Second Mencken Chrestomathy

by H. L. Mencken

  But the mere story, after all, is nothing; the virtue of the book lies in its packed and brilliant detail. It is an attempt, not to solve the American cultural problem, but simply to depict with great care a group of typical Americans. This attempt is extraordinarily successful. The figures often remain in the flat; the author is quite unable to get that poignancy into them which Dreiser manages so superbly; one seldom sees into them very deeply or feels with them very keenly. But in their externals, at all events, they are done with uncommon skill. In particular, Mr. Lewis represents their speech vividly and accurately. It would be hard to find a false note in the dialogue, and it would be impossible to exceed the verisimilitude of the various extracts from the Gopher Prairie paper, or of the sermon by a Methodist dervish in the Gopher Prairie Wesleyan cathedral, or of a speech boy by a boomer at a banquet of the Chamber of Commerce. Here Mr. Lewis lays on with obvious malice, but always he keeps within the bounds of probability, always his realism holds up. It is, as I have said, good stuff. I have read no more genuinely amusing novel for a long while. The man who did it deserves a hearty welcome. His apprenticeship in the cellars of the tabernacle was not wasted.

  * My first book, published in 1903. I am astonished, thumbing through that embarrassing volume, to observe how little critical sense I had in 1902, when it was put together. As incredible as it may seem, it got a number of friendly notices, but on the whole I gathered that it was not a success, and I was glad when it began to be forgotten, which was very soon. I made a resolution to write no more verse, and have kept it pretty well to this day, though with a few backslidings. (See, for example, this page.)

  XX. CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM

  The Uplift as a Trade

  From the Baltimore Evening Sun, March 2, 1925

  LITTLE DOES the public reck how much of the news it devours every day is manufactured by entrepreneurs. Not infrequently I have detected as much as a whole page of it in the eminent Sunpaper, a journal more suspicious than most: it is far worse in others. One reads that the representative of a national organization is before Congress demanding this or that radical change in the laws; the plain fact is that the national organization consists of its representative—that the rest of the members are simply dolts who have put up the money for his salary and expenses in order to bathe themselves in the glare of his publicity. One hears that a million children in Abyssinia are starving, that a fund of $5,000,000 is being raised to succor them, that Baltimore’s quota is $216,000; the plain fact is that an accomplished drive manager has got a new job. One hears that “the women of the United States” are up in arms about this or that; the plain fact is that eight fat women, meeting in a hotel parlor, have decided to kick up some dust.

  It is extraordinarily hard for newspapers to distinguish what is real from what is false in such movements. Those that are private enterprises are commonly run by very cunning fellows, male or female; they are always apparently backed by persons of the highest standing; the demands that they make, for money and support, are often based upon grounds that seem to be very virtuous. Their promoters do not simply beg for space; they make news—and news is news, whatever its origin. The eight fat women, meeting in their hotel parlor, find it easy to alarm the politicians, who are not only dreadful cowards but almost unbelievable asses. Something thus gets afoot. Governors jump; legislators rush through new laws; judges respond to “public sentiment.” How is a newspaper to avoid reporting such stuff? Yet it is often as bogus, at bottom, as a theatrical press-agent’s report that a Follies girl has lost a $100,000 diamond necklace or is engaged to a professor in Harvard University.

  I believe, however, that something might be done, at least against the bolder and more flagrant performers. What comes over the wires, perhaps, is beyond careful investigation, but every newspaper might at least keep watch in its own town; if all did so, the daily stream of blather would lessen by at least eighty per cent. I am in a mood of constructive criticism, and offer concrete suggestions to the two Sunpapers.

  1. Let a rule be set up that no appeal for public funds or subscriptions will be printed until there is filed, under oath, a complete list of all the persons engaged to collect them, with their compensation.

  2. Let it be required that, after the collection has been made, a statement shall be filed, in detail, showing what was done with every cent of the money.

  3. In case the money is for a continuing organization, let it be blacklisted unless it publishes annual statements of its receipts and expenditures in detail, with the name of every person on its payroll.

  4. Whenever resolutions are presented for publication, setting forth any view about a public matter, let it be required that the exact number of persons at the meeting adopting them to be printed with them.

  These rules are not unreasonable. No honest organization, devoted sincerely to good works, could plausibly object to them. But they would fetch many organizations which now prey upon the sentimentality and credulity of the public, and they would put a great many professional uplifters out of business in the community. My scheme is rough, and perhaps defective. I present it as it stands, not only to the two Sunpapers but also to the Society of American Newspaper Editors, which now labors with nonsensical codes of ethics—jewelry and fur coats for a profession which is just learning to wash behind the ears. Let learned counsel lay their heads together, and perfect the imperfect. The public deserves a rest from pious and highfalutin tosh. Until newspapers learn how to keep it out of their news columns, completely and permanently, they will fail to discharge one of their principal functions: the detection and exposure of frauds. Suppose a physician let a chiropractor and a Christian Scientist bark and catch in his waiting room?

