70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



COMMEECIALISM 



By PE0FES30B JOHN J. STEVENSON 



NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 



THE pessimistic streak, woven into every man's nature, becomes a 

 broad band in the community when industrial interests are pros- 

 trate. During the past year, the men who during prosperous times 

 lived in the solitude of their sorrows have come forth and have found 

 appreciative listeners as they denounce our country's sins and despair 

 of its salvation. For a year they have gloated over the frailties of 

 society, the corruption of politics, the degradation of business morals; 

 they have pictured the gloomy future of a country sunk in materialism, 

 a prey to commercialism; they have sung in minor key of the purer 

 days when a man was counted for his worth, when mere wealth carried 

 no weight, when mind was more than matter, when dishonor was 

 iinknown. 



Every unprejudiced observer sees that affairs are sadly out of joint 

 and he longs for some mighty surgeon to adjust them; but he sees no 

 ray of hope, no cure for human woes in these jeremiads; he recognizes 

 only the old wailing, the old discord, with here and there a new note 

 to catch the ear of passers-by. It is as old as the race itself. Doubt- 

 less poor old Adam thought sadly of his bachelor days, untried by any 

 Eve of speculative temperament. The Prisse papyrus, written during 

 the twelfth dynasty and copied from one of the fifth, carries us back 

 to at least 2500 B.C.; its aged author grieved over the degeneracy of 

 his times and longed for those better days of the past. More than 

 fifteen hundred years afterwards the author of Ecclesiastes, pessimist 

 himself, rebuked querulous men who asked why the older days had 

 been better than these; Greek and Eoman literature is full of laments 

 and the poets sang wearily of a golden age, long past and past forever. 

 Our own Washington had little hope for his country as he considered 

 the decadence of public and private honor, the selfish anxiety for 

 advancement and the corruption prevailing everywhere toward the 

 close of the eighteenth century. Yet that was our age of gold, when 

 corporations were unknown, when railroads had not been conceived, 

 when petroleum had not soaked the land with its slime and Wall Street 

 had not come to crush the people's energies. 



Commercialism is the superabounding cause of all troables; a vague 



