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The
second class of authors of “proletarian” fiction are those
who were born in the proletarian milieu they describe in
their books. These men have detached themselves from the
environment of manual workers and have joined the ranks of
professional people. They are not like the proletarian
authors of “bourgeois” background under the necessity to
embark upon special research in order to learn something
about the life of the wage earners. They can draw from their
own experience.
This personal experience
teaches them things that flatly contradict essential dogmas
of the socialist creed. Gifted and hard-working sons of
parents living in modest conditions are not barred from
access to more satisfactory positions. The authors of
“proletarian” background stand themselves in witness of this
fact. They know why they themselves succeeded while most of
their brothers and mates did not. In the course of their
advance to a better station in life they had ample
opportunity to meet other young men who, like themselves,
were eager to learn and to advance. They know why some of
them found their way and others missed it. Now, living with
the “bourgeois,” they discover that what distinguishes the
man who makes more money from another who makes less is not
that the former is a scoundrel. They would not have risen
above the level in which they were born if they were so
stupid as not to see that many of the businessmen and
professional people are self-made men who, like themselves,
started poor. They cannot fail to realize that differences
in income are due to factors other than to those suggested
by socialist resentment.
If such authors indulge
in writing what is in fact prosocialist homilectics, they
are insincere. Their novels and plays are not veracious and
therefore nothing but trash. They are far below the
standards of the books of their colleagues of “bourgeois”
origin who at least believe in what they are writing.
The socialist authors do
not content themselves with depicting the conditions of the
victims of capitalism. They also deal with the life and the
doings of its beneficiaries, the businessmen. They are
intent upon disclosing to the readers how profits come into
existence. As they themselves – thank God – are not familiar
with such a dirty subject, they first search for information
in the books of competent historians. This is what these
experts tell them about the “financial gangsters” and
“robber barons” and the way they acquired riches: “He began
his career as a cattle drover, which means that he bought
farmers’ cattle and drove them to the market to sell. The
cattle were sold to the butchers by weight. Just before they
got to the market he fed them salt and gave them large
quantities of water to drink. A gallon of water weighs about
eight pounds. Put three or four gallons of water in a cow,
and you have something extra when it comes to selling her.”(3)
In this vein dozens and dozens of novels and plays report
the transactions of the villain of their plot, the
businessman. The tycoons became rich by selling cracked
steel and rotten food, shoes with cardboard soles and cotton
goods for silk. They bribed the senators and the governors,
the judges and the police. They cheated their customers and
their workers. It is a very simple story.
It never occurred to
these authors that their narration implicitly describes all
other Americans as perfect idiots whom every rascal can
easily dupe. The above mentioned trick of the inflated cows
is the most primitive and oldest method of swindling. It is
hardly to be believed that there are in any part of the
world cattle buyers stupid enough to be hoodwinked by it. To
assume that there were in the United States butchers who
could be beguiled in this way is to expect too much from the
reader’s simplicity. It is the same with all similar fables.
In his private life the
businessman, as the “progressive” author paints him, is a
barbarian, a gambler and a drunkard. He spends his days at
the race tracks, his evenings in night clubs and his nights
with mistresses. As Marx and Engels pointed out in the
Communist Manifesto, these “bourgeois, not content with
having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at
their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the
greatest pleasure in seducing each others’ wives.” This is
how American business is mirrored in a great part of
American literature(4).
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