  A New Constitution for Maryland

  From the Baltimore Evening Sun, April 12, 1937. The existing Constitution of Maryland was ratified on Sept. 18, 1867. It voices the resentment of the people of the State against military control during the Civil War, and some of its provisions are quite extraordinary. The Declaration of Rights, for example, provides that the rights to jury trial, to habeas corpus, and to free speech and free assembly shall prevail “in time of war as in time of peace,” and Article VI provides that “whenever the ends of government are perverted” the people may overthrow the existing government and set up a new one, and that “the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.” Article XIV of the Constitution proper provides for calling a constitutional convention every twenty years after 1867. But there was no such convention in 1927 or 1947. In 1937 I proposed my new Constitution. Only a few of its provisions are given; the rest were less novel. It got some attention among judges and lawyers through the country, and I received some interesting commentaries on it, but in Maryland it went almost unnoticed and none of its innovations has been adopted since, or even discussed

  Article I

  The Elective Franchise

  Section 1. The people of the Maryland Free State consist of all natural persons denizened within its confines, without regard to age, color, sex, race or national origin. All shall have the equal protection of its laws.

  Sec. 2. Voting in the Maryland Free State shall be a privilege, and not a right. Every natural person denizened within the State who is a citizen of the United States and has reached the age of twenty-five years and can speak, read and write the American or English language, shall have the privilege of voting at elections … provided that he or she has been registered as a voter as provided by law, and provided further that no one shall vote who is under guardianship as a lunatic or as a person non compos mentis, or who has been convicted, either within the State or elsewhere, of felony or of bribery at any election, or who occupies any office of profit under the Maryland Free State or the United States, or who has been in receipt, during the five years next preceding an election, of any grant or benefit from the public treasury, or from any local treasury, or from the treasury of the United
States, save for full value in goods or services.…

  Article II

  Bill of Rights

  Section 1. No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of teaching, but everyone exercising such freedom shall be accountable at law and equity for any actual damage directly and beyond a reasonable doubt flowing therefrom, whether to the common welfare or to private persons.

  Sec. 2. No law shall be passed establishing a religion, or favoring the tenets or practises of any faith or sect, or penalizing any discussion thereof as blasphemy, or impeding the conduct of religious exercises at any place or in any manner not imperiling the public peace or health, or appropriating public funds for any religious purpose, or for any institution controlled by a religious body; but the funds of any division or agency of the State may be paid out to such an institution by law to an amount not greater than the reasonable and actual value of its care for public charges.

  Sec. 3. The right of the people openly to bear arms and to exercise themselves in the use thereof shall not be infringed, but the bearing of concealed weapons by any person or of any weapons by persons convicted of felony involving the use of arms may be prohibited.…

  Sec. 5. No law shall be passed regulating the conduct of any person in his own house, save such conduct as may be directly invasive of his neighbors’ peace or security, or imminently dangerous to the general health or safety.…

  Sec. 11. In all cases wherein prosecutions shall have been initiated on the complaint of a private person, no conviction shall follow save that person appear against the accused in open court.

  Sec. 12. In all criminal cases it shall be competent for the prosecution to produce evidence that the accused is an habitual and incorrigible criminal, and the judge and/or jury may take such evidence into account in estimating the degree of his guilt.…

  Sec. 15. The writ of habeas corpus shall never be suspended, and no person, save members of the militia in actual service, shall be subject to or punishable by martial law.

  Sec. 16. Justice shall be free to all, and no officer of any court or any other person employed in the administration of the laws shall be compensated by fees.…

  Sec. 19. Large and onerous bail shall not be required save in case of manifest necessity, and in every such case the sitting judge or magistrate shall announce in full, in open court, his reasons for requiring it.…

  Sec. 21. No person shall be charged with sedition who advocates the reform of the government by peaceful means, or the orderly substitution of another form of government for it.…

  Sec. 24. Any person wrongfully imprisoned, whether by the unlawful act of a judge, jury or magistrate, or by any other failure of justice, may enter suit for compensation in any District Court, sitting without a jury, and the Governor and Legislative Council shall provide by a general law for the payment of any damages therein awarded.…

  Sec. 25. The right to private property lawfully acquired shall not be destroyed or diminished by law, save as otherwise provided in this Constitution, but the Governor and Legislative Council may by law limit the value of money or goods devisable by will to any one natural person.

