this ugly civilization - ralph barsodi - Arvind Gupta

321 Pages·2010·1.35 MB·English

THIS UGLY

CIVILIZATION

by

RALPH BORSODI

NEW YORK
SIMON AND SCHUSTER
1 9 2 9

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
37 WEST 57 STREET NEW YORK
PRINTED IN U. S. A. BY VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, BINGHAMTON
BOUND BY H. WOLFF EST., N. Y.

Dedicated to
MYRTLE MAE BORSODI
Whose Courage, Initiative and Resourcefulness
Made the adventure possible
Which inspired this book
And for whose patient cooperation in its production
A tribute of mere words is wholly
Inadequate
--PREFACE--

This book in its present form is an attempt, still largely unsatisfactory to myself, to
project certain ideas evolved from a quest of comfort--material and philosophical--in
some respect quite different from that which engages most of us today.
If I have ventured to step from the humdrum practicality of economics to the sacred
and dangerous precincts of philosophy, it is because philosophers generally seem to
forget that the acquisition of food, clothing and shelter is prerequisite to the pursuit of
the good, the true and the beautiful. Epistemology, ethics and esthetics acquire reality
only if related to economics.
While not too sanguine about my success in venturing into this field, the book
cannot wholly fail if here and there it spurs men and women to free themselves from
the ugliness of this civilization. If it directs the attention of even a few thinkers to the
questions with which it deals, I will feel fully justified in having published it.
It is impossible to acknowledge my indebtedness to all from whom I have taken
counsel in the preparation of this book, but special mention must be made of my
friend Guy M. Carleton, with whom I have discussed almost every point in it, and
who has been good enough not only to study the manuscript, but to make many
suggestions for its, improvement.
RALPH BORSODI
Suffern, New York.
August, 1929
--CONTENTS--

BOOK I
THE QUEST OF COMFORT
PART I
THIS UGLY CIVILIZATION
I THIS UGLY CIVILIZATION
II MACHINES
III EFFICIENCY
PART II
THE FACTORY
IV THE FACTORY ITSELF
V THE FACTORY'S PRODUCTS
VI THE FACTORY WORKERS
VII THE FACTORYS CUSTOMERS
VIII THE CONQUERING FACTORY SYSTEM
PART III
THE PERSONS IN THE DRAMA
The Great Men and the Small
IX THE PERSONS IN THE DRAMA
X JOHN DOE, AVERAGE MAN: THE HERD-MINDED TYPE
XI JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER: THE QUANTITY-MINDED TYPE
XII CHARLES W. ELIOT: THE QUALITY-MINDED TYPE
BOOK II
THE CONQUEST OF COMFORT
PART IV
THE MATERIAL ASPECT
XIII COMFORT
XIV FOOD, CLOTHING AND SHELTER: THE ESSENTIALS OF COMFORT
XV THE FACTORS IN THE QUEST OF COMFORT: I. THE HOMESTEAD
XVI THE FACTORS IN THE QUEST OF COMFORT: II. TIME
XVII THE FACTORS IN THE QUEST OF COMFORT: III MACHINES
XVIII THE FACTORS IN THE QUEST OF COMFORT: IV. WISDOM
PART V
THE PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT
XIX THE CONQUEST OF COMFORT
XX THE BARRIERS TO COMFORT
The Economic Barrier
The Physiological Barrier
The Social Barrier
The Biological Barrier
The Religious Barrier
The Political Barrier
The Moral Barrier
The Psychological Barrier
The Educational Barrier
The Individual Barrier
L'ENVOI
XXI L'ENVOI
REFERENCES
BOOK I
THE QUEST OF COMFORT

Since humanity came into being man hath
Enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my
brethren, is our original sin.
--Thus Spake Zarathustra.

PART I
THIS UGLY CIVILIZATION

Shame, shame, shame–
that is the history of man.
--Thus Spake Zarathustra.

