folly.  We  shall  out 
last  and  live  down  all  the  crackpot  Utopias,  because  our  incal 
culable  fickleness  prevents  us  from  suffering  from  any  of  them 
too  seriously. 

In  its  day,  each  of  our  dreams  has  served  its  purpose. 
"Liberty"  helped  win  the  Revolution;  then  ten  years  after  the 
Peace  of  Paris  the  Federalists,  inspired  by  Hamilton,  developed 
a  financial  system  which  concentrated  the  economic  power  of 
the  country  in  a  handful  of  urban  capitalists.  "Democracy" 
rescued  us  from  the  financiers;  but  its  protagonist,  Jefferson, 
was  capable  of  an  act  of  imperialism  which  made  deep-dyed 
Federalists  wince.  Lincoln  led  a  crusade  for  freedom  which 
reduced  half  the  nation  to  a  condition  of  serfdom.  All  of  our 
wars  have  been  fought  for  slogans;  many  political  campaigns 
are  remembered  only  by  their  slogans;  booms  and  panics 
have  been  generated  as  much  by  slogans  as  by  economic  forces 
of  the  most  respectable  hue. 

Like  its  predecessors,  the  New  Deal  served  a  purpose.  In  the 
winter  of  1933  we  were  suffering  from  an  acute  attack  of 
melancholia:  millionaires  were  ashamed  to  be  seen  in  yachts; 
pompous  rotarians  had  acquired  inferiority  complexes;  hap 
pily  mated  bourgeois  couples  stored  canned  food  in  their 
kitchens  and  gold  earnings  in  their  cellars,  while  they  waited 
for  the  revolution  to  start. 


[  196  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

People  can  hardly  remember  those  dark  days,  even  now.  It 
might  have  been  a  good  thing  if  a  revolution  had  started  - 
it  would  have  served  us  right.  But  instead  the  New  Deal 
started.  It  was  not  headed  in  any  particular  direction;  it  had 
no  profound  purpose;  but  it  undoubtedly  served  the  particular 
needs  of  the  moment  as  well  as  anything  could  have.  It  took 
our  minds  off  ourselves.  Business  men  became  so  angry  at 
Franklin  Roosevelt  that  they  forgot  their  troubles  and  began  to 
make  money  in  spite  of  themselves;  and  when  the  arch  liberal 
went  fishing  on  Vincent  Astor's  yacht,  the  other  yachts  came 
out  of  hiding,  a  little  furtively  at  first.  The  prefabricated  house, 
air  conditioning,  streamlined  trains,  colored  movies,  and 
Diesel  engines  dared  show  themselves,  reminding  us  that  we 
used  to  be  famous  for  our  ingenuity.  Engineers  and  scientists, 
who  never  know  much  about  economic  conditions,  developed 
all  sorts  of  new  contrivances  during  the  five  dark  years  —  but 
until  a  few  months  ago  we  were  too  proud  of  our  poverty  to 
market  them. 

In  this  glorious  land,  the  only  thing  you  can  count  on  is 
change.  No  one  can  foresee  what  will  happen;  but  anyone  can 
foresee  that  something  will  happen.  We  do  not  want  a  New 
Deal  any  longer  —  we  want  a  new  slogan. 

Like  John  Adams,  who  forgot  that  he  was  not  a  king, 
Franklin  Roosevelt  forgot  that  he  was  not  a  dictator.  Congress 
men  who  thought  that  they  were  securing  their  jobs  by  bidding 
for  Administration  patronage,  suddenly  discovered  that  in  the 
way  things  were  going  there  would  soon  be  no  jobs  for  them, 
because  there  would  be  no  need  of  a  Congress.  Then  the 
Supreme  Court  resurrected  the  Constitution  as  effectively  as 
Mae  West  had  restored  the  female  form.  People  who  have 
forgotten  what  state  they  were  born  in  have  suddenly  re 
membered  the  States'  Rights  issue.  The  back-to-the-farms 
movement  is  over:  now  we  are  going  back  to  Calhoun. 

States'  Rights  is  a  colorless,  pedantic  issue  until  it  becomes 
amalgamated  with  individual  rights.  But  that  is  just  what  is 
happening  today.  The  states,  moribund  for  generations,  have 
discovered  a  purpose.  They  have  been  reincarnated.  They  are 


FOREWORD  [197] 

becoming  the  champions  of  freedom,  individualism,  property, 
Americanism.  They  are  going  to  save  us  from  the  New  Deal, 
from  Communism,  from  ourselves.  They  are  the  new  slogan: 
States'  Rights  instead  of  Coue! 

Remembering  our  avowed  purpose,  to  focus  the  attention 
of  our  subscribers  on  the  important  trends  of  thought  which 
are  constantly  molding  and  refining  the  American  scene,  we 
have  asked  three  students  of  the  States'  Rights  issue  to  discuss  it 
in  our  pages.  Two  (Peter  Odegard  and  Hoffman  Nickerson) 
appear  in  this  issue;  the  third  (Hon.  Herbert  G.  Pell)  will 
appear  in  the  next.  Diverse  in  background  and  totally  unlike 
in  points  of  view,  each  of  them  recognizes  the  value  of  a  check 
on  the  aggressions  of  a  strong  Federal  government,  but  each 
suggests  a  solution  differing  from  the  others. 

Since  mechanical  difficulties  prevent  the  pages  of  a  quar 
terly  from  paralleling  the  news,  it  becomes  their  pleasant  task 
to  anticipate  events.  Sometimes  a  new  machine  carries  the 
portents  of  news.  William  Cordell  includes  the  Rust  brothers' 
"cotton  picker"  among  the  major  forces  that  may  bring  a 
more  tragic  reconstruction  to  the  South  than  even  the  aboli 
tion  of  slavery.  Yet  most  of  the  current  surface  news  of  the 
South  carries  little  implication  of  such  trouble  ahead. 

Future  news  of  quite  a  different  character  may  be  found  in 
the  open  letter  to  Walter  Damrosch  on  the  possible  translation 
of  Richard  Wagner's  music-dramas  to  the  screen.  And  in  still 
another  direction,  Louise  Maunsell  Field's  discussion  of  the 
modern  novel  opens  up  large  vistas.  Arthur  Van  Dyck's  fore 
cast  of  what  radio  may  do,  indirectly,  to  change  our  lives,  and 
H.  M.  Robinson's  strictures  on  out-dated  police  methods, 
make  further  and  intriguing  forays  into  the  news  of  tomorrow. 
All  this,  we  feel,  is  part  of  the  special  province  of  a  quarterly 
that  seeks  to  discover  trends  rather  than  to  appraise  yesterday's 
facts. 

Among  the  essays  that  have  warmed  our  hearts,  L.  B. 
Hessler's  volley  at  the  "bad  boy"  critics  has  an  engaging  touch 
of  sanity.  The  tyranny  of  the  "bad  boys"  is  almost  over,  but 
far  from  forgotten.  As  to  Herbert  Agar  —  we  fully  expected 


[  ig8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

the  author  of  "The  People's  Choice"  to  pick  the  largest  flaw 
in  our  use  of  economics.  He  has  lived  up  to  our  fondest  hopes. 
We  have  said  before  that  economics  has  drawn  far  too  much 
attention  in  a  depressed  world.  Mr.  Agar  puts  the  whole 
point  as  we  should  have  liked  to  have  put  it  ourselves.  Some 
suspect  —  and  will  know  for  a  certainty  when  they  have 
finished  reading  Mr.  Agar  —  that  economics,  of  itself,  can 
change  nothing.  It  may  explain  the  "why"  of  disasters  and 
salvage,  but  it  cannot  direct  the  "how"  of  right  thinking  and 
good  living.  Ethics  will  come  back  to  a  place  in  the  sun. 
The  world  will  be  happier  for  a  rest  from  economics. 

Perhaps  we  need  more  poets.  The  fresh  delight  of  Thomas 
Chubb's  "How  Spring  Comes  in  Georgia"  in  the  June  issue 
has  prompted  caustic  replies,  in  verse,  from  more  than  one 
defender  of  Connecticut.  We  wish  Mr.  Chubb  could  change 
his  habitat  every  quarter,  and  so  find  cause  for  singing  to 
October  in  Vermont,  perhaps,  or  to  July  in  northern  Michi 
gan,  or  to  January  in  Quebec.  The  poet's  ecstasy  is  worth  pre 
serving  at*  all  times  and  in  all  places. 

Paul  Engle,  whose  "Prologue"  appears  in  this  issue,  uses 
poetry  as  his  vernacular.  His  verses  are  uneven.  Many  of 
them  are  as  angular  as  steel  girders,  and  possibly  as  strong. 
Thomas  Sugrue  is  also  among  our  poets,  in  this  issue  —  to  the 
relief,  we  imagine,  of  those  Californians  who  greeted  his  recent 
"California  —  in  Thy  Fashion"  with  guns  spitting  flame  and 
acid.  We  like  journalists  who  are  poets  under  the  skin.  In  fact, 
we  like  no  journalist  who  is  not  at  least  a  poet. 

In  "Prologue,"  which  is  a  microscopic  epic,  Mr.  Engle 
touches  on  most  aspects  of  American  life  except  the  American 
vacation.  This  really  deserves  to  be  acclaimed.  One  of  these 
days  we  hope  to  run  an  article  (or  preferably  a  poem)  which 
does  justice  to  the  vacation.  Of  course,  there  is  lots  of  vacation 
fiction,  but  it  is  mostly  unsatisfactory  from  our  point  of  view 
because  the  vacation,  in  a  fashion  analogous  to  the  use  of 
history  in  the  historical  novel,  serves  only  as  a  background: 
love  can  occur  without  vacations,  without  history,  without 
even  fiction  for  that  matter. 


FOREWORD  [199] 

What  we  want  is  an  essay  or  an  ode  dedicated  to  Jones' 
Beach  or  Yellowstone  Park.  Our  ancestors,  the  embattled 
farmers,  may  have  been  independent  in  their  political  think 
ing,  but  they  were  not  independent  in  their  relations  with  their 
cattle:  cows  have  to  be  milked  every  day.  The  rugged  indi 
vidualism  of  farm  life  is  romantic,  but  a  fortnight  at  a  beach  or 
beside  a  mountain  lake  is  fun,  too. 

Our  thinking  may  be  enslaved  by  slogans,  but  life  at  the 
beaches  is  no  longer  enslaved  by  inhibitions  and  conventions. 
Health  and  beauty,  instead  of  being  unrelated,  even  antago 
nistic,  are  becoming  one  and  the  same  thing.  Bathing  suits  are 
disappearing  because  they  are  no  longer  necessary  to  hide  the 
deformities  of  Victorian  bodies.  Catharine  Smith  may  bring 
about  a  renaissance  of  horsehair  chairs,  but  she  will  not  restore 
the  kind  of  people  who  look  as  though  they  were  wearing 
horsehair  shirts  —  dreams,  even,  of  a  modern  vacation  eradi 
cate  too  many  furrows  from  our  faces  for  that. 

It  may  soon  be  impossible  to  pass  our  savings  on  to  our 
children,  but  there  is  at  least  some  consolation  in  the  thought 
that  there  are  few  pleasures  left  which  cannot  be  enjoyed  by 
almost  all.  A  Ford  is  as  fast  and  as  comfortable  as  any  car. 
No  club  offers  better  bathing  than  Jones'  Beach.  No  private 
preserve  excels  the  Glacier  and  other  national  parks. 

Perhaps  when  the  pleasures  of  today  become  too  common 
place,  people  will  seek  satisfaction  in  the  arts.  There  are 
already  signs  of  such  a  trend  —  some  of  which  Ruth  Pickering 
discusses  indirectly  in  her  admirable  appraisal  of  our  American 
painter,  Grant  Wood.  The  age  of  cultivation  which  we  de 
scribed  in  the  June  issue  may  really  be  close  at  hand.  To  take 
but  one  example,  the  colored  movies  —  in  their  infancy  today 
—  offer  possibilities  for  artistic  expression  which  can  scarcely 
be  conceived  by  the  boldest  imagination. 

Break  your  shackles,  America,  discard  your  slogans,  learn  to 
understand  the  opportunities  which  lie  within  your  grasp  — 
but  never  forget  to  enjoy  your  vacations ! 


Just  Why  Economics? 

HERBERT  AGAR 

'  I  'HE  bookstores  are  full  of  works  on  economics  today. 
-••  For  the  most  part  the  professional  economists  turn  up  their 
noses,  saying  that  this  is  trash.  And  for  the  most  part  the 
general  public  refuses  the  books  which  the  economists  think 
worthy;  for  such  books  (when  they  are  comprehensible)  seem 
inhumanly  abstract,  seem  to  be  written  about  a  world  which 
might  please  a  mathematician  but  which  has  slight  resem 
blance  to  the  disorderly  home  of  man. 

And  yet  —  economics  is  neither  a  vain  nor  an  unimportant 
subject.  It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  unless  the 
plain  man  can  acquire  some  economic  insight,  our  whole 
grandiose  system  may  soon  be  brought  to  the  ground.  It  has 
become  so  desperately  complicated  that  merely  to  analyze  its 
workings  is  a  task  for  a  highly- trained  mind.  One  result  of 
this  complication  is  that  the  system  has  begun  to  look  easy  to 
a  number  of  minds  which  are  not  noted  for  their  training.  To 
see  the  system  whole  has  become  a  profession;  but  any  man 
can  see  a  little  part  of  it  and  call  that  part  the  whole.  Many 
men  are  doing  this  today,  and  are  telling  us  with  glad  cries 
that  we  could  just  as  well  all  be  rich. 

The  plain  man,  who  can  find  no  books  on  economics  that 
are  both  "sound"  and  readable,  can  hardly  be  blamed  if  he 
begins  to  believe  these  happy  amateurs.  He  can  hardly  be 
blamed,  but  he  will  most  certainly  be  punished.  For  if  he 
believes  them  he  will  refuse  consent  to  any  government  that 
seeks  to  act  on  the  true  facts.  He  will  insist  on  a  new  set  of 
"facts"  —  facts  in  keeping  with  the  "economy  of  abundance" 
which  is  reputed  to  be  just  around  the  corner.  And  finance- 
capitalism  is  so  precarious  a  machine  that  we  dare  not  handle 
it  ignorantly.  Handled  without  utmost  skill  it  is  clumsy  and 
onerous  enough.  Handled  by  a  group  of  cheerful  cranks,  it 
may  bog  down  suddenly.  The  result  would  not  be  "abun 
dance"  in  any  sense  of  the  word. 

[200] 


JUST  WHY  ECONOMICS?  [  201  ] 

It  is  important,  then,  that  there  should  be  a  literature  of 
economics  that  the  plain  man  can  understand,  and  which  his 
political  representatives  can  understand.  One  does  not  need 
to  be  a  friend  of  finance-capitalism  to  see  that  the  worst  way 
of  curing  it  is  to  wreck  it  outright.  After  such  a  cure,  even  the 
most  righteous  of  us  might  starve  to  death.  But  in  order  to  cure 
it  in  a  more  agreeable  way  one  must  first  understand  it;  so  a 
true  literature  of  economics  is  a  genuine  need.  To  what  extent 
does  such  a  literature  exist?  And  to  what  extent  could  it  be 
called  into  being  if  an  intelligent  demand  were  created?  The 
first  step  toward  answering  these  questions  is  to  distinguish 
between  economics,  politics,  morals,  and  economic  history. 
The  distinctions  are  sometimes  less  obvious  than  they  sound. 

ECONOMICS  is  the  study  of  wealth  —  its  production, 
distribution,  and  consumption  —  with  an  eye  to  finding 
the  practical  consequences  which  follow  from  the  nature  of 
wealth  itself.  In  certain  societies,  where  wealth  is  distributed 
by  means  of  money,  economics  must  include  the  study  of 
monetary  theory.  But  the  primary  subject  is  wealth,  not 
money. 

Economics  helps  to  define  what  can  or  cannot  be  done,  and 
to  describe  the  probable  consequences  of  the  things  which 
can  be  done.  Economics  does  not  help  in  the  least  to  define 
what  ought  or  ought  not  to  be  done.  Among  the  many  things 
which  can  be  done  in  the  economic  order  of  any  country  at  any 
moment  in  history,  it  is  the  moral  problem  to  decide  which  of 
them  ought  to  be  done,  and  the  political  problem  to  see  to  it 
that  they  are  done.  But  when,  as  in  our  world,  the  moral 
purpose  of  society  has  become  unsure,  when  there  is  no  one 
way  of  life  which  is  felt  to  be  "ordained"  in  the  sense  that  it 
will  give  man  the  best  chance  to  win  salvation  or  to  fulfil  his 
nature,  then  the  power  of  moral  decision  atrophies.  There 
are  no  sure  grounds  on  which  to  sort  out  what  should  be  done 
from  among  the  many  courses  which  are  economically  pos 
sible. 

When  the  power  of  moral  decision  declines,  the  strength 


[  202  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

and  dignity  of  politics  decline  as  well.  Man  is  left  alone  with 
economics.  But  economics,  when  the  burden  of  decision  is  put 
upon  its  shoulders,  can  only  suggest  which  of  the  possible 
lines  of  conduct  is  likely  to  provide  the  most  wealth.  It  cannot 
even  do  that  accurately,  for  it  is  forced  by  its  terms  of  reference 
to  leave  out  of  account  the  question  of  what  man  should  be 
asked,  or  can  be  expected,  to  endure.  For  example,  an  eco 
nomic  order  well  adapted  to  maximising  the  production  of 
wealth  might  really  prove  "uneconomic"  if  it  were  found 
necessary  to  keep  a  large  and  highly  paid  standing  army  in 
order  to  prevent  the  mass  of  the  population  from  revolt.  As 
soon  as  economics  is  asked  to  become  a  substitute  for  politics, 
it  is  degraded  as  a  social  science;  and  it  never  can  become  an 
adequate  substitute. 

Mr.  Lionel  Robbins  of  the  London  School  of  Economics 
is  one  of  the  men  with  the  greatest  insight  into  our  perplexing 
economic  order.  His  recent  book,  "The  Great  Depression," 
is  an  important  contribution  to  the  literature  of  economics. 
At  the  same  time  (and  this  is  no  criticism  of  the  book)  it  is  a 
warning  of  the  evil  that  must  follow  from  setting  economics 
above  politics.  In  a  chapter  on  "Restrictionism  and  Planning," 
Mr.  Robbins  makes  a  grim  attack  on  the  idea  that  "order" 
can  be  brought  into  finance-capitalism  by  giving  each  industry 
the  right  to  restrict  competition.  The  way  in  which  such  a 
policy  of  curtailment  leads  to  bigger  and  bigger  efforts  at 
governmental  "planning"  —  and  the  way  in  which  such 
"planning"  may  lead  first  to  tyranny  and  then  to  the  destruc 
tion  of  capitalism  in  all  its  possible  forms  —  is  presented  with 
deadly  clarity. 

"There  is  a  snowball  tendency  about  this  kind  of  inter- 
ventionism,"  writes  Mr.  Robbins,  "which  has  no  limit  but 
complete  control  of  all  trade  and  industry.  It  is  clear  that, 
within  the  restricting  industries,  the  state  will  be  driven  to 
adopt  closer  and  closer  control  if  the  schemes  are  not  to  break 
down  from  evasion  of  their  rules.  It  is  one  thing  to  forbid 
farmers  and  others  not  to  produce  more  than  a  certain  quota. 
It  is  another  thing  to  prevent  their  doing  so.  The  Agricultural 


JUST  WHY  ECONOMICS?  [  203  ] 

Adjustment  Act  which  pays  farmers  to  throw  land  out  of 
cultivation  contains  the  pathetic  proviso  that  such  restriction 
must  be  unaccompanied  by  'increase  in  commercial  fertiliza 
tion.5  How,  short  of  the  socialization  of  American  farming,  do 
the  authors  of  this  stipulation  propose  to  put  it  into  force?" 

I  do  not  believe  that  Mr.  Robbins'  argument  can  be  upset. 
Yet  I  can  think  of  nothing  more  unfortunate  than  that  his 
book  should  be  taken  as  a  political,  rather  than  an  economic, 
treatise.  For  its  political  moral  would  be  that  the  thing  to  do 
about  America  is  nothing  at  all.  Mr.  Robbins  is  presenting  the 
argument  for  laissez-faire,  "equilibrium"  economics  in  its 
purest  and  most  abstract  form.  In  doing  so  he  is  performing  a 
great  service  —  but  only  if  we  regard  his  books  as  economics. 
So  taken,  it  is  an  admirable  way  of  pointing  out  the  dangers  of 
interfering  with  the  economic  machine.  It  is  vital  that  we 
should  understand  those  dangers.  It  is  also  vital  that  we  should 
not  delude  ourselves  into  thinking  we  can  leave  the  economic 
machine  severely  alone.  We  cannot  leave  it  severely  alone  for 
political  reasons,  because  man  will  not  permit  us  to  do  so.  This 
is  something  which  economics  can  never  teach  us;  it  lies  out 
side  the  realm  of  economic  thought.  If,  therefore,  in  the  present 
low  estate  of  politics  we  seek  to  take  economics  as  our  sole 
guide,  we  shall  learn  many  things  not  to  do.  And  this  is 
profitable  knowledge.  But  you  cannot  run  a  great  nation,  in  a 
time  of  world  crisis,  solely  by  not  doing  things. 

Another  example  of  the  same  point  can  be  found  in  Mr. 
Robbins'  book.  Discussing  the  American  farm  problem,  Mr. 
Robbins  comes  to  the  following  conclusions  —  all  of  which  are 
"sound  economics" :  "The  difficulties  of  agriculture  here,  as 
elsewhere  in  modern  economic  history,  are  to  be  explained,  in 
the  large,  in  terms  of  an  increase  of  productivity  due  to  tech 
nical  progress  which  encounters  a  relatively  inelastic  demand. 
.  .  .  Technical  progress  in  American  agriculture  has  been 
very  rapid.  The  American  farmer  is  feeling  with  especial  force 
the  pressure  of  those  influences  which  in  the  course  of  history 
have  tended  continually  to  reduce  the  proportion  of  effort 
devoted  to  the  production  of  agricultural  staples.  In  the  begin- 


[  204  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ning  it  was  one  hundred  percent.  Since  then  it  has  been 
diminishing.  In  the  absence  of  restriction,  it  would  in  all 
probability  continue  to  diminish." 

The  correct  economic  deduction  from  all  this,  says  Mr. 
Robbins,  is  that  "a  certain  proportion  of  the  producers  of  the 
products  whose  prices  have  fallen  must  change  over  to  an 
occupation  the  demand  for  whose  product  is  more  elastic. 
There  must  be  a  reshuffling  of  the  labor  force  —  a  contraction 
of  the  proportion  employed  on  the  production  of  products  in 
relatively  inelastic  demand  and  an  expansion  of  the  proportion 
employed  elsewhere." 

From  the  economic  point  of  view  this  is  complete.  We  must 
have  fewer  farmers.  And  if  our  technique  of  soil-culture  im 
proves,  we  must  have  still  fewer  farmers.  And  if  the  agrobiolo 
gists  in  Washington  live  up  to  their  promises  the  time  may  come 
when  a  farmer  is  as  rare  as  a  dirigible  balloon.  The  ex-farmers 
will  be  factory-hands,  making  products  for  which  the  demand 
is  more  "elastic."  Perhaps  they  will  be  making  pip-squeaks 
to  put  on  the  tables  of  night  clubs,  or  little  celluloid  dolls  to 
hang  in  the  rear  windows  of  automobiles. 

What  about  this  program  from  the  political  point  of  view? 
To  a  communist  it  would  sound  more  than  gratifying.  If 
there  is  one  thing  a  communist  dislikes  it  is  a  farmer.  If  there 
is  one  thing  he  approves  of  it  is  a  factory-hand.  It  does  not 
matter  what  the  factory-hand  is  making,  so  long  as  he  is  a 
factory-hand,  a  proletarian,  a  man  who  has  been  prepared  by 
his  economic  lot  to  receive  the  doctrine  of  Marx.  But  the  very 
reasons  which  recommend  this  program  to  a  communist  make 
it  distressing  to  a  man  who  is  interested  in  preserving  the 
American  experiment.  If  we  dispossess  millions  of  small  pro 
prietors,  turning  them  into  millions  of  proletarians,  we  shall 
have  gone  a  long  way  toward  making  a  self-governing  nation 
of  free  men  an  impossibility  within  our  borders.  We  shall  have 
torn  up  the  foundations  of  America,  replacing  them  with 
foundations  suitable  for  a  Fascist  or  a  communist  state. 

All  of  this,  however,  is  quite  beside  the  point  for  Mr. 
Robbins.  Economics  is  the  study  of  wealth.  It  has  nothing  to 


JUST  WHY  ECONOMICS?  [  205  ] 

do  with  the  question  of  whether  self-government  is  better 
than  tyranny,  free  men  better  than  slaves.  Mr.  Robbins  has 
imagined  a  world  in  which  there  is  a  really  free  play  of 
economic  forces.  He  is  pointing  out  that  such  a  world  will 
produce  more  goods,  more  wealth,  if  the  economic  forces  are 
left  entirely  free,  if  they  are  never  interfered  with  at  any  point. 
In  the  course  of  his  argument  he  sheds  much  light  on  the  way 
in  which  the  existing  economic  order  works,  or  fails  to  work. 
It  is  not  his  business  to  tell  us  what  sort  of  a  world  we  want  to 
live  in.  It  is  our  business  to  decide  that,  on  moral  grounds.  It 
is  the  function  of  politics  to  bring  that  desired  world  to  life, 
after  we  have  decided  what  it  should  be. 

It  is  the  function  of  economics  to  tell  us  what  we  may  ex 
pect,  in  regard  to  the  production  of  wealth,  from  this,  that, 
and  the  other  policy.  If,  having  no  moral  aim,  we  turn  to 
economics  as  our  sole  counselor,  it  may  very  well  guide  us  into 
a  world  capable  of  producing  the  maximum  of  goods;  but  we 
are  duping  ourselves  if  we  expect  it  to  guide  us  into  a  world 
where  men  will  be  content  to  live.  A  modern  English  historian 
has  written  that  "the  free  play  of  economic  forces  will  invari 
ably  tend  to  a  rich  but  never  to  a  good  society."  An  under 
standing  of  the  nature  of  economics  will  make  it  clear  that 
this  statement  is  a  truism. 

TN  HIS  book,  "Religion  and  the  Rise  of  Capitalism,"  Mr. 
•*•  R.  H.  Tawney  has  written  that  the  importance  of  the 
mediaeval  view  of  economic  problems  lies  in  the  "insistence 
that  society  is  a  spiritual  organism,  not  an  economic  machine, 
and  that  economic  activity,  which  is  one  subordinate  element 
within  a  vast  and  complex  unity,  requires  to  be  controlled  and 
repressed  by  reference  to  the  moral  ends  for  which  it  supplies 
the  material  means."  It  is  interesting  to  consider  these  two 
views  of  society  —  "spiritual  organism"  and  an  "economic 
machine"  —  with  an  eye  to  the  vexing  modern  problem  of 
"planning." 

If  society  is  a  spiritual  organism,  then  economics  are 
subordinate  to  politics  and  both  to  morals.  In  that  case  we 


C  206  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

can  have  the  sort  of  "planned  society"  our  American  fore 
fathers  intended:  a  society  based  on  moral  principles  that  are 
clearly  understood;  a  society  in  which  the  major  institutions 
(such  as  self-government  and  widely  diffused  private  property) 
are  chosen  and  maintained  because  they  are  in  keeping  with 
the  principles;  a  society  with  the  freedom  that  only  self- 
discipline  can  give.  Planning,  in  these  basic  politico-moral 
terms,  is  the  purpose  of  statesmanship. 

If  we  take  the  view  that  society  is  an  economic  machine, 
then  we  cannot  attempt  political  or  moral  planning.  A  ma 
chine  is  a  fixed  thing;  you  cannot  tamper  with  its  nature.  You 
can  only  see  that  it  runs  as  smoothly  as  possible.  In  other  words 
the  only  planning  such  a  society  can  attempt  is  economic 
planning.  Politics  comes  down  to  a  quarrel  between  the 
group  that  feels  the  machine  will  turn  out  more  wealth  if  it  is 
left  entirely  alone,  and  the  group  that  feels  it  will  turn  out 
more  wealth  if  it  is  tinkered  with  from  time  to  time.  The  result 
of  this  quarrel  is  often  a  compromise  combining  the  worst 
features  of  the  two  methods :  the  machine  is  left  alone  whenever 
a  question  of  moral  interference  might  arise,  but  it  is  tinkered 
with  just  enough  to  spoil  its  economic  efficiency. 

The  defeatism  coloring  so  much  of  our  feeling  about 
politics  is  traceable  to  the  widespread  view  that  society  is 
nothing  but  an  economic  machine.  People  feel  we  are  caught  in 
a  system  we  cannot  alter,  that  there  is  no  use  talking  about 
the  American  dream,  or  about  a  society  of  free  proprietors,  or 
about  any  of  the  basic  American  ideas.  All  that  is  over  and 
done  with,  because  the  machine  will  no  longer  permit  it.  And 
if  it  were  true  that  economics  comes  first,  these  conclusions 
would  logically  follow.  But  it  is  not  true  —  though  it  becomes 
true  for  all  practical  purposes  if  people  persist  in  acting  on  the 
assumption. 

Any  economic  system  can  be  changed  if  its  moral  results 
are  clearly  understood  and  are  felt  to  be  displeasing  —  but 
the  displeasure  has  to  be  sincere,  not  merely  formal.  It  is  a 
gross  delusion  to  feel  that  the  economic  order  has  an  in 
dependent  existence.  Back  of  economics,  lie  morals.  The 


JUST  WHY  ECONOMICS?  [  207  ] 

morals  of  a  society  may  be  high  or  low,  conscious  or  uncon 
scious,  but  they  cannot  be  non-existent.  And  the  morals  of  a 
society  determine  what  emotions  will  be  allowed  free  play, 
what  social  conditions  will  be  tolerated  —  they  determine, 
in  other  words,  the  limits  within  which  the  economic  system 
must  move.  In  a  world  like  ours,  where  people  are  unaccus 
tomed  to  thinking  in  moral  terms,  the  economic  order  can 
warp  the  morals  of  a  society,  can  "determine"  them  to  a  cer 
tain  extent.  But  even  in  our  world  there  is  a  last  resistant  set  of 
moral  assumptions  which  the  economic  order  cannot  change, 
to  which  the  economic  order  must  adjust  itself. 

For  example,  it  has  been  economically  desirable  of  late  to 
close  down  many  of  the  world's  coal-mines.  It  would  be  equally 
desirable,  economically,  to  close  down  the  miners  inside  the 
mines,  so  that  they  might  not  become  a  charge  on  the  com 
munity.  Yet  the  mines  are  closed,  while  the  miners  are  kept 
partially  alive.  The  reason  for  the  inconsistency  is  a  moral 
reason. 

The  more  conscious  a  society  is  of  its  moral  aims,  the  more 
aware  it  is  of  the  relation  between  its  aims  and  its  actions,  the 
less  it  will  be  economically  "determined,"  the  closer  it  will  be 
to  the  ideal  of  a  society  as  a  "spiritual  organism"  in  which  the 
economic  order  supplies  the  material  means  for  the  moral  ends 
of  life.  Conversely,  the  more  successful  a  society  is  in  forgetting 
its  moral  ends,  the  more  will  economic  determinism  operate, 
the  closer  will  society  come  to  being  an  "economic  machine." 
No  society  can  be  an  economic  machine  pure  and  simple,  for 
there  is  always  a  moral  basis  somewhere.  And  no  society  can 
become  a  spiritual  organism  pure  and  simple,  for  that  would  be 
perfection,  and  there  will  be  no  perfect  social  system  previous 
to  the  appearance  of  perfect  men.  But  between  these  two 
extremes  the  social  order  can  vary  infinitely.  In  the  one  direc 
tion  it  approaches  a  more  and  more  unconscious,  a  more  and 
more  mechanical  and  determined  state.  In  the  other  direction 
it  approaches  a  state  in  which  there  is  a  noticeable  relation 
between  what  society  does  in  the  economic  sphere  and  what 
it  feels  to  be  right. 


[  ao8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

The  importance  of  these  distinctions  in  the  world  of  action 
is  that  only  by  proceeding  in  the  latter  direction,  only  by 
ruthlessly  subordinating  economics  to  political  and  moral 
aims,  can  a  nation  hope  to  gain  inner  peace  and  self-esteem, 
and  to  give  its  citizens  a  way  of  life  in  which  the  plain  man  can 
know  happiness  and  dignity.  It  is  an  ironic  fact  that  the  one 
group  in  the  modern  world  which  talks  the  most  nonsense 
about  economic  determinism,  is  the  one  group  which  makes  no 
compromises  when  it  comes  to  subjecting  economic  to  moral 
considerations.  I  refer  to  the  communists,  whose  chief  strength 
is  that  they  are  politically  and  morally  self-conscious. 

Mr.  Robbins  can  show  that  the  free  play  of  economic  forces 
(which  can  only  exist  under  a  regime  of  the  private  ownership 
of  the  means  of  production)  will  produce  more  goods  and 
services,  more  wealth,  than  will  any  form  of  controlled  and 
planned  economy.  The  communists  take  note  of  the  informa 
tion;  they  may  make  good  use  of  it  as  they  proceed  with  their 
plans;  but  it  does  not  occur  to  them  to  submit  to  it,  to  permit 
the  free  play  of  economic  forces.  For  their  first  aim  is  not  to 
produce  the  greatest  possible  number  of  goods;  their  first  aim 
is  to  build  a  world  where  the  plain  man  can  find  justice. 
Those  of  us  who  dislike  their  picture  of  justice,  who  think 
their  earthly  paradise  would  be  a  hell,  would  do  well  to  copy 
their  steadfast  moral  purpose.  For  we  can  never  combat  such 
a  purpose  with  a  mere  "economic  machine."  "History," 
writes  Mr.  Douglas  Jerrold,  "affords  no  instance  of  a  nation 
which  subordinates  politics  to  economics  maintaining  its 
position  as  a  great  power.  The  battle  is  to  the  politically 
conscious,  not  to  the  economically  well-organized." 

To  sum  up  these  distinctions,  I  have  sought  to  establish 
first,  that  the  basic  problem  of  statesmanship  remains  the 
moral  problem.  No  society  can  long  flourish  unless  its  rulers 
(in  a  self-governing  nation,  its  people)  are  agreed  on  the  moral 
aims  which  are  being  sought.  It  must  be  accepted  that  a 
certain  way  of  life  is  desirable,  and  that  the  purpose  of  the 
social  order  is  to  maximize  the  chance  of  attaining  that  way  of 
life.  If  "the  maximum  of  production"  is  taken  as  the  social  aim, 


JUST  WHT  ECONOMICS?  [  209  ] 

instead  of  "a  certain  way  of  life,"  the  society  is  dying  at  its 
roots.  Nations  do  not  survive  by  accident.  They  survive  be 
cause  of  moral  qualities  which  give  them  inner  strength.  And 
no  man's  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten  merely  because  his 
bank-account  is  growing.  It  has  been  written  that  "there  is  no 
escape  from  the  law  which  has  made  resolution,  courage, 
audacity,  an  inspiration  to  sacrifice,  and  an  exaltation  in 
serving  the  condition  of  the  enduring  greatness  of  peoples." 
None  of  these  qualities  can  be  provided  by  a  mere  economic 
machine.  The  America  of  the  igso's  will  serve  as  an  abiding 
proof  of  that  fact. 

The  next  problem  of  politics  is  to  adapt  a  troublesome  and 
discordant  world  as  closely  as  possible  to  the  moral  pattern 
which  has  been  accepted.  In  doing  this  the  economic  welfare 
of  the  people  must  never  for  a  moment  be  ignored.  But  it 
must  never  for  a  moment  be  taken  as  the  sole  aim. 

The  problem  of  economics,  on  the  other  hand,  is  to  discover 
the  effect  of  various  political  and  moral  environments  on  the 
production  and  distribution  of  wealth.  The  statesman  sets  the 
problem.  We  choose,  he  will  say,  for  moral  reasons,  a  nation 
with  a  majority  of  small  proprietors,  on  the  French  or  Danish 
model;  or  we  choose  a  nation  with  no  proprietors  at  all,  but 
with  state-directed  production  for  use;  or  we  choose  a  nation 
with  a  few  big  owners  and  many  salaried  workers,  and  with 
the  state  interfering  to  direct  the  relations  between  the  two 
groups.  We  all  know  that  each  of  these  basic  orders  can  work. 
We  know  that  each  of  them  produces  its  own  characteristic 
moral  environment,  and  its  own  political  forms.  The  states 
man,  or  his  constituents,  must  choose  the  moral  environment; 
there  must  be  a  conscious  and  active  will  of  the  people  directed 
toward  maintaining  it — otherwise  society  will  be  an  aimless 
flux.  And  great  nations  are  not  built  by  aimlessness.  Given  this 
basic  choice,  it  is  the  function  of  economics  to  provide  all  the 
available  facts  as  to  what  can  be  done  to  maximize  the  produc 
tion  of  wealth. 

And  at  the  same  time  economics  should  keep  before  the 
people  the  knowledge  of  what  could  be  done  under  the  other 


[  2 1  o  ]  THE  NOR TH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

basic  forms  of  society.  It  may  be  true,  for  example,  that  a 
slave  state  could  produce  more  goods  in  modern  America  than 
a  state  of  free  proprietors.  If  so,  it  is  important  that  we  should 
have  enough  will  to  reject  the  notion  that  we  are  doomed, 
because  of  this  relatively  unimportant  fact,  to  a  return  to 
slavery. 

AT1  THE  moment,  our  literature  offers  surprisingly  few 
examples  of  pure  economics.  One  reason  for  this,  I  think, 
is  that  our  aimless  society  is  making  a  false  demand  upon  the 
economists,  which  the  economists  are  trying  to  meet.  We  are 
asking  our  economists  to  provide  us  with  a  substitute  for  a 
moral  purpose.  Unable,  or  unwilling,  to  give  moral  reasons 
for  whatever  social  order  we  instinctively  prefer,  we  are  asking 
our  economists  to  prove  that  the  sort  of  world  we  would  like 
to  see  is  really  the  sort  of  world  which  would  produce  the  most 
goods.  That  way  madness  lies  —  for  the  economists  as  well  as 
for  the  rest  of  society. 

It  is  significant  that  the  men  who  are  providing  the  nearest 
approach  to  dispassionate  analyses  are  the  economists  of  the 
extreme  right  —  the  arch  conservatives  who  feel  in  their 
bones  that  whatever  the  political  future  holds,  it  will  not  see 
again  the  world  where  their  hearts  dwell,  that  brief  and  partial 
laissez-faire  world  of  nineteenth  century  British  practice.  There 
is  a  wistful  charm  to  the  picture  these  men  are  giving  of  that 
never-never  land  of  "the  free  play  of  economic  forces." 
And  there  is  an  unrivalled  accuracy  and  clarity  to  their 
descriptions  of  the  experiments  in  control  that  are  being 
carried  on  today.  The  works  of  Mr.  Robbins,  or  Dr.  F.  A. 
Hayek's  "Prices  and  Production,"  or  Mr.  E.  F.  M.  Durbin's 
"Purchasing  Power  and  Trade  Depression"  —  books  like 
these  contain  the  best  of  modern  economic  thought  on  the 
capitalist  side.  Because  these  men  are  not  hopeful  of  becoming 
political  advisers,  they  are  able  to  do  their  business  as  econo 
mists  with  an  accuracy  that  puts  their  opponents  to  shame.  If 
we  would  demand  from  all  our  economists,  not  morals  and  not 
politics,  but  the  most  dispassionate  analyses  that  the  frail 


JUST  WHY  ECONOMICS?  [211] 

human  mind  can  afford,  the  literature  of  economics  would 
become  a  more  impressive  sight. 

What  we  really  demand  is  proof  that  communism,  or 
finance-capitalism,  or  a  "planned"  state  capitalism,  will 
make  everybody  rich.  What  we  really  get,  therefore,  is  not 
economics  but  economic  history.  To  explain  what  I  mean  by 
this  phrase  I  must  describe  what  I  mean  by  history. 

History  is  one  of  the  most  natural  forms  of  thought,  yet  it 
remains  to  this  day  one  of  the  most  obscure,  one  of  the  hardest 
to  analyze.  In  my  opinion  Signer  Croce's  analysis  is  the  most 
accurate  that  has  yet  been  given.  Croce  begins  by  distinguish 
ing  between  history  and  chronicle.  Chronicle  is  the  dead  fact, 
the  unrealized  concept.  When  it  is  brought  to  life  by  an 
imaginative  act,  when  the  concept  is  illuminated  by  intuition, 
we  have  history.  History  and  chronicle,  writes  Croce,  are  dis 
tinguishable  "as  two  different  spiritual  attitudes.  History  is 
living  chronicle,  chronicle  is  dead  history." 

In  bringing  the  dead  chronicle  back  to  life  by  means  of  his 
own  intuitions,  the  historian  is  clearly  likely  to  revive  some 
thing  very  different  from  what  existed  in  the  first  instance.  It 
is  a  precarious  balance  he  is  seeking,  between  concept  and  in 
tuition,  science  and  poetry.  Leaving  aside  the  question  as  to 
whether  he  ever  attains  this  balance  to  perfection,  it  is  worth 
noting  that  when  he  falls  too  far  on  the  side  of  the  concept, 
the  chronicle,  the  result  is  what  Signor  Croce  calls  "philo 
logical  history,"  which  "can  certainly  be  correct,  but  not  true" 
And  when  the  historian  leans  too  far  toward  intuition  the 
result  is  "poetical  history,"  in  which  we  find  "the  substitution 
of  the  interest  of  sentiment  for  the  lack  of  interest  of  thought, 
and  of  aesthetic  coherence  of  representation  for  the  logical  co 
herence  here  unobtainable.  .  .  .  When  life  finds  expression 
and  representation  before  it  has  been  dominated  by  thought, 
we  have  poetry,  not  history."  In  other  words,  life  and  thought 
—  document  and  criticism  —  are  the  two  elements  of  the 
historical  synthesis.  When  either  is  palpably  overemphasized 
we  have  a  form  of  pseudo-history. 

There  is  a  third  form  of  pseudo-history  which  is  more  com- 


[  212  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

mon  than  the  poetic  or  the  philological.  This  third  form  is 
what  Croce  calls  "rhetorical  history"  —  i.e.,  history  written 
to  prove  a  point.  Many  of  man's  most  interesting  writings  be 
long  to  this  group.  In  the  classical  world  there  was  a  tendency 
to  write  history  in  order  to  show  that  the  life  of  man  moved 
in  circles,  returning  upon  itself  with  a  regularity  that  justified 
the  utmost  pessimism.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  there  was  a  tend 
ency  to  write  history  to  show  that  the  Christian  revelation  in 
troduced  truth  into  the  world,  giving  man  his  first  fair  chance 
to  escape  from  classical  pessimism.  In  the  modern  world  there 
is  a  tendency  to  write  history  to  show  that  one  or  another  type 
of  economic  organization  will  give  man  a  better  chance  to 
realize  his  hopes  than  he  has  ever  had  in  the  past.  This  is  the 
sort  of  writing  I  referred  to  when  I  spoke  of  "economic  his 
tory."  It  is  interesting;  it  is  illuminating;  but  it  is  not  eco 
nomics. 

It  is  not  economics  because  it  has  a  moral  aim.  It  is  the 
attempt  of  a  society  which  is  losing  its  convictions,  and  there 
fore  its  basis  for  action,  to  find  a  new  basis  in  a  form  of  thought 
which  does  not  lend  itself  to  that  use.  Most  of  the  left  wing 
treatises  of  today  belong  to  this  category;  for  the  Marxists, 
who  have  a  true  moral  aim,  are  oddly  ashamed  of  this  ad 
vantage.  They  waste  much  effort  in  seeking  to  prove  that  they 
are  merely  embracing  the  "economically  inevitable."  People 
who  have  no  moral  aim,  or  who  are  ashamed  of  having  one, 
always  try  to  ally  themselves  with  destiny.  For  destiny  is  im 
pressive  without  being  embarrassingly  moral.  Some  of  the 
most  powerful  and  interesting  of  our  contemporary  books 
belong  to  this  group  —  for  example,  Mr.  John  Strachey's 
"The  Nature  of  Capitalist  Crisis,"  and  Mr.  Lewis  Corey's 
"The  Decline  of  American  Capitalism."  It  does  not  detract 
from  their  worth  to  suggest  that  they  belong  to  the  literature  of 
moral  exhortation  rather  than  to  the  literature  of  economics. 

"Das  Kapital"  itself  is  a  curious  combination  of  the  two 
types.  It  contains  a  great  deal  of  pure  analysis,  of  magnificent 
fact-finding,  which  belongs  to  economics.  And  it  contains  a 
great  deal  of  back-handed  moralizing,  which  consists  of 


JUST  WHY  ECONOMICS?  [213] 

asserting  that  Fate  and  all  the  dark  powers  of  eternity  are  on 
the  side  of  the  Marxian  dream. 

T  HAVE  tried  to  suggest  why  the  plain  man  finds  the  liter a- 
-*-  ture  of  economics  confusing  and  unsatisfying.  At  the  one 
extreme  are  the  pure  research  problems,  the  statistical  tables 
and  abstract  analyses  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  plain 
man.  They  are  the  necessary  rock-bottom  for  economics,  and 
they  are  properly  written  for  the  profession  only.  Then  there 
is  a  small  (far  too  small)  group  of  books  presenting  in  ordinary 
language,  and  with  some  impartiality,  the  main  findings  of 
economic  science.  Then  there  is  the  abundant  literature  of 
economic  history,  using  the  authoritative  language  and  the 
magic  catchwords  to  bolster  up  a  moral  thesis.  It  would  be 
better  for  society  if  we  could  reach  our  moral  conclusions  on 
plain  moral  grounds,  restricting  our  economic  thought  to  the 
important  field  where  it  belongs. 


On  "Bad  Boy"  Criticism 

L.  B.  HESSLER 

T  AM  an  exasperated  reader.  For  the  last  few  months  (it 
•*•  seems  years)  I  have  been  reading  reviews  of  books  — 
novels,  collections  of  poetry,  biographies,  histories,  all  sorts  of 
books  —  and  my  present  impression  is  that  most  of  the  re 
viewing  is  incompetent  and  dishonest.  Whether  one  consults 
the  daily  newspaper,  the  Sunday  supplement,  the  weeklies,  or 
the  monthlies,  one  has  the  same  feeling  of  frustration,  and 
wonders  if  there  is  any  place  where  the  truth  may  be  found. 
For,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  that  is  what  the  intelligent  reader 
would  like  to  know  —  the  truth.  He  would  like  to  feel  that, 
when  he  picks  up  a  review,  the  writer  will  play  the  game  with 
him,  and  not  try  to  palm  off  on  him  pinchbeck  stuff  by  way  of 
rhapsody,  self-exploitation,  or  an  exercise  in  style. 

The  following,  for  instance,  is  from  a  signed  review  of  "Lust 
for  Life"  in  a  weekly  of  wide  circulation:  "Something  in  result 
seems  to  be  left  out,  or  left  a  little  too  gallantly  to  inference. 
The  beat  of  passion,  inevitably  expected,  is  hardly  to  be  caught 
by  its  statement  however  replete;  the  cry  for  utterance  sounds 
faintly  in  the  record  of  the  search  for  utterance."  An  editorial 
note  informs  us  that  the  author  was  at  one  time  an  art  editor, 
but  is  now  working  in  the  field  of  literature.  My  feeling  is  that 
he  had  better  have  stayed  where  he  was,  for  the  excerpt  is  an 
admirable  illustration  of  the  bastard  style  so  often  affected  by 
those  who  have  to  do  with  the  criticism  of  art  or  music.  They 
have  simply  not  mastered  the  art  of  writing. 

As  an  example  of  rhapsody,  take  the  following,  from  a 
review  of  a  national  best-seller:  "This  is  not  a  novel,  but  a 
symphony.  There  is  an  orchestration  of  incident  and  de 
scription  and  reflection  on  the  author's  part,  slow,  grave, 
telling  in  its  cumulative  effect.  There  is  a  sequence  of  events. 
But  the  pith  of  the  book  is  the  white  pith  of  vision.  .  .  .  There 
is  rich  living  in  this  book.  But  it  is  living  in  principle,  not  in 
the  economic  or  the  social  or  even  the  emotional  sense.  .  .  . 

[214] 


ON  "BAD  B0r>  CRITICISM  [  215  ] 

It  is  Puritanism  made  into  a  psalm  of  life.  [Is  he  speaking  of 

"Paradise  Lost"?] has  solid  substance  enough, 

to  be  sure,  to  set  off  the  vibration  of  its  overtones  from  the 
ultimate  reality.  .  .  .  Those  who  still  love  life  for  its  noble 
ness  and  the  designs  of  its  rhythms  will  thank from  the 

bottom  of  their  hearts.  Her  book  is  magnificent."  This  is  the 
sort  of  writing  that  the  late  B.L.T.  used  to  label  "the  en 
raptured  reporter"  or  "the  delirious  critic." 

The  rhapsodic  and  the  lyric  schools  of  criticism  merge 
easily  into  the  "home- town-boy-makes-good"  type,  in  which 
the  reviewer  gives  tremendous  hurrahs  for  a  book  because  he 
knows  the  author  and  revolves  in  the  same  coterie,  and  not 
because  the  book  has  any  particular  merit  for  the  outsider.  It 
is  the  old  story  of  the  Greek  against  the  barbarian  —  caveat 
emptor!  A  great  deal  of  criticism  of  this  kind  emanates,  of 
course,  from  New  York,  where  the  custom  of  back-slapping 
has  developed  into  an  art.  To  the  dweller  in  the  sticks  it  seems 
that  every  other  reviewer  has  either  just  come  from  a  literary 
tea  or  is  about  to  go  to  one,  where  more  material  for  personal 
propaganda  will  be  diligently  gathered.  The  argument  for  the 
practice  would,  presumably,  be  as  follows:  "A  book  has  been 
written,  accepted,  and  published;  it  must  therefore  be  sold.  I, 
as  a  good  friend,  will  help  to  sell  it.  Authors  must  live."  One 
remembers  Doctor  Johnson's  comment  on  this  argument:  "I 
do  not  see  the  necessity." 

Of  all  the  types  of  criticism,  however,  the  most  insidiously 
misleading,  because  tricked  out  in  the  accoutrements  of 
authority,  is  that  which  I  shall  call  the  "bad  boy"  school.  It 
all  began  with  H.  L.  Mencken.  For  ten  years  in  the  American 
Mercury,  with  some  diminuendo  of  volume  toward  the  end, 
he  belabored  the  conservatives,  most  of  whom  were  college 
professors,  with  a  robustious  vigor  unprecedented  in  American 
criticism.  The  heads  of  some  must  still  be  quite  dizzy  from  his 
blows.  It  is  thought  that  Mencken's  medicine  did  much  good, 
inasmuch  as  only  the  stifTest  kind  of  dosage  would  have  any 
effect  on  people  as  far  gone  in  ignorance  and  indifference  as 
we.  Mencken's  attack  was  a  frontal  one,  and  nothing  is  more 


[  216  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

interesting  than  to  watch  a  fighter  who  uses  primitive  weapons, 
sticks  out  his  tongue,  and  calls  names.  There  was  nothing 
subtle  about  Mencken's  language,  as  there  is  nothing  subtle 
about  his  mind.  If  you  did  not  agree  with  him,  his  method  was 
simply  to  call  you  a  damned  fool  or  to  use  the  "smarty"  epi 
thet,  such  as  "Major  J.  E.  Spingarn,  U.  S.  A.,"  "Prof.  Dr. 
William  Lyon  Phelps,"  and  "Prof.  Dr.  Stuart  P.  Sherman,  of 
Iowa."  (How  quaint  this  all  seems  now!)  His  usual  custom 
was  to  cry  down,  although  on  occasion  he  could  indulge  in 
lavish  praise,  as  witness  his  oft-repeated  cheers  for  Conrad  and 
Dreiser. 

Now  that  he  is  retired  from  active  combat,  it  is  pertinent  to 
examine  his  actual  contribution  to  our  intellectual  and  spirit 
ual  advancement.  There  seems  to  be  a  disposition  amongst 
our  present  commentators  to  fold  the  hands  piously  and  give 
thanks  for  what  he  did.  That  he  did  something  I  should  be  the 
last  to  deny.  Like  Shaw  he  was  a  great  entertainer;  like  him, 
also,  often  at  the  expense  of  reason  and  good  taste.  If  an  up 
right  posture  did  not  please,  he  would,  like  all  good  clowns, 
stand  on  his  head.  There  was  in  him  no  finesse,  no  real  imagi 
nation,  as  may  be  seen  in  his  almost  complete  indifference  to 
poetry.  Like  his  twisted  spiritual  ancestor,  Pope,  he  was  moved 
more  by  animosity  than  by  admiration.  Mankind  loves  a  good 
hater,  but  hatred  has  never  been  the  cardinal  quality  of  good 
criticism. 

However,  I  am  not  in  this  essay  concerned  primarily  with 
Mr.  Mencken,  but  with  what  he  produced,  the  school  of 
smaller  imitators  who  cannot,  like  the  giant  their  master, 
swing  the  redoubtable  battle-axe  but,  instead,  sting  like  gnats. 
There  was  a  time  when  it  was  considered  the  badge  of  en 
lightenment,  the  certain  hall-mark  of  advanced  thinking,  to 
be  seen  with  the  latest  copy  of  the  American  Mercury  in  one's 
hand.  Mencken  was  acclaimed  by  numberless  students,  who 
doted  on  him  for  his  gibes  at  their  professors.  That  time,  "with 
all  its  dizzy  raptures,"  has  now  gone;  Mencken's  popularity  is 
in  eclipse  and  we  have  with  us,  instead,  Mr.  Burton  Rascoe, 
Mr.  Ernest  Boyd  and  the  like. 


'{  pubUe  m 

ON  "BAD  B0r>  CRITICISM  [  217  ] 


following  quotation  from  Mr.  Rascoe's  essay  on  Milton 
•*•  will,  I  hope,  explain  and  justify  my  title:  "Take  an  aspirin 
and  bromide  before  I  utter  the  most  frightful  blasphemy  that  was 
ever  uttered  since  Dr.  Faustus  signed  his  name  to  an  infamous 
pact  with  the  devil.  I  am  about  to  say  (please  hold  your 
breath)  that  'Paradise  Lost3  and  'Paradise  Regained'  are 
horrible  examples  of  what  may  occur  when  a  man  with  a  dis 
pleasing  type  of  mind  happens  to  be  an  expert  versifying 
technician  in  what  is  loosely  called  the  biblical  style.  Yet, 
after  having  done  this,  I  look  into  the  mirror  and  see  that  my 
face  has  not  blackened,  nor  have  my  ears  sprouted  horns  at 
the  tip."  Now  this  is  exactly  what  the  bad  boy  does;  he  sticks 
out  his  tongue  at  his  elders,  he  puts  a  banana  skin  where  a 
dignified  man  with  a  high  silk  hat  will  step  on  it.  These  in 
gratiating  tricks,  while  pardonable  in  a  small  boy,  are,  in  an 
adult,  signs  that  he  is  not  yet  completely  civilized;  he  is  still  a 
hick,  a  smart  aleck.  If  one  goes  to  Mr.  Rascoe's  book,  "Titans 
of  Literature,"  for  bread  he  will,  for  the  most  part,  receive  a 
stone;  he  will,  to  be  sure,  be  amused  —  but  the  entertainment 
will  not  be  great.  Some  of  the  essays  are  real  exercises  in 
criticism;  others  are  prolonged  statements  of  personal  preju 
dice;  still  others  are  merely  half-hearted  biographical  sketches. 
The  essay  on  Virgil  and  Latin  literature,  for  instance,  con 
tains  the  following  titbits:  "The  Georgics  and  the  Eclogues 
were  as  popular  with  the  Roman  populace  and  peasants  in 
Virgil's  time  as  Edgar  Guest's  poems  are  with  newspaper 
readers  today."  Further,  "The  defect  of  this  quality  [the  dual 
purity  of  Virgil's  language]  which  Virgil  had  in  such  perfec 
tion  is  that  Virgil  is  likely  to  spoil  a  beginner's  interest  in  Latin 
poetry  altogether."  A  man  who  says  such  things  will  say  any 
thing.  Further  on  in  the  same  essay  he  remarks  that  Horace  is 
incredibly  underestimated  by  classical  scholars,  and  is  dis 
pleased  that  Professor  Tenney  Frank  "is  not  quite  unre 
strained  enough  in  his  praise  of  Horace  to  please  me."  For  a 
member  of  the  American  Classical  Association  these  dicta  are 
astounding.  One  wonders  what  Mr.  Rascoe's  classical  scholar 
ship  is  like,  and  whether  he  is  acquainted  with  Sellar's  book  on 


[  2 1 8  ]  THE  NOR TH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Horace,  printed  in  1891,  to  mention  no  others.  From  the 
references  to  Greek  and  Latin  literature  scattered  throughout 
the  book,  the  reader  is  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  Mr. 
Rascoe  has  done  merely  miscellaneous  reading,  hardly  serious 
or  consecutive  enough  to  qualify  him  to  pass  opinions  on 
Homer,  Virgil,  and  Sophocles. 

The  same  readiness  to  pronounce  judgment  on  the  Titans, 
with  equal  incompetence  to  do  so,  marks  especially  his  en 
counters  with  Dante  and  Milton.  Here  indeed  the  "bad  boy" 
has  a  glorious  time.  I  have  quoted,  above,  the  introduction  to 
the  essay  on  Milton;  he  goes  on  to  say  that  "  CL' Allegro,'  like 
its  dark  twin  CI1  Penseroso,'  is  a  sophomoric  composition," 
that  "the  two  poems  are  literary  refinements  of  adolescent 
perplexity";  and  he  gives  a  lengthy  extract  from  Norman 
Douglas'  "Old  Calabria"  by  way  of  proof  that  Milton  stole 
his  "Paradise  Lost"  from  the  "Adamo  Caduto"  of  Salandra. 
To  the  reader  unacquainted  with  Milton  scholarship,  this 
last  argument  seems  to  settle  the  matter  of  Milton's  plagiarism, 
but  there  is  nothing  new  about  it,  as  may  be  seen  by  con 
sulting  the  latest  (1842)  edition  of  Todd's  variorum  edition  of 
Milton  and  also  Masson's  introduction  to  "Paradise  Lost," 
where  it  is  again  given.  The  list  of  sources  from  which  Milton 
may  have  "stolen"  the  idea  is  so  large  that  it  ought  to  arouse 
the  suspicion  in  any  honest  mind  that  from  a  community  of 
ideas  there  can  be  no  theft. 

The  truth  is,  Mr.  Rascoe  is  so  eager  to  condemn  Milton 
that  he  seizes  on  all  his  worst  aspects,  interlards  his  own  in 
vective  with  copious  quotations  from  Milton's  prose  and  from 
anti-Miltonic  criticism,  and  builds  up  an  imposing  edifice  of 
pseudo-scholarship.  It  is  a  specious  structure,  because  one 
suspects  that  Mr.  Rascoe  is  merely  trying  to  satisfy  a  personal 
grudge.  The  expression  of  personal  opinion  is,  of  course,  the 
right  of  everyone,  but  when  it  is  done  at  the  expense  of  accu 
racy  and  truth,  the  reader  must  enter  a  protest.  There  is  a 
view  today  that  criticism  is  but  the  expression  of  one's  self,  the 
adventures  of  a  soul  amongst  masterpieces,  that  the  critic  is  a 
creative  artist  of  the  same  sort  as  a  lyric  poet.  It  is  an  inter- 


ON  "BAD  BOP*  CRITICISM  [  219  ] 

esting  theory,  but  it  depends  for  its  validity  on  who  the  lyric 
adventurer  is.  Moreover,  the  critic  has  a  responsibility  toward 
the  public  that  is  not  necessarily  shared  by  the  lyric  poet;  he 
assumes  the  manner  of  authority  and  must  bear  with  him  his 
credentials. 

The  "bad  boy"  in  criticism  is  obsessed  with  the  notion 
that  what  is  traditional  is  wrong,  that  what  he  dislikes 
everyone  ought  to  dislike;  and  so  he  goes  around  sticking  pins 
in  the  mighty.  Judging  from  the  violence  of  Mr.  Rascoe's 
language  in  the  essays  on  Sophocles,  Virgil,  Dante  and  Milton, 
one  suspects  that  anything  like  religion  and  morality  in  an 
author  is,  to  him,  a  major  crime.  There  are,  no  doubt,  certain 
aspects  of  goodness  that  are  irritating  to  most  honest  persons; 
but  to  dismiss  all  literature  that  is,  so  to  speak,  tainted  with 
morality,  is  to  deprive  oneself  of  a  high  form  of  pleasure,  and, 
in  a  critic,  it  is  a  serious  limitation.  The  relation  of  morality 
and  art  is  a  tricky  subject,  one  that  has  caused  many  a  critical 
bark  to  founder.  Whether  a  bad  man  can,  or  cannot,  write  a 
good  book,  it  is  certain,  from  a  reference  to  literary  history, 
that  hardly  any  subject  will  prevent  an  author  from  writing 
a  good  book  if  he  has  it  in  him;  nor  will  the  absence  of  moral 
ity,  or  the  presence  of  immorality,  as  some  hot-heads  seem  to 
think,  constitute  the  key  to  good  writing.  "Tom  Jones"  —  I 
don't  believe  Mr.  Rascoe  has  pronounced  on  this  novel  —  has 
pleased  readers  of  all  kinds  in  all  ages,  and  no  one  can  deny 
that  this  story  was  written  with  a  moral  motive.  "Vanity  Fair" 
is  not  harmed  by  Thackeray's  reiterated  aversion  to  the 
naughty  Becky  Sharp,  and  Wordsworth's  poems  have  ap 
pealed  to  thousands  of  readers  who  theoretically  dislike  poems 
with  a  purpose. 

As  for  religion,  it  is  no  argument  to  say,  or  imply,  that  since 
this  is  an  irreligious  age,  such  topics  are  not  suitable  for  literary 
treatment,  just  as  it  would  be  foolish  to  assert  that  poems  can 
be  written  on  all  subjects  except  A  and  B.  The  attempt  to 
delimit  the  subjects  of  art  in  any  way  usually  ends  in  disaster; 
if  the  dogmatic  critic  kicks  a  theme  out  of  the  front  door,  it  is 
quite  likely  soon  to  come  in  at  the  back.  Another  "Hound  of 


[  220  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Heaven"  may  appear  any  day,  and  indeed  it  was  only  a  few 
years  ago  that  Lola  Ridge  wrote  a  memorable  and  touching 
poem  on  the  crucifixion. 

It  is  equally  uncritical  to  use  one's  disapproval  of  an  author's 
private  life  as  a  peg  on  which  to  hang  denunciations  of  the 
man's  work,  particularly  when  the  facts  are  distorted  as  they 
are  in  Mr.  Rascoe's  essays  on  Milton  and  Dante.  Even  if  he 
were  entirely  accurate,  he  would  not  be  truthful;  the  arrange 
ment  is  malicious.  The  "bad  boy"  now  throws  mud.  He  has 
repeated  what  everybody  knows  and  what  most  have  over 
looked  or  forgiven.  The  private  life  of  an  author  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  judgment  we  pass  on  his  work.  If  we  are  to 
enjoy  the  writings  only  of  those  whom  we  admire  as  indi 
viduals,  we  are  in  a  difficult  situation,  truly.  Some  of  us  will 
have  to  leave  unread  the  poems  of  Byron  and  Shelley,  to  say 
nothing  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge.  Surely,  if  this  sort  of 
thing  is  accounted  criticism,  we  shall  be  reverting  to  the  days 
of  Blackwood's  and  the  Quarterly,  "so  savage  and  Tartarly"; 
and  if  it  be  not  criticism,  it  should  not  masquerade  as  such, 
but  simply  as  the  play  of  the  sons  of  Belial  having  a  glorious 
time.  And,  however  inaccurate  and  untruthful  Mr.  Rascoe 
may  be,  he  does  enjoy  himself. 

T^HE  case  is  different  with  another  "bad  boy,"  Mr.  Ernest 
-*•  Boyd,  who  wrote  in  1927  a  book  called  "Literary  Blasphe 
mies,"  a  title  which  gives  him  away  completely.  Unlike  Mr. 
Rascoe,  Mr.  Boyd  has  no  sense  of  humor  and  takes  his  pleas 
ures  sadly,  even  that  of  fighting.  He  has  a  grudge  to  satisfy, 
chiefly  against  pedagogues,  who,  as  usually  with  this  school, 
are  synonymous  with  college  professors.  He  does  not  like  them, 
nor  what  they  like.  In  proving  his  points,  almost  any  argument 
will  do,  for  he  has  a  complete  equipment  of  the  stock  devices 
resorted  to  by  the  biassed  and  dishonest  critic,  chief  among 
them  the  half-truth,  the  mean  innuendo,  false  emphasis,  and 
the  magnification  of  unimportant  facts.  At  times  one  detects 
Mr.  Boyd  in  a  misstatement.  For  instance,  in  "Literary 
Blasphemies"  there  is  a  chapter  on  Milton  with  a  lengthy  dis- 


ON  "BAD  EOT'  CRITICISM  [  221  ] 

cussion  of  "Paradise  Lost,"  presumably  founded  on  first-hand 
knowledge  of  it;  yet  in  the  Nation  for  November  8,  1933,  to  a 
symposium  of  "Books  I  Have  Never  Read"  he  contributed  his 
list  of  ten,  among  which  is  "Paradise  Lost."  That  is  to  say,  in 
1927  Mr.  Boyd  had  read  "Paradise  Lost";  in  1933  he  had  not. 

However,  I  may  be  wrong,  and  Mr.  Boyd  may  have  ob 
tained  his  information  (and  misinformation)  from  the  many 
critics  whom  he  quotes,  without  having  read  Milton's  epic  at 
all.  Certainly  he  is  an  adept  at  picking  out  the  adverse  com 
ments  from  the  books  which  were  consulted,  and  disregarding 
the  favorable,  as  when  he  quotes  from  Mark  Pattison's  life  of 
Milton  the  particularly  acid  morsel  that  he  wants  —  and 
passes  by  the  entirely  favorable  bulk  of  Pattison's  criticism. 
Mr.  Boyd  might,  by  the  way,  have  taken  a  leaf  from  Pattison's 
book  and  learned  how  to  estimate  the  strong  and  weak  ele 
ments  in  a  writer's  work,  and  cast  the  balance  between  them; 
he  might  have  learned  the  same  thing  from  Doctor  Johnson 
(whom  he  quotes  with  admiration)  if  he  had  read  that  great 
man's  life  of  Milton  carefully.  But  he  is  not,  of  course,  inter 
ested  in  forming  a  just  conception  of  any  writer;  he  wants 
merely  to  parade  his  ego,  to  make  sharp  points  at  the  expense 
of  the  dead. 

Probably  the  best  example  of  Mr.  Boyd's  method  is  to  be 
seen  in  the  emphasis  he  places  upon  Dr.  George  Sigerson's 
article  on  Milton's  supposed  use  of  the  "Carmen  Paschale"  of 
Sedulius.  This  is  merely  one  more  item  in  the  extensive  list 
of  Milton's  fancied  use  of  sources,  and  hardly  more  creditable 
than  the  base  forgery  of  Lauder,  which  deceived  even  Doctor 
Johnson  for  a  time.  Sources  for  "Paradise  Lost"  will  be  dis 
covered  as  long  as  human  ingenuity  and  antipathy,  Rascoes 
and  Boyds  exist:  and  will  worry  no  sound  critic,  because  he 
knows  that  it  is  not  the  material  that  counts  but  the  work 
manship.  Milton's  epic  has  reduced  to  oblivion  all  his  sources. 
It  is  the  product  of  the  reading  and  imaginative  meditation 
of  a  lifetime;  and,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  recited,  not 
written. 

Mr.  Boyd  believes  that  Milton  belonged  to  a  drab  age,  and 


[  222  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

that  the  gay  comedies  of  the  Restoration  have  killed  Milton's 
work  and  the  taste  for  it.  He  adds  that  "Restoration  drama  by 
its  innate  vital  qualities  will  survive,  and  the  names  of  its 
creators  will  become  as  familiar  through  experience  to  modern 
playgoers  as  the  names  of  immortally  dead  classics  are  familiar 
to  professors."  If  Mr.  Boyd  is  as  realistic  a  critic  as  he  thinks 
he  is,  he  will  remember  that  the  revival  of  Restoration  comedy 
occurred  after  the  war,  and  took  place  for  no  loftier  reason 
than  that  which  occasioned  the  revival  of  Aristophanes' 
"Lysistrata"  a  few  seasons  ago  in  New  York.  How  great  is  the 
interest  in  these  plays  now?  No,  I  think  the  despised  pro 
fessors  will  have  to  do  as  much  for  the  revival  of  Congreve, 
Farquhar,  Vanbrugh,  and  Aristophanes  in  the  future  as  they 
have  in  the  past  for  Milton  and  Shakespeare. 

The  final  word  of  Mr.  Boyd  on  Milton  is  worth  quoting: 
"By  the  average  man  or  woman  of  the  present  day  he  is  likely 
to  be  remembered  because  of  this  one  characteristic,  which  he 
had  in  common  with  all  Puritans,  he  made  the  Devil  irre 
sistibly  attractive."  As  a  gem  of  literary  criticism,  this  is  almost 
as  good  as  the  following  solemn  pronouncement  on  Shake 
speare:  "Shakespeare  does  not  open  up  the  glorious  world  of 
Elizabethan  literature  but  rather  closes  it  by  showing  the  best 
that  the  times  could  produce.  He  has  no  message  for  mankind 
and  his  humor  is  frequently  so  feeble  that  a  bad  burlesque 
show  is  brilliant  in  comparison.  .  .  .  If  he  is  irresistible  it  is 
because  he  is  a  musician  of  words  so  lovely  that  the  English 
tongue  is  forever  illuminated  by  his  use  of  it."  That  is  to  say, 
Shakespeare's  dramatic  workmanship,  his  creation  of  charac 
ter,  his  wisdom,  and  his  humanity  are  nothing  to  Mr.  Boyd, 
but  the  artful  manipulation  of  words,  in  which  dozens  of 
second  and  third-rate  writers  excel  —  that  is  the  contribution 
of  Shakespeare ! 

If  one  wished  to  refute  this  argument,  he  could  easily  do  so, 
with  considerable  aid  from  Mr.  Boyd  himself,  but  I  am  inter 
ested  not  so  much  in  defending  Shakespeare  as  in  exposing  the 
type  of  criticism  here  illustrated.  It  is  that  of  a  man  who 
cherishes  a  grudge  against  a  well  established  literary  reputa- 


ON  "BAD  EOT*  CRITICISM  [  223  ] 

tion  and  those  who  uphold  it,  and  who  delights  in  tearing  it 
down  at  the  expense  of  logic  and,  at  times,  of  honesty.  That  a 
real  antipathy  exists,  I  do  not  doubt;  but  I  suspect  that  it  is 
not  entirely  against  the  writer  himself  but  against  professors 
and  other  slaves  of  tradition  who  dare  not  stand  up  to  the 
great,  and  express  their  true  opinions.  There  is,  too,  in  all 
this  a  sadistic  delight  in  needlessly  cruel  remarks,  such  as  Mr. 
Boyd's  about  "the  Elizabethan  blank  verse  beasts  to  whom 
Charles  Lamb  was  addicted  as  he  was  addicted  to  gin."  This 
is,  of  course,  pure  muckerism.  A  critic  may  be  severe  and  just 
without  calling  names  and  perpetrating  such  an  implied 
logical  non  sequitur  as  the  above:  because  Lamb  was  addicted 
to  gin,  he  praised  the  Elizabethan  blank  verse  beasts. 

The  author  of  "Literary  Blasphemies"  (keep  the  "bad 
boy's"  title  well  in  mind)  who  admires  the  early  critical  work 
of  Gifford,  Lockhart,  Wilson,  and  Jeffrey,  is  ambitious  to  be  a 
"heretic  of  criticism,"  and  although  he  acknowledges  the 
"prejudice  and  even  bad  taste"  of  these  men,  he  thinks  their 
work  valuable.  Doubtless  he  concludes  that  his  own  criticism 
is  unstained  with  prejudice  and  bad  taste.  On  the  contrary,  it 
is  full  of  them.  Moreover,  there  is  an  air  of  specious  knowledge 
about  these  articles  that  is  extremely  deceptive  to  the  unin 
formed  reader,  who  argues  that  such  an  elaborate  show  of 
learning  must  presuppose  both  wide  knowledge  and  wisdom. 
Knowledge  there  is,  of  course,  but  it  is  merely  sufficient 
information  to  establish  a  thesis  and  a  prejudice. 

No  attempt  is  made  by  practitioners  of  this  spiteful  school 
of  criticism  to  give  an  unbiassed  and  honest  appraisal  of  the 
work  under  observation  or  to  concern  themselves  with  the 
reader  at  all.  Since  it  is  much  easier  and  vastly  more  inter 
esting  to  throw  brickbats,  mud,  and  rotten  (at  times  very 
rotten)  eggs  at  others,  the  bad  boy  does  so,  not,  as  Mr.  Boyd 
says  in  his  epilogue,  in  the  interests  of  "free  criticism  and 
honest  thinking,"  or  "honest  critical  doubt."  He  has  at  heart 
no  such  lofty  aims;  he  wishes  merely  to  enjoy  himself  at  the 
expense  of  others.  Even  when  he  bestows  praise,  as  in  the 
essay  on  Swift,  he  does  so  chiefly  by  rounding  on  his  idol's 


[  224  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

detractors;  there  is  no  joy  in  the  task.  Here,  indeed,  is  a  dog 
who  not  only  barks  but  bites,  a  heretic  who  tries  to  upset  not 
so  much  the  present  as  the  past,  a  disgruntled  misogynist  so 
wrapped  up  in  his  job  of  idol-smashing  that  he  leads  himself 
astray  as  well  as  others. 

If  such  criticism  has  any  value  at  all,  which  I  doubt,  it  is 
purely  negative.  By  noting  its  laws  and  procedure  and  re 
versing  them,  one  may  learn  a  great  deal  about  the  true  art 
of  judging  a  piece  of  literature.  He  will  learn,  for  instance, 
that  not  only  are  wide  reading  and  knowledge  fundamental, 
but  also  sanity,  balance,  and  a  sense  of  responsibility  to  the 
public.  From  the  "bad  boy"  school  of  critics  one  gets  the 
impression  that  the  chief  equipment  of  the  literary  critic  is 
prejudice  and  impudence.  And  in  the  end  it  is  the  reader  who 
pays. 


Prologue 

PAUL  ENGLE 

America,  bastard  child  from  all  the  world 

Born,  yet  parentless,  hard  scrapper  beating 

Your  lone  wa,y  out  from  a  child  into  a  man, 

It  is  not  strange  you  were  cocky,  forever  carried 

A  chip  on  your  shoulder,  boasted  the  length  of  the  earth. 

You  were  one  tough  baby,  hard  as  nails,  swaggering 

The  streets  with  chin  stuck  out  and  a  grin,  shouting, 

'Take  a  poke  at  that,  kid,  if  you're  lookin'  for  trouble, 

I'm  half  mountain  lion,  half  Texas  steer, 

With  a  dash  of  rattlesnake  and  horned  toad,  taking 

Easily  in  one  jump  and  a  yell  the  land 

From  the  Blue  Ridge  to  the  Big  Horns,  and  wearing 

The  whole  damn  Mississippi  for  a  belt. 

I'll  pull  my  right  shoe  off  and  kick  the  moon 

Clean  over  God's  left  shoulder  for  good  luck. 

I'm  the  world's  original  playboy  —  Look  me  over." 

Because  you  thought  you  had  a  date  with  a  dame 

Called  easy  money,  for  a  thousand  years, 

You  took  the  immeasurable  cloth  of  time 

And  used  it  for  a  rag  to  shine  your  shoes  — 

Nation  of  Jacks  forever  with  a  laugh 

Climbing  the  cloud-lost  beanstalks  of  your  buildings, 

Your  whole  life  a  perpetual  song  and  dance. 

And  yet  in  Washington  I've  heard  you  crying 
Because,  having  been  barefoot  so  long,  your  feet 
Sprawled  in  the  dirt,  their  flat  toes  toughened,  now 

[225] 


[  226  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

You  must  wear  leather  shoes,  forget  your  marbles 
And  that  bright  penny  of  your  youth,  once  spent 
Over  and  over,  fallen  out  through  a  hole 
In  your  pants'  pocket,  lost  in  the  orchard  grass 
Where  you  hooked  apples  at  night,  throwing  a  stick 
Up  to  the  heavy  branches,  or  in  the  crumbled 

Swimming-hole  bank,  under  the  roots,  downstream 

* 

The  cattle  lowing  belly-deep  in  the  water. 

You  strode  the  earth,  not  with  a  lifted  sword 

But  a  gleaming  piston  rod  of  power  in  your  hand 

Till  not  alone  the  world  but  even  yourself 

Was  blinded  and  believed  its  dazzling  glare 

The  very  flame  of  glory,  till  you  found 

On  a  grim  morning  with  the  east  wind  turned 

Suddenly  cold  and  full  of  rain,  you  bore 

A  dog-uncovered  bone  in  your  hand,  and  beat 

Madly  a  tin  drum  with  colored  pictures 

Like  a  child's  dream  of  going  to  the  wars. 

Evenings  in  Dakota  where  the  dust 
Fell  week-long  in  a  Pharaoh  curse  from  the  sky 
You  sat  on  the  front  steps,  smoking  your  pipe, 
And  turned,  for  the  first  time,  into  yourself 
To  trail  your  heart's  interminable  prairie 
For  the  shy,  untrapped  meaning  of  your  life — 
A  day  old  track  on  a  hill,  a  few  flank  hairs 
Caught  on  an  elm,  a  wild-grape  hidden  spring 
Muddied  with  drinking — found  it  fled,  and  nothing 
But  your  heart's  enormous  hollow,  arched  with  sky. 

And  when  (Upper  East  Side)  you  bought  fresh  fruit, 


PROLOGUE  [  227  ] 

New  potatoes,  a  bunch  of  flowers  for  the  wife, 
In  the  street  market  of  immortality 
You  found  they  shoved  your  money  back  and  said, 
"Sorry,  buddy,  that's  no  good  here,  it's  all 
Street  car  tokens,  slugs,  lucky  pieces, 
Chicken  feed,  nothing  behind  it." 

America 

You  minted  out  your  soul  in  alloy  nickels 
Faced  with  an  Indian,  backed  with  a  buffalo, 
And  spent  it  in  the  dime  store  of  mad  dreams. 

In  Florida,  where  the  white  cranes  cry  over 

The  deep  Everglades,  bull  alligators 

Bellow  up  the  moon,  I  have  seen,  swell-headed  youth, 

The  head-hunting  Amazonian  women, 

The  avenging  Fates  of  over  speculation, 

The  logical  height  and  end  of  your  dead  system, 

Shrink  your  bloated  sky-piece  to  a  fist's  size 

And  fight  for  who  should  wear  it  on  a  string. 

In  Colorado  where  the  columbine 

Leans  its  purple  breasts  to  the  prairie  wheat, 

I  have  seen  your  screaming  eagle  with  the  lightning 

Arrows  gripped  in  his  claws,  the  broad  wings  bent 

From  Oregon  to  Maine,  touching  two  waters  — 

0  vast  wing-spread  of  a  continent,  a  nation 
Huddling  in  its  shadow  —  become  a  sparrow 
Pecking  the  gutter  horse  dung  for  old  oats. 

1  pity  you,  tumble  weed  land,  wind-rolled 
Over  the  heat  cracked  plain,  caught  in  a  fence, 
Having  not  the  wisdom  of  uprooted  grass 


[  228  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

That,  bearing  the  sun's  cruel  knife  blade  at  its  throat, 
Will  yet  beat  down  into  the  iron  earth 
The  hot,  white  rivets  of  new  roots,  to  hold 
Till  the  rain  come  and  deeply  harden  them. 

How  pitiful  now,  who  once  so  proudly  ran 
Through  time  in  seven-league  boots,  the  blue  bandana 
Of  the  west  wind  knotted  at  your  throat,  fiddling 
The  whole  world  up  to  a  dance,  with  old  Dan  Tucker 
Or  the  latest  Yiddish  blues  from  Tin  Pan  Alley, 
Slapping  the  lean  butt  of  death  and  shouting 
"Gome  on,  baby,  scrape  that  frown  off  your  face. 
Kick  'em  out,  girlie,  high,  wide  and  handsome. 
Shake  that  cute  what-is-it  of  yours  till  the  boys 
Break  out  in  sweat,  the  drummer  falls  in  his  drum." 

You  Saturday  night  nigger,  drunk  on  his  pay, 
Whistling  at  midnight  past  graveyards  to  keep 
His  courage  up. 

You  we  have  dreamed  would  climb 
The  rock  and  glacier  of  an  American  peak, 
Rainier  or  Pike's,  throw  off  your  clothes  and  stand 
Naked  in  the  glare  of  history; 
And  while  your  body  bore  the  sky  and  took 
The  sun  for  heart  until  your  veins  ran  light, 
You  would  sickle  down  the  rich,  full-kerneled  winds 
Of  heaven  with  the  bright  blade  of  a  song: 

"Whether  early  or  late 
Letting  my  eyes  pale  or  darken 
In  morning  or  evening  light, 
At  sea-level  walking 


PROLOGUE  [  229  ] 

An  Alabama  swamp,  the  night 

Barked  trees,  or  deer-like 

In  the  Alleghenies  stalking 

The  lost  Boone  trail, 

Or  in  Chicago  tearing 

Roosevelt  Road,  cut-out  wide, 

Booze  in  the  back  seat,  the  wail 

Of  sirens  around  me  where  I  cannot  hide  — 

"I  have  been  the  gambling  nation, 
Glad  to  sit  in  an  alley 
With  that  blue-gum  nigger 
Time,  crooning  of  his  gal  Sally 
And  Gabriel's  salvation, 
His  hands  on  the  ivories  slow 
But  quick  on  the  trigger. 
Spit  on  the  dice,  win  or  lose 
Rattle  'em  high,  rattle  'em  low, 
Seben  come  eleben 
Baby  needs  a  new  pair  of  shoes, 
Easy  come,  easy  go  — 
And  singing  a  new  kind  of  blues: 

"Now  in  these  days 
Plunging  the  taut  wood, 
The  Arapaho 

Timbered  mountain,  I  blaze 
The  axe-bruised  bark  for  a  way, 
And  scream  when  I  raise 
The  axe  again  and  find 
I  am  the  hacked  trunk,  the  gray 
Scar  is  my  heart,  the  blind 


[  230  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Forest  my  eyes,  the  unpathed 
Mountain  of  earth  and  mind 
All  one  trail,  wider  than  day. 

"From  the  Jim  River,  the  Sangamon, 
Nueces,  Fox,  I  will  drink 
The  rain-blooded  water  and  swear 
In  my  coming,  to  be,  to  think, 
There  is  a  truth,  one  that  I  wear 
Like  a  brand  new  pair 
Of  pants  in  Spring  - 
Movement,  the  will,  the  can 
Force  of  moving,  to  say 
I  don't  know  where  I'm  going 
But  I'm  on  my  way. 

"I  will  make  a  new  song  of  the  word, 
A  proud  song,  big  in  the  lungs, 
A  free-for-all,  everything  goes, 
Part  barber-shop,  part  jazz, 
Part  cowboy,  all  American  tongues, 
A  hill-billy  Jew's  harp  itchin'  the  toes, 
A  Georgia  fiddler  givin'  the  razz 
To  three  A.M.,  and  a  muted  sax 
Moanin'  deep  till  all  the  world's 
Swaying  and  swinging  and  making  tracks 
For  Joe's  Quick  Lunch  or  Harry's  Place, 
Buck  Tooth's  Barn  or  a  Harlem  dive, 
For  the  first  time  told  that  it's  alive 
In  the  new-word  song  of  a  new-world  race. 

"America,  long  wind  blowing, 


PROLOGUE  [231] 

For  you  not  moving  is  not  being, 
Moving  is  being,  is  going 
Lightly  on  nerves'  feet 
Where  touching  is  seeing 
But  only  singing  is  knowing  — 
The  thing  become,  fleeing 
From  beginning  into  flowing 
Is  the  word  become  song. 

"Here  where  the  long 
Compass  needle 

Of  a  continent  points  north  and  south 
I  will  shout  in  the  Blackfoot  hills 
With  an  American  mouth 
The  song  of  my  tangled  wills 
That  will  be  to  my  twisted  heart 
Deep  rain  after  drouth 
When  the  dry  creek  bed  fills  .  .  . 

"Being  for  me  is  moving,  quiet 
Is  not  being.  Here  in  the  tall  ways 
Of  sun-shafted  buildings,  the  steep 
Wind  riveted  and  roofed  till  men  fly  it 
With  vertical,  square  wings 
Is  movement's  heart,  the  deep 
Core  of  being  where  man  sings 
Restlessness  out  of  his  head 
And  walks  the  long  curves 
Of  earth,  pure  being,  unled 
Through  the  dark  streets  of  his  nerves. 

"Here,  walking  Broadway  or  wide 


C  232  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Michigan  Boulevard,  hitch-hiking 
The  Lincoln  Highway,  here 
Has  the  word  moved  like  the  tide 
Of  a  ploughed  field  in  the  earth, 
Moved  into  man  and  become 
Boned  and  blooded,  and  cried, 
Now  by  a  terrible  birth 
Are  the  word  and  man  one. 

"I,  with  my  feet  in  the  corn 
Of  Illinois  where  have  run 
The  hard  heels  of  the  plough, 
And  my  heart  in  the  eagle-torn 
Peaks  of  the  Rockies,  will  fling 
To  the  glaring  face  of  the  sun 
The  proud  defiance  of  man  .  .  . 
Here  is  the  word,  I  will  sing, 
Become  a  life  and  a  line 
And  to  you  where  we  all  began 
I  hurl  it  back  as  a  thing 
New  in  the  world,  a  sign 
That  the  next  storm  wind  will  bring 
Of  a  slang  and  a  song  where  ran 
In  the  earth  the  American  ring 
Of  a  word,  the  American  man." 

Yet  we  have  heard  nothing  save  the  tiny  cry 
From  a  narrow  street,  of  a  child  who  wept  because 
Having  cut  his  finger,  seen  a  drop  of  blood, 
He  thought  his  heart  had  burst. 

You  have  no  time 
To  sing,  you  are  forever  running  away 


PROLOGUE  [  233  ] 

Shrieking,  lest  you  hear  or  understand 
The  lean,  avenging  fury  of  yourself. 

And  I  have  seen  you,  O  poor  Job  of  nations, 

Now  because  you  have  had  a  boil  on  the  neck, 

Having  been  so  long  clean-blooded,  down  on  the  dung  heap 

Flung,  to  beat  your  breast  and  tear  your  hair 

And  hurl  up  dung  into  the  eyes  of  God. 

But  you  are  not  alone,  for  all  the  world 

Cries,  Pity,  with  you.  Every  nation  stares 

Into  the  other's  face,  into  the  sky, 

The  guts  of  a  bird,  reads  a  deer's  thigh  bone, 

Looks  in  a  mirror  for  a  way,  to  find 

Only  their  own  reflected,  helpless  eyes 

Begging  and  frightened. 

They  are  all  diseased 

With  the  fever  of  wretched  government  that  burns 
And  wastes  the  tortured  flesh  till  it  cannot  sleep, 
With  the  racking  chill  and  ague  of  too  much  money 
In  too  few  hands.  It  is  only  the  life-patient, 
Deep,  man-haunted  earth  that  is  not  sick, 
Gentle  in  cropped  fields. 

Now  I  hear  in  the  night 
Rise  from  every  corner  of  the  world 
The  life-tormented  yell  of  starving  men, 
From  doorway  beds  or  subway  benches,  wrapped 
In  newspapers  —  Beauty  Engaged,  The  Hardware  Joneses 
Leave  For  Europe,  Agitator  Jailed. 
The  toes  of  children  rip  through  old  shoes  and  scrape 
On  the  hot  streets  or  in  the  deep  snow.  Women 
Lift  up  their  eyes,  no  longer  filmed  with  patience, 


[  234  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

In  the  question  that  is  their  birth-right  and  their  curse: 

"Here  are  my  children,  thin,  the  bones  begging  for  food, 

There  are  no  more  quarters  for  the  gas  meter,  no 

Credit  at  the  butcher's,  the  heat  turned  off. 

Here  is  a  man  glad  for  a  chance  to  work 

Hard,  long  hours,  overtime,  and  yet 

Must  walk  the  streets  and  sit  in  a  cold  room. 

I  am  a  woman.  I  do  not  understand. 

But  has  a  man  no  more  the  right  to  work, 

A  child  to  eat?  A  woman  at  evening 

To  rest  in  her  family  without  the  fear 

Morning  will  find  them  turned  into  the  street 

With  a  handful  of  clothes  and  an  old  chair?" 

This  is  not 
Your  way,  America. 

Yet  now  I  see 

In  Alabama  cotton  burned,  In  Iowa 
Hogs  slaughtered  and  buried,  in  Montana 
Wheat  ploughed  under.  While  eight  million  men 
Shiver  and  hunger.  This  is  not  your  way 
America.  Remember  —  if  one  man  eats 
While  another  starves,  his  very  food  is  cursed. 
The  bread-line  is  a  rope  will  strangle  you. 

You've  kidded  yourself  too  long,  America. 

It's  time  you  looked  the  straight  fact  in  the  eye. 

The  world's  gone  bust,  gone  haywire,  and  you  with  it, 

You,  the  infallible,  spoiled  child.  Fate's  got 

Your  number,  buddy,  he's  got  the  dope  on  you, 

Either  you  act  now  or  he'll  slip  up  and  say 

You're  through,  fella,  you're  done,  washed  up,  cold, 


PROLOGUE  [  235  ] 

Out  on  your  feet  and  you  don't  know  it,  you're 
Dead  from  the  ears  up.  Scraaam. 

Remember 

That  living  men  do  not  forever  crawl 
Down  in  the  gutter  and  die  in  sight  of  fire 
Which  burns  the  bread-stuff  that  could  nourish  them; 
That  there  is  an  ancient  power  in  the  world, 
Blind  and  cruel  and  terrible  in  act, 
And  it  is  not  in  the  stars  or  in  your  eyes 
That  you  alone  of  all  the  world's  lands  will 
Escape  the  unimaginable  fury 
Of  the  lean-bellied,  too  long  patient  poor. 

You've  panhandled  your  own  people,  you've  betrayed 
The  faith  of  a  hundred  million,  the  deep  soil 
That  lengthened  your  skeleton,  the  nervous  wind 
That  lifted  your  cheek  bone,  the  dream  of  men 
A  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  who  looked 
At  a  thin  line  of  towns  by  the  sea's  edge 
Huddled,  up  the  tidewater  to  the  first 
Lean  mountain,  and  said  — 

"Here  is  a  new  thing. 
Here  is  another  twist  of  life  in  the  world's 
Lift  of  men  to  the  sunlight.  We  have  torn 
A  new  son  from  the  tired  guts  of  Europe, 
Gut  the  navel  string,  left  it  here  on  a  strange 
Shore  to  suckle  on  maple  sap  and  milkweed, 
Grow  up  half  wolf-boy  and  half  god,  to  thumb 
His  nose  at  a  far  home  he  has  not  seen. 
Here  is  a  new  people"  — 

America 
You  have  betrayed  that  people.  This  is  a  shame 


C  236  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

That  not  alone  will  leave  a  white,  ridged  scar 
Over  your  cheek,  will  let  your  name  taste  rotten 
On  tongues  that  spit  it  out,  that  scorn  to  speak  it, 
But  can  destroy  you. 

You  will  wake  one  morning 
To  hear  the  relentless  hounds  of  hungry  men 
Crying  destruction  over  your  doomed  hills. 

O  desert  nation,  jackaled  with  your  dreams. 

Yet  there  is  a  way.  This  is  not  the  Alamo, 
The  walls  taken,  the  Mission  entered,  righting 
Hand  to  hand  with  the  Bowie  knife,  Crockett 
Fallen  at  last  in  a  roomful  of  his  dead, 
The  relief  held  beyond  the  flood  river. 
It  is  the  old  American  way,  the  going 
Tough,  no  salt,  tobacco  wet,  the  weak 
Clamoring  to  turn  back.  It  is  another 
Cumberland  Pass,  the  guide  shot  and  scalped 
In  sight  —  sound  —  of  the  camp,  the  narrow  trail 
Dark  with  the  forest  death. 

It  is  a  pause 

In  the  long  war-dance  of  our  history,  a  turn 
Of  our  life.  Either  we  go  on  to  shout 
The  great  blood-cry,  or  slink  away  to  the  squaws 
Taunting  in  the  buffalo  tents,  the  boys 
Making  lewd  gestures  of  us  in  the  ponies. 

We  live  darkly  in  the  world's  great  darkness 
Ringed  round  on  the  leaning  hills  with  a  fanged  fire 
That,  in  the  bird-crying  hour  of  dawn, 
Can  run  through  the  dry  grass  to  leap  and  tear  us, 


PROLOGUE  [  237  ] 

Rip  the  lodge  poles  down,  consume  the  pemmican 
Dried  for  winter,  all  the  old  and  sick 
Left  screaming  on  the  black  ground,  and  a  few 
Escaped  to  the  mountains  with  a  medicine  bag 
And  a  knife,  to  live  on  roots  and  bark,  and  die 
In  the  first  blizzard,  bones  piled  in  the  Spring 
For  the  friendly  buzzards.  Or  we  can  ourselves 
Crawl  up  in  the  night  to  steal  it  from  the  gods 
And  carry  it  in  a  pouch  to  our  own  valley, 
Fuel  it  with  the  dead  and  broken  wood 
Of  a  society  we  have  proved  rotten 
And  found  the  courage  to  destroy. 

O  then 

Having  built  up  that  man-exalting  land, 
The  clear  expression  of  the  human  thing 
In  the  social  multitude,  and  in  the  lone 
Individual  with  his  single  way 
That  is  our  self-created  destiny, 
It  will  become  the  true  American  flame 
That  will  be  deep  fire  in  the  nation's  eyes, 
That  will  burn  steel  but  will  not  burn  our  hearts. 


The  Future  of  States'  Rights 

PETER    ODEGARD 

THE  recent  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  Schechter 
Poultry  case  has  once  again  sharpened  the  issue  of  States' 
Rights.  The  controversy,  for  us,  is  an  old  one.  Much  of  our 
political  history  has  revolved  about  it.  The  movement  cul 
minating  in  the  Constitution  was,  in  fact,  a  protest  against  the 
extreme  localism  of  the  post-revolutionary  years.  Every  school 
boy  knows  this  as  the  "critical  period,"  and  although  the 
condition  of  the  country  at  the  time  was  by  no  means  as  bad 
as  some  historians  would  have  us  believe,  it  was  indeed 
critical. 

The  tiny  spark  of  national  consciousness  which  appeared 
during  the  revolution  had  flickered  and  all  but  died.  "Among 
the  first  sentiments  expressed  in  the  first  Congress,"  said 
James  Wilson,  "one  was  that  'Virginia  is  no  more,  that 
Massachusetts  is  no  more,  that  Pennsylvania  is  no  more,  etc. 
We  are  now  one  nation  of  brethren.  We  must  bury  local 
interests  and  distinctions!'  This  language  continued  for  some 
time.  No  sooner  were  the  state  governments  formed  than  their 
jealousy  and  ambition  began  to  display  themselves.  Each 
endeavored  to  cut  a  slice  from  the  common  loaf  to  add  to  his 
morsel,  till  at  length  the  Confederation  became  frittered 
down  to  the  impotent  condition  in  which  it  now  stands." 

To  the  business  and  commercial  classes,  the  crisis  was  par 
ticularly  acute  —  and  it  was  they  who  led  the  movement  for 
a  new  Constitution.  .Necessarily  that  document  was  a  child  of 
compromise.  It  did  not  go  as  far  in  establishing  a  centralized 
authority  as  some  of  the  leaders  desired.  Nevertheless,  by 
giving  to  the  national  government  a  strong  executive  estab 
lishment,  an  independent  system  of  courts,  and  extensive 
powers  over  taxation,  foreign  relations,  commerce  and  cur 
rency,  it  laid  the  foundation  for  a  truly  national  state.  More 
over,  important  restrictions  were  imposed  upon  the  states. 
The  Constitution,  laws,  and  treaties  of  the  national  govern- 

[238] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  239  ] 

ment  were  declared  to  be  "the  supreme  law  of  the  land;  and 
the  judges  of  every  state  shall  be  bound  thereby,  anything  in 
the  Constitution  or  laws  of  any  state  to  the  contrary  not 
withstanding." 

The  Articles  of  Confederation  had  regarded  the  states  as 
sovereign  and  equal,  and  the  national  Congress  was  powerless 
to  act  without  their  consent.  The  government  established  by 
the  Constitution  was  to  rest  upon  the  broad  base  of  popular 
consent  as  represented  in  the  lower  house  of  the  national 
legislature.  Concessions  were  made  to  the  states  in  the  amend 
ing  clause,  the  suffrage  provisions,  and  in  the  Senate  where 
they  were  given  equal  representation  regardless  of  size  or 
population. 

It  was  over  this  latter  issue  that  the  Convention  very  nearly 
went  on  the  rocks.  The  debate  served  to  illuminate  the  atti 
tude  of  many  of  "the  Fathers"  toward  States'  Rights.  "The 
state  systems,"  wrote  Henry  Knox  to  Rufus  King  in  the  sum 
mer  of  1787,  "are  the  accursed  things  which  will  prevent  our 
being  a  nation.  .  .  .  The  vile  state  governments  are  sources 
of  pollution  which  will  contaminate  the  American  name  for 
ages  —  machines  that  must  produce  ill,  but  cannot  produce 
good."  But  John  Dickinson  compared  the  proposed  na 
tional  system  to  the  solar  system  in  which  the  states  were  the 
planets  and  ought  to  be  left  to  move  freely  in  their  orbits. 
In  other  words,  the  new  government  was  to  represent  a  dual 
sovereignty. 

"Good  God,  Sir!"  cried  Gouverneur  Morris,  "is  it  possible 
that  they  can  so  delude  themselves?  ...  It  has  been  said 
that  the  new  government  would  be  partly  national,  partly 
federal;  that  it  ought  in  the  first  quality  to  protect  individuals, 
in  the  second  the  states.  But  in  what  quality  was  it  to  protect 
the  aggregate  interest  of  the  whole?"  Morris,  like  many  of  his 
colleagues,  was  not  sanguine  concerning  such  a  system.  He 
pointed  to  the  failure  of  federalism  in  the  Greek  States,  in 
Germany  and  the  United  Netherlands.  "With  these  examples 
before  our  eyes,  shall  we  form  establishments  which  must 
necessarily  produce  the  same  effects?" 


[  240  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

In  spite  of  these  dire  predictions,  the  theory  of  dual  sov 
ereignty  prevailed  not  only  in  the  apportionment  of  repre 
sentation,  but  also  in  the  division  of  powers  between  the 
states  and  the  nation.  This  division  of  powers,  at  least  in 
theory,  cannot  be  altered  except  by  the  difficult  process  of 
amendment  requiring  the  consent  of  three-fourths  of  the 
states.  Of  course  the  Supreme  Court,  the  final  arbiter  in  juris- 
dictional  controversies,  is  itself  an  agency  of  the  national 
government.  As  a  matter  of  fact  that  government  —  Presi 
dent,  Congress  and  Supreme  Court  —  acting  together  is 
supreme,  and  its  powers  when  so  acting  are  unfettered  by 
Constitutional  restraints. 

We  speak  of  the  national  government  as  one  of  delegated 
powers,  and  of  the  states  as  governments  of  reserved  powers. 
This  distinction  is  made  clear  in  the  tenth  amendment  which 
reads:  "The  powers  not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the 
Constitution  nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the  states,  are  reserved  to 
the  states  respectively  or  to  the  people." 

But  the  language  used  in  apportioning  these  powers  lacks 
precision.  For  example,  Congress  is  given  power  to  "regulate 
commerce  with  foreign  nations  and  among  the  several  states." 
What  is  commerce  and  what  does  it  mean  to  "regulate"?  So 
likewise  Congress  has  power  to  "lay  and  collect  taxes,  duties, 
imposts  and  excises,  to  pay  the  debts  and  provide  for  the 
common  defense  and  general  welfare  of  the  United  States." 
What  is  meant  by  the  "general  welfare"?  Congress  may  estab 
lish  post-offices  and  build  post-roads.  But  does  this  include 
power  to  conduct  a  savings  bank  or  to  engage  in  the  express 
business?  What  are  post-roads,  anyway?  Section  four  of 
article  four  says:  "The  United  States  shall  guarantee  to 
every  state  in  this  Union  a  republican  form  of  government." 
It  does  not,  as  did  the  Weimar  Constitution  of  Germany,  tell 
us  exactly  what  this  means.  Has  Louisiana,  under  the  rule  of 
the  Kingfish,  such  a  government? 

Then  there  is  the  famous  "elastic  clause"  which  gives 
Congress  power  "to  make  all  laws  which  shall  be  necessary 
and  proper  for  carrying  into  execution  the  foregoing  powers." 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  241  ] 

What  laws  are  to  be  deemed  "necessary  and  proper"?  It  is 
plain  that  the  national  government  may  exercise  powers  not 
"expressly"  granted,  but  what  are  the  limits  to  this  "implied" 
authority?  Are  the  powers  granted,  exclusive?  May  they  be 
exercised  by  the  states  in  the  absence  of  national  action,  or 
concurrently  once  Congress  has  acted? 

So  it  is  with  the  restraints  imposed  upon  both  the  national 
and  state  governments.  The  fifth  amendment  says  that  "no 
person  shall  be  deprived  of  life,  liberty,  or  property  without 
due  process  of  law,"  and  an  identical  limitation  is  placed 
upon  the  states  in  section  one  of  the  fourteenth  amendment. 
But  what  is  "due  process  of  law"? 

The  language  of  the  Constitution  is  vague.  All  the  fore 
going  terms  admit  of  many  different  interpretations.  "You 
have  made  a  good  Constitution,"  said  someone  to  Gouverneur 
Morris.  "That,"  replied  Morris,  "depends  on  how  it  is  inter 
preted."  This  important  task  falls  to  the  Supreme  Court.  In 
the  heavy  haze  which  surrounds  the  terminology  of  the  Con 
stitution,  the  "nine  old  men"  who  sit  on  that  tribunal  find 
ample  room  to  exercise  their  interpretative  talents.  In  a  very 
real  sense,  ours  is  a  government  by  judiciary,  as  Louis  Boudin 
has  so  amply  demonstrated.  (Government  by  Judiciary.)  It  is  the 
Supreme  Court  which  ultimately  sets  the  metes  and  bounds 
of  national  and  state  power.  As  James  Beck  once  remarked: 
"Thus  the  Supreme  Court  is  not  only  a  court  of  Justice  but  in 
a  qualified  sense  a  continuous  constitutional  convention."  The 
meaning  and  extent  of  States'  Rights  can  best  be  discovered 
in  the  decisions  of  that  august  body. 

T  N  THE  fanfare  of  praise  and  blame  which  has  greeted  recent 
-*•  decisions,  it  is  important  to  remember  that  on  the  whole 
the  Court  has  been  friendly  to  the  expansion  of  national 
power.  Two  distinct  theories,  represented  at  the  outset  by 
Hamilton  and  Madison  respectively,  have  battled  for  su 
premacy.  Professor  Corwin  puts  it  most  succinctly  when  he 
says:  "...  by  the  year  1885  .  .  .  American  constitutional 
law  had  come  to  embrace  two  widely  divergent  traditions 


[  242  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

regarding  national  power.  The  one  tradition  (Hamiltonian) 
insists  on  the  adaptability  of  national  power  to  'an  undefined 
and  expanding  future'  and  leaves  the  maintenance  of  the 
Federal  system  and  of  States'  Rights  largely  contingent  thereon. 
.  .  .  The  other  tradition  (Madisonian)  erects  dual  Federalism 
into  a  supreme  constitutional  value,  the  preservation  of 
which  ought  forever  to  control  constitutional  interpretation. 
.  .  .  And  having  these  two  traditions  at  hand,  the  Court 
became  enabled  .  .  .  without  too  great  derogation  from  its 
judicial  role,  to  frame  responses  from  either  when  confronted 
with  questions  of  national  power."  (Twilight  of  the  Supreme 
Court.)  John  Marshall  and  the  Court  over  which  he  presided 
were  clearly  Hamiltonian  in  outlook;  Taney  and  his  colleagues 
labored  under  the  shadow  of  James  Madison.  Since  the  Civil 
War  the  Court  has,  with  a  few  notable  exceptions,  followed 
Hamilton,  although  recently  the  pendulum  seems  to  be 
swinging  back  again. 

In  all,  the  Court  has  struck  down  some  sixty  acts  of  Con 
gress.  The  state  statutes  which  have  died  at  its  hands  would 
run  to  many  times  that  figure.  The  very  rapid  expansion  of 
national  power,  and  the  growth  in  state  activities  have  in 
creased  the  number  of  issues  presented.  Moreover,  the  phi 
losophy  of  laissez  faire,  to  which  the  judges  had  in  general 
adhered,  helps  to  explain  the  striking  increase  in  the  laws 
both  national  and  state  which  have  incurred  the  Court's  dis 
pleasure.  Thus  up  to  1900,  only  twenty-six  acts  of  Congress 
had  been  invalidated  by  the  Court,  as  against  some  thirty-six 
since  that  date.  State  laws  were  disallowed  in  twenty  cases 
before  the  Civil  War,  and  in  over  four  hundred  in  the  years 
following  1870. 

The  theory  which  regards  the  Court  as  an  impartial  umpire 
between  Washington  and  the  state  capitals  needs  numerous 
qualifications.  It  has,  in  a  very  real  sense,  been  the  guardian 
of  the  whole  as  against  the  parts.  Indeed,  after  a  careful  study 
of  the  cases,  Professor  Field  has  recently  suggested  that  in 
place  of  the  doctrine  that  the  national  government  may  exer 
cise  only  delegated  powers  a  new  rule  had,  up  to  1 934,  been  in 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'.  RIGHTS  [  243  ] 

effect  applied.  This  new  rule  would  read  somewhat  as  follows: 
"The  national  government  has  all  those  powers  of  govern 
ment  not  specifically  denied  it.  In  case  of  doubt  the  national 
government  shall  be  deemed  to  have  the  power.  In  case  of 
conflict  between  the  nation  and  state  power,  the  national 
government  shall  be  deemed  superior.  In  case  of  war  or 
emergency  these  rules  apply  particularly,  but  in  case  of  doubt 
a  state  of  emergency  shall  be  deemed  to  exist."  Recent  deci 
sions  have  played  hob  with  this  rule  although  the  future  is 
more  likely  to  confirm  than  to  deny  it. 

No  small  part  of  the  expansion  of  national  power  has  taken 
place  under  the  commerce  clause,  coupled  with  the  doctrine 
of  implied  powers.  In  the  first  case  presented  to  the  Court 
under  the  commerce  clause,  John  Marshall  construed  the 
meaning  of  the  Constitutional  grant  to  imply  that  in  this 
area  the  authority  of  the  national  government  was,  for  practi 
cal  purposes,  unlimited.  The  power  to  regulate  commerce,  he 
said,  was  "vested  in  Congress  as  absolutely  as  it  would  be  in 
a  single  government  having  in  its  Constitution  the  same 
restrictions  ...  as  are  found  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States."  The  sole  restraints  upon  its  exercise,  he  indi 
cated,  were  to  be  found  not  in  the  rights  of  the  states,  but  in 
the  limitations  imposed  by  the  people  through  their  repre 
sentatives  in  Congress.  "The  wisdom  and  the  discretion  of 
Congress,  their  identity  with  the  people,  and  the  influence 
which  their  constituents  possess  at  elections  are,  in  this,  as  in 
many  other  instances  .  .  .  the  sole  restraints  to  secure  them 
from  its  abuse."  Moreover,  Marshall  defined  commerce  very 
broadly  to  include  not  only  transportation  but  "intercourse." 

Furthermore,  it  has  been  held  that  the  power  of  the  na 
tional  government  over  interstate  commerce  is,  in  all  im 
portant  respects,  exclusive.  The  Court  has  time  and  again 
invalidated  state  legislation,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  an 
unconstitutional  interference  with  the  "free  and  unrestricted 
flow  of  interstate  commerce."  Serious  limitations  have  thus 
been  placed  upon  the  states  in  taxation,  economic  regulation 
and  even  social  legislation.  It  follows  that  where  the  states 


[  244  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

are  powerless  to  act,  the  necessary  controls  must  be  imposed 
by  the  national  government. 

When  in  1886,  for  example,  the  Court  killed  an  act  of  the 
Illinois  legislature  seeking  to  prohibit  discriminatory  railroad 
rates,  Congress  almost  immediately  passed  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Act,  thus  definitely  bringing  common  carriers 
under  national  control.  This  control  has  since  been  extended 
to  include  regulation  not  only  of  interstate  but  of  intra-state 
rates  as  well.  (C.  B.  and  Q,.  vs.  Wise.)  Interstate  bus  lines  have 
so  far  escaped  Federal  regulation,  and  since  the  power  of  the 
states  over  them  is  severely  limited,  they  remain  virtually 
uncontrolled.  To  those  who  view  the  national  government  as 
avidly  grasping  for  power  everywhere  and  at  all  times,  its 
reluctance  to  occupy  this  field  must  be  puzzling.  The  fact, 
however,  that  the  states  may  not  constitutionally  exercise 
a  power  does  not  imply  that  the  national  government  may 
do  so. 

What  definition  has  the  Court  given  to  the  term  "interstate 
commerce"?  Reference  has  already  been  made  to  Marshall's 
definition.  In  1877,  Chief  Justice  Waite  said  that  the  term  was 
"not  confined  to  the  instrumentalities  of  commerce  .  .  . 
known  or  in  use  when  the  Constitution  was  adopted  but  [keeps 
pace]  with  the  progress  of  the  country  .  .  .  from  the  horse 
with  its  rider  to  the  stage  coach,  from  the  sailing  vessel  to  the 
steamboat,  from  the  coach  and  the  steamboat  to  the  railroad 
and  from  the  railroad  to  the  telegraph,  as  these  new  agencies 
are  successively  brought  into  use  to  meet  the  demands  of 
increasing  population  and  wealth."  (Pensacola  Telegraph  Co. 
vs.  Western  Union.) 

