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I

^

;yii/^

Ill' 0/

Mrs. Jerome B. Thomas

DaU Dd*

y

SIAMORD UNVERSTY LBRARES

SWrOKD. CAUFORMA

94505

Br Waltkx Lippmann:

Tbb Pdbmi dp Paul Maubtt. Edited with an Inttoductiao
A Prbpacb to Pounca

DUFT AND MaSTBXY

The Stakes of DtPLOUAcr

The PoLmcAL Scene: An Emay on the Victohy op 1918

LlBEKTY AND THE NbWS

PUBLIC OPINION

WALTER LIPPMANN

NEW YORK
HAROOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

PilBtH) la tba n. S. A.

FAYE LIPPMANN

Wading River,
Long Idand.

"Btkeld.' kiunan brings limng in a sort of underground den, akiek htu
a meutk open toteardi the light and naeking ail across iki den;.tkty kate
bet* km from tkeir tkiidkood, and kase Iktir Ugs and tucks ckainid so ikal
ikey cannM mow, and can only see before them; for ike ckaini are arranged
f H sntk a nuxAner as to prevent then from turning round tkeir keads. At a
distance ahote and bekind tkem tke tight of a fire is blazing, and betteeen At
fire and lie prisoners there is a raised way; and you teill see, if you look, a
loa teail built along the way, lite tke screen wkitk marionetu players kave
before tiem, over wkith tkey skoai the puppets.

And do you see, I said, men passing along tke atoll carrying vessels,
vkieh appear oner tke audi; also figures of men and animals, made of wood
and stone and various materials; and some of the prisoners, as you tfould
expect, are talking, and some of them are silent ?

This is a strange image, ke said, and tkey are strange prisoners.

Like outsehes, I replied; and tkey see only their oam skadotes, or tke
thadem of one another, wkitk the fire throws on the opposite wall of tke

True, he said: koto could tkey see anything but the skedoai if they were
never inlawed to move their heads ?

And of the objeets wkiek ere being tarried in like manner tkey would see
only tke skadoms T

And if they tvere able to talk tviik one anotker, would they not suppose
tkat they were Tiaming what was artually before them f" — The Republic of
PlalO) Book Seven. Qowett Translation.)

CONTENTS

a,.pt» ''*«T'- INTRODUCTION p.^

L The Worid Outtide and the Pinures in Our Headi. 3

PART 11. APPROACHES TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE

II. Cenionhip and Privacy 35

III. Contact and Opportunity 46

IV. Tune and Attention 58

V. Speed, Wotdi, and Qeamesi 64

PART III. STEREOTYPES

VI. Stereotypes 79

VII. Stereotypei ai Defense 9;

VIII. Blind Spot» and Thdr Value lOf

IX. Codet and Thdr Enemiet 1 1;

X. The Detectioa of Stereotype* 130

PART IV. INTERESTS

XI. The Enliidng of Interest 159

XIL SdF-Interett KeconndeTed 170

PART V. THE MAKING OF A COMMON WILL

XIII. The Trantfer of Interest 193

XIV. Ye» or No aio

XV. Lcadett and the Rank and File 134

PART VI. THE IMAGE OF DEMOCRACY

XVI. The SdfOntered Man JSJ

XVII. The SdKontained Community 363

XVIII. The Role of Force, Patronage, and Privilege 276

XIX. The Old Image in a New Form: GuUd Sodaliam 193

XX. A New Image jio

X CONTENTS

Ch.p«f PART VII. NEWSPAPERS p^

XXI. TTie Buying Public 317

XXII. The Conitant Reader jiS

XXni. The Nature of New* 338

XXIV. Newt, Truth, and a Conduiion 358

PART Vin. ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE

XXV. The Entering Wedge 369

XXVI. IntdUgence Work 379

XXVn. The Appeal to the Puhlie 39S

XXVIIL Tlie Appeal to ReMOD 411

PART I

INTRODUCTION

Chapter I

The World Outside and the Pictures
IN Our Heads

PUBLIC OPINION

CHAPTER I. I^r^RODUCTION

THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND THE PICTURES
IN OUR HEADS

There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a
few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived.
No cable reaches that island, and the British mail
steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September
it had not yet come, and the islanders were still
talking about the latest newspaper which told about
the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the
shooting of Gaston Calmette. It was, therefore, with
more than usual eagerness that the whole colony
assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to
hear from the captain what the verdict had been.
They learned that for over six weeks now those of
them who were English and those of them who were
French had been fighring in behalf of the sanctity
of treaties agunst those of them who were Germans.
For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were
friends, when in fact they were enemies.

But that plight was not so different from that of
most of the population of Europe. They had been
mistaken for six weeks, on the continent the interval
may have been only six days or six hours. There was

4 PUBLIC OPINION

an interval. There was a moment when the picture
of Europe on which men were conducting their
business as usual, did not in any way correspond to
the Europe which was about to make a jumble of
thur lives. There was a time for each man when he
was still adjusted to an environment that no longer
existed. All over the world as late as July 25th men
were making goods that they would not be able to
ship, buying goods they would not be able to import,
careers were being planned, enterprises contemplated,
hopes and expectations entertained, all in the belief
that the world as known was the world as it was.
Men were writing books describing that world. They
trusted the picture in their heads. And then over
four years later, on a Thursday morning, came the
news of an armistice, and people gave vent to their
unutterable relief that the slaughter was over. Yet
in the five days before the real armistice came, though
the end of the war had been celebrated, several thou-
sand young men died on the battlefields.

Looking back we can see how indirectly we know
the environment in which nevertheless we live. We
can see that the news of it comes to us now fast, now
slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true
picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself.
It is harder to remember that about the beliefs upon
which we are now acting, but in respect to other
peoples and other ages we flatter ourselves that it is
easy to see when they were in deadly earnest about
ludicrous pictures of the world. We in»st, because of
our superior hindsight, that the world as they needed
to know it, and the world as they did know it, were

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 5

often two quite contradictory things. We can see,
too, that while they governed and fought, traded and
reformed in the world as they imagined it to be,
they produced results, or failed to produce any, in the
world as it was. They started for the Indies and
found America. They diagnosed evil and hanged
old women. They thought they could grow rich by
always selling and never buying. A caliph, obeying
what he conceived to be the Will of Allah, burned the
library at Alexandria.

Writing about the year 389, St. Ambrose stated
the case for the prisoner in Plato's cave who resolutely
declines to turn his head. "To discuss the nature
and position of the earth does not help us in our hope
of the life to come. It is enough to know what
Scripture states. ' That He hung up the earth upon
nothing ' (Job xxvi. 7). Why then argue whether He
hung it up in air or upon the water, and raise a
controversy as to how the thin air could sustain the
earth; or why, if upon the waters, the earth does not
go crashing down to the bottom? . . . Not because
the earth is in the middle, as if suspended on even
balance, but because the majesty of God constrains
it by the law of His will, does it endure stable upon
the unstable and the void. " ^

It does not help us in our hope of the life to
come. It is enough to know what Scripture states.
Why then argue? But a century and a half after
St. Ambrose, opinion was still troubled, on this
1 by the problem of the antipodes. A monk

I Tk* Mtdiavat Mind, by Henry

^IXLJCA it Tnrr, ^3r .IE 3

-te irrnrnt-s a ic -rsc: rant i -ico^sa. :

-tiar ie -wmd :a x ir -pa

:Tnm ^sat -c w-it a r 3 one r'jur a mr -t 31 j—^^

In -he 3=n

.-Tien ^i'''^ 'aebrc ■itt ^ny
Voah'i >ir: it -naarsatam. ji dte aorrit is * jnfc
cnnicAl moontain srmmi vmcs -crawe "t^ ^q j^i
;Tuy)fi. When 'iie aan is ^emoi -ae "rwimu rtin -c 3
night. Tnc ikj is ^ued tj ttk adees ji' :ie okid-
earrh. It ccnsisa ar imr irig h -rails -roici ai^H: 31 »
c/-»ncave mcf, » ^har :ae su'-li is aic iwr or r^
nnivenc There is an oaaa an rtt ;oe- sm ot ::fc
^y, a>nAtituting ie "waarrs Taac jre lijoTc cfce
firmament. " TTic space berwem rie ceestial ocean
and rSe oltimatc root of die univo^e beiccgs co die
hit^t. The space between the eardi and skr b
inhal>ifed by theangds. FinallT, since Sc Paul said
fhar all men are made to live upon the " face of die
fHrth" h<iw could they live on the back where die
AntifKKles are supposed to be. "With such a passage
Uffiire h'\n eyes, a Christian we are told, should not
' rvfii Bptiik of the Antipodes.*" '

l''rtr \cM shduld he go to the Antipodes; nor should
nuy ClirUtitin prince give him a ship to try; nor

< I J. Iiv. ttniiinMhm <n Knrop,, Vol. I, pp. »76-8.

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 7

would any pious mariner wish to try. For Cosmas
there was nothing in the least absurd about his map.
Only by remembering his absolute conviction that
this was the map of the universe can we begin to
understand how he would have dreaded Magellan
or Peary or the aviator who risked a collision with the
angels and the vault of heaven by flying seven miles
up in the ur. In the same way we can best under-
stand the furies of war and politics by remembering
that almost the whole of each party believes abso-
lutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as
fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact.
And that therefore, like Hamlet, it will stab Polon-
ius behind the rustling curtain, thinking him the king,
and perhaps like Hamlet add:

"Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune."

Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually
known to the public only through a fictitious person-
ality. Hence the modicum of truth in the old say-
ing that no man is a hero to his valet. There is only
a modicum of truth, for the valet, and the private
secretary, are often immersed in the fiction them-
selves. Royal personages are, of course, constructed
personalities. Whether they themselves believe in
thdr public character, or whether they merely per-
mit the chamberlain to stage-manage it, there are at
least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the
private and human. The biographies of great people
fall more or less readily into the histories of these two

8 PUBLIC OPINION

selves. The official biographer reproduces the public
life, the revealing memoir the other. The Charnwood
Lincoln, for example, is a noble portrjut, not of an ac-
tual human being, but of an epic figure, replete with
significance, who moves on much the same level of
reality as Aeneas or St. George. Oliver's Hamilton
is a majestic abstraction, the sculpture of an idea,
*'an essay" as Mr. Oliver himself calls it, "on Amer-
ican union." It is a formal monument to the state-
craft of federalism, hardly the biography of a person.
Sometimes people create their own facade when they
think they are revealing the interior scene. The
Repington diaries and Margot Asquith's are a species
of self-portraiture in which the intimate detail is
most revealing as an index of how the authors like
to think about themselves.

But the most interesting kind of portraiture is that
which arises spontaneously in peoples' minds. When
Victoria came to the throne, says Mr. Strachey,'
"among the outside public there was a great wave
of enthusiasm. Senriment and romance were com-
ing into fashion; and the spectacle of the little
girl-queen, innocent, modest, with fair hair and pink
cheeks, driving through her capital, filled the hearts
of the beholders with raptures of affectionate loyalty.
What, above all, struck everybody with overwhelm-
ing force was the contrast between Queen Victoria
and her uncles. The nasty old men, debauched and
selfish, pigheaded and ridiculous, with their per-
petual burden of debts, confusions, and disreput-
abilides — they had vanished like the snows of winter

t Lytton Suachey, QuttK Ficterit^ p. 7a.

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 9

and here at last, crowned and radiant, was the
spring."

M. Jean de Kerrefeu * saw hero-worship at first
hand, for he was an officer on JofFre's staff at the
moment of that soldier's greatest fame:

"For two years, the entire world paid an almost divine
homage to the victor of the Mame. llie baggage-master
literally bent under the weight of the boxes, of the pack-
ages and letters which unknown people sent him with a
frantic testimonial of their admiration. I think that
outside of General Joffre, no commander in the war has
been able to realize a comparable idea of what glory is.
They sent him boxes of candy from alt the great confec-
tioners of the world, boxes of champagne, fine wines of
every vintage, fruits, game, ornaments and utensils,
clothes, smoking materials, inkstands, paperweights.
Every territory sent its speciality. The painter sent his
picture, ^e sculptor his statuette, the dear old lady a
comforter or socks, the shepherd in his hut carved a pipe
for his sake. All the manufacturers of the world who were
hostile to Germany shipped their products, Havana its
dgais, Portugal its port wine. I have known a hairdresser
D^io had nothing bener to do than to make a portrait of
the General out of hair belonging to persons who were
dear to him; a professional penman had the same idea,
but the features were composed of thousands of little
phrases in tiny characters which sang the praise of the
GeneraL As to letters, he had them in all scripts, from
all countries, written in every dialect, affectionate letters,
grateful, overflowing with love, filled with adoration.
They called him Savior of the World, Father of his Coun-
try, Agent of God, Benefactor of Humanity etc. . . .

K Grand Quartirr GtmrO,

lo PUBLIC OPINION

And not only Frenchmen, but Americans, Argentinians,
Australians, etc. etc. . . . Thousands of little children,
without their parents' knowledge, took pen in hand and
wrote to tell him their love: most of them called him Our
Father. And there was poignancy about their effusions,
their adoration, these sighs of deliverance that escaped
from thousands of hearts at the defeat of barbarism. To all
these naif little souls, JofFre seemed like St. George crush-
ing the dragon. Certainly he incarnated for the conscience
of mankind the victory of good over evil, of light over dark-
ness.

Lunatics, simpletons, the half-crazy and the crazy
turned their darkened brains toward him as toward
reason itself. I have read the letter of a person living in
Sydney, who b^ged the General to save him from his
enemies; another, a New Zealander, requested him to send
some soldiers to the house of a gentleman who owed him
ten pounds and would not pay.

Finally, some hundreds of young girts, overcoming the
timidity of their sex, asked for engagements, their families
not to know about it; others wished only to serve him."

This ideal JofTre was compounded out of the vic-
tory won by him, his staff and his troops, the despair
of the war, the personal sorrows, and the hope of
future victory. But beside hero-worship there is
the exorcism of devils. By the same mechanism
through which heroes are incarnated, devils are made.
If everything good was to come from JofFre, Foch,
WIson, or Roosevelt, everything evil originated in
the Kaiser Wilhelm, Lenin and Trotsky. They were
as omnipotent for evil as the heroes were omnipotent
for good. To many simple and frightened minds
there was no political reverse, no strike, no obstruc-

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS ii

don, no mysterious death or mysterious conflagration
anywhere in the world of which the causes did not
wind back to these personal sources of evil.

3

Worldwide concentration of this kind on a sym-
bolic personality is rare enough to be clearly re-
markable, and every author has a weakness for the
striking and irrefutable example. The vivisection of
war reveals such examples, but it does not make them
out of nothing. In a more normal public life, symbolic
pictures arc no less governant of behavior, but each
symbol is far less inclusive because there are so many
compering ones. Not only is each symbol charged
with less feeling because at most it represents only a
part of the population, but even within that part
there is infinitdy less suppression of individual dif-
ference. The symbols of public opinion, in rimes of
moderate security, are subject to check and com-
parison and argument. They come and go, coalesce
and are forgotten, never organizing perfectly the
emotion of the whole group. There is, after all,
just one human activity left in which whole popula-
tions accomplish the union sacr^e. It occurs in those
middle phases of a war when fear, pugnacity, and
hatred have secured complete dominion of the spirit,
either to crush every other instinct or to enlist it,
and before weariness is felt.

At almost all other rimes, and even in war when it
19 deadlocked, a sufficiently greater range of feelings is
aroused to establish conflict, choice, hesitation, and
oomprtnnise. The symbolism of public opinion

I a PUBLIC OPINION

usually bears, as we shall see,^ the marks of this
balancing of interest. Think, for example, of how
rapidly, after the armistice, the precarious and by no
means successfully established symbol of Allied
Unity disappeared, how it was followed almost im-
mediately by the breakdown of each nation's sym-
bolic picture of the other: Britain the Defender of
Public Law, France watching at the Frontier of
Freedom, America the Crusader. And think then
of how within each nation the symbolic picture of
itself frayed out, as party and class conflict and
personal ambition began to stir postponed issues.
And then of how the symbolic pictures of the leaders
gave way, as one by one, Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd
George, ceased to be the incarnation of human hope,
and became merely the n^otiators and administra-
tors for a disillusioned world.

Whether we regret this as one of the soft evils of
peace or applaud it as a return to sanity is obviously
no matter here. Our first concern with fictions and
symbols is to forget their value to the existing social
order, and to think of them simply as an important
part of the machinery of human communication.
Now in any society that is not completely self-
contained in its interests and so small that every-
one can know all about everything that happens,
ideas deal with events that are out of sight and hard
to grasp. Miss Sherwin of Gopher Prairie,* is aware
that a war is raging in France and tries to conceive
it. She has never been to France, and certainly she
has never been along what is now the battlefront.

> Pan V. ■ See Siockui Lewii^ Uaiit SirtiU

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 13

Rctures of French and German soldiers she has seen,
but it is impossible for her to imagine three million
men. No one, in fact, can imagine them, and the
professionals do not try. They think of them as, say,
two hundred divisions. But Miss Sherwin has no
access to the order of battle maps, and so if she is
to think about the war, she fastens upon JofFre and
the Kaiser as if they were engaged in a personal
duel. Perhaps if you could see what she sees with her
mind's eye, the image in its composition might be
not unlike an Eighteenth Century engraving of a
great soldier. He stands there boldly unruffled and
more than life size, with a shadowy army of tiny
little figures winding off into the landscape behind.
Nor it seems are great men oblivious to these expec-
tations. M. de Pierrefeu tells of a photc^apher's
visit to Jotfre. The General was in his " middle class
<^ce, before the worktable without papers, where he
sat down to write his signature. Suddenly it was
noticed that there were no maps on the walls. But
since according to popular ideas it is not possible to
think of a general without maps, a few were placed
in portion for the picture, and removed soon after-
wards." *

The only feeling that anyone can have about an
event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by
his mental image of that event. That is why until
we know what others think they know, we cannot
truly understand their acts. I have seen a young
girl, brought up in a Pennsylvania mining town,
plunged suddenly from entire cheerfulness into a

' op. cii., p. 99.

14 PUBLIC OPINION

paroxysm of grief when a gust of wind cracked
the kitchen window-pane. For hours she was in-
consolable, and to me incomprehensible. But when
she was able to talk, it transpired that if a window-
pane broke it meant that a close relative had died.
She was, therefore, mourning for her father, who
had frightened her into running away from home.
The father was, of course, quite thoroughly alive as a
telegraphic inquiry soon proved. But until the
telegram came, the cracked glass was an authentic
message to that girl. Why it was authentic only a
prolonged investigation by a skilled psychiatrist could
show. But even the most casual observer could see
that the girl, enormously upset by her family troubles,
had hallucinated a complete fiction out of one ex-
ternal fact, a remembered superstition, and a tur-
moil of remorse, and fear and love for her father.

Abnormality in these instances is only a matter of
degree. When an Attorney-General, who has been
frightened by a bomb exploded on his doorstep,
convinces himself by the reading of revoluHonary
literature that a revolution is to happen on the first
of May 1920, we recc^nize that much the same
mechanism is at work. The war, of course, furnished
many examples of this pattern : the casual fact, the
creative imagination, the will to believe, and out of
these three elements, a counterfeit of reality to which
there was a violent Instinctive response. For it is
clear enough that under certain conditions men re-
spond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities,
and that in many cases they help to create the very
fictions to which they respond. Let him cast the

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 15

first stone who did not believe in the Russian army
that passed through England in August, 1914, did
not accept any tale of atrocities without direct proof,
and never saw a plot, a traitor, or a spy where there
was none. Let him cast a stone who never passed on
as the real in«de truth what he had heard someone
say who knew no more than he did.

In all these instances we must note particularly
one common factor. It is the insertion between man
and his environment of a pseudo-environment. To
that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response.
But because it is behavior, the consequences, if
they are acts, operate not in the pseudo-environment
where the behavior is stimulated, but in the real
environment where action eventuates. If the be-
havior is not a practical act, but what we call roughly
thought and emotion, it may be a long time before
there is any noticeable break in the texture of the
fictitious world. But when the stimulus of the
pseudo-fact results in action on things or other people,
contradiction soon develops. Then comes the sen-
sation of butting one's head agfunst a stone wall,
of learning by experience, and witnessing Herbert
Spencer's tragedy of the murder of a Beautiful
Tlieory by a Gang of Brutal Facts, the discomfort
in short of a maladjustment. For certainly, at the
level of soda] life, what is called the adjustment of
man to lus environment takes place through the me-
dium of fictions.

By fictions I do not mean lies. I mean a represen-
tation of the environment which is in lesser or greater
deffct made by man himself. The range of fiction

i6 PUBLIC OPINION

extends all the way from complete hallucination to
the scientists' perfectly self-conscious use of a sche-
matic model, or his decision that for his pardcular
problem accuracy beyond a certain numbu* of ded-
mal places is not important. A work of fiction may
have almost any degree of fidelity, and so long as the
degree of fidelity can be taken into account, fiction is
. not misleading. In fact, human culture is very
> largely the selection, the rearrangement, the tracing
of patterns upon, and the stylizing of, what William
James called "the random irradiations and resettle-
ments of our ideas. " ' The alternative to the ■■-
use of fictions is direct exposure to the ebb and ''^
flow of sensation. That is not a real alternative, for 4/fk
however refreshing it is to see at times with a per- ^y^
fectly innocent eye, innocence itself is not wisdom,^
though a source and corrective of wisdom.

For the real environment is altogether too big, too
complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance.
We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety,
so much variety, so many permutations and combi-
nations. And although we have to act in that
environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler
model before we can manage with it. To traverse the
world men must have maps of the world. Thdr
persistent difiiculty is to secure maps on which their
own need, or someone else's need, has not sketched in
the coast of Bohemia.

4

The analyst of public opinion must begin then, by

recognizing the triangular relationship between the

' Jamet, PHneiflti <^ Pfythology, Vol II, p. 638.

N

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 17

scene of action, the human picture of that scene, and -
the human response to that picture working itself out
upon the scene of action. It is like a play su^ested
to the actors by their own experience, in which the
plot is transacted in the real lives of the actors, and
not merely in their stage parts. The moving picture
often emphasizes with great skill this double drama
of interior motive and external behavior. Two men
are quarreling, ostensibly about some money, but
their passion is inexplicable. Then the picture fades
out and what one or the other of the two men sees
with his mind's eye is reenacted. Across the table
'rfiey were quarreling about money. In memory
they are back in their youth when the girl jilted
him for the other man. The exterior drama is
explained: the hero is not greedy; the hero is in
love.

A scene not so different was played in the United
States Senate. At breakfast on the morning of
September 29, 1919, some of the Senators read a news
dispatch in the Washington Post about the landing
of American marines on the Dalmatian coast. The
newspaper sud:

FACTS NOW ESTABLISHED

"The following important facts appear already estab'
lisked. The orders to Rear Admiral Andrews command-
ing the American naval forces in the Adriatic, came from
the British Admiralty via the War Council and Rear
Admiral Knapps in London. Tlie approval or dis-
approval of the American Navy Department was not

i8 PUBLIC OPINION

WITHOUT DANIELS' KNOWLEDGE

" Mr. Daniels was admittedly placed in a peculiar posi-
tion when cables reached here stating that the forces over
which he is presumed to have exclusive control were carry-
ing on what amounted to naval warfare ^thout his knowl-
edge. It was fully realized that the British Admiralty
might desire to issue orders to Rear Admiral Andrews to
act on behalf of Great Britain and her Allies, because the
situation required sacrifice on the part of some narion if
D'Annunzio's followers were to be held in check.

" It was further realized that under the new league of
nations plan foreigners would be in a position to direct
American Naval forces in emergencies with or without the
consent of the American Navy Department. . . ." etc.
(Italics mine).

TKe first Senator to comment is Mr. Knox of
Pennsylvania. Indignantly he demands investiga^
tion. In Mr. Brandegee of Connecticut, who spoke
next, indignation has already stimulated credulity.
Where Mr. Knox indignantly wishes to know if the
report is true, Mr. Brandegee, a half a minute later,
would like to know what would have happened if
marines had been killed. Mr. Knox, interested in the
question, forgets that he asked for an inquiry, and re-
plies. If Ametican marines had been killed, it would
be war. The mood of the debate is still conditional.
Debate proceeds. Mr. McCormick of Illinois reminds
the Senate that the Wilson administration is prone to
the wa^ng of small unauthorized wars. He repeats
Theodore Roosevelt's quip about "waging peace."
More debate. Mr. Brandegee notes that the marines

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 19

acted "under orders of a Supreme Council sitting
somewhere," but he cannot recall who represents the
United States on that body. The Supreme Council
is unknown to the ConstituOon of the United States.
Therefore Mr. New of Indiana submits a resolution
calling for the fiacts.

So far the Senators still realize vaguely that
they are discussng a rumor. Being lawyers they still
remember some of the forms of evidence. But as
red-blooded men they already experience all the
indignation which is appropriate to the fact that
American marines have been ordered into war by a
fordgn government and without the consent of Con-
gress. Emotionally they want to believe it, because
they are Republicans fighting the Le^ue of Nations.
This arouses the Democratic leader, Mr. Hitchcock
of Nebraska. He defends the Supreme Council:
it was acring under the war powers. Peace has not
yet been concluded because the Republicans are
delaying it. Therefore the action was necessary and
l^al. Both »des now assume that the report is true,
and the conclusions they draw are the conclusions of
their partisanship. Yet this extraordinary assump-
tion is in a debate over a resolution to investigate the
truth of the assumption. It reveals how difficult it
is, even for trained lawyers, to suspend response until
the returns are in. The response is instantaneous.
The fiction is taken for truth because the fiction is
badly needed.

A few days later an official report showed that the
marines were not landed by order of the British
Govermnent or of the Supreme Council. They had

20 PUBLIC OPINION

not been fighting the Italians. They had been landed
at the request of the Italian Government to protect
Italians, and the American commander had been
officially thanked by the Italian authorities. The
marines were not at war with Italy. They had acted
according to an established international practice
which had nothing to do with the League of Nations.
The scene of action was the Adriatic. The picture
of that scene in the Senators' heads at Washington
was furnished, in this case probably with intent to
deceive, by a man who cared nothing about the
Adriatic, but much about defeating the League.
To this jMcture the Senate responded by a strengthen-
ing of its partisan differences over the League.

5
Whether in this particular case the Senate was
above or below its normal standard, it is not neces-
sary to decide. Nor whether the Senate compares
favorably with the House, or with other parlia-
ments. At the moment, I should like to think only
about the world-wide spectacle of men acting upon
their environment, moved by stimuli from their
pseudo-environments. For when full allowance has
been made for deliberate fraud, political science
has still to account for such facts as two nations
attacking one another, each convinced that it is acting
in self-defense, or two classes at war each certain that
it speaks for the common interest. They live, we are
likely to say, in different worlds. More accurately^
they live in the same world, but they think and feel in
different ones.

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS ai

It is to these special worlds, it is to these private
or group, or class, or provincial, or occupational, or
national, or sectarian artifacts, that the political
adjustment of mankind in the Great Society takes
place. Their variety and complication are impossible
to describe. Yet these fictions determine a very
great part of men's political behavior. We must
think of perhaps fifty sovereign parliaments consis-
ting of at least a hundred l^slative bodies. With
them belong at least fifty hierarchies of provincial and
municipal assemblies, which with their executive, ad-
ministrative and l^slative organs, constitute formal
authority on earth. But that does not begin to
reveal the compleMty of political life. For in each of
these innumerable centers of authority there are
parties, and these parties are themselves hierarchies
with their roots in classes, sections, cliques and clans;
and within these are the individual politicians, each
the personal center of a web of connection and mem-
ory and fear and hope.

Somehow or other, for reasons often necessarily
obscure, as the result of domination or compromise or
a logroll, there emerge from these political bodies
commands, which set armies in motion or make
peace, conscript life, tax, e^dle, imprison, protect
prc^rty or confiscate it, encourage one kind of
enterprise and discourage another, facilitate immi-
gration or obstruct it, improve communication or
censor it, establish schools, build navies, proclaim
"polides," and "destiny," raise economic barriers,
make property or unmake it, bring one people under
the rule of another, or favor one class as against

22 PUBLIC OPINION

another. For each of these decisions some view of
the facts is taken to be conclusive, some view of the
circumstances is accepted as the basis of inference
and as the stimulus of feeling. What view of the
facts, and why that one?

And yet even this does not b^n to exhaust the real
complexity. The formal political structure exists in a
social environment, where there are innumerable
large and small corporations and institutions, volun-
tary and semi-voluntary associations, national, pro-
vincial, urban and neighborhood groupings, which
often as not make the decision that the political body
re^sters. On what are these decisions based?

"Modern society" says Mr. Chesterton, "is in-
trinsically insecure because it is based on the notion
that all men will do the same thing for different
reasons .... And as within the head of any convict
may be the hell of a quite solitary crime, so in the
house or under the hat of any suburban clerk may
be the limbo of a quite separate philosophy. The
first man may be a complete Materialist and feel his
own body as a horrible machine manufacturing his
own mind. He may listen to his thoughts as to the
dull ticking of a clock. The man next door may be a
Christian Scientist and regard his own body as some-
how rather less substantial than his own shadow.
He may come almost to regard his own arms and legs
as delusions like moving serpents in the dream of
delirium tremens. The third man in the street may
not be a Christian Scientist but, on the contrary, a
Christian. He may live in a fairy tale as his ndgh-
bors would say; a secret but solid f^ry tale full of the

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 23

faces and presences of unearthly friends. The
fourth man may be a theosophist, and only too
probably a v^etarian; and I do not see why I should
not gratify myself with the fancy that the fifth man is
a devil worshiper. . . . Now whether or not this sort
of variety is valuable, this sort of unity is shaky.
To expect that all men for all time will go on thinking
different things, and yet doing the same things, is a
doubtful speculation. It is not founding society on a
communion, or even on a convention, but rather on a
coincidence. Four men may meet under the same
lamp post; one to paint it pea green as part of a great
municipal reform; one to read his breviary in the
light of it; one to embrace it with accidental ardour
in a fit of alcoholic enthusiasm; and the last merely
because the pea green post is a conspicuous point of
rendezvous with his young lady. But to expect this
to happen night after night is unwise. . . ." *

For the four men at the lamp post substitute the
governments, the parries, the corporations, the socie-
ties, the social sets, the trades and professions, uni-
versiries, sects, and narionalities of the world. Think
of the legislator voting a statute that will affect
distant peoples, a statesman coming to a decision.
Think of the Peace Conference reconsrituting the
frontiers of Europe, an ambassador in a foreign
country trying to discern the intentions of his own
government and of the foreign government, a pro-
moter working a concession in a backward country,
an editor demanding a war, a clergyman calling on

' G. K. GMtterton, "The Mad Hatter and the Sane HouKholdcr,"
Fa*ily Fair, January, 193I1 p. 54.

34 PUBLIC OPINION

the police to r^;uUte amusement, a club lounging-
room making up its mind about a strike, a sewing
circle preparing to r^ulate the schools, nine judges
deciding whether a l^slature in Or^;on may fix the
working hours of women, a cabinet meeting to decide
on the recc^ition of a government, a party con-
vention choo^ng a candidate and writing a platform,
twenty-seven million voters casting their ballots, an
Irishman in Cork thinking about an Irishman in
Belfast, a Third International planning to recon-
struct the whole of human society, a board of
directors confronted with a set of their employees*
demands, a boy choosing a career, a merchant esti-
mating supply and demand for the coming season,
a speculator predicting the course of the market, a
banker deciding whether to put credit behind a new
enterprise, the advertiser, the reader of advertis-
ments. . . .Thinkof the different sorts of Americans
thinking about their notions of "The British Elmpire"
or "France" or "Russia" or "Mexico." It is not
so different from Mr. Chesterton's four men at the
pea green lamp post.

6

And so before we involve ourselves in the jungle
of obscurities about the innate differences of men, we
shall do well to fix our attention upon the extra-
ordinary differences in what men know of the world.'
I do not doubt that there are important biologjcal
differences. Since man is an animal it would be
strange if there were not. But as rational b^ngs it

t C}. Wallu, Ow Sotial Btrita^, m-Tl*t '*t-

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 25

is worse than shallow to generalize at all about
comparative behavior until there is a measurable
similarity between the environments to which be-
havior is a response.

The pragmaric value of this idea is that it intro-
duces a much needed refinement into the ancient con-
troversy about nature and nurture, innate quality
and environment. For the pseudo-environment
is a hybrid compoimded of "human nature" and
"conditions." To my mind it shows the uselessness
of pontificating about what man is and always will
be from what we observe man to be doing, or about
what are the necessary conditions of society. For
we do not know how men would behave in response to
the facts of the Great Society. All that we really
know is how they behave in response to what can
feirly be called a most inadequate picture of the
Great Society. No conclusion about man or the
Great Society can honestly be made on evidence like
that.

TTiis, then, will be the clue to our inquiry. We
shall assume that what each man does is based not
on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures
made by himself or given to him. If his atlas tells
him that the world is flat he will not sail near what he
believes to be the edge of our planet for fear of falling
off. If his maps include a fountain of eternal youth,
a Ponce de Leon m\\ go in quest of it. If someone
di^ up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a
time act exactly as if he had found gold. The way in
which the world is imagined determines at any
particular moment what men will do. It does not

a6

PUBLIC OPINION
what they will achie

determine what they will achieve. It determines
their effort, their feehngs, their hopes, not their
accompHshjnents and results. The very men who
most loudly proclaim their "materialism" and their
contempt for "ideologues," the Marxian commun-
ists, place their entire hope on what ? On the forma-
tion by propaganda of a class-conscious group. But
what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the
picture to which men respond, to substitute one
social pattern for another? What is class conscious-
ness but a way of realizing the world? National
consciousness but another way? And Professor Gid-
dings' consciousness of kind, but a process of believ-
ing that we recognize among the multitude certain
ones marked as our kind?

Try to explain social life as the pursuit of pleasure
and the avoidance of pain. You will soon be saying
that the hedonist begs the question, for even suppos-
ing that man does pursue these ends, the crucial
problem of why he thinks one course rather than
another likely to produce pleasure, is untouched.
Does the guidance of man's conscience explain ? How
then does he happen to have the particular con-
science which he has? The theory of economic self-
interest? But how do men come to conceive their
interest in one way rather than another? The desire
for security, or prestige, or domination, or what is
vaguely called self-realization? How do men con-
ceive their security, what do they consider prestige,
how do they figure out the means of domination, or
what is the notion of self which they wish to realize?

I

PI

leasure, pam, conscience, acqui

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 27

enhancement, mastery, are undoubtedly names for
some of the ways people act. There may be instinc-
tive dispositions which work toward such ends. But
no statement of the end, or any description of the
tendencies to seek it, can explain the behavior which
results. The very fact that men theorize at all is
proof that their pseudo-environments, their interior
representations of the world, are a determining
element in thought, feeling, and action. For if the
connection between reality and human response were
direct and immediate, rather than indirect and in-
ferred, indecision and failure would be unknown, and
Of each of us fitted as snugly into the world as the
child in the womb), Mr. Bernard Shaw would not
hare been able to say that except for the first nine
months of its existence no human being manages its
affairs as well as a plant.

The chief difficulty in adapting the psychoanalytic
scheme to political thought arises in this connection.
The Freudians are concerned with the maladjust-
ment of distinct individuals to other individuals
and to concrete circumstances. They have assumed
that if internal derangements could be straightened
out, there would be little or no confusion about what
is the obviously normal relationship. But public
opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling
facts, and there is nothing obvious about them.
The situations to which public opinions refer are
known only as opinions. The psychoanalyst, on the
other hand, almost always assumes that the environ-
ment is knowable, and if not knowable then at least
bearable, to any unclouded intelligence. This assump-

28 PUBLIC OPINION

tion of his is the problem of public opinion. Instead
of taking for granted an environment that is readily
known, the social analyst is most concerned in study-
ing how the latter political environment is conceived,
and how it can be conceived more successfully. The
psychoanalyst examines the adjustment to an X,
called by him the environment; the social analyst
examines the X, called by him the pseudo-environ-
ment.

He is, of course, permanently and constantly in
debt to the new psychology, not only because when
rightly applied it so gready helps people to stand on
their own feet, come what may, but because the
study of dreams, fantasy and rationalization has
thrown light on how the pseudo-environment is put
Wither. But he cannot assume as his criterion
either what is called a "normal biological career" '
within the existing social order, or a career "freed
from religous suppression and dogmatic conven-
rions" outside.* What for a sociologist is a normal
social career? Or one freed from suppressions and
conventions? Conservative critics do, to be sure,
assume the first, and romantic ones the second.
But in assuming them they are taking the whole
world for granted. They are saying in effect either
that society is the sort of thing which corresponds to
their idea of what is normal, or the sort of thing which
corresponds to their idea of what is free. Both ideas
are merely public opinions, and while the psycho-
analyst as physician may perhaps assume them, the
sociologist may not take the products of existing

■ Edmnl J. Konpf, Piyckopatkolofyt P- "^ * ^d., p. 151.

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 29

public opinion as criteria by which to study public
ofnnion.

The world that we have to deal with politically is
out of reach, out of sight, out of mind. It has to be
explored, reported, and imagined. Man is no Aristo-
telian god contemplating all existence at one glance.
He is the creature of an evolurion who can just
about span a suiEcient portion of reality to manage
his survival, and snatch what on the scale of time
are but a few moments of insight and happiness.
Yet this same creature has invented ways of seeing
what no naked eye could see, of hearing what no ear
could hear, of weighing immense masses and in-
finitesmal ones, of counting and separating more items
than he can individually remember. He is learning
to see with his mind vast portions of the world that
he could never see, touch, smell, hear, or remember.
Gradually he makes for himself a trustworthy picture
inside his head of the world beyond his reach.

Those features of the world outside which have to
do with the behavior of other human beings, in so far
as that behavior crosses ours, is dependent upon us,
or is interesring to us, we call roughly public affairs.
The pictures inside the heads of these human bangs,
the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs,
purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions.
Those pictures which are acted upon by groups of
people, or by individuals acting in the name of
groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters. And
so in the chapters which follow we shall inquire

JO PUBLIC OPINION

first into some of the reasons why the picture inside
so often misleads men in their dealings with the
world outside. Under this heading we shall consider
first the chief factors which limit their access to the
facts. They are the artificial censorships, the limita-
tions of social contact, the comparatively meager
time avfulable in each day for paying attention to
public affairs, the distortion arising because events
have to be compressed into very short messages, the
difficulty of making a smajl vocabulary express a
complicated world, and finally the fear of facing those
facts which would seem to threaten the established
routine of men's lives.

The analysis then turns from these more or less
external limitations to the question of how this
trickle of messages from the outside is affected by the
stored up images, the preconceptions, and prejudices
which interpret, fill them out, and in th«r turn
powerfully direct the play of our attention, and our
vision itself. From this it proceeds to examine how
in the individual person the limited messages from
outside, formed into a pattern of stereotypes, are
identified with his own interests as he feels and con-
ceives them. In the succeeding sections it examines
how opinions are crystallized into what is called
Public Opinion, how a National Will, a Group
Mind, a Social Purpose, or whatever you choose
to callit, is formed.

The first five parts constitute the descriprive sec-
tion of the book. There follows an analysis of the
traditional democratic theory of public opinion. The
substance of the argument is that democracy in its

THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS 31

original form never seriously faced the problem which
arises because the pictures inside people's heads do
not automatically correspond with the world outside.
And then, because the democratic theory is under
criticism by socialist thinkers, there' follows an
examination of the most advanced and coherent of
these cridcisms, as made by the English Guild Social-
ists. My purpose here is to find out whether these re-
formers take into account the main difficulties of pub-
lic opinion. My conclusion is that they ignore the
difficulties, as completely as did the original demo-
crats, because they, too, assume, and in a much more
complicated civilization, that somehow mysteriously
there exists in the hearts of men a knowledge of the
world beyond their reach.

I argue that representative government, ather in
what is ordinarily called politics, or in industry,
cannot be worked successfiilly, no matter what the
basis of election, unless there is an independent,
expert oi^nizarion for maldng the unseen facts in-
telligible to those who have to make the decisions.
I attempt, therefore, to argue that the serious ac-
ceptance of the principle that personal representa-
tion must be supplemented by representation of the
unseen facts would alone permit a satisfactory de-
centralization, and allow us to escape from the
intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us
must acquire a competent opinion about all public
affairs. It is argued that the problem of the press is
confused because the critics and the apologists expect
the press to realize this fiction, expect it to make up
for all that was not foreseen in the theory of democ-

32 PUBLIC OPINION

racy, and that the readers expect this miracle to be
performed at no cost or trouble to themselves. The
newspapers are regarded by democrats as a panacea for
their own defects, whereas analyws of the nature of
news and of the economic basis of journalism seems to
show that the newspapers necessarily and inevitably
reflect, and therefore, i;i greater or lesser measure,
intensify, the defective organization of public opin-
ion. My conclusion is that public opinions must be
organizai for the press if they are to be sound, not
by the press as is the case today. This ot^anization
I conceive to be in the first instance the task of a
political science that has won its proper place as
formulator, in advance of real decision, instead of
apologist, critic, or reporter after the decision has
been made. I try to indicate that the perplexities
of government and industry are conspiring to give
political science this enormous opportunity to enrich
itself and to serve the public. And, of course, I hope
that these pages will help a few people to realize that
opportxmity more vividly, and therefore to pursue it
more consciously.

PART n

APPROACHES TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE

Chaptek 2. Censorship and Privacy
" 3. Contact and Opportunity
" 4. Time and Attention
" 5. Speed, Words, and Clearness

CHAPTER II
CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY

The picture of a general presiding over an editorial
conference at the most terrible hour of one of the
great batdes of history seems more like a scene from
The Chocolate Soldier than a page from life. Yet we
know at first hand from the officer who edited the
French communique that these conferences were a
regular part of the business of war; that in the worst
moment of Verdun, General Jofire and his cabinet
met and argued over the nouns, adjectives, and verbs
that were to be prints in the newspapers the next
moming.

"The evening communique of the twenty-third
(February 1916)" says M. de Pierrefeu,^ "was
edited in a dramatic atmosphere. M. Berthelot,
of the Prime Minister's office, had just telephonol by
order of the minister asking General Pell£ to strength-
en the report and to emphasize the proportions of the
enemy's attack. It was necessary to prepare the
public for the worst outcome in case the affair
turned into a catastrophe. This anxiety showed
clearly that neither at G. H. Q. nor at the Ministry
of War had the Government found reason for con-
fidence. As M. Berthelot spoke, General PelU made

' G. Q. C, pp. 11&-119.

36 PUBLIC OPINION

notes. He handed me the paper on which he had
written the Government's wishes, t<^ther with the
order of the day issued by General von Deimling and
found on some prisoners, in which it was stated that
this attack was the supreme offensive to secure peace.
Skilfully used, all this was to demonstrate that
Germany was letting loose a gigantic effort, an
effort without precedent, and that from its success
she hoped for die end of the war. The logic of this
was that nobody need be surprised at our with-
drawal. When, a half hour later, I went down with
my manuscript, I found gathered together in Colonel
Claudel's office, he being away, the major-general.
General Janin, Colonel Dupont, and Lieutenant-
Colonel Renouard. Fearing that I would not succeed
io giving the desired impression. General Pell£ had
himself prepared a proposed communique. I read
what I had just done. It was found to be too
moderate. General PelU's, on the other hand,
seemed too alarming. I had purposely omitted von
Deimling's order of the day. To put it into the
communique would he to break with the formula to
which the public was accustomed, would be to trans-
form it into a kind of pleading. It would seem to say:
'How do you suppose we can resist?* There was
reason to fear that the public would be distracted by
this change of tone and would believe that everything
was lost. I explained my reasons and su^ested
giving Deimling's text to the newspapers in the form
of a separate note.

"Opinion being divided, General Pell£ went to ask
General de Castlenau to come and decide finally.

CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY 37

The General arrived smiling, quiet and good humored,
sud a few pleasant words about this new kind of
literary council of war, and looked at the texts.
He chose the simpler one, gave more weight to the
first phrase, inserted the words 'as had been antici-
pated,' which supply a reassuring quality, and was
flatly against inserting von Deimling's order, but was
for transmitting it to the press in a special note ..."
General JofFre that evening read the communique
carefully and approved it.

Within a few hours those two or three hundred
words would be read all over the world. They would
paint a picture in men's minds of what was happening
on the slopes of Verdun, and in front of that picture
people would take heart or despair. The shopkeeper
in Brest, the peasant in Lorraine, the deputy in the
Palais Bourbon, the editor in Amsterdam or Minnea-
polis had to be kept in hope, and yet prepared to
accept possible defeat without yielding to panic.
They are told, therefore, that the loss of ground
is no surprise to the French Command. They
are taught to regard the affair as serious, but not
strange. Now, as a matter of fact, the French
General Staff was not fully prepared for the German
offensive. Supporting trenches had not been dug,
alternarive roads had not been built, barbed wire was
lacking. But to confess that would have aroused im-
ages in the heads of civilians that might well have
turned a reverse into a disaster. The High Command
could be disappointed, and yet pull itself together; the
people at home and abroad, full of uncertainties,
and with none of the professional man's singleness of

38 PUBLIC OPINION

purpose, might on the basis of a complete story have
lost sight of the war in a mel^ of faction and counter-
faction about the competence of the officers. In-
stead> therefore, of letting the public act on all the
facts which the generals knew, the authorities pre-
sented only certain facts, and these only in such
a way' as would be most likely to steady the people.
In this case the men who arranged the pseudo-
environment knew what the real one was. But a
few days later an incident occurred about which the
French Staff did not know the truth. The Germans
announced ' that on the previous afternoon they had
taken Fort Douaumont by assault. At French
headquarters in Chantilly no one could understand
this news. For on the morning of the twenty-fifth,
after the engagement of the XXth corps, the battle
had taken a turn for the better. Reports from the
front said nothing about Douaumont. But inquiry
showed that the German report was true, though no
one as yet knew how the fort had been taken. In the
meantime, the German communique was being
flashed around the world, and the French had to say
something. So headquarters explained. "In the
midst of total ignorance at Chantilly about the way
the attack had taken place, we imagined, in the
evening communique of the 26th, a plan of the attack
which certainly had a thousand to one chance of
being true." The communique of this imaginary
battle read:

"A bitter struggle is taking place around Fort de Douau-
mont which is an advanced post of the old defensive 01^
1 On February 261 1916. Pierrefeu, C. Q. C, pp. 133 li ttj.

CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY 39

ganization of Verdun. The position taken this morning
by the enemy, after several unsuccessful assaults that cost
him very heavy losses, has been reached again and passed by
our tioops whom the enemy has not been able to drive
back." »

What had actually happened differed from both
the French and German accounts. While changing
troops in the line, the position had somehow been
forgotten in a confusion of orders. Only a battery
commander and a few men remained in the fort.
Some German soldiers, seeing the door open, had
crawled into the fort, and taken everyone inside
prisoner. A litde later the French who were on the
slopes of the hill were horrified at being shot at from
the fort. There had been no batde at Douaumont
and no losses. Nor had the French troops advanced
beyond it as the communiqufe seemed to say. They
were beyond it on either side, to be sure, but the fort
was in enemy hands.

Yet from the communique everyone believed that
the fort was half surrounded. The words did not
expltcidy say so, but "the press, as usual, forced
the pace." Military writers concluded that the
Germans would soon have to surrender. In a few
days they began to ask themselves why the garrison,

' Thii ii my own tranalation: the EoEliih translation from London
publiihed in the New York Timei of Sunday, Feb. 27, is as followt:

London, Feb. i£ (1916). A funoui ictuggle hu b<eea in progteu
around Fort de Douaumont which is an advance element of the old
defensive organization of Verdun fortresiei. The position captured thi*
mominB bv the enemy after several fruitlen assaults which cost him
cxtrentdy neavy loisa, (') wai [cached again and gone beyond by out
tioops, which all the attempts of the enemy have not been able to push

(•} The French test lays "pertei tret elevces." Thus the Engliib
tiuidatioD cxacgetatct t2ie otiguia] text

^ PUBLIC OPINION

since it lacked food, had not yet surrendered. "It
was necessary through the press bureau to request
them to drop the encirclement theme." '

The editor of the Frencli communique tells us that
as the battle dragged out, his colleagues and he set
out to neutralize the pertinacity of the Germans by
continual insistence on thdr terrible losses. It is
necessary to remember that at this time, and in
fact until late in 1917, the orthodox view of the war
for all the Allied peoples was that it would be decided
by "attrition." Nobody believed in a war of move-
ment. It was insisted that strat^y did not count,
or diplomacy. It was simply a matter of killing
Germans. The general public more or less believed
the dogma, but it had constantly to be reminded of it
in face of spectacular German successes.

"Almost no day passed but the communique. . . .
ascribed to the Germans with some appearance of
justice heavy losses, extremely heavy, spoke of
bloody sacrifices, heaps of corpses, hecatombs. Like-
wise the wireless constantly used the statistics of the
intelligence bureau at Verdun, whose chief. Major
Cointet, had invented a method of calculating Ger-
man losses which obviously produced marvelous
results. Every fortnight the figures increased a
hundred thousand or so. These 3oo,ocx3, 400,000^
500,000 casualties put out, divided into daily, weekly,
monthly losses, repeated in all sorts of ways, pro-
duced a striking effect. Our formulae variol little:

'Pierrefeu, op. tit., pp. 134-5.

CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY 41

'according to prisoners the German losses in the
course of the attack have been considerable ' . . .
*it is proved that the losses'. . .'the enemy exhausted
byhislosseshasnotrenewed theattack'. . . Certain
formulae, later abandoned because they had been
overworked, were used each day: 'under our artillery
and machine gun 6re'. . . 'mowed down by our
artillery and machine gun fire*. . .Constant repeti-
tion impressed the neutrals and Germany itself, and
helped to create a bloody background in spite of the
denials from Nauen (the German wireless) which
tried vainly to destroy the bad effect oF this perpetual
repetition." '

The thesis of the French Command, which it
wished to establish publicly by these reports, was
formulate as follows for the guidance of the censors:

"This (tensive engages the active forces of our oppon-
ent whose manpower is declining. We have learned that
the class of 1916 is already at the front. There will remain
the 1917 class already being called up, and the resources
of the third categoiy (men above forty-five, or conva-
lescents). In a few weeks, the German forces exhausted
by this effort, will find themselves confronted with all the
forces of 'the coalition (ten millions against seven mil-
lions)." '

According to M. de Pierrefeu, the French com-
mand had converted itself to this belief. "By an
extraordinary aberration of mind, only the attrition
of the enemy was seenj it appeared that our forces
were not subject to attrition. General Nivelle
shared these ideas. We saw the result in 1917. "

' Op. eit., pp. 138-139. ' Op. eU., p. 147.

42 PUBLIC OPINION

We have learned to call this propaganda. A group
of men, who can prevent independent access to the
event, arrange the news of it to suit their purpose.
That the purpose was in this case patriotic does not
affect the ailment at all. They used their power to
make the Allied publics see affairs as they desired
them to be seen. The casualty figures of Major
Cointet which were spread about the world are of the
same order. They were intended to provoke a parti-
cular kind of inference, namely that the war of
attrition was going in favor of the French. But the
inference is not drawn in the form of argument. It
results almost automatically from the creation of a
mental picture of endless Germans slaughtered on
the hills about Verdun. By putting the dead Ger-
mans in the focus of the picture, and by omitting to
mention the French dead, a very special view of the
battle was built up. It was a view designed to neu-
tralize the effects of German territorial advances and
the impression of power which the persistence of the
offensive was making. It was also a view that tended
to make the public acquiesce in the demoralizing
defensive strat^y imposed upon the Allied armies.
For the public, accustomed to the idea that war
consists of great strategic movements, flank attacks,
encirclements, and dramatic surrenders, had gradually
to forget that picture in favor of the terrible idea that
by matching lives the war would be won. Through
its control over all news from the front, the General
Staff substituted a view of the facts that comported
with this strategy.

The General Staff of an army in the field is so

CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY «

placed that within wide limits it can control what the
public will perceive. It controls the selection of
correspondents who go to the front, controls their
movements at the front, reads and censors their
messages from the front, and operates the wires. The
Government behind the army by its command of
cables ^d passports, mails and custom houses and
blockades increases the control. It emphasizes it by
legal power over publishers, over public meetings, and
by its secret service. But in the case of an army the
control is far from perfect. There is always the en-
emy's communique, which in these days of wireless
cannot be kept away from neutrals. Above all there
is the talk of the soldiers, which blows back from
the front, and is spread about when they are on
leave.' An army is an unwieldy thing. And that is
why the naval and diplomatic censorship is almost
always much more complete. Fewer people know
what is going on, and their acts are more easily
supervised.

3
Without some form of censorship, propaganda in
the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to
conduct a propaganda there must be some barrier
between the public and the event. Access to the real
environment must be limited, before anyone can
create a pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or
desirable. For while people who have direct access
can misconcdve what they see, no one else can decide

' For week) prior to the Americin attack at St. Mihid and in the
Atgonne-Meute, everybody in France told eveiybody dte the deep
tectet.

44 PUBLIC OPINION

how they shall misconceive it, unless he can decide
where they shall look, and at what. The military
censorship is the simplest form of barrier, but by no
means the most important^ because it is known to
exist, and is therefore in certain measure agreed to
and discounted.

At different times and for different subjects some
men impose and other men accept a particular
standard of secrecy. The frontier between what is
concealed because publication is not, as we say,
"compatible with the public interest" fades grad-
ually into what is concealed because it is believed to
be none of the public's business. The notion of what
constitutes a person's private affairs is elastic. Thus
the amount of a man's fortune is considered a private
affair, and careful provision is made in the income
tax law to keep it as private as possible. The sale of a
piece of land is not private, but the price may be.
Salaries are generally treated as more private than
wages, incomes as more private than inheritances.
A person's credit rating is given only a limited cir-
culation. The profits of big corporations are more
public than those of small firms. Certain kinds of
conversation, between man and wife, lawyer and
client, doctor and patient, priest and communicant,
are privileged. Directors meetings are generally
private. So are many political conferences. Most of
what is said at a cabinet meeting, or by an ambassa-
dor to the Secretary of State, or at private interviews,
or dinner tables, is private. Many people regard the
contract between employer and employee as private.
There was a time when the affairs of all corporations

CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY 45

were held to be as private as a man's theology is
to-day. There was a time before that when his
theolc^ was held to be as public a matter as the color
of his eyes. But infectious diseases, on the other hand,
were once as private as the processes of a man's
digestion. The history of the notion of privacy would
be an entertaining tale. Sometimes the notions
violently conflict, as they did when the bolsheviks
published the secret treaties, or when Mr. Hughes
investigated the life insurance companies, or when
somebody's scandal exudes from the pages of Town
TVjpics to the front pages of Mr. Hearst's newspapers.
Whether the reasons for privacy are good or bad,
the barriers exist. Privacy is insisted upon at all
kinds of places in the area of what is called public
afFairs. It is often very illuminating, therefore, to
ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you
base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt,
counted, named the thing, about which you have an
opinion ? Was it the man who told you, or the man
who told him, or someone still further removed?
And how much was he permitted to see? When he
informs you that France thinks this and that, what
part of France did he watch? How was he able to
watch it? Where was he when he watched it?
What Frenchmen was he permitted to talk to, what
newspapers did he read, and where did they leant
what they say ? You can ask yourself these questions,
but you can rarely answer them. They will remind
you, however, of the distance which often separates
your public opinion from the event with which it
deals. And the reminder is itself a protection.

CHAPTER III

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY

I
While censorship and privacy intercept much in-
formation at its source, a very much larger body of
fact never reaches the whole public at all, or only very
slowly. For there are very distinct limits upon the
circulation of ideas.

A rough estimate of the effort it takes to reach
"everybody" can be had by considering the Govern-
ment's propaganda during the war. Remembering
that the war had run over two years and a half before
America entered it, that millions upon millions of
printed pages had been circulated and untold
speeches had been delivered, let us turn to Mr.
Creel's account of his fight "for the minds of men, for
the conquest of their convictions " in order that " the
gospel of Americanism might be carried to every
corner of the globe." '

Mr. Creel had to assemble machinery which in-
cluded a Division of News that issued, he tells us,
more than six thousand releases, had to enlist seventy
five thousand Four Minute Men who delivered at
least seven hundred and fifty-five thousand, one
hundred and ninety speeches to an aggregate of over
three hundred million people. Boy scouts delivered

' Geoige Cred, Him /Ft JJetrtited Jmtrict.

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY 47

annotated copies of President Wilson's addresses to
the householders of America. Fortnightly periodi-
cals were sent to six hundred thousand teachers.
Two hundred thousand lantern slides were furnished
for illustrated lectures. Fourteen hundred and thirty
eight different designs were turned out for posters,
window cards, newspaper adverdsements, cartoons,
seals and buttons. The chambers of commerce,
the churches, fraternal sociedes, schools, were used
as channels of distribudon. Yet Mr. Creel's effort,
to which I have not begun to do justice, did
not include Mr. McAdoo's stupendous oi^aniza-
don for the Liberty Loans, nor Mr. Hoover's far
reaching propaganda about food, nor the campaigns
of the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., Salvadon Army,
Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, not to
mention the independent work of patriotic societies,
like the League to Enforce Peace, the League of
Free Nations Association, the National Security
League, nor the activity of the publicity bureaus of
the Allies and of the submerged nationalities.

Probably this is the largest and the most intensive
effort to carry quickly a farly uniform set of ideas to
all the people of a nation. The older proselyting
worked more slowly, perhaps more surely, but never
so inclusively. Now if it required such extreme meas-
ures to reach everybody in time of crisis, how open
are the more normal channels to men's minds? The
Administration was trying, and while the war con-
tinued it very lai^y succeeded, I believe, in creat-
ing something that might almost be called one public
opinion all over America. But think of the dogged

48 PUBLIC OPINION

work, the complicated ingenuity, the money and the
personnel that were required. Nothing like that ex-
ists in time of peace, and as a corollary there are
whole sections, there are vast groups, ghettoes, en-
claves and classes that hear only vaguely about much
that is going on.

They live in grooves, are shut in among their own
affairs, barred out of latter affairs, meet few people
not of their own sort, read little. Travel and trade,
the mails, the wires, and radio, railroads, highways,
ships, motor cars, and in the coming generation
aeroplanes, are, of course, of the utmost influence on
the circulation of ideas. Each of these affects the
supply and the quality of information and opinion
in a most intricate way. Each is itself affected by
technical, by economic, by .political conditions.
Every time a government relaxes the passport
ceremonies or the customs inspection, every time a
new railway or a new port is opened, a new shipping
line established, every time rates go up or down, the
mails move faster or more slowly, the cables are
uncensored and made less expensive, highways built,
or widened, or improved, the circulation of ideas is
influenced. Tariff schedules and subsidies affect the
direction of commercial enterprise, and therefore
the nature of human contracts. And so it may well
happen, as it did for example in the case of Salem,
Massachusetts, that a change in the art of shipbuild-
ing will reduce a whole city from a center where
international influences converge to a genteel prov-
incial town. All the immediate effects of more rapid
tran^t are not necessarily good. It would be difficult

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY 49

to say, for example, that the railroad system of
France, so highly centralized. upon Paris, has been
an unmixed blessing to the French people.

It is certunly true that problems arising out of
the means of communication are of the utmost im-
portance, and one of the most constructive features
ofthe program ofthe League ofNacions has been the
study given to railroad tran^t and access to the sea.
The monopolizing of cables,' of ports, fuel stations,
mountun passes, canals, struts, river courses, termi-
nals, market places means a good deal more than the
enrichment of a group of business men, or the prestige
of a government. It means a barrier upon the ex-
change of news and opinion. But monopoly is not
the only barrier. Cost and available supply are even
greater ones, for if the cost of travelling or trading is
prohibitive, tf the demand for facilities exceeds the
supply, the barriers eidst even without monopoly.

2
The size of a man's income has considerable effect
on his access to the world beyond his neighborhood.
With money he can overcome almost every tan^ble
obstacle of communication, he can travel, buy books
and periodicals, and bring within the range of his
attention almost any known fact of the world. The
income of the individual, and the income of the com-
munity determine the amount of communication
that is possible. But men's ideas determine how that
income shall be spent, and that in turn affects in the
long run the amount of income they will have. Thus
■ Hence the wiMioin of tiktng Yap (crioudy.

50 PUBLIC OPINION

also there are limitations, none the less real, because
they are often self-imposed and self-indulgent.

There are portions of the sovereign people who
spend most of their spare time and spare money on
motoring and comparing motor cars, on bridge-
whist and post-mortems, on moving-pictures and pot-
boilers, talking always to the same people with
minute variations on the same old themes. They
cannot really be said to suffer from censorship, or
secrecy, the high cost or the difficulty of communica-
tion. They suffer from anemia, from lack of appetite
and curiosity for the human scene. Theirs is no
problem of access to the world outside. Worlds of
interest are wtuting for them to explore, and they
do not enter.

They move, as if on a leash, within a fixed radius
of acquaintances according to the law and the gospel
of their social set. Among men the circle of talk in
business and at the club and in the smoking car is
wider than the set to which they belong. Among
women the social set and the circle of talk are fre-
quently almost identical. It is in the social set that
ideas derived from reading and lectures and from the
circle of talk converge, are sorted out, accepted,
rejected, judged and sanctioned. There it is finally
decided in each phase of a discussion which authori-
ties and which sources of information are admissible,
and which not.

Our social set consists of those who figure as people
in the phrase "people are saying"; they are the
people whose approval matters most intimately to
us. In big cities among men and women of wide

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY 51

interests and with the means for moving about, the
social set is not so rigidly defined. But even in big
cities, there are quarters and nests of villages con-
taining self-sufficing social sets. In smaller com-
munities there may exist a freer circulation, a more
genuine fellowship from after breakfast to before
. dinner. But few people do not know, nevertheless,
which set they really belong to, and which not.

Usually the distinguishing mark of a social set
is the presumption that the children may intermarry.
To marry outside the set involves, at the very least,
a moment of doubt before the engagement can be
approved. Each social set has a fairly clear picture
of its relative position in the hierarchy of social
sets. Between sets at the same level, association is
easy, individuals are quickly accepted, hospitality
is normal and unembarrassed. Butincontactbetween
sets that are "higher" or "lower," there is always
reciprocal hesitation, a faint malaise, and a conscious-
ness of difference. To be sure in a society like that
of the United States, individuals move somewhat
freely out of one set into another, especially where
there is no racial barrier and where economic posi-
tion changes so rapidly.

Economic position, however, is not measured by
the amount of income. For in the first generation,
at least, it is not income that determines social stand-
ing, but the character of a man's work, and it may
take a generation or two before this fades out of
the family tradition. Thus banking, law, medicine,
public utilities, newspapers, the church, lai^e retail-
ing, brokerage, manufacture, are rated at a different

52 PUBLIC OPINION

social value from salesmanship, superintendence, ex-
pert technical work, nursing, school teaching, shop
keeping; and those, in turn, are rated as differently
from plumbing, being a chauffeur, dressmaking, sub-
contracting, or stenography, as these are from being
a butler, lady's maid, a moving picture operator, or
a locomorive engineer. And yet the financial return
doles not necessarily coincide with these gradations.

