The Social Order in an American Town

AN American town, large enough to contain a fairly complete representation of the different classes and types of people and social organizations, and yet not so large that individualities are submerged in the general mass, or the lines between the classes blurred and made indistinct, is a real epitome of American life. And the best and most typical qualities are to be found in suburban towns. In a town situated near a large city where it can draw nourishment from the city’s life and constantly react to it, and yet having a history and tradition of its own so that it does not become a mere colorless reflection of that other, one gets the real flavor of American life, and an insight into the way in which its fabric is woven.

If a modern writer wishes to win an imperishable name as a historian, he has only to write an exhaustive monograph on the life of such a town,— what kind of people live there, how they make their living, what are the social cliques, what the children are being taught in the schools, what the preachers are preaching from the pulpit, what the local political issues are, who form the ruling class, and how the local political machine is made up, what the newspapers and the leaders and the different classes think about things, what magazines and books the people read, how the people amuse themselves, even how they dress and what their houses look like, — in short, all those obvious things that we never think of mentioning; things that we would give much to know about our ancestors, but that we get only by the most laborious research, and then only in unsatisfactory fragments.

The writer who did this would not only have produced a complete sketch of American civilization in this year of 1913, but he would have given his contemporaries something serious and important to think about. We should then see ourselves for the first time in the glass, not in the touched-up portraits or hideous caricatures which now pass muster for what we know of ourselves. I shall not be foolish enough to attempt any such broad survey as this; but certain of the more obvious features of the social life of a suburban town where I used to spend my summers have tempted me to try to unravel its social psychology, and study the classes of people who live there and the influences and ideals that sway them as classes, — in short, the way they are typical of American life.

The ’lure of the city’ is a fact familiar enough in our social introspections, but its dramatic quality never grows stale. This contest between the city and the country that has been going on for fifty years has left the country moribund, and made the city chaotic. The country has been stripped of its traditions, and the city has grown so fast that it has not had time to form any. The suburban town is a sort of last stronghold of Americanism. It is the only place, at least in the East, where life has a real richness and depth. But it is on the firing-line; it has to struggle valiantly for its soul. The city cuts a wider and wider swath, and the suburbs are stretching in an everwidening circle from all our cities. The vortex of the city, even the smaller city, is so powerful that it sucks in the hardiest and sometimes the most distant towns, and strips them of all their individuality and personal charm. The city swamps its neighbors, turns them into mere aggregations of expressionless streets lined with box-like houses or shanties of stores, and degrades their pleasant meadows into parks and sites. These suburban annexes cease to have a life of their own, and become simply sleeping-places for commuters. The populations are so transient that the towns seem almost to be rebuilt and repopulated every ten years. And the only alternative to this state of affairs seems to be oblivion, stagnation, and slow decay.

When one does come, therefore, into a town which is near enough to a city to be stimulated by it, and yet which has been able to retain its old houses and streets, its old families, its old green, and its stone church, its meadow-land still stretching long fingers straight into the heart of the town, one breathes a new air. Here is America,— what it used to be, and what one wants to keep it. One strikes root in such a place, gets connected with something vital, begins to blot out the feeling of homelessness and sordidness that one has after a protracted journey through the dreary city outskirts and ramshackle towns and unkempt country that make up so much of our Eastern scenery.

In the East, between the pull of the city and the inundation of foreign immigration, we feel the slipping-away of the American ways more keenly. An Eastern town must be unusually tenacious to maintain itself against the currents, but it is for that reason all the more worthy of intensive study; for the forces and divisions and outlines in its social life are seen with the greater distinctness. Class lines that in other parts of the country, although very real, are softened and blurred, are seen here in clearer light. All the colors are much brighter and, for that very reason, the picture can be plainly seen and understood.

One cannot live long in a town like the one of which I speak, without feeling that the people are graded into very distinct social levels. It is a common enough saying that ihere are no classes in America, and this, of course, is true if by ’class’ is meant some rigid caste based on arbitrary distinctions of race or birth or wealth. But if all that is meant by class is a grading of social and economic superiority and inferiority, with definite groupings and levels of social favor, then such a town has classes, and America has classes. And these distinctions are important; for they influence the actions and ideas and ideals of the people in countless ways and form a necessary background for any real understanding of their life.

