What They Saw in America - Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb 9781316601594, 2015051003, 9781107146617

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What They Saw in America

Grounded in the stories of their actual visits, What They Saw in America takes the reader into the journeys of four distinguished yet very different foreign visitors – Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb – who traveled to the United States between 1830 and 1950. The comparative insights of these important outside observers (from both Europe and the Middle East) encourage sober reflection on a number of features of American culture that have persisted over time: individualism and conformism, the unique relationship between religion and capitalism, indifference toward nature, voluntarism, attitudes toward race, and imperialistic tendencies. Listening to these travelers’ views, both the ambivalent and even the more unequivocal, can help Americans better understand themselves, more fully empathize with the values of other cultures, and more deeply comprehend how the United States is perceived from the outside. james l. nolan jr. is a professor of sociology at Williams College. His teaching and research interests fall within the general areas of law and society, culture, technology and social change, and historical comparative sociology. His previous books include Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The International Problem-Solving Court Movement (2009); Reinventing Justice: The American Drug Court Movement (2001); and The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century’s End (1998). He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and a Fulbright scholarship. He has held visiting fellowships at Oxford University, Loughborough University, and the University of Notre Dame.

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What They Saw in America Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb

JAMES L. NOLAN JR.

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32 Avenue of the Americas, New York ny 10013–2473, usa Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316601594 © James L. Nolan, Jr. 2016 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Nolan, James L., Jr., author. Title: What they saw in America: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G.K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb / James L. Nolan, Jr., Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. Description: New York NY : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015051003| isbn 9781107146617 (Hardback : alk. paper) | isbn 9781316601594 (Paperback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: National characteristics, American–History. | Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805–1859–Political and social views. | Weber, Max, 1864–1920–Political and social views. | Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874–1936–Political and social views. | Qutb, Sayyid, 1906–1966–Political and social views. Classification: LCC E169.1 .N725 2016 | DDC 973–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015051003 isbn 978-1-107-14661-7 Hardback isbn 978-1-316-60159-4 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain accurate or appropriate.

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To my students

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Contents

Acknowledgments

page ix 1

Introduction 1

Pride, Patriotism, and the Mercantilist Spirit: Tocqueville and Beaumont Discover America Tocqueville and the Quandary of American Democracy

11 36

4

Agrarianism, Race, and the End of Romanticism: Weber in Early Twentieth-Century America Weber on Sects, Schools, and the Spirit of Capitalism

66 93

5 6

A New Martin Chuzzlewit: Chesterton on Main Street Chestertonian Distributism and the Democratic Ideal

116 141

7

From Musha to New York: Qutb Encounters American Jahiliyya

163

8

Qutb’s “Inquiring Eyes” in Colorado and California Conclusion

183 203

2 3

237 283 291

Notes References Index

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Acknowledgments

As this book represents something of a departure from my previous work, I necessarily depended upon and profited from the help of a number of institutions and individuals. Included among these were the many Williams College students who assisted in the project. I received direct help from four able research assistants: Erin Altenburger, in the early phases of the project, and Holly Whitney, Margaret Moore, and Erin Curley at later stages of research and writing. I have for several years taught a course at Williams College under the same title as the book and, in this context, benefited from working on the project’s central themes with intelligent and engaged students. A former Williams College student, Dan Burns, assisted in translating some of Sayyid Qutb’s writings on America. Chris Opila and Chloe Bordewich translated additional Qutb material from Arabic to English for me, and William Stewart carefully translated three German newspaper accounts of an important Max Weber lecture. A semester as a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study served me well during a time when I was mainly working on the Weber chapters. Discussion of material with fellows at the Institute proved instructive. Especially helpful was feedback I received from Mark Roche, both during the time of the fellowship and in the years after returning to Williams College. Others who read and commented on all or parts of the manuscript include Michael Aronson, Magnus Bernhardsson, John Calvert, Leo Damrosch, Joseph Davis, Patrick Deneen, Nick Howe, Jonathan Imber, Chris Jensen, Mary Kirby, Gianfranco Poggi, Lawrence Scaff, Olga Shevchenko, Christian Smith, and Robert Wuthnow. These friends, colleagues, and scholars were incredibly generous with ix Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 22 Jan 2020 at 17:49:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066

x

Acknowledgments

the time and effort they committed to reading (and, in some cases, rereading) chapters of the book—a wonderful example of Tocquevillian voluntarism on display. I’m also grateful for input I received from Guenther Roth during an afternoon in New York when I was just beginning work on the project. I was welcomed and assisted at a number of places where I collected data for the book, including the British Library in London; the archives at the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library; the Massachusetts Historical Society Library in Boston; the archives at University of Northern Colorado’s James A. Michener Library; the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco; the La Venta Inn in Palos Verdes, California; the G. K. Chesterton Library in Oxford, United Kingdom; the Beinecke Library at Yale University; and the Château de Tocqueville, in Normandy, France, where Alexis de Tocqueville wrote sections of Democracy in America. Many thanks to Jean-Guillaume de Tocqueville for the private tour of the beautiful estate once occupied by his famous great-great-great grand-uncle and to Melvin Schut and Jonathan Price for helping to arrange the visit. Jay Trask, archivist at the Michener Library at the University of Northern Colorado, never tired of my repeated requests for additional material on Qutb during my stay in Greeley, Colorado. A Class of 1945 World Fellowship from the Dean’s Office at Williams College helped to fund the project’s various research trips. I was also aided through support from the Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. I gained much from the firsthand accounts of three individuals who knew Qutb when he was a student at Colorado State College of Education in the summer and fall of 1949. Invaluable were my interviews with Saeb Dajani, Ibrahim Insari, and Jamie McClendon. For helpful assistance on G. K. Chesterton materials, I owe thanks to Stratford Caldecott, Tessa Caldecott, Ian Ker, and Aidan Mackey. I’m grateful for the editorial and production work of Lewis Bateman, Claudia Bona-Cohen, and Joshua Penney at Cambridge University Press. Finally, I was aided by my ever-supportive family, including Amy and David who (in addition to the former’s fine artwork) read and commented on sections of the book; my late and beloved father, James L. Nolan, who offered feedback on early drafts of two chapters, even while his health declined in the last months of his life; Laura and Will, who never ceased to amuse and show interest; and Cathy, whose contributions are too innumerable to name or count.

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Introduction

Alexis de Tocqueville observed that because Americans live in “perpetual adoration” of themselves, “only foreigners or experience can make certain truths reach [their] ears.”1 Political scientist Russell Hanson agrees, adding that the assessments of a single outside observer may not be enough to “inspire self-criticism on the part of Americans.” Needed, says Hanson, are the comparative observations of “different foreign eyes.”2 In keeping with these insights, this book traces the travels and writings of four foreign visitors who spent time in the United States, returned to their home countries, and then wrote about what they saw. The four outside observers journeyed to the New World at different historical moments – Alexis de Tocqueville (1831–32), Max Weber (1904), G. K. Chesterton (1921; 1930–31), and Sayyid Qutb (1948–50) – and hailed from four separate countries (France, Germany, England, and Egypt respectively). While the visitors emphasized distinct features of American society, one also discovers common themes in their analyses. In that their visits spanned a period of nearly 120 years, their common observations say something about the enduring relevance of American national character. Beyond the contested notion of national character, their collective assessments continue to bear directly on matters of pressing national and international concern. My initial interest in the subject was sparked, in part, by my previous book, Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing, which investigated the transplantation of innovative criminal court programs from the United States to five other common-law countries. Curiously, while legal actors in the other countries eagerly borrowed what were clearly American-grown legal products, they sometimes did so in explicitly anti-American terms, 1 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Texas Libraries, on 08 Dec 2019 at 09:55:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.001

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evincing what could be called a sort of “ambivalent anti-Americanism.” Such ambivalence, as recent international surveys demonstrate, is not isolated to the transference of new criminal courts. Findings from international surveys show that a majority of citizens in a number of countries around the world oppose the spread of American ideas and customs in their countries, while at the same time they welcome and admire American technology and cultural products.3 These findings, again, reveal a curious paradox that invites further exploration. Another impetus for this book was the public commentary that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Immediately after 9/11, it was not uncommon to hear Americans ask, “Why do they hate us?” The question, however, quickly faded from national consciousness, as the United States entered into military engagement first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Yet, it remains an important question. Such public declarations as “they are enemies of freedom” hardly satisfy as plausible explanations.4 That little time and effort was given to ponder this question is not entirely surprising. To be deeply concerned about the interests and perspectives of other countries has not always been regarded as America’s strong suit. Findings from the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes survey show that a majority of respondents in other countries say that “when making foreign policy decisions the U.S. does not take into account the interest of other countries.”5 This is certainly the case in the Middle East, where respondents “overwhelmingly believe the U.S. ignores their interests.” For example, 74 percent of the Egyptians, 75 percent of the Turks, 75 percent of the Jordanians, and 83 percent of the Palestinians say that the United States considers the interests of their country “not too much” or “not at all.” Such attitudes are not, however, isolated to the Middle East. Europeans have reported much the same: 71 percent of the Germans, 89 percent of the French, 75 percent of the Spanish, and 91 percent of the Swedes say the United States ignores their countries’ interests.6 That many Americans ventured to ask the question, “Why do they hate us?” however, suggests some interest in wanting to understand how people in other countries think; and, of course, not everyone ignored this question. Less than two years after the 9/11 attacks, National Public Radio (NPR) ran a story on the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, who visited the United States for twenty-one months between 1948 and 1950. Following the time he spent in the United States, Qutb returned to Egypt and joined the Muslim Brotherhood, becoming one of its most influential thinkers. Indeed, Qutb has been variously described as “one of the most influential

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Introduction

3

Islamist thinkers of the last century”; as “the greatest ideological influence on the contemporary Islamist movement”; and as “the foremost Islamic thinker of his time.”7 His writings on the United States, including a series of essays titled The America I Have Seen, have done much to shape attitudes toward the United States in the Middle East. In his book, The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright notes the causal links between Qutb’s American journey and the events of 9/11. Qutb’s American journey is presented as an important starting place for understanding the animosity toward the United States that precipitated the terrorist attacks. The journalist, Daniel Brogan, makes a similar point. Writing almost two years after 9/11, Brogan acknowledges the common question Americans asked in the days following the terrorist attacks, “Why do they hate us?” He also observes that Americans weren’t particularly interested in answering the question, but had they been, Sayyid Qutb, and his interpretation of America, would be a logical place to start.8 An investigation into Qutb’s life reveals that, while such a direct link may oversimplify the nature and extent of his influence, his critique of the United States is not wholly unlike earlier interpretations of America penned by European visitors and commentators. Even Qutb himself, as we will see in Chapter Eight, cited several Western writers to legitimate his own critical assessment. But why choose these three European visitors in particular to compare with Qutb? There are several reasons for this selection. First, recent works on the American travels of Tocqueville, Weber, and Chesterton, as well as new biographies on Chesterton and Weber suggest continuing and growing interest in their writings on America.9 Second, like Qutb, these visitors actually spent time in America, and are thus distinguishable from other European critics (Heidegger, Kürnberger, and Marx among them) who never set foot in the United States. Third, Tocqueville, Weber, and Chesterton each visited the United States from a different European country (France, Germany, and England, respectively), at a different time in history, and with very distinct vocational and intellectual backgrounds. Given these important differences, discovery of common American characteristics – particularly inasmuch as they line up with Qutb’s analysis – are all the more instructive. Political scientists Richard Boyd and Brandon Turner make a similar point in their comparative discussion of anti-American themes in the writings of Tocqueville, Marx, and Trollope. That is, they find unexpected commonalities in these Europeans’ respective analyses, in spite

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What They Saw in America

of their very different backgrounds, national origins, and political commitments. Boyd and Turner are also struck by how these particular nineteenth-century accounts parallel contemporary assessments of the American personality.10 The differences between the four visitors considered in this study are even more pronounced, thus making their common findings, and the contemporary relevance of their accounts, all the more interesting. Finally, it could be said that Tocqueville, Weber, and Chesterton are among the more friendly of the famous Europeans to have visited and written about the United States. It would be one thing to find similar views between Qutb and more one-sided critics, of which there is no shortage, and quite another to find common observations among those who were more ambivalent, who were simultaneously impressed with and disquieted by what they saw in America. In selecting these Europeans, it should be noted further, I’m not actually selecting only three observers, as each visitor traveled in the company of others: Tocqueville with his lifelong friend and fellow magistrate, Gustave de Beaumont; Weber with his wife Marianne and, for part of the trip, with his colleague, Ernst Troeltsch; Chesterton with his wife Frances on his 1921 journey, and with both Frances and his secretary, Dorothy Collins, on his 1930–31 tour. These fellow travelers said interesting and important things about the United States, and their observations, which I draw on throughout the book, usefully enrich and complement the writings of their more famous companions. These additional observations – gleaned from letters, newspaper accounts, interviews, diaries, and published books – not only represent instructive material in its own right, but provide insights into the thinking and writing of the more renowned writers they accompanied, even (and perhaps especially) when, as was sometimes the case, there was disagreement between members of the same traveling party. In addition to the views of the four visitors’ fellow travelers, the book also touches on the works of other foreign observers of America who either influenced these four men or whose writings in some way illuminate what they had to say.

following their journeys What They Saw in America pays close attention to the actual journeys these visitors took, which in all four cases were characterized by a sense of adventure, exploration, even danger. Tocqueville became very ill during a treacherous trek through snow-covered parts of Kentucky

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Introduction

5

and Tennessee in the frigid winter of 1830. One hundred years later, Frances Chesterton was hospitalized for several days in Chattanooga, Tennessee during the Chestertons’ second American tour, an illness from which it took her several weeks to recover. Qutb also spent time in a hospital in Washington, DC, in 1949, with an undisclosed ailment, an experience that afforded him several interesting observations about American society. Other adventures (or misadventures) included Tocqueville and Beaumont’s Indian-guided two-week excursion into the wilderness of Michigan Territory; Chesterton’s near encounter with a bootleg-related shooting in front of a Portland, Oregon hotel; the failed attempt of an inebriated woman to seduce Qutb aboard the ship that took him from Alexandria, Egypt to New York; and Weber’s decision to quickly abscond from Guthrie, Oklahoma after learning that the newspaper man, with whom he was to meet the next day, had recently drawn a gun on another man. The visitors met a number of interesting people throughout their travels, including Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, Daniel Webster, Jane Addams, William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Ford, and Helen Keller. However, famous Americans were hardly the visitors’ main interlocutors. As Tocqueville wrote to his brother while in the United States, “we rub shoulders with all classes,” and to his father, “the most humble conversation is instructive and I daresay no man, whatever his social rank, is incapable of teaching us something.”11 In realization of what sociologist Peter Berger refers to as sociology’s unrespectability motif, all four foreign observers encountered people from all walks of life, thus providing them a full and textured view of the variegated tapestry of American society. The visitors arrived on American shores with varying levels of notoriety. Weber and Qutb, though both had achieved notable success in their home countries, were far from household names in the United States. Weber’s one lecture, presented at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, was delivered in German with only a handful of people in attendance, and Qutb traveled the United States in relative obscurity. In that the young aristocrats, Tocqueville and Beaumont, were officially ministers of the French government (commissioned to study America’s new penitentiaries), they were treated as distinguished guests, which opened up many doors for them, and not just to America’s prisons. Chesterton was undoubtedly the most well known of the visitors at the times of his tours. He was actually something of a celebrity and was followed by journalists nearly everywhere he went, something Frances Chesterton, in particular,

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experienced as rather taxing. “I didn’t know I was the wife of a great man till I came to America,” she quipped while in the United States. “It had never bothered me before.”12 In writing about what they saw in America, all four visitors themselves offered comparative analyses. That is, in reflecting on America, they used the social and political realities of their home countries as points of comparative reference, both explicitly and implicitly. In an 1847 letter to his cousin and friend Louis de Kergorlay, Tocqueville wrote, “Although I rarely spoke of France in that book [Democracy in America], I did not write a page without thinking of her and without always having her, as it were, before my eyes.”13 Weber’s reflections on America were often in direct reference to developments in Germany, including his St. Louis lecture, which compared American and German agricultural practices. In both his books on America, Chesterton repeatedly identified differences between the United States and England, and in his second book he gave considerable attention to the effects of Americanization on England. In Qutb’s writings on America, he discussed both Egypt and Islam more generally. In fact, the only English article he published while in the United States was a discussion of Egypt in relationship to an unappreciative (and rebellious) world. Given their unique backgrounds and the multiple references to their home countries, I necessarily consider features of their biographies. Sociologist C. Wright Mills says that the essence of the sociological imagination is recognizing the interplay between biography, history, and society. Here Mills is emphasizing the manner in which individual biographies are significantly shaped by particular social and historical contexts. In the present study, I see a similar interplay – in this case, on the manner in which the visitors’ biographies influenced what they saw in American society at the moment in history when they visited it.14 Therefore, woven into the narratives of their separate visits, in the chapters that follow, are references to relevant aspects of their biographies that helped to shape what they saw and how they made sense of it.

common themes What They Saw in America is a comparative book that considers common themes observed by the visitors, but it does so from the ground up, as it were. That is, the book proceeds chronologically, devoting two chapters to each visitor’s journey. It seeks to answer a number of questions. Why did they visit America? Where did they go? With whom did

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Introduction

7

they talk? What did they see? As such, the book is less a work of abstract theory than it is a kind of historical ethnography. That is, as much as possible, I have followed the visitors’ journeys and have sought to understand what they actually saw and heard, and how this evidence informed their interpretations of America. Some theoretical matters are explored, of course, but as derived inductively from the visitors’ direct encounters with people and places in America. In other words, the book aims not so much at contributing a new angle on a contested theoretical dispute or even at engaging in an eclectic exercise of intellectual history, but rather at grounding the visitors’ observations comparatively in the stories of their actual visits. Regardless of their differing disciplinary or professional perspectives, the visitors identified a number of common themes in their reflections on America, including complementary insights on agrarianism and nature, capitalism/industrialism, race, individualism/conformism, religion, secularization, and American imperialism. Not surprisingly, given the visitors’ unique backgrounds, they offered distinctive reflections on these topics. Perhaps more unexpectedly, they also provided similar assessments in a number of instances. For example, all four visitors were struck by Americans’ uniquely capitalistic approach to agriculture and concomitant indifference to nature – an orientation that predates, but also prefigures, the triumph of large-scale agribusiness in the United States and thus sheds light on continuing differences between American and European environmental practices. They also all noted manifestations of American acquisitiveness, energy, and entrepreneurial spirit, sometimes in relationship to the influence of once prevailing forms of religious belief and practice. All four visitors, in fact, discussed the important role of religion in American society, and not only in relationship to economic practices, but to American voluntarism and associational life, race, education, democracy, prisons, and Prohibition. They also, in differing yet overlapping ways, speculated on the future of religion in American society and commented on the processes of secularization. Their discussions of religion are highly relevant to the manner in which the United States projects itself and engages with the international community today. Although Tocqueville may have been the first to identify the paradoxical tendencies of individualism, conformism, and voluntarism in American society, all four visitors touched on these related topics in some manner. A common image invoked by the visitors to describe Americans’ conformist habits and acute sensitivities to the opinion of others was

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the tendency among Americans to form a herd. On a more positive note, the visitors also noticed and commended American voluntary habits, and saw local-level associational life as both mitigating individualistic tendencies and sustaining American democracy. All four visitors, however, became more critical of the United States over time and worried about American imperialistic tendencies, whether of the military or cultural varieties. These and other topics are explored along the way, as I trace the visitors’ journeys in the next eight chapters, and are then given summary consideration, with an eye toward their contemporary relevance, in the concluding chapter.

listening and learning Just a few months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, gave a talk at Williams College. At the time, he had recently completed an initiative that brought individuals from the United States and Vietnam together to discuss the Vietnam War. The project resulted in the publication of a book, Argument Without End. On this April evening in 2001, McNamara described the series of meetings, which took place in Hanoi, and the team of Americans he assembled to participate in the dialogue, two of whom, James Blight and Robert Brigham, joined him in the presentation at Williams. McNamara explained that he himself did not speak Vietnamese. Therefore, he needed someone on the team who did. He also said he knew nothing about Vietnam and therefore invited another scholar to be on the team who was an expert on Vietnamese culture. This was, I thought, a rather stunning concession. The American official who for years had been responsible for U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam, and who had overseen the dramatic escalation of a highly unpopular war in that country, admitted to knowing nothing about Vietnamese culture.15 In Argument Without End, McNamara offers a similar concession, though he applies it to American officials more generally: “In every way, American ignorance of the history, language, and culture of Vietnam was immense.” This ignorance, McNamara argues in the book, was one of the great failures of, and reasons for, the Vietnam tragedy. Accordingly, in the book he advises Americans to learn the indispensable art of empathy, which requires, “above all, an effort to experience the world from the perspective of one whose outlook is radically different” – an orientation, McNamara admits, that is “particularly difficult for the United States.”16

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Introduction

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At the end of the book, he reflects on this belatedly realized revelation in light of contemporary challenges. “What about the United States today and in the future?” he asks. “Do we understand the mindset of Islamic fundamentalists? Or are we likely to disparage as simply ‘irrational’ a mindset that leads to suicide bombings of innocent people?” “Do we understand,” McNamara wonders further, “these mindsets to the extent necessary to head off crises before they become catastrophic events?” Presciently answering his own questions, he writes in 1999: “I think not. We remain ignorant at our peril.”17 Such ignorance, as McNamara makes abundantly clear, is indefensible. Arguably, such indifference is even less excusable when there is a clear sense of hostility directed toward the United States. Whether or not such enmity is justifiable, it seems wise, if not imperative, to seek to understand the nature of and reasons for the animosity. Martha Bayles attempts to do this in her recent book, Through a Screen Darkly, in which, based on interviews with hundreds of individuals around the world (including in the Middle East), she seeks to understand how America is perceived and interpreted from abroad. She discovers that America’s cultural footprint is widespread, that the image of America conveyed through popular culture is a distorted one, and that in traveling to other countries one necessarily develops a more critical attitude.18 Like McNamara, Bayles views as problematic American ignorance of outsiders’ views, what she refers to as the “American people’s chronic indifference to the rest of the world.”19 She advises Americans to shed this attitude and instead “to listen to foreign criticism of our popular culture.”20 Among the critics she cites in her study is Sayyid Qutb. While she justifiably acknowledges that Qutb “had some hang-ups,” she warns that it would be a mistake to dismiss his critique as the misguided rants of a prurient and prudish Islamic radical. In fact, she notes that his reaction to America was not unlike “the offense taken by millions of devout Muslims in the 1970s, when large numbers of them had their first encounters with American culture.” These encounters often “reinforced existing views of the West as godless, decadent, and dangerous.”21 In keeping with Bayles’s recommendation that we listen to foreign critics, this study treats Qutb empathetically, and takes seriously his observations, though not without acknowledging some of his exaggerations and misrepresentations. The aim of the project, then, is similar to Bayles’s. However, instead of traveling abroad to discern how America is perceived from the outside, this book closely considers the travels and writings of four foreign visitors who came to our shores at different

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moments in history and told us what they saw. In seeking to understand someone like Qutb, and the sort of animosity he inspired, the comparison with the more friendly European visitors proves instructive. All four visitors had critical things to say about the United States, but they (especially the European visitors) also identified features of American society they admired. In Bayles’s terms, they discovered both the “bright threads” and the “dark strands” of the American ethos, a sort of ambivalence that one still finds in contemporary perceptions. There are a number of reasons, then, for listening to these visitors. First, given the comparative nature of their individual assessments, they help us to learn something about the countries and communities from which the visitors hailed. Second, inasmuch as the foreign visitor can, as German sociologist Claus Offe puts it, actually “see more than do local inhabitants,”22 they aid us in better understanding ourselves, including seeing common traits (both positive and negative) that have persisted over time. Finally, these outsiders’ assessments give us insight into how we are perceived from abroad and how our often-contested involvement in the international community can sometimes engender ambivalence, if not outright hostility.

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1 Pride, Patriotism, and the Mercantilist Spirit Tocqueville and Beaumont Discover America

On April 2, 1831, two young French aristocrats, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, departed from the Normandy town of Le Havre, on a ship bearing the same name, destined for New York City. They were, respectively, only twenty-five and twenty-nine years old at the time. Their ostensible reason for traveling to the United States was to study American penitentiaries, consider which features of these penal institutions might be transferable to France, and report on their findings to the new Orléans government of King Louis Philippe I. Though they would be faithful in their commission to study American prisons, this justification for the trip was merely a pretense. They had ulterior motives, both with respect to their reasons for leaving France and for what they wished to see in America. Tocqueville and Beaumont came from noble families loyal to the Bourbon dynasty. Neither Tocqueville’s nor Beaumont’s families elected to emigrate from France following the 1789 Revolution. Consequently, Tocqueville’s parents, Hervé and Louise, were imprisoned for ten months during the Reign of Terror, and were only spared the guillotine as a consequence of Robespierre’s fall on July 27, 1794. Louise’s parents, grandparents, and other family members had been executed just days earlier. Though spared the scaffold, Hervé and Louise de Tocqueville were deeply affected by their time in prison; Hervé’s hair turned entirely white during his captivity (though he was only twentyone years old) and Louise suffered from fragile nerves and a sort of nostalgic melancholy thereafter.1 The family, which was able to recover a sizeable portion of their estates (on both sides of the family), eventually settled in Verneuil, a family chateau about 18 miles northwest of Paris, 11 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Texas Libraries, on 08 Dec 2019 at 09:55:30, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.002

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where Tocqueville (born in 1805) and his two older brothers, Hippolyte and Édouard, spent their early childhood. Verneuil provided a relatively tranquil setting for the Tocqueville family, in spite of France’s tumultuous political situation. Despite the shifting political tides, Hervé de Tocqueville succeeded in public life, first as the mayor of Verneuil during Napoleon’s rule, and then as a prefect under Charles X, whose 1824 ascendance to the throne marked the return to power of the Bourbons. This stability amidst the storm was also aided, in part, by the presence of Abbé Lesueur, a Catholic priest who lived with the Tocquevilles following the revolution and who served as a kindly tutor for the three Tocqueville sons. Alexis de Tocqueville had a great fondness for Bébé, as he called him, and was grief stricken when he died during Tocqueville’s time in America. The fortunes of the Tocqueville family changed again following the July Revolution of 1830, when Charles X was deposed and Louis Philippe was placed on the throne. Under the new regime, government officials, including Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont – who were then serving as court magistrates in Versailles – were required either to sign an oath of allegiance to Louis Philippe or lose their positions. Breaking with most of their friends and families (neither Tocqueville’s father nor his brothers signed the oath), Tocqueville and Beaumont signed the pledge, but did so with serious misgivings and apprehensions. In a letter to his future wife, Marie Mottley, Tocqueville wrote, on the day he signed the oath, “I’m deeply wounded and I’ll number this day among the unhappiest of my life . . . I’m at war with myself.”2 Though the young magistrates acquiesced in this instance, mainly as a pragmatic means of preserving their legal careers, they were still viewed with suspicion by the new government. In fact, Tocqueville was made to sign the oath a second time and saw a demotion in his position at Versailles. Thus, the political situation presented itself as untenable, leading Tocqueville and Beaumont to come up with an escape plan. Just six days after Tocqueville’s second signing of the oath, the two friends submitted a proposal to the French minister of the interior to study prisons in America. There was at the time growing interest in prison reform, and several new penitentiaries in America represented potential models for restructuring France’s prison system. The government agreed to commission the trip, but declined to underwrite it. Given Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s family situations, however, the absence of government funding was not a major obstacle. Their primary goal had been accomplished; they could leave France with the imprimatur of the French

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government, as official ministers commissioned to study America’s prisons. Tocqueville admitted privately, though, that “the penitentiary system was a pretext; I used it as a passport that could give me access everywhere in the United States.”3 Thus, from the outset, the French travelers intended to investigate American society more comprehensively. As Beaumont explained in a letter to his father, written while on board Le Havre, he and Tocqueville would endeavor to fulfill their government mission, but they would do much more. Even as they crossed the Atlantic, they were contemplating the “great projects” that would follow their research, as originally they planned to write a book together about America. “[W]hile studying the penal system, we shall be seeing America. While visiting its prisons, we shall be familiarizing ourselves with its inhabitants, its critics, its institutions, its ways. We shall learn the mechanism of its republican government.” The final product of these efforts would be “a book that provides a precise idea of the American people, that outlines its history, that paints its character in broad strokes, that analyzes its social state and in this regard corrects many erroneous opinions.”4 Given the volatile situation in France and its erratic oscillations between despotisms, monarchies, and republics, Tocqueville and Beaumont were genuinely interested in the promise represented in America’s nascent experiment with democracy, a political system they viewed as inevitable, in some form, to Europe’s future. Tocqueville and Beaumont were also motivated by a sense of adventure. Among the literary visitors to the Verneuil chateau of Tocqueville’s youth was François-René de Chateaubriand, a relative of Tocqueville’s mother, whose writings on America he and Beaumont had read. Chateaubriand had traveled to the United States in 1791 and spent one year in the country. His romantic accounts of the New World, its untamed wilderness and native inhabitants, sparked Tocqueville’s imagination and played a role in his decision to make the trip himself. Both Tocqueville and Beaumont made multiple references to Chateaubriand in their letters from America, and his influence played a role not only in their decision to make the journey but also in determining some of what they chose to see while in the United States. In particular, the French ministers wished to experience firsthand the frontier wilderness romanticized in Chateaubriand’s work. And, while Tocqueville and Beaumont took their study of American society entirely seriously – assiduously recording their insights, interviewing scores of Americans from all ranks of life, and collecting enough documents to fill a trunk – the trip was also characterized by a notable sense of wonder, discovery, and adventure.

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Beginning with the voyage across the Atlantic, the two French travelers participated in a spontaneous dance on the deck of Le Havre to the accompaniment of Beaumont’s flute. Spotting an empty barrel bobbing in the open sea, a number of the ship’s passengers grabbed pistols and used the floating object for target practice; it was Tocqueville’s shot that finally pierced the barrel. Their adventures continued in America, where Tocqueville taught Beaumont to swim in the Hudson River; where the travelers shot (and sketched) a variety of birds native to America; where they had several mishaps aboard steamships while traveling on America’s rivers; where they made, with the help of an Indian guide, a long, eventful trek into the frontier wilderness of the Michigan Territory; and where, among the social elite in New York, they attended so many balls and dinner parties that Tocqueville urged his brother Édouard to send from France more gloves, stockings, and neck clothes (the American versions of these oft-used items were evidently too expensive and of “shoddy” quality).5 Their time in America, though, was hardly one long tourist holiday. Indeed, the diligence, inquisitiveness, thoroughness, and insightfulness of their research were nothing short of remarkable. Though Tocqueville preceded Max Weber – one of the recognized founders of the discipline of sociology – in journeying to America by more than 70 years, his excursion can be characterized as a sociological project of the most exemplary quality. As Yale historian George Pierson argued in his comprehensive account of Tocqueville and Beaumont’s journey, “Later scholars would but have to change their terminology to see that the two young Frenchmen were sociologists before their day.”6

tocqueville and beaumont travel to america Tocqueville and Beaumont’s trip lasted about nine and a half months (May 9, 1831 to February 20, 1832) and covered approximately 7,000 miles. The tour was meant to last eighteen months, but was curtailed when the French government called the ministers home early. From the outset, New York was their intended port of entry; however, unfavorable winds forced Le Havre to land in Newport, Rhode Island instead. Having been at sea for 38 days, supplies were running low; thus, there was something of a celebration once the ship had docked in Newport.7 Instead of waiting for the winds to shift, Tocqueville and Beaumont boarded a steamship, the President, for an 18-hour trip through the Long Island Sound, arriving in New York on May 11.

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They spent the first few weeks of the American tour in New York City. Armed with letters of introduction procured in France, they quickly became sought-after guests among New York’s social elite. In biographer Hugh Brogan’s words, they were taken up enthusiastically by New York society; “they were the sensation of the hour.”8 Among the important contacts they established in New York were Edward Livingston, Andrew Jackson’s secretary of state; James Kent, a former chief justice of the New York Supreme Court; and Albert Gallatin, former secretary of the U.S. treasury and ambassador to France, England, and Russia. In spite of their rather full social calendar, the Frenchmen did find time to visit, though somewhat hastily, a few correctional facilities in New York, including an insane asylum, a poorhouse, and a prison on Blackwell’s Island.9 Tocqueville and Beaumont, however, soon tired of the interminable dinners and balls and wished to see more of America and to fulfill their duties of studying America’s full variety of new penal institutions. Thus, after nearly three weeks in New York, they set out by steamship up the Hudson River to the new Sing Sing prison, located on the banks of the river about 30 miles north of New York City. Sing Sing was based on the so-called Auburn model, where prisoners slept in individual cells, worked with other inmates during the day, and were required to remain silent. After spending a little more than a week at Sing Sing, Tocqueville and Beaumont returned to New York, where they stayed for another three weeks before beginning a more extensive northern loop. Traveling mainly by steamship, this longer excursion took them as far west as Green Bay (which was, at the time, part of Michigan Territory) and as far north as Quebec. Again, their travels started on the Hudson River, this time destined for Albany. They had hoped to stop at West Point. However, as was a common (and dangerous) practice of the time, the captain of the ship was racing another steamship to Albany and, not wanting to lose time, made no stops along the way. The French commissioners arrived in Albany early in the morning of July 2, and stayed for three days. The time in Albany was notable both for what they found and what they did not find. With respect to the former, they witnessed two events of considerable interest. The first was a visit to a Shaker community about nine miles outside of Albany. Here they observed the unique singing, “sermonizing,” and dancing characteristic of a Shaker religious ceremony, which Tocqueville, betraying the sensibilities of his Catholic upbringing, described in a letter to his mother as a “frightful event.” “But just imagine, dear Mama, what queer byways the human mind can take when left to its own compass!” He added,

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“There was a young American Protestant with us, who said afterward: ‘Two more spectacles like that one and I’ll become a Catholic.’”10 The next day, Tocqueville and Beaumont witnessed, and actually participated in, a Fourth of July parade and celebration. Corralled by parade organizers, they were made to march near the front of the procession between New York Lieutenant Governor George P. Livingston and Chancellor Reuben H. Walworth. Also in the parade were carriages carrying several Revolutionary War veterans who had fought with George Washington, and whom, in Beaumont’s words, “the city preserved like precious relics.”11 Following the dignitaries were banners advertising various associations and businesses, including the “Association of Butchers,” the “Association of Printers,” and the “Albany Typographical Society.”12 Beaumont found this rather curious and indicative of the peculiarly mercantilist inclination of Americans. “It would be easy to ridicule these signs,” he wrote to his sister Eugénie, “but consider how appropriate it is that people who owe their prosperity to commerce and industry should march behind them.”13 The parade was followed by a ceremony that included speeches, toasts, and a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Beaumont noted that, “before this reading, a Protestant pastor recited a prayer. I recall the detail because it is so characteristic of America, where nothing is done without the sanction of religion. I don’t believe matters are the worse for it.”14 While Tocqueville found some of the particulars of the day’s events “vulgar, even ludicrous,” he also noted a “loftiness of purpose” in the “spectacle” that “spoke to the heart.” His overall impression of having witnessed “something deeply felt and truly great,” however, was soured by the final speech of the day. Emblematic of the sort of arrogance and national pride that he and Beaumont would encounter throughout their travels, the speaker, wrote Tocqueville, “subjected us to a rhetorical harangue pompously parading all of world history to its consummation in the United States, seated at the center of the universe.” Tocqueville left the event “cursing the speechifier whose gab and fatuous national pride had dampened the vivid impression the rest of the ceremony had made.”15

pride and patriotism In fact, a conspicuous form of pride and patriotism was one of the defining characteristics of Americans first detected by the French visitors. In a letter to his mother, written during their first week in New York,

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Tocqueville said Americans “reckon themselves superior in many ways. People here seem to reek of national pride. It seeps through their politeness.”16 A day later, he recorded, as one of several “first impressions,” in his travel notebook: “The Americans thus far strike us as having carried national pride to quite excessive lengths. I doubt that anyone can induce them to say anything at all unfavorable to their country.” Moreover, Tocqueville found the first Americans he met to be “disagreeably selfassured, and largely unenlightened . . . we have yet to meet anyone truly remarkable.”17 In a letter to his father, written about the same time, Beaumont was equally critical on this point. Wherever one goes there is talk of superiority. The self-esteem of Americans verges on conceit . . . The result is that one must praise them lavishly to remain on good terms with them. I do it whole-heartedly, without compromising my perception. National pride leads them to do their utmost to fascinate us and show us only the attractive side of things. But I hope that we shall learn the truth.18

Evidence of the sort of praise that Tocqueville and Beaumont were willing to lavish on Americans can be found in a newspaper report of their investigation of Sing Sing prison. The article describes the research of the “distinguished gentlemen” from France, but also notes with satisfaction that the French commissioners were pleased with what they saw. “We are gratified with the opportunity of stating that they are highly pleased with the institution, and do not hesitate to pronounce it superior, in many branches, to any which they ever visited in Europe.”19 Another amusing anecdote illustrating American pride occurred during the Frenchmen’s interactions with New York’s social elite. Both Tocqueville and Beaumont commented on the beauty of a particular Julia Fulton, the daughter of Robert Fulton, developer of the first commercial steamboat. They conversed with her at various social events in New York; Beaumont even wrote of a moonlight stroll with her during one party. In one flirtatious interaction with Miss Fulton, Tocqueville lightheartedly ventured a compliment by telling her “she was worthy to be a French woman.” She took offense; and the apparent source of her indignation was that Tocqueville dared to regard her as anything other than “completely American.”20 Given these observations, it’s not surprising that Tocqueville would take up the subject of American pride and patriotism in Democracy in America, which he did in several places. In the first volume, he wrote of American boastfulness as it affected the ability, or lack thereof, of Americans to engage in conversation. “An American does not know

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how to converse, but he discusses; he does not discourse, but he holds forth. He always speaks to you as to an assembly; and if he happens by chance to get excited, he will say: Gentleman, while addressing his interlocutor.”21 He also found that Americans were quite prickly if anything negative were ever said of their country.22 Tocqueville attributed this defensiveness to the personalized manner in which Americans associated themselves with their country. He thus saw American patriotism as a mirror or projection of individual conceit and vanity. “Men who live in democracies love their country in the same manner that they love themselves, and they carry the habits of their private vanity over to their national vanity.”23 In his recent and estimable treatment of Tocqueville’s discovery of America, Leo Damrosch argues that over time Tocqueville “would recognize that what looked like vanity was actually insecurity.”24 Arguably, these are not necessarily distinguishable or mutually exclusive character traits; and whether one interprets American boastfulness as pride or insecurity, or some combination of the two, Tocqueville was struck by how eager Americans were to be praised. They appear, wrote Tocqueville, “insatiable for praise . . . they pester you at every moment to get you to praise them; and if you resist their entreaties, they praise themselves.” He offered a telling scenario to illustrate the nature of these entreaties: I say to an American that the country he inhabits is beautiful; he replies: “It is true, there is none like it in the world!” I admire the freedom that the inhabitants enjoy, and he responds to me: “What a precious gift freedom is! But there are few peoples indeed who are worthy of enjoying it.” I remark on the purity of morals that reigns in the United States: “I conceive,” he says, “that a foreigner who has been struck by the corruption that is displayed in all other nations may be astonished by this spectacle.” Finally, I abandon him to the contemplation of himself; but he comes back to me and does not leave me until he has succeeded in making me repeat what I just said to him.25

Beaumont recounted a similar sort of exchange with an American. When the Frenchmen were traveling on rough and barely passable roads through the woods of Kentucky and Tennessee, an American said to Beaumont, “You have some very bad roads in France, don’t you?” Weary from travel, Beaumont responded sardonically, “Yes, sir, and you have some fine ones in America?” The American, evidently, missed the irony of Beaumont’s response, as Beaumont recorded in his diary, “He doesn’t understand me. American pride.”26 Tocqueville wasn’t opposed to patriotism, per se, but he found the American version to be an “irritable patriotism.”27 “One cannot imagine

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a more disagreeable and talkative patriotism. It fatigues even those who honor it.”28 The problem Tocqueville saw with this form of national pride was that it made Americans unwilling to consider the possibility of having any faults. He noted that a foreigner was implored to praise America, but was not allowed to say anything blameworthy.29 Americans, wrote Tocqueville, “have an immense opinion of themselves, and they are not far from believing that they form a species apart in the human race.”30 Both Beaumont and Tocqueville saw this expression of American exceptionalism as immensely harmful to America’s reputation abroad. Beaumont pointed to pride as one of the reasons Americans could not see the perils of their ongoing participation in slavery. “The American, whose pride will not admit the superiority of any other to himself, suffers cruelly because, in the opinion of other nations, slavery has besmirched his country.”31 In the years following publication of Democracy in America, Tocqueville became increasingly concerned about America’s growing power, national pride, and imperialistic inclinations, and he saw these as engendering animus toward the United States internationally. In an 1852 letter to Jared Sparks, he wrote of his anxieties about America and its “excesses of democracy, the spirit of adventure and conquest, the sentiment of and the excessive pride of its strength, and the passion of its youth.”32 In the same year, he wrote to his American friend, Theodore Sedgwick, of his “apprehension” of America’s “spirit of conquest, and even plunder, which has manifested itself among you for several years now.” He warned Sedgwick of the growing hostility toward the United States in Europe: “I do not need to tell you that, on our continent, you are not in good odor. Governments loathe you. They view the United States as the pit of the abyss from where nothing but a putrid stench comes out; and the people reproach you for having made them believe in the Democratic Republic.”33 Thus, the sort of pride and patriotism that Tocqueville noted in the Fourth of July speech of 1831 in Albany was emblematic of a sensibility that both he and Beaumont would find throughout their U.S. travels, and which would be a topic of growing concern to Tocqueville as he contemplated America in the last decades of his life. While discovering America’s patriotic spirit as well as elements of its religious vibrancy and diversity in Albany, what Tocqueville did not find in the capital of New York was a robust and visible state government. He had hoped to “collect valuable information about the central government in this state.” Instead he found that the state government “really doesn’t exist.” “We’re still looking for

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it,” he wrote to his friend, Ernest de Chabrol. While this was disappointing to Tocqueville and difficult to comprehend, given his experience with a more centralized governing structure in France, it was also likely his first practical realization of the social and political significance of America’s local townships and municipalities. He would eventually come to see these as an important feature of American democracy. Even then, he detected the importance and value, though not without qualification, of this more decentralized arrangement. As he explained to Chabrol: The legislature manages everything that concerns the general public; municipalities take care of the rest. As I see it, the virtue of this arrangement is that it allows each locality to take a vigilant interest in its own affairs and generates political activity. But the drawback, even in America, is that it thwarts the administration of uniform measures and gives a character of volatility to the most useful enterprises.34

the journey west On the evening of July 4th, the two French ministers began a two-week excursion by stagecoach and horseback across upstate New York to Buffalo. They made three important stops along the way. The first was to Frenchman’s Island on Lake Oneida. Years earlier, Tocqueville had read the story, Voyage au lac Onéida, of a noble French couple, the La Croix de Watines, who had fled France prior to the 1789 Revolution and sought romantic refuge in America’s wilderness. The story, which tells of the couple having established a blissful, Edenic settlement on a small island on Lake Oneida, had “made a deep and durable impression on [his] soul.”35 The story was an embellished, indeed fictionalized, account of Louis des Watines, who was apparently a rather dubious character, more avaricious than romantic. Nevertheless, unaware of Watines’s actual biography and caught up in the spirit of Chateaubriand’s romanticized vision of America’s wilderness, Tocqueville and Beaumont found Lake Oneida, borrowed a boat, and rowed out to explore what is still today called Frenchman’s Island. Tocqueville wrote of the experience in highly sentimental and quixotic language, and recorded in his travel notebook: “This expedition is what has most vividly interested and moved me, not only since I have been in America, but since I have been travelling.”36 He and Beaumont would soon make an even more extensive journey into America’s wilderness. From the shores of Oneida Lake, Tocqueville and Beaumont traveled to Auburn, where they spent several days investigating the Auburn prison.

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In addition to thoroughly examining the prison, the French commissioners conducted interviews with the prison warden, Elam Lynds, who would greatly influence their views on America’s penitentiaries.37 Before running the Auburn penitentiary, Lynds had helped create and served as the first warden of Sing Sing prison. However, he was dismissed for questionable financial dealings and harsh disciplinary practices.38 After his first meeting with Lynds, Tocqueville recorded in his notebook: “Despotic tendencies show clearly in him.”39 These tendencies were confirmed in extended interviews with Lynds that followed. Indeed, in these transcribed conversations Lynds comes across as merciless and autocratic, though effective and organized, and also highly skeptical of the possibility of ever reforming prisoners. In these interviews, Lynds provided the essence of his philosophy: “It is a question of maintaining labor and perpetual silence, and to succeed one has to attend to business all the time, watch the keepers as well as the inmates, be pitiless and just.”40 As at Sing Sing, prisoners at Auburn stayed in individual cells during the night and labored with others during the day, always in strict silence. Discipline was maintained through the application of corporal punishment. In spite of Lynds’s rough character, Tocqueville and Beaumont were generally persuaded, at least initially, by what they saw. As Tocqueville wrote to Ernest de Chabrol from Auburn, “I can tell you that the penitentiary here is admirable . . . After two months of research, we are more or less settled in the opinion that the American system could work at home. Keep this to yourself. We don’t want it known that we have made up our minds.”41 So significant was their visit to Auburn that Tocqueville and Beaumont would include nearly the whole of their interviews with Lynds in an appendix of their report, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, which they coauthored (though Beaumont wrote most of it) and submitted to the French government in October 1832. In addition to his commentary on prisons, Lynds also offered, almost as an aside, his views on the capriciousness and power of public opinion in America. “Here we are slaves of a ceaselessly changing public opinion.”42 The power of public opinion was, of course, an important concept, which other informants would discuss and which Tocqueville would famously address in Democracy in America. We will return to a more focused discussion of this theme in the next chapter. From Auburn, Tocqueville and Beaumont traveled to Canandaigua, New York, where they stayed at the home of John Canfield Spencer, who became one of Tocqueville’s most important informants. Spencer had

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been a member of the U.S. Congress and was serving in the New York State Assembly when he met the French visitors. He would later become the secretary of war and then secretary of the treasury in President John Tyler’s administration and would edit the first American edition of Democracy in America. Tocqueville and Beaumont were impressed with Spencer; Tocqueville described him as “a man of sparkling intelligence,” and Beaumont found conversation with Spencer invaluable. He had not yet “met anyone else as knowledgeable about his country’s institutions.”43 A number of ideas that Spencer communicated ultimately found their way into Democracy in America, including the importance of a bicameral legislature, the central and unique role of lawyers in American society, the significance of maintaining a clear separation of church and state, the value of local governance, and the necessary role of religion in sustaining a free society.44 Like Lynds, Spencer also commented on the potent force of public opinion, especially as it concerned the behavior of judges. Spencer said of American judges, “they are a little too fond of flattering the people and lack the courage to stand against an opinion when they believe it is held by the masses.”45 In New York City, Tocqueville had earlier heard a similar comment about judges from Albert Gallatin, who likewise observed that because the power of American magistrates “derives solely from public opinion, they must strive constantly to keep the public on their side.”46 While Tocqueville and Beaumont were impressed with Spencer’s intelligence and wide-ranging knowledge of American society, they were also taken by the beauty of his attractive daughters, Mary and Catherine Spencer (the same English Spencer family, it turns out, from which the late Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, descended). In a letter to his mother, Beaumont wrote of Spencer’s “charming” daughters, who would have proved “a terrible distraction” had he and Tocqueville not vowed to avoid any romantic entanglements.47 Similarly, Tocqueville wrote to his sister-in-law Émelie a most amusing account of this distraction, which evidently hastened their departure from the Spencer household. Aside from a well-furnished library, [Mr. Spencer] has two delightful daughters, with whom – in common parlance – we “clicked.” Although they know not a word of French, they possess, among other attractions four blue eyes (two each) the likes of which I am quite sure you have never seen on your side of the ocean. I would describe them at greater length if I weren’t afraid of sounding mawkish. Suffice it to say that we looked at those eyes more readily than at the father’s books. After communing over our discovery, Beaumont and I, wise as you know

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us to be, decided that we had better decamp – a resolution we made good the very next morning by crossing the lake (not swimming it . . . but aboard a steamboat, which is much surer and more commodious).48

And so the twenty-something bachelors departed Canandaigua. Tocqueville was much influenced by John Spencer’s input and would maintain a correspondence with him for years after he returned to France. The steamboat to which Tocqueville referred departed from Buffalo on July 19, where the Frenchmen spent a couple of days before embarking on a two-day journey on Lake Erie to Detroit. In Buffalo they had some of their first encounters with Indians, whom they had long wished to see; these proved somewhat disappointing, as the Native Americans they found in Buffalo had a penchant for alcohol abuse and had largely been reduced to begging. Once in Detroit, as was their habit Tocqueville and Beaumont sought out the Catholic priest in town, a Gabriel Richard, who had fled anticlerical France following the 1789 Revolution. Richard reiterated a point conveyed earlier by John Spencer. “The greatest service one can do to religion,” said Richard, “is to keep it separate from temporal power.”49 From Detroit, Tocqueville and Beaumont made a memorable excursion into the wilderness. Traveling on horseback, they journeyed through dense woods to Saginaw and back. The nearly 200-mile journey included encountering pioneers living in a rustic log cabin, who used a captured bear as a watchdog; benefiting from the dexterous efforts of a Chippewa Indian named Sagan-Ruisco, who skillfully guided them through the Michigan forest; meeting a bois-brûlé or half-breed, dressed in Indian garb, who startled the French visitors when he spoke in their native tongue (As Tocqueville would later recall, “If my horse had spoken up I would not have been more surprised”); nearly getting lost on the return journey; and marveling at the romantic beauty of the forest. Tocqueville described the adventure in an extended essay, Two Weeks in the Wilderness. The trip also provided important material for Marie or Slavery in the United States, a book that Beaumont eventually wrote about America. Though Tocqueville and Beaumont had originally intended to write one book on America together, at some point along their journey, the French visitors decided they would write two separate books. Beaumont had become increasingly interested in and concerned about the plight of African and Native Americans and made this the focus of Marie. Thus, Tocqueville withheld publication of his essay on the wilderness excursion in deference to Beaumont’s interests; and he also likely held back from a fuller discussion of race in Democracy in America for the same reason.

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The Saginaw trip left both Tocqueville and Beaumont with a much more favorable view of the Indians, in contrast to their earlier impressions from Buffalo, and with a growing concern about the treatment of Native Americans by Europeans, a sentiment that would only deepen as their travels continued. A couple of days after the trip to Saginaw, Beaumont wrote the following in a letter to Ernest de Chabrol: I sometimes wonder whether these Indians, whom Europeans scorn, deserve to be called savages. Those whom I’ve seen on the way to Saginaw live peacefully in their forests. All who have relations with them note their honesty, their good faith, their generosity. Europeans who trade with them are vastly superior to them in the ways of deception and always get the upper hand.50

Once back in Detroit, though they had planned to return directly to Buffalo, Tocqueville and Beaumont learned of a steamboat, The Superior, that was making a rare trip to Green Bay via Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. They hastily decided to board the steamship, a decision that proved to be, as Leo Damrosch concludes, “a mistake . . . a disappointment, a waste, in fact, of ten precious days.”51 The trip did appear rather dull to Tocqueville, as he recorded in his notebook three days after setting out, “Day with absolutely nothing to note”; then a week later, “Monotonous journey on the lake”; and then at the very end of the trip, “Nothing of interest on the return journey.”52 However, it would not prove a complete waste, as he and Beaumont had several interesting and informative encounters with Indians during their stops along the shores of the Great Lakes. The voyage also gave them the opportunity to relate to Americans from a range of backgrounds, including clergy representing several denominations – Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Catholic. The Catholic priest, James Mullon, was on his way to Michilimackinac to participate in some kind of theological controversy between Catholics and Presbyterians in the town. Tocqueville recorded an extended conversation with Mullon in his travel notebook. Mullon, like John Spencer and Gabriel Richard before him, spoke of the value of a clear separation between church and state: “the less religion and its ministers are mixed up with government, the less they are involved in political debate, the more influential religious ideas will become.”53 Notice that the separation was understood here as a means of strengthening, not silencing, religion among the people, a point not lost on the French commissioners, particularly as they reflected on the contrast of this arrangement to the French situation. As Beaumont wrote to his brother while on board The Superior, “All the Catholic priests I have met

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in this country consider the complete separation of church and state a great boon. I am tempted to embrace their view; the alliance of the state and religion in France has been subversive to the latter.”54 While Tocqueville and Beaumont found the zealous and somewhat intolerant Mullon interesting, the same could not be said for all the other 200 passengers aboard the ship. Picking up on a theme that would become something of a mantra for Beaumont, he once again noted the mercantilist inclinations of Americans among the passengers on board The Superior. He made specific reference to four young American men on the boat, who, though they were “very good chaps,” were “bored to tears.” In explaining their ennui Beaumont wrote, “every American is a businessman devoted to commerce and industry; he is unfit for any kind of intellectual work.” Therefore, these young men could not see anything of interest on the journey, only “large expanses of water.” There was much more to see, argued Beaumont, “if one is in the least disposed to observe, than a liquid surface.”55 On the pervasiveness of this American disposition, he even jokingly saw himself being influenced by the mercantilist spirit. When, while at Michilimackinac, a “pretty young Indian woman” had offered him pearls for a drawing he had made of a woodpecker, he observed, “Now if that isn’t commerce I don’t know what is. The industrial spirit of America must be rubbing off on me.”56 Tocqueville, however, could not be accused of seeing only large expanses of water. In fact, as The Superior completed its journey, Tocqueville wrote sublimely and presciently to his father: This lake without sails, this shore devoid of any trace of human passage, the endless woods bordering it, are the stuff of poetry. They are also, I swear, the grandest spectacle I have ever seen. What is now one vast forest will one day become a country supremely rich and powerful, and it doesn’t take prophetic vision to foresee this. Nature has provided everything needed for success: fertile land, incomparable waterways. The only thing lacking is civilized man, and he’s at the door.57

Max Weber would pen similar reflections on the encroachment of civilization on a receding wilderness when he journeyed by train through the Oklahoma Territory in 1904. Once back in Buffalo, Tocqueville and Beaumont began their return journey to Albany. However, this time, instead of going across upstate New York, they took a detour into Canada, beginning with a brief stop at Niagara Falls, a site the power and beauty of which they found difficult to describe. Lost for words, Tocqueville invoked the expression used by the Indians (Niagara means “thunder of the waters”) as most fitting. As he explained in a letter to his mother, “Indian languages are full of images

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far more poetic than our own.”58 Writing to a fellow magistrate at Versailles, Tocqueville prophetically warned that if he wished to visit Niagara he should do so without delay. “If you tarry, your Niagara will soon have been spoiled. Already the surrounding forest is growing thin . . . I give the Americans ten years before they build a sawmill or a flour mill at the base of the cataract.”59 On August 20, Tocqueville and Beaumont boarded a steamboat headed north on the St. Lawrence River. After a brief stopover in Montreal, they continued up the St. Lawrence to Quebec City, where they spent five days before returning to Montreal and then traveling south to Albany via Lake Champlain. In all, the Canada excursion lasted two weeks. They were delighted and surprised to find so many French living in “Lower Canada.” They had supposed that, following the “shameful treaty of 1763,”60 which ceded Canada from France to England, the French population would be small and diminishing. Instead, they found that since 1763, the French population had actually grown from 60,000 to nearly 600,000, and the people still clung to many of the customs and habits of Old France. As Tocqueville wrote in a letter to Abbé Lesueur, “They are as French as you and I.” He added, “I can’t tell you how comforting it was to be in the bosom of this community.”61 The French ministers, aided by the input and guidance of John Neilson, their primary Canadian interlocutor, discovered elements of Canadian society that stood in stark contrast to features of American society. They found that the French Canadian peasants – in contrast with the American pioneers – were a more contented lot, and were not nearly as inclined to uproot and seek new and more profitable land elsewhere. As Neilson explained, “The French Canadian is tenderly attached to the land which saw his birth, to his church tower and to his family. It is that which makes it so difficult to induce him to go and seek his fortune elsewhere.”62 An informant in Montreal had communicated much the same of the Canadian farmers: “They have not got the spirit of adventure or the scorn of ties of birth and family which are characteristic of the Americans.”63 Thus, they saw in the French Canadian farmers a joyfulness and sense of place that differed from the acquisitive and restless orientation of the Americans. Offering an important insight into these contrasting views of the land, Beaumont observed, Look at the French peasant, with his gay humor, serene brow, and laughing lips . . . dancing joyfully in the village square. In America they know nothing of this happy poverty. Absorbed by calculation, the American country dweller

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loses no time in pleasures. The fields say nothing to his heart, and the sun that brings fertility to his hillsides doesn’t warm his soul. He treats the land as industrial material, and lives in his cottage as if in a factory.64

Tocqueville was likewise left with “the most favorable possible impression of the Canadian population.” “Here we sensed none of the mercantile spirit that is so obvious in the American’s every word and action.”65 Tocqueville even saw the clergy in Canada as different on this score. “Here, the priest is truly the pastor of his flock and not an entrepreneur in the religious industry, like most American ministers.”66 Beaumont made a similar comment about American ministers: “In many people’s eyes the religious ministry is a veritable industrial career,” a passage cited by Karl Marx, who, in his own commentary on America, noted that, “the very proclamation of the Gospel, Christian teaching, has become a commercial object.”67 French critic, Urbain Gohier, who visited the United States for five months in 1903, similarly observed, “In this land of business, a church is created and organized just like any other [business] enterprise.”68 Max Weber, as we will see, had much to say about the relationship between American churches and business; and Sayyid Qutb, visiting nearly 120 years after Tocqueville’s journey, would likewise characterize American ministers as little different from merchants or business managers.

the mercantilist spirit The French Canadians, with whom Tocqueville and Beaumont felt so much affinity, demonstrated qualities that contrasted with those of their neighbors to the south, and the most important of these was the absence of a prevailing mercantilist spirit. Before continuing with our French travelers as they returned to the United States, it’s worth giving fuller attention to this quality, not only because Tocqueville and Beaumont made reference to it on multiple occasions, but also because it was a feature of the American national character observed by the other three visitors considered in this study. Very early in their tour, the French ministers detected this inclination among Americans. Even as they traveled across the Atlantic, an American passenger aboard Le Havre named Peter Schermerhorn told Tocqueville that “the greatest blot on the [American] national character was the avidity to get rich and to do it by any means.”69 And after being in the United States for only a few weeks, Beaumont wrote to his father, “Americans are . . . a mercantile people. They are consumed by a desire for riches.”70

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Writing to his brother Édouard, around the same time, Tocqueville similarly noted Americans’ passion for making money, which overshadowed their passion for political engagement. “Here we are truly in another world. Political passions are only superficial. The one passion that runs deep, the only one that stirs the human heart day in and day out, is the acquisition of wealth.”71 Two weeks later, he wrote to his friend Ernest de Chabrol, “the deeper one delves into the national character, the more clearly one sees that Americans measure the value of all things solely in terms of the answer to the following question: How much money will it bring in?”72 While in Auburn, New York, Elam Lynds confirmed to Tocqueville this American proclivity, and argued that, as a result, the country’s most talented men typically chose business over public service. Rather than pursue elected office, Lynds explained, “men of great talent . . . prefer commerce and occupations in which one earns more money.” To which Tocqueville concluded, “There in a nutshell, is the American character.”73 Tocqueville saw this acquisitive spirit associated with the related quality of American restlessness. In a letter to Eugene Stoffels he explained that the Americans’ “immoderate appetite for wealth and a desire to get rich quickly” was “bound up with . . . a perpetual fickleness, a continual need for change.”74 And in Democracy in America he wrote that the “taste for material enjoyments must be considered as the first source of this secret restiveness.”75 Tocqueville saw this restlessness as “one of the distinctive character traits of the American people,” one that manifested itself in several ways, including in the inclination among Americans to perpetually relocate.76 Unlike the Canadian farmers, so admired by Tocqueville and Beaumont, the American pioneer never stayed in one place for long. He “carefully builds a dwelling,” and then “sells it while the roof is being laid . . . He settles in a place from which he departs soon after so as to take his changing desires elsewhere.”77 The two French visitors even learned of an Illinois woman whose twelve children had each “been born in a different house.”78 Another French visitor, Michel Chevalier, who came to America about sixteen months after the end of Tocqueville’s journey, likewise observed that “the full-blooded American has this in common with the Tartar, that he is encamped, not established, on the soil he treads upon.”79 Tocqueville noted that Americans were proud of this mobility. “To flee the paternal hearth and the fields where one’s ancestors rest; to abandon the living and the dead to run after fortune—there is nothing that merits more praise in their eyes.”80

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Thus, the American, according to Tocqueville, was not easily satisfied or contented, but was perpetually pining for the next opportunity to get rich. In novelist Wallace Stegner’s terms, the American was a “boomer” rather than a “sticker.”81 He was not bound by a sense of place. Instead, as Tocqueville observed, “He has no memory to connect him with one place rather than another, no deeply rooted customs, no devotion to routine.”82 Tocqueville also found that Americans often lacked a commitment to a particular profession or vocation. As recorded in his travel notebook, “We are told that a man may try his hand at a dozen different walks of life. He may go from merchant to lawyer to doctor to evangelical minister”; or, as he put it in Democracy in America, Americans “have a great capacity for changing their status”; the American “embraces a profession and quits it.”83 Absent was the anchoring influence of a clear notion of calling, which Weber saw as central to the early Puritan perspective and as one of the germinating sources of the spirit of capitalism. In fact, Tocqueville’s discussion of the mercantile spirit anticipated Weber’s famous thesis in several respects. First, Tocqueville noticed the coexistence of a certain form of Protestant Christianity and a particular economic orientation. “The Americans are at once a puritanical nation and a commercial people.”84 While he did not specify a clear causal relationship between the two, he certainly intimated an elective affinity. As recorded in his travel notebook on December 29, 1831 (i.e., toward the end of his time in America), “When you see the purity of morals, the simplicity of manners, the diligent work habits, and the disciplined religious spirit that are characteristic of the United States, you are tempted to believe that the Americans are a virtuous people.” Upon closer examination, however, Tocqueville concluded that behind these manners and disciplined work habits were not religiously informed understandings of virtue, but instead an overriding “love of riches.”85 Virtue, then, was divorced from more salient religious motivations. In America one does not say, wrote Tocqueville, that “virtue is beautiful.” Instead, Americans “maintain that [virtue] is useful and they prove it every day.” Like Weber, then, he noticed a utilitarian turn, whereby a work ethic once based on a religious ideal had become a work ethic more solely aimed at the acquisition of riches. In another link to Weber, Tocqueville made reference to the “American moralists,” who advanced this utilitarian view of virtue. In their translation of Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield and Debra Winthrop plausibly propose, in reference to this passage, that “Benjamin Franklin is so obvious among the ‘American moralists,’ as to obscure all others.”86 Like Weber, then,

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Tocqueville identified in Franklin’s writings a new understanding of virtue, one no longer rooted in explicitly religious motivations, but rather in the utilitarian goal of achieving monetary success. Thus, the benefits of virtue, even of religious practice, rested in the utilitarian advantages it yielded. As one of Tocqueville’s Boston informants put it, “I believe that for the majority religion is a respectable and useful thing rather than a demonstrated truth.”87 While Tocqueville did not unpack the substance of this transition in the same kind of deliberate and detailed fashion as would Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he did note the manner in which American Protestantism encouraged a kind of this-worldly focus that was distinct from the other-worldly focus that preceded it. “In the Middle Ages priests spoke only of the other life; they scarcely worried about proving that a sincere Christian can be a happy man here below. But American preachers constantly come back to earth and only with great trouble can they take their eyes off it.”88 Again, though Tocqueville didn’t specify a clear transition from a this-worldly asceticism to a capitalist or mercantilist spirit, he did observe that the American passion for material well-being had become universal, and that the tastes, needs, and cares associated with this passion, in turn, served to “extinguish religious passions.”89 Even though Tocqueville was sensitive to the presence of a mercantilist ethos, he has sometimes been criticized for missing or not properly anticipating the rise of an industrial, urban-based society in America, or, as political philosopher Sheldon Wolin puts it, of “ignoring the darkening shadows of industrialization.”90 In 1831, America was still essentially an agrarian society. The emerging processes of widespread industrialization were in their nascent stages. The very first U.S. railroad tracks, for example, were just being laid at the time of the Frenchmen’s visit; and Lowell, Massachusetts’s first textile factory had only opened in 1823. While the Frenchmen did not visit Lowell during their stay in Boston, Tocqueville did record in his travel notebook the critical observations of a Mr. Robert Vaux: “Factories deprave workers and often leave them in terrible need. There is especially good reason to be afraid of introducing the factory system into a country as fully democratic as this one.”91 Thus, Tocqueville did not entirely miss the significance of the dawn of an industrial society. As we have seen, Tocqueville certainly detected a spirit that would foster more widespread industrialization. Though he didn’t proactively visit American factories, he would later observe factories in Manchester, England, where industrialization was

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more advanced. And given his critique of mercantilism, it is not surprising that he was highly critical of what he saw in Manchester: Look up and all around this place you will see the huge palaces of industry. You will hear the noise of furnaces, the whistle of steam. These vast structures keep air and light out of the human habitations which they dominate; they envelop them in perpetual fog; here is the slave, there the master, there the wealth of some, here the poverty of most . . . A sort of black smoke covers the city. The sun seen through it is a disc without rays. Under this half daylight 300,000 human beings are ceaselessly at work. A thousand noises disturb this damp, dark labyrinth.92

Tocqueville spoke of the worker as a slave, which, as we will see, is the same nomenclature Chesterton would use to characterize the wageearning industrial worker. In Democracy in America Tocqueville also wrote of the dehumanizing effects of the division of labor. “There is nothing that tends more than the great division of labor to materialize man and to deny even the trace of a soul in his works.”93 Tocqueville’s dark description of the industrial city also anticipated in certain respects Weber’s famous image of the iron cage. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville reflected in almost metaphysical terms on the difficulty of living in such a cage. He viewed it as an intolerable condition, one that humans would ultimately not accept, but would rather seek to break out of in order to recapture their humanity. While Weber would advise humans to accept the meaningless condition of a modern industrial world, Tocqueville detected and anticipated rebellion. He did not view material well-being as ultimately satisfying on a deep and lasting level. Reminiscent of Blaise Pascal, one of Tocqueville’s favorite authors, he opined, “The soul has needs that must be satisfied; and whatever care one takes to distract it from itself, it soon becomes bored, restive, and agitated amid enjoyments of the senses.”94 Given this agitation, Tocqueville noticed that Americans would seek various, and sometimes unusual, types of spiritualism for relief. “Although the desire to acquire the goods of this world may be the dominant passion of Americans, there are moments of respite when their souls seem all at once to break the material bonds that restrain them and to escape impetuously toward Heaven.”95 Again, the soul would do this, according to Tocqueville, because of its essential nature. “These sublime instincts are not born of a caprice of his will: they have their immovable foundation in his nature; they exist despite his efforts. He can hinder and deform them, but not destroy them.”96 In Weberian terms, then, Tocqueville detected efforts to escape the iron cage. He saw the “bizarre sects” and “religious follies” in

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America as expressions of this effort. He even anticipated a return to mysticism as a reaction to a hyper-materialist society. “I would be surprised if mysticism did not soon make progress in a people uniquely preoccupied with its own well-being.”97 In a related note, which did not find its way into Democracy in America, Tocqueville anticipated, “I would not be surprised if the first monasteries to be established in America are trappist monasteries.”98 Trappists (or Cistercians) – who emphasize silence, prayer, study, stability, and work – originated in eleventh-century France as an effort to recover a stricter observance of the Benedictine Rule. A group of French Cistercian monks, in fact, traveled to Kentucky in 1848 to start the first Trappist monastery in America, only sixteen years after Tocqueville’s visit and two years after the first Benedictine monastery was founded in Pennsylvania. Interestingly, another French visitor, Jacques Maritain, who first came to America a century after Tocqueville’s visit and spent twenty-five years living in the United States, made a similar observation. In his 1958 book, Reflections on America, Maritain also noticed that life in the iron cage was a condition that ran against Americans’ natural disposition. Though Americans seemed hurried and active, ensconced as they were in industrial civilization, Maritain detected a longing for the contemplative life, and predicted that the vita contemplativa would eventually become more manifest. Maritain, like Tocqueville before him, pointed to the Trappists (and the popularity of Thomas Merton’s writings in particular), as evidence in support of this projection.99 While Tocqueville did not give extensive attention to the full emergence of an industrial society in America, he did perceptively anticipate the possibility of a new form of aristocracy based on an increasingly hegemonic class of industrialists, once again foreshadowing a more extensive critique of industrialization that Chesterton would advance a century after Tocqueville’s visit. In a short chapter in Democracy in America, Tocqueville noted in almost Marxist terms the growing inequality between the manufacturer, who “asks of the worker only his work,” and the worker, “who expects only a wage” from the manufacturer. “The one resembles more and more the administrator of a vast empire, the other a brute.” At the end of the chapter, he thus warned of a “manufacturing aristocracy that we see arising before our eyes” and cautioned “friends of democracy” that “if ever permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy are introduced anew into the world, one can predict that they will enter by this door.”100

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Beaumont also reflected on the possibility of an aristocracy ruled by a new class of industrial “overlords” in Marie. He observed that in America “there does exist something similar to a feudal aristocracy. The Factory is the manor, the manufacturer the overlord; the workers are the serfs.”101 He saw this emerging industrial system having a chilling effect on other arenas of society. “Everything in the United States has its rise in industry,” observed Beaumont, “and goes back into it, but, unlike blood which warms itself in the heart, all life which reaches industry becomes cold in that icy heart of American society.” In almost Weberian terms, Beaumont observed further that these industrial inclinations discouraged “noble inspirations and generous impulses.” Instead, the “industrial spirit makes society materialistic by reducing all men’s relationships to utilitarian ends.”102 Tocqueville can also be defended against having missed the potency of American industrialization by considering his later reflections on America following publication of Democracy in America. As with his worries about America’s pride and imperialist inclinations, noted above, he also expressed concerns in the last years of his life about unfettered capitalism and the corrupting influence of economic interests on political processes. In a recent analysis of Tocqueville’s letters published after 1840, political scientists Aurelian Craiutu and Jeremy Jennings convincingly argue that Tocqueville’s fears about American democracy intensified during the last two decades of his life. Craiutu and Jennings highlight not only his harsh criticisms of slavery and American imperialism, but also his worries about “the reckless spirit of American capitalism” and “the invasion of the political by the economic sphere.”103 One illustration of Tocqueville’s disquietude, in this regard, can be found in an 1856 letter to Theodore Sedgwick in which he described Americans as “a race of desperate gamblers.” “[Y]our prosperity,” he added, “in a land that is still half-empty, has brought forth a race that combines the passions and instincts of the savage with the tastes, needs, vigor, and vices of civilized men.”104

the contest with nature One cannot discuss the dominance of a mercantilist orientation without also considering the effects of this disposition on nature. As we have seen, Tocqueville had a highly sympathetic and at times romanticized view of the untamed wilderness. In America, he saw nature existing in a contested and conflictual relationship with the industrializing conquests of civilized man. His essay, Two Weeks in the Wilderness, which was not

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published until after his death, spoke elegantly of the beauty and serenity of the forest. In it, Tocqueville identified a contest in America between nature and the ruthless advance of civilized man. He also recounted in the essay the difficulty that he and Beaumont had in acquiring information that would allow them to foray into the untouched wilderness. They could not find anyone who would believe that they wanted to see pristine nature for its own sake. “The American thinks nothing of hacking his way through a nearly impenetrable forest, crossing a swift river, braving a pestilential swamp, or sleeping in the damp forest if there is a chance of making a dollar.” But “to do such things out of curiosity confuses him utterly.”105 Given this skepticism, the French visitors finally feigned an interest in purchasing land and were then given more attentive assistance. As they ventured into the Michigan territory, Tocqueville had expected to find pioneers living at various stages along the spectrum from the primitive to the civilized, “from the most opulent urban patrician to the savage in the wilderness.” Instead, the scattered settlements they encountered in the dense forest were surprisingly civilized and disappointingly uniform. “The man whom you left in the streets of New York is likely to turn up again in the depths of an almost impenetrable wilderness: the same clothes, the same mind, the same language, the same habits, the same pleasures.” Thus, instead of gradations of varying social states, he found “the utmost extreme of civilization . . . virtually face to face with untouched nature.”106 That is, he found pioneers, “composed of the same elements,” fully ensconced within the wilderness but somehow unaffected by its power and beauty. Nature was not something to stand in wonder of but to conquer. In Sheldon Wolin’s words, the French travelers encountered humans who “simply shrugged off the destruction of nature.”107 Tocqueville described the pioneers of the American frontier as “a restless, calculating, adventurous race that acts with cool detachment.” He depicted the westward-marching American as an avaricious conqueror, whose only consideration of nature was to use it for his own destructive purposes. Consider the following description of the American pioneers put forth in Two Weeks in the Wilderness: A nation of conquerors that is willing to subject itself to life in the wild without ever being distracted by its allure; that loves only those aspects of civilization and enlightenment that are useful to well-being; and that plunges into America’s solitudes with an axe and newspapers; a people that, like all great peoples, has but one thought and marches toward the acquisition of wealth, the only purpose of its labors, with a perseverance and a scorn for life that might be called heroic if

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that word applied to anything other than virtue; a nomadic people whose progress neither river nor lake can halt, before whom forests fall and prairies are made to bask in shade; and after reaching the Pacific Ocean, this same people will retrace its steps in order to disrupt and destroy the society it created as it went.108

Given this basic interpretation of the attitude and actions of the American pioneer, it is not surprising that Tocqueville would foretell the full transformation of the forest. Recall his previously noted predictions regarding Niagara Falls and the forests along the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Of the wilderness between Detroit and Saginaw he also expected that the “delightful solitude” of the forest will soon be “utterly transformed.” “Indeed, the white race is already pushing its way through the surrounding woods, and within a few years Europeans will have cut down the trees whose images shimmer in the limped waters of the lake and will have forced the animals that inhabit its shores to flee to new homes in some other wilderness.”109 Beaumont was even harsher in his criticism of what was happening to America’s frontier. In a section of Marie that essentially covers the same journey described in Tocqueville’s essay, Beaumont depicted a hostile relationship between American frontiersmen and the forest. “The Americans regard the forest as a symbol of the wilderness, and consequently of backwardness; so it is against the trees that they direct their onslaughts.” He noted a contrast between European and American attitudes toward the forest. “In Europe trees are cut down to be used; in America, to be destroyed . . . Thus the European who admires beautiful forests is much surprised to find that the American has a deep hatred for trees.”110 In sum, the French visitors identified several qualities of the American people whom they had met thus far. They found them to be industrious and enterprising; proud and patriotic; restless and somewhat indifferent to nature and to the effects of their expansionist inclinations on the natural world around them. As we will see in the next chapter, they would come to see dimensions of these propensities as obstacles or challenges to the full realization of the democratic values of freedom and equality. They would also find habits, inclinations, and governing structures that they admired and saw as contributing toward the flourishing of American democracy. As we continue to follow the journey of the young French magistrates, then, we consider with them the quandary of American democracy.