3
Whatever the tests of admission, the social set
when formed is not a mere economic class, but some-
thing which more nearly resembles a biolc^cal clan.
Membership is intimately connected with love, mar-
riage and children, or, to speak more exactly, with
the atdtudes and desires that are involved. In the
social set, therefore, opinions encounter the canons
of Family Tradition, Respectability, Propriety,
Dignity, Taste and Form, which make up the social
set's picture of itself, a picture assiduously implanted
in the children. In this picture a large space is
tacitly given to an authorized version of what each
set is called upon inwardly to accept as the social
standing of the others. The more vulgar press for
an outward expression of the deference due, the others
are decently and sensitively silent about their own
knowledge that such deference invisibly e^sts. But
that knowledge, becoming overt when there is a mar-
riage, a war, or a social upheaval, is the nexus of a
large bundle of dispositions classified by Trotter '
under the general term instinct of the herd.

< W. TratteTt liutincts oj tht Btrd in Wat and Peate.

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY 53

Within each social set there are augurs like the
van der Luydens and Mrs. Manson Mingott in The
Age of Innocence, who are recognized as the
custodians and the interpreters of its social pattern.
You are made, they say, if the van der Luydens
take you up. The invitations to their functions are
the lugh sign of arrival and status. The elections
to college societies, carefully graded and the grada-
tions universally accepted, determine who is who in
college. The social leaders, wdghted with the ulti-
mate eugenic responsibility, are peculiarly sensitive.
Not only must they be watchfully aware of what
makes for the integrity of their set, but they have to
cultivate a special gift for knowing what other social
sets are doing. They act as a kind of ministry of
foreign affairs. Where most of the members of a set
live complacently within the set, regarding it for all
practical purposes as the world, the social leaders
must combine an intimate knowledge of the anatomy
of their own set with a persistent sense of its place
in the hierarchy of sets.

The hierarchy, in fact, is bound together by the
social leaders. At any one level there is something
which might almost be called a social set of the social
leaders. But vertically the actual binding together
of society, in so far as it is bound together at all by
social contact, is accomplished by those exceptional
people, frequently suspect, who like Julius Beau-
fort and Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence
move in and out. Thus there come to be established
personal channels from one set to another, through
which Tarde's laws of imitation operate. But for

54 PUBLIC OPINION

large sections of the population there are no such
channels. For them the patented accounts of society
and the moving pictures of high life have to serve.
They may develop a social hierarchy of thwr own,
almost unnoticed, as have the N^roes and the
"foreign element," but among that assimilated mass
which always considers itself the "nation," there is
in spite of the great separateness of sets, a variety
of personal contacts through which a circulation
of standards takes place.

Some of the sets are so placed that they become
what Professor Ross has called "radiant points of
conventionality." ' Thus the social superior is likely
to be imitated by the social inferior, the holder of
power is imitated by subordinates, the more success-
ful by the less successful, the rich by the poor, the
city by the country. But imitation does not stop at
frontiers. The powerful, socially superior, success-
ful, rich, urban social set is fundamentally interna-
tional throughout the western hemisphere, and in
many ways London is its center. It counts among
its membership the most influential people in the
world, containing as it does the diplomatic set,
high finance, the upper circles of the army and the
navy, some princes of the church, a few great news-
paper proprietors, their wives and mothers and
daughters who wield the scepter of invitation. It
is at once a great circle of talk and a real social set.
But its importance comes from the fact that here at
last the distinction between public and private affairs
practically disappears. The private affairs of this
> Rou, SeeitU Piyeholety, Ch. IX, X, XL

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY 55

set are public matters, and public matters are its pri-
vate, often its family affairs. The conSnements of
Margot Asquith like the confinements of royalty are,
as the philosophers say, in much the same universe
of discourse as a tariff bill or a parliamentary debate.
There are large areas of governments in which this
social set is not interested, and in America, at least,
it has exercised OTily a fluctuating control over the
national government. But its power in foreign af-
fairs is always very great, and in war time its prestige
is enormously enhanced. That is natural enough
because these cosmopolitans have a contact with the
outer world that most people do not possess. They
have dined with each other in the capitals, and their
sense of national honoris no mere abstraction; it is a
concrete experience of being snubbed or approved by
their friends. To Dr. Kenntcott of Gopher Prairie
it matters mighty litde what Winston thinks and a
great deal what Ezra Stowbody thinks, but to Mrs.
Mingott with a daughter married to the Earl of
Swithin it matters a lot when she visits her daughter,
or entertains Winston himself. Dr. Kennicott and
Mrs. Mingott are both socially sensitive, but Mrs.
Mingott is sensitive to a social set that governs the
world, while Dr. Kennicott's social set governs only
in Gopher Prune. But in matters that effect the
larger relarionships of the Great Society, Dr. Kenni-
cott will often be found holding what he thinks is
purely his own opinion, though, as a matter of fact,
it has trickled down to Gopher Prairie from High
Society, transmuted on its passage through the pro-
vincial social sets.

PUBLIC OPINION

It is no part of our inquiry to attempt an account
of the social tissue. We need only fix in mind how
big is the part played by the sodal set in our spirit-
ual contact with the worlds how it tends to fix what
is admissible, and to determine how it shall be judged.
Affairs within its immediate competence each set
more or less determines for itself. Above all it
determines the detailed administration of the judg-
ment. But the judgment itself is formed on pat-
terns ' that may be inherited from the past, trans-
mitted or imitated from other social sets. The high-
est social set consists of those who embody the leader-
ship of the Great Sodety. As against almost every
other social set where the bulk of the opinions are
first hand only about local affairs, in this Highest
Society the big decisions of war and peace, of social
strategy and the ultimate distribution of political
power, are intimate experiences within a circle of
what, potentially at least, are personal acquaintances.

Since position and contact play so big a part in
determining what can be seen, heard, read, and expe-
rienced, as well as what it is permissible to see, hear,
read, and know, it is no wonder that moral judgment
is so much more common than constructive thought.
Yet in truly effective thinking the prime neces^ty is
to liquidate judgments, regain an innocent eye,
disentangle feelings, be curious and open-hearted.
Man's history being what it is, political opinion on
the scale of the Great Society requires an amoimt of
selfless equanimity rarely attainable by any one for
>Q.?mUL

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY

S7

any length of time. We are concerned in public af-
lajrs, but immersed in our private ones. The time
and attention are limited that we can spare for the
labor of not taking opinions for granted, and we are
subject to constant interruption.

CHAPTER IV

TIME AND ATTENTION

Naturally it is possible to make a rough estimate
only of the amount of attention people give each day
to informing themselves about public affairs. Yet
it is interesting that three estimates that I have ex-
amined agree tolerably well, though they were made
at different times, in different places, and by differ-
ent methods.'

A questionaire was sent by Hotchldss and Franken
to 1761 men and women college students in New
York City, and answers came from all but a few.
Scott used a questionaire on four thousand promi-
nent business and professional men In Chicago and
received replies from twenty-three hundred. Be-
tween seventy and seventy-five percent of all those
who replied to ather inquiry thought they spent a
quarter of an hour a day reading newspapers. Only
four percent of the Chicago group guessed at less
than this and twenty-five percent guessed at more.
Among the New Yorkers a little over eight percent

'July, 1900. D. F. Wilccw, TU AmMcan Nrvispaptr: A Study in
Soaal Ptyehotogy, Annala of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, vol. xvi, p. 56. (The ilatiirical cables are reproduced in
James Edward Rogers', The jimerUan Niaspaprr.)

1916 (?) W. D. Scon. The Piyckohty of Adernitint, pp. 116-148.
See alio Henry Foster Adams, AdBirliiing aid its Alenlal IJms, Ch. Vi.

■ " ■ f Collrge Studtnti, by Prof. George

'ranken, published by the Associa-
iS East j6tb Street, New York

TIME AND ATTENTION S9

^ured thdr newspaper reading at less than fifteen
minutes, and seventeen and a half at more.

Very few people have an accurate idea of fifteen
minutes, so the figures are not to be taken literally.
Moreover, business men, professional people, and
collie students are most of them liable to a curious
little bias against appealing to spend too much time
over the newspapers, and perhaps also to a faint
suspicion of a desire to be known as rapid readers.
All that the figures can justly be taken to mean is
that over three quarters of those in the selected
groups rate rather low the attention they give to
printed news of the outer world.

These time estimates are fairly well confirmed by
a test which is less subjective. Scott asked his Chi-
cagoans how many papers they read each day, and
was told that

14 percent read but one paper

two papers

three papers

four papers

five papers

six papers

all the papers (eight
at the time of this inquiry).
The two- and three-paper readers are sixty-seven
percent, which comes fairly close to the seventy-one
percent in Scott's group who rate themselves at
fifteen minutes a day. The omnivorous readers of
from four to eight papers coincide roughly mth the
twenty-five percent who rated themselves at more
than fifteen minutes.

PUBLIC OPINION

It is still more difficult to guess how the time is
distributed. The coU^ students were asked to
name "the five features which interest you most."
Just under twenty percent voted for "general news,"
just under fifteen for editorials, just under twelve
for "poliucs," a little over eight for finance, not
two years after the armistice a little over six for
foreign news, three and a half for local, nearly three
for business, and a quarter of one percent for news
about "labor." A scattering said they were most
interested in sports, special articles, the theatre,
advertisements, cartoons, book reviews, "accuracy,"
music, "ethical tone," society, brevity, art, stories,
shipping, school news, "current news," print. Dis-
r^arding these, about sixty-seven and a half per-
cent picked as the most interesting features news
and opinion that dealt with public affairs.

This was a mixed college group. The girls pro-
fessed greater interest than the boys in general news,
foreign news, local news, politics, editorials, the
theatre, music, art, stories, cartoons, advertisements,
and " ethical tone." The boys on the other hand were
more absorbed in finance, sports, business page,
"accuracy" and "brevity." These discriminations
correspond a little too closely with the ideals of what
is cultured and moral, manly and decisive, not to
make one suspect the utter objectivity of the replies.

Yet they agree fairly well with the replies of Scott's
Chicago business and profes^onal men. They were
asked, not what features interested them most, but
why they preferred one newspaper to another.

TIME AND ATTENTION 6i

Nearly seventy-one percent based their conscious
preference on local news (17.8%), or political (15.8%)
or financial (11.3%), or foreign (^.5%), or general
(7-2%), or editorials (9%). The other thirty per-
cent decided on grounds not connected with public
affairs. They ranged from not quite seven who
dcdded for ethical tone, down to one twentieth of
one percent who cared most about humor.

How do these preferences correspond with the
space ^ven by newspapers to various subjects?
Unfortunately there are no data collected on this
point for the newspapers read by the Chicago and
New York groups at the rime the quesdonaires were
made. But there is an interesting analysis made
over twenty years ago by Wilcox. He studied one
hundred and ten newspapers in fourteen large cities,
and classified the subject matter of over nine thou-
sand columns.

Averaged for the whole country the various news-
paper matter was found to fill:

(a) W»Newi 17.9

Cb) General '

P^^

II. ntiutratmu

III. litentim

IV. Opiuon
V. AdratiMaieiitt 31.1

In order to bring this table into a fair comparison,
it is necessary to exclude the space ^ven to advertise-

62 PUBLIC OPINION

ments, and recompute the percentages. For the ad-
vertisements occupied only an infinitesmal part of the
conscious preference of the Chicago group or the
college group. I think this is justifiable for our
purposes because the press prints what advertise-
ments it can get,' whereas the rest of the paper is
designed to the taste of its readers.
The table would then read :

I. New*

81.4+

WarNew*
General New*

36.4-

Foreign 1.8-
„ „j. Political 9- 4+
J'°+ Crime 4.6-

Mia'c 16.3+

II. niuitration

4.6-

Special "

|Bu«ne*.u.i-

m. Litenture
[V. Opinion

3-5 +
10. s-

Editorial*
Letter.

IM

In this revised table if you add up the items
which may be supposed to deal with public affairs,
that is to say war, foreign, political, miscellaneous,
business news, and opinion, you find a total of 76.5%
of the edited space devoted in 1900 to the 70.6%
of reasons given by Chicago business men in 1916 for
preferring a particular newspaper, and to the five
features which most interested 67.5% of the New
York College students in 1920.

This would seem to show that the tastes of busi-
ness men and college students in big cities to-day
still correspond more or less to the averaged judg-
ments of newspaper editors in big cities twenty

II objectionable, and thoae which, in

TIME AND ATTENTION 63

years ago. Since that time the proportion of fea-
tures to news has undoubtedly increased, and so has
the circulation and the size of newspapers. There-
fore, if to-day you could secure accurate replies from
more typical groups than college students or business
and professional men, you would expect to find a
smaller percentage of time devoted to public afF^rs,
as well as a smaller percentage of space. On the
other hand you would expect to find that the average
man spends more than ^e quarter of an hour on his
newspaper^ and that while the percentage of space
given to public affairs is less than twenty years ago
the net amount is greater.

No elaborate deductions are to be drawn from these
figures. They help merely to make somewhat more
concrete our notions of the effort that goes day by
day into acquiring the data of our opinions. The
newspapers are, of course, not the only means, but
they are certainly the principal ones. Maga^nes, the
public forum, the chautauqua, the church, political
gatherings, trade union meerings, women's clubs,
and news serials in the moving picture houses su|>>
plement the press. But taking it all at the most
favorable estimate, the time each day is small when
any of us is directly exposed to information from
our unseen environment.

CHAPTER V
SPEED. WORDS, AND CLEARNESS

The unseen environment is reported to us chiefly
by words. These words are transmitted by wire or
radio from the reporters to the editors who fit them
into print. Telegraphy is expensive, and the facil-
ities are often limited. Press service news is, there,
fore, usually coded. Thus a dispatch which reads, —

"Washington, D. C. June i. — ^The United States
regards the question of German shipping seized in this
country at the outbreak of hostilities as a closed incident,"

may pass over the wires in the following form:

"Washn I. The Uni Stas rgds tq of Ger spg seized
in ts cou at t outbic o box as a clod incident." >

A news item saying;

"Berfin, June i. Chancellor Wirth told the Reichstag
to-day in outlining the Government's program that 'res-
toration and recondliation would be the keynote of the
new Government's policy.' He added that the Cabinet
was dctennined disarmament should be carried out loy-
ally and that disarmament would not be the occasion of
the imposition of further penalties by the Allies."

may be cabled in this form:

1 Phillip's Code.
64

SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS 65

"Berlin l. Chancellor Winh told t Reichstag tdy in
outlining the gvts pgn tt qn restoration & reconciliadon
wd b the keynote f new gvts policy, qj He added ttt
cabinet ws dtmd disarmament sd b carried out loyally &
tt disarmament wd n b. the ocan f imposition of further
penalties hi t alis."

In this second item the substance has been culled
from a long speech in a foreign tongue, translated,
coded, and then decoded. The operators who re-
ceive the messages transcribe them as they go along,
and I am told that a good operator can write fifteen
thousand or even more words per eight hour day,
with a half an hour out for lunch and two ten min-
ute periods for rest.

a

A few words must often stand for a whole succes-
sion of acts, thoughts, feelings and consequences.
We read:

"Washington, Dec. 23 — ^A statement charging Japanese
militaiy authorities with deeds more 'frightful and bar-
barous' than anything ever alleged to have occurred in
Belgium during the war was issued here to-day by the
Korean Commission, based, the Commission said, on
authentic reporu received by it from Manchuria."

Here eyewitnesses, their accuracy unknown, report
to the makers of 'authentic reports;' they in turn
transmit these to a commission five thousand miles
away. It prepares a statement, probably much too
long for publication, from which a correspondent
culls an item of print three and a half inches long.
The meaning has to be telescoped in such a way as to

66 PUBLIC OPINION

permit the reader to judge how much weight to give
to the news.

It is doubtful whether a supreme master of style
could pack all the elements of truth that com-
plete justice would demand into a hundred word
account of what had happened in Korea during the
course of several months. For language is by no
means a perfect vehicle of meanings. Words like
currency, are turned over and over again, to evoke
one set of images to-day, another to-morrow. There
is no certainty whatever that the same word will call
out exactly the same idea in the reader's mind as it
did in the reporter's. Theoretically, if each fact and
each relation had a name that was unique, and if
everyone had agreed on the names, it would be
possible to communicate without misunderstanding.
In the exact sciences there is an approach to this
ideal, and that is part of the reason why of all forms
of world-wide cooperation, scientific inquiry is the
most effective.

Men command fewer words than they have ideas
to express, and language, as Jean Paul said, is a
dictionary of faded metaphors.' The journalist ad-
dressing half a million readers of whom he has only a
dim picture, the speaker whose words are flashed to
remote villages and overseas, cannot hope that a
few phrases will carry the whole burden of their mean-
ing. "The words of Lloyd George, badly under-
stood and badly transmitted," said M. Briand to the
Chamber of Deputies,* "seemed to give the Pan-

' Cited by White, Afiehanims of Ckaracur Formatiim.
■ Spedal Cable to Tkt Nta York Tinuj, May 15, 1911, by Edwin L
Jama.

SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS 67

Germanists the idea that the time had come to start
something. " A British Prime Minister, speaking in
English to the whole attentive world, speaks his
own meaning in his own words to all kinds of people
who will SM thar meaning in those words. No
matter how rich or subde — or rather the more rich
and the more subde that which he has to say, the
more his meaning will suiFer as it is sluiced into
standard speech and then distributed again among
alien minds.'

Millions of those who are watching him can read
hardly at all. Millions more can read the words but

the following it

"The Franco-Euriith Exchange in Words.

"Id quarten wdfacquainted with French wayi and character I find »
tendency to tbutk that undue sensibility hat been shown by our preti
and puUic opinion in the lively and at timei intemperate language of the
French pre** through the preieat crisis. The point was put to me by a
wdl-infonned neutral observer in the following manner.

"Words, like money, are tokens of value. They represent meaning,
therefore, and juit as money, their representative vaJue ^oes up ana
down. The French word 'etonnant' was used by Bossuet with a terrible
weigjit of meaning which it has lost to-day. A similar thing can be
obtcrved with the Endish word 'awful.' Some nations constitutionally
tend to understate, others to overstate. What the British Tommy called
to unltealthy place could onlv be described by an Italian soldier by
meant of a nch vocabulary aiaed with an exuberant mimicry. Nariona
that understate keep their word-currency sound. Nationt that overstate
tuffet from inflation in their language.

"Expretdont tuch at 'a distinguished scholar,' 'a clever writer,' must
be translated into French as 'a ^rea( savant,' 'an exquisite master'
It is a mere matter of exchange, just as in France one pound pays 46
francs, and yet one knows that that does not increase its value at home.
Englishmen reading the French press should endeavour to work out a
mental operation similar to that of the banket who puu back francs into
pounds, and not fbtget in so doing that while in normal rimes the change
was IJ it is now 46 on account of (he war. For there is a war fluctuation
on word exchanges at well as on money exchanges.

"The ugameat, one ho|>es, works both ways, and Frenchmen do not
fail to rea&c that there u as much value behind English reucence at
b^ind thdi own (xubcnoce of apiestion."

68 PUBLIC OPINION

cannot understand them. Of those who can both
read and understand, a good three-quarters we may
assume have some part of half an hour a day to
spare for the subject. To them the words so acquired
are the cue for a whole train of ideas on which
ultimately a vote of untold consequences may be
based. Necessarily the ideas which we allow the
words we read to evoke form the biggest part of the
original data of our o[»nions. The world is vast,
the situations that concern us are intricate^ the
messages are few, the biggest part of opinion must be
constructed in the imagination.

When we use the word "Mexico" what picture
does it evoke in a resident of New York? Likely as
not, it is some composite of sand, cactus, oil wells,
greasers, rum-drinking Indians, testy old cavaliers
flourishing whiskers and sovereignty, or perhaps an
idyllic peasantry a la Jean Jacques, assailed by the
prospect of smoky industrialism, and fighting for the
Rights of Man. What does the word "Japan"
evoke? Is it a vague horde of slant-eyed yellow men,
surrounded by Yellow Perils, picture brides, fans,
Samurai, banz^s, art, and cherry blossoms? Or the
word "alien?" According to a group of New Eng-
land college students, writing in the year 1920, an
alien was the following: '

"A person hostile to this country."
"A person against the government."
"A person who is on the opposite side."
"A native of an unfriendly country."
"A foreigner at war."

■ Tkt Ntm RepubtU: Oecember 29, 1910, p. 14*.

SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS 69

"A foreigner who tries to do harm to the country he is in.
"An enemy from a foreign land."
"A person against a country." etc . . .
Yet the word alien is an unusually exact legal term,
far more exact than words like sovereignty, inde-
pendence, national honor, rights, defense, aggression,
imperialism, capitalism, socialism, about which we so
readily take sides "for" or "against".

3

The power to dissociate superficial analogies, at-
tend to differences and appreciate variety is lucidity
of mind. It is a relative faculty. Yet the differences
in lucidity are extensive, say as between a newly
bom infant and a botanist examining a flower. To
the infant there is precious little difference between
his own toes, his father's watch, the lamp on the
table, the moon in the sky, and a nice bright yellow
edition of Guy de Maupassant. To many a member
of the Union League Club there is no remarkable
difference between a Democrat, a Socialist, an an-
archist, and a burglar, while to a highly sophisticated
anarchist there is a whole universe of difference
between Bakunin, Tolstoi, and Kropotkin. These
examples show how difficult it might be to secure a
sound public opinion about de Maupassant among
babies, or about Democrats in the Union League

aub.

A man who merely rides in other people's auto-
mobiles may not rise to finer discrimination than
between a Ford, a taxicab, and an automobile. But
let that same man own a car and drive it, let him, as

TO PUBLIC OPINION

the psychoanalysts would say, project his libido
upon automobiles^ and he will describe a difference in
carburetors by looking at the rear end of a car a city
block away. That is why it is often such a relief when
the talk turns from "general topics" to a man's own
hobby. It is like turning from the landscape in the
parlor to the ploughed field outdoors. It is a return
to the three dimensional world, after a sojourn in the
painter's portrayal of his own emotional response Co
his own inattentive memory of what he imagines he
ought to have seen.

We easily identify, says Ferenczi, two only parti-
ally simitar things:* the child more easily than the
adult, the primitive or arrested mind more readily
than the mature. As it first appears in the child,
consciousness seems to be an unmanageable mixture
of sensations. The child has no sense of time, and
almost none of space, it reaches for the chandelier
with the same confidence that it reaches for its
mother's breast, and at first with almost the same
expectation. Only very gradually does function
define itself. To complete inexperience this is a
coherent and undifferentiated world, in which, as
someone has s^d of a school of philosophers, all facts
are born free and equal. Those facts which belong
together in the world have not yet been separated
from those which happen to lie side by side in the
stream of consciousness.

At first, says Ferenczi, the baby gets some of the
things it wants by crying for them. This is "the

* Intemat. Zeitichr, f. Arztl. Psychoanalyie, 191}. Translated and
republiihed by Dr. Eraeit Jones in S. Fetenczi, CoMribuiioni to Fiycho-
aMlyiis, Ch. VIII, SUpt *'» tkt Dathtprntnt of tkt Senst oj Sealiiy.

SPEED, WORDS. AND CLEARNESS 71

period of magical hallucinatory omnipotence. " In its
second phase the child points to the things it wants,
and they are given to it. "Omnipotence by the help
of magic gestures." Later, the child learns to talk,
asks for what it wishes, and is partially successful.
"The period of magic thoughts and ma^c words. "
Each phase may persist for certain situations, though
overlaid and only visible at times, as for example,
in the litde harmless superstitions from which few of
us are wholly free. In each phase, partial success
tends to confirm that way of acting, while failure
tends to stimulate the development of another.
Many individuals, parties, and even nations, rarely
appear to transcend the magical organization of ex-
perience. But in the more advanced sections of the
most advanced peoples, trial and error after repeated
failure has led to the invention of a new principle.
The moon, they learn, is not moved by baying at it.
Crops are not raised from the soil by spring festivals
or Republican majorities, but by sunlight, moisture,
seeds, fertilizer, and cultivation.'

Allowing for the purely schematic value of Fer-
enczi's categories of response, the quality which we
note as critical is the power to discriminate among
crude perceptions and vague analogies. This power
has been studied under laboratory conditions.^ The

' Fncncxi, being a pathologist, does not describe this maturer period
where experience u orKanized as equations, the phase of realism on the
basis of science;

* See, (or example, Diagnostische Assoziation Studien, conducted at
the Psychiatric University Clinic in Zurich under the direction of Dr. C.
G. Jung. These tests were carried on principally under the so-called
Krapdin-Aschaffenburg classification. They shon reaction time,
dassify tetponse to the sumulant word as inner, outer, and clang, show
■eparate retults for the first and second hundred words, for reaction time

7« PUBLIC OPINION

Zurich Association Studies indicate clearly that
slight mental fatigue, an inner disturbance of atten-
tion or an external distraction, tend to "flatten"
the quality of the response. An example of the very
"flat" type is the clang association (cat-hat), a
reaction to the sound and not to the sense of the
stimulant word. One test, for example, shows a 9%
increase of clang in the second series of a hundred
reactions. Now the clang is almost a repetition, a
very primitive form of analogy.

4
If the comparatively simple conditions of a labora-
tory can so readily flatten out discrimination, what
must be the effect of city life? In the laboratory the
fatigue is slight enough, the distraction rather trivial.
Both are balanced tn measure by the subject's in-
terest and self-consciousness. Yet if the beat of a
metronome will depress intelligence, what do aght or
twelve hours of noise, odor, and heat in a factory, or
day upon day among chattering typewriters and
telephone bells and slamming doors, do to the politi-
cal judgments formed on the basis of newspapers
read in street-cars and subways? Can anything be
heard in the hubbub that does not shriek, or be seen
in the general glare that does not flash like an electric
«gn? The life of the city dweller lacks solitude,
^lence, ease. The nights are noisy and ablaze. The
people of a big city are assaulted by incessant sound,

ind reacdon quality when the subject ii diitracted by holding an idea
in mind, or when ht replin while beating time with a metronome. Some
of the rctults ate aummariied in Jung, Analytic^ Piytkology, Ch. II,
iraiul. by Dr. Conitance E. Long.

SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS 73

now violent and jagged, now falling into unfinished
rythms, but endless and remorseless. Under modern
industrialism thought goes on tn a bath of noise. If
its discriminations are often flat and foolish, here at
least is some small part of the reason. The sovereign
people determines life and death and happiness under
conditions where experience and experiment alike
show thought to be most difficult. "The intolerable
burden of thought" ts a burden when the conditions
make it burdensome. It ts no burden when the
conditions are favorable. It is as exhilarating to
think as it is to dance, and just as natural.

Every man whose business it is to think knows
that he must for part of the day create about himself
a pool of silence. But in that helter-skelter which we
flatter by the name of ciidlization, the citizen per-
forms the perilous business of government under the
worst possible conditions. A faint recognition of
this truth inspires the movement for a shorter work
day, for longer vacations, for light, air, order, sun-
light and dignity in factories and offices. But if the
intellectual quality of our life is to be improved that
is only the merest banning. So long as so many
jobs are an endless and, for the worker, an umless
routine, a kind of automatism using one set of mus-
cles in one monotonous pattern, his whole life will
tend towards an automatism in which nothing is
particularly to be distinguished from anything else
unless it is announced with a thunderclap. So long
as he is physically imprisoned in crowds by day and
even by night his attention will flicker and relax.
It will not hold fast and define clearly where he is the

74 PUBLIC OPINION

vicrim of all sorts of pother, in a home which needs to
be ventilated of its welter of drudgery, shrieking
children, raucous assertions, indigestible food, bad
^r, and suffocating ornament.

Occasionally perhaps we enter a building which
is composed and spacious; we go to a theatre where
modem stagecraft has cut away distraction, or go to
sea, or into a quiet place, and we remember how
cluttered, how capricious, how superfluous and clam-
orous is the ordinary urban life of our time. We
learn to understand why our addled minds seize so
little with precision, why they are caught up and
tossed about in a kind of tarantella by headlines and
catch-words, why so often they cannot tell things
apart or discern identity in apparent differences.

5
But this external disorder is complicated further
by internal. Experiment shows that the speed, the
accuracy, and the intellectual quality of association
is deranged by what we are taught to call emotional
conflicts. Measured in fifths of a second, a series of a
hundred stimuli containing both neutral and hot
words may show a variation as between 5 and 32 or
even a total failure to respond at all.* Obviously
our public opinion is in intermittent contact with
complexes of all sorts; with ambition and economic
interest, personal animosity, racial prejudice, class
feeling and what not. They distort our reading,
our thinking, our talking and our behavior in a great
variety of ways.

* Jung, CUri Licitmt.

SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS 75

And finally since opinions do not stop at the nor-
mal members of society, since for the purposes of an
eI«:tton, a propaganda, a following, numbers con-
stitute power, tiie quality of attention is still further
depressed. The mass of absolutely illiterate, of
feeble-minded, grossly neurotic, undernourished and
frustrated individuals, is very considerable, much
more considerable there is reason to think than we
generally suppose. Thus a wide popular appeal
is circulated among persons who are mentally chil-
dren or barbarians, people whose lives are a morass of
entanglements, people whose vitality is exhausted,
shut-in people, and people whose experience has
comprehended no factor in the problem under
discussion. The scream of public opinion is
stopped by them in little eddies of misunderstand-
ing, where it is discolored with prejudice and far
fetched analogy.

A "broad appeal" takes account of the quality of
association, and is made to those susceptibilities which
are widely distributed. A "narrow" or a "special"
appeal is one made to those susceptibilities which are
uncommon. But the same individual may respond
with very different quality to different stimuli, or to
the same stimuli at different times. Human suscepti-
bilities are like an alpine country. T^ere are isolated
peaks, there are extensive but separated plateaus,
and there are deeper strata which are quite continu-
ous for nearly all mankind. Thus the individuals
whose susceptibilities reach the rarefied atmosphere
of those peaks where there exists an exquisitive dif-
ference between Frege and Peano, or between Sas-

76 PUBLIC OPINION

setta's earlier and later periods, may be good stanch
Republicans at another level of appeal, and when
they are starving and afraid, indistinguishable from
any other starving and frightened person. No won-
der that the magazines with the large circulations
prefer the face of a pretty girl to any other trade
mark, a face, pretty enough to be alluring, but
innocent enough to be acceptable. For the "psychic
level " on which the stimulus acts determines whether
the public is to be potentially a la^ or a small one.

6

Thus the environment with which our public
opinions deal is refracted in many ways, by censor-
ship and privacy at the source, by physical and social
barriers at the other end, by scanty attention, by the
poverty of language, by distraction, by unconscious
constellations of feeling, by wear and tear, violence,
monotony. These limitations upon our access to
that environment combine with the obscurity and
complexity of the facts themselves to thwart clear-
ness and justice of perception, to substitute mislead-
ing fictions for workable ideas, and to deprive us of
adequate checks upon those who consciously strive
to mislead.

PART III

STEREOTYPES

Chapter 6. Stereotypes

" 7. Stereotypes as Defense

" 8. Bund Spots and Their Value

" 9. Codes and Their Enemies

" 10. The Detection of Stereotypes

CHAPTER VI
STEREOTYPES

Each of us lives and works on a small part of the
earth's surface, moves in a small circle, and of these
acquiuntances knows only a few intimately. Of any
public event that has wide effects we see at best only
a phase and an aspect. This is as true of the eminent
insiders who draift treaties, make laws, and issue
orders, as it is of those who have treaties framed for
them, taws promulgated to them, orders given at
them. Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space,
a longer reach of time, a greater number of things,
than we can directly observe. They have, therefore,
to be pieced together out of what others have reported
and what we can imagine.

Yet even the eyewitness does not bring back a
naive picture of the scene.' For experience seems to

'Eg. (f. Edmond Locard, VEnqutU CriminelU tt lei hitthoiis
Seientifi^i. A Breat deal of intetoting material ha* been gathered
in late yean oa the credibility of the nitneti, which ihowi, ai an able
reviewer of Di. Locard's book says in The Times (London) Literary
Supplement (Auguit ift, 1911), that credibility vaiiet at to cUtset of
witneues and ctaBiei of events, and also 19 to type of perception. Thui,
perceptioni of touch, odor, and taste have low evidential value. Our
nearing ii defectiveand arbitrary when it judeet the louice and direc-
tion of tound. and in Litenin^ to the calk of octaer people "words which
are not heard will be supplied by the nicnest in all good faith. He
will have a theory of the purport of the conversation, and will arrange
the sound) he heard to fit it." Even visual perceptions are liable to great
enor, as in identification, recogmtion, judgmcDt of distance, ettimaiea

79

8o PUBLIC OPINION

show that he himself brings something to the scene
which later he takes away from it, that oftener than
not what he imagines to be the account of an event is
really a transfiguration of it. Few facts in conscious-
ness seem to be merely given. Most facts in con-
sciousness seem to be partly made. A report is the
joint product of the knower and known, in which the
rdte of the observer is always selective and usually
creative. The facts we see depend on where we are
placed, and the habits of our eyes.

An unfamiliar scene is like the baby's world, "one
great, blooming, buzzing confusion. '* ■ This is the
way, says Mr. John Dewey,* that any new thing
strikes an adult, so far as the thing is really new and
strange. "Foreign languages that we do not under-
stand always seem jibberings, babblings, in which it
is impossible to fix a definite, clear-cut, individualized
group of sounds. The countryman in the crowded
street, the landlubber at sea, the ignoramus in sport
at a contest between experts in a complicated game,
are futher instances. Put an inexperienced man in a
factory, and at first the work seems to him a meaning-
less medley. All strangers of another race proverb-
ially look alike to the visiting stranger. Only gross
differences of size or color are perceived by an out-
sider in a flock of sheep, each of which is perfectly

oTnumben, for example, the size of a crowd. In the untrained observer,
the lense of time ii highly variable. All these original weaknetset are
complicated by tricki of memory, and the incessant creative quality of
the imapnation. Cf. alto Sherrington, Tkt Integrant Action 0/ the
Nenons SyxUm, pp. 318-317.

The late Ptofeiior Hugo Munsterberg wrote a popular book on this
lubject called On tkt Witntst Stand.

' Wm. Tame*, PrineipUt^ Piycholoty, Vol. I, p. 488.

* John Dewey, Him Wt Tkink, p. lai.

STEREOTYPES 81

individualized to the shepherd. A diffusive blur and
an indiscriminately shifting suction characterize what
we do not understand. The problem of the acquisi-
tion of meaning by things, or (stated in another way)
of forming habits of simple apprehension, is thus the
problem of introducing (i) definiimess and distinction
and (2) consistency or stability of meaning into what
is otherwise vague and wavering. "

But the kind of definiteness and consistency in-
troduced depends upon who introduces them. In a
later passage * Dewey ^ves an example of how dif-
ferently an experienced layman and a chemist might
define the word metal. "Smoothness, hardness,
glossiness, and brilliancy, heavy weight for its size
. . . the serviceable properties of capacity for being
hammered and pulled without breaking, of being
softened by heat and hardened by cold, of retaining
the shape and form given, of resistance to pressure
and decay, would probably be included" in the lay-
man's definition. But the chemist would likely as
not ignore these esthetic and utilitarian qualities,
and define a metal as "any chemical element that
enters into combination witii oxygen so as to form a
base."

For the most part we do not first see, and then
define, we define first and then see. In the great
blooming, buz^ng confusion of the outer world we
pick out what our culture has already defined for us,
and we tend to perceive that which we have picked
out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.
Of the great men who assembled at Paris to setde the
' Of. tit., p. ijj.

8i PUBLIC OPINION

affairs of mankind, how many were there who were
able to see much of the Europe about them, rather
than thdr commitments about Europe? Could any-
one have penetrated the mind of M. Clemenceau,
would he have found there images of the Europe of
I9I9, or a great sediment of stereotyped ideas ac-
cumulated and hardened in a long and pugnacious
existence? Did he sec the Germans of 1919, or the
German type as he had learned to see it since 1871 ?
He saw the type, and among the reports that came to
him from Germany, he Cook to heart those reports,
and, it seems, chose only, which fitted the type chat
was in his mind. If a junker blustered, chat was an
authentic German; if a labor leader confessed the
guilt of the empire, he was not an authentic German.
At a Congress of Psycholt^ in Gottingen an inter-
esting experiment was made with a crowd of presum-
ably trained observers.'

"Not far from the hall in which the Congress was sit-
ting there was a public fete with a masked ball. Suddenly
the door of the hall was thrown open and a clown rushed
in madly pursued by a n^ro, revolver in hand. They
stopped in the middle of the room fighting; the clown
fell, the negro leapt upon him, fired, and then both rushed
out of the hall. The whole incident hardly lasted twenty
seconds.

"The President aslced those present to write immedi-
ately a report since there was sure to be a judicial inquiiy.
Forty reports were sent in. Only one had less than 20%
of mistakes in regard to the principal facts; fourteen had
20% to 40% of mistakes; twelve from 40% to 50%;

' A. von Gennep. La formation dei Ittndt], p
van Laneenhove, Th* &outk 0} a Ltitnd, pp. IK

STEREOTYPES 83

thirteen more than 50%. Moreover in twenty-four ac-
counts 10% of the details were pure inventions and this
proportion was exceeded in ten ac(X)unts and diminished
in six. Briefly a quarter of the accounts were false.

"It goes without saying that the whole' scene had been
arranged and even photographed in advance. The ten
false reports may then be relegated to the category of
tales and legends; twenty-four accounts are half l^en-
dary, and six have a value approximating to exact evi-
dence."

Thus out of forty trained observers writing a
responsible account of a scene that had just happened
before their eyes, more than a majority saw a scene
that had not taken place. What then did they see?
One would suppose it was easier to tell what had
occurred, than to invent something which had not
occurred. They saw their stereotype of such a brawl.
All of them had in the course of their lives acquired a
series of images of brawls, and these images flickered
before their eyes. In one man these images displaced
less than 20% of the actual scene, in thirteen men
more than half. In thirty-four out of the forty
observers the stereotypes preempted at least one-
tenth of the scene.

A distinguished art critic has said • that "what
with the almost numberless shapes assumed by an
object. . . . What with our insensitiveness and in-
attention, things scarcely would have for us features
and outlines so determined and clear that we could
recall them at will, but for the stereotyped shapes art
has lent them." The truth is even broader than that.

84 PUBLIC OPINION

for the stereotyped shapes lent to the world come not
merely from art, in the sense of painting and sculp-
ture and literature, but irom our moral codes and our
sodal philosophies and our political agitations as
well. Substitute in the following passage of Mr.
Berenson's the words 'politics,' 'business,' and 'soci-
ety,* for the word 'art' and the sentences will be no
less true: "... unless years devoted to the study
of all schools of art have taught us also to see with
our own eyes, we soon fall into the habit of moulding
whatever we look at into the forms borrowed from
the one art with which we are acquainted. There
is our standard of artistic reality. Let anyone give
us shapes and colors which we cannot instantly
match in our paltry stock of hackneyed forms and
tints, and we shake our heads at his failure to re-
produce things as we know they certainly are, or
we accuse him of insincerity."

Mr. Berenson speaks of our displeasure when a
painter "does not visualize objects exactly as we do,"
and of the difficulty of appreciating the art of the
Middle Ages because since then "our manner of
visualizing forms has changed in a thousand ways. " •
He goes on to show how in r^ard to the human
figure we have been taught to see what we do see.
"Created by Donatcllo and Masaccio, and sanc-

' Cf. alio hii commenc on Dantt'i Fiiual Images, and hii Early
Ilhatrators in The Study and Criikiim of Italian Art (Fint Series),
p. 13. " }Fi cannot help dressing Vir^l as a Roman, and giving him a
classical profile' and 'statuesque carnage,' but Dante's visual image of
Virgil was probably no less mediaeval, no more based on a critical recon-
strunion of antiquity, than his entire conceplion of the Roman po«.
Fourteenth Century illustrators make Virgil look like a medizval scholar,
dressed in cap and gown, and there is no reason why Dante's visual
image of him should nave been other than this."

STEREOTYPES 85

tioned by the Humanists, the new canon of the
human figure, the new cast of features . . . presented
to the ruling classes of that time the type of human
being most likely to win the day in the combat of
human forces. . . Who had the power to break
through this new standard of vision and, out of the
chaos of things, to select shapes more definitely
expresuve of reality than those fixed by men of gen-
ius? No one had such power. People had perforce
to see things in that way and in no other, and to see
only the shapes depicted, to love only the ideals
presented. . . . " '

2
If we cannot fully understand the acts of other
people, until we know what they think they know,
then in order to do justice we have to appraise not
only the information which has been at their disposal,
but the minds through which they have filtered it.
For the accepted types, the current patterns, the
standard versions, intercept information on its way
to consciousness. Americanization, for example, is
superficially at least the substitution of American for
European stereotypes. Thus the peasant who might
see his landlord as if he were the lord of the manor,
his employer as he saw the local magnate, is taught by
Americanization to see the landlord and employer ac-
cording to American standards. This constitutes a
change of mind, which is, in effect, when the innocu-
lation succeeds, a change of vision. His eye sees
differently. One kindly gentlewoman has confessed

■ Tkf Cenlral Italian Painters, pp. 66-67.

86 PUBLIC OPINION

that the stereotypes are of such overweening import-
ance, that when hers are not indulged, she at least is
unable to accept the brotherhood of man and the
fatherhood of God: "we are strangely affected by the
clothes we wear. Garments create a mental and
social atmosphere. What can be hoped for the
Americanism of a man who insists on employing a
London tailor ? One's very food affects his American-
ism. What kind of American consciousness can grow
in the atmosphere of sauerkraut and Limburger
cheese? Or what can you expect of the Americanism
of the man whose breath always reeks of garlic?" *
This lady might well have been the patron of a
pageant which a friend of mine once attended. It
was called the Melting Pot, and it was given on the
Fourth of July in an automobile town where many
foreign-born workers are employed. In the center
of the baseball park at second base stood a huge
wooden and canvas pot. There were flights of steps
up to the rim on two sides. After the audience had
settled itself, and the band had played, a procession
came through an opening at one side of the field. It
was made up of men of all the foreign nationalities
employed in the factories. They wore their native
costumes, they were singing their national songs;
they danced their folk dances, and carried the ban-
ners of all Europe. The master of ceremonies was
the principal of the grade school dressed as Uncle
Sam. He led them to the pot. He directed them up
the steps to the rim, and inside. He called them out

< Cited by Mr. Edwird Hale Biermdt, Ntw Repuhlit. June i 1911,

STEREOTYPES 87

again on the other side. They came> dressed in
derby hats, coats, pants, vest, stiff collar and polka-
dot de, undoubtedly, s^d my friend, each with an
Eversharp pencil in his pocket, and all singing the
Star-Spangled Banner.

To the promoters of this pageant, and probably to
most of the actors, it seemed as if they had managed
to express the most intimate difficulty to friendly as-
sociation between the older peoples of America and
the newer. The contradiction of their stereotypes in-
terfered with the full recognition of their common
humanity. The people who change their names know
this. They mean to change themselves, and the
attitude of strangers toward them.

There is, of course, some connection between the
scene outside and the mind through which we watch
it, just as there are some long-haired men and short-
haired women in radical gatherings. But to the
hurried observer a slight connection is enough. If
there are two bobbed heads and four beards in the
audience, it will be a bobbed and bearded audience to
the reporter who knows beforehand that such gather-
ings are composed of people with these tastes in the
management of their hair. There is a connection
between our vision and the facts, but it is often a
strange connection. A man has rarely looked at a
landscape, let us say, except to examine its possi-
bilities for division into building lots, but he has seen
a number of landscapes hanging in the parlor. And
from them he has learned to think of a landscape as a
rosy sunset, or as a country road with a church
steeple and a silver moon. One day he goes to the

88 PUBLIC OPINION

country, and for hours he does not see a single land-
scape. Then the sun goes down looking rosy. At
once he recognizes a landscape and exclaims that
it is beautiful. But two days later, when he tries to
recall what he saw, the odds are that he will remem-
ber chiefly some landscape in a parlor.

Unless he has been drunk or dreaming or insane he
did see a sunset, but he saw in it, and above all
remembers from it, more of what the oil painting
taught him to observe, than what an impressionist
painter, for example, or a cultivated Japanese would
have seen and taken away with him. And the Jap-
anese and the painter in turn will have seen and
remembered more of the form they had learned,
unless they happen to be the very rare people who
find fresh sight for mankind. In untrained observa-
tion we pick recognizable signs out of the environ-
ment. The signs stand for ideas, and these ideas we
fill out with our stock of images. We do not so much
see this man and that sunset; rather we notice that
the thing is man or sunset, and then see chiefly what
our mind is already full of on those subjects.

3
There is economy in this. For the attempt to see
all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types
and generalities, is exhausting, and among busy
affairs practically out of the question. In a circle of
friends, and in relation to close associates or competi-
tors, there is no shortcut through, and no substitute
for, an individualized understanding. Those whom
we love and admire most are the men and women

STEREOTYPES 89

whose consciousness is peopled thickly with persons
rather than with types, who know us rather than the
classification into which we might fit. For even with-
out phrasing it to ourselves, we feel intuitively that
all classification is in relation to some purpose not
n^essarily our own; that between two human beings
no association has final dignity in which each does
not take the other as an end in himself. There is a
taint on any contact between two people which does
not aflirm as an axiom the personal inviolability of
both.

But modem life is hurried and multifarious, above
all physical distance separates men who are often in
vital contact with each other, such as employer and
employee, official and voter. There is neither time
nor opportunity for intimate acquaintance. In-
stead we notice a (rait which marks a well known
type, and fill in the rest of the picture by means of
the stereotypes we carry about in our heads. He is an
^tator. That much we notice, or are told. Well,
an agitator is this sort of person, and so ^ is this
sort of person. He is an intellectual. He is a pluto-
crat. He is a foreigner. He is a "South European."
He is from Back Bay, He is a Harvard Man. How
different from the statement: he is a Yale Man.
He is a regular fellow. He is a West Pointer. He is
an old army sergeant. He is a Greenwich Villager:
what don't we know about him then, and about
her? He is an international banker. He is from Main
Street.

The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences
are those which create and maintain the repertory

90 PUBLIC OPINION

of stereotypes. We are told about the world before
we see it. We imagine most things before we experi-
ence them. And those preconceptions, unless edu-
cation has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the
whole process of perception. They mark out certain
objects as familiar or strange, emphasizing the dif-
ference, so that the slightly familiar is seen as very
familiar, and the somewhat strange as sharply
alien. They are aroused by small signs, which may
vary from a true index to a vague analc^. Aroused^
they flood fresh vision with older images, and pro-
ject into the world what has been resurrected in
memory. Were there no practical uniformities in
the environment, there would be no economy and
only error in the human habit of accepting foresight
for sight. But there are uniformities sufficiently
accurate, and the need of economizing attention is
so inevitable, that the abandonment of all stereo-
types for a wholly innocent approach to experience
would impoverish human life.

What matters is the character of the stereotypes,
and the gullibility with which we employ them. And
these in the end depend upon those inclusive pat-
terns which constitute our philosophy of life. If in
that philosophy we assume that the world is codified
according to a code which we possess, we are likely to
make our reports of what is going on describe a world
run by our code. But if our philosophy tells us that
each man is only a small part of the world, that his
intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects
in a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereo-
types, we tend to know that they are only stereo-

STEREOTYPES 91

typeSj to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly.
We tend, also, to realize more and more dearly when
our ideas started, where they started, how they came
to us, why we accepted them. All useful history is
antiseptic in this fashion. It enables us to know
what fairy tale, what school book, what tradition,
what novel, play, picture, phrase, planted one pre-
conception in this mind, another in that mind.

Those who wish to censor art do not at least under-
estimate this influence. They generally misunder-
stand it, and almost always they are absurdly bent
on preventing other people from discovering any-
thing not sanctioned by them. But at any rate,
like Plato in his ailment about the poets, they feel
vaguely that the types acquired through fiction tend
to be imposed on reality. Thus there can be little
doubt that the mo^ang picture is steadily building
up imagery which is then evoked by the words
people read in their newspapers. In the whole ex-
perience of the race there has been no aid to visual-
ization comparable to the cinema. If a Florentine
wished to visualize the saints, he could go to the
frescoes in his church, where he might see a vision of
siunts standardized for his time by Giotto. If an
Athenian wished to visualize the gods he went to the
temples. But the number of objects which were pic-
tured was not great. And in the East, where the spiiit
of the second commandment was widely accepted, the
portraiture of concrete things was even more meager,
and for that reason perhaps the faculty of practical

92 PUBLIC OPINION

decision was by so much reduced. In the western
world, however, during the last few centuries there
has been an enormous increase in the volume and
scope of secular description, the word picture, the
narrative, the illustrated narrative, and finally the
moving picture and, perhaps, the talking picture.

Photographs have the kind of authority over imag-
ination to-day, which the printed word had yester-
day, and the spoken word before that. They seem
utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us
without human meddling, and they are the most
effortless food for the mind conceivable. Any dc*
scription in words, or even any inert picture, requires
an effort of memory before a picture exists in the
mind. But on the screen the whole process of observ-
ing, describing, reporting, and then imagining, has
been accomplished for you. Without more trouble
than is needed to stay awake the result which your
imagination is always aiming at is reeled off on the
screen. The shadowy idea becomes vivid; your hazy
notion, let us say, of the Klu Klux Klan, thanks to
Mr. Griffiths, takes vivid shape when you see the
Birth of a Nation. Historically it may be the wrong
shape, morally it may be a pernicious shape, but it is
a shape, and I doubt whether anyone who has seen
the film and does not know more about the Klu
Klux Klan than Mr. Griffiths, will ever hear the
name again without seeing those white horsemen.

5
And so when we speak of the mind of a group of
people, of the French mind, the militarist mind, the

STEREOTYPES 93

bolshevik mind, wc are liable to serious confusion
unless we agree to separate the instinctive equip-
ment from the stereotypes, the patterns, and the
formulae which play so decisive a part in building up
the mental world to which the native character is
adapted and responds. Failure to make this dis-
tinction accounts for oceans of loose talk about col-
lective minds, national souls, and race psychology.
To be sure a stereotype may be so consistently and
authoritatively transmitted in each generation from
parent to child that it seems almost like a biological
fact. In some respects, we may indeed have be-
come, as Mr. Wallas says,' biologically parasitic
upon our social heritage. But certainly there is not
the least scientific evidence which would enable any-
one to argue that men are born with the political
habits of the country in which they are born. In so
far as poHtical habits are alike tn a nation, the first
places to look for an explanation are the nursery,
the school, the church, not in that limbo inhabited
by Group Minds and National Souls. Until you
have thoroughly failed to see tradition being handed
on from parents, teachers, priests, and uncles, it is a
solecism of the worst order to ascribe political differ-
ences to the germ plasm.

It is possible to generalize tentatively and with a
decent humihty about comparative differences within
the same category of education and experience. Yet
even this is a tricky enterprise. For almost no
two experiences are exactly alike, not even of two
children in the same household. The older son never

' Graham Wallat, Our Social Hefilaff, p. 17.

94 PUBLIC OPINION

does have the experience of being the younger. And
therefore, until we are able to discount the differ-
ence in nurture, we must withhold judgment about
differences of nature. As well judge the productivity
of two soils by comparing their yield before you know
which is in Labrador and which in Iowa, whether
they have been cultivated and enriched^ exhausted, or
allowed to run wild.

CHAPTER VII
STEREOTYPES AS DEFENSE

There is another reason, besides economy of effort,
why we so often hold to our stereotypes when we
might pursue a more disinterested vision. The
systems of stereotypes may be the core of our per-
sonal tradition, the defenses of our position in society.

They are an ordered, more or less consistent pic-
ture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes,
our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have ad-
justed themselves. They may not be a complete
picture of the world, but they are a picture of a pos-
sible world to which we are adapted. In that world
people and things have their well-known places, and
do certain expected things. We feel at home there.
We fit in. We are members. We know the way
around. There we find the charm of the familiar,
the normal, the dependable; its grooves and shapes
arc where we are accustomed to find them. And
though we have abandoned much that might have
tempted us before we creased ourselves into that
mould, once we are firmly in, it fits as snugly as an
old shoe.

No wonder, then, that any disturbance of the
stereotypes seems like an attack upon the founda-
tions of the universe. It is an attack upon the founda-

96 PUBLIC OPINION

tions of our universe, and, where big things are at
stake, we do not readily admit that there is any dis-
tinction between our universe and the universe. A
world which turns out to be one in which those we
honor are unworthy, and those we despise are noble,
is nerve-wracking. There is anarchy if our order of
precedence is not the only possible one. For if the
meek should indeed inherit the earth, if the first
should be last, if those who are without sin alone
may cast a stone, if to Caesar you render only the
things that are Caesar's, then the foundations of
self-respect would be shaken for those who have
arranged their lives as if these maxims were not true.
A pattern of stereotypes is not neutral. It is not
merely a way of substituting order for the great
blooming, buzzing confusion of reality. It is not
merely a short cut. It is all these things and some-
thing more. It is the guarantee of our self-respect;
it is the projection upon the world of our own sense
of our own value, our own position and our own
rights. The stereotypes are, therefore, highly
charged with the feelings that are attached to them.
They are the fortress of our tradition, and behind
its defenses we can continue to feel ourselves safe
in the position we occupy.

When, for example, in the fourth centiuy B. C,

Aristotle wrote his defense of slavery in the face

of increasing skepticism,' the Athenian slaves were

in great part indistinguishable from free citizens.

' Zimmero: Crttk ComntoimeaU/i, See hit fbotnotCt P- 383.

STEREOTYPES AS DEFENSE 97

Mr. Zmmem quotes an amu^ng passage from the
Old Oligarch eacplaining the good treatment of the
slaves. "Suppose it were legal for a slave to be
beaten by a citizen, it would frequently happen that
an Athenian might be mistaken for a dave or an
alien and receive a beating; — since the Athenian
people is not better clothed than the slave or alien,
nor in personal appearance is there any superiority."
Hiis absence of distinction would natiirally tend to
dissolve the institution. If free men and slaves
looked alike, what basis was there for treating them
so differendy? It was this confusion which Anstotle
set himself to clear away in the first book of his
Politics. With unerring insrinct he understood
that to jusrify slavery he must teach the Greeks a
way of seeing thar slaves that comported with the
continuance of slavery.

So, said Aristotle, there are beings who are slaves
by nature.' "He then is by nature formed a slave,
who is fitted to become the chattel of another person,
and on that account is so." All this really says is that
whoever happens to be a slave is by nature intended
to be one. Logically the statement is worthless,
but in fact it is not a proposition at all, and Ic^c
has nothing to do with it. It is a stereotype, or
rather it is part of a stereotype. The rest follows
almost immediately. After asserting that slaves
perceive reason, but are not endowed with the use
of it, Aristotle insists that "it is the intention of
nature to make the bodies of slaves and free men
different from each other, that the one should be

' Puiitiei, Bk. I, Ch. 5.

98 PUBLIC OPINION

robust for their necessary purposes, but the other
erect; useless indeed for such servile labours, but
iit for civil life. ... It is clear then that some men
are free by nature, and others are slaves. . . ."

If we ask ourselves what is the matter with Aris-
totle's argument, we find that he has b^un by erect-
ing a great barrier between himself and the facts.
When he had said that those who are slaves are by
nature intended to be slaves, he at one stroke ex-
cluded the fatal question whether those particular
men who happened to be slaves were the particular
men intended by nature to be slaves. For that ques-
tion would have tainted each case of slavery with
doubt. And since the fact of being a slave was not
evidence that a man was destined to be one, no cer-
tain test would have remained. Aristode, therefore,
excluded entirely that destructive doubt. Those
who are slaves are intended to be slaves. Each
slave holder was to look upon his chattels as natural
slaves. When his eye had been trained to see them
that way, he was to note as confirmation of their
servile character the fact that they performed servile
work, that they were competent to do servile work,
and that they had the muscles to do servile work.

This is the perfect stereotype. Its hallmark is that
it precedes the use of reason; is a form of perception,
imposes a certain character on the data of our senses
before the data reach the intelligence. The stereo-
type is like the lavender window-panes on Beacon
Street, like the door-keeper at a costume ball who
judges whether the guest has an appropriate mas-
querade. There is nothing so obdurate to education

STEREOTYPES AS DEFENSE 99

or to criticism as the stereotype. It stamps itself
upon the evidence in the very act of securing the
evidence. That is why the accounts of returning
travellers are often an interesting tale of what the
traveller carried abroad with him on his trip. If
he carried chiefly his appetite, a zeal for tiled bath-
rooms, a conviction that the Pullman car is the acme
of human comfort, and a belief that it is proper to
tip waiters, taxicab drivers, and barbers, but under
no circumstances station agents and ushers, then his
Odyssey will be replete with good meals and bad
meals, bathing adventures, compartment-train escap-
ades, and voracious demands for money. Or if he is
a more serious soul he may while on tour have found
himself at celebrated spots. Having touched base,
and cast one furtive glance at the monument, he
buried his head in Baedeker, read every word
through, and moved on to the next celebrated spot;
and thus returned with a compact and orderly im-
pression of Europe, rated one star, or two.

In some measure, stimuli from the outside, especi-
ally when they are printed or spoken words, evoke
some part of a system of stereotypes, so that the
actual sensation and the preconception occupy con-
sciousness at the same time. The two are blended,
much as if we looked at red through blue glasses and
saw green. If what we are looking at corresponds
successfully with what we anticipated, the stereo-
type is reinforced for the future, as it is in a man
who knows in advance that the Japanese are cun-
ning and has the bad luck to run across two dishonest
Japanese.

loo PUBLIC OPINION

If the experience contradicts the stereotype, one
of two things happens. If the man is no longer
plastic, or if some powerful interest makes it highly
inconvenient to rearrange his stereotypes, he pooh-
poohs the contradiction as an exception that proves
the rule, discredits the witness, finds a flaw some-
where, and manages to forget it. But if he is still
curious and open-minded, the novelty is taken into
the picture, and allowed to modify it. Sometimes,
if the incident is striking enough, and if he has felt
a general discomfort with his established scheme,
he may be shaken to such an extent as to distrust
all accepted ways of looking at life, and to expect
that normally a thing will not be what it is generally
supposed to be. In the extreme case, especially if
he is literary, he may develop a passion for inverting
the moral canon by making Judas, Benedict Arnolt^
or Caesar Borgia the hero of his tale.

3
The role played by the stereotype can be seen in the
German tales about Belgian snipers. Those tales
curiously enough were first refuted by an oi^an-
ization of German Catholic priests known as Pax.'
The existence of atrocity stories is itself not remark-
able, nor that the German people gladly believed
them. But it is remarkable that a great conservative
body of patriotic Germans should have set out as
early as August 16, 19I4, to contradict a collection
of slanders on the enemy, even though such slanders

:, The Groalk of a Legrnd. The author it a

STEREOTYPES AS DEFENSE loi

were of the utmost value in soothing the troubled
conscience of their fellow countrymen. Why should
the Jesuit order in particular have set out to destroy
a fiction so important to the fighdng morale of Ger-
many?

I quote from M. van Langenhove's account:

"Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium
when strange rumors b^an to circulate. They
spread from place to place, they were reproduced
by the press, and they soon permeated the whole
of Germany. It was said that the Bel^an people,
instigated by the clergy, had intervened perfidiously
in the hostilities; had attacked by surprise isolated
detachments; had indicated to the enemy the posi-
tions occupied by the troops; that old men, and even
children, had been guilty of horrible atrocities upon
wounded and defenseless German soldiers, tearing
out their eyes and cutting off fingers, nose or ears;
that the priests from their pulpits had exhorted the
people to commit these crimes, promising them as a
reward the kingdom of heaven, and had even taken the
lead in this barhority.

"Public credulity accepted these stories. The
highest powers in the state welcomed them without
hesitation and endorsed them with their authority. .

"In this way public opinion in Germany was
disturbed and a lively indignation manifested itself,
directed especially against the priests who were held
responsible for the barbarities attributed to the
Belgians. . . By a natural diversion the anger to
which they were a prey was directed by the Germans
against the Catholic clergy generally. Protestants

loi PUBLIC OPINION

allowed the old religious hatred to be relighted in
their minds and delivered themselves to attacks
against Catholics. A new Kuhurkampf was let
loose.

"The Catholics did not delay in taking action
against this hostile attitude." (Italics mine)'

There may have been some sniping. It would be
extraordinary if every angry Belgian had rushed to
the library, opened a manual of international law^
and had informed himself whether he had a right to
take potshot at the infernal nuisance tramping
through his streets. It would be no less extraordi-
nary if an army that had never been under fire, did
not regard every bullet that came its way as un-
authorized, because it was inconvenient, and indeed
as somehow a violation of the rules of the Kriegspiel,
which then constituted its only experience of war.
One can imagine the more sensitive bent on convinc-
ing themselves that the people to whom they were
doing such terrible things must be terrible people.
And so the legend may have been spun until it
reached the censors and propagandists, who, whether
they believed it or not, saw its value, and let it loose
on the German civilians. They too were not alto-
gether sorry to find that the people they were out-
raging were sub-human. And, above all, since the
l^end came from their heroes, they were not only
entitled to believe it, they were unpatriotic if they
did not.

But where so much is left to the imagination be-
cause the scene of action is lost in the fog of war.

STEREOTYPES AS DEFENSE 103

there is no check and no control. The l^nd of the
ferocious Belgian priests soon tapped an old hatred.
For in the minds of most patriotic protestant Ger-
mans, especially of the upper classes, the picture of
Bismarck's victories included a long quarrel with the
Roman Catholics. By a process of association, Bel-
gian priests became priests, and hatred of Belgians
a vent for all their hatreds. These German protes-
tants did what some Americans did when under the
stress of war they created a compound object of
hatred out of the enemy abroad and all their oppon-
ents at home. Against this synthetic enemy, the
Hun in Germany and the Hun within the Gate, they
launched all the animosity that was in them.

The Catholic resistance to the atrocity tales was,
of course, defensive. It was aimed at those particu-
lar iicuons which aroused animosity against all
Catholics, rather than against Belgian Catholics
alone. The Injormaitons Pax, says M. van Langen-
hove, had only an ecclesiastical bearing and "con-
fined their attention almost exclusively to the repre-
hensible acts attributed to the priests. " And yet one
cannot help wondering a litde about what was set in
motion in the minds of German Catholics by this
revelation of what Bismarck's empire meant in rela-
rion to them; and also whether there was any obscure
connection between that knowledge and the fact that
the prominent German politician who was willing
in the armistice to sign the death warrant of the
empire was Erzbet^er,* the leader of the Catholic
Centre Party.

' Since thi* vu vritten, Eraberger has be«a aMatsiaaied.

CHAPTER VIII

BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE

I

I HAVE been speaking of stereotypes rather than
ideals, because the word Ideal is usually reserved for
what we consider the good, the true and the beauti-
ful. Thus it carries the hint that here is something
to be copied or attained. But our repertory of fixed
impressions is wider than that. It contains ideal
swindlers, ideal Tammany politicians, ideal jingoes,
ideal agitators, ideal enemies. Our stereotyped
world is not necessarily the world we should like it to
be. It is simply the kind of world we expect it to be.
If events correspond there is a sense of familiarity,
and we feel that we are moving with the movement
of events. Our slave must be a slave by nature, if we
are Athenians who wish to have no qualms. If we
have told our friends that we do eighteen holes of
golf in 95, we tell them after doing the course in
no, that we are not ourselves to-day. That is to
say, we are not acquainted with the duffer who
foozled fifteen strokes.

