Our Benevolent Feudalism

Occasionally from too close and exclusive reading of the synoptic gospels, with their recital of Jesus’ specific teachings on social matters, a young and ardent minister loses his perspective, and seeing over-large the industrial and social evils of his time, seeks to remedy them. Usually, however, the mood is but transitory, and a few months, or at most a few years, witness the reaction. Renunciation of heretical doctrines follows, and ultimately the errant is restored to the fold of the “safe.” But let no one imagine that in seigniorial halls his sins are remembered against him. On the contrary, there is more joy over the recovery of one strayed sheep than over ninety and nine that remain faithful.

Sometimes, it must be conceded, there are to be found those who refuse to be forced or cajoled, and who hold their intrepid way in defiance of power. The World assails them, in the words of Matthew Arnold, with its perpetual challenge and warning: —

“‘Behold,’ she cries, ‘so many rages lulled;So many fiery spirits quite cooled down.Look how so many valors, long undulled,After short commerce with me fear my frown.’”

But they fear not her frown; and they teach the social precepts of their Master regardless of material consequences. What those consequences are, the average man knows full well. They are ostracism, a reduction, sooner or later, to the poorest livings; a hemming in and constraining to the narrowest fields of effort and influence – in a word, the full sum of the forceful rebuke which it is possible for the magnate class and its retainers, in the present state of society, to deliver. In the more developed state of the future the rebuke will be yet more emphatic; for the influence of the pulpit, whatever it may be in degree, must in kind be confirmatory of the right of the magnate class to rule.

CHAPTER VIII

General Social Changes

The historic props of class rule, according to Professor Edward A. Ross, in his recent volume, “Social Control,” have been force, superstition, fraud, pomp, and prescription. Our present seigniorial class makes use, with fine discrimination as time and occasion require, of each of these means of support, though unquestionably it sets the greatest value upon the last named. Force is employed less openly, less obviously; decreasingly by the direct imposition of the magnates, increasingly through their ingenious manipulation of the powers of the State. The superstition latent in most minds proves now, as ever, a means of ready recourse; but though supernatural sanction to the acts and authority of the magnates is cunningly deduced and volubly preached from a thousand pulpits, the prop fails somewhat as a constant and sure reliance. Even testimony so authoritative as that of President Baer to the effect that the Great First Cause had intrusted to himself and his co-magnates the control of the business interests of the country, has been flouted in a number of places. The notion of supernatural sanctions, as most people know, and as Professor Goldwin Smith has repeatedly taken pains to point out, is losing its hold upon the reason of mankind; and though it still has, and will ever have, a certain potency, its best days are passed.

As for fraud, both of class against class, and individual against individual, attempts to practise it no doubt increase; but the tooth-and-claw struggle of the last generation has developed and sharpened the wits of the combatants, so that it tends to become a less profitable game. He would be a sharper indeed, according to the proverb, who among the Turks of the Negropont, the Jews of Salonika, or the Greeks of Athens could cheat his fellow: each knows by heart all the tricks and devices of which the others are capable. Matters are not yet at such a stage in free America: great frauds, both of the group and of the individual, are still practised. But the almost infinite possibilities of other days have been sadly restricted by the operation of those natural laws which tend to fit beings to their environment. Pomp, too, is less a factor of control than in past times. It has a powerful grip on the imaginations of the poor, as the columns of our “yellow” journals, which devote so large a space to the ceremonies of the great, amply attest; but though it charms the more, it deceives the less. It interests, it delights; but it does not overawe or subdue.