Again  Justice  Harlan  said:  "Commerce  among  the  states 
embraces  navigation,  intercourse,  communication,  traffic,  the 
transit  of  persons  and  the  transmission  of  messages  by  tele 
graph."  It  has  been  held  that  an  individual  transporting 
goods  across  a  state  line  on  his  own  person  (U.  S.  vs.  Chavez; 
U.  S.  vs.  Hill)  or  in  his  own  automobile  (U.  S.  vs.  Simpson)  is 
engaged  in  interstate  commerce.  As  these  instrumentalities 
have  extended  their  scope,  and  progressively  transcended 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  245  ] 

^*   *s     * ^T^TT??' 

state  boundaries,  the  power  of  the  national  government  has 
increased  and  that  of  the  states  has  just  as  surely  declined. 

While  there  is  now  no  doubt  concerning  the  power  of 
Congress  to  regulate  the  "instrumentalities"  of  commerce,  the 
extent  of  its  authority  over  agencies  and  activities  incidental 
to  this  commerce  is  not  clear.  It  has  been  held  that  manu 
facturing  is  not  commerce  (U.  S.  vs.  E.  C.  Knight)  and  that 
Congress  cannot,  under  the  guise  of  regulating  commerce, 
control  the  conditions  of  manufacturing  within  the  states. 
(Hammer  vs.  Dagenhart.)  Practically  this  distinction  is  becoming 
difficult  to  maintain.  The  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Act  —  out 
lawing  combinations  in  restraint  of  trade  or  commerce  among 
the  states  —  was  very  definitely  designed  to  regulate  the 
conditions  of  manufacturing. 

This  was  followed  by  the  Clayton  Act  and  the  Federal 
Trade  Commission  Act  in  1914,  prohibiting  certain  types  of 
"unfair"  business  practices  which  are  intimately  related  to  the 
process  of  manufacture  as  well  as  sale.  Yet  this  legislation  has 
been  sustained  on  the  ground  that  it  was  intended  to  remove 
"obstructions"  to  the  free  flow  of  commerce.  It  was  on  the 
same  theory  that  the  present  administration  sought  to  justify 
the  NIRA,  and  the  Court  would  have  violated  none  of  the 
canons  of  judicial  consistency  had  it  sustained  the  Act. 

The  line  between  intra-state  and  interstate  commerce  has 
become  extremely  thin  —  as  the  Court  has  time  and  again 
admitted.  In  the  Sugar  Trust  Case  (U.  S.  vs.  E.  C.  Knight)  the 
judges  were  unimpressed  by  the  fact  that  the  defendant 
company  had  "nearly  complete  control  of  the  manufacture 
of  refined  sugar  in  the  United  States,"  and  that  the  over 
whelming  bulk  of  its  product  was  shipped  outside  the  state 
of  manufacture.  But  in  a  later  case  (Swift  and  Co.  vs.  United 
States)  where  some  thirty  firms  agreed  to  refrain  from  bidding 
against  each  other  for  livestock  in  the  local  market,  the  Court 
took  account  of  the  fact  that  the  livestock  came  from  other 
states  and,  as  meat  products,  were  subsequently  shipped 
outside  the  State  of  Illinois.  This,  it  was  held,  rendered  the 
transaction,  taken  as  a  whole,  one  in  interstate  commerce,  and 


[  246  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

hence  subject  to  Federal  law  —  notwithstanding  that  the 
particular  practice  assailed  took  place  within  the  confines 
of  a  single  state. 

Referring  to  this  case  many  years  later  Chief  Justice  Taft 
said:  ".  .  .  .  It  refused  to  permit  local  incidents  of  a  great 
interstate  movement  which  taken  alone  were  intra-state  to 
characterize  the  movement  as  such."  Applying  the  same  logic 
to  the  Packers  and  Stockyards  Act  of  1921  Taft  said:  "The 
object  to  be  secured  by  this  act  is  the  free  and  untrammeled 
flow  of  livestock  from  the  ranges  and  farms  of  the  West  and 
Southwest  through  the  great  stockyards  and  slaughtering 
centers  .  .  .  and  thence  in  the  form  of  meat  products  to 
the  consuming  cities  of  the  country.  .  .  .  The  chief  evil  feared 
is  the  monopoly  of  the  packers,  enabling  them  unduly  and 
arbitrarily  to  lower  prices  to  the  shipper  who  sells,  and  unduly 
and  arbitrarily  to  increase  the  price  to  the  consumer  who 
buys."  (Stafford  vs.  Wallace.)  Incidentally,  it  is  interesting  to 
compare  this  language  with  that  used  in  the  Schechter 
Poultry  Case  where  the  Court  said:  "It  is  not  the  province  of 
the  Court  to  consider  the  economic  advantages  or  disad 
vantages  of  such  a  centralized  system.  It  is  sufficient  that  the 
Federal  Constitution  does  not  provide  for  it." 

With  the  increasing  specialization  and  concentration  of 
industry  —  necessitating  buying  and  selling  in  a  national 
market  —  there  is  scarcely  a  major  economic  undertaking  in 
America  which  cannot  be  described  in  Justice  Taft's  words. 
As  Professor  Cor  win  remarks:  "what  is  said  here  of  the  meat 
business  may  with  equal  truth  be  said  of  half  a  hundred  other 
species  of  traffic  —  in  California's  fruit,  in  Minnesota's  flour, 
in  Texas'  oil,  in  Pennsylvania's  coal,  in  Kentucky's  tobacco, 
in  Michigan's  automobiles,  etc."  Just  why  the  judges  in  the 
N.R.A.  case  did  not  follow  the  line  here  laid  down  remains  a 
secret  locked  within  the  conscience  of  the  Court.  To  say  that 
these  enterprises  can  be  effectively  controlled  by  the  states  is 
both  constitutionally  and  economically  absurd.  To  deny  power 
to  the  national  government  is  therefore  tantamount  to  saying 
that  they  shall  be  uncontrolled. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  247  ] 

Moreover,  one  cannot  justly  speak  of  "Federal  encroach 
ments  upon  the  powers  of  the  states"  when  the  national 
government  moves  into  an  area  which  the  states  are  powerless 
to  occupy.  For  as  Sidney  Gulick  of  the  National  Institute  of 
Public  Administration  says:  "Nothing  effective  can  be  done  in 
the  regulation  or  stabilization  of  economic  affairs  unless  the 
area  of  planning  and  control  has  the  same  boundaries  as  the 
economic  structure."  Is  it  too  much  to  say  that  the  boundaries 
of  the  economic  structure  in  the  United  States  are  for  the  most 
part  those  of  the  nation? 


T^HE  power  of  Congress  over  economic  activities  is  not 
-*-  confined  to  the  commerce  clause.  It  has  power  to  "lay 
and  collect  taxes,  duties,  imposts  and  excises,"  to  tax  incomes 
"from  any  source  derived,"  and  to  "coin  money  and  regulate 
the  value  thereof";  and  the  states  are  specifically  forbidden  to 
do  most  of  these  things.  No  state  may  levy  taxes  upon  inter 
state  commerce,  nor  may  it  tax  the  agencies  or  instrumental 
ities  of  the  national  government.  The  converse  of  this,  how 
ever,  is  not  clear.  It  is  true  that  the  Court  has  forbidden  Federal 
taxes  upon  the  salaries  of  state  judges  (Collector  vs.  Day)  but 
it  has  upheld  the  power  of  the  national  government  to  tax 
certain  other  state  activities.  In  the  famous  case  of  Veazie  Bank 
vs.  Fenno,  a  Federal  tax  upon  the  circulating  notes  of  state 
banks,  the  effect  of  which  was  to  drive  them  out  of  existence, 
was  sustained.  On  the  other  hand,  a  state  tax  upon  the  cir 
culating  notes  of  U.  S.  banks  was  held  to  be  invalid.  (McCol- 
loch  vs.  Maryland.) 

It  is  customary  for  the  Court  to  distinguish  in  such  cases 
between  "governmental,"  and  "non-governmental"  or  "pro 
prietary"  functions.  The  former  may  not  be  taxed  while  the 
latter  may.  But  no  advocate  of  States'  Rights  would  contend 
that  the  states  could  tax  T.V.A.,  or  the  property  of  the  Inland 
Waterways  Corporation,  or  the  Post  Office,  or  Boulder  Dam. 
Yet  internal  revenue  taxes  are  regularly  collected  from  state 
liquor  stores  and  have  been  sustained.  (South  Carolina  vs. 
United  States.)  A  state  university  might  reasonably  be  regarded 


C  248  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

as  a  state  "governmental"  activity.  Nevertheless,  books  and 
supplies  imported  by  such  an  institution  are  subject  to  import 
duties.  (Board  of  Trustees  of  University  of  Illinois  vs.  United 
States.)  But  supplies  purchased  by  agencies  of  the  national 
government  may  not  be  taxed  by  the  states.  (Panhandle  Oil  Co. 
vs.  Knox.) 

The  conclusion  seems  inescapable  that  all  activities  of  the 
national  government  are  "governmental"  and  hence  immune 
from  state  taxation,  although  similar  or  even  identical  activ 
ities  carried  on  by  the  states  may  be  regarded  as  non-govern 
mental  and  hence  subject  to  the  Federal  taxing  power.  It  is 
certain  that  the  national  government  and  the  states  do  not 
any  longer,  if  they  ever  did,  represent  equal  sovereignties  each 
independent  in  its  own  sphere.  Should  any  doubt  on  this 
score  remain  one  might  cite  the  case  of  County  of  Spokane  vs. 
United  States.  The  point  at  issue  was  section  3466  of  the  revised 
statutes  providing  that  "whenever  any  person  indebted  to  the 
United  States  is  insolvent,  or  whenever  the  estate  of  any 
deceased  debtor  ...  is  insufficient  to  pay  all  the  debts  of 
the  deceased,  the  debts  due  to  the  United  States  shall  be  first 
satisfied."  The  deceased  in  this  case  owed  taxes  to  Spokane 
County,  an  agency  of  the  "sovereign"  state  of  Washington. 
Could  the  county  therefore  share  equally  with  the  Federal 
government  in  the  debtors  estate?  It  could  not.  The  court  held 
that  the  claims  of  the  national  government  were  paramount 
even  though  they  absorbed  the  entire  estate,  leaving  nothing 
for  the  county. 

The  influence  of  the  tariff  in  determining  the  economic 
destiny  of  the  nation  has  been  the  occasion  for  many  of  the 
most  sweeping  attacks  upon  Federal  power  by  those  who 
have  defended  States'  Rights.  It  was  the  so-called  "tariff  of 
abominations"  of  1832  that  called  forth  South  Carolina's 
famous  Ordinance  of  Nullification.  Yet  from  Hamilton  to 
Smoot,  the  Federal  taxing  power  has  been  used  to  promote  and 
foster  industry  at  the  expense  of  agriculture  and  the  consumer. 
The  processing  tax  of  the  A.A.A.  which  Henry  Wallace  calls 
an  "internal  tariff,"  seeks  to  extend  similar  benefits  to  the 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES*  RIGHTS  [  249  ] 

farmers.  Without  debating  its  wisdom,  and  aside  from  the 
question  of  delegation  involved  in  the  Secretary's  power  to 
determine  the  rates,  there  should  be  no  doubt  of  its  constitu 
tionality.  It  involves  a  vast  increase  in  the  power  of  the  na 
tional  government  over  agriculture. 

The  taxing  power  of  the  national  government  may  be  used 
not  only  to  pay  the  public  debt  but  to  "promote  the  general 
welfare."  The  purposes  for  which  the  public  debt  may  be 
incurred  and  what  measures  may  constitutionally  be  calcu 
lated  to  "promote  the  general  welfare"  are  not  set  forth  in  any 
great  detail  in  the  Constitution.  Theoretically  the  national 
government,  through  its  power  of  eminent  domain,  might 
acquire  ownership  of  the  major  industries  and  resources  of  the 
country,  and  use  the  taxing  power  to  liquidate  the  debt  thus 
created.  Since  the  state  governments  could  not  then  tax  these 
enterprises,  it  is  conceivable  that  the  states  might  be  de 
stroyed  by  the  consequent  undermining  of  their  financial 
foundations. 

This  is  not  as  fantastic  as  it  may  seem.  The  extension  of  such 
undertakings  as  T.V.A.,  Boulder  Dam,  the  Grand  Coulee, 
and  the  increase  of  Federal  activities  in  such  fields  as  housing 
and  land  purchase  may,  by  removing  property  from  the  tax 
rolls,  jeopardize  the  revenues  of  local  agencies  and  make  them 
increasingly  dependent  upon  Federal  largess.  Already 
Washington  has  occupied  the  most  productive  fields  of  taxa 
tion,  and  some  look  to  the  time  when  virtually  all  taxes  will  be 
collected  by  the  national  government  and  thence  allocated  to 
the  states  and  their  subdivisions.  Considerable  progress  has 
been  made  in  this  direction  through  the  device  known  as 
Federal  grants-in-aid.  In  return  for  such  grants,  the  state 
agrees  to  conform  to  standards  and  policies  laid  down  by 
national  officers  in  carrying  on  the  project.  Frequently,  to 
qualify  for  aid,  the  state  must  enact  legislation  suggested,  and 
often  drafted,  by  agents  of  the  national  government. 

"Moreover,"  says  Charles  Beard,  "we  have  the  strange 
anomaly  of  state  officers  on  Federal  pay-rolls,  Federal  officers 
on  state  and  local  pay-rolls,  Federal  officers  enforcing  state 


[  250  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

laws  and  state  officers  enforcing  Federal  statutes."  The  nature 
and  extent  of  these  activities  are  bewildering  to  those  who 
continue  to  think  in  the  traditional  language  of  "States' 
Rights."  They  include  maternity  and  infancy  aid,  education, 
scientific  research,  pest  eradication,  public  health  work, 
conservation,  and  public  works  of  almost  infinite  variety. 
Without  Federal  aid  the  elaborate  highway  system  of  the 
nation  would  be  unthinkable. 

Critics  of  the  present  administration  would  have  the  country 
believe  that  this  system  is  a  child  of  the  so-called  Roosevelt 
Revolution.  Yet  between  1912  and  1925  Federal  aid  payments 
increased  from  $8,149,478  to  $147,351,393  or  nearly  two 
thousand  percent.  This  includes  only  money  grants.  Under  the 
Morrill  Act  of  1862,  Congress  granted  thirty  thousand  acres 
of  land,  or  the  equivalent  in  land  scrip,  to  each  state  for 
each  of  its  Senators  and  Representatives  to  establish  the  now 
famous  land  grant  colleges  and  universities.  After  the  war 
some  two  hundred  million  dollars  of  war  materials  were 
delivered  to  state  highway  departments. 

Since  the  depression  literally  billions  of  dollars  have  been 
poured  into  the  states  from  the  Federal  treasury  to  finance 
public  works  and  poor  relief.  By  December  1 934  the  national 
government  was  paying  three-fourths  of  the  cost  of  unemploy 
ment  relief.  Indeed  in  the  South,  the  traditional  home  of 
States'  Rights,  between  ninety-five  and  ninety-nine  percent  of 
the  relief  load  was  being  borne  by  the  national  government. 
And  the  end  is  not  in  sight.  Congress  has  passed  the  National 
Social  Security  Act,  under  which  states  will  be  "induced,"  by 
Federal  taxes  and  grants,  to  enact  unemployment  insurance 
and  old  age  pensions  legislation.  We  have  scarcely  scratched 
the  surface  in  the  fields  of  housing,  grade-crossing  elimination, 
public  health,  child  welfare  and  education. 

Are  there  any  limits  to  the  taxing  and  spending  powers  of 
the  national  government  when  used  to  promote  the  general 
welfare?  In  the  Maternity  Aid  Cases  the  Federal  subsidy  policy 
was  attacked  on  two  grounds.  It  was  denounced  as  an  attempt 
to  induce  the  states  to  surrender  a  portion  of  their  sovereign 


THE  FUTURE  -OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  C  251  ] 

rights.  To  this  the  Supreme  Court  replied  simply  that  there 
was  no  binding  obligation  on  the  states  to  accept  the  money. 
The  second  objection  was  that  to  take  money  from  the  rich 
industrial  states  and  distribute  it  to  others  was  a  taking  of 
property  without  due  process  of  law.  But  the  Court  pointed  to 
the  physical  impossibility  of  making  apportionments  of 
Federal  funds  in  exact  proportion  to  the  amount  of  taxes 
collected  in  each  state.  Such  a  system  would  defeat  all  Federal 
taxation.  (Massachusetts  vs.  Mellon;  Frothing  ham  vs.  Mellon.) 

Alexander  Hamilton,  discussing  the  "general  welfare" 
clause  in  1791,  said:  "The  phrase  is  as  comprehensive  as  any 
that  could  have  been  used,  because  it  was  not  fit  that  the  con 
stitutional  authority  of  the  Union  to  appropriate  its  revenues 
should  have  been  restricted  within  narrower  limits  than  the 
'general  welfare,'  and  because  this  necessarily  embraces  a  vast 
variety  of  particulars  which  are  susceptible  neither  of  specifica 
tion  nor  of  definition.  It  is  therefore  .  .  .  left  to  the  discretion 
of  the  national  legislature  to  pronounce  upon  the  objects 
which  concern  the  general  welfare.  .  .  .  And  there  seems  to 
be  no  room  for  doubt  that  whatever  concerns  the  general 
interests  of  learning,  of  agriculture,  of  manufactures,  and  of 
commerce,  are  within  the  sphere  of  the  national  councils,  as 
far  as  regards  the  application  of  money." 

Certainly  this  comes  close  to  expressing  the  theory  upon 
which  the  national  government  has  acted  and  will,  continue 
to  act.  Whatever  limits  there  may  be  to  the  national  authority 
to  promote  the  general  welfare  through  its  taxing  and  spend 
ing  powers,  they  have  not  yet  been  discovered. 

T  N  the  contest  for  power  between  the  national  government 
-*•  and  the  states,  the  latter  have  been  in  retreat  since  the  first 
Congress  assembled  under  the  Constitution.  On  one  sector  of 
the  wavering  battle-line,  however,  they  have  been  able  to  put 
up  a  stubborn  resistance.  They  continue  to  hold  the  important 
area  best  described  as  the  "police  power."  This  phrase,  first 
used  by  Marshall  in  the  famous  case  of  Brown  vs.  Maryland, 
refers  to  the  power  of  the  states  to  regulate,  protect  and 


[  252  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

promote  the  health,  morals  and  safety  of  the  community. 
More  broadly  it  has  come  to  include  such  welfare  legislation 
as  workmen's  compensation,  limitations  upon  the  hours  and 
conditions  of  employment,  minimum  wage,  child  labor,  and 
social  insurance.  Within  these  categories  the  states  are  the 
oretically  supreme,  providing  they  do  not  encroach  upon  the 
acknowledged  powers  of  the  national  government,  impair  the 
obligation  of  contracts,  or  take  property  without  due  process 
of  law. 

But  even  here  there  are  signs  of  compromise  if  not  surrender. 
It  is  generally  agreed  that  the  Federal  government  has  no 
police  powers  as  such.  Yet  under  the  commerce,  postal  and 
taxing  powers  it  has  exercised  "police"  functions.  The  most 
dramatic  recent  illustration  is  the  Lindbergh  Law,  under 
which  Federal  officers  may  pursue,  capture,  try  and  convict 
kidnappers  who  transport  their  quarry  across  state  lines. 
Moreover,  such  interstate  transportation  is  "presumed"  if  the 
victim  is  not  surrendered  within  seven  days.  The  activities 
of  Edgar  Hoover's  "G"  men  in  this  connection  have  already 
become  the  theme  for  fiction,  song  and  scenario.  It  is  reason 
able  to  assume  that  the  theory  underlying  this  law  will  be 
extended  to  include  other  forms  of  crime  long  regarded  as 
within  the  exclusive  jurisdiction  of  the  states. 

Gangsters,  racketeers,  and  bootleggers,  who  were  to  all 
appearances  immune  under  state  laws,  have  been  trapped  by 
internal  revenue  agents  and  now  sit  in  Leavenworth  or  Alca- 
traz,  nursing  their  grievances  against  that  "monster,"  the 
national  government.  They  are  undoubtedly  ardent  believers 
in  "States'  Rights."  Thousands  of  innocent  investors  have  the 
postal  department,  with  its  fraud  orders,  to  thank  for  protec 
tion  against  "fleecing"  by  confidence  men  and  bogus  stock 
brokers.  The  operators  of  the  chain  letter  and  lottery  rackets 
are  probably  convinced  that  the  exercise  of  "police  powers" 
by  the  national  government  is  an  "unconstitutional  infringe 
ment"  of  the  inalienable  rights  of  the  states.  So  too  are  the 
manufacturers,  advertisers  and  salesmen  of  sure-fire  cancer 
cures,  anti-fat  remedies,  corrosive  complexion  aids  and 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  253  ] 

adulterated  foodstuffs,  who  have  felt  the  heavy  hand  of  the 
National  Food  and  Drug  Administration  or  the  inquisitorial 
gaze  of  the  postal  inspectors. 

How  far  may  the  national  government  go  to  accomplish 
police  regulation?  The  theory  is  that  the  commerce,  taxing 
and  postal  powers  cannot  be  used  directly  for  this  purpose 
although  legislation  in  these  areas  may  "incidentally"  accom 
plish  the  same  result.  When  Congress  outlawed  the  transporta 
tion  of  lottery  tickets  in  interstate  commerce,  that  act  was 
upheld  not  as  a  police  regulation,  but  as  a  legitimate  exercise 
of  the  power  to  regulate  commerce.  Yet  the  plain  intent  and 
purpose  of  the  law  was,  as  the  Court  itself  admitted,  to  guard 
"the  people  of  the  United  States  against  the  widespread 
pestilence  of  lotteries."  (Champion  vs.  Ames.}  In  1913  the  Court 
sustained  the  Mann  Act,  making  it  a  crime  for  any  person  to 
transport  or  aid  in  the  transportation  of  a  woman  or  girl  in 
interstate  commerce  for  immoral  purposes.  (Hoke  vs.  United 
States.) 

The  validity  of  such  legislation  is  determined  not  by  the 
powers  of  Congress  to  outlaw  gambling  or  prostitution 
directly,  but  by  its  power  to  deny  access  to  the  channels  of 
interstate  commerce  to  those  who  seek  to  use  them  for  purposes 
regarded  as  immoral  or  injurious  to  the  community.  Upon  the 
same  ground  the  Court  approved  the  Webb-Kenyon  Act, 
forbidding  the  interstate  transportation  of  liquor  to  persons  in 
"dry"  states.  (Clark  Distilling  Co.  vs.  Maryland  Railway.)  But 
when  Congress  in  1916  forbade  the  interstate  transportation 
of  commodities  produced  by  child  labor,  a  divided  court 
declared  the  law  unconstitutional.  (Hammer  vs.  Dagenhart.) 

Unable  to  accomplish  its  purpose  under  the  commerce 
clause,  Congress  imposed  a  special  tax  upon  the  net  profits  of 
concerns  employing  children.  Once  again  there  seemed  ample 
precedent  for  such  action.  John  Marshall  had  once  said  that 
the  power  to  tax  was  a  power  to  destroy,  and  it  had  been  so 
used  against  state  bank-notes.  Again  a  discriminatory  and 
destructive  tax  upon  oleomargarine,  colored  to  look  like 
butter,  was  upheld.  (McCrqy  vs.  United  States.)  To  the  argument 


[  254  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

that  the  tax  was  prohibitive,  the  Court  said  that  since  Con 
gress  clearly  had  the  power  to  tax,  any  restraint  imposed 
upon  that  power  by  the  Court  would  be  an  unconstitutional 
interference  with  the  work  of  the  national  legislature.  In  1914 
the  Harrison  Narcotic  Act  levied  an  excise  tax  of  one  dollar 
upon  all  dealers  in  narcotics.  The  law  was  in  fact  a  national 
licensing  act  since  the  dealers  were  forced  to  comply  with 
specified  conditions  laid  down  by  the  national  government. 
The  Supreme  Court  held  this  to  be  a  legitimate  exercise  of  the 
"taxing"  power.  (U.  S.  vs.  Dor  emus.) 

In  all  of  these  cases  it  is  clear  that  the  taxes  were  imposed 
not  to  produce  revenue,  but  to  enforce  police  regulations. 
Nevertheless,  when  the  child  labor  tax  law  was  presented  to 
the  Court  it  was  set  aside  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  a 
revenue  measure  but  a  police  regulation,  and  an  unconstitu 
tional  encroachment  upon  the  recognized  police  powers  of 
the  states.  (Bailey  vs.  Drexel  Furniture  Company.)  By  its  decisions 
in  the  child  labor  cases,  the  Court  has  in  effect  said  that  only 
a  Constitutional  amendment  can  cure  Congressional  impotence 
in  this  field.  The  recent  N.R.A.  decision  —  making  it  impos 
sible  to  outlawr  child  labor  by  nationally  imposed  codes  of  fair 
competition  —  increases  the  necessity  for  such  an  amendment. 

Of  course  the  states  may  prohibit  child  labor.  But  in  this,  as 
in  other  cases  involving  restrictive  legislation,  they  are  con 
fronted  with  almost  insuperable  difficulties.  In  the  absence  of 
uniform  national  regulations,  any  state  which  adopts  such 
laws  runs  the  risk  of  penalizing  its  own  manufacturers  and 
business  men  for  the  benefit  of  their  competitors  in  less  socially- 
minded  jurisdictions.  Obviously  a  manufacturer  operating  in 
a  state  where  he  may  not  employ  children,  or  where  he  must 
observe  certain  rules  respecting  hours  of  labor  and  minimum 
wages,  competes  at  a  disadvantage  with  manufacturers  in 
states  without  such  restraints.  Moreover,  the  states  are  power 
less  to  protect  themselves.  Should  they,  for  example,  attempt 
to  prohibit  the  importation  of  the  products  of  child  labor  from 
other  states,  they  would  most  certainly  be  forbidden  by  the 
Court  from  thus  unconstitutionally  imposing  burdens  upon 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  255  ] 

interstate  commerce.  So  long  as  manufacturers  produced  for 
a  local  intra-state  market  these  difficulties  were  not  serious, 
but  that  day  has  long  since  passed. 

'T'HIS  discussion  emphasizes  the  fact  that  back  of  all  the 
•*•  furor  over  States'  Rights  lie  powerful  economic  and  social 
interests.  So  long  as  the  exercise  of  national  power  is  promo 
tional  in  character  we  hear  no  complaint  from  the  groups 
whose  interest  is  thus  promoted,  against  Federal  centralization. 
On  the  contrary,  they  clamor  for  more.  There  is  little  or  no 
objection,  for  example,  from  business  men  to  the  activities  of 
the  national  government  in  the  fields  of  trade  promotion  and 
tariff  protection,  or  to  the  Federal  subsidies  to  railroads,  ship 
ping  interests  and  bankers. 

When  Mr.  Ford  says  that  all  business  asks  is  to  have  the 
government  curtail  its  expenditures  and  cease  its  "inter 
ference,"  he  obviously  is  not  thinking  of  Federal  road  building 
activities.  It  is  only  when  Federal  acts  become  regulative, 
competitive,  or  restrictive,  that  these  people  begin  to  talk 
about  returning  to  "the  government  of  our  fathers"  and  "re 
storing  the  states  to  their  rightful  place  in  the  Federal  Union." 
The  same  interests  which  now  denounce  the  expansion  of 
national  power  have  been  foremost  in  invoking  the  "due 
process"  clause  of  the  fourteenth  amendment  to  defeat  state 
action  in  these  same  fields.  It  would  appear  that  what  they 
object  to  is  not  centralization,  as  such,  but  governmental 
control  of  any  kind  by  whomsoever  imposed. 

And  so  with  the  agrarian  interests.  Throughout  most  of 
our  history  it  is  they  who  have  carried  the  torch  of  States' 
Rights.  But  they  have  not  seriously  objected  to  Federal 
centralization  conceived  in  the  interests  of  agriculture.  From 
the  purchase  of  Louisiana  and  the  "acquisition"  of  Texas, 
from  free  seeds  to  Federal  farm  credit,  from  the  establishment 
of  a  Department  of  Agriculture  to  the  Farm  Board  and  the 
A. A. A.,  they  have  looked  upon  the  works  of  the  national 
government  and  found  them  good.  Nor  have  they  been 
content  to  stop  with  these  things;  national  regulation  and  even 


[  256  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ownership  of  the  railroads  and  the  banks  have  been,  and  now 
are,  among  their  most  persistent  and  unremitting  demands. 

Organized  labor  strongly  supported  Federal  anti-trust 
legislation,  but  was  horrified  when  these  laws  were  used 
against  it.  On  the  other  hand  employers  could  find  no  fault 
with  President  Cleveland  in  sending  Federal  troops  into 
Illinois  to  break  a  strike,  over  the  protest  of  the  governor  of 
that  commonwealth.  But  when  the  national  government  seeks 
to  protect  workers  in  their  right  to  organize,  it  is  interpreted 
as  an  unwarranted  assault  upon  the  states. 

A  good  deal  of  the  criticism  against  Federal  centralization 
is  because  of  mounting  governmental  costs.  Federal  expendi 
tures,  for  example,  increased  one  hundred  and  seventy  per 
cent  between  1915  and  1930.  Although  the  bulk  of  this  in 
crease  was  attributable  to  the  war,  it  included  a  marked 
increase  in  expenditures  for  purely  civil  functions.  (Wooddy: 
Growth  of  the  Federal  Government.)  The  rapid  growth  of  the 
Federal  government  during  the  war  tended  to  retard  state 
expansion,  and  it  was  not  until  some  years  later  that  the 
balance  was  even  partly  restored.  The  depression  has  had 
similar  consequences.  The  states  have  been  compelled  to  rely 
upon  Federal  grants  not  only  for  capital  outlays  and  improve 
ments  but  even  for  operating  expenses.  It  is  this  that  has 
aroused  the  fears  of  some  of  those  who  oppose  centraliza 
tion. 

With  many  it  is  an  old  lament.  Governor  Albert  G.  Ritchie 
of  Maryland  declared  in  1925  that  the  "system  ought  to  be 
abolished  root  and  branch."  President  Coolidge  in  his  annual 
message  the  same  year  said:  "Local  self-government  is  one  of 
our  most  precious  possessions.  ...  It  ought  not  to  be  in 
fringed  by  assault  or  undermined  by  purchase."  Just  what 
interests  are  involved  here?  A  study  made  by  Eugene  Morgan 
of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  shows  that  opposition  to  the 
Federal  aid  system  was  largely  confined  to  New  England  and 
the  Middle  Atlantic  states.  That  it  was  not  altogether  a  matter 
of  principle  with  the  representatives  of  these  states,  is  reflected 
in  their  support  of  Federal  aid  legislation  designed  primarily  to 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  257  ] 

benefit  their  own  constituents.  What  they  object  to  is  the 
collection  of  revenue  in  these  rich  Eastern  states  and  its  dis 
bursement  in  other,  less  favored  sections  of  the  country. 

Governor  Ritchie,  for  example,  after  pointing  to  the  fact 
that  several  Western  states  actually  received  more  in  Federal 
aid  than  they  paid  into  the  national  treasury  in  taxes,  said 
that  such  a  situation  "must  be  vicious."  To  make  matters 
worse,  twenty  states  from  which  eighty-six  percent  of  the 
Federal  income  taxes  were  collected  received  back  less  than 
ten  percent  in  the  form  of  grants.  "Is  there  any  possible 
rational  basis,"  he  asks,  "to  justify  such  discriminations?" 

The  answer,  of  course,  is  obvious  to  any  one  who  cares  to 
examine  the  facts.  Professor  Austin  MacDonald  offers  the 
following  pertinent  information  in  his  study  of  "Federal  Aid." 
"The  U.  S.  Steel  Corporation  .  .  .  pays  a  Federal  income 
tax  of  several  million  dollars  in  New  York  State,  though  but 
two  of  its  one  hundred  and  forty-five  plants  and  warehouses 
are  in  New  York,  and  only  twenty  percent  of  its  stockholders 
reside  in  the  Empire  State.  .  .  .  The  Union  and  Southern 
Pacific  Railroads,  without  a  mile  of  track  east  of  the  Mississippi 
River,  also  pay  their  income  taxes  in  New  York  State.  So  does 
the  Anaconda  Copper  Mining  Company,  with  its  plants  in 
Montana  and  Wyoming.  To  credit  the  taxes  paid  by  the 
automobile  industry  to  Michigan,  or  the  packing  industry 
to  Illinois,  when  their  earnings  are  derived  from  the  entire 
nation  would  be  manifestly  unjust. 

As  the  Treasury  Department  itself  has  said:  "there  is  no 
way  of  ascertaining,  from  the  income  tax  returns,  the  amount 
of  income  earned  in  the  respective  states  or  the  amount  of  tax 
paid  on  that  basis."  What  is  true  of  income  taxes  is  true  of 
other  sources  of  Federal  revenue.  Should  the  customs  duties 
collected  be  credited  to  the  states  where  the  chief  ports  of 
entry  happen  to  be  located?  North  Carolina  ranks  second  only 
to  New  York  as  a  source  of  Federal  internal  revenue,  but  the 
cigarettes  manufactured  there  —  upon  which  the  bulk  of 
these  taxes  are  paid  —  are  sold  in  almost  every  state,  city  and 
hamlet  in  the  land.  It  is  precisely  this  situation  which  makes 


[  258  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

the  system  of  Federal  aid  accord  not  only  with  political  and 
financial  expediency,  but  also  with  social  justice. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  the  extent  to  which  the 
national  government  through  this  device  has  "encroached" 
upon  the  rights  of  the  states.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  but 
few  instances  in  which  Federal  expansion  has  resulted  in  a 
complete  transfer  of  functions  from  states  to  the  nation.  The 
conditions  attached  to  the  grants  have  in  general  tended  to 
increase  the  efficiency  and  raise  the  standards  of  state  adminis 
trative  activity.  They  have  as  a  consequence  placed  severe 
restrictions  upon  the  "rights"  of  local  contractors  to  gouge  the 
state  governments  and  of  state  politicians  to  reward  their 
friends  and  punish  their  enemies  at  public  expense.  But  these 
are  "States'  Rights"  of  questionable  value. 

TN  CONSIDERING  the  future  of  the  states  in  the  Federal 
-*•  Union  we  must  keep  in  mind  the  functions  which  they  now 
fulfill.  These  fall  into  two  main  categories.  In  the  first  place  the 
states  are  representative  areas.  As  such  they  represent,  in  our 
national  government,  the  loyalties  which  cluster  around  "the 
nucleus  of  neighborhood  and  geographic  proximity."  In  the 
early  days  these  were  real  —  fortified  as  they  were  by 
economic,  social  and  geographic  isolation.  As  modern  tech 
nology  has  broken  down  barriers  of  space  and  time,  these  state 
loyalties  have  declined.  Moreover,  with  few  exceptions, 
Americans  have  been  loyal  not  so  much  to  states  as  to  great 
sections  or  regions.  Remember  that  thirty-five  of  the  states 
owe  their  existence  as  members  of  the  Union  to  acts  of  Con 
gress.  "In  the  United  States,"  says  Arthur  MacMahon, 
"regions  have  been  more  important  than  states  at  all  periods 
in  the  country's  development." 

The  framers  of  the  Constitution  saw  this.  "Look  to  the  votes 
in  Congress,"  said  Madison,  "and  most  of  them  stand  divided 
by  the  geography  of  the  country  not  according  to  the  size  of  the 
states  .  .  .  the  great  danger  to  our  general  government  is 
the  great  Southern  and  Northern  interests  of  the  continent 
being  opposed  to  each  other."  These  sectional  cleavages  have 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  259  ] 

at  their  base  common  economic,  ethnic  and  cultural  factors 
with  which  they  become  identified.  But  loyalty  to  sectional 
symbols  often  transcends  in  importance  these  subsidiary 
interests.  Southerners  tend  to  distinguish  themselves  from 
Northerners,  and  this  allegiance  is  buttressed  by  educational 
and  cultural  influences,  as  well  as  economic.  The  remem 
brance  of  things  past  —  common  traditions  and  familiar 
symbols  which  represent  them  —  continues  as  a  living  force  in 
social  affairs.  What  is  true  of  the  South  is  true,  to  a  lesser 
degree  perhaps,  of  other  sections  such  as  New  England  and 
the  West. 

All  this  suggests  the  possibility  of  recasting  our  representa 
tive  system  —  particularly  with  reference  to  the  United 
States  Senate  —  so  as  to  afford  recognition  to  these  sectional 
interests.  (Since  the  House  of  Representatives  is  at  present 
representative  of  population,  and  not  of  the  states  as  such,  the 
problems  involving  it  need  not  be  discussed.) 

In  a  sense,  sectional  recognition  would  merely  give  legal 
form  to  an  existing  fact,  since  an  analysis  of  senatorial  votes 
on  thirty-five  roll  calls,  extending  over  six  Congresses,  shows  a 
high  degree  of  sectional  cohesion.  The  country  was  divided 
into  ten  great  sections  upon  the  basis  of  economic  and  social 
interests.  Within  each  it  was  found  that  the  Senators  tended 
to  vote  together  regardless  of  party  affiliation.  These  sections 
were:  i.  New  England  (Maine,  New  Hampshire,  Vermont, 
Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  and  Connecticut).  2.  Middle 
Atlantic  (New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania).  3. 
Central  (Ohio,  Michigan,  Indiana,  Illinois).  4.  North  Central 
(Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  and  Iowa).  5.  West  Central  (North 
Dakota,  South  Dakota,  Nebraska,  and  Kansas).  6.  Upper 
South  Atlantic  (Delaware,  Maryland,  West  Virginia,  Virginia, 
North  Carolina).  7.  South  Central  (Kentucky,  Tennessee, 
Missouri,  Oklahoma).  8.  Lower  South  (South  Carolina, 
Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Arkansas, 
Texas).  9.  Mountain  (Montana,  Idaho,  Wyoming,  Colorado, 
Utah,  Nevada,  New  Mexico,  Arizona).  10.  Pacific  (Washing 
ton,  Oregon,  California). 


[  26o  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

It  is  suggested  that  these  be  used  as  representative  areas 
rather  than  the  states  as  at  present.  Senators  would  be  elected 
from  the  region  upon  the  basis  of  proportional  representation. 
The  purpose  of  such  a  change  is  the  modest  one  of  making  our 
representative  system  conform  more  closely  than  it  now  does  to 
social  reality.  That  it  bristles  with  difficulties  goes  without 
saying.  An  ideal  solution  (assuming  its  possibility)  would 
involve  a  more  or  less  complete  liquidation  of  present  state 
boundaries  rather  than  such  a  grouping  as  proposed.  But 
under  the  Constitution  no  state  may,  without  its  own  consent, 
be  denied  equal  representation  in  the  Senate  —  and  appar 
ently  this  section  is  not  subject  to  amendment.  Assuming  this 
to  be  true,  each  state  would  continue  to  be  represented  by  one 
or  two  senators  with  additional  representatives  being  chosen 
from  the  regions  suggested. 

The  states  also  function  as  representative  units  in  connection 
with  the  amending  process.  (They  are  important,  too,  in 
determining  representation  in  the  electoral  college,  although 
whatever  valid  reasons  there  may  be  for  retaining  this 
anachronistic  institution  they  are  unknown  to  this  writer.) 
This  amending  process  which  requires  the  consent  of  two- 
thirds  of  both  houses  of  Congress,  and  a  majority  in  the 
legislatures  or  special  conventions  of  three-fourths  of  the 
states,  makes  for  inflexibility  in  our  fundamental  law.  It  has 
frequently  been  pointed  out  how  thirteen  states  comprising 
less  than  five  percent  of  the  population  may  defeat  the  will  of 
the  other  ninety-five  percent.  The  unreality  of  this  illustration 
is  evident  when  one  learns  that  these  thirteen  states  include 
Vermont,  Delaware,  New  Hampshire,  and  Rhode  Island, 
along  with  New  Mexico,  Utah,  Arizona,  Nevada,  North  and 
South  Dakota,  Montana,  Idaho,  and  Wyoming.  It  is  highly 
unlikely  that  they  should  ever  agree  on  any  proposed  amend 
ment.  Nevertheless,  the  illustration  is  suggestive  of  the  diffi 
culties  involved. 

To  remedy  this  situation,  it  is  suggested  that  amendments  be 
proposed  by  a  simple  majority  of  the  House  of  Representatives 
and  our  reconstructed  Senate,  plus  ratification  by  popular 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  261  ] 

majorities  in  a  majority  of  the  proposed  regions.  The  simple 
majority,  rather  than  the  present  two-thirds,  for  proposing 
amendments  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  in  the  amending 
process  the  chief  obstacle  has  been  to  secure  submission  by 
Congress,  rather  than  ratification  by  the  states.  Out  of  twenty- 
seven  amendments  proposed,  only  six  have  failed  of  ratifica 
tion  and  one  of  these  —  the  child  labor  amendment  —  is  not 
yet  dead.  Compare  the  speed  with  which  the  nineteenth, 
twentieth  and  twenty-first  amendments  were  ratified,  with 
the  long  struggle  which  preceded  their  submission. 

The  states  serve  as  representative  units  not  only  for  the 
national  government,  but  also  for  certain  more  or  less  arbi 
trarily  determined  local  areas.  Is  there  any  reason  why  North 
Dakota,  South  Dakota,  Nebraska,  and  Kansas,  should  each 
have  a  separate  representative  assembly?  Are  the  interests  to 
be  represented  so  different  that  a  single  legislature  would  not 
serve?  As  a  matter  of  fact  are  not  the  similarities  greater  and 
more  numerous  than  the  differences?  Similarly  with  the  other 
regions.  Ten  regional  legislatures  would  afford  a  more  ade 
quate  representation  of  the  various  interests  in  these  areas  and 
the  major  problems  which  concern  them  than  the  present 
forty-eight  —  not  to  mention  the  saving  in  cost,  time  and 
effort. 

The  form  which  these  regional  assemblies  might  take 
would  no  doubt  vary.  The  bi-cameral  system  —  indefensible 
under  existing  conditions  —  would  have  some  validity  under 
the  plan  proposed.  The  upper  chamber  might  be  representa 
tive  of  the  component  states,  and  the  lower  houses  of  the 
regional  population  with  its  members  selected  according  to 
proportional  representation.  It  is  assumed  also  that  regional 
executive  and  judicial  officers  would  largely  replace  those  of 
the  states. 

T^VEN  slight  analysis  shows  that  for  many  of  the  most 
-^  important  activities  carried  on  by  modern  governments 
the  states  leave  much  to  be  desired  as  administrative  areas. 
State  regulation  of  public  utilities  is  breaking  down  in  the  face 


[  262  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  interstate  transmission,  and  new  forms  of  corporate  organ 
ization  such  as  the  holding  company.  T.V.A.  and  Boulder 
Dam  are  dramatic  illustrations  of  the  inadequacy  of  the 
states  in  solving  the  problems  of  power  control. 

To  a  considerable  extent  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  entire 
field  of  economic  and  social  regulation.  The  contemporary 
criminal  in  a  high  powered  motor  can,  without  too  great 
difficulty,  escape  the  jurisdiction  of  the  state,  which  must  then 
resort  to  the  clumsy  process  of  extradition  before  it  can  bring 
him  to  justice.  In  the  important  matter  of  finance  the  situation 
is  even  more  serious.  Many  important  sources  of  revenue  are 
beyond  reach  of  the  states,  and  they  have  resorted  to  all 
manner  of  expedients  to  make  ends  meet  —  curtailment  of 
necessary  social  services  and  nuisance  taxes  galore  —  only  to 
fail  in  the  end.  Without  aid  from  the  Federal  treasury,  many 
of  them  would  face  bankruptcy  or  revolution  or  both. 

The  boundaries  of  administrative  areas  must  be  relatively 
elastic.  They  will  vary  with  the  purpose  for  which  they  are 
created.  Federal  judicial  districts  differ  from  those  established 
for  administering  relief,  or  public  works,  or  conservation,  or 
banking,  or  farm  credit.  Similarly  within  the  states  we  find 
a  variety  of  administrative  units.  There  are  school,  sanitary, 
drainage,  water,  conservation,  welfare,  and  judicial  districts 
which  contribute  their  quota  to  the  hundred  and  seventy-five 
thousand  or  more  governmental  units  with  which  the  country 
is  blessed  —  or  plagued. 

It  is  not  contended  that  the  regional  grouping  of  states  here 
outlined  would  be  ideal  for  all  administrative  purposes.  But 
they  would  probably  be  superior  to  the  states  for  almost  all 
the  activities  in  which  these  now  engage.  The  increasing  use 
of  interstate  compacts  is  evidence  of  the  need  for  wider  areas 
of  administration.  Some  seventy  such  compacts  have  been 
approved  by  Congress  —  covering  taxation,  navigation,  utility 
regulation,  conservation  and  crime  —  and  we  may  expect 
such  agreements  to  increase  under  the  State  Compact  Law 
passed  by  Congress  in  June,  1934.  The  Commissioners  on 
Uniform  Legislation,  the  Governors'  Council,  the  American 


THE  FUTURE  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  263  ] 

Legislators'  Association,  the  Council  of  State  Governments, 
the  New  England  Council,  etc.  give  further  evidence  of  the 
same  trend.  So  far  as  interstate  compacts  are  concerned,  a 
majority  of  those  adopted  would  be  unnecessary  under  the 
regional  plan  here  proposed.  The  need  for  collaboration  and 
cooperation  becomes  daily  more  urgent.  Would  this  not  be 
facilitated  if  instead  of  forty-eight  separate  governments,  we 
had  only  ten? 

Local  self-government  is  a  cardinal  principle  of  democracy. 
But  it  can  be  conserved  only  if  the  areas  of  local  representation 
and  control  conform  to  living  loyalties  and  substantial  inter 
ests.  The  "sovereign  states"  have  ceased  to  be  even  satisfactory 
administrative  areas.  They  have  become,  as  Stephen  Leacock 
once  put  it,  mere  "astronomical  units."  Against  the  national 
government  they  are  playing  a  losing  hand.  If  we  are  to 
strengthen  local  self-government  we  must  recast  our  political 
boundaries  to  create  meaningful  and  puissant  counter-weights 
to  Washington.  Only  by  so  doing  can  we  hope  to  solve  what 
Justice  Brandeis  calls  the  "greatest  problem  before  the  Ameri 
can  people,"  namely  "the  problem  of  reconciling  our  indus 
trial  system  with  the  political  democracy  in  which  we  live." 

Centralization  appears  to  be  a  law  of  modern  life  in  the 
economic  and  social,  no  less  than  in  the  political  realm.  Rail 
roads  and  airplanes  are  no  respecters  of  state  boundaries,  and 
neither  are  manufacturing  and  distributive  agencies.  The 
telegraph,  the  radio  and  the  motion  picture  have  made  us 
a  single  people.  Unification  and  centralization  do  involve 
perplexing  problems.  The  dangers  of  bureaucratic  control 
from  distant  centers  are  real.  But  the  centripetal  forces  are  at 
work,  and  we  must  make  our  peace  with  them.  To  do  so  we 
must  once  again  inscribe  on  our  banner  the  slogan  of  our 
revolutionary  fathers  —  "Unite  or  Die." 


Wickford  Gardens 

KILE   CROOK 

Old  Wickford  houses  face  the  street, 
But  the  gardens  skirt  the  bay 
Where  honeysuckle  blends  its  sweet 
With  the  salty  sweet  of  spray. 

Old  Wickford  elm-trees  lace  their  shade 

Over  peony  and  phlox; 

The  self-same  traceries  are  laid 

On  barnacled  wet  rocks. 

The  shadow  of  a  gull's  low  wing 
Darkens  on  columbine, 
And  mummychogs  dart,  skimmering, 
Beyond  the  trumpet  vine 

That  trails  a  tendril  in  the  spume 
And  points  where  there  must  be 
The  animate,  unearthly  bloom 
Of  sea-anemone. 

Nasturtium  green:  sea-lettuce  green 
Beyond  the  border  bed; 
Red  cockscomb:  and  through  water  sheen 
The  corallin  glows  red, 

And  lustrous  kelp,  purple  and  brown, 
With  lilac  trees  beside  .  .  . 
Where  Wickford  garden  walls  go  down 
To  boundaries  of  tide. 

[264] 


In  Behalf  of  States'  Rights 

HOFFMAN   NIGKERSON 

r  I  'HE  Administration's  attack  on  the  sovereignty  of  the 
•*•  states,  and  its  temporary  setback  resulting  from  the  Su 
preme  Court's  destruction  of  NIRA,  compel  us  to  answer  the 
question:  What  is  the  permanent  value  of  States'  Rights?  Let 
us  not  make  the  mistake  of  underrating  the  strength  of  our 
opponents'  case.  Those  who  believe  in  centralizing  power  in 
Washington  might  argue  that  the  Founding  Fathers,  or  at 
least  the  more  far-sighted  among  them,  acted  not  from  choice 
but  from  necessity  when  they  drafted  the  Constitution  so  as  to 
protect  the  state  sovereignties.  A  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago 
the  states  were  so  powerful,  and  the  unionist  idea  so  weak, 
that  nothing  better  could  be  done.  The  Fathers  therefore  es 
tablished  the  strongest  central  government  which  could  be 
made  acceptable  at  the  moment,  trusting  that  time  would 
cure  the  defects  of  their  handiwork  by  increasing  the  central 
power. 

This  desirable  increase  has  indeed  come  about,  but  time 
has  shown  the  Fathers'  concessions  to  States'  Rights  to  have 
been  deplorable  indeed.  Thanks  to  them  every  step  in  advance 
has  been  bitterly  fought.  In  the  mind  of  Calhoun,  protagonist 
of  States'  Rights,  they  begot  the  absurd  doctrine  of  Nullifica 
tion  under  which  a  sovereign  state  could  have  vetoed  the 
operation  of  any  Federal  law  within  that  state's  borders. 
They  encouraged  the  tragic  folly  of  Secession  to  which  we 
owed  the  war  of  '6i-'65.  But  fortunately  Appomattox  broke 
the  back  of  States'  Rights.  Since  then  nothing  but  their  crip 
pled  and  continually  weaker  remnant  has  remained. 

That  remnant  has  done  much  harm.  It  has  unnecessarily 
complicated  the  American  legal  system.  It  hinders  the  pursuit 
of  criminals  and  the  regulation  of  industry.  Here  and  there  it 
perpetuates  abuses  like  child  labor.  Sometimes  the  state  sov 
ereignties  trouble  the  foreign  relations  of  the  central  govern 
ment.  For  instance,  when  a  citizen  of  one  nation  is  molested 

[265] 


[  266  ]  THE  NOR  TH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

on  the  territory  of  another,  the  matter  becomes  serious.  Any 
such  incident  might  lead  to  war.  Now  American  mobs 
molested  Spanish  subjects  in  Louisiana  in  1851,  Chinese 
subjects  in  Colorado  in  1 880  and  in  Wyoming  five  years  later, 
Greeks  and  other  foreigners  in  Oklahoma  in  1909.  Italians 
were  lynched  in  Louisiana  in  1891,  in  Colorado  in  1895,  again 
in  Louisiana  in  '96  and  once  more  in  1919,  in  Mississippi  in 
1901,  in  Florida  in  1910,  in  Illinois  in  '14  and  again  in  the 
following  year.  And  yet  the  police  power  of  the  states  deprives 
the  Federal  authority  of  the  right  to  compel  any  state  to  satisfy 
foreign  protests,  no  matter  how  well  justified. 

Let  us  admit  freely  that  if  Nullification  and  Secession  had 
prevailed,  States'  Rights  would  not  have  been  preserved  but 
destroyed;  for  the  dis-United  States  would  have  been  helpless 
before  foreign  invasion.  The  constant  and  bitter  quarrels  be 
tween  the  Confederate  state  governments  and  the  central 
government  of  the  Confederacy  itself,  show  to  what  lengths 
separatism  might  have  gone  when  the  unifying  influence  of 
war  had  been  removed.  But  leaving  dead  issues  like  Nullifica 
tion  and  Secession  on  one  side,  let  us  ask  whether  there  is  still 
force  in  the  old  formula,  "an  indestructible  union  of  inde 
structible  states"? 

rTnO  ANSWER  this  question  we  must  ask  what  is  the  object 
•*•  of  government?  If  it  be  the  smoothest  possible  running  of 
the  governmental  machine,  then  centralization  is  justified.  Or 
if  it  be  the  greatest  possible  strengthening  of  the  nation  in  its 
relations  with  foreign  powers,  then  again  centralization  is 
called  for.  On  the  other  hand,  our  ancestors  would  have  hotly 
denied  that  either  "efficiency"  at  home,  or  the  greatest  pos 
sible  strength  abroad,  was  indeed  the  object  chiefly  desired. 
Governments,  they  were  never  tired  of  repeating,  should  exist 
in  order  to  preserve  human  liberties.  They  must,  indeed,  be 
strong  enough  to  resist  anarchy  from  within  and  invasion  from 
without  —  although  Jefferson  conspicuously  dissented  even 
from  these  modest  propositions,  pretending  to  believe  that  an 
occasional  insurrection  was  a  positive  good,  and  as  President, 


IN  BEHALF  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  267  ] 

disastrously  reducing  the  navy.  Fortunately,  however,  Jeffer 
son  was  an  exception.  On  the  main  point,  that  governments 
exist  for  the  preservation  of  liberty,  no  one  was  more  vehement 
than  he. 

For  this  reason,  the  Founding  Fathers  were  careful  to  es 
tablish  checks  and  balances  within  their  Federal  government 
itself  —  jealously  defending  alike  the  independence  of  the 
President,  the  Congress,  and  the  Federal  judges  against  en 
croachment  by  either  of  the  other  two.  John  Adams  admirably 
expressed  their  idea  when  he  wrote  to  Jefferson:  "The  fun 
damental  article  of  my  political  creed  is  that  despotism,  or 
unlimited  sovereignty,  or  absolute  power  is  the  same  in  a 
majority  of  a  popular  assembly,  an  aristocratical  council,  an 
oligarchical  junto,  or  a  single  emperor  —  equally  arbitrary, 
cruel,  bloody  and  in  every  respect  diabolical." 

But  the  most  powerful  weapons  for  protecting  the  citizen 
against  arbitrary  government  were  the  rights  of  the  states. 
These  are  guaranteed  by  the  tenth  amendment,  the  last  of 
those  amendments  which  together  make  up  the  Bill  of  Rights: 
"The  powers  not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the  Con 
stitution,  nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the  states,  are  reserved  to  the 
states  respectively,  or  to  the  people."  The  Supreme  Court  has 
held  that  this  means  "...  the  reservation  of  the  rights  of 
sovereignty  which  the  states  respectively  possessed  before  the 
adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  and  which  they  had  not 
parted  from  by  that  instrument.  Any  legislation  by  Congress 
beyond  the  limits  of  the  power  delegated  would  be  trespassing 
upon  the  rights  of  the  states  or  the  people  and  would  not  be 
the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  but  null  and  void." 

Norton's  "Constitution  of  the  United  States"  says:  "Thus 
if  North  Carolina  and  Rhode  Island,  which  did  not  ratify  the 
Constitution  until  after  the  new  government  had  become  op 
erative,  had  chosen  not  to  enter  the  Union,  they  would  have 
had  the  powers  inhering  in  independent  governments  —  such 
as  the  power  to  declare  war,  to  coin  money,  to  raise  armies,  to 
make  treaties,  to  regulate  commerce,  to  impose  duties  on  im 
ports  and  exports,  and  so  on  —  all  of  which  were,  under  the 


[  268  ]  THE  NOR TH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Constitution,  for  the  general  welfare,  yielded  up  to  the  na 
tional  government." 

For  those  who  prefer  restraints  to  liberties,  the  arguments  in 
favor  of  States'  Rights  have  no  force.  Since  human  weakness  is 
such  that  any  liberty  will  often  be  abused,  it  is  always  easy  to 
make  a  case  for  restraint.  And  in  practice,  plenty  of  people  so 
shrink  from  the  responsibilities  and  risks  incidental  to  freedom 
that  they  welcome  the  most  drastic  restraints,  if  only  the  re- 
strainer  will  save  them  the  trouble  of  ordering  and  directing 
their  own  lives.  In  the  words  of  Chesterton,  "You  cannot 
argue  with  the  choice  of  the  soul." 

But  if  we  really  prefer  freedom  to  restraint,  then  we  must 
value  local  liberties  as  a  chief  support  of  personal  liberties.  Of 
necessity,  every  tyrant  must  centralize  his  authority  as  much 
as  possible,  and  must  extend  that  authority  over  as  much  ter 
ritory  as  he  can.  In  proportion  as  the  area  subjected  to  him  is 
small,  he  will  find  it  difficult  to  dragoon  his  unwilling  subjects, 
because  a  short  journey  will  take  any  one  of  them  over  the 
border  and  out  of  his  jurisdiction  altogether.  Whatever  one 
may  think  of  slavery,  Nullification  and  Secession,  at  least 
the  history  of  the  ill-fated  Prohibition  amendment  shows  Cal- 
houn  and  the  early  nineteenth  century  Southerners  to  have 
been  a  thousand  times  right  when  they  called  local  liberties  a 
chief  and  necessary  defense  for  individual  liberties. 

DID  space  permit,  we  might  discuss  a  host  of  historical  in 
stances  illustrating  the  same  truth.  Let  us  consider  only 
two,  both  of  high  importance  in  the  experience  of  our  race  — 
the  promotion  of  the  ancient  slave  to  the  half-free  status  of  the 
mediaeval  serf,  and  the  centralization  of  the  French  govern 
ment. 

Ancient  slaves  were  chattels  whose  masters  were  entitled  to 
the  full  produce  of  their  labor.  When  Rome  ruled  from  North 
Britain  to  the  cataracts  of  the  Nile,  and  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Euphrates,  except  for  deserts  or  barbarous  northern 
heaths  there  was  no  place  to  which  a  runaway  slave  might  es 
cape.  But  when,  in  the  Dark  Ages,  centralized  imperial 


IN  BEHALF  OF  STATES'  RIGHTS  [  269  ] 

government  broke  down,  and  the  reality  of  power  was  taken 
over  by  local  feudal  lords,  then  this  condition  changed.  The 
decline  of  the  high  ancient  civilization  had  at  least  this  much 
of  good  in  it:  Slaves  could  run  away  if  they  liked,  so  that  the 
slaveowner  had  to  make  it  worth  the  while  of  his  human 
chattels  to  remain  and  till  his  lands. 

Consequently,  by  the  beginning  of  the  true  Middle  Ages, 
all  over  Central  and  Western  Europe  we  find  the  lords  of 
manors  claiming  only  a  part  of  what  the  descendants  of  their 
former  slaves  produced.  This  amount  they  took  in  the  form  of 
dues  —  so  much  of  the  serfs'  produce  or  so  many  days  of  labor 
on  the  lord's  land.  These  dues  were  more  like  a  tax  paid  to  the 
nobles  who  governed  and  fought,  than  a  competitive  rent; 
their  amount  was  fixed  by  custom,  and  the  morals  of  the  time 
made  it  a  wicked  thing  to  increase  them.  As  long  as  any  mem 
ber  of  a  given  servile  family  remained  on  the  assigned  plot  of 
land  and  fullfilled  the  customary  obligations,  that  family 
could  not  be  dispossessed;  its  other  members  could  go  where 
they  liked  as  far  as  the  lord  was  concerned.  They  could  be 
handicraftsmen  in  the  growing  towns,  or  mercenary  soldiers 
or,  more  commonly,  priests. 

In  practice  such  as  an  arrangement  made  the  former  slave 
almost  a  free  peasant,  and  over  most  of  Western  Europe  a  com 
pletely  free  peasant  he  finally  became.  Will  anyone  say  that 
this  vast  social  change  did  not  help  to  turn  the  fatigue  of  the 
declining  ancient  world  into  the  light-hot  mediaeval  energies 
which  made  the  cathedrals  and  the  crusades,  the  poetry  of  the 
troubadours,  of  Chaucer  and  of  Dante,  and  the  philosophy  of 
St.  Thomas? 

Again,  take  the  French  monarchy.  In  the  early  Middle 
Ages,  the  French  were  the  chief  people  of  Europe.  French- 
speaking  nobles,  touched  here  and  there  with  faint  traces  of 
Scandinavian  blood,  ruled  not  only  France  itself  but  England, 
the  Scotch  lowlands,  parts  of  Ireland,  and  all  Southern  Italy, 
together  with  Sicily,  Syria  and  Palestine.  For  a  moment  they 
even  held  Constantinople  and  half  of  the  Balkans  as  well. 
Their  part  in  the  Crusades  was  so  great  that  to  this  day  the 


[  270  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Arabic  word  for  a  European  is  "firenghi,"  a  Frank.  From  the 
neighborhood  of  Paris  the  Gothic  architecture  spread  every 
where.  The  University  of  Paris  was  the  center  of  European 
learning. 

But  all  this  time  the  King  of  France,  in  theory  second  only 
to  the  Holy  Roman  Emperor,  and  usually  superior  to  the 
Emperor  in  real  power,  was  by  no  means  the  despot  of  a  cen 
tralized  state.  Instead  he  was  more  like  the  president  of  a  group 
of  republics.  These  republics  were  called  provinces;  the  King 
controlled  foreign  affairs  and  the  army,  but  the  provinces, 
through  their  parliamentary  assemblies,  controlled  each  its 
own  local  affairs.  After  the  Wars  of  Religion,  and  the  pro 
longed  faction  fights  which  followed  them,  Louis  XIV  cen 
tralized  the  system,  but  the  change  was  followed  by  the  decline 
of  the  Bourbon  monarchy. 

One  among  many  good  stories  of  the  administrative  im 
pudence  which  marked  that  decline,  is  that  of  a  village  near 
Paris  which  asked  permission  to  levy  a  small  local  tax  to  repair 
their  church  steeple.  After  two  years  the  central  government 
finally  gave  permission,  but  by  that  time  the  steeple  had  fallen 
down.  After  the  Revolution,  Napoleon  centralized  power  still 
further,  setting  up  the  machine  which  administers  France  to 
this  day,  with  the  local  governors,  that  is  the  prefects,  all  ap 
pointed  from  Paris.  Again,  as  under  Louis  XIV,  a  few  years  of 
glory  were  followed  by  a  long  national  decline. 

Let  us  grant  that  neither  Louis  XIV  nor  Napoleon  was  en 
tirely  without  excuse  when  they  concentrated  power.  Both 
would  doubtless  have  called  centralization  "necessary";  in 
deed  that  is  one  of  the  stock  excuses  regularly  brought  forward 
when  liberties  have  been  lost.  The  other  excuse  is,  "Somebody 
else  did  it." 


Grant  Wood,  Painter  in  Overalls 

RUTH   PICKERING 

T  A  7E  ON  the  sunset  side  of  the  Mississippi  had  accepted  the 
*  *  assumption  that  art  wore  a  full-dress  suit  and  spoke  with 
a  New  York  accent.  Now  we  are  glad  to  find  that  in  the  opinion 
of  at  least  one  critic,  it  may  be  at  its  best  in  overalls."  So  says 
an  editorial  in  a  Cedar  Rapids  newspaper.  Out  in  Iowa  they 
are  very  proud  of  Grant  Wood. 

Wood  and  a  handful  of  American  painters  are  tasting  the 
joy  of  being  accepted  in  their  own  communities.  Working  in 
regions  where  they  are  at  home,  they  are  painting  pictures 
their  neighbors  can  understand.  They  have  hoisted  their  over 
alls  on  a  stick,  so  to  speak,  to  scare  away  the  city  connoisseur 
and  the  academician.  They  avoid  high  sounding  talk  about 
art,  and  only  want  to  be  left  alone  with  their  pencils  and 
paints  and  their  friends.  Their  occasional  embattled  petulence 
only  goes  to  show  a  passing  remnant  of  the  sense  of  inferiority 
that  has  heretofore  afflicted  both  the  American  painter  and 
his  audience  —  to  the  profit  and  satisfaction  of  dealers  in 
foreign  art. 

Until  today,  few  painters  have  lived  to  produce  on  the  other 
side  of  the  great  river,  but  west  of  the  Mississippi  self-confi 
dence  is  returning.  Grant  Wood  paints  and  teaches  in  Iowa. 
John  Curry  is  stirred  by  the  hopes  and  fears  of  the  people  of 
Kansas.  Thomas  Benton  will  continue  his  plastic  and  vocal 
belligerency  in  Missouri.  Boardman  Robinson  is  fairly  content 
in  Colorado.  And  there  are  others  at  work,  not  so  well  known 
in  the  East.  This  new  source  should  mean  a  fresh  stream  pour 
ing  into  our  cultural  life.  Since  fertility  in  art  has  always  been 
highly  localized  and  has  been  nurtured  by  a  common  impulse 
of  participation,  there  is  hope  in  what  these  men  are  trying 
to  do. 

Plastic  art  —  the  art  with  the  most  immediately  sensuous 
appeal  —  has  always  been  the  art  most  difficult  to  bring  from 
afar  to  our  doorsteps.  Today,  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  hear 


[  272  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

music  at  home,  over  the  radio,  and  in  concert  halls.  It  is  easier 
still  to  read  novels  and  poetry,  though  somewhat  harder  to  see 
good  plays  on  the  stage  or  even  in  the  movies.  But,  unhappily, 
for  most  people  to  see  a  good  painting  is  still  a  rare  pleasure. 
Pictures  are  too  expensive  to  own.  Galleries  and  museums, 
though  more  widespread  than  they  used  to  be,  are  few  in  pro 
portion  to  the  population,  and  cold  comfort  at  best.  A  repro 
duction,  however  fine,  can  never  equal  the  original,  and  can  do 
little  for  sculpture. 

So,  because  the  plastic  arts  face  their  peculiar  handicap  of 
rarity,  talking  and  reading  about  paintings  has  been  the  lot  of 
most  of  us.  But  our  vision  of  them  has  been  clouded  with  the 
obscuring  gabble  of  over-traveled,  over-cultured  aesthetes, 
who  have  lost  both  sensuousness  and  simplicity,  and  are  the  last 
people  on  earth  either  to  interpret  a  painting  or  enjoy  it.  The 
Western  painters  are  trying  to  find  a  way  out  of  this  dilemma 
by  holding  the  mirror  of  art  up  to  their  own  neighbors  and 
friends. 

Wood  was  born  a  Quaker  farmer's  son  a  few  miles  beyond 
Cedar  Rapids.  It  is  said  that  in  his  youth  his  father  returned  a 
copy  of  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales  to  the  giver  saying,  "We  Quakers 
can  read  only  true  things."  Grant  Wood's  approach  to  art  is 
factual.  His  first  drawings  were  of  his  favorite  Plymouth  Rock 
hen,  each  feather  counted.  Quaker  traits  are  still  evident  in 
his  painting.  Mysticism,  fantasy,  and  fairy  tales  are  not  to  be 
found. 

His  early  education,  however,  was  not  entirely  from  Iowa. 
He  studied  art  in  Chicago  at  night,  working  during  the  day  as  a 
jeweler's  assistant.  He  saved  enough  money  to  go  to  Paris,  to 
Julien's  —  for  a  short  time.  During  the  war  he  enlisted,  was 
not  sent  over-seas,  and  sold  drawings  for  a  quarter  to  the 
soldiers  in  camp.  He  has  been  abroad  four  times.  The  last 
time,  he  returned  so  deeply  impressed  with  the  detailed  work 
of  the  German  primitives  that  his  style  showed  a  dramatic 
change,  which  however  merged  naturally  with  his  early 
factual  style.  He  steers  clear  of  impressionism  and  paints  the 
literal,  sharpened  image. 


GRANT  WOOD,  PAINTER  IN  OVERALLS  [  273  ] 

He  taught  drawing  in  the  public  schools  of  Iowa,  and  for  a 
time  headed  an  art  colony  in  the  abandoned  village  of  Stone 
City.  As  a  regional  director  of  the  Public  Works  of  Art  Project, 
he  stirred  up  fresh  enthusiasm  throughout  his  state.  He  is  to 
day  teaching  at  the  Iowa  State  University  where,  with  his 
students,  he  is  undertaking  a  series  of  murals  for  the  new 
Drama  Building.  He  will  paint  murals  for  the  new  capitol  in 
Lincoln,  Nebraska,  and  has  been  chosen  as  one  of  the  nine 
painters  who  will  decorate  the  new  Post  Office  and  Depart 
ment  of  Justice  buildings  in  Washington.  Last  spring  he  had 
his  first  one-man  show  at  the  Ferargil  galleries  in  New  York. 
But  none  of  this  keeps  him  long  away  from  Cedar  Rapids,  and 
unlike  so  many  American  painters  he  finds  no  necessity  of  re 
volt  against  his  early  environment. 

Wood's  style  is  not  immediately  influenced  by  any  previous 
American  painter,  though  he  was  undoubtedly  stirred  by  the 
unaffected  simplicity  of  some  of  the  Currier  and  Ives  prints. 
Nevertheless,  he  is  directly  in  our  tradition.  As  with  Thomas 
Eakins,  Winslow  Homer,  Henri  and  Bellows,  the  episode,  the 
subject  of  the  painting,  is  of  first  importance. 

Our  American  genius  apparently  tends  toward  the  illustra- 
tional.  Not  even  that  rare  mystic  Ryder,  with  canvasses  so  rich 
in  imaginative  mood,  nor  the  romantic  Arthur  Davies,  nor 
Marin,  Zorach,  Demuth,  in  their  water  colors  today,  can  belie 
the  illustrational  trend.  As  a  nation  we  are  not  attuned  to 
play  with  abstraction.  Our  efforts  are  more  flat-footed.  If  the 
danger  of  the  banal,  of  decoration  without  gaiety,  or  story 
without  plastic  form  is  implicit  in  our  native  methods,  it  is 
also  true,  I  think,  that  our  traditional  ways  can  move  toward 
the  greatest  the  art  of  color  and  form  can  produce. 

Following  the  typical  American  trail,  Wood  chooses  for  his 
subjects  people  as  part  of  a  composition,  portraits,  and  large 
panoramas  of  the  Iowa  countryside  contracted,  with  me 
ticulous  interest  in  detail,  onto  medium  sized  canvasses.  His 
color  is  clear,  his  outlines  unblurred,  and  his  surfaces  polished. 
His  intent  is  easily  understood.  His  work  is  nearly  always 
popular  among  simple  people. 


[  274  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

The  first  canvas  to  make  him  known  outside  his  state  was 
called  "Daughters  of  Revolution."  Paradoxically  enough,  it 
was  not  in  his  usual  kindly  vein.  Three  middle-aged  women 
are  drawn  in  three-quarter  length  before  a  wall-papered 
background,  on  which  hangs  a  print  of  Leutze's  "Washington 
Crossing  the  Delaware."  The  woman  in  the  foreground  holds  a 
teacup,  wrist  and  hand  crooked  in  over  genteel  fashion.  She 
bears  a  smirk  on  her  face.  The  two  other  women  are  severe 
and  beady-eyed. 

The  painting  is  bitter  fun  at  the  expense  of  the  female 
patrioteer,  sexless,  opinionated,  self-righteous.  Cartoon  subject 
matter  is  done  in  permanent  form;  humorous  judgment  is 
passed  by  the  artist  on  weak,  smug  types  which  he  overdig- 
nifies  by  careful  workmanship.  The  painting  held  everyone 
who  saw  it  because  the  characters  were  familiar  and  unpopu 
lar,  and  there  was  no  mistaking  the  artist's  meaning.  But  a 
mood  of  teasing  banter  is  not  enough  for  the  most  distinguished 
art.  The  picture  has  been  shown  in  Chicago  and  at  the  Whit 
ney  galleries.  Many  reprints  have  been  made  of  it,  and  it  is 
now  owned  by  the  actor,  Edward  G.  Robinson,  at  Beverly 
Hills.  The  Daughters  of  the  Revolution,  as  a  society,  have 
survived  the  blow.  This  is  the  most  obviously  satirical  painting 
by  Grant  Wood. 

A  later  canvas,  and  one  now  quite  as  well  known,  is  called 
"American  Gothic."  Two  people,  a  man  and  a  woman,  stand, 
again  three-quarter  length,  before  a  background  showing  the 
pointed  roof  and  Gothic  window  of  the  fancy  little  houses 
built  throughout  the  country  in  the  late  nineteenth  century. 
The  figures  are  neither  idealized  nor  criticized,  though  after 
his  "Daughters  of  Revolution"  Wood's  audiences  were  in 
clined  to  see  satire  here  again. 

The  types  are  vigorously  portrayed,  alive,  three  dimen 
sional,  with  all  Wood's  effort  toward  factualism.  His  intel 
lectual  passion  for  organization  and  design  is  there.  We  stand 
before  the  picture,  amazed  at  its  lifelikeness,  gratified  by  the 
counterpoint  in  Gothic  gable,  long  faces,  and  the  pitchfork 
held  upward  by  the  man.  But  no  direction  is  given  our  emo- 


GRANT  WOOD,  PAINTER  IN  OVERALLS  [  275  ] 

tions.  We  are  bewildered  as  to  what  to  think  or  do  about  this 
man  and  this  woman  —  she  with  her  ric-rac  braid  apron  and 
cameo  pin,  and  a  face  that  is  neither  gentle  nor  mean,  neither 
hopeful  nor  discouraged  —  and  he,  gaunt,  small-town, 
unimpressive. 

Wood  stopped  short  of  satire  here,  but  failed  to  lead  us  on 
toward  pity  or  tenderness  for  his  models.  How  does  he  feel 
about  these  neighbors  of  his?  Are  they  lovable  folk  or  not?  Our 
eyes  are  turned  upon  them  boldly.  It  would  have  been  well  if 
our  hearts  could  understand  them.  The  painting  lacks  the 
artist's  comment.  In  the  last  analysis,  it  is  not  enough  to  show 
us  people  as  they  appear.  The  picture  just  misses  greatness  for 
a  lack  of  deep  appraisal.  Yet  its  power  is  proved,  for  more 
prints  of  "American  Gothic"  were  sold  at  the  Century  of 
Progress  exhibition  than  of  any  other  canvas.  It  is  now  owned 
by  the  Chicago  Art  Institute. 

Either  on  purpose  or  unconsciously,  Wood  refuses  to  define 
his  attitude  toward  his  subjects,  to  give  himself  away.  His  vigor 
seems  to  expend  itself  in  organization  of  forms,  in  clarity  of 
outline,  in  serene  exactitude,  in  finished  surfaces.  He  works 
slowly  and  patiently.  Nothing  is  obscure,  except  what  the  man 
himself  may  feel.  All  is  balanced.  We  stand  before  his  cool 
canvasses  and  take  childish  delight  in  noting  all  the  tiny  figures 
in  a  vast  landscape,  the  feathers  on  the  poultry,  the  dappling 
on  the  farm-horse,  the  braid  of  the  women's  dresses,  the  flowers 
of  the  wall-paper.  Temporarily  we  are  agreeably  suspended  in 
contemplation.  But,  also,  like  Wood  himself  we  are  emotion 
ally  uninvolved.  And  the  difficulty  with  this  "still  pond,  no 
more  moving"  style  of  Grant  Wood  is  that  we  grow  restless  at 
last  and  want  something  deeper  than  likeness  and  form. 

By  his  own  confession,  Wood  has  been  too  much  entranced 
by  the  prim  patterns  on  old  china.  In  his  landscape,  some 
times,  he  prettifies  the  Iowa  fields,  diluting  their  abundant 
fertility  to  tea-cup  graciousness.  It  is  good  that  he  sees  these 
meadows  and  hills  beautiful  and  amenable  to  man's  needs, 
but  he  should  be  careful  not  to  tame  them  into  household  pets. 
Wood,  I  think,  will  fight  out  of  this  primrose  path.  He  says 


C  276  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

himself,  concerning  some  of  his  early  landscape:  "Too  damned 
many  pretty  curves.  Too  many  personal  mannerisms,  caused 
by  fear  that,  because  of  close,  precise  style  of  painting,  I  might 
be  accused  of  being  photographic.  I  am  having  a  hell  of  a  time 
getting  rid  of  these  mannerisms." 

Two  of  Wood's  later  pictures  are  called  "Dinner  for  Thresh 
ers"  and  "Death  on  Ridge  Road."  The  first  shows  the  unique 
beauty  in  his  sense  of  order,  the  second  how  disastrously  it 
sometimes  fails.  "Dinner  for  Threshers"  was  hung  in  this 
year's  Carnegie  exhibition  at  Pittsburg  and  has  been  bought 
by  Stephen  Clark.  Here  are  a  farmhouse  and  yard,  cut  longi 
tudinally  through  the  middle  like  a  stage  set.  At  a  long  table 
on  the  left,  sit  a  sort  of  frieze  of  farm  hands,  all  looking  alike, 
each  in  blue-jeans  and  a  checked  shirt.  At  the  right  is  the 
kitchen.  Women  are  bent  over  the  stove  or  caught  like  statues 
in  the  act  of  carrying  food  into  the  dining-room.  Outdoors  at 
the  far  left,  chickens  cease  pecking  in  the  yard,  the  dappled 
horses  stand  still,  a  farmer  has  just  finished  combing  his  hair 
and  washing  his  face  before  entering. 

All  these  figures  —  men,  women,  and  animals  —  are  sus 
pended,  with  their  household  effects  transfixed  in  motionless 
pattern.  It  is  restful,  interesting,  quaint.  We  are  fascinated 
by  what  they  are  and  by  what  they  have  been  doing.  But  will 
they  ever  do  it  again?  The  action  suggested,  seems  backward  in 
time.  We  are  not  made  to  imagine  this  life  going  on  day  after 
day.  It  is  the  same  wonder  we  experience  before  the  un 
earthed  testimony  to  the  life  in  Pompeii.  "Dinner  for  Thresh 
ers"  is  superbly  painted,  lovingly  arranged.  Yet  wholly  de 
lightful  as  it  is,  this  vital  contemporary  farm  life  in  Iowa  is 
shown  almost  as  if  it  were  extinct. 

It  is  said  that  Wood  decided  to  paint  something  dynamic 
rather  than  static  in  "Death  on  Ridge  Road."  But  I'm  afraid 
his  particular  genius  can  better  cope  with  the  static.  Here  he 
has  chosen  to  record  the  second  when  a  motor  truck  has 
reared  over  the  top  of  a  hill,  and  a  touring-car  is  askew  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  road  approaching  it.  The  truck  bucks  over 
the  ridge  and  hangs  there.  It  will  never  descend  to  crush  the 


GRANT  WOOD,  PAINTER  IN  OVERALLS  [  277  ] 

smaller  car,  which  looks  like  the  shiny  product  of  the  automo 
bile  sales  booklet.  Green  swatches  of  field  are  quite  properly 
undisturbed  by  an  impending  tragedy  that  will  never  come. 
Wood  tries  to  paint  motion  at  its  height,  only  to  prove  that 
calmer  moments  are  his  metier.  For  at  the  pitch  of  excitement, 
organization  of  form  reaches  out  a  dead  hand.  There  is  little 
terror  in  the  painting  because  there  is  little  life. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  trace  of  hysteria,  no  sense  of  excite 
ment  lodges  in  Wood's  Quaker  temperament.  No  very  unruly 
emotion,  either  of  love  or  hate,  if  it  ever  swayed  him,  remains 
unmastered.  This  may  be  regrettable  but  not  fatal,  unless  his 
remoteness,  his  disinterestedness  lead  him  into  emphasis  on 
design  alone.  Wood  is  a  young  painter  and  his  most  important 
ventures  are  ahead.  His  vision  is  lucid  and  fresh,  his  drafts 
manship  mature,  his  self-control,  his  control  of  his  medium 
have  strength.  His  calmness  has  both  sweetness  and  humorous 
tolerance.  Instead  of  being  in  turbulent  revolt,  he  can  accept 
the  finest  in  the  indigenous  material  around  him. 

He  believes  in  the  people  among  whom  he  lives.  His  human 
ity  extends  to  a  desire  to  please  them.  Like  most  Quakers,  his 
virtues,  though  often  negative,  are  real.  He  is  unprovoked  and 
unprovoking.  If  there  is  no  quick  suggestion  in  his  method, 
or  fire  in  his  mood,  and  if  this  leaves  his  work  a  shade  unpro- 
phetic,  he  is  at  least  truly  charming.  If  he  hasn't  yet  achieved 
the  wisdom  of  the  masters,  he  has  a  fine  sanity  as  a  beginning. 
His  popularity  is  deserved,  and  I  think  important,  when  con 
sidered  in  relation  to  the  undeniable  merit  in  his  work.  But  if 
he  were  sometimes  less  cool,  and  more  emotionally  involved 
in  his  subjects,  he  would  paint  more  understandingly  and  give 
no  less  pleasure. 


A  Letter  to  Walter  Damrosch 

RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER 

DEAR  MR.  DAMROSCH: 

The  years  of  your  zeal  in  bringing  Richard  Wagner  to  the 
hearts  of  the  people  have  spanned  an  astounding  change.  Al 
most  single-handed,  you  have  made  this  poetic  and  musical 
giant  a  by-word  in  many  millions  of  homes.  But  what  of  the 
crowning  task  still  ahead  of  you?  When,  where,  and  how  are 
you  going  to  bring  the  music-dramas  of  Wagner  to  the  motion 
picture  screen? 

Curiously  enough,  in  a  decade  of  theatre  and  screen  re 
viewing,  the  notion  that  Wagner  might  find  an  adequate  ex 
pression  on  the  screen  never  occurred  to  me  until,  some  years 
ago,  I  saw  an  atrocious  melange  called  "King  of  Jazz."  But  I 
thought  of  you  often  during  the  cavortings  of  that  picture.  It 
did,  at  least,  open  the  vistas  of  possible  photographic  effects. 
Since  then,  the  vast  improvements  in  sound  recording  and  in 
color  photography  have  only  deepened  my  conviction  that  the 
screen  can  do  more  than  mere  justice  to  Wagner.  It  can  dis 
close,  for  the  first  time,  the  real  images  that  must  have  coursed 
through  his  mind  as  he  wrote  his  incomparable  scores. 

But  it  can  not  do  this  if  the  work  is  left  to  the  gaudy  minds  of 
Hollywood.  There  is  reverence  demanded  in  the  task,  and  a 
soaring  imagination,  more  than  a  touch  of  Wagner's  own  crea 
tive  genius  in  blending  sight  and  sound,  a  passion  for  artistic 
integrity,  and  a  faith  in  the  responsiveness  of  an  audience  to  the 
uncompromised  best.  You  are  the  man  for  that  task.  This  letter 
is  a  brief  which  is  put  before  you,  in  the  hope  that  it  will  lead 
you  to  action,  and  lead  others  to  give  you  unstinting  and 
enthusiastic  cooperation. 

First  of  all,  may  I  suggest  the  painful  inadequacy  of  the 
familiar  operatic  performances  of  Wagner?  Wagner  himself 
used  every  known  innovation  of  his  day  in  scenery  and  lighting 
to  help  create  the  illusion  of  more  than  mortal  grandeur.  But  he 
found  himself  chained  to  the  three  walls  of  the  theatre.  His 

[278] 


A  LETTER  TO  WALTER  DAMROSCH  [279] 

audiences  have  been  chained  to  them  ever  since.  He  had  to  use 
mortals  —  men  and  women  of  all  too  solid  flesh  and  amplitude 

—  to  play  the  roles  of  immortals.  A  suitable  larynx  took  prece 
dence  over  a  suitable  waistline.  (With  what  nostalgia  the  per 
fect  Wagnerite  looks  back  upon  the  rare  emergence  of  a  Jean  de 
Reske  in  Wagnerian  splendor!)  A  Wotan  might  move  with  all 
the  grace  and  grandeur  of  a  hippopotamus,  or  a  Brunhilde 
might  break  the  back  of  any  mere  thoroughbred  and  require 
a  stalwart  cart-horse  —  but  if  their  diaphragms  had  the  power 
of  immortality,  then  immortals  they  became.  Audiences  might 
at  least  shut  their  eyes!  But  was  all  this  the  dream  in  which 
Wagner  lived  and  labored? 

Did  Wagner  compose  a  Siegfried  Idyll  to  crown  the  dream 
of  a  mighty  paunch  strapped  in  skimpy  leather,  and  surmount 
ing  legs  of  dyed  cotton  hues?  Did  the  Valkyries,  thundering 
over  Valhalla,  enter  "lower  left"  on  deli  very- truck  mares,  and 
exit  "upper  right"  in  a  cloud  of  sawdust?  A  kind  word  is  due 
the  Rhine  maidens  of  Wagnerian  history.  They,  at  least,  have 
floated !  And  if  they  bulged  more  than  a  Rhine  maiden  should, 
a  merciful  gauze  screen  subdued  the  fault.  But  when  has  a  Logi 
leapt  from  rock  to  rock  without  risking  a  broken  ankle  or  the 
breaking  of  a  scenic  runway?  I  am  not  asking  these  questions 
maliciously.  As  a  child,  I  once  marveled  that  escaping  steam 
could  look  so  much  like  magic  fire,  and  took  a  frantic  interest 
in  the  internal  mechanics  of  a  stage  dragon  with  paper  teeth. 
But  I  know  that  I  experienced  no  illusion.  I  was  not  among  the 
immortals. 

The  three-dimensional  stage  has  its  place  in  the  scheme  of 
illusion.  When  plays  are  written  for  it,  the  stage  can  vibrate 
within  the  limits  of  its  own  conventions.  The  warming  presence 
on  it  of  human  beings  can  lend  it  a  piercing  immediacy.  But  it 
must  have  human  beings  who  themselves  shed  illusion  and 
glamor.  The  stage  cannot  compass  transitions  of  time  and 
place.  It  cannot  show  simultaneous  action  in  different  places 

—  unless   by  some   awkward   contrivance   which   splits   our 
attention. 

In  the  memorable  days  of  Ben  Hur  the  chariot  race,  for  one 


[  280  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

splendid  moment,  achieved  reality.  The  horses  captured  every 
eye,  and  gave  us  no  time  to  think  of  wings  and  wrinkled  back 
drops.  It  was  the  illusion  of  the  conjurer  who  keeps  our  eyes 
on  his  right  hand  while  his  left  hand  pulls  the  bunny  from  his 
coat  tails.  But  the  Niebelungen  Ring  does  not  build  up  to  one 
chariot  race  on  a  tread-mill.  It  builds  and  builds  in  magnifi 
cent  cadences,  through  the  sin  and  rebellion  of  mortals  and  the 
feuds  of  gods,  to  the  consuming  fires  of  the  twilight  of  the  im 
mortals.  For  that,  no  stage  can  foster  the  illusion.  It  bursts  the 
bounds  of  tiny  conventions.  It  demands  the  mountain  peaks, 
the  flames  of  retribution,  and  visible  majesty  above  the  clouds. 

May  I  pause  to  remind  you  that  the  name  of  Walter  Dam- 
rosch  is  cherished  in  the  memories  of  millions  for  creating 
images  through  words  that  match  the  music  of  Wagner,  and 
soar  with  it  to  the  perilous  heights  of  imagination?  Do  you  think 
that  these  millions  who  have  listened  to  you  in  their  homes 
have  limited  their  dreams  to  the  small  confines  and  grotesque 
pictures  on  the  Metropolitan  Opera  stage?  Of  course  not. 
These  people,  who  were  afraid  of  great  music  only  two  decades 
ago,  have  taken  Wagner  to  themselves  because  they  have  peo 
pled  the  stupendous  phrases  of  his  music  with  equally  stu 
pendous  images.  Their  greatest  fortune  is  that  they  have  never 
seen  a  Wagner  music-drama  on  the  stage. 

I  have  emphasized  the  cramped  and  disillusionizing  effect  of 
the  stage  upon  Wagner's  music-dramas  for  the  very  good  rea 
son  that  some  people  will  instantly  cry  "sacrilege"  at  the  very 
suggestion  of  putting  them  on  the  screen.  The  real  sacrilege 
has  been  in  putting  them  on  the  stage,  especially  the  operatic 
stage  with  its  double  limitation  of  stage  conventions  and  avail 
able  singing-actor  material.  The  screen  could  not  possibly  be 
worse  than  the  stage.  It  might  be  immeasurably  better.  May 
I  now  ask  you  to  consider  some  of  the  alluring  possibilities  of 
the  Wagnerian  screen? 

Suppose  we  take  first  the  human  material  —  the  singing- 
actors.  The  operatic  stage  is  limited  to  those  artists  whose  vocal 
power  can  fill  a  large  auditorium,  even  across  the  fine  fury  of 
orchestral  sound.  The  screen  artist  has  no  such  limitation. 


A  LETTER  TO  WALTER  DAMROSCH  [  281  ] 

Mechanical  adjustments  can  produce  the  exact  balance  re 
quired  between  vocal  and  instrumental  volume.  The  vocal 
recordings  can  even  be  made  after  the  picture  has  been  taken. 
Thus  artists  who  understand  melodic  phrasing  can  replace 
those  who  have  merely  resonance  and  strong  lungs. 

Then  there  is  personal  appearance  and  acting  ability.  The 
operatic  managements  do  not  choose  fat  tenors  and  voluminous 
sopranos  from  sheer  contrariness.  They  are  only  too  delighted 
when  the  phenomenon  appears  of  a  slender  figure  with  an  ade 
quate  voice.  But  there  are  innumerable  singers  today  with 
voices  of  moderate  volume  who  can  act,  and  who  have  the 
figures  to  create  the  needed  illusion  of  grace  and  beauty. 
Thanks  to  the  mechanics  of  the  sound-screen,  they  would  be 
available  for  the  Wagnerian  productions. 

This  brings  us  back  to  the  photographic  scope  of  the  screen 
—  and,  if  you  permit,  to  "King  of  Jazz."  That  film  centered 
around  Paul  Whiteman  and  his  band.  In  the  early  scenes,  the 
full-sized  figure  of  Whiteman  appeared  on  the  screen,  carrying 
a  small  flat  hand-bag.  At  a  given  moment,  he  opened  the  bag, 
and  there  sat  the  musicians  of  his  band,  not  one  of  them  larger 
than  the  fingers  of  Whiteman's  hands.  He  motioned  to  them. 
They  rose,  bowed  and  stepped  out  of  their  little  platform.  A 
Gulliver  and  his  Lilliputians  —  both  in  motion  on  the  same 
screen  at  the  same  instant.  What  has  this  to  do  with  Wagner? 
Only  this:  Wotan,  as  an  immortal,  need  no  longer  have  to 
wear  blocks  on  the  soles  of  his  shoes  to  appear  taller  than  the 
half-mortal  Volsungs. 

I  have  a  mental  picture  of  the  duel  between  Sigmund  and 
Hunding  —  men  of  mortal  size  —  with  Wotan  above  them  in 
the  clouds,  immense  as  the  elements  themselves,  his  spear,  for 
that  instant,  a  thing  of  cosmic  power.  When  the  immortals 
appear  to  men,  then  perhaps  it  is  time  for  them  to  appear  in 
mortal  size,  though  heightened  just  enough  to  lend  them  super 
natural  dignity.  Here  we  would  have  the  old  gods  as  Wagner 
must  have  seen  them,  and  as  your  own  words  have  pictured 
them  to  enthralled  radio  listeners. 

But  the  screen  can  go  much  farther.  The  Hollywood  that 


[  282  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

could  fashion  a  King  Kong  would  have  no  difficulty  in  evoking 
a  dragon  very  different  from  the  papier-mache  monstrosity  of 
the  Metropolitan  Opera  stage.  Mime  and  Alberich  would  be 
dwarfs  —  and  no  longer  full  grown  men  with  padding  for  a 
hunched  back  and  legs  painfully  crooked  to  bring  down  their 
height.  The  camera  would  make  them  dwarfs  —  little  men  — 
as  legend  and  our  imaginations  would  have  them. 

Then  what  of  the  ride  of  the  Valkyries?  Ever  since  David 
Griffith  gave  us  his  clansmen  riding  to  vengeance  in  "The 
Birth  of  a  Nation,"  the  screen  has  been  hungry  for  the  ride  of 
Wo  tan's  daughters  of  battle.  Through  what  miles  of  space  they 
would  dive!  Their  chargers  would  leap  from  cloud  to  cloud, 
from  mountain  tops  to  the  planes  of  war.  Then,  in  a  single 
mighty  leap,  back  to  Valhalla!  Certainly  there  would  be  no 
sacrilege  in  that! 

Your  vivid  imagination  will  add  to  this,  I  hope,  the  new 
achievements  in  color  photography.  These  will  not  be  shadow 
pictures.  Siegfried  will  pass  through  flames  to  Brunhilde  —  not 
merely  through  flickering  patches  of  white.  He  will  lie  in  a 
green  forest  when  the  red  blood  of  Fafner  has  opened  his  ears. 
The  hall  of  Hunding  will  have  the  red  and  gold  and  purple 
splendor  of  the  ages  of  mythology.  Color  will  be  used  to  syn 
chronize  with  the  music,  to  intensify  its  play  upon  the  senses, 
and  to  bring  a  gigantic  symphony  of  sound  and  sight. 

But  what  of  the  musical  score  itself?  Am  I  entirely  heretical 
in  believing  that  Wagner  wrote  many  long  passages  of  recita 
tive  which  hold  his  actors  in  agonizing  suspense,  and  obstruct 
the  flow  of  visual  action?  It  might  not  be  necessary  to  omit  these 
passages  entirely.  I  hope  not,  for  many  of  them  have  haunting 
beauty.  But  they  might  have  to  be  transposed  to  moments  just 
before  or  just  after  the  visual  action.  A  masterly  rearrangement 
of  the  Wagnerian  scores  would  be  your  final  and  greatest 
contribution  in  translating  these  masterpieces  to  the  screen. 
You  alone  could  do  it  in  the  spirit  of  innovation  and  high 
musical  adventure  which  Wagner  himself  would  have  felt  if 
the  screen  had  been  open  to  him  in  his  lifetime. 

This  possible  transposing  and  rearrangement  of  the  scores 


A  LETTER  TO  WALTER  DAMROSCH  [283] 

would  give  the  perfect  Wagnerites  their  one  defensible  chance 
to  cry  outrage.  The  entire  score  —  or  nothing!  But  I  am  sure 
you  could  easily  persuade  them  to  a  more  reasonable  view. 
Many  of  them  are  unconscious  of  the  "cuts"  already  made  in 
the  standard  operatic  performances  of  today.  But  to  millions 
who  have  only  heard  passages  of  Wagner,  the  adapted  continu 
ity  of  a  screen  presentation  would  be  soul-filling  and  complete. 
You  have  an  abundant  right  to  ask  me  at  least  one  more 
question.  With  all  the  eagerness  in  the  world  to  undertake  this 
task,  how  can  you  go  about  it?  How  can  you  persuade  the 
Hollywood  magnates  and  their  New  York  bankers  that  there  is 
a  vast  audience  ready  and  eager  to  pay  its  dimes  and  quarters 
and  half-dollars  to  see  Wagner  on  the  screen?  The  answer,  I 
think,  lies  in  your  own  career.  When  you  started  your  labors, 
there  were  but  a  few  hundred  people  —  possibly  a  few  thou 
sand  —  in  and  around  New  York  and  Boston  who  had  already 
yielded  to  Wagner's  magic.  Today  you  have  an  admitted  au 
dience  of  many  millions.  Your  name  is  inseparably  associated 
with  his  in  the  consciousness  of  the  American  people.  That  is 
why  I  am  laying  this  letter  before  you.  That  is  why  I  hope, 
with  all  my  heart,  that  you  will  take  up  the  task  it  suggests  and 
carry  it  to  a  splendid  consummation. 


Dark  Days  Ahead  for  King  Cotton 

WILLIAM    H.     GORDELL 

r  I  ^HE  embattled  cotton  farmers  of  the  South  have  lost  the 
•*•  second  of  their  great  wars.  They  are  faced  with  another 
period  of  reconstruction  promising  more  fundamental  and 
painful  readjustments  than  those  of  the  Reconstruction  fol 
lowing  the  Civil  War. 

This  second  and  most  recent  war  was  purely  dynastic.  It 
was  to  keep  King  Cotton  on  the  throne  in  Dixie  Land.  None 
of  the  fanfares  of  battle  heralded  the  campaigns.  They  were 
carried  out  in  the  quiet,  peaceful  cotton-fields  in  many  coun 
tries  of  the  world.  The  death  knell  of  cotton  as  King  of  millions 
in  the  South  was  sounded  recently  by  a  few  simple  figures  on 
world  cotton  production.  In  1934  the  South  produced  nine 
and  a  half  million  bales,  while  the  rest  of  the  world  produced 
thirteen  and  a  half  million  bales.  For  the  first  time  in  its  long 
history  the  South  yielded  its  world  supremacy  in  cotton.  The 
import  of  these  figures  increases  when  we  recall  that  before 
1929  the  South  produced  sixty  percent  of  the  world's  cotton. 
In  1 934  the  South  produced  only  forty-one  percent,  and  it  was 
the  rest  of  the  world  that  produced  fifty-nine  percent. 

There  are  several  reasons  for  this  rapid  reversal.  The  most 
immediate,  the  one  that  looms  largest  to  its  opponents,  is  the 
Administration's  cotton-control  program.  Due  to  the  low 
prices  of  the  year  before  (four  to  four  and  a  half  cents  per 
pound  in  1932)  the  Federal  government  in  1933  sponsored  a 
campaign  of  acreage  curtailment  by  paying  the  farmers  who 
plowed  under  every  third  row  of  their  cotton.  The  results, 
accomplished  at  a  cost  of  a  hundred  and  thirty-five  million 
dollars,  were  the  destruction  of  some  ten  million  acres  of 
cotton  and  a  rise  in  the  cotton  price  to  nine  and  ten  cents  per 
pound. 

The  Bankhead  Act  continued  the  program  of  curtailed 
acreage  during  1934.  The  Agricultural  Adjustment  Adminis 
tration  made  payments  to  the  farmers  totaling  a  hundred  and 

[284] 


DARK  DATS  AHEAD  FOR  KING  COTTON  [  285  ] 

sixty  million  dollars  for  not  planting  five  million  acres  of 
cotton.  To  make  the  program  self-supporting,  the  Act  pro 
vided  that  money  for  these  payments  should  come  from  a 
processing  tax  of  4.2  cents  per  pound  on  all  cotton  used  by  the 
American  mills.  Further  provisions  created  credit  agencies  to 
"peg"  the  price  at  a  minimum  of  twelve  cents  per  pound.  The 
result  —  a  decrease  in  production  from  thirteen  million  bales 
in  1932  to  nine  and  a  half  million  in  1934. 

Other  cotton-growing  regions,  such  as  Brazil  and  other 
South  American  countries,  India,  China,  Egypt,  and  Russia, 
took  immediate  advantage  of  the  higher  prices  thus  brought 
about.  They  greatly  increased  their  cotton  acreage  in  1934. 
Brazil  produced  only  seven  hundred  thousand  bales  in  1933; 
in  1934  no  less  than  a  million,  two  hundred  thousand  bales. 
For  the  present  crop  year  the  objective  is  a  million  and  six 
hundred  thousand  bales. 

The  possibilities  for  an  enormous  increase  in  the  Brazil 
cotton  acreage  derive  from  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  billion  acres 
of  deep,  black  soil  in  the  states  of  Sao  Paulo  and  Minas  Geraes. 
They  are  already  connected  with  the  coast  by  three  railway 
lines.  The  Brazilian  cotton  planter  has  plenty  of  cheap  labor 
among  the  Italian  and  Japanese  immigrants.  The  disastrous 
debacle  of  the  coffee  market  has  released  additional  thousands 
of  laborers  from  the  coffee  plantations.  These  possibilities  in 
Brazil  are  the  more  serious  for  the  Southern  planter  because 
cotton  is  indigenous  in  Brazil.  It  is  a  foreign  importation  in 
Dixie.  The  grade  of  fibres  in  Brazilian  cotton  is  usually  more 
desirable  to  the  spinner  than  the  varieties  grown  in  this 
country. 

Other  cotton-growing  regions  report  that  their  production 
has  been  stepped  up  as  much  as  thirty-five  to  forty-five  per 
cent  in  the  last  two  years.  Russia  plans  not  only  to  produce 
sufficient  cotton  for  its  needs  during  the  present  year,  but  also 
enough  for  a  considerable  export.  This  will  be  entirely  possible 
with  the  rapid  utilization  of  the  fertile  Turkestan  region  in 
Central  Asia,  recently  opened  up  to  extensive  settlement  by 
a  new  American-supervised  railway. 


[  286  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Apologists  for  the  Administration's  program  insist  that 
much  of  this  alarming  increase  in  foreign  cotton  production  is 
due  to  economic  nationalism  dictated  by  the  desire  to  be  self- 
sustaining  in  the  event  of  war.  Undoubtedly  this  has  been  a 
contributing  factor.  Before  1932  England  had  gone  to  much 
expense,  perhaps  economically  unjustifiable  at  the  time,  in  the 
construction  of  giant  irrigation  projects  in  the  Upper  Nile 
region  to  make  this  section  available  for  cotton-raising. 
England  had  also  encouraged  India  to  grow  more  cotton 
with  a  view  to  independence  in  case  of  war.  Increased  acreage 
in  Russia  may  also  be  part  of  a  program  of  defense.  The 
incontrovertible  fact  remains,  however,  that  the  American 
Administration's  policy  has  made  it  profitable  for  the  rest  of 
the  world  to  increase  its  acreage  and  output  at  the  expense  of 
the  American  public,  and  more  particularly  of  the  future  of 
the  Southern  planters. 

Yet  the  Southern  planters  have  been  gratified  by  the  gov 
ernment's  program.  It  has  brought  them  not  only  cash  pay 
ments  for  decreased  acreage,  but  also  an  approximate  increase 
of  two  hundred  percent  above  1932  in  the  market  price  of 
their  cotton.  No  wonder  that  in  1934  the  landowners  of  the 
South  voted  nine  to  one  in  favor  of  a  year's  continuation  of  the 
Bankhead  Cotton  Control  Act! 

But  there  are  some  far-seeing  planters,  who,  realizing  that 
this  subsidy  cannot  indefinitely  be  continued,  are  concerned 
for  their  future.  They  wonder  what  will  happen  to  them 
when  the  government  ceases  its  aid,  and  they  are  left  alone 
and  unaided  to  compete  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  They  see 
its  increased  cotton  acreage,  and  its  cheaply  produced  and 
higher  grades  of  cotton  fibres  which  are  quickly  capturing  the 
world's  market.  These  planters  take  a  long  view  of  the  control 
program  and  believe  they  discern  their  doom  written  in  large 
letters  by  the  successive  reports  of  decrease  in  the  relative 
consumption  of  American-grown  cotton. 

Prevailing  high  prices  of  cotton  have  also  speeded  up  the 
development  within  recent  years  of  various  synthetic  sub 
stitutes  for  cotton  fibre.  With  growing  uneasiness,  the  Southern 


DARK  DAYS  AHEAD  FOR  KING  COTTON  [  287  ] 

planters  read  about  the  discoveries  made  by  German  chemists 
of  vistra,  a  new  synthetic  fibre  made  from  cellulose,  a  product 
of  wood  pulp.  In  strength  and  durability  and  cheapness  of 
production,  it  is  more  desirable  than  the  average  low  grade  of 
cotton  staples.  Another  synthetic  product  is  woolstra,  which 
possesses  many  advantages  over  cotton.  Rayon  and  jute  are 
invading  the  cotton  textile  field  and  gaining  popularity  be 
cause  of  their  cheapness.  In  Milan,  Italy,  the  spinning  mills 
which  once  used  American-grown  cotton  almost  exclusively 
are  now  producing  eighty  percent  vistra  cloth  and  only 
twenty  percent  cotton.  Since  vistra  and  woolstra  can  be  spun 
on  the  same  spindles  once  used  for  cotton,  the  shift  to  sub 
stitutes  of  higher  priced  cotton  can,  and  is,  being  made 
cheaply  and  quickly  in  many  European  countries. 

The  only  hope  appearing  on  the  Southern  planters'  horizon 
is  the  promise  of  a  new  invention,  the  universal  pull-model 
cotton-picker,  demonstrated  publicly  for  the  first  time  at  the 
annual  Cotton  Carnival  in  Memphis  early  in  May.  This 
cotton-picker,  invented  by  John  D.  and  Mack  D.  Rust, 
gathers  as  much  cotton  in  eight  hours  as  a  hand-picker  gathers 
in  three  months.  The  estimated  cost  of  operation  per  acre  of 
cotton  (including  the  labor)  is  ninety-eight  cents.  With  the 
use  of  this  tractor-drawn  machine  —  doing  away  with  the 
employment  of  hand-pickers  and  permitting  the  use  of  the 
tractor  the  year  round  —  the  cotton  planter  can  thoroughly 
mechanize  his  farm  and  produce  cotton  at  a  profit  even  if  the 
price  per  pound  dropped  to  the  1932  low  level  of  four  cents! 

By  next  year  this  cotton-picker  will  be  on  the  market  in 
Memphis  and  California.  The  probable  maximum  price  of 
$1000  is  so  reasonable  as  not  to  restrict  its  use  on  any  except 
the  smallest  farms.  Its  widespread  use  will  increase  the  size  of 
plantations  and  hasten  their  complete  mechanization.  With 
this  machine  the  South  may  be  able  to  recapture  part  of  its 
losses  in  the  world  markets,  but  it  will  not  be  able  to  revive 
cotton  as  an  absolute  ruler  over  all  the  people  of  Dixie.  The 
reason  is  not  far  to  seek:  the  cotton-picker  will  deal  death  to 
the  tenantry  system  of  the  South. 


[  288  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

'  I  1HE  present  tenant  and  share-cropper  operation  of  planta- 
-••  tions  in  the  South  follows  the  necessities  and  peculiarities  in 
the  cultivation  and  harvesting  of  cotton.  The  system  was 
established  before  the  modern  tractor,  gang-plows  and  me 
chanical  seeders.  In  the  pre-tractor  era  a  great  number  of 
workers  were  essential  for  the  laborious  spring  planting  — 
with  one  and  two-mule  plows  for  breaking,  bedding,  and 
harrowing,  and  one-row  seeders.  During  cultivation,  fewer 
laborers  were  needed  than  during  planting;  yet  there  was 
plenty  of  work  for  every  member  of  the  tenant  family  in 
chopping  or  hoeing,  listing  and  plowing  the  cotton. 

When  the  larger  plantations  began  to  use  tractors,  the  labor 
of  the  tenants  became  of  little  value  during  the  planting 
season,  and  of  still  less  value  during  cultivation.  It  looked  for 
a  while  as  if  the  tractor,  which  could  accomplish  in  one  day  as 
much  as  ten  tenants  with  ten  teams  and  hand  plows,  would 
relegate  the  tenant  to  Limbo  along  with  the  mule.  But,  fortu 
nately  for  the  tenant,  the  tractor  could  not  pick  cotton  during 
the  harvesting  season  from  September  to  December.  Human 
fingers  had  to  pick  the  locks  of  cotton  from  the  dry,  hard, 
five-pronged  bolls.  Thus,  the  plantation  owner  had  to  continue 
to  furnish  the  tenants  during  the  whole  year  so  as  to  have  them 
immediately  available  during  the  harvest  season.  The  white 
fibre  had  to  be  gathered  as  soon  as  it  was  picked  before  it 
yellowed  and  decayed  from  exposure  to  the  elements. 

The  owners  might  have  discharged  nine  out  of  ten  tenants 
and  used  tractors  during  the  planting  and  cultivation  periods, 
trusting  to  itinerant  labor  to  pick  the  cotton  in  the  fall.  This 
would  seemingly  have  been  the  economical  thing  to  do,  but 
actually  at  the  usual  rate  for  cotton-picking  (fifty  cents  per 
hundred  pounds  of  seed  cotton)  it  costs  nearly  half  of  the 
gross  market  returns  on  a  bale  to  "hire"  it  picked.  It  takes 
fifteen  hundred  pounds  of  seed  cotton  to  make  a  bale  of  five 
hundred  pounds  lint  after  the  seeds  are  removed.  At  the  rate 
of  fifty  cents  per  hundredweight  of  seed  cotton,  the  planter 
would  have  to  pay  out  in  cash  $7.50  per  bale  for  picking.  Add 
to  this  the  cost  of  ginning,  at  least  $2.50  per  bale,  and  the  total 


DARK  DAYS  AHEAD  FOR  KING  COTTON  [  289  ] 

amounts  to  $10.  Now  compare  this  with  a  market  price  of 
four  cents  per  pound  (the  price  at  which  cotton  sold  no  longer 
ago  than  three  years)  on  the  five  hundred  pound  bale.  This 
would  mean  on  the  open  market  about  $20.  Exactly  half 
would  be  paid  to  pickers  for  harvesting  the  cotton. 

The  only  way  the  planter  could  avoid  this  difficulty  was  to 
keep  his  tenants  on  the  plantation,  available  for  the  fall 
picking.  The  meal,  molasses  and  meat  —  not  to  mention  the 
mules  —  the  planter  furnished  to  tenants,  who  were  obligated 
by  mortgages  and  liens  on  their  crops  to  return  the  whole 
amount  at  a  considerable  interest  rate  once  their  crops  were 
harvested.  Now,  since  it  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  system  that 
the  tenant  must  pick  his  own  cotton,  the  landlord  by  a  con 
tinuation  of  tenant  indebtedness  could  save  the  cash  expended 
on  cotton-picking.  He  was  assured  by  his  lien  and  mortgages 
that  the  supplies  he  sold  at  high  prices  and  high  interest 
charges  would  be  returned  by  the  tenants.  What  mattered  it 
if  the  tenants  and  share-croppers  had  nothing  to  show  for  their 
part  at  the  end  of  the  year? 

In  consequence  of  the  peculiarities  of  cotton-harvesting,  the 
tractor  was  valuable  only  during  the  three  months  (April  to 
July)  for  planting  and  cultivation.  Thus  the  planters  did  not 
proceed  to  immediate  mechanization.  It  would  have  been  too 
heavy  a  financial  burden  to  support  a  great  number  of  ten 
ants  all  through  the  year  so  as  to  have  their  free  services  avail 
able  during  the  cotton-picking  season.  Therefore,  tractors 
were  purchased  only  on  the  largest  plantations  and  these  used 
only  for  spring  and  fall  deep-breaking.  Mules  were  retained 
because  they  could  be  fed  on  corn  and  hay  raised  by  the 
tenants  themselves  and  without  cost  to  the  planter.  What  is 
more  to  the  point,  all  the  tenants  would  be  kept  busy  during 
the  whole  year ! 