Most of us would deal with affairs through a rather
haphazard and shifting assortment of stereotypes, if
a comparatively few men in each generation were not
constantly engaged in arranging, standardizing, and
improving them into logical systems, known as the
Laws of Political Economy, the Principles of Politics,

BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE loj

and the like. Generally when we write about culture,
tradition, and the group mind, we are thinking of
these systems perfected by men of genius. Now
there is no disputing the necessity of constant study
and criticism of these idealized versions, but the
historian of people, the politician, and the publicity
man cannot stop there. For what opterates in history
is not the systematic idea as a genius formulated it,
but shifting imitations, replicas, counterfeits, ana-
logjes, and distortions in individual minds.

Thus Marxism is not necessarily what Karl Marx
wrote in Das Kapital, but whatever it is that all the
warring sects believe, who claim to be the faithful.
From the gospels you cannot deduce the history of
Christianity, nor from the Constitution the pohtical
history of America. It is Das Kapital as conceived,
the gospels as preached and the preachment as under-
stood, the Constitution as interpreted and adminis-
tered, to which you have to go. For while there is a
reciprocating influence between the standard version
and the current versions, it is these current versions as
distributed among men which affect their behavior.'

' But unfortunately it is ever 50 much harder to know this actual
cullurelhanit ti totummarizeand to comment upon the works of genius.
The actual culture eiiata in people far too husy to indulge in the stiangc
ttade ot fotmulating their bcliefa. They record them only incidentally,
and the wudent tardy knows how typical are hia data. Perhaps the
ben he can do is to follow Lord Bryce's suggestion [Modrm Dtmocracii),
Vol. I, p. i;6| that he move freely "amon^ all sorts and conditions of
men," to seek out the unbiassed persons in every neighhorhood who
have skill in sizing up. "There is i flair which long practise and 'sym-
pathetic touch' bestow. The trained observer learns how to profit by
small indications, as an old seaman discerns, sooner than the landsman,
the li^i of coming itotm." There is, in short, a vast amount of puess
work involved, and it is no wonder that scholars, who enjoy precision,
to dften cdofiDe chdr attentions to the neater fonnuUtions of other

io6 PUBLIC OPINION

"The theory of Relativity," says a critic whose
eyelids, like the Lady Lisa's, are a little weary,
"promises to develop into a principle as adequate to
universal application as was the theory of Evolution.
This latter theory, from being a technical biological
hypothesis, became an inspiring guide to workers in
practically every branch of knowledge: manners and
customs, morals, religions, philosophies, arts, steam
engines, electric tramways — everything had 'evolved.'
'Evolution' became a very general term; it also be-
came imprecise until, in many cases, the original,
definite meaning of the word was lost, and the theory
it had been evoked to describe was misunderstood.
We are hardy enough to prophesy a similar career
and fate for the theory of Relativity. The technical
physical theory, at present imperfecdy understood,
will become still more vague and dim. History
repeats itself, and Relativity, like Evolution, after
receiving a number of Intelligible but somewhat
inaccurate popular expositions in Its scientific aspect,
will be launched on a world-conquering career. We
suggest that, by that time. It will probably be called
Relathismus. Many of these larger applications will
doubtless be justified; some will be absurd and a
considerable number will, we imagine, reduce to
truisms. And the physical theory, the mere seed of
this mighty growth, will become once more the purely
technical concern of scientific men." •

But for such a world-conquering career an Idea

' TAf Timti (London), Literary SttfpUintm, June i, 1921, p. 351.
Professor Einstein said when he was in America in 1911 thai people
tended to overeitiinate the influence of hii theory, and to under-escimue
its certainty.

BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE 107

must correspond, however imprecisely, to something.
Professor Bury shows for how long a time the idea of
progress remained a speculative toy. "It Is not
easy," he writes,' "for a new idea of the speculative
order to penetrate and inform the general conscious-
ness of a community until it has assumed some
external and concrete embodiment, or is recom-
mended by some striking material evidence. In the
case of Progress both these conditions were fulfilled
(in Ejigland) in the period 1820-1850." The most
striking evidence was furnished by the mechanical
revolution. "Men who were born at the beginning
of the century had seen, before they had passed the
age of thirty, the rapid development of steam naviga-
tion, the illumination of towns and houses by gas, the
opening of the first railway." In the consciousness
of the average householder miracles like these formed
the pattern of his belief in the perfectibility of the
human race.

Tennyson, who was in philosophical matters a
fairly normal person, tells us that when he went by
the first train from Liverpool to Manchester (1830)
he thought that the wh«ds ran in grooves. Then
he wrote this line:

" Let the great world spin forever down the rinpng
grooves of change." '

And so a norion more or less applicable to a journey
between Liverpool and Manchester was generaliznl
into a pattern of the universe "for ever." This

io8 PUBLIC OPINION

pattern, taken up by others, reinforced by dazzling
inventions, imposed an optimistic turn upon the
theory of evolution. That theory, of course, is, as
Professor Bury says, neutral between pessimism and
optimism. But it promised continual change, and
the changes visible in the world marked such extras
ordinary conquests of nature, that the popular mind
made a blend of the two. Evolution first in Darwin
himself, and then more elaborately in Herbert
Spencer, was a "progress towards perfection."

The stereotype represented by such words as
"progress" and "perfection" was composed funda-
mentally of mechanical inventions. And mechanical
it has remained, on the whole, to this day. In Amer-
ica more than anywhere else, the spectacle of mechan-
ical prc^ess has made so deep an impression, that
it has suffused the whole moral code. An American
will endure almost any insult except the charge that
he is not progressive. Be he of long native ancestry,
or a recent immigrant, the aspect that has always
struck his eye is the immense physical growth of
American civilization. That constitutes a funda-
mental stereotype through which he views the world:
the country village will become the great metro-
polis, the modest building a skyscraper, what is
small shall be big; what is slow shall be fast; what is
poor shall be rich; what is few shall be many; what-
ever is shall be more so.

Not every American, of course, sees the world this
way. Henry Adams didn't, and William Allen

BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE 109

White doesn't. But those men do, who in the
magazines devoted to the religion of success appear
as Makers of America. They mean just about that
when they preach evolution, progress, prosperity,
being constructive, the American way of doing
things. It is easy to laugh, but, in fact, they are
using a very great pattern of human endeavor. For
one thing it adopts an impersonal criterion; for
another it adopts an earthly criterion; for a third
it is habituating men to think quantitatively. To
be sure the ideal confuses excellence with size, hap-
piness with speed, and human nature with contrap-
tion. Yet the same motives are at work which have
ever actuated any moral code, or ever will. The
desire for the biggest, the fastest, the highest, or if
you are a maker of wristwatches or microscopes the
smallest; the love in short of the superlative and the
"peerless," is in essence and possibility a noble

Certunly the American ver^on of progress has
fitted an extraordinary range of facts in the economic
situation and in human nature. It turned an unusual
amount of pugnacity, acquisitiveness, and lust of
power into productive work. Nor has it, until more
recendy perhaps, seriously frustrated the active
nature of the active members of the community.
They have made a civilization wtuch provides them
who made it with what they feel to be ample
satisfaction in work, mating and play, and the rush
of their victory over mountfuns, wildernesses, dis-
tance, and human competition has even done duty
for that part of religous feeling which is a sense of

no PUBLIC OPINION

communion with the purpose of the universe. The
pattern has been a success so nearly perfect in the
sequence of ideals, practice, and results, that any
challenge to it h called un-American.

And yet, this pattern is a very partial and inade-
quate way of representing the world. The habit of
thinking about progress as "development" has
meant that many aspects of the environment were
simply neglected. With the stereotype of "progress"
before their eyes, Americans have in the mass seen
little that did not accord with that progress. They
saw the expansion of cities, but not the accretion of
slumsj they cheered the census statistics, but refused
to consider overcrowding; they pointed with pride
to their growth, but would not see the drift from the
land, or the unassimilated immigration. They
expanded industry furiously at reckless cost to thdr
natural resources; they built up gigantic corpora^
tions without arranging for industrial relations.
They grew to be one of the most powerful nations
on earth without preparing their institutions or thar
minds for the ending of their isolation. They stum-
bled into the World War morally and physically
unready, and they stumbled out again, much dis-
illusioned, but hardly more experienced.

In the World War the good and the evil influence
of the American stereotype was plainly viable. The
idea that the war could be won by recruiting unlim-
ited armies, rai^ng unlimited credits, building an
unlimited number of ships, producing unlimited
munitions, and concentrating without limit on these
alone, fitted the traditional stereotype, and resulted

BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE iii

in something like a physical miracle.' But among
those most affected by the stereotype^ there was no
place for the consideration of what the fruits of
victory were, or how they were to be attained.
Therefore, aims were ignored, or r^arded as auto-
matic, and victory was conceived, because the stereo-
type demanded it, as nothing but an annihilating
victory in the field. In peace time you did not ask
what the fastest motor car was for, and in war you
did not ask what the completest victory was for.
Yet in Pans the pattern did not fit the facts. In
peace you can go on endlessly supplanting small
things with big ones, and big ones with bigger ones;
in war when you have won absolute victory, you
cannot go on to a more absolute victory. You have
to do something on an entirely different pattern.
And if you lack such a pattern, the end of the war is
to you what it was to so many good people, an anti-
climax in a dreary and savorless world.

This marks the point where the stereotype and the
facts, that cannot be ignored, definitely part com-
pany. There is always such a point, because our
images of how things behave are simpler and more
fixed than the ebb and flow of affairs. There comes
a time, therefore, when the blind spots come from
the edge of vision into the center. TTien unless there
are critics who have the courage to sound an alarm,
and leaders capable of understanding the change,

* 1 have in mind the traniportatioa and lupply of two million troopi
Prof. Wedey Mitcndl pointi out that the total produi"' '

112 PUBLIC OPINION

and a people tolerant by habit, the stereotype,
instead of economizing effort, and focussing energy
as it did in 1917 and 1918, may frustrate effort and
waste men's energy by blinding them, as it did for
those people who cried for a Carthaginian peace in
1919 and deplored the Treaty of Versailles in 1921.

3

Uncritically held, the stereotype not only censors
out much that needs to be taken into account, but
when the day of reckoning comes, and the stereo-
type is shattered, likely as not that which it did
wisely take into account is ship-wrecked with - it.
That is the punishment assessed by Mr. Bernard
Shaw against Free Trade, Free Contract, Free Com-
petition, Natural Liberty, Laissez-faire, and Dar-
winism. A hundred years ago, when he would
surely have been one of the tartest advocates of
these doctrines, he would not have seen them as he
sees them to-day, in the Infidel Half Century,' to
be excuses for '"doing the other fellow down' with
impunity, all interference by a guiding govern-,
ment, all organization except police organization
to protect legalized fraud against fisticuffs, all at-
tempt to introduce human purpose and design and
forethought into the industrial welter being 'con-
trary to the laws of political economy.'" He would
have seen, then, as one of the pioneers of the march
to the plains of heaven ' that, of the kind of human
purpose and design and forethought to be found
in a government like that of Queen Victoria's uncles,

' Bark to Methiueloh. PTcfacc * Tht Qutnuiientt 0/ Ibienism.

BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE 113

the less the better. He would have seen, not the
strong doing the weak down, but the foolish doing
the strong down. He would have seen purposes,
designs and forethoughts at work, obstructing in-
vention, obstructing enterprise, obstructing what
he would infallibly have rect^ized as the next
move of Creative Evolution.

Even now Mr. Shaw is none too eager for the guid-
ance of any guiding government he knows, but in
theory he has turned a full loop against laissez-
faire. Most advanced thinking before the war had
made the same turn against the established notion
that if you unloosed everything, wisdom would
bubble up, and establish harmony. Since the
war, with its definite demonstration of guiding
governments, assisted by censors, propagandists,
and spies. Roebuck Ramsden and Natural Liberty
have been readmitted to the company of serious
thinkers.

One thing is common to these cycles. There Is in
each set of stereotypes a point where effort ceases
and things happen of their own accord, as you would
like them to. The prt^essive stereotype, powerful
to incite work, almost completely obliterates the
attempt to decide what work and why that work.
Laissez-fjure, a blessed release from stupid official-
dom, assumes that men will move by spontaneous
combustion towards a pre-established harmony.
Collectivism, an antidote to ruthless selfishness,
seems, in the Marxian mind, to suppose an economic
determinism towards efficiency and wisdom on the
part of socialist officials. Strong government.

114 PUBLIC OPINION

imperialism at home and abroad, at its best deeply
conscious of the price of disorder, relies at last on the
notion that all that matters to the governed will
be known by the governors. In each theory there is
a spot of blind automatism.

That spot covers up some fact, which if it were
taken into account, would check the vital movement
that the stereotype provokes. If the progressive
had to ask himself, like the Chinaman in the joke,
what he wanted to do with the time he saved by
breaking the record, if the advocate of laissez-faire
had to contemplate not only free and exuberant
enerpes of men, but what some people call their
human nature, If the collecti^ast let the center of his
attention be occupied with the problem of how he is
to secure his officials, if the imperialist dared to
doubt his own inspiration, you would find more
Hamlet and less Henry the Fifth. For these blind
spots keep away distracting images, which with their
attendant emotions, might cause hesitation and
infirmity of purpose. Consequently the stereotype
not only saves time in a busy life and ts a defense of
our position in society, but tends to preserve us
from all the bewildering effect of trying to see the
world steadily and see it whole.

CHAPTER IX

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES

I
Anyone who has stood at the end of a railroad
platform waiting for a friend, will recall what queer
people he mistook for him. The shape of a hat, a
slightly characteristic gait, evoked the vivid picture
in his mind's eye. In sleep a tinkle may sound like
the pealing of a great bell; the distant stroke of a
hammer like a thunderclap. For our constellations
of imagery will vibrate to a stimulus that is perhaps
but vaguely similar to some aspect of them. They
may, in hallucination, flood the whole consciousness.
They may enter very little into perception, though
I am inclined to think that such an experience is
extremely rare and highly sophisticated, as when
we gaze blankly at a familiar word or object, and it
gradually ceases to be familiar. Certainly for the
most part, the way we see things is a combinarion
of what is there and of what we expected to find.
The heavens are not the same to an astronomer as
to a pair of lovers; a page of Kant will start a differ-
ent train of thought in a Kantian and in a radical
empiricist; the Tahitian belle is a better looking
person to her Tahitian suitor than to the readers
of the National Geographic Magazine.
E:q>ertness in any subject is, in fact, a multiplica-

n6 PUBLIC OPINION

tion of the number of aspects we are prepared to
discover, plus the habit of discounting our expecta-
tions. Where to the ignoramus all things look alike,
and life is just one thing after another, to the special-
ist things are highly individual. For a chauffeur,
an epicure, a connoisseur, a member of the Fresi-
, dent's cabinet, or a professor's wife, there are evi-
dent distinctions and qualities, not at all evident to
the casual person who discusses automobiles, wines,
old masters. Republicans, and college faculties.

But in our public opinions few can be expert,
while life is, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has made plain,
so short. Those who are expert are so on only a
few topics. Even among the expert soldiers, as we
learned during the war, expert cavalrymen were not
necessarily brilliant with trench-warfare and tanks.
Indeed, sometimes a little expertness on a small
topic may simply exaggerate our normal human
habit of trying to squeeze into our stereotypes all
that can be squeezed, and of casting into outer
darkness that which does not tit.

Whatever we recognize as familiar we tend, if we
are not very careful, to visualize with the aid of
images already in our mind. Thus in the American
view of Progress and Success there is a definite
picture of human nature and of society. It is the
kind of human nature and the kind of society which
logically produce the kind of progress that is regarded
as ideal. And then, when we seek to describe or
explain actually successful men, and events that
have really happened, we read back into them the
qualities that arc presupposed in the stereotypes.

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES 117

These qualities were standardized rather inno-
cently by the older economists. They set out to
describe the social system under which they I?ved,
and found it too complicated for words. So they
constructed what they sincerely hoped was a sim-
plified diagram, not so different in principle and
in veracity from the parallelogram with 1^ and
head in a child's drawing of a complicated cow. The
scheme con^sted of a capitalist who had diligently
saved capital from his labor, an entrepreneur who
conceived a socially useful demand and organized
a factory, a collection of workmen who freely con-
tracted, take it or leave it, for their labor, a landlord,
and a group of consumers who bought in the cheap-
est market those goods which by the ready use of the
pleasure-pain calculus they knew would g^ve them
the most pleasure. The model worked. The kind
of people, which the model assumed, living in the
sort of world the model assumed, invariably cooper-
ated harmoniously in the books where the model
was described.

With modiBcation and embroidery, this pure fic-
tion, used by economists to simplify their thinking,
was retailed and popularized until for large sections
of the population it prevailed as the economic mytho-
logy of die day. It supplied a standard version of
capitalist, promoter, worker and consumer in a soci-
ety that was naturally more bent on achieving suc-
cess than on explaining it. The buildings which rose,
and the bank accounts which accumulated, were
evidence that the stereotype of how the thing had
been done was accurate. And those who benefited

ii8 PUBLIC OPINION

most by success came to believe they were the kind
of men they were supposed to be. No wonder that
the candid friends of successful men, when they read
the official bic^aphy and the obituary, have to
restrain themselves from asking whether this is
indeed their friend.

2
To the vanquished and the victims, the official
portraiture was, of course, unrecognizable. For
while those who exemplified progress did not often
pause to inquire whether they had arrived according
to the route laid down by the economists, or by some
other just as creditable, the unsuccessfiJ people
did inquire. "No one" says William James' "sees
further into a generalization than his own knowledge
of detail extends. " The captains of industry saw in
the great trusts monuments of (their) success; their
defeated competitors saw the monuments of (their)
failure. So the captains exf>ounded the economies
and virtues of big business, asked to be let alone,
said they were the agents of prosperity, and the
developers of trade. The vanquished insisted upon
the wastes and brutalities of the trusts, and called
loudly upon the Department of Justice to free busi-
ness from conspiracies. In the same situation one
side saw progress, economy, and a splendid develop-
ment; the other, reaction, extravagance, and a re-
straint of trade. Volumes of statistics, anecdotes
about the real truth and the inside truth, the deeper
and the larger truth, were published to prove both
sides of the argument.

' Tht LttUTi 0} Wittiam Janu), Vol. i, p. 65.

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES 119

For when a system of stereotypes is well fixed, our
attention is called to those facts which support it,
and diverted from those which contradict. So per-
haps it is because they are attuned to find it, that
kindly people discover so much reason for kindness,
malicious people so much malice. We speak quite
accurately of seeing through rose-colored spectacles,
or with a jaundiced eye. If, as Philip Littell once
wrote of a distinguished professor, we see life as
through a class darkly, our stereotypes of what the
best people and the lower classes are like will not be
contaminated by understanding. What is alien will
be rejected, what is different will fall upon unseeing
eyes. We do not see what our eyes are not accustomed
to take into account. Sometimes consciously, more
often without knowing it, we are impressed by those
facts which fit our philosophy.

3
This philosophy is a more or less organized series
of images for describing the unseen world. But not
only for describing it. For judging it as well. And,
therefore, the stereotypes are loaded with preference,
suffused with affection or dislike, attached to fears,
lusts, strong wishes, pride, hope. Whatever invokes
the stereotype is judged with the appropriate senti-
ment. Except where we deliberately keep prejudice
in suspense, we do not study a man and judge him to
be bad. We see a bad man. We see a dewy morn, a
blushing maiden, a sainted priest, a humorless Eng-
lishman, a dangerous Red, a carefree bohemian,
a lazy Hindu, a wily Oriental, a dreaming Slav, a

I20 PUBLIC OPINION

volatile Irishman, a greedy Jew, a ioo% American.
In the workaday world that is often the real judg-
ment, long in advance of the evidence, and it con-
tiuns within itself the concluaon which the evidence
is pretty certain to confirm. Ndther justice, nor
mercy, nor truth, enter into such a judgment, for the
judgment has preceded the evidence. Yet a people
without prejucUces, a people with altc^ther neutral
vision, is so unthinkable in any civilization of which
it is useful to think, that no scheme of education
could be based upon that ideal. Prejudice can be
detected, discounted, and refined, but so long as
finite men must compress into a short schooling
preparation for dealing with a vast civilization, they
must carry pictures of it around with them, and have
prejudices. The quality of their thinking and doing
will depend on whether those prejudices are friendly,
friendly to other people, to other ideas, whether they
evoke love of what is felt to be positively good,
rather than hatred of what is not contained in their
version of the good.

Morality, good taste and good form first standard-
ize and then emphasize certmn of these underlying
prejudices. As we adjust ourselves to our codes, we
adjust the facts we see to that code. Rationally, the
facts are neutral to all our views of right and wrong.
Actually, our canons determine greatly what we
shall perceive and how.

For a moral code is a scheme of conduct applied to
a number of typical instances. To behave as the
code directs is to serve whatever purpose the code
pursues. It may be God's will, or the king's.

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES 121

individual salvation in a good, solid, three dimen-
sional paradise, success on earth, or the service of
mankind. In any event the makers of the code fix
upon certun typical ^tuations, and then by some
form of reasoning or intuition, deduce the kind of
behavior which would produce the am they acknow-
ledge. The rules apply where they apply.

But in daily living how does a man know whether
his predicament is the one the law-giver had in
mind? He is told not to Idlt. But if his children are
attacked, may he kill to stop a killing? The Ten
Commandments are silent on the point. Therefore,
around every code there is a cloud of interpreters who
deduce more specific cases. Suppose, then, that the
doctors of the law decide that he may kill in self-
defense. For the next man the doubt is almost as
great; how does he know that he is defining self-
defense correctly, or that he has not misjudged the
facts, imagined the attack, and is really the aggres-
sor? Perhaps he has provoked the attack. But what
is a provocation? Exactly these confii^ons infected
the minds of most Germans in August, 1914.

Far more serious in the modern world than any
difference of moral code is the difference in the as-
sumptions about facts to which the code is applied.
Reli^ous,moral and political formulae are nothinghke
so far apart as the facts assumed by thdr votaries.
Useful discussion, then, instead of comparing ideals,
reexamines the visions of the facts. Thus the rule that
you should do imto others as you would have them
do unto you rests on the belief that human nature is
uniform. Mr. Bernard Shaw's statement that you

122 PUBLIC OPINION

should not do unto others what you would have them
do unto you, because their tastes may be different,
rests on the belief that human nature is not uniform.
The maxim that competition is the life of trade
consists of a whole tome of assumptions about econ-
omic motives, industrial relations, and the work-
ing of a particular commercial system. The claim
that America will never have a merchant marine,
unless it is privately owned and managed, assumes a
certiun proved connection between a certain kind of
profit-making and incentive. The justification by the
bolshevik propagandist of the dictatorship, espionage,
and the terror, because "every state is an apparatus
of violence" ^ is an historical judgment, the truth of
which is by no means self-evident to a non-communist.
At the core of every moral code there is a picture
of human nature, a map of the universe, and a ver-
sion of history. To human nature (of the sort
conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined),
after a history (so understood), the rules of the code
apply. So far as the facts of personality, of the
environment and of memory are different, by so far
the rules of the code are difficult to apply with suc-
cess. Now every moral code has to conceive human
psychology, the material world, and tradition some
way or other. But in the codes that are under the
influence of science, the conception is known to be an
hypothesis, whereas in the codes that come unex-
amined from the past or bubble up from the caverns of

'See Two Yfarj of Confiiel on ike InJernal Front, published by the
Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, Moscow, 192a Ttans-
lated by Malcolm W. Davis for the Nop York Evening Post, January ij.

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES 1Z3

the mind> the conception is not taken as an hypothe-
sis demanding proof or contradiction, but as a fiction
accepted without question. In the one case, man is
humble about his beliefs, because he knows they are
tentative and incomplete; in the other he is dermatic,
because his belief is a completed myth. The moralist
who submits to the sctendiic discipline knows that
though he does not loiow everything, he is in the
way of knowing something; the dt^madst, using a
myth, believes himself to share part of the insight of
omniscience, though he lacks the criteria by which to
tell truth from error. For the distinguishing mark of
a myth is that truth and error, fact and fable, report
and fantasy, are all on the same plane of credibility.

The myth is, then, not necessarily false. It might
happen to be wholly true. It may happen to be
pardy true. If it has affected human conduct a long
dme, it is almost certain to contain much that ts
profoundly and importantly true. What a myth
never contains is the critical power to separate its
truths from its errors. For that power comes only
by realizing that no human opinion, whatever its
supposed origin, is too exalted for the test of evidence,
that every opinion is only somebody's opinion. And
if you ask why the test of evidence is preferable to
any other, there is no answer unless you are willing
to use the test in order to test it.

4
The statement is, I think, susceptible of over-
whelming proof, that moral codes assume a particular
view of the facts. Under the term moral codes I

124 PUBLIC OPINION

include all kinds: personal, family, economic, pro-
fessional, legal, patriotic, international. At the
center of each there is a pattern of stereotypes about
psychology, sociology, and history. The same view
of human nature, institutions or tradition rarely per-
sists through all our codes. Compare, for example,
the economic and the patriotic codes. There is a
war supposed to affect Jill alike. Two men are part-
ners in business. One enlists, the other takes a war
contract. The soldier sacrifices everything, perhaps
even his life. He is p^d a dollar a day, and no one
says, no one believes, that you could make a better
soldier out of him by any form of economic incentive.
That motive disappears out of his human nature.
The contractor sacrifices very little, is paid a hand-
some profit over costs, and few say or believe that
he would produce the munitions if there were no
economic incentive. That may be unfair to him.
The point is that the accepted patriotic code assumes
one kind of human nature, the commercial code
another. And the codes are probably founded on
true expectations to this extent, that when a man
adopts a certain code he tends to exhibit the kind
of human nature which the code demands.

That is one reason why it is so dangerous to gener-
alize about human nature. A loving father can be a
sour boss, an earnest municipal reformer, and a
rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business
career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on
totally different versions of what others are like and
of how he should act. These versions differ by codes
in the same person, the codes differ somewhat among

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES 125

persons in the same social set, differ widely as between
social sets, and between two nations, or two colors,
may differ to the point where there is no common
assumption whatever. That is why people profess-
ing the same stock of religious beliefs can go to war.
The element of their belief which determines conduct
is that view of the facts which they assume.

That is where codes enter so subdy and so per>
vasively into the making of public opinion. The
orthodox theory holds that a public opinion con-
stitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The
theory I am suggesting Is that, in the present state
of education, a public opinion is primarily a moral-
ized and codified version of the facts. I am ai^;uing
that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our
codes largely determines what group of facts we shall
see, and in what light we shall see them. That is
why, ^th the best will in the world, the news policy
of a journal tends to support its editorial policy;
why a capitalist sees one set of facts, and certain
aspects of human nature, literally sees them; his
socialist opponent another set and other aspects,
and why each regards the other as unreasonable or
perverse, when the real difference between them is a
difference of perception. That difference is imposed
by the difference between the capitalist and socialist
pattern of stereotypes. "There are no classes in
America," writes an American editor. "The history
of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles," says the Communist Manifesto. If you
have the editor's pattern in your mind, you will see
vividly the facts that confirm it, vaguely and inef-

126 PUBLIC OPINION

fectively those that contradict. If you have the
communist pattern, you will not only look for difFer-
ent things, but you will see with a totally different
emphams what you and the editor happen to see in

And since my moral system rests on my accepted
version of the facts, he who denies either my moral
judgments or my version of the facts, is to me per-
verse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for
him? The opponent has always to be exptuned, and
the last explanation that we ever look for is that he
sees a different set of facts. Such an explan-
ation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation
of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily
and seen it whole. It is only when we are in the
habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experi-
ence seen through our stereotypes that we become
truly tolerant of an opponent. Without that habit,
we believe in the absolutism of our own vision, and
consequently in the treacherous character of all
opposition. For while men are willing to admit that
there are two sides to a "question," they do not
believe that there are two sides to what they regard
as a "fact." And they never do believe it until
after long critical education, they are fully conscious
of how second-hand and subjective ts their appre-
hension of their social data.

So where two factions see vividly each its own
aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what
they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES 127

each other with honesty. If the pattern fits their
experience at a crucial point, they no longer look
upon it as an interpretation. They look upon it as
"reality." It may not resemble the reality, except
that it culminates in a conclu^on which fits a real
experience. I may represent my trip from New York
to Boston by a straight line on a map, just as a man
may regard his triumph as the end of a straight and
narrow path. The road by which I actually went
to Boston may have involved many detours, much
turning and twisring, just as his road may have
involved much besides pure enterprise, labor and
thrift. But provided I reach Boston and he succeeds,
the airline and the straight path will serve as ready
made charts. Only when somebody tries to follow
them, and does not arrive, do we have to answer
objections. If we insist on our charts, and he in^sts
on rejecting them, we soon tend to regard him as a
dangerous fool, and he to regard us as liars and
hypocrites. Thus we gradually paint portraits of
each other. For the opponent presents himself as
the man who says, evil be thou my good. He is an
annoyance who does not fit into the scheme of
things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that
scheme Is based in our minds on incontrovertible
fact fortified by irresistible logic, some place has to
be found for him in the scheme. Rarely in politics
or industrial disputes is a place made for him by the
simple admission that he has looked upon the same
reality and seen another aspect of it. That would
shake the whole scheme.

Thus to the Italians b Paris Flume was Italian.

128 PUBLIC OPINION

It was not merely a city that it would be desirable
to include within the Italian kingdom. It was
Italian. They fixed their whole mind upon the
Italian majority within the legal boundaries of the
dty itself. The American delegates, having seen
more Italians in New York than there are in Flume,
without regarding New York as Italian, fixed their
eyes on Fiume as a central European port of entry.
They saw vividly the Jugoslavs in the suburbs and
the non-Italian hinterland. Some of the Italians in
Paris were therefore in need of a convincing explana-
tion of the American perversity. They found it in a
rumor which started, no one knows where, that an
influential American diplomat was in the snares of a
Jugoslav mistress. She had been seen. ... He
had been seen. . . . AtVersailles just off the boule-
vard. . . . The villa with the large trees.

This is a rather common way of explaining away
opposition. In their more libelous form such charges
rarely reach the printed page, and a Roosevelt may
have to wait years, or a Harding months, before he
can force an issue, and end a whispering campaign
that has reached into every circle of talk. Public
men have to endure a fearful amount of poisonous
clubroom, dinner table, boudoir slander, repeated,
elaborated, chuckled over, and r^arded as delicious.
While this sort of thing is, I believe, less prevalent
in America than in Europe, yet rare is the American
official about whom somebody is not repeating a
scandal.

Out of the opposition we make vill^ns and con-
spracies. If prices go up unmercifully the pro-

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES 129

fiteers have conspired; if the newspapers misrepre-
sent the news, there is a capitalist plot; if the rich
are too rich, they have been stealing; if a closely
fought election is lost, the electorate was corrupted;
if a statesman does something of which you dis-
approve, he has been bought or influenced by some
discreditable person. If workingmen are restless,
they are the victims of agitators; if they are restless
over wide areas, there is a conspiracy on foot. If
you do not produce enough aeroplanes, it is the work
of spies; if there is trouble in Ireland, it is German
or Bolshevik "gold." And if you go stark, staring
mad looking for plots, you see all strikes, the Plumb
plan, Irish rebellion, Mohammedan unrest, the restor-
ation of King Constantine, the League of Nations,
Mexican disorder, the movement to reduce arma^
ments, Sunday movies, short skirts, evasion of the
liquor laws, Negro self-assertion, as sub-plots under
some grandiose plot engineered either by Moscow,
Rome, the Free Masons, the Japanese, or the Elders
of 2on.

CHAPTER X
THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES

Skilled diplomatists, compelled to talk out loud to
the warring peoples, learned how to use a large reper-
tory of stereotypes. They were dealing with a pre-
carious alliance of powers, each of which was mun-
tmning its war unity only by the most careful
leadership. The ordinary soldier and his wife> heroic
and selfless beyond anything in the chronicles of
courage, were still not heroic enough to face death
gladly for all the ideas which were said by the foreign
offices of foreign powers to be essential to the future
of civilization. There were ports, and mines, rocky
mountain passes, and villages that few soldiers
would willingly have crossed No Man's Land to
obtwn for their allies.

Now it happened in one nation that the war
party which was in control of the foreign office,
the high command, and most of the press, had claims
on the territory of several of its neighbors. These
cl^ms were called the Greater Ruritania by the
cultivated classes who regarded Kipling, Treitschke,
and Maurice Barres as one hundred percent Ruritan-
ian. But the grandiose idea aroused no enthusiasm
abroad. So holding this flnest flower of the Ruritan-
ian genius, as their poet laureate said, to their hearts.

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 131

Ruritania's statesmen went forth to divide and con-
quer. They divided the claim into sectors. For
each piece they invoked that stereotype which some
one or more of their allies found it difficult to resist,
because that ally had claims for which it hoped to
find approval by the use of this same stereotype.

The first sector happened to be a mountainous
region inhabited by alien peasants. Ruritania
demanded it to complete her natural geographical
frontier. If you fixed your attention long enough on
the ineffable value of what is natural, those alien peas-
ants just dissolved into fog, and only the slope of the
mountmns was visible. The next sector was inhab-
ited by Ruritanians, and on the principle that no
people ought to live under alien rule, they were re-
annexed. Then came a city of considerable com-
mercial importance, not inhabited by Ruritanians.
But until the Eighteenth Century it had been part
of Ruritania, and on the principle of Historic Right
it was annexed. Farther on there was a splendid
mineral deposit owned by aliens and worked by
aliens. On the principle of reparation for damage
it was annexed. Beyond this there was a territory
inhabited 97% by aliens, constituting the natural
geographical fronrier of another nation, never his-
torically a part of Ruritania. But one of the prov-
inces which had been federated into Ruritania had
formerly traded in those markets, and the upper
class culture was Ruritanian. On the principle of
cultural superiority and the neces^ty of defending
civilization, the lands were claimed. Finally, there
was a port wholly disconnected from Ruritania

132 PUBLIC OPINION

gec^aphically, ethnically, economically, historically,
traditionally. It was demanded on the ground that
it was needed for national defense.

In the treaties that concluded the Great War you
can multiply examples of this kind. Now I do not
wish to imply that I think it was possible to resettle
Europe consistently on any one of these principles.
I am certain that it was not. The very use of these
principles, so pretentious and so absolute, meant
that the spirit of acconunodarion did not prevul and
that, therefore, the substance of peace was not there.
For the moment you start to discuss factories, mines,
mountwns, or even political authority, as perfect
examples of some eternal principle or other, you are
not arguing, you are fighting. That eternal principle
censors out all the objections, isolates the issue from
its background and its context, and sets going in you
some strong emotion, appropriate enough to the
principle, highly inappropriate to the docks, ware-
houses, and real estate. And having started in that
mood you cannot stop, A real danger exists. To
meet it you have to invoke more absolute principles in
order to defend what is open to attack. Then you
have to defend the defenses, erect buffers, and buffers
for the buffers, until the whole affair is so scrambled
that it seems less dangerous to fight than to keep on
talking.

There are certmn clues which often help in detect-
ing the false absolutism of a stereotype. In the case
of the Ruritanian propaganda the principles blanketed
each other so rapidly that one could readily see
how the argument had been constructed. The series

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 133

of contradicdoTis showed that for each sector that
stereotype was employed which would obliterate all
the facts that interfered with the claim. Contradic-
tioii of this sort is often a good clue.

Inability to take account of space is another. In
the spring of 1918, for example, lat^ numbers of
people, appalled by the withdrawal of Russia, de-
manded the " reestablishment of an Eastern Front."
The war, as they had conceived it, was on two fronts,
and when one of them disappeared there was an
instant demand that it be recreated. The unem-
ployed Japanese army was to man the front, sub-
stituting for the Russian. But there was one insup-
erable obstacle. Between Vladivostok and the
eastern battleline there were five thousand miles of
country, spanned by one broken down r^Iway.
Yet those five thousand miles would not stay in the
minds of the enthusiasts. So overwhelming was
their conviction that an eastern front was needed,
and so great their confidence in the valor of the
Japanese army, that, mentally, they had projected
that army from Vladivostok to Poland on a magic
carpet. In vain our military authorities argued
that to land troops on the rim of Siberia had as little
to do with reaching the Germans, as climbing from
the cellar to the roof of the Woolworth building
had to do with reaching the moon.

The stereotype in this instance was the war on two
fronts. Ever since men had begun to imagjne the
Great War they had conceived Germany held be-

134 PUBLIC OPINION

tween France and Russia. One generation of strat-
egists, and perhaps two, had lived with that visual
image as the starting point of all their calculations.
For nearly four years every battle-map they saw had
deepened the impression that this was the war.
When affairs took a new turn, it was not easy to see
them as they were then. They were seen through
the stereotype, and facts wluch conflicted with it,
such as the distance from Japan to Poland, were
incapable of coming vividly into consciousness.

It is interesting to note that the American authori-
ties dealt with the new facts more realistically than
the French. In part, this was because (previous
to 1914) they had no preconception of a war upon
the continent; in part because the Americans, en-
grossed in the mobilization of their forces, had a
vision of the western front which was itself a stereo-
type that excluded from their consciousness any
very vivid sense of the other theatres of war. In
the spring of 1918 this American view could not com-
pete with the tradirional French view, because while
the Americans believed enormously in their own
powers, the French at that time (before Cantigny
and the Second Marne) had the gravest doubts.
The American confidence suffused the American
stereotype, gave it that power to possess conscious-
ness, that liveliness and sensible pungency, that
stimulating effect upon the will, that emotional
interest as an object of desire, that congruity with
the activity in hand, which James notes as char-
acteristic of what we regard as "real." ' The French

' Principlet oj Piyckology, Vol. II, p. 300.

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 135

in despair remained fixed on their accepted image.
And when facts, gross geographical facts, would
not fit with the preconception, they were either cen-
sored out of mind, or the facts were themselves '
stretched out of shape. Thus the difficulty of the
Japanese reaching the Germans five thousand miles
away was, in measure, overcome by bringing the
Germans more than half way to meet them. Be-
tween March and June 1918, there was supposwl
to be a German army operating tn Eastern Siberia.
This phantom army consisted of some German
prisoners actually seen, more German prisoners
thought about, and chiefly of the delusion that those
five thousand intervening miles did not really exist.'

3
A true conception of space is not a simple matter.
If I draw a straight line on a map between Bombay
and Hong Kong and measure the distance, I have
learned nothing whatever about the distance I should
have to cover on a voyage. And even if I measure
the actual distance that I must traverse, I still know
very little until I know what ships are in the service,
when they run, how fast they go, whether I can
secure accommodation and afford to pay for it. In
practical life space is a matter of available transporta^

> See in thit connection Mr. Chatlei Grany** interriew with Manhal
Foch, Nne York Timfi, February 16, 1918.

"Getmany i> walking through Russia. America and Japan, who ate
in a pontion to do 10, should go to meet her in Siberia."

See also the resolution by Senator King of Utah, June to, 1918, and
Mr. Taft's itatement in the Nna York Tiwui, June ti, tgiS, and the

appeal to America on May 5, igiS, by Mt. A. J. Sack, Directot of the
Kusiian Information Bureau: "IfGermany werein the A"' ' '
the would have 3,000,000 fighting aa the Eatt front with

136 PUBLIC OPINION

tion, not of geometrical planes, as the old railroad
magnate knew when he threatened to make grass
grow in the streets of a city that had offended him.
If I am motoring and ask how far it is to my destina-
tion, I curse as an unmitigated booby the man who
tetls me it is three miles, and does not mention a
^x mile detour. It does me no good to be told that
it is three miles if you walk. I might as well be told
it is one mile as the crow flies. I do not fly like a
crow, and I am not walking either. I must know
that it is nine miles for a motor car, and also, if
that is the case, that six of them are ruts and puddles.
] call the pedestrian a nuisance who tells me it is
three miles and think evil of the aviator who told
me it was one mile. Both of them are talking about
the space they have to cover, not the space I must
cover.

In the drawing of boundary lines absurd com-
plications have arisen through f^lure to concave
the practical geography of a region. Under some
general formula like self-determination statesmen
have at various times drawn lines on maps, which,
when surveyed on the spot, ran through the middle
of a factory, down the center of a village street,
diagonally across the nave of a church, or between
the kitchen and bedroom of a peasant's cottage.
There have been frontiers in a grazing country which
separated pasture from water, pasture from market,
and in an industrial country, railheads from railroad.
On the colored ethnic map the line was ethnically
just, that is to say, just in the world of that ethnic
map.

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 137

4

But time, no less than space, fares badly. A
conunon example is that of the man who tries
by making an elaborate will to control his money
long after his death. "It had been the purpose of
the first William James," writes his great-grandson
Henry James,' "to provide that his children (sev-
eral of whom were under age when he died) should
qualify themselves by industry and experience to
enjoy the lat^ patrimony which he expected to be-
queath to them, and with that in view he left a will
which was a voluminous compound of restraints and
instructions. He showed thereby how great were
both his confidence in his own judgment and his
solicitude for the moral welfare of his descendants."
The courts upset the will. For the law tn its
objection to perpetuities rec<^izes that there are
distinct limits to the usefulness of allowing anyone
to impose his mora! stencil upon an unknown future.
But the desire to impose it is a very human tr^t, so
human that the law permits it to operate for a
limited time after death.

The amending clause of any constitution is a good
index of the confidence the authors entertained about
the reach of their opinions in the succeeding genera-
tions. There are, I believe, American state con-
stitutions which are almost incapable of amendment.
The men who made them could have had but little
sense of the flux of rime: to them the Here and Now
was so brilliantly certain, the Hereafter so vague or
so terrifying, that they had the courage to say how
> THt Ltttm <4 Wmiam Jamti, Vol. I, p. &

138 PUBLIC OPINION

life should run after they were gone. And then be-
cause constitutions are difficult to amend, zealous
people with a taste for mortmain have loved to write
on this imperishable brass all kinds of rules and re-
strictions that, given any decent humility about the
future, ought to be no more permanent than an
ordinary statute.

A presumption about rime enters widely into our
opinions. To one person an institution which has
existed for the whole of his conscious life is part of
the permanent furniture of the universe: to another
it is ephemeral. Geolc^cal time is very different
from biological time. Social time is most complex.
The statesman has to decide whether to calculate
for the emergency or few the long run. Some deci-
sions have to be made on the basis of what will
happen in the next two hours; others on what will
happen in a week, a month, a season, a decade,
when the children have grown up, or their children's
children. An important part of wisdom is the ability
to distinguish the time-conception that properly
belongs to the thing in hand. The person who uses
the wrong time-conception ranges from the dreamer
who ignores the present to the philistine who can see
nothing else. A true scale of values has a very
acute sense of relative time.

Distant time, past and future, has somehow to be
conceived. But as James says, "of the longer dura-
tion we have no direct 'realizing' sense."' The
longest duration which we immediately feel is what
is called the "specious present." It endures, ac-

' principles oj Psychology, Vol. i, p. 638,

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 139

cording to Titchcner, for about six seconds.' "All
impressions within this period of time are present
to us at once. This makes it possible for us to per-
ceive changes and events as well as stationary ob-
jects. The perceptual present is supplemented by the
ideational present. Through the combination of per-
ceptions with memory images, entire days, months,
and even years of the past are brought together into
the present."

In this ideational present, vividness, as James
s^d, is proportionate to the number of discrimina-
tions we perceive within it. Thus a vacation in
which we were bored with nothing to do passes
slowly while we are in it, but seems very short in
memory. Great activity kills time rapidly, but in
memory its duration is long. On the relation between
the amount we discriminate and our time perspective
James has an interesting passage: *

"We have every reason to think that creatures may
possibly differ enonnously in the amounts of duration
which they intuitively feel, and in the fineness of the
events that may fill it. Von Baer has indulged in some
interesting computations of the effect of such differences
in changing the aspect of Nature. Suppose we were
able, within the length of a second, to note 10,000 events
distinctly, instead of barely 10 as now; ^ if our life were
then destined to hold the same number of impressions,
it might be looo times as short. We should live less than
a month, and personally know nothing of the change of

•Gted by Warren, Human Psychology, p. i;;.
*Op.nl.,ytA. I, p. 639.

■ In the moving picture thii effect u admirably produced by the
iiltn-rapid ciinen.

I40 PUBLIC OPINION

seasons. If bom in winter, we should believe in summer
as we now believe in the heats of the carboniferous era.
The motions of organic beings would be so slow to our
senses as to be inferred, not seen. The sun would stand
still in the sky, the moon be almost free from change,
and so on. But now reverse the hypothesis and suppose
a being to get only one loooth part of the sensations we
get in 3 given time, and consequently to live looo times
as long. Winters and summers will be to him like quarters
of an hour. Mushrooms and the swifter growing plants
will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear instantaneous
creations; annual shrubs will rise and fall from the earth
like restless boiling water springs; the motions of animals
will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets
and cannon-balls; the sun will scour through the sky like
a meteor, leaving a fiery trail behind him, etc"

5
In his Outline of History Mr. Wells has made a
gallant effort to visualize "the true proportions of
historical to geological time." ^ On a scale which
represents the time from Columbus to ourselves by
three inches of space, the reader would have to walk
55 feet to see the date of the painters of the Altamara
caves, 550 feet to see the earlier Neanderthalers, a
mile or so to the last of the dinosaurs. More or less
precise chronology does not begin until after 1000
B. c, and at that time "Sat^on I of the Akkadian-
Sumerian Empire was a remote memory, . . . more
remote than is Constantine the Great from the world
of the present day. . . . Hammurabi had been

9 Hirvey Robinson, ThiNea Hutory,

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 141

dead a thousand years. . . . Stonehenge in England
was already a thousand years old."

Mr. Wells was writing with a purpose. "In the
brief period of ten thousand years these units (into
which men have combined) have grown from the
small family tribe of the early neolithic culture to
the vast united realms — vast yet still too small and
partial — of the present time." Mr. Wells hoped
by changing the time perspective on our present
problems to change the mora! perspective. Yet the
astronomical measure of time, the geolo^cal, the
biological, any telescopic measure which minimizes
the present is not "more true" than a microscopic.
Mr. Simeon Strunsky is right when he insists that
"if Mr. Wells is thinking of his subtitle, The Prob-
able Future of Mankind, he is entitled to ask for
any number of centuries to work out his solution.
If he is thinking of the salvaging of this western
civilization, reeling under the effects of the Great
War, he must think in decades and scores of years." '
It all depends upon the practical purpose, for which
you adopt the measure. There are situations when
the time perspective needs to be lengthened, and
others when it needs to be shortened.

The man who says that it does not matter if
15,000,000 Chinese die of famine, because in two
generations the birthrate will make up the loss,
has used a time perspective to excuse his inertia.
A person who pauperizes a healthy young man be-
cause he is sentimentally overimpressed with an im-

142 PUBLIC OPINION

mediate difficulty has lost sight of the duration of
the beggar's life. The people who for the sake of
an immediate peace are willing to buy otf an ag-
gressive empire by indulging its appetite have al-
lowed a specious present to interfere with the peace
of their children. The people who will not be pa-
tient with a troublesome neighbor, who want to
bring everything to a "showdown," are no less the
victims of a specious present.

Into almost every social problem the proper cal-
culation of time enters. Suppose, for example, it is
a question of timber. Some trees grow faster than
others. Then a sound forest policy is one in which
the amount of each species and of each age cut in
each season is made good by replanting. In so far
as that calculation is correct the truest economy has
been reached. To cut less is waste, and to cut more
is exploitation. But there may come an emei^ency,
say the need for aeroplane spruce in a war, when
the year's allowance must be exceeded. An alert
government will recoghize that and r^ard the
restoration of the balance as a charge upon the
future.

Coal involves a different theory of time, because
coal, unlike a tree, is produced on the scale of geo-
Ic^ca! time. The supply is limited. Therefore a
correct social policy involves intricate computation
of the available reserves of the world, the indicated
possibilities, the present rate of use, the present
economy of use, and the alternative fuels. But

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 143

when that computation has been reached it must
finally be squared with an ideal standard involving
time. Suppose, for example, that engineers con-
clude that the present fuels are bang exhausted at
a certain rate; diat barring new discoveries industry
will have to enter a phase of contracrion at some
definite time in the future. We have then to de-
termine how much thrift and self-denial we will use,
after all feasible economies have been exercised, in
order not to rob posterity. But what shall we con-
sider posterity? Our grandchildren? Oiu* great-
grandchildren? Perhaps we shall decide to calculate
on a hundred years , believing that to be ample
rime for the discovery of alternarive fuels if the
necessity is made clear at once. The figures are,
of course, hypothetical. But in calculadng that way
we shall be employing what reason we have. We
shall be giving social time its place in public opinion.
Let us now imagine a somewhat different case: a
contract between a city and a trolley-car company.
The company says that it will not invest its capital
unless it is granted a monopoly of the main highway
for ninety-nine years. In the minds of the men who
make that demand ninety-nine years is so long as
to mean " forever." But suppose there is reason to
think that surface cars, run from a central power
plant on tracks, are going out of fashion in twenty
years. Then it is a most unwise contract to make,
for you are virtually condemning a future genera-
tion to inferior transportation. In making such a
contract the city officials lack a realizing sense of
ninety-nine years. Far better to give the company

144 PUBLIC OPINION

a subsidy now in order to attract capital than
to stimulate investment by indulging a fallacious
sense of eternity. No city official and no company
official has a sense of real time when he talks about
ninety-nine years.

Papular history is a happy hunting ground of
time confusions. To the average Englishman, for
example, the behavior of Cromwell, the corruption
of the Act of Union, the Famine of 1847 are wrongs
suffered by people long dead and done by actors
long dead with whom no living person, Irish or
English, has any real connection. But in the mind
of a patriotic Irishman these same events are almost
contemporary. His memory is like one of those
historical p^ntings, where Virgil and Dante sit
side by side conversing. These perspectives and
foreshortentngs are a great barrier between peoples.
It is ever so difficult for a person of one tradition to
remember what is contemporary in the tradition of
another.

Almost nothing that goes by the name of Historic
Rights or Historic Wrongs can be called a truly
objective view of the past. Take, for example, the
Franco-German debate about Alsace-Lorraine. It
all depends on the original date you select. If you
start with the Rauraci and Sequani, the lands are
historically part of Ancient Gaul. If you prefer
Henry I, they are historically a German territory;
if you take 1273 they belong to the House of Austria;
if you take 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia, most
of them are French; if you take Louis XIV and the
year 1688 they are almost all French. If you are

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 145

using the argument from history you are fairly cer-
tain to select those dates in the past which support
your view of what should be done now.

Aliments atx>ut "races" and nationalities often
betray the same arbitrary view of time. During
the war, under the influence of powerful feeling, the
differences between "Teutons" on the one hand,
and "Anglo-Saxons" and French on the other, was
popularly believed to be an eternal difference. They
had always been opposing races. Yet a generation
ago, historians, like Freeman, were emphasi^ng the
common Teutonic oripn of the West European
peoples, and ethnologists would certunly insist that
the Germans, English, and the greater part of the
French are branches of what was once a common
stock. The general rule is: if you like a people to^ay
you come down the branches to the trunk; if you
dislike them you insist that the separate branches
are separate trunks. In one case you fix your atten-
tion on the period before they were distinguishable;
in the other on the period after which they became
disrinct. And the view which fits the mood is taken
as the "truth."

An amiable variation is the family tree. Usually
one couple are appointed the original ancestors, if
possible, a couple associated with an honorific event
like the Norman Conquest. That couple have no
ancestors. They are not descendants. Yet they were
the descendants of ancestors, and the expression
that So-and-So was the founder of his house means
not that he is the Adam of his family, but that he is
' the particular ancestor from whom it is desirable

146 PUBLIC OPINION

to start, or perhaps the earliest ancestor of which
there is a record. But genealc^cal tables exhibit
a deeper prejudice. Unless the female line happens
to be especially remarkable descent is traced down
throi^h the males. - The tree is male. At various
moments females accrue to it as itinerant bees light
upon an ancient apple tree.

7
But the future is the most illusive time of all. Our
temptation here is to jump over necessary steps in
the sequence; and as we are governed by hope or
doubt, to exaggerate or to minimize the time required
to complete various parts of a process. The dis<
cussion of the role to be exercised by wage-earners
in the management of industry is riddled with this
difficulty. For management is a word that covers
many functions.' Some of these require no training;
some require a little training; others can be learned
only in a lifetime. And the truly discriminating pro-
gram of industrial democratization would beone based
on the proper time sequence, so that the assumption of
responsibility would run parallel to a complementary
program of industrial training. The proposal for a
sudden dictatorship of the proletariat is an attempt
to do away with the intervening time of preparation;
the resistance to all sharing of responsibility an
attempt to deny the alteration of human capacity
in the course of time. Primitive notions of democ-
racy, such as rotation in office, and contempt for
the expert, are really nothing but the old myth that
' Cj. Carter L. Goodiicb, The Frontier of ConiroL

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 147

the Goddess of Wisdom sprang mature and fully
armed from the brow of Jove. They assume that
what it takes years to learn need not be learned at all.
Whenever the phrase "backward people" is used
as the basis of a policy, the conception of time is a
decisive element. The Covenant of the League of
Nations says/ for example, that "the character of
the mandate must differ according to the st^e of the
development of the people," as well as on other
grounds. Certain communities, it asserts, "have
reached a stage of development" where their inde-
pendence can be provisionally recognized, subject
to advice and assistance "until such time as they
are able to stand alone." The way in which the man-
datories and the mandated conceive that time will
influence deeply thdr relations. Thus in the case of
Cuba the judgment of the American government
virtually coincided with that of the Cuban patriots,
and though there has been trouble, there is no finer
page in the history of how strong powers have dealt
with the weak. Oftener in that history the estimates
have not coincided. Where the imperial people,
whatever its public expressions, has been deeply
convinced that the backwardness of the backward
was so hopeless as not to be worth remedying, or so
profitable that it was not desirable to remedy it,
the rie has festered and poisoned the peace of the
world. There have been a few cases, very few, where
backwardness has meant to the ruling power the need
for a prc^am of forwardness, a program with definite
standards and definite estimates of time. Far more

148 PUBLIC OPINION

frequently, so frequently in fact as to seem the rule,
backwardness has been conceived as an intrinsic
and eternal mark of inferiority. And then every
attempt to be less backward has been frowned upon
as the sedition, which, under these conditions, it
undoubtedly is. In our own race wars we can see
some of the results of the failure to realize that time
would gradually obliterate the slave morality of the
Negro, and that social adjustment based on this mor-
ality would begin to break down.

It is hard not to picture the future as if it obeyed
our present purposes, to annihilate whatever delays
our desire, or immortalize whatever stands between
us and our fears.

In putting tc^ther our public opinions, not only
do we have to picture more space than we can see
with our eyes, and more time than we can feel, but
we have to describe and judge more people, more
actions, more things than we can ever count, or
vividly imagine. We have to summarize and general-
ize. We have to pick out samples, and treat them as
typical.

To pick fairly a good sample of a large class is
not easy. The problem belongs to the science of
statistics, and it is a most difficult affair for anyone
whose mathematics is primitive, and mine remain
azoic in spite of the half dozen manuals which I
once devoudy imagined that I understood. All
they have done for me is to make me a litde more
conscious of how hard it is to classify and to sample.

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 149

how readily we spread a little butter over the whole
universe.

Some time ago a group of social workers in Sheffield,
England, started out to substitute an accurate pic-
ture of the mental equipment of the workers of that
city for the impressionistic one they had.' They
wished to say, with some decent grounds for saying
i t, how the workers of Sheffield were equipped. They
found, as we all find the moment we refuse to let
our first notion prevail, that they were beset with
complications. Of the test they employed nothing
need be said here except that it was a large ques-
tionnmre. For the sake of the illustration, assume
that the questions were a fair test of mental equip-
ment for English city life. Theoretically, then, those
questions should have been put to every member
of the working class. But it is not so easy to
know who are the working class. However, assume
again that the census knows how to classify them.
Then there were roughly i04,ocx> men and 107,000
women who ought to have been questioned. They
possessed the answers which would justify or refute
the casual phrase about the "ignorant workers"
or the "intelligent workers." But nobody could
think of questioning the whole two hundred thou-
sand.

So the social workers consulted an eminent statis-
tician, Professor Bowley. He advised them that not
less than 408 men and 408 women would prove to be
a fair sample. According to mathematical calcula-
tion this number would not show a greater deviation

■ Tlu Equipmint of liu Worktr.

ISO PUBLIC OPINION

from the average than i in 22.' They had, therefore^
to question at least 8i6 people before they could
pretend to talk about the average workingman.
But which 8i6 people should they approach? "We
might have gathered particulars concerning workers
to whom one or another of us had a prc-inquiry
access; we might have worked through philanthropic
gentlemen and ladies who were in contact with cer-
tain sections of workers at a club, a mission, an
infirmary, a place of worship, a setdement. But
such a method of selection would produce entirely
worthless results. The workers thus selected would
not be in any sense representative of what is popu-
larly called ' the average run of workers; ' they would
represent nothing but the little coteries to which they
belonged.

"The right way of securing 'victims,' to which at
immense cost of time and labour we rigidly adhered,
is to get hold of your workers by some 'neutral'
or 'accidental' or 'random' method of approach."
This they did. And after all these precautions they
came to no more definite conclusion than that on
their classification and according to their question-
naire, among 200,000 Sheffield workers "about one
quarter" were "well equipped," "approaching three-
quarters" were "inadequately equipped" and that
"about one-fifteenth" were "mal-equipped."

Compare this conscientious and almost pedantic
method of arriving at an opinion, with our usual
judgments about masses of people, about the volatile
Irish, and the logical French, and the disciplined

' Op. eit., footnote, p. 65.

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 151

Germans, and the ignorant Slavs, and the honest
Chinese, and the untrustworthy Japanese, and so
on and so on. All these are generalizations drawn
from samples, but the samples are selected by a
method that statisttcally is wholly unsound, llius
the employer will judge labor by the most trouble-
some employee or the most docile that he knows,
and many a radical group has imagined that it was
a fair sample of the working class. How many
women's views on the "servant question" are litde
more than the reflection of their own treatment of
their servants? The tendency of the casual mind
is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which sup-
ports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it
the representative of a whole class.

A great deal of confusion arises when people de-
cline to classify themselves as we have classified
them. Prophecy would be so much ea^er if only
they would stay where we put them. But, as a
matter of fact, a phrase like the working class will
cover only some of the truth for a part of the time.
When you take all the people, below a certain level
of income, and call them the working class, you
cannot help assuming that the people so classified
will behave in accordance with your stereotype. Just
who those people are you are not quite certain. Fac-
tory hands and mine workers fit in more or less, but
farm hands, small farmers, peddlers, little shop
keepers, clerks, servants, soldiers, policemen, firemen
slip out of the net. The tendency, when you are
appealing to the "working class," is to fix your at-
tention on two or three million more or less confirmed

152 PUBLIC OPINION

trade unionists, and treat them as Labor; the other
seventeen or eighteen million, who might qualify
statistically, are tacitly endowed with the point of
view ascribed to the organized nucleus. How very
misleading it was to impute to the British working
class in 1918-1921 the point of ^ew expressed in
the resolutions of the Trades Union Congress or in
the pamphlets written by intellectuals.

The stereotype of Labor as Emancipator selects
the evidence which supports itself and rejects, the
other. And so parallel with the real movements of
working men there exists a fiction of the Labor
Movement, in which an idealized mass moves to-
wards an ideal goal. The fiction deals with the
future. In the future possibilities are almost indis-
tinguishable from probabilities and probabilities
from certainties. If the future is long enough, the
human will might turn what is just conceivable
into what is very likely, and what is likely into
what is sure to happen. James called this the faith
ladder, and said that "it is a slope of goodwill on
which in the larger questions of life men habitually
live." '

'i. There is nothing absurd in a certain view of the
world being tnie, nothing contradictory;

2. It might have been true under certain conditions;

3. It may be true even now;

4. It is fit to be true;

5. It ougkl to be true;

6. It must be true;

7. It shall be true, at any rate true for me."

> William Jamet, Somi Protleni of Pkiloiopky, p. 2x4.

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 153

And, as he added in another place,' "your acting
thus may in certain special cases be a means of
making it securely true in the end." Yet no one.
would have inmsted more than he, that, so far as
we know how, we must avoid substituting the
goal for the starting point, must avoid reading
back into the present what courage, effort and
skill might create in the future. Yet this truism
is inordinately difficult to live by, because every
one of us is so little trained in the selection of our
samples.

If we believe that a certun thing ought to be
true, we can almost always find either an instance
where it is true, or someone who believes it ought to
be true. It is ever so hard when a concrete fact il-
lustrates a hope to weigh that fact properly. When
the first six people we meet agree with us, it is not
easy to remember that they may all have read the
same newspaper at breakfast. And yet we cannot
send out a questionnaire to 816 random samples
every time we wish to estimate a probability. In
dealing with any large mass of facts, the presumption
is against our having picked true samples, if we are
acting on a casual impression.

9
And when we try to go one step further in order
to seek the causes and effects of unseen and com-
plicated afFiurs, haphazard opinion is very tricky.
There are few big issues in public life where cause
and effect are obvious at once. They are not obvious

' A PluTeliitic Utthmt, p. 319.

1 54 PUBLIC OPINION

to scholars who have devoted years, let us say, to
studying business cycles, or price and wage move-
ments, or the migration and the assimilation of
peoples, or the diplomatic purposes of foreign powers.
Yet somehow we are all supposed to have opinions
on these matters, and it is not surprising that the
commonest form of reasoning is the intuitive, post
hoc ergo propter hoc.

The more untrained a mind, the more readily it
works out a theory that two things which catch
its attention at the same time are causally connected.
We have already dwelt at some length on the way
things reach our attention. We have seen that our
access to information is obstructed and imcertain,
and that our apprehension is deeply controlled by
our stereotypes; that the evidence available to our
reason is subject to illusions of defense, prestige,
morality, space, time, and sampling. We must note
now that with this initial taint, public opinions are
still further beset, because in a series of events seen
mostly through stereotypes, we readily accept se-
quence or parallelism as equivalent to cause and
eifect.

This is most likely to happen when two ideas that
come together arouse the same feeling. If they come
tt^ether they are likely to arouse the same feeling;
and even when they do not arrive together a power-
ful feeling attached to one is likely to suck out
of all the corners of memory any idea that feels
about the same. Thus everything painful tends
to collect into one system of cause and effect, and
likewise everything pleasant.

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 155

"lld iim (1675) This day I hear that GtodJ has shot
an arrow into the midst of this Town. The small pox
is in an ordinary y' sign of the Swan, the ordinaiy Kecpeis
name is Windsor. His daughter is sick of the disease.
It is observable that this disease b^ns at an alehouse,
to testify God's displeasure ag' the sin of drunkenness
& y* of multiplying alehouses! " *

Thus Increase Mather, and thus in the year 1919
a distinguished Professor of Celestial Mechanics dis-
cussing the Einstein theory:

"It may well be that. . . . Bolshevist uprisings are in
reality the visible objects of some underiying, deep,
mental disturbance, world-wide in character. . . . This
same spirit of unrest has invaded science." *

In hating one thing violently, we readily associate
with it as cause or effect most of the other things we
hate or fear violendy. They may have no more
connection than smallpox and alehouses, or Rela<
dvity and Bolshevism, but they are bound together
in the same emotion. In a superstitious mind, like
that of the Professor of CelestiaJ Mechanics, emotion
is a stream of molten lava which catches and im-
beds whatever it touches. When you excavate in it
you find, as in a buried city, aU sorts of objects
ludicrously entangled in each other. Anything can
be related to anything else, provided it feels like it.
Nor has a mind in such a state any way of knowing
how preposterous it is. Ancient fears, reinforced by
more recent fears, coagulate into a snarl of fears

> Tkt Htart of At Pntiun, p. 177, edited br Eliiibcth Decriog
HamcMn,
■Otcdin Til* Nm lUpMicOve. 24, 1919, p. 110.

iS6 PUBLIC OPINION

where anything that is dreaded is the cause of any-
thing else that is dreaded.

