Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
Let us be true to our time, Mrs. Lee! If our age is to be beaten,
let us die in the ranks. If it is to be victorious, let us be first
to lead the column. Anyway, let us not be skulkers or grumblers.
There! have I repeated my catechism correctly? You would have it!
Now oblige me by forgetting it. I should lose my character at home
if it got out.”[664]
And the conclusion of the matter is thus summed up:
“I want to go to Egypt,” said Madelaine, still smiling faintly;
“democracy has shaken my nerves to pieces. Oh, what rest it would
be to live in the Great Pyramid and look out forever at the polar
star!”
Not a hint of the Industrial Revolution; not a hint of the sordid
Whiggery that was fouling American politics; not a suggestion of any
creative social philosophy on which to establish an adequate theory of
democracy. A dreary place at best, with no faith in human nature and no
trust in democratic machinery, but only a gentlemanly belief that an
antiquated Federalism may somehow pull this venture in republicanism
out of the bog in which Jacksonianism had mired it. No wonder Henry
Adams would not set his name on the title-page, but left it an orphan
to make its own way in the world. In his life of John Hay, William
Roscoe Thayer has explained the situation thus:
The Adamses, the Hays, and Clarence King formed an inner circle,
which somebody named “The Five of Hearts,” and out of this came,
in 1882, a novel entitled _Democracy_, a strikingly clever satire
on Washington society. Its authorship was at once attributed to
them, but one after another denied it. If it was a joint product
no individual could monopolize the credit; and as it seems to have
been read chapter by chapter to the group, and discussed by them
all, it might be said, technically, to be a composite. Clarence
King is still commonly regarded as its author; and there are many
supporters of Hay; but I believe that only Mr. Adams possessed the
substance, and style, and the gift of Voltairean raillery which
distinguish it.[665]
Mr. Thayer is generous in his praise.
_An American Politician_ is even less consequential as a political
study than _Democracy_. Marion Crawford was a professional romancer
and in this naïve venture into a field little known to him he carried
his complete romantic kit. The political theme is tied about with so
many love strands as almost to strangle it. The hero, John Harrington,
we are assured is a very remarkable man, a Bostonian with a Mayflower
teapot in his family treasures, an idealist of primitive Puritan
intensity. But we must take him upon hearsay. Nothing that he does
or says suggests his greatness. Politically the book is reduced to a
little glimpse of the methods of selecting a United States senator--an
Irish ward boss with twenty votes in his belt, a gentlemanly railway
attorney who handles offal skillfully with a handkerchief at his
nose--set in between two set speeches by the hero. The rest is Newport
and the Back Bay, not quite stupid yet with no distinction. The
romancer does not move easily in an unfamiliar field, and he sends
his hero forth to battle for righteousness with small intellectual
equipment. His speeches are heavily oratorical and his political
philosophy is naïve; it is pretty much George William Curtis, the
sufficiency of civil service reform and the virtues of non-partisanship.
The unreality of the book is furthered by a conception worthy of
Poe--a mysterious council of three that meets in London and directs
political movements in America. We are dimly aware that the council
is both ancient and honorable; that it goes back historically to
post-Revolutionary days and is self-perpetuating; and its uncanny
power has resulted from supreme intelligence supplemented by exact
information gathered during many years. In its secret archives every
public man in America is tagged and docketed; his political and
financial affiliations are set down in detail; and on the basis of this
knowledge the cryptic three send forth instructions that are faithfully
carried out. The danger to America lies in sectionalism--North, South,
and West struggling for supremacy in the national councils; and upon
the three rests the self-imposed responsibility of saving America
from itself. The idea is sufficiently absurd, as the book is absurd.
Crawford was a cosmopolitan who knew little about American political
conditions, and the crisis of the novel is the Hayes-Tilden _impasse_
of 1876. The influence of the novel, one may safely assume, was
negligible.[666]
2 • The Economic Novel
The theme of these earlier novels was politics as revealed by the
Gilded Age; on the other hand _The Bread-winners_ was one of the early
economic novels. Like _Democracy_ it was an outcome of the discussions
of the vivacious trio, John Hay, Clarence King, and Henry Adams.
Written in 1882 by Hay, it was published anonymously in the _Century
Magazine_ from August, 1883, to January, 1884. Hay never publicly
acknowledged the authorship, and it was not until the edition of 1915
appeared with an introductory note by his son, that his name appeared
on the title-page. It achieved a notable success--far beyond that of
_Democracy_; was warmly praised and sharply criticized; was replied to
in other novels; all of which goes to show that it fanned the coals
that were smoldering in the industrial life of the day, threatening
a general conflagration. It was the first recognition on the part of
literature that a class struggle impended in America--a first girding
of the loins of polite letters to put down the menace that looked
out from the underworld of the proletariat; and as such it assumes
importance as an historical document quite beyond its significance as a
work of art.
