The Unpopular review, January-June 1917

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THE

UNPOPULAR
REVIEW

PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

VOL. VII
JANUARY — JUNE

1917

LIBRARY

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1916

BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

Contents

VOLUME VII
No 13. JANUARY-MARCH, 1917

SOME SECOND THOUGHTS OF A SOBERED

PEOPLE Edward A. Bradford

THE CONSERVATION OF CAPACITY . . . Jesse Lee Bennett .

THE INGENUITY OF PARENTS .... Agnes K. Anderson *

THE ECONOMIC HYMN OF HATE . . . H. R. Mussey .

WHAT is THE MATTER WITH THE THEATER? Brander Matthews .

CEoipus AND JOB . Arthur W. Colton .

THE Two OPPOSING RAILROAD VALUATIONS Morrell W. Gaines .

As TO PARSONS Edward M. Chapman

Otto H. Luken
Edna B. Schwarzman
Calvin Thomas .
Franklin H. Giddings
Grant Showerman .
Mrs. John H. Curran and

12

84
98
"3
I3S
140

T
164

GERMAN TRUST LAWS AND OURS

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING ALONE .

NATURE, NURTURE AND NOVEL-WRITING

A DOUBLE ENTRY EDUCATION .

MODEST MODERNIST PAPERS, I. . .

THAT PATIENCE WORTH BABY ...

The" Editor . . . .179

CORRESPONDENCE: A Friend Who Helps. ^Esthetic Culture. The Sense of
Time and Rhythm — A Possible Subvention to Literature — A Counsel
of Perfection . 199

EN CASSEROLE: "Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?'* — Why It
Should Not be Quite so Proud — Gift-Books and Book-Gifts — Psychical
Research at Harvard — Opportunity — Endicott and I Burn Drift-
wood — The New Passion for the Drama — One Way of Being Fooled —
A Word to Contributors — More Fads in Writing — Hibrow — The
Eternal Boy 203

No 14. APRIL-JUNE, 1917

THE LAST BARBARIAN INVASION? . . The Editor 223

THE LEGEND OF GERMAN EFFICIENCY . Herbert F. Small . . . 230
THE WEAKNESS OF SLAVIC POLITY . . Alvin S. Johnson . . . 243

THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRY A. Hamilton Church . .251

MODEST MODERNIST PAPERS, II. . . . Grant Showerman . . . 273

THE RIGHT TO LIFE A. G. Keller 286

SELF-ADVERTISING .... . . June E. Downey . . . 302

SOME FUNDAMENTALS OF PRISON REFORM O. F. Lewis 314

MAKING Too MUCH PROFIT .... Perry Rush Cobb . . .327

ON BEING A PROFESSOR Carl Becker 342

ON BEING A HERMIT Miss C. F. Richardson . . 362

THE JOURNALIZATION OF AMERICAN LIT-
ERATURE F. L. Pattee 373

THE "CONSPIRACY "SUPERSTITION . . P. W. Slosson .... 395

SOME NEW LIGHT ON THE FUTURE LIFE? The Editor 408

CORRESPONDENCE: Pedagogy Even Once More — Mania Editorum — A
Correction — A Nut for Psychical Researchers — Faculty Athletic

Committees 422

EN CASSEROLE: Some War Forecasts — The Total Depravity of Type —
The Tyranny of Talent — The Scarcity of Paper — Teaching Greek
and Latin — The Passing of Mr, De Morgan — Looking the Part —
The Real Feminist Ideal — A Columbia Number — Queries and Cuck-
oos— Things that Need Remedying 429

/L79718

The Unpopular Review

No. 13 JANUARY — MARCH, 1917 VOL. VII

SOME SECOND THOUGHTS OF A SOBERED

PEOPLE

THE election is over, and there arises the usual babel
of explanations. Yet who certainly knows which
particular issues caused the result? The answer cannot
be found in any relation between the platforms and the
votes. The platforms were hardly mentioned, and in
some respects were openly flouted. In our politics the
candidates have become the platforms to such an extent
that one function of the convention system has been
outgrown, and survives only as a basis of false pretenses
to the electorate. The election of President Wilson to
succeed himself is the one sure lesson of the election, what-
ever that lesson may teach. Everywhere he was stronger
than his party, and never did a President reach the White
House with freer hands than he in his second term. Be-
yond this all else is chaos. The woman suffragists threat-
ened both parties with four million votes, but where were
they shown in operation? Illinois is the only State which
reports woman votes separately. Illinois gave Hughes
his greatest plurality, next to Pennsylvania, but Wilson
carried ten of the eleven transmississippi woman suffrage
states. The demonstration of sex solidarity is obscure,
but so far as it is discoverable it went against the candi-
date of the women. There are more union votes in and
near New York than anywhere else, perhaps than every-
where else. But it was in the Eastern industrial states
that the labor candidate was weakest. There is hardly
a chemical trace of the influence of the German vote on
the final result, however it may be traced in a few locali-

I

2 The Unpopular Review

ties. These are small inconsistencies compared with the
grand fact that the strongest voterthe Democrats ever
cast does not give them the House of Representatives.
It is still doubtful that the Republicans have a reliable
majority over the Democrats, but it seems sure that the
balance of power lies with the scattering vote. A curious
sidelight upon the working of our institutions is shown
by the fact, as it seems at the time of writing, that Hughes
gets the votes of Minnesota by a total of about 300 voters,
or an average of 25 for each electoral vote, although the
whole State averaged about 30,000 for each electoral vote.
It is useless to attempt to reconcile the votes of Wisconsin
for Hughes and Lafollette, the Reactionary and the
Progressive. Wilson carried California by about 3,ooo,
the exact figures still being subject to correction. Johnson
carried California by nearly 300,000. The entire result
would have been altered for all the United States if there
had been loyal cooperation between Johnson and Hughes,
and between the Republicans and the Progressives. Most
of the foregoing contrasts are of a post-mortem nature.
Most interest for forward looking observers lies in the
new alignment between the comparatively backward
South and the somewhat premature West. There's
little hope for the conservative East if those two sections
are to unite against it. False starts in that direction
were made in the Granger movements of the 70' s and 8o's,
and the silver movement. The country united for the
rejection of those heresies. There now arises the question
how the country will comport itself toward the alignment
of those sections upon the Progressive movement. Will
the leaven of the East prevail as before? Or will the
Wilson Republicans finally conquer the Hughes Demo-
crats? It would seem that a clue to the answer may be
found in the results locally of the Progressive policies
which have been adopted in the States and the cities, and
which now are proposed for the country by the promoters
of Progressive reforms,

Second Thoughts of a Sobered People 3

Oregon is the "extremes!" example of the initiative,
referendum, recall, and most similar devices for the rule
"of the people, by the people, for the people." An
apology should be offered for the use of the honored phrase
in the light of the experience of the working of the ma-
chinery: for the operation of it belies the argument for
its adoption. The referendum is no novelty in American
affairs: since the earliest times many constitutions and
many specific laws have depended upon popular votes.
But that is something different from the institution of
direct legislation as a practice. According to Oregon
authority, that was first done in Oregon by the vote of
1902 establishing that system of lawmaking by 62,024 to
5,668. The legislation in this manner began in 1904 and
gained headway in proposals, but lost headway in per-
centage of approval. This reaction from wholesale
legislation by the people is well brought out in the fol-
lowing table:

Years Proposals Percentages adopted
1904 3 ico

1905 ii 73

1908 29 63

1910 32 28

1912 37 27

I9H 29 H

In other words the voters struck against being overworked
by the politicians. In 1912 Presidential year in Oregon
there were numerous candidates on national, state, county,
district, city, and precinct tickets. Besides, there were
proposals of legislation containing 932 square inches of
solid print. It is not within human power to vote wisely
upon such avalanches of proposals. They make a mockery
of short ballot reform, and demand a remedy. The local
advice to those overwhelmed by these political conun-
drums had several formulas. Examples are: "When in
doubt vote no," "Vote no on everything," and "Vote on
nothing."

4 The Unpopular Review

In the adjoining State of Washington experience was
similar. The Indianapolis News, a journal sympathetic
toward anything labelled reform, sent one of the editors
to investigate the working of the system in Oregon and
Washington, and he reported that in both States the over-
loaded "direct legislators" were ridding themselves of
their load by leaving it by the roadside. He illustrated
the reason of the breakdown of the system by telling how
it worked in Seattle:

In the last year and a half Seattle has had an almost constant
series of elections. Last year in February came the non-
partisan municipal primaries, then in March the municipal
election, then between March and September a school election,
and constant and vigorous agitation for the recall of the newly
elected Mayor. In September came the statewide primary, in
November the State and National election, in December the
port of Seattle election, and in June this year again another port
election. One of the most important elections on this list was
the last election, in which the people were called to approve or
to reject different proposals on the $20,000,000 harbor work.
Only twenty per cent of the people went to the polls.

In Wisconsin the case is similar. In 1912, Colonel
Roosevelt gave a certificate of character to Wisconsin
politics in these words :

Thanks to the movement for genuinely democratic popular
government which Senator La Follette led to overwhelming
victory in Wisconsin, that State has become literally a labora-
tory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social
and political betterment of the people as a whole.

At the next election in 1914, the people rejected one
hundred per cent of the proposals, the same clean score
that Oregon made of approvals in the first flush of en-
thusiasm over the rule of the people. The voters were so
thoroughly sick of "laboratory" work that they rejected
all ten proposals by majorities ranging from 56,060 to
105,825. This is interesting because several of the pro-
posals resemble those pending in New York State, such as

Second Thoughts of a Sobered People 5

home rule for cities, excess condemnation, State insurance,
and others. The proof of the pudding being in the eating,
it is noteworthy that the voters were gratified when the
Governor elected at that election announced an economy
of $8,000,000, in the expenses run up in the name of reform
under the La Follette regime. Whatever the merit of the
laboratory work, the voters thought that, with an increase
of expenses from $4,000,000 to $16,000,000, it came too
high, and they welcomed a reduction by half as heartily as
they rejected the proposals for continuing the good work.

Missouri also made a clean score of rejection of fifteen
proposals by majorities ranging between 40,000 and
292,000, in a poll including seventy per cent of the voters
in the preceding Presidential rejection. That is, the votes
on the rejections were more truly representative than the
votes on the approvals in the other laboratory states.
This was the election in which the people of Missouri
rejected by 324,000 to 159,000 the full crew law which
the Missouri legislature had passed, and which the recent
New York legislature considered without repealing.

Arizona defeated a conspicuous labor class measure -
an anti-blacklist law. This year San Francisco cast the
first popular vote approving the "open shop" by amend-
ing the charter so as to prevent "picketting" and similar
union measures to deprive non-unionists of their rights as
citizens.

California was one of the states which rejected an eight-
hour proposal, one of the demands in the pending railway
wage dispute. Indeed in this most progressive state the
referendum itself was turned to reactionary use. The
progressives enacted an anti-alien land law bill, and a
referendum was petitioned upon it. This disgusted
Governor Johnson, who vouched for the bill as "drastic."
He was so sure that it was popular that he declared that
any man who voted against it was "either an idiot or
bought." Such family troubles are frequent enough
among wealthy malefactors, who are actuated by original

6 The Unpopular Review

sin, but it supplies food for thought when the progressives
say such things of their own proposals, and turn against
each other the spear which knows no brother.

What is true of the states is true of smaller divisions of
government. Take for example the commission form of
government of cities, which at first spread like wildfire.
It is said that three hundred cities placed themselves
under this form of government, and it was a boast that
none, having adopted it, had ever reconsidered it. Recent
cases of rejection of the innovation are numerous. Among
them may be mentioned Minneapolis, and Sunbury, Sham-
okin, and Mount Carmel in Pennsylvania. The most
conspicuous case of all is Denver. After a trial of some
years it returned to the Mayoral form of government
on May 20. The New York Sun's despatch from Denver
said "the reversion from the Commission form of govern-
ment demonstrated that the intelligent voters decided
that municipal government is primarily a business and
economic problem, not a political problem to be handled
by politicians, dreamers, and reformers. There are many
psychological reasons that helped bring about the rever-
sion, but the economic problem was the basic reason. The
test of four years under the commission form has shown a
constant increase annually in the cost of administration,
with little or no money going for permanent improvements.
The reasons for the rejections are various, but include un-
happy experiences. The great increase of expenses in
Milwaukee, Trenton, and Nashville was the cause of the
disillusion in those cases. Nashville was placed in a
receivership, and has been cited as the climax of misrule
in city government. The Commissioners built up a
political machine, looted the city, and defied recall. One
set of officials succeeded another until citizens could not
tell to whom to pay taxes.

There is nothing peculiar to the United States in these
second thoughts. Across the border, in Canada, notice

Second Thoughts of a Sobered People 7

was taken of the early enthusiasm of prosperity through
the ballot in Oregon, and a referendum was ordered on the
adoption of the referendum. But the craze had passed its
climax, and only nine per cent of the electorate voted.
Thirty per cent was necessary, and the result was a re-
jection: for only six per cent favored it.

The instances of reversals of opinion, without the re-
jection of the reform proposals, are among the oddities of
politics. In Seattle, where there is woman suffrage, the
women and the ministers secured the recall of "Hi" Gill
on local issues not worth stating, with the result that
"Hi" was re-elected at the next opportunity, chiefly
because of the woman vote. In Tacoma the women and
the saloon keepers secured the recall of Mayor Fawcett,
and at the next election re-elected him. Sentiment rather
than sense controls such oddities; and where people have
had experience they do say that new bonnets will control
the female vote as well as bank notes will control the male
vote.

That the reform proposals are as capable of being
prostituted as the older forms of popular government is
illustrated by an experience in Ohio. The liability com-
panies which disliked the workmen's compensation law
used against it the referendum, after they had opposed the
adoption of the referendum. The manner of its use would
have been a credit in the days and manners of the ward
heeler system. Cents bought signatures to the petition
for the referendum, and in a single night eight hundred
were secured in the "resort district" of Cincinnati. Sig-
natures were forged by wholesale, and petitions were
stolen by burglary after they had been filed. Charges
like these were made by Governor Cox, and were sustained
in the courts.

Such is some of the evidence that the people become re-
actionary upon becoming surfeited with progressive ex-

The Unpopular Review

periments. The reason why their second thoughts on the
new political playthings are "different," is the discovery
that there are no shortcuts to perfect government, and
that there are no substitutes for — nothing under any
form of government "equally as good," as — oversight of
the people's business by the people. No suggestion is made
that the new methods are not capable of giving good re-
sults. But they give no guarantees of working as prom-
ised. The reason for reaction is that the people are
more conservative than reformers, and that they mark
the difference between promise and performance.

Reverting to Oregon as a horrible example, it is apropos
to cite — as the Oregon journals cite, the contrast between
experience and the pretense upon which the reforms were
obtained. In 1902 the Oregonian recapitulated among
reasons for the adoption of the referendum, that it "would
be an obstacle to too much legislation, to partisan ma-
chine legislation, and to boss-rule." As to quantity of
legislation, the record has been given above. The quality
of legislation has been much the same as under the old
system, the politicians being able to deceive the people by
using the people's weapons against the people. Thus in
1910, the people enacted by a direct vote an amendment
to the constitution taking all tax powers from the legisla-
ture, and vesting it solely in the people. The only power
left to the legislature regarding taxation was to propose
measures which could become effective only by vote of the
people.

That has been contested up to the Federal Supreme
Court upon two grounds. First, it was argued that direct
legislation abolishes representative government, and es-
tablishes taxation without representation; secondly, tax-
ation by direct legislation deprives those taxed of property
without due process of law. If those propositions are
established, it follows that Oregon is deprived of a Repub-
lican form of government. The Supreme Court dismissed
the cases, for the reason that the court lacked jurisdiction

Second Thoughts of a Sobered People 9

to decide issues suitable to be decided only by the political
department of government. It is a political question
whether a State has a republican or constitutional form
of government, and should be decided by Congress, not
by the courts. This leading case involves the status of all
such legislation, and it is to be remarked that the merits
have not been decided. The arguments have never been
passed upon by competent authority. It is open to those
who dislike such legislation to rely upon the obiter dicta
of the judges who discredited such innovations when re-
fusing jurisdiction.

The last word has not yet been said. Two Senators,
Bourne and Chamberlain, were seated at Washington
during the pendency of these proceedings, and therefore
without the consideration of questions which Congress left
to the courts, and which the courts have referred to Con-
gress with expressions of unfavorable opinion. The point
is interesting because there is Oregon authority for the
statement that those Senators were elected by popular vote
and by procedure designed to make their election sure,
in evasion of the legislature's action. A later amendment
of the Federal constitution cures this defect in the election
of other Senators, but the point survives in Oregon and
other States, respecting other "progressive" proposals
which do not rest upon amendments of the Federal con-
stitution. This is the account of the situation in Oregon as
outlined in the Oregon Voter, of Portland, by Mr. L. B.
Smith, who concludes that there are "grave dangers in
continuing farther upon principles admittedly doubtful."

No state which has acted in the manner of Oregon can
be sure that its laws are laws before Congress has decided
the political issues, and the courts have decided the con-
stitutional issue. Take for example the "blue sky" laws
which have been passed in twenty-seven states, and in
some of them by the progressive machinery of enactment.
Ohio's law was passed under a constitutional amendment,
and this month was declared unconstitutional. The same

io The Unpopular Review

fate previously befell laws of the same sort forbidding the
sale of wildcat securities, in Michigan, Iowa, South
Dakota, and West Virginia. The point is not that "blue
sky" laws, any more than much other progressive legis-
lation, are objectionable, or cannot be worked but that it
is not prudent, through enthusiasm for virtue, to neglect
the ordinary safeguards of conservative procedure.

In many cases the accelerators of social progress have
simply stumbled over themselves in their haste. They
have sometimes tried to do by politics what it is only
proper or practicable to do by ethics. Conduct can be
regulated by the police power, but discretion in economics
and politics cannot be conferred by statute. The relations
between labor and capital, the questions of excessive
hours and deficient pay, the attempt to regulate private
business whenever "affected by public interests," are
rather matters of social and moral nature than of law.
Majorities have not always the right to enact their will,
even for a good end, and with the best of motives. If ma-
jorities could enact their will unrestrained, the law could
have no stability: whenever the majorities changed, the
law would change; whoever controlled majorities could
enact folly, injustice, revenge. Not all old things are good,
but old things embody the wisdom of generations, and
there is usually a reason for their defects. The idea that
constitutions are laws, and may be changed at will when-
ever majorities wish to make laws, is at war with our
institutions. The idea that the voice of the people is the
voice of God, and that what the people order is right
because the people order it, has been revised by the peo-
ple themselves. In many cases experience has shown
them their folly and the unwisdom of their leaders. Once
more it is established that the people are conservative.

This reactionary trend in national affairs has caused
more and more delegates to the national conventions
to be commissioned without instruction. What is the

Second Thoughts of a Sobered People 1 1

interpretation of this fact? Is it not clear that the people
thought that their delegates upon assembling could make
a wiser choice than the people themselves, and that they
were left without instructions in order that they might
make their choice upon their responsibility? That is the
theory of representative government, for which it has been
sought to substitute democratic government, which the
people refuse to accept or to exercise.

And yet so little is this appreciated that many leading
journals, including the World and the Sun, are proposing
that the electoral college should be abolished, and that
there should be substituted for it a direct popular vote
for President. The suggestion is that the electoral college
is aristocratic, undemocratic, and that the people should
rule directly. Yet it has been shown that now as in the
eighteenth century the people reject what is proposed.
After a century's trial the verdict of experience is that
representative government is better than democratic,
if the meaning of democratic is that everybody shall vote
upon everything. They simply will not do it, and cannot
be made to. They are too much concerned in their own
affairs to give the necessary attention to the affairs of
government. It is enough to ask the people to determine
the broad lines of policy. Details would be better at-
tended to by representative experts. Reelection of
deserving representatives is an easier road to good govern-
ment than the recall of officials for no better reason than
a shift of popular sentiment. There is no surer road to
political efficiency than the methods which have proven
successful in economic and industrial managements.
The people would be happier if they allowed the politicians
to trouble them less, retaining nevertheless the power
to intervene whenever the politicians deserve correction.

THE CONSERVATION OF CAPACITY

w

HEN President Wilson announced to Congress in
his message of 1915:-

I take it for granted that I do not need your authority to
call into systematic consultation with the directing officers of
the army and navy, men of recognized leadership and ability -

no protesting voice was raised against his assumption.
Yet earlier American statesmen might have considered
the assumption a most dangerous one, and protested
strenuously against it. That complete distrust of author-
ity which actuated the makers of the Constitution, and
was the keynote of Congressional oratory in the first half-
century of our national life, has curiously disappeared in
our present tendency toward greater national centraliza-
tion. Some of the eighteenth century fetiches must ap-
pear to our present statesmen as dingy, discolored, and
no longer worthy of worship.

Mr. Martin H. Glynn, former Governor of New York,
focuses our attention upon one eighteenth-century idol
that seems less imposing than once it did. He says:

The American ideal that "All men are born free and equal
and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,"
etc., was set out in the Declaration of Independence, not as
anything new, but as the affirmation of a well-settled principle
that had been violated by British aggression. It had long been
held that in a state of nature men were in a condition of " perfect
freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions
as they see fit, within the bounds of the laws of nature." Our
Declaration of Independence reaffirmed this principle. . .

This is the reiteration of a grandiose proclamation so
familiar that the mind receives it almost without scrutiny
or examination. The underlying principles of modern
social speculation are so opposed to it that we do not
immediately see that connection between it and Mr.

12

The Conservation of Capacity 13

Wilson's statement which would have been instantly
apparent to our suspicious forbears.

To-day we are beginning to ask: Is that "principle"
really true? In this world of ours has there ever been a
"state of nature" in which men moved without the leave
of those stronger, wiser, more determined or more cunning
than themselves ? Does it not seem more in line with the
basic elementary facts of life, as we know it and see it
about us, that, almost from the very beginning, any de-
sirable thing — feather, food, cave, wife — has been
taken from the weak by the strong; the time of the weak
used either for the benefit of those who could master and
exploit him, or for the common benefit by those who
could master and guide him? Is civilization not to be
distinguished from barbarism simply by the abridgment
of the "perfect freedom" of the man of narrow range into
concerted effort under the direction of those of wider
vision than himself?

If to find abstractions upon which to found states, and
by which to weigh the laws of those states, it is really
necessary to speculate upon the conditions of primitive
life, certainly biologists and anthropologists might profit-
ably be called into consultation with the slightly over-
speculative Jean Jacques Rousseau and his somewhat in-
dividual conceptions of a " state of nature."

To the anthropologist it is much more likely to appear
that the very origin and beginning of all society is to be
traced back to the greater strength of a few, and the use
of that strength to weld men together into some sort of
organization, if it were but slavery. The strong have
always taken that which they desired from the weak, and
authority and discipline — the spinal column of civiliza-
tion, without which there can be no organized human
life — developed in their most elementary and rudimen-
tary forms when the controlling few saw the desirability
of a greater cohesiveness in the tribe, either to accomplish

14 The Unpopular Review

tasks for their sustenance or pleasure, or to conquer other
tribes possessing less solidarity. The original gregarious
anarchy — if it ever existed, save as with beasts in the
jungle — disappeared very quickly as the bands of men
became larger, the food scarcer, or some women or things
more desirable than others. And than that, probably no
one fact is more clear to those who see that any brother-
hood of man is a thing which must be achieved, and not
a thing which has been lost — to those who see life with-
out either rose or gray glasses, and who find "a gloomy
truth a better companion through life than a cheerful
falsehood."

Against the great background of history, the "master"
type — the man who bends his fellows to his will, creates
discipline and wields authority — stands out sharply and
clearly. In his very earliest manifestations he was an
unconscious instinctive instrument of evolution, prepar-
ing the way for civilization. With the development of
intelligence and morality, however, he gradually evolves
into two distinct types — the despoiler and the leader —
alike in their ability to gain power over their fellow-men,
but antithetically opposed in the impulses that actuate
them and in the uses to which their power is put when
gained.

The reformer, the idealist — types developed in the
security and protection created by the strong — generally
fail to recognize this division of the "master" type.
The reformer lives in a very simple world, and does
not often split any of his abstractions. He was at his
greatest ascendency during the period in which Mr.
Glynn's "principle" was considered as "well-established."
Lifted to momentary power because of widespread revolt
against the selfishness of unworthy monarchs, he almost
made men believe that all history is reducible to the
simple terms of an abstraction "man," deprived of an
abstraction "liberty" by an abstraction "the conqueror."
From such an interpretation of history, the logical deduc-

The Conservation of Capacity 15

tion is inevitable: to secure universal happiness, it is nec-
essary simply to remove or to enchain the "conqueror,"
to restore "liberty," and to permit homogeneous and
approximately uniform masses of men to govern them-
selves by representatives duly chosen. But a century and
a half of experimentation along such lines forces, even
upon the idealist, the realization that the abstraction
"man," far from being simple and comprehensible, is a
synthesis of diversities infinitely more remarkable than
the myriad shades and colors that are synthetized into
the abstraction "light." But even now the idealist and
reformer will not learn that the "master" type is but one
of the colors of the spectrum of "man," not a thing dis-
tinct and apart. Confronted by very hard facts he would
have us believe that new "conquerors" have arisen, or old
ones burst their chains. Our great industrial leaders, our
captains of industry, he tells us, are the "conquerors" of
to-day. Representative democracy has simply altered the
form of conquest and power. A new revolt must be or-
ganized, a new social system evolved, to fetter them anew.
Thus our contemporary reformers are preaching an
interpretation of history slightly more complex than that
of their eighteenth-century forerunners. They now vir-
tually proclaim that the "conqueror" cannot be destroyed.
A very avatar of Jove, he is able to change his form at
need, to assume any shape essential to his conquest under
the changing conditions of life. Civilization must evolve
ever stronger and more elaborate weapons with which
to fight him. Conquered personally by the combined
strength of other men, he developed armed bands to
support him, and lived a merry life of Jpillage;" overcome
by greater bands, he was discovered in possession of the
soil when population had grown to the point where
possession of the soil was all important; removed from
possession of the soil, when the dust had cleared away,
and capital and the machinery of production had become
more important than land, he was found in possession of

1 6 The Unpopular Review

them. The various current panaceas, we are told, will,
by industrial evolution or revolution, take from him his
capital and factories, but we must expect him, sooner or
later, smilingly to emerge in the possession of some new,
unthought-of, but most necessary and desirable thing
which changed conditions shall have created. Chasing
and fighting him has been, and will be, the great sport of
history. But, not until the millennium, may we ever
expect him to be finally enmeshed.

In this ingenuous explanation of history, it will be ob-
served that the "conqueror" must be fought because he is
in possession of something or other. The fact that he may
possibly be the one best fitted to utilize that something
or other for the general good is nowhere developed; neither
is the fact that that something or other might never be
discovered or utilized at all unless discovered and utilized
by him. Nor is there developed the possibility that the
so-called "conqueror" may be a manifestation of the
creative principle at work in man; that, having not only
natural forces to direct and control, but the inertia of the
non-creative types to overcome as well, he must first gain
power to enforce discipline, and cannot direct his every
act by idealistic niceties, or by the notions of inert and
sedentary critics.

It appears that Machiavelli, so many centuries ago,
had clearer vision than have our reformers of the day.
He was able to see that the concept "man" is infinitely
divisible, that the "conqueror" is one of the types of
"man" and not a bogie existing without that concept.
Machiavelli declared that:

In the capacities of mankind there are many degrees: one
man understands things by means of his own natural endow-
ments; another understands things when they are explained
to him; and the third can neither understand things of himself
nor when they are explained by others. The first are rare and
exceptional, the second have their merit, but the last are wholly
worthless.

The Conservation of Capacity 17

Mr. Wells, whose social theories have developed during
two decades from an almost anarchic radicalism to his
present pleas for the conservation of "the quality of the
quarter-deck," elaborates Machiavelli's differentiations.
In a very interesting chapter of The Modern Utopia,
Mr. Wells speaks of the Creative, the Kinetic, and the
Dull, but he illuminates the subject by adding to these
the Base> who may come from any of the three divisions,
and represent the negative and evil manifestations of life.
The Base Creative, it will be instantly recognized, evokes
the strictures of the reformer. He is the "conqueror."
Unquestionably the type has existed and does exist, but
that very ethical nature of man of which the reformer and
the idealist are manifestations, long ago developed to the
point where it can hold the Base Creative strongly in
check. To-day the "conqueror" is hedged in by suspi-
cions and restrictions, and only rarely, — and then not for
long, — is he able to manipulate the levers of the greatest
power. Seldom does he gain even a momentary accept-
ance by the leaders, the positive Creative types.

Since the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs none of
the greatest and most powerful figures among men have
represented the unadulterated greed and selfishness of
the earliest primitive chieftains (and even in the vain-
glorious Mesopotamian inscriptions is seen a developing
ethical sense). From Caesar on, the great historic masters
of men have evinced a "decent regard for the opinions of
mankind," and have expressed allegiance to ethical con-
cepts not only in words but in actions. The brutal,
bestial tyrants among civilized peoples, have been those
inheriting and not acquiring power. And only the docility
and supineness of men have 'permitted their crimes and
vagaries.

The speculative philosophy of the future will probably
divide and redivide and subdivide Mr. Wells' classifica-
tions, growing ever further away from any conception
of men as in any way alike in innate capacity. It will

1 8 The Unpopular Review

probably recognize the validity of the protests of the
idealist against the "conqueror," the base creative, and
will attempt to reduce his power for evil to the min-
imum. It will not, however, endorse the idealist's refusal
to recognize the "master" or "leader" to whom we owe
our civilization. Far from removing or enchaining such
men, it will seek to utilize their great abilities for the
common good to the utmost.

In those parliaments of the world that have developed
naturally and with no definite break with evolutionary
force, the leaders are represented because they founded
the governments of which the parliaments are growths.
In our American parliament they are represented only
indirectly by the governing machinery they own or con-
trol. There is no recognition of their existence as a type,
nor of their claims to greater influence in our government
than other men have. Our constitution was too much
a reaction against the reformer's bogie "conqueror."
Proclamations of abstract right had so convinced us that
our Revolution had given him his final quietus, that,
during all the time the will of the "despoiler" and even,
sometimes, the will of the "leader," dominated our
counsels, we comforted ourselves with the wish-befathered
thought that neither existed, and that the concept "man"
was the simple thing the reformer would have us believe
it to be.

Probably the greatest fundamental fact in the English
democracy is that since William the Conqueror established
his quintessential autocracy, the developing system of
government has represented no absolute break with the
past. It has used logic, but has never builded upon a
complete and definite logical system: it has remained in
many ways illogical and mysterious, like life itself. From
the central seat of authority established in the primitive
and unreasoned way by force, the individual has snatched
ever and ever greater liberty by the use of force or by the

The Conservation of Capacity 19

show of strength. All the essential rights enjoyed by the
English, for good or for evil, have been won by men with
weapons in their hands — men tempering the authority
of the master by the use of his own qualities of force and
vision. Might has remained the social amalgam, however
differently distributed from generation to generation.
And the master type has enjoyed, whenever and wherever
recurring, an accepted voice in the national life. The King,
remaining to-day possibly only as a race representative, a
symbol of the past or a mystic figure-head, can, even so,
admit to the upper house and its powers, every new comer
with broader chest or bigger brain who has won mastery
over large numbers of his fellows, gained power, and
proved his possession of the quality of leadership. Price
Collier gives figures and dates to prove his assertions
that: —

The present House of Lords is conspicuously and predomi-
nantly a democratic body chosen from the successful of the land.

and

Strange as it may seem, there is no assembly where a man
could go — granted that all the peers were present — where he
would be more certain of getting sound advice upon every
subject, from higher mathematics and abstruse law down to
the shoeing of a horse or the splicing of a cable.

In the evolving English Constitution, the hereditary
feature of the House of Lords, may, some day, be removed,
and the body reduced to a fixed number. But, however
it may change externally, the fundamental principle of
such an upper house will doubtless remain as long as
England herself.

In America we have developed very differently. The
rights the individual enjoys in America were given to him
by wise men with pamphlets in their hands, and logic and
idealism in their heads. In our Constitutional Convention
a great nation of civilized men was founded upon a

20 The Unpopular Review

written constitution based upon abstract ideas. In that
constitution was embodied, without doubt, all that the
wisdom and idealism of many wise and good men could
abstract from history to serve for the glory of the new
nation, the happiness and best interests of its citizens,
the wholesome progress of the race, and as a model to all
mankind. And it has worked — it has succeeded. Against
all the prophecies of those opposing it, against increasingly
difficult and unimagined conditions, the constitution, so
written, has worked wonderfully well. It commands the
admiration of the world.

The greatest purpose of that constitution was to pro-
tect the nation from any possibility of the idealist's
bogie "the conqueror"; to prevent the exercise of power
or authority save by those duly entrusted with it by the
people. Even in that purpose it has been successful. It
has prevented the disruption of the state by the unscru-
pulous or the ambitious, it has prevented injustice to the
weak at the hands of the strong to any such degree as
have arisen under other systems. But it has not prevented
the securing of great power either by the base creative
or by the authentic creative. And to the degree in which
it has not done so, the fact must be faced that in English
government the changes have been somewhat contin-
uously away from an original materialism toward the
idealistic direction of greater liberty; the changes in
American government have been somewhat continuously
away from an original idealism toward the recognition of
the existence of materialistic forces by attempts to reg-
ulate them. Sometimes they are selfish, greedy, ruthless
forces; sometimes irrepressible evolutionary, constructive
forces, but in either case forces which the constitution had
not sufficiently considered.

In England the strength of the despoiler, who has arisen
by greed or cunning, is somewhat lessened by putting him
in conspicuous place and under the elaborate restrictions
of an aristocratic regime: the constructive force of the

The Conservation of Capacity 2 1

leader — to whom power is but a necessary preliminary to
usefulness — is utilized by permitting the outlet into con-
structive channels of his capacity to lead and direct real
men in a real world for the common good. In America,
no distinction between them being recognized, resentment
has been felt toward both types, and during the past few
decades, the direct participation in governmental activities
by either has been prevented as far as possible. Under
the spell of the eighteenth-century fetiches, the master,
whether for good or bad, has appeared a parasitic growth
on the body politic, not a component part of it which
could be made to work for the good of the whole. Since
the development of the widely-discussed, world-famous
American fortunes and enterprises, the greater the busi-
ness success of an American, the more difficult has been
his entrance into the ranks of the elected representatives
of the people. The Senate became a "rich men's club"
before the people took hold. The successful American
was in possession of things universally desired, therefore
he was the bogie "conqueror" bursting his chains, and
therefore he was an enemy of "man."

The two natural results of this condition require no
comment. There arose the inevitable ownership of the
Senate and legislatures by railroad and express companies,
to the consequent obstruction of wholesome progressive
legislation, and there arose the inevitable growth in
country estates and city palaces of the utterly parasitic
life of arrant hedonism of those who found themselves
with wealth, power, leisure, but with the utilization of
any of their constructive powers — of their wisdom or
experience — prevented by a distrustful electorate.

There is no particularly marked change in the public
attitude even yet, but there are certain straws which
indicate the direction of a changing wind of public opinion
which may finally veer so greatly as to permit a wiser
utilization of certain great constructive forces in our

2 2 The Unpopular Review

national life upon which too great a pressure has been
kept heretofore. The sort of distrust felt toward Vander-
bilt or Huntington or Harriman does not seem quite so
much in evidence now. For the past few years there has
been considerable interest in the writings, views and
comments of such men as Mr. J. J. Hill and Judge Gary.
Editors begin to give greater space to the opinions of
those very successful men whose success has not been
malodorous, and a reaction from the muckraking sen-
timent has lessened indiscriminate public distrust of all
tremendously successful men. New York — sophisticated
and imperial — has gone farther than most parts of the
country, and the presence of Judge Gary on a Municipal
Commission and of Mr. Root as President in the Con-
stitutional Convention are suggestive. The difference
between the despoiler and the leader is, apparently, be-
coming recognized.

The formation of the Naval Advisory Board is probably,
as yet, the greatest governmental step in the utilization
of knowledge and experience, no matter by whom pos-
sessed. The practically universal endorsement of the
experiment by the press, and the complete lack of protest
against President Wilson's statement to Congress con-
cerning it, are profoundly significant facts. It is true that
the Advisory Board itself is largely composed of inventors,
and that a great difference may be felt to exist between
the inventor type — akin to the artist type — and the
leader type. They are both manifestations of the creative
principle, but one is better equipped to deal with things,
the other with men. Down the ages, indeed, the leader
has been the natural protector of the artist, the scientist,
the inventor. In immediate concerns, the hard-headed,
hard-hitting practical man of affairs might be distrusted
more than the inventor. But the committees appointed
by the Advisory Board, particularly the Committee on
Industrial Preparedness, have embraced many men of the
very type most castigated by the muckrakers, and still

The Conservation of Capacity 23

there has arisen no protest against the utilization and
conservation of any knowledge, capacity, or experience
which can be used for the general welfare.

The change in public sentiment thus indicated justifies
the most careful consideration. A fundamental principle
of the American type of representative democracy is in-
volved, since the complete utilization of natural leadership
would eventually result in a new kind of legislative body.
The original design of the constitution, the original
sentiment of the people, was wise and sure. In our modern
life it is difficult to distinguish clearly and surely between
the despoiler and the leader. Among the masters there are
always utterly negative and ruthless forces which do not
appear in their true aspect. It is better to keep the orig-
inal sentiment — to keep all egocentric forces under
pressure until something breaks, than to admit these
negative forces, unregulated, to direct governmental
power. We must evolve an acid test for the real creative,
which the base creative cannot survive. There must be
elaborated some new, essentially American, method of
utilizing the constructive genius of such men as Mr. Hill,
the late George Westinghouse, Mr. Daniel Willard,
Colonel Goethals, Mr. Vail and others, in more direct and
definite manner than through interviews, and yet of
keeping completely out of direct executive or advisory
place, more predatory and ruthless gentlemen who need
not be named. We shall never desire, nor be willing, to
copy a House of Lords to which admittance may be
gained by contributions to party funds; but, nevertheless,
if we are to conserve capacity as well as other "natural
resources" there could be a Council of the Elders used to
our very great advantage.

It is being slowly borne in upon the world that the man
who is able and willing to spend a lifetime in securing a
constituency by talking of his own merits, may possess
very much less of the quality of the quarter deck than the

24 The Unpopular Review

man who is moved by an irresistible urge to exercise the
quality rather than to talk about it. There is much truth
in the statement of Speaker Reed, that it is a fair inference
that a man who can impress himself upon 200,000 people
or upon the whole population of a great State, has some-
thing more than ordinary qualities and something more
than ordinary force. But Mr. Bryan, from one angle, and
Mr. Sulzer from another, show us that those powers may
not be essentially the powers of statesmanship, while the
qualities and force of our empire builders and railroad
kings are certainly those of proved statesmanship, what-
ever undesirable concomitants may sometimes be asso-
ciated with them.

In a long and disastrous war, we should probably find
a method of admitting to greater participation in the
affairs of state, men with ability proved by deeds and not
by oratory. A little broader vision, a little greater energy
might well replace in our upper house the eloquence with
which we could easily dispense. Sooner or later we shall
enmesh certain of our "masters" -not in chains — but
in the silken bonds of noblesse oblige, and shall elaborate a
method of utilizing their abilities. Such a development
can be progressive, and not the reactionary move it may
seem. Should it ever come, the Naval Advisory Board
will have played an important part in the evolution of
American government.

THE INGENUITY OF PARENTS

1SEE audacious boys and girls born to parents whose
spirits are drab; I see the sullenest children born
into homes where life is high-spirited; I see all sorts of
incongruities, and yet a tolerable peace prevails. When-
ever I stop to consider how arbitrary are the accidents
of birth, I am always filled with wonder that so many
families are passably congenial — that so few come to open
warfare.

It may seem strange for anyone to wonder at there
being peace within the home; it must seem little short of
irreverent to those people who hold that the family is a
God-assembled unit, and that the home is per se a little
zone of peace, marked off by its very nature from the
world outside. I cannot bring myself to agree with these
people; I cannot think that in this matter of domestic
peace such harmony is a pre-determined state; I cannot
believe that some families are damned, some elect. And
yet I probably go to the opposite extreme; for I see in
every child newly come into a home, a little potential rebel
smuggling in, under cover of his individuality, traits at
real odds with that perfectness in which the "home circle"
has so long indulged itself.

But I have great confidence in the ingenuity of parents.
In fact it seems to me that of all people in the world
parents are the most ingenious. Not, to be sure, in the
sense of being out-and-out inventors: for that implies
a choosing of material, which is not allowed them; but in
their unequalled ability to reconcile material at hand.
They might, in fact, be called "opportunists" in in-
genuity. Certain it is: they make the best of things;
they take the medley that the average family is, and
they make of it a domestic unit; they bring order out of
chaos, though the odds appear to lie all against them.

25

26 The Unpopular Review

For this ordering of the home is not as easy as it once
was, when children were to their places born. In the old
days a child was frankly just a child, and not, as he is
today, a "little citizen" of the world — that composite
creature who lays infant hands on all the rights and duties
of adult individuality. It must have been the exception,
in those days, for the home to be out of gear, because it
must have taken nothing but good machinery to keep
it running; it was just a matter of the giving and taking
of cues, I should think. For everyone had his part — a
stock part to be sure, but nevertheless his own. A father
was a straight father, without having to be at the same
time a companion to his boy, and the "outside world"
to his little girl. A mother could be a mere mother; she
did not need to fret herself with feverish anxiety to typify
an all-round neuter atdtude toward everything on land
or sea. Children were only children taught to be children,
obedient and submissive, regardless of the fact that at
twenty-one they must have developed in them enough
of originality, enough of courage, to vote for themselves.

But let me hasten to remark that I am not siding with
the regime; I am as keen as any democrat against left-
over tyrannies, though they be mild and kindly ones.
All that I say for the old technique is that it was simple,
as a caste system always is, with its members trained to
give or take rule. But now that democracy is upon us,
invading our very homes, all is changed; the old ways
have been driven out of vogue. The birch rod has be-
come bad taste. It is no longer good form for a parent to
issue a command. What place could it have among
equals ? What place, in fact, have any of the old attitudes ?

And yet, in spite of changes, human nature stays about
the same with parents and their children; they fall heir
to the same old frictions and complexities; the home still
teems with its old confusion, to be calmed, the Lord knows
how! Or, in more literal terms, as best the parent can!
For it is literally up to them, now that the Lord has

The Ingenuity of Parents 27

ceased to be exclusively the God of Fathers and has ex-
tended his backing equally to all members of the house-
hold. Parents are left with only their unaided ingenuity
to bank upon. Now that behavior claims the rank of
conduct, the sure touch they had attained against child
behavior has given way to trial-and-error faltering. To
what shifts are they not driven! To what genius may
their ingenuity not be spurred!

One of the commonest devices used by parents to unify
the home is their insistence on the belief that each child
in the family is bound to be like one or the other of his
parents. "She takes after her mother," or "He takes
after his father." These are stock phrases, and they are
employed in the face of the most obvious misfits. "Oh
yes, Jennie, she has an awful temper — stubborn as can
be. Oh yes, her father was the same before her." It does
not seem to matter that the father in the case of Jennie
is as yielding and spiritless as a lamb! He must, in theory,
take on new qualities or give up his own, that Jennie may
stand in consequential relation to him. Sometimes it is
the father — sometimes the mother — whose character
is stretched to make the point. It is always the less self-
defensive of the two on whom are imposed all those traits
that startle and annoy.

It need not be a parent or an immediate relative to
whom these discordant elements are referred. A more
remote ancestor is often called upon to serve, especially
if those of contemporary kinship happen to have an eye
for the congruity of their own make-ups. For no matter
how sincere a home pacificist one may be, there is a limit
to the odds and ends of character he will care to welcome
unto himself. It is natural and easy to refer back to the
dead. In a negative sense, at least, they are willing
sources; they cannot rise up and organize their reputa-
tions, and by a sort of inverted atavism they can be forced
to re-inherit according to the conveniences of their de-
scendants.

28 The Unpopular Review

I, myself, have always been explained on the basis of
my great-grandfather, about whom much could be af-
firmed, because little was actually known. Fact had it
that he met his death while reading under a tree — the
tree fell down upon him and killed him. But why, in
consequence, he should be blamed for my being impracti-
cal and absent-minded and vague was, at first, a puzzle
to me. I undertook defending him with some seriousness,
arguing naively from the facts in the case; why shouldn't
he read under a tree? Why shouldn't he keep an eye
single to the plot? — assuming the stability of the tree,
on a clear day. This I continued for some time, succeeding
only in confirming my parents' theory of myself, until
I suddenly discovered that the "annoying nervous alert-
ness" of my brother, was also being laid to the absent-
mindedness of that same great-grandfather. Then I gave
up my defense, for I realized that my great-grandfather's
posthumous self was doomed to be forever in the making;
that his memory was not to be maintained with any care
for its consistency. I knew him then for the tool that he
was in the hands of my parents.

And at the present stage, this exploitation of our an-
cestors cannot be helped. Later perhaps, when parents
have perfected themselves in ingenuity, ancestors can
be relegated to their pedestals again. But as things stand
now, with democracy and equality rife within the home,
fathers and mothers are hard put to it to manage. A trait
cannot be quelled as previously, it cannot even be ignored,
it must needs be embraced, no matter how unwelcome:
for democracy insists on equal cordiality toward every-
thing on hand. There they are — little Susie's temper
fits and little Willie's sullenness — and there is no need
for better introduction. They cannot be beaten out of
operation; the parents' hands are tied, but their wits are on
the job, casting about for an explanatory source. For the
family's hope lies solely in shouldering its own eccentrici-
ties. What if an ancestor or two be compromised ? Surely

The Ingenuity of Parents 29

it is worth the price, if the family can hitch along placidly
in a sense of self-responsibility.

It is hard, of course, on the ancestors — this fall from
idol to tool — but, in a way, it is a change for them. I
suppose they turn over in their graves with resentment,
though it seems to me they might better save their ener-
gies to applaud the parents for bringing them up to date —
out into the whirl of present-day affairs, as it were. For
it is no small achievement, whether it be appreciated or
not, to feature an ancestor out on the fighting front.

But this service to the dead and gone is only incidental
with parents, and their ingenuity is not to be measured
thereby. They are the servants primarily of the alive arid
coming, the "rising generation," as we word it to-day, a
phrase by the way which was not invented until deference
for youth came in. Today this deference for youth honey-
combs our entire domestic system; it shows itself at the
most unexpected points. In parental commands, for
instance, where one would least think to find it, there it
lurks, negating the essence of the command, with its
tendency to make all clear, that Willie may see and know
and understand. Willie has the right to know, it seems —
the God-given right to know why he must not suck his
shoe-strings or cheat in school. Though the technicalities
of bacteriology and criminology confuse him out of obedi-
ence, the explanation is his by rights: he must have his
share of respect. The brief, succinct, "Willie, don't
do that!" has become, "Willie, I shall have to ask you
not to, because, Willie, you see . . . you see . . . ' Thus
do parents obtain results without falling back on frank
despotism.

Another device in common use consists in making the
child feel that by obeying his parents he indulges them.
This, of course, may result in extreme parental sub-
servience, but as a bit of ingenuity, it is flavored high
with democracy and equality. Great care must be taken
not to appeal too openly in behalf of the parents; for

30 The Unpopular Review

should the child once clearly realize that he is master of
his elders, he is apt to slip into sensations of superiority,
an error against equality as great, on its side, as the birch-
rod was on its. But though it can be abused, it is a work-
able device, and its worth has been proven many times.
I know homes that depend entirely upon it for their peace,
and they are homes in which the greatest reverence for
child assertiveness prevails. The scheme works in this
way. One of the parents is established as an invincible
lover of peace. Uusally it is the father who is chosen to
take this part. He falls into it easily because it seems
natural for him to want his home quiet, spending his day,
as he does, in the seething outside world. He can love
calm for its own sake — for pure selfish reasons — with-
out seeming to plot against his children's right to be noisy.
True — he cries as insistently as ever tyrant did: "Give
me my peace!" but that is an advance on the old: "Stop
that noise!" —an advance in the direction of democ-
racy: for is not the child's right to refuse him clearly
implied ?

Much is made of the strenuousness of the father's life,
and through sympathy for it the mother makes the appeal
to her riotous offspring: "Poor papa! He will be so
tired!" "You know, dears, papa has such hard days
down-town!" Peace hangs upon so frail a thread that
the exhaustion of the male parent must be stressed. If
he is a professor, the clamor of the class-room is empha-
sized; if a lawyer, the bickerings of the court-house; if a
mere sitter in an office, the constancy of buzzers and of
telephone bells and the never-ending tread of busy feet
in and out of his quarters. Such a life! "We must do
all we can to make home quiet for Dad!" Thus do they
plan together to indulge him.

As I have suggested, the father does what he can to
play-up this aspect of himself. He forms the habit of
sinking into his Morris-chair directly on entering the
house. By resting his head weakly in his hands and re-

The Ingenuity of Parents 3 1

laxing utterly, he makes himself a reminder of the at-
mosphere he expects. Thus he often forestalls a real
outbreak. If he feels a squall in the air, he exclaims with
automatic emphasis: "Can't a man have peace, even
in his own home?" Like Mr. Gilbey of Fanny' 's First
Play, he has learned to rise, in no matter what crisis of
domestic friction, and cry out, "Would you have me go
mad, here — here — on me own carpet!"

It should be noted that never by word of his does he
deny his children's rights: in all that he says and does, he
is merely asking attention to this one right of his — the
right of any man to peace in his own home.

I have often suspected fathers of carrying this device
to deceptive extremes. And yet who can say where in-
genuity leaves off, and deception begins? Even were
the line easy to draw, much could be forgiven the tired
father who has the perilous straits to steer between the
Scylla of tyranny and the Charybdis of noise. What if
the father break into a dishonest run on nearing home, that
he may enter flushed as from recent battle? What if he
has rested at his Club from three till six! What if he fail
to mention this play-time and his lunch-hour-^ in stressing
the life he leads in the intervals between leisure? He is
only representing his day with an eye for its unity — and
for the unity that works. And why not? Why should
not a man apply the pragmatic sanction to his version
of himself? Especially a father, in a democratic era!

So vital has this device of peace-within-the-home be-
come, that we find husbands and wives acting in ac-
cordance with it long before their home affairs demand.
It has come to control the attitude of any wife toward
any husband. I would not claim that it has become
hereditary; perhaps it is only unconscious imitation that
makes the childless husband declare himself a lover of
home peace years before his peace is threatened. Why
should a man, newly married, be outspoken for a "calm

32 The Unpopular Review

and quiet home"? He should be innocent of friction.
Has he an intuition perhaps, of what this allegiance will
later mean to him?

Someone has suggested that men and women early
adopt this attitude so as to train themselves for the
children that the future may bring upon the scene. But
this I cannot believe: the husband takes too naively to
his part, the wife to hers. I cannot think of these pre-
parental days as a frank dress-rehearsal for the years
that follow.

Has the young wife, too, an intuition of the future?
It almost seems so, to look at the home she plans. The
soothing green that she hangs upon the walls — the
draperies with which she obscures the doors — every
piece of furniture that she chooses with its quiet wood,
its drowsy lines, its drawing depths — all seem to suggest
that she sees clearly what is ahead of her. But, in reality,
it is only the "exhausted husband" idea that has subdued
the decorations: she has no real notion why her own taste
for vivid effects has deadened. She is in the grip of intui-
tive wisdom that sets her preparing, in advance, just the
setting that the "exhausted father" will later approve
and need.

But it cannot be rated as a device — this home-decora-
tion sense; it is too unconsciously possessed. It cannot
lay claim to ingenuity: for ingenuity knows always what
it is about. But it had its origin in parental cleverness;
of that there can be no doubt, else why did the Morris-
chair and the wide-spread taste for green come so soon
upon the heels of home democracy?

But lest it be thought that all parents are blind intui-
tionalists, I hasten to mention another group — the
philosophic parents. They are most self-conscious and
reflective. They have gone so far as to build a philosophy
around the exigencies of home democracy.

They scorn the tactics of the every-day opportunist,

The Ingenuity of Parents 33

with his chronic willingness to grasp at straws. They
will deal with a situation by theory or not at all. They
have passed beyond the piece-meal ways of ordinary
ingenuity; they settle what they are going to do, once
for all, on a firm philosophic basis.

They say — and this is their fundamental hypothesis —
that the domestic sphere is life. This is a practical
conclusion, arrived at empirically, though they would
die rather than admit it. They have felt that they are
cut off from life-in-the-large. They have seen that their
parenthood localizes their experiences. They have realized
that they cannot rush out and seek experiences en masse.
They cannot free-lance with life, and they know it. There-
fore they have come to the conclusion that life must
free-lance with them. In fact, that is what life has been
doing, they say, right along, only they have been too
blind to see it. They conclude that their children are
not hindrances at all, but experiences to be lived. In
short, they are life's representatives, trailing in their wakes
all the phases of which life is capable.

One can only realize the ingenuity of this point of view
by seeing how it fits in with all the prevailing tendencies.
It capitalizes the uppishness of childhood, for instance,
for all that is worth. Instead of trying to compel the child
into the way that he should go, it asks only that the child
should have a way to go, and then that he should go it.
Parents request nothing more of the child, except permis-
sion to follow in his trail.

According to this theory, a child is not a failure unless
he does not furnish his parents variety and shock. The
successful child is the one who is unique in the eyes of his
parents; and to be unique is, often, but to be naughty
in the old tried ways. The old ways of being naughty
may not always thrill parents, however, especially if they
have had long and varied pasts. Then, to be naughty
in a fresh way is all that is required of the child.

Occasionally this is too heavy a burden for the shoulders

34 The Unpopular Review

of the young. But not often does a child go under; only
in those few sad cases where parents are extremists in
variety, and the child defective in distinctiveness.

I recall a case in point, where a younger brother was
frightened out of what hope he might have had for special
development, by a too insistent father. The boy showed
every sign of going the way of his older brother, who was,
I suppose, a failure, from the point of view of experience,
insomuch as he was the copy of his mother in submissive-
ness and docility. "Be something! Be yourself!" Thus
the father rudely gave vent to his growing irritation,
when the only hope the boy had for personality lay in
the application of kindergarten methods: he must be
coaxed and caressed to it.

This instance is, of course, the exception; it is only
the congenital copy-cat who cannot throw off the fetters
of heredity and example in the heat of his individual
emancipation.

This philosophy of which I have been speaking deals
the death-blow to the parents' efforts after peace, and
in so doing it again shows itself wise to the times. It
was a losing fight anyway, it says, so why not lose it with
a theoretic sanction. Harmony in the home was always
a bit stuffy, so let in the drafts and wind. Of course, if
harmony exists in the outside world, well and good, let
the home mirror what is there — that and no more.
Nothing is ever out of order in these philosophic homes
except, perhaps, monotony.

The parents that hold to this philosophy reduce them-
selves, by doing so, to a mere cipher of what they once
were. The fall from absolute monarch to benevolent
demagogue was great enough, but the fall to the place of
spectator is greater; it almost does away with parental
identity.

I think I suggested awhile back that philosophizing
parents had ceased to be opportunists. Let me re-state
myself and say that they are the very kings among op-

The Ingenuity of Parents 35

portunists: for they have carried opportunism up into
the high planes of theory. They have invented a phil-
osophy to match the way things are going. And now they
have argued themselves out of place because they have
seen that their recall is pending. With a philosophic
flourish they have made out their own papers of dis-
missal. Need one look farther for unfaltering ingenuity?
Surely, I think not.

THE ECONOMIC HYMN OF HATE

WAR breeds war. In no other respect has the present
struggle been more war-breeding than in the
new-old ideas of trade to which it has given rise. The
world over, men have begun again to think in terms of
seventeenth-century mercantilism, and seventeenth-cen-
tury thought means seventeenth-century action. Are we,
then, once more to enter on a period of devastating wars,
such as marked the turbulent centuries of nation-making
from 1500 to 1800? That depends in good part on the
direction taken by the world's thinking, and just at
present that is pointing back toward international strug-
gle based on trade rivalry.

Mercantilism was the system of thought and practice
that governed the European powers during the years
when modern Europe was coming into being. As the cen-
tral idea of statesmen was that of relative national power,
economic and social activities were subordinate to the
political end. National power was to be attained only
through military struggle, which rilled these bloody cen-
turies and reached its culmination in the grim carnage of
the Napoleonic wars.

The economic basis of these conflicts lay largely in the
struggle for the rich commerce of America and the east,
bringing to a poverty-stricken Europe undreamed wealth.
American silver poured into Spain and Portugal; the loot
of India and the Indies filled the coffers of London and
Liverpool and Amsterdam. Foreign trade, as in all cen-
turies of the world's history before the nineteenth, was
in no small measure plunder, and the sword determined
as between Spain and Portugal, Holland and France and
Britain, which should be chief plunderer, and by conse-
quence chief beneficiary. Relative national power was
of primary importance in such conditions. "Can a nation

36

The Economic Hymn of Hate 37

be safe without Strength?" wrote Charles D'Avenant in
1696; " and is power to be compass'd and secur'd but by
riches? And can a country become rich any way, but by
the help of a well managed and extended Traffick? "

Small wonder that the state was central in the thoughts
of rulers and ruled alike. Small wonder that the " condi-
tion-of-the-people question" was scarcely broached. Ma-
chinery hardly yet existed, the world's power of coal
lay in the ground untouched, the internal productive
powers of the nations were small; they were poor to a
degree hard to realize in this richer age. The apparent
avenue to wealth was trade, but athwart the trade routes
stood the jealous figures of other nations eager to seize
the same golden opportunities. And the nations that
would be great and powerful built navies and raised
armies, and settled on the battlefield and gun-deck the
question who should have the trade. Trade followed
the flag without questioning, for the trader flying the
foreign flag was unceremoniously driven out of the trade -
with violence if need be.

Such were the conditions of the mercantilist era, such
the sanctions of international rivalry, and such was the
justification for seeking to advance your own nation by
injuring your neighbors. It was a poverty-ridden world,
with not enough to go round, and relative military and
naval power decided who should enjoy the small riches
that did exist. There was a real basis for national hatreds.
One nation raised itself on the ruins of another. Por-
tugal, Spain, Holland and France successively yielded
the hegemony and the final struggle left it with England.
It would require a bold man to deny that the mercan-
tilists were right in declaring national power the proper
aim of the statesman's efforts.

To-day these ideas are coming back. For a century
men had been learning to think in other terms. The
multiplied productive power of steam-driven machinery
had been teaching us to look for the increase of wealth to

38 The Unpopular Review

internal development, not to foreign exploitation. We
had been discovering that we could produce wealth
enough if only we could learn to distribute and use it
wisely. Our interest had been shifting to internal prob-
lems, social questions of all sorts as contrasted with in-
ternational ones. America came into being scarcely
knowing that there were such things as international
problems. Throughout Europe west of the Russian border
democracy in the last half of the nineteenth century had
been making long strides, and democracy was turning
its attention, with no small promise of success, to solving
the internal problems of the industrial state. Amid all
the tumult and confusion and shouting could be discerned
the steady onward movement as the mass of the people
slowly became better fed, better educated, better fitted
to rule themselves.

The democracy gave little thought to foreign affairs,
trusting them largely to the secret diplomacy of states-
men supposed to be expert in such matters. In recent
years, however, there had been growing up among the
people in all the western countries and in Japan a type of
internationalism rich with promise for the future. In-
telligent, scientific, broadly patriotic, it recognized that
national isolation was a thing of the past, and that the
world civilization of the future must be a cooperative
task, enlisting the energy of all nations. This ' interna-
tional mind" that was just coming into being was not
jealous of a progressive neighbor; it rejoiced in that
neighbor's contribution to the common stock. The small
nations no less than the large had their place in its scheme
of things. Underneath all, it was recognized that ma-
chinery had given the world the basis for peace and
plenty. No longer need the nations spring at one an-
other's throats in order to get a chance to snatch their
own insufficient share from the world's too scanty stock.

Then came the colossal tragedy of 1914. With the
first roar of the cannon, democracy abandoned its tasks,

The Economic Hymn of Hate 39

and sprang to the defense of country. And magnificently
has the peace-trained citizen played his part in the face
of the machine gun and the flying shrapnel. But the
tasks of social reconstruction have been laid aside, and
popular thinking has been turned in large part toward
international relations. Here the ordinary man finds
himself in a field to which he is unaccustomed. Bewil-
dered by the sweep of the forces that the war has let
loose, emotionally stirred to the very depths, he finds
himself thinking as his ancestors thought two centuries
and a half ago. His leaders, under the same emotional
stress, have for the most part spoken no word of protest.
The whole world seems in danger of being carried back
to a place where its international relations will be deter-
mined by the ideas of 1650, however different may be
the conditions of 1916.

No better illustration can be offered than the proposals
of the economic conference of the allies held at Paris in
June last.

The measures proposed for the war period, already
largely in effect before the conference, may be passed
over with the mere mention of the blacklist of neutral
firms " under enemy influence." The sequestration of
property owned by enemy aliens is likewise not without
significance.

The really important plans are those proposed for the
period of reconstruction after the war. Countries devas-
tated by war are to have restored to them their agricul-
tural and industrial plant and stock and their merchant
fleet. This sounds like indemnity. For a period of years
after the war enemy subjects in allied countries will be
excluded from certain industries and professions which
concern national defense or economic independence.
The proposal of course means the exclusion of Germans
from business in the allied countries, and it has been sug-
gested in Great Britain that the period covered be twenty
years.

4° The Unpopular Review

Further, and more important, the allies agree during
the whole reconstruction period to conserve their raw
materials for one another before all others, and to make
special arrangements to facilitate their interchange.

This amiable design for starving German industries
by depriving them of raw materials is to be supplemented
by a far reaching plan for cutting off German markets.
During a period of years to be fixed by agreement, the
allies resolve that none of them will grant the Central
Powers most-favored-nation treatment; this will leave
the allies free to do exactly as they please regarding Teu-
tonic commerce. Yet more striking in phrase, " in order
to defend their commerce and industry and their agricul-
ture and navigation against economic aggression resulting
from dumping or any other mode of unfair competition,"
the allies will fix a period of time during which commerce
of the enemy countries "will be subjected either to prohibi-
tions or to a special regime of an effective character"
(evidently tantamount to prohibition), and Teuton ships
will be subject to special agreement.

As permanent measures the allies propose to render
themselves economically independent of the Teutons as
regards both raw materials and manufactures, consider-
ing not only sources of supply, but also financial, com-
mercial and maritime organization. To this end the
governments concerned may adopt whatever methods
they choose — subsidies, grants in aid of research and
industrial development, customs duties or prohibitions,
the various countries "having regard to the principles
which govern their economic policy" -a recognition of
British free trade as the rock on which the whole scheme
is likely to split. It is also agreed to facilitate mutual
allied trade by the development of shipping facilities,
and communication by post and telegraph, as well as the
assimilation of the laws of patents, trade-marks and copy-
right.

Putting the whole thing in a nutshell, the allies propose

The Economic Hymn of Hate 41

after the war to boycott Germany, cutting off her raw
materials, closing her markets for manufactured exports,
and hampering her shipping all they can. They propose
to make themselves as a group economically independent,
and interdependent only among themselves, though they
profess a tenderness for neutral trade. In view of exist-
ing economic relationships these proposals are startling
enough; it is doubtful whether more astonishing sugges-
tions were ever seriously put forward by responsible states-
men. This extraordinary document was signed by the
representatives of France, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Portu-
gal, Russia and Servia. The British government later
approved the resolutions, which may accordingly be taken
to represent the collective wisdom of allied statesmen as
applied to the future conduct of economic affairs.

The sweep of the proposed policy is really even wider
than appears on the surface. What a large part of its
advocates really desire is a policy of economic separatism
like that demanded by the association of chambers of
commerce of the United Kingdom, advocating for Great
Britain a tariff with four levels of rates, rising successively,
against: (i) All parts of the British Empire; (2) the allies;
(3) present neutral states; (4) present enemy countries.
Every protectionist in Europe, needless to say, is in full
cry on this scent, and the echo of their cry is heard on our
side of the water, where the demand for retaliation for
anticipated injuries is already becoming vocal.

The more the Paris proposals are studied, the more do
their mercantilist preconceptions and purposes assert
themselves. "The present war," says the editor of the
Edinburgh Review in discussing them, "has revealed to
the world the fact that Germany regards commercial
enterprise as a form of preparation for military ac-
tion. . . It is the combination of a highly efficient in-
dustrial organization with an aggressive military state
that we have to fear." The preconception of relative
power — could it be more clearly expressed? The idea

4 2 The Unpopular Review

of an innate hostile rivalry breathes through every syllable
of the Paris proposals and every word of their support-
ers. From the resolutions themselves we learn that the
allied representatives "perceive that the Central Powers
of Europe, after having imposed upon them their mil-
itary struggle, in spite of all their efforts to avoid the
conflict, are preparing to-day, in concert with their allies,
a struggle in the economical domain which will not only
survive the reestablishment of peace, but at that very
moment will assume all its amplitude and all its intensity.
They cannot in consequence conceal from themselves
that the agreement which is being prepared for this pur-
pose amongst their enemies has for its evident object the
establishment of their domination over the production
and the markets of the whole world and to impose upon
the other countries an intolerable yoke [presumably by
selling those countries certain goods cheaper than the
countries can make them themselves]. In the face of
such a grave danger" the allies propose "to secure for
themselves and the whole of the markets of neutral coun-
tries full economic independence and respect for sound
commercial practice." Stripping the matter of its rhetoric,
the allies fear the economic efficiency of Germany, and pro-
pose to cripple it if they can. This is stark mercantilism.
Even the methods proposed are those of the seventeenth
century. Depriving a rival of raw material, prohibiting
his goods from your market, excluding his subjects from
trade in your country, limiting the movements of his
ships in your ports — one can match these devices meas-
ure for measure in the laws of Cromwell and Colbert and
the great Frederick. One almost turns the page in ex-
pectation of finding some recommendation for burying
in woolen, in order to encourage the consumption of
woolen goods, or for eating fish on Friday, to aid the fish-
ing industry — measures of ancient mercantilist policy
that might well be expected to recommend themselves to
these modern mercantilist statesmen. The new mer-

The Economic Hymn of Hate 43

cantilism, in fact, so closely parallels the old, in spirit,
in purpose and in methods, that one wonders whether
existing conditions actually give the same sanction to it
as was possessed by the older philosophy of hate. If
present economic and political conditions furnish the
policy with a firm basis, it is useless to cry out against it;
if not, the nations are but yielding to an outburst of pas-
sion, and they may well pray to be delivered from their
insanity.

How stands it, then, with the world's actual affairs?
We can best answer the question by examining the prob-
able effects of the Paris proposals. Similar policies worked
fairly well two hundred and fifty years ago; how will they
work now?

For purposes of discussion, assume an allied victory
more or less complete, a Germany stripped of her colonies,
her dream of an Asiatic empire shattered, her old boun-
daries restored or even on the west crowded back to the
Rhine. The allies, flushed with victory, put the Paris
boycott in full effect — what then? In the boycotting
group we have the important manufacturing states of
Great Britain, far and away leading partner, France,
Belgium, Italy and Japan, with Russia and the British
overseas dominions to furnish food and raw materials.
It is certainly quite possible for such a group to live
almost wholly to itself, independent of Teutonic and, to
a large extent, of neutral materials and manufactures.
Let Great Britain, then, as she is desired to do, impose
protective duties, and let the whole machinery of preferen-
tial customs, as among the allies and their colonies, go
into operation, leaving neutral trade to suffer for its neu-
trality, and leaving the defeated Teutons to stew in their
own juice.

The consequences would apparently be about as fol-
lows : The allies could on paper deprive Germany — the
only power of real interest to them — of nearly nine-

44 The Unpopular Review

twentieths of her ante-bellum imports, and cut off the
market for approximately three-eighths of her exports —
a consummation devoutly to be wished, as they believe
in their present hatred and fear of Germany. Imports
of food valued at more than $200,000,000 reached Ger-
many from the allied nations in 1913, most largely from
Russia, and German industries utilized ally-produced
materials valued at nearly twice that amount. In normal
times Germany eats Russian and Canadian wheat and
barley, she burns British coal and weaves British yarn,
she spins Indian and Egyptian cotton and Australian
wool, and manufactures the palm products of Britain's
African colonies. The list might be indefinitely extended.
Deprive Germany of this food and these materials, and
you indeed hinder her economic progress somewhat, but
it is grotesque to believe that you strike a mortal blow
at her industries. From the outbreak of the war Ger-
many has been completely shut off from such allied sup-
plies and in no small measure from neutral ones as well.
Is German industry to-day prostrate? Listen to the
answer that roars from ten thousand cannon throats
along the far-flung battle lines in France and Flanders,
in theTrentino, in Poland and Dobrudja.

Never was the power of science more impressively
demonstrated than during the past two years of world
torture. The grip of British sea power has fastened re-
morselessly on the throat of German industry, but respira-
tion has not stopped. German science has produced a
substitute for one "indispensable" material after an-
other — and the war goes on. Let the allies cut off ab-
solutely — assuming that were possible — German sup-
plies of raw materials from present allied and neutral
states as well, and they but hasten on the process of sub-
stitution that the war has already carried so far.

Of course the allies could not cut off neutral supplies.
But when the war is over, they cannot even cut off their
own supplies. Prohibit, if you will, the export of Canadian

The Economic Hymn of Hate 45

wheat and British herrings and South African wool and
Indian jute and rubber and copra to Germany, and they
will go to Holland and Sweden, and Germany will get
them at a cost but slightly enhanced. Or do the allies
contemplate continuing as a permanent peace measure
their friendly war devices of rationing Germany's neutral
neighbors or allowing them to import for their own needs
only on condition they will agree not to allow any goods
to filter through to the hated Teutons ? Nothing less, it will
be observed, would have any real effect in keeping allied
materials out of Germany, unless the allies are ready to
prohibit all sales of materials to present neutrals, and
we have not yet heard any suggestion of this particular
form of madness.

But even if the allies could cut off from Germany the
food and materials with which they supplied her — as
they cannot — the loss would fall more heavily on them
than on her, strange as it may appear. The world is not
all divided between the belligerents. The Americas,
Scandinavia, Holland, Spain, China have stood aloof.
These neutrals supplied almost half Germany's imports
before the war. Cut off Canadian wheat, and Argentinian
wheat will take its place; British African copra, and West
Indian will replace it; Indian rubber, and Brazilian will
be imported instead — and so with other materials. No
more effective scheme than an allied embargo on ma-
terials could be devised to make Germany a yet better
customer than she has been to the United States and the
other great neutrals. This would cement commercial
bonds inevitably drawing these states to the Teutonic
side in any future conflict.

How stands it with the boycott of German goods? Not
much better. Indeed, both the proportion and the ab-
solute amount of Germany's exports that the allies could
cut off is materially less than the corresponding part of
her imports; but there is something specially attractive
about the notion of taking its customers from a nation.

46 The Unpopular Review

Iron and steel products, textiles, leather goods, chemicals
and dyestuffs, electrical supplies and other manufactures
in bewildering variety and considerable amounts, go from
Germany to all the allied countries. Her figures show
total exports of i,438,cxx),ooo marks to Great Britain,
her best customer, in 1913, 880,020,000 marks to Russia,
790,000,000 to France and 393,000,000 to Italy, to men-
tion only the largest European allies. On paper it looks
easy to clip a billion dollars off Germany's export figures,
and the mouth of every allied manufacturer waters at
thought of the rich plums awaiting him.

A little consideration, however, is calculated to moderate
his enthusiasm. British shipbuilders for years have en-
joyed cheap German steel, wickedly dumped in Britain
at better prices than German shipbuilders could get it.
In their sharp competition with German weavers in neu-
tral markets, British cloth manufacturers in the past have
had the advantage of cheap and excellent German dyes.
German leather has been at disposal of British and Italian
shoe and harness makers, German electrical and other
machinery at command of French and Italian and Japa-
nese manufacturers, German metals and alloys at the
service of the thousands of establishments that wanted
them in all the allied countries — and so runs the tale.
If one allied manufacturer stands to gain by the cutting
off of a dangerous rival, another will lose by being de-
prived of some important material or item of equipment,
or else our poor old friend the ultimate consumer will
pay a higher price on top of his staggering war taxes.

Moreover, practically the same difficulties present them-
selves as in cutting off Germany's raw materials. Ger-
man goods, cut off from direct export, will find their
way into allied countries through Holland and Scandinavia
and Switzerland, nor will all the efforts of government
suffice to stop the trade. To whatever extent it is stopped,
German manufactures will go to both the Americas, to
the Indies and China, and will in so far spoil the allied

The Economic Hymn of Hate 47

markets there. It is all very well to talk of allied eco-
nomic independence, but in fact the four manufacturing
allies, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan, will not
easily solve the problems of post-bellum finance and in-
dustry by selling their goods to one another, or even to
Russia and the British overseas dominions, all alike
eager to develop their own manufactures. It is too much
like the South Sea islanders making their living by doing
one another's washing. The allies' fear of being thought
to intend action against neutral trade is all the evidence
needed of their desire to hold neutral markets.

To sum up the whole matter — any attempt of the
allies to injure Germany after the war by cutting off her
materials or closing her markets will injure allied business
no less than German. The effort at allied economic in-
dependence will have for its inevitable result a mutually
advantageous economic union of Germany and the present
neutral countries, a union certain in future to bind to
the Teutonic side by the ties of self-interest and under-
standing the forty millions of neutral Europe, the fifty
millions of South America, the hundred millions of the
United States and the three hundred millions of China,
together with all the enormous industrial resources and
capacities of these great neutral states. If the world is
to be a world of war, the true statesman will hesitate long
before erecting such a combination against himself.

But this is not all. Germany and England are the
inevitable manufacturing rivals of Europe, Russia the
granary of that continent. England alone can furnish
compensation to Russia for the markets she is to lose in
Germany. But Canada and Australia, under the new
ideas, must be paid for their sacrifices by a preference
even over Russia. Just how England is to give up her
market to Russian wheat at the same time that she allows
Canada to occupy that market, we have not been told.
Moreover, even at best the British market, where Russian
grain must compete with that from overseas, will be

48 The Unpopular Review

worth less to Russia than that in the interior of Germany,
where her geographical advantage is marked. The simple
fact is that none of the allies, nor all of them together,
can afford Russia adequate compensation for the loss of
her market in Germany, nor can they supply her as
cheaply and advantageously as can Germany with a
large part of the goods she needs to carry forward the
industrial transformation her rulers desire. The allies'
economic plan cuts squarely across the natural economic
development of Russia, and even if her adhesion to the
plan be secured, it is hard to see how it can be long main-
tained. The alliance of the great eastern despotism with
the western republics is no less incongruous on its eco-
nomical side than on its political.

The clash of commercial policy within the alliance,
moreover, promises plenty of trouble. A1V the partners
but Great Britain are protectionist in greater or less
degree. Even hatred of Germany is not going to lead
French and Italian and Canadian manufactures to wel-
come an inflow of British goods helped along by preferen-
tial tariff rates. If Britain is to enjoy the lowest rates,
it will mean simply that neutral goods as well as Teu-
tonic ones must be subjected to prohibitive duties, and
we shall have another influence working for neutral-
Teuton alliance.

And finally, the plan fundamentally involves the
abandonment of British free trade. The leading partner
in this precious scheme of industrial mischief-making
cannot play her part as long as she maintains free ports.
Without taxing her food and materials she cannot give
preference to her colonies and her allies. And there is as
yet no adequate evidence that Great Britain is willing or
able to pay the price of giving up free trade. John Bull
is a proverbially hard-headed person; his economic in-
terests imperatively dictate the uttermost cheapness of
food and materials with untrammeled freedom for his

The Economic Hymn of Hate 49

ships. The war on the allied side has demonstrated the
financial solidity of the free-trade partner. Facing the
future with its burden of taxes and its problems of in-
dustry, will Great Britain abandon the fiscal policy under
which it has become the world's workshop and banker?
It may be, but if so it will be at cost of a tremendous
financial sacrifice. The frantic outburst of imperial loy-
alty evoked by war and the fear and hatred of Germany,
may suffice to lead Great Britain to industrial suicide,
but the history of that sober-minded state scarcely leads
one to expect such a result.

Turn the matter as one may, the allies' policy stands
economically condemned. In the commercial situation
created by machinery and modern transportation, such a
policy is impracticable if not impossible, economically dis-
astrous to its authors, and pregnant with political possi-
bilities of the most serious sort. It means not only
alienation of neutrals, but driving them into the arms of
the very enemy fear of whom has given occasion to the
policy. In its first application it promises to sow the seeds
of dissension among its advocates, and that dissension will
apparently mean early dissolution.

The Paris proposals, then, are not dictated by the
economic interests of the allies, or even, in the long run,
by their political ones. The same may be said of the
whole array of mercantilist expedients that are urged at
the present time. The world has outgrown them, and if
nations acted rationally on a consideration of their real
interests, we should hear no more of such expedients. But
unhappily neither individuals nor nations act rationally
under stress of strong feeling. What threatens the world
after the war is the irrational reaction of the belligerents
to the fear and hatred aroused by the war. So it is con-
ceivable that in the contingency of a decisive victory for
the allies, they might put into effect at any rate some
part of the Paris proposals. All depends on how effect-
ively war sentiments and passions are utilized.

50 The Unpopular Review

No country now stands to gain economically by any
such separatist policy; yet in every country there are
important interests that might gain by it, and they
always use the sentiment of national solidarity and for-
eign hostility to attain their ends. The policy of protec-
tion is the classic case in point. In every continental
country and in America alike the interested protectionists
have carried their case for higher prices on their own
goods by appeal to patriotism. No case can be found
where protection as a pure and unadulterated business
policy has for any long time maintained itself. Men
support it, often at personal disadvantage, because they
think it is "a good thing for the country;" and the "good
thing" may mean a political or military advantage no
less than an economic one.

The policy of the United States under such conditions
assumes large importance. A fifty-year continuance of
Chinese-wall protection was made possible by our enor-
mous territorial extent and unexampled natural re-
sources. The rich domestic market was all our manufac-
turers needed or wanted; but in 1913 our trade burst its
bonds, and a tariff law was enacted based on the idea of
reciprocity in trade, not exclusion of competing imports.
Some manufacturers, secure in the domestic market, were
eager to reach out for foreign trade. To do this they
wanted to cut costs, hence they began to favor a policy of
cheapness rather than dearness. The commercial situa-
tion dictated increasing liberalism in commercial policy.

Then came the war, and all was again in the melting
pot. The president and his party found it expedient to
make concessions — a tariff board, protection for dye-
stuffs, anti-dumping legislation, provision for shipping
and other discrimination by act of the president. Now
the air is full of alarms and suggestions for "defense" of
threatened industries. We are warned that the allies'
combination is to shut us out of their market, and that

The Economic Hymn of Hate 5 1

the Teutonic Central European union is to exclude us
from business there. Therefore we are urged to "pre-
pare" by raising a tariff wall to a prohibitive height, in
order to be able to take it down as against any nation
that will promise to be good, by establishing a "bar-
gaining" tariff, by enacting discriminating shipping legis-
lation, by doing all sorts of things that are supposed to
benefit our own citizens at cost of somebody else. We
hear much chatter of the protection of "key" industries,
newly discovered to be such.

In pursuit of such aims we are plied with extraordinary
and inconsistent arguments. We learn on one day on the
authority of certain timorous persons in Washington that
the allies have established an absolute monopoly of certain
materials essential to our industries, and that their policy
will destroy those industries. On the same day the chief of
the bureau of foreign commerce shows that Europe is going
to need a billion dollars' worth of lumber in the year
after the war, and that she is coming to us for a large part
of it. Pray how is she to pay for it ? By cutting off her ex-
ports to us? By making us hunt up new sources of supply
for materials with which she has heretofore supplied us?

Yet more remarkable: in one and the same interview,
the chairman of the executive committee of the steel cor-
poration warns us that only a high tariff can save us from
the threatening flood of imports after the war, and tells
us that the government must allow export combinations
so our manufacturers may compete with Europeans in
South American and Asiatic markets — as though manu-
facturers who can meet the foreigner in neutral markets
cannot meet him in their own market. One would ima-
gine from what we are told that the European peoples,
instead of devoting all their energy to the grim business
of butchering one another, and supporting their own
butchers, incidentally destroying every bit of property
they can — that instead of this they have all taken a long
holiday from their ordinary work of making a living, in

52 The Unpopular Review

order to pile up enormous stocks of goods that they will
force on us willy nilly after the war at slaughter rates,
for the laudable purpose of enriching their impoverished
lands by selling goods for less than it cost to produce
them.

First of all, then, assuming that isolation is everywhere
to be carried into effect, no other nation on earth can
afford it so well as we. Endowed by nature with almost
every material of industry, with all the resources of the
two Americas at our disposal, and now by accident with
agriculture and manufacture in close balance, even on
the assumption of two closed European alliances, we are
a set of pusillanimous cowards if we fear such a situation.
Were it necessary, we could within ten years 'snap our
fingers at Europe, and could go on living indefinitely on
a plane of comfort that Europe's own folly would have
prevented her from sharing.

But Europe is not able, and does not desire, to shut us
out of her trade. The United States, half ashamed of
the cool wisdom that has kept it out of the slaughter, is
far too humble in its thought of itself. American cotton
and iron and steel and copper and machinery and food-
stuffs and lumber — these and a hundred other products
that Europe thankfully takes wherever she can get them
cheapest are our best assurance that no possible alliances
will exclude us from her markets.

The appalling loss of life and maiming of productive
workers on the battlefield, the withdrawal of men from
the laboratory and the technical classroom, the highly
probable loss of initiative and push in millions of men as a
result of the nervous drain of war, the dissolution of
foreign selling organizations painfully built up during
years of peace — these are abundant assurance, if that
be any joy to our business men, that after the war we
shall face a group of crippled competitors. For our own
part, relatively at least, we shall have gained. Our new
financial strength, our new plant paid for out of war

The Economic Hymn of Hate 53

profits, our new machinery for foreign trade, banking
and investment — what are these but so many guarantees
of success to the business man of intelligence, vision,
daring? Can it be that in face of such advantages Amer-
ican business men, like children clinging to their mother's
skirts for fear of hobgoblins and ghosts, will still run to
their government, crying for individual aid against im-
aginary dangers? And can it be if they are so foolish,
that American statesmen will listen to their babblings?

Whatever dangers may threaten European states, they
do not threaten America. No one in his senses suspects
Germany of a policy of "peaceful economic penetration"
of the United States, relentlessly pursued by selling us
goods cheap, as preliminary to armed attack on a good
customer. Nor does anyone imagine that Great Britain
buys and sells in our market in pursuance of a hypocritical
design some day to annex us to the British Empire.
Geographically aloof from the dynastic and militaristic
struggles of the old world, rich beyond the dream of any
European state, beneficiary of a system of liberty whose
blessings we as yet but half appreciate, economically,
politically and socially the spoiled darling of the gods,
the United States can afford not to be afraid — nay,
Americans cannot afford to be cowards. In their own
interest, and in that of the world at large, they must be
true to that ideal of individual liberty and international
fair dealing for which we believe we stand.

In the coming crisis of world politics, the United States
ought to champion the broadest liberalism of commercial
policy. It is vain to establish a league of peace unless
the foundations are to be laid in the solid masonry of
mutual respect and commercial fair dealing. Anything
less will sooner or later issue in international hatred. Let
the United States, as seems to be too likely the case, now
join in the cry for commercial "defense," "retaliation,"
all the other notions of commercial war in peace, and
we may well see the whole world join lustily in singing the

54 The Unpopular Review

hymn of hate, each nation against each. On the other
hand, let the United States, guided by reason and not
by emotion, hold itself steadfast on the path of liberalism
on which we are happily entered, and the defenders of
economic sanity in Great Britain will be heartened against
the forces of unreason and hatred that now beset them
so sore. If the structure of British free trade can be
saved, the allies' economic combine as an engine for keep-
ing alive national animosity will be all but powerless.
British free trade in the past has given the lie to German
imperialistic claims of commercial strangulation as her
justification for waging war. British adherence to that
policy in the future will strengthen the forces in Ger-
many that are working for her liberalization. The lib-
eralizing of Germany is an essential condition of world
peace in the future. No mere internal question is in-
volved in our proposed subscription to the hymn of hate,
no mere matter of markets, no simple problem of dollars
and cents; but our decision may well influence the whole
future of international affairs.

If America can be big enough, brave enough, idealistic
enough to believe that the cooperative basis of interna-
tional relations indicated by economic fact is more im-
portant than the competitive one indicated by political
hatreds, we may play a large part in saving much from the
wreck that Europe threatens to make of western civiliza-
tion.

But it may well be not merely western civilization that
is at stake. From every advanced western country there
flows out a stream of capital toward the less developed
lands. Behind the railroad builder and the mining con-
cessionaire in the past has marched the grim figure of the
soldier. Investment has been but the preliminary to
political interference and military aggression: for Europe
has proceeded on the theory that economic and political
power should be used to strengthen each other in inter-
national dealings. That theory is already threatening

The Economic Hymn of Hate 55

to bring Europe some day into armed conflict with the
hundreds of millions of the East.

It has remained for America to show a more excellent
way. Mexico testifies to an American belief that American
capital invested abroad assumes the same risks in those
lands as native capital, that the rights of American
capital abroad are not superior to the rights of the peoples
concerned to work out their own salvation if they can.
And the situation in China shows that such a policy is a
real business asset, because America is not suspected of
any ulterior political end. American capital is eagerly
sought in China, while European and Japanese capital
is accepted only under stress of necessity. Present Amer-
ican investment policy is idealistic, gloriously imprac-
tical — and it is already in process of demonstrating its
success, as witness the concession for a thousand miles
of American-built railways in China. Only let our trade
policy be established and maintained on the same high
basis of reciprocal advantages, resting on mutual eco-
nomic service and not on political pressure, let us turn
our backs on the fears and hatreds that Europe is nourish-
ing to-day, let us believe that the future lies with those
peoples who cooperate most wisely in external economic
relations at the same time that they order their internal
social affairs most intelligently, and America may yet
help the world take some steps toward decent interna-
tional relations, as she has already helped it realize some
new possibilities of developing order and liberty together
over a continental area among a myriad of differing
peoples. We must dare, and again dare, and forever dare.

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THE
THEATER?

THAT something is the matter with the theatrical
business in the United States is only too apparent.
It is true that there are more and more American plays
which mirror with superficial accuracy interesting aspects
of American life. It is true also that in every season judi-
cious playgoers may enjoy an uncertain number of sat-
isfactory performances. It is true furthermore that there
is no dearth of good acting, both skilful and sincere. It
is true finally that our newer theaters are sumptuous and
comfortable and safe. But it is true none the less that the
theatrical business, always precarious, has been descending
for several successive years into the slough of despond.
Every fall dozens and even scores of companies set out
from New York with high hopes for the winter, only to
return before Christmas, closed up at the customary two
weeks' notice. Even in the more important cities, theaters
are "dark" for weeks at a time, or eke out the lean season
by opening their doors to vaudeville or moving pictures.

The splendid New Theater built by the millionaires of
New York, was kept up by them for only two seasons;
and after two more years of drama and two years of opera,
it was turned into a variety-show, with a performance
adroitly adjusted to the supposed tastes of the supposed
Tired Business Man.

