American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  300 [Beard’s conclusions]: Economic Interpretation, pp. 324–25.

  [Response to Beard’s Interpretation]: quoted in Goldman, pp. 153–54.

  [Lerner on Beard’s Interpretation]: Max Lerner, Ideas Are Weapons (Viking Press, 1939), p. 154.

  301 [Madison on ideas and interests]: The Federalist, Jacob E. Cooke, ed. (Wesleyan UniversityPress, 1961), no. 10, quoted at pp. 57–59.

  [Holmes on Beard’s Interpretation]: quoted in Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, pp. 212–13.

  On Charles A. Beard and his Interpretation in general, see John Patrick Diggins, “Power and Authority in American History: The Case of Charles A. Beard and His Critics,” American Historical Review, vol. 86, no. 4 (October 1981), pp. 701–30.

  302 [Beard as a theorist]: Harold J. Laski, “Charles Beard: An English View,” in Howard K.Beale, ed., Charles A. Beard: An Appraisal (University of Kentucky Press, 1954), pp. 9–24.

  302–3 [Veblen’s personality and background]: Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America (Viking Press, 1934]: David Riesman, Thorstein Veblen (Scribner’s, 1953); Max Lerner, ed..The Portable Veblen (Viking Press, 1948), “Introduction” by Lerner.

  303 [Veblen chrestomathy]: Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Modern Library,1934), pp. 274. 170–71, 141, 143, 140, respectively.

  [Veblen’s basic philosophy]: Bernard Rosenberg, The Values of Veblen (Public Affairs Press, 1956); Stanley Matthew Daugert, The Philosophy of Veblen (King’s Crown Press, 1950).

  [Veblen on the subordination of women]:John P.Diggins, The Bard of Savagery (Seabury Press, 1978). ch. 8.

  [Veblen and Marx]: Diggins, Bard of Savagery, part 2; Veblen, “The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers,” in Veblen, Veblen on Marx, Race, Science and Economics (Capricorn Books, 1969), pp. 409–56; J. A. Hobson, Veblen (Chapman and Hall, 1936).

  304 [Dobriansky on Veblen]: Lev E. Dobriansky, Veblenism: A New Critique (Public Affairs Press,1957). esp. ch. 9.

  [Veblen’s failure to offer comprehensive social alternative]: Arthur K. Davis, “Sociological Elements in Veblen’s Economic Theory,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 53, no. 2 (June 1945). pp. 132–49.

  [Irish gardener to Adams]: Education of Henry Adams, op. cit., p. 16.

  [Adams in Washington]: Van Wyck Brooks, New England: Indian Summer (E. P. Dutton, 1940), ch. 17.

  305 [Henry Adams, life and ideas]: Henry Brooks Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams: The Major Phase (Harvard University Press, 1964);R. P. Blackmur, Henry Adams (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980); David R. Contosta, Henry Adams and the American Experiment (Little, Brown, 1980); John J. Conder, A Formula of His Own (University of Chicago Press, 1970); William Dusinberre, Henry Adams: The Myth of Failure (University Press of Virginia, 1980).

  [Kelvin on modern biologists]: quoted in Samuels, p. 476.

  [James on not understanding Adams’s theory]: ibid., p. 485.

  [Adams on power, Roosevelt, and trusts]: Education of Henry Adams, pp. 418, 500.

  306 [Brooks Adams’s views]: Brooks Adams, “Introductory Note,” in Henry Adams, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (Macmillan, 1920), pp. v–xiii; Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay (Swan Sonnenschein, 1895).

  [Charles Francis Adams on being bored]: Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams, January 15, 1908, Henry Brooks Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, see also, Ford, Letters of Henry Adams, op. cit.,vol. 2, pp. 487–88 (Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., January 17, 1908).

  Art: “All That Is Holy Is Profaned”

  306 [Greenwich Village, early 1900s]: Arthur Frank Wertheim, The New York Little Renaissance (New York University Press, 1976); John A. Kouwenhoven, The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York (Doubleday, 1953), Group Six; Frederick J. Hoffman, The Twenties (Viking Press, 1955), ch. 1.

