Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
consequence the major parties chose to follow the economic interests of
master groups, heedless of all humanitarian issues.
But the spirit awakened by the earlier democratic enthusiasm could
not be kept in political strait-jackets. The Jacksonian revolution
overflowed all narrow party dikes, expressing itself in diverse
humanitarian and reform movements and quickening the minds of ardent
Americans with larger democratic aspirations. The noble idealism of
successive third parties that have sprung up reasserted the democratic
principles flouted by the major parties. The Locofoco movement, the
Free-soil Party, the early Republican Party, the Greenback Party, the
Populist Party, the Progressive Party, have had a common objective,
namely to carry further the movement inaugurated by the Jeffersonians
to make of America a land of democratic equality and opportunity--to
make government in America serve man rather than property. The
third-party movements have always been democratic movements, and though
they have failed in their immediate objectives they have served the
purpose of reminding the major parties--oftentimes rudely--that America
presumes to be a democratic country. Thus interpreted the history of
the political struggle in America since 1790 falls into three broad
phases: the Jeffersonian movement that asserted the ideal of political
democracy; the Jacksonian movement that established it crudely in
practice; and the successive third-party movements that attempted
to regain such ground as had been lost, to extend the field, and to
perfect the machinery of democratic government.
As a result of the long struggle the abstract principle of
democracy--during the period under consideration--was firmly
established in the popular mind; but as it fell under the successive
custodianship of different economic groups it came to receive strangely
diverse interpretations. Interpreted by the coonskin Jacksonians
it meant political equalitarianism; by the slave economy it meant
a Greek democracy; by the industrial economy it meant the right of
exploitation. It has changed service with each new master. Always the
principles of Jeffersonianism--of democracy as a humane social order,
serving the common well-being--have been lost out of the reckoning, and
except in so far as the tendency has been checked by the third-party
threat, democratic professions have been only a thin cover under
which the old class warfare has gone forward vigorously. In the
decades immediately following the Civil War democracy passed under the
custodianship of the middle class, who were busily engaged in creating
a plutocracy, and the major ideas of the earlier movement took on
a characteristic middle-class coloring. The idea of a beneficent
progress, which was the flower of the doctrine of human perfectibility,
came to be interpreted as material expansion with constantly augmenting
profits; and the idea of democracy came to be interpreted as the right
to use the government of the whole for the benefit of the few.
* * * * *
Considered historically perhaps the chief contribution of the
Progressive movement to the democratic cause is to be found in its
discovery of the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the federal
Constitution. That so obvious a fact so long escaped recognition
was due to political causes easily understood. For a century the
Constitution had been a symbol of national unity, a cohesive
force amidst the drift of expansion, a counter influence to the
disintegrations of states-rights particularisms; and as such it had
appealed to the national loyalties of men in every commonwealth. To
criticize it was reckoned disloyal. The long process of interpretation
had remained in the hands of the lawyers and had been wholly
legalistic and antiquarian. In all this earlier commentary--except
for a small group of left-wing Abolitionists who repudiated the
entire instrument--no question as to the democratic spirit of the
Constitution was raised, no doubts as to its sufficiency as a
fundamental democratic law were suggested. The class divisions that
presided at its making were ignored, and the aristocratic spirit of
its creators was forgotten. But with the rising revolt against the
custodianship of government by financial and industrial interests came
a new critical interest in the fundamental law. Discovering that its
hands were tied the democracy began to question the reason for the
bonds that constrained its movements. The latent distrust was quickened
by what was regarded by many as judicial usurpations of power, such
as the act of the Supreme Court in declaring unconstitutional the
federal income-tax law, and the question of the desirability of an
eighteenth-century document that by its complexity unduly impeded the
functioning of the democratic will, was thrust into the foreground of
political debate. It was the struggle of 1789 over again.
The new school of criticism was historical rather than legalistic. It
was concerned primarily with origins--and it must take into account
the political theories and class interests of the eighteenth-century
gentlemen who framed the document. It refused to look upon the Fathers
as supermen, devoted unselfishly to high patriotic duty, but chose
to regard them as capable statesmen, saturated with aristocratic
prejudices, who fearful of losing control of the new venture in
republicanism, took care to shape an instrument that threw sharp
restrictions about the majority will.
* * * * *
The theme of the present volume is the industrialization of America
under the leadership of the middle class, and the consequent rise of a
critical attitude towards the ideals and handiwork of that class. It
concerns itself primarily with the spirit of realism that under the
constrictions of industrialism and with the spread of scientific modes
of thought emerged to question the ardent romanticisms of an earlier
age, and bring under doubt the excellence of a social order created by
the Industrial Revolution.