I

It is by prescription – by a constant appeal to the sanctity of custom, a constant preaching of the validity of vested rights, and of the beauty, order, inevitability, and righteousness of things as they are – that the magnate class wins to its support the suffrages of the people. Other influences aid, but this one is dominant. As Professor Ross pertinently writes: —

“Those who have the sunny rooms in the social edifice have … a powerful ally in the suggestion of Things-as-they-are. With the aid of a little narcotizing teaching and preaching, the denizens of the cellar may be brought to find their lot proper and right, to look upon escape as an outrage upon the rights of other classes, and to spurn with moral indignation the agitator who would stir them to protest. Great is the magic of precedent, and like the rebellious Helots, who cowered at the sight of their masters’ whips, those who are used to dragging the social chariot will meekly open their calloused mouths whenever the bit is offered them.”

The magnates, as has been shown, brook small interference with prevailing customs. Their near dependents, retainers, and “poor relations” think as they think, and feel as they feel; and the great majority of the professional moulders of opinion, drawing their inspiration from above, preach and teach as the magnates would have them. The general social passivity following the pressure of all these influences upon the public mind is as certain and inescapable as a mathematical conclusion.

II

A powerful auxiliary to the preaching of the sanctity of custom is the extolling of individual “success.” At the very time when socio-industrial processes are settling to a fixed routine and socio-industrial forms to a fixed status, – when day by day there is found less room at the top and more room at the bottom, – the chorus of exhortation to the men of the land to bestir themselves reaches its highest pitch. Meddle not with custom and the law, is the injunction; leave those to abler and wiser heads – meaning, of course, the present formulators and manipulators thereof. Meddle not with things as they are, but while your companions sleep, “toil upward in the night,” and carve out a career for yourself among the stars. Put no faith in general social changes, except such as result from the combined effect of each unit concerning himself solely with his own material salvation. There is no social betterment without precedent individual betterment, it is urged. “You cannot make a bad man good by legislation,” is the admonitory adage, and “You cannot make a poor man rich by legislation” is its twin. If certain persons hold to the theory that corrective laws have a definite reaction upon character, and that in every civilization worthy the name there are social institutions, founded in law, which are immeasurably in advance of the general average of sanity, sobriety, and honesty of the citizenship, such persons are but dreamers, and are not to be taken too seriously. So, too, with the dictum regarding the statutory enhancement of riches. There are those who insinuate that it is heard most often from the lips of the industrial magnates, the majority of whom are living examples of the fact that riches may be garnered by means of tariffs and other privilege-giving laws; and from the laissez-faire tariff reformers, whose reiterated argument against protective duties is that they are law-given privileges by which the few gain wealth at the expense of the many. But persons who question this profound adage are unsophisticated. They fail to discriminate properly. The adage is one which, like a simile or metaphor, should not be stretched too far. It has its true and legitimate bearing only when it is applied to the very poor.

Personal endeavor toward the goal of “success” is the urgent exhortation. Scarcely one of the magnates who have recently entered literature, or who, avoiding that province, have on occasion unbosomed themselves to the interviewer, but takes pains to declare how numerous and how mighty are the possibilities in the path of the energetic. All that is needed, according to most of the seigniorial recipes, are brains and health; honesty, it is true, is often included as an ingredient in the compound, but its mention is possibly ironical, and need not concern us. Brains and health are thus the two things needful; and though pursuing Satan may gather in, with his drag-net, a vast army of the hindmost, the fortunate possessors of these two boons will inevitably forge to the front in the headlong race.

It is by no accident that this particular counsel from the magnates is heard now more frequently than any other. It is one that of course has been given in all times; but it has never been given with such frequency and unction as now. Consciously or subconsciously, it is an expression of class feeling – a revelation of the community of interests and purposes of a particular division of our society. In whatever cases its utterance is prompted by a general social motive, that motive is the defence of class control. It is counsel that makes for the acquiescence of the lower orders and the increased security of the upper. “The heaving and straining of the wretches pent up in the hold of the slaver is less,” writes Professor Ross again, “if now and then a few of the most redoubtable are let up on deck. Likewise the admitting of a few brave, talented, or successful commoners into the charmed circle above has a wonderful effect in calming the rage and envy of the exploited, and thereby prolonging the life of the parasitic system.” This counsel of endeavor, promulgated by the few who have striven and “succeeded,” is thus a social sedative of great efficacy.

