The Reign of Gilt

by David Graham Phillips

If this were true, we as Americans would say, “Happiness bought at the price of self-respect is far too dear. Heaven itself would be too dear at that price. And, however it may be with some Europeans, to an American the admission that he was not the equal of any man would be a degradation like that of the slave.” But it is not true that we are an unhappy people. Not to be sunk in a bucolic stupor like the peasants of Europe does not mean unhappiness. To know when one is uncomfortable, to think how to become less uncomfortable, to be alive, alert, aspiring, to love work as other people love play, to love progress as other people love stagnation—that does not mean unhappiness. There are other standards of happiness than the bucolic or than the self-complacence of the constricted devotees of caste. Indeed, we in America continue to doubt whether those states of mind are truly happy. Content may or may not mean happiness. It may be the calm, numb resignation of despair. It may be the fat, swine-like stupor of an established aristocracy. We have our own ideas of happiness—and it is interesting to note that these restless, forever unsatisfied longings of ours tend to long life.

We are not unhappy; but neither are we happy, nor likely to become so, until our corner of the world, at least, is in far better order than it is at present or likely to be soon.

There are two kinds of optimism. There is the optimism of retreat—the kind our critics set up as the harbinger of happiness. Our plutocrats preach this optimism, and those of our politicians who are fattening on the honors, salaries and spoils of office. “We are a great people,” they say. “Look at our national wealth. Look at our per capita circulation of money. Look at the totals of our production of everything for man and beast. Let us rejoice and do nothing to disturb our national prosperity. Let us stop thinking—or, rather, let the masses of the people give the plutocrats and the politicians in power a free hand to do the thinking and acting for the nation. Enough of this vulgar and irritating discontent! Enough of the coarse, low talk about wealth! Let us discuss art and literature and glory and grandeur!”

All this with the most serious face in the world. All this with perfect honesty and a heart full of patriotism!

The answer of the American people is cruel. “Rubbish!” they say. They are not optimists of retreat—for what but retreat is a progress that advances a class at the expense of the mass?

Theirs is the optimism of advance—the advance of all. “We are indeed great,” they reply to the optimists of retreat. “Let us be greater. What Democracy we have had has carried us far. Let us have more Democracy. The masses are better off than they used to be, thanks to the sweeping away of some of the obstacles of class and caste. Let us sweep away the rest of those obstacles. What we have is good. It is the promise of better. Let us see that that promise is redeemed!”

Happiness—in the customary, narrow sense—the sense put into the word by the long past with its reign of class and caste—that happiness we have not. But the joy of life—the vigorous, bounding hope that beats in the heart and throbs in the veins of the strong man growing in strength—that we have in ever fuller measure. Such happiness never has been in the past? Such happiness cannot be in a world of such abysmal natural inequalities? We deny it. We are here not to live by the past, by precedent, but to make a mockery of past and precedent. We are the children of Democracy, not the wards of aristocracy. We propose a wholly new world—and we are putting our proposals into effect. We have done well, though we have barely begun. We shall do better. Another century or so! We envy our grandchildren, not our grandfathers.

If happiness of the kind our ancestors of the world’s aristocratic days dreamed had been the objective of the human race, man would have retained his hairy coat, his taste for raw meat, his pleasure in cave-dwelling. Every once in awhile we see in America people whose object is happiness. Sooner or later they arrive at the bottom. Sometimes they are happy there. But, happy or not, they are not to be envied or imitated. The dominant note of the real slums is happiness. Don’t be deceived by the squalor and rags into thinking it misery. The unhappy slum-dwellers do not remain, but restlessly and resolutely fight against the bestial stupor, fight their way back to the light and the joy of life.

The joy of life is the exaltation that comes through a sense of a life lived to the very limit of its possibilities; a life of self-development, self-expansion, self-devotion to the emancipation of man. Whoever you are, this joy of life can be yours. Money has nothing to do with it, either in aiding or retarding. Money cannot buy the essentials—health and love. It cannot avert the essential evils—illness, bereavement. The world keeps finding this out from generation to generation—and forgetting as soon as it rediscovers. Solomon mentioned the matter many centuries ago, when he wrote:

“I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits; I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees; I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me; I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces;....