384 LITERARY PAPERS 



try, etc. (desirable and precious advantages as they all are), 

 do of themselves determine and yield to our experiment of 

 democracy the fruitage of success. Society in these States is 

 canker' d, crude, superstitious, and rotten. Political, or law- 

 made society is, and private, or voluntary society is also. . . . 

 The spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of 

 hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not in the women, 

 nor the women in the men. The aim of all the litterateurs is 

 to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, 

 etc., the most dismal phantoms I know, usurp the name of re- 

 ligions." 



He tells of the business depravity of our country: that it "is 

 not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater." He 

 speaks of all official services and departments as "tainted" 

 and saturated in "corruption" and "falsehood." These are 

 the sins that men have to answer for. Woman's share of all 

 this purification is her part in "fashionable life, flippancy, 

 tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims or no aims at all." 

 These things are all untruth, soul-unsatisfying. All these ex- 

 crescences are to be cut away, and in their stead arise " char- 

 ity and personal force the only investments worth any- 

 thing." 



Whitman would favor the financial independence of wo- 

 man as part of his scheme. He says, "my theory includes 

 riches and the getting of riches," and he maintains that, after 

 the rights of property have been listened to and acquiesced 

 in, the liberalism of these United States asks "for men and 

 women well off, owners of houses and acres, and with cash 

 in the bank." Thus he would extend wealth to all, giving to 

 men and women money, products, and power as a base upon 

 which to raise the edifice of personal liberty. He does not sug- 

 gest how these riches are individually to accrue, although he 

 condemns modern business methods and despises materiality 

 as the aim of all effort; still he is not in sympathy with the 

 idea that "property is theft," for in other passages than those 

 just quoted he perceives "clearly that the extreme business 

 energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth preva- 

 lent in the United States, are parts of amelioration and pro- 



