What Chase wanted in social reform was “more light and less power.” He said, “Too many reforms amount to attempts at predicting with insufficient data, and if such predictions ever work in the social field it is by accident.” He admitted that a more even distribution of goods throughout the world would be a big help for peace, but added, “Nobody yet knows how it can be achieved, in a realistic political way.” When Rick suggested that perhaps they hadn’t time to make the elaborate investigation proposed, the answer was, “We haven’t time not to.”
After their guest had departed the two couples sat discussing his point of view. Rick, who had lived through the rough and tumble of British politics for most of his life, exclaimed, “Insufficient data, my eye! You have the data of a score of depressions in a century and a half. You have the data that with each depression thousands of little businessmen were forced into bankruptcy, and millions of workers had to part with their savings and their homes. You have the data that a hundred men, or maybe two hundred, have incomes of a million dollars a year. What more data do you need in order to know that your society is in a state of perpetual civil war, with strikes and revolts and crime waves and all the other products of a blind competitive system?”
That was the way the impatient ones talked.
VII
Another impatient one was Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, editor and publisher from the Middle West. They heard that he was in town and sought him out; they found in him the first and only man who still believed in the pamphlet as a weapon. He went into a sort of ecstasy over the very word. “A pamphlet is cheap, effective, and popular with the masses. It is not big enough to frighten them off. A pamphlet gets its job done because, if it is properly written, it covers a theme thoroughly and brings the reader to a definite conclusion. A pamphlet has the power to move mountains.”
When he heard about the million dollars he pleaded, “Don’t make the mistake of wasting your money on fat, expensive books. Learn from the work of Voltaire, Paine, Ingersoll, Kropotkin, Goldman, Debs, and hundreds of others. You must go to your job with the passion and sincerity of Diderot, d’Holbach, and the other French encyclopedists. You must take all culture as your field—politics, economics, finance, social evolution, free thought, anti-clericalism, democracy, science, history, philosophy. You must conduct the greatest battle of the pamphlets in all history. The people have been misled and confused, and you must rebuild their minds; they will come to you with the innocence of children, and you must give them understanding. The encyclopedists brought enlightenment to the top layers of society; a set of their books cost about two hundred dollars. They found their readers even in the palace of the King, and among skeptical members of the Church hierarchy. Theirs was a revolution from the top, an aristocratic movement; but yours will be a cultural revolution from the bottom up. You have the brains and the money, and you can buy the right machinery and the know-how. You have a staggering opportunity!”
This lover of cheap books spoke as one having authority, having made himself the greatest creator of pamphlets in history. He had sold more than three hundred million “Little Blue Books” at the price of five cents each, which meant that he had handled fifteen million dollars. He had more than twenty-five hundred titles, including every subject of importance you could think of. He advertised this list in all the important magazines and newspapers that would accept his copy—many wouldn’t because his list included attacks on superstition and clerical power. In course of time his list had come to include eight hundred “Big Books” also; his was a going concern, and he was the one man who had been able to make money out of selling the masses what were supposed to be unpopular ideas.
This dreamer of unlimited education ended his excited discourse with a smile. “I suppose that what has stirred me so is the idea of a million dollars. Even though I don’t expect to touch any of it, still it works on both my mind and my senses. I have a nose for news, and another for money.”
This large and prosperous lover of books went on to relate amusing stories of what he had learned about his business. He had published a short story by Maupassant entitled “The Ball of Tallow” and had sold fifteen thousand copies a year; then it occurred to him to give it a different title, and as “A French Prostitute’s Sacrifice” it sold nearly four times as many. Théophile Gautier’s Fleece of Gold sold only five thousand a year, but when it became In Quest of a Blonde Mistress its sales were multiplied by ten. That wasn’t supposed to be ethical, or at any rate dignified, but the publisher’s conscience did not trouble him. “The people get a recognized masterpiece, and they learn something about the world they live in. Believe me, I know what the discovery of great literature means to people who are poor. I began earning my living as a boy, driving an elevator in a school, and I devoured good literature in between passengers. I read books and wrote books a long time before I began selling them, and when I sell a thousand I am reading every copy in my imagination.”
VIII
Then came another Jew and another book lover: Sam de Witt, old-time New Yorker, old-time tennis champion, a poet who published his own poems and plays, and a prosperous dealer in tools and machinery. Sam was one of the five elected Socialists who had been expelled from the New York legislature during World War I. He was in his mid-fifties now, but as full of liveliness as ever. He knew all about the different “causes” in New York and the quarreling party lines. He became eloquent as he described the situation.
“There is the curse of the ‘angle.’ Having edited a Socialist weekly for years, and in that time read Communist, Trotskyist, anarchist, liberal, and every other tint and twist of sociological publication, I learned to distinguish a clipping without reference to its source. Wording and tone fell into their pattern at once, whether dealing with the future of the Swedish thermos bottle or the holy tetractys of Pythagoras. Each publication developed a planetary system, around whose hub some twenty to forty thousand votaries swirled or trailed in self-righteous assurance.”