The professional moulders of opinion take their cue from these exhortations of the magnates, improve, elaborate, and redistribute them. The professors, the editors, and the orators lead, and the hortatory pronouncements of the pulpit follow closely. The Carpenter of Nazareth, it is true, held other views of “success”; but his precepts would seem to have gone out of fashion in the fanes and tabernacles ostensibly devoted to his worship. With all ranks and conditions Success becomes the great god; and as though there were not already priests and votaries enough for his proper worship, a special class of publications has recently arisen, which serve as his vowed and consecrated ministers. These teach to the devout but unsophisticated followers of the great god the particular means best adapted to win his grace; how his frown may be averted; or, if his anger be kindled, by what penances and other rites he is to be propitiated. They chant the praises and recite the life-incidents of those who have been most conspicuously blessed, and to all the rest of mankind they shout, “Follow our counsel, and some day you shall be even like unto these.” It is a glittering lure, and it is eagerly pursued. Sometimes, indeed, not without doubts and misgivings; for a recognition that “all the gates are thronged with suitors,” that “all the markets overflow,” and that the settling and hardening of socio-industrial processes has already begun, becomes more general, and leads many to essay the trial of fortune’s pathway only as a desperate and forlorn adventure. But these are the exceptions; the majority are still to be caught by limed twigs. The gods denied mankind many gifts, and attached hard conditions to most of those which they granted. But for all their withholding of certain gifts and their tainting of others, they sought to compensate by giving an extra allowance of credulity.

III

Not only by the showering of precepts, by the encouragement of individual effort, and by the dangling of more or less illusory prizes before the wistful multitude does the ruling class maintain its hold. It invites, to some extent, a participation in the harvest. The growth of the shareholding class, of which mention has already been made, is by no means wholly fortuitous. New companies of small initial capital, and with somewhat dubious chances in the great struggle, may be glad enough to market their shares wheresoever they can; but something of seigniorial grace and condescension, though not entirely unmixed with calculating foresight, is apparent in the opening of opportunities for small investment in the larger and more stable corporations. Mr. John B. C. Kershaw, in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1900, gives an interesting account of this fostering of share-investment in England. The industrial magnates, he says, saw that the best policy for preventing the growth of a public sentiment favoring the encroachments of labor would be to increase the number of bourgeoisie interested in industrial affairs. Accordingly they encouraged popular share-buying, with the result that “a large and increasing proportion of the general public is now financially involved in all industrial struggles, and our manufacturers feel assured that the danger lest the workers should be backed by a solid and enthusiastic public opinion in their demands for shorter hours or increased pay no longer exists.”

As in England, so also here. The movement toward corporate ownership is probably more pronounced in the United States than in the older country, and it has been equally encouraged from above. Joint-stock concerns increased in England from 9344 in 1885 to 25,267 in 1898. In Massachusetts, the State in which the preparation of statistics most nearly approaches the methods of science, corporations are reported to have increased during the years 1885-95 by more than 77 per cent. As for shareholders, the nine principal manufacturing industries of Massachusetts for the same period show percentages of increase ranging from 13.87 in tapestry to 637.74 in leather, saddles, and harness. The entire country has shown a marked growth in the number of this class, and it would seem that no one is too poor to hold a share in some corporation. Indeed, to read the arguments of the legal retainers of the magnates in the Income Tax case, and in the various trust cases that from time to time arise, one would think that the main body of the shareholders of the nation was composed of workingmen, widows, and orphans. In no time since the prophet Ezekiel’s day have there been uttered words of such tender consideration for the poor and needy, the widow and the orphan, and of such bitter denunciation for their would-be despoilers as were tearfully put forth in opposing the income tax.