Lowest in the social scale is, of course, the factory class. The town has long been an important manufacturing centre, and it is possible to see here almost a history of industrialism in America. There is the old type of mill, now rapidly dying out, and only preserved in favored industries by a beneficent tariff. There is a woolen mill which is the most beautiful example of paternal feudalism that, can be found. The present owner inherited it from his father, who had inherited it from his. He lives in a big house overlooking the mill-pond, and personally visits the office every day. The mill employs hundreds of men, women, and children, and one would say that they were fortunate to be so singularly free from absentee capitalism. The owner is one of the most respected men in the community, head of the board of education, president of the local bank. And yet to an outsider it does not seem as if his employees are one whit better off than if they were working for a soulless corporation. The hours are the maximum allowed by law, the ages of the children the minimum, and there is much night work.

One who has had ideas of the solution of social problems by the developing of more brotherhood between employer and employee is rudely undeceived by the most cursory glance at an institution such as this. The employees of the mill are typical. There are little, dried-up men who have worked there for fifty years, — their sons and daughters joining them as fast as they grew up, — steady, self-respecting men who have perhaps saved enough to buy a little cottage near the mill. Then there are the younger men and women, mostly drifters, who stay in a factory until they are ’laid off’ in a season of depression, and then move about until they find work somewhere else. Lastly there is the horde of Italian and Polish boys and girls, begrimed, chattering children who pour out of the mill-gates at night when the whistle blows, and whom one hears running past again in the morning before seven, always hurrying, always chattering.

The town can already boast a Polish quarter and an Italian quarter, the former somehow infinitely the superior in prosperity and attractiveness, and apparently possessing a vigorous community life of its own. The Italian quarter is typical enough of the struggles of too many of our immigrants. It can hardly be possible that these people have left anything worse in the old country than this collection of indescribable hovels, most of them built by the owners, this network of unpaved streets and small gardens and ashes and filth; and the suffering in that mild native climate of theirs must have been far less than it is here. The town has given them a school and a chapel, but their fearful squalor, apparent to every man who walks about the town, has not seemed to distress their American neighbors in the least. The attitude of the latter is typical. They are filled with an almost childlike faith in the temporary nature of this misery. These people are in America now, you are told, and will soon be making money and building themselves comfortable homes. Meanwhile all that can be done is to surround them with the amenities of civilization, and wait.

The most impressive thing about the working class, on the whole, is the profound oblivion of the rest of the population to them. They form a very considerable proportion of the population, and yet it would be difficult to find any way in which they really count in the life of the town. The other classes have definite social institutions which bind them together, and give them not only recreation but influence. This working class has nothing of the kind. For amusements in their hours of leisure they go to the neighboring city; an occasional employees’ ball and a small Socialist local make up practically all of the institutional life of the people. The town thus seems to have a whole class living in it, but not of it, quite apart and detached from the currents of its life.

The psychology of this working class is different from that of the other classes. The prevailing tone is apathy. There is no discontent or envy of the well-to-do, but neither is there that restless eagerness to better their position, and that confidence in their ultimate prosperity, which the American spirit is supposed to instil into a man. Men in the trades seem to have this spirit, but it is noticeably absent from the factory class. Even the immigrants seem quickly to lose that flush of hope and ambition with which they arrive in this country. The factory routine seems to get into their very souls, so that their whole life settles down to a monotonous drudgery without a look forward or backward. They are chiefly concerned in holding their jobs, and escaping the horrors of unemployment. — in making both ends meet. Beyond this there is little horizon for day-dreaming and ambition. Life to them is a constant facing of naked realities, and an actual ’economy,’ or management, of resources, not an effort to impress themselves on their neighbors, and to conform to the ways of those about them. This deep-seated divergence in standards and interests from the rest of American life may or may not be important, for the factory class is thus far politically negligible; but it is interesting, and well calculated to suggest many unpleasant things to American minds.

