Chapter VI: Part 6

As I have indicated earlier in this letter, the ideal is dear to our patriotic sensibilities that we are governed by average opinion, and that the average is peculiarly high. The fastidious citizen in this country has been and still is fond of the taunt that men of upright character and fine instincts--what he calls gentlemen--will not enter public life, for the reason that they will not eat dirt. The reply has been that the real bugaboo of the fastidious citizen is one of manners, and that in the essentials of character, in strong moral purpose and solid worth, the average American voter is the peer of any aristocracy. The issue becomes really one of fact, and mere solemn assertion will not serve as evidence beyond a certain point. If the majority prefer dishonesty, the power is in their hands to perpetuate the system; but believing as you and I do that the majority at heart is honest, how are we to explain the continued existence of the evil? How as patriots shall we reconcile the perpetuation in power of the low comedians, Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan, except on the theory that it is the will of the majority that they should continue to serve the people? This is not a question of kid gloves, swallow-tailed coats, and manners, but an indictment reflecting on the moral character and solid worth of the nation. How are we to explain it? What are we to say? Can we continue to declare that we are the most honest and aspiring people in the world and expect that portion of the world which has any sense of humor not to smile? Are we, who have been accustomed to boast of our spotless integrity as a people, ready to fall back on and console ourselves with the boast, which does duty nowadays on lenient lips, that we are as honest as any of the nations of Europe except, possibly, England? That is an indirect form of patriotic negation under the shadow of which low comedians and leading villains could ply their trade comparatively unmolested.

As a philosopher, who is not a real philosopher, I find this charge of Josephine's a difficult nut to crack, and I commend it respectfully to your attention to mull over at your leisure, trusting that it may temper the effulgence of your thoughts on Independence Day. Yet having had my say as a philosopher, let me as an optimist, willing to succor a fellow-optimist, add a few considerations indicating that the situation may not be so ultimately evil as the existing state of affairs and Josephine would have us believe. I write "may not be," because I am not altogether confident that my intelligence is not being cajoled by the natural cheeriness and buoyancy of my disposition. The sole question at issue is whether the majority of the American people are really content to have the money power of the country prey upon and be the prey of the lowest moral sense of the community.

We have before us an every-day spectacle of eager aggregations of capital putting aside scruples as visionary and impractical, and hence "un-American," in order to compass success, and at the other side of the counter the so-called representatives of the people, solemn in their verbiage but susceptible to occult and disgraceful influences. The two parties to the intercourse are discreet and business-like, and there is little risk of tangible disclosure. Practically aloof from them, except for a few moments on election day, stand the mass of American citizens busy with their own money-getting or problem-solving, and only too ready to believe that their representatives are admirable. They pause to vote as they pause to snatch a sandwich at a railroad station. "Five minutes for refreshments!" Five minutes for political obligations! Individually there are thousands of strictly honest and noble-hearted men in the United States. Who doubts it? The originality and strength of the American character is being constantly manifested in every field of life. But there we speak of individuals; here we are concerned with majorities and the question of average morality and choice. For though we have an aspiring and enlightened van of citizens to point the way, you must remember that emigration and natural growth has given us tens of thousands of ignorant, prejudiced, and sometimes unscrupulous citizens, each of whose votes counts one. Perhaps it is true--and here is my grain of consolation or hope--that the average voter is so easy-going, so long-suffering, so indisposed to find fault, so selfishly busy with his own affairs, so proud of our institutions and himself, so afraid of hurting other people's feelings, and so generally indifferent as to public matters, provided his own are serene, that he chooses to wink at bribery if it be not in plain view, and likes to deceive himself into believing that there is nothing wrong. The long and short of it seems to be that the average American citizen is a good fellow, and in his capacity of good fellow cannot afford to be too critical and particular. He leaves that to the reformer, the literary man, the dude, the college professor, the mug-wump, the philosopher, and other impractical and un-American people. If so, what has become of that heritage of his forefathers, the stern Puritan conscience? Swept away in the great wave of material progress which has centred all his energies on what he calls success, and given to the power of money a luring importance which is apt to make the scruples of the spirit seem unsubstantial and bothersome. An easy-going, trouble-detesting, self-absorbed democracy between the buffers of rapacity and rascality.

A disagreeable conclusion for an optimist, yet less gloomy than the other alternative. This condition admits of cure, for it suggests a torpid conscience rather than deliberate acquiescence. It indicates that the representatives are betraying the people, and that there is room for hope that the people eventually may rise in their might and call them to account. If they do, I beg as a philosopher with humorous proclivities, to caution them against seizing the wrong pig by the ear. Let them fix the blame where it belongs, and not hold the corporations and the money power wholly responsible. It may be possible in time to abolish trusts and cause rich men sleepless nights in the crusading name of populism, but that will avail little unless at the same time they go to the real root of the matter, and quicken the average conscience and strengthen the moral purpose of the plain people of the United States. There will be leading villains and low comedians so long as society permits, and so long as the conscience of democracy is torpid. The players in the drama are, after all, only the people themselves. Charles the First was beheaded because he betrayed the liberties of the people. Alas! there is no such remedy for a corrupt democracy, for its heads are like those of Hydra, and it would be itself both the victim and the executioner.

_THE END_

_D. B. Updike
The Merrymount Press
104 Chestnut Street
Boston_

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