The historic props of class rule, according to Professor Edward A. Ross, in his recent volume, “Social Control,” have been force, superstition, fraud, pomp, and prescription. Our present seigniorial class makes use, with fine discrimination as time and occasion require, of each of these means of support, though unquestionably it sets the greatest value upon the last named. Force is employed less openly, less obviously; decreasingly by the direct imposition of the magnates, increasingly through their ingenious manipulation of the powers of the State. The superstition latent in most minds proves now, as ever, a means of ready recourse; but though supernatural sanction to the acts and authority of the magnates is cunningly deduced and volubly preached from a thousand pulpits, the prop fails somewhat as a constant and sure reliance. Even testimony so authoritative as that of President Baer to the effect that the Great First Cause had intrusted to himself and his co-magnates the control of the business interests of the country, has been flouted in a number of places. The notion of supernatural sanctions, as most people know, and as Professor Goldwin Smith has repeatedly taken pains to point out, As for fraud, both of class against class, and individual against individual, attempts to practise it no doubt increase; but the tooth-and-claw struggle of the last generation has developed and sharpened the wits of the combatants, so that it tends to become a less profitable game. He would be a sharper indeed, according to the proverb, who among the Turks of the Negropont, the Jews of Salonika, or the Greeks of Athens could cheat his fellow: each knows by heart all the tricks and devices of which the others are capable. Matters are not yet at such a stage in free America: great frauds, both of the group and of the individual, are still practised. But the almost infinite possibilities of other days have been sadly restricted by the operation of those natural laws which tend to fit beings to their environment. Pomp, too, is less a factor of control than in past times. It has a powerful grip on the imaginations of the poor, as the columns of our “yellow” journals, which devote so large a space to the ceremonies of the great, amply attest; but though it charms the more, it deceives the less. It interests, it delights; but it does not overawe or subdue. IIt is by prescription—by a constant appeal to the sanctity of custom, a constant preaching of the validity of vested rights, and of the beauty, order, inevitability, “Those who have the sunny rooms in the social edifice have ... a powerful ally in the suggestion of Things-as-they-are. With the aid of a little narcotizing teaching and preaching, the denizens of the cellar may be brought to find their lot proper and right, to look upon escape as an outrage upon the rights of other classes, and to spurn with moral indignation the agitator who would stir them to protest. Great is the magic of precedent, and like the rebellious Helots, who cowered at the sight of their masters’ whips, those who are used to dragging the social chariot will meekly open their calloused mouths whenever the bit is offered them.” The magnates, as has been shown, brook small interference with prevailing customs. Their near dependents, retainers, and “poor relations” think as they think, and feel as they feel; and the great majority of the professional moulders of opinion, drawing their inspiration from above, preach and teach as the magnates would have them. The general social passivity following the pressure of all these influences upon the public mind is as certain and inescapable as a mathematical conclusion. IIA powerful auxiliary to the preaching of the sanctity of custom is the extolling of individual “success.” Personal endeavor toward the goal of “success” is the urgent exhortation. Scarcely one of the magnates who have recently entered literature, or who, avoiding that province, have on occasion unbosomed themselves to the interviewer, but takes pains to declare how numerous and how mighty are the possibilities in the path of the energetic. All that is needed, according to most of the seigniorial recipes, are brains and health; honesty, it is true, is often included as an ingredient in the compound, but its mention is possibly ironical, and need not concern us. Brains and health are thus the two things needful; and though pursuing Satan may gather in, with his drag-net, a vast army of the hindmost, the fortunate possessors of these two boons will inevitably forge to the front in the headlong race. It is by no accident that this particular counsel from the magnates is heard now more frequently than any other. It is one that of course has been given in all times; but it has never been given with such frequency and unction as now. Consciously or subconsciously, it is an expression of class feeling—a The professional moulders of opinion take their cue from these exhortations of the magnates, improve, elaborate, and redistribute them. The professors, the editors, and the orators lead, and the hortatory pronouncements of the pulpit follow closely. The Carpenter of Nazareth, it is true, held other views of “success”; but his precepts would seem to have gone out of fashion in the fanes and tabernacles ostensibly devoted to his worship. With all ranks and conditions Success becomes the great god; and as though there were not already priests and votaries enough for his proper worship, a special class of publications has recently