And the moving-picture managers are constantly
annexing other playhouses built for the regular drama;
the latest of these theaters to surrender is the Knicker-
bocker in New York, the house wherein the Irving-Terry
company played, the Coquelin-Hading company and a
host of other leading attractions, native and foreign.
Equally significant is the withdrawal of a manager as
capable and as resourceful as Mr. Daniel Frohman from

56

What is the Matter with the Theater? 5 7

the field of production, to devote his energy and his skill
to the making of moving-pictures.

These are the fatal facts; and no one familiar with all the
circumstances can deny that the theatrical business as a
business, as a money-making proposition, is in a parlous
state.

Now, as Artemus Ward used to put it, why is this thus ?
What has brought about this unprofitable state of affairs?
What are the reasons for this lamentable condition?

The explanations most often heard are two. The first
is that times have been hard for half-a-dozen years, and
that the theatrical business has suffered just as almost
every other business has suffered, no more and no less.
The second is that the sudden and startling and stupen-
dous expansion of the moving-picture industry has ex-
posed the regular theaters to a cut-price competition, the
full effects of which may not yet be evident.

These reasons are both of them valid; they are good as
far as they go. There is no doubt that ever since the panic
of 1907 financial conditions have been unsatisfactory;
capital has been suspicious; trade has been curtailed. But
although general business has not been good for several
years, it has been slowly getting better, — whereas the
theatrical business has been steadily getting worse. And
the fierce rivalry of the movies has incontestably aggra-
vated the uncertainty of the theatrical situation. When
a family is trying to economize, it is likely to weigh very
cautiously the prospective pleasure of an evening at the
movies for twenty-five cents a head, and an evening in a
regular theater in seats that cost two dollars each. Prob-
ably this is a competition which the theater will always
hereafter have to contend with, even if the immediate
and excessive vogue of the moving-picture should wane
after a season or two. Furthermore it must be said that
the regular theaters almost invited the competition of the
movies by their uniform scale of prices.

58 The Unpopular Review

Here we find a third reason, probably at least as potent
as the other two. It may be put bluntly: — the managers
of the American theaters, instead of trying to entice cus-
tomers and to build up a steady trade, as all other trades-
men do, have been engaged in discouraging theater-going
by the terms and conditions on which they have sold their
tickets. They have done as the railroad managers did
when they made the rates all that the traffic would bear.
They have demanded not only a high price, but a uniform
price, for all the attractions, whatever the varying attract-
iveness of these might be. There is no common sense basis
for asking the same price for the privilege of seeing a com-
paratively inexpensive performance of a simple play with
a small cast, and an elaborate spectacular production with
a large company of actors and actresses in receipt of high
salaries. Five dollars was not exorbitant for the privilege
of beholding Salvini as Othello with Edwin Booth as lago.
Three or even four dollars was not a prohibitive price for
the delight of seeing together Jefferson as Bob Acres, Mrs.
Drew as Mrs. Malaprop, John Gilbert as Sir Anthony
Absolute, W. J. Florence as Sir Lucius O'Trigger and
Robert Taber as Captain Absolute. Two dollars and a
half or even three dollars would be willingly paid for the
satisfaction of witnessing The Merchant of Venice with
Henry Irving as Shylock and Ellen Terry as Portia, sup-
ported by the highly competent and well-balanced Lyceum
company.

These are, of course, "exceptional offerings," as they
phrase it in the department-store advertisements; and for
the exceptional offerings the enthusiastic playgoer is al-
ways ready to pay an exceptional price. Nor has the play-
goer, even when he is not enthusiastic, any objection to the
ordinary rate of two dollars when the performance is as
satisfactory as that of Leak Kleschna given a few years
ago by Mrs. Fiske, George Arliss, John Mason, William
B. Mack and Charles Cartwright, or as that of The New
York Idea given last fall by Miss Grace George, Miss Mary

What is the Matter with the Theater? 59

Nash, and Mr. Ernest Lawford. Yet even for these es-
timable performances perhaps the majority of the specta-
tors in the center of the house, in the most desirable seats,
bought their tickets from the speculators in one or another
of the hotels, and were forced to pay two dollars and a
half — the extra fifty cents being divided between the
managers and the speculators.

While the performances of Mrs. Fiske and Miss George
and their well-chosen companies in well-chosen plays may
well be worth two dollars or even two dollars and a half,
this cannot be said of a majority of the programs proffered
in our theaters. Many of these would be dear at any price;
they are the failures, always to be expected in a business
as risky as theatrical management; and they are with-
drawn after short runs. But there are not a few plays in
every season which are not flat failures, which have modest
merits and which might fill out a fairly honorable career if
they were proffered at a price commensurate with these
modest merits. At two dollars they are likely to play to
houses only sparsely populated, whereas at a dollar, or
even at a dollar and a half, the auditorium might be
profitably peopled. It is a good sign that certain New
York theaters reduced their prices in the fall of 1915; and
it is significant that the new Standard Theater on the
upper West side, where the traveling companies remain for
a week, has a lower scale of prices than the theaters farther
down on Broadway, and that it is one of the best-paying
playhouses in greater New York. It may be recorded also
that the Standard is a "neighborhood theater" with a
solid body of regular customers, encouraged to take their
tickets in advance for the whole season, for one night a
week, thus eliminating the speculator.

Quite as unfortunate as the principle of asking two
dollars in every theater of any pretension, for every play
presented, is the principle of asking the same price for
every seat on the ground floor. These seats are not of

60 The Unpopular Review

equal value; and it is hopelessly unbusinesslike to try to
sell goods of unequal value at the same price. If the choice
seats in the center of the house are worth two dollars each,
then those at the back and the sides are not worth more
than a dollar and a half. Here the managers of the theaters
would do well to take a hint from the managers of the
railroads, and recognize the necessity of "differentials."
There would be obvious advantage in returning to the cus-
tom of forty and fifty years ago, when the tickets to
different parts of the house, were fifty cents, seventy-five
cents, a dollar, a dollar and a quarter and a dollar and a
half. Only within the past twenty years has the practice
become established of imposing a uniform price of two
dollars on all the seats on the main floor, — a novelty as
noxious as it is abhorrent.

Here again, we may recognize a sign of hope in the cus-
tom of having a lower scale for the Wednesday matinees
than that maintained for the Saturday matinee and for
the evening performances. Probably there would be
profit in applying the lower Wednesday matinee scale to
the Monday and Tuesday evening performances during
a long run, when the receipts are generally barely more
than half those taken in on Friday and Saturday evenings.
And it is noteworthy that this policy was adopted by
Mr. William A. Brady at the Playhouse in New York
for the series of performances given by Miss Grace
George.

A fourth reason for the unsatisfactory condition of the
theatrical business can be found in its over-expansion.
Owing to the cut-throat rivalry of two hostile groups of
managers, playhouses have been multiplied far beyond
the demand of the public, which is of course far beyond
the possibility of profit. There are scores of small cities
in which a second theater has been erected although the
first theater was barely paying its way. To supply these
competitive houses far too many inferior companies have

What is the Matter with the Theater? 6 1

been sent out. And the animosity between the groups has
sometimes been so embittered that a first-rate attraction
has been placed in one of the theaters specially to compete
with another first-rate attraction already announced for
the other house. This is simply suicidal. Almost equally
foolish has been the policy pursued in what are known as
the "one-night stands." These little towns are rarely
ready to supply remunerative audiences for more than one
or two or, at the most, three evenings a week. Yet the
managers have not hesitated to book six consecutive com-
panies to fill every one of the six nights, with the inevitable
result that no one of the half-dozen is able to play to one-
half of the receipts which would have fallen to the lot of
any one of them if its single performance had been the
only one in the week. Here we have a group of closely re-
lated errors in management, — too many companies, too
many theaters, too high prices, and prices too rigidly
uniform for seats of varying value and for attractions of
varying importance. These are all matters of administra-
tion; and therefore they are all of them entirely in the
control of the managers themselves. As these managers
are believed to be men of affairs, with a keen insight into
business conditions, we may hope that sooner or later they
will come together to correct these errors, and to put their
business on a solider foundation.

There is, however, another condition which is not in the
control of the managers, and which is due to the peculiar
position held by New York — a position not held by any
one of the great cities of Europe. New York is the pro-
ducing center for new plays; it is the starting point for
foreign attractions; and its stamp of approval is deemed
to be more or less necessary for success in any of the other
cities in the United States. Plays are sometimes forced
into a run in New York in the hope that the reputation
thus falsely acquired may impose upon the playgoers in
Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston. It is not too much

62 The Unpopular Review

to say that there is now in New York not one theater
managed with an eye single to itself: they are all managed
with an eye upon the possible profit to be made throughout
the whole United States after the play has completed its
protracted career in Manhattan. However magnificent
may be the reward of a whole season's run in New York,
it is not the half of that which awaits its managers in the
rest of the country. And as a result, not a single theater
in New York has a permanent company of its own; and
every company occupying the stage of a metropolitan
playhouse is really a road-company, which expects to go
wandering east and west, north and south, all over the
United States.

This is not the situation in any of the countries of Eu-
rope. In France and in England, Paris and London are
not only the capitals and the chief centers of urban popula-
tion, but they are so far ahead of the other cities that they
have no rivals. The more important companies of Paris
rarely or never "go on the road;" they are anchored in the
capital, and for them the provinces offer no alluring temp-
tation. In like manner, the more important companies in
London play in London only, and pay very brief and very
occasional visits even to cities as large as Edinburgh and
Dublin, Manchester and Liverpool. The dramatic au-
thors of Great Britain derive by far the larger part of their
British royalties from the performances of their plays in
the capital itself; and in like manner the French play-
wrights make their profit mainly from the Parisian the-
aters. Both in France and in Great Britain the capital
city is all important, and the other towns taken altogether
return rewards far inferior to that which the capital city
supplies.

Among the German-speaking peoples, on the other hand,
there are two capitals, almost equal in authority, Berlin
and Vienna. Both of them have their court-theaters, more
or less imperially supported; and so have such minor cap-
itals as Munich and Dresden. In other large cities, Frank-

What is the Matter with the Theater? 63

fort, for example, and Hamburg, there are municipal
theaters more or less supported by the city itself. All these
leading German towns have companies permanently con-
nected with their theaters, changing a little from season to
season, but never "going on the road." And each one of
these theaters is managed with the sole desire of pleasing
the playgoers of the town in which it is situated. Al-
though renowned actors go on starring tours, they play as
"guests" supported or rather surrounded by the local
company. Very rarely indeed does any German theater
allow its actors to appear anywhere but on its own boards.
And in Germany there are no "combinations" organized
on purpose to "go on the road." This is a more satisfac-
tory condition than can be found here in the United States
or even in any other European country, because it en-
courages the local managers to bring out new plays. It
is true, of course, that most dramatic novelties are first
exhibited in Berlin or Vienna, but it is also true that not a
few of them are originally produced in Dresden or Mu-
nich, Hamburg or Frankfort.

Now Germany is a fairly compact country with a fairly
homogeneous people, whereas the United States is a
straggling territory with a heterogeneous population.
We come from different stocks and we dwell under differ-
ent conditions; and therefore our need of dramatic de-
centralization is far greater than that of Germany. When
we consider that the drama is the most democratic of the
arts because it must win popular approval or die, when
we recall the diverse desires and aspirations of the in-
habitants of separate States, we cannot help admitting
that a dramatic literature which should be more freely
American, which should have a fuller flavor of the soil,
would be more likely to develop if there was a franker
recognition of "local option," so to speak, if plays dealing
with local conditions had a fair chance of profitable per-
formance in the community which had given them birth.
American novelists and short-story writers have put far

64 The Unpopular Review

more local color into our prose fiction than American
dramatists have even tried to put into our plays. The
potential playwrights of the fiction-belt of Indiana, for
example, are not engaged in composing plays which reveal
the true inwardness of the Hoosier primarily for the delight
of dwellers on the Wabash; they are trying to concoct
pieces to tickle the jaded sensibilities of the Tired Business
Man in the tenderloin on the Hudson.

Then there is another striking and significant difference
between the conditions in Europe and in the United
States. London is the heart of England, whereas New
York is not the heart of the United States. Paris rep-
resents France, whereas New York does not satisfactorily
represent the United States. Berlin is the center of Prus-
sia, whereas New York is the gateway of the United States.
Although New York is not the political capital of the
country, it is the commercial and financial capital, and
it is probably also the literary and artistic capital. Yet
only a few of its millions of inhabitants are natives, and
only a few more are born of native parents. New York is,
more than any other American city, the melting-pot in
which aliens from every clime are being melted together
to fuse with the native. Because it is the gateway and
the melting-pot, New York contains more alien elements
not yet assimilated, than any of the other larger cities of
the country. And to say this is to say that New York is
in some respects the least American city. It is to say that
the population of New York is not representative of the
population of the United States as a whole, because a
vast majority of the population of the United States is not
only native and born of native parents but it has acquired
American ideas of life, American ideals of conduct, Amer-
ican standards of morals, — ideas and ideals and standards
which may or may not be superior to those of the un-
•assimilated aliens of New York but which at any rate are
different.

Now if this is the case, it needs no argument to show

What is the Matter with the Theater? 65

that it is unfortunate for the American theater that plays
which are produced to please the population of the United
States as a whole, should have to begin by pleasing the
population of New York. And it is small wonder that a
host of plays which have pleased New York in the course
of the past few seasons, should have failed to please the
playgoers of the rest of the United States. Immigrants
and even the children of immigrants (and the average age
of the habitual playgoing public is under thirty) cannot
be expected to have the point of view of native Americans;
they do not see life from the same angle; they do not look
at questions of morals and of manners exactly as do we who
are native to the soil.

The recent succession of "crook" plays and the even
later series of "red light" dramas, false in treatment,
maudlin in sentiment, and revolting in taste, were toler-
ated in New York whereas outside of New York they were
discovered to be shocking and abhorrent. Some of them
may have been sincere efforts to deal with the darker as-
pects of life; but not a few of them seemed to be simply
speculations in smut, certain to be disgusting to the
healthy American palate. It would be difficult to declare
exactly just how much of the injury to the theatrical busi-
ness is to be ascribed to the reaction of decent Americans
against this attempt to lure them into beholding stories of
vice, unredeemed by any real insight into the more somber
problems of our social organization. So far as these plays
are concerned, New York proved itself to be unrepresent-
ative of the United States.

As the drama is the most democratic of the arts, there-
fore the American managers who produce American plays
should think and feel as do the American people upon
whose approval they depend. It was an absurdity to in-
vite an Englishman, Mr. Granville Barker, to take charge
of the New Theater. How could any Englishman, no
matter how clever he might be, understand the temper of
the American people as the manager of an American

66 The Unpopular Review

theater ought to understand it? The ultimate failure of
Lester Wallack was due to the fact that (although he was
a native of New York), he chose resolutely to remain an
Englishman, in spite of all temptations to belong to other
nations, thereby incapacitating himself for understanding
the desires and the preferences of the playgoers he sought
to attract to his theater. And it is not without significance
that we owe many (if not most) of the more interesting
American plays of the past decade to the managers who
have a hereditary understanding of the American people
by right of their nativity — Mr. Winthrop Ames, Mr.
Belasco, Mr. W. A. Brady, Mr. George M. Cohan, Mr.
Fiske, Mr. Arthur Hopkins, Mr. George C. Tyler, and
Mr. Savage.

These managers may or may not reside in New York;
but they understand the people outside of New York.
And it is to the people outside of New York that the Amer-
ican drama appeals, and it is upon them that the theatrical
business must rely for its prosperity. It is a good augury
for the future that first productions are made now and
again outside of New York. Mr. George Arliss had a long
season in Disraeli in Chicago before he came East to
play successfully on Broadway; and Under Cover filled
a Boston theater for weeks the winter before it was brought
to New York. Even in distant Los Angeles Mr. Oliver
Morosco has dared to be independent and to try out
dramatic novelties.

It may seem to some that the question whether or not
the theater is making money is of interest only to those in
the show-business. As a fact, it is important to all of us
who look for an outflowering of the drama here in America
and who long to see our own life with its peculiarities and
its problems set on the stage with the amplitude and the
accuracy with which French life was depicted by the
French dramatists of the nineteenth century.

CEDIPUS AND JOB

I

ALL experience," says Sainte Beuve, "is like a book
and it makes no great difference whether one opens
to page a hundred and twenty which is the integral cal-
culus, or to page eighty-five which is hearing the band
play in the gardens."

It is like a book also in that if one opens in that random
way to a puzzling paragraph, the meaning may appear
by further study of the paragraph by itself, but as a rule
one has to turn back and recover the context. For
though humanity is not like a book where one can read
the past as closely as the present, it is like a book in that
it has a context and a little one can read; only the earlier
pages of the great folio of the generations of men are
blotted and torn and faded, and then whole leaves and
chapters are gone, and then come only loose words, letters,
fragments, decay, little hints and long guesses.

If from his own self-knowledge and from observation of
his fellows one philosopher concludes that conscience is an
innate faculty, and another that it is but the shadow of a
social injunction; if M. Maeterlinck sees justice as a mys-
tery full of hazy possibilities, and M. Remy de Gour-
mont as simply an equilibrium and hence a thing funda-
mentally undesirable; it seems to follow that conscience
and justice are somewhat difficult paragraphs on the
immediate page. Have they no context in the book?
In its dim old pages one seems to find the consciousness
of primitive man in such curious solution with his group
that the social custom is his conscience, and between his
"innate faculty" and his social injunctions there is no
conscious difference. Our conception of justice is a com-
position of diverse elements, some of which are discern-
ible as coming from different directions, however still

68 The Unpopular Review

mysterious in themselves. One of these elements — which
Professor Westermark believes the principal one — may
indeed be a sort of apotheosis of resentment, and M. De
Gourmont may call it, if he chooses, an instinct for equi-
librium. Revenge is "getting even," and "Revenge,"
said Bacon, "is a kind of wild justice."

No river has, properly speaking, any source except the
sea which is also its goal. Where water begins to flow
visibly, which will have to flow farthest before reaching
the sea, is commonly called the source of the river, but the
definition is trivial, however practical. Such blended
conceptions as conscience, justice, and sin are conditions
of our minds, characteristics of their make up, like lakes
whose shape is determined by the land around them;
some of the contents may have fallen directly from the
clouds, or been mysteriously condensed out of the atmos-
phere, but the mass of it has flowed in more or less visibly,
and in part from other gatherings of water of quite differ-
ent shape and farther back in the wilderness. The par-
allel is not very exact.

And yet the Book of Job and the tragedy of CEdipus,
those dramatizations of the conflict of two irreconcilable
ideas, are they not, in their tossing and struggle, like the
agony of water falling from one level to another? God
is strong and just. Therefore the sufferer must be wicked.
But Job was good! What can it mean? CEdipus knew
nothing of the sins he was committing. If Apollo did
not order the parricide and the incest, then destiny or-
dered them, and Apollo's prophecy was a part of the
trap, and CEdipus ran upon it when he was doing his
best to avoid it. He is a good man who has had the
misfortune to become "wicked." Definitions of words
do not help the fact that he calls it sin, and is racked and
crushed by remorse, and has all the sensations of un-
speakable guilt. Is there no difference in the eyes of the
gods between guilt and bad luck? Are sin and misfor-
tune the same? Job and his friends, and CEdipus and the

Oedipus and Job 69

chorus, all struggle with the problem to no conclusive
result.

Do there crawl

Live things of evil from the deep

To leap on man? -

Oh, let me live unstained till I die,

For the laws are holy!

The case of CEdipus is more subtle and appalling than
that of Job, for Job does not feel wicked, but CEdipus
does. He has become a moral leper, "Unclean! Un-
clean!" The chorus prays to be protected from the dread
contaminating peril which lurks and hangs to left and
right and overhead. Safety is only in straight, narrow
and prescribed path's. One step aside, one breach of the
law, and the thing may fall, and you are infected, tainted,
smitten with the curse. Whether you have broken an
injunction, or some "evil eye" has witched you; whether
you have been careless, or as careful as you know how;
however it comes about, the evil that falls upon you is the
same.

But can it be that the gods are indifferent whether the
unfortunate is guiltless or not? We poor mortals en-
deavor after something we call justice. Do the rules of
the wide universe make no endeavor after it? "He
sendeth his rain upon the just and the unjust" was one
of the saddest admissions that the phenomenon of life
drove into the heart of young humanity, and the ache of
it is there to-day, when the continuing evidence still
clinches the conclusion that it is largely true. The oracle
doomed the helpless CEdipus, as Calvinistic theology
doomed the helpless non-elect, and against both of them
something in humanity revolted. And yet both are dis-
tant recognitions of the fact of nature. The warfare is
inherent. We can neither reconcile ourselves to nature,
nor separate ourselves from her. We are a part of her,
yet we know a law of which she knows nothing. We

7O The Unpopular Review

predicate a justice beyond her, not because we see evi-
dence of it, but because our hearts demand it. We
struggle with the thought, like Jacob with the angel, all
through the night, crying, "I will not let thee go except
thou bless me."

So that, after all, it does make some difference, whether
we open the book of experience at the integral calculus or
at hearing the band play in the gardens. In a way, it
makes all the difference, for they are type pages, and all
the pages in the book are of one or the other of these two
types, or contain them both, mingled and yet separable.
If a man makes gods of the harvest or the storm, or says
"God is the First cause," he is at a calculus type of page.
If he makes gods for the comfort of his despair or the goal
of his aspirations, or says, "God is the unutterable sigh of
the human heart," he is at a band-in-the-garden type of
page. The two pages are written in languages so differ-
ent that the meaning of one cannot be rendered in the
idiom of the other. Or we might put it in this way, that
the book of experience is interlinear, like a book of songs,
one line in words and letters of the alphabet, and the next
in notes of a musical score. But they do not seem to be
written for each other. We would fain sing the words
to the music, and understand the music through the
words; we would fain sing the universe to the melodies we
feel, and make a broad intelligible path from a world
without us to a world within; and we can do neither of
these things.

II

All natural life is a struggle to continue and perpetuate
itself. Every separate life and every species is bred to
this issue. The chance of survival, given to lower forms
by multitudinous procreation, is given to the higher spe-
cies by a normal condition of intense and constant watch-
fulness. Danger is the atmosphere they live in. The

Oedipus and Job 71

dominating element in the feeling of early man toward all
things not himself, or of his immediate group, is a suspi-
cious apprehension. Power to harm is not only con-
ceived of as localized in particular objects, but as inherent
in things in general. This generalization of the Fear is
not a human achievement, but the human version of ani-
mal watchfulness. When innumerable objects to be
feared have produced a temperamental fear, nature her-
self has made the generalization. It is not that "from a
multitude of things having power arises the notion of a
continuum of power, a world of unseen magical activity
lying behind the visible universe " (Harrison); it is rather
that out of the fear of a multitude of things having power,
arises a continuum of fear, suspicion, or watchfulness, and
out of this subconscious continuum of fear or awe arises
the conscious notion of a continuum of power. The
leaping crawling evil, whose approach is misfortune, its
touch contamination, its grasp ruin and death, is the ob-
jective of the Fear. It is an innate belief caused by an
innate condition. Monotheism does not grow out of
polytheism so much as out of an already unified sense of
awe. It is not a generalization by the reason, but the
projection of an emotion already generalized.

The Iroquois word "orenda" and the Melanesian
"mana" mean much the same thing. It is that power,
or allotment of the power, residing in a person or thing, to
accomplish anything. "The orenda of a hunter is pitted
against the orenda of his prey." Possibly everything has
it in some degree, at any rate anything may have it in a
dangerous degree. It may pass from one thing to another
by contact or nearness, but especially by contact. It is
contagious and infectious. It may be benevolent or ma-
levolent. You induce the good will, or protect yourself
against the hostility, if you can. The art of doing so is
called magic. In general you think of it as dangerous,
much as you think of any stranger as probably an enemy,
or as any animal, at any odd sound or sight, immediately

72 The Unpopular Review

thinks, "Danger!" The world is a live wire charged
with peril. Any object which looks odd gives suspicion
that it is heavily charged. Taboos are warnings, signs,
"Keep off the grass," "Look out for the locomotive,"
"Streng verboten," regulations and prohibitions, so that
one may not run into ambushed disaster or catch the dis-
ease of ill luck.

"Holy" or "unclean," "lucky" or "unlucky," are
different phases of the same idea. Holy things make
holy, unclean things unclean, whatever touches them. A
lucky stone in your pocket makes you lucky, an unlucky
stone unlucky; the quality, influence, power, mana,
orenda, resident in things is transferable, as the magnet-
ism of a magnet magnetizes another piece of iron.

All the vast phenomena of ceremonial cleanness and
ritual precautions, "clean and unclean" animals, all forms
of taboo and contact-dread, all sacrifices and communion
feasts, seem to run back to the idea of the transferable
nature of this power — beneficent or maleficent but par-
ticularly the latter — which permeates and flows through
everything, which emanates from things like an odor,
which is so concentrated in this thing as to be dangerous,
and so diluted in most things as perhaps to be negligible,
but which may come forth to help or injure from almost
anything.

The fear of ill luck haunts the savage night and day. His
life is enmeshed in a network of taboos. A taboo is anything
one must not do lest ill luck befall, and ill luck is catching like a
disease. If my next door neighbor breaks a taboo, the unpleas-
ant consequences are likely to be passed on to me and mine —
Hence the violator of a taboo is an object of communal ven-
geance.— The most striking instance of taboo-breaking is the
violation of the law of exogamy, the law against marriage
within the kin. (Marett.)

Now, whether the consequent evil is called, or con-
ceived of, as ill luck or the curse or infection, a disease or
the wrath of God, the conception is fundamentally the

Oedipus and Job 73

same. Whether you catch the evil through your own
fault or not is a minor matter, for the evil is the same.
One supposes there is a rule against every danger, and if
one knew and perfectly obeyed them all one would pre-
sumably be immune from ill luck, vaccinated against
all evil. Of course one does not know them all. The
medicine man or priest knows more law than most people.
The scrupulously careful man in these matters is the
prototype of the religious man. The sinless man, who
breaks no rule, is almost necessarily prosperous.

Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,
Non eget Mauris jaculis nee arcu.

"I have been young and now I am old, yet have I not
seen the righteous forsaken."

Ill

Consciousness of humanity as humanity, of the species
man, is a late development. If we picture him as slowly
emerging from "nature," we must also observe that he
still more slowly becomes aware that he has emerged, that
an impassable gulf lies between him and all life below and
behind. Himself and nature seem to him one indivisible
whole. But his mind moving naturally from the known
to the unknown, he does not suppose himself like "na-
ture;" he supposes "nature" like himself. Feeling him-
self conscious and with a spirit something, or resident
power, active within him, he supposes everything is con-
scious with a spirit something, or resident power, active
within it. This supposition of the humanity of nature,
this ignoring of the gulf, shows its lingering trails in the
innumerable metamorphoses of folk-lore; this seeing
everything like himself in all the anthropomorphic gods.

Indeed we state the same thing, and emphasize this
absorbing relationship in another way, when we say that
to the savage the nature or essence of anything is its re-

74 The Unpopular Review

lation to him or to his group. The nature of this animal
is to be good to eat, the nature of that tree to furnish
bark for canoes. Just as in the interfolded and blended
configuration of New England hills, the names "Baldwin
Hill, Church Hill, Bell Hill, Painter Hill" do not essen-
tially mean to country folk any visible configurations.
Essentially they mean the hill roads, and where there is
no road there is usually no name. The essence of the
hills is their human relationship. They are things one
has to climb.

So far as we now tend to conceive humanity and the hu-
man order in terms of nature and nature's order, we re-
verse the primitive, who conceived nature and nature's
order in terms that he knew best, which were human.
So do the poets still conceive, and Ruskin denounced the
habit. Foam is not "cruel" nor the morning "jocund."
But poetry is rooted in forgotten ages and immune to the
criticism.

"Ought," to us, is social; "must" is natural. If a man
is mortally ill he "must" die. But if nature is moral he
also "ought" to die. If man and nature have the same
law, the "ought" of the one is the same as the "must"
of the other. "Whatever is, is right," is a reassertion of
the primitive's point of view — his inability to conceive
of humanity as having struck out a new path for itself,
and gone "voyaging through strange seas — alone."

The primitive boundaries of right are not the limits of the in-
dividual as against society, nor yet of society as against nature,
but radiate in unbroken lines from the center of society to the
circumference of the cosmos. . . The visible world was
parcelled out into an ordered structure reflecting, or continuous
with, the tribal microcosm, and so informed with types of repre-
sentation which are of social origin. To this the order of na-
ture owes its moral character. It is regarded as not only neces-
sary, but right or just, because it is a projection of the social
constraint imposed by the group upon the individual, and in
that constraint "must" and "ought" are identical. (Cornford.)

Ancient faith held, and in part modern religion still holds,

Oedipus and Job 75

that moral excellence and material prosperity must go to-
gether, that man by obeying Themis, the Right, can control the
way of nature. This strange faith, daily disproved by reason,
is in part the survival of the conviction, best seen in totemism,
that man and nature are one indivisible whole. (Harrison.)

Now, when men have become conscious of themselves
in organic groups, and have also seen that nature is also
grouped, they again suppose the same kind of grouping.
Totemism is the identification of a species with a human
group. The men of the emu totem insist that emus and
emu-men are the same, but kangaroos and kangaroo-men
are different from them. The men of the kangaroo totem
agree that they and the kangaroos are the same, but that
emu-men are different from them. Totemism, it has
been suggested, arises in part from the desire to empha-
size and realize more vividly the group solidarity by iden-
tifying it with the emphatic and unmistakable unity of
species. The men of one totem are "all one flesh" be-
cause they are "all one flesh" with their totem animal.
They get from the idea the emphatic sense of social soli-
darity which they need. Totem groups are generally ex-
ogamous, and folk-lore abounds in the intermarriage of
animals of different species. But some groups are en-
dogamus like real species. Caste is a sort of attempt at
imitative species.

However that may be, the group unity was successfully
emphasized. If one has a cancer, it is not a question of
sympathy with that unfortunate portion of the body: it
is a question of saving one's life. If one dove in a dove
cote is crippled, the other doves attack and cast it out,
because their instincts say nothing about sympathy with
individuals, but only about advantage to the community.
In primitive human society too, the group rather than the
individual seems to be the moral unit. CEdipus and Job
and the misfortunes of innocence do not, in such a so-
ciety, puzzle or revolt the mind or conscience of any
of its normal members.

7 6 The Unpopular Review

Now when, into this moral code, hitherto wholly or
predominantly social in its nature and aims, there began
to creep or increase considerations for the individual, a
doubt whether the group was everything and the per-
son nothing — when "justice" and "right" began to mean
issues between man and man, or even between a man and
his group, and not merely observance of those tribal laws,
common customs and sanctioned habits which maintained
the group — this change in the conception of the social
order passed over to and was held good for the natural
order, since the two were still thought of as the same.
An innocent man injured by group action being now
held to have something wrong about it, it appeared also
wrong for an innocent man to be unfortunate. For-
tune "ought" to be "just." "Shall not the judge of all
the earth do right? " The conception of nature had
shifted, following a shift in the conception of society.
But the realities of society had actually followed the
shift in conception, because they consist of that concep-
tion, whereas the realities of nature remained precisely
as they were before. The new conception of nature was
not as true as the old one.

When it was believed that the gods punished the tribe for
the sins of its members, or a member for the sins of his tribe,
"this belief was not only effective in practice but substantially
true in theory." But when it was taught " that the gods always
punished the individuals for their own sins, the formula lost so
much of its truth as to lose nearly all of its effectiveness." (Had-
ley.)

To study the universe, and then, turning back to human-
ity and human society with altered eyes, to attempt the
statement of man in terms of nature, is comparatively
modern. Of old the statement was of nature in terms of
man. The wrench and struggle, old beyond measure-
ment and yet unfinished, to set the two apart — to real-
ize that whether nature ultimately makes all laws for man

Oedipus and Job 77

or not, man does not make laws for nature; that his moral
jurisdiction stops short at his own frontiers, and beyond
them there are no personal rights — this wrench and
struggle and crying out of great pain are the subject-
matter of the book of Job, the central motif of the CEdipus.
Job is crushed not only because his wealth and his chil-
dren are gone and he sits alone in the ashes, but because
the fair structure of his moral universe seems to have
broken down, and his whole soul cries out against admit-
ting it.

The primitive said, "The whole world is the same as we
are," and it was not. The facing of the fact drove Job
to the ash heap of despair and the choruses of CEdipus to
helpless contradictions. Some modern men have said:
"We are the same as the whole world," and we are not.
For instance we are just or unjust, and nature is neither.

These conceptions of primitive man — mana, totem,
and magic — seem strange enough to us now, though the
threads of them are inwoven in our thoughts and govern
our feelings, our goings out and our comings in.

First: He thought of the whole universe, both nature
and man, in the same terms, namely, in terms of man and
his society. He thought of everything as having, what
he felt himself to have, some kind of indwelling power.
For the most part he thought of that power as dangerous
rather than beneficent, and attempted to manipulate it by
magic and to avoid it by taboos.

Second: His general feeling of fear, as well as his fear
of particular things, came up with him from below into
humanity. The object of that generalized fear or awe
was the projection of it. (Monotheism is as primitive as
polytheism. The much debated and often shifted line
between magic and religion may perhaps as reasonably as
anywhere be drawn at the point where one begins to think
of the Power, or Powers, as like himself, instead of as like
something in himself — as a being, or beings, to be pleaded
with and propitiated, instead of a mere force or forces to

78 The Unpopular Review

be checked or manipulated. Religion begins with per-
sonification.)

Third : When the fear, awe, sense of power unseen and
latent everywhere, have projected their one blended con-
ception, and so far as that projection is thought of as a
power to harm, his attitude toward it was something like
that of a modern man toward infectious and contagious but
preventable disease. What things he must and must not
do in order not to catch it were traditional and prescribed.
The dogmatists claimed that the rules were sufficient.
Hence when a man has "caught it" as violently as Job,
he must have broken the rules badly, he must have been
an extraordinary sinner. Contrarywise, when he has,
like QEdipus, unquestionably broken the most absolute,
imperative rules among all known rules, he must have
"caught it" in the deadliest form. QEdipus himself ad-
mitted it. He recognized himself as necessarily an outcast.

Fourth: The social group was almost as organic as a
hive of bees, and every member's moral ideas were all
directed to the maintenance of the group.

Fifth : The rise of personal values on the moral horizon
introduced an irreconcilable element, a definite breach
with nature. He still thought of his own laws, his social
right and wrong, as holding good for nature, but his social
ideas had changed, whereas nature had not changed.

Sixth: Unlucky and sinful are two ideas arising from
the division of one idea. In (Edipus and Job the division
is half felt but not achieved.

IV

So long as it was collectively believed that the group
was punished for its sins and prospered by its virtues,
there was enough truth in it to maintain the theory; but
when the individual was substituted for the group, and
one tried to hold that God, or the gods, or the universe,
was just to every man by himself, the discrepancy with

Oedipus and Job 79

thronging and patent facts was too great, and the theory
fell down. The friends of Job argued that since he was
unfortunate he must be wicked. Job knew better. But
the author of the book had no solution. His Jehovah,
who should deliver the conclusion of the whole matter
and close the discussion, delivers magnificent poetry, but
throws no light on the subject, save the glare of his indig-
nation that anything so insignificant as man should have
any opinion about it. Job was silenced but not answered.
The opinion of the author would appear to be that the
problem was humanly insoluble.

The same question was submitted to Christ in connec-
tion with a man born blind, whether it was the man or his
parents who had sinned. The questioner's point of view
was that of Job's friends, namely: "Since God is just,
where there is suffering there must be sin. Whose sin
was here?" The modern eugenist, who is interested only
in causes that can be attacked, would have answered:
"Probably his parents, in this case. Congenital blindness
has usually that origin." The answer of Christ was:
"Neither he nor his parents, but that the works of God
should be made manifest in him." And this answer gives
no more satisfaction to us than Jehovah's to Job. It
seems to mean: He was born blind for the sake of the
miracle which you are about to witness. It may mean
more. But one suspects that a number of things were
said at the time by the teacher, and forgotten by the dis-
ciples, who were more interested in miracles than in ethi-
cal philosophy. For the life of Christ does furnish a sort
of answer to the problem, a personal solution at least,
and something to this effect: "I did not sin, and yet I
suffered. But I was willing to do so. For any man who
was willing to suffer unjustly, the problem, so far as him-
self is concerned, disappears. So far as other men are
concerned, his business is to help, not to solve."

If any answer is attempted nowadays, it perhaps agrees
with that answer, but makes an addition. Justice, it

8o The Unpopular Review

says, is a conception springing out of human relations,
and applying to human conduct. Its extension beyond
these is an inference which breaks down. You cannot
bring the universe into a court of law, or arraign it before
a moral code, or measure it by a moral standard. Man
has branched off on a strange road of his own. Nature
knows nothing of his new experiences and is unaware of
his conclusions.

After all, it is something like this that runs through the
thunderous scorn of Jehovah to Job, namely: The trouble
is you are trying to describe something in terms that do
not apply to it. Is the universe "just"? Is the soul
round or square? Can you measure time by the bushel?
What is the price of the morning? Elihu announces, "I
will ascribe righteousness to my Maker," and his Maker
tells him that his "words are without knowledge" and a
"darkening of council."

Man has become something more than a portion 'of
"nature." He has broken a new trail, and will never
again return the way he came. All his "returns to na-
ture" are episodic. The path he has taken has its own
realities and goals. His vision within is as solid a fact as
his physical eyesight, but it is different kind of fact. The
God to whom he "will ascribe righteousness" and cry,
"His banner over me is love!" is no projection or inhabi-
tant of the heavens or the earth, but of his own heart.
"Nature knows nothing of justice," he says, "and what
of it? You and I know something of justice, and we know
that it is something. Look for it where it is, not where it

is not.'!

Can we ever humanize the universe, or even our round
domestic earth, or force it to meet our demands, to deal
with us by laws that we lay down? It is not an incon-
ceivable ideal so to order procreation that no child shall
be born without a normally healthy body and mind, and
that practically all shall continue in health, be provided
with an education and means to earn a living, and prac-

Oedipus and Job 81

tically all die of old age. We may forestall all hunger
and disease, control floods and storms, establish an en-
tente cordiale with every practicable climate on the globe,
and so limit and surround the domain of accident that
misfortune shall again presumably always be someone's
fault, and the sin and ill luck again tend to merge toward
the same idea. We may humanize nature by foresight
and contrivance, as our forefathers attempted to by in-
ference and analogy. A world bereft of chance may seem
a prospect more comfortable than exhilarating; or a world
subdued to man's hand may be conceived of as the pre-
liminary basis for more daring and yet undreamed of
flights of his spirit; but at any rate it is not inconceivable.
The old attempt to state nature in terms of man was
persistent but unsuccessful; the analogy broke down; the
terms would not apply. The modern attempt to state
man in terms of nature is also persistent but unsuccess-
ful; the analogy breaks down; the terms will not apply.
As time has no cubic contents, nor the morning any price,
neither have the dreams that stir and glimmer within me
while the band plays in the gardens any recognition or ac-
quaintance with the formulas of the integral calculus.
The heart's long sigh and waiting pain and nameless hope
are no dances of the atoms, and have no more to do with
geology than has "nature" with "justice." The paths
divided long ago, in the uplands of the wilderness. Whit-
man says:

I give nothing as duties,

What others give as duties I give as living impulses.

Shall I give the heart's action as a duty? —

Whatever tastes sweet to the most healthy person, that is finally

right. —

Animals ... do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of

owning things,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

82 The Unpopular Review

These "returns to nature" nearly always bring with
them a sense of better sanity and sincerity, like a current
of fresh air in a close room. Or as if one periodically
drew back from his long task to breathe and recuperate
to shift his footing, grown insecure, before bending to his
task again. But it is only a happy episode. It is not the
main work in hand.

And there comes a lull in a hot race,
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And then he thinks he knows
The Hills where his life rose.

But he need not think thereby he also knows
The Sea where it goes.

For such visions are recollections not prophecies. They
tell him of the Hills, but not of the Sea. His past lies in
his resurging instincts, but his future lies in his task and
its path leads him away from "nature." We have built
up conceptions that are not in nature, and we shall never
surrender them.

The Whitman message means that a man's salvation
is to fall in step with the universe, to lie back on nature
and breathe her strength, to cease to strain away from her.
When Omar sent his soul through the invisible, and his
soul came back and reported: "I myself am heaven and
hell," it was an anti- Whitman report. One says: "I am
a part of nature, and my power as well as my peace is to
be natural." The other says : " I am something other than
nature, and my gain as well as my glory is to increase the
difference." For granted that our conscientious reason-
ings are three-fourths made of old and buried things, our
aspirations three-fourths instinct, and ourselves three-
fourths rooted in the brown earth; yet there remains a
fourth, a something insurmountable, ineffable and not in
antecedent nature at all.

Oedipus and Job 83

"All is good that comes from the hand of nature, all
is corrupted in the hands of man — " is good Genevan
doctrine, with "nature" substituted for "God." But
whether we repeat that "only man is vile" or not, what
we believe is that only man is important; that all lower
life is a means to a higher life, and yet again a higher;
that the one critical place in the universe is that tremu-
lous gleaming salient where the highest life yet known is
burning its way upward.

That strikes us as good poetry, but we are not content
to let the matter go without a little prose that our con-
tributor is good enough to invite us to add.

It is Nature's blindness to justice — her unswerving
disregard for anything in man's acts but the acts them-
selves; her absolute lack (except as she occasionally gives
us a second or even later chance) of mercy or pity for
ignorance or weakness or hereditary taint or passion of
any kind, or for any cramping of circumstance; her abso-
lute indifference to motive — it is these apparent de-
ficiencies in her treatment of man that have forced him
to study and regard the consequences of his acts, and so
have evolved him into an intellectual and moral being —
evolved a quite wide-reaching instinct for profitable con-
duct and unprofitable conduct, which we call right and
wrong, the instinct being what we call conscience. And
part of the same evolution under the same unyielding
conditions have been man's conception of morality, and
enthusiasm for it. He early became conscious of the
force behind the conditions, and this complex of the force
and the conditions, he has expressed in his various my-
thologies, through sundry anthropomorphic conceptions.
It was Job's confidence that, despite Nature's merciless
adherence to the conditions, they worked on the whole
for good, that evoked his message to the ages: "Though
He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." [EDITOR.]

THE TWO OPPOSING RAILROAD
VALUATIONS

THE Federal Valuation law was passed in March,
1913. On behalf of the Interstate Commerce
Commission the cost of making the valuation was va-
riously estimated at from one and one quarter million
dollars to five million; the time at from one to five years.
Three and a half years have passed. It develops that the
cost will probably exceed sixty million dollars. Less than
thirty per cent of the inventorying has been finished. The
Commission now hopes to complete the field labor in four
years more, but a more impartial estimate is six or seven
years. After that there will be the great legal battles to
interpret what is and what is not value, and to revise both
data and conclusions. A new period of suspense will
follow, possibly longer, and certainly more arduous, than
that devoted to the initial measurements.

But the valuation of railroads on the exchanges and in
the public markets costs nothing, is made every day in
accord with the conditions of that day, and is immeasur-
ably more nearly correct, in the real sense, and immeasur-
ably more useful than any conceivable governmental valu-
ation can be.

The utility of the government valuation is beginning
to be doubted. Senator Townsend, of the Committee
which drafted the law, has publicly questioned it. He
has expressed the wish that Congress were now able to
reverse the vote by which it committed itself to the policy.
Many who still favor the valuation in theory, believe
that it will never catch up with the unceasing changes in
the properties measured, so that it must always be out of
date and ineffective. Although the Interstate Commerce
Commission cleaves to it as to a creed, the valuation is
assuredly ripe for investigation, if not for abandonment.

Two Opposing Railroad Valuations 85

Senator Lafollette was the chief champion of the meas-
ure in the Senate; Professor Commons the guiding spirit
in framing the details. Hon. Charles A. Prouty, the
leader in developing the policies of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission, has resigned from its membership in
order to become the Director of the Valuation Division.
The law was radical in origin; its execution is in charge of
one who carries out radical ideas with reasonableness and
poise. In the hands of a less balanced extremist, the
valuation would prove so absurd as not to be feared. Un-
der his guidance it assumes a dangerous importance, both
at law and in the court of popular opinion.

The era of conferring weighty authority upon commis-
sions is a revulsion from a period of license. The valua-
tion law is the arch-type of the measures that have been
passed under a blind spell of trust and enchantment. It
presents the Commission with vast powers, that go to the
roots of railroad finance, and deal with the national wel-
fare. There was then no doubt or hesitation behind the
generous gift. The enthusiastic faith that the setting
apart of a few men in appointive commissions offers the
solution of vexed problems, is now somewhat sobered.
Nevertheless these improvised bodies are still seeking
more power and wider duties, and are endeavoring to take
the actual administration of railways out of the hands of
managements of life-long experience. The consequences
of the Federal Valuation upon railroad finance, where
misconception and ignorance can hardly fail to work ir-
reparable havoc, call for no easy-going submission, or re-
liance upon a post-mortem correction.

There is, and always has been, another valuation of
the railroads. The value placed upon their securities in
the public market is an approximately true expression of
the value of the properties. Another standard of value
is simply another definition. The market valuation is
useful. It has made possible the building and equipping
of the railroads, and furnished them forth as they actually

86 The Unpopular Review

are, for the public service. Without it there would be no
railroads, and no such opportunity for the investment of
savings. Based squarely upon financial requisites, with-
out theorizing, circumlocutions and self-deceptions, it has
served as one of the most powerful instruments of advance-
ment that civilization has been able to devise. This is a
practical valuation. It works.

The Federal Valuation is to be derived by standards
different from those of the market valuation. It faces
backward, looking to the past. Its values will probably
be different. At any rate it is to be a superseding valua-
tion, annulling the present standards as fixed by the se-
curities. The Federal Valuation is to take effect upon the
market valuation by means of revisions of railroad rates.

If, by happy chance, the two valuations should coin-
cide, then the Federal Valuation would clearly be useless,
an extravagance of idle vagary that railroads and govern-
ment alike could ill afford, and that its sponsors do not
intend. But if, as is intended, the Federal Valuation
shall disagree with the market valuation, it could not fail
to be most deeply injurious. It is more likely to impover-
ish security holders than to make them wealthy, but
either result is bad whan accomplished by fiat of law.
Thus the Federal Valuation is useless or it is detrimental.
It is doubtful if it can be made to work, even tempo-
rarily, but in any event it will be short-lived.

Some railroad managers, disapproving the principle of
valuation, have nevertheless acquiesced in its practice.
They believe it will prove useless to the Commission, but
may be useful to the railroads, by laying the ghost of
watered capital, and preventing reckless and improvident
reductions of rates. Knowing the great cost of railroad
properties, thay are convinced that a fair Federal Valua-
tion must at least support the market valuation of secu-
rities: that it cannot be less. This is, however, only an
assumption. The reckoning leaves out the peculiar men-
tal processes employed in the Federal Valuation.

Two Opposing Railroad Valuations 87

The real cost of constructing the railroads, to be ascer-
tained as prescribed in the law, has already been aban-
doned by the Valuation Division as unascertainable.
Nevertheless land values are being computed as of the
date of construction, setting aside the worth that years
have brought to right of way, and to terminals in what
are now the great cities. An inexcusably exaggerated
depreciation,^so-called, is being calculated as a deduction
from value. Costs of acquisition of connecting railroads,
necessary in creating through routes, are apparently to
be ignored. The " value" found will be neither cost nor
selling price, but a new figure, hitherto unknown, and
unreal.

It appears that the principal reliance of the Commission
will be a guess at the bare cost of reproducing a railroad
just as it stands, under a hypothetical program of cheap
and rapid construction with modern machinery, facilities,
connections and prices; with no allowance for mistakes,
high initial cost of capital, or evolutionary rebuilding, and
too little allowance for the usual indirect expenses of
law, finance, engineering, organization and contingencies.
Profits in construction, and surplus earnings used on the
property, are both to be eliminated. Especial care is
taken to place reasonably low unit prices on labor and
materials. This is the spirit of the valuation, as it has
been revealed to date. Some details may be changed and
other factors considered before the final conclusion. The
nearest approach as yet to the finished product is the
" tentative valuations " of four small railroads in the South
and West. In these many of the unit prices are lower
than contractors would undertake to do the work for, and
the elements of value assembled therefrom are, in addi-
tion, unreasonably pruned and reduced.

Thus the market valuation is not safe from inroads.
The Federal Valuation may not injure the strongest and
wealthiest properties, but weaker systems, those most in
need of financial encouragement, will undoubtedly suffer.

88 The Unpopular Review

A diplomatic acquiescence in the valuation by any rail-
road is an unsound policy.

The major premise of the Federal Valuation is false.
In any transportation enterprise, the immediate interests
of capital, labor and the public are opposed. Each has a
share in the total benefit of the undertaking, and the
amount of that share depends on the size of the other two
shares. But capital, labor and the public also have a
more permanent, and larger, common interest. Each
must have the cooperation of the other two before there
can be an enterprise, or continuing benefits therefrom to
be divided. Business, and especially transportation, is
being administered more and more on a permanent basis
of sharing fairly, and less on the temporary basis of grasp-
ing ruthlessly.

The valuation is aimed at the share of capital. To
suppose that railroad capital, as it now exists, is getting
more than its fair share is fallacious. As a matter of fact,
it is getting too little, so that railroad enterprise is losing
vigor. There is less new construction to-day than at any
time since before the Civil War. One-sixth of railroad
mileage is in the hands of receivers. Even the quota of
equipment has been allowed to fall behind. But the
Commission does not seek to restore the balance by in-
creasing, or making more certain, the share of capital.
The Federal Valuation is still directed to the end of re-
stricting that share, so that the abuse of excessive return
may be rectified, and the public, and labor also, may re-
ceive their just due. This is the sanction of the valua-
tion. It is a fixed and dangerous delusion, unaffected by
the most patent facts of the financial condition of the
roads.

In the hearings before the law was passed, Senator
Cummins expressed fear lest the valuation might show
a sum greater than the par of securities outstanding.
This was hardly fair-minded: it showed motive. How-
ever, in order to take the sting from this apprehension, he

Two Opposing Railroad Valuations 89

then stated the theory of rate of return upon which the
valuation idea rests. The real difference between railroad
property and that of private corporations is that "the
former may only earn a fair and reasonable return upon
the value, whatever that may be, and in the latter the
owner is permitted to earn any profits that he may under
the laws of commerce and of trade." Professor Commons
assented. The fundamental purpose is to limit railroad
profits, whether or not the valuation shows the par of se-
curities to be fully sustained. If railroads in their capac-
ity as public servants earn more than a fair return on the
value of their property devoted to public use, the profits
are extortionate.

Now this is an untenable principle, especially if the
value of the properties is illiberally construed. Railroads
are insatiate consumers of capital. They spend more
than they earn. They obtain funds only by sales of se-
curities that compete in open market with securities of
private industry, and with the war loans. If the returns
to capital are less in railroads than in private industry,
money will not be obtainable by railroads. That is ele-
mentary and obvious. The market valuation, as source
of capital, puts securities of every class on an equality,
having regard to both risk of loss and chance of profits.
Investors cannot be driven. They take what they prefer,
and keep their money if they do not care to buy.

Behind the distinction between railroads and private
property, lies a fatal misconception. It is that new in-
vestment may be made safe and profitable after the exist-
ing investment has been passed through a forced read-
justment. If earnings are reduced, the market might
fall, to be sure, but the lower level of prices would then be
attractive to investors! The Procrustes' bed of valuation
may cut off feet and head from investments, but a re-
stricted income will thereafter provide sufficient nourish-
ment for the diminished body!

The theory is unnatural. There are two insurmount-

9° The Unpopular Review

able difficulties. One is the shock to investors: the other
that no avenue of investment would remain.

Few roads have first mortgage bonds for sale. The
bonds they can offer are now almost invariably of junior
lien. In addition, the proportion of debt to stock has so
increased during these last years of doubtful outlook,
that preservation of credit must soon necessitate stock,
instead of bond, financing. But any reduction in market
value will make stock, and junior bonds, unsalable.
These issues are already unmarketable for a very con-
siderable proportion of railroads. They will bear the
brunt of whatever decreases are effected in earning
power.

Junior securities cannot be shoved aside by the Federal
Valuation and got out of the way. They have their legal
rights. They are the existing means of financing rail-
roads. To ignore them, to expose them to unrestrained
attack by imposing an idealistic valuation, is to blink the
real problem. In order to create some other and better
class of security, the underlying mortgages also would
have to be eliminated, and the structure of finance stripped
down to the rails. It is a convulsion that the valuation
portends. Capital cannot be drawn into railroads by
promising a fair return on value, "whatever that may be."
An attractive return on a substantial market price must
instead be provided for the class of securities which the
railroads can offer. In so far as it may accomplish the
end of interfering with the market valuation, the Fed-
eral Valuation brings a break down of railroad financing,
threatens the destruction of investments.

An ambitious program of regulation and management
has been postulated on the carrying out of the Federal
Valuation. The objectives were stated in an article pub-
lished by Mr. Prouty last January. First he describes
as follows the processes of railroad regulation: determin-
ing the amount of securities which shall be issued; fixing
the standards by which the roadway and equipment shall

Two Opposing Railroad Valuations 9 1

be constructed and maintained; prescribing the schedules
upon which trains shall be run and the train crews which
shall be used in the operation of these trains; determining
the charge which may be made for every service rendered
by the common carrier. He believes "the government
must possess and exercise when necessary all the above
authority."

Next he shows the bearing.of the Federal Valuation on
this scheme of regulation. "The value of the property
is a basic fact lying at the foundation of all intelligent
treatment of these utilities. No commission can deter-
mine the amount of securities to be issued or the rates to
be applied, nor can it fix the standards of construction,
maintenance and operation without an accurate knowl-
edge of this fact."

Mr. Prouty thinks that this program can be followed
without discouraging investment. He is not impressed
with the idea that "the government can impound the
money which has been invested, and compel additional
investment to protect that already made." However he
holds out no assurance that the market value of securities
will be protected by the Commission's valuation. Nor
can he. The valuation does not measure money put into
securities, but what the Commission may find in the
property.

The aim is not regulation but management. It is a
visionary control by means of an impractical theory. All
of the uncomfortable problems of management are to be
reduced to placidity by using rules and formulae that go
back behind them. The functions proposed for the
Commission and the Federal Valuation, have hitherto
been carried on, in a rough practical way, by the market
valuation and the operating officers. It is the end of
evolution from within, and the substitution of authority
from without. Form vanquishes substance.

But the Commission has not the powers presumed for
it by Mr. Prouty. The methods used by it to beget

179718 *<*

LIBRARY

CITY. ft. >'

92 The Unpopular Review

power have recoiled upon its head. A large share of this
authority has passed beyond its grasp, never to return.

There has been a propaganda for self-aggrandizement.
The Commission has made insidious attacks upon capital
in the endeavor to wrest the management of railroads
from the owners. Scandals of private ownership have
been aired. Mistakes have been distorted into crimes.
Heavy blame has been given in matters of innocent ad-
ministrative judgment, both for lack of success and for
too great success. But of praise for the skill, integrity
and manhood of private ownership as a whole, there is
not a line in the Commission's official utterances. It has
desired to usurp the authority of the owners over their
properties, and it has accordingly implied that they were
using that authority unwisely and unfairly.

Thus the belief that capital has been getting more than
its share is fostered. Now the Commission has not been
in position to increase or decrease the share of labor. Its
activities have been confined to decisions affecting the
respective shares of the public and of the owners. In-
directly, by keeping down rates and putting up expenses,
it has left labor chilled. The vicious circle has now been
completed. Labor has vaulted over the head of the Com-
mission to obtain a fuller share in railroad enterprise
through direct control. It flouts the valuation, and all
other tithing of mint and cummin by commissions. Fic-
tions of bureaucracy have been overruled by revolt of a
stronger and more vital force.

The eight-hour pay law has as yet no great bearing on
train schedules. The demand for one hundred and fifty
per cent payment for overtime beyond eight hours will
have some effect. The genuine eight-hour day, the ex-
cuse for the emergency legislation, would alter nearly two-
thirds of the train schedules. Like the full-crew and
short-train laws, this recent enactment is to be laid di-
rectly to legislature and not to commissions. Neverthe-
less it marks the beginning of the end of the towering

Two Opposing Railroad Valuations 93

structure of commission control. It would prove im-
possible to satisfy labor, now that blood has been tasted,
by the cold calculations of the Interstate Commerce
Commission as to train crews and schedules. If it as-
sumes the burden of deciding labor's share its indepen-
dence and its authority will disappear. Issues have been
raised with labor, with the aid of the Commission's propa-
ganda, which cannot be arbitrated, mediated, or regu-
lated; or legislated out of existence. In order to be
settled they must be fought out sooner or later.

Standards of maintenance, schedules and train crews
all represent problems too urgent for valuation processes,
even if considered solely from the side*of capital. The
theory of Mr. Prouty appears to be that railroads may be
ordered to run trains, buy rails and equipment, and hire
men according to the rate of return they happen to be
earning on the value of their properties. If the profits
are excessive additional service can be demanded, but if
the roads are poor they may be excused. Some western
commissions have tried this plan. In effect it gives the
Commission the right to draw on the railroad for money
according to the results of the valuation. It is a prepos-
terous notion. Under present conditions three million
reports a year are required of the railroads by the Commis-
sion. Large systems have to make one hundred and ten
thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand reports
apiece. An accounting requirement, that serves no prac-
tical purpose, adds to expenses seventy million dollars a
year. Two-thirds of the cost of the valuation is being
saddled on the railroads. The boiler inspection rs admin-
istered in the most costly and tediously impractical man-
ner. A large part of the time and energies of railroad
executives are occupied with hearings, held by clerks and
subordinates of the Commission, in which oral testimony
is exacted in order to introduce in evidence the very facts
already covered by the millions of sworn reports. The
Interstate Commerce Commission may not be so narrowly

94 The Unpopular Review

partisan as the state commissions. But it is more ex-
travagant than any. The condition would be intolerable
if it were to take control over the largest expense accounts
of railroads, no matter whether or not the bill were passed
on to the public. The preservation of capital's share
from the rust of waste is the task of the owners, in which
the Federal Valuation can hardly assist.

Then there is, according to Mr. Prouty, the determina-
tion of the amount of securities to be issued. Anyone
can determine value received for securities issued, with-
out spending sixty million dollars for a valuation. The
intention is plainly to limit the aggregate of securities
outstanding, to the value of the properties. There would
then be no water, viewed from the standpoint of the
valuation.

This plan has been tried in Texas under the scheme of
regulation perfected by Judge Reagan. That State has
many poor railroads and few developed trunk lines. These
few exist only because they cannot go around, and they
are largely dependent on the charitable credit of connect-
ing lines in other states. Texas may be extreme. But
either the railroad properties as valued by the Commission
will fully cover the outstanding securities or they will not.
In the former case the valuation is useless and ineffective,
unless to satisfy curiosity. In the latter case all business
dependent on rail transportation must suffer the conse-
quences.

The only supervision of securities helpful or salutary
would be provision that they be honestly exchanged for
what tRey are really worth in the market. In order to
check and punish dishonesty or insure against extortionate
profits, there need be no demand that they be sold for
more than they will bring, whether par or any other
figure. Nor is it necessary to stop new financing if the
produce of all past securities as inventoried in the prop-
erty proves to be less than par.

The market valuation controls the issue of securities.

Two Opposing Railroad Valuations 95

The average amount listed by railroads for new capital
on the New York Stock Exchange has been approximately
$400,000,000 a year for the last ten years. In 1909 it
exceeded $750,000,000. In 1915 it dropped close to
$200,000,000. Since 1912 the new capital has been below
the normal. As far back as 1909 Mr. James J. Hill es-
timated that the railroads would need at least five billion
dollars during the next five years in order to catch up
with the necessities of commerce. To-day the railroads
are still farther behind where they ought to be. If the
market valuation were now high enough there would be a
tremendous outpouring of capital into equipment, facili-
ties and new construction to cope with business that is
actually in sight. But market values are too low, and
the appetite for railroad investment is dulled.
I The Federal Valuation can prevent the railroads from
issuing securities acceptable to the market. If it makes
securities attractive in larger volume, that could only be
by raising rates and increasing the share of capital.
Higher rates and restricted profits do not go hand in hand
under the system of controlling securities by valuation.
There will be less new investment than there is now. It
is indeed impossible to understand how, if valuationary
limitations had prevailed in earlier days, tjie railroads
could have been built at all.

Rates, like securities, are commonly considered one of
the more legitimate spheres of influence of the valuation.
The determining of rates on the basis of the Federal
Valuation, the fourth and last of Mr. Prouty's categories,
is a direct and serious attack on the market valuation.
They say that there is legal precedent, and that security
holders have no vested rights in market values, or in
earning power, but merely in the measured value of the
properties. But if this be so in law, a matter yet to be
determined with respect to the Federal Valuation, never-
theless it is unjust and inequitable. It is a change of
rules after the game has been part played. Investors

96 The Unpopular Review

cannot take out what they have put into railroads, and go
their ways. The process savors of a device to take away
from one side and give to the other that which had all
along been held out as the inducement to play. Hitherto
in eighty years of railroad history, the Government has
not placed the bar sinister across the share of capital in
railroad enterprise. All railroad securities have been ac-
quired in the faith that they represent a genuine equity
in a recognized earning power.

The Federal Valuation has, besides, practically no lee-
way for the exercise of control over rates. A very
slight reduction would suffice to stop financing, put an
end to growth, and restrict the expansion of traffic. Dur-
ing the past five years the entire market valuation of
railroad securities has been carried by the last twenty-six
cents of the dollar earned. The first seventy-four cents
has had to be paid out for wages, materials and taxes. A
reduction of five per cent in rates, taking away five cents
of the twenty-six applicable to interest and dividends,
would produce a shrinkage of over three billion dollars in
the market valuation. Railroad management is a busi-
ness of narrow margins, vast permanent outlay, and in-
tense application in the mastery of difficult problems. It
is really strange that, even in an atmosphere of imprac-
tical idealism, so remote, inconsequential and adventitious
a standard as the valuation should have been brought
forward as the universal solvent of rates.

Reasonable rates are such as will bring capital into
railroad development for the purpose of carrying com-
merce. The eye of the rate-maker, whether official or
private, must be on sources of money and origins of
traffic. Rates are a question of means and results rather
than of an academic value of property. They belong to
the serious business of providing a continuing and general
prosperity. The share of capital must be maintained,
and not curtailed by the reappraisements of valuation,
if commerce, by which people live, is to be fully developed.

Two Opposing Railroad Valuations 97

This should be the problem which the Interstate Com-
merce Commission is meeting. The Federal Valuation,
a limitless grasping for power in the paths of futility, has
no point of contact with it, except to injure and destroy.
The value of securities in the market, at once anathema
and terra incognita to commissions, is the key to its solu-
tion.

If the Commission were to substitute new values and
new rates suddenly, to-morrow, everyone would be aghast
at the reckless and wanton attack on investors and the
amazing assault on prosperity. It is in fact only the
slow ponderousness of its machinery, and the uncom-
prehended technicalities of its cumbersome reasonings,
that guard the Federal Valuation from a just meed of
righteous scorn.

AS TO PARSONS

EVERY great calling antagonizes some people all the
time; and a good many people some of the time.
Who has not read of the popular outbursts against lawyers
in the early decades of the Republic? Through them the
lawyers seem to have held a prosperous even if not al-
together serene way. Within recent years the physician
has come in for something more than his share of derision,
because of the empirical nature of his work, while his
brother the surgeon has found himself depicted now as a
stupid butcher of men, and again as a cruel vivisector
of beasts — preferably affectionate pet beasts; both
physician and surgeon meanwhile seeing eye to eye in their
zeal for the main chance. Under these circumstances it
was not to be supposed that the minister of religion could
escape; nor was it altogether desirable, since, as I shall
presently indicate, every great calling must expect a
modicum of ridicule, and may profit by it. If the car-
icaturist and paragrapher have rarely made a "drive" at
the minister, or treated him with the hostility roused by
the pathologist, they have none the less dealt with him
persistently as though he and his follies were especially
fitted

To every day's most common need
By sun and candle light.

Four types of the minister of religion appear in this con-
nection, two representing his feebleness and other two his
strength. Most frequent, perhaps, is the semi-ascetic
negation and futility which the cloth is made to cover.
Who does not at once recognize the stereotyped figure
of the anaemic, ungainly, ill-clothed, but eminently well-
meaning non-entity whom the draughtsman likes to label
"A Good Thing?" He it must have been, who, breakfast-
ing at his bishop's table, rejoiced that at least parts of his

As to Parsons 99

egg were good; and he certainly was the original Hopley
Porter of Assesmilk-cum-Worter in Sir W. S. Gilbert's
Rival Curates.

He plays the airy flute

And looks depressed and blighted,
Doves round about him "toot"
And lambkins dance delighted.

Beside him is a brother who matches his ineffectiveness,
but not his meekness. He represents the self-indulgent
type, full-fed and unctuous, but feeble in conviction, and
altogether incapable of spending or being spent in a great
cause. If, like St. Paul, he ever thinks of himself as " in
labors more abundant," they prove to be generally of
the tea-drinking order. His hours of ease, on the other
hand, are, or at least used to be in Thackeray's pages,
spent upon his sofa with a French novel which is incon-
tinently thrust beneath the cushions if visitors come in.

These are among the properties when the humorist
arrays his stage. But since it cannot be denied that the
clergy sometimes display strength as well as weakness, this
strength has developed two correspondent types especially
adapted to the use of the satirist. Without any dogmatic
assertion of principles, it may be said that the satirist
generally tends to use types of evil efficiency, while the
humorist is better suited with types of futility. Hence
appears the spectre of the fanatic. There is no denying
his power; so the artist with pen or pencil bends his en-
ergies toward emphasizing the unloveliness of the power,
and we have the grim, lean figure, generally in long black
coat rather than in vestments, and with a face whose lips
seem ready to deny everything but a mouthful of pet
dogmas. This man is sometimes a leader of men — he is
quite capable indeed of leading forlorn hopes — but most
often along ways of protest. "Thou shalt not" is his
motto; inhibition is the gospel which he preaches with
keenest zest; and inhumanity is the sin of which he stands
condemned — often with humanity's name upon his

ioo The Unpopular Review

tongue. His counterpart is more likely to be canonically
vested. He may indeed be plump and rosy, "every
button doing its duty," as the congratulatory apple-woman
once said to her well-fed priest. But he is only nominally
a servant of the Gospel. His real ministry is at the altar
of the great god Status Quo. In his faith and practice,
what has been must be again, and shall ever be. He fears
the waywardness of growth in a living tree more than the
threat of certain decay which time always makes against
hewn and fabricated wood; and sometimes he seems to
justify himself, since it is quite possible by shielding
precious things from too common service, to keep their
material intact through centuries; though at the price of
substituting form for genuine substance, as if a mummy
were to attempt the office of a friend.

To these four types must be added one other, brought
into being by the specialized ministry which we call
missionary. This service is important for two reasons: —
first, because it keeps alive the essential and original calling
of the Christian; and second, because it is of great histor-
ical significance. We are still too near to the nineteenth
century to see its achievements in right perspective; but
it is safe to say that when its story is definitively told, a
very generous chapter will have to be given to the or-
ganized religious adventure which has not only carried
Christian teaching into all quarters of the globe, but has
also reacted in many ways upon Christendom. The
missionary has been an explorer of new lands, the friendly
interpreter of primitive peoples, and the organizer of their
languages. No other impulse has ever done so much
toward the reduction of barbarous speech to writing,
and to the elucidation of its grammar, as the desire to use
it for religious instruction. In this process very notable
men and women have been developed — people of wide
experience of the world, and of abounding humor, as well
as of high ideals and apostolic devotion. As a rule the
missionary is the last person to be pitiful over any possible

As to Parsons 101

sacrifice made by him, and, while naturally a little old-
fashioned in certain things, he is likely to be less formal
and rigid than some of his brethren at home.

It was inevitable that he should fall into the hands of the
cartoonist, and find that worthy in his most philistine
mood. Who does not know the result? Here is Stiggins
with long black coat, gloves to whose finger ends his own
never reach, trousers falling sufficiently short of his boots
to show that the latter have elastic tops. He grasps a
corpulent umbrella in one hand, and a book of devotion
in the other, while his mission would seem to be the turning
of cheerful heathen into sorry Christians of the Stiggins
brand. Or yonder is Chadband looking ruefully over the
edge of the pot into which Mumbo Jumbo has soused him
with a view to supper. Considerable rather ghastly in-
genuity and a humor at which missionaries themselves
doubtless chuckle, have been expended in variations on
this theme. One fancies that a missionary might have in-
vented the inquiry addressed by a traveller to the South
Sea Island chief: "Do you remember the Rev. Mr. Jones
who once preached the gospel in these parts?" To which
the chief smacking his lips responds, "I do, he was deli-

What does the parson say to these things? If they
are well done, he laughs as a good-natured man ought.
When they are good-tempered into the bargain, he shows
them to his friends. When they are ill-tempered, he con-
siders that even such spleen may have its uses, and mur-
murs, perhaps with a sigh, forsan et hcec olim. . . The
fact is that he is committed to a great profession. One of
the distinctive features of this, as of every great profession,
is that it brings him into intimate relations with people.
He sees them at their best and their worst; leads their
worship; teaches their children; speaks with them of things
that generations of their fathers have felt to be sacred.
A measure of leadership in the affairs of societies and

IO2 The Unpopular Review

often of communities is offered to him, at least to this
extent, that it awaits his hand if the hand be fitted to
grasp it. Probably no man in the average community can
exercise leadership more naturally and with less liability
to jealousy than the thoroughly qualified minister of
religion. But it is a commonplace of experience that temp-
tation always dogs such privilege like a shadow. This
temptation is reinforced in the minister's case by the fact
that much of his work is or ought to be done in his study,
and that his working hours are to a considerable degree at
his own disposal. Hence arises the danger that he will
fail to be strict with himself in these matters; that having
learned a certain facility in public speech he will trust to
it for the matter of his sermons rather than to severe study
and careful observation; and that in his intercourse with
persons he will let the essence of good will and honest
endeavor ooze out from the form of his authority, leaving
it empty and unreal. Genuine men who aim at efficiency
in the ministry are always conscious of this temptation,
and welcome the wholesome medicine of the fun-maker and
the satirist, even though it be a little bitter to the taste.

When indeed a hostile animus is evident, the wise man
may still say to himself: — This is like the thing that the
pathologist must put up with. We are each honestly
engaged in a calling which aims at results of high benef-
icence. He must sometimes experiment with animals,
and in the process may lose his sensibility to suffering; it
is good for him now and then to be brought to book — even
stupidly and harshly brought to book by the sentimental-
ist. It is probably good that the business in which he is
occupied should be under the ban of general suspicion,
and that he should incur a considerable unpopularity in
following it. It is good for me, tempted as I may be to
trade upon privilege or take advantage of the considera-
tion which reverence and courtesy accord, to see myself
as others would see me if I yielded. It may conceivably
be a good thing that my whole profession should be sub-

As to Parsons 103

ject to an unpopularity at least sufficient to challenge the
motives of each recruit to it.

A point is sometimes reached however when the min-
ister is moved to protest, with the assurance that his pro-
test will be respected by fair-minded men. This appears
when the critic begins with a fundamental charge of in-
sincerity. That begs the whole question, really removing
it from the field of discussion, since, of course, if a man be
untruthful, no evidence which he brings in abatement of
charges against himself can be quite trustworthy. It is
"a poisoning of the wells" in controversy, as Newman
once called it, and like all really inhumane methods is
likely to react against the cause in which it is employed,
as the violation of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusi-
tania set the faces of the neutral world against Germany.
They were acts in which she seemed to conquer. In
reality they represented an abiding loss which no indem-
nity can ever pay. So the charge of intellectual dishon-
esty, easy to bring, but difficult to disprove, because it
involves motive and purpose, tends always to weaken the
case of the accuser. Here for instance is the criticism of a
clever reviewer upon a thoughtful essay by a clergyman,
dealing with some matters of theological re-statement.
The book "is graceful, scholarly and disingenuous."
Why? Presumably because it recognizes the fact that
words are symbols or counters, whose significance must
change in some degree with the human experience for
which they stand. Had the author failed to do this, the
criticism might easily have run: — "the book has a grace-
ful style though cumbered with a good deal of learned
lumber, and it is especially marked by the reactionary
tone so characteristic of the clergy." There you have it.
A clergyman may conceivably be a sincere man, if con-
tent to be narrow and reactionary. The moment that he
begins to claim for his religion a power to grow coincident
with the growth of human experience, he is liable to the
charge of insincerity.

IO4 The Unpopular Review

Let it not be thought that the minister wastes much
time in self-pity or in remonstrance because of this griev-
ance, even though he knows it to be a real one. For one
thing he has grown used to it; and for another he has large
countervailing rewards.

The chief of these is that he is the servant of a great con-
structive idea. Through all the denominations and sects
there runs the persistent notion that the burden of the
preacher's message is a Gospel — some good news or other.
He is called to proclaim a Kingdom of God on earth and
in heaven. Of course the fact that a man's rightful place
in this kingdom may be missed, introduces a note of warn-
ing into the message, and here or there a preacher may be
found sounding that note unduly. To read the popular
literature which exploits the clergy, whether it be essay,
short story or novel, one might suppose this note of warn-
ing to be the sermon's main characteristic. In point of
fact, during almost a half century of pretty regular church-
going, in churches reputed to be orthodox, I do not remem-
ber ever to have heard a sermon upon Hell, or so much as
caught a whiff of brimstone from any ante-chamber of it.
The printed sermons of this period tell the same story.
Even in the old days when the terrors of the Law and the
thunders of Sinai are supposed to have been the preacher's
main reliance, I doubt if these themes were so regnant as
those whose only knowledge is derived from the title of a
single sermon of Jonathan Edwards would have us believe.
Far be it from me to justify or to explain away the rigors
of that ancient day. I only suggest that he who would
really know of what he speaks should put beside Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God, a passage in the Journal
in which Edwards records his Sunday walk in the Saybrook
fields; or, when he is assured that the Puritans had no
sense of humor, and were consistently hard and dour, let
him turn to a letter of Lion Gardiner to Robert Chapman
and Thomas Hurlburt — a chief source for our history of
the Pequot War — and note the mirth of these men in the

As to Parsons 105

winter when the Pequots with their allies Cold and Hunger,
besieged them in Saybrook Fort. The laughter may have
been a little grim, but on one occasion was so hearty that
twenty-three years afterward Gardiner remembered to
comment upon it, throwing a pregnant parenthesis into
the same sentence, to remind his friends how little they
had to eat that night.

The note of warning must be sounded, but it is not
dominant in the Christian minister's faith or preaching.
He is an apostle of the doctrine that he lives in an ordered
universe, where law is stronger than caprice, and good-will
more lasting than hatred. This good-will, as representing
the normal attitude of God to man, and man to his
brother, — the only attitude in which either God, man, or
the world can really rest — is in its various forms the sub-
stance of his preaching. He thinks of man as partial and
often disordered, but with measureless capacity and po-
tency in him; so that he is competent not only to dominate
his world, but vastly to enlarge it, if he will choose the
best. So he preaches the love of God, the forgiveness of
sin, and a life that death cannot defeat. He does this as a
Christian, in the light shed upon the whole problem of life
and death by Jesus Christ and His disciples in every age
up to our own.

Now whatever one may think of this doctrine as a mat-
ter for personal belief, very few thoughtful people will
claim that it is petty or insignificant. Wherever a man
throws in his lot with it, he finds himself steadied and his
way enlarged. Should some sceptic come by to tell him
that this whole business is in the region of hypothesis, and
that his religion can only be what Carlyle said Goethe's
was — "a great Perhaps" — he is disposed to answer that
even if he thought so, he should still choose the best Per-
haps available, and that he does not know a better than
the Christian gospel. It is a notable thing that daily
contemplation of such an ideal, and a sincere endeavor to

io6 The Unpopular Review

translate its truth into goodness both individual and social,
seems to hearten men. Hard-working ministers rarely lose
faith either in individuals or in society. The missionaries
who know retarded and perhaps degraded people best, and
who often suffer at their hands, are yet their most sym-
pathetic interpreters. I have recently been in the com-
pany of a missionary physician. He has passed through
five Armenian massacres. His wife has died and he him-
self has been brought to death's door by typhus. Much
of his work seems to have been undone, and many of his
friends scattered, by persecution and war. One could not
set this cultivated and experienced man down as a fanatic;
but quite as little could one ignore the existence of some
power which kept his life whole in spite of every assault of
circumstance. Still gaunt with fever, he yet seemed "totus,
teres atque rotundus" in a sense Horace could scarce have
understood.

So I have known a young man to be led toward the
ministry despite considerable natural disinclination, by
the notable serenity which marked the old age of a clergy-
man in his acquaintance. This man had neither held high
position, won any considerable fame, received large mate-
rial emolument nor escaped his share of life's pain and
grief. Yet in his age he seemed to have bread to eat that
the world knew not of. Out of the ideals and endeavors of
his calling had come abiding satisfactions, which not only
served to make old age attractive in the eyes of younger
people, but helped to convince one of them that the calling
itself must have reality and worth.

Then there is the constant, generally friendly, and often
intimate association with all sorts and conditions of men.
Something of this experience, as has already been pointed
out, belongs to every great profession, and gives it distinc-
tion. It would be unprofitable to inquire as to which pro-
fession gains the most from it. But the minister who
proves himself worthy of confidence has an almost unique
opportunity to explore the hearts of men when they are

As to Parsons 107

uplifted in joy or broken with grief. It is often said that
he is denied a real experience of the world, owing to the
fact that he sees people at their best — dressed, as it were,
for Sunday and its worship. There is just enough truth
in the taunt to keep it alive. No doubt in the ordinary
intercourse of life most men do put the best foot forward
in walking with the parson; and as certainly a minority,
if only to show their independence, put forth their worst.
The wise parson watches both, and is quietly amused. He
is not indifferent to the indirect respect which the former
pays to religion in his person. Indeed this is one of the
things that, in order to be worthy of it, keep him up to his
work. Nor is it a light matter that here and there, some
very decent kindly man should think it incumbent upon
him, in the minister's presence, to carry a chip upon his
shoulder; to say nothing of the man who is neither decent
nor kindly, and who is genuinely disturbed by the Law and
Gospel for which the minister stands. The latter would of
course be glad to come to an understanding with all of
these three at once. All, he as much as they, might lose
something in the process; but they would gain more. Yet
this cannot be. Time and change must do their perfect
work. He knows, no man better, that if these men have
clothed him with any fancied halo, the illusion must be
dispelled. The man with the best foot forward will post-
pone it to its neighbor to-morrow or the next day, and the
quantity in his personal equation unknown to the minister
at present, will be determined. The man with the chip
on his shoulder will forget it in some chance meeting for
common work or play, and prove to be, not improbably, a
very practicable companion, perhaps — such things have
been — a lifelong friend. The man whose brusqueness
really has some ground in fear, not of the minister of
course, but of the fundamental principle of honor for which
a true Christian ministry stands, moves, like the rest,
toward his little day of judgment, when the springs of
conduct must appear. It may be when he has attained

io8 The Unpopular Review

his ends, and is confirmed in ways that now trouble him;
or when sickness, misfortune and that contrition which is
at once one of the greatest realities and one of the deepest
mysteries of life, have broken him down; or when, con-
scious of death's approach, he ventures a half pathetic
comparison with others by way of self-justification. So
joy, sorrow, sickness, death, success, failure, play and
work, bring their revelations, and if the minister see men
sometimes at their abnormal best he is ready with his
formula of correction; the worst comes in often enough to
qualify the best, and both together give an unfailing
interest to his day.

Indeed the comedy and tragedy of life as he sees it are
so vital, that the action of the theatre seems forced and its
stage bare. Honest farce retains its appeal; melodrama
may once in a while amuse him by its sheer absurdity; but
tragedy is so often either wooden or weak, while the
problem-plays deal with such factitious problems and so
distort their perspective, that the unreality or the over-
emphasis speedily palls, and he goes back to his people
glad to touch life itself again. It seems strange to him
that more writers for the stage do not observe life's ret-
icencies, reserves, and system of checks and balances.
Life loves to mingle tragedy and comedy, not as the play-
wright does, by setting them in such high relief that the
hearer cries "a plague on both your houses," but so vitally
and inextricably that the onlooker can scarcely tell
whether to laugh or cry.

Here for instance, one morning in February, came a
marine engineer to tell me that two neighbors had fallen
out. Both were fishermen. One accused the other of
stealing his eel-spear; high words ensued, and a court was
to sit upon the quarrel in the town hall that afternoon.
Could anything be done? We could try and see. So I
ordered my horse; ran down the man least likely to con-
sent to arbitration, and induced him to agree to meet his

As to Parsons 109

neighbor; left word for the other to call at a stated hour;
went home and waited. In due time they were there, and
were set down on either side of the library fire. The books
which lined the walls put them perhaps at a slight dis-
advantage by making them feel a bit out of their element,
but only enough to modulate their voices and minister
to general self-restraint. I had the further advantage
of knowing the men well, and of a lifelong fondness for
their calling, so that the subtle distinction between winter
and summer spears and the qualities of spear-hafts were
as much a part of my vernacular as of theirs. Yet there
was little call to do anything but let them talk the whole
thing out. This they did with only an occasional restrain-
ing word when the argument threatened to grow heated.
It was notable talk, alike in its vigor and its naivete.
As they warmed to it, the listener realized anew how little
the average man outgrows his childhood. One was nerv-
ous and voluble, with an unusual command of quaint New
England speech, which grew more and more grammatically
mixed as he kindled and the impulses of a generous heart
asserted themselves. His fellow was rather taciturn, with
a tendency toward truculence both in speech and bearing,
which his normal good nature was by degrees undermining.
Altogether it was a memorable hour. At its conclusion,
when everything needful seemed to have been said twice
over by the men, I suggested a solution which, though
it would have been laughed out of a court of law, seemed
in no way ridiculous to them. They shook hands at noon
and went their ways in peace, while the authorities will-
ingly countermanded the court summons. Within a month
the plaintiff in the case was spending days and nights in
grappling for the body of his neighbor, drowned in the
overturning of a boat; and the next time I brought them
together it was to bury one. So close do comedy and
tragedy, Homer's divine mirth and Virgil's indefinable
lachrymcz rerum crowd one another in '[the parson's
day.

i io The Unpopular Review

The reader of magazine articles and of novels that claim
clergymen for their heroes may easily fancy that the min-
ister is generally hampered by the narrowness of his church
officials, when he is not persecuted by their tyranny. Why
does not somebody suggest that deacons, elders and vestry-
men may conceivably be high-minded, honorable, and gen-
erous men? There is little in these offices to justify a man
in seeking them. The people by whose votes they are filled
are generally as intelligent and rightminded as they are un-
trammelled in the exercise of their suffrage. They are
not likely to choose to represent them those whom they
cannot respect; and in point of fact they do not. Small
men undoubtedly are sometimes put in big places; but it
is as often true that large men are to be found in obscure
places, and one of the minister's satisfactions is to dis-
cover such people wherever he goes, and to make lifelong
friends of them. In a fairly wide experience I can recall
but one man among my church and parish officers who
ever showed a disposition to put brakes upon the wheels of
progress for the mere sake of handling the brake lever;
and grave injustice would be done if I were to speak of
this tendency of his as habitual. The impulse came upon
him now and then, probably because his circle was small,
there were not many levers of influence within reach, and
this was pretty nearly his only chance. Generally these
men are the best available in their communities, represent-
ing of course a considerable variety of tastes, experiences
and ideals; and valuable to the minister for that very
reason; chiefly valuable, perhaps, because in almost every
group of them he finds those who at once rebuke and
hearten him by a devotion and serviceableness to which he
himself has not attained.

Association with his fellow parsons brings him similar
rewards. Of course in every large group of them there will
be some weak or vain folk. But the rank and file are good
to know — rewarding companions, and not infrequently

As to Parsons in

men of infinite humor as well as of piety. Indeed it is in
such fellowship that he learns how close is the relation
between humor and faith : for humor is the play of the soul
in a life of vicissitude, and to find room or heart for very
much of it, one must have confidence that vicissitude is but
an incident in a world whose essential ends are ordered by
Good Will and a Divine Reason.

Let it be freely granted that these men are often marked
and sometimes marred by professional mannerism — a
something which few followers of any profession escape,
but which dogs the steps of teachers, most inevitably of
such as do their teaching in large public assemblies. He
who knows them best soon learns, however, that this is but
a crust or callous worn by the world's attrition; and he
may even prefer it to the grotesque attempts made by
some parsons to avoid the inevitable. He does not need to
be told that most of these men are in receipt of meagre sal-
aries, and often enough hampered by problems of ways
and means; yet as he looks again, it is to discover that they
somehow make these serve for the keeping of a decent
home, the honorable payment of bills, the higher educa-
tion of their children, and the response to a surprising num-
ber of appeals for help. It is not by chance that so many
men and women of unusual efficiency have been bred in
parsonages. Bare as these may sometimes be, they gen-
erally furnish to their children a training in morals as well
as manners, a sense of values which puts high appraisal
upon education, good books, good fellowship between
parents and children, and faith in eternal things. This is
no mean equipment. Nor will his estimate of his fellows
seriously diminish when he remembers that most of them
must be cheered, if cheered at all, by very small material
successes. They like indeed to tell one another of the
Scotch minister who fell into despair over the attendance,
or lack of it, upon his mid-week service. One evening
when it seemed as though no one were coming, he sent his
sexton to spy out the prospect and report. Incontinently

ii2 The Unpopular Review

that worthy returned with glowing face. "Cheer up,
meenister," quoth he, "cheer up! There are twa or three
auld women jist a-pourin' in."

None the less the calling has its high rewards. There is
uplift in honest worship, and a double measure in its
leadership. There is a great variety of service which, when
faithfully performed, keeps life responsive to the human
appeal, making a man at once tolerant and tolerable.
And there is a deepening conviction as he sees his fellows
born, grapple with circumstance, and die, that faith does
not betray the faithful, and that the essence of Religion's
good news is true.

GERMAN TRUST LAWS AND OURS

AGAIN and again we read in the newspapers and
magazines about the wonderful aid that the Ger-
man government is asserted to render to industrial com-
binations, enabling them to capture foreign trade from
countries where such combinations are less efficiently
organized or considered illegal. Exemption of combina-
tions in our foreign trade from the operation of the Sher-
man law has consequently been advocated, in order to
enable our manufacturers and exporters to meet German
competition in the foreign field on an equal footing. But,
suppose that such an amendment should be enacted by
Congress, would it offset the advantages alleged to be
derived by our German competitors from the support
of their government, quite apart from considerations of
efficiency of internal management and organization?

Our Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, in
cooperation with the consular service is much better
equipped for promoting our foreign trade than the corre-
sponding German bureau. Assertions to the contrary are
usually made for the laudable purposes of making our
Bureau still more efficient. The service that our daily
Commerce Reports render to the exporter is not equalled
by that of any German publication. In setting this forth
the writer is not biased by the splendid work of the press
agent of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce
and of the Federal Trade Commission. As an illustration
of this work, it may be mentioned that for several months
after the organization of the Federal Trade Commission
not a single week passed without a certain magazine in the
electrical field containing an article mentioning the doings
or plans of the Commission.

Bureaucracy flourishes in the German consular service
and diminishes the efficacy of her commercial attaches.