The rest of the people, while they comprise two distinct classes, are much more homogeneous. They touch each other at all points that make for the broader life of the town, and diverge only on aspects of manners and social qualifications. There is first the ruling class, in this case really hereditary, consisting of the direct descendants of the early settlers, and of the men who built the old church in 1789. The old church has been the stronghold of their power; it preceded the town, and gave the old families a political preëminence which, until very recently, has never been seriously questioned. These families still own much of the land of the town, and their power and influence shows itself in a thousand ways. Their members are elders and trustees of the old church, officers of the banks, honorary members of committees for patriotic celebrations. No local enterprise can be started without their assent and approbation. They are not all rich men, by any means, but they are all surrounded by the indefinable glamour of prestige. They are the town, one somehow feels. They rule as all aristocracies do, by divine right. They are the safe men, the responsible men. Their opinions of people and things percolate down through the rest of the people. Their frown is sufficient to choke off a local enterprise; a word from them will quench the strongest of enthusiasms for a new idea or programme or project. It is their interest that determines town policy in the last resort. New schools, parks, fire-houses, municipal ownership, — all these questions are settled finally according to t he effect they will have on the pockets and interests of this ruling class.

And yet, strange to say, their activity is seldom direct. They work rather through that great indispensable middle class that makes up the third division of the townspeople. It is hard to define what separates these from the ruling class. Many of the families have lived in the town for many years; many of them arc wealthy; many of them have profitable businesses. And yet it is true that in most of the affairs of the town, this class seems to act as the agents of the ruling class. The members of this class are the real backbone of the town’s life. They organize the board of trade, “boom” the town, inaugurate and carry through the celebrations, do the political campaigning and organizing, and in general keep the civic machinery running. But little of what they do seems to be carried through on their own prestige. It is always with the advice and consent of the bigger men. This is the curious irony of aristocracies the world over, — that they can wield the ultimate power without bearing any of the responsibility, or doing any of the actual work. The ruling class in this town no longer assumes even political responsibility. The town committee is composed of members of the middle class, and all the political workers and henchmen throughout the town are equally plebeian. Those good people who lament that politics are corrupt because the ’best men’ will not enter public life, forget that this ruling class is behind everything that is done, and is getting its political work done at an extremely cheap rate. If the real rulers had any serious objection to the way things are run, they would soon enough lie in politics. They remain out because their interests are well taken care of; another class bears for them all the burden and strife of the day.

The difference between the ruling class and the middle class in our community, though apparently so intangible, shows itself in a dozen different ways. There is a distinct line of cleavage in social matters, in church matters, in recreation and business. ‘Society,’ of course, in the community is synonymous with the ruling class. An infallible instinct guides the managers of receptions and balls, and the lines are as jealously guarded as if there were actual barriers of nobility erected. The ladies have their literary clubs, where quiet, but none the less effective, campaigns are waged against the admission of undesirable plebeians. The young people ape their elders in everything. The epithet used by ‘society’ for those who are excluded from its privileges is ‘ordinary’ or ‘common’; the term is at once an explanation and an excuse for the exclusion.

The middle class, on their part, have their own society, and their own exclusions. Their social functions, however, have the virtue of being less formal and less secular. The nucleus of their social life is the church, and it is curious to observe how closely church lines follow these social lines. The aristocracy is centred in the old church, stanchly Presbyterian. Its temporal and spiritual affairs are in these aristocratic hands as absolutely as they were in the hands of the greatgrandfathers who built the church. There is, of course, a strong admixture of the middle class, but little can zeal and hard work do to win for them a seat at the councils. Their strongholds are the Baptist and Methodist churches, and it is the few members of the ruling class who happen to belong to those confessions who are the governed and disfranchised. The church means much more to these middle-class people than it does to the aristocracy. The services are conducted with greater ardor, and attended with much more regularity. The class of ‘ordinary’ people that support them have not reached the degree of sophistication that makes them ashamed of the hearty church-going of their ancestors. There is a Catholic church, but it confines its ministrations strictly to the working class. Nothing is known of it by the members of the other classes, and any entrance of its priest into public affairs is looked upon with the deepest suspicion.

In business matters the line between the two classes is equally sharp. The members of the ruling class hold, as a rule, business positions of considerable importance in the neighboring city, while the middle class is largely engaged in local trade, or in smaller positions in the city. There is a certain slight social stigma that attaches itself to a young man who takes up work in town, and the city is thus the goal of all the socially ambitious. There is a distinct prejudice, also, on the part of the ruling class against anything that savors of mechanical labor, and this is another point of divergence from the middle class, who are less squeamish. It would be unjust to imply that the ruling class is not industrious. There are no idle rich in the town, and the differences between the classes are differences of taste and business position, and not in the least of industry and ability.

