Prophet of Misery

Author Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, A Gallery of Women) returned to Manhattan from a tour of the U. S., declared to surprised newsmen: "All newspaper interviews are stupid. ... I will bet you $10 that you cannot get into your paper the things that I am going to say."

Excerpts from the subsequent interview: "Since modern business . . . has made American citizens into trudging asses, there is no great contemporary American literature. The constitutional government of America is abdicated. America is controlled by trusts. . . . They have the power to tax, which is the power to destroy. . . . The mental capacity of our school teachers is practically nullified by business authorities. . . . They must denounce Bolshevism and keep their mouths shut on Darwinism. The great educational thing ... is the Flag, and it is the duty of every citizen to be 100% American--in other words, a damn fool. . . . What do books concern themselves with nowadays? Why, with a little love affair, perhaps, of people's marital experiences for 20 years, of the adventures of some dub in the detective world, or how terrible the world looks to some dub who has never looked at it all. . . . Life is life. It may be a lolling, fat, disgusting thing, but in the hand of a master it would become a very sardonic thing . . . satire . . . irony . . . [or] a literature of despair like that of Dostoievski. That might be a good thing. . . . Literary men--hell! With millions of people ... in distress . . . they sit in New York composing odes to Spring. You can't count on them for leadership."

Author Dreiser's proposal to ease the misery of millions: to remove "the double yoke of government" (business & politics) under which the U.S. labors.

"Make Mr. Rockefeller Secretary of Oil and Gas. Send Mr. Atterbury [Pennsylvania R. R.'s president] to Washington to be Director of Railroads. Keep Mr. Mellon where he is. ... Add all the banks and insurance companies, all institutions that deal in money, to the Treasury Department. [The U. S.] is slowly but surely dwindling into a kind of economic joke. . . . We need a statesman, not an engineer in the White House. . . . The only thing that will stir the people is misery. They are not miserable enough yet, but they will be. Men could organize this land so it could support three or four times its population without any misery. ... I have never seen a land more beautiful. ... It could live beautifully."

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