Considering  the  abnormally  low  prices  of  cotton  since  1 920, 
it  is  no  wonder  that  tenantry  is  on  the  increase  despite  the 
fact  that  the  standard  of  living  among  this  class  has  been  on  a 
steady  decline.  The  individual  farmer  with  small  acreage  has 
found  it  progressively  more  difficult  to  compete  with  the  large 


[  ago  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

plantations,  and  many  of  them,  forced  into  bankruptcy  by  low 
prices  of  cotton,  have  had  to  resort  to  tenant  farming  for  a 
livelihood.  Despite  its  meagerness,  it  is  at  least  an  existence. 
The  latest  figures  available  show  that  since  the  World  War, 
tenantry  in  the  South  has  proceeded  apace.  In  1910  only 
fifty  percent  of  the  farms  in  the  South  were  operated  by  ten 
ants,  while  by  1920  this  had  increased  to  fifty-five  percent. 
By  1935  the  total  had  jumped  to  sixty-five  percent.  These 
figures,  dealing  only  in  terms  of  farms,  give  only  part  of  the 
picture.  According  to  the  census  reports  of  1 930,  the  total  farm 
population,  in  the  period  1920  to  1930,  decreased  over  a 
hundred  and  ninety  thousand,  while  the  number  of  share 
croppers,  or  tenants  working  lands  owned  either  by  large 
landholders  or  corporations,  increased  nearly  a  hundred  and 
ninety  thousand.  This  represents  an  increase  of  more  than 
thirty-five  percent  over  the  total  number  of  croppers  listed  in 
1920. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  certain  effects,  on  the  tenants,  of  the 
adoption  and  use  of  the  Rust  Brothers'  mechanical  cotton- 
picker.  Drawn  by  a  tractor,  the  new  universal  pull-model,  as 
we  have  seen,  can  pick  as  much  cotton  in  eight  hours  as  an 
average  picker  can  gather  in  three  months.  This  means  that 
eighty  to  eighty-five  percent  of  the  present  tenants  will  no 
longer  be  needed  on  the  plantation.  It  will  now  be  more  econom 
ical  for  the  planter  to  use  the  tractor  than  man  and  mule 
power.  He  can  use  it  not  only  during  the  planting  and  culti 
vating  seasons,  but  also  during  the  harvesting  period  to  pull 
the  cotton-picker. 

In  the  cotton-producing  Southern  states,  according  to  the 
census  report  of  1930,  there  are  some  million  or  more  tenants 
and  share-croppers.  Eighty  percent  of  them,  or  over  nine 
hundred  thousand,  will  be  dislodged  by  the  cotton-picker. 
Taking  an  average  of  four  persons  to  the  family,  we  arrive  at 
the  startling  conclusion  that  three  million,  eight  hundred 
thousand  men,  women,  and  children  will  be  forcibly  emanci 
pated  from  their  settled  stations,  with  no  available  means  of 
livelihood.  These  people  can  turn  nowhere  for  relief  except  to 


DARK  DATS  AHEAD  FOR  KING  COTTON  [  291  ] 

the  government.  Even  under  the  present  system,  whereby 
tenants  are  furnished  from  the  plantation  commissary,  there 
were  four  hundred  thousand  croppers  on  the  relief  rolls  in 
Southern  states  in  1 934.  In  Arkansas,  Oklahoma,  and  Texas, 
all  largely  rural  in  population,  the  percentage  of  population 
receiving  government  aid  last  year  averaged  twenty-two  per 
cent.  This  percentage  promises  to  increase  by  leaps  and 
bounds  when  the  mechanical  cotton-picker  attains  universal 
use  within  the  next  two  years. 

f~\  F  LATE  the  Department  of  Agriculture  has  shown  much 
^-^  concern  over  the  thousands  of  evictions  from  plantations 
resulting  from  its  crop  reduction  program.  Although  pro 
visions  were  made  in  the  contracts  signed  by  the  landowners 
to  protect  croppers  from  eviction,  the  government  has  found  it 
necessary  to  investigate  the  flood  of  complaints  pouring  into 
Washington  concerning  the  destitute,  evicted  peasantry.  A 
survey  is  now  in  progress  in  several  representative  sections  to 
discover  the  extent  of  the  violation  of  the  contract  pledges.  No 
accurate  figures  of  the  number  of  evictions  resulting  from  the 
reduction  program  are  available.  But  the  situation  is  severe. 
All  over  the  cotton  belt,  locals  of  the  Southern  Tenant  Farmers 
Union  have  been  formed  to  resist  forced  eviction  from 
plantations. 

The  Federal  government  has  not  publicly  condemned  the 
planters  for  these  illegal  but  economically  necessary  evictions, 
but  it  has  realized  the  necessity  of  providing  for  this  class.  Last 
April,  Senator  Bankhead,  author  of  the  Cotton  Control  Act, 
proposed  a  bill  carrying  a  billion  dollar  appropriation  to  be 
used  as  a  loan  to  rehabilitate  and  make  independent  from 
five  hundred  thousand  to  three  million  tenants.  The  bill  en 
countered  much  opposition  in  the  Senate,  because  of  its 
administrative  features,  and  was  temporarily  shelved  to  make 
way  for  the  Patman  Bonus  measure. 

So  far,  the  Washington  authorities  have  taken  no  cognizance 
of  the  threat  of  the  mechanical  cotton-picker.  They  have,  to 
tell  the  truth,  had  their  hands  full  in  taking  care  of  those  al- 


[  292  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ready  evicted  under  the  present  reduction  program.  But  in  the 
light  of  the  inevitable  overthrow  of  the  tenantry  system,  the 
Federal  government  should  by  every  possible  means  make 
thorough  investigations  and  broaden  the  provisions  of  the 
Bankhead  Tenant  Rehabilitation  Bill.  Then  it  will  be  pre 
pared  in  time  to  meet  the  situation  with  a  plan  for  permanent 
solution.  Otherwise,  the  South  will  find  itself  faced  with  a 
new  period  of  reconstruction,  following  the  "emancipation" 
of  the  tenant  peasantry,  even  more  disastrous  than  the  period 
following  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves. 

Reconstruction,  to  be  of  any  value,  must  be  planned  with  a 
view  to  permanence.  No  half-way  measures  or  expedients  can 
save  the  South  from  a  relapse  into  social  stagnation.  Only 
vigorous,  well-organized  planning  can  save  the  tenants  from 
a  condition  even  worse  than  their  present  degradation  — 
whose  only  virtue  has  been  its  security.  Now,  for  the  first  time 
since  the  Civil  War,  even  that  is  threatened  with  complete 
disruption. 


To  a  Pair  of  Gold  Earrings 

THOMAS   SUGRUE 

Once  you  were  free  to  love,  and  held  your  face 
Against  the  moving  earth  to  feel  its  heart. 
Once  you  were  beaten,  yielding  to  the  grace 
Of  subtle  fingers,  and  a  cunning  art 
That  shaped  you  gently,  tracing  on  your  soul 
The  image  of  a  dream.  Your  lines  belong 
To  what  an  old  monk  lettered  on  a  scroll 
Between  his  matins  and  the  vesper  song. 
Now  you  lay  hands  on  beauty,  and  your  eyes 
Turn  upward  to  the  lights  that  loose  her  hair; 
Twisting  to  catch  a  shadow  as  it  flies 
Along  her  lips,  laying  their  laughter  bare. 
And  through  her  voice  the  tinkle  of  your  breath 
Runs,  like  a  whisper  muttering  of  death. 


[293] 


Our  Tipstaff  Police 

HENRY   MORTON  ROBINSON 

NEXT  to  the  anecdotes  that  a  manic-depressive  tells  his 
keeper,  the  craziest  and  most  uncoordinated  thing  in 
America  is  our  police  system.  Under  our  Constitution  we  have 
expressly  delegated  all  "police  powers"  to  the  several  states, 
arranging  matters  so  that  each  community  —  city,  town,  or 
hamlet  —  shall  handle  its  own  police  affairs,  brooking  no 
interference  from  outside  authority,  and  cooperating  only  to 
such  degree  as  is  politic  or  convenient.  As  a  result  we  have 
thirty-nine  thousand  separate  and  independent  police  agencies 
in  the  United  States,  a  floundering  welter  of  inefficiency  and 
obsolescence,  a  patchwork  sieve  through  which  the  criminal 
easily  slips  to  freedom.  Three  thousand  cities,  sixteen  thousand 
incorporated  municipalities,  and  twenty  thousand  townships 
are  all  making  free-lance  attacks  on  the  twin  problems  of 
crime-repression  and  police  protection,  with  a  resulting  con 
fusion  that  makes  the  builders  of  Babel  seem  as  unanimous  as  a 
couple  of  Southern  governors  deciding  to  have  another  julep. 
This  lack  of  coordinated  activity  in  our  police  system  is  one 
of  the  major  reasons  why  we  are  not  getting  further  in  our 
much  publicized,  but  as  yet  abortive  "war  against  crime." 
Observe,  for  instance,  the  haphazard  manner  in  which  our 
police  handle  the  genteel  crime  of  forgery:  Our  annual  loss 
from  forgery  is  nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars; 
in  one  eastern  city,  three  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  week  is 
paid  out  on  bad  checks.  Yet  the  stupid  disharmony  of  our 
police  makes  the  forger's  role  one  of  the  safest  and  most  profit 
able  in  the  criminal  repertory.  Everyone  knows  that  a  forger 
works  quickly;  he  "lays  down"  his  spurious  paper  in  Con 
necticut,  nets  his  profit,  and  skips  on  to  New  York.  But  as  he 
leaves  the  state  of  Connecticut,  nothing  officially  follows  him 
but  a  sigh  of  relief.  The  losses  are  made  up  by  insurance  com 
panies,  who  carry  on  private  wars  against  these  pen-and-ink 
artists,  but  there  is  no  concerted  action  by  the  police.  No 

[294] 


OUR  TIPSTAFF  POLICE  [  295  ] 

description  of  the  forger's  modus  operandi  is  broadcast;  not  even  a 
warning  that  he  is  coming.  "Let  New  York  handle  him,"  is 
Connecticut's  attitude;  "Leave  him  to  New  Jersey,"  says 
New  York. 

This  costly  and  fantastic  buck-passing  goes  on  not  only 
among  the  states,  but  between  neighboring  cities  as  well. 
Sporadic  and  unrelated  clean-ups  drive  crooks  from  Albany 
to  Buffalo,  or  from  Chicago  to  Cleveland,  the  logic  being  that 
of  a  housewife  who  tidies  up  her  kitchen  by  sweeping  the  dirt 
into  the  dining-room.  Even  the  highly  touted  Federal  police 
units  overlap  and  conflict  with  each  other;  our  central  govern 
ment  maintains  two  distinct  patrol  forces  —  the  Customs 
Border  Patrol  conducted  by  the  Treasury  Department,  and 
the  Immigration  Border  Patrol  of  the  Department  of  Labor. 
In  addition,  it  has  four  major  police  organizations:  the  Divi 
sion  of  Investigation  in  the  Department  of  Justice,  the  Secret 
Service  and  the  Narcotic  Unit  in  the  Treasury,  and  the  crim 
inal  investigation  activities  of  the  Post  Office.  Here  then  are 
six  independent  outfits  which  inevitably  clash  with  each  other 
in  numberless  cases.  Until  these  groups  are  consolidated,  the 
criminal  jurisdictions  within  the  Federal  government  will 
continue  to  be  as  weirdly  uncoordinated  as  the  police  depart 
ments  of  the  several  states. 

Rugged  uncoordination  is  perhaps  too  deeply  graven  in  our 
national  character  to  be  etched  out  by  acid  paragraphs. 
Indeed,  I  merely  mention  it  as  a  prelude  to  the  real  charge 
that  I  would  bring  against  our  police.  For  it  seems  that  police 
men,  as  a  body,  all  show  a  noticeable  passion  for  the  archaic,  a 
too,  too  tender  devotion  to  the  practices  and  instruments  of 
antiquity.  This  touching  emotion  puts  them  a  full  century 
behind  the  times,  thrusting  them  back  into  an  age  when  the 
tipstaff  and  blunderbuss  were  the  constable's  sole  weapons, 
and  the  "ordeal  by  weights"  the  favorite  method  of  determin 
ing  innocence  or  guilt.  For  the  inescapable  fact  is  this:  Our 
American  police  agencies  have  not  availed  themselves  of  the 
methods  developed  by  science  for  the  detection  and  apprehen 
sion  of  criminals.  The  tipstaff  still  holds  sway,  while  serviceable 


[  296  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

batteries  of  scientific  instruments  stand  unused,  scorned,  or 
unheard  of,  by  those  in  charge  of  crime  control. 

The  application  of  science  to  criminal  investigation  is  one  of 
the  outstanding  social  advances  of  the  last  decade;  certainly  it 
has  brought  about  a  revolution  in  the  methods  of  detecting, 
apprehending  and  identifying  the  criminal  elements  of  society. 
This  is  particularly  true  in  Europe;  the  practical  police  results 
achieved  by  European  criminologists  outrival  the  wildest  ex 
ploits  of  fictional  Vidocqs.  The  basic  premise  of  these  investi 
gators  is  that  every  criminal,  no  matter  how  astute,  always 
leaves  some  trace  behind  —  a  hair,  a  scale  of  cuticle,  an  im 
palpable  record  in  the  dust.  To  discover  and  preserve  these 
traces  is  the  task  of  the  scientific  policeman.  Doctor  Poller  of 
Vienna  has  devised  a  process  known  as  "moulage"  (literally 
"modeling")  by  which  such  minute  traces  as  tool-marks  left 
on  a  window-sill  or  door-jamb,  teeth  indentations  on  fruit, 
cheese,  or  other  food  (many  criminals  munch  nervously  during 
and  after  the  commission  of  a  crime)  can  be  plastically  repro 
duced  for  purposes  of  evidence.  Auto  tracks  in  snow,  or  in  dust 
so  delicate  that  a  single  breath  would  blow  it  away,  are  sprayed 
with  a  fixative  until  they  harden;  sensitive  clays  are  then  laid 
over  the  tire-marks,  and  from  this  negative  cast,  a  positive 
impression  is  secured. 

M.  Locard,  the  famous  criminologist  of  Lyons,  has  evolved 
a  new  system  of  criminal  identification  known  as  "poroscopy," 
by  which  the  faintest  imprint  of  a  few  pores  on  a  single  papil 
lary  ridge  on  a  criminal's  finger  —  less  than  one  five- thou 
sandth  part  of  a  complete  fingerprint  —  can  be  made  to  serve 
as  infallible  proof  of  his  implication  in  a  crime.  By  analyzing 
microscopic  sections  of  thread,  dirt,  or  blood  found  under 
the  fingernails  of  a  murdered  man,  Locard  can  in  many  cases 
provide  his  detectives  with  a  complete  description  of  the 
murderer.  Once,  after  examining  the  dried  saliva  on  a  tooth 
pick,  Locard  told  his  men  where  to  look,  and  whom  to  look 
for;  he  repeated  the  same  trick  by  analyzing  the  saliva  on  a 
cigarette  found  beside  a  murdered  man.  No,  Locard  is  not  a 
character  of  fiction.  He  is  the  comparatively  young  and  very 


OUR  TIPSTAFF  POLICE  [  297  ] 

able  chief  of  the  municipal  detective  laboratory  of  Lyons, 
France,  where  he  accomplishes  his  marvels  on  an  appropria 
tion  of  $900  a  year ! 

Nor  are  American  criminologists  laggard  in  the  develop 
ment  of  their  science.  Laboratory  analyses  of  ashes  enable 
technicians  to  say,  in  arson  cases,  whether  gasoline,  kerosene, 
linseed  oil  or  other  specific  inflammables  were  used  in  starting 
a  fire.  F.  B.  Gompert,  of  California,  has  devised  a  system  for 
classifying  human  hair;  he  has  found  nearly  twenty- two 
thousand  varieties,  all  differing  in  color,  shape,  and  texture, 
and  has  given  each  hair  a  "type"  number.  Once  in  a  murder 
case  he  went  over  a  carpet  with  a  vacuum  cleaner,  picked  up 
four  hairs  all  corresponding  to  the  hair  found  on  the  head  of  a 
suspect  who  was  later  convicted.  Calvin  Goddard,  the  fore 
most  firearms  expert  in  the  world,  can  furnish  the  name, 
calibre,  condition,  and  date  of  manufacture  of  any  gun  used 
in  a  fatal  shooting,  merely  by  examining  the  bullet  or  shell 
found  at  the  scene  of  the  crime.  By  applying  the  new  "paraffin 
test,"  Goddard  can  determine  whether  a  man  was  killed  by  a 
homicidal  bullet,  or  whether  he  committed  suicide.  Luke  S. 
May  has  developed  a  technique  for  identifying  knives,  axes, 
screw-drivers  and  other  implements,  from  the  marks  they 
leave  on  the  victim  or  on  materials  used  by  the  criminal. 

The  list  could  be  prolonged  into  a  very  litany  of  marvels,  yet 
so  far  as  the  majority  of  our  tipstaff  police  are  concerned,  these 
scientific  aids  to  crime  control  apparently  do  not  exist.  Don't 
take  my  word  for  it !  Just  inspect  the  mounting  list  of  unsolved 
and  unpunished  crimes  in  the  United  States.  In  1933  there 
were  one  million,  three  hundred  thousand  serious  crimes 
committed  in  this  country,  including  twelve  thousand  murders 
and  ninety  thousand  felonious  assaults !  Yet  in  three-fourths  of 
these  crimes,  no  one  was  ever  brought  to  justice.  In  the  preced 
ing  year,  in  New  York  City  alone,  there  were  over  twelve 
hundred  cases  of  homicide,  and  only  eighteen  convictions  for 
murder!  Now  while  it  is  ridiculous  to  claim  that  scientific 
methods  of  crime  detection  would  straightway  clap  all  crim 
inals  behind  bars,  the  present  writer  bluntly  asserts  that  our 


[  298  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

police  can  never  satisfactorily  fulfill  their  obligation  to  society, 
until  they  lay  aside  their  hostility  to  the  new  detective  science, 
and  adopt  its  weapons  in  the  battle  against  crime.  When  I 
asked  a  Chicago  police  official  what  scientific  advances  had 
been  made  by  his  department  last  year,  he  replied  that  all 
radio  cars  were  now  equipped  with  new  searchlights ! 

To  witness  police  tipstavery  at  its  worst,  bend  your  glance 
backward  to  the  opening  chapter  of  the  Lindbergh  case.  Do 
you  remember  [could  anyone  ever  forget?]  the  foaming  and 
senseless  cataract  of  gorgeously  uniformed  state  troopers  that 
descended  on  the  Lindbergh  home  on  motorcycles  —  roaring 
up  and  down  the  road,  trampling  every  available  clue  into  the 
March  mud,  systematically  covering  with  impenetrable  layers 
of  stupidity  every  fingerprint,  footprint,  and  dust-trace  on  the 
estate?  Hauptmann  has  been  convicted,  and  doubtless  deserves 
the  punishment  that  will  be  meted  out  to  him,  yet  there  are 
many  impartial  and  legally-trained  minds  which  dispute  the 
value  of  the  evidence  that  placed  him  in  the  Lindbergh  nursery 
on  the  night  of  the  kidnapping.  Almost  the  only  scientific 
evidence  was  the  testimony  of  Koehler,  the  wood  expert. 
What  wouldn't  Prosecutor  Wilentz  have  given  for  a  lone 
conclusive  fingerprint  on  the  crib,  window-sill  or  ladder?  How 
effectively  he  could  have  introduced  a  moulage  reproduction  of 
that  footprint  underneath  the  nursery  window !  Or  a  handful 
of  dust  intelligently  swept  up  and  later  analyzed  for  evidence 
connecting  it  with  the  accused.  A  European  prosecutor  would 
have  had  all  these  aids  as  a  matter  of  routine;  the  first  investi 
gator  who  reached  the  scene  would  have  protected  with  his 
life  (and  reputation)  that  footprint  in  the  mud.  But  our  hand 
some  American  troopers,  densely  packed  in  motorcycle  array, 
humpty-dumptied  the  problem  so  completely  that  no  subse 
quent  forensic  glue,  however  skillful,  could  ever  piece  it  to 
gether  again. 

Americans  spray  a  vast  amount  of  sentimentality  over  that 
lovable  fellow,  the  ordinary  patrolman,  who  alternately 
barks  at  motorists  and  sells  them  tickets  to  police  balls.  On  the 
whole,  he  is  a  fine  specimen  of  manhood  —  reasonably  honest, 


OUR  TIPSTAFF  POLICE  [  299  ] 

and  capable  of  high  heroic  fortitude.  But  it  is  becoming  more 
and  more  apparent  that  he  is  badly  educated  for  his  job.  Only 
in  large  cities  does  the  candidate  for  the  force  attend  a  police 
school;  small  town  cops  are  recruited  from  the  ranks  of  the 
local  strong  boys,  and  offer  nothing  but  a  thick  neck  to  deflect 
the  criminal's  assault  on  society.  But  even  in  the  big  cities,  the 
education  of  the  rooky  is  woefully  sketchy;  New  York's 
"finest"  spend  a  scant  three  months  in  acquiring  the  mysteries 
of  their  profession  before  they  are  put  on  the  beat.  Thousands 
of  policemen  have  never  fired  their  service  revolvers;  most  cops 
would  be  lost  if  obliged  to  "take  down"  their  weapon  and  re 
assemble  it  blindfolded  —  a  common  stunt  in  the  regular 
army.  On  the  higher  levels  of  procedure,  such  as  securing  and 
guarding  scientific  evidence,  the  average  roundsman  is  a 
complete  "bust";  he  doesn't  know  a  clue  when  it  smacks 
him  between  the  eyes. 

Only  recently  an  auto  filled  with  bandits  screamed  down 
the  main  street  of  a  fair-sized  Illinois  city,  pumping  bullets 
from  pistols  and  "Tommy"  submachine  guns.  In  sheer 
exuberant  defiance,  one  of  the  gangsters  hurled  a  pistol  out  of 
the  car  window.  The  first  peace  officer  to  pick  it  up  was  a 
sergeant  of  detectives;  he  jerked  out  the  magazine,  squeezed 
the  trigger,  peered  down  the  barrel,  and  succeeded  in  oblit 
erating  all  fingerprints  that  might  have  been  found  on  the 
weapon.  The  proper  technique  would  have  been  to  wrap 
the  pistol  carefully  in  a  handkerchief,  and  permit  no  one  to 
touch  it  until  a  fingerprint  expert  had  systematically  searched 
its  surface  for  a  tell-tale  fingerprint.  But  this  doughty  sergeant 
had  probably  never  heard  of  fingerprints  on  gun-stocks,  and 
would  be  picturesquely  profane  if  you  suggested  looking  for 
them.  And  this  despite  the  government's  fingerprint  cam 
paign! 

The  right  to  bear  arms,  proudest  of  early  American  preroga 
tives,  has  this  sad  contemporary  sequel:  Ninety  percent  of  our 
crimes  of  violence  are  committed  with  firearms.  Statistics  on 
the  subject  are  plentiful  and  monotonous,  but  they  can  all  be 
distilled  into  a  single  sweet-smelling  sentence:  Someone  is  either 


[  300  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

killed  or  wounded  by  firearms  every  hour  of  every  business  day  in  the 
United  States.  It  would  be  absurd  to  blame  all  this  lethal  gun 
nery  on  the  police,  for  they  alone  are  not  responsible  for  the 
hot  rash  of  gun-killings  that  spreads  over  our  countryside.  But 
they  could  at  least  emerge  from  their  tipstaff  trance,  and  be 
slightly  more  intelligent  about  linking  up  fatal  bullets  with  the 
guns  that  fired  them.  For  the  remarkable  thing  about  crimes 
involving  a  gun  is  this:  Whenever  a  trigger-man  pumps  a  bullet 
into  the  body  of  his  victim,  he  releases  a  chunk  of  concrete 
evidence  that  binds  him  inseparably  to  his  act.  Science  has 
discovered  that  every  gun-barrel  imprints  deep  on  every  bullet 
fired  from  it  characteristic  markings  peculiar  to  that  gun  and 
that  gun  alone.  These  markings  are  microscopic  but  terribly 
vocal  in  announcing  their  origin,  and  are  as  infallible  for  pur 
poses  of  identification  as  the  print  left  by  the  human  finger. 

It  is  unjustifiable  ignorance,  then,  to  permit  a  gunman  to 
escape  when  every  bullet  fired  from  his  gun  is  very  much  like  a 
visiting  card  bearing  his  latest  address.  But  let  us  glance  at  the 
police  record  on  the  subject  of  firearms  identification.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  courts  now  welcome  this  type  of  judicial  proof 
whenever  it  is  offered,  there  are  only  seventy  police  depart 
ments  in  the  United  States  that  can  point  to  a  qualified  fire 
arms  expert  on  their  regular  staff.  Of  these  seventy  experts, 
less  than  half  possess  complete  apparatus  for  scientific  firearms 
identification.  No  wonder,  then,  that  bandits  fling  their  guns 
contemptuously  at  the  police,  when  they  know  that  prevailing 
methods  of  identification  will  never  link  them  to  their  crime. 

The  personal  experience  of  Colonel  Calvin  Goddard,  hailed 
in  Europe  as  one  of  the  leading  criminologists  of  the  age,  offers 
an  illuminating  footnote  to  the  blunderbuss  attitude  of  the 
American  police.  Between  1925  and  1929,  Colonel  Goddard 
was  co-founder  and  director  of  the  Bureau  of  Forensic  Ballis 
tics,  of  New  York  City,  the  first  firearms  identification  service 
ever  established  in  this  country.  Goddard,  a  physician  and  a 
Major  in  the  World  War,  had  perfected  instruments  and 
methods  by  which  he  could  positively  identify  bullets  fired 
from  any  make  or  type  of  firearm;  he  and  his  colleagues  were 


OUR  TIPSTAFF  POLICE  [  301  ] 

prepared  to  give  a  complete  service  in  forensic  ballistics,  and 
quite  naturally  expected  that  the  New  York  Police  Depart 
ment  would  be  interested  in  his  work.  During  the  years  be 
tween  1925  and  1929,  New  York  City  had  six  hundred  and 
fifty  gun  murders,  of  which  more  than  four  hundred  are  still 
unsolved.  Yet  in  all  that  period,  Goddard  was  never  called 
into  conference  by  the  police !  His  fees  were  low,  his  service  was 
at  that  time  unique,  but  the  New  York  Police  Department 
(which  then  had  no  ballistics  laboratory  of  its  own)  preferred  to 
let  gun  murders  go  unavenged  rather  than  utilize  Goddard' s 
scientific  knowledge. 

The  Bureau  of  Investigation  in  Washington  proudly  boasts 
that  its  files  contain  over  four  million  fingerprints,  and  that 
these  prints  pour  in  from  all  over  the  world  at  the  rate  of 
twenty- two  hundred  a  day.  But  on  a  recent  tour  of  visitation,  a 
Bureau  chief  found  hundreds  of  fingerprint  cards  lying  around 
police  stations;  either  they  contained  fingerprints  that  had  not 
been  forwarded  to  Washington,  or  they  were  wholly  neglected 
and  covered  with  dust.  The  fingerprint  is  society's  best  weapon 
in  the  war  against  crime  —  but  it  gets  pretty  mouldy  from  dis 
use  in  some  of  the  hinterland  police  departments.  As  for  the 
technique  of  securing  "latent"  fingerprints  (that  is,  finger 
prints  invisible  to  the  naked  eye)  not  one  policeman  in  ten 
thousand  has  the  knowledge  or  equipment  necessary  to  lift 
this  damning  type  of  evidence  from  a  door-knob,  drinking 
glass,  or  ransom  note. 

When  the  police  pick  up  a  suspect,  it  is  their  duty  to  check 
up  on  his  criminal  record,  unearth  objective  evidence  against 
him,  and  place  as  much  material  as  possible  in  the  hands  of 
the  prosecutor.  But  it  requires  brains,  persistence,  energy  and 
training  to  gather  this  type  of  external  evidence,  and  because 
most  of  these  attributes  are  conspicuously  absent  in  our  police 
men,  a  vicious  "third-degree"  substitute  has  been  developed. 
When  lynx-eyed  departmental  sleuths  are  baffled  by  a  paucity 
of  clues  (generally  furnished  by  stool-pigeons)  or  when  they 
are  too  stupid  or  lazy  to  gather  material  evidence  against  a 
prisoner,  they  transform  their  tipstaffs  into  divining-rods,  and 


[  302  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

work  diligently  on  the  suspect's  skull  until  he  "comes  clean." 
Rubber  hose,  which  leaves  no  incriminating  welt  on  face  or 
body,  is  a  favorite  weapon  with  the  "confession  snatchers";  a 
telephone  book  can  knock  a  man  senseless,  yet  leave  no  mark 
on  his  head  —  therefore  telephone  books  are  in  great  demand 
at  headquarters.  One  modern  torturer  in  an  Eastern  city 
withholds  drinking  water  from  the  victim  while  a  cold  water 
tap  is  kept  running  in  the  room.  Prisoners  are  held  incom 
municado  without  food  or  bedding  and  are  cruelly  prevented 
from  sleeping  until  an  agonized  declaration  of  guilt  is  wrung 
from  their  lips. 

A  single  citation  from  the  record  will  illustrate  the  mediaeval 
refinements  of  the  third  degree.  In  the  case  of  People  vs.  Cope 
(Illinois,  1930)  the  defendant  was  charged  with  stealing  an 
automobile,  but  the  Chief  of  Detectives,  one  Grady,  wanted 
him  to  confess  to  an  unsolved  murder.  Eschewing  the  intel 
lectual  labor  involved  in  the  analysis  of  external  clues,  Grady 
put  Cope  in  a  chair  and  told  him  either  to  talk  or  take  a  beat 
ing.  Cope  replied  that  he  had  nothing  to  say.  Whereupon 
Grady  bestrode  him,  bent  him  back  by  the  neck,  then  standing 
off  a  few  paces  kicked  him  in  the  stomach,  and  hit  him  on  the 
knees  and  shins  with  a  club.  Cope  still  refused  to  admit  guilt  or 
complicity.  At  this  point  he  was  dragged  into  the  police 
gymnasium,  his  feet  were  chained  together  and  he  was  strung 
up,  head  downward,  while  additional  blows  were  rained  on 
him  by  the  zealous  chief  and  his  assistants.  Cope  finally  broke 
down  under  this  exhibition  of  tipstavery,  and  cried  out  that 
he  would  confess  to  anything  —  anything  at  all  —  if  only 
they  would  stop  beating  him. 

Most  of  us  recognize  that  criminals  are  a  vicious,  hard- 
mouthed  crew,  and  no  one  expects  a  harassed  Chief  of  Police 
to  provide  them  with  an  eiderdown  head-rest  while  interroga 
tion  is  in  progress.  "Gather  round,  fellows,  while  Mr.  Geoffrey 
Malmaison  tells  us  how  he  killed  little  Mary  Smith,"  is  scarcely 
the  formula  for  prying  the  truth  out  of  a  murderer.  But  there 
are  methods  of  securing  testimony  easily,  painlessly,  and  with  a 
minimum  of  police  time  and  energy  —  scientific  methods  of 


OUR  TIPSTAFF  POLICE  [  303  ] 

proved  efficacy  —  that  stand  ready  to  aid  any  officer  of  the 
law  who  has  the  imagination  and  courage  to  use  them.  Chief 
among  these  devices  is  the  Keeler  Polygraph,  commonly 
known  as  the  "lie-detector,"  which  has  been  successfully  used 
in  thirty-five  hundred  cases  by  its  co-inventor,  Dr.  Leonard 
Keeler  of  Northwestern  University.  This  amazing  instrument 
with  its  uncanny  faculty  of  ferreting  out  truth,  has  never  yet 
damaged  the  body  of  a  guilty  man  or  the  reputation  of  an 
innocent  one;  in  ninety-five  percent  of  its  trials  it  has  exposed 
guilt  in  various  degrees  ranging  from  petty  pilfering  to 
murder.  Yet  when  I  asked  an  inspector  of  New  York  detectives 
what  he  thought  of  this  scientific  device,  he  shook  a  square- 
knuckled  fist  in  my  face  and  shouted  belligerently,  "This  is 
the  only  lie-detector!" 

Fist  and  boot  still  serve  this  inspector  well;  trained  in  the 
old  school  of  nightstick  and  stool-pigeonry  he  is  not  enthusi 
astic  about  this  scientific  invasion  of  his  preserves.  It  is  too  late 
for  him  and  thousands  of  his  colleagues  to  change;  their  stub 
born  adherence  to  an  old  routine  is  the  chief  thwart  to  the  new 
criminology,  and  can  be  combated  only  by  educating  a  fresh 
generation  of  policemen  with  a  truer  contemporary  concept 
of  their  job.  To  accomplish  this  re-education,  a  complete 
divorce  of  police  and  politics  must  take  place;  it  is  futile  to 
talk  of  lifting  the  general  level  of  police  intelligence  when, 
under  our  present  system,  the  Police  Commissioner  is  the 
creature  of  the  political  machine  that  appoints  him.  Chicago 
has  had  eighteen  Police  Commissioners  in  twenty  years;  the 
life  of  a  Commissioner  in  New  York  is  about  fifteen  months, 
after  which  period  he  is  forced  out  of  office  or  throws  up  his 
hands  in  despairing  resignation.  A  "shake-up"  of  the  entire 
force  follows  as  the  new  broom  sweeps  into  office.  This  merry- 
go-round  tenure  destroys  all  feeling  of  permanency  in  any 
group  of  public  servants;  merit  is  subordinated  to  politics,  and 
turbulent  unrest  is  substituted  for  the  quiet  performance  of 
duty. 

How  different  the  scene  in  European  cities!  The  Commis 
sioners  and  Chiefs  of  Police  in  England,  France  and  Germany 


[  304  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

are  without  exception  university  men  with  a  doctor's  degree. 
They  devote  their  lives  to  the  profession  of  police  service;  it  is  a 
career  like  medicine  or  law.  They  hold  office  and  perform 
their  duties  independent  of  political  interference,  and  cannot 
be  removed  unless  serious  charges  are  preferred  against  them. 
Intellectually  alive,  scientifically  alert,  they  welcome  new 
departures  in  criminology,  and  their  reputations  are  built 
upon  their  successful  utilization  of  laboratory  techniques  and 
discoveries.  The  men  under  them  are  selected  for  intelligence 
and  adaptability  to  police  work.  A  candidate  for  the  Metro 
politan  Police  of  London  must  pass  an  examination  which 
includes  mathematics,  modern  languages,  general  history, 
physics,  chemistry  and  biology.  At  the  satisfactory  conclusion  of 
this  examination  he  attends  the  Metropolitan  Police  College 
for  fifteen  months,  during  which  term  he  studies  law,  ballistics, 
accountancy  and  all  modern  methods  of  criminal  investigation 
and  detection. 

Police  training  in  Germany  is  even  stiff er;  after  passing  a 
stern  scholastic  test,  the  candidates  are  given  a  police  problem 
bristling  with  details,  very  long  and  complicated.  They  are 
then  obliged  to  run  a  thousand  yards,  leap  some  hurdles,  scale 
a  wall  and  jump  a  wide  ditch.  As  they  finish  this  steeplechase 
they  are  sent  into  a  large  room  where  writing  material  and 
desk  space  are  provided.  Here  they  are  directed  to  write  out 
the  solution  of  the  problem  previously  given  them,  while  a 
stop-watch  is  held  on  each  candidate.  In  this  way  his  ability  to 
concentrate  and  function  mentally  under  conditions  of  excite 
ment  and  fatigue  are  readily  noted.  If  American  policemen 
were  subjected  to  a  similar  test,  it  is  highly  doubtful  that  more 
than  ten  percent  of  them  would  retain  their  breath,  let  alone 
their  consciousness,  until  the  end. 

There  are,  however,  hopeful  signs  of  a  new  day  in  police 
education;  the  horizon  is  pink  with  promise,  although  not  a 
great  deal  has  been  yet  accomplished.  The  most  encouraging 
portent  comes  from  the  proposed  "West  Point"  of  Police,  soon 
to  be  established  at  Washington,  D.  G.,  under  the  direction  of 
the  Department  of  Justice.  At  this  police  college,  a  four-year 


OUR  TIPSTAFF  POLICE  [  305  ] 

course  will  be  offered  to  students  specially  selected  from  regu 
lar  city  police  departments;  they  will  be  trained  in  scientific 
techniques  of  crime  detection,  and  at  the  successful  comple 
tion  of  their  course  will  receive  a  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Police 
Science.  No  date  has  been  set  for  the  opening  of  this  institute, 
but  it  is  unofficially  stated  that  it  will  be  in  full  operation 
before  the  close  of  1936. 

In  miniature,  this  type  of  police  college  already  exists  in 
Berkeley,  California,  where  August  Vollmer  has  turned  the 
patrolman's  beat  into  a  field-school  for  students  eager  to 
master  the  elements  of  scientific  police  work.  Vollmer  also 
holds  a  professorship  in  the  University  of  Chicago  where  he 
lectures  to  a  rapidly  increasing  enrollment  of  practical-minded 
policemen.  Several  state  colleges  give  "short  courses"  in  police 
work,  and  groups  of  Western  states  have  established  Zone 
Schools  at  which  excellent  instruction  is  given.  The  West  is  far 
ahead  of  all  other  sections  in  its  adoption  of  police  science;  the 
Middle  West  ranks  next,  the  South  third,  while  the  conserva 
tive  Eastern  states  bring  up  a  pitiable  rear.  One  of  the  most 
vigorous  sprouting  centers  of  the  new  criminology  is  the 
Scientific  Crime  Detection  Laboratory  of  Chicago,  affiliated 
with  Northwestern  University.  This  laboratory  is  not  only  a 
police  college,  but  it  is  also  a  successful  bureau  of  crime  detec 
tion;  its  experts  have  testified  in  twenty-five  hundred  cases 
involving  forensic  ballistics,  legal  medicine,  document  examina 
tion  and  the  new  moulage.  A  literature  of  police  science  is 
slowly  developing  as  these  experts  publish  their  findings  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Police  Science  and  other  periodicals  of 
the  "trade." 

Very  much  on  the  credit  side  of  the  police  ledger  are  the 
"G-men,"  those  invincible  operatives  of  the  Division  of  In 
vestigation.  They  set  a  pace  that  few  peace-officers  have  ever 
equalled;  a  versatile  lot,  they  can  audit  a  bank's  accounts, 
prepare  a  government  brief  in  a  false-securities  trial,  or  drill  a 
Public  Enemy  at  forty  paces.  They  are  all  lawyers  or  account 
ants  with  a  college  education,  on  which  has  been  superimposed 
a  special  training  in  criminology.  They  can  focus  a  compound 


[  306  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

microscope  as  effectively  as  they  can  squeeze  a  trigger,  and  if 
there  were  fifty  thousand  of  them  instead  of  a  scant  five  hun 
dred,  crime  in  the  United  States  would  not  be  the  sprawling, 
uncontrolled  parasite  it  is  today.  The  most  we  can  hope  for  in 
the  new  campaign  against  crime  is  that  the  students  in  the 
proposed  "West  Point  of  Police"  will  be  obliged  to  pass  the 
same  rigorous  tests,  and  be  exposed  to  the  same  laboratory 
instruction,  that  gives  the  G-men  a  long  start  on  any  crook  they 
set  out  to  catch. 

A  fresh  gale  is  rising  in  the  police  world;  discerning  ears 
know  it  to  be  the  dynamo  hum  of  science,  responding  to  the 
challenge  of  modern  crime.  The  taxpayer  interprets  the  sound 
hopefully,  for  there  can  be  no  truer  economy  than  the  prompt 
and  certain  apprehension  and  conviction  of  the  criminal. 
The  gangster  hears  it  with  dismay,  for  it  means  the  end  of  his 
fiesta  of  lawlessness.  Most  professional  policemen  hear  it  not  at 
all.  In  their  arrogant  deafness  they  imagine  that  society  will 
continue  to  tolerate  and  pay  for  a  job  inadequately  conceived 
and  wretchedly  done.  But  the  gale  will  soon  be  whistling 
among  the  ruins  of  their  mediaeval  policemanship;  the  tipstaff 
is  doomed,  and  those  who  cling  to  it  will  find  it  a  very  poor 
straw  indeed  when  the  fresh  winds  of  scientific  crime  detection 
really  begin  to  blow  about  their  ears. 


Radio,  and  Our  Future  Lives 

ARTHUR  VAN  DYGK 

OUR  MINDS  can  encompass  the  universe  instantly  — 
but  our  physical  senses  lag  woefully  behind.  Scientific 
developments  are  fundamentally  attempts  to  extend  the  scope 
of  our  physical  senses  to  match  more  nearly  our  mental  prow 
ess.  For  example,  we  have  increased  transportation  speed  to 
from  ten  to  twenty  times  the  speed  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  and 
we  have  seen  the  tremendous  effects  of  this  new  speed  upon 
our  society.  Radio,  in  all  its  forms,  and  in  many  of  its  offshoots, 
is  even  more  important  because  it  extends  the  range  of  our 
senses  more  nearly  to  the  capacity  of  our  minds. 

This  age  is  one  of  chemistry,  electricity,  aircraft  and  radio. 
It  is  an  era  of  tremendous  and  rapid  expansion.  A  radio  official 
recently  prepared  a  chart,  startling  in  significance.  In  it  he  has 
included,  first,  the  radio  devices  and  services  actually  in  opera 
tion  today;  second,  those  which  will  be  put  into  use  as  soon  as 
manufacturing  and  operating  details  have  been  worked  out; 
and,  third,  those  known  to  be  of  eventual  practicability  but 
which  still  are  in  the  research  laboratory.  The  two  latter  list 
ings  compose  approximately  two-thirds  of  the  entire  chart !  In 
other  words,  big  as  the  radio  industry  is  now,  it  is  using  only 
one-third  of  its  already  known  potentialities. 

Much  of  radio's  indirect  usefulness  lies  in  contributing  new 
tools  of  value  to  other  branches  of  the  electrical  art.  Radio,  for 
example,  has  provided  new  methods  of  generating  and  con 
trolling  higher  frequencies,  so  that  the  whole  art  of  generation 
and  distribution  of  electricity  may  be  greatly  modified  and 
improved.  Not  only  will  we  see  vacuum  tubes  and  audio  am 
plifiers  in  small  devices  and  apparatus,  but  we  will  see  them  in 
power  houses  and  transmission  lines  and  substations,  doing 
heavy  machinery  work. 

Radio  sound  receivers  have  been  highly  developed  during 
the  past  ten  years,  yet  progress  in  this  field  has  just  begun.  The 
receiver  of  the  future  will  undoubtedly  be  tunable  to  desired 

[307] 


[  308  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

stations  merely  by  the  pressing  of  buttons.  In  addition,  re 
ceivers  will  be  turned  on  automatically  for  desired  programs, 
or  turned  on  by  signals  from  the  transmitting  station.  Other 
refinements  will  make  the  receiving  set  respond  almost  auto 
matically  to  the  wishes  of  the  listener.  Also,  and  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  radio  receiver  is  the  most  complicated  and  most 
critically  adjusted  device  which  has  ever  entered  the  home  or 
been  put  into  the  hands  of  untrained  operators  to  manipulate, 
the  future  receivers  will  be  even  more  simple  to  operate  than 
those  of  today. 

A  development  of  real  significance  is  that  of  sound  record 
ing.  The  electric  phonograph  was  the  first  device  in  this  class. 
The  sound  motion  picture  was  the  second.  The  range  of  the 
latter  has  recently  been  extended  by  amateur  sound  motion 
picture  cameras  and  reproducers.  The  next  logical  step  is  the 
use  of  sound  recording  in  the  home,  and  in  business.  It  is  quite 
practical  to  make  simple  apparatus  for  the  general  public, 
capable  of  recording  and  reproducing  short  messages,  so  that  I 
visualize  a  gradual  revolution  of  our  present  practices  in  writ 
ten  communication,  to  a  future  condition  wherein  a  great  deal 
of  our  social  correspondence,  and  at  least  some  of  our  business 
correspondence,  will  be  by  sound  records.  This  development  is 
slow,  because  we  are  naturally  dilatory  about  accepting  im 
provements  which  merely  replace  an  old  service,  although 
quick  to  accept  those  which  provide  a  totally  new  one. 

Next  we  have  the  talking  book.  This  project  is  now  in  the 
development  stage,  and  experiments  are  being  made  to  record 
full-length  books  on  films.  The  chief  drawback  to  this  method, 
however,  is  the  cost  of  the  recording  material.  The  recording 
of  talking  books  on  materials  like  cellophane  is  being  tried,  and 
it  is  certain  that  eventually  some  such  method  will  enable  us  to 
have  complete  talking  libraries  which  can  be  stowed  away  in  a 
closet.  Even  today  we  know  that  it  is  technically  feasible  to  re 
duce  the  size  of  the  sound  track  on  a  film  so  that  an  hour's 
performance  can  be  recorded  on  a  few  feet  of  film;  and  while  it 
is  impossible  to  guess,  at  this  moment,  whether  the  most  prac 
tical  form  of  talking  books  will  be  cellophane,  film,  paper,  steel 


RADIO,  AND  OUR  FUTURE  LIVES  [  309  ] 

wire  or  some  other  material,  we  do  know  from  similar  past  ex 
perience  that  the  talking  book,  in  a  practical  form,  is  as  sure  to 
come  as  the  present  day  radio  receiving  set  was  sure  to  be 
evolved  from  the  crude  crystal  sets  of  the  early  'twenties.  I 
leave  it  to  the  reader's  imagination  to  see  the  appeal  and  use 
fulness  of  a  book  which  is  read  to  the  listener  by  competent 
readers,  accompanied  with  appropriate  sound  effects.  It  ought 
at  least  to  be  a  marvelous  field  for  the  mystery  thriller  novel ! 

A  quite  different  development  is  that  of  personal  communi 
cation.  Already  we  have  portable  receivers,  so  small  and  light 
that  they  can  be  carried  about  without  burden  or  inconven 
ience.  It  is  easy  to  visualize  a  system  which  will  enable  in 
dividuals  at  all  times  to  keep  in  touch  with  messages  from 
broadcast  stations,  or  central  communication  stations. 

Going  a  step  further,  we  know  that  it  will  be  practicable  in 
the  future,  to  provide  small,  simple  and  light  apparatus  which 
will  permit  two-way  radio  telephone  communication  over  dis 
tances  of  at  least  a  few  miles.  This  would  mean  that  any  two 
persons  separated  by  short  distances  could  communicate  with 
each  other  at  will.  The  familiar  police  radio-alarm  system  now 
in  general  use  is  an  initial  example  of  this.  In  time,  delivery 
trucks  will  keep  in  touch  with  their  dispatcher  in  a  department 
store;  salesmen  will  talk  with  their  offices;  and  executives  will 
keep  in  touch  with  their  desks  when  away  from  their  businesses 
—  all  by  means  of  personal  radio  communication. 

There  is  another  fascinating  radio  off-shoot  in  the  field  of 
sound.  This  is  the  electrical  musical  instrument.  Throughout 
the  ages,  musical  instruments  have  been  developed  in  hundreds 
of  forms  —  but  all  of  them  were  wholly  mechanical  in  opera 
tion.  Today  we  know  that  anything  that  can  be  done  me 
chanically  can  be  done  electrically,  and  usually  with  more 
flexibility  and  better  control.  It  is  only  within  the  last  few  years 
that  electrical  musical  instruments  have  made  their  appear 
ance,  and  their  use  has  been  retarded  by  the  reluctance  of 
music-lovers  to  accept  them  on  aesthetic  and  artistic  grounds. 
Real  artistry  and  technique  on  any  musical  instrument  re 
quires  years  of  study  and  practice.  It  is  quite  natural  that  any 


[  310  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

change  in  the  mechanism  which  affects  the  accepted  tech 
nique  is  revolutionary,  and  not  readily  welcomed. 

Nevertheless,  when  viewed  from  the  scientific  basis,  elec 
trical  musical  instruments  are  capable  not  only  of  doing  any 
thing  which  mechanical  instruments  can  do,  but  of  doing  it 
much  better,  and  furthermore,  of  providing  new  possibilities  in 
each  of  the  important  musical  elements  of  tone  range,  tone 
quality  and  volume  range.  It  is  not  too  much  to  expect  that 
fifty  years  from  now  all  major  musical  instruments  will  be 
electrical;  that  effects  now  undreamed  of  will  be  common 
place;  and  that  the  over-all  results  will  be  vastly  increased 
possibilities  of  musical  language,  interpretation  and  inspira 
tion. 

So  far  we  have  considered  developments  which  had  to  do 
with  the  sense  of  hearing,  and  with  communication  by  speech 
or  recording  of  sounds.  But  radio  has  also  found  the  way  to 
extend  the  human  sense  of  sight,  and  the  reproduction,  at  a 
distance,  of  sights,  scenes  and  pictures.  The  technical  problems 
have  increased  in  difficulty  as  we  have  progressed  to  more  and 
more  complicated  forms  of  intelligence  conveyance.  The  tele 
graph  is  the  simplest,  the  telephone  next,  the  simple  stationary 
picture  next,  and  the  instantaneous,  moving  scene  the  most 
difficult. 

Sending  pictures  electrically  over  a  distance  is  called  fac 
simile  transmission,  and  is  not  to  be  confused  with  television. 
It  is  in  actual  commercial  use  on  several  transoceanic  radio 
circuits  and  on  some  inter-city  wire  and  radio  circuits  in  this 
country,  and  has  been  operated  experimentally  between  the 
shore  and  ships  at  sea.  It  has  not  yet  made  an  appearance  in 
broadcasting  to  the  home.  The  commercial  uses  of  facsimile 
are  of  course  quite  different  from  its  possible  usefulness  in  home 
broadcasting.  In  commercial  work  the  material  transmitted 
includes  such  items  as  news  photographs,  clothing  designs, 
contract  and  signature  matters,  and  weather  maps. 

Future  development  of  commercial  fascimile  will  probably 
extend  it  to  include  the  printed  word,  replacing  the  long 
familiar  dot  and  dash  code  transmission  of  words,  letter  by 


RADIO,  AND  OUR  FUTURE  LIVES  [  311  ] 

letter.  Obviously,  the  transmission  of  a  written  or  printed  mes 
sage  as  a  facsimile  of  the  original  is  not  only  more  accurate, 
but  is  vastly  more  useful,  since  diagrams,  pictures  and  other 
material  may  be  included.  In  the  home,  it  appears  reasonable 
to  expect  that  there  are  various  kinds  of  material  which  will 
make  valuable  "program  material,"  if  we  may  call  it  that.  For 
example,  news  flashes  and  photographs,  recipes,  cartoons, 
market  and  weather  reports,  are  clearly  available.  In  the 
purely  technical  aspects,  there  are  no  serious  obstacles  to  the 
rendition  of  a  new  public  service  of  this  sort. 

The  transmission  and  reception  of  instantaneous  pictures,  or 
television,  is  the  most  difficult  of  the  radio  applications  in  exist 
ence  or  in  prospect.  Sound  transmission  is  exceedingly  simple 
in  comparison.  One  of  the  many  aspects  of  the  problem  can  be 
estimated  by  viewing  the  range  of  electrical  frequencies  which 
must  be  handled.  In  sound  radio  we  are  hearing  much  of  the 
advances  made  in  high  fidelity  reproduction,  where  the  prob 
lem  has  been  merely  to  extend  the  range  by  three  or  four  thou 
sand  cycles.  In  television  we  must  start  with  a  range  of  several 
million  cycles! 

We  must  add  to  the  purely  technical  problems,  the  physio 
logical  fact  that  our  sense  of  sight  is  much  more  delicate  and 
critical  than  our  sense  of  hearing.  We  can  tolerate  a  very  con 
siderable  degree  of  interference  with  sounds  we  wish  to  hear, 
but  we  can  tolerate  little  or  no  interference  with  our  vision.  As 
someone  has  said,  "A  feather  shuts  out  the  mountain  view." 
Each  part  of  a  television  system  must  be  practically  perfect  to 
secure  humanly  acceptable  results,  and  it  must  be  noted  that 
the  television  system  includes  the  space  medium  between  the 
transmitter  and  receiver.  However,  it  is  one  of  the  axioms  of 
scientific  development,  and  one  of  the  laws  of  infinite  Nature, 
that  anything  which  can  be  done  at  all,  can  be  done  satisfac 
torily  well.  The  real  problem  is  merely  that  of  the  necessary 
time  and  expense  to  find  the  way. 

Work  remains  to  be  done  before  television  can  be  ready  for 
public  service.  The  present  program  of  television  development 
emphasizes  that  television  bears  no  relation  to  the  present  sys- 


[  312  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

tern  of  sound  broadcasting,  and  that  it  requires  the  creation  of 
a  system  and  not  merely  the  commercial  development  of  ap 
paratus.  To  understand  the  promise  as  well  as  the  present 
limitations  of  the  art  of  television,  let  us  review  briefly  the  pres 
ent  status  of  development. 

Research  and  technical  progress  may  be  judged  by  the  fact 
that  upon  a  laboratory  basis  a  343-line  picture  has  been  pro 
duced,  as  against  the  crude  3O-line  television  picture  of  several 
years  ago.  The  picture  frequency  of  the  earlier  system  was 
about  twelve  per  second.  This  has  now  been  raised  to  the 
equivalent  of  sixty  per  second  (motion  pictures  have  a  fre 
quency  of  forty-eight) .  These  advances  enable  the  reception, 
over  limited  distances,  of  relatively  clear  images  whose  size 
has  been  increased  without  loss  of  definition. 

The  present  practical  character  of  possible  service  is  some 
what  comparable  in  its  limitations  to  what  one  sees  of  a  parade 
from  the  window  of  an  office  building,  or  of  a  world  series  base 
ball  game  from  a  nearby  roof,  or  of  a  championship  prize-fight 
from  the  outermost  seats  of  a  great  arena. 

In  the  present  state  of  the  art,  the  service  range  of  television 
from  any  single  station  is  limited  to  a  radius  of  from  fifteen  to 
twenty-five  miles.  National  coverage  of  the  more  than  three 
million  square  miles  in  the  United  States  would  require  a  mul 
titude  of  stations,  with  huge  expenditures,  and  presents  a  great 
technical  problem  of  interconnection  in  order  to  build  a  net 
work  system  by  which  the  same  program  may  serve  a  large 
territory.  Existing  available  wire  systems  are  not  suitable  for 
interconnecting  television  stations.  Radio  relays  must  be  fur 
ther  developed,  or  a  new  wire  system  created,  to  do  the  job 
now  being  done  by  the  wires  which  connect  present-day  broad 
casting  stations. 

An  outstanding  accomplishment  in  television  research, 
however,  is  the  invention  and  perfection  of  the  "iconoscope." 
This  is  an  electric  eye,  which  facilitates  the  pickup  of  studio 
action  and  permits  the  broadcasting  of  remote  scenes  — 
thereby  giving  to  the  television  transmitter  the  function  of  a 
camera  lens.  Through  the  use  of  the  iconoscope,  street  scenes 


RADIO,  AND  OUR  FUTURE  LIVES  [  313  ] 

and  studio  performances  have  been  experimentally  trans 
mitted  and  received. 

There  are  still  other  radio,  or  high  frequency  electrical  de 
velopments,  which  ought  to  be  included  in  this  story.  For 
example,  there  is  the  application  to  treatment  of  the  human 
body,  the  control  of  bacteria,  and  in  surgery  the  bloodless  and 
antiseptic  "radio  knife."  But  a  complete  list  of  the  vast  possi 
bilities  is  unnecessary  to  the  proof  of  our  main  theme  that 
radio  will  have,  and  is  having,  an  enormous  effect  upon  our 
lives  and  habits.  At  present  we  are  seeing  only  the  early  ex 
amples  of  radio  and  electrical  devices  and  services.  Their  fur 
ther  technical  improvement  can  be  distinctly  foreseen,  and 
their  ultimate  effects  are  certain  to  be  tremendous. 

I  suggest  that  you  will  find  it  interesting,  amusing,  and  prob 
ably  helpful,  to  attempt  to  visualize  the  future  of  ten  to  twenty 
years  from  now.  With  its  changed  conditions  in  music,  enter 
tainment,  transportation,  news  dissemination,  politics,  and 
world  understanding,  it  will  be  shaped  in  very  large  part  by  the 
direct  and  indirect  contributions  of  radio. 


Miss  Craigie 

CHARLES    HANSON    TOWNE 

T  PASS  the  house  now  quite  often,  but  always  with  an 
•*•  averted  face.  But  how  strange  it  seems  that  long  before  the 
almost  unbelievable  thing  happened,  we  who  were  Miss 
Craigie' s  neighbors  in  the  Vermont  hills  always  went  by  her 
door  with  a  smile. 

For  she  was  an  odd  little  wisp  of  a  woman,  Miss  Charity 
Craigie.  No  one  knew  much  about  her,  save  that  she  seemed 
to  have  some  means;  but  she  took  no  part  in  village  activities. 
The  houses  of  our  tiny  town  clustered  together  like  gossiping 
old  ladies,  their  red  or  white  faces  seeming  to  whisper  of  the 
passers-by,  and  there  were  moments  in  the  dusk  when  they 
appeared  to  nod  to  one  another.  One  or  two,  more  eager  than 
the  rest  to  see  all  that  was  happening  in  the  quiet  streets, 
leaned  forward  so  that  they  had  clear  glimpses  up  and  down. 
Vines,  like  veils,  partially  hid  some  of  their  lined  countenances. 

But  Miss  Craigie's  house  was  just  beyond  the  village  limits 
—  an  almost  solitary  structure  of  severe  white,  not  within 
hailing  distance  of  many  of  the  others  —  at  a  bend  of  a  road 
which  led  vaguely  to  open  country.  It  was  perched  like  a 
saucy  child  upon  a  little  knoll,  and  several  apple-trees  framed 
its  plain  fagade,  giving  it,  in  May,  a  brief  beauty  which  it 
certainly,  in  austere  seasons,  lacked. 

The  doors  and  windows,  no  matter  what  the  weather,  were 
always  closed.  We  wondered,  when  summer  came,  why  Miss 
Craigie  did  not  fling  them  wide,  as  we  all  did;  but  that  was 
only  one  of  her  eccentricities.  Under  the  shingled  roof  — 
dipping  here  and  rising  there,  until  it  resembled  an  angry 
eyebrow  —  Miss  Craigie  remained  aloof  all  day  and  all 
evening;  and  she  allowed  the  grass  and  the  weeds  to  grow  so 
that  what  may  once  have  been  a  lawn  was  now  nothing  but  a 
mass  of  coarse  tumbled  green.  There  was  a  side  porch,  screened 
in  during  the  summer  months,  upon  which,  once  in  a  great 
while,  we  caught  fleeting  glimpses  of  Miss  Craigie's  slender, 

[314] 


MISS  CRAIGIE  [315] 

bent  form;  but  for  the  most  part  she  was  invisible.  Of  course 
the  itinerant  vegetable  man  and  the  butcher  occasionally  saw 
her  and  spoke  with  her;  but  even  these  she  addressed  through 
the  protecting  screen  of  her  back  door. 

No  one  knew  how  old  she  might  be;  but  it  was  a  matter  of 
village  history  that  she  had  lived  alone  in  this  house  for  upward 
of  fifty  years,  and  she  was  a  grown  woman  when  she  came  to 
Winthrop.  She  had  bought  the  place,  with  its  three  acres,  of 
Selectman  Collins,  and  paid  cash  for  it  —  as  she  paid  cash  for 
everything.  All  that  she  seemed  to  need  came  in  a  van  from 
over  Dorset  way.  The  doors  were  opened  to  receive  Miss 
Craigie  and  her  meagre  belongings,  and  then  forever  closed, 
as  if  they  were  entrances  to  a  tomb.  She  was  literally  swallowed 
up,  and  it  is  small  wonder  that  legends  grew  and  spread; 
that  it  was  whispered  of  her  that  she  had  been  jilted  in  Dorset 
—  literally  at  the  altar,  some  imaginative  chatterboxes  said  — 
and  that  she  had  determined  to  live  the  life  of  a  recluse  for  the 
rest  of  her  days. 

She  had  grown  white  with  the  years,  and  we  wondered 
what  she  did  with  herself  during  the  long,  slow  days  —  as  long 
and  slow,  when  one  is  thus  alone,  as  the  intervals  which  those 
in  prison  know.  Did  she  read,  did  she  sew,  or  did  she  merely 
sit  and  ponder  on  what  might  have  been?  There  was  no  way  of 
finding  out;  for  after  all,  if  one  is  civilized  one  does  not  intrude 
on  a  neighbor's  selected  privacy.  If  Miss  Craigie  preferred  to 
be  by  herself,  that  was  none  of  our  concern.  Only  faint  rumors 
came  to  us  now  and  then,  as  when,  for  instance,  she  was  taken 
ill  once,  and  old  Mrs.  Taylor,  her  nearest  neighbor  and  a 
widow,  was  called  in  to  nurse  her  (she  would  not  have  a 
doctor,  for  doctors  were  men,  and  men  were  Miss  Craigie' s 
abomination) . 

It  was  Mrs.  Taylor  who  told  us  that  the  mysterious  old  lady 
had  her  own  herbs  and  simples  which  she  steeped  and  stirred 
in  a  great  earthen  pot,  and  in  the  benefits  of  which  she  had  the 
greatest  faith.  She  likewise  spread  the  story  of  how  neat  was 
the  interior  of  the  tiny  house;  how  one  room  had  waxed 
hardwood  floors,  and  over  the  mantel  hung  a  portrait  of  Miss 


[  316  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Craigie  when  she  was  a  young  girl.  Ah,  she  must  have  been 
beautiful  in  those  sadly  distant  days;  and  some  of  us  let  our 
imaginations  run  riot,  and  thought  of  her  as  now,  in  her  old 
age,  spending  most  of  her  time  gazing  at  the  semblance  of  her 
youthful  self.  But  we  had  no  means  of  knowing.  It  was 
merely  human  to  conjure  up  the  picture,  and  as  we  spoke  of 
such  a  scene,  we  smiled. 

As  soon  as  Miss  Craigie  recovered,  she  dismissed  Mrs.  Tay 
lor.  She  wished  no  contacts  with  anyone,  it  seemed;  but  we 
gathered  that  she  spoke  softly,  with  a  cultured  voice,  and  that 
she  had  one  constant  fear  —  the  tramps  who  wandered 
through  the  countryside  in  those  days. 

One  evening,  a  few  years  after  her  illness,  she  saw  two 
rough  looking  fellows  prowling  down  the  road,  and  disappear 
into  the  woods  that  bordered  her  property,  and  when  the 
milkman  came  the  next  morning,  she  begged  him  to  summon 
Mrs.  Taylor.  She  was  frightened  by  these  men,  and  in  a 
whisper  said  so;  and  she  urged  Mrs.  Taylor  to  spend  the  next 
night  with  her.  Mrs.  Taylor,  who  was  herself  growing  old, 
laughed,  and  asked  what  sort  of  protection  she  could  offer. 
She  sought  to  explain  that  the  tramps  were  probably  harmless, 
and  would  do  Miss  Craigie  no  harm.  And  then  it  was  learned 
that  Miss  Craigie,  who  never  went  to  the  village  bank,  yet 
who  always  seemed  to  be  in  funds,  kept  all  that  she  possessed, 
in  cash.  Thus,  after  many  years,  one  of  her  secrets  was  out. 

It  was  but  human  for  Mrs.  Taylor  to  reveal  what  she  had 
discovered.  She  told  how  she  had  admonished  her  to  let  the 
bank  take  care  of  those  greenbacks,  and  how  almost  wrathful 
Miss  Craigie  had  become.  "No,  no!"  she  had  cried  out.  "For 
then  I  should  have  to  see  a  man  whenever  I  went  to  draw 
some  money,  and  that  I  could  never  bear."  And  there  was  Mrs. 
Taylor,  in  her  own  loneliness,  wishing  every  day  of  her  life 
that  her  husband  had  not  died.  Oh,  the  world  was  strangely 
balanced,  when  one  lonesome  penniless  woman  prayed  for 
masculine  protection,  and  another  with  plenty  despised  the 
sex,  and  hugged  to  her  heart  the  ducats  that  she  might  so 
much  better  have  shared. 


MISS  CRAIGIE  [317] 

If  only  Mrs.  Taylor,  in  her  innocence,  had  not  told  what 
she  had  so  accidentally  found  out !  For  we  all  know  how  idle 
gossip  grows,  expands,  reaches  out,  gathering  importance  as  it 
moves,  having  a  bit  added  here,  a  grain  put  on  there.  From 
Winthrop  to  Dorset  the  tidings  went  that  Miss  Craigie  was  a 
miser,  with  thousands  of  dollars  tucked  away  in  that  little 
house;  and  it  was  even  rumored  that  there  were  priceless 
jewels  in  dark  places,  old  silken  gowns  in  secret  cupboards,  and 
rare  china  in  the  cellar  and  the  attic. 

And  then,  one  stormy  night,  Mrs.  Taylor  was  awakened  by 
a  sound  which  seemed  to  come  from  the  direction  of  Miss 
Graigie's  house.  At  first  she  thought  it  was  only  a  dream;  but 
when  she  was  thoroughly  awake,  she  was  sure  she  heard  the 
sound  again  —  a  shrill  call  that  echoed  down  the  lonely  road. 
Then  the  rain  descended  in  buckets,  the  sky  was  torn  by 
lightning,  and  the  thunder  rolled  ominously  through  our  hills. 
Somehow  Mrs.  Taylor  fell  asleep,  but  at  the  first  touch  of 
dawn,  still  remembering  what  she  had  heard,  she  tore  down 
to  Miss  Craigie's,  and  it  was  not  long  before  the  whole  village 
received  the  dreadful  news. 

For  Miss  Graigie  had  been  murdered  in  her  bed,  and  axes 
had  been  used  to  break  the  walls;  the  drawers  of  every  bureau 
had  been  ransacked  by  fiendish  hands,  the  doors  and  windows 
so  long  closed  had  been  left  wide  open,  the  storm  had  poured 
in  on  the  hardwood  floor,  and  the  pitiful  furnishings  had  been 
drenched  and  ruined.  And  upstairs  Miss  Craigie  lay  in  mute 
and  awful  dignity,  her  nightdress  torn,  her  poor  old  body 
bearing  evidence  of  the  brave  struggle  she  must  have  put  up. 

It  was  Mrs.  Taylor  who  went  to  the  kitchen,  lifted  the 
board  beneath  the  sink,  and  found  the  money,  undiscovered 
by  the  thieves  and  murderers,  intact  in  its  newspaper  wrap 
pings.  It  was  all  that  Miss  Graigie  had  had  to  see  her  through 
to  the  end  of  her  days  —  not,  as  we  were  soon  to  find  out,  the 
many  thousands  it  had,  in  imagination,  come  to  be,  but  only  a 
pitiful  four  hundred  and  eighty-one  dollars  and  fifty-seven 
cents ! 


Emancipating  the  Novel 

LOUISE   MAUNSELL   FIELD 

HPHAT  this  present  period  is  one  of  broken  barriers  and 
-*•  overturned  walls  is  a  truism  which  applies  in  its  fullest 
extent  to  the  English- American  novel.  Yet  if  you  talk  of  the 
new  freedom  of  fiction,  most  people  immediately  conclude 
that  you  are  referring  exclusively  to  the  liberty  accorded  the 
modern  writer  in  dealing  with  questions  of  sex.  The  immensity 
of  the  change  which  has  occurred,  not  only  since  those  days 
when  Thackeray  prefaced  "Pendennis"  with  an  apology  for  his 
temerity  in  venturing  to  present  a  young  man  "resisting  and 
affected  by  temptation,"  but  even  since  the  early  years  of  the 
present  century  is  so  obvious  it  overshadows  all  others.  Every 
one  of  us  is  aware  that  the  publisher  who  brought  out  David 
Graham  Phillips'  story  of  "Susan  Lennox:  Her  Fall  and  Rise" 
needed  greater  courage  than  was  required  of  those  who  issued 
"Sanctuary,"  or  "The  Well  of  Loneliness." 

It  is  true  that  this  change  menaced  extreme  consequences. 
For  a  while,  the  novel  was  sex-ridden.  Every  author  who 
wanted  to  be  thought  modern  felt  compelled  to  deprive  his 
heroine  of  her  virtue  at  the  earliest  possible  moment,  accepting 
the  temporarily  established  convention  that  no  woman  could 
be  both  chaste  and  charming;  as  for  the  leading  male  char 
acter,  he  was  regarded  as  pathetically  inhibited  if  he  indulged 
merely  in  promiscuity  and  not  in  perversions.  For  some  years, 
amorality  threatened  to  enslave  fiction  as  completely  as  ever 
morality  had  done,  but  presently  a  quiet  rebellion  began,  a 
rebellion  not  of  moralists  but  of  sophisticates.  With  familiarity, 
what  had  once  been  pleasantly  fresh  and  shocking  became  un 
pleasantly  stale  and  wearisome;  not  indignation  but  boredom 
freed  the  novel  from  its  comparatively  brief  bondage  to  sexual 
preoccupations  and  aberrations,  precisely  as  it  had  already 
freed  it  from  a  much  longer  lasting  convention,  one  which 
faded  out  of  existence  so  peacefully  that  its  demise  attracted 
scarcely  any  attention. 

[318] 


EMANCIPATING  THE  NOVEL  [319] 

Yet  in  its  heyday,  that  convention  had  been  all-powerful, 
controlling  even  the  greatest.  For  it  was  the  young  love  interest 
which  from  the  "Tom  Jones"  period  onward  was  regarded  not 
only  as  an  essential,  but  as  the  one  indispensable  factor  in 
every  English- American  novel.  Many  of  them  could  be,  and 
were,  written  about  it;  none  were  written  without  it.  How  Sir 
Walter  Scott  writhed  under  its  exactions  you  can  tell  from  his 
whole-hearted  dislike  for  most  of  his  heroes,  not  to  mention 
several  of  his  heroines;  those  young  women  he  really  cared 
about  he  rarely  permitted  to  take  part  in  that  "happy  ending," 
then  synonymous  with  matrimony.  Dickens  obviously  found 
his  young  lovers  an  almost  unmitigated  nuisance,  while  in 
"Vanity  Fair"  Thackeray  was  brave  enough  to  repudiate  them 
altogether. 

Lesser  men  like  Trollope  or  William  Dean  Howells  some 
times  found  the  love  story  a  useful  framework  for  a  picture  of 
contemporary  manners,  while  the  incomparable  Jane  Austen 
used  it  as  a  central  observation  point  for  her  extraordinarily 
minute  and  exact  character  study;  but  in  general,  the  bigger 
the  author,  the  greater  the  pest  his  young  lovers  were  to  him. 
Yet  such  a  strangle-hold  did  those  young  lovers  have  on  fic 
tion,  that  even  Balzac  wrote  a  preface  justifying  his  choice  of  a 
"Femme  de  Trente  Ans"  for  a  heroine,  and  the  almost  in 
variable  climax  of  any  successful  novel  was  the  arrival  at  the 
altar  of  one  or  more  frequently  mismated  couples. 

Young  love,  and  young  love  only,  was  regarded  as  romantic; 
and  romance  was  what  women,  always  in  the  majority  among 
fiction  readers,  insistently  demanded  so  long  as  their  own 
interests  and  opportunities  were  narrowly  circumscribed.  As 
these  widened,  their  fictional  requirements  widened  with 
them,  especially  those  of  the  more  intelligent,  until  to-day  the 
"sweet  story"  is  put  in  a  class  by  itself,  as  special  sustenance  for 
the  mentally  infantile  or  mentally  decrepit.  These  being 
numerous,  it  frequently  sells  very  well. 

Moreover,  the  love  story  necessarily  lost  much  of  its  im 
portance  when  marriage  ceased  to  imply  life  sentence,  and  an 
unhappy  love-affair  the  wreck  of  at  least  a  greater  part  of  its 


[  320  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

victim's  existence;  while  the  disappearance  of  parental 
authority,  and  the  more  casual  treatment  accorded  not  only 
engagements  but  even  matrimony  itself,  robbed  it  at  about  the 
same  time  of  much  of  its  adventurous  quality.  When  to  all 
this  was  added  the  cult  of  frankness,  it  became  more  and  more 
difficult  for  an  author  to  keep  his  young  lovers  apart  through 
out  the  requisite  number  of  chapters.  Parental  disapproval, 
lovers'  quarrels,  previous  engagements,  ill-advised  marriages, 
no  longer  provided  ready-made  obstacles  with  which  to  pre 
vent  the  course  of  true  love  from  running  with  undramatic 
smoothness. 

Economic  difficulties  of  course  remained,  and  others  might 
occasionally  be  found,  while  the  novelist  of  course  always  has 
it  in  his  power  to  return  to  the  days  of  family  discipline  and 
family  feuds,  so  that,  despite  change  of  emphasis,  neither 
romantic  love  nor  that  supposedly  more  realistic  variety  sup 
plied  by  the  so-called  sex  novel  has  entirely  disappeared,  or  is 
likely  to  disappear,  from  our  fiction.  What  really  matters,  is 
that  neither  shackles  it  any  longer.  The  novelist  of  to-day  may 
ignore  either  or  both  if  he  chooses,  and  often  does.  Only  in  the 
last  chapter  of  Thomas  Wolfe's  "Of  Time  and  The  River," 
that  extraordinary  novel  which  so  strongly  resembles  a 
flood  of  molten  lava  pouring  forth  from  a  volcano,  does 
romantic  love  appear  on  its  hero's  horizon. 

This  emancipation  from  the  once  unescapable  love  interest 
has  not  merely  permitted  but  impelled  the  modern  novel  to  go 
further  afield  socially,  historically,  and  especially  pathologi 
cally  than  it  has  done  in  a  very  long  time,  if  ever  before.  It  is 
not  only  in  sex  questions  that  the  novel  has  not  so  much 
developed  as  revived  an  old  courage.  The  tales  of  ancient 
Egypt,  like  the  dramas  of  ancient  Greece,  frankly  regarded 
crime,  not  as  a  rare  phenomenon  wrought  by  persons  outside 
the  pale  of  ordinary  humanity,  but  as  a  part  of  more  or  less 
everyday  life.  The  novelist  of  to-day  accepts  and  portrays  the 
fact  that  horrible  things  are  sometimes  done  to,  and  by, 
people  whom  if  we  met  them  we  would  regard  as  fairly  aver 
age.  William  Faulkner's  "Light  In  August,"  Louis  Bromfield's 


EMANCIPA  TING  THE  NO  VEL  [321] 

"24  Hours,"  Sarah  Gertrude  Millen's  "Three  Men  Die"  and 
many  others  have  brought  into  the  domain  of  serious  fiction 
matters  once  relegated  to  the  dime  novel. 

And  why  not?  Is  there  any  one  of  us  who  has  not  at  one  time 
or  another  come  into  contact  with  attempted,  if  not  with 
achieved,  murder  precisely  as  we  have  come  into  contact  with 
nymphomaniacs,  dipsomaniacs  and  other  pathological  types? 
With  the  new  interest  in  abnormal  psychology  now  so  evident, 
all  these  have  been  recognized  as  provinces  into  which  the 
novelist  may  journey  if  he  will,  his  freedom  to  do  so  being 
partly  a  result  of  the  new  honesty  in  facing  the  abnormal  and 
repellent,  and  partly  due  to  the  keener  curiosity  regarding  our 
fellow  mortals  which  sprang  out  of  the  World  War. 

Length,  form  and  style  claim  the  same  liberty  as  subject. 
There  was  a  time  when  somehow,  someway,  every  novel  must 
be  padded  to  the  required  three  volume  length;  readers  of 
Gissing's  "New  Grub  Street"  will  realize  what  hardships  this 
implied  for  many  an  author.  Later  came  the  demand  for  the 
single  volume  of  from  seventy-five  to  a  hundred  thousand 
words;  more  or  less  almost  destroyed  a  novel's  selling  quality. 
Today,  we  have  successful  novels  as  short  as  "Good-Bye,  Mr. 
Chips,"  and  as  long  as  "Anthony  Adverse."  Not  only  may  the 
present-day  writer  choose  what  subject  he  pleases;  he  can 
write  about  it  at  what  length  he  pleases,  and  in  the  way  he 
pleases. 

For  a  while,  the  stream-of-consciousness  method  was 
proclaimed  the  only  one  possible  for  the  really  modern  writer; 
Anglo-Saxon  literature  had  but  one  true  prophet,  and  his 
name  was  James  Joyce.  Now  the  excitement  has  died  away, 
the  stream-of-consciousness  remaining  as  one  method  among 
many. 

The  twenty-four  hours  convention,  confining  the  action  of  a 
novel  within  that  period,  was  another  once  threatening  restric 
tion.  It  too  has  now  subsided  into  its  proper  place  as  one  of  a 
group,  and  with  it  has  gone  that  Ernest  Hemingway  style  of 
short,  sharp  sentences  which  for  a  while  held  injurious  sway. 
All  these  and  many  others  have  had  their  brief  day  of  dictator- 


[  322  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ship  and  subsided  into  the  ranks,  leaving  the  observer  to 
realize  the  truth  of  Kipling's  dictum: 

"There  are  nine  and  sixty  ways  of  constructing  tribal  lays, 
"And  —  every  —  single  —  one  —  of  —  them  —  is  —  right." 

Right,  that  is,  so  long  as  it  is  the  way  which  accords,  not  with 
some  literary  fashion  of  the  moment,  but  with  the  require 
ments  of  the  particular  novel  and  its  characters  as  their  creator 
sees  them. 

The  much  denounced  World  War  accomplished  at  least 
one  good  thing:  it  gave  us  a  new,  if  at  times  painful  interest  in 
nations  other  than  our  own.  One  result  of  this  has  been  a  flood 
of  translations,  while  that  quickened  interest  in  our  national 
beginnings,  which  is  largely  the  result  of  a  half-conscious  ef 
fort  to  escape  from  the  uncertain  present,  and  which  has  re 
sulted  in  the  appearance  of  so  much  biography  and  so  many 
historical  novels,  speedily  and  almost  inevitably  broadened  to 
include  those  of  other  countries.  We  have  reluctantly  learned 
that  nations,  like  individuals,  do  not  and  cannot  exist  of  and 
by  themselves  alone,  that  to  read  only  our  American  records  is 
like  listening  to  one  character  in  a  play  while  ignoring  all  the 
others. 

This  interest  has  resulted  in  a  new  liberty  for  the  once  de 
spised  historical  novel.  Degraded  into  a  twin  sister  of  the  cloak 
and  sword  melodrama,  it  had  become  simply  an  adventure 
story,  heavily  sweetened  with  young  love;  the  period  was 
merely  a  background  whose  accuracy  of  presentation  mat 
tered  little.  The  new  interest  in  the  past  has  set  it  free  to  study 
seriously  the  ideas  and  manners  of  another  and  an  earlier  day. 
It  is  the  truthfulness  and  vividness  with  which  these  are  por 
trayed  that  is  the  matter  of  primary  importance  in  such 
modern  historical  novels  as  "Kristin  Lavransdotter,"  "Mary 
Peters,"  or  "So  Red  The  Rose."  The  change  is  both  valuable 
and  notable  —  one  intensified  and  to  some  degree  brought 
about  by  the  situation  wherein  we  now  find  ourselves. 

For  we  who  are  living  to-day  are  living  in  a  period  not  un 
like  that  of  Tudor  England.  The  conditions  are  in  many  ways 


EMANCIPA  TING  THE  NO  VEL  [  323  ] 

the  same  in  kind,  though  on  an  infinitely  larger  scale.  Then  the 
Renaissance  had  awakened  men  to  the  splendor,  and  also  to 
the  long  duration,  of  a  past  all  but  forgotten;  the  archaeolo 
gists  are  doing  the  self-same  service  for  us.  But  the  time  dura 
tion  has  enormously  increased,  so  that  that  very  past  which 
seemed  so  ancient  to  them,  has  to  us  become  a  thing  of  yester 
day.  Their  old  world  was  the  world  of  Greece  and  Rome; 
ours  is  that  of  Egypt  and  Sumeria,  hoary  with  age  before  ever 
Rome  was  born.  The  new  world  of  Christopher  Columbus'  dis 
covering  quickened  the  imagination  of  the  fifteenth  and  six 
teenth  centuries;  ours  is  stirred  by  the  conquest  of  a  new  realm, 
the  air,  while  radio  and  wireless  have  annihilated  distance, 
and  the  physicists  have  transformed  our  conceptions  of  the 
universe.  To  them,  the  flat  earth  had  become  round;  to  us,  the 
eternal  hills  have  ceased  to  seem  eternal,  the  solid  earth  is  no 
longer  solid.  New  thoughts,  new  ideas,  besiege  us  on  every 
side.  Old  conceptions  are  being  destroyed,  or  so  transformed 
as  to  be  almost  unrecognizable.  Even  so,  although  to  a  much 
lesser  degree,  was  it  in  the  days  of  the  Eighth  Henry. 

These  changes  have  come  too  quickly  for  us  to  grasp,  as  yet, 
even  a  fraction  of  their  implications.  Physically,  we  have 
adapted  ourselves  to  a  changed  world  with  amazing  rapidity 
and  ease;  mentally,  we  are  still  bewildered  and  disorganized. 
Our  imaginations  are  still  recoiling  from  the  new  conditions, 
or  else  clutching  at  them  avidly;  we  have  as  yet  scarcely  at 
tempted  to  arrange  and  coordinate  and  assimilate  them  into 
our  being.  And  until  that  assimilation  has  been  accomplished 
the  creative  imagination  can  not  have  full  and  easy  play.  We 
are  not  yet  at  home  in  this  new  world  which  has  so  suddenly 
come  into  being. 

Fiction  has  so  far  shown  no  adequate  response  to  the  gigantic 
changes  which  are  taking  place  before  our  astonished  eyes; 
and  for  this  our  modern  novelists  have  been  much  blamed,  I 
think  unjustly.  They  might  almost  as  well  be  expected  to 
model  molten  lava,  and  it  is  a  sure  instinct  which  has  turned 
so  many  of  them  back  to  that  past  whose  substance  has  taken 
on  shape  and  solidity,  so  that  it  may  be  analyzed  and  ap- 


[  324  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

praised.  Apart  from  all  other  reasons,  it  is  to  a  very  great 
extent  because  it  does  reflect  —  in  its  very  nebulousness,  its 
lack  of  cohesion  and  restraint,  its  sense  of  an  immense  power 
unleashed  and  running  wild  —  so  much  of  the  very  spirit  of 
our  modern  time,  that  Thomas  Wolfe's  novel  has  met  with  such 
swift  acclaim. 

For  all  its  deficiencies,  much  of  the  work  recently  done  is  of 
the  utmost  importance,  not  so  much  on  its  own  account  as  in 
the  preparation  it  has  made,  and  is  making,  for  that  which  is 
to  come.  Not  Shakespeare,  but  his  predecessors  freed  the  stage 
from  its  hampering  connection  with  the  Church,  sweeping 
aside  any  number  of  restrictions  and  conventions.  And  it  may 
be  that  those  writers  who  have  won,  for  the  novel,  freedom 
such  as  it  never  had  before,  are  preparing  the  way  for  a  new 
and  glorious  literature.  If  our  period  resembles  that  of  Henry 
Eighth,  so  may  the  one  to  come  bring  splendors  like  those  of  the 
Elizabethan  Age.  Present-day  authors  are  perhaps  important 
principally  as  forerunners  —  openers  of  roads  for  those  whose 
sun  has  not  yet  risen. 

Old-time  restrictions  on  subject  and  method,  length  and 
period  and  treatment,  have  lost  their  authority;  while  new 
ones,  which  attempted  to  assume  it,  have  been  quietly  rele 
gated  to  their  proper  places.  Every  phase  of  life,  every  period 
of  history,  every  type  of  mentality  yields  itself  as  material  for 
the  fictionist.  The  emancipation  of  the  novel  is  complete.  We 
await  those  writers  of  greater  power  and  finer  skill,  more  vivid 
imagination,  deeper  sympathy,  keener  intelligence  and  larger, 
clearer  vision,  who  in  days  to  come  will  make  full  use  of  all 
that  the  new  universe  and  the  new  liberty  have  to  offer. 


"Good  Neighbor"  — and  Cuba 

PAUL  VANORDEN  SHAW 

T  TANGING  in  the  balance  are  important  American  inter- 
-*--!•  ests  in  the  Latin  American  world.  Competition  from 
Europe  and  Asia,  symbolized  in  races  against  time  by  zeppe- 
lins,  airplanes,  and  steamships  from  all  the  industrial  nations 
of  the  world,  has  led  the  statesmen  and  the  business  men  of  the 
United  States  to  eliminate  one  point  of  advantage  which  our 
competitors  enjoyed  or  sought  to  capitalize  —  our  real  or 
alleged  imperialism  in  the  Caribbean.  Republican  and  Demo 
cratic  administrations  alike  have  recognized  the  need  for 
braking  the  course  of  empire.  Notable  success  has  attended 
their  efforts.  But  in  Cuba,  the  commonly  accepted  testing 
ground  in  Latin  America  of  the  United  States'  sincerity,  the 
"good  neighbor"  policy  has  failed.  This  failure  jeopardizes 
the  rest  of  our  program  and  may  annul  the  substantial  gains 
already  achieved. 

Cuba  is  more  to  the  United  States  than  a  sugar-bowl.  As  a 
source  of  sweetness  for  the  American's  coffee  cup,  for  his  candy 
and  cakes,  for  his  ice-cream  and  desserts,  Cuba  is  of  sufficient 
importance  to  claim  his  peculiar  interest,  because  the  "Pearl 
of  the  Antilles"  supplies  by  far  the  greatest  proportion  of  this 
energy  and  flavor-giving  commodity  which  is  consumed  in 
the  United  States.  Even  for  purely  military  reasons  it  would 
be  disastrous  to  be  cut  off  from  this  island  and  its  indispensable 
product.  Those  who  recall  the  rationing  of  sugar  in  war  times 
will  remember  the  importance  of  this  foodstuff  in  American 
war-time  economy. 

But  when  Cuba  is  prosperous,  her  demand  for  American 
products  puts  her  well  at  the  top  of  the  foreign  purchasers  of 
American  agricultural  and  manufactured  goods.  In  spite  of 
her  small  size  and  her  relatively  limited  population  of  four 
million  souls,  less  than  the  total  population  of  the  city  of  New 
York,  Cuba  bought  more  farm  implements  after  the  World 
War  than  did  France,  then  in  the  midst  of  her  reconstruction 

[325] 


[  326  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

activities,  and  ranked  fourth  or  fifth  in  the  list  of  foreign  im 
porters  —  buying  in  one  year  more  than  $200,000,000  worth 
of  American  farm  and  factory  products.  These  facts  alone  make 
the  fate  of  Cuba  of  tremendous  significance  to  every  American. 
Each  of  them  uses  some  portion  of  Cuba's  sugar,  and  each 
profits  in  some  small  measure  when  American  trade  to  her 
ports  is  swollen. 

Though  Cuba  has  ceased  to  be  the  prohibition-time  Mecca 
of  thirst-driven  American  tourists,  her  tropical  climate  and 
proximity  still  serve  as  a  magnet  to  travelers  interested  in 
foreign  nations  not  too  expensively  away,  and  which  still 
provide  many  of  those  elements  of  amusement,  which,  for  lack 
of  a  better  name,  can  be  called  "continental"  in  character  and 
flavor.  Her  racing  tracks,  her  gambling  resorts,  her  houses  of 
gaiety  and  centers  of  night  life  still  exert  a  lure  which  will  last 
as  long  as  they  retain  their  peculiar  or  lurid  nature.  Sloppy 
Joe's  cocktail  emporium  has  become  an  institution  with  con 
tinental  and  international  fame.  And  as  long  as  one  can  buy  in 
Havana  articles  for  twice  or  three  times  their  value,  even 
though  made  in  Hoboken,  American  travelers  will  seek  Cuba's 
multi-colored  markets  and  her  Latin  attractions. 

Cuba  is  the  guardian  of  the  approaches  to  one  of  our  most 
expensive  and  most  cherished  possessions  in  the  Caribbean  - 
the  Panama  Canal  —  around  which  much  of  our  diplomacy 
has  centered  for  more  than  four  decades,  and,  in  anticipation, 
for  many  more  decades  prior  to  its  actual  projection  and  execu 
tion.  This  strategic  importance  of  Cuba  to  the  United  States, 
real  or  alleged,  has  figured  greatly  in  naval  conferences  on  our 
national  defenses,  and  has  led  to  the  establishment  of  naval 
bases  on  the  island.  Many  episodes  in  our  diplomatic  history 
have  veered  around  Cuba.  Slavery,  strategy  and  plain  political 
advantage  have  caused  the  island  to  become  a  storm  center  of 
intrigue.  Fear  that  other  nations  might  obtain  her  and  thus 
jeopardize  our  own  safety  has  led  to  fantastic  schemes  of  an 
nexation  which  fortunately  have  failed  to  materialize. 

Nevertheless  Cuba  was  the  innocent  spark  which  set  us  off 
into  the  imperialist  game.  The  Spanish- American  War  (which 


"GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  327  ] 

Wisan  has  proved  conclusively  was  brought  on  as  much  to 
increase  the  lagging  circulation  of  a  chain  of  newspapers,  as  to 
defend  American  interests  and  to  promote  the  welfare  of 
Cuba)  gave  rise  to  a  whole  series  of  events  which  have  had 
repercussions  in  other  parts  of  the  Caribbean  world,  and 
which  today  are  ghosts  rising  up  to  smite  our  commercial  and , 
diplomatic  interests  in  all  Latin  America. 

For  one  thing,  a  process  already  begun  took  on  renewed 
vigor  under  the  Platt  Amendment.  Americans  poured  them 
selves  and  their  gold  in  a  veritable  torrent  into  the  sugar 
plantations  of  Cuba.  Then  Cuba  became  the  tender  object  of 
banking  and  diplomatic  interest.  Interventions  and  marines, 
interference  and  advice  flowed  freely  from  Washington  to 
Havana,  until  a  generation  of  Cubans  discovered  that  all  was 
lost  and  that  their  land  had  been  sold  to  foreigners. 

Once  definitely  in  the  Caribbean,  however,  the  course  of 
empire  swept  in  a  circle.  Panama,  Haiti,  Santo  Domingo, 
Puerto  Rico,  Honduras,  Nicaragua  received  the  solicitous 
ministrations  of  the  American  State  and  the  harder  and  less 
tender  touch  of  khaki-clad  leathernecks.  Cuba  itself  received 
repeated  evidences  of  our  solicitude.  On  three  occasions  we 
took  over  her  government  and  showed  her  by  actual  demon 
stration  how  to  do  it.  Both  Republican  and  Democratic  ad 
ministrations  pursued  strikingly  similar  policies  in  the  Carib 
bean  world.  This  proves  nothing  more  than  that  the  whole 
enterprise  was  perhaps  a  fair  indication  of  the  prevailing  spirit 
in  the  American  nation  as  a  whole.  Both  parties  espoused  this 
form  of  cultural,  commercial  and  financial  expansion. 

But  this  procedure  had  its  costs  as  well  as  its  advantages.  The 
cry  of  imperialism  rose  round  the  Latin  American  world. 
Learned  essays  and  emotional  volumes  from  Latin  American 
pens  described  in  no  uncertain  terms  the  "colossus  of  the 
north"  as  the  "Yankee  peril."  Unions  against  the  United 
States  were  preached  by  Latin  Americans;  and  our  European 
competitors  denounced  us  while  proclaiming  their  own  virtues. 
To  some  extent  the  latter  were  justified.  Great  Britain,  whose 
economic  investments  in  Latin  America  date  back  to  the 


[  328  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

iSso's,  never  made  political  control  one  of  the  conditions  of 
her  loans.  She  may  have  exercised  political  influence  but  she 
never  used  marines,  Platt  Amendments,  nor  annexation  to 
doit. 

Distance  from  Latin  America  and  the  prestige  of  the  United 
States  in  the  New  World  are  perhaps  just  as  much  responsible 
for  these  European  qualities  as  any  nobility  of  purpose  in  the 
Europeans  themselves.  For  needs  of  propaganda,  however, 
these  of-necessity  virtues  stood  our  competitors  in  good  stead. 
Whatever  the  Latin  Americans  might  say,  they  could  never 
accuse  the  British  or  any  other  of  our  competitors  of  having 
landed  marines  to  teach  "backward"  Latin  Americans  the 
arts  and  sciences  of  self-government. 

The  word  "backward"  recalls  a  factor  which  has  proved 
influential  in  forming  the  torrential  stream  of  protest  which 
flowed  through  Latin  America.  Whether  they  deserved  it  or 
not,  the  Latin  Americans  were  incensed  at  the  excuse  which 
we  offered  for  strafing  them.  We  called  them  "backward," 
"lapsers  into  barbarism,"  "comic  opera  rebels,"  "unstable 
mestizos"  and  "undisciplined  peoples"  to  whom  common  sense 
was  unknown.  We  pointed  to  their  revolutions,  to  their  dic 
tatorships  and  to  their  frequent  constitutional  changes,  as 
evidence  that  they  needed  something,  and  something  which 
we  could  give  them  better  than  anyone  else.  And  if  we  could 
turn  a  pretty  penny  while  we  did  it,  why  not? 

There  seemed  to  be  no  good  answer,  so  we  pitched  in  to 
deliver  those  lessons  in  self-government.  Naively  we  thought 
that  no  one  perceived  that  what  we  meant  by  self-government 
was  the  maintenance  of  governments  friendly  to  American 
investments  and  commerce,  and  strong  enough  to  preserve 
those  orderly  conditions  so  necessary  to  the  kind  of  economic 
activity  to  which  we  were  accustomed,  and  which  was  being 
carried  on  by  those  whom  we  had  gone  there  to  protect. 

Obsessed  by  our  own  history  and  by  certain  preconceptions 
as  to  its  course,  no  one  vouchsafed  any  study  of  the  causes  of 
those  political  disturbances  to  see  whether  there  were  valid 
underlying  conditions  to  justify  them.  Nor  did  we  notice  how 


"GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  329  ] 

our  activity  was  swelling  the  discontent,  the  suspicion  and  the 
hatred  of  us  in  other  parts  of  the  Latin  American  world  where 
our  economic  and  commercial  interests  had  vastly  increased 
after  the  World  War.  Nor  did  we  stop  to  study  whether  the  in 
stitutions  implanted  by  our  marines  were  suited  to  its  new 
soil.  All  that  we  noted  was  the  ungracious  ingratitude  of  those 
whom  we  were  "sacrificing"  ourselves  to  befriend. 

But  finally  it  dawned  upon  someone  somewhere,  somehow, 
that  the  thing  didn't  work.  We  began  to  lose  trade  or  were 
threatened  with  its  loss.  We  found  ourselves  competing  unsuc 
cessfully  with  Germans,  Britishers,  Italians,  French  and 
Japanese.  We  found  our  salesmen  not  too  well  received.  Finally 
complaints  were  voiced,  embarrassingly  enough,  in  those  fests 
of  brotherly  Pan-American  love,  the  Pan-American  confer 
ences.  It  became  so  apparent  that  Pan- Americanism  was  be 
coming  more  and  more  a  farce  that  wise  ones  in  Washington 
and  Wall  Street  decided  to  probe  deeper  than  ever  before  for 
causes.  They  found  that  our  real  or  alleged  imperialism  was 
the  true  cause  of  our  commercial  and  financial  troubles,  and 
that  something  drastic  must  be  done  to  eliminate  even  its 
memory.  Washington  reversed  the  machinery  of  empire  and 
the  American  business  man  resorted  to  "culture-teering." 

The  latter  who  had  called  attention  to  palpable  gaps  in 
Latin  American  culture  as  a  means  of  advertising  the  devices 
he  had  to  offset  those  faults,  as  well  as  to  justify  U.  S.  mari- 
nocracy,  now  began  to  praise  the  spiritual  and  intellectual 
culture  of  Latin  America,  though  he  still  thought  that  eco 
nomically  and  industrially  we  could  be  of  service  to  the  Latin 
American  world.  The  business  man  prevailed  on  the  State 
Department  to  hasten  the  withdrawal  of  marines,  and  to 
end  all  those  practices  which  spoke  louder  than  our  preach 
ments  or  our  honeyed  words  of  Pan- Americanism. 

In  1928,  President-elect  Hoover  made  a  pre-inaugural  tour 
of  Latin  America.  This  was  preceded  by  good-will  tours  to 
Mexico  and  Central  America  by  our  "Princes  of  Wales,"  Lind 
bergh  and  Will  Rogers,  much  of  this  to  offset  events  such  as 
the  very  disagreeable  occurrences  at  Havana  where,  at  the 


[  330  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Sixth  Pan-American  Conference,  President  Coolidge  and 
Secretary  Hughes  and  the  other  American  delegates  were 
rather  embarrassed  by  the  withdrawal  of  the  Argentine  dele 
gation  —  which  seemed  to  believe  that  the  marching  feet  of 
marines  in  Nicaragua  spoke  more  loudly  as  to  our  true  Pan- 
American  feeling  than  the  honeyed  phrases  which  they  listened 
to  at  the  conference.  This  action  of  the  Argentine  delega 
tion,  though  looked  upon  at  the  time  as  an  emotional  display, 
may  have  been  the  turning  point  in  American  Caribbean 
policy. 

Though  President  Hoover  made  haste  slowly,  he  had  the 
honor  of  seeing  the  last  marine  withdrawn  from  Nicaragua 
before  he  finished  his  otherwise  disastrous  term.  On  his  heels 
came  President  Roosevelt  and  Secretary  Hull  with  their 
policies  and  practices.  The  former  provided  the  ideology  which 
presumably  was  to  characterize  his  foreign  policy;  the  latter 
illustrated  it  in  Montevideo  at  the  Seventh  Pan-American 
Conference.  The  contrast  between  this  and  the  former  at 
Havana  could  not  have  been  more  marked.  By  it  all  the  Latin 
Americans  were  impressed.  But  their  conversion  was  slow. 
Often  disappointed  because  our  gestures  did  not  fit  our  words, 
they  waited  until  the  Pan-American  Conference  to  see  if  this 
acid  test  could  be  passed.  Our  nation  had  always  dominated 
the  Pan-American  Conferences  while  at  the  same  time  breath 
ing  sentiments  of  equality  and  brotherhood.  Mr.  Hull  did  not 
fail  at  Montevideo. 

One  by  one  the  sore  spots  in  the  Caribbean  were  cleaned  up. 
The  marines  were  removed  from  Haiti  ahead  of  the  time  pro 
vided.  Treaty  revisions  were  projected  and  made.  Trade 
agreements  were  signed.  Mr.  Roosevelt  visited  Caribbean 
nations  on  his  way  to  Hawaii,  and  pronounced  in  Cartagena, 
Colombia,  his  policy  of  "live  and  let  live."  All  seemed  well  and 
an  all-American  system  loomed  closer  than  ever  before,  a  sys 
tem  in  which  all  parties  would  profit  by  the  partnerships 
promised  in  it. 

Parallelling  all  these  movements  of  the  Roosevelt  adminis 
tration  was  a  Cuban  policy  intended  to  arrive  at  the  same  goal. 


'GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  331  ] 

As  a  termination  to  this  long  introduction  on  our  policy  in 
Cuba  must  be  set  down  the  last  reason  why  Cuba  is  of  more 
importance  to  the  United  States  than  being  its  sugarbowl. 
Cuba  is  the  acid  test  of  the  genuineness  of  American  policy 
towards  Latin  America.  If  we  fail  in  Cuba,  we  fail  in  the  whole 
Latin  American  world.  The  work  of  President  Hoover  and 
that  of  Secretary  Hull  will  go  for  naught.  Thus  far  we  have 
failed. 

Cuba  is  the  acid  test  of  American  change  of  heart  towards 
Latin  America  for  reasons  that  are  obvious,  and  for  many 
more  which  are  known  only  to  those  who  follow  Latin  Ameri 
can  opinion  of  the  United  States.  Among  the  reasons  most 
patent  are  those  associated  with  Cuba's  size,  proximity  and 
importance  to  the  United  States.  It  is  more  or  less  logically 
assumed  that  any  change  from  an  imperialist  temper  must  be 
immediately  registered  in  the  nearest  "sovereign"  nation  which 
has  suffered  our  interposition.  Because  Cuba  is  weak,  as  com 
pared  with  the  United  States,  she  offers  the  fullest  opportunity 
for  the  expression  of  any  true  philanthropic  or  selfishly  en 
lightened  motives  we  may  have  come  to  possess. 

Principally,  however,  Cuba  occupies  this  important  role  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Latin  Americans.  They  believe  that  we  be 
trayed  Cuba  when  we  fought  for  her  freedom  and  then  bound 
her  hand  and  foot  by  the  Platt  Amendment.  This  constituted 
in  the  Latin  American  world  a  signal  that  our  imperialism  was 
now  frank  and  open.  We  really  had  fought,  so  they  asserted, 
not  to  free  Cuba  from  Spain,  but  to  free  her  from  her  European 
bonds  so  as  to  ensnare  her  in  our  own.  "Abolish  the  Platt 
Amendment"  became  the  war  cry  of  the  anti-imperialists  in 
Latin  America. 

The  amendment,  in  short,  enjoyed  the  same  ill-favor 
as  our  marines  in  Haiti  and  Nicaragua,  our  "stealing"  of  the 
Panama  Canal,  and  other  evidences  of  an  attitude  and  tech 
nique  which  the  sensitive  Latin  Americans  came  to  despise. 
Even  in  the  remote  parts  of  South  America  our  Cuban  policy 
had  Uts  effect  in  swelling  the  stream  of  anti-Americanism  and 
augmenting  the  trade  of  others. 


[  332  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

TA7HEN  Gerardo  Machado  caused  himself  to  be  reflected 
*  *  in  1928,  thus  breaking  his  promises  not  to  seek  reelection, 
and  then  set  about  to  govern  Cuba  with  a  hand  of  iron  — 
supported,  it  is  alleged  in  Cuba,  with  American  funds  and 
sympathy  —  there  began  to  grow  in  Cuba  a  feeling  that  a  new 
deal  in  that  nation  was  absolutely  necessary. 

A  canvas  of  the  means  to  dispossess  the  "beast,"  as  he  was 
called,  resulted  in  bringing  to  light  a  situation  which  many 
Cubans,  mainly  the  younger  ones,  had  not  been  fully  aware  of. 
Stated  starkly  and  frankly  it  was  this:  The  aliens  in  Cuba  were 
not  the  Spaniards,  Orientals  and  Americans,  but  had  come 
to  be  the  Cubans  themselves.  That  is,  the  Cubans  for  many 
reasons  which  need  not  be  recapitulated  here,  had  signed 
away  their  birthright  to  foreigners  who,  under  the  protection 
offered  by  the  Platt  Amendment,  found  it  extremely  conven 
ient  to  buy,  sometimes  at  exorbitant  prices,  Cuban  sugar 
plantations  and  real  estate,  and  to  make  other  investments. 

The  Cuban  himself  became  a  secondary  parasite  on  pri 
mary  parasites  who  waxed  fat  on  land  which  once  belonged 
to  him.  He  either  lived  off  the  scraps  which  fell  his  way  when 
the  dance  of  the  millions  —  that  golden  era  of  high  sugar  prices 
—  was  on,  or  off  the  stocks  and  bonds  he  had  received  when 
he  sold  out,  or  upon  his  salary  as  agent,  lawyer,  superintend 
ent,  or  representative  of  some  foreign  entrepreneur.  In  any 
case  he  had  no  control  over,  contact  with,  or  commerce  arising 
out  of  the  economic  wealth  of  his  own  land.  Among  other  re 
sults,  this  state  of  affairs  precluded  the  formation  of  strong 
Cuban  groups  bound  together  by  economic  ties.  Cuba  became 
a  nation  of  individualists,  each  with  a  foreign  interest  to  serve 
and  upon  which  he  had  to  rely. 

Taking  advantage  of  this  situation,  Machado,  who  had  few 
scruples  and  knew  that  politics  was  an  industry  —  one  of  the 
few  left  in  the  island  in  which  Cubans  could  find  outlets  for 
their  energies  —  sought  by  every  means  fair  or  foul  to  keep 
himself  and  his  coterie  in  power.  He  used  the  army,  the  porra 
(gangsters  who  had  a  price),  foreign  loans,  and  other  devices 
to  eliminate  his  opponents  and  to  keep  his  pockets  lined  with 


"GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  333  ] 

loyalty-producing  gold.  His  technique  was  barbarous.  Men 
and  boys  were  killed,  exiled,  jailed,  castrated  and  mutilated. 
Schools  and  labor  unions  were  closed  or  dissolved. 

Much  of  the  hatred  heaped  on  Machado's  head  was  caused 
by  the  alleged  support  which  he  received  from  the  American 
State  Department,  for  his  backing  by  American  banks  and  for 
the  Platt  Amendment  which,  theoretically,  precluded  a  suc 
cessful  revolution  against  him.  In  this  way  he  became  a  symbol 
not  only  of  his  own  villainy  but  of  an  immoral  imperialism 
which  backed  him. 

Finally  unable  to  stand  the  gaff  any  longer,  a  group  of 
students  and  young  professional  men  organized  a  secret  so 
ciety,  the  ABC,  which  has  become  well  known  in  the  course  of 
time.  In  1931,  these  embattled,  enthusiastic  and  idealistic 
youths  of  Cuba,  who  had  drawn  up  a  most  complete  program 
for  the  "renovation"  of  the  island,  staged  a  revolt  which  was 
put  down  by  the  most  uncivilized  means  at  the  disposal  of 
Machado  and  his  large  well-trained  and  well-equipped  army. 
Though  defeated,  the  assassination  and  cruel  treatment 
of  many  well-born  youths  of  the  island  crystallized  the 
opposition. 

President  Hoover  decided  to  keep  hands  off,  though  he  was 
opportuned  by  two  groups  in  which  were  found  both  Cubans 
and  Americans.  Those  who  favored  Machado  wanted  the 
policy  of  hands-off.  The  others  wanted  a  last  intervention  to 
end  intervention.  They  felt  that  if  the  State  Department  ex 
pressed  its  disapproval  of  Machado's  methods,  this  might 
serve  as  a  signal  to  the  Cubans  that  they  were  free  to  do  as  they 
pleased  with  their  president.  Mr.  Hoover,  perhaps  wisely, 
decided  on  the  course  of  non-intervention.  His  Ambassador, 
Mr.  Harry  Guggenheim,  was  bitterly  criticized  by  liberals  in 
the  United  States,  and  by  the  anti-Americans  in  Cuba  and 
elsewhere,  for  his  policy  of  dolce  Jar  niente,  and  for  permitting 
under  his  very  nose  activity  which  the  Platt  Amendment  then 
gave  this  country  the  right  to  recognize  and  end.  We  had 
pledged  ourselves  to  maintain  in  Cuba  a  government  which 
should  provide  peace,  order  and  happiness. 


[  334  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

When  the  Roosevelt  administration  came  into  power  in 
March  1933  it  inherited,  among  other  grave  problems,  the 
Cuban  question.  The  state  of  affairs  at  that  moment  must  be 
briefly  described.  Machado,  ever  increasing  his  dictatorial 
power,  was  harassing  his  opponents  in  every  conceivable  way, 
while  at  the  same  time  spending  prodigally  of  American  funds 
on  some  public  works  which  today  are  objective  reminders 
that  he  did  not  pocket  all  of  the  graft  himself.  Beneath  the 
surface,  the  Cuban  volcano  was  seething,  and  as  soon  as 
the  policy  of  the  "good  neighbor"  was  announced  the  Cubans 
saw  a  ray  of  hope.  Conditions  as  they  were  could  not  long 
exist  under  the  promises  made  by  Mr.  Roosevelt. 

In  the  State  Department  were  two  gentlemen  who  were  to 
play  a  fateful  role  in  the  tragedy  which  ensued.  Mr.  Sumner 
Welles,  suave,  aristocratic  gentleman  from  Maryland,  an 
authority  on  Caribbean  affairs,  an  experienced  diplomat  of 
the  old  school  and  the  author  of  a  two  volume  work  on  Santo 
Domingo,  was  made  Assistant  Secretary  of  State  in  charge  of 
Latin  American  affairs.  He  had  served  in  Caribbean  countries 
and  in  the  State  Department,  and,  though  in  1924  he  had 
written  an  article  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  which  denied  that 
the  United  States  ever  had  been  imperialistic,  almost  from  the 
outset  he  promised  a  new  deal  to  Latin  America,  and  de 
nounced  in  no  uncertain  terms  the  Platt  Amendment  as  an 
"iniquitous  treaty"  which  should  be  abrogated. 

Also  a  diplomat  of  the  old  school  was  Mr.  Jefferson  Caffery, 
who  is  now  American  Ambassador  in  Cuba.  He  stayed  in  the 
State  Department  when  Mr.  Welles  went  to  Cuba  as  Ambas 
sador  in  April  1933.  Both  subsequently  changed  places.  When 
Mr.  Welles  returned  to  Washington,  Mr.  Caffery  went  to 
Havana.  Mr.  Caffery  had  been  American  Minister  in  Colom 
bia  and  had  risen  as  a  career  diplomat  in  the  service. 

In  any  event  the  Roosevelt  administration  decided  to  assist 
the  Cubans  in  ousting  Machado,  and  Mr.  Welles  was  chosen 
for  the  ticklish  job  of  intervening  without  intervention  to  end 
intervention  in  Cuban  affairs.  It  appears,  however,  that  he 
went  to  Cuba  with  preconceived  notions  of  the  underlying 


"GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  335  ] 

causes  of  the  Cuban  trouble  and  with  preconceived  ideas  as  to 
the  proper  solution. 

Both  Mr.  Welles  and  Mr.  Caffery  have  apparently  acted  on 
the  assumption  that  underlying  all  else  in  the  Cuban  situation 
is  the  economic  bankruptcy  of  the  nation,  and  that  once  the 
price  and  demand  for  Cuban  sugar  and  other  products  of  that 
nation  could  be  admitted  under  better  conditions  into  the 
United  States,  and  that  once  the  improvement  was  registered 
in  better  living  conditions  among  the  masses,  that  the  surface 
turmoil  would  subside  —  especially  if  certain  treaty  revisions 
improving  the  diplomatic  relationships  between  Cuba  and  the 
United  States  accompanied  the  economic  measures  to  be 
taken.  Both  admitted  that  there  were  social  and  political 
problems  but  neither  would  admit  that  these  were  so  serious 
as  not  to  yield  to  economic  forces. 