Generally it all culminates in the fabrication of
a system of all evil, and of another which is the
system of all good. Then our love of the absolute
shows itself. For we do not like qualifying adverbs.'
They clutter up sentences, and interfere with irre-
sistible feeling. We prefer most to more, least to
less, we dislike the words rather, perhaps, if, or, but,
toward, not quite, almost, temporarily, partly. Yet
nearly every opinion about public affairs needs to
be deflated by some word of this sort. But in our
free moments everything tends to behave abso-
lutely, — one hundred percent, everywhere, forever.

It is not enough to say that our side is more right
than the enemy's, that our victory will help democ-
racy more than his. One must insist that our victory
will end war forever, and make the world safe for
democracy. And when the war is over, though we
have thwarted a greater evil than those which still
afflict us, the relativity of the result fades out, the
absoluteness of the present evil overcomes our spirit,
and we feel that we are helpless because we have not
been irresistible. Between omnipotence and im-
potence the pendulum swings.

Real space, real time, real numbers, real connec-
tions, real weights are lost. The perspective and
the background and the dimensions of action are
clipped and frozen in the stereotype.

' Cf. Freud's discussion of absolutism in dreams, Inttrprtution of
Dttamj, Chapttr VI, especially pp. a88, et itq.

PART IV

INTERESTS

Chapter ii. The Eklistihg of Interest
" 10. Selt-Interest Reconsidered

CHAPTER XI
THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST

But the human mind is not a film which registers
once and for all each impression that comes through
its shutters and lenses. The human mind is end-
lessly and persistently creative. The pictures fade
or combine, are sharpened here, condensed there,
as we make them more completely our own. They
do not lie inert upon the surface of the mind, but
are reworked by the poetic faculty into a personal
expression of ourselves. We distribute the emphasis
and participate in the action.

In order to do this we tend to personalize quanti-
ties, and to dramatize relations. As some sort of
all^ory, except in acutely sophisticated minds, the
affairs of the world are represented. Social Move-
ments, Economic Forces, National Interests, Public
Opinion are treated as persons, or persons like the
Pope, the President, Leniuj Morgan or the King be-
come ideas and institutions. The deepest of all the
stereotypes is the human stereotype which imputes
human nature to inanimate or collective things.

The bewildering variety of our impressions, even
after they have been censored in all kinds of ways,
tends to force us to adopt the greater economy of
the allegory. So great is the multitude of things

■ .: -c is .aba mie» rhat lo
is a nn l ir has csTvctopsi

- -rraiicy. Cnnl ic rdeases
^,:2J» some craving ui' our

irc dbiects wtuck tfci noc

THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST 163

some aspect of the picture. The identification, or
what Vernon Lee has called empathy,' may be almost
infinitely subtle and symbolic. The mimicry may
be performed without our being aware of it, and some-
times in a way that would horrify those sections of
our personality which support our self-respect.
In sophisticated people the participation may not
be in the fate of the hero, but in the fate of the whole
idea to which both hero and villain are essentia].
But these are refinements.

In popular representation the handles for identifi-
cation are almost always marked. You know who
the hero is at once. And no work promises to be
easily popular where the marking is not definite and
the choice clear.' But that is not enough. The
audience must have something to do, and the con-
templation of the true, the good and the beautiful
is not something to do. In order not to sit inertly
in the presence of the picture, and this applies as
much to newspaper stories as to fiction and the
cinema, the audience must be exercised by the image.
Now there are two forms of exercise which far
transcend all others, both as to ease with which they
are aroused, and eagerness with which stimuli for
them are sought. They are sexual passion and
fighting, and the two have so many associations with
each other, blend into each other so intimately, that
a fight about sex outranks every other theme in the
breadth ofits appeal. There is none so engrossing or
so careless of all distinctions of culture and frontiers.

. C/.PartVn.

i62 PUBLIC OPINION

gesture, or in a rythm of speech. Visualization may
catch the stimulus and the result. But the inter-
mediate and internal is often as badly caricatured
by a vtsualizer, as is the intention of the composer
by an enormous soprano in the sweet maiden's
part.

Nevertheless, though they have often a peculiar
justice, intuitions remain highly private and largely
incommunicable. But social intercourse depends on
communication, and while a person can often steer
his own life with the utmost grace by virtue of his
intuitions, he usually has great difEculty in making
them real to others. When he talks about them they
sound like a sheaf of mist. For while intuition does
pve a fairer perception of human feeling, the reason
with its spatial and tactile prejudice can do little
with that perception. Therefore, where acrion de-
pends on whether a number of people are of one
mind, it is probably true that in the first instance
no idea is lucid for practical decision until it has
visual or tactile value. But it is also true, that no
visual idea is significant to us until it has enveloped
some stress of our own personality. Until it releases
or resists, depresses or enhances, some craving of our
own, it remains one of the objects which do not
matter.

Pictures have always been the surest way of con-
veying an idea, and next in order, words that call
up pictures in memory. But the idea conveyed is not
fully our own until we have identified ourselves with

THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST 163

some aspect of the picture. The identification, or
what Vernon Lee has called empathy,' may be almost
infinitely subtle and symbolic. The mimicry may
be performed without our being aware of it, and some-
times in a way that would horrify those sections of
our personality which support our self-respect.
In sophisticated people the participation may not
be in the fate of the hero, but in the fate of the whole
idea to which both hero and villain are essential.
But these are refinements.

In popular representation the handles for identifi-
cation are almost always marked. You know who
the hero is at once. And no work promises to be
easily popular where the marking is not definite and
the choice clear.* But that is not enough. The
audience must have something to do, and the con-
templation of the true, the good and the beautiful
is not something to do. In order not to sit inertly
in the presence of the picture, and this applies as
much to newspaper stories as to fiction and the
cinema, the audience must be exercised by the image.
Now there are two forms of exercise which far
transcend all others, both as to ease with which they
are aroused, and eagerness with which stimuli for
them are sought. They are sexual pas^on and
fighting, and the two have so many associations with
each other, blend into each other so intimately, that
a fight about sex outranks every other theme in the
breadth of its appeal. There is none so engrossing or
so careless of all distinctions of culture and frontiers.

i64 PUBLIC OPINION

The sexual motif figures hardly at all in American
political imagery. Except in certain minor ecstasies
of war, in an occasional scandal, or in phases of the
racial conflict with N^roes or Asiatics, to speak of it
at all would seem far-fetched. Only in moving pic-
tures, novels, and some magazine fiction are indus-
trial relations, business competition, politics, and
diplomacy tangled up with the girl and the other
woman. But the fighting motif appears at every
turn. Politics is interesting when there is a fight,
or as we say, an issue. And in order to make politics
popular, issues have to be found, even when in truth
and justice, there are none, — none, in the sense that
the differences of judgment, or principle, or fact, do
not call for the etdistment of pugnacity.'

But where pugnacity is not enlisted, those of us
who are not directly involved find it hard to keep
up our interest. For those who are involved the
absorption may be real enough to hold them even
when no issue is involved. They may be exercised
by sheer joy in activity, or by subtle rivalry or inven-
tion. But for those to whom the whole problem is
external and distant, these other faculties do not
easily come into play. In order that the faint image
of the affair shall mean something to them, they
must be allowed to exercise the love of struggle,
suspense, and victory.

Miss Patterson' insists that "suspense. . . con-

'C/. Tiaacta Taylor Patterson, Cinma Craftsmanihif, pp. 31-31.
"III. If the plot licks suspcDse: i. Add an antagonist, 1. Add an ob-
atacle, 3. Add a problem, f. EinphaiiEe one of the questions in the

THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST 165

stitutes the difFerence between the masterpieces in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the pictures
at the Rivoli or the Rialto Theatres." Had she
made it dear that the masterpieces lack either an
easy mode of identification or a theme popular -for
this generation, she would be wholly right in saying
that this "explains why the people straggle into
the Metropolitan by twos and threes and struggle
into the Rialto and Rivoli by hundreds. The twos
and threes look at a picture in the Art Museum for
less than ten minutes — unless they chance to be art
students, critics, or connoisseurs. The hundreds in
the Rivoli or the Rialto look at the picture for more
than an hour. As far as beauty is concerned there
can be no comparison of the merits of the two pic-
tures. Yet the morion picture draws more people
and holds them at attention longer than do the
masterpieces, not through any intrinsic merit of its
own, but because it depicts unfolding events, the
outcome of which the audience- is breathlessly wait-
ing. It possesses the element of struggle, which
never fails to arouse suspense."

In order then that the distant situation shall not
be a gray flicker on the edge of attenrion, it should
be capable of transladon into pictures in which the
opportunity for identification is recognizable. Unless
that happens it will interest only a few for a little
while. It will belong to the sights seen but not felt,
to the sensations that beat on our sense organs, and
are not acknowledged. We have to take sides. We
have to be able to take sides. In the recesses of our
being we must step out of the aucUence on to the

i66 PUBLIC OPINION

stage, and wrestle as the hero for the victory of good
over evil. We must breathe into the allegory the
breath of our life.

And so, in spite of the cridcs, a verdict is rendered
in the old controversy about realism and romanticism.
Our popular taste is to have the drama originate in a
setting realistic enough to make identification plaus-
ible and to have it terminate in a setting romantic
enough to be desirable, but not so romantic as to be
inconceivable. In between the beginning and the
end the canons are liberal, but the true banning
and the happy ending are landmarks. The moving
picture audience rejects fantasy logically developed,
because in pure fantasy there is no familiar foothold
in the age of machines. It rejects realism relentlessly
pursued because it does not enjoy defeat in a struggle
that has become its own.

What will be accepted as true, as realistic, as good,
as evil, as desirable, is not eternally fixed. These
are fixed by stereotypes, acquired from earlier experi-
ences and carried over into judgment of later ones.
And, therefore, if the financial investment in each
film and in popular magazines were not so exorbitant
as to require instant and widespread popularity,
men of spirit and imagination would be able to use
the screen and the periodical, as one might dream of
their being used, to enlarge and to refine, to verify
and criticize the repertory of images with which our
imaginations work. But, given the present costs,
the men who make moving pictures, like the church

THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST 167

and the court punters of other ^es, must adhere to
the stereotypes that they find, or pay the price of
frustrating expectation. The stereotypes can be
altered} but not in time to guarantee success when
the fihn is released six months from now.

The men who do alter the stereotypes, the pioneer-
ing artists and critics, are naturally depressed and
angered at managers and editors who protect their
investments. They are risking everything, then
why not the others? That is not quite fair, for in
thdr righteous fury they have forgotten their own
rewards, which are beyond any that their employers
can hope to feel. They could not, and would not
if they could, change places. And they have for-
gotten another thing in the unceasing war with
PhilisUa. They have forgotten that they are measur-
ing thdr own success by standards that artists and
wise men of the past would never have dreamed of
invoking. They are asking for circulations and
audiences that were never considered by any artist
until the last few generations. And when they do not
get them, they are disappointed.

Those who catch on, like Sinclur Lewis in " M^n
Street," are men who have succeeded in project-
ing definitely what great numbers of other people
were obscurely trying to say inside their heads.
"You have said it for me." They establish a new
form which is then endlessly copied until it, too,
becomes a stereotype of perception. The next
pioneer finds it difficult to make the public see Main
Street any other way. And he, like the forerunners
of Sincl^r Lewis, has a quarrel mth the public.

i68 PUBLIC OPINION

This quarrel is due not only to the conflict of
stereotypes, but to the pioneering ardst's reverence
for his material. Whatever the plane he chooses,
on that plane he remains. If he is dealing with the
inwardness of an event he follows it to its conclusion
r^ardiess of the piun it causes. He will not tag
his fantasy to help anyone, or cry peace where there
is no peace. There is his America. But big audiences
have no stomach for such severity. They are more
interested in themselves than in anything else in the
world. The selves in which they are interested
are the selves that have been revealed by schools
and by tradition. They insist that a work of art
shall be a vehicle with a step where they can climb
aboard, and that they shall ride, not according to
the contours of the country, but to a land where for
an hour there are no clocks to punch and no dishes
to wash. To satisfy these demands there exists an
intermediate class of artists who are able and willing
to confuse the planes, to piece tc^ether a realistic-
romantic compound out of the inventions of greater
men, and, as Miss Patterson advises, give "what
real life so rarely does — the triumphant resolution
of a set of difficulties; the anguish of virtue and the
triumph of sin. . . changed to the glorifications
of virtue and the eternal punishment of its enemy." '

4

The ideologies of politics obey these rules. The

foothold of realism is always there. The picture of

some real evil, such as the German threat or

THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST 169

class conflict, is recognizable in the argument. There
is a description of some aspect of the world which
is convincing because it agrees with famihar ideas.
But as the ideology deals with an unseen future, as
well as with a tangible present, it soon crosses im-
perceptibly the frontier of verification. In describ-
ing the present you are more or less tied down to
common experience. In describing what nobody has
experienced you are bound to let go. You stand at
Arm^eddon, more or less, but you battle for the
Lord, perhaps. ... A true beginning, true according
to the standards prevailing, and a happy ending.
Every Marxist is hard as nails about the brutalities of
the present, and mostly sunshine about the day after
the dictatorship. So were the war propagandists:
there was not a bestial quality in human nature they
did not find everywhere east of the Rhine, or west of it
if they were Germans. The bestiality was there all
right. Butafter the victory, eternal peace. Plenty of
this is quite cynically delitwrate. For the skilful pro-
pagandist knows that while you must start with a
plausible analysis, you must not keep on analyzing,
because the tedium of real political accomplishment
will soon destroy interest. So the prop^andist ex-
hausts the interest in reality by a tolerably plausible
banning, and then stokes up energy for a long
voyage by brandishing a passport to heaven.

The formula works when the public fiction en-
meshes itself with a private urgency. But once en-
meshed, in the heat of battle, the original self and the
ori^al stereotype which effected the junction may
be wholly lost to sight.

CHAPTER XII

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED

I
Therefore^ the identical story is not the same
story to all who hear it. Each will enter it at a
slightly different point, since no two experiences are
exactly alike; he will reenact it in his own way, and
transfuse it with his own feelings. Sometimes an
artist of compelling skill will force us to enter into
lives altogether unlike our own, lives that seem at
first glance dull, repulsive, or eccentric. But that
is rare. In almost every story that catches our
attention we become a character and act out the
role with a pantomime of our own. The pantomime
may be subtle or gross, may be sympathetic to the
story, or only crudely analogous; but it will consist
of those feelings which are aroused by our concep-
tion of the role. And so, the original theme as it
circulates, is stressed, twisted, and embroidered by
all the minds through which it goes. It is as if a
play of Shakespeare's were rewritten each time it is
performed with all the changes of emphasis and mean-
ing that the actors and audience inspired.

Something very like that seems to have happened
to the stories in the sagas before they were definitively
written down. In our time the printed record, such
as it is, checks the exuberance of each individual's

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 171

fancy. But against rumor there is little or no check,
and the origjnal story, true or invented, grows wings
and horns, hoo^ and beaks, as the artist in each
gossip works upon it. The first narrator's account
does not keep its shape and proportions. It is edited
and revised by all who played with it as they heard
it, used it for day dreams, and passed it on.'

Consequently the more mixed the audience, the
greater will be the variation in the response. For
as the audience grows larger, the number of common
words diminishes. Thus the common factors in the
story become more abstract. This story, lacking
precise character of its own, is heard by people of
highly varied character. They give it their own
character.

The character they give it varies not only with
sex and age, race and religion and social position,
but within these cruder classifications, according to
the inherited and acquired constitution of the in-
dividual, his faculties, his career, the progress of
his career, an emphasized aspect of his career, his
moods and tenses, or his place on the board in
any of the games of life that he is playing. What
reaches him of public affairs, a few lines of print,
some photographs, anecdotes, and some casual ex-
perience of his own, he conceives through his set
patterns and recreates with his own emotions. He
does not take his personal problems as partial

172 PUBLIC OPINION

samples o( the greater environment. He takes his
stories of the greater environment as a mimic en-
largement of his private life.

But not necessarily of that private life as he would
describe it to himself. For in his private life the
choices are narrow, and much of himself is squeezed
down and out of sight where it cannot directly govern
his outward behavior. And thus, beside the more
averse people who project the happiness of their
own lives into a general good will, or their unhappi-
ness into suspicion and hate, there are the outwardly
happy people who are brutal everywhere but in thur
own circle, as well as the people who, the more they
detest thdr families, their friends, th^r jobs, the
more they overflow with love for mankind.

As you descend from generalities to detiul, it be-
comes more apparent that the character in which
men deal with their afFurs is not fixed. Possibly
their different selves have a common stem and com-
mon qualities, but the branches and the twigs have
many forms. Nobody confronts every situation with
the same character. His character varies in some
degree through the sheer influence of time and ac-
cumulating memory, since he is not an automaton.
His character varies, not pnly in time, but according
to circumstance. The legend of the solitary English-
man in the South Seas, who invariably shaves and
puts on a black tie for dinner, bears witness to his
own intuitive and civilized fear of losing the character
which he has acquired. So do diaries, and albums,
and souvenirs, old letters, and old clothes, and the
love of unchan^ng routine testify to our sense of

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 173

how hard it is to step twice in the Heraclitan
river.

There is no one self always at work. And there-
fore it is of great importance in the formation of
any public opinion, what self is engaged. The
Japanese ask die right to settle in California. Clearly
it makes a whole lot of difference whether you con-
ceive the demand as a desire to grow fruit or to
marry the white man's daughter. If two nations
are disputing a piece of territory, it matters greatly
whether the people regard the negotiarions as a real
estate deal, an attempt to humiliate them, or, in
the excited and provocative language which usually
enclouds these arguments, as a rape. For the self
which takes charge of the instincts when we are
thinking about lemons or distant acres is very dif-
ferent from the self which appears when we are
thinking even potentially as the outraged head o( a
family. In one case the private feeling which enters
into the opinion is tepid, in the other, red hot. And
so while it is so true as to be mere tautology that
"self-interest" determines opinion, the statement is
not illuminating, until we know which self out of
many selects and directs the interest so conceived.

Religious teaching and popular wisdom have al-
ways distinguished several personalities in each
human bang. They have been called the Higher
and Lower, the Spiritual and the Material, the
Divine and the Carnal; and although we may not
wholly accept this classificarion, we cannot fail to
observe that distinctions exist. Instead of two anti-
thetic selves, a modern man would probably note

174 PUBLIC OPINION

a good many not so sharply separated. He would
say that the distinction drawn by theologians was
arbitrary and external, because many different selves
were grouped together as higher provided they fitted
into the theologian's cat^orics, but he would recog-
nize nevertheless that here was an authentic clue to
the variety of human nature.

We have learned to note many selves, and to be a
little less ready to issue judgment upon them. We
understand that we see the same body, but often a
different man, depending on whether he is dealing
with a social equal, a social inferior, or a social su-
perior; on whether he is making love to a woman
he is eligible to marry, or to one whom he is not;
on whether he is courting a woman, or whether he
considers himself her proprietor; on whether he is
dealing with his children, his partners, his most
trusted subordinates, the boss who can make him or
break him; on whether he is struggling for the neces-
sities of life, or successful; on whether he is dealing
with a friendly alien, or a despised one; on whether
he is in great danger, or in perfect security; on
whether he is alone in Paris or among his family in
Peoria.

People differ widely, of course, in the consistency
of thdr characters, so widely that they may cover
the whole gamut of differences between a split sou!
like Dr. Jekyll's to an utterly singleminded Brand,
Parsifal, or Don Quixote. If the selves are too un-
related, we distrust the man; if they are too inflex-
ibly on one track we find him arid, stubborn, or
eccentric. In the repertory of characters, meager

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 175

for the isolated and the self-sufficient, highly varied
for the adaptable, there is a whole range of selves,
from that one at the top which we should wish God
to see, to those at the bottom that we ourselves do
not dare to see. There may be octaves for the
family, — father, Jehovah, tyrant, — husband, pro-
prietor, male, — lover, lecher, — for the occupation, —
employer, master, exploiter, — competitor, intriguer,
enemy, — subordinate, courtier, snob. Some never
come out into public view. Others are called out
only by exceptional circumstances. But the char-
acters take thdr form from a man's conceprion
of the situation in which he finds himself. If the
environment to which he is sensitive happens to be
the smart set, he will imitate the character he con-
ceives to be appropriate. That character will tend
to act as modulator of his bearing, his speech, his
choice of subjects, his preferences. Much of the
comedy of life lies here, in the way people imagine
thar characters for situations that are strange to
them: the professor among promoters, the deacon
at a poker game, the cockney in the country, the paste
diamond among real diamonds.

3
Into the making of a man's characters there en-
ters a variety of influences not easily separated.'
The analysis in its fiandamentals is perhaps still as
doubtful as it was in the fifth century b. c. when

' Foi an interaUDB tketch ef the mote noteworthy early atiempu to
explain character, lee the chapter called "The Antecedents of the Study
of Character aoA Tenpcnment," in Joieph Jaitrotr's, The Psytholoty of

176 PUBLIC OPINION

Hippocrates formulated the doctrine of the humors,
distinguished the sanguine, the melancholic, the
choleric, and the phlegmatic dispositions, and
ascribed them to the blood, the black bile, the
yellow bile, and the phlegm. The latest theories,
such as one finds them in Cannon,' Adler,' Kempf,'
appear to follow much the same scent, from the
outward behavior and the inner consciousness to
the physiology of the body. But in spite of an im-
mensely improved technique, no one would be likely
to claim that there are setded conclusions which
enable us to set apart nature from nurture, and ab>
stract the native character from the acquired. It
is only in what Joseph Jastrow has called the slums
of psychology that the explanation of character is
regarded as a fixed system to be applied by phrenol-
ogists, palmists, fortune-tellers, mind-readers, and a
few political professors. There you will still find it
asserted that "the Chinese are fond of colors, and
have their eyebrows much vaulted " while " the
heads of the Calmucks are depressed from above,
but very lai^e laterally, about the organ which gives
the inclination to acquire; and this nation's pro-
pensity to steal, etc., is admitted." *

The modern psychologists are disposed to regard
the outward behavior of an adult as an equation
between a number of variables, such as the resistance
of the environment, repressed cravings of several

' Tkf Autonomic FuTictioni and ike Ferionatity; Piyckopalhoiogy.
C}. also Louis Berman: The Clavdi Rtgidating Ptriontdity.
* Jastrcm, op. til., p. 156.

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 177

maturities, and the manifest personality.^ They
permit us to suppose, though I have not seen the
notion formulated, that the repression or control of
cravings, is fixed not in relation to the whole person
all the time, but more or less in respect to his
various selves. There are things he will not do as a
patriot that he will do when he is not thinking of
himself as a patriot. No doubt there are impulses,
more or less incipient in childhood that are never
exercised again in the whole of a man's life, except
as they enter obscurely and indirectly into combina-
tion with other impulses. But even that is not
certain, ^nce repression is not irretrievable. For
just as psychoanalysis can bring to the surface a
buried impulse, so can social situations." It is only
when our surroundings remain normal and placid,
when what is expected of us by those we meet is
consistent, that we live without knowledge of many
of our dispositions. When the unexpected occurs, we
learn much about ourselves that we did not know.

The selves, which we construct with the help of all
who influence us, prescribe which impulses, how em-

' Fonnulated by Kempf, Piychopatiology, p. 74, at followt:
Muufesl wishes

Later ReprcMcd Wiihei

AdfJescEiit Repretscd Wiihe*

Prcidoleicetil Repreiud Wuhet

* Cf. the very interetdng book of Everett Dean Maitin, Tke Btkmor
ofCnmdt.

Alw Hobbes, Leviadum, Part II, Ch. a;. " For the panioiu of men,
which asunder are moderate, as (he heat of one brand, in an auembly
■IE tike many brands, that inflame one another, especially when they
blow one another with oraliona. . . ."

LcBoo, Tlu Crovd, elaborate* this obterratioa of Hobbei'i.

178 PUBLIC OPINION

phasized, how directed, are appropriate to certiun
typical situations for which we have learned pre-
pared attitudes. For a recc^nizable type of exper-
ience, there is a character which controls the out-
ward manifestations of our whole being. Murderous
hate is, for example, controlled in civil life. Though
you choke with rage, you must not display it as a
parent, child, employer, politician. You would not
wish to display a personality that exudes murderous
hate. You frown upon it, and the people around you
also frown. But if a war breaks out, the chances are
that everybody you admire will begin to feel the
justification of killing and hating. At first the vent
for these feelings is very narrow. The selves which
come to the front are those which are attuned to a
real love of country, the kind of feeling that you find
in Rupert Brooke, and in Sir Edward Grey's speech on
August 3, 1914, and in President Wilson's address to
Congress on April 2, 1917. The reality of war is still
abhorred, and what war actually means is learned
but gradually. For previous wars are only trans-
figured memories. In that honeymoon phase, the
realists of war righdy insist that the nation is not
yet awake, and reassure each other by saying: "Wait
for the casualty lists." Gradually the impulse to "
kill becomes the main business, and alt those char-
acters which might modify it, disintegrate. The
impulse becomes central, is sanctified, and gradually
turns unmanageable. It seeks a vent not alone on the
idea of the enemy, which is all the enemy most
people actually see during the war, but upon all the
persons and objects and ideas that have always been

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 179

hateful. Hatred of the enemy is legitimate. These
other hatreds have themselves legitimized by the
crudest analogy^ and by what, once having cooled
off, we recognize as the most far-fetched analogy.
It takes a long time to subdue so powerful an impulse
once it goes loose. And therefore, when the war is
over in fact, it takes time and stru^le to regain
self-control, and to deal with the problems of peace
in civilian character.

Modem war, as Mr. Herbert Croly has satd, is
inherent in the political structure of modern society,
but outlawed by its ideals. For the civilian popula-
tion there exists no ideal code of conduct in war,
such as the soldier still possesses and chivalry once
prescribed. The civilians are without standards,
except those that the best of them manage to im-
provise. The only standards they possess make war
an accursed thing. Yet chough the war may be a
necessary one, no moral training has prepared them
for it. Only their higher selves have a code and
patterns, and when they have to act in what the
higher regards as a lower character profound disturb-
ance results.

The prq>aration of characters for all the situa-
tions in which men may find themselves is one func-
tion of a moral education. Clearly then, it depends
for its success upon the sincerity and knowledge
with which the environment has been explored.
For in a world falsely conceived, our own characters
are falsely conceived, and we misbehave. So the
moralist must choose: either he must offer a pattern
of conduct for every phase of life, however distaste-

i8o PUBLIC OPINION

ful some of its phases may be, or he must guarantee
that his pupils will never be confronted by the situa-
tions he disapproves. Either he must abolish war,
or teach people how to wage it with the greatest
psychic economy; either he must abolish the economic
life of man and feed him with Stardust and dew, or
he must investigate all the perplexities of economic
life and offer patterns of conduct which are applicable
in a world where no man is self-supporting. But that
is just what the prevailing moral culture so generally
revises to do. In its best aspects it is diffident at the
awful complication of the modern world. In its worst,
it is just cowardly. Now whether the moralists
study economics and politics and psychology, or
whether the social scientists educate the moralists is
no great matter. Each generation will go unpre-
pared into the modern world, unless it has been
taught to conceive the kind of personality it will
have to be among the issues it will most likely meet.

Most of this the naive view of self-interest leaves
out of account. It forgets that self and interest are
both conceived somehow, and that for the most
part they are conventionally conceived. The ordin-
ary doctrine of self-interest usually omits altogether
the cognitive function. So insistent is it on the fact
that human bdngs finally refer all things to them-
selves, that it does not stop to notice that men's
ideas of all things and of themselves are not instinc-
tive. They are acquired.

Thus it may be true enough, as James Madison

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED i8i

wrote in the tenth paper of the Federalist, that " a
landed interest^ a manufacturing interest, a mercan-
tile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser
interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations,
and divide them into different classes, actuated by
different sentiments and views." But if you exam-
ine the context of Madison's paper, you discover
something which I think throws light upon that
view of instinctive fatalism, called sometimes the
. economic interpretation of history. Madison was
arguing for the federal constitution, and "among the
numerous advantages of the union" he set forth
"its tendency to break and control the violence of
faction." Faction was what worried Madison. And
the causes of faction he traced to "the nature of
man," where latent dispositions are "brought into
different degrees of activity, according to the differ-
ent circumstances of civil society. A zeal for differ-
ent opinions concerning religion, concerning govern-
ment and many other points, as well of speculation
as of practice; an attachment to different leaders
ambitiously contending for preeminence and power,
or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes
have been interesting to the human passions, have,
in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them
with mutual animosity, and rendered them much
more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than
to cooperate for their common good. So strong is
this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual ani-
mosities, that where no substantial occasion presents
itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions
have been sufHcient to kindle their unfriendly pas-

i82 PUBLIC OPINION

sions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the
most common and durable source of factioTis has been
the various and unequal distribution of property."

Madison's theory, therefore, is that the propensity
to faction may be kindled by religious or political
opinions, by leaders, but most commonly by the
distribution of property. Yet note that Madison
claims only that men are divided by their relation
to property. He does not say that their property
and their opinions are cause and eifect, but that
differences of property are the causes of differences
of opinion. The pivotal word in Madison's argu-
ment is "different." From the existence of differing
economic situations you can tentatively infer a
probable difference of opinions, but you cannot infer
what those opinions will necessarily be.

This reservation cuts radically into the claims of
the theory as that theory is usually held. That the
reservation is necessary, the enormous contradic-
tion between dt^ma and practice among orthodox
socialists bears witness. They argue that the next
stage in social evolution is the inevitable result of
the present stage. But in order to produce that in-
evitable next stage they organize and agitate to pro-
duce " class consciousness." Why, one asks, does not
the economic situation produce consciousness of class
in everybody? It just doesn't, that is all. And there-
fore the proud claim will not stand that the socialist
philosophy rests on prophetic insight into destiny.
It rests on an hypothesis about human nature.'

'C/. Thorstein Veblen, "The Socialist Economics of Kirl Mant and
His Followers," in The Place of Science in Modern CiaUkation, esp.
pp. 4'3-4'B.

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 183

The socialist practice is based on a belief that
if men are economically situated in different ways,
they can then be induced to hold certain views.
Undoubtedly they often come to believe, or can be
induced to believe different things, as they are, for
example, landlords or tenants, employees or em-
ployers, skilled or unskilled laborers, wageworkers
or salaried men, buyers or sellers, farmers or middle-
men, exporters or importers, creditors or debtors.
Differences of Income make a profound difference in
contact and opportunity. Men who work at ma-
chines will tend, as Mr. Thorstein Veblen has so
brilliantly demonstrated,' to interpret experience
differently from handicraftsmen or traders. If this
were all that the materialistic conception of politics as-
serted, the theory would be an immensely valuable hy-
pothesis that every interpreter of opinion would have
to use. But he would often have to abandon the
theory, and he would always have to be on guard.
For in trying to explain a certain public opinion, it is
rarely obvious which of a man's many social rela-
tions is effecting a particular opinion. Does Smith's
opinion arise from his problems as a landlord, an im-
porter, an owner of railway shares, or an employer?
Does Jones's opinion, Jones bang a weaver in a textile
mill, come from the attitude of his boss, the competi-
tion of new immigrants, his wife's grocery bills, or
the ever present contract with the firm which is sell-
ing him a Ford car and a house and lot on the in-
stalment plan? V^thout sp«:ial Inquiry you cannot
tell. The economic determinist cannot tell.

■ TJu Ttuoty of B*niuu EnUrprut.

184 PUBLIC OPINION

A man's various economic contacts limit or en-
large the range of his opinions. But which of the
contacts, in what guise, on what theory, the material-
istic conception of politics cannot predict. It can
predict, with a high d^r^ of probability that if a
man owns a factory, his ownership will figure in
those opinions w}uch seem to have some bearing
on that factory. But how the function of bdng
an owner will figure, no economic determinist as
such, can tell you. There is no fixed set of opinions
on any question that go with bong the owner of a
factory, no views on labor, on property, on manage-
ment, let alone views on less immediate matters.
The determinist can predict that in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred the owner will resist attempts
to deprive him of ownership, or that he will favor
l^slation which he thinks will increase his profits.
But since there is no magic in ownership which
enables a business man to know what laws will make
him prosper, there is no chain of cause and effect de-
scribed in economic materialism which enables any-
one to prophesy whether the owner will take a long
view or a short one, a competitive or a cooperative.

Did the theory have the validity which is so often
claimed for it, it would enable us to prophesy. We
could analyse the economic interests of a people,
and deduce what the people was bound to do. Marx
tried that, and after a good guess about the trusts,
went wholly wrong. The first socialist experiment
came, not as he predicted, out of the culmination of
capitalist development in the West, but out of the
collapse of a pre-capitalist system in the East. Why

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 185

did he go wrong? Why did his greatest disciple,
Lenin, go wrong? Because the Marxians thought
that men's economic position would irresistibly
produce a clear conception of thm economic inter-
ests. They thought they themselves possessed
that clear conception, and that what they knew
the rest of mankind would learn. The event has
shown, not only that a clear conception of interest
does not, arise automadcally in everyone, but that
it did not arise even in Marx and Lenin themselves.
After all that Marx and Lenin have written, the
social behavior of mankind is still obscure. It ought
not to be, if economic position alone determined
public opinion. Position ought, if their theory were
correct, not only to divide mankind into classes,
but to supply each class with a view of its interest
and a coherent policy for obtaining tt. Yet nothing
is more cert^n than that all classes of men are in
constant perplexity as to what their interests are.^
This dissolves the impact of economic determin-

' At a miner of hex, nhen it came to the test, Lenin completely
abandoned the mateiiahsdc interpretation of politics. Had he held
■inceiely to the Marxian formula when heidied power in 1917, he would
have said to himidf: accordioi to the teachings of Mar%, socialism will
develop out of a mature capitalism . . . here am I, in control of a natioD
that is only enteiing upon a capitalist development ... it is true that I
am a sod;diit, but! am a scientific socialist ... it follows that for the
present all idea of a socialist republic is out of the question ... we
must advance capitalism in order that the evolution which Man pre-
dicted may take ^lace. But Lenin did nothing of the sort. Instead of
waiting for evolution to evolve, he tried by will, force, and education, to
ith the historical process which his philosophy assumed.

Wice this was written Lenin has abandoned communism on the ground
that Russia docs not possess the necessary bads in a mature capitalism.
He now says that Russia must create capitalism, which will create a
proletariat, which will some day create communism. This is at least
consistent with Marxist dogma. But it shows how little determinism
thett is in the opinions ci a determinist.

i86 PUBLIC OPINION

ism. For if our economic interests are made up of
our variable concepts of those interests, then as the
master key to social processes the theory fails. That
theory assumes that men are capable of adopting
only one version of their interest, and that having
adopted it, they move fatally to realize it. It as-
sumes the existence of a specific class interest. That
assumption is false. A class interest can be conceived
largely or narrowly, selfishly or unselfishly, in the
light of no facts, some facts, many facts, truth and
error. And so collapses the Marxian remedy for
class conflicts. That remedy assumes that if aU
property could be held in common, class diflferences
would disappear. The assumption is false. Prop-
erty might well be held in common, and yet not be
conceived as a whole. The moment any group of
people failed to see communism in a communist
manner, they would divide into classes on the basis
of what they saw.

In respect to the existing social order Marxian
socialism emphasizes property conflict as the maker
of opinion, in respect to the loosely defined working
class it ignores property conflict as the basis of
agitation, in respect to the future it imagines a
society without property conflict, and, therefore,
without conflict of opinion. Now in the existing
social order there may be more instances where one
man must lose if another is to gain, than there would
be under socialism, but for every case where one
must lose for another to gain, there are endless cases
where men simply imagine the conflict because they
are uneducated. And under socialism, though you

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 187

removed every instance of absolute conflict, the
partial access of each man to the whole range of
facts would nevertheless create conflict. A socialist
state will not be able to dispense with education,
morality, or liberal science, though on strict mater-
ialistic grounds the communal ownership of proper-
ties ought to make them superfluous. The commun-
ists in Russia would not prop^ate their faith with
such unfla^jing zeal if economic determinism were
alone determining the opinion of the Russian people.

5

The socialist theory of human nature is, like the
hedonistic calculus, an example of false determinism.
Both assume that the unlearned dispositions fatally
but intelligently produce a certain type of behavior.
The socialist believes that the dispositions pursue
the economic interest of a class; the hedonist believes
that they pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Both
theories rest on a naive view of instinct, a view,
defined by James,' though radically qualified by
him, as " the faculty of acting in such a way as to
produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends
and without previous education in the performance."

It is doubtful whether instinctive action of this
sort figures at all in the social life of mankind. For
as James pointed out: * "every instinctive act in an
animal with memory must cease to be 'blind' after
being once repeated." Whatever the equipment at
birth, the innate dispositions are from earliest infancy

' PrineipUi of Pjyehcloey, Vol. II, p. 38J.
'Of. «(.,V(iL II, p. 390.

i88 PUBLIC OPINION

inunersed in experience which determines what shall
excite them as stimulus. "They become capable," as
Mr. McDougall says,' "of being initiated, not only
by the perception of objects of the kind which directly
excite the innate disposition, the natural or native
excitants of the instinct, but also by ideas of such
objects, and by perceptions and by ideas of objects
of other kinds." *

It is only the "central part of the disposition"'
says Mr. McDougall further, "that retains its spe-
cific character and remains common to all individuals
and all situations in which the instinct is excited."
The cognitive processes, and the actual bodily move-
ments by which the instinct achieves its end may be
indefinitely complicated. In other words, man has
an instinct of fear, but what he will fear and how he
will try to escape, is determined not from birth, but
by experience.

If it were not for this variability, it would be
difficult to conceive the inordinate variety of human
nature. But when you consider that all the import-
ant tendencies of the creature, his appetites, his
loves, his hates, his curiosity, his sexual cravings,
his fears, and pugnacity, are freely attachable to
all sorts of objects as stimulus, and to all kinds of
objects as gratification, the complexity of human
nature is not so inconceivable. And when you think
that each new generation is the casual victim of

' Introduction to Sorial Piychology, Fourth Edi

""Most definitions of instincts and inst--"-
only of their conative aspects . . . and it is
the cognitive and alTective aspects of the
Fixitnote op. cil.. p, 29.

' P- 34

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 189

the way a previous generation was conditioned,
as well as the inheritor of the environment that
resulted, the possible combinations and permu-
tations are enormous.

There is no prima facie case then for supposing
that because persons crave some particular thing,
or behave in some particular way, that human nature
is fatally constituted to crave that and act thus. The
craving and the action are both learned, ■ and in
another generation might be learned differentiy.
Analytic psychology and social history unite in sup-
porting this conclusion. Psychology indicates how
essentially casual is the nexus between the particular
stimulus and the particular response. Anthropol(^
in the widest sense rwnforces the view by demonstrat-
ing that the things which have excited men's pas-
sions, and the means which they have used to realize
them, differ endlessly from age to age and from place
to place.

Men pursue thwr interest. But how they shall
pursue it is not fatally determined, and, therefore,
witlun whatever limits of time this planet will con-
tinue to support human life, man can set no term
upon the creative energies of men. He can issue no
doom of automatism. He can say, if he must, that
for his life there will be no changes which he can
recc^nize as good. But in saying that he will be
confining his life to what he can see with his eye,
rejecting what he might see with his mind; he will
be taking as the measure of good a measure which is
only the one he happens to possess. He can find no
ground for abandoning his highest hopes and relaxing

190 PUBLIC OPINION

his conscious effort unless he chooses to r^ard the
unknown as the unknowable, unless he elects to
believe that what no one knows no one will know,
and that what someone has not yet learned no one
will ever be able to teach.

PART V

THE MAKING OF A COMMON WILL

Chapter 13. The Transfer of Interest
" I4. Yes or No
" 15. Leaders and the Rank and File

CHAPTER XIII
THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST

This goes to show that there are many variables
in each man's impressions of the invisible world.
The points of contact vary, the stereotyped expec-
tations vary, the interest enlisted varies most subtly
of all. The living impressions of a large number of
people are to an immeasurable d^ree personal in
each of them, and unmanageably complex in the
mass. How, then, is any practical relationship
established between what is in people's heads and
what is out there beyond their ken in the environ-
ment? How in the language of democratic theory,
do great numbers of people feeling each so privately
about so abstract a picture, develop any common
will? How does a simple and constant idea emerge
from this complex of variables. How are those things
known as the Will of the People, or the National
Purpose, or Public Opinion crystalized out of such
fleecing and casual imagery?

That there is a real difficulty here was shown by
an angry tilt in the spring of 1921 between the Amer-
ican Ambassador to England and a very lai^e number
of other Americans. Mr. Harvey, speaking at a
British dinner table, had assured the world without
the least sign of hesitancy what were the motives

194 PUBLIC OPINION

of Americans in 1917.* As he described them, they
were not the motives which President Wilson had
insisted upon when he enunciated the American mind.
Now, of course, neither Mr. Harvey nor Mr. WIson,
nor the critics and friends of either, nor any one else,
can know quantitatively and qualitatively what
went on in thirty or forty million adult minds. But
what everybody knows is that a war was fought and
won by a multitude of efforts, stimulated, no one
knows in what proportion, by the motives of Wilson
and the motives of Harvey and all kinds of hybrids
of the two. People enlisted and fought, worked,
paid taxes, sacrificed to a common end, and yet no
one can begin to say exactly what moved each person
to do each thing that he did. It is no use, then,
Mr. Harvey telling a soldier who thought this was a
war to end war that the soldier did not think any
such thing. The soldier who thought that thought
that. And Mr. Harvey, who thought something else,
thought something else.

In the same speech Mr. Harvey formulated with
equal clarity what the voters of 1920 had in th«r
minds. That is a rash thing to do, and, if you simply
assume that all who voted your ticket voted as you
did, then it is a disingenuous thing to do. The
count shows that sixteen millions voted Republican,
and nine millions Democratic. They voted, says
Mr. Harvey, for and agaJnst the League of Nations,
and in support of this claim, he can point to Mr.
Wilson's request for a referendum, and to the undeni-
able fact that the Democratic party and Mr. Cox

■ Naa York Timrs, May 20, igii.

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 195

insisted that the League was the issue. But then,
saying that the League was the issue did not make the
League the issue, and by counting the votes on elec-
tion day you do not know the real division of opinion
about the League. There were, for example, nine
million Democrats. Are you endded to believe that
all of them are staunch supporters of the League?
Certainly you are not. For your knowledge of
American politics tells you that many of the millions
voted, as they always do, to maintain the existing
social system in the South, and that whatever their
views on the League, they did not vote to express
their views- Those who wanted the League were no
doubt pleased that the Democratic party wanted it
too. Those who disliked the League may have held
their noses as they voted. But both groups of South-
erners voted the same dcket.

Were the Republicans more unanimous? Any-
body can pick Republican voters enough out of his
circle of friends to cover the whole gamut of opinion
from the irreconcilability of Senators Johnson and
Knox to the advocacy of Secretary Hoover and Chief
Justice Taft. No one can say definitely how many
people felt in any parricular way about the League,
nor how many people let their feelings on that sub-
ject determine their vote. When there are only two
ways of expressing a hundred variedes of feeling,
there is no certain way of knowing what the decisive
combinadon was. Senator Borah found in the Re-
publican dcket a reason for vodng Republican, but
so did President Lowell. The Republican majority
was composed of men and women who thought a

196 PUBLIC OPINION

Republican victory would kill the League, plus
those who thought it the most practical way to
secure the League, plus those who thought it the
surest way offered to obtain an amended League.
All these voters were inextricably entangled with
thar own desire, or the desire of other voters to
improve business, or put labor in its place, or to
punish the Democrats for going to war, or to punish
them for not having gone sooner, or to get rid of Mr.
Burleson, or to improve the price of wheat, or to
lower taxes, or to stop Mr. Daniels from outbuilding
the world, or to help Mr. Harding do the same thing.

And yet a sort of decision emerged; Mr. Harding
moved into the White House. For the least com-
mon denominator of all the votes was that the Demo-
crats should go and the Republicans come in. That
was the only factor remaining after all the contra-
dictions had cancelled each other out. But that
factor was enough to alter policy for four years.
The precise reasons why change was desired on that
November day in 1920 are not recorded, not even
in the memories of the individual voters. The reasons
are not fixed. They grow and change and melt into
other reasons, so that the public opinions Mr. Hard-
ing has to deal with are not the opinions that elected
him. That there is no inevitable connection be-
tween an assortment of opinions and a particular
line of action everyone saw in 1916. Elected appar-
ently on the cry that he kept us out of war, Mr.
Wilson within five months led the country into war.

The working of the popular will, therefore, has
always called for explanation. Those who have been

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 197

most impressed by its erratic working have found a
prophet in M. LeBon, and have welcomed generali-
zadons about what Sir Robert Peel called "that
great compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong
feeling, ri^t feeling, obstinacy and newspaper para-
graphs which is called public opinion." Others have
concluded that ^nce out of drift and incoherence,
settled aims do appear, there must be a mysterious
contrivance at work somewhere over and above the
inhabitants of a nation. They invoke a collective
soul, a narional mind, a spirit of the age which im-
poses order upon random opinion. An oversoul
seems to be needed, for the emotions and ideas in
the members of a group do not disclose anything so
simple and so crystalline as the formula which those
same individuals will accept as a true statement of
thdr Public Opinion.

But the facts can, I think, be explained more
convincingly without the help of the oversoul in
any of its disguises. After all, the art of inducing all
sorts of people who think ditFerently to vote alike is
practiced in every political campaign. In 1916, for
example, the Republican candidate had to produce
Republican votes out of many different kinds of
Republicans. Let us look at Mr. Hughes' first
speech after accepting the nomination.' The con-
text is still clear enough in our minds to obviate
much explanation; yet the issues are no longer
contentious. The candidate was a man of unusually

' Ddivered ai Canie^e Hal), New York City, July 31, 1916.

198 PUBLIC OPINION

plain speech, wKo had been out of politics for several ■
years and was not personally committed on the
issues of the recent past. He had, moreover, none of
that wizardry which popular leaders like Roosevelt,
Wilson, or Lloyd George possess, none of that his-
trionic ^ft by which such men impersonate the feel-
ings of their followers. From that aspect of politics
he was by temperament and by tr^ning remote.
But yet he knew by calculation what 'the politician's
technic is. He was one of those people who know
just how to do a thing, but who can not quite do it
themselves. They are often better teachers than the
virtuoso to whom the art is so much second nature
that he himself does not know how he does it. The
statement that those who can, do; those who cannot,
teach, is not nearly so much of a reflection on the
teacher as it sounds.

Mr. Hughes knew the occasion was momentous,
and he had prepared his manuscript carefully. In a
box sat Theodore Roosevelt just back from Missouri.
All over the house sat the veterans of Armageddon in
various stages of doubt and dismay. On the plat-
form and in the other boxes the ex-whited sepulchres
and ex-second-story men of 1912 were to be seen,
obviously in the best of health and in a melting mood.
Out beyond the hall there were powerful pro-Ger-
mans and powerful pro-Allies; a war party in the
East and in the big cities; a peace party in the middle
and far west. There was strong feeling about Mexico.
Mr. Hughes had to form a majority against the
Democrats out of people divided into all sorts of
combinations on Taft vs. Roosevelt, pro-Germans vs.

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 199

pro-Allies, war vs. neutrality, Mexican intervention
vs. non-intervention.

About the morality or the wisdom of the affair we
are, of course, not concerned here. Our only interest
is in the method by which a leader of heterogeneous
opinion goes about the business of securing a homo-
geneous vote.

"This reprtseiUaiit>e gathering is a happy augury. It
means the strength of reunion. It means that the party
of Lincoln is restored. . . ."

The italicized words are binders: Lincoln in such a
speech has of course, no relation to Abraham Lincoln.
It is merely a stereotype by which the piety which
surrounds that name can be transferred to the Re-
publican candidate who now stands in his shoes.
Lincoln reminds the Republicans, Bull Moose and
Old Guard, that before the schism they had a com-
mon history. About the schism no one can afford to
speak. But it is there, as yet unhealed.

The speaker must heal it. Now the schism of 1912
had arisen over domestic questions; the reunion of
1916 was, as Mr. Roosevelt had declared, to be
based on a common indignation against Mr. Wilson's
conduct of international affairs. But international
affairs were also a dangerous source of conflict. It
was necessary to find an opening subject which
would not only ignore 1912 but would avoid also the
explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfiilly
selected the spoils system in diplomatic appoint-
ments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discr^ting
phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The

400 PUBLIC OPINION

record being indefensible, there is.no he^tation in the
vigor of the attack. Lo^cally it was an ideal intn><
duction to a common mood.

Mr. Hughes then turns to Mexico, beginning with
an historical review. He had to conader the general
sentiment that affairs were going badly in Mexico;
also, a no less general sentiment that war should be
avoided; and two powerful currents of opinion, one of
which s^d President Wilson was right in not rect^-
nizing Huerta, the other which preferred Huerta to
Carranza, and intervention to both. Huerta was the
first sore spot in the record. ■ .

"He was certainly m fact the head of the Government
in Mexico."

But the moralists who regarded Huerta as a drunken
murderer had to be placated.

"Whether or not he should be recognized was a question
to be detemiined in the exercise of a sound discretion,
but according to correct principles."

So instead of saying that Huerta should have been
recognized, the candidate says that correct principles
ought to be applied. Everybody believes in correct
principles, and everybody, of course, believes he
possesses them. To blur the issue still further
President Wilson's policy is described as "inter-
vention." It was that in law, perhaps, but not in
the sense then currently meant by the word. By
stretching the word to cover what Mr. Wilson had
done, as well as what the real interventionists

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 201

wanted, the issue between the two factions was to
be repressed.

Having got by the two explosive points "Huerta"
and " interoention" by letting the words mean all
things to all men, the speech passes for a while to
safer groimd. The candidate tells the story of Tam-
pico, Vera Cruz, Villa, Santa Ysabel, Columbus and
Carrizal. Mr. Hughes is specific, either because the
facts as known from the newspapers are irntating, or
because the true explanation is, as for example in
r^ard to Tampico, too complicated. No contrary
passions could be aroused by such a record. But
at the end the candidate had to take a position. His
audience expected it. The indictment was Mr.
Roosevelt's. Would Mr. Hughes adopt his remedy,
intervention?

"The nation has no policy of aggression toward Mexico.
We have no desire for any part of her territory. We wish
her to have peace, stability and prosperity. We should be
ready to aid her in binding up her wounds, in relieving her
from starvation and distress, in giving her in every prac-
ticable way the benefits of our disinterested friendship.
The conduct of this administradon has created difficulties
which we shall have to surmount. . . . We shall have to
adopt a new policy, a policy of firmness and consistency
through which alone we can promote an enduring friend-
ship."

The theme friendship is for the non-interventionists,
the theme "new policy" and "firmness" is for the
interventionists. On the non-contentious record,
the det^ is overwhelming; on the issue everything is
cloudy.

202 PUBLIC OPINION

Concerning the European war Mr. Hughes em-
ployed an ingenious formula:

"I stand for the unfiinching maintenance of all American
rights on land and sea."

In order to understand the force of that statement at
the time it was spoken, we must remember how each
faction during the period of neutrality believed that
the nations it opposed in Europe were alone violating
American rights. Mr. Hughes seemed to say to the
pro-Allies: I would have coerced Germany. But the
pro-Germans had been insisting that British sea
power was violating most of our rights. The formula
covers two diametrically opposed purposes by the
symbolic phrase "American rights."

But there was the Lusi tania. Like the 1913
schism, it was an invincible obstacle to harmony.

"... I am confident that there would have been no
destruction of American lives by the sinking of the Lusi-
tania."

Thus, what cannot be compromised must be obliter-
ated, when there is a question on which we cannot all
hope to get together, let us pretend that it does not
exist. About the future of American relations with
Europe Mr. Hughes was silent. Nothing he could
say would possibly please the two irreconcilable fac-
tions for whose support he was bidding.

It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Hughes did
not invent this technic and did not employ it with the
utmost success. But he illustrated how a public
opinion constituted out of divergent opinions is
clouded; how its meaning approaches the neutral tint

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dcMlC B S STBBOQB OK C

Bat bov B it tfcn a ragoe idea » ofaai kss tk

power to unite OLLpli kIi: opEnans? Tflcse ofssaons^
we Tccall, huwetci deefty Aer mzy be iAiy aie not ia
amtuiaa] and pungent ooaitact widi die &cTs they pro-
fess tD treat. On tiie ™«'i'^*« envinxuiKnt, Mexico^
(Ik European war, our grip is s£^t tboi^t our
feding may be intense. The ori^nal [Mctuies and
words wluch aroused it have not anytfaing Uke the
fonx of the fcding itself. The account of what has
happened out ctf si^t and bfaring in a place where
we have never been, has not and never can have,
except Iviefly as in a dream or fantasy, all the
dimensions of reality. But it can arouse all, and
sometimes even more emotion than the realit}'. For
the trigger can be pulled by mme than one stimulus.
The stimulus which raiginally pulled the trigger
may have been a series of pictures in the mind aroused
by printed or spoken words. These pictures fade and
are hard to keep steady; their contours and their
pulse fluctuate. Gradually the process sets in of
knowing what you feel without being enrirely certain
why you feel it. The fading pictures are displaced by
other pictures, and then by names or symbols. But
the emotion goes on, capable now of being aroused by
the substituted images and names. Even in severe

204 PUBLIC OPINION

thinking these substitutions take place, for if a man
is trying to compare two compHcated situations, he
soon finds exhausting the attempt to hold both fully
in mind in all their detail. He employs a shorthand
of names and signs and samples. He has to do this
if he is to advance at all, because he cannot carry the
whole ba^age in every phrase through every step he
takes. But if he forgets that he has substituted and
simplified, he soon lapses into verbalism, and begins
to talk about names regardless of objects. And then
he has no way of knowing when the name divorced
from its first thing is carrying on a misalliance with
some other thing. It is more difficult still to guard
ag^nst changelings in casual politics.

For by what is known to psychologists as condi-
tioned response, an emotion is not attached merely to
one idea. There are no end of things which can arouse
the emotion, and no end of things which can satisfy it.
This is particularly true where the stimulus is only
dimly and indirectly perceived, and where the ob-
jective is likewise indirect. For you can associate an
emotion, say fear, first with something immediately
dangerous, then with the idea of that thing, then
with something similar to that idea, and so on and on.
The whole structure of human culture is in one re-
spect an elaboration of the stimuli and responses of
which the original emotional capacities remain a
fairly fixed center. No doubt the quality of emotion
has changed in the course of history, but with nothing
like the speed, or elaboration, that has characterized
the conditioning of it.

People differ widely in their susceptibility to ideas.

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 205

There are some in whom the idea of a starving child
in Russia is practically as vivid as a starving child
within sight. There are others who are almost
incapable of being excited by a distant idea. There
are many gradations between. And there are people
who are insensitive to facts, and aroused only by
ideas. But though the emotion is aroused by the
idea, we are unable to satisfy the emotion by act-
ing ourselves upon the scene itself. The idea of the
starving Rusaan child evokes a desire to feed the
child. But the person so aroused cannot feed it.
He can only give money to an impersonal organi-
zation, or to a personification which he calls Mr.
Hoover. His money does not reach that child. It
goes to a general pool from which a mass of children
are fed. And so just as the idea is second hand, so are
the effects of the action second hand. The cognition
is indirect, the conation is indirect, only the atFect is
immediate. Of the three parts of the process, the
stimulus comes from somewhere out of sight, the
response reaches somewhere out of sight, only the
emotion exists entirely within the person. Of the
child's hunger he has only an idea, of the child's relief
he has only an idea, but of his own desire to help he
has a real experience. It is the central fact of the
business, the emotion within himself, which is first
hand.

Within limits that vary, the emotion is transferable
both as r^ards stimulus and response. Therefore, if
among a number of people, posses^ng various tend-
encies to respond, you can find a stimulus which will
arouse the same emotion in many of them, you can

3o6 PUBLIC OPINION

substitute it for the original sdmuli. If, for example,
one man dislikes the League, another hates Mr.
Wilson, and a third fears labor, you may be able to
unite them if you can find some symbol which is the
antithesis of what they all hate. Suppose that
symbol is Americanism. The first man may read it as
meaning the preservation of American isolation, or as
he may call it, independence; the second as the
rejection of a politician who clashes with his idea of
what an American president should be, the third as a
call to resist revolution. The symbol in itself signi-
fies literally no one thing in particular, but it can be
associated with almost anything. And because of
that it can become the common bond of common
feelings, even though those feelings were originally
attached to disparate ideas.

When political parties or newspapers declare for
Americanism, Progress! vism, Law and Order, Jus-
tice, Humanity, they hope to amalgamate the emo-
tion of conflicting factions which would surely divide,
if, instead of these symbols, they were invited to
discuss a specific program. For when a coalition
around the symbol has been effected, feeling flows
toward conformity under the symbol rather than
toward critical scrutiny of the measures. It is, I
think, convenient and technically correct to call
multiple phrases like these symbolic. They do not
stand for specific ideas, but for a sort of truce or junc-
tion between ideas. They are like a strategic rail-
road center where many roads converge regardless
of their ultimate origin or their ultimate destina-
tion. But he who captures the symbols by which

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 307

public feeling is for the moment contained, controls
by that much the approaches of public policy. And
as long as a particular symbol has the power of coali-
tion, ambitious factions will fight for possession.
Think, for example, of Lincoln's name or of Roose-
velt's. A leader or an interest that can make itself
master of current symbols is master of the current
situation. There are limits, of course. Too violent
abuse of the actualities which groups of people think
the symbol represents, or too great resistance in the
name of that symbol to new purposes, will, so to
speak, burst the symbol. In this manner, during the
year 1917, the imposing symbol of Holy Rus^a and
the Little Father burst under the impact of suffering
and defeat.

The tremendous consequences of Russia's collapse
were felt on all the fronts and among all the peoples.
They led directly to a striking experiment in the
crystallizadon of a common opinion out of the
varieties of opinion churned up by the war. The
Fourteen Points were addressed to all the govern-
ments, allied, enemy, neutral, and to all the peoples.
They were an attempt to knit together the chief
imponderables of a world war. Necessarily this was a
new departure, because this was the first great war
in which all the deciding elements of mankind could
be brought to think about the same ideas, or at
least about the same names for ideas, simultaneously.
Without cable, radio, telegraph, and daily press,
the experiment of the Fourteen Points would have

2o8 PUBLIC OPINION

been impossible. It was an attempt to exploit the
modern machinery of communication to start the
return to a "common consciousness" throughout the
world.

But first we must examine some of the circum-
stances as they presented themselves at the end of
1917. For in the form which the document finally
assumed, all these considerations are somehow repre-
sented. During the summer and autumn a series
of events had occurred which profoundly affected
the temper of the people and the course of the war.
In July the Russians had made a last offensive, had
been disastrously beaten, and the process of demoral-
ization which led to the Bolshevik revolution of
November had begun. Somewhat earlier the French
had suffered a severe and almost disastrous defeat in
Champagne which produced mutinies in the army and
a defeatist agitation among the civiUans. England
was suffering from the effects of the submarine raids,
from the terrible losses of the Flanders battles, and in
November at Cambrai the British armies met a
reverse that appalled the troops at the front and the
leaders at home. Extreme war weariness pervaded
the whole of western Europe.

In effect, the agony and disappointment had jarred
loose men's concentration on the accepted version
of the war. Their interests were no longer held by the
ordinary official pronouncements, and their attention
b^an to wander, fixing now upon their own suffer-
ing, now upon their party and class purposes, now
upon general resentments against the governments.
That more or less perfect organization of perception

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 209

by official propaganda, of interest and attention by
the stimuli of hope, fear, and hatred, which is called
morale, was by way of breaking down. The minds
of men everywhere b^an to search for new attach-
ments that promised relief.

Suddenly they beheld a tremendous drama. On
the Eastern front there was a Christmas truce, an
end of slaughter, an end of noise, a promise of peace.
At Brest-IJtovsk the dream of all simple people had
come to life: it was possible to negotiate, there was
some other way to end the ordeal than by matching
lives with the enemy. Timidly, but with rapt atten-
tion, people b^an to turn to the East. Why not,
they asked? What is tt all for? Do the politicians
know what they are doing? Are we really fighting
for what they say? Is it possible, perhaps, to secure
it without fighting? Under the ban of the censor-
ship, little of this was allowed to show itself in print,
but, when Lord Lansdowne spoke, there was a re-
sponse from the heart. The earlier symbols of the
war had become hackneyed, and had lost their power
to unify. Beneath the surface a wide schism was
opening up in each Allied country.

Something amilar was happening in Central
Europe. There too the original impulse of the war
was weakened; the union sacr£e was broken. The
verdcal cleavages along the battle front were cut
across by horizontal divisions running in all kinds
of unforeseeable ways. The moral crisis of the
war had arrived before the military decision was
in sight. All this President Wilson and his advisers
realized. They had not, of course, a perfect knowl-

2IO PUBLIC OPINION

edge of the situation, but what I have sketched they
knew.

They knew also that the Allied Governments were
bound by a series of engagements that in letter and
in spirit ran counter to the popular conception of
what the war was about. The resolutions of the
Paris Economic Conference were, of course, public
property, and the network of secret treaties had been
published by the Bolsheviks in November of 1917.*
Their terms were only vaguely known to the peoples,
but it was definitely believed that they did not com*
port with the idealistic slogan of self-determination,
no annexations and no indemnities. Popular ques-
tioning took the form of asking how many thousand
English lives Alsace-Lorraine or Dalmatia were
worth, how many French lives Poland or Meso-
potamia were worth. Nor was such questioning
entirely unknown in America. The whole Allied
cause had been put on the defensive by the refusal
to participate at Brest-Li tovsk.

Here was a highly sensitive state of mind which no
competent leader could fail to consider. The ideal
response would have been joint action by the Allies.
That was found to be impossible when it was con-
sidered at the Interallied Conference of October.
But by December the pressure had become so great
that Mr. George and Mr. Wilson were moved inde-
pendently to make some response. The form selected

' President Wilson stated at his conference with the Senators that he
had never heard of these treaties until he reached Paris. That statement
is perplexing. The Fourteen Points, as the teit shows, could not have
been formulated without a knowledge of the secret treaties. The sub-
stance of those treaties was before the President when he and Colonel
House prepared the final published text of the Fourteen Poinu.

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 211

by the President was a statement of peace terms
under fourteen heads. The numberihg of them was
an artifice to secure precision, and to create at once
the impression that here was a business-like docu-
ment. The idea of stating "peace terms" instead
of "war aims" arose from the necessity of estab-
lishing a genuine alternative to the Brest-Litovsk
ne^tiations. They were intended to compete for
attention by substituting for the spectacle of Russo-
German parleys the much grander spectacle of a
public world-wide debate.