CHAPTER I
THIS UGLY CIVILIZATION

THIS is an ugly civilization.
It is a civilization of noise, smoke, smells, and crowds--of people content to live
amidst the throbbing of its machines; the smoke and smells of its factories; the crowds
and the discomforts of the cities of which it proudly boasts.
The places in which the people work are noisy. The factories are filled with the
recurring, though not the rhythmic, noises of machines and the crash and clatter
incidental to their operation. The offices, too, are noisy with the rat-tat-tat of
typewriters, the ringing of telephones, the grinding of adding machines. The streets on
which the people move about, and around which they work and play, resound with the
unending clatter of traffic--the roar of motors, the squeaks of brakes, the shrieks of
sirens, and the banging of street cars. And even the homes in which they are supposed
to rest are noisy because they are not only packed close together but built tier on tier
so that the pianos, phonographs, and radios in them blare incongruously above, below,
and on all sides of them.
The people of this factory-dominated civilization accept its noisiness. For noise is
the audible evidence of their prowess; the inescapable accompaniment of their
civilization's progress. The greater the noise, the greater the civilization.
The people of Pittsburgh, a city of more than half a million souls, live in a cloud of
soot. Soot shuts out the sun by day; the moon and stars by night. Soot blackens
Pittsburgh's churches and courthouses; its humble dwellings and towering office
buildings. It creeps and sifts into Pittsburgh's homes. It smuts the walls, the draperies,
the rugs, the furnishings in Pittsburgh's homes. In Pittsburgh people accept a sooty
civilization because soot makes Pittsburgh great.
The people of Chicago, a city of over three million souls, live under an encircling
and overpowering smell. At breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner: while working and,
playing; awake and asleep; Chicago's millions inhale penetrating smells from the
mountains of dung and offal in its great stockyards. The greater the smells the
stockyards make, the greater their contributions to Chicago. In Chicago people accept
a smelly civilization because smells make Chicago great.
The people of New York, a city of over six million souls, shuttle back and forth
morning and night between their flats at one end and their jobs at the other end of a
series of long underground tubes. Twice each work day throughout their lives New
Yorkers push and are pushed into their noisy, sweaty, obscenely crowded subways,
elevated railroads, street cars and busses. In New York people accept a civilization of
crowded homes, crowded streets, crowded stores, crowded offices, crowded theatres
because crowds make New York great.
Pittsburgh is not our only sooty factory city; Chicago is not our only smelly
stockyards town; New York is not our only crowded metropolis. The cities of the
country differ from one another only in degrees of sootiness, smelliness, noisiness and
crowdedness. What is most discouraging, those not so sooty as Pittsburgh, nor so
smelly as Chicago, nor so crowded as New York, aspire to equal these three shining
jewels of our civilization in the very things that make for ugliness.
Travel on the Erie Railroad from New York to Buffalo and you will see how this
civilization scars what should be one of the most beautiful regions of the world. The
train moves through a countryside that is one unending delight--a succession of hills
and valleys, fields and streams of entrancing loveliness. From the time it leaves the
factory dotted area of northern New Jersey, which the sprawling cities of Jersey City,
Passaic and Paterson make hideous, it travels through a region that should inspire all
of those who dwell in it to the building of beautiful places in which to work and play.
Instead, the cities and towns are eyesores, especially those that contain factories, and
most of them do; made more hideous because of the contrast between the dingy places
built by men and the natural beauty about them. What the factory has left undone to
mar the country seems to have been done by the signs and billboards advertising
factory products; by the huddle of stores and warehouses in which factory products
are distributed; by the drab, box-like houses in which dwell the makers of factory
products. Between the factory itself and these by-products of a factory dominated
countryside all has been done that could be done to make the country ugly.
Above all, this civilization is ugly because of the subtle hypocrisy with which it
persuades the people to engage in the factory production of creature comforts while
imposing conditions which destroy their capacity for enjoying them. With one hand it
gives comforts--with the other hand it takes comfort itself away.
The servitude to the factory which it enforces uniformly upon all men harnesses
skilled workers and creative individuals in a repetitive treadmill which makes each
muscle in their bodies, every drop of blood in their veins, the very fibres of their
being, cry out in voiceless agony that they are being made to murder time--the
irreplaceable stuff of which life itself is composed.
For America is a respecter of things only, and time--why time is only something to
be killed, or butchered into things which can be bought and sold.
Wherever the factory dominates, there you will find the factory-generated waste of
human life and natural resources, and the noise, soot, smell and crowds of
industrialized America.
For the misdirection of human energy which destroys beauty is neither exclusively
American nor exclusively modern. Ugliness has existed in all ages and is to be found
among all the peoples of the earth. The tragic universality of the "misfortune" to
which Friedrich Nietzsche calls attention in "Thus Spake Zarathustra" has made
ugliness the common curse of mankind. Says Nietzsche:
There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty of the earth are not also
the first men.
For "the mighty of the earth," when bereft of wisdom, have to devote themselves
ruthlessly to perpetuating their own might. This is the genesis of the interminable
warfare waged by predatory quantity-minded men upon the quality-minded men who
seek to make the world a more beautiful place in which to live.
Substitute "church" for "factory" and the argument of this book applies equally well
to the situation of mankind when Voltaire waged his war with "I'Infame." Hypatia the
church tore to pieces. Bruno it burned at the stake. Copernicus and Galileo it
terrorized into temporary silence. What the church did when it had full sway to the
quality-minded individuals who sought to make the world a more intelligent place was
similar in essence, although far worse in kind, to that which the factory does today.
Substitute "slavery" for "factory" and the argument applies equally to that period of
history when mankind accepted the idea that heredity and power gave to limited
numbers of men the right to enslave others. Nothing in all history is more vile than the
institution which permitted a "noble" Roman to cripple Epictetus, because he owned
him! What slavery did when it flourished to the quality-minded individuals, both slave
and free, who sought to make life more beautiful, was no different in essence from
that which the factory does today.
Substitute "absolutism" for "factory" and the argument applies equally to every
period and every place in which kings, princes and nobles wielded absolute powers.
What absolutism did wherever it had sway to quality-minded individuals was similar
in essence to what the factory does today.
The civilizations dominated by the church, by slavery and by absolutism were each
in their way ugly. But the superstitions, cruelties, and injustices which marred them
were the symptoms and not the true causes of the perhaps incurable disease from
which all of them suffered.
The institutions which dominated those civilizations, just as the factory dominates
ours, expressed the activities of acquisitive, predatory, ruthless, quantity-minded types
of men. Because these powerful but inferior types impose their wills upon superior
types of men, the individuals who mitigate the tragedy of life--those who have
contributed all the beauty to be found amidst the wealth of folly and waste in the
world--are penalized and handicapped in their work.
Under penalty of all that is dear to men--work, comfort, fellowship, even life itself--
they are forced to subscribe to the false facts, false hopes, false fears, false tastes of
the conventions of their times. The penalties for failure to conform have varied from
burnings-at-the-stake, the favorite method when the church dominated civilization, to
starvation-into-accepting-a-place-in-the factory system, the favorite method now that
the factory dominates civilization.
America has not yet permitted the factory, officially, to take over the government.
America still gives, officially, lip-service to the rights of the individual. But factory-
dominated America is slowly but surely destroying its idealists by making laws,
schools and all other popular institutions "practical." Already the factory has created a
factory folkway. In America "business as usual" is not a mere slogan--it is a holy and
patriotic virtue.
But look at Russia. In Russia proscription of the nonconformist is practiced--after
socialization--on an even greater scale than in capitalistic America.
There the factory is supreme.
There the factory has taken over the government.
And there all men are being forced to conform to the needs of the factory, precisely
as in ancient Sparta they were forced to conform to the needs of the state, and in the
Middle Ages to the needs of the church.
And now let me try to tell you why it is that I have come to the conclusion that it is
the factory--the gross abuse of the factory--that has produced this ugly civilization.
For it is an ugly civilization.
It is ugly because of its persistent failure to concern itself about whether the work
men do, and the things they produce, and above all the way they live, create the
comfort and understanding essential if mankind is to achieve an adequate destiny.
And it will remain ugly and probably become uglier year by year until the men who
are able to mitigate its ugliness free themselves to do so.
CHAPTER II
MACHINES

