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POLITIK

TO
MARY JO DANGERFIELD
AND
FRANCIS SPENCER
BECAUSE THEY ARE VERY YOUNG
AMERICANS
 
 

FIRST PRINTING

Copyright, 1947, by Lloyd R. Morris
All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions

Published in New York by Random House, Inc.,
and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada,
by Random House of Canada, Ltd., 1947

Designed by Meyer Wagman

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The story of the American mind and heart during the past fifty years, told with ironic wit and deep nostalgia; a book to make you enjoy the past and understand the present; a cavalcade of America that both recreates and interprets the most extraordinary era of our history.

In 1896, Americans serenely faced the future. They were moving along the highroad of progress, and moving fast. Just beyond the horizon lay the promised land. They differed chiefly about the best means of reaching what was so obviously attainable. Under the circumstances to be a pessimist was to be a queer fish.

In 1946 their mood was very different. During the interval, their physical and social environment had been completely transformed. They had advanced, as no other nation in history, toward power, wealth, and material possessions. In the common view, these were what made existence more secure and more satisfying. But few Americans considered life as secure and satisfying as it had been fifty years earlier. Confidence and faith had evaporated. Skepticism was commonplace. Pessimism. was no longer eccentric. The weather had shifted from fair to overcast, and the American dream had taken on the quality of a mirage.

The parallel developments of unexampled progress and deepening disillusion are the subject of this book. It surveys the radical changes that have occurred in our lifethe revolution ,in customs, manners, and moralsin terms of the journalists, writers, philosophers, and religious and social leaders who have shaped our contemporary culture and helped make the moral weather in which we are living today.

Lloyd Morris, teacher, critic, and man of letters, is best known for his biography of Hawthorne (The Rebellious Puritan); his collaboration with John van Druten in The Damask Cheek; and his autobiography, Threshold in the Sun, which both the New Yorker and the New York Times compared to that American classic, The Education of Henry Adams. By the publication of Postscript to Yesterday he takes his place as one of the foremost social historians of this generation. (Electronic Information Network entry on Lloyd R. Morris, 1893 - 1954)
 
 

FOUR PORTRAITS FROM POSTSCRIPT TO YESTERDAY

from Samuel Dickson, Isadora Duncan (1878-1927)

ISADORA DUNCAN's love affairs were numerous and she embarked on every one as if it were destined to be perfect and permanent. She was less promiscuous than psychically virginal. Men failed her with tedious unanimity. She asked nothing of them - except perfection.

from Anarchy Archives, An Online Research Center on the History and Theory of Anarchism, Goldman Archive

Short, stocky, exceedingly plain, EMMA GOLDMAN looked like a strong-minded, respectable housewife. She was strong-minded, no housewife, and anything but respectable. Her Prim white shirtwaist and black skirt disguised a proletarian Aspasia whose tempestuous love affairs, whatever their private Passion, were always public demonstrations of a theory. Emma Goldman loved theories with an indiscriminate ardor. The violence of her affection for ideas was equaled only by the violence of her antipathy to capitalists and reformers. As she was convinced that every attractive idea ought to be adopted, her life-except for intervals spent in prison-held few vacant moments. In the phrase of the day, she "believed in experience". So her path was littered with abandoned lovers and discarded philosophies. To all of them she had been faithful, in her fashion. Each had seemed irresistible-for a while.

from Allan R. May, Dutch Schultz: Beer Baron of the Bronx

DUTCH SCHULTZ performed a traditionally approved economic function. By effecting the consolidation of independent units, he eliminated waste, promoted efficiency and replaced the disorder of an obsolete individualism with rigorous discipline.... He cheerfully recognized the "right of the inefficient to die" and made himself its willing instrument. Death solved the problem of competition.

from Guinan, Silent Ladies & Gents

Like Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, MISS TEXAS GUINAN wished to redeem her world from the cardinal sin of dullness. Like Mrs. Fish, she was singularly free of illusions and possessed a notable talent for imaginative insult. Seated in the center of her nightly bedlam, her diamonds blazing and her gown shining with sequins, armed with a clapper and police whistle to ward off any intolerable momentary silence, she, would welcome patrons with a-, loud, cheerful, full-throated "Hello, sucker! ". . . . Life, as she saw it from her table, had the look of madness and she took a malicious pleasure in abusing it, making it more wacky, stepping up its frenzy.... By nature, she was a small-town woman, inclined to simple decencies.

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Table of Contents

PREFACE ..... xi

INTRODUCTION: The Look of Life ..... xv

Part One:

THE SOCIAL SCENE

CHAPTER I: The Lady Vanishes

 CHAPTFR 11: The Woman Takes Over ..... 32

CHAPTFR III: The Fingers in the Pie  ..... 64

Part Two:

THE INTERPRETERS' HOUSE

CHAPTER IV: The Melancholy of the Masters ..... 89

CHAPTER V: The Scepticism of the Young .....107

CHAPTIER VI: Seven Pillars of Wisdom .....134

CHAPTER V11: Across the Footlights ..... 172

Part Three:

A MATTER OF RECORD

CHAPTER IX: "Raising the Tone of Democracy" ...... 267

Part Four:

THE FEAST OF REASON AND THE FLOW OF SOUL

CiiAiPTER X: All Life is an Experiment ...... 321

CHAPTER Xl: The Mourners Go About the Streets ..... 378

CHAPTER XII: The Mysticism of the Middie Classes ..... 422

CONCLUSION:

At the End of an Era ...... 444