The Damnation of Dollars, Yankee Greed and a Yankee Critic. (1906)
Clarion readers will have admired the vigorous and trenchant verses which we have published from time to time under the signature of Herman Scheffauer. Mr. Scheffauer is an American--a native, we believe, of San Francisco—and he has come over to England to compete (as it were) in the boat race of literature. He looks like winning. To the current number of the "Rapid Review," Mr. Scheffauer contributes an article which, under the title of "Bribery, Fraud, and Corruption," offers a powerful indictment of the commercial methods of America. "The tinned meat scandal," says Mr. Scheffauer, is but one of many that have shocked Europe of late. The incessant story of fraud, thievery, and die honour has to many made the United States appear like some great sink of moral decay. All candid men in America acknowledge the truth of the tremendous frauds and do not attempt to defend or conceal them." Mr. Scheffauer offers explicit reasonsfor this state of affairs. "The source of all," he states, is found in the insatiable greed for gain-- in the damnation and the disease of dollars. It has turned single men and bodies of men of business into assassins, into traitors, robbers, and slaves. The principles, integrity, and consciences of both rich and poor have been infected." And Mr. Scheffauer supports this statement with the most damning evidence "The Man with the Muck Rake" has been at work in America, and he has exposed the whole fabric of American commercial rottenness, from municipal corruption to the insurance frauds, and the poisoning conspiracy of Chicago. Much has been written of late concerning the Man with the Muck Rake- a phrase coined and . made current in a fashion typically American. The Man with the Muck Rake is one who uncovers the putrid spots in politics or commerce, who rakes for names and evidence in a mass of bribery and 'Graft,' and then announces what he finds. He follows the wires that exert the 'pull,' and lays bare the burrows of political, corporate, or private dishonesty. Men of the highest integrity have wielded the rake, sincere well-wishers of their country, burning for justice to be done and bent on punishing the evil doers. In their efforts to eradicate , the everspreading cancer of Graft, they have been emulated by others for motives less praiseworthy. Some Men with the Muck Rake have dug up corruption for personal ends, for notoriety, sometimes for revenge,or a perverse delight in arousing a sensation. The volatile American public, fed full of sickening details, has grown weary of the everlasting disclosures. But the cause flourishes as before. Day after day in every part of the Union the newspapers bring accounts of the most unabashed dishonesty. Side by side with reports of the bloodiest crimes run columns redolent with financial depravity. No place nor person seems immune; it has become an ancient story that may surprise but cannot shock. The disease manifests itself not in spots, but is epidemic. If Mr. Sinclair's Packingtown may be termed a 'Jungle,' then must whole sections of the country be likened to black morasses steaming with the miasma of dishonesty. The Men with Muck Rakes, toiling here and there, have uncovered so appalling a state of affairs that their labour' have, in the main, been productive of good. If so much may be disclosed, how much more may there not lie hidden? A public sentiment has been created, even what might be called a national sense of shame. Yet if Graft has become a national institution, it has become so only by slow growth; and reform, too, must be a growth and be slow. While it is just to unmask fraud and to punish it, disclosures are useless so long as the laws may be perverted and the guilty allowed to escape. So long as the American character remains tolerant of thievery, so long will reform he impossible." Mr. Scheffauer points out that the general character of the American public, quite as much as the character of American money-grabbers, is responsible for the decay of American honour. He tells us that when ministers preached against the "tainted money" offered to churches the millionaires that phrase became at once a jest to the shallow and irreverent public. And yet-" all reformers spoke of corruption and dishonesty as a thing apart fromthe people. and as pertaining chiefly to the moneyed classes or the corporations." Mr. Scheffauer asserts, however, that in actual practice "the disease of dollars affects not only the wealthy but also the poor and middle classes. AlI are striving to become wealthy by the same means. It is the same vice on a smaller scale; the difference is one of degree only. This deplorable truth is usually overlooked or ignored by reformers. They demand improvement from the trusts, millionaires, and politicians, but not from the general public to which they appeal. They expect honesty to make its way from without instead of from within." One result of what Mr. Scheffauer terms "this shifting vagueness of principle" is that a large proportion of the American public actually resents the exposure of the wrongdoers upon grounds of patriotism! Says Mr. Scheffauer:" A luminous example of the perverted reason in the arguments of these ultra-patriots is furnished in a speech by Dr. James R. Day, Chancellor of Syracuse University:
"We have fallen into a scandal-mongering epoch. The foul harpies of slander have created a condition and all of the civilised world is nauseated at the thought of us. It has cost us tens of millions of money andthe respect of mankind. It will and should cost us our self-respect if we do do not burn out with caustic of a hot indignation this soreof slander. The scandel-monger who drags the people through the slaughter-houses to exhibit in loathsome forms the food of their tables by exaggeration, and Munchausen stories of things that always must be offensive at best, is a mistaken agitator, and especially dangerous to us as a people at this time. "
Here
the effect is railed against instead of the cause, the scandal instead of the
crime, the scandalmonger instead of the rascal whose actions call for exposure.
The. 'people' who were 'dragged' through the pits of slaughter, rushed by
thousands to buy the book that told them what 'the food of their tables' really
was. Dr. Day's use of the word 'Munchausen ' means as much as 'false'—and as
such he would apply it to the incontrovertible evidence of the novel and the
official report. In this shallow and unsoundrhetoric it is also to be noted as
unsciously significant that the 'millions of money' have precedence of 'the
respect of mankind.' In his specious use of the word 'slander,' the speaker
would imply that the lawbreakers are innocent. He defends them by denouncing
their denouncers. The just and thoughtful American, though grieved at the
debasing disclosures, does not seek to defend what he cannot deny. To him the
surgeons who lop off gangrened limbs, probe hidden sores, or proclaim an
infectious disease of the nation, are not ' foul harpies' -for what they affirm
may be confirmed. They are generally toilers among nauseating things for the
sake of bringing about purity and reform. A morbid rage for denunciation may
exist, bet the evil that so steadily prompts it
is more morbid still. Though shame may accrue to the Republic through
the exposures, the blame must fall upon those who are exposed."
“The Damnation of Dollars. Yankee Greed and a Yankee Critic.”, in: The Clarion, Friday, September 14, 1906, p.4.