Mr.  Welles,  in  spite  of  the  overwhelming  evidence  in  its 
favor,  refused  then  and  has  resolutely  refused  since  to  admit  the 
existence  of  a  social  revolution  in  the  island.  Mr.  Caffery  has 
admitted  its  existence,  though  he  has  not  been  willing  to  fol 
low  its  implications  to  their  logical  conclusion.  This  is  one  of 
the  main  reasons  for  the  failure  of  Mr.  Welles's  policies,  for  the 
disastrous  results  of  Mr.  CafTery's  practice,  and  for  the  un 
happy  condition  of  Cuba  today.  Succinctly  put,  their  idea 
was  to  oust  Machado,  improve  the  sugar  market  and  abolish 
the  Platt  Amendment;  and  presto!  the  Cuban  problem  would 
be  solved. 

With  this  underlying  idea  in  mind,  Mr.  Welles  went  to 
Cuba  in  April  1933.  He  took  with  him  plans  for  easing  the 
inevitable  transition  period  between  Machado  slavery  and 
Plattless  independence.  He  announced  then  that  his  funda 
mental  purpose  was  to  create  a  situation  where  the  Cubans 
could  "use  the  muscles  of  self-reliance,"  in  other  words,  a 
situation  in  which  they  could  at  last  govern  themselves  in  a 
Cuba  Libre. 

His  plans,  though  ideal  from  an  academic  point  of  view, 
were  inappropriate  for  a  people  in  revolution,  and  for  a  people 
with  Latin  ideas,  customs  and  psychology.  It  was  his  plan  to 


[  336  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

use  mediation,  conciliation,  and  constitutional  procedures. 
He  first  would  get  Machado  and  his  opponents  together  to 
plan  ways  for  Machado's  leaving  the  island  and  the  presidency. 
A  prospect  undoubtedly  pleasing  to  the  then  president! 
Once  Machado  was  out  of  the  way  by  an  ingenious  use  of 
certain  constitutional  articles,  a  provisional  government 
should  come  into  power  and  this  should  represent  all  shades  of 
Cuban  opinion.  This  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  might  have 
been  proposed  by  a  conciliatory  and  friendly  diplomat  in  the 
course  of  the  French  Revolution.  Mr.  Welles's  plea  was  fea 
sible  if  Mirabeau,  Louis  XVI,  Napoleon,  Danton,  Robes 
pierre,  Louis  XVIII,  and  Talleyrand  could  have  been  found 
together  in  a  coalition  in  the  fateful  years  from  1 789  to  1 81 5  in 
France. 

Then  having  established  this  orderly  conciliation  or  concen 
tration  government,  the  administration  should  not  only  govern 
the  country  but  should  prepare  the  nation  for  the  election  of  a 
permanent  administration.  In  the  meantime  Mr.  Welles  was 
to  hurry  back  to  Washington  and  from  there  to  do  his  part  in 
regard  to  sugar  and  the  Platt  Amendment. 

But  events  ran  away  with  him.  The  Cubans,  once  they  real 
ized  that  the  Roosevelt  administration  did  not  treasure 
Machado,  began  a  general  strike  against  him.  The  army 
finally  whispered  to  him  that  he  had  better  depart  to  greener 
pastures.  He  flew  to  Nassau  on  August  twelfth,  and  shortly 
afterwards  Carlos  Manuel  de  Cespedes  became  provisional 
president,  with  a  coalition  cabinet  and  with  the  promise  of 
elections.  He  was  promptly  recognized.  Mr.  Welles  became 
the  hero  of  the  day.  Machado  was  out.  Cuba  was  free  from  the 
tyrant  and  the  good  neighbor  policy  was  in  fine  working  order. 

But  on  September  4,  through  a  mutiny  in  the  army,  the 
irrepressible  and  inevitable  eruption  of  the  underlying  revolu 
tion  took  place.  President  de  Cespedes  was  overthrown  and 
the  left-wing  students  of  the  university  and  others  who  had  not 
fallen  in  with  Mr.  Welles's  plans  for  an  "American  made 
solution,"  took  over  the  government  with  the  popular  pro 
fessor  of  anatomy,  Dr.  Ramon  Grau  San  Martin,  at  their  head. 


"GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  337  ] 

He  was  not  recognized.  A  cordon  of  twenty-nine  American 
battleships  soon  encircled  Cuba,  and  this  man  who  had  had  no 
following  became  a  popular  hero.  He  had  bucked  the  Ameri 
can  State  Department,  he  had  defied  its  authority  and  had 
overthrown  a  government  alleged  to  have  been  "made  in  the 
American  embassy."  . 

Prolonged  lack  of  American  recognition,  however,  ruined 
Grau.  Yet  his  administration,  according  to  Hudson  Strode,  to 
the  eleven  American  scholars  who  wrote  the  Foreign  Policy 
Association  Report  on  Cuba,  to  Carleton  Beals,  to  Ernest 
Gruening,  to  Hubert  Herring  and  to  a  host  of  others,  was  the 
first  "truly  Cuban  government  in  Cuban  history,"  the  "only 
one  which  struck  at  Communism  at  its  roots"  —  not  by  shoot 
ing  at  the  symptoms  of  the  disease,  as  have  done  his  successors, 
but  by  passing  decrees  which  were  aimed  to  improve  the  lot  of 
the  masses  in  Cuba.  Whether  Grau  was  forced  to  do  this  or  not 
is  beside  the  point.  He  has  left  a  legacy  and  a  memory  which 
will  never  fade. 

Had  there  been  no  social  revolution  before,  Grau  must 
have  created  one.  The  negroes  and  mulattos  of  the  island,  its 
poor  and  downtrodden  families,  its  students  and  many  others 
caught  a  vision  while  he  was  in  power.  Many  there  are  who 
claim  that,  had  we  supported  Grau,  the  cause  of  the  extreme 
left  in  Cuba  must  have  withered.  Instead,  our  balking  him  has 
pushed  almost  all  Cuban  groups,  save  the  conservatives  and 
other  sycophants  of  foreign  capitalistic  enterprise,  several 
notches  to  the  left  —  and  those  on  the  left  to  become  radicali- 
simos. 

Thus  the  first  use  of  the  "muscles  of  self-reliance"  was  met 
by  a  stern  and  overwhelming  rebuff  by  the  American  State 
Department.  Matters  went  from  bad  to  worse  and  when  the 
cane-cutting  season  appeared  it  was  evident  that  something 
must  be  done.  It  is  alleged  that  Mr.  Caffery,  then  Mr.  Roose 
velt's  personal  representative  in  the  island,  intimated  to 
Colonel  Batista,  the  sergeant  who  had  engineered  the  uprising 
of  September  4,  and  who  was  now  head  of  the  Cuban  army, 
that  Grau  would  never  be  recognized  —  even  though  in  the 


[  338  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

meantime  he  had  demonstrated  his  ability  to  repress  revolution 
by  two  victories  over  counter-revolutionaries.  But  rather  than 
buck  the  steamroller,  and  perhaps  because  he  had  lost  the 
support  of  Batista,  he  resigned  and  left  the  government  to 
Carlos  Hevia  who  ruled  forty  hours  and  then  also  resigned. 

January  18,  1934  was  an  auspicious  day  for  Assistant 
Secretary  of  State,  Sumner  Welles,  for  on  that  day  Colonel 
Carlos  Mendieta  became  the  provisional  president  of  Cuba. 
Colonel  Mendieta  was  popular,  honest,  a  liberal-conservative 
of  the  old  school  who  had  fought  in  the  war  for  freedom  and 
who  belonged  therefore  to  the  "men  of  '95."  He  formed  a 
coalition  cabinet  with  all  parties  save  the  followers  of  Grau  or 
"Autenticos,"  as  they  came  to  call  themselves.  Carlos  Mendieta 
promised  to  hold  elections  in  December,  and  stated  that  he 
would  resign  if  they  were  not  held.  And  furthermore  he 
agreed,  apparently,  to  play  ball  with  the  American  interests 
in  the  island.  He  also  promised  certain  revolutionary  reforms 
which  were  demanded  by  the  ABC  as  a  condition  for  their 
participation  in  his  administration. 

For  his  part  Mr.  Welles,  evidently  extremely  pleased  that 
all  the  conditions  which  he  considered  essential  for  the  peace 
ful  solution  of  the  Cuban  problem  were  at  hand,  hastened  to 
bolster  up  Mendieta  in  every  conceivable  way.  In  what  many 
have  considered  unseemly  haste,  he  recognized  the  Mendieta 
regime  after  withholding  recognition  from  Grau  for  four 
months.  Then  the  American  government  showered  boon  after 
boon  upon  Mendieta.  The  Costigan-Jones  bill  granted  Cuba 
a  liberal  sugar  quota  and  an  increased  preferential.  Liquors 
from  Cuba  were  admitted  under  favorable  conditions.  And  on 
May  29  the  Platt  Amendment  was  abrogated.  Thus  one  of  the 
greatest  obstacles  to  Cuban-American  and  to  inter-American 
friendship  was  razed  at  a  stroke. 

Exactly  one  month  after  we  had  severed  the  gordian  knot 
which  bound  Cuba  to  us,  and  abolished  the  amendment 
which  gave  us  the  right  to  intervene  in  Cuban  affairs,  we 
showed  our  partiality  to  the  Mendieta  regime  by  placing  an 
embargo  on  arms  to  all  parties  save  to  the  Cuban  government. 


"GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  339  ] 

Though  this  was  done  in  accordance  with  a  previous  treaty, 
the  time  and  the  occasion  for  its  declaration  were  significant. 
Then  as  a  last  boon  to  Cuba  we  signed  with  her  the  Trade 
Agreement  of  August  24.  This  at  first  benefited  American 
exporters,  but  has  now  produced  beneficial  effects  in  Cuba 
itself.  By  these  treaty  revisions,  and  with  this  trade  agreement, 
Mr.  Welles  had  done  all  within  his  power  to  provide  smooth 
sailing  for  President  Mendieta. 

'VT'ET  the  history  of  the  Mendieta  regime  has  proven  the 
•^  fallacy  of  the  reasoning  of  the  State  Department.  In  spite 
of  improvement  in  the  economic  conditions  of  Cuba,  the 
political  and  social  situation  of  the  island  has  steadily  decayed. 
Today  the  Cubans  find  themselves  more  frustrated  and  balked 
than  under  Machado.  Directly  and  indirectly  our  policy  is 
responsible. 

After  a  brief  honeymoon,  trouble  began;  it  is  unnecessary  to 
recite  in  detail  all  that  has  taken  place  under  Mendieta.  The 
record  can  be  found  in  any  American  newspaper  which 
carries  Cuban  news.  More  than  five  hundred  people  have 
been  consulted  in  preparing  this  statement  of  the  history 
of  the  Mendieta  regime.  Bombings  and  terrorism  increased. 
Constitutional  guarantees  were  suspended,  first  in  Havana 
then  in  the  island  as  a  whole.  The  coalition  cabinet  slowly 
disintegrated  until  Mendieta  had  no  support  save  that  of  his 
own  party,  the  army  and  the  American  Ambassador.  Leaders 
of  many  parties  fled  to  this  country  and  to  Mexico.  The  elec 
tions  have  been  postponed  several  times  and  Mendieta  has  not 
kept  his  promise  of  resigning  if  they  were  not  held. 

For  the  first  time  in  Cuban  history  a  military  dictatorship, 
though  thinly  veiled  behind  a  civilian  government,  slowly  but 
surely  has  come  to  dominate  the  island.  At  Camp  Columbia, 
the  very  astute  and  able  former  sergeant  and  present-day 
Colonel,  Fulgencio  Batista,  holds  the  destiny  of  his  country  in 
his  hands.  The  army  has  been  increased.  Its  quarters  have 
been  improved.  It  receives  a  third  of  the  national  budget  for 
its  maintenance,  more  than  $20,000,000,  while  the  schools 


[  340  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

have  received  less  and  less  support  until  there  are  neither 
pencils  to  write  with  nor  benches  for  the  students  to  sit  on. 

As  far  as  the  Mendieta  regime  is  concerned,  a  peak  was 
reached  in  March  1935.  Just  after  the  American  State  Depart 
ment  had  unofficially  announced  that  certain  critics  of  its 
policy  were  wrong  in  stating  that  there  was  almost  universal 
opposition  to  the  Mendieta  regime,  and  that  actually  only 
ten  percent  of  the  Cubans  disfavored  Mendieta  —  and  that 
these  opponents  were  disgruntled  outs  or  "social  revolution 
aries"  —  practically  every  student  and  teacher  in  the  island 
walked  out  in  a  strike  against  conditions  in  the  schools,  public 
employees  left  their  jobs,  and  many  labor  unions  did  the  same. 
The  whole  island  was  tied  up  and  Mendieta  began  to  totter. 

The  strike  was  put  down,  according  to  the  Havana  corre 
spondent  of  the  New  York  Times,  by  the  use  of  the  most  re 
pressive  measures  ever  employed  in  the  history  of  Cuba. 
Twenty  were  killed,  seven  hundred  or  more  were  imprisoned, 
and  as  many  more  had  to  flee  for  their  lives.  All  but  the  pri 
mary  schools  were  closed;  many  if  not  most  of  the  labor  unions 
were  dissolved;  the  opposition  press  was  suspended.  Innocent 
men  were  subjected  to  capital  punishment  or  imprisonment. 

And  as  the  clock  went  back  to  times  worse  than  those  in  the 
days  of  Machado,  expressions  of  satisfaction  and  contentment 
emanated  both  from  Washington  and  the  legation  in  Havana. 
Mr.  Welles  said,  over  the  radio,  that  at  last  the  Cubans  had 
demonstrated  that  they  could  govern  themselves,  and  Mr. 
Caffery,  rubbing  his  hands  in  seeming  pleasure,  announced 
that  now  all  was  well  in  Cuba.  It  thus  seems  clear  that  the  de 
nouement  in  Cuba  has  pleased  Colonel  Mendieta,  who  re 
mains  in  the  palace,  Colonel  Batista,  who  is  now  the  poorly 
disguised  dictator,  and  the  American  diplomats  directly 
responsible  for  our  Cuban  policy. 

Thus  the  social  revolution  in  Cuba  has  been  frustrated. 
The  moral  support  of  the  American  State  Department  is  in  no 
small  part  responsible.  This  can  have  only  one  result  as  far  as 
the  United  States  is  concerned.  An ti- Americanism  must  grow 
in  Cuba.  How  this  will  affect  more  than  a  billion  dollars  of 


"GOOD  NEIGHBOR"  —  AND  CUBA  [  341  ] 

American  money  invested  in  the  island,  only  time  will  tell. 
And  as  the  true  state  of  affairs  becomes  known  in  the  other 
nations  of  Latin  America,  there  may  re-appear  another  wave  of 
an  ti- Americanism  there;  and  this,  judging  from  past  experience, 
must  affect  our  trade  adversely.  The  finely  spun  schemes  for  an 
American  system  which  might  allow  the  nations  of  the  New 
World  to  ignore  war  in  Europe  and  the  Far  East  are  threatened 
with  disruption.  For,  as  Mr.  Sumner  Welles  himself  has  said, 
the  ultimate  security  of  the  United  States  depends  on  the  loyal 
friendship  of  her  neighbors  in  the  New  World. 


A  Little  Girl's  Mark  Twain 

DOROTHY   QUICK 

A  LITTLE  girl  walked  round  and  round  the  deck  of  an 
*•*-  ocean  liner.  On  the  starboard  side  she  fairly  flew  along, 
but  when  she  turned  the  corner  and  came  to  the  port  side  of 
the  vessel,  she  walked  slowly  and  her  feet  dragged,  her  eyes  lost 
in  admiration  of  a  man  who  stood  at  the  rail,  talking  to  another 
man.  Both  of  them  were  staring  out  towards  the  far  horizon 
line,  and  didn't  see  the  little  girl,  whose  gaze  was  riveted  on 
the  older  of  the  two,  the  one  with  a  great  shock  of  snowy  white 
hair  and  a  keen,  kindly  observant  face.  He  was  Mark  Twain. 

I  can  still  remember  the  thrill  I  had  when,  after  walking 
past  him  five  or  six  times,  he  suddenly  turned,  held  out  his 
hand  and  said  in  a  slow,  drawly  voice,  "Aren't  you  going  to 
speak  to  me,  Little  Girl?"  His  companion  faded  away  into 
space,  as  far  as  I  was  concerned,  when  I  took  his  place.  In  a 
few  seconds  I  was  at  the  rail,  standing  beside  the  Mark  Twain 
whom  only  yesterday  I  had  seen  walking  down  the  platform 
of  a  London  station  surrounded  by  literally  hundreds  of  ad 
mirers.  He  hadn't  seen  me  hanging  half  out  of  the  compart 
ment  window  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  him,  nor  had  I  at  that 
moment  dreamed  that  the  next  morning  I  should  be  standing 
beside  him  on  the  deck  of  a  steamer  bound  for  New  York  — 
standing  beside  him  and  actually  talking  to  him. 

It  was  too  wonderful;  and  I  shall  never  forget  how  proud 
and  happy  I  was.  It  wasn't  very  long  before  he  asked  me  if  I 
knew  who  he  was.  I  replied,  "Of  course,  you're  Mark  Twain, 
and  I've  read  all  your  books."  This,  of  course,  was,  as  he  said 
about  the  report  of  his  own  death,  slightly  exaggerated,  but  in 
the  main  it  was  true  enough.  My  grandfather  had  recited 
Shakespeare  and  Tom  Sawyer  to  me  in  my  cradle,  and  had 
read  me  not  only  "Tom  Sawyer,"  "Huckleberry  Finn,"  but 
"Innocents  Abroad"  and  "A  Tramp  Abroad,"  as  a  preparation 
for  the^trip  from  which  I  was  now  returning. 

I  don't  think  Mark  Twain,  or  Mr.  Clemens,  as  I  later  pre- 

[342] 


A  LITTLE  GIRL'S  MARK  TWAIN  [  343  ] 

ferred  to  call  him,  quite  believed  my  elaborate  statement, 
because  he  began  asking  me  questions.  If  I  hadn't  actually 
read  the  books,  this  would  soon  have  proved  the  fact;  however 
as  I  had  not  only  read  them,  but  they  had  been  read  to  me,  he 
soon  found  (as  he  laughingly  said)  that  I  knew  more  about  his 
books  than  he  did  himself. 

We  got  along  famously  and  the  time  slipped  by  completely 
unnoticed.  It  wasn't  until  the  luncheon  gong  sounded  that  I 
remembered  my  family  with  a  guilty  start.  Mr.  Clemens  said 
he  wanted  to  meet  my  mother  very  much.  So  hand  in  hand 
we  walked  along  the  decks  of  the  S.  S.  Minnetonka  until  we 
finally  got  to  the  lower  deck,  where  my  mother  and  grand 
parents  had  ensconced  themselves  in  a  sunlit  corner.  I  began 
to  explain  my  long  absence,  but  Mr.  Clemens  said  it  would  be 
better  if  I  did  some  introducing  instead,  so  the  explanations 
dropped.  As  I  found  out  later,  they  weren't  necessary.  Mother 
had  been  worried  about  me  and  had  gone  on  a  searching  tour. 
When  she  had  seen  how  utterly  absorbed  I  was,  and  in  what 
good  hands,  she  had  gone  contentedly  back  to  the  steamer 
chairs  to  wait  until  I  came. 

Almost  before  I  knew  it,  Mr.  Clemens  had  arranged  to  have 
his  steamer  chair  by  ours,  and  I  discovered  that  without 
doubt  I  had  made  a  new  friend.  That  night,  as  usual,  I  wore  a 
white  sailor  suit  to  dinner.  Being  only  nine,  I  had  my  dinner 
very  early,  so  I  didn't  see  Mr.  Clemens;  but  just  as  I  was  get 
ting  into  bed  there  was  a  knock  on  the  door  and  it  was  my  new 
friend  clad  in  one  of  his  famous  white  suits,  come  to  see  me  in 
mine !  Someone  had  told  him  about  my  costume. 

Unfortunately,  I  was  attired  in  pajamas  so  I  could  only 
promise,  as  he  especially  requested,  to  wear  the  white  sailor 
suit  the  next  day.  Fortunately,  I  had  a  large  supply  of  them, 
for  he  insisted  I  wear  them  throughout  the  rest  of  the  voyage. 
So  we  both  appeared  each  day  in  white.  Mark  Twain's  were 
made  of  white  flannel  and  mine  of  serge,  but  everyone  assured 
us  that  we  looked  very  well  together. 

The  second  night  out  we  had  an  accident.  About  five  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  in  a  dense  fog,  a  fishing  schooner  ran  into  us  — 


[  344  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

knocking  a  huge  hole  in  the  side  of  the  boat.  The  Captain 
ordered  all  life  boats  down,  and  for  a  few  moments  there  was 
wild  confusion.  Then  it  was  discovered  that  the  hole  was  above 
the  water  line  and,  as  the  sea  was  calm,  there  was  practically 
no  danger.  The  news  was  circulated  about,  and  the  people 
who  had  rushed  up  on  deck  began  to  return  to  their  cabins. 

Then  for  a  moment  the  fog  lifted  and  showed  the  schooner 
which  had  rammed  us,  with  her  bow  completely  gone.  There 
was  only  time  for  a  glimpse  when  the  fog  closed  in  again.  Our 
Captain  sent  down  lifeboats  to  see  if  they  could  pick  up  any 
one,  or  be  of  any  assistance  to  the  schooner;  but  though  we 
waited  there  for  several  hours  there  was  never  another  sign  of 
the  boat  or  its  crew. 

Later,  when  we  returned  to  New  York,  all  the  papers  made 
much  of  the  accident,  and  said  Mark  Twain  put  on  his  Oxford 
gown  (he  had  just  had  a  degree  conferred  upon  him  by  Oxford 
University)  and  rushed  down  to  my  stateroom  and  carried  me 
up  on  deck.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mr.  Clemens  and  I  had  both 
slept  serenely  through  the  whole  affair  —  even  the  crash.  I 
think  we  were  about  the  only  two  people  on  the  entire  ship 
who  had.  Mr.  Clemens's  secretary  had  reported  the  incident 
to  him  after  the  suspense  was  over,  and  Mr.  Clemens  sent  the 
steward  down  to  my  cabin  to  see  if  I  was  all  right,  and  to  tell  me 
not  to  worry. 

The  report  went  back  to  him  that  I  was  still  asleep.  The 
next  morning  he  told  my  mother  that  my  sleeping  through  the 
affair  was  a  sure  sign  that  I  was  a  genius.  As  he  was  one,  and 
he'd  slept,  it  naturally  followed  that  I  was  going  to  be  one  as 
I'd  done  the  same  thing. 

Mother  was  afraid  the  idea  of  an  accident  might  make  me 
nervous  (there  were  people  who  slept  in  their  clothes  the  rest 
of  the  voyage)  so  I  was  told  nothing  about  it.  But  Mother 
neglected  to  warn  Mr.  Clemens  to  keep  the  secret,  so  the 
next  day,  as  I  took  a  morning  promenade  with  him,  I  saw  the 
men  on  pulleys  over  the  side,  mending  the  hole,  and  in  answer 
to  my  questions  Mr.  Clemens  told  me  all  about  the  mishap. 
Instead  of  being  frightened,  I  was  rather  pleased  at  the  im- 


A  LITTLE  GIRLS  MARK  TWAIN  [  345  ] 

portance  of  having  been  in  an  accident;  but  Mr.  Clemens 
laughed  and  said,  "It  didn't  do  you  much  good  to  be  in  it  as 
you  slept  all  through  it." 

Mr.  Clemens  became  interested  in  getting  up  a  statement  to 
the  directors  of  the  Line,  completely  exonerating  the  Captain 
of  all  blame  for  the  accident,  and  was  not  only  one  of  the  first 
to  sign  the  document  but  personally  saw  that  everyone  else 
did  also. 

We  were  inseparable  for  the  rest  of  the  voyage;  he  literally 
wouldn't  let  me  out  of  his  sight.  If  I  was  late  in  appearing,  he 
would  come  down  to  the  stateroom  to  "fetch"  me;  and  when 
ever  I  played  shuffleboard  he  would  have  his  chair  moved 
where  he  could  superintend,  and  put  my  coat  around  my 
shoulders  between  plays.  He  was  much  interested  in  my  skill 
at  shuffleboard  or  "Horse  Billiards"  as  he  called  it.  And  even 
though  I  was  eliminated  from  the  Junior  Tournament  quite 
early  in  the  games,  he  gave  me  his  book,  "Eve's  Diary,"  with 
this  inscription:  "To  Dorothy  with  the  affectionate  regards  of 
the  Author.  Prize  for  good  play  in  Horse  Billiards  Tournament, 
July  19,  1907."  At  the  same  time  he  called  me  to  his  cabin  and 
told  me  to  pick  out  whichever  photograph  of  him  I  liked  best 
from  a  selection  of  twenty  or  so,  and  when  I  had  made  the 
choice  he  autographed  it  for  me. 

The  only  time  during  the  day  when  we  were  separated  was 
at  meals,  Mr.  Clemens,  of  course,  being  at  the  Captain's 
table.  But  quite  often  he  would  leave  his  table  and  come 
over  to  sit  with  us.  Then  the  Captain  would  send  him  over  a 
plate  of  baked  potatoes,  done  in  a  way  of  which  Mr.  Clemens 
was  especially  fond,  declaring  that  they  were  better  at  his  own 
table  than  at  any  other.  And  Mr.  Clemens,  who  had  already 
ordered  a  portion  at  our  table,  would  eat  both  platefuls  and 
swear  they  tasted  exactly  alike,  which  he  considered  a  good 
joke  on  the  Captain. 

Mr.  Clemens  laughingly  called  me  his  business  manager;  so 
when  they  were  getting  up  the  concert  program  and  a  group  of 
men  approached  him  to  see  if  he  would  speak,  he  said  that 
they  would  have  to  ask  me.  "I  never  do  anything  unless  my 


[  346  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

business  manager  says  I  may.  So  you'll  have  to  ask  her."  I,  of 
course,  was  only  too  delighted  to  give  the  required  permission 
as  I  wanted  above  everything  to  hear  him  speak  myself,  and 
had  already  received  permission  to  sit  up  for  the  occasion. 
Imagine  my  pride  and  delight  when  I  saw  printed  on  the  con 
cert  program,  which  is  to  this  day  one  of  my  most  prized  pos 
sessions:  "S.  L.  Clemens  (Mark  Twain)  by  courtesy  of  Miss 
Dorothy  Quick" 

As  he  talked  about  the  improvement  of  the  condition  of  the 
adult  blind  —  and  repeated  the  story  told  in  "A  Tramp 
Abroad"  of  having  been  caught  with  a  companion  in  Berlin 
in  the  dark  for  an  hour  or  more,  and  of  his  horror  at  not  being 
able  to  see  for  even  so  short  a  time  —  my  head  literally  swam 
with  the  joy  that  this  great  man,  who  was  holding  all  the 
people  that  were  crowded  into  the  ship's  lounge  literally 
breathless  with  the  magic  of  his  words,  was  my  friend,  and 
that  he  was  saying  them  through  the  "courtesy  of  Dorothy 
Quick."  He  said  that  he  would  devote  much  of  his  life  to  the 
subject  of  aiding  the  blind,  and  the  passengers  promised  their 
aid  in  anything  he  undertook.  I  remember  his  telling  me  that 
shortly  before  this  trip  he  had  met  Helen  Keller,  and  had  been 
particularly  impressed  with  the  wonderful  things  her  teacher 
had  done  to  improve  her  condition. 

It  was  like  Mr.  Clemens  to  take  every  opportunity  of  helping 
a  cause  in  which  he  was  interested.  I  recollect  that  I  was  stay 
ing  with  Mr.  Clemens,  at  2 1  Fifth  Avenue,  on  a  night  when  the 
Pleiades  Club  was  giving  a  dinner  in  his  honor.  He  had  for 
some  reason  refused  to  go.  It  was  a  bitter  disappointment  to 
me,  because  my  mother  was  going  to  be  there,  and  as  I  had 
been  visiting  Mr.  Clemens  I  hadn't  seen  her  for  several  days. 
The  dinner  was  at  the  Hotel  Brevoort,  very  near  Mr.  Clemens5 
house.  As  the  time  for  the  dinner  drew  nearer  I  became  more 
and  more  downcast.  Finally  Mr.  Clemens  asked  what  was  the 
matter.  I  stammered  out  something  about  the  dinner.  "Did 
you  want  to  go?"  he  questioned.  I  nodded.  "Then  we'll  go!" 
He  began  roaring  up  the  stairs  for  his  secretary  to  telephone 
the  Master  of  Ceremonies  we  were  coming,  and  when  the  sec- 


A  LITTLE  GIRL'S  MARK  TWAIN  [  347  ] 

retary  said,  "I  thought  you'd  decided  not  to  go,"  he  replied 
simply,  "Dorothy  wants  to  go  and  I've  just  remembered  there's 
something  I  wanted  to  talk  about." 

I  wish  I  could  remember  what  it  was,  but  the  excitement  of 
the  evening  —  sitting  next  to  Mark  Twain  at  the  Speakers' 
table,  in  a  chair  he  had  brought  specially  for  me  —  was  too 
much  for  my  youthful  memory.  I  know  everyone  said  it  was 
one  of  the  best  speeches  he'd  ever  made;  but  the  two  things 
that  stand  out  in  my  mind,  apart  from  actually  getting  to  the 
dinner,  was  my  mother  waiting  at  the  door  for  us,  as  we  came 
into  the  hotel,  and  whisking  me  off  to  fix  my  long  braids  — 
a  small  detail  which  Mr.  Clemens  and  I  had  completely  over 
looked,  and  which  kept  the  whole  dinner  waiting  at  least 
twenty  minutes  —  and  then  being  taken  home  by  Mr.  Clemens 
just  as  a  sweet  lady  who  had  made  a  great  fuss  over  me  all 
evening  was  about  to  play  the  piano.  I  would  much  rather 
have  remembered  what  Mr.  Clemens  spoke  of,  but  I  think  it 
was  something  about  making  a  collection  of  compliments  in 
stead  of  autographs,  or  cats  and  dogs.  Anyway  I've  taken  the 
idea  to  heart  and  collected  them  ever  since,  just  because  Mark 
Twain  said,  "The  paying  of  compliments  is  an  art  by  itself." 

But  I  have  strayed  away  from  the  ocean  voyage.  When,  after 
the  most  thrilling  and  eventful  nine  days  of  my  life,  we  arrived 
in  New  York,  a  swarm  of  reporters  surrounded  Mr.  Clemens, 
who  refused  to  be  photographed  unless  I  would  be  taken  with 
him.  He  sent  to  ask  Mother's  permission,  and  once  it  was 
granted  we  went  to  the  sun-deck  and  let  the  cameramen  have 
full  sway.  Both  Mr.  Clemens  and  I  had  on  our  white  suits,  and 
the  next  day  there  wasn't  a  paper  in  New  York  that  didn't 
have  one  of  the  pictures  in.  As  it  was  rather  unusual  for  Mr. 
Clemens  to  pose  for  the  newspapers,  they  made  the  most  of  it; 
and  even  now  they  always  bring  forth  the  pictures  we  had 
taken  that  day  whenever  there  is  a  call  for  pictures  of  Mark 
Twain. 

Later,  The  American  did  a  special  article  called,  "Me  and 
Mark  Twain,"  in  which  there  was  a  sketch  of  Mr.  Clemens 
and  myself  seated  on  the  bow  of  an  ocean  liner,  I  very  com- 


[  348  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

fortably  ensconced  in  his  lap.  Mr.  Clemens  liked  this  the  best 
of  all  the  things  that  appeared,  and  said  it  had  given  him  a 
new  idea.  He'd  never  traveled  on  the  bow  of  a  ship,  but  he 
thought  he  would  like  to  try  it  sometime,  if  Pd  go  along. 

All  the  papers  made  much  of  our  friendship.  "Mark  Twain 
Home  —  Captive  of  Little  Girl"  was  one  of  the  headlines.  And 
they  carried  long  paragraphs  about  me.  I  have  them  all  and 
with  them  another  souvenir  of  the  trip,  a  drawing  of  Buster 
Brown  with  sprouting  wings  looking  at  the  following:  "RE 
SOLVED,  that  Mark  Twain  has  deserted  the  entire  ship's  com 
pany  for  Dorothy  Quick.  I  wish  my  name  was  Twain.  Buster." 
This  is  pasted  in  my  scrap  book,  next  to  the  concert  program. 

On  the  dock,  my  new  friend  and  I  parted.  But  this  was  the 
beginning  of  a  treasured  friendship,  which  was  for  me  a  great 
privilege  and  joy. 


Devotional 

ELBRA  DICKINSON 

Through  your  wide  emerald  fields  I  walk, 

Beloved  Lord; 

Bearing  an  earthen  bowl  of  royal  blue 

To  catch  the  day's  last  golden  spillings  .  .  . 

With  the  slow,  measured  tread 
Of  ancient  worshippers  I  walk; 
My  arms  in  tenderness  encircling 
This  sacred  vessel  .  .  . 

The  tall,  plumed  trees  in  adoration  bow, 

Their  sensate  leaves  quivering  in  rapt  emotion  . 

They  know! 

As  do  their  feathered  guests, 

Singing  and  swaying  on  their  outstretched  arms, 

For  whom,  beloved  Lord,  for  whom 

I  walk  these  fields  of  emerald,  alone  at  dusk, 

Upon  so  dear  an  errand ! 


[349] 


Tumultuous  Cloister 

DOROTHY  V.   GORRELL 

"IV  /TANY  a  bubble  of  popular  misapprehension  has  been 
•*•»•*•  pricked  in  the  devastating  days  since  1929,  but  countless 
shimmering  bubbles  continue  to  hover  softly  over  the  idea  of 
college  —  investing  it  with  the  glamor  of  football  heroes, 
campus  queens,  and  gay  young  things  dancing,  singing,  loving, 
tooting  off  to  heaven  in  streamer-decked  cars.  A  short  time 
ago  I,  too,  was  a  party  to  such  fantastic  beliefs;  but  three  years 
through  the  mill  have  effectively  smashed  all  such  nonsensical 
notions.  If  there  is  any  fact  behind  the  fiction  propagated  by 
present-day  movies  and  stories,  I  must  confess  it  has  altogether 
escaped  me. 

If  there  ever  was  an  era  of  dashing  collegiates  and  giddy 
co-eds,  it  is  relegated  to  the  dim  past  preceding  1929.  The 
social  whirl,  as  I  have  seen  it  at  fraternity  functions,  Yale 
proms,  Harvard  football  dances,  and  gala  Dartmouth  Carni 
vals  is  in  the  nature  of  interludes  snatched  guiltily  from  the 
essential  business  of  life  —  studying.  That  such  affairs  are  gay 
no  one  doubts;  that  they  are  loud  and  wet  everyone  admits; 
that  they  are  full  of  thrills  and  excitement  for  everyone  of  their 
bright-eyed  guests  is  also  true;  but  that  they  are  all  of  college 
life  or  even  of  primary  importance  in  college  life,  I  emphati 
cally  deny. 

As  I  return  to  college  this  fall,  I  realize  that  I  am  again 
subjecting  myself  to  a  life  of  the  most  exacting  slavery,  yet  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  returning;  I  realize  that  I  am  again 
joining  the  ranks  of  the  most  harried  and  overworked  class  of 
people  in  society,  but  I  am  eager  to  plunge  again  into  the  fray. 
Talk  of  unemployment  is  mockery  to  the  college  student;  the 
idea  of  an  eight  hour  day  is  a  fantastic  dream  to  those  of  us 
who  labor  from  twelve  to  twenty-four  hours  with  little  time 
out  for  meals;  carefree  week-ends  are  unknown  to  undergradu 
ates  whose  assignments  go  on  willy-nilly  as  life  becomes  a 
nightmare  of  papers  and  quizzes. 

[350] 


TUMULTUOUS  CLOISTER  [  351  ] 

For  the  three  years  of  my  college  experience,  breakfast  at 
7:15  has  assembled  its  customary  depressing  group,  bleary- 
eyed,  uncommunicative,  sleep-drugged.  Breakfast- table  con 
versation  has  limited  itself  to  resentful  remarks  if  anyone  ap 
pears  cheerful.  The  explanation  of  these  touchy  temperaments 
is  to  be  found  in  the  night-life  of  their  possessors  —  a  night 
life  composed  not  of  dancing  girls  and  hilarious  laughter,  but 
of  scratching  pens  and  tragic,  scholarly  sighs.  Studying  until 
one  o'clock  night  after  night  is  a  common  experience.  All- 
night  grinds  are  more  rare  but  certainly  not  unknown. 

Often,  to  beat  the  sandman  at  his  game,  two  students  beset 
with  work  will  burn  the  midnight  oil  together,  with  time  out 
now  for  black  coffee  and  again  for  a  cold  shower.  I,  myself, 
have  gone  forty-six  hours  without  sleep  and  found  time  for  a 
snooze  of  only  two  and  a  half  hours  in  a  total  of  sixty-six. 
Such  dissipation,  of  course,  cannot  continue  indefinitely,  and 
after  a  particularly  bad  siege,  we  are  obliged  to  cut  classes  and 
catch  up,  protected  by  signs  posted  on  the  door,  which  threaten 
dire  things  if  anyone  trespasses  the  command:  "Sleeping! 
Please  do  not  disturb." 

It  sometimes  occurs  to  us  to  wonder  if  college  is  worth  the 
cost  to  health  and  nerves,  not  to  mention  the  price  in  dollars 
and  cents.  Yet  we  invariably  conclude  —  those  of  us  who  stay 
—  that  the  answer  is  yes.  We  are  the  depression  generation  of 
college  students.  Throughout  our  college  careers  we  have  had 
to  count  the  pennies  more  assiduously  than  our  predecessors; 
we  have  had  friends  drop  college  for  financial  reasons;  we  have 
watched  the  numbers  of  self-help  students  and  those  supported 
by  scholarships  increase.  Because  the  depression  ceased  to  be 
an  objective  tragedy  which  we  regretted  but  largely  ignored, 
and  became  instead  an  actuality  in  our  lives  and  the  lives  of 
our  friends,  we  opened  our  eyes  to  see  what  was  happening, 
and  began  to  ask  questions. 

Our  appreciation  of  college  grew  because  there  we  had 
access  to  good  current  literature,  there  we  came  in  contact 
with  people  who  could  interpret  it  intelligently,  there  we  could 
expound  our  ideas  and  listen  to  the  theories  of  others  in  an 


[  352  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

atmosphere  of  tolerance.  The  universality  of  this  new,  vivid 
interest  in  current  affairs  is  evidenced  by  the  growth  in  the 
numbers  enrolled  in  courses  dealing  with  economics,  political 
science  and  government;  the  starting  of  new  campus  clubs,  and 
the  revival  of  old  ones  interested  in  contemporary  problems; 
the  widespread  response  to  the  Literary  Digest  college  peace 
poll  which  brought  in  more  ballots  than  any  previous  poll. 

I  can  testify  from  personal  experience  to  the  change  in  the 
nature  of  "bull-sessions,"  sacred  to  college  students,  which  has 
occurred  in  the  past  couple  of  years.  Formerly  clothes  and  men 
monopolized  the  parties,  and  I've  no  doubt  that  football  and 
women  held  the  center  of  the  stage  at  the  talk-fests  in  our 
brother  colleges.  Now  our  discussions  might  best  be  described 
as  "bulling  the  world  aright."  Ideals  are  rampant  in  these  long 
controversies,  but  they  are  ideals  with  considerable  thought 
behind  them,  and  intelligent  suggestions  for  application. 
"Roosevelt,"  "New  Deal,"  "economic  planning,"  "interna 
tional  situation,"  "Hitler,"  punctuate  these  discussions  with 
surprising  regularity. 

The  Supreme  Court  decision  in  the  gold  cases  last  spring  was 
the  subject  of  many  controversial  forecasts.  Those  of  us  with 
some  knowledge  of  the  money-credit  situation  were  hounded 
with  questions  by  students  of  Latin  and  English  literature, 
who,  in  spite  of  their  excursion  into  fields  far  removed  from  the 
Supreme  Court  chamber,  demanded  an  explanation  of  things 
happening  here  and  now.  The  N.R.A.  decision  was  a  bomb 
shell  when  it  came  in  late  May,  and  the  furor  it  aroused  di 
minished  only  as  we  turned  to  meet  the  impending  threat  of 
exams.  Panic-stricken  students  of  economics  searched  the 
newspapers  for  details  and  made  dire  forecasts  as  to  the  future. 
Conservatives  —  there  are  a  few  —  welcomed  the  declaration 
as  so  much  riddance  of  bad  rubbish;  but  one  girl  expressed 
the  attitude  of  many  when  she  exclaimed  indignantly,  "What 
ever  is  to  become  of  this  country  if  we  can't  initiate  social 
change  within  the  law?" 

The  internationalism  which  was  so  characteristic  of  the 
latter  'twenties  has  retained  a  strong  foothold  in  the  colleges. 


TUMUL  TUO  US  CLOISTER  [  353  ] 

In  that  respect  more  than  in  any  other,  we  can  be  charged 
with  being  idealists.  The  college  peace  movement  —  which 
has  been  considerably  in  the  limelight  for  the  past  two 
years  —  results,  I  think,  from  a  sincere  belief,  on  the  part  of 
students  who  have  studied  the  facts,  in  the  futility  and  inanity 
of  war.  The  movement  seems  to  have  gained  most  headway  in 
women's  colleges,  but  there  is  no  disputing  the  fact  that  colleges 
are  full  of  pacifist  tendencies. 

A  rough  estimate  of  pacifist  strength  among  college  students 
is  furnished  by  the  results  of  the  Literary  Digest  peace  poll  in 
which  16.48  percent,  or  17,951  students,  indicated  that  they 
would  not  fight  if  the  United  States  were  invaded.  The  fact 
that  82.18  percent  entered  a  flat  "no"  in  answer  to  the  ques 
tion,  "Would  you  bear  arms  for  the  United  States  in  the  in 
vasion  of  the  borders  of  another  country?"  surely  indicates 
that  college  youth  dislike  war  and  are  not  willing  to  become 
martyrs  on  the  capricious  say-so  of  their  government. 

The  peace  movement,  in  so  far  as  I  have  contacted  it,  has 
been  entirely  student-sponsored  and  has  had  no  tinge  of  com 
munism  connected  with  it.  It  is  essential  to  emphasize  this  fact 
because  of  the  careless  habit  which  many  persons  have  of  asso 
ciating  communism  and  pacifism  indiscriminately.  So  often 
one  hears  the  colleges  charged  with  being  hotbeds  of  radical 
ism,  nests  of  communists  and  pacifists,  that  outsiders  are  likely 
to  become  convinced  that  we  are  a  helpless  lot  of  children 
when  we  enter  college  and  emerge,  as  the  result  of  four  years' 
indoctrination,  a  mob  of  howling  reds. 

Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth.  Naturally,  courses 
in  communism  and  socialism  are  taught  for  the  benefit  of  those 
who  want  a  knowledge  of  contemporary  social  movements, 
just  as  courses  in  Shakespeare  are  offered  for  students  of  litera 
ture,  and  courses  in  other  religions  are  open  to  Bible  students. 
But  there  is  no  attempt  at  conversion  to  this  or  that  social 
philosophy.  The  approach  is  that  of  the  scholar  searching  for 
facts,  and  if  the  instructor  offers  an  opinion,  he  usually  offers 
it  purely  as  an  opinion,  leaving  the  student  free  to  decide  on 
the  merits  of  the  question.  The  result  is  calculated  to  make 


[  354  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

us  emerge,  not  radicals,  but  liberals  with  an  open  mind  on 
most  questions. 

It  is  because  college  has  given  us  this  training  in  examina 
tion  of  the  facts,  in  consideration  of  the  pros  and  cons  of  every 
question;  because  college  has  attempted  to  show  us  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  unchallenged  right  or  wrong;  and  has 
taught  us  tolerance  in  listening  to  others,  while  allowing  us 
freedom  to  our  own  beliefs  —  that  we,  though  often  weary 
and  disillusioned,  overworked  and  heart-sore,  maintain  with 
fervor:  "College  is  worth  the  price!" 


In  Defense  of  Horsehair 

CATHARINE  COOK  SMITH 

A?TER  the  hunt  breakfast  I  went  up  the  curving  staircase 
of  the  Georgian  house.  In  the  wide  rooms  on  either  side 
of  the  broad  center  hall  were  fine  chintzes,  good  pieces  of  fur 
niture,  Chippendale,  Sheraton  and  Hepplewhite.  I  looked 
from  the  central  Palladian  window  across  the  fields  that 
sloped  to  the  Shenandoah  and  the  Blue  Ridge.  As  I  turned  to 
go  downstairs  my  eye  fell  on  a  chair,  its  high  rounded  back 
shrouded  in  a  cretonne  slip  cover.  It  was  then  that  my  mania 
seized  me.  I  looked  around,  I  was  alone.  With  a  cool  impu 
dence  that  now  seems  almost  incredible  to  me  (but  my  hostess 
is  famed  for  her  amiable  disposition)  I  took  off  that  slip  cover. 
Triumph!  I  was  right  in  my  guess.  It  was  an  old  Victorian 
chair  in  the  original  horsehair.  As  I  gazed  fondly  at  its  curved 
back,  carved  with  a  rose  and  leaves,  the  head  of  its  owner 
appeared  above  the  stair  rail.  "What  are  you  doing  to  that 
horrid  old  chair?"  Her  shriek  of  astonishment  had  no  trace  of 
annoyance,  and  in  my  guilty  confusion  I  felt  that  Southern 
hospitality  had  stood  the  test  nobly. 

Any  American  family  that  has  been  able  to  hold  on  to  the 
belongings  of  one  or  two  past  generations  is  sure  to  have  some 
pieces  of  Victorian  horsehair.  Many  people  do  not  appreciate 
them.  Around  1929  there  was  a  flurry  of  little  magazine  arti 
cles  announcing  an  approaching  Victorian  revival.  Philadel 
phia  had  a  Victorian  show.  The  Metropolitan  Museum 
arranged  a  Victorian  room,  but  in  rather  an  unkindly  spirit. 
Several  decorators  with  taste  used  a  few  Victorian  pieces. 
But  in  many  houses  the  horsehair  chairs  and  sofas  are  relegated 
to  the  store  closet  and  the  back  hall. 

Yet  this  furniture  always  has  character,  is  often  comfortable 
and  charming,  and  above  all,  it  has  never,  so  far  as  I  know, 
been  reproduced  by  the  wholesale  furniture  houses  whose 
excellent  replicas  of  Spanish,  Italian,  Tudor,  Georgian  and 
Colonial  furniture  adorn  every  apartment  hall,  every  hotel 

C355] 


[  356  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

lobby.  Bring  home,  if  you  can  afford  it,  your  Norman  peasant 
buffet,  search  Vienna  and  Lexington  Avenue  for  Biedermeir, 
fill  your  penthouse  with  Spanish  iron  and  leather,  above  all 
cherish  your  grandfather's  Chippendale  desk,  but  don't  neg 
lect  these  delightful  pieces,  so  easy  to  come  by.  The  storage 
warehouses  must  be  full  of  such  homely  treasures  —  com 
fortable  and  abounding  in  pleasant  associations. 

One  knowing  decorator  covers  his  Victorian  chairs  with 
white  leather  or  velvet,  but  I  am  in  favor  of  horsehair.  The 
black  usually  found  is  good  with  other  colors.  If  it  is  too  badly 
worn  it  can  be  replaced  with  modern  horsehair.  This  can  be 
had  in  various  colors,  and  is  woven  with  a  small  stripe  or 
check,  which  seems  to  prevent  the  occurrence  of  the  breaks 
that  sometimes  appear  in  the  smooth  old  horsehair.  The  com 
mon  prejudice  of  the  elderly  against  this  upholstery  is  prob 
ably  due  to  the  memory  of  short  legs  in  socks  being  pricked  by 
horsehair  bristles!  For  the  most  part,  however,  it  is  a  clean, 
durable,  cool,  handsome  and  altogether  satisfactory  material. 

The  Victorian  pieces  of  which  I  speak  were  made  in  rose 
wood  or  black  walnut,  and  upholstered  in  horsehair,  called 
haircloth  in  contemporary  catalogues.  There  are  sofas,  large 
and  small,  easy  chairs,  with  or  without  arms,  and  side  chairs. 
They  were  made  in  this  country  and  in  England  by  cabinet 
makers  who  probably  had  French  design  books,  and  are 
really  adaptations  for  thrifty  folk,  of  the  style  of  Louis  XV. 
They  were  made,  so  far  as  the  records  show,  from  about  1830, 
when  the  Empire  influence  was  on  the  wane,  to  1870,  when 
William  Morris  and  his  fellow  primitives  became  the  fashion. 
Morris  disliked  the  overfilled  and  fussy  drawing  rooms  of  the 
period.  He  included  the  horsehair  furniture  in  the  same  con 
demnation  with  the  whatnot  and  the  antimacassar  and  so 
threw  out  the  child  with  the  bath.  He  showed  such  sincerity 
of  feeling  in  his  decorative  reforms,  that  it  seems  perhaps  un 
kind  to  recall  the  two  abominations  that  come  to  mind  in 
connection  with  his  movement  —  the  Morris  Chair  and  the 
Peacock  Room. 

Our  furniture  is  contemporaneous  with  the  marble-topped 


IN  DEFENSE  OF  HORSEHAIR  [  357  ] 

table  (for  which  a  defense  might  be  made)  but  I  believe  is 
usually  earlier  than  the  huge  black  walnut  double  bed  and 
bureau  which  have  brought  so  much  disrepute  to  the  Victo 
rian  period.  The  armchair  is  of  two  or  three  different  styles, 
with  or  without  arms,  the  back  entirely  upholstered,  or  with 
an  upholstered  panel  surrounded  by  a  wooden  frame,  held 
by  wooden  supports  to  the  seat.  The  backs  are  always  rounded, 
and  usually  carry  a  carved  center  ornament.  The  legs  are 
curved.  The  side  chairs  come  in  a  variety  of  charming  shapes, 
with  upholstered  seats;  the  backs  are  a  curved  band  with  cross 
slat,  carved  like  the  easy  chairs.  Roses  and  grapes  are  favorite 
ornaments.  These  side  chairs  are  light  and  pleasing,  but  strong 
enough  to  be  used  as  dining  chairs  with  the  now  popular  small 
dining-table. 

The  sofas  vary  in  size  from  the  "love-seat"  for  only  two 
affectionate  sitters,  to  long  pieces  where  one  can  lie  at  length 
on  the  cool  horsehair  during  a  hot  afternoon.  The  sofa  backs 
are  curved  and  carved  like  the  chairs,  often  tufted,  and  some 
times  divided  into  three  panels  with  wooden  frames.  The 
Belter  chairs  and  sofas,  with  their  very  high  carved  backs  and 
the  solid  wooden  support  to  the  upholstered  panels,  are  a 
pretentious  and  not  always  agreeable  form  of  Victorian 
furniture.  Both  Belter  and  Duncan  Phyfe  worked  in  this 
period.  Their  furniture  is  of  the  best  workmanship,  and  is 
highly  esteemed,  especially  that  of  Duncan  Phyfe,  which  is 
perhaps  more  Empire  than  Victorian.  So  far  as  I  know  they 
never  worked  in  horsehair. 

The  horsehair  group  was  less  well  made  and  must  have  been 
less  expensive.  In  looking  through  some  dozens  of  the  design 
books  of  furniture  makers  of  the  early  igth  century,  I  find 
these  pieces  only  occasionally  listed.  Thomas  King  who  pub 
lished  his  "Original  Designs  for  Chairs,  Sofas,  etc."  at  2 14 
High  Holborn  about  1 840,  gives  the  sidechairs.  A  character 
istic  suite,  sofa,  easy  chair  and  armchair  is  shown  in  the  illus 
trated  catalogue  of  Palmer  and  Embury  Co.  New  York  City, 
for  1875.  They  were  "agents  for  Pawtucket  haircloth  and 
English  imitation  haircloth  ...  all  goods  in  black  walnut 


[  358  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

unless  otherwise  ordered."  Other  designs  are  to  be  found  in 
"The  Cabinet  Maker's  Assistant,"  Glasgow,  Edinburgh,  Lon 
don  and  New  York  1853.  The  Victorian  chair  shown  in  some 
of  Morris  Kantor's  painting  is  of  a  particularly  angular,  naive 
rigid  shape.  It  has  its  own  quality,  suggestive  of  Puritan  New 
England,  witches  and  Hawthorne.  George  Bellows  has  used 
one  of  the  loveliest  of  horsehair  sofas  several  times  in  his  pic 
tures  of  Mrs.  Bellows  and  his  little  daughters. 

But  to  return  to  the  defense  of  my  mania.  Must  one  be  alone 
and  unwatched  to  indulge  so  simple  an  enthusiasm?  Horsehair 
evokes  a  mood  that  was  once  an  intimate  part  of  American 
life.  It  cannot,  perhaps,  be  restored  —  but  we  can  at  least  find 
suitable  times  and  places  to  recall  it.  A  corner  in  horsehair 
can  become  a  cherished  corner  in  our  memories. 


History  as  a  Major  Sport 

GEORGE  FORT  MILTON 

PROBABLY  it  is  because  history  is  the  most  vital  branch  of 
•*-  human  knowledge  that  the  writing  of  it  is  so  satisfying  an 
intellectual  adventure.  At  least  it  has  been  my  own  experience 
that  the  quest  for  the  truth  as  to  men,  events  and  epochs,  can 
prove  a  major  sport  surpassed  in  zest  and  sense  of  achievement 
by  none  I  know.  Nor  is  this  strange,  for  in  its  record  of  human 
experience  history  illumines  man's  struggle  with  nature,  re 
cords  his  attempts  at  social  cooperation,  and  dramatizes  his 
development  against  handicaps.  The  study  is  broad  enough  to 
portray  the  growth  of  ideas  and  cultures,  and  yet  its  exacti 
tudes  are  such  that  research  can  be  focussed  on  the  splendors 
of  a  prince  or  the  battle  tragedy  of  an  afternoon. 

The  historian's  task  is  to  capture  the  ghosts  of  yesterday,  and 
breathe  into  them  the  breath  of  life  —  a  task  requiring  skill 
as  well  as  understanding,  and  calling  for  the  marriage  of  schol 
arship  and  art.  It  is  a  role  made  peculiarly  difficult  because  the 
historian  is  denied  the  creative  craftsman's  liberty  to  follow 
the  free  range  of  his  imagination.  Confronted  with  a  fixed  mass 
of  material,  the  historian  must  cast  it  into  moving  and  persua 
sive  literary  form.  The  tapestry  of  life  that  he  weaves  must  be 
in  as  brilliant  colors,  and  portray  as  moving  scenes,  as  those 
presented  by  the  novelist  —  but  the  historian  must  use  the  old 
thread  of  fact.  Should  the  reading  interest  flag,  he  cannot  in 
vent  some  new  and  striking  scene  to  rejuvenate  attention:  as 
the  bond-servant  of  his  material,  he  must  build  his  mosaic  out 
of  the  truth. 

Let  me  illustrate  the  phases  of  historical  composition  out  of 
my  own  experience.  While  engaged  in  preparing  a  history  of 
the  consequences  of  the  American  Civil  War,  I  came  to  feel  the 
need  for  reappraising  the  causes  of  that  struggle.  The  part  that 
chance  played  in  Reconstruction,  the  role  of  unpredictables 
and  imponderables  in  the  impeachment  outcome,  raised  serious 
doubts  as  to  the  analagous  claim  that  the  Civil  War  was  inevi- 

[359] 


[  360  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

table.  After  I  began  to  burrow  into  the  genetics  of  the  War,  it 
became  plain  that  rival  absolutes  held  sway  in  the  period  of  the 
War's  gestation:  the  Aristotelian  mean  between  Abolition  and 
Secession  had  been  given  but  slight  heed. 

Soon  two  challenging  questions  presented  themselves:  To 
begin  with,  were  the  Absolutists  right  about  the  inevitability  of 
the  conflict?  And  again,  if  not,  why  had  the  present  generation 
of  historical  scholars  been  able  to  do  little  more  than  hint  at  the 
truth,  without  persuasive  documentation?  These  intriguing 
questions  led  me  into  a  historical  job  that  took  four  years.  Now 
in  the  common  run  of  things,  few  mortals  have  so  many  mort 
gages  upon  their  time  as  does  the  provincial  newspaper  pub 
lisher  who  must  be  at  once  editor,  business  man  and  factory 
executive  —  a  job  requiring  just  about  twenty-four  hours  a 
day.  Such  a  life  has  many  satisfactions,  but  leisure  for  scholarly 
research  is  not  among  them.  My  historical  work  had  to  be 
performed  from  eight  in  the  evening  until  midnight.  The 
fatigues  of  the  process,  however,  had  their  eventual  reward. 

My  first  difficulty  was  the  inadequacy  of  the  data.  Different 
kinds  of  historical  evidence  have  varying  usefulness.  The  im 
mediate,  intimate  record  a  participant  in  an  event  makes,  by 
diary-entry  or  private  letter,  is  the  most  useful  of  all  sources. 
Next  in  value  is  the  account  given  in  some  contemporary  news 
paper,  magazine,  speech  or  debate;  its  worth,  however,  is  often 
diminished  because  it  is  a  formal  and  purposeful  public  pres 
entation.  Even  less  dependable  is  an  individual's  recollections 
years  after  the  event,  for  usually  these  have  grown  dim  from 
time,  or  have  suffered  distortion  because  of  subsequent  events. 
Least  useful  of  all  is  the  mythology  with  which  later  generations 
often  seek  to  justify  inherited  political  prejudices. 

Looking  over  the  records  of  the  'fifties,  I  found  more  than 
enough  intimate  material  about  the  great  extremists.  Many 
were  the  recollections  of  private  papers  of  the  vanguard  of 
Secession,  for  the  embattled  Southerners  had  preserved  each 
vatic  syllable  and  faded  anecdote  of  Davis  and  Calhoun.  Sim 
ilarly,  the  vast  band  of  Lincolnian  idolators  had  winnowed  the 
Emancipator's  memorabilia;  Sumner's  letters  were  preserved 


HISTORT  AS  A  MAJOR  SPORT  [  361  ] 

in  due  pomposity,  along  with  those  of  Garrison,  Phillips, 
Trumbull,  Washburne  and  Chase.  Even  "Beast"  Butler's 
multitudinous  correspondence  had  been  edited  and  put  into 
libraries  the  nation  over.  But  of  the  statesmen  who  had  cried, 
"A  plague  on  both  your  houses!"  the  intimate  record  was 
slight  indeed.  The  most  important  sources  available  were  the 
papers  of  John  J.  Crittenden,  a  stalwart  Kentucky  conserva 
tive.  But  of  the  main  group  of  Northern  Democrats,  the  men 
who  had  almost  won  their  effort  to  postpone  the  war,  the  yield 
was  practically  nil. 

Thereupon  I  commenced  a  search;  most  of  all  it  was  desir 
able  to  discover  the  papers  of  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  the  great 
man  of  the  epoch.  Truly  a  human  lodestone,  Douglas  attracted 
to  himself  a  personal  political  party  reaching  every  section  of  the 
nation,  and  became  the  focus  of  the  effort  to  persuade  peace 
able  adjustment.  His  papers,  if  extant,  would  almost  certainly 
reveal  the  breadth  and  depth  of  the  conservative  appeal. 

Initial  inquiries  were  disappointing;  there  had  been  a  fire  in 
Washington  after  the  Little  Giant's  death,  and  the  report  was 
that  all  his  private  papers  had  been  burned  up.  However,  two 
Douglas  grandsons  lived  in  Greensboro,  N.  G.  A  visit  there 
yielded  the  lively  satisfaction  of  their  friendship.  One  of  them 
made  available  a  rare  parcel  of  letters  Douglas  had  written 
home  when,  as  a  beardless  boy,  he  went  West  to  make  his  own 
way  in  the  world.  Soon  the  other,  poking  around  in  a  rickety 
outhouse,  came  across  an  old  packing-box.  When  it  was  hauled 
out  one  Saturday  afternoon  in  March  1931,  and  opened,  my 
eyes  feasted  on  hundreds  of  bundles  of  letters,  each  packet 
neatly  tied  in  tape.  I  can  remember  to  this  day  the  tremendous 
thrill  of  that  discovery  —  it  was  a  major  part  of  the  Little 
Giant's  papers !  This  was  the  key  to  the  magic  door  of  the  'fif 
ties,  and  that  key  was  in  my  hands. 

Discovery  was  the  first  step;  the  next  was  to  make  use  of  it. 
There  were  fully  twenty-five  thousand  letters  in  the  box;  each 
one  must  be  deciphered  and  read,  its  matter  of  consequence 
discerned  and  put  into  adequate  note.  Then,  too,  time  was  im 
portant.  It  did  not  take  long  to  secure  an  office,  rent  two  type- 


[  362  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

writers  and  hire  a  stenographic  staff.  Then  for  six  eye-dimming 
weeks  it  was  my  task  to  decipher  letters,  mark  passages  to  be 
copied  and  do  all  other  things  needful  in  extracting  the  heart 
and  essence  of  a  great  correspondence.  Of  course,  the  papers  of 
statesmen  of  that  day,  before  typewriters  or  duplicating  de 
vices,  consisted  almost  entirely  of  letters  received.  Indeed,  this 
was  a  great  merit,  for  one  read  that  stream  of  incoming  reports, 
appeals  and  suggestions,  with  the  uncanny  feeling  of  having 
one's  finger  on  the  pulse  of  an  epoch  and  a  cause. 

When  the  task  was  finally  done,  I  came  home  with  my  note 
books  bulging  with  a  new  record  of  the  'fifties  —  one  so  ex 
plosive  in  the  character  of  its  evidence  that  I  had  no  hesitation 
in  terming  the  struggle  which  followed  Sumter  as  a  "needless 
war."  For  the  Douglas  papers  filled  the  great  gap  theretofore 
existing  in  the  evidence;  they  threw  new  light  on  the  motives 
and  techniques  by  which  the  ultra  minorities  in  both  sections 
manipulated  official  machinery,  and  showed  that  the  masses 
of  the  people,  South  and  North  alike,  did  not  want  this  politi 
cians'  war. 

But  it  was  not  enough  to  have  found  these  letters.  The  very 
fact  of  their  discovery  called  for  checking  of  evidence,  testing 
of  statements,  examination  of  opposing  viewpoints  —  to  say 
nothing  of  the  actual  writing  itself.  It  was  important  to  find 
Douglas'  responses  to  his  chief  correspondents.  To  do  this, 
I  classified  the  letters  by  the  states  of  the  writers'  residence, 
sending  these  lists  to  the  appropriate  State  Historical  Societies, 
prominent  newspapers,  etc.,  asking  their  aid  in  finding  living 
descendants  of  those  who  had  worked  with  the  Little  Giant. 
Over  a  thousand  such  letters  went  out,  and  these  I  backed  by 
personal  tours  of  investigation. 

Some  of  the  resultant  discoveries  were  most  valuable.  For 
example,  in  Springfield,  Illinois,  I  found  Douglas'  correspond 
ence  with  General  John  A.  McClernand  —  at  first  his  rival 
and  then  one  of  his  stanchest  Congressional  aides.  There,  too, 
grandsons  of  William  H.  Lanphier,  the  Little  Giant's  ablest 
editor,  made  the  whole  rich  Lanphier  correspondence  avail 
able.  In  the  middle  'fifties  Douglas  had  established  the  Chicago 


HISTORY  AS  A  MAJOR  SPORT  [  363  ] 

Times,  putting  James  W.  Sheahan  at  the  editorial  helm,  and 
in  1860  Sheahan  prepared  the  Little  Giant's  campaign  biog 
raphy.  In  Chicago,  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  find  Sheahan' s 
son;  he  turned  over  to  me  another  treasure  trove  of  Douglas' 
letters. 

Quests  of  this  type  call  for  the  detective  as  much  as  the  his 
torian.  Careful  running  down  of  random  leads  is  essential,  and 
often  rewarded,  but  sometimes  success  is  just  sheer  luck.  There 
was  the  case  of  the  Sanders  letters.  George  N.  Sanders  was  a 
Kentucky  editor-politician  who  wanted  Douglas  to  lead  a 
political  revolution  to  throw  the  Old  Fogies  out.  But  Sanders 
acted  like  a  bull  in  a  china  shop,  a  cause  which  allied  all  other 
candidates  against  Douglas,  whose  denials  and  disavowals 
were  received  with  scorn.  I  became  convinced  that,  but  for 
Sanders,  the  Little  Giant  would  have  been  elected  President  in 
1852.  The  common  view  was  that  the  Senator  was  directing 
every  move  of  the  mischief,  but  I  did  not  believe  it  —  such  a 
course  was  altogether  out  of  character  with  Douglas'  own  tech 
nique,  and  I  felt  sure  that  the  latter  must  have  made  frantic 
efforts  to  halt  his  friend's  mad  course.  Of  this  there  was  infer 
ential  evidence  in  Sanders'  letters  to  Douglas.  But  to  prove  the 
point  I  had  to  have  the  Little  Giant's  answers. 

Soon  I  found  that  a  batch  of  Douglas'  letters  to  Sanders  had 
been  sold  in  New  York  in  1915.  The  auction  gallery  exhumed 
its  ledger  record  of  purchasers,  by  means  of  which  I  traced  and 
secured  copies  of  half  of  the  original  collection.  But  apparently 
the  rest  had  vanished  in  thin  air.  It  happened  that  the  indexer 
extraordinary,  Mr.  Joseph  Greenbaum  of  New  York,  recalled 
that,  years  before,  a  bookbinder  friend  had  found  a  scrapbook 
of  Lincoln  items.  On  the  chance  it  might  have  some  needful 
data,  Mr.  Greenbaum  set  to  work  to  trace  it.  After  months  of 
search,  it  came  to  light  that  the  scrapbook  had  been  presented 
to  the  public  library  at  Water  town,  Conn.,  and  that  not  only 
was  it  a  scrapbook  of  old  clippings,  but  that  also  it  contained 
eight  letters  from  Douglas  to  George  Sanders.  These  enabled 
me  to  reconstruct  the  whole  story  of  the  tragedy  of  that  cam 
paign.  Had  it  not  been  for  this  Kentucky  marplot,  Douglas 


[  364  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

might  well  have  been  President  in  1 852 ;  perhaps  the  Missouri 
Compromise  would  not  have  been  repealed  and  there  would 
have  been  no  Civil  War! 

After  collecting  material  comes  the  task  of  judgment,  about 
as  difficult  as  the  discovery  of  fact.  Here  the  historian  must  be 
an  expert  on  the  reliability  of  handwriting,  have  some  knowl 
edge  of  the  credibility  of  witnesses,  and  be  a  shrewd  inquirer 
into  the  motives  of  men.  He  must  also  become  thoroughly 
imbued  with  the  problems  and  personalities  of  the  age  of 
which  he  writes.  Through  thus  recapturing  the  sense  of  his 
torical  participation,  he  re-creates  the  reality  of  the  problems 
of  the  past  generations,  and  makes  them  once  more  living 
things. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  give  the  impression  that  each  of  the 
three  processes  of  material-gathering,  analysis  and  composi 
tion,  is  separate  in  point  of  time.  At  least,  so  far  as  the  present 
writer  is  concerned,  the  three  went  on  simultaneously;  and 
with  each  particular  episode  there  was  an  intense  effort  to  do 
all  three  at  once.  One  proceeds  steadily  through  the  ocean  of 
myth  and  hypothesis,  carefully  trying  to  build  a  causeway  of 
tested  truth.  In  doing  so,  the  subconscious  mind  classifies  the 
facts;  and  when  the  whole  work  is  done  one  has  an  almost  in 
tuitive  sense  of  appropriate  proportions  by  which  to  guide 
final  recasting. 

Once  the  material  is  mastered,  the  need  for  integration 
leads  to  months  of  revision  and  rearrangement.  Then  it  is  that 
the  spirit  groans  most  mournfully.  After  one  has  read  and 
edited  a  single  chapter  a  dozen  times  or  so,  it  requires  con 
siderable  courage  to  sit  down  to  it  with  a  battery  of  sharpened 
pencils,  to  cut  from  it  a  space  saving  of  a  hundred  words  a 
page.  And  yet,  when  publishers  din  in  your  ears  the  words  of 
Michelangelo,  "The  More  the  Marble  Wastes,  the  More  the 
Statue  Grows,"  one  comes  almost  to  believe  it.  Even  so,  there 
is  a  real  pang  when  one  forces  one's  own  pencil  to  strike  out  a 
paragraph  which  represents  the  fruits  of  two  months'  careful 
investigation;  or  when  a  purple  passage  is  doomed  to  slaughter 
as  unnecessary  surplusage. 


HISTORY  AS  A  MAJOR  SPORT  [  365  ] 

Let  us  say  no  more  of  these  spiritual  travails  of  the  final 
stages  of  historical  composition.  Likewise  let  us  draw  the  veil 
of  silence  over  the  agonies  of  proof-reading,  and  then  of  finding 
in  the  printed  volume  typographical  errors  which  stick  out  like 
a  sore  thumb.  Eventually  the  work  is  done  and  Leviathan  is 
born.  It  must  be  admitted  that  when  the  historian  finishes  such 
a  work,  he  asks:  "Why  did  I  ever  undertake  such  toil?"  But 
this  feeling  is  not  long-lived.  Soon  it  is  overcome  by  the  feeling 
of  mastery,  the  feeling  that  he  has  really  plumbed  to  the  depths 
of  an  epoch.  The  historian  persuades  himself  that,  through 
finding  out  how  and  why  men  acted  as  they  did  a  century  ago, 
he  suspects  a  little  better  what  are  the  mainsprings  of  our  con 
temporary  society.  At  any  rate,  permit  me  to  nominate  the 
writing  of  history  as  a  major  sport  for  all  who  are  interested 
in  what  makes  the  wheels  go  round  in  the  whirligig  of  Life. 


Book  Reviews 

THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  THE 
SETTLEMENTS.  By  Charles  M.  Andrews.  Tale  University  Press, 
$4.00. 

TN  THE  past,  American  history,  with  a  few  exceptions,  has  been 
•*~  written  from  a  partisan,  a  political,  or  a  popular  point  of  view. 
Furthermore,  little  of  an  authoritative  nature  has  been  written  on 
our  colonial  background.  We  have  been  so  much  concerned  with 
our  "manifest  destiny"  that  we  have  given  little  or  no  thought  to  our 
origins  —  and  origins  are  always  important. 

In  this  first  volume  of  what  will  be  a  detailed  history  of  the  Amer 
ican  colonies,  Professor  Andrews  deals  exclusively  with  the  origins 
of  the  earliest  of  these.  Beginning  with  a  brilliant  narrative  of  the  Age 
of  Discovery  in  Europe  and  the  part  that  Elizabethan  England  played 
in  that  discovery,  the  author  goes  on  to  describe  the  expansion  of 
England's  commercial  activities  and  the  resulting  factors  that  influ 
enced  colonization  in  the  East  and  in  North  America.  A  spirit  of 
restlessness  was  in  the  air.  England  was  becoming  an  industrial  and 
commercial  nation.  The  great  landlords  were  turning  their  lands  into 
sheep  farms,  thus  depriving  the  tenant  farmer  of  an  opportunity  to 
get  a  living  from  the  soil.  The  early  seventeenth  century  found  many 
men  on  the  roads  of  England  without  money  and  without  a  home. 
Some  were  dispossessed  peasants,  though  the  majority  were  dis 
charged  soldiers  and  sailors,  for  now  England  was  at  peace. 

The  increase  in  commerce  and  industry,  the  increase  in  popula 
tion,  the  increase  in  the  number  of  the  unemployed,  made  coloniza 
tion  a  necessity.  The  dispossessed  and  the  unemployed  had  to  be 
settled  on  land  somewhere  that  they  might  live,  and  also  create  new 
markets  for  English  business.  Added  to  these  reasons  was  the  desire 
on  the  part  of  the  impoverished  gentleman  adventurers  of  England, 
principally  younger  sons  of  the  landed  gentry  and  the  nobility,  to 
acquire  wealth  quickly.  Despite  the  fact  that  very  little  gold  had  been 
found  in  North  America,  these  men  insisted  that  it  was  there  for  the 
simple  reason  that  it  had  been  found  in  such  abundance  in  Central 
and  South  America. 

With  the  principal  reasons  for  colonization  firmly  established, 
Professor  Andrews  then  proceeds  to  take  up  in  detail  the  establishing 
of  the  colonies  in  Virginia,  Bermuda,  Newfoundland  and  Nova 
Scotia,  and  at  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay.  It  is  in  the  narration 
of  the  founding  of  these  colonies,  and  of  their  activities  to  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  that  Professor  Andrews  makes  an  original 

[366] 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  367  ] 

contribution  to  the  method  of  writing  early  American  history. 
Previous  historians  have  considered  the  problem  of  settlement  only 
from  the  American  point  of  view,  and  wrote  only  of  those  colonies 
that  later  became  states.  Professor  Andrews  has  placed  himself  and 
his  readers  in  England,  thus  permitting  a  survey  of  the  entire  prob 
lem  as  it  affected  the  colonies  and  the  mother  country.  This  method 
also  enabled  the  author  to  take  up  the  subject  of  those  North  Amer 
ican  colonies  which  are  still  under  English  dominion.  Thus  we  have, 
for  the  first  time,  a  complete  record  of  English  colonization  in  North 
America. 

The  second  advantage  that  this  volume  has  over  any  other  ac 
count  of  American  colonial  history  that  I  have  read,  is  that  it  treats 
the  colonies  as  colonies  and  not  as  potential  units  of  the  United 
States.  An  opportunity  is  thus  given  for  a  fair  and  leisurely  examina 
tion  of  the  problems  of  settlement  and  government  which  the  Amer 
ican  colonies  had  to  face,  long  before  there  was  any  idea  of  rebellion 
against  the  mother  country.  Every  other  historian  of  this  period  has 
hurried  over  these  phases,  or  has  considered  them  in  the  light  of 
future  events.  Of  course,  no  other  historian  had  at  his  command  the 
knowledge  of  this  period  that  has  made  Professor  Andrews  the  great 
est  authority  on  our  colonial  history.  It  is  not  merely  as  a  narrative 
that  "The  Colonial  Period  of  American  History"  supersedes  all 
earlier  books  on  the  subject;  it  contains  the  mature  judgments  of  a 
scholar  who  has  made  the  period  his  own. 

On  more  than  one  occasion  in  this  volume,  Professor  Andrews 
takes  issue  with  other  investigators  in  early  American  history  regard 
ing  their  conclusions.  To  cite  only  one  instance:  The  author  does  not 
agree  with  the  findings  of  Professor  Wertenbaker  regarding  the  im 
portance  of  the  indentured  servant  after  he  had  obtained  his  freedom. 
He  holds  to  the  older  view  that  Virginia  was  ruled  by  "men  of  rank 
and  influence  and  good  social  standing." 

In  one  respect  this  volume  will  prove  a  disappointment  to  the 
cultivated  general  reader  who  is  not  an  historical  specialist.  Professor 
Andrews  has  given  very  little  space  to  the  social  and  intellectual 
movements  of  the  early  colonies.  We  should  like  to  know  more  of  the 
social  structure  in  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  before  1800.  Charters 
and  governments  are  necessary,  and  a  knowledge  of  them  is  valuable, 
but  they  were  made  for  the  benefit  of  men  and  women.  It  is  in  these 
men  and  women  that  we  are  primarily  interested.  The  only  non- 
political  figure  who  receives  any  consideration  in  this  volume  is 
Thomas  Morton,  an  English  royalist  who  tried  to  make  life  in  the 
Plymouth  colony  a  little  brighter.  His  only  reward  was  banishment, 
though  future  generations  have  blessed  him  for  giving  us,  in  his  "New 
England  Canaan,"  one  of  the  few  good  things  in  early  American 


[  368  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

literature.  Perhaps  the  later  volumes  of  this  history  will  deal  more 
extensively  with  the  human  element  in  our  early  history. 

There  is  no  question  that  this  first  volume  is  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  contributions  to  American  history  in  modern  times.  Having 
been  planned  and  written  in  the  best  tradition  of  modern  historical 
scholarship,  it  is  free  from  the  many  vices  of  popularization,  though 
it  has  a  style  and  a  movement  that  are  ideally  adapted  to  the  material 
and  the  plan  of  presentation.  Its  choice  by  the  Pulitzer  Prize  Com 
mittee  was  obvious. 

E.  H.  O'NEILL 


SHIPMASTERS  OF  CAPE  COD.  By  Henry  C.  Kittredge.  Houghton 
Mifflin,  $3.50. 


is  a  brave  and  hearty  book.  It  does  not  pretend  to  be  a 
maritime  history  of  the  Cape,  but  a  chronicle  of  the  master 
mariners  who  were  born  and  raised  along  the  Bay  shore  from 
Barnstable  to  Provincetown,  and  down  the  "backside"  to  Falmouth. 
We  have  all  heard  vague  stories  of  the  fifty  sea  captains  of  Chatham, 
and  the  Cape  jury  that  contained  seven  men  qualified  to  testify  as 
experts  on  minor  features  of  Honolulu  harbor;  but  here  are  the  facts. 
Mr.  Kittredge  has  followed  his  Cape  Codders  down  East  and  down 
South,  in  the  Western  Ocean  packet  service,  to  the  West  Indies  for 
rum  and  to  Smyrna  for  figs,  to  the  "Coast"  and  the  "Islands,"  up 
the  Hoogly  and  Canton  Rivers,  and  around  the  world. 

It  is  a  fine  meaty  book,  full  of  long  extracts  from  ships'  logs  and 
from  the  masters'  correspondence  with  wives  and  ship-owners,  brim 
ming  over  with  storms  and  shipwrecks  and  the  ordinary  incidents  of 
seafaring.  You  can  read  it  straight  through  with  increasing  delight 
(though  with  some  confusion  among  the  numerous  Crowells,  Crock- 
ers,  Eldridges,  Snows  and  Mayos)  or  you  can  dip  in  anywhere  and 
pull  up  something  like  this,  from  Captain  Rodney  Baxter's  log  of  his 
voyage  to  Ireland  with  corn  for  the  famine  sufferers  of  1847,  m  tne 
schooner  American  Belle  (p.  1  45)  : 

The  sea  was  occasionally  running  a  little  on  our  port  quarter.  I 
caught  hold  of  the  wheel  to  assist  the  man  at  the  helm  to  swing  the 
vessel  off,  so  that  the  sea  would  strike  us  square  in  the  stern,  and  when 
it  did  so,  it  lifted  her  stern  so  that  she  almost  pitch-poled,  with  the  end 
of  the  jib  boom  under  water  some  distance.  .  .  .  The  man  at  the  wheel 
and  myself  would  have  been  washed  overboard  if  we  had  not  been  well 
lashed.  We  were  not  less  than  ten  feet  under  water,  and  when  we  re 
gained  our  places  on  our  feet,  the  vessel's  stern  was  down  under  water 
and  we  were  up  to  our  arms  in  it,  with  tons  of  water  in  the  after  part, 
and  the  weight  caused  her  to  present  an  angle  of  45  degrees,  bow  out. 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  369  ] 

The  pressure  of  the  water  burst  off  the  bulwarks  and  she  recovered, 
after  apparently  struggling  to  live.  We  kept  on  all  night,  and  the  gale 
abated.  .  .  . 

One  of  the  many  features  in  the  book  that  provokes  reflection  is 
the  fact  that  Cape  Cod  shipmasters  in  those  days  of  sail  had  to  con 
sider  and  decide,  in  ports  such  as  Shanghai  and  Singapore,  whether 
to  accept  a  freight  at  the  going  rate,  or  load  a  certain  cargo  on  the 
owner's  account,  or  charter  the  vessel  to  a  local  merchant,  or  pro 
ceed  to  another  port  in  ballast,  or  even  sell  the  ship.  Until  the  i85o's 
no  data  on  prices  or  markets  were  cabled  around  the  world;  and  in 
the  Napoleonic  wars,  shipmasters  had  to  contend  with  government 
regulations,  even  more  fluctuating  and  elaborate  than  those  of 
today.  Consequently,  business  judgment  was  required  of  a  ship 
master  as  well  as  ability  to  manage  a  ship.  Yet  some  of  these  Cape 
Codders  had  already  risen  to  a  command  at  an  age  when  their 
descendants  have  just  graduated  from  high  school  and  are  seeking  a 
job  at  a  filling  station. 

The  "Old  South"  was  not  the  only  social  system  that  vanished 
with  "progress."  Maritime  New  England  and  Nova  Scotia  once  had 
a  way  of  life  that  afforded  a  good  living,  variety,  adventure,  a  dash  of 
romance  to  the  great  majority  of  the  men-folk;  and  the  satisfaction 
of  power  and  distinction  to  the  most  able.  The  women,  too,  I  venture 
to  declare,  had  more  satisfaction  out  of  life  than  the  pampered  belles 
and  hand-kissed  matrons  of  the  Southland.  New  England  has  no 
war,  treaty,  or  hated  outlander  to  blame  for  doing  her  out  of  it;  she 
helped  undo  herself  with  industrial  development  and  protective 
tariffs,  and  so  can  look  back  on  it  dispassionately  —  with  affection, 
to  be  sure,  but  without  mawkish  sentiment  or  false  glamor. 

Half  a  dozen  of  our  best  novelists  have  simultaneously  discovered 
this  field,  especially  the  Maine  corner  of  it;  but  if  you  like  facts  rather 
than  fiction,  let  Mr.  Kittredge  take  you  across  the  seven  seas  on  a 
wooden  sailing  vessel  commanded  by  a  Cape  Cod  shipmaster. 

SAMUEL  E.  MORISON 

BLACK  RECONSTRUCTION.  By  Burghart  Du  Bois.  Harcourt  Brace, 

$4-5°- 

HPO  the  many  readers  of  the  Beards,  Muzzey,  Rhodes  and  other 
-*•  recognized  American  historians,  this  book  will  come  as  a  distinct 
shock.  Written  frankly  from  the  negro  point  of  view  by  a  distin 
guished  negro  scholar,  not  one  of  these  notable  authors  escapes 
castigation,  be  it  because  of  inaccuracy  or  bias  or  plain  ignorance. 
The  author  acknowledges  that  he  has  an  axe  to  grind,  and  asserts 
that  "the  mass  of  American  writers  have  started  out  so  to  distort  the 


[  370  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

facts  of  the  greatest  critical  period  of  American  history  as  to  prove 
right  wrong  and  wrong  right."  The  axe  has  been  sharpened  through 
many  years  of  research  and  study.  With  this  view  it  will  be  impossible 
for  most  readers  to  escape  either  complete  agreement  or  complete 
disagreement. 

The  book  is  based  on  two  main  themes:  First,  negroes  as  a  race  are 
not  backward.  Time  and  again  the  author  refers  to  the  Constitution 
with  its  "all  men  are  born  free  and  equal."  No  one  will  question  the 
hideous  wrong  of  slavery,  but  many  are  inclined  to  doubt  the  equal 
ity  of  all  men.  We  have  been  led  to  regard  the  excesses,  corruption 
and  chaos  of  the  Reconstruction  period  in  the  South  as  an  example 
of  what  the  negro,  aided  and  led  on  by  the  unscrupulous  carpet 
bagger  from  the  North,  did  with  his  equality.  One  has  a  full  compre 
hension  of  Mr.  Du  Bois'  bitterness  when  he  refers  to  this  era  as  "the 
finest  effort  to  achieve  democracy  for  the  working  millions  which 
this  world  had  ever  seen."  After  careful  reading  of  the  chapters  on 
the  negro  legislatures  in  the  South  after  the  war,  one  is  forced  to  con 
sider  the  author's  claims  as  to  the  social  responsibilities  of  negro 
lawmakers  rather  tedious  and  certainly  exaggerated.  The  activities 
of  these  negro  legislators  do  not  seem  to  support  the  author's  conten 
tion  that  the  negro  should  have  been  enfranchised  as  soon  as  he  was 
freed.  Andrew  Johnson,  Seward  and  others  who  felt  that  the  negro 
should  be  educated  before  he  was  given  the  vote,  come  in  for  a  fear 
ful  pen-lashing.  Even  when  some  of  Johnson's  ablest  state  papers  are 
referred  to,  Mr.  Du  Bois  sneeringly  observes  that  the  President  could 
not  have  written  them  by  himself.  As  the  book  progresses,  this  bitter 
ness  becomes  almost  fanatical.  Johnson  knew  nothing  of  finance,  was 
drunk  a  large  part  of  the  time,  was  "God's  own  fool."  The  argument 
is  weakened  by  these  intemperate  and  often  strikingly  inaccurate 
accusations. 

The  second  premise  is  the  statement  that  the  South  "turned  the 
most  beautiful  section  of  the  nation  into  a  center  of  poverty  and  suf 
fering,  gambling  and  brawling,  an  abode  of  ignorance  among  black 
and  white  more  abysmal  than  in  any  modern  land."  The  chapter  on 
"The  Planter"  is  filled  with  hatred  towards  this  class,  a  hatred  un 
derstandable  in  a  member  of  this  long  suffering  race.  At  this  point  it 
is  only  proper  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Du  Bois  seems  to 
have  found  his  ideal  in  the  social  program  of  the  New  Deal.  Capital 
ists  are  referred  to  as  "exploiters,"  labor  must  fight  ever  onwards 
against  tyrannical  capitalists.  To  those  who  believe  that  it  is  foolish 
completely  to  exterminate  the  "goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg,"  the 
employer,  and  who  believe  that  the  employer,  within  reason,  should 
have  power  to  employ  only  those  who  satisfy  him,  the  excoriation  of 
the  planter  will  sound  not  unlike  the  broadsides  of  President  Roose- 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  371  ] 

velt  regarding  the  class  of  Tories  who  interfere  with  his  policies. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  planters  as  a  group  were  admirable: 
many  were  self  satisfied  wastrels  completely  lacking  that  sense  of 
responsibility  which  should  accompany  wealth  and  position.  But  to 
criticize  them  for  their  adherence  to  the  belief  and  custom  of  England 
and  the  Continent  is  unfair.  The  planters,  South  Carolinians  in 
particular,  had  always  been  closer  to  the  old  world  than  the  new, 
and  with  reason.  Even  today  there  is  no  strong  bond  between  the 
South,  New  England  or  the  middle  states.  The  chapter  as  a  whole 
seems  to  degenerate  into  a  tirade  which  will  largely  cost  the  author 
the  sympathy  of  the  discerning  reader.  Southerners  may  disagree 
with  but  cannot  ignore  the  closing  sentences:  "The  disaster  of  the 
war  decimated  the  planters;  the  bitter  disappointment  and  frustra 
tion  led  to  a  tremendous  mortality  after  the  war,  and  from  1870  on, 
the  planter  class  merged  their  blood  so  completely  with  the  rising 
poor  whites  that  they  disappeared  as  a  separate  aristocracy.  It  is  this 
that  explains  so  many  characteristics  of  the  post-war  South;  its 
lynchings  and  mob  law,  its  murders  and  cruelty,  its  insensibility  to 
the  finer  things  of  civilization." 

In  the  effort  to  keep  the  negro  and  his  problem  in  the  center  of  the 
stage,  Mr.  Du  Bois  (and  factually  this  is  probably  the  weakest  section 
of  the  book)  claims  that  the  Civil  War  was  due  almost  entirely  to  the 
problem  of  slavery.  Without  entering  upon  the  ramifications  of  this 
question,  it  may  be  said  that  nearly  all  previous  students  have  con 
sidered  that  no  single  factor  could  account  for  the  Rebellion.  Lincoln 
and  other  Northern  leaders  had  no  wish  to  disturb  the  "peculiar  in 
stitution"  of  the  South  except  by  legal  methods.  What  they  were 
determined,  at  all  costs,  to  preserve  was  the  Union.  So  one  at  least 
has  always  been  taught,  and  when  Mr.  Du  Bois  dismisses  this  as  mere 
sentiment  one  is  still  not  convinced.  Such  questions  as  the  tariff,  the 
transference  of  the  balance  of  power  from  the  agricultural  interests  to 
the  industrial,  the  inability  of  the  South  to  see  its  political  domina 
tion  of  the  country  disappear  —  these  and  more  must  be  considered 
as  contributing  causes  to  the  struggle.  True,  these  questions  are  dis 
cussed,  but  are  all  too  lightly  dismissed. 

The  author  assigns  the  winning  role  in  the  war  to  the  negro.  He 
asserts,  in  the  chapter  entitled  "The  General  Strike,"  that  "the  black 
worker  won  the  war  by  a  general  strike  which  transferred  his  labor 
from  the  Confederate  planter  to  the  Northern  invader,  in  whose  army 
lines  workers  began  to  be  organized  as  a  new  labor  force."  In  this 
chapter  the  activities  in  New  Orleans  of  General  Benjamin  Butler, 
elsewhere  cited  as  "glorious  Ben  Butler,"  are  commented  on  in  com 
mendatory  fashion.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  student  of  American 
history  will  find  it  difficult  to  discover  any  public  figure  who  exer- 


[  372  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

cised  as  sinister  an  influence  for  evil  so  consistently  as  did  this  man. 
Many  readers  will  undoubtedly  disagree  with  the  statement,  "It  is 
astonishing  how  this  army  of  striking  labor  furnished  in  time  200,000 
Federal  soldiers  whose  evident  ability  to  fight  decided  the  war." 

If  the  book  has  a  hero,  it  is  Charles  Sumner,  Senator  from  Mas 
sachusetts,  who,  with  the  Abolitionists  Garrison  and  Phillips,  was  the 
great  advocate  of  immediate  negro  enfranchisement.  One  can  under 
stand,  but  not  concur  with,  the  author's  enthusiasm  for  this  man. 
Cold,  pompous,  arrogant  —  an  intellectual  snob,  he  appears  in  these 
pages  "full  of  sound  and  fury."  If  one  considers  how  he  would  have 
voted,  in  spite  of  his  high  flown  sentiments,  if  a  negro  had  been 
nominated  for  governor  of  Massachusetts,  one  must  add  "signifying 
nothing."  Sharing  the  author's  admiration,  is  Thaddeus  Stevens.  In 
his  endorsement  of  Stevens'  stand  in  support  of  negro  enfranchise 
ment,  Mr.  Du  Bois  appears  to  have  overlooked  the  controlling  inter 
est  in  this  extraordinary  man's  life  when  he  observes  that  "never  a 
mere  politician,  he  cared  nothing  for  constitutional  subtleties  nor 
even  for  political  power."  The  great  passion  in  Stevens'  life  was  the 
Republican  Party;  it  had  saved  the  country,  it  must  rule  it.  To  rule, 
it  was  necessary  to  bring  the  negro  votes  into  the  fold,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  keep  the  embittered  Southern  white  vote  down.  This  deter 
mination  led  the  Radicals  to  pass  the  infamous  Reconstruction  Act, 
placing  the  South  under  military  law,  and  to  attempt  the  impeach 
ment  of  Andrew  Jonnson,  both  of  which  actions  are  passed  over  as 
quickly  and  quietly  as  possible  by  Mr.  Du  Bois.  On  the  shoulders  of 
this  group  of  men  may  be  placed  the  responsibility  for  the  ruin  of  the 
South  and  eventually  of  the  negro  himself.  To  claim  for  the  Radicals 
broad  vision  and  statesmanship,  as  a  whole  is  absurd.  They  were 
G.A.R.  politicians  and  played  the  same  role  as  the  protagonists  of 
the  American  Legion  today. 

"Black  Reconstruction"  is  an  ambitious  work,  and  one  cannot  but 
admire  the  immense  industry  involved  in  developing  new  sources  of 
information.  Though  possibly  not  in  agreement  with  the  author's 
interpretations  of  his  material,  one  is  never  disinterested.  It  is  a 
dynamic  book  and  will  undoubtedly  provoke  new  arguments  on  an 
old  controversy. 

DOUGLAS  DEBEVOISE 


RENASCENT  MEXICO.  Edited  by  Hubert  Herring  and  Herbert  Weinstock. 
Covici  Friede,  $2.50. 


events  in  Mexico,  there  has  been  of  late  years  an  embitter- 
ing  controversy.  It  is  economic.  Also,  it  is  religious.  And  reli 
gion,  added  to  economy,  affects  politics  and  diplomacy.  This  book 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  373  ] 

contains  a  symposium  on  Mexico  which  is  intended  to  spread  light, 
not  heat.  Men  who  know  the  subject  write  clearly  and  pleasantly 
about  the  revolution  that  is  sweeping  over  the  country,  the  plans  for 
reconstruction  and  the  cultural  background  of  the  people.  We  see 
the  landscape  as  a  whole.  We  see  that  landscape  as  it  is  seen  by  these 
men.  But  there  arises  a  question.  Admitting  that  the  vision  is  com 
prehensive,  can  we  also  say  that  it  is  unobstructed?  Do  we  see  what 
we  are  looking  at,  as  it  really  is?  These  writers  survey  Mexico  — 
north,  south,  east  and  west  —  but  always  through  a  window.  The 
glass  is  transparent;  but  all  glass  intercepts  rays  of  light.  We  gaze 
upon  the  scene  beyond.  But  the  scene  as  it  reaches  us,  has  been 
robbed  in  a  measure  of  actuality.  The  facts  are  there,  but  they  are 
surrounded  by  an  atmosphere  which  is  not  quite  the  atmosphere  that 
people  breathe. 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  putting  a  name  to  the  transparency  that 
permits  the  vision  which  it  affects.  In  Germany,  it  is  known  as  Neo- 
paganism.  It  spreads  over  Russia,  over  Turkey  and  —  in  a  decorous 
dilution  —  over  the  English  speaking  world.  We  live  in  an  era  of 
Humanism,  and  Humanism  is  the  medium  of  visibility  that  is  spread 
over  these  pages. 

The  Humanists  are  engaged  upon  a  fascinating  experiment.  Ex 
pressed  in  crude  terms,  this  experiment  is  an  endeavor  to  satisfy  the 
being  of  man  without  assuming  that  God  also  is  a  Being.  It  is  not  a 
new  experiment  nor,  hitherto,  has  it  ever  succeeded.  Of  this  experi 
ment,  Mexico  is  among  the  most  interesting  laboratories.  In  describ 
ing  the  experiment,  the  Humanists  adopt  a  subtle  and  a  seductive 
diplomacy.  They  tell  the  truth.  They  tell  nothing  that  is  contrary 
to  the  truth.  But  do  they  tell  the  whole  truth? 

We  are  reminded  that  the  Mexicans  were  Americans  before  there 
were  Americans  in  the  Mayflower,  that  they  established  a  civilization, 
that  they  carved  a  Calendar  Stone.  It  is  not  made  so  plain  that  they 
also  carved  the  Stone  of  Sacrifice  on  which  the  blood  of  human 
victims  never  ceased  to  flow  —  victims  to  be  numbered  by  scores  of 
thousands.  The  world  today  is  not  entirely  altruistic.  But  nowhere  is 
there  to  be  found  a  worship  so  sanguinary  and  so  hideous  as  the 
awful  atrocities  that  passed  for  legitimate  ritual  among  the  pre- 
Christian  Mexicans. 

Few  will  suggest  that  there  were  no  abuses  within  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  which  transformed  Mexico.  The  fact  remains  that 
this  Church  embraces  the  main  body  of  the  people  and  that  there  is 
no  alternative  to  it  suggested  in  these  pages.  Yet  what  is  the  account 
of  the  Church  here  presented?  Merely  a  passing  reference.  And  what 
kind  of  reference?  That  the  Church  perpetuated  the  superstitions  of 
the  Middle  Ages.  Were  those  superstitions  all  that  the  Church  per- 


[  374  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

petuated?  It  is  to  the  Church,  with  all  her  faults  and  failures,  that 
Mexico  owes  a  majestic  architecture,  her  education,  and  the  heritage 
of  a  Christendom  which  produced  a  Galileo  and  a  Dante,  a  Velas 
quez,  a  Michael  Angelo  and  a  St.  Francis  of  Assisi. 

It  is,  we  submit,  a  confusion  of  the  issue  to  suggest  that  Neo-pagan- 
ism,  whether  in  Russia  or  in  Mexico,  has  adopted  the  principles  of 
religious  equality  and  cultural  freedom.  A  Mexican  priest,  writing 
these  words  in  his  parish  magazine  —  if  indeed  priests  and  parishes 
can  be  found  associated  with  a  magazine  —  would  immediately  get 
into  trouble.  These  words,  if  printed  in  Russia,  supposing  that  such 
printing  could  be  arranged,  would  render  the  writer  liable  to  a  ban 
ishment  worse  than  death.  All  that  English-speaking  peoples  mean 
by  freedom  of  the  mind  is  denied  under  the  Neo-pagan  autocracies. 

p.  w.  WILSON 


THE  FIRST  CENTURY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,  1770- 
1870.  By  Fred  Lewis  Pattee.  Appleton-Century,  $3.50. 

HP  HE  beginning-point  for  histories  of  American  literature  moves 
•*•  steadily  forward,  as  more  and  more  rigid  standards  of  criticism 
are  applied  to  the  writings  of  native  pioneers.  Wendell  and  Green- 
ough's  incredibly  dull  textbook  on  the  subject,  written  considerably 
more  than  a  quarter-century  ago,  devotes  about  two-thirds  of  its 
space  to  early  New  England  worthies  of  the  stripe  of  Cotton  Mather 
and  Jonathan  Edwards.  A  recent  study  of  fiction,  Harlan  Hatcher's 
"The  Making  of  the  Modern  American  Novel,"  takes  the  dawn  of 
this  century  as  its  point  of  departure,  Mr.  Hatcher's  contention  being 
that  with  the  exception  of  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  and  "Moby  Dick" 
there  was  no  novel  written  in  this  country  of  any  real  consequence 
before  1900.  He  adds  that  "Moby  Dick"  really  belongs  to  us,  since  it 
was  our  generation  that  discovered  it. 

Fred  Lewis  Pattee,  a  conservative  professor  whose  judgments  are 
quite  academic,  completes  his  long  history  of  our  literature  —  parts 
of  which  have  been  appearing  at  intervals  for  several  years  —  with 
a  large  volume  entitled  "The  First  Century  of  American  Literature," 
taking  as  his  dates  1770  to  1870.  Two  great  wars  are  his  pivotal 
points.  Thus  he  omits  altogether  the  production  of  the  early  colonial 
period.  Even  so,  he  includes  a  large  number  of  names  and  titles  that 
have  only  historic  interest,  and  deserve  no  space  on  the  basis  of 
intrinsic  artistic  merit.  There  would  have  been  far  less  excuse  for  a 
quarrel  on  this  ground  if  the  book  had  been  called  simply  "A  First 
Century  of  American  Writing,"  since  obviously  much  of  the  material 
discussed  is  not  literature  at  all.  In  fact,  the  earlier  pages  of  the  book 
show  the  result  of  a  great  deal  of  careful  and  laborious  scholarship, 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  375  ] 

but  they  are  devoted  to  a  discussion  of  the  works  of  people  who,  while 
often  exceedingly  interesting  as  personalities,  were  not  able  to  write 
anything  worth  preserving  except  for  its  possible  social  significance. 

Lest  I  fall  into  an  error  similar  to  the  one  I  have  just  accused  Dr. 
Pattee  of  making,  let  me  explain  that  his  volume  is  intended  prima 
rily  for  use  as  a  textbook,  and  makes  only  a  general  pretense  of  ap 
pealing  to  people  who  read  for  entertainment  and  edification,  rather 
than  to  be  able  to  answer  questions  on  examination.  The  possessor 
of  a  keener  and  clearer  mind,  Vernon  Lee  Parrington,  even  though 
somewhat  hampered  by  a  pre-conceived  theory,  did  make  excellent 
social  material  out  of  his  examination  of  early  American  literature. 
Of  this,  Dr.  Pattee  is  patently  not  capable;  he  generalizes  loosely,  and 
his  sweeping  observations  upon  the  shifting  American  scene  are  not 
at  all  the  sort  to  make  the  observant  reader  sit  up,  with  a  feeling  of 
delight  and  surprise,  at  the  discovery  of  crystallized  insight. 

Since  I  am  neither  forced  to  teach  nor  to  study  Dr.  Pattee's  book, 
there  would  be  no  point  in  my  trying  to  pass  upon  its  merits  as  a 
textbook.  But  I  cannot  overlook  the  opportunity  to  say  that  a  text 
book  on  literature  should  be  written  in  at  least  moderately  good 
English.  And  Dr.  Pattee  is  guilty  of  some  of  the  most  astonishingly 
bad  writing  in  the  present  volume  that  I  have  come  upon  in  many  a 
day.  It  is,  in  my  sober  judgment,  little  short  of  criminal  to  put  before 
students  whose  style,  if  they  are  ever  to  have  any,  is  unformed,  a  book 
in  which  page  after  page  is  filled  with  inverted  sentences.  I  say  noth 
ing  of  the  free  use  of  sentences  without  verbs,  to  which  we  are  by  now 
perhaps  accustomed;  but  what  possible  excuse  can  there  be  for  such 
contortions  of  words  as  these,  to  cite  only  a  few  that  made  my  flesh 
creep? 

Written  not  at  all  was  it  for  profit. 

Noteworthy  indeed  much  of  this  practical  wisdom. 

A  document  is  it  that  later  critics  cannot  neglect. 

The  classic  spirit  —  perfection  of  form  imposed  upon  strength  of  feeling 

—  was  by  these  lyrics  brought  to  the  American  bourgeoisie. 

The  youngest  member  of  the  group  was  James  Russell  Lowell,  born  in 

1819.  Fourteen  .years  was  he  younger  than  Emerson,  thirteen  years 

younger  than  Hawthorne. 

There  are  hundreds  of  sentences  beginning  with  an  adverb,  and  in 
no  instance  is  anything  gained  by  such  wretched  arrangements;  on 
the  contrary,  as  may  be  seen  from  some  of  the  horrible  examples 
cited  just  above,  the  usual  order  of  words  would  be  a  distinct 
improvement. 

When,  however,  I  have  said  that  Dr.  Pattee's  writing  strikes  me  as 
shockingly  bad,  and  that  much  of  his  subject  matter  could  interest 
only  the  student  out  to  make  good  grades,  or  the  chauvinistic  Amer- 


[  376  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

lean  whose  patriotism  causes  him  to  value  the  native  product  as  far 
beyond  its  merit  (as  the  latter  was  esteemed  in  most  instances  by 
contemporary  reviewers),  it  remains  true  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
information  to  be  had  from  Dr.  Pattee's  book.  His  emphasis  upon 
the  early  development  of  the  literary  magazine,  for  example,  and  its 
effect  upon  the  typical  American  short  story;  his  discussion  of  the 
growth  of  our  own  kind  of  humor;  his  chapter  on  "The  Annuals  and 
Gift  Books"  in  which  I  believe  he  has  broken  new  ground;  his  really 
excellent  chapter  on  Cooper,  and  various  scattered  comments  —  put 
those  of  us  who  love  American  literature  in  his  debt.  One  must  ad 
mire  his  industry  in  wading  through  so  much  hopeless  stuff;  a  meas 
ure  of  his  mettle  in  this  respect  may  be  had  from  his  earlier  editing 
of  Freneau,  whose  poetry  he  still  likes  although  Freneau  was  never 
better  than  a  third-rate  versemaker. 

As  for  Dr.  Pattee's  critical  judgments,  they  are  what  might  be 
expected.  In  general,  he  is  inclined  to  blame  the  times  rather  than 
the  man  himself  for  failure,  and  to  harp  steadily  upon  the  evils  of  the 
feminine  influence  on  American  letters  from  the  very  beginning  — 
a  subject  about  which  there  is  still  considerable  feeling,  and  with 
more  reason  at  present  because  the  women  novelists  are  so  much 
more  numerous  and  more  distinguished  than  their  male  competitors. 
Of  Poe,  for  example,  whom  he  neither  likes  nor  understands,  he 
writes:  "Poe  was  a  genius  thrown  into  the  muck-heap  of  an  unliter- 
ary  generation,  the  feminine  'thirties  and  'forties  of  democratic 
America."  This  is  too  simple  an  explanation.  Does  Dr.  Pattee  mean 
to  suggest  that  Poe  would  have  achieved  real  greatness  if  he  had 
lived  in  the  'twenties  and  'thirties  of  plutocratic  America?  Why 
blame  the  women  for  Poe's  own  weaknesses? 

In  his  last  chapter  he  summarizes  the  hundred  years,  and  his 
winnowings  show  only  Irving  and  Cooper  of  the  early  period.  Later 
he  names  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Holmes,  Mrs. 
Stowe,  Thoreau  and  Lowell  as  the  classic  eight  of  the  New  England 
resurgence  and  adds,  "Critics  of  two  generations  later,  however,  have 
made  sad  havoc  with  these  valuations.  Three  non-New  Englanders 
they  have  placed  above  the  eight  —  Whitman,  Melville,  Poe;  and 
they  have  reduced  the  eight  to  three  —  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  and 
Thoreau."  It  is  quite  impossible  to  escape  the  conclusion  that  the 
critics  of  two  generations  later  are  eminently  sound  in  their  severe 
judgments. 

Naturally,  since  Dr.  Pattee  writes  extensively  of  American  mag 
azines,  the  name  of  the  North  American  Review  appears  repeatedly 
in  his  later  pages,  and  his  final  tribute  is  in  these  words  —  after  he 
has  spoken  of  the  invaluable  place  the  magazines  occupy  in  the  work 
of  our  literary  historians  —  "From  such  a  list  one  might  trace  the 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  377  ] 

entire  literary  development  of  a  century.  .  .  .  One  might  do  the 
same  thing  for  the  period  after  1815  had  one  only  a  file  of  the  North 
American  Review.  Most  important  of  all  was  it  of  all  the  critical 
forces  that  shaped  our  literature  in  half  a  century.  It  reviewed  every 
significant  American  book  from  the  standpoint  of  literary  dictator; 
it  made  and  unmade  poets  and  novelists;  it  laid  down  literary  laws 
for  the  nation.  It  brought  fame  to  dozens  of  writers,  the  list  begin 
ning  perhaps  with  Mrs.  Child,  Cooper,  and  Hawthorne." 

Two  odd  mistakes  escaped  the  vigilant  eye  of  James  A.  Anderson, 
who  checked  the  manuscript,  according  to  the  introductory  note. 
One  is  a  misspelling  of  the  name  of  McGufTey,  of  McGuffey's 
Readers,  and  the  other  is  a  reference  to  Maupassant's  famous  ghost 
story  as  "La  Hula,"  giving  it  a  slightly  Hawaiian  flavor  to  which  it 
is  not  at  all  entitled. 

HERSGHEL  BRICKELL 


THE  FOUNDING  OF  HARVARD   COLLEGE.   By  Samuel  Eliot 
Morison.  Harvard  University  Press,  $5.00. 


T^HIS  is  the  first  volume,  in  order,  of  "The  Tercentennial  History 
-••  of  Harvard  College  and  University,  1636-1936."  The  author  has 
already  edited  a  cooperative  work,  "The  Development  of  Harvard 
University,  1869-1929,"  which  was  published  five  years  ago.  Even 
tually,  "The  Tercentennial  History"  will  comprise  five  stout  vol 
umes.  Judging  by  the  contents  of  the  two  which  have  already  ap 
peared,  this  important  task  will  never  have  to  be  done  again. 

Like  Thomas  Prince,  who  began  his  "History  of  New  England  " 
with  the  flood  according  to  Scripture,  Mr.  Morison  begins  at  the 
beginning.  He  gets  only  as  far  as  the  year  before  the  first  charter  of 
1650,  by  virtue  of  which  Harvard  is  today  the  oldest  corporation 
in  the  country.  Almost  a  third  of  this  volume  is  devoted  to  the  origin 
and  development  of  the  various  universities  of  Europe,  with  special 
emphasis  on  Cambridge,  and  in  particular  Emmanuel  College, 
where  John  Harvard  took  his  degree.  The  fact  that  most  of  the  col 
lege  graduates  among  the  early  settlers  of  New  England  came  from 
Cambridge  was  decisive  —  but  the  influence  of  Edinburgh,  as  well 
as  Trinity,  in  Dublin,  where  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  studied,  was  by  no 
means  without  importance.  Leyden  and  Franeker  are  featured,  also, 
as  the  nursery  and  refuge  of  Puritan  dissent  in  England. 

Harvard  College  was  founded  by  an  act  of  the  colonial  legislature 
of  Massachusetts,  at  the  end  of  a  "heavy  day's  business"  on  October 
28,  1636,  the  future  regicide,  Henry  Vane,  being  then  governor. 
John  Harvard  was  not,  as  is  commonly  believed,  the  founder,  but  the 
first  individual  benefactor  of  a  college  already  two  years  old.  The 


[  378  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

first  class  (of  nine  students)  was  graduated  in  1642.  For  the  "sus 
pended  animation"  of  one  entire  academic  year  (1639-1640)  no  in 
formation  is  available.  From  that  August  of  1 640,  when  the  excellent 
Henry  Dunster  was  wisely  chosen  "president,"  the  existence  of 
Harvard  College,  in  spite  of  almost  constant  squabbles  and  occa 
sional  misfortunes,  has  been  reasonably  secure.  If  another  future 
regicide,  Hugh  Peter,  could  have  had  his  way,  the  college  would 
probably  be  at  Marblehead  today.  In  November,  1637,  the  present 
site  was  fixed  upon,  and  in  the  following  September  John  Harvard 
died  at  Charlestown,  leaving  half  his  estate  of  seventeen  hundred 
pounds  and  all  his  books  to  the  college,  which  was  given  his  name 
by  the  legislature,  in  March  1639. 

It  is  amusing  to  remember  that  the  first  head  of  Harvard  (never 
officially  recognized  as  such)  was  a  rogue  who  died  in  a  London  jail 
in  1674.  Nathaniel  Eaton  took  only  one  year  to  make  himself  odious 
by  beating  one  of  his  staff,  after  his  mercenary  wife  had  starved  the 
students.  Mr.  Morison's  story  of  this  unhappy  beginning  is  as  lively 
as  his  style.  Even  Henry  Dunster,  it  might  be  added,  had  to  be  put 
out  of  the  office  he  adorned  for  many  years  because  he  became  a 
Baptist  —  or  what  our  law-and-order  men  would  call  a  communist 
—  and  would  not  keep  quiet  about  it.  The  lucky  election  of  Dunster, 
however,  saved  the  college  by  the  skin  of  its  teeth. 

