Second Mencken Chrestomathy (10 page)

But it is in the United States that capitalism really enters into Heaven. Here alone does belief in it take on the virulence of a state religion; here alone are men jailed, beaten and done to death for merely meditating against it, as they used to be burned for “imagining the king’s death.” I doubt that in the whole country there are 50,000 native-born citizens who have so much as permitted their minds to dwell upon the theoretical possibility of ever supplanting it. That form of fancy, so instinctively abhorrent to the right-thinking Americano, is confined almost exclusively to foreigners—and, as every one knows, a foreigner has no rights, even of cogitation
in camera
, by American law, and whatever he is in favor of is
ipso facto
felonious, immoral and against God. Nay, capitalism is planted as firmly in These States as the belief in democracy. It will never be shaken down while you and I breathe and hope and sweat and pray. Long before it feels the first shooting pains down the legs there will be nothing left of us save the glorious immortality of heroes.

For these reasons, though I have read the work of Mr. and Mrs.
Webb with unflagging attention and great interest, I beg to suggest again that their title is unduly optimistic.

From the Chicago
Tribune
, Sept. 18, 1927

Those earnest, and, in the main, quite honest ladies and gentlemen who were lately deafening the world with their uproar about the Sacco and Vanzetti case fell into an ancient error: they assumed that the gross unfairness which showed itself in the prosecution was peculiar to the capitalistic system of government, and that under some other system it would have been avoided. This I presume to doubt. No government is ever fair in its dealings with men suspected of enmity to it. One of the principal functions of all government, indeed, is to put down such men, and it is one of the few governmental functions that are always performed diligently and
con amore
. If Sacco and Vanzetti had been oil millionaires, or coal magnates, or archbishops, or men of any similar training and prejudice, and if the scene of their trial had been Moscow instead of Boston, they would have been sent to bliss eternal quite as enthusiastically, and to the tune of precisely the same whoops and gloats.

I incline to think that in this business a capitalistic democracy is apt to be rather slacker than either a strong monarchy or a communistic state. The reason is not far to seek. It lies in the fact that under democracy the reigning plutocracy must execute its mandates through juries, which is to say, through the small bourgeoisie. The judges are easy to control, but the juries are sometimes very recalcitrant. Is it so soon forgotten that at least half of the men the American Department of Justice tried to send to prison during the late war for political heresies were acquitted by juries? The case of poor Debs is remembered, as the case of Sacco and Vanzetti will be remembered, but no one seems to recall the scores of imaginary “communists,” “anarchists,” “German spies” and other hell-cats who, despite the best efforts of professional witnesses in
the employ of the government,
i.e.
, of the plutocracy, were turned loose. The fact is that it is dangerous for the plutocracy and its agents to push juries too far. The men in the box must be handled discreetly, else they will run amok. If Judge Webster Thayer had denounced Sacco and Vanzetti to the jury in the terms he is said to have used in private, enough of the twelve would have revolted to make a mistrial. For the natural sympathy of humble men is with other humble men, and they sometimes show it unexpectedly and very resolutely. The moment it becomes possible for them to imagine themselves in the prisoner’s place—that moment they become skittish, and are no longer to be relied upon to serve God and country with due docility.

In the Sacco and Vanzetti case it was naturally hard for the jury to do any such imagining, for the two men were brought into court in a steel cage, and for weeks the local newspapers had been depicting them as dangerous anarchists, with a bomb in one hand and a stiletto in the other. They were, of course, nothing of the sort, but “philosophical” anarchists of the uplifting and sentimental variety—in brief, dreamers whose Utopia was scarcely to be distinguished from that of the Quakers. However, I am not so sure that the truth would have done them much good with the jury. For plain men dislike uplifters almost as much as they dislike bomb-throwers, and at the time of the trial there was a revulsion against the uplift throughout the United States. Thus, barring accident, it was pretty certain that Sacco and Vanzetti would be convicted, regardless of the actual evidence against them. They were, according to the ideas then prevailing, unpleasant and subversive men, and any stick was good enough to beat them with. They must tarry in Gehennah a long while before they get their revenge, but get it they will. At some time or other in the future there will be a Socialist government in one of the American States, and it will engage in the usual gaudy efforts to put down its enemies. Then the world will see a pair of stock-brokers go on trial for burning down a Labor Lyceum, and presently it will be horrified by their execution, and mobs of bank cashiers, butlers, newspaper editorial writers, clergymen, lawyers and other friends of the plutocracy will stone the American consulates at Barcelona, Lille and Montevideo.