Rick ventured mildly, “It has been our hope that we can hold ourselves above party and faction.” To which the answer was, “To do that you will have to hold yourselves so high that nobody will know you are there.”
The speaker went on to tell the sad story of Marshall Field, benevolent multimillionaire, who had subsidized an afternoon newspaper called PM. He had succeeded in fusing some of these rival groups into a circulation of a hundred and fifty thousand; as Sam classified them, “Forty thousand Stalinists, twenty thousand Socialists with various shades of hatred of Joe and all his works, five thousand Trotskyists, and the rest confused goodhearted lads and lassies who just can’t stomach Hearst and Luce and the rest of our press masters. The paper has lost several times as much money as you lads and lassies have to put into the pot. Here you are with one million dollars, proposing to save two billion human beings who are standing on the verge of extirpation.”
“What would you advise us to do?” asked the American “lassie,” not without a touch of acid in her tone.
The discouraged Socialist thought for a bit and then said, “I can tell you—but you won’t do it.”
“Give us a chance,” urged Rick.
“All right. You rent yourselves a large tract of land somewhere out beyond the Jersey marshes and put a heavy steel fence around it and turn loose a lot of savage dogs to guard it. You erect some low, flat, sinister-looking buildings and take extraordinary precautions to swear all the workingmen to secrecy. You install a lot of queer machinery which I can buy for you—that’s my business and I won’t charge you a profit. Gradually rumors will spread, and reporters will come; you tell them that you have employed the world’s greatest physicist, and he has discovered a process for producing atomic fission in ordinary rock, and so you are going to make the world’s most awful bomb. This is a free country, and you don’t have to let anybody into your plant that you don’t want to. Gradually awe and terror spread—nobody doubts that you have something, because who would spend a million dollars o
n nothing? That is reasonable, isn’t it?”
“And then?”
“This goes on for three or four years, until the whole world knows about your project and the suspense has become extreme. By that time the United Nations will be on the verge of its final break-up. You come before them and say, ‘Gentlemen, there is not to be another war. I have decided to save you the trouble. I have created a rock bomb that will destroy everything within a hundred miles of it, and probably start a chain reaction in all the rock in the earth. I have a dozen of these bombs, and my agents have them hidden in a dozen of your great cities—New York, Washington, London, Paris, and, believe it or not, Moscow and Leningrad. I give you one week in which to submit your dispute to the arbitration of the World Court, to abolish all armed forces and all national boundaries and tariffs, passports, visas, vetoes, and other obstructions to peaceful intercourse. You will immediately establish an international government run by the majority vote of the nations here present. If you don’t take this action the bombs will go off at the same instant in all the different places. They will be time bombs, and the agents will have time to escape. Nor will it do you any good to arrest me, for in that case my agents have orders to get the bombs started, and may God have mercy on your dumb souls!”
They all had a chuckle; and Laurel, somewhat mollified, remarked, “You ought to make that into a play, Mr. de Witt.”
“If I do,” countered the tool merchant, “will you use part of your million dollars to produce it?”
IX
All this was America, and they were learning about it at first hand. For Rick, all the reading of his lifetime was not equal to this face-to-face contact. He found the American accent fascinating; he was amused to note that whereas the Americans all knew he had an English accent, they were surprised to learn that they had an American accent. It is, apparently, the habit of all peoples to assume that the earth revolves around their particular spot on it. “Everybody but thee and me is queer, and sometimes I have doubts about thee.”
For Lanny, too, these encounters were stimulating. For nearly a decade he had had no personal contact with the movement he had been trying to serve. He had been living in the enemy’s country, not merely physically but ideologically; he had been living capitalism and luxury, while cherishing democracy as a secret dream. Now he could sit among his real friends and listen to their talk and observe what life had been doing to them, and especially what war had been doing to them. There had been more than ten years of war, for it had begun in Spain, and even before that, when Hitler had advanced into the Rhineland.
For anyone with a critical sense it is easier to love the people in imagination than in reality. These “radicals,” these “Leftists,” or whatever name you chose to give them, were opinionated persons and didn’t mind repeating themselves over and over—they couldn’t have carried on their work otherwise. They had strongly developed egos, and strong resistance to other egos. Along with their sense of justice it was possible for them to have more or less envy; they would have had to be superhuman in order not to enjoy having a little success, even a little luxury in their lives. Those who had forced their way upward in the world had found it rough going, and they hadn’t always had time to practice the amenities, or even to think about them. Some didn’t have good table manners, and some didn’t always remember to brush the dandruff off their coat collars. In short, a leisure-class person could find numerous reasons for disapproving of them.