114 The Unpopular Review

Lately the attache in one of our largest cities was in the
habit of referring inquiries for American goods from
German importers, to an American manufacturers' associa-
tion located in his city. The association in acting upon
such inquiries naturally felt obliged to try first of all to
secure any such prospective business for its own members,
though the best source of supply, which the German
commercial attache was expected to give to his inquirer
in Germany, might not have been among the members of
that association. A copy of Thomas' or Hendrick's
Directory would have helped him out in many cases.
We have a federal department of commerce, while Ger-
many has no such imperial department. Certain divisions
of the department of the interior and of the foreign office
are charged with the promotion of Germany's foreign
trade. An imperial bureau of foreign commerce has been
advocated for almost two decades. The remarkable
success of private initiative, and the disagreement of the
two leading manufacturers' associations concerning the
organization of such a bureau have been the chief obsta-
cles to its establishment. In this connection, we ought
not to forget that there is no general association of man-
ufacturers in Germany whose work equals the work for
the promotion of foreign trade of the National Association
of Manufacturers in this country.

Another great service which the German government is
asserted to render to the exporter is the reduction of
freight rates on the government-owned railways. We
forget, however, that owing to the small area of Germany,
these reductions cannot possibly apply to a distance of
more than a few hundred miles. Considering the vast
distances of our country, we see that a freight deduction
for such short distances as have to be reckoned with in
Germany would not be a great boon if granted to the
average American exporter. Consequently the service
which the German government may render to exporters
by a lowering of freight rates does not place the American

German Trust Laws and Ours 115

exporter at a comparatively great disadvantage in com-
peting with his German rival. We, furthermore, seem to
overlook the fact that the Interstate Comrrierce Commis-
sion has not yet abolished low export rates for certain
commodities.

What then is. it that has made the Germans so efficient
in their foreign trade? Will a comparison of our trust
laws with their laws reveal the cause? Here, as in the
matters above referred to, German activities have been
greatly exaggerated, and many inaccuracies regarding the
legal status of combinations in Germany have been pre-
sented to the American public, not only by individual
writers but also in Government publications. A recent
report issued at Washington speaks of a difference of
opinion among German jurists regarding the legality of
combinations. Another Government publication says
that in Germany the establishment of monopolies is
theoretically illegal and that occasionally a trust has been
declared unlawful under the Penal Code because of extor-
tion. All these assertions are contrary to fact. The
legality of combinations has always been upheld by the
German Supreme Court, and a monopoly would be illegal
only if it exploited the consumer, a case which has never
come before the courts. It would be extremely difficult
for the courts to establish just when a price is extortionate.

According to Dr. J. W. Jenks, a leading: American au-
thority on industrial combinations, "trusts are taken to
mean manufacturing corporations with so great capital
and power that they are at least thought by the public to
have become a menace to their welfare, and to have,
temporarily at least, considerable monopolistic power."
If we were to apply this definition of a trust to conditions
in Germany, we should find that there are only two or
three trusts in that country. The German Imperial
Supreme Court, in a decision handed down last year,
defined the nature of a trust to consist in the subjecting of

1 1 6 The Unpopular Review

an industry to a single capitalistic power for the promotion
of capitalistic interests. But when we speak of German
trusts, we really have in mind the German cartel or syn-
dicate, which is a sort of organized pool, that is, an associa-
tion of manufacturers or dealers in some particular line
of business, for the purpose of lessening or eliminating
competition. This may be effected by agreements as to
terms of sale and delivery, the grading of goods, the fixing
of prices, the allotment of territory, the restriction of
output, joint-buying, and joint-selling. The simpler
forms of cartel are merely contracts between manufac-
turers, while the more highly developed cartel — the
syndicate which acts as a selling agency for the members
of the syndicate, is organized as a partnership, a stock
corporation, a limited liability company, or in yet some
other form. The individual manufacturers are in this
way partners or stockholders in the company. Except
for a few very rare cases where competition has been
eliminated by legislative means, this factor is never
entirely eliminated; it simply takes on a different form,
and continues to exist within the cartel, showing itself in
the struggle for allotment figures and in other forms.

The most important anti-trust law in this country, the
Sherman act of 1890, has been declared by the Supreme
Court, in the Standard Oil and American Tobacco deci-
sions, to be the embodiment of the common law, and the
court has accordingly held that the first section of the
act, which deals with combinations and conspiracies in
restraint of interstate and foreign commerce, refers only
to unreasonable restraint. The second section of the
Sherman act refers to monopolies and attempts to monop-
olize. Whether or not a preponderating proportion of the
business in a certain line means monopoly, and whether or
not a corporation possessing the power to hurt the public
interest ought to be dissolved, will soon have to be decided
by the Supreme Court in the Keystone Watch case, the
Harvester case, the Steel Trust case and other cases. The

German Trust Laws and Ours 117

decisions of the lower courts in these cases are in conflict
with each other. In the Harvester case, the Federal Dis-
trict Court decided that the combination must dissolve
because it had acquired too large a percentage of the busi-
ness in its line, although the trust was given a clean bill of
commercial conduct. On the other hand, in the Keystone
and Steel Trust cases, the District Court refused to dissolve
the trust, saying that a business should not be condemned
merely because it was large and had the power to hurt the
public.

Corners in staple commodities, as well as combinations
in interstate trade for the purpose of fixing prices and
terms of sale, restricting the output, or allotting business
or territory, have been held by the Supreme Court to be in
violation of the Sherman act. The fixing of the resale
price by the manufacturer of a commodity, be it un-
patented, patented, or copyrighted, has been held illegal
in the Dr. Miles Medical case, the Sanatogen case, and
the Bobbs-Merrill vs. Straus case. Among more recent
federal district court decisions, those in the Victor vs.
Macy case and the Cream of Wheat case, however, seem
under certain circumstances to offer a subterfuge to the
manufacturer who wants to control the resale price. It is
interesting to note that the company manufacturing
Cream of Wheat is still selling its product to the Great
Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, although the court
decided that the former company had the right to dis-
continue selling to the latter company, which as plaintiff
had asked the court to enjoin the manufacturer of Cream
of Wheat from refusing to sell to the plaintiff. Apparently
the Cream of Wheat company cannot get along without
the selling services of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea
Company.

The Clayton Law, which was enacted in 1914, supple-
ments the Sherman act and the minor anti-trust acts. It
specifically mentions the following practices as being

1 1 8 The Unpopular Review

illegal where their effect may be to substantially lessen
competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of
commerce.

(1) Price discrimination;

(2) Tying (exclusive) leases, sales, and contracts;

(3) The acquisition of stock of one corporation by a
competing corporation;

(4) The acquisition of stock of competing corporations
by another corporation.

The Clayton act does not forbid ownership of stock for
investment only, " not using the same by voting or other-
wise ... to bring about the substantial lessening of
competition"; nor does it forbid discriminations in price
made in good faith in order to meet competition, or on
account of differences in the grade, quality or quantity,
or the cost of selling or transportation; nor are sellers
prevented from selecting their own customers in bona fide
transactions and not in restraint of trade. This right to
choose customers has been upheld in the Cream of Wheat
case.

A provision of the act prohibiting certain kinds of
interlocking directorates requires that competing corpora-
tions having a million dollars capital, surplus, and un-
divided profits, and engaged in interstate commerce, may
not have directors in common. In Germany interlocking
directorates abound. According to the German Direc-
tory of Corporation Directors and Officials there are quite
a number of bank directors and captains of industry
who are directors in from thirty to fifty concerns. Louis
Hagen, one of the best known German captains of indus-
try, is a director in fifty-four corporations; he holds the
record, being closely followed by several other well-
known men.

The authority to enforce compliance with the above
mentioned regulations of the Clayton act has been vested
in the Federal Trade Commission, established by an act

German Trust Laws and Ours 119

of September 26, 1914. Unfair methods of competition
have been declared unlawful by that act, and the Com-
mission is to prevent such methods. Just what the term
"unfair methods of competition" means is not defined
in the act. Mr. Taft and other authorities think that the
term simply means shich practices as come within the
scope of the Sherman act. The provisions of the Clayton
act which require the ascertaining of whether or not the
methods specified in the act substantially lessen com-
petition, are practically useless, since the work of the
Supreme Court is not made easier thereby: for the findings
of the Federal Trade Commission are subject to sanction
or setting aside by the courts. A chief aim of the Clay-
ton act seems to have been to give labor unions their bills
of rights. Yet whether combinations of labor in restraint
of trade have really been exempted by the Clayton act
from the operation of the anti-trust acts, has still to be
decided by the Supreme Court. If labor unions have been
exempted, as Mr. Gompers claims, then the secondary
boycott, as employed in the Danbury Hatters case, and
similar weapons of labor unions are lawful.

For the prevention of unfair trade practices the Federal
Trade Commission seems to be rather superfluous, since
the decision of the Commission must be passed upon by
the courts. Some other provisions of the Federal Trade
Commission act, however, may prove very beneficent to
business. The Commission may be called upon by the
Department of Justice to make recommendations as to the
manner in which corporations may readjust their business
so as to comply with the law. Congress or the President
may direct it to investigate violations of anti-trust laws.
Moreover, it has the power to require corporations to file
with the Commission annual or special reports relative to
their organization, practices and management, to in-
vestigate conditions in the foreign trade of the United
States, as well as trade conditions in foreign countries.

120 The Unpopular Review

Recommendations for additional legislation may be sub-
mitted by the Commission in connection with its annual or
special reports to Congress.

The Commission has made use of this right in recom-
mending that Congress enact a bill permitting the estab-
lishment of joint-selling agencies for foreign trade by
concerns which are in the same line of business. Steam-
ship lines and large national banks have already been
permitted by Congress to form combinations for the for-
eign trade. On March 1st the Commission sent question
blanks to the corporations in this country, asking them to
furnish a few simple facts regarding their business. The
information received by the Commission will be sum-
marized for each industry, and then distributed. The
Commission wishes to help the business men in obtaining
adequate banking credit on the basis of an intelligent
bookkeeping system, and in establishing and standardizing
cost-accounting systems, so as to enable every business
man to obtain the reliable cost figures essential to prof-
itable business. The intent is highly laudable.

A member of the Commission recently announced that
it intended to secure general facts regarding each industry,
and to supply business men with these facts for the pur-
pose of preventing over-production. It will be an enor-
mous task to gather all the information necessary to allow
of the ascertaining of the exact state of an over-production
in the various lines of business; and even if exact figures
are available, how is the Commission going to prevent
over-production? It will be possible only by compulsion
or agreement — that is, by means of some organization
similar to that kind of German cartel which fixes the out-
put of its individual members. Such an organization,
however, would be in violation of the Sherman act.

An American organization which in Germany would be
called a well-organized cartel is the California Fruit
Growers Exchange. That association through its many
exchanges is able to direct the citrous fruit grown by its

German Trust Laws and Ours 121

members to the places where the demand is greatest, and
shows what trade cooperation can accomplish. As the
association has no monopoly of the market on account of
competition from other sources, the government has not
disturbed it. Another American " Cartel" is well de-
scribed in a recent edition of the Outlook. The Puyallup
fruit growers' association, headed by the president of
the Washington State Senate, buys and sells for the ac-
count of its 1800 members, with the result that their
profits have been very greatly increased without raising
the price to the consumer.

In Germany all the practices forbidden by the Clayton
law and all contracts and combinations in restraint of
trade forbidden by the Sherman act are valid, provided
that they are not "contrary to good custom (wider die
guten Sitten)" The term suggests our "public policy,"
but is not quite parallel with it. The German Supreme
Court has defined this term to forbid actions which
"shock the delicacy of all fair and just minded persons."
The court may take cognizance of the ethical view of a
particular set of people if the prevailing custom has im-
pressed itself upon such a view. A practice sprung up in a
trade is not necessarily "good custom;" it may be a bad
custom. Price maintenance, price discrimination, tying
contracts, secondary boycotts and other practices which
unduly restrain competition, are contrary to our laws,, but
are generally allowed in Germany.

As a counterpart to section 5 of the Federal Trade Com-
mission act which declares unfair methods of competition
in interstate and foreign commerce unlawful, and to the
fraudulent-advertising and unfair-competition laws en-
acted in several of our states, the Germans have a "Law
against unfair Competition." In addition to declaring
unlawful all methods of competition which are contrary to
"good custom," the law specifically prohibits certain
practices, as for instance deceptive advertisements,

122 The Unpopular Review

fraudulent use of names and trade marks, bribery of a
competitor's or customer's employees, malicious assertions
regarding a competitor's standing and honesty or the
quality of his goods, the misnaming of a bargain sale as a
bankruptcy sale or a receiver's sale, and so forth. State-
ments like "cheapest source of supply," "without com-
petition," "largest house," and similar phrases have been
held to be against the law unless they are in accord with
the facts. Blatant advertisements which are obviously
grossly exaggerated, however, do not come under the law.
Cotton goods must not be sold as linen goods; mixed
American and Russian oil must not be sold as American
oil; goods containing only 60% to 70% wool must not be
sold as woolen goods, etc.

Practically all the methods of unfair competition con-
demned under the German law, with the exception, per-
haps, of exaggerated and false assertions regarding goods
for sale, have, at one time or other, been held to be illegal
by the courts in this country. A recent Supreme Court
decision upholding the Sherley amendment to our Food
and Drugs act will lessen fraud in interstate commerce by
means of false labels.

The first section of the German Trade Regulations act,
which guarantees freedom of trade to anybody, is always
being presented in American publications on German
combinations as being a protection against undue inter-
ference by competitors with the freedom of carrying on a
trade or occupation. This contention is not correct. The
section in question only precludes interference by the
governmental authorities. A boycott, be it primary or
secondary, is in Germany considered "contrary to good
custom" only if the boycotted is brought to the verge of
bankruptcy, or if the injury is out of all proportion to the
gain sought. Yet the means employed in the boycott may
in themselves violate "good custom," as for instance,
when facts are misrepresented.

There is a section in the German penal code which

German Trust Laws and Ours 123

condemns efforts to secure unlawful pecuniary advantage
by compelling another through violence or threats to do,
tolerate or discontinue a certain act. The enforcement
of this provision has been held in abeyance of late years
in the case of combinations formed for the furtherance of
economic advantage. A threat to ruin a competitor would
come under this section.

If an outsider is ruined as a result of lawful meth-
ods of competition employed by the cartel, such as price-
discrimination or price-cutting, he has no redress. Even
if the cartel statute provides for admission of new mem-
bers, it is not obliged to admit any applicant, and an
outsider may easily be ruined by being refused admission.
If, however, in addition to refusing admission the cartel
should demand of its members that they add one third
to their selling price in the case of a firm employing
the services of non-members, such action, in case it
resulted in the financial ruin of the outsider, would be
against good custom. These examples show that the
cartels have powerful weapons for bringing outsiders to
terms.

In the matter of bids for contracts, the German Supreme
Court has decided that contractors in agreeing among
themselves as to the bids to be made, do not act contrary
to good custom. If, however, through their combination,
the party inviting the bids is forced to pay more than a
reasonable price, it has a claim against the contractors
for the difference between the price it pays and a reason-
able price. In the case of public contracts a section of the
old Prussian criminal law makes liable to fine or imprison-
ment a party preventing another from bidding, by force
or by the promise of a consideration.

A public-service electric corporation does not act con-
trary to good custom in demanding that its subscribers
purchase from the company all the supplies necessary for
the installation and use of power service.

Other cases might be mentioned which show that

124 The Unpopular Review

"good custom" includes many things which we should not
consider reasonable methods of competition.

According to a section of the Prussian statute intro-
ducing the commercial code, stock corporations jeopardiz-
ing the public weal may be dissolved. This provision has
never been invoked.

According to a section of the German code of civil
procedure, an arbitration tribunal may be agreed upon for
all disputes in which a compromise is possible. The
cartels have made such an extensive use of this permission
that cartel disputes, either between cartel members and
between a cartel and its customers, seldom come before
the courts. In New York state and many other American
states such an arbitration agreement is not legally binding;
either party to the agreement may appeal before or after
the arbitration to the court of jurisdiction.

That cartel regulations often assume a certain legisla-
tive character by regulating ill-defined practices has been
shown by opinions of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce,
which has frequently declared certain cartel by-laws and
stipulations to constitute trade customs.

Although cartel agreements in Germany have on the
whole been considered beneficial to the community,
within the past few years there has been a strong move-
ment hostile to the formation of trusts, and especially to
the expansion of foreign trusts. The British-American
Tobacco Company has felt the brunt of this movement.
Certain firms in the German cigarette trade have for a
long time been under accusation of having some connec-
tion with that trust. About 250 German cigarette man-
ufacturers have formed an "Association for Protection
against the Tobacco Trust." Chambers of commerce and
Other trade bodies have joined this protective associa-
tion.

The trust nevertheless seemed to be increasing its
control of the cigarette trade, by means of cut prices and

German Trust Laws and Ours 125

premiums. Finally the district attorney at Dresden was
induced to make a search of the places of business of
concerns suspected of being connected with the trust. As
a basis for such a proceeding, the authorities cited sec-
tion 128 of the German penal code, which reads:

Participation in an association whose existence, constitution
or purpose is intended to be concealed from the public au-
thorities, or in which obedience to unknown superiors, or uncon-
ditional obedience to known superiors, is promised, is to be
punished by imprisonment for not more than six months in the
case of the members, and by imprisonment for not less than one
month nor more than one year in the case of the founders and
directors of the association.

Prominent jurists considered the proceeding of the
authorities unlawful, asserting that the section in question
did not refer to economic associations whose existence was
to be concealed from competitors. The Imperial Secre-
tary of the Interior disclaimed any responsibility for the
action of the Dresden district attorney.

The public campaign of the Protective Association and
of independent dealers (who refused to display the goods
of the trust firms, or to sell them except when asked for)
have induced the two most prominent subsidiaries of the
trust to transfer a majority of their stock to German
capitalists who have no other connection with the trust.
In March, 1915, the Supreme Court decided that the
Adler Cigarette Manufacturing Company, part of whose
stock is owned by the trust, was violating the Law against
Unfair Competition by calling its products "trust-free."
The defendant company asserted that there was no trust
in Germany, but the court nevertheless defined a trust
as described earlier in this paper.

An anti-trust movement similar to that in the cigarette
trade has been started in the shoe trade and kindred lines,
by the formation of the "Association for Protection against
the Shoe Machinery Trust." At about the same time that
the government of this country instituted a suit against

126 The Unpopular Review

the United Shoe Machinery Company, the Association of
German Shoe and Legging Manufacturers, through six
of its members at Frankfort-on-the-Main, started a suit
against the German branch of the Shoe Machinery Trust
for the annulment of its leasing contracts, which require
the lessee to buy his requirements of thread and tacks from
the trust, and to abstain from installing any machinery
but that of the trust. In view of previous decisions, there
is little likelihood that the courts will consider these
contracts illegal, i. e. as being contrary to good custom.
There is also a margarine trust in Germany. This
trust is capitalized chiefly by Dutch and British firms.
Several years ago a court decision held that the so-called
trust firms are not permitted to ship margarine under the
name of a concern which they have bought up, but which
no longer manufactures margarine; in addition to the
name of the concern thus purchased, the name of the real
manufacturer must be shown on the containers. The
independent manufacturers assert that the proportion of
trust manufactured margarine in Germany amounts to
80%. They wish the government to proceed against the
trust on the ground of paragraph two of the second section
of the "Law relating to the Trade in Butter, Cheese,
Lard, and their substitutes," which reads : " If margarine,
margarine-cheese, or artificial edible fat, is sold by a dealer
or offered for sale, in complete barrels or cases, the in-
scription (margarine) must further contain the name or
the firm of the; manufacturer, as well as the trade-mark
used by the manufacturer for the marking of the grade
of his products." The independents assert that the two
leading concerns composing the trust in Germany, one of
which has its factory near Hamburg, while the other is
located in the ilhineland, have their products shipped to
their customers from the factory nearest the point of
destination. As the product is always marked with the
name and trade-mark of the concern that sells it, even if
it was manufactured and shipped by the other concern,

German Trust Laws and Ours 127

the government should interfere on the ground of the
provision of the margarine law, above stated. It is
asserted that within six or seven years the trust has saved
in cross-freight about $500,000, which the government,
as the owner of the railways, has lost.

In addition to the laws governing the conduct of com-
binations, as explained above, the requirements of the
German Limited Liability Company Law and of the Com-
mercial Code relative to the organization and management
of corporations, have been an effective bar to the evils of
stock watering and monopoly. In 1870, the charter
system was replaced by entry in the trade register. Any
stock company or limited liability company which com-
plies with certain preliminaries, which are passed upon by
the judge of registry, comes into corporate existence simply
by entry in the trade register. The Limited Liability
Company Law does not prevent fraudulent promotion, but
the formation of the far more important stock corporation
is governed by strict regulations regarding the liability of
the founders for any fraud or inaccurate statements in the
formation proceedings. Stock watering has been made
practically impossible. Accountants appointed by the
chambers of commerce or by the judge of registry in-
vestigate the value of any property taken over in exchange
for shares upon the organization of the company. An
evasion of .this rule by a postponement of such exchange
until after the, formation,. has been made difficult. Bank-
ing houses inviting subscriptions for stocks or bonds are
liable for damages for any incorrect statements made in
the prospectus signed by them either intentionally or
through gross negligence. The liability of the directors,
entering in the trade register all important changes in
the status of the company, the valuation of securities and
other property, and increasing and reducing c apital stock,
are all governed by rules to protect the investor and the
creditor. For instance, no articles of any kind can be en-

128 The Unpopular Review

tered on the balance sheet at a figure above the purchase
price. If, in the case of securities and staple commodities,
the market price is below the purchase price, the former
has to be taken as a basis. Depreciation of machinery
must be accounted for in the balance sheet. No dividend is
allowed to be paid so long as the liabilities (including the
capital stock) exceed the assets.

All these laws and regulations, however, are not the only
checks to an aggressive cartel policy. Through ownership
of the railways the German states have a powerful weapon
in their hands. Prussia has more than once reduced or
threatened to reduce freight rates on coal from the coast
to the interior, in order to enable English coal to compete
with the Rhenish-Westphalian Syndicate. The participa-
tion of individual states in various industries, especially
those in coal, potash, and lignite, has resulted in their
becoming members of cartels, and thus obtaining a voice
in the cartel management. As powerful outsiders they
may exert an even greater influence on the cartel policy.
The States of Prussia and Anhalt are members of the
Potash Syndicate, which is organized under a law regulat-
ing prices and output. One of its interesting features
is the provision for ,a permanent surveillance of the wage
and working conditions in the cartelized mines. This is to
prevent the shifting of the reduction of domestic prices
provided for in the law, on to the workers' wages, under
penalty of a reduction of the mine's share in the aggregate
potash production.

The spirits cartel is a necessary result of the taxation
of brandy, and the coal cartels are based on the mining
law.

When last year negotiations were being carried on
for the renewal of the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syn-
dicate, the most important German cartel, and it looked
as if lack of compromise would lead to a dissolution of the
syndicate on January 1st, the Federal Council (supported

German Trust Laws and Ours 129

by the German diet) threatened, in case a syndicate con-
trolling at least 97% of the coal output of all the private
concerns in the Ruhr district should not be formed, to
create a compulsory syndicate under the supervision of
the State. This threat resulted, at the last moment, in a
renewal of the syndicate for i% years, the Prussian state
mines in the Ruhr district becoming members of the new
cartel. Furthermore, Prussia secured the right to with-
draw on notice, and to cast the deciding vote if a minority
of at least 30 per cent of all the other votes were for
a reduction, or against an increase, in the selling prices.
The syndicate has to supply the Prussian Minister of
Commerce and Industry with detailed reports on many
syndicate matters that concern the public interest. No
obstacles are to be put in the way of the acquisition of the
Hibernia mine by the state. The output of the Hibernia
concern having been limited to 5,813,0x30 tons of coal and
1,512,800 tons of coke, the Prussian state will control an
output of 11,313,500 tons of coal and 3,476,000 tons of
coke out of a total syndicate output of 108,729,266 tons
of coal and 25,170,816 tons of coke. A compulsory syn-
dicate is again threatening, as the i}^ years have almost
elapsed and the syndicate has not yet been renewed.

In an article by the author on German Cartel Policy
in The Engineering Magazine of January, 1915, it was
pointed out that the government's threat of a cartel law
had practically no influence on the harsh policy of the
cartels in the textile lines, for which the threat was meant.
Since then the only marked effect which the war has had
on cartel policy is the increased influence of the govern-
ment in the coal syndicate, as above described. Although
this may not seem to be a great step towards government
regulation, the decree of the Federal Council, and certain
stipulations of the coal syndicate's statutes, may become
the basis for an increase of government control and owner-
ship of certain industries, as well as for cartel legislation.

13° The Unpopular Review

The idea of government ownership has been greatly
furthered by the war. Many of the new economic insti-
tutions created by the war, such as maximum prices, war
credit banks, raw material distributing boards, and so
forth, are likely to leave a marked impression on Ger-
many's future economic organization. Men formerly
opposed to government ownership are now satisfied that
after the war, in order to make the country's economic
organization as efficient as its military organization, the
government will have to go even farther in its participa-
tion in the active management of trades and industries.
It is surprising to see well-known economists and public
men who have always been enemies of socialism, advocat-
ing measures leading to nationalization or government
ownership. Economic preparedness, however, will not be
the only factor determining the steps to be taken by the
government in the regulation and management of indus-
tries. Although Germany has expected, rightly or wrongly,
that the Allies will have to pay her a large indemnity
(which, by the way, may be agreed upon to consist largely
of staple commodities), it is realized that new sources of
revenue will have to be found after the war. Not only
has interest to be paid on the large war loans, but there is
also need of a large amount of money for soldiers' and
sailors' pensions, for the replenishment of war material,
and for the re-building of devastated districts. A govern-
ment monopoly in nitrogen has already been practically
decided on. A cigarette monopoly is a probability (in
Poland a cigarette trading monopoly has been introduced
by the German administration), and a margarine monop-
oly has been under discussion. It is asserted that both
the cigarette industry and the margarine industry could
be quite easily transformed into government monop-
olies, because combination in both has reached a high
degree, and because the annual consumption of their
products is not only large but also easy to determine in
advance. Some economists oppose taking over such

German Trust Laws and Ours 131

gigantic enterprises by the government, on the ground
that the present owners would not part with them for any
reasonable consideration. They propose that the govern-
ment take in hand and develop new industries created by
the war, such as those in textile fiber and albumen. At any
rate, the war will result in an enormous change in eco-
nomic organization, and probably will bring about a
solution of many present-day problems.

While we thus see Germany on the one hand proceeding
toward government regulation of private monopoly and
to government ownership, the United States on the other
hand is endeavoring to enforce competition and so to
prevent the formation of monopolies. This seems to be an
extremely difficult task. It was Proudhon who first said
that "competition kills competition." American econ-
omists, however, as well as President Wilson, say that
only illicit competition will lead to monopoly. To the
writer it seems that proof of the contrary is furnished not
only by Germany, but also by other countries, where
monopoly has come to be the result of perfectly lawful
competition, and of competition which even in this coun-
try would not be called illicit.

American economists and men like Mr. George W.
Perkins expect great results from the proposed publicity
in corporate affairs. But what good would it do if stock
corporations were forced, as they are in Germany, to
publish their balance sheets annually; where are the
publications which would call the attention of the general
public to the mismanagement and violations of their
duties on the part of the officers of the corporation, as
shown in such annual reports? The general reader does
not understand a balance-sheet, and only a critical review
by some competent person could show him where there
is something wrong. The writer recently happened to
attend a gathering of about a dozen economists at Colum-
bia University. With the possible exception of himself

132 The Unpopular Review

they all agreed that there was no daily paper of any in-
fluence that would undertake such a public service as
furnishing general critical reviews of the management of
corporations.

A German bank known throughout that country
recently went bankrupt as a result of its officers' mis-
management. For three or four years, this end had been
predicted by several influential German papers, and
prospective investors had been warned away. In another
instance an officer of one of the large steel works had
formed a new steel company on the basis of a new inven-
tion. When he needed credit for the enlargement of his
plant, the business of which was growing very rapidly, the
concerted action of the leading banks resulted in his
being unable to secure from any bank the credit required.
They were unwilling to aid him in selling the stock of his
company. First a weekly, and then some influential
dailies took up his case, and in a few years the business has
become one of the largest and most prosperous in Ger-
many. Such instances are anything but the exception in
German journalism. Can we claim that American news-
papers render similar service to the public?

Chairman Hurley of the Federal Trade Commission
has pointed out that of a total of 250,000 business cor-
porations there are more than 100,000 with no net in-
come whatever. Suppose that we had combination in
the form under which it exists in Germany; would all of
these 100,000 corporations have come into existence had
they known that they would have difficulty in successfully
competing with a combination? Of course, not all of
those 100,000 corporations mean economic waste, but
much of their work is unnecessary for the national econ-
omy, and could be used to better advantage in other fields
of production. There is an enormous waste in economic
productivity throughout the country. Here in New York,
we frequently find two grocery stores, two saloons, two
ice-cream stores, and two cigar stores in one block. That

German Trust Laws and Ours 133

the great number of grocery stores and delicatessen stores
are not cheapening food has been admitted by the de-
mand for public markets, which by the way cannot be
very successful unless they are wholesale markets, as
experience in large cities of other countries has shown.
Corporations like the Riker-Hegeman Stores and the
Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, with their nu-
merous branches, are worthy of encouragement as being
able to furnish reliable products at prices below those of
the average drug store and grocery store.

There are a great many lines in which combination
would do away with the enormous waste of competition.
A good example seems to be the Diamond Match Com-
pany, which controls 85% of the American match indus-
try and has factories in North and South America, Europe,
and Africa. Yet it is not being accused of exploiting the
consumer. In the case of public service corporations,
supreme court decisions in various states have upheld
monopoly by confirming decisions of public service com-
missions refusing to issue licenses to prospective com-
petitors of public service corporations.

Sociologists tell us that the desire for recognition is the
most fundamental social force. Could we not change our
attitude towards business by recognizing as a great busi-
ness man not the man who has amassed millions, but the
man who is really a great captain of industry. Professor
Ely has said that one of the most difficult ethical tasks
which society has, is to deepen the feeling of ethical
obligation, in their relations to the general public, on the
part of those who control private corporations. In Ger-
many the captains of industry seek recognition not by
showing that they have amassed wealth, but by showing
that their deeds have been considered worthy, by one of
the German kings or grand dukes, of being rewarded with
the title of commercial councillor, privy commercial
councillor, or even by a peerage.

It is generally acknowledged in Germany that combina-

134 The Unpopular Review

tion has done away with a great deal of waste in competi-
tion. As Professor Seager points out in a recent issue of
The Political Science Quarterly, we have satisfactory
regulation of the business of interstate common carriers
by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and of that of
public service corporations by state public service commis-
sions. In all probability it would also be possible to find
some adequate method of government regulation for indus-
trial corporations. Federal incorporation has been pro-
posed. Instead of exacting a charter fee, it might be
feasible to demand the transfer of a certain small percent-
age of the capital stock to the government, thus making
the latter a shareholder in every corporation. Merely such
shareholding, in connection with stipulations regarding the
rights of minority stockholders, might turn out to be
sufficient supervision, at least for a beginning. At any
rate, a change in the government's trust policy, in the
direction of relaxation of enforcement of free competition,
and in the direction of greater regulation of industrial
corporations, is bound to come. The Federal Trade
Commission has discontinued the trust-busting business of
its predecessor, the Bureau of Corporations; and the
Commission's investigations and subsequent recommenda-
tions to Congress will be awaited with great interest.

"Good custom," it is true, may include things which we
might consider as verging on the unfair, but the main
difference between the status of combinations here and
in Germany is that we consider monopoly as being against
public policy, while in Germany the cartel, though it tends
toward monopoly, is not generally looked upon in any
unfavorable light. Furthermore, the right to freedom of
contract (with the exception of cartel agreements regard-
ing bids for contracts) is more jealously safeguarded in
Germany than in this country, whereas the right to
freedom of competition is more jealously protected in this
country than in Germany.

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING ALONE

FIRST of all, let me say most emphatically that I
am very fond of my friends, and that they are
the finest, the most charming, the nearest unique in the
world. I am never so much alone as when I am in their
company. To distort Emerson, with perfect sweetness
they allow me the independence of solitude. They are
never hurt and dismayed if I go off into a " vacant" or a
"pensive" mood. I rarely feel that I must escape from
them. However, the real species of friend is decidedly
limited in number, and its habitat, unfortunately, is
widely scattered. All of us, alas, spend much of our
time with people whom we struggle valiantly to meet on
common ground. If the ground proves to be a quicksand
of prejudices and misunderstandings, we pretend to ig-
nore the fact for a while, but finally we are honest with
ourselves, and scramble to our several shores, hoping that
no one has noticed our ungainly gestures. The process
is exhausting — at least it is to me.

Ever since I was a small child, I have at times found it
necessary to retire from a noisy, talkative, vigorous world.
I need to relax my soul, and then to give it exercises, to
get it alive again. Don't laugh at me and say that every-
one needs to do the same thing, because I know many
people who do not.

There is Vera, for instance, who is always the engineer
"off of" something or other, as Myra Kelly puts it. She
gets breakfast, up at the lake, and pets the pumping en-
gine at the same time; she combines a visit to the vegetable
garden, from which she comes laden with enough produce
for three days, with vulcanizing the cuts in the tires of
her Ford; she cooks a country mid-day dinner and plays
a set of tennis while she does it. She is quite capable of
entertaining two or three people while she develops and

I3S

136 The Unpopular Review

prints a roll of films. I have known her simultaneously
to read Imagist verse and talk about recipes for making
jelly. She does all things with an almost fatal facility,
and enjoys the society of human beings while she does
them. You might think it is because she never gets
under people's skins, and therefore can endure them in-
definitely. Not at all. It is merely that she accepts them
as they are, and finds in her rich and varied personality
some common trait. How else could she ever get along
with me? In some strange way we are complementary.
While I moon along with her on a country road, giving
my passive attention to sky and earth, she plans cam-
paigns against all the various complicated engines on her
place, reserving just enough appreciation of out-of-doors
to make her an ideal comrade for a walk. Best of all
she knows how to keep her mouth closed.

There was a pest of a nice uncle of hers at the lake last
year. He was so pleasant an old man that I was ashamed
of myself when I found him getting on my nerves. He
had an annoying habit of mumbling French into his
beard in a very efficient way, and expecting me to under-
stand him. Vera invited him to take hikes with us, and
she was really and truly astounded that he balked at
climbing over and under barbed wire to hunt mushrooms
in a swampy pasture. One day I sneaked away from the
garage, where he and Vera were vulcanizing tires, and
went down to the lake. Around the steel launch had
been built a narrow pier of thin planking, which on that
particular morning seemed to me an ideal basking place.
I lay upon it at full length, shading my eyes with my
hands. Under me the water was "lapping on the crag"
in true Tennysonian fashion, and above me was a sky
that was the concentrated blue of all the fine paintings of
heavens which I had ever seen. Snowy clouds were
piling themselves cumbrously toward a large celestial
island. Its color was that deeply tender blue that looks

On the Difficulty of Being Alone 137

moist. Behind me an orchard-oriole was whistling clearly,
and once I caught a sight of his burning orange plumage as
he made a short flight above my head. The sunshine
was warming me to the bone. I was very happy.

Suddenly a newspaper rustled ominously. A voice
from the arbor halfway up the bluff disengaged itself
from an enveloping beard. As long as it spoke French
I could pretend not to understand, but finally I had to
recognize the fact that Uncle Pierre feared that I should
tumble into three inches of water and perish. For ten
weary minutes I assured that miserable man that I
couldn't possibly fall into the lake, and that I couldn't
drown if I did.

"But you may fall asleep, my dear young lady. I shall
sit here, and if you doze, I shall consider it my duty to
awaken you."

My charming solitude broken, I made a lame excuse,
hunted for Vera, and having found her, pumped the
mended tires. Soon after that, some neighbors decided
to be very nice to us, and for three dreadful days solitude
alone or with Vera was not to be thought of. She didn't
mind the invasion at all, but I did, and it was with deep
relief that I heard that the invaders had decided to go to
town for a week. Joy in lonesomeness had a new edge,
and when Vera asked me to superintend the burning of
rubbish off in the oak grove, I accepted with pleasure.
She had to direct the cutting of the lawn by two young
boys who had driven over from a neighboring farm. The
smoke from my fire floated off in "silvery wreaths." It
walled me off from all that was bothersome and annoying.
Suddenly I found myself singing the fire music. By
turns I was Wotan, Briinnhilde and the orchestra. I,
who never sing in public, or even in company, gave most
of the last scene of Die Walkure, taking the parts sepa-
rately, but usually trying to do all together. The heart-
breaking music was making me feel deliciously sad.

138 The Unpopular Review

Then, from behind the smoky wall a nasal voice asked :
"Say, lady, do you think you could get me some fishin'
tackle? I brung them two boys over here to cut the
grass, and I thought it ud be a good day to fish."

Had he asked for an airship I think I might have found
a few addresses for him — but fishin' tackle! Vera and
I hunted an hour and discovered a rod but no line. We
introduced the man to several localities that we thought
might have been frequented by worms. He found the
bait, but there was not a hook on the place. He left in
disgust, and Vera and I sat down and laughed until we
cried. Then she decided to analyze the pumping engine
to find out what ailed its inwards, and I — well I trailed
along with her.

Vera, you see, has so much mentality that she can make
people believe that she considers them charming, using
only about one-sixteenth of her brain for the process.
With the rest of her mind, she arranges lines of action.
Like Tom Sawyer, she gets the other fellow to whitewash
her fences. However, I don't know what she would have
done with the lover of Jean de Reszke whom I met in
the top gallery.

Years ago, before Vera and I became friends, Anna
and I once saved enough wealth from the remnants of
our weekly allowances to buy tickets to hear a gala per-
formance of Faust. Our parents consented to our sitting
alone, since Anna's brother, who was "suping" that
night, could meet us and take us home. Our seats were
in the last row of the top gallery of the Auditorium. I
still hear people mention that performance with the
same awe with which our fathers discuss Edwin Booth:
for Melba, the two de Reszkes, Campanini, and several
other stars were in the cast. Just as the lights went down
and the orchestra began to play, a small bouncing in-
dividual with shining face and shining clothes, dropped
with a thud into the aisle seat next to us. Our pleasing

On the Difficulty of Being Alone 139

solitude in the midst of a great crowd was disturbed,
broken, gone: our neighbor's individuality was as ex-
uberant as his movements. He ejaculated, groaned and
sighed in ecstasy. He shivered with apprehension, and
bounded up and down in his seat. During the perform-
ance our attention was divided between him and the
stage. The surprise of Melba's clear tones is still asso-
ciated in my mind with the stifled sighs of that pestif-
erous neighbor. In endeavoring to shut our minds to
him, we lost the first rapture of the music. But it was
during the intermission that he inflicted himself most
emphatically upon us. He talked to us because we were
there; had the seats been empty, he would probably have
talked to them. He described the delicacy, the fine re-
serve, with which Jean de Reszke — "Jean, my idol," as
he called him — had awakened the sleeping Briinnhilde
in the opera of the night before. "One kiss," he said,
"one delicate kiss." His tones arose with excitement
until at least a hundred people turned to look at us
inquiringly. He illustrated the fine restraint of the hero
by nipping out a portion of the thick gallery air with his
thumb and fore-finger. I see him yet, and hate him in
my soul. What right had he to spoil a first performance
of an opera for two eager girls by intruding his person-
ality, his point of view? Mad King Ludwig was not so
mad as people think him.

Before I die I am going to build a house in the desert.
There I shall be able to bask in the sun, and to sing operas
under my breath. I shall shoot on sight anyone who
visits me uninvited. Anyone who goes with me will
have to pass a very difficult examination on his ability
to keep silent. He may then come on probation. If I
don't like him, I shall send him home. There will be no
redress.

NATURE, NURTURE, AND NOVEL-
WRITING

MANY seem to take it for granted that the academic
study of good literature, if properly managed by
teacher and taught, should in the nature of things put
the student in the way of creating it. And since our
schools and colleges and universities began some years
ago to take the study of literature very seriously, and have
long devoted a vast amount of effort to it without pro-
ducing any visible surplus of good imaginative writers,
there is a tendency to draw the conclusion that something
must be wrong. Sometimes it is the teachers who are
blamed — too much mechanical "philology" or what not.
Again it is the students who are believed to be suffering
from a sort of secular degeneration due to athletic sports,
luxury, the love of amusement, or the materialistic drift
of the age. Whoever gets the blame, it is apt to be as-
sumed that things are going from better to worse and
that something ought to be done about it.

Such is the opinion, one must infer, of Mr. William W.
Ellsworth, a publisher of long experience who lately al-
lowed himself to be interviewed for the New York Times.
Mr. Ellsworth "can not help feeling that the art of author-
ship is not growing in America as it should, and that the
colleges are apparently doing nothing to help this growth."
It appears that new writers are not emerging as they
should. A recent count of a thousand book-manuscripts
examined in his office up to January i, 1916, showed forty-
one accepted and not one of them by a new writer. Fifteen
years ago a similar count of a thousand showed fourteen
new authors out of twenty-five accepted. Mr. Ellsworth
does not say in so many words that the blight is ascribable
to the colleges, but he evidently suspects something of
the kind, for we are told of young persons of his acquaint-

140

Nature, Nurture, and Novel-Writing 141

ance who in school had an apparent faculty for creative
literature, and came out of college "familiar with the
writings of Addison and Browning but utterly unable to
express an original thought." Plainly this implies that
the colleges are not doing their whole duty, at least not
doing what might fairly be expected of them. He finds
the situation puzzling and depressing.

Now all this invites reflection. In the first place, one
balks a little at the seeming identification of literature
with fiction, as if that alone could be "creative." Sec-
ondly, one is surprised to hear that there is serious danger
of a waning supply of that particular literary commodity.
Thirdly, supposing that danger to be real, one does not
quite see how the colleges are responsible for it or why
they should be looked to for a remedy.

But what sort of person is "one," the reader may be
wondering by this time. Be it known, then, that "one"
is in this case a well-seasoned university teacher of litera-
ture. He is the author of books and essays dealing with
that subject, but is not a novelist — never wrote a story
in his life. He does like to dabble in verse-making, and
knows the rules of the game, but is well aware that he
was never cut out for a highly expert player.

Now looking at the situation from his particular perch,
the writer is not greatly moved to pessimism by the solici-
tude above set forth. He has noticed from his reading
that art of every species, like manners and social ideals,
is generally on the decline — in the estimation of elderly
folk whose eyes are fixed on what they have known and
loved in the past. At any particular epoch in any nation's
literary history one can usually find, if one hunts for,
expressions of wonder and dismay at the way 'things are
going. But in literature as elsewhere the law of supply
and demand gets in its inevitable work. Great genius,
memorable for a long posterity, comes very rarely; but
seasonal production for the market goes on its way under
the ever changing conditions. With more or less of light

142 The Unpopular Review

and of smoke, with intermittent flickerings and brighten-
ings, with incessant change of hue, the torch is somehow
kept afire, and the nations get taken care of in the long
run in accordance with their deserts. What better can
one expect unless it were more geniuses? And who by
taking thought can provide them?

Let this pass for what it is worth as a professorial obiter
dictum, making no claim to startling novelty. The real
subject of these cogitations is the assumption stated at
the beginning. Is it a reasonable opinion, in the light of
present knowledge, that the study of imaginative literature
in school, college, and university should impart the power
to produce it? If this is a proper assumption, then it must
be admitted that hitherto the study has not been rightly
managed. Something is wrong. Either the teachers are
not of the right kind or else they are working in the wrong
way. Let us note in passing that such an admission does
not utterly discredit the study as now carried on, unless
we assume that the production of literary artists is the
sole object of putting literature into the course of study.
If teachers are able, in a fa r proportion of cases, to interest
the average student in g xl literature, to give him an
inkling of what it really is, and to quicken ever so little
his appetite for it, they are doing something well worth
while. They may still hold up their heads with, say, the
teachers of music and drawing, who are not often blamed
because no large crop of Mozarts and Corots can be
observed to spring up in their wake. I do not now claim
that the teachers are notably successful, even in this
modest mission of training appreciators. I merely say
that so far as they do succeed, they are performing a
creditable social function. But this is another story, and
I wish to keep to the main question.

We may put it in a different form thus: Is the total of
q1' Lities that go to the writing of a good novel a matter
of nature, of nurture, or a mixture of the two? If it is a
mixture of the two, how are they distributed? If all the

Nature, Nurture, and Novel- Writing 143

qualities were of nurture, then it should be possible, by
skillfully applied training in a suitable environment, to
make a novelist out of any boy or girl who comes along.
But if the ability, or any essential factor of it, is a matter
of nature (that is, of heredity), then training and environ-
ment are wasted on those who have not that particular
factor in their germ-plasm. For such the case was un-
alterably closed at, or rather before, birth. At this point
let me quote a paragraph from a recent authoritative
book on Heredity and Environment by Professor E. G.
Conklin of Princeton (page 463) :

There can be no doubt that the main characteristics of every
living thing are unalterably fixed by heredity. Men differ from
horses or turnips because of their inheritance. Our family traits
were determined by the hereditary constitutions of our an-
cestors, our inherited personal traits by the hereditary constitu-
tions of our fathers and mothers. By the shuffle and deal of
the hereditary factors in the formation of the germ cells, and
by the chance union of two of these cells in fertilization, our
hereditary natures were forever sealed. Our anatomical,
physiological, psychological possibilities were predetermined in
the germ cells from which we came. All the main characteristics
of our personalities were born with us, and can not be changed
except within relatively narrow limits. "The leopard can not
change his spots nor the Ethiopian his skin," and "tho thou
shouldst bray a fool in a mortar with a pestle yet will his foolish-
ness not depart from him." Race, sex, mental capacity are
determined in the germ cells, perhaps in the chromosomes, and
all the possibilities of our lives were there fixed, for who by
taking thought can add one chromosome, or even one deter-
miner, to his organization?

Further on, Conklin dwells on the rich possibilities of
development by training — what we can do and what we
can not do. His conclusions are distinctly hopeful. The
gist of them is that education can do a great deal —
vastly more than it has done hitherto — to train the will,
the habits of thought and action, the ideals, the sense of
responsibility, the power of application and of self-
control. But I note that he does not mention artistic

144 The Unpopular Review

ability of any kind among these potentialities of develop-
ment by training.

Probably most careful observers will say that a marked
talent for imaginative writing is not a simple affair, but
composite — a product of several factors some of which are
much more commonly found in the human make-up than
others. If this is so, and I think it is, the question then
arises: What is the probability that any particular boy
or girl on reaching school age will have all the essential
factors in his or her organization? Because if the prob-
ability is very small indeed, it can hardly be expected,
indeed it would hardly be right, that school and college
teachers in a democratic society should center their efforts
largely on that rare individual, even if they knew just
what sort of training and environment would best develop
his peculiar gift. Our schools are not made for geniuses,
tho they certainly ought not to blight genius. // they
do that, and so far as they do it, there is something wrong.

Is it then possible to analyze the aggregate of qualities
that go to good imaginative writing, for the purpose of
determining which are of nature for the relatively many,
and therefore capable of nurture in schools of general
learning, and which are hereditary gifts of the very few —
gifts that must be developed, if at all, in ways that are
beyond the reach of the pedagog.

Of course I am here conscious of raising a hard question
that has usually been given up as hopeless. The qualities
I am talking about are generally lumped together under
the name of genius, and genius is treated as an inscrutable
mystery. The poet is born, not made, says the proverb;
genius is kindled only by genius, said Lessing. The very
word ingenium tells its tale of this way of thinking. The
gift is "born in" one, or else it is not. If it is born in one
it will take care of itself, and often seems to thrive best
under poverty and hard knocks and other so-called ad-
verse conditions — the very opposite of those that foster-

Nature, Nurture, and Novel- Writing 145

ing care would antecedently be apt to select. Coddling
and all attempts to guide it or force it into some conven<-
tional mold are either futile or else they spoil it. They
are like the attempts of the old French gardeners to make
trees grow in cubes, pyramids and spheres. Definitions
of genius that leave out the mystery, such as an infinite
capacity for taking pains, or an intense preoccupation
with some dominant purpose, vision or dream, never quite
seem to tell the whole story. And really they do not,
because no two individuals are just alike, and men differ
most from one another according to the greater or less
development of qualities that are inborn. Everyone has
his ingenium and it is no more mysterious in one case
than in another. So we are at last coming to think of
genius a little more soberly. To-day the awe and wonder
of thinking men are less excited by the achievement of
a specific genius in a particular man or woman, than by
the universal mystery of all-inclusive development from
a microscopic germ cell.

So it may not be utterly impossible after all to make the
analysis suggested. On account of the endless variety of
human ingenia, and of the fact that a clever imitator
without the gift may simulate a work of art — there being
many degrees and no absolute distinction between artistry
and artisanship — our probability of error will be rather
large. Perhaps the factors we disengage may not be true
determiners in the Mendelian sense — that is a question
for biologists — but it seems worth while to make the
attempt and see what comes of it.

First, then, a good novelist must belong to the imagina-
tive, visualizing type of mankind. A very large propor-
tion of human beings otherwise able seem to have no
imaginative power. But without this factor a would-be
novelist is a mere cobbler.

Second, he must have the artistic proclivity, that is, a
strong bent for bodying forth his imagination in words.
To speak Greek, he must be a born "maker." These

146 The Unpopular Review

first two are not the same. There are highly imaginative
persons given to revery and daydreaming who do not
have any decided bent for making.

Third, he must be capable of what I shall venture to
call vicarious experience. I mean that he must be able
to identify himself with imaginary people to such a degree
that they are as if real to him. This is the condition of
their seeming real to his readers, hence is one of the great
fundamental factors of literary artistry. Yet it is dif-
ferent from imagination, different from the bent for
making.

Fourth, he must be an interested observer of character
for its own sake. Most of us do not really see character
at all in the sense here involved — any more than we see
the little things of outdoor life when we take a walk. Or
if we do see it, our minds are apt to set about changing
it, reforming it, making it over in our own image.

Fifth, he must be able to handle effectively the language
that he uses. This does not mean that he must be able
to write clearly, coherently, or with due logical sequence.
Effectively for the purposes of art means sensuously, so
that the words shall flash back lights from the printed
page, making the reader sit up and take notice. This
factor has grown in importance ever since stories began
to be made for the eye rather than the ear.

Now I do not suppose for a moment that any good
novelist would at once accept this inventory as complete.
Each would probably wish to add something. One, per-
haps, would suggest the necessity of having a philosophy
of some kind, while another would caution against di-
dacticism, or emphasize some minor trick of the trade.
Be it so. Philosophy and technic are admittedly of nur-
ture, and I am in quest of the factors that at least seem
to be not everyone's affair. Unless I am mistaken the
additions to my scheme would only show that no two
novelists are alike, and that the kinds of good story are
many. The only one not allowable is the genre ennuyant,

Nature, Nurture, and Novel-Writing 147

which to be sure is extensively produced but never culti-
vated. No one cares about its constituent factors. I am
quite content if the factors above enumerated are ad-
mitted to be in a general way the perennially important
ones.

Let us assume, then, for the sake of the discourse, that
my inventory is fairly complete. What we next need to
know is the relative frequency with which these various
factors are present in the human germ cell. If all five
are essential, and if they do not necessarily go together,
what is the probability that any particular person will
have the combination in his make-up? Unfortunately
there is no way of answering this question or even of
investigating it by direct observation. It is a free field
for guessing and estimating. We can tell little about
potentialities of development by looking at the human
infant, much less by inspecting the oosperm from which
he came (if that were possible). Saint and sinner, learned
and lewd, genius and dolt all look alike in the fertilized
egg. We can only guess what men might become by
observing what they do become. My own observations
have been made on college and university students — a
selected group in whom the conventionalizing educational
process, largely (more's the pity) a germ-stifling process,
had already been at work for nearly or quite twenty years.
Having regard to this class which I have been in the way
of observing, I judge that the factors above enumerated
are separately pretty rare, the rarity diminishing in the
order of the numbers, and that the combination of all
five is very rare indeed. Perhaps one student in fifty,
men and women, belongs clearly to the imaginative,
visualizing type, one in forty has a bit of the artist in his
make-up, one in thirty is capable of vicarious experience,
one in twenty is an interested observer of character, and
one in ten can write more or less effectively. Possibly
one in five hundred has all five of the factors in simul-
taneous healthy development.

148 The Unpopular Review

Needless to say that I do not bank heavily on these
particular numbers or wish to have them quoted as a
solemn statistical deliverance. The order of the factors
may be in need of revision. It is confessedly guesswork.
Very likely another man in my business would put the
factors in a somewhat different order and find them
present in other proportions of cases. Maybe he would
think the lucky combination more frequent than I have
estimated. But he would certainly find it very rare, and
that is the sole point that I am driving at in this discus-
sion.

So we see why our schools, colleges, and universities,
with all their conscientious study of good imaginative
literature, do not, can not, and should not be expected to
turn out good imaginative/writers on a large and increasing
scale. They can only turn out what is first turned in to
them. Moreover the teachers do not know, and no one
has yet been able to tell them, just what sort of training
would be best adapted to develop, in a given case of ideal
endowment, the totality of gifts we have been considering.
Probably they would go all wrong in their experimenta-
tion. Belike a year in prison, or before the mast, or on a
Mississippi steamboat, or in the rough-and-tumble of
socialistic agitation, would be more to the purpose than
anything they could provide.

Does it follow that it is not worth while for the literary
aspirant to go to college at all? Well, hardly. If he has
the right pentamerous stuff in his organism it really does
not matter much in the long run whether he goes or not,
while if he hasn't it, no college can help him. History
proves that incontestably. The idea that college life by
its very nature has a blighting effect on artistic talent is
largely chimerical. If the talent is really there, it will
show itself in due time in its own way, being neither made
nor marred by anything colleges can do. The "apparent
faculty" that can be ruined by college life is not of Apollo
— not the real thing. Gray was wandering in dreamland,

Nature, Nurture, and Novel- Writing 149

as a poet rightly may, when he sang of mute inglorious
Milton s. It pertains to the nature of a Milton not to be
mute (number two above). He simply can not be — - any
more than a spider can refrain from spinning its web.

On the whole, however, let the aspirant go to college,
and on to the university, if he conveniently can. Only
let him go as to a school of life — life to be heartily lived
and curiously observed; not as to a school of theory and
criticism, to be absorbed from the benches in the expecta-
tion that when his private balloon is duly inflated it will
waft him quickly to distinction in novel-writing. For the
potential indirect gain is considerable. In the first place,
college life is a great revealer of the self. In the vast
majority of cases the apparent faculty is an illusion of
young ambition. The gift is not really there in its com-
posite bloom. There is something lacking. In that case
the acid test of college life soon tells the aspirant how
the matter stands. This saves time and effort.

And then what an arena of discussion is the modern
university! There is where the ideas, doctrines, tend-
encies and antagonisms that are shaping our civilization
for better or worse are scrutinized and debated on their
merits. Should it be of no value to the literary aspirant
to hear of these things which are the moving forces of
society? When he does not know just what phase of life
will afterwards lay hold of him and furnish him with the
raw material of his artistry, can he choose on the whole
any better environment in which to spend a few years
of his adolescence? If he can choose better, let some one
tell us what the better school is. I can not think of any
better than a place where all phases of life are ventilated
pro and con in the discussions of the lecture-room and the
seminar. Let the aspirant take it all in, not bothering
his head about departments and degrees and that sort
of thing, but curious only of life. If peradventure he
has it in him to write better stories than those of De
Maupassant, to hear what some well-read professor

150 The Unpopular Review

thinks of De Maupassant will still do him no harm, and
may indirectly do him just a little good. I freely admit
that the positive gain is uncertain, and does not in any
case amount to much. My point is that all the criticism
and historical scrutiny and professorial opinionation will
do the aspirant no harm if he has a rugged individuality
of his own. If he has not, all the schools and professors
on earth can never make an artist of him. If he can write
effectively, and feels in his bones that what the professor
of composition says is mainly fudge, let him still hear the
professor of composition on the subjects of clearness, force
and logical coherence, and then — go his way to whatever
vital experience may grip him, and write as God gives
him to see the light.

A DOUBLE ENTRY EDUCATION

A WORD of autobiography may give warning of
prejudices and preconceptions that have entered
into my thinking upon educational problems, and which
should be held in mind when judging the theory of edu-
cational values that I shall present.

I was born in the least of New England villages, at the
home of my maternal grandfather, who by vocation was
a tanner and by avocation town clerk, justice of the
peace, and postmaster. In a neighboring state my pa-
ternal grandfather was by vocation a farmer, and by avo-
cation a land surveyor and justice of the peace. Both
grandfathers, at one time or another, represented their
towns in the legislatures of their respective states. My
father was a Congregational minister who, from time to
time, contributed articles to the denominational press,
and published one book of serious purpose.

Until I went to college I had lived only in villages or in
open country. Circumstances have made me a citizen
of the world's largest city. Circumstances and inclina-
tion have made me by vocation a university professor,
by avocation a writer of books, a trustee of a college, and
a member of the Board of Education of my city. By
necessity, therefore, as by predilection, I have thought
much about educational programs and methods. When
I entered college there was already lively discussion, in
this country and abroad, of the relative values of classical
and scientific studies. It will hardly be claimed that the
question has been decided by the mere fact that the
classics have been driven from most of our American col-
leges and universities. The issue has been broadened,
until now we are debating the relative values of literary
studies of any description, on the one hand, and of train-
ing in the observation and handling of material things,

I52 The Unpopular Review

on the other hand. Great pressure is brought to bear to
substitute, in the public schools of our largest cities, educa-
tion through things for education through books, and the
President Emeritus of Harvard University, in a highly
important paper published by the General Education
Board, has strongly argued that the best part of human
knowledge "has come by exact and studied observation
made through the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell,
and touch," and that "the most important part of educa-
tion has always been the training of the senses through
which that best part of knowledge comes."

Obliged to vote from time to time upon measures,
which in the end will build our educational policy upon
the proposition that Mr. Eliot so clearly states; or upon
an older, and essentially different proposition; or upon
some combination or compromise of these two, I have
reviewed my individual experience as a subject of educa-
tional experimentation. From the things that I have re-
membered and discovered, I have drawn certain inductive
conclusions.

My strict upbringing was conformed at all points to
my father's Calvinistic faith. Secular knowledge, al-
though important, was of infinitely less concern than
"the plan of salvation," supreme above all philosophies,
human sciences, and arts. Before I could read, my mem-
ory was taxed to learn and to recite Bible verses. When
I was seven or eight years old, my father began assigning
simple readings in books of history, and when I was nine,
he began teaching me Latin. School studies did not
interest me until I was ten years of age or older. The
first that I cared for was geography. Then, all at once,
I found that I enjoyed the class exercises in parsing and in
analyzing sentences. Arithmetic meant nothing to me
until I discovered that I must know something of it, and of
geometry, in order to understand how my grandfather
worked out his problems in surveying.

Meanwhile, I was getting education of another sort.

A Double Entry Education 153

Before I was six years old I had become, in an infantile
way, a theological sceptic, and to this day I believe that
many children before they reach that age have begun to
think about the things that are commonly called reli-
gious, in agnostic attitudes that will not materially change
as long as they live. If this sounds like exaggeration,
let me explain how inevitable it was in my case and, I
think, is for the same reason in the cases of others. The
things that I heard in church and in prayer-meeting, and
the forms of speech that my father used, made upon me a
deep and vivid impression of unreality. They affected
me like bad dreams which, when I awoke to the sunshine
and the concrete incidents of washing and dressing, en-
joying my breakfast, and getting busy with my play, I
was glad to forget. Looking back upon it all now I ex-
plain my reactions at that time as indicating that I in-
tensely enjoyed the world of things. I know, indeed,
that I did, and that I turned to it eagerly to escape from
a world of ideas that repelled me.

My keenest delight was to watch the operations of a
shop where stationary steam-engines were built at the
rate of one a week, and especially, on Saturday afternoons,
to see the new engine fired up and tried out. Next to
this I enjoyed the occasional visits at the home of my ma-
ternal grandfather, who allowed me to wander and play
at will about the tannery, and watch its operations. At
a later time I was permitted, to my intense delight, to ac-
company one of my father's parishioners who was making
fossil-footprint collections in the Connecticut Valley, for
the Geological Museum at Amherst College. Still later I
entered with zest upon the wholesome out-of-door work
of helping my paternal grandfather, in a simple way, in
land surveying, and under his instruction I made some
progress in mechanical drawing. By my father I was
taught to use the ordinary tools of the carpenter's work-
shop. Naturally also I became a pretty good all-round
hand on the farm.

154 The Unpopular Review

So far the only books that I had cared for in the least
had been a simply-written outline of commercial geog-
raphy called The Book of Commerce by Sea and Land,
a well worn text-book of Natural Philosophy, and a few
stories. The first book of a serious sort for "grown
ups " that I read through because I liked it, was Professor
Dana's Corals and Coral Islands which my geologist friend
had put into my hands. The first serious hard-work
study of books that I ever did was upon text-books of me-
chanical drawing. Of course, after a fashion, I got my
lessons at school, in arithmetic, algebra, Latin, and va-
rious other things. But school work was merely a task.
I had for it none of the enthusiasm with which I found
out things for myself in the world of actualities.

By what process then was it that at last I awakened to
apprehension of a world not actual, yet real — the con-
crete world of romance and art; to knowledge of a world of
thoughts, real in part, in part unreal; and to appreciation
of the immense importance of verbal distinctions, and of
ideas recorded in books? I have asked myself this ques-
tion many times, and I think that I can answer it with
approximate certainty.

On a November day I discovered Walter Scott, and the
world of romance. It was the longer poems that I read.
My mood was in tune with the opening lines of the In-
troduction to Canto First of Marmion, and my surround-
ings, in the Western New England country, itself a land
of romance, needed but little retouching by imagination
to become the Scottish scene depicted.

Now the world of romance has this peculiarity: outside
of our individual minds it does not in synthesis exist, all
put together in vital and working unity. In this sense
it is not actual. Yet, outside of our individual minds, in
the ages-long experience of our race, its elements, its con-
crete factors, all have existed, over and over, in infinitely
varied combinations. In this sense it is real. It is a

A Double Entry Education 155

world which we ourselves create, making it as we wish it
to be, and in which we dream and wander at will. Yet
it is a familiar world, a world of sense experience, and of
common sense, in which we know ourselves to be quite
sane and at home. All this I felt, if I did not explicitly
think, as I revelled in Scott, contrasting the substantial,
worldly, and alluring realism of romance with the spooky
queerness of that theological heaven whence I had incon-
tinently fled.

On another and later day the thought came to me that
the Latin language is an instrument of precision; that
algebra is another instrument of precision, quite as truly
as are the scales and the dividers that we use in drawing.
The notion fascinated me. I began to be interested in
shades of meaning, in discriminations of thought from
thought, and in quantitative as distinguished from quali-
tative statements. The realization grew that our knowl-
edge is an immensely complex thing. We get it and we
organize it by a twofold process : the process of perception
and the process of reason. We make observations, as
Mr. Eliot says, through the senses of sight, hearing, taste,
smell, and touch. But we do not stop with sense observa-
tions; we do not even stop with experimentation upon ma-
terial things. We observe in thought; that is, we imagine.
We experiment in thought; that is, we reason. And the
thought processes have one immense advantage over the
sense processes: they are more fluid. By means of them
we can make thousands of combinations that are impos-
sible in the world of sense. Thereby we discover and we
invent, and through discovery and invention we have ob-
tained a degree of mastery over the world of material sense.

In the ardor of this thought I turned to philosophy.
My only access to it at this time was through articles on
the various philosophical writers and systems which I
found in the most useful work in my father's library: an
encyclopaedia. All these I read: the Hobbes and the

156 The Unpopular Review

Locke, the Berkeley and the Hume; the Kant, the Schel-
ling, the Fichte, and the Hegel. This reading awakened
more curiosity than it satisfied, but from it I obtained one
priceless thing: another thought that I discovered for my-
self. As I had turned to philosophy because I had seen
the immense utility of observation and experimentation
in terms of ideas, I turned from it because I now saw that
thought unchecked by sense could intoxicate and enslave,
and lure us on into that world of unrealities, of phantasma-
goria of the fact-free mind from which, in childhood, I
had shrunk. From that day forth I knew my own atti-
tude towards science and philosophy. I saw a realm of
knowledge limited but real; a realm in which reason and
perception work together to establish verifiable truth:
verifiable in the one meaning of the word which is both
intelligible and practical. Alleged truth is verified when
the verdict of sense and the verdict of reason upon it agree.
Verified and verifiable knowledge of the objective
world (which comprises not only inanimate things and liv-
ing bodies, but also the observable phenomena of human
behavior) we to-day call natural, experimental, or physical
science. Huxley was in the habit of calling it natural
knowledge. No one of these names possibly is quite
appropriate, but that does not greatly matter. The im-
portant thing to keep in mind is that verifiable or natural
knowledge — a product of both reason and sense per-
ception— -is marked off and always to be discriminated
from speculative philosophy or philosophical specula-
tion — a product of reason only.

It is a habit of the human mind to utilize one word to
convey more than one meaning. We seize upon resem-
blances, trivial, amusing, or important, and fix them in
consciousness by tagging them with the same verbal
sign. The procedure is a simple case of inductive logic,
and a word of double meaning is therefore often a record
of significant experiences through which the race, in its

A Double Entry Education 157

evolution, has passed. Among such words, "specula-
tion" and "speculative" are exceptionally suggestive.
To speculate is to spy out and behold. Therefore it is
also to contemplate; to look into; to pursue or spy out
truth by reasoning. But truth is by no means the only
thing that man curiously looks into and tries to spy out.
The usual man is more interested to spy out opportunity,
and commonly the operation is one attended by risk.
Consequently it comes about that to speculate is "... to
invest money for profit upon an uncertainty; to take the
risk of loss in view of possible gain."

So the business man and the philosopher both specu-
late. Have we not here something either philosophical
or practical, or perhaps both practically and philosophic-
ally worth spying out? What is it that business specula-
tion and philosophical speculation have in common?

One common element, obviously, is belief or faith, in
distinction from knowledge. In both cases the mental
operation is the projection of reasoning, good or bad in
quality, as may be, unchecked as yet by sense perception.
Philosophers and investors alike are taking risks which
may or may not return a profit. Belief, then, in dis-
tinction from knowledge, is the psychological element
common to both kinds of speculation.

In keeping with the common psychological element is
a practical element. Philosophical or economic specula-
tion is essentially credit: it is an obligation: it is not cash.
Unless it is paid up sooner or later in the hard cash of
fact, in sense perception, or in material goods, it is wasted
effort, wasted wealth.

Our spying out of this subject may profitably go one
stage further. There is a sense in which coin money is
essentially a form of credit. The European War is re-
minding the world, as it has been reminded thousands
of times before, that even gold and silver avail nothing
in situations where it is impossible to buy with them
the concrete goods imperatively needed. The economist

158 The Unpopular Review

long ago discriminated money wages from real wages.
The laborer's wages may be advanced twenty per cent;
but if the prices of the necessaries of life advance thirty
per cent he has not gained, he has lost. In the realm of
ideas, as in the realm of business, there is a coin circula-
tion which ordinarily passes in discharge of obligations,
but like money of the market, it is worthless unless con-
vertible into concrete satisfactions. The coin circulation
of the mind consists of that stock of traditional ideas and
alleged truths which commonly we accept without ques-
tion. In a measure they have been verified by experi-
ence, but from time to time they are challenged; and when
challenged, they must make good one hundred per cent,
or be discredited. And the concrete payment into which
they must be convertible is sense perception.

We are now in sight of the theory of education which I
wish to present. Science is a double entry bookkeeping.
Speculative philosophy is a single entry bookkeeping.
Speculative philosophy makes up its account of the uni-
verse in terms of ideas only. Science makes up an ac-
count in terms of ideas and another account in terms of
sense perception, which may be over and over repeated,
and the two accounts must agree.

The exploitation of ideas has been as necessary a process
in the development of civilization out of barbarism as has
the exploitation of sense observation; and the recording
of ideas and observations in books has been as necessary
for the growth of knowledge as either perception or
thought. He is a man of narrow vision who would for-
bid speculation in the economic world because it may
yield nothing but loss, or object to philosophical specula-
tion because it may lead nowhere. He is a one-eyed man
who can see only the value of books; and he is a man with
only the other eye who can see only the value of skill, in-
genuity, and precision in sense observation.

In|the university and in the theological seminary we

A Double Entry Education 159

may well leave the mind free to project its vision, to
speculate at will. In the technical school we may hold
the learner to hourly contact with physical forces and
material things. But in school and college, in that gen-
eral work of education which we plan for the average in-
dividual, to fit him for worthy and successful living, we
should, I think, first keep within that empirical realm
which is made up of the ideas, the sense impressions, and
the motor processes that are interconvertible, and sec-
ond, within this realm, we should develop a double entry
education.

We should first do all that Mr. Eliot, and those who
agree with him, ask. We should train the senses and re-
quire practice, thorough and long-continued, in the use
of instruments of precision, in observation and in creative
work. Thereby we should keep the mind in close touch
with actuality, and enrich it with the content of fact.
But there we should not stop. We should also enkindle
the love of romance, and reveal the visions of possibility
and of beauty that we call literature and art. We
should teach the uses and the niceties of words. We
should develop, so far as we can, the power of purely
intellectual analysis, and we should open to every mind
the treasure house of ideas, the accumulations of the
generations of human experience. So should we make
men, equipped and trained to lead the lives of men; not
workmen only, or dreamers only, powerless to convert
their dreams into concrete realities.

The effective means or procedures of double entry edu-
cation are at least four in number. All are empirical; all
have been tested and have "made good." Men that have
profited by any one of them know its value, but too often
they are ignorant of the value of the other three. Therefore,
we have endless contention over educational programs.

First in time and most simple in character is the making
or producing of something. To make a stone hatchet, or

160 The Unpopular Review

a bow and arrow, a hut or a canoe, a web of cloth, or a
water jar, a pair of shoes or a coat, a plow, a sailboat or
a steam engine, to raise a crop of oats or rear a herd of
cattle, is to call forth every major reaction of the mind,
and, in a degree, to train all its powers. It demands
ideas, and a more or less free arrangement of them in the
coherences that we call patterns. It demands also ac-
curacy of sense impression and of motor adjustment; and
it is a process in which, at every stage, idea, sense percep-
tion and motor reaction are and must be interconvertible.

To obtain this result, however, the thing made or
grown must be a complete and functioning thing, not a
mere part of a whole which is never seen entire and in
operation. It must emotionally be wanted and imagina-
tively be foreseen and planned. It must be discovered
in its sources and circumstances, be assembled in its ma-
terials or elements, be constructed or grown, and finally,
it must be made to "go," or otherwise to satisfy, and
must be approved or condemned by the judgment as it
"works" or does not work. This synthesis is educa-
tionally vital, and it is the standard by which to measure
the value of any given scheme of manual training or
vocational guidance. In earlier days artisans, practical
manufacturers and practical farmers were often well
educated men, although they had enjoyed little school-
ing. In making or growing complete things, adequate
to foreseen uses, their minds were normally developed.
In highly specialized modern industry the worker pro-
duces only a relatively insignificant part. He gets only
the vaguest notions of sources, completeness and ultimate
adequacy. To reproduce in the school shop these edu-
cationally worthless or worse than worthless modern
conditions, instead of the earlier ones that had a sterling
educational value, imagining that in so doing we are
"practical" and "advanced" is to be absurd to the nth de-
gree.

Nearly as early in time, and but little less elementary

A Double Entry Education 161

in character than double entry education by creative
work, is the practical education that we get through rela-
tions with fellowmen. The keenness of sense and the
precision of judgment that the apprentice may get in the
shop or the farmer's boy in the field, the newsboy may
obtain in the street. The successful detective relies on his
working combination of observation with conjecture. The
business man who gets on spends his days, as we have seen,
in maintaining the interconvertibility of speculation with
concrete facts of sense. So also, to an extent not always
justly measured by a cynical press, does the practical
politician, who works his way up from the duties of a
watcher, or of humbler service, through district leader-
ship to responsible power. Grudgingly or admiringly the
world accepts the self-made man as in a way educated. It
has to acknowledge that he is trained in perception and in
understanding, if not in literary tradition or in convention.
We are not permitted to forget, however, that street
and mart, with the aid of the "district," deliver to us also
as characteristic products, the gangster and the heeler,
the parasite and the grafter. If the manipulation of ma-
terial things is inadequately educative unless it is seen as
part of a larger process culminating in the fulfillment of a
purpose, so is social "mixing" inadequate, or worse, un-
less it is part of a process of "getting somewhere" worth
while. To obtain the double entry education through
social experience one must belong to organizations that
function as agencies adjusting means to ends, and which,
therefore, striving for collective success, penalize indi-
vidual inefficiency. And obviously, if social experience
is to develop not only efficiency but also social vision and
a sense of responsibility, the organizations to which one
belongs must be comprehensive and of high purpose.
We arrive here at recognition of the supreme educational
value of citizenship, as it was conceived by the Greek, as
we moderns shall necessarily conceive it if the lessons of
the great war shall be taken to heart, Citizenship is not

1 62 The Unpopular Review

fulfilled in the enjoyment of state-created privileges while
the defense of one's country is left to hirelings or to vol-
unteers. Citizenship includes a sense of obligation, and
a personal preparedness to take one's individual part in
any emergency. A part of that preparedness is military
training, and in human history thus far military service
has been the one effective means of creating in the aver-
age human breast a sense of complete self-giving to the
commonwealth, and of actually bringing the average
heedless individual to

keep his rifle and himself just so.

The remaining ways and means of training sense and
thought in effective interaction are (3) the creative pur-
suit or the critical study of literature or art, and (4)
scientific investigation or the systematic study of natural
science. I offer no contribution to the controversial
literature upon the relative values of these supposedly
unlike ways and means, beyond the remark that they are
less unlike than most of the disputants over them assume,
and that any one of them misused or used inadequately,
may grievously disappoint, as manual training or social
mixing may.

Protagonists of education through the observation and
handling of material things, usually single out "literary"
studies and the "literary method" as representative of a
schooling that neglects to train the senses. The assump-
tion betrays a curious failure of observation. A study of
anything through books only, of course, neglects sense
training, but the method is no more fatal in literature
than in science. Neither literature nor art can live,
any more or any longer, than natural science could live,
if not continuingly fed on observation of the material
world. Moreover, to understand literature or art, as to
create it, one must know at first hand through individual
sense impressions, the concrete things depicted : the shore
and the sky, the marsh and the mountain, the crumbling

A Double Entry Education 163

arch and the crowded street, the struggle for existence, in
mill or mine, in market or forum, on field or battlefield.
And only as expression in word, or form, or color, is over
and again brought face to face with sense impressions of
the "material" expressed, can we have standards or
judgments in art or in letters. Cubism and Futurism,
like speculative philosophy, may stimulate intellectual
motility, or reveal new possibilities, but in themselves
they are no more art and literature than speculative
philosophy is science.

Fortunate is the man who has profited by all of the
ways of double entry education. To have learned and
been disciplined through making things that "go" or
"work"; through effective cooperation with fellowmen;
through the patient study of expression, point by point
with observation of the content supposedly expressed;
and through a not less patient examination of the content
of knowledge and of our inductive methods of organizing
it: this is, in truth, to be educated. But in realizing so
much let us not fall into the deplorable error of conclud-
ing that every boy and girl in school should be "put
through" a curriculum compounded of these four pro-
grams, in vain expectation that he or she will so obtain
a "broad" or "rounded" education. By this error our
up-to-date public schools have been made absurd, and
too often next to worthless. Not every boy or girl can
profit by as many as two of the four programs, and the
pupil who can thrive on them all is highly exceptional.
Our business in the public schools is to see that every boy
and girl is awakened, disciplined and carefully trained in
perception and in thought, by at least one procedure, and
by acquaintance with at least one kind of material. If
then, in addition, he or she presumably can obtain some-
thing worth while from other material and through an-
other educational experience, let the hopeful experiment
be tried.

MODEST MODERNIST PAPERS

/. The Arts and Education

THERE are two extreme manners, or rather moods,
of looking upon the past. There is the mood of
light-hearted contempt and ridicule of those who regard
the past as only an extended period of benighted groping
or supine inertia conveniently affording the dark back-
ground for the shining virtues of a progressive present
-a mood which often, under provocation of some ob-
stinate and disappointing demonstration of the past's
real power, changes from careless hostility to the bitter
gloom and hatred of the extreme radical; and there is the
mood of easy and unthinking acceptance — of exaggerated
veneration for the old and established, of exaggerated
timidity in the face of the new and untried.

The conflict between these two moods is unceasing.
Sometimes it has grown to such fierce intensity as to
disrupt society. The French Revolution is witness.

"So, however," speaks the well-known Voice interpreting
this most famous of such disruptions, — "so, however, in this
world of ours, which has both an indestructible hope in the
Future, and an indestructible tendency to persevere as in the
Past, must Innovation and Conservatism wage their perpetual
conflict, as they may and can. Wherein the daemonic element,
that lurks in all human things, may doubtless, some once in
the thousand years, — get vent. But indeed may we not regret
that such conflict, — which, after all, is but like that classical
one of hate-filled Amazons with heroic Youths, and will end
in embraces, — should usually be so spasmodic? For Conserva-
tism, strengthened by that mightiest quality in us, our in-
dolence, sits for long ages, not victorious only, which she should
be; but tyrannical, incommunicative. She holds her adversary
as if annihilated; such adversary lying, all the while, like some
buried Enceladus; who, to gain the smallest freedom, has to
stir a whole Trinacria with its

164

Modest Modernist Papers 165

If today the two moods of Innovation and Conserva-
tism were evenly exaggerated, a reasonable satisfaction
of the essayist's obligation would perhaps be to set down
such philosophic comment on both as occurred to him,
and then, with a general exhortation to common sense
and the better employment of energy by the extremists
of both factions, and with a comforting expression of
faith in the principle of stable equilibrium as applied to
society, to conclude. But the spirit of Innovation,
always more or less welcome as a correction to the spirit
of Conservatism, has of recent years so often gone
beyond bounds, and has become in many respects so
aggressive, that it is the duty of the sane to counsel on
occasion a little less rapidity, heat, and self-confidence,
and a little more self-examination, steadiness, and
calm.

While the conflict of to-day does not differ in essence
from that of the ages, there are some features which dis-
tinguish it from the struggles of the past. In the first
place, the extent of the battle-line is unexampled. The
great eighteenth century conflict, far extended in space
and time as have been its consequences, was more or
less localized. In comparison with our world of the first
decades of the twentieth century, the world of 1789 was
composed of separate, uncommunicating, and repellent
units. To-day, Conservatism and Innovation confront
each other in every land and on every sea. As regards
the sharing of ideas and emotions, the world is immeasur-
ably more a unit than ever before.

In the second place, on the part of Innovation at least,
the conflict to-day is distinguished by an audibility in-
comparably greater than any yet known in the history
of the race. With wireless in the heavens above, and
cables in the water under the earth, with them that go
down to the sea in ships doing business in great waters
all over the globe, the whole earth is suddenly grown

1 66 The Unpopular Review

immeasurably smaller. "This wide and universal theatre "
is shrunk to such dimensions that every line of the actors
and all the comments of the audience are clearly heard.
Every shot fired now is heard round the world.

Of this ease of communication and widespread dis-
tribution there have been two results. One of them is
courage on the part of Innovation. If in the multitude
of counsellors there is safety, in the noise of self-assertion
there is confidence. The New has gathered boldness from
the sound of its own vociferation.

The other result is to be seen in a certain growth of the
New in unity and consistency. It has come to be less
local and less straggling, more universal and more self-
conscious. There have come to be theatres devoted ex-
clusively to the New, and publishers whose names are
identified with the New. We are constantly hearing now
of the New Painting, the New Music, the New Education,
the New Poetry, the New Morals, the New Woman,
where before we heard nothing beyond scattered refer-
ences to the New Jerusalem and the New York and
New Haven. We have seen a movement like Futurism
deliberately adopt more or less definite principles and
(alas!) practices regarding painting, sculpture, literature,
and music; and the extension of these principles to dress,
manners, morals, religion, legislation, or education would
surprise us hardly more than their original application
to the fine arts. What the various individual movements
in letters and the arts do, when they set forth in mani-
festo the definition of their aims and the importance of
their achievements, the New as a unified whole might
almost do.

We seem at this point to be in need of a term. What
shall we denominate the figure whom we set up as the
visible and audible representative of the New? Let us
thank Miss Agnes Repplier for the suggestion in her title
The Modest Immigrant, as we thank her for many

Modest Modernist Papers 167

other apt and pleasant things, and refer to the prophet of
the New as "The Modest Modernist."

The Modest Modernist does not appear in the gallery
of Theophrastus' Characters, whether under that title or
any other title, like "The Boastful Man," "The Lo-
quacious Man," or "The Late-Learner," which might
be suspected of indicating his presence. Perhaps he did
not exist. Perhaps Theophrastus felt unequal to the
task of adequate portraiture. At any rate, let us indulge
ourselves for the moment by emulating the friend and
pupil of Aristotle, and do what we may to supply the
lack in his otherwise excellent work.

The Modest Modernist, O Unpopular Polycles, is one
who will tell you that the sorry Scheme of Things entire
is a grand mistake. He will tell you that it must be
shattered into bits and re-moulded nearer to the Heart's
Desire. He will assure you that this can be done. He
says he himself knows the means.

The Modest Modernist will tell you the truth. He
will tell you all about the means, and all about himself.
He says the past had false ideas of modesty. He says
that the New Modesty, the true modesty, consists in
telling the truth exactly as it is. He will tell it even if it
makes him seem great.

The Modest Modernist is out of patience with the past.
This is his most audible trait. He will tell you that the
past has been slow, the past has been somnolent, the past
has been timid, the past has been mistaken, the past has
been criminal. He will let the dead past bury its dead;
he will act, act with the living present. He adds, "as
someone has somewhere said." The more he thinks about
it, the more convinced is he that the great obstacle to
present and future perfection is the past.

The Modest Modernist will therefore break with the
past. He will do more. He will paralyze the past. He

1 68 The Unpopular Review

will crush it with a phrase. He will call it the "ignorant''
past, the "imp regressive" past, the "static" past, the
"malevolent" past, the "conspiring" past, the "long,
dead hand, forever reaching out and laying upon the
present its clammy, chilling touch." He will refer to
"the trammels of the past," and "the tyranny of tradi-
tion." He will be an emancipator. He will refer to his
"mission." He says that whatever has been, has been
wrong.

The Modest Modernist never has doubts. Everything,
to him, is as plain as a pike-staff. He is a radical, a re-
former, a revolutionary, a regenerator. To him, correc-
tion is so easy and so simple that the mere existence of
evil of any sort is an incrimination of the living and the
dead. He will go about asking, "Why has no one thought
of these things before?" If a neighbor criticize his
theories, he will say that the critic is "in bondage to the
past." If the critic point out a disturbing fact, he will
assume that it does not exist; or that it will not exist
once he has applied his plan. If the critic insist that some
things have been known since recorded time began, and
that they seem rooted in the nature of things, he will
say that this is no sign they will exist in the future. He
will prove history mistaken. He will denature nature.

It is in the arts that the Modest Modernist is most
emancipated from the past. He will tell you that it is
not true that the Greeks set art forever right. He is
going to do that himself. He will not have his imagina-
tion in bonds. He will "spit every day on the altar of
Art." He declares it all nonsense to say that the Par-
thenon was consummate perfection. He says the Wis-
consin State Capitol is bigger by a great many hundreds
of tons. He allows that the Greeks did well, when you
consider, but says that they had no railways and not
much commerce.

The Modest Modernist is quite sure about painting.

Modest Modernist Papers 169

He says that painting has never been really aesthetic.
It has been theological, archaeological, literary; it has
been photographic and decorative — a bastard art. The
old masters were benighted. He concedes that Raphael
drew pretty well, but says that after all he was only an
illustrator — like all other painters up to the present. The
Impressionists, the Pointillists, the Divisionists, the
Chromo-luminarists, the Neo-Impressionists, and the
Cubists, he says, are hardly less benighted. They have
indeed in their way contributed to progress, but even
they are all in one respect as stupid and illogical and
unaesthetic as the old masters themselves. Pure paint-
ing must admit no medium of expression but color,
whereas these unprogressives actually allow in their
paintings recognizable objects.

The Modest Modernist suspects Cubism and Futurism
themselves of recognizability. Vorticism and Intimism
represent an advance, but are still not quite "defecated."
It is only in Synchromism, with its absolute unrecogniza-
bility, that the soul is left perfectly free to appreciate the
aesthetic depths of real painting. It is the Synchromists
who have set art forever right, as far as painting is con-
cerned. "It now remains only for artists to create," says
the Modest Modernist. "The era of pure creation begins
with the present day."

The Modest Modernist will also reform sculpture al-
together. He will use all materials in all manners except
the old manner. He will use clay, marble, wood, glass,
rock, hair, leather, straw, cloth, bits of mirror, cement —
whatever will communicate the effect he wishes — all in
the same work. He will use only straight lines. He will
sculpture a man at a table, and pass the plane of the
table through the man's anatomy. He will open the
human figure like a window and enclose in it all the
environment in the midst of which it lives. He will
create things as they really appear to the eye. If you

i jo The Unpopular Review

say he does not make them so appear, he will say that your
vision is distorted by slavery to the conventional past.

The Modest Modernist asks, "Why have a key in
music?" He says there is no key in the sounds that
nature makes. Nature's music, he says, is an ever shift-
ing current of keyless noises. Music should represent
noise in motion. That is the way it exists in nature. The
lack of instruments suited for such music he easily ob-
viates. He invents the bourdonneur, the fracasseur, the
eclateur, the bruisseur, the glouglouteur, and others of the
kind. For this orchestration he composes "The Dinner
on the Terrace," "The Waking of the Capital," and
"The Rendez-vous of Autos and Aeroplanes." He has
them performed. A public still groping in the musical
darkness of the unprogressive past throw potatoes and
eggs at the fracasseurs and the glouglouteurs. There is a
riot. The newspapers report it, and the Modest Modernist
declares that the press is a thrall to the notions of an ob-
solete past.

The Modest Modernist will also set right the art of
poetry. Of course, he will first dispose of the past. He
will say that Homer nods, and that Milton's theology is
long since exploded. He will declare that Shakespeare is
ill-adjusted and undramatic, and that Spenser is dull and
static. He will say that Bryant and Longfellow are very
second and third rate, and that Tennyson is only a sort
of glorified Longfellow. He has thought it all out, and
is sure that life is too short for us to be spending time
upon anything so unrelated with present-day progress as
the standard poets.

The Modest Modernist reads the standard poets to
scoff at them. They confirm his good opinion of the
present and himself. If he does read Milton, it is only
for that purpose. He will tell you that no one else reads
Milton at all. As for him, he would disdain to write in
the manner of Milton. He has a better manner himself.

Modest Modernist Papers 171

"Could I but swat J. Milton's lyre," he says — , "with all of
Milton's vim, I would not waste poetic fire on things embalmed
by him. . . We gaze upon his pictured head, admire his bulging
brow, and say we're sorry he is dead — but no one reads him
now. His poems are a punishment imparting doleful ache to
any busy modern gent who has his way to make. . . This
life's too short for endless pomes that don't lead anywhere,
ground out by bards with lofty domes and birds' nests in their
hair. Had I J. Milton's gift of song, I'd spring some harmless
mirth, embalming topics, all day long, for people now on earth."

For this exquisite mingling of the utile and the dulce
the Modest Modernist gets, say, $25. He says Milton got
only $50 for the whole of Paradise Lost, which was several
hundred times as long. And besides, he says, this kind
of poetry does some good.