  307 [“Everybody was freeing themselves”]: Floyd Dell, quoted in Goldman, op. cit., p. 224.

  [Washington Square boardinghouse ofthe great]: Gilbert Tauber and Samuel Kaplan, The New York City Handbook (Doubleday, 1966), p. 467.

  [A bastard and the “bourgeois pigs”]: quoted in Goldman, p. 225.

  308 [Luhan’s voice]: Maurice Sterne, quoted in Wertheim, p. 91.

  [The Luhan salon]: Mabel Dodge Luhan, Movers and Shakers, vol. 3 of Intimate Memoirs (Harcourt, Brace, 1933–36), p. 83.

  [Reed on Luhan]: quoted in Wertheim, p. 91.

  [“Melt, You Women!”]: ibid.

  [Marx on the bourgeois epoch]: quoted in Justin Kaplan, review ofMarshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (Simon and Schuster, 1982), Harvard Magazine (March–April 1982), pp. 8–9.

  [The American art establishment, late nineteenth century]: Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (Hill and Wang, 1982), esp. ch. 5, quoted at pp. 144–45; Robert M. Crunden, Ministers of Reform (Basic Books, 1982), pp. 102–3.

  309 [“And I dislike unrest”]: Sir Purdon Clarke, quoted in Herbert J. Seligmann, “291: A Vision Through Photography,” in Waldo Frank et al., America & Alfred Stieglitz (Aperture, 1975), p. 60.

  [New currents in art, late nineteenth century]: Oliver W. Larkin, Art and Life in America (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), book 4; Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Carol Troyen, and Trevor J. Fairbrother, A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760–1910 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1983), chs. 8–9; Trachtenberg, passim.

  [Homer]: Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work of Winslow Homer (Harry N. Abrams, 1979); Lloyd Goodrich, Winslow Homer (Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art-Macmillan, 1945).

  [“Exactly as it appears”]: quoted in James T. Flexner, That Wilder Image (Little, Brown, 1962), pp. 345–46.

  [Eakins]: Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Times of Thomas Eakins (Grossman, 1974); Sylvan Schendler, Eakins (Little, Brown, 1967).

  [“Physiology from top to toe”]: quoted in Larkin, p. 277.

  310 [“Drunks and slatterns”]: Outlook, quoted in ibid., p. 336.

  [“Paint the ugly”]: ibid.

  [The Eight]: Bernard B. Perlman, The Immortal Eight (Exposition Press, 1962); Ira Glauckens, William Glauckens and the Ashcan Group (Crown, 1957); Wertheim, pp. 131–36.

  [Henri]: William Innes Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle (Cornell University Press, 1969); Perlman, pp. 39–64 and passim.

  [Henri’s convictions about painting]: Crunden, p. 104.

  [Stieglitz]: Dorothy Norman, Albert Stieglitz: An American Seer (Random House, 1960); Sue Davidson Lowe, Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983); Sara Greenough and Juan Hamilton, eds., Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs and Writings (Callaway Editions, 1983); Waldo Frank et al.

  311 [“Not very elevating”]: W. B. McCormick, quoted in Norman, p. 72.

  [Armory Show]: Larkin, ch. 28. I have drawn heavily from Larkin in describing the exhibits, especially the “American room,” quoted from Larkin at p. 363.

  [Century review of Armory Show]: ibid., p. 364.

  312 [Roosevelt on the Armory Show]: quoted in Crunden, p. 114.

  [Loss of continuity between art and experience]: Larkin, p. 348.

  [Mumford on Stieglitz assimilating the machine]: Mumford, “The Metropolitan Milieu,” in Waldo Frank et al., p. 32.

  313 [Wright on the uglification of America]: quoted in Crunden, pp. 158–59.

  [Wright on the machine and Democracy]: ibid., p. 157.