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2 Tocqueville and the Quandary of American Democracy

Having completed their journeys to Canada and the western frontier of the United States, Tocqueville and Beaumont ventured back to America’s eastern cities. Traveling by steamship down Lake Champlain, the French visitors returned to Albany on September 4. Anxious to get to Boston, where letters from France awaited them, they departed Albany by stagecoach on September 6 and arrived in Boston on the 9th, making only one stop along the way – in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, at the home of Catherine Maria Sedgwick. Miss Sedgwick had been recommended to them as one of the leading female novelists in America at the time.1 Unfortunately, she was not home on the day of their visit. Other members of the Sedgwick clan, however, were present, including the novelist’s young nephew, Theodore Sedgwick, who would one day become Tocqueville’s research assistant in Paris and, subsequently, a close friend with whom he would correspond until the end of his life.2 In Boston, Tocqueville received the sad news that his beloved Bébé had died. “Never in my life have I felt so painfully disconsolate,” he wrote to his brother Édouard. “I hope eventually to recover from this blow, but there will always be a void that neither time nor friendship nor the future . . . can fill.”3 It was in Boston that Tocqueville and Beaumont first learned that the French interior ministry wanted them to shorten their journey and return soon to France. Evidently, there was concern that the French commissioners were not fully attending to their purported task of studying American prisons – it had, after all, been two months since they last visited a prison. In spite of these unwelcome pieces of news, the time spent in Boston proved invaluable and highly informative for Tocqueville and Beaumont. They found the city very agreeable and more 36 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Texas Libraries, on 08 Dec 2019 at 09:55:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.003

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cultured and less commercially oriented than New York. Beaumont wrote to his brother, “This is unquestionably the most interesting city we’ve seen until now.”4 And more than 20 years after returning to France, Tocqueville still favorably recalled his time in Boston. “Boston seemed to me the most pleasant city to live in. There I found a great number of educated and pleasant people, and if I had had to settle somewhere in America, I believe I would have chosen Boston.”5 Among the intelligent and informed people the French ministers encountered during their three weeks in Boston was John Quincy Adams, who two years earlier had been defeated by Andrew Jackson in his quest for a second term as president and had recently been elected to the House of Representatives. Beaumont described Adams as “a man of wit and intriguing conversation.”6 The French visitors were less impressed with his successor, the only other American president they would meet on their journey; and their less than positive opinion of Jackson was likely influenced by input they received from their “Boston Brahmin” informants.7 In his conversation with Adams, Tocqueville touched on a number of matters, including the role of religion in society. Like John Spencer, Adams regarded religion as “one of the most [important] safeguards of American society.” Adams also expressed grave concerns about slavery, agreeing that it was a “great blemish,” and identifying it as the source of “nearly all our present difficulties and fears about the future.”8 Among other problems, the institution encouraged idleness among whites, thus degrading their character, an observation that would be confirmed by the French travelers’ time in the American South and that Tocqueville would later include in Democracy in America. Among the other Boston notables, with whom Tocqueville and Beaumont interacted and had helpful conversations, were Jared Sparks, a historian and future president of Harvard University; Josiah Quincy, former mayor of Boston and then-president of Harvard; Francis Leiber, a German immigrant, writer, editor, and future professor at Columbia University, who would later translate into English the French ministers’ report on American penitentiaries; Francis Gray, a state senator and prison inspector; William Ellery Channing, a leading Unitarian minister; Daniel Webster, the famous orator and Massachusetts senator; and Edward Everett, a future U.S. congressman, senator, and secretary of state in Millard Fillmore’s administration. From his Boston interlocutors, Tocqueville gained information that would serve as the foundation for some of his most important insights into American society.9 Here Tocqueville’s thoughts on American voluntarism, the cultural importance

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of mores or “habits of the heart,” the political significance of local townships, the sustaining role of religion in a democracy, and the paradoxical coexistence of American individualism and majoritarianism began to take shape.

the majority and the individual Tocqueville’s time in Boston was particularly significant as it concerns this last point. At the end of their three weeks in Massachusetts’s capital city, Tocqueville entered into his travel notebook the following “two great social principles,” which he saw ruling American society: 1st The majority may be mistaken on some points, but finally it is always right and there is no moral power above it. 2nd Every individual, private person, society, community or nation, is the only lawful judge of its own interest, and provided it does not harm the interests of others, nobody has the right to interfere.10 Underscoring the weight he ascribed to these observations, Tocqueville added, “I think that one must never lose sight of this point.”11 He would follow his own advice, as he continued to ponder the substance and implications of these great (and paradoxical) social principles for years to come and would elaborate on them at some length in Democracy in America. While in Boston, conversations with Jared Sparks significantly influenced Tocqueville’s thinking on the first of the two principles. “In this country the political dogma is that the majority is always right,” Sparks explained. “Sometimes the majority has sought to oppress the minority.”12 Tocqueville would take Sparks’s words to heart in developing his famous notion of the “tyranny of the majority,” though Sparks would later claim that Tocqueville had not fully understood him on this matter. In an 1841 letter, Sparks wrote that Tocqueville’s take on the “tyranny of the majority . . . was entirely mistaken.” “The tyranny of the majority,” Sparks added, “if exercised at all, must be in the making of law; and any evil arising from this source operates in precisely the same manner on the majority itself as on the minority.” In another letter, written in the same year, Sparks said, “Mr. de Tocqueville often confounds the majority with public opinion.”13 This latter observation may help to explain some of the misunderstanding, as in Tocqueville’s mind the exercising of the tyranny of the majority was clearly more than the making of the law.

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Here as elsewhere Tocqueville saw mores or cultural sensibilities as a force of greater social consequence than the law. Moreover, Sparks, as we have seen, was not the first American to offer input on this critical point, nor was Tocqueville the only foreign observer to note this feature of American society.14 Recall that even before arriving in Boston, Tocqueville had already heard mention of the power of public opinion from New York informants Albert Gallatin, John Spencer, and Elam Lynds. Several others opined to the visiting Frenchmen on this subject after they left Boston. In Cincinnati, for example, a lawyer named Samuel Chase told Tocqueville, “No one can fight the tide of public opinion.”15 In Baltimore, a journal editor named Peter Cruse relayed to Tocqueville the chilling story of a journalist who two decades earlier had dared to oppose the popular War of 1812. Because of the journalist’s views, a crowd marched against the house where he and his friends had taken refuge. The militia was called out for protection but refused to stand up against the crowd. For their own safety, the journalist and his friends were put in prison; but the crowd, undeterred, stormed the prison, killing one of the inmates and injuring the others. Offending parties went to trial but were acquitted by a jury. “We have no authority outside of and superior to the people,” concluded Cruse, “whatever it desires, one has to submit to it.”16 As we will see, when Chesterton visited America in the first half of the next century, he learned of (and commented on) the fate of another journalist who similarly faced the wrath of public opinion when he spoke out against American involvement in World War I. Finally, when in Philadelphia, Tocqueville had a conversation with a resident, George Washington Smith, about the voting habits of free blacks in Pennsylvania. Tocqueville had witnessed an election day and was surprised to see no blacks at the polling places. He wondered why in a free state, like Pennsylvania, blacks were not allowed to vote. Smith explained to Tocqueville that, legally, free blacks were permitted to vote, but chose not to because they were afraid of being mistreated at the polls. “Among us,” Smith added, “it sometimes happens that the law lacks force when the majority does not support it. Now the majority is imbued with the greatest prejudices against Negroes, and magistrates do not feel they have the strength to guarantee to the latter the rights that the legislator has conferred.” Tocqueville responded with incredulity. “What! The majority which has the privilege of making the law, also wants to have that of disobeying the law?”17 Again, as it concerns Sparks’s objections to Tocqueville’s explication of the potency of majoritarian sentiment, we see that, while not unrelated

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to the law, Tocqueville (as well as some of his other informants) hardly understood the concept to be exclusive to legal processes. Indeed, he even learned that the power of public opinion could flagrantly supersede the law. What Tocqueville saw, and the input he received, helps to explain his rather ominous conclusions on this topic: The majority in the United Sates therefore has an immense power in fact, and a power in opinion almost as great and once it has formed on a question, there are so to speak no obstacles that can, I shall not say stop, but even delay its advance, and allow it the time to hear the complaints of those it crushes as it passes. The consequences of this state of things are dire and dangerous for the future.18

He saw in this power the seeds of a new despotism and a sort of oppression that inhibited not only the expression of minority views but the thinking of individual thoughts. “I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.” He contrasted this with conditions in a monarchy where “despotism struck the body crudely, so as to reach the soul; and the soul, escaping from those blows, rose gloriously above it.” In democratic republics, however, “tyranny does not proceed in this way; it leaves the body and goes straight for the soul.”19 Both Tocqueville and Beaumont were somewhat surprised to find higher levels of conformity among Americans than they had expected. Recall Tocqueville’s discovery that the American pioneer in the wilderness of the western frontier was no different than the east coast city dweller: “the same clothes, the same mind, the same language, the same habits, the same pleasures.”20 Beaumont likewise observed that from “New York and the Great Lakes, I looked in vain for intermediate degrees in American society.” Instead he found “the same men, the same passions and way of life . . . It is a strange thing that the American nation is made up of all the peoples of the earth, and no nation presents as a whole such uniform characteristics.”21 Meditating on the despotic potential of the sovereign majority, Tocqueville envisioned a nation that was “nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals.”22 Even in monarchical systems, where opposition to rulers was sometimes artfully and openly expressed, Tocqueville noted, there was more freedom of expression and thought than in America’s democracy. “If ever freedom is lost in America,” wrote Tocqueville, “one will have to blame the omnipotence of the majority.”23 The power of the majority, however, was only the first part of the puzzle. Also scribbled into his travel notebook during his last days

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in Boston was the contrasting and ostensibly mitigating principle that “every individual . . . is the only lawful judge of his own interests.” Herein lay the great paradox: a society that extolled the independence and freedom of the individual while it also encouraged conformity to the sovereign majority. As Damrosch summarizes, Tocqueville saw America as a nation of “individualists who were deeply conformist,”24 or as historian James T. Schleifer puts it, as a society with contradictory tendencies “toward individual independence and toward conformity and submission to the crowd.”25 How did Tocqueville reconcile these contradictory inclinations? The key may lie in Tocqueville’s conceptualization of “self-interest well [or rightly] understood.” He noted the unique and important role of the free and independent individual in American society, that is, the second great principle. He saw in this principle a departure from the republican notion of the virtuous individual who sacrificed himself out of commitment to the common good. However, it was not as though the republican notions of virtue disappeared entirely in a democracy. Rather, according to Tocqueville, vestiges of republicanism remained in the same way that vestiges of the Protestant work ethic remained – as ideals more significant for the utilitarian benefits they yielded than as determinative sources of moral commitment in their own right.26 Thus, one participated in common life not out of a “first principles” sense of duty to the common good, but because it was necessary for the achievement of one’s own self-interest. That is, one recognized that to realize aspirations of personal well-being, one had to cooperate with others. As Tocqueville put it, “Each man perceives that he is not as independent of those like him as he at first fancied, and that to obtain their support he must often lend them his cooperation.”27 Here the rightly understood part of the equation came into play. Tocqueville regarded unfettered individualism as untenable. A society that neglected any kind of cooperative or associational life risked a perilous and fatal decline into barbarism.28 Maintenance of the free and independent individual required certain sacrifices for the sake of the common good; but these sacrifices were ultimately understood to be in harmony with individual self-interest. As Tocqueville stated in his accompanying “rubish” notes: “Interest well understood requires you often to sacrifice your interest or rather, that to follow your interest over all, you often have to neglect it in detail.”29 In this way, commitment to the larger community was not its own telos, as in the republican vision, but a means by which to realize and sustain the free and independent individual.

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Two elements of American democracy that restrained (and thus benefited) the individual were its voluntaristic inclinations and its system of local self-governance, related phenomena Tocqueville first encountered in Albany, but which were made more clear to him in New England. Several in Boston spoke of the local initiatives typical of communal action in New England’s townships. Josiah Quincy, for example, explained to Tocqueville that “Massachusetts is a collection of small republics, which choose their own officials and take care of their own affairs.” To illustrate this point, Quincy offered: “Suppose, for example, that a man has an idea for some social improvement: a school, a hospital, a highway. He does not think of turning to the authorities. He publishes his plan, proposes to set to work, calls on other individuals to join him and tackles every obstacle head-on.”30 The German immigrant Francis Lieber reinforced this point: “If some obstruction blocks a public way, the neighbors will form a deliberative body on the spot. They will appoint a committee and solve the problem by making sage use of their collective talents . . . It would never occur to anybody that some preexisting authority ought to take charge.”31 Tocqueville found voluntary associations to be ubiquitous and of every imaginable kind in America. “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite,” wrote Tocqueville in Democracy in America. “Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools.”32 Lieber explained to the visiting Frenchmen that this modus operandi had become natural to Americans; it was not something mandated and directed by a distant and centralized bureaucratic authority. Instead such initiatives were habitual, part of the very marrow of Americans’ collective, yet decentralized, life together. “Constitutions and political regulations are of no importance in themselves,” said Lieber. “Such creations are lifeless and inert until the mores and social situation of the people breathe life into them.”33 The central place of mores or habits of the heart in sustaining a democracy would become a major and important theme in Democracy in America. Tocqueville would ultimately regard mores as “one of the great general causes to which the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United Sates can be attributed.”34 And he saw in the “spirit and the mores of the people” a “power superior” to the law.35

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In spite of Tocqueville’s largely positive understanding of the individual, motivated by self-interest albeit rightly understood, the individualism that he discovered in America presented something of a conundrum. On the one hand, habits of voluntarism and local governing practices served to draw the independent individual out of himself and into cooperative involvement with others, thus preventing the potential perils of a selfish withdrawal from society. Associational life and local self-governance also represented a barrier against the encroachments of majoritarian authority and the conformist tendencies it encouraged. On the other hand, Tocqueville noticed that at the local level the threat of majoritarian oppression could be most acute. Tyranny in a smaller locality, wrote Tocqueville, “is more inconvenient there than anywhere else because, acting in a more restricted circle, it extends to everything in that circle.”36 Thus, he saw localism as both that which protected the individual against the tyranny of the majority (and the routinizing processes of a centralized bureaucracy) as well as the place where majoritarian oppression could be most severe. As Schleifer explains, “the very local control which [Tocqueville] applauded . . . as a major barrier to the tyranny of the majority also facilitated the oppression of individuals and minorities by local majorities.”37 It was a dilemma, according to Schleifer, that Tocqueville never fully recognized or resolved. In any event, this quandary underscores the extent to which the individual in a democracy is susceptible to the conformist tendencies of majority views and expectations (whether they are national or local). Because individualism could lead both to selfish withdrawal from society and to conformity to a tyrannical majority, Tocqueville saw individualism as a potential foe to individuality. In fact, the conditions fostering the former threatened to undermine the latter. In a democracy, wrote Tocqueville, the conformist tendencies of individualism represented a condition whereby “the spirit of individuality is almost destroyed.”38 In this paradox, we find another parallel between our French and English visitors, as Chesterton would also note the curious situation in America in which individualism actually undermined individuality, though, as we will see, Chesterton linked the conformist inclinations of Americans not so much to competing tensions within democracy but to the social effects of industrial capitalism. Tocqueville also prefigured his English counterpart in his admiration of American egalitarianism. Like Chesterton, as we will see in Chapter 5, Tocqueville was struck by the absence of class-consciousness among the American people, a quality he discovered almost immediately.

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He recorded among his “first impressions” in New York that “the whole of society seems to have turned into one middle class.”39 After a rather unceremonious introduction to the governor of New York, he noted: “The greatest equality seems to reign even among those who occupy very different positions in society.”40 Several weeks later, Tocqueville again observed “the extreme equality that exists in social relations. The wealthiest man and the humblest artisan will shake hands in the street.”41 Tocqueville and Beaumont were taken aback when, during a visit to a prison in New York, the district attorney who accompanied them shook hands with one of the prisoners.42 Given these observations, it is not surprising that the very first line in Tocqueville’s classic book would read, “Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck my eye more vividly than the equality of conditions.”43 As in his discussion of individualism, while Tocqueville admired this equality, he also detected potential dangers. For one, he saw egalitarianism, as such, resulting in a kind of mediocrity. “Why,” he asked, “when there are no longer any lower classes, are there no superior classes? Why when the knowledge of government reaches the masses, are great geniuses missing from the direction?”44 Even more explicitly, Beaumont wrote in Marie, “Do not look for poetry, literature, or fine arts in this country. The universal equality of conditions spreads a monotonous tint over all society. No one is completely ignorant and no one knows very much; what is duller than mediocrity!”45 More seriously, however, Tocqueville worried that equality, which he sometimes used interchangeably with democracy, could lead to a new kind of despotism. As he stated in Democracy in America, “the vices to which despotism gives birth are precisely those that equality favors. These two things complement and aid each other in a fatal manner.”46 He saw equality and freedom as distinct and in tension. He feared that in a democracy, the people had a passion for equality that superseded their love of freedom. While “democratic peoples have a natural taste for freedom,” Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “for equality they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal, invincible passion; they want equality in freedom, and, if they cannot get it, they still want it in slavery.”47 He saw the path to servitude, as such, as insidious and nearly undetectable. “The evils that extreme equality can produce become manifest only little by little; they insinuate themselves gradually into the social body.”48 The principal fear of a democracy, wrote Tocqueville, is this “longer, more secret, but surer path toward servitude” that “equality produces.”49

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The prisons, which Tocqueville and Beaumont were tasked to study, provided a curious prototype for this tradeoff between freedom and equality. In this setting, there was perfect equality (“There is even more equality in the prison than in society”);50 yet freedom was entirely denied the prisoner. In other words, Tocqueville worried that “despotic regimes can give people equality but deny them freedom”; the American prison provided “a perfect illustration.”51 Here was the full realization, in isolated institutionalized form, of the kind of individualism, uniformity, equality, and consequential despotism that Tocqueville feared in a democracy more generally. Sheldon Wolin thus finds ironic Tocqueville’s approval of despotism in the prisons and anxious condemnation of the same in society.52

back to the prisons Upon receiving communication from the French government, Tocqueville and Beaumont renewed their neglected work on American prisons, a task they found increasingly tedious and boring. As Beaumont wrote in a letter to his mother, “The prisons have pretty well bored us . . . we always see the same thing.” Yet, they dutifully continued to study them, if only “to fulfill a necessary formality.”53 Before leaving Massachusetts, they visited two penal institutions in Boston: the Charleston prison, also styled on the Auburn model, and a “House of Reformation” for juvenile offenders in South Boston. Prisons remained their primary focus in the next two cities they visited, Hartford and Philadelphia. They toured the Wethersfield prison outside of Hartford in early October. Similar to Auburn in most respects, at Wethersfield the practice of corporal punishment was less common and less severe. Also unique to Wethersfield was a greater sense of optimism about the prospects of actually reforming prisoners. Unlike Elam Llynds of Auburn, the Wethersfield chaplain, Rev. G. Barrett, held that “prison can become a place of reform for the convicts.”54 Wethersfield was also the smallest penitentiary they visited, a quality they viewed favorably. In fact, Tocqueville and Beaumont would ultimately refer to Wethersfield in their final prison report as the best penitentiary in America.55 After a brief stopover in New York, the French ministers traveled to Philadelphia, where they finally saw America’s other leading prison model. The Quaker-inspired Eastern State Penitentiary, or Cherry Hill as it was popularly known, opened its doors in 1829. The new penitentiary, with its vast and imposing Gothic exterior, was like Auburn in that

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inmates occupied individual cells. However, unlike at Auburn, inmates worked in their isolated cells rather than in community with other prisoners during the day. Each cell had an attached walled-in courtyard for outdoor exercise and the inmates’ only visitor was a prison chaplain. While in Philadelphia, Tocqueville attended a Quaker meeting (as would Max Weber during his time in Philadelphia) and thus experienced firsthand the religious orientation upon which the Philadelphia prison was partly developed. That is, the quiet reflection of the Quaker meeting was the intended orientation of the prison, where silent attention to one’s inner light was meant to lead prisoners to a penitential state of reform. There were a total of eighty-seven prisoners in Eastern State Penitentiary at the time of their visit; Tocqueville individually interviewed sixty-three of them. Evidently, “because of Beaumont’s hopeless boredom with the mission,” Tocqueville took on this task alone.56 The Eastern State Penitentiary was built in the style of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, where all prisoners could be viewed from the vantage point of a central guard station, but without necessarily knowing they were being watched. Michel Foucault, who read and referenced Beaumont and Tocqueville’s study, would use this model as a basis for his discussion of the “panoptical principle” or “carceral continuum” – his argument that the new penitentiaries were emblematic of (and continuous with) the disciplinary structures and practices of other increasingly rationalized institutions in modern society, including factories, schools, hospitals, and military barracks. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault writes of the early nineteenth-century shift from a dominant form of punishment oriented toward the body to one aimed at the reformation of the soul. In a letter to the French minister of the interior, written from Philadelphia, Tocqueville articulated this very understanding of Cherry Hill. What we saw when we examined the Philadelphia cells from inside was totally new and quite interesting. The inmates are generally in good health, well clothed, well fed, and supplied with comfortable bedding . . . Nevertheless, they are profoundly unhappy. The mental suffering to which they are subjected is more terrifying than chains or blows. Is this not how an enlightened and humane society ought to seek to punish? Punishment here is at once milder and more terrifying than any other punishment yet invented. It aims solely at the prisoner’s mind but achieves incredible power over it.57

That Tocqueville’s rhetorical question begged an affirmative response is made clear later in the letter. Tocqueville informed the French minister of the interior that he thought the methods employed at Cherry Hill would

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be effective. “Most of the inmates incarcerated in the Philadelphia penitentiary today will emerge with the proper mental habits to avoid relapsing into a life of crime.” He added that he was “strongly inclined to believe that the Philadelphia system is superior to the New York system as well as to all the other systems that have been tried at one time or another in the United States,”58 a view that he and Beaumont would ultimately qualify in their prison report to the French government. Charles Dickens, who visited Cherry Hill eleven years after Tocqueville and Beaumont’s visit, was less sanguine in his assessment of the effects of solitary confinement on the lives of the prisoners in Philadelphia, which he described as “cruel and wrong.” While Dickens acknowledged the humane intentions of those who devised the model, he believed that the reformers did not know what they were doing. So terrible was the anguish and loneliness that he witnessed among those subjected to solitary confinement at Cherry Hill, he concluded, “No man has a right to inflict [such punishment] upon his fellow creature.”59 From Philadelphia, Tocqueville and Beaumont made a short excursion to Baltimore, where again the first order of business was to visit Baltimore’s penal institutions, including an almshouse and a penitentiary. However, their time in Baltimore was hardly limited to prison visits. Here, as elsewhere, the French visitors were warmly received and enthusiastically entertained. Beaumont wrote to his brother at the time, “We were delighted with the people of Baltimore. The week we spent there was a real carnival. We went from banquet to banquet. We didn’t dine at our inn a single night. There was always another gala to attend.”60 As to prisons, the Baltimore penitentiary was based on the Auburn model, though it had the unique feature of allowing the inmates to earn money for some of their labors, a practice that received the approbation of the French commissioners.61 While visiting the almshouse, Tocqueville and Beaumont witnessed a black man who had gone mad as a consequence of having been abused by a notoriously cruel slave trader. When the French visitors entered his cell, “he was lying on the floor, rolled up in the blanket which was his only clothing. His eyes rolled in their orbits and his face expressed both terror and fury.” Tocqueville lamented this “terrible sight” and described the tormented man as “one of the most beautiful Negroes I have ever seen, and he is in the prime of life.”62 The French ministers witnessed firsthand another demonstration of racial prejudice when they attended a horse race in Baltimore. At the race, a black man entered the grounds with some whites, an action for which he received “a shower of blows” with a cane. The pummeling,

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though horrifying to the French visitors, was evidently a surprise neither to the crowd nor to the black man.63 Maryland was the first state that Tocqueville and Beaumont visited where slavery was legal. In fact, while in Maryland, they met and interviewed the ninety-five-year-old Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll lived in Carrollton, Maryland, about 30 miles outside of Baltimore, on 13,000 acres; he owned more than 200 slaves, though he supported emancipation and had freed a number of his slaves. At the time the French visitors were in Baltimore, a thirteen-year-old slave named Frederick Bailey (aka Frederick Douglas) was teaching himself to read, and just two months earlier (while Tocqueville and Beaumont were cruising on a steamship bound for Montreal) neighboring Virginia had violently suppressed Nat Turner’s famous slave rebellion. 64 Deeply moved by what he heard and saw, Beaumont was now determined to write a book on race in America. In a letter to his brother penned just days after returning to Philadelphia from Baltimore, he wrote of his “particular interest” in slavery, and of his plans for a “great work” on the subject that would “immortalize me.”65 Marie would hardly immortalize Beaumont, but he would weave many of his American experiences and conversations into the book, including observations from their time in Baltimore. As they ventured south, the French travelers would learn even more of the plight of Indians and African slaves in America, providing additional material for their respective reflections on race in United States, a topic we will take up at the end of this chapter. Before doing so, it is worth noting one other feature of the American prisons observed by Tocqueville and Beaumont. As noted earlier, Sheldon Wolin points out the ironic discrepancy in Tocqueville’s treatment of America’s prisons and of American society more broadly.66 In important respects, the prison represented something of a microcosm of American society. That is, Tocqueville found in the prisons a sort of forced individualism (i.e., isolated cells), egalitarian treatment of prisoners, a style of punishment aimed at the soul rather than the body (especially at Cherry Hill), and a decentralized system organized by local officials. The result was a form of despotism (more harsh than soft, in this case) of which Tocqueville largely approved. Yet, as we have seen, Tocqueville was sometimes quite critical of the very same features and despotic tendencies in American democratic society more generally. How do we make sense of Tocqueville’s disparate views on very similar tendencies, albeit in distinctive settings? Such a delineation was possible for Tocqueville, arguably, because he saw the prison as a unique

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and autonomous institution in which the normal freedoms and governing principles of a democratic society did not apply. Indeed, Beaumont and Tocqueville stated as much in their report, On the Penitentiary System: “We understand perfectly well, that an assemblage of criminals, all of whom have infringed the laws of the land, and all of whose inclinations are corrupted, and appetites vicious, cannot be governed in prison according to the same principles, and with the same means as free persons, whose desires are correct, and whose actions are conformable to the laws.”67 Foucault, of course, would come to see the governing principles of the prisons as more coextensive with than distinct from the administrative forms and practices of other institutions in modern society. Echoing Foucault’s insights, Damrosch likewise concludes that with “historical hindsight” we see that “this system was not really an exception to the way society normally worked, but rather an extension of the new techniques of organization and control.”68 In two important respects, however, Tocqueville and Beaumont saw features of American prisons – local control and religion – commensurate with defining qualities of American society and, additionally, as obstacles to the easy transference of American-styled prisons to France. Regarding local governance, here as elsewhere the French magistrates were impressed with what they saw. Locally developed prisons in the United States engendered greater commitment and interest in those who established them. In contrast, they viewed the more centralized structure of the French system as more expensive, less efficient, less flexible to local needs, and less capable of reforming prisoners. Thus, they wished for greater decentralization in France and for a governing structure that would “have, more and more, a tendency to become local.”69 In the absence of a more decentralized system, they saw the transference of the American system to their home country as difficult. They likewise viewed religion as a key feature of American prisons that would make problematic a direct transplantation. As in American society more generally, they saw the prisons inextricably linked with religious beliefs and practices. From the outset, “the progress of the reform of prisons has been of a character essentially religious,” and after the prisons were established, religion remained “one of the fundamental elements of discipline and reformation.” The pervasiveness and general acceptance of religion in the United States represented a glaring contrast to conditions in France, where strong prejudices against ministers remained.70 Tocqueville and Beaumont attributed hostility to religion among the French to the previously close association between the state and religion

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prior to the 1789 revolution, when for “a long period, the altar . . . struggled in concert with the throne to defend royal power.” As a consequence, “the general public opinion” in France “shows itself little favorable towards anything protected by religious zeal.” Importantly, Tocqueville and Beaumont did not think that, in the long run, these obstacles would remain. “A lasting public prejudice against religion and her ministers is not the natural state of things.”71 In the United States, they did not detect the same sort of hostility toward religion; in fact, they discovered quite the contrary, and they attributed this harmony to the clear separation between church and state. Such an arrangement, however, did not mean that religion had no influence on public institutions, including America’s new penitentiaries. Indeed, as we have seen, religion greatly influenced “the direction of penitentiaries,” and this influence was not limited to the role of prison chaplains. Both the prisoners and those who worked in the prisons were also infused with “religious principles.” Prison officers, therefore, would never “utter a word which is not in harmony with the sermons of the chaplain.” The prisoner himself experienced in the penitentiaries a pervasive “religious atmosphere” and was open to its “influence because his primary education has disposed him for it.”72 In this sense, the prison was indeed a microcosm of society, where Tocqueville also found a pervasive religious attitude, one that he saw significantly contributing to the sustainability of American democracy.

religion and democracy Tocqueville’s reflections on the relationship between religion and democracy have received no small measure of scholarly attention. On this subject, his own biography and his ongoing concerns about the situation in France are especially relevant for understanding his interpretation of the unique role of religion in a democracy. In terms of his biography, he was “born and educated in a thoroughly Catholic milieu.”73 However, this formation, which included both Jansenist and Jesuit strains of influence, was challenged when Tocqueville moved to live with his father, whose prefectorial duties had taken him to Metz. While Tocqueville’s mother remained in Paris (having grown weary of her husband’s multiple relocations), Tocqueville joined his father in Metz in 1820 to further his education. During this period, an important event took place in the life of the young, intellectually curious aristocrat. Perusing the books in his father’s library, the sixteen-year-old Tocqueville waded into the

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waters of eighteenth-century enlightenment philosophy. What he discovered shook his faith to the core. As he would recall later in life, “I stuffed my mind pell-mell with all sorts of notions and ideas that usually come at a later age.” As a consequence, “doubt entered, or rather rushed upon me with unheard-of violence . . . I was overcome with the blackest melancholy.”74 After this experience, he stepped away from the certitudes of his Catholic upbringing, though it’s safe to say that the faith never entirely left him. As historian Doris Goldstein puts it, Tocqueville “retained affection and respect for the Church throughout his life,”75 and, though there is some disagreement among historians about the particulars, it is also the case that he returned to full communion with the Catholic Church at the end of his life.76 These sympathies influenced what he saw, with whom he spoke, and how he made sense of his American journey. As already noted, he attended a range of Protestant religious services (including Methodist, Shaker, Quaker, and Unitarian services) and witnessed expressions of American civil religion in a number of public settings. However, he had a particular interest in the strength and fate of Catholicism in America. As stated in Democracy in America, “I interrogated the faithful of all communions; above all, I sought the society of priests.” Thus, he felt a special affinity with the faith of his rearing. “The religion that I profess brought me together particularly with the Catholic clergy, and I was not slow to bond in a sort of intimacy with several of its members.”77 Given his background and affections, it may not be surprising that he saw the Catholic Church as the central religious reference point from which the fracturing expressions of Protestantism deviated in varying degrees. As he wrote to Kergorlay from New York, “In America, Protestantism is astoundingly fissiparous: sects have divided into an infinite number of subsets. Picture if you will concentric circles around a fixed point, which is the Catholic faith; with each successive circle, religion draws much closer to pure deism.”78 He saw this structuring of the religious landscape as a temporary condition, and anticipated that eventually the only viable option would be either Catholicism or an outright rejection of Christianity. Our descendants in a democracy, wrote Tocqueville, “will tend more and more to be divided into only two parts, those leaving Christianity entirely and those entering into the bosom of the Roman Church.”79 In his image of the concentric circles, he saw Unitarianism as one of the outer rings, and as a place where unbelievers could participate in the rituals of religious ceremony but without having to assent to traditional Christian doctrine.

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Tocqueville viewed Unitarianism as a short step away from the absence of any kind of belief. He investigated this point with several of his informants, including John Quincy Adams and the influential Unitarian minister, William Ellery Channing. In fact, he asked Channing rather “bluntly” whether he believed Unitarianism would ultimately undermine Christianity of its substance, and he was candid with him regarding his fears that Unitarianism – and Protestantism more generally – was on a trajectory toward a full rejection of Christianity. “I am frightened, I confessed [to Channing], by the turn that the human spirit has taken away from Catholicism, and I fear the end of the road will be natural religion.” While Adams shared Tocqueville’s view on the matter, Channing, not surprisingly, did not see Unitarianism as so dire a threat and sought to defend its reasonableness. Tocqueville, however, was not persuaded, and in his field notes described Channing’s argument as “more specious than solid.”80 The essential departure from Christianity, represented in Unitarianism, worried Tocqueville, because he saw religion as a sustaining feature of democracy and as that which shaped the mores and habits of the heart. So convinced was Tocqueville that “one must maintain Christianity within the new democracies at all cost,” while keeping it officially separated from the state, that he suggested the priests should be chained to their sanctuaries and not allowed to leave.81 Without the potency of religious belief, Tocqueville worried that other tendencies – including American mercantilism, individualism, and restlessness – would become unchecked and would ultimately make democracy untenable. His notion of selfinterest rightly understood, arguably, represented a compromise (or perhaps a transitional stage) between behavior dictated by value-oriented religious sentiments and behavior of a more distinctly utilitarian orientation – in Weberian terms between Wertrational and Zweckrational types of rational action. Self-interest rightly understood was a compromise: it allowed for individual freedom while also restraining the individual – who, because of practiced habits, acted in concert with broader communal interests and concerns. The rightly understood part of the equation, however – at least originally – was informed by certain religious sensibilities, but had taken on a more utilitarian form. Interestingly, on this point, Tocqueville saw an important difference between selfinterest rightly understood and religious motivations of a more purely Wertrational type. In his rubish notes Tocqueville spelled out a clear distinction between the “doctrine of interest well understood” and the more

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explicitly Christian “doctrine of the love of God.” He viewed the latter as “very superior” because “it places interest in the other world and draws us out of the cesspool of human and material interests.” He described the “doctrine of the love of God” as “infinitely purer, more elevated, less material, according to which the basis of action is duty.”82 Both doctrines could spur individuals to be honest and act sacrificially in relationship to others, but there was an important difference. “The doctrine of interest well understood can make men honest. But it is only that of the love of God that makes men virtuous.”83 Elsewhere in Democracy in America, Tocqueville communicated a belief that this more elevated sense of duty was necessary for sustaining a democratic republic. “Religion is much more necessary . . . in democratic republics more than all others. How could society fail to perish if, while the political bond is relaxed, the moral bond were not tightened? And what makes a people master of itself if it has not submitted to God?”84 One could argue, then, that Tocqueville’s interest rightly understood was a provisional doctrine, which could for a time restrain egoistic selfinterest and serve as a sufficient motivation for communal, cooperative action. With France as the backdrop, however, he feared this provisional arrangement would eventually be undermined by further secularization. Unlike Weber, though, he did not view the process of secularization as the inevitable consequence of modernization. As revealed in the discussion about religion in the prison report, Tocqueville did not see hostility toward religion as a natural human condition. On the contrary, he believed that belief was intrinsic to the human experience. In Democracy in America he wrote, “Only by a kind of aberration of the intellect and with the aid of a sort of moral violence exercised on their own nature do men stray from religious beliefs.” Therefore, he saw unbelief, particularly what he witnessed in France, as a temporary condition. “Disbelief is an accident; faith alone is the permanent state of humanity.”85 As will be explored in succeeding chapters, all of our other visitors would take up the issue of the role of religion in society in one form or another. For Tocqueville, it was a significant point because, in his view, democracy could not be sustained without some form of at least residual religious sentiment. Tocqueville’s Catholic sympathies, no doubt, colored what he saw (and didn’t see). Unlike Weber, he gave little attention to the doctrinal differences of the various Protestant sects and could be quite critical of the Protestant services that he did attend. After witnessing a fiery and emotional Methodist service, for example, he “fled full of disgust and penetrated by a profound terror,” and then offered his own prayer

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in response: “Is it possible that you recognize yourself in the horrible portrait that your creations make of you here? Must man be degraded by fear in order to raise him up to you, and can he climb to the ranks of your saints only by delivering himself to transports that make him descend below beasts?”86 It has also been noted that Tocqueville’s religious predilections prevented him from discussing or even noticing the Second Great Awakening, which was in full force at the time of his visit.87 Instead, as we have seen, he preferred to seek out and interview Catholic priests. Weber, in contrast, paid very little attention to Catholicism in the United States. In comparing Tocqueville to Weber, historian John Patrick Diggins notes that their different religious biographies played a role in determining their respective interpretations of America. As Diggins puts it, “In one respect the difference between Tocqueville and Weber was the difference between a hopeful liberal Catholic and a skeptical Calvinist modernist.”88 Antoine Redier, one of Tocqueville’s first biographers, goes even further, arguing that “Tocqueville’s Catholic beliefs are fundamental for the understanding of his political and historical ideas.”89 In Tocqueville and Beaumont’s discussions with Catholic priests, one of the most consistently conveyed opinions from this small segment of the American population was their highly favorable view of the clear separation between church and state. Recall Beaumont’s comment to his brother Achille, “All the Catholic priests I have met in this country consider the complete separation of church and state to be a great boon.”90 Both Beaumont and Tocqueville agreed with this assessment and saw the arrangement as one that would actually help to preserve religion in society, not relegate it to the private sphere (as the concept is often interpreted to mean in the contemporary context). As Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “one cannot say that in the United States religion exerts an influence on the laws or on the details of political opinions, but it directs mores, and it is in regulating the family that it works to regulate the state.” So significant was this indirect influence that Tocqueville referred to religion in America as “the first of their political institutions,” even though “it never mixes directly in the government of society.”91 Given the pervasiveness of religion, Tocqueville could not help but reflect on this defining feature of American society in relationship to the institution of slavery. He noted, in this regard, that it was Christianity that had originally put an end to slavery. He was therefore dismayed that it was among professedly Christian people that the institution

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was reintroduced. “Christianity destroyed servitude; Christians in the sixteenth century reestablished it.”92 The treatment of both African slaves and Native Americans would be the major focus of the final segment of their American journey, one that took them through the southern part of the United States.

the southern loop and “the three races” From Philadelphia, the French commissioners set out on the longest leg of their journey, an extended loop through the South that would take them as far west as the Mississippi River and as far south as New Orleans. The pace of this part of their tour was accelerated because of the request from the French government that they curtail their travels and return to France. The return trip from New Orleans to Washington, DC, which they covered by stagecoach in only two weeks, was especially speedy, and they were forced to abandon plans to visit Charleston, South Carolina, and the Montpelier home of James Madison in Orange, Virginia, where Madison and his wife Dolly still lived in retirement. Such a forced omission is regrettable for many reasons, not the least because Tocqueville had been reading the Federalist Papers during the journey, and history no doubt would have benefited from an interchange between the founding American constitutionalist and the inquisitive French magistrates. However, Tocqueville and Beaumont did meet a fair number of other notables during this last segment of their American journey, including Sam Houston, future president of the Republic of Texas and senator and governor of the state of Texas; John McLean, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, who would later write a dissenting opinion in the famous Dred Scott case; Salmon P. Chase, future treasury secretary under Abraham Lincoln and chief justice of the Supreme Court; Joel Poinsett, ambassador to Mexico, who brought back from Mexico the plant that now bears his name (poinsettia); and Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, whom the Frenchmen met briefly in Washington, DC – a meeting that did little to alter the largely negative views they had already formed about the man. These encounters, as with many that preceded them, illustrate how, as Damrosch puts it, “Tocqueville and Beaumont had a gift of bumping into people who were famous at the time or destined to be later.”93 The southern loop began in late November 1831, when Tocqueville and Beaumont left Philadelphia by stagecoach for a three-day journey

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to Pittsburgh. The trip to Pittsburgh, which Beaumont described as “one of the most painful yet,” was unbearably cold.94 In fact, the frigid conditions on this segment of the journey were only a foretaste of what Tocqueville and Beaumont would experience most of the way to New Orleans; it would turn out to be one of the coldest winters the region was ever known to have experienced.95 They stayed in Pittsburgh for only one day, before boarding a steamboat, the Fourth of July, on the Ohio River destined for Cincinnati. The brief stay in Pittsburgh left the Frenchmen with only enough time for a visit to the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. In light of our discussion in Chapter 1 about Tocqueville’s attention (or lack thereof) to American industrialism, it would have been helpful, if their time had not been limited, to learn more of what he and Beaumont thought of Pittsburgh’s factories. We know from Beaumont only that he saw Pittsburgh as the “Birmingham of America,” an industrial town “perpetually shrouded in smoke from the steam engines that drive [its] factories.”96 Their expedition on the Fourth of July was shorter than expected, as late on the night of November 26 the steamboat crashed into a reef (Burlington Bar) on the Ohio River just north of Wheeling, Virginia (now in West Virginia). The ship quickly took on water but did not sink entirely because it remained lodged on the reef.97 The two hundred passengers safely boarded another steamship, the William Parsons, to complete the trip to Cincinnati. This would not be the Frenchmen’s only mishap on steamships; less than two weeks later, after leaving Cincinnati, the Ohio River became so frozen that their boat got lodged in the ice, forcing them to disembark at Westport, Kentucky and then walk 25 miles to Louisville. Then, at the end of December, on the Mississippi River just north of New Orleans, their steamboat was delayed for two days while stuck on a sandbar. Such misfortunes with steamboat travel were not entirely uncommon. Toward the end of their American journey, Tocqueville reported to his brother Édouard that steamboat travel was much more risky than they had realized. During the first six weeks of their American tour alone, Tocqueville learned that thirty steamboats had exploded or sunk.98 On the steamboat ride (or rides) from Pittsburgh to Louisville, Tocqueville and Beaumont witnessed a condition first conveyed to them by John Quincy Adams regarding the degrading effects of slavery on the character of white slaveowners. As the two friends traveled down the Ohio River with Kentucky (a slave state) on one side and Ohio (a free state) on the other, Tocqueville noted a clear difference.

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The people of Ohio may appear to be poor, because they work with their hands, but their labor is for them a source of wealth. Across the river live people who are served by others and display little compassion, people without energy, ardor, or a spirit of enterprise. On one side of the water, labor is honored and opens all doors; on the other, it is scorned as a mark of servitude.

It was clear in Tocqueville’s mind that the difference between Kentucky and Ohio had everything to do with slavery. “Slavery numbs the black population and saps the energy of the white population. Its baleful effects are plain to see.”99 A conversation with Timothy Walker, a distinguished Cincinnati lawyer, confirmed (or helped to form) Tocqueville’s thinking on this point. Kentucky’s “prosperity is stationary,” said Walker. “The only reason that one can give for this difference is that slavery reigns in Kentucky, but not in Ohio. There work is disgraceful, here it is honorable. There, there is idleness, here endless activity.” This did not mean, however, that Ohio treated free blacks fairly – quite the contrary. The legal status of blacks in Ohio, as described by Walker in 1831, foreshadowed the treatment African Americans would receive during the postemancipation period of the Jim Crow laws. In conversation with Walker, Tocqueville observed, “In Ohio you have made very severe laws against the blacks.” To which Walker responded, “Yes. We try and discourage them in every possible way. Not only have we made laws allowing them to be expelled at will, but we hamper them in a thousand ways. A Negro has no political rights; he cannot be a juror; he cannot give evidence against a white. That last leads to revolting injustices.”100 After the Ohio River iced over, Tocqueville and Beaumont, with the aid of a “big strapping pioneer” and his wagon, made the arduous 25-mile trek to Louisville from Westport.101 Once in Louisville, the French travelers faced a quandary; here too the river was frozen. Should they wait it out, hoping the river would thaw, retrace their steps, or consider an alternative route? It was suggested that an overland trek to Memphis would enable them to catch a steamboat headed south on the Mississippi; and they were repeatedly assured, “the Mississippi never freezes.” Heeding this advice, they began a 370-mile overland journey to Memphis, perhaps the most difficult and dangerous part of their entire American tour. The temperatures remained frigid, the roads were in terrible condition, their modes of transportation (stagecoach and open wagon) were subpar, and Tocqueville became seriously ill. Nevertheless, the experience (even Tocqueville’s illness) provided them opportunities for further insights into the treatment of blacks and the social

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consequences of slavery in the south. In spite of the formidable difficulties they faced, Tocqueville did not, as he wrote to his father, “regret the journey we just took through the forests of Kentucky and Tennessee.”102 Tocqueville’s illness forced the travelers to stop in Sandy Bridge, Tennessee at the rather isolated cabin/inn of a pioneer family. For several anxious days, Tocqueville lay in bed with a fever, while Beaumont cared for and fretted over his ailing friend and patient. As recorded in Beaumont’s diary: “Depths of isolation and abandonment. What to do? What will happen if the illness gets worse. What is this illness? Where to find a doctor? The nearest one is more than 30 miles away.”103 Though gravely weak from his illness, Tocqueville still observed with interest the revealing dynamics between this relatively poor white frontiersman, his family, and his black slaves. In a letter to his father, written after recovering, Tocqueville described the rudimentary log cabin, its enormous fire, porous walls (and, thus, freezing temperatures), and the curious manner in which the white man ran his household. The mistress of the house sat next to the fire, with the quiet, modest look typical of American wives, while four or five plump children clad as lightly as if it were July rolled about the floor. Under the mantle of the fireplace, two or three squatting Negroes seemed to find it less hot than in Africa. In this impoverished setting our host nevertheless did the honors of his house easily and courteously. Not that he lifted a finger of himself, but the poor blacks saw that strangers had entered the house, and one of them, acting on the orders of his master, served us whiskey, while another served corn cakes and venison, while a third was sent to fetch more wood . . . While the slaves were occupied in this way, the master, quietly seated in front of a fire hot enough to roast an ox to the very marrow, soon enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke, while between puffs he beguiled the time for his guests by recounting all the great hunting exploits he could remember.

Both Tocqueville and Beaumont were struck by the manner in which the man of the house, though far from wealthy, presented himself as an aristocrat. As Beaumont noted in his diary: “The husband hunts, hikes, rides horseback. Certain airs of a gentleman. Petty aristocrats with feudal habits.”104 Tocqueville similarly observed, “To mount a horse, hunt, and smoke like a Turk in the bright sun – that is the destiny of the white man.”105 Tocqueville conveyed to his father another scenario that further illustrated the “value that people here ascribe to a man’s life if he has the misfortune to have black skin.” On the trek between Louisville and Memphis, Tocqueville, Beaumont, and company needed to cross the Tennessee River. The ferry that was crossing was a small “paddlewheel steamer maneuvered by a horse and two slaves.” After safely ferrying the

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travelers across the river, the owner of the boat expressed a reluctance to transport their wagon, because the river was a little rough. One of those traveling with the Frenchmen assured the boat owner that should the horse and slaves perish, he would be duly compensated. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be responsible for the price of the horse and slaves.” Assured that what he owned – both horse and human slaves – were thus insured, “the wagon was loaded onto the boat and taken across.”106 When Tocqueville and Beaumont finally arrived in Memphis, two weeks after leaving Louisville, they discovered that the Mississippi itself was frozen. They could see “that several steamboats were caught in the ice . . . sitting there as still as if they were rocks.”107 As a consequence, the French visitors had no choice but to stay in Memphis and wait for the river to thaw out. After a week of idleness, spent mostly hunting birds (which they did with members of the Chickasaw tribe) and writing letters, a steamship from New Orleans finally made its way north. Stopping in Memphis, the captain of a steamship, called the Louisville, was planning to continue north. Tocqueville, Beaumont, and fifteen others found the captain and urged him to travel south, arguing that because of freezing conditions further travel to the north would be impossible.108 An unexpected occurrence finally convinced the captain to change course. It was December 1831, one year since President Andrew Jackson had signed into law the Indian Removal Act. Out of the woods on the shore of the Mississippi emerged a group of Choctaw Indians being escorted by a federal agent in compliance with the Act. The agent offered the captain generous remuneration to transport the beleaguered Choctaw Indians south to Arkansas. Persuaded, the captain turned the Louisville around, thereby allowing Tocqueville and Beaumont to continue their journey south. Thus, the French visitors witnessed firsthand one of the initial groups of Indians relocated as part of the famous Trail of Tears. It has been argued that the actual phrase “trail of tears” originated from this tribe. Allegedly, upon arriving in Arkansas with his people in 1831, a Choctaw Chief told an Arkansas Gazette reporter that the removal thus far had been “a trail of tears and death.”109 Beaumont drew a picture of the tragic scene in his sketchbook and Tocqueville wrote to his mother about the incident, along with views about government policy toward Native Americans more generally. Regarding the Choctaw conducted onto the Louisville in Memphis, Tocqueville observed: Among them was a woman aged 110. I have never seen a more terrifying figure. She was naked except for a blanket through which one could glimpse the most

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emaciated body one can imagine. She was escorted by two or three generations of offspring. What a wretched fate, to leave her homeland at that age to seek her fortune in a foreign land . . . Overall, there was about this spectacle an air of ruin and destruction, something that felt like a final farewell, with no return. It was impossible to witness the scene without feeling a pang in the heart. The Indians were calm but somber and taciturn. I asked one who spoke English why the Choctaws were leaving their homeland. “To be free,” he answered. I couldn’t get anything else out of him. Tomorrow we will deposit them in the solitudes of Arkansas. It must be said that it was a stroke of fortune that brought us to Memphis in time to witness this expulsion, or one might say this liquidation, of one of the last remnants of one of the most celebrated and ancient American tribes.110

Concerning the government’s policy toward Indians more generally, Tocqueville was quite critical. He noted that, compared to the violent and brutish practices of the Spaniards, the Europeans in the United States were more subtle but no less injurious in their removal of Indians. “The Americans of the United States, more humane, more moderate, more respectful of rights and legality, and never bloodthirsty, have been more profoundly destructive of the Indian race.”111 Tocqueville noted that the Indians were often paid for the land that they were being asked to abandon, albeit with the looming insinuation that if they refused they would be forced to leave anyway. “What to do? Half-convinced, half-compelled, the Indians move out; they go to inhabit new wilderness, where the whites will hardly leave them in peace for ten years.”112 With trenchant irony, he observed to his mother, “Do you see what high civilization brings?”113 Once in Arkansas, the Choctaw were set ashore and would then attempt the long journey into Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. Almost three-quarters of a century later, Max Weber would visit the same region and witness the continuing struggles between Native and European Americans. After the Choctaw had disembarked in Arkansas, the colorful person of Sam Houston boarded the Louisville. Tocqueville described Houston as “a man of athletic build, whose physical and moral energy is evident in his appearance.”114 After resigning from the governorship of Tennessee under a cloud of scandal in 1829, Houston had, for the previous two years, been living among the Cherokee and had taken the daughter of a Cherokee chief as his common-law wife. He was very knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, the plight of the Indians, which, as recorded in Tocqueville’s travel notebook, was the main focus of the conversation aboard the Louisville. Regarding religion among the Indians, Houston observed that in general “the Indians believe in the existence of a God who metes out

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rewards and punishments in the next life for what a person does in this one.” He did not think it was a good idea to “try to civilize Indians by sending missionaries to live among them,” though he observed that “Catholicism is capable of making a lasting impression on the Indians,” because “it strikes their senses and speaks to their imagination.”115 Houston was optimistic about the government’s relocation policy. He believed the approach would save the Indians, allowing them a place to thrive where “the region is healthy and the land extremely fertile.” Tocqueville did not share Houston’s optimism and believed instead that it was just a matter of time before these resettled Indians would face the same forced relocation again. “In a few years, doubtless, the same white population that now presses on them will be on their heels . . . they will again meet the same ills without the same remedies; and, as sooner or later they will run out of land, they will ever have to resign themselves to dying.”116 Tocqueville and Beaumont finally arrived in New Orleans on January 1, 1832. Because of delays – including having just been stuck for two days on a sandbar – they could stay in New Orleans for only a few days. This allowed enough time to visit a prison, the conditions of which they found deplorable. Men were put “together with hogs, in the midst of all odors and nuisances.” Unlike either the Philadelphia or Auburn models, the prison in New Orleans made no effort to reform its prisoners. “Nobody thinks of rendering them better . . . they are put in chains like ferocious beasts; and instead of being corrected, they are rendered brutal.”117 The Frenchmen thus concluded that the prisons in the Southern states were not nearly as advanced as those in the North.118 They also found the population in New Orleans to be very different from the other region of French influence they had visited in the fall. “We have seen French in Canada,” Tocqueville wrote to Ernest de Chabrol, “they are calm, moral, pious; in Louisiana we met Frenchmen of an entirely different stripe – restless, dissolute, lax in every way.”119 In New Orleans, Tocqueville and Beaumont attended an opera and were struck by the manner in which the audience was divided by race and gender. In the front section were white men; behind them, mulatto women; and in the gallery, black women. As Tocqueville recorded in his travel notebook: “Strange sight: all the men white, all the women colored or at least with African blood.”120 Among the mulattos were women who looked white, but because they possessed even a trace of black blood they were segregated as such. Beaumont would use this particular prejudice and even this scene in his book Marie.