Such are the ways of governments at all times and everywhere. I am surely no admirer of democracy, and so it pains me to have to say it, but I remain convinced that a democratic-capitalistic state is apt to be more humane in this department than any other kind of state. The cause of its relative mildness lies in its dual nature, which makes for weakness. Whenever a state is strong it is intolerant of dissent; when it is strong enough it puts down dissent with relentless violence. Here one state is as bad as another, or, at all events, potentially as bad. The Puritan theocracy of early New England hanged dissenters as gaily as they are now being hanged by the atheistic Union of Soviet Republics; the Prussian, Russian, Austrian, French and English monarchies were as alert against heresy as the militaristic-capitalistic
bloc
which now runs Italy or the plutocracy which runs Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts.

The only way to make a government tolerant, and hence genuinely free, is to keep it weak. The Liberals of the United States, after years of bitter experience, are beginning to grasp that elemental fact, and so one finds them abandoning their old demands for more and more laws, and greater and greater hordes of job-holders. But they learn slowly, as is the habit of earnest and indignant men at all times and everywhere. In the face of the obscenity of Law Enforcement they have ceased to believe in Prohibition, but most of them, blind to the fact that the Postoffice is already one of the most sinister agents of oppression in the United States, still talk sentimentally of government ownership. Some day some realist on their General Staff, suddenly barred from the mails for violating the delicate pruderies of a tender bureaucrat, will begin to figure out what he would do for telephone service if the telephones were controlled by a docile political hack from Indiana, and how he would get from Chicago to New York if another of the same sort had the power to refuse tickets to “Reds.”

Thomas Jefferson, the greatest of all American political philosophers, saw this clearly, and so he was in favor of keeping the government as weak as possible. He believed that in any dispute between a citizen and an official the citizen ought to have the benefit of every doubt. But Jefferson was too intelligent a man to believe that the sweet could be obtained without also taking in a
certain amount of the bitter. He knew that a weak government was very likely to be an unstable one—that its very mildness would be no more than a symptom of sickness. He swallowed the fact bravely, and even went to the length of arguing in favor of frequent revolutions. But not many men of today would go with him so far.

Most men incline in the other direction. They like a strong government because, so long as they do not offend it, it gives them protection and security; they are quite willing to give up some of their liberty, and even a great deal of it, in return for those boons. This, I take it, is the position of most respectable Americans today. They are not precisely in favor of rushing innocent men to the electric-chair, as Sacco and Vanzetti were rushed; they are simply in favor of letting the government frame any definition of public enemies, so long as it takes and scotches those public enemies who are actually and palpably dangerous to the peaceable citizen. Their view of it is thus much like their view of the policeman. Not wanting to be clubbed by him, they are polite to him. But they do not protest very violently when they see him clubbing some one else, for they assume that he knows his business.

It is easy to deride this attitude, but not easy to formulate a better one. In the department of government, as in all other departments, the plain man is confronted by harsh alternatives. When political wizards offer to show him a way out, it almost always becomes plain in short order that their way is quite as bad as the old ones, and maybe worse. So he sticks to his rough guesses and approximations. He would welcome, no doubt, a perfect government, but his instinct teaches him that it is as unimaginable as a perfect wife.

From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, Sept. 14, 1931

On September 4, 476, a gang of ruffians commanded by Odoacer the barbarian seized young Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman Emperor, and clapped him into a dungeon. This was at 10:40 in the forenoon. At the same instant the Roman Empire
blew up with a bang, and the Middle Ages began. The curious thing is that no one knew it. People went about their business as if nothing had happened. They complained that the times were hard, but that was all. Not even the learned were aware that a great epoch in history had come to a close, and another begun.