The  pains  and  patience  taken  in  the  making  of  this  book  were  as 
enormous  as  the  plan  of  it.  For  one  thing,  the  author  had  the  imagin 
ation  to  establish  a  most  plausible  reconstruction  of  the  first  college 
building.  Readers  can  learn  where  the  students  lived,  what  they  ate, 
how  they  played,  and  what  they  studied.  The  illustrations  are  many 
and  various,  and  a  great  deal  of  time  and  trouble  went  into  five  im 
portant,  but  innocent  looking,  appendices.  Two  maps  of  the  college 
part  of  Cambridge,  in  1638  and  today,  are  convenient  and  absorb 
ing.  Harvard  men  ought  to  look  into  this  book,  if  for  no  other  reason 
than  to  discover  that  no  likeness  of  John  Harvard  has  ever  been 
found  —  or  ever  existed,  so  far  as  is  known. 

They  would  do  well  to  consult  it  for  another  reason,  also.  Gradu 
ates  of  the  university  have  often  been  learned  but  not  frequently 
have  they  acquired  the  art  of  wearing  their  learning  so  lightly  as 
Professor  Morison.  In  this  book  they  can  discover  the  difference 
between  hod-carriers  of  facts  and  architects  of  ideas  —  or,  better 
still,  how  one  and  the  same  man  can  excel  at  both  the  trade  and  the 
profession.  As  a  rare  combination  of  research  and  assimilation,  this 
work  is  notable.  Its  faults  are  trifling,  and  the  scholarship  and  vision 
of  its  author  have  shown  how  much  ignorance  is  needed  to  call  such 
a  subject  as  this  one  narrow. 

STEWART  MITCHELL 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  379  ] 

DEEP  DARK  RIVER.  By  Robert  Rylee.  Farrar  &  Rinehart,  $2.50. 
KNEEL  TO   THE  RISING  SUN.  By  Erskine  Caldwell.   The  Viking 
Press,  $2.50. 

T^AKEN  together,  these  two  books  constitute  a  serious,  and  often 
-*-  very  bitter,  indictment  of  the  South  and  the  Southern  civiliza 
tion.  Mr.  Caldwell  and  his  work  are  already  well  known,  while  Mr. 
Rylee's  book  is  a  first  novel,  faulty,  sometimes  disappointing,  but 
with  much  that  is  impressive,  and  much  that  is  beautiful.  The  one 
deals  largely  with  the  poor  whites,  the  unemployed  laborers  and  the 
worse  than  unemployed  share-croppers,  as  well  as  with  the  negroes 
whose  position  is  still  more  miserable;  while  the  other  is  largely  con 
cerned  with  the  relations  between  the  two  races. 

"Niggers  have  been  the  curse  of  this  state,  and  of  the  South.  It  was 
too  easy  to  live  off  them.  But  living  off  somebody  else's  strength 
makes  you  weak,"  declares  old  Mr.  Rutherford,  himself  one  of  those 
white  men  who,  once  strong  and  energetic,  have  sunk  into  an  apathy 
and  decay  which  symbolizes  the  condition  of  that  part  of  Mississippi 
to  which  Mose  Southwick,  negro  laborer  and  farmhand,  came  after 
he  lost  his  job  in  a  Louisiana  gravel-pit,  and  where  he  was  presently 
tried  for  murder.  It  is  the  portrait  of  Mose  which  makes  the  novel 
memorable  as  a  thing  of  dignity  and  fineness.  For  Mose,  religious 
and  ambitious  to  be  ordained,  is  no  plaster  saint,  but  a  very  real 
human  being  who  does  wrong  sometimes,  and  on  at  least  one  occa 
sion  produces  tragic  results  by  sheer  negligence.  Yet  for  him  the 
author  can  claim,  and  one  feels  justly,  that  his  is  a  "great  soul." 

His  character  is  far  from  static;  it  develops  through  suffering  and 
injustice  and  even  more  through  an  interest  in  and  love  for  the  land 
he  cultivates,  which  gives  him  a  certain  pride  of  possession  in  those 
fields  which  are  not  his,  though  they  owe  so  much  to  his  labor.  He  is 
seen  clearly,  drawn  firmly  and  lovingly,  but  without  any  marring 
touch  of  sentimentality.  There  is  much  of  pathos,  nothing  of  bathos 
in  the  picture  of  Mose  and  his  helplessness  in  a  world  run  by  and  for 
white  people,  a  world  wherein,  according  to  Mr.  Rylee,  he  has  no 
rights,  nor  any  claim  to  justice.  Yet  by  sheer  force  and  fineness  of 
character  he  rises  above  circumstances  until  he  no  longer  seems 
pitiable  to  the  reader;  while  the  woman  lawyer  who  has  jeopardized 
her  career  in  his  defense,  feels  that:  "Mose  is  beyond  her  now,"  in  a 
peace  she  could  not  achieve. 

In  Mose,  the  sufferings  as  well  as  the  best  qualities  of  the  negro  are 
nobly  drawn;  and  if  the  rest  of  the  novel  matched  up  with  the  portrait 
of  its  central  character,  the  book  would  be  a  remarkable  one.  Un 
fortunately,  the  rest  of  the  novel  has  many  flaws.  Old  Mr.  Ruther 
ford  is  excellently  done,  but  Mary  Winston,  the  white  woman  lawyer 


i,o  :- 


[  380  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

whose  keen  sense  of  justice  compels  her  to  undertake  an  almost  hope 
less  task,  never  becomes  real.  Her  character  was  evidently  intended 
to  balance  that  of  Mose,  but  she  remains  a  lifeless  figure,  occasion 
ally  serving  as  a  mouthpiece  for  the  author.  The  courtroom  scenes, 
which  should  be  moving  and  dramatic,  fall  flat  —  partly  because  of 
Mary,  partly  because  Mr.  Rylee  has  not  worked  them  up  to  the 
degree  of  tension  which  would  make  them  memorable;  while  the 
figures  of  Mr.  Rutherford's  two  worthless  sons  are  as  unreal  as  their 
behavior  is  melodramatic.  At  present,  Mr.  Rylee  is  far  better  at 
contemplative  analysis  of  character  than  he  is  at  handling  dramatic 
moments;  the  first  part  of  his  book  and  its  concluding  chapters  are 
much  the  best,  though  the  descriptions  of  the  life  of  which  he  is  tell 
ing  have  ease  and  sureness  from  first  to  last.  His  deep  compassion, 
his  rebellion  against  injustice,  result  in  an  outlook  far  from  hopeless. 
Mose  has  been  defeated;  his  cause  is  lost;  yet  with  him  remains  the 
victory. 

It  is  the  wide  difference  in  their  outlook  which  most  sharply  dis 
tinguishes  Robert  Rylee's  work  from  that  of  Erskine  Caldwell.  Mr. 
Caldwell  has  a  keener  sense  of  drama,  a  more  incisive  touch;  but 
there  is  no  lift,  no  possibility  of  triumph  wrung  from  defeat  in  the 
negroes  and  poor  whites  of  his  brief,  vivid  stories.  The  longest  tale 
in  the  book,  which  gives  its  title  to  the  volume,  is  an  utterly  horrible 
one  of  physical  and  psychical  degradation.  It  is  not  the  central, 
hideous  episode  of  the  devouring  of  the  old  man  by  the  ravenous  hogs 
which  is  the  ugliest  thing  in  the  story,  but  the  complete  debasement 
of  the  son,  Lonnie — a  cringing,  trembling  wretch  who  cannot  even 
be  loyal  to  the  one  man  who  has  helped  and  trusted  him.  From  the 
cutting  off  of  the  dog's  tail  to  that  dreadful  moment  when  the  body 
of  the  betrayed  negro  falls  crumpled  upon  the  ground,  horror  follows 
horror  until  one's  nerves  can  endure  no  more. 

And  the  other  tales  are  almost  if  not  quite  as  hopeless.  The  mother 
who  sells  her  little  daughter  to  buy  food  for  her  other  children;  the 
unemployed  laborer  who  dies  on  the  sidewalk  while  the  owner  of  the 
big  automobile  which  has  struck  and  killed  him  declares  that  he  is 
only  faking;  the  huge  negro,  Candy-Man,  shot  down  by  a  policeman 
as  he  comes  swinging  along  the  road  on  the  way  to  visit  his  girl  — 
these  and  all  the  rest  are  part  of  a  record  of  the  merciless  exploitation 
of  the  weak,  of  cruelty,  treachery,  of  the  lowest  depths  to  which 
human  nature  can  fall. 

Both  books  in  their  depiction  of  concrete  instances  are  an  arraign 
ment  of  the  society  which  makes  such  instances  possible.  Mary 
Winston  dares  not  defend  Mose  by  using  the  truths  she  would  have 
used  had  he  been  a  white  man,  because  she  knows  that  to  do  so  would 
alienate  public  opinion,  and  deprive  him  of  any  chance  of  escape  he 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  381  ] 

might  have.  No  one  voices  a  protest  when  Candy- Man  is  shot  down, 
and  the  men  of  the  community  all  join  in  pumping  bullets  into  the 
body  of  the  negro  who  had  dared  stand  up  against  a  white  man,  even 
though  they  knew  that  white  man  to  be  unutterably  vile.  But  where 
Erskine  Caldwell  merely  presents  the  case  as  he  sees  it,  Robert  Rylee 
goes  further  and  deeper,  maintaining  his  belief  in  the  power  of  char 
acter  to  surmount  even  the  worst  kind  of  circumstance.  Mr.  Cald 
well  apparently  sees  degradation  as  finality;  but  it  is  quite  evident 
that  neither  the  story  of  Mose  nor  that  of  Mary  is  finished  when 
"Deep  Dark  River"  comes  to  an  end. 

LOUISE  MAUNSELL  FIELD 

HERITAGE.  By  George  F.  Hummel.  Stokes,  $2.50. 

SECOND  HOEING.  By  Hope  Williams  Syke.  Putnam,  $2.50. 

A  FEW  FOOLISH  ONES.  By  Gladys  Hasty  Carroll.  Macmillan,  $2.50. 

HP  HERE  is  a  swelling  procession  of  regional  novels.  Authors  have 
•••  suddenly  become  consciously  regional;  publishers  are  delighted 
to  fill  their  lists  with  this  sure-fire,  old-home-town  stuff  in  modern 
garb.  At  least  the  trend  is  producing  novels  worth  reading  as  Baedek 
ers,  if  not  as  literature.  No  author  writes  of  stars  falling  on  Alabama 
without  some  fair  idea  of  what  sort  of  territory  they  are  grazing. 
These  books  are  popular  because  their  sectionalism  satisfies  the  curi 
osity  of  many  readers  concerning  the  lives  of  people  living  in  the 
wheat  belt,  or  the  scrub  country  of  the  South  (witness  Miss  Ferber's 
"So  Big,"  Bromfield's  "The  Farm,"  or  Marjorie  Rinnan  Rawling's 
"South  Moon  Under")  and  also  nourishes  the  urban  dweller's 
nostalgic  hankerings  after  the  land. 

In  "Heritage,"  whose  scene  is  cast  on  Long  Island,  Mr.  Hummel 
claims  what  few  casual  residents  realize  today,  that  "in  spite  of  the 
powerful  influx  of  men-masses  and  social  concepts  from  the  giant 
metropolis  which  has  absorbed  the  entire  western  end  of  Long  Is 
land,  whatever  is  fundamental  and  lasting  in  the  character  of  present 
day  Long  Islanders  is  component  of  that  slow  insistent  seepage  of  the 
New  England  tradition  through  the  North  American  continent  and 
North  American  life."  For  those  who  are  interested  in  tracking  down 
such  a  study,  this  sociological  novel  (which  by  Mr.  Hummel's  own 
statement  is  a  labor  of  love)  will  prove  gratifying.  Others  will  un 
doubtedly  consider  it  dull  and  prosaic.  The  book  is  set  solidly,  some 
times  stolidly,  in  its  wide,  old-fashioned  frame  of  loving  memory. 

The  inheritance  woven  into  the  tale  is  the  Germany  of  the  'forties. 
While  the  Puritan  settlers  made  and  tried  to  keep  Norwold  (South- 
hold?),  multiplying  through  intermarriage  and  prospering  in  their 
little  self-contained  community,  the  immigrants  joined  it  to  the 


[  382  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

outside  world.  The  author  gives  us  the  parallel,  and  later  widely 
diverging,  lives  of  twin  brothers  of  German  extraction  and  their  en 
tanglements  with  American  Puritan  stock.  He  mingles,  fuses,  and 
muddles  the  life  histories  of  three  generations.  He  opens  with  John 
Beebe's  hiring  of  Gottlob  Weller,  sturdy  immigrant  farm-hand  and 
his  gallant  Frau  Barbara,  and  ends  the  fifty  year  span  with  the 
marriage  of  Beebe's  granddaughter  and  Weller's  illegitimate  grand 
child  into  one  of  Southold's  oldest  families.  Physchologically  speak 
ing,  we  are  confronted  with  the  wormwood  and  gall  of  defeat  in  love 
and  material  success,  as  it  crystallized  in  the  souls  of  twin  brothers, 
aliens  to  a  new  world,  and  never  wholly  of  it. 

Miss  Syke's  "Second  Hoeing"  emphasizes  that  same  gulf  between 
foreigner  and  American,  even  for  the  citizen  with  foreign-born 
parents.  That  bridge  of  nationality  is  never  really  crossed  in  her 
book.  Yet  one  would  have  expected  the  adjustment  to  come  in  the 
last  generation,  the  "Second  Hoeing"  following  America's  most 
crowded  moments  of  expansion  and  lightning  "progress." 

That  familiar  longing  for  the  past,  and  for  farming  as  a  "way  of 
life,"  that  echoed  through  Pound's  "Once  a  Wilderness"  permeates 
"Second  Hoeing,"  and  is  present  once  more  in  Mrs.  Carroll's  "A 
Few  Foolish  Ones."  The  latter  is  a  finely  turned  novel,  sentimental 
but  authentic  and  alive,  and  somehow  consoling  in  its  philosophy. 
"Second  Hoeing"  has  for  its  locale  a  setting  heretofore  foreign  to 
fiction,  the  Colorado  sugar-beet  country.  The  writer  furnishes  a  de 
piction  less  impersonal  than  is  usual  in  European  novels  of  soil, 
though  equally  naturalistic  in  detail.  Hannah  Schreissmiller  is  made 
of  the  same  heroic  stuff  as  Kate  Bragdon  in  "A  Few  Foolish  Ones," 
but  she  does  not  accept  as  easily  a  backwater  fate,  nor  arrive  at  the 
same  serenity  as  Mrs.  Carroll's  New  Englander. 

The  similarity  obtains  likewise  between  Gus  Bragdon,  hard 
Maine  farmer,  loving  trees  better  than  fellow  humans  because  they 
were  less  "whiffle-minded"  —  and  the  German  Russian  Fritz,  harsh 
taskmaster,  caring  only  about  his  beet  crop  and  renter's  prestige.  It 
seems  almost  as  though  the  three  authors  employed  a  set  pattern; 
each  has  a  self-sacrificing  mother  and  stanch  daughter,  and  the 
same  existence  barren  of  all  but  a  few  crude  pleasures. 

In  other  words,  a  regional  convention  has  come  into  existence;  for 
years  to  come  the  presses  will  be  flooded  with  regional  novels,  as  care 
fully  patterned  from  the  original  prototype  as  the  movie  stars  of  the 
Gar  bo  era. 

ELEANOR  L.  VAN  ALEN 


Contributors5  Column 

Herbert  Agar  ("Just  Why  Economics?")  is  the  author  of  "The  People's 
Choice,"  that  entertaining  account  of  the  Presidents  of  the  United 
States  which  won  the  Pulitzer  prize  for  history  in  1 934.  This  article 
will  appear  as  a  chapter  on  the  Literature  of  Economics  in  "What  Is 
a  Book?  Thoughts  about  Writing"  —  an  anthology  which  Dale 
Warren  is  editing  for  publication  by  Houghton  Mifflin  in  November. 

L.  B.  Hessler  ("On  'Bad  Boy'  Criticism")  is  Assistant  Professor  of 
English  at  the  University  of  Minnesota.  This  article  seems  to  be  the 
result  of  a  long,  smoldering  rebellion  on  the  part  of  one  who  has  made 
the  love  of  books  his  vocation  as  well  as  his  recreation. 

Paul  Engle  ("Prologue"),  the  author  of  "American  Song"  and 
"Worn  Earth,"  is  now  a  Rhodes  Scholar  from  the  State  of  Iowa,  at 
Merton  College,  Oxford.  Curiously  enough,  for  a  poet,  he  is  con 
centrating  in  economics  and  modern  history.  However,  he  is  also 
working  on  a  new  book,  to  which  "Prologue"  will  be  the  introduc 
tion. 

Peter  Odegard  ("The  Future  of  States'  Rights")  is  the  author  of 
"Pressure  Politics,"  and  "The  American  Public  Mind."  He  is  Pro 
fessor  of  Political  Science  at  Ohio  State  University.  The  whole 
problem  of  States'  Rights  has  been  one  of  his  hobbies  for  many  years. 

Kile  Crook  ("Wickford  Gardens")  is  a  Connecticut  poet,  and  one  of 
those  "back-to-the-landers"  that  one  hears  so  much  about. 

Hoffman  Nicker  son  ("In  Behalf  of  States'  Rights")  is  best  known  for  his 
history  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition.  However,  he  is  also  a  student  of 
American  affairs.  This  paper  springs  from  a  profound  conviction,  the 
result  of  his  European  and  American  studies  on  the  importance  of 
local  governments. 

Ruth  Pickering  ("Grant  Wood,  Painter  in  Overalls")  is  Associate 
Editor  of  Arts  and  Decoration.  She  is  enthusiasic  about  the  growing 
interest  in  art  throughout  this  country. 

Richard  Dana  Skinner  ("A  Letter  to  Walter  Damrosch")  was  formerly 
the  dramatic  critic  of  The  Commonweal,  and  is  now  Associate  Editor 
of  the  North  American  Review. 

William  Cor  dell  ("Dark  Days  Ahead  for  King  Cotton")  was  formerly 
an  assistant  to  the  head  of  the  Department  of  Political  Science  at  the 
University  of  Arkansas.  He  edits  a  yearly  anthology  of  the  best  maga 
zine  articles,  entitled  "Molders  of  American  Thought." 

[383] 


[  384  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Thomas  Sugrue  ("To  a  Pair  of  Gold  Earrings")  will  be  remembered  by 
North  American  Review  readers  for  his  pungent  article,  "California 
—  in  Thy  Fashion,"  which  appeared  in  our  June  issue.  His  versatile 
temperament  is  in  no  way  phased  by  the  task  of  running  off  a  sonnet. 

Henry  Morton  Robinson  ("Our  Tipstaff  Police")  is  the  author  of 
"Stout  Cortez,"  as  well  as  of  several  volumes  of  poetry.  This  study  of 
our  police  system  is  a  hobby  with  him. 

Arthur  Van  Dyck  ("Radio,  and  Our  Future  Lives")  is  the  Engineer-in- 
Charge  of  the  RCA  License  Division  Laboratories.  There  are  few 
people  in  a  better  position  to  judge  the  accomplishments  and  future 
possibilities  of  radio. 

Charles  Hanson  Towne  ("Miss  Craigie")  is  well-known  as  former  editor 
of  Harper's  Bazaar,  and  as  a  columnist.  He  wrote  the  English  lyrics 
for  Offenbach's  opera,  "La  Belle  Helene." 

Louise  Maunsell  Field  ("Emancipating  the  Novel")  writes  here  about 
some  trends  in  the  modern  novel.  Readers  will  remember  a  similar 
article  in  our  December  issue  on  the  subject  of  modern  biography, 
entitled  "Biographical  New  Dealing." 

Paul  Vanorden  Shaw  ("'Good  Neighbor'  —  and  Cuba")  is  an  estab 
lished  authority  on  Latin  America.  He  has  taught  history  at  Colum 
bia  University  for  many  years,  and  is  now  teaching  and  doing  re 
search  work  in  Panama. 

Dorothy  Quick  ("A  Little  Girl's  Mark  Twain")  writes  short  stories  for 
current  periodicals. 

Elbra  Dickinson  ("Devotional")  is  a  Massachusetts  poet,  and  a  distant 
relative  of  Emily  Dickinson. 

Dorothy  Gorrell  ("Tumultuous  Cloister")  is  the  Managing  Editor  of 
the  Wellesley  College  News. 

Catharine  Cook  Smith  ("In  Defense  of  Horsehair")  believes  that  even 
Victorian  furniture  has  its  moments.  She  has  many  other  interests, 
among  them  the  sponsoring  of  children's  dramatics. 

Henry  Fort  Milton  ("History  as  a  Major  Sport"),  the  author  of  "The 
Age  of  Hate"  and  "The  Eve  of  Conflict,"  is  the  President  and  Editor 
of  the  Chattanooga  News.  This  article,  as  well  as  Mr.  Agar's,  will 
appear  in  Dale  Warren's  "What  Is  a  Book?" 


THE 

NORTH 

AMERICAN 

REVIEW 


Founded  1815 


JOHN  PELL  Editor 
RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER  Associate  Editor 


VOLUME  240  DECEMBER  1935  NUMBER  3 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Foreword                                                                                   j.  p.  387 

Songs  of  a  Mountain  Plowman                               JESSE  STUART  391 

Recovery  of  What?                                  CHARLES  MAGEE  ADAMS  396 

An  Essay  on  Essays                  KATHARINE  FULLERTON  GEROULD  409 

Going  after  the  Cows  in  a  Fog.  Verse        R.  p.  TRISTRAM  COFFIN  419 

New  Deal  Catharsis                                                  FRANK  KENT  42 1 

Profit  Sharing                                                    GEORGE  HULL,  JR.  425 

Mexico,  My  Beloved.  Verse                               JOSEPHINE  NIGGLI  433 

Mexican  Small  Town                                      PHILIP  STEVENSON  434 

Martinez,  and  Mexico's  Renaissance                BROOKE  WARING  445 

Name  Five  Venezuelan  Ventriloquists!  Verse         M.  p.  BURDEN  458 

Reorganizing  these  United  States                    HERBERT  c.  PELL  460 

Old  Calamity                                        JOSEPH  FULLING  FISHMAN  470 

Where  Ignorant  Armies.  Verse            WINFIELD  TOWNLEY  SCOTT  487 

Modern  American  Biography                                  E.  H.  O'NEILL  488 

Unions  among  the  Unemployed    WM.  AND  KATHRYN  CORDELL  498 

The  Plum  Tree.  Verse                                            FRANCES  FROST  511 

Mahaley  Mullens.  Story                                       ROBERT  TURNEY  512 
Book  Reviews 

It  Can't  Happen  Here                                                    HERSCHEL  BRICKELL  543 

By  Sinclair  Lewis 

Vein  of  Iron                                                             LOUISE  MAUNSELL  FIELD  546 

By  Ellen  Glasgow 

Lucy  Gayheart                                                                               JOHN  SLOCUM  549 

By  Willa  Gather 

The  Voice  of  Bugle  Ann                                    THOMAS  CALDECOT  CHUBB  550 

By  MacKinlay  Kantor 

Feliciana                                                                     RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER  553 

By  Stark  Young 

The  Best  Short  Stories  of  1935                    WM.  AND  KATHRYN  CORDELL  554 

Edited  by  Edward  J.  O'Brien 

Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Politician                                                         E.  H.  O'NEILL  559 

By  William  B.  Hesseltine 

Lucius  Q,  C.  Lamar                                                              PHILIP  BURNHAM  564 

By  Wirt  Armistead  Gate 

Eugene  O'Neill:  A  Poet's  Quest                                          RICHARD  BURTON  568 

By  Richard  Dana  Skinner 

Notes  of  Death  and  Life                                                              MILDRED  BOIE  571 

By  Theodore  Morrison 

Contributors'  Column  575 

THE  NORTH_AMERICAN  REVIEW:  Published  quarterly  by  the  North  American  Review  Corporation. 

3,  597  Ms 


Publication  office,  Rumford  Building,  Concord,  N.  H.  Editorial  and  executive  office,  597  Madison 
Avenue,  New  York,  N.  Y.  Price  $1.00  a  copy;  $4.00  per  year;  Canada,  $4.25;  foreign  countries.  $4.50. 
Entered  as  second-class  matter  Dec.  18, 1920,  at  the  post  office  at  Concord,  N.  H. ,  under  Act  of  Congress 
of  March  3,  1879. 

Copyright.  1935,  by  the  North  American  Review  Corporation:  Walter  Butler  Mahony,  President; 
David  M.  Figart,  Secretary,  John  Pell,  Treasurer. 

Title  registered  U.  S.  Patent  Office. 


THE    NORTH    AMERICAN   REVIEW 

VOLUME  240  DECEMBER  1935  NUMBER  3 


Foreword 

A*  INTERVIEWER  asked  Henry  Ford,  the  other 
day,  what  he  thought  were  the  best  features  and  the 
worst  features  of  the  New  Deal.  "I  think  probably  it's  all 
good"  was  Mr.  Ford's  prompt  reply.  "I  think  it's 
probably  all  good  because  it  gives  people  experience.  We 
learn  only  by  experience." 

There  is  a  school  of  thought  —  labeled  the  Old  Guard 
—  which  believes  that  a  lot  of  the  experience  to  which  we 
are  being  subjected  is  unnecessary,  but  the  Old  Guard  is 
notoriously  intolerant.  There  was  no  practical  and 
thorough  way  to  explode  the  dreams  of  our  contemporary 
Utopians  except  by  giving  them  a  chance  to  see  what  they 
could  do.  Upton  Sinclair  was  a  plausible  and  dangerous 
fanatic  until  he  secured  the  nomination  for  the  governor 
ship  of  California;  now  he  is  just  another  has-been. 
Father  Coughlin  attained  the  front  page  and  political 
notoriety  via  the  radio;  but  this  very  notoriety  put  him 
out  of  favor  in  the  church,  instead  of  lifting  him  into  real 
political  prominence.  Professor  Warren  cut  his  own 
throat  when  he  cut  the  gold  content  of  the  dollar,  but 
failed  to  produce  a  millennium.  Huey  Long  was  a  martyr 
to  his  own  precepts:  if  he  had  not  corrupted  even  the 
medical  department  of  his  state,  it  is  alleged  his  life  might 
have  been  saved.  Rexford  Tugwell,  Felix  Frankfurter  and 
their  colleagues  have  erected  a  superb  object  lesson  in  the 
honors  of  bureaucracy. 

[387] 


[  388  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Of  course,  this  Utopian  business  does  not  exactly  form 
a  new  chapter  in  our  history.  Few  people  who  read 
newspaper  accounts  of  the  TVA,  the  Alaska  homestead 
project,  and  the  other  collectivist  schemes  which  infest 
the  New  Deal,  seem  to  realize  that  the  history  of  white 
men  on  the  American  continent  is  almost  a  parade  of  such 
dreams-come-true  (or  almost  true).  Jamestown,  the 
earliest  settlement  on  our  shores,  was  one  of  these;  and 
later  Plymouth  followed,  or  tried  to  follow  its  pattern. 
The  colonies  of  Georgia  and  Pennsylvania,  as  well  as 
many  others,  were  founded  as  miniature  Utopias  designed 
to  carry  out  somebody's  ideal.  Thomas  Hooker  and  his 
followers  carried  their  ideals,  as  well  as  their  women, 
children,  cattle,  pots  and  pans,  into  the  wilderness  to 
found  Connecticut;  while  Roger  Williams,  animated  by 
identical  motives,  found  his  way  to  Rhode  Island. 
Immediately  after  the  Revolution,  the  Vicomte  de 
Noailles  established,  and  soon  abandoned,  a  settlement 
on  the  north  branch  of  the  Susquehanna  appropriately 
called  Asylum.  Of  all  the  Utopian  projects  the  Mormon 
hejira  was  the  most  remarkable,  if  Thoreau's  vigil  at 
Walden  was  the  most  solitary.  All  of  these,  and  many 
others,  were  searching  for  perfection.  None  found  it,  to  be 
sure,  but  out  of  their  idealism  they  carved  our  nation. 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  this  curious  quality  of  mind,  in 
digenous  to  our  climate,  persists?  We  shall  always  go  on 
dreaming  about  the  perfect  community  and  its  many 
manifestations:  rural  electrification,  urban  hygiene, 
privileges  for  the  underprivileged,  full  dinner  pails  for  the 
shiftless,  and  automobiles  for  everybody. 

The  failure  to  recognize  this  deep-seated  American 
quality  accounts  for  a  good  deal  of  the  confusion  and 
bewilderment  which  infests  our  thinking  today.  Political 
writers  refer  to  conservatives  and  liberals  (borrowing  the 


FOREWORD  [  389  ] 

names  from  English  journals  of  opinion)  without  recog 
nizing  that  these  are  not  and  never  have  been  American 
categories.  Our  true  division  is  into  idealists  and  prag- 
matists.  The  conflict  between  the  two  points  of  view  is 
easily  traceable,  because  at  the  outset  of  the  Republic 
it  was  dramatized  by  two  of  its  greatest  figures,  Jefferson 
and  Hamilton.  Our  history  is  the  conflict  between  the 
two,  a  succession  of  transcendent  dreams  and  devastating 
disillusionment.  We  take  to  Stock  Market  gambling  as 
naturally  as  ducks  to  water,  because  it  is  a  sport  which 
conforms  to  our  temperament:  fanciful  prophecies,  exag 
gerated  enthusiasms,  occasionally  punctured  by  disillu 
sionment.  When  economic  theories  fail  to  rescue  us  from 
a  depression,  some  new  dream  does  the  trick.  Leave  it  to 
the  automobile  manufacturers  to  discover  streamlining 
and  the  Warner  Brothers,  Shakespeare. 

Incidentally,  their  current  production  "A  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream"  really  deserves  some  comment.  The 
Warner  Brothers  are  not  soft-headed,  and  they  do  not 
produce  art  for  art's  sake.  They  recognized  that  some 
thing  had  to  be  done  —  the  movies  were  losing  their  grip 
on  the  people.  Glamorous  girls,  gunmen,  trained  animals, 
dancers,  comedians,  G-men,  sophisticates,  Irish  mothers, 
nude  chorines,  little  boys,  little  girls,  all  the  pragmatic 
devices  had  lost  their  old  appeal.  So  the  Warner  Brothers 
sent  for  Reinhardt  and  Shakespeare  (they  probably  did 
not  know  he  was  dead). 

The  movies  afford  the  finest  medium  for  artistic 
expression  which  has  as  yet  been  evolved,  and  they  may 
be  on  the  threshold  of  a  period  comparable  to  the 
Elizabethan  age  in  the  drama.  Some  directors  are  begin 
ning  to  perceive  the  true  relationships  between  photog 
raphy,  music  and  the  human  mind,  and  to  develop  the 
technique  of  suggestion.  If,  in  the  last  analysis,  art  as  well 


[  390  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

as  natural  beauty  are  recognized  by  a  sensation  of  ecstasy, 
a  synthesis  of  color,  form  and  music  affords  an  unparal 
leled  opportunity  for  producing  it. 

Of  course,  ecstasy  can  be  produced  without  mechanical 
contrivances.  The  value  of  poetry  is  undiminished  by  the 
evolution  of  photography  and,  fortunately,  there  are 
poets  in  America,  as  well  as  motion  picture  directors. 
Some  of  them,  like  Jesse  Stuart,  live  in  the  country,  far 
from  New  York,  Chicago,  and  even  Hollywood.  Although 
he  has  occasionally  wandered  from  the  Kentucky  Moun 
tains,  he  has  never  left  them  for  long.  In  the  winters  he 
teaches  in  the  neighborhood  school,  summers  he  farms  his 
102  acre  farm  (it  has  two  acres  of  bottom  land).  He  un 
derstands  and  loves  his  native  hills  as  he  understands  and 
loves  the  power  of  words.  With  the  spirit  of  independence 
which  once  typified  the  American  farmer,  he  accepts  no 
government  bounties  and  allows  no  one  to  interfere  with 
his  freedom.  Being  a  student,  he  may  be  familiar  with 
Jefferson's  warning:  "Were  we  directed  from  Washington 
when  to  sow  and  when  to  reap  we  should  soon  want 
bread." 


Songs  of  a  Mountain  Plowman 

JESSE  STUART 

Here  are  the  songs  I  give  you:  a  wisp  of  leaves; 

Green  pines  —  white  evening  skies  —  a  bowl  of  blue; 

A  world  of  dirt  —  a  wind  among  the  trees  — 

These  things  to  leave  or  take  them  as  you  please. 

But  these  are  things  I  freely  give  to  you. 

Such  are  the  things  I  love:  a  clover  lane. 

And  bees  aworking  on  the  clover  tops  — 

The  blackberry  blossoms  drinking  fresh  spring  rain. 

And  soft  winds  gently  swaying  green  beech  tops. 

These  are  the  things  I  love  —  I  say,  I  love  — 

These  little  things  that  I'm  a  singing  of. 

And  reader,  I  would  love  to  walk  with  you; 

On  our  dirt  earth:  upon  this  bowl  of  blue; 

I'd  love  to  walk  with  you  and  talk  with  you. 


We  stand  here  idle,  half  afraid  to  stir. 

We  cannot  even  find  the  path  to  take. 

Too  many  roads  are  leading  everywhere, 

Through  pasturefields,  cornfields  and  brushy  brakes. 

Here  are  the  skies:  the  good  clean  wind  to  breathe, 

The  deep  rich  loamy  earth  beneath  our  feet, 

And  here  are  many  roads  to  take  or  leave; 

Earth  for  the  bed:  the  clean  wind  for  the  sheet. 

I  guess  it  does  not  matter  much  the  way  we  go, 

Or  where  we  go,  or  when,  or  how,  or  why. 

For  we  must  keep  our  feet  upon  the  earth 

And  we  must  live  in  wind  beneath  the  sky. 

The  road  lies  here  before  me,  if  I  lose 

It  is  my  fault:  no  certain  road  I  choose. 

[390 


[  392  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Now  listen  Plowman,  listen !  Don't  you  hear 

The  music  in  the  pasture  streams  this  year? 

And  don't  you  hear  caroling  of  birds, 

Songs  sweeter  than  the  songs  of  human  words  — 

Songs  lighter  than  the  wind  among  the  leaves. 

I  think  the  birds  stole  music  from  the  leaves 

When  winds  were  blowing  through  the  tops  of  trees. 

That  is  the  reason  that  the  birds  can  sing 

Much  sweeter  songs  than  I  can  sing  this  spring. 

Now  Plowman,  let  your  tired  mules  rest  a  spell 

And  lean  against  the  handles  of  your  bull-tongue  plow. 

I  know  you  cannot  see  the  oak  buds  swell, 

But  you  can  listen  to  the  song-birds  now. 

And  don't  you  think  the  songs  of  corn-field  birds 

Are  sweeter  than  the  songs  of  human  words? 


The  crickets  sing  and  all  around  the  heat 
Glimmers  like  heat  above  a  brush-pile  fire; 
And  thousand-legs  crawl  out  on  a  thousand  feet, 
And  birds  sing  from  a  rusty  barb-fence  wire  — 
This  is  the  day  life  is  so  lazy  here 
Among  the  wilted  weeds  and  wilted  leaves 
That  sag  earthward  from  arms  of  the  oak  trees. 
This  is  the  day  that  writhing,  hungry  snakes 
Crawl  by  the  creek  to  get  the  lean  bull-frogs. 
This  is  the  day  the  lizards  lie  on  logs 
And  blink  and  blink  their  little  beady  eyes 
And  with  lips  tight  look  to  the  floating  skies  - 
For  soon  they  have  their  bellies  filled  with  flies 
And  copperhead  lies  in  the  weeds  in  wait 
Where  soon  a  just- weaned  rabbit  meets  its  fate. 


SONGS  OF  A  MOUNTAIN  PLOWMAN  [  393  ] 

I'm  hungry  Life  for  woods  and  rocks  and  skies 

And  for  the  fern-crowned  cliffs  and  sky-blue  streams; 

I'm  hungry  Life  for  the  old  paradise 

Of  moss-soft  woods  where  summer  sunlight  gleams. 

I'm  hungry  Life  —  I  want  to  walk  alone 

Where  there  are  sounds  of  wind  and  wild  bird  calls  — 

I  want  to  saunter  out  and  touch  the  stone 

Where  over  sandstones  shirt-blue  water  falls. 

I'm  hungry  Life  for  scent  of  leaf  and  bloom; 

I'm  hungry  Life  for  a  sweet  breath  of  wind; 

For  in  this  peopled  land  there's  little  room 

For  mighty  oaks  for  one  to  ramble  in  — 

No  room,  O  Life,  amid  this  noise  and  gloom 

For  songs  of  birds  and  wind-grass  tambourine. 


We  are  the  young  today:  the  power  is  ours 
To  clear  the  hills  of  brush  and  plow  the  ground. 
And  all  the  hours  we  live  are  silver  hours. 
Fresh  nourishment  from  earth  is  in  our  veins. 
The  life  that's  in  young  trees  is  in  our  veins. 
We  are  the  young,  and  beauty  of  the  flowers 
Makes  strong  impressive  channels  on  our  brains. 
Look  to  the  east  and  west:  the  purpling  sky 
Over  the  earth  is  lazily  floating  by  — 
We  are  the  young  and  we  can  reach  the  sky; 
Put  out  our  hands:  the  sky  will  come  to  us; 
The  sky  will  come,  a  great  white  bird  to  us. 
And  for  our  loves  green  leaves  will  sing  to  us; 
The  green  leaves  and  white  lilting  flowers 
That  hang  out  in  the  wind  and  love  the  hours. 
We  are  the  young  today:  the  power  is  ours. 


[  394  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

America:  the  blood  of  you  is  in  me! 

America:  the  dirt  of  you  is  in  me! 

Root  and  blossom  I  belong  to  you ! 

And  every  leave  that  grows  on  this  oak  tree 

Is  made  America,  of  dust  of  you ! 

America:  it  is  your  hills  in  me; 

I  never  saw  one  of  your  western  plains  — 

It  is  your  ruggedness  of  hills  in  me 

And  toughness  of  fiber  of  the  oak  tree. 

The  toughness  of  the  oak  was  in  my  sires; 

The  blood  of  mountain  earth  was  in  their  veins. 

Today,  I  must  go  marching,  marching  on 

Carrying  blood  of  my  fathers  mountain-born; 

Men  color  of  buff-colored  autumn  corn  . 


I  hear  the  wind  a-blowing  across  the  land. 

I  love  the  music  of  the  wind's  wide  sweep 

As  it  blows  through  the  brush  across  the  land. 

The  music  of  the  wind  lulls  me  to  sleep. 

And  long  before  the  autumn  has  gone  by 

And  multi-colored  leaves  cling  to  the  boughs, 

I  love  to  hear  this  wind  asweeping  by 

And  watch  the  leaves  go  windward  from  the  boughs. 

For  what  is  life  without  some  music  in  it, 

And  what  is  sweeter  music  than  the  wind. 

My  friend  our  life  span  is  a  golden  minute 

And  we  had  better  find  some  music  in  it  — 

The  wind  is  both  a  flute  and  violin. 

I  love  to  walk  under  night  trees  and  listen 

When  moonlight,  starlight  on  the  dead  earth  glisten. 


SONGS  OF  A  MOUNTAIN  PLOWMAN  [  395  ] 

I'm  mad  with  this  leaf-strewn  November  mood. 

I'm  mad  for  in  this  life  is  too  much  life  — 

A  windy  autumn  mood  is  now  my  mood  — 

Something  of  autumn  has  crept  into  my  blood. 

Winds  sigh  through  barren  trees  with  lonely  sound. 

Wet  autumn  leaves  stick  closely  to  the  ground 

I'm  mad  with  autumn  for  no  reason  why  — 

Not  even  for  the  windy  autumn  sky 

That  floats  almost  the  level  of  the  trees 

Above  the  earth  that's  plastered  with  dead  leaves. 

I'm  mad  with  autumn  for  I  hear  her  gods 

In  winds  above  awhispering  to  the  night; 

Like  the  ghosts  of  dead  leaves  in  an  autumn  flight. 


Roll  over  clouds  like  ledges  of  thick  stones ! 
Roll  over  me  dark  clouds  —  roll  over  fast ! 
Roll  over  me  tonight  ...  I  am  alone; 
Far  in  these  windy  woods  I  am  alone. 
Roll  over  me  you  night  clouds  flying  fast ! 
Lightning  streak  the  valleys  with  quick  light. 
Flash  deep  into  the  heart  of  this  black  night ! 
Come  on  you  rain  and  wet  the  parching  night! 
Roll  over  me  you  clouds  in  this  clean  January 
And  fall  white  tons  of  rain  down  on  the  timber. 
Something  there  is  about  this  night  I  love; 
This  night  dark  as  a  grave  so  gray  above. 
A  whip  of  lightning  and  a  crack  of  thunder. 
Come  on  rain,  sleet  and  snow  and  feed  the  timber! 
Make  this  a  night  I  always  shall  remember! 


Recovery  of  What? 

CHARLES  MAGEE  ADAMS 

T  LAST  the  sun  of  recovery  seems  to  be  breaking 
through  the  fog  of  depression.  After  the  false  dawns 
of  the  past  several  years,  that  statement  may  suggest  rash 
optimism.  If  so,  it  should  not  be  charged  to  the  writer 
alone.  Eminent  economists  and  industrialists  have  pub 
licly  pointed  to  multiplying  signs  that  the  ebb  of  the  busi 
ness  tide  has  given  place  to  a  resurgent  flood.  Indeed, 
some  declare  that  recovery  is  already  here. 

Whether  these  economic  mariners  are  calculating  the 
drift  correctly  is  irrelevant  to  this  discussion.  Not  that 
there  is  any  intent  to  dismiss  business  recovery  as  incon 
sequential.  That  would  be  futile,  for  recovery  is  impera 
tive.  Nevertheless,  trying  to  discern  a  significant  pattern 
in  the  kaleidoscope  of  events  —  as  every  sentient  being 
must  now  and  then  —  it  seems  to  the  writer  that  there  is 
something  else  that  may  be  of  equal,  if  not  greater  long- 
run  importance  than  recovery  itself:  namely,  our  con 
notation,  concept,  philosophy,  of  recovery. 

For  most  of  us  the  word  has  come  to  possess  compelling 
magic.  It  stands  out  enticingly  in  newspaper  headlines, 
makes  heartening  music  in  the  ear.  But  precisely  what 
do  we  mean  by  recovery?  No  doubt  that  seems  a  stupid 
question.  Anyone  can  describe,  if  not  define,  recovery. 
Its  distinguishing  characteristics  are  healthy  profits,  gen 
eral  employment  at  good  pay,  buoyant  commodity  and 
security  markets,  other  manifestations  of  brisk  commercial 
and  industrial  activity.  In  short,  it  represents  everything 
people  can  buy  and  do  with  increased  income. 

This,  however,  is  only  the  contemporary  husk  of  the 
word.  At  heart  it  means  to  regain,  recapture,  repossess; 

[396] 


RECOVERY  OF  WHAT?  [  397  ] 

which  in  turn  implies  a  goal,  an  objective.  Essentially, 
then,  the  question  is:  Just  what  are  we  hoping  to  attain 
once  more;  what  are  we  expecting  to  lay  hold  of  again? 

Of  course  the  answers  vary  as  widely  as  the  answerers. 
It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  virtually  all  of  them  can 
be  expressed  in  terms  of  business  charts  and  indices.  The 
generally  accepted  goal  of  recovery  is  economic  improve 
ment.  What  we  seem  to  be  on  the  verge  of  repossessing 
are  greater  means  of  living,  our  industrial  and  commer 
cial  health — though  not  merely  the  spotty  vigor  of  1929. 
We  are  hoping  —  some  of  us  are  even  resolved  —  that 
when  it  comes,  recovery  shall  assure  everyone  the  oppor 
tunity  of  having  more  of  the  things  money  can  buy  and 
do,  than  before  the  fateful  dawn  of  "black  Thursday." 

This  is  both  natural  and  legitimate.  For  six  years, 
millions  have  been  in  varying  degrees  of  want.  Their  need 
for  what  recovery  can  make  possible,  is  no  erudite  ab 
straction.  Moreover,  in  view  of  the  grotesque  inequalities 
of  the  boom  years,  no  fair-minded  person  will  deny  the 
justice  —  not  to  mention  the  economic  soundness  —  of 
broadening  the  purchasing-power  base.  Yet  it  is  signifi 
cant  that  the  commonly  held  concept  of  recovery  limits 
its  objectives  so  sharply  to  economic  improvement.  That 
should  become  clear  if  one  examines  the  situation  more 
closely. 

The  1929  depression  was  different  from  its  predeces 
sors:  not  so  much  in  cause,  intensity  and  duration,  as  in 
the  efforts  made  to  emerge  from  it.  For  the  first  time  in  our 
history  the  Federal  government  undertook  the  role  of 
full-fledged  economic  physician.  Using  a  thick  sheaf  of 
prescriptions  too  familiar  to  be  listed  here,  it  sought  not 
only  to  relieve  the  symptoms  but  to  stop  the  infection  at 
its  supposed  source.  Many  of  the  medicines  have  been 
drastic  and  costly.  Also,  the  great  Washington  specialist 


[  398  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

has  employed  plastic  surgery  and  skin  grafting.  However, 
even  more  striking  than  this  governmental  therapy  are 
its  mentors  and  inspirers. 

To  an  extent  incomparably  greater  than  any  similar 
crisis,  the  1929  depression  enlisted  the  efforts  of  what  are 
popularly  known  as  the  "theorists."  These  are  not  merely 
economists  and  sociologists,  with  a  professional  interest  in 
such  problems.  They  also  include  lawyers,  clergymen, 
teachers,  writers,  engineers,  scholars,  humanitarians. 
Forsaking  their  briefs,  charts  and  theses,  they  have  set 
out  on  an  intellectual  crusade  to  —  in  their  own  phrase 
—  end  the  sardonic  spectacle  of  want  in  the  midst  of 
plenty.  Considering  the  high-minded  enthusiasm  of 
most,  it  seems  proper  to  call  them  idealists  rather  than 
theorists.  Some  have  joined  the  Roosevelt  Administra 
tion  in  official  capacities.  But  the  majority  have  continued 
their  private  pursuits,  devotedly  championing  the  "more 
abundant  life."  Probably  no  economic  emergency  has 
ever  marshalled  such  an  impressive  array  of  brains  and  so 
much  zeal  for  improving  the  common  lot. 

Either  because  or  in  spite  of  this  government-idealist 
coalition  (the  point  is  still  at  issue)  recovery  is  now  within 
sight.  Yet  an  ironic  anomaly  persists.  It  is  the  widespread 
disposition  to  believe  that  economic  recovery  automati 
cally  assures  a  solution  of  our  basic  difficulties. 

If  this  view  were  limited  to  the  "man  in  the  street" 
and  the  "practical"  politicians  it  would  be  quite  under 
standable.  The  M.  I.  T.  S.  (using  the  Washington  desig 
nation)  is  pretty  certain  to  believe  that  virtually  any 
difficulty  can  be  resolved,  given  enough  money.  And  of 
course  the  mill-run  politician  would  never  disillusion 
him  if  he  could.  But  the  view  is  not  so  limited. 

It  is  also  shared  by  most  of  the  idealists  who  general- 
staff  the  crusade  for  human  betterment.  Here  are  no 


RECO  VERT  OF  WHA  T?  [  399  ] 

mediocre  minds,  no  kowtowing  to  the  multitude.  As  a 
group  they  represent  much  of  the  nation's  first-rate  abil 
ity,  perhaps  the  bulk  of  its  social  vision.  Yet  most  of  them 
subscribe  to  the  complacent  belief  that  economic  recovery 
automatically  assures  an  end  to  our  major  difficulties. 

To  be  sure,  they  rarely  state  the  proposition  in  so  many 
words.  Nevertheless,  the  implication  is  plain.  After  read 
ing  their  articles,  or  listening  to  their  speeches,  one  can 
summarize  their  position  thus:  We  need  only  clear  up 
this  economic  mess,  give  everybody  a  good  job,  step  up 
consumption  to  production  —  then  "happy  days"  will  be 
here  again. 

It  would  be  pleasant  indeed  to  concur  in  this  comfort 
able  view,  the  more  when  it  has  such  eminent  support. 
But,  unfortunately,  the  facts  do  not  permit  it.  At  most, 
economic  recovery  can  dispose  of  just  one  set  of  human 
problems,  those  arising  from  depressed  business  condi 
tions.  It  not  only  fails  to  solve,  but  aggravates,  a  second 
set  of  problems,  humanly  far  more  serious  than  the  first. 
For  economic  recovery  merely  assures  more  abundant 
means  of  living.  It  provides  no  clearer  notion  of  the  ends 
for  which  these  means  should  be  used. 

There,  it  seems  to  this  bystander,  is  the  glaring  anom 
aly  of  our  recovery  concept.  Now  that  it  is  within 
sight,  it  turns  out  that  what  we  have  been  struggling  so 
desperately  to  regain  these  past  six  years  is  not  an  objec 
tive  but  merely  better  transportation.  Where  we  propose 
to  go  in  our  swifter  stream-lined  vehicle  remains  as 
uncertain  as  ever. 

The  irony  of  the  situation  becomes  the  more  pointed 
when  one  remembers  that  the  idealists,  rather  than  hard- 
headed  business  men,  have  supplied  most  of  the  inspira 
tion  and  direction  for  our  organized  recovery  effort.  Yet 
they  have  committed  the  error  least  expected  of  them: 


[  400  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

glorifying  the    material    and    ignoring  the  intangible. 

Theoretically,  their  recovery  philosophy  is  that  we 
must  raise  mass  purchasing-power  to  an  all-time  high  in 
order  to  assure  richer,  fuller  living.  That  would  be  air 
tight  were  it  not  for  a  wrong  relation  of  the  two  factors. 
Instead  of  means  and  end,  they  have  become  coupled  as 
cause  and  effect.  Now  the  recovery  thesis  is  warped  into 
the  contention  that  once  mass  pruchasing-power  is 
stepped  up  sufficiently,  richer,  fuller  living  will  follow. 

To  be  fair,  it  must  be  said  that  this  distortion  is  at 
tributable  more  to  emphasis  than  to  direct  statement. 
Analyzing  the  utterances  of  representative  recovery  zeal 
ots,  it  will  be  found  that  reams  are  devoted  to  the  me 
chanics  of  the  "more  abundant  life":  shorter  hours, 
higher  pay,  unemployment  insurance,  old  age  pensions, 
stabilized  agriculture,  conservation  of  resources,  low-cost 
housing,  cheaper  electricity,  and  so  on.  Only  brief  vague 
paragraphs  are  devoted  to  what  is  to  be  done  with  these 
Utopian  blessings.  Apparently  that  is  taken  for  granted. 
Once  such  a  wealth  of  facilities  is  provided,  it  is  cheer 
fully  assumed  that  the  beneficiaries  will  make  intelligent, 
constructive  use  of  them,  as  inevitably  as  day  follows 
night. 

The  best  that  can  be  said  of  such  a  feeling  (scarcely 
reasoning)  is  that  it  betrays  an  almost  ludicrous  naivete. 
To  contend  that  more  abundant  means  per  se  assure  more 
abundant  living,  is  as  absurd  as  to  expect  skilled  crafts 
manship  from  a  workman  merely  because  he  is  equipped 
with  precision  tools.  Which  is  to  say,  it  ignores  the  vital 
element  of  the  problem,  the  human  factor. 

That  is  not  cynicism.  Neither  does  it  represent  the 
sneer  of  a  patrician,  viewing  the  plight  of  the  rabble 
from  the  remote  heights  of  wealth.  (The  writer's  back 
ground  can  scarcely  be  called  aristocratic.  And  certainly 


RECOVERY  OF  WHAT?  [401  ] 

he  has  had  sufficient  first-hand  experience  with  dollar- 
stretching  to  leave  no  illusions  about  the  "blessings"  of 
poverty.)  It  is  simply  a  candid  statement  of  facts  that 
should  be  obvious. 

Notwithstanding  all  the  real  suffering  incident  to  the 
depression  and  the  galling  inequities  of  boom  times,  the 
bitter  tragedy  or  grim  comedy  of  our  civilization  is  that 
so  many  millions  already  live  in  a  state  that  can  be  termed 
prosperous  poverty.  Let  me  clarify  that  perhaps  contra 
dictory  phrase  by  citing  examples. 

The  "Joneses"  are  an  "average"  family:  parents,  two 
sons,  two  daughters;  the  children  past  their  majority. 
Despite  the  depression,  all  save  the  mother  are  employed 
at  good  jobs;  the  father  and  the  boys  in  industrial  plants, 
the  girls  in  offices.  And  their  "standard  of  living"  be 
speaks  an  ample  income. 

Their  commodious  house,  which  they  own  debt-free, 
is  well-kept,  comfortably  if  not  tastefully  furnished,  and 
equipped  with  the  modern  conveniences.  In  the  garage 
are  three  cars,  all  recent  models.  The  family  dresses  well, 
the  girls  even  conspicuously.  Their  table  is  spread  with 
bountiful,  though  unimaginative  meals.  They  take  part 
in  various  social  activities  which  entail  expense.  On  vaca 
tion  trips  they  have  covered  most  of  the  country.  Super 
ficially,  the  Joneses  are  a  case  demonstration  of  what 
purchasing  power  can  do  to  improve  the  status  of  the 
nation's  backbone.  But  a  glimpse  beneath  the  surface 
discloses  things  not  so  heartening. 

Most  of  the  Joneses'  reading  is  limited  to  the  "fun 
nies,"  the  sports  page  and  gossip  columns.  As  regards 
music  —  provided  by  the  radio  —  their  tastes  divide 
along  the  line  of  the  generations,  between  hill-billy  tunes 
and  Tin  Pan  Alley.  To  them,  the  theatre  means  the 
movies  —  almost  any  movie.  The  bulk  of  Mr.  Jones' 


[  402  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

conversation  is  shop-talk  and  ward  politics.  Mrs.  Jones 
is  a  walking  file  of  recipes  and  warm  neighborhood 
gossip.  Under  a  slick  veneer  of  wisecracks,  the  boys  are 
loutish.  Women  and  cars  are  their  obsessions;  work  a 
necessary  evil.  Despite  makeup  which  changes  with  their 
worship  of  screen  stars,  the  girls  wear  a  look  of  blank 
animation.  They  chatter  about  clothes  and  men  in  slurred 
hoarse  voices. 

But  wry  as  is  their  commentary  on  progress,  the  full 
significance  of  the  Joneses  can  be  seen  only  in  historical 
perspective.  Two  generations  ago  a  man  of  Jones'  native 
ability  would  have  been  restricted  to  a  career  as  tenant 
farmer  or  humble  artisan.  His  sons  would  have  been 
limited  to  pursuits  only  little  better;  his  daughters  to 
domestic  service,  if  they  found  gainful  employment  at  all. 
The  family's  standard  of  living  would  have  been  on  a 
scale  implicit  in  these  conditions.  It  is  the  many  times 
greater  purchasing  power  put  within  reach  of  millions, 
by  our  modern  economy,  that  has  raised  the  Joneses  to 
a  status  that  would  have  been  considered  opulence  fifty 
years  ago.  Yet,  judged  by  the  exacting  criteria  of  intangi 
ble  values,  the  contemporary  Joneses  lead  lives  little  if  any 
richer,  fuller,  happier  than  their  grandparents. 

This  personalizes  the  stubborn  fact  that  the  physical 
equipment  which  determines  what  we  carelessly  call  the 
standard  of  living,  is  merely  the  machinery  of  living.  Its 
human  value  is  measured  solely  and  directly  by  the  use  to 
which  it  is  put.  Of  course  that  should  be  self-evident.  But, 
bewilderingly,  it  is  overlooked  by  a  high  proportion  of  the 
very  group  which  should  be  most  sensitive  to  imponder 
ables. 

The  tactical  objectives  of  the  social  prophets  are  such 
things  as  a  higher  minimum  income,  better  housing,  ade 
quate  medical  care.  In  themselves,  these  are  beyond 


RECO  VERT  OF  WHA  T?  [  403  ] 

reproach.  However,  the  current  over-emphasis  of  them 
has  the  lamentable  effect  of  putting  the  cart  before  the 
horse,  obscuring  the  intangible  factors  that  are  para 
mount.  Thousands  of  families  are  living  richly  on  far  less 
than  the  $1800  to  $2200  income  variously  set  up  as 
necessary  for  decency.  There  are  slums  on  Park  avenue 
while  countless  dingy  flats  are  true  mansions.  And  the 
most  significant  fact  of  modern  health  is  the  decisive 
influence  of  emotional  states. 

By  implication  at  least,  the  idealists  disregard  all  this, 
minimize  the  fundamental  that  the  best  things  of  life  are 
cheapest,  in  terms  of  money.  Paradoxically,  they  line  up 
with  the  "desire-creating"  forces  of  commercialism  that 
make  us  covet  most  of  the  things  money  can  buy,  not  so 
much  for  their  intrinsic  beauty  or  utility  as  for  their 
attainment  aura. 

The  grandiose  vision  which  beckons  the  social  philos 
ophers  is  an  economy  under  which  group  purchasing 
power  shall  be  spread,  and  raised  to  the  point  where 
everyone  may  have  relatively  everything  he  wants.  Cer 
tainly,  if  such  a  scheme  could  be  put  into  effect,  America 
would  become  an  earthly  paradise  —  save,  that  is,  for  an 
important  question  which  remains  unanswered.  To  what 
humanly  constructive  use  will  the  recipients  put  the 
bounty  poured  out  from  the  bigger  and  better  horn  of 
plenty? 

Of  course  that  will  be  branded  as  the  rankest  sort  of 
"Tory"  treason.  According  to  our  political  philosophy, 
the  use  one  makes  of  one's  private  means  (provided,  of 
course,  that  these  means  do  not  constitute  the  crime  per 
se  of  "great  wealth")  is  a  strictly  personal  matter.  It  is 
for  the  individual,  not  society,  to  determine  how  they 
shall  be  employed. 

Unfortunately,  however,  it  is  not  an  individual  prob- 


[  404  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

lem.  Our  modern  economy  is  so  tightly  articulated  that 
the  individual  can  do  virtually  nothing  which  does  not 
affect  others,  and  more  than  ever  under  the  scheme  of 
things  envisioned  by  the  recovery  zealots. 

Long  before  the  depression  typhoon  struck,  commerce 
and  industry  sought  to  make  us  voracious  consumption 
machines.  We  were  persuaded  and  adjured  to  eat,  wear, 
use,  more  of  this  and  that;  not  because  we  wanted  to,  but 
because  it  was  our  duty  to  devour  the  output  of  produc 
tion. 

The  depression  tightened  this  same  obligation.  We 
were  repeatedly  bally hooed  into  buying  "till  it  hurts"  to 
stimulate  employment.  And  since  the  Roosevelt  adminis 
tration  came  into  power,  our  socio-economic  responsibil 
ity  has  been  extended  in  a  score  of  ways,  by  legislation. 
The  processing  taxes  force  all  of  us  to  contribute  to  the 
increased  income  of  the  agricultural  community.  The 
NRA  required  all  to  provide  greater  earnings  for  another 
class  of  workers.  Payroll  taxes,  shouldered  by  the  con 
sumer,  are  to  finance  the  social  security  program.  The 
TVA  seeks  to  improve  one  section  at  the  expense  of  the 
whole  nation.  And  the  current  taxation  set-up  makes  it 
expedient  to  spend  any  income  in  excess  of  comfort 
requirements. 

In  short,  the  tendency  of  our  modern  economy  is  to 
force  each  of  us  to  earn  more  in  order  to  provide  a  higher 
income  for  all  the  rest.  That  being  the  case,  the  question 
of  the  use  to  which  this  increased  purchasing  power  is 
put,  becomes  a  legitimate  matter  of  general  concern. 

Is  the  opportunity  for  higher  earnings  to  result  in  the 
deepening  and  enrichment  of  living?  Or  does  it  mean 
simply  the  addition  of  more  millions  to  those  who  already 
exist  in  a  condition  of  prosperous  poverty?  There,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  the  real  hub  of  our  recovery  problem. 


RECO  VERT  OF  WHA  T?  [  405  ] 

Unless  all  indications  are  misleading,  the  innumerable 
counterparts  of  the  "Joneses"  will  embark,  as  soon  as 
possible,  on  a  "more  abundant  life"  distinguished  by 
these  striking  advancements:  an  even  faster  car,  still 
more  fattening  foods  (alternated,  of  course,  with  spas 
modic  dieting,  at  least  by  the  women),  a  louder  radio, 
more  silk  and  fur  and  cosmetics,  four  or  five  movies  a 
week  instead  of  the  present  two  or  three,  more  contract 
bridge  at  higher  stakes,  better  cigarettes,  more  labor- 
saving  appliances  that  create  more  leisure  time  to  be 
"killed,"  bigger  and  better  vacations  measured  in  terms 
of  hot-dog  stands  and  new  daily  mileage  records;  the  sort 
of  existence  climaxed  by  the  futile  pathos  of  retirement 
in  Florida  or  California. 

To  be  sure,  education  is  supposed  to  be  the  infallible 
panacea.  "College  for  everybody"  was  part  of  the  late 
Huey  Long's  Utopia.  And  the  oracles  of  public  enlight 
enment  are  rumbling  —  with  convenient  vagueness  — 
about  the  necessity  of  more  training  for  living.  But  the 
help  to  be  expected  from  formal  education  is  slight  in 
deed.  The  showing  made  by  purely  factual  instruction 
is  dismal  enough  —  as  witness  slovenly  speech  despite 
years  of  classroom  English,  and  the  thriving  business 
done  by  medical  quacks  notwithstanding  courses  in 
hygiene  and  physiology.  When  cultural  training  is  con 
sidered,  the  indistinguishable  tastes  of  most  college  grad 
uates  afford  an  ironic  commentary  on  its  effectiveness. 

No,  the  problem  of  how  to  attain  a  truly  abundant  life 
cannot  be  solved  merely  by  more  paternalistic  super 
vision,  creating  an  FALA  (Federal  Abundant  Living 
Administration),  heavily  bankrolled  and  staffed  with 
bureaucratic  brass-hats.  If  it  is  to  be  solved  at  all  by 
deliberate  effort,  that  effort  will  have  to  come  primarily 
from  the  idealists  of  the  country. 


[  406  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

It  is  they  who  inspired  and  captained  the  crusade  for 
more  bountiful  means  of  living.  Accordingly,  now  that 
their  material  goal  is  within  sight,  it  is  only  reasonable  to 
expect  them  to  devote  their  major  energies  to  achieving 
next  the  intangible  ends  for  which  these  practical  means 
were  sought.  In  other  words,  the  moment  seems  at  hand 
for  the  idealists  to  go  back  to  ideals;  shift  their  emphasis 
from  "standards  of  living"  to  living  itself.  Assuming  a 
willingness  to  do  so  (unfortunately  by  no  means  evident 
as  yet),  an  effective  line  of  attack  is  clear  enough. 

The  charge  repeatedly  made  against  the  wealthy  by  the 
champions  of  the  "underprivileged"  is  that  they  are 
lacking  in  sober  responsibility,  vulgarly  indifferent  to  the 
cultural  opportunities  opened  up  by  the  power  of  money. 
Often  that  charge  is  valid.  Many  of  the  very  rich  do  lead 
lives  of  gilded  stupidity.  But  it  is  also  true  that  wealth  is 
a  relative  quantity.  Compared  with  conditions  that  pre 
vailed  as  recently  as  two  or  three  generations  ago,  mil 
lions  of  Americans  (I  should  say  a  substantial  majority) 
now  enjoy  a  standard  of  living  whose  comfort,  even 
luxury,  was  surpassed  only  by  the  top-income  minority 
in  previous  eras.  It  is,  then,  not  illogical  or  unreasonable 
to  expect  these  newcomers  to  affluence  to  meet  the  same 
requirements  imposed  on  the  wealthy  of  today. 

The  nearer  we  approach  the  idealists'  goal  of  material 
recovery,  the  more  imperative  it  becomes  for  the  preachers, 
teachers,  social  prophets  and  humanitarians  to  implant 
the  philosophy  of  cultural  noblesse  oblige  in  the  popu 
lar  consciousness;  the  sobering  recognition  that  the  oppor 
tunity  for  greater  earnings  carries  an  implicit  and  com 
plementary  obligation  to  make  constructive,  respectful, 
human  use  of  the  more  abundant  means  put  within  reach 
of  the  many. 

For  this  vastly  increased  earning  power  has  not  been 


RECO  VERT  OF  WHA  T?  [  407  ] 

conjured  out  of  thin  air  by  the  magic  of  a  Washington 
decree.  It  represents  the  cumulative  effort  of  many  gener 
ations  —  in  part  groping  but  more  and  more  purposeful 
—  to  achieve  something  better  for  humanity.  Naturally, 
the  competent  few  have  contributed  most  to  that  effort. 
But,  significantly,  they  stand  to  receive  less  than  before 
in  return. 

Under  the  growing  doctrine  of  social  responsibility, 
we  ask  that  business  executives,  technicians,  financiers, 
and  investors  shall  adopt  something  of  the  same  philos 
ophy  that  motivates  artists,  thinkers  and  scientists;  ac 
cept  a  smaller  share  of  the  values  they  create  than  would 
be  theirs  under  the  hard  every-man-for-himself  creed, 
in  order  that  there  may  be  more  to  distribute  among  the 
sub-competent.  From  the  standpoint  of  human  justice, 
there  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  application  of  this  doc 
trine.  But  the  balances  held  by  the  classic  representation 
of  Justice  are  more  than  a  decorative  detail.  When  the 
competent  are  expected  to  forego  what  they  might  right 
fully  claim,  for  the  sake  of  the  sub-competent,  it  is  only 
fair  to  demand  that  the  beneficiaries  shall  be  guided  by 
a  sense  of  social  responsibility  in  the  use  of  what  is  pro 
vided  for  them.  If  they  are  not,  the  competent  can 
scarcely  be  blamed  for  feeling  that  the  doctrine  of  social 
responsibility  is  a  glittering  pretext  for  exploiting  them. 
And  in  the  last  analysis,  progress  depends  on  the  com 
petent  few  —  not  the  inept  many. 

All  this,  let  me  make  clear,  is  not  being  set  down  in  a 
spirit  of  bitterness  or  contempt.  Rather,  it  is  prompted 
by  a  deep  concern,  tinged  with  both  impatience  and  pity. 
No  intelligent  person  can,  I  think,  view  the  contemporary 
spectacle  without  some  such  mixed  feelings.  At  a  tre 
mendous  cost,  not  only  in  public  funds  but,  more  impor 
tant,  in  the  effort  of  our  best  minds,  we  are  on  the  verge 


[  4o8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  attaining  that  condition  popularly  called  recovery. 
But  is  what  we  are  actually  regaining  worth  the  terrific 
price?  In  human  essentials,  are  we  going  to  be  a  great  deal 
better  off?  Can  economic  well  being  per  se  bring  most  of 
us  appreciably  nearer  the  avowed  goal  of  richer  living, 
fulfilled  possibilities,  true  civilization? 

At  the  risk  of  seeming  to  wield  a  wet  blanket,  I  must 
confess  that  my  dominant  reaction  to  these  questions  is  a 
regretful  doubt.  It  looks  very  much  as  if  we  have  been 
devoting  ourselves  chiefly  to  restoring  the  health  of  an 
adult  body  housing  an  adolescent  mind.  Until  we  have 
brought  the  mind  up  to  the  stature  of  the  body,  we  can 
scarcely  call  recovery  significant  or  complete. 


An  Essay  on  Essays 

KATHARINE  FULLERTON  GEROULD 

SOME  of  the  rhetoric  books  my  generation  used  in  col 
lege  went  back  to  Aristotle  for  many  of  their  defini 
tions.  "Rhetoric,"  he  says,  "may  be  defined  as  a  faculty 
of  discovering  all  the  possible  means  of  persuasion  in  any 
subject."  Persuasion,  indeed,  is  more  starkly  and  simply 
the  purpose  of  the  essay  than  of  fiction  or  poetry,  since 
the  essay  deals  always  with  an  idea.  No  true  essay,  how 
ever  desultory  or  informal,  but  states  a  proposition 
which  the  writer  hopes,  temporarily  at  least,  to  make  the 
reader  accept.  Though  it  be  only  the  defense  of  a  mood, 
subject  and  predicate  are  the  bare  bones  of  any  essay.  It 
may  be  of  a  complex  nature  (like  many  of  Emerson's) 
stating  several  propositions;  but  unless  it  states  at  least 
one,  it  is  not  an  essay.  It  may  be  a  dream  or  a  dithyramb; 
I  repeat,  it  is  not  an  essay. 

Let  us  neglect  the  old  rhetorical  distinctions  between 
exposition  and  argument.  To  sort  all  essays  into  those 
two  types  of  writing  would  be  more  troublesome  a  task 
than  the  wicked  stepmother  ever  set  her  stepdaughter  in 
a  fairy-tale.  We  can  no  more  do  it  without  the  help  of 
magic  than  could  the  poor  princess.  When  is  an  essay 
argument,  and  when  is  it  exposition?  That  way  lie  aridity 
and  the  carving  of  cummin.  In  so  far  as  the  essay  at 
tempts  to  persuade,  it  partakes  of  the  nature  of  argument. 
Yet  who  would  call  Lamb's  "Dream  Children"  an  argu 
ment?  Or  who  shall  say  it  is  not  an  essay?  It  contains  a 
proposition,  if  you  will  only  look  for  it;  yet  to  associate 
Lamb's  persuading  process  with  the  forum  would  be 
preposterous.  All  writing  presupposes  an  audience 
(which  some  of  our  younger  writers  seem  to  forget)  but 

[409] 


[  410  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

formal  argument  presupposes  opponents,  and  I  cannot 
find  the  faintest  scent  of  an  enemy  at  hand  in  " Dream 
Children." 

I  am  sorry  to  kick  the  dust  of  the  Schools  about,  even 
in  this  half-hearted  way,  yet  some  salutation  had  to  be 
made  to  rhetoric,  which  is  a  noble  science,  too  much  neg 
lected.  Let  us  now  forget  the  rhetoricians,  and  use  our 
own  terminology  (our  common  sense  too,  if  we  have  any). 
Let  us  say,  first,  that  the  object  of  the  essay  is,  explicitly, 
persuasion;  and  that  the  essay  states  a  proposition.  In 
deed,  we  need  to  be  as  rigorously  simple  as  that,  if  we  are 
going  to  consider  briefly  a  type  that  is  supposed  to  in 
clude  Bacon's  "Of  Truth,"  De  Quincey's  "Murder  as 
a  Fine  Art,"  Lamb's  "In  Praise  of  Chimney  Sweeps," 
Hazlitt's  "On  Going  a  Journey,"  Irving's  "Bachelors," 
Hunt's  "Getting  up  on  Cold  Mornings,"  Poe's  "The 
Poetic  Principle,"  Emerson's  "Self-Reliance,"  Arnold's 
"Function  of  Criticism,"  Stevenson's  "Penny  Plain  and 
Twopence  Coloured,"  Paul  Elmer  More's  "The  Demon 
of  the  Absolute,"  Chesterton's  "On  Leisure,"  Max  Beer- 
bohm's  "No.  2.  The  Pines,"  Stephen  Leacock's  "People 
we  Know,"  and  James  Truslow  Adams'  "The  Mucker 
Pose." 

The  foregoing  list,  in  itself,  confesses  our  main  diffi 
culty  in  delimiting  the  essay.  The  most  popular  kind  of 
essay,  perhaps,  is  that  known  as  "familiar."  When  people 
deplore  the  passing  of  the  essay  from  the  pages  of  our 
magazines,  it  is  usually  this  that  they  are  regretting. 
They  are  thinking  wistfully  of  pieces  of  prose  like  Lamb's 
"Sarah  Battle  on  Whist,"  Leigh  Hunt's  "The  Old  Gen 
tleman,"  Stevenson's  "El  Dorado,"  Max  Beerbohm's 
"Mobled  King."  They  mean  the  essay  that  is  largely  de 
scriptive,  more  or  less  sentimental  or  humorous,  in  which 
it  is  sometimes  difficult  to  find  a  stated  proposition.  This 


AN  ESSAY  ON  ESSAYS  [  41 1  ] 

kind  of  prose  has  not  been  very  popular  since  the  war, 
and  I,  for  one,  am  not  regretting  it.  It  will  come  back  — 
as  long  as  the  ghost  of  Montaigne  is  permitted  to  revisit 
the  glimpses  of  the  moon.  But  the  familiar-essay- which- 
is-hardly-an-essay  can  be  spared  for  a  few  years  if  neces 
sary,  since  it  demands  literary  gifts  of  a  very  high  order, 
and  the  authors  mentioned  have  at  present  no  com 
petitors  in  this  field.  If  the  bones  of  the  essay  are  to  be 
weak,  the  flesh  must  be  exceeding  fair  and  firm. 

Are  we  to  admit,  at  all,  that  "Sarah  Battle"  and  "The 
Old  Gentleman,"  and  "El  Dorado"  and  "Mobled 
King"  are  essays?  Do  they  state  a  proposition  to  which 
they  attempt  to  persuade  us?  Well,  we  can  twist  them  to 
a  proposition,  if  we  are  very  keen  on  our  definition  — 
though  I  think  most  of  us  would  admit  that  they  are 
chiefly  descriptive  and  that  they  are  only  gently  directed 
to  the  creation  of  opinion.  Must  we  then  deny  that  they 
are  essays?  No,  I  think  they  are  essays,  though  it  is  obvi 
ous  that  the  familiar  essayist  goes  about  his  business  far 
otherwise  than  Arnold  or  Emerson  or  Macaulay.  He  at 
tempts  rather  to  sharpen  our  perceptions  than  to  con 
vince  us  of  a  statement;  to  win  our  sympathy  rather  than 
our  suffrage.  His  proposition  is  less  important  to  him 
than  his  mood.  If  put  to  it,  we  can  sift  a  proposition  out 
of  each  one  of  these  —  and  they  were  especially  chosen 
because  they  put  our  definition  on  its  defense.  Lamb 
states,  if  you  like,  that  to  abide  by  the  rigor  of  the  game  is 
in  its  way  an  admirable  thing;  Leigh  Hunt  states,  if  you 
like,  that  growing  old  is  a  melancholy  business;  Steven 
son  states  that  it  is  better  to  travel  hopefully  than  to  ar 
rive;  Max  Beerbohm  states  that  no  man  is  worthy  to  be 
reproduced  as  a  statue.  But  the  author's  proposition,  in 
such  essays,  is  not  our  main  interest.  This  brings  us  to  an 
other  consideration  which  may  clarify  the  matter. 


[  4i2  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Though  an  essay  must  state  a  proposition,  there  are 
other  requirements  to  be  fulfilled.  The  bones  of  subject 
and  predicate  must  be  clothed  in  a  certain  way.  The 
basis  of  the  essay  is  meditation,  and  it  must  in  a  measure 
admit  the  reader  to  the  meditative  process.  (This  proce 
dure  is  frankly  hinted  in  all  those  titles  that  used  to  begin 
with  "Of"  or  "On":  "Of  Truth,"  "Of  Riches,"  "On  the 
Graces  and  Anxieties  of  Pig-Driving,"  "On  the  Knocking 
at  the  Gate  in  'Macbeth',"  "On  the  Enjoyment  of  Un 
pleasant  Places").  An  essay,  to  some  extent,  thinks  aloud; 
though  not  in  the  loose  and  pointless  way  to  which  the 
"stream  of  consciousness"  addicts  have  accustomed  us. 
The  author  must  have  made  up  his  mind  —  otherwise, 
where  is  his  proposition?  But  the  essay,  I  think,  should 
show  how  and  why  he  made  up  his  mind  as  he  did; 
should  engagingly  rehearse  the  steps  by  which  he  came 
to  his  conclusions.  ("Francis  of  Verulam  reasoned  thus 
with  himself".)  Meditation;  but  an  oriented  and  fruitful 
meditation. 

This  is  the  most  intimate  of  forms,  because  it  permits 
you  to  see  a  mind  at  work.  On  the  quality  and  temper  of 
that  mind  depends  the  goodness  of  the  production.  Now, 
if  the  essay  is  essentially  meditative,  it  cannot  be  polemi 
cal.  No  one,  I  think,  would  call  Cicero's  first  oration 
against  Catiline  an  essay;  or  Burke' s  Speech  on  the  Con 
ciliation  of  America;  hardly  more  could  we  call  Swift's 
"Modest  Proposal"  a  true  essay.  The  author  must  have 
made  up  his  mind,  but  when  he  has  made  it  up  with  a 
vengeance,  he  will  not  produce  an  essay.  Because  the 
process  is  meditative,  the  manner  should  be  courteous;  he 
should  always,  by  implication,  admit  that  there  are  good 
people  who  may  not  agree  with  him;  his  irony  should 
never  turn  to  the  sardonic.  Reasonableness,  urbanity  (as 
Matthew  Arnold  would  have  said)  are  prerequisites  for  a 


AN  ESSAY  ON  ESSAYS  [  413  ] 

form  whose  temper  is  meditative  rather  than  polemical. 
We  have  said  that  this  is  the  most  intimate  of  forms. 
Not  only  for  technical  reasons,  though  obviously  the 
essayist  is  less  sharply  controlled  by  his  structure  than  the 
dramatist  or  the  sonneteer  or  even  the  novelist.  It  is  the 
most  intimate  because  it  is  the  most  subjective.  When 
people  talk  of  "creative"  and  "critical"  writing  —  divid 
ing  all  literature  thus  —  they  always  call  the  essay  criti 
cal.  In  spite  of  Oscar  Wilde,  to  call  it  critical  is  probably 
correct;  for  creation  implies  objectivity.  The  created 
thing,  though  the  author  have  torn  its  raw  substance 
from  his  very  vitals,  ends  by  being  separate  from  its 
creator.  The  essay,  however,  is  incurably  subjective; 
even  "Wuthering  Heights"  or  "Manfred"  is  less  subjec 
tive  —  strange  though  it  sound  —  than  "The  Function 
of  Criticism"  or  "The  Poetic  Principle."  What  Oscar 
Wilde  really  meant  in  "The  Critic  as  Artist"  —  if,  that 
is,  you  hold  him  back  from  his  own  perversities  —  is  not 
that  Pater's  essay  on  Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  more  crea 
tive  than  many  a  novel,  but  that  it  was  more  subjective 
than  any  novel;  that  Pater,  by  virtue  of  his  style  and  his 
mentality,  made  of  his  conception  of  the  Mona  Lisa 
something  that  we  could  be  interested  in,  regardless  of 
our  opinion  of  the  painting.  I  do  not  remember  that 
Pater  saw  himself  as  doing  more  than  explain  to  us  what 
he  thought  Leonardo  had  done  —  Pater,  I  think,  would 
never  have  regarded  his  purple  page  as  other  than  criti 
cism.  I,  myself —  because  I  like  the  fall  of  Pater's  words, 
and  do  not  much  care  for  Mona  Lisa's  feline  face  — 
prefer  Pater's  page  to  Leonardo's  portrait;  but  I  am 
quite  aware  that  I  am  merely  preferring  criticism,  in  this 
instance,  to  the  thing  criticized.  I  am,  if  you  like,  pre 
ferring  Mr.  Pecksniff's  drunken  dream  —  "Mrs.  Tod- 
gers's  idea  of  a  wooden  leg"  —  to  the  wooden  leg  itself. 


[  414  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Anything  (I  say  to  myself)  rather  than  a  wooden  leg! 

A  lot  of  nineteenth  century  "impressionistic"  criticism 
— Jules  Lemaitre,  Anatole  France,  etc.  —  is  more  de 
lightful  than  the  prose  or  verse  that  is  being  criticized.  It 
is  none  the  less  criticism.  The  famous  definition  of  "the 
adventures  of  a  soul  among  the  masterpieces"  does  not 
put  those  adventures  into  the  "creative"  category;  it 
merely  stresses  their  subjectivity.  Wilde  is  to  some  extent 
right  when  he  says  that  criticism  is  the  only  civilized  form 
of  autobiography;  but  he  is  not  so  right  when  he  says  that 
the  highest  criticism  is  more  creative  than  creation.  No 
one  would  deny  that  the  purple  page  Wilde  quotes  tells 
us  more  about  Pater  than  it  does  about  Leonardo,  or 
even  about  Mona  Lisa  —  as  Macaulay's  Essay  on  Milton 
conceivably  tells  us  more  about  Macaulay  than  about 
the  author  of  "Paradise  Lost."  All  Bacon's  essays  to 
gether  but  build  up  a  portrait  of  Bacon  —  Francis  of 
Verulam  reasoning  with  himself;  and  what  is  the  sub 
stance  of  the  Essays  of  Elia,  but  Elia?  "Subjective"  is  the 
word,  however,  rather  than  "creative." 

It  is  this  subjectivity  —  Montaigne's  first  of  all,  per 
haps  —  that  has  confused  many  minds.  It  is  subjectivity 
run  wild  that  has  tempted  many  people  to  believe  that 
the  familiar  essay  alone  is  the  essay;  which  would  make 
some  people  contend  that  an  essay  does  not  necessarily 
state  a  proposition.  But  we  are  talking  of  the  essay  itself; 
not  of  those  bits  of  whimsical  prose  which  are  to  the  true 
essay  what  expanded  anecdote  is  to  the  short  story. 

The  essay,  then,  having  persuasion  for  its  object,  states 
a  proposition;  its  method  is  meditation;  it  is  subjective 
rather  than  objective,  critical  rather  than  creative.  It  can 
never  be  a  mere  marshaling  of  facts;  for  it  struggles,  in 
one  way  or  another,  for  truth;  and  truth  is  something  one 
arrives  at  by  the  help  of  facts,  not  the  facts  themselves. 


AN  ESSAY  ON  ESSATS  [  415  ] 

Meditating  on  facts  may  bring  one  to  truth;  facts  alone 
will  not.  Nor  can  there  be  an  essay  without  a  point  of 
view  and  a  personality.  A  geometrical  proposition  cannot 
be  an  essay,  since,  though  it  arranges  facts  in  a  certain 
pattern,  there  is  involved  no  personal  meditative  process, 
conditioned  by  the  individuality  of  the  author.  A  geo 
metrical  proposition  is  not  subjective.  One  is  even 
tempted  to  say  that  its  tone  is  not  urbane ! 

Perhaps  —  with  the  essay  thus  defined  —  we  shall 
understand  without  effort  why  it  is  being  so  little  written 
at  present.  Dorothy  Thompson  said  the  other  day  that 
Germany  is  living  in  a  state  of  war.  The  whole  world  is 
living  more  or  less  in  a  state  of  war;  and  a  state  of  war 
produces  any  literary  form  more  easily  than  the  essay. 
It  is  not  hard  to  see  why.  People  in  a  state  of  war,  whether 
the  war  be  military  or  economic,  express  themselves 
polemically.  A  wise  man  said  to  me,  many  years  ago, 
that,  in  his  opinion,  the  worst  by-product  of  the  World 
War  was  propaganda.  Many  times,  in  the  course  of  the 
years,  I  have  had  occasion  to  recall  that  statement.  There 
are  perhaps  times  and  places  where  propaganda  is  justi 
fied  —  it  is  not  for  me  to  say.  But  I  think  we  should  all 
agree  that  the  increasing  habit  of  using  the  technique  of 
propaganda  is  corrupting  the  human  mind  in  its  most 
secret  and  delicate  processes.  Propaganda  has,  in  com 
mon  with  all  other  expression,  the  object  of  persuasion; 
but  it  pursues  that  legitimate  object  by  illegitimate  means 
—  by  suggestio  Jalsi  and  suppressio  veri;  by  the  argumentum 
ad  hominem  and  hitting  below  the  belt;  by  demagogic  ap 
peal  and  the  disregard  of  right  reason.  The  victim  of 
propaganda  is  not  intellectually  persuaded,  but  intel 
lectually  —  if  not  emotionally  —  coerced.  The  essayist, 
whatever  the  limitations  of  his  intelligence,  is  bound  over 
to  be  honest;  the  propagandist  is  always  dishonest. 


[  416  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

To  qualify  a  large  number  of  the  articles  and  pseudo- 
essays  that  appear  at  present  in  our  serious  periodicals, 
British  and  American,  as  "dishonest"  calls  for  a  little  ex 
plaining.  When  one  says  that  the  propagandist  is  always 
dishonest,  one  means  this:  He  is  a  man  so  convinced  of 
the  truth  of  a  certain  proposition  that  he  dissembles  the 
facts  that  tell  against  it.  Occasionally,  he  is  dishonest 
through  ignorance  —  he  is  verily  unaware  of  any  facts 
save  those  that  argue  for  him.  Sometimes,  having  ap 
proached  his  subject  with  his  decision  already  made, 
he  is  unable  to  appreciate  the  value  of  hostile  facts,  even 
though  he  is  aware  of  them.  In  the  latter  case,  instead  of 
presenting  those  hostile  facts  fairly,  he  tends  to  suppress 
or  distort  them  because  he  is  afraid  that  his  audience, 
readers  or  listeners,  will  not  react  to  them  precisely  as  he 
has  done.  The  propagandist  believes  (when  he  is  not  a 
paid  prostitute)  that  his  conclusions  are  right;  but,  no 
more  than  any  other  demagogue,  does  he  like  to  give 
other  men  and  women  a  fair  chance  to  decide  for  them 
selves.  The  last  thing  he  will  show  them  is  Francis  of 
Verulam  reasoning  with  himself.  He  cannot  encourage 
the  meditative  process.  He  is,  at  best,  the  special  pleader. 

It  can  have  escaped  no  reader  of  British  and  American 
periodicals  that  there  is  very  little  urbane  meditation  go 
ing  on  in  print.  Half  the  articles  published  are  propa 
ganda —  political,  economic,  social;  the  other  half  are 
purely  informational,  mere  catalogues  of  fact.  The  essay 
is  nowhere.  Either  there  is  no  proposition,  or  evidence  is 
suppressed.  Above  all,  there  is  no  meditation  —  no  ur 
banity.  All  this  is  characteristic  of  the  state  of  war  in 
which  we  are  unfortunately  living;  that  state  of  war 
which,  alas !  permits  us  few  unprejudiced  hours. 

Yet  I  think  many  people  would  agree  that  we  need 
those  unprejudiced  hours  rather  particularly,  just  now. 


AN  ESSAY  ON  ESSAYS  [  41 7  ] 

We  need  the  essay  rather  particularly,  just  now,  since 
fiction  and  poetry  have  suffered  even  more  cruelly  than 
critical  prose  from  the  corruption  of  propaganda  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  rage  for  "fact-finding"  on  the  other. 
We  need  to  get  away  from  polemics;  we  even  need  to  get 
away  from  statistics.  Granted  that  we  are  in  a  state  of 
war:  are  we  positively  so  badly  off  that  we  must  permit 
every  sense  save  the  economic  to  be  atrophied;  that  we 
cannot  afford  to  think  about  life  in  any  terms  except 
those  of  bread?  The  desperate  determination  to  guaran 
tee  bread  to  every  one  —  which  seems  to  be  the  basis  of 
all  our  political  and  economic  quarreling  —  is  perhaps 
our  major  duty.  And  after?  as  the  French  say.  Is  it  not 
worth  our  while  to  keep  ourselves  complex  and  civilized, 
so  that,  when  bread  for  every  one  is  guaranteed,  we  shall 
be  capable  of  entertaining  other  interests? 

The  preoccupation  with  bread  alone  is  a  savage's  pre 
occupation;  even  when  it  concerns  itself  altruistically 
with  other  people's  bread,  it  is  still  a  savage's  preoccupa 
tion.  The  preoccupation  with  facts  to  the  exclusion  of 
what  can  be  done  with  them,  and  the  incapacity  for 
logical  thinking,  are  both  savage.  Until  a  man  begins  to 
think  —  not  merely  to  lose  his  temper  or  to  learn  by 
heart  —  he  is,  mentally,  clothed  in  the  skins  of  beasts. 
We  are,  I  fear,  under  economic  stress,  de-civilizing  our 
selves.  Between  propaganda  and  "dope"  there  is  little 
room  for  the  meditative  process  and  the  subtler  proposi 
tions. 

I  am  not  urging  that  we  play  the  flute  while  Rome 
burns.  I  recall  the  sad  entry  in  Dorothy  Wordsworth's 
journal:  "William  wasted  his  mind  all  day  in  the  maga 
zines."  I  am  not  asking  the  magazines  to  waste  the  minds 
of  our  Williams.  .  .  .  The  fact  that  the  familiar  essay  of 
the  whimsical  type  is  not  at  the  moment  popular  —  that 


[  4i 8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

when  people  wish  to  be  diverted,  they  prefer  Wodehouse 
to  Leacock,  let  us  say  —  does  not  disturb  me.  But  it 
seems  a  pity  that  meditative  prose  should  suffer  a  total 
eclipse,  if  only  because  meditation  is  highly  contagious. 
A  good  essay  inevitably  sets  the  reader  to  thinking.  Just 
because  it  expresses  a  point  of  view,  is  limited  by  one  per 
sonality,  and  cannot  be  exhaustive  or  wholly  authorita 
tive,  it  invites  the  reader  to  collaboration.  A  good  essay  is 
neither  intoxicant  nor  purge  nor  anodyne;  it  is  a  mental 
stimulant. 

Poetry  may  be,  indeed,  as  Arnold  said,  "a  criticism  of 
life."  But  most  of  us  need  a  different  training  in  critical 
thinking  than  that  which  is  offered  to  us  by  the  poets.  A 
vast  amount  of  the  detail  of  life,  detail  which  preoccupies 
and  concerns  us  all,  is  left  out  of  great  poetry.  We  do  not 
spend  all  our  time  on  the  heights,  or  in  the  depths,  and  if 
we  are  to  live  we  must  reflect  on  many  matters  rather 
temporal  than  eternal.  The  essayist  says,  "Come,  let  us 
reason  together."  That  is  an  invitation — whether  given 
by  word  of  mouth  or  on  the  printed  page  —  that  civilized 
people  must  encourage  and,  as  often  as  possible  in  their 
burdened  lives,  accept. 


Going  after  the  Cows  in  a  Fog 

ROBERT  P.  TRISTRAM  COFFIN 

The  day  was  over,  but  there  was  no  night 
To  take  its  place  yet.  All  the  trees  were  gone 
Except  the  few  that  loomed  beside  the  way, 
And  they  were  larger  than  beech  trees  should  be; 
They  towered  topless  by  the  boy,  as  he 
Went  up  the  path  the  many  tracks  of  cows, 
Hoof  to  hoof's  end,  and  forty  years  of  them, 
Had  cut  ten  inches  wide  through  pennyroyal 
And  hardhack  with  its  silver,  hugged-up  leaves. 
The  path  went  where  the  huckleberry  bushes 
And  bayberry  were,  to  brush  off  stinging  flies, 
It  did  not  go  the  way  a  man  would  go. 
It  was  not  wide  enough  for  even  a  boy 
Ten-years-wide  to  keep  his  trousers  dry. 
The  cobwebs  were  as  solid  as  bead  bags 
Until  the  boy  had  passed,  and  then  they  were 
Thin  thread  and  dry  and  all  their  bright  beads  gone. 
Although  he  could  not  see  the  woods,  the  boy 
Could  hear  woods  dripping  busily  each  side. 

"Coo-boss !  coo-boss !"  —  His  voice  came  back  on  him 
And  did  not  get  past  trees  or  up  the  hill. 
It  was  lonesome,  shut  in  with  his  voice, 
Whistling  did  not  help.  The  night  was  nigh. 
It  might  be  miles  to  go.  The  boy  stopped  still. 

There  was  a  muffled  tonkling  of  a  bronze 
Bell  somewhere  or  other,  every  side. 


[  420  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

And  then  a  wide  white  face  built  up  itself 
Out  of  the  fog  and  stopped  with  startled  eyes, 
Warm  in  the  mist,  less  than  ten  feet  away. 
"Soo-boss!  so-boss!"  The  small  boy  stepped  aside, 
The  eyes  grew  friendly,  the  curled  horns  shook  once, 
The  mild  head  lowered,  and  the  cow  went  by. 
The  boy  stayed  still,  head  after  head  came  on, 
Swinging,  friendly,  and  sleek  bodies  after 
Lurched  by  in  peace.  The  boy  turned  his  bare  toes 
And  followed  the  swinging  line  off  into  night. 


New  Deal  Catharsis 

FRANK  R.  KENT 

IT  IS  easily  possible  that  history  will  record  the  para 
doxical  verdict  that  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt  has  done 
more  than  any  other  President  to  preserve  our  institu 
tions  and  stem  the  tide  of  both  socialism  and  fascism. 
From  the  conservative  point  of  view,  he  is  likely  to  be 
recognized  in  years  to  come  as  one  of  the  great  bene 
factors  of  the  nation. 

For  more  than  a  generation  the  messiahs  of  politics,  in 
groups  and  as  individuals,  had  been  preaching  the 
sugary  doctrines  which  the  engaging  Mr.  Roosevelt 
eagerly  seized  and  dealt  out  to  a  dazed  people  in  large, 
undiluted  doses.  Not  one  was  new;  not  one  originated 
with  the  President  nor,  in  fact,  anywhere  near  the  presi 
dential  circle.  For  years  they  had  been  mouthed  by  men, 
mostly  from  the  West,  who  had  gotten  into  Congress 
calling  themselves  Progressives  or  Insurgents.  Some  of 
them  were  sincere,  believing  their  own  stuff;  others  were 
calculating  demagogues  who  knew  a  lot  better.  Every 
policy  or  proposal  was  soaked  in  the  sorry  idea  of  a 
paternalistic  government  which  would  own,  run  and 
regiment  everything.  Invariably  the  appeal  was  to  the 
disgruntled  and  discontented;  the  effort  always  to  array 
those  who  have  not  against  those  who  have,  on  the  mis 
taken  theory  that  the  former  are  in  the  majority.  I  say 
it  is  a  mistaken  theory  because  at  bottom,  and  under 
normal  conditions,  the  country  is  overwhelmingly  con 
servative,  highly  averse  to  experiments  except  when 
alarmed  and  misled.  It  is  so  big  that  not  nearly  enough 
people  can  get  mad  about  the  same  thing  at  the  same 
time.  What  sets  Texas  ablaze  leaves  Massachusetts  as 

[421] 


[  422  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

cold  as  a  banker's  heart;  things  that  threaten  turmoil 
and  generate  heat  in  Minnesota  and  Montana  create  not 
a  ripple  of  interest  in  Maryland  and  Virginia.  Despite 
Mr.  Sinclair  Lewis,  this  isn't  a  revoluting  country. 

It  was,  of  course,  utterly  impossible  for  anyone  to 
conceive  the  variety,  the  character  or  the  scope  of  the 
New  Deal  experimentation,  or  estimate  its  cost.  The 
whole  business  has  been  upon  a  gigantic  and  bewildering 
scale.  In  the  end,  it  will  prove  the  most  expensive  ex 
ample  of  confusion  and  futility  ever  provided  by  any 
government  in  the  history  of  the  world.  There  will  be  a 
terrific  bill  to  pay.  Yet  in  the  long  run  it  may  be  worth 
it.  Its  failures,  tragic  and  costly  as  they  are  sure  to  be, 
may  prove  easily  the  most  valuable  object  lessons  a 
people  ever  had.  Already  there  are  indications  of  this  in 
the  reaction  of  the  voters  against  the  foolish  excesses  into 
which  we  have  been  plunged.  There  is  no  room  to  doubt 
that  Mr.  Roosevelt's  extravagances  have  converted  a 
great  many  people  to  the  conservative  point  of  view.  It 
is  logical  to  believe  that  as  one  after  the  other  of  his 
schemes  crumble  and  flop,  the  power  of  the  demagogues 
in  the  land  will  be  diminished,  the  disposition  of  the 
people  to  run  after  false  gods  decreased,  and  a  public 
impatience  will  develop  with  those  who  preach  the 
doctrine  of  discontent,  and  try  to  delude  the  voters  with 
Utopian  dreams  of  a  nation  in  which  no  one  need  work 
for  a  living.  A  swing  back  to  fundamentals  is  inevitable. 

Certainly  the  President's  famous  press  conference, 
which  General  Johnson  asserts  was  part  of  the  Frank 
furter  strategy  to  put  the  Constitution  "on  the  spot,"  did 
more  to  repopularize  that  instrument  than  a  hundred 
years  of  political  and  educational  oratory.  Instead  of 
responding  to  the  Roosevelt  "horse  and  buggy"  phrase 
as  expected  by  his  professorial  advisers,  the  public  gen- 


NEW  DEAL  CA  THARSIS  [  423  ] 

erally  reacted  quite  violently  in  the  other  direction.  The 
net  result  was  the  creation  of  a  vibrant  sentiment  for 
both  Court  and  Constitution  of  such  strength  that  the 
Administration  promptly  backed  away  from  the  issue, 
though  not  before  the  suspicion  had  pretty  generally 
permeated  the  people  that  behind  the  President  is  a 
group  of  men  who  regard  the  Constitution  —  again  to 
quote  General  Johnson  —  as  an  "antediluvian  joke"  to 
be  tossed  aside  as  interfering  with  their  plans  for  the 
More  Abundant  Life. 

The  almost  incredible  clumsiness,  waste  and  stupidity 
of  the  alphabetical  bureaucracy  has  given  the  country  a 
fairly  convincing  object  lesson  in  the  joys  of  socialism, 
and  demonstrated  the  absurdity  of  the  general  regi 
mentation  which  the  national  planners  of  the  Tugwell 
type  thought  they  could  achieve,  and  toward  which  goal 
they  had  Mr.  Roosevelt  running  with  the  ball.  The 
NRA,  which  had  begun  to  crumble  and  disintegrate 
long  before  the  Supreme  Court  killed  it,  taught  business 
men  that  no  magic  could  save  them  from  themselves. 
Whether  or  not  the  Supreme  Court,  as  expected,  knocks 
out  the  processing  tax  as  unconstitutional,  in  the  long 
run  the  AAA  experiment  is  doomed  to  failure.  Its  per 
manent  effect  will  be  a  demonstration  of  the  futility  of 
all  such  legislation,  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  more 
difficult,  in  the  future,  for  the  demagogues  who  specialize 
in  the  farmer  vote  to  delude  him  again.  It  is  true,  too,  I 
think,  that  the  collapse  of  the  Warren  plan  has  shown 
the  fallacy  of  the  so-called  managed  currency;  that  the 
Administration's  domination  of  the  radio  has  aroused 
public  opinion  to  the  necessity  of  freeing  broadcasting 
from  political  control;  and  that  the  1935  tax  law  has 
proven  to  millions  of  people  that  the  deficit  cannot  be 
met  or  the  nation  supported  by  soaking  the  rich  —  that 


[  424  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

there  is  no  soundness  in  the  pleasing  idea  that  the  Fat 
Cats  with  the  Fancy  Fortunes  can  be  squeezed  while  the 
masses  of  the  people  continue  to  revel  in  the  pouring 
out  of  the  Federal  billions. 

Summing  up,  there  seems  sound  ground  for  believing 
that  the  terrific  confusion  and  cost  of  the  New  Deal 
experiments,  coupled  with  their  recorded  failures  and 
demonstrated  futility,  will  sicken  the  nation  equally  with 
the  political  philosophy  for  which  they  stand,  and  with 
the  breed  of  men  they  have  brought  into  high  office. 
Whether  the  popular  reaction  now  rapidly  gathering 
force  is  strong  enough  to  put  an  end  to  this  wild  regime 
next  year,  or  whether  it  will  take  another  four  before  it 
is  swept  out,  is  not  possible  to  say.  What  is  clear,  how 
ever,  is  this:  In  the  end  the  revulsion  against  the  Roose- 
veltian  course  will  be  very  great  indeed.  It  will  be  strong 
enough  to  end  this  sort  of  experimentation  for  many 
years  to  come.  It  will  swing  us  back  to  sanity  and  sol 
vency,  restore  confidence  in  the  fundamentals,  and  make 
us  extremely  wary  of  the  political  medicine  men  with 
their  patent  panaceas  for  every  national  ache  and  pain, 
and  their  insincere  twaddle  about  the  "Forgotten  Man." 
Viewed  in  this  way,  it  is  possible  —  not  now,  perhaps, 
and  probably  not  soon,  but  at  some  time  in  the  future  - 
to  regard  Mr.  Roosevelt  as  a  great  national  benefactor. 


Profit  Sharing  and  Prosperity 

GEORGE  HULL,  JR. 

PEOPLE  are  constantly  discussing  capitalism  and 
socialism,  but  they  very  seldom  stop  to  consider  just 
where  the  difference  between  the  two  systems  lies.  Their 
fundamental  cleavage,  it  seems  to  me,  is  a  question  of 
fluidity.  In  a  wholly  socialistic  state  all  relationships  are 
fixed  or  static;  in  a  truly  capitalistic  order,  on  the  other 
hand,  nothing  is  fixed,  everything  fluid.  Rhythm,  waves, 
fluctuations,  seasons,  change  are  inherent  components 
of  nature.  The  great  strength  of  capitalism  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  conforms  to  nature.  Relationships  which  can  easily 
be  altered,  which  give  and  take,  are  in  little  danger  of 
being  destroyed. 

Lincoln  pointed  out  that  a  nation  cannot  exist  half 
slave  and  half  free,  but  it  remains  for  some  latter  day 
statesman  to  declaim  the  equally  true  proposition  that 
we  cannot  exist  half  capitalistic  and  half  socialistic.  If  my 
definition  of  these  terms  is  accurate,  we  have  been  at 
tempting  this  straddling  game  for  a  long  time,  and  therein 
lies  the  source  of  many  of  our  troubles.  If  true  capitalism 
demands  that  nothing  shall  be  rigid,  fixed  wage  rates 
and  fixed  debt  structures  have  no  place  in  it  —  are,  in 
fact,  antagonistic  to  it.  But  people  must  be  compensated 
for  their  work  and  for  their  risks,  or  the  wheels  won't  go 
round  —  won't  exist  at  all,  for  that  matter.  How  can  they 
be  compensated  without  wages  or  interest? 

The  answer  is  very  simple:  The  product  of  all  capital 
istic  enterprise  is  profits,  and  the  only  compensation 
which  is  sufficiently  elastic  to  withstand  the  exigencies 
of  nature  is  a  share  in  profits.  Industries,  such  as  the 
chemical  industry,  which  have  done  their  major  financing 

[425] 


[  426  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

through  stock  issues  offer  a  sharp  contrast  to  the  railroads, 
ridden  with  debts  (but  not  by  passengers).  It  will  not  be 
long  before  the  same  principle  is  applied  by  far-sighted 
entrepreneurs  to  the  problem  of  wages.  There  is  no  other 
fundamental  solution  to  the  dilemma  which  has  resulted 
from  the  present  condition  of  rigidity:  during  periods  of 
rising  profits,  labor  agitators  create  dissatisfaction  among 
workers,  engender  strikes  and  disturb  the  economic  pic 
ture;  during  periods  of  depression,  on  the  other  hand, 
rigid  wage  rates  impede  the  deflation  of  costs  and  produce 
bankruptcies  and  unemployment. 

Let  us  assume  that  every  enterprise  in  the  nation  has 
adopted  \h&  principle  of  profit  sharing  as  its  revised  method 
of  distributing  wages  and  salaries  and  dividends.  Since 
the  individual  corporation  is  left  free  to  apply  the  prin 
ciple  in  its  own  way,  we  will  assume  that  it  divides  its 
beneficiaries  into  four  classes  or  four  profit-sharing  groups 
and  calls  them — (1)  "the  worker  group";  (2)  "the 
clerical  group";  (3)  "the  stockholder  group";  (4)  "the 
manager-executive  group."  Within  each  of  these  groups 
the  individuals  are  graduated  according  to  their  varying 
qualifications  just  as  they  are  today  under  the  flat  wage 
system.  The  "stockholder  group"  is  of  course  graduated 
and  remunerated  on  the  basis  of  individual  holdings,  or 
ownership  of  stock.  The  individuals  in  the  other  groups 
are  graduated  according  to  their  relative  value  to  the 
company,  and  are  remunerated  accordingly. 

Now  let  us  remember  that  each  group  as  a  unit,  and 
each  individual  in  each  group  has  acquired  a  vital,  per 
sonal  interest  in  the  common  purpose  of  the  corporation, 
which  is  the  making  of  the  largest  possible  net  corporate 
profit.  In  applying  the  principle  of  profit  sharing,  a  meet 
ing  takes  place  between  the  representatives  of  the  four 
groups.  There  has  been  no  disturbance  of  the  wage  rates, 


PROFIT  SHARING  AND  PROSPERITY  [  427  ] 

or  salary  rates,  or  dividend  rates  up  to  this  point.  It  is 
recognized,  however,  that  a  wage  rate  or  salary  rate  is  no 
longer  to  be  thought  of  as  the  total  compensation  of  the 
recipient.  It  is  no  longer  a  "flat  rate,"  but  something  like 
a  "drawing  account."  It  carries  the  recipient  over  a  cer 
tain  period,  at  the  end  of  which  the  net  profits  of  the  cor 
poration  are  determined  and  each  group  receives  its 
group  share,  and  each  individual  in  each  group  receives 
his  pre-arranged  percentage  of  the  total  received  by  the 
group  to  which  he  belongs. 

If  it  so  happens  that  the  Smith  Shoe  Company  is  mak 
ing  a  good  profit  at  the  time  this  new  system  is  adopted, 
all  parties  might  decide  to  let  the  "drawing- account 
wage"  remain  just  what  the  flat  rate  had  previously  been. 
If  its  cost  structure  were  such  that  the  company  was 
making  a  good  net  profit,  it  might  seem  best  to  leave 
undisturbed  that  part  of  its  cost  structure  which  was 
made  up  of  its  wage-roll  and  salary-roll.  The  portion  of 
the  net  profit  received  by  each  individual  would  be 
something  extra.  Presumably  no  one  would  object  to  the 
inauguration  of  profit  sharing  under  those  favorable 
conditions. 

But  suppose  the  company  were  making  not  profits,  but 
losses  at  the  time  the  profit-sharing  arrangement  went 
into  effect.  How  would  that  situation  be  handled?  Un 
doubtedly  the  facts  would  be  laid  before  all  four  groups  in 
conference,  and  a  percentage  reduction  in  the  remunera 
tion  of  all  four  groups  and  of  the  individuals  in  each  group 
would  be  recommended.  In  this  case,  if  all  agreed,  the  old 
flat  wage  rate  would  be  transformed  into  a  drawing- 
account  wage,  but  on  a  lower  basis.  The  sting  of  this  re 
duction  all  along  the  line  would  be  mitigated  by  two 
things,  namely  —  first,  the  fact  that  it  was  a  "share-and- 
share-alike"  proposition,  second  —  that  it  gave  promise 


[  428  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  putting  the  corporation  in  a  position  to  show  a  net 
profit,  in  which  case  each  and  every  individual  would  get 
some  of  it.  There  is  a  mutuality  of  interest  here  which 
does  not  and  cannot  exist  under  the  straight  flat  wage 
system.  It  puts  all  the  individuals  in  a  frame  of  mind  to 
cooperate  with  each  other  for  the  common  benefit  of 
the  corporation,  because  their  fate  is  definitely  linked 
with  the  fate  of  the  corporation  the  moment  profit  sharing 
is  substituted  for  flat  wages.  The  corporation  is  thus  en 
abled  to  extricate  itself  from  a  position  in  which  it  is 
losing  money,  and  to  get  its  costs  and  selling  prices  down 
to  where  it  can  make  a  profit  by  putting  over  a  large  sales 
volume  at  reduced  prices. 

This  release  from  the  rigidity  of  rates  does  not  mean 
that  a  uniformly  blanketed  wage  rate,  or  working-hours 
rate,  or  price  rate  has  been  changed  from  one  blanket 
level  to  another  blanket  level  by  "collective  bargaining" 
between  the  management  of  the  Smith  Shoe  Company, 
and  a  labor  union  leader,  as  it  does  today.  It  means  that 
without  any  interference  from  a  union  or  a  Code,  the 
four  groups  of  profit-sharing  partners,  constituting  all 
the  human,  individual  beneficiaries  of  this  particular 
enterprise,  the  Smith  Shoe  Company,  have  regained  their 
individual  liberty  to  make  their  own  rates  to  fit  their  own 
conditions.  But  distribution  is  no  longer  done  by  flat 
rates.  The  change  from  flat  rates  to  shares  is  the  thing 
which  has  made  possible  the  regaining  of  this  corporate 
and  individual  liberty.  This  in  turn  enables  the  corpora 
tion  and  the  individuals  composing  it,  to  do  the  things 
which  will  allow  the  corporation  and  the  individuals  to 
survive  and  presumably  also  to  prosper.  Today  we  are 
bound  hand  and  foot  by  unionized  wage  rates  and  work 
rates,  which  together  make  a  rigidly  unionized  cost  rate. 
Lately  we  have  been  further  bound  by  codified  price 


PROFIT  SHARING  AND  PROSPERITY  [  429  ] 

rates,  thus  making  the  rate  structure  rigid  from  bottom  to 
top. 

I  believe  that,  in  time,  even  the  drawing-account  por 
tion  of  the  profit-sharing  wage  system  would  fade  out  of 
the  economic  picture.  Thus  profit  sharing  would  remove 
even  that  aspect  of  a  fixed-cost  factor  in  Industry.  Any 
fixity  at  the  bottom  of  our  system  tends  to  crystallize  the 
structure  all  the  way  to  the  top.  When  it  comes  to  the 
rigidifying  of  selling  prices  at  the  top  of  the  rate  structure, 
the  most  important  law  of  economics  is  thwarted,  namely 
the  law  which  indicates  that  when  volume  declines,  a 
lowering  of  price  is  the  correct  economic  lever  to  be 
moved  in  order  to  recover  volume.  We  cannot  success 
fully  operate  an  economic  system  with  price  as  the  main 
objective,  as  we  are  trying  to  do.  We  must  put  ourselves 
in  a  position  wherein  we  are  enabled  to  operate  with 
volume  as  the  chief  objective.  Particularly  is  this  true  un 
der  the  mass-production  system.  Our  production  system 
is  a  full  grown,  powerful  adult;  whereas  our  distribution 
system  is  pitifully  infantile,  by  comparison. 