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After a brief steamboat ride from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama, the French visitors then hastily traveled by stagecoach to Norfolk (where they caught a ferry to Washington, DC) in order to arrive in time for the start of the 22nd Congress. They traversed a remarkable 1,000 miles on land – through Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and then into Virginia – in only 12 days, averaging more than 80 miles a day. No doubt, more time would have allowed them a fuller and deeper understanding of the South and the realities and effects of slavery. Nevertheless, albeit rapid, the road trip through the South afforded Tocqueville an opportunity to witness an instructive encounter between the three races, of which he put forth a moving meditation in Democracy in America. Near the home of a pioneer family outside of Montgomery, Alabama, Tocqueville took a stroll up to the edge of a spring in the woods. Here he came upon a small white girl, whom he surmised to be a daughter of the pioneer family. With her was an Indian woman (from the Creek nation) and a black woman. All three came to sit down beside the spring, and the young savage, taking the child in her arms, lavished on her caresses that you could have believed were dictated by a mother’s heart; on her side, the Negro woman sought by a thousand innocent tricks to attract the attention of the small Creole. The latter showed in her slightest movements a sentiment of superiority that contrasted strangely with her weakness and her age; you would have said that she received the attentions of her companions with a kind of condescension. Squatting in front of her mistress, watching closely for each of her desires, the Negro woman seemed, equally divided between an almost maternal attachment and a servile fear; while a free, proud, and almost fierce air distinguished even the savage woman’s effusion of tenderness.121

Startled by Tocqueville’s presence, the Indian woman ran off and “plunged into the woods.” Tocqueville found in the scene “something particularly touching: a bond of affection united the oppressed to the oppressors here, and nature, by trying hard to bring them together, made still more striking the immense space put between them by prejudice and laws.”122 As a fitting summary of the troubling race relations Tocqueville found in America, he wrote the following question in the margins of this part of the manuscript: “Why of these three races, is one born to perish, the other to rule and the last to serve?”123 Beaumont, of course, made race the primary focus of his book on America. Just as Tocqueville withheld publication of his essay on the wilderness in deference to the topical interests of his good friend and traveling partner, so it is likely he didn’t say more on race in Democracy

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in America for the same reason. Nevertheless, what he said was substantive, significant, and insightful; and the issue of slavery, in particular, remained a matter of intense interest to Tocqueville for the rest of his life. During his political career, after returning to France and being elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he fought for the elimination of slavery in the French colonies. Even after retirement from politics in 1851, he remained greatly distressed about the continuation and proposed expansion of slavery to the western territories of the United States. In fact, it was a topic he addressed repeatedly and with great agitation in his correspondence with American friends in the last decade of his life. To Theodore Sedgwick, for example, he wrote in 1857, that he was “vehemently opposed to the extension of this horrible evil,” and that to extend slavery further would be “one of the greatest crimes that human beings could commit against the general cause of humanity.”124 At the request of an American abolitionist, in 1856 he even published in the United States a moving plea in the Liberty Bell (later reprinted in The Liberator) for the elimination of slavery. In it he wrote of being “pained and astonished by the fact that the freest people in the world . . . the only one among civilized and Christian nations . . . maintains personal servitude.” He concluded: An old and sincere friend of America, I am uneasy at seeing Slavery retard her progress, tarnish her glory, furnish arms to her detractors, compromise the future career of the Union . . . As a man, too, I am moved at the spectacle of man’s degradation by man, and I hope to see the day when the law will grant equal civil liberty to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God accords the freedom of the will, without distinction to the dwellers upon earth.125

Thus, as it concerns the promise and the quandary of democracy, just as Tocqueville worried about its tyrannical and despotic tendencies, he agonized over the limited application of its liberties to all who inhabited a land that he admired and of which he remained a sincere and interested friend.

the nation’s capital and the return to france Tocqueville and Beaumont finally arrived in Washington on January 17, 1832, where they reconnected with a number of individuals whom they had met earlier in their travels, including Edward Livingston, John Quincy Adams, and Joel Poinsett. Damrosch characterizes the Frenchmen’s time in the nation’s capital as a disappointment.126 There are

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several reasons for this. First, they were not particularly impressed with the city. Beaumont described the houses and scattered organization of the city “ugly to look at.”127 Tocqueville was similarly underwhelmed by the city, which he described as “an arid, sun-parched plain across which are scattered two or three sumptuous buildings and the five or six villages that make up the city.”128 Second, Tocqueville and Beaumont met, but were decidedly unimpressed with, President Andrew Jackson. Beaumont described their brief meeting with America’s seventh president in a letter to his mother. “He was alone when we entered the room . . . We spoke about rather insignificant things. He served us a glass of Madeira, and we thanked him and called him ‘sir’ just as any other visitor would.” What did Beaumont make of America’s seventh president? “He is not a man of genius. He once enjoyed a reputation as a duelist and hothead.”129 Equally unflattering, Tocqueville described Jackson in Democracy in America as “a man of violent character and middling capacity.”130 They had little to say about the second branch of government as well. Though they visited the House and Senate chambers on several occasions and were introduced to its members by Joel Poinsett, not much was said of these visits beyond what Beaumont wrote to his mother. “The debate in the chambers is somber and impressive. Seldom do political passions intrude in such a way as to disrupt these discussions.”131 Perhaps the most important reason for their disappointing time in Washington, DC was that they were tired, homesick, and ready to be back in France. Beaumont wrote as much to his mother: “I do not think that my stay in Washington is as profitable as it might have been. Despite all my effort to focus on the interesting things around me, I am perpetually preoccupied with the idea of my return.”132 Even more unequivocally, Tocqueville wrote to Ernest de Chabrol from Washington that he and Beaumont could “no longer remain in America. Our feet are burning. Everything that moors us to life is in France.” He confessed, “I am already living more in France than in the United States.”133 Less than a month after writing this letter, Tocqueville and Beaumont would be on a ship returning to France. They had hoped to depart even earlier, but a February 10 booking for transport to France had been canceled. They left Washington on February 3, spent two days in Philadelphia and then arrived in New York on February 6. Delayed an extra ten days in New York because of the cancellation, they finally boarded Le Havre – the same ship upon which they had journeyed to America more than nine

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months earlier – on February 20 and set sail for France. Anticipating their return, Tocqueville had written to his brother a few weeks earlier about his plans for a book on America in what can be characterized as one of the greatest understatements imaginable. “I think that, when I return, if I have some free time, I might be able to write something passable about the United States.”134

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3 Agrarianism, Race, and the End of Romanticism Weber in Early Twentieth-Century America

In August 1904, seventy-three years after the two French magistrates began their journey to America, Max and Marianne Weber departed from Germany for a visit to the United States. Traveling with the Webers, for the first part of the trip, was the German theologian, Ernst Troeltsch. Both Troeltsch and Weber had been invited to give lectures at the World Congress for Arts and Science in conjunction with the St. Louis World’s Fair. Facilitating their invitation was Hugo Münsterberg, a German émigré, Harvard psychology professor, and one of the chief organizers of the Congress. Weber had previously planned to travel to America in 1893 for the World’s Fair in Chicago, a trip that did not materialize because of his engagement to Marianne that year.1 Like Tocqueville, Weber was preceded to America by a relative – in this case, his father, Max Weber, Sr., who traveled to the United States in 1883, joining James Bryce, Carl Schurz, and Henry Villard for an excursion on the just completed Northern Pacific Railroad.2 Weber had a long-standing interest in America, and not just because of his father’s visit. When he was only eleven years old, family friend Friedrich Kapp gave him a translated copy of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography; and, at age fifteen, Weber wrote that he was studying American history and finding it quite interesting.3 His 1904 journey in America was much shorter than Tocqueville’s: 2½ months compared to 9½ months. While Tocqueville traveled by coach and steamship, Weber traveled primarily by train; he estimated that he spent approximately 180 hours on America’s railways and traversed a total of around five thousand miles.4 Though utilizing different modes of transportation, both visitors followed a similar geographical loop. As John Patrick 66 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Texas Libraries, on 08 Dec 2019 at 09:55:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.004

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Diggins observes, Tocqueville and Weber “traveled over many of the same routes and came away with many of the same impressions about this new nation and new people forming across the Atlantic.”5 Interestingly, though Tocqueville’s influence on Weber was evident, a direct reference to Tocqueville in Weber’s work has yet to be discovered.6 Like Tocqueville and Beaumont, the Webers began their journey in New York. After five days in the city, they ventured west, stopping for visits in North Tonawanda, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo before taking a train to Chicago, where they stayed for more than a week. From Chicago, the German visitors went south to St. Louis, where Weber gave his lecture on September 21, 1904. From St. Louis, Troeltsch and the Webers parted ways – Troeltsch back to Germany via the East Coast, and the Webers to America’s West and South. Max stayed in St. Louis for nine days before taking a train to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, while Marianne remained in St. Louis. They rejoined each other six days later in Memphis, and then traveled together to New Orleans. Like the French prison commissioners who preceded them, the Webers took a fast-paced tour through the South, taking less than two weeks to travel the one thousand plus miles between New Orleans and Washington. They made several stops along the way, including visits to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and with relatives on the Fallenstein side of Weber’s family in Mount Airy, North Carolina. After about a week in Washington, DC, they ventured north again, making stops in Baltimore and Philadelphia, before finding their way to Boston, a city that they, like Tocqueville and Beaumont before them, found especially agreeable. The German travelers experienced Boston as “older, more refined, and more harmonious” than the other American cities they had visited.7 After a week in Boston, Max and Marianne returned to New York by way of Providence, Rhode Island. They remained in New York for a very busy two weeks before boarding the Hamburg on November 19, allowing plenty of time to return to Germany before Christmas, as was their wish. The American trip represented an important transition point in Weber’s biography. In June 1897, Weber had a serious quarrel with his father. Less than two months later, Max Weber, Sr., died without having reconciled with his son. In the following year, Weber slipped into a depressive state, which lasted for more than four years. So debilitating was his condition – diagnosed at the time as “severe and persistent neurasthenia”8 – that Weber stopped lecturing and eventually gave up his teaching duties at Heidelberg University entirely. During this period,

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he spent several months in a sanatorium and many more traveling abroad, mostly in southern Europe, with Marianne, who was an indispensable support to him throughout that time. The American trip (and anticipation of it) helped Weber to emerge from his troubled state. As Marianne put it, “The very project and the planning acted as a tonic.”9 His most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was written very much with America in mind.10 It was originally released as two essays, the first published in the same year as the American trip and the second in the year after their return. His St. Louis lecture was the first public lecture he had given in more than five years. Marianne was elated, “You can imagine how I felt when I saw him standing before an attentively listening audience again.”11 The moment represented a critical turning point; Weber would remain a revived and productive scholar for the next sixteen years until his death in 1920.

america’s capitalistic cities The sense of excitement and improved health were evident even on the voyage across the Atlantic. Marianne noted that, during the eight-day crossing aboard the Bremen, her husband slept well and regained his appetite. “He is really fine, or so it seems to me,” she wrote to Weber’s mother Helene.12 As for Marianne, she was disturbed by the treatment of the third-class passengers, made up mainly of immigrants from Russia and eastern Europe, many of them Jewish, who were crammed into cramped quarters in the lower deck. When the German travelers disembarked in New York harbor, Weber was eager to begin his investigations of the New World; in Marianne’s words, he “darted ahead with long, elastic strides, leaving his companions behind – like a liberated eagle finally allowed to move its wings.”13 Weber took in the new sights of the bustling city with great relish. His traveling companions, who were more ambivalent and overwhelmed by what they saw, were less enthusiastic. Troeltsch was struck by the immensity, busyness, and noise of the city. “The ears are here totally blunted from the continuous thundering and roaring. Sometimes it feels as if one were drunk.” Of their first sight of the metropolis, Troeltsch wrote to his wife, Marta: What a view, and what a teeming din of humans and cars! Across there rise like a confused mass of mixed-up towers the skyscrapers, the monstrous business establishments with 20 stories, a sort of castle and fortification of

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capitalism, all gathered round bank and stock exchange like a giant medieval castle, in which money, the bank, the capital, rules with innumerable thousands of subjects.14

After three days in New York, Marianne Weber was not sure what to make of the experience. “To be sure, we have definitely not decided as yet – at least I have not – whether we ought to find this piece of the world on which five million people are piled up magnificent and tremendous or crude, hideous, and barbaric.”15 The same ambivalence characterized her take on the tall St. Paul and Park Row buildings, which stood in view from their hotel window. “Two of the powerful beasts, 30-story ‘skyscrapers,’ arise directly across from us. One must see them to believe they are real. I still ask myself whether they are simply dreadful, grotesque and showy, or whether they display their own beauty and dignity.”16 Max Weber, unlike his co-travelers, was more enthusiastic about what he saw. “His lively interest in the new world almost made him forget the lack of his accustomed comforts; he was annoyed if anyone made a fuss about it and wished to appreciate everything and absorb as much of it as possible.” In keeping with his analytical emphasis on Verstehen, he “rejected for the time being any criticism of the new things which was based on unfamiliarity with them. He was on the side of the new and empathized with it.” Weber was taken by the energy and novelty of the lively capitalistic city, and strove to make sociological sense of what he saw. “Thanks to his temperament and presumably also to his comprehensive knowledge and scholarly interest,” wrote Marianne, “he at first finds everything beautiful and better than in our country on principle; his criticism does not come until later.” In fact, Weber was impatient with his “German fellow travelers who groan about America after a day and half in New York.”17 The city, of course, was much changed since Tocqueville and Beaumont’s 1831–32 visit. New York had grown from around two hundred thousand to nearly four million inhabitants, and was swarming with new European immigrants who poured into the city by the thousands each year. In 1904 alone, more than eight hundred thousand immigrants flooded into the United States, mainly from Russia and eastern and southern Europe.18 In spite of these changes, the German visitors’ first impressions of New York would match some of those made by the French travelers who preceded them. Both the German and French visitors, for example, took note of the lack of prominence of church buildings in the city. Troeltsch observed that New York was “the picture of a city not characterized by church steeples.” Rather, the

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churches “disappear almost among the towering buildings.”19 Similarly, Marianne noticed that the New York skyscrapers “nullify everything else in the vicinity, such as the little church [St. Paul’s chapel] with its gothic tower that tries to assert itself like an island of peace amid the untamed din of the streets.”20 Beaumont likewise had noted the less than prominent place of churches in the New York cityscape: “You see neither domes nor church tower nor grand edifices,” he wrote, “so you feel as if you’re still in a suburb.”21 The Webers were also not particularly impressed with the uniformity and blandness of the hotel room in which they stayed. The “coldly impersonal” room was “distinguished by its bareness, a telephone, and two enormous spittoons.” It lacked the “German Gemültlichkeit [coziness]” to which they were accustomed.22 After five days in New York, the German travelers boarded a Pullman Coach on a railway directed north along the Hudson River, the very same route followed by Tocqueville and Beaumont. Once at Albany, the train turned west toward Buffalo. The Webers stayed in western New York for four days, which included a visit to North Tonawanda, a German immigrant town of approximately twenty thousand inhabitants situated just northeast of Buffalo. Here, in conversations with the Protestant pastor Hans Haupt, Weber began his explorations of the connections between American Protestant sects and the spirit of capitalism. Prior to their visit, Weber and Troeltsch had asked Haupt to collect information on American denominations, their practices, teachings, and connections to economic behavior. Curiously, Haupt perceived that Weber and Troeltsch took little interest in what he had to say. Haupt later reported to Wilhelm Pauck his impression “that the professors knew all that could be known without having to weigh empirical evidence.”23 As Weber’s 1906 essay, “Churches and Sects in North America,” makes clear, Haupt misperceived his visitors. In the essay, Weber used statistical data provided by Haupt and even made specific reference to the “membership” and “collections” practices of Haupt’s church. We will consider Weber’s treatment of churches and sects in the next chapter, but first on to Chicago, America’s other great capitalistic city, or what Marianne described as “the monstrous city which even more than New York was the crystallization of the American spirit.”24 Max and Marianne departed for Chicago on September 9, 1904. Troeltsch would follow a day later, as he and another German academic, Paul Hensel – who had joined their small party in western

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New York – stayed another day at Niagara Falls.25 If New York City was off-putting to Troeltsch, Chicago was positively horrifying. As he wrote to his wife: Chicago is disgusting, the ugliest city I have ever seen. It lies entirely flat in an absolutely uncharming area at the banks of a large lake, the strong winds of which hinder the growth of any vegetation. In addition, it is the most soot-filled and dirtiest commercial city I have ever seen. In fifteen minutes one is black from head to toe, and the workers here wear, justifiably, black shirts.26

Even Weber, his enthusiasm and open-mindedness notwithstanding, found Chicago to be overwhelming. “Chicago is one of the most incredible cities,” he wrote.27 During his eight-day stay in Chicago, he was given a full tour of a slaughterhouse, where he followed “a pig from the sty to the sausage to the can.”28 Interestingly, Upton Sinclair arrived in Chicago just one month later (October 1904) to begin his research for The Jungle, the 1906 book that would make him famous. Sinclair spent seven weeks in the meatpacking plants of Chicago gathering material for his book. Weber’s colorful descriptions of the city bear an uncanny resemblance to Sinclair’s portrayal of Chicago in The Jungle. The Webers arrived in the immediate aftermath of the “great Beef Strike” of the summer of 1904, an event also depicted in Sinclair’s novel. In a letter to his mother Helene, Weber offered a lively account of the strike: All hell had broken loose in the “stockyards”: an unsuccessful strike, masses of Italians and Negroes as strikebreakers; daily shootings with dozens of dead on both sides; a streetcar was overturned and a dozen women were squashed because a “non-union man” had sat in it; dynamite threats against the “Elevated Railway,” and one of its cars was actually derailed and plunged into the river. Right near our hotel a cigar dealer was murdered in broad daylight; a few streets away three Negroes attacked and robbed a streetcar at dusk, etc.29

In addition to making reference to the strike, both the novelist and the social scientist also wrote of the glaring class differences between the destitute immigrant workers and the extravagantly wealthy owners who lived in large houses on Lake Shore Drive; the corruption of the party bosses; the filth and unsanitary conditions of the city and the slaughtering factories; and the huge influx of immigrants from a variety of European countries. Sinclair’s protagonist, the Lithuanian Jurgis Rudkus and his fiancé Ona, upon first arriving in Chicago, observed with breathless wonder the interminable stockyards: “north and south as far as the eye can reach there stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled – so many cattle no

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one had ever dreamed existed in the world.”30 Weber observed much the same when he first came upon the stockyards: “as far as one could see . . . there is nothing but herds of cattle, lowing, bleating, endless filth.”31 Both writers also offered similar descriptions of the slaughtering process, though Sinclair’s account is more detailed and sordid. Nevertheless, Weber was clearly stunned by what he saw. He wrote of the “‘ocean of blood,’ where several thousand cattle and pigs are slaughtered every day,” of the “unsuspecting bovine” hoisted up by an “iron grip,” and ushered through an assembly line of “ever-new workers who eviscerate and skin it, etc., but always (in the rhythm of work) tied to the machine that pulls the animal past them.” Weber “teetered about” in the “atmosphere of steam, muck, blood, and hides . . . trying to keep from being buried in the filth.”32 Weber used the image of dissection to explain “the whole tremendous city,” which he likened to a “human being with its skin peeled off and whose intestines are seen at work.”33 One example of such graphic exposure, observed Weber, was a side street where “prostitutes are placed in a show window with electric light and prices on display.”34 In The Jungle, Ona’s cousin Marija became a prostitute to support the family and shared with Jurgis in great detail the sad plight of many other immigrant women who were forced into the profession. Weber wrote of the avaricious streetcar company, which calculated that it was cheaper to pay for deaths and injuries (which occurred at a rate of about 400 each year) than to make the necessary improvements to prevent such accidents.35 Likewise, in The Jungle the policies of a “greedy street-car corporation,” resulted in Ona being refused a transfer ticket (which she was owed), and being forced to walk to work, without a coat, in the pouring rain.36 One of Upton Sinclair’s most important contacts in Chicago was Adolph Smith, a British medical writer whom he met through Jane Addams, the renowned settlement worker and founder of Hull House. Smith, though equally alarmed by what he saw in Chicago, differed from Sinclair in that he did not see socialism as the answer to the atrocities of the meatpacking industry. Instead, he put forth, as an alternative model, the more humane, healthful, and hygienic slaughterhouse practices of Europe. In fact, as Smith saw it, Chicago did not actually have slaughterhouses. Rather, it had large, unclean, and unsafe factories in which the wholesale and dangerous slaughter of animals took place. The main difference highlighted by Smith was that in America, unlike in Europe, animals were treated like any other industrial raw material; and the

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slaughtering process was approached according to the “principles of modern industrialism.” That is, “the sole object seems to be to convert each animal into [a] saleable product in the quickest and cheapest manner possible.”37 Smith’s assessment parallels the comparison Weber would make in his St. Louis lecture between American and European agricultural practices more generally. Weber, as we will see, also identified the United States as unique in that farming was nearly always understood as a business. While in Chicago, the Webers did not meet Upton Sinclair or Adolph Smith, but they did meet Jane Addams, and were very impressed with her and her work. The settlement movement received an honorable mention in The Jungle (a kind settlement worker helped Jurgis get a job at one point in the story). However, Sinclair had a different outlook than did Jane Addams: he felt that what the situation really needed was a proletarian revolution. While the settlement workers were well meaning, he thought they only helped to soften and thus perpetuate a fundamentally flawed socioeconomic system. To cause real and lasting change, he believed that Addams and her colleagues should instead focus on converting settlement house residents to socialism. Despite his differing philosophy, Sinclair stayed at a settlement house run by Mary McDowell, connected with the University of Chicago, during his time in Chicago.38 The Webers, and Marianne in particular, had a more unequivocally positive view of the settlement workers. Indeed, for Marianne, Jane Addams, the “Angel of Chicago,” was a salutary source of redemption in this “monstrous, demonic modern city.”39 The Webers’ experience in Chicago, Marianne wrote, had “shaken” them “out of a state of reverie and somnolence.” With a warning voice it declared: “Look, this is what modern reality is like.”40 And yet, as Marianne saw it, there was hope. As she wrote in her husband’s biography: But the face of the monster which indifferently swallowed up everything individual stirred them not only with its magnificent wildness but also with its gentle features that bespoke a capacity for love as well as kindness, justice, and a tenacious desire for beauty and spirituality. On the billboards there was a poster proclaiming CHRIST IN CHICAGO. Was this brazen mockery? No, this eternal spirit dwells there, too – for example, in the work of a woman who has the courage of her convictions. In the dreary streets of a workingmen’s district Jane Adams [sic] created her famous “settlement.”41

On Sunday, September 11, 1904, two days after arriving in Chicago and only a few days after Marianne had visited a settlement house in Buffalo, the Webers met Jane Addams and were given a tour of Hull House.

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Marianne returned in the evening to attend a Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) meeting, where the discussion focused on the recent strike. Marianne was deeply impressed with “this gentle, refined woman,” and discovered in Jane Addams a kindred spirit, one who shared her interests in social reform and in the women’s movement. She found in the multiple services and in the spirit of Hull House “a place offering beauty, joy, intellectual uplift, physical training, and social service.”42 Here she was reaffirmed in all that she thought positive about the American character, where she was “impressed once again with the charming eloquence of American women. Like American men, they had a delightful way of expressing their views vividly and with warmth and humor.”43 Also represented in the settlement movement was an example of the sort of voluntary societies that Tocqueville saw as sustaining democracy and civil society and that Weber also viewed as critical to the American experience, but, as we will consider in the next chapter, in slightly different terms. Before following our German travelers to St. Louis, it is worth underscoring again the differences between how Max, on the one hand, and Marianne and Ernst Troeltsch, on the other, made sense of what they saw in America thus far. All three visitors found troubling some of the conditions of life in a modern industrialized society. As illustrated in Marianne’s positive portrayal of Jane Addams, however, both Marianne and Troeltsch saw religion continuing to play an important and redemptive role in addressing the ills of modernity. Weber, in contrast, envisioned a process of increasing secularization, whereby religion would play a much reduced role in society; he held a more “optimistic belief in progress.”44 These different perspectives represented a point of tension and disagreement, especially between Weber and Troeltsch. Hans Haupt remembered that, during their visit to North Tonawanda, Weber and Troeltsch “talked and argued all the time.” In letters to his wife, Troeltsch wrote of “some theoretical disagreements” with Weber and indicated that he was in greater sympathy with “Marianne’s religiously inspired criticism of the United States . . . than he was with her husband’s enthusiasm.” Like Marianne, he saw religion continuing to play an important role in society and did not accept Weber’s posture of “heroic skepticism.”45

agrarianism in comparative perspective From Chicago, Troeltsch and the Webers traveled to St. Louis, where Weber lectured on agricultural practices in the United States and Europe.

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Agrarianism was an important theme in Weber’s analysis of America and in his larger scholarly oeuvre more generally. Because of Weber’s renown as a sociologist of religion, economics, and politics, it is sometimes forgotten (or not even realized) that agriculture was a major interest throughout his career. Correcting this oversight, Joachim Radkau argues in his recent biography that “agriculture and religion” remained “the greatest elements of continuity in his life’s work.”46 Weber’s postdoctoral Habilitationsschrift was on agrarian history in Roman antiquity, and the project that first earned him recognition in Germany and eventually a post at the University of Freiburg was his work with the Verein für Sozialpolitik (a policy-oriented social science association) on the displacement of German peasants by Polish immigrant farmers in East Germany. Weber’s lecture in St. Louis drew heavily on his contribution to the so-called East Elbian Report. As was typical of Weber, in this earlier work, he conspicuously avoided monocausal explanations – often as thinly veiled refutations of Marxist materialistic determinism – to make sense of the changing social and economic landscape of the East Elbian region. Weber’s explanation, particularly as put forth in his important Freiburg lecture of 1895, was heavily influenced by nationalistic concerns and sometimes not very subtle prejudices against the Polish immigrant farmers. Nevertheless, contained in the analysis are important insights that informed his comparative discussion of U.S. agricultural practices and that align with observations made by Tocqueville and Beaumont when they were in North America. As part of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, in 1892 Weber began a study of the German peasants east of the Elbe River. Agricultural conditions in the region represented a clear contrast with the sort of farming that was taking place in the western region of the Rhine Valley, where at the time German peasants were thriving as independent farmers supplying goods to local urban centers. East Elbe in contrast was comprised mainly of large estates still under the loosening grasp of the politically influential Junker aristocracy. With the advancing development of modern capitalism and changing geopolitical considerations, the power of the Junker class was under threat. Weber observed that German peasants were leaving the region with aspirations for a better life in the cities or the New World. In their place, Junker lords were hiring immigrant Polish peasants to farm their estates. Once in Prussia, some of the Poles would then settle on less desirable land to establish their own small farms. Survey data, analyzed by Weber, revealed that between 1871 and 1885 the greatest growth in the region was among the

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Polish peasant farmers in small villages on the least fertile land (i.e., the uplands with lower quality soil).47 What caused these demographic changes? The Junker lords, in order to keep up with the developing capitalist economy, were transforming themselves from landholding aristocrats into “entrepreneurs working according to commercial principles,”48 an evolution that directly affected the lives of the German peasants working on their estates. In the previous arrangement, one class of workers (Instleute), though under the dominion of a patriarchal system, also had a certain level of independence, ownership, and a stake in the estate’s success. The Instmann functioned as a smallholder, lived with his family in a cottage, raised some of his own livestock on the estate’s pasture land, and directly benefited from the threshing produced on the estate. As the landed aristocrat became a commercial entrepreneur, the peasant became a proletarian worker, who had only his labor to sell for a wage. He lost his more communally oriented benefits, his shared interest in the estate. That is, he was no longer an integrated and invested member of the estate community, what Weber tellingly referred to as a Gemeinschaft.49 The drive to leave, then, according to Weber, stemmed from a psychological impetus to seek (and also in some senses to recover) “the magic of freedom.”50 Protestant Germans with longings for more freedom and aspirations to pursue a higher cultured life therefore departed the region, while Catholic Polish peasants were content to live in small villages and farm land viewed by others as undesirable. As a consequence, Poles were overtaking the region, thus causing a potentially unstable geopolitical situation for Germany. To explain the success of the Poles in the region, Weber offered a somewhat counterintuitive explanation: Why is it the Polish peasants who are gaining ground? Is it because of their superior economic intelligence or capital? It is rather the opposite of both of these things. Under a climate, and on a soil, which essentially permit the production of cereals and potatoes, alongside extensive cattle-raising, the person who is least threatened by an unfavorable market is the one who takes his products to the place where they are least devalued by a collapse in prices – his own stomach; in other words the person producing his own needs.51

Weber denigrated and complimented the Polish farmers at the same time. He conceded that they were the successful and independent farmers in the region, but for the reason that they were from a lower cultural stock. As a lower culture, they did not aspire to a higher life and were content with little. “The small Polish peasant gains more land

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because he is prepared even to eat grass, as it were – in other words not despite but rather because of his habitually low physical and intellectual standard of living.”52 We see here, then, a foreshadowing of themes Weber would develop a decade later in his famous Protestant ethic thesis. In the Freiburg address he did not play up religious factors, though at times he spoke of the “Catholics” and the “Protestants” in the region, referring to the Polish immigrants and German peasants respectively. In the Protestant Ethic, of course, he traced the theological roots of distinctive mentalities toward work and acquisitiveness; he noted, for instance, a critical difference between how the Puritan Richard Baxter and the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas interpreted St. Paul’s admonition in 2 Thessalonians, “He who will not work shall not eat.” According to Weber, Baxter interpreted this passage to mean that an unwillingness to work signifies a “lack of grace”; for Thomas Aquinas, in reference to the same passage, labor is seen as necessary only “for the maintenance of individual and community.”53 Weber identified the Puritan notion of wanting to prove one’s elect status (i.e., demonstrating God’s particular grace) as the religious impetus for a unique work ethic – an ethic with a stronger affinity to acquisitiveness than was found among those who saw work primarily as the means of providing for oneself and one’s community. By the time he wrote the Protestant Ethic, then, the religious differences between these two groups had assumed a more central place in his thinking. In fact, at the very beginning of the Protestant Ethic, in setting out his essential thesis, he makes direct reference to the German and Polish peasants in East Germany to illustrate the more prominent place of Protestants, in contrast to Catholics, in emerging capitalistic enterprises. At the time of the Freiburg lecture, however, Weber was more concerned about the political implications of developments in West Prussia than with the religious roots of modern capitalism; and thus recommended both a closing of the border to Polish immigrants and an effort by the state to internally colonize East Elbe with German farmers, in order to preserve the “Germanness” of the region. While these nationalistic concerns were most significant to Weber at the time, there is also evidence that he held a sort of mystical understanding of the importance of attachment to the land. In his work on agriculture in antiquity, for example, he invoked the image of the Greek god Antaeus to illustrate the strength and sustenance one gains from closeness to the soil.54

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One of the reasons Weber advocated internal colonization was the belief that, if given their own land, the German peasants would develop a sense of ownership and attachment to the land, and would thus be more patriotic Germans. As he wrote in the East Elbian report: “We want to fetter them to the soil of their fatherland, not with legal, but rather with psychological chains. We wish . . . to make use of their hunger for land to bind them to their homeland, even if we have to hammer a generation into the land to secure its future.”55 Again, his nationalistic predilections were primary, yet he recognized a natural inclination toward attachment to the land, and advocated giving German farmers small- and medium-sized plots of land in order to achieve this freedom and the strength and security to be gained from it. The religious themes became more detectable in the 1904 St. Louis lecture. Here Weber noted more explicitly the manner in which both Catholicism and Lutheranism, in contrast to Calvinism, resisted capitalistic tendencies in agriculture. Weber observed that both the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church “support the peasant, with his conservative conduct of life, against the dominion of urban rationalistic culture.” These churches favored the “personal human character” represented in the previous socioeconomic arrangement and were less pleased with “the purely commercial relations which capitalism creates.” From the perspective of these ecclesiastical bodies, said Weber, the formerly more personal and organic working relationship between lord and serf could more easily be “developed and penetrated ethically.”56 Non Calvinistic forms of Christianity, then, along with such factors as a more limited supply of land, resistance from an educational class (Bildungaristokratie) that opposed capitalism, and the vestigial influences of a feudalistic socioeconomic system, then, were factors in Germany that represented obstacles to the development of more industrial forms of agriculture. According to Weber, American farmers, in contrast, did not have these forces with which to contend and were thus less resistant to the influence of a capitalistic orientation. In fact, as he saw it, in America the market preceded the farmer. The American farmer “produces for the market – the market is older than the producer here,” whereas in Europe the market “is younger than the producer.”57 In other words, according to Weber, farming in America was understood primarily and predominantly as a business. In the St. Louis lecture Weber allowed that, historically, among some communities in America, approaches to the land were not exclusively commercial enterprises. However, by the time of Weber’s visit, these cases

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were no longer present. “The old New England town, the Mexican village, and the old slave plantation do not determine any longer the physiognomy of the country. And the peculiar conditions of the first settlements in the primeval forests and on the prairies have disappeared.” Thus, in the United States, there no longer existed “what might be called ‘rural society.’”58 That is, agrarianism in America could not be understood as something distinctively rural. Rather, modern capitalism had become so influential and widespread that the only question to be asked of rural society was “whether and how the no longer existing rural community or society can arise anew so as to be strong and enduring.”59 In the United States one could only speak of the rural condition as “the absolute individualism of the farmers’ economics, the quality of the farmer as a mere business man.”60 The purpose of Weber’s long discussion about Germany in the St. Louis lecture was to underscore the historical and regional uniqueness of the American orientation. The “European peasant of the old type,” said Weber, “did not produce to gain profit, like a business man, for the past two thousand years had not trained him to this.”61 Indeed, the two orientations asked very different questions of the land. “The old economic constitution asked: How can I give, on this given soil, work and sustenance to the greatest possible number of men? Capitalism asks: How can I produce as many crops as possible for the market from this given soil with as few men as possible.”62 Weber’s sources for understanding the American farmer, as such, are not entirely clear, as he had not, by the time of the St. Louis lecture, spent very much time among America’s farming communities; though he had seen firsthand the industrial orientation of the factory-styled slaughterhouses in Chicago. He also would have read Max Sering’s 1887 book on agrarian competition in the United States and Hugo Münsterberg’s discussion of the American pioneer in his 1904 book, The Americans. Münsterberg, like Tocqueville before him, noted the Americans’ “reckless treatment of nature.” American “farmers tilled only the best soil,” wrote Münsterberg, “and nature was dismantled and depleted in a way which a European, who is accustomed to precaution, finds positively sinful.” In America, the cautionary words of more “thoughtful minds” were resisted as the reckless masses “so far as nature is in question, think very little of their children’s children, but are greedy for instant profits.”63 Weber’s reflections would echo some of these themes, particularly as it concerned differences between European and American orientations toward the land. Still, his firsthand knowledge of American farmers was limited, which is one reason why, after the St. Louis address, he ventured

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into Indian Territory on his own.64 As his wife Marianne wrote, when Weber was preparing to leave St. Louis, “he wants to inquire into the farmers’ living conditions.”65 As it concerns what Weber presented at the Congress in St. Louis, the American who chaired the session, Aaron Jones, would have been in full agreement with Weber’s assessment of the American farmer. Jones was from South Bend, Indiana, and was at the time the Master of the National Grange, an important and long-standing national advocacy organization for American farmers. Three years earlier, Jones, in an address before the Illinois Farmers’ Institute, forcefully argued that the farmer-as-businessman image was the proper way to understand the calling of the farmer. There is a feeling that some other callings are more honorable than that of farming. The farmer should be a business man, capable and well trained. A man must have some means if he would succeed and have the respect of his fellow men, and he should make money as men do in other callings, and he can only do this by being a good business man. If you have a dull boy make a lawyer, a merchant, or even a manufacturer [of him] rather than a farmer. It is not a question, how much can a man produce on his farm, but how [to] convert it into the most money?66

Weber’s observations also line up with some of what Tocqueville and Beaumont observed in North America, particularly as they contrasted the Catholic French Canadian farmers with the mostly Protestant farmers in the United States. Recall Beaumont’s comparison between American farmers and the French Canadian peasants. The French peasant “dances joyously in the village square,” whereas the American farmer, who knows “nothing of this happy poverty . . . regards the soil as the material of industry and lives in his cottage as in a factory.”67 Like the Polish peasants in eastern Germany, the French Canadians were semi-independent, content, and Catholic. As Beaumont described them, It is impossible to imagine a population happier than the rural population of Canada . . . There is uniformity of religion: everyone is Catholic. Traces of feudalism remain: the land is divided into seigneuries, or estates, and each tenant is required to pay dues to the lord. The dues are minimal: for example, 5 or 6 francs for 90 acres. The lord has a special pew in the church. Apart from that, he is “lord” in name only and enjoys no privilege of any kind.68

Tocqueville also saw the French Canadian peasants in terms similar to those offered by Weber of the Polish farmers in East Elbe. Unlike Weber, however, Tocqueville gave more attention to the place of religion among the French Canadians.

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The religion [is] enlightened, and Catholicism here neither arouses hatred nor draws sarcastic comments from Protestants. I confess that I find it more satisfying than I find the Protestantism of the United States. Here, the priest is truly the pastor of the flock and not an entrepreneur in the religious industry, like most American ministers.69

It was, after all, a Protestant interlocutor who told the French commissioners that “the French Canadian is tenderly attached to the land which saw his birth, to his church town and to his family.”70 Also like the Polish farmer, the French Canadian was content with less fertile land and lacked the acquisitive spirit to pursue a more lucrative life elsewhere. At one point Tocqueville even asked a French Canadian farmer “why Canadians were content with small fields when fertile but uncultivated land was to be found not twenty leagues away.” The response, noted Tocqueville, came with a “certain bite,” as the peasant replied: “Why do you love your wife when your neighbor’s wife has much more beautiful eyes?”71

nature and the american frontier Like Tocqueville, Weber was fascinated by the idea of the American frontier; both visitors made reference to the romanticism of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels. Both also marveled at the beauty of Niagara Falls. In reflecting on the “green island between the two great falls,” Weber noted that “the countless quiet spots in thick greenery give one a very special feeling of the profound calm before the storm.” Marianne likewise wrote of “that incredible waterfall – not just a lovely colorfully shimmering spray in a romantic rocky gorge, but something like a captured ocean that frees itself from confinement by a mad leap into the abyss.” When the Webers visited Niagara Falls in early September 1904, Tocqueville’s prediction that the falls “will soon have been spoiled” by human hands had been realized. Nevertheless, Weber maintained that the fall’s “natural beauty is wonderful despite all the shameful disfigurement.”72 Following the St. Louis address, Weber declined an invitation to meet President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, along with other international presenters at the Congress, preferring instead to venture into Indian Territory, the same region where the band of Choctaw Indians, encountered by Tocqueville during the cold winter of 1831, were in the process of being relocated. Weber, like Tocqueville, was intrigued by the contest between primitive nature and the conquering forces of modern “civilization,”73 which was another reason he chose to skip the meeting

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with Roosevelt. As Marianne Weber explained in her biography, there were for Weber other things of “burning interest,” including his desire to see firsthand “the conquest of the wilderness by civilization.”74 The best source of Weber’s thinking on this subject comes from two letters he wrote to his mother, which gave accounts of his time in Guthrie and Muskogee, Oklahoma (then still Indian Territory), where he traveled by train immediately following the St. Louis event. He journeyed alone for the first time in the United States, as Marianne elected to stay in St. Louis. Like Tocqueville, Weber was struck by the curious juxtaposition of modern capitalism and the untouched wilderness and, also like Tocqueville, described nature in romantic and sublime language. Nowhere else does old Indian romanticism blend with the most modern capitalistic culture as it does here. The newly built railroad from Tulsa to Mac Alester [McAlester] first runs along the Canadian [Arkansas] River through veritable virgin forest for an hour, although one must not imagine it as the “Silence in the Forest” with huge tree trunks. Impenetrable thicket – so dense that except for a few vistas one does not even notice that one is only a few meters from the Canadian [Arkansas] River; dark trees – for the climate is already southerly (snow is rare) – overgrown with climbing plants right up to the top; in between yellow, quiet forest brooks and little rivers completely covered with greenery. The larger streams, like the Canadian [Arkansas] River, have the most Leatherstocking romanticism. They are in an utterly wild state, with enormous sandbanks and thick, dark greenery on their banks. Their waters roll along in bends and branches, giving the peculiar impression of something mysterious: one does not know whence they come and whither they go. With the exception of a single Indian fishing boat that I saw the streams were empty.75

Weber’s observations here sound very much like Tocqueville’s reveries offered after his time on Frenchman’s Island and his journey between Detroit and Saginaw in the Michigan Territory. Recall Tocqueville’s expectation that his foray into the wilderness would reveal incremental stations or gradations along the road from the primitive to the civilized. Instead he found a notable indifference to nature among the settlers and a surprising juxtaposition of the modern standing “virtually face to face with untouched nature.”76 Weber’s account offers only a slightly more gradual transition from the “virgin forest” to the capitalistic city. In the main, his representation is quite similar to Tocqueville’s, in that the conquest of capitalism over nature is depicted as a forceful and jarring invasion. Immediately following the reflections cited earlier, Weber wrote: But the virgin forest’s hour has struck even here. In the forest one does occasionally see groups of genuine old log cabins – the Indian ones are recognizable by the

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colorful shawls and the laundry hanging out to dry – but one also sees quite modern wooden houses from the factory, 500 dollars and up, put up on stones; next to these there is a large clearing on which corn and cotton have been planted. The trees were covered with tar at the bottom and ignited. Now they are dying and stretching their pale, smokey fingers upward in a confused tangle; next to the fresh seeds among them this looks strange and by no means attractive. Then there are large stretches of prairie – partly willows, partly cotton again and corn fields.77

One wonders, however, what Weber would have found had he entered one of the “genuine old cabins,” instead of only viewing them from the passing train. It was actually inside the log cabins of the frontier that Tocqueville discovered a pioneer who was no different from the man in the city. “There is nothing rustic about him,” wrote Tocqueville, “nothing naïve, nothing that smacks of the wilderness, nothing even that resembles one of our villages.” This is not what Tocqueville expected to find. “You come upon a cabin made of split logs . . . and you think that you’ve finally stumbled upon the home of an American peasant. Wrong.” Instead, he found that “the owner of the place wears the same clothes you do, speaks the language of the town, and has piled his rough-hewn table with heaps of books and newspapers.”78 Nevertheless, what Weber observed on the train from Guthrie to Muskogee was certainly a transitional phase of sorts, even if only a temporary and short-lived one. Alas, just a short step from the cornfields and the $500 houses was the rapidly industrializing town. And suddenly one begins to smell petroleum; one sees the high, Eiffel Tower–like structures of the drill holes in the middle of the forest and comes to a “town.” Such a town is really a crazy thing: the camps of the workers, especially section hands working for the numerous railroads under construction; streets in a primitive state, usually doused with petroleum twice each summer to prevent dust, and smelling accordingly . . . In addition, the usual tangle of telegraph and telephone wires, and electrical railways under construction – for the “town” extends into unbounded distance.79

Of the bustling town of Muskogee – and of the triumph of industrial capitalism more generally – one discovers in Weber a slightly more sanguine attitude than was displayed in Tocqueville’s take on the march of civilized man over nature. Both Weber and Tocqueville, however, depicted a contest that had an inevitable outcome. Of Muskogee, Weber wrote to Helene: “Too bad; in a year this place will look like Oklahoma (City), that is, like any other American city. With almost lightning speed everything that stands in the way of capitalistic culture is being crushed.”80 While there is something of a lament in this statement, Weber was also quite taken by the energy and commotion of the industrializing

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town, which had tripled in size in the four years preceding his visit. “There is a fabulous bustle here, and I cannot help but find tremendous fascination in it, despite the stench of petroleum and the fumes, the spitting ‘Yankees’ and the racket of the numerous trains.”81 Not surprising, given Weber’s analysis of capitalism in the Protestant Ethic and elsewhere, he conveyed in these letters to his mother a sort of ambivalence toward modernity; that is, he depicted it as a double-edged sword. Despite the stench and the spitting Yankees, he could not “deny that in general,” he found “the people pleasant,” though, like Tocqueville, he encountered “interviewers who wished to hear about the greatness of their country.” He marveled at the informality and the “free-and-easy atmosphere,” even while he entertained “crazy” questions from naïve Americans, such as, “How do you cope with the Negroes in Germany?” which “was not even the craziest question.” Among the inhabitants of Muskogee, he had not been “so merry since” his “first semesters at university”; he described the “humor” of the people as “nothing short of delicious” and the town as “a more civilized place than Chicago.” Along with the jolliness, however, there was also a sense of loss and an expectation that capitalism would ultimately create a place of disenchanting uniformity. In a year, Weber reiterated, the “marvelously attractive – that is, not esthetically attractive” town “will already have assumed the character of Oklahoma City, that is, that of any other western city.”82 Another event worth noting occurred during Weber’s time in Indian Territory, particularly since it corresponds with information Tocqueville received during his travels in the South. After leaving St. Louis, Weber had originally planned to stay a week in Guthrie before traveling to Muskogee. In Guthrie he was scheduled to meet with a newspaper editor named Frank Greer. Upon arrival, however, he learned that just two days earlier Greer had met with a competing journalist, John Golobie, ostensibly for a friendly drink. Greer’s real reason for initiating the meeting, however, was to obtain from his competitor a retraction of unfavorable comments made about Greer in Golobie’s paper, the Oklahoma State Register. To secure compliance with his request, Greer pulled a gun on Golobie. Learning of the incident, which was in the local papers on the day of his arrival, Weber decided that he no longer wanted to meet with Greer and hastily departed Guthrie, taking the first train to Muskogee. As he wrote to his mother, “I left quickly especially since the editor to whom I was recommended had tried to shoot and kill his competitor . . . That went a little too far for me.”83

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While journeying through the South, Tocqueville learned of similar behavior.84 He traveled for two days with a lawyer from Alabama, whom he found to have “much practical good sense” and whose accounts he had “corroborated by several pieces of subsequent information.” According to the lawyer, in Alabama “there is no one here but carries arms under his clothes. At the slightest quarrel, knife or pistol comes to hand. These things happen continually.” The lawyer noted further that juries typically acquitted parties arrested for participating in duels. To prove that he himself had been involved in such altercations, he revealed to Tocqueville and Beaumont several scars on his head. “But you went to the law?” asked Tocqueville. “My God. No,” he replied. “I tried to give as good in return.”85 Dueling, as such, was not as common when Weber visited the South. In any respect, Weber likely found amusing the reaction to his absconding in this instance, because his hasty departure itself became a news item. Two days after he left Guthrie, the Daily Oklahoman reported that “Prof. Von Webber of Heidelberg university, Germany” after he “had been in his room about an hour . . . hurriedly came down stairs and ordered his baggage removed . . . for transportation to Muskogee.” Evidently, Weber had read about the incident in the local paper and reportedly explained to the proprietors of the Hotel Royal in Guthrie, “I cannot see how a man who carries a gun can be a ‘shentlemans’ and, therefore, I will not meet him, but will go at once to Muskogee.”86 The international wire service picked up the story, which was then grossly embellished in the Berlin press. In an account read and clipped by Weber’s mother back in Germany, Weber was reported to have actually witnessed a duel: “Immediately both editors began to shoot wildly at each other in order to resolve their differences. Professor von Weber was stunned at first, but after he had recovered from his initial surprise, he had his baggage rounded up, went to the station and travelled back to civilization on the first train.”87 Twenty-seven years after Weber’s indirect encounter with gun violence, our third visitor, G. K. Chesterton, while lecturing in Portland, Oregon, missed by only a few minutes a hold-up and killing just outside his hotel, evidently associated with bootlegging activity of the Prohibition era. Of course, the much debated prevalence and use of guns in American society remains an issue of pressing concern to the present day.

the color line Another topic of significant interest to Weber during his time in Indian Territory and in the American South was the plight of Native and African

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Americans, the same two racial groups that captured the sympathetic attention of Beaumont and Tocqueville. Regarding Native Americans, recall Tocqueville’s prediction that once the Indians were relocated, as part of the Jacksonian removal policy, “the whites will hardly leave them in peace for ten years.”88 It would turn out to be longer than a decade; nevertheless, what Tocqueville presciently anticipated was ultimately realized and Weber was there to witness it. The “obvious source” of what Weber observed, as political scientist Lawrence Scaff notes, “was the terrible history of persecution, displacement, and land expropriation in the Jacksonian era, observed by Tocqueville.”89 An important actor in this unfolding drama was Robert Latham Owen, a member of the Cherokee tribe, a former Indian agent, and eventually one of Oklahoma’s first senators. Weber met Owen in Muskogee, and learned a great deal from his “host and friend.”90 In fact, he tried (unsuccessfully, it would turn out) to persuade Owen to write in opposition to Federal Indian policy in a contribution to his Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, the journal that he edited with Werner Sombart and Edgar Jaffe. At the time of Weber’s visit, the eastern half of Oklahoma remained occupied by the five civilized tribes – the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians. As Weber described the development: “Until 1889 the entire old Indian Territory belonged to the Indians, who were dealt with like a foreign power. Then the Creeks and the Cherokees sold half of it to the United States for $15 million: the present Oklahoma Territory.” According to Weber, Owen “was still indignant over the low price and the stupidity of it.” Tribal members were given $500 each for their share of the purchase, which they “quickly squandered.”91 Leaders of these tribes, however, were hopeful that what remained of Indian Territory could be admitted to the Union as the Indian populated and governed state of “Sequoyah.” At the time of Weber’s visit, Owen and others were still hoping for this outcome. President Roosevelt, who visited the territory six months later, would eventually reject the request, not wanting to add two new western states to the Union. The Oklahoma and Indian Territories were eventually admitted to the Union in 1907 as the single state of Oklahoma, thus putting a final end to the existence of Indian Territory in the United States. Forced against their interests into an individualized form of land ownership, these changes also ended what Weber referred to as the Indian practice of “agrarian communism.” The Indians had made clear their opposition to this policy. According to Weber, they had “expressed the most

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passionate opposition when the old rules concerning communal land were abolished (which actually assisted them as owners of large herds who needed pastures).” Weber noted that the full-blooded Indians “scorn every occupation except cattle raising, hunting, fishing.” Instead, Indians were given individual allotments; “private ownership [was] forced on the Indians.”92 Weber witnessed in Indian Territory a confluence of variables that were not entirely foreign to him. In East Elbe he had also observed a region challenged by advancing capitalism, composed of multiple status and ethnic groups, with varying attitudes toward the land. In the American case, the government played a determinative role and Weber met the important federal agents working in the region, including J. George Wright (U.S. Indian inspector), Tams Bixby (chair of the Indian Commission), and J. Blair Shoenfelt (Indian agent). Interestingly, here too, the internal colonization of German farmers was a factor, as the collective policy efforts of the federal agents included incentives “to attract German farmers from Iowa and Wisconsin” to settle in the region.93 Again, representatives of the five civilized tribes, including Robert Latham Owen, found the government’s efforts paternalistic, ill-conceived, and in opposition to the self-governing interests of the local tribes. While in Indian Territory, Weber witnessed firsthand both a land auction and the distribution of money to members of the Creek tribe. As he wrote to his mother, “A land auction of Creek land will take place tomorrow and I will be present. Five thousand Creeks are coming – they will camp here in tents and receive the payment which will be split amongst them.”94 Weber thus observed the final chapter of a process that began at the time of Tocqueville’s visit. The Muskogee Daily Phoenix reported that the payments Weber had witnessed “dated from the 1830s and were based on losses incurred by the Creeks in the forced resettlement.”95 Weber’s second letter from Indian Territory thus fittingly concluded, “But enough of this trip ‘to the old, romantic land.’ The next time I come here, the last remnant of ‘romanticism’ will be gone.”96 If Robert Owen was Weber’s most important informant concerning Native Americans, W.E.B. Du Bois was his most significant interlocutor with respect to African Americans. Weber and Du Bois met for breakfast while Weber was in St. Louis; it is also likely that Du Bois attended Weber’s lecture. St. Louis was not Du Bois’s first encounter with Weber, as he evidently attended one or more of Weber’s lectures when he was a student in Berlin from 1892 to 1894. Du Bois had joined the Verein für Sozialpolitik when he was in Germany, the same organization that

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commissioned Weber’s East Elbian research. Weber was quite taken by Du Bois and corresponded with him during his trip in America and after his return to Germany. He had hoped to visit Du Bois in Atlanta, but for several reasons (including, apparently, Marianne’s difficulties with the climate of the South) this meeting did not take place. It appears that between 1904 and 1905 a total of nine letters were exchanged between Weber and Du Bois. Writing from New York at the end of their journey, Weber invited Du Bois to contribute an article to the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. Du Bois accepted this invitation and his article, Die Negerfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten (The Negro Question in the United States), was published in 1906. Weber also read and found fascinating Du Bois’s 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, which he referred to as that “splendid work.”97 After returning to Germany, Weber made efforts to have the book translated into German and suggested having Else Jaffe (the wife of Weber’s coeditor and colleague and also the woman with whom he would have a romantic liaison near the end of his life) undertake this task. Though initial steps were taken toward this end, a final German translation of the work never came to fruition. In fact, it would not be until 2003 (exactly one century after the book was first published in English) that The Souls of Black Folk was published in German. The correspondence between the two scholars also reveals that Weber saw Du Bois addressing the most important issue of the time, both in America and in the world. Borrowing a phrase from Du Bois, Weber wrote that he was “absolutely convinced that the ‘color line’ problem will be the paramount problem of the time to come, here and everywhere in the world.”98 Likely at Du Bois’s recommendation, the Webers visited Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute as they traveled through Alabama. This was their first stop after leaving New Orleans, a city they did not much care for. They were unimpressed with the “paralyzing tropical heat . . . dusty vegetation,” and “deadly depression over everything” that they found in New Orleans. On their departure from the city, Marianne wrote, “We were glad to have that accursed hole behind us after two and half days.”99 What they found in Tuskegee, in contrast, according to Marianne, “moved them more than anything else on the trip.” Here, “the great national problem of all American life, the showdown between the white race and the former slaves, could be grasped at its roots.”100 Booker T. Washington was not present when they visited Tuskegee, but his wife, Margaret Washington, as reported by Marianne, graciously

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received them, lunched with them, and introduced them to personnel at the Tuskegee Institute. Weber wrote to Booker T. Washington from New York a few weeks later: “My wife and myself were so deeply impressed by all we saw and learned there, that we hope to be in a position to come again before leaving the country.” Weber would not return during the 1904 journey but promised to visit again in two or three years. At the end of the letter, Weber added that he was “sorry to say” that “only at Tuskegee I found enthusiasm in the South at all.”101 He repeated this observation in a letter cited in Marianne’s biography, in which he noted with disapproval the sentiments among Southern whites that “‘social equality’ and ‘social intercourse’ are impossible – even, or particularly, with the educated and often nine-tenths white Negro upper class.” As a consequence, according to Weber, “the whites are bleeding to death because of this separation intended as ‘racial protection,’ and the only enthusiasm in the south may be found among that Negro upper class; among the whites there is only aimless, impotent hatred of the Yankees.”102 Marianne was even harsher in her criticism of white prejudices, particularly when these were defended with religious justifications. Among the staff they met at Tuskegee was the dean of women, Jane E. Clark. Impressed with Clark, Marianne wrote with notable indignation: But a social community will never come about between her [Clark] and the whites. She will be counted among the most despised race; she may never hope to have her education and sensibility recognized as equally valuable as theirs. A drop of Negro blood in her veins excludes her forever from any legitimate living in common with a white man. In fact, any white person who was unprejudiced enough to interact socially with these people would be boycotted by his own race. And one calls that Christianity and recognition of ‘human rights’! I find the entire relations of the whites in the South and these highly educated people of mixed race simply outrageous.103

There are several parallels between the Webers and Beaumont and Tocqueville as it concerns their respective interpretations of racial attitudes in the United States. Like the Webers, Beaumont was particularly astonished at the prejudicial attitudes toward mulattos or blacks with only “a drop of Negro blood.” Indeed, the protagonist in his novel, Marie, looked white, yet her life was disrupted and destroyed when it was discovered that she had “Negro” blood. One finds another commonality between Weber and Tocqueville in that both visitors, after returning to their respective countries, offered forceful refutations of racial theories that endorsed the superiority of whites and the biological (or anthropological) determinacy of

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differences between races. Both Tocqueville and Weber, in fact, argued against theorists who would eventually influence Nazi ideology. In Tocqueville’s case, he was personally acquainted with Arthur de Gobineau, author of Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, and was sent a copy of the book in 1855. He was unequivocally hostile to Gobineau’s arguments. He wrote to Beaumont at the time, “Gobineau has just sent me a big book written by him intended to provide that all the events occurring in the world are explained by the difference of races, a theory more appropriate to a horse dealer than a statesman. I do not believe anything of it at all.”104 He made these views clear to Gobineau himself, to whom he wrote directly, “You know that I cannot reconcile myself to your system in any way and that my ideas are so obstinate in this regard that the very reasons with which you are trying to make them acceptable to me deepen my opposition.”105 Like Marianne Weber, he was particularly bothered by efforts to defend Gobineau’s views in reference to Christianity. To Gobineau he wrote in 1857, “I know that at this very moment, there are in the south of the United States Christian priests who preach from their pulpit doctrines which are undoubtedly analogous to yours.” However, Tocqueville continued, “in this world the majority of Christians cannot have the least sympathy for your doctrines.” Moreover, as Tocqueville saw it, Christianity simply could not reasonably be offered as a support for Gobineau’s racist views. “Plainly Christianity seeks to make all men brothers and equals.”106 With similar resolve, Weber challenged the theories of Alfred Ploetz – whose work was directly drawn upon by Hitler – and specifically held up W.E.B. Du Bois to refute Ploetz’s views. In 1910, at the first meeting of the German Sociological Society in Frankfurt, Ploetz presented a paper, “The Concept of Race in Society.” In the discussion that followed, Ploetz and Weber had a spirited exchange about the status of Negroes in the United States. Ploetz, who also lived for a time in the United States, offered the following explanation for the social distance between whites and blacks in the United States: “The Yankee hesitates to have social relationships with Negroes because he feels himself compromised by uninhibited morals, the more defective intelligence, and the more foolish behavior on the average of the Negro.” He added that blacks were justifiably excluded from white universities and other institutions in the United States because of their “intellectual and moral inferiority.” Weber strenuously objected: Nothing of the kind is proven. I wish to state that the most important sociological scholar anywhere in the Southern States in America, with whom no white

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scholar can compare, is a Negro – Burckhardt Du Bois. At the congress of scholars in St. Louis we were permitted to have breakfast with him. If a gentleman from the Southern States had been there it would have been a scandal. The southerner would naturally have found him to be intellectually and morally inferior. We found that the southerner like other gentlemen would have deceived himself.107

In Economy and Society, Weber further articulated his view that antipathy between races had nothing do to with anthropological differences, but rather was culturally and historically determined. In the United States, “abhorrence on the part of the Whites is socially determined,” Weber wrote, by the “tendency toward the monopolization of social power and honor, a tendency which in this case happens to be linked to race.” Like Tocqueville, Weber saw differences between the manner in which whites treated Native Americans and African Americans. Weber observed that in the “United States the smallest admixture of Negro blood disqualifies a person unconditionally, whereas very considerable admixtures of Indian blood do not.” Significantly, “Negroes were slaves and hence disqualified in the status hierarchy.” Thus, “differences due to socialization and upbringing,” not “anthropological differences,” explained perceptions and attitudes between these races. 108 As was the case in developments in Indian Territory, what Weber found in the South was not entirely new to him; that is, there were interesting commonalities between the plight of African Americans in the post–Civil War South and the conditions of peasant farmers analyzed in his East Elbian research. Du Bois’s contribution to Weber’s journal, in fact, was a very similar sort of analysis as Weber’s 1890s research. The “free” black sharecroppers working the land of the old Southern plantations were not altogether unlike the “free” German peasants working for a wage on the capitalizing estates of the Junker aristocrats turned industrial entrepreneurs. In both cases, as Nahum Chandler observes, the two scholars were attempting to make sense of “the status of a historically subordinated labor force.”109 We also see an evolution in Weber’s thinking about race. No longer was he articulating what seemed like anthropologically determined interpretations of racial qualities, that is the “lower cultural stock” of the Polish peasants. Instead, during his St. Louis address, he made clear that “it is not natural differences . . . in the economic talent of the races, but the historically established economic milieu that is the determining factor in the difference in the results of peasant agriculture.”110 As evinced in his strong opposition to Ploetz, what he saw in the American South and what

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he learned from W.E.B. Du Bois only reinforced this adjusted view. We have also seen that among the cultural determinants of ethnic difference that became important to Weber was religion, an area of research the nascent indications of which were evident in his St. Louis address and would continue to inform much of his scholarship in the years following his American journey.