We of today may be just as blind. It may be that the so-called Modern Period is falling into chaos around our heads—that an entirely new epoch is beginning for mankind. It may be that the capitalistic system is blowing up, as the Roman system blew up. It may be that the new era is beginning in Russia, or somewhere else, or even here at home. If so, I can only say that I regret it extremely. The capitalistic system suits me precisely. I am aware of its defects, but on the whole it agrees with my prejudices and interests. If Communism is on the way I hope to be stuffed and on exhibition in the Smithsonian before it hits Maryland.

But all this is beside the point. The simple question is, can capitalism survive its present appalling attack of boils? Will it prevail against Bolshevism, or will it succumb? The question is by no means easy to answer. Capitalism is plainly wobbling, but is Bolshevism really any stronger? If it were as hard hit, wouldn’t it wobble too? Only time can tell, and time tells slowly, even in a frantic age. Meanwhile, let us ponder two facts. The first is that in England the greatest trading corporation in history, the very pearl and model of the capitalistic system, is plainly bankrupt. The other is that in the United States, where capitalism has been elevated to the august estate of a national religion with fifty Popes and 10,000 gaudy Cardinals, the whole pack of these inspired brethren, though the God of Rotary is in hourly communication with them, face a similar bankruptcy with blank faces, and haven’t the slightest notion what to do.

From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, May 12, 1940

No one can deny what is spread upon the minutes so copiously. The New Deal, only too plainly, is extending democracy to very remote places of decimals. Reaching out constantly for fresh fields
and pastures new, it gradually takes over the entire business of living, including birth and death. It undertakes not only to carry on all the customary enterprises of government, with constant embellishment; it also horns into such highly non-political matters as the planting and harvesting of crops, the pulling of teeth, and the propagation of the species. In particular, it undertakes to succor every one who feels that he is suffering from injustice, whether at the hands of his fellowmen or of his own chromosomes. If there is something you want but can’t get, it will get that something for you. And, contrariwise, if there is something you want and have got, it will take it away.

It would be hard to imagine a simpler system, or, in its first stages, a more successful one. Nearly all of us, in some particular or other, are have-nots, and here is an invitation to every have-not to step up to the bar and give it a name. The response is naturally large, and not only large but vociferous. The rejoicing of the beneficiaries is so loud that the groans of those who are mulcted can hardly be heard. The Hon. Mr. Roosevelt, the impresario of the riot, becomes the most popular politico ever known. So long as the money holds out, he can have not only a third term, but also a fourth, fifth and
n
th. The only question before the house is whether he will condescend to accept.

Meanwhile, theory keeps step with practise, and the career mendicant is supported and encouraged by the official metaphysician. It is the natural and bounden duty of democracy, we are told, to take care of its customers in all situations, at all times, and everywhere. If one of them lacks a job, then democracy must find it for him, and if the yield thereof is less than satisfactory to him, then democracy must adjust it to his desires. If he goes into business—say, farming—and makes a botch of it, his losses must be made good. If he craves a house beyond his means, then money to pay for it must be provided. If he has too many children, the supernumeraries must be lifted off his hands, and his energies released for the generation of more.

As I have said, the system is simple, and for a while it works well enough. The shrill gloats and exultations of A, who has got something for nothing, drown out the repining of B, who has lost something that he earned. B, in fact, becomes officially disreputable,
and the more he complains the more he is denounced and detested. He is moved, it appears, by a kind of selfishness which is incompatible with true democracy. He actually believes that his property is his own, to remain in his keeping until he chooses to part with it. He is told at once that his information on the point is inaccurate, and his morals more than dubious. In an ideal democracy, he learns, property is at the disposal, not of its owners, but of politicians, and the chief business of politicians is to collar it by fair means or foul, and redistribute it to those whose votes have put them in office.