A great number of shareholders in a particular company would seem, on first thought, to be something of a nuisance. Unquestionably they would represent a wide range of conflicting views and antagonistic purposes, all bearing upon the one problem of the proper operation of the company’s property; and would thus give salient instances of that unwisdom which is too often found in a multitude of counsellors. At least this is the seigniorial argument against national collectivism – an argument which one might naturally suppose to be quite as applicable to the particular collectivism of the stock company. But it does not so apply; the solid advantages of diffused shareholding in assuring general public sanction to the acts of the magnates outweigh the confusion and danger which are alleged to lie in public ownership.

The social and political effect of this general participation in the ownership of industries may be readily observed by all but the blind. “If the truth were known,” wrote that keen-witted financier, Mr. Russell Sage, in a magazine article published last May, “concentration of wealth is popular with the masses.” Partners in the great enterprises, the multitude of petty shareholders are led more and more to consider economic questions from the employers’ standpoint. In the controversies between labor and capital ten years ago the average citizen was but an onlooker, sometimes a weak partisan of capital, but very often a neutral, with a strong latent sympathy for the “under dog.” To-day, thanks to his holding of a single share in the steel corporation or of two or three shares in some street railway company, he is an employer, one of the men “to whom God, in His infinite wisdom, has given the control of the property interests of the country.” He sees, thinks, and feels as a member, however humble, of the employing class; and what the magnates think and do is to him all the law and the prophets. “Bound by gold chains about the feet” of his feudatory lords, he is at the same time a sharer in their responsibilities and a faithful retainer in their service.

IV

It would be idle to declare that all the tendencies make toward acquiescence. Just as in the atmosphere a prevailing drift of the wind is accompanied by cross currents, flurries, and rotatory motions, so the dominant tendency discoverable in social industry is qualified by many complex processes. Of the cross currents here to be briefly noted, some are but trifling, while others undoubtedly reveal a certain force and constancy. A small part of the public is ever in a state of ferment over imputed social evils, and at rare times this ferment becomes general. Recurring labor troubles indicate that the spirit of resistance, if it really be dying, dies hard. Strikes of the magnitude of those at Homestead and in the Tennessee mines in 1892, at Chicago and other railroad centres in 1894, the several anthracite coal strikes of 1897, 1900, and 1902, and the steel strike of 1901 prove that organized labor has not wholly succumbed to the encompassing forces about it. The remarkable growth in numbers, these last two years, of the unions composing the American Federation of Labor, is confirmatory testimony. Radical political movements, furthermore, have not been wanting. The Socialists have increased their voting strength in the nation from some 2000 ballots in 1888 to upward of 130,000 in 1900. The Farmers’ Alliance made tremendous headway in the election of 1890, and its political successor, the People’s party, secured by fusion more than 1,000,000 votes in 1892 and nearly 2,000,000 in 1894. “Labor” mayors and even Socialist mayors have been elected in several cities, and the polling of 106,721 votes for Samuel M. Jones for Governor of Ohio in 1899 was a truly remarkable showing of the residual independence of the citizenship. There are also general social movements to chronicle. Reform societies and clubs are occasionally heard of; arbitration movements have met with some favor; there has been a considerable growth in the number of university and college settlements; and anti-trust conferences and things of that sort have frequently met, talked, and dispersed. Indeed, all of us at times grumble and find fault with general conditions. Even Mr. Russell Sage, in the face of his exultant panegyric on the beneficence of combination, has very recently given to the press a statement denouncing the further consolidation of industry, and predicting, in case his words are not heeded, “widespread revolt of the people and subsequent financial ruin unequalled in the history of the world.” Though only a few of us are irreconcilable at all times, all of us are disaffected sometimes – especially when our particular interests are pinched. We talk threateningly of instituting referendums to curb excessive power, of levying income taxes, or of compelling the Government to acquire the railroads and the telegraphs. We subscribe to newspapers and other publications which criticise the acts of the great corporations, and we hail as a new Gracchus the ardent reformer who occasionally comes forth for a season to do battle for the popular cause.