The motive of _The Bread-winners_ is the defense of property against
the “dangerous classes”; its immediate theme is a satire of labor
unions. In an introductory note to the later edition, Clarence Leonard
Hay explicitly denies this. “_The Bread-winners_,” he says, “is not
directed against organized labor. It is rather a protest against the
disorganization and demoralization of labor by unscrupulous leaders
and politicians who, in the guise of helping the workingman, use his
earnings to enrich themselves.” He then states the theme thus:
It is a defense of the right of an individual to hold property, and
a plea for the better protection of that property by law and order.
Civilization rests upon law, order, and obedience. The agitator
who preaches that obedience to lawful authority is a sin, and
patriotism an illusion, is more dangerous to society than the thief
who breaks in at night and robs the householder.
The editor thinks well of the American workingmen. At heart they are
sound; their motives are honest; but their ignorance of fundamental
economic principles too easily suffers them to fall victim to
unscrupulous demagogues whose only object is their exploitation. To
prevent such “disorganization and demoralization of labor,” which
can bring only suffering and failure upon men ill prepared to endure
them, is therefore the patriotic duty of the educated classes. The
proletariat is groping blindly for leadership; it is stirring uneasily;
if the educated classes do not offer an enlightened leadership, the
laborer will follow low cunning to immoral ends and blind leaders of
the blind will bring irretrievable disaster upon civilization. Selfish
appeal will kindle envy and hate; the rich and prosperous will go down
before brute force; the rights of property will be destroyed; law,
order, and obedience will give place to anarchy.
Such, briefly developed, is Clarence Hay’s exposition of _The
Bread-winners_; and the exposition seems to suggest the social views of
John Hay. He probably had no antipathy to labor unions which are guided
in their policy by “sound economic principles” and right “morality”--as
the capitalist understands such things. But labor unions which follow
their own leaders, which persist in thinking out a proletarian economy,
which are bent on substituting a social morality for a property
morality, which refuse to be led by the “educated classes,” he was
bitterly hostile to. It is the unrest furthered by rebellious labor
unions that he fears, and it is this that gives point and animus to
his satire. That _The Bread-winners_ was conceived in a spirit of
beneficent paternalism towards the proletariat, the present-day reader
will have difficulty in discovering. It is too frank in defense of
vested interests, it looks with too stern a disfavor upon all labor
leaders who refuse to accept the finality of the present industrial
order, it exudes too strong an odor of property-morality, to deceive
an intelligent reader. Read today it is clearly a partisan defense
of economic individualism, an attack upon the rising labor movement,
a grotesque satire smeared with an unctuous morality--and because of
this, a perfect expression of the spirit of upper-class America in
those uneasy eighties with their strikes and lockouts and Haymarket
riots.
The plot of the book is slight--it is the story of the oily
machinations of Ananias Offitt, a professional agitator who lives off
simple honest workmen whom he seduces, organizes a secret Brotherhood
of the Breadwinners, urges on riot and robbery at the time of a great
strike, is checkmated by the hero--a cultivated and elegant clubman by
the name of Captain Arthur Farnham--betrays his tool, and in the end
is murdered by him. Fortunately for the welfare of property interests
there are “honest” workmen, men like Leopold Grosshammer, who rally
to the support of law and order and eventually break the strike. The
love-story is provided with two heroines, and the contrast between them
emphasizes the class line which property draws. The upper-class heroine
is as correct and colorless as Cooper’s Eve Effingham: the lower-class
heroine is as vulgarly handsome and as brazen as “such people” are
supposed to be. A high-school education has spoilt her for the factory
or domestic service, filling her empty head with foolish ambitions, but
it could not make a lady of her.
Hay was in Cleveland at the time of the great strike in 1877, and
he was profoundly disturbed by the experience. Writing to his
father-in-law, he said:
The prospects of labor and capital both seem gloomy enough.
The very devil seems to have entered into the lower classes of
workingmen, and there are plenty of scoundrels to encourage them
to all lengths.... I am thankful you did not _see_ and _hear_
what took place during the strikes. You were saved a very painful
experience of human folly and weakness, as well as crime.[667]
The crying evils of a buccaneer industrialism which lay behind the
strikes, Hay ignored completely. To provide his idyllic background of
contented labor before it is seduced by demagogues, he goes back to
a decadent domestic economy. His “honest and contented workman” is a
carpenter who works for another carpenter--not a factory-hand tending
a machine; and when the demagogue comes with his specious appeal he is
triumphantly refuted.
“What are we, anyhow?” continued the greasy apostle of labor. “We
are slaves; we are Roossian scurfs. We work as many hours as our
owners like; we take what pay they choose to give us; we ask their
permission to live and breathe.”
“Oh, that’s a lie,” Sleeny interrupted, with unbroken calmness.
“Old Saul Matchin and me come to an agreement about time and pay,
and both of us was suited. Ef he’s got his heel onto me, I don’t
feel it.”[668]
John Hay was convinced that an “educated leadership” alone could save
American democracy. But unfortunately--despite his great reputation