Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans

by Unknown

SPORT AND PLAY

Mr. Spalding, the well-known sporting goods manufacturer, is also the publisher of the Spalding Athletic Library, which contains, besides rule books and record books of various sports, a series of text-books, at ten cents the copy, bearing such titles as “How to Play the Outfield,” “How to Catch,” “How to Play Soccer,” “How to Learn Golf,” etc. Authorship of these works is credited to famous outfielders, catchers, soccer players, and golfers, but as the latter can field, catch, play soccer, and golf much better than they can write, the actual writing of the volumes was wisely left to persons who make their living by the pen. The books are recommended, as a cure for insomnia at least. The best sporting fiction we know of, practically the only sporting fiction an adult may read without fear of stomach trouble, is contained in the collected works of the late Charles E. Van Loan.

R. W. L.

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION FROM THE FOREIGN POINT OF VIEW[1]

Frances Milton Trollope: “The Domestic Manners of the Americans,” London, 1832.

The rest is silence ... or repetition.

E. B.

[1] The views of foreign travellers in the United States are summarized in John Graham Brooks’s “As Others See Us,” New York, 1908.—The Editor.

WHO’S WHO
OF THE CONTRIBUTORS TO
THIS VOLUME

Conrad Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1889, and was graduated from Harvard in 1912. His books include several volumes of poems, “Earth Triumphant,” “Turns and Movies,” “The Jig of Forslin,” “Nocturne of Remembered Spring,” “The Charnel Rose,” “The House of Dust,” and “Punch: The Immortal Liar,” and one volume of critical essays, “Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry.”

Anonymous, the author of the essay on “Medicine,” is an American physician who has gained distinction in the field of medical research, but who for obvious reasons desires to have his name withheld.

Katharine Anthony was born in Arkansas, and was educated at the Universities of Tennessee, Chicago, and Heidelberg. She has done research and editorial work for the Russell Sage Foundation, National Consumers’ League, The National Board, Y. W. C. A., and other national reform organizations, and is the author of “Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia,” “Margaret Fuller: A Psychological Biography,” and other books.

O. S. Beyer, Jr., was graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology as a mechanical engineer in 1907, and did graduate work in railway and industrial economics in the Universities of Pennsylvania and New York. After some experience as an engineering assistant and general foreman on various railways, and as research engineer in the University of Illinois, he helped organize the U. S. Army School of Military Aeronautics during the War, and later took charge of the Department of Airplanes. He was subsequently requested by the U. S. Army Ordnance Department to organize and operate schools for training ordnance specialists and officers, and in order to conduct this work, he was commissioned Captain. After the termination of the War, he helped promote, and subsequently assumed charge in the capacity of Chief, Arsenal Orders Section, of the significant industrial developments carried forward in the Army arsenals. He has contributed numerous articles to technical periodicals and proceedings of engineering and other societies.

Ernest Boyd is an Irish critic and journalist, who has lived in this country for some years, and is now on the staff of the New York Evening Post. He was educated in France, Germany, and Switzerland for the British Consular Service, which he entered in 1913. After having served in the United States, Spain, and Denmark, he resigned from official life in order to take up the more congenial work of literature and journalism. He has edited Standish O’Grady’s “Selected Essays” for Every Irishman’s Library and translated Heinrich Mann’s “Der Untertan” for the European Library, and is the author of three volumes dealing with modern Anglo-Irish Literature: “Ireland’s Literary Renaissance,” “The Contemporary Drama of Ireland,” and “Appreciations and Depreciations.”

Clarence Britten was born in Pella, Iowa, in 1887, and was graduated from Harvard in 1912 as of 1910. He was Instructor of English in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, in the Department of University Extension, State of Massachusetts, and in the University of Wisconsin. He has been editor of the Canadian Journal of Music, and from 1918 to 1920 was an editor of the Dial.

Van Wyck Brooks was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1886, and was graduated from Harvard in 1907, as of 1908. He was instructor in English in Leland Stanford University from 1911 to 1913, and is now associate editor of the Freeman. Among his books are “America’s Coming-of-Age,” “Letters and Leadership,” and “The Ordeal of Mark Twain.”