V

It must be confessed, however, that this revolt is, for the most part, sentimental; it is a mental attitude only occasionally transmutable into terms of action. It is, moreover, sporadic and flickering; it dies out, after a time, and we revert to our usual moods, concerning ourselves with our particular interests, and letting the rest of the world wag as it will. The specific social reaction of the last few years has been especially marked. It has shown itself in the weakening or disruption of radical political movements, in the more hesitant attitude of the trade-unionists, in the decline of factory legislation, – in fact, of all legislation tending to the protection of the weaker and the regulation of the stronger, – and in a general feeling of the futility of social effort. The Anti-imperialists will have it that this admitted reaction is due to the South African and Philippine wars, to a lust of empire and a contempt for the rights of weaker peoples. It is a pretty theory, but unfortunately it has small basis in chronology. For the reaction had already become apparent before either war was waged. The date of its beginning may be variously guessed at; but it is probable that the time assigned to it in Chapter V – somewhere within the two years 1896-97 – is not far wrong. Before that time a very large part of the public could occasionally be interested in social measures and movements, and in social literature. Thousands of even the most hardened philistines read Mr. George’s “Progress and Poverty,” Mr. Bellamy’s “Looking Backward,” and Mr. Kidd’s “Social Evolution.” And as for that minor section of the public, the social reformers, there was then to be found among them a radicalism of belief, a definiteness of aim, an ardency and determination of spirit that are sadly wanting now. Doubtless to every one of these, as he ruefully compares the two periods, there recurs the sentiment of the Wordsworthian recollection, —

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very heaven.”

While in the bosom of every devotee of Things-as-they-are there rises the sentiment of thankfulness that the mass of the people have learned the wisdom of letting well enough alone.

Political radicalism reached its culminating point in the election of 1896. Despite certain foolish and mischievous notions embodied in the two radical platforms of that year, the combined movement was yet a consistent and unified attack upon class rule. The elections of the next two years revealed a waning of Populist and Democratic strength, and in 1900 a fine sense of caution prompted the Fusionists to subordinate the industrial demands of their platforms to the issue of Imperialism. The Socialists, it is true, usually increase their vote; but the admitted fact of a great growth of Socialist conviction throughout the land makes these slight increases at the polls appear but trivial, and only further confirms the view that such radicalism is sentimental rather than potential. Anti-trust conferences are not without an element of humor; at least, they are the cause of much humor in outsiders; and the widely heralded arbitration court of the National Civic Federation breaks down on the very occasion when most is expected of it – that of the anthracite coal strike. Organized labor, despite its greater numerical strength, is far less aggressive than of old; and except in isolated instances, it observes a caution which would have further distinguished Fabius. As for the growth of college settlements, the fact is only an added proof of reaction. They do a great good, unquestionably; but their basis is philanthropy and not social adjustment.

As a people, we have heard enough, for the time, about social problems, and prefer to interest ourselves in other matters. Professor Walter A. Wyckoff, who has recently changed the scene of his optimistic observances from America to England, has an article in the September Scribner’s on the English social situation. “The condition-of-the-people problem,” he writes, “lacks vitality for the moment because, as one shrewd observer remarked, ‘the public has grown tired of the poor.’” We are feeling the same weariness here. Our benevolence somewhat increases, and we are willing to give, and more than willing that the magnates shall give freely; but we want to be troubled no more with remedial schemes. Rather, we are disposed to trust to seigniorial wisdom and virtue to set things right. Some of us will perhaps decline to go so far in our trust as a certain prominent Massachusetts lady who proposed to abolish working-class suffrage. “I think,” said this lady in an address to a club of working girls, “many of the troubles between employer and men might be swept away if the men could not vote. If he felt that they did not stand on just the same footing as himself, that they had not quite so many privileges as he, the employer might have a chivalric feeling toward them.” Some of us may hesitate at this project, but withal we are willing to trust largely to seigniorial guidance.