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4 Weber on Sects, Schools, and the Spirit of Capitalism

After departing from Tuskegee, the Webers ventured north to visit relatives in Knoxville, Tennessee and Mt. Airy, North Carolina. Helene Weber was particularly keen to hear news of the so-called colonial children, that is, the grandchildren from her father’s first marriage. Helene’s father, Georg Frederick Fallenstein, and his first wife, Elizabeth Benecke, had six children, several of whom, when they came of age, moved to the New World. Among these was Fritz Fallenstein (aka Francis Miller or “Uncle Fritz”), Helene’s half-brother, who “as an adolescent had left the despotic pressure of home and secretly escaped overseas.”1 Francis himself had six children – these were the relatives the Webers visited in Knoxville and Mt. Airy in the fall of 1904. Max and Marianne already knew Bill Miller, whom they had hosted along with his father for a visit to Freiberg in 1895. Of the Miller children, Max and Marianne first stayed with Bill and his family for several days in Knoxville in early October, after which they traveled (by way of Asheville, North Carolina and a brief tour of the Biltmore estate) to Mt. Airy, where they spent several more days with other members of the Miller (Fallenstein) clan, including Jim and Jeff Miller.2 Picking up on themes he first explored in Tonawanda, New York, Weber, while visiting his American stepcousins, collected more data on Protestant sects and their relationship to modern capitalism. Weber used several telling encounters from his time in the American West and South to illustrate the connections between membership in a Protestant sect and participation in the world of business, all of which he recounted in his 1906 essay, “Churches and Sects in North America.”3 The first of these was the story of a German nose specialist who had 93 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Texas Libraries, on 08 Dec 2019 at 09:55:42, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.005

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recently started a medical practice in Cincinnati. Upon receiving his first patient, the German doctor asked the man to explain “the nature of his complaint.” To the doctor’s “considerable astonishment, the very first statement of the man was the announcement: I am from the Second Baptist Church on X street.” The “bewildered doctor” struggled to understand the “causal connection” between the patient’s church membership and his “maladies of the nose.” Only later did he decipher the meaning of this statement, which was meant to assure the attending physician: “Don’t worry about the fee being paid!” Weber explained further, “Membership in a ‘reputable’ (in the American sense) church community guaranteed not only the social reputableness of the individual, but also, and above all, his reputableness in business.”4 The second story was of a traveling salesman whom Weber met on a train in Oklahoma. This older gentleman sold “iron letters for gravestones” or “undertakers’ hardware.” To this salesman, knowledge of a customer’s church membership represented valuable information. As he informed Weber, “Mister, as far as I am concerned anyone can believe what he chooses. But when I learn from a customer that he doesn’t attend church, then for me he is not good for fifty cents. Why pay me when he doesn’t believe in anything?” As with the patient in Cincinnati, then, church membership conveyed important information about the character of the customer and the promise that bills for services rendered would be dutifully paid. As Weber saw it, association with an ecclesiastical community was used to “guarantee the honorableness of the individual.”5 The third, and perhaps most interesting, of these events occurred during Weber’s time with his “colonial” relatives in North Carolina. With Jim and Jeff Miller, Weber attended an outdoor Baptist church baptism on a cold Sunday afternoon in October. Like his brother Bill, Jim was a practicing Methodist. In fact, in the morning of the same Sunday, Weber had attended a Methodist service with Jim and his family.6 Jeff, on the other hand, was not a member of a church, yet he attended the baptism with his visiting German cousin. Weber set the scene for the baptism: Approximately ten people of both sexes in their Sunday-best entered the icy water of a mountain stream one after another and after voluminous declarations of allegiance bent their knees, leaned back into the arms of a black-clothed reverend (who stood waist-deep in the water during the entire procedure) until their faces disappeared under the water, climbed out sneezing and shivering, were congratulated by the farmers who had come in large numbers by horse and wagon, and quickly made for home (which in some cases was hours away).7

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The Miller brothers, in different ways, helped Weber to interpret what he had witnessed. Jim, the practicing Methodist, assured Weber on behalf of the shivering newly baptized that “faith protects one from catching cold.”8 Jeff, on the other hand, offered what seems a more cynical interpretation. As Weber recounted, One of my cousins [Jeff] . . . who scorned the procedure by spitting irreverently (he abstained from joining a church as a sign of his German descent), showed a certain interest as an intelligent-looking young man submerged himself. “Oh see, Mr. X, I told you so!” Pressed to explain he responded at first only that Mr. X intended to open a bank in Mt. Airy and needed significant credit.9

Weber would learn later that it was also significant that Mr. X had been baptized into this particular Baptist congregation (likely Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, according to Lawrence Scaff), because its inquiries into a person’s “moral and business conduct” were “considered by far the strongest and most reliable.” Membership would benefit Mr. X’s new banking business not only as it concerned potential Baptist customers, but even more significantly with the “non-Baptist ones.”10 Weber confirmed, through further observations and discussions, that the creditworthiness afforded through particular church memberships was a widespread phenomenon. “Baptism secures to the individual the deposits of the whole region and unlimited credit without any competition.” In fact, once admitted to a sect, the member could travel to other regions of the country where his church affiliation served as a sort of letter of reference; consequently, the member “found credit everywhere.” As such, church membership was a necessary ticket to business success. “In general, only those men had success in business who belonged to Methodist or Baptist or other sects or sectlike conventicles.”11 Weber’s own cousins illustrated this point, as both Bill and Jim Miller, the practicing Methodists, were relatively successful in their respective vocations, whereas Jeff was a struggling and less accomplished farmer.12 Weber noted, in fact, that Jeff had “a profound aversion to ‘farming’,” and that he “usually remained depressed.” Jeff was, however, according to Weber, a proficient tobacco spitter. He noted Jeff’s ability to “spat well-aimed streams of brown sauce into the fire through and over the legs of those sitting in between.”13 Not only did church membership have societal significance in terms of one’s business life in this way, church activities themselves extended well beyond the church service. Foreshadowing the overtly social nature of church activity that Sayyid Qutb would observe more than forty years later, Weber noted that the church

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offered not only “instructional presentations, church suppers, Sunday school and all imaginable charitable institutions, but also the most diverse athletic activities, football practice and the like.” Time was allotted during church services for “announcements of these activities.”14

churches and sects For Weber, the sect represented an ideal typical ecclesiastical form that was distinct from a church, in that individuals were not born into sects. Rather, membership was voluntary and had to be agreed upon both by the individual member and by the congregation.15 The joining member had to be uniquely qualified and, as with the Baptist church in Mt. Airy, the inquest leading to acceptance could be probing and exhaustive. As Weber explained, “admission is preceded by an examen rigorosum which inquires about blemishes in [one’s] past conduct: frequenting an inn, sexual life, cardplaying, making debts, other levities, insincerity, etc.” If one passes this inquiry and earns admittance, then “creditworthiness is guaranteed.”16 In contrast, Weber understood a church to be an obligatory “institution” into which one was born without choice, by which he meant, in particular, the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Lutheran Church, especially as it functioned in Germany. Churches, as such, were “universal” in nature and included within their congregations “both the righteous and the unrighteous.”17 Membership was not voluntary and did not involve the sort of rigorous examination and ongoing scrutiny characteristic of sects. To illustrate, Weber observed that in Catholic churches the practice of confession offered relief to the sinner, “but rarely aim[ed] at changing his mind.”18 Church membership, then, did not necessarily signify morally upstanding character. According to Weber, Protestant sects provided a sort of template for voluntary associations in American society more broadly. The “schema of the sect” was the original prototype for “the tremendous flood” of associations that penetrated “every nook and cranny of American life.”19 Weber saw the spread of “numerous associations and clubs” outside of the ecclesial bodies as an indication of “increasing secularization.” Nevertheless, these associations, which existed for every “conceivable purpose,” followed directly from the example of the sects.20 Like Tocqueville, Weber saw associations as a powerful and pervasive feature of American democracy. James Bryce, the Scottish author of The American Commonwealth, who first visited the United States in 1870 (almost halfway between

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Tocqueville’s and Weber’s visits), also observed the importance and ubiquity of voluntary associations in America. “Associations,” wrote Bryce, “are created, extended, and worked in the United States more quickly and effectively than in any other country.”21 Weber saw associations, as did Tocqueville before him, as that which helped to mitigate tendencies toward individualism. “Whoever represents ‘democracy’ as a mass fragmented into atoms,” Weber wrote, “is fundamentally mistaken so far as the American democracy is concerned . . . The genuine American society . . . was never such a sandpile.”22 In a certain sense, then, Weber saw the sect as an institution that, in Tocquevillian terms, fostered a sort of individualism rightly understood. Also like Tocqueville, it was a social setting that represented a compromise between (or transitional stage from) Wertrational to Zweckrational. Participation in the sect involved rational action characterized by calculation with the promise of utilitarian benefits (Zweckrational), but it was also an institution that required religiously determined ethical character (Wertrational). In Weberian terms, the voluntary association was a place that promoted an “ethic of responsibility,” an ethic that involved features of both Wert and Zweck. “Weber saw the Puritan self and the sectlike associations,” writes political scientist Sung Ho Kim, “as an educational mechanism for a uniquely modern symbiosis of subjective value and objective rationality that issues in principled, moral conduct of an autonomous agency.”23 The sectlike association was also for Weber a sort of compromise between (or alternative to) Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, the ideal types made famous by Weber’s German colleague, Ferdinand Tönnies, who also presented a paper at the St. Louis World’s Fair. These associations were not a Gemeinschaft, for membership was entered into voluntarily, but neither were they a Gesellschaft, at least as understood by Tönnies, insofar as there was a communal dimension to the association with valueoriented criteria for membership.24 Sects and sectlike associations represented important and formative mediating institutions standing between the autonomous individual and the bureaucratic state.25 Given the pervasiveness of these mediating institutions, Weber thus concluded that it would be inaccurate to characterize American democracy as a “sand-pile of unrelated individuals.”26 While both Weber and Tocqueville saw voluntary associations as an important feature of American democracy and as a phenomenon that mitigated the dangers of individualism, they differed in their understandings of the source or cause of these associations. From whence came

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Americans’ unique propensity to join together for so many social activities and purposes? As discussed in Chapter 2, Tocqueville saw associational life emerging out of the individual’s perceived need to cooperate with others in order to preserve individual freedom and fend off the potential despotism of majoritarianism. In Tocqueville’s view, the habits of voluntarism were born out of cooperative economic and political activities, whereas for Weber associational life originated in the Protestant sect.27 In each instance, the visitors identified a spillover effect from a particular social realm into the broader society more generally. From Tocqueville’s perspective, Americans joined together with a common interest in “a commercial undertaking” or “an industrial operation.” Having come together in “these small common affairs,” Americans developed “the ability to pursue great ones in common.” Likewise, one gained through participation in “politics . . . the taste for and the habit of association; it makes a crowd of men who would otherwise have lived alone desire to unite, and teaches the art of doing it.” Thus political involvements and small economic enterprises provided the training ground for the “continuous use of the right of association in civil life.”28 Voluntary and cooperative civic activities became habitual for Americans, and a defining feature of their collective character. Weber similarly observed a sort of carryover effect, but instead of seeing associational life emanating “from commercial and political associations,”29 as sociologist Stephen Kalberg puts it, he saw it emerging out of the communal practices of the Protestant sects. “Today,” Weber observed, “large numbers of ‘orders’ and clubs of all sorts have begun to assume in part the functions of the religious community.”30 Moreover, these newer versions of associational life, though secularized, still conveyed something about one’s credibility. What membership substantively signified may have changed, but associational life still had a legitimating function. “Almost every small businessman who thinks something of himself,” Weber observed, “wears some kind of badge in his lapel.”31 Success in business still required the legitimation of “a social organization (earlier almost always religious, today of one kind or another).”32 Thus, while both Tocqueville and Weber saw voluntary associations as an important feature of American democracy and civil society, they offered different explanations for its origins. Why the difference? One reason may have to do with their distinctive biographies. As noted in Chapter 2, Tocqueville’s Catholic upbringing played a role in determining what he saw of religious life in America. While he visited some Protestant churches, he and Beaumont were more inclined to seek out and

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interview Catholic priests in the various places they stayed. Tocqueville was also rather dismissive of the evangelical Protestantism that he did encounter; and, in important respects, he missed the vitality and significance of the Second Great Awakening, which was at high pitch during the time of his visit.33 With Weber, on the other hand, I have found no evidence that he ever set foot in a Catholic church while in America, even though at the time of his visit the Catholic Church had become the single largest denomination in the United States, with more than 14 million members and representing more than 16 percent of the U.S. population. As with Tocqueville, then, Weber’s own biography arguably shaped what he saw and didn’t see. His study of the East Elbian peasants, discussed in the last chapter, suggests that prejudices from his Protestant upbringing – a childhood that spanned the German Kulturkampf, with which he was sympathetic – may well have influenced his analysis. Radkau observes that in terms of Weber’s sociology of religion, “Catholicism is the greatest and strangest blank.”34 In the United States, as elsewhere, Catholicism “remained a conspicuous gap in his analysis.”35 Weber did, however, visit a range of Protestant churches and, unlike Tocqueville, paid much closer attention to the substantive teachings, doctrinal differences, and unique practices of the various Protestant sects. In fact, during the next month of his trip, starting with his time in North Carolina, the Webers would attend seven different Protestant services, including the Baptist and Methodist services in Mt. Airy, an African American service at a Baptist church in Washington, DC, a Quaker service in Haverford, Pennsylvania, Christian Scientist and Presbyterian services in New York, and, less than a week before their departure, an Ethical Culture Society Meeting, also in New York. Here as elsewhere, then, we could say with John Patrick Diggins that “the difference between a hopeful liberal Catholic and a skeptical Calvinist modernist” played a role in determining their varying interpretations.36 These biographical differences may also have affected their distinctive interpretations of secularization. Both identified Protestantism as a cause of secularization, but in very different respects. As discussed in Chapter 2, Tocqueville saw the fissiparous and centrifugal qualities of Protestantism as representing concentric circles deviating in varying degrees from Catholicism. Of particular concern to Tocqueville was Unitarianism, which he saw as one of the outer circles and a short step from a departure from the Christian faith altogether. Recall Tocqueville’s interview with William Channing, who was, incidentally, one of Helene

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Weber’s favorite religious writers. Tocqueville anticipated that the centrifugality of Protestantism would eventually result in Americans choosing either Catholicism or no religion at all. Unlike Weber, however, he did not see the societal movement away from religion as a natural or lasting condition.

secularization Like Tocqueville, Weber saw in Protestantism one of the causes, albeit unintended, of secularization. However, Weber paid much closer attention to the substantive teachings of the various sects and the manner in which particular doctrines were linked to the rise of modern capitalism – and then eventually to the undermining of religious sentiments in society. This, of course, was the argument he advanced in his famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, to be discussed more fully in the next section. The “Churches and Sects” essay also addressed the secularization argument, but from a different angle. The essay – originally intended to be a supplement to the two essays that comprise the Protestant Ethic – looked less at the content of belief than it did at the social location (and relocation) of the community that inculcated and maintained Protestant beliefs and practices. The transference of associational life from the sects – where social control focused on the evaluation and affirmation of ethical character – to a wide variety of secular clubs and associations, represented the dissolution of religiously determined forms of social control. While in America, though Weber observed the continuing social significance of membership in a sect, as revealed in the anecdotes considered at the start of this chapter, he saw this as a passing phenomenon, and he pointed to expanding European immigration as one cause of secularization. Recall the manner in which he linked his cousin Jeff’s non-churched status to his Germanness. In the revised and expanded version of “Churches and Sects,” he developed this point: Nobody who visited the United States fifteen or twenty years ago, that is before the recent Europeanization of the country began, could overlook the very intense church-mindedness which then prevailed in all regions not yet flooded by European immigrants. Every old travel book reveals that formerly churchmindedness in America went unquestioned, as compared with recent decades, and was even far stronger.37

Moreover, based on “numerous observations” made during his two-anda-half months in the United States, he concluded that church-mindedness,

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though “still rather important, was rapidly dying out.”38 European, and especially German, immigration contributed to this “modern decomposition.”39 In addition to the secularizing influence of European immigration, he saw the emergence of secular clubs and associations, which were replacing Puritan sects, as a related feature of the secularization process. Weber observed that the “old social function of these sects has been diminished.” His cousin, Jim, for example, was a member of an “order” upon which his credit rating was largely based. The order served simultaneously as “health insurance, a burial fund, and a widows’ pension fund.” Members of the order were obligated to grant credit to a member who was a victim of “blameless economic distress,” a function previously served by the sects. “The tremendous increase in the clubs and orders here,” wrote Weber, “is a substitute of the crumbling organization of the sects.”40 Inasmuch as sects stopped being the locus of social control, the distinctively ethical character of associational life dissipated. Weber’s understanding of secularization in this regard was, as Kim summarizes, a two-part view: “first, the secular clubs and associations, the heirs to the Puritan sects, were no longer voluntary associations; hence, second, they no longer attended to the ethical discipline of individual members’ life conduct.” Membership came to signify, instead of compliance with demanding ethical standards, “status honor and prestige,” thus leading to the development of a new type of aristocracy.41 Weber recounted the various “exclusive associations” through which the “typical Yankee” would traverse in his ascension to bourgeois success, “beginning with the Boy’s Club in school, proceeding to the Athletic Club or the Greek Letter Society or to another student club of some nature, then onward to one of the numerous notable clubs of businessmen and the bourgeoisie, or finally to the clubs of the metropolitan plutocracy.”42 These modern clubs were a consequence of a “profound transformation” and were “largely the product of a process of secularization.” Given that club affiliation evolved to represent a “means of acquiring social prestige,” rather than a guarantee of religiously informed ethical conduct, “these phenomena, often highly grotesque,” wrote Weber, “belong in the broad field of the Europeanization of American ‘society.’”43 Unlike Tocqueville (or Chesterton, as we will see), Weber viewed secularization as an inevitable consequence of modernity. That the sects were giving way “in a steadily decreasing proportion” to the secular clubs and orders demonstrated the “procedure of ‘secularization,’ to which in

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modern times all phenomena that originated in religious conceptions succumb.”44 One finds in Weber’s discussion of sects an important link to his argument in the Protestant Ethic, namely, what could be referred to as the “utilitarian turn.” In the Protestant Ethic, Weber identified the historical process by which religiously informed conduct, such as honesty, hard work, frugality, thrift, and the like, eventually gave way to a greater focus on the utilitarian benefits yielded through practicing these virtues. In “Churches and Sects,” the legitimating role of associational life in a Protestant sect – and the ethical conduct this affiliation publicly confirmed – likewise led to membership in secular clubs and associations, which also served a legitimating function, but toward the end of social ascent and status. Central to both works is the critical turn toward a utilitarian orientation.

the protestant ethic The utilitarian turn, as depicted in the Protestant Ethic, centers on the important transitional figure of Benjamin Franklin, who represented for Weber the prototype of the spirit of capitalism. As mentioned in the last chapter, family friend Friedrich Kapp gave Weber a copy of Franklin’s autobiography when he was eleven years old. Kapp wrote the introduction to the German translation of the book, which reads, “Every German father should put Franklin’s autobiography into his son’s hands as a lesson . . . We lag behind the materially developed peoples, especially the Americans, in appreciating the proper role of money-making and material means in achieving spiritual and moral purposes.”45 In the copy of the book given to the young Weber, Kapp wrote, “To my young friend Max Weber at Christmas 1875 from your old friend Friedrich Kapp.”46 Weber would heed Kapp’s admonition to appreciate the connection between spiritual purposes and money-making, and Franklin would prove central to his understanding of this relationship. As is evident in the first of the two essays that make up the Protestant Ethic, Franklin appears to have provided for Weber an introduction to economic life in America. In fact, the first essay was written before Weber’s trip to America and the second after his return (which included material he collected while in the United States). In the autobiography Weber first read as a child, Franklin gave an account of his modest upbringing in Boston, his self-education, and his success as a printer in Philadelphia. Franklin embodied in his own biography the sort of secularizing transition Weber sought to depict in both the Protestant Ethic and “Churches and Sects.”

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Franklin was raised a Presbyterian in Boston, but at a young age he rejected his Calvinistic religious heritage and moved toward a sort of deism.47 Nevertheless, he determined that some of the principles and virtues inculcated through his religious upbringing could prove beneficial in the world of business. “I had been religiously educated a Presbyterian,” he wrote, “Tho’ I seldom attended any public worship, I still had an opinion of its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted.”48 Franklin took to heart, for example, a verse from the Book of Proverbs often repeated to him by his father: “Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men.” From this instruction, Franklin determined that industry was “a means of obtaining wealth and distinction.”49 Thus, Franklin advanced a new take on the Puritan virtues of industry, frugality, and honesty. Revelation had indeed no weight with me, as such; but I entertain’d an opinion that, though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably these actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all circumstances of things considered.50

In his discussion of Franklin in the Protestant Ethic, Weber cited this passage. While Weber did not depict Franklin as an unqualified utilitarian, he saw his reasoning and practices as reflecting a social situation whereby a religiously inspired cultural ethos would help set the stage for a utilitarianism that would both depart from and serve to undermine its religious roots. Weber focused on two theological themes in particular in his analysis of Protestantism, the Lutheran notion of calling (Beruf) and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. They provided a theological justification for hard work in the world, what Weber referred to as this-worldly asceticism. Thus, one worked hard in one’s calling – a calling no longer exclusive to a clerical or monastic life (i.e., other-worldly asceticism). The Calvinist notion of predestination also encouraged hard work, but toward the end of demonstrating to oneself and to others that one was among the elect. The combination of a sort of existential insecurity about one’s salvific status, a strong work ethic, and a religiously informed disincentive to spend one’s earnings on oneself resulted in capitalist accumulation and ultimately success in one’s business. Success, as such, came to be seen over time as a sign of God’s blessing and evidence of one’s elect status. As is illustrated in the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin, success eventually became the ultimate end and the

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religious motivations that first led to success eventually faded into the background.51 As Weber put it in the final pages of the Protestant Ethic, today “victorious capitalism” needs the “support” of religious asceticism “no longer.”52 In the absence of this support and justification for hard work, modern capitalism became a disenchanted and difficult social condition. “The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.” For the Puritan, care for external goods lay on one’s shoulders as “a light cloak.” With victorious capitalism, the cloak became an “iron cage.”53 Interestingly, one finds in Franklin’s autobiography not only the utilitarian reinterpretation of Christian virtue for the purposes of success in business, but even a proposition to introduce a voluntary association that would replace the often contentious religious sects – along lines strikingly similar to Weber’s secular associations depicted in “Churches and Sects.” Franklin proposed calling his association The Society of the Free and Easy.54 He even put forth a “creed” that would contain “the essentials of every known religion.” Like the sects it sought to replace, the new society would require members to assent to the creed and go through a period of “three weeks’ examination and practice of the virtues.” However, the aim was not so much to preserve certain ethical behaviors, as it was to promote “one another’s interests, business, and advancement in life.”55 Franklin thus suggested a social structure that embodied the nascent utilitarianism represented in the maxims of Poor Richard’s Almanac and the like, and which also reflected the secularized versions of associational life that Weber observed while in the United States. A central justification Franklin offered for starting this society is worth noting. Franklin proposed such a society as an alternative to the various “articles” of the sects that “serv’d principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another.”56 The impetus, as represented here, suggests that the utilitarian turn was inspired, at least in part, by a wish to avoid hostile disagreements between Christians, which had been a defining quality of Christendom since the very origins of the Reformation. Weber’s thesis has, of course, been much contested since it was published in the first decade of the twentieth century. Franklin’s stated reason for proposing The Free and Easy Society points to one of the challenges to the Protestant Ethic thesis – an argument that historian Brad Gregory has developed in his recent, and compelling, discussion of the consequences of the Protestant Reformation.57 Gregory argues that the violent disagreement between Christians following the Reformation led to a societal arrangement whereby, for the sake of peace, religion was relegated to the private sphere. Religion

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no longer served as a “sacred canopy” or “institutionalized worldview,” as it had prior to the Reformation.58 The privatization of religion helped to precipitate both the acceptance of modern capitalism among Western Christians as well as the eventual secularization of Western society. “Religious persecution understandably led most Catholics and Protestants alike eventually to welcome the free exercise of individual conscience with respect to religious belief and worship,” writes Gregory. “By privatizing religion and separating it from society, individual religious freedom unintentionally precipitated the secularization of religion and society.”59

colleges and universities The theme of secularization is also evident in Weber’s observations about American universities and colleges. Unlike Tocqueville, who did not visit a single college during his 1831–32 tour, Weber visited a variety of institutions of higher education, including Northwestern University and the Tuskegee Institute during the first half of his trip.60 Education was an even greater focus during the second leg of his journey, when he visited Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and Haverford. Additionally, given her strong “feminist interests in women’s education,”61 Marianne on her own visited Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, and Simmons colleges, as well as a coeducational high school when she was in St. Louis. After returning to Germany, Weber would comment on the differences between American and German institutions of higher learning, including, most significantly, in his important 1918 lecture, “Science as a Vocation.” Northwestern was the first university Weber visited while in the United States. At Northwestern he discovered qualities about American universities that would be confirmed in his and Marianne’s later visits to East Coast colleges. One finds in Weber’s discussion of American universities themes and conclusions that parallel his assessment of Protestant sects. That is, he saw in the American university an institutional setting where young Americans could form strong and lasting friendships, where particular ethical character was inculcated, and where one’s learning had benefits for life in the world of business. He also saw these institutions, as with sectlike associations, going through a process of secularization. Of American universities in general Weber wrote: While the American youth has to work little and slowly in primary school, grammar school and high school, at about 17–18 . . . he enjoys the greatest amount of freedom . . . [and] has become vigorous and independent. The college

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student (17/18 to 21/22 years old) normally enters a dormitory, has to submit to the rules, is controlled if not formally then in practice with respect to drinking, etc. His course of study is prescribed with the exception of certain electives, failure to attend classes is impossible, there is weekly chapel, and exams occur every quarter. Despite all this the magical memories of youth are focused on this period of life. Sports on a massive scale, attractive forms of sociability, endless intellectual stimulation, countless lasting friendships are the results, and above all, far more than with our students, learning the habit of work.62

Marianne was similarly taken by the idyllic setting of American colleges, which she described as “colonies of charming buildings far outside the metropolis set among carefully tended green lawns and in the shade of old trees – worlds by themselves, full of poetry and the happy intellectual life of the young.” In these “oases,” Marianne added, “young Americans from a wide social range were taught the tender, beautiful, and profound aspect of life.”63 As with sects and sectlike associations, however, Weber saw the colleges in a state of flux. He observed that “most of the ‘colleges’ originally were the work of puritanical sects.” And while this heritage was passing away, “something of the tradition of the Pilgrim fathers was still discernible.” Like the sects, the American college, at least originally, encouraged certain ethical behaviors: “It still bounded the young men to the ideal of chastity, prohibited smutty stories, and instilled into them a measure of chivalry toward women which was unknown to the average German of the day.” At places like Haverford, Weber found “the religious spirit particularly alive,” though even here, the religious spirit “was already mixed with uncongenial components.” The departure from the earlier ethos was even more pronounced at colleges in the large cities, where “only the solidly constructed framework was left.” In Marianne’s words, “The creative initial spirit had disappeared, and this gave rise to those phenomena of Anglo-American life that the Webers judged to be ‘cant.’”64 In a discussion of chapel requirements at Northwestern University, Weber illustrated the nature of the changes under way: It seems incredible when one reads in the statutes of Northwestern University in Chicago (originally Methodist, the large University [of Chicago] founded by Rockefeller is Baptist, and both compete in the same city!) that a student must attend either 3/5 of the daily services or one additional hour of lectures instead of 3 hours of services. If he has a bigger “chapel record” (!!) than required, he is given credit for the next academic year, and then he needs that much less attendance. If the “chapel record” is inadequate for two years, the student is expelled. 65

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While there were requirements to attend chapel, the substance of the chapel services was evidently evolving. The Northwestern Bulletin at the time expressed views about the religious dimension of education that would comport nicely with the ethical prescriptions of Benjamin Franklin and would provide support for Gregory’s explanation regarding one of the causes of secularization. “The University was not established with the view of forcing on the attention of students the creed of any particular church,” the 1904–1905 Bulletin reads, “but for the promotion of learning under influences conducive to the formation of a manly Christian character.”66 Weber was struck by the bureaucratic nature of the requirements, which seemed to be of greater import than the substance of the services, which were no longer conspicuously religious in character. Yet the “religious service” is peculiar: sometimes it is replaced by lectures, for instance on [Adolf von] Harnack’s History of Dogma. At the conclusion the dates of the next football, baseball, cricket match, etc., are announced, as the harvesting used to be announced in German villages. The whole thing is utterly confusing. It is hard to say how great the indifference is at this time; that it has increased, particularly because of the Germans, is fairly certain. But the power of the church communities is still enormous in comparison with our Protestantism.67

Once again, then, he blamed the Germans for growing religious indifference. As was the case in the Methodist church service in Mt. Airy, he noted a range of other activities, which did not have prima facie religious significance, announced at chapel services, for example, cricket matches, football games, and the like. And he saw religious indifference on the rise. In a lecture delivered in 1911 in Dresden, Weber elaborated on the secularizing processes he observed in American universities. Here he noted that “the older colleges [in America] were predominantly established by religious sects” and that “traces of this can be seen everywhere.” As with the changes he observed among the sects, however, he detected an erosion in the previous emphasis on the religiously inspired formation of ethical character: Nowadays, however, American universities are becoming to a certain extent metropolitan and, furthermore, there is no doubt that at least in some of them the old collegiate system, with required residence in college and strict control over the mode of life of the students, is partly in process of being discarded and partly has already been discarded.68

Weber learned of another indication of secularization in a significant meeting with William James during his time at Harvard University in

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early November 1904. “Aside from his contact with Du Bois,” writes Scaff, “this conversation [with James] was surely Max Weber’s most consequential encounter during the American journey.”69 In his revised version of “Churches and Sects,” Weber made reference to this meeting, in which James acknowledged the lack of interest among his fellow academics regarding the role of religion in American society. The view, held by both Weber and James, that religion was an important, albeit declining, feature of American social, civil, and political life, was, according to James, not shared by many of his colleagues. Weber stated, “Some cultured Americans often dismissed these facts [about the religious roots of associational life] briefly and with a certain angry disdain as ‘humbug’ or backwardness, or they even denied them; many of them did not even know anything about them, as was affirmed to me by William James.”70 Weber alluded to this conversation again at the very end of the Protestant Ethic when he wrote, “The modern man is in general, even with the best will, unable to give religious ideas a significance for culture and national character which they deserve.”71 This attitude was driven home to Weber by the fact that he had difficulty finding early Puritan writings in the larger American university libraries, though he was more successful at smaller places like Haverford.72 In addition to religion’s declining influence in higher education, Weber identified other unique features of American colleges, often in contrast with practices in Germany. In “Science as a Vocation,” for example, he compared the American assistant professor with the German Privatdozent at the start of their respective academic careers, and observed varying teaching loads and promotional practices. In Germany he worried that students craved a leader who would give them a Weltanschauung, rather than a teacher who would dispassionately pass along knowledge. While the American situation was closer to the latter, he characterized the transmission of knowledge by American instructors in terms of a purchasable consumer product. “The American’s conception of the teacher who faces him is: he sells me his knowledge and his methods for my father’s money, just as the greengrocer sells my mother cabbage. And that is all.”73 The movement toward a consumerist mentality of education comports well with Frederick Rudolph’s historical analysis of Williams College. As Rudolph describes it, the history of Williams College is the history of three distinct eras: the Christian era, the gentleman’s era, and, most recently, the consumerist era.74 A capitalist/consumerist attitude toward education was also apparent to Weber in terms of the manner in which schools competed with one

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another (e.g., his observation, noted earlier, that Northwestern and the University of Chicago competed with each other in the same city). “The American universities compete in a quite relentless way against their sister institutions,” Weber observed. He likened this competitive orientation to American industrialism more generally: “Like the modern industrial enterprise [the universities] pursue a policy of relentless selection with regard to proficiency, at least among their younger teachers.” In sum, the universities “bear the characteristics of competitive institutions.”75

the eastern states The Webers covered much ground in this last leg of their journey. As Marianne wrote, “the Webers [after Mt. Airy] then went back to the cultural centers of the eastern states and saw in quick succession Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Boston, and their environs.”76 In addition to the various colleges and universities they investigated, they continued to visit churches. In Washington, DC, for example, after tours of Arlington Cemetery and George Washington’s Mount Vernon home, they attended “a Negro religious service” at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church. The middle-class African American church had been established in 1839 and was pastored by the “legendary preacher and former slave Walter H. Brooks.”77 Brooks was away on this particular Sunday and a visiting lay preacher gave the sermon instead. Of the service Weber wrote, “Uncanny how a muffled moaning began as the sermon increased in urgency and finally became impassioned. The last words of each sentence were repeated, first softly, then in a shrill voice – ‘Yes, Yes!’ or ‘No, No!’ in response to the apostrophizing of the preacher,” whom Weber described as “no more impassioned than the young Methodist in Mount Airy.”78 Four days later, they attended a much quieter Fifth Day Meeting service with the Quakers outside of Philadelphia in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The service began in strict silence and remained so until a member of the congregation was moved by the spirit to speak. Marianne described the service as resembling “the most ancient Christian congregations, as simple and unadorned as one can imagine, as anti-Catholic as possible, excluding any manner of sensual or aesthetic influence, and thus enormously impressive.” Especially striking to Marianne was “the silence and collective anticipation about what the holy spirit will announce through the mouth of one of the members of the congregation.”79 During this particular service, an historian named Allen Thomas spoke on the sanctity and separateness of the saints, providing material that went to the heart of

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Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis.80 In fact, Weber cited the sermon at the end of the fourth chapter of the Protestant Ethic, and viewed it as supporting his conceptualization of the distinctively Protestant form of inner worldly asceticism, where “saints,” instead of fleeing the world into the solitude of the monasteries, “strode into the market-place of life . . . and undertook to penetrate just that daily routine of life with its methodicalness, to fashion it into a life in the world, but neither of nor for this world.”81 At Haverford, Weber also learned about the college’s cricket team, which was reportedly the best in the country and had recently returned from a successful tour of competition in the United Kingdom.82 This would not be the only example of collegiate sports competition that Weber encountered. The day after the Quaker service, the Webers took a train to Boston. However, the trip was hampered by events leading up to the annual Harvard vs. University of Pennsylvania football contest. As reported in Marianne’s biography: Our departure for Boston was almost fraught with difficulty. You see, the “football-team” of the University of Pennsylvania was leaving for Boston to fight against Harvard; all 2000 students saw it off at the railway station, and hundreds took the ten-hour trip here. Consequently, that evening the station was inaccessible for hours. The rascals did not let anyone pass. Everyone missed his train and a lady was badly trampled. We saw the whole thing from our carriage.83

In Boston, the Webers attended the football contest between the two schools amongst an enthusiastic crowd in a recently completed stadium “as big as the Coliseum, with room for 40,000 people.” They were struck by the “thunderous chanting” of the fans “after each ‘play.’” Penn defeated Harvard 11–0, sending Harvard fans into a “profound depression.”84 In Philadelphia, on the other hand, Penn fans celebrated. The coach commended the team for its “reliance on our methods” and its “determination to play conscientiously,” while at the Monday chapel service, the dean described the victory as a “vindication of Penn spirit and determination.”85 Such justifications were commensurate with Weber’s assessment of the Puritan derived justifications for sports discussed in the Protestant Ethic. As with enterprising capitalism, sports were acceptable if they “served a rational purpose.” From this perspective, “recreation for physical efficiency” was acceptable, but as “a means for the spontaneous expression of undisciplined impulses” or “purely a means for enjoyment,” or if it awakened “pride, raw instincts or the irrational gambling

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instinct,” it was to be condemned.86 Both Chesterton and Qutb, as we will see, also encountered American sports mania. Their findings suggest that the once constraining rational purpose for sports may have eroded over time. Weber himself, in the last pages of the Protestant Ethic, likened the “pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning” to the “character of sport”; and near the end of his life Weber reportedly said, in a more critical tone, that student life in America “consists of nothing more than sports, from start to finish.”87 The Webers spent five more days in Boston. In addition to the football game and Weber’s interactions with William James, the Webers twice visited the Münsterberg home. Hugo Münsterberg, who was responsible for Weber’s invitation to the St. Louis World Fair, regularly offered “counsel and hospitality to illustrious German travelers.”88 While in Boston, Marianne visited both Wellesley and Simmons colleges. The Webers also made a trip to a northern Boston suburb to visit another member of the Fallenstein clan, Laura Fallenstein and her husband Otto von Klock and their eight children. Klock ran a “successful typewriter and translation business.” As was typical of the children of immigrants, thought Weber, the Klock children had “drifted away from Protestantism,” providing further evidence to him of secularization.89 Like Tocqueville before them, the Webers found Boston a pleasant and civilized place, “with its buildings darkened with age, and particularly at Harvard, they again felt that they were on familiar soil.” In “elegant Boston,” wrote Marianne, “the wild adventurousness of colonial life seemed to be settling down in the firmly established old English tradition; things that had ripened now joined together in salutary harmony.”90 From Boston, the Webers traveled to New York by way of Providence, Rhode Island and New Haven, Connecticut. At Brown University, Weber learned from the librarian that “the university though founded by Baptists and a few Congregationalists, had decided to erase any connections to its religious and ‘sectarian’ heritage,” thus confirming for Weber the insight offered to him by William James a few days earlier.91 Once in New York, the Webers spent a busy two weeks before beginning their journey home aboard the Hamburg on November 19. During their final days in the United States, Max attended a Christian Science service while Marianne attended a Presbyterian Church service. The next Sunday, they both attended a meeting of the Ethical Culture Society in Carnegie Hall, where they heard a sermon by Felix Adler on “Mental Healing as a Religion.” Max visited

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Columbia University, where he once again explored the library and was shown around the campus by political economy professor Edwin Seligman. The Webers also visited several settlements, where they met Lilian Ward, the cofounder of the Henry Street settlement, and Florence Kelley, the great social reformer, factory inspector, and director of the National Consumers’ League. Marianne described Kelley as “by far the most outstanding figure” of all the “Americans the Webers met.”92 The Webers also paid visits to the daughters of Frederick Kapp, Hannah and Clara, who had married brothers, Paul and Alfred Lichtenstein, two German-Jewish bankers. The Webers spent two evenings with the Lichtensteins in Brooklyn, on November 11 and 17. Marianne was not particularly impressed with these friends of the Weber family, whom she described as “amiable” but “completely uninteresting people.” She found the Lichtenstein brothers to be “a pair of jolly but otherwise unimpressive bankers.”93 Max, on the other hand, gathered more data on the processes of German immigration and secularization in America. In a letter to his mother he wrote of the “secularized offspring of the old Puritan ways,” and described what the Lichtensteins conveyed to him regarding the continuing social significance of church membership: The Lichtensteins too said, the first question of the Americans, with whom they therefore did not socialize, is always: Which church do you belong to? At least in Brooklyn which is pious in comparison with New York, all social acquaintance, visiting and dining etc. are still church-related in the old Yankee circles, even now! And despite all change.94

Weber made reference to the conversation, without naming the Lichtensteins, in his 1906 “Churches and Sects” essays as well as in the expanded version of the essay published in 1920. The evening after their second dinner with the Lichtensteins, they attended a play, The True Power, at a Yiddish Theater with their friend, David Blaustein, and found the acting to be impressive.95 The following day they boarded the Hamburg, destined for Cherbourg, France, from which they would take a train to Heidelberg. Arriving in the port town of Cherbourg, the Webers were, fittingly, only about 12 miles away from the Château de Tocqueville, the location where their illustrious predecessor spent years reflecting on his own American journey. The Château, it is worth noting, is still owned by the Tocqueville family, and Alexis’s library, where he wrote significant portions of Democracy in America,

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is still preserved; the current owner is the great-, great-, great-grandson of Édouard de Tocqueville, the brother to whom Alexis sent many letters from America. As for Weber, according to Marianne, he “looked back with gratitude to the country where he had been granted such happy days.” She “had the feeling that she was bringing home a man restored to health.” Weber himself concluded that the trip could be justified “from the point of view of a widening of my scholarly horizon (and improving my state of health),” the full fruits of which could “of course, not be seen for some time.”96

final thoughts Weber, like Tocqueville and the other visitors considered in this study, became more critical of America later in his life. In 1918, two years before his death, Weber gave a lecture in Heidelberg, titled “Democracy and Aristocracy in American Life,” to the local chapter of the Volksbund. Several German newspapers at the time reported at length on the wellattended address.97 Taken together, they provide a good sense of the substance of the two-hour lecture, which was never published. In the address, Weber offered “gripping descriptions” of a range of topics, many of which have been discussed in the present study.98 The talk, however, was evidently harsher in tone than were many of his previous discussions of the United States.99 In the speech, as Roth puts it, Weber “drew on his 1904 visit to paint a darker picture of the United States.”100 Certainly absent was the attitude that Marianne described during the first part of their American journey, when Weber found “everything beautiful and better than in our country.” Her prediction that “his criticism does not come until later” was surely realized in this lecture.101 Weber condemned a number of features of American society, including its problem with race. Disenfranchisement of blacks – for example, with respect to voting rights, segregation in public spaces, and marriage restrictions – denoted “fractures in the democratic character of the country.” In the South, said Weber, democracy “has never actually existed and still does not exist to this day.”102 Weber also reviewed the “highly peculiar combination of fundamental religious ideology with a mercantilist business economy” as well as the role of sects and sectlike associations, the secularized versions of which he saw contributing to the emergence of a new aristocracy. In an essay written a year earlier, Weber also addressed the importance of “the growth of a raw

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plutocracy or even an ‘aristocratic’ prestige group, which is slowly emerging” in America, “even though it usually goes unnoticed.”103 His reflections on the emergence of a new capitalist-based aristocracy in America echo concerns raised by Tocqueville who, as discussed in Chapter 1, anticipated the development of a “manufacturing aristocracy.” It’s a theme, as we will see, that Chesterton would also address in his discussions of American capitalism. Weber also spoke in negative terms about individualism in America, where “self-reliance and self-dependence is taught from the start in the schoolroom” and where there is “boundless respect for the self-made man.” Curiously, the individualism was matched by a kind of conformism where “one always dresses in the newest fashion.”104 In “Science as a Vocation,” a lecture Weber gave four months earlier, he also spoke of American individualism. “The young American,” said Weber, “has no respect for anything or anybody, for tradition or for public office – unless it is for the personal achievement of the individual man.” Then Weber added, with apparent derision, “This is what the American calls ‘democracy.’”105 Bespeaking his frustration with America’s participation in World War I, he discussed the “American passion for sports,” which, interestingly, he viewed as having “influenced the stance of the Yanks in the present war.” Weber starkly claimed that Germans “have nothing to learn from the old democracy of that country.” Yet, as he acknowledged in “Science as a Vocation,” he saw Germany becoming “Americanized,” not just in the area of higher education, but in German life more generally.106 Given that he viewed American democracy “in its present form” as “facing its doom,” he did not see Americanization as a fully positive development. As far as American involvement in World War I, unlike the “majestic” situation of the “German warrior,” Americans, said Weber, had no sense of the “destiny of history” and the American soldier “doesn’t even know for what he is dying.” That is, he did not think Americans had a clear purpose for their involvement in the European conflict. Nevertheless, Weber the German nationalist saw America emerging as the dominant world power and lamented the decline of Germany’s more prominent role in world politics. In a letter written in the same year, he wrote, “America’s world rule was as inevitable as that of Rome after the Punic Wars in ancient times.” Like Tocqueville before him, he predicted an international situation in which America would share its global rule with Russia, a condition he appears to have accepted with a sense of

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tragic resignation.107 Finally, in this 1918 speech he also decried the American “romance of quantity,” which “rules the souls”; and he spoke of a peculiar brand of American hopefulness that knows no object. “What the goal of this hope is,” Weber reportedly said, “no one actually knows.” Our next visitor, to whom we will now turn, agreed with Weber on a number of fronts, including on this point about American hopefulness. As we will see, G. K. Chesterton also believed that Americans lived with a “permanent ethic of unmeaning hopefulness.”108

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5 A New Martin Chuzzlewit: Chesterton on Main Street

Just over seventeen years after Weber returned to Germany, G. K. Chesterton and his wife, Frances, boarded the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria in Liverpool, England en route to New York. This would be the first of two trips Chesterton would make to the United States. He and Frances spent three months in North America in 1921 and then a little more than six months in 1930–1931, when Chesterton’s secretary, Dorothy Collins, also joined them. Chesterton did not originally intend to write about his time in the United States; he announced just before leaving England in 1921 that, unlike a number of previous British literary visitors, he would not write a book about America. Fortunately, at least for the purposes of the present study, it is a promise that he would not keep, as he published two books on America, one after each visit: What I Saw in America (1922) and Sidelights on New London and Newer York (1932), the latter of which includes thoughts on the processes of Americanization.1 Reflections offered in these works suggest that his earlier unfulfilled announcement was in part a reaction against the “sneering” critiques offered by such previous British visitors as Charles Dickens and Frances Trollope, whose analyses he viewed as too smug, superficial, and snobbish. Indeed, one senses that he was motivated in part by a wish to offer a friendly corrective to these earlier accounts. Evidence of this is found in Chesterton’s first book on America, which includes a chapter titled “A New Martin Chuzzlewit,” a reference to the fictional character (actually two characters) from Charles Dickens’s novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. In one part of the novel, the young Martin Chuzzlewit and his cheerful companion, Mark Tapley, travel to America. On this adventure, the two English travelers are swindled by coarse, 116 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Texas Libraries, on 08 Dec 2019 at 09:55:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.006

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tobacco-chewing, greedy hucksters. The depiction of America in this story is not a generous one. In Chesterton’s words, it is “unduly critical” and “is generally regarded as something which is either a taunt or covered with an apology.”2 Chesterton partly defended Dickens on the grounds that his exaggerated absurdities, whether of the Americans or of the English, were really just expressions of the unique qualities of Dickens’s literary genius. “He made these Americans absurd because he was an artist of absurdity.” In achieving his artistry, however, Chesterton thought Dickens erred “not in thinking his Americans funny, but in thinking them foolish because they were funny.”3 From the outset, Chesterton was determined to approach America with a different attitude. He even posited a philosophy for how one should encounter things foreign, which was in direct contrast to what he found in Dickens’s work: “The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny.”4 While he would not avoid finding humor in what he saw, to be sure, he approached America with an open mind and he was a more charitable observer than were some of his English predecessors, even though he found plenty about which to be critical. In his words, he came as a “traveler” rather than a “tripper”; the latter “sees what he has come to see,” while the former “sees what he sees.”5 At the outset of his first tour of America he stated that the object of his visit was to “lose his impressions of the United States.” Chesterton declined at this early juncture to offer any real impressions because he had not yet had the opportunity to “acquaint himself with the conditions of life in this country at first hand.”6 Unlike Tocqueville, Weber, or Qutb, Chesterton came to the United States as something of a celebrity. During his two visits, he participated in debates, gave scores of lectures, sat for dozens of interviews, received several honorary degrees, and was followed (even hounded) by journalists almost everywhere he went. Dorothy Collins wrote home that the press were “on the doorstep of every hotel like a plague of locusts.”7 His lectures and debates were well received and well attended, drawing audiences as large as 4,000 to 5,000 in some instances.8 In typical self-deprecatory form, Chesterton estimated that his second trip alone “consisted of inflicting no less than ninety-nine lectures on people who never did me any harm.”9 He was well known at the time as a popular British journalist, debater, satirist, author, and master of paradox. Chesterton also had something of a reputation for his support of the Irish independence movement, a position he was asked about, and even

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thanked for, during his American travels. His influence on the movement was not minimal. Michael Collins, the leader of the Irish Republican Army, had read and been influenced by Chesterton’s book, Napoleon of Notting Hill. The novel, which Collins regarded as his favorite book, played an important role in shaping the Irish leader’s nationalism. Collins’s high regard for Chesterton’s novel was so well known that British Prime Minister Lloyd George gave a copy of the book to all the members of his Cabinet prior to the 1921 negotiations with the Irish delegation over the Irish Treaty, “that they might better understand the Irish leader’s mind.”10 Less well known, but arguably no less important, was Chesterton’s role in the Indian nationalist movement, though Chesterton’s views on the topic received at least some coverage in the American press prior to his visit.11 Consistently opposed to British imperialism of any sort (he was strongly and publicly opposed to the Boer Wars in South Africa), Chesterton wrote an article in a 1909 issue of the Illustrated London News on the efforts of Indian nationalists. The main point of the article was that the Indian nationalist movement failed inasmuch as it tried to imitate the British. Chesterton urged instead that the movement should strive to be more genuinely Indian. “The principal weakness of Indian Nationalism seems to be that it is not very Indian and not very national.”12 Instead, Chesterton saw the nationalists as too preoccupied with imitating the British. Chesterton observed: But the Indian Nationalists whose works I have read simply say with everincreasing excitability, “Give me a ballot-box. Provide me with a Ministerial dispatch-box. Hand me over the Lord Chancellor’s wig. I have a natural right to be Prime Minister. I have a heaven-born claim to introduce a budget. My soul is starved if I am excluded from Editorship of the Daily Mail.”13

Mahatma Gandhi was in London at the time of the article’s publication. “Thunderstruck” by Chesterton’s words, he immediately translated the article into Gujarati, and, along with his own commentary, dispatched it to Durban for publication in the Indian Opinion. Gandhi’s comments indicate something of the regard he held for Chesterton and the influence Chesterton had on his thinking: “Mr. G. K. Chesterton is one of the great writers here. He is an Englishman of a liberal temper.” On Chesterton’s article he wrote, [H]e has contributed an article on Indian awakening, which is worth studying. I too believe that what he has said is reasonable . . . Indians must reflect over these views of Mr. Chesterton and consider what they should rightly demand . . . I, for

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one, was led by Mr. Chesterton's article to all these reflections and I place them before readers of Indian Opinion.14

Gandhi was also inspired by Chesterton’s article to write his 1910 book, Hind Swaraj, also published in English under the title, Indian Home Rule.15 Given Chesterton’s international reputation, it is perhaps not surprising that he met and talked with a number of famous people during his American travels. Among these were Henry Ford, Sinclair Lewis, Helen Keller, John Drinkwater, Ernest Shackleton, and Pearl White, the “Stunt Queen” of silent films. He also participated in popular debates with Cosmo Hamilton, Horace Bridges, and Clarence Darrow. Chesterton recognized that his very visible and public presence limited the scope and quality of his fieldwork. “When I went wandering about the United States disguised as a lecturer, I was well aware that I was not sufficiently well disguised to be a spy.”16 Nevertheless, a spy of sorts he endeavored to be, even though his size (six feet two inches and “immense girth”) and disheveled appearance (“a masterpiece of studied carelessness”)17 would make him an unlikely candidate for such a role. However, as noted by his boyhood friend, E. W. Fordham, though “apparently oblivious of everything he passed,” Chesterton was “in reality a far closer observer than most, and one who not only observed but remembered what he had seen.” Moreover, “he retained these powers of observation and memory throughout his life.”18 Dorothy Collins said much the same of Chesterton’s aptitude for careful observation: while he may have appeared “oblivious of everything that passed before him,” Chesterton was really “a much closer observer than most, and remembered what he had seen and what he had read.” Additionally, he looked beyond surface appearances in order to understand the minds of those whom he encountered on his travels. “He always remembered what he had seen and those with whom he had talked, not so much by their faces as by their minds – for that is how he saw people.”19 Not unlike the protagonist in his famous Father Brown mysteries, Chesterton’s unkempt and heedless appearance belied a keen facility for penetrating and insightful observation.

chesterton’s two journeys After nine days at sea, Gilbert and Frances landed in New York City on January 10, 1921. As with his German and French predecessors,

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the journey itself generated interesting observations. Both Marianne Weber and Frances Chesterton, for example, had similar reactions to the conditions of the ships upon which they traveled. When the Webers crossed the Atlantic in 1904 there were more than one thousand immigrants on the ship. Marianne lamented the “cramped quarters of the eastern European immigrants,” who were relegated to the ship’s lower decks and were crowded together like “sheep on the heath.” She complained that the smaller number of first class travelers, in contrast “lived at the expense of others,” which she saw as a “really dreadful” situation, one that “should be given public attention.”20 Frances Chesterton observed similar conditions during her 1921 voyage: “We have over 1,000 immigrants on board of every nationality. The poor souls look so wretched though often are quite merry enough.” Like Marianne before her, Frances was uneasy with the comparative luxury of the first class travelers: There are only two classes of passengers on this boat 1st and 3rd. It seems a shame that 100 first class passengers should occupy nearly the whole of the ship with a winter garden, library, smoke-room, drawing room, dining room and endless cabins and staterooms and these poor folk be confined to a very small space on the lower deck.21

These would not be the last observations the Chestertons would offer regarding issues of class, nor the only of their insights that would align with those of the Webers. Both couples were also taken by the size and energy of New York, the first U.S. city they encountered. For the Chestertons, New York City served as a sort of base for the first month of their stay in the United States, during which time Chesterton took a number of short trips to lecture in other East Coast cities, including Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New Haven. On February 12, 1921, the Chestertons departed for a longer trip that took them as far north as Montreal and as far west and south as Duluth and Oklahoma City. This longer loop more closely resembled Weber’s earlier route than it did Tocqueville’s. Chesterton, however, did not extend his journey to the southern states below and east of Oklahoma – as did both Weber and Tocqueville before him. The Chestertons returned to New York from this more extensive journey on March 26 via Indianapolis and then departed for England on April 11, 1921. The Chestertons returned to North America almost a decade later, the primary purpose of which was to give a series of lectures at the University of Notre Dame on the history and literature of the Victorian

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period in England. Notre Dame was one of several universities to give Chesterton an honorary degree during his second tour of the United States. Following his six weeks at Notre Dame, Chesterton again traveled, usually by train, to give lectures in various U.S. and Canadian cities. His first stop after leaving South Bend was Ann Arbor, Michigan. From there, he traveled to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and then back to New York City. In December and January, with New York again serving as a base, he gave lectures in, among other cities, Boston, Providence, Newark, Hartford, New Haven, and Worcester, where he received another honorary degree from the College of Holy Cross. On January 20, 1931, the Chestertons and Dorothy Collins set out from New York for a longer journey intended to take them into the South and then eventually on to California. Chesterton was meant to lecture in the deeper South on this trip, an area of the country that he did not visit on his 1921 trip. However, while in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Frances became seriously ill and Chesterton was forced to cancel lectures scheduled in the region. Frances eventually recovered enough to travel to the West Coast, though about five days after her husband and Dorothy Collins had set out. Chesterton gave lectures up and down the West Coast, including in Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver; however, Frances spent most of her time convalescing and recouping at La Venta Inn in Palos Verdes, California, now a suburb of Los Angeles, with the help of a hired nurse who had accompanied her on the train from Chattanooga. According to Massie Ward, one of Chesterton’s first biographers, apart from Frances’s illness, the Chestertons enjoyed this trip “far better” than the first because “they came much closer to the people of the country.”22 On this second journey, the English travelers did not go directly to New York, but approached the North American continent via the St. Lawrence River, stopping briefly in Quebec and then landing in Montreal, where Chesterton gave his first lecture of the tour on September 29, 1930. About a week later, the three travelers arrived in South Bend, Indiana, where they remained until November 15, with the exception of several weekend trips to Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee for debates and lectures. As noted earlier, they returned to New York City several times during this second tour. The city left a significant impression on Chesterton, as he offered reflections on New York in both of his books on America.

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newer york Given Chesterton’s celebrity status, when he and Frances disembarked the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria for their first American tour on January 10, 1921 in New York, they were immediately surrounded by a pack of journalists. As described in Frances’s diary, “the fun (or the horrors) began. Interviewers, photographers, film men – all seized on us and we spent our last hour on the boat in a mob of what I can only term lunatics.”23 When they finally made it to their hotel, “another frenzied mob of newspapermen attacked us and even penetrated to our room and took photographs there.”24 They met the same fate the following day in Boston, where Chesterton delivered the first of his American lectures, leading Frances to record in her diary: “So far my feelings towards this country are entirely hostile – but it would be unfair to judge too soon.”25 Though she would come to appreciate aspects of American society, Frances never grew accustomed to the attention she and her husband received and often longed to be back home in her quiet English village. Chesterton seemed to handle the attention with greater equanimity and good humor. As with Frances, though, his first impressions of America, and of New York in particular, were not entirely favorable. His first bit of criticism focused on the Biltmore Hotel, where he and Frances stayed while in New York. The twenty-two-floor luxury hotel located near Grand Central Station had opened eight years prior to the Chestertons’ visit. Chesterton was struck, first of all, by the sheer magnitude of the building. “When I first went into one of the big New York hotels, the first impression was certainly its bigness.” Though he avoided such choice words as those offered by Marianne Weber (i.e., “powerful beasts,” to describe skyscrapers), in his typical epigrammatic style, he played off of the name, Biltmore, wondering “how many national humorists had made the obvious comment of wishing they had built less.”26 He would soon learn, as he traveled to other U.S. cities, that American hotels differed very little one from another and lacked the coziness and idiosyncratic charm of English inns. “In all my American wanderings,” noted Chesterton, “I never saw such a thing as an inn.”27 Instead, he discovered that “there is only one hotel in America. The pattern of it, which is a very rational pattern, is repeated in cities as remote from each other as the capitals of European empires.”28 Not only did he find American hotels all alike, but he found the floors within individual hotels likewise predictably uniform.

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If the passage outside your bedroom door, or hallway as it is called, contains, let us say, a small table with a green vase and a stuffed flamingo, or some trifle of the sort, you may be perfectly certain that there is exactly the same table, vase, and flamingo on every one of the thirty-two landings of that towering habitation.29

Thus, Chesterton saw this kind of hotel as distinctly American and as tending toward “too much uniformity.” However, here as in other instances, he qualified his critique. While the American hotel is American, it “is not America.” What exactly Chesterton meant by this cryptic quip is not entirely clear. A plausible interpretation, though, is that he saw the unappealing uniformity of American hotels stifling the realization of more commendable inclinations even while it expressed, albeit in diluted form, some sort of undeveloped virtue. As Chesterton put it, “that very uniformity disguises not a little natural dignity.”30 One finds in this observation a certain interpretative orientation that was typical of Chesterton and indicative of his wish to avoid the sneering attitude found among earlier British observers. Much like Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher who spent about 25 years living in the United States, Chesterton had a penchant for discovering the “lurking positive.”31 While not blind to American faults, Chesterton, as we will see, tended to highlight Americans’ positive attributes, even if they were not always detectable at a prima facie level. In this sense, he embodied the kind of ambivalence discussed in the Introduction and thus set himself apart from our final visitor, who had more of an eye for the “lurking negative.” With respect to New York’s large hotels, Chesterton was critical of the manner in which they literally and symbolically created a distance between people and the land. He sympathetically quoted a Bulgarian waiter he had met in New York who, in reflecting on his home country’s agricultural practices, gravely said, “From the earth we come and to the earth we return; when people get away from that they are lost.”32 Relating this maxim to New York’s large buildings, Chesterton imagined a “fine American epic” whereby people on the top floors of a big hotel are cut off from those on the bottom floors. He argued that without access to the land those on the top floors would eventually “die or surrender.” While they would initially have access to “modern improvement and conveniences; light and ventilation and telephones and hot and cold water,” once “cut off at the main” their food options would be severely limited. They “could not devour telephone wires, and might even be averse from eating soap.” Conflict with those on the bottom floors, who still had access to “yams and sweet potatoes,” would thus ensue.

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The obvious unsustainability of this condition illustrated the need, as reflected in the words of the Bulgarian waiter, to be close to the land. Here again Chesterton offered an empathetic qualification. “It is a slander on America to suppose that most of them live in large hotels. An enormous number of them live in little wooden houses, looking rather like dolls’-houses, each with a porch in front; and they are immeasurably happier and better than anybody in the very biggest hotel.”33 Chesterton added another qualification. Just as most Americans did not live in hotels, so most Americans did not live in New York; it would be a mistake, therefore, to conclude that New York represented America. “But from the little I did see, I should venture on the generalization that the great part of America is singularly and even strikingly unlike New York.” Not only was New York not like the small farming towns of the Midwest, according to Chesterton, it was also “quite vitally different from the other historic cities of America.”34 He found that, though cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore had not been untouched by “the modern vulgarity of avarice and advertisement,” they still retained unique living traditions; echoes of the country’s republican spirit; and distinctive, democratic, and vital local communities, making them “more like those quiet villages than they are like New York.”35 There were still places in these cities, said Chesterton, “where we can feel so suddenly in the silence its plain garb and formal manners, that the walking ghost of Jefferson would hardly surprise us.”36 In contrast, as he told a reporter from the Montreal Daily Star, New York is “very much like being in hell – very pleasantly of course.”37 In New York, Broadway also invited Chesterton’s interpretive gaze. He stood one evening watching the bright and variegated lights of Times Square and observed to the amusement of the American friends who were with him: “What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any one who was lucky enough to be unable to read.”38 He elaborated at some length on the meaning of this observation in What I Saw in America, explaining that while he appreciated the aesthetic quality of Time Square’s “long kaleidoscope of colored lights,” he regretted that these were created for the purposes of advertisement. It would be one thing, even a noble thing, if they were constructed for the purpose of art. “As a matter of art for art’s sake, they seem to me rather artistic”; but inasmuch as these advertisements “have only the mean and materialistic character of making the rich richer,”39 he found them problematic and indicative of the immodest triumph of industrial capitalism, a theme relevant to Chesterton’s thoughts on America’s experiment with Prohibition.

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prohibition and puritanism It would be impossible for Chesterton to have visited the United States when he did and not have an opinion on Prohibition, as both his journeys to America occurred during enforcement of the Volstead Act. As recorded in his autobiography, “the first [visit] was very near the beginning and the second very near the end of the prolonged freak of Prohibition.”40 That he called it a “freak” is emblematic of Chesterton’s highly critical view of Prohibition. In fact, while he was generally reluctant to offer impressions of America until he had actually spent time in the country, Prohibition was one area where he expressed strong opinions even before his arrival. By his own account, as he entered New York harbor in view of the Statue of Liberty, he teased those “earnest Prohibitionists” on board by suggesting that the iconic statue “ought to be given back to the French, a vicious race abandoned to the culture of the vine,” and proposed “that the last liquors on board should be poured out in a pagan libation before it.”41 Just two days after landing, he expressed his disapproval of Prohibition in an interview with the Boston Herald, where Chesterton described the policy “as the beginning of the destruction of all liberty.”42 In his first American lecture, delivered in Boston the next day, he similarly speculated, in reference to Prohibition, that “if Patrick Henry could return to the earth and look about him at some of the social problems of our day, it is possible that he might modify his observation and confine himself to saying, ‘give me death.’”43 About six weeks into his first tour of the United States he stated even more forcefully in an interview with the New York Times: “Your country began with the Declaration of Independence and ends with prohibition.”44 These views did not soften over time. A decade later, nearly halfway through his second visit, Chesterton told a New York Sun reporter: “It has long been recognized that America was an asylum, but it is only since prohibition that it has resembled a lunatic asylum.”45 His hostility toward Prohibition, however, stemmed not so much from some sort of libertarian opposition to a practice that he enjoyed; and he certainly did appreciate alcohol and was hardly denied its pleasures during his time in the United States. Rather, his opposition was based on concerns about the oppressive processes of bureaucratization; the continuing influences of American Puritanism; the criminal activity fostered, albeit unintentionally, by the policy;46 and the apparent class issues that motivated passage and enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment. On this last point, Chesterton’s views interestingly line up

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with sociologist Joseph Gusfield’s status politics argument put forth in his 1963 book, Symbolic Crusade, where Gusfield argues that the driving force behind the temperance movement was not a purely moral initiative, but was actually a status conflict between the rural, Protestant, middleclass nativists who felt threatened by the growing influence and increasing numbers of urban, mostly Catholic, working-class immigrants. According to Gusfield, the former status group, enlivened by status anxiety, lobbied for passage of anti-liquor legislation in an effort to make illegal a defining consumptive habit of the emerging status group.47 Interestingly, Chesterton saw Prohibition, initially at least, as particularly aimed at African Americans. As he wrote in What I Saw in America, “many of the states of the American Union, which first forbade liquor to citizens, meant simply to forbid it to the negroes.” That is, he believed “the whole business began with the problem of black labor” before it was extended to other workers. This was one of the few times Chesterton discussed the plight of blacks in America, which distinguishes him from the other visitors considered in this study, all of whom gave more attention to the issue. He was evidently aware of this omission and offered the following defense: “I have not attempted in this book to deal adequately with the question of the negro” because “I do not think I have anything particularly valuable to say or suggest.” He added, “the negro problem certainly demands more study than a sight-seer could give it; and this book is controversial enough about things that I have really considered, without permitting it to exhibit me as a sight-seer who shoots at sight.”48 Nevertheless, he felt comfortable enough to describe the “enslavement and importation of negroes” as “the crime and catastrophe of American history.” He also noted that he was most struck by African Americans’ “charming and astonishing cheerfulness.”49 Dorothy Collins, for her part, provided further observations on racial segregation in a letter to her mother written while traveling by train between Roanoke, Virginia and Chattanooga, Tennessee: “We are really in the South now,” she wrote on stationery from the Roanoke hotel, where the English travelers had spent the previous night. “The waiting rooms, etc. are all marked – white men – Colored men – White women – Colored women. The colored people are not allowed to mix with whites in the trains, trams, restaurants, churches, etc.” Like both Tocqueville and Marianne Weber before her, she opined on the incompatibility of these practices with religious principles: “Most unchristian I think.”50 Chesterton himself discussed race in relation to religion in a counterintuitive discussion of “progress.” He first invoked and commended

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Jefferson’s lament regarding the institution of slavery: “Jefferson, in the dark estate of his simple Deism, said the sight of slavery in his country made him tremble, remembering that God is just.” He observed that over time some Americans progressed from this view to the more scientific views of Arthur de Gobineau, the same French aristocrat whose racist views Tocqueville objected to in the 1850s. “Gobineau, who began most of the modern talk about the superiority and inferiority of racial stocks,” wrote Chesterton, “was seized upon eagerly by the less generous of the slave-owners and trumpeted as a new truth of science and new defense of slavery.” This “movement of the progressive sort” resulted in a “materialistic hardening,” whereby “slavery grew more brazen and brutal” and thus “replaced the remorse of Jefferson.”51 In any respect, Chesterton, like Gusfield, interpreted Prohibition along class lines, adding that enforced sobriety allowed the business class to better control and exploit the workers for the purposes of increased productivity. “The real power behind Prohibition is simply the plutocratic power of the pushing employers who wish to get the last inch of work out of their workmen.”52 He noticed during his travels that the wealthy never had difficulties getting liquor if they wanted it. “Prohibition does not prohibit, so far as the wealthy are concerned . . . it is a law that the rich make knowing they can always break it.”53 In this sense, then, his disapproval of Prohibition can be situated within his more general frustration with the advancement of industrial capitalism, a development for which Chesterton reserved some of his most trenchant criticisms, which we will consider more fully in the next chapter. Linking Prohibition to the interests of the business leaders in this way helps to explain why Chesterton saw the policy as no less than a new form of slavery. This association between Prohibition and slavery was made clear in his expressed opposition to the possible transplantation of the law to England. The proposed transference, according to Chesterton, was based on the argument that “England may find it necessary to become teetotal in order to compete commercially with the efficiency and economy of teetotal America.” He noted the absurdity of such an argument by imagining justifications for a similar sort of borrowing situated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when America had “one of the most economical and efficient of all forms of labor,” that is, slavery. In both instances, efficiency and economic superiority were the driving justifications. The earlier “servile state” was defended on the same grounds as the “far more materialistic utopia” of modern commercial capitalism.54

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Elsewhere, he made even more explicit the parallels he saw between the wage-earning practices of modern industrialism and slavery. “The trend of the world today . . . is to treat human beings like machines and see how much they can produce, which was the method of the planters of South Carolina toward their slaves in the old days.”55 As it concerns Prohibition, it was a policy that allowed the bourgeoisie to push the worker to greater industry and efficiency. These were dehumanizing values, according to Chesterton, endemic to modern capitalism and not unrelated to the residual influence of American Puritanism. Chesterton went so far as to argue, at one point, that “Prohibitionism” was really a new form of Puritanism. “The religion that remains in the ruck of American villages doubtless differs from the origins from which its sects arose. It is not pure Puritanism. It is something rather impure that is the only practical product of Puritanism. It might be called, in the more general sense, Prohibitionism.”56 According to Chesterton, Puritanism was a form of religious expression that concerned itself with the trivial; it was defined by “having righteous indignation about the wrong thing.”57 He also believed that Puritanism was a narrowed and simplistic understanding of Christianity that reduced religious belief and practice to one’s oppositional stance against such practices as alcohol consumption and gambling. Even the so-called anti-Puritans (he would place George Bernard Shaw, Sinclair Lewis, and H. L. Mencken in this camp) were really, according to Chesterton, Puritans at heart, because they, like the pure Puritans, “seem incurably convinced that things like [wine or whisky or games] are the main concern of religion.”58 Prohibitionism, then, was the rechanneling of a certain energy and passion derived from the defining qualities of the Puritanism of America’s past. He elaborated on this point in a 1930 New York Times Magazine interview: When the pioneers of this country started westward, they traveled in covered wagons with closed minds. The Puritan is likely to be a fanatic. He believes in the simplicity of human nature. If there is any defect he thinks he can find one thing to cure it. He does not realize either the complexity of the world or the complexity of human nature. He suddenly decides that drink is the cause of much misery and he promptly adopts prohibition as a panacea for all ills.59

Chesterton presciently anticipated that, following the suppression of alcohol consumption, other practices, such as smoking (a habit he also enjoyed), would be similarly crusaded against. In this regard, he jestingly

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proposed that the next step should be to limit talking. “Talking often goes with tobacco as it goes with beer; and what is more relevant, talking may often lead both to beer and tobacco . . . If the American Puritan is so anxious to be a censor morum, he should obviously put a stop to the evil communications that really corrupt good manners.”60 More seriously, Chesterton also saw Puritanism as directly related to the very onset and advancement of modern capitalism.

the spirit of capitalism revisited On this subject, Chesterton offered reflections remarkably similar to those put forth in Max Weber’s famous thesis discussed in the previous chapter, though I find no evidence that Chesterton ever read Weber. The English version of The Protestant Ethic was not published until 1930, during Chesterton’s second trip to the United States. Nevertheless, during this trip, in an interview with a reporter from Albany, New York, Chesterton highlighted the energetic nature of American economic activity and advanced an analysis that comes strikingly close to Weber’s thesis. The people are too eager to build up: they spend their energy in building up something that will be taken down in a few years. It has grown to be almost a religion with the people here. It is a very subtle thing. I don’t know where it came from. It is the outgrowth of history, of the exhilarating climate and the pioneer spirit, I suppose. The Puritans came here full of ideals or religion as if a new light shone. That passionate energy for religion with which they came to this country passed away and the people have thrown their tremendous energy into business. It is the worship of activity for its own sake. They worship it without an objective.61

While Chesterton marveled at the eagerness of enterprising Americans and rhetorically wondered about the source of this energy, he did not shy from offering an explanation, one that closely approximated Weber’s thesis. In fact, in another interview, nearly a month later, he made quite clear that he had at least some idea of “where it came from.” Chesterton, like Weber, saw an elective affinity, if not a causal relationship, between Puritanism and industrial capitalism: “I think America’s religion of industrialism, building, building, building, is an outgrowth of Puritanism.”62 He also appreciated the subtlety and complexity of this relationship. While Chesterton did not, like Weber, offer an analysis of social change symbolized in a transitional figure like Benjamin Franklin, he did speak of the development of the spirit of capitalism as an “outgrowth of history.” Also like Weber, he spoke of a work ethic or “eagerness to build up” as an orientation that was once rooted in a

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particular form of Protestant Christianity (i.e., pure Puritanism), but whose religious roots eventually “passed away.” In America it is still the individual making good in trade, because it was originally the individual making good in goodness; that is, in salvation of the soul . . . And so at last religion surrendered to the trick of trade; learned from hucksters and hustlers how to “put it over”; counted converts like customers and thought rather of selling the goods than of seeking the good.63

Thus a work ethic, which used to be a means to a greater end, had become an end in itself. For Weber, the light cloak has become an iron cage; for Chesterton, “people have thrown their tremendous energy into business” and now “worship it” as an “activity for its own sake.” While in Detroit, where Chesterton gave lectures on two occasions in late February 1921, he met one of America’s leading industrialists in the person of Henry Ford. As recorded in Frances’s diary, on February 27 Chesterton was “fetched by Mr. Ford’s representatives and taken out to see him at Dearborn, 10 miles from Detroit.”64 Although Chesterton said it was a “pleasure” to meet Ford, not surprisingly there was much about the great master of the factory assembly line that he did not like. He described Ford as a “man quite capable of views which I think silly to the point of insanity,” and as one “capable of being wildly wrong.” While Chesterton mentioned Ford’s Peace Ship campaign of World War I – which he characterized as “preposterous” and “a national combination of imagination and ignorance” – as well as his “campaign against the Jews,” it was “his commercial purposes” as an industrialist that in his view “made him a mere sliver of what was human.” According to Chesterton, Ford “is not a man who merely wants to run people; it is rather his views that run him, and perhaps run away with him.”65 The day after their first stay in Detroit, the Chestertons traveled to Cleveland, where they met another famous American, Helen Keller, whom Frances described in her diary as “quite pretty and very lively,” and who “amused herself by making up paradoxes and retailing them” to her guests. “Very good were they too,” Frances said of Keller’s paradoxes.66 Ten days after Chesterton’s second lecture in Detroit, they arrived in Oklahoma City, where they stayed for a couple of days. Like Weber they noted the rapid development of the area. On the day of their arrival Frances recorded in her diary this feature of the city: “the town that has been created out of the Indian prairie in less than 30 years through [the] finding of oil.”67

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Chesterton’s observations of economic development in Oklahoma were quite similar to Weber’s. Recall from Chapter 3 Weber’s stated belief that within a year the “marvelously attractive” Muskogee “will look like Oklahoma, that is, like any other American city. With almost lightning speed everything that stands in the way of capitalistic culture is being crushed.”68 In Lawrence Scaff’s analysis of these passages, he argues that Weber’s words should not be interpreted as an unqualified jeremiad against modern capitalism; instead, Weber had a more ambivalent and nuanced view. One finds something of the same in Chesterton’s assessment, as put forth in a discussion about Oklahoma that he first published in the Chicago Daily Tribune at the end of his 1921 trip. On the one hand, Chesterton “felt a perfectly genuine and generous exhilaration of freedom and fresh enterprise in new places like Oklahoma.” On the other hand, in words quite similar to Weber’s, he saw the spread of “industrialism . . . choking up the growth of natural things everywhere and turning the green world gray.”69 As it concerns the triumph of industrialism over nature, the Chestertons agreed with both Weber and Tocqueville in their assessment of Niagara Falls, which the English travelers visited a month before arriving in Oklahoma. Recall that Tocqueville predicted the despoilment of the area around the falls, which was realized by the time of Weber’s visit. Still, Weber appreciated the natural beauty of the falls “despite the shameful disfigurement.” Frances Chesterton felt much the same. She found the falls to be quite lovely, but also a disappointment because of the factories on the American side that went right up to the water’s edge.70 As it concerns agrarianism, however, Chesterton was more optimistic than Weber about the future of the small family farm. “Farms will last,” he wrote, “and farming will always last.”71 In contrast, Weber stated that in the United States there no longer existed “what might be called ‘rural society.’”72 Chesterton held strongly to the Jeffersonian vision of a democratic society populated with small family farms, close to the land, and with farmers and townspeople producing their own locally unique cultural products – a perspective that would surely please the Bulgarian waiter Chesterton met in New York. For Chesterton, scale was significant and consequential; he saw big as dangerous and harmful (whether it be big business or big government) and small as beautiful.73 Thus, he was heartened by what he witnessed in terms of the continuing vitality of America’s small towns and small farms. They represented a small-scale democratic societal arrangement that would serve as a “counterweight” to the destructive spread of industrialism.