Lastly, the two classes diverge in the way they amuse themselves. To the outsider it looks as if the middle class contrived to have a better time of it than the aristocracy. The most striking institution of the former is the lodge, — Masons and Odd Fellows and Elks and Woodmen. The class membership of these fraternal organizations is very evident. Of all the institutions of the town, the lodge is the most definitely middle-class. No member of the ruling class or the factory class can be found within the ranks. On the other hand, inclusion in the ‘Assembly ’ dances is the badge of aristocracy. The ruling class has only a near-by country club to compensate it for its exclusion from the lodges, and its native conservatism and thrift permit its giving to this club only a grudging and half-hearted patronage. In comparison with the busy social, political, and church life of the middle class, that of the aristocracy appears almost tame and uninteresting. Their natural caution, prudence, and reserve, and the constant sense of their position in the community, have kept them almost as poorly provided with social institutions as the factory class itself.

Thus these two classes live side by side in the town, strangely alike, yet strangely different, constantly reacting upon each other, each incomplete without the other. The ruling class is much more dependent, of course, on the middle class than the middle class is on it. For it draws its sustenance only from the inferiority of the middle class. Without that middle class, the spice and joy of aristocracy would be absent. The factory class is too utterly alien, indeed is hardly aware of the existence of an aristocracy, and could not, at its best, even serve and fortify and supplement the ruling class as does that class which the latter affects to despise as ‘ordinary.’

In quiet times the two classes seem almost merged into one, but let some knotty local issue arise, and the divergence is clearly seen. There is a certain amount of class jealousy exhibited at such times, and while it rarely affects the political field, it is apt to play havoc in the affairs of a church. That is why church politics are so carefully shunned; they have such fearful potentialities of trouble, and trouble that does not confine itself to the church, but reaches out into every aspect of town life. Religion is a very real thing in an American town, and a middle class that will take dictation in political matters from the ‘best men’ of the community will bitterly resent any attempt to force its church into action of which it does not approve, or which it is afraid it will not be able to lead. Proposals for church union, for civic organizations of men’s clubs, or for organized charity societies are fruitful causes of hard feelings and jealousies. It is hard to preach Christian unity in a town where a church is not only a religious body but the stronghold of a social class. The classes must evidently be merged before the churches can be.

Politically there is not this sensitiveness between the two classes. It is the presence of a foreign element that creates local issues, or it is the injection of religious personalities into a campaign. In suburban towns the dramatic political contests are not between the settled classes in the town, but between the old residents and the new, between the natives and the commuters. And since the commuter is simply an aggravated type of the modern nomadic American, the political fight in this town that I am speaking of may be fairly typical of a struggle that is going on with more or less virulence all over the land. In some ways the commuter is the most assimilable of all Americans. He is indeed far more fortunate than he deserves to be, for it is he who destroys the personality of a town. Passing lightly from suburb to suburb, sinking no roots, and moving his household gods without a trace of compunction and regret, this aimless drifter is the deadliest foe to the cultivation of that ripening love of surroundings that gives quality to a place, and quality, too, to the individual life. This element of the population depersonalizes American life by not giving it a chance to take root and grow. When it becomes strong enough it begins to play havoc with the politics of a town. For the commuters have permeated all the classes, and when they begin to take an interest, in the local issues, party and class lines are slashed into pieces. It is the perennially dramatic contest between the old and the new, and it makes an issue that, is really momentous for the future of the town. For the shifting of power means the decay of a tradition, and however self-centred and destitute of real public spirit may have been the rule of the aristocracy, no lover of his town wishes to see things turned over to a loose herd of temporary residents.

In the towns surrounding our town, political control has long since passed out of the hands of the old leaders into those of the commuters, and the communities have paid the penalty in the loss of their distinctive note and charm. In my town, also, it looks as if the fate of the ruling class were irretrievably sealed. They have recently alienated their middle-class following by a proposal to annex the town to the neighboring city, the argument being that annexation must come some time, and that it might as well be now, before all is lost. But this measure has called out all the latent patriotism of the people, and it will undoubtedly be defeated at the polls.