The  most  fundamental  fallacy  in  the  whole  Roosevelt 
program  is  its  aim  to  achieve  price  at  the  sacrifice  of 
volume.  Price  is  not  wealth.  It  is  only  a  rate  at  which  one 
kind  of  wealth,  in  some  physical  form,  is  traded  for  an 
other.  The  placing  of  too  great  an  emphasis  on  price  tends 
to  give  us  a  beautiful  but  theoretical  rate  of  doing  busi 
ness,  but  little  business  being  done.  If  we  cannot  change 
the  rate  when  it  proves  to  be  a  rate  which  kills  volume, 
then  we  are  frozen  in  a  position  from  which  revival  is 
impossible.  Revival  is  a  matter  of  volume,  not  a  raising  of 
rates. 

The  Code  system  of  running  the  economic  show  made 
cost  rates  more  rigid,  more  widely  and  arbitrarily  and 
uniformly  blanketed  over  broad  segments  of  our  economic 


[  430  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

system.  It  put  us  in  strait-jackets  which  were  far  more 
tight  and  ill-fitting  to  the  individual  corporations  operat 
ing  under  them,  than  were  the  rates  imposed  by  the  la 
bor  unions.  It  is  this  tightening  of  rate  rigidity  and  the 
widening  of  its  uniform,  blanketing  processes  which  make 
it  impossible  to  recover  any  considerable  degree  of  eco 
nomic  prosperity  except  the  paternalistic  spurts  that  come 
from  artificial  borrowing  and  spending  by  government. 
This  government  intrusion  gives  us  an  economic  direction 
straight  toward  the  complete  socialization  of  our  entire 
system. 

I  have  tried  to  show  briefly  that  this  direction  grows 
inevitably  out  of  the  conflict  relation  between  employer 
and  employees  which  is  inherent  in  the  flat  wage  system. 
Unless  we  shift  to  universal  profit  sharing,  we  are  certain 
to  go  all  the  way  to  the  terminus  of  this  socialistic  direc 
tion.  There  is  no  permanent  stopping-place  halfway  be 
tween  individualism  and  socialism.  The  type  of  corporate 
individualism  which  will  begin  to  revive  when  we  adopt 
profit  sharing,  is  depicted  in  the  illustration  of  the  Smith 
Shoe  Company.  A  profitable  company  does  one  thing  to 
meet  the  individual  conditions  confronting  it.  An  un 
profitable  company  does  a  different  thing  to  meet  its 
different  conditions.  They  cannot  do  this  under  blan 
keted  rates;  and  they  cannot  get  rid  of  blanketed  rates 
except  by  abolishing  labor  unions  through  the  adop 
tion  of  universal  profit  sharing. 

In  addition  to  giving  us  individual  corporate  freedom 
and  flexibility  in  the  matter  of  rate-making,  the  introduc 
tion  of  profit  sharing  will  give  us  a  wider  distribution  of 
buying  power  in  the  interest  of  making  a  wider  and  more 
continuous  mass  market  for  the  sale  of  our  mass-produc 
tion  output.  Let  us  suppose  that  the  Smith  Shoe  Com 
pany  puts  in  some  improved  machinery  which  enables  it 


PROFIT  SHARING  AND  PROSPERITT  [431  ] 

to  double  its  production  per  man  per  hour,  and  that  it  is 
able  to  sell  the  increased  output  without  reducing  its 
previous  selling  prices.  If  the  drawing- account  wages  and 
salaries  remain  the  same,  the  result  is  a  greatly  increased 
net  profit  for  the  corporation.  When  the  question  of 
allotting  this  increased  profit  among  the  four  groups  of 
partners  comes  up  for  consideration,  the  point  should  be, 
and  undoubtedly  would  be  brought  up,  that  the  groups 
embracing  the  largest  number  of  individuals  should  begin 
to  receive  an  increasing  percentage  of  the  total  profit  of 
the  corporation  —  because  this  would  diffuse  buying 
power  more  widely  among  the  smaller  income  classes 
who  spend  all  they  receive  currently,  and  thus  put  the 
buying  power  back  into  circulation  in  the  current  con 
sumption  of  shoes  and  of  all  other  kinds  of  standard  con 
sumer  goods. 

This  is  a  correct  principle  of  distribution.  If  the  Smith 
Shoe  Company  has  three  stockholders,  three  executives, 
ten  department  managers,  one  hundred  clerks  and  one 
thousand  "workers,"  the  percentage  of  the  total  profit 
of  the  corporation  paid  out  to  the  "clerk  group"  and  the 
"worker  group"  should  rise  as  the  corporate  net  profits 
rise.  The  observance  of  this  principle  of  mass-distribution 
would  tend  to  become  a  universal  distribution  habit  un 
der  the  adoption  of  universal  profit  sharing,  as  the  revised 
method  of  distributing  buying  power.  If  every  individual 
enterprise  observed  this  principle  of  diffusing  a  rising 
dollar  volume  of  net  profits  more  and  more  widely,  by 
giving  its  numerically  larger  groups  a  rising  percentage 
of  the  total  of  the  rising  corporate  profits,  each  corpora 
tion  which  was  making  a  rising  profit  would  thus  be 
fertilizing  its  own  future  market  and  that  of  every  other 
producer.  The  composite  result  would  be  an  indirect 
"gearing"  of  consumption  with  production,  allowing  pro- 


[  432  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

duction  to  set  the  economic  pace,  and  causing  consump 
tion  to  follow  any  pace  that  production  might  choose 
to  set. 

This  indirect  gearing  of  the  total  consumption  with 
the  total  production  of  the  country  will  be  the  result  of 
establishing  a  direct  connection  between  the  inflowing 
dollar  volume  of  net  profit,  with  the  outflowing  dollar 
volume  of  buying  power  which  is  diffused  among  the 
masses  of  smaller  income  receivers  in  each  and  every 
individual  enterprise.  Thus  profit  sharing  from  the  view 
point  of  the  employers  or  proprietors  of  our  economic 
system  is  not  a  matter  of  altruism,  but  a  matter  of  enlight 
ened  self-interest.  It  tends  to  keep  the  consumer  market 
continually  absorbing  the  entire  output  of  our  whole 
economic  system.  It  is  obvious  that  this  diffusion  of  rising 
profits  which  is  essential  to  the  maintenance  of  the  mass- 
consumer  market  cannot  take  place  under  the  flat-wage 
system.  That  is  why  our  mass  market  collapses  in  the  pe 
riods  of  rising-profits  —  bringing  "prosperity"  to  an 
abrupt  end. 


Mexico,  My  Beloved 

JOSEPHINE  NIGGLI 

Mexico,  my  beloved, 

is  not  the  clashing  of  cymbals 

nor  the  curving 

of  vermilion  sails 

over  the  heart 

of  the  wind; 

it  is  not 

a  vivid  slash 

across  the  mouth 

of  the  world. 

But  when  the  moon  touches  the  silken  waves 

of  the  Lerma, 

and  the  carnations 

breathe  their  scents 

into  the  souls  of  a  thousand  birds 

and  force  them  to  sing 

of  something 

they  but  dimly  understand  — 

this, 

my  beloved, 

is  Mexico. 


[433] 


Mexican  Small  Town 

PHILIP  STEVENSON 

IN  HIS  last  campaign  for  the  presidency,  Mr.  Hoover 
intimated  that  if  his  opponent  were  elected,  grass 
would  grow  in  the  streets  of  our  cities.  He  did  not  need  to 
explain  that  to  Americans  such  a  thing  would  indicate  a 
calamitous  state  of  affairs.  His  audience  took  that  for 
granted.  Yet  when  I  tell  you  that  grass  grows  in  the 
streets  of  Mexican  small  towns,  I  mean  to  suggest  no 
calamity.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  only  one  of  the  delightful 
differences  between  Mexican  towns  and  our  own. 

For  the  streets  of  provincial  Mexico  are  cobbled.  Yet 
they  do  not  in  the  least  resemble  the  cobbled  streets  of  a 
bygone  day  in  America.  The  stones  are  flat-topped,  with 
grass  growing  between  —  not  at  all  a  bad  surface  for 
driving.  And  instead  of  being  all  one  shape  and  size,  they 
are  of  all  shapes  and  sizes,  patiently,  cunningly,  fitted 
together  into  patterns. 

This  is  an  example  of  the  most  important  difference 
between  us  and  the  Mexicans.  With  us,  utility  and 
efficiency  are  paramount,  whereas  everything  they  do  is 
influenced  by  their  prehistoric  Indian  heritage  of  beauti 
ful  design  and  patient  craftsmanship. 

When  we  make  things,  when  we  buy  and  sell  things, 
the  quickest  way  is  always  the  best  way.  In  Mexico,  the 
best  way  is  the  pleasantest.  That  is  why  the  Mexican  is  so 
often  dismayed  by  our  slap-dash,  rough-and-ready  way 
of  walking  into  a  store,  buying  what  we  want,  and  im 
mediately  walking  out  again.  And  that  is  why  we  call  it 
"a  waste  of  time"  to  take  odd-sized  stones  and  patiently 
fit  them  together  just  to  make  a  street,  or  to  spend  a 
sociable  half  hour  just  to  buy  a  little  fruit.  Why  not  make 

[434] 


MEXICAN  SMALL  TO  WN  [  435  ] 

the  stones  in  standard  size  and  save  the  trouble?  Why  not 
buy  your  fruit  and  have  done? 

The  answer  is  that  in  the  Mexican's  view,  time  could 
not  possibly  be  better  spent  than  in  the  enhancement,  the 
dramatization,  the  humanization  of  routine.  It  isn't  that 
he's  slow  or  lazy  at  all.  But  he  insists  that  the  things  we 
have  to  do  everyday  might  just  as  well  be  enjoyable,  and 
that  things  we  have  to  look  at  everyday  might  better  be 
beautiful.  As  a  result,  the  Mexican  Indian  (four-fifths 
of  the  population  of  Mexico)  is  almost  never  bored. 

This  Mexican  quality  of  infusing  drama  into  the  most 
ordinary  matters  is  well  illustrated  by  the  design  of  Mexi 
can  houses.  From  the  street  their  appearance  is  quite 
ordinary  —  though,  to  be  sure,  different  from  ours,  with 
their  tinted  plaster,  their  moss-stained  tile  roofs,  their 
hinged  "French"  windows  in  place  of  sashes.  But  in  no 
case  does  the  exterior  suggest  the  gaiety,  the  flowery 
Eden-beauty  of  their  patios  or  interior  courts. 

The  Mexican's  patio  is  his  hearth,  the  bosom  of  his 
home.  (Indeed,  he  has  no  hearth,  since  the  Mexican 
climate  obviates  the  need  of  fireplaces.)  The  patio  is  the 
center,  the  most  important  thing  about  the  house,  and  the 
tile-floored  rooms,  relatively  unimportant  necessities,  are 
ranged  round  it  on  two  or  more  sides.  Often  it  will  con 
tain  a  well  (not  always  to  be  trusted  for  purity)  with  its 
stone  coping,  its  pulley  and  bucket  suspended  from  a 
handsome  frame  of  wrought- ironwork;  while  the  high 
walls  dividing  the  patio  from  its  neighbors  are  invariably 
banked  with  ferns  and  a  thousand  bright  flowers  the  year 
round.  In  many  homes  the  patio  supports  a  few  banana 
trees  or  papayas  or  guavas  that  contribute  to  a  good  liv 
ing;  in  others  will  be  found  a  royal  palm  for  shade,  or  a 
lovely  dripping  pepper  tree  with  its  streaks  of  bright  red 
pods  for  decoration.  Shut  your  eyes,  imagine  this  private 


[  436  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Eden  in  moonlight,  silver  with  violet  shadows,  hushed 
with  slow  song  to  a  guitar,  and  you  will  feel  something 
of  the  theatrical  magic  of  the  Mexican  house. 

But  it  is  a  magic,  let  us  admit  at  once,  that  Americans 
as  a  whole  would  never  put  up  with.  It  is  a  magic  real 
ized  at  the  price  of  efficiency,  of  practical  comfort.  The 
beds  are  springless  more  often  than  not,  the  furniture  in 
general  scanty.  At  evening,  unless  all  doors  are  tightly 
shut,  bats  fly  in  and  roost  in  the  rafters.  Fleas  are  a  uni 
versal  pest  —  as  widespread  a  nuisance  as  the  common 
winter  nose  and  chest  cold  in  America  —  and  to  keep 
them  out  is  a  never-ending  struggle,  however  humor 
ously  dramatized.  Privies,  tin  washbowls  and  pitchers, 
are  penalties  accompanying  an  almost  total  lack  of 
running  water. 

Even  though  you  have  a  private  well,  water  for  drink 
ing  and  bathing  is  brought  to  you  daily  by  an  aguador 
(water-carrier),  dozens  of  whom  trot  all  day  from  the 
municipal  water  faucet  through  the  streets  of  provincial 
Mexico,  laden  with  two  five-gallon  cans  hung  by  ropes 
from  either  end  of  a  pole  across  the  shoulders.  In  their 
thonged  sandals,  their  light  cotton  pants  and  coats,  their 
low-crowned  broad-brimmed  sombreros  with  an  unused 
chin-strap  hanging  down  the  back  like  a  cue,  their  sparse 
black  moustaches  and  their  Mongolian  trot,  these 
aguadores  give  an  extraordinarily  Chinese  touch  to  the 
streets.  For  homemakers  who  cannot  afford  this  service 
(about  \]/2  cents  a  day)  there  is  no  alternative  but  to  don 
one's  blue  rebozo  (a  narrow  shawl,  the  standard  head 
dress  of  the  Mexican  woman),  hoist  one's  tawny  water- 
jar  to  the  right  shoulder,  and  carry  one's  water-supply 
oneself. 

Which  is  an  excellent  point  at  which  to  remark  that, 
contrary  to  his  reputation  in  America,  the  Mexican  is 


MEXICAN  SMALL  TOWN  [437] 

scrupulously  clean.  When  one  considers  the  widespread 
lack  of  water,  it  is  amazing  how  much  scrubbing  and 
washing  goes  on.  The  sweep-sweep  shush-shush  of  brooms 
is  as  characteristic  a  sound  in  Mexico  as  the  incessant 
sunrise-to-sunset  pat-pat-patting  of  tortillas  (thin  corn- 
meal  pancakes,  staple  food  of  rich  and  poor) ;  and  in  any 
town  boasting  a  river  or  a  lake,  the  banks  will  be  gay  with 
people  all  day  long  scrubbing  their  clothes,  themselves, 
and  their  children.  Throughout  the  country,  sidewalks 
and  even  the  cobbled  streets  are  watered  and  swept  re 
ligiously  at  dawn.  If  the  Mexicans  are  not  up  to  our  stand 
ards  of  cleanliness,  let  us  blame  not  the  people  but  their 
rulers,  those  who  control  the  capital  that  might,  but 
does  not,  provide  them  with  the  necessary  means.  Given 
American  facilities,  I  daresay  Mexico  would  be  spotless 
—  and  bugless ! 

The  American  housewife  would  scarcely  recognize  a 
Mexican  kitchen  as  such.  It  is  invariably  a  dark  window- 
less  cubbyhole,  without  cupboard  or  dish-closet,  without 
a  refrigerator,  without  a  chimney  or  anything  resembling 
a  stove!  For  centuries  Mexico  has  been  short  of  wood, 
and  the  use  of  coal  is  confined  largely  to  industry.  For 
cooking,  charcoal  is  the  commonest  fuel.  Instead  of  a 
range  in  the  kitchen,  you  see  a  sort  of  tile  bench  with  two 
or  three  grilled  excavations  in  it.  These  are  the  braziers 
in  which  a  few  fragments  of  charcoal  are  kindled  with 
shavings.  Round-bottomed  clay  pots  propped  straight 
by  stones  (or  occasionally  modern  flat  pans)  are  set 
directly  on  the  fire,  and  the  charcoal  is  fanned  to  the 
desired  heat  by  vigorous  agitation  of  a  straw  fan  at  the 
draught  hole!  Yet  Mexican  food,  though  occasionally 
exotic  to  our  taste,  is  delicious.  They  do  extraordinary 
things  with  the  means  at  their  disposal.  Indeed,  their 
bread,  baked  in  tiny  roll-like  loaves,  is  far  superior  to  ours. 


[  438  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Although  charcoal  gives  off  comparatively  little  smoke 
or  gas,  the  lack  of  a  chimney  would  drive  an  American 
housewife  to  distraction,  and  the  lack  of  utensils  might 
cause  a  domestic  revolution.  For  mashing  potatoes  or 
other  vegetables  she  would  use  a  stone  pestle  and  mortar. 
Her  egg-beater  would  be  a  sharply  incised  wooden  instru 
ment,  like  a  carved  potato-masher,  twirled  to  and  fro  be 
tween  the  palms.  Her  containers  would  be  almost  ex 
clusively  Indian  clay  pots,  covered  (if  covered  at  all!) 
with  a  clay  plate.  A  double-boiler  would  be  simply  a 
small  pot  set  inside  a  larger  one  containing  water.  Ovens 
are  manufactured  tin  boxes  set  over  the  charcoal  brazier. 
The  sink  is  of  stone,  and  in  the  average  house  it  is  emptied 
simply  by  removing  the  wooden  plug  from  the  drain  and 
catching  the  flood  in  a  bucket! 

With  this  equipment  it  can  be  seen  that  housekeeping 
is  a  major  full-time  job  in  Mexico.  For  the  average  house 
has  no  phone  from  which  orders  to  be  "sent  right  up" 
may  be  given.  For  your  supplies  you  go  to  the  market  — 
or  send  your  cook  —  and  for  certain  staples  such  as  coffee 
and  refined  sugar,  to  a  store.  And  since  there  is  no  re 
frigeration,  and  little  if  any  cupboard  room,  you  buy 
in  tiny  quantities  — just  enough  for  the  day.  But  this  is 
no  drawback.  Even  if  none  of  these  reasons  existed,  a 
housewife  in  Mexico  would  still  insist  on  the  daily  trip  to 
market.  Our  Indian  cook,  indeed,  made  several  trips 
a  day,  and  exhibited  the  utmost  dismay  when  we  sug 
gested  it  would  save  her  a  good  deal  of  effort  if  she  bought 
the  whole  day's  needs  at  once.  She  ran  her  legs  off  and 
haunted  the  market  out  of  preference.  Nor  did  we  blame  her 
once  we  understood  the  reason. 

For  the  open-air  market  is  the  center  and  spirit  of  old, 
Indian  Mexico.  It  is  the  last  virile  remnant  of  a  gracious, 
ancient,  communal  way  of  life  —  Indian  life  —  before 


MEXICAN  SMALL  TO  WN  [  439  ] 

the  Spanish  conqueror  brought  his  white  man's  efficiency 
to  America,  and  smashed  to  bits  the  patient,  quietly 
lovely  social  patterns  of  its  peoples.  For  centuries  before 
Cortez,  Mexico  had  had  her  open-air  markets  —  large 
enough,  it  is  said,  to  accommodate  tens  of  thousands  of 
people,  and  offering  for  sale  many  things  superior  to 
any  then  known  in  Europe  —  and  Mexico  has  her  mar 
kets  still.  Although  the  character  of  its  products  has 
greatly  changed  in  four  hundred  years,  the  market  still 
represents  the  spirit  of  an  ancient  day  when  the  struggle 
for  existence  was  softened  and  concealed  by  ritual,  when 
necessary  tasks  were  communized  and  sociable,  when 
nothing  was  standardized,  matter-of-fact,  or  routine, 
when  business  and  pleasure  were  one. 

All  Mexican  markets  are  one  delightful  jumble,  a  mad 
confusion  of  colors,  smells,  sounds,  and  forms;  of  light  and 
shadow;  of  occupation  and  idleness;  riches  and  poverty. 
Situated  generally  not  far  from  the  plaza  —  invariably 
the  center  of  town  —  they  cover  spaces  varying  from 
an  ordinary  vacant  lot  to  tens  of  acres,  depending  on  the 
size  of  the  town.  Coming  on  a  market  unexpectedly,  the 
eye  is  at  first  literally  stunned,  as  by  a  constantly  shifting 
kaleidoscope. 

The  Mexicans,  like  all  dark-skinned  people,  are  fond 
of  bright  color  —  in  the  rawest  shrieking  combinations  — 
and  they  are  right!  it  suits  them.  So  first,  perhaps,  you 
distinguish  the  people:  seas  of  shifting  hats,  low-crowned 
and  broad,  gaily  embroidered,  tilted  to  the  sun  by  a 
quick  expert  shake  of  the  head  —  those  are  the  men;  and 
proudly  moving,  living  madonnas  in  dark-blue  rebozos 
whose  folds,  it  seems,  can  never  hang  ungracefully  — 
the  women;  and  between  their  legs,  staggering  along, 
pushing  their  bare  rounded  bellies  ahead  of  them,  the 
littlest  children.  Older  children,  the  boys  in  big  hats  and 


[  440  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

the  little  girls  in  shawls,  are  for  the  most  part  miniature 
replicas  of  their  parents.  Most  of  the  men  wear  white 
cotton  pants  —  and  blinding  white  they  are  in  the  sun  - 
and  white  coats  over  a  colored  shirt,  with  a  folded  scrape 
on  the  shoulder.  The  women  are  more  addicted  to  bright 
hues  —  magenta  and  lemon  and  cerise,  orange,  scarlet 
and  purple. 

The  sea  of  hats  and  rebozos  flows  slowly,  with  Indian 
gravity,  between  the  booths  and  stalls  filled  with  wares 
and  shaded  from  the  sun  by  cotton  awnings  stretched 
across  alleys,  or  tipped  toward  the  light  by  props  shifted 
as  the  day  waxes  or  wanes.  There  is  absolutely  no  system 
about  anything.  Beside  the  booths,  between  the  booths, 
standing  or  squatting  on  straw  mats,  are  other  vendors, 
their  wares  spread  neatly  on  the  ground.  And  what 
mouth-watering  wares.  Flowers  in  profusion:  raw  ma 
genta  bougainvillea,  yellow  or  scarlet  poinsettia,  white 
jasmine,  roses,  and  colorful  mixtures  of  wild-flowers  - 
a  few  cents  for  an  armful!  Vegetables  galore:  great 
livery  white  radishes,  prickly  chayote,  tomatoes,  huge 
yellow  papayas,  glistening  onions,  heaps  of  orange 
carrots,  crimson  chile,  green  squashes,  cool  blades  of 
romaine,  pale  spears  of  sugar-cane.  And  fruit!  Mexico 
is  the  paradise  of  fruit:  gigantic  oranges  (the  most  tasty 
are  green!),  limes  and  sweet  lemons,  avocado  pears  (at 
about  a  cent  apiece),  guavas,  tejocotes  and  a  dozen  less- 
known  tropical  fruits ! 

Broad  fans  of  hats,  piles  of  hand-made  guar aches  (semi- 
sandals,  the  most  comfortable  footgear  in  the  world), 
shoals  of  Indian  pottery  in  browns  and  polychrome  de 
signs,  groups  of  highlighted  tawny  water-jars,  peanuts 
arranged  in  neat  little  squares,  stacks  of  folded  serapes 
(hand-woven  wool  blankets  with  a  slit  in  the  middle  for 
the  head  to  pass  through,  worn  exclusively  by  men), 


MEXICAN  SMALL  TOWN  [  441  ] 

fresh  fish  netted  an  hour  ago,  live  chickens  and  suckling 
pigs  are  all  found  in  profusion!  And  in  the  booths  all 
these  and  more  —  shelves  piled  helter-skelter  with  grocer 
ies,  candles,  hand-made  tin  lanterns  and  sconces,  straw 
mats  and  fans,  bolts  of  bright  cloth,  white  sheeting  and 
duck,  blue  rebozos,  black  veils  for  church,  glassware  and 
cheap  dishes,  buttons  and  five-and-ten  knicknacks  — 
almost  anything,  in  fact,  almost  any  service,  can  be 
bought  in  a  Mexican  market. 

A  boy  wanders  about  with  his  box  of  brushes  and  paste 
offering  a  shine  to  anyone  wearing  shoes  (to  be  dis 
tinguished  from  the  common  sandal-like  guaraches). 
Over  there  a  barber  has  set  up  his  chair  under  an  awning. 
Here  a  gambler  is  calling  out  the  names  and  numbers  of 
playing-cards.  Yonder  a  group  of  musicians,  in  exchange 
for  a  meal,  are  fiddling  fiddles,  plinking  guitars,  thumb 
ing  their  home-made  harps,  and  singing  a  long  ballad 
to  attract  the  hungry  to  a  booth  where  cooked  food  is 
served. 

For  the  market  is  also  an  open-air  restaurant.  Besides 
the  counters  at  booths,  there  are  countless  rough-plank 
tables  in  the  open  air,  their  benches  crowded  with  people 
munching  beans  and  chile  and  tortillas.  They  don't  use 
spoons,  but  fold  their  tortillas  into  scoops  to  convey  the 
food  to  their  mouths  —  and  the  spoon  is  consumed  with 
the  mouthful! 

In  and  out  among  the  booths,  between  the  vendors 
squatting  on  their  mats,  moves  the  bright  quiet  crowd, 
cracking  peanuts  as  they  go,  sucking  pink  dulces,  or 
gnawing  on  a  centavo's  worth  of  sugar-cane  and  spitting 
out  the  pulp.  Their  talk  is  very  subdued;  like  Indians 
everywhere,  they  are  very  gentle  and  quiet  even  in  their 
keenest  enjoyments  —  they  even  laugh  quietly,  and  they 
seldom  shout,  but  move  with  dignity,  with  a  stately 


[  442  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

carriage  learned  from  balancing  burdens  on  their  heads. 
The  men  are  Chinesey  with  their  thin  moustaches  and 
broad  low  hats  with  the  cue-like  chin-strap  hanging 
down  behind,  and  their  wide  dirty  feet  in  sandals.  And 
the  women  are  like  dark  madonnas  with  their  fine 
grained  skin  and  dark  quiet  eyes,  framed  gracefully 
within  the  eternal  blue  rebozo,  often  with  their  straight 
black  hair  flying  loose,  and  usually  a  black-eyed,  button- 
mouthed  baby  cradled  in  one  arm.  The  children  who  can 
walk,  walk;  and  those  who  can  run,  run  —  or  else,  like 
their  parents,  they  are  quiet,  as  only  Indian  children  can 
be  quiet,  with  large-eyed  thoughtful  gravity. 

Beggars  abound,  too,  in  the  market  —  that  is  one  mod 
ern  touch  added  to  the  ancient  thing,  the  belief  that  it  is 
all  right  for  some  people  to  have  everything  and  others 
nothing.  Another  unpleasant  feature  is  butchered  meat 
crawling  with  flies.  The  market  is  not  all  good,  not  all 
beautiful,  not  all  beer  and  skittles;  it  has  its  shortcomings 
aplenty,  but  by  and  large  it  is  the  finest  manifestation 
of  Mexican  life.  See  it  at  night,  too,  if  you  can,  lit  by  little 
kerosene  flares  of  home-made  tinwork,  when  the  men 
have  donned  their  serapes  and  shadows  leap  and  flicker 
over  dark  faces  and  reddish  flames  flare  and  glitter  in 
sombre  eyes.  But  above  all,  hear  the  market !  Listen  to  the 
quiet  rumbling  stream  of  talk,  the  gentle  rustling  flow  of 
Mexican  life  itself. 

A  few  of  the  vendors  cry  their  wares.  But  very  few.  Not 
many  have  much  to  sell  — just  a  few  little  piles  of  this 
and  that,  in  neat  tiny  pyramids  or  squares  or  circles,  a 
few  peanuts  or  sweets,  eggs  or  limes  brought  from  the 
ranchito  this  morning,  a  couple  of  passive  chickens  with 
their  legs  tied  together,  a  few  little  fish  trapped  in  a  net 
at  dawn.  True,  the  gambler  is  a  modern;  he  is  loud 
enough,  shouting  his  winners  and  losers,  but  then,  he  is 


MEXICAN  SMALL  TO  WN  [  443  ] 

not  an  Indian,  he  is  quite  out  of  key  with  the  prevalent 
sound  of  the  market  —  a  low,  grave  rumble  of  quiet  talk, 
quiet  laughter,  occasionally  presided  over  by  guitar- 
tinkles  and  a  long  mournful  song. 

No,  the  sellers  squat  passive  before  their  neat  modest 
piles  of  produce,  and  wait  for  a  buyer.  And  when  the 
buyer  comes,  the  transaction  develops  into  a  long  and 
complicated  social  relationship.  The  price  asked  is  high, 
the  price  offered  is  low,  and  the  problem  is  to  bring  them 
together.  No  hurry,  though;  there's  no  fun  in  solving 
problems  quickly.  So,  slowly,  patiently,  one  price  comes 
down,  the  other  goes  up,  and  meanwhile  there  is  oppor 
tunity  for  a  thousand  comments  on  the  weather,  the 
scarcity  of  this  or  that,  the  abundance  of  the  other  thing, 
politics,  anecdotes,  and  items  of  local  scandal.  And  every 
where,  all  round  you,  the  same  thing  is  going  on,  very 
quietly.  The  barber  snips  and  talks,  the  butcher  slices  and 
talks,  the  food  tables  are  a  low  babble  of  eating  and  talk, 
the  sugar-cane  vendor  hacks  off  superfluous  leaves  from 
his  stalks  —  and  talks. 

That  is  the  thing  that  finally  strikes  the  American  most 
vividly  about  the  Mexican  market:  that  it  is  preeminently 
an  Indian  social  gathering.  You  feel  it  has  almost  noth 
ing  to  do  with  buying  and  selling  in  our  sense  —  with 
business,  with  commercialism.  It  is  all  so  innocent,  on 
such  a  pathetically  tiny  scale  of  profit  and  loss,  that  it 
seems  not  primarily  a  commercial  venture  at  all,  the  buy 
ing  and  selling.  Exchanging  goods  happens  to  be  neces 
sary  just  to  satisfy  dire  needs  for  the  next  few  minutes  or 
hours;  it  is  a  minimum  requirement  for  keeping  life  alive, 
one's  own  and  others',  buyers'  and  sellers'.  Salesmanship 
is  not  a  career.  It  is  never  a  bid  for  power  or  riches,  not 
prompted  by  greed  for  gain  alone,  by  envy,  or  by  a  crav 
ing  for  ascendancy  over  one's  fellows.  No,  you  sell  today 


[  444  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

merely  in  order  that  you  may  be  able  to  live  tomorrow. 

Oiga!  If  you  sell  today  enough  to  keep  you  till  day 
after  tomorrow,  you  won't  have  anything  to  do  tomorrow, 
you  won't  have  any  reason  to  come  to  the  market  - 
you  won't  be  able  to  squat  here  all  day,  tilting  your  hat 
against  the  warm  sun  and  chatting  about  prices  and  the 
weather  and  watching  the  fun.  No,  the  market  is  society; 
it  is  warm  human  give-and-take;  it  is  life.  What  is  the  use 
of  making  a  big  profit  and  retiring  from  the  market  in 
your  old  age?  If  you  do  that,  you'll  cut  yourself  off  from 
life.  Your  old  age  will  be  lonely.  It  won't  be  any  fun.  No, 
it  is  better  to  sell  only  a  little  at  a  time  — just  enough  to 
last  from  day  to  day.  So,  it  is  good  to  live. 

Contrast  the  market  with  the  average  store  in  Mexico. 
The  store  is  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other  —  neither  de 
lightful  nor  really  businesslike.  You  don't  bargain  in  a 
store;  but  you  probably  pay  much  higher  prices  for 
service  no  better.  And  ten  to  one  the  thing  you  want  is  out 
of  stock,  and  the  stock  itself  in  much  more  flagrant  con 
fusion.  If  you  point  out  something  on  a  shelf,  the  chances 
are  the  storekeeper  will  have  to  move  three  ploughshares, 
several  cans  of  kerosene,  a  coil  or  two  of  rope,  a  dozen 
bars  of  soap,  six  oil  lanterns  and  a  sack  of  flour,  before  he 
can  even  reach  the  shelf!  In  short,  the  store  will  exhibit 
the  untidy  inefficiency  of  the  earliest  days  of  pioneering 
commerce  in  America.  Capitalism  is  still  young  in  Mex 
ico,  and  correspondingly  raw  and  graceless.  It  has  lost 
the  attractive  non-commercial  quality  of  folk-exchange 
without  having  yet  acquired  capitalistic  efficiency. 

So,  in  Mexico,  go  to  the  market.  It  is  commerce  in  its 
pristine  simplicity,  an  unavoidably  necessary  means  of 
circulation  and  exchange,  not  only  of  goods,  but  of  hu 
man  understanding  —  making  for  pleasure,  for  health, 
and  for  abundant  life. 


Martinez,  and  Mexico's  Renaissance 

BROOKE  WARING 

THE  most  obscure,  the  most  retiring,  the  most  self- 
effacing,  and  yet  the  most  important  man  in  the 
Mexican  Renaissance  is  Alfredo  Ramos  Martinez,  the 
innovator.  Although  one  hears  continual  eulogy  of  his 
talented  friends  Rivera  and  Orozco,  and  of  his  pupils 
Siqueros  and  Jean  Chariot,  the  personality  and  brilliant 
accomplishment  of  Mexico's  first  and  strongest  artistic 
revolutionist  still  remain  an  enigma  to  the  world  outside 
of  the  West. 

Martinez's  success  in  California  is  astonishing.  While 
other  artists  of  international  reputation  are  starving,  this 
energetic  Mexican  is  overwhelmed  with  commissions. 
His  ascendancy  is  more  surprising  when  one  reflects  that 
Martinez  is  one  of  the  few  painters  who  have  not  been 
made  by  publicity.  There  have  been  no  press  wars  raging 
around  his  head.  Neither  is  he  in  league  with  any  of  the 
organized  groups  which  dominate  the  vicious  intrigues  of 
artistic  politics.  He  has  always  remained  an  independent. 

The  fresco  for  the  patio  of  the  Swerling  home  in  Bev 
erly  Hills  is  one  of  his  most  formidable  works.  His  draw 
ing  is  sculptural,  his  rich  brilliant  color  and  his  powerful 
rhythmic  form  are  a  complete  unit,  the  balance  and 
symmetry  of  his  composition  is  original  and  varied,  his 
spatial  relationships  give  the  illusion  of  solid  depth  when 
he  desires.  The  dynamic  work  of  this  Mexican  possesses 
more  than  values,  beautiful  painting-quality,  architec 
tural  modeling.  His  frescos  are  illuminated  by  the 
psychology  of  the  people  he  paints.  They  are  blistering 
with  his  own  vibrant  emotion  —  they  walk,  they  speak, 
they  are  alive. 

[445] 


[  446  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Unlike  the  other  Mexican  painters,  Martinez  regards 
the  revolution  as  only  an  incident.  To  him  the  everyday 
life  of  the  people  at  work  is  paramount.  In  the  first  panel 
of  the  Swerling  fresco  Martinez  portrays  the  brutality 
and  hatred  of  the  insurrection.  In  the  last  panel  appear 
the  same  peons  returned  to  their  travail;  there  is  amity, 
reserve,  almost  a  religious  expression.  These  two  groups 
are  separated  by  a  large  area  in  which  Martinez  vividly 
describes  the  agrarian  life  of  the  Indian.  Sculptural 
mestizo  girls  carrying  baskets  of  multicolored  fruit,  emer 
ald  green,  vermilion  red,  luminous  yellow,  on  their 
ivory-black  heads.  In  the  background  Martinez  has 
chiseled  in  paint  the  savage  ultramarine-blue  Sierra 
Madre  mountains. 

At  present  Martinez  is  completing  his  fresco,  Resurrec 
tion,  in  the  Santa  Barbara  Chapel  for  Mrs.  George 
Washington  Smith  and  Henry  Eicheim.  This  painting  is 
as  primitive  as  it  is  modern  in  its  simplicity.  The  cube, 
the  sphere,  the  cylinder  are  as  apparent  in  this  work  as  in 
any  of  Picasso's  abstract  canvasses,  only  the  Mexican 
combines  a  forceful  life-spark  with  volume.  Martinez 
has  used  a  very  limited  palette:  only  two  earth  colors, 
ultramarine  blue  and  a  little  black.  Unlike  Rivera  he 
does  not  mix  his  water  color  with  lime.  He  likes  to  have 
the  sensuous  beauty  of  the  wall  show  through  the  trans 
lucent  paint.  His  work  is  transparent  and  at  the  same 
time  very  solid. 

Martinez  has  also  painted  a  Madonna  in  fresco  for  the 
Collins  home  in  Hollywood,  and  several  large  murals 
at  Ensenada.  His  next  commissions  are  for  a  fresco  in  the 
First  National  Bank  of  Santa  Barbara  and  another  for 
La  Quinta  at  Palm  Springs. 

When  young  Alfredo  Martinez  was  nine  he  was  sent 
to  the  Academy  of  Bellas  Artes  at  Mexico  City.  The 


MARTINE&  AND  MEXICO'S  RENAISSANCE        [  447  ] 

boy  was  stimulated  and  enchanted  by  the  phenomenal 
contrast  and  color  of  the  city.  He  was  bewitched  by 
multitudinous  Indians:  Mayans,  Aztecs,  Farascos,  Mix- 
tecas,  Las  Bateas,  Guerros.  In  Monterey  he  had  seen  only 
Europeans,  a  few  natives,  and  the  mestizos  which  are  the 
product  of  reciprocal  breeding,  the  Indian  with  the 
continental.  Here  he  stared  at  the  bronze  men  wearing 
red  scrapes  and  yellow  sombreros.  The  women  with  their 
prolific  petticoats,  their  plaited  lustrous  hair,  were  com 
parable  to  the  Egyptian  statues  in  the  museum.  The 
children  with  their  circular  faces  and  their  oblique  eyes 
were  like  Japanese  dolls. 

Alfredo  saw  Indian  women  pounding  tortillas,  he 
watched  the  cock-fights,  he  was  delighted  with  the  native 
Mexicans  meandering  through  street  after  street,  singing 
the  names  of  their  wares;  he  studied  the  picturesque 
males  as  they  sauntered  in  and  out  of  the  doors  of  the 
cantinas.  Everything  cried  to  him  to  be  painted,  to  be 
perpetuated  by  plastic  means,  in  line,  color,  space. 

He  was  in  a  metamorphosed  universe  from  that  of  his 
grandfather's  hacienda  in  Nueva  Leon.  Alfredo  was 
young;  he  possessed  a  mentality  vital  as  electricity,  and 
the  emotional  nature  of  his  Mayan  progenitors.  He  was 
alone  in  a  fascinating  metropolis.  Living  was  an  exciting 
experience.  Mexico  City,  the  historical  habitat  of  Cortez 
and  Montezuma,  was  to  embrace  not  only  adventure  and 
revelation  for  the  boy,  but  was  also  to  be  the  place  of  his 
two  great  artistic  deceptions  —  the  first  when  he  was 
nine  years  old  and  the  second  when  he  was  thirty-three. 

Forty-five  years  ago  the  schools  in  Mexico  were  com 
parable  to  the  unintelligent  mausoleums  of  art  in  the  rest 
of  the  civilized  world,  castrating  the  young  talent  that 
came  within  their  walls  by  frigid  academicism  and 
scholastic  rules.  Originality  was  decapitated;  and  in  its 


[  448  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

stead  leered  the  senile  mask  of  the  classic  imitator.  It  was 
before  Havelock  Ellis  had  written  that  the  ugly  may  be 
beautiful,  but  the  pretty  is  never  beautiful.  It  was  before 
the  inquisitive  Picasso  had  made  his  experiments  with 
cubism,  with  monochrome,  with  line  and  with  space. 

The  prospective  artist  was  drilled  in  all  things  Grecian, 
Roman,  French  and  Spanish;  but  never  was  his  vision 
directed  on  his  own  stimulating,  exotic  Mexico.  Before 
Rivera  and  Orozco,  at  a  time  when  all  Mexico  was 
painting  the  artificial,  Alfredo  saw  how  beautiful  were 
the  simple  lines  of  commonplace  forms;  the  workman's 
back  as  he  dug  in  the  road,  the  calm  dignity  of  the 
statuesque  Indian  girls. 

This  formal  atmosphere  of  the  school  of  1889  presented 
a  horrible  chimera  to  the  small  boy.  Even  at  this  early 
age  he  possessed  the  intelligence  and  the  sensitivity  to 
realize  that  art  was  not  something  dead  and  far-away, 
but  something  very  close  and  to  be  lived  with.  It  was 
psychologically  impossible  for  Alfredo  to  stay  in  the 
Bellas  Artes.  Instead  he  wandered  into  the  streets  and 
sketched  the  everyday  life  of  the  people.  How  much  more 
absorbing  to  draw  the  Mexican  market-day  with  its 
vitality  and  color  than  to  copy  over-ornamented  plaster 
casts. 

The  director  became  incensed  at  the  independence  of 
his  young  pupil  and  wrote  to  the  elder  Martinez.  "Your 
son  refuses  to  remain  in  school,  instead  he  profligates  his 
time  in  the  country  sketching  the  native  workman."  The 
report  was  forwarded  to  the  student  with  a  note  of 
remonstration  from  the  parent. 

The  boy  answered:  "My  dear  Father,  I  have  always 
been  an  obedient  son  but  in  the  matter  of  my  artistic 
development  I  must  beseech  you  to  be  lenient;  this  is  a 
condition  I  naturally  understand  better  than  you  do.  The 


MARTINE&  AND  MEXICO'S  RENAISSANCE        [449] 

method  of  teaching  in  this  school  is  not  for  me.  I  cannot 
remain  in  the  classroom.  Believe  that  I  work  hard  and 
permit  me  to  solve  my  own  problems." 

Jacobo  Martinez  responded  sagaciously  to  the  director 
of  the  academy.  "My  son  is  a  serious  boy,  and  I  have 
confidence  in  his  judgment.  I  know  he  is  very  industrious 
and  if  he  prefers  to  glean  his  knowledge  from  the  people 
instead  of  in  the  classroom,  let  him  do  so.  Let  him  develop 
naturally." 

This  letter  from  the  small  boy  to  his  father  was  the 
first  shot  in  Mexico's  artistic  revolution. 

IN  OBSERVING  the  lives  of  artists  one  often  finds  a 
vigorous  parental  protest,  as  in  the  background  of  Van 
Gogh,  Gauguin,  Michael  Angelo  —  a  driving  force  that 
is  attributed  by  psychoanalysts  to  a  constant  subconscious 
antagonism  with  a  member  or  members  of  the  family. 

These  artists  work  out  their  unsolved  infantile  prob 
lems  in  paint.  An  illustration  is  the  Surrealist  school  of 
which  Miro  is  the  foremost  exponent.  This  group  at 
tempts  to  draw  nothing  but  the  subconscious  mind.  How 
vacuous  are  their  formless  blocks  and  febrile  arrange 
ments  compared  to  the  architectural  draftsmanship  and 
dynamic  composition  of  a  Martinez  —  who  paints  life 
from  a  sympathetic  and  humanitarian  point  of  view 
rather  than  from  the  antagonistic  and  inverted  vision  of 
the  maladjusted  psychotic.  Martinez  has  made  his  ad 
justments,  his  ego  is  free  to  solve  the  problems  of  beauty 
and  plasticity.  His  driving  force  seems  to  be  a  true  crea 
tive  urge  and  not  a  neurosis  seeking  an  outlet  for  early 
sublimated  aggressions. 

When  Alfredo  was  nineteen,  Phoebe  Hearst  visited  the 
Mexican  capital.  As  a  patroness  of  the  arts,  Mrs.  Hearst 
became  interested  in  Alfredo  and  sent  him  to  Paris  as 


[  450  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

her  protege.  Martinez  studied  by  himself,  taking  his  in 
spiration  from  the  life  around  Luxembourg  Park  or  near 
the  Seine.  Alone  in  Mexico,  he  had  anticipated  nights  of 
excited  controversy,  but  when  he  was  a  part  of  the  group 
in  Paris  he  realized  that  actual  work  was  the  thing  that 
mattered,  and  not  talking  about  what  one  intended  to  do. 

When  one  separates  the  man,  Martinez,  from  the  artist 
one  finds  the  intellectual  part  of  his  nature  enjoying 
fruition  in  the  rich  cultural  existence  of  pre-war  Paris. 
Through  his  life  marched  his  great  contemporaries: 
Pablo  Picasso,  Henri  Matisse,  Remy  de  Gourmont, 
Claude  Monet,  Rodin,  Duse,  Rubin  Dario,  Pavlowa, 
Isadora  Duncan.  Outstanding  men  and  women  of  their 
generation  congregated  in  the  most  liberal  city  of  the 
world  to  animate  and  encourage  each  other,  and  to 
achieve  opportunity  and  appreciation  for  their  genius. 

One  night  an  artist  asked  Alfredo  if  he  would  like  to 
meet  Remy  de  Gourmont,  who  at  that  time  was  the  idol 
of  the  young  French  intellectuals.  Martinez  was  delighted 
and  accompanied  his  friend  to  a  boulevard  cafe  where 
sat  Remy  de  Gourmont  sipping  a  Cointreau  and  con 
versing  with  a  group  of  deferential  young  men.  No  one 
spoke  but  De  Gourmont,  and  he  was  only  answered  by  a 
reverent,  "Yes,  master,  no  master."  When  the  author 
put  his  glass  to  his  lips  the  students  did  likewise,  when  he 
put  his  glass  down  the  young  men  followed  his  example. 
The  extravagant  homage  took  on  the  atmosphere  of  a 
dignified  religious  service. 

The  independent  Mexican  could  endure  it  no  longer, 
he  stood  up,  took  his  hat  in  his  hand  and  in  his  most 
courteous  manner  said,  "I  am  happy  to  have  made  your 
acquaintance,  Monsieur  de  Gourmont,  but  I  have  work 
to  do.  I  must  go."  The  young  men  were  confused,  they 
looked  bewildered. 


MARTINEZ,  AND  MEXICO'S  RENAISSANCE        [  451  ] 

That  night  the  friend  who  had  introduced  Martinez 
to  De  Gourmont  called  at  his  atelier  and  he  was  surprised 
to  find  Alfredo  reading  "Philosophic  Nights  in  Paris." 
"I  can't  understand  you,  Ramos,"  he  exclaimed.  "You 
walk  out  while  the  most  distinguished  man  in  France  is 
speaking  and  then  you  go  home  and  devour  his  book. 
What  is  the  matter  with  you?" 

"The  finest  reflections  of  the  intellect  of  a  great  author 
lie  in  his  book,  and  are  only  to  be  completely  understood 
in  solitude." 

One  autumn  Alfredo  wearied  of  Paris  and  longed  for 
the  Netherlands.  In  a  short  time  he  was  established  in  a 
small  hotel  facing  the  Amsterdam  Canal.  Everything  he 
saw  was  paintable.  Alfredo  constructed  a  huge  canvas 
and  commenced  to  transfer  to  it  the  sensation  he  received 
whenever  he  looked  out  of  the  window.  As  line  and  mass 
became  ships  and  water,  Martinez'  curiosity  was  aroused 
concerning  the  men  who  piloted  the  boats.  He  wanted 
to  know  their  psychology,  what  they  thought,  how  they 
lived.  Alfredo  was  delighted  with  these  simple  Nether- 
landers.  Somehow  their  humble  dwellings,  the  poignant 
odor  of  food  coming  from  the  rural  kitchens,  reminded 
him  of  his  own  native  Mexico. 

Alfredo  painted  from  sunrise  to  sunset  hardly  stopping 
for  food.  In  his  subconscious  mind  he  saw  English  red 
where  vermilion  should  have  been.  The  canals,  the  ships, 
the  boatmen  cavorted  in  his  imagination,  they  gave  him 
no  rest.  Alfredo  rose  at  night  and  from  memory  repainted 
all  the  work  of  the  previous  day.  The  same  process  was 
repeated  the  next  night,  and  the  next,  until  Martinez  had 
had  no  sleep  for  a  feverish  week.  He  studied  the  canvas, 
the  result  of  five  months  of  fervid  work.  "It  is  dead,"  he 
said  sorrowfully.  "If  my  paintings  are  failures,  my  life  is 
only  a  burlesque.  My  efforts  have  been  sincere  but  the 


[  452  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

painting  shows  only  superficial  aptitude,  and  to  me  life 
without  art  is  impossible." 

As  one  deranged  he  went  out  in  the  street,  he  wished 
for  a  tree  to  fall  upon  him,  he  prayed  for  a  cyclone,  a 
tornado.  He  returned  to  his  room,  his  irritation  became 
rage.  On  his  table  he  saw  a  knife,  he  grabbed  it,  and 
aimed  at  the  picture.  Alfredo  dug  the  knife  into  the 
painting  and  slashed  in  every  direction.  The  canvas  re 
sembled  confetti.  Then  he  threw  the  knife  on  the  floor, 
the  paint-box  followed,  then  the  palette,  the  easel.  The 
landlord  dashed  into  the  room  to  find  his  gentle  guest  a 
turbulent  maniac.  "Pack  up  my  things,"  shouted  Al 
fredo.  The  innkeeper  complied  hurriedly  while  some  of 
the  room  still  remained  intact. 

Alfredo  boarded  the  first  train  for  Paris.  He  sat  with 
his  head  bent  down,  his  arms  folded;  he  could  under 
stand  the  melancholy  sorrow  of  a  refugee  leaving  behind 
a  burning  farm.  As  the  train  approached  Brussels,  he 
thought  of  a  painting  of  the  Amsterdam  Canal  by 
Bertzon.  "Why  not  get  off,"  he  said  to  himself,  "and  see 
how  a  strong  artist  handled  the  same  subject?"  The  idea 
was  some  small  consolation.  Soon  he  was  in  the  museum 
contemplating  the  picture  he  had  visioned  in  his  mind. 
"My  God,  this  is  macabre,  academic.  Mine  had  virility, 
it  was  alive !" 

On  returning  to  the  Latin  Quarter  Alfredo  wrote  to 
his  friend,  the  innkeeper  of  Amsterdam,  to  send  him  the 
fragments  of  his  own  canvas.  When  the  strips  arrived  he 
put  them  together  as  a  child  reconstructs  a  puzzle.  On 
beholding  the  result  he  boarded  the  next  train  for  the 
Netherlands  and  in  the  same  room  on  the  banks  of  the 
Canal,  Alfredo  repainted  the  canvas.  The  picture  re 
ceived  immediate  acclaim  in  Paris. 

After  saturating  himself  for  fourteen  years  in  the  life  of 


MARTINE^  AND  MEXICO'S  RENAISSANCE        [  453  ] 

Europe,  Alfredo  returned  radiant  with  honors  to  Mexico 
and  to  the  home  of  his  family.  Sara,  his  maternal  sister, 
ecstatically  embraced  him,  "I  am  so  proud  of  you;  the 
newspaper  clippings  have  been  wonderful." 

He  sat  down  to  relax  but  his  eye  was  arrested  by  large 
water  colors  on  the  wall.  "Sara,  whose  paintings  are 
these?" 

"Why  yours,  just  some  things  you  did  in  Nueva  Leon 
when  you  were  a  boy." 

"Santa  Maria!"  He  jumped  up  and  walked  closer  to 
a  painting  of  an  Indian  workman.  Martinez  folded  his 
arms  and  seriously  contemplated  the  picture  from  a  dis 
tance,  then  closely.  He  whispered,  "I  could  never  have 
painted  anything  so  beautiful.  Are  these  really  mine?" 

"Why  of  course." 

"What  a  tragedy,"  he  groaned,  "I  have  mutilated 
fourteen  years,"  and  then  he  added — pointing  at  his 
picture,  "this  is  what  I  went  to  Paris  to  learn!" 

"But  I  don't  understand.  You  were  so  successful,  your 
commissions,  your  Le  Printemps  that  won  the  prize  in  the 
1906  Automne  Salon  in  Paris." 

"Come  here,"  he  said  taking  her  by  the  arm.  "Look 
at  the  honest  sincerity  of  this  simple  picture.  It  is  spon 
taneous  and  it  has  all  the  psychology  of  the  people.  See 
how  the  form  functions  with  the  color.  It  is  a  complete 
unit  and  such  sensitive  original  drawing.  My  God !  Why 
did  I  go  to  Paris?  Could  I  only  be  so  unsophisticated 
again.  Art  must  be  pure.  Yes,  I  have  learned  technique, 
anatomy;  I  have  absorbed  a  little  Giotto,  a  little  El 
Greco,  a  little  Cezanne,  but  I  have  submerged  my  own 
individualism.  My  subconscious  is  a  walking  Louvre.  I 
have  died  of  too  many  advantages.  My  sympathy  is  here, 
where  I  belong,  among  my  own  people." 

"But  Alfredo,  your  prizes,  your  fine  criticisms.  These 


[  454  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

paintings  on  the  wall  are  only  the  works  of  a  child." 
"That  child  was  a  great  artist,"  he  answered  with 
misery  in  his  voice.  "In  admiring  the  waves  I  have  be 
come  lost  in  the  ocean." 

For  two  disconsolate  years  Alfredo  could  not  paint. 

ALFREDO  RAMOS  MARTINEZ  believes  that  ev- 
JT\.  eryone  possesses  talent  —  some  for  painting,  some 
for  business,  some  for  music,  but  that  most  of  the  natural 
aptitude  of  the  world  is  destroyed  by  repressive  and  un 
intelligent  education. 

In  1913  he  was  offered  the  directorship  of  the  Academy 
of  Santa  Anita.  He  refused.  "No,  not  I  —  I  am  the 
enemy  of  all  academies."  Crowds  of  pupils  swarmed  the 
garden  of  his  home.  They  wrote  seranades  and  sang  to 
him,  they  pleaded  with  him.  "We  know  we  are  not 
taught  the  real  art.  Life  is  taken  out  of  our  work."  Their 
words  were  reminiscent  of  the  intense  grief  Martinez 
himself  had  suffered  as  a  boy  of  nine  in  the  Bellas  Artes 
Academy.  He  understood  the  directorship  would  mean 
the  sacrifice  of  his  own  work,  but  he  felt  their  need  so 
profoundly  that  he  accepted  and  for  twelve  years  he 
seldom  had  time  to  paint. 

This  self-abnegation  is  indicative  of  the  man's  char 
acter.  It  is  very  difficult  for  the  creative  artist  to  put 
himself  in  the  role  of  an  interpreter,  although  Martinez' 
teaching  is  creative  as  well  as  recreative.  The  experiment 
was  selfless,  but  in  giving  of  himself  he  grew.  No  one  can 
truly  teach  without  learning  at  the  same  time.  As  George 
Moore  put  it:  "The  instinct  of  teaching  is  but  the  fruition 
of  a  man's  belief  in  the  truth  of  his  ideas." 

The  first  School  of  Outdoor  Painting  was  started  with 
only  ten  boys.  In  1914  Martinez  opened  a  second  school 
in  the  gardens  of  his  old  Spanish  Colonial  home  in 


MARTINEZ,  AND  MEXICO'S  RENAISSANCE        [455] 

Coyoacan.  In  1925  he  assumed  directorship  of  four  other 
schools  and  placed  former  students  of  his  in  charge. 
Eleven  thousand  children  have  come  under  his  jurisdic 
tion. 

Instruction  in  the  new  school  was  based  on  an  emo 
tional  approach  instead  of  on  an  intellectual  appeal. 
Martinez  believes  the  born  creator  is  primarily  an  intui 
tive  person,  and  should  be  guided  by  the  teacher  but 
never  taught.  He  thinks  enthusiasm  and  sympathy  are 
essential  for  the  embryonic  artist  —  that  his  sensitivities 
should  be  developed  by  making  him  aware  of  the  world 
in  which  he  lives,  by  opening  his  eyes  wider.  Martinez 
is  a  natural  psychologist,  his  first  instinct  is  to  destroy 
fear.  He  builds  up  the  self-confidence  of  the  student, 
making  him  cognizant  of  his  own  faculties. 

"Stay  away  from  the  museum,"  he  told  his  pupils, 
"but  observe  nature." 

The  students  were  given  absolute  freedom;  permitted 
to  choose  their  own  subject,  their  own  medium,  and  their 
individual  technique.  The  director  and  his  assistants 
acted  only  in  an  advisory  capacity.  All  material  was 
furnished  by  the  government. 

In  1926  Martinez  went  to  Vasconcelos,  who  was  then 
Minister  of  Art  and  pleaded,  "Let  me  take  an  exhibit  of 
my  students'  work  abroad.  France  has  her  museums,  her 
gay  life,  her  fine  merchandise.  The  United  States  has  her 
industrialism,  her  sky-scrapers,  her  factories;  Mexico  is 
not  a  commercial  country,  she  has  only  her  art.  I  want 
to  show  the  world  what  we  have  been  doing.  Some  day 
tourists  will  flock  to  Mexico  to  see  the  work  of  our  artists." 

Vasconcelos  gave  his  consent. 

Martinez  took  a  traveling  exhibit  of  his  school  to 
Paris,  Berlin  and  Madrid.  In  the  throes  of  various  Euro 
pean  "isms"  and  specious  fads,  the  cogent  honesty  and 


[  456  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

naive  talent  of  these  young  primitives  caused  bewilder 
ment.  "How  does  he  do  it?"  "His  teaching  is  uncanny." 
There  seems  to  be  no  explanation  other  than  the  person 
ality  and  the  belief  of  the  man  himself.  His  gift  for  teach 
ing  is  almost  psychic. 

Maurice  de  Waleffe  wrote  in  the  Paris  Midi,  "Go  see 
the  exposition  of  the  pictures  painted  by  little  Mexican 
Indian  students,  from  eight  to  twelve  years  of  age.  They 
stupefy  our  artists.  They  will  someday  stupefy  our 
sociologists." 

"The  most  celebrated  painters,  such  as  Picasso  and 
Foujita  have  been  tremendously  enthusiastic  about  these 
works  of  the  children  and  have  shown  great  interest  in 
these  happy  efforts  of  Monsieur  Martinez,"  quoted  the 
New  York  Herald  of  Paris. 

Paris  critics  awaited  Paul  Rosenberg's  opinion  of  the 
exhibit,  but  he  only  shook  his  head  and  walked  around 
the  gallery  refusing  to  comment.  Finally  the  room 
cleared.  Martinez  and  the  famous  dealer  remained  alone. 
"Ramos,"  said  Rosenberg  tragically,  "it  is  frightful. 
These  pictures  of  your  little  Mexican  children  are  so 
beautiful  that  they  destroy  all  our  theories,  all  we  know." 

It  is  unfair  that  writers  of  the  Mexican  Renaissance 
do  not  give  Alfredo  Martinez  credit  for  founding  and 
inspiring  the  celebrated  outdoor  school  of  painting. 
Even  Anita  Brenner  in  "Idols  Behind  Altars"  claims 
"Best-Mougard  the  first  pedagogical-artistic  experi 
menter."  The  establishment  of  these  revolutionary 
schools  is  thus  far  the  outstanding  accomplishment  of 
Martinez'  life,  and  has  been  the  most  significant  influence 
in  the  artistic  development  of  Mexico. 

In  1928  Alfredo  Ramos  married  the  pretty  Maria  de 
Sodi.  A  year  later  a  crippled  child  was  born  to  them. 
Martinez  resigned  as  director  of  the  Academy  and  with 


MARTINEZ,  AND  MEXICO'S  RENAISSANCE        [  457  ] 

his  family  he  traveled  to  New  York,  to  Rochester,  to 
Chicago,  to  Los  Angeles;  everywhere  he  searched  for  a 
doctor  who  could  make  his  baby  strong  and  healthy. 

He  saw  his  child's  pain,  his  wife's  misery,  his  finances 
vanishing,  and  the  infant  at  first  no  better.  His  spirit  was 
rushing  water  imprisoned  under  frozen  ice.  In  his 
wretchedness  he  could  no  longer  paint  in  the  conven 
tional  tradition.  He  turned  for  comfort  once  again  to  the 
subjects  which  interested  him  in  his  childhood;  the 
humble  Indian,  the  savage  mountains  of  Mexico.  In  re 
turning  to  his  own  roots,  he  entered  the  finest  period  of 
his  art. 

The  combination  of  his  intense  suffering,  his  child's 
happy  recovery,  his  casting  off  of  the  foreign  influences, 
his  experiments  with  his  students  which  helped  him  to 
formulate  his  own  conceptions,  caused  Martinez  to  reach 
an  emotional  maturity  which  culminated  in  his  artistic 
rebirth. 

Why  are  important  walls  given  to  inferior  muralists 
when  we  have  working  quietly,  unobtrusively,  artists  of 
great  genius,  capable  of  interpreting  in  plastic  forms 
peculiar  to  us,  the  rhythm  of  our  life,  its  tempo,  its  char 
acter,  and  its  stirring  beauty?  It  is  an  indictment  of 
American  art  that  commissions  are  given  to  men  with 
political  influence  who  transform  our  modern  edifices 
into  pages  from  commercial  magazines,  instead  of  to 
sincere  artists  who  would  metamorphose  our  walls  with 
simplicity  and  their  own  vibrancy  into  murals  of  intense 
emotion. 

In  a  day  when  the  artistic  world  is  infested  by  so  many 
braggarts  and  charlatans,  men  who  have  no  knowledge 
of  construction,  of  form,  of  composition,  of  the  real  tech 
nique,  no  sensibilities,  it  is  invigorating  to  find  a  consum 
mate  artist  gentle,  honest  and  capable. 


Name  Five  Venezuelan  Ventriloquists! 

MARGARET  PARTRIDGE  BURDEN 

Relations  between  host  and  guests 
Are  warped  by  information  tests. 

Some  evenings  when  the  men  come  back 
With  long  cigars  and  Armagnac, 
A  hitherto  attractive  host 
Suggests  the  games  I  hate  the  most 
(Those  games  in  which  he  takes  delight 
In  proving  I  am  not  quite  bright)  — 
In  vain,  alternatives  I  seek 
Like  Contract,  or  six-pack  bezique; 
Though  I  protest  until  Pm  croupy, 
He  still  insists  on  mental  whoopee. 

While  heretofore  I  thought  him  cordial 

My  feelings  change  to  hatred  Borgial  — 

My  brain  goes  blank,  my  thoughts  are  harried, 

(Would  that  my  parents  had  not  married !) 

As  rats  leave  sinking  keels  behind 

All  inspirations  flee  my  mind. 

I  never  can  recall  the  dates 

Of  European  potentates — , 

Remember  Nelson's  last  manceuver, 

Or  list  the  paintings  in  the  Louvre; 

My  cranium  I  cannot  vex 

With  twenty  glands  that  end  in  X, 

Or  seven  Swedish  appetizers 

[458] 


FIVE  VENEZUELAN  VENTRILOQUISTS!  [  459  ] 

Or  thirty  heroines  of  Dreiser's  — 
Why  have  I  not  some  vague  memento 
Of  artists  in  the  cinquecento? 

I  know  my  mental  age  is  three 
But  why  display  it  publicly? 
Why  turn  a  most  congenial  soiree 
Into  a  night  of  toil  and  worry? 
The  joys  of  dining  home  I  pore  on 
While  being  classified  a  moron. 
The  sadist  who  arranged  the  dinner 
Appears  to  be  the  only  winner; 
He  solves  at  once  each  baffling  poser 
Because  he  learnt  them  all  —  sub  rosa. 

Oh,  who  will  grant  my  anguished  prayers 
To  do  away  with  questionnaires? 


Reorganizing  these  United  States 

HERBERT  C.  PELL 

WE  MUST  separate  basic  principles  from  the  acci 
dents  of  mechanism.  I  propose  that  we  should  set 
up  new  governments  over  the  various  groups  of  the  coun 
try,  which  we  may  call  provinces.  I  suggest:  (1)  New 
England;  (2)  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey, 
Delaware,  and  Maryland;  (3)  the  southern  Atlantic 
states;  (4)  the  Gulf  states,  Oklahoma  and  Arkansas;  (5) 
Tennessee,  Kentucky,  Indiana,  Ohio,  Michigan,  and 
Illinois;  (6)  the  prairie  states;  (7)  the  mountain  states, 
and  (8)  the  Pacific  coast. 

I  make  no  attempt  to  argue  for  these  particular  divi 
sions,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  each  has  a  genuine  local  in 
terest.  Most  of  their  products  are  consumed  locally;  their 
social  and  financial  structures  are  self  contained.  There  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  New  England  attitude;  the  Pacific 
coast  has  its  own  ideas;  there  is  a  genuine  distinction  be 
tween  the  Iowa  point  of  view  and  that  of  Ohio  or  of  Ala 
bama. 

These  provinces,  like  the  states  in  1789,  would  have  in 
dividual  social  structure  and  standards.  Things  done  in 
one  would  not  be  tolerated  in  another,  and  vice  versa. 
However  great  their  business  intercourse  might  be  with 
other  parts  of  the  country,  a  very  large  part  of  their 
manufactures  and  agricultural  products  would  be  con 
sumed  within  the  provincial  boundaries.  In  other  words, 
they  represent  actualities  —  real  social,  business,  and  po 
litical  units. 

It  is  absurd  that  the  Federal  government  should  be 
bound  to  respect  privacies  which  are  no  longer  private, 
and  that  the  states  should  preserve  powers  which  they 

[460] 


REORGANISING  THESE  UNITED  STATES          [461  ] 

originally  retained  because  their  exercise  could  affect 
only  themselves,  long  after  these  powers  reach  far  be 
yond  their  own  boundaries. 

If  a  man,  in  1789,  owned  a  stretch  of  land  three  miles 
across,  he  would  have  had  the  unquestionable  right  to 
buy  the  biggest  cannon  he  could  find  and  blaze  away  to 
his  heart's  content.  It  does  not,  however,  follow  that  his 
descendant,  who  may  have  inherited  every  inch  of  the 
ancestral  acres,  can  safely  be  allowed  to  set  up  a  sixteen- 
inch  gun  and  bombard  the  country-side  for  twenty  miles 
around. 

Except  for  the  natural  objection  to  novelty  which  lays 
such  a  heavy  burden  of  proof  on  every  proposal,  there  is 
no  administrative  reason  why  a  regrouping  and  reorgani 
zation  of  the  United  States  government  along  the 
original  lines,  should  present  any  extraordinary  difficul 
ties.  It  would  be  opposed  by  selfish  politicians  who  object 
to  any  change  for  the  same  reason  that  rotten  apples  ob 
ject  to  a  windstorm.  At  the  first  motion,  off  they  go,  and 
come  falling  to  the  ground  for  the  pigs  to  eat.  There 
would  also  be  objection  from  business  interests,  which 
have  been  able  to  do,  in  the  twilight  zone  between  au 
thorities,  what  they  would  not  have  been  allowed  to  ac 
complish  if  subject  to  a  clear  jurisdiction. 

There  should  be  taken  from  the  Federal  power,  and 
given  to  the  new  provincial  governments  all  those  exten 
sions  which  have  accrued  to  the  United  States  since  1789, 
leaving  to  Washington  only  the  direction  of  foreign  af 
fairs,  the  army  and  navy,  money,  the  post-office,  and 
interprovincial  commerce.  This  would  make  the  Federal 
government  genuinely  national. 

As  a  member  of  Congress,  I  was  impressed  by  the  fact 
that  most  members  regarded  themselves  as  ambassadors 
of  localities,  and  not  as  members  of  the  national  legisla- 


[  462  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ture.  Most  of  our  time  was  occupied  in  discussing  local 
proposals,  none  of  which  were  of  any  interest  to  a  tenth  of 
the  members.  For  this  we  should  not  blame  the  character 
of  the  individual  congressman,  but  the  conditions  which 
have  forced  the  Federal  government  to  intervene  so  often 
in  matters,  which,  though  they  transcend  the  power  of 
the  present  states,  have  no  real  national  significance. 

The  new  provincial  governments  would  receive  from 
the  states  the  rule  over  many  things  which  in  practice  are 
interstate,  but  not  interregional  —  higher  education, 
bankruptcy,  business  procedure  generally,  marriage, 
divorce,  interstate  but  intraprovincial  highways,  auto 
mobile  licenses,  liquor  regulation,  building  standards, 
criminal  law,  and  suffrage.  There  would  be  every  facility 
provided  for  the  provincial  governments  to  make  agree 
ments  between  themselves  on  any  subject  not  affecting 
the  nation  as  a  whole. 

The  subjects  which  the  proposed  provincial  govern 
ments  would  control  would  be  those  which  actually 
transcend  the  powers  of  state  authorities,  and  which  affect 
the  interests  of  the  province,  but  not  those  of  the  nation. 
The  standard  of  higher  education  varies  throughout  the 
country,  but  does  not  change  very  much  from  state  to 
state.  The  standards  of  culture  and  respect  for  learning 
are  pretty  much  the  same  throughout  the  Northeast. 
Degrees  from  northeastern  colleges  have  approximately 
equal  value,  and  mean  something  very  different  from  the 
sheepskins  issued  by  football  colleges  or  monkey  law  uni 
versities.  A  Federal  Department  of  Education  which  had 
to  consider  the  fundamentalist  folly  of  Tennessee,  or  the 
recent  passionate  hatred  of  intellect  of  Louisiana,  would 
be  useless  to  the  literate  sections  of  the  nation. 

Business  customs  and  standards  of  financial  honesty  do 
not  vary  according  to  state  lines,  although  they  are  very 


REORGANISING  THESE  UNITED  STATES          [463] 

different  in  different  parts  of  the  country.  For  this  reason 
bankruptcy  and  business  procedure  should  be  left  as 
much  as  possible  to  provincial  control.  The  honest  would 
be  better  able  to  enforce  the  accepted  standard,  and  the 
dishonest  would  have  fewer  imaginary  lines  across  which 
to  jump.  The  low  business  standards  which  are  a  menace 
to  this  country  would  be  substantially  improved  by  pro 
vincial  control.  We  can  count  on  legislative  hypocrisy  to 
set  a  standard  quite  high  enough  for  practical  purposes, 
but  this  standard  can  be  enforced  only  by  public  opinion. 

The  experiment  of  prohibition  cost  the  nation  much  in 
health,  in  moral  strength,  and  in  courage,  but  it  taught  a 
great  deal  to  the  intelligent  observer.  Among  the  facts 
which  it  emphasized,  is  the  impossibility  of  enforcing  a 
moral  code  unless  it  be  supported  by  the  vast  majority  of 
the  people.  For  the  first  time,  it  was  impressed  on  us  that 
there  are  certain  classes  of  legislation  which  require 
more  popular  support  for  their  enforcement  than  do 
others.  If  the  barest  majority  decided  to  go  on  the  red 
and  stop  on  the  green,  or  adopted  daylight  saving,  or  the 
metric  system,  the  minority  would  unquestionably 
acquiesce.  Prohibition  taught  us  to  measure  opposition 
not  only  by  numbers  but  by  intensity. 

Federal  laws  to  regulate  business  over  the  whole  na 
tion  are  almost  certainly  dangerous,  because  they  must 
be  too  lax  for  one  part  of  the  country,  or  too  strict  for  an 
other.  The  result  is  that  however  specific  their  physical 
commands  may  have  been,  their  moral  sanction  has  been 
vague.  Business  men  treat  them  as  unpleasant  rules,  ra 
ther  than  as  enunciations  of  principles  by  which  they  are 
morally  bound.  If  the  control  of  banking  and  of  business 
generally  were  left  to  the  provincial  governments,  there 
would  very  rapidly  develop  an  accepted  standard  for  the 
conduct  of  business. 


[  464  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Marriage  and  divorce  should  also  be  settled  by  the 
provinces.  A  Federal  law  covering  these  subjects  would  be 
almost  as  fruitful  of  misfortune  as  was  the  Volstead  Act. 
A  general  average  of  our  divorce  laws  applied  through 
out  the  country  would  offend  most  standards.  It  would  be 
impossible  to  draw  a  statute  which  would  satisfy  the 
people  of  the  South,  where  divorce  is  practically  unheard 
of  and  unquestionably  frowned  on  by  public  opinion,  and 
at  the  same  time  be  consonant  with  the  extremely  easy 
ideas  on  this  subject  which  exist  in  some  parts  of  the  West 
where  divorces  need  little  more  than  registration.  A  na 
tional  divorce  law  would  result  either  in  free  love  or  in  the 
widespread  collusion  and  fraud  which  exist  in  the  state  of 
New  York. 

The  New  York  statute  permits  divorce  only  for  adul 
tery.  The  result  is  that  people  go  to  other  states  for  the 
purpose  of  achieving  divorce,  or  else  obtain  it  in  New 
York  by  collusion,  with  the  whole  affair  arranged  by 
attorneys.  I  do  not  believe  that  a  quarter  of  New  York 
divorces  —  certainly  not  a  quarter  of  divorces  obtained 
by  New  Yorkers  —  are  the  result  of  genuine  indignation 
at  actual  physical  infidelity  perpetrated  in  partnership 
with  the  person  named  as  corespondent.  Sexual  morals  in 
California  affect  the  lives  of  Carolinians  less  than  does  the 
weather  in  Milwaukee,  and  it  seems  absurd  to  burden 
Carolinian  representatives  with  the  guardianship  of 
Pacific  virtue. 

The  rights  of  the  Federal  government,  of  the  provincial 
governments,  and  of  the  state  and  local  governments,  to 
various  forms  of  taxation  should  be  very  much  more 
clearly  defined  than  they  are  today.  No  one  can  have 
motored  much  in  the  United  States  without  having 
frequently  noticed  just  before  crossing  a  state  line,  signs 
telling  him  that  it  is  his  last  chance  to  buy  gasoline  in  a 


REORGANISING  THESE  UNITED  STATES          [465] 

state  where  it  is  taxed  less  than  in  the  sovereignty  he  is 
approaching. 

Certain  states,  in  their  efforts  to  allure  rich  residents, 
have  bound  themselves  by  their  constitution  to  exact  no 
inheritance  or  income  taxes.  The  states  which  have  in 
come  taxes  are  daily  losing  the  citizenship  of  rich  individ 
uals  who  are  moving  to  other  states  which  bid  for  their 
residence. 

We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that  among  the  resources 
of  the  Federal  government  should  be  all  income  and  in 
heritance  taxes,  and  that  no  other  tax  on  income  or 
inheritance  should  be  levied  by  any  provincial,  state,  or 
local  government.  These  taxes  should  be  the  main  sup 
port  of  the  Federal  government,  supplemented  by  import 
duties,  postal  receipts,  and  to  a  certain  extent  by  patent 
fees,  and  services  of  that  nature. 

The  provinces  should  derive  their  revenue  from  ex 
clusive  sources  which  could  be  tapped  neither  by  the  na 
tional,  state,  nor  local  governments.  These  should  include 
excises,  corporation  taxes,  fees  for  licenses  to  practice 
professions.  The  state  and  local  governments  would  main 
tain  themselves  exclusively  on  real  estate  taxes  and  li 
censes  charged  to  carry  on  local  businesses. 

We  must  recognize  the  facts.  I  have  tried  to  work  out  a 
plan  by  which  to  preserve  the  original  principles  of  the 
American  government,  without  sacrificing  the  fullest 
efficiency  of  modern  civilization.  There  is  nothing  sacred 
about  tools.  Our  government  was  planned  to  give  to 
local  government  all  the  power  which  it  could  properly 
exercise,  and  the  control  over  all  matters  of  merely  local 
interest.  The  state  government  controlled  those  matters 
which  were  beyond  the  power  of  local  administration, 
and  did  not  affect  other  states.  The  Federal  government 
was  designed  to  be  purely  an  interstate  affair. 


[  466  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

The  ideal  which  inspired  those  who  planned  this  gov 
ernmental  mechanism  was  the  desire  to  give  to  every  in 
dividual  the  utmost  liberty  in  the  conduct  of  his  private 
life,  in  the  management  of  his  property,  and  in  the  ex 
pression  of  his  opinion,  consistent  with  the  maintenance 
of  justice,  and  of  public  order.  The  ingenious  and  clever 
organization  which  was  devised  at  the  constitutional  con 
vention,  was  planned  primarily  to  protect  the  individual 
from  undue  restraint  and  the  public  from  unjust  ex 
ploitation. 

The  justification  of  the  machine  set  up  in  1789  by 
Washington  and  his  associates,  was  that  it  achieved  its 
object,  and  continued  with  great  efficiency  to  give  to  the 
people  the  liberty  and  protection  which  they  wanted,  un 
til  the  material  conditions  of  the  country  changed  to 
such  an  enormous  extent  as  to  unbalance  the  political 
structure. 

Our  local  governments  are  the  scandal  of  the  world. 
County  governments  are  corrupt  and  useless,  as  out  of 
date  and  full  of  danger  as  the  vermiform  appendix.  These 
governments  direct  what  are  no  more  than  administra 
tive  units  —  often  unwieldy,  and  almost  always  mori 
bund.  They  are  able  to  call  on  no  real  loyalty;  they  rep 
resent  no  real  interest.  States,  as  a  rule,  take  about  the 
place  that  was  filled  in  1789  by  the  counties.  Intra-state 
buiness  is  today  about  what  intra-county  business  was 
then.  State  life  and  state  loyalty  are  taken  as  seriously  as 
county  life  and  county  loyalty  in  the  time  of  Washington. 

There  is,  however,  nothing  to  take  the  place,  midway 
between  the  locality  and  the  nation,  that  was  originally 
occupied  by  the  states.  We  have  New  Englanders,  south 
erners,  middle  westerners;  we  have  the  Pacific  coast, 
but  we  do  not  have  any  New  England  government,  or 
southern  government,  or  government  of  the  Pacific  coast, 


REORGANISING  THESE  UNITED  STATES          [467] 

to  provide  them  with  a  political  unity,  and  the  means  of 
giving  official  expression  to  their  opinion. 

If  any  measure  is  desired  by  more  than  one  state,  it 
must  be  granted  from  Washington.  A  question  which  can 
only  affect  the  Pacific  coast  cannot  be  decided  by  the 
coast  representatives,  but  must  be  put  to  the  votes  of 
Congressmen  from  all  over  the  country,  who  have  neither 
knowledge  of  nor  interest  in  the  matter.  The  result  is  the 
system  of  log-rolling  by  which  the  desires  of  any  section 
of  the  country  can  be  fulfilled  only  if  its  representatives 
mollify  those  of  other  districts.  Most  members  of  Congress 
vote  on  these  measures  with  an  ignorant  partisan  bias. 

When  improvements  in  New  England  are  needed, 
they  must  be  paid  for  out  of  the  national  treasury,  and  the 
representatives  of  New  England  must  make  agreements 
with  leaders  of  the  majority  party,  and  support  measures 
in  other  parts  of  the  country  of  which  they  know  nothing. 
If  we  had  provincial  governments,  we  would  have  local 
responsibility,  real  local  administration  and  probably  less 
expenditure.  A  member  who  "brings  home  the  bacon"  at 
the  expense  of  the  Federal  government,  gets  much  more 
political  profit  out  of  his  accomplishment,  than  would  the 
man  who  had  achieved  expenditure  at  the  expense  of 
local  taxation. 

The  erection  of  such  provincial  governments  must  be  a 
necessary  preliminary  if  we  are  to  maintain  the  principles 
on  which  our  government  is  founded.  It  is  impossible  that 
forty-eight  states  should  remain  politically  separate, 
when  they  are  neither  economically  nor  socially  inde 
pendent.  It  would  be  a  very  unfortunate  thing  if  the 
states  were  to  become  administrative  districts  of  the  Fed 
eral  government.  If  the  governor  of  a  state  is  to  differ 
from  a  satrap  or  prefect,  he  must  be  the  head  of  a  real 
organization.  The  states  are  no  longer  real  sections  of 


[  468  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

the  country,  and  there  is  no  use  trying  to  galvanize  their 
corpses  into  occasional  convulsions.  At  the  same  time, 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  govern  a  nation  as  a  unit,  if 
that  nation  be  as  genuinely  divided  as  the  United  States 
is  today. 

Sooner  or  later,  there  must  be  some  recognition  of  the 
real  divisions  of  the  country  —  laws  made  for  the  Pacific 
coast  must  differ  from  those  made  for  New  England.  A 
system  suitable  for  the  Northeast  must  be  provided  even 
though  it  shall  not  suit  the  far  South.  The  South  must  be 
treated  as  the  real  entity  that  it  is.  This  must  happen. 
Facts  must  be  recognized.  In  twenty  years  we  will  either 
see  a  unification  of  each  section,  and  the  setting  up  of 
sectional  governments  such  as  I  suggest,  or  we  will  find 
the  Federal  government  dividing  the  administration  of 
many  of  its  laws  through  districts  governed  by  Federal 
proconsuls. 

The  Federal  Reserve  Bill  divided  the  country  into 
financial  districts.  Unless  there  is  set  up  in  each  section  an 
administration  able  to  provide  the  tools  for  the  control  of 
power  and  of  public  utilities,  different  regulations  will 
have  to  be  made  by  divisions  of  the  I.C.C.  and  by  other 
Federal  regulatory  boards. 

The  mania  of  the  New  Era  and  the  prostration  that 
followed  it  were  not  isolated  phenomena  unpredictable 
and  without  visible  cause.  We  were  not  hit  by  a  shooting 
star.  They  were  the  inevitable  consequence  of  the  system 
of  society  in  which  they  were  produced.  The  New  Era 
boom  rose  higher  than  that  which  preceded  the  panic 
of  the  early  'nineties,  and  the  collapse  brought  us  lower. 
Every  crisis  has  been  worse  than  its  predecessor  because 
the  economic  structure  of  the  country  diverged  more  and 
more  from  the  social  and  political  organizations  which 
were  unable  to  control  it. 


REORGANISING  THESE  UNITED  STATES     5 A -.•£ ^469  ] 

V  «& 

If  we  are  to  preserve  the  principle  of  a  government 

responsible  to  the  people  over  which  it  rules,  rather  than 
to  outsiders,  it  will  be  necessary  to  set  up  a  system  of 
provincial  governments.  Either  the  Federal  government 
will  extend  its  power  to  compress  the  states  and  take 
from  them  all  dignity  and  all  power,  or  we  will  have  the 
states  forming  unions  among  themselves,  which  will  be 
strong  enough  actually  and  effectively  to  control  all 
matters  of  sectional  interest.  That  No  Man's  Land,  in 
which  astute  lawyers  have  erected  hideouts  for  powerful 
knaves  must  be  cleared. 

The  Federal  government  will  either  extend  its  power 
to  the  inmost  bounds  of  the  states,  or  we  will  have  new 
states  arising  to  assume  the  dignity  and  reality  of  the  old. 
There  is  no  third  alternative.  Is  government  to  be  sent  up, 
or  to  be  sent  down? 

We  cannot  hope  to  see  our  problem  solved  by  political 
passion  or  by  a  balance  of  class  selfishness.  The  question 
concerns  the  future  of  our  country,  and  the  future  of  every 
individual  in  it.  Unless  an  adequate  answer  is  found,  the 
nation  will  be  weak  and  feeble,  and  every  one  of  us  will 
be  very,  very  uncomfortable.  Human  happiness  is  im 
possible  without  security;  our  ideal  is  liberty  under  fixed 
conditions.  Contentment  requires  certainty,  and  certainty 
is  of  all  things  in  the  world  the  least  likely  to  result  from 
our  present  system. 


Old  Calamity 

JOSEPH  FULLING  FISHMAN 

THE  most  capable  executives  in  the  United  States 
never  receive  one  line  of  publicity.  No  magazine  ever 
"writes  them  up."  No  newspaper  columnist,  in  search  of 
"personality"  material,  ever  gives  them  a  thought.  It 
would  not  occur  to  writers  to  look  for  them  in  the  places 
where  their  work  is  so  unobtrusively  performed.  Yet  in 
the  course  of  their  daily  duties  they  are  called  upon  to 
display  more  diversified  abilities,  more  courage,  more 
understanding,  and  more  force  and  stamina  than  ninety- 
nine  out  of  a  hundred  big  business  executives  who  are 
paid  from  ten  to  thirty  or  forty  times  as  much. 

"Old  Calamity,"  as  deputy  wardens  are  known  in 
prison  the  country  over,  is  the  heart,  lungs  and  liver  of  the 
penitentiary  system.  Around  him  revolves  the  entire  in 
stitution,  and  upon  him,  and  often  upon  him  alone,  de 
pends  the  success  or  failure  of  the  warden's  administra 
tion.  For  in  the  larger  prisons  the  warden  is  so  occupied 
with  the  financial  affairs  of  the  institution  (they  often  cost 
several  million  dollars  a  year  to  run)  that  all  the  actual 
contacts  between  prisoners  and  officers  must  be  left  to  the 
deputy.  Let's  see  now  what  the  deputy  warden  of  an  in 
stitution  of,  say,  three  thousand  prisoners  and  about  two 
hundred  and  fifty  guards  and  employes,  does  to  keep  him 
self  from  being  bored. 

His  first  duty  is  to  interview  every  new  arrival.  In  a  big 
prison  there  will  be  times  when  as  many  as  forty  or  fifty 
convicts  will  arrive  in  a  single  day  —  a  heterogeneous 
collection  from  every  social  stratum  and  of  every  con 
ceivable  "anti-social"  background.  Each  one  of  them  has 
to  be  mugged  and  fingerprinted,  and  has  to  give  to  the 

[470] 


OLD  CALAMITY  [  471  ] 

Record  Clerk  as  much  of  his  history  as  he's  willing  to 
give,  which  is  just  about  as  much  as  he  thinks  the  officials 
know  anyhow.  With  this  meagre  information  before  him, 
Old  Calamity  interviews  each  new  arrival  with  bewilder 
ing  rapidity.  With  the  data  gleaned  from  a  quick  survey 
of  the  man  in  front  of  him,  and  a  dozen  or  so  questions 
which  is  all  he  has  time  to  ask  if  he  wants  to  get  his  other 
work  done,  the  deputy  must  decide  on  how  the  man  is  to 
be  "celled"  —  that  is,  in  which  part  of  the  institution 
he  is  to  live  and  who  is  to  be  his  cell  partner  —  and  in 
which  shop  he  is  to  be  assigned  to  work. 

One  man  asks  that  he  be  celled  with  prisoner  Hendrick- 
son.  "Cousin  o'  yours?"  the  deputy  inquires  casually. 
The  prisoner  nods.  Somehow  or  other,  they're  always 
cousins.  "Well,  we'll  see  what  Hendrickson  has  to  say 
about  it,"  says  Old  Calamity,  in  the  meantime  indicating 
that  the  new  arrival  is  to  be  placed  in  a  different  cell- 
house  than  that  occupied  by  Hendrickson,  and  also  as 
signed  to  a  different  shop.  A  few  minutes  later  the  inquiry 
which  the  deputy  has  set  in  motion  proves  what  he  sus 
pected  all  along.  Hendrickson  has  "stooled"  on  the  new 
arrival,  who  is  itching  to  "get  even."  The  deputy's 
quick,  and  apparently  casual  decision  has  prevented  a 
serious  fight  and  possibly  a  murder. 

Another  prisoner  also  asks  for  a  particular  cell-mate. 
"No,"  says  the  deputy  shortly,  "cell  you  alone."  A  glance 
has  shown  him  the  feminine  mannerisms  of  the  typical 
pervert.  Another  of  the  men  is  a  banker  who  speculated 
with  the  bank's  money  and  lost.  His  trembling  lip  and 
quavering  replies  to  the  deputy's  questions  indicate  the 
mental  and  emotional  struggle  which  he  is  undergoing. 
The  deputy  cells  him  with  one  of  his  own  kind,  rather 
than  with  some  illiterate  "roughneck"  with  whom  he 
would  have  nothing  in  common,  and  whose  very  presence 


[  472  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

would  "rub  in"  his  degradation  and,  perhaps,  break 
him  down  completely. 

Another  is  assigned  to  the  end  cell  nearest  the  guard's 
desk.  His  papers  show  that  he  has  broken  jail  twice.  So  he 
is  put  where  the  guard  can  keep  an  eye  on  him  at  all  times. 
Still  another  receives  a  nod  from  the  deputy.  "Back 
again,  Hargrave?"  Hargrave  nods  amiably.  "Yes,  sir, 
and  I'd  like  to  get  in  B.  cell  house,  if  you  please,  sir." 
Old  Calamity  smiles  grimly.  "No  use,"  he  replies,  just  as 
amiably,  "Ostricher's  gone."  Ostricher  is  the  guard  who 
was  caught  smuggling  in  narcotics  to  prisoners  just  after 
Hargrave  completed  his  last  term.  The  face  of  Hargrave, 
a  drug  addict  who  has  taken  at  least  five  "cures,"  shows 
his  disappointment  as  he  suddenly  loses  interest  in  B.  cell 
house. 

In  half  an  hour,  or  even  less,  all  the  prisoners  are 
"celled."  Each  must  then  be  assigned  to  work.  Half  of 
the  prisoners  know  exactly  what  they  want  to  do.  During 
the  long  days  awaiting  trial  in  the  county  jail,  they  have 
made  careful  inquiries  of  their  fellows  who  have  been  in 
this  particular  "stir"  concerning  the  jobs  which  are 
easiest.  The  tailor  shop,  let  us  say,  has  the  call.  So  the  first 
man  promptly  replies  "Tailor"  when  the  deputy  asks  him 
what  he  did  on  the  outside.  "Ever  do  any  busheling?" 
the  deputy  inquires  casually.  The  prisoner  looks  blank. 
"Put  him  in  the  stone  shed,"  Old  Calamity  directs  his 
aid,  and  the  balance  of  the  men  standing  in  line  suddenly 
decide  that  they  were  something  else  besides  tailors. 

If  the  prisoner's  crime  shows  him  to  be  of  a  quarrelsome 
and  belligerent  disposition,  he  cannot  be  placed  in  a 
shop  where  hammers,  knives  or  other  articles  which  can 
be  used  as  weapons  are  handled.  If  he's  delicate-looking 
he  must  be  kept  out  of  the  rope  shop,  as  the  flying  lint 
may  bring  on  lung  trouble.  If  he's  clumsy,  he  can't  be 


OLD  CALAMITY  [  473  ] 

put  in  the  tailor  shop,  as  he  may  spoil  several  hundred 
dollars'  worth  of  work  while  learning.  If  he's  well  edu 
cated  and  clever  (but  not  too  clever)  he's  placed  in  an 
office  job.  And  Old  Calamity  must  make  his  decisions 
with  lightning-like  rapidity. 

But  he  must  be  as  careful  as  he  is  quick,  since  a  slight 
mistake  can  very  easily  be  followed  by  serious  conse 
quences.  More  than  one  prison  murder  has  been  due  to  a 
deputy's  mistake  in  assigning  a  convict  to  a  shop  where 
he  worked  with  something  which  could  be  used  as  a  weap 
on.  Even  an  assignment  to  a  clerk's  job  in  one  of  the 
offices  may  have  serious  results.  I  have  known  several  in 
stances  in  which  such  prisoners  changed  the  commit 
ments  of  their  fellows,  and  "doctored"  the  other  records 
to  conform,  so  that  some  of  the  convicts  were  released  a 
year  or  two  before  their  time  expired.  There  are  dozens 
of  other  ways  in  which  prisoner-clerks  can  do  serious 
damage,  if  they  are  placed  in  positions  where  they  can 
learn  too  much  about  the  inner  workings  of  the  institu 
tion.  It  is  Old  Calamity's  business  to  see  to  it  that  those 
placed  in  such  positions  are  men  who  can  be  trusted. 

Despite  the  general  belief  to  the  contrary,  there  are 
many  such  in  the  penitentiaries:  men  who,  through  sheer 
unfortunate  circumstances,  were  led  to  commit  a  crime, 
but  who  are  not  in  any  sense  criminals  in  the  ordinary 
acceptance  of  that  term.  But  if  the  deputy  should  be 
guilty  of  an  error  of  judgment,  and  not  pick  such  a  man, 
almost  anything  can  happen.  Warden  Moyer,  the  warden 
of  Sing  Sing  a  few  years  ago,  was  forced  to  make  good  a 
loss  of  eight  thousand  dollars  caused  by  a  prisoner's 
forging  his  name  to  a  check.  At  another  institution  several 
prisoners  were  released,  following  a  fake  telegram  taken 
over  the  telephone  by  one  of  the  prisoner-clerks  in  the 
office.  There  is  also,  of  course,  an  untold  amount  of  petty 


[  474  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

graft  on  the  part  of  such  prisoner-clerks  in  a  position  to  do 
little  favors  for  their  fellows. 

After  Old  Calamity  has  celled  and  assigned  to  work 
thirty  or  forty  prisoners,  he  has  the  balance  of  the  day  to 
devote  to  making  two  or  three  rounds  of  the  institution  — 
listening  to  the  complaints  of  various  prisoners  who  have 
asked  for  an  audience  with  him;  acting  on  their  requests 
for  special  favors  or  privileges;  hearing  the  stories  of 
prisoners  charged  with  infractions  of  the  rules,  and  decid 
ing  on  what  punishments  to  mete  out  to  them;  taking 
charge  of  the  mess  hall  at  meal  times;  directing  the  search 
for  a  prisoner  who  escaped  the  day  before;  reassigning  his 
guard  force  to  take  care  of  the  vacancies  caused  by  sick 
ness,  resignations  or  other  reasons;  seeing  what  is  causing 
that  milk  shortage  on  the  prison  farm;  finding  out  what 
became  of  those  fifty  missing  fingerprint  records;  and 
generally  being  in  three  or  four  places  at  one  time  and 
carrying  on  five  or  six  conversations  at  once. 

During  his  leisure  time  between  those  and  his  eighty  or 
ninety  other  duties,  Old  Calamity  makes  a  contact  with 
his  "stool  pigeons"  (every  deputy  has  them,  no  matter 
what  he  may  say  about  it  publicly)  so  that  he  can  keep  his 
finger  on  the  pulse  of  the  institution  and  thwart  the 
dozens  of  plots,  counterplots,  intrigues  and  "framings" 
constantly  being  hatched  in  every  penal  institution  the 
world  over. 

By  the  time  Old  Calamity  has  attended  to  these  few 
duties,  making  allowances  for  a  hundred  or  more  inter 
ruptions,  the  whistle  blows  for  lunch.  So  the  deputy  goes 
to  the  mess  hall  and  takes  charge,  sitting  at  a  little  raised 
desk  in  the  front  of  the  room.  There  are,  say,  about  two 
thousand  prisoners  in  the  room,  a  large  percentage  of 
them  highly  emotional  and  "spoiling"  for  some  kind  of 
trouble.  One  prisoner  curses  a  waiter  because  he  thinks 


OLD  CALAMITY  [  475  ] 

he  intentionally  put  a  piece  of  bone  on  his  plate  instead 
of  meat.  There  is  a  slight  ripple,  a  craning  of  necks,  a 
flash  of  the  deputy  and  two  or  three  "screws"  hurrying 
to  the  scene  —  and  the  disturbance  dies  a-borning. 

But  not  always.  Sometimes  the  cursing  one  follows  his 
oaths  with  something  more  substantial  in  the  way  of  a 
blow  —  and  in  an  instant  a  fight,  the  most  welcome 
diversion  in  the  monotony  of  prison  life,  is  in  full  swing. 
No  two  gladiators  ever  received  a  more  enthusiastic  re 
ception.  Two  thousand  men  are  on  their  feet,  screaming, 
cursing,  looking  uncertainly  round  for  some  leader  who 
will  show  them  how  they  can  use  the  situation  to  their 
own  advantage. 

To  know  the  calibre  of  man  it  takes  to  be  a  deputy 
warden,  one  must  be  present  at  an  occurrence  like  this. 
I  once  witnessed  such  a  scene  at  the  Federal  Prison  at 
Leavenworth.  Several  plates  had  been  thrown  by  the 
more  enthusiastic  prisoners,  who  took  this  means  of  show 
ing  their  appreciation  of  the  fighters'  efforts,  and  the  situ 
ation  was  beginning  to  look  decidedly  serious.  And  then, 
just  as  suddenly  as  it  began,  it  stopped.  Old  Calamity  was 
standing  by  the  two  pugilists,  calmly  interrogating  them 
concerning  their  trouble.  "Come  on  out,"  he  said  softly, 
leading  one  of  the  prisoners  out  of  the  room  and  turning 
him  over  to  a  guard  at  the  threshold.  The  prisoners 
looked  at  one  another  in  bewilderment.  What  had  prom 
ised  to  be  a  thrilling  diversion  had  miraculously  come  to 
an  end.  With  a  sigh  of  disappointment  they  resumed 
their  meal. 

It  was  all  done  so  calmly,  so  casually,  that  one  would 
think  the  deputy  didn't  realize  his  danger.  But  one 
should  not  make  that  mistake.  There  isn't  a  day  in  the 
year  when  he  isn't  in  similar  danger,  and  he  knows  it. 
But  a  deputy  warden  is  as  nearly  fearless  as  it's  possible 


[  476  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

for  a  human  to  be.  It  takes  more  than  mere  fearlessness 
to  make  a  deputy  warden,  but  no  deputy  warden  ever  re 
mained  one  for  long  who  didn't  possess  that  quality  in 
superabundant  measure.  At  the  most  unexpected  times, 
emergencies  arise  which  can  only  be  met  by  the  most 
unflinching  courage. 

Every  deputy  warden  of  every  large  penitentiary  han 
dles  such  emergencies  as  a  matter  of  course  many  times 
during  the  course  of  a  year.  I  remember  upon  one  occa 
sion,  in  the  yard  of  the  Federal  Prison  at  Atlanta,  a 
prisoner  in  one  of  the  lines  marching  in  to  lunch  suddenly 
attacked  the  deputy,  yelling  at  the  same  time,  "Come  on, 
boys,  we'll  take  the  place."  But  Old  Calamity  shook  him 
off,  struck  him  with  the  cane  he  always  carries  while  in 
the  yard,  and  then,  walking  calmly  up  and  down  in  front 
of  the  line  of  several  hundred  men,  three  quarters  of 
whom  could  have  "licked"  him  in  a  fight,  he  inquired  if 
there  were  any  more  who  wished  to  attack  him,  and 
threatened,  to  use  his  own  words,  to  "spatter  them  against 
the  wall."  I  have  known  this  same  deputy,  on  several 
occasions,  to  go  unarmed  into  the  barricaded  cell  of  a 
prisoner  who,  table-leg  in  hand  and  half-crazy  with  rage, 
threatened  to  kill  the  first  person  who  approached. 

Every  deputy  warden  is  occasionally  called  upon  to  do 
this,  as  it  is  a  common  practice  for  disgruntled  or  crazy 
prisoners  to  barricade  themselves  in  their  cells  and  refuse 
to  come  out.  Occasionally,  in  such  cases,  an  ammonia 
gun  is  used  to  stupefy  the  prisoner;  but  more  often  depu 
ties  are  so  afraid  of  hurting  the  prisoner,  and  thus  causing 
criticism,  that  they  would  rather  take  chances  of  them 
selves  being  hurt  or  killed. 

At  times,  in  order  to  support  his  authority  and  his  repu 
tation  for  fearlessness,  it  is  even  necessary  for  Old  Calam 
ity  to  grandstand  a  little,  even  though  he  is  in  reality  the 


OLD  CALAMITY  [  477  ] 

most  modest  of  men.  I  was  once  present  in  an  institution 
when  a  deputy  warden  gave  such  a  theatrical  display. 
He  told  me  that  he  had  heard  through  his  stool  pigeons 
that  one  of  the  prisoners  had  boasted  he  intended  to  kill 
him  if  he  ever  laid  hands  on  him  —  this  remark  following 
a  fight  in  the  mess  hall  during  which  the  deputy  grabbed 
a  prisoner  by  the  arm  and  took  him  out.  "Want  to  see 
something  yellow?"  he  inquired.  I  indicated  that  I  did, 
although  I  was  at  a  loss  to  know  what  he  meant.  "Come 
down  to  the  mess  hall  at  noon  and  I'll  show  you  some 
thing,"  he  remarked.  So  I  went  down. 

After  the  men  had  all  been  seated,  and  before  he  gave 
the  signal  to  begin  eating,  Old  Calamity  arose  and,  amid 
intense  silence,  walked  slowly  down  the  aisle.  He  stopped 
about  halfway.  "Marchant,"  he  said,  addressing  a  tough- 
looking  prisoner,  "I  understand  you  said  you'd  kill  me 
if  I  ever  took  hold  of  you.  Come  here,"  he  went  on,  his 
manner  suddenly  changing,  as  he  grabbed  the  prisoner 
by  the  coat  collar.  Stupefied  and  silly-looking,  the  pris 
oner  arose  and,  in  a  silence  which  could  be  cut  with  a 
knife,  allowed  the  deputy  to  lead  him  out  of  the  room. 
Immediately  he  left,  there  was  an  excited  buzz  among  the 
prisoners.  In  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  guards,  it  soon 
broke  out  into  open  conversation,  in  violation  of  the  rules. 
Then,  just  as  suddenly,  it  was  stilled.  I  could  tell  what 
had  happened  without  looking  up.  The  deputy  had  re 
turned,  and  the  men  recognized  their  master. 

Sometimes  Old  Calamity  will  use  similar  grandstand 
ing  methods  to  break  the  power  of  a  leader  among  the 
prisoners,  particularly  when  that  leadership  has  become 
a  menace  to  the  safety  of  the  institution.  The  almost  fool 
hardy  courage  which  a  deputy  warden  will  show  on  such 
an  occasion  smacks  strongly  of  comic  opera.  One  such 
prisoner,  who  had  a  large  following  among  the  most  dis- 


[  478  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

orderly  element  in  the  institution,  boasted  openly  that  he 
would  someday  kill  the.  deputy  warden.  Thereupon  Old 
Calamity,  learning  that  this  man  had  been  a  barber, 
sent  for  him  and  said,  "I'm  going  to  see  just  how  much 
nerve  you  have.  You  say  you're  going  to  kill  me.  All 
right,  I'm  going  to  give  you  the  chance.  Come  over  to  the 
barber  shop  with  me." 

When  they  arrived,  Old  Calamity  climbed  into  one  of 
the  chairs  and,  without  even  looking  around,  said  curtly, 
"Shave  me."  The  prisoner  hesitated,  while  the  deputy 
settled  back  comfortably  in  his  chair  and  the  other 
prison-barbers  wet  their  suddenly-dry  lips  and  looked 
at  each  other  in  nervous  alarm.  But  Old  Calamity  got 
his  shave  without  mishap  —  while  his  barber,  suddenly 
made  ridiculous  and  craven,  immediately  lost  his  leader 
ship  among  the  prisoners,  as  there  is  nothing,  outside  of  a 
stool  pigeon,  that  the  average  convict  hates  more  than  a 
"four-flusher." 

To  get  still  another  angle  on  just  what  it  means  to  be  a 
deputy  warden,  one  must  see  the  mass  of  complaints  and 
requests  which  come  to  his  desk  every  day:  complaints 
about  the  food,  the  medical  service,  ill  treatment  by  a 
guard,  bulldozing  by  another  prisoner,  refusal  by  the 
clothing  officer  to  issue  a  new  suit  of  underwear,  request 
for  change  of  work  because  of  cold  contracted  while 
scrubbing  the  corridors,  alleged  theft  of  completed  work 
by  another  convict  (a  common  complaint  where  a  daily 
task  is  assigned)  and  so  on,  and  on. 

The  requests  are  for  extra  letters  or  visits,  for  the  resto 
ration  of  "good  time"  previously  taken  away,  for  a  posi 
tion  as  trusty,  for  permission  to  spend  some  time  in  the 
yard  each  day  because  of  bad  health,  for  the  restoration 
of  baseball  or  tobacco  privilege,  for  permission  to  put  on 
some  kind  of  holiday  performance,  for  authority  to  organ- 


OLD  CALAMITY  [  479  ] 

ize  a  football  league,  for  permission  to  wear  the  shoes 
which  the  inmate  brought  with  him,  and  for  a  thousand 
and  one  other  things  of  every  kind  and  description.  A 
definite  decision  must  be  made  in  each  case.  Prisoners  are 
quick  to  recognize  evasions  or  "trimming,"  while  a  dep 
uty  warden  who  promises  he'll  look  "into  it,"  and  doesn't, 
quickly  loses  the  supreme  authority  so  necessary  to  his 
position. 

I  have  watched  a  deputy  warden  during  these  requests 
for  interviews  give  forth  a  steady  stream  of  "No.  Yes. 
Yes.  No,"  in  a  way  which  seemed  to  indicate  that  it  was 
merely  a  matter  of  chance  whether  a  prisoner's  request 
was  granted  or  not.  But  the  deputy  was  able  to  give  a 
good  reason  for  each  decision.  A  prisoner  was  refused  an 
extra  letter  because  he  had  already  had  an  extra  letter 
that  month.  Another  was  denied  a  change  of  work  be 
cause  a  stool  pigeon  had  reported  to  the  deputy  that  this 
particular  man  had  a  plan  for  escaping  which  necessi 
tated  possession  of  a  chisel,  and  the  transfer  which  he 
wanted  was  to  the  carpenter  shop. 

Another  was  granted  a  change  of  job  because  he  was 
the  brains  of  a  plot  to  escape,  and  Old  Calamity  knew 
he  could  be  more  carefully  watched  in  the  second  place 
than  in  the  first  —  although  the  prisoner  himself  didn't 
know  it.  Another  had  his  good  time  restored,  even 
though  his  record  had  not  been  of  the  best,  because  the 
deputy  wanted  to  get  his  friendship  to  use  him  as  a  stool 
pigeon  —  not  a  particularly  honorable  procedure,  per 
haps,  but  then  after  one  has  dealt  with  thousands  of 
criminals  who  are  past  masters  in  the  art  of  trickery  and 
deceit,  he  finds  he  must  meet  guile  with  guile  if  he  wishes 
to  survive  in  the  struggle.  And  so  it  goes,  until  Old  Calam 
ity  has  disposed  of  possibly  a  hundred,  or  a  hundred  and 
fifty  requests  at  one  sitting. 


[  480  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

After  lunch  comes  "court  call,"  when  the  prisoners 
who  have  been  "shot"  (reported)  during  the  previous 
twenty-four  hours  are  brought  before  the  deputy  for  an 
accounting  of  their  conduct.  One  will  be  charged  with 
talking  while  at  work,  another  with  insolence  to  an  officer, 
a  third  with  striking  a  guard,  another  with  malingering 
in  order  to  avoid  work,  still  another  with  wilfully  de 
stroying  property  or  wasting  food,  six  or  eight  with  right 
ing  and  any  number  of  them  with  lagging  behind  in  line. 
The  latter  may  not  seem  serious  offense  to  an  outsider, 
but  "on  the  inside"  many  prisoners  lag  behind  for  no 
other  purpose  than  suddenly  to  drop  out  of  line  alto 
gether,  so  that  they  can  "hide  out"  somewhere  in  the 
institution  awaiting  an  opportunity  to  escape. 

Every  one  of  these  prisoners  is  innocent,  to  hear  him 
tell  it.  All  those  accused  of  righting  were  attending  in 
dustriously  to  their  work  when,  without  the  slightest 
warning,  the  other  men  suddenly  attacked  them.  Those 
accused  of  cursing  an  officer  earnestly  explain  that  it 
was  all  a  mistake,  that  the  cursing  was  done  by  the  man 
back  of  them  in  the  line  whose  name  they  do  not  know. 
The  man  who  threw  the  brick  was  merely  testing  his 
strength  when  the  brick  suddenly  slipped  out  of  his  hand 
and  nearly  struck  the  officer.  The  four  or  five  charged 
with  wasting  food  suddenly  developed  a  terrific  stomach 
ache  so  that  they  couldn't  eat  another  mouthful,  while 
the  mere  suggestion  that  they  had  attempted  to  avoid 
work  is  met  by  the  alleged  malingerers  with  an  expression 
of  anguish  that  anyone  should  think  they  would  be  so 
depraved. 

Faced  with  this  conflicting  and  contradictory  evidence, 
Old  Calamity  dispenses  his  frontier  justice.  One  man  gets 
five  days  in  the  "cooler"  (the  solitary  cell),  another  has 
his  tobacco  privilege  taken  away,  the  malingerers  are 


OLD  CALAMITY  [  481  ] 

denied  the  Saturday  afternoon  privilege  of  the  yard  for  a 
month,  the  fighters  are  not  permitted  to  attend  the  weekly 
movie  show  for  two  or  three  weeks,  the  man  who  at 
tempted  to  strike  the  guard  has  thirty  days'  "copper" 
(good  time)  taken  away  from  him  and  is  warned  that  a 
repetition  of  this  offense  means  the  "pickling  room" 
(an  isolated  part  of  the  institution  where  chronic  as 
saulters  of  guards  are  kept),  while  those  who  talked  in 
line  either  lose  letter  privileges  for  a  week,  or  are  dis 
missed  with  a  reprimand. 

Besides  endeavoring  to  mete  out  justice  to  the  prison 
ers,  on  which  his  reputation  as  a  "square  shooter" 
largely  depends  (and  the  value  of  this  reputation  is  not  to 
be  sneezed  at  inside  the  penitentiary  as  well  as  out),  Old 
Calamity  must  give  the  guards  who  made  the  reports  the 
impression  that  he  is  backing  them  up,  whether  he  really 
is  or  not.  For  that  reason,  he  will  often  give  a  reprimand 
to  the  prisoner  in  front  of  the  guard,  when  he  knows  well 
enough  that  the  fault  lies  with  the  latter  rather  than  with 
the  convict.  The  next  time  he  sees  the  prisoner  while 
making  his  rounds  he  will  stop  and  chat  with  him  a  little 
and,  without  directly  saying  so,  give  him  to  understand 
that  he  knows  the  rebuke  he  gave  him  was  undeserved. 

Anyone  who  does  not  think  this  is  necessary  does  not 
know  prison  guards.  They  are  as  temperamental  as  opera 
singers.  The  most  heinous  offense  which  a  deputy  ward 
en  can  commit  is  a  failure  to  "back  them  up"  when  they 
make  a  report  against  a  prisoner.  Upon  one  occasion, 
while  I  was  Inspector  of  Prisons  for  the  Federal  govern 
ment,  I  made  an  investigation  of  the  guard  force  at  one 
of  the  United  States  prisons.  I  found  that  one  guard 
had  not  made  a  report  against  a  prisoner  for  more  than 
two  years.  When  I  questioned  him  concerning  this,  he 
virtuously  declared  that  when  he  made  his  last  report, 


[  482  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

the  deputy  warden,  instead  of  putting  the  man  in  the 
"cooler"  as  he  should  have  done,  had  let  him  off  with  a 
reprimand.  Then  and  there,  the  guard  made  up  his  mind 
never  to  report  another  prisoner. 