Having enlisted the interest of the world, it was
necessary to hold that interest unified and flexible
for all the different possibilities which the situation
contained. The terms had to be such that the major-
ity among the Allies would regard them as worth
while. They had to meet the national aspirations of
each people, and yet to limit those aspirations so that
no one nation would r^ard itself as a catspaw for
another. The terms had to satisfy ofiicial interests
so as not to provoke ofiicial disunion, and yet they
had to meet popular conceptions so as to prevent the
spread of demoralization. They had, in short, to
preserve and confirm Allied unity in case the war was
to go on.

But they had also to be the terms of a possible
peace, so that in case the German center and left
were ripe for agitation, they would have a text with
which to smite the governing class. The terms had,
therefore, to push the Allied governors nearer to
their people, drive the German governors away from
their people, and establish a line of common under-

212 PUBLIC OPINION

standing between the Allies, the non^official Ger-
mans, and the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary.
The Fourteen Points were a daring attempt to raise
a standard to which almost everyone might repair.
If a sufficient number of the enemy people were
ready there would be peace; if not, then the Allies
would be better prepared to sustain the shock of war.

All these considerations entered into the making
of the Fourteen Points. No one man may have had
them all in mind, but all the men concerned had
some of them in mind. Against this background let
us examine certain aspects of the document. The
first five points and the fourteenth deal with "open
diplomacy," "freedom of the seas," "equal trade
opportunities," " reduction of armaments," no imper-
ialist annexation of colonies, and the League of
Nations. They might be described as a statement of
the popular generalizations in which everyone at
that time professed to believe. But Number Three
is more specific. It was aimed consciously and
directly at the resolutions of the Paris Economic
Conference, and was meant to relieve the German
people of their fear of suffocation.

Number six is the first point dealing with a par-
ticular nation. It was intended as a reply to Russian
suspicion of the Allies, and the eloquence of its
promises was attuned to the drama of Brest-Li tovsk.
Number seven deals with Belgium, and is as un-
qualified in form and purpose as was the conviction
of practically the whole world, including very large
sections of Central Europe. Over number eight we
must pause. It begins with an absolute demand for

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 213

evacuation and restoration of French territoryj and
then passes on to the question of Alsace-Lorraine.
The phrasing of this clause most perfecdy illustrates
the character of a public statement which must
condense a vast complex of interests in a few words.
"And the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871
in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has un-
setded the peace of the world for nearly fifty years,
shoiJd be righted. . . ." Every word here was
chosen with meticulous care. The wrong done
should be righted; why not say that Alsace-Lorraine
should be restored? It was not said, because it was
not certain that all of the French at that time would
fight on indefinitely for reannexation if they were
oifered a plebiscite; and because it was even less
certiun whether the English and Italians would
fight on. The formula had, therefore, to cover both
contingencies. The word "righted" guaranteed sat-
isfaction to France, but did not read as a commit-
ment to simple annexation. But why speak of the
wrong done by Prussia in iS^i? The word Prussia
was, of course, intended to remind the South Ger-
mans that Alsace-Lorraine belonged not to them
but to Prussia. Why speak of peace unsetded for
"fifty years," and why the use of "1871"? In the
first place, what the French and the rest of the world
remembered was 1871. That was the nodal point
of their grievance. But the formulators of the
Fourteen Points knew that French ofiicialdom
planned for more than the Alsace-Lorraine of 1871.
Hie secret memoranda that had passed between the
Czar's ministers and French officials in 1916 covered

214 PUBLIC OPINION

the annexation 'of the Saar Valley and some sort of
dismemberment of the Rhineland. It was planned
to include the Saar Valley under the term "Alsace-
Lorraine " because it had been part of Alsace-Lorraine
in 1 8 14, though ithadbeendetachedini8i5, and was
no part of the territory at the close of the Franco-
Prus«an war. The ofEcial French formula for
annexing the Saar was to subsume it under "Alsace-
Lorraine" meaning the Alsace-Lomdne of 1814-
1815. By insistence on "1871" the Preadent was
really defining the ultimate boundary between Ger-
many and France, was adverting to the secret
treaty, and was casting it aside.

Number nine, a litde less subdy, does the same
thing in respect to Italy. "Clearly recognizable
lines of nationality" are exactly what the lines of
the Treaty of London were not. Those lines were
partly strategic, partly economic, partly imperial-
istic, partly ethnic. The only part of them that
could possibly procure allied sympathy was that
which would recover the genuine Italia Irredenta.
All the rest, as everyone who was informed knew,
merely delayed the impending Jugoslav revolt.

5
It would be a mistake to suppose that the ap-
parently unanimous enthusiasm which greeted the
Fourteen Points represented agreement on a pro-
gram. Everyone seemed to find something that he
liked and stressed this aspect and that detml. But
no one risked a discussion. The phrases, so pregnant
with the underlying conflicts of the civilized world.

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 215

were accepted. They stood for opposing ideas, but
they evoked a common emotion. And to that ex-
tent they played a part in rallying the western
peoples for the desperate ten months of war which
they had still to endure.

As long as the Fourteen Points dealt with that
hazy and happy future when the agony was to be
over, the real conflicts of interpretation were not
made manifest. They were plans for the settlement
of a wholly invisible environment, and because these
plans inspired all groups each with its own private
hope, all hopes ran together as a public hope. For
harmonization, as we saw in Mr. Hughes's speech,
is a hierarchy of symbols. As you ascend the hier-
archy in order to include more and more factions
you may for a time preserve the emotional connec-
tion though you lose the intellectual. But even the
emotion becomes thinner. As you go further away
from experience, you go higher into generalization
or subtlety. As you go up in the balloon you throw
more and more concrete objects overboard, and when
you have reached the top with some phrase like
the Rights of Humanity or the World Made Safe
for Democracy, you see far and wide, but you see
very little. Yet the people whose emotions are
entrained do not remain passive. As the public
appeal becomes more and more all things to all men,
as the emotion is stirred while the meaning is dis-
persed, their very private meanings are given a
universal application. Whatever you want badly
is the Rights of Humanity. For the phrase, ever
more vacant, capable of meaning almost anything.

3i6 PUBLIC OPINION

Boon comes to mean pretty nearly everything. Mr.
Wilson's phrases were understood in endlessly dif-
ferent ways in every comer of the earth. No docu-
ment negotiated and made of puhhc record ensted
to correct the confusion.' And so, when the day
of setdement came, everybody expected everything.
The European authors of the treaty had a lai^
choice, and they chose to realize those expectations
which were held by those of their countrymen who
wielded the most power at home.

They came down the hierarchy from the Rights
of Humanity to the Rights of France, Britiun and
Italy. They did not abandon the use of symbols.
They abandoned only those which after die war
had no permanent roots in the imagination of their
constituents. They preserved the unity of France by
the use of symbolism, but they would not risk any-
thing for the unity of Europe. The symbol France
was deeply attached, the symbol Europe had only a
recent history. Nevertheless the distinction between
an omnibus like Europe and a symbol like France is
not sharp. The history of states and empires reveals
times when the scope of the unifying idea increases
and also times when it shrinks. One cannot say that
men have moved consistently from smaller loyalties
to larger ones, because the facts will not bear out the
clmm. The Roman Empire and the Holy Roman
Empire bellied out further than those national uni-
fications in the Nineteenth Century from which be-
lievers in a World State argue by analogy. Never-

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST 217

theless> it is probably true that the real integration
has increased regardless of the temporary inflation
and deflation of empires.

Such a real integration has undoubtedly occurred
in American history. In the decade before 1789
most men, it seems, felt that their state and their
community were real, but that the confederation of
states was unreal. The idea of thur state, its flag,
its most conspicuous leaders, or whatever it was that
represented Massachusetts, or Virginia, were genuine
symbols. That is to say, they were fed by actual
experiences .from childhood, occupation, residence,
and the hke. The span of men's experience had
rarely traversed the imaginary boundaries of their
states. The word Virginian was related to pretty
nearly everything that most Virginians had ever
known or felt. It was the most extensive political
idea which had genuine contact with their experience.

Thdr experience, not their needs. For their needs
arose out of their real environment, which in those
days was at least as large as the thirteen colonies.
They needed a common defense. They needed a
financial and economic regime as extensive as the
Confederation. But as long as the pseudo-environ-
ment of the state encompassed them, the state
symbols exhausted their political interest. An inter-
state idea, like the Confederation, represented a
powerless abstraction. It was an omnibus, rather
than a symbol, and the harmony among divergent
groups, which the omnibus creates, is transient.

2i8 PUBLIC OPINION

I have said that the idea of confederation was a
powerless abstraction. Yet the need of unity existed
in the decade before the Constitution was adopted.
The need existed, !n the sense that affairs were askew
unless the need of unity was taken into account.
Gradually certain classes in each colony b^an to
break through the state experience. Their personal
interests led across the state lines to interstate ex-
periences, and gradually there was constructed in
their minds a picture of the American environment
which was truly national in scope. For them the
idea of federation became a true symbol, and ceased
to be an omnibus. The most imaginative of these
men was Alexander Hamilton. It happened that
he had no primitive attachment to any one state,
for he was born in the West Indies, and had, from
the very beginning of his active life, been associated
with the common interests of all the states. Thus
to most men of the time the question of whether the
capital should be in Virginia or in Philadelphia was
of enormous importance, because they were locally
minded. To Hamilton this question was of no emo-
tional consequence; what he wanted was the assimip-
tion of the state debts because they would further
nationalize the proposed union. So he gladly traded
the site of the capitol for two necessary votes from
men who represented the Potomac district. To
Hamilton the Union was a symbol that represented
all his interests and his whole experience; to White
and Lee from the Potomac, the symbol of their
province was the highest political entity they served,
and they served it though they hated to pay the

THE TRANSFfeR OF INTEREST

219

price. They agreed, says Jefferson, to change their

votes, "White with a revulsion of stomach almost

convulsive." •

In the crystallizing of a common will, there is

always an Alexander Hamilton at work.

> Works, Vol. IX, p. 87. Gted by Beud, Bcoiumk Origiiu of J^tf
mnuK Dmocraty, p. 173.

CHAPTER XIV
YES OR NO

Symbols are often so useful and so mysteriously
powerful that the word itself exhales a magical gla-
mor. In thinking about symbols it is tempting to
treat them as if they possessed independent energy.
Yet no end of symbols which once provoked ecstasy
have quite ceased to affect anybody. The museums
and the books of folklore are full of dead emblems and
incantations, since there is no power in the symbol^
except that which it acquires by association in the
human mtnd. The symbols that have lost their
f>ower, and the symbols incessantly suggested which
fail to take root, remind us that if we were patient
enough to study in detail the circulation of a symbol,
we should behold an entirely secular history.

In the Hughes campaign speech, in the Fourteen
Points, in Hamilton's project, symbols are employed.
But they are employed by somebody at a particular
moment. The words themselves do not crystallize
random feeling. The words must be spoken by
people who are strategically placed, and they must be
spoken at the opportune moment. Otherwise they
are mere wind. The symbols must be earmarked.
For in themselves they mea:n nothing, and the choice
of possible symbols is always so great that we should.

YES OR NO 221

like the donkey who stood equidistant between two
bales of hay, perish from sheer indecision among
the symbols that compete for our attention.

Here, for example, are the reasons for their vote
as stated by certain private citizens to a newspaper
just before the election of 1920.

For Harding:

"The patriotic men and women of to-day, who cast their
ballots for Harding and Coolidge will be held by posterity
to have signed our Second Declaration of Independence."
Mr. Wilmot , inventor.

"He will see to it that the United States does not enter
into 'entangling alliances.' Washington as a dty will
benefit by changing the control of the government from
the E>emocrats to the Republicans."

Mr. Qarence— — , salesman.

For Cox:

"The people of the United States realize that it is our
duty pledged on the fields of France, to join the League of
Nations. We must shoulder our share of the burden of
enforcing peace throughout the world."

Miss Marie , stenographer

"We should lose our own respect and the respect of
other nations were we to refuse to enter the League of
Narions in obtaining intemarional peace."

Mr. Spencer , starisucian.

The two sets of phrases are equally noble, equally
true, and almost reversible. Would Clarence and
Wilmot have admitted for an instant that they in-
tended to default in our duty pledged on the fields of
France; or that they did not desire international

222 PUBLIC OPINION

peace? CcPtainly not. Would Marie and Spencer
have admitted that they were in favor of entangling
alliances or the surrender of American independence?
They would have argued with you that the League
was, as President Wilson called it, a disentangling
alliance, as well as a Declaration of Independence for
all the world, plus a Monroe Doctrine for the planet.

Since the oiFering of symbols is so generous, and
the meaning that can be imputed is so elastic, how
does any particular symbol take root in any parti-
cular person's mind? It is planted there by another
human being whom we recc^ize as authoritative.
If it is planted deeply enough, it may be that later we
shall call the person authoritative who waves that
symbol at us. But in the first instance symbols are
made congenial and important because they are intro-
duced to us by congenial and important people.

For we are not born out of an egg at the age of
eighteen with a realistic imagination; we are still, as
Mr. Shaw recalls, in the era of Burge and Lubin, where
in infancy we are dependent upon older beings for our
contacts. And so we make our connections with the
outer world through certain beloved and authorita-
tive persons. They are the first bridge to the invisi-
ble world. And though we may gradually master for
ourselves many phases of that larger environment,
there always remains a vaster one that is unknown.
To that we still relate ourselves through authorities.
Where all the facts are out of sight a true report and a
plausible error read alike, sound alike, feel alike.

YES OR NO 2J3

Except on a few subjects where our own knowledge
is great, we cannot choose between true and false
accounts. So we choose between trustworthy and
untrustworthy reporters.'

Theoretically we ought to choose the most expert
on each subject. But the choice of the expert, though
a good deal easier than the choice of truth, is still too
difficult and often impracticable. Tlie experts them-
selves are not in the least certain who among them is
the most expert. And at that, the expert, even when
we cfJi identify him, is, likely as not, too busy to be
consulted, or impossible to get at. But there are
people whom we can identify easily enough because
they are the people who are at the head of afFairs.
Parents, teachers, and masterM friends are the
first people of this sort we encounter. Into the diffi-
cult question of why children trust one parent rather
than another, the history teacher rather than the
Sunday school teacher, we need not try to enter.
Nor how trust gradually spreads through a news-
paper or an acquaintance who is interested in public
afFairs to public personages. The literature of psy-
choanalysis is rich in suggestive hypothesis.

At any rate we do find ourselves trusting certain
people, who constitute our means of junction with
pretty nearly the whole realm of unknown things.
Strangely enough, this fact is sometimes regarded as
inherently undignified, as evidence of our sheep-like,
ape-like nature. But complete independence in the
universe is simply unthinkable. If we could not take

> Sec in intereninB, nthcr quaint old book: Gcmie Comewall Lcwii,
A» Eitay on ih liifiufnet oj Jmliority in JUmitj ef Opinio*,

224 PUBLIC OPINION

practically everything for granted, we should spend
our lives in utter triviality. The nearest thing to a
wholly independent adult is a hermit, and the range
of a hermit's action is very short. Acting entirely
for himself, he can act only within a tiny radius and
for simple ends. If he has time to think great thoughts
we can be certain that he has accepted without ques-
tion, before he went in for being a hermit, a whole
repertory of painfully acquired information about
how to keep warm and how to keep from being
hungry, and also about what the great questions are.

On all but a very few matters for short stretches
in our lives, the utmost independence that we can
exercise is to multiply the authorities to whom we
give a friendly hearing. As congenital amateurs our
quest for truth consists in stirring up the experts,
and forcing them to answer any heresy that has the
accent of conviction. In such a debate we can often
judge who has won the dialectical victory, but we are
virtually defenseless against a false premise that
none of the debaters has challenged, or a neglected
aspect that none of them has brought into the argu-
ment. We shall see later how the democratic theory
proceeds on the opposite assumption and assumes for
the purposes of government an unlimited supply of
self-sufficient individuals.

The people on whom we depend for contact with
the outer world are those who seem to be running it.'
They may be running only a very small part of the
worid. The nurse feeds the child, bathes it, and puts
it to bed. That does not constitute the nurse an au-

' Cj. Bryce, Modern Dimocracin, Vol. II, pp. S44-54S-

YES OR NO 225

thority on physics, zoology, and the Higher Criticism.
Mr. Smith runs, or at least hires, the man who runs
the factory. That does not make him an authority
on the Constitution of the United States, nor on the
effects of the Fordney tariff. Mr. Smoot runs the
Republican party in the State of Utah. That in it-
self does not prove he is the best man to consult
about taxation. But the nurse may nevertheless
determine for a while what zoology the child shall
learn, Mr. Smith will have much to say on what
the Constitution shall mean to his wife, his secretary,
and perhaps even to his parson, and who shall define
the Hmits of Senator Smoot's authority?
, The priest, the lord of the manor, the captains and
the kings, the party leaders, the merchant, the boss,
however these men are chosen, whether by birth,
inheritance, conquest or election, they and their
organized following administer human affurs. They
are the officers, and although the same man may be
field marshal at home, second lieutenant at the office,
and scrub private in politics, although in many
institutions the hierarchy of rank is vague or con-
cealed, yet in every institution that requires the
cooperation of many persons, some such hierarchy
exists. ' In American politics we call it a machine, or
"the organization."

3
There are a number of important distinctions
between the members of the machine and the rank

' Cf. M. Oslrogonki, Drmacraiy atid lie Organaaiion of Political Parliti,
passim: R. Michdi, Political Parties, faiiin; and Bryce, Modern Democ-
nuies, particulirlv Chip. LXXV) ilto Ron, PriiuipUi of Sociology,
Chapi. XXII-XXIV.

226 PUBLIC OPINION

and file. The leaders, the steering committee and the
inner circle, are in direct contact with their environ-
ment. They may, to be sure, have a very limited
notion of what they ought to define as the environ-
ment, but they are not dealing almost wholly with
abstractions. There are particular men they hope to
see elected, particular balance sheets they wish to
see improved, concrete objectives that must be at-
tained. I do not mean that they escape the human
propensity to stereotyped vision. Their stereotypes
often make them absurd routineers. But whatever
thar limitations, the chiefs are in actual contact with
some crucial part of that larger environment. They
decide. They give orders. They bai^n. And .
something definite, perhaps not at all what they
imagined, actually happens.

Their subordinates are not tied to them by a com-
mon conviction. That is to say the lesser members
of a machine do not dispose their loyalty according
to independent judgment about the wisdom of the
leaders. In the hierarchy each is dependent upon a
superior and is in turn superior to some class of his
dependents. What holds the machine together is a
system of privileges. These may vary according to
the opportunities and the tastes of those who seek
them, from nepotism and patronage in all their
aspects to clannishness, hero-worship or a fixed
idea. They vary from military rank in armies,
through land and services in a feudal system, to
jobs and publicity in a modern democracy. That is
why you can break up a particular machine by abolish-
ing its privileges. But the machine in every coherent

YES OR NO 227

group is, 1 believe, certain to reappear. For privilege
is entirely relative, and uniformity is impossible.
Imagine the most absolute communism of which
your mind is capable, where no one possessed any
object that everyone else did not possess, and still, if
the communist group had to take any action what-
ever, the mere pleasure of being the friend of the man
who was going to make the speech that secured the
most votes, would, I am convinced, be enough to
crystallize an organization of insiders around him.
It is not necessary, then, to invent a collective
intelligence in order to expliun why the judgments of
a group are usually more coherent, and often more
true to form than the remarks of the man in the
street. One mind, or a few can pursue a train of
thought, but a group trying to think in concert can
as a group do littie more than assent or dissent.
The members of a hierarchy can have a corporate
tradition. As apprentices they learn the trade from
the masters, who in turn learned it when they were
apprentices, and in any enduring society, the change
of personnel within the governing hierarchies is slow
enough to permit the transmission of certain great
stereotypes and patterns of behavior. From father
to son, from prelate to novice, from veteran to cadet,
certain ways of seeing and doing are taught. These
ways become familiar, and are recc^ized as such by
the mass of outsiders.

Distance alone lends enchantment to the view
that masses of human beings ever cooperate in any

m8 public opinion

complex affair without a central machine managed
by a very few people. "No one," says Bryce,*
" can have had some years ' experience of the conduct
of affairs in a I^slature or an administration without
observing how extremely small is the number of
persons by whom the world is governed." He is
referring, of course, to affairs of state. To be sure
if you consider all the affairs of mankind the number
of people who govern is considerable, but ifyou take
any particular institudon, be it a le^slature, a
party, a trade union, a nationalist movement, a
factory, or a club, the number of those who govern
is a very small percentage of those who are theoretic-
ally supposed to govern.

Landslides can turn one machine out and put
another in; revolutions sometimes abolish a particu-
lar machine altogether. The democratic revolution
set up two alternating machines, each of which in the
course of a few years reaps the advantage from the
mistakes of the other. But nowhere does the ma-
chine disappear. Nowhere is the idyllic theory of
democracy realized. Certainly not in trades unions,
nor in socialist parties, nor in communist govern-
ments. There is an inner circle, surrounded by con-
centric circles which fade out gradually into the
disinterested or uninterested rank and file.

Democrats have never come to terms with this
commonplace of group life. They have invariably
regarded it as perverse. For there are two visions of
democracy: one presupposes the self-sufficient indi-
vidual; the other an Oversoul regulating everything.

>0^.c»i., Vol. II, p. 543.

YES OR NO 229

Of the two the Oversoul has some advantage because
it does at least recognize that the mass makes deci-
sions that are not spontaneously born in the breast of
every member. But the Oversoul as presiding genius
in cor|X)r^te behavior is a superfluous mystery if we
fix our attention upon the machine. The machine is
a quite prosaic reality. It consists of human beings
who wear clothes and live in houses, who can be
named and described. They perform all the duties
usually assigned to the Oversoul.

5
The reason for the machine is not the perversity
of human nature, it is that out of the private notions
of any group no common idea emerges by itself. For
the number of ways is limited in which a multitude of
people can act directly upon a situation beyond their
reach. Some of them can migrate, in one form or
another, they can strike or boycott, they can applaud
or hiss. They can by these means occasionally resist
what they do not like, or coerce those who obstruct
what they desire. But by mass action nothing can
be constructed, devised, negotiated, or administered.
A public as such, without an ot^anlzed hierarchy
around which it can gather, may refuse to buy if the
prices are too high, or refuse to work if wages are
too low. A trade union can by mass action in a
strike break an opposition so that the union officials
can negotiate an agreement. It may win, for ex-
ample, the right to joint control. But it cannot
exercise the right except through an organization.
A narion can clamor for war, but when it goes to

I30 PUBLIC OPINION

war it must put itself under orders from a general
SMfF.

The limit of direct action is for all practical pur-
poses the power to say Yes or No on an issue pre-
sented to the mass.' For only in the very simplest
cases does an issue present itself in the same form
spontaneously and approximately at the same time
to all the members of a public. There are unorgan-
ized strikes and boycotts, not merely industrial ones,
where the grievance is so plain that virtually without
leadership the same reaction takes place in many
people. But even in these rudimentary cases there
are persons who know what they want to do more
quickly than the rest, and who become impromptu
ringleaders. Where they do not appear a crowd will
mill about aimlessly beset by all its private aims,
or stand by fatalistically, as did a crowd of fifty
persons the other day, and watch a man commit
suicide.

For what we make out of most of the impressions
that come to us from the invisible world is a kind of
pantomime played out in revery. The number of
times IS small that we consciously decide anything
about events beyond our sight, and each man's opin-
ion of what he could accomplish if he tried, is slight.
There is rarely a practical issue, and therefore no
great habit of decision. This would be more evident
were it not that most information when it reaches us
carries with it an aura of suggestion as to how we

' C/. Jimea, Somt ProbUmi of PkUosofky, p. 227. "Bjt for most of
our emcTECncics, fractional lolutions xrc impossible. Sddom can we act
fractionally."

Cf. Lowdl, Puilie Opinion and Popular GoBtrnmenl, pp. 91, 92.

YES OR NO 23<

ought to feel about the news. That suggestion we
need, and if we do not find it in the news we turn
to the editorials or to a trusted adviser. The revery,
if we feel ourselves implicated, is uncomfortable un-
til we know where we stand, that is, until the facts
have been formulated so that we can feel Yes or No
in r^ard to them.

When a number of people all say Yes they may
have all kinds of reasons for saying it. They gener-
ally do. For the pictures in their minds, are, as we
have already noted, varied in subde and intimate
ways. But this subtlety remains within their minds;
it becomes represented publicly by a number of
symbolic phrases which carry the individual emotion
after evacuating most of the intention. The hier-
archy, or, if it is a contest, then the two hierarchies,
associate the symbols with a definite action, a vote
of Yes or No, an attitude pro or con. Then Smith
who was against the League and Jones who was
against Article X, and Brown who was against Mr.
Wilson and all his works, each for his own reason, all
in the name of more or less the same symbolic
phrase, raster a vote against the Democrats by
voting for the Republicans. A common will has been
expressed.

A concrete choice had to be presented, the choice
had to be connected, by the transfer of interest
through the symbols, with individual opinion. The
professional politicians learned this long before the
democratic philosophers. And so they organized the
caucus, the nominating convention, and the steering
committee, as the means of formulating a definite

232 PUBLIC OPINION

choice. Everyone who wishes to accomplish any-
thing that requires the cooperation of a large number
of people follows th^r example. Sometimes it is
done rather brutally as when the Peace Conference
reduced itself to the Council of Ten, and the Council
of Ten to the Big Three or Four; and wrote a treaty
which the minor allies, their own constituents, and
the enemy were permitted to take or leave. More
consultation than that is generally possible and de-
sirable. But the essential fact remains that a small
number of heads present a choice to a large group.

The abuses of the steering committee have led to
various proposals such as the initiative, referendum
and direct primary. But these merely postponed or
obscured the need for a machine by complicating the
elections, or as H. G. Wells once said with scrupu-
lous accuracy, the selections. For no amount of
balloting can obviate the need of creating an issue,
be it a measure or a candidate, on which the voters
can say Yes, or No. There is, in fact, no such thing
as "direct legislation," For what happens where
it is supposed to exist? The citizen goes to the polls,
receives a ballot on which a number of measures are
printed, almost always in abbreviated form, and, if
he says anything at all, he says Yes or No. The
most brilliant amendment in the world may occur to
him. He votes Yes or No on that bill and no other.
You have to commit violence against the English
language to call that legislation. I do not argue, of
course, that there are no benefits, whatever you

YES OR NO 233

call the process, i think that for certain kinds of
issues there are distinct benefits. But the necessary
simplicity of any mass decision is a very important
fact in view of the inevitable complexity of the world
in which those decisions operate. The most compli-
cated form of voting that anyone proposes is, I
suppose, the preferential ballot. Among a number of
candidates presented the voter under that system,
instead of saying yes to one candidate and no to all
the others, states the order of his choice. But even
here, immensely more flexible though it is, the action
of the mass depends upon the quality of the choices
presented.' And those choices are presented by the
energetic coteries who husde about with petitions
and round up the delegates. The Many can elect
after the Few have nominated.

'£y. H. J. Luki, FonnJations of SeMTtigniy, p. 114. ". . . pro-
poitional leprewntidoa ... by leading, at it leemj to lead, to the
jmup lyneni . . . may deprive the electors of their choice of leaden."
The group fytlem undoubtedly tendi, ai Mr. Liab layi, to make
the taecnon of the executive more indirect, but there ii no doubt alio
that it ttndj to produce le^stative aucmbliei in which curtentt of
^nion are more fully repietented. Whether that ii good or bad
cannot be determioed a pnori. But one can lay that succeiiful co-
operation lod reiponsibility in a more accurately representative at-
tembly require a higher organization of political intcJIigeoce and
political habit, than in a rigid two-party house. It is a more complex
political fonn and may therefore work lew wdL

CHAPTER XV
LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE

Because of their transcendent practical import-
ance, no successful leader has ever been too busy to
cultivate the symbols which organize his following.
What privileges do within the hierarchy, symbols do
for the rank and file. They conserve unity. From
the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden
idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic
word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or
Bentham, symbols have been cherished by leaders,
many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because
they were focal points where differences merged.
The detached observer may scorn the "star-
spangled" ritual which hedges the symbol, perhaps as
much as the king who told himself that Paris was
worth a few masses. But the leader knows by
experience that only when symbols have done their
work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd.
In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common
target, and the idiosyncrasyof real ideas blotted out.
No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criti-
cism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination
of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot,
"our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to
poke about it you cannot reverence it. "' For poking

' The English Constitution, p. 127. D. A ppleton &( Company, 1914.

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 235

about with clear definitions and candid statements
serves all high purposes known to man, except the
easy conservation of a common will. Poking about,
as every responsible leader suspects, tends to break
the transference of emotion from the individual mind
to the institutional symbol. And the first result of
that is, as he rightly says, a chaos of individualism
and warring sects. The disintegration of a symbol,
like Holy Russia, or the Iron Diaz, is always the
beginning of a long upheaval.

These great symbols possess by transference all
the minute and detailed loyalties of an ancient and
stereotyped society. They evoke the feeling that
each individual has for the landscape, the furniture,
the faces, the memories that are his first, and in a
static society, his only reality. That core of images
and devotions without which he is unthinkable to
himself, is nationality. The great symbols take up
these devotions, and can arouse them without calling
forth the primitive images. The lesser symbols of
public debate, the more casual chatter of politics, are
always referred back to these proto-symbols, and if
possible associated with them. The question of a
proper fare on a municipal subway is symbolized as
an issue between the People and the Interests, and
then the People is inserted in the symbol American,
so that finally in the heat of a campaign, an eight
cent fare becomes unAmerican. The Revolutionary
fathers died to prevent it. Lincoln suffered that it
might not come to pass, resistance to it was implied
in the death of those who sleep in France.

Because of its power to siphon emotion out of

236 PUBLIC OPINION

distinct ideas, the symbol is both a mechanism of
solidarity, and a mechanism of exploitation. It
enables people to work for a common end, but just
because the few who are strat^cally placed must
choose the concrete objectives, the symbol is also an
instrument by which a few can fatten on many,
deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony
for objects they do not understand.

Many aspects of our subjection to symbols are not
flattering if we choose to think of ourselves as realis-
tic, self-sufEcient, and self-governing personalities.
Yet it is imposMble to conclude that symbols are
altc^ther instruments of the devil. In the realm of
science and contemplation they are undoubtedly the
tempter himself. But in the world of action they
may be beneficent, and are sometimes a neces^ty.
The necessity is often imagined, the peril manu-
factured. But when quick results are imperative, the
manipulation of masses through symbols may be the
only quick way of having a critical thing done.
It is often more important to act than to understand.
It is sometimes true that the action would fail if
everyone understood it. There arc many affairs
which cannot wait for a referendum or endure pub-
licity, and there are times, during war for example,
when a nation, an army, and even its commanders
must trust strategy to a very few minds; when two
conflicting opinions, though one happens to be right,
are more perilous than one opinion which is wrong.
The wrong opinion may have bad results, but the two
opinions may entail disaster by dissolving unity."

■ Captain Peter S. Wright, Assistant Secietary of the Supreme Wai

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 237

Thus Foch and Sir Henry Wilson, who foresaw the
impending disaster to Gough's army, as a conse-
quence of the divided and scattered reserves, never-
theless kept their opinions well within a small circle,
knowing that even the risk of a smashing defeat was
less certainly destructive, than would have been an
excited debate in the newspapers. For what matters
most under the kind of tenaon which prev^led in
March, 1918, is less the lightness of a particular move
than the unbroken expectation as to the source of
command. Had Foch "gone to the people" he might
have won the debate, but long before he could have
won it, the armies which he was to command would
have dissolved. For the spectacle of a row on Olym-
pus is diverting and destructive.

But so also is a conspiracy of ^ence. Says Cap>
tiun Wright: "It is in the High Command and not in
the line, that the art of camouflage is most practiced,
and reaches to highest flights. All chiefs everywhere
are now kept punted, by the busy work of number-
less publicists, so as to be mistaken for Napoleons —
at a distance. . . .It becomes almost impossible to
displace these Napoleons, whatever their incom-
petence, because of the enormous public suppwrt
created by hiding or glossing failure, and exaggera-
ting or inventing success. . . . But the most insidi-
ous and worst effect of this so highly organized falsity
is on the generals themselves: modest and patriotic as
they mostiy are, and as most men must be to take up
and follow the noble profession of arms, they them-

Council, At ikt Sufttmt War CouniU, a wdl worth careful reading m
Mcrecy and unity of comniand, even though in retpect to the allied lead-
en he vagea a pasnonatc polemic.

138 PUBLIC OPINION

selves are ultimately affected by these universal
illusions, and reading it every morning in the paper,
they also grow persuaded they are thunderbolts of
war and infallible, however much they fail, and that
thdr m^ntenance in command is an end so sacred
that it justifies the use of any means. . . . These
various conditions, of which this great deceit is the
greatest, at last emancipates all General Staffs from
all control. They no longer live for the nation: the
nation lives, or rather dies, for them. Victory or
defeat ceases to be the prime interest. What matters
to these semi-sovereign corporations is whether dear
old Willie or poor old Harry is going to be at their
head, or the Chantilly party prev^l over the Boule-
vard des Invalides party. " ' j
Yet Captain Wright who can be so eloquent and so
discerning about the dangers of silence is forced
nevertheless to approve the silence of Foch in not
publicly destroying the illusions. There is here a
complicated paradox, arising as we shall see more
fully later on, because the traditional democratic
view of life is conceived, not for emergencies and
dangers, but for tranquility and harmony. And so
where masses of people must cooperate in an uncer-
tain and eruptive environment, it is usually necessary
to secure unity and flexibility without real consent.
The symbol does that. It obscures personal inten-
tion, neutralizes discrimination, and obfuscates in-
dividual purpose. It immobilizes personality, yet at
the same time it enormously sharpens the intention
of the group and welds that group, as nothing else in a
' Op. cit; pp. 9B1 loi-ioj.

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 239

crisis can weld it, to purposeful action. It renders
the mass mobile though it immobilizes personality.
The symbol is the instrument by which in the short
run the mass escapes from its own inertia, the in-
ertia of indecision, or the inertia of headlong move-
ment, and is rendered capable of bang led along the
zigzag of a complex situation.

But in the longer run, the give and take increases
between the leaders and the led. The word most
often used to describe the state of mind in the rank
and file about its leaders is morale. That is sud to
be good when the individuals do the part allotted
to them with all thar energy; when each man's
whole strength is evoked by the command from
above. It follows that every leader must plan his
policy with this in mind. He must consider his de-
cision not only on " the merits," but also in its effect
on any part of his following whose continued sup-
port he requires. If he is a general planning an
attack, he knows that his organized military units
will scatter into mobs if the percentage of casualties
rises too high.

In the Great War previous calculations were upset
to an extraordinary d^ee, for "out of every nine
men who went to France five became casualties." '
Tlie limit of endurance was far greater than anyone
had supposed. But there was a limit somewhere.

frencb.

J the EngliA louc« altme, pottibly t

240 PUBLIC OPINION

And so, partly because of its effect on the enemy,
but also in great measure because of its effect on
the troops and their families, no command in this
war dared to publish a candid statement of its losses.
In France the casualty lists were never published.
In England, America, and Germany publication of
the losses of a big battle were spread out over long
periods so as to destroy a unified impression of the
total. Only the insiders knew until long afterwards
what the Somme had cost, or the Flanders battles; '
and Ludendorff undoubtedly had a very much more
accurate idea of these casualties than any private
person in London, Paris or Chicago. All the leaders
in every camp did their best to limit the amount of
actual war which any one soldier or civilian could
vividly conceive. But, of course, among old veterans
like the French troops of 1917, a great deal more is
known about war than ever reaches the public.
Such an army begins to judge its commanders in
terms of its own suffering. And then, when another
extravagant promise of victory turns out to be the
customary bloody defeat, you may find that a
mutiny breaks out over some comparatively minor
blunder,- like Nivelle's offensive of 1917, because
it is a cumulative blunder. Revolutions and mutin-
ies generally follow a small sample of a big series of
evils.'

' Op cil., p. 34, the Somme cose nearly 500,000 casualties; the Am«
and Flanders offensives of 1917 cost 650,000 British casualties.

' The Allies suffered many bloodier defeats than that on the Chemin
des Dames.

* C/. Pienefeu's account, op, dt., on the causes of the Soisson) mutinies,
and the method adopted by Petain to deal with them. Vol. 1, Part III,
el stq.

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 241

The incidence of policy detennines the relation
between leader and following. If those whom he
needs in his plan are remote from the place where
the action takes place, if the results are hidden or
postponed, if the individual obligations are indirect
or not yet due, above all if assent is an exercise of
some pleasurable emotion, the leader is likely to have
a free hand. Those programs are immediately most
popular, like prohibition among teetotalers, which
do not at once impinge upon the private habits of
the followers. That is one great reason why govern-
ments have such a free hand in foreign affairs. Most
of the frictions between two states involve a series
of obscure and long-winded contentions, occasion-
ally on the frontier, but far more often in regions
about which school geographies have supplied no
precise ideas. In Czechoslovakia America is re-
garded as the Liberator; in American newspaper
paragraphs and musical comedy, in Ajnerican con-
versation by and large, it has never been finally
settled whether the country we liberated is Czecho-
slavia or Jugoslovakia.

In foreign affairs the incidence of policy is for a
very long time confined to an unseen environment.
Nothing that happens out there is felt to be wholly
real. And so, because in the ante-bellum period,
nobody has to fight and nobody has to pay, govern-
ments go along according to their lights without
much reference to their people. In local affairs the
cost of a policy is more easily visible. And therefore,
all but the most exceptional leaders prefer policies
in which the costs are as far as possible indirect.

»42 PUBLIC OPINION

They do not like direct taxation. They do not like
to pay as they go. They like long term debts. They
like to have the voters believe that the foreigner will
pay. They have always been compelled to calculate
prosperity in terms of the producer rather than in
terms of the consumer, because the inddence on the
consumer is distributed over so many trivial items.
Labor leaders have always preferred an increase of
money wages to a decrease in prices. There has
always been more popular interest in the profits
of millionaires, which are visible but comparatively
unimportant, than in the wastes of the industrial
system, which are huge but elusive. A le^slature
dealing with a shortage of houses, such as exists
when this is written, illustrates this rule> first by
doing nothing to increase the number of houses,
second by smiting the greedy landlord on the hip,
third by investigating the profiteering builders and
working men. For a constructive policy deals with
remote and uninteresting factors, while a greedy
landlord, or a profiteering plumber is visible and
immediate.

But while people will readily believe that in an
untmagined future and in unseen places a certwi
policy will benefit them, the actual working out of
policy follows a different logic from their opinions.
A nation may be induced to believe that jacking up
the freight rates will make the railroads prosperous.
But that belief will not make the roads prosperous,
if the impact of those rates on farmers and shippers
is such as to produce a commodity price beyond
what the consumer can pay. Whether the consumer

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 243

will pay the price depends not upon whether he
nodded his head nine months previously at the
proposal to raise rates and save business, but on
whether he now wants a new hat or a new automo-
bile enough to pay for them.

3

Leaders often pretend that they have merely un-
covered a program which existed in the minds of
thdr public. When they believe it, they are usually
deceiving themselves. Programs do not invent
themselves synchronously in a multitude of minds.
That is not because a multitude of minds is necessar-
ily inferior to that of the leaders, but because thought
is the function of an organism, and a mass is not an
organism.

This fact is obscured because the mass is con-
stantly exposed to suggestion. It reads not the news,
but the news with an aura of suggestion about it,
indicating the line of action to be taken. It hears
reports, not objective as the facts are, but already
stereotyped to a certain pattern of behavior. Thus
the ostensible leader often finds that the real leader
is a powerful newspaper proprietor. But if, as in a
laboratory, one could remove all suggestion and lead-
ing from the experience of a multitude, one would,
I think, find something like this: A mass exposed to
the same stimuli would develop responses that
could theoretically be charted in a polygon of error.
There would be a certain group that felt sufficiently
alike to be classified tt^ether. There would be
variants of feeling at both ends. These classifica-

444 PUBLIC OPINION

tions would tend to harden as individuals in each of
the classifications made their reactions vocal. That
is to say, when the vague feelings of those who felt
Vilely had been put into words, they would know
more definitely what they felt, and would then feel
it more definitely.

Leaders in touch with popular feeling are quickly
conscious of these reactions. They know that high
prices are pressing upon the mass, or that certain
classes of individuals are becoming unpopular, or
that feeling towards another nation is friendly or
hostile. But, always barring the effect of suggestion
which is merely the assumption of leadership by
the reporter, there would be nothing in the feeling
of the mass that fatally determined the choice of
any particular policy. All that the feeling of the
mass demands is that policy as it is developed and
exposed shall be, if not logically, then by analogy
and association, connected with the original feeling.

So when a new policy is to be launched, there is
a preliminary bid for community of feeling, as in
Mark Antony's speech to the followers of Brutus."
In the first phase, the leader vocalizes the prevalent
opinion of the mass. He identifies himself with the
familiar attitudes of his audience, sometimes by
telling a good story, sometimes by brandishing his
patriotism, often by pinching a grievance. Finding
that he Is trustworthy, the multitude milling hither
and thither may turn in towards him. He will
then be expected to set forth a plan of campaign.
But he will not find that plan in the slogans which

' EicdlcDtly analysed m Martin, The BikoBtoT of Crowds, pp. IJO-I J3,

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 24S

convey the feelings of the mass. It will not even
always be indicated by them. Where the incidence
of policy is remote, all that is essential is that the
program shall be verbally and emotionally connected
at the start with what has become vocal in the
multitude. Trusted men in a familiar role subscrib-
ing to the accepted symbols can go a very long way
on thar own initiative without expl^ning the sub-
stance of their programs.

But wise leaders are not content to do that. Pro-
vided they think publicity will not strengthen op-
position too much, and that debate will not delay
action too long, they seek a certain measure of con-
sent. They take, if not the whole mass, then the
subordinates of the hierarchy suiEciendy into thdr
confidence to prepare them for what might happen,
and to make them feel that they have freely willed
the result. But however sincere the leader may be,
there is always, when the facts are very complicated,
a certwi amount of illusion in these consultations.
For it is impossible that all the contingencies shall
be as vivid to the whole public as they are to the
more experienced and the more imaginative. A
fairly large percentage are bound to agree without
having taken the time, or without posses^ng the
background, for appreciating the choices which the
leader presents to them. No one, however, can
ask for more. And only theorists do. If we have had
our day in court, if what we had to say was heard,
and then if what is done comes out well, most of us
do not stop to consider how much our opinion ef-
fected the bu^ness in hand.

2+6 PUBLIC OPINION

And therefore, if the established powers are sen-
stive and welUinformed, if they are visibly trying to
meet popular feeling, and actually removing some ot
the causes of dissatisfaction, no matter how slowly
they proceed, provided they are seen to be proceed-
ing, they have little to fear. It takes stupendous
and persistent blundering, plus almost infinite
tactlessness, to start a revolution from below. Palace
revolutions, interdepartmental revolurions, are a
different matter. So, too, is demagogy. That stops
at relieving the tension by expressing the feel-
ing. But the statesman knows that such relief is
temporary, and if indulged too often, unsanitary.
He, therefore, sees to it that he arouses no feeling
which he cannot sluice into a program that deals
with the facts to which the feelings refer.

But all leaders are not statesmen, all leaders hate
to resign, and most leaders find it hard to believe
that bad as things are, the other fellow would not
make them worse. They do not passively wait for
the public to feel the incidence of policy, because
the incidence of that discovery is generally upon
their own heads. They are, therefore, intermittently
engaged in mending their fences and consolidating
their position.

The mending of fences consists in offering an
occasional scapegoat, in redressing a minor griev-
ance affecting a powerful individual or faction,
rearranging certain jobs, placating a group of people
who want an arsenal in their home town, or a law
to stop somebody's vices. Study the daily activity
of any public official who depends on election and

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 247

you can enlai^ this list. There are Congressmen
elected year after year who never think of dissipating
thdr energy on public affairs. They prefer to do a
little service for a lot of people on a lot of little sub-
jects, rather than to engage in trying to do a big
service out there in the void. But the number
of people to whom any organization can be a suc-
cessful valet is limited, and shrewd politicians take
care to attend either the influential, or somebody
so blatandy uninfluential that to pay any atten-
tion to him is a mark of sensational magnanimity.
The far greater number who cannot be held by
favors, the anonymous multitude, receive propa-
ganda.

The established leaders of any organization have
great natural advantages. They are believed to
have better sources of information. The books and
papers are in their offices. They took part in the
important conferences. TTiey met the important
people. They have responability. It is, therefore,
easier for them to secure attention and to speak in a
convincing tone. But also they have a very great
deal of control over the access to the facts. Every
official is in some d^ee a censor. And since no one
can suppress information, either by concealing it or
foi^tting to mention it, without some notion of
what he wishes the public to know, every leader is
in some degree a propagandist. Strat^cally placed,
and compelled often to choose even at the best
between the equally cedent though conflicting ideals
of safety for the institution, and candor to his public,
the official flnds himself deciding more and more

248 PUBLIC OPINION

consciously what facts, in what setting, in what
guise he shall permit the public to know.

That the manufacture of consent is capable of

great refinements no one, I think, denies. The pro-
cess by which public opinions arise is certainly no
less intricate than it has appeared in these pages,
and the opportunities for manipulation open to
anyone who understands the process are plain enotjgh.

The creation of consent is not a new art. It is
a very old one which was supposed to have died out
with the appearance of democracy. But it has not
died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in
technic, because it is now based on analysis rather
than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psycho-
It^cal research, coupled with the modern means
of communication, the practice of democracy has
turned a corner. A revolution is taking place,
infinitely more significant than any shifting of
economic power.

Within the life of the generation now in control
of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art
and a regular organ of popular government. None
of us begins to understand the consequences, but it
is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of
how to create consent will alter every political cal-
culation and modify every political premise. Under
the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the
sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants
of our thinking have become variables. It is no
longer possible, for example, to believe in the original

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE 249

dt^ma of democracy; that the knowledge needed
for the management of human afffurs comes up
spontaneously from the human heart. Where we
act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-
deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot
verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot
rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of
casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond
our reach.

THE IMAGE OF DEMOCRACY

"I confess that in America I saw more than America;
I sought the image of democracy itself."
Alexis de Tocqueville.

Chapter i6. The Self-Centered Man

" 17. The Self-Contain ED Community
" 18. The Role of Force, Patronage

AND Privilege
" 19. The Old Image in a New Form:

Guild Socialism
" 30. A New Image

CHAPTER XVI
THE SELF-CENTERED MAN

Since Public Opinion is supposed to be the prime
mover in democracies, one might reasonably expect
to find a vast literature. One does not find it. There
are excellent books on government and parties, that
is, on the machinery which in theory re^sters public
opinions after they are formed. But on the sources
from which these public opinions arise, on the pro-
cesses by which they are derived, there is relatively
little. The existence of a force called Public Opinion
is in the main taken for granted, and American
political writers have been most interested either in
finding out how to make government express the
common will, or in how to prevent the common will
from subverting the purposes for which they believe
the government exists. According to thdr traditions
they have wished either to tame opnion or to obey it.
Thus the editor of a notable series of text-books
writes that " the most difficult and the most moment-
ous question of government (is) how to transmit the
force of individual opinion into public action." *
But surely there is a still more momentous question,
the question of how to validate our private versions

' Albert Buihndl Han in the lotraductocy note to A. Lawrence
Lowetl'i Pvblic Opinion and Popular GaetrnmnL

254 PUBLIC OPINION

of the political scene. There is, as I shall tty to
indicate further on, the prospect of radical improve-
ment by the development of principles already in
operation. But this development will depend on how
well we learn to use knowledge of the way opinions are
put together to watch over our own opinions when
they are bang put together. For casual opinion,
being the product of partial contact, of tradition, and
personal interests, cannot in the nature of things take
kindly to a method of political thought which is
based on exact record, measurement, analysis and
comparison. Just those qualities of the mind which
determine what shall seem interesting, important,
familiar, personal, and dramatic, are the qualities
which in the first instance realistic opinion frustrates.
Therefore, unless there is in the community at large a
growing conviction that prejudice and intuition are
not enough, the working out of realistic opinion,
which takes time, money, labor, conscious effort,
patience, and equanimity, will not find enough sup-
port. That conviction grows as self-criticism in-
creases, and makes us conscious of buncombe, con-
temptuous of ourselves when we employ it, and on
guard to detect it. Without an ingrained habit of
analyzing opinion when we read, talk, and decide,
most of us would hardly suspect the need of better
ideas, nor be interested in them when they appear,
nor be able to prevent the new technic of political
intelligence from being manipulated.

Yet democracies, if we are to judge by the oldest
and most powerful of them, have made a mystery
out of public opinion. There have been skilled

THE SELF-CENTERED MAN 255

cu^anizers of opinion who understood the mystery
well enough to create majorities on election day.
But these organizers have been re^u-ded by political
science as low fellows or as "problems," not as
possessors of the most effective knowledge there was
on how to create and operate public opinion. The
tendency of the people who have voiced the ideas of
democracy, even when they have not manned its
action, the tendency of students, orators, editors,
has been to look upon Public Opinion as men in other
societies looked upon the uncanny forces to which
they ascribed the last word in the irection of events.
For in almost every political theory there is an in-
scrutable element which in the heyday of that theory
goes unexamined. Behind the appearances there
is a Fate, there are Guardian Spirits, or Mandates to
a Chosen People, a Divine Monarchy, a Vice-Regent
of Heaven, or a Class of the Better Bom. The more
obvious angels, demons, and kings are gone out of
democratic thinking, but the need for believing that
there are reserve powers of guidance persists. It
perasted for those thinkers of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury who designed the matrix of democracy. They
had a pale god, but warm hearts, and in the doctrine
of popular sovereignty they found the answer to their
need of an infallible origin for the new social order.
There was the mystery, and only enemies of the
people touched it with profane and curious hands.

They cUd not remove the veil because they were
practical polidcians in a bitter and uncertain struggle.

2S6 PUBLIC OPINION

They had themselves felt the aspiration of democ-
racy, which is ever so much deeper, more intimate
and more important than any theory of government.
They were engaged, as against the prejudice of ages,
in the assertion of human dignity. What possessed
them was not whether John Smith had sound views
on any public question, but that John Smith, scion of
a stock that had always been considered inferior,
would now bend his knee to no other man. It wa^
this spectacle that made it bliss "in that dawn to be
alive." But every analyst seems to degrade that
dignity, to deny that all men are reasonable all the
time, or educated, or informed, to note that people
are fooled, that they do not always know thdr own
interests, and that all men are not equally fitted to
govern.

The critics were about as welcome as a small boy
with a drum. Every one of these observations on the
fallibility of man was being exploited ad nauseam.
Had democrats admitted there was truth in any of
the aristocratic arguments they would have opened a
breach in the defenses. And so just as Aristotle had
to insist that the slave was a slave by nature, the
democrats had to insist that the free man was a legis-
lator and administrator by nature. They could not
stop to explain that a human soul might not yet have,
or indeed might never have, this technical equipment,
and that nevertheless it had an inalienable right not
to be used as the unwilling instrument of other men.
The superior people were still too strong and too
unscrupulous to have refrained from capitalizing so
candid a statement.

THE SELF-CENTERED MAN 257

So the early democrats insisted that a reasoned
righteousness welled up spontaneously out of the
mass of men. All of them hoped that it would, many
of them believed that it did, although the cleverest,
like Thomas Jefferson, had all sorts of private reser-
vations. But one thing was certain: if public opinion
did not come forth spontaneously, nobody in that
age believed it would come forth at all. For in one
fundamental respect the political science on which de-
mocracy was based was the same science that Aristotle
formulated. It was the same science for democrat
and aristocrat, royalist and republican, in that its
major premise assumed the art of government to be
a natural endowment. Men differed radically when
they tried to name the men so endowed; but they
agreed in thinking that the greatest question of all
was to find those in whom political wisdom was innate.
Royalists were sure that kings were born to govern.
Alexander Hamilton thought that while "there
are strong minds in every walk of life . . . the repre-
sentative body, with too few exceptions to have any
influence on the spirit of the government, will be
composed of landholders, merchants, and men of the
learned professions." ' Jefferson thought the politi-
cal faculties were deposited by God in farmers and
planters, and sometimes spoke as if they were found
in all the people.* The main premise was the same:
to govern was an instinct that appeared, according
to your social preferences, in one man or a chosen
few, in all males, or only in males who were white

' The Ftitraliit, No*. ]5, 36. Cf. comnieat by Heary Jonei Ford m hi*
Risi and Groank of Amtneon Politkt. Cb. V.
■ See below p. i6i.

358 PUBLIC OPINION

and twenty-one, perhaps even in all men and all
women.

In deciding who was most fit to gorern, knowledge
of the world was taken for granted. The aristocrat
believed that those who dealt with large affairs pos-
sessed the instinct, the democrats asserted that all
men possessed the instinct and could therefore deal
with large affairs. It was no part of political science
in either case to think out how knowledge of the world
could be brought to the ruler. If you were for the
people you did not try to work out the question of
how to keep the voter informed. By the age of
twenty-one he had his political faculties. What
counted was a good heart, a reasoning mind, a bal-
anced judgment. These would ripen with age, but
it was not necessary to consider how to inform the
heart and feed the reason. Men took tn thar facts as
they took in their breath.

But the facts men could come to possess in this
effortless way were limited. They could know the
customs and more obvious character of the place
where they lived and worked. But the outer world
they had to conceive, and they did not conceive it
instinctively, nor absorb trustworthy knowledge of
it just by living. Therefore, the only environment in
which spontaneous politics were possible was one
confined within the range of the ruler's direct and
certain knowledge. There is no escaping this con-
clusion, wherever you found government on the
natural range of men's faculties. "If," as Aristotle

THE SELF-CENTERED MAN 259

s^d,' "the citizens of a state are to judge and
distribute offices according to merit, then they must
know each other's characters; where they do not
possess this knowledge, both the election to offices
and the deci^on of law suits will go wrong. "

Obviously this maxim was binding upon every
school of political thought. But it presented peculiar
difficulties to the democrats. Those who believed
in class government could fairly claim that in the
court of the king, or in the country houses of the
gentry, men did know each other's characters, and
as long as the rest of mankind was passive, the only
characters one needed to know were the characters
of men in the ruling class. But the democrats, who
wanted to raise the dignity of all men, were im-
mediately involved by the immense size and con-
fusion of their ruling class — the male electorate.
Their science told them that politics was an in-
stinct, and that the instinct worked in a limited
environment. Their hopes bade them insist that all
men in a very large environment could govern. In
this deadly conflict between their ideals and their
science, the only way out was to assume without
much discussion that the voice of the people was
the voice of God.

The paradox was too great, the stakes too big,
their ideal too precious for critical examination.
They could not show how a citizen of Boston was to
stay in Boston and conceive the views of a Vir-
ginian, how a Virginian in Virginia could have real
opinions about the government at Washington,
" PoUHci, Bk. vn, Ch. 4.

26o PUBLIC OPINION

how Congressmen in Washington could have opinions
about China or Mexico. For in that day it was not
possible for many men to have an unseen environ-
ment brought into the field of thdr judgment.
There had been some advances, to be sure, Mnce
Aristotle. There were a few newspapers, and there
were books, better roads perhaps, and better ships.
But there was no great advance, and the political
assumptions of the Eighteenth Century had essen-
tially to be those that had prevailed in political
science for two thousand years. The pioneer demo-
crats did not possesss the material for resolving
the conflict between the known range of man's
attention and their illimitable faith in his dignity.

Their assumptions antedated not only the modern
newspaper, the world-wide press services, photog-
raphy and moving pictures, but, what is really
more significant, they antedated measurement and
record, quantitative and comparative analysis, the
canons of evidence, and the ability of psycholf^cal
analysis to correct and discount the prejudices of
the witness. I do not mean to say that our records
are satisfactory, our analysis unbiased, our measure-
ments sound. I do mean to say that the key in-
ventions have been made for bringing the unseen
world into the field of judgment. They had not
been made in the time of Aristode, and they were
not yet important enough to be visible for political
theory in the age of Rousseau, Montesquieu, or
Thomas Jefferson. In a later chapter I think we
shall see that even in the latest theory of human
reconstruction, that of the English Guild Socialists,

THE SELF-CENTERED MAN 261

all the deeper premises have been taken over from
this older system of political thought.

That systemj whenever it was competent and
honest, had to assume that no man could have more
than a very partial experience of public affairs. In
the sense that he can give only a litde time to them,
that assumption is still true, and of the utmost
consequence. But ancient theory was compelled to
assume, not only that men could give little attention
to public questions, but that the attention available
would have to be confined to matters dose at hand.
It would have been visionary to suppose that a
time would come when distant and complicated
events could conceivably be reported, analyzed,
and presented in such a form that a really valuable
choice could be made by an amateur. That time
is now in sight. There is no longer any doubt that
the continuous reporting of an unseen environment
is fea^ble. It is often done badly, but the fact that
it is done at all shows that it can be done, and the
fact that we be^n to know how badly it is often
done, shows that it can be done better. With
varying d^rees of skill and honesty distant com-
plexities are reported every day by engineers and
accountants for business men, by secretaries and
dvil servants for officials, by intelligence officers
for the General Staff", by some journalists for some
readers. These are crude b^nnings but radical,
far more radical in the literal meaning of that word
than the repetition of wars, revolutions, abdications
and restorations; as radical as the change in the
scale of human life which has made it pos^ble for

262 PUBLIC OPINION

Mr. Lloyd Geoi^ to discuss Welsh coal mining
after breakfast in London, and the fate of the Arabs
before dinner in Paris.

For the possibility of bringing any aspect of human
affairs within the range of judgment breaks the spell
which has lain upon political ideas. There have,
of course, been plenty of men who did not realize
that the range of attention was the main premise of
political science. They have built on sand. They
have demonstrated in their own persons the effects
of a very limited and self-centered knowledge of the
world. But for the political thinkers who have
counted, from Plato and Aristotle through Machia-
velli and Hobbes to the democratic theorists, specu-
lation has revolved around the self-centered man
who had to see the whole world by means of a few
pictures in his head.

CHAPTER XVII
THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY

That groups of self-centered people would engage
in a stni^e for existence if they rubbed against
each other has always been evident. This much
truth there is at any rate in that famous passage in
the Leviathan where Hobbes says that "though
there had never been any time wherein particular
men were in a condition of war one against another>
yet at all times kings and persons of sovereign au-
thorily because of their independency ^ are in continual
jealousies and in the state and posture of gladiators,
having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed
on one another. . ." '

a
To circumvent this conclusion one great branch
of human thought, which had and has many schools,
proceeded in this fashion: it conceived an ideally
just pattern of human relations in which each person
had well defined functions and rights. If he con-
scientiously filled the role allotted to him, it did not
matter whether his opinions were right or wrong.
He did his duty, the next man did his, and all the
dutiful people together made a harmonious world.

26+ PUBLIC OPINION

Every caste system illustrates this principle; you
lind it in Plato's Republic and in Aristotle, in the
feudal ideal, in the circles of Dante's Paradise, in
the bureaucratic type of socialism, and in liussez-
faire, to an amazing d^rec in syndicalism, guild
socialism, anarchism, and in the system of interna^
tional law idealized by Mr. Robert Lanang. All of
them assume a pre-established harmony, inspired,
imposed, or innate, by which the self-opinionated
person, class, or community is orchestrat«I with the
rest of mankind. The more authoritarian imagine
a conductor for the symphony who sees to it that
each man plays his part; the anarchistic are inclined
to think that a more divine concord would be heard
if each player improvised as he went along.

But there have also been philosophers who were
bored by these schemes of rights and duties, took
conflict for granted, and tried to see how their side
might come out on top. They have always seemed
more realistic, even when they seemed alarming,
because all they had to do was to generalize the
experience that nobody could escape. Machiavelli
is the classic of this school, a man most mercilessly
maligned, because he happened to be the first na-
turalist who used plain language in a field hitherto
preempted by supernaturalists.' He has a worse
name and more disciples than any political thinker
who ever lived. He truly described the technic of

his AUxendir Hamillon, says of Machiavelli

he conditions which exist — the nature of man

nchangeable, he proceeds in a calm, unrooril

n fro^, to show how a valiant and sagaciojs ruler

to his own advantage and the security of his dy-

THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY 265

existence for the self-contained state. That is why
he has the disciples. He has the bad name chiefly
because he cocked his eye at the MetUci family,
dreamed in his study at night where he wore Ms
"noble court dress" that Machiavelli was himself
the Pnnce, and turned a pungent description of
the way things are done into an eulogy on that way
of doing them.

In his most infamous chapter ^ he wrote that
"a prince ought to take care that he never lets
anything slip from his lips that is not replete with
the above-named five qualities, that he may appear
to him who hears and sees him altc^ther merciful,
faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There
is nothing more necessary to appear to have than
this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally
more by the eye than by the hand, ba:ause it belongs
to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch
with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be,
few really know what you are, and those few dare
not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many,
who have the majesty of the state to defend them;
and in the actions of all men, and especially of
princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one
judges by the result. . . . One prince of the present
time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches
anything else but peace and good faith, and to both
he is most hostile, and dther, if he had kept it,
would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom
many a time."

i66 PUBLIC OPINION

That is cynical. But it is the cynicisni of a man
who saw truly without knowing quite why he saw
what he saw. Machiavelli is thinking of the run of
men and princes "who judge generally more by
the eye than by the hand," which is his way of saying
that their judgments are subjective. He was too
close to earth to pretend that the Italians of his
day saw the world steadily and saw it whole. He
would not indulge in fantasies, and he had not the
materials for imagining a race of men that had
learned how to correct their vision.

The worldj as he found it, was composed of
people whose vision could rarely be corrected, and
Machiavelli knew that such people, since they see all
public relations in a private way, are invx^ved in
perpetual strife. What they see is their own per-
sonal, class, dynasric, or municipal version of affairs
that in reality extend far beyond the boundaries
of their vision. They see their aspect. They see
it as right. But they cross other people who are
similarly self-centered. Then their very existence
is endangered, or at least what they, far unsuspected
private reasons, regard as their existence and take
to be a danger. The end, which is impregnably
based on a real though private experience justifies
the means. They will sacrifice any one of these
ideals to save all of them, .... "one judges by
the result. . ."

3

These elemental truths confronted the democratic

philosophers. Consciously or otherwise, they knew

THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY tfyj

that the range of political knowledge was limited,
that the area of self-^vemment would have to be
limited, and that self-contained states when they
nibbed against each other were in the posture of
gladiators. But they knew just as certunly, that
there was in men a will to decide their own fate,
and to find a peace that was not imposed by force.
How could they reconcile the msh and the fact?

They looked about them. In the dty states of
Greece and Italy they found a chronicle of cor-
ruption, intrigue and war.' In their own cities
they saw faction, artificiality, fever. This was no
environment in which the democratic ideal could
prosfier, no place where a group of independent
and equally competent people managed their own
affairs spontaneously. They looked further, guided
somewhat perhaps by Jean Jacques Rousseau, to
remote, unspoiled country villages. They saw
enough to convince themseJves that there the ideal
was at home. Jefferson in particular felt this, and
Jefferson more than any other man formulated the
American image of democracy. From the townships
had come the power that had carried the American
Revoludon to victory. From the townships were
to come the votes that carried Jefferson's party to
power. Out there in the farming communities of
Massachusetts and Virginia, if you wore glasses
that obliterated the slaves, you could see mth your-
mind's eye the image of what democracy was to be.