These later developments have brought out much that is typical of American life, for this contest has betrayed the incorrigible un-socialmindedness of the ruling class, the most thoroughly American of all. In spite of their pride in their station in the community, these men, living on the lands of their great-great-grandfathers, with ancestries stretching back to the early settlements, seem to have no sentiment for their community as a community. There is plenty of sentiment for their own class and their own lands, but none for the town. Since they are no longer at the helm, the town is to them almost as if it were not. They are sincerely puzzled and pained at the indignant outcry against the merging of the town wit h a corrupt, machine-ridden city. They say it will be good for the town to be known as a part of the city. It will raise the value of real estate, and they cannot see the exquisite naïveté which is lent to this argument by the fact that they themselves own most of the real estate in the town. This argument seems to have had weight, however, for the patriotic pride which the average landless American feels in the increase in real-estate values in his community seems to be quite undisturbed by any consideration of the increased tribute that he must pay for the indulgence of that sentiment.

The social spirit of this ruling class seems to consist in the delusion that its own personal interests are identical wit h those of the community at large. Some such philosophy animates, I suppose, many of the largo corporate and financial American bodies to-day.

The direct result of this annexation contest in my town has been a disillusionment of the middle class. The hearty admiration for the ’best men’ has turned into disgust at the meagreness of their local patriotism. The ruling class could keep its power only so long as nothing came to try it. But the heart of the people is in the right place; they admire the great ones of the ruling class because they attribute to them virtues which they do not possess; they admire the successful man because they think he is brave and generous and big, when really he may be only mean and grasping. They are beginning to remind one another that the leading men have never done anything for the town. Any one of half a dozen could endow a Young Men’s Christian Association, or some similar institution, which the town needs. Only recently did the town obtain a library, and then not through any exertion of the citizens, but as a windfall from an industrial princeling who had been born in the town, but had never lived there since his childhood.

There is something in the old notables of a town like this that wins almost a grudging admiration. Their self-respect is so stolid, their individualism so incorrigible, their lack of sensitiveness to the social appeal so overwhelming. In command of the board of education, they kept school facilities at the lowest possible point for years, until an iconoclastic superintendent aroused public sentiment and forced the erection of new buildings. The ruling class in command of the old church does nothing to extend its work beyond the traditional services and societies, although there is crying need for social work among the foreign population of the towm. And since this ruling class exercises all the spiritual initiative of the town, none of the other churches or societies stir out of the beaten paths or try any hazardous reforms or risky innovations.

This spiritual initiative is not a thing that is lightly lost. I have not meant to imply that the disillusionment of the middle class was likely to be permanent. On the contrary, even if political control does pass out of the hands of both classes into those of newcomers, the latter wall soon be brought under the spell. Wealth and social position will still lead the town. Even though discontent puts political power completely into the hands of the newcomers, they will find themselves unable to make headway against the ideals and prejudices of the ruling class. The neighboring towns have lost their personality because they have lost their ruling class, or because the ruling class has been in too hopeless a minority to maintain its influence. Where it can retain its hold on property and in church affairs, it will continue, though defeated, to be the salt of the earth; its tone will permeate the life of the town. That prevailing tone is, of course, conservative.

The town has been, as I have said, on the firing-line, in constant danger from capture by the commuter element, and consequently the ruling class has been throwm even more strongly on the defensive than is usual. This has shown itself in a distrust of the younger men; their entrance into church and political life has been deprecated, through fear that hot-headedness and an impatience with dilatory methods might lead them to take rash steps that would betray the whole class to the enemy.

Another of the prevailing ideas (typically American) is that the ruling class is ipso facto competent to lead in every department of the town’s life. A wealthy manufacturer is elected head of the board of education, a coalmerchant is chairman of the library committee, and so forth. There is no specialization of functions in the ruling class. And this comprehensive scope of activities is acquiesced in by the middle class; indeed is regarded almost as axiomatic. The expert has no opportunity of influencing his fellow-citizens. What can he know in comparison with a man who has lived all his life along the town green and who owns forty houses?