With  this  kind  of  temperament  to  contend  with,  Old 
Calamity's  difficulties  in  assigning  the  guards  to  work 
in  order  to  keep  them  all  satisfied  can  easily  be  imagined. 
In  most  institutions  the  guards  "rotate"  at  regular  inter 
vals,  so  that,  in  a  three-shift  institution,  a  guard  will  work 
three  months  on  day  duty  and  six  months  on  the  first 
and  second  night  shifts.  They  will  also  rotate  in  jobs,  a 
guard  who  is  in  a  tower  on  the  wall  for  three  months  be 
ing  placed  in  charge  of  a  work  gang  for  the  next  three. 
For  some  reason  guards  seem  to  like  tower  duty,  although 
standing  for  eight  hours  in  one  spot  doing  nothing  but 
holding  a  loaded  rifle  in  the  arms  would  seem  to  almost 
anyone  else  to  be  the  hardest  kind  of  work. 

Many  guards  who  are  excellent  on  the  walls  are  utterly 
worthless  when  placed  in  charge  of  a  gang,  as  they  cannot 
get  the  work  out  of  the  prisoners;  and  their  near  prox 
imity  to  a  large  number  of  men  seems  to  irritate  them  and 
cause  them  to  note  the  trivial  things  and  overlook  the 
important  ones.  So,  when  the  deputy  finds  a  good  gang- 
guard  he  tries  with  all  the  arts  at  his  command  to  keep 
him  from  feeling  that  he  is  "getting  the  worst  of  it."  If, 
however,  the  guard  becomes  disgruntled  at  not  getting 
his  turn  of  duty  in  the  towers,  Old  Calamity  must  let  him 
have  it  —  thus  weakening  his  force  just  that  much  and 
rendering  it  necessary  to  brace  the  weak  spot  by  making 
some  other  kind  of  a  shift. 

To  shift  a  hundred  and  fifty,  or  two  hundred  men  of  all 
degrees  of  individuality  and  temperament,  and  at  the 
same  time  keep  them  all  feeling  that  they  are  getting  a 
square  deal,  is  a  job  which  would  tax  the  patience  of  a 


OLD  CALAMITY  [  483  ] 

Job  and  the  wisdom  of  a  Solomon.  But  the  deputy  warden 
who  isn't  able  to  do  it  doesn't  remain  a  deputy  very  long. 
I  have  seen  dozens  of  them  come  and  go,  watched  the 
prison  slowly  become  disorganized,  the  prisoners  bitter 
and  disgruntled,  the  guards  angry  and  discontented, 
all  working  slowly  and  surely  toward  the  inevitable  "bust- 
up"  of  a  bloody  riot  which  one  may  read  about  at  almost 
regular  intervals  in  the  newspapers. 

If  by  any  chance  Old  Calamity  should  run  out  of  work 
during  the  day,  he  can  begin  an  investigation  of  the 
matters  reported  to  him  in  fifteen  or  twenty  anonymous 
notes  which  have  come  to  his  desk  during  the  week: 

Deputy:  One  of  the  men  in  C.  dormitory  has  got  a  gun. 

Deputy:  Watch  McCreery  on  farm.  He  is  getting  ready 
for  a  break. 

Deppity:  There  is  6  deks  of  junk  in  taler  shop. 

Deputy:  Guard  Morrison  is  stealing  steaks  and  cooking 

them  for  his  dinner  every  night, 

and  many  others  of  a  similar  tenor.  Many  of  the  notes 
come  from  practical  jokers  among  the  prisoners  who, 
either  for  the  fun  of  it  or  to  rid  their  souls  of  a  grievance 
against  the  officials,  want  to  give  the  deputy  "a  run 
around  the  block."  But,  although  fully  aware  of  this, 
Old  Calamity  cannot  afford  to  disregard  any  of  them. 

The  one  about  the  gun  in  C.  dormitory  may  be  a 
practical  joke.  Or  it  may  be  that  one  of  the  prisoners 
there  has  a  gun  and  is  awaiting  a  favorable  opportunity 
to  make  a  break  for  freedom.  Or  it  may  even  be  that  the 
prisoner  who  wrote  the  note  has  the  gun  and  wants  to 
frame  an  enemy  by  "planting"  it  in  the  other's  mattress, 
the  note  being  written  merely  to  insure  a  quick  "frisk" 
of  the  dormitory.  Similar  reasons  may  exist  for  all  the 
others.  McCreery's  job  on  the  farm  may  be  coveted  by 
another  prisoner,  who  is  taking  this  means  of  having  the 


[  484  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

former  brought  in  inside  the  walls.  Or  it  may  actually  be 
that  he  is  getting  ready  for  a  break.  Old  Calamity  must 
have  a  talk  with  him  and  decide,  from  that  brief  inter 
view,  whether  McCreery  is  or  isn't. 

Guard  Morrison  may  be  stealing  steaks,  or  the  note 
may  be  merely  an  effort  on  the  part  of  a  prisoner  he 
reported  to  "get  even."  So  each  matter  is  thoroughly  in 
vestigated,  and  enough  of  them  prove  to  be  true  to  cause 
Old  Calamity  to  feel  exceedingly  thankful  for  his  invisible 
friends  who  take  this  measure  of  showing  their  apprecia 
tion  of  his  square  treatment. 

This  atmosphere,  of  anything  being  likely  to  happen  at 
any  moment,  which  surrounds  Old  Calamity  at  all  times, 
day  and  night,  year  in  and  year  out,  would  make  a  nerv 
ous  wreck  out  of  almost  any  man  in  the  world  except  a 
born  deputy  warden.  Add  to  it  the  innumerable  things 
which  do  happen,  and  you  will  get  some  slight  idea  of  the 
kind  of  stamina  it  takes  to  hold  a  position  of  this  kind. 
During  the  year  there  may  be  two  or  three  fires  in  the 
various  shops,  almost  invariably  started  by  prisoners. 
There  will  be  several  occasions  when  the  lights  will  sud 
denly  be  short-circuited  by  some  prisoner's  sticking  a 
screw-driver  or  other  piece  of  metal  in  a  socket.  These 
are  usually  designed  to  cover  an  attempted  escape.  No 
one  knows  where  the  blow  is  going  to  strike,  and  there 
are  a  few  moments  of  feverish  activity  until  the  "break 
down"  electric  service  gets  to  work  and  the  officers  can 
check  up  to  see  if  anyone  is  missing.  There  will  be  a 
dozen  or  more  sudden  knife-fights  between  prisoners, 
any  one  of  which  may  result  in  a  death.  And  there  will 
be  the  anxious  times  —  possibly  a  half  dozen  during  the 
course  of  a  year  —  when  the  "count"  is  short! 

One  must  see  Old  Calamity  at  such  a  time  to  get  a 
lesson  in  what  smooth,  noiseless  efficiency  really  is.  Let's 


^W*| 

Putlic  Library 

OLD  CALAMITY  ^       [,485  ] 

assume  that  the  evening  count  shows  three  prisoners 
missing.  Three  things  may  have  happened.  There  may 
have  been  a  mistake  in  "taking  the  count."  Or  the  count 
may  be  correct  and  the  three  prisoners  "hiding  out"  in 
some  part  of  the  institution  awaiting  an  opportunity  to 
escape.  Or  they  may  actually  have  escaped  already.  Old 
Calamity  takes  no  chances.  Immediately  the  report 
reaches  him,  he  phones  the  boiler  room.  In  a  few  seconds 
the  escape  siren  is  being  sounded  —  warning  the  country 
folk  for  four  or  five  miles  around,  and  causing  many  a 
farmer  to  take  his  old  rifle  from  the  wall  and  go  out  for 
the  reward. 

A  few  moments  later  the  prison  printing  shop  is  run 
ning  off  thousands  of  wanted  circulars,  giving  the  names 
of  the  prisoners,  their  aliases,  descriptions,  peculiar  mark 
ings  and  fingerprint  classifications.  As  fast  as  they  come 
off  the  press  they  are  placed  in  already  addressed  enve 
lopes,  and  sent  to  chiefs  of  police  and  peace  officers 
through  the  entire  country.  While  this  is  being  done  Old 
Calamity  has  sent  for  the  correspondence  record  of  the 
three  prisoners  —  giving  the  names  of  the  people  to 
whom  they  have  sent  letters  and  from  whom  they  have 
received  them  while  in  the  institution. 

As  fast  as  he  can  get  wires  and  long  distance  calls  off, 
the  police  in  the  towns  where  these  correspondents  live 
are  watching  their  homes  to  see  if  the  escaped  men  come 
there  for  shelter  or  hiding.  While  his  clerks,  under  his 
direction,  are  putting  these  wires  and  calls  through,  Old 
Calamity  is  interviewing  the  three  cell-mates  of  the  miss 
ing  prisoners  to  see  what  he  can  find  out  from  them, 
interrupting  himself  every  few  moments  to  listen  to  re 
ports  from  the  various  squads  of  guards  sent  out  in  auto 
mobiles  after  the  getaway,  and  to  tell  them  where  to  go 
next  in  their  hunt  for  the  runaways. 


[  486  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Not  a  half  hour  has  elapsed.  Old  Calamity  has  not  left 
his  desk,  nor  raised  his  voice,  nor  betrayed  the  slightest 
sign  that  he  is  in  the  least  bit  worried  or  rattled.  It  is 
simply  a  part  of  his  day's  work.  The  chances  are  that  in 
an  hour  or  two  a  guard  will  come  in  with  three  sheepish- 
looking  prisoners  and  inform  the  deputy  that  he  found 
them  "hiding  out"  in  the  carpenter  shop.  Old  Calamity 
takes  all  their  good  time  away,  locks  them  up  in  the 
"cooler,"  and  then,  the  incident  forgotten,  again  turns 
to  his  thousand  or  so  other  duties. 

Not  one  prison  guard  in  five  hundred  is  capable  of 
being  a  deputy  warden.  And  not  one  deputy  warden  out 
of  a  hundred,  no  matter  how  capable  he  is,  ever  becomes 
a  warden.  He's  usually  lacking  in  education  and  in 
fluence.  All  he  has  is  an  extraordinary  ability  in  guiding, 
by  the  sheer  force  of  his  own  personality,  the  lives  of  three 
thousand  men  of  every  degree  of  criminality  and  vicious- 
ness,  and  of  every  shade  of  abnormality  and  sub-normal 
ity,  so  that  they  can  dwell  together  under  the  most  un 
natural  conditions  with  an  absolute  minimum  of  friction 
and  chafing.  For  this,  if  he's  an  exceptionally  good 
deputy  warden,  he  may  receive  as  much  as  three  thousand 
dollars  a  year. 


Where  Ignorant  Armies 

WINFIELD  TOWNLEY  SCOTT 

The  child  plays  on  the  sands 

Alone,  and  takes  in  her  hands 

Shells,  dried  stars,  sea-grass, 

Stones  hot  with  the  sun; 

And  sometimes  studies  the  gulls 

Or  carefully  questions  a  wave 

Or,  squat  at  a  troubled  pool, 

Peers  to  learn  what  there  was. 

Yet  turning,  will  shout  and  run 

While  foam  purrs  at  her  heels: 

Then  turning  will  chase  it  back. 

Secure  upon  beach  or  rock, 

She  is  shrill  with  delight  and  daring 

Or  quiet  and  staring, 

Pleased  at  the  bright  confusion 

Above  her  innocent  hair 

Of  birds  wild  over  the  sea. 

But  now  she  broods  by  a  crab 

Busy,  as  one  assured 

That  afternoon  at  her  back 

Is  filled  with  her  victory. 


[487] 


Modern  American  Biography 

E.  H.  O'NEILL 

\  MERICAN  biography  has  come  of  age.  After  nearly 
YlL  a  generation  of  experimentation,  life-writing  in 
America  has  developed  into  a  form  of  art  as  distinctive 
as  the  novel  or  the  essay.  We  are  no  longer  satisfied  with 
the  family  memorial  of  the  politician  or  the  man  of 
letters;  we  are  no  longer  willing  to  wade  through  the 
"monumental"  lives  of  statesmen;  we  want  reality  in 
our  biography.  We  are  tired  of  the  " debunking"  and  re 
write  schools  of  biography  which  flourished  between 
1920  and  1930.  We  no  longer  believe  that  the  psychologi 
cal  or  the  psychoanalytical  is  the  only  approach  to  bio 
graphical  interpretation.  We  want  biography  that  is 
truthful,  not  sensational. 

Though  the  rewrite  and  tabloid  schools  of  biography 
are  still  in  evidence,  they  have  been  superseded  by  that 
type  of  modern  biography  which,  using  the  methods  that 
have  been  in  vogue  for  fifteen  years,  presents  a  complete, 
fair,  and  dignified  treatment  of  the  subject.  We  are  no 
longer  primarily  interested  in  watching  our  prominent 
men  being  hauled  from  the  pedestals  which  they  may  or 
may  not  have  adorned.  We  want  the  truth,  but  we  want  it 
interestingly  and  fairly  presented.  We  want  to  see  both 
sides  of  the  picture  —  to  see  the  man  as  he  really  was. 

The  World  War,  which  has  been  held  responsible  for 
much  that  is  good  and  bad  in  our  modern  civilization, 
has  had  some  effect  on  modern  biography.  Since  the  war 
most  of  us  have  looked  at  life  and  at  men  from  a  point 
of  view  very  different  from  that  of  previous  generations. 
We  have  questioned  everything  from  God  to  government, 
and  we  have  tried  to  see  men  and  things  as  they  are  and 

[488] 


MODERN  AMERICAN  BIOGRAPHY  [  489  ] 

were,  not  as  we  should  like  to  have  them.  Our  skepticism 
has  not  been  irreverent;  we  have  not  been  iconoclasts; 
we  have  been  and  are  trying  to  seek  the  truth  about  the 
world  and  the  people  in  it.  It  is  no  longer  the  fashion 
to  accept  authority;  we  must  investigate  for  ourselves. 
Our  fiction  has  gone  beyond  realism  into  naturalism  and 
plain  reporting;  our  poetry  has  taken  on  new  and 
strange  forms,  some  good  and  some  bad;  our  drama  has 
become  the  medium  for  examining,  and  generally  satiriz 
ing,  our  social  customs  and  habits;  our  biography  has 
become  creative  and  re-creative  and  sometimes,  un 
fortunately,  imaginative. 

If  we  are  to  understand  the  development  of  modern 
biography,  particularly  in  America,  we  must  go  back  to 
1918,  for  it  was  in  that  year  that  Lytton  Strachey  pub 
lished  "Eminent  Victorians."  It  is  to  this  book,  along 
with  "Queen  Victoria,"  that  we  owe  not  only  much  of  the 
best,  but  also  much  of  the  worst  in  modern  life-writing. 
Mr.  Strachey  brought  to  biography,  and  to  English  prose, 
a  marvelous  knowledge  of  literature  and  life,  a  masterful 
command  of  irony,  and  an  almost  faultless  style.  These 
qualities,  not  always  obvious,  led  many  of  his  disciples 
and  imitators  into  fields  which  they  were  not  able  to  ex 
plore.  They  were  deceived,  by  the  apparent  simplicity  of 
the  manner  and  style  of  these  two  books,  into  thinking 
that  they  could  do  likewise.  Their  knowledge  was  fre 
quently  superficial,  their  irony  mere  invective,  and  their 
style  second-rate  journalism.  The  result  was  an  endless 
stream  of  books,  many  of  which  were  forgotten  within  the 
season  of  their  publication. 

Andre  Maurois  and  Emil  Ludwig  also  affected  the 
writing  of  biography  in  America  for  several  years  follow 
ing  the  publication  of  "Ariel,  the  Life  of  Shelley"  (1923) 
and  "Napoleon"  (1926).  We  know  now  that  Maurois 


[  490  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

was  using  biography  as  a  means  of  self-expression  when 
he  wrote  "Ariel."  Its  effect  in  America  was  very  un 
fortunate  for  it  encouraged  the  use  of  fiction  in  biography, 
a  use  that  cannot  be  defended  even  in  the  case  of  such  an 
artist  as  M.  Maurois.  Ludwig  introduced  the  dramatic 
element  into  modern  biography.  Herr  Ludwig  was  a 
dramatist  before  he  turned  to  biography,  and  it  was  quite 
natural  that  he  should  build  his  biographies  on  dramatic 
principles.  His  American  followers  lacked  this  experience, 
with  the  result  that  their  presentations  were  theatrical 
rather  than  dramatic. 

I  am  not  inferring  that  these  three  men  had  only  a  bad 
effect  on  modern  American  biography.  We  profited  by 
their  influence,  in  that  our  better  modern  biographers 
adapted  the  best  of  the  European  methods  to  their  mate 
rial  and  to  their  points  of  view.  A  survey  of  their  work 
from  1920  to  the  present  time,  will  clearly  show  the 
steady  development  of  life- writing  as  an  art. 

It  took  some  time  for  the  influences  I  have  indicated 
to  become  apparent  in  American  biography.  As  interest 
in  this  form  of  writing  grew,  the  number  of  practitioners 
increased.  Some  turned  to  it  because  they  saw  an  oppor 
tunity  to  explain  the  great  and  the  notorious  in  history, 
literature  and  public  life  as  they  really  were  —  in  a  style 
and  language  that  would  appeal  to  the  modern  reader. 
Others  became  fabricators  of  books  called  biographies 
because  such  work  had  become  profitable.  A  third  group 
turned  to  the  form  for  both  reasons,  perhaps,  but  with  a 
sincere  intention,  seldom  realized,  of  making  "heavy 
reading"  light. 

It  is,  I  think,  significant  that  our  first  genuine  psycho 
logical  biography  appeared  in  1920,  when  Katharine 
Anthony  published  "Margaret  Fuller."  This  is  one  of  the 
most  important  books  in  modern  American  life-writing, 


MODERN  AMERICAN  BIOGRAPHY  [  491  ] 

for  it  exhibits  the  advantages  and  the  disadvantages  of 
the  purely  psychological  method.  In  this  instance  the 
method  is  perfectly  suited  and  adapted  to  the  subject. 
Because  Margaret  Fuller  is  what  may  be  called  a  "case," 
it  was  not  necessary  for  her  biographer  to  approach  the 
subject  in  any  but  a  scientific  spirit.  The  disadvantage  of 
this  method  is  that  it  naturally  fits  very  few  subjects.  Used 
in  conjunction  with  plain  narrative  or  simple  exposition 
as  a  means  of  developing  the  whole  character  of  a  man  or 
woman,  it  is  excellent;  used  alone  it  places  insurmount 
able  limitations  on  a  biographer  —  because  the  unusual, 
the  abnormal  is  only  part  of  the  story.  We  may  under 
stand  the  subject  of  a  psychological  analysis,  but  we  can 
not  truly  know  him  or  imagine  how  he  looked  or  acted 
under  normal  conditions.  The  picture  of  a  disembodied 
soul  is  hardly  the  stuff  of  good  biography. 

The  psychoanalytical  method  is  no  more  successful  as 
a  sole  means  of  biographical  interpretation  than  is  the 
psychological.  The  fault  here  is  that  in  almost  every  in 
stance  the  psychoanalytical  biographer  approaches  his 
subject  with  a  preconceived  point  of  view,  and  so  uses  his 
material  that  every  move,  every  thought  is  made  to 
prove  the  biographer's  thesis.  One  of  the  most  striking 
examples  of  this  method  is  Joseph  Wood  Krutch's  "Edgar 
Allan  Poe:  a  Study  in  Genius"  (1926).  Mr.  Krutch  based 
his  book  on  the  fact  that  Poe  was  a  neurotic,  and  that  all 
of  his  work  was  affected  by  his  neuroses.  It  would  be 
foolish  to  deny  that  Poe  was  a  neurotic;  it  seems  to  me 
equally  foolish  to  maintain  that  his  work  can  be  explained 
entirely  or  only  on  the  basis  of  his  neuroses.  Mr.  Krutch's 
book  is  interesting,  and  a  valuable  contribution  to  the 
body  of  Poe  literature,  but  it  is  not  good  biography. 

Like  the  pseudo-scientific  biographies,  the  journalistic 
type  of  life-writing  has  run  its  course.  It  served  a  purpose 


[  492  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

for  a  time,  giving  the  average  reader  a  racy  and  so-called 
intimate  account  of  the  great  and  the  near-great.  Gen 
erally  based  on  secondary  sources,  its  only  virtues  were 
timeliness  and  a  kind  of  smart  iconoclasm  that  appealed 
to  the  undiscerning  reader. 

Akin  to  the  journalistic  biography  was  the  type  that 
set  out  deliberately  to  " debunk"  its  subject,  to  strip  him 
bare  of  every  ability  and  every  virtue.  The  late  Paxton 
Hibben  was  a  master  of  this  biographical  invective,  and 
he  chose  his  subjects  with  care.  In  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
and  William  Jennings  Bryan  he  found  two  men  whose 
careers  were  ideally  suited  to  his  peculiar  methods.  Both 
had  been  popular  idols  in  their  respective  fields,  and  both 
had  had  flaws  in  their  characters.  Mr.  Hibben  chose  to 
use  those  weaknesses  of  character  as  the  bases  of  his 
studies,  giving  us  in  "Henry  Ward  Beecher"  and  "The 
Peerless  Leader"  two  classics  in  scandal-mongering  and 
destructive  criticism,  without  permitting  a  single  ray  of 
light  to  illuminate  the  canvases.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
these  books  were  popular  for  a  time;  that  they  are  value 
less  as  studies  in  personality  is  equally  clear. 

There  were  innumerable  books  of  this  kind  published  in 
the  period  of  which  I  am  writing,  though  I  doubt  that 
any  of  them  will  be  read  a  decade  after  their  publica 
tion.  Their  passing  will  be  no  loss,  for  they  have  served 
at  least  one  purpose:  to  prove  that  biography  must  be 
more  than  amusing,  more  even  than  interesting,  that  it 
must  be  honest  and  truthful. 

There  is  another  class  of  life-writing  to  be  mentioned 
—  the  fictional  biography.  This  is  not  to  be  confused 
with  biographical  fiction.  The  latter  is  a  perfectly  legiti 
mate  form  of  the  novel,  in  which  the  artist  uses  facts  as  a 
basis  for  the  superstructure  of  his  imagination;  while  the 
former,  purporting  to  be  true,  is  really  a  product  of  the 


MODERN  AMERICAN  BIOGRAPHY  [  493  ] 

author's  imagination.  The  novelist  can  indulge  in  the 
"might  have  been";  the  biographer  cannot  —  unless  he 
gives  fair  warning  to  his  reader.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  average  fictional  biography  is  not  deliberately 
misleading,  but  that  it  is  the  result  of  unsuccessful  ex 
cursions  into  the  fields  of  psychological  or  psychoanalyti 
cal  biography,  or  just  plain  attempts  to  accelerate  the 
tempo  of  a  subject  which  the  author  may  have  considered 
a  little  dull. 

Of  the  host  of  these  fictional  biographies  of  the  last 
decade,  I  might  mention  "Margaret  Fuller"  by  Mar 
garet  Bell,  and  Johnston  D.  Kirkhoff's  "Aaron  Burr;  a 
Romantic  Biography."  Trying  to  imitate  Katharine 
Anthony's  treatment  of  the  same  subject,  Miss  Bell  suc 
ceeded  only  in  producing  a  book  close  to  the  borderline 
of  the  novel,  while  Mr.  Johnston  paid  far  more  attention 
to  the  romance  of  Burr's  life  than  to  its  reality. 

Critical  biography  has  always  been  a  difficult  form  be 
cause  there  is  the  constant  tendency  to  place  more  em 
phasis  on  the  criticism  than  on  the  life-writing.  The  ideal 
critical  biography  develops  both  phases  at  the  same  time, 
as  an  instance  of  which  I  mention  Professor  George  E. 
Woodberry's  "Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,"  an  earlier 
American  biography. 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  contributions  to  critical  biog 
raphy  was  Amy  Lowell's  "John  Keats."  A  distinguished 
poet  and  critic  in  her  own  right,  and  an  ardent  admirer 
of  Keats,  Miss  Lowell  brought  to  the  writing  of  this  book 
a  robust  enthusiasm,  a  profound  knowledge  of  the  tech 
nique  of  poetry,  and  superb  critical  judgment.  The  read 
ing  of  "John  Keats"  is  an  intellectual  adventure,  and  it  is 
just  because  of  this  that  the  book  fails  to  be  a  great 
biography.  Keats  is  continually  lost  in  the  maze  of  Miss 
Lowell's  scholarship,  in  her  excursions  into  the  realm  of 


[  494  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

pure  poetry,  in  her  interest  in  the  creation  of  the  literature 
which  has  made  Keats  one  of  the  great  English  poets. 
Regardless  of  the  critical  biographer's  knowledge  of,  and 
interest  in  the  work  of  his  subject,  that  work  must  be 
subordinated  to  the  major  theme  of  the  biography,  the 
re-creation  of  the  personality.  This  criticism  holds  good 
for  the  historical  and  the  legal  biographer,  as  well  as  for 
the  critical  biographer. 

Despite  the  journalistic,  pseudo-scientific  fads  and 
fashions  of  this  period,  biography  has  made  more  definite 
progress  in  the  last  fifteen  years  than  has  any  other  form 
of  literature.  Every  branch  of  literature  has  been  the  sub 
ject  of  experiment;  some  of  the  experiments  have  suc 
ceeded,  more  have  failed.  Modern  fiction,  modern  poetry, 
and  modern  drama  are  in  various  experimental  stages, 
but  biography  has  emerged  and  has  taken  on,  not  a  new 
form,  but  a  form  that  is  the  logical  development  of  the 
various  methods  that  have  been  tried  in  the  last  fifteen 
years.  We  have  seen  the  rise  of  the  psychological,  psycho 
pathic  and  pathological  methods  in  life-writing.  We  have 
seen  the  two  or  three  volumes  of  life  and  letters  reduced  to 
a  sketch,  an  analysis,  or  a  psychograph.  We  have  seen  the 
biography  of  an  earlier  day  rewritten  in  modern  slang 
and  scientific  jargon.  We  have  seen  facts  sacrificed  to 
effect,  biography  made  into  fiction  or  plain  falsehood. 
We  have  seen  the  "debunking"  school  pull  figures  from 
pedestals  and  then  break  the  pedestals.  Some  of  the  ex 
hibitions  were  painful  to  many  of  us,  but  the  operations 
eventually  saved  the  patient. 

The  journalist  who  imbibed  enough  psychology  to  use 
some  of  the  terms  showed  us  that  biography  cannot  be 
written  that  way;  the  psychologist  or  psychiatrist  who 
tried  to  intensify  his  subject  with  the  method  of  the 
journalist,  showed  that  biography  cannot  be  written  that 


MODERN  AMERICAN  BIOGRAPHY  [  495  ] 

way.  The  more  serious  writer  who  started  with  a  precon 
ceived  idea  of  his  subject,  and  used  only  that  source 
material  which  would  prove  his  case,  showed  us  that  biog 
raphy  cannot  be  written  that  way.  The  critic,  turned 
biographer  and  always  judging  the  individual  in  terms 
of  his  art,  showed  us  that  biography  cannot  be  written 
like  that. 

This  is  one  side  of  the  picture;  the  other  view  is  much 
more  encouraging.  Since  1925,  America's  contribution 
to  the  best  in  the  art  of  biography  has  been  truly  remark 
able.  The  best  biographers  in  this  country,  keenly  aware 
of  the  developments  in  life- writing,  have  taken  advantage 
of  every  innovation,  adapting  it  to  their  subjects  and 
their  own  methods.  They  have  used  psychology  and  psy 
choanalysis,  imagination  and  drama  as  contributing 
factors  in  the  re-creation  of  the  personality  of  the  individ 
ual.  A  glance  at  some  of  the  outstanding  lives  of  the  dec 
ade  will  indicate  the  extent  of  our  contribution  to  the  art 
of  biography.  The  biographies  of  Lincoln  by  Carl  Sand 
burg  and  Albert  J.  Beveridge  mark  the  high  point  of 
Lincoln  life- writing.  Neither  is  a  complete  biography,  for 
Sandburg  confined  his  book  to  the  "prairie  years,"  and 
Senator  Beveridge  died  before  his  task  was  completed; 
but  both  are  masterpieces  of  their  kind,  one  in  interpre 
tive  biography,  the  other  in  plain  narrative.  What  these 
men  have  done  for  the  earlier  years  of  Lincoln's  life, 
Rupert  Hughes  is  doing  for  the  whole  of  Washington's. 
When  Mr.  Hughes  completes  the  three  volumes  already 
published  which  bring  Washington's  career  to  1781,  this 
biography  will  be  the  most  complete  and  the  best  inter 
pretation  of  Washington  that  we  have. 

In  the  field  of  authentic  dramatic  biography,  "The 
Raven;  a  Biography  of  Sam  Houston"  by  Marquis 
James,  is  a  masterpiece.  One  of  the  most  romantic  and 


[  496  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

dramatic  figures  in  American  history,  Sam  Houston 
comes  completely  alive  in  this  book.  More  than  that,  no 
biographer  can  be  expected  to  do.  In  much  the  same 
manner,  and  with  even  more  gusto,  Herbert  Gorman  has 
re-created  the  author  of  "The  Three  Musketeers"  in 
"Dumas,  the  Incredible  Marquis."  These  books  are  not 
only  great  biographies;  they  are  literature. 

In  the  political  field,  we  have  Claude  Fuess'  "Daniel 
Webster,"  Henry  F.  Pringle's  "Theodore  Roosevelt," 
and  Allan  Nevins'  "Grover  Cleveland."  It  would  be  diffi 
cult  to  decide  which  is  the  best  of  the  three,  for  each 
represents  the  best  in  personal  and  political  biography. 
In  other  fields  we  have  "President  Eliot  of  Harvard"  by 
Henry  James,  "The  Life  of  Emerson"  by  Van  Wyck 
Brooks,  and  "Sherman,  Fighting  Prophet"  by  Lloyd 
Lewis.  Each  of  these  books  is  done  in  an  entirely  different 
manner;  each  author  has  made  such  use  of  modern  bio 
graphical  methods  as  best  suited  his  purpose;  each  life  is 
a  close  approximation  to  the  ideal  of  true  biography: 
the  re-creation  of  the  man  as  he  really  was. 

It  would  seem  that  the  high  point  of  interest  in  modern 
biography  came  in  1932.  The  financial  depression  may 
have  had  some  influence  on  the  biographical  flood; 
though  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  public  taste,  and  more 
careful  consideration  of  manuscripts  by  publishers,  were 
responsible  for  the  decrease  in  the  quantity  of  biography 
published  during  the  last  three  years.  The  decrease  in  the 
quantity  of  biographical  literature  has  not  affected  its 
quality.  The  stream  is  running  clearer  with  the  passage 
of  each  year,  and  America  is  developing  a  literature  of 
biography  second  to  none. 

One  of  the  best  signs  of  our  progress  is  the  fact  that  biog 
raphers  are  turning  to  new  subjects  or  to  those  who  have 
been  neglected  for  generations.  They  are  finding  vast 


MODERN  AMERICAN  BIOGRAPHY  [  497  ] 

collections  of  new  material,  and  bringing  to  the  consider 
ation  of  that  material  a  modern  point  of  view.  Many  a 
"forgotten  man"  has  received  tardy  recognition  in  the 
last  five  years,  and  every  phase  of  our  history  is  being 
written  in  good  biography.  The  most  important  recent 
biography  is  Douglas  Freeman's  "Robert  E.  Lee."  We 
had  to  wait  a  long  time  for  a  complete  and  honest  inter 
pretation  of  the  great  military  leader  of  the  Confeder 
acy,  but  our  patience  has  been  rewarded  with  a  piece  of 
life-writing  that  proves  beyond  a  shadow  of  a  doubt  that 
American  biography  has  come  of  age. 


Unions  among  the  Unemployed 

WILLIAM  H.  AND  KATHRYN  COE  CORDELL 

THE  depression,  like  all  phenomena  of  misery,  has 
made  strange  bedfellows.  The  economic  upheaval 
has  accustomed  us  to  accept  many  associations  we  would 
have  disdained,  had  we  even  thought  of  them,  during 
the  Era  of  Prosperity  but  not  of  Good  Will  which  was 
ushered  out  by  the  debacle  of  1929.  This  democratizing 
power  of  human  misery  is  nowhere  better  illustrated 
than  in  the  unions  of  the  unemployed  for  the  protection 
of  their  inalienable  right  not  to  starve  in  the  midst  of 
abundance.  The  movement  toward  the  formation  of 
"pauper  unions"  has  made  significant  strides  within  the 
past  two  years,  especially  among  that  class  of  the  unem 
ployed  which  has  benefited  from  the  government's 
emergency  relief  program. 

The  public,  or  rather,  that  section  of  it  more  fortu 
nately  placed  in  the  economic  scale,  has  been  surprised 
and  in  many  cases  shocked  by  headlines  in  the  press  to 
the  effect  that  "FERA  Workers  Strike  for  More  Relief." 
The  newspapers  have  regularly  carried  stories  from  vari 
ous  states  of  protests,  mass  demonstrations  and  rioting  by 
persons  on  relief.  That  these  outbreaks,  peaceful  or  vio 
lent,  are  often  the  result  of  careful,  deliberate  manoeuvering 
by  the  officials  and  members  of  unions  of  the  unemployed 
is  known  to  few  people  outside  of  the  relief  set-ups.  The 
public  in  general  has  regarded  this  agitation  as  spon 
taneous  and  sporadic  in  its  manifestations  —  in  most 
cases  as  further  evidence  of  the  ungratefulness,  the  bite- 
the-hand-that-feeds-you  attitude  of  people  on  the  dole. 
Some  critics  have  caustically  remarked  the  anomaly  of 
persons  on  relief  striking  for  more  pay.  The  very  absurd- 

[498] 


UNIONS  AMONG  THE  UNEMPLOYED  [  499  ] 

ity  of  a  relief  strike  causes  the  man  in  the  office  chair  to 
snort  in  derision,  and  dismiss  the  whole  thing  with: 
"They  ought  to  kick  that  whole  bunch  of  ingrates  and 
reds  off  the  relief  rolls,  and  make  them  work  for  their 
living  like  I  have  to  do  for  mine." 

The  public's  conception  of  the  spontaneous  nature  of 
this  agitation,  as  well  as  its  estimation  of  the  radical  or 
"red"  make-up  of  the  relief  victims,  are  belied  by  the 
facts  and  figures  in  the  case.  While  it  is  true  that  in  the 
first  years  of  the  depression  (1929-32)  the  majority  of  the 
riots  resulted  from  impulsive  actions  among  crowds  and 
mobs  impelled  by  the  immediate  call  of  hunger,  the  spirit 
of  agitation  today  manifests  itself  through  various  organ 
izations  of  the  unemployed  called  unions,  councils, 
leagues  or  brotherhoods. 

There  are  some  200,000  members  of  three  national 
organizations  of  the  unemployed,  and  an  inestimable 
number  who  hold  membership  in  the  multitude  of 
"locals"  and  regional  organizations  without  connection 
with  the  three  nationals.  That  these  unions  are  affiliates 
of  the  Third  Internationale  in  Moscow,  or  are  directed 
by  the  Communist  Comintern,  is  an  untenable  thesis. 
It  is  true  that  some  have  been  organized  by  Communist 
agitators;  but  even  in  such  organizations  the  cosmopoli 
tan  nature  of  the  membership,  including  men  and  women 
of  all  creeds,  colors,  races,  professions  and  political  affilia 
tions,  prevents  the  Communists  from  securing  control. 
If  there  is  a  "united  front,"  to  borrow  a  term  from  the 
Marxian  strategists,  it  is  not  based  on  any  political  doc 
trine,  but  upon  the  democracy  of  misery.  To  regard  this 
movement  as  a  part  of  the  "red  menace"  because  of  the 
few  Communists  who  are  associated  with  it,  would  be  an 
absurd  and  dangerous  thing. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  many  of  the  leaders  of  these 


[  5oo  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

pauper  unions  are  young  men  and  women  who  are  radi 
cal  only  in  the  most  approved  sense  of  that  word,  that  is, 
in  a  desire  to  get  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  These  youth 
ful  leaders  profess  no  desire  to  reform  the  world  by  up 
rooting  the  present  order  of  things.  Undernourished, 
lacking  the  basic  necessities  of  life,  and  seeing  no  outlet 
for  their  energies  and  ambitions  in  the  future,  they  have 
turned  to  this  work  to  secure  first  of  all  sufficient  food  for 
themselves  and  their  fellow  victims,  and  secondly  as  an 
avenue  to  adventure  and  social  usefulness.  They  have 
no  more  love  of  violence  than  does  the  most  wizened  arm 
chair  philosopher,  remote  in  his  ivory  tower.  Their  radi 
cal  plans  are  concerned  only  with  securing  the  means  to 
exist,  and  not  with  the  organization  of  the  whole  of 
existence. 

These  same  young  men  and  women,  when  asked  if 
they  regard  themselves  as  "radical"  or  "red"  (terms  that 
are  synonymous  to  the  average  American),  insist  that 
they  are  not  interested  in  politics  as  far  as  their  organiza 
tions  are  concerned.  The  majority  of  them  feel  that  they 
are  as  American  (a  term  synonymous  with  anti-radicalism 
of  all  shades  and  varieties)  as  the  fellow  with  a  job.  They 
feel  that  they  have  as  much  right,  and  actual  need,  to 
organize  into  unions  as  do  their  more  fortunate  fellow 
citizens  who  still  hold  good  jobs.  They  justify  their  posi 
tion  by  precedents  in  our  recent  history  —  and  not  with 
out  plausibility,  as  a  review  of  events  in  this  country 
during  the  past  fifty  years,  and  more  especially  since  ihe 
depression,  amply  demonstrates. 

The  first  significant  attempt  to  organize  the  unem 
ployed  in  this  country  was  undertaken  in  1894  by  General 
Jacob  Sechler  Coxey.  Some  forty-one  years  ago,  he  led 
his  famous  expeditionary  force  of  three  hundred  and 
fifty-six  unemployed  men  to  Washington  to  demand  the 


UNIONS  AMONG  THE  UNEMPLOYED  [  501  ] 

issuance  of  $500,000,000  greenbacks,  and  the  institution 
of  a  public  works  program  to  cure  the  depression  and 
relieve  the  unemployed.  While  General  Coxey  failed  in 
his  mission  (he  was  arrested  for  trespassing  on  the  grass), 
Coxey 's  army  succeeded  in  establishing  a  precedent  for 
organizations  among  the  unemployed,  and  for  appeal  to 
Washington  in  time  of  need. 

Thirty-eight  years  later  the  ex-soldiers,  borrowing  a 
page  from  history,  organized  an  army  and  marched  on 
Washington  to  urge  Congress  to  enact  a  bonus  measure. 
This  so-called  Bonus  Expeditionary  Force  reinforced  the 
precedent  set  by  Coxey 's  army,  with  the  result  that  the 
authorities  at  Washington  have  been  besieged  more  or 
less  continuously  by  special  groups  of  employed  and  un 
employed,  of  rich  and  poor  during  the  past  three  years. 

When,  in  response  to  the  call  of  public  need,  the  RFC 
was  organized  in  1932,  the  unemployed,  variously  esti 
mated  at  from  ten  to  fifteen  million  people,  began  to  de 
mand  assistance.  Rioting  broke  out  in  the  large  Metro 
politan  centers.  By  midsummer  of  that  year,  no  part  of 
the  country  could  claim  immunity  from  social  unrest. 
Even  in  the  traditionally  conservative  agrarian  South, 
mobs  fearlessly  demanded  food.  At  England,  Arkansas, 
sharecroppers  and  tenants  armed  with  shotguns  moved 
against  the  town  to  secure  food  and  clothing  in  the  mem 
orable  bread  riot.  By  September  of  1932  the  money  made 
available  to  the  state  governments  through  RFC  loans 
was  being  distributed  among  the  most  destitute,  so  that 
spontaneous  rioting  soon  ceased  to  occupy  the  headlines. 

With  the  advent  of  the  present  administration,  Presi 
dent  Roosevelt  promised  a  New  Deal  for  the  "forgotten 
man."  Later  when  the  FERA  and  in  turn  the  CWA  were 
set  up,  the  President  encouraged  the  unemployed  to  hope 
and  confidence  by  his  statement  that  no  one  would  be 


[  502  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

permitted  to  starve.  To  make  the  beneficiaries  feel  that 
they  were  getting  a  square  deal,  he  urged  them  to  address 
their  letters  and  petitions  of  complaint  to  him.  The  un 
employed  took  him  at  his  word,  deluging  the  White 
House  with  thousands  of  letters  every  day.  For  a  while 
these  epistolary  activities  served  as  an  outlet  for  the  wrath 
of  the  unemployed,  and  agitation  was  at  a  comparative 
standstill. 

Meanwhile,  as  early  as  1931,  sections  of  the  Unem 
ployed  Council,  the  most  influential  of  the  pauper  unions, 
were  being  organized  in  Chicago.  By  September  of  that 
year  there  were  forty-five  branches  of  this  organization 
in  that  city  alone,  with  a  total  membership  of  around 
twenty  thousand  people.  The  primary  purpose  of  this 
Chicago  group  was  to  resist  evictions  for  non-payment  of 
rent.  Mass  assistance  against  threatened  and  attempted 
evictions  was  so  effective  in  calling  the  attention  of  the 
public  to  the  condition  of  the  unemployed,  that  the 
Mayor  decreed  a  sort  of  moratorium  on  rent  debts  and 
forced  removals. 

Later  the  Unemployed  Council  directed  its  efforts 
toward  raising  the  standards  of  living  for  the  twenty 
thousand  men  who  lived  in  Chicago's  flop-houses.  In  a 
mass  demonstration  five  thousand  of  the  unionists 
marched  to  the  general  headquarters  of  the  flop-houses 
located  on  Monroe  and  Green  Streets,  where  they  de 
manded,  and  later  received,  three  meals  per  day  instead 
of  two,  two  feet  of  air  space  between  the  beds,  free  medi 
cal  attention,  tobacco  twice  each  week,  no  discrimination 
against  members  of  the  Unemployed  Council,  and  the 
right  to  hold  assemblies  in  the  flop-houses.  Later  the 
Chicago  headquarters  of  the  Unemployed  Council 
claimed  the  major  share  of  credit  for  bringing  about, 
through  mass  pressure,  the  enactment  by  the  Illinois 


UNIONS  AMONG  THE  UNEMPLOYED  [  503  ] 

legislature  of  a  twenty  million  dollar  public  relief  bill. 

In  states  farther  west,  the  pauper  unions  became  still 
more  powerful.  In  most  cases  these  early  western  unions 
were  formed  from  the  numerous  associations  for  barter  and 
exchange  of  commodities  and  services  that  had  had  such 
a  phenomenal  growth  in  that  section  of  the  country.  Al 
ready  such  self-help  organizations  as  the  Mormon's 
Natural  Help  Association  had  accustomed  the  unem 
ployed  members  to  the  necessity,  value  and  method  of 
group  action  for  relieving  their  destitute  situation.  As  the 
depression  deepened,  however,  such  labor  and  goods 
exchanges,  with  local  scrip  as  a  medium,  became  appar 
ent  for  what  they  were  in  a  highly  organized  industrial 
economy  —  mere  makeshifts  to  ward  off  distress  and 
starvation.  The  members  began  to  reorganize  their  asso 
ciations  into  unions  under  the  leadership  of  three  parties, 
the  American  Worker's,  the  Socialistic  and  the  Commu 
nistic.  The  pitiful  and  petty  efforts  at  self-help  were  aban 
doned  as  the  government  relief  program  got  under  way 
in  September,  1932. 

In  Seattle,  Washington,  the  Unemployed  Citizen's 
League  was  organized  in  the  latter  part  of  1931  as  a  sort  of 
self-help  and  employment  bureau.  As  the  true  extent 
of  the  economic  situation  became  better  known,  this  or 
ganization  was  forced  to  interest  itself  in  relief  for  its 
members.  The  League  grew  by  leaps  and  bounds  in  size 
and  strength,  until  by  the  fall  of  1932  it  was  powerful 
enough  to  sweep  its  entire  slate  of  candidates  into  the 
city  government.  Among  these  were  the  mayor,  three 
councilmen,  two  school  directors  and  a  member  of  the 
Port  Commission.  Subsequently  these  officials  influenced 
the  City  Council  to  distribute  seeds,  tools  and  other 
emergency  aids  among  the  unemployed. 

Social  unrest  first  made  itself  felt  in  the  eastern  indus- 


[  504  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

trial  centers;  but  outside  of  Pittsburgh  this  agitation  was 
less  rapidly  organized  than  in  the  West,  taking  the  form 
of  vociferous  protests  and  mob  violence.  In  Pittsburgh  by 
1933  the  Unemployed  League  and  the  American  Work 
er's  Party  had  organized  the  majority  of  that  city's  un 
employed  into  unions.  As  in  Chicago,  the  immediate 
incentive  of  the  Pittsburgh  unions  was  active  resistance 
against  evictions.  In  one  case  this  Pittsburgh  group  or 
ganized  a  mass  demonstration  to  prevent  the  eviction 
of  one  of  its  members.  Meeting  on  the  day  of  the  threat 
ened  removal,  they  forced  the  constable  who  had  come  to 
serve  the  papers  to  withdraw.  Then  to  celebrate  its  vic 
tory,  the  group  held  an  auction  at  which  they  sold  the 
constable  for  a  high  mock  bid  of  eight  cents. 

Ironically  enough  the  Federal  Emergency  Relief  pro 
gram  resulted  in  reducing  the  number  of  spontaneous 
demonstrations  and  riots,  while  it  gave  an  added  impetus 
to  the  formation  of  the  pauper  unions  which,  while  less 
vocal  and  violent,  are  much  stronger  and  more  effective 
than  the  previous  methods  of  manifesting  discontent. 
This  state  of  affairs  is  attributable  not  so  much  to  the  lack 
of  sufficient  relief  —  for  the  bounty  of  the  government 
in  most  cases  is  beyond  criticism  —  but  to  the  inefficient 
administration  of  the  relief  funds.  Owing  more  to  the 
necessity  for  haste  than  to  any  political  corruption,  the 
administration  of  relief  was  carried  out  by  workers  who 
had  not  the  least  inkling  of  the  principles  of  social  service 
work.  All  offices  were  overstuffed  with  incompetent,  in 
many  cases  downright  ignorant  case-workers  who, 
though  frequently  recruited  from  among  the  unemployed 
themselves,  soon  lost  all  sympathy  for  those  less  fortunate 
ones  who  came  to  them  for  questioning  before  being 
granted  relief. 

As  a  result  of  this  incompetence  among  the  case-work- 


UNIONS  AMONG  THE  UNEMPLOYED  [  505  ] 

ers  and  other  administrators,  many  needy  persons  suffered 
from  unjust  discrimination;  while  all  resented  the  haughty 
attitudes  of  the  officials  in  charge.  A  classic  example  of 
the  relation  of  case-worker  to  relief  client  comes  from  the 
Deep  South  where  the  lack  of  knowledge  of  social  work  is 
most  evident  among  relief  administrators.  A  young  man 
who  had  taken  several  degrees  in  the  social  sciences  from 
the  state  university,  with  a  view  to  taking  up  social  service 
work  as  a  profession,  found  it  impossible  to  secure  a 
position  in  the  relief  set-up  even  as  a  case-worker.  While 
his  political  affiliations  were  orthodox,  so  were  those  of 
many  other  less  educated  persons  who  secured  jobs  as 
case-workers  through  manipulating  certain  well-known 
political  strings.  The  young  graduate  found  that  his  edu 
cation  in  the  social  sciences  prevented  him  from  getting 
possible  jobs  in  the  world  of  business,  while  his  profession 
of  social  work  was  closed  to  him.  Finally,  reduced  to 
destitution,  he  was  forced  to  apply  for  relief.  Imagine  his 
surprise  when  he  discovered  that  the  case- worker  detailed 
to  investigate  him  was  an  old  elementary  schoolmate  who, 
he  knew,  had  never  finished  the  sixth  grade!  Since  this 
case-worker  envied  him  his  superior  education,  he  re 
fused  to  grant  the  young  applicant  any  assistance  —  sug 
gesting  instead  that  he  ought  to  find  it  easy  to  get  a  job 
"with  them  degrees."  Beyond  this  case- worker's  decision 
there  was  then  no  appeal. 

This  example  of  the  incompetence  of  relief  adminis 
trators  could  be  duplicated  into  the  thousands.  In  the 
majority  of  cases,  the  relief  victims  mumbled  under  their 
breath  and  bore  their  chagrin.  Many  wrote  letters  to  the 
President,  which  were  in  turn  sent  to  the  FERA  to  be 
answered.  In  some  cases  the  relief  applicants,  tired  of  the 
unsympathetic  attitudes  of  the  case-workers,  vented  their 
wrath  by  assaulting  their  questioners. 


[  506  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

As  the  unemployed  began  to  realize  that  individual  re 
actions  against  injustice  in  relief  administration  were 
ineffective,  they  decided  that  mass  action  alone  could  set 
things  right.  The  result  was  the  formation  of  more  leagues, 
and  an  increase  in  the  membership  of  those  already 
organized  in  every  section  of  the  country  except  the 
agrarian  South.  As  these  unions  demonstrated  their  ef 
fectiveness  in  the  adjustment  of  complaints,  their  mem 
bership  grew,  and  continues  to  grow,  day  by  day. 

In  addition  to  the  adjustment  of  complaints,  these 
leagues  have  begun  to  demand,  and  in  many  cases  to 
achieve,  representation  on  local  grievance  committees  as 
well  as  on  relief  boards.  In  imitation  of  the  regular  labor 
unions,  many  of  these  pauper  unions  demand  the  recog 
nition  of  their  right  to  collective  bargaining  on  public  and 
relief  work.  As  suggested  at  the  outset,  the  activities  of 
these  organizations  are  predicated  on  the  inalienable 
right  not  to  starve  in  the  midst  of  plenty.  In  consequence, 
where  the  officials  of  these  unions  feel,  after  examination, 
that  one  of  their  members  is  not  getting  a  decent  amount 
of  either  home  or  work  relief,  they  make  out  a  case  history 
of  the  applicant  and  submit  it  to  the  relief  authorities  for 
reconsideration.  One  bureau  in  Chicago  has,  during  the 
past  two  years,  successfully  handled  an  average  of  fifteen 
hundred  of  such  case  complaints. 

At  the  headquarters  of  many  of  these  unemployed 
councils  there  is  an  elaborate  set-up  for  looking  after 
union  affairs.  Next  to  the  committees  on  complaints, 
who  deal  directly  with  the  local  relief  administrations, 
there  are  the  so-called  committees  on  public  utilities, 
whose  business  it  is  to  see  that  no  member  goes  without 
lights,  gas,  or  water.  In  case  the  gas  and  lights  are  turned 
off  at  the  home  of  a  member,  service  men  are  dispatched 
to  turn  the  meters  back  on.  When  the  water  is  cut  off,  the 


UNIONS  AMONG  THE  UNEMPLOYED  [  507  ] 

service  men  from  the  unemployed  union  may  solve  the 
problem  by  turning  the  meter  on  again  and  then  pouring 
cement  over  it.  The  water  company  would  have  to  de 
stroy  the  meter  to  remove  the  cement,  so  the  water  is 
usually  left  on ! 

With  the  influx  of  thousands  of  new  members  recruited 
from  among  those  on  relief,  the  unemployed  councils 
have  become  less  and  less  radical  in  nature.  Although 
originally  many  were  organized  by  the  Communists  as 
well  as  by  the  Socialist  and  American  Worker's  parties, 
the  simon-pure  "reds"  are  greatly  outnumbered  by  or 
thodox  Republicans  and  Democrats  who  have  no  more 
concern  for  the  success  of  Marxism  than  Mussolini  or 
Hitler  would  have.  Hunger,  not  Moscow,  provides  the 
motivation  for  these  unions. 

The  conservatism  of  these  organizations  often  appeals 
to  the  officials  in  charge  of  relief  administration  in  the 
various  states.  Last  January  relief  authorities  in  Denver 
even  encouraged  unionization  among  the  unemployed. 
These  organizations  later  succeeded  in  influencing  the 
Colorado  legislature  to  pass  certain  tax  and  bond  bills 
for  relief  purposes.  While  the  Colorado  legislators  de 
bated  various  relief  measures,  members  of  the  unem 
ployed  unions  crowded  the  galleries.  Opponents  of  the 
relief  measures  favored  by  the  union  members  were 
heckled,  and  their  voices  drowned  in  songs  from  the 
gallery. 

There  is,  however,  a  possibility  that  these  pauper 
unions  will  become  increasingly  revolutionary  in  spirit 
unless  the  government  adopts  a  long-term  relief  policy. 
So  far  these  unions  have  in  reality  been  interested  pri 
marily  in  achieving  one  thing  —  a  sense  of  security  for 
their  members.  In  most  instances  the  relief  administra 
tions  have,  on  the  contrary,  discouraged  the  development 


[  5o8  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  this  feeling  of  security  among  their  relief  clients  on  the 
theory  that  the  unemployed,  assured  of  the  dole,  would 
cease  their  individual  efforts  to  secure  jobs  and  would 
relapse  into  apathetic  idleness.  The  motto  has  been 
"morale  must  be  maintained." 

But  the  fact  that  the  essential  basis  of  morale  is  a  sense 
of  security  has  been  overlooked.  In  consequence,  no 
relief  client  has  been  permitted  to  feel  that  the  govern 
ment  will  take  care  of  him  indefinitely  until  such  time  as 
he  can  refit  himself  into  the  scheme  of  things.  Like  the 
sword  of  Damocles,  want  has  hung  suspended  by  a  thread 
of  uncertainty  over  his  head.  Today  food,  but  tomorrow 
possible  starvation.  With  the  worry  and  concern  about 
his  future,  his  morale  has  suffered.  In  this  state  he  has 
turned  to  the  pauper  unions  where  he  finds  not  only 
fellowship  in  his  misery,  but  also  some  degree  of  assurance 
as  to  his  future. 

The  failure  of  the  relief  administration  to  adopt  a 
long-term  policy  at  the  outset  of  its  program  brought 
about  the  general  acceptance  of  the  theory  that  the  un 
employed  must  not  be  encouraged  to  feel  secure  in  their 
positions  as  beneficiaries  of  the  dole.  The  policy  of  relief 
has  been  predicated  upon  the  assumption  that  prosperity 
will  round  the  corner,  and  make  unnecessary  the  main 
tenance  of  the  relief  program.  In  consequence,  its  ad 
ministration  has  been  opportunistic  in  nature,  a  condi 
tion  which  has  been  encouraged  by  the  emergency  of  the 
situation.  The  sudden  shifts  in  direction,  name  and  set-up 
of  the  relief  administration  have  been  exceedingly  ex 
pensive  and  often  extravagant,  and  such  changes  have 
not  retarded  or  prevented  the  break-down  in  public 
morale.  The  pangs  of  hunger  among  the  unemployed 
have  been  temporarily  appeased;  but  no  provisions  have 
been  made  for  the  futures  of  men  without  work. 


UNIONS  AMONG  THE  UNEMPLOYED  [  509  ] 

In  this,  the  sixth  year  of  the  depression,  it  has  become 
apparent  that  a  large  majority  of  the  present  unemployed 
population  of  ten  and  one-half  million  people  cannot  ex 
pect  to  be  absorbed  by  industry,  even  with  the  latter  func 
tioning  on  a  basis  of  pre-1929  prosperity.  To  realize  that 
for  them  the  depression  may  be  here  to  stay  is  not  to 
accept  a  counsel  of  despair.  As  Keynes  has  pointed  out 
with  regard  to  the  powerful  Roman  Empire,  there  was 
one  depression  that  lasted  eight  hundred  years !  Indeed, 
it  is  more  pleasant  to  believe  that  prosperity  lies  just 
around  a  fabled  corner  for  every  one  of  us,  and  it  would 
not  be  good  politics  to  think  and  say  otherwise. 

But  unfortunately,  reality  is  ineluctable  and  forces 
itself  to  be  recognized.  That  the  present  Administration 
has  come  to  recognize  this  situation,  at  least  in  part,  is 
indicated  by  its  experiments  with  the  idea  of  rehabilita 
tion  and  subsistence  farming.  Meanwhile,  however,  it 
continues  its  original  policy  of  expensive  expediency  in 
the  administration  of  relief,  hoping  against  hope  that  the 
Golden  Era  will  return.  And  all  the  while  the  pauper 
unions  continue  to  grow  in  strength  and  membership  in 
an  effort  to  alleviate  the  uncertainties  of  the  governmental 
program. 

Only  by  the  adoption  of  a  long-term  policy,  and  the 
institution  of  a  permanent  set-up  to  insure  security  for 
those  on  relief,  can  the  government  hope  to  discourage 
the  growth  of  unionism  among  the  unemployed.  Even 
tually  this  will  have  to  be  done  —  the  sooner  the  better 
and  the  less  expensive  for  all  concerned.  For  instance, 
with  a  permanent  organization  of  relief  workers  selected 
on  the  basis  of  merit,  preferably  through  civil  service  ex 
amination,  the  expenses  of  relief  administration  could 
be  cut  in  half  through  increased  efficiency.  Even  greater 
savings  might  be  effected  if  a  Department  of  Social 


[  5io  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Service  were  established,  equal  in  rank  to  that  of  the 
Army,  Navy  and  others,  for  the  direction  and  coordina 
tion  of  all  relief  and  social  activities  of  the  Federal 
government. 

Until  such  time  as  the  government  moves  to  the  adop 
tion  of  a  permanent  relief  program,  social  service  workers 
will  do  well  to  encourage  the  growth  of  unions  among  the 
unemployed.  These  pauper  unions  can  preserve  the  mo 
rale  of  the  unemployed  by  serving  as  counter-agent  to  the 
vacillating  activities  and  inefficiency  of  the  relief  admin 
istration.  To  bait  their  members  as  "reds"  is  absurd. 
Taking  them  at  their  own  estimation,  they  are  citizens 
who  have  no  desire  to  overthrow  the  government  that 
continues  to  feed  them.  What  they  do  desire  to  secure 
through  their  unions  is  a  sense  of  security  —  that  sense 
which,  far  from  being  inimical  to  government,  is  rather 
its  basis  and  only  excuse  for  being. 

If  these  pauper  unions  become  increasingly  radical 
and  menacing  to  the  powers  that  be,  this  will  be  owing 
not  to  personal  inclination  on  the  part  of  the  members, 
but  to  the  force  of  outside  circumstances  over  which  they 
have  no  control.  If  the  government  continues  its  policy  of 
discouraging  that  feeling  of  security,  they  will  naturally 
turn  more  and  more  toward  the  acceptance  of  the  plans 
of  demagogues  which  seem  to  promise  them  some  hope 
of  future  certainty. 


**•*  •'>(! 

^NC^\ 

:\  Public  Library 

The  Plum  Tree     %  <.*       «** 

^*^cE.w^t 

FRANCES  FROST 

There  was  a  tree,  and  in  the  early  spring 
its  delicate  twigs  burst  into  flower  before 
the  leaves  came  out.  I  stood  on  the  sudden  shore 
of  seeing,  I  gaped  in  the  grass  at  the  petals'  opening, 
and  thought;  I  never  saw  this  tree,  I  never 
cried  in  my  throat  like  this  without  quick  tears. 
In  a  warmer  evening  I  watched  the  soft  wind  sever 
the  flakes  of  bloom  from  branches. 

The  summer's  years 

were  busy  with  elm-green  shade  and  bumble-bees 
and  the  butterfly  I  caught  and  kept  in  a  box 
until  it  died. 

When  the  tree  was  heavy  with  plums 
some  of  them  dropped  to  the  grass  and  split  on  the  rocks, 
and  my  mother  put  a  purple  fruit  in  my  hand 
and  said:  eat  it. 

I  stared  at  the  blue-dark  skin 

thinking:  here's  something  lovely  and  strange,  unbanned, 
too  big  for  my  palm.  And  warily  biting  in, 
I  tasted  the  bitter  purple,  the  golden  flesh 
ripened  and  wild  and  sweet,  and  gnawing  down 
fiercely,  with  juicy  fingers,  beneath  the  mesh 
discovered  the  hard  impenetrable  stone. 


Mahaley  Mullens 

ROBERT  TURNEY 

THE  first  inkling  that  there  was  anything  peculiar 
about  the  warrant  in  his  breast  pocket  came  to 
Spencer  Williams  when  he  stopped  at  the  Corners  to  in 
quire  the  way. 

The  storekeeper  spat  accurately  on  a  fly  crawling 
along  the  porch  rail  before  he  drawled: 

"So  yo're  anxious  t5  larn  th'  way  to  Mahaley  Mullen- 
ses?" 

"Yes,  please." 

"Wai  —  '  He  spat  again,  this  time  with  equal  ac 
curacy  into  the  cuspidor  beside  the  door.  "Mahaley  Mul 
lens  is  sorta  Gawd  Almighty  up  on  Buzzard  Mountain.  I 
wouldn't  be  agoin  thar  on  no  monkey  business  ef  I  wuz 
you." 

"It's  important  business." 

"Wai,  I  reckon  little  Haley  kin  direct  you  better'n  me. 
She's  inside  buyin'  vittles."  He  craned  his  neck  and 
peered  into  the  inner  gloom  of  the  store.  "Here  she  comes 


now." 


A  moment  later  a  tall  girl  in  brown  calico  and  blue 
sunbonnet  appeared. 

"Here's  another  on  'em,  Haley.  Stranger,  this  heah  is 
Mahaley  Mullens  —  the  young'ur,  that  is." 

The  girl  surveyed  Williams  calmly. 

"So  yo're  lookin'  fer  my  Ant  Haley's?" 

"Why  yes,  I  am." 

The  corners  of  her  mouth  dimpled  into  a  slow,  enig 
matic  smile. 

"Aimin'  tuh  arrest  her?" 

"Why  —  " 


MAHALEY  MULLENS  [513] 

"That's  what  allus  brings  men  folks  like  yo'uns  to 
these  parts.  I'm  jest  settin'  out  fo'  home.  I'll  take  yo' 
along." 

"That'd  be  mighty  kind  of  you." 

"O,  'tain't  nothin'.  That  thing  yourn?"  She  nodded 
towards  the  Ford. 

"Why,  yes,  it  is." 

"That  thing  wouldn't  git  no  place  on  our  road.  Be 
sides  I  got  a  hoss  an  waggin." 

"I'll  put  it  away  fer  yo'  in  my  barn,"  suggested  the 
storekeeper.  "Haley's  right  'bout  th'  road." 

The  girl  made  no  offer  to  resume  conversation  as  they 
drove  slowly  along  the  village  street;  yet  she  appeared  in 
no  way  disturbed,  though  obviously  she  guessed  the  ob 
ject  of  his  visit. 

Williams  gazed  uncomfortably  across  the  valley.  In 
the  distance,  the  mountains  seemed  to  shimmer  bluely  in 
the  rising  heat.  Somewhere  a  rain  crow's  sharp  raucous 
cry  accentuated  the  stillness  of  the  sundrowned  landscape. 

They  rumbled  over  a  cedar  bridge.  Beneath,  the 
stream  lay  in  broad  pools  across  which  scatterings  of 
light  flickered  goldenly  as  the  shadowing  tree  tops  moved 
in  an  upper  wind.  But  close  to  the  ground  no  breath 
stirred.  They  passed  the  last  house  —  its  dooryard  filled 
with  mauve  China  asters  and  white  monk's-hood  picoted 
with  blue;  its  appletree  leaning  sleepily  over  the  gray 
roof  —  and  turned  into  what  was  scarcely  more  than  a 
trail  zigzagging  up  beneath  vast  buttonwoods. 

"Tell  me  about  th'  town,"  commanded  the  girl  with 
startling  abruptness. 

"Just  what  do  you  want  to  know?" 

He  studied  her  profile  during  the  pause  before  she 
answered. 

No,  she  was  scarcely  pretty  —  though  in  the  right 


[514]  THE  NOR  TH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

clothes  she  might  be  something  more  than  that.  He  won 
dered  what  color  her  hair  was. 

"Ant  Haley  says  they  got  music  an  every  thin5  all  lit  up 
like  fair  night  at  Custer  every  night." 

"That's  more  or  less  true,  though  I  never  saw  Custer." 

"I  allow  there's  been  right  smart  changes  since  Ant 
Haley  were  thar.  She  calcalates  it  tuh  be  mor'n  fifty 
years." 

"I  guess  there  have  been  a  few  changes." 

"She  says  there  be  lamps  ahangin'  all  'long  th'  street 
every  two  hundred  steps.  She  counted  on  'em." 

"I  wouldn't  be  surprised  if  that's  right." 

"Ant  Haley  says  city  folks  wears  store  clothes  every 
day." 

"That's  the  only  kind  of  clothes  they  have." 

"An  the  wimmen  folks  wears  silk  same  as  we'd  wear 
calico." 

"Not  all  of  them." 

"Ant  Haley's  got  a  silk  dress.  It  jest  fits  me.  But  she 
can't  git  into  it  no  more  —  it  wus  made  for  her  so  long 
ago." 

They  relapsed  into  silence  and  Williams  stole  another 
glance  at  her.  Her  skin  was  clear  and  slightly  golden  from 
the  sun;  her  nose  large  and  beautifully  formed;  the  mouth 
firm  yet  sensitive.  She  turned  towards  him  suddenly  and 
he  saw  her  eyes  were  slate-colored. 

"Your  eyes  are  gray,"  he  exclaimed  and  felt  somehow 
foolish. 

"What  color  did  yo'  think  they  wuz?"  she  demanded 
sharply. 

Then,  with  a  little  flicker  at  the  corners  of  her  mouth, 
she  unbent  somewhat. 

"They's  Mullens  eyes.  All  Mullens  is  got  gray  eyes. 
Lan'  but  it's  hot!" 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [515] 

She  brushed  back  her  sunbonnet,  and  two  thick  braids 
uncoiled  and  slipped  down  over  her  shoulders.  They 
were  the  color  of  October  beech  leaves.  Just  then  the 
road  cut  through  a  clearing  and  the  sun  lighted  her  hair 
with  an  iridescent  sheen  of  gold  and  copper. 

She  stopped  with  a  casual  "Woah,  Boy,"  and  jumped 
down. 

"Yo'  kin  help  me  ef  yo'  want  tuh.  Thar's  a  service  tree 
sommers  hereabouts.  Ant  Haley  sets  right  powerful 
store  by  th'  berries." 

They  scrambled  up  a  bank  covered  with  sweet  fern  and 
blueberries. 

"What  a  beautiful  tree!"  exclaimed  Williams. 

"Yes,  it's  allus  admired  right  much;  but  nobody  knows 
jist  what  it  be." 

"It's  a  broadleafed  holly." 

She  looked  at  him  with  dawning  respect. 

"I  allus  knowed  it  were  called  sumpin5  in  books." 

"It's  the  finest  I've  seen.  It  must  be  nearly  forty  feet." 

"It  allus  were  a  notable  tree.  When  th'  weather  gits 
snappish,  th'  berries  colors  up  real  pretty.  Ant  Haley 
likes  me  t'  bring  her  some  when  I  pass  this  way.  But  yo' 
got  t'  be  powerful  careful,  they  falls  off  so  easy." 

They  continued  up  the  bank  until  they  reached  the 
clump  of  shadblow. 

"The  ripest  ones  is  on  th'  groun',  but  be  keerful  not  t' 
git  none  that's  rotted." 

"I'll  shake  the  ripest  down,  then  we  can  pick  'em  up." 

"It's  a  good  idea,  ef  yo're  strong  enuf.  I  ain't." 

He  shook  the  tree  with  both  hands.  A  light  pattering  of 
the  blue  fruits  scattered  over  the  dried  leaves  about 
them.  Haley  stooped  to  gather  them  into  her  sunbonnet. 

"Th'  boys  uster  cut  down  th'  whole  tree  t'  git  th'  fruit; 
'till  Ant  Haley  stopped  'em.  She  said  thar  warn't  no  pint 


[516]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

in  spilin5  next  yar,  'count  o'  doggone  laziness  this  one." 
"Not  a  bad  philosophy." 
"I  don't  know  whut  yo'  calls  it;  but  I  call  it  plain  hoss 


sense." 


She  stood  up. 

"These'll  be  plenty.  Ant  Haley  kinda  likes  havin'  a 
special  snack  nobody  else's  got." 

On  the  way  back  to  the  wagon,  she  turned  aside  to 
pick  a  spray  of  Carolina  beech-drops. 

"Ant  Haley's  gonna  be  right  pleased  this  trip,"  she 
said  smelling  the  waxy  pink  bells.  "She  allus  did  fancy 
sweet-pine  sap.  I  like  t'  take  her  some  o'  th'  woods  when 
ever  I  can.  She  uster  be  a  great  one  fer  ramblin';  but 


now  — " 


She  broke  off  and  glanced  at  him  from  under  her  lashes, 
an  amused  twinkle  in  her  eyes. 

"You'd  be  'sprised  how  little  things'll  perk  her  up." 

The  sun  was  already  hanging  low  in  the  west  when  they 
came  out  into  wild  upland  farm  country,  where  gray 
snake  fences  separated  the  road  from  fields  of  scrawny 
corn  whose  lances  rustled  faintly  in  the  wind  as  they 
passed. 

"Thar's  Buzzard's  Rock.  When  we  git  down  th'  road  a 
piece,  yo'  kin  see  Ant  Haley's  place." 

To  the  left  the  land  sloped  to  a  sheer  drop  along  whose 
edge  sumac  flourished  its  already  crimson  bundles  of 
velvety  fruits  among  dark  frond-like  leaves.  Below,  a 
river  twisted  whitely  between  the  green  of  tree  tops  to 
wards  where  —  far  across  the  wind  filled  chasm  —  other 
mountains  rose  bluely  to  meet  the  sky. 

"That's  Ant  Haley's." 

On  an  outjutting  shoulder  beneath  Buzzard's  Rock, 
Williams  saw  a  long,  low  cabin  plumed  with  a  wavering 
haze  of  smoke. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [51?] 

A  bedlam  of  yellow  hounds  yelped  down  the  road  to 
meet  them. 

"Drat  them  dawgs!  I  reckon  th'  boys  is  home  aready." 

Unurged,  the  horse  quickened  his  pace  and  they 
rolled  into  the  stable  yard  and  descended  in  grand  style. 

"Git  along!"  shouted  Haley  at  the  dogs  which  were 
sniffing  and  growling  about  William's  legs. 

"Zeke!  O  Zeke!" 

Her  voice  bugled  out  across  the  valley,  clear,  sonorous, 
and  set  the  echoes  ricocheting. 

"Zeke!  Call  these  hounds!  Thar's  a  stranger  heah." 

From  the  direction  of  the  cabin  porch  came  a  sharp 
whistle  and  the  hounds  scurried  away  yelping. 

A  rangy  man  with  carroty  hair  and  beard  lounged 
into  view  at  the  porch  end. 

"Git  ma  t'baccy?" 

"Yes,  Uncle  Zeke." 

As  they  approached,  Zeke's  eyes  travelled  over  Wil 
liams  with  a  glance  wholly  impersonal,  withdrawn. 

"Howdy."  Holding  out  his  hand,  he  shifted  his  slate 
colored  eyes  to  Haley. 

She  handed  him  his  package. 

"This  be  Mr.  Williams.  He's  come  fer  Ant  Haley  — 
tho'  he  won't  let  on." 

A  look  of  masked  amusement  twinkled  between  uncle 
and  niece. 

"Git  along  t'  yo'  great  Ant  Haley." 

Zeke  moved  down  the  porch,  seating  himself  where  he 
could  see  into  the  cabin  through  the  open  door. 

More  and  more  uncomfortable,  Williams  followed  the 
girl  inside. 

At  first  he  could  only  dimly  see  the  furnishings.  But  as 
his  eyes  accustomed  themselves  to  the  shadowy  light  he 
made  out  more  of  the  details.  A  large  rough  wood  table 


[518]  THE  NOR  TH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

stood  before  the  cavernous  fireplace,  where  a  great  iron 
pot  bubbled  fragrantly  over  embers.  Against  the  chimney 
hung  ears  of  red  and  yellow  and  purple  corn,  part  of 
their  pale,  silver  brown  husks  stripped  back  and  braided 
into  the  thick  rope  by  which  they  were  suspended.  From 
the  smoke-darkened  beams  dangled  bundles  of  herbs, 
festoons  of  red  and  white  onions  among  long  strings  of 
scarlet  peppers  and  mahogany  colored  hams  like  violins. 

"Don't  keep  me  awaitin5,  Haley.  Whar's  ma  store 
candy?" 

The  deep  voice  rumbled  from  what  Williams  had  mis 
taken  for  a  closet  jutting  out  into  one  corner.  Now  he 
saw  it  was  a  great  tester  bed  hung  with  star  patterned 
homespun. 

The  corner  was  so  shadowy  he  could  not  make  out  the 
speaker. 

"I  brung  summun  t5  see  yo5,  Ant  Haley." 

"Who  be  it?" 

"A  stranger.  I  reckon,  yo's  agoin'  tuh  git  arrested 
agin." 

A  growling  laugh  shook  the  curtains  and  set  the  bed 
creaking. 

"Lan5,  Lan' !  Don't  they  never  give  up?  Bring  him 
close,  Haley,  so's  I  kin  see  him.  An'  ring  back  these 
cuyartins.  I  been  nappin'  some." 

Haley  leaned  across  the  bed  and  drew  back  the  cur 
tains  from  the  window  beside  it.  Williams  found  himself 
looking  into  a  face  propped  above  a  mountain  of  quilt  — 
a  face  carven  and  heavy-lidded  as  that  of  some  idol. 
Rumpled  white  hair  was  pushed  back  from  it,  and  in  the 
shadow  of  fierce  white  brows,  dark  eyes  twinkled  at  him 
with  a  jewel-like  brightness. 

"So  yo've  come  fer  tuh  arrest  me?" 

Williams  cleared  his  throat  awkwardly. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [519] 

"I'm  sorry,  Mrs.  Mullens,  but  I  have  got  a  warrant 
against  you." 

"Fer  distillin'  an'  sellin'  o'  moonshine?" 

"Yes,  that's  the  charge." 

"Young  feller,  fer  nigh  forty  years  I  been  sellin'  moon 
shine;  an'  I  'spect  ter  go  on  asellin'  it  'till  th'  Lord  takes 


me." 


"I'm  sorry,  Mrs.  Mullens,  you  — " 

"Oh,  ef  yo'  say  so,  I  s'pose  I  got  t'  go  tuh  jail.  I  ain't 
one  tuh  resist  th'  Law.  Whut  yo'  got  tuh  take  me  in?" 

Young  Haley  answered  for  him. 

"He  hed  a  automobile.  But  I  tole  him  it  warn't  no  use 
on  our  road,  so  he  lef  it  at  Mr.  Wilkeses." 

"Lan',  ain't  thet  a  pity,  now.  I  allus  hankered  tuh  ride 
in  one  o'  them  things.  Well,  tell  th'  boys  tuh  hitch  up 
agin." 

"You'd  better  pack  a  bag  for  your  Aunt,  too,"  Wil 
liams  said,  relieved  that  everything  was  going  so  smoothly. 
"I'll  do  everything  to  make  her  trip  comfortable." 

"Yo'  hearn  what  he  said,  Haley.  Run  pack  me  a  grip." 

"I  hearn  him,  Ant  Haley." 

But  she  made  no  move  to  go. 

Mahaley  Mullens  began  to  chuckle.  It  seemed  to  begin 
somewhere  deep  in  her  belly. 

"But  befo'  I  discompose  maself  —  fer  I  be  mighty 
cumf't'ble  —  how  yo'  agoin'  tuh  git  me  thro'  that  doah?" 

Williams  glanced  at  the  narrow  doorway  and  then  at 
her. 

She  had  thrown  back  the  single,  light  quilt;  and  he 
saw  for  the  first  time  that  the  mountain  was  neither  pil 
lows  nor  bedclothes,  but  her  own  body.  Squatting  there 
like  some  appalling  Buddah,  she  filled  the  entire  bed. 
Not  even  sideways  would  it  be  possible  to  get  her  from 
the  room  in  which  she  lay. 


[  52o  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Haley  and  Zeke  joined  their  aunt's  peal  of  laughter. 

"They  allus  sends  th'  new  men  tuh  arrest  me,"  Ma- 
haley  informed  him  as  she  rearranged  the  quilt.  "Sort  uv 
puts  'em  thro'  their  sprouts." 

She  reached  out  and  removed  the  top  of  the  barrel  be 
side  her  bed. 

"Hev  a  drink?" 

Dipping  in  a  white  gourd,  she  brought  it  up  full  of 
tawny  liquid  and  the  sharp  aroma  of  corn  whiskey. 

"No  thanks." 

Ruefully,  Williams  watched  her  drink  and  return  the 
gourd  to  its  hook. 

She  drew  her  hand  across  her  mouth  and  resumed  the 
conversation. 

"Way  back  in  1780,  Washington  an'  his  rebels  druv 
my  folks,  th'  Bruces,  an'  my  husband's  folks,  th'  Mul- 
lenses,  out  uv  Virginie,  'count  they  wuz  King's  men  — 
Tories  he  called  'em.  They  come  in  twenty  waggins  up 
these  mountings  an'  we  been  agin  his  govamint  ever 


since." 


A  young  white  pig  came  from  behind  the  bed  and 
nuzzled  her  hand  until  she  scratched  its  ears. 

"Yo'  been  nappin',  too,  Toby?" 

The  pig  leaned  against  the  bed  and  grunted  con 
tentedly. 

"Mrs.  Mullens,  I  must  warn  you  it's  my  duty  to  arrest 
you  and  take  you  to  the  county  jail;  and  —  if  it's  hu 
manly  possible  —  I  intend  to  do  it." 

"Young  man,  I  admire  yo'  spunk.  But  ef  thar's  any 
way  short  o'  tearin'  down  th'  house  t'  git  me  outer  here,  I 
can't  think  whut  it'd  be.  Thar's  been  seven  afore  yo' 
couldn't  figger  no  way.  An'  they  had  sense  enuf  tuh  bring 
sumpin'  tuh  take  me  away  in." 

Young  Haley  spoke  quickly  to  cover  his  discomfiture. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  521  ] 

"Ant  Haley,  he  knowed  th'  name  —  th'  book  name  fer 
th5  green  bush  tree." 

The  old  woman  looked  at  him  with  interest. 

"Lan',  Ian',  I  allus  hankered  tuh  know  whut  t'  call 
that  thar  green  bush  tree." 

"He  says  'tis  called  a  broadleafed  holly." 

"Is  that  true?" 

"Why,  yes  that's  its  name." 

"Thar  jes  ain't  no  tellin'  when  yo're  agoin'  tuh  larn 
sumpin'  new.  Ever  since  I  recumember  thar  ain't  been 
nobody  knowed  what  that  green  bush  tree  were  rightly 
called.  An'  now  I  know.  Haley,  set  a  place  fer  th'  stran 
ger.  He's  astayin'  fer  supper.  An'  hurry  up  some.  I  feel 
vitalish  arter  ma  nap." 

"But,  Mrs.  Mullens,  I  can't  — " 

"Course  yo're  astayin'.  Jist  becaise  yo're  th'  law's  no 
reason  tuh  act  onfriendly.  Anyhow  yo'  can't  go.  It's 
comin'  up  tuh  rain.  Lookit  them  maples  down  th' 
mounting.  They  allus  turns  white  afore  a  storm." 

Far  below  along  the  stream,  swamp  maples  were 
ruffling  the  underside  of  their  leaves  whitely  in  the  rising 
wind.  And  as  though  to  confirm  her  prophecy,  at  that 
moment  thunder  sounded  distantly  across  the  moun 
tains. 

"Git  out  th'  silver  dish,  Haley,  seein'  thar's  company." 

Haley  disappeared,  leaving  Williams  uncomfortable 
and  undecided. 

"If  you'll  let  me  have  a  horse  — " 

"Lan',  I  wouldn't  send  no  hoss  out  in  whut's  acomin'. 
Now,  don't  argify.  It  tuckers  me." 

A  snuffling  sound  behind  him  made  Williams  turn.  A 
freckled-faced  youngster  of  thirteen  hesitated  in  the  door 
way. 

"Whut's  th'  matter,  Patrick  Henry?  Wipe  yo'  nose  an' 


[  522  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

come  on  in  hyar.  Haley's  got  supper  putty  near  ready." 

The  boy  drew  one  brown  hand  across  his  nose  and 
then  down  the  faded  leg  of  his  overalls. 

"I  got  yo'  a  new  chawin'  stick,  Ant  Haley." 

His  bare  feet  shushed  across  the  uncarpeted  boards. 

"Tupelo  wood,"  said  his  aunt.  "Thar  ain't  nothin'  bet 
ter  'n  Tupelo  fer  a  chawin'  stick." 

Mahaley  fished  among  the  bedclothes  'till  she  pro 
duced  a  package  of  snuff  and  proceeded  to  inaugurate  the 
new  stick. 

"It's  a  powerful  fine  stick,  Patrick  Henry,  an'  I'm 
mighty  obleeged  tuh  yo'." 

"Whut's  Haley  all  dressed  up  fer?"  demanded  Patrick 
Henry  in  a  sudden  voice  that  startled  him  as  much  as  the 
others. 

"Yo'  hus  up  yo'  mouth,  you  Patrick  Henry,"  said 
Haley,  not  deigning  to  look  at  him. 

She  crossed  the  room  to  place  the  silver  dish  on  the 
table,  and  as  she  moved  the  silk  dress  whispered  about 
her.  It  was  slate-gray  and  old-fashioned,  with  a  high 
neck  and  flounces  of  lilac  plaid.  Yet  somehow  it  well  be 
came  her  grave  dignity.  She  had  wound  her  braids 
crosswise  into  a  figure  eight  low  on  her  neck,  and  a  silver 
brooch  pinned  a  bit  of  purple  ribbon  at  her  throat. 

"We'uns  is  cellibratin',  Patrick  Henry,"  said  Mahaley, 
chuckling  slyly.  "Ps  been  arrested  fer  th'  eighth  time." 

Williams  stirred  uncomfortably. 

"Really,  Mrs.  Mullens,  I'd  feel  much  better  if  you'd 
let  me  — " 

"Lan',  chile!  I  didn't  aim  tuh  rile  yo'  none.  I  were  jist 
havin'  a  little  laff  tuh  myse'f.  An'  I  ain't  aimin'  tuh  let 
yo'  go  nuther.  Look  how  dark  it's  agittin'.  In  no  time  't 
all,  it'll  be  blacker'n  a  nigger's  neck." 

Haley  began  lowering  the  brass  lamp  above  the  table. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  523  ] 

"Let  me  do  that  for  you,"  exclaimed  Williams,  glad  of 
an  excuse  to  move. 

"Much  obleeged." 

She  crossed  to  the  fireplace;  selected  a  paper  spill 
from  the  blue  cup  on  the  mantelshelf;  and,  lighting  it 
from  the  embers,  returned  to  transfer  the  flame  to  the 
lamp. 

"Yo5  kin  hyste  it  agin'." 

She  took  down  a  gray  cow-horn  and,  going  to  the  door 
wound  a  deep  peal  far  out  across  the  darkening  valley. 

"Guess  that'll  fetch  young  Zeke  an'  Alexander  Hamil 
ton  an'  Thomas  Jefferson." 

"Who  are  they?" 

"Young  Zeke's  Uncle  Zeke's  eldest  an'  th'  others  is  th' 


twins." 


"Whoever  named  them  certainly  had  his  history 
mixed,"  laughed  Williams.  "Hamilton  and  Jefferson 
couldn't  stand  each  other." 

"Nuther  kin  th'  twins." 

Haley  laughed  dryly. 

"'Cep'  when  summun  else  tries  tuh  do  sumpin'  tuh  one 
of  'em." 

Mahaley  began  to  scold  the  pig  who  was  still  rubbing 
his  back  insinuatingly  against  the  bed. 

"Git  along,  Toby.  I  got  importanter  things  tuh  do 
besides  scratch  yo'  haid  all  night.  Patrick  Henry,  take 
him  along  outside.  An'  don't  lemme  ketch  yo'  pullin'  his 
yars  like  las'  time.  That  pig's  got  feelin's  same  as  yo'  has. 
An'  he's  a  lot  pearter'n  some  folks." 

A  younger  edition  of  Zeke  hulked  into  the  room  and 
seated  himself  at  the  table,  his  eyes  fixed  suspiciously  on 
Williams. 

"Whar's  th'  twins?"  demanded  Mahaley. 

"They  'uns'll  be  along,"  he  said  in  a  mournful  voice. 


[  524  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

His  father  entered  and  strolled  over  to  the  table. 

"Well,  let's  set,"  he  said. 

"Dish  up  th5  vittles,  Haley,"  commanded  her  aunt. 

With  loud  whoopings  two  small  boys  forced  their  way 
simultaneously  through  the  door.  One  was  tall  and  sandy; 
the  other  short  and  dark.  Each  had  a  black  eye. 

"Don'  yo5  push  me!" 

"Don'  yo5  push  me!  I  got  heah  fust!" 

"Shet  up,  both  on  yo'." 

The  last  from  Mahaley. 

The  boys  bounced  into  chairs. 

"Ant  Haley,"  shouted  the  tall  one.  "I  licked  Alexander 
Hamilton  agin." 

The  dark  one  bounced  from  his  chair. 

"He's  alyin',  Ant  Haley,  I  heP  his  haid  in  th'  dust  till 
he  hollered  nuff.  Come  outside  an'  I'll  do  it  agin." 

"Shet  up!  Ain't  I  tole  yo'  uns,  ef  one  clips  t'  other  - 
clip  him  back;  but  fergit  about  it  arterwards.  Beside  we 
got  cump'ny." 


A^L  at  once  the  storm  was  upon  them  in  a  swift  scud 
ding  of  lightning-tattered  darkness  through  which 
battled  a  clamor  of  wind  and  the  crash  of  thunder. 

"Shet  th'  doah,"  commanded  Mahaley,  "fore  we's  all 
blowed  clean  outern  th'  house." 

Haley  rose  to  obey;  but  Williams  was  before  her.  The 
men  looked  up  at  him  in  surprise. 

"Ther's  whut  yo'  wanted  tuh  be  out  in,"  chuckled 
Mahaley,  gloating  over  the  heaped  plate  her  niece  handed 
her.  "Said  storm  wuz  acomin'.  Can't  fool  th'  maples." 

They  ate  slowly  and  with  gusto  —  so  slowly  that  be 
fore  they  were  finished  the  storm  had  gone  as  suddenly 
as  it  had  come,  leaving  behind  the  steady  drip  of  rain- 
laden  trees  and  the  gurgling  of  the  rivulet  from  the  eaves. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  525  ] 

Haley  removed  the  plates  and  set  in  the  middle  of  the 
table  the  silver  bowl  filled  with  blueberries. 

"Yo5  got  sumpin5  special,  Ant  Haley." 

"Whut  is  it?" 

"Sarvice  berries." 

"I'll  have  'em  mixed  with  t'  others." 

Haley  handed  her  a  saucer  of  both,  which  the  old  lady 
seized  greedily. 

"My,  my,"  she  said,  "these  buckberries  is  got  a  real 
good  smack." 

Patrick  Henry,  having  already  finished  a  heroic  pile, 
pushed  back  his  saucer. 

"'Tain't  tuh  ma  taste.  Too  puckery." 

"Sakes  alive,  Patrick  Henry,  ain't  nuthin'  never  tuh 
yo'  taste?" 

"Naw,"  said  Patrick  Henry  concisely  and  shuffled  out. 

"Ant  Haley,  I  clean  fergot  tuh  give  yo'  yo'  bit  o'  sweet 
pinesap!"  exclaimed  Haley,  shaking  out  her  sunbonnet. 
"Whut  a  shame!  It's  pretty  nigh  wilted." 

"Put  it  in  a  glass  o'  water  with  a  little  whiskey  an' 
'twill  perk  up.  An'  thet  reminds  me;  Zeke,  when  air  yo' 
an'  them  no'-count  boys  gwine  tuh  git  me  nuff  Injun 
pipes  tuh  make  ma  eye  water?  Ma  eyes  been  in  need  o' 
strengthnin'  fer  a  powerful  long  time." 

"We'uns'll  look  aroun'  an'  git  yo'  some,  Ant  Haley, 
never  yo'  fret." 

Picking  his  teeth  meditatively,  he,  too,  disappeared 
into  the  gathering  darkness. 

No  more  blueberries  being  forthcoming,  the  twins 
made  a  rush  for  the  door.  Alexander  Hamilton  reached 
it  first  and  turned  fleetingly  to  thumb  his  nose.  With  a 
look  of  dark  determination,  Thomas  Jefferson  sped  after 
him.  A  moment  later  there  was  a  yell  of  mingled  pain  and 
rage  outside  the  cabin. 


[  526  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"Lan',  them  twins  do  beat  all !  Whar's  ma  store  candy, 
Haley?" 

Haley  handed  her  the  paper  bag.  With  quick,  greedy 
gestures  the  old  lady  opened  it  and  popped  one  of  the 
colored  balls  into  her  mouth. 

Young  Zeke's  mournful  voice  recalled  them  sharply  to 
his  presence. 

"Ain't  Haley  plum  beautiful  in  thet  thar  silk  dress,  Ant 
Muhully?" 

"Gret  Day,  Zeke!  Yo'  be  t'  skeerinest  pusson!  Settin' 
'roun'  like  a  bump  on  a  lawg  'tell  a  body  fergits  yo're 
alive;  then  making  'em  jump  outern  thar  skin  with  thet 
hoot  owl  voice." 

"I'm  sorry,  Ant  Muhully." 

"'Tain't  yo'  fault,  Zeke.  Yo're  th'  way  th'  Lawd  made 
yo';  same  as  a  hoot  owl  is,  I  reckon.  Whar's  ma  mixture, 
Haley?  Zeke's  plum  upset  ma  digestun." 

Zeke  stood  shamefacedly  by  while  Haley  got  a  large 
bottle  bearing  in  very  black  letters  the  legend:  GID 
EON'S  UNIVERSAL  MIXTURE. 

"I  got  this  offern  a  man  wuz  passin'  through.  Whut 
were  it  he  called  hiself,  Haley?" 

"A  'sympathetic,  magnetic,  hypnotic  healer."2 

"That's  whut  it  were.  'Tain't  done  me  much  good  so 
fer;  but  yo'  never  kin  tell  in  th'  long  run,  so  I  goes  on 
atakin'  it." 

"I  reckon  I'll  be  agoin',"  said  Zeke.  "Night,  Ant 
Muhully." 

Then  with  all  the  sorrow  of  the  ages  in  his  voice: 

"Good-bye,  Haley." 

"Good-night,  Zeke.  But  why  in  th'  name  o'  sense,  do 
yo5  allus  say  it  like  you  wuz  goin'  tuh  ma  funeral?  Yo'll 
see  me  in  th'  mawnin'." 

"I  know." 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  527  ] 

Darkness  swallowed  him. 

"I  must  go,  Mrs.  Mullens.  Thanks  for  the  supper.  I 
wish  we'd  met  differently." 

"Yo'd  never  fin5  yo'  way  down  th'  mounting.  It's  th' 
dark  o'  th'  moon.  Yo'  kin  have  to' other  room  an'  Haley 
kin  sleep  on  th'  trundle  bed." 

"I  couldn't  let  you  do  that." 

"Many's  th'  time  Haley's  slep'  on  th'  trundle  when  I 
were  sick.  I'd  leave  yo'  hev  a  hoss,  only  in  th'  dark  with  a 
stranger,  moren  likely  he'd  jist  turn  roun'  an'  come 
home." 

"I  don't  min'  'tall,"  said  Haley.  "Th'  trundle's  th' 
cumf't'blest  bed  in  th'  house." 

"But  considering  why  I'm  here  — " 

"O,  I  don'  hole  it  agin  yo',"  said  Mahaley.  "'Tain't 
yo'  fault  yo's  th'  Law." 

"But  as  I've  already  told  you  —  I  intend  to  do  my 
duty,  if  it's  humanly  possible.  You  make  it  very  difficult 
by  making  me  like  you,  Mrs.  Mullens." 

Mahaley  chuckled  at  the  compliment. 

"Well,  I  kinder  like  yo',  too.  An'  ef  yo'  kin  find  a  way 
tuh  git  me  tuh  t'  jail,  welcome.  It's  been  so  longish  sence 
I  been  nowheres,  I  speck  a  jaunt  even  tuh  jail  'ud  be 
right  pleasurable." 

"In  that  case,  I  promise  you:  To  jail  you  shall  go! 
Even  if  I  have  to  take  down  the  side  of  your  house." 

"'Tain't  no  use  speculatin'  on  thetf  Th'  Law  may 
hanker  tuh  arrest  me  fer  moonshinin';  but  th'  Law's  got 
tuh  pertect  ma  house  fum  bein'  tore  down." 

Williams  made  no  answer.  His  eyes  were  fixed  medita 
tively  on  Toby,  who,  with  much  grunting,  was  preparing 
to  settle  himself  for  the  night  under  the  bed. 

"Haley,  settle  me  some.  I'm  tumble  oncomf't'ble.  My 
hyeart's  all  fluttery." 


[  528  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Williams  hastened  to  help  Haley;  but  the  old  lady 
waved  him  away. 

"'Tain't  nuthin5  tuh  take  on  over.  Jes  one  o'  ma  little 
spells.  Guess  Fs  all  tuckered  out.  Draw  th'  bed  cuyartins 
so's  th'  light  won't  pester  me  none;  an'  I'll  rest  some." 

Haley  arranged  the  curtains  deftly  and  quietly. 

"Perhaps  it'd  be  better  if  I  turned  in  now  and  let  your 
aunt  be  as  quiet  as  possible." 

"Mebbe  'twud,"  said  Haley.  "I'll  light  yo'  a  candle." 

"Can't  I  help  you  with  the  dishes  first?" 

"Much  obleeged.  But  thar  ain't  no  need.  'Tain't  a 
man's  chore." 

She  lit  a  home-dipped  tallow  candle  and  led  the  way 
to  a  door  beside  the  chimney.  Beyond  was  a  small  room, 
bare  but  scrupulously  neat.  At  sight  of  the  old  carved  bed 
and  the  chest  of  drawers  against  one  wall,  Williams  gave 
an  exclamation  of  pleasure. 

"It  air  pretty,  ain't  it?"  said  Haley,  setting  down  the 
candle  on  the  dark  lustrous  surface.  "Th'  Bruces  brung  it 
across  th'  mountings  fum  Virginnie.  They  uster  be  mo' 
pieces;  but  they  got  scattered  with  this  un  an'  that  un 
gettin'  married." 

She  stood  there  in  the  soft,  golden  aura  of  the  candle, 
smiling  her  serene,  meditative  smile. 

Later  as  he  tumbled  into  the  bed  with  its  sweet  smelling 
mattress  of  corn  shucks,  he  muttered  apropos  of  nothing 
in  particular: 

"It  does  take  a  beautiful  woman  to  wear  a  high-necked 
dress." 

Two  days  later  he  returned  the  horse  Mahaley  had 
loaned  him.  Patrick  Henry  was  seated  in  the  doorway 
sorting  herbs.  He  looked  up,  nodded  without  speaking, 
then  turning  shouted: 

"Haley,  here  be  sum'un."  He  resumed  sorting. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  529  ] 

"Who  be  it?"  called  the  old  lady  from  inside  the  cabin. 

"It's  me,  Mrs.  Mullens.  I've  brought  back  your  horse." 

"Come  right  in  and  set  a  while." 

She  was  propped  up  with  pillows,  a  small  loom  set 
across  the  bed  before  her.  While  she  talked,  her  fingers 
continued  to  move  deftly  back  and  forth. 

Haley  stood  up  from  the  iron  pot  she  had  been  stirring 
and  greeted  him  with  a  faint  but  friendly  smile. 

"Haley,  git  Mr.  Williams  a  cheer.  You'll  hev  tuh  'scuse 
th'  mess  we'un  is  in.  Haley's  cookin'  me  up  some  mo'  dye 
fer  ma  weavin'.  Haley  chile,  yo'  better  put  some  mo' 
yaller  snake  root  in,  or  'twun't  be  strong  enuff.  Set  yo'sef, 
Mr.  Willums." 

"I'm  going  right  back,  Mrs.  Mullens." 

"'Tain't  neighbor-like  tuh  run  right  smack  off.  Patrick 
Henry,  why  'n  tarnation  don't  yo'  put  th'  hosses  'way?" 

"Uncle  Zeke  tuck  'em." 

Mahaley  turned  to  Williams. 

"Hev  some  whiskey?" 

"No  thanks." 

"Dun't  yo'  never  drink  none  'tall?" 

"You  forget  I'm  a  Revenue  man.  I  can't  drink  with  a 
prospective  prisoner." 

"Wai,  I'll  hev  a  drink  masef  anyhow.  Dip  it  up  fer  me, 
Haley." 

When  she  had  finished,  she  turned  to  him  again. 

"Is  yo'uns  plannin'  tuh  stay  long  in  these  pyarts?" 

"Until  I  get  instructions  about  you.  If  I  find  that  I 
have  the  authority,  I  mean  to  pull  down  the  side  of  your 
house  and  take  you  back  with  me." 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  an  expressionless  face;  but 
there  was  an  amused  light  in  her  eyes  that  matched  the 
faint,  tolerant  smile  her  niece  gave  him. 

"Yo'  shore  be  persistent." 


[  530  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

But  turning  from  them,  Williams  saw  in  Zeke's  eyes 
for  the  first  time  something  not  only  personal  but  un 
friendly. 

X  TEVERTHELESS,  in  the  two  weeks  that  followed 
JL  Al  before  headquarters  replied,  his  daily  ride  brought 
him  invariably  to  the  cabin  on  Buzzard's  Rock. 

Time  after  time,  he  turned  back  from  the  mountain 
road,  clenching  his  hands,  and  crying  aloud  to  himself: 

"You're  seven  kinds  of  a  fool!" 

But  always  he  found  himself  finally  dismounting 
among  the  evening  primroses  that  grew  thickly  against 
the  gray  weather  beaten  Mullens  barn. 

A  week  after  the  letter  from  headquarters,  he  turned  in 
at  the  gate,  a  middle-aged,  nondescript  stranger  jolting 
along  beside  him  on  a  hired  horse. 

"This  is  Dr.  Cullen,"  he  told  Mahaley.  "He's  a  friend 
of  mine.  I'd  like  him  to  look  you  over.  He  may  be  able  to 
do  something  for  you." 

She  gave  him  a  sharp  look;  but  submitted  to  Dr.  Cul- 
len's  examination  without  protest,  even  without  interest. 
Her  face  looked  somehow  gray  and  sunken.  Around  the 
heavy-lidded  eyes,  there  were  fine  lines  of  strain,  as  though 
she  had  not  slept  or  were  in  secret  pain. 

"Urn,"  said  Dr.  Cullen  noncommittally  when  he  had 
finished  his  examination. 

"And  this  is  Toby,"  said  Williams,  feeling  like  Judas. 

"Um,"  remarked  Dr.  Cullen  again  and  fixed  his  eyes 
on  the  pig,  who  was  leaning  against  the  bed  in  the  hope 
of  getting  his  ears  scratched. 

"T'  peartest  shote  I  ever  did  see,"  said  Mahaley,  star 
ing  at  the  doctor  in  her  turn. 

Haley  stood  by  in  silence,  a  puzzled  little  frown  draw 
ing  her  fine  brows  together. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  531  ] 

"I'll  be  back  tomorrow  and  let  you  know  what  the  doc 
tor  says,"  he  mumbled,  avoiding  her  gaze. 

It  was  nearly  noon  the  next  day  when  he  rode  slowly 
out  of  the  woods,  dreading  what  lay  before  him.  Haley 
came  out  of  the  field  ahead,  a  basket  of  corn  under  one 
arm.  She  paused  for  him  to  come  up  to  her. 

"The  summer's  nearly  over,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  she  said  glancing  down  at  the  spray  of  purple 
aster  tucked  in  her  dress.  "I  'most  hates  tuh  see  th'  fust 
camphor  flowers  —  pretty  though  they  be." 

They  walked  on  in  silence. 

Mahaley  was  busy  sopping  buttered  corn-pone  in  a 
saucer  of  molasses. 

"Hev  some  hoecake  an'  saughum?"  she  asked  after  she 
had  nodded  a  greeting. 

With  a  heavy  feeling  of  distaste  for  his  whole  errand,  he 
refused. 

"Haley  chile,  git  me  some  hot  hoecake.  This  hyear's 
jist  got  a  fever." 

While  Haley  whipped  up  the  batter  and  dropped  a 
thick  spoonful  on  the  wide  hoe  blade  over  the  coals,  Wil 
liams  stood  watching  the  twins.  Seated  on  the  floor,  they 
seemed  to  be  fighting  a  duel  with  two  of  the  late  blooming 
violets  already  appearing  in  the  woods. 

"What're  you  doing?"  he  asked.  Anything  to  postpone 
what  must  come. 

"Hevin5  a  cock  fight  with  these  hyear  little  roosters," 
explained  Alexander  Hamilton. 

A  deft  movement  on  his  brother's  part  decapitated  his 
flower. 

"I  beat  him,  Ant  Haley!  I  beat  Alexander  Hamilton!" 

He  pranced  towards  the  door,  waving  his  flower  aloft. 

"Yo5  jist  beat  me  'caise  he  were  atalkin'  tuh  me!" 
shouted  Alexander  Hamilton,  tears  of  rage  in  his  eyes. 


[  532  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"Yaaah!"  mocked  the  victor,  indiscreetly  balancing  on 
one  foot.  Too  late  he  ducked  the  ear  of  corn  that  whizzed 
towards  him.  It  caught  him  on  the  side  of  the  head  and 
was  followed  by  Thomas  Jefferson.  They  disappeared  in  a 
whirlwind  of  arms  and  legs. 

"Lan5 ! !"  was  Mahaley's  sole  comment. 

Williams  searched  for  words  with  which  to  begin. 
After  a  silence  Mahaley  brought  things  to  a  head. 

"Well,  whut  did  th5  doctor  hev  tuh  say?" 

Williams  avoiding  Haley's  eyes,  began: 

"He  said  you  could  be  moved  without  danger." 

"Moved?" 

"I'm  taking  your  aunt  on  the  warrant  I  hold  for  her 
arrest.  I've  arranged  to  have  the  trial  at  Custer,  so  she'll 
be  spared  the  longer  trip." 

"Still  an'  all,  yo'  got  tuh  git  me  thar,"  the  old  lady  re 
minded  him  mildly. 

"In  a  few  days  men  are  coming  to  take  down  the  wall 
by  your  bed  - 

"But  th'  law  won't  let  yo'  do  that." 

"Dr.  Cullen  is  also  an  officer  of  the  Health  Commis 
sion.  Under  an  old  statute  he  is  having  this  house  con 
demned  as  unsanitary." 

"Whut  do  that  mean,  Haley?" 

"Whut  do  whut  mean?" 

Zeke  and  Patrick  Henry  were  standing  in  the  door. 

"Onsan'tary,"  said  Mahaley. 

"'Tain't  clean,"  Patrick  Henry  informed  them.  "We 
larned  sumpin'  'bout  it  when  they  hed  th'  school  that 


time." 


"I  wudn't  set  no  store  by  no  thin'  outern  a  book,"  said 
Zeke.  "They's  more  lies  in  books  then  any  place  unner 
th'  sun." 

He  fixed  his  eyes  coldly  on  Williams. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  533  ] 

"Yo5  mean  t5  say  Ant  Haley's  house  ain't  clean?" 

"Not  exactly  —  but  you  see  there's  an  old  statute 
which  says  that  no  building  used  for  animals  shall  be 
used  as  a  human  habitation." 

"I  thought  that  doctor  man  looked  at  Toby  mighty 
curious,"  said  Mahaley. 

"Yo'  use  powerful  big  words,"  cried  Patrick  Henry,  his 
face  scarlet,  "but  they  don't  mean  nothin'  'cep'  yo're  a 
skunk!" 

Zeke's  voice  cut  in.  It  was  almost  gentle. 

"Stranger,  git  on  yo'  way  —  an'  travel  fast.  'Caise  ef  I 
ever  sets  eyes  on  yo'  agin,  I'll  putt  a  bullet  thro'  yo' 
haid." 

"Shet  up,  Zeke!"  snapped  Mahaley.  "I  ain't  daid  yit, 
an'  til  I  is  yo'  ain't  th'  King  o'  Buzzard's  Rock.  'Sides, 
who's  agitin'  arris  ted  annyhow,  yo'  er  me?" 

She  turned  to  Williams,  who  stood  silent  and  unhappy, 
his  eyes  on  the  floor. 

"Oncet  yo'  gits  th'  wall  down,  how  yo'  gwine  tuh  git 
me  tuh  Custer?  I  ain't  no  saplin'." 

"I've  ordered  a  light  spring  wagon  — " 

"Yo're  lower  'n  a  snake!"  cried  Patrick  Henry,  his 
eyes  bright  with  tears.  "Awormin'  yo'  way  inter  our 
house  jist  so's  yo'  kin  shame  us!" 

"I've  never  deceived  you.  I  told  you  from  the  first 
what  I  had  to  do.  God  knows  it's  hard  for  me  to  do  this; 
but  it's  my  duty." 

He  turned  despairingly,  but  Haley  had  slipped  away. 

"Yo'  keep  yo'  mouth  shet,  Patrick  Henry.  This  heyar 
ain't  none  o'  yo'  business." 

"It  air  our  business  tuh  pertect  our  wimmen,"  an 
swered  Zeke. 

Suddenly  Mahaley  cried  with  an  intensity  that  startled 
them  all,  it  was  so  unexpected: 


[  534  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"Don't  yo'  think  I'd  be  glad  o'  annythin'  thet  got  me 
outern  heyar?  Don't  yo'  think  I'd  like  jist  onct  tuh  feel  th' 
sky  over  ma  haid  an'  th'  wind  ablowin'  'round  me  onct 
agin?  Instid  o'  walls  —  walls  —  walls!" 

She  turned  to  Williams  and  threw  out  her  hands 
wildly. 

"Yes!!  Yes!!  Tar  'em  down!  Tar  'em  down  quick! 
Quick! !  An'  I'll  thank  yo' !  I'll  go  tuh  jail  an'  be  glad  tuh 
go  —  only  hurry !  hurry ! !" 

She  fell  back  among  her  pillows  panting. 

Patrick  Henry  and  Zeke  rushed  to  her. 

"Git  away  an'  leave  me  be!  Yo'  uns  is  got  me  all 
riled." 

She  lay  still  a  moment  with  eyes  closed. 

"Zeke,  yo'  'member  this:  till  I  is  daid,  yo'  ain't  th' 
King  o'  Buzzard's  Rock." 

"Ant  Haley!  Yo'  knows  I  dun't  keer  nothin'  fer  bein' 
th'  King  o'  Buzzard's  Rock!" 

"I  know,  Zeke.  Thar  ain't  no  need  tuh  take  nothin'  I 
said  amiss."  She  patted  his  hand.  "Patrick  Henry,  git  me 
some  'simmon  brandy.  I  feel  kinder  tuckered  out." 

As  she  sipped  it,  she  glanced  up  at  Williams,  with 
something  of  the  old  twinkle  in  her  tired  eyes. 

"Thar  ain't  but  one  thing  yo'  done,  I  holds  agin  yo' !" 

"What's  that?" 

"Scandalizin5  pore  Toby." 

At  the  barn  Haley  was  waiting  for  him. 

"I  couldn't  hev  thought  it  of  yo'." 

"Haley,  if  you  only  knew  how  I  prayed  there  wouldn't 
be  any  way!" 

Suddenly  her  eyes  brimmed  over. 

"Haley,  if  there  hadn't  been  a  way  —  I  meant  to  come 
to  you  —  there  was  something  I  wanted  to  tell  you  - 

"Whut  —  whut  were  it?" 


'  *  <L 


MAHALET  MULLENS  r, 

"I  meant  —  Haley,  I  love  you  —  I  wanted  you  to  be 
my  wife  —  I  — " 

"Oh!  —  Oh!" 

It  was  such  a  tiny  sound.  And  now  her  hand  was 
pressed  to  her  lips  and  she  was  looking  at  him  with  eyes 
that  owed  their  brightness  to  more  than  tears. 

"Haley!" 

For  a  long  time  they  clung  together,  murmuring 
things  they  could  never  remember. 

A  katydid  started  its  vibrant  song  in  a  nearby  tree.  The 
shadow  of  Buzzard's  Rock  began  to  creep  up  the  foot  of 
the  blue  mountain  across  the  valley.  Already  the  prim 
roses  were  opening  their  pale  yellow  flowers,  filling  the 
air  with  their  delicate  fragrance. 

Williams  touched  one  of  them  with  his  finger. 

"I'll  always  think  of  you  whenever  I  smell  them." 

"I  wouldn't  never  need  no  thin'  tuh  make  me  think  of 
yo'." 

"Darling!  I  can  hardly  believe  you  really  love  me!" 

"I  reckon  I've  loved  yo'  ever  since  th'  fust  time  I  set 
eyes  on  yo' !" 

"Suppose  I'd  never  come  here  — " 

Realization  swept  over  him  in  a  suffocating  wave. 

"God  help  us!  What' re  we  going  to  do,  Haley?" 

"Do?" 

"You  know  why  I'm  here.  You  — " 

"But  it's  all  different  now  —  that  we  uns  is  marryin'." 

"Just  what  do  you  mean,  Haley?" 

She  drew  away  and  looked  into  his  face  anxiously. 

"Yo'  don't  mean  —  But  yo'  couldn't  take  Ant  Haley 
now.  Not  now/39 

His  face  darkened. 

"So  it  was  just  a  trick!" 

"Ef  yo'  —  ef  yo'  loves  me,  yo'  jest  can't!" 


[  536  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"I  couldn't  have  believed  it.  That  you'd  try  to  play  — " 

"So  thet's  whut  yo'  think!" 

"I  couldn't  have  believed  you'd  stoop  so  low!" 

"Oh!  I  don't  keer  whut  yo'  think  o'  me!  But  ef  yo' 
tetch  Ant  Haley,  I  don't  never  want  tuh  set  eyes  on  yo' 
agin'!" 

"Very  well!" 

He  sprang  into  the  saddle  and  rode  off  without  looking 
back. 

THE  workmen  were  not  due  until  the  end  of  the  week. 
For  the  next  three  days  Williams  kept  away  from 
Buzzard's  Rock,  trying  vainly  to  forget  the  aching  wound 
Haley  had  dealt  him. 