  Article III

  General Policies

  Section 1. It shall be the policy of the Maryland Free State to repay and cancel its present public debt as soon as possible, and to avoid incurring onerous public debts hereafter. No debt shall be incurred save by authority of a majority of the registered voters of the State, ascertained by plebiscite, and no plebiscite or plebiscites shall be submitted in any one calendar year providing for the borrowing of a sum greater than ten per centum of the total revenue actually collected by the State from direct taxes, excluding licenses, during the calendar year preceding. No law providing for a loan shall be valid unless it also provides for the retirement of that loan within ten years, and levies a tax sufficient to meet the necessary amortization and interest. The provisions of this section shall apply pari passu to loans made by all divisions and agencies of the State authorized by law to borrow money, to the end that they may reduce their debts as soon as possible.

  Sec. 2. No law shall be passed appropriating or authorizing the expenditure of money for the enjoyment or benefit of any person or persons that does not provide for the same or equal enjoyment and benefit to any other person, nor shall any such appropriation be made by any division or agency of the State.

  Sec. 3. Divorce in the Maryland Free State shall be granted by a general law only, and no special bill of divorcement shall be passed by the Legislative Council. No divorce shall be granted until the marriage shall have endured at least three years. No testimony shall be taken in a divorce case, save only the testimony of one or both parties to the marriage that he, she or they desire it to end. In case both parties so testify a divorce may be granted forthwith. In case one party dissents no divorce shall be granted until at least two years have passed since the filing of the action.…

  Sec. 5. No license to marry shall be granted to any female who has not reached the age of 18 years, nor to any male who has not reached the age of 21, nor to any person of either sex who has been married more than twice previously, or who has been divorced within the two years next preceding.…

  Sec. 7. Laws may be passed providing for the sterilization of persons adjudged by due process, by law established, to be biologically unfit for reproduction, whether physically or mentally, and criminality involving violence to the person may be reckoned as an evidence of such unfitness.

  Sec. 8. No person shall be paroled, pardoned or released on suspended sentence a second time.

  Sec. 9. It shall be competent for any judge, in passing sentence for felony or other grave crimes, to make removal from the Maryland Free State a part of the punishment, whether for a definite time or for life, and to make imprisonment for the same time the alternative.

  Sec. 10. All laws carrying punishment by fine shall provide that the fine be apportioned to the known or apparent income of the person fined, whether earned or unearned, to the end that the pains of punishment may be equalized and the equal protection of the laws better effected.…

  Sec. 11. No law shall be passed licensing the practise of the healing art, or any part of it, to any person whose qualification is not at least equal to that of a graduate of the Medical School of the University of Maryland, and the Legislative Council, with the approval of the Governor, may pass laws forbidding the said practise to all other persons, on penalty of imprisonment.…

  Sec. 15. The Legislative Council, with the approval of the Governor, may provide by law for the payment of old-age pensions to indigent persons beyond the age of 60 years, for the insurance of workers, including farm laborers and domestic servants, against unemployment, and for the humane care of the sick, disabled and indigent, but no person shall have any right to any benefit from such laws who has not been a bona fide resident of Maryland for the five years next preceding his application for such benefit.

  Sec. 16. The Legislative Council, with the approval of the Governor, may provide by law for the investigation and adjudication of labor disputes, but no law shall be passed compelling any man to work against his will, or to employ another against his will.

  Sec. 17. No law shall be passed relieving any corporation or noncorporate association from liability for damages inflicted on others by its officers and members as such, or by any of them.

  Article IV

  The Executive

  Section 1. The executive power of the Maryland Free State shall be vested in a Governor, whose term of office shall be continued ten years, or, in case no successor lawfully qualifies at the end of his term, until such successor qualifies.

  Sec. 2. No one shall be eligible to the office of Governor save one who is a natural-born citizen of the Maryland Free State, and has resided within its boundaries for the ten years immediately preceding his entrance into office.

  Sec. 3. No one shall be eligible to the office of Governor who is less than 30 years of age, or more th
an 60 years, nor anyone who has held any office of profit under the Maryland Free State or the United States during the five years next preceding the beginning of the term for which he offers to serve, save only that of members of the Legislative Council; nor anyone who has received any fee or other reward during that time for advocating or opposing any legislation in the Maryland Free State.

  Sec. 4. The Governor shall be the fount of mercy, and shall have the power to diminish or remit the penalties inflicted in all criminal cases, to issue reprieves of sentence, and to restore to citizenship persons disfranchised for crime, but in every case he shall file with the clerk of the High Court a memorandum setting forth at length his reasons for such action, and embodying a full and true list of the persons who have petitioned or advised him to take it, and in no case shall he pardon or reprieve or diminish the punishment of any person lawfully convicted of bribery at an election or of being an habitual and incorrigible criminal, or of any person impeached by the Grand Inquest. Nor shall he commute the death sentence of any person previously adjudged on true evidence to be an habitual and incorrigible criminal, or convicted of murder committed in the perpetration of a felony with arms.…