"The American Revolution broke out," says de

' "Dnnocradei have erer bran ipectidei of turbulence and conten-
tion . . . and have in general been at than in theit livei ai they have
been violent in thdt deathi." Madiion, FiitrtHit, No. lo.

268 PUBLIC OPINION

Tocquevillc,' "and the doctrine of the soverMgnty
of the people, which had been nurtured in the town-
ships, took possession of the state." It certainly
took possession of the minds of those men who
formulated and popularized the stereotypes of
democracy. "The cherishment of the people was
our principle," wrote Jefferson.* But the people he
cherished almost exclu^vely were the small land-
owning farmers: "Those who labor in the earth
are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a
chosen people, whose breasts He has made his
peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
It is the focus in which He keeps alive that sacred
fire, which otherwise might escape from the face
of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of
cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor
nation has furnished an example."

However much of the romantic return to nature
may have entered into this exclamation, there was
also an element of solid sense. Jefferson was right
in thinking that a group of independent farmers
comes nearer to fulfilling the requirements of
spontaneous democracy than any other human
society. But if you are to preserve the ideal, you
must fence off these ideal communities from the
abominations of the world. If the farmers are to
manage their own affairs, they must confine affairs
to those they are accustomed to managing. Jeffer-
son drew all these logical conclusions. He disap-
proved of manufacture, of foreign commerce, and a

' Dtmocran in Amrnca, Vol. i, p. 51. Third Edition.

* Cited in Qiarles Beard, EtinumU Origins of Jtfffrionian Democracy.

THE SELF-CX)NTAINED COMMUNITY 269

navy, of intangible forms of property, and in theory
of any form of govermnent that was not centered
in the small self-governing group. He had critics
in his day: one of them remarked that "wrapt up
in the fullness of self-consequence and strong enough,
in reality, to defend ourselves ^iunst every invader,
we might enjoy an eternal rusticity and live, for-
ever, thus apathized and vulgar under the shelter
of a selfish, satisfied indifference." '

The democratic ideal, as Jefferson moulded it,
consisting of an ideal environment and a selected
class, did not conflict with the political science of
his time. It did conflict with the realities. And
when the ideal was stated in absolute terras, partly
through exuberance and partly for campaign pur-
poses, it was soon forgotten that the theory was
originally devised for very special conditions. It
became the political gospel, and supplied the stereo-
types through which Americans of all parties have
looked at politics.

That gospel was fixed by the necessity that in
Jefferson's time no one could have conceived public
opinions that were not spontaneous and subjective.
The democratic tradition is therefore always trying
to see a world where people are exclusively con-
cerned with affairs of which the causes and effects
all operate within the region they inhabit. Never
has democraoc theory been able to conceive itself in
the context of a wide and unpredictable environ-
'Op.cit., p. 4a6.

270 PUBLIC OPINION

ment. The mirror is concave. And although dem-
ocrats ncog^TC that they are in contact with ex-
ternal affairs, they see quite surely that every
contact outside that self-contiuned group is a threat
to democracy as originally conceived. That is a
wise fear. If democracy is to be spontaneousj the
interests of democracy must remun ^mple, in-
telligible, and ea^ly managed. Conditions must
approximate those of the isolated rural township
if the supply of information is to be left to casual
experience. The environment must be confined
within the range of every man's direct and certain
knowledge.

The democrat has understood what an analysis of
public opinion seems to demonstrate: that in dealing
with an unseen environment decisions "are mani-
festly settled at haphazard, which clearly they
ought not to be." ^ So he has always tried in one
way or another to minimize the importance of that
unseen environment. He feared foreign trade be-
cause trade involves foreign connections; he dis-
trusted manufactures because they produced big
cities and collected crowds; if he had nevertheless
to have manufactures, he wanted protection in the
interest of self-sufficiency. When he could not find
these conditions in the real world, he went passion-
ately into the wilderness, and founded Utopian
communities far from foreign contacts. His slogans
reveal his prejudice. He is for Self-Government,
Self-Determination, Independence. Not one of
these ideas carries with it any notion of consent or

' Ariicotle. PoUtici, Bk. VII, Ch. IV.

THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY 371

commimity beyond the frontiers of the self-governing
groups. The field of democratic action is a cir-
cumscribed area. Within protected boundaries
the aim has been to achieve self-sufficiency and
avoid entanglement. This rule is not confined to
for^gn policy, but it is plainly evident there, because
life out^de the national boundaries is more dis-
tincdy alien than any life within. And as history
shows, democracies in their foreign policy have had
generally to choose between splendid isolation and
a diplomacy that violated their ideals. The most
successful democracies, in fact, Switzerland, Den-
mark, Australia, New Zealand, and America until
recently, have had no foreign policy in the European
sense of that phrase. Even a rule like the Monroe
Doctrine arose from the desire to supplement the
two oceans by a glacis of states that were sufficiently
republican to have no foreign policy.

Whereas danger ts a great, perhaps an indis-
pensable condition of autocracy,' security was seen
to be a necesaty if democracy was to work. There
must be as little disturbance as possible of the
premise of a self-contained community. Insecurity
involves surprises. It means that there are people
acting upon your life, over whom you have no
control, with whom you cannot considt. It means
that forces are at large which disturb the familiar
routine, and present novel problems about which

' Fiiher Ames, frightened by the democratic rertduiion of 1800^ wrote
to Rufui Khe in iSoi: "We need, »t all nation! do, the comprenioa on
the outtide (/our circle of a formidable ndghboi, who«e pretence AM
at all rimei excite itronger fean than dcmacoBun can inipire the people
widi towards thedr goremment." Cited by Ford, Riri and Groalk of
JnuricoK Politici, p. 69.

J72 PUBLIC OPINION

quick and unusual decisions are required. Every
democrat feels in his bones that dangerous crises
are incompatible with democracy, because he knows
that the inertia of masses is such that to act quickly
a very few must decide and the rest follow ratho-
blindly. This has not made non-resistants out of
democrats, but it has resulted in all democratic
wars being fought for pacifist iums. Even when
the wars are in fact wars of conquest, they are
sincerely believed to be wars in defense of civilization.
These various attempts to enclose a part of the
earth's surface were not inspired by cowardice,
apathy, or, what one of Jefferson's critics called a
willingness to live under monkish disdpline. The
democrats had caught sight of a dazzling pos^bility,
that every human being should rise to his full stature,
freed from man-made limitations. With what
they knew of the art of government, they could, no
more than Aristotle before them, conceive a society
of autonomous individuals, except an enclosed and
simple one. They could, then, select no other prem-
ise if they were to reach the conclusion that aJI the
people could spontaneously manage their public
affairs.

5
Having adopted the premise because it was neces-
sary to their keenest hope, they drew other conclu-
sions as well. Since in order to have spontaneous
self-government, you had to have a simple self-
contained community, they took it for granted that
one man was as competent as the next to manage

THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY 273

these ample and self-contained affairs. Where the
wish is father to the thought such logic is convincing.
Moreover, the doctrine of the omnicompetent citizen
is for most practical purposes true in the rural town-
ship. Everybody in a village sooner or later tries
his hand at everything the village does. There is
rotation in office by men who are jacks of all trades.
There was no serious trouble with the doctrine of the
omnicompetent citizen until the democratic stereo-
type was universally applied, so that men looked at
a complicated civilization and saw an enclosed village.

Not only was the mdividual citizen fitted to deal
with all public aff»rs, but he was consistendy public-
spirited and endowed with unflagging interest. He
was public-spirited enough in the township, where he
knew everybody and was interested in everybody's
business. The idea of enough for the township
turned easily into the idea of enough for any purpose,
for as we have noted, quantitative thinking does not
suit a stereotype. But there was another turn to
the circle. Since everybody was assumed to be
interested enough in important affairs, only those
affairs came to seem important in which everybody
was interested.

This meant that men formed their picture of the
world outside from the unchallenged pictures in
their heads. These pictures came to them well
stereotyped by their parents and teachers, and were
litde corrected by their own experience. Only a
few men had affairs that took them across state lines.
Even fewer had reason to go abroad. Most voters
lived their whole lives in one environment, and with

274 PUBLIC OPINION

nothing but a few feeble newspapers, some pamphlets,
political speeches, their rel^ous training, and rumor
to go on, they had to conceive that larger environ-
ment, of commerce and finance, of war and peace.
The number of public opinions based on any objec-
tive report was very small in proportion to those
based on casual fancy.

And so for many different reasons^ self-suifidency
was a spiritual ideal in the formative period. The
physical isolation of the township, the loneliness of
the pioneer, the theory of democracy, the Protestant
tradition, and the limitations of political science all
converged to make men believe that out of thdr own
consciences they must extricate political wisdom.
It is not strange that the deduction of laws from abso-
lute prindples should have usurped so much of thdr
free energy. The American political mind had to
live on its capital. In legalism it found a tested body
of rules from which new rules could be spun without
the labor of earning new truths from experience. The
formulce became so curiously sacred that every good
foreign observer has been amazed at the contrast
between the dynamic practical enei^ of the Ameri-
can people and the static theorism of their public
life. That steadfast love of fixed principles was
simply the only way known of achieving self-
sufficiency. But it meant that the public opinions
of any one community about the outer world con-
sisted chiefly of a few stereotyped images arranged in
a pattern deduced from their legal and their moral
codes, and animated by the feeling aroused by local
experiences.

THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY 275

Thus democratic theory, starting from its fine
vision of ultimate human <^gnity, was forced by lack
of the instruments of knowlet^ for reporting its
environment, to, Adl back upon the wisdom and
experience which happened to hare accumulated in
the -voter. God had, in the words of Jefferson,
made men's breasts "His peculiar deposit for substan-
tial and genuine virtue." These chosen people in
their self-contained environment had all the facts
befbre_them. The environment was so familiar that
one could take it for granted that men were talking
about substantially the same things. The only real
disagreements, therefore, would be in judgments
about the same facts. There was no need to guar-
antee the sources of information. They were obvious,
and equally accessible to all men. Nor was there need
to trouble about the ultimate criteria. In the self-
contiuned community one could assume, or at least
did assume, a homogeneous code of morals. The
only place, therefore, for differences of opinion was
in the It^cal application of accepted standards to
accepted facts. And since the reasoning faculty was
also well standardized, an error in reasoning would
be quickly exposed in a free discussion. It followed
that truth could be obtiuned by liberty within these
limits. The community could take its supply of
information for grantexl; its codes it pa^ed on
through school, church, and family, and the power
to draw deductions from a premise, rather than the
ability to find the premise, was r^arded as the chief
end of intellectual training.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ROLE OF FORCE, PATRONAGE AND
PRIVILEGE

"It has happened as was to have been foreseen,"
wrote Hamilton,' " the measures of the Union have
not been executed; the delinquencies of the States
have, step by step, matured themselves to an extreme
which has at length arrested all the wheels of the
national government and brought them to an awful
stand." . . . For "in our case the concurrence of
thirteen distinct sovereign wills is requisite, under
the confederation, to the complete execution of
every important measure that proceeds from the
Union." How could it be otherwise, he asked: "The
rulers of the respective members . , . will under-
take to judge of the propriety of the measures
themselves. They will consider the conformity of
the thing proposed or required to their immediate
interests or aims; the momentary conveniences or
inconveniences that would attend its adoption. All
this will be done, and in a spirit of interested and
suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of na-
tional circumstances and reasons of state which is
essential to right judgment, and with that strong

' Federalisl, No. IJ.
176

FORCE, PATRONAGE, AND PRIVILEGE 277

predilection in favor of local objects which can hardly
fail to mislead the decision. The same process must
be repeated in every member of which the body is
constituted; and the execution of the plans framed by
the councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on
the discretion of the ill-informed and prejudiced
opinion of every part. Those who have been con-
versant in the proceedings of popular assemblies,
who have seen how difficult it often is, when there
is no exterior pressure of circumstances, to bring
them to harmonious resolutions on important points,
will readily conceive how impossible it must be to
induce a number of such assemblies, deliberating at a
distance from each other, at different times, and
under different impressions, long to cooperate in the
same views and pursuits."

Over ten years of storm and stress with a congress
that was, as John Adams said,* "only a diplomatic
assembly," had furnished the leaders of the revolu-
ion "with an instructive but afflicting lesson"* in
what happens when a number of self-centered com-
munities are entangled in the same environment.
And so, when they went to Philadelphia in May of
1787, ostensibly to revise the Articles of Confedera-
tion, they were really in full reaction against the
fundamental premise of Eighteenth Century democ-
racy. Not only were the leaders consciously opposed
to the democratic spirit of the time, feeling, as Mad-
ison s«d, that "democracies have ever been spec-
tacles of turbulence and contention," but within
the national frontiers they were determined to offset

' Ford, of. cit., p. 36. » Ftdtraliit, No. IS-

278 PUBLIC OPINION

as far as they could the ideal of self-governing com~
munities in self-contained environments. The col-
lisions and failures of concave democracy, where men
spontaneously manned all their own affairs, were
before their eyes. The problem as they saw it, was
to restore government as against democracy. They
understood government to be the power to make
national decisions and enforce them throughout the
nation; democracy they believed was the insistence
of localities and classes upon self-determination
in accordance with their immediate interests and
aims.

They could not consider in their calculations the
possibility of such an organization of knowledge
that separate communities would act ^multaneously
on the same version of the facts. We just b^n to
conceive this possibility for certain parts of the
world where there is free circulation of news and a
common language, and then only for certain aspects
of life. The whole idea of a voluntary federalism
in industry and world politics is still so rudimentary,
that, as we see in our own experience, it enters only
a little, and only very modestly, into practical poli-
tics. What we, more than a century later, can only
conceive as an Incentive to generations of intellec-
tual effort, the authors of the Constitution had no
reason to conceive at all. In order to set up na-
tional government, Hamilton and his colleagues
had to make plans, not on the theory that men
would cooperate because they had a sense of com-
mon interest, but on the theory that men could
be governed, if special interests were kept in

FORCE, PATRONAGE, AND PRIVILEGE 279

equilibrium by a balance of power. "Ambition,"
Madison said^' ''must be made to counteract am-
bition."

They did not, as some writers have supposed,
intend to balance every interest so that the govern-
ment would be in a perpetual deadlock. They in-
tended to deadlock local and class interest to prevent
these from obstructing government. "In framing
a government which is to be administered by men
over men," wrote Madison,* "the great difficulty
lies in this: you must first enable the government to
control the gooemetl, and in the next place, oblige it
to control itself." In one very important sense,
then, the doctrine of checks and balances was the
remedy of the federalist leaders for the problem of
public opinion. They saw no other way to substitute
"the mild influence of the magistracy" for the "san-
guinary agency of the sword" ' except by devising
an ingenious machine to neutralize local opinion.
They did not understand how to manipulate a lai^
electorate, any more than they saw the possibility
of common consent upon the basis of common infor-
mation. It is true that Aaron Burr taught Hamilton
a lesson which impressed htm a good deal when he
seized control of New York City in 1800 by the aid
of Tammany Hall. But Hamilton was killed before
he was able to take account of this new discovery,
and, as Mr. Ford says,* Burr's pistol blew the bnuns
out of the Federal party.

^Federaliit, No. 51, cited by Ford, op. cit., p. 60.

• Federalitt, No. 15.

* Ford, op. lit., p. 1 19.

PUBLIC OPINION

When the constitution was written, "politics
could still be managed by conference and agreement
among gentlemen" ^ and it was to the gentry that
Hamilton turned for a government. It was intended
that they should manage national affiurs when local
prejudice had been brought into equilibrium by
the constitutional checks and balances. No doubt
Hamilton, who belonged to this class by adoption,
had a human prejudice in their favor. But that by
itself is a thin explanation of his statecraft. Cer-
tainly there can be no question of his consuming
passion for union, and it is, I think, an inversion of
the truth to argue that he made the Union to protect
class privil^es, instead of saying that he used class
privileges to make the Union. "We must take man
as we find him " Hamilton s^d, " and if we expect
him to serve the public we must interest his passions
in doing so." ' He needed men to govern, whose
passions coutd be most quickly attached to a na-
tional interest. These were the gentry, the public
creditors, manufacturers, shippers, and traders,' and
there is probably no better instance in history of the
adaptation of shrewd means to clear ends, than in
the seties of fiscal measures, by which Hamilton
attached the provincial notables to the new govern-
ment.

Although the constitutional convention worked
behind closed doors, and although ratification was

Wp.eit.,p.tn.
*0p.cU.,p.47.
* Bcatd, £c<nioiniV InUrprttOlion oftlu ConmtMion, pattim.

FORCE, PATRONAGE, AND PRIVILEGE 281

engineered by "a vote of probably not more than
one-sixth of the adult males," ' there was little or
no pretence. Hie Federalists argued for union^
not for democracy, and even the word republic
had an unpleasant sound to George Washington
when he had been for more than two years a re-
publican president. The constitution was a can-
did attempt to limit the sphere of popular rule;
the only democratic organ it was intended the
government should possess was the House, based
on a suffrage highly limited by property qualiB-
caiions. And even at that, the House, it was
believed, would be so licentious a part of the
government, that it was carefully checked and
balanced by the Senate, the electoral college,
the Presidential veto, and by judidal interpreta-
tion.

Thus at the moment when the French Revolu-
tion was kindling popular feeling the world over,
the American revolutionists of 1776 came under a
constitution which went back, as far as it was expedi-
ent, to the British Monarchy for a model. This
conservative reaction could not endure. The men
who had made it were a minority, their motives were
under suspicion, and when Washington went into
retirement, the position of the gentry was not
strong enough to survive the inevitable struggle
for the succession. The anomaly between the origi-
nal plan of the Fathers and the moral feeling of
the age was too wide not to be capitalized by a
good politician.

> Beird, op. cit., p. 315.

a8i PUBLIC OPINION

3

Jefferson referred to his election as "the great
revolution of 1800," but more than anything else
it was a revolution in the mind. No great policy-
was altered, but a new tradition was established.
For it was Jefferson who first taught the American
people to r^ard the Constitution as an instrument
of democracy, and he stereotyped the images, the
ideas, and even many of the phrases, in which
Americans ever since have described politics to
each other. So complete was the mental victory,
that twenty-five years later de Tocqueville, who was
received in Federalist homes, noted that even those
who were "galled by its continuance" — were not
uncommonly heard to "laud the delights of a repub-
lican government, and the advantages of democratic
institutions when they are in public." '

The Constitutional Fathers with all their sagacity
had failed to see that a frankly undemocratic con-
stitution would not long be tolerated. The bold
denial of popular rule was bound to offer an easy
point of attack to a man, like Jefferson, who so far
as his constitutional opinions ran, was not a bit more
ready than Hamilton to turn over government to
the "unrefined" will of the people.^ The Federalist
leaders had been men of definite convictions who
stated them bluntly. There was little real discrep-
ancy between their public and their private views.
But Jefferson's mind was a mass of ambiguities, not

' Dimacriuy in Amirica, Vol. I, Ch. X (Third Edition, 1838), p. 116.

* Cf, his plan for the Constitution of Virginia, his ideas for a senate of
properly holders, and his views on the judicial veto. Beard, Economic
Origini of Jefersonian Demacracy, pp. 450 tt stq.

FORCE, PATRONAGE, AND PRIVILEGE 283

solely because of its defects, as Hamilton and his
biographers have thought, but because he believed in
a union and he believed in spontaneous democracies,
and in the political science of his age there was no
satisfactory way to reconcile the two. Jefferson
was confused in thought and action because he had a
vision of a new and tremendous idea that no one
had thought out in all its bearings. But though
popular sovereignty was not clearly understood by
anybody, it seemed to imply so great an enhance-
ment of human life, that no constitution could
stand which frankly denied it. The frank denials
were therefore expunged from consciousness, and the
document, which is on its face an honest example of
limited constitutional democracy, was talked and
thought about as an instrument for direct popular
rule. Jefferson actually reached the point of believ-
ing that the Federalists had perverted the Constitu-
tion, of which in his fancy they were no longer the
authors. And so the Constitution was, in spirit,
rewritten. Partly by actual amendment, partly by
practice, as in the case of the electoral collie, but
chiefly by looking at ic through another set of stereo-
types, the facade was no longer p>ermitted to look
oligarchic.

The American people came to believe that their
Constitution was a democratic instrument, and
treated it as such. They owe that fiction to the vic-
tory of Thomas Jefferson, and a great conservative
fiction it has been. It is a fur guess that if everyone
had always r^arded the Constitution as did the
authors of it, the Consdtution would have been

284 PUBLIC OPINION

violently overthrown, because loyalty to the Con-
stitution and loyalty to democracy would have
seemed incompatible. Jefferson resolved that para-
dox by teaching the American people to read the
Constitution as an expression of democracy. He
himself stopped there. But in the course of twenty-
five years or so sodal conditions had changed so
radically, that Andrew Jackson carried out the
political revolution for which Jefferson had prepared
the tradition.'

4
The political center of that revolution was the
question of patronage. By the men who founded the
government public office was r^arded as a species
of property, not lightly to be disturbed, and it was
undoubtedly their hope that the offices would remain
in the hands of their social class. But the democratic
theory had as one of its main principles the doctrine
of the omnicompetent citizen. Therefore, when
people began to look at the Constitution as a demo-
cratic instrument, it was certain that permanence in
office would seem undemocratic. The natural ambi-
tions of men coincided here with the great moral
impulse of their age. Jefferson had popularized the
idea without carrying it ruthlessly into practice,
and removals on party grounds were comparatively
few under the Virginian Presidents. It was Jackson
who founded the practice of turning public office
into patronage.

' The teader who has any doubts as to the extent of the revol jtion that
eepataced Hamilton's opinions from Jackson's practice should tutn to
Nit. Henry Jones Foid'j Rise and Groteth of American Politics.

FORCE, PATRONAGE, AND PRIVILEGE 285

Curious as it sounds to us, the principle of rota-
tion in office with short terms was r^^arded as a
great reform. Not only did it acknowledge the new
dignity of the average man by treating him as fit
for any office, not only did it destroy the monopoly
of a small social class and appear to open careers to
talent, but "it had been advocated for centuries as
a soverugn remedy for political corruption," and
as the one way to prevent the creation of a bureau-
cracy.^ The practice of rapid change tn public
office was the application to a great territory of
the image of democracy derived from the self-
contained village.

Naturally it did not have the same results in the
nation that it had in the ideal community on wluch
the democratic theory was based. It produced quite
unexpected results, for it founded a new governing
class to take the place of the submei^ed federalists.
Unintentionally, patronage did for a large electorate
what Hamilton's fiscal measures had done for the
upper classes. We often fail to realize how much
of the stability of our government we owe to pa-
tronage. For it was patronage that weaned natural
leaders from too much attachment to the self-
centered community, it was patronage that weakened
the local spirit and brought together in some kind
of peaceful cooperation, the very men who, as
provincial celebrities, would, in the absence of a
sense of common interest, have torn the union apart.

But of course, the democratic theory was not

supposed to produce a new governing class, and it

' Ford, op. fit., p. 169.

286 PUBLIC OPINION

has never accommodated itself to the fact. When
the democrat wanted to abolish monopoly of offices,
to have rotation and short terms, he was thinking
of the township where anyone could do a public
service, and return humbly to his own farm. The
idea of a special class of politicians was just what the
democrat did not like. But he could not have
what he did like, because his theory was derived
from an ideal environment, and he was living in a
real one. The more deeply he felt the moral im-
pulse of democracy, the less ready he was to see the
profound truth of Hamilton's statement that com-
munities deliberating at a distance and under
different impressions could not long cooperate in
the same views and pursuits. For that truth post-
pones anything like the full realization of democracy
in public affairs until the art of obtiuning common
consent has been radically improved. And so while
the revolution under Jefferson and Jackson produced
the patronage which made the two party system,
which created a substitute for the rule of the gentry,
and a discipline for governing the deadlock of the
checks and balances, all that happened, as it were,
invisibly.

Thus, rotation in office might be the ostensible
theory, in practice the offices oscillated between
the henchmen. Tenure might not be a permanent
monopoly, but the professional politician was per-
manent. Government might be, as President
Harding once said, a simple thing, but winning
elections was a sophisticated performance. The
salaries in office might be as ostentatiously frugal as

FORCE, PATRONAGE, AND PRIVILEGE 287

Jefferson's home-spun, but the expenses of party
organization and the fruits of victory were in the
grand manner. The stereotype of democracy con-
trolled the visible government; the corrections, the
exceptions and adaptations of the American people
to the real facts of their environment have had to
be invisible, even when everybody knew all about
them. It was only the words of the law, the speeches
of politicians, the platforms, and the formal machinery
of administration that have had to conform to the
pristine image of democracy.

5

If one had asked a philosophical democrat how
these self-cont^ned communities were to cooperate,
when thdr public opinions were so self-centered,
he would have pointed to representative govern-
ment embodied in the Congress. And nothing
would surprise him more than the discovery of how
steadily the prestige of representative government
has declined, while the power of the Presidency has
grown.

Some critics have traced this to the custom of
sending only local celebrities to Washington. They
have thought that if Congress could consist of the
nationally eminent men, the life of the capital
would be more brilliant. It would be, of course,
and it would be a very good thing if retiring Presi-
dents and Cabinet officers followed the example of
John Quincy Adams. But the absence of these men
does not explain the plight of Congress, for its
decline began when it was relatively the most

288 PUBLIC OPINION

eminent branch of the government. Indeed it is
more probable that the reverse is true, and that
Congress ceased to attract the eminent as it lost
direct influence on the shaping of national policy.
The main reason for the discredit, which is world
wide, is, I think, to be found in the fact that a
congress of representatives is essentially a group
of blind men in a vast, unknown world. \^th some
exceptions, the only method recc^ized in the Con-
stitution or in the theory of representative govern-
ment, by which Congress can inform itself, is to
exchange opinions from the districts. There is no
systematic, adequate, and authorized way for
Congress to know what is going on in the world.
The theory is that the best man of each district
brings the best wisdom of his constituents to a
central place, and that all these wisdoms combined
are all the wisdom that Congress needs. Now
there is no need to question the value of expressing
local opinions and exchanging them. Congress has
great value as the market-place of a continental
nation. In the coatrooms, the hotel lobbies, the
boarding houses of Capitol Hill, at the tea-parties
of the Congressional matrons, and from occasional
entries into the drawing rooms of cosmopolitan
Washington, new vistas are opened, and wider
horizons. But even if the theory were applied, and
the districts always sent their wisest men, the sum
or a combination of local impressions is not a wide
enough base for national policy, and no base at all
for the control of foreign policy. Since the real
effects of most laws are subtle and hidden, they

roicE, rsnaiMx, xsd iwilege 09

CMUiOt DC lllMJCIWiMM Iff flUJIIIg nOU ClfHJJLBCCS

throi^ li local states of nimL TWj* cm be b»«a
only t^ contraAed Rpomng and abgecB^ sbu^sk.
And just V tK ■On a a ■»££ nctniy CMWMjt.
know how ^ti di i it it by taDdng id tbe iiscauoi,
bat most ajumine aaa Atea and data that only
an afTTHi w t jwf can ue cut nc fc™i. so tnc u.wuudb'
docs not ani*c at a tiiK ]aLtuic of the state of the
union by pUiiug tPBCtiM' a mosnc of local pi c tme s^ .
He needs to know die kical pctiircs, but unless he
possesses instmmenls far caEbratii^ than, one pic-
ture is as good as the nex^ and a |^eat deal better.
The Ptcndent docs come to Ac assistance of
Congress by defivtfii^ mcsss^cs on the state of the
Union. He is in a positian to do that because he
preades over a Tast coDectiaa of b ureau s and their
agents, which report as wdl as acC Bat he tdls
Congress what he chooses to tell it. He cannot be
he ck led, and die censoralup as to what is compatiUe
with the pul^ interest is in his hands. It is a
whcUy one-sided and tricky relationship, which
somedmes readies such heights of absurdity, that
Congress, in order to secure an important document
has to thank the enterprise of a Chicago newspaper,
a- the calculated indiscretion of a subordinate
official. So bad is the contact of legislators with
necessary facts diat they are forced to rely cither cm
private tips or on that l^alized atrodty, the Con-
gresfflCMia] investigation, where Congressmen, starved
of their le^timate food for thought, go on a wild
and feverish man-hunt, and do not stop at can-
nibalism.

ago PUBLIC OPINION

Except for the little that these investigations
yield, the occasional communications from the
executive departments, interested and disinterested
data collected by private persons, such newspapers,
periodicals, and books as Congressmen read, and a
new and excellent practice of calling for help from
expert bodies like the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the
Tariff Commission, the creation of Congressional
opinion is incestuous. From this it follows ather
that legislation of a national character is prepared
by a few informed insiders, and put through by
partisan force; or that the legislation is broken up
into a collection of local items, each of which is
enacted for a local reason. Tariff schedules, navy
yards, army posts, rivers and harbors, post offices
and federal buildings, pensions and patronage: these
are fed out to concave communities as tangible
evidence of the benefits of national life. Being
concave, they can see the white marble building
which rises out of federal funds to raise local realty
values and employ local contractors more readily
than they can judge the cumulative cost of the pork
barrel. It is fair to say that in a large assembly of
men, each of whom has practical knowledge only of
his own district, laws dealing with translocal affairs
are rejected or accepted by the mass of Congressmen
without creative participation of any kind. They
participate only in making those laws that can be
treated as a bundle of local issues. For a legislature
without effective means of information and analysis
must oscillate between blind regularity, tempered

FORCE, PATRONAGE, AND PRIVILEGE 291

by occasional insurgency, and logrolling. And it is
the logrolling which makes the regularity palatable,
because it is by logrolling that a Congressman
proves to his more active constituents that he is
watching their interests as they conceive them.

This is no fault of the individual Congressman's,
except when he is complacent about it. The cleverest
and most industrious representative cannot hope to
understand a fraction of the bills on which he votes.
The best he can do is to specialize on a few bills,
and take somebody's word about the rest. I have
known Congressmen, when they were boneing up
on a subject, to study as they had not studied since
they passed their final examinations, many large
cups of black coffee, wet towels and all. They had
to dig for information, sweat over arranging and
verifying facts, which, in any consciously organized
government, should have been easily available in a
form suitable for decision. And even when they
really knew a subject, their anxieties had only begun.
For back home tjie editors, the board of trade, the
central federated union, and the women's clubs had
spared themselves these labors, and were prepared
to view the Congressman's performance through
local spectacles.

What patronage did to attach political chieftains
to the national government, the infmite variety of
local subsidies and pHvil^es do for self-centered
communities. Patronage and pork amalgamate
and stabilize thousands of special opinions, local

*93 PUBLIC OPINION

discontents, prirate ambitions. Hiere are but two
other alternatives. One is govemment by terror
and obedience, the other is gOTcmment based on
such a highly developed system of information,
analy^, and self-consciousness that "the knowledge
of national circumstances and reasons of state"
is evident to all men. The autocradc system is in
decay, the voluntary system is in its very earliest
development; and so, in calculating the prospects
of association among large groups of people, a L^igue
of Nadons, industrial government, or a federal
union of states, the d^ree to which the material
(or a common consciousness exists, determines how
far cooperation will depend upon force, or upon the
milder altemadve to force, which is patronage and
privil^;e. The secret of great state-builders, like
Alexander Hamilton, is that they know how to
calculate these principles.

CHAPTER XIX

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM: GUILD
SOCIALISM.

Whenever the quarrels of self-centered groups
become unbearable, reformers in the past found
themselves forced to choose between two great
alternatives. They could take the path to Rome
and impose a Roman peace upon the warring tribes.
They could take the path to isolation, to autonomy
and self-sufficiency. Almost alwajrs they chose that
path which they had least recently travelled. If
they had tried out the deadening monotony of
empire, they cherished above all other things the
simfde freedom of their own community. But if
they had seen this simple freedom squandered in
parochial jealoudes they longed for the spacious
order of a great and powerful state.

Whichever choice they made, the essential diffi-
culty was the same. If decisions were decentralized
they soon floundered in a chaos of local opinions.
If they were centralized, the policy of the state was
based on the opinions of a small social set at the
capital. In any case force was necessary to defend
one local right agmnst another, or to impose law and
order on the localities, or to resist class government at
the center, or to defend the whole society, centralized
or decentralized, against the outer barbarian.

394 PUBLIC OPINION

Modern democracy and the industrial system
were both born in a time of reaction agmnst kings,
crown government, and a regime of detMled economic
r^;ulation. In the industrial sphere this reaction
took the form of extreme devolution, known as
laissez-faire individualism. Each economic decision
was to be made by the man who had tide to the
property involved. Since almost everything was
owned by somebody, there would be somebody to
manage everything. This was plural sovereignty
with a vengeance.

It was economic government by anybody's eco-
nomic philosophy, though it was supposed to be
controlled by immutable laws of political economy
that must in the end produce harmony. It pro-
duced many splendid things, but enough sordid and
terrible ones to start counter-currents. One of
these was the trust, which established a kind of
Roman peace within industry, and a Roman preda-
tory imperialism outside. People turned to the
legislature for relief. They invoked representative
government, founded on the image of the township
farmer, to regulate the semi-sovereign corporations.
The working class turned to labor organization.
There followed a period of increasing centralization
and a sort of race of armaments. The trusts inter-
locked, the craft unions federated and combined
into a labor movement, the political system grew
stronger at Washington and weaker in the states,
as the reformers tried to match its strength against
big business.

In this period practically all the schools of socialist

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 295

thought from the Marxian left to the New National-
ists around Theodore Roosevelt, looked upon cen-
tralization as the first stage of an evolution which
would end in the absorption of all the semi-sovereign
powers of business by the political state. The evolu-
tion never took place, except for a few months
during the war. That was enough, and there was
a turn of the wheel ag^nst the omnivorous state in
favor of several new forms of pluralism. But this
time society was to swing back not to the atomic
individualism of Adam Smith's economic man and
Thomas Jefferson's farmer, but to a sort of molecular
individualism of voluntary groups.

One of the interesting things about all these
oscillations of theory is that each in turn promises a
world in which no one will have to follow Machia-
velli in order to survive. They are all established
by some form of coercion, they all exercise coercion
in order to maintain themselves, and they are all
discarded as a result of coercion. Yet they do not
accept coercion, either physical power or special
position, patronage, or privilege, as part of their
ideal. The individualist said that self-enlightened
self-interest would bring internal and external
peace. The socialist is sure that the motives to
aggression will disappear. The new pluralist hopes
they will.' Coercion is the surd in almost all social
theory, except the Machiavellian. The temptation
to ignore it, because it is absurd, inexpressible,
and unmanageable, becomes overwhelming in any
man who is trying to radonalize human life.

' See G. D. H. Cole, Social Thiory, p. 141.

296 PUBLIC OPINION

The lengths to which a clever man will sometimes
go in order to escape a full recognition of the role of
force is shown by Mr. G. D. H. Cole's book on Guild
Socialism. The present state, he says, "is primarily
an instrument of coercion;" ' in a guild socialist
society there will be no soverwgn power, though
there will be a coordinating body. He calls this
body the Commune.

He then begins to enumerate the powers of the
Commune, which, we recall, is to be primarily not
an instrument of coercion.* It settles price disputes.
Sometimes it fixes prices, allocates the surplus or
distributes the loss. It allocates natural resources,
and controls the issue of credit. It also "allocates
communal labor-power." It ratifies the budgets
of the guilds and the civil services. It levies taxes.
"All questions of income" fall within its jurisdiction.
It "allocates" income to the non-productive mem-
bers of the community. It is the iinal arbiter in all
questions of policy and jurisdiction between the
guilds. It passes constitutional laws fixing the
functions of the functional bodies. It appoints the
judges. It confers coercive powers upon the guilds,
and ratifies their by-laws wherever these involve
coercion. It declares war and makes peace. It
controls the armed forces. It is the supreme rep-
resentative of the nation abroad. It settles bound-
ary questions within the national state. It calls
into existence new functional bodies, or distributes
new functions to old ones. It runs the police. It
' Cole, Gitiid Socialiim, p. IC7. ' Op. eU., Ch. VIII.

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 297

makes whatever laws are necessary to regulate per-
sonal conduct and personal property.

These powers are exercised not by one commune,
but by a federal structure of local and provincial
communes with a National commune at the top.
Mr. Cole is, of course, welcome to insist that this is
not a sovereign state, but if there is a coercive power
now enjoyed by any modern government for which
he has forgotten to make room, I cannot think of it.

He tells us, however, that Guild society will be
non-coercive: "we want to build a new society which
will be conceived in the spirit, not of coercion, but
of free service." ' Everyone who shares that hope,
as most men and women do, will therefore look
closely to see what there is in the Guild Socialist
plan which promises to reduce coercion to its lowest
limits, even though the Guildsmen of to-day have
already reserved for their communes the widest
kind of coercive power. It is acknowledged at once
that the new society cannot be brought into ex-
istence by universal consent. Mr. Cole is too honest
to shirk the element of force required to make the
transition.* And while obviously he cannot predict
how much civil war there might be, he is quite clear
that there would have to be a period of direct action
by the trade unions.

3
But leaving a^de the problems of transition, and
any consideration of what the effect is on their
future action, when men have hacked thdr way

' 0^ rii.. p. 141. ' CJ. op. cii., Ch. X.

298 PUBLIC OPINION

through to the promised land, let us imagine the
Guild Society in being. What keeps it running as
a non-coercive society?

Mr. Cole has two answers to this question. One
is the orthodox Marxian answer that the abolition
of capitalist property will remove the motive to
agression. Yet he does not really believe that,
because if he did, he would care as little as does the
average Marxian how the working class is to run the
government, once it is in control. If his diagnosis
were correct, the Marxian would be quite right: if
the disease were the capitalist class and only the
capitalist class, salvation would automatically follow
its extinction. But Mr. Cole is enormously con-
cerned about whether the society which follows the
revolution is to be run by state collectivism, by
guilds or cooperative societies, by a democratic
parliament or by functional representation. In
fact, it is as a new theory of representative govern-
ment that guild socialism challenges attention.

The guildsmen do not expect a miracle to result
from the disappearance of capitalist property rights.
They do expect, and of course quite rightly, that if
equality of income were the rule, social relations
would be profoundly altered. But they differ, as
far as I can make out, from the orthodox Russian
commimist in this respect: The communist proposes
to establish equality by force of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, believing that if once people were
equalized both in income and in service, they would
then lose the incentives to aggression. The guildsmen
also propose to establish equality by force, but are

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 299

shrewd enough to see that if an equilibrium is to
be maintained they have to provide institutions for
maintaining Jt. Guildsmen, therefore, put their
faith in what they believe to be a new thrary of
democracy.

Their object, says Mr. Cole, is "to get the me-
chanism right, and to adjust it as far as possible to
the expression of men's social wills." ' These wills
need to be given opportunity for self-expression in
self-government "in any and every form of social
action." Behind these words is the true democratic
impulse, the desire to enhance human dignity, as well
as the traditional assumption that this human dignity
is impugned, unless each person's will enters into
the management of everything that aifects him.
The guildsman, like the earlier democrat therefore,
looks about him for an environment in which this
ideal of self-government can be realized. A hundred
years and more have passed since Rousseau and
Jefferson, and the center of interest has shifted from
the country to the city. The new democrat can no
longer turn to the idealized rural township for the
image of democracy. He turns now to the work-
shop. "The spirit of association must be given free
play in the sphere in which it is best able to find
expression. This is manifestiy the factory, in which
men have the habit and tradition of working to-
gether. The factory is the natural and fundamental
unit of industrial democracy. This involves, not
only that the factory must be free, as far as possible,
to manage its own affairs, but also that the dem-
■ Of- <if-, p- 16.

300 PUBLIC OPINION

ocratic unit of the factory must be made the basis
of the larger democracy of the Guild, and that the
larger organs of Guild administration and govern-
ment must be based largely on the principle of
factory representation." •

Factory is, of course, a very loose word, and
Mr. Cole asks us to take it as meaning mines, ship-
yards, docks, stations, and every place which is
" a natural center of producdon." * But a factory
in this sense is quite a different thing from an in-
dustry. The factory, as Mr. Cole conceives it, is a
work place where men are really in personal contact,
an environment small enough to be known directly
to all the workers. "This democracy if it is to be
real, must come home to, and be exercisable directly
by, every individual member of the Guild." * This is
important, because Mr. Cole, like Jefferson, is seek-
ing a natural unit of government. The only natural
unit is a perfectly familiar environment. Now a
large plant, a railway system, a great coal field, is
not a natural unit in this sense. Unless it is a very
small factory indeed, what Mr. Cole is really think-
ing about is the shop. That is where men can be
supposed to have "the habit and tradition of working
together." The rest of the plant, the rest of the
industry, is an inferred environment.

Anybody can see, and almost everybody will admit,
that self-government in the purely internal affairs of
the shop is government of affairs that "can be taken

^Op.cii., p. 4a 'Op. cit., p. 41. 'Op. tit., p. 40.

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 301

in at a single view. *' > But dispute would arise as to
what constitute the internal affairs of a shop. Obvi--
ously the biggest interests, like wages, standards of
production, the purchase of supplies, the marketing
of the product, the larger planning of work, are by no
means purely internal. The shop democracy has
freedom, subject to enormous limiting concUtions
from the outside. It can deal to a certain extent
with the arrangement of work laid out for the shop,
it can deal with the temper and temperament of
individuals, it can administer petty industrial justice,
and act as a court of first instance in somewhat
larger individual disputes. Above all it can act as a
unit in dealing with other shops, and perhaps mth
the plant as a whole. But isolation is impossible.
The unit of industrial democracy is thoroughly en-
tangled in foreign affairs. And it is the management
of these external relations that constitutes the test
of the guild socialist theory.

They have to be managed by representative
government arranged in a federal order from the
shop to the plant, the plant to the industry, the
industry to the nadon, with intervening regional
grouping of representatives. But all this structure
derives from the shop, and all its peculiar virtues are
ascribed to this source. The representatives who
choose the representatives who choose the repre-
sentatives who finally "coordinate" and "r^ulate"
the shops are electwi, Mr. Cole asserts, by a true
democracy. Because they come originally from a
self-^verning unit, the whole federal organism will

' Aciltotle, PalitUi, Bk. VII, Ch. IV.

302 PUBLIC OPINION

be inspired by the spirit and the reality of self-govern-
ment. Representatives will aim to carry out the
workers* "actual will as understood by themselves," '
that is, as understood by the individual in the shops.
A government run literally on this principle would,
if history is any guide, be either a perpetual logroll,
or a chaos of warring shops. For while the worker
in the shop can have a real opinion about matters
entirely within the shop, his "will" about the rela-
tion of that shop to the plant, the industry, and the
nation is subject to all the limitations of access,
stereotype, and self-interest that surround any other
self-centered opinion. His experience in the shop at
best brings only aspects of the whole to his attention.
His opinion of what is right within the shop he can
reach by direct knowledge of the essential facts.
His opinion of what is right in the great complicated
environment out of sight is more likely to be wrong
than right if it is a generalization from the experi-
ence of the individual shop. As a matter of experi-
ence, the representatives of a guild society would
find, just as the higher trade union officials find to-
day, that on a great number of questions which they
have to decide there is no "actual will as understood"
by the shops.

5

The guildsmen insist, however, that such criticism

is blind because it ignores a great political discovery.

You may be quite right, they would say, in thinking

that the representatives of the shops would have to

' Op. cU., p. 43.

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 303

make up their own minds on many questions about
which the shops have no opinion. But you are
simply entangled in an ancient fallacy: you are
looking for somebody to represent a group of people.
He cannot be found. The only representative pos-
sible is one who acts for "some particular iunction," '
and therefore each person must help choose as many
representatives "as there are distinct essential groups
of functions to be performed. "

Assume then that the representatives speak, not
for the men in the shops, but for certain functions in
which the men are interested. They are, mind you,
disloyal if they do not carry out the will of the group
about the function, as understood by the group.*
These fimctional representatives meet. Their busi-
ness is to coordinate and regulate. By what standard
does each judge the proposals of the other, assuming,
as we must, that there is conflict of opinion between
the shops, since if there were not, there would be no
need to coordinate and regulate?

Now the peculiar virtue of functional democracy
is supposed to be that men vote candidly according
to their own interests, which it is assimied they know
by daily escperience. They can do that within the
self-contained group. But in its external relations
the group as a whole, or its representadve. Is dealing
with matters that transcend immediate experience.
The shop does not arrive spontaneously at a view
of thewholesituarion. Therefore, the public opinions
of a shop about its rights and duties in the industry

304 PUBLIC OPINION

and in society, are matters of education or propa-
ganda, not the automatic product of shc^Mronsdous-
ness. Whether the guildsmen elect a delate, or a
representative, they do not escape the problem of the
orthodox democrat. Either the group as a whole, or
the elected spokesman, must stretch his mind beyond
the limits of direct experience. He must vote on
questions coming up from other shops, and on mat-
ters coming from beyond the frontiers of the whole
industry. The primary interest of the shop does not
even cover the funcrion of a whole industrial voca-
tion. The funcrion of a vocarion, a great industry,
a district, a nation is a concept, not an experience,
and has to be imagined, invented, taught and be-
lieved. And even though you define fimction as
carefully as possible, once you admit that the view of
each shop on that function will not necessarily coin-
cide with the view of other shops, you are saying that
the representative of one interest is concerned in the
proposals made by other interests. You are saying
that he must conceive a common interest. And in
voting for him you are choosing a man who will not
simply represent your view of your funcrion, which
is alt that you know at Arst hand, but a man who will
represent your views about other people's views of
that function. You are voting as indefinitely as the
orthodox democrat.

The guildsmen in their own minds have solved the
question of how to conceive a common interest by
playing with the word function. They imagine a

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 305

society in which all the main work of the world has
been analysed into functions^ and these functions
in turn synthesized harmoniously. ' They suppose
essential agreement about the purposes of society as a
whole, and essential agreement about the role of
every oi^anized group in carrying out those purposes.
It was a nice sentiment, therefore, which led them to
take the name of their theory from an institution that
arose in a Catholic feudal society. But they should
remember that the scheme of fimction which the
wise men of that age assumed was not worked out by
mortal man. It is unclear how the guildsmen think
the scheme is going to be worked out and made
acceptable in the modern world. Sometimes they
seem to ai^e that the scheme will develop from
trade union organization, at other times that the
communes will de6ne the constitutional fijnction of
the groups. But it makes a considerable practical
difference whether they believe that the groups define
their own fimctions or not.

In either case, Mr. Cole assumes that society can
be carried on by a social contract based on an ac-
cepted idea of" distinct essential groups of functions."
How does one recc^ize these distinct essential
groups? So far as I can make out, Mr. Cole thinks
that a function is what a group of people are inter-
est^ in. "The essence of functional democracy is
that a man should count as many times over as there
are functions in which he is interested." * Now
there are at least two meanings to the word interested.
You can use it to mean that a man is involved, or

> Cf. op. eii., Ch. XK. ' SotUJ Tktory, p. 103 rt itq.

3o6 PUBLIC OPINION

that his mind is occupied- John Smith, for example,
may have been tremendously interested in the Still-
man divorce case. He may have read every word of
the news in every lobster edition. On the other hand,
young Guy Stillman, whose legidmacy was at stake,
probably did not trouble himself at all. John
Smith was interested in a suit that did not affect his
"interests," and Guy was uninterested in one that
would determine the whole course of his life. Mr.
Cole, I am afraid, leans towards John Smith. He
is answering the "very foolish objection" that to
vote by functions is to be voting very often: "If a
man is not interested enough to vote, and cannot be
aroused to interest enough to make him vote, on, say,
a dozen distinct subjects, he waives his right to vote
and the result is no less democratic than if he voted
blindly and without interest."

Mr. Cole thinks that the uninstructed voter
"waives his right to vote." From this it follows that
the votes of the instructed reveal their interest, and
their interest defines the function.' "Brown, Jones,
and Robinson must therefore have, not one vote
each, but as many different functional votes as there
are different questions calling for associative action
in which they are interested." * I am considerably
in doubt whether Mr. Cole thinks that Brown, Jones
and Robinson should qualify in any election where
they assert that they are interested, or that somebody
else, not named, picks the functions in which they are

' Cf. G>. XVIII of this book. "Since eveiybody was assumed to be
interested enough in important afFiirs, only those affairs came to seem
jortani in which everybody was interested."
Guild Sodaliim, p. 24.

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 307

entitled to be interested. If I were asked to say what
I believe Mr. Cole thinks, it would be that he has
smoothed over the difficulty by the enormously
strange assumption that it is the uninstructed voter
who waives his right to vote; and has concluded that
whether functional voting is arranged by a higher
power, or " from below " on the principle that a man
may vote when it interests him to vote, only the
instructed will be voting anyway, and therefore the
institution will work.

But there are two kinds of uninstructed voter.
There is the man who does not know and knows that
he does not know. He is generally an enlightened
person. He is the man who waives his right to vote.
But there is also the man who is uninstructed and
does not know that he is, or care. He can always be
gotten to the polls, if the party machinery is working.
His vote is the basis of the machine. And since
the communes of the guild society have large powers
over taxation, wages, prices, credit, and natural
resources, it would be preposterous to assume that
elections will not be fought at least as passionately as
our own.

The way people exhibit thar interest will not then
delimit the functions of a functional society. There
are two other ways that function might be defined.
One would be by the trade unions which fought the
battle that brought guild socialism into being. Such
a stru^e would harden groups of men together in
some sort of functional relation, and these groups
would then become the vested interests of the guild
socialist society. Some of them, like the miners and

3o8 PUBLIC OPINION

railroad men, would be very strong, and probably
deeply attached to the view of their function which
they learned from the batde with capitalism. It is
not at all unlikely that certain favorably placed
trade unions would under a socialist state become
the center of coherence and government. But a
guild society would inevitably find them a tough
problem to deal with, for direct action would have
revealed their strategic power, and some of their
leaders at least would not offer up this power readily
on the altar of freedom. In order to "coordinate"
them, guild society would have to gather together its
strength, and fairly soon one would find, I think,
that the radicals under guild socialism would be
asking for communes strong enough to define the
functions of the guilds.

But if you are going to have the government
(commune) define functions, the premise of the the-
ory disappears. It had to suppose that a scheme of
functions was obvious in order that the concave shops
would voluntarily relate themselves to society. If
there is no settled scheme of functions in every
voter's head, he has no better way under guild
socialism than under orthodox democracy of turning
a self-centered opinion into a social judgment. And,
of course, there can be no such settled scheme,
because, even if Mr. Cole and his friends devised a
good one, the shop democracies from which all power
derives, would judge the scheme in operation by
what they learn of it and by what they can imagine.
The guilds would see the same scheme differently.
And so instead of the scheme being the skeleton that

THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM 309

keeps guild scx:iety together, the attempt to define
what the scheme ought to be, would be under guild
socialism as elsewhere, the main business of politics.
Ifwe could allow Mr. Cole his scheme of functions we
could allow him almost everything. Unfortunately
he has inserted in his premise what he wishes a
'guild society to deduce.'

■ I have dealt with Mr. Coie'* theory rather than with the experience
of Soviet Ruuia becauic, while the teitiinony ii (raKmentary, all cora-
peicnt obterven wem to agree that Rustia in 1911 doa not illuitrate s
communiil itate in working order. Ruttia ii in revolution, and what
you can learn from Ruuia is what a revolution ii like. You can learn
very little about what a communitt aodet^r would belike. It it, however,
immenid^ tiKiiificant that, GrtI aa practical revi^udoniiu and then ai
public official!, the Russian communiiti have relied not upon the tpon-
taneoui democracy of the Russian people, but on the discipline, ipecial
interest and the noblesse obliEc of a tpecialiaed clau — the loyal and
indoctrinated raemben of the Communiit party. In the " irantidon,"
on which no time limit has been set, I bdieve, the cure for dais govenf
ment and the coercive state is strictly homeopathic.

There ii also the question of why I selected Mr. Cole's books rather
than the much more closely reasoned "Constitution for the Socialist
Commonwealth of Great Britain" by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. I
a<hniie that book very much, but I have not been able to convince myself
that it is not an intdlectual tour de force. Mr. Cole leetn* to me far
more authentically in the spint of the socialist movement, and therefore^

CHAPTER XX
A NEW IMAGE

The lesson is, I think, a fairly clear one. In the
absence of institutions and education by which the
environment is so successfully reported that the
realities of public life stand out sharply against
self-centered opinion, the common interests very
largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be
managed only by a specialized class whose personal
interests reach beyond the locality. This class is
irresponsible, for it acts upon information that is
not common property, in situations that the public
at lar^e does not conceive, and it can be held to
account only on the accomplished fact.

The democratic theory by failing to admit that
self-centered opinions are not sufficient to procure
good government, is involved in perpetual conflict
between theory and practice. According to the
theory, the full dignity of man requires that his will
should be, as Mr. Cole says, expressed "in any and
every form of social action." It is supposed that
the expression of their will is the consuming passion
of men, for they are assumed to possess by instinct
the art of government. But as a matter of plain
experience, self-determination is only one of the
many interests of a human personality. The desire

A NEW IMAGE 3"

to be the master of one's own destiny is a strong
desire, but it has to adjust itself to other equally
strong desires, such as the desire for a good life,
for peace, for relief from burdens. In the original
assumptions of democracy it was held that the ex-
pression of each man's will would spontaneously
satisfy not only his desire for self-expression, but
his desire for a good life, because the instinct to
express one's self in a good life was innate.

The emphasis, therefore, has always been on the
mechanism for expressing the will. The democratic
EI Dorado has always been some perfect environ-
ment, and some perfect system of voting and rep-
resentation, where the innate good will and in-
stinctive statesmanship of every man could be
translated into action. In limited areas and for
brief periods the environment has been so favorable,
that is to say so isolated, and so rich in opportunity,
that the theory worked well enough to confirm men
in thinking that it was sound for all time and every-
where. Then when the isolation ended, and society
became complex, and men had to adjust themselves
closely to one another, the democrat spent his time
trying to devise more perfect units of voting, in the
hope that somehow he would, as Mr. Cole says,
"get the mechanism right, and adjust it as far as
possible to men's social wills." But while the dem-
ocratic theorist was busy at this, he was far away
from the actual interests of human nature. He was
absorbed by one interest: self-government. Man-
kind was interested in all kinds of other things, in
order, in its rights, in prosperity, in sights and sounds

3i» PUBLIC OPINION

and in not being bored. In so far as spontaneous
democracy does not satisfy their other interests,
it seems to most men most of the time to be an
empty thing. Because the art of successfiil self-
government is not instinctive, men do not long
desire self-government for its own sake. They
desire it for the sake of the results. That is why the
impulse to self-government is always strongest as a
protest against bad conditions.

The democratic fallacy has been its preoccupation
with the origin of government rather than with the
processes and results. The democrat has always
assumed that if political power could be derived in
the right way, it would be beneficent. His whole
attention has been on the source of power, »nce he
is hypnotized by the belief that the great thing is
to express the will of the people, first because ex-
pression is the highest interest of man, and second
because the will is instinctively good. But no
amount of regulation at the source of a river will
completely control its behavior, and while democrats
have been absorbed in trying to find a good mechan-
ism for originating social power, that is to say a
good mechanism of voting and representation,
they neglected almost every other interest of men.
For no matter how power originates, the crucial in-
terest is in how power is exercised. What determines
the quality of civilization is the use made of power.
And that use cannot be controlled at the source.

If you try to control government wholly at the
source, you inevitably make all the vital decisions
invisible. For since there is no instinct which

A NEW IMAGE 313

automatically makes politica] decisions that produce
a good life, the men who actually exercise power not
only fail to express the will of the people, because
on most questions no will exists, but they exercise
power according to opinions which are hidden from
the electorate.

If, then, you root out of the democratic philosophy
the whole assumption in all its ramifications that
government is instinctive, and that therefore it can
be managed by self-centered opinions, what becomes
of the democratic faith in the dignity of man? It
takes a fresh lease of life by associating itself with
the whole personality instead of with a meager
aspect of it. For the traditional democrat risked
the dignity' of man on one very precarious assump-
tion, that he would exhibit that dignity instinctively
in wise laws and good government. Voters did not do
that, and so the democrat was forever bang made
to look a little silly by tough-minded men. But if>
instead of hanging human dignity on the one as-
sumption about self-government, you insist that
man's dignity requires a standard of living, in which
his capacities are properly exercised, the whole
problem changes. The criteria which you then
apply to government are whether it is producing
a certain minimum of health, of decent housing,
of material necessities, of education, of freedom, of
pleasures, of beauty, not simply whether at the
sacrifice of all these things, it vibrates to the self-
centered opinions that happen to be floating around
in men's minds. In the d^ree to which these
criteria can be made exact and objective, political

314 PUBLIC OPINION

decision, which is inevitably the concern of com-
paratively few people, is actually brought into
relation with the interests of men.

There is no prospect, in any time which we can
conceive, that the whole invisible environment wilt
be so clear to all men that they will spontaneously
arrive at sound public opinions on the whole business
of government. And even if there were a prospect,
it is extremely doubtful whether many of us would
wish to be bothered, or would take the time to
form an opinion on "any and every form of social
action" which affects us. The only prospect
which is not visionary is that each of us in his own
sphere will act more and more on a realistic picture
of the invisible world, and that we shall develop
more and more men who are expert in keeping these
pictures realistic. Outside the rather narrow range
of our own possible attention, social control depends
upon devising standards of living and methods of
audit by which the acts of public officials and in-
dustrial directors are measured. We cannot our-
selves inspire or guide all these acts, as the mystical
democrat has always imagined. But we can stead-
ily increase our real control over these acts by
insisting that all of them shall be plainly recorded,
and their results objectively measured. I should
say, perhaps, that we can progressively hope to
insist. For the working out of such standards and
of such audits has only begun.

PART VII

NEWSPAPERS

Chapter XXL The Buying Public

XXII. The Constant Reader
" XXIII. The Nature of News
" XXIV. News, Truth, AND A Conclusion

CHAPTER XXI
THE BUYING PUBLIC

The idea that men have to go forth and study the
world in order to govern it, has played a very minor
part in political thought. It could figure very litde,
because the machinery for reporting the world in any
way useful to government made comparadvely litde
progress from the time of Aristode to the age in which
the premises of democracy were established.

Therefore, if you had asked a pioneer democrat
where the information was to come from on which the
will of the people was to be based, he would have
been puzzled by the question. It would have seemed
a litde as if you had asked him where his life or his
soul came from. The will of the people, he almost
always assumed, ensts at all dmes; the duty of
political science was to work out the inventions of
the ballot and representative government. If they
were properly worked out and applied under the
right conditions, such as exist in the self-contiuned
village or the self-contmned shop, the mechanism
would somehow overcome the brevity of attention
which Aiistotle had observed, and the narrowness of
its range, which the theory of a self-contained com-
munity tacidy acknowledged. We have seen how
even at this late date the guild socialists are trans-

3i8 PUBLIC OPINION

fixed by the notion that if only you can build on the
right unit of voting and representation, an intricate
cooperative commonwealth is possible.

Convinced that the wisdom was there if only you
could 6nd it> democrats have treated the problem
of making public opinions as a problem in civil
liberties.' "Who ever knew Truth put to the worse,
in a free and open encounter?" ' Supposing that no
one has ever seen it put to the worse, are we to be-
lieve then that the truth is generated by the encoun-
ter, like fire by rubbing two sticks? Behind this
classic doctrine of liberty, which American democrats
embodied in their Bill of Rights, there are, in fact,
several different theories of the origin of truth. One is
a faith that in the competition of opinions, the truest
will win because there is a peculiar strength in the
truth. This is probably sound if you allow the
competition to extend over a sufficiently long time.
When men ai^ue in this vein they have in mind the
verdict of history, and they think specifically of here-
tics persecuted when they lived, canonized after they
were dead. Milton's question rests also on a belief
that the capacity to recognize truth is inherent in all
men, and that truth freely put in circulation will
win acceptance. It derives no less from the experi-
ence, which has shown that men are not likely to dis-
cover truth if they cannot speak it, except under the
eye of an uncomprehending policeman.

'The best study is Prof. Zechariah Chafee's, Frerdamof Sprech.

* MiUon, Artoparitica, cited al the opening of Mr. Qiafee's book.
For comment on this classic doctrine of liberty as staled by Milton,
John Stuart Mill, and Mr. Bertrand Russell, see my Libtrty and At

Nfwi. a. U.

THE BUYING PUBLIC 319

No one can possibly overestimate the practical
value of these dvil liberties, nor the importance of
mwntMning them. When they are in jeopardy, the
human spirit is in jeopardy, and should there come a
time when they have to be curtailed, as during a
war, the suppression of thought is a risk to civiliza-
tion which might prevent its recovery from the ef-
fects of war, if the hysterics, who exploit the neces-
sity, were numerous enough to carry over into peace
the taboos of war. Fortunately, the mass of men is
too tolerant long to enjoy the professional inquisitors,
as gradually, under the criticism of men not willing
to be terrorized, they are revealed as mean-spinted
creatures who nine-tenths of the time do not know
what they are talking about.'

But in spite of its fundamental importance, civil
liberty in this sense does not guarantee public opinion
in the modem world. For it always assumes, either
that truth is spontaneous, or that the means of
securing truth exist when there is no external inter-
ference. But when you are dealing with an invisible
environment, the assumption is false. The truth
about distant or complex matters is not self-evident,
and the machinery for assembling information is
technical and expensive. Yet political science, and
especially democratic political science, has never
freed itself from theori^nal assumption of Aristotie's
politics sufficiently to restate the premises, so that
political thought might come to grips with the

■ Cf. for example, the publicitioni of the Luik Committee in New

Pre*iden( WiUon'i iUoCH.

320 PUBLIC OPINION

problem of how to make the invisible world viable
to the citizens of a modern state.

So deep is the tradition^ that until quite recently,
for example, political science was taught in our
collies as if newspapers did not eidst. I am not
referring to schools of joumaHsm, for they are trade
schools, intended to prepare men and women for a
career. I am referring to political science as ex-
pounded to future business men, lawyers, public
officials, and citizens at large. In that science a
study of the press and the sources of popular informa-
tion found no place. It is a curious fact. To anyone
not immersed in the routine interests of political
science, it is almost inexplicable that no American
student of government, no American sociologist, has
ever written a book on news-gathering. There are
occasional references to the press, and statements
that it is not, or that it ought to be, "free" and
"truthful." But I can find almost nothing else.
And this disdain of the professionals finds its counter-
part in public opinions. Universally it is admitted
that the press is the chief means of contact with the
unseen environment. And practically everywhere it
is assumed that the press should do spontaneously
for us what primitive democracy imagined each of
us could do spontaneously for himself, that every day
and twice a day it will present us with a true picture
of all the outer world in which we are interested.

This insistent and ancient belief that truth is not
earned, but inspired, revealed, supplied gratis.