Harold Chapman Brown was born in Springfield, Mass., in 1879, and was educated at Williams and Harvard, from which he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1905. He was instructor in philosophy in Columbia University until 1914, and since then has been an instructor in Leland Stanford University. During the War he was with the American Red Cross, Home Service, at Camp Fremont. He has contributed numerous articles on philosophy to technical journals, and is co-author of “Creative Intelligence.”

Zechariah Chafee, Jr., was born in Providence, R. I., in 1885, and was educated at Brown University and the Harvard Law School. After several years’ practice of the law in Providence, and executive work in connection with various manufacturing industries, he became Assistant Professor of Law in Harvard University in 1916, and Professor of Law in 1919. He is the author of “Cases on Negotiable Instruments,” “Freedom of Speech,” and various articles in law reviews and other periodicals.

Frank M. Colby was born in Washington, D. C., in 1865, and was graduated from Columbia in 1888. He was Professor of Economics in New York University from 1895 to 1900, and has been editor of the “New International Encyclopedia” since 1900, and of the “New International Year Book” since 1907. He is the author of “Outlines of General History,” “Imaginary Obligations,” “Constrained Attitudes,” and “The Margin of Hesitation.”

Garet Garrett was born in Pana, Ill., in 1878, and from 1900 to 1912 was a financial writer on the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Evening Post, and the New York Times. He was the first editor of the New York Times Annalist in 1913–1914, and was executive editor of the New York Tribune from 1916 to 1919. He is the author of “The Driver,” “The Blue Wound,” “An Empire Beleaguered,” “The Mad Dollar,” and various economic and political essays.

Walton H. Hamilton was born in Tennessee in 1881, was graduated from the University of Texas in 1907, and received the degree of Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1913. After teaching at the Universities of Michigan and Chicago, he became Olds Professor of Economics in Amherst College in 1915. He was formerly associate editor of the Journal of Political Economy, and is associate editor of the series, “Materials for the Study of Economics,” published by the University of Chicago Press. During the War he was on the staff of the War Labour Policies Board. He is co-editor with J. M. Clark and H. G. Moulton of “Readings in the Economics of War,” and the author of “Current Economic Problems” and of various articles in economic journals.

Frederic C. Howe was born in Meadville, Pa., in 1867, and was educated at Allegheny College and Johns Hopkins University, from the latter receiving the degree of Ph.D. in 1892. After studying in the University of Maryland Law School and the New York Law School, he was admitted to the bar in 1894, and practised in Cleveland until 1909. He was director of the People’s Institute of New York from 1911 to 1914, and Commissioner of Immigration in the Port of New York from 1914 to 1920. He has been a member of the Ohio State Senate, special U. S. commissioner to investigate municipal ownership in Great Britain, Professor of Law in the Cleveland College of Law, and lecturer on municipal administration and politics in the University of Wisconsin. Among his books are “The City, the Hope of Democracy,” “The British City,” “Privilege and Democracy in America,” “Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy,” “European Cities at Work,” “Socialized Germany,” “Why War?” “The High Cost of Living,” and “The Land and the Soldier.”

Alfred Booth Kuttner was born in 1886, and was graduated from Harvard in 1908. He was for two years dramatic critic of the International Magazine, and is a contributor to the New Republic, Seven Arts, Dial, etc. He has pursued special studies in psychology, and has translated several of the books of Sigmund Freud.

Ring W. Lardner was born in Niles, Michigan, in 1885, and was educated in the Niles High School and the Armour Institute of Technology at Chicago. He has been sporting writer on the Boston American, Chicago American, Chicago Examiner, and the Chicago Tribune, and writer for the Bell Syndicate since 1919. Among his books are “You Know Me Al,” “Symptoms of Thirty-five,” “Treat ’Em Rough,” and “The Big Town.”

Robert Morss Lovett was born in Boston in 1870, and was graduated from Harvard in 1892. He has been a teacher in the English Departments of Harvard and the University of Chicago, and dean of the Junior Colleges of the latter institution from 1907 to 1920. He was formerly editor of the Dial, and is at present on the staff of the New Republic. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and is the author of two novels, “Richard Gresham” and “A Winged Victory,” of a play, “Cowards,” and with William Vaughn Moody of “A History of English Literature.”

