Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
and the checks and balances of the Fathers. It gave rise to a critical
examination of the spirit and purpose of the Constitution.[813]
b. Economic. A growing conviction that talk of political democracy is
futile except in so far as it leads to economic democracy. That power
is economic in origin and that those who control the economics will
control the government. The gospel of economic determinism. Certain
conclusions emerged:
1. That capitalism is no longer competitive but monopolistic.
2. That _laissez-faire_ism no longer suffices.
3. That centralization has submerged the individual citizen; that he
is impotent before the leviathan corporation; and that henceforth the
struggle is to be between organized groups for the control of the
state.[814]
c. Literary. An examination and rejection of traditional literary and
cultural ideas. An attack upon:
1. Puritan reticence and smug respectability.
2. Middle-class optimism and sentimentality.
Led by H. L. Mencken, Ludwig Lewisohn, and the younger intellectuals.
The bias aristocratic.
2. _The Incoming of Old-World Thought._ The breaking-down of the older
provincialism and the reception of new ideas.
a. The philosophy of collectivism. Derived chiefly from Germany and
England; largely Marxian and Fabian. The conviction that the state
must absorb the trust. Later the appearance of syndicalism and guild
socialism, based on a distrust of the bureaucratic, omnicompetent
state. Anarchism has remained alien in spirit.[815]
b. The new aristocracy. A reversion from an easy-going Jacksonianism
based on the doctrine of equalitarianism. A direct denial of that
doctrine and the theory of leadership. In business the doctrine of the
expert and the rule of efficiency. In philosophy the doctrine of the
intellectual aristocrat--a suggestion of Nietzsche and the will to
power. Thus Mencken joins hands with Judge Gary in upholding the ethics
of the strong. The total result an effective denial of our traditional
ideal of democracy.
c. The problem novel. All this ferment entered into literature,
tyrannizing in its insistence. Old forms became old-fashioned
overnight. The novel was so useful that it was drafted by the new
crusading enthusiasm. Romance and naturalism alike were swept away;
the political novel and the economic novel took their place to arouse
public opinion to action. It was the glorification of propaganda.
Except for James Branch Cabell and Edith Wharton not a writer escaped.
There is something pathetic in the way the harmless bleating
romantics were dragged at the chariot wheels of social problems. Booth
Tarkington, Mary Johnston, Winston Churchill, William Allen White, were
sacrificed equally with potential naturalists like Robert Herrick,
Upton Sinclair, and Ernest Poole. Their careers may be seen from
Churchill, Poole, and Herrick.
1. Winston Churchill. [The most representative of the spirit of
Progressivism.] A conscientious middle-class romantic. Churchill was a
faithful reflector of middle-class movements. His work falls into three
phases:
[a. _Romantic historical tales._ _Richard Carvel_ (1899) the type
of Cavalier romance. A blend of Thackeray’s _Henry Esmond_ and _The
Virginians_, John Paul Jones added for extra historical flavor. A
double background: (1) the old South of the Revolution with a Loyalist
villain and a patriot hero; (2) the London of Brooks Club and a gaming
aristocracy, with Charles Fox. The heroine another edition of Beatrix
Esmond the hero another Henry Esmond. _The Crisis_ (1910) a romance
of the borderland of the Civil War: a fire-eating Southern heroine
and a sober Yankee-Puritan hero. _The Crossing_ (1904) a romance of
the settlement of the Inland Empire. A theme not yet adequately dealt
with in American fiction. The story breaks in two: the first half
Churchill’s best work in romance; the last half his worst.[816]]
b. _Political novels._ Coincided with the rise of the Progressive
movement. _Coniston_ (1906) a study of the legislative boss in New
Hampshire. A reflection of his experience in the state legislature.
How the “interests,” and in particular the railroads, manage to put
their bills through. Jethro Bass sells political control to the highest
bidder.
_Mr. Crewe’s Career_ (1908): the same theme a generation later.
Consolidation of the railroads has brought about absentee dictatorship
of state politics. The boss has removed to New York and manages the
legislature through his local lawyer. The philosophy of big-business
prosperity rests on property rights, held in trusteeship by the
corporations that fill the empty dinner pails, make and unmake business
confidence. The revolt of the younger generation--Austen Vane and
Victoria Flint, in whom stirs a new social conscience.
c. _Economic novels._ Began with _The Inside of the Cup_ (1913), a
venture in higher criticism and social interpretation. So compare
_Robert Elsmere_ (1888). An attack on old dogmas and an attempt to
discover the democratic springs of Christianity. The clash between
the reborn Son of God and an unregenerate society, and the need to
establish the Kingdom of God in this world. The church today controlled
by business subscriptions. The solution to be sought in a free pulpit,
supported by the common people, preaching a new social Christianity.
_A Far Country_ (1915), a study in the emptiness of the profit motive.
A background of banking--J. P. Morgan and Company. The dissatisfaction
of the prodigal son who has wasted his intellectual and moral
patrimony--the lawyer who sells his brain to rise and loses the
things that make life worth while. His conversion brings the call to
self-education.