  Writing: “Venerable Ideas Are Swept Away”

  [Sloan and The Masses]: Wertheim, op. cit., pp. 37–44; Bruce St. John, ed., John Sloan’s New York Scene, from the Diaries, Notes and Correspondence, 1906–1913 (Harper & Row, 1965); Crunden, op. cit., pp. 111–12.

  [Art Young]: Young, Art Young: His Life and Times, John N. Beffel, ed. (Sheridan House, 1939), esp. ch. 26.

  [Eastman]: Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), ch. 1 and passim; William O’Neill, The Last Romantic (Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. ch. 2; Max Ea
stman, Enjoyment of Living (Harper & Bros., 1948), esp. parts 6 and 7; Wertheim, pp. 34–35.

  [Eastman’s appointment]: Young, p. 275.

  314 [“We live on scraps”]: quoted in Wertheim, p. 43.

  [Secession at The Masses]: ibid., pp. 43–44, Young quoted at p. 43.

  [The Seven Arts]: ibid., pp. 173–83, Oppenheim quoted at p. 174; James Oppenheim, “The Story of the Seven Arts,” The American Mercury, vol. 20, no. 78 (June 1930), pp. 156–64.

  [Bourne]: Louis Filler, Randolph Bourne (American Council on Public Affairs, 1943); Max Lerner, “Randolph Bourne and Two Generations,” Twice a Year, vols. 5–6 (double number: Fall–Winter 1940 and Spring–Summer 1941), pp. 54–78.

  [Oppenheim on Bourne]: “The Story of the Seven Arts,” p. 163.

  [Mencken and The Smart Set]: Wertheim, ch. 12; C. L. Bode, Mencken (Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), esp. ch. 5. The six-volume “series” of Prejudices (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919–27) offers a selection, with some revisions, of Mencken’s contributions to The Smart Set.

  315 [Mencken’s ambition for The Smart Set]: quoted in Wertheim, p. 197.

  [“Poet’s Free Lunch”]: ibid., p. 196; Bode, p. 71.

  [Mencken and the new poets]: Mencken, “The New Poetry Movement,” in Mencken, Prejudices: First Series (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919), pp. 83–96.

  [Others]: Wertheim, pp. 102–8.

  [Poetry]: Harriet Monroe, A Poet’s Life (Macmillan, 1938), esp. chs. 24–27; Dale Kramer, Chicago Renaissance: The Literary Life in the Midwest, 1900–1930 (Appleton-Century, 1966), ch. 15; “Bastien von Helmholtz” (Ezra Pound), “Review: Poetry: A Magazine of Verse,” The Egoist (reprinted by Kraus Reprint), vol. 1, no. 11 (June 1, 1914), p. 215.

  [Monroe circular]: quoted in Monroe, p. 251.

  [“Keenest young literary group”]: ibid., p. 259.

  316 [Pound’s letter to Monroe]: August 18, 1912, in D. D. Paige, ed., The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941 (Harcourt, Brace, 1950), pp. 9–10, quoted at p. 10.

  [Principles of Imagism]: “F. S. Flint” (Ezra Pound), “Imagisme,” Poetry, vol. 1, no. 6 (March 1913), p. 199.

  [“Image” defined]: Pound, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste,” ibid., p. 200.

  [Dreiser and Mencken]: W. A. Swanberg, Dreiser (Scribner’s, 1965), pp. 124–27, Dreiser quoted at p. 126; Bode, pp. 103–5.

  317 [Dreiser’s family]: Swanberg, ch. 1.

  [Dreiser’s years before Carrie]: ibid., pp. 23–81.

  [Dreiser as first important American writer from a non-Anglo-Saxon, lower-class background]: John Lydenberg, “Theodore Dreiser: Ishmael in the Jungle,” in Lydenberg, ed., Dreiser: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice-Hall, 1971), p. 24.

  318 [Ford on Dreiser]: Ford, “Theodore Dreiser,” The American Mercury, vol. 40, no. 160 (April 1937). p. 495.