Robert H. Lowie was born in Vienna in 1883, and came to New York at the age of ten. He was educated at the College of the City of New York and Columbia University, from which he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1908. He has made many ethnological field trips, especially to the Crow and other Plains Indians. He was associate curator of Anthropology in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, until 1921, and since then has become Associate Professor of Anthropology in the University of California. He is associate editor of the American Anthropologist, and was secretary of the American Ethnological Society from 1910 to 1919, and president, 1920–1921. He is the author of “Culture and Ethnology” and “Primitive Society,” as well as many technical monographs dealing mainly with the sociology and mythology of North American aborigines.

John Macy was born in Detroit in 1877, and was educated at Harvard, from which he received the degree of A.B. in 1899, and A.M. in 1900. After a year as assistant in English at Harvard, he became associate editor of Youth’s Companion, and later literary editor of the Boston Herald. Among his books are “Life of Poe” (Beacon Biographies), “Guide to Reading,” “The Spirit of American Literature,” “Socialism in America,” and “Walter James Dodd: a Biography.”

H. L. Mencken was born in Baltimore in 1880, and was educated in private schools and at the Baltimore Polytechnic. He was engaged in journalism until 1916, and is now editor and part owner with George Jean Nathan of the Smart Set Magazine, and a contributing editor of the Nation. His books include “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche,” “A Book of Burlesques,” “A Book of Prefaces,” “The American Language,” and two volumes of “Prejudices.” In collaboration with George Jean Nathan he has published “The American Credo,” and “Heliogabalus,” a play.

Lewis Mumford was born in Flushing, Long Island, in 1895. He was associate editor of the Dial in 1919, acting editor of the Sociological Review (London), a lecturer at the Summer School of Civics, High Wycombe, England, and has contributed to the Scientific Monthly, the Athenaeum, the Nation, the Freeman, the Journal of the American institute of Architects, and other periodicals. He was a radio operator in the United States Navy during the War.

George Jean Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1882, and was graduated from Cornell University in 1904. He has been dramatic critic of various newspapers and periodicals, and is at present editor and part owner with H. L. Mencken of the Smart Set Magazine. Among his books are “The Popular Theatre,” “Comedians All,” “Another Book on the Theatre,” “Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents,” “The Theatre, the Drama, the Girls,” and, with H. L. Mencken, of “The American Credo,” and “Heliogabalus.”

Walter Pach was born in New York in 1883, and was graduated from the College of the City of New York in 19013. He studied art under Leigh Hunt, William M. Chase, and Robert Henri, and worked during most of the eleven years before the War in Paris and other European art-centres, exhibiting both here and abroad. He was associated with the work of the International Exhibition of 1913, as well as other exhibitions of the modern masters in America, and with the founding and carrying on of the Society of Independent Artists. He is represented by paintings and etchings in various public and private collections, has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, University of California, Wellesley College, and other institutions, has contributed articles on art subjects to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, L’Arts et les Artistes, Scribner’s, the Century, the Freeman, etc., and is the translator of Elie Faure’s “History of Art.”

Elsie Clews Parsons was graduated from Barnard College in 1896, and received the degree of Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1899. She has been Fellow and Lecturer in Sociology at Barnard College, Lecturer in Anthropology in the New School of Social Research, assistant editor of the Journal of American Folk-Lore, treasurer of the American Ethnological Society, and president of the American Folk-Lore Society. She is married and the mother of three sons and one daughter. Among her books are “The Family,” “The Old-Fashioned Woman,” “Fear and Conventionality,” “Social Freedom,” and “Social Rule.”

Raffaello Piccoli, who has written the article on “American Civilization from an Italian Point of View,” was born in Naples in 1886, and was educated at the Universities of Padua, Florence, and Oxford. In 1913 he was appointed Lecturer in Italian Literature in the University of Cambridge, and in 1916 was elected Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Society of Literature. During the War he was an officer in the First Regiment of Italian Grenadiers, was wounded and taken prisoner while defending a bridge-head on the Tagliamento, and spent a year of captivity in Hungary. After the Armistice he was appointed to the chair of English Literature in the University of Pisa. During the years 1919–21 he has acted as exchange professor at various American universities. He has published a number of books, including Italian translations of Oscar Wilde and of several Elizabethan dramatists.

