Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington. Gilbert Clinton Wallace
of his property. As we would go over the names in the dynasty, Mr. Roosevelt would say almost invariably: "I can't describe him better to you than to say he's another – ," naming our mutual acquaintance, one of the many of his sort into whose hands by inheritance the control of business has descended.
Whatever the reason is, whether the inertia of large organization and the weakening of competition have favored the remaining in power of the second generation, whether we have evolved but one great type, the pioneer, whose day is past, and have not yet differentiated the true business man any more than we have differentiated the true statesman; whether that psychological change which I have sought to trace, that denial of freedom which once was the pioneers' – the new laws, the hard restraints operating now upon business as upon everything else and enforcing conformity – there are today no Titans, no one stealing fire from the heaven of Progress for the benefit of the human race – unless Henry Ford – no Carnegies, Morgans, Rockefellers, Harrimans, of the blessed nineties.
The old sureness is gone. The great pioneers were never assailed by doubts: they went straight forward, wearing the blinkers of a single aim, which kept their eyes like those of harnessed horses in the narrow road; God was with them, Progress was with them, Public Opinion was with them, the government at Washington was with them.
But their successors, like everyone else, look over their shoulders and see the shadows: see the government at Washington and attach a comic importance to that bewildered figure; just as the government at Washington looks over its shoulder and sees at New York the government by business, its traditional master, and wishing a master, is unaware that the twilight of the gods is come. And both see that greatest of all shadows, Public Opinion, the new monster of Frankenstein which everyone feeds with propaganda, and fears. These three things were all one in the bright days of the great pioneers, and in that perfect unity everyone was sure, so sure, and the few were free, so free!
Business no longer imposes itself up on the imagination through its extraordinary personalities. In vain do we seek to recover the past. In vain does the popular magazine fiction strive to furnish what life no longer does – the pioneer ideal, the hero who overcomes fire and flood and the machination of enemies and moves irresistibly forward to success, who believes in himself, whose motto is that the will is not to be gainsaid, whose life is one long Smile Week.
Vast propaganda exists to hold us true to the old faith; we read it as we used to read Sunday School fiction; but religion only sought its way into hearts within the covers of E. P. Roe when other channels began to close. We beat the bushes for the great, the kings that should come after Agamemnon. Monthlies of vast circulation tell us of every jack-of-all-trades who hits upon a million dollars. This one found out how to sell patches for automobile tires. That one was an office boy who never knew when it became five o'clock in the afternoon. Our faith requires vast stirring.
To the gradual weakening of the idea that business was all-wise and all-powerful, the war greatly contributed. Before 1914 men would say confidently, "Ah, but business, the bankers, will not let the nations fight. They have only to pull the strings of the purse and there will be no money for the fighters." After hostilities began they would say with equal confidence: "It will be all over in six weeks. The bankers will not let it go on."
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