Then  one  evening,  as  he  opened  the  door  of  his  room  he 
sensed  an  alien  presence. 

"Put  yo'  hands  up  an'  keep  'em  thar!"  commanded 
Zeke's  voice  from  the  darkness. 

Williams  sprang  backwards  —  only  to  be  stunned  by  a 
blow  on  the  chin. 

"Don't  hurt  him,  son." 

"Aw,  pap,"  replied  the  mournful  voice  of  young  Zeke, 
"he  deserves  a  thrashin' !" 

"Yo'  hyarn  how  yo'  Ant  Haley  said  'twuz  tuh  be.  Tie 
his  hands  an'  don't  pester  him  none.  Stranger,  yo'  come 
along  peaceful  an'  yo'll  be  a'right.  Ant  Haley's  hankerin' 
fer  a  talk  with  yo' !" 

During  the  long  dark  ride  no  other  word  was  spoken. 

As  they  entered  the  cabin,  Haley  rose  from  beside  her 
aunt  and  seated  herself  by  the  fire,  her  back  pointedly 
turned  upon  him. 

"Take  thet  rope  offern  his  hands,"  commanded 
Mahaley. 

Her  eyes  glittered  brightly,  as  she  picked  at  her  quilt, 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  537  ] 

now  carefully  pleating  it,  now  smoothing  it  out  again. 

"Yo'  uns  wait  outside.  I'll  call  yo5  when  I  wants  yo' !" 

Williams  stood  stiffly  before  her  until  the  door  closed. 

"May  I  ask  why  I've  been  brought  here  in  this  fash 
ion?" 

"Whut's  wrong  'twixt  yo'  an'  Haley?"  demanded  the 
old  lady. 

"Why  don't  you  ask  your  niece?" 

She  ignored  this. 

"Yo'  uns  wuz  in  love.  It  were  as  plain  as  th'  nose  on 
yo'  face  fust  time  I  set  eyes  on  yo5.  Whut's  made  th' 
ruction  'twixt  yo'  now?" 

"You're  mistaken.  Your  niece  cares  nothing  for  me." 

"Haley,  don't  set  thar  so  pernickety  like.  Say  sumpin' !" 

"Thar  ain't  nothin'  tuh  say." 

"Your  niece's  interest  in  me,  Mrs.  Mullens,  was 
prompted  by  her  desire  to  prevent  your  arrest." 

"Haley  chile,  ef  it's  'count  o'  me,  can't  yo'  see  he's 
adoin'  his  duty  th'  way  he  sees  it?  An'  I'd  a  sight  ruther 
think  o'  you,  arter  I'm  gone,  married  to  a  man  with  th' 
guts  t'  do  whut  he  believes  t'  be  right,  than  sommun 
who'd  do  whut  he  karnsidered  wrong  jest  to  please  you." 

"If  this  was  all  you  wanted,  Mrs.  Mullens,  may  I  go 
now?" 

"Let  him  go,  Ant  Haley.  I  don't  never  want  tuh  set 
eyes  on  him  ag'in!" 

Mahaley  was  winking  violently  at  him  and  nodding 
towards  Haley. 

But  he  stood  in  stony  silence. 

"Gret  Day!  Fer  a  peart  lookin'  young  feller,  yo'  shore 
is  th'  closest  tuh  a  jackass  I  ever  did  see!" 

"I'm  sorry  you  think  so.  May  I  go  now?" 

"Sartinly,  sartinly!  I  ain't  hankerin'  t'  keep  nobody  as 
is  onwillin'  tuh  stay.  Haley,  send  th'  boys  tuh  set  with  me. 


[  538  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Ef  I  keeps  'em  whar  I  can  hev  ma  eye  on  'em  awhile,  I 
know  thar  can't  be  no  shenannigans." 

She  held  out  her  hand  to  Williams.  She  looked  very 
tired  and  old. 

"Well,  I  reckon,  'twill  wuk  it'sef  out  sommers.  Young 
folks'  quarrels  ginnerally  does." 

The  night  before  the  men  were  to  arrive,  Williams 
awoke  with  a  start.  It  was  not  just  a  casual  awakening. 
Someone  was  throwing  pebbles  against  his  window. 

He  rose  and  looked  out,  but  it  was  impossible  to  see 
anything  in  the  moonless  gloom. 

"Who's  there?" 

"It's  me  —  Haley." 

Her  voice  was  barely  a  whisper. 

"Let  me  in  quick!  Ant  Haley  sent  me!" 

"Wait  'till  I  put  some  clothes  on." 

"Hurry!  Please  hurry !" 

Wondering  at  the  strangeness  of  her  visit  and  even 
more  at  the  agitation  in  her  voice,  Williams  threw  on  his 
clothes  and  went  below. 

She  entered  quickly,  and  leaned  against  the  door  a  mo 
ment,  as  though  to  collect  herself. 

She  wore  a  dark  gray  cloak  that  came  to  the  floor  and 
her  hair  was  tucked  under  a  little  bonnet  such  as  he  had 
seen  in  Godey  prints. 

As  she  turned  towards  him,  he  saw  that  she  had  been 
crying. 

"Haley!  What's  happened!" 

"Ant  Haley,"  she  whispered  with  trembling  lips. 

"Is  she  worse?" 

"She  —  she  died  —  tonight  — " 

"My  God!" 

She  steadied  her  voice. 

"She  felt  it  were  comin'  an'  made  th'  boys  leave  us 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  539  ] 

alone.  She  said  soon  as  she  were  gone,  they'd  be  gunnin' 
fer  you.  An'  she  couldn't  rest  easy  in  —  she  made  me 
promise  I'd  git  you  outern  th'  mounting  as  soon  as  — " 

Her  voice  broke  and  she  hid  her  face. 

"Poor  Haley!" 

"Yo'  got  tuh  hurry  — " 

"But,  Haley,  I  can't  run  away." 

"Thar  ain't  no  reason  fer  you  tuh  stay  here,  now." 

There  was  no  bitterness  in  her  voice  as  she  said  it. 

"Ef  yo'  stay,  'twill  mean  misery  fer  all  on  us.  Ant 
Haley  said  she  knowed  yo'  wouldn't  refuse  th'  las'  thing 
she  ast." 

"But,  I  sent  my  car  back  by  Dr.  Cullen  — " 

"I  got  hosses.  Ant  Haley  thought  of  everythin'.  We  got 
most  o'  th'  night;  and  hit  takes  lessern  two  hours  tuh  git 
tuh  th' junction.  Thar's  a  train  tuh  Custer  just  arter  day 
break.  An'  th'  boys  won't  know  till  mawnin'  nohow. 
Ant  Haley  tole  'em  as  long  as  th'  lamp  were  in  her  windoh 
it  were  all  right." 

"But  my  men  will  expect  to  find  me  here  — " 

"Don't  yo'  see  whut  'twill  mean  ef  yo'  stays?  Th'  boys 
'ull  do  somethin'  thet'll  land  'em  in  jail  —  er  worse. 
Yo'  got  tuh  go !  It's  th'  onliest  thing  Ant  Haley  ever  ast 
yo' !" 

So  it  was  the  boys !  His  heart  seemed  to  close  up  inside 
him. 

"All  right.  I'll  go,"  he  said  quietly  and  turned  towards 
the  stair. 

He  had  little  to  pack  and  they  slung  the  single  bundle 
behind  his  saddle. 

"Which  way  do  we  go?" 

"We  —  we  turn  left  arter  th'  bridge." 

The  horses  hoofs  seemed  to  make  a  tremendous  clatter 
in  the  dense  blackness.  But  once  out  of  the  village  they 


[  540  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

were  engulfed  in  the  clamor  of  the  katydids,  which  seemed 
to  drown  out  even  the  sound  of  iron  on  stone. 

"We  turn  off  ag'in  summers  putty  soon." 

Haley's  voice  came  to  him  faintly  from  the  gloom 
ahead. 

"Well,  let  me  know  because  I  can't  see  my  hand  be 
fore  my  face." 

High  overhead,  innumerable  fireflies  flashed  goldenly  in 
the  unseen  branches  of  the  great  water  oaks. 

"Th5  lightnin'  bugs  is  real  pretty,  ain't  they?  Ant 
Haley  uster  like  tuh  see  'em  in  th'  gloamin'.  She  — " 

Her  voice  faltered  and  they  rode  on  in  silence. 

"I  —  I  think  this  be  th'  tarnin',"  Haley  said  at  last. 

His  horse  shied  a  little,  but  guided  firmly  turned  off  the 
wide  road  with  a  resigned  snort. 

"It  be  tumble  black." 

"You  aren't  afraid,  are  you?" 

"N-no.  I  bean't  eggzakly  afeard  — " 

They  rode  in  silence.  Then  Haley  spoke  in  a  small, 
desolate  voice. 

"I  —  I  smell  pine  trees,  don't  yo'?" 

"I've  smelt  them  for  some  time." 

"Then  we've  —  we've  lost  th'  way." 

"Are  you  sure?" 

"They  ain't  no  pine  trees  'long  th'  junction  trail." 

"What'll  we  do?" 

"Thar  ain't  —  ain't  nothin'    tuh   do    but    wait   'till 


mawnin'." 


"Couldn't  we  find  our  way  back  if  we  left  it  to  the 
horses?" 

"They'd  jest  take  us  home  up  th'  back  trail.  Th'  best 
thing  is  tuh  git  off  an'  tie  'em  up  'till  mawnin'.  We  kin  set 
on  th'  needles.  It's  th'  only  thing  tuh  do." 

They  tied  the  horses  and  settled  themselves  at  the  foot 
of  a  big  pine  by  the  side  of  the  trail. 


MAHALET  MULLENS  [  541  ] 

"I'm  —  I'm  sorry,"  said  Haley  meekly. 

"It's  not  your  fault." 

They  relapsed  into  silence  again.  After  a  while  from 
her  gentle  breathing,  he  knew  that  Haley  had  fallen 
asleep,  exhausted  by  all  she  had  been  through.  He  rolled 
his  coat  into  a  pillow  and  gently  slipped  it  under  her 
head.  Then  he  sat  staring  into  the  darkness,  listening  to 
the  rhythmic  rise  and  fall  in  the  wild  din  of  the  katydids. 
Tomorrow  she  would  —  but  he  couldn't  think  of  to 
morrow. 

A  QUAIL  was  calling  from  the  hill.  He  opened  his 
eyes,  vaguely  wondering  where  he  was.  Haley  still 
slept.  The  sight  of  the  tear  stains  on  her  cheeks  caught 
sharply  at  his  heart. 

He  rose  and  stretched  himself;  but  the  heaviness 
weighing  on  all  his  limbs  had  little  to  do  with  fatigue.  He 
was  thirsty.  Making  as  little  noise  as  possible,  he  moved 
off  in  search  of  a  spring  or  stream. 

Other  quails  began  to  answer  the  first.  Across  the  val 
ley  crows  were  cawing,  and  from  close  at  hand  suddenly 
came  the  lowing  of  a  cow.  He  scrambled  down  a  bank 
and  found  himself  in  a  worn  though  somewhat  over 
grown  trail.  Following  it  a  few  paces,  he  came  to  a  turn 
and  stopped  short. 

They  had  camped  at  the  very  edge  of  the  pine  barrens, 
and  straight  ahead  was  the  junction  station. 

He  bounded  up  the  bank  to  find  Haley  brushing  pine 
needles  from  her  cloak. 

"Haley!  The  junction!  It's  right  ahead." 

"Is  it?"  she  said  very  faintly. 

"Yes,  it's  no  distance  at  all.  You  don't  need  to  come 
any  further.  I'll  be  all  right  now." 

His  heart  was  heavy  as  he  said  it. 


[  542  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"But  —  but  whut'll  I  do?" 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"I  can't  go  home  now.  Uncle  Zeke  — " 

He  caught  his  breath. 

"Couldn't  I  go  along  with  you  on  th'  train  tuh  town?" 

She  hesitated,  then  went  on  quickly. 

"I  got  relatives  thar  —  an'  —  an'  I  won't  shame  yo' 


none." 


She  held  open  her  cloak  to  disclose  the  silk  dress. 
"Haley!  You  knew  where  the  junction  was  all  the 


time." 


She  dropped  her  eyes. 

"And  what  am  I  to  do  with  you  after  we  do  get  to 
town?" 

She  lifted  her  candid  eyes  to  his,  trying  bravely  not  to 
let  her  lips  tremble. 

"I  reckon  you'll  hev  tuh  marry  me.  Leastwise  that's 
how  Ant  Haley  said  'twud  be." 


**'  Y>  A  £ 

r*  it 


Book  Reviews 


IT  CAN'T  HAPPEN  HERE.   By  Sinclair  Lewis.   Doubleday 
Doran,  $2.50. 

SINCLAIR  LEWIS'  latest  novel,  "It  Can't  Happen  Here," 
which  takes  its  title  from  the  typical  American  remark 
concerning  the  possibility  of  a  dictatorship  in  this  country,  is 
a  piece  of  journalistic  fiction  in  every  page  of  which  is  the 
sound  of  a  swiftly  pounded  typewriter.  In  fact,  without  listen 
ing,  the  attentive  reader  will  catch  in  its  pages  the  rattle  of  the 
flying  keys  and  the  tinkle  of  the  bell  at  the  end  of  the  line. 

Written  at  a  white  heat,  the  novel  is  filled  with  feeling,  as 
well  as  with  the  sharp  and  accurate  observation  that  has 
always  marked  Mr.  Lewis'  work  even  when  it  has  failed,  as 
has  often  been  the  case,  to  reach  his  top  mark.  One  might 
naturally  suppose  that  such  a  book  would  call  for  the  exercise 
of  a  good  deal  of  creative  imagination,  but  actually  Mr.  Lewis 
has  saved  himself  from  the  exercise  of  a  faculty  for  which  he 
has  never  been  noted  by  the  simple  expedient  of  transferring 
what  has  happened  in  other  countries  to  this;  there  is  a  strik 
ing  resemblance  to  our  dictatorship  in  that  of  Hitler  —  too 
striking,  in  fact,  for  credible  accuracy. 

The  parts  of  the  book  that  relate  to  the  actual  operations  of 
the  dictatorship  are  but  little  more  than  rewritten  passages 
from  the  many  volumes  that  have  told  of  hardships  and  cruel 
ties  in  Nazi  Germany.  Here  again,  as  in  the  whole  plan  and 
tempo  of  the  novel,  the  author  is  writing  as  a  journalist,  taking 
available  material  and  reshaping  it,  but  not  enough  so  to 
suit  his  own  purposes. 

His  descriptions  of  concentration  camps,  for  example, 
parallel  exactly  similar  descriptions  of  such  institutions  in 
Germany,  and  when  he  insists  upon  the  widespread  existence 
of  homosexuality  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  the  dictator 
ship,  it  is  seen  that  he  is  merely  following  an  established 
pattern,  rather  than  trying  to  work  out  an  American  version. 

The  principal  virtue  of  the  work,  aside  from  the  fact  that  it 
represents  Mr.  Lewis  as  a  tale-teller,  the  writer  of  exciting  and 
even  gripping  narrative  which  carries  the  reader  along  at  a 

[543] 


[  544  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

breathless  speed,  lies  in  its  re-statement  of  the  liberal  principles 
that  belong  to  the  generation  of  Americans  of  which  Mr.  Lewis 
himself  is  a  member.  For,  without  laboring  the  point  too  much, 
he  makes  it  clear  that  both  fascism  and  communism  will  in 
evitably  find  hard  going  in  this  country  merely  because  of  the 
existence  of  a  large  number  of  people  who  do  not  have  to 
rationalize  their  belief  in  freedom  of  thought  and  expression, 
as  well  as  in  the  exercise  of  the  kindlier  virtues,  but  whose 
minds  are  set  on  these  matters  in  such  a  way  that  nothing  but 
death  can  change  them. 

In  other  words,  Mr.  Lewis  again  makes  it  apparent  that 
as  much  as  he  has  scolded  his  fellow- Americans  —  even  in  the 
present  book  he  finds  them  relieved  of  their  dictatorship  but 
uncertain  what  they  want  —  there  has  never  been  any  doubt 
in  his  mind  that  certain  Americans  are  possessed  of  admirable 
qualities.  Toward  these  he  can  be  as  gentle,  almost  sentimental, 
as  he  can  be  brutal  to  the  whole  tribe  of  hypocrites  and  stuffed 
shirts.  Hence,  while  the  present  book  is  filled  with  rude  and 
raucous  laughter  at  many  of  our  follies,  it  is  also  tender  toward 
what  Mr.  Lewis  considers  our  best  in  both  men  and  women. 

The  spokesman  for  his  own  opinions  is  Doremus  Jessup,  a 
sixty-odd-year-old  newspaper  editor  in  the  Vermont  town  of 
Fort  Jessup.  Mr.  Lewis  remains  loyal  to  his  own  Middle  West 
in  having  the  "radical"  territory  lead  in  the  revolt  against  the 
dictatorship,  but  his  real  tribute  is  to  the  state  of  his  adoption. 
Jessup  is  shrewd,  whimsical  and  liberal  to  the  bone,  quite  a 
"character." 

Often  in  his  cogitations  the  accents  of  Mr.  Lewis  himself  are 
unmistakable.  This  is  a  familiar  Lewis  trick,  of  course,  elbow 
ing  the  character  aside  to  do  the  talking  himself.  In  fact,  there 
is  one  place  where  the  phrase,  "meditated  Jessup,"  seems 
purely  an  interpolation,  an  afterthought,  as  if  Mr.  Lewis  in 
making  his  revision  had  decided  that  it  would  be  more  in 
accordance  with  the  rules  of  fiction  if  he  retired  a  little  more 
from  the  center  of  the  stage. 

His  plan  for  the  establishment  of  the  dictatorship  is  not  by 
the  use  of  force  and  arms,  which  the  Communists  declare  is 
the  only  possible  method.  On  the  contrary,  he  prophesies  the 
next  presidential  election  as  resulting  in  the  choice  of  one  Buzz 
Windrip,  who  more  nearly  resembles  the  dead  Huey  Long 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  545  ] 

than  anyone  else  at  present  in  the  political  picture.  (The  death 
of  Long  takes  some  of  the  punch  out  of  Mr.  Lewis's  book,  inci 
dentally.)  Windrip  is  full  of  fair  promises,  $5,000  a  year  for 
everybody,  and  so  on;  and  he  is  greatly  aided  by  Bishop 
Prang,  the  famous  broadcaster,  who  is  a  Methodist  Father 
Coughlin.  The  real  devil  in  the  Windrip  administration  is  Lee 
Sarason,  who  more  nearly  resembles  Hitler  than  he  does  an 
American.  Windrip  is  in  the  main  a  sort  of  poker-playing, 
whiskey-drinking  Harding,  a  good-natured,  not  very  shrewd 
politician,  who  knows  how  to  rouse  the  rabble  and  to  play 
"Man-of-the-People"  with  finish  and  effect. 

The  League  of  Forgotten  Men  is  the  basis  of  Windrip's 
strength,  and  his  administration  is  backed  by  the  Minute  Men, 
who  are  Hitler's  Brown  Shirts  or  Mussolini's  Black  Shirts  all 
over  again,  taking  the  trick  of  beating  with  steel  tapes  from  one 
and  the  use  of  castor  oil  from  the  other. 

Eventually,  after  the  dictatorship  has  grown  in  severity, 
and  has  resulted  in  what  might  be  expected  in  the  way  of 
suppression  of  all  freedom,  Sarason,  the  diabolical,  succeeds 
in  getting  rid  of  Windrip  by  sending  him  off  to  France.  Then 
Sarason  is  killed  by  Haik,  another  member  of  the  group,  and 
things  go  from  bad  to  worse  the  country  over  until  the  reaction 
sets  in  and  the  curtain  falls,  with  our  old  friend  Doremus 
Jessup  active  in  what  seems  to  be  an  excellent  chance  of  the 
reestablishment  of  democratic  government,  with  an  honest 
liberal  Republican,  Walt  Trowbridge,  as  its  head. 

While  all  this  is  happening,  Jessup  has  lost  his  paper,  and  is 
sent  away  to  a  concentration  camp  for  his  subversive  activities 
in  printing  and  distributing  anti-Windrip  propaganda.  His 
daughter  Mary,  whose  husband  has  been  murdered,  takes  her 
melodramatic  revenge  by  diving  her  airplane  into  a  ship 
carrying  the  judge  who  sentenced  her  husband.  His  sweetheart, 
Lorinda,  who  is  another  one  of  Mr.  Lewis's  "free  women,"  is 
done  with  complete  sympathy  —  the  same  sort  of  tender  affec 
tion  as  Sissy,  the  youngest  Jessup  child,  who  sounds,  one  must 
admit,  slightly  antiquated,  as  if  she  were  a  left-over  flapper 
from  the  post-war  revolt  of  youth. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  in  describing  the  course  of  the  dictator 
ship  alone,  with  the  German  pattern  at  hand,  Mr.  Lewis  is 
handling  essentially  dramatic  material.  This,  coupled  with  his 


[  546  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

satirical  jibes,  his  sketches  of  many  living  people,  particularly 
of  politicians  —  one  way  he  has  of  dodging  the  identification 
of  his  characters  with  the  living,  or  the  freshly  dead,  as  in  the 
case  of  Huey  Long,  is  to  put  in  both  —  his  joshing  of  patriotic 
songs,  and  the  warm  friendliness  of  his  treatment  of  the 
Vermonters  he  likes,  makes  his  book  quite  as  readable  as 
anything  he  has  ever  done.  It  is  not  literature,  nor  is  it  in  any 
sense  profound.  But  it  is  unadulterated  Sinclair  Lewis,  and  it 
represents  him  perfectly  as  the  essential  journalist  he  has 
always  been. 

I  may  add,  as  a  personal  observation,  that  the  book  left  me 
unconvinced  of  the  possibility  of  a  dictatorship's  arriving  any 
time  soon,  or  in  the  manner  described  by  Mr.  Lewis.  The 
difference  between  us  is  that  I  have  more  faith  in  the  Doremus 
Jessups  than  he  has;  I  still  think  they  would  go  into  action 
before  a  Buzz  Windrip  and  a  Lee  Sarason  got  as  far  as  the 
White  House. 

HERSCHEL  BRICKELL 

VEIN  OF  IRON.  By  Ellen  Glasgow.  Harcourt  Brace,  $2.50. 

MUCH  of  our  modern  fiction  is  either  a  cry  of  despair,  or  a 
more  or  less  whining  protest  against  what  the  writers 
regard  as  the  general  futility  of  life.  Everything,  they  declare, 
being  for  the  worst  in  this  worst  of  all  possible  worlds,  the  only 
amelioration  to  weariness  and  woe  is  getting  drunk  continu 
ally,  if  not  continuously.  But  now,  ringing  high  above  this 
wailing  chorus,  Ellen  Glasgow's  new  novel  comes  like  a 
trumpet  call,  stirring  men's  minds  and  hearts  to  a  renewal,  not 
so  much  of  hope  or  faith,  as  of  pride  and  fortitude.  It  is  possi 
ble,  proclaims  this  book  by  America's  foremost  novelist,  not 
merely  to  refuse  to  yield  to  misfortune  but  even,  if  you  are 
proud  enough  and  strong  enough,  to  wring  something  of  hap 
piness  out  of  pain  and  disappointment.  At  the  very  last,  John 
Fincastle  attains  a  peace  which  is  greater  than  joy;  his  daugh 
ter  Ada,  whose  story  the  novel  tells,  closes  it  on  a  note  of 
triumph. 

Miss  Glasgow  has  a  full  appreciation  of  the  power  of 
heredity,  and  shows  it  as  a  dominant  factor  in  the  lives  of  her 
characters.  The  Fincastles  were  Scotch  Presbyterians  who  had 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  547  ] 

come  to  America  when  Virginia  was  still  a  wilderness,  settling 
in  the  village  of  Ironside  in  Shut-In  Valley.  Ada's  great-great- 
great-grandmother  had  been  captured  by  Indians  and  married 
to  an  Indian  brave  at  the  age  of  seventeen;  she  was  a  hundred 
years  old  when  she  died,  and  never  spoke  about  her  early 
experiences.  Her  grandmother,  a  strict  Presbyterian,  had  seen 
her  brilliant,  dearly  loved  son  John,  pastor  of  the  largest 
church  in  Queenborough,  turned  out  of  his  pulpit  because  of 
the  heretical  ideas  expressed  in  his  book..  John  Fincastle  had 
stood  for  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth;  as  a  result  of  this 
honesty,  he  was  obliged  to  take  his  old  mother,  his  pretty, 
delicate  wife,  Mary  Evelyn,  and  his  little  daughter,  Ada,  back 
to  the  comfortless  old  family  home,  still  called  the  manse, 
where  they  lived  as  best  they  could  on  the  produce  of  their 
garden  and  the  chickens  raised  by  his  sister  Meggie  —  the  few 
dollars  he  was  able  to  earn  by  teaching  being  needed  for  his 
life  insurance  and  the  mortgage. 

When  we  first  meet  Ada  she  is  a  child  of  ten,  her  desires  and 
hopes  all  centered  on  the  doll  with  real  hair  her  father  is  to 
bring  her  from  town,  not  as  a  gift,  but  as  her  own  purchase, 
bought  with  the  money  earned  by  picking  berries.  When  he 
arrives  she  can  hardly  wait  to  open  the  package  —  and  the 
doll  proves  merely  a  china  one,  with  hair  painted  on.  Those 
with  real  hair  had  been  too  expensive.  "Try  not  to  give  way  to 
disappointment.  Think  how  sad  the  world  would  be  if  we  all 
gave  way  to  disappointment,"  Aunt  Meggie  admonishes  the 
child.  But  Ada,  who  has  what  her  grandmother  calls  "the 
single  heart,"  is  conscious  only  that  never,  so  long  as  she  lives, 
will  she  have  a  doll  with  hair  that  she  can  brush  and  comb. 

That  episode  is  typical.  Misfortune  pursues  Ada  as  the 
children  chase  the  idiot  boy  in  the  book's  opening  sentence. 
The  mob  of  the  unimaginative,  the  carelessly  cruel  who  make 
up  so  large  a  portion  of  humanity,  brings  her  suffering.  Be 
cause  of  the  force  of  a  mob  convention  she  is  compelled  to  see 
Ralph  McBride,  her  young  lover,  married  to  the  worthless  girl 
for  whom  he  cares  nothing,  and  who  cares  nothing  for  him. 
The  little  time  of  perfect  happiness  they  defiantly  snatch  from 
life  has  to  be  paid  for,  and  then  when  presently  it  seems  as  if 
Ada's  hopes  are  at  last  to  be  fulfilled,  the  Ralph  who  returns 
from  the  War  proves  a  changed  man,  cynical  and  embittered. 


[  548  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

But  deep  down  in  Ada's  character  lies  that  "Vein  of  Iron" 
which  is  her  heritage,  and  this  it  is  that  enables  her  to  live 
through  the  depression  of  the  thirties  as  indomitably  as  her 
ancestors  had  lived  through  hardships  and  Indian  warfare. 

Ada  is  superbly  drawn,  as  are  all  the  characters  in  the  book. 
Her  frail,  lovely  mother,  who  "fell  into  the  habit  of  laughing 
too  much,"  during  those  dark  days  when  there  often  wasn't 
enough  to  eat  in  the  house,  and  who  found  more  help  in  her 
one  pretty  blue  bowl  than  she  did  in  morning  prayers,  is  in 
some  ways  the  most  appealing  figure  in  the  book.  The  courage 
with  which  she  strove  to  maintain  a  certain  grace  of  living  was 
as  heroic  as  her  husband's  stand  for  integrity.  The  old  grand 
mother,  stern,  strong,  firm  in  her  religion,  who  was  always  sent 
for  when  there  was  sickness  among  the  mountain  folk,  is  so 
magnificent  a  personage  that  a  book  less  rich  than  this  one 
would  be  irretrievably  impoverished  by  her  passing.  Yet  ad 
mirably  as  all  these  are  drawn,  admirably  drawn  too  as  are 
Ralph,  the  "disappointed  romantic,"  and  the  many  minor 
characters,  the  author's  very  finest  work  is  her  portrayal  of 
John  Fincastle,  the  philosopher.  In  the  hands  of  almost  any 
other  writer,  he  would  have  been  objectionable;  as  he  stands 
out  in  Miss  Glasgow's  book  we  sympathize  with  him,  reverence 
him,  are  hurt  by  his  tragedy,  but  never  presume  to  pity  him. 
The  scene  of  his  death  is  one  of  the  best,  perhaps  the  very  best, 
that  this  First  Lady  of  fiction  has  ever  wrought. 

The  long  novel  is  so  thoughtful,  so  rich  in  wisdom  and  in 
understanding,  so  full  of  memorable  scenes  and  yet  more 
memorable  individuals,  it  is  difficult  to  decide  what  to  choose 
for  special  comment.  No  more  truthful,  and  consequently  more 
heartbreaking  description  of  the  depression  has  yet  appeared 
than  that  Miss  Glasgow  gives  us  in  her  account  of  what  hap 
pened  in  Mulberry  Street.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be 
anything  but  easy  to  find  a  more  beautiful  treatment  of  love's 
ecstasy  than  the  episode  on  the  Indian  trail.  Miss  Glasgow 
looks  at  life  steadily,  clearly  and  above  all  honestly,  with  a 
gaze  undistorted  by  romanticism  and  undimmed  by  pessimism. 
There  is  sweetness  and  contentment  and  joy  in  existence  as 
she  sees  it,  as  well  as  bitterness  and  disappointment  and  pain. 
Even  Aunt  Meggie,  who  had  missed  the  love  which  enabled 
Mary  Evelyn,  despite  poverty  and  frustration,  to  assert,  "I 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  549  ] 

have  been  happy,"  found  delight  in  small,  practical  things; 
while  John  Fincastle,  the  "splindid  failure,"  relished  life  as  his 
forefathers  had  done,  and  as  his  daughter  did  —  meeting  it  al 
ways  with  the  same  high  courage. 

"There's  one  thing  they  can't  take  from  us,  and  that's 
fortitude,"  he  declares,  speaking  for  once  as  the  mouthpiece  of 
his  creator.  Contrasted  with  this  work  of  beauty  and  power  and 
clear  vision,  many  of  our  best  sellers  seem  things  of  mere  tinsel 
and  straw. 

LOUISE  MAUNSELL  FIELD 

LUCY  GAYHEART.  By  Willa  Gather.  Knopf,  $2.00. 

AT  FIRST  appearances,  Miss  Gather  seems  to  have  written 
a  novel  which  corrects  all  the  minor  faults  of  her  previous 
successes.  The  time  is  the  twentieth  century  rather  than  the 
nostalgic  past,  and  the  main  scene  is  Chicago  rather  than  some 
overworked  small  community.  Her  style  shows  the  same  sure 
mastery  which  can  be  found  in  such  diverse  novels  as  "My 
Antonia"  and  "Death  Comes  for  the  Archbishop,"  though  she 
occasionally  slips,  as  in  ".  .  .  one's  blood  coursing  unchilled 
in  an  air  where  roses  froze  instantly." 

The  story  is  based  on  the  life  of  the  charming  and  talented 
Lucy  Gayheart.  She  goes  from  her  small  town  into  the  music 
world  of  Chicago,  where  she  meets  and  falls  in  love  with  a 
famous  concert  singer.  Because  he  gives  her  a  glimpse  of  a 
world  that  she  has  never  imagined,  she  spurns  her  girlhood 
sweetheart.  She  lives  in  bliss,  finding  it  hard  to  wait  between 
their  meetings.  Then  the  singer  is  drowned  in  one  of  the  Italian 
lakes.  Lucy  returns  broken-hearted  to  her  home  town,  almost 
recovers  her  happiness,  when  suddenly  she  is  drowned  herself 
after  a  quarrel  with  her  sister.  The  last  section  of  the  book  is 
devoted  to  the  sorrowing  of  the  sweetheart  who  realized  too 
late  how  much  he  loved  her.  She  leaves  a  gay  and  vivid  mem 
ory  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  who  knew  her. 

With  this  absurdly  mid- Victorian  plot  Miss  Gather  has 
done  extremely  well.  Her  characters  seem  genuine,  especially 
Lucy  whose  gaiety  infects  the  reader.  The  town  boy  is  a  perfect 
prig,  though  not  to  be  compared  with  Levin  in  Anna  Karenina, 
who  is  also  lovable.  The  key  situation  —  Lucy's  reaction  to  the 


[  550  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

singer's  death  —  is  handled  by  the  author  with  great  delicacy. 

The  fault  of  this  novel  lies  not  in  what  it  includes,  but  in 
what  it  excludes.  There  is  no  complete  picture  of  Lucy's  small 
town  background,  nor  of  the  development  of  her  personality 
beyond  the  statement  that  she  was  a  very  simple  person  who 
was  always  gay.  There  is  no  evidence  that  Chicago  had  any 
effect  on  her.  In  fact  there  is  no  feeling  for  existence  in  twen 
tieth  century  America  rather  than  nineteenth,  or  eighteenth, 
except  for  Lucy's  slight  emancipation.  There  is  little  finality  to 
the  presages  of  her  death  which  shocks  the  reader  and  does  not 
convince  him  of  its  inevitability. 

The  wistful  nostalgia  of  the  last  section  of  this  novel  fully 
counteracts  the  relative  modernity  of  the  setting  and  leaves  the 
whole  hanging  on  a  blurred  edge  of  time.  One  wonders  if  Miss 
Gather  has  a  positive  sense  of  values  strong  enough  to  with 
stand  the  present. 

JOHN  SLOCUM 

THE  VOICE  OF  BUGLE  ANN.  By  MacKirday  Kantor.  Coward- 
McCann,  $1.25. 

ANTHONY  ADVERSE"  and  the  current,  astonishing 
•f\  vogue  of  the  three-decker  novel  notwithstanding,  it  is  not 
necessary  for  an  author  to  produce  a  long  work  to  touch  off  the 
responsiveness  of  the  public,  or  even  to  deal  largely  or  lovingly 
with  the  materials  of  romance.  Short  things  can  invoke  equal 
magic. 

Slightly  over  a  decade  ago,  for  example,  we  had  "Messer 
Marco  Polo,"  and  even  those  of  us  who  now  realize  that  Bonn 
Byrne's  compact  distillation  of  wizardry  is  not  quite  so  likely  to 
maintain  a  front-rank  position  among  the  immortals  of  litera 
ture  as  we  then  thought,  do  not  have  to  be  ashamed  of  the 
dozen  times  we  read  it,  nor  of  the  "great  shout"  which,  like 
Kubla  hearing  the  story  of  Christ,  we  gave  when  we  were 
done.  Last  year  we  were  given  "Good  Bye,  Mr.  Chips."  It  was 
a  withdrawal  from  life,  as  aloof  and  sheltered  from  the  world 
as  the  ivy-overgrown  school  buildings  in  which  its  episodes 
took  place,  but  it  did  something  to  our  pulses  just  the  same. 

Now  comes  to  us  "The  Voice  of  Bugle  Ann,"  a  small  book 
that  is  just  as  appealing  as  its  great  little  heroine  with  her 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  551  ] 

brown  spots,  her  flopping  ears,  her  "well-arched  coupling" 
and  the  proud  tail  she  carried  like  a  banner.  It  is  perhaps  the 
best  one,  and  the  most  durable  one  of  the  three.  It  is  definitely 
a  romance,  but  it  is  grounded  firmly  on  reality.  Its  story  is 
exciting,  even  melodramatic,  but  —  at  any  rate  to  those  who 
know  the  South  —  entirely  credible.  Within  the  self-imposed 
limits  of  its  Missouri  way  of  speech,  its  writing  is  effective  and 
vivid;  if  not  strictly  humorous,  it  is  at  least  frequently  dry;  and 
it  is  often  very  beautiful.  Its  organization  (speaking  techni 
cally)  is  almost  perfect.  Indeed,  the  one  fault  of  the  book  is  that 
it  is  almost  too  perfectly  put  together;  that  the  author  knows 
almost  too  well  the  tricks  of  his  trade;  that  he  constructs  his 
story  so  flawlessly  that  sometimes,  though  never  for  long,  one 
has  a  fleeting  half  doubt  of  his  sincerity. 

It  is  —  to  use  a  way  of  speaking  filched  from  the  mental 
processes  of  Hollywood  press  agents  —  almost  a  pint-sized 
epic.  Better  still  it  is  an  American  ballad  about  an  American 
subject  and  spoken  in  an  American  lingo,  that  happens  to  have 
been  cast  in  prose. 

First  of  all  it  is  a  story  about  fox  hunting.  Not,  however,  any 
imported,  even  if  duty-free  sport  of  would-be  English  squires 
of  Fairfield,  Connecticut  or  Warrenton,  Virginia.  "We  never 
kill  the  fox,"  says  old  Springfield  Davis  who  is  the  eighty- two- 
year-old  protagonist  of  the  story.  "We  don't  ride  no  horses,  nor 
wear  funny  coats  and  caps.  We  raise  dogs  and  we  train  them." 
(That  in  itself  is  one  hundred  percent  native,  as  American  as 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  or  a  coonskin  cap,  as  is  also 
the  fierce  passionate  love  of  dogs  upon  which  the  tale  is 
grounded.  No  one  with  a  slick  kennel  and  a  professional  dog- 
handler  can  quite  measure  the  depth  of  it.  It  is  frontier  atavism.) 

Beyond  that,  it  is  the  story  of  a  particular  dog  —  of  Bugle 
Ann,  of  a  "little  lady"  as  Spring  liked  to  call  his  bitches,  of  a 
fine  foxhound  who  "had  learned  the  last  trick  of  any  fox  who 
ever  jumped,"  of  "the  sweetest  mouthed  hound  in  Missouri." 

"Sometimes  I  reckon  I  don't  deserve  her,"  says  Spring. 

It  is,  further,  the  story  of  Spring  Davis  himself  who  ran  away 
to  join  the  Confederate  army  seventy  years  ago  when  he  was 
twelve  years  old,  but  "who  had  done  a  sight  of  fox  hunting 
before  that."  And  of  his  son  Benjy  who  had  "something  of 
the  Indian"  in  his  "twenty-year-old  face."  And  of  Calhoun 


[  552  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Royster,  his  friend  and  neighbor  who  had  hunted  fox  with  him 
"time  out  of  mind."  And  of  Gal  Royster 5s  son  Baker  who  had 
served  over  seas  and  had  been  shell-shocked,  and  who  there 
fore  could  not  hear  talk  of  shooting  without  trembling  inside 
and  feeling  his  throat  grow  dusty,  without  smelling  pepper  in 
his  nose  "as  if  someone  had  given  him  a  blow  that  fractured 
the  little  blood  vessels." 

It  makes  mention  of  Spring  Davis'  wife  Adelaide. 

"Mrs.  Davis  was  thirty  years  younger  than  her  husband, 
eighteen  inches  shorter,  a  few  degrees  less  talkative,  and  she 
knew  that  after  his  dogs  Spring  loved  her  well." 

It  goes  on  to  consider  Jacob  Terry  whom  Spring  Davis 
"wouldn't  call  a  pleasant  man"  and  who  plays  havoc  with 
their  fox  hunting  by  going  in  for  sheep  raising.  He  cuts  off 
their  country  with  a  wove-wire  fence.  "Hog- tight,  bull-strong, 
and  horse-high,"  Tom  Royster  calls  it. 

It  brings  in  Gamden  Terry,  Jacob's  eighteen-year-old 
daughter  who  has  "the  shaded  hazel  eyes  of  her  mother's 
family"  but  "the  Terry  red  hair."  Benjy  Davis  falls  in  love 
with  her.  Montague  and  Gapulet  in  the  Ozarks ! 

There  is  a  killing,  and  a  courthouse  trial  and  Spring  Davis 
goes  to  State  Prison  in  Jefferson  City.  It  deals  with  the  dis 
appearance  of  Bugle  Ann,  and  with  her  death,  and  with  (you 
might  almost  say)  her  resurrection.  And  it  has  a  happy  ending. 
Yet  it  is  in  no  way  (outside  of  the  normal  possibilities  of  life) 
sentimental.  It  does  of  course  heretically  indicate  that  a  tale 
written  about  the  white  inhabitants  of  a  southern  state  can 
make  you  laugh,  chortle,  weep  or  cry  out  with  delight.  The 
previous  indications  were  that  you  could  only  retch. 

And  this  is  a  sound  thing  and  a  needed  thing  to  do.  For  with 
out  challenging  either  the  abilities  or  the  integrity  of  that  crop 
of  writers  who  have  allowed  us  to  see  without  illusions  the  in 
grown  degeneracy  of  a  way  of  living  that  is  a  national  disgrace, 
one  can  point  out  that  there  is  another  equally  valid  tradition. 
It  is  the  older  tradition.  For  the  bards  brought  us  delight  long 
before  the  first  socially  minded  writer  lashed  our  conscience. 
A  bard  in  his  own  way,  Mr.  Kantor  does  the  same.  I  do  not 
undertake  to  predict  that  our  grandchildren  studying  twen 
tieth  century  literature  will  find  this  little  gem  required  read 
ing.  But,  sirs  and  madams,  I  do  hold  that  you  will  like  it  now. 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  553  ] 

If  you  enjoy  good  stories,  "spines  like  little  needles"  will  rise 
on  your  scalp  as  they  did  on  Benjy's,  when  you  have  finished. 
But  if  perchance  you  are  a  dog  lover,  then  Lord  help  you.  For 
like  Gal  Royster,  you  will  be  crying  like  your  "own  grand 
child,"  only  perhaps  not  quietly.  And  toward  Mr.  Kantor  you 
will  be  feeling  a  warmth  and  a  gratitude  that  you  do  not  know 
how  to  express. 

THOMAS  GALDEGOT  CHUBB 

FELICIANA.  By  Stark  Toung.  Scribner's,  $2.50. 

STARK  YOUNG  is  an  artist  who  understands  that  there 
are  two  planes  of  reality  —  the  plane  of  accidental  detail 
and  the  plane  of  essential  quality.  Several  of  the  chirping  — 
and  squawking  —  critics  have  indulged  in  such  phrases  as 
"Mr.  Young's  air-conditioned  Deep  South"  to  belittle  the  spell 
of  sensitive  beauty  in  his  latest  book,  "Feliciana."  These 
critics  belong  to  the  "rats,  lice  and  history"  school  of  literary 
perception.  It  is  their  own  mentality  that  needs  to  be  air- 
conditioned. 

Feliciana  is  a  collection  of  sketches  and  short  stories,  some 
of  them  in  an  Italian  setting,  but  most  of  them  to  do  with 
Stark  Young's  beloved  Deep  South,  before,  during  and  after 
the  civil  war  that  strangled  our  agrarian  civilization.  To  say 
that  the  Civil  War  ended  slavery  is  beside  the  point  and  mis 
leading.  It  ended  chattel  slavery  and  ushered  in  the  era  of  the 
industrial  helot.  It  ended  slavery  of  the  body  and  enthroned 
a  new  servitude  of  the  mind  and  soul.  Mr.  Young  is  not  con 
cerned  with  either  form  of  slavery.  He  is  merely  enchanted 
with  a  quality  no  longer  to  be  found  in  the  American  soul  — 
a  quality  that  captured  the  wisdom  of  the  creative  earth  and 
the  sensitiveness  of  all  things  that  grow  between  the  rain  and 
the  sun.  He  is  concerned  most  literally  with  tenderness. 

"I  sometimes  think  that  nothing  is  worth  while  that  is  not 
about  something  else,"  writes  Mr.  Young  in  telling  the  chival- 
ric  story  of  "Cousin  Micajah";  and  then  explains  that  as  he 
once  listened  to  his  uncle  tell  of  other  people  and  other  times, 
he  "knew  perfectly  well  that  he  was  not  talking  of  any  person 
or  story  but  of  all  life."  Tenderness  belongs  to  the  living  and 
thus  to  all  life  —  and  to  death,  not  as  the  end,  but  as  immortal- 


C|554  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ity.  The  dead  of  whom  Stark  Young  learned  in  his  youth  be 
came  his  immortals  and  part  of  a  living  heritage.  He  tells  us 
now  of  their  undying  qualities.  The  best  stories  in  "Feliciana" 
are  the  fruit  of  his  communion  with  these  living  dead. 

It  is  in  "Shadows  on  Terrebonne"  that  we  find  Stark  Young 
at  his  best.  One  can  hardly  call  it  a  short  story,  so  uneasily  does 
it  fit  into  any  hard  category.  It  traces  the  interplay  of  silent 
understanding  between  youth  and  middle  age,  between  little 
Ellen  and  her  uncle  Alfred,  who  had  seen  more  than  other  men 
and  had  thus  encountered  the  challenge  of  an  unbelieving 
world.  At  long  last,  events  proved  that  he  had  seen  the  truth. 
"What  happens  to  our  souls  when  nothing  mocks  them  any 
more?  Are  they  not  free?  And  are  not  those  who  love  us  free  then 
also?"  Ellen  could  leave  her  uncle,  to  begin  her  own  cycle  of 
life,  only  when  he  was  freed  from  the  unbelieving  mockery  of 
the  world.  That  is  the  theme  of  "Shadows  on  Terrebonne"  — 
as  fragile  and  as  livingly  tender  as  the  manner  of  its  telling. 
Its  setting  is  on  the  plantation  whose  name  gives  the  title  to  the 
story,  a  place  "like  time  itself,  the  shadows,  the  wings,  the 
passing  ripples,  against  the  steady,  still  stream." 

One  cares  very  little  whether  or  not  the  accidental  detail  of 
this  vanished  life  had  ugly  aspects  which  Mr.  Young  neglects 
to  mention.  He  is  not  indulging  in  that  transient  form  of  real 
ism.  He  is  writing  in  the  other  plane  of  essential  quality,  "not 
of  any  person  or  story  but  of  all  life."  There  is  more  than  mere 
nostalgia  at  play  here.  There  is  also  the  tender  passion  of  un 
derstanding,  and  the  consciousness  that  between  the  living 
past  and  the  living  present  only  time  intervenes,  as  between 
today  and  tomorrow's  dawn. 

RICHARD  DANA  SKINNER 

THE  BEST  SHORT  STORIES  OF  1935.  Edited  by  Edward  J. 
O'Brien.  Houghton  Mifflin,  $2.50. 

WITH  the  present  volume,  Edward  J.  O'Brien's  annual 
collection  of  "Best  Short  Stories"  comes  of  age.  Appear 
ing  over  a  period  of  twenty-one  years,  the  volumes  have 
secured  for  their  editor  the  high  rank  of  arbiter  over  the  desti 
nies  of  most  writers  of  this  class  of  literature.  The  task  of  evalu 
ating  each  volume  of  the  series  as  it  appears,  calls  for  more 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  555  ] 

than  a  mere  excoriation  of  the  editor  for  his  sins  of  commission 
and  omission.  One  must  first  investigate  the  editor's  standards 
of  selection,  in  order  to  ascertain  whether  the  stories  fall  short 
of,  achieve  or  exceed  the  expressed  aims  of  the  anthology. 
Then  the  value  of  the  editor's  principles  of  selection  may  be 
questioned. 

In  the  current  volume  of  "Best  Short  Stories,"  Mr.  O'Brien 
has  set  himself  "the  task  of  disengaging  the  essential  human 
qualities  in  our  contemporary  fiction,  which,  when  chronicled 
conscientiously  by  our  literary  artists,  may  fairly  be  called  a 
criticism  of  life.  .  .  .  No  substance  is  of  importance  in  fiction 
unless  it  is  organic  substance,  that  is  to  say,  substance  in  which 
the  pulse  of  life  is  beating."  Here  is  Mr.  O'Brien's  first  test  for 
excellence  in  the  short  story,  that  of  substance. 

"But  a  second  test  is  necessary  if  the  story  is  to  take  rank 
above  other  stories.  The  true  artist  will  seek  to  shape  this  living 
substance  into  the  most  beautiful  and  satisfying  form  by  skilful 
selection  and  arrangement  of  his  materials,  and  by  the  most 
direct  and  appealing  presentation  of  it  in  portrayal  and  char 
acterization."  Thus  Mr.  O'Brien's  second  test  is  that  of  artistic 
form.  When  the  gravity  of  these  two  tests  is  applied  by  Mr. 
O'Brien,  the  year's  short  story  crop  falls  neatly  into  categories. 
Distinctive  stories  are  listed  in  the  appendix  with  one,  two  or 
three  stars  to  indicate  the  editor's  keen  but  not  infallible 
judgment  of  their  merit.  From  the  Roll  of  Honor  (three  stars) 
are  taken  the  stories  reprinted  within  the  volume. 

When  the  first  of  Mr.  O'Brien's  tests  is  applied  to  the  twenty- 
seven  "Best  Short  Stories"  included  in  the  present  volume,  let 
it  be  remembered  that  this  test  of  substance  "may  fairly  be 
called  a  criticism  of  life."  Judging  from  the  stories  included, 
"life"  for  Mr.  O'Brien  would  seem  to  have  a  special  and  nar 
row  significance,  entitling  it  to  be  spelled  (as  once  long  ago) 
with  a  capital  "L,"  and  consisting  merely  of  the  emotional 
reactions  of  a  few  individuals  to  one  another  in  varying  degrees 
ranging  from  affection  to  violence,  of  individuals  who  have  no 
relation  to  the  Zeitgeist  or  Weltanschauung  of  the  period  in  which 
they  live.  The  characters  in  the  majority  of  the  stories  included 
could  as  well  have  lived,  moved  and  had  their  intimate  little 
beings  in  the  world  of  1914.  Although  no  one  could  fairly  ask 
the  fiction  writer  to  embody  a  complete  history  of  the  age  in 


[  556  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

which  his  characters  live  as  the  background  of  his  story, 
nevertheless  some  indication  of  the  spirit  of  the  age  in  which 
the  author  lives  will  be  inherent  in  the  substance  of  the  story. 
Life,  the  common  life,  has  always  pervaded  good  literature  in 
such  a  manner  that  the  reader  of  a  later  period  may  accurately 
sense  the  tempo  and  the  spiritual  milieu  of  the  period  in  which 
the  author  wrote. 

Now,  in  the  sixth  year  of  the  depression  and  on  the  twenty- 
first  anniversary  of  the  World  War  —  two  of  the  greatest 
maelstroms  into  which  human  life  can  be  plunged  —  one  may 
reasonably  expect  to  find  in  the  literature  of  the  period  some 
sense  of  the  social  unrest,  the  frustration  and  despair,  the  hopes 
and  struggles  resulting  from  the  impact  of  two  major  disasters. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  present-day  America  there  are  many 
writers  keenly  aware  of  the  deep  social  and  personal  implica 
tions  of  depression,  who  are  intent  upon  portraying  its  effects 
upon  the  relationships  of  individuals  to  each  other,  and  of  the 
individual  to  the  masses. 

But  in  all  the  twenty-seven  stories  selected  by  Mr.  O'Brien  the 
depression  is  not  mentioned  once  —  which  may  be  all  to  the 
good.  What  is  a  more  serious  accusation,  however,  only  two 
stories  are  in  substance  remotely  concerned  with  the  effect  of 
the  present  widespread  economic  debacle.  In  Paul  Morgan's 
"A  Distant  Harbor,"  a  young  man  ironically  gets  a  job  which 
would  have  permitted  him  to  marry  his  sweetheart  who  is 
enceinte,  only  to  return  after  his  day's  work  to  find  that  she, 
thinking  herself  deserted  because  of  his  absence,  has  committed 
suicide.  In  Madelene  Cole's  "Bus  to  Biarritz"  one  finds  the 
familiar  theme:  a  virgin  on  her  way  to  make  the  supreme 
sacrifice  to  be  able  to  aid  her  parents.  But  for  the  most  part, 
instead  of  stories  vibrant  with  contemporary  realities,  O'Brien's 
present  volume  contains  a  satiety  of  rehashed  themes  and  im 
mature  characterizations,  reminiscent  of  the  materials  and 
methods  of  the  group  of  revolters  of  the  '20s. 

Here,  for  instance,  in  Charles  Cooke's  "Triple  Jumps"  is  the 
story  of  a  circus  performer  who  commits  suicide  because  of  the 
infidelity  of  his  sweetheart.  Whit  Burnett's  "Division"  (whose 
fifty-seven  pages  properly  padded  would  make  a  fair  novel) 
deals  with  the  immature  introspections  of  a  young  poet  over 
the  fearful  dichotomy  of  his  soul.  In  Harry  Sylvester's  "A 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  557  ] 

Boxer,  Old"  is  described  the  decline  and  last  fight  of  a  pugilist. 
Perhaps  the  best  illustration  of  the  hackneyed  material  in  this 
collection  is  the  first  selection  in  the  book,  "Outside  Yuma" 
by  Benjamin  Appel,  a  story  in  the  original  Jim  Tully  tradition 
of  life  in  hobohemia.  Four  men  are  put  off  a  train  in  the  desert, 
where  they  wander  as  aimlessly  as  they  talk,  or  vice  versa. 
(Compare  this  story  of  pre-depression  hoboes  from  the  editor's 
own  magazine,  with  Daniel  Main  Waring's  powerful  story  of 
post-depression  transients,  "Fruit  Tramp,"  in  Harpers  for 
July  1934,  which  is  not  included.) 

Omitting  all  stories  that  portray  a  social  consciousness  of  the 
contemporary  scene,  the  editor  found  himself  "compelled  to 
comment  on  a  new  and  serious  tendency  in  contemporary 
American  letters,  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  many  critics  and 
more  writers  to  legislate  politically  on  the  American  writer's 
subject  matter  in  a  manner  that  can  only  be  described  as 
fascist."  While  one  may  agree  with  his  contention  that  politi 
cal  preoccupations  will  limit  the  writer's  art,  one  must  take 
issue  with  his  assumption  that  writers  on  the  left  or  right  who 
hold  certain  political  tenets  cannot  become  more  than  ma 
chine-minded  dabblers.  Although  he  does  not  call  those  writ 
ers  on  the  left  Marxists,  it  is  understood  that  Mr.  O'Brien 
means  this  group.  One  is  led  to  suspect  that  the  editor's  violent 
antipathy  to  the  Marxists  was  the  primary  factor  which  led 
him  to  exclude  stories  written  from  a  social  outlook,  even  the 
several  excellent  stories  published  last  year  in  first-class  maga 
zines. 

In  his  summary  of  the  short  story  for  the  year  he  wrote, 
"The  rhythm  of  the  American  scene  is  now  much  more  even 
and  self-possessed  than  it  has  ever  been  before.  Speed  values 
are  rapidly  disappearing,  galvanic  stimulus  is  less  and  less  of 
fered  to  the  reader,  and  it  begins  to  look  as  if  the  American 
writer  was  beginning  to  possess  his  own  soul  in  peace,  if  not  in 
comfort.  The  battle  has  been  won.  Let  us  now  see  if  the  Ameri 
can  writer  is  prepared  to  share  the  fruits  of  victory  with  his 
enemies."  This  might  well  be  called  O'Brien's  manifesto 
toward  escape  into  the  dark  backward  abysm  of  time. 

Mr.  O'Brien  should  further  be  taken  to  task  for  his  neglect 
of  a  second  tendency  in  contemporary  American  letters.  This 
is  the  tendency  toward  regional  color  (as  distinguished  from 


[  558  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

local  color)  as  the  background  for  fiction,  best  represented  in 
the  more  significant  work  of  Erskine  Caldwell.  (Incidentally, 
one  of  CaldwelPs  stories,  "The  Cold  Winter,"  a  trite  piece  as 
compared  with  such  a  story  as  "Kneel  to  the  Rising  Sun,"  is 
included  in  the  present  collection.  Instead  of  selecting  a  story 
which  would  reveal  CaldwelPs  preoccupation  with  regional 
color  in  the  South,  and  his  social  consciousness  of  the  plight  of 
the  "poor  whites,"  Mr.  O'Brien  chose  a  story  with  an  apart 
ment  house  setting  and  a  peeping  Tom  character  —  who 
eavesdrops  as  the  man  in  the  next  room  comes  to  murder  his 
estranged  wife  and  take  their  child.)  Indeed,  while  excluding 
stories  from  this  school  of  regional  color,  the  editor  includes 
five  stories  whose  settings  are  in  France,  Spain  and  England. 
One  should  not  of  course  try  to  delimit  the  author's  range  in 
search  of  a  proper  setting  for  his  art,  but  this  does  not  justify 
Mr.  O'Brien's  omission  of  outstanding  American  regional 
color  stories  to  make  room  for  mediocre  stories  set  in  other 
parts  of  the  world. 

If  it  is  granted  that  technical  excellence  in  story-telling  is 
the  prime  requisite  in  the  "Best  Short  Stories,"  Mr.  O'Brien 
had  ample  reason  for  including  the  majority  of  the  twenty- 
seven  stories  comprising  his  current  volume.  However,  as  he 
himself  has  had  occasion  to  remark,  American  short  story 
writers  are  past  masters  in  the  technique  of  narration,  plot 
construction  and  characterization.  But  the  best  technicians  are 
not  necessarily  the  most  significant  or  best  writers,  for  in  that 
event  Mr.  O'Brien  would  be  compelled  to  get  his  best  stories 
each  year  from  the  abundant  crop  in  the  pulp  and  slick  maga 
zines.  In  the  present  volume,  however,  there  are  five  excellent 
stories  which  embody  significant  subject  matter  in  such  a 
manner  that  form  and  content  constitute  a  whole,  a  work  of 
art:  Dorothy  McCleary's  "Sunday  Morning,"  David  Cornel 
Dejong's  "Home-Coming,"  Paul  Morgan's  "Distant  Harbor," 
William  Wister  Haines'  "Remarks:  None,"  and  Allan  Seager's 
"This  Town  and  Salamanca." 

By  far  the  most  outstanding  selection  in  the  volume  is, 
strictly  speaking,  not  a  short  story  but  a  new  type  of  literature. 
William  Saroyan's  "Resurrection  of  a  Life"  is  representative  of 
a  bastard  form  of  the  essay  and  the  short  story.  Despite  the  fact 
that  Saroyan's  book,  "The  Daring  Young  Man  on  the  Flying 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  559  ] 

Trapeze,"  was  universally  acclaimed  the  major  find  in  the 
realm  of  the  short  story  during  1 934,  even  a  casual  survey  of  his 
work  is  sufficient  indication  of  his  ability  as  a  writer  in  a  new 
branch  of  literature  which  is  neither  the  short  story  nor  the 
essay,  but  a  peculiarly  powerful  combination  of  the  form  and 
substance  of  both. 

While  "The  Best  Short  Stories  of  1935"  cannot  be  called  an 
impartial  selection  made  by  reference  to  expressed  objective 
standards,  Mr.  O'Brien  is  to  be  commended  on  the  inclusion 
of  several  significant  short  story  writers,  and  by  three  of  the 
five  outstanding  discoveries  of  the  year  in  the  short  story 
realm.  It  is  unfortunate  that  an  analysis  of  the  sources  of  the 
stories  which  make  up  the  volume  should  reflect  that  practice 
so  evident  among  American  critics  (to  the  detriment  of  our 
literature)  of  mutual  back-slapping  and  praise.  This  is  not  to 
condemn  mutual  assistance  among  writers  except  in  so  far  as 
it  tends  to  perpetuate  certain  types  of  literature  and  materials, 
to  the  exclusion  and  discouragement  of  a  fresh  expression  of 
creative  talent. 

WILLIAM  AND  KATHRYN  CORDELL 

ULYSSES  S.  GRANT,  POLITICIAN  By  William  B.  Hes- 
seltine.  Dodd  Mead,  $4.00. 

WHEN  the  series  of  "American  Political  Leaders"  was 
started  five  years  ago,  we  were  promised  volumes  on  the 
major  political  figures  from  Andrew  Johnson  to  Herbert 
Hoover  that  would  present  complete,  original,  and  critical 
accounts  of  the  subjects.  This  volume  on  Grant,  the  tenth  of  the 
series,  maintains  the  standard  set  by  the  earlier  publications  in 
the  series,  though  it  differs  in  method  from  most  of  them. 

In  "Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Politician,"  Profesor  Hesseltine  chose 
to  write  a  history  of  Grant  as  President,  rather  than  a  full 
length  biography  of  the  victor  of  the  Civil  War.  In  taking  these 
eight  years  as  the  focal  period  of  Grant's  life,  the  author  was 
perfectly  justified.  Before  1860  Grant  failed  in  every  attempt 
he  made  to  earn  a  living;  the  Civil  War  raised  him  to  the  dizzi 
est  heights  of  fame;  the  eight  years  in  the  White  House  showed 
that  the  rise  had  been  a  little  too  sudden. 

Though  many  have  made  the  attempt,  no  biographer  has 


[  560 ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

ever  succeeded  in  presenting  a  complete  picture  of  Grant.  Pro 
fessor  Hesseltine  has  re-created  the  Grant  of  the  presidential 
years,  the  man  as  he  really  was.  In  an  opening  chapter  that  is 
a  masterpiece  of  biographical  condensation,  Grant  is  carried 
from  his  birth  in  1822  to  the  opening  of  the  Civil  War.  While 
reading  this  chapter  one  regrets  that  the  author  did  not  give  us 
more  details  of  Grant's  early  life,  though  nothing  is  omitted 
that  will  enable  us  to  understand  General  and  President  Grant. 

Ulysses  S.  Grant  was  born  into  a  family  that  was  very  spar 
ing  of  signs  of  affection.  Shy,  sensitive,  and  silent,  the  boy 
was  allowed  to  grow  up  under  comparatively  little  restraint 
and  with  comparatively  little  attention  paid  to  him.  The  result 
was  that  Grant  had  what  the  psychologists  call  an  inferiority 
complex.  In  only  one  situation  was  the  boy  always  the  master. 
He  loved  horses,  knew  them,  and  could  ride  any  that  he  ever 
saw.  In  this  field  he  showed  the  patience  and  the  tenacity  that 
were  to  enable  him  to  defeat  Lee,  the  stubbornness  that  was  to 
cause  him  so  much  trouble  when  he  became  President. 

Grant's  father  was  very  proud  of  his  son,  and  wanted  to 
give  him  the  educational  advantages  which  had  been  denied  to 
the  older  man.  Money,  however,  was  scarce  with  Jesse  Grant, 
and  it  was  only  through  political  influence  that  Ulysses  was 
able  to  escape  from  his  father's  tannery,  which  he  thoroughly 
disliked.  An  appointment  to  West  Point  was  obtained  for  him; 
this  boy  who  hated  the  sight  of  blood  was  launched  on  a  career 
as  a  professional  soldier,  a  career  that  was  to  reach  its  height 
in  one  of  the  bloodiest  wars  in  the  world's  history. 

Grant's  record  at  West  Point  was  fair.  He  was  good  at 
mathematics,  a  brilliant  horseman,  but  he  never  could  master 
French.  At  graduation,  he  was  commissioned  a  lieutenant  of 
infantry  and  ordered  to  Jefferson  Barracks  in  St.  Louis.  He  had 
no  desire  to  remain  in  the  army:  he  wanted  to  be  a  professor  of 
mathematics  at  West  Point!  As  there  was  no  vacancy  at  the 
Point,  Grant  continued  his  tour  of  duty  in  St.  Louis.  He  served 
through  the  Mexican  War  as  regimental  quartermaster,  re 
maining  in  the  army  until  1853,  when,  now  a  captain  and  a 
married  man,  he  resigned  rather  than  face  a  courtmartial  on  a 
charge  of  drinking. 

When  Grant  left  the  army,  he  had  no  plans  and  no  hope 
for  the  future.  The  story  of  the  next  seven  or  eight  years  was 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  561  ] 

to  prove  that  he  was  totally  unfitted  for  civil  life,  whatever 
his  military  ability  may  have  been.  His  own  and  his  wife's 
family  helped  him,  but  he  could  make  no  headway  in  business. 
He  tried  farming,  held  an  internal  revenue  post  for  a  time,  and 
finally  became  a  clerk  in  his  brother's  store  at  Galena,  Illinois, 
at  fifty  dollars  a  month.  Even  here  he  was  a  failure. 

And  then  war  was  declared.  For  a  time  bad  luck  continued 
to  follow  him,  until  an  opportunity  for  military  organization 
brought  him  to  the  attention  of  the  state  authorities.  In  a  short 
time  he  was  given  a  regiment  and,  in  his  thirty-ninth  year,  he 
started  to  fight  his  way  to  fame.  The  story  of  Grant's  rise  to 
the  position  of  commanding  general  of  the  Union  army  is  too 
well  known  to  need  recounting  here.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  his 
most  prominent  traits  of  character,  patience  and  tenacity  com 
bined  with  the  ability  to  make  sudden  decisions  and  the  will 
power  to  carry  them  through,  gave  him  his  success  in  the  Civil 
War.  With  the  possible  exception  of  Lincoln,  Ulysses  S.  Grant 
was  the  most  popular  man  in  this  country  in  April  1865,  and 
that  popularity  continued  into  the  middle  of  his  first  adminis 
tration. 

It  is  at  this  point  in  the  narrative  of  Grant's  career  that 
Hessel tine's  book  assumes  major  proportions,  becomes  an  in 
valuable  study  not  only  of  Grant  but  of  the  politics  and  econom 
ics  of  the  Reconstruction  Era  and  the  Gilded  Age.  It  is  at 
this  time  that  the  real  Grant  begins  to  appear,  though  it  will 
be  years  before  the  picture  is  complete. 

When  the  hero  of  Appomattox  found  himself  the  country's 
hero,  he  was  as  embarrassed  as  if  he  had  been  a  beardless  lieu 
tenant.  He  tried  to  avoid  the  numerous  social  affairs  that  were 
staged  in  his  honor,  drawing  back  into  the  protection  of  his 
silence  as  completely  as  he  could.  This  retirement  could  be  only 
temporary  for  he  was  courted  by  the  radicals  and  by  President 
Johnson  and  his  party.  No  one  knew  where  Grant  stood  on  the 
question  of  what  should  be  done  with  the  South.  The  radicals 
needed  him  to  strengthen  their  position;  President  Johnson 
sought  his  aid  to  bring  about  an  intelligent  solution  of  the 
perplexing  question.  Grant  kept  his  silence,  and  in  so  doing  be 
came  the  most  important  man  in  the  country. 

It  is  doubtful,  as  Professor  Hesseltine  points  out,  whether 
or  not  Grant  knew  on  which  side  of  the  question  he  stood.  He 


[  562  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

had  voted  but  once  in  his  life,  for  Buchanan  in  1856.  He  had 
never  evinced  any  interest  in  politics  and  public  affairs,  but 
he  was  naturally  quiet  and  conservative.  He  had  granted  Gen 
eral  Lee  lenient  terms  of  surrender,  which  encouraged  Johnson 
and  his  followers  to  believe  he  would  side  with  them.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  had  let  fall  an  occasional  remark  regarding  the 
South  and  slavery  that  led  the  radicals  to  believe  that  they 
could  count  on  him.  Such  was  the  state  of  national  affairs  as 
the  time  approached  for  the  presidential  nomination. 

As  the  author  develops  the  narrative  of  these  stirring  and 
troublous  times  we  see  General  Grant  —  he  was  now  General 
of  the  Armies,  the  first  since  Washington  —  leaning  now  in  one 
direction,  now  in  the  other.  He  wanted  to  remain  friendly  with 
both  sides,  he  was  beginning  to  realize  his  own  importance, 
and  he  knew  that  he  would  be  the  next  President  of  the  United 
States  by  the  vote  of  the  people  rather  than  by  the  choice  of 
any  political  party. 

Gradually  he  saw  that  his  fortunes  lay  with  the  radicals,  be 
cause  they  seemed  to  voice  the  sentiments  of  the  majority  in 
respect  to  the  South.  His  break  with  President  Johnson  came 
as  a  result  of  the  latter 's  defiance  of  the  Tenure  of  Office  Act 
in  removing  Stanton  as  Secretary  of  War.  From  that  time  on 
he  was  in  the  hands  of  the  radicals,  and  from  that  time  dates 
the  beginning  of  his  political  education,  such  as  it  was.  Of 
course  he  was  elected,  and  he  took  office  in  the  firm  belief  that 
he  had  been  chosen  by  the  will  of  the  people  and  not  by  the 
politicians. 

General  Grant  entered  upon  his  first  term  of  office  with  a 
very  meagre  equipment.  His  ignorance  of  the  Constitution 
and  constitutional  government  was  equalled  only  by  his  ig 
norance  of  politics.  Almost  every  move  that  he  made  on  his 
own  responsibility  was  wrong,  and  this  situation  continued 
throughout  his  eight  years  as  President.  His  cabinet,  entirely 
of  his  own  selection,  was  about  as  bad  as  it  could  be.  His  nomi 
nee  for  the  Treasury,  A.  T.  Stewart,  was  ineligible  for  that  of 
fice  because  of  his  business  affiliations.  Even  when  this  and  other 
necessary  changes  were  made  in  the  cabinet,  it  was  still  far 
below  the  average.  The  President  tried  to  carry  on  the  govern 
ment  as  the  General  carried  on  the  war,  and  he  did  not  seem 
to  see  that  this  was  impossible. 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  563  ] 

His  troubles  began  at  once  and  continued  throughout  his 
two  administrations.  The  country's  finances  were  in  a  de 
plorable  condition;  reconstruction  problems  in  the  South  were 
a  constant  trouble  and  worry;  Grant  continually  interfered  in 
foreign  affairs,  of  which  he  knew  absolutely  nothing;  and 
finally,  there  was  the  politics  involved  in  the  whole  problem. 
These  matters  and  numerous  others  are  brilliantly  described 
in  a  series  of  chapters  which,  in  my  judgment,  are  among  the 
best  that  have  ever  been  written  on  this  important  and  com 
plicated  period  of  our  history. 

Despite  the  serious  errors  that  were  made  in  domestic  and 
foreign  affairs  largely  through  Grant's  stubbornness,  wilful- 
ness,  and  ineptitude,  he  was  reflected  in  1872.  He  had  lost  a 
great  deal  of  his  popularity,  but  he  still  had  enough  to  defeat 
his  "Democratic"  opponent,  Horace  Greeley,  the  worst  pos 
sible  candidate  that  could  have  been  selected. 

Within  a  few  months  of  the  beginning  of  the  second  term, 
the  storm  broke.  The  financial  structure  broke  under  the 
weight  of  the  failure  of  Jay  Cooke,  resulting  in  the  panic  of 
1873.  Then  came  the  scandals  which  were  to  make  these  eight 
years  famous  in  the  annals  of  political  corruption.  The  scandals 
of  the  Credit  Mobilier,  of  the  Whiskey  Ring,  of  the  Salary 
Grab,  of  Secretary  of  War  Belknap,  festered  and  broke  under 
pressure  by  the  Democrats  and  the  reformers,  leaving  the  im 
pression  that  there  was  scarcely  an  honest  man  in  public  life. 

Professor  Hesseltine  is  careful  to  point  out  in  his  survey 
of  this  phase  of  Grant's  history  that  the  President  inherited 
some  of  this  trouble,  and  that  in  no  instance  could  the  slight 
est  trace  of  dishonesty  be  attributed  to  him.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  Grant's  high  sense  of  honor  and  honesty  prevented  him 
from  seeing  dishonesty  when  it  was  obvious  to  everyone  else. 
His  fault  was  more  culpable  in  the  Whiskey  Ring  scandal  than 
in  any  of  the  others,  for  the  center  of  the  ring  in  St.  Louis  was 
one  of  Grant's  personal  appointees  and  his  private  secretary;  a 
member  of  his  personal  as  well  as  of  his  official  family  was 
equally  implicated.  Grant  was  totally  unable  to  read  character, 
and  even  when  his  friends  were  shown  to  be  deeply  involved  he 
refused  to  accept  the  evidence. 

In  discussing  Grant's  activities  in  the  famous  election  of 
1876,  Hesseltine  substantiates  the  findings  of  all  modern  his- 


[  564  3  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

torians  and  biographers,  that  Tilden  was  elected  and  that  the 
election  was  stolen  from  him  in  Louisiana  and  Florida,  the 
Republicans  having  captured  South  Carolina  through  intimi 
dation  of  the  voters.  For  this  disgraceful  affair,  President 
Grant  must  take  most  of  the  blame.  He  knew  of  the  corruption 
existing  in  these  states,  he  sent  Federal  troops  into  them  os 
tensibly  to  preserve  "republican  government"  —  really  to 
guarantee  the  return  of  Republican  electors  —  and  he  upheld 
every  move  of  the  Republicans  to  declare  Hayes  the  victor. 
By  this  time  Grant  had  ceased  to  be  the  choice  of  the  people; 
he  had  become  the  boss  of  the  Republican  party.  The  party 
had  stood  by  him  and  he  was  prompt  to  pay  his  debt. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  features  of  this  excellent  analy 
sis  of  Grant,  the  politician,  is  its  impartial  tone.  Without  re 
sorting  to  any  of  the  tricks  of  the  scandalmongers  —  the 
temptation  must  have  been  strong  —  the  author  steadily  and 
remorselessly  develops  his  thesis:  the  change  from  the  great 
soldier  to  the  party  politician.  Based  on  unimpeachable  evi 
dence,  and  written  in  a  style  that  combines  grace  and  dignity 
with  interest,  "Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Politician"  is  a  very  important 
contribution  to  the  literature  on  Grant,  and  to  the  history  of 
the  United  States  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

E.  H.  O'NEILL 

LUCIUS  Q.  C.  LAMAR,  Statesman  of  Secession  and  Reunion.  By 
Wirt  Armistead  Gate.  The  University  of  North  Carolina  Press, 
$5.00. 

THE  thoroughly  southern  University  of  North  Carolina 
Press  published  this  long  and  very  traditional  biography 
of  the  South's  most  able  statesman  of  reunion.  The  tradition  it 
is  written  in  is  not  widely  followed  today.  The  author  avoids 
completely  all  the  vulgarities  and  insights  of  the  psychological 
biographers,  the  corrupt  ion  and  truth  of  economic  interpreters, 
and  the  sweeping  deductions  of  the  anthropological  schools. 
The  book  follows  an  unhurried  chronological  order.  It  traces 
the  family  tree  to  the  seventeenth  century.  It  talks  about 
Lamar's  education  and  marriage  and  comings  and  goings.  It 
presents  its  evidence  with  no  interpretation  and  takes  for 
granted  an  acceptance  of  all  evidence  at  strict  face  value. 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  565  ] 

Wirt  Armistead  Gate  rigidly  denies  himself  any  unity  that 
might  be  called  merely  artistic  unity  —  this  is  no  masquerading 
novel.  But  in  avoiding  so  carefully  the  taint  of  prose  fiction  he 
tends  to  miss  also  purely  historical  comprehensibility.  The 
book  is  the  rather  external  chronicle  of  a  man's  action,  almost 
the  raw  material  for  a  biography.  Lamar's  actions  are  linked 
together  too  much  by  dates.  His  family  life,  private  business, 
local  political  work,  education,  traveling,  and  his  southern  and 
national  statesmanship  are  understood  to  be  working  on  each 
other,  but  there  is  small  attempt  explicitly  to  rationalize  from 
the  material  any  generalized  forces.  This  does  give  a  kind  of 
objectivity.  An  objective  definition  of  Lamar's  stature  in 
American  history  appears  to  be  the  primary  purpose  of  the 
book,  but  the  objectivity  is  not  altogether  fruitful.  It  shows  how 
important  a  great  many  contemporaries  thought  Lamar  was, 
but  a  reader  doesn't  feel  he  has  been  given  a  proper  chance  to 
judge  for  himself,  nor  that  the  author  has  fully  explained  his 
own  high  estimation. 

Lucius  Q.  G.  Lamar  (Quintus  Cincinnatus)  was  born  in 
1825  to  a  Georgian  branch  of  one  of  the  South's  ruling  families. 
He  had  a  good  education,  became  a  lawyer  and  a  law  pro 
fessor,  married  and  settled  down  in  Oxford,  Mississippi.  He 
was  a  promising  young  States'  Rights  man  in  Congress  before 
the  War  (Civil),  and  during  it  he  worked  for  the  South  as  a 
statesman,  a  soldier,  and  after  being  wounded  and  threatened 
with  epilepsy,  as  a  diplomat.  At  the  time  of  Secession  he  made 
the  beautiful  proposal  that  the  southern  states  should  adopt  the 
American  Constitution  verbatim  as  the  organic  law  of  the 
Confederacy.  He  reentered  national  politics  during  Recon 
struction  days,  and  first  as  a  Representative  and  then  as  a 
Senator  led  in  the  "redemption"  of  the  South  and  in  the 
reconciliation  of  the  sections.  Cleveland  made  him  Secretary 
of  the  Interior,  and  finally,  in  1888,  he  became  the  first 
southerner  and  Democrat  after  the  War  to  be  appointed 
Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court. 

In  the  slow  and  difficult  labor  of  disarming  northern 
suspicion  of  southern  "rebels,"  of  finally  putting  into  dead 
history  the  whole  conflict  of  secession,  and  of  eliminating  the 
"bloody  shirt"  from  American  politics,  Lamar  worked  more 
effectively  than  anyone.  After  reentering  Congress  in  1873,  his 


[  566  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

first  important  speech  was  a  eulogy  of  Charles  Sumner,  a  sur 
prising  speech  for  the  "southerner  of  the  southerners"  and  the 
most  famous  of  his  life.  While  never  hinting  that  he  had 
changed  his  mind  about  the  right  of  the  southern  cause,  he 
finally  and  completely  accepted  on  the  national  plane  the  re 
sults  of  the  "bloody  arbitrament,"  and  sought  mutual  knowl 
edge  and  charity  between  North  and  South.  This  labor,  done 
expressly  for  the  nation,  and  Lamar's  most  important  work, 
the  author  shows  excellently. 

Lamar  linked  his  national  efforts  very  consciously  with  his  par 
ticular  aspirations  for  the  South  and  for  Mississippi.  To  him  the 
latter  were  frankly  primary,  at  least  until  he  was  rather  old.  It  is 
in  interpreting  his  work  for  the  South  that  Mr.  Gate  seems  to 
assume  a  number  of  premises  which  many  of  his  readers  won't 
share.  The  "black  Republican"  governments  of  the  South  de 
pended  on  the  armed  patrols  of  an  unfriendly  North,  and  it  was 
from  these  "scalawag"  and  "carpetbag"  governments  that  Mis 
sissippi  wanted  redemption.  The  author  shows  that  Lamar  ac 
cepted  the  constitutional  freedom  of  the  slaves  and  the  im 
possibility  ever  of  withdrawing  from  the  Union,  but  he  gives 
the  impression  that  aside  from  these  concessions,  Lamar 
wanted  the  South  to  be  just  the  same  as  before  the  war.  Mr. 
Gate  is  probably  correct,  but  he  rather  assumes  than  demon 
strates  that  this  was  the  proper  attitude. 

Lamar  considered  himself  a  "conservative  Democrat,"  but 
in  regard  to  most  issues  not  enough  material  is  given  to  get  a 
very  complete  picture  of  what  he  meant  by  this.  He  was  for  a 
low  tariff,  low  taxes  and  for  "sound"  versus  "greenback" 
money.  He  objected  to  dishonesty  in  government,  and  ad 
ministered  the  Interior  Department,  with  the  vastly  important 
Land  Office,  brilliantly  and  scrupulously.  He  believed  in  the 
efficacy  of  education  and  did  good  work  to  advance  public 
schools.  His  conception  of  a  public  servant  was  high  and  he 
never  betrayed  it.  In  these  matters  the  specific  problem  of 
rebuilding  the  South  hardly  arises,  except  in  so  far  as  they 
opposed  the  dominant  northern  policy  favoring  in  a  different 
way  the  new  industrialism. 

We  have  a  fuller  picture,  however,  of  his  attitude  toward 
the  negroes.  In  general  it  can  be  said  that  the  Republicans  are 
shown  always  wrong  and  Lamar  always  right.  There  are  more 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  567  ] 

reasons  to  question  this  view  than  the  author  seems  to  assume. 
The  truly  pernicious  governments  set  over  the  southern  states 
after  the  War  are  accused  of  being  the  sole  and  sufficient  rea 
son  why  the  color  line  was  bitterly  and  so  permanently  drawn 
through  southern  politics  and  life.  Lamar  is  pictured  as  pro 
testing  against  this  and  trying  to  eradicate  its  evil  consequences. 
Lamar  was  certainly  no  southern  "Bourbon,"  and  was  rela 
tively  enlightened  when  compared  with  his  southern  neighbors, 
but  he  showed  no  appreciation  of  the  fact  that  some  Americans 
wanted  real  and  actual  equality  for  the  negroes.  To  him  it  was 
blind  hatred  that  made  some  northerners  prefer,  if  there  were 
only  that  choice,  government  dominated  by  negroes  to  gov 
ernment  by  the  old  southerners.  He  simply  could  not  conceive 
of  the  Civil  War  emotion  about  "redeeming"  the  negro. 
Several  quotations  may  illustrate  his  viewpoint: 

"I  have  just  emerged  from  a  struggle  to  keep  our  people  from 
a  race  conflict.  I  am  not  sure  yet  that  we  are  safe,  for  the  black 
line  is  still  maintained  by  the  agents  of  the  Federal  government. 
The  negro  race,  which  has  no  idea  of  a  principle  of  government 
or  of  society  beyond  that  of  obedience  to  the  mandate  of  a  mas 
ter,  sees  in  these  agents  the  only  embodiment  of  authority.  .  .  . 
We  could,  by  forming  the  'color  line,'  and  bringing  to  bear  those 
agencies  which  intellect,  pluck,  and  will  always  give,  overcome 
the  stolid,  inert,  and  illiterate  majority;  but  such  a  victory  will 
bring  about  conflicts  and  race  passions  and  collisions  with 
Federal  power. 

"Whilst  I  have  labored  to  come  to  an  opposite  conclusion,  I 
am  satisfied  that  the  experiment  of  trying  to  make  self-governing 
people  out  of  the  negroes  will  fail  —  in  fact,  has  already  failed." 
"  We  white  people  ought  to  keep  united.  So  much  of  our  highest 
interest,  of  our  truest  prosperity,  and  of  our  best  hope  depends 
upon  this  union,  that  brethren  of  the  same  blood  must  not  allow 
themselves  to  divide  between  contending  parties  or  over  the 
claims  of  party  candidates;  for  here  in  Mississippi  unity  of  pur 
pose  and  concert  of  action  (and  very  vigorous  action  at  that) 
are  not  a  policy,  not  a  sentiment,  not  a  principle,  but  a  supreme 
necessity  of  self-preservation,  an  only  refuge  from  ruin  and  woe. 
[If  the  Federal  government  should  at  once  and  entirely  cease 
to  interfere  in  the  affairs  of  Mississippi]  "the  rights  of  personal 
security  and  of  property  would  be  under  the  changed  circum 
stances  referred  to  as  secure  as  they  are  in  any  community  on 
earth.  The  disturbances  there  now  are  purely  of  a  political 


[  568  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

nature.  Public  opinion  in  that  state  regards  any  white  man  as 
ignoble  and  cowardly  who  would  cheat  a  negro  or  take  advan 
tage  of  him  in  a  trade  or  who  would  wantonly  do  him  a  personal 
injury.  .  .  .  The  suffrage  and  other  political  rights  would,  with 
occasional  disturbances  for  a  short  period,  be  quickly  secured  to 
the  freedmen." 

Although  a  northern  reader,  as  I'm  afraid  I  have  too 
clearly  indicated,  might  find  many  occasions  to  differ  with 
Mr.  Gate's  handling  of  his  subject,  he,  like  any  other,  will 
find  an  enormous  interest  in  it.  The  biography  shows  in  a 
now  unusual  way  the  career  of  a  fine  and  gifted  man  and 
brings  one  deeply  into  a  full  period  of  our  history.  Exceptions 
to  the  book  as  a  critical  biography  only  make  it  more  valuable 
as  in  itself  a  source  book  for  the  history  it  treats. 

PHILIP  BURNHAM 


EUGENE  O'NEILL:  A  Poet's  Quest.  By  Richard  Dana  Skinner. 
Longmans,  Green,  $2.00. 

A  DRAMATIST,  or  any  other  creative  writer,  may  lead  a 
./"Y.  double  life  in  his  work.  He  may  use  themes  and  motives 
as  they  come  to  him  from  the  vast,  many-voiced  sounding- 
board  of  living,  and  so  treat  each  subject  according  to  its  ap 
peal  of  the  moment  —  hiding  behind  characters,  and  interest 
ing  himself  primarily  in  the  dramatic  values  of  his  plays  and  in 
the  proper  presentation  of  his  story.  Yet,  in  that  region  of  his 
psyche  which  for  convenience  we  will  call  his  unconscious,  he 
may  give  himself  away  (to  the  thoughtful  few,  at  least)  as 
revealing  under  his  subject-matter,  and  back  of  his  external 
picture  of  life,  the  sensitive  flux-and-flow  of  his  own  soul  as  it 
struggles  on  to  the  desired  goal. 

The  plays  of  the  poet-playwright  are  thus  masks  to  be  re 
moved  by  the  knowing  in  order  to  detect  the  essential  soul- 
struggle  down  beneath  all  his  fables.  No  easy  task,  this !  Apply 
the  theory  to  Shakespeare  and  you  have  the  explanation  why 
for  300  years  and  more  critics  have  been  guessing  about  his 
views  on  this,  that  and  the  other  —  including  the  identity  of 
the  Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets.  Frank  Harris  thinks  he  can  de 
cipher  the  mystery.  Most  scholars  give  it  up. 

This  line  of  thought  is  suggested  by  a  sympathetic  reading  of 


BOOK  REVIEWS  ilC[  |6$3:^ 

R.  Dana  Skinner's  "Eugene  O'Neill:  A  Poet's  Quest."  Not  to 
perceive  that  Mr.  Skinner  is  essaying  exactly  what  I  have 
indicated:  that  is,  not  an  evaluation  of  the  comparative  dra 
matic  values  of  the  plays,  but  rather  an  enlightened  attempt  to 
trace  the  spiritual  to-and-fro  of  his  quest  for  the  harmonic 
beauty  which  is  life's  best  justification,  is  to  miss  the  meaning 
of  his  book.  One  must  hail  so  valiant  an  effort,  whether  ac 
cepting  the  point  of  view  or  not,  recognizing  it  as  a  most 
worthy  adventure  in  serious  constructive  criticism.  Especially 
is  it  welcome  since  our  leading  contemporary  dramatist  shows 
startling  contrasts  —  spiritual  ups-and-downs,  we  may  call 
them.  Compare,  for  example,  two  such  plays  as  "Desire 
Under  the  Elms"  and  "Days  Without  End"  —  the  latest 
drama  seen  in  New  York.  They  might  stand  for  diametrically 
opposite  interpretations  of  the  riddle  of  human  existence. 

But  it  is  one  of  the  merits  of  Mr.  Skinner's  study  that  he 
reconciles  all  inconsistencies  by  positing  the  duality  of  O'Neill's 
nature  —  like  the  duality  of  all  of  us !  The  author  does  not 
make  the  mistake  of  arguing  from  "Days  Without  End"  that 
O'Neill  has  reached  a  point,  a  sort  of  intellectual  terminal  of 
his  career,  where  the  grim  contradictions  of  life  which  he  has 
long  fought  merge  in  a  final  mood  of  peace  and  faith.  On  the 
contrary,  he  frankly  concedes  that  very  likely  throughout  his 
creation  to  the  last,  this  playwright,  in  his  representational 
depictions  through  story,  will  be  now  on  the  spiritual  heights, 
or  heading  that  way;  again  in  the  dark  valleys  of  doubt,  well- 
nigh  despair.  It  is  a  poet's  Pilgrim's  Progress  he  wishes  to 
paint;  and  such  gain  as  is  registered  comes  out  of  the  painful 
combat  exhibited  by  his  storm-tossed  dramatis  personae  — 
the  masks  of  his  manikins,  with  the  poet  concealed  behind  the 
synthesis  of  those  masks. 

The  book  makes  another  point  with  which  I  happen  to  be  in 
complete  agreement.  Mr.  Skinner  believes  that  O'Neill's 
deepest  significance  lies  in  his  poetic  vision.  I,  too,  have  always 
felt  that  this  dramatist  has  been  injured  in  the  house  of  his 
friends  who  over-emphasize  such  plays  as  "Strange  Interlude" 
and  "Mourning  Becomes  Electra"  —  powerful  as  they  are  — 
and  see  less  of  import  in  other  plays  like  "Beyond  The  Hori 
zon"  (it  is  the  reviewer's  gratification  that  he  was  one  of  three 
committeemen  to  award  the  Pulitzer  Prize  to  that  drama), 


[  570  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"Marco  Millions,"  "The  Fountain,"  and  "Lazarus  Laughed." 
Among  the  early  one-acters,  I  think  "The  Moon  of  The 
Caribbees"  stands  out  for  excellence  just  because  it  poetizes  a 
realistic  theme.  The  very  title  implies  romantic  atmosphere. 
In  the  final  estimate,  O'Neill  will  survive  for  his  poetic  inter 
pretation  of  the  human  show.  Influenced,  doubtless,  by  the 
scientific  determinism  of  our  day,  and  adopting  the  current 
realism  of  theme  and  dialogue,  nevertheless,  O'Neill  is  at  his 
best  when  he  responds  to  that  lyric  cry  native  to  his  spirit.  It  is 
a  merit  of  the  Skinner  analysis,  it  seems  to  me,  that  he  is  aware 
of  this  and  appraises  the  work  accordingly. 

Mr.  Skinner's  ideology  is  colored  by  his  sense  of  spiritual 
realities,  and  for  this  reason  plenty  of  O'Neill  students  and 
critics  will  demur  to  a  treatment  which  insists  on  subjecting 
the  poet  to  concepts  which,  if  not  unfamiliar  to  him,  may  be 
to  those  who  would  appraise  his  work  and  worth.  I  for  one  am 
quite  willing  to  concede  Mr.  Skinner's  approach,  since  it 
results  in  a  sympathetic  comprehension  of  the  underlying 
meaning  of  the  twenty-odd  dramas  of  Eugene  O'Neill.  At 
times,  as  I  read,  I  almost  wonder  if  such  an  insight  as  is  here 
shown  may  not  reveal  O'Neill  to  himself!  The  author  tells  us 
that  it  was  agreed  between  O'Neill  and  himself  that  the  drama 
tist  was  not  to  see  the  manuscript  of  the  book  before  publica 
tion.  This  was  to  give  Mr.  Skinner  a  free  hand  when  he  strove 
to  offer  his  own  reaction  to  what  he  describes  as  the  "inner 
continuity"  of  the  plays.  These  deeply  suggestive  words  were 
written  by  dramatist  to  critic:  "Whatever  'inner  continuity' 
there  may  be  in  these  plays,  I  gladly  leave  to  you  to  unravel  — 
for  whether  I  shall  agree  with  you  or  not  ...  it  is  undoubt 
edly  true  that  an  author  is  not  always  conscious  of  the  deeper 
implications  of  his  writings  while  he  is  actually  at  work  on 
them,  and  perhaps  never  becomes  fully  aware  of  all  he  has 
revealed." 

One  more  word  as  to  the  method  used  in  unfolding  the 
thesis.  The  book  begins  with  several  preliminary  chapters  in 
which  the  author  clearly  places  O'Neill  in  his  marked  in 
dividualism  always  relative  to  his  changing  generation.  This  is 
ably  accomplished.  Then  follows  the  remainder  of  the  study 
in  which,  in  strict  chronologic  order,  the  plays  are  considered. 
A  valuable  part  of  this  sequent  analysis  lies  in  the  fact  that 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  571  ] 

the  playwright  has  given  Mr.  Skinner  a  detailed  statement  not 
only  of  the  years  of  composition,  but  of  the  very  months  or 
parts  of  the  given  year.  It  is  thus  disclosed  that  some  dramas 
had  several  drafts  before  completion:  "Days  Without  End," 
to  illustrate,  was  not  finished  until  a  final  fourth  draft  in  1933. 
It  is  impossible  to  rise  from  a  reflective  reading  of  such  a 
work  as  this  without  a  sense  of  gratitude  that  so  penetrating  a 
light  has  been  shed  upon  the  genius  of  a  man  so  often  baffling 
to  a  hasty  scrutiny,  or  to  an  examination  less  perceptive. 

RICHARD  BURTON 

NOTES  OF  DEATH  AND   LIFE.   By    Theodore  Morrison. 
Thomas  Crowell,  $2.00. 

MR.  THEODORE  MORRISON  has  both  the  naturalness 
of  the  born  poet  and  the  artistry  of  the  conscious  and 
schooled  craftsman.  His  poetry  has  accents  of  high  beauty, 
though  the  music  is  present  only  in  notes,  and  it  has  also  a 
high  seriousness,  though  that  seriousness  is  often  too  sober. 

In  his  second  volume  of  poetry,  "Notes  of  Death  and  Life," 
he  has  shown  again  his  absorption  in  the  serious  subjects 
common  to  poets  of  all  ages.  Though  we  cannot  be  "lovers  of 
death,"  he  says,  "death  is  no  tragedy  for  those  who  die," 
and  even  those  who  live  find  "our  thought  of  death  is  filial 
to  our  thought  of  life."  "Life  itself,"  he  proclaims  with  some 
thing  of  Santayana's  philosophy,  "contains  its  ideal  goal," 
and  to  this  goal  he  has  only  too  evidently  given  all  his  "weight 
of  solitary  thought,"  his  "own  hard  wrestling  with  the  world," 
all  that  he  counts  as  "fruits  of  mind." 

With  these  attitudes  toward  death  and  life  are  involved  Mr. 
Morrison's  hatred  of  war,  most  painfully  realized  in  "A  Lay 
Requiem,"  most  bitterly  satirized  in  "Thoughts  on  the 
Present  Discontent."  But  even  more  bitter  is  his  hatred  of  the 
economic  struggles  that  cripple  people  and  nations;  he  prays 
for  the  "more  honorable  death"  of  civil  war,  the  "glorious 
revolution  of  the  exploited."  His  indignation  at  war  and  in 
justice  is  nowhere  better  expressed  than  in  his  "Thoughts  on 
the  Present  Discontent";  and  the  publication  of  this  poem  in  a 
comparatively  new  and  radical  magazine  is  evidence  of  its 
very  real  and  pertinent  concern  with  modern  problems. 


[  572  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Mr.  Morrison  is  absorbed  also  in  the  forms  and  techniques  of 
verse  which  reach  back  into  the  past.  The  predominant  meter 
he  uses  is  blank  verse,  and  the  verse  patterns  in  the  short 
lyrics,  while  freshly  and  skilfully  used,  show  no  great  original 
ity.  For  Mr.  Morrison  is  wisely  content  to  express  his  own 
meditations  in  his  own  sincere  and  well-schooled  way.  That 
this  way  shows  the  discipline  of  careful  attention  to  form,  of 
respect  for  the  purity  and  dignity  of  the  English  language, 
is  to  be  admired;  that  it  shows  also  the  restrictions  and  weak 
nesses  of  outmoded  fashions  of  expression  is  to  be  regretted. 

That  absorption  in  the  poetry  of  the  past  which  colors  his 
poetry  unfortunately  distracts  one  from  it  to  the  poetry  of 
others.  If,  as  one  of  our  most  learned  literary  critics  has  said, 
the  mantle  of  Wordsworth  has  fallen  upon  Mr.  Morrison,  it 
may  be  even  more  true,  as  another  of  his  fellow  poets  has  con 
cluded,  that  "not  the  mantle  but  the  blanket,  the  carpet  of 
Wordsworth,  has  fallen  upon  him  and  almost  crushed  him." 
Not  only  can  the  very  patterns  of  that  carpet  be  discerned  in 
some  of  his  poems,  but  in  almost  all  of  them  can  be  found  the 
frayed  ends  of  poetry  of  another  day.  Mr.  Morrison's  ability  to 
use  hard  words,  homely  images,  telling  phrases,  such  as  "nasal 
drill,"  a  horse  "munching  his  oats  and  grain,"  a  man  "draw 
ing  the  bedclothes  round"  —  adds  definitely  a  vigorous  note 
of  reality  and  modernity  to  many  of  his  best  poems.  His  in 
ability  to  recognize  that  certain  other  terms  are  tag-ends  of 
worn-out  fashions  of  expression,  weakens  and  antiquates  and 
spots  others  of  his  verses.  It  is  distinctly  annoying  to  find  in  all 
too  many  of  his  poems  the  use  of  elisions,  and  of  obsolete 
phrases  and  terms  such  as  "thus  haply,"  "except  it  waft," 
"sole  amid,"  "passing  old,"  and  "vale."  Like  Wordsworth, 
Mr.  Morrison  is  too  given  to  the  use  of  high-sounding  abstrac 
tions  and  terms  such  as  "noble,"  "soberly,"  "pious";  like  Ar 
nold,  he  is  guilty  occasionally  of  a  stiff  pedantic  tendency  to 
pad. 

These  defects  of  Mr.  Morrison's  thinking  and  technique  are, 
it  seems,  so  obvious  to  the  modern  ear  and  mind  that  they  can 
not  be  disregarded,  and  are  better  recognized  so  that  they  may 
be  cleared  away  for  appreciation  of  his  virtues.  For  virtues, 
and  even  charms,  his  poetry  has  in  fine  and  solid  degree.  Mr. 
Morrison  is  a  poet  who  thinks  consciously  and  carefully;  and 


BOOK  REVIEWS  [  573  ] 

that  is  no  small  credit  in  these  days  of  cultivation  of  the  sub 
conscious,  the  abnormal,  the  merely  associated,  to  the  ex 
clusion  of  the  conscious,  the  healthy  and  the  logical.  He  has 
been  absorbed  in  the  great  human  problems  of  thinking  and 
living;  he  has  sought  and  found  replies 

"To  longing  that  cried  out  for  some  clear  way 
Toward  love  and  toward  high  effort." 

That  he  takes  his  thinking  and  his  poetry  too  seriously,  a 
common  fault  of  sober  young  poets,  is  obvious;  that  he  needs  to 
cultivate  and  reach  that  "playfulness,"  to  use  Robert  Frost's 
term,  which  is  the  result  of  the  objective  attitude  of  the  mature 
artist,  is  less  obvious  but  more  serious.  Despite  the  deep  and 
moving  sincerity  of  "A  Lay  Requiem,"  and  its  faithful  yet 
skilfully  modernized  use  of  the  classical  traditions  of  pastoral 
elegy,  the  whole  writing  of  the  poem  may  be  questioned;  for 
the  death  of  a  brother  by  cancer  is  too  near  a  man  for  him  to 
write  a  poem  about  it  that  moves,  without  making  uncomfort 
able  the  writer  and  the  reader. 

In  his  "Thoughts  about  the  Present  Discontent,"  Mr.  Mor 
rison  is  more  successful  in  his  mature  handling  of  material, 
and  most  successful  in  his  technique.  Here  can  best  be  seen  his 
effective  use  of  refrain.  The  repeating  and  re  weaving  of  phrases 
into  the  fabric  of  "A  Hymn  of  Earth,"  the  fine  picking  up 
and  circling  back  to  early  motifs  in  "The  Wood  Lily,"  are 
most  musical  and  lovely  —  and  are  evidence  of  that  apprecia 
tion  and  understanding  of  music  which  Mr.  Morrison  expresses 
with  rare  ability.  The  beautiful  free  rhythms  of  "The  Days  of 
Light,"  the  magical  simplicity  of  the  nature  lyric  "Kindred," 
the  swing  of  the  ballad  "Incident  of  a  Voyage  from  Amster 
dam  to  England,"  and  the  splendid  vigor  of  "Stanzas  for 
Epiphany,"  mark  Mr.  Morrison  as  a  poet  of  varied  and  skilful 
metrical  achievement. 

The  last  poem  is  the  most  original  and  interesting.  A  drink 
ing  and  Christmas  song,  its  combination  of  naive  Christian 
piety  and  pagan  love  of  drink  and  fellowship,  of  homely 
realism  — 

"Drink  a  bumper  to  the  donkey  and  to 
the  fleas  he  dwelt  amid" 

—  and  simple  beauty  and  dignity  such  as  the  couplet  — 


[  574  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

"Certain  shepherds  there  were  who  came  in  great  awe 
To  gaze  on  the  young  God  asleep  in  the  straw" 

—  make  it  a  joy  at  every  reading. 

And  while  Mr.  Morrison  is  guilty  of  writing  phrases  and 
whole  lines  of  pure  prose,  he  is  capable  also  of  writing  phrases 
and  verses  of  inevitable  Tightness,  freshness  and  loveliness.  Such 
phrases  come  most  often  when  he  is  describing  nature,  as 
when  he  says: 

"the  rainfall,  suddenly  ceasing,  opens  the  sky," 

"the  air  is  a  garment  worn  by  singing  birds," 

"the  dark-eaved  hemlock  forest"  mirror  their  "profiles  faint  in 

the  wavering  sheen  of  the  water;" 

"a  spray  of  snowy  music 

Blown  lightly  from  the  storm-bound  sparrow's  throat 

In  unconsidered  earthliness." 

His  images  are  fresh  and  often  startling:  "the  cold -eared 
stars,"  "the  salty  haycocks,"  "that  strange  glass,  the  eye,"  and 
"those  waxen  caves,  the  ear,"  the  "delicate  pander"  -  the 
bee  —  "booming  through  the  leaves."  As  beautiful  as  his 
passages  on  music  are  those  on  light  —  "Light  the  impalpable 
and  strange,"  "the  swift  of  foot,"  "shining  in  the  barriers  of 
the  sea."  He  manages  place  names  with  delight  and  musical 
skill. 

Such  phrases  are  evidence  of  the  natural  gift  of  the  poet; 
they  are  evidence  also  of  the  cultivated  perfection  of  the  artist. 
Mr.  Morrison's  music  is  not  always  sustained  but  it  is  always 
recurrent.  In  these  days  when  the  extremes  of  raw  and  sensa 
tional,  or  erudite  and  experimental  verse  are  preferred,  it  is 
good  to  be  able  to  congratulate  publishers  on  their  taste  and 
courage  in  printing  a  book  of  verse  so  finished  and  so  serious. 
It  is  satisfying  to  discover  a  poet  who,  if  he  goes  on  to  write 
verse  of  a  high  "playfulness,"  may  well  become  a  most  dis 
tinguished  writer. 

MILDRED  BOIE 


^  m 

Contributors'  Column 

Jesse  Stuart  ("Songs  of  a  Mountain  Plowman")  is  a  Kentucky  farmer 
and  school-teacher  who  is  rapidly  becoming  a  poet  of  considerable 
note.  He  is  the  author  of  "Man  with  a  Bull-tongue  Plow,"  and  we 
understand  that  he  is  contemplating  a  new  book  of  verse. 
Charles  Magee  Adams  ("Recovery  of  What?")  is  a  columnist  and  radio 
editor.  He  is  well-known  to  North  American  Review  readers  through 
a  long  series  of  articles  dealing  with  fundamental  problems  in 
present-day  American  life. 

Katharine  Fuller  ton  Gerould  ("An  Essay  on  Essays")  is  a  distinguished 
essayist  and  writer  of  short  stories.  She  is  the  author  of  "The  Aristo 
cratic  West"  and  other  volumes. 

Robert  P.  Tristram  Coffin  ("Going  after  the  Cows  in  a  Fog"),  whose 
novel  "Red  Sky  in  the  Morning"  has  recently  been  published  by 
Macmillan,  is  a  well-known  poet. 

Frank  Kent  ("New  Deal  Catharsis")  is  Editor  of  the  Baltimore  Sun. 
He  has  done  political  reporting  for  over  thirty-five  years,  and  is  the 
author  of  "The  Story  of  Maryland  Politics"  and  "The  Democratic 
Party:  History." 

George  Hull,  Jr.  ("Profit  Sharing")  is  the  son  of  the  George  Hull  of 
"Industrial  Depressions"  fame.  In  his  own  book,  "Perpetual  Pros 
perity:  the  Hull  Plan"  (to  which  William  Lyon  Phelps  wrote  the 
introduction)  he  outlines  his  ideas  for  a  wiser  capitalism. 
Josephine  Niggli  ("Mexico,  My  Beloved?')  is  a  young  playwright  who 
is  studying  with  the  Carolina  Playmakers  at  Chapel  Hill.  Her  home, 
however,  is  in  Monterrey,  Mexico;  and  Mexico,  "the  country  I  love 
so  much,"  is  the  subject  of  all  her  work. 

Philip  Stevenson  ("Mexican  Small  Town")  is  the  author  of  two  novels, 
"The  Edge  of  the  Nest"  and  "To  Saint  Luke's."  His  "God's  in  His 
Heaven"  has  been  produced  in  several  cities  by  the  Theatre  Union. 
Brooke  Waring  ("Martinez,  and  Mexico's  Renaissance")  is  herself  a 
talented  painter,  and  the  only  American  pupil  of  Alfredo  Martinez. 
She  has  done  several  murals;  and,  during  December,  her  paintings 
are  on  exhibit  at  the  Palace  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  in  San  Francisco. 
Margaret  Partridge  Burden  ("Name  Five  Venezuelan  Ventriloquists!") 
is  a  daughter  of  the  late  William  Ordway  Partridge,  the  distinguished 
sculptor.  She  is  a  student  of  painting,  and  has  worked  under  George 
Pierce  Ennis  and  other  American  teachers. 

Herbert  C.  Pell  ("Reorganizing  These  United  States")  is  a  former 
Member  of  Congress  and  New  York  Democratic  State  Chairman. 
He  is  at  present  engaged  mostly  in  writing. 

C575P 


[  576  ]  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

Joseph  Fulling  Fishman  ("Old  Calamity")  was,  for  more  than  ten 
years,  the  only  Inspector  of  Prisons  for  the  U.  S.  Government.  He  is 
the  author  of  several  books  on  prison  problems,  and  teaches  at  the 
New  School  for  Social  Research  in  New  York  City. 

Winfield  Townley  Scott  ("Where  Ignorant  Armies")  has  just  received 
the  Guarantors'  Award,  1935,  from  Poetry  magazine.  He  is  on  the 
staff  of  the  Providence  Journal,  and  of  the  English  Department, 
Brown  University.  We  do  not  know  whether  he  is  related  to  the 
general ! 

E.  H.  O'Neill  ("Modern  American  Biography")  is  a  regular  con 
tributor  to  the  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW.  His  history  of  American 
biography  has  just  been  published  by  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
Press. 

William  H.  and  Kathryn  Coe  Cor  dell  ("Unions  among  the  Unem 
ployed")  are  husband  and  wife.  Together  they  edit  a  yearly  anthol 
ogy  of  American  magazine  articles.  Mr.  Cordell's  "Dark  Days  Ahead 
for  King  Cotton"  appeared  in  our  September  issue. 

Frances  Frost  ("The  Plum  Tree")  is  a  poet  who  has  frequently 
honored  our  pages.  Readers  will  remember  her  "Road  through 
New  Hampshire"  which  we  published  last  June. 

Robert  Turney  ("Mahaley  Mullens")  is  a  former  PWA  worker  whose 
play,  ^'Daughters  of  Atreus,"  is  being  produced  by  the  Theatre 
Guild  this  winter.  He  has  studied  dramatics  at  Columbia,  the  Uni 
versity  of  Toronto,  in  Paris  and  in  Salzburg. 

STATEMENT  OF  THE  OWNERSHIP,  MANAGEMENT,  CIRCULATION,  ETC.,  REQUIRED 

BY  THE  ACT  OF  CONGRESS  OF  AUGUST  24,   1912, 
of  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW,  published  quarterly  at  Concord,  New  Hampshire,  for  October  1, 

STATE  OF  NEW  YORK     \ .... 
COUNTY  OF  NEW  YORK  /  8S- 

Before  me,  a  Notary  Public.  In  and  for  the  State  and  county  aforesaid,  personally  appeared  John 
Pell,  who,  having  been  duly  sworn  according  to  law,  deposes  and  says  that  he  is  the  Editor  of  the  NORTH 
AMERICAN  REVIEW,  and  that  the  following  is,  to  the  best  of  his  knowledge  and  belief,  a  true  statement 
of  the  ownership,  management,  etc.,  of  the  aforesaid  publication  for  the  date  shown  in  the  above  caption, 
required  by  the  Act  of  August  24,  1912,  embodied  in  section  411,  Postal  Laws  and  Regulations,  printed 
on  the  reverse  of  this  form,  to  wit: 

1.  That  the  names  and  addresses  of  the  publisher,  editor,  managing  editor,  and  business  managers  are: 
Publisher :jThe  North  American  Review  Corporation,  597  Madison  Ave.,  New  York,  N.  Y. ;  Editor:  John 
Pell,  597  Madison  Ave.,  New  York,  N.  Y.;  Managing  Editor:  James  H.  Van  Alen,  597  Madison  Ave., 
New  York,  N.  Y.;  Business  Manager:  Ira  A.  Kip,  Jr.,  597  Madison  Ave..  New  York,  N.  Y. 

2.  That  the  owners  are:  Edgar  B.  Davis,  Luling,  Texas;  Walter  B.  Mahony,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

3.  That  the  known  bondholders,  mortgagees,  and  other  security  holders  owning  or  holding  1  per  cent 
or  more  of  total  amount  of  bonds,  mortgages,  or  other  securities  are:  None. 

4.  That  the  two  paragraphs  next  above,  giving  the  names  of  the  owners,  stockholders,  and  security 
holders,  if  any,  contain  not  only  the  list  of  stockholders  and  security  holders  as  they  appear  upon  the 
books  of  the  company  but  also,  in  cases  where  the  stockholder  or  security  holder  appears  upon  the  books 
of  the  company  as  trustee  or  in  any  other  fiduciary  relation,  the  name  of  the  person  or  corporation  for 
whom  such  trustee  is  acting,  is  given;  also  that  the  said  two  paragraphs  contain  statements  embracing 
affiant's  full  knowledge  and  belief  as  to  the  circumstances  and  conditions  under  which  stockholders  and 
security  holders  who  do  not  appear  upon  the  books  of  the  company  as  trustees,  hold  stock  and  securitlee 
In  a  capacity  other  than  that  of  a  bona  fide  owner;  and  this  affiant  has  no  reason  to  believe  that  any  other 
person,  association,  or  corporation  has  any  interest  direct  or  indirect  in  the  said  stock,  bonds,  or  other 
securities  than  as  so  stated  by  him. 

JOHN  PELL,  Editor. 
Sworn  to  and  subscribed  before  me  this  30th  day  of  September,  1935. 

F.  M.  MCCLELLAND,  Notary  Public. 
(My  commission  expires  March  30,  1936.) 

SEAL]