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[T]he modern agricultural life of America is still the only real life there is. It is, especially, all that remains of the real popular life. Exactly in so far as men are villagers, men are democrats; in so far as they still live in villages, they are citizens; citizenship has vanished from the cities . . . In so far as America retains certain rural truths and traditions, it is exactly by those . . . that they may yet survive and succeed.74

Chesterton believed this agrarian-based small-town life could save America “from the calamities of wealth and science.”75 On this point, Chesterton’s wish or prediction would clearly not be realized. Between 1920 and 2010, the number of farms in the United States decreased from more than 6.4 million to about 2.2 million farms.76 In 1920, 27 percent of the American labor force was employed in agriculture. By 2000, this had decreased to 1.9 percent.77 Little could Chesterton have imagined the steady and rapid disappearance of the family farm that would ensue in the eighty years after his last visit. Instead of small-scale agriculture checking the spread of industrialism, as Chesterton anticipated, industrial capitalism turned farming itself into large-scale agribusiness. It would be wrong to conclude that Chesterton was entirely blind to this eventual outcome. To the contrary, he noticed in Oklahoma that the small towns did not develop their own local culture but imported culture from the cities, via the cinema and railroads. What worried Chesterton was that “you would hardly find in Oklahoma what was found in Oberammergau” (the Bavarian village famous for its economy of local crafters and locally produced Passion play, which has been performed every ten years since 1634). “What goes to Oklahoma is not the peasant play, but the cinema. And the objection to the cinema is not so much that it goes to Oklahoma as that it does not come from Oklahoma.” While Chesterton would have wished for small-town Oklahomans to produce their own cultural products, as did (and still do) the villagers of Oberammergau, he saw the infusion of city culture as importing “a blast of death and a reek of rotting things.”78 Moreover, Chesterton even seems to have anticipated the triumph of industrialism over small farming, and worried that the “ruralism” in America was not really rural. Instead, the utilitarian mind-set, imported from the industrialized cities, had already infected agrarian life such that the farm was not treated so much as “a farm to feed people, but as a shop from which to sell food.”79 Here Chesterton essentially restated what Weber had said twenty-five years earlier during his St. Louis lecture. Therefore, both Weber and Chesterton, in reflecting on small towns in Oklahoma, were concerned that industrial capitalism would triumph over

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something more innocent, necessary, and admirable. For Weber the “marvelously attractive” was being “crushed” by a “capitalistic culture.” For Chesterton, the genuine and exhilarating freedom of fresh enterprise was being subjected to the “blast of death and a reek of rotting things” imported from the “great modern urban centers.” In both cases, the foreign observers offered strong words to describe a process of change with which neither was entirely enthusiastic. In Weber’s case, he viewed capitalism as having fully eliminated rural society. In Chesterton’s case, he discovered in America a threatened, though still vibrant and democratic, agrarian-based small-town culture, the continuation of which could serve as a potential check against the crushing triumph of industrial capitalism. It is perhaps telling, given these different emphases, that when Weber channeled the spirit of America he found Benjamin Franklin, whereas when Chesterton did so he summoned the ghost of Thomas Jefferson.

main street and distributism Chesterton’s sympathy with this type of society lined up with his commitment to “distributism”; and he (along with Hilaire Belloc, Cecil Chesterton, Vincent McNabb, and others) devoted much time and energy to promoting distributist principles as an alternative to both industrial capitalism and socialism. Distributism featured in more than one of Chesterton’s famous debates with George Bernard Shaw in England and was given fullest articulation in his book, An Outline of Sanity, published in 1926, between his two trips to America. In the book, Chesterton argued for “a return to the sanity of field and workshop, of craftsman and peasant, from the insanity of trusts and machinery, of unemployment, over-production and starvation.”80 Distributism encouraged small-scale local production, a decentralized agrarian-based economic system, widely distributed ownership of private property, and limitations on the machineries of mass production. It bears close resemblance to the Jeffersonian vision of the yeoman farmer. Chesterton mentioned the concept a number of times in his various reflections on America. His distributist orientation was also relevant to his meditations on Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, which was published the year before Chesterton’s first visit and was much discussed during both of his trips in the United States. Chesterton serendipitously met Lewis while in Chicago on his first visit. He was scheduled to give a lecture on the evening of February 23, 1921 (at Orchestra Hall, where 3,000 would attend); the day of the lecture he had wandered into a bookstore operated by Walter Hill.

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Here he found both Sinclair Lewis and the author John Drinkwater browsing the store. The chance meeting unfolded into a most interesting and fanciful encounter. After Walter Hill invited the three authors to sit and chat, they discussed several topics, including the practice of giving autographs. Lewis noted that he had “received floods of letters from people in the small towns throughout the middle west taking him to task for stating that ‘Main Street’ is typical of all American towns; but that comparatively few were anxious for his autographed copies.” Drinkwater noted that he had autographed “countless copies of his ‘Abraham Lincoln’” book; and Chesterton “stated that he had not kept actual count, but that he was sure he had autographed more than six thousand books, pictures, postcards, menus, etc.”81 Walter Hill invited the three literary men to stay for lunch and to partake of “something rare in his safe besides books.” An observer, Earl E. Fisk, suggested that the three men should write a play together. As they discussed this idea “in a haze of alcohol,” Lewis proposed that the play be called Marry the Queen of Scotch,82 and it was agreed that Chesterton would write the first act. Not surprisingly, given his love of detective novels and his success with the Father Brown mysteries, Chesterton decided that the play should be a murder mystery. “There is nothing like a nice murder,” Chesterton said, “to get human interest into the play.” Drinkwater would write the next act to deepen the mystery, and Lewis would conclude with the solution and “happy ending.” The plot would involve a murder victim who was a world-renowned American prohibitionist found dead in his Paris hotel room with the murder weapon, a broken quart bottle, laying next to his body.83 There is no evidence that this proposed play ever came to fruition. As it concerns Lewis’s Main Street, it seems that Chesterton was in agreement with the many letters Lewis received objecting to his depiction of small-town America. One also gathers that Chesterton was unlikely to have made much of an effort to secure an autographed copy of the book himself. Journalists repeatedly asked Chesterton, during his second tour of the United States, what he thought of Lewis’s book, a question prompted by the fact that in 1930 Lewis was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for Main Street. Chesterton said that he was puzzled by the choice and that if he were on the Nobel Prize Committee he would not have given the award to Lewis. It bothered him that a book that “ridiculed whole cross sections of American life” should be “singled out as the greatest and worthiest of his period.” Instead, he suggested that either Edith Wharton or Thornton Wilder would have been better choices for the honor.84

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Given these inquiries, it’s not surprising that in several venues Chesterton gave attention to Main Street – he referred to the book in interviews, articles, and in his two books on America. Main Street is the story of a young woman, Carol, who grows up in Minnesota’s Twin Cities at the turn of the twentieth century. She graduates from the fictional Blodgett College, spends a year in Chicago studying to become a librarian, and then works in the St. Paul Library before meeting and marrying Will Kennecott, a small-town doctor from Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. The story centers on Carol’s wish to “reform” Gopher Prairie and make it more cultured and urbane. Lewis depicts the inhabitants of Gopher Prairie as smug, provincial, gossipy, class conscious, hypocritical, mindlessly patriotic, and dull. Carol is consistently thwarted and frustrated in her efforts to transform the town in accordance with her ill-defined cosmopolitan vision. With her lack of success in effecting reform, she feels increasingly claustrophobic and longs for an escape from Gopher Prairie. For Lewis, Gopher Prairie is a prototype of early twentiethcentury small-town America, and it is not unlike Sauk Centre, the small Minnesota town where he grew up. Chesterton, not surprisingly, given his reflections on Oklahoma and his penchant for finding the “lurking positive,” took issue with Lewis’s characterization of Main Street America. It is not that he disagreed with some of the particulars portrayed in Lewis’s novel. Rather, he thought Lewis emphasized the wrong things. That is, Lewis spent too much time on the dark or shady side of Main Street, rather than on the sunny side. Chesterton believed that both sides should be considered in order to give a full and accurate picture of the place. As it concerns the dark side, Chesterton agreed with “this famous critic” on at least one point, namely Lewis’s portrayal of Main Street’s materialistic tendencies and admiration of commercial success.85 It was not the poet or the artist or even the farmer who the residents of Gopher Prairie held in high regard; rather, it was the millionaire corporate man, Percy Bresnahan, and the developer/ promoter, James Blausser, to whom they showed the greatest deference and respect. Chesterton agreed that this esteem was misplaced. “This illusion of a sort of strength or sanity in modern business operations is in fact the chief falsity which poisons our present society.”86 Chesterton also agreed with Lewis that residents of Main Street enjoyed little privacy, at least as compared to what the Chestertons were accustomed to in England. Lewis’s protagonist, Carol, often feels that she is being watched, and there are not a few scenes where curious and gossipy townspeople walk past her house while looking into her

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windows. Chesterton experienced something of this during his time on Main Street: “I do feel that there is a lack of privacy which means so much to an Englishman. Indeed, the almost universal hospitality which I saw there made me feel that every man’s home, instead of being his castle, is his hotel.”87 The lack of privacy was likely exacerbated by Chesterton’s celebrity status, a feature of America, as noted earlier, that especially wearied Frances. As she wrote in a letter home, “The real truth is that I care more for my dog, donkey, and garden in the little English village where we live than for all the publicity in the world.”88 Chesterton’s concessions notwithstanding, in the main he thought that Lewis’s characterization of Main Street was far too pessimistic; and this view was largely, though not exclusively, based on the six weeks that the Chestertons lived with the Bixler family in South Bend, Indiana. Given this somewhat limited exposure, Chesterton admitted that he may not have had the most complete picture of Main Street. As he put it in an interview with a New York Times reporter, “I do not want to be presumptuous. I have lived on Main Street but a few weeks.” He playfully added, “Knowing very little about it, I suppose I am a good one to discuss it.” In discussing it, however, he did not focus only on his own experiences, but recounted scenes from Lewis’s Main Street and reinterpreted them in a more positive light. One of these concerns Dr. Kennicott’s heroic and skillful effort, with the help of his wife Carol, to reach and operate on a seriously injured farmer during a treacherous snowstorm. Consider Chesterton’s recounting of the scene: A doctor who can drive through a storm and under the most unfavorable conditions operate upon a man and save a life, a wife who can accompany him and, though unaccustomed to these things, can stand by and administer ether – people like that have something fine in them, they have qualities that go for the making of a great country. Though Mr. Lewis has described incidents such as these, he has stressed the foibles and little peculiarities that are, after all, nonessential, and in that way has produced a picture which, though it has truth in it, nevertheless puts emphasis on what to my mind are the wrong things.89

Having read Main Street prior to his time with the Bixler family, Chesterton was “quite prepared for anything” and “expected to see a number of caricatures stalking up and down Main Street.” Instead, he found much that he liked and admired. “I really found Main Street a most charming and entertaining thoroughfare, and I was not only entertained by its citizens, but I found them to be a most commendable lot of people.”90 One thing that particularly struck Chesterton was the manner in which people from different classes related to one another, an

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observation that contradicted the petty class-consciousness depicted in Lewis’s novel. Chesterton told of one incident when, after giving a lecture in a college or university town, a professor approached him and complimented Chesterton on parts of his lecture. Shortly thereafter, this same college professor’s chauffeur walked up to Chesterton and, in a very similar manner, expressed appreciation for one point in his lecture while taking issue with another. According to Chesterton, “There was absolutely no difference between the tone and the gesture and bodily carriage of the professor and his servant.”91 Dorothy Collins similarly noted how the Bixlers knew “all the local tradespeople” to whom they were “introduced on every possible occasion. All very democratic and friendly.” She observed the same lack of class-consciousness among the Notre Dame students. “It is really democratic in a way we do not know democracy in England. Some of the boys come from rich homes and others work in the town of South Bend for a certain time each day in shops or lifts or restaurants in order to get enough money to pay their fees. There is no difference made and they are treated as equals by the rich ones without any question of snobbery.”92 Chesterton experienced this indifference to class distinctions as “a blast of fresh air.” In America, he observed, “it is as if people took for granted that they were really created equal,” a social condition that contrasted starkly with the situation in England where “class consciousness is so morbidly acute.”93 He was repeatedly struck by the familiarity between people who he would have regarded as coming from different class situations. “I was surprised, for instance, at hearing the butcher ask one of his customers about the health of her family; I was astonished to see a peddler being invited into the house, and the familiar manner in which the grocer greeted a college professor gave me a start. Grocers do not do that in England.”94 As noted earlier, this more positive account of the sunny side of Main Street was informed in important respects by the time the Chestertons and Dorothy Collins lived with the Bixler family in South Bend. The president of Notre Dame, Father John O’Donnell, had identified several options to accommodate the English visitors during their stay in South Bend. The Bixler home was the first option that the traveling party explored and it was where they remained for their six weeks at Notre Dame. The Bixlers lived less than a mile from the center of the university in a modest fourbedroom house at 209 East Pokagon Street. Living in the home were Anna and Dellhard Bixler (who, like Chesterton’s father, was a real estate agent), their two small daughters (four years old and six months old),

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an “old grandfather,” and another lodger. As Dorothy remembered with wonder: “How we all packed in was a mystery.”95 The Chestertons and Dorothy Collins grew very fond of the Bixlers and fully entered in to their home life. They were originally meant to have dinners at the university but, after two days, asked instead to return “home” in the evenings to dine at the Bixlers. They found the children to be “delightful” and grew particularly fond of the four-year-old Delphine. Chesterton enjoyed Dellhard’s home brew; and Frances was impressed by the democratic nature of the household: “father, mother, and grandfather all help with the housework.”96 Dorothy Collins was equally impressed. She described Mrs. Bixler as “marvelous.” “She runs everything,” she wrote to her mother, “I admire her tremendously.” Dorothy also found “the husband . . . just as marvelous in his way.” “From the time he comes in at about 6 o’clock until he leaves the next morning, he takes entire charge of the baby,” she wrote. “He is quite as good at it as Mrs. Bixler is.”97 In sum, they found the Bixlers a “most amusing” family that offered them “a glimpse of the real middle class American life.” When they departed on November 15, 1930, the Chestertons and the Bixlers were moved to tears.98 Given this experience, it is not surprising that Chesterton viewed as misguided Lewis’s wish to reform Main Street. To the contrary, Chesterton “wondered whether these people in that little town are missing anything in life.” He could not “think of any way in which they could be changed to advantage.”99 The particular Main Street upon which Chesterton dwelled in 1930 was, as it is today, a quintessential football town. In fact, the Chestertons arrived just days before the initiation of Notre Dame’s new football stadium. Chesterton was introduced at the ceremony, where he met the legendary Knute Rockne. Chesterton never attended a game during his time in South Bend, as he was away giving lectures on the weekends, but he did see one or two practices. The important place of football at Notre Dame was not lost on the visitors. In a letter home, Frances wrote of the various academic buildings, the “large and beautiful church,” and the library, yet acknowledged that “the glory of this place, to the students anyhow, is the football stadium, that holds 53,000 people.”100 Dorothy Collins did attend a couple of games, including an “uneven” victory over Navy (26-2). She was taken by the enormity of the stadium (“Everything is on such a huge scale in this country”); the enthusiasm of the crowd in spite of the “bitterly cold” weather; and the passion for football generally (“The whole country is crazy about football”). While she found the games “really most thrilling,” she also noted that

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they were “fairly rough.”101 While lecturing in Cleveland, Chesterton was asked by a journalist whether he thought Americans took football too seriously, to which he responded, “I was rather agreeably surprised in the case of Notre Dame. I didn’t see so much of a savage fanatical spirit about it. They seemed full of proper sporting humor – hoping the other chap might have every chance to win. But maybe,” he added, “this was because Notre Dame generally won.”102 Chesterton traveled extensively throughout the United States, and while South Bend may have been his most in-depth and direct experience with small-town life in America, he did not see it as unique. Nor did Dorothy Collins who, while living with the Bixlers, read Robert and Helen Lynd’s Middletown, which she described as “a most interesting sociological study of a town in the Middle West which might quite well be South Bend.”103 In fact, the location of the Lynd study, Muncie, Indiana, was in the same state and less than 150 miles south of South Bend. Chesterton found the Bixlers to be “fine and sincere; kindly and considerate”; and he discovered that “most Americans are courteous and considerate, especially of their inferiors.”104 Contrary to Lewis’s characterization, he saw Main Street America not as something deserving of derision and in need of reform, but as the very thing to which reformers should aspire: And in places like that described as Main Street, that comparative equality can immediately be felt. The men may be provincials, but they are certainly citizens; they consult on a common basis. And I repeat that in this, after all, they do achieve what many prophets and righteous men have died to achieve. This plain village, fairly prosperous, fairly equal, untaxed by tyrants and untroubled by wars, is after all the place which reformers have regarded as their aim; whenever reformers have used their wits sufficiently to have any aim. The march to Utopia, the march to the Earthly Paradise, the march to the New Jerusalem, has been very largely the march to Main Street. And the latest modern sensation is a book written to show how wretched it is to live there.105

What Chesterton liked about Main Street corresponded with his distributist vision. The small agrarian town, characterized by personal relationships of cooperation and service, fostered a sort of democratic order that Chesterton idealized. Interestingly, Chesterton’s positive take on the small town, small farm, and local craftsman anticipated the resurgence of interest in agrarianism and local economies championed in the work of such contemporary writers as Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, and Wendell Berry. Indeed, Wendell Berry’s fictional Port William represents what one could call a Chestertonian antidote to Lewis’s Main Street.

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Berry’s novels are situated in the years prior to and during World War II, a few decades after the setting of Lewis’s Main Street, which is historically focused on the years just before and during World War I. One could argue that a Berry character such as Jayber Crow represents the exact antithesis of Lewis’s Carol Kennicott. Where Carol moved to a small town and longed to alter or escape its stultifying provincialism, Jayber returned to Port William, after a period of wandering, to find a home, a community, a sense of place. To say that Berry’s fiction differs significantly from Lewis’s would be an understatement. While Berry doesn’t overlook individual flaws and foibles among his Port William characters, he does not see these as the essence of small-town life, nor does he mock them. Berry’s work, instead, celebrates the virtues of small-town life; the humanizing qualities of “membership” in a community; and the beauty, groundedness, and artistry of small-scale family farming. The present-day renewed interest in craftsmanship and in developments like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), farmer’s markets, the slow food movement, and farm-to-table restaurants represent societal inclinations toward the sort of distributism Chesterton defended and the benefits and virtues of the village that he saw still surviving, though under threat, when he visited America. The emergence of these developments suggest that at least some are still asking, as did Weber in 1904, “whether and how the no longer existing rural community or society can arise anew so as to be strong and enduring.”106

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6 Chestertonian Distributism and the Democratic Ideal

There was, as revealed in his assessment of Main Street, much that G. K. Chesterton appreciated about Americans. He admired their generosity, courage, hospitality, and friendliness. He was repeatedly impressed with the way people from different classes related to one another. Other qualities, however, he found less attractive, and chief among these were the related faces of the American “mood” that he referred to as “hustle and uplift.” The former, which he also described as “the last hysteria of the herd instinct,” approximated the sort of restlessness that Tocqueville noticed among Americans a century earlier.1 In an interview during his first visit to the United States, Chesterton made clear that, while he liked the American people, he was not impressed with their “hustle.”2 Frances, who was sometimes overwhelmed by the frenzied pace and noise of American life, similarly told a reporter, “You are in such a surprising hurry here about everything.”3 In describing the busyness, hustle, and energy of the American people, Chesterton noticed that it seemed to lack a clear objective. Instead, he observed “passionate worship of energy for its own sake,” and called it a “chief fault of the American people.”4 Dorothy Collins agreed with the Chestertons on this point; as she complained in a letter to her mother, she found American energy and friendliness at times overpowering: The Americans are kind in a way that overwhelms and almost smothers one. Their restlessness, vitality, and noisiness almost leaves one breathless and sometimes, unless one is feeling very strong, almost a nervous wreck. I cannot explain it. You need to be in the country to appreciate what I mean, although just to meet one or two typical Americans in England gives one an idea of their bounding energy.5

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Along with this restless and forceful energy, Chesterston observed the related quality of a kind of distractedness or “homelessness” among Americans. To illustrate this point, he described the practice common in American restaurants at the time where people would “frequently start up and dart from the room at a summons from the telephone.” He was relieved to discover, while staying at a Canadian hotel, that such paging was forbidden in the hotel’s dining room.6 He contrasted this with American practices and specifically recalled an incident in a crowded and smoky Pittsburg parterre, where calls for a Mr. Anderson rang out interminably. One can only imagine what he would make of the disruptive qualities of today’s social media. As touched upon in the last chapter, he associated the hurried pace, noise, and “general restlessness” of Americans with the triumph of industrial capitalism in America.7 The second aspect of the American mood that Chesterton detected – and found off-putting – was “uplift” or “cheerfulness.” “Though I really like Americans,” said Chesterton, “I think their cheerfulness is the most dismal thing about them.” As with hustle, Chesterton linked cheerfulness with the “unrealities of plutocracy and promotion.” He did not see it as a natural attribute of Americans, but as that which was fostered by the cultural influences of commercial capitalism. The omnipresence of advertising and commerce essentially encouraged and trained Americans to be this way. Echoing Weber’s observations about Americans’ objectless optimism, Chesterton noted that in America, “Everybody is educated in a sort of permanent ethic of unmeaning hopefulness.” They somehow feel it a duty to be “as cheerful as the cheerfullest man in sight.”8 It should be noted, on this point, that Chesterton was himself no gloomy pessimist. Indeed, his wit and warmth were among his most often noted personality traits, so much so that even his sparring partners, though disagreeing with him publicly on many important issues, enjoyed and admired his conviviality and good humor. Cosmo Hamilton, who debated Chesterton in both England and the United States, for example, respected Chesterton’s debating skills, word mastery, mirth, and sportsmanship. After a debate with Chesterton in London, Hamilton said that he “carried away from that room a respect and admiration for this Tomboy among dictionaries, this philosophical Peter Pan, this humorous Dr. Johnson, this king and gallant Cherub, this profound student and wise master which has grown steadily ever since.”9 The cheerfulness to which Chesterton objected was of a different kind, one shaped by the advertising practices of commercial capitalism. He felt that the boastfulness, exaggeration, even deception endemic to

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promotional advertising influenced the character of Americans. The individual was, in this climate, compelled toward a sort of boosterism, a cheerful elevation of the self that imitated the selling of a manufactured product. “The Americans were never naturally boomster or business bullies.”10 Rather, the cultural ubiquity of commercial capitalism essentially pushed them to become “believers in selfish, sensational self-advertisement.”11 Having linked American cheerfulness to commercial advertising in this way, it is not surprising, given Chesterton’s views about capitalism, that he would consider cheerfulness to be such a dreary personality trait. Chesterton also found distasteful the related qualities of enthusiasm and optimism, which he likewise connected to the promotional emphasis of competitive commercialism and which he thought encouraged egotism and conceit. As with cheerfulness, he did not see these inclinations as natural to Americans, but rather as traits that had been inculcated over time. “[Americans] have been deliberately and dogmatically taught to be conceited. They have been systematically educated in a theory of enthusiasm, which degrades it into mere egotism. The American has received as a sort of religion the notion that blowing his own trumpet is as important as the trump of doom.”12 Chesterton thus detected in early twentiethcentury America a tendency that would become an even more pronounced cultural obsession over time, especially in America’s schools, where the promotion of “self-esteem” has become a central pedagogical preoccupation.13 He would probably not be surprised, then, by the extent to which Americans would come to view cheerfulness and optimism as the normal or healthy state of the human condition; and he would likely find troubling, given his criticisms of psychology, the widespread practice of achieving these personality traits through psychopharmacological remedies. The preference for cheerfulness is so taken for granted today that we have essentially pathologized overseriousness, sadness, even shyness, and now advise those inflicted with these “unhealthy” inclinations to medicate themselves into a sunny Prozac personality.14 Chesterton’s grumpiness toward American cheerfulness is revealed in an interesting anecdote recounted in Ian Ker’s recent biography on Chesterton. When, on one occasion during his second trip to the United States, a Notre Dame professor greeted Chesterton, he only “got a grunt in reply.” When the professor commented on the Englishman’s “lack of cheerfulness,” the typically genial Chesterton replied, “One should be given the luxury of a little private grouch once in a while.”15

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One imagines that Chesterton would be even more insistent on this indulgence were he to experience American society today. Chesterton was also bothered that outsiders paid so much attention to cheerfulness and optimism, while ignoring other more commendable qualities. He felt that foreigners focused on and, in some cases, sought to import what Chesterton viewed as America’s less appealing traits. “We are only called upon to admire the Americans for their hustle, their publicity, their commercial amalgamations . . . we are especially taught to hail as the best thing in America what is certainly the worst thing in America . . . the horrible and repulsive thing called Optimism.”16 Instead, he wished greater attention was given to more appealing features of American national character. “The real, natural Americans are candid, generous, capable of beautiful wonder and gratitude; enthusiastic about things external to themselves; easily contented and not particularly conceited.”17 He regretted that “nothing is ever said of the real republican virtues which still survive” and which could still be found in parts of Main Street America.18 Again, Chesterton observed that these more endearing American qualities had been undermined by “the false commercial ideal,” which instead pressed Americans to struggle “against modesty as if it were morbidity; and actually try to coarsen their natural courtesy.”19

conformist individualism The optimism and cheerfulness to which Chesterton objected was arguably just one feature of a larger related phenomenon, namely the distinctively conformist habits that he detected in American society. Here his work follows on a Tocquevillian theme considered in Chapter 2. Tocqueville also identified an American preoccupation with the individual that was paradoxically coupled with a concomitant, and somewhat ironic, tendency toward conformism. Tocqueville saw America as a nation of “individualists who were deeply conformist,”20 or, put another way, as a society with contradictory tendencies “toward individual independence and toward conformity and submission to the crowd.”21 Chesterton picked up on this paradox and extended Tocqueville’s insight by attempting to show how American individualism actually led to conformism. Americans, according to Chesterton, “value and even venerate the individual.” In this exaltation of the individual, however, Chesterton noted a “curious contradiction,” namely that American “individualism is the reverse of individuality.” Chesterton explained this contradiction by pointing to the competitive habits fostered by the

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practices of a capitalist society. “Where men are trying to compete with each other they are trying to copy each other. They become standardized by the very standard of self.”22 Americans were particularly vulnerable to this habit of competing with and copying others, according to Chesterton, because they “are a very self-conscious people,” who are “intensely sensitive” and “conscious of criticism.” It’s notable, in this regard, how often both Chesterton and Tocqueville were asked during their travels what they thought of Americans and America, a tendency, it will be recalled, that Beaumont employed to advance his own investigative interests. Such sensitivity and self-consciousness, observed Chesterton, leads to uniformity. “It is this very vividness in the self that produces the similarity . . . it is when they are self-conscious that they are like each other.”23 Here Chesterton presciently anticipated the “other directed” orientation depicted in sociologist David Riesman’s important work, The Lonely Crowd, published two decades after Chesterton’s second visit to America. Like Chesterton, Riesman associated other-directedness with “capitalism, industrialism, and urbanization,” viewed those embodying this personality type as having “exceptional sensitivity to the actions and wishes of others,” and identified the manner in which this “need to be liked” led to conformity both with respect to “the externals of appearance and propriety,” as well as to internal matters of ideas and beliefs.24 These were all features of American individualism that Chesterton observed as well; and the conformist tendencies, in particular, led him to conclude that “individualism is the death of individuality.”25 This is, of course, a typical Chestertonian quip, characteristic of the epigrammatic titles of some of his American lectures, for example, “The Ignorance of the Educated” or “Avoiding the Inevitable.” Yet behind the clever play on words is a serious insight, which builds upon Tocqueville’s observations and anticipates Riesman’s discussion of this topic. One way to understand Chesterton’s point here is to recall the general processes of homogenization that he saw in America more broadly. As noted in the previous chapter, Chesterton viewed American hotels as conspicuously uniform and as lacking the charming distinctiveness of English inns. Yet for Chesterton, the hotel was only one indication of a society that tended toward too much uniformity.26 In discussing American fashion, for example, Chesterton, like Weber before him, observed the relative uniformity in styles of dress. “Americans all dress well; one might almost say that American women look well; but they do not compared with Europeans look very different.”27 Frances noted the same in an interview

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during their 1921 travels. “Your American women are smart dressers,” she observed. However, “to us there is a monotony in your styles – that is, all American well-dressed women look as if they did not dare to be original or distinctive.”28 Conformist tendencies, however, were for Chesterton not limited to the uniform features of American hotels or dress styles. Importantly, conformism could also result in a dangerous and unforgiving uniformity of public opinion. In Chesterton’s words, “Public opinion can be a prairie fire; it eats up everything that opposes it.”29 Under this condition, minority views could be treated harshly and unfairly. He saw this as a threat to democracy: “The danger of democracy is not anarchy but convention.”30 One example he pointed to during his first visit was the treatment of the American socialist, Eugene Debs. Debs had spoken out publicly against American involvement in World War I, an offense for which he was eventually arrested in 1918 and sentenced to ten years in prison; the term was shortened when President Harding commuted his sentence in the same year as Chesterton’s first visit. Chesterton did not approve of the handling of the case; he viewed Debs’s treatment as “very harsh” and his sentence as “long and oppressive.” In his view, Debs was the victim of merciless majoritarian sentiment. Debs’s case, according to Chesterton, illustrated that “democracy is no respecter of persons.”31 In America, “the individual seems to be sacrificed to the clamor of the multitude.”32 The parallels between Debs’s case and the case of the Baltimore journalist (who opposed the War of 1812), recounted to Tocqueville by Peter Cruse, are, of course, remarkably similar. In both cases, individual voices of opposition to wars were harshly silenced by the tides of popular sentiment. Tocqueville and Chesterton, thus, offered similar critiques regarding the “tyranny of the majority,” and noted clear contrasts with practices in their home countries. Chesterton, for example, observed that the British would not have “gone so far in our persecution of political opinion.”33 Tocqueville also observed that once the majority in the United States had settled on a social question, for an individual to hold an opposing viewpoint was potentially perilous (for the individual). Tocqueville ominously wrote, “I do not know of any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.”34 Even in the more aristocratic and absolutist governments of Europe, thought Tocqueville, the individual could more freely express his or her opinions. Similarly, Chesterton believed Debs would have fared better in England because

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“England is governed by the gentry.” Among the gentry are “aristocrats like Bertrand Russell and Mr. [Arthur] Ponsonby,” who, either by a “true instinct of chivalry” or a recognition that others within their own circles might share the views of a Eugene Debs, would be “moved to the defense of the conscientious objector.”35

democracy and industrialism Chesterton, like Tocqueville, then, noticed a tendency toward uniformity, a conventionalism that threatened the expression of individual views and even the thinking of independent thoughts. Both visitors saw these conformist dispositions as pernicious and as a threat to individual liberty and, ironically, as coexisting with a pronounced cultural emphasis on the importance of the individual. Unlike Tocqueville, however, Chesterton more clearly associated conformist proclivities with modern industrialism, which was, of course, a more advanced societal condition by the time of his visits. For Chesterton, whether manifested in the cheerfulness of American personalities, standardized hotels, common dress styles, or dominant political opinions, the tendency toward conformity could be traced to the influences of industrial capitalism. Not only was this condition a threat to individual liberty, it represented a fundamental challenge to democracy itself; and he saw this challenge as particularly acute in the United States. Where in other modern countries “industrial capitalism and ideal democracy are everywhere in controversy,” only in America, observed Chesterton, “are they in conflict.”36 Our discussion in Chapter 5 of Chesterton’s defense of Main Street offers a clue as to why he saw industrialism as a threat to American democracy. Again, his understanding of democracy was essentially and explicitly Jeffersonian. Like Jefferson, Chesterton idealized an agrarian society populated by yeoman farmers (or “peasants,” as Chesterton preferred) living in decentralized and relatively self-sufficient agricultural communities. Under this arrangement, government would be principally local. A true democracy, as such, was a system where the people actually knew and lived near those who governed them. Chesterton argued, “we should try to make politics as local as possible.” He whimsically added, though while making a serious point, that we should “keep the politicians near enough to kick them. The villagers who met under the village tree could also hang their politicians to the tree. It’s terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hung today.”37

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Industrialism challenged the salience of local governing and economic arrangements. Instead, it led to urbanization, a more centralized and bureaucratized governing structure, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of industrialists who had primary control over the means of production. Such an arrangement, according to Chesterton, led to the development of a plutocracy or oligarchy, where the industrial leaders and managers of finance had disproportionate power and political influence. In such a political economy, politicians were not so much accountable to those they were meant to represent as to the wealthy industrialists. As he stated in an interview during his 1921 trip, “Everywhere, in this industrial age, we find that politicians, instead of being afraid of the people as they should be, are afraid of the rich.”38 The controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, which loosened restrictions on corporate influence on the electoral process, is precisely the sort of development that Chesterton feared would undermine American democracy. Industrialism, according to Chesterton, not only weakened democracy because it resulted in the disproportionate influence of wealthy oligarchs, but it advanced a new form of slavery. “The trend of the world today,” Chesterton told a New York Times reporter during his first American visit, “is to treat human beings like machines and see how much they can produce, which was the method of the planters of South Carolina toward their slaves in the old days.”39 As he saw it, the power of the industrial class over the workers represented a return to “the old master-and-slave system.” The authority of the new masters, however, rested in their monopolistic control over the productive processes of increasingly specialized and centralized industries; thus, these new masters included “Smith, the copper king, and Jones, the wheat baron, and Hoggenheimer, the fertilizer czar, who all will do as they like; and what they like is not always apt to be pretty to see.”40 And among the things the industrial class did, according to Chesterton, was the class-inspired experiment with Prohibition, the main aim of which was to control and squeeze more work out of the wage-earning laboring class. While Chesterton was in the United States, a reporter challenged him on this point, and put forth the pro-Prohibitionist argument that the new laws have a “moral backing” in that “whisky has caused crime and wife-beating and has ruined lives and families.” “How about that, Mr. Chesterton?” Interestingly, even here, Chesterton pointed to industrialism as the source of the problem: “[T]he fault lies in your industrial system – your economic fabric. Your great cities, with their slums,

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their factories, their congestion, breed intemperance, making for misuse of alcoholic drinks.”41 Thus, both the cause and the proposed solution, as Chesterton saw it, stemmed from the same faulty system. That the ruling plutocracy could push through passage of the Volstead Act was simply an illustration of the extent to which industrial leaders had a monopoly on the processes of large-scale production and could therefore unduly influence policy and determine the lives of those working in the factories and businesses that they controlled. In a truly agrarian democracy, there would be no such concentration of wealth and power. Chesterton asserted, “industrialism is in essence oligarchical . . . the machine necessitates the idea of master and servant.” In contrast, “while men were on the land, democratization was possible.”42 He saw two phenomena in American society as providing potential checks on the escalating and anti-democratic influences of industrialism. The first was the continuing presence and flourishing of small family farms, a feature of the United States that he felt outsiders overlooked in their admiration of American manufacturing prowess. We in England hear a great deal, we hear far too much, about the economic energy of industrial America, about the money of Mr. Morgan or the machinery of Mr. Edison. We never realize that while we in England suffer from the same sort of successes in capitalism and clockwork, we have not got what the Americans have got: something at least to balance it in the way of a free agriculture, a vast field of free farms dotted with small freeholders . . . [whose] comparative equality is a true counterweight to the toppling injustice of the towns.43

Chesterton viewed these agrarian communities as tending toward and embodying democratic qualities.44 “I should say that the peasant part of American democracy is successful. The small landholders are the great makeweights that carry this country along.”45 He thus placed hope in the agrarian-based communities that still existed in the United States and, perhaps naïvely, predicted that the “farms will last; and farming will always last.”46 Along with the continuing presence of small farms, Chesterton also noticed, as did Tocqueville and Weber before him, the pro-democracy force of voluntary associations. In fact, Chesterton went so far as to call American habits “of spontaneous social organization” a “power that is the soul and success of democracy.” Elaborating on this point he observed of Americans: “Their high spirits, their humane ideals, are really creative, they abound in unofficial institutions; we might almost say in unofficial officialdom. Nobody who has felt the presence of all the leagues and guilds and college clubs will deny that [Walt] Whitman was national

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when he said he would build states and cities out of love of comrades.”47 Even while Chesterton recognized the pro-democracy qualities of small farms and voluntary associations, he still worried that these counterforces would not ultimately hold up against the unrelenting advancement of industrialism. With respect to farms, he argued that “in so far as America retains certain rural truths and traditions . . . she may yet survive and succeed.” However, as noted earlier, he also observed that an industrial mind-set was beginning to make the “ruralism” of American farming communities “not rural.” Whether due to the “omnipresence of machinery” or the “omnipresence of newspapers,” he detected a utilitarian attitude influencing societal understandings of the purpose and place of farming.48 With respect to voluntary associations, while Chesterton admired America’s joining habits he also detected “a danger in the gregariousness of American society.” The dangers had mainly to do with the tendencies toward conformism and conventionalism, which, as noted earlier, he viewed as a challenge to authentic individuality and ultimately to democracy.49 Recent studies depicting a precipitous decline in the social capital of America’s voluntary associations and an increase in loneliness among Americans would certainly add to these worries,50 in that just as small farms have steadily declined, so have the sort of civic associations that Chesterton (and Tocqueville and Weber) viewed as the “soul and success of democracy.”51 Studies by Robert Putnam, Sherry Turkle, and the like, also suggest that the continuing advancement of technological innovation has played no small part in fostering attenuating social capital and intensifying the alarming levels of loneliness in America.

american cultural imperialism Given his critique of American industrial capitalism, it is not surprising that Chesterton would warn against the foreign importation of those features of America that he saw closely linked to industrialism. His second book on America, Sidelights, published after his 1930–31 tour, included reflections on the processes of Americanization. In Sidelights, he cautioned the British to be careful about what they imported from the United States. His reflections on this point call to mind a more recent study by another British journalist, who also concluded that UK citizens needed to be more discerning about what they borrowed from the United States. Jonathan Freedland, a writer for the Guardian, spent about four years traveling around the United States in the 1990s. Like Chesterton believed,

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there was much about America that Freedland also admired and thought was worthy of emulation. However, he concluded in his book, Bring Home the Revolution, that the British were not nearly careful enough about what they imported. “There is much of real value to plunder from the US, but we are missing it,” Freeland writes, “we are shipping in junk and leaving behind gold.”52 While Chesterton would probably differ with Freedland on which American products were worthy of importation, he would agree that historically the British have been enamored with and have tended to import the wrong things. As he put it in Sidelights, “it is invariably the worst things that are spread.”53 Broadly speaking, one would say in today’s parlance that Chesterton was against American cultural imperialism. Chesterton, of course, had always been an anti-imperialist. As noted previously, he was an early and very public opponent of the Boers Wars; he supported Irish independence and deplored English treatment of the Irish; and he was a source of inspiration for Indian home rule. While he was, thus, an opponent of military/political imperialism of the British variety, he was arguably even more critical of industrial/cultural imperialism of the American type. “I think that Imperialism is none the less Imperialism because it is spread by economic pressure or snobbish fashion rather than by conquest; indeed I have much more respect for the Empire that is spread by fighting than for the Empire that is spread by finance.”54 In Sidelights, Chesterton wrote that while he did “not hate America” he did “hate Americanization.” That said, there were features of American society that he thought his compatriots should take note of, but these were not those qualities of America most typically admired. “We have many things to learn from America; but we only listen to those Americans who have still to learn them. Thus, for instance, we do not import the small farm but only the big shop. In other words, we hear nothing of the democracy of the Middle West, but everything of the plutocracy of the middleman.”55 In keeping with this perspective, Chesterton farcically proposed that the English should import a Nebraska farmer and set his farm down in the middle of London for observation. An ideal spot, he thought, would be the space occupied by Selfridge, an enormous department store on Oxford Street in London, designed by the Chicago businessman Gordon Selfridge. He suggested that it “could be easily cleared away for the purpose.” Thus situated, Londoners could learn “a great deal of good” by watching the farmer at his work and might come to realize that “a man can really live and walk about upon something more productive than a pavement; and that when he does so he can really be a free man.”56

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Instead of learning from the small farmer, however, Chesterton acknowledged that the British were much more taken by exports of the Selfridge variety. “America can give nothing to London but those multiple modern shops, of which it has too many already.”57 His reflections, in this regard, anticipated contemporary discussions critical of the processes of globalization, by which scholars often mean Americanization. Chesterton was motivated to write his novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, out of sympathy for the localism of a small London neighborhood pitted against the large homogenizing processes of globalization. His defense of the local public house, second-hand bookshop, and neighborhood grocer, for which he drew his sword in writing The Napoleon of Notting Hill, has largely been ignored. The large chain stores, including many of American origin, have now become commonplace in the town centers of English villages.58 Chesterton’s sympathies with localism made him suspicious of “cosmopolitanism” and “internationalism,” which he saw as “hostile to democracy.”59 Arguing against H. G. Wells’s wish for a World State modeled on the United States, Chesterton asserted that the “only pure, popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge.”60 His argument against the undemocratic possibility of an “aristocracy of globetrotters” anticipated more recent assessments of new cosmopolitan elites, such as Zygmunt Bauman’s global “tourist,” Peter Berger’s “global elite,” and Christopher Lasch’s “revolt of the elites.” That the global focus of the new elites represents a challenge to democracy is especially clear in Lasch’s work, as he recognizes both that the loyalties of the new elite “are international rather than regional, national, or local” and that “classical theorists of democracy doubted whether self-government could work very effectively beyond the local level – which is why they favored as much localism as possible.”61 Chesterton similarly maintained that democracy was best served not by an aristocracy of globetrotters (or global tourists or cultural elites), but by ordinary people governing themselves at the local level. “In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves – the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.”62 In line with Chesterton’s defense of localism, popular and renewed defenses of the benefits of local communities and local economies have been reasserted in recent years,63 as have explicit articulations of Chestertonian distributism.

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distributism rediscovered Though Chesterton’s early political inclinations were toward a sort of liberal socialism of the G. B. Shaw type, he later became critical of both socialism and capitalism. Instead, he was committed, as he explained while in the United States, to a “form of democratic Bolshevism, under which all property would be distributed and controlled by every one.” He saw both capitalist control of property and government control of property as problematic, and asserted that “while a group of capitalists have brought evils, it would be no different and no better to have property controlled by another group who would be governmental officials.”64 He saw the two systems as essentially materialistic in nature and as taking power, control, and liberty away from the common people. As a distributist, he held instead “that the best interests of freedom will be obtained by a general distribution of property among as many of the people as possible.”65 Distributism, then, represents a sort of third way. Interestingly, it has received renewed attention in recent years, perhaps most prominently by the British writer, Phillip Blond, whose ideas, at least for a moment, caught the attention of a varied array of individuals across the sociopolitical spectrum in England and the United States.66 Blond sees both the Tea Party movement (with its anti–big government sentiments) and the Occupy movement (with its animosity toward corporate America) as two sides of the same coin. In each case, says Blond, Americans are frustrated with large, unwieldy, and unaccountable institutions from which they feel alienated and dispossessed. In the current situation, says Blond, democracy is not working because the private sector has been “captured by big capital” and “the public sector has been captured by big state.”67 As a remedy, Blond calls for a renewal of the sort of voluntaristic associations that both Tocqueville and Chesterton viewed as essential to democracy. This renewed civic society “should be what rules, what regulates, what is sovereign”; and both the market and politics should be subservient to it and should be primarily local. “Villages should run villages, cities cities, and neighborhoods their own streets and parks.” In terms of specific policy solutions, Blond recommends giving local citizens’ groups more budget authority and letting local associations select and vote for their own candidates. It’s not that a centralized government would play no role. Rather, it would play a reduced and more “appropriate” role, handling only that which could not be taken care of at the local level.68 Another contemporary proponent of distributism – though he doesn’t use the term and would likely resist being associated with any movement

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bearing its name – is the Kentucky writer, Wendell Berry, who for decades has defended small-scale agricultural practices and has decried the destructive actions of big business and big government on the environment and on local communities. Like Chesterton, Berry is explicitly Jeffersonian in his understanding of democracy and of the importance of widespread private ownership of land: “a democratic state and democratic liberties depend upon democratic ownership of the land.”69 Moreover, like Chesterton, Berry sees industrialism as the central and defining problem – a rare position in Chesterton’s day, but an even rarer position today. In a 2012 Jefferson lecture at the Kennedy Center sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Wendell Berry, in terms very similar to Chesterton’s, served up a scathing critique of industrialism and observed that across the political spectrum, whether “conservative” or “liberal,” faith in “science, finance, and technology” goes largely unquestioned. Like Chesterton, however, Berry does not subscribe to this faith. Instead, he believes the experiment with industrialism has been tried and has utterly and unequivocally failed. Now the two great aims of industrialism – replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy – seem close to fulfillment. At the same time the failures of industrialism have become too great and too dangerous to deny. Corporate industrialism itself has exposed the falsehood that it ever was inevitable or that it ever has given precedence to the common good. It has failed to sustain the health and stability of human society. Among its characteristic signs are destroyed communities, neighborhoods, families, small businesses, and small farms.70

Berry, like Chesterton, is a defender of private property, a proponent of the democratic virtues of local economies and local agrarian communities, a critic of the material and cultural influence of machinery and technology, and an opponent of large-scaled business and governing structures. In the Jefferson lecture, Berry begins his remarks recalling the work of his grandfather, who farmed in the same Henry County area of Kentucky where Berry lives today. Berry’s grandfather would still have been farming at the time of Chesterton’s visits. Berry tells the story of his grandfather rising early on a winter morning in 1907 to sell his tobacco crop at auction in Louisville, only to return the same evening “without a dime.” Berry attributes the low return on his grandfather’s crops to the exploitative and monopolistic control of the tobacco industry by James B. Duke and the American Tobacco Company, precisely the sort of oligarchical hegemony that Chesterton lamented in his criticisms of

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industrial capitalism. Indeed, Chesterton could have added “Duke the Tobacco baron” to his litany of powerful plutocrats listed earlier. Another clear connection between Chesterton and Berry is their mutual appreciation for some of the ideas of the Southern Agrarians, whose defining book, I’ll Take My Stand, was published during Chesterton’s second visit. In an interview with a Chattanooga News reporter in February 1931, Chesterton acknowledged that, along with John Brown’s Body, he had “just finished reading I’ll Take My Stand” and that he agreed “in the main with the young southerners and thinks the returning to the farms is the great solution of the industrial situation with which the world is faced today.”71 In an essay titled “Still Standing,” Berry similarly notes, though with qualification, his appreciation for I’ll Take My Stand, and in particular the book’s introductory statement of principles, to which the twelve agrarians all subscribed. The statement, says Berry, “has held up startlingly well.” “I know of no criticism of industrial assumptions that can equal it in clarity, economy, and eloquence.”72 Both Chesterton and Berry would agree with the Southern Agrarians that among the negative consequences of industrialism are “overproduction, unemployment, and a growing inequality in the distribution of wealth.”73 In fact, the main point in Chesterton’s American lecture, “Culture and the Coming Peril,” was the problem of overproduction.74 Chesterton often clarified that though he spoke of the coming peril, in his view, it had already arrived. And Berry makes clear in his Jefferson lecture that he believes the peril has only intensified since the early 1930s. Chesterton and Berry would also agree with the Southern Agrarians that agrarianism stands in opposition to industrial society and “that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers.”75 This elevated view of the farmer traces back to Jefferson, who asserted in his Notes on the State of Virginia, “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”76 Chesterton agreed with Jefferson on this point, adding that a Jeffersonian form of democracy was the original intention behind the American quest for independence but that it had not been sustained over time. “America, instead of being the open agricultural commonwealth for which its founders hoped, has become the dumping-ground of all the most dismal ideas of decaying epochs in Europe, from Calvinism to industrialism.” Chesterton wished instead that Jeffersonian democracy had remained unsullied from

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the influence of industrial capitalism.77 Berry, of course, would agree. Thus, when Berry situates himself within the tradition of an agrarian writer, it’s a legacy that includes not only Jefferson and the Southern Agrarians, but, importantly for the purposes of the present study, G. K. Chesterton as well. Given these clear ties, it is not surprising that recent scholarship has linked Berry’s agrarianism to a lineage extending back to Chesterton. In an essay on Berry and the British distributists, classicist William Fahey identifies a number of common themes found in the works of both, including the notion of “propriety.”78 A sense of stewardship and proprietorial deference to the dictates of the natural and created order are key both to Berry’s life and writings and to classical distributist thought. As Fahey points out, while Berry cautiously and reservedly situates himself within the “Bible-reading Christian tradition,” in his understanding of propriety and otherwise, Chesterton and the leading distributists (and even Tocqueville, to a lesser extent) functioned within a more conspicuously Catholic frame of reference. In fact, though already “on the road to Rome,” as it were, during his first American tour, Chesterton formally converted to Catholicism between his two visits – an orientation that helps to explain, in part, his rather critical posture toward Puritanism. Both Chesterton and Tocqueville also more explicitly articulated a necessary relationship between religion and democracy.

religion and democracy Chesterton stated at the end of What I Saw in America that “freedom is an eagle whose glory is gazing at the sun.”79 That is, the glory, the beauty, the possibility, and the sustainability of American freedom and democracy depend on a society looking beyond itself to a divine source. That this source refers to the god of the Christian tradition is a point that Chesterton made clear in the same section of the book: “So far as that democracy becomes or remains Catholic and Christian, that democracy will remain democratic. In so far as it does not, it will become wildly and wickedly undemocratic.”80 Again revealing his Jeffersonian sympathies, Chesterton also observed that American democracy was founded on an essential creed or dogma: “There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” Any other foundation represents “a sort of sentimental confusion” that would prove vain “for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant.”81

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While in the United States, Chesterton wrote a short article that was published in the Chicago Daily Tribune. In this piece, he spelled out what he believed were the essential ingredients of democracy. These included, first, a belief in the commonsense views of ordinary people, such that the closer the common people are to the “organ of government the better”; second, the importance of private property for the private citizen; third, the “small fortress” that is the institution of the family; and finally, the preservation of this domestic life through the protection of religion. He acknowledged “that religion has certainly been far more powerful in the past than it is in the present; but that does not alter the fact that it is necessary for this particular plan for the future.”82 Tocqueville also saw religion as playing an important role in sustaining democracy. While he argued strongly against any formal affiliation between church and state, he believed religion, and Christianity in particular, served a vital social function. His advocacy of a clear separation between church and state was inspired, in part, by conditions in France, where the previously close association between church and crown resulted in broad hostility toward religion following the French Revolution. Tocqueville and Beaumont addressed this attitude in their book on penitentiaries and noted the comparative differences between France and the United States. “With us [in France] there exist, in a great number of persons, prejudices against religion and her ministers, which are unknown in the United States, and our clergy in turn are subject to impressions unfelt by the religious sects of America.”83 Importantly, Tocqueville viewed this condition as neither natural nor normal. He saw “the total rejection of any religious belief” as “contrary to man’s natural instinct” and as “destructive of his peace of mind.”84 He seemed to intimate, moreover, that such hostility to religion would not last: “A lasting public prejudice against religion and her ministers is not the natural state of things. And we do not know what point a society may reach, without the assistance of religious belief.”85 In the United States, Tocqueville discovered a very different attitude toward the role of religion. He found a common view among Americans that “religion contributes to the stability of the State and the maintenance of law and order” and that “a civilized community, especially one that enjoys the benefits of freedom, cannot exist without religion.” In fact, Americans saw “in religion the surest guarantee of the stability of the State and the safety of individuals.”86 Tocqueville agreed that religion played a necessary role because in a democracy, unlike in a monarchy, the authority of the ruling order had been loosened. “How could society

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fail to perish if, while the political bond is relaxed, the moral bond were not tightened? And what makes a people master of itself if it has not submitted to God?” Thus, according to Tocqueville, a democracy should do two things: keep religion formally separate from political power while simultaneously maintaining the necessary vibrancy of religion in society. This was a complicated arrangement, to be sure, and Tocqueville admitted to not knowing how he would advise a democratic government to sustain religious vitality. Nevertheless, he felt strongly on both accounts: that it would be dangerous to directly mix religion with public affairs and that “one must maintain Christianity within the new democracies at all cost.”87 Both Tocqueville and Chesterton, then, saw religion as a necessary force for sustaining democracy. Accepting for a moment this premise, and following Weber’s assessment of the place of religion in modern society (as well as the sociological accounts of secularization that followed), one might conclude that democracy in America is in serious jeopardy. Weber argued that one of the consequences of modernization was the undermining of religion and the concomitant disenchantment of the world. Because humans had an intrinsic need to make meaningful sense of the world, the modern condition of disenchantment presented a quandary. What was the individual to do? Weber did not regard as plausible a return to the older theodicies, but proposed instead a tragic acceptance of a life without ultimate meaning, a purposeful willingness to face up inwardly to the disenchanted modern condition. According to Chesterton, the realization of this proposition would be the death knell of democracy. He stated quite plainly in What I Saw in America that “there is no meaning in democracy if there is no meaning in anything.” And Chesterton was also very clear about that which gave ultimate meaning: “there is no meaning in anything if the universe has not a centre of significance and an authority that is the author of our rights.”88 If, then, as Chesterton argued, democracy depends on a creed, on “an authority that is the author of our rights,” what of the future of religion in America? Chesterton took up this very topic in two debates with Clarence Darrow during his second trip to America. The first debate was held at the Arena in New Haven on January 16, 1931, where there were reportedly 5,000 in attendance, and the second was held at the Mecca Temple in New York City on January 18, 1931, with nearly 4,000 in attendance. At both debates, Chesterton and Darrow addressed the question, “Will the World Return to Religion?” Chesterton argued that religion

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would return, Darrow argued that it would (and should) not. Darrow asserted that the “religious idea is based upon crude and uninformed theories of the universe”; he mocked the biblical accounts of creation, Jonah and the whale, and Noah’s ark; he argued that “the intelligent man no longer believed the mystery and miracle tales of the Bible”; and concluded “that advances in science had made it certain that religion was slowly dying out and would not return.”89 Chesterton, for his part, noted this tendentiousness and took Darrow to task for it. He claimed that Darrow had not been arguing with him, but with “some Fundamentalist maiden aunt.” He made clear that, as a Catholic, while he regarded the Bible as true, he did not take literally the biblical stories in the fashion depicted by Darrow.90 In an interview with a St. Louis reporter nearly a week after the debate, Chesterton raised this point again. “We were entirely at odds,” Chesterton said, “and he seemed to assume from the beginning that I was his Puritan great-grandmother.” To clarify any confusion on this point, Chesterton added, “Now I am not his Puritan great-grandmother at all.”91 Chesterton even mentioned the debates in his autobiography, where he made reference to the “very famous skeptic,” who “appeared to be unable to think of anything except Jonah and the Whale” even when Chesterton “tried to talk about Greek cults or Asiatic asceticism.”92 As it concerns the future of religion, Chesterton argued that “at no period in history has skepticism displaced religion for more than two generations . . . because man is not complete without religion”; that “conditions favored a great revival of religion”; and that “the dams of unbelief will crumble and the ancient river of religion will pursue its old course.”93 Chesterton did not see the decline of religion as an inevitability – far from it. In fact, Chesterton took up this question directly in a lecture that he gave during both visits, “Avoiding the Inevitable.” His basic argument in this lecture was that history reveals time and again that developments that we once regarded as inevitable have, in many instances, not been realized. In short, as he put it during a lecture in Portland, Oregon, “the inevitable is not inevitable at all.” Highlighting the importance of historical contingency and the role of human agency, he spoke of the many moments in history when things “nearly, nearly, nearly happened,” but were prevented or “turned aside” because of “personal action.” Among the assumptions that were once viewed as inevitable but did not come to pass was the belief that “religion was rapidly disappearing.” Instead, he saw “a general tendency in the world toward religion,”94 the same argument he made in his debates with Darrow.

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It seems that a large majority in attendance at the second debate – the only one of the two where a vote was taken – were persuaded by Chesterton’s arguments. Chesterton won handily, by a margin of more than two to one. The final tally was 2,359 for Chesterton and 1,022 for Darrow. A review of the debate in the February 4, 1931 issue of The Nation, by Henry Hazlitt, noted how ineffective Darrow’s strategy was against Chesterton. Hazlitt described Darrow’s arguments as “conducted on a surprisingly low intellectual level,” and likened him to a “village atheist . . . trying to shock and convince yokels.” Not only was “Chesterton’s deportment irreproachable,” but he conveyed a deeper knowledge of science than did Clarence Darrow, the ostensible “defender of science.” At a later date, Hazlitt recalled of the debates Chesterton’s “immense superiority over his antagonist” and “his charm as a man.”95 As was often the case, Chesterton not only won over his audience, he also, at least on the personal level, won over his opponent. Toward the end of his life, Darrow wrote, “I was favorably impressed by, warmly attached to, G. K. Chesterton. I enjoyed my debates with him, and found him a man of culture and fine sensibilities. If he and I had lived where we could have become better acquainted, eventually we would have ceased to debate, I firmly believe.”96 In his recent work on secularization, sociologist Christian Smith, like Chesterton, emphasizes the importance of human agency. Smith does not deny the role of capitalism in the secularization process. It is just that the “boom and incorporation of industrial capitalism” is not disconnected from the actors who were shaped by it. Accounting for the actions of these actors, Smith reviews the processes by which industry and wealth, in the decades just before and after the turn of the twentieth century, became increasingly centralized and located in the hands of a shrinking number of industrial magnates – the same phenomenon that Chesterton repeatedly made reference to in his critiques of industrial capitalism. As a consequence of “corporate capitalism” the industrial leaders were given enormous resources, which, according to Smith, they used to “undermine religion’s authority in American higher education and science.” Among those corporate leaders who benefited from this wealth and then used it to pioneer “functionally secular education and scholarship” was the very same James B. Duke discussed in Wendell Berry’s Jefferson lecture.97 Smith, like Berry, then, puts a face (or faces) on the processes of corporate capitalism; and, like Chesterton, he identifies the manner in which the advancement of industrial capitalism contributed to the

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unequal distribution of wealth that ultimately led to the undermining of religion’s influence in society. By identifying the particular agents of change, Smith supports Chesterton’s assertion that the process was not inevitable, but rather involved particular individuals making particular choices that had particular consequences. On this point, Chesterton specifically argued, “Don’t say that wages rise and fall, as if they were tides of the ocean; but say that a certain individual has raised or lowered the wages of other individuals.”98 As Wendell Berry makes clear, the choices and actions of individuals like James B. Duke had real consequences for real people, including his grandfather. Of more specific concern to Smith (and Chesterton) was the result of these actions on the viability of religion in American society. Chesterton had addressed the issue of religion’s survivability in an interview with the poet George Sylvester Viereck, which was published in the Chicago Herald and Examiner several months before his debates with Darrow. In this wide-ranging interview, Chesterton acknowledged that “Christianity is fighting for its existence.” However, he said that this should not be interpreted as a sign of its demise, because Christianity “thrives on persecution . . . You can drive religion underground, but you cannot destroy it. Christianity was never stronger than in the catacombs.” In the conversation, Chesterton also spoke of the reconcilability between religion and science and distanced himself from the beliefs (“I don’t object to the evolution of the body, even from a monkey”) and practices (“There is nothing wrong with drink”) of fundamentalists. Curiously, at the end of the interview, he also made reference to a “great battle” or a “spiritual Armageddon” that will take place in America. “Why,” asked Viereck, “on American soil?” Because, said Chesterton, unlike in Europe, there is “space” because “America . . . takes its intellectual problems seriously.”99 It’s not clear, from the context of the interview, what precisely Chesterton anticipated would be the substance of the battle. However, we know that Chesterton spoke often, while in America, of the coming peril. He gave the lecture, “Culture and the Coming Peril,” at least nine times during his second trip to America. He was even asked at one point whether George Bernard Shaw was the coming peril, to which Chesterton replied, “Heavens, no. He is a disappearing pleasure.”100 We also know that he saw the peril as it related to the overproduction (both materially and intellectually) of an industrial society, a system that he viewed to be in direct conflict with American democracy. While industrialism was, for Chesterton, a threat to democracy, religion

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was a necessary supporting force. The “great battle” that he anticipated, then, may have had a basis in the outcome of these conflicting forces, which, from his vantage point, would significantly determine the future of democracy. Our next visitor – though coming from a very different religious, regional, and cultural background – addressed similar themes in his writings about America, writings that would ultimately play a role in the emergence of another sort of battle in America.