  [Doubleday and Carrie]: Swanberg, pp. 85–90.

  [Early reviews of Carrie]: ibid., pp. 91–92; Donald Pizer, ed., Critical Essays on Theodore Dreiser (G. K. Hall, 1981), pp. 157–68.

  [“Mr. Dreiser can not punctuate”]: Harriet Merton Lyon, “Theodore Dreiser’s ‘Sister Carrie’ ” (1907), in Pizer, p. 163.

  319 [Markels on Dreiser]: Markel, “Dreiser and the Plotting of Inarticulate Experience,” in Pizer, p. 186.

  [“Bitter, brutal insistence”]: Dreiser, The ‘Genius’ (Horace Liveright, 1923), p. 231.

  [“Old, mournful Carrie”]: Dreiser, Sister Carrie (“The Pennsylvania Edition”; University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), p. 487.

  [“Rubber-stamp formulae”]: Mencken, “The Dreiser Bugaboo,” The Seven Arts (reprinted .by AMS), vol. 2 (August 1917). p. 517.

  [Young Edith Jones]: Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (D. Appleton-Century, 1934), chs. 1–4; R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton (Harper & Row, 1975), chs. 2–3.

  [Father’s library]: Backward Glance, pp. 64–72.

  [First literary effort]: ibid., p. 73.

  [Trilling on Wharton]: Diana Trilling, “The House of Mirth Revisited,” in Irving Howe, ed., Edith Wharton: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 105.

  [Kazin on function of genteel women]: Kazin, On Native Grounds (Doublcday, 1956), p. 55.

  321 [“What marriage was really like”]: quoted in Lewis, p. 53.

  322 [Archer on emancipating his wife]: Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Modern Library, 1920), p. 196.

  [Roosevelt on cleaning out the stable]: Age of Innocence, pp. 348–49.

  [Best-sellers, 1901–1908]: Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History (Harper & Row, 1976), p. 858.

  [Sales of Age of Innocence]: Lewis, p. 429.

  [Dreiser on discovering America]: quoted in Kazin, p. 68.

  323 [Generous illusions and mean truths]: Wharton, The House of Mirth (Berkley Books, 1981), p. 71.

  “All That Is Solid Melts into Air”

  [Paterson strike and pageant]: John Reed, “War in Paterson,” in William L. O’Neill, ed., Echoes of Revolt: The Masses, 1911–1917 (Quadrangle, 1966), pp. 143–47; William D. Haywood, Bill Haywood’s Book (International Publishers, 1929), pp. 261–64; Joyce L. Kornbluh, Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology (University of Michigan Press, 1964), ch. 7; Wertheim, op. cit., pp. 51–57.

  [Bourne on pageant]: Randolph Bourne, “Pageantry and Social Art,” in Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings, 1911–1918, Olaf Hansen, ed. (Urizen Books, 1977), p. 519.

  324 [Flynn’s judgment of pageant]: Flynn, “The Truth about the Paterson Strike,” address given January 13, 1914, reprinted in Kornbluh, pp. 215–25, esp. pp. 221–22.

  9. THE REFORMATION OF ECONOMIC POWER

  325 [Roosevelt’s pre-presidential career]: Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979); David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (Simon and Schuster, 1981); Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard University Press, 1951–54), vol. 1.

  326 [Roosevelt’s personality and views]: John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Harvard University Press, 1967); Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt (Longmans, Green, 1958); John M. Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt: The Years of Decision,” appendix 9, in Morison, Letters, vol. 1, pp. 1484–94; Morris; McCullough.

  [Roosevelt’s killing of neighbor’s dog]: Morris, p. 98.

  [Roosevelt on Irish fellow legislators]: Theodore Roosevelt, “Diary of Five Months in the New York Legislature,” in Morison, Letters, vol. 2, appendix 1, pp. 1469–73, quoted at p. 1470.

  [“Wealthy criminal class”]: quoted in Wagenknecht, p. 217.