The Modest Modernist has discovered that literary
convention too, is tyrannical, along with everything
else from the tyrannical past. Why should epics be in
hexameter or pentameter? You find nothing of the sort
in nature. Nature is free and unconstrained. Why should
lyrics be in rhyme, or even in rhythm?

The Modest Modernist demands liberty. He doesn't
wait for a response to his demand. He assumes liberty.
He adds to it equality — and superiority. He discovers
that free verse is just as good as any other verse, and a
great deal better. Besides, it is easier to manufacture.
You don't have to keep the public waiting while you
study text books on metre, and the rhyming dictionary.
You just write what is on your mind.

You wish, for example, to describe a dull day in your
childhood years. You say:

There was nothing to see, nothing to do, nothing to play
with, except that in an empty room upstairs there was a large
tin box containing reproductions of the Magna Charta, of the
Declaration of Independence and of a letter from Raleigh after
the Armada. There were also several packets of stamps,
yellow and blue Guatemala parrots, blue stags and red baboons
and birds from Sarawak, Indians and men-of-war from the

172 The Unpopular Review

United States, and the green and red portraits of King FrancO-
bollo of Italy.

Of course, unless given some kind of warning, a public
whose aesthetics are still fettered by the traditions of the
tyrannical past will fall into the trap of its own stupidity
and mistake this for prose. The Modest Modernist rec-
ognizes the handicap, and kindly makes a concession.
He gives the unfortunate reader a hint by the division
of his matter into verses. He begins the verses with
capital letters, like this:

There was nothing to see,

Nothing to do,

Nothing to play with,

Except that in an empty room upstairs

There was a large tin box

Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta,

Of the Declaration of Independence

And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada, etc.

The Modest Modernist prints a book of poems com-
posed after this manner. In the preface, he formulates
his theory of the poet's art. He formulates it under six
heads:

1. Use the language of common speech, but employ always
the exact word.

2. Create new rhythms — as the expression of new moods —
and do not copy old rhythms.

3. Employ absolute freedom in the choice of subject.

4. Present an image.

5. Make it hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

6. Be concentrated.

He admits to the book nothing not illustrative of these
principles. To illustrate concentration and the employ-
ment of common language, he includes the poem on
childhood:

I hate that town;

I hate the town I lived in when I was little;

I hate to think of it.

Modest Modernist Papers 173

There were always clouds, smoke, rain

In that dingy little valley.

It rained; it always rained.

I think I never saw the sun until I was nine —

And then it was too late;

Everything's too late after the first seven years.

I was like a moth —

Like one of those gray Emperor moths

Which nutter through the vines at Capri.

And that damned little town was my match-box,

Against whose sides I beat and beat

Until my wings were torn and faded, and dingy

As that damned little town.

There was nothing to see, etc.

To exemplify "absolute freedom in the choice of sub-
ject/' he includes a poem about playmates. It exempli-
fies as well the employment of the exact word:

You were my playmate by the sea.

We swam together.

Your girl's body had no breasts.

We found prawns among the rocks;

We liked to feel the sun and do nothing;

In the evening we played games with the others.

It made me glad to be by you.

Sometimes I kissed you,

And you were always glad to kiss me;

But I was afraid — I was only fourteen.

And I had quite forgotten you,
You and your name.

To-day I pass through the streets.
She who touches my arm and talks with me
Is — who knows? — Helen of Sparta,
Dryope, Laodamia. . .

And there are you

A in Oxford Street.

The Modest Modernist doesn't print the blank. He

174 The Unpopular Review

prints the exact word. He will have no cowardly dealings
with falsehood. He believes in all speaking the truth, and
in speaking all the truth.

The neighbors read the poem, and it shocks them.
They are sunk in degrading servitude to the hypocritical
past. When they come to the word which the poet prints,
their tongues are paralyzed. It is too exact.

He illustrates the "image, hard and clear, never blurred
nor indefinite," by a poem of Imagist Poetry's favorite
daughter:

My thoughts

Chink against my ribs

And roll about like silver hail-stones.

I should like to spill them out,

And pour them, all shining,

Over you.

But my heart is shut upon them

And holds them straitly.

Come, You! and open my heart;

That my thoughts torment me no longer,

But glitter in your hair.

The Modest Modernist demands freedom. We reply
that genius is always privileged to use freedom, and wel-
come. The "high priestess of the new poetical cult"
abuses the privilege in such ways as this. She says mean
things about our favorite poets. We protest. She says
that "surely we can see that the new poets have more
originality, more of the stuff out of which poetry is made,
than their predecessors had," aside from two exceptions
that she has mentioned. We like what she says about
exceptions. It leaves us something.

The Modest Modernist believes in free prose as well
as free verse. He says that letters, words, syntax, and
punctuation are all only means to an end, and that any
other means which will bring the same result should be
fearlessly employed. He will use numbers, mathematical
signs, and varying type. He will use words and phrases

Modest Modernist Papers 175

manufactured as need arises, as well as the ordinary
literary forms. He says that the point is, that composi-
tion must be a vivid representation of action and thought.
He will describe you the charge of the Light Brigade in
some such fashion as this:

Van-guard: 200 yards charge-bayonets forward Arteries dis-
tension heat fermentation hair arm-pits chignon redness blond-
ness hard-breathing + knapsack 75 pounds = prudence stagger-
ing iron trappings helter-skelter weariness = 3 shudders com-
mands stones rage enemy magnet lightness glory Heroism
vanguard 100 yards machine-guns fusillade eruption fiddles
brass pirn poum pac tim toum machine-guns ta-ta-ra-ta-ra-
ta-ra-ta. . . Battle-flag (prairies sky-white-heat) = Italy force
Italian-pride brothers wives mother sleeplessness braying-of-
camels glory dominion cafes tales-of-war. . .

The Modest Modernist has thoughts about the art of
education. He has discovered that it is not an art, but
a science. He refers to his "scientific researches." He
plots curves, and makes tables and charts. He will tell
you that they prove things.

He has discovered children. The past never suspected
children. He has discovered that intelligence is to be
measured and weighed. He has discovered individuality.
He has discovered the inviolability of nature. He will
forbid you to say "Don't." He will forbid you to say
"Must." He will warn you ofT the sacred lawn of child
existence, and away from the shrubs. He will not let you
prune, or tie, or curb, or bend, or straighten, or in any
wise compel. He says that you may suggest, but you must
be careful how you do it. He will have you first read
a History of Education and study his essays and charts.

The Modest Modernist has discovered that education
should "train for life," and that almost nothing in the
curriculum has ever had the least to do with life. He
will tell you that "generally speaking, it may be safely
affirmed that the subjects commonly taught, the manner

176 The Unpopular Review

in which they are taught, and the amounts taught are
determined by tradition, not by a fresh and untram-
meled consideration of living and present needs." He
will not say that anything determined in the least by
tradition is bad; because that is always understood. He
will have the educated man "contentedly ignorant of
things for learning which no better reason than tradition
can be assigned." He will assume that most of the cur-
riculum actually consists of things for learning which
tradition is the only reason that can be assigned. He
does not prove this; he admits it. He says that "the
literature that most schools now teach is partly obsolete,
partly ill-timed, rarely effective or appealing." He
speaks of "children forced to worship as 'classics' or
'standards' what in their hearts they revolt from because
it is ill-chosen or ill-adjusted." He himself was the vic-
tim of compulsory worship. He is sure he knows how
every child feels.

Especially in the public schools, and especially in the
state universities, the Modest Modernist will not have
the people's money squandered in teaching the children
of the people things whose present position in the curric-
ulum "rests upon tradition and assumption," and of course
upon nothing else. He will not have children taught
"useless historic facts just because previous generations
of children have learned and forgotten them." He will
have the courage not to teach "obsolete and uncongenial
classics, simply because tradition has made this sort of
acquaintance a kind of good form."

The Modest Modernist knows that the classics are
obsolete and uncongenial. He knows it because once he
heard of someone who had found written inside the cover
of a Latin book :

Dead they that spoke it;
Dead they that wrote it;
Dead they that learned it —
Blessed death! they earned it.

Modest Modernist Papers 177

The Modest Modernist will remedy you all these evils,
and as many more as you may find. He will have no
more studying of the geography of Siam by pupils who
are never going to live in Siam. He will have no more
studying of interest by children who will never need to
calculate interest, or who, if the need should arise, will
do it better with an interest table. He will say that life
isn't going to be reading poetry, or doing college algebra,
or theorizing about molecules and atoms. He will say
that what we want is more familiarity with farm soils,
and less with star-dust; more knowledge of agricultural
roots, and less of Greek roots; less time spent on history
and mathematics, and more on gasoline engines and
household management.

As for cultivation of the mind, the Modest Modernist
will assure you that cooking is just as good as classics,
besides being useful. He will say that cultivation has
nothing to do with the nature of the subject, but depends
upon the intentness of the student's interest and the time
he spends. An hour is an hour. One subject is as good
as another, and a great deal better, if the Modest Modern-
ist selects it. A trip to Indiana is as good as a trip to
Italy, if you only travel as hard. Whether the bottle is
filled with champagne or beer is no matter for worry, so
long as the bottle is full, or looks full. It may be well to
keep the champagne cork and label for a time, but con-
cession must go no farther.

The Modest Modernist will make you a curriculum
which will conserve all the virtues of the old order of
education, and none of its faults. He will make you a
curriculum which will have none of the faults of the new
order, and all of its virtues. He will produce you the
educated man who will be "trained to know, to care
about and to understand the world he lives in, both the
physical world and the social world," who will have "the
capacity to note and to interpret phenomena," and "a
comprehension of and sympathy with current industry,

178 The Unpopular Review

current science and current politics." He will leave no
problems to be solved.

The Modest Modernist in education works rapidly.
In the spare time of one semester he gathers experimental
data proving conclusively that what intelligent people
from the time of Plato down have been supposing to be
true is absolutely without foundation. He goes to a
pedagogical convention whose purpose is "to sum up and
apply everything that is being developed with regard to
any phase of the nature of childhood and youth and
means and methods of education." He never thinks
how droll it is that a similar convention will be held again
next year.

The Modest Modernist is quite sure that he is doing a
great deal. He is still more sure that he is going to do a
great deal more before very long. He asks you if you had
the advantages of any of these ideas when you went to
school. You say, no, you'll have to confess that you
didn't. The Modest Modernist looks grave. He ex-
pected as much. You can see that he is thinking that
you are not really educated, or else that you are a muta-
tion and don't count.

The Modest Modernist in education reminds us of
Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism, Intimism, Synchromism,
and whatever is to follow. "It now remains only for
teachers to teach. The era of real education begins with
the present day."

The rapid thinking of the Modest Modernist has been
applied also to civics, morals, and religion. But the
unpracticed, static mind must not undertake to compre-
hend all at once too many of the deep things of Modest
Modernism. Of these matters, O Polycles, we shall speak
at another time.

THAT PATIENCE WORTH BABY

A YEAR ago in our "No. 9" we gave some account
of the strange experiences of Mrs. John H-
Curran of St. Louis with the Ouija board. These up
to that time have now become so generally known that
we give but a brief summary of them, as introductory
to some later ones.

In July, 1913, after Mrs. Curran and a friend had been
occasionally playing with the Ouija board during a couple
of weeks without eliciting anything of significance, sud-
denly from a clear sky came:

"Many moons ago, I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth
my name."

Apparently their hands left the board a moment in as-
tonishment: for it continued:

"Wait. I would speak with thee. If thou shalt live, then
so shall I. I make my bread by thy hearth. Good friends, let
us be merrie. The'time for work is past. Let the tabbie drowse
and blink her wisdom to the fire log."

"How quaint that is I" one of the women exclaimed.

"Good mother wisdom is too harsh for thee," said the board,
"and thou shouldst love her only as a foster mother."

Thus began an intimate association with "Patience
Worth" that still continues, and a series of communica-
tions that in vigor and literary quality are hardly paral-
leled in the scant imaginative literature quoted in the
chronicles of Psychical Research, and in volume and struc-
ture entirely without precedent. The language is some-
times pretty close to that of the period (the middle of the
seventeenth century) in which Patience professes to have
had her mortal experience; and sometimes her speech is
much later, even of our period, which corresponds with her
claim of being conscious through all the intervening time.
We use the personal pronoun only provisionally.

179

180 The Unpopular Review

Her habitual language in conversation is of the early
period, and shows great familiarity with the dress, house-
hold utensils, and ways of the time.

It was soon apparent that Mrs. Curran was the sole
agent of transmission (?): for the communications came
only when she was at the board, and it mattered not who
else sat with her, but a second pair of hands seemed needed
as a mechanical counterweight. During the first months
Mrs. Curran and Mrs. Hutchings alone sat, but gradually
the circle widened, and others assisted Mrs. Curran.
Sometimes as many as five or six would sit with her in
the course of an evening. At first her mother recorded
most of the communications, but Mr. Curran gradually
took her place.

Previous to our account of a year ago, these records
had accumulated until they filled five volumes of large
typewritten pages. Two of the volumes consisted of
conversations, short poems, allegories and other minor
matter; one contained a long mediaeval drama, Red-
wing; another, a mediaeval tale, Telka; and one, the part
then delivered of A Sorry Tale which relates in biblical
language the biography of the impenitent thief on the
cross. Very little of this matter is the frequent trash of
involuntary writing. Nearly all of it is to be taken seri-
ously as literature. Much of it is literature of a high
order. Authorities are always shy, and wisely so, of pub-
licly endorsing questionable matters: so we are not yet
free to quote some authoritative confirmation of this
opinion which has come to us. All this is in spite of
the fact that previous to the appearance of Patience
Worth, Mrs. Curran had shown no literary aptitudes or
ambitions, and written nothing beyond letters, which,
however, were better letters than people usually write.

For some time it has been the practice of the Currans
to sit at the board three evenings a week, and to have
friends in on at least one of them. The ostensible Patience
has become quite familiar with some of these friends, and

That Patience Worth Baby 181

continues to take the lead in the evenings' conversations.
Telka has been finished, and The Sorry Tale has appeared
to be nearing its close, and as an offset to its dominant
gloom, A Merry Tale of Merry England in Patience's
time has been begun and made some progress.

Both the stories have been delayed, however, by an
occurrence which has excited the liveliest interest in the
growing circle of believers that "Patience" is what she
professes to be, and given to many others a delightful
opportunity for ridicule. Before that opportunity is
unreservedly embraced, however, a few things seem to
need accounting for.

We condense the Currans' record of their recent ex-
perience, not always bothering to distinguish their words
from our own, but generally printing extracts in the small
type, and our comments in the larger.

On Wednesday evening, August 16, 1916, the Currans
started their usual tri-weekly sitting, expecting Patience
to continue The Sorry Tale. Instead of doing that, how-
ever, she began by saying that she was going to tell them
something "close, yea close." This intensely and skil-
fully emotional start of the experience may appear later
as one of the things to be accounted for — unless Patience
and the subsequent proceedings are admitted to be what
they purport.

She continued :

Ye see, I be a weaver of cloths. [Her usual metaphor for
her activities with the Ouija board. Ed.] And this cloth be
not for him who hath. Yea, and thee and thee and thee do
have o' a fullsome measure. Look, look, a time a-later the
purse shall fatten, and ye shall seek ye a one, a wee bit, one
who hath not. Aye, this be close, close.

The Currans and their friends report that it dawned
upon them at once that Patience wanted them to adopt
a baby. If it did, they were so quick to seize Patience's
meaning as to suggest the aid of a little telepathy,

1 8 2 The Unpopular Review

or a feeling already alive in the heart of Mrs. Curran,
who had been married several years without a child.
But she declares that the idea had never entered her head,
and was entirely alien to their domestic accommodations
and habits. The idea being broached, however, whatever
its source, progress was easy and rapid. In condensing
the Currans' story, we shall naturally retain many of the
expressions which imply their faith that the whole pro-
ceeding was what it purports to be. As they waited for
farther instructions, Patience said:

Thou shalt deliver o' the goods o' me [proceeds of publish-
ing her communications? Ed.] unto the hands o' this one, and
shall speak its name "Patience Worth."

They were rather dumbfounded that she wanted to give
it her own name, but agreed, and she went on:

Look, look ye, this one shall be a one that needeth sore,
mind ye! And look ye, look ye. For all this wee hand plucketh
from out thy heart, even so shall it be filled.

They say that they then began to realize that it was
no joke, but the real thing; and as this was the first thing
Patience had ever asked from them in return for all her
goodness to them, they accepted the situation philosoph-
ically, and she went on with her instructions :

Ye shall whisper sweets unto this bit; e'en at in the sma'
ear that heareth not the full wordin'.

Yea and unto this one thou shalt speak o' a fairie damie
who ministereth; and o' Him who hath sent her.

They wondered at her wanting a girl instead of a boy,
which is another thing to be accounted for: for it goes
to preclude the desire originating with Mrs. Curran: she
already had a stepdaughter, and women are apt to prefer
boys, as she says she did. Patience answered:

"Ye see, a man laddie hath man's cunnin', but the damies,
ah, I be aknowin'!" . . .

She then went on to lay the responsibility on all of the

That Patience Worth Baby 183

Patience Worth clan that had been forming around the
Currans by saying:

"Nay one shall take unto him the all. Nay, this one shall be
the flesh o' all who love o' me, and shall smile sweets unto
them."

The subject came up of the parentage of the child and she
said:

"Mind ye not o' Earth's laws, but His. See ye full, be wickeds
'pon the path, yet look ye, the grandsires shadow need not fall
'pon it."

After a little, she told them: "Even through tides shall He
have sent one who may minister even before the eyes of man,
even though Earth see her not."

It should be explained for any reader new to Patience,
that she claims a high religious mission, and many of
her utterances are quite in accord with such a claim.
This, too, despite the fact that Mrs. Curran never was
particularly devote.

She began to tell how she wanted the baby dressed, saying:

"Ye shall set her spinster-prim. Look ye, look ye, and
bonneted o' white like unto thy damie. (Patience) Yea and
a wee, wee kerchief; and ye shall set it gray caped. Yea, and
ye shall see that about the wee neck hangeth the sign o' Him "
(a cross).

Of course they hastened to promise that all these things
should be carried out, and she continued:

"Ye shall speak then the word 'Patience' full oft. Yea, and
when ye see the wee armies raised unto thee 'tis thy handmaid
raisin'."

The Currans, assisted by members of the Clan, industriously
hunted for a baby through various homes and in many direc-
tions without any encouragement. Some of the Clan thought
that probably Patience might bring her herself in some myste-
rious way, or that she would arrange to have one left on the door-
step. After some of this talk one night, Patience said to such
a one:

"Thinkest thou that the sheep cometh unto the shepherd
without the callin'? Nay. Ye shall seek, and thine handmaid
shall leap thee at thy heart, and thee and thee and thee, the
loves o' me shall for to set thee warm o' lovin'."

184 The Unpopular Review

So the search continued from day to day. Several times
during it Patience announced that she was " merryin'," but
never would tell what her tickle was about. Another night
she told them that they must not look for a baby "that be
whole," for did they do this thing, it would be "like a wolf that
seeketh the fat fowl that he feed him well."

And she continued:

"Look ye, He sendeth His pured dews even unto the deaded
buds, alike unto the freshed. Yea, and upon the filths the same
dews fall. This be the sign."

And when by the merest apparent accident, they did
find the baby, its widowed mother's circumstances were
most humble.

"See, I did nay set the task o' the takin' unto thee o' this
mite, save that thy heart ope unto it. Nor did I set that thou
shouldst lend o' thy sire's name unto it. Nay, for look, be it
but a broked one, 'tis His and fit that it bear the name o' thy
handmaid. And nay man suflereth."

There was discussion here of the possibility that the child
might turn out badly. Patience said:

"Yea, but this shall ne'er be!"

This was the first definite prophecy she had ever made as to
the future of anyone.

"Ye see, I shall feed this wee mite love. Not out o' one o'
ye, but a bit, a whit, a wee mite frae all o' ye.

"Thou art His. And ye should know ye, all o' ye fall short
o' what He fashioneth as the whole bowl. And this thou
shouldst remember, and look ye not unto thy charin' babe
for the whole. Nay, but that it send forth one pured beam o'
His light."

She frequently speaks of the child as having a mission.
The psychical researchers should keep an eye on it.
Later, while discussing the baby, Patience remarked:

"'Tiscreepin"ponthee!"

And soon by the merest accident, Mrs. Curran met
with information which led to a child not yet born,
who, providing it should turn out to be a girl would
fill the requirements perfectly. The father had been
killed by a mill accident. The mother was in charge

That Patience Worth Baby 185

of a mere acquaintance, and facing the world in poverty
with her child. It was ascertained that she would be will-
ing to have the child adopted.

Then began to occur some more things that need ac-
counting for, and cannot all be accounted for even by
the mere hypothesis that Patience is a postcarnate in-
telligence.

One evening, when the Currans were again writing on The
Sorry Tale and at exactly nine o'clock, Patience stopped the
narrative and said: "This be nuff." No one could get her to
say whether she wanted to write later in the evening or whether
she wanted to wait until the next day. It had been arranged
to call at ten o'clock to see if the baby had been born, and when
ten o'clock came, a message was received over the 'phone that
the baby had been born at nine o'clock, the moment that
Patience ceased her writing. She explained it later by saying:

"Think ye I be astirrin' o' brew [i. e., inventing a story. Ed.]
and this thing bein' ?"

Evidently she knew what was going on.

Mr. and Mrs. Curran went out and returned with the baby.
It weighed less than five pounds, which was certainly as "wee"
as Patience might desire, and by a coincidence, the baby also
had red hair, and Patience Worth, her spirit mother, said she
had red hair when she lived. It was also discovered that the
child's father was English and the mother Scotch, the supposed
parentage of Patience Worth.

We by no means fully share the confidence of the
Currans that Patience Worth is a postcarnate intelligence.
But on the other hand, we cannot be as ready as they are
to see mere "coincidence" in the affairs we are getting into.
We don't say that they are anything more, but to a
credulous mind they certainly suggest something more.
The chances were but one in two that the unseen baby
would be a girl, and probably about one in a hundred that
she would be a red-head. The chance of her having in
America an English father was, according to the last cen-
sus, about one in one hundred and fifteen. Finally the
chance of a Scotch mother would of itself be one in three
hundred and eighty-five. We figure the chances against

1 86 The Unpopular Review

the whole thing being coincidence at about nine million to
one, but we are stale in such calculations, and never were
proficient. And we have known coincidences against which
the chances were bigger than that.

Now if all this is not coincidence, what is it? Is it a
case of the frequent and well known phenomenon of imag-
ination supplying accessory circumstances after the event,
or did telepathy from a postcarnate intelligence lead the
Currans to that exceptionable baby?

Don't think, though, that all these things to be ac-
counted for and all these " coincidences" convince us, as
they have some people, that this baby is a "reincarnation"
of Patience. Of all gratuitous superstitions, reincarnation
seems to us about as dead against the facts, as any. Our
own simple faith is that a bit of mind accompanies each
bit of matter, and that though the matter in the universe
does not increase, the mind does; that while human bodies
have to be disintegrated in order that new ones may be
assembled from their material, such need not be the case
with souls; that when a spermatozoon enters an ovum,
not only is the accretion of a new body begun, but the
development (only partly by accretion) of a new soul,
and that as these all are facts (I call the association of
each particle of matter with a particle of mind a fact,
not merely because I can't imagine the contrary, but
because the great genius of James could not) — now as
all these are facts, and the transmigration of souls is dead
contrary to them, and was imagined before they were
known, it does not seem extravagant to call it an un-
mitigated absurdity. The whole order of nature, including
the strongest passion of men, seems to have been evolved
for the production of more souls to enjoy the happiness
of the universe, and there's no sign whatever, except the
faint touches of heredity, of transmigration.

It's hard enough to believe that there is a postcarnate
Patience Worth, and to believe that she is also incarnate
in her little namesake, is to believe dead against the order

That Patience Worth Baby 187

of Nature as we know it. A certain degree of incarna-
tion — from about a two hundred and fifty- sixth in a
ninth generation, to a five hundred and twelfth in a tenth
generation — would, barring intermarriages, be predicable
if the baby were Patience's descendant; but that ostensi-
ble lady professes to have been a spinster.

Perhaps some of our lady readers, even of those who can
swallow all this as coincidence, but can't imagine it as
containing anything outside of traditional experience,
and perhaps even an occasional man with interests as
feminine as our own, may care to know how the coincident
baby is getting along.

Well, her doctor says "she's a corker," and the Currans
say she's "of patrician mould," which, in the child of a
poor mill hand, is another of the things to be accounted
for.

She is doing well at latest accounts, and has lots
of pretty clothes provided by the ladies in the habit of
talking with Patience; and the cross prescribed by that
lady, with a ruby where the arms intersect, and suspended
from a string of gold beads, both supplied by male ad-
mirers.

Patience is constantly enjoining upon the clan to love
the baby enough.

Here are a few little dabs from the Currans' record of
how things are going.

"Behold ye, His younged seed hath fallen unto thy hands.
Stand ye then that thou nurture it in lovin'. Nay pity-lovin',
but lovin' lovin' !"

We promised and she said to Mrs. R :

" Watch ye dame. See, thou knowest His wonderworks.
This be one; for thy damie hath lended her hand unto this one
e'en through the darksome tide it knew not. And look ye, it
shall know not, yet thy dame's hands shall minister and men
shall see."

"See ye, the thing thy handmaid promised unto thee hath
been and shall shew it fulled and o'er. Look, this be the sign

1 88 The Unpopular Review

that thy handmaid loveth thee and thy love for this wee one
is the sign thou lovest her."

Later Mr. Curran asked if she had any special instruc-
tions for the baby's doctor. She answered:

"Lor', ye speak out and bid that I speak me out unto him
that with bigged hands ministereth sooth. Nay, I speak me
not; for look ye, such an heart needeth nay wordin', for he
knoweth Him within this wee one."

Then she said to all of us:

"Lor', such an lovin' shall ye sup, all o' ye. And ye shall
know that this babe be not o' one o' ye, but o' all o' ye. A
charin' babe. "Tis nuff that ye lo'e her, and Him."

After some days, she referred to The Sorry Tale, thus:

"See ye shall set ye upon the cloth (The Sorry Tale) at a
later tide, for thy handmaid putteth (communicates) through
a fog, for she that lendeth o' her hands be ascattered awither."

She was right about Mrs. Curran, and no wonder: for the
baby had about taken up her every thought.

October the tenth. It was hard for Patience to begin writing
on the story: for she said:

"See ye, 'tis such an task that thy handmaid set up brew;
for look ye, there lieth within e'en thy walls a wee bit one that
streameth lovin' upon the very breaths. Nay, nay, it uppeth
not a sorryin' but it filleth up such an achin' empty!"

It was remarked that it was odd and wonderful that Patience
should have chosen to adopt a child, and that she must have
wished for one when she was alive. Patience said:

"Know ye not that a primmed spinster, bibbed and f rocked
like unto the tide, cold, cold gray and bleak, housed such an
warrin' heartie that ached and lo'ed and hungered deep."

Here Miss C sat down for a word.

"There hangeth upon the very airs a new born lovin'. See,
wee dame, thou knowest the warmpth o' the bright flame that
ariseth and kindleth within the heart. This be not for the wee
flesh, but thou hast oped and ta'en athin thee love, deep lovin'.
Wrap thee thine arms 'bout this wee sma' fleshie and leave thy
love to clothe o' her. She be such an clothless one and needeth
that all o' ye lend thy hands unto the weavin' o' love's cloth
for to swathe o' her."

"Thy damie hath pinned her faith unto thee, all o' ye, for

That Patience Worth Baby 189

look, he who opeth unto Him, the Shedder o' drops, [Christ's
blood? Ed.] and Him who sent His coming, knoweth loves
depths; for ye be such."

October the twelfth. Patience wanted to talk of the baby
before she wrote on The Sorry Talf, so she began:

"List, for a curtinin'. 'Bout the thornie cradle. Thy hand-
maid shall weave a silvered dream that shall be set o' jewels
that shall be sweets awhispered unto the dreamin'. List, for
the headies restie shall be such lovin' hands.

"The earth be such an riched storin' o' lovin' but the hands
o' men shut the store, and it taketh o' a babe for to ope it up.
Ye see, be there nay path that sheweth unto a man's heart, lo,
it taketh a babe for to find o' it!"

Dr. W had brought the chain to go with the cross. It

was of gold beads. Patience referred to it thus:

"Look ye the wee bit thong that hangeth the sign o' Him,
sheweth like unto wee sma' drops. This be the sign o' the
sheddin' each dropie a wee bit o' love."

On October the thirteenth she said:

"I be at a singin'."

Mr. Curran said we hadn't had much poetry of late.

Patience said: "Ye see, there be such an flurryin' o'er the
wee bit one."

Then came a poem which is hardly a fair specimen of
Patience. Another came on the fourteenth, which does
very nicely, for baby talk.

Ye wee, wailin' woe, sae saddin' sorry;

Ye gloomin' woe, ye sorry spellin';

Who sent ye seekin' me?

Who gaed ye naked wailin', ye sobbin' woeie?

Cease. I'll comfort ye;

O' smiles astranded 'pon the tearin' drops;

O' sighins, dipped o' laughter;

O' sunnied days, and sorried silver nighttide hours,

I'll weave ye o' a wee bit cloakie.

Yea, and sit me lovin' ye, ye sorry wailin';

Ye wee woe wailin', I'll nay o' ye!

But love ye to a merry!

On October the sixteenth Mr. Yost [editor of the published
book of Patience's sayings] came as usual.

19° The Unpopular Review

Patience wanted to "gab-wench" a little before she went to
work. She began:

"Ye see, ye the brother of the flesh o' me, and ye, laddie, and
ye, the dame that ministereth unto the babe, I did for to fetch
such an sweeted one. Watch ye, such an twain o' rosed arms
shall press lovin."

Mrs. Curran said: "The poor little thing!" Patience said:

"Nay, nay babe be beggared that be swathed o' lovinV

"Ah, happied me!"

Then Patience said this of the cross Mr. Yost brought:

"Lor', 'pon the spot whereon the drop sheweth (the ruby in
the center) hath thy handmaid pressed her lips. This be not
all that thou shalt see. Watch. Watch and thou shalt know
what fullsome hearts earth houseth."

Then after she had written on The Sorry Tale awhile she
went on:

"Ye see, when the hearth be brushed and tidied and the
brush-broom dusted, the dame may spread her napron and
sit a whit and stream a gabbin."

"I ha'e athin me a wishin that the takin' o' this wee whit
one shall ope up locked doors unto ones o' Him."

Patience said to Mr. Curran:

"Look ye, laddie, thy dame hath set such an deared treasure,
eh?"

Mr. Curran heartily agreed, and she repeated her admonition:

"See ye unto it that ye deal full!"

Then came some more baby poetry:

O, a packin' I shall pack!
Sweetin's drippin' frae it.
Aburstin' o' the packin's pack,
The cheerie smilies glintin'.
And weel athin its deepin', set
A treasurein' o' sparkin's
Like gems o' nobles. Yet they be
But tearies gleamin' pure.

Yea, such an pack o' sweets

I set me! And last unto it

One wee woe, sae sma'

That fullsome it may be

And riched and lacking naything!

That Patience Worth Baby 191

We liked it and she said she had more, this one "a gooded
one."

Ah, dost thou lo'e o' Him? Then share ye o' Him.

Dost thou lo'e thy brother? Share Him unto him.

Dost lo'e His day? Then share its lovin' unto one aside thee.

Dost lo'e His wee bit ones? Then share thine unto one.

Dost thou lo'e o' Him? Keep thee nay dumb,

But sing thy lovin' wide, deep and high.

Yea, fling it forth unto the skies. Yea, din the ears

O' Earth, that all shall ope to it.

Yea, share o' Him

For sharin' leaveth Him to set Him deeper unto Earth

And fill its empty up.

Yea, share o' Him.

Dr. - - is the psychologist at - - and has long been a
friend of Patience. His profession would naturally deny the
spirit of Patience. Patience has had much quiet fun teasing
the Dr. and this night this occurred:

Dr. laughed and said he was going to be mighty quiet

so she wouldn't get anything on him. Patience turned to him
and said:

"Yea, sirrah, I hae o' a sumpthin! Ye would o' flesh that
I shew thee. [Presumably he had wanted to see Patience. Ed.]
Ye see, I fetched o' it!" (The Dr. agreed she had done that
thing.)

"Yea, but a man be a MAN who doth bob and tuck unto a
one who be but a wee whit dame with naught to war o' save
wordin's!

"Yea, and ye see, the in-man's buildin' be not o' stuffs, and
I BE ME. Ye set ye o' a thinkin' and speak it out this thinkin'
be a thing, but it be not one whit o' what I be!" [Apparently
that his intellectual constructions were less substantial than
Patience herself, though she manifested only in words. Ed.]

On October the twenty-third Patience gave us her daily
admonition as to the baby, saying:

"See thee that the fullsome lovin' be the wee one's."

We joked about the baby and its power.

"A babe be e'en as an aged kinged one; he uppeth o' his
scepter athin the hours that mortals fall them wearied sore."

"Ye see, there be singin' athin me that setteth the weavin'
tarried." [Kept back her work on The Sorry Tale. Ed.]

*92 The Unpopular Review

We asked for it and she sang:

Oh, ye wearyin' roads!

Ye darked sorryin' hours!

Ye happiness fleein' the way!

Ye dole dealin' ones!

Ye sore smitin' tides!

Awhither ye! On, and avaunt!

I'll sup me sae deep

That the path 'sways shall gleam.

I'll drunk me o' happiness wine.

I'll sup, yea and sup,

And drunk me and quaff

Till the Earth merry spinnin' doth flee!

I'll sog me sae deep that the dark hours shall gleam

O' the smile o' the wee babby sma'.

"Babes smiles be the wings that bear woes unto naughts."

"Yea, the treasurin' store o' the begged; for a begged babie
sma' smileth even so sweet as one wrapped o' King's mantles
o'er; nor woe marreth the gold o' their smilin', e'en though they
be born from out woe." . . .

Then she said to Mr. Yost about the baby book:

"Thee didst fetch ye forth a scriptin' pack, abinded up o'
heaven's blue and scribed o' glintin' stuffs. Athin thy heart
shall this wee handie write o' gold, brother mine, and ye, the
loved."

It lacked a day of being three weeks since Patience Wee was

born, before Mr. and Mrs. R Y came to see her from

their home in St. Louis County. They brought Warren, their
boy, fat, fair and four, and Dolly, Patience Worth's god-child,
also fat and fair and fourteen months.

During the evening Mr. Y suggested that we put the

hands of Dolly on the board and see what Patience would have
to say. Dolly was a little bit sleepy, and we had a hard time
getting her down to doing what was wanted, so finally we let
Mrs. Y— - hold the child and put her hands on the board.
Patience remarked:

"See ye, like unto the aged king, eh?"

We laughed at her reference to what she had said about this
a short time before — , that a babe was like an aged king. Then
she went on, addressing herself to Mrs. Curran:

"Athin thy nestie abideth the loves o' thy handmaid. Look

That Patience Worth Baby 193

ye, the wee whit lonied one and the full-dealt sunnied one,
loved alike!"

Then she continued to Dolly's mother and father:

"See ye, thou hast such an golded cup, jewelled deep o'
beautious gems, filled up o' lovin' wine. Thou mayest sup
without the seekin' o' more; but look ye this lonied one hath
but a bowl stripped o' gems, yea, and emptied o' love's wine.
Lend thee thy dealin' unto this wee one.

"But hark ye. See thee; within the wee heartie o' this babe
hath thy handmaid set the sun's bright glintin'."

Here Dolly again asserted herself and disturbed the meetin'.
But Patience seems to know the babes as well as the old folks.
She said:

: 'Tis well that the Spring's day he burst ope o' tinder-
splittin'."

Then she began talking of Dolly:

"Look ye, such an fulled store hath she that she shall deal
with her hands, freely out the fullsomeness, and the loned
ones 'long Earth's paths shall feed them 'pon her fullsome
dealin'.

"Wouldst t,hou know o' Him. Look unto the deep o' this
babe's eyes."

We could not help but see this in the depths of Dolly's eyes,
and we remembered what Patience had said before about baby's
eyes. Here Patience seemed to notice that Dolly's eyes were
getting heavy: for she said:

"When the even cometh the angels' hands weight the e'es'
lids heavied."

So the "aged kings" had waved their scepter and the subjects
bowed and took them home to bed.

We have given this account of matters relating to
the baby because we believe it contains several points
worth bearing in mind by all interested in psychical re-
search — points apt to help the correlation of its mys-
teries with our established knowledge, perhaps in the
century James was ready to allow for the job.

But we think that probably of more importance in the
connection are some extracts that we will give from a letter
in which Mrs. Curran states her own views of her extraor-
dinary experiences. It is the second letter we have lately
had from her, and we confess^ as we have told her, tl^at to

194 The Unpopular Review

our mind the letters add something to the hypothesis
that Patience Worth's manifestations are due to the
involuntary exercise of capacities resident in Mrs. Curran
or, we should say, passing through her without the inter-
vention of any intelligence but her own: she is by no
means as devoid of literary faculty as thought by her and
some others who believe Patience Worth to be a separate
intelligence. If you care to know what we think: so far,
we "give it up."

Mrs. Curran writes us:

I am still writing The Sorry Tale, even though I would hasten
it. You can imagine how aggravating it is to me, who never
did anything methodically, to see this story slowly, ponder-
ously, and day by day rolling along without my being able to
just give it a little push and have it over with.

You asked me what effect the baby had on the work. I
cannot see any effect on Patience Worth. Once in the first
week after the baby's arrival, she wrote the largest amount
of the story she had ever done at one sitting, and she continues
writing just the same as usual, except that now and then she
breaks into poetry over the baby, or warns us to be sure that
we love it enough. As for myself, of course receiving so very
many more visitors than usual, owing to the advent of the
baby, has wearied me some; but I cannot say I am any the
worse for it, as the same effect is produced on me at any time
when I see too many visitors.

You know Mr. Curran has a daughter who is now sixteen
years of age and who my mother and I have raised since she was
five years old. If Mr. Curran and I had been going to take
a child it would have been a boy. However, now that it is a girl
we are satisfied.

As to compensations; well, you should see the baby. She is
compensation for most anything, and every day brings some
new wonder to light that we had not discovered before about
her.

It has been very beautiful to see how our friends have wel-
comed this little child. Surely no baby has had more love since
her coming, even though fortune was unkind to her at first.

I shall take my compensation out of her love and shall only
hope that she will love us. Nor shall I entertain even a faint
desire that she should be either a freak or a genius. I haven't

That Patience Worth Baby 195

decided which I am yet, and it is mighty uncomfortable not
to know which. After all it is a mighty faint line that divides
a freak from a genius, isn't it?

As to how much of the stuff that I am producing is volun-
tary and how much involuntary, it is my honest opinion, (and
I have particularly watched to see if any events during the
day have any effect on what is produced; and try to view it
from every side,) that none of the work in all the nine hundred
thousand words . . . was consciously or voluntarily produced
by me.

At times my own mind acts while delivering for Patience
Worth. For instance, at one point in The Sorry Tale, I saw a
very rocky path in the small visions that seem to relate the tale
to me, and immediately my mind remarked to itself "what a
rocky place" and my hands recorded on the board "the rattle
of rocks." Immediately Patience Worth broke in and asked
me why I put my own tongue in her "brew", and corrected the
"rocks" to "stones," thus making the phrase consistent with
the book, in which the word rock doesn't appear.

This is decidedly one of the things that, as said before,
need accounting for.

Outside of such small intrusions of myself, there is no volun-
tary intrusion. And when I do think and am conscious, or
should I try to put into words myself what I am seeing, the
whole vision vanishes.

You will, no doubt, remember what I told you about getting
these stories in the small pictures that are so very minute and
yet so perfect. Now, these pictures I see consciously. I am
busy looking at them with my conscious mind and a sort of
an inner eye. The vision is wiped out when I quit writing,
and the last tableau appears just as I begin a new sitting and
the panorama continues. Everything is as spontaneous to me
as it is to those about me.

The plot is in the dark, the characters spring up new and
strange; even the names are hard for me to get. At times the
plot and characters become so involved that my conscious
mind is worrying over them, and yet Patience Worth will go
steadily on. I feel as though I were in a strange land, and even
smell smells that I have never smelled before, and am conscious
of the atmosphere of foreign lands.

The only "hunches" I ever got came as flashes, Once or

196 The Unpopular Review

twice this has happened, as with the story Mr. Reedy printed
called the Thanktide Tale. After Patience had put off writ-
ing it until there wasn't time for a human being to finish a
decent story, and we had entirely given it up, I saw a bit of
one of these visions during the day-time while on a street car.
It showed itself to me about the duration of the ordinary flash
of lightning, but the vision was indelibly imprinted — of a
dismal day and a man on a snowy road with a dog following
him. This picture proved to be the man and dog in the Thank-
tide Tale, and was all I knew about it, and the same picture
was reproduced during the tale, with the story accompanying it.

At the beginning of The Sorry Tale I had the vision of the
crucifixion that I told you of, also a vision of a young mother
and baby that I believed to be the Virgin Mary and the Christ
child, but which proved to be Theia, the mother of the hate
child, and her baby. This did not come into the story until
some twenty thousand words of the book had already been
written, although I saw it several months before.

Once in a long while I will see one character out of the story
before it comes; sometimes several weeks before it is in the
story, and I have no more idea what he is going to do or what
part he is going to take than you have.

If one admits that the foregoing is the act of a subconscious
mind, how can one account for the pictures in The Merry Tale
which a young lady has drawn at Patience Worth's instigation,
pictures of various characters in the story, all of whom Patience
named as they were drawn. Some of the characters have, anjd
some have not, appeared in the Tale so far written. How did
Patience Worth work through both our minds, or could my
subconscious mind dictate to another subconscious mind?

Some students would say that the answer to that is
plain everyday telepathy, such as, forty years ago nobody
believed in, and now is believed in by nearly all investi-
gators but Dr. Hyslop. He thinks it inconsistent with
spiritism (which we don't) : so as he believes in spiritism,
he disbelieves in telepathy. It is an established dogma
of Myers and Company that telepathy takes place only
between subconscious or " subliminal" minds.

The young lady does not know the story of The Merry Tale,
has not read it, yet before witnesses she drew characters with

That Patience Worth Baby 197

peculiarities that marked them so they could not be mistaken.
For instance, Amelio was one-eyed and she knew nothing of it;
nevertheless she drew the character with one eye, and I have
the picture.

All of the characters have an archaic or ancient appearance,
and are people of the time about which the story is written.
Although she has never drawn any like this before, she began
to do this with Patience, and to make the matter more wonder-
ful, Patience promised to write a story using these pictures
that she would draw.

The Merry Tale was already started, and there was some
twenty thousand words of it done. Patience kept telling us
that she was laughing at us, and that she had a tickle and that
she was a dame, etc. After the pictures began to come we
realized that they were illustrations for The Merry Tale, as
Patience named them, and some were in the story while others
came in later.

I understand that the mere occurrence of the pictures is not
remarkable, inasmuch as automatic drawing has been done be-
fore, which we all know; but the pictures are very wonderful
work; and that there is nothing in psychology that could ac-
count for two subconscious minds working together.

Then Psychology has got to be enlarged.

As soon as The Sorry Tale is finished, and I can find time to
resume the writing and working with this young lady, I will
do so. She is not an old-time friend of mine, but was brought

to me by Mrs. of this city, who is a great friend of Patience;

and no pictures have been made except with Mrs. and

friends as witnesses.

Now tell me this. If I can do these things, and it is a part
of me, if it is voluntary or conscious in even a measure, why
are none of these scenes, none of these stories, none of Patience
Worth's works, of to-day; and why is it that I don't have visions
of this time and day? It is very hard for me to write in the
ordinary way. I have been almost all afternoon writing this
letter to you, while if it had been The Sorry Tale or a big poem,
I would have done three thousand words in an hour and three
quarters, and forgotten it.

I expect this seems like a good deal of a muddle, but I have
tried to tell you as honestly as I can the things that I thought
you wanted to know.

To conclude, I feel that I should say that after three years

198 The Unpopular Review

and six months of close acquaintance with Patience Worth,
and after receiving over nine hundred thousand words of her
dictation, I have come to believe, from out as clear a mind as
the average among a rather high class acquaintance, that
Patience Worth is a discarnate spirit, speaking to me and
through me to others, from a state of actual existence outside,
beyond or different from, the ordinary life of mortals.

The influence of the personality is for the highest good, as
witness hundreds of letters from the heart hungry and the
lonely; and the best of it all is that they come from people of
the highest intellectuality.

That Mrs. Curran, if avid of literary reputation, should
have deliberately sought it in a language that nobody
speaks and that it is not yet established that anybody
ever did speak — exactly; that she should consciously
have poured out so many volumes in that language, be-
ginning each day's work, without apparent reference,
just where the preceding work stopped; that she should
roll off so much poetry of real merit with every indica-
tion of extemporaneousness; that with that language, and
in these days, she should have for years fooled people
of the intelligence of some students of and believers in
Patience Worth — all this seems the least probable solu-
tion of the puzzle yet offered. A much more probable one
is that she possesses in an unprecedented degree a faculty
recorded of many others, of building up from trifles of
observation, often unconscious, great structures entirely
out of proportion to the known material, and doing this
in day dreams, just as nearly all of us do in our dreams
at night.

But how that faculty gets into us, and where it comes
from, are perhaps the hardest questions, and perhaps
even in these days, the most important questions en-
gaging the mind of man. Their answers may do more
than all the chancelleries, legislatures and armies to solve
the terrible problems with which these are now so agoniz-
ingly engaged.

CORRESPONDENCE

A Friend Who Helps. ^Esthetic Culture. The Sense of Time

and Rhythm.

THE names of several friends have occurred to me . . . whom
I should like to have make the acquaintance of the "Unpopular."
These names are on an appended sheet. . . I count it a happy
day when a friend called my attention to the Review. Where
other periodicals crowd one's attention with conflicting and
confusing accounts of fact and incident, the "Unpopular" gives
orderly and well-thought-out comment, interpreting the trend
of events and showing their significance with true prophetic
instinct. . .

Pursuing a line of thought suggested in ^Esthetic Integrity [An
essay in No. 8. ED.], I know so many people of high ideals
who plod on from day to day, as I have done so many days but
hope to do less, entirely absorbed in a routine that allows not
a minute nor a thought for the conscious development of the
aesthetic nature. . . If art is one of God's chief interpreters,
then the development of the aesthetic nature, in the broadest
and best sense of the term, becomes a duty as sacred as care for
spiritual and bodily health. It deserves, then, a regular and
generous allowance of time and attention, and ought to be in-
cluded in any scheme of living exalted by the name Christian,
not as an extra flourish that is all right if a person has tastes and
time to develop them, but as a positive essential, a definite
duty, which cannot be slighted without going counter to the
unmistakable teaching in the parable of the talents. The
beauty of holiness is not a more vital fact than the holiness of
beauty, yet there have been times when orthodox Christian
doctrine has all but denied the latter. . .

The articles on Psychic Research have been very engrossing.
The attitude of indifference and even of occasional hostility
toward this subject taken by a number of people to-day seems
to me as wrong and short-sighted as that adopted by the mediae-
val world toward chemistry when it classed it with sorcery.
When psychic research has opened to us its world, as chemistry,
physics and electricity have done, this obstructive section may
be expected to swing round, as usual. In connection with im-
pressions gained from the article entitled From William

199

2OO The Unpopular Review

James? concerning the nature of the post-carnate life, I have
often wondered what effect it will have of our conception of
rhythm when time ceases and eternity begins. Our appreciation
of music and dancing depends on our feeling for rhythm, which
in turn depends on our sense of time duration, which sense it
seems reasonable to believe will undergo a change, possibly be
lost as unnecessary, possibly expanded to infinite proportions.
Time, in this life, acts as a safety-valve that gradually lightens
our load of memory. In the next life is it not possible that our
subconscious memory will be found to have escaped the erosive
action of time, and spring to the surface as an infallible recording
angel ?

Regarding the sense of rhythm, does it not seem reason-
able that as the greater includes the less, a wider con-
sciousness regarding time may not preclude the sense of
rhythm ?

As to the expansion of memory, are not such indications
as we have rather in favor of the individual mind reaching
farther access to the stores of the Cosmic Mind — those
of James's "reservoir"?

A Possible Subvention to Literature.

WE entrust the following contents of a postcard to our
readers with (and not in) confidence.

Monowi, Nebr., Oct. I, 1916.
Messrs. Editors & Publishers:

I have seen mention of your magazine but never seen a copy.
How is it managed as to contributions? Do you pay for ar-
ticles, or make the author pay? Some people anxious to appear
in print may pay for the pleasure. You may be in need of such
help to "keep up" if your circulation is small. I expect you
are offered many "crank" essays and have hard time to decide
between them. I am a theological writer and my views are
unpopular because they are "betwixt and between" Orthodox
and Liberals. I am too poor now to pay, but later may afford to.
I merely wish to know your way of business. Can you send me
an old copy for sample?

Very truly yours
Rev. .

Correspondence 201

We answered substantially as follows :

In answer to your card of October 1st, a sample copy was
sent you promptly, and we are curious to know what you think
of it.

You need not regret that you are "too poor now to pay" for
entrance to the UNPOPULAR. In that regard you are as rich
as Mr. Rockefeller, and, we trust, always will be.

So far, we have managed to pay our contributors — by going
into the stocking; but if we approach the toe, perhaps we will
have to change our policy, or give up. As yet, however, other
departments of our business keep putting into the stocking
stuff that impedes our progress toward the toe.

Your idea of paying for admission is so original that we may
possibly print it in our correspondence department — perhaps
in hopes that some of our friends may be enthusiastic enough
to send us articles with accompaniments that will farther im-
pede the possible progress toward the toe of the stocking.

We have been offered astonishingly few "crank" contribu-
tions — and very little crank correspondence.

Up to this writing, our correspondent has taken over
six weeks in, apparently, determining what to "think
of it."

We wonder how many specimen copies of periodicals
he has on hand. There are " collectors" in this depart-
ment of culture as well as in others.

A Counsel of Perfection

IT looked as if this number were going to press sparing
our conservative readers any allusion to Simplified Spell-
ing; when along came the following temptation:

I find that I cannot pull with you at all. The irreducible
minimum of elements in our language is thirty- three; and they
cannot be adequately represented by an alphabet of twenty-
six letters. You might give this aspect of the subject some con-
sideration in your next issue.

The attitude of this friend, who appears to be an expert,
we consider the greatest obstacle to the reform; and we
grieve to say that the obstacle characterizes experts gen-

2O2 The Unpopular Review

erally. This matter is not going to be settled by experts,
but by the rank and file who use the English language —
writers generally, and they are never going to bother
themselves with signs for "the irreducible minimum of
elements in our language." The tendency of the English-
speaking people has been to diminish signs rather than
increase them. The rough-and-tumble world is going to
spell in a rough-and-tumble way, whatever experts may
try to effect, though of course with the slow growth of
general knowledge, more system will creep in, but not
more elaboration. The tendency in orthography and in-
flection is toward simplicity. Compare English spelling
of three or four centuries ago with that of to-day, and
Hebrew inflection, or even Greek, with English. But if
the experts will avoid elaboration and counsels of per-
fection— such, for instance, as "the obscure vowel" in
so many terminations, and the diphthongal treatment of
the letter t, and an enlarged alphabet, and diacritical
marks, — they can effect a vastly greater uniformity and
consistency in the rough-and-tumble than prevail at
present.

The Simplified Spelling Board itself, while its experts
are halting over such things as above enumerated, is
recommending clearing out a great many diphthongs.
But the Board is no more inconsistent than everybody
else in matters so complicated. The demand for expres-
sion of slight shades in spelling is but another illustration
of the tendency, never so rife as now, to rush after ideals,
sound or not, in disregard of impeding conditions. Other
illustrations are the socialistic craze, the craze for a single
tax that shall be directly paid by only a small minority
of the voters, and Germany's craze for a medieval expan-
sion by force in the twentieth century.

EN CASSEROLE

"Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?"

FIRST, because the New York city railway strike dem-
onstrated, so far as such a matter can be demonstrated,
that, as we claimed in our last number, the best way to
handle the threatened railway strike that stampeded the
President and Congress, would have been to let it come.

Second, and longo intervallo, because the Philharmonic
prospectus for the current season says:

It is worth recording that the Society has received many
requests for more concerts without soloists and it is a fact
that those of the past season which were devoted solely to
orchestral music were most strongly supported;

Third, because the Kneisel prospectus announces only
two pieces, instead of some half dozen as heretofore, in
which the piano and strings swear at each other. By the
way: the accepted contrast "piano and strings" is not a
good one: for the piano is a stringed instrument. How
would piano and bowed instruments do? Or, for short,
piano and bows?

At least one of the mortals concerned in the foregoing
question and answers, it might not be becoming in the
present editor to designate; but anybody curious on the
subject may find something about it in the leading article
of our last number, and in a scrap on The Overbearing
Piano in the Casserole of Number 5.

And now encouraged by the progress following that
scrap, whether the scrap influenced the progress or not, we
feel moved to unbosom ourselves on another topic, which
was once subject of newspaper controversy between the
Secretary of the Philharmonic and the present writer.

We contend not only that the time of lovers of the
orchestra is used to disadvantage when the orchestra is

203

204 The Unpopular Review

silenced or subordinated to bring forward virtuosi who
ought to be reserved for concerts of their own; but that
such time is also wasted, and great injustice done the
memory of the great classic composers, when the pieces
they wrote for their primitive orchestras are played in-
stead of the pieces written by the best composers for the
modern orchestra. Beethoven himself never heard an
orchestra that would be tolerated in a high class provincial
city to-day. No wind instrument that was played in his
day was ever in tune but by momentary accident, or is
played at all now. Some have the same names, but they
are very far from the same things: Boehm and Sax and
other inventors have attended to that. The almost
maddening martial inspiration of the modern brass har-
monies were as unknown to Beethoven as aerial warfare
was to Napoleon; and the religious inspirations that he
got from the wood choir were generally out of tune, and
the attempts at combining the whole orchestra always
were. Although Beethoven was a greater genius than
Liszt or Wagner or Tchiakovsky, he never made as great
orchestral music as any one of them has done: for he
never heard the tones to inspire it, and would not have
had the instruments to make it if he had. With their
inspirations and facilities he would have surpassed them
all. The assertion is perfectly safe: for with much more
limited facilities, he has surpassed them all: connoisseurs
are virtually agreed that with his one perfect medium —
the string quartet, he has surpassed their orchestras.
But the genre is different. Comparing genre with genre,
his orchestral music is far behind theirs, and except for
historical purposes, it is doubtful policy to play it, not to
speak of the absurdity of keeping half a great modern
orchestra quiet while the rest is occupied in such primitive
work.

We are perfectly aware that the foregoing opinions are
as "unpopular" as our opinions on virtuosi at orchestral
concerts, and piano with bows (see above), were before

En Casserole 205

the Philharmonic and Kneisel prospectuses for the present
season. But unpopular opinions are our specialty, though
our extreme desire is to make them popular. And we hope
you rejoice with us on the rare occasions when finis coronal.

Why It Should not be Quite so Proud

BECAUSE the chances once seemed, and have not at
this writing entirely ceased to seem, that Mr. Gompers had
been elected President of the United States: at least such
may well have been the faith of those who saw his hand in
the nomination and confirmation of Mr. Brandeis, in the
pre-campaign threat of the railroad tie-up, and in the
stampeding of the President and Congress.

Yet this was seeing a good deal, and perhaps folks
didn't really see it all, but a good many honestly thought
they did.

If we really saw the half of it, the country is going to see
a great deal more pretty soon — principally in the way
of experiment, of which much will be interesting, some very
expensive, much futile, some dangerous and some valuable.

The labor leaders have believed that they could rule
the country, and rule it by force. For a brief day last
August they ruled it by a mere threat. What they would
have accomplished if they had attempted force, was
probably demonstrated in the New York trolley strike —
they couldn't have held their forces together, and the
strongest agents of disruption would have been among
their own people and their sympathizers. Organized
labor is but a minor fraction of the population. What
power it has shown has come from organization against the
unorganized public, but the leaders have overestimated the
amount, actual and potential, of that power. It cannot
seriously affect the rights of the general public, of which
it is a part, and the most defenceless part, without seriously
affecting its own rights, and so putting an end to its ag-
gressive power, — even to its aggressive disposition. The
election shows that these truths are apt to be demonstrate4

206 The Unpopular Review

soon in some troublesome and expensive ways; but we,
being of an optimistic disposition, do not believe that there
will be as much trouble as some others believe. There are
no such oppressions here as have provoked the great bloody
recoils of history — no such ignorance, no such general
brutality.

The most hopeful feature of the situation is that the
experiments may teach the unions much that will make
them more reasonable, and so increase their usefulness,
which, despite all their errors, has already been very great.

We earnestly hope that an eight hour day will soon be-
come general. There was a time when man's control of
Nature and himself was too weak for average men to make
a living in eight hours. We believe that time is past.
One reason we so believe is that the eight hour day has
been gradually coming into practice. We believe that
its permanent establishment will be delayed rather than
hastened by lawlessness or fraud. In Congress's action
in August, there was a large element of both.

We want not only the eight hour day, but we want
wages to be just as high as the demand for product or
service makes possible; but we don't believe there is any
magic that can make them higher, even in legislatures or
in courts.

Gift-Books and Book-Gifts

AMONG the Christmas commodities urged upon the pur-
chasing public by booksellers' catalogues and counters,
there is one that becomes each year more prominent,
namely, that literary anomaly known as the gift-book.
I wonder how other volumes, more obscure, regard the
gift-book. Do they covet his bad eminence, beholding his
jewelled dress, luxurious trappings, and coffined ease?
Or do they, on the contrary, rather hug the dustiest corner
of the shelf, preferring it to the splendor of the sarcoph-
agus, and shuddering before the terrible secret of his
exalted position?

En Casserole 207

How quickly the titles of the favored few come to one's
finger-ends as one begins to count! The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table, Portuguese Sonnets, The Eve of St. Agnes,
Sesame and Lilies, The Rubaiyat. What a curious con-
course the authors would make if they were brought
forth in a company as often as are their books. Matter
so diverse, yet so incessantly combined, would seem sug-
gestive of strange psychological phenomena to be argued
from the characteristics of gift-books, but investigation
along this line would prove most misleading. In a study
of the nature of the gift-book, you must avoid all con-
sideration of its contents. Gift-books are chosen either
from the shelf of the classics or from that of the newest
comers, but in one respect the two are always alike: they
are never books marketable on their own merits; to be sold
they must be lifted to the dignity of becoming presents.
The classic group is generally floated on its classicism,
plus much majesty of binding and of boxing; only rarely is
it judged to need illustration: the contemporary group on
the other hand, depends for its appeal entirely on illustra-
tion, it trails over the counter a procession of pictures that
blinds the purchaser to the width of margins and the
paucity of reading matter. The difference between thfe
gift-book which is a classic and the gift-book which is a
contemporary is that one opens the latter; one never opens
the former.

The two types become instantly recognizable as one
remembers the last Christmas, and anticipates the next
Santa Claus's pack always brings much matter for solid
reflection, however delicately our parcels be done up in
tissue paper and bright ribbon. One always receives one's
quota of gift-books. I wonder what becomes of all the
Portuguese Sonnets in the world.

In our Christmas collection the gift-book must be
classified in the heap labelled the Present Perfunctory. It
fulfils the two conditions of its classification, it is nakedly
useless and ornate. Those two adjectives represent the

208 The Unpopular Review

basic characteristics of all the presents urged by all the
holiday advertisers. The gift-book is but another recourse
of the giver who wishes to give but not to think. Does a
real book-buyer ever buy a gift-book — for himself or for
anybody else?

The real book-buyer, however, need indulge no con-
tempt for the purchaser of gift-books, who trustingly and
uncritically allows the bookseller to choose his Christmas
presents for him. The manner of the selection marks the
whole affair from beginning to end as politely impersonal.
In the publisher's initial choice he never intrudes the
slightest personal bias in his selection from established
reputations, from the great Have-Beens, the famous Once-
Were-Reads. The names of the gift-books never vary
from Christmas to Christmas. In the publishing, pur-
chasing, giving and receiving of a gift-book, there is a
scrupulous avoidance of any suggestion of individual
preference. For this fact one should be profoundly grate-
ful, for the gift-bearing season is rendered innocuous
exactly in proportion to its number of impersonal presents.

In our grown-up Kris-Kingling there still lingers a
good deal of the Gift Critical — survival of the switch for
the bad child, the sweetmeat for the good. Now the less
evidence of personal reflection in a present, the safer.
The gift-book fills a need, it is a politeness that pene-
trates no man's privacy, an expression of good will left on
the doorstep, not thrust into the heart.

Upon my shelves I can find no sharper contrast than
that between the gift-book and the book-gift, the latter
being a volume selected because it represents the giver's
taste, or else what he thinks is my taste, or still worse,
what he thinks ought to be my taste if it isn't. All three
revelations are perilous. "Tell me what you eat, and I
will tell you what you are," declare our paternal sellers of
cereals. " Tell me what you read, and I will tell you what
you are," is a process even more heart-searching.

En Casserole 209

There is nothing more harmlessly impersonal than the
gift-book, there is nothing more audaciously personal than
the book as gift. The latter represents individual dis-
covery, and the impulse to share the delight with a friend;
yet, should the friend fail to share, what a gulf suddenly
yawns between the giver and the recipient of some book
that in an instant becomes an accusation of uncongenial-
ity ! You can forgive a person who gives you an unbecom-
ing tie, you can condone color blunders, but you cannot
forgive a friend who gives you a book unbecoming to your
form of thought, you cannot forgive character-blindness.
And should the book-gift go a step farther, should you
have reason to suspect it of the donor's effort at pros-
elytism, of an intention to convert you to opinions, human
or literary, that you are not ready to accept, then the
poor little book-gift becomes that most dangerous kind
of Christmas remembrance, the Gift Reformative, the
switch in the Christmas stocking. In giving or receiving,
not a gift-book, but a book-gift, a volume chosen by
friend for friend, much is risked, but perhaps with reason.
There are books to which a friend has introduced me
which have relinked our hearts together with chains of
gold and gladness, or by another figure, have been gates
into a domain of delight where three may wander in a
joyous privacy of possession, my friend and I, and the
author to whom he introduced me.

Still the principle is unaltered that the giving of books
is a perilous matter. Those who keep the safe side will
confine themselves to the giving not of book-gifts but of
gift-books, that wise provision of Providence and the
publisher. Both these agencies are aware of two facts for
the foolhardy — that reading is of all concerns most per-
sonal, and that gift-giving should be of all courtesies most
impersonal: so both supply the need by putting into our
hands the gift-book. The characteristic that best fits a
book to be a gift, is the characteristic that most unfits it to
be a book. I reveal the secret of the sarcophagus referred

2io The Unpopular Review

to at the beginning: the gift-book is a book that is never
read! That is why its fellow- volumes may well shudder
at its position, however seeming-splendid; for while it is
safe and stupid to give a gift-book, safer and stupider to
receive one, how much worse to be one!

Psychical Research at Harvard

PROVISION has been made in the department of Psy-
chology for the investigation of such superusual phenom-
ena as they may consider with it. They have begun by
testing the telepathic sensitiveness of people in general.
It is hoped that in time they will investigate it in people
showing signs of possessing it. Perhaps, however, as
tests improve, they may find that everybody possesses
it in some degree just as Sir William Crookes satisfied
himself in his laboratory that everybody possesses teleki-
netic power in some degree. Of course instruments for
measuring either can hardly be said yet to exist, though
Sir William's tests had some quantitative features.

Opportunity

DURING the recent agitation over the threatened rail-
road strike, three railroad presidents were taken out to
a provincial lunch by a lawyer with whom they were in
consultation. He apologized for the shortcomings of the
meal, and one of them said: "Well, don't bother about
me. I took my lunch out of a tin pail for ten years, and I
think I can manage to worry through with this." The
second said: "I ought to get along here even better than
you, for I took mine out of a pail for fifteen years." The
third one said: " My tin pail season was a compromise —
about twelve years and a half. I can compromise on this
very satisfactorily now."

This reminds us of Sill's poem, and as there's no

En Casserole 211

danger of anybody being reminded of it too often, we
give it:

THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: —

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;

And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords

Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner

Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, " Had I a sword of keener steel —

That blue blade that the king's son bears, — but this

Blunt thing — !" he snapt and flung it from his hand,

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,

And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,

Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout

Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause that heroic day.

And yet, after all, we can't all be born kings' sons or
men able to get beyond the dinner pail; but does that
fact make it any easier for those who are not? It at
least should teach them not to attribute their fate to
their fellow men, not to claim more than Nature has ap-
portioned them, and to accept that in a spirit of cheerful-
ness. A larger proportion of men are attaining comfort-
able fortune every day, and an increasing number can be
helped to the ability to attain it.

There is at least that degree of hope in the outlook. But
there is no hope whatever that much help can advanta-
geously be given a normal man beyond education and op-
portunity to help himself.

Endicott and I Burn Driftwood

I HAVE in my cellar a barrel of driftwood, planks of old
whaling brigs with the copper nails still bristling here and
there. Every winter Endicott orders me just such a
barrel, sometimes from Montauk, sometimes from New
Bedford, where the old schooners are broken up. This

212 The Unpopular Review

is in memory of one evening years ago on our wedding trip
when the uncertain wheels of the Montauk stage drew up
at the door of Conklin's-by-the-sea, and we went in from
the rain. There, in the farm kitchen, we found our first
driftwood fire burning blue and lavender on the hearth.

Ever since, our inland wood-basket has had hidden
under the logs of maple and hickory, a stick or two of
the battered old whalers. This has become a family tradi-
tion. The children used to make witch-fires of the wood
on Hallowe'en. Planks of it went to college upon the
floors of their trunks. And now, when they are all away,
and have barrels of their own, Endicott invites guests for
the winter evening, and still gets me my driftwood.

That is about all Endicott does do in the matter. For
Endicott does not like to chop. The planks are too large
for economical burning, and really need to be split. This
must, moreover, be done with some skill, without flaking
off the strange green substance that cakes their surface and
without wasting a single nail hole. I will therefore have
no unlettered man of toil chopping my whalers for hire.
And, as I said before, I find the professional classes loth
to chop. I therefore descend to my barrel, pry out a
plank, and split the worn old sticks myself. With my little
pile of odd shaped fagots in hand, I ascend to my wood-
basket, and wait for a good night for a fire, with guests.

Guests, we have found, always behave better at their
second fire than at their first. If driftwood fire is men-
tioned to the human race, the human race invariably
mentions driftwood powder. At least, no guest of ours,
but one, has ever failed to discuss it and all its works.
Endicott at such times plays the perfect host. He evinces
cordial interest, explaining in turn how the copper nails
and the sheathing of these ancient brigs, acted upon by the
chemicals in salt water, produce a similar compound.
In fact, for some guests, Endicott maintains, the powder
would be best. A tablespoonful sown over the fire — and
lo! the instant, sure result, continuing as long as one cares

En Casserole 213

to keep on basting the logs with it. The powder has its ad-
vantage; at least its possibilities furnish talk in the first few
minutes after the true driftwood has been laid on the
embers.

As the mouldy old sticks kindle slowly with ordinary
yellow flame, I am always uneasy; I can feel the guest
deciding that the much-talked-of flame is all imagination.
I recall the dreadful evening when driftwood did refuse
to burn colors — a plank that I myself had collected by
the shore and brought home in my steamer trunk. I was
having an experimental fire by myself with a piece of it
one night, when Endicott walked in.

"Burning the ship?" asked Endicott cordially.

"I don't believe it's exactly a ship" I explained mod-
estly. "It looked like the end of an old dory."

"It acts like the end of an old shed," said Endicott.
This conversation runs in my head whenever driftwood
burns yellow.

And then, in the midst of such uncomfortable recollec-
tions, up flare the waves of green and saffron green and
blue. Little points of clear color flicker at every crevice,
and conversation dies.

I do not know what we all think about as we watch
it. Perhaps it is not necessary to muse on lost ships
and storms and broken ventures, nor on all our drifted
voyages apart. It is enough for once to see a rainbow in
flames.

There is no monotony now. Rarer colors show as the
heart of the wood begins to burn. Rich violet sometimes
glows underneath, and a peculiar lilac color wavers over
the burned out fragments as the edges crumble. One
stick falls, and a glory of turquoise and peacock green
rushes up afresh. We watch it burn and change and flare,
until at length it settles slowly into one last quiet flame
of softest blue, with now and then a tiny yellow spark
running over its surface, like a wild goose chase up a
kobold's chimney flue. Rose color in the embers, the last

214 The Unpopular Review

of the fire, is the best. Then absolute dark, uncom-
promising as the death of a dream.

"Can you reach me that bit of excelsior in the corner
of the basket?" inquires Endicott of the guest. The
obliging friend gropes efficiently in the dark.

"Now watch," remarks Endicott, and puts a handful
of tinder on the dark little heap that was our fire.

What follows must some-day go into somebody's col-
lected poems. I have mentioned our one guest who did
not talk about driftwood powder. We first tried the
experiment when he was here, and I have always thought
that he would write the poem. For, as we watched, up
through the common tinder rose once more the best of all
the driftwood colors; the exquisite purity of blue and lilac,
and the palest daffodil and green. We tossed fragments
of apple wood and chestnut into the flame, and they burned
as if they too had sailed the old North Sea with Patrick
Spens. Up from those soft dim ashes, into the common-
place material, came the rarest spirit of flame. We asked
our guest what the poem should be about. He said that it
meant for him the sadness of second love. He said that it
might be a symbol of sharing of inspiration. He said it was
the beauty of a dead dream rising to bless a common life.

Endicott, with academic eyeglasses akimbo, watched
the experiment genially. The poet dropped a twisted bit
of a business letter into the ashes, and it flared into a wave
of gold and violet.

"Probably it is the heat volatilizing the gases again,"
explained the poet dreamily.

"Exactly," said Endicott.

? ; 'Yes. A quick little gust of wind down the chimney
made the flame whirl softly. A gray flake of the feathery
ash floated out along the hearth. By what winds had it
once been driven? by what storms at night? I brushed
it back into the flame again, — Strange ashes, curiously
compounded of many things; — of old memories of coral
reefs and dead men's bones, and going after whales!

En Casserole 215

The New Passion for the Drama

WE are offered more contributions regarding the
drama, three or four to one, than regarding all other
literature, and more than regarding any other one sub-
ject but the war and contingent topics. Moreover in late
years the increase in the building of theatres has been much
greater than in any other class of public structures, except
the kindred class of movie shows, and perhaps hotels — for
the accommodation of people who come to town to go to
the shows.

The implications and questions from these facts are
pretty obvious, but they are important enough to justify
dwelling on them a little.

Are our people seeking more amusement and instruc-
tion, or are they seeking a larger proportion of it through
that direct presentation to their senses which is the prin-
cipal resource of the primitive man, and less through
the indirect presentation by the printed word, and through
the greater use of the imagination and reflective powers
which the printed word demands ?

One answer is involved in the fact that periodicals
have increased as fast as the theatres. And a farther
and rather ghastly light is thrown upon the subject by
the collateral fact that proportionally the sales of books
have not so increased, but have gone in the opposite
direction. All this points to the conclusion that people's
minds have become more "dissipated," and their powers
of imagination and reflection diminished.

Does the Sunday Newspaper suggest anything farther?
On first thought, a universal orgy of vulgarity in its colored
supplements; and on second thought, an unprecedented
diffusion of rational entertainment and instruction in
the more respectable pages, especially in the magazine
supplements of the better papers. But these good things,
not to speak of the other voluminosities, appear in such
tempting guise that they unquestionably have drawn

2 1 6 The Unpopular Review

many serious readers, more than they realized, away from
their books. Probably they have begun to realize this,
however, and, more or less faintly, to resist the tempters.
But the result, even to such readers, is that dissipa-
tion of mind which seems indicated by the growing
preference for the stage over the printed page; and for
the periodical over the book.

The dissipation of mind, and the stage, are of course
mutually cause and effect: demand and supply always react
on each other. But some other causes for the mutual dis-
sipation strike us hard, and do not strike us pleasantly.

The first is the outgrowth of the old religious forms, and
the consequent slackening of the religious braces to
seriousness of interests and earnestness of purpose. The
remedy is to take out of the creeds and liturgies what
later knowledge has shown to be false. We would, how-
ever, not by any means wish religion to crowd out amuse-
ment and gayety of spirit; for unless it underlie them,
they are baseless, unenduring, and, long before life nor-
mally ends, cease to satisfy.

One Way of Being Fooled

WE don't often get fooled in books, but we have just
been looking into — and tried to read but couldn't — a
work in Economics and one on Psychology, by no means
intended to be elementary, and both by teachers of high
position and wide reputation; and we were absolutely
unable to find in them much of anything but common-
places put in technical terms, and half a dozen words, on
an average, where but one was needed.

Previous experience had led us to suspect that there
were floating around a good many such books on these and
kindred subjects, and we had generally escaped them, but
the "standing" of the authors of these caught us.

One of those two books we had lugged from town to
country and from country back to town for the years since
it was published — on looking at the imprint, we were

En Casserole 217

astonished to find how many. And in all that time, some-
how, we never got fairly started in it. The other day we
resolved we would start. We did, but we did not get far.
And now we know, and have just told you, the reason why
we never got started before. Heretofore when we hadn't
taken to a book by an author of great reputation, we tried
to attribute the fault to ourselves. But after this ex-
perience, with the first of these books, we were less dis-
posed to that effort, and made short shrift of the other
one.

If you will just bear this experience in mind the next
time you find yourself slow in getting into a book, perhaps
you'll thank us for it.

There are special causes in our country why you should
have occasion to do so : for in our favored land we are spe-
cially apt to be fooled by authors' reputations. We have
a much larger proportion of institutions conferring degrees
than any other people. Our superabundance of "learn-
ing" is enough to vulgarize it, and to give a common-
place man a high standing among large crowds of those
still more commonplace. Any "professor" or other re-
spectable man disposed to give five dollars of dues, can get
into most of the societies for the various ics and ologies,
and the election of men to the presidencies of these so-
cieties is no certain indication of solid capacity in the
men.

Now of course any man whose head thus appears above
the commonplace, even by so poor a warrant as the vote of
his compeers, naturally regards himself as fit to write a
book, and being equipped with the technical vocabulary
of his subject, if with nothing else, is apt to do it. When
the book appears, it is of course praised by the rank
and file of his colleagues; and you and I, unless we are
up to the trick I am trying to show you, are apt to be
fooled.

But nevertheless let us be fairly ready to see that the
trouble is in us when it really is.

2 i 8 The Unpopular Review

A Word to Contributors
PLEASE

Use farther for the comparative degree of far (see More
Fads in Writing, below);
. Keep further as a transitive verb;

Don't omit paging your contributions;

Don't page them at the bottom;

Don't fasten the sheets together so as to hide the paging
at the top;

Fold the sheets in an ordinary long document envelope:
the vast majority come that way, and an occasional one
left flat, or folded but once, is awkward in handling the
mass;

Don't let the fact that most of the foregoing short
paragraphs occupy single lines and begin with capitals,
lead you to suspect that we intended them for vers libre.
They may be though, for all we know. That last sentence,
you see, is a couplet. All our poetry is like that — rolled
off involuntarily. And as we thus manufacture on the
premises all that, under present plans, we need, we are
moved to one more injunction in parting:

Don't send us any.

More Fads in Writing

ALTHOUGH we cannot find any etymological distinc-
tion between "farther" and "further," and the diction-
aries treat them as equivalents, we are eccentric enough
to be offended whenever we find "further" used as an
adjective or adverb, and "farther" as a verb. "Farther,"
whatever else it may be, is certainly the comparative of
"far": so why not reserve it for adjective use? On
the other hand, "further" is certainly not the compara-
tive of anything — Webster really says so when he calls
it a comparative with "positive wanting." Therefore
it should not be put to adjective or adverbial use: so
why not reserve it for the verb? The Oxford dictionary

En Casserole 219

gives further as the earlier form, and says that farther
was evolved from it, and not from far; but that it has
come into use as the comparative of far, and that the
distinction we have marked is now sanctioned.

In the same vein, wouldn't it be well to discriminate
between the sign etc. for etcetera and &c. for and-so-forth,
reserving the former for other kinds of things, and the
latter for things more of the same kind. We often find
an actual need for some such discrimination, and though
the signs are really the same, many people pronounce them
in the two ways we have indicated.

Another thing which bothers us is the frequent occur-
rence of Spencer's "unexpected additional step in the
dark" — a subordinate clause following after the reader
supposes the sentence to be finished: e. g., "When we
went fishing we had great luck last Tuesday." The "last
Tuesday" belongs at the start, or, as a sort of adverbial
qualification, next to "fishing. " Subordinate clauses never
should come at the end. Read Spencer on Style, if you
haven't done it. We had a lovely talk last Saturday
night with a professor of English who never had.

Yet another thing, not very bothersome, but still in-
congruous with the fitness of things. You use a quota-
tion for a purpose of your own, and signify your purpose
by a punctuation mark; the average proof-reader makes
that punctuation mark part of the quotation: e. g., Why
should he have cried: "Angels and ministers of grace,
defend us?" Now "angels and ministers of grace defend
us" was never an interrogative sentence, and yet in the
above case the proof-reader makes it one. The interroga-
tion point should follow the quotation mark, not precede
it. If any mark precedes, it should be an exclamation,
but the logical fitness of "defend us!"? would hardly
compensate its over-luxuriousness.

Notwithstanding all of which, we admit points of
punctuation (or punctuation points?) to be rather ticklish
subjects for discussion — so much are they de gustibus,

220 The Unpopular Review

and so much, as all careful editors must have noticed,
is the use of them an individual characteristic.

Hibrow

WE have lately rejected two contributions otherwise
admirable, simply because they were too hibrow — two
excellent young people, of the respective sexes character-
istic of this single-mooned planet, had gone and got hold
of a lot of long words — some of them very good words
in their places — and smeared them into a lot of places
where they were not needed at all, and where good ordi-
nary words would have left the articles in their natural
simple beauty, and as plain to the comprehension as the
Venus de' Medici.

Hasn't it ever occurred to our young folks who have
read a little philosophy, that the big words are intended
to mark distinctions that are of no consequence in non-
technical work (and, we fear, many of them of not much
in any other) and that lugging them into matter addressed
to non-technical persons, is useless, even worse than
useless — in bad taste, which is the vestibule of immoral-
ity — even thought by some more or less stupid and
brilliant people, to be worse than immorality — as if those
three words were not a contradiction in terms.

We are not narrow about this long-word business.
Why, as some of you know, we have even ourselves un-
blushingly said "telekinetic telepsychosis," but we said
it only because we had to, and not when simpler words
would have done the job.

Now, dear children: when you do those things, you
don't appear half as hibrow as you think, and if you suc-
ceed in getting yourselves called hibrow, you won't enjoy
it half as much as you think; and meanwhile you will be
overdressing your dolls and perhaps getting mistaken for
ordinary shoddy, some of them which may be really very
nice and strong and fit for the touch that came to a big
one made of harder material by a man named Pygmalion.

En Casserole 221

The Eternal Boy

I DO not always dream of killing a German with liquid
fire. At rare intervals my dreams have to do with an-
other obsession of mine, the pursuit of pedagogy. Quite
recently I found myself at my wit's end to hold the at-
tention of a youth ,to whom I was vainly endeavoring to
explain the secret of the Latin verb. Finally I said, with
some acerbity, "I wish I could see what you've got in-
side your head that you find so absorbing," when sud-
denly by the blessed magic of dreamland, as it were a
powerful X-ray, I did see right into his head, and there,
on a charming lake set amidst flowering meadows and
shady trees, I saw a boat, riding idly, with sails set, in-
viting my lesson-worn boy to the "immediate reality" of
a day of unalloyed pleasure. "Run along, Johnny," I
said, "while tibi sunt Integra lintea; l that will do for to-
day." This time I spoke without acerbity. On awaken-
ing, I fell to wondering just what "modern activity" of
Mr. Abraham Flexner would succeed where my "words
and symbols" had failed.

1 Your sails are yet whole (life is fresh). Horace, Odes, I, 14, 9.

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The Unpopular Review

No. 14 APRIL — JUNE, 1917 VOL. VII

THE LAST BARBARIAN INVASION?

B ^RUSSIANS, Hapsburgs, Huns and Turks! What
a combination! The names are enough, but it
may be well to recall a thing or two more.

The Turk needs no word: he is still unspeakable.

We don't know what has become of the Hun — the
terrible and merciless small man with the big mouth.
His name survives, and he must be somewhere behind
the sort of business that has been going on of late, per-
haps hidden by the nobler victimized Magyar.

The Hapsburg victimized him and roped him into an
empire which is simply a lot of incongruous peoples held
together by their bonds.

The Borussian is the head and front of the whole of-
fending. A strange history has made him the strange
thing he is. He is the savage infusion into German civil-
ization. He got nothing from Greece or Rome, while
most of his kindred tribes got much. So persistent and
stubborn a pagan was he that the tribes to the South
and West of him long got up holy wars to convert him,
and it was not until the thirteenth century, when he was
conquered by the Teutonic knights, that Christianity
could be imposed upon him. Would he have gloried,
or would he have hung his head, if he had received a
prophecy, and could understand it, that he should unite
with his conquerors, but impose upon them his own name,
and that all together should increase until they became the
terror of the world; that they should be the world's
mightiest makers of weapons, and not only of weapons
but of nearly every other thing people want, except things

223

224 The Unpopular Review

of beauty; that they should become the greatest traders;
that the ships of the mighty sea rovers between them and
Britain should be as nothing compared with theirs; and
that they should have a city greater than Rome should
then be? But that not content with all this, they should
want the world, and make war upon it, and lose all — their
factories stopped, their ships tied up, their men worse
than decimated, their women and children starved.

Such a Vergilian prophecy is now easily made from
History.

A few centuries found the Borussians and their con-
querors, united, with the Borussian name, under that
"fine old pirate" Frederick the Great, gobbling up ter-
ritory and taking a place in the nations. And although
Frederick was the sort of pirate who played the flute
and sent for Voltaire to bring his people some civiliza-
tion, these tastes were not permitted to interfere with
business, however, and the gobbling has gone on ever
since, without the civilization ever getting much deeper
than swash-buckling, money-making, and brag. Outside
of four or five warriors and statesmen, the Prussians have
produced no great man, as measured by the world's
greatest, but they brag as if they had produced the only
ones that count; and while in art and letters they have
done little, they have bragged of the rest of Germany's
men eminent in these departments, until they consider
them their own; and they have taught all Germans to
brag with them. It is no discredit to a nation not to
have produced a Homer, a Dante, or a Shakespeare; but
it is a discredit to brag as if they had. It is no discredit
to a nation that its fiction is below that of England,
France, Russia, and Spain (if we are to weigh Spain
by Cervantes); but it is a discredit to brag as if it
were first. It is a discredit for Germany to claim to
be first in science, when she had not Newton or Darwin;
or first in music, when Beethoven was a Belgian and
Wagner a Jew; or first in the fine arts other than music,

The Last Barbarian Invasion? 225

when people outside of Germany whose opinion counts,
place her third or fourth; or first in philosophy, when she
had not Bacon or Spencer, and when Kant was a Scotch-
man; or, with a vengeance, when the high priori word-
juggling which she has been pleased to call her philosophy
has been her own undoing.

Lately we met in two days three cultured people —
rather youngish — who had never heard the camel story :
so this appears a good place, and it is certainly a horribly
appropriate time to tell it. Three wise men, English,
French and German, were appointed to produce re-
spectively disquisitions on the camel. The Englishman
at once packed up and went to Egypt to see all he could
of the camel; the Frenchman ransacked the libraries to
read everything recorded of the camel; and the German
locked himself in his study to evolve the camel from
his inner consciousness.

Germany is no wiser regarding world-wide questions
than her philosopher was regarding the camel. In the
lower activities, manufactures, commerce, and war, she
has shown wonderful capacity in doing what others
have done, cheaper than they can, and in pushing the
results farther; and in the organization of practical
effort generally, so far as her own home affairs are con-
cerned, she has surpassed the similar activities of the rest
of the world. But the victories of 1866 and 1870, the con-
solidation of the empire, the rapid accumulation of wealth
turned her head, and her philosophy never has been of
the kind to keep anybody's head straight. The un-
bounded conceit which the years since 1870 have bred
in her, prepared her for Nietzsche's vagary of the super-
man, led her to place herself in the role, and prevented
her single-track mind from harboring even so simple an
antidote as the story of Gulliver and the Lilliputians. To
restrain this extravagance there was little humor and
less taste. The greatest exponent of both that the Ger-
mans have had was Heine the Jew. In taste, the one

226 The Unpopular Review

she thinks greatest, Lessing, is a joke. Even Goethe, the
nation's one great man in the higher realms of thought,
even in the picture drawn by his adoring Eckermann, is
not seldom a figure to excite a smile. And at the bottom
of it all was the greatest stock of sentimentality that any
people has ever had to carry.

All this sentimentality had full sweep regarding the
State. When national unity was attained after such long
and painful yearning, it made the empire the object of
almost idolatrous worship. This passion was stimulated
by her vaporing philosophers no less than by her wonder-
fully increasing commerce. The feeling rapidly grew
that their empire was the empire of the world, and their
culture the culture. As the empire had become an object
of worship, the duty of spreading its Kultur was soon
made by the same vaporing philosophers an article of
religion.

And all this was backed up by plain simple greed.
The evidence is everywhere that the honest Germans of
1870 have been turned by their rapid accumulation of
wealth into a "nation of sharpers".

Of course from all this conceit and greed has grown
envy, and Germany's hatred of the only neighbor who is
stronger, wiser and, hardest of all, a better gentleman,
has grown into madness.

Worst of all for her, with the growth of all these de-
structive passions, her army, which was wisely formed to
prevent France's revanche, had grown into one fit for large
and sudden aggression, and her navy was not far behind it,
and both were the nursery of a military caste longing for
conquest.

Moreover, she had fewer centuries than any other
civilized nation, between her and the ingrained barbaric
lust of conquest. Barring Russia's mistake of not realiz-
ing the quality of Japan, the impulse to war of attempted
conquest of equals, seemed pretty well outlived in Europe,
before it broke out through Germany's ignorant and in-

The Last Barbarian Invasion? 227

sane conceit, rotten philosophy, greed and envy. All these
mad passions have destroyed Germany's reasoning powers,
not to speak of her conscience. She could use them only
to support her own desires. After flinging her ultimatums
to Russia on the East and France on the West, and march-
ing across Belgium to attack her, she holds herself to be
the party attacked. One of her gelehrte said to us, of the
Belgian infamy: "What else could we do?" He was a
simple kindly old man, and we restrained the impulse to
answer: Stand by your agreement and take the conse-
quences. When she is arraigned for the Lusitania murders,
she answers: "We put your children to an easy death,
while you were trying to kill ours by starvation": she
showed herself unable to realize that she gave the Lusi-
tania children no chance of escape, while hers could
escape through her surrender, and that starvation to
effect that is a weapon sanctioned through the whole
history of international law; she babbles of wanting the
freedom of the seas, while before she threw her position
into the cauldron of this war, she was commercially mis-
tress of them, and could be again if she would behave
herself; she claims the right to use a weapon in contra-
vention of all law because it is a new weapon; and while we
write, her pal and pupil Austria caps the climax by say-
ing that we can be safe by keeping out of their war zone,
ignoring our very contention that they had no right to
establish one.

