UTOPIA OF USURERS - II Letters and the New Laureates

Utopia of Userers, et al

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

UTOPIA OF USURERS - II LETTERS AND THE NEW LAUREATES, UTOPIA OF USERERS, ET AL by Gilbert K. Chesterton
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In these articles I only take two or three examples of the first and
fundamental fact of our time. I mean the fact that the capitalists of our
community are becoming quite openly the kings of it. In my last (and
first) article, I took the case of Art and advertisement. I pointed out
that Art must be growing worse--merely because advertisement is growing
better. In those days Millais condescended to Pears' soap, In these days
I really think it would be Pears who condescended to Millais. But here I
turn to an art I know more about, that of journalism. Only in my ease the
art verges on artlessness.

The great difficulty with the English lies in the absence of something one
may call democratic imagination. We find it easy to realise an individual,
but very hard to realise that the great masses consist of individuals.
Our system has been aristocratic: in the special sense of there being only
a few actors on the stage. And the back scene is kept quite dark, though
it is really a throng of faces. Home Rule tended to be not so much the
Irish as the Grand Old Man. The Boer War tended not to be so much South
Africa as simply "Joe." And it is the amusing but distressing fact that
every class of political leadership, as it comes to the front in its turn,
catches the rays of this isolating lime-light; and becomes a small
aristocracy. Certainly no one has the aristocratic complaint so badly as
the Labour Party. At the recent Congress, the real difference between
Larkin and the English Labour leaders was not so much in anything right or
wrong in what he said, as in something elemental and even mystical in the
way he suggested a mob. But it must be plain, even to those who agree
with the more official policy, that for Mr. Havelock Wilson the principal
question was Mr. Havelock Wilson; and that Mr. Sexton was mainly
considering the dignity and fine feelings of Mr. Sexton. You may say they
were as sensitive as aristocrats, or as sulky as babies; the point is that
the feeling was personal. But Larkin, like Danton, not only talks like
ten thousand men talking, but he also has some of the carelessness of the
colossus of Arcis; "Que mon nom soit fletri, que la France soit libre."


A Dance of Degradation

It is needless to say that this respecting of persons has led all the
other parties a dance of degradation. We ruin South Africa because it
would be a slight on Lord Gladstone to save South Africa. We have a bad
army, because it would be a snub to Lord Haldane to have a good army. And
no Tory is allowed to say "Marconi" for fear Mr. George should say "Kynoch."
But this curious personal element, with its appalling lack of
patriotism, has appeared in a new and curious form in another department
of life; the department of literature, especially periodical literature.
And the form it takes is the next example I shall give of the way in which
the capitalists are now appearing, more and more openly, as the masters
and princes of the community.

I will take a Victorian instance to mark the change; as I did in the case
of the advertisement of "Bubbles." It was said in my childhood, by the
more apoplectic and elderly sort of Tory, that W. E. Gladstone was only a
Free Trader because he had a partnership in Gilbey's foreign wines. This
was, no doubt, nonsense; but it had a dim symbolic, or mainly prophetic,
truth in it. It was true, to some extent even then, and it has been
increasingly true since, that the statesman was often an ally of the
salesman; and represented not only a nation of shopkeepers, but one
particular shop. But in Gladstone's time, even if this was true, it was
never the whole truth; and no one would have endured it being the admitted
truth. The politician was not solely an eloquent and persuasive bagman
travelling for certain business men; he was bound to mix even his
corruption with some intelligible ideals and rules of policy. And the
proof of it is this: that at least it was the statesman who bulked large
in the public eye; and his financial backer was entirely in the background.
Old gentlemen might choke over their port, with the moral certainty that
the Prime Minister had shares in a wine merchant's. But the old gentleman
would have died on the spot if the wine merchant had really been made as
important as the Prime Minister. If it had been Sir Walter Gilbey whom
Disraeli denounced, or Punch caricatured; if Sir Walter Gilbey's favourite
collars (with the design of which I am unacquainted) had grown as large as
the wings of an archangel; if Sir Walter Gilbey had been credited with
successfully eliminating the British Oak with his little hatchet; if, near
the Temple and the Courts of Justice, our sight was struck by a majestic
statue of a wine merchant; or if the earnest Conservative lady who threw a
gingerbread-nut at the Premier had directed it towards the wine merchant
instead, the shock to Victorian England would have been very great indeed.


Haloes for Employers

Now something very like that is happening; the mere wealthy employer is
beginning to have not only the power but some of the glory. I have seen
in several magazines lately, and magazines of a high class, the appearance
of a new kind of article. Literary men are being employed to praise a big
business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find
political reasons for the commercial schemes--that they have done for some
time past--they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers.
They describe the capitalist's brain of steel and heart of gold in a way
that Englishmen hitherto have been at least in the habit of reserving for
romantic figures like Garibaldi or Gordon. In one excellent magazine Mr.
T. P. O'Connor, who, when he likes, can write on letters like a man of
letters, has some purple pages of praise of Sir Joseph Lyons--the man who
runs those teashop places. He incidentally brought in a delightful
passage about the beautiful souls possessed by some people called Salmon
and Gluckstein. I think I like best the passage where he said that
Lyons's charming social acaccomplishments included a talent for "imitating
a Jew." The article is accompanied with a large and somewhat leering
portrait of that shopkeeper, which makes the parlour-trick in question
particularly astonishing. Another literary man, who certainly ought to
know better, wrote in another paper a piece of hero-worship about Mr.
Selfridge. No doubt the fashion will spread, and the art of words, as
polished and pointed by Ruskin or Meredith, will be perfected yet further
to explore the labyrinthine heart of Harrod; or compare the simple
stoicism of Marshall with the saintly charm of Snelgrove.

Any man can be praised--and rightly praised. If he only stands on two
legs he does something a cow cannot do. If a rich man can manage to stand
on two legs for a reasonable time, it is called self-control. If he has
only one leg, it is called (with some truth) self-sacrifice. I could say
something nice (and true) about every man I have ever met. Therefore, I
do not doubt I could find something nice about Lyons or Selfridge if I
searched for it. But I shall not. The nearest postman or cab-man will
provide me with just the same brain of steel and heart of gold as these
unlucky lucky men. But I do resent the whole age of patronage being
revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets,
under kings that have taken no oath, nor led us into any battle.