_The Dwelling Place of Light_ (1917), a study of the blighting effect
of industrialism on the native Yankee stock that has failed to rise
into the exploiting class. The restlessness of modern life due to the
failure of normal instincts to find satisfaction in daily existence--an
emptiness due to loss of beauty, freedom, creative craftsmanship. The
search for compensation brings death and not life. A background of the
Lawrence strike and syndicalism.
2. Robert Herrick. The most promising of the potential naturalists.
An intellectual fascinated by the crude materialism of Chicago in the
late nineties. Suffered from the inhibitions of a Puritan idealism;
the problems of this raw world cried aloud for solution--the woman
question, the labor question, the problem of the professions--and
warped him away from naturalism, making him an easy victim of the new
social enthusiasm. The key to his thought--economic determinism.
_The Memoirs of an American Citizen_ (1905). His best work and the
nearest approach to naturalism. A detailed study of the American
business man--the captain of industry who rises in a competitive
society by his own will. The competitive order, he perceives, requires
an ethics different from the Christian ideal. The survival of the
fittest means the survival of the strongest, the most cunning and
unscrupulous. The realist who deals with facts discovers that he lives
in a world of pigs--little pigs of the village, larger hogs of the
city. To get in the trough a man must have fingers and toes and use
them. The world belongs to the strong. That which gives dignity is
bigness: the larger the hog, the more imposing. Little business is
dirty and petty, but big business may become poetic. To grind a mess of
sausages is messy, but to provide sausages for every breakfast table
in America is grandiose. To realize his ambition Van Harrington plays
fast and loose with conventional ethics, but unlike Frank Cowperwood
he seeks a new ethics. As a superman his work will be justified by its
creativeness, by its service to humanity.
_A Life for a Life_ (1910). In certain other of his work Herrick
betrays naturalistic tendencies, notably in _The Web of Life_ (1900),
where he considers the problem of social complexity and how it binds
the life of men and women and determines their fate. But in _A Life
for a Life_ he surrenders wholly to the problem. His theme is how the
predatory egoism of the profit-struggle may be cured, and he presents
alternative solutions: syndicalism and Christianity. The cure lies in
individual self-conquest--breaking through the web of “things as they
are” and choosing life instead of power.
Herrick was on the threshold of naturalism. He felt the complexity of
life and the determining force of that complexity; but he failed to
achieve the attitude of objectivity.
3. Ernest Poole. _The Harbor_ (1915). The culmination of the novel of
naturalistic propaganda and the most widely read. A dramatic record of
a changing industrial order, traced through three stages: (1) The old
world of small competitive business that is dead; (2) The present world
of corporation control; (3) The world of syndicalistic control that
struggles to be born.
Against this changing world stands the young idealist troubled in
his loyalties, who sets up different gods to worship: (1) The idol
of art--aloofness from the mass struggle; (2) The idol of efficiency
by the supermen who rule in trusteeship; (3) The idol of mass
solidarity and workers’ control--the conclusion that is on the dawn of
realization: “The world for all the workers.” _Conclusion._ The ferment
of social thought, shot through with Marxianism, familiarized the
American novelists with one doctrine important for the naturalist--the
doctrine of economic determinism. In none of them did it pass over
into a larger conception of philosophical determinism, and this sets
the limitation to their naturalism. The common zeal for reform or
revolution, moreover, kept them from objectivity. In none is there the
calm detachment and the amoral presentation of material without which
naturalism sinks into propaganda. Their position presupposes a large
confidence in individual initiative--a confidence in the power of men
to alter the world they live in. It is admirable, but it is not the way
of the naturalists, who do not seek to change what they regard as an
essentially unresponsive world that changes only after its own way.
Jack London: The Novelist of the Proletariat[817]
Experienced the harsh contacts of a seasonal worker and tramp. Became a
Marxian socialist and revolutionist, preaching the war of the classes
in _The Iron Heel_ (1908), _The Revolution_ (1910), and other works. A
man of strong vital energy with a philosophy shaped by Darwin, Spencer,
and Nietzsche. Emphasizes a passionate will-to-power, a superman of
swift and violent action.
_The Call of the Wild_ (1903); a study in atavism, brilliant, poetic,
set against a wild Alaska background. The resurgence of the primitive
wolf-instincts in a domesticated dog.
_The Sea Wolf_ (1904); the frankest statement in American literature
of the unbridled will-to-power, egoistic, amoral. A malignant ferocity
in a philosophical, herculean sea captain, whose body is destroyed by
paresis, but whose malignancy is unconquered.
_Martin Eden_ (1909); autobiographical. So compare _John Barleycorn_
(1913). The former deals with his struggle to educate himself, to
write, and to gain recognition. A background of his experience at the
University of California. A profound contempt for _bourgeois_ standards
of life and thought. The note of revolution and the lapsing of the
will-to-live.
London carries to the extreme the “elemental” of Norris, translating it
into the primitive and abysmal. A potential naturalist in his amoral
attitude and his underlying pessimism, but carried away by zeal of
revolution. Lacks restraint and finish.
Upton Sinclair[818]
The most insistent and outspoken of the muckrakers. Began as a
novelist, but his art submerged by propaganda--a profound suspicion of
capitalism and all its ways.