Here then is the mad and bloody giant raging against
law and civilization. Long before he was ready to strike,
he was training for supporters the only other barbarians
left in Europe, and with them he has gathered (saving the
rest of misled Germany) the worst of the ragtag and
bobtail. Look again at the names BORUSSIANS! HAPS-
BURGS! HUNS! TURKS! — a barbarian invasion.

Can civilization permit such a gang to endure? They
cannot be reasoned with: they must be rendered incapable
of farther harm.

228 The Unpopular Review

What is our relation to the fearful task? They have
broken our laws (for the law of nations is our law) mur-
dered our people, ignored our remonstrances, and disre-
garded their promises to us. They now presume to dic-
tate the course of our travel and commerce to a degree
forbidden by international law, and to cap it all comes
the story of their intrigues against us throughout Latin
America. But our direct relations are not the only
ones that concern us. When they were ravishing women
and killing men and children in Belgium, we stood by
without a word, and the well-meaning theorist at the
head of our affairs, in his new and trying position,
told us that as it was none of our war, we were not
to express opinions or even think thoughts. He has
had some practical experience since then, and grown
able to express, frequently, a somewhat different order
of views, though whether he is able to act upon them is,
at this writing, yet to be seen. He will probably, so well
as he is able, carry out our will, and our united will seems
to be to stop this infamy.

Will this be the last barbarian invasion? Since this re-
view started out in 1914 by permitting a contributor to de-
clare that there could be no European war, we have not
tried the role of prophet. But do not the flags from the
upper end of Fifth Avenue to the lower end of Broadway
seem to promise the republic of United Germany, the
Hapsburgs' thralled peoples freed, the Hun with no leader
but the Magyar, the Turk back in the Asia which spewed
him onto Europe, and the federation of all free nations for
defence against barbarism, and the peace of the world?

To experienced diplomats this vision often appears

. . . Too bright or good

For human nature's daily food,

one of those unrealizable dreams for which so many good
men, never so many as now, are wasting their labors

The Last Barbarian Invasion? 229

and often their reason — the dreams which are the
stock-in-trade of charlatans and demagogues, and the
dissipation of which was the main motive for founding
this humble organ, and fated it to be "unpopular." And
certainly the most optimistic of us may well feel misgiving
on reflecting that our original thirteen states, with our
common language and traditions and aspirations, could
not get together with less than two constitutions, or
keep together without the greatest war then known.
But Canada has held together with two languages, though
with the mighty cement of the British Empire, and Swit-
zerland, of her own motion, has held together with three.
The polyglot Austrian Empire of course doesn't count:
for it has been held together by chains.

The nations are already united to a degree that we do
not always realize, by modern communication and com-
merce. Is it extravagant to say that economically they
are one, and that it only remains to organize a unity al-
ready existing?

Most hopeful is the enormous increase in men's disposi-
tion for peace. By the nations of long civilization war
is despised and hated. It is no longer a matter of glory
or pomp and circumstance. England's thin red line is
a thing of the past, and even Germany fights in sober
colors. The duel has gone within the memory of men
now living: in the present writer's youth the window of
every dealer in fire-arms displayed a pair of dueling pistols.
No end of international quarrels have been settled by
judicial procedure, and an international court of arbitra-
tion already exists with a local habitation and a name.
The need of putting behind it the force^'required behind all
law is felt and yearned for by nations already having
enough of that force. The dream will have to be realized,
as our dream of Union was, by trial and error; and while
many wise men do not dare expect it, most good men are
ready to work for it, and with a burning faith that the
barbarian invasion now upon us shall be the last.

THE LEGEND OF GERMAN EFFICIENCY

I

OF all tidy Continental peoples the Germans are most
conspicuous for their neatness. This quality can
be seen in large cities, forest floors and river beds; but it
reaches its acme in the home of the Hausfrau. After a
while, however, admiration of her becomes tempered by
the discovery of a peculiarity: her neatness is not a means
but an end. Her Moloch, Ordnung, devours all the com-
forts, quietudes, privacies and pleasant little irregularities
that make home sweet. She is nevertheless admired; and
even that land of male domination has paid her a fitting
tribute. Wherever a suitable site offers itself, the statue
of a colossal woman has been erected. Superficially, she
resembles Brynhild or Thusnelda. But many travellers,
on closer examination, have recognized the modern
Hausfrau, terrible in helmet and breastplate, and with a
spear to quell domestic mutinies. She is Germania,
mighty Goddess of Efficiency.

II

If to have an end in view, and to cultivate the proper
means and bring them to a sharp focus upon that end,
be efficient, then the Prussians have long been an efficient
people. Able organizers, like Frederick the Great, left
their impress on a nation of serfs. No other aptitude
than an extreme docility to paternalistic government
is needed to account for that Prussian team work which
is considered one of the highest achievements of Kultur.
How far it is from being the free gift of native talent can
be seen in the obstinacy with which Prussian statecraft
distrusts all the forms of democratic communalism, and

230

The Legend of German Efficiency 231

clings to the sort that is imposed from above. So, out
of units that were undeniably excellent material, but not
natural fighters like the Bavarian Highlanders, the Prus-
sian drill sergeant created perhaps the best military
machine that has ever existed. Prussia exhibited extreme
specialization: her sole end through the ages was the terri-
torial aggrandizement of the ruling dynasty. This older
view of history — as discernible in Bismarck as in Met-
ternich — met with the more democratic aspirations
elsewhere for German unity, and while using them, con-
trolled them; and Germany, not without internal wrenches
and pangs, was unified by the least German of her peoples.
Long before their unification the German peoples dis-
played in varying degrees a common trait: a capacity
for careful and patient craftsmanship, aided by a rugged
temperament that could stand the strain. Carlyle's
definition of genius can be read as a tribute to his idols.
Except in music (and even there Germany's greatest mas-
ters were of alien race), neither in the finer nor in the
more useful crafts did this quality produce much of what
other peoples recognize as beauty — it was not for their
beauty that Duerer's works were treasured by Italian
virtuosi — but the quality did produce solid work, and
had a wide range, from Guttenberg's epoch-making blocks,
to the toys of the Black Forest. If the German appren-
tice, journeyman and master could point with pride to
the results of an unbroken mediaeval tradition, so could
the burghers of the Hansa towns claim to have used ably
their inheritance of trade and finance, within the scope
allowed them by the persistence of mediaeval conditions
in later Germany. It is perhaps necessary to insist on
these points. The older Germany is supposed to be a
land of "dreams," modern Germany to lead the world
in "practicality." This view has its convenience, but
is quite misleading when given too broad an application.
The older German, like everybody else, had to earn his
daily bread — and under conditions that the long dis-

232 The Unpopular Review

organization of the old Empire and the ravages of many
wars made exceptionally difficult. It is hard to see why
this problem is not fundamentally the most "practical"
of all — why the workman's solution of it was not a
"practical" achievement; or why, if he sang over his
simple fare as his descendants seldom do, or had more
words of good cheer for his wife and children, he was any
the less "practical" for that. But the world from his
shop — or office or lecture room — to his home was a
small one. His "culture," narrow but deeply rooted,
reflected these conditions. There are some very real
things in the "dream art" of that period: the quaint
houses in Schwind's backgrounds, a thousand home
touches in the "lyric moonshine" of the Romanticists.
They are all redolent of a neighborhood. So is much
elaborate learning — like Werner's geology, generalized
from the rocks in a corner of Saxony, but with such con-
vincing thoroughness as to disorient the science for a
generation. The larger world was the uncertain quantity.
One could not go far abroad to inspect the proverbial
camel: he was "constructed out of the inner conscious-
ness." Each poem created a new world, according to
the author's caprice. Great universes of sound were
fashioned for the spirit to roam in. A couple of ideas
derived from experience, were set abreeding until the
immense progeny spread itself out in the family tree of a
metaphysical system. The extremes of that "idealism"
were confined to the leisure classes: it is hard to imagine
a practicing stone-mason a complete Fichtean. But
what smells of the soil in the art and thought of that
period, and the mid-air structure of the rest, alike reveal
German inexperience of the larger world.

When Bismarck came, the Germanics, which had been
unable to coalesce by a gradual secular process, were
jammed together as by a sudden convulsion. The local
cultures were levelled, or isolated in pockets, where even
at home it was hard for them to compete with the Prus-

The Legend of German Efficiency 233

sian system, which had obtained such signal results.
No general culture, but a military and beaurocratic ma-
chinery became the great unifying bond. Freed from
past handicaps, the powerful new nation plunged into
the vortex of our modern "civilization" of science and
industry. In the systematic appliance of science to prac-
tical ends she has led the world; and the venerable Goethe,
who with the perennial receptivity of true genius hailed
the first industrial smoke-stacks, might well, had he
lived to see them, have hymned the new swarm of fac-
tories and all the good ships that bore their produce over
the Seven Seas. This is the change from the Germany of
dreams to the Germany pre-eminent in material endeavor.
But does it, as is so often said, involve the complete
transformation of a people?

Ill

As modern science developed, it fostered a desire to
face the thing under scrutiny, allowing neither prejudice
nor tradition to interfere with the penetration of its true
secrets. This is scientific "respect for truth" -a great
gain for the human spirit, and, with due reservations, a
justification for the exalted position of science in modern
life. For the rest, it has added nothing new to human
effort since Adam, save the increasing efficacy of the
formula, the result and weapon of generalized knowledge;
and men are supposed to work "scientifically" when they
transfer something analogous to the field of their labors,
small but perfect specializations producing great results
by their coordination. Germany long showed genius
for the more plodding sort of science; and to-day shows a
still more marked one for organized work. But new
science brought her no new qualities, it merely enlarged
the scope of the old. The German Professor of Chemistry
is so often sought out by the foreigner because in his
laboratory he is the most honest and patient of work-
men, with the least possible extraneous "nonsense"

234 The Unpopular Review

about him. He is apt to be the old type, little changed -
potent in his shop, and outside amazingly and most lov-
ably ingenuous. In general it can be said that the Ger-
man practitioner of applied science is what by nature
and an immeasurable line of descent he ought to be: a
workman. The old quality of patient craftsmanship is
the most genuine thing in modern Germany; no system
of government can confer it or permanently take it away,
nor can a war, short of extinction, totally destroy it.
But the Prussian system, spread by military and educa-
tional training, immensely promoted that ultimate or-
ganization, which has been the mark of German communal
power. An individual Professor might deem himself of
the Social-Democratic opposition; his achievements were
none the less directed upward toward the Pickelhaube
apex of the State. Most of his confreres, like the manu-
facturer and financier, were glad to cooperate with
the State, seeing their individual effectiveness secured
thereby and increased, and their stature magnified like
that of the soul lost in Nirvana, which, so Swamis tell
us, becomes Nirvana himself. A bird's-eye view of that
Kultur loses sight of cross-currents, and beholds the
Prussian Drill Sergeant topping and permeating it all.

So much for the old craftsmanship in its new form.
The very perfection of the machine gives food for thought.
Did the mere fact that Germany plunged into the larger
world, confer upon her, just "awakened from her dreams,"
a sudden familiarity with its greater problems and reali-
ties? To begin with, the very catch word of the great
change, "practicality," has a suspicious, Babu ring.
Men mouth and ruminate it at times they used to devote
to cheerful relaxation from toil; they dream it; it intrudes
itself upon them when Baedeker's stars point to beauty
worth a thousand exclamations; it haunts them. They
are not practical about being practical. They have every
symptom of men driven by that worst of Juggernauts, an
abstraction.

The Legend of German Efficiency 235

Then there is the new State. Treitschke sees in Bis-
marck's success a vindication of Macchiavelli's political
theories — virtu is the one Renaissance impulse that has
always awakened a ready echo in Germany. But once
the State has been formed by means only too visibly
human, Treitschke leaves Macchiavelli behind, finding
him too "positive," too destitute of moral grandeur.
The State becomes a mysterious entity, something quite
apart from its human constituents; in its German form,
of course, its privilege is to be the depositary of tran-
scendantal virtues, its divine duty to impose them by
conquest on an inferior world. Mr. G. B. Shaw warns
us that Treitschke is not representative-- despite his
complete adoption by University officialdom. But the
Schoolman's "realistic" conception of the State is never-
theless the common and guiding one. The hold of an
abstraction on the native mind was not loosened but
strengthened by Bismarck's achievement: the Platonic
idea of the Warrior State gleamed in men's eyes, with a
moment's immediacy of shining armor, and they tasted of
its beneficence and might. So civilian resistance to
Prussian military arrogance was weakened, though a
long familiarity with soldiers and soldiering might have
placed the matter in the domain of common sense. Let
the most miserable of Lieutenants force the issue, and
he dives, a quintessence of Military Necessity, into your
witches' broth of a State, whence a thousand votes in a
thousand Reichstags may not avail to fish him out. If
democratic opposition to this prevailing notion has made
the Socialists formidable, in numbers at least, they too
have displayed more ability to theorize than to act.
These late cousins of the winners of Magna Charta, have
not succeeded in so much as converting the Reichstag
from an advisory, into a parliamentary, body.

Whether or no the long honor roll of German scientists
contains the name of many great initiators, the Germans
can claim an undoubted aptitude for that branch of

236 The Unpopular Review

natural science which deals with things — including among
things the outer husk of humanity. But when its specu-
lations concern themselves with living humanity, they
take on a notable wildness. How much of German psy-
chology is merely an unconscious justification of the
Prussian temperament — finding " health" in its asperi-
ties, "decadence" in everything else. If His Majesty
would sleep, how pathological the wakings of all others.
If he would glory in his ugliness, how morbid all other
beauty. And anthropology — what a riot-dance of the
Germanic Kulturvolk over the face of the earth it is!
The German still " posits" from his inner consciousness
the world as he would have it, and with all the illusion
of certainty that "science" conjures up. He dreamed the
old abstractions at home; the new drive him forth, his
eyes staring, his fists clenched.

German political, social and scientific thought betrays
the stupendous power of the Idea in that land. It shows
the obstinate old Ego, not chastened, but swelled into
the dimensions of a State. It shows no effective counter-
weight of mellowed humanity, none of that secular root-
ing in an old and general soil, which gives other civiliza-
tions their stability.

IV

Here the vexed question of German culture — in its
narrower sense as opposed to Kultur — forces itself upon
us. It is an historical commonplace that, if no more
intrinsic explanation can be found, Germany was still
prevented by the business of the Reformation and the
disorders of long indecisive religious wars from sharing in
those humanizing, socializing movements, which acted
with such power in the Romance countries and in Eng-
land. She had her belated "Renaissance" toward the
end of the XVIIIth Century. Goethe, its outstanding
figure, represented the two main Renaissance elements:
individual self-culture, and the emancipation of the

The Legend of German Efficiency 237

individual from the limitations of self; morally, by his
escape into the social body; aesthetically and intellectually
by his escape from provincialism — even national -
into the general "best," past and present. It may not be
irreverent to this, the most illustrious and universal
exponent of the modern spirit, to hint that he was unable
to clothe his larger thoughts in the flesh, and had to fall
back on symbols; that his contacts with the general
humanity and with alien cultures are wide, but lack a
certain spontaneity, even profundity; and that these im-
perfections are characteristically German. Neverthe-
less, he is the fountainhead of a great tradition, and
many honored names in many lands attest his influence.
Nietzsche, proud of that spiritual descent, comes with a
passion of "Hellenism," whose white heat fairly shrivels
the paper-doll fooleries of the Second Faust; and in him
international European thought — called Intellectual-
ism — finds its most eloquent and inspiriting voice. But-
the most popular part of his philosophy is the veritable
climax of German inability to conceive of the individual,
man or state, as a social being. Nietzsche stands on no
soil whatsoever. A significant contrast is felt when one
compares him with M. Anatole France — that not cata-
clysmic but subtly erosive iconoclast: M. France's mouth-
pieces hold their searching Platonic dialogues in French
homes, mellow with an ancient civilization and an age-
long social grace.

The Schlegels, Tieck, Bopp — one could not easily
exhaust the list of those who directed their romantic
fervors into the fields of scholarship, and introduced into
Germany all the masters of literature from Kalidasa to
Robert Burns. To-day the supply of excellent transla-
tions is as enormous as it is comprehensive in scope;
they are cheap books such as people buy not to display
on their shelves but to read. The hospitality of the Ger-
man stage is notorious. It is always a sign of national
vigor to reach out in this way. But, as in the case of

238 The Unpopular Review

individual genius, one is more interested in personality,
that other sign of vigor: the power to digest and re-fuse
what has been absorbed, and give it out again with a new
impress upon it. Here Germany confesses the almost
utter want of what France possessed as early as the Xllth
Century: a social mold of her own. She gives back her
classical, or English or French or Scandinavian or Russian,
models with no more than a German coarsening of them.
Moreover, the native genius — as in Hauptmann and
Sudermann — chafes under the restrictions of the more
sober foreign methods, and returns to revel in the old
dream world of the mystic and symbolist. More tangibly,
one is aware that racial pride still rests on that crude
mediaeval individualism which the "Storm and Stress"
rediscovered in its search for a national past. The man-
at-arms, not the Red Cross Knight, but the apotheosis
of the Robber Baron, a huge half-amorphous oppression
of granitic Might, haunts sculpture. Or else, in an effort
to escape from what was foreign in even the German
Middle Ages, the background of Teutonic myth is sought.
Altogether, the German spirit has looked upon the
achievements of foreign genius as something to be carried
like a tribal booty to the tribal home. It has shown little
aptitude for those true voyagings abroad into lands of
alien beauty, whence men return cosmopolitans, real
members of the international family. And the stronger
native genius would throw off foreign "rubbish" en-
tirely. Do we not hear that the Teuton has too long been
lulled to sleep by the false rites of a Semitic god, and
must return to Odin and be strong again with Thor's
hammer? Modern German Bildung, so far from opposing
a human element to the impelling Idea, has aided in
bringing it closer to the imagination, giving it, if not a
body of flesh and blood, at least the rude human linea-
ments of a pagan god. The old provincial cultures, which
within their limits were social and humane, are seen
floating, quaint trophies, on the torrent of Might.

The Legend of German Efficiency 239

V

Whatever venerability German "Michel" may derive
in his own eyes from the recrudescence of primitive gods
or the invocation of historical traditions of violence or
old abortive Empire-buildings, since 1870 he has ap-
peared to his neighbors with all the traits of the parvenu
writ large upon him. A self-made man, his purseful of
soldiers and reserve of Power in the bank are his infallible
buy-all. He exudes auras of success. Success is his gauge
of others — not the unostentatious maintenance of settled
achievement, but success that hymns itself as stridently
as a dynamo. He is forever ordering his own servants
about, and elsewhere can recognize no authority the
weight of whose hand is unfelt, no service out of livery.
He enjoys the crowning felicity of his type: he is right
because he is himself. His very "altruism" threatens
the imposition of his tastes on others. Secure of his
power to "buy," he jostles his way to the counter, re-
gardless of his neighbors' ribs and toes. We heard an
outcry in the baker's shop, and Michel, his blue eyes wide
with a na'ive and pained astonishment, answering, "Must
I not eat?"

One might thus epitomize the change German diplo-
macy has undergone since Bismarck was dropped over-
board, and the Emperor took the helm. If Bismarck's
policy was essentially of a predatory world predatory,
he still had the primitive huntsman's innate sympathy
with the hunted, even a certain kindness for them when
their flesh and pelts were not wanted. It may not have
been a very noble game he played, but perhaps, leaving
aside his exceptional genius for opportune forgery, it was
"the game" of international politics, and will continue
to be, until a better mutual understanding tempers
competition. The point is that a consistently "average"
or low view of humanity, so one does not except himself
from the view, promotes fellowship of a sort. Once his

240 The Unpopular Review

task was accomplished, Bismarck regarded Germany as
a nation among nations — one which must not neglect
the ultimate defensive power of a great army, yet which,
by "playing the game" could always rely on a European
balance sufficiently favorable to her. There is a sort of
lonely grandeur about this figure in old age, as he fills
the tragic part of the Fox clamantis. His warnings not to
alienate Russia, not to provoke British hostility, not to
allow the Triple Alliance to drift from a defensive, into
an aggressive, one, need not be followed in detail. He
advised not to do precisely what his Imperial successor
has done — with results that bid fair to be the undoing
of all that Bismarck wrought, and are writing themselves
over all Europe in blood.

Bismarck, an "atavism" of the pedestrian Prussian
XVIIIth Century, refused to be hurried away from his
common sense by Slav perils or Pan-German intoxications :
he did not perceive the abstractions, Race, Might and
Kultur in triumphant march over the globe. He saw in
Germany a powerful State, but the mysteries of the Super-
State were beyond him. Glad to avail himself of expert
knowledge, he yet was not sufficiently "scientific" to in-
vest the specialist with mysterious powers: he duly con-
sulted Roon and Moltke, but reserved for himself the
arrangement of wars. It was left to the wisdom of his
successors to erect the Great General Staff into an omnis-
cient Oracle.

Prince von Buelow has recently scored the diplomats,
working under his direction, for their lack of adroitness
and "psychology." Yet he himself is identified at home
with certain peculiar methods of "assimilating" the Pole,
whose success is as doubtful as their humanity. Under
his own Chancellorship, the "adroitness" of German deal-
ings with the German element itself in Alsace-Lorraine
reached its climax. . . . The German diplomats have
lacked something profounder than "psychology," a lack
shared in by able professed psychologists; by Prince von

The Legend of German Efficiency 241

Buelow himself, — and even by his great master in states-
manship.

For Bismarck's failure to appreciate XlXth Century
Democracy left an open wound in the German body
politic. His State may seem so nicely to balance the
various elements out of which it was compounded as to
constitute that modern marvel, a democratic autocracy.
Yet the full third part of a population remarkable for its
docility, was forced into an attitude of extra-governmental
opposition; and the government's sole remedy for this
situation lay in polishing the machinery of military re-
pression, and the contemplation of foreign wars.

Everywhere, at home, in the Colonies, in foreign prop-
aganda, the modern German spirit has proved its crass
inability to deal with the human factor. Its "efficiency"
has there broken down — and this is a world not of form-
ulae and machines, but of living men. Recent history has
shown how vastly what the positive-minded call the
"imponderabilia" count. Spiritual things are not the
moral Sundays people were prone to believe them, but
are profoundly spun into the warp and woof of ordinary
life. Shelley, Arnold's ineffectual angel, seems a far more
practical statesman than the authors of this tragedy.
Even successful wars of conquest must be unavailing
when undertaken in a temper against which the flesh of
man everywhere, — yellow, white and black — must
rise in revolt.

VI

What will happen to Germany when she faces an after-
math compared with which the ravages of the Thirty
Years War were sporadic in extent and easily reparable,
is beyond conjecture. One likes to hope that those popu-
lar aspirations for a Greater Germany at last released
from repression, which were stunted by the actual con-
summation, will evolve a state more conformable than
the old with the will of a modern people: that this people,

242 The Unpopular Review

no longer imagining itself "chosen" - so the gods choose
for destruction — will bring its great vigor and peculiar
gifts back to the soil. A nation of hard workers and hard
thinkers it must continue to be; and perhaps the threads
of the old cultures, with their good cheer and half-forgotten
kindliness, can be picked up and gradually woven into
something national.

What we know is the trend German strength and
effort have taken. Peculiar to the Germans is their feeble
resistance to the driving-power of abstract thought.
They have been feverishly busy baking mystic bread
for their mystic state, while the Neapolitan lazzarone,
lounging along the sunlit quays, might have taught them
how men are fed. They have enslaved the mind to the
brawn it idealized. Their Idea is not that Divine one
incarnate with a human bosom for erring men to rest in;
it is an idolatry of "stocks and stones," which adumbrate
the hostile forces of a non-human universe, and demand
the appeasement of human sacrifice.

Otherwise, in the language of the laboratories, Germany
has no more than "isolated" forces at work throughout
our general civilization in such a way as to simplify their
reading. To this civilization we Americans are committed,
with rather an insistence on its "material" side. Our
strongest spiritual bond, democracy, has tightened in the
face of German governmental ideals. But much of our
thought, especially in the sphere of education, exhibits
an undiscriminating esteem for German efficiency. We,
too, in our own way, often consider the Hausfrau before
we do the humanized home whose minister she is.

THE WEAKNESS OF SLAVIC POLITY

MUCH has been said and written, of late, of the
amiable and admirable personal quality of the
Slavs. Multitudinous have been the prophecies of a
coming Slavic hegemony of the arts, of philosophy, of
religion. But one thing Slavic you find omitted from
even the most unrestrained panegyrics of the warbitten
Slavophiles: Slavic polity. It is not foretold that out
of East Europe shall arise forces making for the regenera-
tion of Western governments. Politically Slavdom is
weak, and has always been weak. Let us recall unhappy
Poland, so quarrelsome and corrupt as to be incapable
of energetic action in the face of the most patent designs
of spoliation on the part of neighbors not by any means
overwhelmingly powerful. Let us recall the everlasting
factional struggles of Bohemia; the incapacity of Rumania,
down to the present day, to reach a rational solution of
the problems of peasant misery and aristocratic insolence;
the overweening pride and inevitable fall of Bulgaria;
Servia, fountain and origin of a world of woe. Could
not the leaders of Servia see that they were seated astride
the rim of the European powder vat? Had they not
sufficient to do to assimilate the motley population of
Bulgars and Greeks, Turks and Albanians, Rumanians
and gypsies that had fallen to them by the chance of
war? Yet they had to yearn, not in their hearts pru-
dently, abiding their time, but overtly and flagrantly,
for the still Greater Servia that would embrace Bosnia
and Herzegovina, thus providing a convenient pretext
for their destruction. And finally let us reflect upon
the greatest of all failures of Slavdom, Russia.

Russia a failure, you exclaim indignantly. Was it
not the Russian invasion of East Prussia that saved
Paris and gave France and England time to gather their

243

244 The Unpopular Review

resources? Was it not Russia that overwhelmed Austria
and by heavy drafts upon German military power thinned
the Teutonic line in Flanders and France to such an
extent that for a whole year aggressive action was out
of the question? And is it not Russia that is menacing
the integrity of the Turkish domains and rendering fan-
tastic the German threat against Egypt and India? To
be sure. Russia's failure does not consist in non-perform-
ance: it consists in performance less than was to be ex-
pected of what is potentially the mightiest military power
of the world. It consists further in the incommensurate
cost to her own people of what Russia has won.

In men of military age, and also in men who have under-
gone military training, the resources of Russia very nearly
equalled those of the Teutonic empires combined. And
the Russian is by nature one of the best soldiers in the
world. He is physically robust, patient under long
marches and inadequate food, and his bravery is that of
the hero and fatalist. Recall the glowing reports from
Petrograd, early in the war, of the Russian soldier's love
of the bayonet charge. As we now have reason to surmise,
the Russian soldier delighted in the bayonet only after
his cartridges had given out. It is no matter: let us give
our unstinted admiration to the heroic peasants charging
into the hell of shrapnel and machine gun fire with weap-
ons in no way superior to the spears of the Macedonian
phalanxes. It is such soldiers of whom Russia has un-
limited numbers, and whom she sacrifices in long retreats
before troops inferior in everything but officers and equip-
ment.

Why Russia is lacking in officers — Russia, a military
state with an aristocratic caste regarding itself superior
to any other profession than the military — is a story
too long to be interpolated here. But why is she lacking
in munitions? Her industry, to be sure, is undeveloped,
and the making of cannon and shells requires a well-
trained industrial population. She has, however, the

The Weakness of Slavic Polity 245

resources to buy them ; and if she had not, her allies would
supply the resources. But all that enters Russia now
must be squeezed through the narrow gateway of the
Siberian railway. As I write, I note in the press of the
day (March n) that forty ships are on the ocean, bound
from New York to Vladivostok, and over 250 ships from
European ports are headed for the same destination.
And at Vladivostok there reigns unheard-of confusion.
Supplies overflowing the warehouses and piled high on
the piers; freight cars lost on sidings all the way across
Siberia; unessentials given right of way and the neces-
sities of military success delayed. And all the while one
must bear in mind that at Kola on the Arctic there is a
magnificent port, free of ice the year around, where even
now a number of ships are lying, discharging cargo, part
of which is just to lie dead, part to be painfully forwarded
two hundred miles by reindeer sledge. Why is there no
railway from Kola to Petrograd? The port was opened
over ten years ago and the railway route surveyed. The
excess freight by way of Vladivostok on the shipments
of last year alone would easily have paid for the railway.
Its military services would have been worth a half million
men. From the opening of the war to the present date
there has been ample time to construct a railway. But
as yet scarcely anything has been done, and the most
optimistic forecasts place the date of completion of the
road at some time in 1917.

In modern warfare the losses in wounded bear a ratio
to the losses in killed of four or five to one. Among the
wounded, those actually mutilated or otherwise totally
incapacitated are a relatively small fraction. A good
hospital service will in a period of six or eight weeks
restore to the line of battle between fifty and seventy-five
per cent of the wounded. A bad hospital service will
permit infection to finish the work of bullet or shell in an
incredible number of cases otherwise curable. Very little
information from the Russian hospitals filters through

246 The Unpopular Review

the more stirring accounts of the time. But what we do
get tells of gangrened arms and legs carried away by the
cartload, of sickening waste of human strength and life.
Happiest are the Russian wounded who fall into the hands
of the enemy. They are lost to the Russian army, but
may yet be restored to the Russian state.

In this account of Russian incompetence the most
significant place should perhaps be reserved for the treat-
ment of the civilian population in the huge territory over
which the war has been waged. It is a well-known fact
that the favorite procedure of Russian generals, before
a retreat, has been to order the men of military age, or
even the whole civil population, to retreat before the
army into parts of Russia not likely to be invaded. There
can never be an adequate record of the miseries of the
civil population of Poland, thus forced over night to
abandon their homes to the soldier's torch. Old and young,
well and sick, mothers carrying and leading their little
children, packed like cattle in cars, or following the high-
ways in carts or on foot — it was a migration more miser-
able than the world has ever known. And in the regions
to which the survivors of these hunted folk have been
driven, what arrangements have been made for provision-
ing them, sheltering them, employing them? Scarcely
any. Before such masses of misery, city and communal
authorities, the church and private philanthropy, have
sunk back in fatalistic asthenia. On the fringe of the
German invasion the only efficient philanthropist is death.
Plainly, there is something fundamentally wrong with
Slavdom, that it should prove so lamentably weak in
time of crisis; that it should win its way to victory, if
at all, only over a bridge of its teeming manhood, misera-
bly and futilely slain. If we were still in the Freeman
stage of historical thought, we should proceed to explain
the whole situation in terms of the characteristics of the
race. The Slav, we should soberly assert, is mystically
religious, hungry for pain, individualistic and incapable

The Weakness of Slavic Polity 247

of organization. He is a child of nature and wins by
nature's method of plethora and waste. And thus we
might philosophize ourselves into an asthenia and fa-
talism like that of Russia, disregarding the obvious fact
that German organization and efficiency are most char-
acteristic of Prussia, a state with a vast infusion of Slavic
blood. Was not Bismarck, the most efficient of modern
state builders, a Slav? Do not the records of German
achievements in science, medicine, administration, busi-
ness, teem with Slavic names? And do we not find our
own Slavic fellow citizens of the second generation very
successfully doffing mysticism and fatalism, and donning
Yankee modes of thought and action? The racial hypoth-
esis is justly suspect.

If we look to the social organization of Slavdom, on
the other hand, we are struck by a whole series of illumin-
ating facts. In the Slavic countries more than anywhere
else in Europe, the once universal order of social caste
has been preserved. There is an hereditary aristocracy
at the top, and a degraded peasantry at the bottom.
Land ownership, office holding and to a certain extent,
the professions, are the prerogative of the aristocracy;
the peasantry latterly have extended their pristine sphere
by transforming part of their numbers into an urban
proletariat. Business, very weakly represented by petty
merchandising and money lending, has been despised by
the aristocracy, and out of the reach of the peasantry.
Thus it has been left to the preemption of alien elements.
In the Balkans, business falls largely to the Jews, Greeks,
Syrians; in Russia to the Jews and Germans.

Now, government to-day is distinguished from that of
earlier times by its dependence upon the business ability
and integrity available for public service. Two centuries
ago the relation between government and governed in
time of peace was essentially tributary. By one method
or another it was necessary to extort from the mass of the
subjects enough funds to enable the sovereign and his

248 The Unpopular Review

satellites to live brilliantly, but no extremely efficient
revenue service was necessary for this. If the tax col-
lectors kept too much of their takings for themselves,
it was possible to turn the evil to account by placing the
court's satellites in office as tax collectors. The admin-
istration of justice was chiefly a local matter, carried on
in a loose way, but without great expense. Compare
the situation of a modern government, with its educa-
tional services, its duties in the matters of communication
and transportation, its charitable and penal systems,
etc. Modern government is expected to give quid pro
quo, and in so far is analogous to business. It must levy
heavy taxes equitably, collect them with certainty and
economy, and find faithful servants to expend its funds
wisely on objects determined by law. Business principles,
once generally disregarded by the statesman, are now
essential to effective government in time of peace. In
time of war they may almost be said to be essential to
national survival. Napoleon could set out on a campaign
expecting to live on the country and to equip himself as
he proceeded out of sales of loot to the thrifty merchan-
disers following the army. Joffre must have behind him
a huge and complex transport system upon which he can
rely absolutely, and still further in the background a
system for purchase and delivery of munitions so well
organized that it cannot fail. French valor holds the
Germans back, but without French business organization
the valor of the troops would be suicidal.

Now, a hereditary aristocracy does not produce the
type of official required for the execution of the business
functions of the state. The aristocrat is no doubt in
most respects more admirable than the man of affairs,
but it is very hard for him to see that straight accounting
is a matter of personal honor. He is conscious of his
worth to society, and if conditions are such that he finds
it difficult to maintain himself according to the standards
required by his personal and official dignity, he is not

The Weakness of Slavic Polity 249

averse to dipping into the public purse. To him such
conduct is a peccadillo justified by the excellent end in
view. And if he does not himself need thus to divert
public funds to his account, he is widely connected with
other excellent men struggling to keep their heads above
water, and will endeavor to place them where they can
make life tolerable for themselves. Thus peculation and
place mongering spring naturally from the condition of
an hereditary aristocracy that has multiplied beyond the
sustaining power of its landed revenues, or that has
survived into an age in which the cost of living is rising.
They are characteristic of Russia to-day, as they were
characteristic of England in the days of the Stuarts, and
of. France under the Grand Monarch.

What we now call political corruption was common
under the earlier order; all that is new is its greater extent
and its more sinister consequences under existing condi-
tions. The evil has been appreciated by the more pa-
triotic members of the class that profits by it, and a
remedy has been sought in all manner of mechanical
devices, collectively known as "red tape." But "red
tape," while reducing corruption, reduces efficiency in
even greater proportion. If we are to have at once honest
and efficient government, it must come by way of a shift
in the ruling class. Supplant the blooded bureaucrat
by the business man. This is what has been achieved
in England, and only to a less extent in France. It has
been achieved in far greater measure than is commonly
supposed in Germany.

But in Slavdom generally the shift is made difficult
by the fact that the business class is largely alien. When
Poland awoke to the danger of dismemberment, it made
several efforts to place its government upon a sound
business footing. These efforts were ineffectual, because
the business men of Poland were chiefly Jews and Germans,
and by this very fact excluded from an active part in
governmental affairs. In Russia to-day the restrictions

250 The Unpopular Review

upon the Jews deprive the government of much of the
special ability most needed in the public life of the nation.

Slavic failure in government, it seems evident, is not
to be imputed to the Slavic racial character. It is a
consequence of a political situation that makes great
demands upon the business abilities of government offi-
cials, but does not draw the officials from the business
class. And this fact, in turn, is a consequence of the low
degree of business development, and the preemption of
such business as exists by classes excluded by race preju-
dice from participation in government. Slavdom has
been out of the current of world trade, but not out of
the current of world politics. Hence its failure under
the international duties thrust upon it by the times.

There can be little doubt that the conclusion of peace
will see the beginnings of a business era in Russia. No
patriotic Russian can in future hold the contemptuous
attitude toward the prosy details of money making that
prevailed in the past. For want of attention to these
details, millions of Russians are seen to be paying the
price of mutilation or death. With a large, well-organized
class of Russian business men, the barriers between Jew
and Gentile will break down, and the unutilized powers
of the Jew will be employed to the enrichment of political
life. Russia, like Germany, France, England and the
United States, will become a bourgeois nation, material-
istic, money-making, but efficient and powerful. For
such gain there will, to be sure, be a certain offsetting
loss. Russian literature and art will lose their savor for
the dilettante of western Europe and America, who will
have to turn elsewhere for the characteristic note of man-
liness wedded to despair, virtue linked with crime. But
Russia was made not for the tragic catharsis of soul of
foreign amateurs, but for the joy and life of her own
hundred millions.

THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRY

/. Movements Beneath the Surface

IN attempting to pierce the veil that separates us
from a vision of the future, even of the immediate
future, it is necessary to remember that all such attempts
must be purely speculative. We should therefore at all
costs avoid the temptation to be dogmatic, and not take
our attempt too seriously. It is in this spirit that the
suggestions to be made in the present article are offered.
They are guesses, founded on observation of certain new
tendencies that are abroad. But how far they are correct
guesses, only time can show. Their best justification lies
in the absorbing interest which the future possesses for
every progressive mind.

It is the opinion of many people, and this opinion is
sometimes met in somewhat unexpected quarters, that
our present economic system has passed its zenith of
usefulness, and is becoming less and less adapted to
modern needs with every passing year. That it often
gives rise to undue concentration of such wealth as is
produced is too obvious to need argument, but there is
also good reason to suppose that as a wealth-producing
mechanism, it is not far from being abreast of the pos-
sibilities engendered by the enormous development of
man's control over nature during the past century and a
half.

If, as some suppose, the economic machine is becoming
unworkable, one of three things must happen. It may
be altered in direction and aim, gradually and without
convulsion or breakdown. It may end in catastrophe
of the most alarming kind. It may be gradually super-
seded by a new system that will grow up alongside it,
and draw the life out of it by degrees, precisely as com-

251

252 The Unpopular Review

mercialism grew up alongside the later feudal system,
and gradually drew the life out of it until it decayed.

It is not very difficult to guess the direction from which
this new system will come. The nineteenth century saw
the highest development of political democracy that the
world has ever known. The twentieth century will see
the development of economic democracy.

This will not be reached, as far as one can judge, by
any vast bouleversement of existing things. The socialist
dream of waking up one morning in a socialized world,
brought into being by decree of a committee of Public
Welfare, self-appointed, is not likely to mature. When
the feudal world was superseded it was not taken over
bodily as a running concern by the commercial world.
On the contrary, the latter rose gradually into power
from many centres, and its rise was accompanied by
many failures and setbacks, so that the substitution of
"contract" for "status" -the great legal distinction
between the two forms of social organization — was so
gradual that neither its beginning nor its end can be
marked with certainty. It does not seem any more likely
that a new social order, if such is immanent in present
movements, will come into being by taking over the social
or industrial mechanism of the present day, if only be-
cause such mechanism is utterly unsuited for the expres-
sion of new social relations. It may be, indeed, that the
vast complexity of the modern industrial world is only a
temporary phase, just as the commercial system that
succeeded the feudal was, organically, a far simpler and
looser one. This of course looks unlikely now, but not
more so than the other change must have looked then.

It is not impossible to suppose that the germs of a new
order of economic relationship are already sown. That,
of course, is not practically important now, unless we can
also perceive something of the path which is likely to
lead from the old to the new. It must be confessed that
something of the eye of faith is necessary to make the

The Future of Industry 253

connection, more particularly as it is not in this country,
but in Europe, that the most promising beginnings are
to be observed. Yet it also seems probable that it must
be in America, still the land of endless possibility and
opportunity, that the most energetic experimental de-
velopment must take place.

It is a curious fact that it is in democratic America
that the organization of industry has developed along
the lines of absolutism. In Europe on the contrary, such
organization has reached out toward democratic forms
and in certain instances has already developed them to a
wonderful degree. To discuss the reason for this would
lead us outside our present subject, which is to discuss
the new ferments already working, and endeavor to
appraise their value in the future.

Industry is based on three main elements. First, the
possession of natural resources. Without these it cannot
exist. The Eskimo has developed his civilization on
snow as a building material, blubber and fish as diet, skins
as clothing, and the bones of fish and bears as raw material
for manufacture. Considering his material, he has done
reasonably well. Modern civilization is built on coal and
iron, and it is the possession of these resources that de-
termines its whole course, and makes it so different from
anything that has gone before.

The next element of industry is the productive unit.
Formerly a large part of the industry of the world was
carried out by very small groups of men, even by single
workers. To-day, the tendency is to enlarge the size of
the productive unit, until its organization has become
a science in itself. Within the productive unit, order
reigns. Each function to be performed is determined
in advance, both qualitatively and quantitatively. There
is no scramble, no uncertainty as to who is to do this work
and who that. Men compete with each other to get into
the productive unit, and they rival each other in qualifying
for more responsible work, but within the unit neither gap

254 The Unpopular Review

nor overlap is permitted, and the work of everyone is co-
ordinated most carefully; each is engaged on a complete
engineering proposition — the application of forces to
materials on a definite basis to a definite end.

If that were all the problem that industry affords, our
troubles would be very much fewer than they are. Trial
and error would in the long run work out a plan for the
just distribution of the fruits of work among those that
participate in it, and those that provide the sinews of war.

But unfortunately there is a third element in industry
that is not yet brought under the reign of scientific law.
While each productive unit in its internal structure is
an example of coordinated activity, industry as a whole
is still in the stage of being wholly uncoordinated, and is
in fact a veritable scramble, very much as if in a factory,
each new job were to be thrown on the floor and the whole
body of workers invited to fight for its possession.

From this want of adjustment arise some of the most
bitter struggles, and many of the greatest distresses of
the modern world. Unemployment is largely due to it.
And so little is the matter understood that the fiercest
invective and the strongest opposition are applied to any-
one who attempts, as regards any particular trade, to
set up a more or less approximate coordination of the
industry by consolidating productive units, and cutting
out superfluous energies in the production and distribu-
tion of goods. The moment this is attempted, the cry
is raised that "competition" is imperilled, whereas the
power of competition depends on quite other conditions
that have little to do with consolidation.

It is impossible to discuss matters like these without
coming at once into the presence of the idea of "com-
petition" and its obverse, "combination," about which
the foggiest notions generally prevail. In speaking of
"competition," as the life-blood of progress, it is entirely
forgotten that there are no more changeable things than
the forms of competition, and that they are by no means

The Future of Industry 255

confined to the strife of the spear and the strife of the
market. What we term competition is in general a very
crude form of measurement of capacity, and though it is
quite certain that capacity will always diifer as among
individuals, and will always find its own level, it is equally
certain that the particular form suitable for one age will
be unsuitable for another. In a barbaric military age,
thews and sinews and physical courage will be the ele-
ments of competition; in a mercantile age, shrewdness
and cunning. In a scientific age, such as we are now
entering on, still higher faculties than to prod one's com-
petitor with a spear, or delude him in a bargain, will be
called on, with necessarily a more marked shifting of the
play of competition to another arena.

While therefore it is quite reasonable to say that com-
petition must be maintained, it is quite another matter
to assert that some particular variety of competition of
the moment should be maintained. To say that it is for
the public advantage that ten firms in the same industry,
with a total capacity exceeding any possible demand for
their goods, should be compelled to maintain expensive
individual selling organizations, and scramble for each
order that comes into the market, instead of dividing
them up on a pro-rating basis, seems illogical. It means
the diversion of attention from the prime work of produc-
tion. It means unnecessary fluctuations in the amount
of work handled by each firm. It means unemployment
here, and over-employment there. It means plant idle
in one place, and overburdened in another. And who
benefits ?

It is evident that if these productive units combine,
either on the Trust plan, which means centralized con-
trol, or on the Cartel plan, which means a kind of parlia-
ment for that industry, the stream of production is
steadied, and, provided that a market monopoly is not used
to raise prices, no one is harmed. It is evident, therefore,
that the evil of combination lies not in the fact of com-

256 The Unpopular Review

bination, but in the improper use of the power of mo-
nopoly that such consolidation may make possible. The
evil does not arise from the elimination of a certain kind
of competition among the firms themselves, but in the
possibility of their using their combination to raise
prices.

In the ordinary course, such conduct would bring its
own penalty. High prices would invite new competition
outside the combine, and force prices down. In a per-
fectly free and open market, no combination could af-
ford to run that risk. But if they can succeed in some
method of cornering the market, and driving out new
competition before it has time to gather head, then we
have an illustration of the successful but wholly illegiti-
mate use of the advantages of combination. It should
be noted, however, that a new variety of competition
is concerned here, namely, competition between the com-
bine as a whole and a new comer. That is the competition
that it is to the public interest to see maintained.

How can an open market be maintained? Feebly and
uncertainly by legislation, because there are as clever
minds on the side of the combine as on the side of the
state. And while the state can only legislate for particu-
lar conditions as it discovers them, the combine can shift
its ground very rapidly, and so evade the law. But there
is one way of doing it that will put the strongest combine
on its good behavior at once and for ever, and that is by
an answering combine of consumers. Is such a thing
possible? Let the facts answer. In England, the co-
operative societies maintained by the working people
are now estimated to embrace one-fifth of the population,
and the turnover of their transactions is already some
$550,000,000 yearly. The most powerful trust would
hesitate to play tricks with an organized body of con-
sumers like that. Except by a monopoly of raw material
(perhaps the easiest form of monopoly to reach by the
regulation of the law), there is no possible answer to the

The Future of Industry 257

demand for competitive price when consumers as a whole
insist on it.

All this has been introduced for the purpose of showing
that what appears to be the most portentous industrial
phenomena of our day, tending to overwhelm the people
in the grip of an industrial autocracy, are really not what
they seem. No form of wealth is more fragile and evan-
escent than that engaged in production. Nothing is more
timid than capital when it finds itself in presence of su-
perior forces intelligently applied. There is only one form
of ownership that confers lordship, and that is ownership
of land. The largest and best organized plant, capitalized
in millions, rapidly falls to the value of scrap-iron, once
the fertilizing stream of "orders" is diverted from it.
And as a speculative fantasy one might imagine a time
when people will come to gaze on the vast decaying ruins
of the twentieth century trust plants, as they now go to
gaze on the ruins of the feudal castles of Europe. But
let us hope that it will not come to that.

We observe, then, a tendency to consolidation and to
the elimination of unnecessary competition, but this
tendency is itself but the expression of a need impera-
tively felt, namely, for a form of coordination between
the productive units themselves and the entire output of the
industry. It is this that really gives strength to the com-
bining movement. It is this that is both its impulse and
its justification. To expect to roll it back is like ordering
the advancing tide to recede. We may expect to prevent
its abuse, but the only way in which this can be done
permanently is by an answering coordination, that of
consumers. But if we once assume that the whole body
of consumers can be organized and their wants coordi-
nated, we step at once into a wholly new economic world,
that will have very little real relation to the present
system. It is evident, however, that this must be a slow
development, and cannot take place overnight.

258 The Unpopular Review

This principle of cooperation has made enormous
strides already. In addition to the British cooperative
societies and those of other countries, the movement
has spread to the most individual of all callings — agri-
culture. Here it has had a double development, associa-
tion for purchase, and association for common manufac-
ture and common sale. On the one hand, groups of agri-
culturalists combine to standardize, purchase, and test
the qualities of seeds, fertilizers, and other supplies, thus
rescuing the individual from greedy exploitation, and
what is worse, deception as to the quality of goods, which
had reached enormous proportions. On the other hand,
groups are formed to receive, standardize, and distribute
products on a wholesale scale, thus again rescuing the
individual from exploitation by those who received a
large reward for a very poor and inefficient distribution
or marketing service. Further, the organization of asso-
ciated producers has led to proper grading of product,
associated with definite brands, so that the buyer knows
in advance what he is ordering and paying for, without
the necessity of close inspection of each consignment.

In particular may be cited the great work done by
the Irish Agricultural Organization Society founded by
Sir Horace Plunkett in 1894. ^n I911 tnis organization
had grown to a membership of 100,000, in 900 branches,
and an annual turnover of $15,000,000. Combined with
its regular activities is a department advancing funds
to credit societies, and it was recently reported that out
of loan transactions aggregating $90,000, only $500 had
been irrecoverable.

In Denmark the dairy industry has been transformed
by the introduction of cooperative creameries, which
now handle four-fifths of all the milk of the country,
and produce butter to the value of $45,000,000 annually.
Danish agriculture may be said to be almost entirely
conducted on cooperative plans, — purchasing societies,
egg societies, bacon-curing societies and so forth being

The Future of Industry 259

universal. It is said that a Danish farmer frequently
has membership in as many as ten such societies, each
dealing with a different branch of his business. In Ger-
many the movement has also made good progress though
only of recent introduction. The syndicats agricoles of
France number thousands, and their principal trading
function is the purchase of farm requisites, especially
fertilizers, for their members on a large scale, and with the
guarantees which large transactions are able to command.
In the United States some noteworthy producers' so-
cieties, both for purchase and marketing, also exist and
have exhibited strong vitality and growth.

Such cooperative associations are examples of organic
forms of productive units not dependent on single owner-
ship, or on stockholding ownership. They represent the
principle of voluntary association, and may be likened
more to a college team for baseball or football than to an
ordinary commercial firm. They perform all the func-
tions of the latter with an entirely different fundamental
idea at their base. Here, then, is one new influence creep-
ing into our present-day economic system, that is in it,
but not of it, and may be considered to represent a type
of organization of which more will be heard in the future.

Closely allied with the question of such voluntary pro-
ductive units, with their cooperative buying function,
and their cooperative selling function, is the development
of a new variety of finance, of which again the most wide-
spread examples are to be found in agricultural industry.
The so-called "Mutual Credit" movement has made
enormous strides in European countries, and has in many
cases wholly transformed the economic position of those
who operate under it.

The general idea is a very simple one. Suppose a
neighborhood group of twenty or thirty farmers associat-
ing themselves to borrow money for reproductive im-
provements, — the money being borrowed on the liability
of all the members, and loaned to an individual member on

260 The Unpopular Review

his personal responsibility. No profits are sought. All
debts of the association are backed by the mutual liability,
unlimited. Loans may be in cash, if necessary, but are
frequently in kind, the association purchasing at whole-
sale, and selling on credit to their members. For conven-
ience the local associations are grouped in larger district
and national associations, forming banks, — one German
example of a central bank does business with some 5000
local associations. Here we have a considerable financial
system, throughout which no private profit is sought,
yet which by the peculiar principle of its fundamental
idea exercises a continuous pressure towards efficiency
that no privately exploited financial system can exert.

The fundamental idea is simply that the granting of
loans is based on the responsibility of the borrower, not
in a property sense, but in a moral and efficiency sense.
The whole idea rests on the fact that the local groups are
small enough for each member to be thoroughly known
to his fellow members. Theirs is the responsibility for
the loan, and consequently they take good care to inves-
tigate the borrower and his projects from every point of
view that affects the question of repayment. He must
be a capable man in every sense. He must be reliable,
a man of his word. The purpose for which he asks the
money must be an approved one, and likely in the judg-
ment of his fellow members to produce the results he
claims for it. And they are not likely to fail in their
scrutiny, since in that case they have to bear the loss
that may ensue. It will be seen that this system supplies
capital to capacity on the sanest and safest terms, and
without any fuss or feathers.

Another influence that is making itself felt in the modern
world is that of Insurance.

The modern tendency is to make Insurance compulsory.
This is as it should be. As the idea develops, and it is
only as yet in its infancy, it will be extended to every
kind of mishap that is unforeseeable as far as the indi-

The Future of Industry 261

vidual is concerned, but calculable as far as the mass is
concerned. When this has been done a tremendous bur-
den of misery will have been lifted from the shoulders of
humanity. Instead of great organizations to pick people
up after they have fallen down, they will be prevented
from falling down at all, and in that respect our present
system will seem extraordinarily barbaric in comparison.
Insurance will be to the social process like a flywheel to a
reciprocating steam engine. It will continue prosperity
between the strokes — between the life happenings tend-
ing to progress — and convert a spasmodic motion into a
smooth and regular one.

These three new principles — cooperation, mutual
credit, and insurance — have come into operation in the
modern world so gradually and so silently that their
significance has been to a large extent over-looked. They
represent ideas wholly foreign to our forefathers, and the
proof is that many worthy persons look uneasily on their
progress even now. Sub-consciously, perhaps, they are
perceived to be likely to undermine the structure of eco-
nomic society as we know it, for they all tend to the
democratization of industry, and to the restoration of
the individual to his place in the sun of which the so-
called "industrial revolution" deprived him.

Is this so? Do these movements represent a force
tending to form new economic organisms, and to dis-
integrate the present forms? I do not think it can be
denied that this must be their effect. Whatever tends
to free the individual and enchance his powers and his re-
sponsibility must, unless democracy is the sham that its
opponents claim it to be, prove in the end attractive to
the stronger individuals, and be adopted by them. It is,
I venture to say, a very hopeful outlook, against which
a continuance of the present system has very little to
offer. The coordination of industry by the association of
consumers, the free association of producers with free
access to capital in proportion to capacity, the averaging

262 The Unpopular Review

out of the largest portion of human calamity by the agency
of insurance, make a picture that is as yet far off from
realization, but is at least commenced and sketched out.
Now let us attempt to connect these elements of a
new economic age with the present position of manu-
facturing industry.

II. The Promise of the Future

Social forces, in their inception, are nearly always blind
forces. They arise no one knows how, and they operate
along the line of least resistance long before their pres-
ence is recognized. The village community grew into
the manor, and the manor into the complex organization
of feudalism, so imperceptibly that no clearjiividing line
can be found. In the same way modern "capitalist"
industry rose by such slow degrees, and from such very
small beginnings, that even half-way in its career the
most gifted seer could not have predicted its future domin-
ion. Factory industry has enormously developed within
the memory of men still living. None of these evolutions
was brought about by conscious planning of statesmen or
social reformers. They simply happened, — our way of
saying that the causes are deeper than our ken.

Before we can guess at the proximate developments
likely to take place in the evolution of industry, it will be
necessary to try to understand the general tendency —
the shape and direction of the curve — of the new move-
ment. We must begin with the most general terms and
then narrow down the problem until it comes, however
slightly, within the grasp of practical endeavor.

The most general statement that seems likely to be
true is that already indicated — that the direction of
evolution is towards the democratization of industry.
And secondly that this process will be accompanied by a
rise^in the importance of the individual, based on an in-
creased capacity for voluntary cooperation in organized work.
This, of course, is a very vague statement. We can

The Future of Industry 263

however proceed to give it a little more definiteness. To
do this we must consider the citizen from the point of view
of his function of consumer apart from his function as pro-
ducer. And we must also glance at his position simply as
a living being.

The latter may be dismissed in a few words. It has
to do with the applied law of Average, in the form of
Insurance, as already referred to. Unquestionably, as
statistical science extends its dominion, very few of the
mishaps of life will be left outside the operation of this
principle. The process of civilization upward from primi-
tive savagery is, in fact, a continual increase of safe-
guarding of the individual from mishap. The savage
is at the mercy of nature to a degree infinitely greater
than the civilized man. He cannot control the flood, nor
fight the fire. Disease to him is the act of a hostile power.
His cattle die, or his crops are blighted by the anger of
the gods, where the civilized man sees only microbes. And
this process of collective action on the ills, and collective
bearing of the burden of mishap, obviously must develop
until men may walk with little fear, and much confidence
that whatever befalls them beyond their individual power
to prevent, the whole power of society will automatically
remedy, not by way of charity, but by way of mutual
protection and organization.

There remains the position of the individual as con-
sumer and as producer. With the former we have but
little concern here, although it is precisely in this field
that the most momentous developments may be expected
in the future. For on the organization of the consumer de-
pends the successful coordination of the productive power
of society, and its rescue from the arena of hap-hazard
struggle in which it now exists. Upon this organization also
depends the substitution of a sane and ordered finance
for our present method, which suggests the collection
of eggs by a farmer from under haystacks and barns and
from all manner of odd corners wherever the hens hap-

264 The Unpopular Review

pened to lay them, and then the assembly of the col-
lected eggs in enormous masses, whereby breakages on a
great scale are in frequent danger of happening. This,
however, is beyond our present field of inquiry, though
the new development of " Mutual Credit" shows that
in this field also new ferments are working.

We are thus left face to face with the question of the
individual in his function as producer. Now the most
general term in which we can express the tendency that
seems in the air with regard to him is unquestionably
the transformation of the productive unit from an organi-
zation of master and servant to an organization, such
as we have seen has already been developed widely in
agriculture, of voluntary and independent associates.
Of course, this culmination is a long way off, as yet.
Industry requires an infinitely more complex organiza-
tion than does agriculture, though probably, as time
goes on, some of its present complexity will be lost, and
simplification ensue.

We cannot avoid the issue once we get it squarely
presented to our minds. Are we to assist in the trans-
formation of men into "hands" or the development of
"hands" into men? And if we believe that it is our duty
to assist and not hinder the coming of economic democracy,
what is it in our power to do, consistently with present
responsibilities, to foster the coming of the change?

Again we must have resource to very general terms in
an attempt to solve this problem. For what we are alone
able to do is to encourage a social force that is working
out its own ends. We may hinder it, or we may remove
obstacles from its path. But we do not know enough
about its working (or that of any social force) to control
it actively. We are not called on at this stage to consider
the type of the future organizations that it will bring
forth, although we might guess at these, too, if necessary.

Nor can we consider problems arising out of the present
uncoordinated condition of industry. At present whole

The Future of Industry 265

productive units may be swept away, bought up, forced
out of the running, subjected to operations much like
those of predatory warfare. It is obvious that such a
fate for any productive unit does not depend at all on
its internal organization. It happens because industry
as a whole is not organized in the same way as each pro-
ductive unit is organized within itself. The answer to
part of the problem will be found, as already suggested,
in the coordination of industry by the association of
consumers, and the application of searching statistical
methods so that productive energy will not be applied
where it is not wanted, but precisely where it is wanted.

The great English cooperative consumers' movement,
with its annual turnover of $500,000,000 in household
and domestic supplies is, of course, an example confined
to a particular field. The agricultural societies that pur-
chase seeds, fertilizers, and machinery for their constituent
members are an example in another field. It is not un-
thinkable that such organizations may be extended, area
by area until the principal fields of consumption are
covered. This would bring about an immense steadying
of industry and a great decrease of speculative entry
into any productive field in which there was really no
need for additional productive facilities.

Our problem is, here, confined to the relations of men
associated for production within a productive unit, and
the encouragement of whatever social force is at work
to transform such units from the present type to a true
democratic type of free associates. Not actually to trans-
form them, be it understood, but to give free play to the
forces that seem to be acting in the direction of so transforming
them at some future time. There is a difference between
these two aims. The first is Utopian; the second within
the bounds of practical possibility.

To begin with, it is necessary to distinguish between
the opportunity to rise and the opportunity to develop.
While it is, of course, most important that the avenue

266 The Unpopular Review

to higher positions shall be kept open and made available
as far as possible to members of the rank and file, it must
be recognized that this alone is no solution of the prob-
lem. Though every private may carry a marshal's baton
in his knapsack, it is obvious that very few can ever at-
tain possession of that baton. The law of average in
Human Faculty shows that the possession of capacity is
comparatively rare, and no amount of education, es-
pecially of the book-learning kind, can change the bear-
ing of this law. The important part of the problem is the
provision of opportunity for the rank and file to develop,
quite apart from the rise of certain units out of it. It is
action on the mass of ordinary men that is required, rather
than the cultivation of exceptional men, for the latter
are able to take care of themselves under any social or
economic system. In the closest autocracies men have
always risen from the ranks to high position, while the
condition of the bulk of the people has remained wretched
enough.

They must in some way be brought into the system,
while remaining relatively speaking, just a mass of
ordinary men. I wish to emphasize this point, because
it is not always clearly perceived. Many persons suppose
that some equilibrium can be reached by arranging that
the ordinary man shall have an opportunity of rising
above his fellows. They lay stress on night schools, edu-
cational facilities, libraries, and so forth, and believe that
these agencies are really all that are necessary to give
contentment. These are excellent institutions of course,
particularly if they effect a general rising of the level
of education throughout the mass. But they no more
affect the main question than one can affect the level of
a reservoir by pouring in a few buckets of water.

In the same way, no permanent equilibrium can be
expected from the introduction of special forms of wage
remuneration. The tendency of organized labor is to
oppose these, just because organized labor has a very

The Future of Industry 267

clear view of what it is after, and that is not the cultiva-
tion of exceptional men. In as far as injudicious employers
yield to the temptation to force the pace by setting up
standards of performance based on the work of the most
skilful and energetic men, organized labor is found, natu-
rally enough, in bitter opposition to these special forms of
remuneration. The meaning of this attitude should be
dispassionately examined by employers. It is not due
to a desire to prevent its own members from reaping the
fullest reward of their capacity, but to a fear that their
general class solidarity will be to some extent disrupted
by the separation of the interests of the more capable
men from those of the less capable.

As no such individual jealousy is exhibited towards
those members who pass out of the ranks of the class into
the higher organization, it is evident that we have here an
attitude that is dictated by some very strong perception
of consequences. What these are there can be no manner
of doubt. Men who pass into the higher organization
are lost to the rank and file, it is true, but they are in no
sense competing with the internal interests of the rank
and file. They may acquire different and even to some
extent antagonistic interests, but they are not doing the
same work as those who remain. Now the man of special
capacity who earns large bonuses is doing the same work
as his fellows. He is getting a larger share of the wage
fund than they. They regard him as taking away from
his fellows work that they would otherwise have an op-
portunity to do. In the long run this is always a fallacy.
Demand tends to rise in proportion as cost falls, and the
superior man's larger wages come from product that would
not exist but for his superior capacity; but from the
peculiar and personal point of view of the employee it is
difficult to attain this perspective. Organized labor clings
to the doctrine, however often it may be exploded, and
more particularly dreads the possibility of cleavage in its
own ranks that might sometime arise therefrom.

268 The Unpopular Review

We may take it, then, that, however valuable it might be
economically, organized labor will not accept the proffer of
opportunity for the individual to rise, as any substitute
for opportunity to develop as a class. Unfortunately at
that point its contribution to the problem generally ends.
It can bring forward no constructive plans, save a general
attitude of watchful waiting for opportunity to force
wages up. But as a general rise of wages has no other
effect than to induce a general rise of prices, it is evident
that this process is simply a vicious circle, and that not
only can labor never gain on the higher organization of
industry by such means, but that the contest is one that
must continue for ever, with all its attendant loss, bitter-
ness, and misery.

A little consideration of this problem shows that it has
many solutions, or at least partial solutions. These may
vary all the way from modest attempts at group remunera-
tion — such as for example a dividend on wages to all
the members of a specific function, e. g., the power
plant, dependent on the general efficiency reached in
any period — up to general profit-sharing schemes in
which dividends are set aside in such a way that the work-
ers gradually acquire a share in the ownership of the
business. To begin with, such a form of organization
is obviously but little removed from present forms, and
that in fact is its chief point of interest. But that it af-
fords a bridge over which industry may pass by steady
development from master-and-servant to more coopera-
tive forms is more than probable. Its hopefulness lies
in the educative influence brought to bear on the ordinary
man, and in the intensified economic value his services
thus acquire, without separating him from his class.

Such an outcome is not a mere figment of the imagina-
tion. Apart from the classic examples of the Godin Iron-
works and other well-known French cooperative estab-
lishments, a great deal of experiment along the lines of
cooperative production has taken place in England.

The Future of Industry 269

This has taken two forms, one a type of organization per-
mitting the workers to acquire an interest in the busi-
ness — a type that has been introduced with considerable
success in the United States also — and another a type
which may be described as purely democratic, in which
the workers themselves are voluntarily associated, elect
their own "bosses," and carry on business for themselves.
Over loo of these latter societies exist in England and
Scotland at the present time, with an aggregate turnover
of some $21,000,000. Many of them have existed for
years, and have always exhibited healthy growth. It is
a significant fact that those most successful are more or
less closely affiliated with the great cooperative consumers'
movement spoken of above.

The subject cannot be fully considered without taking
into account the presence in the field of the systematic
organization of Labor in Trade Unions. The trade union
is the outgrowth of the general dissociation of interests
between the mass of the workers and the higher organiza-
tion of industry. It is based on the idea that while the
individual is very weak and helpless as compared with
this higher organization, a sufficiently strong combina-
tion of workers is able to establish and maintain standards
of wages and hours beyond what would otherwise be
conceded. Though their way of doing this is commonly
based on the procedure of "trial and error," and is con-
sequently very disturbing to industry and in fact is not
infrequently unjust to individual employers, there seems
no reason why, by degrees, they should not bring them-
selves to cooperate with employers in a veritable indus-
trial parliament, based on the principle of opportunity
to develop, rather than on opportunity to rise.

A platform of greater confidence, and interchange of
views between organized labor and the higher organiza-
tions of particular industries, would give rise to a higher
type of Unionism, and also to a more uniformly higher
view on the part of employers. Mr. Carroll D. Wright

270 The Unpopular Review

has observed that the larger and better organized Unions
are more disposed to be reasonable than the smaller and
weaker ones. In the same way regular cooperation and
discussion between workers and employers would bring
to the front men on both sides of large caliber, and assist
in relegating to the background the hot-heads and irrec-
oncilables who can never see reason.

The foregoing discussion may now be summed up, and
a general view taken of the influences at work in the
modern world. In the first place the difficulty of the
position of the American manufacturer must be recog-
nized. His is not an easy task. Compared with his
contemporaries in European countries, where the mass
of workers have a common tradition, a common standard
of life, and a common language, the material on which
he has to work is not at first sight a promising one. But
on the other hand he has some advantages that the others
have not. The pace is faster, the atmosphere more elec-
tric, the desire to progress more intense. The mistakes
and even the bitternesses of yesterday are more quickly
passed by and forgotten in the aspirations towards the
future — though this may work in two directions, pro-
ducing a more constant tension and expectation of dis-
turbance as well. Nevertheless, on the whole his ad-
vantages are perhaps greater than those of his European
confreres. And he himself is less bound by tradition,
less certain that he is of other clay than those he em-
ploys. Perhaps on the whole, he is far more sympathetic
with the idea that opportunity to develop as well as op-
portunity to rise shall be provided as rapidly as possible.

Next we observe that the movement toward consolida-
tion of industry, whatever the evils that arise from the
present form of that consolidation, is due to the steady
pressure of an impulse that cannot be denied or turned
back — the necessity for coordinating the external re-
lation of productive units just as their interior mechanism
has already been coordinated. The answer to the abuses

The Future of Industry 271

of this tendency will probably be found, not in legislative
attempts to turn back the tide, but in a corresponding
coordination of consumers' demands in the future, per-
haps no very distant future in some cases. Such co-
ordination will probably be piece-meal, and by no means
nation-wide, at any rate to begin with. The example
of what has been done in England in this connection
was introduced as a proof that the tendency exists, and
is not merely an academic possibility.

It was also noticed that the principle of cooperation
has passed in the case of agriculture into three streams
of influence — common purchase; common manufacture,
as in creameries and bacon factories; and common mar-
keting. The progress made in some cases can only be
described as truly revolutionary. It has also been intro-
duced into that most tangled of all modern problems -
finance. Mutual credit, as yet largely, though not wholly,
confined to agricultural operations, is the germ of a force
that cannot fail to transform industrial relations also
when the time arrives for its application in that direction.

Finally, the relations between the higher organization
of industry, and the mass of workers as producers were
considered. The difference between opportunity to rise
and opportunity to develop is an important one. The
latter is the crucial question at the present time. The
desire to preserve solidarity of interests within the ranks
of the workers was noted as a phenomenon that must be
reckoned with and allowed for in any attempt to develop
higher forms of industrial organization. The organized
workers feel no interest in, but sometimes considerable
jealousy of, the work of their more skilful members, in
the fear that a dividing line of interests will thus be
brought about in their own ranks. Thus we have or-
ganized labor arrayed in more or less active opposition
to efficiency, and the dividing line between its ranks
and the higher industrial organization is to some extent
widened instead of closed. It asks for opportunity to

272 The Unpopular Review

develop as a class, rather than for opportunity to become
differentiated within the class, and thus disintegrate its
present solidarity.

In the past twenty years, during which the present
writer has been closely in touch with the higher organiza-
tion of divers industries, a great change in the spirit of
the piece has become manifest. The more progressive
employers are awake to the fact that the basic relation
on which factory production was originally founded
during the so-called industrial revolution, needs alteration.
It is unfortunately true that the Trade Unions have not
advanced in equal degree. They have very little construc-
tive theory — there is even a tendency in some quarters
to revert to earlier types of obstruction, not merely by
strikes, but by sabotage and wilful damage. No progress
can be made that way: for the theory on which such
action is based is an anti-social one, and therefore fore-
doomed to failure.

The true line of development is therefore seen to be
some form of organization capable of being applied to
existing productive units — since the form of organiza-
tion obviously controls the direction of development —
that will not merely allow, but foster, an increasing soli-
darity of interest between the workers as workers and the
higher organization of industry. In this way alone can
the eventual democratization of the economic relation
be brought about. Such organization can only be de-
veloped by experiment,- and in its experimental working
out, it is important that both organized labor and the
higher organization of industry shall be more mutually
helpful and less mutually suspicious. That such a de-
velopment can be successfully attained only by mutual
cooperation, and not by paternalism, seems essentially
true.

MODEST MODERNIST PAPERS

//. Civics, Morals, and Religion

3

THE Modest Modernist in civic life, O Polycles, is
cheerful. He is a good hoper. The worst thing
he can think of to call you, and the easiest, besides "be-
hind the times," is "pessimist." He himself is an op-
timist. If you call him an "incorrigible" optimist, his
cup runs over. He will tell you that he is an optimist on
principle. He will say it loud enough for all the neighbors
to hear.

This is why the Modest Modernist never has doubts.
He can not afford to have doubts. Doubts would under-
mine his optimism, and Modest Modernism without
optimism is nothing. If the facts will not justify his
theories, the facts must take the consequences. With
him, theories are stubborn things.

The Modest Modernist considers the present an infinite
improvement upon the past. At times, however, he is
unable to look upon the present with that perfect satis-
faction which is the bliss of Modest Modernism. That
is because the web of the present has, inextricably woven
into it, so many rotten threads of the past. With the
tendency of the present, however, and with the promise
of the future, it is different. In them he has the most
unquestioning faith. Whatever is going to be, is going
to be right. We are on the way, he will tell you, we are
on the way as never before. He knows now that we shall
really arrive at the foot of the rainbow. He knows be-
yond _all doubt that the pot of gold is there in reality.
In a generation or two, in a decade or two, in a year or
two, we shall be dividing the treasure. The golden age

273

274 The Unpopular Review

heretofore has always been in the remote past. Now, the
golden age is in the near future. He says we are moving
rapidly, and will soon be there.

The Modest Modernist says, Why should we not soon
arrive, with all the appliances and means this greatest
of all ages affords? He will tell you of the wonderful
abundance of twentieth century devices. He will talk
of steam, of electricity, of radium. He will ask you
to think of the precision of modern machinery, of the
aeroplane, of wireless, and of the marvels of medicine
and surgery.' He kindles. He glows. He will ask
you to think of the intellectual advances of the age -
of college and university, of library and museum and
special foundation, of the availability and universality,
as well as the range, of modern knowledge. He will
ask you to consider especially the possibilities of the
social sciences. He tells you of eugenics, hygienics, hu-
manics, euthenics, agonistics, dietetics, economics, agro-
nomics, scientific management. He says that the poor
ignorant past had none of these things. He asks what
may not come of wireless ? He says some day we shall all
have pocket wireless. He asks what may not come of
postum or peanut flour or educator crackers, or fletcher-
ism? He says once do away with dyspepsia, and we shall
all be optimists. He asks what may not come of mental
therapeutics? He asks what may not come of scientific
management? He says some day we shall be able to
measure the professor and the minister, and know at last
whether we are really getting our money's worth of culture
and religion. He asks what may not come of eugenics?
He says we breed twelve-thousand-dollar cows and hogs
now, and some day shall have a race of men and women
who will not be ashamed to stand before a Guernsey or a
Poland China.

The Modest Modernist foresees universal health, uni-
versal enlightenment. He foresees universal brotherhood,
universal justice. The means are abundant. And the

Modest Modernist Papers 275

method is simple. He says, Get together! Organize! He says
the past is the old grandfather's clock: "Ke-e-ep a-part!
Ke-e-ep a-part!" but the present is the lively little clock
that cheerfully clicks away: "Get-to-gether, get-to-gether,
get-to-gether ! " So he says, Get together! Organize a move-
ment. Call it by some alliterative title, like the Civic
Center, or the Clean-up and Lift-up. Have meetings
every two weeks, every week. Have a center in every
ward. Make use of every schoolhouse. Get together!
Talk things over. Appoint committees. Discover abuses.
Discuss them. Correct them! Become universally in-
telligent, universally patriotic. Have city and county
organizations, with city and county secretaries. Have
the county organizations organized into a state organiza-
tion with a state secretary. Have the state organizations
organized into a national organization with a national
secretary. Have meetings every week in every school-
house in the land. Have city, county, and state conven-
tions. Have publications. Have travelling secretaries.
Have missionaries. Organize all North America. Or-
ganize South America. Organize Europe. Organize the
world! Have an international organization, international
secretaries, international publications. Agitate. Peti-
tion. Get laws onto the statute books. Make it a crim-
inal offense for a man not to be patriotic, for a man not
to cast his vote, not to be temperate, not to be progressive,
not to be eugenic, not to be optimistic. Organize! Agi-
tate! Exert pressure. Use the God-given opportunity.
Use the God-given instrumentalities of the greatest age
of history!

Use the movie, for example. The dynamic present has
the movie, where the criminal, static past had only Raphael
and his crowd of church illustrators. The Modest Mod-
ernist addresses "scenario writers, producers, photoplay
actors, endowers of exquisite films, sects using special
motion pictures for a predetermined end, all you who are
taking the work as a sacred trust." He says: "Consider

276 The Unpopular Review

what it will do to your souls, if you are true to your trust.
Every year . . . new visions will come, new prophecies
will come. You will be seasoned spirits in the eyes of the
wise. . . . You will be God's thoroughbreds. ... It
has come, then, this new weapon of men, and the face of
the whole earth changes. In after centuries its beginning
will be indeed remembered. It has come, this new weapon
of men; and by faith and a study of the signs we proclaim
that it will go on in immemorial wonder."

The Modest Modernist is so optimistic that the neigh-
bors grow pessimistic. There is only about so much of
optimism in nature, and he absorbs so much that others
have to go without. One of them says to him : "But there
is the war. The war is rending the world as war never yet
has done. And this is the New war, too. Don't blame it
upon the past. It is part and parcel of the New Progress.
It uses New guns, New ships, New methods on sea and
land. It is Big Business and Efficiency glorified. It navi-
gates the depths. It navigates the sky. It kills by mil-
lions. It boasts of its destructiveness. It practices the
New atrociousness. It is based on the New morality: it
justifies offense against the law because offense seemed
necessary means to an end; it denies a power above the
individual nation. It justifies its frightfulness with the
New logic. It even concedes the New equality of sex: it
punishes a woman as it would a man. It murders in cold
blood the sex that has always been helpless against the
impulse to rescue men from danger of death or
slavery."

The Modest Modernist explains it all in one breath. He
says the war is not a New war. It is really an Old war.
It is the malevolent past at work again. But he says it
is the last gasp of the past. There are going to be, as a
result of this war, the most momentous changes in every
department of human activity that the world has ever
seen. This is the last war. After this war is over, war
will no longer be allowed.

Modest Modernist Papers 277

The Modest Modernist is for keeping things stirred up.
He is restless by nature, and he is restless also on principle.
He is sure that all progress means change. He is equally
sure that all change means progress. If you express a
doubt, he calls you a pessimist, or a knocker, or a grouch.
He says nothing was ever accomplished without the
spirit of boost. He will tell you with an air of gentle com-
passion to bury your hammer and go buy a horn. The
conservative and him that loveth repose his soul hateth.
For him, the peace that passeth understanding has no
charm. Peace is static. He believes only in the dynamic.
He must see things happening. He is a Doer of the word,
not a Hearer only. The M^V ayav, the "nothing in ex-
cess" of the ancient Greek, is all Greek to him. His
motto is "Something Doing!" He likes to be called a man
who does things. He says this is the age of the man who
does things.

The Modest Modernist is always in motion. He is the
apostle of movement, and the apostle of movements. He
flits from movement to movement. He is always buzzing,
sipping, and darting away to fresh flowers. He keeps the
rest of the world in movement — in neighborhood move-
ments and national movements; in civic and patriotic
movements; in theological, pedagogical, sociological, and
illogical movements; in dietetic, philanthropic, micro-
scopic, and myopic movements. Every one of them is in
turn "the most vital, the most far-reaching, the most
comprehensive, and altogether the most momentous ever
initiated in this community."

The Modest Modernist says, "Do you know?" and "Do
you realize?" a great many times when he tells you this.
He makes frequent use of the word "constructive." He
says: "Do you realize, my friends, that you and I, in this
very community and at this very hour, are inaugurating
a movement which contains greater constructive possi-
bilities for the cause of civic and social betterment than
all other present and past movements combined?" He

278 The Unpopular Review

says in parenthesis that he "speaks advisedly." He says
it is strange no one ever thought of this before. He says
all great things are simple. The Modest Modernist is
talkative. There are some who call him Chautauquative.

With all this Doing and Talking to occupy him, it is
not strange that the Modest Modernist has little time for
Hearing. Neither his profession nor his nature allows
contemplation. He does not believe in contemplation,
anyway. Contemplation is not dynamic. Contempla-
tion is static. Contemplation is paralyzing. The man
who contemplates, along with the woman who hesitates,
is bound to be lost. The man who looks before he leaps
is likely never to leap at all — and what becomes then of
action, of change, of progress, of evolution, and of " Some-
thing Doing?"

The Modest Modernist does not believe in standing by
and philosophizing on the procession of life. The past
did that, and the past, as usual, was wrong. The Modest
Modernist gets into the procession. He carries a banner.
He shouts and waves his arms. He doesn't believe in
bystanders. To be in the procession, that is the thing, and
to be shouting and waving. Even if the results are not
wholly definite and satisfactory, shout and wave never-
theless. Be seen and heard. Above all, be optimistic. To
seem to be doing something keeps up the glow that goes
with real achievement. The Modest Modernist says we
must keep up the glow anyway, because sometime the
opportunity for really doing something may come, and
then we shall need it. This is his reply to the bystander
who says he can see little else accomplished than a noisy
march around the square back to the place where the
procession started.

The Modest Modernist is not really opposed to thinking.
It is only a certain kind of thinking that he does not like —
the slow, laborious, fettered, enslaved, pessimistic kind of
the dead past. Thinking is all right in itself, but it must

Modest Modernist Papers 279

be free. It must be quick. It must be optimistic. It
must be dynamic. Above everything else, it must be
translated into movement.

The dynamic, instantaneous thinking of the Modest
Modernist has made startling discoveries. It has dis-
covered that hanging does not really reform the criminal,
and that the imprisonment of the husband and father is
really punishment of the wife and children. It has dis-
covered that it is not the girl who is at fault, but the
employer who does not give her a salary large enough for
the beauty-boxes and millinery she craves; that it is not
the daughter who is guilty, but the mother or the school
teacher who fails to instruct her in sex; and that, in gen-
eral, it is no more you that sin, but sin that dwelleth in
your environment, or in your digestion, or in your grand-
father's digestion.

To put it in other words, the Modest Modernist has
discovered that you sin in spite of yourself, and because
of what society throws around you, and what your grand-
father left you for a legacy. As both your grandfather
and present society are creations of the past, the Modest
Modernist makes it plain that here again we have only
another case of the clammy, chilling touch of the long dead
hand. It could hardly be clearer that there is no such
thing as individual responsibility for sin. Therefore let
him that stole steal some more.

Besides, the Modest Modernist has discovered that sin
is after all not so exceedingly sinful. He will tell you that
morality is only a conventional thing. The morals of
one age or one environment are not identical with those
of other ages and other environments. There is no such
thing as absolute morality. The whole thing is merely a
matter of evolution. He will tell you that standardized
morals and the laws based upon them are full of injustice,
and need not be taken too seriously. He says that hunger,
thirst, pugnacity, and the sex instinct are all universal
and in accord with nature, and that the moral or statute

280 The Unpopular Review

law which curbs them, being contrary to nature, is there-
fore tyranny. We are all serfs in the bondage of custom.
We are all slaves to phrase. Before we can really progress,
we must emancipate ourselves. The Modest Modernist
is always for breaking some of the shackles. Sometimes
he breaks them all. In his thoroughly emancipated state,
he is a free thinker, a free liver, a free lover, and an
anarchist.

The Modest Modernist has startled us most of all by
discovering that the Church is not perfect. He has found
out that her message falls on heedless ears, and that the
ears themselves are not to blame. He tells us that the
church does not minister to the poor or tell the truth to
the criminal rich. He himself doesn't belong to church.
He knows that you can pray as well in the open as under
a roof, so he goes joy-riding on Sunday morning. He
knows that sermons are not the only means of grace, and
goes to the movies on Sunday evening. If in the pulpit,
he feels constrained to leave the ministry. He becomes
the secretary of a movement. He can't see why all
ministers don't do the same thing. He publishes an ar-
ticle in a magazine and says so. If he remains in the
pulpit, he cries out against the prim, old-fashioned,
starched, stereotyped, static, aristocratic, dogmatic, hi-
eratic, Sundayfied religion of the unilluminated past. He
institutes the super-institutional church. He provides
billiards, basket ball, baths, and a bar, smokes during
spiritual consultations, goes in for slang and common
sense in sermons, slaps God on the back in prayer, becomes
the people's friend, and denounces bankers, college pro-
fessors, and other prosperous and well-dressed men.

The Modest Modernist is not always consistent. This
is true especially as regards the rich and the poor, the
leaders and the led, the strong and the weak. It may be
that this is because consistency is a jewel known to Shake-
speare, and therefore another property of the past. In

Modest Modernist Papers 281

men who are in prison, the Modest Modernist assumes
virtue the victim of environment, that is, of society, that
is, of the tyranny of the past. In men who are in the pul-
pit, on the other hand, he sees criminal connivance with
the oppressive powers of a corrupt social regime. His
faith in the common man and the submerged is equalled
only by his distrust of the prominent and well-to-do. He
finds it easy to speak of "God's patient poor," and "the
criminal rich," and "the predatory rich." He knows per-
fectly well, not only that everything has an economic
basis, but that everybody who has more money or brisker
brains or cleaner clothes than anyone else, is engaged in
a vast conspiracy, in which the capitalist is the arch
plotter, to exploit humble and defenceless virtue. He will
assume virtue in the obscure who ask for the overturn
of the established order, but he will assume villainy in
legislature, cabinet, court, pulpit, and college hall. He
will assume virtue in nature's production of passion in
the individual, but not in nature's production of the
social order. He will regard the social order as the product
of man alone, and charge the origination and perpetuation
of its faults to a selfish, guilty, and conspiring past. He
teaches, O Polycles, distrust of the leaders of men, living
and dead.

It is easy to forget, in the presence of loud exaggeration,
that really good citizenship is the mean of extreme inno-
vation and extreme conservatism. The really good citi-
zen is neither progressive nor conservative; he is both
progressive and conservative. He is the Platonic ideal:

He sets in order his own inner life and is his own master, and
at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the
three principles (wisdom, courage, temperance) . . . when he
has bound together all these, and is no longer many, but has
become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature,
then he will begin to act.

282 The Unpopular Review

The Modest Modernist does not bind together wisdom,
courage, and temperance, or take the trouble of becoming
a temperate and adjusted nature, or even try to find out
what these things mean. He must act at once, and it is
easier to act without knowing too much He is not un-
educated. He is what, in matters of leadership, is prob-
ably worse: he is half educated. Even if he knows the
facts about the past he despises, he still fails to compre-
hend what the facts teach about human affairs. He dis-
courses about the most momentous questions with the
glibness of omniscient inexperience. He has no concep-
tion of the immensity of time and the slowness of the
human advance. He does not know that the awakening
of mankind to the mere idea of law and the common good
was a matter, not of centuries, but of cycles. He has no
conception of the reality and the earnestness of human
experience. He does not know that a thousand years in
the life of the greatest law-making nation of ancient or
modern times preceded the great code that still underlies
the life of western civilization. He never thinks of tradi-
tion as the product of the collective sincere effort of the
race through ages of warm-blooded living. He rarely
realizes either the difficulty of his purpose, or the futility of
artificial reform, or the actual virtues of that which he
seeks to displace. He does not realize that

Born into life, 't is we,
And not the world, are new;
Our cry for bliss, our plea,
Others have urged it too —
Our wants have all been felt, our errors made before.

Let it be understood that when the spectator ridicules
the pretensions of the Modest Modernist it is not because
of hostility toward progress, and not because of love for
Musty Conservatism. Let us be fair, and as charitable
as the facts will permit. The Modest Modernist is not
invariably the incumbent of a well-salaried position

Modest Modernist Papers 283

created by the last legislature or board of education as a
result of his own agitation, and now engaged in justifying
and perpetuating himself. He is not invariably the can-
didate consumed with zeal for the people whose votes he
is asking for. He is not invariably the play-writer or
manager staging highly remunerative drama for the up-
lifting of the public morals. He is not invariably the
movie-producer filled with the burning desire to instruct
the young and edify the old. He is not always the novelist
who makes money by benevolent instruction of the public
in the Things of Sex as They Are; nor always the poet
unselfishly blazing the way to freedom and notoriety; nor
always the painter or critic thirsting for fame or con-
spiring to stimulate a jaded market; nor always the pro-
fessional investigator who will guarantee results at $25
a day and expenses, with reduced rates by the year and
to especially corrupt universities.

There is a great deal of this kind of Modernism, but it
is far from constituting the whole body. Without the
generous soil of a more or less genuine support among
citizens at large, the Modest Modernist could never
flourish. Let us go farther, and say that even at his
noisiest, he is actuated largely, like the rest of the world,
by the sincere and impatient desire for the good.

Yet, granting even so that the heart of the Modest
Modernist is right, the citizen of temperate and adjusted
nature resents no less being called upon to contribute
money, time, and energy to the " get-good-quick" schemes
of undisciplined enthusiasm. He resents the profession-
alization of civic virtue, the formalization and commercial-
ization of optimism, the exploitation of popular credulity
and distrust, the condemnation of his faith in the rectitude
of the average man and in the virtue of social institu-
tions approved by the test of time. He resents preten-
tious claims to perfection. He resents the substitution of
promises for the future for results of the past. He resents
quackery, whether it is the ingenuous quackery of well-

284 The Unpopular Review

meaning ignorance, or the calculating quackery of the
parasite. He agrees with Carlyle:

"Of human Criminals, in these centuries, writes the
Moralist, I find but one unforgivable: the Quack. 'Hate-
fuf to God,' as divine Dante sings, 'and to the Enemies of
God,

A Dio spiacente ed a* nemici sui.'r

Let us be sensible. The past lives on. Neither men
nor ages wholly die. Their thought lives on — in monu-
ments and literature. Their emotions live on — in art
and institutions. Their blood lives on. The past of the
race is as truly a part of the living present as the past of
the individual body and soul is part of their present. All
time, all existence, is a unit.

