History of the U. S. Dream

THE EPIC OF AMERICA--James Truslow Adams--Little, Brown ($3). Not Prohibition but the U. S. itself, thinks James Truslow Adams, is the noble experiment. He calls it the "American dream." In this one-volume history of the U. S. he shows the beginnings of the dream, its sinkings into nightmare, its lapses into crude daylight reality, its volatile rises. Professional historian, no mealy-mouthed panegyrist, Adams has written his epic in curt, clear narrative; but "the epic loses all its glory without the dream. The statistics of size, population, and wealth would mean nothing to me unless I could still believe in the dream."

The U. S. Dream, which Adams calls unique in the world's history, is "the belief in the common man and the insistence upon his having, as far as possible, equal opportunity in every way with the rich one."

The Epic of America does not seek to compete with the ordinary historical or economic narratives of the U. S. With only four brief footnotes, few formal statistics, a broad brush Adams paints a rapid but effective picture, tries at the same time to show "how the ordinary American . . . has become what he is today in outlook, character, and opinion.'' Such oft-told stories as the events of the Revolution and the Civil War, Washington at Valley Forge and Lincoln in his cabin Adams does not retell; but he comments on their causes, their effects on the national character.

Because the U. S. colonists were subject to laws passed by a far-away Parliament they drifted "toward the belief that if a law interfered with their business and profits it need not be obeyed." No more an iconoclast than a panegyrist, Adams thinks Washington saved the U. S., not by military brilliance but by force of character: "In plain truth we see now that the Revolution was only saved from being an abortive rebellion by two factors . . . one the character of Washington, and the other the marshaling against England of European powers." Many of the "best people" were Tories: "from eighty to a hundred thousand left their native colonies"--a considerable setback, thinks Adams, for U. S. civilization. But Washington was wary of democracy and most other aristocrats of the Revolution did not believe in it; it was Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence. "Hamilton stood for strength, wealth, and power; Jefferson for the American dream."

Adams calls the frontier the U. S. safety-valve, admires the pioneers, but this side idolatry. Adams tells soberly of one Kentucky camp-meeting in 1801 attended by more than 25,000, preached at for a week by 17 preachers, graced at one moment by 3,000 prostrate swooners, 500 "jerkers" and "barkers."' "Two of the strongest influences in our life, religion and the frontier, made in our formative periods for a limited and intolerant spiritual life. . . . Because the frontiersmen had developed the right combination of qualities to conquer the wilderness, they began to believe quite naturally that they knew best, so to say, how to conquer the world, to solve its problems, and that their own qualities were the only ones worth a man's having. Among these came to be aggressiveness, self-assertion, and a certain unteachableness." Soon the frontier came into politics. "The American doctrine had developed, through the long training of the common man in local politics, that anyone could do anything. . . . Superficiality had inevitably resulted from enforced versatility."

When Andrew ("Old Hickory'') Jack son clumped into the White House the U. S. dream was made flesh. "After An drew Jackson every boy was being told he might be President of the United States." The North began to hustle. "Business ceased to be a mere occupation which must be carried on in accordance with the moral code. It had itself become part of that code. Money-making having become a virtue, it was no longer controlled by the virtues, but ranked with them, and could be weighed against them when any conflict occurred." As the U. S. stretched itself the booster was born. "As he lost sight of the real end for which wealth is won, so likewise he tended to lose sight of the real end for which an in crease in population may be desired. . . . The later odd aversion, in a nation wholly made up of immigrants of one generation or another, toward any of our citizens who expatriate themselves for a while, springs straight from this frontier prejudice. He who went abroad became hated both as a lost unit in a population which must be made ever larger, and also as a critic, albeit even a silent one, who might 'give the place a bad name' and hinder others from coming."

But the U. S. businessman did not lose his idealism. "The American did not believe he was selling his soul to Mammon, but thought he was merely pledging it for the moment, as he was ready to pledge anything he owned, with the hope of ultimate gain. He could not be quite comfortable about devoting himself solely to business until he had made it a virtue, and he always looked forward to a future which would justify spiritually his intense present preoccupation with the material. . . . We were boilingly busy. We must make our fortunes while there was still a chance in a new country. Some day you would see. The ways of God were mysterious, and if we only made the insurance office and the joint-stock company profitable enough to ourselves, they would be changed to spiritual values."

While the North industrially expanded, the South's energies were expended in conserving and developing the landed civilization they already had. Not Slavery but Sectionalism Adams considers was the real issue of the clash. When the South lost, its civilization was ruined; an American dream had gone forever--but not the American dream. With the passing of the frontier came "one of the really great turning points in our history." Hitherto, when the West had revolted against Eastern domination the West had always won. But "in 1896 [when Bryan ran for President against McKinley] for the first time, a revolt of the frontier failed. Something had gone out of American life. Something new had entrenched itself against attack.

Our 20th Century era of titanic corporations Adams calls "The Age of the Dinosaurs." Says he: "It is probable that the dinosaurs passed because of lack of brain power. The difficulty of supplying our modern economic monsters with sufficient power of intellectual direction at the top has already become evident." He thinks Roosevelt "undeniably the greatest Republican President since Lincoln." For Wilson he reserves higher praise: "Here once more was the authentic voice of the great American democracy; here once more was the prophet speaking of the American dream, of that hope of a better and richer life for all the masses of humble and ordinary folk who made the American nation. It was the voice once more of the democratic frontier, of Jefferson, of Jackson, of Lincoln."