ALL civilizations have been ugly. They could not well avoid it.
But this civilization is unique. Machines make it possible for this one to be
beautiful, and yet it is in many respects indescribably uglier than the civilizations that
have preceded it.
For this civilization, instead of using machines to free its finest spirits for the pursuit
of beauty, uses machines mainly to produce factories--factories which only the more
surely hinder quality-minded individuals in their warfare upon ugliness, discomfort,
and misunderstanding.
Consider, for instance, the persuasive and eloquent apology for the factory which
Mr. Glenn Frank has recently written and which be entitled "The Machine Age." 1
Among contemporary students of our civilization Mr. Frank has no superior in
equipment and experience for the task of defending our "machine civilization" from
those who venture to criticise it. He is a practical man, with years of business
experience under Mr. E. A. Filene of Boston, the head of the largest men's and
women's clothing store in the world. He is a forceful writer, with the skill in
expressing himself to be expected from a man for so many years the editor of the
"Century." He is an erudite man, for he is the president of the University of
Wisconsin, one of the best exemplars of the higher education in these machine-
dominated states.
And yet Mr. Frank makes the serious mistake of taking a facile phrase, the machine
age, too seriously. To speak rhetorically of a machine age is permissible if the
inferences drawn are merely rhetorical. But it is not permissible to assume that
"machine age" is a self-defining term and that no obligation exists for defining it as
carefully as every general concept should be defined when it is used as a basis for
broad generalizations. In the absence of definition I can truthfully say that I am
heartily in favor of my kind of machine age and very much opposed to Mr. Glenn
Frank's kind of machine age. Plainly, if we are to understand each other, we must
define our terms.
Mr. Frank fails not only to define adequately the term which gives his thesis its title
but he uses it interchangeably with such expressions as "the machine," "machine
industry" and "machine civilization"--expressions which he likewise fails to define.