Second Mencken Chrestomathy

by H. L. Mencken

  Nevertheless, this plu-normal Mr. Bok failed in his supreme enterprise; he never became quite a 100% American, and in his book he plainly says so. The trouble was that he could never wholly cure himself of being a European. Even a Hollander, though nearer the American than any other, is still a European. In Bok’s case the taint showed itself in an irrepressible interest in things that had no place in the mind of a truly respectable man—chiefly in things artistic. When he looked at the houses in which his subscribers lived, their drab hideousness made him sick. When he went inside and contemplated the lambrequins, the gilded cat-tails, the Rogers groups, the wax fruit under glass domes, the emblazoned seashells from Asbury Park, the family Bible on the marble-topped center-table, the crayon enlargement of Uncle Richard and Aunt Sue, the square pianos, the Brussels carpets, the grained woodwork—when his eyes alighted upon such things, his soul revolted, and at once his moral enthusiasm incited him to attempt a reform. The result was the long series of Ladies’ Home Journal crusades against the hideousness of the national scene—in domestic architecture, in house furnishing, in dress, in town buildings, in advertising. Bok flung himself headlong into his campaigns, and practically every one of them succeeded. He was opposed furiously by all right-thinking American men, even by such extraordinary men as the late Stanford White. Nevertheless, he fought on, and in the long run he drew blood. He is almost alone responsible for the improvement in taste that has shown itself in America during the past thirty years. No other man or woman deserves a tenth of the credit that should go to him. He carried on his fight with the utmost diligence and intelligence, wearing down all opposition, proceeding triumphantly from success to success. If there were gratitude in the land, there would be a monument to him in every town in the Republic. He has been, aesthetically, probably the most useful citizen that ever breathed its muggy air.

  But here I come upon an inconvenient moral, to the effect, to wit, that his chief human value lay in his failure to become wholly Americanized, that he was a man of mark in direct proportion as he was not a 100% American. This moral I refrain from plainly stating on patriotic grounds.…

  Dr. Townsend and His Plan

  From the Baltimore Sun, July 2, 1939

  Dr. Francis E. Townsend, the originator, organizer and sole proprietor of the $200-a-month old-age pension movement bearing his name, was 72 years old last January 13. Few men in American history, or indeed in any history, have leaped from obscurity to celebrity so late in life. Up to the time he was seized by the one and only idea to his credit on the scrolls of time, and the bush burst into flame under his nose, he was a family doctor in a poor way of practice, and his fame, such as it was, was circumferenced by a few streets. For more than thirty years he had been looking at the tongues of what he himself describes as “the indigent”—first in the little town of Belle Fourche, S.D. (population, 2,000), and then in Long Beach, the waterfront annex of Los Angeles.

  How he hit upon the notion that made him known from coast to coast, and got him a following of a million or more cocksure and howling disciples, with another million or two hanging about the side-lines and brought him to such puissance that more than 100 head of Congressmen, Democrats and Republicans alike, now take his orders and eat from his hand—how this miracle was set in train will probably never be known. The doctor himself says that he was inspired by seeing a couple of poor people, in the depths of the depression, searching garbage cans for scraps of food, but that, of course, is only half the story, and not the more important half. Many other persons of tender heart had been shocked by the same spectacle, and not a few of them had resolved mightily that something had to be done about it. But. Dr. Townsend was the only one who hatched a simple, completely preposterous and hence irresistibly convincing scheme. It had three parts, all of them easily comprehensible to the meanest understanding. The first consists in paying every American more than 60 years old a pension of $200 cash a month. The second consisted in requiring every recipient to spend every cent of it before the month’s end. And the third consisted in raising the money by laying a sales tax of two per cent, upon each and every transaction involving the exchange of money, of whatever shape or sort.

  That all this was original with the doctor is, of course, hard to believe. Parts of it, in fact, had been adumbrated by other wizards, and long before the depression. But the chances are at least even that he had never heard of these other wizards, even at second hand, and the fact remains indisputable that he was the first to put the various elements together, and the first to sign on customers for the whole. He began in a small way in the purlieus of Los Angeles, but in a strangely little while he was roving all of California, and before a year had come and gone his anything but clarion voice was being heard as far east as Ohio, as far south as Florida, and as far north as Maine.

  At the start, obviously, he had the advantages of a singularly favorable terrain. In Southern California the density of people thirsting for novel and unprecedented gospels is greater than anywhere else on earth. All the messiahs of new religions, new diets, new schemes of healing, new economic theories, new systems of logic, new values for pi and new technics in amour gravitate thither as surely as pickpockets gravitate toward a Shriners’ Convention. It is the chosen seat of hundreds of advanced thinkers of the highest eminence, ranging from Aimée Semple McPherson to Upton Sinclair. It is the Holy Land alike of the Rosicrucians and the mental telepathists, the yogis and the New Thoughters, the vegetarians and the anti-vivisectionists. One of the largest hospitals in Los Angeles is operated by the osteopaths, and the Christian Scientists have a voice in all matters of public health. Thus the soil was ready for Dr. Townsend’s evangel—but so was it ready for the tilling of the thousand and one other messiahs who worked it when he did. Why did he succeed so much better than any of the others? Why did he bulge out of Southern California so quickly, and begin to roll up converts in all parts of the United States? Why was he riding herd on Congressmen and United States Senators at a stage when all his rivals were still cadging nickels in Los Angeles gospel-tents and public parks?

