Has any historian ever noticed the salubrious effect, on the English character, of the frenzy for hanging that went on in England during the Eighteenth Century? When I say salubrious, of course, I mean in the purely social sense. At the end of the Seventeenth Century the Englishman was still one of the most turbulent and lawless of civilized men; at the beginning of the Nineteenth he was the most law-abiding; i. e., the most docile. What worked the change in him? I believe that it was worked by the rope of Jack Ketch. During the Eighteenth Century the lawless strain was simply choked out of the race. Perhaps a third of those in whose veins it ran were actually hanged; the rest were chased out of the British Isles, never to return. Some fled to Ireland, and revivified the decaying Irish race: in practically all the Irish rebels of the past century there have been plain traces of English blood. Others went to the Dominions. Yet others came to the United States, and after helping to conquer the Western wilderness, begat the yeggman, Prohibition agents, footpads and hijackers of to-day.
The murder rate is very low in England, perhaps the lowest in the world. It is low because nearly all the potential ancestors of murderers were hanged or exiled in the Eighteenth Century. Why is it so high in the United States? Because most of the potential ancestors of murderers, in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, were not hanged. And why did they escape? For two plain reasons. First, the existing government was too weak to track them down and execute them, especially in the West. Second, the qualities of daring and enterprise that went with their murderousness were so valuable that it was socially profitable to overlook their homicides. In other words, the job of occupying and organizing the vast domain of the new Republic was one that demanded the aid of men who, among other things, occasionally butchered their fellow men. The butchering had to be winked at in order to get their help. Thus the murder rate, on the frontier, rose to unprecedented heights, while the execution rate remained very low. Probably 100,000 men altogether were murdered in the territory west of the Ohio between 1776 and 1865; probably not 100 murderers were formally executed. When they were punished at all, it was by other murderers—and this left the strain unimpaired.
4
Heroes
Of human eminence there are obviously two varieties: that which issues out of the inner substance of the eminent individual and that which comes to him, either partially or wholly, from without. It is not difficult to recognize men at the two extremes. No sane person would argue seriously that the eminence of such a man, say, as Richard Wagner was, in any plausible sense, accidental or unearned. Wagner created “Tristan und Isolde” out of his own inherent substance. Allowing everything for the chances of his education and environment, the massive fact remains that no other man of the same general education and environment has ever created anything even remotely comparable to it. Wagner deserved the eminence that came to him quite as certainly as the Lord God Jehovah deserves that which attaches to Him. He got it by differing sharply from other men, and enormously for the better, and by laboring colossally and incessantly to make that difference visible. At the other extreme lies such a fellow, say, as young John D. Rockefeller. He is, by all ordinary standards, an eminent man. When he says anything the newspapers report it in full. If he fell ill of gallstones to-morrow, or eloped with a lady Ph.D., or fell off the roof of his house, or was taken in a rum raid the news would be telegraphed to all parts of the earth and at least a billion human beings would show some interest in it. And if he went to Washington and pulled the White House bell he would be let in infallibly, even if the Heir of Lincoln had to quit a saxophone lesson to see him. But it must be obvious that young John’s eminence, such as it is, is almost purely fortuitous and unearned. He is attended to simply because he happens to be the son of old John, and hence heir to a large fortune. So far as the records show, he has never said anything in his life that was beyond the talents of a Rotary Club orator or a newspaper editorial writer, or done anything that would have strained an intelligent bookkeeper. He is, to all intents and purposes, a vacuum, and yet he is known to more people, and especially to more people of means, than Wagner, and admired and envied vastly more by all classes.