It is not possible to escape the past. It is not necessary
to resent the past. Our debt to the dead is our debt to
civilization. But for them we should still be untamed
beasts of the field and forest, hiding from other beasts.
They discovered for us the secrets of fire, the means of
safety from heat and cold and savage enemy, the benefits
of tillage, the conveniences of law and business, the art
of healing. They wrought out for us the higher goods -
the pleasures, the alleviations, the consolations, the in-
spirations, of religion, philosophy, and the arts.

We need not accept blindly, and preserve unchanged
in every detail, the bequest of the past. The course of
error is not yet run. All good things were at one time
new, and at all times some new thing may be good. But
we must accept the bequest substantially as it comes, and
employ all care in its use.

There are eternal, immovable verities. Without regard
for the truth, without patriotism, without some manner
of dwelling in the secret presence of the Most High, with-
out a measure of love for the beautiful in nature, in art,
and in conduct, no people has ever wrought either its
own happiness or the good of its neighbors.

Modest Modernist Papers 285

Let us lend a philosophic and sympathetic ear to the
message of the dead. They tell us that nothing they ever
gained was won without the travail of experience. They
tell us of painful, useless steps, which we need not take
again. They tell us to expect evil along with good. They
tell us that evil itself is an eternal verity, inherent in the
organized life of men, inseparable from it — as much the
work of nature as the natural world itself. They counsel
eternal struggle against it, but only intelligent struggle —
for ends that are clearly seen, by means not already shown
to be futile, in the temper of them that prove all things
but hold fast to that which is good.

There is no panacea. We may alleviate, but not
eliminate. To avoid suffering is no more possible than to
avoid truth or beauty. Truth is eternal, lies are inherent;
beauty is eternal, ugliness inherent. With the good, comes
evil ; with happiness, come struggle, hardship, and pain. No
man can be master of men, in ever so little, without some
man being in like degree a slave. The ministered unto
must have the minister. No man can lead unless other
men follow.

Civilization is the Great Compromise. It has freed us
from many tyrannies, but at cost of many enslavements.
It has rescued us from the perils of savagery, and taught
us comfort and enjoyment, and has taken from us the
health and the liberty of the beast. By the institution of
property it has freed us from the evils of wandering, in-
stability, and sloth, and with property has involved us
in the ambition, poverty, avarice, discontent, and abuse
that inevitably follow in its train. It has given us liberty
and leisure to dream and to do, and enmeshed us in a
thousand petty artificialities. It has taught us many
inventions to relieve us from toil, and laid on our backs
the burden of a thousand anxieties. The history of
civilization is the history of the sufferings undergone for
the sake of liberty, and of the slaveries inherent in liberty
acquired.

THE RIGHT TO LIFE

NOT so long ago, in one of our cities, an extremely
defective baby was allowed to die. Parent, sur-
geon, and a number of consulting doctors concurred in
the decision; and an operation calculated to keep the
unfortunate alive was not performed. Then the case
received publicity in the press. There were presently
reported a number of commendatory expressions from
competent sources, but the main result was a rather full
chorus of condemnation. Some of the objections were
reasonable enough: there was fear of the consequences of
the practice, if countenanced by silence or otherwise, rather
than disapproval of what was done in the actual case in
hand. But the voices that sounded their notes most con-
fidently were those which invoked religion and asserted
"the sacredness of life"; and there were minatory refer-
ences to the child's "natural right to life." It was
proposed to punish the surgeon attending — and most
probably he has been or will be punished, socially if not
by process of law.

Some people hurried to the biographical records and
collected names of defectives who later became useful
to their communities. There was a show of reason here,
but the fact that kinds and degrees of defectiveness were
not specified gave to this proceeding the appearance of
a swift grasp at analogy — hasty, sketchy, uncritical,
impressionistic — in the interest of prepossession. Anal-
ogy is, by its nature, an instrument of exposition rather
than of reasoning.

What this predominating type of objector was expres-
sing was his sentiment rather than his reasoned opinion;
his prepossessions rather than his cool judgment. It is
of these prepossessions that I wish to speak — these
traditional ways of looking at things, which are not ques-

286

The Right to Life 287

tioned but become a matter of feeling rather than of
intellect. In this case the prepossessions assert that life is
"sacred," or is a thing to which everyone has a "natural"
right. Much of this sort of thing is heard, from certain
sources, every time there is a murder-trial followed by
a sentence of death, and again after the execution of that
sentence. We are not now discussing the whole case
against capital punishment, nor yet the whole case re-
specting the treatment of a defective infant; but only
the attitude toward both cases, or either, which results
from the assumption of the "sacredness" of life or from
that of a "natural right to life."

"But," says some suspicious reader, "hold on a min-
ute. Do I understand that you mean to assault the idea
of human brotherhood, of pity and mercy and sympathy,
of humanitarianism in general?" By no means. Anyone
who is at all conversant with the past of the race knows
that such sentiments are the product of a long course of
social evolution and may be taken to have demonstrated
their "survival value." They represent the view of life
and things that has automatically formed around a cer-
tain stage in that evolution. Humanitarianism attends
this age, just as the philosophy of repression or of en-
franchisement of the joy of life has accompanied other
stages. But such a sentiment, though broadly accordant
with conditions, easily lends itself to deductions as to
conduct which readily run out into extreme variations, or
sentimentality. Such variations need control, if the senti-
ment of the period is to correspond with the actual con-
ditions of the society's life, and not with something that
"never was on sea or land." Otherwise we get a dishar-
mony of thought and fact, dogmatism, and all the sterile
word-churning that attends the resolve somehow to rec-
oncile the irreconcilable. Hence also pain, disillusion,
and discouragement, when it appears that life will not con-
form to theory, but goes hard on a theory that does not
conform to life. It is always ominous when men refuse to

288 The Unpopular Review

test up their life-theories on actual conditions — when
any philosophy of life has come to be regarded as a thing
set apart from criticism on the basis of facts, and from
reasoning in the light of them — when, in lieu of, or by
way of shrinking from, actual handling and free examina-
tion, refuge is taken in expressions such as "sacredness,"
or the "absolute," or the "natural."

For this is what men are wont to do when they resent
the examination of cherished ideas, and yet, as they cast
vaguely about, see no definite case to support them. They
take refuge in the supernatural, or in the "natural,"
meaning by the latter term that which was there from the
outset — inherent, innate, inalienable. It is this refuge
of those who assert the "sacredness" or the "natural
right" to life that we propose to examine. Perhaps we
can emerge with a clearer idea of what the actual and
undeniable right to life really is, and by what force it is
guaranteed.

If the sacredness of life means that, given by God, it
is sacred to Him, and cannot rightly be either taken away
or renounced, then we stand before a case of revelation,
and there is no object or use in arguing about it. In fact,
any possible accumulations, even of scientific evidence,
can be met by an assertion of the doctrine of mystery:
"what we believe may seem contrary to your knowledge
and science; it is, however, not contrary to them, but
above them."

If anyone believes, and wishes still to believe, that he
has had a revelation, no argument ever persuades him
that he has not. You can refer to the very Book of reve-
lation, but you are somehow evaded. Confront a Puritan
with the statement of Christ himself that "the sabbath
was made for man, not man for the sabbath, " and he does
just what the Pharisees did — takes refuge in the Old
Testament, and ignores the New. Then follow him up
and present a case, resting upon Old Testament support,
for slavery or polygamy; and watch him fly back to the

The Right to Life 289

New, and hunt out some passage which he thinks will
justify his views. And when you are done with him,
reflect upon the possibilities of elusion that inhere in
interpretation. Plainly here is no arena for the exercises
of reason.

But there are a good many people who accept current
traditional views without ever thinking of them as subject
to rational examination. They are, however, in theory,
willing enough to fall in with the so-called "law of parsi-
mony," which forbids us to have recourse to higher causes
when lower will explain. They do not need to account for
the crash of thunder by some ancient daemonistic theory.
To such it may be enlightening to reflect that the idea of
the sacredness of life did not exist in the earliest stages
of the evolution of the race; that it, and also the concep-
tion of the right of all to life, came to exist during that
evolution; and that we now know something about how
both ideas have come to be. It is permitted to explain
by lower causes how this eventuated — just as it is con-
ceded that we may now demonstrate geological sequences
without constant recourse to the supernatural, or the
"ascent of man" without a Miltonic Paradise and Fall.

There is a real right to life and a real sacredness to life,
just as there is a real right to property and a real sacred-
ness to it. There can be no objection to using these terms
if it is realized that the conceptions for which they stand
are a product of evolution, as are all the rest of our notions;
and if they are used as sound conceptions standing over
against tested social realities. But if these terms are go-
ing to be caught at irrationally and emotionally, as con-
venient weapons for or against what happens to please
or displease us, and especially if they are to be endowed
with some mystical content, then there is occasion for
protest. In connection with the case cited, they seem to
have been used, for the most part, in an unintelligent
manner; and objection to such use may well take the form
of a sketch of how they came to be.

290 The Unpopular Review

In the evolution of society it is the right to life which
was antecedent to the sacredness of life. Let us therefore
consider the former first. This right was not in nature;
man as man was not born with it. When certain philoso-
phers, in relatively modern times, got to reflecting upon
rights, they could see no origin for them in the evolution
of the race as they then conceived of it. But what
men cannot explain they are wont to refer to creation, or
nature, or "second-nature." The temper of these philoso-
phers, in revolt as they were against the rigidity and arti-
ficiality of an epoch just closing, was to get back to
nature. Hence they pronounced the right to life a
"natural right." Other natural rights were cited then,
and have been added unto since — to liberty; to the
pursuit of happiness; to procreation, or, at least, to
mating; to work; to leisure; to equality.

What can be said of the natural right to life can be said
of all natural rights, so-called, viz., there is no such thing.
A right is no right unless it is enforceable against some-
thing or somebody. How, then, enforce a "natural" right
to life? An unarmed man meets a tiger in the jungle. No
natural right to life will save him. His right is a minus
quantity if both man and beast are as nature fashioned
them. But the tiger's is positive — at any rate he is going
to live. This introduces us to the consideration that right
must have might behind it. "Might may not make right, "
says a forceful writer, "but it makes what is." The man,
meeting the tiger, has an enforceable right to life meas-
ured exactly by the degree of his superiority in might
over the beast. It becomes positive to man if he can kill
or drive away the antagonist; but that can be only if he
has fire, let us say, or an express rifle.

If the same thing were not true of the relations of man
and man, on the lowest stages of human development
known, what has just been said would be irrelevant.
Enemies had no rights at all, except those which they
gained over one another by force; least of all were their

The Right to Life 291

lives "sacred." And even within a peace-group there
were only acquired rights, guaranteed by a might which
was generally that of the group. What we find in the
actual cases, is that some — not all — had one or more
of the so-called natural rights, which they had got and
held in some way; and that those who had not the rights
did not sense any loss, or even lack, of natural privilege.
Slaves and women were not always chafing under a nat-
ural urge toward the recovery of what nature had given
them, to be "inalienably" theirs. They lived life as it
fell to them, and were not nearly so "sorry for themselves"
as we, projecting our ideas into their situation, and in
our sympathy, have been for them.

We have a right to a thing when the rest will hold off
and let us have it. The form of a right in favor of anyone
is a prohibition upon the rest against taking something
from him. But, as life goes, there must be power behind
this prohibition, or it does not work, and so there is no
right. Enemies, we have seen, had no acknowledged rights ;
and "enemy" meant anyone outside our own group: the
stranger, the hostis. Those who quote "Thou shalt not
kill" should take note that this did not mean "Thou
shalt not kill the Philistine." But within the "us-group,"
or the "in-group," there has developed a taboo against
killing certain people, or, at length, anyone whatsoever.
This, be it noted, has come out of social necessity, and
is not natural at all. A, a member of a savage tribe, is
killed by B, a fellow-member. Now A's relatives will
try to kill B, or, in default of B, any of B's relatives. This
makes a feud, as it goes on, and general internal strife.
Groups which permit that are weakened and fall before
those that forbid it — and the latter keep on forbidding
it as they extend their power. A steady process of societal
selection destroys the feud-habit, and what led to it.
Also, since B's relatives are endangered by his act, they
will feel a group-responsibility for him and for each other,
which will lead to restraint. Gradually the A's will not

292 The Unpopular Review

be assaulted by the now restrained B's. Then the A's
have a right to life. It is enforceable by the group at large.
The right to life is conceded for the sake of expediency,
unconsciously, and not planfully, but as the result of auto-
matic selection. Behind A stood avengers, ready to make
trouble. But those in a group who have no party to stand
up for them, have consequently no rights at all; the right
to their lives — and liberty and happiness — lies in the
hands of their master.

This is the way rights arose. They are not natural at
all, but societal. They do not occur outside of society;
Robinson Crusoe had no rights. They are not acquired
without protracted struggle and selection. They have
to be won or conferred by society. They are relative,
in the form they take, to the stage of civilization. At
first they have nothing to do with religion, and certainly
not with philosophy. They are not at all in the form in
which our age knows them, even when they exist at all. In
other words they are evolutionary — not absolute, im-
mutable, universal, inalienable, or anything of the sort.

Perhaps the right to life was as early as any other to
receive extension, at least to all grown men, throughout
the "in-group." The taboo that assures it is omitted at
peril of the group-existence. And as the smaller societies
were compounded and re-compounded, the scope of the
taboo widened. Not to take human life at all came at
length to be the desirable thing — the ideal, if you will.
The presumption has come to be that life shall not be taken
from anybody; that means that society concedes to all a
right to life. Or if life is taken, it shall be in the interest
of a superior and social desirable. This widened concep-
tion of a right to life is independent of laws and states,
but it is evidently a p'roduct of society's development
and of culture. It is historical of development and not at
all natural in the sense of primordial or instinctive. There
were always, even within the society, persons whose right
to life was not recognized as such; it was merged in the

The Right to Life 293

property right of their superiors and was long part of that
right. The patria potestas included rights to others' lives.
So that it needed the eye of speculation, never very keen
to detect awkward exceptions, and great ignorance of
the early stages of society's evolution, to elaborate a doc-
trine of the "natural right" to life. However, the philoso-
phers succeeded in getting the notion into people's un-
critical heads, and it persists, as a tradition, with great
tenacity.

The "sacredness" of life is an idea that follows upon
the right to life. All inhibitions that are old enough
receive religious sanction. Note the several proscriptions
of the tables of the Law. The ancestral spirits guarantee
the expediency-taboos — the rights that come, entirely
secularly, out of custom, precedent, and law — guarantee
them, as spirit-beings, with all the interest they had in
them as living men, but now with infinitely augmented
might. These taboos have come, under automatic selec-
tion, out of the growth and conflicts of custom and the
mores; but, now that they are sanctioned, to break them
is a sin against the supernatural powers. Thus a divine
guarantee comes to enfold the idea of life; together with
all other things thus enfolded, it becomes "set apart" or
"sacred." In the view of the early ages it is a possession
of the god, which it is not right for man to touch, any more
than an Ark of the Covenant.

Elaborations in theology have then followed, and to
any conceivable extent; and many people are as inalter-
ably convinced that God made life sacred as they are
that religion made, and makes, marriage; whereas religion
only sanctioned what already existed in fact, worked
out by selection, in the one case as in the other. This
is in no wise denying the great mystery of birth, life, or
death; face to face with such, let any man say "I know
not," or "I believe," as he may choose. All that is out-
side the field of science. We are here interested, not in

294 The Unpopular Review

speculating about how life began, or when it is to end,
but how the idea that life is sacred really evolved in
human history.

It is a fact, easily established by cases, that the idea of
the sacredness of life, if it is ascribed to primitive times
and peoples, is another instance of projecting our own
sentiments into the minds of other peoples whom we do
not understand. Savages see lives snuffed out all the
time, and as a sort of matter of course. We must remem-
ber that they are engaged in a real struggle for existence,
which civilization has, for us, turned into a mere name.
Society is now supposed to guarantee existence: if anyone
dies of hunger, or cold, or violence within the confines of a
state or city, it is a reproach to the community. But no
organization exists to guard primitive men against these
perils, and primitive people are familiar with death. Life
as life is not sacred at all; no idea exists that birth and
death are great mysteries, somehow divine; the capacity
for wonder is as yet undeveloped. It is at first astonishing
to discover the small valuation that is laid upon life,
either of others or of one's self. It is not so "precious"
that it thus becomes "sacred." Life is easily taken, and as
readily laid down. Suicide is committed under what seem
to us highly frivolous incitements. A Papuan, seeing from
a tree-top that his wife, at the foot of the tree, is smoking
up his cigarettes, casts himself down to death in a pet.
A debtor threatens a creditor that if he goes on persecut-
ing him, he will commit suicide on the creditor's threshold
and thereafter haunt the place. As cases prove, he will
carry out the first part of the threat; and the creditor is
sure enough that he will do both things, to be ready to
ease up on him. Nor do all highly civilized nations hold
life in such estimation as we do. Readers of Chinese and
Japanese history need not be told that the Oriental ideas
on this matter are not ours. They have a different philos-
ophy of life. Consider the practice of hara-kiri.

The Right to Life 295

To an age materially successful enough to philosophize
and be humanitarian, there appears to be some compelling
ethical reason, if not a religious one, to consider all these
matters of rights as somehow settled in some absolute
form, irrespective of circumstances. But there is no
valid reason for supposing that the course of social evolu-
tion has changed its mode and direction so that a right
no longer needs an enforcing might behind it. The right
to life could not have been, nor could it now be, without
the might of society to support it; no right in society that
is not so supported can persist. To judge of any case of
rights without considering the interests of society, and
where society's power in the matter is going to be put
forth, is to ignore the most vital factor in the field. The
very sacredness of life is a societal product; of what use
to play with the term, ignoring that which lends it con-
tent?

If preceding contentions are accepted, it is not sufficient
to approach a case with either of these phrases — "sa-
credness" or "natural right" — as a touch-stone. To
arrive at a sound judgment, it is necessary to renounce
phrases which are mere symbols, or of secondary intention,
and consider why society has developed its prescriptions
and prohibitions — to understand the essence of the social
provisions as to life-preserving and life-taking, and then
try to exercise rational judgment upon the particular
case in hand. Of course, as was said above, if it is pre-
ferred to renounce all rational procedure, and go back
at once and fully to revelation, that is as one wills; anyone
who wishes to do that will regard all that is said here as
superfluous. But the tendency has long been to seek
rational grounds, if only to justify revelation. The at-
tempt, however uncritical of its own cases, to show that
society stands at least a possible chance of losing a valua-
ble member by allowing an infant, however clearly de-
fective, to die, recognizes the interest of the society in
the quality of its members. Once it was thought that

296 The Unpopular Review

any approach to Malthusianism was all wrong and even
criminal; even continence could, by a logical extension,
be a crime against the souls waiting to be born, saved,
and glorified. This was a sort of quantitative theory of
life. But common sense, basing its findings upon actual
knowledge, and rejecting dogma, has come to see (and
perhaps to exaggerate) the social interest that lies in the
quality of life rather than in its quantity. When the social
interest projects itself clearly enough upon the scene, all
dogmas fall into the shadow and are at length dissipated.

Now the interest of society, through the ages, has been
an ever more successful adaptation to environment, re-
sulting in a rising standard of living. It has called for
members of a superior physical and mental character,
and for better organization. It has demanded quality.
Where the struggle to maintain the society has been se-
vere, the weak have had to be eliminated; men have both
practiced infanticide and killed the old; they have aban-
doned the sick. Even when the struggle was more success-
ful, and aimed at something more than mere existence,
a society has yet exposed its weakly infants, and refused
to burden the fit by making them support the unfit.
This policy has been successful, in the sense of permitting
the race to become what it has become. We must not
quarrel too much with the ladder upon which we have
climbed, nor hold in too great contempt its base degrees.

The age-long struggle has succeeded to a degree permit-
ting society, in some instances, to abrogate its own crite-
rion, ignore quality, and cast upon the fit, who support
it, a considerable burden of the unfit; also to develop a
number of so-called ethical theories of conduct, which,
if carried out to their logical conclusion, could mean only
destruction. It is only success and a surplus in the strug-
gle that allow of such departures from the mode of nature
and of the earlier ages. In these days one society even as-
pires to carry part of the burden of another — the "white

The Right to Life 297

man's burden." This is well enough while the struggle
goes well. But it is dangerous, and may bring disaster
if the complexion of the struggle changes. What can be
done by a comparatively new country, with great natural
resources, cannot be done later on; a young man cannot
expect at fifty or sixty to bear burdens which lie light upon
his back in youth. Let him beware of strapping them on
too securely and irrevocably, especially if they are sure
to increase by the natural course of events, in the lapse
of time. It may even be a disservice, or dangerous, to
save lives in an alien society where life is cheap because
population is almost at the saturation point — certainly
so, unless, at the same time, the local organization is so
bettered that it can take care of its own local increase;
otherwise there is in preparation, either a wholesale sacri-
fice of life, or a geometrically increasing burden for the
benevolent life-savers. This conclusion is not arrived at
by divination; it is simply mathematics.

Three years ago the answer to any such warning would
have been the patronizing smile at the "alarmist" or the
"pessimist." Now one can ask, with no fear of the smile:
"What can a civilized world, engrossed in or exhausted
by war, do for its quondam wards? What could Ger-
many do now for a plague-stricken Chinese district?" But
the pressure of the present crisis is small compared to that
of some future age, when the world has filled up — es-
pecially if it is replete with the defective and incompetent.

It simply will not do to ignore quality in the race;
to persist in so doing is to bid defiance to experience and
knowledge. To say this, however, is not to come out as
a helper or "champion" of society. We need not sympa-
thize with or pity society; as well pity gravitation. Society
will get her " rights, " because she has at disposal a massive
cosmic might. What we need to do is to keep out of the
way of the might, with our dogmas and with our ethical
and other theories. The insect that struts before the road-

298 The Unpopular Review

roller, playing the part of Chantecler, had better direct
his antennae toward the rear now and then. Society does
not mind killing men any more than gravitation does.
It takes its course, and men are safe only if they study
and know that course, and conform their policies and ac-
tions to it. We live, as animals, by learning natural laws,
and conforming to them; similarly, in society, we live by
studying the life and evolution of society, and adjusting
ourselves. No grand principles, existing in our own minds,
are going to help us when the pinch comes. Then the
question will be only this: Have we acted rationally, in
the light of knowledge? If we have, we shall go on to the
next period; if not, we shall stop and suffer and die.

It has been for the interest of society, as we look back
on the course of evolution, that men shall, ever and anon,
die — whether miserably, as the criminal, or gloriously,
as the patriot. "A state," says Sumner, "can never
make men of any kind; a state consumes men. The lives
of generations are spent to maintain it, and carry it on."
Death, however much we have been trained to fear it,
or be horrified at it, is but an incident in organic or social
evolution. Society can freely send out its best to die for
it. To say that society has no right to do this, or to rid
itself of dangerous and anti-social elements — by execu-
tion or by sterilization, for example — is about equivalent
to saying that nature has no right to let the lion-cub,
born without a palate, die. The death of the unfit implies
the life and increased opportunity of the fit. It was for
the fit alone that the "Thou shalt not kill," of the ancient
law, was laid down. They were those that society could
not spare as a sacrifice to internal animosities. It was
they who were automatically assured of the right to life,
guaranteed to them by the might of society. If, inflated
with ethical theory or high-sounding principles, we try
to thwart this age-long selective process, we ought to count
well the comparative cost of interfering or letting alone.

The Right to Life 299

Somebody who is a social asset pays for all these reforma-
tory and "uplift" proceedings. Who? And what does
the cost mean to him and to society? Shall we refuse to
protect him ? Even if you can make low-class morons out
of the offspring of a worse defective, is that better than to
have denied him procreation, and thus spared the cost
to the normal and fit?

It is far easier to snap up a high-sounding phrase and
go ahead by feeling, without thought, than it is to think.
That is admitted. Rational action is always hard; perhaps
that is why it is so highly rewarded, in its results; it is
bound to be, if its outcome is harmony of adjustment.
If we are going to secure such, we cannot act from sub-
jective feelings and pleasant and lofty, but inapt, theories,
we must always have within the horizon of our judgment
the vision of society and its interest — which should al-
ways remain gravely immanent, like Goethe's great gray
face of the Earth-Spirit in the clouds. And its interests
must be conceived, not as the result of hit-or-miss obser-
vations of contemporary things, viewed with a prepossesed
mind, wet eye, and yearning soul; but in the light of its
evolution, studied with cool and clear dispassionateness.
If we cannot know, in many cases, what positive action
we should take, we can at least know, in the extreme cases,
what ought not to be. It is always easier to define the
issue if it is put in negative form, like the primitive taboo.
We may not be able to say, for instance, who shall marry
whom, to get wholesome results; but it is easy to say that
extreme defectives shall not marry extreme defectives.
A beginning can always be made, and made safely, with the
extremes, about whose identity rational people can have no
great doubts. This will not satisfy the ardent person with
the mission to humanity; but it ought to appeal to the
discerning.

It is a presumptuous thing, and, if carried to excess, it
may be a fatal thing, in order to maintain the inefficient
and dependent, to overburden the efficient and self-

300 The Unpopular Review

supporting, in so far reducing their possibilities of better-
ing themselves. Let no one say the "state" does this.
What is the state but "all-of-us"? We cannot afford
to forget the efficient, even though, in humble callings,
their independence leaves them in an obscurity out of
which the less worthy emerge to engage our pity. If we
know what a society is, and have some idea of its evolu-
tion and life, we shall always guard ourselves against
forgetting them, being assured that their safety is ours.
They have rights behind which lies the might of society;
and if we infringe those rights, we are in the way of a mas-
sive and irresistible force. Wait till the pinch comes,
and our ethical constructions will be of about the same
utility as a sword of lath would be in stopping the on-rush
of a lion. There are notions we can afford to play with
while all goes well and the struggle is easy and successful,
but which must be incontinently abandoned under the
stress that carries us into some inevitable crisis-time.

Assertion of the inherent "sacredness" of life is a nega-
tion of society's interest, and an abdication of judgment
based upon a knowledge of the nature and evolution of
society. Assertion of the "natural right to life" for all,
is but little better; for a doctrine of this order is generally
regarded as a sort of revelation, and it is not desired to
look into its origins. To insist that life must be preserved
so long as there is even a theoretic chance of recovery is not
a practicable policy. There is always, supposably, a chance
of error in diagnosis; it is pretty hard to find anything,
in this world of incompletenesses, of which we can be
dead sure. So, also, there is always a chance that the
criminal, unanimously condemned by several juries, is
innocent. But life cannot be carried on by such highly
hazardous and speculative methods. We always have
to do the best we can, with the light we have. The system
of society cannot be perfect; it can simply become better
adapted. Evolution does not produce superlatives, but

The Right to Life 301

comparatives; not absolutes, but relatives. It is the over-
valuation of human life which we hold in theory, that leads
us to such cases of long-chance gambling. Error is normal
enough. It is too bad that it is; but the cost to society
of an occasional error is nothing compared to the cost to
be incurred by trying to adhere only to certainties in a
world of uncertainties.

Year in and year out death removes the socially use-
ful — those demonstrated to be so, not by chance, guess,
or pious hope, but by test — under the operation of pre-
ventable causes. If it came to a clearly defined choice,
even the prepossessed might be gravelled by being re-
quired to decide where he ought to apply his energies in
championing the "sacredness" of life or the " natural
right" to it.

SELF-ADVERTISING

IN meditating upon this subject I am reminded of a
family story about a little serving-maid who was
wont every evening to read with great absorption the
personal items in the daily newspaper.

Always, on laying down the paper, she would say wist-
fully to her mistress, "I wish I could get my name in the
paper!" Once she elaborated a little. "Oh, I wish I
could get my name in the paper. Everybody in my fam-
ily but me has had his name in the paper!"

"And what did your family do to get into print?"
asked her mistress.

"They died, ma'am," said Mary.

Not many of us, I daresay, would carry our desire for
fame as far as Mary, however up-to-date in this matter
of self-advertising. Of course, there are a few modest
individuals among us who claim that business advertising
is, at best, a necessary evil, and that publicity is by only
one letter removed from duplicity, as, under Grimm's
law, b and p are virtually the same. Perhaps they deceive
themselves who ask of voter and reporter only aristo-
cratic disregard. There's a limit to comfortable self-
annihilation, as Wells's Invisible Man discovered. No, we
do not care to be so inconspicuous that folks think they can
walk through us, — or over us.

Others say: "Yes, we would be known of men. But
why bother ourselves about it? We are advertised by
our loving friends."

Just so! Therefore, it behooves us to study the thing.

Practical men assure us that the first item in this matter
of advertising is to attract attention by sheer force of
presentation. Print your poster in bright colors, and use
letters ten inches high. And best begin your self-advertis-
ing by being six feet tall and three feet broad. If neces-

302

Self-Advertising 303

sary, reform your ancestors. This advice should be taken
early. The matter of a complexion can be adjusted later.

Clothes are of great significance in this connection,
because nearly everybody can see shoes and collars and
hats and rings, but only a few folks can see souls and
thoughts and spiritual rags. As believers in democracy,
we are proud to belong to the majority. Manners, too,
are of first importance; not to be able to achieve social
address is a confession of inalienable stupidity. Has not
Nature herself been at pains to invent an eye that can
take a right-left snap-shot with great celerity? Some of
us have discovered this at a dinner-party, and skillfully
selected the right-pronged fork with which to eat our
fish, through confidence that our next neighbor knows
what he's doing. Indirect vision is in fact of greater
moment in self-advertising than accumulation of cortical
gray matter: for it enables you, an hour before the party
begins, to see without looking what your neighbor has on.

If we are to be one hundred per cent efficient, we should
make an inventory of the resources at our disposal, not
despising the day of small things. For genius may after
all turn out to be mastery of details; and fame, scientific
management of a reputation. While achieving a presence
of distinction and social polish — that out of eye may not
be out of mind — let us also achieve an autograph properly
enigmatic, just the right turn of illegibility that marks
culture, with the modest flourishes that stop short of
the marginal decorations that quite properly amuse us
as evidence of megalomania. Let us also patronize the
camera. Some photo-secessionist may yet succeed in
giving us a profile or cast of countenance worthy to put
on a library building or in a college annual, if not on a
postage stamp. In our attention to details, let us not,
either, despise the calling card, that tiny self-poster
(or poser) that gives others an opportunity to gage our
comme-il-fautness by running their fingers over the surface
and inspecting the dimensions with an architectural eye.

3°4 The Unpopular Review

It is well even to multiply occasions for multiplying their
distribution. To part with a whole deck at once is as-
suredly a sign of delicacy in perception of social rela-
tionships, and guarantees your ability to count up to a
score, say, — a matter of some moment in these days
when everybody's mentality is under Binetesque sus-
picion — or superstition.

In advertising, there are some false ideas left over from
the time when the art was the preempted domain of the
manufacturers of patent medicine. A given patent medi-
cine used to be advertised as good for every disease known
to the medical profession, although thirty years ago folks
did not enjoy so many and such varied diseases as we do
today. Sometimes, of course, the medicine worked the
miracles they claimed — when there was nothing the
matter with the patient, and he had a strong constitution.
But the working of such miracles was subject to many
chances, and business men learned that it was a mistake
to advertise an oil that really was good for lubricating
the muscles, as also a cure for indigestion — there was a
chance that it might cure all diseases at once.

We recognize today that the first principle of good ad-
vertising is to be discriminating in your boasts. Promise
no more than you can fulfill, for to lure purchasers under
false pretenses is not merely bad advertising, — it is an
advertising of badness. Self-advertising owns the same
principle. Nowadays, as has been said, your esteemed
Professor must occupy a chair and not a whole sofa.
Don't cast doubts on your ability to run an automobile
by a claim you can't prove, to draw one. Nor because
you rival the dictionary in fluency, assume that you rival
the encyclopedia in ideas.

Did you ever read a recommendation so inordinately
flattering that you wondered what the trouble was, that
the paragon's employers were so anxious to get rid of him?
None the less, this is the day of overdone personal recom-
mendations. You, the School Board, run over application

Self- Advertising 305

after application with its attached laudation of the appli-
cant as a gilt-edged investment, a providentially created
luminary to divide the day from the night; and then,
fearful of your own standing in such a company of suns,
you turn to the private letters that have come in answer
to your solicitation for the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, to find that the Miss Smith of much
experience, is sixty years old and deaf; the attractive
Miss Jones, young and a flirt; the scholarly Mr. Brown,
a pathetic failure. One can damn with excessive praise
as well as with faint.

There is no use to which commercial flattery can be
put comparable to that vouched for by a young matron
of my acquaintance. Although she achieved matrimony
without the submission of a single recommendation, as a
precautionary measure, in case pedagogical greatness
should ever be thrust upon her, she collected, in the role
of sweet girl-graduate, numerous and glowing tributes.
And now in domestic seclusion she finds consolation in
daily perusal of the catalog of her virtues. She of the
pleasing personality, the unfailing tact, the many talents,
the assured success, needs but experience to learn how
properly to manage one man, and to boil the water with-
out burning it.

To achieve the proper emphasis, it is well to write one's
own recommendations, to do one's own headlining; only
too often our neighbor turns an undiscriminating eye
upon our antics. Nowadays, especially, when statis-
ticians estimate greatness by the number of lines given a
person of fame in biographical (autobiographical?) dic-
tionaries, it is well to be forethoughted enough to make a
measurable showing, with an inch or so to spare.

We must be ready, too, to reckon with the eugenist
who, being scientifically inclined, is wont to determine
first rights to parentage, by listing the honors in men of
science or women of letters. To be quite frank, their prin-
ciple of selection tickles the sense of humor of the rest of

306 The Unpopular Review

us. Think of living surrounded by men with one eye
glued to the microscope, and the other to a telescope, or
by women facile with the pen and scalpel rather than with
tongue and fan. In that heaven of the eugenist, even the
principles of self-advertising would need revision. Ended
the day of fine feathers and of morons, of poets and poli-
ticians; germicides substituted for suicides; puffing for
bluffing! Never! They take themselves too seriously -
these scientists; they do not hear the little bells jangling.
The truly great wink at posterity, to show that they are
not the dupes of their own reputation.

Besides, they're impractical, academic! It's much
more to the point in self-advertising to be a descendant
rather than an ancestor — the bright infant being dis-
counted as evidence. Of course the psychologist threatens
to change all that, but a society for prevention of cruelty
to mothers will no doubt be organized in due season.

It is because the trade-mark is the pictorial representa-
tion of the honor of a firm in its dealings with the public,
because it guarantees the worth of the goods it seals, that
the commercial value of accredited trade-marks is so great
that in certain cases it has even disturbed the theoretical
determination of price by the law of supply and demand.
But racial, tribal, and family trade-marking is an older
device than commercial trade-marking. In fact, Nature
herself set the example when she was at the pains to cast
particular moulds of feature for Jew and Gentile. What
wonder that the savage took the hint, and assumed for
his tribe a totem, and, not content with sticking it upon
the pole in front of his teepee, tattooed it also upon his
body. After the tribe, the family, too, developed its
especial mark — its name of long tradition, its title of
nobility, its crest of heraldic significance, or even its pecu-
liar cast of feature, intonation of voice, or patented crim-
son hair. Humiliation reaches no lower level than for
human beings to wear no trade-mark, to be neither the
one thing nor the other, to be nameless, or to be numbered.

Self-Advertising 307

as cattle in a pen. But such sorrows trouble not the born-
advertiser who can hyphen totems with skill, coin an
ancient crest while you wait, and purchase a headpiece
or a Greek nose at a trifling cost.

Most of us, fortunately, have a name or two to spare,
with preface and appendix to boot. Often we are son or
daughter of a very select portion of the alphabet, and
cousin to a celebrity, who strikes us as worth mentioning
when we are conspicuous by his absence. Otherwise we
prefer the unhonored prophet or the grandfather in the
background. But background we must have — keep in
touch with historic traditions, as the small girl who re-
joiced that her initials, A. D., were cut in stone on the
most impressive building in her town, together with the
date of her birth. A few of us are still more ambitious;
we are content with nothing less than a B. C. after our
philosophies and divertisements. We possess the legal
turn of thought — the mind of man runneth not to the
contrary.

All fraternity and college pins and pennants, all watch-
fobs of Masonic or other emblems, all alphabetical dec-
orations, are methods of tagging ourselves, methods of
advising our companions that we have passed through
certain manufacturing establishments, and are guaranteed
goods. Guaranteed indeed! "Our college has turned
out an extraordinary number of illustrious men. Class
of humpty-dumpty was especially strong. There was
Potter, you know — wonderful mind, that man — old
rival of mine, used to beat him, by Jove, by only a fraction
of a point every time."

Those of us who have taken our N. B. in less orthodox
form do not, to be sure, always appreciate certain forms
of academic tagging. The courtly gentleman whose fob-
chain sports the emblematic Phi Beta Kappa seems next-
door neighbor to the complacent lady who exhibits proudly
on her bosom the convent medal emblazoned "Good Con-
duct." Absurd combination, of course! But somehow

308 The Unpopular Review

we must be permitted to sweeten our sour grapes, and
give our own college yell — " Self-made! Rah! rah! rah!"

All the insignia of office, from the bells and pomegran-
ates of the high priests of the tribe of Aaron, to the gold
tassel and striped hood of the latest doctor of philosophy,
are professional trade-marks, and have no doubt a high
utility. The good bishop's suavity of manner, his portly
figure, his shapely hand richly decorated with a seal ring,
his mellow voice, are part of his stock in trade. And a
hobo who should depart from the regulation rags, and
indulge instead in a silk top-hat and patent leather boots,
might find difficulty in earning a living.

Only in the matter of names do the rules of the game
work somewhat strangely. Nor is it marriage alone which
causes the confusion, and so confounds trade-marks that
the placid German Hausfrau answers to the name of
Seriora Roderique. Given names too have a way of prov-
ing false prophets, as the two-hundred pound woman
who signed herself "Tina " was heavily aware. To be sure,
business enterprise exhibits itself even here. Mr. Lemon
solves his problem by becoming a professor of pomology,
and White and Black cancel their difficulties by going
into partnership.

On the whole, however, we wear the trade-mark of sex
and of race, of family and of profession, somewhat un-
consciously. As a matter of course we advertise our-
selves women by our petticoats, or Irish by our brogue,
or Smith by our bridgeless nose. Very few of us have
either the desire or the courage to unsex or expatriate
or unfamily ourselves. We even assume cheerfully the
ministerial manner or the school-marm cast of coun-
tenance. We are content, most of us, to be replicas, big
or little, of cousin or grandparent — to continue the type.
But the fine point in self-advertising comes with the
achievement of a special style of self — a cut of the clothes,
a cast of the features, a quirk of temper, a vein of ideality,
that is strictly our own and trade-marked.

Self-Advertising 309

Of course the obligation of living up to a reputation
is by no means a light one. Some people find the game
not worth the candle. The wit must often be the butt
of his own mockery, as he pounds out the expected bon
mot; the blue stocking must weary of the necessity of
always displaying the dismal hose, especially at a ball;
the saint must frequently long to shed his halo; and the
devil be anxious "to let" his horns. Therefore it is that
the modern vacation has been invented, a season wherein
one doffs for a while his wonted self. The parson indulges
in a panama and expletives; the diplomat tells the truth
and angles openly. At bottom, of course, this is only a
sort of inverted advertisement of self. It's a skilful use
of the law of contrast. The turning of your personal
item upside down on the page of the world stirs the curios-
ity of your elsewhile indifferent neighbor. The class-room
of your dignified college professor who forgets his dignity
on the football field, becomes thereafter the Mecca of
the Eleven. Only the professional Funny-Man may take
no holiday: he must content himself with being most
funny when most serious: for if you habitually indulge
in skewed lines, a temporary erection is viewed with sus-
picion.

The copyrighting of a trade-mark and its exhibition
in the agora of the world proclaim in unmistakable terms
that YOU'RE HERE and doing business. But although
such declaration cannot be too persistent, it may be too
insistent. The conservative business man may capture
the speculator's boom; the demure maiden rival the
charms of the decolletee Lady of the Boards. It's bad
business to put yourself on the ten-cent counter, even
though you are sold out inside the hour.

Of course, if a master-hand at suggestion, you can take
the world by storm, captivate it by the flash of your per-
sonality, hynotise it by the utterance of the word "I".
But for the most part the shadow of St. Helena or of the
mad-house rests on the future of the man who plays the

310 The Unpopular Review

egoist too strenuously. We others are apt to rebel or to
raise our voices and fists. In the pandemonium reputa-
tions go to smash. There are corners in personal stock
as well as in corn and wheat, but he who creates a panic
on Life's Wall Street, does so at considerable personal
peril. Usually, subtle methods are best. It's no use
shouting: "Get out of the way! Here I come!" unless
you're riding a motorcycle, like a certain statesman of
vociferous reputation.

Better, indeed, to emulate the tiny girl who had been
taught manners, and knew that it was her part to give
the greater and take the less. Confronted with the prob-
lem of sharing with Jimmy her two very unequal pieces
of taffy, she solves the problem like an authority on ethics.
"Mama, " she says sweetly, "I'll put them on a plate
and pass them." Of course, this was trusting considerably
to Jimmy's being as well brought up as she was.

The average man who constantly asserts by word or
deed that he's up and doing, learns the lesson from the
advertiser, and varies the style of his proclamation. As
the smiling Chef of Cream of Wheat he plays many parts.
This is the lesson that the bore can never learn — that you
must always be yourself, but you must be it differently.
In your biographical dictionary you must vary names,
dates, and diseases. There is really no reason why you
should tell all you know in one prayer, one speech, one
book, or one conversation, unless perchance you fear
>our first may be your last. To know how to be con-
spicuously silent is the great achievement. Avoirdupois
permitting, it's well to emulate the submarine.

Emphasis is an important matter in the achievement
of a reputation. It's a mistake to begin every word in
the sentence with a capital letter, and to paragraph each
sentence. Those people who are stuck full of exclamation
points are as bad reading as those who never saw a punc-
tuation mark. The altogether successful person under-
stands how to win your confidence and make you feel at

Self- Advertising 311

home, without giving away all the secrets of his person-
ality or forfeiting the right to startle you by a wholly
unexpected action. "I might have known it!" But
you didn't.

In the advertising world it's a moot question whether
your advertisement should be an illustration of your
goods or only a good illustration of anything whatever.
I recently saw a picture of an airship, advertising a collar
button. To be sure, under the picture it said "Don't
fly high!" but that could hardly have been an exhortation
not to roll under the bureau. It was a good illustration,
but not an illustration of the goods. The value of rele-
vancy is not duly appreciated in personal advertising
either. The actress who too confidently expects to derive
a dramatic reputation from a domestic lack of one, is
frequently doomed to disappointment. So too, fine
clothes and spacious houses, irreproachable grammar
and manners, do not unduly influence you if in search
of the one man who can save your life by a dextrous use
of the knife, or the supreme handling of a jury. There is,
of course, a sociology as well as a psychology of clothes;
and your wife's display of diamonds, and your own dis-
play of automobiles, are legitimate ways of saying to
the world "I'm a success!" But neither the one nor
the other is an inevitable guarantee in the eyes of man-
kind. Indeed, there's something superb in the way of a
man who edges to the front in spite of rundown heels and
frayed neckties. The shabby orator who succeeds in
keeping your attention off his garments, has won his
laurels by no trick of the trade. He who can with im-
punity defy convention and fashion has come to stay.
Which is not equivalent to saying that there's any neces-
sary connection between musical genius and long hair,
nor indeed between bad manners and good surgery.

It's our fear of the Cartoonist with his eye for the salient,
his ability to strip our personalities of the irrelevant and
superficial, that keeps many of us from floating our per-

312 The Unpopular Review

sonal stock too vain-gloriously. We are aware that,
stripped of our borrowed hair, our borrowed reputations,
our borrowed ideals, we might cut as poor a figure as
Thackeray's King when deprived of his wig and robes
of state. None the less, it remains true, on the whole,
that a man is known by the company he keeps and the
clothes he wears. This mergence of a man's reputation
with that of his companions and tailors exemplifies what
in psychological jargon is called fusion. Your son may
borrow your reputation, your wife may dress for you,
and your grandfather do your thinking. Your present
self can even borrow a character from your own past self,
sometimes, of course, against your will. It is to get rid
of the boy he once was, that the wise man moves away
from his home-town. Sometimes, for a similar but sadder
reason, the man moves back.

There's danger of your reputation running away with
you, getting beyond your control, as Captains of Finance
and energetic Politicians have discovered. Newspaper
personalizing is indeed precarious advertising. In the
secret domains of your Castle in Spain you may picture
yourself on terms of intimacy with the King of England,
or addressing a learned assemblage of scholars in Heidel-
berg, or playing havoc in your laboratory with the old
theories of Life and Matter; but when your home paper
features you as entertained by the President, when as a
matter of fact you but touched his hand at a public re-
ception; or lauds you as great among the great, when
your only claim to such distinction is your desire to be
such; or exploits your manufacture of Babies in a retort,
before you have succeeded in creating a dollar, you feel
like a brass button accidentally mislaid in a museum
collection of crown-jewels.

Some of us, however, find it difficult even to get into a
newspaper — or an unpopular review. It may be our
ultimate success. The undertaker who decorated his
shop gaily with holly and mistletoe, and advertised for a

Self-Advertising 313

brisk Christmas trade, was no grim humorist. He knew
that there's a right time for dying, and that there's such
a thing as doing it too late. Dying at the right moment
is in fact the most effective bit of self-advertising. Death,
indeed, as the little maid perceived, is the only act of
distinction that many of us can hope to achieve.

Yet to take much comfort in post-mortem advertising
betokens a highly ingenuous spirit. For whatever bi-
ographer or monument-maker may reap the profits of
Fame-After-Death, the real manufacturer of the article
reaps little. Such, however, is the tenacity of the instinct
for Self-Advertising, that Fame — the long obsession of
the Memory of the World by a name, has seemed to some
worth even the sacrifice of the present. All of which goes
to show that, as we have said, the psychology of self-
advertising merits consideration.

SOME FUNDAMENTALS IN PRISON
REFORM

PRISON reform is now having its place in the sun.
There is a nation-wide willingness to give to pris-
oners a liberal chance to make good, inside and outside
the prisons. The employment secretary of the Prison
Association of New York assisted directly and indirectly
in placing more than half a thousand released prisoners
during the twelve months ending September 30, 1916.
Released prisoners themselves are joining in the move-
ment, and in New York City there is a group of some
two hundred graduates of Elmira Reformatory, banded
together in the Rodgers Loyal Club for mutual improve-
ment and for the cooperative hunting and securing of
jobs for their fellow-members. This club was an object
of suspicion to the earliest members, until they discov-
ered that the proposers of the club, the Reformatory's
parole officers, were after all "human beings, instead of
being just officers." Then the lads took hold and
"pushed." In short, they were discovering the same
elements of human-ness in their officers that the prison
reformers have been diligently proclaiming as existing in
the prisoners, under the new penology.

Prisons, under modern wardens, are now under dili-
gent observation, and are standing sympathetic trial.
Formerly, anything called a prison was tolerated until
something particularly atrocious was dragged out into
the light of day by an enterprising newspaper or a "re-
former." Today, prisoners have to make good, or the
public is irritated because of the failure of the invest-
ment it has made in devoting to prison reform its special
attention. That is why Sing Sing prison, above all others,
is being watched. That is also a fine assurance that, in
the main, prisons will make good. But if, on the one

314

Fundamentals in Prison Reform 315

hand, the public insists that prisoners make good, it is
only just on the other hand, that the prisoners claim that
the public shall make good — shall provide modern prisons.

The most frequent statement in prison reform today -
a truth as old as Christianity — is that prisoners are, after
all, only human beings. Christ proclaimed that of his
associates on the cross. The message is none the less true
for having been so barbarously forgotten through the
centuries. The converse is also true — that prisoners are
not greater, or more important to society, than the mil-
lions of human beings that never went to prison. The
present swing toward an apotheosis of the prisoner, just
because he is suddenly found to react like a human in all
essentials, has led not a few enthusiasts to extol him and
lime-light him, until there is not a little force in Governor
Whitman's recent statement to the American Prison As-
sociation at Buffalo in October, that an excess of molly-
coddling is no less dangerous than an excess of punish-
ment.

It is also true that prisoners within the walls respond
with remarkable rapidity to decent or optimistic treat-
ment. That is nothing new either, but a general belief
in the fact is new. Back in the sixties of the nineteenth
century a warden in the State prison in Missouri gave
his prisoners the privileges of the yard, and free conversa-
tion on Sundays and holidays, with a chance also on
holidays to have "big feeds" and athletic events, and to
invite friends in. This will be sad news to a number of
wardens who still firmly believe that they are the original
"freedom-of-the-yard" wardens. Nevertheless, to under-
take today an innovation without immediate precedents
requires extraordinary courage, and so Tynan in Colorado,
Gilmour in Ontario, Whittaker at the Farm Workhouse
of the District of Columbia, Homer at Great Meadow in
New York, and Osborne and Kirchwey at Sing Sing have
been pioneers to whom the country owes much — and the
prisoners more.

3 1 6 The Unpopular Review

Tynan in putting men out on the roads, scores of miles
from the prison blazed the way for Eastern States to
follow. Gilmour showed the Dominion of Canada that
it is possible to build an entire prison by short-term pris-
oners, almost without the assistance of free labor. Whit-
taker took the tramps and " drunks" from the city of
Washington to a thousand-acre Virginia rough-land farm
some twenty miles away, and got good solid days' work
out of them — to their own better health and happiness.
Homer, at the most striking outdoor prison of the East,
showed that a big prison does not need encircling walls to
restrain an entire prison population. Osborne showed
that the theory of self-government is not only feasible
but admirable, within limits, and Kirchwey gave a bril-
liant example of a man's taking up unostentatiously his
friend's job and doing it well.

But after all, where are we, today? The man in the
street would appreciate knowing where he stands in prison
reform: so this article aims to lay down easily demon-
strable facts deduced from the history of the last several
years.

First of all, it seems evident that modern prisons can
achieve two kinds of success — the tour de force p, or the
success that is based on more cautious or more funda-
mental economic principles.

Sing Sing has burst into the national public eye through
the combination of an enlightened warden with a brand-
new idea of prison self-government — and has, in large
measure, succeeded. In spite of certain failures, the con-
tribution to prison reform that Sing Sing has made in
the last two years is greater than that of any other
prison.

Most prisons, however, succeed more slowly and cau-
tiously. A warden of such a prison will conduct his insti-
tution more as an opportunist, progressing "here a little
and there a little," until in a few years — if politics allows

Fundamentals in Prison Reform 317

him to stay that long — he has a well-rounded-out "honor
prison." Great Meadow is an example of the second
type.

The public must understand that marvellous examples
of trustworthiness or brilliancy of prisoners may be con-
spicuous, at the same time that a prison is loosely run.
On the other hand, a prison may grind away at a highly
developed administrative system, the product of decades
of polishing off, and yet turn out its graduates un-
responsive, often unreclaimed and sordid-minded. Never-
theless, in this age of rapid progress, brilliant experiment-
ing, and real public interest in prison reform, there are
certain factors that must be embodied and coordinated in
any prison or reformatory that is to function with per-
manent success in our social system. The prison without
some of these factors may achieve apparent success, and
be relatively successful, but the experienced ear hears the
ominous sounds in the machinery.

Permit me to state some of the "inevitables" in a
successful prison system.

i. Each able-bodied or able-minded prisoner must con-
tribute, for at least five and a half days a week, an honest
day's work. This fact is so absolutely true, in wholesome
prison reform, that anyone who deals with the human
product of the prisons feels like screaming it from the
house-tops. About the most difficult thing the prisoners'
aid society has to do is, not to gain the released prisoner's
confidence, nor even to find him a job, but to get him to
hold his job, simply because he doesn't know how to work
or hasn't learned that he must "deliver the goods." The
idea of working hard, as virtually all men must work if
they are to do honest work, is simply beyond the com-
prehension of thousands of men coming from some of our
chief Eastern prisons.

Therefore that state is cruel that tolerates from prison
inmates sloppy, slow, intermittent, "fake" work, and
thereby ultimately turns back to society a human being

3 1 8 The Unpopular Revdew

that first annoys and then disgusts the many employers
who today will go far out of their way to give a released
prisoner a chance to make good. Employment secre-
taries of prisoners' aid societies have to hunt for new
employers right along, because the old employers become
disillusioned, and say they've had enough for a while.
The prison's first duty, after consideration of health, is
to teach habits of industry, not to teach at industry. Man
earns his bread outside the prison by the sweat of his
brow; he must learn inside the prison what honest sweat
feels like, not now and then, but week-in and week-out.
There are many noteworthy examples of ex-prisoners
succeeding, but the main proposition regarding the em-
ployment secretary's job holds good.

2. The prison fails dismally of its purpose if it is simply
a correctional melting pot, into which all comers are thrown
indiscriminately. Prisons were such, before the advent
of the reformatories like Elmira, in the early seventies of
the nineteenth century. Today, the most advanced insti-
tutions are alive to the necessity of becoming clearing
houses for their prisoners. From the moment of recep-
tion of the inmate until his departure, the prison must
deal with him as an individual. He is no mere number,
no unit in a sombre gray mass. He is a throbbing, in-
trospective, often morbid mind. He must be painstak-
ingly examined, diagnosed, prognosed, dosed, and classi-
fied, as an entity, with possibilities of reclamation, not
infinite but reasonable. He must be assigned to the task
and occupation that fits him, often that which he has
pursued on the outside. To be sure, the aviator that
drifted to Elmira Reformatory had to have his job changed,
but that is an exception.

The inmate must be sorted into the group that he can
best thrive in; he must be given ample chance to make
good, and to make progress. Just as habits of industry
should make a good workman out of him, so a graded,

Fundamentals in Prison Reform 319

classified system of promotion will develop in him hope,
ambition, ingenuity and responsibility. In such classifica-
tion special attention must be paid to mental and physical
defects. There are far more deviates in prison than has
been generally supposed. Those likely to be permanently
anti-social, because of mental conditions, should not be
released. This is easy to proclaim, but the legislative
fight will be bitter in practically any state when the at-
tempt is made to provide permanent legal custody for
those mentally unfit for liberty, but not insane.

3. Rewards and privileges must, so far as possible, sup-
plant in prisons the grossly stupid " Thou shah not" com-
mands of the past. It is hard, indeed, to get the prison
faced around toward a "boosting" policy, instead of a
policy of intimidation and repression. The amazement
on the faces of prison officials who, when inmates have
been given the freedom of the yard for the first time,
discover that the prison buildings are not immediately
burned, nor the walls scaled en masse, would be enor-
mously funny, if it were not so tragic. For upon those
faces have been impressed the century-old traditions of
physical domination, and it is painful for such wrinkles
to smooth out.

So deprivations and reductions in grade and privileges
must take the place of dark cells, dungeons, chains and
other brutalities. Oh the sanctity of the dark cell method !
I have seen poor miserable sinners blink in their blindness
and grope with their arms in the broad daylight, as the
"cooler" doors have been swung open upon the pitch-
darkness of this horrid substitute for the physical tortures
of the past. Within the last six months, in the Empire
State, men have been found with chains rivetted to their
bodies, wearing them for months at a time to bed and to
their bath. A head official has testified, in my own state,
that his business was not to run a reformatory, but to
prevent escapes.

320 The Unpopular Review

Society, which provides by law for the administration
of prisons, must not forget that the ways of evil are attrac-
tive to many prisoners, and that, if the ways of honesty
are to be demanded, the substitutes for evil must be more
attractive than the evil. Categorical prohibitions not
to do things are stupid in prisons, unless prisoners under-
stand clearly why the things should not be done.

That fact is an underlying principle in Mr. Osborne's
penal philosophy. I have known him to permit the con-
tinuance of a disturbing condition that he might have
stopped by a prohibition, because he believed that the
inmates were sure to suffer by it, and therefore when they
discovered its effect would, through their powers of self-
government, not only put an end to it but see why it should
stop. The wise father and mother explain to their chil-
dren why they mustn't go beyond their depth, if they
can't swim. They don't put up a sign at the river bank
saying: "Johnny and Annie, You Mustn't Go Into the
Water Here!" For virile Johnny and imitative Annie
would be sure to go into the water just there.

4. Punishment, as an element of prison administration,
must not be entirely eliminated. While the prison should
be a training school for life, life itself does not eliminate
punishment for wrongdoing. To a large number of those
who suffer punishment, it seems not only deserved but
reasonable. It should not, however, mean corporal, cruel
or unnatural punishment. Imprisonment itself is a suf-
ficient punishment for most inmates — so long of course
as prison does not embody such pastime elements as will
make the prison actually attractive. Modern penology,
while barring the cruel methods of the past, adheres to
deprivations, reductions in grade, loss of "good time,"
and the like. The main consideration, of course, is as
far as possible to follow Spencer's great principle, of fol-
lowing nature's way and making the punishment the
natural outcome of the error.

Fundamentals in Prison Reform 321

The place of recreations, sports, etc., in prison life is
still unclear to many well-wishers of prison reform, who
fear that present methods tend to making the prison an
institution to gain entrance into which not a few unfor-
tunates would commit crime. Nothing could be further
from the truth. I foresee, however, a time when prisons
will actually attract inmates, but it will not be for the
incidental recreations, but for the stalwart curriculum
offered in preparation for an honest and substantial life.
Dr. Kirchwey's joking remark that the time will come
when a degree from Sing Sing will be as valuable as a
degree from Harvard, will sometime approximate truth,
but not for the same individuals. The prison of the future,
to realize its own great function, must become the "uni-
versity of another chance" that the State Reformatory
of Washington already has christened itself.

The transformation of the punitive prison into such a
penological university is progressing with the adage that
"all cell and no play makes Jack a sick boy." Speaking
more seriously, the appalling cell confinement traditional
in our prisons until recent years, as at Sing Sing, where
fourteen hours a day were passed in impossibly small and
damp cells, simply had to be abolished, as a first step
toward developing a sane mind in a sane body. So long
as men were moved in mass and were known by numbers,
and the constant nightmare of the prison warden was a
possible escape or riot, games and free conversation in
the yard were beyond conception. The relatively sudden
emergence in the last few years of the pallid prison popula-
tion into the bright sunshine of the yard was primarily a
health measure, and should be administered as such. In-
cidentally, such privileges of play and free time within
the walls can also be potent disciplinary measures. But
baseball and other games are not to be allowed simply
in order that the prisoner's life may be made more easy
and bearable, or that he may be induced to refrain from
rioting or being otherwise incorrigible or dangerous.

322 The Unpopular Review

Prison recreations should be for sanitary reasons, and a
reward for work well done and good conduct.

5. Prisoners should be paid for their labor. Since pay-
ment for work, in outside life, bears a reasonable relation-
ship to work performed, prisoners should be reasonably
paid for what they do inside. And so, particularly where
there is no monetary remuneration, free time for leisure
and recreation seems just. If payments in money are im-
possible, at least "good time" for work should be de-
ducted from their sentences. The great incentives to
work on the outside are the great incentives inside. On
the outside, men work in order to earn money, that they
may live, save a. portion of their earnings, enjoy leisure.
Inside the prison men will work in order to earn money,
or "good time," or that they may enjoy greater privileges,
or for other similar reasons. But, of all the inducements,
that of real money is the greatest. Generally the chance
to earn commutation of sentence is already provided by
law.

And as, on the outside, workers must earn their living,
so on the inside the prisoner ought to pay, out of his earn-
ings, for his own maintenance. It is stupidity on the part
of the State to allow a prisoner to receive his board and
keep his earnings; true, the State may be overpaying
him or underpaying him. There is not yet any clear rela-
tion between prison work and earnings. In the State of
New York, where the farcical cent-and-a-half-a-day wage
is paid to State prisoners, the injustice rankles and creates
an anti-social spirit. The prison should give a quid pro
quo, for what the prisoner does, and should receive just
pay for what it provides.

Nor should the prisoner be allowed to forget or re-
main indifferent to the family left behind. In numberless
cases, family destitution follows in the wake of crime.
The prisoner is fed and lodged and clothed, while the
family, plunged into poverty, must seek the bounty of

Fundamentals in Prison Reform 323

private or public chanty. The prisoner should be re-
quired to give a certain percentage of his earnings toward
the support of his family. The man who is allowed to
overlook family obligations while in prison has lost a
powerful incentive to an honest life when he comes out.
Furthermore, the family has a right to demand some sup-
port from the state, if the state earns through the prisoner
anything over and above his mere maintenance cost.

6. The personality of the warden of a prison is of the
greatest importance. His "job" is fully as comprehensive
and as important to society as the position of a college or
university president. The possibilities of influence of a
high-grade warden are but just now becoming realized.
Mr. Osborne has for the first time shown the whole nation
this fact.

Recently, in advocating the appointment of the best
possible man as warden of a certain State prison, I said
in an open letter to New York newspapers that the modern
warden must be an administrator, an excellent judge of
men, filled with broad and deep sympathy, a just man,
and must have some knowledge of sanitation, architec-
ture, building, agriculture, and a score of other subjects.

Above all, the warden must have "personality." He
is the "big man," the "boss," to every inmate of his in-
stitution. He is the center of all eyes, the chief object of
prison discussion and gossip. His strength and his weak-
ness will be imitated by many of his wards. And, par-
ticularly in these days of the outdoor employment of
prisoners, often at great distances from the prison, the
warden is the invisible tie that restrains many an inmate
from taking speedy leave. All of which demands that
the appointments of prison officials be taken out of politics,
which procedure can best be accomplished by civil service
rules, with special attention to oral examination of can-
didates.

The warden's personality can be considerably weakened

324 The Unpopular Review

by inefficiency in administration. Wardens should be
"long-haul," not "short-haul" personalities. Experience
shows that a good warden in a poorly equipped prison
can do far better than a poor warden in a well equipped
prison. Moreover, the ethical standards of a warden
seep down through the least of the officers of the institu-
tion.

And so, before many years have passed, the wardenship
will measure up, in truth, to the requirements of the
Presidency of the University of Another Chance.

7. The indeterminate sentence, with its all-important
corollary, parole, must be a part of any adequate prison sys-
tem. Courts cannot and should not determine the ad-
visable length of stay of the inmates of prison walls. As
well expect that the ambulance doctor or the receiving
physician of a hospital should, on the admission of a
patient, prescribe to a day when he should be discharged.
The indeterminate sentence makes the prisoner in large
measure the arbiter of his fate. At present there are
many varieties of indeterminate sentences, some far
broader than others. Ultimately indeterminate sen-
tences will be without minimum limit, and possibly with-
out maximum. Inmates should be released on parole
when there is strong possibility that (a) they will never
again perform a serious criminal act, and (b) that they
will become and continue to be self-supporting.

On the other hand, inmates should not be released from
prison with such precipitate haste as to create in the
minds of the outside public the general feeling that crim-
inal acts are condoned or regarded as trivial. Society is
adequately protected only when the prison is sufficiently
an object of dread to impress those of weaker wills with
the disgrace and discomfort of imprisonment with the
attendant loss of liberty.

Courts of parole, or rehabilitation, must determine
when and where the inmates shall be released on parole.

Fundamentals in Prison Reform 325

The principle of the indeterminate sentence and of parole
will be largely vitiated if the releasing body is trivial,
puerile, or political. It should have the dignity of the
Bench and the sympathy of the Samaritan.

8. Structurally, the Bastille-type of gigantic cellblock,
housing even more than a thousand prisoners, as at Sing
Sing, must be abandoned. Detached buildings, each hous-
ing from fifty to not over two hundred inmates, are neces-
sary for classification, individual treatment, and promo-
tion of inmates from grade to grade. Simple rooms, and
(to a limited extent) dormitories, must replace the tradi-
tional cages called cells. Farm industrial prisons in the
country, combining both agricultural and industrial
training, must replace congregate prisons with cramped
acreage and high walls. Sunshine and the open air, the
fields and the farm, belong by right to the prisoners as a
place of labor, as well as to the outside worker. So prisons
must develop varied forms of outdoor employment, on
roads, on farms and in forests. But, because such work is
not work fit for all the year around, industrial training
in modern prison shops will continue to be the predomi-
nant form of employment in large prisons.

9. When the released prisoner comes out on parole, honest
work must not be inaccessible to him. Both state and pri-
vate philanthropy must help him to get work and to hold
his job. And, be it especially remembered, a serious re-
duction in crime throughout the country will occur about
in proportion as any systematic effort is successfully car-
ried through to bring and keep the prisoner and his job
together — providing the prisoner is willing and able to
hold his job, or to leave it only for a better one.

10. And lastly. Society must remember that the prisoner
is a human being, essentially similar to other human
beings, instead of being essentially different.

326 The Unpopular Review

Last April I travelled with two hundred young law-
breakers a journey of eighty miles, from New York up
into Orange County, to the site of a new reformatory,
under the management of the City of New York. These
"tough guys" of the city streets were being transported,
without chains, without handcuffs, and without a gun
in the pocket of any of the ten guards. On the boat,
coming down the East River, the boys were as lively as if
on an ordinary excursion. I stopped in front of one lad,
who was entertaining his mates with a particularly fine
bit of finger-whistling. Admiringly, I said to the boy:
"That's fine. I wish I could do that!" And there came
from him the simple reply: "Every feller's got some talent
to him!"

That's the keynote of the prison of the future! Every
fellow, every inmate has some talent. And to bring it
out, and to make of it an economic asset to the fellow
himself and to his country, every guard and every other
prison officer, up to the warden, must have "some talent
to him" in the administration of these future universities
of Another Chance. For the prisoner is entitled to a
good chance, both inside and outside the prison. He may
come out of prison highly enthusiastic to make good. But
he will find the life after prison hard, and for a considerable
time filled with drudgery and worry. He must be equipped
with sufficient stamina to meet these difficulties. The
best preparation for the years after prison is the habit of
hard work, reinforced by good standards of conduct.
These the prison must give him.

MAKING TOO MUCH PROFIT

fTT\HE day before yesterday I bought a notebook for
J[ thirty-three cents, the like of which had always
before cost me a simple quarter of a dollar. The sales-
man was not apologetic at all. He took the rhetorically
correct position of assuming that, as a wide-awake busi-
ness man, I was familiar with the trend of prices. He
put it across very well, giving me a little glow of satisfac-
tion at being recognized as broad-minded and up to date.

But I am not ready to believe that the stationer raised
his prices because he was compelled to. I will admit the
probable fact that he did have to raise them or make less
money; but that was not the determining factor. Two
changes had come about: one in the prices the retailer
pays to the people who supply him, one in the state of
mind of the buying public. For the sake of having
figures, say the book costs the stationer twenty cents now,
increased from sixteen. On the other hand I have come
of late to be reconciled to paying as much as thirty-three
cents for what used to be a twenty-five cent book.

Of course in their causes and effects these elements are
badly tangled, but to the stationer they are two entirely
distinct phenomena affecting his business on two opposite
sides. If the increased cost to him had come through
some freak of the trade, in a time of depression, and we
customers had stubbornly declined to see that the book
was not still a twenty-five cent book, would he have re-
fused to supply us, for the reason that his gross margin
had fallen from nine cents to five? If some happy acci-
dent had operated this year to keep the wholesale price
of the book where it had been, while we were all acquiring
the habit of paying thirty-three cents or thereabout for
twenty-five cent paper goods, giving the dealer a chance

3*7

3 2 8 The Unpopular Review

to take a little of what he calle "velvet," would he have
denied himself?

The opportunity" is the thing; not the need. Other-
wise low-priced labor would be on strike all the time;
high-priced labor never.

I say he advanced the price because he could. But
do not blame him. Let him have his taste of chicken
now (to use another elegant figure of the counting room).
A couple of years back his diet was mostly feathers.

A big thing that helps to keep open the chasm of mis-
understanding between the amateur and the professional
in the industrial field is the feeling on the part of the ama-
teur that the professional deals the game to suit himself
- that he is responsible for all the effects and for all the
things that look like effects. I say amateur, not aca-
demic; because the college professor seems to get nearer
the truth than the run of writers and editors and legis-
lators. The abstract theory of economics, from Adam
Smith down, is closer to the actual than are the assump-
tions of our anti-trust legislation, or most of the argu-
ments for communal ownership of public utilities.

The Outlook for June twenty-eighth says the railways
make the usual claim that they must increase rates if
their pay-rolls are increased, and continues, with an ex-
clamation point: "No one ever seems to think a reduction
of profits or even increase in economies is conceivable!"

Never mind the railways. They are in an exceedingly
special and doubtless an uncomfortable predicament.
The allusion is a general one.

The rejoinder is so simple that it almost seems dis-
courteous. Are we to expect that men who are enlisted
to maintain profits will agree with a wave of the hand to
their reduction? Shall we assume that the men who are
now giving their lives to the effecting of economies in in-
dustry, are not trying?

If the editor of The Outlook had time for this debate,

Making Too Much Profit 329

we should expect him to say that heads of corporations
should consider themselves trustees for the public; and
to mention the possibilities of scientific management.

The trustee-for-the-public idea, as an abstract proposi-
tion, is all right. It is just as good as the idea that any
man must be happy if he has a chance to work hard all
the time, because of the inherent nobility of labor. But
shut your eyes and put yourself under the influence of
common sense long enough to realize that a director is a
human being, and then follow this.

I have fifty thousand dollars in money. No matter
now how I got it. It is mine. No matter what anarchy
may be approaching, this money is in my pocket to-day.
I have liberty to spend it, if I like, in any way I like. I
may buy a big car and drive it all over the world; stop at
the best place in every town. I may go and shoot tigers.
I may follow the fishing season up and down the country
until I get tired of it. I may pick out the spot I like best
in all the world, and go and loaf there (socialism holding
off) the rest of my life. I have a perfect legal right and a
pretty plausible moral right to have one almighty good
time throwing that money at the birds.

But I do not throw it. I let it be used to help build a
factory. You see that immediately we make jobs for
people, construction gangs and so on, and they spend their
wages, put money in circulation, and all that. But never
mind that. 'That is the smallest part of it. We believe
we are helping everyone in the community, excepting
our competitors. When a new buyer enters a market,
his bidding operates to raise prices. When a new seller
comes, the pressure is downward. We enter the labor
market as a buyer, the consumers' market as a seller.
Every man or woman who comes to work for us comes
of his own free choice, to better himself, because he judges
we are offering him a more satisfying situation, all in all,
than any one else. Every customer who comes to buy
decides in his best judgment that we are offering better

330 The Unpopular Review

value than he can get his hands on elsewhere. If we
were not in business — if we had exercised our option
of enjoying the spending of our money — both wage
earner and consumer must have been content with some-
thing not quite so desirable. The logic of this is plenty
strong enough to convince me — the director — that the
existence of our concern is a boon to the community, no
matter what gain we may incidentally secure for our-
selves.

Market conditions force us to this helpful position, and
any claim that we are bound to go further, to do even
better by labor or by the public than we must, at the ex-
pense of our profit, is simply an argument that selected for-
tunate individuals should give alms to selected individuals
of the less fortunate. That question we are not taking up.
We are trying only to get you to see the question for what
it truly is. It is not a question of justice. Our profit, if
we have one, which is rather dubious, has not been taken
from any man's pocket. We feel that we created it, as
truly as if we had persuaded two stalks of corn to grow
where one grew before.

Our expense is a swelling, squirming thing imprisoned
between relentless boundaries that tend always to draw
closer — the market where we buy and the market where
we sell. We achieve a profit only by compressing the ex-
pense to make room for it. If one of the limits by chance
does give back for the moment, we take the advantage
thankfully; frankly, because we relish profit. We like
what postpones the ever threatening day that is to force
us out of business. We do not always see that a com-
fortable profit this one season is conclusive argument
for more of an increase in wages than is required to hold
our men; we have the habit of thinking in decades rather
than in years, and we know too well that good measure
of profit is a fleeting thing, while increased wages come
to stay. In any event, we feel that we are far from
blameworthy: because, so long as we continue buying and

Making Too Much Profit 331

selling, we are a positive advantage to all who sell to us,
to all who work for us, and to all who come to buy. The
fact that my stationer is at hand, offering twenty-five
cent note books at thirty-three cents, very possibly keeps
his competitor across the way from exacting forty; and
the presence and prosperity of a half dozen paper mills
in our town, when they changed the other day from two
shifts to three, advanced the price of common labor
twenty per cent at one jump.

You want my neighbor sent to prison for paying girls
six dollars a week. If he had never built his factory,
where would they be? Is nothing a week so much better
than six dollars? He knows the troubles girls have. He
will thank you on his knees if you will tell him how to help
them more. But when you ask him to raise their wages,
and to continue in business so as to provide employment
for them, you should furnish a private gold mine under
his office desk. His whole income, year with year, would
not add forty cents a week to each girl's envelope.

Scientific management, from the standpoint of the
community, is one of the best things we have heard of in a
long time. But please consider thoughtfully these ex-
tracts from a paper by one of its exponents (The Foundry,
January, 1915), bearing in mind that wage earners are
opposed to it; as I hope you and I, friends working side
by side, priding ourselves on turning out every day a full
honest day's work (and being unschooled in economic
theory), would resent what promised to double the task
for one of us, and to force the other to hunt a new job.

"The success of the entire bonus system is dependent
on the reliability of the work of the time-study foreman
and his assistants, and in the accuracy of their investiga-
tions and records.

"The observer or time-study man should be a skilled
man of the trade under investigation. It is not absolutely
necessary that he be the fastest worker in the shop, but he

332 The Unpopular Review

must be one of the best. Pride and enthusiasm in his
work are two of the chief essentials. To these may be
added sound judgment and an unbiased mind, and above
all things, he must be patient, exacting, and extremely
diplomatic.

" Before starting to make a time-study, the right work-
man must be chosen for the job [to perform the actual
work]. He must be a fast and conscientious worker and
skilled at the kind of work, or branch of the trade, under
investigation. . . First of all (other conditions being pro-
pitious) the man chosen to do the job must be one who
is strictly loyal and thoroughly in sympathy with the new
methods.

"The writer has in mind a number of jobs which took
from six to fourteen months of unremitting, patient labor
on his part before a cent of bonus was earned on them."

Jobs as they are spoken of here are not full installations
of the system, but single shop details, such as the prepara-
tion of a sand mold for a particular cast iron part, or a
drilling or polishing operation on the same piece; such
a job as might take five or six minutes of a good man's
time.

This time-study man, accurate in clerical work — me-
chanically expert — sound in judgment — unbiased of
mind — patient — exacting — diplomatic — is not the
super-expert at the head of the firm of consultants. He
is not the engineer in charge of installing systems. He is
a man who is to go into the shop, to direct and to do rou-
tine detail work with a watch and a pencil, for month after
month. A factory must have a number of these men; at
least as many as there are departments.

If you know of one, in our line, fairly filling the specifi-
cations, I may say I know where there is a lucrative posi-
tion for him as a general superintendent.

Making Too Much Profit 333

Any considerable increase in cost, either of production
or of distribution, that has an effect general to an indus-
try, mercilessly forces an increase in prices. Economy
we are striving for always; any profit margin that will
survive a substantial reduction throughout an industry
is an abnormal thing. The consumer must be given his
opportunity to shoulder so much of the burden as he
will. If he will shoulder none of it, we must go out
of business. Some of us must go out of business in any
event. The increase in price will always normally drive
some buyers out of the market, and those remaining, not
enough to go round, fall to the lot of the sellers who are
best equipped to deliver value. The least able must
drop out.

You will set against this in your mind, perhaps, an
instance of a man you know who is taking regular divi-
dends of twenty per cent from some one investment. He
will not be boasting of three others which pay him
nothing, and bring his average down to five per cent.
And the one investment that does pay is likely to be in
the stock of a young concern that is capturing business,
through patents or progressive management, from older
competitors, driving their earnings down to nothing, and
producing a low average of dividends for the industry as a
whole.

Let me risk one quotation from an authority on eco-
nomics, Professor Taussig. I tremble, because if you
should read the economists, there would be no need for
this paper. The quotation is second hand, from System.
"... If changes in the arts were to cease, if competi-
tion were to work out its results perfectly, if prices were
to conform closely to expenses of production, the managers
of industry would receive nothing but wages. . . But in
a dynamic state — state of unstable equilibrium, of transi-
tion, of advance. . . By taking the lead in utilizing in-
ventions or improving organization they make extra
gains, which last so long as they succeed in holding the

334 The Unpopular Review

lead. Business profits, so considered, are ever vanish-
ing, ever reappearing. They are the stimulus to improve-
ment and the reward for improvement. . . The large
and conspicuous gains are in fact associated almost in-
variably with advances in the arts, with boldness and
sagacity in exploiting new enterprises and new methods."

In common conception, profit is something that drops
in the laps of the affluent, the bounty of the capricious
gods, something for nothing. It does not exist.

Is a speculative gain something for nothing? No. It
is gambling; a win to-day and a loss to-morrow. Is the
yield of a fraudulent deal something for nothing? No
more than the spoil of a burglar. It involves the loss of
security, reputation, self-respect. Then, as the run of
people think of it, there is no such thing as profit.

The investor foregoes the immediate enjoyment of his
property, and takes the chance of losing it. He gives us
the use, he saves for us the increase, of the fruitful thing
he controls, and he will submit, if the fortunes of com-
merce so decree, to its annihilation. For this, in the long
run, he gets very little; just wages for the time he spends
managing his estate, and perhaps a little better than
savings-bank interest. If occasionally he gets a big gain,
it is compensation to him for having made possible a
greater extraordinary gain to the community in general.

The flow of commerce is like the course of a river. By
age-long reactions, automatically compensating and self-
adjusting, a condition is reached that is forever closer and
closer approaching the smoothness of fluid stability.
Any intervention from outside, short of regulation from
start to finish, comprehensive and of scientifically correct
design, serves only to provoke the retaliation of nature,
as surely as a bucket of quicksilver will squirt out some-
where, if you try to compress it by sitting in it.

There was a shallow place in our stream here a year
ago. During the spring freshet a tree fell across and

Making Too Much Profit 335

effectually deepened that spot. The current, forced under,
did a good job of excavating; using the material to con-
struct a brand new and annoying sand bar at the next
quiet stretch below. Our ventures at correcting imper-
fections in the development of business often work out
effects of the same sort.

For instance, all employers but the most benighted
now understand that piece-work rates are not to be cut.
This is the way it works. John Anderson has a man turn-
ing out ten pieces of work a day, on the average, for a
daily wage of two dollars. He gets a rush order, and he
says, "Lester, if you'll hurry, I'll pay you eighteen cents
a piece for all you do." Lester awakens to an interest in
life, and after a bit John discovers that he is doing twenty
pieces, earning three dollars and sixty cents a day. John
is saving two cents of direct labor cost on each piece, and
he has doubled his output without increasing his plant,
and without increasing any expenditure for light, heat,
taxes, supervision, and the rest of the hideous items that
pile up his expense. It is a good thing all round.

But before long John begins to take his share of the
benefit for granted, and to wonder what Lester is doing
with all his money. John can not make it seem right
that a common two dollar man should be drawing three
dollars and sixty cents every day, and enjoying good
health. He' concludes he has made a woeful blunder, a
simple error in calculation, and that Lester is very un-
sportsmanlike in taking such continued advantage of it.
John feels that Lester should really always be grateful
for being allowed to reap the benefit of John's indulgent
heedlessness so long. It is absolutely an unheard-of
thing, you know, for such a fellow to be making over two
dollars. It must have a demoralizing effect on him, too.

So John lowers the price to ten cents, and Lester works
just twice as hard for his two dollars a day as he did in
the first place. The joy is gone out of his life. And for
himself John has killed the golden goose. The next time

336 The Unpopular Review

(or it may be the third or fourth time; some kinds of fish
will swallow the same bait more than once) that he ap-
plies the stimulus of piece-work it does not stimulate.
The men have learned that two dollars a day is their
limit, and they take pains not to earn any more. When
John wants to increase production, now, he buys more
land, more buildings, more machinery, and pays for the
education of green men.

Employers who have learned their trade are not caught
that way. The more money their men earn, the better
they like it. But the State, as an employer of public
service corporations, is showing less foresight than Mr.
Anderson. He never announced in advance that there
would be a penalty for effective work.

We say to transportation and lighting companies,
"Look out. If you earn over six per cent we are going
to cut your rates, so you will have to exert yourselves
harder to earn six per cent next year." When we give
any man the chance to choose between earning seven per
cent this year, by sweating hard, and five per cent next
year, and indefinitely, by the same sweat; and the alterna-
tive of earning five and nine-tenths per cent every year,
eased up, it is fair to expect that he will naturally ease
up.

I have heard of a little inter-county railroad living
under such a threat. The rumor is that they once dis-
continued a profitable passenger run, to the serious
annoyance of their people, to avoid making too much
money.

In such a case there is no incentive to economy. Waste
is no crime. There is no eagerness to beat last year's
record, no tension to keep the force keyed up where it
should be. Achievement is penalized. The company
does not care for improvements. The life is gone out of
the organization; it is eased up — slack. And the public
pays.

Some communities have been awakened to this, and

Making Too Much Profit 337

have worked out arrangements for splitting increased
earnings between the corporation and the public, in much
the same way that modern management uses in dividing
savings between employer and wage earner. But such
keenness is not usual. Public business methods that do
not lag behind enlightened private practice are rare.

Are you impatient, when you buy farm produce, be-
cause the composite middleman gets a larger share of the
retail price than the farmer gets? Well, the farmer
plants, cultivates, harvests, and delivers at the rail-
road, all in one compact bulk. Then he is done. The
middlemen inspect, transport, store, transport to re-
tailers, store again, inspect again in detail, take the loss
on spoiled goods, distribute to a hundred households,
collect the money. The farmer might do these things if
he would, and have the middleman's spoil for himself.
It would not pay him wages.

A man and a team, if there were no profitable use for
them on the farm, command in the produce season from
three and a half to six dollars a day of some contractor's
or road builder's money almost any day and anywhere.
The farmer is at liberty to peddle his produce. He must
add to his prices, then, enough to cover his lost time, his
unsalable remainder at the end of the day, and the dis-
tastefulness of the work of peddling. If this left his prices
still below those of the grocer to you, no doubt the traffic
would be going on in that way to-day. Farmers are not
blind to opportunity.

If it strikes you as an outrage that fresh eggs should be
forty cents at retail in your city the same day they are
thirty-five in the village six miles away, try this. Hire
a man at two dollars a day to buy eggs in the country and
ship them to you. Hire a man and a wagon in town at
four dollars to deliver them. You will not need to pay
any rent or insurance or any of those things. After the
first bare hundred and twenty dozen each day, if your

338 The Unpopular Review

men do not break any of the eggs, you will have five cents
from every dozen to give to chanty.

The truth is, an egg in town is worth more money than
an egg in the country, just as truly as a melon is worth
more on the vine in August than it is in the seed in March.
In taking an egg to town you add to it what the economists
call utility of place. You give it availability. Poten-
tially, a melon seed is a vine of melons. Potentially only,
an egg in the farmer's cellar or in the bucket under the
counter of the country merchant is the same as an egg
in your ice box. We are willing to pay the farmer for
converting the melon seed into melons; we are willing to
pay his wife for supervising the transformation of chicken
feed into eggs. Why not pay the commission man and
the railroad and the grocer for their work in turning a use-
less egg into a useful one?

The economists would clear up a good many of these
points, if they were a little better hammock reading. For
instance, why own a home when you may pay rent? The
rent you pay goes into the landlord's bag. Out of the bag
come taxes, insurance and repairs. What is left the land-
lord may spend, and it amounts to less than fair interest
on his investment.

If you doubt this, ask your banker what sort of an in-
vestment well built residence property is, aside from its
speculative phase. If you buy the place, you pay in-
terest (or lose it from your income, if you pay cash from
your savings), and you pay the taxes, insurance, and repair
bills yourself. What is the gain to you in money?

We have a shoe dealer on a second floor down town
who says: "Climb a flight and save a dollar. The other
people have to charge high prices because they pay more
rent." Take it from Adam Smith, there is a flaw in that
reasoning. Being on the second floor does not give that
dealer any advantage over his competitors. If it did, they
would all be up there, or on the third or fourth. You do
not buy a beefsteak for less money on account of its being

Making Too Much Profit 339

raised over in the back township seven miles from the
railroad, where land is cheap.

There may be something in the shoe man's argument.
Possibly he is a pioneer in a movement that will end in
the more general utilization of second floors for small re-
tail establishments. But as he states the proposition, it
is not valid.

What he wants you to believe is that rent is a cause,
having its effect in the price of shoes. What the econo-
mists prove is that the price of shoes is the result of the
action of supply and demand in the shoe market, while
the rent of any location is the result (not a cause at all of
anything, but an effect) of some peculiar benefit conferred
by that location on the people who have the privilege of
using it. If there is a difference in prices due to the loca-
tions, it does not mean that the man downstairs is forced
to ask more; it means that the man upstairs is forced to
take less. A shoe store on the ground floor pays more
rent than one above, not because the landlord's fancy
happened to wander that way, but because it is easier to
sell shoes close to the sidewalk. Our friend up a flight
must expend in extra selling effort all he saves in rent.
He must buy newspaper space to do the work of show
windows, for one thing.

The selling price of any commodity is the result of the
complex and involved interaction of the number of buyers
in the market, the number of sellers, their necessities and
limitations, modified by their bargaining skill. If we
traced it to the end this would be a text-book. But two
or three steps will show the weave of the thing.

You have a horse to sell, and the least money you can
accept is eighty dollars. I am in the market to buy, and
my limit is eighty dollars. If we meet, and have the
market to ourselves, we deal, sooner or later, at eighty
dollars. That is simple and plain. But if another seller
enters the negotiations who will sell, if he must, at seventy
dollars, the horses being of equal values, I shall surely

34° The Unpopular Review

deal with him, at an undetermined price somewhere be-
tween seventy dollars and eighty, depending on which of
us puts up the better bluff. On the other hand, any num-
ber of sellers may offer horses at prices as low as eighty-
five dollars, and any number of buyers may bid a maxi-
mum of sixty-nine, without affecting either the number
of sales or the current price. That is going far enough to
show how the affair tangles itself up.

The basic fallacy lies in assuming that the prices
other people, especially employers, pay, and the prices
people other than ourselves secure for their merchandise
are arbitrary, subject to manipulation, high or low like
the flame of a gas jet. We know, each of us, that for our-
selves we take what we can get, for labor, professional
service, or funds invested; and we pay what we must
when we buy. But we feel that somehow the other people
have the dice loaded.

A frank old partner of Mr. Carnegie's, I think it was,
got on his feet at a board meeting and announced his
policy. "What we want is prices to go up, and costs to go
down." Of course. That is what we all want. The
social uplifter wants the price of labor to go up, and the
cost of its subsistence to go down. I heard once in a con-
ference a plea for a costly change in policy, with the sup-
plementary suggestion that naturally the cost would be
made up by an increase in prices. The Old Man smiled
a smile and said, "If we are in position to advance prices,
let's advance them anyway, and divide the money."

Such unnatural monsters as monopolies of necessities
of life we have not considered. They are out of our reach,
of course. We must recognize, while we are referring to
them, that the large corporations we familiarly speak of
as trusts do not come anywhere near being all monopolies.

But monopolies of things people do fairly well without,
are not exceptions. I bought a patent bass bait last
summer for seventy-five cents which I unreservedly be-

Making Too Much Profit 341

licve gave somebody a margin of seventy-two cents. But
that man will never know whether he acted wisely.
He may to-day be tortured by a horrid suspicion that he
might have sold ten times as many baits at a profit of
fifteen cents, and made twice as much money.