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7 From Musha to New York: Qutb Encounters American Jahiliyya

The Egyptian Sayyid Qutb boarded a ship in Alexandria headed for the United States on November 3, 1948. It was the first time the forty-twoyear-old Qutb had ever traveled outside of Egypt. Qutb would spend almost two years in the United States. The reasons for his trip to America were not unlike those that determined Tocqueville’s journey nearly 120 years earlier. Like Tocqueville, Qutb worked for the government, in this case for the Egyptian Ministry of Education. Also like Tocqueville, Qutb’s political position in his home country had become precarious and a trip abroad was contrived to extricate him from an increasingly tenuous situation, in fact, to avoid an arrest warrant that had been issued by the Egyptian government.1 Just as Tocqueville was commissioned to study American prisons, Qutb was commissioned to “investigate the American system of education, its methods and curricula.”2 In Qutb’s case, however, the government initiated the trip and the reason wasn’t so much because of changing political circumstances as it was because of Qutb’s writings, which were increasingly viewed as problematic by the Egyptian government. For the first part of Qutb’s career, he had been a fairly prominent member of the secular intellectual class in Cairo. He was a well-known poet, essayist, literary critic, and educator. In the 1940s, however, Qutb was transitioning from a modern secularist into an Islamic activist and was becoming more vocal in his criticisms of Western influence in Egypt and of complicity, political corruption, and tyranny in the existing regime of King Farouk I. Aided by the intervening efforts of Prime Minister Mahmoud Nuqrashi Pasha, Qutb’s trip was arranged with the hope that time in the United States would moderate his hostile attitude toward the West.3 It did just the opposite. His two years in 163 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 11:09:02, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.008

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America served to further radicalize Qutb and harden his views toward the West in general and toward the United States in particular. There is some debate about whether Qutb’s time in America caused his radical turn or simply confirmed opinions he had already formed. Arguing for the former, historian Emmanuel Sivan sees Qutb’s time in the United States as “the formative experience that converted him to fundamentalism.”4 Historian John Calvert, however, provides evidence for the latter, arguing that “Qutb viewed the United States not with fresh eyes but rather through the tinted spectacles of a man long captive to a particular view of the world.”5 Anthropologist James Toth plausibly suggests that it was a bit of both, that Qutb’s time in the United States served to confirm and galvanize the particular trajectory he was already on. “Qutb’s visit to America certainly reinforced his preconceived pessimism toward Western civilization and strengthened it even more by what he experienced first-hand . . . He did not just steadily move toward radicalism nor merely become radicalized suddenly by his American trip. It was both.”6 In 1953, a few years after returning to Egypt from the United States, Qutb formally joined the Muslim Brotherhood and became one of its most influential thinkers. His writings put him at odds with the modernizing government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was arrested in 1954 and spent more than nine years in prison before he was released for a short time, rearrested, and then executed by hanging on August 29, 1966. While in prison he continued to write and produced his important exegesis of the Qur’an, In the Shade of the Qur’an, and his jihadist manifesto, Milestones, the latter of which served as the primary source of evidence in the trial leading to his death sentence. His writings have “profoundly shape[d] Arab and Muslim perceptions of the new world,” and have been an important source of inspiration for such terrorist groups as al Qaeda.7 The distinguished French scholar Gilles Kepel describes Qutb as “the greatest ideological influence on the contemporary Islamist movement.”8 In fact, Sayyid’s brother Mohammed Qutb was one of Osama bin Laden’s teachers in Saudi Arabia, and al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri frequently cites Qutb in his writings. Qutb’s writings were one source of inspiration in the Egyptian version of the 2011 Arab Spring, the results of which gave the Muslim Brotherhood, for a short time anyway, formal political power in Egypt. As James Toth concludes in his recent biography, in Egypt “the legacy of Sayyid Qutb endures . . . Now nearly 50 years after his death, Sayyid Qutb’s heirs are attempting to bring his vision of a

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truly Islamic Egypt to life.”9 As was the case during Qutb’s lifetime, this attempt remains a violently contested and conflictual one.

a child from musha If the reasons for Qutb’s tour of America recollect Tocqueville’s journey, Qutb’s writings about Musha, the small village in which he grew up, call to mind comparisons with Chestertonian distributism. Two years before he departed for the United States, Qutb published A Child from the Village, a semi-autobiographical account of life in the village where he lived from his birth in 1906 until he moved to Cairo to further his education in 1921. Musha is located about 250 miles south of Cairo in the Sa‘id region of Egypt located on the west bank of the Nile in the province of Asyut. A Child from the Village represents an interesting mix of views that would, in certain respects, typify Qutb’s own struggle, and evolving commitments, regarding the competing forces of modernity and tradition in Egypt. As it concerns traditional village life, the book reveals a perspective that is both somewhat critical of village superstitions and folk beliefs while also nostalgic and appreciative of the simplicity, honor, and piety of life in the agrarian village. A Child from the Village makes clear Qutb’s growing concerns about social justice, especially with respect to the transient workers who came to Musha for the planting and harvesting seasons. The book also demonstrates Qutb’s love and respect for his parents and his frustrations with the intrusive visits of outside authorities, who treated villagers disrespectfully, beat some, and confiscated their weapons. Qutb was one of five children; he had one brother, Mohammed, and three sisters, Nafisa, Amina, and Hamida. Mohammed, and two of his sisters, Amina and Hamida, would eventually join him as Islamic activists following his return from America. His family, though respected in the village and at one time moderately well off, were forced to sell off some of their land because of economic difficulties. Qutb was encouraged, especially by his mother, to succeed in life as part of the effendi class (the modern and Western-styled sector of Egyptian society) so that he might help restore the family’s wealth and stature. Qutb’s description of Musha would have warmed the heart of Chesterton the agrarian distributist. Qutb wrote of the relatively equal distribution of land among village inhabitants. “The largest agricultural holding was not more than two hundred faddans [about 207 acres], and there was hardly an individual or family that did not have a piece of land,

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whether large or small. This distribution of land diminished the class differences and created a condition of personal pride in the relationships between people.”10 And, like Weber’s Antaeus, the Musha farmers gained strength from working the land: “When the men are in the fields they can forget [their sorrows]. The bright sunlight fills their souls and brightens them, and the sprouting of the seeds in the black earth causes dim hopes to grow in their souls even though in their profound simplicity they cannot perceive them.”11 Before his visit to America, then, Qutb showed a sensitivity to nature and to the strength one derived from direct contact with the land. While in the United States, Qutb was struck by Americans’ indifference to the influence of nature, even though they were surrounded by “incalculable expanses of virgin land . . . uncharted forests . . . tortuous mountain mazes . . . thundering hurricanes.” He was amazed, as he put it, “at how all this did not leave a shadow upon the American spirit and inspire a belief in the majesty of nature and that which is beyond nature, opening for the American spirit a window on things that are more than matter and the world of matter.”12 Recall Tocqueville’s similar observation about Americans, who could live in the midst of the wilderness “without ever being distracted by its allure.”13 Qutb’s appreciation of the Musha farmers also calls to mind Tocqueville and Beaumont’s admiration of the French Canadian farmers who derived joy and pleasure from working the land to which they were affectionately committed, an attitude they saw as distinguishable from the more restless and mercantilist farmers they encountered in the United States. Qutb dedicated A Child from the Village to Taha Hussein, author of The Days (al-Ayyam), a similar autobiographical account of growing up in a small village in the Sa‘id region of Egypt. Like Qutb, Hussein was part of a middle-class landholding family. Hussein also moved to Cairo as a young man to further his education. He received a scholarship to study in France, where he took classes at both the University of Montpellier and the Sorbonne. At the latter, he attended the lectures of, among others, the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim. Hussein argued in favor of a full adoption of European-styled modernity, and his treatment of Egyptian village life was much more dismissive and condescending than Qutb’s. James Toth suggests that A Child from the Village was actually a critical, if indirect, response to Hussein. “Qutb demonstrated a pride in his rural roots whereas Hussein recommended these values be expunged so that Egypt might take its rightful place as a modern, European society.”14 In his dedication to Hussein, Qutb made clear that his account of “days”

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in an Egyptian village was different from Hussein’s and was approached with an attitude more sympathetic to the virtues and “inherent spiritual sensibilities” of life in the traditional Egyptian village.15 Qutb’s reaction to Hussein’s negative assessment of village life provides an interesting comparison to Chesterton’s critical reaction to Sinclair Lewis’s mockery of small-town life in America. Like Hussein, Lewis portrayed small-town life as parochial, backwards, and regretfully lacking in cosmopolitan sophistication. Similarly, “Hussein belittled and disdained the village life of his youth, showing it in an unfavorable light and mocking it.”16 Just as Chesterton parted with Lewis, Qutb parted with Hussein. “Where Hussein was sarcastic and ridiculing, Qutb was affectionate and respectful. Where Hussein wholeheartedly embraced France and Europe, Qutb was much less cosmopolitan.”17 Like both Chesterton and Tocqueville, Qutb showed a respect for the local and traditional wisdom of the peasant villager, whom he viewed as someone to emulate rather than disparage.18

“from secularism to jihad ” Thus, though Qutb left Musha for Cairo at the age of fifteen, and spent the first part of his career as a successful member of the effendi, fully engaged with Western ideas and literature, the customs and traditions of the village never entirely left him. In Musha – apart from a very brief stint at the traditional Qur’anic school or kuttab – Qutb attended the more modern state school, the madrasa, in the village. This did not prevent him, however, from studying the Qur’an, a book he memorized by the time he was only ten years old. Upon moving to Cairo, he lived with an uncle on his mother’s side of the family. He attended secondary school and high school, and eventually enrolled in the more modern Dar al-‘Ulum, which would set him on course for his career as a secular literati. He graduated from Dar al-‘Ulum in 1933 at the age of twenty-seven and immediately began working for the Ministry of Education, first as a teacher and then as a school inspector. Early during his time in Cairo, Qutb came under the influence of Abbas al-‘Aqqad, the leading figure of the Diwan literary school of writers in Egypt. The anglophile Diwan circle was inspired by such English writers as Thomas Hardy, Samuel Coleridge, and John Stuart Mill and was characterized by its emphasis on “subjective, emotional, even soulful reflection.”19 While Qutb would eventually depart from the secular Western orientation of al-‘Aqqad and the Diwan school, he would

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continue to work within the subjective, even romantic, aesthetic he learned from al-‘Aqqad, an aesthetic detectable in some of his ruminations on American life. In the early 1940s, Qutb’s disenchantment with the West grew, he became frustrated with Britain’s ongoing influence in Egypt, and more inclined toward the traditionalism and religiosity of his Musha roots. During his years as a leading literary figure in Cairo, he may have appeared modern and Western on the outside, but the roots of his life in the small Egyptian village of Musha ran deep. As John Calvert puts it, “beneath the Western jacket and tie and modern-style schooling there existed a traditional man whose cultural sensibilities were anchored in the universe of village Egypt.”20 These traditional sensibilities would come to fuller fruition during the 1940s as Qutb gradually evolved, in Adnan Musallam’s terms, “from secularism to jihad.”21 Qutb had been critical of Western imperialism; as a boy he had even participated in the 1919 protests against British occupation of Egypt. However, his antipathy toward the West had been reserved for European powers. Not until President Harry Truman’s public advocacy of Jewish settlement in Palestine in 1946 did the United States more conspicuously enter into the orbit of his ire. Qutb was not surprised that the British recommended Jewish settlement in the region. However, support “by the United States took him aback.” As John Calvert notes, Qutb had “shared with other Arabs the belief that as a country dedicated to international justice, the United States would support the self-determination of the Arab people, including the Palestinians, after the war.”22 Now, Qutb viewed the United States as being no different than other Western powers. Thus, he wrote in an October 1946 issue of al-Risala, two years before his trip to America: All [the Western nations] take their bearings from one source, and that is the materialistic civilization that has no heart and no moral conscience. It is a civilization that does not hear anything except the sound of machines, and does not speak of anything but commerce . . . How I hate and disdain those Westerners! All of them, without exception: the British, the French, the Dutch and now the Americans who were at one time trusted by many.23

Saeb Dajani, a student who knew Qutb during his time in the United States and who also saw him in Jordan several times after he returned to the Middle East, held a similar view. Dajani says that a sort of confusion among Middle Easterners was because they loved the United States but were “so damn mad at it” for supporting Israel and concomitantly disregarding Palestine. In a certain sense, then, frustration with the United

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States was colored by a sense of disappointment and betrayal. In any respect, an important transition had already taken place in Qutb’s life prior to his trip to the United States. In fact, his first clearly Islamist book, Social Justice in Islam, was completed just before his departure in 1948. He gave the manuscript to his brother Mohammed, who was left to guide the book through the publication process. It was released in 1949 while Qutb was in America. Islam scholar William Shepard notes that the work signaled “a major change in his orientation,” as it “put his passion for social justice on an Islamist rather than a secular foundation.”24 This transitional period was marked by Qutb’s development of two important concepts that would shape both his interpretation of America and the substance of his Islamic radicalism in the years following his return to Egypt. The first of these is the concept of jahiliyya. Used four times in the Qur’an, the term literally means ignorance, and originally referred to the barbaric condition of Arabs in the early seventh century prior to the mission of the Prophet Muhammad. Over time, Qutb expanded the meaning of jahiliyya and sharpened its application in several respects. In Qutb’s developed conceptualization, jahiliyya no longer referred to a specific period, but to any historical moment when Muslims had been corrupted by secularism and Western influence. Second, it applied not only to wayward Muslims but to any people or nation not living a pure form of Islam. Thus, non-Muslims could also be categorized as jahiliyya. Finally, he expanded the understanding of jahiliyya to mean more than simply ignorance. Because the Prophet’s teachings were delivered in the seventh century, ignorance, as such, was less relevant, as the message was now fully available. For Qutb, jahiliyya eventually included “almost everything modern, Western, and secular – with its decadence, hubris, wickedness and Godlessness.”25 However, Qutb reserved his harshest criticism for the jahiliyya of Muslims who, having capitulated to secularism and modernity, he did not regard as truly Muslim.26 In Social Justice in Islam, Qutb made a clear distinction between Islamic society and “misguided, jahili submissive societies,” a distinction that was solidified and reinforced during his time in the United States.27 Moreover, his direct encounter with the West engendered in Qutb a wish to take more direct action. That is, his understanding took on a more “motivational character.”28 In a version of Social Justice in Islam revised after his return to Egypt, Qutb recounted this revelation. Referring to himself in the third person, he wrote: The one who says all these things spent a full forty years of his life reading in most areas of human knowledge . . . Then he returned to the sources of his creed and his

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conception, and he found that everything he had read was paltry and insignificant besides that vast resource – and it could not have been otherwise. But he does not regard the way he spent forty years of his life, for he came to know the real nature of the Jahiliyyah and its deviation, its paltriness and insignificance, its bristling bluster and also its snobbish presumption! Then he came to know with certainty that it is not possible for the Muslim to combine these two sources as sources of authority.29

Given the substance of this epiphany, he determined that he could no longer continue his career as a literary critic, but would devote himself to promoting Islam and ridding Egypt of jahiliyya. As he wrote to his friend, Anwar al-Ma’adawi, near the end of his time in the United States, “You are looking forward to seeing me return in order that I take my place in literary criticism! I am afraid to tell you that this will not happen.”30 Instead, he declared his intention, in what would turn out to be no overstatement, “to devote the rest of my life to a comprehensive social program that will involve the lives and efforts of many.”31 In 1952, Qutb formally resigned from the Ministry of Education. The opposite of jahiliyya is hakimiyya, or God’s sovereignty. The defeat of jahiliyya and the realization of a hakimiyya society under Shari‘a law, in Qutb’s view, required praxis, that is, a fight or “struggle” to root out jahiliyya, in other words, to engage in jihad. Jihad is the second concept that became important to Qutb in this new stage of his career. In common parlance in the West, jihad has come to be associated with violence or militancy. For Qutb, however, jihad was multifaceted, with militancy representing only one dimension and not the most salient. More central was an emphasis on education, persuasion, formation in the faith, and service to society. Jihad of the sword only came after jihad of the heart (coming to a place of true belief), jihad of the tongue (proselytization and education in the faith), and jihad of the hand (engaging in various acts of social service to society).32 As Toth summarizes, “Qutb understood the different types of jihad as a progression from an inner spiritualism to persuasion and education, to more activist methods, and then finally to militant combat.”33 Only after his years of torture and imprisonment at the hands of the Nasser regime did Qutb become more vocal in his endorsement of jihad of the sword. Even after his brief release from prison in 1964, when a group within the Muslim Brotherhood was beginning to move in the direction of militancy, Qutb recommended caution. “Our first objective,” he advised, “should not be to establish an Islamic order or to implement the Shari‘a. Rather, our primary task is to bring the society in its entirety, both rulers

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and the ruled, to a closer understanding of true Islamic principles.”34 In reference to the 9/11 attacks, Calvert argues that Qutb “would not have sanctioned the methods of extreme violence” employed in this instance, as “Qutb had pointed out in his writings, the killing of innocents finds no justification in the Qur’an.” Moreover, Qutb would not “have understood Al Qaeda’s desire to attack a Western power in this fashion,” as most important to him was jihad against the jahiliyya he found in his own country.35 Nevertheless, his ideas would certainly be appropriated to justify direct hostility against the West, and that his writings were based on twenty-one months living in the United States gave much credibility to his criticisms.

the atlantic journey As with the visitors who preceded Qutb, the journey across the Atlantic Ocean was an important precursor to Qutb’s time in the United States. In keeping with his mystical disposition and his deepening spirituality, crossing the vast sea provided an opportunity for Qutb to reflect upon his life and the direction it would take. Recollecting his journey across the Atlantic, Qutb wrote: “I felt like a small speck in the immense ocean, among the crashing waves and the infinite blue surrounding us. And nothing but the will of God and his solicitation, and the laws He laid down for the universe, could have guaranteed the safe passage of that small speck among the terrible ocean waves.”36 Demonstrating both his sensitivity to nature and his appreciation of classical music, Qutb described one night of the journey on the vast ocean: “the breeze was gentle, the night was quiet and the moon had a silvery glistening.” In that “moment of sanctity, transparency and glorification” he felt “the music of existence,” which one could also sense in the “musical pieces of Mozart.”37 He saw the beauty of the sea as proof of God’s existence. As he contemplated these signs of providence, he understood himself to be at a sort of spiritual crossroads. “Should I go to America as any normal student on a scholarship, who only eats and sleeps, or should I be special?” Qutb asked himself. “Should I hold on to my Islamic beliefs, facing the many sinful temptations, or should I indulge those temptations all round me?”38 Or, in Sayed Khatab’s rendering of the same existential discussion, he writes of Qutb asking: “Do I go to America like a normal emissary? Or am I to be distinguished by a particular character?”39 Qutb was no normal emissary; and he would prove himself a particular character to be sure. An

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opportunity to hold fast to his convictions, to resist temptation, however, would not wait until he reached American shores. One evening on the voyage, a “beautiful, tall, semi-naked” woman appeared at his stateroom cabin door. The woman asked Qutb if she could spend the night with him, a request he forcefully refused. After shutting the door to his room, he heard the woman fall to the ground in an apparent state of drunkenness. As Qutb conveyed to his friend, Sayyid Salim, this was one of “various attempts to persuade him sexually.” Firm in his resolve to resist such enticements, he would later report that “all the attempts of the United States concerning him had ended in failure.”40 On the ship, Qutb also led a Friday Muslim prayer service, an activity that was prompted by the proselytizing efforts of a Christian missionary on board who dared to approach Qutb and five other Muslims. After the encounter, Qutb sought and was granted permission from the ship’s captain to lead Muslim prayers. After the service, Qutb was approached by a Yugoslavian woman who was moved by what she witnessed. Qutb recounted, “Her eyes swelled with tears and she could not contain her emotions. She clasped my hand warmly and said in weak English that she could not help but be touched by the humility, order, and spirituality contained in our prayers.”41 Qutb attributed the woman’s response to “the Qur’an’s miraculous ability to move sensibilities by means of the sonorous power of its language.”42

new york and washington, dc Like the previous visitors, Qutb’s first stop was New York City. He arrived at the start of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. He described New York as hectic and fast paced, as a “crazy place, a place that is never still,” and as a “huge workshop,” “clamorous” and “noisy.”43 Noticing a flock of pigeons, which had landed on a curb beside a main road, Qutb reflected on the frenzy of activity surrounding the birds: the “roaring cars and thunderous traffic,” the “hurrying crowds rushing feverishly in search of their prey,” and the “hard and cold . . . sharp and sparkling looks filled with greed, desire, and lust.” Qutb imagined the peaceful pigeons offering advice to “this stormy, furious human herd.” It was as if they were saying: “Easy! Have some leniency and peace. Ponder the meaning, beauty and the music of life. Pursue life’s higher ends, rather than this life of gluttony, indulgence, craving and consumption.”44

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As we have already seen, Qutb was not the first to notice the hurried pace and restlessness of Americans. Both Tocqueville and Chesterton also observed these qualities. Recall Frances Chesterton’s summary quip to Americans, cited in the previous chapter: “You are in such a surprising hurry here about everything.”45 Other Middle Eastern visitors were likewise struck by this characteristic of Americans. The Syrian author, Safiq Jabri, who visited the United States two times during the 1950s, disliked the “fast-paced American life,” and observed of the American that “from morning until noon he works, eating in a hurry, and then he returns to work. A soon as he leaves his work, he hurries to eat dinner in some restaurant . . . There is no free time to converse with friends, or spend time alone with the family.”46 The Syro-Lebanese scholar, Philip K. Hitti, similarly, in his 1924 book, America in the Eyes of an Easterner, wrote, “‘Hurry is Satan’s way,’ is a proverb that is unknown to Americans. For the American eats in a hurry, walks in a hurry, works in a hurry, lives life in a hurry, dies in a hurry, and even is buried in a hurry.”47 Reflecting on the “clamor and crowds” of New York, Qutb likened the people to an “agitated herd.” While in America, he found “the herd in every place, the agitated, confused herd that knew no purpose except for money and pleasure.”48 Qutb did not see Americans giving themselves to “calm contemplation,” but to a kind of thinking and “strenuous effort” aimed at “improving the factory, upgrading the laboratory, managing the work, and organizing the labor!” This hard “work for the sake of the dollar” left no room for “spiritual longings” or “poetic feelings” or appreciating beauty. Like Tocqueville and Beaumont, Qutb observed that Americans were surrounded by natural beauty, but were indifferent to it. “Nature has surrounded this country with its boundless treasures,” he wrote, “beauty in nature, beauty in faces, and beauty in figures.” Yet, “nobody realizes or feels this beauty.”49 In New York, Qutb felt alienated by an environment of constant “noise and rush,” by a life of “perpetual anxiety, perpetual work, perpetual desire.”50 As he wrote to a friend, “Here in this strange place, this huge workshop they call ‘the new world,’ I feel as though my spirit, thoughts and body live in loneliness.” He longed to talk to someone about “topics other than dollars, movie stars, brands of cars – a real conversation on the issues of man, philosophy and soul.”51 By the early part of the New Year, Qutb had traveled from New York to Washington, DC, where he enrolled in Wilson Teacher’s College, now part of the University of the District of Columbia. He found aspects of his time in Washington agreeable. “Life in Washington is good,” he wrote

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to his friend Mohammad Gabr, “especially as I live in close proximity to the library and my friends.” Moreover, he reported making “good progress” with his English; and the generous stipend supplied to him by the Egyptian Ministry of Education was more than sufficient to cover his costs. “A regular student can live well on $180 per month,” Qutb wrote. “I however, spend between $250 and $280 monthly.”52 The sort of educational practices he found at Wilson Teacher’s College, however, were not entirely to his liking. Qutb wrote to Gabr of his experience at the College’s International Center for Teaching Languages, where he reportedly evolved “from being merely a student who learns the language into a teacher who teaches them how to study the language.” Correcting the school’s “defective pedagogy,” Qutb succeeded “in modifying their methods in many instances.”53 From this experience he rather harshly concluded that “America is the biggest lie known to the world.” While it was possible to “benefit from America in the pure scientific scholarships: mechanics, electricity, chemistry, agriculture . . . and the like,” visitors would be seriously mistaken to “attempt to benefit from American theoretical studies including methods of teaching.” He offered in this instance what was for him an atypical cautionary caveat: “Nevertheless, I do not like to make hasty judgments. Maybe there are things which hitherto I do not know.”54 A judgment that would be confirmed in Qutb’s mind, however, was his view that America was to be commended for its technological and scientific innovations, for its advances in “chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, medicine, industry, agriculture and methods of administration.”55 Qutb was not anti-modern in this sense and his views were commensurate with the sort of ambivalent anti-Americanism discussed in the Introduction. In his most developed reflections on the United States, The America That I Have Seen, published in 1951, the year following his return to Egypt, he wrote in “wonder and admiration” of America’s “genius in management and organization.”56 Similarly, in a letter to his friend, Twafiz al-Hakim, he wrote of America’s “inexhaustible materials and resources, powers and men, this huge industrialization which is not known to any other civilization.” He added that America’s “countless variety of productions, the educational institutions and laboratories everywhere, the brilliant planning and management . . . stimulate wonder and admiration.”57 However, for Qutb, this economic and material prowess came at a great cost. It was not balanced with equal advancement in the realm of human values. “I fear,” Qutb wrote further, “that a balance may not

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exist between America’s material greatness and the quality of its people.” Qutb anticipated that, in the final analysis, when “the book of life will have closed,” that “America will have added nothing or next to nothing, to the account of morals that distinguishes man from object, and indeed, mankind from animals.”58 While still in Washington, DC, Qutb wrote to Gabr a summation of what he had seen of American life thus far: “I believe that I can summarize it for you when I say that it is a life whose pillars are pleasure and scientific success, that there is no place in it for any creation that humanity cherishes, and that all moral values are a subject of ridicule for Americans.”59 Concerning morals, Qutb related the story of a female teacher at Wilson Teacher’s College who, while giving a lesson to a group of Latin American students, invited the students to comment on their experiences in the United States. A young man from Guatemala observed: “I have noticed that young girls who are fourteen years old and boys who are fifteen years old engage in complete sexual relations.” The student added, “this is a very early age to engage in these relations.” In an attempt to assuage the student and offer a defense for the behavior of American teenagers, the teacher responded, “Our life on earth is very short. We do not have time to waste more than fourteen years.” Qutb cited the recently published Alfred C. Kinsey Report as evidence that such “absolute licentiousness” was not out of the ordinary.60 At the Washington, DC hotel where Qutb and another Egyptian were staying, the hotel’s African American elevator operator told them of various sexual adventures occurring at the hotel. Qutb suggested that the black elevator operator was open with the visiting Egyptians, “because we were nearer to his skin color and because we did not despise colored people.” Included among the hotel employee’s stories were accounts of delivering bottles of Coca Cola to rooms where pairs of boys and girls were engaging in sexual activity. Those participating in these liaisons would not change “their posture when he entered the room.” Qutb and his colleague were taken aback by these stories and could not comprehend the apparent lack of shame. The hotel employee, in turn, could not understand their disgust. “They satisfy their private inclinations and enjoy themselves,” he explained to the visiting Egyptians. Qutb concluded from this and other observations that “American society does not disapprove of any person’s satisfying his pleasure in the way that appeals to him as long as there is not coercion.”61 While in Washington, DC, Qutb was admitted to the George Washington Hospital for an undisclosed illness.62 Here again he was

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scandalized by American attitudes toward sexuality when a nurse openly detailed to Qutb her ideal attributes for lovers: “I want nothing in the man of my dreams but two strong arms he can really squeeze me with!”63 While in the hospital, Qutb also learned that Hassan al-Banna, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, had been shot and killed while getting into a Cairo taxi on February 12, 1949. Al-Banna had founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. The murder was an apparent retaliation for the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi, which occurred six weeks earlier (this is the same Nuqrashi who, by some accounts, had assisted in arranging Qutb’s trip to the United States). Qutb offered the implausible assertion that “hospital employees openly rejoiced upon hearing the news” of al-Banna’s death. The shooting of the Muslim Brotherhood leader was reported in major U.S. papers on the day following the assassination, but not in a celebratory fashion.64 According to Musallam, the event was an important turning point in Qutb’s life. For the first time he “realized the threat al-Banna had posed to the West, and Qutb regretted not getting in closer contact with him.”65 Qutb’s interest in the Muslim Brotherhood, however, was evident from his very first days in the United States. Not long after his arrival in New York, Qutb wrote to Gabr and asked, “How is the Muslim Brotherhood doing?” Two months later, while in Washington, DC, he mentioned the Brotherhood again, stating that “I would like to be completely connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and their movement for the duration of my time here.” Finally, in a third letter to Gabr, written while he was in California in January 1950, he inquired with even greater urgency, “So, what is the state of the Muslim Brotherhood today? Who are the members of its guidance council? How do affairs progress inside and outside of it? It is my right to know something about all of this.”66 Qutb’s growing and more intense interest in the Muslim Brotherhood was encouraged, in part, by a meeting in Washington with James Heyworth-Dunne, a British Arab scholar, who told Qutb that the Brotherhood represented a “bulwark against the advance of Western civilization in the Muslim East,” an argument which, given Qutb’s developing views, would constitute an essential endorsement of the organization. Heyworth-Dunne told Qutb that Egypt “will not progress if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power.”67 In fact, in early January, Heyworth-Dunne had reported on the death of Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi in a Washington Post article in which he referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as a “fanatical, anti-Western, anti-government

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organization.”68 During his meeting with Qutb, Heyworth-Dunne offered to translate Qutb’s recently published book Social Justice in Islam into English, an offer Qutb refused due to his suspicions that the Arabist historian was trying to recruit him to American intelligence work.69 As evidence for this suspicion Qutb reported that Heyworth-Dunne had showed him intelligence reports on al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood during their meeting.70 The ostensibly jubilant response to al-Banna’s fatal shooting was not the only reaction to a death Qutb witnessed when he was at the George Washington Hospital. He recalled another incident while hospitalized: I was at George Washington Hospital in the capital city, and it was evening. Suddenly there was a commotion of unknown origin that drew much attention. And the patients who were able to move began leaving their beds and their rooms and coming into the hallway to take a closer look. Then they began to gather together inquiring about the source of the spectacle in the hospital’s unusually quiet life. We learned after a while that one of the hospital’s employees was injured in an elevator accident and was in critical condition, indeed, he was in the final round of death.

One patient went to get a firsthand view of the accident and report back to the others on what he had seen. Qutb was disturbed by what occurred next: But here was this American who began laughing and chuckling while he mimicked the appearance of the injured, dying man, and the way his neck was struck by the elevator, his head crushed, and his tongue dangled from his mouth on the side of his face! And I waited to see signs of disgust or disapproval from those listening, but the vast majority of them began laughing joyously at this odious act.71

For Qutb, this was not an isolated incident, but was indicative of Americans’ lack of sensitivity toward the “sanctity of death.” As further evidence for this assertion, he recounted other incidents he had seen or heard about from others. Among these was the story, told to him by a friend, of a funeral where attendees stood in a reception room with the body of the deceased displayed in a glass coffin. Unsettling to Qutb and to his friend was that those present “began mocking and making jokes about the deceased and other individuals.” Even the “wife and family took part in this, giving rise to joyful laughter in the cold silence of death, around the body that was shrouded in burial clothes.”72 Qutb recounted another occasion when he was at the house of a woman who was helping him with his English. A female friend was visiting the woman when he arrived and he caught the tail end of their conversation. The friend said with gratification and a smile, “I was lucky

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because I had taken out insurance on his life. Even his treatment cost very little because I had insured him with the Blue Cross.” Qutb was stunned to learn that she was speaking of her husband who had died only three days earlier. How, he wondered, could she speak so “matter-of-factly about her husband”? Noting Qutb’s disquietude, the English instructor sought (without success) to reassure him: “He was ill! He had fallen sick more than three months before his death!”73 Reflecting on these encounters, Qutb observed that even chickens and ravens demonstrated greater reverence for the death of their own. He attributed Americans’ lack of respect for the dead to their preoccupation with “monetary and material measures, and sheer physical gratification.” This and the “drought of sentimental sympathy” had, according to Qutb, “erased the sanctity of death in the American soul.”74 Though not in direct reference to the United States, Max Weber similarly reflected on the meaning of death in modern Western society more generally. Citing Tolstoy in “Science as a Vocation,” Weber raised the question of whether or not – in the modern condition, characterized as it is by a preoccupation with the “purely practical and technical” – the phenomenon of death had any meaning. He concluded, with Tolstoy, that it did not. For “civilized man,” said Weber, “death for him is a meaningless occurrence. And because death is meaningless, civilized life as such is meaningless; by its very ‘progressiveness’ it gives death the imprint of meaninglessness.”75 In a more recent discussion, sociologist George Ritzer likewise observes the manner in which the processes of modern rationalization (or McDonaldization) have resulted in “the dehumanization of the very human process of death.”76 In one way or another, Weber and Ritzer, like Qutb, see death in modern Western culture as having lost its sanctity or meaning. For his part, Qutb provided specific examples of the way in which Americans living in the mid-twentieth century demonstrated this disenchanted understanding of death.

social justice in islam As previously noted, Qutb’s book Social Justice in Islam was first published in 1949 while Qutb was in the United States. Between the time of his return to Egypt and his death, the book was edited and reissued five times, and in some cases the revisions were rather substantial. As William Shepard observes in his careful analysis of the various editions, Qutb’s animosity toward the West, and toward America in

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particular, became more pronounced in the later editions, the versions published after his return to Egypt. This was evident, for example, in his discussions about race relations in the United States. Like both Tocqueville and Weber before him, Qutb noted the glaring mistreatment of Native and African Americans in the United States. A virtue of Islam, according to Qutb, was that it transcended ethnic, racial, tribal, and national differences, an achievement that, in his view, made it superior to Western civilization. On the other hand, Western civilization permits, among other injustices, wrote Qutb, “the American conscience to engage in an organized extermination of the Red Indian race while the rest of the world looks on, just as it permits that miserable discrimination between white and black, a loathsome savagery.”77 The last phrase about discrimination against blacks was added in the last edition. He made a similar adjustment in another section of Social Justice in Islam, where he wrote of the evils that will befall the people should they ignore the justice offered in an Islamic system. Qutb wrote of the injustices “the White men give to the Red people and the Black people in the United States.” The latter phrase (“and the Black people”) was added in the edition published immediately following Qutb’s return from the United States. 78 Alterations to Social Justice in Islam also reveal that Qutb, like the three European visitors who preceded him, became more conscious and critical of American imperialism over time. In chapter 8 of the first edition, written before Qutb traveled to the United States, he wrote of European imperialism, but made no mention of the United States in this context. In the 1949 version he wrote critically of “European imperialism,” which was edited to “European and American Crusaderist imperialism,” in the 1964 edition. Similarly, in the first edition, Qutb wrote of the hostility of “European imperialism” to Islam, which was altered to “European and American imperialism” in the 1964 version.79 In the same section, Qutb delineated different types of imperialism exercised by various Western powers, such as France’s involvement in Morocco and England’s dealings in Egypt, which are found in all versions of the text. Only in the 1964 edition did Qutb add a sweeping and critical observation about American imperialism: “America establishes practices and systems that crush all aspects of Islam, doctrinal, ethical and practical, in all parts of the Islamic world.”80 One final alteration in Social Justice in Islam is worth noting. In the first five editions of the text, Qutb predicted that Americans would eventually become communist. “Barring unforeseen events,” America

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would “follow the same road” as Russia and China. Once monopolies take control and the American worker “loses the opportunity to become one of the capitalists himself,” he “will turn to Communism, for he will not be restrained by any notion of life higher than the materialistic one, nor by any spiritual creed nor any moral ideal.” Qutb eventually eliminated this line and, in several other places, he altered the language to mitigate the certitude of his original prediction. Nevertheless, he still maintained that there “is no essential difference between Russian and American thinking, but only differences in economic and social circumstances.” Both systems, according to Qutb, were “basically materialistic in their thinking about life.”81 This perspective on capitalism and communism lines up in interesting ways with Chesterton’s critique of the same two economic models. As discussed in Chapter 6, Chesterton was also critical of both economic systems; and he saw distributism as a viable alternative to “the two extremes of Capitalism and Communism.” Like Qutb, he saw both systems as having the same essential tendencies. “The practical tendency of all trade and business today is toward big commercial combinations,” wrote Chesterton, which are “often more imperial, more impersonal, more international than many a communist commonwealth.” Both systems were, in Chesterton’s view, “equally impersonal and inhuman.”82 It’s worth noting that agreeing with both Chesterton and Qutb on this point was another foreign visitor, one who himself suffered under a communist regime. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose writings did much to expose to the world the atrocities of the Soviet system, was exiled from Russia in 1974. Thirty years after Qutb arrived on American shores, Solzhenitsyn was invited, during the time of his exile, to receive an honorary degree and give the 1978 commencement address at Harvard University. In the speech, A World Split Apart, Solzhenitsyn, to the surprise of many, leveled a critique not just against communism, about which he had written so much, but against the decadence and materialism of the West. Western civilization, said Solzhenitsyn, had turned its back on “the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal.” In this sense, then, like Qutb, Solzhenitsyn saw no real difference between the East and the West. Both systems were denying deeper, more lasting human values. “In the East, [our spiritual life] is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.”83

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Qutb would have been in full agreement with Solzhenitsyn on this point. He, too, saw more similarities than differences between the East and the West. “We should not be deceived by the fact that we see a strong and violent struggle between the Eastern and Western blocs,” wrote Qutb in Social Justice in Islam, “for both of them have a materialistic notion of life, each is similar to the other in its thinking, and neither struggles for ideas and principles but only for influence in the world and profit in the markets.”84 Where Solzhenitsyn and Qutb differed was in their prescriptions for overcoming the materialism of capitalism and communism. For Qutb the answer rested firmly and unequivocally in Islam. “The real and profound struggle is between Islam on one hand and both the Eastern and Western blocs on the other. Islam is the real force that resists the force of the materialistic thought worshipped equally in Europe, America, Russia and China.”85 Chesterton and Solzhenitsyn, no doubt, would not agree with Qutb that Islam was the proper remedy, that it alone “contains the universal, complete and harmonious conception concerning existence and life . . . that gives life a spiritual basis,” as Qutb put it.86 Nevertheless, as we will consider in the next chapter, there are more areas of common ground in the views of these very different foreign visitors than one might expect. Before following Qutb as he left the East Coast for the western part of the United States in the summer of 1949, a final insight from Social Justice in Islam is worth noting, as it lines up with what several other foreign visitors, including Solzhenitsyn, noticed about America. Qutb identified the lack of “safeguards for freedom of opinion in the United States,” where “the publishing and broadcasting companies monopolize the expression and guidance of opinion, and do not allow any contradictory idea to find its way to the eyes and ears and minds of people.”87 This observation, of course, calls to mind the conformist tendencies and the “tyranny of the majority” in America that both Tocqueville and Chesterton observed. Solzhenitsyn, nearly a century and a half after Tocqueville, joined with the Frenchman (and with Chesterton and Qutb) in observing the same basic tendency. Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd.88

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Solzhenitsyn thus joined several of our foreign observers in his invocation of the herd image. As we have seen, Qutb likewise described Americans as an “agitated herd.” Before him, Tocqueville worried about democracy becoming a “herd of timid and industrious animals” conforming to the dictates of the sovereign majority, and Chesterton offered the “last hysteria of the herd instinct” as one way to describe the dominant American mood.89 As Qutb left Washington, DC for Colorado in the summer of 1949, he would continue to pay attention to the fashions, moods, and trends that determined American attitudes and that defined the zeitgeist of mid-twentieth century America.

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8 Qutb’s “Inquiring Eyes” in Colorado and California

Qutb’s next stop was Greeley, Colorado, home of Colorado State College of Education (CSCE), now called University of Northern Colorado. In certain respects, Greeley would seem an out of the way destination for Qutb and an unlikely place to engender the sort of negative response from him that followed. The town was started in 1870 by Nathan Meeker as a planned utopian community. It was named after Horace Greeley, Meeker’s boss at the New York Tribune and one of the community’s original sponsors. Situated about 50 miles north of Denver between the Platte and Cache la Poudre rivers with the dramatic expanse of the Colorado Rockies in view to the west, Meeker saw the location as an idyllic agrarian setting for starting a temperate and morally upstanding community. After placing an advertisement in the New York Tribune, more than 3,000 applied to join the community, from which 700 were selected to settle in the new town. By 1949, when Qutb arrived, Greeley had a population of around 20,000, was still a dry town, and had more than 20 different churches. It is not entirely clear why Qutb chose to visit Greeley, though there were a number of other Middle Eastern students at CSCE at the time, including students from Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt. Additionally, CSCE was an education school, and the ostensible reason for Qutb’s trip to America was “to study modern systems of education and training.”1 It is also possible that Qutb’s friendship with the Egyptian graduate student, Ahmed Abbas, played a role. Abbas was finishing a doctorate in Education in the summer of Qutb’s arrival. Like Qutb, Abbas had lived in Cairo; and he had completed degrees from Cairo’s Fouad I University and the Institute of Education before going to 183 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 11:14:08, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.009

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Colorado. Given Qutb’s position in the Egyptian Ministry of Education, it is likely he knew Abbas in Egypt. Moreover, in Colorado, Abbas and Qutb were known to be “good friends” and, like Qutb, Abbas reportedly joined the Muslim Brotherhood upon his return to Egypt.2 I interviewed three former CSCE students who knew Qutb at Greeley: Saeb Dajani, a Palestinian who came to Greeley from Jerusalem; Ibrahim Insari, also from Jerusalem and a cousin of Dajani’s; and Jaime McClendon, the only African American student at CSCE at the time. They remember Qutb as intelligent, knowledgeable, gracious, rather sophisticated, as someone who carried himself well, could cite poetry, and had a fondness for classical music. Insari recalls that Qutb would sometimes quote the Qur’an in reference to “social structure, behavior, and the kind.” Qutb turned forty-three in October 1949 while in Greeley; most of the other students with whom he associated were in their late teens or early twenties. Given this age difference and Qutb’s notable accomplishments in Egypt, it’s not surprising that some found him to be somewhat aloof. Jamie McClendon, for example, remembers that Qutb “was very professorial; he held himself up,” and conveyed an attitude of, “I have an education, I am qualified, I’ve studied, I know stuff, I am somebody.” A passage from Milestones, which British travel writer Jonathan Raban identifies as “unmistakably a portrait of Qutb in America,” communicates this sense of loftiness, but it appears to stem more from a moral or religious than an intellectual sense of superiority. Qutb wrote that amidst the “rubbish heap” of a jahiliyya society, “the Believer from his height looks at the people drowning in the dirt and mud. He may be the only one; yet he is not dejected nor grieved, nor does his heart desire that he take off his neat and immaculate garments and join the crowd. He remains the uppermost with the enjoyment of faith and the taste of belief.”3 The October 1949 issue of the CSCE Bulletin includes a photograph of Qutb seated next to the president of the college, Dr. William R. Ross. In the picture, the two are examining Qutb’s recently published book, Social Justice in Islam; and Qutb is, notably, neatly dressed in a tie and three-piece suit. The caption reads: “The author is Mr. Sayed Kotb of Cairo. In addition to being an author of both novels and text books, Mr. Kotb is an outstanding authority on Arabic Literature and is a noted educator in his homeland. Mr. Kotb is one of several Egyptians to stay at the college.”4

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“inquiring eyes” In the summer of Qutb’s arrival, the CSCE’s school paper, The Mirror, published an article on international students that would prove eerily prescient. The article was a summation of a longer piece, “Campus Ambassadors,” by Neil M. Clark, which was published a few weeks earlier in the Saturday Evening Post. Clark anticipated that future American foreign policy would be significantly influenced by the 26,000 internationals then studying in the United States. “These students have sharp, inquiring eyes,” wrote Clark. “They are looking us over shrewdly and don’t miss much, and they will carry word of us back home. In a few years most of them will be in places of power or influence in their own countries . . . These students are forming opinions of us. They will carry back tales about the kind of folks we are.”5 As it concerns the inquiring eyes of Sayyid Qutb, Clark could hardly have imagined just how prophetic he would ultimately be. Student comments cited in the article included both positive and negative assessments of the United States. Among the faults identified were that “Americans don’t speak English,” that is, not proper British English. A student from Mosul had studied English for years in his home country, yet reported having to spend two months at Bucknell University, “learning American.” Visiting students also criticized Americans for rushing too much, not taking time to explore one another’s minds, being too smug, treating college as a fad (especially with regard to football), placing too high a value on money, and holding racially prejudiced views.6 Qutb would identify some of these same faults in his own critique of the United States and was even critical of some features of American society that visiting students viewed more favorably. For example, male students cited in Clark’s piece were reportedly happy with the “freedom that girls and women enjoy here.” The article pictures two young men at Mines College in Colorado studying at a table; one is from Pakistan, the other from Afghanistan. Above the table, situated between Pakistani and a United Nations flags, is a pinup of a red-haired woman scantily clad in a green bikini. This is precisely the type of image that bothered Qutb and that would typify what he meant by the worst sort of jahiliyya. Concerning the observation of racial prejudice in America, after returning to Egypt, Qutb wrote, “racism had brought America down from the summit to the foot of the mountain – taking the rest of humanity down with it.”7 Saeb Dajani recalls talking with Qutb and Ahmed Abbas about an incident that occurred at a Greeley cinema. Qutb and

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Abbas went to the theater, but were refused entry because they were thought to be African American. When Abbas explained that they were Egyptians, the ticket seller relented and offered to admit them. However, they left, feeling indignant over the exchange. Both Dajani and McClendon, who, with Qutb, were members of the International Club at the college, also encountered rather overt forms of racism during their time at CSCE, incidents of which Qutb would no doubt have been aware. McClendon, for example, was in a biology class with a professor named Ezra Harrah. At the start of the semester, Harrah announced to McClendon and an Asian student named Harold Chong, in front of the class, that they “didn’t belong in that class with white kids.” When Chong got up to leave, McClendon turned to him and said, “Damn it, you sit down.” Chong did sit down, but that did not end their difficulties. Later in the semester, McClendon spent hours studying for one of Harrah’s exams. He went into the examination feeling well prepared and thought he had aced the test. However, McClendon explains, “when I got my test back I got an F on it.” Incredulous, he took the exam to Dr. Harrah, who responded dismissively, “You couldn’t have remembered all of that.” Undeterred, McClendon eventually went to Dr. Ross, the president of the college, who then took the matter up directly with Dr. Harrah. The grade was changed from an F to an A, but Harrah warned McClendon that if he even missed one class, he would fail him. McClendon was a star on the college football team. Having been injured during play, he had difficulty walking and subsequently missed a class. Dr. Harrah kept his promise and failed McClendon, who had to retake the class with another professor. Saeb Dajani experienced similar difficulties with the same professor. In fact, the discrepancy in the professor’s grading of Dajani’s work and that of other students in the class was so obvious that a student sitting next to Dajani took it upon herself to complain to the administration. Sylvester Toussaint, CSCE director of Student Personnel at the time, called Dajani in to his office to discuss the situation. Dajani was a zoology major and Harrah the chair of zoology; thus, they would likely have to continue dealing with each other. Embarrassed by the manner in which Dajani was being treated, Toussaint made arrangements to secure Dajani’s transfer to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California. Dajani saw the proposed arrangement as an act of kindness from the administration. He said, “I’m not here to make any problems. So, I accepted.” He then transferred and finished his degree at Cal Poly. Both Dajani and

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McClendon noted that Dr. Harrah was the exception to the rule at CSCE. In the main, they found Greeley and the college to be a very friendly place and their professors to be excellent instructors. Given Harrah’s behavior, however, McClendon could not understand why the school hired him and kept him on the faculty.8 In addition to being a professor at the college, Dr. Harrah was also a minister at a local Methodist church in Greeley. Noting the hypocrisy of this role, McClendon, who was also a Methodist, said that when he learned of it, it “kind of blew me away.”9 In terms of other racial incidents, McClendon recalls that the Mexicans, many of whom worked in the agricultural fields surrounding Greeley, occupied a segregated section of the downtown park.10 McClendon also faced difficulties getting a haircut in Greeley. “I went to get a haircut, and the fellow looked at me . . . and he said, ‘I can’t cut your hair. Now, you come back after hours and I’ll cut your hair,’” a proposal that McClendon refused. He was even denied a haircut by a barber in Denver after a friend took him there. After learning of these incidents, Insari recalls how he and Saeb Dajani and some of McClendon’s fellow football players went to the local barbershop in Greeley with McClendon, sat down, and said to the barber, “Now he goes first and we go next.” According to Insari, the “barber got frustrated and didn’t know what to do.” McClendon also experienced difficulties securing on-campus housing, though not necessarily from students. As Dajani recalls, “I came to the counter, you know where the lady and her husband were assigning rooms for the beginning of the semester or the quarter, and they didn’t know what to do with Mr. McClendon who was black. And I said I would room with him. I made a friend out of him.” Dajani is quite sure that Qutb was aware of these occurrences. He explains, “Now, you know Sayyid Qutb knows these stories.” It is not surprising, then, that Qutb would later write in Milestones of the “evil and fanatic racial discrimination” he saw in the United States, and in The Shade of the Qur’an: “During my stay in the United States of America, I saw . . . the way they treat the colored people with despicable arrogance and disgusting barbarity.” He even claimed that American racism was of “an even harsher form” than “that of the Nazis,” particularly “if these colored people are Muslims.”11 Qutb first enrolled in the summer session of 1949, which began June 25th and ended on August 19th. He audited an Elementary English Composition class with an assistant professor of English named Richmond Hutchins. Also teaching at Greeley that summer was the

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author, James Michener, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning book Tales of the South Pacific had been published two years earlier. Along with a list of course offerings, the 1949 CSCE Summer Bulletin provides introductory information on the town of Greeley, including a page titled, “Greeley – The City Beautiful.” The page contains pictures of four attractive homes with tidy and well-manicured lawns and reads, “People visiting the community for the first time marvel at the immaculate appearance of both the residential and business districts, which seem to have a ‘well-scrubbed look.’” The bulletin states further, “Residents take great pride in the care of their homes and take advantage of an abundant mountain water supply to develop luxuriant lawns, beautiful gardens of flowers and many types of colorful foliage.”12 On evening walks through Greeley’s neighborhoods, Qutb took note of these homes and lawns. “Each house,” he wrote, “appears as a flowering plant and the streets are like garden pathways.” However, he observed that residents did not venture beyond their own yards and rarely interacted with others. As he put it, “the owners of these houses spend their leisure time working hard, watering their private yards and trimming their gardens. This is all they appear to do.”13 He saw residents’ preoccupation with their individual lawns as a selfish, noncommunal, and utilitarian sort of activity. Instead of appreciating the natural beauty of their gardens, Greeley residents were focused on “developing the garden and organizing it in the same way the store owner organizes his store, and the factory owner his factory.” Qutb’s observation here calls to mind Beaumont’s interpretation of the American farmer as one who treats “the land as industrial material, and lives in his cottage as if in a factory,” as well as Weber’s characterization of “the absolute individualism of the [American] farmers’ economics, the quality of the farmer as a mere business man.”14 Qutb did not see Americans appreciating beauty for beauty’s sake. There was, Qutb observed, “no relishing of beauty and enjoying beauty.” Instead, it was “the mechanism of organizing and putting into order, and not the spirit of good taste and beauty.”15 Moreover, Qutb did not find Greeley residents to be joyful or happy people. “I stayed there six months,” he wrote, “and never did I see a person or family actually enjoying themselves, even on summer nights when breezes waft over the city as in a dream.”16 Today in Greeley, it should be noted, summer breezes carry with them the rather pungent smell of the enormous cattle feed lots that fill the landscape surrounding the city. This form of industrialized agriculture is arguably a contemporary

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manifestation of the same sort of farming practices Weber witnessed in the Chicago stockyards of 1904. In the fall semester, Qutb audited three classes: a class on “American Education” and a class on “Secondary Education,” both taught by Assistant Professor of Secondary Education Julius Schulz, who was new to the college that year; and a third class on “Oral Interpretation,” taught by a theater or speech professor named Helen Langworthy. The two education classes fit well with Qutb’s ostensible purpose to “study the principles of education and curricula, including American curricula.”17 Qutb likely took the class on oral interpretation, which gave students the “opportunity to read aloud in all the forms of literature,” with the aim of improving his spoken English. Qutb formally withdrew from all three classes on December 21, 1949 before the exam period began. While these classes were no doubt instructive to Qutb, it is clear that his observations of American society extended well beyond the classroom, including to the sports field. Qutb was critical of the violence he witnessed in American sports, especially on the football field. He viewed American football as a sort of gladiator exhibition, where fans, with primitive impulses, relished in the physicality and roughness of the sport: This primitiveness can be seen in the spectacle of the fans as they follow a game of football, played in the rough American style, which has nothing to do with its name “football,” for the foot does not take part in the game. Instead, each player attempts to catch the ball with his hands and run with it toward the goal, while the players of the opposing team attempt to tackle him by any means necessary, whether this be a blow to his stomach, or crushing his arms and legs with great violence and ferocity. The sight of the fans as they follow this game . . . is one of animal excitement born of their love for hardcore violence.

Cheering fans, according to Qutb, yelled, “Destroy his head. Crush his ribs. Beat him to a pulp.”18 While his account seems exaggerated, during Qutb’s time in Greeley, two players suffered broken jaws, including the starting quarterback. Jamie McClendon was also injured. In the team’s humiliating loss to Wyoming (103-0) that year, Dajani reports that the Wyoming players were particularly rough on McClendon because of his race. “I considered him a hero,” Dajani says, “because in the game with Wyoming, the players banged on him because he was black.” Wajeeh Dajani, Saeb’s older brother and also a student at CSCE, similarly noted the enthusiasm with which Americans watched and played football. As reported in the student paper that fall, Wajeeh Dajani “thought that the American people have not had as much political excitement and

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hardship as other countries have experienced, so sports fill in that gap.” Said Dajani, “That gives them excitement.”19

churches in america Qutb made a practice of visiting churches during his time in the United States. He even joined church clubs in order to get an inside look at these communities. He famously wrote of a particular church club in Greeley of which he was a member. “One night I was in a church in Greeley, Colorado, I was a member in its club as I was a member in a number of church clubs in every area that I had lived in, for this is an important facet of American society, deserving close study from the inside.”20 On this particular occasion, Qutb observed that after the “religious service,” members of the club moved to an adjoining room to participate in a dance. “The dance floor was lit with red and yellow and blue lights, and with a few white lamps. And they danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire.”21 The minister, according to Qutb, encouraged those not dancing to join in, dimmed the white lamps, and then put a new tune on the gramophone, Baby It’s Cold Outside. The Frank Loesser song was performed as a duet in the 1949 film Neptune’s Daughter, which earned Loesser an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Qutb found the lyrics of Baby It’s Cold Outside scandalous given the context in which they were played. Qutb summarized the content of the song as “a dialogue between a boy and a girl returning from their evening date. The boy took the girl to his home and kept her from leaving. She entreated him to let her return home, for it was getting late, and her mother was waiting but every time she would make an excuse, he would reply to her with his line: but baby it is cold outside.”22 Qutb saw the dialogue as inappropriate for the setting of a church. Saeb Dajani, who also frequented church-sponsored social events in Greeley, remembers these dances. He also, at least initially, found such behavior odd, especially in a church. “I come from Jerusalem,” he explains, “where churches are for prayer. But in the United States, it is for social things.” Qutb likewise saw the social dimension of American churches to be their defining quality. “If the church is a place for worship in the entire Christian world,” wrote Qutb, “in America it is for everything but worship. You will find it difficult to differentiate between it and

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any other place. They go to church for carousal and enjoyment, or, as they call it in their language ‘fun.’”23 Thus, Qutb, like Weber, saw in the churches a sort of secularization taking place, but instead of church membership serving as a form of social capital for success in business enterprises, the clubs were now serving as places for socializing and entertainment. To illustrate this focus, Qutb quoted a notice for a church party posted in the student union, which read: “Sunday, October 1st, 6:00 P.M., snacks, magic, games, puzzles, contests, fun.”24 He would, no doubt, have found equally problematic similar advertisements for church and religious club functions listed in Greeley’s college and local papers during the fall of 1949, including announcements for a Sunday evening dinner sponsored by the “Episcopal Canterbury” club followed by “games and entertainment,” a “Halloween Party held by the Congo Club of the Park Congressional Church,” the performance of a “noted speaker, humorist and song leader” at the First Methodist church, and a Sunday evening of “supper and entertainment” by the Newman club.25 Qutb has not been alone in identifying the entertainment orientation of American religion. Religion scholar C. K. Robertson, in his treatment of the topic, argues that “American religion has become – and perhaps long has been – rooted in our own cultural preoccupation to be amused, diverted, charmed . . . entertained.”26 The entertainment orientation of American religion has become even more pronounced in recent decades, particularly as seen in the rapidly growing mega- or seeker church movement in evangelical Protestantism. These churches are well known for their use of bands playing contemporary music, drama performances, and high-tech multimedia presentations. The pastor of a 3,000-member mega-church in Phoenix, Arizona speaks unapologetically of his “entertainment evangelism” philosophy. His church “employs bands, comedians, clowns, drama, and other creative means of outreach” in order to attract potential members.27 Churches are not spared in media theorist Neil Postman’s discussion of America’s culture of entertainment; Postman even sees this orientation altering the essential message of Christianity. Christianity is “a demanding and serious religion,” writes Postman. However, “when it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.”28 While Qutb emphasized the “fun” dimension of church activities, he did not see this feature as mutually exclusive from a market orientation. In fact, he saw the former as serving the latter. That is, the entertainment, social functions, even “using the most beautiful and graceful girls of the town, and engaging them in song and dance, and advertising” served

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the utilitarian end of attracting new members. In this sense, Qutb did not see the role of the church minister as “any different from that of a theater manager, or that of a merchant.” Success comes first and before everything, and the means are not important and this success will reflect on him with fine results: money and stature. The more people that join his church, the greater is his income. Likewise, his respect and recognition is elevated in the community, because the American by his nature is taken with grandeur in size and numbers. It is his first measure of the way he feels and evaluates.29

Again, Qutb was not the first or the last to notice these tendencies. Weber observed the “still quite normal” practice in 1904 in which a real estate developer, in constructing a new site, would build a church structure and then hire a recent seminary graduate, with the promise of permanent employment should he “succeed in rapidly preaching the building ‘full.’” Recall also Tocqueville’s assessment of American ministers as “entrepreneur [s] in the religious industry” or Chesterton’s description of the process whereby “religion surrendered to the trick of trade; learned from hucksters and hustlers how to ‘put it over’; counted converts like customers and thought rather of selling the goods than of seeking the good.”30 Contemporary mega-churches have strategically used such marketing practices as direct mailings, radio and television advertisements, and surveys of local residents to launch and grow their churches.31 Their efforts have been aided by the consulting advice of such agencies as the Barna Group. “The church is a business,” says popular marketing consultant George Barna and author of Marketing the Church; therefore, “the local church must be run with the same wisdom and savvy that characterizes any for profit business.”32 Arguably, Qutb identified a tendency that has only become more pronounced in recent decades, at least among some church communities. As it concerns dances, Qutb saw these events as one strategy for recruiting new members and as an example of the church imitating the surrounding culture. Regarding the latter, dances appear to have been one of the main social activities at CSCE. The yearbook and the school paper for the 1949–50 school year are filled with pictures of and announcements for a variety of proms, dances, and balls. A short article in the January 1950 issue of The Mirror, for example, lists no fewer than eight upcoming dances: “Dances scheduled are: Snyder Snow Ball, Jan. 7; Beaux Arts Ball, January 20; ‘C’ Club, February 4; Blue Key Sweetheart Ball, February 17; Forensic Follies Dance, February 24; I.S.A. Carnival, March 3; International Students Dinner and Dance, March 4; Frosh Ball, March 10.”33 Inasmuch as churches held similar sorts of dances, the churches were, in

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Qutb’s words, doing little to differentiate themselves from any other place. Like Postman, Qutb saw the effort to imitate culture in this way as having the effect of altering the substance of religion. He observed that in utilizing these strategies, ministers do not ask, What is the value of attracting them to the church, when they rush to it in this way, and spend their time in this manner? Is church attendance a goal in and of itself? Is it not for the edification of feelings and manners? From the minister’s point of view . . . merely going to church is the aim. And this situation makes sense to those who live in America!34

While it did not make sense to Qutb, some of his Middle Eastern friends were, over time, more favorably disposed to these practices. Saeb Dajani, for example, was at first critical of church dances and other social events. “We come from countries where a church is purely prayer, prayer and a monastery type of study, not dancing and having pot lucks, and things like that. This is really weird to us.” Eventually, however, he came to see the value in these social activities. Dajani explains his own evolution, “First we criticize it, then we are impressed, then we start praising it, because we get used to the goodness in it.” Dajani was particularly fond of the churchsponsored weekend trips to cabins in the Colorado mountains. “I thought it was fantastic.” Again, Qutb would likely see Dajani’s evolution as an example of jahilliya, of Muslims capitulating to Western mores. In his essays, The America I Have Seen, Qutb even made reference to “immoral Arab youths,” who had American girlfriends and were lured by them to attend church functions. Qutb gave one such Arab youth the nickname “Abu al-Atahiya” – a reference to an Arab poet born in the eighth century who wrote love poetry for Utba, the concubine of Caliph al-Mahdi – presumably to mock the manner in which the young Arab studying in the United States was smitten by his American girlfriend. According to Qutb, the Abu al-Atahiya of Greeley would follow his girlfriend to the church in which she sang, a form of recruitment acceptable to the minister but deplorable to Qutb. Again, to Qutb, Muslim acquiescence to, or even cooperation with, Western ways was the worst type of jahiliyya. In the United States, he met Muslims who defended Islam on the grounds that it was compatible with Western values. Such Muslims, he wrote in Milestones, assumed a “defeated mentality.” He strongly objected to Muslims who tried to “search for resemblances to Islam in man-made systems.”35 During my stay in the United States, there were some people of this kind who used to argue with us – with us few who were considered to be on the side of Islam.

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Some of them took the position of defense and justification. I, on the other hand, took the position of attacking the Western Jahiliyyah, its shaky religious beliefs, its social and economic modes, and its immoralities.36

In attacking Western mores, he leveled his criticism against a number of features of American society, including “capitalism with its monopolies,” “usury,” “individual freedom devoid of human sympathy and responsibility,” and a “materialistic attitude which deadens the spirit.” In Milestones, as elsewhere, he decried American sexual practices as animalistic, as that “which you call ‘Free mixing of the sexes’; at this vulgarity which you call emancipation of women.”37 In contrast he argued unapologetically for the superiority of Islam, “with its logic, beauty, humanity and happiness.” He noted that when he advanced these arguments in the United States, he “made the American people blush.” Most frustrating to him, however, were the supposed “exponents of Islam” who tried to find common ground with American ways. These are people, wrote Qutb, “who are defeated before this filth in which Jahiliyyah is steeped, even to the extent that they search for resemblances to Islam among this rubbish heap of the West.”38 Qutb’s account here suggests that he was willing to challenge Americans even while he was in the United States. Further evidence of such boldness can be found in the one English article he is known to have published while in the United States. In the previous chapter we touched on Qutb’s view that American support of Jewish settlement in Israel constituted a betrayal of trust between the United States and Arabs. His article, “The World Is an Undutiful Boy!” published in fall 1949 issues of CSCE’s literary magazine, the Fulcrum, picks up on this theme. The story is about mother Egypt and her boy, that is, the world. Egypt assumed the role of mother because she “was advanced and possessed a great civilization before any other country.” Civilized Egypt “taught Greece, and Greece taught Europe.” But when the boy grew up, he turned on his mother and tried to kill her. “This is a fact,” wrote Qutb. “This is what actually happened.” The parable thus concludes with an explanatory reference to contemporary international politics: When we came here to appeal to England for our rights, the world helped England against the justice. When we came here to appeal against Jews, the world helped the Jews against the justice. During the war between Arab and Jews, the world helped the Jews, too.39

The state of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, six months before Qutb traveled to the United States, sparking the Arab-Israeli War to

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which Qutb referred at the end of his article. A year later, while Qutb was in America, Israel became a member of the United Nations. All this affected Qutb a great deal. Political scientist Ahmad Moussalli notes that “1948–1949 were tragic years for the Arabs: Israel was established as a state whose existence was guaranteed by the USA.”40 Qutb was “disgusted when he heard how triumphant Americans had reacted to Israel’s independence,” and he was “amazed at the uncritical acceptance of the Zionist-project, with its anti-Arab and anti-Islamic undertones.”41 At CSCE, Qutb was not the only Muslim to speak out against America’s Middle East foreign policy at that time. Wajeeh Dajani (brother of Saeb) was born in Jersualem. His family lost their home as a consequence of the Arab-Israeli War and they were forced to move as refugees to Amman, Jordan. Though more charitable and diplomatic than Qutb, Dajani, in a fall 1949 interview with The Mirror, offered criticisms of American foreign policy. When asked his opinion of the American people, Dajani said, “They impress me as peace-loving people – people who enjoy life and have a good sense of humor.” However, he added, “I think that they lack a little political understanding which indirectly affects the United States’s foreign policy.” Alluding to the sort of disappointment expressed by Qutb, Dajani noted, “The Middle Eastern people blame President Truman for the conflict in Palestine; I think that the United States should, in order to establish better relations and regain its prestige in all the Middle East, do something in the way of helping one million Arab refugees,” among whom were members of Dajani’s family living in Jordan.42

american primitiveness According to Moussalli, three features of America were particularly shocking to Qutb: “materialism, racism, and sexual permissiveness.”43 The sexual suggestiveness in evidence at the church dance was, according to Qutb, indicative of a more pervasive acceptance of sexual license in American society more broadly and represented, along with its sports practices, an example of American primitiveness. As discussed in the previous chapter, Qutb encountered evidence of overt sexuality both on his Atlantic crossing and during his time on the East Coast. His critical views were reinforced during his stay in Colorado. He recalled, for example, a conversation with a female college student, who told him: “The matter of sex is not a moral matter at all. It is but a question of

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biology, and when we look at it from this angle it becomes clear that the use of words like moral and immoral, good and bad, are irrelevant.”44 In keeping with this view, Qutb found Americans to be very conscious of their sexuality and lacking in reticence and reserve. Long before the discovery of “social anxiety disorder” and the popular use of psycho-pharmaceutical remedies (e.g., Paxil) to treat shyness, Qutb observed that “the word ‘bashful’ has become a dirty disparaging word in America.”45 Instead of shyness and reserve, he observed that Americans were preoccupied with sexual attraction. “The American boy knows well that the wide, strapping chest is the lure that cannot be denied by any girl, and that her dreams do not fall upon anyone as much as they fall upon the cowboys.” Likewise, “the American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.” As evidence for these observations, Qutb cited a Look magazine article that surveyed girls about what attracted them to boys. “The overwhelming majority,” Qutb reported, “declared their open attraction for boys with ox muscles.”46 Qutb saw American preoccupation with sex as a form of slavery and as one form of American degeneration into primitiveness. He contested the notion that sexual license constituted true human freedom. Rather, while acknowledging that sexual desires were “normal and true,” he viewed the American lack of restraint as animalistic and a form of “gripping slavery.” “Controlling such desires,” he wrote, “is a testament to freedom from slavery.”47 In fact, Qutb had a singularly developed notion of human freedom. According to Qutb, Islam allowed humans to be liberated from the slavery of their sexual and materialistic appetites.48 Americans were also primitive, according to Qutb, with respect to their tastes in art and music. As noted earlier, Qutb was a fan of classical music. He did not, however, like jazz, which he viewed as the American “music of choice.” Demonstrating that he was himself not above racial prejudices, he described jazz as “the music that the negroes invented to satisfy their primitive inclinations, as well as their desire to be noisy on the one hand and to excite bestial tendencies on the other.” Even the singing that accompanied jazz, he described as “coarse and obnoxious.”49 Jamie McClendon remembers of Qutb that “he didn’t appreciate black music or anything of that nature.” Apart from jazz, Qutb was initially heartened by the number of Americans he saw attending operas, ballets, symphonies, and classical theater. Perhaps, he thought, there was a place in the

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American soul for deeper “human values” beyond science and industry after all. Upon further examination, however, he discovered that Americans’ attention to more “refined art” was actually rooted in their wish to appear cultured, not in their intrinsic appreciation of the art itself. Therefore, according to Qutb, Americans watched operas, visited museums, and traveled to distant places in order to collect information for the purpose of fashionable conversation and to satisfy the American inclination “toward collection and enumeration.” As Qutb saw it, then, art appreciation was really, in sociologist Thorstein Veblen’s terms, a form of conspicuous consumption and leisure. Americans tallied up experiences, visits, performances, even friendships, in order to impress others. “Thus your knowledge and your culture are often measured by how much you have read and watched and heard.” For this reason, he argued that Americans used their wealth to buy culture from abroad, but did not really understand or value what they imported. As a result, American museums contained art purchased from places like Italy and Germany, but had very few works by American artists, because “American works are primitive and plain to the point of being laughable next to those splendid worldly treasures.”50 In spite of this accumulation of art, the question remained: “Does the American soul have any share in these riches? Does she even have mere artistic enjoyment of this costly human inheritance?” A museum in San Francisco would provide the setting for investigating this question. Following his time in Colorado, Qutb spent the last – and least documented – part of his trip in California, where he visited San Francisco, Palo Alto, and San Diego.51 While in San Francisco he went to the Museum of Fine Arts, where he found Jean-Baptist Huet’s 1766 painting, Fox in a Chicken Yard. Demonstrating the emotional aesthetic cultivated during his years of association with the Diwan school, Qutb struggled for words to describe “the beauty of this ingenious picture, in which the artist depicted several profound, complex feelings.”52 Could Americans share his appreciation for this beauty? To investigate this question, he set up a little ethnographic study. He found a seat in the museum near the painting where he could observe visitors. He sat for a total of four hours and watched 109 persons pass before Huet’s painting, observing their faces to ascertain “whether they were feeling anything of what they were seeing.” Those visiting the Museum of Fine Arts on that day did little to impress the Egyptian ethnographer with the depth of their artistic sensibilities. “Only one lingered for about two minutes in front of the picture I had selected,”

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wrote Qutb, “and he lingered in the whole hall for about five minutes . . . and then flew off.” Qutb repeated this experiment in other parts of the San Francisco museum and then “in other museums in several cities.” The results were the same. He found “only a rare minority of visitors” who “comprehended anything of these tremendous artistic riches from all the places on earth.”53 There was only one artistic form, according to Qutb, at which Americans were proficient: “the art of the cinema.” Even here, though, “as far as the artistry goes,” there were other peoples (including the English, French, and Russians) who surpassed the Americans. Inasmuch as Americans excelled in film, it was due to their strengths in the areas of technological “expertise, proficiency, magnification, and approximation.” That said, the content of most American films, according to Qutb, focused on “manifestly primitive subjects” such as stories about police and cowboys. Interestingly, there were exceptions to this critique; Qutb identified three American movies he viewed positively: Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights, and the Song of Bernadette.54

secularization As Qutb saw it, the foundational explanation for American primitiveness was secularism. “When humanity closes the windows to faith in religion, faith in art, and faith in spiritual values altogether,” he wrote, “there remains no outlet for its energy to be expended except in the realm of applied science and labor, or to be dissipated in sensual pleasure,” which is “where America has ended up after four hundred years.”55 Qutb’s assessment of America here recalls Weber’s concluding meditations on the conditions of life in the iron cage. Weber wrote, less than a halfcentury earlier, “For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart’; this nullity imagines that it has achieved a level of civilization never before achieved.” Like both Tocqueville and Chesterton, however, Qutb did not accept Weberian disenchantment as an inevitable, lasting, and acceptable condition for modern humans. Moreover, while Qutb viewed the West as having become secular, his assessment was different from Weber’s in important respects. The defining problem of Western Christianity, according to Qutb, was that it advanced a minimalist, as opposed to maximalist, view of the role of religion in society.56 That is, Qutb saw Christianity as relevant only to the private sphere, to the personal relationship between “man and his God.”