Between Wagner and young John there are infinite gradations, and sometimes it is a hard matter to distinguish between them. To most Americans, I daresay, a Harding or a Coolidge appears to enjoy an eminence that is not only more gaudy but also more solid than that of, say, an Einstein. When Einstein visited the United States, a few years ago, he was taken to see Harding as a sort of treat, and many worthy patriots, no doubt, regarded it as somewhat too rich for him, an enemy alien and a Jew. If Thomas Hardy came here to-morrow, his publisher would undoubtedly try to get an invitation to the White House for him, not merely to advertise his books but also to honor the man. Yet it must be plain that the eminence of Coolidge, however vastly it may be whooped up by gentlemen of enlightened self-interest, is actually greatly inferior to that of either Einstein or Hardy. These men owe whatever fame they have to actual accomplishments. There is no doubt whatever that what they have is wholly theirs. They owe nothing to anyone, and no conceivable series of accidents could have made them what they are. If superiority exists among men, then they are indubitably superior. But is there any sign of superiority in Coolidge? I can find none. His eminence is due entirely to two things: first, a series of accidents, and secondly, the possession of qualities that, in themselves, do not mark a superior man, but an inferior. He is a cheap, sordid and grasping politician, a seeker of jobs all his life, willing to do almost anything imaginable to get them. He has never said a word worth hearing, or done a thing requiring genius, or even ordinary skill. Put into his place and given the opportunities that have arisen before him in a long succession, any other ninth-rate lawyer in the land could have got as far as he has got.
Now for my point. It is, in brief, that the public estimation of eminence runs almost directly in inverse ratio to its genuineness. That is to say, the sort of eminence that the mob esteems most highly is precisely the sort that has least grounding in solid worth and honest accomplishment. And the reason therefor is not far to seek. The kind of eminence that it admires is simply the kind that it can understand—the kind that it can aspire to. The very puerility of a Coolidge, in fact, is one of the principal causes of the admiration he excites. What he has done in the world is within the capacities, given luck enough, of any John Smith. His merits, such as they are, are almost universal, and hence perfectly comprehensible. But what a Wagner or an Einstein does is wholly beyond the understanding of an ordinary ignoramus, and so it is impossible for the ignoramus to admire it. Worse, it tends to arouse his suspicion, and hence his animosity. He is not merely indifferent to the merits of a Wagner; he will, if any attempt is made to force them upon his attention, challenge them sharply. What he admires fundamentally, in other words, is himself, and in a Coolidge, a Harding, a baseball pitcher, a movie actor, an archbishop, or a bank president he can see himself. He can see himself, too, though perhaps more dimly, in a Dewey, a Pershing, a Rockefeller or a Jack Dempsey. But he can no more see himself in a Wagner or an Einstein than he can see himself on the throne of the Romanoffs, and so he suspects and dislikes such men, as he suspects and dislikes Romanoffs.
Unluckily, it is one thing to denounce his stupidity, and quite another thing to escape its consequences. The history of mankind is peopled chiefly, not with the genuinely great men of the race, but with the flashy and hollow fellows who appealed to the mob. Every American remembers vividly the contribution that Theodore Roosevelt made to the building of the Panama Canal—a contribution that might have been made by any other American thrown fortuitously into his place, assuming only that the substitute shared his normal American lack of a sense of honor. But who remembers the name of the man who actually designed the canal? I turn to the New International Encyclopedia and find nine whole pages about the canal, with many drawings. There is eloquent mention of Col. Goethals—who simply carried out the designer’s plans. There is mention, too, of Col. Gorgas—whose sanitary work was a simple application of other men’s ideas. There is ample space for Roosevelt, and his blackjacking of Colombia. But so far as I can find, the name of the designer is not there. The mob did not admire him, and so history has overlooked him.
5
An Historic Blunder
The Southern gentry made a thumping mistake when, after the Civil War, they disfranchised the blacks. Had they permitted the latter to vote, they would have retained political control of all the Southern States, for the blacks, like the peasants everywhere else, would have followed their natural masters. As it was, control quickly passed to the poor white trash, who still maintain it, though many of them have ceased to be poor. The gentry struggle in vain to get back in the saddle; they lack the votes to achieve the business unaided, and the blacks, who were ready to follow them in 1870, are now incurably suspicious of them. The result is that politics in the South remain fathomlessly swinish. Every civilized Southerner knows it and is ashamed of it, but the time has apparently passed to do anything about it. To get rid of its Bleases, Mayfields, Slemps, Peays and Vardamans, the South must wait until the white trash are themselves civilized. This is a matter demanding almost as much patience as the long vigil of the Seventh Day Adventists.