Causes and Consequences

by John Jay Chapman

The only place in the country where society is not dull is Washington, because in Washington politics have always forced the social elements to mix; because in Washington, some embers of the old ante-bellum society survived; because the place has no commerce, and because the foreign diplomats have been a constant factor, educating the Americans in social matters. But Washington is not the centre of American civilization. The controlling force in American life is not in its politics, but in commerce. New York is the head and heart of the United States. Chicago is America. And the elements of this life must be sought, as always, in the small towns. Find the social factors which are common to New York, to Poughkeepsie, and to Newport, and you have the keynote to the country. We began with a city club. But it would have made no difference what gathering we entered—a drawing-room at Newport, a labor union in Fifteenth Street—we should have found the same phenomena,—formalism, suppression of the individual, intellectual dishonesty.

The dandy at Newport who conscientiously follows his leaders and observes the cab rule, the glove ordinance, and the mystery of the oyster fork, is governed by the same law, is fettered by the same force, as the labor man who fears to tell his fellows that he approves of Waring’s clean streets. Each is a half-man, each is afraid of his fellows, and for the same reason. Each is commercial, keeps his place by conciliatory methods, and will be punished for contumacy by the loss of his job. Neither of them has an independent opinion upon any subject.

The charge brought against our millionaire society is that it is vulgar. The houses are palaces, the taste is for the most part excellent, the people are in every sense but the commercial sense more virtuous than the rich of any other nation. Wealth is poured out in avalanches.

Why is all this display not magnificent? The millionaire society is not vulgar, but it is insignificant. The reason is, that you cannot have splendor without personal and intellectual independence, and this does not exist in America. The conversation on the Commodore’s steam yacht is tedious. The talk at the weekly meeting of the amalgamated glaziers is insipid, and impresses you with the selfishness of mankind.

Now what is at the bottom of this identity? We are passing through the great age of distribution. It is not confined to America. It qualifies European history. All the different kinds of Socialism are mere proofs of it. Every one either wants to get something himself, or, if he is a philosopher, wants to show other people how to get it. Even Henry George thought that man lives by bread alone; at least, he thought that if you only give every one lots of bread, that is all you need provide for; the rest will follow. In America we are leading the world in the intensity with which this phase of progress goes on, because in America there is nothing else to occupy men’s minds. Let us return to our social focus and its relation to the arts.

The world has groped for three thousand years to find the connection between morality and the fine arts. It may be that we stand here on the borderland of discovery. We can at least see that they are not likely to arise in an era of subserviency and intellectual fog.

The fine arts are departments of science, and the attitude of mind of the artist toward his work, or of the public toward his product, is that of an interest in truth for its own sake. It is the attitude of the scientific man toward his problems. The scientists do not waver or cringe. They are the great bullies of this era. They draw their power from their work. They seek, they proclaim, they monopolize truth. There is in them the note of greatness, not because of their discoveries, but because of their pursuit.

Commercial or sexual crime or violence, that does not unman the artist, ought not to extinguish art, and it never has done so. Anything that has made him time-serving or truthless ought to show in his work, and it always has done so.

Any system of morality or conjunction of circumstances that tends to make men tell the truth as they see it will tend to produce what the world will call art. If the statement be accurate, the world will call it beautiful. Put it as you will, art is self-assertion and beauty is accuracy. Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.

Anybody can see that fiction depends upon social conditions; for it is nothing but a description of them.