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It problematically ignored a fuller influence over the whole of society and its defining institutions.57 For Qutb, then, as writer Paul Berman notes, “The truly dangerous element of American life was not capitalism, or foreign policy, or racism, or the exploitation of women. The truly dangerous part lay in the separation of Church and State.”58 Thus, though Qutb could be disparaging toward Western Crusaders and Zionists, and even mocked such foundational Christian doctrines as the Trinity and original sin, he also appeared at times almost sympathetic toward Christianity. It would be hard to think highly of The Song of Bernadette and not have some appreciation of Christian spirituality. In Social Justice in Islam, Qutb observed: “Christ (upon whom be peace) came only to preach spiritual purity, mercy, kindness, tolerance, chastity, and abstinence.”59 Likewise, in his account of the history of European Christianity, he wished not to “denigrate the whole body of European churchmen,” and positively acknowledged that “the majority must be sincere.” However, he saw the otherworldly asceticism of Christianity as mistakenly relevant only to personal character. “By its nature a denial of worldly life, [Christianity] is a summons to avoid materialism, to despise the world, and to seek rather the Lord’s kingdom in the Heavenly world.”60 With the advancement of industrialism, therefore, the church was not in a position to counter Western rationalism. Instead, because of its lack of influence and authority in the public sphere, it “joined itself to the capitalist camp.”61 Qutb, like Weber, acknowledged that, in terms of its defining tenets, Christianity opposed materialism of both the capitalist and communist varieties. However, because of Christianity’s relegation to the private sphere, it was not in a position to handle or control the emerging economic orders. “Christianity,” wrote Qutb “cannot be counted as a positive force in confronting the new materialistic ideas since it developed into an individualistic, detached and negative religion without the living force to foster continual and practical growth.”62 Thus, Americans (and Westerners more generally) became wealthy and powerful and achieved notable success in technology and science, but these qualities, according to Qutb, without the concomitant and restraining influence of religion and vibrant spirituality, left Americans lifeless and miserable. It is a fact that no fair-minded person could ever deny: the majority of people in the most affluent and materially advanced countries, such as the United States of America or Sweden, lead the most miserable lives. Anxiety, depression and boredom are eating into people’s lives who despite their affluence and energy, are driven to a culture of fads and mental and sexual perversions, and all kinds of anti-social

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escapist behavior that allows them no peace or security. The fundamental cause of this pervasive unhappiness is the spiritual wilderness in which Western societies are living today. For, in spite of the prosperity and material well-being they enjoy, these societies lack the spiritual reassurance and faith that can only come with belief in God and placing our full trust in Him. They no longer have any universal goals or aims to aspire to. They have lost faith in human life and man’s mission and role in the world as defined in God’s covenant with mankind.63

Such an assessment was not unique to Qutb or even to Islamist critics of the West. This analysis comes very close to Solzhenitsyn’s critique of Western materialism discussed in the previous chapter. Qutb’s overall assessment of America was even shared by some Americans and Western Europeans. “Many Americans,” says Lawrence Wright, “were beginning to come to similar conclusions,” such that “in many respects,” Qutb’s “analysis, though harsh, was only premature.”64 John Calvert similarly notes that Qutb’s critique signaled a “moment in modern history when the United States’ glossy image began to tarnish, not only in the eyes of Muslims, but in the view of many Americans and Europeans, too.”65 Eight years after Qutb returned to Egypt, the American writers William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick published their best-selling novel, The Ugly American, which depicted the boorishness, insensitivity, and insularity of Americans living in places like Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma. Qutb himself drew upon the work of some Western writers at the time to support and provide legitimacy to his critique, including the Nobel Prize–winning French surgeon Alexis Carrel and the American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. While visiting Lourdes in France, Carrel witnessed the miraculous cure of a seriously ill woman. As a consequence, he began to advocate a deeper appreciation of the spiritual realm; promoted, within the medical field, a view of the inextricable unity of body and spirit; and criticized Westerners’ preoccupation with the material world.66 “The conquest of the material world,” he wrote, “which has ceaselessly absorbed the attention and the will of men, caused the organic and the spiritual world to fall into almost complete oblivion.”67 Qutb also cited John Foster Dulles, who, in his book, War or Peace, was equally critical of Americans’ disregard of the spiritual. “The trouble is not material,” wrote Dulles. “We are establishing an all-time world record in the production of material things. What we lack is a righteous and dynamic faith. Without it, all else avails us little.”68 A half-century later, another important European, Joseph Ratzinger, would offer views of Western secularism that bear an uncanny resemblance to Qutb’s assessment. In a book written just before he became

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Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger depicted Western society as having achieved material advancement in the absence of spiritual vitality: Moral strength has not grown in tandem with the development of science; on the contrary, it has diminished, because the technological mentality confines morality to the subjective sphere. Our need, however, is for a public morality, a morality capable of responding to the threats that impose such a burden on the existence of us all. The true and gravest danger of the present moment is precisely this imbalance between technological possibilities and moral energy.69

Like Qutb, then, Ratzinger sees Western rationalism as having supplanted concern with morality and as having consigned spiritual matters to the realm of private and personal subjectivity. After the Enlightenment and the religious wars that followed the Protestant reformation, Christianity no longer served as a “sacred canopy” in Europe.70 “Europe has developed a culture,” wrote Ratzinger, that “excludes God from public awareness.” His existence only belongs “to the sphere of subjective choices . . . God is irrelevant to public life.”71 In reference to Europe’s refusal to mention its Christian past in formulating a proposed new constitution for the European Union, Ratzinger took issue with the claim that to make reference to the role of Christianity in European history would be insensitive to the growing number of Muslims in Western Europe. He challenged this position, arguing instead that Muslims actually “feel threatened, not by the foundations of our Christian morality, but by the cynicism of a secularized culture that denies its own foundations.”72 This appears to have been the case with Qutb, whose critique of American Christianity was, at least in part, that American churchgoers were not being faithful to their own tradition. His dismay with the church dance in Greeley, for example, was a critique of Americans not taking their religion seriously enough. As historian of religion Bruce Lincoln notes, “Qutb was not disturbed simply by the eroticism he took to be indecorous and improper. More troubling, but analytically most revealing, was the enabling condition of this offensive spectacle: the disconnection between the preceding ‘religious’ church service and the ‘social’ event that followed.”73 Qutb, moreover, acknowledged that “spiritual religions – especially Christianity – reject European and American materialism.”74 However “America has forgotten . . . the spirit,” which “has no value here [the United States].” Instead, students write dissertations on “the best method for washing dishes,” which is viewed as “more important than a thesis on the Bible.” Given America’s secular condition, as such, Qutb believed that it would “be a disaster for humanity if the world became America.”75

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For his part, in light of Western secularization, Ratzinger understands the attraction of Islam. “The rebirth of Islam,” writes Ratzinger, is “nourished by the awareness that Islam is capable of offering a valid spiritual basis for the life of the people, a basis that seems to have slipped out of the hands of old Europe, which, thus, notwithstanding its continued political and economic power, is increasingly viewed as a declining culture condemned to fade away.”76 Not a few Westerners, then, with Ratzinger among them, would agree with central elements of Qutb’s critique of Western minimalism. Chesterton and Tocqueville similarly saw this type of minimalism as neither an inevitable condition nor the ideal situation for sustaining a democracy. Thus, Qutb was not (and is not) the only one who thinks it would “be a disaster for humanity if the world became America.” Regardless of whether one agrees with his assessments, not to mention his prescriptions, understanding Qutb’s critique, and the influence it has had among some in the Middle East, provides a step toward answering the question asked by many Americans after the 9/11 attacks. The fact that his analysis of America lines up in certain respects with assessments made by other Westerners, including those considered in this study, suggests that perhaps he is pointing to certain truths – however entangled with exaggeration and vitriol they may be – that, in Tocqueville’s words, only a foreigner can make reach the ears of Americans.

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Conclusion

The four visitors, with their unique biographies, arrived on American shores at different times in history and employed distinctive interpretive lenses to make sense of what they saw. While all had critical things to say about the United States, none was uniformly negative. In the last decade of his life, even when he had become more disapproving of the United States, Tocqueville still regarded himself as “half an American citizen,” and referred to the United States as that “grand and glorious country.”1 Weber, at the end of his American tour, spoke of Americans as “a wonderful people,” among whom he and Marianne found a “youthfully fresh, confident energy, a force for good.”2 Chesterton, likewise, admired Americans for their friendliness and lack of class snobbery and described them as “sympathetic, imaginative, and full of fine enthusiasms.”3 Even Qutb, clearly the most critical of the four, commended America for its vast and beautiful natural resources and Americans for their advances in science and technology. With the exception of Qutb, the foreign visitors found Americans to be friendly, hospitable, energetic, warm, and devoid of class prejudices. They noticed and admired Americans’ voluntary habits and inclinations to join together for a variety of economic, political, and civic purposes; and they saw these inclinations as an important contributing factor to the success of American democracy. Thus, to the extent that the European visitors were critical, their assessments were characterized by a kind of ambivalence. Chesterton even made a distinction between Americans’ natural propensities and virtues and that which America exported to Europe and other places. “The real, natural Americans,” wrote Chesterton “are candid, generous, capable of beautiful wonder and 203 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Texas Libraries, on 08 Dec 2019 at 09:55:39, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066.010

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gratitude; enthusiastic about things external to themselves; easily contented and not particularly conceited.”4 It mystified Chesterton that, instead of paying attention to these “real virtues of America,” notice was only given to the “most absurd booming and boosting of Americanization.” In Chesterton’s view, the qualities of America that “reach us across the seas” are the “things least worthy of boasting.”5 Or, in Jonathan Freedland’s terms, what gets exported is the junk rather than the gold. Martha Bayles makes a similar point. She likewise finds a discontinuity between the character and lives of many ordinary Americans and the image of American life that is exported through public diplomacy and popular culture. What often does not get portrayed on the international stage, says Bayles, are the “bright threads” of the American ethos – community cohesion, family, friendliness, and liberty realized in proper balance with duty and responsibility. Instead what gets communicated through popular culture are only America’s “dark strands”: the “image of the isolated individual, detached from family and community, whose life is consumed by the ruthless pursuit of sex, money, or power.”6 Like Chesterton, Bayles wishes more of America’s bright strands were broadcast and exported internationally. In any respect, though they found much to criticize, our four visitors, in varying degrees, also discovered America’s bright threads or features of American society that they admired. Also evident in the commentary of all four visitors was the impression, sometimes quite explicit, of the existence of an American national character. This concept, of course, contains not a few problems. For one, we live in an increasingly interconnected and global world with porous national boundaries, making it difficult to speak of the distinctive qualities of the people of a particular nation. Additionally and relatedly, we live in a highly pluralistic society, comprised of individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds and subcultures. Some ideological divisions in American culture are so deep that they have at times been characterized as warring cultural camps. The visitors, however, did not necessarily see pluralism – even deep cultural divisions – in America as negating the reality of a national character. Tocqueville, for example, spoke confidently of an American national character even while he viewed the United States as a “vast and un-homogeneous” society.7 In a similar way, Beaumont observed that “the American nation is made up of all the peoples of the earth,” and yet “no nation presents as a whole such uniform characteristics.”8 Chesterton captured a similar sort of uniformity amidst the diversity in America in his discussion of the proverbial melting pot. While the

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pot is filled with people from a range of races and backgrounds, the pot is “of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance.”9 In other words, even with diversity, there still exists something distinctive, solid, and defining. Chesterton’s assessment, in important respects, approximates the work of cultural anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, and the philosopher Ralph Barton Perry, who, writing in the 1940s, gave concerted attention to the idea of national character. Perry, like Chesterton, spoke of the integrative effects of the melting pot. “The melting pot has not only melted,” he wrote, “it has cooked a broth with an unmistakable flavor of its own.”10 Mead likewise observed the power of American culture to assimilate individuals from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. While acknowledging that the United States was a country of immigrants, she argued that unity was achieved amidst the diversity through the internalization of key values.11 Swedish visitors Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, writing at the same time, characterized these values as the “American Creed.”12 Using similar nomenclature, Chesterton, at the start of his first book on America, famously argued that “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.” This creed, Chesterton explained, “enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just.”13 While discussions of national character by Mead and others were popular for a couple of decades, the concept fell out of favor during the 1960s and beyond. The historian, Robert Collins, writing in 1988, summarized what many scholars had come to accept: “The concept of national character has been shattered by the historical pluralism of the past two decades; like Humpty Dumpty it is beyond saving.”14 More recent sociological work, however, while not ignoring challenges to the idea, has reasserted the analytical usefulness of national character.15 In his 2010 book, Made in America, sociologist Claude S. Fischer finds that the social historical record reveals important distinctions that are particular to American culture and that have been sustained over time. Struck by the continuity of a number of American character traits – including ones identified in this book – Fischer concludes that discussing “distinctive national character does make sense.”16 While one must approach the concept with caution and qualification, that our four visitors – from different national backgrounds and visiting at different moments in history – observed similar qualities about America, says something about the persisting salience of national character. Our four

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visitors identified a variety of common character traits in America, some of which remain matters of intense public interest. What follows, then, in this final chapter, are summary reflections on the common character qualities identified by our four visitors, with some consideration of the relevance of these insights to the contemporary situation. As previously noted, all four visitors identified features of American life that they admired and appreciated. They also found qualities of the American character less worthy of commendation. Highlighting some of their overlapping criticisms, as I do in the pages that follow, is not meant to repudiate that which is laudatory, but to inform efforts at critical self-reflection and improvement.17 Giving attention to these dark strands, as informed by the insights of our foreign observers, serves as a useful step toward better realizing, fostering, and ultimately sharing America’s bright threads.18

guns and violence As it concerns one particular strand, all four visitors made some mention of violence and/or the use of guns.19 While traveling by stagecoach through Alabama, a lawyer lectured Tocqueville about the ongoing practice of dueling and the common habit of carrying arms under one’s clothes.20 Weber made a hasty departure from Guthrie, Oklahoma, when he learned that the newspaper editor with whom he was to meet the next day had only recently pulled a gun on a competing editor. Chesterton narrowly missed a shoot-out and killing in front of his Portland hotel. In spite of this brush with gun violence, he facetiously complimented the Chicago of Al Capone’s heyday for having the “good taste to assassinate nobody except assassins.” Most violent crime, he observed, was between rivaling gangsters. “Criminal society in Chicago,” he quipped, “seems to be extraordinarily exclusive.”21 And Qutb, though he did not make specific reference to guns, was struck by Americans’ “love for hardcore violence.” He saw this not only in the history of American military conflicts (his portrayals of which contain not a few misrepresentations), but in Americans’ movie preferences (“police films and cowboy films”) and in the ferocity of American sports, especially football.22 With the exception of Tocqueville, the visitors encountered the phenomenon of American football. The Webers attended a Harvard vs. Penn game and witnessed the antics of spirited fans leading up to the contest. Chesterton resided in South Bend for six weeks in the fall of 1930, when the famous Knute Rockne coached Notre Dame’s football team and

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when the university opened its new 54,000-seat stadium. Though he never attended a game, Chesterton wrote a poem about the stadium, and his secretary, Dorothy Collins, did attend a couple of games in the new stadium. Collins observed the “fairly rough” nature of the sport and noted that in general “the whole country is crazy about football.”23 Frances Chesterton similarly observed the relative importance given to football among students at Notre Dame.24 While Chesterton detected admirable sportsmanship at Notre Dame that challenged the sport’s reputation for evincing a “savage fanatical spirit,” Qutb was much more critical of the violent nature of the sport he witnessed at CSCE in 1949. Just as gun violence remains an issue of major concern to Americans, so recently has violence in sports, especially football, received increasing attention.25

race in america In Greeley, at least as observed by one of the Middle Eastern students studying during the time of Qutb’s stay, violence in football also had a racial dimension to it, as the only African American player for CSCE at the time was apparently treated with particular roughness because he was black. All four visitors, in one manner or another, discussed the treatment of Native Americans and African Americans in the United States – Tocqueville, during the time of slavery, and the other three, after emancipation but before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. What our visitors saw in the post-emancipation period makes clear that equality for racial minorities in the United States was far from being fully realized. As W.E.B. Du Bois put it in his 1906 article published in Max Weber’s journal, “emancipation basically altered little.”26 All four visitors spoke against racism in strong terms. Tocqueville wrote of the “horrible evil” of slavery and viewed its proposed extension as “one of the greatest crimes that human beings could commit against the general cause of humanity.”27 Near the end of his life, Weber wrote disparagingly of the unequal treatment of blacks in America. He observed that in the American South democracy had never existed and that to speak of social equality in that region was a farce.28 Chesterton described slavery as “the crime and catastrophe of American history” and saw Prohibition (an experiment he incessantly derided) as a law aimed firstly at controlling and punishing blacks.29 Qutb experienced firsthand racial discrimination and strongly condemned the racism he witnessed.30

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The visitors sometimes discussed race in reference to religion. This was particularly the case with Tocqueville, who regretted the fact that while religion had provided the grounds for ending slavery, it was among Christians that the institution had been reintroduced.31 In his impassioned plea against slavery published in the Liberty Bell in 1856, Tocqueville wrote that he was “pained and astonished by the fact that the freest people in the world . . . the only one among civilized and Christian nations . . . maintains personal servitude” and looked forward to the day when “the law will grant equal civil liberty to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God accords the freedom of the will, without distinction to the dwellers upon earth.”32 And just two years before his death, he forcefully refuted Arthur de Gobineau’s contention that slavery was compatible with Christianity. “In this world,” wrote Tocqueville to Gobineau in 1857, “the majority of Christians cannot have the least sympathy for your doctrines . . . Plainly Christianity seeks to make all men brothers and equals.”33 Just as Tocqueville refuted Gobineau, Weber argued strenuously against the racist views of Alfred Ploetz and held up W.E.B. Du Bois as one “with whom no white scholar can compare.”34 At the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Max and Marianne were deeply impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of the place but scandalized by the treatment of mixed-race blacks in the region. Marianne decried the fact that the Tuskegee Dean of Women, Jane Clark, was excluded from social interaction with whites because she had “Negro blood in her veins.” Underscoring the hypocrisy of defending such racial separation according to religious principles, Marianne protested: “And one calls that Christianity and recognition of ‘human rights’! I find the entire relations of the whites in the South and these highly educated people of mixed race simply outrageous.”35 When the Chestertons were traveling by train through the South in 1931, Dorothy Collins took note of the separate bathrooms, waiting rooms, and seating areas in public places for blacks and whites. Of these practices, Collins reflected critically: “Most unchristian I think.”36 Chesterton himself interpreted the embrace of Gobineau’s scientific racism by some Southerners as a “progressive” and lamentable departure from the deistic remorse of Jefferson, who “said the sight of slavery in his country made him tremble remembering that God is just.”37 Recall also Jamie McClendon’s astonishment when, at the time of Qutb’s visit, he learned that his openly racist zoology professor at CSCE was also a Methodist minister. Qutb also drew connections between religion and

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race and, not surprisingly, saw Islam as the answer to overcoming racial discrimination. As noted in Chapter 7, he viewed Islam as superior to Western civilization in that as a religion it transcended ethnic, racial, tribal, and national differences.38 Religion, however, was not always invoked to justify racial discrimination. In fact, religion provided (and would continue to serve as) an important justificatory theme in America’s ongoing struggle to achieve greater equality for racial minorities. This was evident in central currents of the 1960s civil rights movement, and not only in the actions and rhetoric of its most important leader, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.39 King, incidentally, like Chesterton, made reference to an American creed (similarly invoking Jefferson’s words as the basis for this creed); like Tocqueville, yearned to see the justice and equality of this creed realized for all; and, like Dorothy Collins, spoke of the “utterly un-Christian” practice of segregation.40 A recent compilation and analysis of civil rights rhetoric leading up to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act makes evident that, as a whole, “civil rights was fundamentally a religious affair.”41 Jacques Maritain underscored the significance of religion to the civil rights movement in his discussion of race in America. Having first visited the United States in 1933 (two years after Chesterton’s second tour) and having spent a number of years in the country thereafter (including the years of Qutb’s visit), Maritain could not avoid discussing race in his analysis of American society. In so doing, he both condemned earlier religious complicity with racism, while he also affirmed the more recent leadership efforts among clergy to denounce and fight against racial prejudice.42 W.E.B. Du Bois likewise underscored, in his 1906 article published in Weber’s journal, the helpful contributions that church communities had made even earlier in the fight against racial discrimination.43 Given these efforts and the central role of religion in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, it is fitting that our visitors would talk about race in light of religious principles, even if their discussions focused on American failures to realize these ideals. In a 2006 speech on religion and public life, President Barack Obama, whose own biography is evidence of America’s progress toward realizing its creed, underscored this historical link between religion and the quest for greater racial equality. Obama acknowledged the gains that had been made over time through religiously motivated rhetoric and action, noting that people like Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. “repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause.” In light

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of the important role that religion has played in helping to foster greater racial equality, Obama added that “secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.”44 Race was also linked, at least in Chesterton’s view, to another major theme considered by all four visitors, namely, the triumph of modern American capitalism. Recall that Chesterton regarded industrial capitalism as a new form of slavery and noted that Prohibition, in particular, was endorsed along the same lines that Americans had once defended the institution of slavery; that is, on the grounds of economic efficiency. Treating humans as machines, observed Chesterton, represented the same exploitative orientation as planters exploiting slaves in the antebellum South. Thus, he imagined “it very likely that the old South may yet laugh in its grave at the ending of your industrial North in a sort of slavery.”45 He even saw, as noted earlier, the prohibition of alcohol as a policy that was originally aimed at blacks in order to get more work out of them in America’s industrial factories. On this point, we once again find a commonality between Chesterton and Wendell Berry. In his illuminating reflections on race in America, Berry observes that Africans were enslaved not because they were black, but because they could be exploited for economic purposes.46 A similar sort of logic still determines the nature of work today, according to Berry, who like Chesterton regards industrial capitalism as, in certain respects, a new form of slavery. That is, though we cannot today legally buy and enslave the body of another person, the labor market is still, if not more so, characterized by a crude sort of economic reductionism.47 To illustrate this point, Berry speaks of having attended a business school graduation in California where graduates wore signs around their necks that proclaimed “For Sale.” He found in this humorous expression of graduates’ employment anxieties a sort of painful irony: Whereas in the old market people sold other people, in the new market people sell themselves.48 While Chesterton was unique in drawing links between race, slavery, and capitalism, all four visitors, in one manner or another, took note of American industriousness and acquisitiveness.

acquisitiveness and work The foreign travelers, in the main, shared a common perception of Americans as a people preoccupied with making money. Even as Tocqueville sailed across the Atlantic in April 1831, he was warned that one of

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the chief weaknesses of the American “national character was the avidity to get rich and to do it by any means.”49 Once in the United States, both Tocqueville and Beaumont were repeatedly struck by Americans’ mercantilist inclinations, and Tocqueville would conclude that “Americans measure the value of all things solely in terms of the answer to the following question: How much money will it bring in?”50 This feature of the American character, according to Tocqueville, led to, among other things, restlessness, mobility, and the habit of often changing one’s profession. Weber, though using different nomenclature, discovered a similar defining tendency. What Tocqueville and Beaumont described as the mercantilist spirit, Weber called the “spirit of capitalism.” Weber and his traveling companions were both alarmed by and in awe of America’s highly energized, productive, and fast-paced capitalistic cities. Weber observed applications of this capitalistic spirit in a number of realms of American society, including in agriculture, in education, in the conquest of nature, and even in the competitive orientation of sports. However, Weber most comprehensively fixed his gaze on the relationship between capitalism and religion, identifying the particular theological tenets and organizational practices of Protestant sects as among the germinating sources of the spirit of capitalism. Chesterton similarly saw affinities between Puritanism and Americans’ productive and acquisitive habits.51 Like Tocqueville, he saw the triumph of industrial capitalism causing Americans to be restless and hurried. Chesterton also noticed this ethos contributing to the American qualities of optimism, cheerfulness, and egotism. That is, he noted a connection between the capitalistic practices of advertising and the American proclivity to promote the self; individuals were, in essence, trained to promote the self in the same way a company advertises a product. As will be discussed later in this chapter, Chesterton’s insights in this regard have been realized, in exaggerated form, in the contemporary use of new social media technologies. Finally, Qutb saw materialism as one of the defining features of American society; here was a place where the “desire for money . . . consumes all of life.”52 The American, Qutb observed, “spends all the hours of his life hard at work for the sake of the dollar.”53 He was highly critical of a number of features of American capitalist society, including usury practices, monopolies, and a “materialistic attitude, which deadens the spirit.”54 This latter point was particularly significant with Qutb, as he saw America’s success and advancement in industry, technology, and science, while admirable, not sufficiently balanced by a spiritual

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maturity in the area of human values. The result, according to Qutb, was a society in which people “lead the most miserable lives.” Despite their “affluence and energy,” he wrote, “anxiety, depression, and boredom are eating into people’s lives.”55 While Qutb’s assessment here may be overly critical, it is not wholly unlike Tocqueville’s analysis. Tocqueville observed of Americans that “almost everywhere they encounter fortune, but not happiness. Among them the desire for well-being has become a restive and ardent passion that increases while it is being satisfied.”56 Americans experience a “singular melancholy . . . amid their abundance,” he observed, and a “disgust with life that sometimes seizes them in the midst of an easy and tranquil existence.” In a democracy, wrote Tocqueville, “madness is more common than everywhere else.”57 Thus, while more than a century separated their visits, Tocqueville and Qutb identified similarities with respect to both the intensity of America’s acquisitive spirit and the effects of materialism on the American psyche. Given these common observations, it is not surprising that contemporary discussions often feature this quality of American culture.58 The historical record on this point, however, is somewhat ambiguous, and the perception of an unremitting advance in American materialism is a trope that requires some qualification. Chesterton, for his part, regarded as a fable the common European view that Americans were materialistic. He argued, “I do not think the dollar is almighty in America; I fancy many things are mightier, including many ideals.” He admitted that Americans may talk more about money than do Europeans, but that it was work and success, more than money, that Americans really loved.59 Maritain likewise saw work, rather than money, as that which held “sway over American civilization.” He similarly regarded American materialism as something of a myth and found rather irritating and somewhat hypocritical the common European characterization of Americans as hypermaterialists.60 Like Chesterton, he observed that Americans were not particularly discreet in the way they talked about money.61 Yet, in the main, he viewed the American people as less materialistic than many Europeans. If only a fable, it is one that Americans themselves, Maritain observed, appear to have accepted.62 Recent survey evidence indicates that this self-perception persists, as nine out of ten Americans agree that “our society is much too materialistic.”63 In keeping with what our visitors observed, such an analysis is not entirely off the mark. When Americans were asked in a recent survey, “What single factor would most improve the quality of their lives,”

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the most common response was “more money.”64 In the forty years after Qutb’s visit, the gross domestic product per capita in the United States tripled. Between 1950 and 1990, per capita consumer spending on clothing more than doubled, on housing nearly tripled, and on automobiles more than doubled.65 Yet, as spending habits and general living standards have increased, levels of reported happiness have not kept pace.66 When contemporary critics say, in light of these trends, that at the start of the twenty-first century Americans may be richer but they are not happier, they are essentially repeating observations made by both Qutb and Tocqueville during the previous two American centuries.67 Americans may have a romantic view of work, as Chesterton observed, but it is a love affair that has taken a toll. The National Center for Health Statistics, for example, reports that a majority of working Americans experience stress on a regular basis.68 Another survey shows that 59 percent of full-time workers experience stress on the job at least once a week and that one in six report experiencing stress almost every day.69 Even in high-prestige and well-paying fields – such as law and medicine – American professionals express dissatisfaction.70 A poll among lawyers, for example, found that 70 percent would choose another occupation if given the opportunity and that 75 percent would not want their children to follow them into the legal profession.71 Given these pressures and levels of dissatisfaction, it may not be surprising that Americans change jobs often. Reflective of the kind of occupational restlessness and mutability observed by Tocqueville more than 180 years ago, one in ten Americans today changes occupations every year. The average young person today can expect to change jobs at least eleven times during a forty-year career and to retool his or her skill base at least three times.72 There is also evidence, however, that Americans are neither solely committed to, nor entirely satisfied with, a single-minded quest to work harder, make more money, and acquire more goods. Recall Tocqueville’s observation that Americans, weary of their dominant materialist inclinations, would from time to time “break the material bonds that restrain them” and seek transcendent things. Likewise, as noted earlier, Chesterton saw other ideals as more important to Americans than the almighty dollar. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow’s careful analysis of American attitudes toward work and money, in his book Poor Richard’s Principle, tells a similar story. While Wuthnow presents data in support of the sort of acquisitiveness and overwrought work habits identified by our visitors, he also notes continuing strains of moral discourse (both ascetic and expressive) in American culture that, though less

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salient than they once were, are still discernible and, in some instances, showing signs of resuscitation. Like Qutb, Wuthnow observes a need (and even, among some, a desire) to recover human values that have eroded over time in the context of scientific and economic advancements. Moreover, in keeping with Chesterton’s and Maritain’s objections to common European stereotypes of American materialism, Wuthnow cites evidence that Americans are no more materialistic than people in other industrial societies. For example, in a multination survey – which includes data from seven advanced industrial countries – young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four were asked to select the primary reason for why people work: “mainly to earn money, as a duty to society, or to find self-fulfillment.” To earn money was the most common response in all seven countries. However, American respondents were the least likely to select earning money and the most likely to choose self-fulfillment.73 These findings suggest that an economistic perspective is not the only paradigm according to which Americans think about work and money. Nevertheless, those seeking to live out human values that transcend economic considerations do so in a system where monetary concerns prevail. In other words, though some may be motivated by other factors, they still must reckon with life inside the Weberian iron cage. As Brad Gregory puts it, “those who are devoted to their families, demonstrate care for others, make charitable donations, and practice self-restraint do so within a world dominated by wall-to-Walmart capitalism and consumerism.”74 A similar sort of tension was illustrated in the life and words of the Bulgarian waiter, whom Chesterton met in the New York restaurant. Recall that Chesterton was moved by the waiter’s profound words regarding the human need to be close to the land. Yet, in spite of the waiter’s ideals, he was still made to function like an “automaton,” as he “passed, with his artificial clothes and manners, lit up with all the ghastly artificial light of the hotel, and all the ghastly artificial life of the city.”75 There are some parallels between Chesterton’s philosophical Bulgarian automaton and the Bobo (Bourgeois-Bohemian) class put forth more recently by journalist David Brooks. The emergence of the Bobo class is, in part, the story of how countercultural critics of materialism themselves became affluent and part of the very establishment they once opposed. Highly educated bohemians may not have been looking for money, but money found and affected them. As members of the new elite, they must somehow reconcile, however uneasily, the reality of their prosperous

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lives and the echoes of their anti-establishment ideals. In other words, though higher (or alternative) ideals persist, even in resurgent form, Americans still live within a system deeply influenced by the spirit of modern capitalism and all its institutional and cultural concomitants.

agriculture and nature Our four foreign visitors observed that America’s capitalist spirit affected a number of realms of social and economic life. Important among these were American agricultural practices and attitudes toward nature. Tocqueville and Beaumont observed in America a restless, acquisitive, and conquering mentality toward the land and a lack of appreciation for the beauty and romance of nature. The young aristocrats noted a qualitative difference between the French Canadian farmers, who demonstrated a love for and attachment to the land, and the American pioneers who treated the land as industrial material and were perpetually prepared to relocate. In his comparative observations of German and American agricultural practices, Weber likewise noticed that in the United States a business orientation determined American approaches to the land – a disposition that stood in contrast to European practices, where farming communities existed long before the onset of modern capitalism. According to Weber, a rural society, as such, simply did not exist in the United States in 1904. Tocqueville, though his visit preceded Weber’s by more than seventy years, had also detected a business outlook in the way Americans approached agriculture. “Almost all the farmers in the United States have joined some commerce to agriculture,” Tocqueville wrote in the second part of Democracy in America, “most have made a commerce of agriculture.” The “American cultivator” rarely “settles forever on the soil he occupies,” he added. Instead, “a field is cleared to be resold and not to be harvested.” Just as Weber saw the market as having preceded the farmer in America, Tocqueville observed that Americans “transport the spirit of trade into agriculture, and their industrial passions show themselves there as elsewhere.”76 Thus, an essentially capitalist approach to farming was in place long before the full industrialization of agriculture in America.77 While Chesterton noted similar capitalistic tendencies, he was more sanguine about the preservation of small-scale farming in America’s future. Chesterton celebrated the family farm and America’s rural communities as among the country’s most laudable assets. As a distributist and Jeffersonian idealist, he saw what remained of rural society as an

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important and contributing feature of American democracy. Though not a dominant strain in U.S. agricultural practices, there were certainly elements of America’s farming history that supported Chesterton’s optimism. That is, a minority of “stickers” or “improvers” resisted the booming tendencies of the majority.78 While not as pessimistic as Weber regarding the future of American rural communities, Chesterton did observe worrying trends, including a dominant production mentality and a tendency for small towns to import culture from the industrial cities rather than to create and produce their own culture. Seventeen years after Chesterton’s second trip, Qutb came to America with the small agrarian Egyptian village as a defining feature of his biography. Musha embodied much of what Chesterton idealized regarding a distributist model; and Chesterton would have been equally aggrieved by the external intrusions into Musha that Qutb resented. As discussed in Chapter 7, both Chesterton and Qutb argued against authors who disparaged the virtues of village life. Like Tocqueville and Beaumont, Qutb also observed an indifference to nature among Americans. America’s beautiful and majestic natural resources, he found, “did not leave a shadow upon the American spirit.”79 These common observations, offered at different periods in American history, give insight into the contemporary situation. As discussed in Chapter 6, agribusiness has become the dominant model in the United States. Through the technological mechanization of farming practices and the widespread use of pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers, the full triumph of industrial farming has been realized, very much against what Chesterton optimistically anticipated.80 One indication of the decline of the small farm and the triumph of industrial farming is that in the one hundred years between 1900 and 2000, the number of farms in the United States decreased 63 percent, while the average size of farms increased 67 percent, from an average of 147 acres to 436 acres per farm.81 Moreover, in keeping with Weber’s assessment, we still find differences between European and American attitudes toward farming and the treatment of the environment. Consider two examples. Today one finds important differences between U.S. and European attitudes toward hydraulic fracturing for the extraction of natural gas, or “fracking,” as it is popularly known. This practice, though it has received resistance in some parts of the United States, is actually rather widespread. Twenty states now have shale gas wells used to extract natural gas through fracking. Since the 1990s, the number of new wells has increased on an average of 13,000 wells per year, a pace that has only accelerated in

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recent years. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of natural gas wells in the United States grew from 342,000 to 510,000.82 European countries, on the other hand, have been much more resistant to the hydraulic fracturing of shale for the production of natural gas. France and Bulgaria, countries with the largest shale-gas reserves in Europe, have banned fracking altogether, as have the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.83 In 2012, the UK suspended fracking for a period when the process caused minor earthquakes. A second example of differences between U.S. and European environmental and agricultural practices today is found in contrasting attitudes toward the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Europe remains skeptical of genetically modified foods and has largely resisted both the production and importation of GMOs. In the United States, in contrast, there was hardly even a public discussion of the matter before GMOs became widespread. The United States is the biggest producer of GM foods in the world. In the United States today, 91 percent of soybeans, 85 percent of corn, and 88 percent of cotton are genetically modified.84 In Europe, barely one-tenth of 1 percent of agricultural land is planted with GM crops.85 It has even been difficult to get foods labeled as GM in the United States, whereas this has been the common practice in Europe. Recall Adolph Smith’s observation – offered at the time of Weber’s visit – that what was distinct about U.S. slaughtering practices was that Americans treated animals like any other industrial raw material. Increasingly, one can say the same about the treatment of plants and seeds in the United States. In February 2013, the Supreme Court heard a case, Bowman v. Monsanto, which considered an independent farmer’s reuse of patented soybean seeds purchased indirectly from Monsanto. The Monsanto lawyer argued that the seed in question was an invented product just like any other industrial product. “Without the ability to limit reproduction of soybeans containing this patented trait,” he asserted, “Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention and never would have produced what is, by now, the most popular agricultural technology in America.” Bowman’s lawyer, on the other hand, argued unsuccessfully that it was problematic to view as an invention what for centuries has been understood as a basic farming practice.86 The court ruled unanimously in favor of Monsanto, and held that to allow Bowman’s practices to continue would deprive “Monsanto of its monopoly” and its due compensation as the seed’s “inventor.”87 No justice questioned whether it was proper to regard a seed, albeit

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genetically modified, in the same way one regards a manufactured product. In Europe, for a number of reasons, there has been tremendous resistance to Monsanto and to GM foods in general. Arguably, as observed by Weber in 1904, differences today are still rooted in contrasting U.S. and European cultural understandings of food and agriculture.88 Where the United States is characterized by an overriding utilitarianism, in Europe a traditionalist food culture, the continuing influence of its agrarian history, and the long-standing cultural appreciation of cultivated rural landscapes result in very different attitudes toward GMOs.89 In Europe, GM foods are often derided as “Frankenfood” and even small experimental plots of GM crops are routinely vandalized by protestors. As discussed in Chapter 5, in the United States there has in recent years been growing interest in local, organic, small-scale farming practices. Increasingly popular are such developments as the slow food movement, farm-to-table restaurants, farmers’ markets, “locavore” practices, and CSA farms. The first American CSA farm was started in western Massachusetts in 1985. Now there are more than 6,000 CSA farms throughout the United States.90 The overall number of farms in America, after declining for decades, has actually stabilized in the last twenty years and has even, in the last few years, seen a small uptick. This is due in no small measure to the growth of CSAs and other small-scale organic farms. Such documentaries as Food Inc., King Corn, and Fresh, as well as Michael Pollan’s Omnivores Dilemma and the writings of Wendell Berry have done much to make Americans more aware of the magnitude and consequences of agribusiness in the United States. Nevertheless, these are still minority voices. What is sometimes not realized, even among advocates of these movements, is just how pervasive and entrenched an essential business mind-set has been to agriculture throughout American history – a reality made evident by what our four visitors saw in America.

individualism and conformism Another common critique of the United States, found in the writings of all four visitors, was their similar discussions about American individualism and conformism. Chesterton made the most direct link between capitalist competition and conformist tendencies. “Where men are trying to compete with each other they are trying to copy each other,” wrote Chesterton. “They become standardized by the very standard of self.”91 Weber noticed similar conformist tendencies. Both he and Chesterton commented on the lack of charm and the uniformity of American hotels

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as well as the American tendency to dress alike and slavishly follow fashionable trends.92 “This submission to fashion,” observed Weber, “exists among men in America to a degree unknown in Germany.”93 Weber also noticed the homogenizing effects of capitalism in making all cities the same; recall his lament that within a year Muskogee would look like any other capitalistic city. The visitors identified the power of public opinion as one of the sources of forcing conformity among Americans. Chesterton likened the overwhelming influence of public opinion in America to a prairie fire that consumed everything in its path.94 Qutb similarly noted the lack of “safeguards for freedom of opinion in the United States.”95 Most ominously, Tocqueville stated, “I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.”96 Even before Tocqueville’s visit, foreign travelers noted Americans’ intense concern with the opinion of others. A common finding in the accounts of a number of British visitors, who came to the United States between 1735 and 1835, for example, was “the acute sensitiveness to opinion that the average American revealed.”97 Thus, the conformism detected by our visitors was not limited to such external factors as cities or styles of dress. It extended to the actions, beliefs, and thinking of American citizens. During their last days in New York, the Webers met Dr. Yamei Kin, a Chinese physician and public health advocate, through Lillian Wald. During the Webers’ visit, Kin gave a lecture in which she warned of the homogenizing consequences of industrial capitalism. “Would you have us all alike?” Kin asked her American audience; “you have done many things . . . made many machines that turn out many things – all just alike. Would you do the same with us?” Marianne Weber sympathized with Kin and, charmed by the “petite, smart” physician, would not want “to see her forced into our forms.”98 I had to agree with her as she scolded the Western European peoples for presuming to force everyone in the world into their capitalist-industrial culture, “so that every nation becomes exactly like the other,” just as one commodity is identical to another.99

As observed by our visitors, Americans have evinced less resolve than was recommended by Yamei Kin in resisting the conformist tendencies of a capitalist culture. In fact, Chesterton saw Americans as particularly vulnerable to the homogenizing consequences of competition because they “are a very self-conscious people” and thus sensitive to criticism.100

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One indication of this self-consciousness was the habit detected among Americans to solicit praise, often not very subtly, for their country. In Oklahoma, Weber encountered “interviewers who wished to hear about the greatness of their country”; Tocqueville observed that Americans appear “insatiable for praise”; and Chesterton saw Americans as “too self-conscious” and “too much aware of outside opinion.”101 In keeping with David Riesman’s other-directedness, the visitors discovered that Americans’ need to be liked extended to fellow Americans as well. To illustrate this proclivity, and the sort of conformism it fostered, our visitors invoked the image of a “herd,” whether it be Tocqueville’s “herd of timid and industrious animals,” Chesterton’s “hysteria of the herd instinct,” or Qutb’s “frantic, agitated herd.” Even Solzhenitsyn warned of the “dangerous tendency” in America to “form a herd.”102 The irony in all of this is that the visitors also recognized that Americans extolled the importance of the individual. Chesterton, for example, noted the “curious contradiction,” in spite of their conformist tendencies, “that Americans do in theory value and even venerate the individual.”103 However, Chesterton and Tocqueville similarly concluded that American individualism actually represented a threat to individuality. In Chesterton’s words, “individualism is the reverse of individuality.” Tocqueville likewise noted that in a democratic state, where people are “more or less equal . . . far from wanting to preserve what can still make each one of them different, they ask only to lose that singularity in order to blend into the common mass.” As a result, “the spirit of individuality is almost destroyed.”104 Eduardo Nolla observes that in Tocqueville’s understanding “the word individualism . . . is always accompanied by its opposite, the spirit of individuality.”105 Tocqueville, then, was not alone in identifying the American paradox of a people who valued the independent individual yet who also conformed to the crowd. Indeed, this has been a quality often identified in the literature on American national character. Ralph Barton Perry, for example, observed a sort of “collective individualism” among Americans, a unique combination of competitive individualism and conformist pressures.106 Today we find similar tendencies, even in arenas celebrated as venues for individual expression. Media and communications scholar Alice Marwick, for example, finds these countervailing tendencies in her analysis of popular social media technologies. Marwick acknowledges that new social media venues are typically endorsed as tools that liberate and foster free and individual self-expression.107 However, she argues

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that, in reality, new social media serve less to liberate individuals than to encourage conformity with the defining ideals and values of Silicon Valley’s new capitalism. Reminiscent of the business graduates with “For Sale” placards, observed by Wendell Berry, Marwick notes that through acts of “selfbranding” people actually use “advertising and marketing strategies to sell the self.”108 This, in exaggerated form, is precisely the sort of self-promotional and conformist competitiveness that Chesterton detected. As Marwick sees it, widespread use of these technologies – though ostensibly liberating and individualistic – actually “limits diversity of opinion” and determines human relationships and even the way in which individuals think about themselves according to market values.109 Writer Christine Rosen finds much the same in her analysis of Facebook and other forms of social media. She too notes that, as conventionally understood, Facebook represents a place where one is free to express one’s unique and highly individualized self. Yet, she discovers even here a curious sort of conformism. In words that approximate the paradox captured by Chesterton, Tocqueville, and others, Rosen describes this online social world as “an overwhelmingly dull sea of monotonous uniqueness, of conventional individuality, of distinctive sameness.”110

voluntarism A key to ameliorating the tensions represented in this paradox, at least in Tocqueville’s understanding, was the concept of self-interest rightly understood, which was sustained, in part, by the common American habits of joining with others in a variety of voluntary efforts and associations. These local-level voluntary enterprises served both to draw the individual into cooperative association with others and to protect the individual against the potentially despotic tendencies of the sovereign majority. Tocqueville observed that, regardless of an individual’s motives for participation, such acts of mutual cooperation had become habitual for Americans. Weber (and James Bryce before him) discovered this same phenomenon and commended it as an important feature of American democracy. Toward the end of his life, Weber even positively recommended the social capital of voluntary associational life to Germany, though he feared that such associations in Germany would be viewed as illegitimate or, at best, as efforts that would ultimately be subsumed under the aegis of the more centralized state apparatus.111 Weber saw American voluntary

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organizations as an outgrowth of the membership practices of Protestant sects. As such, America’s multiple associations, though an important and commendable feature of American democracy, also signified what Weber saw as a more widespread process of secularization. As associational life moved from the sects to the secular clubs and associations, membership was more likely to signify status in an emerging new aristocracy than the confirmation of demanding ethical character. Though he did not elaborate on the subject as did Weber and Tocqueville, Chesterton did take note of “all the leagues and guilds and college clubs” in the United States. He interpreted these unofficial institutions in a positive light, seeing them as an expression of Americans’ “high spirits,” creativity, and “humane ideals.” Like both Tocqueville and Weber, Chesterton saw these habits “of spontaneous social organization” as a “power that is the soul and success of democracy.”112 Qutb, though he was a member of CSCE’s international club as well as a number of church clubs, highlighted instead Americans’ penchant for such isolated and self-preoccupied engagements as caring for their individual lawns. While Qutb was not alone in making such an assessment,113 his interpretation should be qualified by Maritain’s observations, offered at approximately the same time as Qutb’s visit, of the still flourishing and “countless initiatives of fraternal help which are the daily bread of the American people.” Sounding much like Tocqueville, Maritain noted the many active associations, communities, and brotherhoods in the United States. Yet, even Maritain, though disposed to emphasize the “lurking positive,” noted worrying signs. He observed tensions between tendencies toward individual freedom and efforts to preserve community ties; and he conceded, in partial agreement with Qutb’s observations, that a genuine sense of community had declined.114 So, what of voluntarism and civic engagement today? Some suggest that Tocqueville’s concerns have, at least in part, been realized. This is certainly what the authors of Habits of the Heart, an important book whose title bears a Tocquevillian phrase, found in their 1985 study of middle-class Americans. Based on numerous interviews, the five authors of Habits of the Heart discovered that the dominant moral languages in contemporary American society are “expressive individualism” and “utilitarian individualism.” Less evident today, say Bellah and his colleagues, is the rightly understood part of the individualism paradox. As individualism has advanced, so, some argue, has civic engagement weakened. In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam documents the precipitous decline of American voluntarism, joining habits, and social capital.

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Others, such as Claude Fischer, are more optimistic about the persistence of voluntarism among Americans. Fischer sees voluntarism not only as a defining American trait, but as a quality of Americanism that remains vital even today. Fischer, among others, calls into question Putnam’s findings, arguing that while certain forms of association may have declined, others (and even more) have emerged to take their place. There may be fewer bowling leagues, Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, and PTA groups, but there are more self-help groups, book clubs, hiking groups, and Bible study classes. What has remained over time, argues Fischer, is American voluntarism and joining habits. Nevertheless, even Fischer acknowledges that the binding nature of group associations has changed, a quality of contemporary associational life discussed in Robert Wuthnow’s study of proliferating small groups in America. Wuthnow suggests that small groups have emerged precisely because other forms of social capital have declined. Forty percent of Americans, Wuthnow reports, are involved in some kind of small group. On the one hand, these groups can be seen as the most recent manifestation of Americans’ joining tendencies. On the other hand, as Wuthnow concedes, there is something qualitatively different about small groups as compared to earlier forms of associational life. Contemporary small groups are less binding, are often centered on individuals’ emotional needs and problems, and are easier to exit. In Wuthnow’s words: “The social contract binding members together [in small groups] asserts only the weakest of obligations. Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone’s opinion. Never criticize. Leave quietly if you become dissatisfied.”115 Arguably the weaker ties and the greater ease with which one can enter and exit such group forms is even more pronounced in new so-called digital communities. Several recent studies show that while new social media technologies offer more avenues for social connection, they may actually be fostering greater social distance. According to Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz, in their book The Lonely American, new forms of digital connectivity offer a limited substitute for community characterized by real physical presence. Still, many extol the virtues of new social media and electronic forms of communication as that which will foster new forms of community and connectivity. However, as Sherry Turkle argues rather persuasively in Alone Together, though Americans may be increasingly connected to one another electronically, they are also “oddly more alone.”116 Even Fischer, though more sanguine about the continuing inclination among Americans to join together, wonders: “At what point

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does having more options for more people to exit more groups create a society in which too little is certain, too little can be counted on and people are too often left behind – sometimes by just an ‘unsubscribe’ e-mail?”117 Whether fostered by new social media technologies or other factors, evidence of growing disconnectedness among Americans is difficult to ignore. The number of one-person households in the United States has increased from 7.7 percent in 1940 to 17 percent in 1970 to 27.4 percent in 2013.118 In some places, such as Manhattan, it is as high as 48 percent. General Social Survey (GSS) data reveal a decline in the number of people with whom Americans discuss “important matters.” In 2004, nearly onequarter of respondents reported not having a single confidant with whom they could discuss important matters.119 However, that people in the United States still seek out opportunities to join together – whether in small groups, online communities, or other venues – is suggestive of longstanding inclinations among Americans to form voluntary associations. One can understand new efforts to connect with others – regardless of the social capital that is actually achieved – as an indication of this enduring cultural propensity. Thus, in Martha Bayles’s terms, one finds in the contemporary situation the “bright threads of our affability – our friendliness,” to be “interwoven with dark strands of loneliness, detachment, anomie.”120 Unfortunately, Bayles discovers, the latter is what is often highlighted in images of America exported abroad. So pronounced is this perception that internationals who meet actual Americans are sometimes surprised by what they encounter. Among Bayles’s interlocutors was an Egyptian woman in Cairo who had spent a year in the United States as an exchange student. She reported how taken she was by the amount of time Americans spent with their families. “In the media,” she said, “there are no families, just individuals.” In India, Bayles found positive attitudes toward many American traits, but a clear “rejection of American hyperindividualism portrayed in its entertainment.” Here too, direct encounters with Americans sometimes served to disabuse Indians of distorted perceptions portrayed in popular culture.121 In a similar way, the Chestertons discovered a warm and cohesive communal life during their time with the Bixler family in South Bend; and Weber, in his encounter with American associational life, was compelled to refute as “fundamentally mistaken” those who portrayed American democracy as a “sandpile” or “a mass fragmented into atoms.”122 Weber, however, though he admired American associational

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life and even recommended it to Germany, noted changes on the horizon. Like some of the contemporary scholars cited earlier, who worry about declining social capital, Weber identified trends that he saw altering the nature and quality of associational life in America.

religion and secularization Weber viewed the societal relocation of associational life from the sects to the secular clubs as one indicator of secularization, a process that he also observed in the realm of American higher education. All four visitors, in one manner or another, commented on religiosity and the process of secularization in American society. Tocqueville viewed the various Protestant sects in America as tending toward a departure from Christianity. He anticipated that eventually the only options would be Catholicism or no religion at all. However, he viewed as significant the social role of religion in sustaining American democracy. Juxtaposed against the situation in France, he commended the separation of church and state in America, viewing it as an arrangement that preserved the vitality and social utility of religion in society. Tocqueville saw widespread unbelief as an aberration and religious faith as the natural inclination of humans. In two important senses, Chesterton agreed with Tocqueville. Like Tocqueville, Chesterton saw religion as essential for democracy and he did not regard its social decline as inevitable. Instead he anticipated, as noted in Chapter 6, that “the dams of unbelief will crumble and the ancient river of religion will pursue its old course.”123 Weber believed just the opposite and embraced what Troeltsch referred to as a kind of “heroic skepticism.”124 “The fate of our time,” Weber stated, “is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the the ‘disenchantment of the world.’”125 Qutb agreed that in the Western world religion had become separate from the state, which he identified as one of Christianity’s fundamental weaknesses. In terms not wholly unlike his European predecessors, Qutb observed the processes of secularization taking place even within Protestant churches. Where Weber concentrated on the church’s increasing utilitarian function, Qutb emphasized the social and entertainment orientation of the churches he visited – an element of church life that has arguably become more pronounced in recent decades. For a long time, Weber’s work represented the starting point for most contemporary theories of secularization. Peter Berger, for example,

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following Weber, argued in the 1960s that the rationalizing processes of modernization led to the disenchantment of the world and the full secularization of society.126 In light of the continuing, even revitalizing, vibrancy of religion around the world in the decades that followed, however, Berger has since retracted this thesis; though he still sees high levels of secularity at play in certain places, including notably in the arena of American higher education (recall Weber’s discussion with William James). More generally, however, Berger now concludes that “the world today is massively religious, and it is anything but the secularized world that had been predicted (be it joyfully or despondently) by so many analysts of modernity.” Berger also now allows that earlier theorists had overestimated the purported inevitability of secularization and had underappreciated the role of human agency.127 His revised conclusion on this point comports with Chesterton’s reflections on the consequences of individual action and on the “avoidability of the inevitable.” Several other recent works on secularization have, likewise, complexified earlier arguments and called into question the assumption that modernity necessarily leads to secularization. In his 2007 tour de force on the subject, philosopher Charles Taylor argues that there are three different, yet related, types of secularity: (1) the retreat of religion from the public sphere, (2) the decline in religious commitment at the level of individual belief and practice, and (3) the common cultural sensibilities or taken for granted assumptions that make belief in the modern context less plausible. We cannot assume, says Taylor in A Secular Age, that just because of the advancement of secularization type 1 there will necessarily be secularization type 2. Taylor draws heavily on Weber in his analysis, though, significantly, he does not agree that disenchantment is the necessary and accepted “price we pay for modernity and rationality” nor that the modern human’s only viable choice is to “courageously accept this bargain, and lucidly opt for what we have inevitably become.”128 Taylor, following Weber, allows that in the modern “secular age,” humans poignantly experience a prevailing sense of meaninglessness and associate the flatness of everyday life with the consequences of living in a modern consumerist industrial society. Yet, he also believes, following Tocqueville and Chesterton, that modern humans have not, and will not, easily acquiesce to life in a meaningless universe. The “sense that there is something more presses in,” says Taylor. “Our age is very far from settling in to a comfortable unbelief.”129 Tocqueville, recall, said something quite similar. In fact, he viewed disenchantment as an intolerable condition that humans would simply not accept, and saw some of the

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varied expressions of religiosity and mysticism in America as evidence of humans attempting to break out of the restrictions of an overly materialistic society. Given the continuing vibrancy of religious belief and practice in large sectors of American society (and in the world more generally), it seems that Tocqueville, in contrast to Weber, was right on this point.130 In his edited volume, A Secular Revolution, sociologist Christian Smith puts forth a revised take on standard interpretations of secularization that also speaks to this issue of inevitability. Like Taylor, Smith calls into question the essential inescapability of secularity that was assumed in earlier accounts. Referring primarily to what would be Taylor’s first category, Smith argues that secularization is not simply an unintended outcome of the broader modern processes of differentiation and rationalization, but is a result of the intentional actions of actors with a vested interest in advancing secularization. Smith identifies the years between 1870 and 1930 as the period when religious symbols and ideas were increasingly excluded from the public sphere. Interestingly, Smith identifies Clarence Darrow as one of the “secularizing activists” who sought to marginalize religion during this period, the very person Chesterton debated on the topic of the future of religion while he was in the United States. Recall that during these debates, Chesterton felt that Darrow debated with him as though he were his fundamentalist aunt. According to Smith, this was a common strategy; that is, secularizing activists of this period were quick to “associate religion . . . with the uncultivated mass or ordinary people (philistines, babbits, fundamentalists, bumpkins, etc.).”131 While Tocqueville celebrated the separation of church and state in the United States, and viewed it as an arrangement that allowed both for the continuing vibrancy of religion in society and for its indirect, yet essential, influence on public institutions, Qutb saw the separation of church and state in much more negative terms. He viewed the separation of Christianity from the public square (Taylor’s type 1 secularization) as that which set up a condition whereby Western societies easily capitulated to the negative consequences of modern capitalism. Qutb’s conclusion on this point, then, is closer to Weber than it is Tocqueville. However, it is even closer, in certain respects, to Brad Gregory’s revised account of secularization considered in Chapter 4. Gregory likewise sees the privatization of religion, which resulted from conflicts between different Christian communities following the Protestant Reformation, as that which precipitated the secularization of society and of religion. While

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Qutb would place the origins of the separation of Christianity from society further back in history, he, like Gregory, saw this arrangement ultimately leading to the secularization of religion, as illustrated through his commentary on Protestant churches in the United States. As Bruce Lincoln argues, for people like Qutb, religion is understood in maximalist terms; that is, it is understood as a worldview that is meant to encompass the whole of life, not simply private beliefs. In other words, none of Charles Taylor’s three types of secularization would be acceptable in Qutb’s vision of an authentic Islamic society. Thus, what was problematic for Qutb was the imposition on Islamic society of a Western minimalism – a condition with the economy as “the central domain of culture” and religion “restricted to [the] private sphere.”132 As noted in Chapter 8, Qutb was not alone in lamenting a minimalist arrangement. Some Western thinkers, including Joseph Ratzinger, have similarly decried the move toward minimalism in Europe and have found common ground with Islam on this point. “The real antagonism typical of today’s world is not that between diverse religious cultures,” writes Ratzinger, “rather, it is the antagonism between the radical emancipation of man from God, from the roots of life, on the one hand, and the great religious cultures, on the other.133

imperialism and indifference In keeping with this assessment, what Qutb denounced was a societal condition of “radical emancipation” from God, or what he preferred to call jahiliyya society, and the imposition of this culture on Islamic societies. If, as discussed in the Introduction, we are to avoid the mistakes of the Vietnam conflict, and take the time to understand a culture very different from ours, the deeply religious roots of the hostility toward the United States that precipitated the 9/11 attacks cannot be ignored. As Bruce Lincoln explains: It is tempting in the face of such horror, to regard the authors of these deeds as evil incarnate: persons bereft of reason, decency, or human compassion. Their motives, however . . . were intensely and profoundly religious. We need to take this fact seriously, uncomfortable though it be, since it can tell us important things about the events of the 11th, the broader conflict of which those events are a part, and also the nature of religion.134

As it concerns the latter, it is not just terrorists who, because of their religious commitments, find features of American life repugnant. Indeed,

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much of the Muslim world views the sort of individualism and promotion of sex, violence, and money depicted in American popular culture as a threat to their way of life. As noted in the Introduction, millions of devout Muslims were offended when they first encountered American popular culture in the 1970s.135 A 2009 survey conducted by World Public Opinion reveals that these concerns persist; 80 percent of Egyptians agreed that one of President Obama’s policy goals was to “impose American culture on Muslim society.”136 The director of the United States Information Agency (USIA), Joseph Duffey, warned in 1998, a year before the USIA was to be shut down, that, in the absence of the agency’s public policy work, American entertainment would be left as the de facto source for portraying American society to the world. Duffey presciently warned (three years before 9/11) that this could have harmful consequences. “In countries that are repelled by American and Western values, such as . . . Islamic countries that reject Western secularism, such programming only confirms the worst suspicions that the West, and America in particular, is morally corrupt and intellectually devoid.”137 The highest levels of resentment toward American cultural products are found in Middle Eastern countries. The Pew Global Attitudes survey found that in only four countries did a majority report disliking American music, movies, and television: Turkey at 61 percent, Egypt at 60 percent, Jordan at 56 percent, and Pakistan at 78 percent.138 As discussed in Chapter 7, one of the consequences of Qutb’s trip to America, and his reflections on the experience after returning to Egypt, was a growing concern about American imperialism. Recall his strident and hyperbolic statement in the 1964 version of Social Justice in Islam: “America establishes practices and systems that crush all aspects of Islam, doctrinal, ethical and practical, in all parts of the Islamic world.”139 As we have seen, however, Qutb was not alone in objecting to American imperialism. Indeed, this became a topic of concern for all four visitors after they returned to their home countries. Tocqueville, in the last years of his life, similarly worried about America’s pride, spirit of conquest, and imperialistic tendencies, and viewed these qualities as undermining America’s reputation in Europe.140 Weber, also near the end of his life, spoke in dark terms about America’s growing power and influence, which he appears to have accepted as a tragic inevitability. As far as America’s involvement in World War I, he observed that Americans did not even understand why they were in the conflict and likened their participation to the level of sports competition. In a speech given two years before his death, Weber bluntly stated

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that Germans “have nothing to learn from the old democracy of that country” and described American democracy “in its present form” as “facing its doom.”141 Chesterton, too, wrote against American imperialism. He had long been an anti-imperialist, but he saw the American cultural, as opposed to military, form of imperialism as particularly pernicious. He had more respect for imperialism “spread by fighting” than imperialism of the American variety advanced as it was by “economic pressure or snobbish fashion.” I do “not hate America” he wrote in his second book on United States, but “I hate Americanization.”142 Thus, Qutb was not the only one of our visitors to lament the spread of Americanism; and it is a concern shared by many today. A recent iteration of the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, for example, found that in fifteen of the twenty countries surveyed, a majority of the respondents said the spread of American ideas and customs in their country was a bad thing, with the highest levels found in Middle Eastern countries.143 As noted in the Introduction, it is also commonly perceived globally that Americans pay little attention to the interests of other countries in making foreign policy decisions.144 Recent history demonstrates that the United States pays a great cost when exerting its influence globally while simultaneously being perceived to ignore the interests, concerns, and values of the countries in which it is involved. As the Arabist and respected foreign service officer David Newton puts it, “The most serious problem we face in the Middle East is the feeling that America does not listen.”145

taking culture seriously and the benefits of ambivalence If, as Robert McNamara warned – in reflecting on his and others’ mistakes in Vietnam – Americans don’t seek to empathetically understand those groups who have been inspired by the writings of Sayyid Qutb and the like, “we remain ignorant at our peril.”146 Political scientist Roxanne Euben makes a similar point. She warns, “Qutb’s political thought and the thought of those like him are not just a matter of intellectual interest or enrichment, but of urgent political realities” (a warning, it should be noted, that, like McNamara’s, was offered prior to the events of 9/11). Also like McNamara, Euben recognizes that such empathetic understanding is difficult for Americans. Western perspectives “wedded to a rationalist epistemology” have difficulty coming to terms with “practices and ideas guided by and defined in terms of belief in divine truths unknowable by human means.”147

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Interestingly, even those in the United States who purport to affirm, empower, and regard as legitimate the multiple people groups and varied lifestyles that make up our late-modern, interconnected, and pluralistic world, often don’t take culture seriously enough.148 Within certain facets of multicultural discourse, for example, appreciation and affirmation of cultural diversity can sometimes mean a trivializing of culture, where the focus is on such conventions and folkways as dress styles, art forms, eating customs, music, and dance. Often overlooked – even in the name of respecting cultural difference – are the normative values and conceptions of the sacred that are the heart of culture.149 Yet this is the very feature of culture that, rather than being seriously regarded, is often ignored, trivialized, or, as discussed between William James and Weber, viewed as “humbug.” The reflections of our four visitors demonstrate that ignoring this essential and defining feature of culture is consequential in terms of understanding both others and ourselves. Regarding the latter, our visitors make abundantly clear that religion has played a determining role in many facets of American life throughout its history. The foreign interpreters, as we have seen, highlighted the effects of religious belief and practice on the economy, associational life and voluntarism, race, prisons, Prohibition, education, and democracy. Collectively, they show that to ignore this feature of American life would be to grossly misrepresent American history and identity. Disregarding the centrality of conceptions of the sacred to understandings of culture is also consequential as it concerns our engagements internationally. As Martha Bayles observes, “the official stance of the US government toward faith-saturated societies . . . is relentlessly secular.”150 Such a stance is problematic for several reasons. First, it does not really represent the United States, which, at least in comparison to Western Europe, still has relatively high levels of religious belief and practice. In this sense, then, the highly secularized stance of American officials on the global stage is an example of how Taylor’s secularization types 1 and 3 are more advanced than type 2. This condition would have surprised Tocqueville, who, while he celebrated the separation of church and state, saw the unique arrangement as allowing religion to flourish and to influence and sustain, albeit indirectly, the American political order. A Tocquevillian understanding of the conditions and benefits of church/state separation is very different from the more stridently secular laïcité policy in France. Inasmuch as the secular nature of our engagement with faith-saturated countries reflects the French model, not only are we not fully representing

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ourselves, we are inviting resentment and resistance from other countries where religion is still a defining part of their culture. The United States is also missing an opportunity to demonstrate to other countries how religion and government can cooperate without being either a theocracy or a fully secular society. As anthropologist Robert Hefner puts it, the United States could be a model for “a third way between theocracy and secular democracy, in which ‘religious principles and democratic values coexist.’”151 One of our great failures in the Middle East, according to Bayles, is that in accepting a relentlessly secular stance in dealing with highly religious societies, “we have failed to convey the most vital lesson of our history.”152 As we have seen, our visitors detected both imperialistic and conformist tendencies among Americans. Given the latter, the exportation of things American can involve the imposition of a uniformity of thinking, a homogeneity that is not always recognized by those doing the transporting. This is certainly what I found in my work on the transplantation of problem-solving courts. In the process of transplanting these court innovations, Americans were often perceived as imperialistic, as having one set way of operating problem-solving courts, and as insensitive to the distinctive qualities of a foreign country’s local legal culture.153 Another helpful illustration of such imperialism can be found in the case of the United Nations Population Conference in Cairo in 1994. In sociologist Joseph Davis’s analysis of the conference, he discovered the imposition of particular Western values and ideas that met resistance from an interesting alliance of participants who were not in full sympathy with these values.154 In this instance, as in others, cultural differences were hardly respected, affirmed, and valued. In a recent revisitation of this earlier study, Davis writes that “our problem is not that we overvalue cultural differences but that we underestimate them.” In spite of our celebration of multiculturalism, he adds, we actually “imagine a sameness of outlook and aspiration, an unwitting projection of ourselves in the end.”155 As illustrated at the 1994 Cairo conference, organizers, far from embracing a multicultural perspective, viewed their “values in matters of individual rights, gender, family, and the like to be unambiguously good for everyone” and expected that these values would likewise be “unambiguously desired by the intended beneficiaries.”156 However, they clearly were not. Not a few participants at the Cairo conference, mostly from Muslim countries, in essence asserted, as did Yamei Kin when the Webers were in New York in 1904, “don’t make us like you.” Yet, this is precisely what Americans did (and do), as is

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also evident, as Davis points out, in such efforts as our “mission to plant democracy in Iraq,” where American officials likewise expected (wrongly) that our intervention would be unambiguously desired.157 The Pew Global Attitudes survey, in fact, shows that predominantly Muslim countries dislike American ideas about democracy, with 73 percent in Turkey, 54 percent in Egypt, 54 percent in Jordan, and 67 percent in Pakistan reporting such a view. However, this does not mean that citizens in these countries are opposed to democracy as such. As found in a 2003–2004 World Values Survey, levels of support for “democratic ideals” and “how democracy works in practice” are as high in Muslim countries as in Western democracies.158 Very much in keeping with Qutb’s assessment, these same countries – along with the rest of the world – admire American advances in technology and science. Therefore, like Qutb, citizens in Muslim countries can admire American science and technology, yet reject American popular culture and American forms of democracy. Such a view was shared by Mohamed Morsi, the deposed Egyptian president, who like Qutb had studied in the United States. Like Qutb, Morsi “admired America’s scientific and technical achievements but was repelled by its cultural decadence.”159 Six years after the UN conference in Cairo and just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Cairo Times published reactions from a number of Egyptians interviewed on the streets of Cairo. None expressed much sympathy for the United States – though they regretted the loss of innocent life – and all were opposed to proposed retaliatory efforts in Afghanistan. A columnist in the same issue urged America to “reach out to those who, for whatever reason, feel they have a justifiable grievance against the United States.” In his view, such grievances included frustration with America’s “global promotion of cultural values that do not sit easily with Islam” as well as its “overwhelming wealth [and] military might.”160 Of course, these were all matters that another Egyptian, Sayyid Qutb, objected to more than a half-century earlier, as did many participants at the UN conference in Cairo in 1994, and as many still do today. One can forcefully reject Qutb’s promotion of jihad of the sword – and the tragic manner in which it has been appropriated by others – while at the same time take seriously some of his criticisms. That many of his observations were shared, in some form, by the more friendly European visitors considered here may help Americans be more understanding of and receptive to his critique.