But did he not make a pile of easy money as it was?
I understand so; more or less of a pile. But then likely
enough he lost it all trying to sell some other baits that
the fish did not like. We have to look at these things in a
broad way. In spite of the fact that I once saw one up
a tree, I will hazard the unqualified assertion that wood-
chucks live on the ground. It is true there have always
been instances of easy gains, as there have been reckless
gamblers of all sorts who have sometimes won.

But the facts are these.

We buy at a price we do not control, except in so far as
our bidding has tended to increase it. We sell at a price
about which we have nothing to say, except that our en-
trance into the market has had more or less influence to
lower it. Between the two we must insert our expense,
and then, if there is room, our profit. Compression of
the expense — which is management — is what makes
room for profit.

Now go one step farther with me, and please do not
lose this. It is to the interest of us all that there shall be
profit. Remember that legitimate competitive profit,
made without fraud, does not and can not, as a broad
proposition, mean anything but good management. It
is no indication of the grinding of labor or of whip-sawed
consumers. And the more money there is made, in any
branch of commerce, the more adventuring capital will
be attracted into it, the more the selling price of the
product must be forced down, and the greater must be
the portion of it that is transmitted to labor.

ON BEING A PROFESSOR

Some Remarks on Education by one whose Early Training
was not of the Best

SOCRATES. About what does the Sophist make
a man eloquent? The player on the lyre may be
supposed to make a man eloquent about that
which he understands, that is about playing the
lyre. Is not that so?

HIPPOCRATES. Yes.

SOCRATES. Then about what does the Sophist
make him eloquent? Must not he make him
eloquent in that which he understands?

HIPPOCRATES. Yes, that may be assumed.

SOCRATES. And what is that which the Sophist
knows and makes his disciple know?

HIPPOCRATES. Indeed, that I cannot tell.
i

I

A MINOR use of newspapers and magazines is that
they often convey information about a man which
the man himself would never acquire by observation and
experience alone. It was in this way, through the in-
valuable pages of the Atlantic Monthly and other period-
icals, that I first learned of the forlorn state of that ancient,
and once honorable, company of College Professors. Not-
withstanding the unselfish devotion with which they pur-
sue a noble calling, so at least I was led to infer, Professors
are frequently without influence in their own communities,
only by close and even humiliating economies have occa-
sionally a little free pocket money, and generally speaking
are unable, for financial reasons mainly, to cultivate the
tranquil mind or properly to nourish what the Germans
call the inner life. Having myself been a professor for
some years, plodding along contentedly enough for the

342

On Being a Professor 343

most part, I was extremely sorry to hear — as I say from
the periodicals — of my present lamentable situation.

How I came to join this unfortunate class may perhaps
be of some sociological interest, particularly so since my
earliest impression of the professor should have prejudiced
me for life against the calling. It was as a lad that I came
to know a lean little old man, in ancient shiny frock coat,
who came every Spring to prepare our fire wood. He
sawed wood for a living; but by profession was a weather
prophet. When he went down the street people were ex-
pected to observe him. If he went free handed you were
to know that the day would be fine; but he reserved a
plentiful supply of biting sarcasm for those who ventured
forth unprotected, even on a cloudless day, after having
seen him pass with an umbrella. He was an excellent
wood-sawyer; but it was the common belief in the commu-
nity that as a weather prophet he was visionary, an in-
curable idealist, inefficient certainly to the last degree,
and of no practical use whatever. In fact, the man was
thought to be mildly demented; and so, by some sure
popular instinct, everyone called him "Professor."

It was with no idea of fashioning myself upon this
eccentric model of a man that I went to college. Nor yet
was it with any particular profession in view; for I recall
that nothing used to annoy me more than to have some
respectable friend of the family inquire: "And what does
the young man expect to do when he gets through col-
lege?" I rather hoped not to have to do anything; and if
my parents did not share this hope, they were at least con-
vinced, apart from any question of vocation, of the great
advantage of possessing a "good education." I went to
college, therefore, somewhat as a matter of course; not,
certainly, to become a professor, but to obtain a good
education. Whether this object was attained or not, the
four years in college was to me a wonderful adventure in
the wide world of the human spirit, an adventure which at
the time seemed well worth while, quite apart from any

344 The Unpopular Review

question of its practical application. In this idea, I was
greatly encouraged by certain professors who seemed
greatly interested in my adventure, encouraging it for all
they were worth. And these men had an insidious fascina-
tion for me because, contrary to all I had supposed,
they were not mere road guides, uninterested in the coun-
try because they knew it by heart, mechanically directing
travellers as part of the day's work, and collecting a fee
for services rendered; but, like the several Knights in the
Faerie Queene, were themselves impelled by some inner
daemon to venture beyond the beaten paths, scarcely
knowing whither they were going or what they might find,
but pursuing still, seemingly interested rather in the search
itself than in the end of it. And so they welcomed me,
content that I should seek for something even if I found
it not. What I should seek, or where I might find it,
they never told me; but by subtle suggestion, and still
subtler example, contrived to give to my quest a certain
direction.

It is impertinent to this sad tale to describe the many
interesting countries into which my adventure took me:
as, for example, the country of Philosophy, into which so
many well defined but long since abandoned roads led,
all taking different directions but coming out at the same
place, the place called Nowhere, in which many people
serenely sat doing nothing in particular; or that other and
quite different country of History, where there were only
innumerable, intricately threaded faint paths, leading
to the place called Everywhere, in which were all sorts of
people busily engaged in doing nothing in general. Suffice
it to say that the four years were up before I had more
than begun to get the lay of the land. Less than ever did
I desire to return to the known world and tread in monot-
onous routine the dusty streets of Now and Here. How
fine, I thought, to remain always in this unknown coun-
try! How fine not to have "to do" anything! And one
day it dawned upon me that this was precisely the case of

On Being a Professor 345

my admired professors. Here they were, confined for
life in this delightful country of the mind, with nothing
"to do," privileged to go on as best they could with the
great adventure. From that moment I was a lost man.
I was bound to become a professor.

II

By great good luck and much plodding industry this
honorable distinction was attained in due course. In the
process of attaining it, doubtless much of the glamor that
in youthful student days had hung mistily about the posi-
tion was inevitably dispelled. And yet I was greatly
content with my bargain. Fortune had happily placed
me in an agreeable corner of the world; and I reflected,
with Bishop Butler, that in a universe such as this is,
inhabited by a creature such as man is, not all things
are ordered as one might wish; so that in the course of
some years I made those adjustments to the resistant
facts of reality which most aspiring youths have to make.
But all this is nothing to the point, except to say that it
was during these years, and as a part of this adjustment,
that I became aware of two profound truths; truths which
were obvious enough indeed, but to which I had hitherto
given but slight attention.

It need not be said that professors are an extremely im-
practical people; absent minded, as even the comic papers
have found out, continually occupied with profound
excogitations, and inclined, therefore, to take the world,
and their place in it, very much for granted. Thus it
happened that in our university one of the profound
truths to which I have referred would probably not have
been noticed by any member of the faculty, had it not
been so often explained by the president, and with earnest-
ness and eloquence elucidated at commencement time,
and on other festival occasions, when noted local states-
men, successful business men, and pedagogical experts

346 The Unpopular Review

were found willing to turn aside from the pressing duties
of real life to consider for a brief hour the fundamental
problems of higher education. The truth which was
thus so often elaborated, I cannot pretend to phrase as
happily as I have often heard it phrased; but what I
understood these clever men to say was that the state
paid me a salary for which some equivalent might reason-
ably be expected in return.

By the nature of their duties being often required to give
long and profound consideration to matters of no great
importance, professors are more disposed than other men
to meditate at leisure those ideas of vital significance which
occasionally come their way. This new idea I therefore
looked at for a long time from every point of view. That
the state paid me a salary, could not be denied; that some
equivalent might reasonably be expected in return ap-
peared to be, the more I turned it over, an eminently just
conclusion. From the first the proposition as a whole won
my complete assent; and my attention was chiefly oc-
cupied with some of its more obscure implications; as,
for example, was I by any chance already rendering any
service in return for my salary? If so, was the salary
equal to the service rendered? Should the work of a
professor be of a nature, or should it not be of a nature, to
be easily measured in terms of money? And in either case
what was that work? These questions gave me much
concern. At best, certainly, the professor's salary could
not be regarded as princely. Did not someone once say
that professors, of all able men the most poorly paid, might
all be making a great deal of money had they not chosen
to renounce the lower for the higher life? I must confess
that this attractive idea, to which I sometimes timidly
assented, did not in the end prove altogether convincing,
and it had besides the disadvantage of not being relevant.
It did not alter the fact that I was not a lawyer, or a cap-
tain of industry, or a plumber, but a professor; one of
those, if you will, who had voluntarily renounced the pur-

On Being a Professor 347

suit of gain; and having done so it seemed to me that I
must perforce face the practical question of what was
the service, if any, which I rendered for the salary, such
as it was, which the state did unquestionably pay over
to me.

Much light was shed on these perplexing problems by
that other profound truth which was explained to us,
with rather more elaboration than the first, by the free
spirits of the uncloistered outside world. We were assured
that, whereas the knowledge acquired by students from
learned professors was an excellent thing in itself, and
even a necessary part of a liberal education, it still re-
mained true, inasmuch as this knowledge would inevitably
slip from the mind after a time, that the chief value of four
years in college was not so much the result of any mere
book learning as it was of the daily contact with men and
affairs outside the class room. The college career, rather
than the college course, was the thing: the friendships
formed in chapter house and boarding club, the experience
gained on the campus and the athletic field, all the varied
activities of the four fruitful years spent on this mimic
stage of the world, — these would prove of chief value in
real life; and it was the fond memory of these activities that
would remain with the alumnus, returning after many
years to his alma mater, to remind him of his membership
in the company of the liberally educated.

This idea, even the first time I heard it presented, did
not, somehow or other, strike me as altogether novel.
Many students seemed often so much more alert in con-
ducting an election than in writing an essay, appeared so
much more intelligent in discussing gridiron conflicts than
in describing the Wars of Religion, and in general took
their class work with such settled even if commendable
resignation, that I had sometimes wondered whether they
did not learn more from each other than from the faculty.
Not that the students, I imagined, were more to blame
than their instructors. The average man does not hunger

348 The Unpopular Review

and thirst after knowledge any more than after righteous-
ness. The writing of an essay, when everything is said,
is a task like any other. The Wars of Religion are dull
enough in all conscience. And if it be true, as I have heard
said, that the born teacher is one who each day "sets his
students' imagination aflame," I had to confess that the
born teacher is very rare. Of course I took the conven-
tional, academic view that the situation, whoever was to
blame for it, was one to be deplored, and corrected if pos-
sible. Like the British House of Commons on a famous
occasion, I often highly resolved that the evil had in-
creased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished, with-
out seeing very clearly how that desired end might be
attained. It was very consoling, therefore, to learn that
there was no call to be distressed, that the situation, on the
whole, was quite as it should be. I was reminded of the
well known epigram which has it that Harvard would be
a great university if it were not for the students; and I
wondered if it would not be more modern to say that
Harvard, or Kansas, would be a great university if it were
not for the professors.

Personally, I thought it would be perplexing indeed if
it should turn out so; and I was more than ever concerned
to know what it was that a professor, paid by the state,
had to do with these young people, so terribly at ease in
Zion, who in increasing numbers assembled every year
at the university to educate themselves. How many of
them came to college, and how many were only sent?
They seemed not to be in any sense a picked or chosen
company. They were just Everybody's children, who
often replied, when I casually asked them why they came
to college, that they "just came;" and who sometimes
asked me in return if it was not a good place to come to. I
could not deny it, I who had gone to college without know-
ing why. Sometimes I passed them in review, as it were,
searching for those of whom one could say, "the university
is a bad place for you." There were those aspiring youths

On Being a Professor 349

who could not decide in what branch of human learning
they preferred to specialize, and with irresolution drifted
from mathematics to history, from history to sociology,
and so on to journalism. There were the engaging, well
set up chaps, ambitious to be thought men of the world,
who were willing, without fear and without research, to
take on a little general culture, but who seemed to think
it not quite good form to know anything for certain. There
were the more serious youths who deeply pondered the
problem of existence. Very modern in their ideas of
Social Service, wishing not to be thought irreligious al-
though not subscribing to any formal creed, they appeared
to enjoy a high sense of having reconciled all the antin-
omies, inasmuch as they willingly accepted, with certain
reservations, the doctrine of evolution, and yet found it
not inconsistent to be present at meetings designed to
promote the cause of true Christianity through the dis-
cussion of "Jesus Christ as Head Coach," or other up to
date and opportune topics. No, I could not deny that,
for all of these, the university was a good place to be.
Least of all, perhaps, could I deny it in the case of that
multitude of trim-frocked young women, bubbling over
with health and the joy of living, who invaded and seemed
to possess the university; who so obviously found it a
good place to be; so excellent a place in which to be ini-
tiated into literature and the fine arts, into history and the
social sciences, and into a sorority; those devotees of
fashion and the higher life who were equally chagrined at
failing to receive a high grade or an invitation to the party,
who attended classes so regularly, took notes so assid-
uously, and were often able to reply so neatly to every
sort of question — of which they had learned the answer.
For all of these excellent children, whom one never ex-
pected to step out of the beaten path or peep over the
edge of a conventional idea, the university was at least not
a bad place in which to be. But then what of the illus-
trious minority, the saving remnant of young men and

350 The Unpopular Review

women who were not content to skirt the outer edge of the
intellectual country? A few there were always with the
genuine curiosity of the scholar; a few who wished not
merely to seek wisdom but to pursue it as well. To all
such I confess I was ever partial, delighted to find them
interested in knowledge for its own sake rather than for
the sake of a grade. I never knowingly did anything to
discourage their fondness for useless ideas, or to check
the instinctive aptitude which they sometimes exhibited
for every kind of heresy. These were the pupils whose
imagination the born teacher might each day set aflame.
These were the pupils who would go far if the pace was
properly set. But in that case the others, left far behind
without a guide, would be in danger of altogether losing
their way. Here they were then, pellmell, Everybody's
children in Everybody's university; and the professor,
comfortably drawing his salary month by month, had
to decide whether he could best serve the state by attend-
ing mainly to the great majority or by attending mainly
to the saving remnant. The professor had to decide
whether he would endeavor to make the university a
school of higher education or merely a higher school of
education.

The answer to this question I found by no means easy.
In a community saturated with the sentiment of democ-
racy it might seem to go without saying that if the people
wished to maintain a great public playground where a
little useful information, neither dangerous nor too es-
oteric, could be picked up by the way, the paid professor
was there to give them what they wanted. And yet, in
this community whose democracy was touched with
idealism, it seemed reasonable to suppose that intelligent
people who sent their children to the university would
desire for them the higher education in some serious sense.
At least I could not think that the "Old Grad," even if he
did customarily discourse longer on football than on Latin,
really supposed that the university was maintained at

On Being a Professor 351

great expense primarily for the practice of the new dances
or the cultivation of college spirit. I came therefore to the
conclusion, without being very sure of its being the right
one, that the professor might safely concern himself with
intellectual interests rather than with "student interests,"
and with a good conscience give his best efforts to those
pupils (a considerable number after all, if one allowed for
the natural conservatism of the normal young fellows who
wish not to appear conspicuous), who were capable of
serious intellectual effort, allowing the others to come and
go, without too rigid inquiry into their attainments, on
the assumption that four years in college could not, on
almost any terms, do them any great harm.

In this opinion I long continued, and should doubtless
have persisted to this day, had it not been for a new order
of ideas which began to make its way into the quiet ac-
ademic world. It must have been about the year 1910, or
some such inconvenient date, that I began to have an
uneasy sense of things gone wrong; and I was shortly
made aware that the question had not to do with the
students but with me; the real question was not whether
I should concern myself with serious intellectual interests,
but whether the intellectual interests with which I had so
long concerned myself were in fact serious. Let the pro-
fessor work his students as much as he liked; it was still
pertinent, I found, to ask of what practical benefit was
all this endeavor. I had considered the whole question
from the point of view of the efficiency of the students,
and all this it now turned out was a great mistake; what
I should in fact have asked was whether the professor
himself was efficient.

Like the good John Bunyan, I was now much "tumbled
up and down in my mind." As soon as I felt the edge of
that word efficiency, I knew there was sharp work to be
done. A word so self-contained, yet so little restful; a
word so keen and precise; a word so firm and metallic, so
hard and yet so resilient, would surely cut straight and

35 2 The Unpopular Review

ruthlessly through all that was vague and uncertain in
the world, would prick every bubble of speculative think-
ing, expose all soft idealisms, and open up those obscure
and shaded nooks of the human mind where emotion
keeps its day, and energy is dissipated in the vain striving
after impossible things. Suddenly confronted with this
uncompromising word, there was little I could set down
in extenuation. All the vague adumbrations of ideas with
which I had puffed up my soul in vanity, weighed in the
balance against this word, were found but trifles light as
air. There was nothing for it but to surrender at discre-
tion; to begin life over; to find out, first of all, what effi-
cient education was like, and then what I might do in the
way of promoting it.

Ill

Left to myself I should most probably have gone wrong.
Fortunately, I was not left to myself. A great number of
disquisitions, on efficiency in general and on educational
efficiency in particular, exposed the theory of the thing;
while certain changes in the traditional college curriculum,
changes which, unperceived by me, had been going on for
many years, furnished examples of its practical applica-
tion. Instructed in theory and fortified by concrete
illustration, I soon learned to detect the efficiency expert,
or any fair specimen of his work, entirely unaided, and
with what seemed to me a commendable degree of pre-
cision. My success in this matter was doubtless due to the
habit of employing, out of many tests, three principal
ones, which it was said should be applied to determine
the efficiency of every sort of activity. These tests may be
conveniently put in the form of questions; so that one is
always on the right track in asking, of any educational
institution or course of study, whether it has a practical
value, whether it has a measurable value, and whether its
value is equal to its cost. I must confess that for a long

On Being a Professor 353

time the whole business was a purely empirical process on
my part; but in time I came to see that these three ex-
cellent tests, far from being mere arbitrary rules of thumb,
were all clearly derived from a single fundamental prin-
ciple, a principle which had the advantage of being
grounded in revelation as well as in reason, the principle,
namely, that education has to do primarily with the
things that are seen and temporal rather than with the
things that are unseen and eternal.

That this way of regarding the matter had so long
escaped me is perhaps not so inexplicable as one would
suppose. My failure was doubtless due to excessive
preoccupation with the dead past. As a student of history
I had been much impressed with a distinction, over subtle
no doubt, which old Martin Luther, and Socrates before
him, attempted to draw between the inner or spiritual
man and the outer or temporal man. Men whom the
world had fallen into the habit of calling great had made
so much of this distinction that I also, being somewhat
conventionally minded, came to regard it as of great im-
portance. From all I could learn, I imagined that if
history had any meaning, if the study of the past revealed
anything which we could safely speak of as "progress" or
"development," it was to be found precisely in this pain-
fully won, even if inadequate, separation of the inner from
the outer man, and in the subordination, as yet only par-
tially effective to be sure, of material to spiritual values.
Such limited experience as I had had, confirmed by the
opinions of reputed wise men in all ages, led me to suppose
that spiritual and material values were of a different order
altogether, and that the former could neither be fostered
nor measured by means that were appropriate to the latter.
Preoccupied with these not very precise ideas, I suppose it
never occurred to me to ask whether schools and churches,
or the intellectual activities which seem always in some
fashion connected with them, were efficient, or whether
they were worth all they cost. I had rather thought of

354 The Unpopular Review

such institutions and activities as devoted to fostering
those ideal interests which humanity seemed to find in-
dispensable; as devoted to preserving and promoting,
certainly never as effectively as could be wished, that in-
definable thing called wisdom or virtue, which, as Socrates
said, is " surely the one true coin for which all things should
be exchanged."

Now, it had required no little courage to engage in the
business of education on these terms. Strive as one might,
profits were small, exceeding slow in the realization, and
sometimes, even with the closest figuring, seemed to have
altogether vanished. How elusive and intangible a thing
was this wisdom, or liberal culture, in the service of which
so many buildings were erected, so many salaries paid,
so many unread books printed! As of old it could doubt-
less still be said that "wisdom crieth aloud, she uttereth
her voice in the streets;" but though she might speak with
the tongues of angels her message seemed too often all
but lost in the noises of the forum or the market place.
Where then was the professor to maintain that he had
promoted understanding, or done effective battle against
the plangent platitude or the pretentious humbug? Who
could claim to demonstrate beyond peradventure that
right reason followed in the wake of Latin composition,
or that much study of history fostered the righteousness
that exalteth a nation? On these terms it was difficult
indeed for the professor to maintain his own worth, by
his works to prove to the eye of sense that he was any-
thing more than a late survival, a kind of tradition, as it
were, which men repeat still, well aware that it has but a
poetic significance.

With what relief then, with what a sense of assured
results, might not the professor turn to a theory of educa-
tion which, identifying the inner with the outer man,
concerned itself with material and measurable realities!
Now it was that I first fully grasped the profound signif-
icance of a saying of Pascal. "How rightly," he says,

On Being a Professor 355

"do men judge by external rather than by internal stand-
ards. Which of us two shall enter first? The most able?
But I am as able as he: we should have to fight about that.
He has four footmen, while I have but one. That is some-
thing which can be seen. There is nothing to do but to
count. It is clearly my place to yield, and I am a fool if
I contest it. Thus we remain at peace, the greatest of all
possible blessings." Applying this qualitative arithmetic,
I found all the great problems of education much sim-
plified, and placed in the way of an easy solution. One
had only to count, an extremely easy thing to do, and very
precise in its results. One had but to count the students
in all the universities to determine which was the greatest
university, the enrollment in all the courses to determine
which was the best course. That student was the most
liberally educated who obtained the best paying job. The
ablest professor was the one who accumulated the most
degrees, or printed the most books; while the most effi-
cient was he who taught most hours in the day, or whose
name was attended with the longest retinue of varied and
noted activities.

"He has four footmen, while I have but one." But why
indeed should he have four since I have but one? Let us
each have two, a very good number for any man, so that
we may go in together, thus banishing jealousy and con-
tention from the world. If this solution did not occur to
Pascal, it was doubtless because he lived in an aristocratic
age. But in our day it is difficult to imagine any other,
or to conceive why it should not be applied to those in-
stitutions which, being supported by public taxation, are
necessarily devoted to the promotion of equality. It
seemed clear, therefore, that the efficiency of a university
should be judged, not alone by the number of its activities,
but also by the uniformity of its results. Formerly I had
supposed this altogether impracticable; I now came to see
that it was within the range of the possible. Organization
and system, excellent and obtainable substitutes for in-

356 The Unpopular Review

spiration, would do the business in the end. The univer-
sity had in fact to be standardized. Let it but be provided
with a sufficiently elaborated mechanism of coordinated
and intricately reticulated compulsory and restrictive
rules and regulations, and one could not doubt that pro-
fessors would be made 'efficient in spite of themselves, or
that students would become educated by passive resistance
to an established routine. If all professors conducted
their classes by the same method, and applied the same
method in testing the attainments of their students; if no
professor devoted more or less /time than every other to
supervising the work of his classes, if none made that
work either more or less interesting, or failed to observe
the rule requiring that a just percentage of his pupils
should attain excellence in the end; why, in that case,
one might look forward to the happy day when students
would enter the Latin course as readily as the course in
Oral Expression, being assured beforehand that the chances
of achieving the mental quality stamped Grade A would be
precisely the same in the one course as in the other.

Excellent results such as these could not of course be
obtained without excellent men. I was therefore well
aware that for the standardization of the university a new
type of men was needed: alert and active men, practical,
hustling fellows, live wires; a different sort altogether from
the traditional professor, hall-marked by a timid and
casual air, over much given to "dreams and the reading of
many books, in which are also divers vanities," as the
Preacher says. But I had only to look around me to
realize that the new professor was already on the ground.
Everywhere there appeared to be an increasing number
of efficiency experts: systematizers and methodologists,
pedagogical statisticians, instructors who gave the im-
pression of having reduced the art of teaching to the level
of an exact science. Nor could I doubt that the New
Professor was not only known but justified of his works.
He everywhere brought with him new life and a sense of

On Being a Professor 357

lifted horizons, so that the task of disciplining the minds
of students, and of fitting them at once for social service
and a well paid job, seemed the least part of the profes-
sor's duties. I wonder now that any one could have
thought to justify an expensive university so long as it
aimed only to shape the thought and conduct of the rising
generation! The New Professor taught us that the cam-
pus must be made coextensive with the commonwealth.
Brought into contact with all the people, conferring upon
them those material benefits which could be exactly
measured, and once felt could not be forgot, the university
would win their undivided allegiance, and would at last
become, what its founders intended it to be, the palladium
of all our liberties.

One could not long remain cold in the presence of such a
splendid ideal as this; nor long refuse one's sympathy
to the men who were engaged in providing the highly
articulated organization which was necessary to attain it.
I had long been sceptical of the possibility of advancing
education through the multiplication of administrative
devices; was doubtless a little repelled by the New Pro-
fessor's complacent confidence in the efficacy of so much
machinery; a little jealous, perhaps, on account of the in-
stant applause with which his proposals were greeted by
the many. And yet there was a compelling fascination
about these men. The New Professor conducted himself
with such a busy air of industry and of things accom-
plished; he spread about in the quiet academic world so
bright a sense of precision and practicality and of work-
able mechanisms; he was so alertly on the job, foreseeing
every difficulty only to dispose of it by a new device; was
so earnestly methodical and so methodically earnest; was
so furnished forth with profound and brightly furbished
convictions, even about little things; and in general was
so persistently up to the mark doing his level best, and
sometimes a second best, in the search for a perfect educa-

35 8 The Unpopular Review

tional Schematism, that one could by no means refuse him
a great admiration.

Admire him or not, I realized that the New Professor
had come to stay. He was a part of the Zeitgeist, which it
is useless to resist however little one may enjoy it. I recog-
nized the New Professor as an embodiment of the Zeitgeist
as soon as I realized that it was his foreordained mission to
bring education into harmony with the main trend of
thought in society at large. "The Jesuit," says Mr.
Irving Babbitt, "unduly encouraged the individual in the
hope that he might cast off the burden of his sin upon the
priest;" and I have his word for it, although he is doubtless
too little in sympathy with popular ideas to be a good
judge, that the underlying notion of present day human-
itarianism is to think, likewise, that the individual may
"cast off his burden upon society." Doubtless no one
has better expressed this fruitful idea than Rousseau:
"Men are naturally good," he said; "it is society that
corrupts them." Now I had always thought of Rousseau,
taking credit to himself for all his virtues while laying all
his vices to the account of his neighbors, as having in-
vented a most easy solution for all our social problems.
What could be happier then, than to apply this philosophy,
everywhere so popular in the world at large, to the min-
iature world of the university? And this, it seemed to
me, was precisely what the New Professor was up to:
devising the perfect organization as a substitute for per-
sonal responsibility, thus enabling the student, and the
professor too, rest his soul, to cast off the burden of educa-
tion upon a vicariously mediating institution.

It was not difficult to foresee that our pupils, with the
enthusiasm of youth, would readily adapt themselves to a
philosophy of this sort. Occupied with many things, they
would inevitably find inspection of the formal record much
easier than self-examination as a test of excellence. Mat-
ters would be much simplified if students, delegating the

On Being a Professor 359

business of studying certain subjects to professors of estab-
lished reputation, could take their education for granted
as soon as they had obtained the credits necessary for a
degree; if none could question their religion so long as they
were down on the Registrar's books as having declared a
preference for some or other denomination of professing
Christians; if none could object to their conduct so long
as they observed the rules laid down by the committee
on social affairs. And if some failed, even on these terms,
it was a great advantage to know that the fault was in the
system and not in themselves. A recent contributor to
the Outlook has described his own case, which was pre-
cisely of this sort, with admirable insight. At his univer-
sity, he said, the professors were not inspiring, many
student activities distracted his attention, an inequitable
system of grading discouraged him, and in general the
atmosphere of the place was not conducive to interest in
serious things: for all these reasons he had "lost the capac-
ity for work."

No one can deny that the young man had a just griev-
ance; for it is a serious thing, in this busy world, to lose the
capacity for work, and certainly an institution lacked
efficiency in which four years' residence could give that
result. On the other hand, it is right to point out that we
have only recently begun to standardize our universities;
and in matters of this sort not everything can be accom-
plished in the twinkling of an eye. Already, in the mere
recognition that our fortune is in our stars not in ourselves,
we have undoubtedly taken a long step forward. It re-
mains only to define wisdom and virtue with complete
elaboration in terms of the average social judgment. Then
any student, or professor either, even the most indifferent,
may lie down in the lap of the university in the confident
expectation of being nursed into the achievement of some-
thing excellent.

360 The Unpopular Review

IV

It must be confessed that we are still far from having
attained this desirable condition, even in the middle west,
which is well known to be a most progressive and enter-
prising community. Yet the movement is well under way;
so well under way that I myself regard it, with admiration
indeed, but with a certain resignation, as one who already
thinks of himself as belonging to an older generation. I
think it a great point in my favor that I clearly foresaw
the passing of the old order, and that I did my best to
adapt myself to the new. I tried desperately, for a long
time, to acquire a new stock of ideas, to banish useless
dreams, to take on at least such an appearance of efficiency
as might enable me, under favorable circumstances, to
pass muster before an inspector from the Carnegie Insti-
tution. It cannot be said that I achieved any great suc-
cess. Doubtless I had been too long habituated to an
older order of ideas; and it is well known that defects in
early training, extremely difficult to overcome in later life,
are likely to discount whatever native talent one may
possess. Every year, therefore, I find myself falling far-
ther and farther behind, relatively. It may be that I am
more efficient than I was; but, compared with the truly
competent, I know well that I am at best nothing more
than "something just as good" as the genuine.

Sometimes I yield to the insidious temptation which
induces a defeated man to disparage the merits of the
victor, that he may regard his own defects as a finer kind
of virtue. Is it perhaps after all true, I say to myself,
that the more efficient education becomes, the less efficient
become the educated? Is it true that spiritual benefits
can be so precisely noted and set down in terms of material
value? Perhaps, after all? — And so I deceive myself at
times with formulating a kind of slave morality, well
suited to flatter the vanity of one who has succumbed, in
some measure, to men of super qualities. 'Tis but a harm-

On Being a Professor 361

less delusion! I know it well; and am resigned, on the
whole, to the notion that I shall never be an efficient
professor in a completely standardized university. I will
do what I can, but hope to keep close in my sheltered
corner, and to avoid, if possible, the Survey and the
Questionnaire, well aware that they would expose all
my counterfeit values to the curious inspection of an
unsympathetic world. Already I remind myself, and in
the future I doubt not I shall remind myself more and
more, of the old "Professor" in shiny frock coat who
came every Spring to prepare our fire wood. Like him I
may, figuratively speaking, make a good living sawing
wood; but like him also I foresee myself still nourishing
certain fantastic ideas which the sympathetic will regard
as harmless eccentricities, and the unfriendly as dangerous
heresies. Such is the irony of fate! — that I should come
to resemble the old Professor whom in my youth I thought
so little admirable! As yet, it is true, I do not habitually
wear a frock coat; but I console myself with the thought
that everything comes to him who waits.

ON BEING A HERMIT

WHEN Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee of the
nineteenth century opened his eyes in the England
of the sixth century, he found a world little scathed by
comfort, science, or commonsense. He applied nine-
teenth century facts to sixth century superstitions with,
it will be remembered, many entertaining results, but a
final logical explosion. Now if the cases were reversed,
and some well equipped persons of long ago found them-
selves unintentionally a part of the twentieth century,
it is possible that with a little adjustment they would
be able to practice their professions and trades without
incommoding or irritating their neighbors: for beyond
question a number of occupations that we think of as
"lost" are in active service today. A change of name
and address is the only real difference.

The alchemist and astrologer, for example, are easily
recognizable in their modern form as laboratory research
worker and weather prophet; the bellman reappears as a
sandwich man or newsboy; the professional poisoner lurks
within the evader of pure food regulations. The chapman
has become a book agent; and the copyist and illuminator
find employment in designing Christmas cards, posters
and advertisements. Crusaders are still with us; Pales-
tine has broadened to the world, and the Saracens have
yielded place to politicians and proprietors of all kinds.
The minstrel substitutes a rented auditorium for a castle
hall, or makes himself ubiquitous by means of talking
machines. Whipping-boys masquerade as presidents,
kings, and generals, and wizards take out licenses under
such names as Edison, Burbank, Wright, or Marconi.
Pirates still operate, and pilgrims still wend their way to
birthplaces, shrines, and tents-of-a-night.

It is clear, then, that all of these worn-out employments,

362

On Being a Hermit 363

after being repaired a little and polished a trifle, are as
good as new; but there is yet another occupation, popular
for many centuries, that requires thorough renovation if
not re-creation. I refer to the very ancient and always
honorable calling of the hermit.

It is unaccountable that a profession so general, so
accessible, so undemanding, should have been allowed to
lapse. When one remembers that kings, priests, peasants
and unassorted folk of every age and condition have been
hermits, that no dowry or apprenticeship was ever re-
quired, that any tree or cave or stretch of desert sufficed
for "plant," it seems wickedly wasteful that such an out-
let for human peculiarities and possibilities should be
barred.

Solitude, a hermit's first requisite, has always been a
favorite subject for poets, essayists, and travelers. Among
these last are many who are not actually averse to other
company, but are quite comfortable without it. Borrow
and Stevenson, for instance, always get on perfectly with
Borrow and Stevenson. Possibly, indeed, the explanation
of genuine solitaries lies in the fact that they do get on
with themselves. That quality is vastly different from
conceit. The person who likes himself excessively usually
wishes to share his approval, but the person who merely
"gets on with" himself can work or play, can be amused
or bored, without the aid of an audience or a confidant.

Not only solitude in general, but solitaries in particular
are a part of much of the writing of long ago. A collection
of Hermitana should begin with Marco Sadeler's her-
mits, — the volume which Stevenson says he used to
study every Sunday of his childhood: — "enchanting
prints, full of wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as
large as a county for the imagination to go a-traveling in."

In fiction, hermits are apt to act as picturesque super-
numeraries. Is it necessary to marry or bury in haste?
Behold a hermit is at hand. Must a secret be revealed
or a document produced? A hermit stands at attention.

364 The Unpopular Review

Is the author slightly embarrassed as to the disposal of a
character? a hermit cell opens automatically. "All the
fiction of the last age will vanish," asserts Dr. Johnson,
"if you deprive them of a Hermit and a Wood, a Battle
and a Shipwreck." Such hermits, though, are purely
conventional: it is impossible to tell one from another.
But occasionally fiction does permit a professional recluse
to have personality. Johnson's own hermit, in Rasselas,
is, for example, an honest human gentleman well worth
meeting. He has had a past, acknowledges that his present
is unsatisfactory, and sensibly arranges for a more con-
genial future.

The star hermits with a past are frequently not only
spectacular, but aristocratic. Scott's hermit of Engaddi
is far from commonplace either in his personal experience
or in lineage. On one occasion when he and King Richard
are conversing, the king remarks rather tactlessly that
love and renown as a compensation for suffering can
hardly be appreciated by the hermit.

"Do I not know — can I not estimate, — the value of
minstrel's praise, and of ladies' love!" retorted the hermit.
"King of England . . . the blood that boils in thy blue
veins is not more noble than that which stagnates in
mine." (There is nobody like Scott!) "Few and cold as
the drops are, they are still of the royal Lusignan ... I
am — that is, I was when in the world — Alberich
Mortemar —

"Whose deeds," said Richard, "have so often filled
Fame's Trumpet! . . . Could such a light as thine fall
from the horizon of chivalry, and yet men be uncertain
where its embers had alighted ? "

The hermit relates his history, casually mentioning in
the early part that "while the noblest ladies in Palestine
strove which should weave garlands for my helmet, my
love was fixed on a maiden of low degree." He concludes:
"A fallen nun whose guilt was avenged by self-murder,

On Being a Hermit 365

sleeps soundly in the vaults of Engaddi, while above her
grave, gibbers, moans, and roars, a creature to whom but
so much reason is left as may suffice to render him com-
pletely sensible to his fate!"

A greater variety of sin decorates the past of Sir Guy
de Montfort whom T. S. Arthur long ago introduced to
me in Wilson's Intermediate Fifth Reader. Sir Guy is re-
sponsible for (i) a lovely widow who " droops in Arno-
castle;" (2) "the wild pang that snapped the heart strings
of De Courcy's bride;" (3) "a shrieking maniac," the
beautiful betrothed of Sir Gilbert de Marion. It was
high time Sir Guy became a hermit.

Now Goldsmith's " gentle hermit of the vale" has not
only a past — a mild one — but what is rare with hermits,
a future. The charming youth who has taken refuge with
this fortunate hermit, is revealed as a beautiful damsel
whose one desire is to lay her down and die. Her love had
already, because of her trifling, laid him down and died.
But-

Forbid it, Heav'n! the Hermit cried,

And clasped her to his breast,
The wondering fair one turned to chide,

'Twas Edwin's self that pressed.

Turn, Angelina, ever dear -

My charmer, turn to see
Thy own, thy long-lost Edwin here,

Restored to love and thee.

This is agreeable, very agreeable indeed. I know only
one pleasanter mingling of the conventional and the un-
usual. The combination occurs in Chateaubriand's
Attala. The hero and heroine (a Seminole and a Natchez)
are lost in a marvellously tropical forest somewhere in
what is now Tennessee. A hurricane adds to their dis-
comfiture. Fortunately, a hermit and a St. Bernard dog
come to their aid, and the young people are guided through
the brilliantly colored jungle to the hermitage. This

366 The Unpopular Review

hermit, using accepted Alpine methods, devotes his life
to the rescuing of lost travelers.

Our modern disregard of the possibilities of the hermit
profession is especially incomprehensible in the light of
our open acknowledgment of, even insistence upon, a
quality that is an element of human nature. This quality
goes by various names: isolation, for example, or aloof-
ness, or wildness, or loneliness. Many authorities on the
spiritual or nervous cost of living advocate separate beds,
rooms, suites, even houses. Whole books are written
about the remoteness of the Self, the isolation of the Soul.
In present-day fiction the hero or heroine frequently de-
claims: "I must live my own life!", or "I must be alone
to find out what I really am!"; and the husky young man
or the lusty young woman flees as a bird to the mountain,
the sea, or the plain, — returning, usually, with the de-
termination to do whatever is particularly upsetting to
those most nearly concerned.

With this increasing emphasis on the separateness of
the individual may be noticed a lessening of emphasis on
the unity of the family. The " family" ideal has un-
doubtedly dimmed. Once, every sacrifice was made to
keep a family together, literally and figuratively, -
irrespective of temperaments or tastes. Sisters were sup-
posed to room with sisters, and brothers with brothers.
The family lamp and the family hearth constituted an
ironbound custom, any departure from which aroused
expostulation if not condemnation. But today a recogni-
tion of personal privacy and preference (just the hermit-
feeling) has noticeably affected the old convention of
continuous physical proximity for those closely related.
It is no longer indecorous to admit that blood relationship
does not necessarily insure identical views as to food,
ventilation, politics, or religion. Something has been
lost, without doubt. The encouragement of the hermit
quality until it becomes an exploitation of the Ego, gives

On Being a Hermit 367

a special opportunity to selfishness and the ignoring of
responsibility. But "pigs is pigs" anywhere, in any cir-
cumstances. A normal hermit can be quite happy in a
normal family. It isn't so much that people wish to be
alone, as that they wish to be let alone.

But strangely enough, in spite of this adherence to the
principle, this encouragement and enjoyment, even exag-
geration, of the thing itself, the profession of Hermiting
(there should be such a noun) has no standing today. It
seems to me, however, that properly godfathered, adver-
tised, and financed, the profession might be revived. Of
course I realize that few persons would, at first, desire
to be hermits uninterruptedly; but I am sure that many
persons would welcome the opportunity to be a hermit
occasionally. Tom Sawyer yearned to die temporarily.
Being a hermit occasionally would come near to filling
that temporary need experienced by Tom — of bodily
removal and freedom from accustomed tasks — which
everybody has known, if we may judge by poets and
philosophers, by our neighbors and ourselves. It is true
that vacations and sanatoriums are already at the service
of those who work or play too hard, but there is a fictitious
air of gayety about the first, and a realistic emphasis on
treatment in the second, that spoil both as a substitute
for being a hermit.

Perhaps a term of Hermiting might be made compulsory
on all citizens. That provision would do away with the
embarrassment of absenting oneself from a world scornful
and ignorant of hermit relaxations and employments.
A required hiatus could be used for Repose, or could be
filled practically with Best Books, Diets, Exercises, or
other mortifications of the flesh and the spirit. Occa-
sional Hermiting, moreover, might give opportunity to
develop or appraise imagined ability. Most people sus-
pect that they possess a latent gift which cruel circum-
stance has denied expression. Quite possibly the hermit

368 The Unpopular Review

would find that he was correct in his surmise as to per-
sonal genius, and the world would be richer for his dis-
covery. But quite possible, too (and not less valuable),
would be the enforced realization that the spark was not
vital, but was merely a glow of appreciation, of refined
taste. Chastened, the hermit would resume his accus-
tomed mode of life. Or, if he were unwilling to relinquish
the precious conviction of being ill-used, he could lament
that his chance had come too late. Again, he might find
that there was no genuine hermit quality in him, and
that he had merely been sulky or discouraged or dyspeptic,
and he would return to the world well pleased to be a
part of it. Stockton tells, in The Queen's Museum, of a
youth who was apprenticed to a hermit, but fortunately
the boy found in time that his heart was not in his profes-
sion. He exchanged occupations with a robber chief,
and was quite happy, especially — for he was a kindly
youth — when he learned that the ex-robber was equally
content; and, furthermore, that the hermit had never
realized the substitution.

Hawthorne says that his Wakefield is not a hermit, -
but he was. Nineteenth century conditions gave Wake-
field no opportunity to develop according to recognized
hermit requirements, yet he was certainly a hermit at
heart. Wakefield, it will be remembered, was the gentle-
man who walked out of his house one day, and, twenty
years later, walked in again. He had been living around
the corner the entire twenty years. There was no par-
ticular reason for his going. He merely wished to get
away. What we sentimentally call the Wanderlust has the
same basis, an intense longing to go, not to a definite place,
but to go away from any place that has a claim upon us or
that can control our actions. Just to go somewhere, any-
where. A certain provincialism — "to get to go" -ex-
presses this feeling. The emphasis in this idiom is always
on the effort, the attempt, not by any chance on a destina-
tion. The victims of Wanderlust wish "to get to go."

On Being a Hermit 369

The word Wanderlust reminds me of someone I heard
use it recently, a someone who gets on admirably both
with himself and with an environment which would seem
a fair substitute for the conventional mediaeval-hermit
background. He was twelve, my friend tells me, when
the Wanderlust seized him in his native state of Penn-
sylvania, and haled him forth. The restlessness took him
eventually to the Mississippi River, and, always alone,
he made his way toward the gulf. The friendliness of New
Orleans detained him some months. (Even mediaeval
hermits were willing to come in touch with the world
now and then. Certainly Peter the Hermit emerged from
his retirement to some purpose). He learned French, and
became familiar with the fish trade of the section. Then
he returned to his original form, as Stockton might say,
and wandered west of the city through bayous and lakes
and swamps and marshes until he came to Grande lie.
That was in the fifties. He is still at Grande lie, now
Americanized into Grand Isle. There have been intervals,
for of course he fought through the Civil War, he has been
back to Pennsylvania once or twice. But his legal domicile
is Grand Isle.

In a certain section of south Louisiana the United
States government has set apart a number of islands as
bird reservations. There in security, the pelican, the egret,
the blue heron may build their nests and rear their young.
Game wardens enforce the law; and fish wardens patrol
the bays and passes in behalf of oysters and shrimps.
Now perhaps some day the government will set apart
hermit reservations. They will not in the least resemble
National Parks nor will they duplicate Rest Cures. They
will be places selected for their beauty and worth where
people may meditate, or create, or loaf, or toil, — by
themselves. I haven't worked out the details yet; prob-
ably credentials will be necessary, and the matter of food
and lodging may require a thought or two. But I know
there will be wardens whose duty it will be to repel

37° The Unpopular Review

promoters, to viser admission cards, and, doubtless, to
settle disagreements between hermits. It is hardly neces-
sary to say that the twentieth century hermit would be
quite comfortable physically. Even Johnson's hermit
had many ameliorations in his retreat, and when he con-
cluded to renounce his profession he was able to begin the
world anew with a quantity of gold which he had pru-
dently concealed in the rocks. The Clerk of Copman-
hurst was not unreasonably self-denying; and a strictly
modern novel shows a hermit enjoying a cave that is
equipped with rare rugs, silver basins, and a Malay valet.

There is, of course, nothing new in my idea about human
reservations. Once upon a time, Cities of Refuge were in
vogue; the Cave of Addullam was hospitably open; and
churches have always offered some measure of respite.
Many of these arrangements were made, I know, in the
interests of murderers, but criminals today have wider,
more congenial opportunities of disappearing, and I do
not feel that it would be narrow minded or ungenerous
to blacklist lawbreakers from my chain of twentieth cen-
tury Addullams. There would have to be a chain of
reservations: for in order to serve their purpose they
should offer every form of natural scenery and every
degree of temperature. Some people like life hot, of
course, and some like it cold. Some like the landscape
high, and some like it low. Some like the world round,
and some like it flat.

In the event of the establishing of hermit reservations,
I shall beg that Grand Isle may be the first place opened.
It is all ready: not an oleander should be uprooted or a
live oak straightened. I would not even alter a detail of
the way that leads to Grand Isle. It is a waterway which
begins at the Mississippi River, and for two miles goes
straight along a canal bordered by slender brown cypresses
that rise out of unbroken stretches of blue-lavender
hyacinths up, up to the short green needled branches
from which wave heavily, slowly, masses of soft curling

On Being a Hermit 371

grey moss. Overhead, a strip of blue sky narrows and
inclines until the boat enters Bayou Barataria. Then the
live oaks stretch out great branches, and the blue is seen
only in patches or through the green and grey above. For
twelve hours (the distance between New Orleans and
Grand Isle is, by air-line, fifty-nine miles) the intending
hermit would steam in and out of oak-shadowed bayous;
through level green marshes; past shrimp platforms
(crowded with Malays, Chinamen, Indians, Negroes);
over smooth, lazily washing lakes, around shell banks, -
a possible pirate hoard under each; — until just after
sunset he would come in sight of solid land. A long,
narrow strip of land it is, shut in on one side by sea level
marshes shot through with streaks of gold and green and
rose and purple light, and on the other by blue, white-
topped surf that has rolled from the Caribbean to pound
heavily on the brown shell-less beach of Grand Isle. From
the deck of the low lying boat that has brought him, the
hermit would step into a skiff. This would take him
within a dozen yards or so of land, and there he would
climb to the floor of a wagon, and a mule would pull him
jerkily, splashily to shore.

Even the swift far-south twilight would show him
hedges of pink oleander and white-belled Spanish dagger.
The hurrying stars, or — if he be so blessed — the moon,
would aid him to pick his way along the top of narrow
levees, over stiles, across house yards and through groves
of slanting oaks. There are no roads on Grand Isle, nor
is there a church, a hotel, a "movie," a telegraph, or a
telephone. But there is a postoffice, and within it my
friend whom the Wanderlust once incited, lives as an
adapted, modernized hermit. He has many books, he
speaks many dialects, he knows many legends and his-
tories. He has a past of action and of honor. In '61 he
was a member of a dashing regiment of Zouaves recruited
from the chenieres, the bayous and the prairies trem-
blantes; he fought in great battles, he was captured, and

37 2 The Unpopular Review

starved and shot at in prison; he knew the defeat of his
Cause; and slowly, painfully, but never hopelessly, he
made his way back to Grand Isle. His is the land of
Lafitte and of lesser pirates, of Indian tradition, of
Acadian fact, of swift, overwhelming tragedies of the sea.
A few miles west of Grand Isle, is a short bare strip of sand
that once was lie Derniere, — a low lying island, formed,
tradition says, of dark green oaks, of rose-pink oleander,
of shining sand, surrounded by a sea so blue that no man
might tell where the heavens above met the waters be-
neath. There were days of warning wave and threatening
cloud; and then a night of cataclysm. In his Chita,
Lafcadio Hearne tells — no, paints — the story. But
never has a tidal wave swept over Grand Isle. This
island is high and firm, and along its length stands its
seawall: a bulwark of live oaks, broad, low, bending away
from the winds that blow from

The gates of gold
Beyond the Spanish Main.

Here I rest my case for the hermit. What I have tried
to show is that the hermit-quality is as prevalent today
as it was when prayer, fasting, and a desert were the con-
ventional concomitants of a pronounced and prolonged
desire for privacy. A once flourishing profession exists
only as a figure of speech, as a phase of psychology. But
exist it does, and exist it will. "As the old hermit of
Prague, that man who never saw pen and ink . . .
said . . . 'That that is, is.'"

I suppose I must not hope that the renovation and utiliz-
ation of the hermit-idea will come swiftly. There is, I
am forced to acknowledge, a wide spread, deeply rooted
impression in regard to professional anchorites that does
not differ materially from the point of view held by Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on her-
mits, nowadays, like they used to in old times, but a

On Being a Hermit 373

pirate's always respected. And a hermit's got to sleep on
the hardest place he can find, and put sackcloth and
ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain -

"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head
for?" inquired Huck.

"I dono. But they've got to do it. Hermits always do.
You'd have to do that if you was a hermit."

"Dern'd if I would," said Huck.

THE JOURNALIZATION OF AMERICAN
LITERATURE

AFTER thirty years of pretty continuous reading in
American literature I can say that never has the
published output been so clever, so sparkling, so arresting
as at the present moment, and never has it been so shallow
and inconsequential. Literature that has any excellen-
cies save the mechanical ones connected with the modern
art of "putting it over" seems to be disappearing. In
place of the great still books of the earlier periods, more
and more are we getting literary journalism, — clever
and animated little scraps in the place of fiction, sparkling
shallowness, ephemeral smartness for the pulp-paper
magazine and the Sunday Supplement.

This is a terrible indictment of a generation, especially
if one will admit — and who will not? — that the soul of
an epoch is to be found in its written product. Is the
indictment too strong? For an answer we can do no
better than study what undoubtedly is the leading literary
success of the generation, the author who in the last seven
years, according to the statement of his publishers, has
sold one million, eight hundred thousand copies of his
stories, — O. Henry, already crowned, it would seem, as
an American classic.

Never has there been in America a literary arrival more
startling and more complete than his. He appeared
with the suddenness of a comet. Hardly had we learned
of his existence and his name before he seemed to be filling
the whole east. He was one William Sydney Porter we
were told, a southerner who had seen rough life in the
south-west, in Honduras, in South America, — tramp,
cow-boy, adventurer, crude realist, who was bringing
exotic atmospheres and breezy sections of life in uncharted
regions west and south of the Caribbean. Then suddenly

374

Journalization of Our Literature 375

we found him acclaimed — strange metamorphosis ! — in-
terpreter of New York City, Scheherazade of "little old
Bagdad on the Hudson," first licensed revealer of the
real heart of the modern Babylon of the west, and then,
before we could rub our eyes, we were told that he was
dead. From Cabbages and Kings, his first book, to the
end in 1910, was six years, — six years and ten volumes.
Two posthumous issues there were, then a set of twelve,
advertised everywhere as by "the Yankee de Maupas-
sant," and sold beyond belief.

But the mere selling of almost two million copies is
not the remarkable thing about O. Henry: he has been
given a place beside the masters. Editors of college texts
are including his work among the classics. A recent book
of selections from the work of the world's greatest short
story writers includes only five Americans: Irving, Haw-
thorne, Poe, Bunner, O. Henry. The Professor of English
literature in the University of Virginia, a scholar of note,
has written a biography, and has justified himself with
the dictum: "O. Henry's work remains the most solid
fact to be reckoned with in the history of twentieth cen-
tury literature." At the dedication of the O. Henry
memorial at Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1914, this critic
had added him to the quartette of great American short
story tellers : Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Harte. An English
edition of the stories has now appeared, and the Canadian
critic, Stephen Leacock, in a essay entitled The Amazing
Genius of 0. Henry, has written: "The time is coming,
let us hope, when the whole English-speaking world will
recognize in him one of the great masters of modern
literature."

Manifestly, to study the work of this modern crowned
classic is to study the minds of those who crowned him.
Through the works of O. Henry one may estimate O.
Henry's period, for a people and a generation are to be
judged by what they enjoy, by what they teach in their
schools and crown in their academies. Success like his

376 The Unpopular Review

means imitators, a literary school, a standard of measure-
ment.

The first approach to the man — the only approach
until recently — must be through the twelve volumes of
his writings. Read all of them if you would know him,
but beware : they are intoxicating. One emerges from the
twelfth book of the strange Harlequin epic completely
upset, unable for a time rightly to evaluate, condemning,
yet inclined by some strange wizardry to praise. Where
else may one find such a melange, — stories bedeviled
and poured into bomb-shells; traversities and extrava-
ganzas; rollicking farce often as vulgarly grotesque as
the picture supplement of the Sunday edition; short
stories violating every canon of the text-book, yet so
brilliant as to tempt one to form a new decalogue of the
art; sketches, philosophizings, burlesque hilarious? What
spirits! what eager zest in life! what curiosity! what
boyish delight in the human show! one must go back to
Dickens to match it. Not a dull page, not a sentence
that does not rebound upon you like a boy's laugh, or
startle you, or challenge you, or prod you unawares. It
is strong meat prepared for jaded palates: there are no
delicates flavors, no subtle spiceries, no refined and ex-
quisite essences of style. Its tones are loud, its humor is
exaggerated, its situations and characters extremes. It
is pitched for men, for healthy, elemental men: men of
the bar-room and the frontier. In no writings since Dick-
ens does liquor flow so freely: — " drink shall swell the
theme and be set forth in abundance" he cries in The
Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball. The Fourth in Salvador is the
most besotted tale in modern literature. And yet, for all
that, and notwithstanding the fact that the stories record
life on isolated masculine ranches, in vice-reeking tropic
towns, and the unspeakable areas of New York City, at
every point that touches the feminine — paradox again! —
the work is as clean as Emerson's. Not a page in the twelve
volumes that may not be read aloud in the family circle.

Journalization of Our Literature 377

Before one has spent an hour with the volumes, one is
conscious of a strange duality in the work, one that must
have had its origin in the man himself. It is as if a Haw-
thorne had sold his pen to Momus. There are paragraphs
where the style attains a distinction rare anywhere in
literature; one might cull extracts that would imply
marvellous wholes. We realize that we are dealing with
no uncouth ranchman who has literary aspirations, who
writes in slang for want of legitimate vocabulary. We
are in the hands of one who has read widely and well,
one who has a vocabulary, not including his slang, which
may be called unique, which may be compared indeed
with that of a Pater or a James. His biographer records
that for years the dictionary was his favorite reading,
that he pored over it as one pores over a romance, and
his reader may well believe it. One professor studies
O. Henry for his vocabulary alone, for the marvellous
power he has to capture the one fleeting word of all words
for his purpose, for his ability to express in mere vocables
the inexpressible. Is not a paragraph like this as unique
as Charles Lamb?

In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds de-
lightful to the palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer.
Altruism must halt the story thus long. On, diner, weary of the
culinary subterfuges of the Gallic chef, hie thee to El Refugio!
There only will you find a fish — bluefish, shad or pompanon
from the gulf — baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes
give it color, individuality and soul; chili Colorado bestows upon
it zest, originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy
and mystery, and — but its crowning glory deserves a new
sentence. Around it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity ! — but
never in it — hovers an etherial aura, an effluvium so rarefied
and delicate that only the Society for Psychical Research could
note its origin. Do not say that garlic is in the fish at El Refugio.
It is not otherwise than as if the spirit of Garlic, flitting past,
has wasted one kiss that lingers in the parsley-crowned dish
as haunting as those kisses in life, "by hopeless fancy feigned
on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the
waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and a carafe of wine

37 8 The Unpopular Review

that has never stood still beyond Oporto and El Refugio — ah,
Dios!

This is how he describes a tropic sunset:

The day died in the lagoons and in the shadowed banana
groves and in the mangrove swamps, where the great blue
crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly ramble.
And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief
twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went;
the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row
of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the
approach of soft-footed night.

But one catches only fitful glimpses of this more serious
O. Henry. It is as if the Momus who ruled his pen nodded
for a moment, seldom more than a moment. The sentence
or the paragraph that starts in serious tone ends most
often with impish laughter. Mark the Emersonian open-
ing and the Harlequin close of a passage like this from
Squaring the Circle. It is typical.

Nature moves in circles; art in straight lines. The natural
is rounded; the artificial is made up of angles. A man lost in
the snow, wanders, in spite of himself in perfect circles; the
city man's feet, denaturalized by rectangular streets and floors,
carry him ever away from himself. The round eyes of childhood
typify innocence; the narrowed line of the flirt's optic proves
the invasion of art. The horizontal mouth is the mark of
determined cunning; who has not read Nature's most spontan-
eous lyric in lips rounded for the candid kiss? Beauty is Nature
in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full
moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples,
the huckle-berry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the
ring for the waiter, and the "round" of drinks.

We can never trust him. His tale of Southern life,
The Guardian of the Accolade, beguiles us. It rings true;
it is exquisitely told. Uncle Bushrod is as feelingly and
convincingly drawn as any old regime negro in recent
literature. The feeling grows as we read that we have
discovered a classic; at last from O. Henry a work of
serious art with no Harlequin tricks and no vaudeville.

Journalization of Our Literature 379

Then comes the final sentence — ah! the master it seems
was not absconding with the bank funds after all; the
old negro had not as he so fondly believed, rescued the
family from the gulf of dishonor: he had only prevented
his master from going on a fishing trip, and the satchel
of .supposed stolen bonds that he had secured so diplo-
matically and returned with such pride to the bank, -
" there was two quarts of the finest old silk-velvet Bourbon
in that satchel you ever wet your lips with." We have
been trifled with. We no longer think of it as an exquisite
tale of the Old South: the author has degraded his art;
deliberately has he fabricated the whole picture as a
hoax, as a background for one single vulgar moment of
surprise. One begins the next story with caution. The
materials may promise to be of gold, but who may tell
that it is not an impish trick? In The Door of Unrest
we have a central idea worthy of a Hawthorne, but it is
embroidered everywhere with cheapness. It is pure
linen edged with bunting.

This duality — brilliancy and cheapness, sermons in
motley, art verging ever into caricature — came not
alone from the personality of the man: it came from his
training and his times. To create an O. Henry there
must be schooling in Texas, or if not in Texas then in
some remote area of America where individualism is re-
ligion, and men live lives in the open and close to the
primitive earth. Before he was twenty-one he had for
two years observed, never as an active participator, the
rough life on a sheep ranch in the heart of the south-west,
and he had learned among other things how the primitive
man laughs. Then for twelve years he had lived in Texas
cities, — Austin, Houston, — surrounded by men who
had been a part of the stormy, lawless days of the state.
Western breeziness there was in these little cities, bound-
less spirits, hilarious optimism, sentiment. To O. Henry,
born with soul as keenly sensitive to the incongruous
as ever was Artemus Ward, it was school and college.

380 The Unpopular Review

His companions in every circle in which he ever lived
considered him_a humorist, a mimic, a joker, a caricaturist:
he moved always in a gale of laughter. It showed him
the way he was to go. As early as 1887 ne was contribut-
ing his regular budget of jokes to the Detroit Free Press,
and by 1895 he was editor and proprietor of a humorous
journal of his own, The Rolling Stone, "out for the moss."
A year it was before it ceased rolling, and then its editor
transferred himself to the Houston Daily Post to take
charge of a Eugene-Field-like column entitled Tales of
the Town. There he might have remained until he died
had not sudden good fortune in the form of seeming
annihilating defeat overtaken him and torn him from
the environment that threatened him. Until he was
thirty-five O. Henry was a professional newspaper hu-
morist of the frontier type, and, so far as concerns litera-
ture, he was nothing else.

This early training so colored all his later work that
the twelve volumes of it are to be classified as humor
rather than fiction. It is significant that when in 1903
his North Carolina genre story The Whirligig of Life
was accepted by Harper's Monthly it was printed in
The Editor's Drawer. He was a humorist more com-
pletely even than was Mark Twain, and, more than even
Artemus Ward, was he indigenous to our own soil. His
point of view, his atmospheres, his material, his characters,
and the language they speak are all American and only
American. His comparisons and allusions are always
unique and always so redolent of our American life that
translation into other languages must be all but impos-
sible. Open at random for examples: "They're as full
of apathy as a territorial delegate during the chaplain's
prayer;" "They became inebriated with attention, like
an Atlanta colonel listening to * Marching through Geor-
gia."1 He is a new name to be added to the group of
peculiarly American literary comedians: John Phoenix,
Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Josh Billings.

Journalization of Our Literature 381

Original as he was, however, he added few devices to
those already associated with distinctively American
humor. He used exaggeration as outrageously as even
John Phoenix or Mark Twain. He drove it to the utmost.
A man has chills and fever: "He hadn't smiled in eight
years. His face was three feet long, and it never moved
except when it opened to take in quinine." The man
with rheumatism, asked if he has ever rubbed the af-
fected part with rattlesnake oil, replies: "If all the snakes
I have used the oil of was strung out in a row they would
reach eight times as far as Saturn and the rattles could
be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back." But there
is a peculiar quality to his exaggerations that is individual
as well as American. No man has ever used comparisons
more original or more grotesquely incongruous; "She
had hair the color of the back of a twenty-dollar gold
certificate, blue eyes, and a system of beauty that would
make the girl on the cover of a July magazine look like
the cook on a Monongahela coal barge," or "He was the
red-hottest Southerner that ever smelled mint. He made
Stonewall Jackson and R. E. Lee look like abolitionists."
The mark of O. Henry is upon such work as peculiarly
and exclusively as is the mark of Artemus Ward on the
speeches of the genial showman. He has too the American
fondness for aphorisms, and at times he is as pregnant
with quaint philosophy as Josh Billings: "A story with a
moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito: it bores
you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your
conscience:" "A straw vote only shows which way the
hot air blows." Words in his hands are as wax. Open
at random: everywhere malaproprieties, outrageous coin-
ages, deliberate misquotations, and slang beyond the
powers even of a George Ade, — no writer of his genera-
tion has been so startling. And not even John Phoenix
has surpassed him in the American use of irreverence as a
humorous device. To him nothing is sacred: "Be con-
siderable moanin' of the bars when I put out to sea,"

382 The Unpopular Review

soliloquizes the Toledo man dying with consumption,
"I've patronized them pretty freely." He sometimes
indulges in Biblical exegesis. He explains the fall of Sam-
son: "She gave her old man a hair cut, and everybody
knows what a man's head looks like after a woman cuts
his hair. And then when the Pharisees came round to
guy him he was so shamed he went to work and kicked
the whole house down on top of the whole outfit."

But the comic device most affected by O. Henry, one
that may be called his most prominent mannerism, is a
variety of euphemism, the translating of simple words
and phrases into resounding and inflated circumlocutions.
So completely did this take hold of him that one finds
it in almost every paragraph; all his characters speak
in it as a kind of dialect. A waiter becomes "a friendly
devil in a cabbage-scented hell;" a tramp is "a knight
on a restless tour of the cities;" a remark about the
weather is "a pleasant reference to meteorological con-
ditions." Instead of saying that Mr. Brunelli fell in
love with Katy, he says: "Mr. Brunelli, being impression-
able and a Latin, fell to conjugating the verb amare
with Katy in the objective case." A little of this is
laughable, but O. Henry wears it threadbare. The plain
statement, The woman looked over at him hoping he
would invite her to a champagne dinner, becomes, "She
turned languishing eyes upon him as a hopeful source of
lobsters and the delectable, ascendant globules of effer-
vescence." It is too much.

His humor is more forced, more deliberately artificial,
than that of Mark Twain. It is the humor of one who is
trying to be humorous. He is brilliant rather than droll.
He makes use constantly of incongruous mixtures for
the last outrageous ingredient of which you feel he must
have ransacked his whole experience: "He seemed to me
to be a sort of mixture of Maltese kitten, sensitive plant,
and a member of a stranded 'Two Orphans' company;"
"He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City

Journalization of Our Literature 383

detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton
Rouge." One need illustrate no further. Everywhere
incongruous association: "His hair was opalescent and
his conversation fragmentary;" "She possessed two
false teeth and a sympathetic heart." "He had gout
very bad in one foot, a house near Gramercy Park, half
a million dollars, and a daughter." It is as if he had
paraphrased Sterne's dictum into "If I knew my reader
could guess what is coming in the next sentence or even
in the next phrase I would change it instantly."

But it is not with the literary comedians that O. Henry
is being classed by the reading public who have crowned
him: it is as a serious contributor to American fiction, as
a short story writer sui generis, the creator of a new
genre, a genius, an "American de Maupassant." Con-
servative criticism as always has been inclined to wait:
a comet be it ever so brilliant fades if you give it time,
but the hand of the critic of O. Henry has been forced.
It becomes impossible to ignore the voices of the times
that greet us everywhere, — in university and public
library, in home and club and barber shop, in the work
of even the critics themselves. What of O. Henry as the
writer of American short stories ?

With Professor Smith's biography has come a document
of peculiar value for our study, the author's own list of
his first twelve stories in the order they were written
during the years 1898 to 1901 while he was an inmate
of the Ohio State prison. It seems that Whistling Dick's
Christmas Stocking, which was published in McClure's
Magazine in December, 1899, the story that first intro-
duced him to northern readers, was the beginning of
his work, and as we read we feel it was by no accident
that it was accepted and published by the magazine which
was among the earliest to popularize its subscription
price and journalize its literary content.

The story was in the new field of fiction which had been
opened by Kipling. Beginning with the closing years of

384 The Unpopular Review

the century had come the demand for the concrete, for
exciting stories by writers who had been a part of what
they wrote, — Jack London from Alaska, Davis from
South America, and the like. A fiction writer to hold
his readers must have had an unusual experience in a
new and picturesque area.

Quaeque ipsi miserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.

The new tale with the strange name of O. Henry instantly
gained a hearing because of the strangeness and freshness
of its content. It seemed to deal realistically with the
winter exodus of tramps to New Orleans, and it was told
apparently by one who had himself been a tramp and
who spoke with authority.

The story discloses much. It tells us for one thing
that the transition from Sydney Porter, the Texas news-
paper paragrapher, to O. Henry the short story writer,
came through the medium of Bret Harte's California
tales. Like Harte's work, it is a story of sentiment,
theatric rather than realistic, theatric even to the point
of falsehood. The central incident is not only absurd,
it is impossible: one stocking from a new pair — are not
new stockings usually fastened together at the toe? —
works out of the large bundle of Christmas goods lying
at the bottom of the carriage and at the proper instant
falls at the feet of a tramp. Later that same stocking,
with a stone and a note in it, is hurled by the tramp at
least a quarter of a mile to fall at the feet of the lady
who had bought it. Like Harte's work too, the tale is
a dramatized paradox: a besotted tramp after years of
vagrancy becomes a man again because a little girl by
a happy impulse wishes him "Merry Christmas!" then —
second paradox — when he is offered as a reward a place
in the home he has saved, he flees terrified back into his
old vagrancy. Even the style reveals the influence of
Harte. "Ther bloomin' little skeezicks!" says the tramp
reminiscently as he looks at the stocking; "The d — d little

Journalization of Our Literature 385

cuss!" says Kentuck as he looks at the thumb the baby
had grasped.

This same attitude toward life and material we find in
An Afternoon Miracle, The Sphynx Apple, Christmas by
Injunction, indeed in all his stories of the south-west.
All were molded by Harte as Harte was molded by Dick-
ens. The West is used as startling and picturesque back-
ground; the characters are the conventional types of
western melodrama: desperadoes, cowboys, train-robbers,
sheep-men, miners, — all perfect in theatric make-up,
and extreme always in word and action. Like Harte,
the writer had no real love for the West, and he never
worked with conviction and sympathy to show the soul
of it. Here and there a glow of insight and sympathy
may hover over the studies that he made of his native
South, but one finds it rarely in others of the two hundred
and fifty stories that make up his set of books; certainly
one finds it not at all in the fifty-seven that deal with the
south-west. By a change of some two hundred words
any one of them could be transferred to the East, and
lose nothing of its value. By the changing of half a
dozen names, for instance, The Indian Summer of Dry
Valley Johnson could be laid in Hoboken, New Jersey,
and gain thereby. Johnson could just as well be a milk-
man from Geneva, New York.

The external manner of Harte he outgrew, but never
did he free himself of the less obvious characteristic that
renders the work of both men inferior when compared
with absolute standards: neither had a philosophy of life
and a moral standpoint. Of the two Harte is the greater,
for Harte's work is single — never does he give us the
serious mixed cheaply with buffoonery, — and once or
twice does he make us feel an individual human soul,
tut even Harte must be classed with those who have
debauched American literature, since he worked the
surface of life with theatric intent and always without
moral background.

386 The Unpopular Review

In the second group of O. Henry's stories fall the South
American studies and The Gentle Grafter series that fill
two whole books and overflow into other volumes of his
set. Despite much splendid description and here and
there real skill in reproducing the atmosphere and the
spirit of the tropics, Cabbages and Kings must be dis-
missed in its author's own terms as mere "tropic vaude-
ville," extravaganza of the newspaper comic-column
type. In The Gentle Grafter series, moreover, we have
what is undoubtedly literature at its very worst. It
may be possible that the series rests on fact; a prototype
for Jeff Peters undoubtedly there was, — a certain volu-
ble convict in the Ohio prison who told the writer all
these adventures; but for all that, the tales are false.
They are not life: they are opera bouffe. The characters
are no more flesh and blood than are Punch and Judy.
They talk a dialect unknown outside of the comic theater.
Sophomores at dinner may occasionally use circumlocu-
tion for humorous effect, but here everybody is sopho-
moric and supersophomoric; they never speak save in
words sesquipedalian. An Indiana hotel man is asked
concerning the ownership of a house. "That," he says,
" is the domicile and the arboreal, terrestrial, and horti-
cultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett." Andy
Tucker, the confidence man, discourses always thus:
"He has nominated you custodian of his bundle, in the
sappy insouciance of his urban indiscrimination." An
Irishman in the heart of the forest bids the first man he
has seen for months to dismount from his mule in terms
like these: "Segregate yourself from your pseudo-equine
quadruped." This is not an occasional pleasantry for
humorous effect: it is the everyday language of all the
characters. It is not slang, for slang is the actual words
of actual men, and since the world began no one ever
talked like this. It is an argot deliberately manufac-
tured for the burlesque stage.

Art is truth, — truth to facts and truth to the pre-

Journalization of Our Literature 387

sumption fundamental, at least in civilized lands, that
truth is superior to falsehood and right superior to wrong,
and that crime is never to be condoned. Despite the
freedom of his pages from salacious stain, O. Henry must
be classed as immoral, not because he uses picaresque
material, or because he records the success of villainy,
but because he sympathizes with his law-breakers,
laughs at their impish tricks indulgently, and condones
their schemes for duping the unwary. It does not excuse
Jeff Peters to explain that he fleeces only those who have
fleece to spare, or those rich ones who enjoy an occasional
fleecing because it affords them a new sensation. The
Gentle Grafter is cloth of the same loom that wove Raffles
and all the others on that shelf of books that are the shame
of American literature. The taint extends through all
of O. Henry's work. He had no moral foundations. At
heart he was with his bibulous rascals: train robbers,
tramps, desperadoes, confidence men, sponges and all
his other evaders and breakers of the law. He chuckled
over their low ideals and their vulgar philosophy like
one who sides naturally against law and order and sober-
ness. One might note, for example, that his attitude
toward the police is that of the confidence man. He lived
in a world governed not by inflexible moral standards,
but by Harlequin and Momus and the law of dramatic
finesse.

The last period of O. Henry's life began in 1904 when
he was engaged by the 'New York World to furnish a
story each week for its Sunday Supplement. He had been
in the city for two years, and had constantly written stories
of life in the south-west and in Central America. He
had studied the demands of the time, and he had dis-
covered de Maupassant, — his biographer records that
during his later years he kept the work of the great story-
teller always near at hand. He had gained in ease, in
constructive art, in brilliancy of diction and of figure of

388 The Unpopular Review

speech. Now with the beginning of his contract with the
World came the culmination of his later manner, that
manner by many considered to be the real O. Henry.
Seldom now did he attempt ambitious plot stories like
A Black Jack Bargainer and Georgia's Ruling. Often
his weekly contribution to the World cannot be called
a story at all. It was a sketch, an expanded "paragraph,"
an elaborated anecdote, a study, a "story" in the news-
paper sense of the word.

"The newspaper" - the word is illuminating. When
asked his profession in the Ohio prison, he had replied
"newspaper reporter." With the exception of a single
story in Harper's Monthly and one in The Century, —
The Missing Chord, June, 1904, — all his work was first
published in the daily press or in the journalistic ten-
cent magazines. More than one-third of all he wrote
appeared first in the columns of the World. What the
paper really did was to engage him as a reporter, — a
privileged reporter at large, sent out into the city to
secure one "story" each week.

The requirements of the newspaper "story" are ex-
acting. It must be vivid, unusual, unhackneyed, and
it must have in it the modern quality of "go." It is an
improvisation by one who through long practice has gained
the mastery of his pen, and by one, moreover, who has
been in living contact with that which he would portray.
It is written in heat, excitedly, to be read with excitement
and then thrown away. There must be no waste ma-
terial in it, no "blue pencil stuff," and there must be "a
punch in every line." The result is a brilliant tour de
force called forth by the demand of the times for sensa-
tion, for newness, for fresh devices to gain, if only for
an instant, the jaded attention of a public supersatu-
rated with sensation.

Complaint has come that one does not remember the
stories of O. Henry. Neither does one remember the
newspaper "stories" he reads from morning to morning,

Journalization of Our Literature 389

brilliant though they may be. The trouble comes from
the fact that the writer is concerned solely with his reader.
Anything to catch the reader. It is a catering to the
blase, a mixing of condiments for palates gross with sensa-
tion. The essence of the art is the exploiting of the un-
expected, — the startling comparison, manner, climax.
Everywhere paradox, incongruity, electric flash-lights,
"go" — New York City, ragtime, Coney Island, the
Follies, — twentieth century America at full strain.

O. Henry lacks repose, and art is serene. He moves us
tremendously, but never does he lift us. One cannot take
seriously even his seriousness. How can one approach
in the spirit of serious art a story with the title Psyche
and the Psky scraper, .or one that opens like this:

"The poet Longfellow — or was it Confucius, the
inventor of Wisdom ? — remarked :

Life is real, life is earnest;
And things are not what they seem.

As mathematics are — or is: thanks, old subscriber! —
the only just way by which questions of life can be meas-
ured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight
edge and the balanced column of the great goddess Two-
and-Two-Makes-Four."

It is all fortissimo, all in capital letters. He slaps his
reader on the back and laughs loudly as if he were in a
bar-room. Never the finer subtleties of suggested effect,
never the unsuspected though real and moving moral
background, seldom the softer tones that touch the deeper
life and move the soul, rare indeed the moments when
the reader feels a sudden tightening of the throat and a
quickening of the pulse. It is the humor of a comic
journalist — an enormously clever and witty journalist
we must admit — rather than the insight of a serious
portrayer of human life; it is the day's work of a trained
special reporter eager that his "stories" shall please his
unpleasable chief and his capricious public long ago out-
wearied with being pleased.

39° The Unpopular Review

On the mechanical side of short story construction
O. Henry was skilful even to genius. He had the unusual
power of gripping his reader's attention and compelling
him to go on to the end. Moreover, he was possessed of
originality, finesse, brilliancy of style and diction, and
that sense of form which can turn every element of the
seemingly careless narrative to one startling focus. It is
this architectonic perfection that has endeared him to
the makers of hand books and correspondence courses.
He began at the end and worked backward. Skilfully
in the earlier stages of the story he furnishes materials
for a solution; the reader falls into the trap, sees through
the whole plot, and is about to turn to the next tale when
the last sentence comes like a blow. Study the mechanism
of such tales as Girl, The Pendulum, The Marry Month of
May and the like. One may detect instantly the germ of
the story. A whole narrative simply for this: "At last
I have found something that will not bag at the knees,"
or "'Oh, Andy/ she sighed 'this is great! Sure I'll marry
wid ye. But why didn't ye tell me ye was the cook? I
was near turnin' ye down for bein' one of thim foreign

counts.'1

Brilliant as this all may be, however, one must not
forget that it concerns only the externals of art. His
failures were at vital points. A short story must have
characterization, and O. Henry's pen turned automatically
to caricature. Descriptions like this may be legitimate
in burlesque, but hardly in that most severely artistic
of the prose forms: "He was built like a shad, and his
eyebrows were black, and his white whiskers trickled
down from his chin like milk coming out of a sprinkling
pot;" or even such mock poetic levity as this: "She was
looking like a bulbul, a gazelle, and a tea rose, and her
eyes were as soft and bright as two quarts of cream
skimmed off from the Milky Way." A short story must
have a dialogue that is natural and inevitable. In The
World and the Door he remarks : " I read in a purely fictional

Journalization of Our Literature 391

story the other day the line: '"Be it so," said the police-
man.' Nothing so strange has yet cropped out in Truth,"
and yet in the same volume he can make a college pro-
fessor talk like this: "You wind-jammers who apply
bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms
send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesi-
mal ragbag." A short story should be true: exaggeration
is not truth. A short story should leave sharp cut and
indelible the impress of a vital moment in the history of
an individual soul. It should "take you by the throat
like a quinsy" and not because of a situation, but because
of a glimpse into a heart. O. Henry, however, deals not
with souls but with types, symbols, stock figures of
comedy. His point of view is that of the humorist who
works with abstractions: the mother-in-law, the tramp,
the fat man, the maiden lady. As a result he leaves no
residuum. He amuses, he diverts, he startles, and we
close his book and forget.

But his shop girls, are they not individuals? Are they
not true? Do they not move us? Moved undoubtedly
we are, but not because we enter the tragedy of any in-
dividual shop girl. His sermon like An Unfinished Story
on the pernicious system that creates the type moves us
even to anger, but we shed no tears over any individual.
The atmosphere is too artificial for any real emotion.
It is a tract, a sermon in motley, not a short story.
One feels that the constructive art of a piece as brilliant
as even A Lickpenny Lover overshadows all else within
it. It is based upon an untruth: the form of the lover's
proposal had to be carefully fabricated so as to make
possible the final sentence which is the cause of the whole
tale, and one knows that no rational man ever so worded
a proposal, and that no lover as ardent could have failed
to make clear his position. It smells of the footlights;
it was deliberately manufactured not to interpret life,
but to give a sensation.

In much of his later work he impresses us as a raconteur

39 2 The Unpopular Review

rather than as a weaver of that severe literary form, the
short story. One feels almost the physical presence of
the man as one opens a story like this: "Suppose you
should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with
ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar
while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and
something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly a
hand is laid on your arm," or this: "I don't suppose it will
knock any of you people off your perch to read a con-
tribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many
others have demonstrated the fact that animals can
express themselves in remunerative English." One has
the impression of a man blinking at ease over his cigar
in the hotel lobby. His stories are brief — two thousand
five hundred words the later ones average — and they
follow each other breathlessly. He is familiar with his
reader, asks his advice on points of diction and grammar,
winks jovially, slaps him on the back and laughs aloud:
" There now! it's over. Hardly had time to yawn, did
you?" "Young lady, you would have liked that grocer's
young man yourself." "It began way up in Sullivan
County, where so many rivers and so much trouble be-
gins— or began; how would you say that?" He opens
like a responder to a toast at a banquet, with a theory
or an attitude toward a phase of life, then he illustrates
it with a special case holding the point of the story skil-
fully to the end, to bring it out with dramatic suddenness
as he takes his seat amid tumultuous applause. Many
of his stories, even as Mrs. Gerould has declared, are
mere anecdotes.

This then is O. Henry. Never a writer so whimsical.
By his own confession Cabbages and Kings is "tropic
vaudeville," and the book is not widely different from all
that he wrote. He was contemporary with the ten-cent
magazine; it made him and it ruined him. He drifted with
the tide, writing always that which would be best paid for.

Journalization of Our Literature 393

A few times he tried to break away as in Roads of Destiny
with its Hawthorne suggestions and The Church with an
Overshot Wheel, but it was only fitfully that he even strug-
gled to escape the vaudeville world. The Enchanted Kiss,
an absinthe dream with parts as lurid and as brilliant as
anything in DeQuincey, came at the very beginning of
his work. The ephemeral press had laid its hands upon
him and he gave it its full demands.

He admitted his failure. It is pathetic in the last weeks
of his life, the power of wizard expression gone forever,
the physical sinking fast into collapse when it should
have borne him through thirty years more of creative
effort, to hear his cry: "I want to get at something bigger.
What I have done is child's play to what I can do, to
what I know it is in me to do." And again in connection
with The Dream, that last story of his, never finished:
"I want to show the public I can write something new, -
new for me, I mean — a story without slang, a straight-
forward dramatic plot treated in a way that will come
nearer my ideal of real story-writing." He was planning
a novel. "The story of a man — an individual, not a
type," as he expressed it. It was too late. What he had
written he had written.

We may explain him best, perhaps, in terms of his own
story The Lost Blend: a flask of coarse western humor, -
John Phoenix, Artemus Ward; a full measure of Bret
Harte, — sentiment, theatric posing, melodrama; a dash
of de Maupassant, — constructive art, finesse; a brim-
ming beaker of journalistic flashiness, bubbles, tang,
and then — insipid indeed all the blend without this -
two bottles of the Apollinaris of O. Henry's peculiar
individuality, and lo! the blend that is intoxicating a
generation, — "elixir of battle, money, and high life."

Exhilarating surely, but a dangerous beverage for steady
consumption. Sadly does it befuddle the head, the heart,
the soul. It begets dislike of mental effort, and depend-

394 The Unpopular Review

ence solely upon thrill and picturesque movement. It is
akin to the moving pictures, where thinking and imagina-
tion die. A college president complained to me recently
of the difficulty of finding chapel preachers who will
hold the attention of the students. "There must be
nothing abstract; everything must be in the concrete.
The preacher must be hot from some battle where he has
grappled with picturesque problems at first hand, and
he must present graphic pictures in breathless succession."
Why complete the connection? Are we not arriving
at a period of ephemeral literary art, a shallow period
without moral background and without philosophy of
life, a period, dominated by the pulp-wood journal, a
period, in short, in which an O. Henry is the crowned
literary classic?

THE "CONSPIRACY" SUPERSTITION

LET us suppose that you are carrying a satchel full of
money home from the bank, and that your walk
takes you through a notoriously lawless part of the town.
You may pass separately a score of suspicious looking
characters without turning a hair. But if you see three
or four of them around the corner talking together, and
one of them seems to glance furtively in your direction,
how quickly you will alter your route! That knot of
men outside the saloon may not know or care what you
are carrying. They may be talking politics. They may
be talking about the war. They may be talking about
the price of beer. But there is one chance in fifty that
they may be talking about you, and you are not going to
take that chance. You are descended from ten thousand
generations of those who did not take too many chances;
the fact that you are here proves that. The too trustful
have left no descendants.

Let us suppose that you are king of Altruria. So far
as you know, your kingdom has no enemies. But you
read in the papers one morning that the Emperor of
Utopia has been visiting the capital of your neighbor the
Republic of Atlantis. Your foreign office reports that
Atlantis has negotiated a secret commercial treaty with
the prince of Asgard. The principality of Asgard com-
pletes the circle by offering a coaling station to the Empire
of Utopia. These events may be quite unrelated to each
other. The three nations concerned may not dream of
conspiring against the interests of your kingdom. But
you will not take a chance. You will summon the Altru-
rian House of Burgesses and ask them for an appropriation
to double the strength of the army, just in case — . You
are not afraid of any country on earth in the ordinary
course of things, but this whispering together (perhaps on

395

396 The Unpopular Review

the most innocent imaginable topics) plays the deuce with
your royal nerves.

This fear of conspiracy is one of the most natural and
understandable of human instincts. There have cer-
tainly been innumerable plots of every sort — criminal,
political, financial, diplomatic — which have played an
important role in history. But it is evident that a real
danger which is also a secret danger will be magnified
by the imagination and distorted into the absurdest
shapes. The discovery of two or three genuine plots to
overthrow the English government in the Roman Catholic
interest, such as the "gunpowder plot" of 1605, so in-
flamed the fears of English Protestants that for genera-
tions unscrupulous persons in Great Britain and in Ireland
were able to make their fortunes by inventing "Popish
plots." Even in this country and in this enlightened (or
at least educated) age, there are thousands of sincere and
otherwise intelligent men who believe, with The Menace,
that all the Catholics in America are involved in a vast
secret conspiracy to overthrow the free institutions of this
country and erect upon their ruins a Papal despotism. The
Catholics, too, have a pet delusion, the mysterious wicked-
ness of "Freemasonry." The mere existence of a secret
society will set a certain type of mind to wondering, "Why
secret? What can they be planning?" The American
anti-Masonic movement, which at one time reached the
dignity of a national political party, is a perfect example
of the fear of the hidden.

Most of the cruel deeds which disfigure history are
due to this terror. The French Revolution provides us
with many instances. It was before the days when rail-
road, telegraph, and telephone could scatter rumors over
the nation in an hour, and bring their contradiction an
hour later. A rumor traveled slowly from mouth to
mouth; but it had the more time to grow, and, before a
denial could overtake it, it often reached unrecognisable
proportions. Thus in the summer of 1789 there was a

The " Conspiracy" Superstition 397

great deal of violence in many of the country districts of
France, the houses of the nobles were robbed or burned,
and there were bread riots in many towns and villages.
News of these disorders spread from one province to
another across the length and breadth of France, and
suffered a sea-change in the telling. It was not so much
that the scale of these events was exaggerated, but their
very nature was changed. Instead of being isolated inci-
dents, they became parts of great conspiracies. Says
Shailer Matthews:

Plots were suspected on all sides — brigands were always
on the point of breaking in upon one's town or village; huge
royalist syndicates were being formed to starve the people into
submission by raising the price of grain; the Duke of Orleans
was hiring rascals to terrify the people into loving him; royalists
were blowing up patriotic citizens at lawn parties.

The massacres of 1792 were not caused by an outburst
of animosity against the royalist prisoners in Paris, but by
fear, the fear of a definite conspiracy. Some one started
the rumor that the prisoners had plotted to break jail
as soon as the Republican troops had left Paris to fight
the armies then invading France, and would massacre all
the good citizens who remained. "Shall we go to the
front," asked the Parisians, " and leave behind us these
aristocrats to kill our wives and children?" They argued
that for conspirators no prison was so safe as the grave,
and even if there were no conspiracy, it would be well to
make certain that there could be none.

But unreasoning fear of the conspirator is not confined
to the crowd. It reaches its greatest development, per-
haps, in the court of an unpopular monarch. The black
years of reaction in Europe which followed the Napoleonic
wars were marked by a peculiar hostility to all forms of
voluntary organization. In Germany the student so-
cieties were forbidden altogether, lest they might prove a
cloak for political propaganda. In England and France
to join a labor union was a penal offense, for the authori-

398 The Unpopular Review

ties held that a labor union was, as such, an illegal con-
spiracy (this idea still lingers in our American habit of
considering all business combinations as "conspiracies
in restraint of trade "). In Russia up to the present day
it has been unsafe to organize a private association for
the most innocent purpose — to educate the peasants,
to combat intemperance, to discuss the poets, or even to
drink tea. To the mind of the Russian official everything
that is not done by the state must be done by the individ-
ual: all association smells of dynamite. In the Turkish
court, where suspiciousness is the chief of virtues, a text-
book of chemistry was banned for containing the formula
for water, H2O. "This," said the censor, "clearly signi-
fies that in the mind of the writer Hamid the Second is
Naught!"