  The answer, it seems to me, must be divided into two parts. The first is that his scheme, from the standpoint of the customers, was enormously simpler, cheaper and juicier than what any of the other messiahs had to offer. He did not promise the underprivileged a vague Utopia in some indefinite future on this earth or another; he promised them the exact sum of $200 a month, here and now. And he didn’t demand that they build a vast and expensive tabernacle or elect him to some high and glittering public office, or buy unintelligible text-books of his new arcanum, or clownish uniforms or even badges; he told them he wanted nothing for himself, and convinced them that he meant it, and the most he ever asked them to chip in for expenses was 25 cents a year.

  That was half of his advantage over his rivals. He offered poor and hopeless people quick and cheap relief, and he offered it to them in amounts that, to them, seemed almost unlimited. How many of them, in the days of their youth, had ever earned so much as $200 a month? Probably not two per cent. But now all of them were to get it regularly—and not only get it, but be free (and even obliged) to spend every cent of it. No wonder they rushed up to sign their names. Here at last, so to speak, was Utopia with teeth in it. Here was salvation in hard coin, payable on the nail. No more painful figuring! No more longing and waiting! No more ifs or buts! The thing was magnificently specific, detailed, concrete, categorical.

  The other half of the doctor’s advantage lay in his transparent honesty. The poor fish had been listening for years to evangelists of a wholly different sort. All the theologians they patronized were made up like chorus girls in a Biblical play, all the medical revolutionaries were duplicates of the corn doctors they had encountered at county fairs, and all the politicians were patently porch climbers. But here was an elderly man who looked and talked like themselves—a soft-spoken and decent-appearing fellow in a neat gray suit, who expounded his gospel without heat and yet without the faintest shadow of
a doubt—a man so earnest, so calm and confident, so lacking in all the familiar hocus-pocus, so curiously and astoundingly respectable that they fell for him as easily as a delirium tremens patient falls for a kindly nurse who sponges his red-hot head and sneaks him a jug.

  Does Dr. Townsend, after five or six years of heavy campaigning, still believe in the Townsend Plan? I am convinced that he does. He is no longer, to be sure, the innocent that he must have been when he began. Hard experience with chiselers and worse has revealed to him the dangers of too much trustfulness. He has ceased to be willing, as he once was, to listen to racketeers with oily tongues, full of intelligent self-interest. His subordinates today are all subordinates, and not partners. He keeps a tight rein upon them and punishes contumacy without mercy. But he still believes.

  Two lessons that he has learned serve to keep his movement alive today, and will probably keep it alive for a good while to come, despite the rise of formidable imitators and competitors, and a series of crushing legislative reverses. The first is that his followers are his followers, and no other’s. When they meet in convention they never debate anything; they simply wait for him to make his will known, and then sustain it unanimously. Let him give the word and they are for it; let him shake his head and they are agin it. The other thing he has learned is the danger of compromise. Three years ago he nearly came to grief by an imprudent alliance with Father Coughlin, William Leimke, and a large assortment of other such sorcerers; today he will have nothing to do with any of them. It is not sufficient that a Congressman in his pen holler vaguely for old-age pensions; he must holler specifically for the Townsend Plan, and for nothing else. John L. Lewis, it is announced, is planning to collar him by offering to support him; it will be as easy as collaring Tom Girdler, and no easier.

  How long will he last? I refuse to guess. In the long run, the plain people always turn upon and butcher their messiahs. But of one thing I am certain: that the Townsend movement is not dead yet, nor even seriously sick. The old folks still hope, trust and believe.

  One Who Will Be Missed

  From the American Mercury, Sept., 1931, pp. 35–36

  As soon as Congress reassembles a gang of shabby politicians will arise upon their hind legs in the hall of the House and heap encomiums upon the late Nicholas Longworth, LL.D. Not one of them, I suppose, will think to mention that his chief distinction among American statesmen lay in this: that he regarded nearly all men of their order as rogues and asses, and dealt with them habitually as such.

  Here, of course, I do not accuse the deceased of entertaining moral ideas: they were, indeed, completely foreign to his nature. To understand him one must always remember that a rogue, to him, was not a sinner to be scorned but a clown to be enjoyed, and that above all other varieties of clowns he loved and cherished the ass political. In Washington, given such tastes, he was in Paradise, and so he stayed there as much as he could. From his pulpit in the House he could look up at any moment and see a dozen of the most talented mountebanks in Christendom. Moreover, his official powers were such that he could set them to performing whenever he chose, and in a curious and stupendous manner. No wonder he stuck to politics. It gave him, I believe, one of the pleasantest lives ever led by mortal man. Existence, to him, was an endless and ever charming circus, with clowns five deep in the ring. Nor was he above slipping on a piebald nightshirt on occasion, and reddening his nose, and grabbing a slapstick, and leaping into the ring to do some amiable clowning himself.