arisen, which serve as his vowed and consecrated ministers. These teach to the devout but unsophisticated followers of the great god the particular IIINot only by the showering of precepts, by the encouragement of individual effort, and by the dangling of more or less illusory prizes before the wistful multitude does the ruling class maintain its hold. It invites, to some extent, a participation in the harvest. The growth of the shareholding class, of which mention has already been made, is by no means wholly As in England, so also here. The movement toward corporate ownership is probably more pronounced in the United States than in the older country, and it has been equally encouraged from above. Joint-stock concerns increased in England from 9344 in 1885 to 25,267 in 1898. In Massachusetts, the State in which the preparation of statistics most nearly approaches the methods of science, corporations are reported to have increased during the years A great number of shareholders in a particular company would seem, on first thought, to be something of a nuisance. Unquestionably they would represent a wide range of conflicting views and antagonistic purposes, all bearing upon the one problem of the proper operation of the company’s property; and would thus give salient instances of that unwisdom which is too often found in a multitude of counsellors. At least this is the seigniorial argument against national collectivism—an argument which one might naturally suppose to be quite as applicable to the particular collectivism of the stock company. But it does not so apply; the solid advantages of diffused The social and political effect of this general participation in the ownership of industries may be readily observed by all but the blind. “If the truth were known,” wrote that keen-witted financier, Mr. Russell Sage, in a magazine article published last May, “concentration of wealth is popular with the masses.” Partners in the great enterprises, the multitude of petty shareholders are led more and more to consider economic questions from the employers’ standpoint. In the controversies between labor and capital ten years ago the average citizen was but an onlooker, sometimes a weak partisan of capital, but very often a neutral, with a strong latent sympathy for the “under dog.” To-day, thanks to his holding of a single share in the steel corporation or of two or three shares in some street railway company, he is an employer, one of the men “to whom God, in His infinite wisdom, has given the control of the property interests of the country.” He sees, thinks, and feels as a member, however humble, of the employing class; and what the magnates think and do is to him all the law and the prophets. “Bound by gold chains about the feet” of his feudatory lords, he is at the same time a sharer in their responsibilities and a faithful retainer in their service. IVIt would be idle to declare that all the tendencies make toward acquiescence. Just as in the atmosphere VIt must be confessed, however, that this revolt is, for the most part, sentimental; it is a mental attitude only occasionally transmutable into terms of action. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.” While in the bosom of every devotee of Things-as-they-are there rises the sentiment of thankfulness that the mass of the people have learned the wisdom of letting well enough alone. Political radicalism reached its culminating point in the election of 1896. Despite certain foolish and mischievous notions embodied in the two radical platforms of that year, the combined movement was yet a consistent and unified attack upon class rule. The elections of the next two years revealed a waning of Populist and Democratic strength, and in 1900 a fine sense of caution prompted the Fusionists to subordinate the industrial demands of their platforms to the issue of Imperialism. The Socialists, it is true, usually increase their vote; but the admitted fact of a great growth of Socialist conviction throughout the land makes these slight increases at the polls appear but trivial, and only further confirms the view that such radicalism is sentimental rather than potential. Anti-trust conferences are not without an element of humor; at least, they are the cause of much humor in outsiders; and the widely heralded arbitration court of the National Civic Federation breaks down on the very occasion when most is expected of it—that of the anthracite coal strike. Organized labor, despite its greater numerical strength, is far less aggressive As a people, we have heard enough, for the time, about social problems, and prefer to interest ourselves in other matters. Professor Walter A. Wyckoff, who has recently changed the scene of his optimistic observances from America to England, has an article in the September Scribner’s on the English social situation. “The condition-of-the-people problem,” he writes, “lacks vitality for the moment because, as one shrewd observer remarked, ‘the public has grown tired of the poor.’” We are feeling the same weariness here. Our benevolence somewhat increases, and we are willing to give, and more than willing that the magnates shall give freely; but we want to be troubled no more with remedial schemes. Rather, we are disposed to trust to seigniorial wisdom and virtue to set things right. Some of us will perhaps decline to go so far in our trust as a certain prominent Massachusetts lady who proposed to abolish working-class suffrage. “I think,” said this lady in an address to