THE BUYING PUBLIC 321

comes out very plainly in our economic prejudices
as readers of newspapers. We expect the newspaper
to serve us with truth however unprofitable the
truth may be. For this difficult and often dangerous
service, which we recognize as fundamental, we
expected to pay until recently the smallest coin
turned out by the mint. We have accustomed
ourselves now to paying two and even three cents
on weekdays, and on Sundays, for an illustrated
encyclopedia and vaudeville entertainment attached,
we have screwed ourselves up to paying a nickel or
even a dime. Nobody thinks for a moment that he
ought to pay for his newspaper. He expects the
fountains of truth to bubble, but he enters into no
contract, l^al or moral, involving any risk, cost or
trouble to himself. He will pay a nominal price
when it suits him, will stop paying whenever it
suits him, will turn to another paper when that
suits him. Somebody has said quite apdy that
the newspaper editor has to be re-elected every
day.

This casual and one-sided relationship between
readers and press is an anomaly of our civiliza-
tion. There is nothing else quite like it, and it is,
therefore, hard to compare the press with any other
business or institution. It is not a business pure and
simple, pardy because the product is r^ularly
sold below cost, but chiefly because the community
applies one ettucal measure to the press and anotho*
to trade or manufacture. Ethically a newspaper
is judged as if it were a church or a school. But
if you try to compare it with these you fail; the

321 PUBLIC OPINION

taxpayer pays for the public school, the private
school is endowed or supported by tuitiot) fees,
there are subsidies and collections for the church.
You cannot compare journalism with law, medi-
cine or engineering, for in every one of these pro-
fessions the consumer pays for the service. A
free press, if you judg^ by the attitude of the
readers, means newspapers that are virtually ^ven
away.

Yet the critics of the press are merdy vcudng
the moral standards of the community, when they
expect such an institution to live on the same plane
as that on which the school, the church, and the
disinterested professions are supposed to live. This
illustrates again the concave character of demo-
cracy. No need for artificially acquired information
is felt to exist. The information must come natur-
ally, that is to say gratis, if not out of the heart of
the citizen, then gratis out of the newspaper. The
citizen will pay for his telephone, his railroad rides,
his motor car, his entertainment. But he does not
pay openly for his news.

He will, however, pay handsomely for the privilege
of having someone read about him. He will pay
directly to advertise. And he will pay indirectly
for the advertisements of other people, because
that payment, being concealed in the price of com-
modities is part of an invisible environment that
he does not effectively comprehend. It would be
regarded as an outrage to have to pay openly the
price of a good ice cream soda for all the news of
the world, though the public will pay that and

THE BUYING PUBLIC 323

more when it buys the advertised commodities.
The public pays for the press, but only when the
payment is concealed.

3

Circulation is, therefore, the means to an end.
It becomes an asset only when it can be sold to the
advertiser, who buys it with revenues secured
through indirect taxation of the reader.' The kind
of circulation which the advertiser will buy depends
on what he has to sell. It may be "quality" or
"mass." On the whole there is no sharp dividing
line, for in respect to most commodities sold by
advertising, the customers are neither the small
class of the very rich nor the very poor. They are
the people with enough surplus over bare neces-
sides to exercise discretion in their buying. The
paper, therefore, which goes into the homes of the
fairly prosperous is by and large the one which otFers
most to the advertiser. It may also go into the
homes of the poor, but except for certain lines of
goods, an analytical advertising agent does not rate
that circulation as a great asset, unless, as seems
to be the case with certain of Mr. Hearst's prop-
erties, the circulation is enormous.

A newspaper which angers those whom it pays
best to reach through advertisements is a bad

' "Aq cMabliahed ncwipaper u entitled to fii !ti advertiiin^ rata lo
that iti net tecdpti ftooi citculatioii may be left od the credit nde of the
profit and Iom account. To arrive at net receipt*, I would deduct from
the KTOM the coit of promotion, diitribution, and other expcnsei incideif
tal to circulation." From an addteu by Mr. Adolph S. Ocbi, publisher
of the A^m Yort Tinut u the Philadelphia Convention of the Auociated
Advertitini Cubi of The World, June 16, 1916. Cited, Elmer Davit)
HiiKry 0} Tkt Nan York Timti, 1851-1921, pp. 397-398.

324 PUBLIC OPINION

medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever
claimed that advertising was philanthropy, ad-
vertisers buy space in those publications which are
fairly certain to reach their future customers. One
need not spend much time worrying about the
unreported scandals of the dry-goods merchants.
They represent nothing really agnificant, and
incidents of this sort are less common than many
critics of the press suppose. The real problem is
that the readers of a newspaper, unaccustomed to
paying the cost of newsgathering, can be capi-
talized only by turning them into circulation that
can be sold to manufacturers and merchants. And
those whom it is most important to capitalize are
those who have the most money to spend. Such a
press is bound to respect the point of view of the
buying public. It is for this buying public that
newspapers are edited and published, for without
that support the newspaper cannot live. A news-
paper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful
banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the
buying public, it loses the one indispensible asset
of its existence.

Mr. John L. Given,' formerly of the New York
Evening Sun, stated in 19I4 that out of over two
thousand three hundred dailies published in the
United States, there were about one hundred and
seventy-five printed in cities having over one hundred

' Makinia Newstaptr, p. 13. This Is the best teclinical book I know,
and should be read by everyone who undertakes to discuss the press.
Mr. G. B. Diblee, who wrote the volume on The Niuispaper in the Home
University Library sayi (d. in), that "on the press for ptetamen I
only know of one good book, Mr. Given's."

THE BUYING PUBLIC 325

thousand inhabitants. These constitute the press
for "general news." They are the key papers
which collect the news dealing with great events,
and even the people who do not read any one of
the one hundred and seventy-five depend ulti-
mately upon them for news of the outer world.
For they make up the great press associations which
cooperate in the exchange of news. Each is, there-
fore, not only the informant of its own readers,
but it is the local reporter for the newspapers of
other cities. The rural press and the special press
by and large, takes their general news from these
key papers. And among these there are some very
much richer than others, so that for international
news, in the main, the whole press of the nation
may depend upon the reports of the press associa-
tions and the special services of a few metropolitan
dailies.

Roughly speaking, the economic support for
general news gathering is in the price paid for ad-
vertised goods by the fairly prosperous sections of
cities with more than one hundred thousand in-
habitants. These buying publics are composed of the
members of families, who depend for their income
chiefly on trade, merchandising, the direction of
manufacture, and finance. They are the clientele
among whom it pays best to advertise in a news-
paper. They wield a concentrated purchasing power,
which may be less in volume than the aggregate
for farmers and workingmen; but within the radius
covered by a daily newspaper they are the quickest

326 PUBLIC OPINION

They have, moreover, a double claim to attention.
They are not only the best customers for the ad-
vertiser, they include the advertisers. Therefore
the impression made by the newspapers on this
public matters deeply. Fortunately this public is
not unanimous. It may be "capitalistic" but it
contains divergent views on what capitalism is,
and how it is to be run. Except in times of danger,
this respectable opinion is sufficiently divided to
permit of considerable differences of policy. These
would be greater still if it were not that publishers
are themselves usually members of these urban
communities, and honesdy see the world through
the lenses of their associates and friends.

They are engaged in a speculative business,'
which depends on the general condition of trade,
and more peculiarly on a circulation based not on a
marriage contract with their readers, but on free
love. The object of every publisher is, therefore,
to turn his circulation from a medley of catch-as-
catch-can newstand buyers into a devoted band of
constant readers. A newspaper that can really
depend upon the loyalty of its readers is as inde-
pendent as a newspaper can be, given the economics
of modern journalism.^ A body of readers who

' Sometimes so speculative that in order to secure credit the pubhsher
has to go into bondage to his creditors. Information on this point is very
difficult to obtain, and for that reason its general importance is often
much exaggerated.

'"It is an axiom in newspaper publishing — 'more readers, more
independence of the influence of advertisers; ^wer readers and more
dependence on the advertiser.' It may seem like a contradiction (yn
it IS the truth) to assert: the greater the number of advertisers, the [ess

THE BUYING PUBLIC 327

stay by it through thick and thin is a power greater
than any which the individual advertiser can wield,
and a power great enough to break up a combina-
tion of advertisers. Therefore, whenever you find
a newspaper betraying its readers for the sake of an
advertiser, you can be fairly cert^n ather that the
publisher sincerely shares the views of the advertiser,
or that he thinks, perhaps mistakenly, he cannot
count upon the support of his readers if he openly
resists dictation. It is a question of whether the
readers, who do not pay in cash for their news, will
pay for it in loyalty.

influence they are individuiUj able to excrdte with the pubtiihet.'*
Adolph S. Ocfaf, tj. impra.

CHAPTER XXII
THE CONSTANT READER

The loyalty of the buying public to a newspaper is
not stipulated in any bond. In almost every other
enterprise the person who expects to be served
enters into an agreement that controls his passing
whims. At least he pays for what he obtains. In
the publishing of periodicals the nearest approach
to an agreement for a definite time is the paid sub-
scription, and that is not, I believe, a great factor in
the economy of a metropolitan daily. The reader is
the sole and the daily judge of his loyalty, and there
can be no suit against him for breach of promise or
nonsupport.

Though everything turns on the constancy of the
reader, there does not exist even a vague tradition
to call that fact to the reader's mind. His con-
stancy depends on how he happens to feel, or on his
habits. And these depend not simply on the quality
of the news, but more often on a number of ob-
scure elements that in our casual relation to the
press, we hardly take the trouble to make conscious.
The most important of these is that each of us tends
to judge a newspaper, if we judge it at all, by its
treatment of that part of the news in which we feel
ourselves involved. The newspaper deals with a
318

THE CONSTANT READER 319

multitude of events beyond our experience. But it
deals also with some events within our experience.
And by its handling of those events we most fre-
quendy decide to like it or dislike it, to trust it or
refuse to have the sheet in the house. If the news-
paper gives a satisfactory account of that which
we think we know, our bu«ness, our church, our
party, it is fairly certain to be immune from Solent
criticism by us. What better criterion does the
man at the breakfast table possess than that the
newspaper version checks up with his own opinion?
Therefore, most men tend to hold the newspaper
most stricdy accountable in their capacity, not of
general readers, but of special pleaders on matters
of their own experience.

Rarely is anyone but the interested party able to
test the accuracy of a report. If the news is
local, and if there is competition, the editor knows
that he will probably hear from the man who thinks
his portrait unfair and inaccurate. But if the news
is not local, the corrective diminishes as the subject
matter recedes into the distance. Tlie only people
who can correct what <they think is a false picture
of themselves printed in another city are members
of groups well enough organized to hire publicity
men.

Now it is interesting to note that the general
reader of a newspaper has no standing in law if he
thinks he is bang misled by the news. It is only
the aggrieved party who can sue for slander or libel,
and he has to prove a material injury to himself.
The law embodies the tradition that general news

330 PUBLIC OPINION

is not a matter of common concern,' except as to
matter which is v^;uely described as immoral or
seditious.

But the body of the news, though unchecked as a
whole by the disinterested reader, consists of items
about which some readers have very definite pre-
conceptions. Those items are the data of his judg-
ment, and news which men read without this per-
sonal criterion, they judge by some other standard
than their standard of accuracy. They are dealing
here with a subject matter which to them is indis-
tinguishable from fiction. The canon of truth can>
not be applied. They do not boggle over such news
if it conforms to their stereotypes, and they continue
to read it if it interests them.*

There are newspapers, even in large cities, edited
on the principle that the readers wish to read about
themselves. The theory is that if enough people
see their own names in the paper often enough, can
read about their weddings, funerals, sociables,
foreign travels, lodge meetings, school prizes, their
fiftieth birthdays, their sixtieth birthdays, their
silver weddings, their outings and clambakes, they
will make a reliable circulation.

The classic formula for such a newspaper is con-

' The reader will not mistake this as a plea for censorship. Il might,
however, be a good thing if there were competent tribunals, preferably
not official ones, nherc charges of untruthfulness and unfairness In the
general news could be sifted. Cf. Liberty and th Ntws, pp. 73-76.

'Note, for example, how absent is indignation in Mr. tlplon Sinclair
against socialist papers, even those which aie as malignantly unfair
to employers as certain of the papers cited by him ate unfair to ladicib.

THE CONSTANT READER 331

tained in a letter written by Horace Greeley on
April 3, i860, to "Friend Fletcher" who was about
to start a country newspaper: '

"i. Begin with a clear conception that the subject of
deepest interest to an average human being is himself;
next to that he is most concerned about his neighbors.
Asia and the Tongo Islands stand a long way after these
in his regard. ... Do not let a new church be organized,
or new members be added to one already existing, a fann
be sold, a new house raised, a mill set in motion, a store
opened, nor anything of interest to a dozen families occur,
without having the fact duly, though briefly, chronicled
in your columns. If a farmer cuts a big tree, or grows
a mammoth beet, or harvests a bounteous yield of wheat
or com, set forth the fact as concisely and unexceptionally
as possible."

The function of becoming, as Mr. Lee puts it,
"the printed diary of the home town" is one that
every newspaper no matter where it ts published
must in some measure fill. And where, as in a great
city like New York, the general newspapers cir-
culated broadcast cannot hll it, there exist small
newspapers published on Greeley's pattern for
sections of the city. In the boroughs of Manhattan
and the Bronx there are perhaps twice as many
local dailies as there are general newspapers.* And
they are supplemented by all kinds of special pub-
lications for trades, religions, nationalities.

These diaries are published for people who
find their own lives interesting. But there are also

■ Cited, Jame* Mdvin Lee, The Hiriary of American Joumalitm,
p. 405.
' CJ. John L. GiTeo, Making a Nttupaf*r, p. I].

332 PUBLIC OPINION

great numbers of people who find their own lives
dull, and wish, like Hedda Gabler, to live a more
thrilling life. For them there are published a few
whole newspapers, and sections of others, devoted
to the personal lives of a set of imaginaty peoi^^
with whose gorgeous 'nces the reader can in his
fancy safdy identify himself. Mr. Hearst's nnfli^-
g^ interest in hig^ society catos to peo|^ who
never hc^ to be in high society, and yet man-
age to derive some enhancement out of the vague
feding that they are [»art of the life that they read
about. In the great cities "the printed <Uary of
the h«ne town" tends to be the printed diary of a
smart set.

And it is, as we have already noted, the dailies
of the dries which carry the burden of bring^
distant news to the private citizen. But it is not
primarily their political and social news which
holds the circulation. The interest in that is intermit-
tent, and few publishers can bank on it alone. The
newspaper, therefore, takes to itself a variety of
other features, all primarily designed to hold a body
of readers together, who so far as big news is con-
cerned, are not able to be critical. Moreover, in big
news the competition in any one community is not
very serious. The press services standardize the
main events; it is only once in a while that a great
scoop is made; there is apparently not a very great
reacting public for such massive reporring as has
made the New York Times of recent years indis-
pensable to men of all shades of opinion. In order
to differenriate themselves and collect a steady

THE CONSTANT READER 333

public most papers have to go outside the field of
general news. They go to the dazzling levels of
society, to scandal and crime, to sports, pictures,
actresses, advice to the lovelorn, highschool notes,
women's pages, buyer's pages, cooking receipts, chess,
whist, gardening, comic strips, thundering partisan-
ship, not because publishers and editors are interested
in everything but news, but because they have to
find some way of holding on to that all^d host of
passionately interested readers, who are supposed by
some criticsofthepress to be clamoring for the truth
and nothing but the truth.

The newspaper editor occupies a strange position.
liis enterprises depend upon indirect taxation
levied by his advertisers upon his readers; the
patronage of the advertisers depends upon the
editor's skill in holding together an effective group
of customers. These customers deliver judgment
according to their private experiences and thdr
stereotyped expectations, for in the nature of
things they have no independent knowledge of
most news they read. If the judgment is not un-
favorable, the editor is at least within range of a
circulation that pays. But in order to secure that
circulation, he cannot rely wholly upon news of the
greater environment. He handles that as interest-
ingly as he can, of course, but the quality of the
general news, especially about public affairs, is not
in itself sufficient to cause very large numbers of
readers to discriminate among the dailies.

Tlus somewhat left-handed relationship between
newspapers and public information is reflected in

334 PUBLIC OPINION

the salaries of newspa[>er men. Reporting^ which
theoretically constitutes the foundation of the
whole institution, is the most poorly paid branch
of newspaper work, and is the least r^arded. By
and large, able men go into it only by neces^ty or
for experience, and with the definite intention of
being graduated as soon as possible. For straight
reporting is not a career that offers many great
rewards. The rewards in journalism go to specialty
work, to signed correspondence which has editorial
quality, to executives, and to men mth a knack
and flavor of their own. This is due, no doubt, to
what economists call the rent of ability. But this
economic principle operates with such peculiar
violence in journalism that newsgathering does not
attract to itself anytlung like the number of trained
and able men which its public importance would
seem to demand. The fact that the able men take up
" straight reporting " with the intention of leaving it
as soon as possible is, I think, the chief reason why it
has never developed in sufficient measure those cor-
porate traditions that give to a profession prestige
and a jealous self-respect. For it is these corporate
traditions which engender the pride of craft, which
tend to raise the standards of admission, punish
breaches of the code, and give men the strength to
insist upon their status in society.

3

Yet all this does not go to the root of the matter.

For while the economics of journalism is such as to

depress the value of newsreporting, it is, I am cer-

THE CONSTANT READER 335

tiun, a false determinism which would abandon
the analysis at that point. The intrinsic power of
the reporter appears to be so great, the number of
very able men who pass through reporting is so
large, that there must be some deeper reason why,
compararively speaking, so little serious effort has
gone into raising the vocation to the level say of
medicine, engineering, or law.

Mr. Upton Sinclair speaks for a large body of
opinion in America,' when he clums that in what
he calls "The Brass Check" he has found this
deeper reason:

"The Brass Check is found in your pay envelope every
week — you who write and print and distribute our news-
papers and magazines. The Brass check is the price of
your shame — you who take the fair body of truth and sell
it in the market place, who betray the virgin hopes of
mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business." * '

It would seem from this that there exists a body
of known truth, and a set of well founded hopes,
which are prostituted by a more or less conscious
conspiracy of the rich owners of newspapers. If
this theory is correct, then a certain conclusion fol-
lows. It is that the fair body of truth would be
inviolate in a press not in any way connected with
Big Business. For if it should happen that a press not
controlled by, and not even friendly with, Big
Business somehow failed to contain the fur body of

' Mr. Hilaire Bdloc maket practically the Mine analytit for En^iih
Dcmpapen. Cf. The Fret Press.

■ ifpton Sinclair, Ttie Brass Ckeck. A Study of American Joumaiitm,
p. 436.

336 PUBLIC OPINION

truth, something would be wrong with Mr. Sn-
dair's theory.

There is such a press. Strange to say, in proposing
a remedy Mr. Sinclair does not advise his readers
to subscribe to the nearest radical newspaper. Why
not? If the troubles of American journalism go
back to the Brass Check of Big Business why does
not the remedy lie in reading the papo^ that do
not in any remote way accept the Brass Check?
Why subsidize a "National News" with a large
board of directors "of all creeds or causes" to print
a paper full of facts "r^ardless of what is injured,
the Steel Trust or the I. W. W., the Standanl Oil
Company or the Socialist Party?" If the trouble
is Big Business, that is the Steel Trust, Standard
on and the like, why not urge everybody to read
I. W. W. or Socialist papers? Mr. Sinclair does not
say why not. But the reason is simple. He cannot
convince anybody, not even himself, that the anti-
capitalist press is the remedy for the capitalist
press. He ignores the anti-capitalist press both in
his theory of the Brass Check and in his constructive
proposal. But if you are diagnosing American
journalism you cannot ignore it. If what you care
about is "thefair body of truth," you do not commit
the gross logical error of assembling all the in-
stances of unfairness and lying you can find in one
set of newspapers, ignore al! the instances you
could easily find in another set, and then assign as
the cause of the lying, the one supposedly common
characteristic of the press to which you have con-
fined your investigation. If you are going to blame

THE CONSTANT READER 337

"capitalism" for the faults of the press, you are
compelled to prove that those faults do not exist
except where capitalism controls. That Nfr. Sin-
clair cannot do this, is shown by the fact that while
in his diagnosis he traces everything to capitalism,
in his prescription he ignores both capitalism and
anti-capitalism.

One would have supposed that the inability to
take any non^;apitalist paper as a model of truth-
fulness and competence would have caused Mr.
Sinclair, and those who agree with him, to look
somewhat more critically at thdr assumptions.
They would have asked themselves, for example,
where is the fair body of truth, that Big Buaness
prostitutes, but anti-Big Bu»ness does not seem to
obtwn? For that question leads, I believe, to the
heart of the matter, to the question of what is news.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE NATURE OF NEWS

All the reporters in the world working at] the
hours of the day could not witness all the happen-
ings in the world. There are not a great many
reporters. And none of them has the power to be
in more than one place at a time. Reporters are
not clairvoyant, they do not gaze into a crystal
ball and see the world at will, they are not assisted
by thought-transference. Yet the range of subjects
these comparatively few men manage to cover
would be a miracle indeed, if it were not a stand-
ardized routine.

Newspapers do not try to keep an eye on all
mankind,' They have watchers stationed at certain
places, like Police Headquarters, the Coroner's
CMfice, the County Clerk's Office, City Hall, the
White House, the Senate, House of Representatives,
and so forth. They watch, or rather in the majority
of cases they belong to associations which employ
men who watch "a comparatively small number of
places where it is made known when the life of
anyone . . . departs from ordinary paths, or when
events worth telling about occur. For example,

' See the illuminating chapter in Mr. John h. Given's book, already
cited, on "Uncovering the News," Ch. V.

THE NATURE OF NEWS 339

John Smithj let it be supposed, becomes a broker.
For ten years he pursues the even tenor of his way
and except for his customers and his friends no one
gives him a thought. To the newspapers he ts as
if he were not. But in the eleventh year he suffers
heavy losses and, at last, his resources all gone,
summons his lawyer and arranges for the making
of an assignment. TTie lawyer posts off to the County
Clerk's office, and a clerk there makes the necessary
entries in the official docket. Here in step the
newspapers. While the clerk is writing Smith's
business obituary a reporter glances over his shoulder
and a few minutes later the reporters know Smith's
troubles and are as well informed concerning his
business status as they would be had they kept a
reporter at his door every day for over ten years." '
When Mr. Given says that the newspapers know
"Smith's troubles" and "his business status," he
does not mean that they know them as Smith knows
them, or as Nfr. Arnold Bennett would know them
if he had made Smith the hero of a three volume
novel. The newspapers know only "in a few min-
utes " the bald facts wluch are recorded in the County
Clerk's Office. That overt act "uncovers" the
news about Smith. Whether the news will be
followed up or not is another matter. The point is
that before a series of events become news they have
usually to make themselves noticeable in some more
or less overt act. Generally too, in a crudely overt
act. Smith's friends may have known for years that
he was taking risks, rumors may even have reached

340 PUBLIC OPINION

the financial editor if Snutli's fneada were talka-
tive. But apart from the &ct that none of tlus
could be published because it w(Hild be libd> Aen
is in these rumors nothing definite on which to
peg a story. Something definite must occur. that
has unmistakable form. It may be the act of going
into bankruptcy, it may be a fire> a collision, an
assault, a riot, an arrest, a denunciation, the lit-
troducdon of a bill, a speech, a vote, a meeting, the
expressed opinion of a wdl known citizen, an editorial
in a newspaper, a sale, a wage-schedul^ a price
change, the proposal to build a bri^e. . . . There
must be a manifestation. The (surse of events
must assume a certain definable shape, and until
it is in a phase where some aspect is an accomplished
fact, news does not separate itself from the ocean
of possible truth.

Naturally there is room for wide difference of
opinion as to when events have a shape that can be
reported. A good journalist will find news oftener
than a hack. If he sees a building with a dangerous
list, he does not have to w^t imtil it falls into the
street in order to recognize news. It was a great
reporter who guessed the name of the next Indian
Viceroy when he heard that Lord So-and-So was
inquiring about climates. There are lucky shots
but the number of men who can make them is
small. Usually it is the stereotyped shape assumed
by an event at an obvious place that uncovers the
run of the news. The most obvious place is where

THE NATURE OF NEWS 341

people's affeirs touch public authority. De minimis
non curat lex. It is at these places that marriages^
births, deaths, contracts, failures, arrivals, depart-
ures, lawsuits, disorders, epidemics and calamities
are made known.

In the first instance, therefore, the news is not
a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an
aspect that has obtruded itself. The news does
not tell you how the seed is germinating in the
ground, but it may tell you when the first sprout
breaks through the surface. It may even tell you
what somebody says is happening to the seed under
ground. It may tell you that the sprout did not
come up at the time it was expected. The more
points, then, at which any happening can be fixed,
objectified, measured, named, the more points
there are at which news can occur.

So, if some day a legislature, having exhausted all
other ways of improving mankind, should forbid
the scoring of baseball games, it might still be
possible to play some sort of game in which the
umpire decided according to his own sense of far
play how long the game should last, when each
team should go to bat, and who should be regarded
as the wiimer. If that game were reported in the
newspapers it would consist of a record of the
umpire's decisions, plus the reporter's impression
of the hoots and cheers of the crowd, plus at best a
vague account of how cert^n men, who had no
specified position on the field moved around for a
few hours on an unmarked piece of sod. The more
you try to imagine the logic of so absurd a pre-

342 PUBLIC OPINION

dicament, the more clear it becomes that for the
purposes of newsgathering, (let alone the purposes
of playing the game) it is impossible to do much
without an apparatus and rules for naming, scoring,
recording. Because that machinery is far from
perfect, the umpire's life is often a distracted one.
Many crucial plays he has to judge by eye. The
last vestige of dispute could be taken out of the
game, as tt has been taken out of chess when people
obey the rules, if somebody thought it worth his
while to photograph every play. It was the moving
pictures which finally settled a real doubt in many
reporters' minds, owing to the slowness of the
human eye, as to just what blow of Dempsey's
knocked out Carpentier.

Wherever there Is a good machinery of record,
the modem news service works with great precision.
There is one on the stock exchange, and the news
of price movements is flashed over tickers with
dependable accuracy. There is a machinery for
election returns, and when the counting and tabu-
lating are well done, the result of a national election
is usually known on the night of the election. In
civilized communities deaths, births, marriages and
divorces are recorded, and are known accurately
except where there is concealment or neglect. The
machinery exists for some, and only some, aspects
of industry and government, in varying degrees of
precision for securities, money and staples, bank
clearances, realty transactions, wage scales. It
exists for imports and exports because they pass
through a custom house and can be directly recorded.

THE NATURE OF NEWS 343

It exists in nothing like the same d^ee for Interna]
trade, and especially for trade over the counter.

It will be found, I think, that there is a very
direct relation between the certainty of news and
the system of record. If you call to mind the topics
which form the principal indictment by reformers
against the press, you find they are subjects in
which the newspaper occupies the position of the
umpire in the unscored baseball game. All news
about states of mind is of this character: so are all
descriptions of personalities, of sincerity, aspiration,
motive, intention, of mass feeling, of national feel-
ing, of public opinion, the policies of foreign govern-
ments. So is much news about what is going to
happen. So are questions turning on private profit,
private income, wages, working conditions, the
efficiency of labor, educational opportunity, un-
employment,' monotony, health, discrimination,
unfairness, restraint of trade, waste, " backward
peoples," conservatism, imperialism, radicalism, lib-
erty, honor, righteousness. All involve data that
are at best spasmodically recorded. The data may
be hidden because of a censorship or a tradition of
privacy, they may not exist because nobody thinks
record important, because he thinks it red tape, or
because nobody has yet invented an objective
system of measurement. Then the news on these
subjects is bound to be debatable, when it is not
wholly neglected. The events which are not scored
are reported either as personal and convendona]

otbcReporuof Uneinploynient in

344 PUBLIC OPINION

opinions, or they are not news. They do not take
shape until somebody protests, or somebody in-
vestigates, or somebody publicly, in the etymolc^cal
meaning of the word, makes an issue of them.

This is the underlying reason for the existence of
the press agent. The enormous discretion as to
what facts and what impressions shall be reported
is steadily convincing every organized group of
people that whether it wishes to secure publicity
or to avoid it, the exercise of discretion cannot be
left to the reporter. It is safer to hire a press agent
who stands between the group and the newspapers.
Having hired him, the temptation to exploit his
strategic position is very great. "Shortly before
the war," says Mr. Frank Cobb, "the newspapers
of New York took a census of the press agents who
were regularly employed and regularly accredited
and found that there were about twelve hundred of
them. How many there are now (1919) I do not
pretend to know, but what I do know is that many
of the direct channels to news have been closed and
the information for the public is first filtered through
publicity agents. The great corporations have
them, the banks have them, the railroads have
them, all the organizations of business and of social
and political activity have them, and they are the
media through which news comes. Even statesmen
have them." '

Were reporting the simple recovery of obvious
facts, the press agent would be little more than a

■ Address before th« Women's City Cljb of New York, Dec. it, 1919.
Reprinted, Ntw Republic, Dec. 31, 1919, p. 44.

THE NATURE OF NEWS 345

clerk. But since, in respect to most of the big topics
of news, the facts are not simple, and not at all ob-
vious, but subject to choice and opinion, it is natural
that everyone should wish to make his own choice
of facts for the newspapers to print. The publicity
man does that. And in doing it, he certiunly saves
the reporter much trouble, by presenting him a clear
picture of a situation out of which he might otherwise
make neither head nor tail. But it follows that the
picture which the publicity man makes for the re-
porter is the one he wishes the public to see. He is
censor and propagandist, responsible only to his
employers, and to the whole truth responsible only
as it accords with the employers' conception of his
own interests.

The development of the publicity man is a clear
sign that the facts of modem life do not spontan-
eously take a shape in which they can be known.
They must be given a shape by somebody, and since
in the daily routine reporters cannot give a shape to
facts, and since there is little disinterested organiza^
tion of intelligence, the need for some formulation is
being met by the interested parties.

3

The good press agent understands that the vir-
tues of his cause are not news, unless they are such
strange virtues that they jut right out of the routine
of life. This is not because the newspapers do not
like virtue, but because it is not worth while to say
that nothing has happened when nobody expected
anything to happen. So if the publicity man wishes

346 PUBLIC OPINION

free publicity he has, speaking quite accurately, to
start something. He arranges a stunt: obstructs the
traffic, teases the police, somehow manages to en-
tangle his client or his cause with an event that is
already news. The sufFragjsts knew this, did not
particularly enjoy the knowledge but acted on it,
and kept suffrage in the news long after the argu-
ments pro and con were straw in their mouths, and
people were about to settle down to thinldng of the
suiFrage movement as one of the established insti-
tutions of American life.'

Fortunately the suffragists, as distinct from the
feminists, had a perfectly concrete objective, and a.
very simple one. What the vote symbolizes is not
»mple, as the ablest advocates and the ablest op-
ponents knew. But the right to vote is a simple
and familiar right. Now in labor disputes, which
are probably the chief item in the charges against
newspapers, the right to strike, like the right to
vote, is simple enough. But the causes and objects
of a particular strike are like the causes and objects
of the woman's movement, extremely subtle.

Let us suppose the conditions leading up to a
strike are bad. What is the measure of evil? A
certain conceprion of a proper standard of living,
hygiene, economic security, and human dignity.
The industry may be far below the theoretical stand-
ard of the commimity, and the workers may be too

' Cf. Inei Haynes Irwin, The Slory of iMe Woman' r Parly. It is not
only a good account of a vital part of a great agitation, but a reservoir
i£ mateiial on successful, non-revolutionarv, non-conspiring aeitation
under modern conditions of public attention, public interest, and politi-
cal habit.

THE NATURE OF NEWS 347

wretched to protest. Conditions may be above the
standard, and the workers may protest violently.
The standard is at best a vague measure. However,
we shall assume that the conditions are below par,
as par is understood by the editor. Occasionally
without waiting for the workers to threaten, but
prompted say by a social worker, he will send re-
porters to investigate, and wilt call attention to bad
conditions. Necessarily he cannot do that often.
For these investigations cost time, money, special
talent, and a lot of space. To make plausible a
report that conditions are bad, you need a good
many coliunns of print. In order to tell the truth
about the steel worker in the Pittsburgh district,
there was needed a staff of investigators, a great
deal of time, and several fat volumes of print. It
is impossible to suppose that any daily newspaper
could normally regard the malung of Pittsburgh
Surveys, or even Interchurch Steel Reports, as one
of its tasks. News which requires so much trouble
as that to obtain is beyond the resources of a duly
press.'

The bad conditions as such are not news, because
in all but exceptional cases, journalism is not a first
hand report of the raw material. It is a re[>ort of
that material after it has been stylized. Tlius bad
conditions might become news if the Board of Health

' Not long ago Babe Ruth mi jailed for ipeediiif . SdeaMd fnm jail
)un before the aftetnoon game itaned, he tuihcd mto hit waitiog auto-
mobile, and made up for tune loit in jail by breaking the ipeed lawt on
hit way to the ball mundi. No policeman nopped hiin, but a reporter
dmcd him, and pubuthed hi* tpeed the nnt monuDg. Babe Ruth i* an
exceptional mao. Newapapen cannot time all mocotiK*. They have to
take their oevi about apecdiog lioai the police.

348 PUBLIC OPINION

reported an unusually ' high death rate in an indus-
trial area. Failing an intervention of this sort^ the
facts do not become news, until the workers organize
and make a demand upon thdr employers. Even
then, if an easy setdement is certain the news value
is low, whether or not the conditions themselves are
remedied in the setdement. But if industrial rela-
tions collapse into a strike or lockout the news value
increases. If the stoppage involves a service on
which the readers of the newspapers immediately
depend, or if it involves a breach of order, the news
value is still greater.

The underlying trouble appears in the news
through certain easily rect^nizable symptoms, a de-
mand, a strike, disorder. From the point of view of
the worker, or of the disinterested seeker of justice
the demand, the strike, and the disorder, are merely
incidents in a process that for them is richly com-
plicated. But since all the immediate realities lie
outside the direct experience both of the reporter,
and of the special public by which most newspapers
are supported, they have normally to wait for a signal
in the shape of an overt act. When that signal
comes, say through a walkout of the men or a sum-
mons for the police, it calls into play the stereotypes
people have about strikes and disorders. The un-
seen struggle has none of its own flavor. It is noted
abstractly, and that abstraction is then animated by
the immediate experience of the reader and reporter.
Obviously this is a very different experience from
that which the strikers have. They feel, let us say,
the temper of the foreman, the nerve-wracking

THE NATURE OF NEWS 349

monotony of the machine, the depres^ngly bad air,
the drudgery of thdr wives, the stunting of thdr
children, the dinginess of their tenements. The
slogans of the strike are invested with these feel-
ings. But the reporter and reader see at first only
a strike and some catchwords. They invest these
with their feelings. Their feelings may be that
their jobs are insecure because the strikers are
stopping goods they need in their work, that there
will be shortage and higher prices, that it is all
devilishly inconvenient. These, too, are realities.
And when they ^vc color to the abstract news that
a strike has been called, it is in the nature of things
that the workers are at a disadvantage. It is in the
nature, that is to say, of the exisdng system of in-
dustrial relations that news arising from grievances
or hopes by workers should almost invariably be
uncovered by an overt attack on production.

You have, therefore, the circumstances in all thdr
sprawling complexity, the overt act which signalizes
them, the stereotyped bulletin which publishes the
signal, and the meaning that the reader himself in>
jects, after he has derived that meaning from the
experience which directly affects him. Now the
reader's experience of a strike may be very important
indeed, but from the point of view of the central
trouble which caused the strike, it is eccentric. Yet
this eccentric meaning is automatically the most
interesting.' To enter imaginatively into the central
issues is for the reader to step out of lumself, and
into very different lives.

> C/. Cb. XI, "The Enliniag of Intercn."

3SO PUBLIC OPINION

It follows that in the reporting of strikes, the
easiest way is to let the news be uncovered by the
overt act, and to describe the event as the story of
interference with the reader's life. That is where
his attention is first aroused, and his interest most
easily enlisted. A great deal, I think myself the
crucial part, of what looks to the worker and the
reformer as deliberate misrepresentation on the part
of newspapers, is the direct outcome of a practical
difHculty in uncovering the news, and the emotional
difficulty of making distant facts interesting unless,
as Emerson says, we can "perceive (them) to be
only a new version of our familiar experience" and
can "set about translating (them) at once into our
parallel facts." '

If you study the way many a strike is reported in
the press, you wilt find, very often, that the issues
are rarely in the headlines, barely in the leading
paragraphs, and sometimes not even mentioned
anywhere. A labor dispute in another city has to be
very important before the news account contains
any definite information as to what is in dispute.
The routine of the news works that way, with modi-
fications it works that way in regard to political
issues and international news as well. The news is
an account of the overt phases that are interesting,
and the pressure on the newspaper to adhere to this
routine comes from many sides. It comes from the
economy of noting only the stereotyped phase of a
situation. It comes from the difficulty of finding

' From his essay entitled Art and Cnliciim. The quotation occurs

THE NATURE OF NEWS 351

journalists who can see what they have not learned
to see. It comes from the almost unavoidable diffi-
culty of finding sufficient space in which even the
best journalist can make plausible an unconven-
tional view. It comes from the economic neces^ty
of interesting the reader quickly, and the economic
risk involved in not interesting him at all, or of
offending him by unexpected news insufficiendy or
clumsily described. All these difficulties combined
make for uncertainty in the editor when there are
dangerous issues at stake, and cause him naturally
to prefer the indisputable fact and a treatment more
readily adapted to the reader's interest. 71»e indis-
putable fact and the easy bterest, are the strike
itself and the reader's inconvenience.

All the subder and deeper truths are in the present
organization of industry very unreliable truths.
They involve judgments about standards of living,
productivity, human rights that are endlessly
debatable in the absence of exact record and quan-
titative analysis. And as long as these do not exist
in industry, the run of news about it mil tend, as
Emerson said, quoting from Isocrates, "to make of
moles mountains, and of mountains moles." > Where
there is no constitutional procedure in industry,
and no expert sifting of evidence and the claims^
the fact that is sensational to the reader is the fact
that almost every journalist will seek, (^ven the
industrial relations that so lai^y prevail, even
where there is conference or arbitration, but no
independent filtering of the facts for decision, the

> Id., mprm.

3S1 PUBLIC OPINION

issue for the newspaper public will tend not to be
the issue for the industry. And so to try disputes
by an appeal throi^h the newspapers puts a burden
upon newspapers and readers which they cannot
and ought not to carry. As long as real law and
order do not exist, the bulk of the news will, unless
consciously and courageously corr^ted, work agunst
those who have no lawful and orderly method of
asserting themselves. The bulletins from the scene
of action will note the trouble that arose from the
assertion, rather than the reasons which led to it.
The reasons are intangible.

The editor deals with these bulletins. He sits in
his office, reads them, rarely does he see any large
portion of the events themselves. He must, as we
have seen, woo at least a section of his readers every
day, because they will leave him without mercy
if a rival paper happens to hit their fancy. He
works under enormous pressure, for the competi-
tion of newspapers is often a matter of minutes.
Every bulletin requires a swift but complicated
judgment. It must be understood, put in relation
to other bulletins also understood, and played up
or played down according to its probable interest
for the public, as the editor conceives it. Without
standardization, without stereotypes, without rou-
tine judgments, without a fairly ruthless disregard
of subtlety, the editor would soon die of excitement.
The final page is of a definite size, must be ready
at a precise moment; there can be only a certain

THE NATURE OF NEWS 353

number of captions on the items, and in each cap-
tion there must be a definite number of letters.
Always there is the precarious ui^ency of the buying
public, the law of libel, and the possibility of endless
trouble. The thing could not be managed at all
without systematizadon, for in a standardized
product there is economy of time and effort, as
well as a partial guarantee against fiulure.

It is here that newspapers influence each other
most deeply. Thus when the war broke out, the
American newspapers were confronted with a subject
about which they had no previous experience.
Certain diulies, nch enough to pay cable tolls, took
the lead in securing news, and the way that news
was presented became a model for the whole press.
But where did that model come from? It came
from the English press, not because Northcliffe
owned American newspapers, but because at first
it was easier to buy English correspondence, and
because, later, it was easier for American journalists
to read English newspapers than it was for them to
read any others. London was the cable and news
center, and it was there that a certain technic for
reporting the war was evolved. Something similar
occurred in the reporting of the RusMan Revolution.
In that instance, access to Russia was closed by
military censorship, both Russian and Allied, and
closed still more effectively by the difficulties of the
Russian language. But above alt it was closed to
effective news reporting by the fact that the hardest
thing to report is chaos, even though it is an evoMng
chaos. This put the formulating of Russian news

354 PUBLIC OPINION

at its source in Helsingfors^ Stockholm, Geneva,
Paris and London, into the hands of censors and
propagandists. They were for a long time subject
to no check of any kind. Until they had made
themselves ridiculous they created, let us admit,
out of some genuine aspects of the huge Russian
maelstrom, a set of stereotypes so evocative of hate
and fear, that the very best insdnct of journalism,
its desire to go and see and tell, was for a long time
crushed.'

5
Every newspaper when it reaches the reader is
the result of a whole series of selections as to what
items shall be printed, in what position they shall
be printed, how much space each shall occupy,
what emphasis each shall have. There are no
objective standards here. There are conventions.
Take two newspapers published in the same city
on the same morning. The headline of one reads:
"Britain pledges aid to Berlin against French ag-
gression; France openly backs Poles." The headline
of the second is "Mrs. Stillman's Other Love."
Which you prefer is a matter of taste, but not en-
tirely a matter of the editor's taste. It Js a matter
of his judgment as to what will absorb the half
hour's attention a certain set of readers will give to
his newspaper. Now the problem of securing at-
tention is by no means equivalent to displaying
the news in the perspective laid down by religious

< CI. A Till 0} thi News, by Walter Lippmann >nd Charles Men,
aoisted by Faye Lippmaou, Ntui JUpublic August 4, 1910.

THE NATURE OF NEWS 355

teaching or by some form of ethical culture. It is a
problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of in-
ducing him to feel a sense of personal identification
with the stories he is reading. News which does
not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into
the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a
wide audience. The audience must participate in
the news, much as it participates in the drama, by
personal identification. Just as everyone holds
his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he
helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subder form
the reader enters into the news. In order that he
shall enter he must find a familiar foothold in the
story, and this is supplied to him by the use of
stereotypes. They tell him that if an association of
plumbers is called a "combine" it is appropriate to
develop his hostility; if it is called a "group of
leading business men" the cue is for a favorable
reaction.

It is in a combination of these elements that the
power to create opinion resides. Editorials rein-
force. Sometimes in a situation that on the news
pages is too confusing to permit of identification,
they give the reader a clue by means of which he
engages himself. A clue he must have if, as most
of us must, he is to sdze the news in a hurry. A
su^esdon of some sort he demands, which tells him,
so to speak, where he, a man conceiving himself
to be such and such a person, shall integrate his
feelings with the news he reads.

"It has been said" writes Walter Bagehot,' "that

■ Od the EmodoD of Convictiai, Liurary ShuIuj, Vol. Ill, p. 171.

3S6 PUBLIC OPINION

if you can only get a middleclass Eng^shman to
think whether there are 'snails in Sinus,' he will
soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to
make him think^ but if he does think, he cannot
rest in a negative, he will comt to some dedsion.
And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A
grocer has a full creed as to fordgn policy, a young
lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to
which neither has any doubt whatever."

Yet that same grocer will have many doubts
about his groceries, and that young lady, mar-
velously certain about the' sacraments, may have
all kinds of doubts as to whether to marry the
grocer, and if not whether it is proper to accept
his attentions. The ability to rest in the n^adve
implies either a lack of interest in the result, or a
vivid sense of competing alternatives. In the case
of fordgn policy or the sacraments, the interest in
the results ts intense, while means for checking the
opinion are poor. This is the plight of the reader
of the general news. If he is to read it at all he
must be interested, that is to say, he must enter
into the atuadon and care about the outcome.
But if he does that he cannot rest in a negative,
and unless independent means of checking the lead
given him by his newspaper exists, the very fact
that he is interested may make it difficult to arrive
at that balance of opinions which may most nearly
approximate the truth. The more passionately
involved he becomes, the more he will tend to re-
sent not only a different view, but a disturbing bit
of news. That is why many a newspaper finds

THE NATURE OF NEWS 357

that, having honestly evoked the partisanship of
its readers, it can not easily, supposing the editor
believes the facts warrant it, change position. If a
change is necessary, the transition has to be managed
with the utmost skill and delicacy. Usually a
newspaper will not attempt so hazardous a per-
formance. It is easier and safer to have the news
of that subject taper off and disappear, thus putting
out the fire by starving it.

CHAPTER XXIV

NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION

As we b^n to make more and more exact studies
of the press, much will depend upon the hypothesis
we hold. If we assume with Mr. Sinclair, and most
of his opponents, that news and truth are two words
for the same thing, we shall, I believe, arrive no-
where. We shall prove that on this point the news-
paper lied. We shall prove that on that point Mr.
Sinclair's account lied. We shall demonstrate
that Mr. Sinclair lied when he said that somebody
tied, and that somebody lied when he said Mr. Sin-
clair lied. We shall vent our feelings, but we shall
vent them into air.

The hypothesis, which seems to me the most
fertile, is that news and truth are not the same
thing, and must be clearly distinguished.' The
function of news is to signalize an event, the func-
tion of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts,
to set them into relation with each other, and make
a picture of reality on which men can act. Only at
those points, where social conditions take recogniz-
able and measurable shape, do the body of truth
and the body of news coincide. That is a compara-
tively small part of the whole field of human interest.

' When I wrote Libtrty and the News, I did not underttand thit
dininction cleariy enouBh to slate it, but cj. p. 89 fF.
3S8

NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION 359

In this sector, and only in this sector, the tests of
the news are suiiiciently exact to make the charges
of perversion or suppression more than a partisan
judgment. There is no defense, no extenuation,
no excuse whatever, for stating six times that Lenin
is dead, when the only information the paper pos-
sesses is a report that he is dead from a source
repeatedly shown to be unreliable. The news, in
that instance, is not "Lenin Dead" but "Helsingfors
Says Lenin is Dead." And a newspaper can be
asked to take the responability of not making Lenin
more dead than the source of the news is reliable;
if there is one subject on which editors are most
responsible it is in their judgment of the reliability
of the source. But when it comes to dealing, for
example, with stones of what the Russian people
want, no such test exists.

The absence of these exact tests accounts, I
think, for the character of the profession, as no
other explanation does. There is a very small body
of exact knowledge, which it requires no outstand-
ing ability or training to deal with. The rest is in
the journalist's own discretion. Once he departs
from the region where it is definitely recorded at
the County Clerk's office that John Smith has
gone into bankruptcy, all fixed standards disappear.
The story of why John Smith failed, his human
frailties, the analysis of the economic conditions
on which he was shipwrecked, all of this can be
told in a hundred different ways. There is no dis-
cipline in applied psychology, as there is a discipline
in medicine, engineering, or even law, which has

j6o PUBLIC OPINION .

authority to direct the journalist's mind when he
passes from the news to the vague realm of truth.
There are no canons to direct his own mind, and
no canons that cooce the reader's judgment or the
publisher's. His ver^on of the truth is only his
vernon. How can he demonstrate the truth as he
sees it? He cannot demonstrate it, any man dian
Mi-. Sinclair Lewis can demonstrate that he has
tcdd At whole truth about Main Street. And the
more he understands his own weaknesses, the more
ready he is to admit that where there is no objective
test, his nrn opinion is in some vital measure con-
structed out of his own stereotypes, according to
lus own code, and by the urgency of his own interest.
He knows that he is sedng the world through sub>
jective lenses. He cannot deny diat he too is, as
Shelley remained, a dome of many-colored g^ass
which st!un$ the white radiance of eternity.

And by this knowledge his assurance is tempered.
He may have all kinds of moral courage, and some-
times has, but he lacks that sustaining conviction
of a certain technic which finally freed the physical
sciences from theolopcal control. It was the gradual
development of an irrefragable method that gave
the physicist his intellectual freedom as ag^st all
the powers of the world. His proofs were so clear,
his evidence so sharply superior to tradition, that
he broke away finally from all control. But the
journalist has no such support in his own con-
science or in fact. The control exercised over him
by the opinions of his employers and his readers, is
not the control of truth by prejudice, but of one

NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION 361

opinicpn by another opinion that it is not demon-
strably less true. Between Judge Gary's assertion
that the unions wilJ destroy American institutions,
and Mr'. Gomper's assertion that they are agencies
of the rights of man, the choice has, in large measure,
to be governed by the will to believe.

The task of deflating these controversies, and
reducing them to a point where they can be reported
as news, is not a task which the reporter can per-
form. It is possible and necessary for journalists
to bring home to people the uncertain character of
the truth on which their opinions are founded, and
by criticism and agitation to prod social science
into making more usable formulations of social
facts, and to prod statesmen into establishing more
visible institutions. The press, in other words, can
fight for the extension of reportable truth. But as
social truth is organized to-day, the press is not
constituted to furnish from one edition to the next
the amount of knowledge which the democratic
theory of public opinion demands. This is not due
to the Brass Check, as the quality of news in radical
papers shows, but to the fact that the press deals
with a society in which the governing forces are so
imperfecdy recorded. The theory that the press
can itself record those forces is false. It can nor-
mally record only what has been recorded for it
by the working of institutions. Everything else is
argument and opinion, and fluctuates with the vi-
cissitudes, the self-consdousness, and the courage of
the human mind.

If the press is not so imiversally wicked, nor so

36a PUBLIC OPINION

deeply conspiring, as Mr. Sinclair would have us
believe, it is very much more frail than the demo-
cratic theory has as yet admitted. It is too frail
to carry the whole burden of popular sovereignty,
to supply spontaneously the truth which democrats
hoped was inborn. And when we expect it to supply
such a body of truth we employ a misleading stand-
ard of judgment. We misunderstand the limited
nature of news, the illimitable complexity of society;
we overestimate our own endurance, public spirit,
and all-round competence. We suppose an appe-
tite for uninteresting truths which is not discovered
by any honest analysis of our own tastes.

If the newspapers, then, are to be chatted with
the duty of translating the whole public life of
mankind, so that every adult can arrive at an opinion
on every moot topic, they fail, they are bound to
fail, in any future one can conceive they will con-
tinue to fail. It is not possible to assume that a world,
carried on by division of labor and distribution of
authority, can be governed by universal opinions
in the whole population. Unconsciously the theory
sets up the single reader as theoretically omnicom-
petent, and puts upon the press the burden of ac-
complishing whatever representarive government,
industrial organization, and diplomacy have failed
to accomplish. Acting upon everybody for thirty
minutes in twenty-four hours, the press Is asked
to create a mystical force called Public Opinion
that will take up the slack in public institutions.
The press has often mistakenly pretended that it
could do just that. It has at great moral cost to

NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION 363

itself, encouraged a democracy, sdll bound to its
original premises, to expect newspapers to supply
spontaneously for every organ of government, for
every social problem, the machinery of information
which these do not normally supply themselves.
Institutions, having failed to furnish themselves
with instruments of knowledge, have become a
bundle of "problems," which the population as a
whole, reading the press as a whole, is supposed to
solve.

The press, in other words, has come to be r^arded
as an ot^an of direct democracy, charged on a much
wider scale, and from day to day, with the function
often attributed to the initiative, referendum, and
recall. The Court of Public Opinion, open day and
night, is to lay down the law for everything all the
time. It is not workable. And when you consider
the nature of news, it is not even thinkable. For
the news, as we have seen, is predse in proportion to
the precision with which the event is recorded.
Unless the event is capable of being named, measured,
given shape, made specific, it either fails to take
on the character of news, or it is subject to the
accidents and prejudices of observation.

Therefore, on the whole, the quality of the news
about modern society is an index of its social or-
ganization. The better the institutions, the more all
interests concerned are formally represented, the
more issues are disentangled, the more objective
criteria are introduced, the more perfecdy an affair
can be presented as news. At its best the press is
a servant and guardian of institutions; at its worst

36i PUBLIC OPINION

it is a meuM by which a few exploit sodal disor-
ganization to their own ends. In the d^ree to
which institutions iaH to function, the unscrupulous
journalist can fish in troubled waters, and the con-
scientious one must gamble with uncertundes.

The press is no substitute for institutions. It is
like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessljr
aboutj bringing one episode and then another out of
darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of
the world by this light alone. They cannot govern
society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It
is only when they work by a steady li^t of their
own, that the press, when it is turned upon them,
reveals a «tuation intelligible enough for a popular
decision. The trouble lies deeper than the press,
and so does the remedy. It lies in social organiza-
tion based on a system of analysis and record, and
in all the corollaries of that principle; in the aban-
donment of the theory of the omnicompetent citizen,
in the decentralization of decision, in the coordina-
tion of decision by comparable record and analysis.
If at the centers of management there is a running
audit, which makes work intelligible to those who
do it, and those who superintend it, issues when
they arise are not the mere collisions of the blind.
Then, too, the news is uncovered for the press by a
system of intelligence that is also a check upon the
press.

That is the radical way. For the troubles of the
press, tike the troubles of representative govern-
ment, be it territorial or functional, like the troubles
of industry, be it capitalist, cooperative, or com-

NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION 365

munist, go back to a common source: to the failure
of self-governing people to transcend thdr casual
experience and their prejudice, by inventing, creat-
ing, and organi^ng a machinery of knowledge.
It is because they are compelled K) act without a
reliable picture of the world, that governments,
schools, newspapers and churches make such small
headway ag^st the more obvious failings of de-
mocracy, against violent prejudice, apathy, prefer-
ence for the curious trivial as against the dull im-
portant, and the hunger for sideshows and three
l^ged calves. This is the primary defect of popular
government, a defect inherent in its traditions, and
all its other defects can, I believe, be traced to this

PART VIII

ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE

:r XXV. The Entering Wedge
XXVI. Intelligence Work
XXVII. The Appeal to the Public
XXVIII. The Appeal to Reason

CHAPTER XXV
THE ENTERING WEDGE

If the remedy were interesting, American pioneers
like Charles McCarthy, Robert Valentine, and
Frederick W. Taylor would not have had to fight so
hard for a hearing. But it is clear why they had to
fight, and why bureaus of governmental research,
industrial audits, budgeting and the like are the
ugly ducklings of reform. They reverse the process by
which interesting public opinions are built up. Instead
of presenting a casual fact, a large screen of stereotypes,
and a dramatic identification, they break down the
drama, break through the stereotypes, and offer men
a picture of facts, which is unfamiliar and to them
impersonal. When this is not painful, it is dull,
and those to whom it is painftil, the trading politician
and the partisan who has much to conceal, often
exploit the dullness that the public feels, in order to
remove the pain that they feel.

Yet every complicated community has sought the
assistance of special men, of augurs, priests, elders.
Our own democracy, based though it was on a theory
of universal competence, sought lawyers to manage
its government, and to help manage its industry.
369

370 PUBLIC OPINION

It was recognized that the specially trained man
was in some dim way oriented to a wider system of
truth than that which arises spontaneously in the
amateur's mind. But experience has shown that
the traditional lawyer's equipment was not enough
assistance. The Great Society had grown furiou^y
and to colossal dimensions by the application of
technical knowledge. It was made by engineers who
had learned to use exact measurements and quanti-
tative analysis. It could not be governed, men
began to discover, by men who thought deductively
about rights and wrongs. It could be brought under
human control only by the technic which had created
it. Gradually, then, the more enlightened directing
minds have called in experts who were trwned, or
had trained themselves, to make parts of this Great
Society intelligible to those who manage it. These
men are known by all kinds of names, as statisticians,
accountants, auditors, industrial counsellors, engi-
neers of many species, scientific managers, personnel
administrators, research men, "scientists," and some-
times just as plain private secretaries. They have
brought with them each a jargon of his own, as well
as filing cabinets, card catalogues, graphs, loose-leaf
contraptions, and above all the perfectly sound ideal
of an executive who sits before a flat-top desk, one
sheet of typewritten paper before him, and decides
on matters of policy presented in a form ready for
his rejection or approval.

This whole development has been the work, not so
much of a spontaneous creative evolution, as of
blind natural selection. The statesman, the execu-

THE ENTERING WEDGE 371

dve, the party leader, the head of a voluntary asso-
ciation, found that if he had to discuss two dozen
different subjects in the course of the day, somebody
would have to coach him. He began to clamor for
memoranda. He found he could not read his mail.
He demanded somebody who would blue-pencil the
interesting sentences in the important letters. He
found he could not digest the great stacks of type-
written reports that grew mellow on his desk. He
demanded summaries. He found he could not read
an unending series of figures. He embraced the
man who made colored pictures of them. He found
that he really did not know one machine from an-
other. He hired engineers to pick them, and tell
him how much they cost and what they could do.
He peeled off one burden after another, as a man
will take off first his hat, then his coat, then his collar,
when he is struggling to move an unwieldy load.

3
Yet curiously enough, though he knew that he
needed help, he was slow to call in the social scientist.
The chemist, the physicist, the geolo^st, had a
much earlier and more friendly reception. Labora-
tories were set up for them, inducements offered, for
there was quick appreciation of the victories over
nature. But the sdentist who has human nature
as his problem is in a different case. There are many
reasons for this: the chief one, that he has so few
victories to exhibit. He has so few, because unless
he deals with the historic past, he cannot prove his
theories before offering them to the public. The

372 PUBLIC OPINION

physical scientist can make an hypothecs, test it,
revise the hypothesis hundreds of times^ and, if
after all that, he is wrong, no one else has to pay the
price. But the social scientist cannot b^n to offer
the assurance of a laboratory test, and if his advice
is followed, and he is wrong, the consequences may
be incalculable. He is in the nature of things far
more responsible, and far less certain.

But more than that. In the laboratory sciences
the student has conquered the dilemma of thought
and action. He brings a sample of the action to a
quiet place, where it can be repeated at will, and
examined at Idsure. But the social scientist is con-
stantly being impaled on a dilemma. If he stays in
his library, where he has the leisure to think, he has
to rely upon the exceedingly casual and meager
printed record that comes to him through official
reports, newspapers, and interviews. If he goes out
into "the world" where things are happening, he
has to serve a long, often wasteful, apprenticeship,
before he is admitted to the sanctum where they
are being decided. What he cannot do is to dip
into action and out again whenever it suits him.
There are no privileged listeners. The man of
affairs, observing that the social scientist knows only
from the outside what he knows, in part at least,
from the inside, recognizing that the social scientist's
hypothesis is not in the nature of things susceptible
of laboratory proof, and that verification is possible
only in the "real" world, has developed a rather low
opinion of social scientists who do not share his
views of public policy.

THE ENTERING WEDGE 373

In his heart of hearts the social scientist shares
this estimate of himself. He has little inner cer-
tainty about his own work. He only half believes
in it, and bong sure of nothing, he can find no com-
pelling reason for insisting on his own freedom of
thought. What can he actually cl^m for it, in the
light of his own conscience? ' His data are uncer-
tain, his means of verification lacking. The very
best qualities in him are a source of frustration.
For if he is really critical and saturated in the scien-
rific spirit, he cannot be doctrinaire, and go to
Armageddon against the trustees and the students
and the Civic Federation and the conservative press
for a theory of which he is not sure. If you are
going to Armageddon, you have to battle for the
Lord, but the political sdentist is always a litde
doubtful whether the Lord called him.

Consequently if so much of social science is apolo-
getic rather than constructive, the explanation lies
in the opportunities of social science, not in "capital-
ism." The physical scientists achieved their freedom
from clericalism by working out a method that pro~
duced conclusions of a sort that could not be sup-
pressed or ignored. They convinced themselves and
acquired dignity, and knew what they were fighting
for. The social scientist will acquire his dignity
and his strength when he has worked out his method.
He will do that by turning into opportunity the
need among directing men of the Great Society for
instruments of analysis by which an invisible and

374 PUBLIC OPINION

most stupendously ditlicult environment can be
made intdligible.

But as things go now, the social scientist assembles
his data out of a mass of unrelated material. Social
processes are recorded spasmodically, quite often as
accidents of administration. A report to Congress^
a debate, an investigation, l^al briefs, a census, a
tariff, a tax schedule; the material, like the skull of
the Piltdown man, has to be put tc^ther by ingen-
ious inference before the student obtains any sort
of picture of the event he is studying. Though it
deals with the conscious life of his fellow citizens, it
is all too often distressin^y opaque, because the
man who is trying to generalize has practically no
supervision of the way his data are collected. Imag-
ine medical research conducted by students who
could rarely go into a hospital, were deprived of
animal experiment, and compelled to draw conclu-
sions from the stories of people who Had been ill,
the reports of nurses, each of whom had her own
system of diagnosis, and the statistics compiled by
the Bureau of Internal Revenue on the excess profits
of druggists. The social scientist has usually to
make what he can out of categories that were un-
critically in the mind of an official who administered
some part of a law, or who was out to justify, to
persuade, to claim, or to prove. The student knows
this, and, as a protection against it, has developed
that branch of scholarship which is an elaborated
suspicion about where to discount his information.

That is a virtue, but it becomes a very thin virtue
when it is merely a corrective for the unwholesome

THE ENTERING WEDGE 375

position of social science. For the scholar is con-
demned to guess as shrewdly as he can why in a
situation not clearly understood something or other
may have happened. But the expert who is em-
ployed as the mediator among representatives, and
as the mirror and measure of administration, has a
very different control of the facts. Instead of being
the man who generalizes from the facts dropped to
him by the men of action, he becomes the man who
prepares the facts for the men of action. This is
a profound change tn his strategic position. He no
longer stands outside, chewing the cud provided by
busy men of affairs, but he takes his place in front
of decision instead of behind it. To-day the sequence
is that the man of affairs finds his facts, and decides
on the basis of them; then, some time later, the
social scientist deduces excellent reasons why he
did or did not decide wisely. This ex post facto
relationship is academic in the bad sense of that
fine word. The real sequence should be one where
the disinterested expert first finds and formulates
the facts for the man of action, and later makes what
wisdom he can out of comparison between the de-
cision, which he understands, and the facts, which
he organized.

For the physical sciences this change in strat^c
position began slowly, and then accelerated rap-
idly. There was a time when the inventor and
the engineer were romantic half-starved outsiders,
treated as cranks. The business man and the artisan

376 PUBLIC OPINION

knew all the m]rsteries of their craft. Then the
mjrateries grew nuxv mysterious, and at last indus-
try b^an b> depend upon physical laws and
chemicid combinations that no eye could see, and
only a tnuned mind could concdve. The sdendst
moved from his noble garret in the Latin Quarter
into office buildings and laboratories. For he alone
could construct a working image of the reality on
which industry rested. From the new relationship
he took as much -as he gave> perhaps more: pure
science developed faster than applied, though it
drew its economic support, a great deal of its in-
s[nration, and even more of its relevancy, from
constant contact with practical decision. But
physical science still labcmd under the enormous
limitation that the men who made decisions had
only thnr commonsense to guide them. They ad-'
ministered inthout scientific aid a world complicated
by scientists. Again they had to deal with facts
they could not apprehend, and as once they had to
call in engineers, they now have to call in statis-
ticians, accountants, experts of all sorts.

These practical students are the true pioneers of
a new social science. They are "in mesh with the
driving wheels " ' and from this practical engage-
ment of science and action, both will benefit radi-
cally: action by the clarification of its beliefs; be-
liefs by a continuing test in action. We are in the
earliest beginnings. But if it is conceded that all
large forms of human association must, because of

' Cf. The Address of the President of the American Philoaophical
Association, Mr. Ralph Barton Perry, Dec. 38, igio. Publiihed in the
Ptoceediugt of the Tweadeth Auduu Meedng.