Of the last ten years Adams says: "Our present decade . . . might be described succinctly by saying that Harding had to liquidate the War; Coolidge had quietly to liquidate the scandals of the Harding regime; and Hoover is now watching the liquidation of 'Coolidge prosperity.' " The War was a calamitous setback to the U. S. Dream. "The prospect is discouraging today, but not hopeless. . . . We have a long and arduous road to travel if we are to realize our American dream in the life of our nation, but if we fail, there is nothing left but the old eternal round. The alternative is the failure of self-government, the failure of the common man to rise to full stature, the failure of all the American dream has held of hope and promise for mankind."

The Author. James Truslow Adams, no relation to Massachusetts' famed Adams family, though he has been their biographer (The Adams Family, TIME, June 16. 1930), is a roving Manhattanite who traces his ancestry to English settlers in Virginia in 1658. He thinks he has lived long enough abroad to have attained an objective view of the U. S. "Conscious, on the one hand, of no sectional prejudices, but only of being an American, on the other he has grown increasingly conscious of how different an American now is from the man or woman of any other nation." Big-eared, big-eyed, with professorial pince-nez, a clipped mustache over unprofessorially thick lips, James Truslow Adams looks young (he is 53) to be the author of so many fat and respectable books of history. In 1921 Founding of New England won him the Pulitzer Prize. Other books: Revolutionary New England, New England in the Republic, Jeffersonian Principles, Hamiltonian Principles. Book-of-the-Month Club judges had no difficulty in making The Epic of America their unanimous selection for October.

Story by Alger

Everyone who knows John Chipman ("Johnny") Farrar--and few literary people there are in the land who have never met him--knows how precocious he is. Remembering his early leaps & bounds, his friends last week were not really as surprised as they might have been when his small, young firm of Farrar & Rinehart, publishers since 1929, bought out potent Cosmopolitan Book Corp., publishers since 1914 and wholly owned by William Randolph Hearst. Long used by Mr. Hearst to make by-profits out of serials published in his magazines, Cosmopolitan was grandly energized last year and the book trade heard that Mr. Hearst was out to outdo the greatest book houses. The Cosmopolitan stable of authors was expensively expanded until it included such prize exhibits as Louis Bromfield (reputedly under contract for five books at $60,000 a book), Erich Maria Remarque, Anita Loos, Fannie Hurst, Ruth Suckow, Vicki Baum, Colette, Rex Beach, besides such old Hearst standbys as Peter B. Kyne. Harry Leon Wilson, the late James Oliver Curwood. By taking over Cosmopolitan's contracts, Farrar & Rinehart stepped overnight from second rank to very first. Publisher Farrar was pleased, and well he might be, to be at 36 head of such an affair. For while his favorite author may be Marlowe, no man minds having his life turn into a Horatio Alger tale. Johnny Farrar was a poor boy from Vermont. When he went to Yale to join its strong Class of 1919 he had no influential friends, no cushiony background to carry him over the bumps. Small, squeaky-voiced, with a tousled mop of red hair, Farrar did not look like the Boy Who Made Good. But by junior year he was known and liked by everyone that counted in the college. He edited the Lit, left college to go to War, came back to take his degree with such friends as Stephen Vincent Benet. Thornton Niven Wilder, the late Briton Hadden.

Success in college, especially literary fame, does not necessarily mean success afterwards, but Farrar's did. He quickly became a feature writer for the late great World's Sunday Magazine. At 26 he was editor of The Bookman and a figure in the Manhattan literary world. He wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal at $1,000 a month. Publisher George H. Doran took him on as editor and he hobnobbed with the literary great and near great. When Doubleday merged with Doran, Johnny Farrar, 32, was associate editor (later editor) and a director of one of the largest

U. S. publishing houses, at a salary fatter than most of his college contemporaries, not excepting bankers. The Doubleday-Doran merger had its drawbacks. Editor Farrar talked things over with his friends Stanley Marshall and Frederick Rinehart, sons of rich Authoress Mary Roberts Rinehart. They decided to take a chance and start a publishing house of their own. By the time the new firm was ready to bite off such a big mouthful as Cosmopolitan Book Corp., it had on its lists, besides Mother Rinehart, the following: Katharine Brush, Upton Sinclair, Floyd Dell, Alec Waugh, Walter De La Mare, DuBose Heyward. Onetime father-in-law of Partner Stan ley Rinehart is George H. Doran, who withdrew from Doubleday, Doran last year to be literary adviser to Publisher Hearst's magazines (TIME, Aug. 11, 1930). Despite his divorce from Daughter Mary Doran, Partner Rinehart and Father Doran remain good friends, but Farrar & Rinehart denied that Father Doran had any part in their acquisition of Cosmopolitan Book Corp. Smart young Publishers Farrar & Rinehart let the curious book trade stay curious as to how they had paid and how much for an outright purchase that surely ran well into six figures.

* New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price {$5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.