The third dominant ideal is Puritanism. It must be confessed that among the ruling class this is more of an ideal than a rule of life. The town is so near the city that it catches a good deal of the sophistication of the latter. In the ruling class, Puritanism is kept more for public use than for private. Yet it is always correct, even though it is a little uneasy at times, as if it were half ashamed of itself. A candidate for office must have exceptional qualifications if he is to counterbalance the disadvantages of not being a church-goer and a Protestant. It is necessary to ‘keep the Sabbath’ with considerable strictness. Dances and parties on Saturday night must end promptly at twelve. If Sunday golf and tennis-playing occur among the ruling class, they are discreetly hidden from public gaze. The Presbyterian and Episcopalian ministers direct, their philippics against these forms of vice. In the churches of the middle class, the world, the flesh, and the devil appear in the guise of dances and the theatres of the neighboring city. Roth classes think very highly, however, of punctilious behavior. The need of maintaining the tone of the community, therefore, prevents the urban sophistication from sinking in very deep.

The most striking form in which Puritanism asserts itself is in the annual contest with the saloon. The subject of licenses is a thorny question in local politics, and much good casuistry is expended in explaining the position of the ruling class in the matter. Religiously the saloon is anathema, but practically it is an established institution, and therefore entitled to all that respect which our ruling class pays to what is. Prohibition is unthinkable; diminution of the number of licenses is an attack on property rights. Moral sentiment can only be rightfully expended, therefore, on the maintenance of the existing number. It is surprising what a wave of moral fervor will sweep over the town at such a crisis. The existence of eighteen saloons seems to every one, churchman and infidel alike, as tolerable and natural: the presence of nineteen would constitute an inexpiable communal sin against the Almighty. The pulpits thunder, the town committee is besieged with letters and beset with ’personal influence,’ petitions are drawn up, a mass-meeting is held, the moral crisis spoken of, and all good men are called upon to rally to preserve the civic righteousness of the community.

This perennial moral excitement and indulgence illustrate excellently well the American zest for ’moral issues.’ Philosophers tell us that an emphasis on strictly moral solutions of political and economic problems argues a relatively primitive state of civilization, — in other words, that the only valid solution of a problem is a scientific solution. But even to the wisest of the ruling class of the town it seems never to have occurred that the saloons might be regulated on some basis of a minimum legitimate demand, and of their being situated in those sections of the town where they will be least troublesome.

This Puritanism of the ruling class, then, supported and even forced by the middle class, is not a reasonable ideal, but simply an hereditary one. A ruling class follows the line of smallest resistance. The prestige of the ’man of property’ gives him an oracular validity that nothing can shake. The efforts of the other classes will only be against the current. The middle class gets carried along with the aristocracy, furnishing power, but no initiative, while the factory class sleeps out its dreamless sleep, untouched, and without influence. The latter class is certainly not touched by the Puritanism of the town; it is little touched by the ed ucation.

The High School is practically a class institution; a very small percentage of the school children continue their education so far. Neither is the culture of the town, as a whole, particularly impressive. The university man may well feel that he has been wandering about among the moonbeams, so few of the modern points of view and interests have seeped down into the intellectual life of the town. The annual course of lectures, managed by representatives of the ruling class, carefully side-tracks all the deeper questions of the time; ministers on patriotic subjects, naturalists and travelers, readers of popular plays, make up the list of speakers. The library caters to an overwhelming demand for recent fiction. A woman’s club discusses unfatiguing literary subjects. A quiet censorship is exercised over the public library. Anything that suggests the revolutionary or the obscene is sternly banned. It is considered better to err on the side of prudence. To an outsider the culture of the town seems at times to evince an almost unnecessary anxiety to avoid the controversial and the stimulating. So long as life is smooth and unperturbed, the people do not care whether it is particularly deep or not. And they are content to leave all controversial questions in the hands of their ’best men.’

Shall we be un-American enough to criticize them? Is our national attitude toward our ruling class very different from the attitude in this little town? Just as the ruling class in the town is the converging point for all the currents in town life, so is the ruling class in America the converging point for our national life. Only by understanding it and all its workings, shall we understand our country. One can begin by understanding that little cross-section of American life, the suburban town.