There is no need for us to seek further examples from
distant countries and past times. Consider the Socialist
party in America. The Socialist party is a thing quite
distinct from Socialism; it has all of the faults of that
abstract program, but it adds to them some quite un-
necessary errors to which its theory has in no way com-
mitted it. The chief of these mistakes is the belief that
the party is the target of innumerable "conspiracies"
set on foot by the capitalists. Never was there such a
nightmare-ridden movement. To read The Call or The
Masses or any of the other popular party organs, is as
thrilling as to read a good dime novel about the days
of Richelieu. Of course it is true that such a movement
as Socialism is bound to encounter a great deal of op-
position, and that some of it will be underhand and in-
direct. But it does not follow that every reform move-
ment is started with the sole object of seducing the work-
ing classes from the Socialist party. It does not follow
that philanthropic and religious movements are all cun-
ningly devised to keep the people from becoming discon-
tented with their lot. It does not follow that the Boy
Scouts are being trained to shoot down striking working-

The "Conspiracy" Superstition 399

men, and that a state constabulary has no other duties.
It does not follow that the whole preparedness movement
is designed to put military power in the hands of the "rul-
ing class."

The truth is that the American Socialist party is suffer-
ing from two manias well known to alienists and not in-
frequently found together — the delusion of grandeur and
the delusion of persecution. The Socialists in this coun-
try are not so important as they think themselves; neither
are they so hated as they think themselves. Says the
party platform:

The capitalist class, though few in numbers, absolutely con-
trols the government, legislative, executive and judicial. This
class owns the machinery of gathering and disseminating news
through its organized press. It subsidizes seats of learning —
the colleges and schools — and even religious and moral agen-
cies.

Now where is the fallacy in this ? It is true that some men
in this country are very much wealthier than others. It
is true that these men have power far out of proportion
to their number: for wealth is power. It is also true that
numerous politicians, journalists, college professors and
presidents, clergymen and others of the professional
classes, are anti-Socialist. The fallacy lies in detecting
the element of "conspiracy" where it does not exist.
Capitalism is only correct if used as a loose and general
description of our social structure; it becomes nonsense
if referred to a compact and conscious organization.
Various groups of business men know that there are
interests which they have in common, but they have not
ceased to compete, both individually and in groups.
Mr. Jones the department store owner may think about
Socialism occasionally, but what really worries him is
Mr. Rosenfeld who owns the other big store in town.
Mr. Robinson the newspaper proprietor may suppress
an item for fear it will offend one of his big advertisers, but
that he stands in line on payday to get a check from

400 The Unpopular Review

Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller, simply is not true.
When the Reverend Mr. Wilburton preaches about the
future life, the last thing in his mind is the deliberate cul-
tivation of "other-worldliness" in order that the working
classes may be content with meager living in this life. Yet
numerous worthy people — who never go to church — will
insist that for that purpose and that only, the Church is
supported. Mr. Ghent, one of the most intelligent of
American Socialists, has labeled the professional classes
collectively as the "retainer" class of "our benevolent
feudalism." If Mr. Ghent is right, one can only say that
never was a master class worse served, since the leadership
and much of the membership of every radical movement
which this country has known, including Socialism, has
come from among these "retainers."

But the greatest of all delusions of conspiracy have
arisen from the smoke of the present war. Its two most
interesting superstitions are not, as might be supposed,
the legend of the Angels of Mons and the legend of the
thousands of Russians said to have been sent through
Great Britain to France in the first month of the war,
but the Myth of the Entente Conspiracy and the Myth of
the Pan-German Conspiracy.

The conspiracy story which comes from Germany is
absolutely incredible to us, but it is apparently believed
by most Germans and by most of their apologists in this
country. The main outlines of this myth are so familiar
to all who read the pro-German press of this country or
of Europe that it need be merely summarized here. Eng-
land, they say, has always been jealous of a possible rival,
and when Germany began to prosper, the English states-
men plotted to crush her in a great war, ruin her commerce,
seize her colonies, and dismember her territories. But
the English, being a prudent people, did not dare under-
take the task alone, and looked for accomplices. Edward
the Seventh and his Mephistophelian confidant Sir Ed-

The "Conspiracy' Superstition 401

ward Grey persuaded France and Russia to become par-
ties to the plot, and bribed them by promising them a
large part of Germany for their pains. Belgium, Japan,
Italy, and sundry of the Balkan states were persuaded to
become silent partners in the great conspiracy. Some add
that the United States was bribed or bullied or flattered
into promising a friendly neutrality, if not open aid. But
this offensive coalition did not want immediate war.
It was willing to wait until France and Russia could com-
plete their plans of military organization. Germany
could not afford to wait. When her statesmen learned
of the anti-German plot — the "iron ring" which isolated
Germany both commercially and diplomatically, they
determined to break their foes in one great war, that all
nations might live on equal terms thereafter, and no more
such conspiracies be possible. Thus it happened that
Germany, technically the aggressor, was really acting on
the defensive.

Into the framework of this theory the German apolo-
gists have fitted all the detailed happenings before the war
and during its course. Certain parts of the picture are
still admittedly incomplete. For the evil intentions of
England they have been forced to rely upon the Morocco
affair, the Bagdad railway question, and the utterances of
a few jingo politicians and publicists. But the mere ex-
istence of .the Triple Entente, together with the well-
known treacherous and hypocritical character of the
English, renders farther proof superfluous. For the in-
tentions of France they refer to the currency of the phrase
revanche, the three years' service law, and sentimental
references to the lost provinces. For the intentions of
Russia, one word, Pan-Slavism, explains all. For the in-
tentions of Belgium, Dr. Dernburg produced documents
found during the German occupation of that country.
The Serajevo assassination was -really a Russian plot,
which aimed to use Servia as an instrument to dismember
Austria-Hungary. Hence the very peremptory attitude

402 The Unpopular Review

of the Hapsburg monarchy to Servia was not based upon
any desire to oppress a small nation, but rather to save
it from becoming a satellite of Russia. The occupation of
Belgium and of Luxemburg was to prevent the French
from carrying out their plan of invading Germany through
these countries. The harsh measures adopted during the
course of the war were the expedients of a people right-
ing for very existence, against foes who were determined
to erase Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey from
among the nations of the earth.

If we believe this myth, it certainly alters the perspective
of the war. We may still regard the Germans as unwise
in hastening to meet the inevitable war instead of trying
to postpone it, while appealing in the meantime to the
neutral powers and to the liberal element which is found
to some degree in every nation. But our heaviest moral
condemnation must go to the powers who plotted to de-
stroy a nation which is, with all its faults, about the best
administered and most highly developed part of Europe.

But if the German story of the great international con-
spiracy be false, the conduct of Germany and of Austria-
Hungary has not a rag of apology, at least for those who
believe that to begin an unnecessary war is a crime. There
is undoubtedly that grain of truth in the myth which lies
at the heart of all myths. The Entente did exist, and
it was certainly directed against Germany. The only
point at issue is the purpose of the anti-German powers.
Did they league to arrange a war against Germany, or
for mutual aid if Germany should begin the war? We
have no direct evidence on the question, for there may be
any number of secret treaties or of secret clauses in known
treaties which have yet to see the light in any "white
book."

But the indirect evidence that the Entente was only a
defensive understanding seems overwhelming. In the
first place England and France would not have fought on a
pretext which could not be justified to the masses of the

The "Conspiracy" Superstition 403

people. In these countries diplomacy is still a game played
by a few cabinet officers, but it is played to please the
spectators. Sir Edward Grey might, it is true, bring
war upon the British Empire by a diplomatic misstep,
and trust to the newspapers to find justifications for him
after the event, but his future political career would de-
pend upon how public opinion took the war. Did the
British public desire a war with Germany? There is
little evidence of it. Many of the newspapers denounced
intervention up to the very declaration of war; some have
never become reconciled to it. The Liberal party, which
in England is the pacifist party, has been returned to
power in three successive elections. The Labor party and
the Irish Nationalists, whose support was essential to the
Liberal ministry, were openly and even bitterly anti-
imperialist. Even after the invasion of Belgium, a con-
siderable minority of Laborites and radical Liberals in
the House of Commons attacked intervention. If ever
a nation went to war with every appearance of reluctance,
it was Great Britain in 1914. The French people were
far more nearly united at the opening of the war than the
British, which is scarcely surprising when it is considered
that Germans were already on French soil; but for a
score of years the Radical-Socialist coalition had defeated
the chauvinists at every trial of strength. The class-
conscious portion of the French working classes was unan-
imously anti-militarist, and not infrequently anti-national.
It is incredible that a Germany acting solely on the de-
fensive would have found the French people enthusiastic
to destroy her.

In the second place, the attitude of the French and
British governments has been by no means so aggressively
anti-German as the "conspiracy" legend would lead us to
expect. They have, it is true, rather overreached Ger-
many in the competition for securing colonies, but they
have permitted the central powers to strengthen their
position in Europe by such steps as the Austrian annexa-

404 The Unpopular Review

tion of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the placing of German
princelings on Balkan thrones. At the Hague Conferences
Great Britain and France were far more friendly to pro-
posals to limit armament than was Germany. The pro-
posal for a "naval holiday" came from the British ministry
and was contemptuously ignored on the other side of the
North Sea. The British ministry, moreover, while strength-
ening the fleet to meet German increases, consistently
resisted all attempts to introduce compulsory military
service or to create an army adequate to take part in a
continental war. England had to take two years after
the declaration of war to develop an army comparable
with the French or the German. If there had really been
afoot a British plot to bring about a general war, this
necessary step would have been taken years earlier. If
Sir Edward Grey so underrated the strength of the cen-
tral powers as to imagine that French and Russian forces
would be sufficient to conduct an offensive war on land,
while the British limited their field of action to the sea,
instead of being the modern Machiavelli the Germans
make him out, he would have been the champion idiot
of Europe.

But the strongest argument against the German myth
is not the pacifism of the French and British people or
the moderation of their governments, but the general
international situation. A nation, no matter how selfish
or unscrupulous, does not go to war unless the gains of
possible victory seem to outweigh the losses and risks of
the struggle. Great Britain and France hold the largest
colonial empires in the world. Germany had a much
smaller and much less valuable overseas dominion. Is
it more probable that the French and British would risk
their magnificent possessions on the chance of gaining
colonies which would barely repay them for the cost of a
war, or that Germany would risk her Pacific islands and
African jungles to win an empire in India, Egypt, and
Morocco? Some have suggested that the British desired

The "Conspiracy" Superstition 405

to provoke a war in order to crush German trade and in-
dustry, which were developing with such dangerous
rapidity. But it is forgotten that in Germany England
would ruin not only one of her leading rivals, but also one
of her best customers. A nation unwilling even to adopt
a protective tariff to exclude Germany from her domestic
and colonial markets, would not be apt to go to war merely
to eliminate a commercial rival.

It may be freely admitted that France and Russia
had ambitions on the continent which might cause reason-
able apprehension to Germany. France has not forgotten
Alsace-Lorraine, nor has the German government ruled
those provinces in such a way as to permit her to do so.
Russia may cast covetous eyes upon the Slavic parts of
Austria-Hungary. But neither country would be likely
to begin a war without assurance of British support, and
to make sure of that support they would certainly have
waited until Germany should take some step which would
arouse the fears of the British. France by herself would be
no match for Germany, for since the war of 1870 she has
not kept pace with the German growth in population and
military power. Another defeat might mean the loss of
a great part of eastern France, and an indemnity which
would be absolutely crushing. Russia would not suffer
so greatly in defeat, for she would still retain the northern
half of Asia and the really Russian parts of Europe, even
if the Germans annexed Poland and all the lands on the
Baltic. But so unmistakable a military reverse would com-
plete the work which the Japanese war began, and destroy
forever the prestige of the autocracy. German bureau-
crats were the mainstay of the Russian government, the
Russian court was open to German influences and sym-
pathies, and, most important of all, the elimination of the
German and Austrian monarchies from the field of Welt-
politik would leave Russia the only power in Europe
organized in open defiance of the modern spirit of de-
mocracy and nationalism. These considerations might

406 The Unpopular Review

well make the Russian government see in the central pow-
ers, allies and bulwarks rather than enemies. As for Bel-
gium, she of all nations on earth had most to lose by war,
and least to gain by it, and it is inconceivable that she
would enter any but a defensive agreement with any
power.

The theory that the allied nations had conspired to ruin
Germany and divide her possessions falls of its own weight.
All the evidence which is advanced to support it can be
far better explained as the reaction of fear to German
threats and German aggressions, while the evidence against
it is conclusive.

The real diplomacy of the world is hand-to-mouth; with
kaleidoscopic shifting of alliances and incessant emergence
and subsidence of rivalries and enmities. It is rarely
inspired by ideals or marked by diabolical cunning. As
compared with the arm-chair Weltpolitik of the professors
and journalists, its chief virtue is moderation, and its
commonest vice is myopia. The diplomatic world imag-
ined by the average laymen full of the memoirs of Talley-
rand and the maxims of Machiavelli, is a far more
interesting place. An intricate web of conspiracies con-
nects together all the public acts of any nation. Secret
documents containing the most far-reaching plans for the
partition of Asia lie in the pigeon holes of every states-
man's desk. Superhumanly clever spies, sometimes
waiters but more frequently beautiful women, are on the
track of these important documents. Alliances are con-
summated on waste heaths or in obscure inns at midnight,
while the participants are supposed to be touring the South
Sea in their yachts or playing at Monte Carlo. And yet
the plans of world conquest which are hidden with such
care are, if we are to believe all we are told, open to the
inspection of everyone who can buy a copy of Bernhardi.
This is fascinating, but it suffers from the disadvantage
of not being true. Perhaps the natural human tendency

The "Conspiracy" Superstition 407

to find in every coincidence a conspiracy, can never be
wholly eradicated; perhaps it is a permanent flaw in the
mind of the race. But educated men should do what they
can to preach sanity, to moderate panic> and to dispel
illusory fears, if only that real perils may be the more
clearly seen. Above all, we should cease to call all who
dabble in world politics by the name of "statesmen";
which implies foresight, resolution, and skill in the hand-
ling of men. The average ruler or cabinet minister is
only a politician, even if his sphere of action be an inter-
national congress instead of a ward caucus.

SOME NEW LIGHT ON THE FUTURE

LIFE?

IN Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond, or Life and Death
with whose salient features many readers are already
familiar, there are some less salient ones well worth consid-
ering which bear on the nature of the future life. We as-
sume that there is such a life, and in the present state of our
knowledge we can only assume it; but we can only assume
that tomorrow's sun will rise. \Ve have what purport to be
communications from that life, but so far, their genuine-
ness can be verified only by the testimony of witnesses in
the present life, and this admits the possibility of uncon-
scious telepathy or teloteropathy* between the witness and
the medium. This reduces the question, so far, of the future
life, to one of probabilities. Which is the more probable,
spiritism or teloteropathy? Telepathy is an accepted fact,
and teloteropathy is very like unto it. Neither necessarily
excludes spiritism, but possibly may. Each person must
judge for "thonself". To most of those who have
studied most, the probabilities seem to incline toward
the future life, and assuming it, we will proceed to some
light thrown upon it by Sir Oliver's book. For conven-
ience, at least, we will quote the alleged utterances as if
they were what they purport to be, and we defy any-
body to quote much of them without falling, for the time
at least, into that assumption.

There are two features of Sir Oliver's book which seem
to point more clearly than anything else we remember
reading, toward some very interesting and important
conclusions, but we will consider them later, alluding
to them here merely to help the reader's patience while
we go over a few minor matters for the sake of whatever

* Farther-feeling as distinct from far-feeling, i. t., from a distance instead
of from the sitter.

408

New Light on the Future Life? 409

confirmation they may give to some points in previous
records.

Each of the ostensible personages appearing through
the mediums quoted by the Society for Psychical Re-
search or by Sir Oliver Lodge may reasonably be said to
manifest the same individuality through all the mediums.
This would be the case if the mediums got their knowl-
edge telepathically or teloteropathically from the living
persons who knew the ostensible postcarnate communica-
tor, or from the communicator's surviving self, the argu-
ment for its being the surviving self of course increasing
as time diminishes the number of surviving acquaint-
ances and the vividness of their recollections.

Now Frederic W. H. Myers was an ostensible communi-
cator through Mesdames Piper, Thompson, Verrall, Hol-
land, and possibly one or two others quoted up to the last
two or three years, by the S. P. R., and with all of them
he was the same Myers, being specially distinguished
for cryptic references to passages of classical poetry, in
which he was deeply versed in life. These passages, on
being hunted up, have been found to have some significant
relations to each other or to circumstances connecting
Myers with the sitter or with some other friend to whom
Myers wanted the reference sent. The alleged communi-
cator claims to take this roundabout way through means
not possibly known to the medium, in order to prove his
own identity.

Now through two or three new mediums in Sir Oliver's
book, the same old Myers turns up in the same old way.
This may have some little cumulative value for the
spiritistic hypothesis, but at first it seems to have little
evidential force : for the literature is full of Myers, and the
later mediums could easily have "got onto" him there.
But where do they get onto the fresh classical allusions ?

The principal one in this book is a message to Sir Oliver
telling him to take the part of the poet, and he, Myers,
would be Faunus. The Latin flavor of this led Sir

4i o The Unpopular Review

Oliver to send it to Mrs. Verrall, a profound Latin scholar
(and, incidentally, an involuntary writer), at Cambridge,
and she referred him to a passage in Horace where the
poet thanks Faunus, a god of poets, for fending off the
force of the blow of a falling tree which had struck Horace
on the head. Sir Oliver inferred this to mean that some
blow was about to fall on him, and that Myers would
mitigate its effects. In a few days Sir Oliver's son Ray-
mond was killed in battle, and in a few more, Sir Oliver
was ostensibly told by the boy, through mediums, that
he was well and happy in the other life, under the care of
Myers, who of course was playing the part of "Faunus."
The details as given in the book add much to the aspect
of genuineness.

The alleged testimony regarding the other life given in
this book by the ostensible Raymond and one or two
friends tallies on the whole with that given by previous
alleged communicators, and so adds to the argument that
it is all real testimony to actual fact.

The alleged new arrivals in the other life are reported,
as usual in the earlier records, coming in a state of exhaus-
tion from the stress of separation from the body; and, as
usual hitherto, a sort of spiritual umbilical cord is stated
to be the last thing separated (see below). Farther
alleged concurrent details are: the rare use of the terms
life and death; the usual, and identical expressions are "in
the body," for this life, and "passing over" for what we
call "death." They claim new bodies (see below) and
freedom from the ills of the old ones, they depict a life
much like this one, but with wider opportunities, which
they cannot explain, partly because we could under-
stand, only in limited degree. In general they indicate
superiority to space and time; they can summon each
other instantly, and really seem to do it, and they
see each other at any stage of their existence — as chil-
dren who have left earth, or as the same persons ma-
tured by intervening time. And most important of all,

New Light on the Future Life? 411

everybody seems to have just the sort of heaven he
wants.*

Then there is frequent allusion to the spirit having
"built up" a body which the control can see. We do not
remember meeting this before: the alleged newly-arrived
spirit is generally reported as immediately recognized
by its friends, but that does not imply immediate recogni-
tion by whatever personality happens to be the usual
control of the medium. Feda, who is the alleged child-
control of Mrs. Leonard, says (p. 125):

There is some one here with a little difficulty; not fully built
up; youngish looking; form more like an outline; he has not
completely learnt how to build up as yet.

Then she describes Raymond, and repeats, "He is not
built up quite clearly, but it feels as if Feda knew him."

She often speaks, childlike, in the third person.

This is followed by a passage (p. 126) that was a pretty
big stroke of imaginative genius if the medium did it:

He seems to know what the work is. The first work he will
have to do, will be helping at the Front; not the wounded so
much, but helping those who are passing over in the war. He
knows that when they pass on and wake up, they still feel a
certain fear — and some other word which Feda missed. Feda
hears a something and "fear." Some even go on fighting; at
least they want to; they don't believe they have passed on.
So that many are wanted where he is now, to explain to them
and help them, and soothe them. They do not know where
they are, nor why they are there.

On this, however, Sir Oliver, who does not appear
slavishly credulous, comments (p. 127):

Considered that this was ordinary "Feda talk," such as it is
probably customary to get through mediums at this time;
therefore, though the statements are likely enough, there is
nothing new in them.

There is farther allusion to "building up" on p. 181.

* For a fuller treatment, see Holt: On the Cosmic Relations, pp. 938 if. We
trust our readers, at least our habitual readers, to believe, if they think at all
about it, that if we knew any other place to send them, we would not refer to
our own work, especially in a number where by pure coincidence it is advertised.

412 The Unpopular Review

There are two spirits standing by you; the elder is fully
built up, but the younger is not clear yet.

We confess ourselves skeptical, though open to con-
viction, about this whole body business, of which, by the
way, there is much more in Sir Oliver's book than we
know of elsewhere. He being a physical scientist, we ques-
tion whether the medium did not get it telepathically
from him. If there is any basis for it all in another world,
our tendency to regard that world as purely pscyhic
is so great that our guess would be that the building up
of the body is really subjective — the getting better and
better used to a telepathic impression from the other
soul, just as nearly all of us have probably received in
our dreams telepathic impressions of the visible personali-
ties of the departed.

However this all may be, Feda inclines more to the
physical. She goes on quoting Raymond* about his al-
leged new body (p. 194^".)-'

My body's very similar to the one I had before. I pinch
myself sometimes to see if it's real, and it is, but it doesn't
seem to hurt as much as when I pinched the flesh body. The
internal organs don't seem constituted on the same lines as
before. They can't be quite the same. But to all appearances,
and outwardly, they are the same as before. I can move some-
what more freely, he says. . . . He has got a new tooth now
in place of another one he had — one that wasn't quite right
then. He has got it right, and a good tooth has come in place
of the one that had gone.

He knew a man that had lost his arm, but he has got another
one. Yes, he has got two arms now. He seemed as if without
a limb when first he entered the astral, seemed incomplete,
but after a while it got more and more complete, until he got
a new one.

This atavistic (?) return to the? crab's ability to restore a
lost member seems to us a little fishy (aquatic coincidence
unpremeditated). But we ourselves saw, in a dream, a
maimed body restored, and there were the strongest
reasons for showing us that body restored, and we have

*The mediums generally allege that the new postcarnate must communicate
through more experienced ones.

New Light on the Future Life? 413

more confidence in the veridicity of that dream than of
any we know of, including those of the mediums; and
we know of some that we come about as near " believing"
in as a sane man can without "laboratory evidence."
The sitting continues:

O. J. L. — What about a limb lost in battle?

Oh, if they have only just lost it, it makes no difference, it
doesn't matter; they are quite all right when they get here. But
I am told — he doesn't know this himself, but he has been
told — that when anybody's blown to pieces, it takes some
time for the spirit-body to complete itself, to gather itself all
in, and to be complete. It dissipated a certain amount of
substance which is undoubtedly theric, theric — etheric, and
it has to be concentrated again. The spirit isn't blown apart,
of course, — he doesn't mean that, — but it has an effect upon
it. He hasn't seen all this, but he has been inquiring because
he is interested.

We can't help asking ourselves whether this "etheric"
body business is a telepathic reflection by the medium of
certain well-known ideas of Sir Oliver Lodge himself.
But see his comment below.

He continues:

O. J. L. — What about bodies that are burnt?

Oh, if they get burnt by accident, if they know about it on
this side, they detach the spirit first. What we call a spirit-
doctor comes round and helps. But bodies should not be burnt
on purpose. We have terrible trouble sometimes over people
who are cremated too soon; they shouldn't be. It's a terrible
thing; it has worried me. People are so careless. The idea
seems to be — "Hurry up and get them out of the way now
that they are dead." Not until seven days, he says. They
shouldn't be cremated for seven days.

O. J. L. — But what if the body goes bad?

When it goes bad, the spirit is already out. If that much
indicating a trifle) of spirit is left in the body, it doesn't start
mortifying. It is the action of the spirit on the body that keeps
it from mortifying. When you speak about a person "dying
upwards," it means that the spirit is getting ready and gradually
getting out of the body. He saw the other day a man going
to be cremated two days after the doctor said he was dead.
When his relations on this side heard about it, they brought a
certain doctor on our side, and when they saw that the spirit

414 The Unpopular Review

hadn't got really out of the body, they magnetised it, and
helped it out. [Murder! Ed.] But there was still a cord, and it
had to be severed rather quickly, and it gave a little shock to the
spirit, like as if you had something amputated; but it had to be
done. He believes it has to be done in every case. If the body is
to be consumed by fire, it is helped out by spirit-doctors. He
doesn't mean that a spirit-body comes out of its own body, but
an essence comes out of the body — oozes out, he says, and goes
into the other body which is being prepared. Oozes, he says,
like in a string. String, that's what he says. Then it seems to
shape itself, or something meets it and shapes round it. Like
as if they met and went together, and formed a duplicate of
the body left behind. It's all very interesting.

On all of which Sir Oliver comments as follows, and
we agree with him:

I confess that I think Feda may have got a great deal of
this, perhaps all of it, from people who have read or written
some of the books referred to in my introductory remarks.
But inasmuch as her other utterances are often evidential,
I feel that I have no right to pick and choose; especially as I
know nothing about it one way or the other.

Perhaps we, too, ought to lug in here another bit of
skepticism. We have a distinct recollection of seeing
Feda spoken of somewhere as the ubiquitous "Indian
maiden" -even Mrs. Piper started with one, and one
named after Chlorine gas! This, and Mrs. Leonard having
another one, we felt to be what the boys call "fierce,"
but a second glance, via the index, at Sir Oliver's book
does not find Feda in any such character, and we suspect
that we must have seen the attribution in some notice
where she had got mixed up with earlier "Indian maid-

ens."

Regarding the functions of the spiritual body, Feda
goes on thus (p. 200) :

He sees the sun; but it seems always about the same degree
of warmth, he doesn't feel heat or cold where he is. The sun
doesn't make him uncomfortably hot. That is not because the
sun has lost its heat, but because he hasn't got the same body
that sensed the heat. When he comes into contact with the
earth plane, and is manifesting, then he feels a little cold or

New Light on the Future Life? 415

warm — at least he does when a medium is present — not
when he comes in the ordinary way just to look round. When
he sang last night, he felt cold for a minute or two.

O. J. L. — Did he sing?

Yes, he and Paulie had a scuffle. Paulie was singing first,
and Yaymond * thought he would like to sing too, so he chipped
in at the end. He sang about three verses. It wasn't difficult,
because there was a good deal of power there. Also nobody except
Mrs. Kathie knew who he was, and so all eyes were not on him,
and they were not expecting it, and that made it easier for him.
He says it wasn't so difficult as keeping up a conversation; he
took the organs there, and materialized his own voice in her
throat. He didn't find it very difficult, he hadn't got to think
of anything, or collect his ideas; there was an easy flow of words,
and he just sang. And I did sing, he says; I thought I'd nearly
killed the medium. She hadn't any voice at all after. When
he heard himself that he had really got it, he had to let go.
Raised the roof, he says, and he did enjoy it!

(Here Feda gave an amused chuckle with a jump and a
squeak [i. e., through the medium. Ed.]).

He was just practising there, Yaymond says. At first he
thought it wouldn't be easy.

(This [says O. J. L. Ed.] relates to what I am told was a real
occurrence at a private gathering; but it is not evidential.)

Apropos of the topic of language it is worth while to
remark that throughout the book, Raymond is reported
as speaking the colloquial language peculiar to cultivated
young Englishmen of his class. This dramatic fidelity
to the natural language of the communicators may fairly
be said to be characteristic of the better mediums, and of
course is a pretty strong argument on the spiritistic side.
But the sitters generally knew their peculiarities of
language, so it may be telephathic after all. Sir Oliver
notes that the communicators in his book generally ad-
dress their surviving friends with the terms usual in life —
nicknames, etc. This is true in virtually all the records.
But there's the possible telepathy!

* Note the contrast between the almost technical expressions in the preceding
paragraph, and this baby pronunciation. The contrast of language is even
stronger in some other places. Feda represents herself to be a child. Perhaps
the differences are when she speaks in her own person and] when;she repeats
Raymond.

4i 6 The Unpopular Review

Through Sir Oliver's alleged reports from the other
world, there are the usual traces of the anthropomor-
phism, mythologies and mystic dreams of this world,
though not of course as many as if the sitters and chief
ostensible communicator had not previously been ex-
ceptionally free from them. It's rather suggestive, how-
ever, t;hat one of the most ecstatic experiences of Sir
Oliver Lodge's son when emancipated from the flesh, is
in a celestial lecture-room and from teachers of celestial
perfection. So are virtually all the records made up of
the ideas of the sitter, the medium, and to a degree gen-
erally much greater and over-fatuous to neglect, of the
alleged surviving communicator. In such a combination,
even assuming the communicator as actual as the sitter
and the medium, there must often be incongruity — enough
sometimes to stagger the best-convinced investigator.

Conformably with precedent Raymond is alleged to
be puzzled at not being visible to his friends here, as
they are to him. There are several passages of the pur-
port of the following (p. 207) :

Father, tell mother she has her son with her all day on Christ-
mas Day. There will be thousands and thousands of us back
in the homes on that day, but the horrid part is that so many
of the fellows don't get welcomed [i. e. are not recognized or
perceptible. Ed].

Sir Oliver intimates (p. 137) that muscular action
has to do with table-tipping, though he seems to have
gravitated towards a different impression by the time
he reached p. 218. We, ourselves, know that in some
cases, if not in all, the muscles have nothing to do with it.
We saw one of the most remarkable cases on record *
where a music stand tipped toward the operator, while any
muscular pressure would have tipped it from him.

The case whose details our readers know by this time
of two independent mediums minutely describing a pho-

* Reported in Holt On the Cosmic Relatiotu, 94 ff.

New Light on the Future Life? 417

tograph which neither they nor anybody near them could
know by any usual means of communication, is perhaps
the most remarkable case on record of the control know-
ing something unknown to medium or sitter. But it
proves nothing: for the photograph was well known to
many distant people, and the knowledge may have been
picked up teloteropathically "out of the air" by the
mediums, just as the wireless telegraph picks up its in-
formation. Is this, however, more probable than spiritism?

And now we come to the first of the matters of major
importance to which we alluded at the outset.

We have said elsewhere *(the relation of it all to Sir
Oliver Lodge's book will appear later) :

Now if Mrs. Piper's dream state is really one of communica-
tion with souls who have passed into a new life, dream states
generally may not extravagantly be supposed to be foretastes of
that life.

The dream life is free from the trammels of our waking en-
vironment and powers. In it we experience unlimited his-
tories in an instant; roam over unlimited spaces; see, hear, feel,
touch, taste, smell, enjoy unlimited things; walk, swim, fly,
change things with unlimited speed; do things with unlimited
power; make what we will — music, poetry, objects of art,
situations, dramas, with unlimited faculty, and enjoy unlimited
society.

The dream life contains so much more beauty, so much
fuller emotion and wider reaches than the waking life, that one
is tempted to regard it as the real life, to which the waking life
is somehow a necessary preliminary. So orthodox believers
regard the life after death as the real life; yet most of their
hopes regarding that life — even the strongest hope, of rejoin-
ing lost loved ones — are realized here during the brief throbs
of the dream life. To good dreamers, it is unnecessary to offer
proof of any of these assertions, and to prove them to others
is impossible.

The suggestion has come to more than one student, and to
me very strongly, that when we enter into life — as spermatozoa,
or star dust, if you please — we enter into the eternal life, but
that the physical conditions essential to our development into

*Holt: On the Cosmic Relationship. 92; ff. The treatment of the subject
there is much fulle r.

4 1 8 The Unpopular Review

appreciating it are a sort of veil between it and our conscious-
ness. In our waking life we know it only through the veil;
but when in sleep or trance, the material environment is re-
moved from consciousness, the veil becomes that much thinner,
and we get better glimpses of the transcendent reality.

Now in Sir Oliver Lodge's book the ostensible com-
municators frequently — more than I remember others
doing — liken their life to the dream life. Through Feda,
Raymond says (p. 202) to his father regarding those who
enter the spirit life, especially his companions in arms:

It is so much easier for them if they and their friends know
about it beforehand. It's awful when they have passed over
and won't believe it for weeks, — they just think they're dream-
ing.

This seems a startling confirmation of the speculation
that that life and our dream life are the same. Moreover
on page 189 Raymond sends word to his mother: "You
often go up there in the spirit-land while your body is
asleep;" and on page 193 Feda quotes Raymond as say-
ing:

I wish you could come over for one day, and be with me here.
[Then, she goes on to mix her own speech with Raymond's as
she frequently does: Ed.]. There are times you do go there
[i. e. to his plane: Ed.], but you won't remember. They have
all been over with him at night-time, and so have you, but he
thought it very hard you couldn't remember.

Sometimes such dreams are remembered. We know of
two that have beneficently reversed the course of a life.

All this appears to us very important — as tending to
confirm the foregoing speculations on the dream life's
being the eternal life.

Feda goes on to say:

If you did, he is told (he doesn't know it himself, but he is
told this), the brain would scarcely bear the burden of the
double existence, and would be unfitted for its daily duties; so
the memory is shut out.

And this too appears to us very important as supporting
the conclusion to which considerable attention to the

New Light on the Future Life? 419

subject, and some remarkable dream experience, led us
years ago — that much consciousness of the future life
would tend to unfit us for this one, and would therefore
be inconsistent with the obvious plan of the universe -
to develop us by working out here our own salvation,
whatever that may be, even if nothing more than an
existence worth while here.

Here is another of what appear to us the weighty major
suggestions of Sir Oliver's book. A couple of paragraphs
must be premised.

All the explanations of the riddle of the Universe
and the soul, their whence and why, fall into two
classes: that God made them to amuse himself, and
that he made them to amuse somebody else. "God"
of course is a term of very wide and varying significance.
A great deal of ink and a greater deal of blood have been
shed in support of both theories, and, as often in such
cases, it does not require a mind of very extraordinary
grasp to suspect that both are true. Shut out the base
idea that God wanted a big court to do him homage,
tickle his nose with incense, sing his praises, and beg
favors of him, including the confusion of their enemies -
always assumed by both sides, even down to today, to be
his enemies too — and substitute for these ideas: that he
wanted to evolve and help themselves evolve, intelligent
and moral and happy beings, and to rejoice with them in
their happiness, and we get not only a pretty respectable
sort of a God, at least the most respectable we have yet
been able to make, but a pretty respectable solution of our
problem, at least the most respectable we have yet been
able to make.* And in doing this we may well realize
the pathos of our forebears' attempts to realize the benefi-
cent source and motive power of the universe as a char-
acter like their own barbarous chiefs. We are fallen on

* For a fuller treatment of these speculations also see Holt: On the Cosmic
Relations, pp. 943 ff.

42 o The Unpopular Review

happier days, though too many traces of their ideas still
survive in acts of propitiation and in prayers for mercy
to a power that we see all around us preponderatingly
working for good, and comparatively seldom permitting
evil.

The best comprehension we have so far reached of how
that respectable scheme of the Universe was worked out,
is that beginning with the star dust, planets have been
evolved with intelligent beings upon them, who through
the blissful institution of sex, have been evolving souls; and
at last we have struck some facts as puzzling as light
must be to a worm with rudimentary eyes, which
permit a hopeful guess that these souls, connected in our
conditions with rather rickety bodies, leave these bodies
for better ones and better conditions, and keep on im-
proving indefinitely.

Now, Sir Oliver's book gives us some hints, as it does
regarding dreams, which seem to tally with these guesses.
On page 197, Raymond is alleged to have said through
Feda:

There are men here, and there are women here. I don't
think that they stand to each other quite the same as they did
on the earth plane, but they seem to have the same feeling to
each other, with a different expression of it. There don't seem
to be any children born here. People are sent into the physical
body to have children on the earth plane; they don't have them
here. But there's a feeling of love between men and women
here which is of a different quality to that between two men
or two women; and husband and wife seem to meet differently
from mother and son, or father and daughter.

There, then, is evidence, such as it is, that the planets
are evolved to evolve the souls, and that being done,
the souls pass on, and in the higher planes no new ones
are evolved. The bodies, having performed their func-
tions, are dissipated, and we have strong reason to believe,
the planets, in time are dissipated too. Why, is one of the
deepest of our deepest problems. As to the bodies, the
material, at least some of it, is used in the evolution of new

New Light on the Future Life? 421

bodies and hence of new souls, and hence (if our new
guesses are right) of the wider and permanent happiness
for the sake of which the universe seems to have been
evolved : While its matter and motion seem to have limits,
souls and happiness seem open to constant increase.

If the pragmatic argument is good for anything, it
can seldom be good for as much as for the genuineness
of the communications given in this book. They have
lifted an exceptionally important and meritorious family
from distress into happiness, and will undoubtedly do
the same for many others in these awful times. Yet it
must be admitted that communications as open to ques-
tion as these still are have their dangers, but the record
of disaster is trifling compared with that on the happier
side.

CORRESPONDENCE

Pedagogy — Even Once More

WE had given to the subject all the attention that we
thought our readers would care for, when we received the
first of the following letters. We trust the correspondence
speaks for itself:

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

The School of Education

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR.

November 22, 1916.

Editor and Publisher of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW,
34 West 33d St., New York.

Sir: May I impose on you to ask that you give personal atten-
tion to the short article which appears on pages 428-29 of the
current issue of the REVIEW ? I have never investigated teachers'
grades, as is there stated. I have never been active in the move-
ment to standardize grading systems. The president of Harvard
University has. The University of Missouri has. A number
of eminent educators not in any wise connected with depart-
ments of education have seen that it is essential to remove the
irregularities and ambiguities in teachers' grades and have
taken a strong hand in standardizing them. What I cannot
understand is the reason for printing this illnatured letter with-
out verifying at least a part of its statements, especially when
the author's name is not allowed to come to the surface.

I do not write for the purpose of asking that this be published.
I do ask that you look in person into the editorial situation
which permits the appearance of so unjustified an attack. Does
not your relation to your readers dictate that you ask someone
who is informed to tell them about the standardizing of teachers'
marks ?

Very truly yours,
(Signed) CHARLES H. JUDD.

The answer was :

November 25, 1916.

My dear Sir: I am shocked to receive your letter of November
22nd. I feel perfectly confident that the author of "An Advance

422

Correspondence 423

in Pedagogy" had no idea whatever of quoting you — that he
took a name "out of his head," so to speak, without looking
over the catalogues to find if he happened to hit anybody.
The intention of the article, I know, was entirely humorous.

It is very natural that in your sensitiveness to the use of your
own name, you should not have realized the facts I have stated ;
but I have no idea that anybody but yourself will consider the
joke as an attack on your personally, or that many will even
think of you in connection with it. Still, if you wish, we will
take peculiar pleasure in printing this correspondence, but we
advise against it. It will in any event be too late to get it in the
forthcoming January-March number.

Very truly yours,
(Signed) by the Editor.

To this came response:

December 5, 1916.

Sir: I shall take advantage of your proposal to publish my
letter of November 22 together with your reply of November
25. It is my judgment that the editorial attitude which you
set forth in your letter of November 25 throws so much light
on the value of comments by THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW on the
science of education that I owe it to the professional interests
which I represent to bring the whole matter to the attention
of your readers.

In general I should not think of going into print to answer a
personal attack and did not have in mind asking for a publica-
tion of my letters until I read your reply. I shall ask you,
therefore, to include this letter when you print the others.

Mania Editorum
THE following is from a leading university:

Years ago I was struck with the plain fact that everyone
whom fate or duty or poverty compels to read editorially masses
of other people's manuscript becomes crazy — loses the normal
sense of relative values in minor matters of literary form;
trivial things come to seem immense. I admit the effect is not
so great in the inverse direction; I have no evidence that weight-
ier matters come to seem trivial; but the ratio comes out wrong
whether one term is unduly magnified or the other unduly
lessened.

424 The Unpopular Review

Let me hasten to add that this outbreak is not the effect of
editorial rejection of good manuscripts; a fair proportion of my
manuscripts, never numerous, have been printed and paid for
at current rates. The phenomena have simply interested me
as an observer of my kind. And this ink was set flowing by your
paragraphs, "A Word to Contributors" and "More Fads in
Writing," because they suggested an editor who is not yet
quite crazy. As he is now past middle life and long practised
in reading other people's manuscripts, there is even hope that
he will not become so — at least, not in just the ways that have
caught my attention.

My first "case" was editor of a series of books. After settling
the details in which uniformity of framework was a needed
economy of effort, he read critically every page. In a little
while he became unable to distinguish between those matters
that belonged to the framework of the series, where uniformity
was clear gain, and those details where individuality was de-
sirable, and another's fads and aversions might be quite as good
as his own. His own acquired the force of natural laws.

Another was editor of a technical journal, where clarity was
all-important and other literary merits of little consequence.
For him there was more excuse, and it cost little to accept his
demands, even where they were absurd; one sacrificed little by
submitting.

It is in the literary periodicals that the situation becomes
more painful or comical according to one's mood. In some
journals a certain measure of simplification of spelling is de
rigueur; in others any simplification not yet accepted by the
most conservative in both England and New England is anath-
ema. In some a compound centuries old like today is painfully
hyphenated as if it were a new-comer; in others tonight and
tomorrow must be divided in like manner. No one yet insists
on to-gether, but no doubt some one will. And why not add
al-to-gether and here-to-fore and yester-day and for-ever and be-fore
and a-part and be-cause and never-the-less? Why print any
compound with-out a hyphen? The language has inadvertently
accepted a lot of them which need reforming backward as much
as today. In some of our best magazines towards is tabu; in
others, just as well edited, toward is never allowed except in
verse. Everybody knows or can easily learn that both forms
are equally old and in equally good usage in both prose and
verse — as are adverbial forward and forwards and backward
and backwards. If uniformity in such matters is so important

Correspondence 425

for a journal why isn't it just as important for an individual
author, who is forced to appear inconsistent if he contributes
to different editors? I have been repeatedly corrected for using
farther as the comparative of far, and made to accept further,
comparative of dialectic and vulgar fur.

By virtue of this mania the editor relates himself to the school-
master on his less agreeable side, and to the pedant. It's a
great pity. The editorial craze for particular types of uniform-
ity is incidentally as great a hindrance to reform in spelling, for
example, as the "experts" whom you lambast, who would like
to see our alphabet sufficiently enlarged to be capable of reason-
able accuracy in writing English, or who would like to see diph-
thongal i written as a diphthong.

This particular editor is not at all particular. While he
sometimes states a modest preference, he thinks that an
author good enough to be welcomed into this review is good
enough to be his own judge. The editor is even hoping
for the time when readers will be satisfied to let them
choose their own spelling.

A Correction
DR. HYSLOP has sent us the following:

After making a statement about some work of Patience
Worth, the January-March number of THE UNPOPULAR RE-
VIEW makes the following remarks:

"Some students would say that the answer to that is plain
everyday telepathy, such as, forty years ago nobody believed
in, and now is believed in by nearly all investigators but Dr.
Hyslop. He thinks it inconsistent with spiritism (which we
don't) : so as he believes in spiritism he disbelieves in telepathy.
It is an established dogma of Myers and Company that telepathy
takes place only between subconscious and 'subliminal' minds."

The writer of that note is quite mistaken in his statement
about my attitude regarding "telepathy." I have accepted it
for 25 years, and have said so in everything that I have written
about it. So far from regarding it as inconsistent with spiritism
I have always maintained that it might be the means of proving
that theory. It is the public that conceives them as rival ex-
planations of facts.

426 The Unpopular Review

What I have contended for in regard to it is two things, (i)
That, in whatever way you define it, it is not explanatory of
anything whatsoever. (2) That it is an appeal to the unknown
(we do not know what it is or what the process is), and science
will not tolerate an appeal to the unknown to explain anything.

The only rational and defensible meaning that can be given
to the term telepathy is that it denotes mental coincidences
between two separate minds, that are not due to chance or to
normal sense perception. This makes it a mere name for the
facts themselves and not for any cause or known process. It
is thus wholly without explanatory power. But spirits, where
the phenomena are (i) supernormal and (2) representative
of the personal identity of the deceased, explain because they
represent a known kind of fact; namely, consciousness as we
know it in experience, and because they presumably act as
causes in the same way consciousness acts with the living.

The term "telepathy" has been made to do duty for several
things for which there is not one iota of evidence anywhere in
the world. The one sense in which it legitimately applies is
that which denotes coincidences between two independent
mental states that are active at the time. This is all that the
evidence supports. That is, A thinks and B gets A's present
active thought. But the public and many psychic researchers
conceive it as coextensive with several things for which there
is no scientific evidence whatever, (i) That it denotes direct
transmission from one living mind to another. (2) That the
transmission is by some form of vibrations, usually after the
analogy of wireless telegraphy. (3) That it represents selection
from the subconscious of the "agent" by the subconscious
of the "percipient." (4) That it represents selection by sub-
conscious of the "percipient" from the subconscious of any
living person at any time and at any distance. Now these last
four conceptions of it are wholly without scientific evidence
and I do not believe that any scientific man in the world will
assert that there is adequate evidence for them. Until it is
produced I contend and have contended for the claim that they
cannot be assumed to explain the selective character of the
facts which invoke spirits to account for them.

The real trouble is that it is not respectable to believe in
spirits and hence people do not take the trouble to ascertain
what I really believe regarding telepathy. When it becomes
respectable to believe in spirits they will be accepted without
evidence, and "telepathy" will go the way of Mesmerism in its
relation to the subject. Telepathy is a term that limits evidence:
it does not limit explanation. The assumption of B selecting

Correspondence 427

memories from the subconscious of A is very different from that
of A acting on B, and is without any scientific warrant what-
ever.

A Nut for Psychical Researchers

A MOTHER writes us this account of a strange utterance
of her six-year-old boy:

He modeled a remarkable ship under full sail a few days ago.
About an hour after he had shown it to me I asked him to keep
it to show to his father. Unfortunately the boy had broken it
up, so I asked him if he would try to make another. He did.
It wasn't at all good, and I told him so. He made still another
even more clumsy, so I let the matter drop. The next day he
said to me: "You know some one else's mind made that first
boat, and my fingers." I said: "Why you were alone in your
study, weren't you?" I knew that he had been. He replied,
"Oh, yes, but it wasn't my mind, just my fingers."

That this little boy may have some superusual psychic
endowment is suggested by the circumstances that his
father, and his aunt and grandfather on the other side
are in Who's Who, and his great great grandparents were
the grandparents of Whistler.

Faculty Athletic Committees

ONE of the Nestors in College Athletics sends us the
following:

Dean Hole tells the story of a gentleman travelling on the
underground rail in London who was addressed by a very
large lady, sitting near him, as follows: "The next station at
which we arrive, Sir, will be Sloane Square, and I shall feel
greatly obliged if you will kindly assist me to leave the carriage
on our arrival. I have already been twice around London,
having made unsuccessful efforts to leave the train. Being
unfortunately very heavy and clumsy in my movements, I
find it easier to descend from the doorway backwards, and I
have twice been occupied in my awkward endeavor, when a
porter, under the misapprehension that I was entering the

The Unpopular Review

compartment, has not only addressed me, 'Now, Miss, be
quick, train's going,' but has propelled me onwards."

Now this seems to be the predicament of our Faculty Athletic
Committees. They have been bustled into a train of under-
graduate athletic impetuosities, and when in a sober, sedate
but rather clumsy fashion they endeavor to alight at what they
feel is surely their station, they are told abruptly, "Train's
going!" and crammed in again for another round!

EN CASSEROLE

Some War Forecasts

IN view of recent events, two letters sent us last summer
by an English statesman whose opinion carries as much
weight in this country as anybody's, have assumed an
interesting aspect.

He said in substance that Germany knew she was
whipped, and had been making all that effort at Verdun,
which could not possibly result in any corresponding
military advantage, because she wanted by a great vic-
tory to put herself in a position to make an apparently
magnanimous proposition for peace.

Our friend's power as a prophet is indicated by Ger-
many's conduct as soon as she had accomplished the
Roumanian drive. This makes interesting another fore-
cast in his letters: he said that he specially wished we
would go into the war, because that would give Germany
a new pretext to pull out — namely : that she could not
whip the world. Now this last U-boat performance looks
as if she were seeking that pretext herself — as if she
wished to get us into a declaration of war, in order that
she might pull out; and so far as that consideration goes,
it seems eminently desirable that we should give it to
her, and at once. But Congress, the president's only in-
strument for doing it, he has, at this writing, deliberately
kept out of his reach (perhaps to keep himself out of its
reach) until the middle of April.

The Total Depravity of Type

NOTWITHSTANDING all we have lately said about the
fallibilities of scholarship and proof-reading, we were so
defenceless against them as to print in the last number
that the department of Psychology at Harvard was
preparing to investigate "such superusual phenomena

429

43° The Unpopular Review

as they may consider with it." Of course we tried to
say worth it.

The Tyranny of Talent

WE come into life handicapped by many a tyranny,
.but by none heavier than the insolence of that particu-
lar ability packed into our still imperfect cranium. Al-
though one may observe in rare individuals the exhibition
of a fine independence that from infancy to age consistently
refuses to develop the dominance of some obvious talent,
for the most part we yield to the conventional views that
defy such despotism, and to our own delight in that little
toy, success, which the autocrat dangles before our eyes.
The only people never disillusioned are the unsuccessful.
Every time we succeed we take a tuck in a dream. Of all
domains, the most desirable is the kingdom of dreams,
and the only people who never lose it, who, rather, rein-
herit it from day to day, are the people who consistently
and conscientiously fail.

There are, however, only an enviable few of us who are
not able to do some one thing well. It does not need, of
course, to be anything notable. We need not be the fools
of fame, in order to taste all the depths of success. We
may merely be able to tie up parcels with neatness and
dispatch, — rest assured we shall be enforced to tie up
everybody's parcels until we totter into our graves. Most
households can boast a member with an ability to find
things; the demands upon the time and the resourcefulness
of such a professional finder prevent her ever finding peace
(a finder is, of course, always feminine.)1 One could multi-
ply indefinitely examples from immediate experience, that
prove the argument for inefficiency.

The tyranny of talent has beset our path with many
little proverbs that bark at our lagging heels. " Nothing
succeeds like success " has hounded many a man to a deso-

1 But Gilder's poem beginning: "Are these the finding eyes? " was on a
portrait of Columbus. — ED.

En Casserole 431

late eminence. " Whatever is worth doing is worth doing
well" is a maxim that we allow to control our activities
as thoroughly as we refuse to allow it to convince our
intelligence: for obviously whatever is worth doing is
not worth doing well; on the one hand^the statement may
authorize a wasteful and indiscriminate energy; and,
far worse, it is manifestly false, because everything that
gives you joy is worth doing, and ten to one the thing that
gives you most joy in the doing, is the thing that you do
very ill indeed.1

Superficially considered, success appears to be a conse-
quence of self-expression necessarily gratifying; intimately
experienced, success is found to be a consequence of self-
repression most painful. The trouble is that one never
knows in time. Often one goes gambolling into success un-
wittingly as a young animal, only to have one's first joyous
neigh, or bray, of achievement cut short by feeling sudden
hands bind one to a treadmill — the treadmill that impels
one to grind out similar achievements, tramp-tramp-tramp,
all the rest of one's life. The worst is that no one ever sus-
pects the excellently efficient middle-aged nag of still sniff-
ing a larking canter through the mad spring meadows of
the unattempted. Our best friends suppose the treadmill
contents us. Yet we are always cherishing our own little
dreams of a medium of expression better suited to our indi-
viduality than that skill with which nature has endowed
us. Browning acknowledges the phenomenon in One Word
More, in noting the dissatisfaction of the artist with his
proper medium:

Does he paint? He fain would write a poem, —
Does he write? He fain would paint a picture,
Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
Once and only once, and for one only,
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.

1 This contributor is growing dangerous. That one does a thing ill, and
enjoys doing it ill, is no sign that it's not worth doing well. She never heard
"us" play the cello.— ED.

43 2 The Unpopular Review

The psychological experience described is more funda-
mental than its application in the poem merely to love
and a lady.

The harshness of a controlling talent is severe in re-
stricting us not alone to what we can do well, but to what
we can do best. If we paint, we must not only not write
a poem, but we must not attempt a picture different
from our best; if we write, we must continue to write in
the type and the tone of our first successful experiment.
The chef may long to be an astronomer, but not only must
he stick to his flesh-pots, but if, in the gusto of some early
egg-beating, he has stumbled upon the omelet superla-
tive, he must continue to furnish the world with omelets,
no matter if eggs become for him an utter banality, and
no matter how his fancy be seething with voluptuous
dishes of air-drawn cabbage, or super-sheep.

The world is too much against us if we try to lay down
the burdens the task-master Talent has imposed. The
successful man belongs to the public: he no longer belongs
to himself. Talent, tried and proved and acclaimed, is too
strong for us; we continue its savorless round, against all
our inward protest. We are its slaves, and through the
amiability ineradicable in most bosoms, the slaves also
of our admiring kinsfolk and friends and public; most of
all, perhaps, the slaves of our own self-doubt, for possibly
after all they are right, possibly we are justly the chattels
of Talent, and not of that whispered self of the air, taunt-
ing, teasing us, "What you have done is sordid, is savor-
less! Come with me to attempt the unexplored!" This
desire denied is both acknowledgment that all our lordly
labelled triumphs may have had a false acclaim, and is
also a protest against all mundane and mortal valuations.
Our unshackled ego, scorning things done that took the
eye and had the price, seems to have the truer voice. Is
not art itself the assurance that we are no petty slaves of
efficiency, but heirs of a serene domain where the unac-
complished is forever the only thing worth accomplishing?

En Casserole 433

The Scarcity of Paper

IT once seemed likely to be a blessing, if it would reduce
the number of books printed by half, the size of news-
papers by two-thirds, the amount of advertising by three-
quarters, the number of circulars in one's mail by four-
fifths, and their length by five-sixths. Hope deferred
maketh the heart sick; and the heart is getting sicker
and sicker!

Teaching Greek and Latin

IN regard to teaching Greek and Latin, there is one
consideration which seems fundamental, which must have
been presented many times, and yet which, in considerable
reading on the subject, we do not remember seeing. It is
the use which the pupil expects to make of the languages.

In our schools, he certainly does not expect to speak
or write them, or to be called upon to understand them
when spoken. He expects only to understand them when
printed. So to understand them, he need not know how
many and what prepositions "govern" the dative or the
accusative or the ablative. The texts he reads will con-
tain all those prepositions and cases in their proper rela-
tions, consequently he need not memorize all those facts.
The texts will also contain all the verbs in their proper
moods, so that he need not learn all the perplexing sub-
tleties which have placed them so. The same with all
the grammar except the mere inflections. Therefore for
our pupils' purposes, four-fifths, perhaps nine-tenths of the
grammar, and that the most difficult part, is superfluous.

It is our privilege, now a rare one, to remember that
these considerations consciously or unconsciously guided
much of the work of no less a teacher than Whitney.
As soon as his pupils knew a few words and inflections,
he at once set them to reading. But as his work with us
was in the modern languages, which we were to speak,

434 The Unpopular Review

he of course did not stop there2 but probably it is not too
much to assume that if reading had been the only ex-
pectation, he would simply have had us read, read, read.

In Germany, many years ago, a judicious adviser
counseled us: "Take an interesting short story. Read
it through and make out of it what you can. Don't bother
with the dictionary." (We already knew enough words
for very simple conversation.) "The words you know
will enable you to understand in the context many words
you don't know. When you get through, you will have a
general notion of the story. Then read it again, and that
general knowledge will enable you to understand much
that you did not undertsand in the first reading. Then,
with this understanding, read it a third time, and you
will virtually understand it all." We took his advice
and it worked admirably.

We tried it also in Italian, and it worked even better,
because what we knew of Latin and French helped. We
had sung a good many bits of the operas, translating
only enough to get the general significance. This gave
us a trifling knowledge of the language — enough, backed
by a few hours with the inflections, to read a few stories
in the way recommended by our German friend, but far
from enough to read Dante. We had started to read two
or three translations of him, but did not get interested
enough to go ahead. At last we picked up one with the
original on the opposite pages. We began with the trans-
lation. At tempting points we looked over at the original
and worked out the translation, and often were tempted
to read on in the original, turning to the translation where
help was needed. In this way we found ourselves inter-
ested from the start, as we never had succeeded in being
in a mere translation, and were thus led through the
whole Divina Commedia, and with great delight.

From all this we have a strong conviction that the
solution of the problem of the classics in general educa-
tion may lie in the methods here indicated.

En Casserole 435

They would save the large proportion of time now
wasted on the grammar. They would make possible a
wider knowledge of the literature, turn study from the
bore it now is, to a delight, and make the pupil familiar
with the standard current reminiscences, and also make
him a member of the freemasonry to which they are the
shibboleth.

In fairness, however, should be raised the question
whether these methods would give the drill in accuracy
that the old ones did. But there also come counter
questions whether that drill was worth what it cost,
and whether enough of it cannot be had in other dis-
ciplines.

And finally there is the certainty that the proposed
methods would better meet the fundamental need in the
whole matter, mention of which, for the sake of simplifying
our little exposition, we have so far reserved. That need
is such a knowledge of the root-words as is the proverbial
"key to the modern languages" and to the best appreci-
ation of distinctions and emphases in English literature.
So far as the pupil becomes a writer or speaker, that knowl-
edge enormously expands his vocabulary; aids him to
follow words compounded with prepositions with the
right prepositions — that is : to avoid such mistakes as
averse to or sympathy for a person; and enormously helps
him to select the strongest words for emphasis and the
nicest ones for distinctions. That Burns and Herbert
Spencer and possibly even Shakespeare himself used the
language without these aids does not materially affect the
matter. There are not enough Burnses and Spencers and
Shakespeares in our schools to make it worth while to fit
the curriculum to them, and even if there were, they
would be all the better and happier for a reading
knowledge of Greek and Latin and the deathless litera-
tures which they embody. And this they can obtain
for a tithe of the labor required under the old-fashioned
teaching.

The Unpopular Review

The Passing of Mr. De Morgan

THE following account of the funeral, strangely graphic
and suggestive because unpremeditated, has been sent us
from a private source. We print it, however, for the
last clause.

"At the funeral, one saw all the folk of the Nineties
and earlier, the William Morris and Rossetti lot. Those
who survive seemed to come out of their secret lairs,
just to see their old pal buried. It was a most old-
fashioned audience. They were dressed as they dressed
thirty years ago; they behaved as people behaved thirty
years ago, and all looked as if they ought to have been
dead for a quarter of a century. Never have I seen any-
thing like it. Of course there were the representatives
of the press and the literary world; but the bulk of the
people were those weird shadows. It was a horrid morn-
ing with driving snow; and I saw the old man's coffin
driven off from the church to the distant cemetery with
a bit of a pang, because he was the dearest old thing
that ever lived."

Looking the Part

THE hope of the public that a personage should look his
part is so inveterate that it has in all times promoted pose
and make-up. Only people of that hypothetical deriva-
tion called Anglo-Saxon are even supposed to dislike
official garb, and democratic levelling succeeds in sup-
pressing it but temporarily. In time the old desire to see
personages distinguished visibly will be answered. Men
and women who have emerged from the mass will pro-
claim themselves to the eye. That we rejoice to have
them do so is patent enough to explain certain substitu-
tions in newspaper illustration. B's photograph may be
published as A's because A does not sufficiently look the
part, although journalists have been accused of mak-

En Casserole 437

ing such substitutions from haste or laziness. Some
figure being unexpectedly needed, they are supposed to
take under stress what is handiest. But journalists,
though perhaps hasty, are certainly not lazy. Reflecting
on their assiduity in photographing everybody, we must
explain their substitution otherwise. Is it not a natural
extension of the journalistic art of giving the public what
it wants? A tennis champion is needed. But the office
photograph shows him in business clothes and boarding
a train. Better use this other player smashing at the net
in proper flannels, especially as the momentary agony of
his expression makes him unrecognizable. The public
wants a tennis player; and a tennis player wears flannels
and plays tennis. An obscure railroad president leaps into
notoriety. His photograph is on file; but it shows a little
wizened figure with melancholy eyes and scrawny beard,
whereas everyone knows that railroad presidents are
large, sleek, and of political countenance. Better use this
obscure socialist agitator who looks the presidential part.
At any rate, whether it explains newspaper substitutions
or not, it is a fact that in spite of disillusioning experience,
we still fondly expect people to look their parts. We,
the indiscriminate public, may be content to be indistin-
guishable: we have no parts. When a man has a part, the
least he can do for us is to use the proper pose and make-
up. If we do not demand this, we none the less hope for
it secretly and rejoice in its realization.

Conversely we took as an affront the publication last
winter of a group of contemporary poets in evening dress.
Of these bards, one is thus reduced to a cook, another to
a plumber, a third to a vaudeville singer, a fourth to that
composite youth who advertises socks, and several to
commercial travelers. This caricature of our idealism
was the more cynical because substitution was invitingly
easy. How many readers could be expected to know
whether these sorry figures were indeed of those whose
names they bore? At least the press photographer might

438 The Unpopular Review

have paid the usual compliment of posing them singly
with pen and paper and stern or sardonic mien. Not so.
Deliberately journalism said: Behold in conventionalized
mass the poets of the hour, and see if there be any poetry
left!

What should a poet look like? We know from monu-
ments, if not from frontispieces; and no experience seems
to dispel the type. Therefore aspiring youth follows a
right instinct in still affecting ampler collars, softer and
more flowing neckcloths, longer hair, even sashes and, for
bolder spirits, fur rugs, or that other make-up of flannel
shirt and sombrero. Otherwise how advertise? How
arrive at being taken seriously? Certainly not by hav-
ing one's verses read. As if verses were read except
by a few teachers and declaimers! Poetry is written, not
read. Therefore the thin volume in which the lines do
not fill the page, and the spaces show a pattern — or did
until the other day — must be supplemented by a proper
human figure. And one's own figure usually will not
answer without make-up. There is astonishing temerity
in that Italian woman who puts as a frontispiece to Gli
Amanti her mere photograph, a portrait unadorned. The
public will go no farther. These are not the features and
the garb of passion. There is no mystery, no suggestion.
She looks like you and me. And if a novelist dispenses at
her peril with robes of romance, how shall the poet be
known without singing robes? Who will give him a
tea?

This public demand is obstinate even for professors.
One would suppose that for a company so small statis-
tically, so familiar and so little regarded, the make-up
would be negligible. Not so. The public insists that
the professor is a type, perhaps because he occupies
a platform. The typical professorial appearance is de-
manded, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The very newspaper which tells us that the professor is a
business man or a politician, a farmer, a journalist, or a

En Casserole 439

parson, pictures him in cartoons with the traditional cos-
tume and properties. He must be thin; he must peer
through spectacles; he must wear shabby and baggy
clothes; and above all he must always carry an umbrella.
Since one glance at a faculty meeting would exorcise this
bogy, evidently professors scorn their make-up in vain.
If they will not wear it in life, it shall by popular art be
imputed and imposed.

A demand so inveterate, so invariable, may as well be
accepted. Men will demand make-up as they demand
ritual. Masons may somewhat shamefacedly wear their
aprons in public over their store clothes — a combination
making the sadness of our daily clothes more hideous;
but Knights of Pythias appear fairly to rejoice in the sword
and plume of the eighteenth century. If the actual cattle-
men of our plains sometimes miss their opportunities, the
cowboy of the stage, of the cartoon, and of every other
public exhibition is always careful to look the part. How
gladly we acclaimed, once upon a time, a President of the
United States in uniform! What merely facial distinction,
what godlike brow or authoritative nose, can suffice to
impose presidentiality? Not forever, we may surmise,
will the President of the United States be thus inferior in
visibility to the president of any small college. Napoleon
was always most careful of his make-up, graduating it
with nice artistry as he expanded his role. His clothes
cried command, dominion, empire; and conversely the
weakness of municipal authority throughout these United
States may be due largely to the fact that you cannot
tell a mayor when you see one.

So elder Puritan protests against the innovation of
academic gowns and hoods in American colleges was
entertained only for the sake of logic; it was never really
heeded. All the younger savants were too glad. Academic
milliners, to be sure, pushed the new fashion for their
business ends; but they could not have succeeded without
learned connivance. Men wish to look like doctors when-

44° The Unpopular Review

ever they can. The heart rises against the level dulness,
the depressing monotony, of our daily outward habit.
Having lost the rational diversification of the middle
ages, we break loose from modern uniformity when we
dare, and, when we dare not, rejoice to see our elect few
in proper garb. Only a pessimist could expect that civil-
ized men should remain content to leave looking the part
to undertakers.

The Real Feminist Ideal

MRS. BURKE- JONES was the most popular woman in
town. She was a philanthropist, a socialist and a
suffragist.

Every Monday morning she attended the Executive
Board meeting of the Park Commission; every Monday
afternoon she went to the Missionary Society; Tuesday
mornings she met with her Bridge Club, and in the after-
noons with the Music Study League. Each Wednesday
morning she presided at the Suffrage Association, and
in the afternoon at the Mothers' Circle; Thursdays were
taken up with the Browning Band and the Home Eco-
nomics Society; on Fridays she looked in at the Factory
Library, the East Side Kindergarten and the Home for
Better Babies; every Saturday she spent shopping, re-
plenishing her wardrobe and giving orders to the servants
for the coming week. On Sundays she taught in the
Sunday School and sang in the church choir.

She went everywhere to conventions, and her name
was frequently found on programs.

Mr. Burke- Jones was a dyspeptic. He was also con-
sidered rather queer. He generally dined at restaurants
and often slept at the Club.

Mrs. Burke- Jones was finally and most justly elected
President of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, and
on the night of the State convention, everyone eagerly
awaited the announcement of her subject. Elaborately

En Casserole 441

dressed and holding an immense bunch of roses, she
advanced to the front of the stage and, smiling in a
sweetly feminine way, said:

"Friends, I have chosen as my subject for this evening,
that which is of paramount importance in this day and
time — Woman's Sphere, The Home."

A Columbia Number

WE did not intend to make one of our last issue,
though the four articles from that university may look
as if we did, but we do things of that kind only by
accident — happy accident that time. Professors in nine
different universities contribute to this number. Guess!
That was not intentional either.

Queries and Cuckoos

MAN is a questioning animal. We would cast no un-
just aspersions upon all other animals, but we maintain
that man is primarily an interrogation-mark, and of course
was one long before Pope. From the nebulous dawn of
things he has asked questions. And the answers? Ah,
that's another story!

"Am I my brother's keeper?" snarls Cain. How
various have been the answers!

"Why do the heathen rage?" found its way into the
question-box at a missionary meeting, once upon a time,
and the good brother in charge stammered and was
troubled as he cast about for a reply.

"What destroieth the memorie of thinges?" comes
plaintively from a sixteenth-century clerk. "Not poppy,
nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,"
mutter the lagos of the ages.

But the queries are not all of this high seriousness.

"What cast of countenance is the mark of love?"
writes eighteenth-century Eugenius. Woman, in thine
infinite variety, canst thou answer?

44 2 The Unpopular Review

Strephon breaks into metre:

" If Chloe breathes no,

Doth she ever mean yes?"
Doth she?

Aurelia yearningly poses the editor with: "How may
a husband be kept constant, living in retirement?" What
wonder that the editor felt "blasted by a sudden im-
becility" as he groped for a reply?

The problems do not always concern man. Many
curious questions on natural history are folded away
in the wrinkled records of scientific societies. "What
is the origin of vegetables?" Seek the answer, Reader,
in the dusty Transactions of the American Institute.
But look not for much light.

"O Cuckoo! l Shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice ? "

queries the Poet. And in the worm-eaten tomes that
contain the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society, the learned Dr. Jenner asks, "To what, then,
may we attribute the peculiarities of the cuckoo?" Vain
question! echoing down to us from 1788, in those ponder-
ous Transactions, with much curious speculation on the
matter. But Philosopher nor Poet answers the query.

Can you, O gentle reader, furnish the information?

Or, pray, can you tell, "What destroieth the memorie
of thinges?"

A Few of the Things that Need Remedying

THE Cabinet.

The provisions of the constitution that restrict direct
National taxation to the Income Tax.

All provisions everywhere that put the spending of the
taxes into the hands of the people who do not pay them.

1The poor editor supposed the conundrum was addressed to a skylark.
Probably it has been put more than once.

En Casserole 443

The levying of any taxes that people don't know they

pay-
Laws that are more careful of the criminal than of

society.

Neglect of the fountain-heads of culture in educational
curricula.

Confusion of business functions and educational func-
tions in colleges.

The same in the press.

The spelling of English.

Solos and primitive programs at the concerts of great
modern orchestras.

Piano playing with other instruments, except as ac-
companiment.

The Smoke Nuisance.

Taking off of enough city railroad cars outside of rush
hours to keep the remaining ones crowded.

The repetition of liturgies that priests and people no
longer believe in.

All other forms of lying.

Philanthropies where the heart runs away with the head.

LIBRARY

OUR WRITTEN PURPOSES

" And therefore have we
Our written purposes before us sent;
Which, if thou hast consider' d, let us know"

— Antony and Cleopatra.

Mark Twain, once a printer himself, advised his friend, William Dean
Howells, against choosing a printer for a hero. "Better not," he said.
"People will not understand him. Printing is something every village
has in it, but it is always a sort of mystery."

If there is uncertainty in lay minds as to printers, how inscrutable to
them are the duties of publishers! Questions in regard to the Yale Uni-
versity Press have revealed such a general ignorance of its aims that it
may not be amiss to explain the purpose of its foundation. In fact, uni-
versity presses are so new in America and fulfil such different purposes
where they have been established, that an explanation may be interesting
even to the initiated who know what publishing is.

Briefly, the Yale University Press was founded:

To provide an adequate medium for publishing notable books which
tend to advance American scholarship in all its fields.

To bring into prominence writers whose names would otherwise be
known to but few, thereby aiding young scholars to secure recognition
and promotion.

To be alert to the opportunity and duty of publishing volumes by
writers in other institutions and in other countries. It is not from acci-
dent, but from design, that the list of authors represented by Yale Uni-
versity Press publications includes men from three continents and from
over one hundred universities.

To publish only such works as shall reflect credit on the University
whose name it bears. To this end, every manuscript to be published
under its imprint must receive the approval of a Committee composed
of officers and members of the University.

To follow the very best traditions of printing and book-binding, mak-
ing only books which may serve as a standard.

Expressed in terms of books, its purpose is to publish such a work as
that which Hon. James Bryce referred to as "One of the most important
constitutional records in the whole history of the United States." 1

To make it possible for such men as William Ernest Hocking (since
appointed to a professorship in philosophy at Harvard University) to
issue his first book, "The Meaning of God in Human Experience." 2

To issue what Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., described as "the most im-
portant monograph on painting at once written by an American and
published by an American press." 3

*THE RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787. Edited by
Max Farrand. 4 volumes. $15.00 net per set, postpaid.

2 THE MEANING OF GOD IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE. By William Ernest

Hocking. (The Hibbert Journal described it as "sustained and convincing
eloquence of thought — not enthusiastic, but simply vast and strong and
careless, because sure.") Third printing. $3.00 net, postpaid.

3 JACOPO CARUCCI DA PONTORMO. His Life and Work. By Frederick

Mortimer Clapp. 153 illustrations. $7.50 net, postpaid.

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

209 Elm Street 280 Madison Avenue

NEW HAVEN, CONN. NEW YORK CITY

When writine to advertisers, kindlv mention THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW

INDEX
THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW

VOL. VII

[ Titles of Articles are printed in heavier type. The names of authors of articles
are printed in small capitals]

Advertising, self, 302

'Making Too Much

De Morgan, The Pass-

^Esthetic culture, 199

Profit,' 327

ing of Mr., 436

Amusement, 215

Colleges, 342; novel-

Difficulty of Being Alone,

ANDERSON, AGNES K.,

writing and, 140-150

On the, 135; sketch

'The Ingenuity of Par-

COLTON, ARTHUR W.,

complaining of solitude

ents,' 25

'QEdipus and Job,' 67

interrupted, 135-139

Art, 168-170

Columbia Number, A,

Domestic relations, 25-

Athletic committees, 427

441

35

Authors' reputations, 217

Combinations, 113-134

Double Entry Education,

Baby, Patience Worth's,

Commission government,

A, 151; education of

179-198

6

the writer; the world of

BALDWIN, C. S., 'Looking

Commissions, 85, 92-93

things and the world of

the Part,' 436

Competition, 113-134

thought, 151-155; phi-

Barbarians, 223

Conquerors, 14-18

losophy, 156; belief, 157;

BECKER, CARL, 'On Be-

Conscience, 67-83

science a double entry

ing a Professor,' 342

Conservation of Capac-

bookkeeping, 158-159;

BENNETT, JESSE LEE,

ity, The, 12; a growing

effective means of dou-

'The Conservation of

recognition of the fact

ble entry education,

Capacity,' 12

of a master type and of

159-163

Bismarck, 239

the value of leaders

DOWNEY, JUNE E., 'Self-

Body, soul vs., 420; spir-

among men, 12-24

Advertising,' 302

itual building up, 411

Conservatism, 164-165

Drama, 56-66; new pas-

Books, fooled in, 216;

" Conspiracy " Supersti-

sion for, 215

gift, 206

tion, The, 395; fear of

Dreams, 417, 430

Borussians, 223

conspiracy; examples,

Driftwood, 211

BRADFORD, EDW. A.,

395-398; American So-

DUTTON, GEO. B.,

' Some Second Thoughts

cialist party, 398-400;

'Queries and Cuckoos,'

of a Sobered People,' I

myth of the Entente

441

Brandeis, L. D., 205

conspiracy and the ar-

Economic Hymn of

Business profits, 327-341

guments against it, 400-

Hate, The, 36; war has

Camel story, 225, 232

406; diplomacy, 406-

brought a return to

Capacity, 12-24

407

seventeenth century

Capital, railroad, 88-97
Cartel, 116-134

Constitution, U. S., 20, 23
Contributors, A Word to,

mercantilism, 36-39;
allied proposals for

Catholics, 396

218

economic boycott of

CHAPMAN, EDW. M., 'As

Cooperation, industrial,

Germany, 39-43; prob-

to Parsons,' 98

256

ably efforts disastrous,

Children, 25-35

Correction, A, 425

43-51; policy of the

China^ 55

Correspondence, 199,

United States, 51-55

Christian gospel, 104-106

422

Editors, 423

CHURCH, A. HAMILTON,

Counsel of Perfection,

Education, 151-163, 175-

'The Future of Indus-

A, 201

178, 342

try,' 251

Crazes, 202

Efficiency, German, 230

Citizenship, 281

Crookes, Sir Wm., 210

Eight-hour day, 206

Civilization, 285

Cuckoos, 441

Election, I

Classics, 176, 177, 433

CURRAN, MRS. JOHN H.,

Eliot, Chas. W., 152, 155,

Clayton act, 117-119,

and HENRY HOLT,

159

121

'That Patience Worth

En Casserole, 203, 429

Clergymen, 98-112

Baby,' 179

Endicott and I Burn

COBB, PERRY RUSH,

Democracy, economic, 25 2

Driftwood, 211

445

446

Index

English language, 202

Gift-Books and Book-

220, 424

Gifts, 206

Eternal Boy, The, 221

GILMORE, MRS. EVELYN

Evil, 67-83

KING, 'The Rea

Faculty Athletic Com-

Feminist Ideal,' 440

mittees, 427
Fads in Writing, More

God, 419
Goethe, 236

218

Gompers, Sam'l, 205

Faith, ui-112, 157

Government ownership in

Fear, 71

Germany, 130

Feminist Ideal, The

Grand Isle, 369

Real, 440

Great Britain, free trade,

Free trade, 48-50, 54

48-50

Free verse, 171-174

Greek, 43 3

Freedom, 13, 14

Harvard, 210

French Revolution, 396-

Hate, economic, 36-55

397

Henry, O., 374~394

Friend Who Helps, A,

Hermit, On Being A, 362;

etc., 199
Future Life, Some New

old employments re-
created, 362; solitude,

Light on, 408; Lodge's

363; hermits in story,

Raymond, or Life and

364-366; hermit qual-

Death and its signif-

ity, 366-367; temporary

icance, 408; minor

hermiting, 367-368:

messages and their

Wanderlust, 368-369;

confirmation of pre-

hermit reservations,

vious records, 409-417;

369-370; Grand Isle,

dream life as real life,

.370-373

417-419; scheme of the

Hibrow, 220

universe; souls vs.

HOLT, HENRY, 'Columbia

bodies, 419-421

Number, A,' 441; 'Con-

GAINES, MORRELL W.,

tributors, A Word to,'

'The Two Opposing

218; 'Fads in Writing,

Railroad Valuations,' 84

More,' 218; 'Future

German Trust Laws and

Life, Some New Light

Ours, 113; German

On,' 408; 'Hibrow,'

government and foreign

220; 'Last Barbarian

trade, 113-115; trust,

Invasion, The,' 223;

cartel, combination,

'New Passion for the

monopoly and the

Drama, The,' 215; 'One

Sherman act, 115-117;

Way of Being Fooled,'

Clayton act, 117-118;

216; 'Opportunity,'

trade commission, 118-

210; 'Psychical Re-

121 ; competition and

search at Harvard,'

"good custom" in Ger-

210; 'Scarcity of Paper,

many, 121-124; anti-

The,' 433; 'Teaching

trust movements there,

Greek and Latin,' 433;

124-127; stock water-

'Things That Need

ing, 127-128; govern-

Remedying, A Few of

ment control, 128-131;

The,' 442; 'Total de-

journalism, 132; good

pravity of Type, The,'

combinations possible,

429; 'War Forecasts,

133-134

Some,' 429; ' Why

Germany, 223 ; boycot-

should the Spirit of

ting, 39-51; conspiracy

Mortal be Proud? ' 203;

myth, 400-406; effi-

'Why It should not be

ciency, 230

Quite so Proud,' 205;

GIDDINGS, FRANKLIN H.,

See also CURRAN

'A Double Entry Edu-

lome, 25-35

cation,' 151

iumanity, 73

Humor, 108, in

Hyphens, 424

Hyslop, J. H., 425

Imagination, 215

Individual, 76

Industry, The Future of,
251; silent progress
of three principles:
cooperation, mutual
credit and insurance,
251-262; evolution to-
ward economic de-
mocracy, 262-266; op-
position of organized
labor, 266-270; solu-
tion by cooperation,
270-272

Ingenuity of Parents,
The, 25; parents and
children, 25-27; de-
vices of parents for
preserving harmony in
the home, 27-35

Innovation, 164

Insurance, 260, 263

Internationalism, 38, 39,
229

interstate commerce com-
mission, 84-97, I34

Investments, railroad, 84-

Job, 67-83

JOHNSON, ALVIN S., 'The
Weakness of Slavic
Policy,' 243

Journalization of Amer-
ican Literature, The,
374; a study of O.
Henry, his success and
works, 374-376; qual-
ity, 377-379; early life,
379-380; humor, 380-
383; short story, 383-
384; Harte's influence,
384-385; South Amer-
ican studies, 386-387;
work for the World,
387-389; his skill and
his failings, 390-393;
pathetic times, 394

Judd, Chas. H., 422
ustice, 67-83

KELLER, A. G., 'The
Right to Life,' 286
iRKLAND, WINIFRED,
'Gift-Books and Book-
Gifts,' 206; 'Tyranny
of Talent, The,' 430

..abor, organized, 205,
266-272

Index

Last Barbarian Invasion
The, 223; Prussian con
ceit and the world';
task, 223-229

Latin, 433

Leadership, 14-24

Legend of German Effi
ciency, The, 230; Prus
sian system, 230-233
scientific thought, 232-
236; culture; Goethe
Nietzsche, 236-238
Bismarck, 239-241
trend and future, 241-
242

LEWIS, O. F., 'Some Fun
damentals in Prison
Reform,' 314

Life, comedy and tragedy
108-112; right to, 286

Literature, 140; American

374-394

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 408

Loneliness, 366

Looking the Part, 436

Lords, House of, 19

Luck, 67-83

LUKEN, OTTO H., 'Ger
man Trust Laws anc
Ours,' 113

Making Too Much
Profit, 327; rising prices
and profits, 327-331;
scientific management,
33I~334»* private and
public business method,
335-337; middleman
and commission mer-
chant, 337-338; rent,
338-339; prices and
cost, management and
profit, 340-341

Mania Editorum, 423

MATTHEWS, BRANDER,
'What is the Matter
With the Theater?' 56

Memory, 200

Mercantilism, 36, 42

Ministers, 98-112

Missionaries, 100-101,
106

Modest Modernist Pa-
pers: I. The Arts and
Education, 164; inno-
vation and conserva-
tism, 164-166; the
prophet of the new, 167;
on art, 168-170; on
poetry, 170-171; free
verse, free prose, 171-

175; education and the
classics, 175-178. II.
Civics, Morals, and
Religion, 273; optim-
ism, 273-274; organiz-
ing, 275-276; doing
things, 277-278; mod-
ern thinking and morals,
279-281; the good cit-
izen, 281-283; tne past,
the verities, and civili-
zation, 283-285

Modesty, 167

Monopoly, 127, 133-134

Morality, 83, 279

Motion-pictures, 56-57

Music, orchestral, 203

MUSSEY, H. R., 'The
Economic Hymn of
Hate,' 36

Mutual credit, 259, 264

Myers, F. W. H., 409

Nature, Nurture, and
Novel- writing , 1 40 ;
college and literature,
140-142; heredity, 143;
qualities needed for
imaginative writing,
144-146; combination
rare, 147-148; college
life, 148-150

Naval Advisory Board,
22, 24

New Passion for the
Drama, The, 215

New Theater, 56, 65

Mew York, 64

Newspapers, Sunday, 215

Nietzsche, 237

Novel-writing, 140-150

CEdipus and Job, 67; ex-
perience, justice, con-
science, nature, 67-70;
fear and power, 71-73;
conceptions of primi-
tive man, 73-78; eter-
nal problem of sin and
suffering, 78-81; Whit-
man's message, 81-83

0. Henry, 374~394

One Way of Being
Fooled, 216

Opportunity, 210

Optimism, 273

Oregon, 3-4, 7-10

Organizing, 275

Osborne, T. M., 315, 316,

320, 323

Paper, The Scarcity of,
433

447

Parents and children, 25-

Parsons, As to, 98; rid-
icule of clergymen, 98-
101; how clergymen
meet it, 101-103; in-
sincerity, 103; endur-
ing rewards: the gospel,
intimacies, humor, faith,
104-112

Past, 284

Patience Worth Baby,
That, 179; Patience de-
sires the Currans to
adopt a girl baby, 179-
184; coincidences, 185-
187; extracts and baby
talk, 187-193; ex-
tracts from Mrs. Cur-
ran's letters, 193, 197;
a conjecture, 198

PATTEE, F. L., 'The
Journalization of Amer-
ican Literature,' 374

Peace, 229; domestic, 25-

35

Pedagogy — Even Once
More, 422

Philosophy, 156

Poetry, 170-174, 218

Possible Subvention to
Literature, A, 200

Prison Reform, Some
Fundamentals in, 314;
reformers and their
work, 315-316; hard
work, 317-318; dis-
crimination, 318-319;
rewards, 319-320; pun-
ishment, 320-322; pay-
ment, 322; Warden's
personality, 323; in-
determinate sentence,
324; prison structure,
325; another chance,
325-3.26

Professions, 98

Professor, On Being a,
342; college education
of the writer, 342-345;
being a professor, and
the question of effi-
ciency, 345-351; the old
ideal of spiritual vs. the
new order of material
values, 351-357; lack of
success in becoming a
new professor, 357-
361

Profits, 327

Index

Progressives, 7-8

Property, railroad, 89

Protection, 50

Prouty, C. A., 85-97

Prussia, 223, 230

Psychic phenomena, 179-
198, 408-421, 427

Psychical Research at
Harvard, 210

Psychical Researchers,
A Nut for, 427

Punishment, 320

Queries and Cuckoos,
441

Railroad Valuations, The
Two Opposing, 84; a
criticism of the Federal
Valuation as costly,
useless, and detrimental
compared with public
market valuation, 84-

97

Referendum, 3, 5, 7

Reincarnation, 186

Religion, 216, 280

Representative govern-
ment, ii

Rhythm, 200

RICHARDSON, CAROLINE
F., 'On Being a Her-
mit,' 362

Right to Life, The, 286;
examination of the
tradition of a natural
right to life, 286-293;
evolution of the idea of
its sacredness, 293-295;
right and sacredness
depended on the might
of society, 295-301

Rights, 12

Romance, 154, 159

Russia, 243

SCHWARZMAN, EDNA B.,

'On the Difficulty of
Being Alone,' 135
Science, 158, 162, 233
Scientific management,

331

Second Thoughts, Some,
of a Sobered People, i ;
election results as show-
ing reaction against

some progressive exper-
iments, i-n

Self-advertising, 302;
members and details,
303-304; personal rec-
ommendations, 304-
306; trade-marks, fam-
ily, professional and
personal, 306-309;

egoism, 310; relevancy,
311; reputation out oi
control, 312; death and
fame, 313

Sermons, 104

Sherman act, 116-117,
121

SHOWERMAN, GRANT,
'Modest Modernist
Papers,' 164, 273

Sill, E. R., 210

Simplicity, 202

Sincerity, 103

Sing Sing, 316, 321, 325

SLAUGHTER, M. S., 'The
Eternal Boy,' 221

Slavic Polity, the Weak-
ness of, 243; Russian
political incompetence
the result of not draw-
ing government officials
from the business class,
243-250

SLOSSON, P. W., 'The
"Conspiracy" Super-
stition,' 395

SMALL, HERBERT F., 'The
Legend of German Effi-
ciency,' 230

Socialist party, 398-400

Solitude, 363

Spelling, 201, 424

Spirit, 408-421

State, 235; right to take
life, 298

Strike, railway, 203, 205

Success, 19, 22, 430

Suffering, 67-83

Taboo, 72

Talent, 430

Tariff, 50

Teaching Greek and

Latin, 433
Telepathy, 196, 408, 425

Teloteropathy, 408

Theater. See Drama

Theater, What is the
Matter with the? 56;
moving pictures, 56-57;
prices, 58-60; competi-
tion, 60-6 1 ; road-com-
panies, 61-64; New
York non-representa-
tive of America, 64-
66

Things that Need Rem-
edying, A Few of the,
442

THOMAS CALVIN, 'Na-
ture, Nurture, and
Novel-writing,' 140

Time, 200

Total Depravity of Type,
The, 429

Totemism, 75

Trade, free, 48-50, 54;
seventeenth century,
36-39; United States
policy, 50-55

Trade commission, Fed-
eral, 113, 118-120

Trade unions, 269, 272

Transmigration, 186

Treitschke, 235

Trusts, 113-134

Tyranny of Talent, The,

43° .

Universities, 342

Valuation, railroad, 84-97

Wanderlust, 368

War, 36

War Forecasts, Some,
429

WARNER, FRANCES LES-
TER, 'Endicott and \
Burn Driftwood,' 21 1

Wells, H. G., 17

Whitman, W., 81, 82

Why It Should not be
Quite so Proud, 205

" Why Should the Spirit
of Mortal be Proud? "
203

Wilson, Woodrow, I

Words, 220

Writing fads, 218

Yost, Mr., 189, 190

LIBRARY

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