The field to be traversed is thus predetermined. The interpretation of
our literature since 1860 must be fitted into the broad lines of our
national experience and will follow the main divisions of development.
I. The conquest of America by the middle class and its
custodianship of democracy. The philosophy of the middle class.
II. The challenge of that overlordship by:
1. The older democratic agrarianism as expressed chiefly in the
third-party movements.
2. The new proletarian philosophy that came likewise out of the
ferment of the French Revolution, but that traveled a different
course--through Europe and the earlier continental Industrial
Revolution, and thence to America.
III. The intellectual revolution brought about by science with the
results:
1. The recovery of a spirit of realism.
2. The appropriation of science by the middle class.
IV. The rise of a detached criticism by the younger intellectuals.
In dealing with this material it will be necessary to follow sectional
lines in the earlier decades until the encompassing movement of
centralization finally obliterated them and produced a common national
spirit and purpose.
In the welter that is present-day America militant philosophies with
their clear-cut programs and assured faiths are wanting, and many feel,
as Matthew Arnold felt fourscore years ago, that they are dwelling
between worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born. The old
buoyant psychology is gone and in the breakdown and disintegration of
the traditional individualism no new philosophies are rising. Builders
of Utopias are out of a job. Political and economic theory is in
charge of paymasters and is content with the drab rim of the familiar
landscape. Retainer-fees have blotted out for it the lovelier horizons
that earlier thinkers contemplated. Academic political scientists and
economists have largely joined the Swiss guards, and abdicated the high
prerogative of speculative thought. It is the men of letters--poets and
essayists and novelists and dramatists, the eager young intellectuals
of a drab generation--who embody the mind of present-day America; not
the professional custodians of official views. They at least decline
to block the path to the Promised Land with retainer-fees; they at
least are free souls, and in the measure of their abilities, free
thinkers. It is to them therefore that one must turn to discover the
intellectual currents of later America--to their aspirations as well
as to their criticisms. Literature at last has become the authentic
voice of this great shapeless America that means so much to western
civilization. Not theologians any longer, nor political philosophers,
nor industrial masters, nor bankers, are the spokesmen of this vibrant
life of a continent, but the intellectuals, the dreamers, the critics,
the historians, the men of letters, in short; and to them one may turn
hopefully for a revelation of American life.
The period dealt with in the present study marks the complete
triumph of the middle class and the final defeat of the traditional
agrarianism. The disintegration of the earlier romanticisms, both
native and imported, has run its course. The philosophy of Jefferson
and John Taylor, with its physiocratic bias, its antipathy to a money
economy, its love of local autonomy, has been buried in the potter’s
field.
* * * * *
Amidst all the turmoil and vague subconscious tendencies, certain ideas
slowly clarified: first, that the earlier democratic aspirations had
somehow failed, that an equalitarian philosophy adapted to frontier
conditions could not easily be carried over into a centralizing and
stratifying America and was doomed to eventual defeat; second, that
even in the supposed heyday of our democracy, we had never achieved a
democracy, but rather a careless individualism that left society at
the mercy of a rapacious middle class; third, that we must take our
bearings afresh and set forth on a different path to the goal. As these
convictions slowly rose into consciousness, a quick suspicion of our
earlier philosophies arose to trouble us. With the growing realism of
the times came a belief that our French romantic theories were mainly
at fault and we must somehow go back to the rationalistic eighteenth
century and start once more to recreate a democratic philosophy. The
crux of the matter seemed to lie in the romantic conception of human
nature. Rousseau and Godwin were the false prophets who led us astray,
and we must return to the solid realism of John Locke. In the light of
a realistic psychology, with its discovery of morons, and its study
of mob tendencies, it was no longer possible to take seriously that
attractive figment of the romantic imagination--man in the state of
nature, perfectible by following the light of reason, seeking justice.
Morons do not fit nicely into the older theory--they jar one’s faith in
human perfectibility. In the light of intelligence tests perhaps the
whole romantic theory of democracy was only a will-o’-the-wisp. With
the very foundations of our traditional philosophy turning to quicksand
under our feet, no wonder we are bedeviled by doubts and uncertainties.
Utopias no longer seem so near at hand as they did; plans and
specifications of the ideal commonwealth no longer seem simple matters
to be drawn by any competent social carpenter. Our jauntiness is gone,
speculation is less important than investigation, and in the spirit of
sober realism we are setting about the serious business of thinking.
In this thinking two major forces are at hand: economics and