THE ENTERING WEDGE 377

sheer practical difficulty^ contiun men who will come
to see the need for an expert reporting of their par-
ticular environment, then the imagination has a
premise on which to work. In the exchange of
technic and result among expert staffs, one can see,
I think, the banning of experimental method in
social science. When each school district and bud-
get, and health department, and factory, and tariff
schedule, is the material of knowledge for every
other, the number of comparable experiences begins
to approach the dimensions of genuine experiment.
In forty-eight states, and 2400 cities, and 277,000
school houses, 270,000 manufacturing establish-
ments, 27,000 mines and quarries, there is a wealth
of experience, if only it were recorded and available.
And there is, too, opportunity for trial and error
at such slight risk that any reasonable hypothesis
might be g^ven a fair test without shaking the
foundarions of society.

The wedge has been driven, not only by some
directors of industry and some statesmen who had
to have help, but by the bureaus of municipal re-
search,* the l^slative reference libraries, the special-
ized lobbies of corporations and trade unions and
public causes, and by volimtary oi^anizations like
the League of Women Voters, the Consumers'
League, the Manufacturers' Associations: by hun-

' The oumber of these orsaniiatioiu in the United State* it vety gmt.
Some are alive, loine half dead. They are in rapid flux. Liiti of them
lupphed to me by Or. L. D. Upton of the Detroit Bureau of Govern-
mental Retearch, Min Rebecca B. Rankin of the Municipal Refetence
Library of New York City, Mr. Edward A. Fitzpatrick, Secretary of the
State Board of Education (Witconiin), Mt. Savel Zimand of the Bureau
of Indufuial Reiutch (New York City), iud into the hundrcdi.

378 PUBLIC OPINION

dreds of trade assodattons^ and citizens' unions; by
publications like the Searchlight on Conptst and
the Survey; and by foundations like the General
Education Board. Not all by any means are dis-
interested. That is not the pcunt. All of them do
b^n to demonstrate the need for interposing some
form of ex[>ertness between the private dtizen and
the vast environment in which he is entangled.

CHAPTER XXVI
INTELLIGENCE WORK

The practice of democracy has been ahead of its
theory. For the theory holds that the adult electors
taken together make decisions out of a will that is
in them. But just as there grew up governing hier-
archies which were invisible in theory, so there has
been a large amount of constructive adaptation,
also unaccounted for in the image of democracy.
Ways have been found to represent many interests
and functions that are normally out of sight.

We are most conscious of this in our theory of the
courts, when we explain their legislative powers
and their vetoes on the theory that there are interests
to be guarded which might be foi^tten by the
elected officials. But the Census Bureau, when it
counts, classifies, and correlates people, things,
and changes, is also speaking for unseen factors in
the environment. The Geological Survey makes
mineral resources evident, the Department of
Agriculture represents in the councils of the nation
factors of which each farmer sees only an infinites-
imal part. School authorities, the Tariff Commission,
the consular service, the Bureau of Internal Rev-
enue give representation to persons, ideas, and
objects which would never automatically find them-

38o PUBLIC OPINION

selves represented in this perspective by an electitm.
The Children's Bureau is the spdcesman of a whcJe
comfJex of interests and functions not ordinarily
viable to the voter, and, therefore, incapable of
becoming ^>ontaneously a part of his puUic opin-
ions, l^us the printing of ounparative statistics
of infant mortality is often fbllomd by a reducticm
of the death rate of babies. Municipal offidals and
voters did -not have, before publication, a place in
their picture of the environment for those babies.
The statistics made them viable, as visible as if
the babies had elected an alderman to air their
grievances.

In the State Department the government main-
tains a Division t^ Far Eastern Affairs. What is
it for? The Ja[«nese and the Chinese Governments
both maint»n ambassadors in Washington. Are
they not qualified to speak for the Far East? They
are its representarives. Yet nobody would argue
that the American Government could learn all
that it needed to know about the Far East by con-
sulting these ambassadors. Supposing them to be
as candid as they know how to be, they are still
limited channels of information. Therefore, to
supplement them we maijitain embassies in Tokio
and Peking, and consular agents at many points.
Also, I assume, some secret agents. These people
are supposed to send reports which pass through
the Division of Far Eastern Affairs to the Secretary
of State. Now what does the Secretary expect of
the Division? I know one who expected it to spend
its appropriation. But there are Secretaries to

INTELLIGENCE WORK 381

whom special revelation is denied, and thejr turn to
their divisions for help. The last thing they expect
to find is a neat argument justifying the American
position.

What they demand is that the experts shall
bring the Far East to the Secretary's desk, with all
the elements in such relation that it is as if he were
in contact with the Far East itself. The expert
must translate, simplify, generalize, but the in-
ference from the result must apply in the East, not
merely on the premises of the report. If the Secre-
tary is worth his salt, the very last thing he will
tolerate in his experts is the suspicion that they
have a "policy." He does not want to know from
them whether they like Japanese policy in China.
He wants to know what different classes of Chinese
and Japanese, English, Frenchmen, Germans, and
Russians, think about it, and what they are likely
to do because of what they think. He wants all
that represented to him as the basis of his decision.
The more faithfully the Division represents what is
not otherwise represented, either by the Japanese
or American ambassadors, or the Senators and
Congressmen from the Pacific coast, the better
Secretary of State he will be. He may decide to
take his policy from the Pacific Coast, but he ml!
take his view of Japan from Japan.

It is no accident that the best diplomatic service
in the world is the one in which the divorce between
the assembling of knowledge and the control of policy

382 PUBLIC OPINION

is most perfect. During the war m many British Em-
bassies and in the British Foreign Office there were
nearly always men, permanent officials or else spe-
cial appointees, who quite successfully discounted
the prevailing war mind. They discarded the rig-
marole of being pro and con, of having favorite
nationalities, and pet aver^ons, and undelivered
perorations in their bosoms. They left that to the
political chiefs. But in an American Embassy I once
heard an ambassador say that he never reported
anything to Washington which would not cheer up
the folks at home. He charmed all those who met
him, helped many a stranded war worker, and was
superb when he unveiled a monument.

He did not understand that the power of the
expert depends upon separating himsdf from those
who make the decisions, upon not caring, in his
expert self, what decision is made. The man, who
like the ambassador takes a line, and meddles with
the decision, is soon discounted. There he is, just
one more on that side of the question. For when
he begins to care too much, he begins to see what he
wishes to see, and by that fact ceases to see what
he is there to see. He is there to represent the un-
seen. He represents people who are not voters,
functions of voters that are not evident, events
that are out of sight, mute people, unborn people,
relations between things and people. He has a
constituency of intangibles. And intangibles can-
not be used to form a political majority, because
voting is in the last analysis a test of strength, a
sublimated battle, and the expert represents no

INTELLIGENCE WORK 383

strength available in the immediate. But he can
exercise force by disturbing the line up of the forces.
By making the invisible visible, he confronts the
people who exercise material force with a new en-
vironment, sets ideas and feelings at work in them,
throws them out of position, and so, in the pro-
foundest way, affects the deciaon.

Men cannot long act in a way that they know is a
contradiction of the enmronment as they conceive
it. If they are bent on acting in a certain way they
have to reconceive the environment, they have to
censor out, to rationalize. But if in their presence,
there is an insistent fact which is so obtrusive that
they cannot explain it away, one of three courses
is open. They can perversely ignore it, though they
will cripple themselves in the process, will overact
their part and come to grief. They can take it into
account but refuse to act. They pay in internal
discomfort and ii-ustration. Or, and I believe this
to be the most frequent case, they adjust thdr
whole behavior to the enlarged environment.

The idea that the expert is an ineffectual person
because he lets others make the decisions is quite
contrary to experience. The more subde the ele-
ments that enter into the decision, the more ir-
responsible power the expert wields. He is certain,
moreover, to exercise more power in the fiitiux than
ever he did before, because increasingly the relevant
facts will elude the voter and the administrator.
All governing agencies will tend to organize bodies
of research and information, which wilt throw out
tentacles and expand, as have the intelligence de-

3S4 FtmUC OPINION

putments of all the armies in the world. But the
ocperts will remain human beings. They will
enjoy power, and thdr temptation will be to ttp^
pcunt themselves censors, and so absorb the nnl
function of dedsion. l^ess thdr function is oor-!
rectly defined they will tend to pass on the facts
they think appropriate, and to pass down the de-
daons they approve. They will tend, in tiuxtt b>
become a bureaucracy.

The only institutional safeguard is to sq>arate
as absolutdy as it is pos^ble to do so the staff which
executes from the staff which investigates. The
two should be parallel but quite distinct bodies of
men, recruited <Hfferently, paid if posuble fmm
separate funds, resfxmuble to different heads, in-
trinucally uninterested in each other's personal suo<
cess. In industry, the auditors, accountants, and
inspectors should be independent of the manager,
the supeiintendents, foremen, and in time, I be-
lieve, we shall come to see that in order to bring
industry under social control the machinery of
record will have to be independent of the boards of
directors and the shareholders.

3
But in building the intelligence sections of indus-
try and politics, we do not start on cleared ground.
And, apart from insisting on this basic separation of
fimction, it would be cumbersome to insist too
precisely on the form which in any particular in-
stance the principle shall take. There are men who
believe in intelligence work, and will adopt it;

INTELLIGENCE WORK 385

there are men who do not understand it, but cannot
do their work without it; there are men who will
resist. But provided the principle has a foothold
somewhere in every social agency it will make
progress, and the way to b^n is to begin. In the
federal government, for example, it is not necessary
to straighten out the administrative tangle and the
illogical duplications of a century's growth in order
to find a neat place for the intelligence bureaus which
Washington so badly needs. Before election you
can promise to rush bravely into the breach. But
when you arrive there all out of breath, you find
that each absurdity is invested with habits, strong
interests, and chummy Congressmen. Attack all
along the line and you engage every force of reaction.
You go forth to battle, as the poet said, and you
always fall. You can lop off an antiquated bureau
here, a covey of clerks there, you can combine two
bureaus. And by that time you are busy with the
tariff and the railroads, and the era of refonn is
over. Besides, in order to efiiect a truly logical
reorganization of the government, such as all can<U-
dates always promise, you would have to disturb
more passions than you have time to quell. And any
new scheme, supposing you had one ready, would
require ofEcials to man it. Say what one will about
officeholders, even Soviet Russia was glad to get
many of the old ones back; and these old officials,
if they are too ruthlessly treated, will sabotage
Utopia itself.

No administrative scheme is workable without
good will, and good will about strange practices is

386 PUBLIC OPINION

impossible without education. The better way is
to introduce into the existing machinery, wherever
you can find an opening, agencies that wilt hold up a
mirror week by week, month by month. You can
hope, then, to make the machine visible to those
who work it, as well as to the chiefs who are re-
sponsible, and to the public outside. When the
office-holders b^n to see themselves, — or rather
when the outsiders, the chiefs, and the subordinates
all begin to see the same facts, the same damning
facts if you like, the obstruction will diminish. The
reformer's opinion that a certain bureau is inef*
ficient is just his opinion, not so good an opinion
in the eyes of the bureau, as its own. But let the
work of that bureau be analysed and recorded, and
then compared with other bureaus and with private
corporations, and the argument moves to another
plane.

There are ten departments at Washington rep-
resented in the Cabinet. Suppose, then, there was
a permanent intelligence section for each. What
would be some of the conditions of effectiveness?
Beyond all others that the intelligence officials
should be independent both of the Congressional
Committees dealing with that department, and of
the Secretary at the head of it; that they should not
be entangled either in decision or in action. Inde-
pendence, then, would turn mainly on three points:
on funds, tenure, and access to the facts. For clearly
if a particular Congress or departmental official can
deprive them of money, dismiss them, or close the
files, the staff becomes its creature.

INTELLIGENCE WORK

The question of funds is both important and diffi-
cult. No agency of research can be really free if it
depends upon annual doles from what may be a
jealous or a parsimonious congress. Yet the ultimate
control of funds cannot be removed from the legisla-
ture. The financial arrangement should insure the
staff against left-handed, joker and rider attack,
against sly destruction, and should at the same time
provide for growth. The staff should be so well
entrenched that an attack on its existence would
have to be made in the open. It might, perhaps,
work behind a federal charter creating a trust fund,
and a sliding scale over a period of years based on the
appropriation for the department to which the in-
telligence bureau belonged. No great sums of money
are involved anyway. The trust fund might cover
the overhead and capital charges for a cert^n mini-
mum staff, the sliding scale might cover the enlai^e-
ments. At any rate the appropriation should be
put beyond accident, like the payment of any long
term obligation. This is a much less serious way
of " t^ng the hands of Congress " than is the passage
of a Constitudonal amendment or the issuance of
government bonds. Congress could repeal the
charter. But it would have to repeal it, not throw
monkey wrenches into it.

Tenure should be for life, with provision for retire-
ment on a liberal pension, with sabbatical years set
aside for advanced study and training, and with
dismissal only after a trial by professional colleagues.
The conditions which apply to any non-profit-making

388 PUBLIC OPINK^

intellectual career should apply here. If die work
is to be salient, the men who do it must have dignity,
security, and, in the upper ranks at least, that
freedom of nund idiich you find only where men
are not too immediately concerned in practical de-
d^on.

Access to the materials should be established in die
organic act. The bureau should hare the right to
examine all papers, and to question any official tn"
any outsider. Continuous investigation of this sort
wcNild not at all resemble the sensational legisla-
tive inquiry and the spasmodic fishing e:q}editiott
which are now a common feature of our govern-
ment. The bureau should have the right to pro-
pose accounting methods to the department, and
if the [Ht^>osal is rejected, or violated after it has
been accepted, to appeal under its charter to Con-
gress.

In the first instance each intelligence bureau would
be the connecting link between Congress and the
Department, a better link, in my judgment, than the
appearance of cabinet officers on the floor of both
House and Senate, though the one proposal in no
way excludes the other. Hie bureau would be the
Concessional eye on the execution of its policy. It
would be the departmental answer to Congressional
criticism. And then, since operation of the Depart-
ment would be permanently visible, perhaps Congress
would cease to feel the need of that minute legislation
born of distrust and a false doctrine of the separation
of powers, which does so much to make efficient
administration difficult.

INTELLIGENCE WORK 389

5

But, of course, each of the ten bureaus could not
work in a watertight compartment. In their relation
one to another lies the best chance for that "coordi-
nation " of which so much is heard and so little seen.
Clearly the various staffs would need to adopt,
wherever possible, standards of measurement that
were comparable. They would exchange their rec-
ords. Then if the War Department and the Post
Office both buy lumber, hire carpenters, or construct
brick walls they need not necessarily do them through
the same agency, for that might mean cumbersome
over-centralization; but they would be able to use
the same measure for the same things, be con-
scious of the comparisons, and be treated as com-
petitors. And the more competition of this sort the
better.

For the value of competition is determined by the
value of the standards used to measure it. Instead,
then, of asking ourselves whether we believe in
competition, we should ask ourselves whether we
believe in that for which the competitors compete.
No one in his senses expects to "abolish competi-
tion, " for when the last vestige of emulation had dis-
appeared, social effort would consist in mechanical
obedience to a routine, tempered in a minority by
native inspiration. Yet no one expects to work out
competition to its logical conclusion in a murderous
struggle of each against all. The problem is to select
the goals of competition and the rules of the game.
Almost always the most visible and obvious standard
of measurement will determine the rules of the game:

390 PUBLIC OPINION

such as money, power, popularity, applause, or Mr.
Veblen's "conspicuous waste." What other stand-
ards of measurement does our civilization normally
provide? How does it measure efficiency, produc-
tivity, service, for which we are always clamoring?

By and large there are no measures, and thn^
is, therefore, not so much competition to achieve
these ideals. For the difference between the higher
and the lower motives is not, as men often assert,
a difference between altruism and selfishness.' It is
a dtff'erence between acting for easily understood
aims, and for aims that are obscure and vague.
Exhort a man to make more profit than his neighbor,
and he knows at what to aim. Exhort him to render
more social service, and how is he to be certain what
service is social ? What is the test, what is the meas-
ure? A subjective feeling, somebody's opinion. Tell
a man in time of peace that he ought to serve his
country and you have uttered a pious platitude.
Tell him in time of war, and the word service has a
meaning; it is a number of concrete acts, enlistment,
or buying bonds, or saving food, or working for a
dollar a year, and each one of these services he sees
definitely as part of a concrete purfwse to put at the
front an army larger and better armed, than the
enemy's.

So the more you are able to analyze administration
and work out elements that can be compared, the
more you invent quantitative measures for the
qualities you wish to promote, the more you can
turn competition to ideal ends. If you can contrive
' c/. Ch. XII.

INTELLIGENCE WORK 391

the right index numbers > you can set up a competi-
tion between individual workers in a shop; between
shops; between factories; between schools; ' between
government departments; between regiments; be-
tween divisions; between ships; between states;
counties; cities; and the better your index numbers
the more useful the competition.

The possibilities that lie in the exchange of mater-
ial are evident. Each department of government is
all the time asking for information that may al-
ready have been obtained by another department,
though perhaps in a somewhat different form. The
State Department needs to know, let us say, the
extent of the Mexican oil reserves, their relation to
the rest of the world's supply, the present ownership
of Mexican oil lands, the importance of oil to war-
ships now under construction or planned, the com-
parative costs in different fields. How does it secure
such information to-day? The information is prob-
ably scattered through the Departments of Interior,
Justice, Commerce, Labor and Navy. Either a clerk
in the State Department looks up Mexican oil in a
book of reference, which may or may not be accurate,
or somebody's private secretary telephones some-
body else's private secretary, asks for a memoran-

' I am not uiinB the term index numben in it* purdy technical meui-
ingi but to covet any device for the comparative meaiurement of locial
phenomena.

* See, for example, An Index Numbtr for Slait Schpol SyiUmj by
J D A D ti c c J--; >--_ Ti : I_i r-.t_

Leonard P. Ayrci, Ruudl Sage Foundation, iqja. The principle of the
quota wai very lucceufuliy applied in the Liberry Ltnn CampaiBiu, ai '
under very much more difficult ctrcumttancei by the AlUea Mantii

391 PUBLIC OPINION

dum, and in the course of time a darkey n
arriTcs with an armful of unintelligible nparta. The
Department should be able to call on its own in-
telligence bureau to assemble the facts in a way
suited to the diplomatic problem up for dedacMi.
And these facts the diplomatic inteUigence bureau
would obtiun from the central clearing house.'
This establishment would pretty soon become a
focus of informadon of the most extraortUnary Idnd.
And the men in it would be made aware of what the
problems of government really are. They would
deal with problems of definidon, of terminology, of
statistical technic> of logic; they would travene oaa.-
cretely the whole gamut of the social sdences. It
is difficult to see why all this material, excq>t a few
diplomatic and military secrets, should not be <^>en to
the scholars of the country. It is there that the
political scientist would find the real nuts to crack
and the real researches for his students to make. The
work need not all be done in Washington, but it
could be done in reference to Washington. The
central agency would, thus, have in it the makings of
a national university. The staff could be recruited
there for the bureaus from among college graduates.
They would be worldng on theses selected after
consultation between die curators of the national
university and teachers scattered over the country.
If the association was as flexible as it ought to be,
there would be, as a supplement to the permanent
staff, a steady turnover of temporary and specialist

' Thete has been a vait development of such servicei among tnde
aisociationi. The possibilitiet of a pecvened u*e were levealed by the
New York Buildins Trades mveatisation of 1921.

INTELLIGENCE WORK 393

appointments from the universities, and exchange
lecturers called out from Washington. Thus the
training and the recruiting of the staiF would go
together. A part ofthe research itself would be done
by students, and political science in the univeraties
would be associated with politics in America.

7
In its main outlines the principle is equally ap<
plicable to state governments, to cities, and to rural
counties. The work of comparison and interchange
could take place by federations of state and city
and county bureaus. And within those federations
any desirable regional combination could be or-
ganized. So long as the accounting systems were
comparable, a great deal of duplication would be
avoided. Regional coordination is esfwdally de-
sirable. For I^al frontiers often do not coincide
with the effective environments. Yet they have a
certain basis in custom that it would be cosdy to
disturb. By coordinating their information several
administrative areas could recondle autonomy of
deci^on with coSperation. New York City, for
example, is already an unwieldy unit for good gov-
ernment from the City Hall. Yet for many pur-
poses, such as health and transportation, the metro-
politan district is the true unit of administration.
In that district, however, there are large cities,
like Yonkers, Jersey City, Patterson, Elizabeth,
Hoboken, Bayonne. They could not all be managed
from one center, and yet they should act together
for many functions. Ultimately perhaps some

394 PUBLIC OPINION

such flexible scheme of local government as Sidney
and Beatrice Webb have suggested may be the
proper solution.* But the first step would be a
coordination, not of decision and action, but of
information and research. Let the officials of the
various municipalities see their common problems
in the light of the same facts.

It would be idle to deny that such a net work of
intelligence bureaus in politics and industry might
become a dead weight and a perpetual irritation.
One can easily imt^ne its attraction for men in
search of soft jobs, for pedants, for meddlers. One
can see red tape, mountains of papers, questionures
ad nauseam, seven copies of every document, en-
dorsements, delays, lost papers, the use of form 136
instead of form 29b, the return of the document
because pencil was used instead of ink, or black
ink instead of red ink. The work could be done
very badly. There are no fool-proof institutions.

But if one could assume that there was circulation
through the whole system between government
departments, factories, offices, and the universities;
a circulation of men, a circulation of data and of
criticism, the risks of dry rot would not be so great.
Nor would it be true to say that these intelligence
bureaus will complicate life. They will tend, on
the contrary, to simplify, by revealing a complexity
now so great as to be humanly unmanageable. The

■'■The RrotganiMtion of Local Government" (Ch. IV), in .* Con-
ttiauion for At Socialist CommanweaiUi of Great Britain-

INTELLIGENCE WORK 395

present fundamentally invisible system of govern-
ment is so intricate that most people have given up
trying to follow it, and because they do not try, they
are tempted to think it comparatively simple.
It is, on the contrary, elusive, concealed, opaque.
The employment of an intelligence system would
mean a reduction of personnel per unit of result^
because by making available to all the experience
of each, it would reduce the amount of trial and
error; and because by making the social process
visible, it would assist the personnel to self-criticism.
It does not involve a great additional band of
officials, if you take into account the time now
spent vainly by special investigating committees,
grand juries, district attorneys, reform organiza-
tions, and bewildered office holders, in trying to
find their way through a dark muddle.

If the analysis of public opinion and of the dem-
ocratic theories in relation to the modern environ-
ment is sound in principle, then I do not see how
one can escape the conclusion that such intelligence
work is the clue to betterment. I am not referring
to the few suggestions contained in this chapter.
They are merely illustrations. The task of working
out the technic is in the hands of men trained to do
it, and not even they can to-day completely foresee
the form, much less the details. The number of
social phenomena which are now recorded is small,
the instruments of analysis are very crude, the
concepts often vague and uncritiazed. But enough
has been done to demonstrate, I think, that unseen
environments can be reported eiFectively, that

396 PUBLIC OPINICnV

they can be reported to divngent groups of pet^le
in a way which is n«itral to their prejudice, and
capable of overeoming thor subjectiTism.

If that 13 tru^ then in working out the intdligence
prindple men will find the way to overcome the
central difficulty of self-government, the difficulty
of dealii^ with an unseen reality. Because of that
difficulty, it has been impossible f<x any sdf-gov-
eming community to reoindle its need for isdation
with the necessity for wide contact, to reconcile
the dignity and individuality of local dednon with
security and wide coordination, to secure effective
leaders without sacrificing responnbility, to have
useful public opinions without attempting universal
public opinions on all subjects. As long as there
was no way of establishing common versions of un-
seen events, conmion measures for separate actions,
the only image of democracy that would work, even
in theory, was one based on an isolated community
of people whose political faculties were limited, ac-
cording to Aristotle's famous maxim, by the range
of their vision.

But now there is a way out, a long one to be sure,
but a way. It is fundamentally the same way as
that which has enabled a citizen of Chicago, with
no better eyes or ears than an Athenian, to see and
hear over great distances. It is possible. to-day, it
will become more possible when more labor has
gone into it, to reduce the discrepancies between
the conceived environment and the effective en-
vironment. As that is done, federalism will work
more and more by consent, less and less by coercion.

INTELLIGENCE WORK 397

For while federalism is the only possible method of
union among self-governing groups,' federalism
swings either towards imperial centralization or
towards parochial anarchy wherever the union is
not based on correct and commonly accepted ideas
of federal matters. These ideas do not arise spon-
taneously. They have to be pieced together by
generalization based on analysis, and the instru-
ments for that analysis have to be invented and
tested by research.

No electoral device, no manipulation of areas, no
change in the system of property, goes to the root
of the matter. You cannot take more political
wisdom out of human beings than there is in them.
And no reform, however sensational, is tnxly radical,
which does not consciously provide a way of over-
coming the subjectivism of human opinion based
on the limitation of individual experience. There
are systems of government, of voting, and repre-
sentation which extract more than others. But
in the end knowledge must come not from the con-
science but from the environment with which that
conscience deals. When men act on the principle
of intelligence they go out to find the facts and to
make their wisdom. When they ignore it, they go
inside themselves and find only what is there. They
elaborate their prejudice, instead of increasing their
knowledge.

> C/. H. J. Latki, The Foundationj of SoBerrign^, and other Eutyrt,
paniculatiy the Etmr of thii name, at wdl u the Kobletnt of Adminit-
ttadve Area*! The Tbewy ot Pnpiilu Soverdsnty, and The Pluralinic

CHAPTER XXVII
THE APPEAL TO THE PUBUC

In real life no one acts on the theory that he can
have a public opinion on every public questi<Mi,
though this fact is often concealed where a person
thinks there is no public question because he has
no public o[»nion. But in the theory of our politics
we continue to think more literally than Lord Bryce
intended, that "the action of C^ion is continu-
ous," ^ even though "its acdon . . . deals with
broad principles only." * And then because we try
to think of ourselves having continuous opinions,
without being altogether certain what a broad
principle is, we quite naturally greet with an an-
guished yawn an argument that seems to involve
the reading of more government reports, more
statistics, more curves and more graphs. For all
these are tn the first instance just as confusing as
partisan rhetoric, and much less entertaining.

The amount of attention avfulable is far too
small for any scheme in which it was assumed that
all the citizens of the nation would, after devoting
themselves to the publications of all the intelligence
bureaus, become alert, informed, and eager on the
multitude of real questions that never do fit very

' Modem Democracitj, Vol. I, p. 159. *Id., footDOle, p. 158,

398

THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 399

well into any broad prindple. I am not making that
assumption. Primarily, the intelligence bureau is an
instrument of the man of action, of the representa-
tive charged with decision, of the worker at his
work, and if it does not help them, it will help no-
body in the end. But in so far as it helps them to
understand the environment in which they are work-
ing, it makes what they do visible. And by that
much they become more responsible to the genera]
public.

The purpose, then, is not to burden every citizen
with expert opinions on all questions, but to push
that burden away from him towards the responsible
administrator. An intelligence system has value,
of course, as a source of general information, and as
a check on the daily press. But that is secondary.
Its real use is as an md to representative govern-
ment and administration both tn politics and in-
dustry. The demand for the assistance of expert
reporters in the shape of accountants, statistidans,
secretariats, and the like, comes not from the public,
but from men doing public bu^ness, who can no
longer do it by rule of thumb. It is in ori^n and in
ideal an instrument for doing public business better,
rather than an instrument for knowing better how
badly public business is done.

As a private dtizen, as a sovereign voter, no one
could attempt to digest these documents. But as
one party to a dispute, as a committeeman in a
l^slature, as an officer in government, business.

400 PUBLIC OPINIC»f

or a trade nnioii, as a monber of an industrial coun-
dl, reports on the spedfic matter at issue will be
increaangjy welcome. The private citizen interested
in scHue cause would belong, as he does now, to
vtduntary soderies whidi employed a staff to study
the documents, and make rqxMs that served as a
check on (^dald(»n. There would be some study
of this material by newq>aper men, and a good
deal by experts and by pditical sdendsts. But
the outnder, and every one of us is an outuder
to all but a few aspects of modem life, has ndther
time, nra- attention, nw interest, nor the equip-
. ment for spedfic judgment. It is on the men
in»de, working under conditions that are sound,
that the daily administrations of sodety must
rest.

"Hie general public outude can arrive at judgments
about whether these conditions are sound only on
the result after the event, and on the procedure
before the event. The broad principles on which
the action of public opinion can be continuous are
essentially principles of procedure. The outsider
can ask experts to tell him whether the relevant
facts were duly considered; he cannot in most
cases decide for himself what is relevant or what
is due consideration. The outsider can perhaps
judge whether the groups interested in the decision
were properly heard, whether the ballot, if there
was one, was honestly taken, and perhaps whether
the result was honestly accepted. He can watch
the procedure when the news indicates that there
is something to watch. He can r^se a quesrion as

THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 401

to whether the procedure itself is right, if its normal
results conflict with his ideal of a good life.' But
if he tries in every case to substitute himself for the
procedure, to bring in Public Opinion like a provi-
dential uncle in the crisis of a play, he will confound
his own confusion. He will not follow any train
of thought consecutively.

For the practice of appealing to the public on all
sorts of intricate matters means almost always a
desire to escape criticism from those who know by
enlisting a lai^ majority which has had no chance
to know. The verdict is made to depend on who
has the loudest or the most entrancing voice, the
most skilful or the most brazen publicity man, the
best access to the most space in the newspapers.
For even when the editor is scrupulously fair to
"the other side," fairness is not enough. There
may be several other sides, unmentioned by any
of the organized, financed and active partisans.

The private citizen, beset by parrisan appeals for
the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, per-
haps, that these appeals are not a compliment to
his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature
and an insult to his sense of evidence. As his civic
education takes account of the complexity of his
environment, he will concern himself about the
equity and the sancity of procedure, and even this
he will in most cases expect his elected representative
to watch for him. He will refuse himself to accept
the burden of these decisions, and will turn down
his thumbs in most cases on those who, in their
' C/. OwpiCT XX.

4D2 PUBLIC OPINION

huny to win, rush from the oonference table widi
the first dope for the reporters.

Only by insisting that problons shall not come
up to him until they have passed through a proce-
dure, can the busy citizen of a_ modem state hope
to deal with them in a form that is intelligible. For
issues, as they are stated by a partisan, almost
always conust of an intricate series of facts, as he
has observed them, surrounded by a large fatty
mass of stereotyped phrases charged with his emo-
tion. According to die fashion of the day, he will
emerge from the conference room in^sting that
what he wants is same soulfilling idea like Justice,
Welfare, Americanism, Socialism. On such issues
the citizen outside can sometimes be provoked to
fear or admiradon, but to judgment never. Before
he can do anything with the argument, the fat has
to be boiled out of tt for him.

3
That can be done by having the representative
inside carry on discussion in the presence of some
one, chairman or mediator, who forces the discussion
to deal with the analyses supplied by experts. This
is the essential organization of any representative
body dealing with distant matters. The partisan
voices should be there, but the partisans should
find themselves confronted with men, not personally
involved, who control enough facts and have the
dialectical skill to sort out what is real perception
from what is stereotype, pattern and elaboration.
It is the Socratic dialogue, with all of Socrates's

THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 403

energy for breaking through words to meanings,
and something more than that, because the dia-
lectic in modern life must be done by men who have
explored the environment as well as the human
mind.

There is, for example, a grave dispute in the steel
industry. Each side issues a manifesto full of the
highest ideals. The only public opinion that is
worth respect at this stage is the opinion which
insists that a conference be otganized. For the
side which says its cause is too just to be contam-
inated by conference there can be Htde sympathy,
^nce there is no such cause anywhere among mortal
men. Perhaps those who object to conference do
not say quite that. Perhaps they say that the other
side is too wicked; they cannot shake hands with
traitors. All that public opinion can do then is to
organize a hearing by public ofHcials to hear the
proof of wickedness. It cannot take the partisans'
word for it. But suppose a conference is agreed to,
and suppose there is a neutral chairman who has
at his beck and call the consulting experts of the
corporation, the union, and, let us say, the Depart-
ment of Labor.

Judge Gary states with perfect sincerity that his
men are well paid and not overworked, and then
proceeds to sketch the history of Russia from the
time of Peter the Great to the murder of the Czar.
Mr. Foster rises, states with equal sincerity that
the men are exploited, and then proceeds to outline
the history of human emancipation from Jesus of
Nazareth to Abraham Lincoln. At this point the

404 PUBLIC OFINIW

chairman calls upon the intelligence men for wage
tables in order to substitute for the words "wdl
pud" and "explnted" a taUe showing what die
different classes art paid. Does Judge Gary dunk
they are all well pud? He does. Does Afr. Foster
think they are all oq^mted? No, he thinks that
groups C, M, and X are e]q>laited. What does he
mean by acphnted? He means they are not paid
a living wage. They are, says Judge Gary. What
can a man buy on that wage, asks the chainnan.
Nothing, says Mr. Foster. Everything Iw needs,
says Judge Gary. ' Hie churman consults the
budgets and price stadsdcs of the government.*
He rules that X can meet an average budget, but
that C . and M cannoL Judge Gary serres nodce
that he does not regard the official stadsdcs as
sound. The budgets are too lugh, and prices have
come down. Mr. Foster also serves notice of ex-
ception. The budget is too low, prices have gone
up. The chairman rules that this point is not
within the jurisdiction of the conference, that the
official figures stand, and that Judge Gary's ^cperts
and Mr. Foster's should carry thar appeals to the
standing committee of the federated intelligence
bureaus.

Nevertheless, says Judge Gary, we shall be ruined
if we change these wage scales. What do you mean
by mined, asks the chairman, produce your books.

' See an article on "The Cost of Livine and Wage Cuts," in the Stm
Rtpvilw, July 27, 1911, by Dr, Leo WoTman, for a brilliant dijcuniaa
oT the naive use of such figures and " pteudo-principles." TheiraminKi*
of particular Importance becauie it comes from an econoraiit and (tabt-
liaan who has hiroielf done K
diiputei.

THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 405

I can't, they are private, says Judge Gary. What
is private does not interest us, says the chiurman,
and, therefore, issues a statement to the public
announcing that the wages of workers in groups C
and M are so-and-so much below the ofEdal mini-
mum living wage, and that Judge Gary declines
to increase them for reasons that he refuses to state.
After a procedure of that sort, a public opinion in
the eulogistic sense of the term > can exist.

The value of expert mediarion is not that it sets
up opinion to coerce the partisans, but that it dis-
inflates partisanship. Judge Gary and Mr.
Foster may remain as littie conwnced as when they
started, though even they would have to talk in a
different strain. But almost everyone else who was
not personally entangled would save himself from
being entangled. For the entangling stereotypes
and slogans to which his reflexes are so ready to
respond are by this kind of dialectic untangled.

On many subjects of great public importance,
and in varying degree among different people for
more personal matters, the threads of memory and
emotion are in a snarl. The same word will connote
any number of different ideas: emotions are dis-
placed from the images to which they belong to names
which resemble the names of these images. In the
uncriticised parts of the mind there is a vast amount
of association by mere clang, contact, and suc-

< Ai uKd by Mr. Lowdl b hi* Puilie Ofinion and PofuUr Gt>tmf

4o6 PUBLIC OPINION

cession. There are stray emotional attachmenta^
there are words that were names and are madcs.
In dreams, reveries, and panic, we uncorer some
of the disorder, enough to see how the naive mind
is composed, and how it behaves when not dis-
dpHned by wakeful effort and external renstance.
We see that there is no more natural order dian in a
dusty old attic. There is often the same incon-
gruity between fact, idea, and emotion as there
might be in an opera house, if all the wardrobes
were dumped in a heap and all the scores mixed
up, so that Madame Butterfly in a Valkyr's dress
waited lyrically for the return of Faust. "At
Christmas-tide" says an editorial, "old memories
soften the heart. Holy teachings are ranembered
afresh as thoughts run back to diildhood. The
world does not seem so bad when seen through the
mist of half-happy, half-sad recollections of loved
ones now with Cjod. No heart is untouched by
the mysterious influence. . . . The country is
honeycombed with red propaganda — but there is a
good supply of ropes, muscles and lampposts . . .
while this world moves the spirit of liberty will
burn in the breast of man."

The man who found these phrases in his mind
needs help. He needs a Socrates who will separate
the words, cross-examine him until he has defined
them, and made words the names of ideas. Made
them mean a particular object and nothing else.
For these tense syllables have got themselves con-
nected in his mind by primitive association, and
are bundled together by his memories of Christmas,

THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 407

his indignation as a conservative, and his thrills as
the heir to a revolutionary tradition. Sometimes
the snarl is too huge and ancient for quick unravel-
ling. Sometimes, as in modem psychotherapy^
there are layers upon layers of memory reaching
back to infancy, which have to be separated and
named.

The effect of naming, the effect, that is, of saying
that the labor groups C and M, but not X, are under-
piud, instead of saying that Labor is Exploited, is
incisive. Perceptions recover thdr identity, and the
emotion they arouse is specific, since it is no longer
reinforced by large and accidental connections with
everything from Christmas to Moscow. The dis-
entangled idea with a name of its own, and an emo-
tion that has been scrutinized, is ever so much more
open to correction by new data in the problem. It
had been imbedded in the whole personality, had
aHiliattons of some sort with the whole ^p: a chal-
lenge would reverberate through the whole soul.
After it has been thoroi^hly criticized, the idea is no
longer me but thai. It is objectified, it is at arm's
length. Its fate is not bound up with my fate, but
mth the fate of the outer world upon which I am
acting.

5
Re-education of this kind will help to bnng our
public opinions into grip with the environment.
That is the way the enormous censoring, stereotyp-
ing, and dramatizing apparatus can be liquidated.
Where there is no difficulty in knowing what the

4o8 PUBLIC OPINION

relevant environment is, the critic, the teacher, the
phyudan, can unravel the mind. But where die
environment is as obscure to the analyst as to his
pu{ril, no analytic technic is sufficient. Intelligence
work is required. In political and industrial prt^
lems the critic as such can do something, but unless
he can count upon recdving fnan expert r epo r ters a
valid picture of the environment, his dialectic cannot
go far.

Therefore, though here, as in most other matters,
"education " is the supreme remedy, the value of this
education will depend upon the evoludon of knowl-
edge. And our knowledge of human institutions is
still extraordinarily meager and impresaomstic.
The gathering of social knowledge is, on the whole,
still haphazard; not, as it will have to become, the
normal accompaniment of action. And yet the
collection of information will not be made, one may
be sure, for the sake of its ultimate use. It will be
made because modern decision requires it to be made.
But as it is being made, there will accumulate a body
of data which political science can turn into general-
ization, and build up for the schools into a conceptual
picture of the world. When that picture takes form,
civic education can become a preparation for dealing
with an unseen environment.

As a working model of the sodal system becomes
available to the teacher, he can use it to make the
pupil acutely aware of how his mind works on un-
familiar facts. Until he has such a model, the teacher
cannot hope to prepare men fully for the world they
will find. What he can do is to prepare them to deal

THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 409

with that world with a great deal more sophistication
about their own minds. He can, by the use of the
case method, teach the pupil the habit of examining
the sources of his information. He can teach him,
for example, to look in his newspaper for the place
where the dispatch was filed, for the name of the
correspondent, the name of the press service, the
authority given for the statement, the drcum-
stances under which the statement was secured. He
can teach the pupil to ask himself whether the re-
porter saw what he describes, and to remember how
that reporter described other events in the past.
He can teach htm the character of censorship, of the
idea of privacy, and furnish him with knowledge of
past propaganda. He can, by the pn^ier use of
history, make him aware of the stereotype, and can
educate a habit of introspection about the imagery
evoked by printed words. He can, by courses in
comparative history and anthropology, produce a
life-long realization of the way codes impose a special
pattern upon the imagination. He can teach men
to catch themselves making all^ories, dramadnng
relations, and p>ersonifying abstractions. He can
show the pupil how he identifies himself with these
allegories, how he becomes interested, and how he
selects the attitude, heroic, romantic, economic
which he adopts while holding a particular opinion.
The study of error is not only in the highest degree
prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduc-
tion to the study of truth. As our minds become
more deeply aware of chdr own subjectivism, we
find a zest in objective method that is not other-

4IO PUBLIC OPINICm

wise there. We see vividly, as normally we should
not, the enonnous mischief and casual cruelty of our
prejudices. And dw destruction of a prejudicei^
dMN^ painful at first, because <tf its connection
with our self-respect, gjves an tnmiense rdief and a
fine pride when it is successfiilly done. There is a
radiod enla^ement of the range of attention. As
the current categtwies dissolve, a furd, ample
vermon of the world breaks up. The scene turns
vivid and fiilL There follows an emotional incentive
to hearty appreciation of scientific method, which
otherwise it is not easy to arouse, and is imposable
to sustfun. Prejudices are so much eaaer and
more interesting. For if you teach the princi-
ples of science as if they had always been accepted,
thdr chief virtue as a discipline wluch is objectivity,
will make them dull. But teach them at first as
victories over the superstitions of the mind, and the
exhilaration of the chase and of the conquest may
carry the pupil over that hard transition from his
own self-bound experience to the phase where his
curiosity has matured, and his reason has acquired

CHAPTER XXVIH
THE APPEAL TO REASON

1 HAVE written, and then thrown away^ several
endings to this book. Over all of them there hung
that fatality of last chapters, in which every idea
seems to find its place, and all the mysteries, that the
writer has not forgotten, are unrav^ed. In politics
the hero does not live happily ever after, or end his
life perfectly. There is no concluding chapter, be-
cause the hero in politics has more future before him
than there is recorded history behind him. The last
chapter is merely a place where the writer imagines
that the polite reader has begun to look furtively at
his watch.

When Plato came to the point where it was fitting
that he should sum up, his assurance turned into
st^e-fright as he thought how absurd it would
sound to say what was in him about the place of
reason in politics. Those sentences in book five of the
Republic were hard even for Plato to speak; they are
so sheer and so stark that men can ndther forget
them nor live by them. So he makes Socrates say to
Glaucon that he will be broken and drowned in
laughter for telling "what is the least change which

412 PUBLIC OPINICHf

will enable a state to pass into the truer l<Hin," '
because the thoi^ht he " would fain have uttered if it
had not seemed too extravagant" was that "until
philosophers are Idngs^ or the Ungs and princes of
this world have the spirit and power of philosophy,
and political greatness and wisdom meet in one . . .
cities will never cease from ill, — no, nor the human
race . . ."

Hardly had he said these awfiil words, when he
realized they were a counsel of perfectirai, and felt
embarassed at the unapproachable grandeur of his
idea. So he hastens to add that, of course, "the
true pilot" will be called "a prater, a star-gazer, a
good-for-nothing. " ' But tlus mstfiil admis«on,
though it protects him against whatever was the
Greek equivalent for the charge that he lacked a
sense of humor, furnished a humiliating tulpiece to a
solemn thought. He becomes defiant and warns
Adeimantus that he must "attribute the uselessness"
of philosophers " to the fault of those who will not
use them, and not to themselves. The pilot should
not humbly beg the smlors to be commanded by
him — that is not the order of nature." And with this
haughty gesture, he hurriedly picked up the tools of
reason, and disappeared into the Academy, leaving
the worid to Machiavelli.

Thus, in the first great encounter between reason
and politics, the strategy of reason was to retire in
anger. But meanwhile, as Plato tells us, the ship is
at sea. There have been many ships on the sea,
since Plato wrote, and to-day, whether we are wise or
- > Stpublit, Bk. V, 473. Jowett titai. ' Bk. VI, 48S-489.

THE APPEAL TO REASON 413

foolish in our belief, wc could no longer call a man a
true pilot, simply because he knows how to "pay
attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars
and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art." '
He can dismiss nothing which is necessary to make
that ship s^ul prosperously. Because there are mu-
tineers aboard, he cannot say: so much the worse for
us all. . . it is not in the order of nature that I
should handle a mutiny ... it is not in the order of
philosophy that I should consider mutiny ... I
know how to navigate ... I do not know how to
navigate a ship full of sailors . . . and if they do not
see that I am the man to steer, I cannot help it.
We shall all go on the rocks, they to be punished
for their sins; I, with the assurance that I knew
better. . . .

3
Whenever we make an appeal to reason in politics,
the difficulty in this parable recurs. For there is an
inherent difficulty about using the method of reason
to deal with an unreasoning world. Even if you
assume with Plato that the true pilot knows what is
best for the ship, you have to recall that he is
not so easy to recognize, and that this uncertainty
leaves a large part of the crew unconvinced. By
definition the crew does not know what he knows, and
the pilot, fascinated by the stars and winds, does not
know how to make the crew realize the importance
of what he knows. There is no time during mutiny
at sea to make each saHor an expert judge of experts.

> BL VI, 488-489.

414 FUBUc opnnon

Then is no time fra* the plot to consult his crew and
find out whether he is really as wise as he thinks he
is. For education is a matter of jrears, die eniei;gency
a matter of hours. It would be altogether academic,
then^ to tell the jnlot that the true nmcdy is, for
example, an education diat will endow saikirs with
a better sense of evidence. Tou can tell that only
to shipmasters <ai dry land. In the crins, the
only advice is to use a gun, cr make a speech, utter
a stirring slogan, offer a compromise, emfdoy any
qmck means aviulable to quell the mutiny, the
sense of cadence bong what it is. It is only on
shore where men plan for many voyages, that they
can afford to, and must for thdir own salvation, deal
with those causes that take a long time to remove.
They will be dealing in years and generations^ not in
emei^;encies alone. And nothing will put a greater
strmn upon their wisdom than the necessity of dis-
tinguishing false crises from real ones. For when
there is panic in the airj with one crisis tripping over
the heels of another, actual dangers mixed with
imaginary scares, there is no chance at all for the
constructive use of reason, and any order soon seems
preferable to any disorder.

It is only on the premise of a certain stability
over a long run of time that men can hope to follow
the method of reason. This is not because man-
kind is inept, or because the appeal to reason is
visionary, but because the evolution of reason on
political subjects is only in its b^nnings. Our
rarional ideas in politics are still large, thin, generali-
ties, much too abstract and unrefined for practical

THE APPEAL TO REASON 4>5

guidance, except where the a^regates are large
enough to cancel out individual peculiarity and ex-
hibit large uniformities. Reason in politics is especi-
ally immature in predicting the behavior of individual
men, because in human conduct the smallest initial
variation often works out into the most elaborate
differences. That, perhaps, is why when we try to
insist solely upon an appeal to reason in dealing with
sudden situations, we are broken and drowned in
laughter.

4
For the rate at which reason, as we possess it, can
advance itself is slower than the rate at which action
has to be taken. In the present state of political
science there is, therefore, a tendency for one situa-
tion to change into another, before the first is clearly
understood, and so to make much political criridsm
hindsight and litde else. Both in the discovery of
what is unknown, and in the propagation of that
which has been proved, there is a time-differential,
which ought to, in a much greater degree than it ever
has, occupy the political philosopher. We have be-
gun, chiefly under the inspiration of Mr. Graham
Wallas, to examine the effect of an invisible environ-
ment upon our opinions. We do not, as yet, under-
stand, except a little by rule of thumb, the element of
time in politics, though it bears most direcdy upon
the practicability of any constructive proposal.' We
can see, for example, that somehow the relevancy of
any plan depends upon the length of time the opera-

' Cf. H. G. Weill ID the opening chapten (tf Mankind m iht Makini.

4i6 PUBLIC OPINION

tiion requires. Because tm the length of time it will
depend whether the data which the plan assumes as
pven, will in truth remain the same.* There is a
factcH* here which realistic and cqicrienced men do
take into account^ and it helps to mark them oflF
somehow from the opportunist, the naonary, the
philistine and the pedant.* But just how tiie calcula-
tion of time enters into politics we do not know at
present in any systematic way.

Until we understand these matters more cleariy,
we can at least remember that there is a problem of
the utmost theoretical difficulty and practical con-
sequence. It will help us to cherish Sato's ideal,
without sharing his hasty conclusion about the
pervernty of those who do not listen to reason. It is
hard te obey reason in politics, because you are trying
to make two processes march t(^ther, which have
as yet a different gait and a different pace. Until
reason Is subde and particular, the immediate
struggle of politics will continue to require an amount
of native wit, force, and unprovable faith, that reason
can neither provide nor control, because the facts of
life are too undifferentiated for its powers of under-
standing. The methods of social science are so litde
perfected that in many of the serious decisions and
most of the casual ones, there is as yet no choice but
to gamble with fate as intuition prompts.

But we can make a belief in reason one of those

' The better the current analysis in the intdhsence work of any initi-
tjtion, the less likely, of course, that men will deal with tomornnr'a
problems in the light of yesterday's facts.

' Not all, but some of the differences between reactionaries, conacrva-
tivei, liberals, and radicals are due, I think, to a different intuitive ctti-
mate of the rale of change in social affiin.

THE APPEAL TO REASON 417

intuitions. We can use our wit and our force to
make footholds for reason. Behind our pictures of
the world, we can try to see the vista of a longer
duration of events, and wherever it is possible to
escape from the urgent present, allow this longer
time to control our decisions. And yet, even when
there is this will to let the future count, we find again
and again that we do not know for certain how to act
according to the dictates of reason. The number of
human problems on which reason is prepared to
dictate is small.

There is, however, a noble counterfeit in that
charity which comes from self-knowledge and an
unarguable belief that no one of our gregarious species
is alone in his longing for a friendlier world. So
many of the grimaces men make at each other go
with a flutter of their pulse, that they are not all of
them important. And where so much is uncertain,
where so many actions have to be carried out on
guesses, the demand upon the reserves of mere de-
cency is enormous, and it is necessary to live as if
good will would work. We cannot prove in every
instance that it will, nor why hatred, intolerance,
suspicion, bigotry, secrecy, fear, and lying are the
seven deadly sins against public opinion. We can
only insist that they have no place in the appeal to
reason, that in the longer run they are a poison;
and taking our stand upon a view of the world
which outlasts our own predicaments, and our own
lives, we can cherish a hearty prejudice against them.

4i8 PUBUC OPINION

We can do this all the better tf we do not allow
frig^tfulness and fanaticism to impress us so deeply
that we throw up our hands peevishly, and lose inter-
est in the Iraiger run of time because we have lost
fiuth in the future of man. There is no ground for
this despur, because all the j^j on wluch, as James
stadf our destiny hangs, are as pr^nant as they ever
were. What we have seen of brutality, we have seen,
and because ttwas strange, it was not craidu^ve. It
was only Berlin, Moscow, Versailles in 1914 to 1919,
not Armageddon, as we rhetorically said. The more
realistically men have faced out the brutality and the
hysteria, the more they have earned the right to say
that it is not foolish for mm to believe, because an-
other great war took place, that intelligence, courage
and effort cannot ever contrive a good life for all men.

Great as was the horror, it was not universal.
There were corrupt, and there were incorruptible.
There was muddle and there were miracles. There
was huge lying. There were men with the will to
uncover it. It is no judgment, but only a mood,
when men deny that what some men have been,
more men, and ultimately enough men, might be.
You can despair of what has never been. You can
despair of ever having three heads, though Mr.
Shaw has declined to despair even of that. But you
cannot despair of the possibilities that could exist
by virtue of any human quality which a human being
has exhibited. And if amidst all the evils of this
decade, you have not seen men and women, known
moments that you would like to multiply, the Lord
himself cannot help you.

INDEX

INDEX

"Bom Cha^Tbe." 33S. Ml

Bnwl.M

BicM-Litimk. UN. 110, 111, tU

Bmn, R. W., UO

BniUlky.41S

Brm,Lonl, 10!, 124, US, lU, JM

Bimoitnbc, 231, IM

Bnrawi. bKriHtniCT. »Si » *Jh In-

BoTT, Aano, It)

CibinM, 3M; bldUfcnce bunua to
CUKHlOuC, 131
CuukbTw. B., I

AnnlieBrioB, SI
ASotk, 117; a

165; flemtyped Hapti and.
Aftltti, plowifav, 1ST
Ajq^, Hunt. >, 55
AUmtiDa, atncuom ol d1

*m, KMi imnpiHT 4iid, 336

. ■ Hi isdiBtiT. 1 IB

Cutdnwi, Geaoil d>. M
CMiultH of Uw mi, 2J9-1U
Catbolic («kU] (odMlt, JOS
Cubolk* >Dd Gomui, 101

Ceuonhip, JO; mlliUiy, U: privtcy ud,

Chilte. ZfcliuUli. 311
Chuee ol nunc, ST
diUKtm^lIl, 1», m

Chstcrton, G. K., 11, 13
ChiBUnu, 406

City, lite dlitnctiBi, 71, 74; traOcT-ou
d. 143

Bebnum, l..
Btiloc. HUiin. 3JS
Banuop, Benurd. B3

Bonun, Loui]. 17a

Bmbdat, U.. 35

BknUdt. £. R.. B6

Bii Biulaea, I IB; nempapcn wd, 335

VlE)d(|iDU, 101. Ill

BoUninn, III; EioKcin Tbcmr ud, 151

KS. 14»

Coda. M; hcU wd, 113; nool. 110; tkdt

Caeid>Ni.»5;bok'>.»t
Cobtit, Ui^, 40. U
Col*, C. dTh., MS, »«
CoIlKtivcmiDil,93
CoUactivtoB. 113
CoUlCi Hcicdo. 51

CommiiDJIr. K
CooipctltiaD. i

Eaaioauc d . .. _
Ecoiuunic mytboLiify.

ISJ, IBS, 1ST
I7_ ^

CeDfoBiiB si mind.

CoBlgy, U7; lunanDcc ol tula, 3Sa;

CenrtLiTV

Cnd^UlyoIwi

0«d. Ocoiie. Wit proniudii. 4t

Cmy. HirbBt, 179

Cninl, »hHlc»iii», 230; pvcialtO, 17T

Cubt, 147

CiecbiBlavikU, 211

Emenon. R. W.,i

EmoUon, meawty ud. 405; coa

Empulliy. 163 '

Engliili GuiJil SocUliili, 31. 160. 1

Eotcrinc vtdit, jW
EnviruDiiiHit. difficultia of otir

7&: iadinaJy known. 4
Enw, iludyof , 400
Enbernr, Manhiu. 103
ElcnuJ principla uid the Wotld W
Europe u symbol, 210

FictiocB, ISl
ftaacf. 2«9. 300

FuU, iicinii, 30; raonl cods rtd, Ult
umccn, 31; irdchiuc pnpetlj, 153

fuDCtioui, 303. 305: fovcmmcnt'u an
tautlnct. 2S9; indusUU, 146; new
thtatf d. 2»9: old docmi. 249; phDo»-
T^, 367 ; public opinioii njfede a Diyitay
2H-255; revolulioo in, 248; twovkom,

Fsencii, S., TO
Fktiou. 14, 1!, 19
nakioua peraouUty, I

/. John., on tht pcoblon of appte-

Fonl, H. J,. 257,258-259, 2J1, 279,2

FortiT. W. Z., 403
Fourteen Poinu, 107, IK
a 1701601,216

noila and. 130
Dbect action, timit.

: RnriUnkB pcopa-

Freighl rata, 241
French Genoa] Staff tu
Fieud, Slfaiuid, 15«
FnndlaB, 27

FoDctiOM, 304

Oattf. Chukh 13S
Cm W«r. Sm Woild Wu
~ a, (^ lUta oi. IfiT

_£, Ur., «i
it SociMv. 15, U, JTO
np Mind. 30, 91
''■ ■ "<m.29S,3l.ltO

Btta of Tui)' 31.

fcMtAty.lS6

r. 156. 199. i\3

Ida], IM

Ucat, dccuUlkn. 4>i dmlntioo limiit,
4«iw]>lin HKciKibility, IDS

, d^ uid couBty, JM

Juua, Willimn (the Gnt). 137
Jina, WUlbun. I«. K, IIS, 138. I»,
130, ilS; an dacrimiiuliou uxl dm*
139-lW;

, .T,J,P.L.

JcSenoD, Tbomu. 119, 1ST, 167; cob-
nitutioa ud. lei

jdnir. Dr., n*

J(dR. Ga»nl, 9, 10. 11: u idibit of wu
iKin,J]:atVnduB,JS,3T

IODB. Emal, TO
oumaJisin. 31, 261; iM tin Ncmpapai
UDg, Clj., 71, 11, 74

Kemp(.E.J.,lS, IT«

KBIbg,Ill,l7S

King. S«at«, of Vtti. tU

Kdoi. SnuloT, IS

Leuuc ol N'aliom, 19, 10; jbMdl

UBoa. GusUive, 177,197

«.I. M..33I

A, Vtnuui, lU

.cmliciaa, 131: ttr alin Coqeru

Alio, Nicolu, IS5
Levi), G. C UJ

Kwit. Sinclair, 12. I«>. JM)

Jbcrly, JIS

.IppBunn, Fny*, Ji4
JppmAno. Walter, 151
JiieU, PhDip, 119

It, d E.. 71

_. nil. A. lAwiBias, UD
,Dcidib' o< miBd, W
.ddmiaifl, Geniin], 240

tmiilanSa. 201

Luik CommittM, iW

MdCailhy, Charlra. :
McCoTmick, SoiKtor,
McDaugall, William,
Ifachiivelli, Niccolo, ta
UuUncptAltlciil. 21!^ I
'UvUnoy of koawlcdgi

18

Muk pcncd, 71
"iSjn^tTHI," I

161, MO

Mnnnw

DoctriiK, !71

Moral codn, 120; puticular vim

(Dd,

iiulioa. 179

Moni"

209.139

Monilif

M<™g

LtSI'"'-"*

.DaiUiy,240

■tia.41}

■Dd public opinias.lU

Kcv. Snato, 19

Nnr Yntk CHt. mit ■< iilwhiiliilfcii

Ne«3. ftucBB work, 343^ Uck of exact
tots, J59; Duchiatiy of ivcord, J42;
lutun ol. iii: t^«l«-» Lnimai. «*:
■jruem at iKotd and, 343; tnilh di»-
tinguislin] from, iHi aaeawnat, 339;
unpaid for. 321

Nevt-Kilhmni, 320, 334

Nein|HpEn,3l, 32; accuracy. 319; cuual
nUtion oi the public Id 321: dmik-
tkn, 323, 326; coDccalcd paynKoE lor,
ith onutuit nadcr, 3U-, dtuy wd
penonat patut. 330; ediioi'i poiiticia,
333, 351: maaewxan oflcuiol&r, ^
inslitatlaiu and, 304; invtidndiBi of
Industrial conditinoi. 347: m ur t prem i-
ution, 350; poUtiuil science and 310;

SublisluiuF as a buaines, 336; ndical,
16: uluin of rrparten, etc.. 334; time
and attention itvca lo, 58; Uutb and,
362; unique pwilion. 321
Nivelle, General. 41, 240
NoiH. 72
Notlhdiffe, Lord, 353

Officebolden. lU, 385

Mecbanical bve
Melling Pot pag
AteDlalconluin
HeaUt fatipie,
Uentality, \am,
UoTkra, C. E..

Httipbon, 160
Halco. ei, 200
Mlchdl. K.. 325

WHkir. Ill

Opinion, 123; property and IBl
Opponuniry and rontdct. 46
OtKanizalion, political. 225
Orginiaationa of mearch and n

37J
Oltaluied intdlifeDce. 3fi7
OstiHcnki, U., 22S
Oiit^ public, 400
OwF*lur22«-229

FuEUt of tbe Heltiag I^, H

1^,26

Palmer, A. Milchelt. 319

Faiia,49

Futy politki, IH

Patriotic code, U4

PecLSlT

vSLgb

r'; syinbolfc'Tr

PnbUc (piril. HI
pobUdn men, M4
Pafudtr. IM

hid. ua

PCUia, CcMnl. 340
PUkamilvalltfc, 90. 11!)
FliotaaiiplM. S]

PktnmTuVlS, 31.11. ]»[.IU.I«5
Fioidn, Jt«B de, «. IJ, 3i, MO
Pitliburih Survey, 347

Plata's RcniUicIM, 111

Fkuutc. 26

Plot*. I»

PlqrdJna. "'*' fnAn* ?o^

Polilfcal Ulc twnpledly, II. U

Initial fctna Jl "'•■

■Dd.3»
FoUtultlnxki. ISS
PotUol wUiKn, inaite. IJ7

*, 144

lendiiij, 246; pto- Raoirch

.. 1. 31,1>7, ]

nntbctn, (iiild lociaUuB. 2M
Rcfnantilini, hiactinu], 30J
RnvOBcd cnvion, 174
Rcpublkui Khkmiii 1«I2, 199
Rcpublicuu. 1»4
Roearch tod refoB]
Ra(»:UbiliIj,52

XapooK, 71, V:
KcTolution, 14«; _.

chukal (1120-50), lui
RhineUad, 114
RidilcT. J. P. L.. M
Rlifati ud dutio. IM
Rbbti of humultr. 21S
KoUn, J. H.. 140

iatb. BdN, Ml

Sue vilky. 114
Swt.A./, I3S

lU; ]

Chni."
5liv«y, Al

TinK-conccptwD, I»
Time pcnpMIivT. IW, Itl

Tooiucvilfc, AluB de. 2M
Tolmiia. 12(1
Toi>ii3hips._I67, 27i

Tnisl io nlhrn, 2!J

Social hU, so. si. 54

Sodalinn» 11t3. 1M. ISA
Sodcl^, Gr*I. 25, 55. 3

Spwd. wotdi. cittinai. *

EUU, ^KRUry □[. J80
SUteiiood, 2t7

Daka'Lnrw Clob, Vt
1Mt]r,lM,ua

Stnidiey'i Qumi
SUilc. 263 JaT
Sufta sBd thE I
Stnigglc, 164
Stnuisky, SimtQ
Suoxu. 109. IK
Sufinafab. M
Supcr&tivc. 109

Victoii»,a

.obH. C.Weib.HI

Symbolic posooality, 11

Synbob, II. lOe: cbincler, 220; hicr-

uchy. 215; leaden' use o(. 234; power

Tdt, W. H., I3S
Tuu, 92
ThDoi, F. W., X9

vSiatiM, Sabot. M9
VctHen. Tlmntcfai, in, II

Vktoty. Ill
Virril. «S. 144
X^niniu. IIT
Vbudlatlon. M
Voice of tbe pi

Voting, 144. 19); by fuoctions, 506;
■BcUlod ot lecuniMt InniDCRiEDU* vote.
IW; pRfRentiil, 233; reuom. electicm
ol 19M. Ml

lu. MS

WuhingtoD. GoMEF, ISI

WaskiMfUn Pail. 17

Webb, Sidiiey ud Bailnn. 309, >9i

Wdb, H. G , 419: on hirtoiT, 140

Wbite. W. AUnoo. M

WhiU. Wm. Allen, lOS

Will o( Ihe pt
Wil]-Dukinc.l37
WilsM, SirRflicy. 2

okB ol the

ud. 110
WbKfe«-fiue, c
Wotinu. Leo. «
Womu'tputy.
Wonb., FrpBH

Um.1
IHical, ..

K*. 116: RmlLatioa oI a

110: cuiuIlK*, 239-

actndlu, t
il, pTS., 2

Wotincdua....

BMtd, po^JtiaJ, 29

Yh or DO. 210, 210

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