a club of working girls, “many of the troubles between employer and men might be swept away if the men could not vote. If he felt that they did not stand on just the same footing as himself, that they had not quite so many privileges as he, the employer might have a chivalric feeling toward them.” Some of us may hesitate at this project, but Instead of the personal fidelity that characterized the older Feudalism, we are rapidly developing a class fidelity. History may repeat itself, as the adage runs; but not by identical forms and events. It is not likely that personal fidelity, as once known, can ever be restored: the long period of dislodgment from the land, the diffusion of learning, the exercise of the franchise, and the training in individual effort have left a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the past and the present forms. But though personal fidelity, in the old sense, is improbable, group fidelity, founded upon the conscious dependence of a class, is already observable, and it grows apace. Out of the sense of class dependence arises the extreme deference which we yield, the rapt homage which we pay—not as individuals, but as units of a class—to the men of wealth. We do not know them personally, and we have no sense of personal attachment. But in most things we grant them priority. We send them or their legates to the Senate to make our laws; we permit them to name our administrators and our judiciary; we listen with eager attention to their utterances, and we abide by their judgment. When the venerable Mr. Hewitt, brought forth like the holy man Onias, in the Judean civil war between Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, to denounce the opposing faction, utters his anathema against the minions of Mr. Mitchell, we listen in awe and are convinced. A three-line interview with the chief of the magnates is read with an eagerness wholly wanting in our perusal VICurrent passivity has, however, a reverse side. To many persons a recognition of the changing conditions brings demoralization or despair. All are not won by the lure of “success.” To an increasing number the dangling prize in the distance is but a mirage, and oppressed by a sense of the bankruptcy of life they seek an oblivious relief. There is a drift toward the twin dissipations of drink and gambling, and there is an increase of suicide. The greater drink consumption is a matter of common observation, and it is amply attested by statistics. Mr. J. Holt Schooling’s figures in a recent issue of the Fortnightly Review show an increased consumption in the United States of 20 per cent for the years 1896-1900, as against the years 1886-90. The The recent increase of petty gambling is still more noticeable. Playing for high stakes, a custom common enough in the late years of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth, has long been given over or transferred to the domain of “business.” But what is colloquially known as “tin-horn” gambling has advanced, these last five years, by leaps and bounds. Doubtless the high precedent of our national Monte Carlos, the stock exchanges, is ample cause for much of it; but other causes are also in operation. With those persons that hearken to, but heed not, the seigniorial exhortation to bestir Faro, keno, and roulette may have suffered some decline in favor. If so, statutes and the police, instead of a growing aversion to gambling, must be held responsible. It is one of those conventional puzzles which none can explain, that it is possible in our cities to restrict table and wheel gambling, but seemingly impossible to restrict certain other forms. Poker, for instance, maintains its hold, unawed by statute and unhampered by authority; while policy and race-betting, the special refuges of the desperately poor and the desperately fatuous, win new and lasting converts day by day. Indeed, the growth of race-betting is one of the striking phenomena of our time. It has become a habit, a disease; and its confirmed victims are held in as slavish a thraldom as are the victims of opium and hasheesh. One need not penetrate to a pool-room or journey to a race-track to discover evidences of its general diffusion. He may hear of it on every side, and he may find definitive proof in the daily journals. In nearly all of these the space given to the reports of races, the lists of betting odds and accounts of great winnings, is generous; The meaning of the increase of suicide is clouded by a number of factors, and it is impossible to ascribe the tendency to one cause alone. Were we to accept the explanation of the pulpit, we should see in it the awful consequences of the decline of faith. Pathologists, however, while not denying this influence, enumerate many others. Racial and temperamental factors, drink and vice, are all concerned in the matter, and even climates and seasons are influential. But whatever the effect of these may be, the intensifying struggle for life these last few years, and what appears to many minds a darkening outlook for the future, must be acknowledged as powerful agents in increasing the rate of self-destruction. The rate is highest in the great industrial centres, where the struggle is fiercest, where the richest stakes are won and lost, where luxury is most flaunting and poverty most galling; and it is least where the struggle is in some measure relaxed. The recent census shows for the decade an increased rate per 100,000 of population VIIAll of our general institutions reflect the changes