  When he died (alas, before his time) some of the Washington correspondents hinted delicately that his cynicism was a blot upon his patriotism, and ill became a Speaker of the House. What nonsense! It was precisely his cynicism that made him Speaker of the House, and it was the same that made him a good one—the best, perhaps, since Tom Reed. He was always clearly superior to the quacks he enjoyed so vastly, and knew so well how to lead, and they were all well aware of it. There was nothing mysterious about his influence over them, and, above all, there was nothing ignominious. He was anything but a back-slapper. What they sensed in him was simply a kind of intellectual security that they themselves longed for but could never attain—the easy and safe confidence of a man who has sized up his world with great accuracy and knows his way about in it. They called him Nick, and cherished the privilege with naïve exultation, but in their secret hearts, I am convinced, they always thought of him as Mr. Longworth. He was not as they were, and they knew it.

  So far as I have heard, there is no Longworth Act in the law-books; the hon. gentleman, in fact, was against most of the more salient laws of his country, and violated some of them without apology. That attitude, I believe, was not the least of his contributions to current statecraft. He knew that the American belief in laws was a superstition too profound to be dissipated, and so he went along with it when he had to, but there is no record that he ever sought to reënforce it. Plainly enough, he’d have been happy if he could have blown it up altogether. But that was impossible, and so he contented himself with keeping its operations within bounds. That is to say, he hampered and crippled the mountebanks in front of him as much as he could, all the while taking his delight in their gyrations. The ideal House of his dreams was one in which a few realistic men made a few inescapable laws, and the rest of the brethren gave a bawdy and harmless show. That ideal was never realized, but I think it came nearer realization than most. The Longworth House, at its worst, was at least innocent of the grosser sort of false pretenses. In the hands of its realistic Speaker it came to be presented to the country as precisely what it was: a conglomeration of puerile political hacks, most of them asses and many of them rogues. Even the Washington correspondents, perhaps the most romantic men on earth, ceased to be fooled by it. Turning from it in horror they sought their world-savers in the Senate.

  It seems to me that this achievement was a public service of a high order, though it will get no notice in the history books. If we had a dozen Longworths in Washington we’d have a far more sensible grappling with the difficulties which now beset the country. If there were two or three in the Cabinet, to police the Doaks, Hydes, Andy Mellons and other such zanies, even the Hoover administration would take on a certain intellectual dignity, not to say integrity. It is silly to call the Longworth attitude cynicism, and to assume that giving it that evil name has disposed of it. There was a great deal more to it than mere shirking. It did not seek to evade the facts; it sought, rather, to expose them and make them plain. It was the philosophy of a man who revolted instinctively against the blather that is wisdom to ordinary politicians. He knew, on occasion, how to use that blather too, but not even his worst enemy—if he left an enemy—will argue that he ever believed in it. His point of view, first and last, was that of a thoroughly civilized man. His values, whether at work or at play, were at once more subtle and more solid than those of the general, whether in or out of office. He was one of the few men of any genuine culture to succeed in politics in our time. He will be missed.

  The End of a Happy Life

  From the Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 21, 1932

  The late Albert Hildebrandt, who died last Thursday, had barely turned sixty, but he really belonged to an elder Baltimore, and it was far more charming than the Rotarian Gehenna we endure today. He was one of its genuine notables, though he got into the newspapers very seldom. What kept him out was mainly his own surpassing amiability: he was completely innocent of that yearning to harass the neighbors which commonly passes among us as public spirit. If he ever made a speech it must have been before I met him, which was more than thirty years ago. When the Babbitts of the town held a banquet and afflicted one another sadly he stayed at home, playing the violoncello, or went to a beerhouse for a decent evening with his friends. When a public committee was appointed to improve mankind and solve the insoluble he was not on it.

  Nevertheless, there were few Baltimoreans of his time who were better worth knowing, for he stood in the first rank of a very difficult profession, he practised it
all his life with unfailing devotion and complete honesty, and that practise not only engrossed him but also pleasantly entertained him, and made him content. He enjoyed violins as other men enjoyed pictures or books. When he encountered a good one he would strip off his coat and have at it with the enthusiasm of a Schliemann unearthing a new Troy, and when a bad one came into his hands he would demolish its pretensions with a gusto but little less. If his judgment was ever questioned, it was not by sensible men. He was so obviously the master of his subject that, once he had exposed his views and offered his reasons, there was no answer short of complaining to the police. There were chances in his business for considerable killings, but he seldom took advantage of them. His attitude toward the violins that passed through his hands was commonly far more sentimental than commercial, and he spent a lot of time and energy upon labors that brought him little profit, and sometimes not even thanks. It always seemed to me that a sort of professional delicacy stayed him—that he was too sensitive about the honor of his distinguished house, and had too much respect for violins themselves, to traffic in them too brutally. When the impulse to pile up money came upon him he always turned to some other enterprise, usually highly speculative. That other enterprise was never a shining success, but while it lasted it at least gave him the feeling that, within the bounds of his vocation, he could remain the free artist, and suffer no compulsion to approach the unseemly, which was to him the impossible.