VII
All 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 sedative miscellany that not only charms the mind from serious thinking, but in time paralyzes the very power of thought.
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 last regret of the late J. Gordon Coogler, of Columbia, S.C., that instead of printing his amiable verses on his own press, he had not guaranteed the cost of their production, and secured their publication by a metropolitan firm.
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 things. Even the “problem” novel, which, though often crude or hysterical, was yet an attempt to deal with some of the deeper facts of life, has been banished, and is not to be permitted to return. “Our publishers,” says the well-known literary supplement of a New York daily newspaper, “are seeking on all sides for wholesome stories, dealing optimistically with life, and reaching happy conclusions.” It is a true judgment, and reveals most clearly the present standards of public taste.
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 minds and complacent natures. Accordingly, he writes so, to the best of his ability, and so, to that limit, do all his fellows. The collective result is seen in the character of the greater number of our books, our magazines, our Saturday and Sunday supplements. On all sides is poured forth a flood of print which deludes the hope or flatters the vanity of the mass, and which insures a state of mental subserviency,—the necessary requisite of the economic subserviency imposed by the ruling class.
CHAPTER IX
Transition and Fulfilment
Upon all the heterogeneous but coalescing units of the social mass the group of magnates imposes its collective will. There are still disputes and rivalries among the rulers, and may ever be; but these are for the most part minor differences, to be settled among themselves and their mutual arbitrators, the judges, and qualify in no way the facts of a recognized community of interests and of collective purposes and plans. Whatever the individual rivalries, they result in no deliberate betrayal of class interest; practically every magnate maintains, at all hazards, his fidelity to the group. A sense of group honor may in most instances prompt this fidelity, but a lively sense of apprehension is also influential. For should any magnate become possessed of heretical notions, and thereupon make common cause with the public against a particular interest of his class, he would by that act banish himself from communion with his fellows, and jeopard his possessions to the last dime. There is, as every one knows, a definite seigniorial resolve that no strike of workmen on transportation lines or in public utilities shall succeed; and when such a strike occurs, every resource of the magnate class is brought to bear to resist and defeat it. Often there are attendant circumstances which might tempt a rival, for his own interests, to interfere on behalf of the workers. But the thing is never done; and he who should do it would declass himself as effectually as a mediæval nobleman would have done by enlisting in a peasants’ rebellion. There is, furthermore, a definite seigniorial determination to withstand to the utmost the agitation for public ownership; every magnate, with his intellectual retainers behind him, makes of himself a modern Stonewall Jackson in resistance to this movement. Here, again, industrial rivalry might at times prompt a desertion to the public cause. But there is no such case; here, as elsewhere, the ruling class maintains its integrity. As is known, great strikes are sometimes won; and occasionally, in isolated places, an advance is made in the direction of public ownership. But neither is accomplished through desertions in the seigniorial group, and the instances prove only that its rule has not yet become supreme.