in public thought, taste, and feeling consequent upon the changing conditions of the social rÉgime. But on none of them are these changes writ more clearly or in larger characters than on the institution of letters. Along with the morganization of industry steadily proceeds the munseyization of literature. We are a free people, our politicians tell us, and are strenuously resolved to remain so. But if we are to be judged by our popular literature, the verdict can hardly be other than that we have reached an advanced stage of subserviency, and that the normal mood of the overwhelming majority is one of complacence with its lot. Our popular magazines regularly keep before us a justification, actual or inferential, of things as they are; and though it is couched in less argumentative phrasing than that of the newspapers, it is, no doubt, for that very reason, a more plausible and effective expression of the plea. There are panegyrics on our captains of industry, tales of their exploits in the great industrial battle, descriptions of their town-houses and country-seats,—all, in fact, that makes for the emulation of their wisdom and virtues, and particularly of their faculty of acquisitiveness,—with a multitude of recipes for the winning of “success.” Along with this is provided a vaudeville of idle entertainment: wonder tales, short stories, a gallery of pictures of stage-folk, who, whatever their merits may be, bear but a problematic relation to literature; and finally an amorphous compound of Such of these publications as indulge in the gentle art of reviewing give further evidence of changing conditions. Reviewing, as now practised, studies the amenities of life, with a particular regard for the counting office, “wherein doth sit the dread and fear” of the publisher who has advertising to distribute. With a few notable exceptions the reviewing journals make it their business to be “nice.” They do not damn, not even with faint praise; they commend or extol. It is not that they praise insincerely a bad book—reviewing is too highly developed a craft for such crudity. But in a bad book all that the widest exercise of charity can pronounce even passably good comes in for praise; and what is weak or poor, or inclusive under old John Dennis’s favorite term of “clotted nonsense,” is mercifully omitted from mention. So it is when the advertising publisher is a factor in the game. But a reviewing journal must uphold a reputation for impartial judgment, and must thus mingle blame with praise. Its opportunity comes when some inglorious Milton of Penobscot or Butte prints his verses at home at his own expense. A copy drifts into the reviewing office and effects a transformation. The angelic temper upon which so many and such large drafts are made becomes exhausted, and the humble poet is treated to the sort of thing which Gifford used to deal out to the Della Cruscans and the ireful Dennis to the poetasters of Queen Anne’s time. It was perhaps The literary distinction of former days has taken wings. Whether or not Wordsworth was right in his lament over the state of England in 1803 may be questioned; but a like lament uttered for our own land and time would be in large part justified. We have the two extremes of exceedingly plain living and of wildly extravagant living; but high thinking seems to be the accompaniment of neither. For several years the only really salable books have been novels, and among these popular favor has centred almost wholly on the kind called historical—called so not because the stories bear any relation to history, but because in them the action is put in a past time. Lately, it is true, there have been signs of a reaction; but let none imagine that it is due to a growing taste for stronger meat. Rather it is an evidence that in our love of novelty we have tired of one trifle and now demand another in its stead. For the recent indications of declining favor for the historical novel are accompanied by no signs of reviving favor for more serious works. The Huxley Memoirs, it is true, unexpectedly achieved the degree of favor usually given to a fifth-rate novel; but the work, despite its science, philosophy, and religious controversy, was yet an entertaining story, and won its way for that reason. No more in fiction than in other branches of literature is there promise of better Our popular magazines most accurately reflect the public mind. Pictures and stories are the substance of its childish delight. Among periodicals we have nothing in any way comparable to the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, the Nineteenth Century, the Fortnightly, the Contemporary, the AthenÆum, the Spectator, the Saturday Review, or even the Academy. Whatever tendencies of late have seemed to indicate the future planting of such reviews on these shores, have very recently been extinguished. Of three publications in which articles of some thought and some importance were occasionally printed, two have recently found a monthly issue more frequent than the public taste required, and have accordingly transformed themselves into quarterlies, while the third has been forced to make concessions to the general demand for “lightness and brightness.” For these are the qualities which pay. “Make it light and bright,” is the order which the literary contributor hears in the editorial offices when he submits his wares; and though the terms may be variously interpreted, he understands what is meant: he must write down to the level of childish |