These facts stood out when the leisure-class person took a day off and went among his own sort. Lanny and Laurel took Rick and Nina up to Newcastle; a delightful drive in bracing autumn weather, and there was a large household, living in accord with completely accepted conventions which removed all friction and made every human contact agreeable. Nobody tried to force his opinions upon you; nobody forced anything upon you, you were assumed to know what to say, what to do, what to wear, what to eat and drink. If it was golf, you knew how to play; if it was cards, you wouldn’t dream of cheating; if it was at the table, you knew how to hold your knife and fork, and you were offered a second helping once and only once. Friction of every sort was avoided like a plague. Of course it existed; Lanny told his friends about bitter family quarrels, but no visitor would ever see a trace of them. There was the story of a haughty Budd dame who had said to her husband, “Take me into the closet and spit on me if you must, but show respect for me when we are in public.”
The way Lanny got along with the highly developed egos of the wealthy was to let them say their say and never oppose them. What was the use? You could never change them, only make them angry. Rick and Nina had grown up on this course, and so the four dwelt in the enemy’s country, ate the enemy’s food, listened to the enemy’s conversation, and conformed to the enemy’s proprieties. The enemy became a friend, and all the Budd tribe came in to meet a British baronet (genuine) and his wife (also genuine). There was a tea for them at the country club, where they met “everybody,” and they might have stayed on as guests indefinitely. But after three days of it they were bored and wanted to get back to that uncomfortable world where crude, imperfect people argued and squabbled over party lines and programs. (Incidentally, Baby Lanny had the measles and was shut up in a darkened room, and Frances had gone back to England with her mother; so two reasons for staying were canceled.)
X
The work of delving into the American mind went on. Lanny looked into the story of the Garland Fund, an experiment which came closest to the one he was planning. Some twenty years ago a young radical had inherited from his father a share of a fortune and had announced that he did not believe in the right of inheritance and would not touch it. Thereupon his fellow radicals and mentors had gathered about and persuaded him that this was a mistake; if he refused the money others would get it and make no good use of it. How much more sensible to take the money and turn it over to the movement!
So Charles Garland announced that he had changed his mind. He would keep a quarter of a million for himself and give the rest, slightly over a million, to a trusteeship called the Garland Fund, directed by tried and true friends of social justice. There had followed a process of consulting and planning, like that which the Lannys and the Ricks were carrying on. Gifts were made to civil liberties and labor groups, and a large sum went into the reprinting of cheap editions of the classics of the social protest movement.
Lanny collected all the details that were available. A total of fifty volumes had been agreed on: Tolstoy and Kropotkin and Lenin, Marx and Proudhon, Blatchford and Ruskin, Shaw and Wells, Paine and Veblen and Jack London, Henry George and Lester Ward—a widely varied list. They had been made available in large editions at fifty cents a copy, and the question was, how many people had they reached and what had they accomplished? Seeking this information, Rick went to see the man who had launched the publishing venture and guided it for the Garland Fund—only to learn that the man was now engaged in private business and was of the opinion that the only enterprise worth considering was the overcoming of “the great totalitarian sweep” that was under way.
“Assuming that that is true,” said the baronet, “how are we going to set about it? If we try to do it with capitalism, we will presently find ourselves the ally of Franco and the Catholic hierarchy, of Greek royalty and the Chinese landlords and moneylenders; in short, of reaction everywhere in the world. It will be one kind of totalitarianism against another, and we democrats will lose out either way. The only way to fight Communist totalitarianism is to show the people how they can get a just co-operative order by peaceable means. That way we can get all the peoples of the world on our side, including those whom Stalin is taking over by force; in the end we may win even the Russian people.”
But it was of no use; this worried radical thought that there was no longer time for anything of the sort; the Communist menace was too immediate.
Next they got the name of a man who had assisted with the Garland Fund books. What would he have to report? Again Rick pai
d a call, and he heard the opinion, “World War III seems to me so certain, so absolutely inevitable, that it seems to me far more constructive to devote ourselves to preparation for winning it than to attempts to prevent it. For if this country loses World War III, I foresee a dark age that will last for at least five centuries.”
This time Rick avoided arguing. He was dealing with a publisher in active business and could ask definite questions. The man pointed out that anyone who tried to sell low-priced serious books faced tremendous competition from magazines, both slicks and pulps, from comic books, from twenty-five-cent mysteries, and so on. He had found it easier to sell quantities of old books that had stood the test of time than to sell anything new. He estimated that from seventy-five to ninety per cent of radical publications were sold to radicals, which meant that the works had little effect on the general public.
Finally he spoke these depressing words: “No consideration of this kind would be honest if it failed to take into account the damned low intelligence quotient of a considerable segment of the American public. How large this segment is, and how low its intelligence quotient is, I leave for others to say, but any study of the extremely popular radio programs will prove that the programs with the highest rating, with extremely few exceptions, are directed at the ten to twelve-year-old mind.”
XI
Variety is said to be the spice of life, and certainly it was making life spicy for these four. They made notes on each set of opinions and tried to classify them, but it couldn’t be done—there were so many more differences than agreements. They saw themselves in the position of the farmer and his son in the fable of Aesop, trying to get their donkey across a bridge. So many persons told them how to do it, and they tried to please everybody, with the result that they pleased nobody and lost their donkey into the bargain.