  [Roosevelt and Social Darwinism]: William Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961), pp. 62, 92, 99, 140.

  [Roosevelt on self-help and struggle]: quoted in Morris, pp. 348, 571.

  [Roosevelt on the “best classes” and on sterilizing the criminal and the feebleminded]: quoted in Wagenknecht, p. 86.

  327 [Roosevelt’s reading]: Blum in Morison, vol. 1, pp. 1488–91.

  [Roosevelt on social critics]: quoted in ibid., p. 1491.

  327 [Roosevelt’s qualified admiration of Tolstoy]: Harbaugh, p. 460.

  [Roosevelt on Longfellow]: Roosevelt to Arlo Bates, September 29, 1897, in Morison, Letters, vol. 1, p. 695.

  [Roosevelt on Chaucer]: Roosevelt to Cecil Arthur Spring Rice, May 3, 1892, in ibid., vol. 1, p. 277.

  [Roosevelt in his biographies of Benton and Cromwell]: Morris, pp. 332–35, 705.

  [Adams on Roosevelt]: Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Houghton Mifflin, 1974). p. 417.

  [Roosevelt’s anger over query as to his presidential ambition]: Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (Harcourt, Brace, 1931), pp. 258–60, Roosevelt quoted at pp. 259, 260.

  328 [“The Man with the Hoe”]: quoted in Mark Sullivan, Our Times (Scribner’s, 1926–35), vol. 2,p. 239.

  The Personal Uses of Power

  [“I was a sickly and timid boy”]: Roosevelt to Edward Sanford Martin, November 26, 1900, in Morison, Letters, op. cit., vo
l. 2, pp. 1442–45, quoted at pp. 1442, 1443.

  329 [Roosevelt on history]: ibid., p. 1444.

  [“Deep and damnable alliance”]: quoted in William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White (Macmillan, 1946), pp. 297–98.

  [White on Roosevelt]: ibid., p. 298.

  [Franchise tax bill]: Morris, op. cit., p. 698.

  330 [Program of “moderately positive action”]: Harbaugh, op.cit., pp. 155–57, quoted at p. 155.

  [Mr. Dooley on Roosevelt’s antitrust policy]: quoted in Elmer Ellis, Mr. Dooley’s America: A Life of Finley Peter Dunne (Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), p. 170.

  [Aldrich and Quay]: Nathaniel W. Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich (Scribner’s, 1930); James A. Kehl, Boss Rule in the Gilded Age: Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981).

  [Hanna on Roosevelt as “madman” and as “cowboy”]: quoted in Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (Harcourt, Brace, 1931), p. 223; and in H. H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding (Scribner’s, 1923), p. 101.

  331 [Reed’s retirement]: Samuel W. McCall, The Life ofThomas Brackett Reed (Houghton Mifflin,1914), ch. 20.

  [“Go slow”]: quoted in Harbaugh, p. 155.

  [Robinson’s warning to Roosevelt about business confidence]: quoted in ibid., pp. 153–54.

  [Roosevelt’s reply]: Roosevelt to Douglas Robinson, October 4, 1901, in Morison, Letters, vol. 3, pp. 159–60.

  [Morgan]: Frederick Lewis Allen, The Great Pierpont Morgan (Harper & Bros., 1949); Herbert L. Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan (Macmillan, 1939).

  332 [Early prosecutions under the Sherman Antitrust Act]: Hans B. Thorelli, The Federal Antitrust Policy (Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), esp. chs. 7 and 8.

  [Roosevelt on corporate control as question of presidential and popular power]: Thorelli, pp. 423–24; Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, as quoted in Harbaugh, p. 149.

  [Morgan-Roosevelt relationship]: Roosevelt to William Thomas O’Neil, November 12, 1882, in Morison, Letters, vol. 1, p. 58, footnote 2; Roosevelt to Elihu Root, December 5, 1900, in ibid., vol. 2, p. 1450; Allen, ch. 11; Satterlee, passim.