Louis Raymond Reid was born in Warsaw, N. Y., and was graduated from Rutgers College in 1911. Since then he has been engaged in newspaper and magazine work in New York City. He was for three years the editor of the Dramatic Mirror.

Geroid Tanquary Robinson was born in Chase City, Virginia, in 1892, and studied at Stanford, the University of California, and Columbia. He was a member of the editorial board of the Dial at the time when it was appearing as a fortnightly, and is now a member of the editorial staff of the Freeman, and a lecturer in Modern European History at Columbia University. He served for sixteen months during the War as a First Lieutenant (Adjutant) in the American Air Service. Residence in Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona, and California has given him the opportunity to observe at first hand some of the modes and manners of race-prejudice.

J. Thorne Smith, Jr., was born in Annapolis, Md., in 1892, and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1914. He was Chief Boatswain’s Mate in the U. S. Naval Reserve during the War, and editor of the navy paper, The Broadside. He is the author of “Haunts and By-Paths and Other Poems,” “Biltmore Oswald,” and “Out-O’-Luck.”

George Soule was born in Stamford, Conn., in 1887, and was graduated from Yale in 1908. He was a member of the editorial staff of the New Republic from 1914 to 1918, and during 1919 editorial writer for the New York Evening Post. He drafted a report on the labour policy of the Industrial Service Sections, Ordnance Department and Air Service, for the War Department, and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Coast Artillery Corps. He is a director of the Labour Bureau, Inc., which engages in economic research for labour organizations, and is co-author with J. M. Budish of “The New Unionism in the Clothing Industry.”

J. E. Spingarn was born in New York in 1875, was educated at Columbia and Harvard, and was Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University until 1911. Among his other activities he has been a candidate for Congress, a delegate to state and national conventions, chairman of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, vice-president of a publishing firm, and editor of the “European Library.” During the War he was a Major of Infantry in the A. E. F. His first book, “Literary Criticism in the Renaissance,” was translated into Italian in 1905, with an introduction by Benedetto Croce; he has edited three volumes of “Critical Essays of the 17th Century” for the Clarendon Press of Oxford, and contributed a chapter to the “Cambridge History of English Literature;” his selection of Goethe’s “Literary Essays,” with a foreword by Lord Haldane, has just appeared; and his other books include “The New Hesperides and Other Poems” and “Creative Criticism.”

Harold E. Stearns was born in Barre, Mass., in 1891, and was graduated from Harvard in 1913. Since then he has been engaged in journalism in New York, and has been a contributor to the New Republic, the Freeman, the Bookman, and other magazines and newspapers. He was associate editor of the Dial during the last six months of its appearance as a fortnightly in Chicago. Among his books are “Liberalism in America” and “America and the Young Intellectual.”

Henry Longan Stuart is an English author and journalist who has spent a considerable part of his life since 1901 in the United States. He served through the War as a Captain in the Royal Field Artillery, was attached to the Italian Third Army after Caporetto, and was press censor in Paris after the Armistice and during the Peace Conference. He is the author of “Weeping Cross,” a study of Puritan New England, “Fenella,” and a quantity of fugitive poetry and essays.

Deems Taylor was born in New York in 1885, and was graduated from New York University in 1906. He studied music with Oscar Coon from 1908 to 1911. He has been connected with the editorial staff of the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” and has been assistant Sunday editor of the New York Tribune and associate editor of Collier’s Weekly, and at present is a critic of the New York World. He has composed numerous musical works, including “The Siren Song” (symphonic poem, awarded the orchestral prize of the National Federation of Music Clubs in 1912), “The Chambered Nautilus” (cantata), “The Highwaymen” (cantata written for the MacDowell festival), and “Through the Looking Glass” (suite for symphonic orchestra).

Hendrik Willem Van Loon was born in Holland in 1882, and received his education in Dutch schools, at Cornell and Harvard, and at the University of Munich, from which he received his Ph.D., magna cum laude, in 1911. He was a correspondent of the Associated Press in various European capitals, and for some time was a lecturer on modern European history in Cornell University. He is at present Professor of the Social Sciences in Antioch College, and is the author of “The Fall of the Dutch Republic,” “A Short History of Discovery,” “Ancient Man,” “The Story of Mankind for Boys and Girls,” “The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom,” etc.