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What They Saw in America

At the outset of this book, I identified two sources of inspiration for this project: the discovery of Qutb’s American journey and the ambivalent anti-Americanism I found in the international problem-solving court movement. Qutb, though he admired certain features of America, could hardly be characterized as ambivalent in his assessment. The other three visitors, however, did express a sort of ambivalence in their views on American society.161 It’s an ambivalence that one still finds today, where America’s cultural footprint around the world is “complex, of varying depth, sometimes welcome and sometimes not.”162 Along with Tocqueville, Weber, Chesterton, and Maritain, one also finds this ambivalence in the writings of one of the most recent visitors mentioned in this book, the Russian writer and thinker, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As noted earlier, Solzhenitsyn was unabashedly critical of American commercialism, materialism, and conformist tendencies. However, he was also deeply appreciative of a number of features of American society, including – echoing Tocqueville and Chesterton – the small-scale democratic self-governing practices he witnessed firsthand in New England. When preparing for his return to Russia in February 1994, Solzhenitsyn warmly thanked the people of Cavendish, Vermont: “Here in Cavendish and in the surrounding towns, I have observed the sensible and sure process of grassroots democracy, in which the local population solves most of its problems on its own, not waiting for the decisions of higher authorities.”163 He would continue to cite what he witnessed in New England in his promotion of democracy in Russia. While in America he also commended Americans, even while criticizing them, for their “strength, generosity, and magnanimity.”164 However, much like our other visitors, he too had concerns about American assertiveness and growing cultural influence. Until the very last years of his life, he promoted “local self-governance in Russia” and cited the “highly effective local self-government systems in Switzerland and New England”165 as worthy examples, but he also lamented that Western exports to Russia were of the worst kind. “Russia is currently adopting many things from the West,” said Solzhenitsyn. “Unfortunately, it is also adopting many of the worst things. All the filth! Pornography, drug addiction, organized crime, new types of swindles.”166 In other words, he saw Russia importing the dark strands rather than the bright threads. Solzhenitsyn even specified a kind of ambivalence when he observed that, among Russians, America “evokes a sort of mixture of feelings.”167 What, in the final analysis, is one to make of this ambivalence? Maritain – whose views, as we have seen, line up in a number of ways

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with the three Europeans considered here, especially with Tocqueville’s and Chesterton’s assessments – offers interesting and instructive reflections on the concept. First, he says that “history is ambivalent.” Even when things seem most dire, the possibilities for change and renewal may already be, even if not immediately visible, latently moving forward.168 Second, he observes that “every great human reality is ambivalent, and that the best things involve dangers or are accompanied by more or less serious defects.”169 Highlighting these defects, again, is not meant to invalidate that which is admirable, but to encourage deeper reflection, regeneration, and renewal. Ambivalence, then, is in keeping with the vagaries, possibilities, and contingencies of history; and it is a quality of every great human reality. Ambivalent assessments, moreover, can encourage efforts for further improvement and for surmounting imperfections.170 Thus, we can think of the ambivalence found in our visitors’ accounts less as frustrating contradictions or inconsistencies than as beneficial, even inspiring, renderings. In reflecting on the concomitant anxieties and optimisms found in Democracy in America, literary critic James Wood has spoken of “Tocqueville’s fruitful ambivalence.”171 We can likewise regard as fruitful or constructive the ambivalent accounts found in this comparative assessment of America. Listening to these outsiders’ views, both the ambivalent and even the more unequivocal, in other words, may help Americans better understand themselves, more fully empathize with the values of other cultures, and more deeply comprehend how the United States is perceived from the outside. Attending to these insights may also help Americans do a better job of recognizing their positive features – as Freedland would put it, of realizing the gold and discarding the junk, or in Bayles’s terms, of highlighting the bright threads and muting the dark strands. This was the essential plea of the graceful Chinese physician, Yamei Kin, who so impressed Marianne Weber during their final days in America. “So far you have given us only your vices,” Kin told her audience in New York, “but we would like your virtues.”172 All four visitors objected to certain American exports. However, while in America, they also discovered attributes that, though perhaps not easily given to exportation, and not always appreciated by Americans themselves, were worthy of admiration. This, for Chesterton, was the “final paradox” discovered through his American travels: “The best things do not travel, and yet we must travel to find them.”173 Or, one might add, we find them in listening to those who did travel to our shores and told us of what they saw in America.

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Notes

Notes to Introduction 1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Harvey Mansfield and Debra Winthrop (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000), 245. 2 Russell L. Hanson, “Tyranny of the Majority or Fatalism of the Multitude,” in America Through European Eyes: British and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 236. 3 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Global Unease with Major World Powers (June 27, 2007). As summarized in the survey report, while “large proportions in most countries think it is bad that American ideas and customs are spreading to their countries,” there is also “near universal admiration for U.S. technology and a strong appetite for its cultural exports in most parts of the world,” 6. 4 As Martha Bayles discovers in her research on attitudes toward the United States in the Middle East, “Dictators and fanatics may revile America’s political liberties, but most people do not. On the contrary, what I found in my interviews, and what emerges from a careful reading of global opinion, is that most people admire America’s political liberties but recoil at the image of excessive personal freedom held up to them by American popular culture: an image of the isolated individual, detached from family and community, whose life is consumed by the ruthless pursuit of sex, money, or power” (Martha Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014], 248). 5 The Pew Global Attitudes Project. “Global Unease with Major World Power” (June 27, 2007), 20. 6 Ibid. In the 2013 version of this survey, responses from Middle Eastern countries were about the same: Egypt 83%, Turkey 75%, Jordan 76%, and Palestinian Territory 81%. Responses from European countries were lower: Germany 48%, France 65%, and Spain 80%. Sweden was no longer included in the survey, but Greece was added. In Greece, 79% said the United States 237 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Edinburgh College of Art, on 20 Mar 2020 at 20:14:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316551066

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10

11

12 13

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Notes to pp. 2–8

ignored their country’s interests. Still, even in 2013, a majority of respondents in every European country, with the exception of Germany, said America considered the interests of their country “not too much” or “not at all” (www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/4/survey/15/response/Not+too +much–Not+at+all/). Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 31; Gilles Kepel, as cited in Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 154; Daniel Brogan, “Al Qaeda’s Greeley Roots: How the Intellectual Father of Osama Bin Laden’s Terrorist Network Learned to Hate America in a Tiny Colorado Town,” 5280 Magazine (June/ July 2003), 159. Daniel Brogan, “Al Qaeda’s Greeley Roots,” 160. Leo Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010); Lawrence A. Scaff, Max Weber in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009); Patrick Deneen, “What G. K. Chesterton Saw in America: The Cosmopolitan Threat from a Patriotic Nation,” in America Through European Eyes: British and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). Richard Boyd and Brandon Turner, “Anti-Americanism and the American Personality,” ed. Brendon O’Connor, Anti-Americanism: History, Causes, Themes, Vol. 1 (Oxford/Westport, CT: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007), 115–137. Alexis de Tocqueville, Letters from America, ed. Frederick Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 44, 53. Leo Damrosch also notes this quality of their research: “They were equally sociable and at ease with rural shopkeepers, pioneer farmers, prison guards, state governors, bankers, and Indian chiefs” (Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 99). Ker, G.K. Chesterton: A Biography, 442. Aurelian Craiutu and Jeremy Jennings, America Through European Eyes: British and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 321. Sheldon Wolin observes that Tocquevillian theory is “inseparable from the biography of the theorist: from who he is, what he is, and when he is. Biography, unlike method, is unique and untransferable” (Sheldon S. Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001], 87). And, of course, this lack of knowledge greatly affected the policy choices that were made. In an interview at George Washington University, McNamara admitted as much. In response to a question about the so-called Domino Theory, McNamara replied, “Well, I think one of the things it showed was that we didn't know either our opponents – in this case the North Vietnamese – or even our allies – in this case the South Vietnamese. I don't think we knew

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the society, I don't think we knew the leaders” (www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ coldwar/interviews/episode-11/mcnamara3.html). Robert McNamara, James Blight, and Robert Brigham, Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 376–382. Ibid., 392. Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 86. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 248–249. Ibid., 155. Offe, Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber, and Adorno in the United States (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 9.

Notes to Chapter 1 1 Antoine Rédier wrote of Tocqueville’s mother: “Poor woman – often sick, always melancholy and discontented, a flower too rudely shaken by the tribulations of the Reign of Terror.” As cited in André Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Lydia Davis with Robert Hemenway (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988), 37. 2 As cited in Leo Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 10. 3 Ibid., 12. 4 Alexis de Tocqueville, Letters from America, 13. 5 In a May 28, 1831 letter to his brother, Édouard, Tocqueville wrote: “My dear friend, I must ask a favor of you and beg you to do it as soon as possible, though it will put you to some inconvenience. Among other things that are exorbitantly expensive in this country are gloves and articles of silk. Ballroom gloves that cost forty-five sous in Paris cost six francs here and are shoddy. Since we are forever attending social functions and will be even more sociable this winter, you can imagine that we would be ruining ourselves if we had to purchase new gloves every two or three days. We shall be saving money by having them sent from Paris, despite the postage and custom duties” (Tocqueville, Letters from America, 44–45). 6 George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), 79. Raymond Aron makes this observation as well. “Tocqueville is not ordinarily included among the founders of sociology; I consider this neglect of Tocqueville’s sociological writings unjustified” (Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, Vol. I [New York: Doubleday, 1965], 237). Aurelian Craiutu and Jeremy Jennings also observe that Tocqueville was “applauded” for “his sociological acumen” by Americans after publication of Democracy in America (Craiutu and Jennings, eds., Tocqueville on America After 1840 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 16). 7 Tocqueville wrote to his mother: “We were dancing jigs at Newport’s dock, as happy as could be just to find ourselves back in the world.” The captain treated those who had rowed ashore to dinner. More provisions were purchased and

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Notes to pp. 14–21

the dinner continued aboard the Le Havre in the “ladies saloon” until after midnight (Tocqueville, Letters from America, 18). Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 151. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 21. Tocqueville, Letters from America, 125. Ibid., 114. Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 180. Tocqueville, Letters from America, 114. Ibid. Ibid., 119–121. Ibid., 24. Olivier Zunz and Arthur Goldhammer, eds., Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America: Their Friendship and Their Travels (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2010), 365. Tocqueville, Letters from America, 32. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 41. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 4, ed. Eduardo Nolla and trans. James T. Schleifer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), 1086. Democracy in America Vol. 2, ed. Nolla, 397. “The American, taking part in all that is done in this country, believes himself interested in defending all that is criticized there.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 227. Ibid., 586. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 23. Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 585. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 176–77. Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 226–27. Ibid., 585. Ibid., 226–27. Ibid., 359. Gustave de Beaumont, Marie or Slavery in the United States (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 202. Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 139. Ibid., 136. Tocqueville, Letters from America, 121. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 398. Alexis de Tocqueville, Journey to America, ed. J. P. Mayer and George Lawrence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 131. Tocqueville recorded conversations with those running the comb shop, the stone cutting shop, the tool shop, the shoe-maker’s shop, the blacksmith shop, etc. See Tocqueville, Journey to America, 124–28. See also Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 211. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 58.

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39 Tocqueville, Journey to America, 129. Hugh Brogan describes Lynds as “a sadistic bully, of an American type all too familiar today from films and novels about the US Marines in the Second World War, and recent outrages in the prisons at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib” (Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life, 166). 40 Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 208. 41 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 119. 42 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 215. 43 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 132; Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 83 44 See Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 218–221. Of Spencer’s influence on Tocqueville, George Pierson writes: “the influence of Mr. Spencer’s thought can no longer be disguised. These conversations, indeed, make it no exaggeration to say that, in several important branches of constitutional theory and practice, the source of Tocqueville’s knowledge, of his wisdom and intelligence, was none other than this learned and luminous lawyer” (Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 222). 45 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 219. 46 Ibid., 213. 47 Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 217. 48 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 132–33. 49 Tocqueville, Journey to America, 135. 50 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 138. 51 Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 83. 52 Tocqueville, Journey to America, 147–48. 53 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 221–22. 54 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 149. 55 Ibid., 150. 56 Ibid., 157. 57 Ibid., 160. 58 Ibid., 166. 59 Tocqueville, Journey to America, 118. 60 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 170. 61 Ibid., 175. 62 Tocqueville, Journey to America, 43. 63 Ibid., 39. 64 Darmrosch, citing Beaumont’s Marie, 64. See also Beaumont, Marie, 115. 65 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 319. 66 Ibid., 317. 67 Karl Marx, Early Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1974), 238. 68 As cited in Thomas Albert Howard, God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 163. 69 Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 49.

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70 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 29. 71 Ibid., 44. 72 Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, June 9, 1831, as cited in Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 39. 73 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 118. 74 Ibid., 85. 75 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 512. 76 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 314. 77 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 512. 78 Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 133. 79 Michael Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States (Boston: Weeks, Jordan and Company, 1839), 129. 80 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 272. 81 Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs (New York: Random House, 1992), pages xxii and 4, as cited in Wendell Berry’s NEH lecture. These tendencies are also explored and illustrated in Stegner’s partially autobiographical novel, Big Rock Candy Mountain (Wallace Stegner, Big Rock Rock Candy Mountain [New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1943]). 82 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 314. 83 Ibid.; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 387 and 512. Tocqueville wrote, “Americans therefore have a great facility in changing their status, and they take advantage of it according to the needs of the moment. One encounters some who have been successively attorneys, farmers, traders, evangelical ministers, doctors” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 387) 84 Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 32 85 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 347. 86 Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 501. 87 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 251. 88 Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 505. 89 Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 323. 90 Sheldon S. Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 142. 91 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 249. 92 Tocqueville, Journey to England, 107. 93 Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 387. 94 Ibid., 510. 95 Ibid.. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Democracy in America Vol. 3, ed. Nolla, 941.

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99 Jacques Maritain, Reflections on America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 22–23, 40–41. As it concerns Americans chaffing against life in the iron cage, Maritain observes: “At least as regards the essentials, their [Americans] souls and vital energy, their dreams, their everyday effort, their idealism and generosity, were running against the grain of the inner logic of the superimposed structure [of industrial civilization],” 22. Regarding the Trappists, Maritain notes that in the United States “the monasteries founded by various contemplative Orders are so crowded that they refuse candidates for lack of room,” 42. 100 Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 530–32. 101 Beaumont, Marie, 106. 102 Ibid., 114–15. 103 Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 20–21. 104 Ibid., 188–89. 105 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 407. 106 Ibid., 405. 107 Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds, 115. 108 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 411. 109 Ibid., 417. 110 Beaumont, Marie, 135. Beaumont offered similar reflections in a letter to his sister Eugenie, “In America there is a widespread feeling of hatred for trees” (Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 74). Notes to Chapter 2 1 While Beaumont was critical of American literature in general, he allowed that a few writers had “acquired a deserved reputation through their works,” and specifically made reference to Catherine Maria Sedgwick as “the author of several very pleasing novels” (Beaumont, Marie, 110). 2 Sedgwick makes a number of references to both Tocqueville and Beaumont in a diary he kept while in Paris. The journal can be found in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. The following entry, from January 1834, gives a sense of the nature of Tocqueville and Sedgwick’s working relationship: “Monday 20 Jan. 1834 – Finished the 4th volume of . . . Tocqueville came about ½ past 11 & staid till 1 – talking partly about the work he is to publish on our country & partly about France – He says that as regards the religious spirit – Paris is an exception to the rest of France where in certain parts they are profoundly religious . . . He says the manners of the nation have changed entirely within 50 years . . . The salon is no longer the same – You see the men grouped together . . . He said that he believed the social spirit of equality must sooner or later create the republic – He is right – The republic is the inevitable system to which all tends . . . Russia and the United States were the only powers wh. presented an avenir [future]. Both of these are aggrandizing – the others are stationary or diminishing. He went away at ½ past 1. I have

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written up my journal and it is now ½ past 3” (Theodore Sedgwick III. Journal: Paris, Vol. III [Nov. 2, 1833–May 16, 1834], Massachusetts Historical Society). Alexis de Tocqueville, Letters from America, 180–181. Ibid., 191. Craiutu and Jennings, eds., Tocqueville on America After 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 190. Tocqueville, Letters from America, 199. A description of this class or caste was offered by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 98). Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 244. It was, as George Pierson puts it, “The Heart of the Experience,” Tocqueville in America, 347. Tocqueville, Journey to America, 149. Ibid. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 242. Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 17–18. Arriving in America 16 months after Tocqueville’s departure, the French visitor Michel Chevalier also noted the power of public opinion in America. In a letter from Richmond, Virginia dated August 16, 1835, Chevalier made reference to both religious authority and the authority of public opinion: “There is, in America, religious authority which never closes its eyes; there is the authority of opinion, which is severe to rigour . . . there is the dictatorial authority of the crowd” (Michael Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States [Boston: Weeks, Jordan and Company, 1839], 335). Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 268. Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 505. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 2, ed. Nolla, 414. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 237. Ibid., 244. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 405. Beaumont, Marie, 141. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 663. Ibid., 249. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 102. James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 259. As Tocqueville noted, “The beauty of virtue is the favorite thesis for moralists under aristocracy. It’s utility under democracy” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla, 922). Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 486. Ibid., 486–490. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla, 924.

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30 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 236. 31 Ibid., 239. 32 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 489. 33 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 239. 34 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 274; and “I have thought that all the causes tending to the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States can be reduced to three: . . . The third flows from habits and mores,” 265. 35 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla, 499. 36 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 150. 37 Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, 215. 38 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla, 1180. Nolla notes that in Tocqueville’s use of the term, “individualism . . . is always accompanied by its opposite, the spirit of individuality,” 882. 39 Tocqueville, Journey to America, 274 40 Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 65. 41 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 212. 42 Beaumont, Marie, 227–228. 43 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 3. 44 Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 510. 45 Beaumont, Marie, 105. 46 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 485. 47 Ibid., 482. 48 Ibid., 481. 49 Ibid., 640. 50 Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), 66. 51 Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 39. 52 Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds, 401. 53 Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 449. 54 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 445. 55 Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 130. 56 Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life, 190. 57 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 462. 58 Ibid., 463. 59 Charles Dickens, American Notes and Pictures from Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1842), 99. 60 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 162.

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Notes to pp. 47–54

61 Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 71. 62 Tocqueville, Journey to America, 159. 63 Ibid., 157. 64 Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 171–172. 65 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 163. 66 Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds, 401. 67 Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 76. 68 Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 39. 69 Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 126–129. 70 Ibid., 120–121. 71 Ibid., 123. 72 Ibid., 122. 73 Doris S. Goldstein, Trial of Faith: Religion and Politics in Tocqueville’s Thought (New York: Elsevier, 1975), 10. 74 Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life, 49. 75 Goldstein, Trial of Faith, 10. 76 Hugh Brogan summarizes what is generally agreed upon: At the end of his life, “[Tocqueville] now accepted the Church’s authority and discipline. He repented; he confessed; he received absolution and communion” (Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life, 638) 77 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 282. 78 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 89. 79 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 425. 80 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 245–246. 81 As Tocqueville states in Democracy in America, “I feel myself so sensitive to the almost inevitable dangers that beliefs risk when their interpreters mix in public affairs, and I am so convinced that one must maintain Christianity within the new democracies at all cost, that I would rather chain priests in the sanctuary than allow them to leave it” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 521). 82 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla, 924–925. 83 Ibid., 925. 84 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 282. 85 Ibid., 284. 86 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla, 1362–1363. 87 See Goldstein, Trial of Faith, 19–21; Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 50–52. 88 John Patrick Diggins, Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 87. 89 John Lukacs citing Redier in “The Last Days of Alexis de Tocqueville,” Catholic Historical Review 50, no. 2 (July 1964): 161. 90 Tocqueville, Letters from America, 149.

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Notes to pp. 54–63 91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

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Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 278–280. Ibid., 326. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 157. Tocqueville, Letters from America, 237 Tocqueville wrote to his brother from Louisville on December 6: “It’s as cold as a Russian winter. Nobody here recalls having seen anything like it” (Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 186). Tocqueville, Letters from America, 127. As noted in Beaumont’s diary, “Its hull was hung up on the very reef that had smashed it” (Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 175). Tocqueville, Letters from America, 263. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 358. Tocqueville, Journey to America, 97–98. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 191. Ibid. Ibid., 177–178. Ibid., 178. Ibid., 191–192. Ibid., 192. Ibid., 191. Ibid., 194. Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr. and James W. Parins, eds., Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal (Oxford: Greenwood, 2011), 240. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 197. Ibid., 195. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 312. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 195. Ibid., 343. Ibid., 344. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 322–323. Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 49. Ibid., 194. Tocqueville, Letters from America, 261. Tocqueville, Journey to America, 162. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla, 521. Ibid. Ibid., 519. Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 195. Ibid., 169. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 182–193.

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Notes to pp. 64–69

127 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 203. 128 Ibid., 206. 129 Ibid., 201–202. 130 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 265. 131 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 202. 132 Ibid., 204. 133 Ibid., 207–208. 134 Ibid., 205.

Notes to Chapter 3 1 Guenther Roth, “Transatlantic Connections: A Cosmopolitan Context for Max and Marianne Weber’s New York Visit 1904,” Max Weber Studies 5, no. 1 (2005): 88. 2 Ibid., 84. 3 Lawrence A. Scaff, “Remnants of Romanticism: Max Weber in Oklahoma and Indian Territory,” Journal of Classical Sociology 5, no. 1 (2005): 55. In the introduction to the German edition Kapp himself states, “Every German father should put Franklin’s autobiography into his son’s hands as a lesson” (Roth, “Transatlantic Connections,” 87). 4 Wolfgang J. Mommsen, “Max Weber in America,” The American Scholar 69 (2000): 104; Scaff, Max Weber in America, 181. 5 Diggins, Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy, 1. 6 Fritz Ringer writes, “Weber saw the fabric of American society much as Alexis de Tocqueville had seen it, but I have found no evidence that he learned from his illustrious predecessor” (Ringer, Max Weber: An Intellectual Biography [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004], 141). Similarly, Claus Offe makes note of Max Weber’s “unclarified relationship to Alexis de Tocqueville – to whom he was clearly indebted for many of his ideas or actual concepts, yet whom he never once mentions” (Claus Offe, Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber, and Adorno in the United States [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005], 1). 7 Lawrence A. Scaff, Max Weber in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 162. 8 Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 148. 9 Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. and ed. Harry Zohn (London: Transaction, 1988), 280. 10 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 214. 11 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 290. 12 Ibid., 280. 13 Ibid., 281. 14 Cited in Hans Rollmann, “‘Meet Me in St. Louis’: Troeltsch and Weber in America,” Weber’s Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts, ed.

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Notes to pp. 69–75

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 367. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 282. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 27. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 281–282. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 26. Rollman, “‘Meet Me in St. Louis’: Troeltsch and Weber in America,” 368. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 27. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 16. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 280. Hans Rollman, “‘Meet Me in St. Louis’: Troeltsch and Weber in America,” 370. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 285. Hans Rollman, “‘Meet Me in St. Louis’: Troeltsch and Weber in America,” 369. Ibid., 371. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 285. Ibid., 287. Ibid., 286. Reviewing newspaper accounts of the strike, Lawrence Scaff corroborates much of what Weber described (Scaff, Max Weber in America, 42–43). Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, ed. Russ Castronova (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 34. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 41. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 287. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 42. Ibid. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 287. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, 75, 136. Adolph Smith, “The Dark and Insanitary Premises Used for the Slaughtering of Cattle and Hogs,” The Lancet (January 14, 1905): 120. Anthony Arthur, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair (Westminster, MD: Random House, 2006), 47–48. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 44; Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 288. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 287. Ibid. Ibid., 288. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 44. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, “Friendship between Experts: Notes on Weber and Troeltsch,” Max Weber on His Contemporaries, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 218. Ibid., 217–218, 226. Radkau, Max Weber, 79. Radkau is not alone in making this observation. Q. J. Munters, in his discussion of Weber as a rural sociologist, concludes that “Weber was intensively concerned with rural problems over a long period of years” (Q. J. Munsters, “Max Weber as Rural Sociologist,” Sociologia Ruralis 12, no. 1 [1972]: 129–130). Along similar lines, Peter Ghosh observes that the

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Notes to pp. 75–80

1904 lecture was “a final summation of a line of inquiry that had been the centerpiece of his intellectual life throughout the 1890s.” Ghosh goes so far as to claim that “the amount of Weber’s work which stands outside the rural framework is practically nil” (Peter Ghosh, “Not the Protestant Ethic? Max Weber at St. Louis,” History of European Ideas 31 (2005): 374, 396. Max Weber, Political Writings, ed. Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 7. This view is qualified by Ludwig Bernhard’s work on the Polish peasants. As Joachim Radkau points out, Bernhard shows how “the Polish superiority was due not to a primitive lack of material needs but to a highly effective community life” (Radkau, Max Weber, 82). Keith Tribe, ed., Reading Weber (New York: Routledge, 1989), 161. Dirk Kasler, Max Weber: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Trans. Philipa Hurd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 55. Max Weber, Political Writings, 8. Ibid., 9. Radkau notes the relevance of this perspective in today’s global economy: “Here is the germ of an idea which is becoming topical again at today’s level of ‘globalization’: namely, that growing worldwide competition, together with the superior strength of big capital, forces everyone whose position in this struggle is hopelessly inferior to resort on an increasing scale to self-provision” (Radkau, Max Weber, 86). Max Weber, Political Writings, 10. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons, ed. Anthony Giddens (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 159. Max Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilization, trans. R. I. Frank (London: NLB, 1976), 410–411. Tribe, Reading Weber, 115. Max Weber, “The Relations of the Rural Community to Other Branches of Social Science,” trans. Charles W. Seidenadel. Proceedings of the International Conference of Arts and Sciences, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, vol. 7: Social Sciences (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1906), 732. Weber, however, acknowledges that the “Catholic Church is, in a social sense, more democratic nowadays than formerly,” presumably in reference to the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (See P. Ghosh, “Max Weber and the ‘Rural Community’: A Critical Edition of the English Text,” History of European Ideas 31 (2005): 334. Max Weber, “The Relations of the Rural Community,” 727. Ibid., 726. Ibid. Ghosh, “Max Weber and the ‘Rural Community,’” 329. Max Weber, “The Relations of the Rural Community,” 727. Ibid., 729. Hugo Müntersberg, The Americans (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904), 250–251. Ghosh, for example, observes that, “It never occurred to Weber to visit the great wheat producing states of America in order to verify these propositions”

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Notes to pp. 80–88

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

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(P. Ghosh, “Not the Protestant Ethic? Max Weber at St. Louis,” History of European Ideas 31 [2005], 378). Scaff, Max Weber in America, 73. Aaron Jones, Illinois Farmers’ Institute with Reports of County Farmers’ Institutes for the Year 1901 (Springfield, ILL Phillips Bros., State Printers, 1901), 92. Beaumont, Marie, 115. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 119. Ibid., 317. Tocqueville, Journey to America, 43. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 321. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 284. As Lawrence Scaff puts it, for Weber, “an opportunity to view frontier conditions would have had an irresistible appeal, as it did earlier for Tocqueville” (Scaff, “Remnants of Romanticism,” 56). Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 291. Max Weber, “A Letter from Indian Territory,” Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 16, no. 2 (November 1988): 134. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 405. Max Weber, “A Letter from Indian Territory,” 134. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 403–404. Max Weber, “A Letter from Indian Territory,” 134. Ibid., 135. Ibid., 134–135. Ibid., 134. Ibid., 135. Pierson notes, “Since leaving the Ohio he [Tocqueville] had made more than one observation on the prevalence of dueling in the South” (Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 640). Tocqueville, Journey to America, 107–109. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 77–78. Ibid., 78. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 312. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 82. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 85. Ibid., 85, 88. Ibid., 88. Weber, “A Letter from Indian Territory,” 135. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 89. Max Weber, “A Letter from Indian Territory,” 136. Nahum D. Chandler, “The Possible Form of an Interlocution: W.E.B. Du Bois and Max Weber in Correspondence, 1904–1905,” New Centennial Review 6, no. 3 (2007): 199.

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Notes to pp. 88–96

98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Ibid., 197. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 295. Ibid. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 265. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 296. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 110. Craiatu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 328. Ibid., 335. Ibid., 337. Ernst Moritz Manasse, “Max Weber on Race and Society,” Social Research 14, no. 2 (June 1947): 312. 108 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 385–398. 109 Chandler, “The Possible Form of an Interlocution,” 218. 110 H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 378–379. Notes to Chapter 4 1 According to Marianne, Weber’s “stepcousins were Grandfather Fallenstein’s grandsons from his first marriage” (Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 291). 2 On the journey from Knoxville to Mt. Airy, the Webers stopped for one night in Asheville, North Carolina and toured the Biltmore estate recently built by the Vanderbilts. 3 There are several versions of this essay: Max Weber, “‘Churches’ and ‘Sects’ in North America: An Ecclesiastical Socio-Political Sketch,” trans. Colin Loader, Sociological Theory 3 (Spring 1985): 7–13; Weber, “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 302–322; Weber, Economy and Society, 1204–1210. 4 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 7. 5 Ibid.,” 7–8. 6 Weber, “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 307. Weber wrote that at the Methodist service, the afternoon baptism was “recommended as a spectacle to edify everybody,” 307. 7 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 8. 8 Ibid.; Weber, “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 304. 9 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 8. 10 Ibid. 11 Weber, “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 305. 12 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 132. 13 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 298. 14 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 8. 15 “The individual,” wrote Weber, “is admitted by virtue of a voluntary resolution by both parties” (“Churches and Sects,” 9). 16 Weber, Economy and Society, 1206. 17 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 9. 18 Weber, Economy and Society, 1206.

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Notes to pp. 96–103

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19 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 10. 20 Weber, Economy and Society, 1206. 21 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (Indianapolis: The Liberty Fund, 1995), 936. 22 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 10. 23 Sung Ho Kim, Max Weber’s Politics of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 25. 24 On this point, Colin Loader and Jeffrey Alexander note: “The sect differs from the mainstream academic conception of Gesellschaft in that it is not barren of values” (Loader and Alexander, “Max Weber on Churches and Sects in North America: An Alternative Path Toward Rationalization,” Vol. 3 Sociological Theory [Spring 1985], 3). 25 As Kim summarizes, these were “voluntary associations that were . . . predicated on a particularistic principle of membership, permeating the intermediary sphere between the state and individuals” (Kim, Max Weber’s Politics of Civil Society, 67). 26 Weber, Economy and Society, 1207. 27 Stephen Kalberg, “Tocqueville and Weber on the Sociological Origins of Citizenship: The Political Culture of American Democracy.” Citizenship Studies 1, no. 2 (1997): 199–222. 28 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 496. 29 Kalberg, “Tocqueville and Weber on the Sociological Origins of Citizenship,” 217. 30 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 8. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 10. 33 See Goldstein, Trial of Faith, 19–21; Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 50–52. 34 Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, 107–108. 35 Ibid., 180. 36 Diggins, Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy, 87. 37 Weber, “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 302–303. 38 Ibid., 304. 39 Roth, “Transatlantic Connections,” 100. 40 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 299. 41 Kim, Max Weber’s Politics of Civil Society, 89. 42 Max Weber, “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 309. 43 Ibid., 310–311. 44 Ibid., 307. 45 Roth, “Transatlantic Connections,” 87. 46 Ibid. 47 Franklin, however, asserted that he “never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern’d it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.” (Benjamin Franklin, The

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Notes to pp. 103–108

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005], 64. Ibid., 64–65. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 47–48. Gianfranco Poggi helpfully describes the secularizing process, as depicted by Weber in the Protestant Ethic, as twofold. First, “the very success of their professional activities progressively deadened the religious nerve of some individuals; it rendered less cogent and constant their concern with the question of salvation, and weakened their identity as believers.” Second, “and more importantly, in the course of becoming the central economic fact of modern life . . . capitalism contributed powerfully to the advance of secularization and the church became less significant as a collective protagonist of the general social process.” (Gianfranco Poggi, Weber: A Short Introduction [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006], 73–74. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Ibid., 182. However, he understood freedom in terms of “free, as being, by the general practice and habit of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice; and particularly by the practice of industry and frugality, free from debt, which exposes a man to confinement, and a species of slavery to his creditors.” (Franklin, Autobiography, 75–76). Ibid., 75–76. Ibid., 64. Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1967); Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, 172. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, 243. Pierson notes that “so far as can be ascertained they neither visited, nor studied, a single college in the United States. Apparently it never occurred to them that such institutions could have any bearing on the character of American civilization.” (Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 448). Scaff, Max Weber in America, 142. Ibid., 49. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 288. Ibid., 288–289. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 50. Ibid. Ibid.; see also Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 289. Max Weber, Max Weber on Universities, trans., ed., intro. Edward Shils (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 23. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 148. Weber, “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 308. Weber, Protestant Ethic, 183.

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Notes to pp. 108–113

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72 Wolfgang Mommsen, “Max Weber in America,” The American Scholar 69 (2000): 105. 73 Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 149. 74 Frederick Rudolph, Mark Hopkins and the Log: Williams College, 1836–1872 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). See especially the appendix of the bicentennial edition, “Williams College 1793–1993: Three Eras, Three Cultures.” 75 Max Weber on Universities, 25. 76 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 300. 77 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 138. 78 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 300. 79 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 143. 80 Ibid., 145. 81 Weber, Protestant Ethic, 154. In footnote 193 on p. 258, Weber refers to the “Quaker sermon” he heard at “Haverford College.” 82 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 143. 83 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 301. 84 Ibid. 85 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 146–147. 86 Weber, Protestant Ethic, 167. 87 Ibid.; “The Commission for Freedom and the Fatherland” [“Der Volksbund für Freiheit und Vaterland”], Heidelberger Tageblatt, no. 71 (25 March 1918), 3. 88 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 301. 89 Scaff, Protestant Ethic, 161. 90 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 301. 91 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 161. 92 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 302. 93 Roth, “Transatlantic Connections,” 96. 94 Ibid., 99. 95 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 303. 96 Ibid., 304. 97 “Democracy and Aristocracy in America” [“Demokratie und Aristorkatie in Amerika”], Heidelberger Neueste Nachrichten, no. 71 (25 March 1918), 5; “The Commission for Freedom and the Fatherland” [“Der Volksbund für Freiheit und Vaterland”], Heidelberger Tageblatt, no. 71 (25 March 1918), 3; “Democracy and Aristocracy in American Life” [“Demokratie und Aristokratie im amerikanischen Leben”], Heidelberger Zeitung, no. 72 (26 March 1918), 3. 98 “The Commission for Freedom and the Fatherland” [“Der Volksbund für Freiheit und Vaterland”], Heidelberger Tageblatt, no. 71 (25 March 1918), 3. 99 As Guenther Roth notes, Weber put “a more negative accent on his standard themes” in this lecture (Roth, “Transatlantic Connections,” 104). 100 Ibid.

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Notes to pp. 113–119

101 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 281–282. 102 “Democracy and Aristocracy in American Life” [“Demokratie und Aristokratie im amerikanischen Leben”], Heidelberger Zeitung, no. 72 (26 March 1918), 3. 103 Max Weber, “National Character of the Junkers,” From Max Weber, ed. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 392. 104 “Democracy and Aristocracy in America” [“Demokratie und Aristorkatie in Amerika”], Heidelberger Neueste Nachrichten, no. 71 (25 March 1918), 5. 105 Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 149. 106 Ibid., 131. 107 Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 636–637. 108 G. K. Chesterton, Sidelights, in The Collected Worlds of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. XXI (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 552. Notes to Chapter 5 1 Maisie Ward writes: “It may really be said that on the States he wrote two books, the volume of essays Sidelights on New London and Newer York which followed his second visit showed a much greater understanding than in What I Saw in America” (Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943], 562) 2 G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. XXI (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 225. 3 Ibid., 225–227. 4 Ibid., 38. 5 G. K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 306. 6 “Chesterton Here for Lecture Tour,” New York Times (January 11, 1921). 7 British Library Additional Manuscript (Hereafter BL Add. MS) 73471-0086. 8 Chesterton, The Autobiography, 391. 9 Ibid., 305. 10 Joseph Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of GK Chesterton (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1996), 89; see also Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 452. 11 There is some evidence that Chesterton’s views, in this regard, were known to Americans, as the New York Times published an interesting interview with Chesterton by an Indian journalist in 1916. See Harendranath Maitra, “India for Indians, Says Gilbert K. Chesterton,” New York Times (May 21, 1916). In this interview Chesterton asserts that “India must be thoroughly Indian,” and “India must be governed by Indians for Indians.” 12 G. K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, September 18, 1909 (October 2–American edition), as quoted in A. J. Parel, The Chesterton Review 19, no. 1 (February 1993): 92. 13 Ibid., 93. 14 Ibid., 92. 15 Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 249. Given the importance of this article, one Gandhi biographer went so far as to say that in writing it

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Notes to pp. 119–125

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Chesterton had “made his greatest contribution to history without knowing it” (Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi [New York: Stein and Day, 1968], 137–138). G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 51. “Chesterton Here for Lecture Tour,” New York Times (January 11, 1921). Cyril Clemens, Chesterton: As Seen by His Contemporaries (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1969), 8–9. Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 99. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 25–26. Ker, G.K. Chesterton: A Biography, 433. Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 581. Ker, G.K. Chesterton: A Biography, 434. Ibid., 435. Ibid., 437. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 54. As it concerns the building of more, Donald L. Miller notes that from late 1921 until 1929 (the years bookended by Chesterton’s two visits), a new building went up in New York City on average every 51 minutes (Donald L. Miller, Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014], 169). G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 52. Ibid., 53. Ibid. Ibid., 58. Howard, God and the Atlantic, 175. Howard attributes this description of Maritain to Ralph McInerny. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 64. G. K. Chesterton, Sidelights in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. XXI (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 571. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 89. Ibid. Ibid., 186. Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 441. G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 62. Ibid., 66, 68. G. K. Chesterton, The Autobiography, 305. The start of his first visit in 1921 began one year after the start of Prohibition and his second visit began in 1930 approximately three years before the end of Prohibition. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 73. “Chesterton to Open Tour Here,” Boston Herald (January 12, 1921). “Chesterton Opens American Tour,” Boston Globe (January 13, 1921), 4. “Chesterton Quips Amusing Americans,” New York Times (February 20, 1921). Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 642. Chesterton wrote that the only ones who still want Prohibition were the bootleggers. He and Dorothy Collins just missed being caught in the crossfire of a gang-related shooting in Portland, Oregon. “Dorothy remembered a particularly dramatic episode during the visit to Portland where she and

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Notes to pp. 125–131

Gilbert nearly witnessed a gangland killing: ‘The thuggery which resulted from Prohibition was at its height. At Portland there was a hold-up and a killing outside our hotel which, much to the distress of the taxi-driver, we just missed by minutes” (Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence, 403). Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986). G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 154. Ibid. BL Add. MS, 73471-0165. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 256–257. Ibid., 153. Ibid., 147, 82. Ibid., 148. “Chesterton Here for Lecture Tour,” New York Times (January 11, 1921). G. K. Chesterton, Sidelights, 563. Ibid., 564. Ibid., 565. S. J. Woolf, “He Found That the Thoroughfare Had a Sunny Side,” New York Times Magazine (November 30, 1930), 3. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 150. Michael Ffinch, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 324. See also BL Add. MS 73403 054–55: “Famed Writer Sees ‘Thrill’ and Energy as New God,” by Henry Christman, Albany, NY, December 3, 1930. In the same interview, Chesterton spoke critically of the reformation and of Calvinism in particular: “Calvin laid too much to the grace of God. He believed that personal actions of goodness did not amount to salvation unless it was by the grace of God.” The Calvinistic emphasis, he added, “was based on a cruel logic.” BL Add. MS 73403-056: “Human Religion World Need, Says Chesterton,” Albany, NY, December 30, 1930. Chesterton also observes in What Is Wrong with the World: “As he entered the gloomy porch of Puritanism, so he entered the gloomy porch of Industrialism.” (G. K. Chesterton, What Is Wrong with the World [n.p.: Simon and Brown, 2010], 42)k,. G. K. Chesterton, Sidelights, 590. Frances Chesterton, American Diary, entry on Sunday, February 27, 1921. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 139, and Robert Royal, Introduction to G. K. Chesterton Collected Works, Vol. XXI, 32. Frances Chesterton, American Diary, entry on Tuesday, March 1, 1921. Ibid., Wednesday, March 16, 1921. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 90. “At the Sign of the World’s End: The March to Main Street,” Chicago Daily Tribune (April 3, 1921). Frances Chesterton, American Diary, entry on Monday, February 21, 1921. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 102. Max Weber, “The Relations of the Rural Community,” 726. In fact, Chesterton influenced the thinking of E. F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered (Vancouver, BC: Hartley and Marks, 1973).

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Notes to pp. 132–137

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74 G. K. Chesterson, Sidelights, 544–545. See also “At the Sign of the World’s End: The March to Main Street,” Chicago Daily Tribune (April 3, 1921): “Unlike the English, the Americans, according to Chesterton, “have kept to something of the simplicity and, therefore, the dignity of democracy; and that democracy may yet save their country even from the calamities of wealth and science.” 75 “At the Sign of the World’s End: The March to Main Street,” Chicago Daily Tribune (April 3, 1921). 76 www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf; www.agclassroom.org/gan/ timeline/farmers_land.htm; www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics .html. Wendell Berry, “Still Standing,” in Citizenship Papers (Washington, DC: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2003), 159. 77 www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf; www.agclassroom.org/gan/time line/farmers_land.htm. 78 “At the Sign of the World’s End: The March to Main Street,” Chicago Daily Tribune (April 3, 1921). 79 G. K. Chesterson, Sidelights, 545. 80 Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 511. 81 From the appendix of G. K. Chesterton, G. K. Chesterton Collected Works, Vol. XXI (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 651–652, citing excerpts from Earl E. Fish, “The Chesterton, Lewis, Drinkwater Affair,” in the January 1924 issue of The Bookman. 82 Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 304. 83 Appendix of G. K. Chesterton Collected Works, Vol. XXI, 651–652. 84 BL Add. MS 73403-093; BL Add. MS 73403-037–038. 85 G. K. Chesterson, Sidelights, 547. 86 Ibid., 548. 87 S. J. Woolf, “He Found That the Thoroughfare Had a Sunny Side,” New York Times Magazine (November 30, 1930). 88 Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 439. Her homesickness for England was also captured in a poem that she sent to G. K.’s mother, written on a postcard from a large hotel in Albany, New York: How I want to see you You cannot think There’s very little here to eat And nothing to drink. The people talk for ever Hotels are hot And for one hour in England I’d chuck the lot.

89 S. J. Woolf, “He Found That the Thoroughfare Had a Sunny Side,” New York Times Magazine (November 30, 1930). 90 Ibid. 91 G. K. Chesterton, Sidelights, 556. 92 BL Add MS 73471-0066.

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Notes to pp. 137–143

93 BL Add MS 73403-093. 94 S. J. Woolf, “He Found That the Thoroughfare Had a Sunny Side,” New York Times Magazine (November 30, 1930). 95 Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 633. 96 Ibid., 633–635. 97 BL Add. MS 73471-0070. 98 Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 633–635. As Dorothy Collins put it in a letter to her mother dated November 16, 1930, “We left yesterday in floods of tears on the part of the Bixlers and Miss Burkett, who have been too kind to us in every way” (BL Add MS 73471-0075). 99 S. J. Woolf, “He Found That the Thoroughfare Had a Sunny Side,” New York Times Magazine (November 30, 1930). 100 BL Add. MS 73473-148. 101 BL Add. MS 73471-0066, 73471-0033, 73471-0034, 73471-0035, 734710036. 102 BL Add MS 73403-046. 103 BL Add. MS 73471-0068. 104 From an interview with the New York Sun around November18, 1930 (Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 642). 105 Chicago Tribune (April 3, 1921), A7. 106 Max Weber, “The Relations of the Rural Community,” 726. Notes to Chapter 6 1 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 248. 2 BL Add. MS 73402-052. 3 BL Add. MS 73402-032. Maisie Ward also observed that Frances “hated hustle, heat and crowds” (Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 568). 4 BL Add. MS 73403-054. 5 BL Add. MS 73471-0071. 6 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 58–59. 7 BL Add. MS 73403-005. 8 Chesterton, Sidelights, 552. Like Chesterton, Jacques Maritain observed that Americans were almost forced to be optimistic. “I don’t believe very much in that big, radiant optimism which social etiquette obliges American faces to display” (Jacques Maritain, Reflections on America, 46). 9 BL Add MS 73402-025. 10 Chesterton, Sidelights, 523. 11 Ibid., 525. 12 Ibid., 523. 13 See, for example, James L. Nolan Jr., The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century’s End (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 128–181; John P. Hewitt, The Myth of Self-Esteem: Finding Happiness and Solving Problems in America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 14 Peter Kramer notes in his book Listening to Prozac that “tastes and judgments regarding personality styles do change.” Previous styles we once admired in

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Notes to pp. 143–150

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famous artists and writers, “we now see as merely immature, overly depressive and perhaps in need of treatment.” He worries that “in a culture where overseriousness is a medically correctable flaw,” we might “lose our taste for the melancholic or brooding artist.” (Peter Kramer, Listening to Prozac [New York: Viking, 1993], 20. See also Carl Elliott, Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003). Ker, G.K. Chesterton: A Biography, 639. Chesterton, Sidelights, 583. Ibid., 523. Ibid., 583. Ibid., 527. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 102. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, 259. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 251. Ibid., 161. David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 19–26. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 161. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 160. BL Add. MS 73402-039. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 160. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 160–161. BL Add. MS 73402-086. Ibid. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 244. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 160–161. Ibid., 70. BL Add. MS 73402-106. BL Add. MS 73402-058–059. “Chesterton Here for Lecture Tour,” New York Times (January 11, 1921). BL Add. MS 73402-042. Ibid. BL Add. MS 73403-022. “Mr. Chesterton Here, Talks on Many Things,” Milwaukee Journal (Sunday, October 19, 1930). “At the Sign of the World’s End: The March to Main Street,” Chicago Daily Tribune (April 3, 1921). As Chesterton asserts, “As I shall suggest presently, there is much in common between this agricultural society of America and the great agricultural societies of Europe. It tends, as the agricultural society nearly always does, to some decent degree of democracy” (Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 102). BL Add. MS 73402-076. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 102. Ibid., 247. Chesterton, Sidelights, 545.

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Notes to pp. 150–154

49 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 251. 50 See Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011); Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz, The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009). 51 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 247. 52 Jonathan Freedland, Bring Home the Revolution (London: Fourth Estate, 1999), 14. 53 Chesterton, Sidelights, 584. 54 Ibid. 55 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 198. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 See Patrick Deneen, “What G. K. Chesterton Saw in America: The Cosmopolitan Threat from a Patriotic Nation,” in America Through European Eyes: British and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (University Press: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 237–257. 59 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 215. 60 Ibid., 216. 61 Christopher Lasch, Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 35 and 84. 62 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 44. 63 See, for example, Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York: Holt, 2007), as well as the writings of Wendell Berry. 64 BL Add. MS 73402-018. 65 BL Add. MS 73402-019. 66 David Gibson, “Age-old Distributism Gains New Traction,” Washington Post, (October 17, 2011): “Blond has been hailed by The New York Times' conservative columnist David Brooks and by the liberal media mogul Arianna Huffington, and met with politicians from both parties on his U.S. tour. He was invited to speak at Catholic University of America in Washington by Stephen F. Schneck, a political scientist and Obama supporter, and in New York he was hosted at an invitation-only confab by Philip K. Howard, the apostle of a "common good" public policy and onetime adviser to Al Gore.” 67 Philip Blond, “The Participative Economy,” in The Hound of Distributism (ACS Books, 2012), 100. 68 Ibid., 97–102. See also David Brooks’s discussion of Blond in “The Broken Society,” New York Times, March 28, 2010. 69 Wendell Berry, “The Agrarian Standard,” in Citizenship Papers (Washington, DC: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2003), 149. 70 Wendell Berry, “It All Turns on Affection,” 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities delivered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in

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Notes to pp. 150–161

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Washington, DC (April 23, 2012). www.neh.gov/news/2012-jefferson-lec ture-wendell-berry BL Add MS 73403-102. Wendell Berry, “Still Standing,” in Citizenship Papers (Washington, DC: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2003), 155. Ransom, John Crowe, et al., I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), xli. BL Add. MS 73403-007. “G.B.S. Disappearing Pleasure Not Coming Peril, Says G.K.” “The main peril lying on our civilization, he asserted, was over production of all kinds, the economic, moral artistic, intellectual, philosophical and social surfeiting of people by nonessentials” The Mail and Empire (October 4, 1920). I’ll Take My Stand, xvli and xvlii; Berry, Still Standing, 154. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 164–165. Chesterton, Sidelights, 598. William E. Fahey, “The Restoration of Propriety: Wendell Berry and the British Distributists,” in The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, ed. Mark T. Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), 200–201. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 263. Ibid. Ibid., 261. “The Plain Man and the Pipe of Peace, Chesterton,” Chicago Daily Tribune (April 10, 1921). Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 120–124. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1955), 149–150. Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 120–124. Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 153. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 520–521. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 263. BL Add. MS 73403-086 and 73403-091. BL Add. MS 73403-086. BL Add. MS 73403-093. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton, 305–306. BL Add. MS 73403-086 and 73403-091. BL Add. MS 73403- 121. Clemens, Chesterton: As Seen by His Contemporaries, 117–118. Ibid., 68. Christian Smith, The Secular Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 74. “‘Inevitable? Bah!’ Says Chesterton,” New York Times (January 22, 1921). BL Add. MS 73403 019–021. Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, 632.

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Notes to p. 163 Notes to Chapter 7

1 As James Toth notes, “Qutb became so disliked by the Palace that it issued an arrest warrant for him. The situation was so dire that it required the sympathetic prime minister, Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi, who knew Qutb from the Wafd and Sa‘dist parties, to intervene with Qutb’s employer, the Education Ministry, and to quickly arrange to send Qutb on an educational mission to the United States to get him safely out of harm’s way” (James Toth, Sayyid Qutb: The Life and Legacy of a Radical Islamic Intellectual [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013], 58). 2 Sayed Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliyyah (New York: Routledge, 2006), 141. 3 Officials at the Ministry of Education saw themselves as providing Qutb with “an unusual mission to the United States in order to connect with Western civilization, see with his own eyes what the New World holds, and so deepen his thinking and broaden his mind.” There was even speculation that the trip was arranged with some kind of collusion between the Egyptian and American governments (Makki Al-Tahir, “Sayyid Qutb; Thalath Rasa’il lam Tunshar Qablu” (“Qutb and Three Unpublished Letters”), Al-Hilal [October 1986], 125). See also John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 139; Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 58; Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 139; Adnan A. Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Radical Islamism (London: Praeger, 2005), 96–97. 4 Emmanuel Siven, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 22. 5 Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 143. In support of this position, Calvert cites an article in the newspaper al-Ahram, written by Qutb some fourteen years before his trip to the United States. Here, Qutb wrote of a young American who believed that “righteousness, honesty, and honor are not essential for success in practical activities, and that the opposites of these virtues can lead to great prosperity and gain.” This perspective, according to Qutb, was typical of the “bizarre ideas and unusual opinions” coming daily from America. The young American’s market-oriented approach was indicative of the “economic view of things that dominates the world in general and America in particular,” 319, footnote 15. See Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 118: “Sayyid Qutb’s negative attitude toward the United States, its society and culture, and his sweeping generalizations did not come all of a sudden. When Qutb arrived in the United States in 1948, he already had many preconceived ideas about the United States and Western Civilization.” 6 Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 68. 7 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 23. For a discussion of Qutb’s profound and widespread influence in the Muslim world, see Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 54. Euben cites Yvonne Haddad, for example, who writes of Qutb that “few Muslim thinkers

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Notes to pp. 163–171

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have had as significant an impact on the reformulation of contemporary Islamic thought as Sayyid Qutb,” 54. As cited in Martha Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 154. Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 247–248. Sayyid Qutb, A Child from the Village. Ed., trans., and intro. by John Calvert and William Shepard (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 115. Ibid., 131. Sayyid Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen: In the Scale of Human Values,” in America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature, ed. Kamal Abdel-Malek (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 12–13. Tocqueville, “Two Weeks in the Wilderness,” in Zunz and Goldhammer, 411. Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 52. Qutb, A Child from the Village, xxvii. Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 52. Ibid., 52–53. “Qutb supported a national community that was based on the humor, honesty, and determination of the peasants and petit bourgeois entrepreneurs of the village” (Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 53). Ibid., 20. John Calvert, “The World Is an Undutiful Boy!” Sayyid Qutb’s American Experience,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 11, no. 1 (2000): 90. Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad. Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 121. Ibid.; Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 86. William E. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), xvi. Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 125. Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988): “Qutb condemns above all that jahiliyya which pretends it is Islam,” 179. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 137, 146. Khatab writes, “From America, he himself confirmed his ideological position and his absolute faith in the ideas of his book, Social Justice, in which he distinguished between Islamic and ‘misguided jahili, submissive societies,’” 146. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 146. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 305 Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 119. Ibid.; Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 145. Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 143–157. Ibid., 155. Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 241. Ibid., 291–292. See also Berman: “I have to add, given the course of action followed by some of Qutb’s followers in later years, that jihad, in his conception, contained an ethical dimension. He quoted Muhammad’s successor, Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, who told his army, ‘Do not kill any women, children or elderly people.’ Qutb quoted the Koran, which says: ‘Fight for the cause of God those who fight against you, but do not commit aggression. God does not

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36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Notes to pp. 171–176

love aggressors.’ Qutb thought that ethical commandments were crucial to military victory. Writing about Muhammad and his Companions, he said, ‘These principles had to be strictly observed, even with those enemies who had persecuted them and inflicted unspeakable atrocities on them.’ Jihad did have its rules. It was fastidious” (Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism [New York: W.W. Norton, 2003], 98. See also Toth, who writes, “Qutb’s revulsion toward errant Muslims – he called them hypocrites – became much greater than his loathing of ‘Zionists’ and ‘Crusaders’” (Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 146). John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 141. Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 113. Wright, Looming Tower, 7. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 140. Ibid. Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 142. Ibid. Ibid., 143; Calvert, “The World Is an Undutiful Boy,” 93; and Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 41–42. Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 143–144. BL Add. MS 73402-032. Maisie Ward also observed that Frances “hated hustle, heat and crowds” (Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 568). Shafiq Jabri, The Land of Magic (1962), as excerpted in Kamal Abdel-Malek, ed., America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature: An Anthology, 1895–1995 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 82. As excerpted in Kamal Abdel-Malek, ed., America in an Arab Mirror, 50. Sayyid Qutb, “Hama’im fi New York” (“Pigeons in New York”), Al-Kitāb no. 8 (December 1949): 666–667. Ibid., 667–668. Ibid., 669. Wright, Looming Tower, 11. Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 144; Wright, Looming Tower, 14–15. Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 144. Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 114. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 142–143. Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen,” 10. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 142. Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen,” 10. Makki Al-Tahir, “Sayyid Qutb; Thalath Rasa’il lam Tunshar Qablu,” 128. Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 115. Ibid., 115–116. Lawrence Wright thinks it was to have his tonsils removed (Lawrence Wright, Looming Tower, 15). Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen,” 22. As Calvert notes, “It is difficult to believe that Americans of the time were aware of or interested in a political killing in far-away Egypt.” Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 144. Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 121.

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Notes to pp. 176–185

267

66 Makki Al-Tahir, “Sayyid Qutb; Thalath Rasa’il lam Tunshar Qablu,” 127–129. 67 Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 144–145. 68 J. Heyworth-Dunne, “The Insidious Ikhwan Strikes Again,” Washington Post (January 2, 1949), B2. 69 Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 145. 70 Ahmad S. Mousalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1992), 30. 71 Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen,” 17. 72 Ibid., 16. 73 Ibid., 17. 74 Ibid., 18. 75 Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 140. 76 George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (London: Sage, 2013), 122. 77 Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 59. 78 Ibid., 113. 79 Ibid., 286. 80 Ibid., 287. 81 Ibid., 349–350. 82 Chesterton, Outline of Sanity, 25–37. 83 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart,” Harvard Commencement Address, June 8, 1978. 84 Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 350. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid., 324. 88 Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart.” 89 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 663; Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 248. Notes to Chapter 8 1 Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism, 24. 2 Interview with Saeb Dajani. 3 Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Damascus, Syria: Dal al-Ilm, 1990), 100. See Jonathan Raban, “Truly, madly, deeply devout,” The Guardian, March 1, 2002 (www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/mar/02/socialsciences.higher education?INTCMP=SRCH); See also Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 121. 4 “Newsletter,” CSCE Bulletin, Series XL VUX, no. 12 (October 19, 1949), 3. 5 Neil M. Clark, “Campus Ambassadors,” Saturday Evening Post 221, Issue 45 (May 7, 1949), 38–183 (6 pages). The Mirror version reads as follows: “‘These students have sharp eyes,’ Mr. Clark says, ‘They are looking us over shrewdly and don’t miss much, and they will carry word of us back home. In a few years most of them will be in places of power or influence in their own countries” (“Post Discusses Views of Foreign Students,” The Mirror [May 27, 1949], 8).

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Notes to pp. 185–191

6 Clark, “Campus Ambassadors,” 183; and “The Post Discusses Views of Foreign Students,” 8. 7 Wright, Looming Tower, 19. 8 Harrah did leave CSCE in 1954 or 1955, though it was not for retirement, as it was announced in May 1954 that he would teach for at least one year in the biology department at Monmouth College in Illinois where his son-in-law, Ralph Frazier, was the head of the department. See “Dr. Ezra Harrah to Retire, Will Teach in Illinois,” Greeley Tribune (May 26, 1954), 1. 9 As reported in a May 26, 1954 issue of the Greeley Tribune, “Dr. Harrah has been prominent in the Methodist church having served as Colorado Conference lay leader from 1939 to 1950. For 10 years, while teaching at the college, he also served as pastor of the Galeton community church near Greeley” (“Dr. Ezra Harrah to Retire, Will Teach in Illinois,” Greeley Tribune, May 26, 1954), 1. 10 Lawrence Wright also learned of this racial segregation in Greeley: “In the handsome park behind the courthouse, Anglos kept to the south side and Hispanics to the north” (Looming Tower, 19). 11 Toth, quoting Milestones in Sayyid Qutb, 67; The Shade of the Qur’an as cited in Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 154. 12 Colorado State College of Education Bulletin, 1949 Summer Session, p. 21. 13 Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 147. 14 Darmrosch, citing Beaumont’s Marie, in Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 64. See also Beaumont, Marie, p. 115; Ghosh, “Max Weber and the ‘Rural Community,’” 329. 15 Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 117. 16 Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 147. 17 Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad, 112; the class on “American Education” seems particularly fitting. The course description reads: “Objectives of education, techniques of educational thinking, characteristics and trends in the American school system, the general program of education, levels of education, federal-state-local relations problems of teacher education and welfare” (from University of Northern Colorado Archives). 18 Qutb, “The America I Have Seen,” 14. 19 “Dajani in Jerusalem Learns of CSCE Through Teacher-Graduate,” The Mirror, (Friday, November 11, 1949), 5. 20 Qutb, “The America I Have Seen,” 19–20. 21 Ibid., 20. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 19. 24 Ibid. 25 The Mirror (September 30, 1949), 8; The Greeley Daily Tribune (October 26, 1949), 11; The Greeley Daily Tribune (June 22, 1949), 4. 26 C. K. Robertson, Religion as Entertainment (New York: Lang, 2002), 1. 27 Douglas Mohrmann, “Megachurch, Virtual Church,” in Religion as Entertainment, ed. C.K. Robertson (New York: Lang, 2002), 27–45. See also Kimon Howland Sargeant, Seeker Churchers: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000).

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Notes to pp. 191–197

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28 Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 121. Kimon Sargeant makes a similar argument in his book, Seeker Churches. 29 Qutb, “The America I Have Seen,” 19. 30 Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 317; Weber, “Churches and Sects,” transl. Colin Loader, 7; G. K. Chesterton, Sidelights, 590. 31 Sargeant, Seeker Churches, 110–112. 32 George Barna, Marketing the Church (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1988), 26. Kimon Sargeant writes of the popularity of George Barna: “Clearly, there is considerable demand for Barna’s analysis and prescription; he publishes almost one book a year and offers conferences all over the country. As one pastor put it, ‘Barna is hot’” (Sargeant, Seeker Churches, 111). 33 “Dances Dominate Activities of Winter Quarter,” The Mirror (January 6, 1950), 1. 34 Qutb, “The America I Have Seen,” 21. 35 Qutb, Milestones, 94. 36 Ibid., 95. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Qutb, “The World Is an Undutiful Boy!” Fulcrum, The Literary Magazine of Colorado State College of Education3, no. 1 (Fall 1949): 29. I thank the University of Northern Colorado Archives for providing this document. 40 Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism, 25. 41 Toth, Sayyid Qutb, 65. 42 “Students Speak: Dajani in Jerusalem Learns of CSCE through TeacherGraduate,” The Mirror (November 11, 1949), 5. 43 Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism, 25. 44 Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen,” 23. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 22. 47 Ibid., 23. 48 Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 113: “Undoubtedly, life on the Western style is pleasant, but it is not a pleasant or developed life on the scale of humanity. The life in which both sexes are completely free is a pleasant life undoubtedly, but this free life is far away from the life of human beings. It is a reactionary life in the development of humanity. Yes, there is freedom, a complete freedom, but not the freedom of spirit. There is freedom of bodily desires, animal freedom, and not the freedom of human beings. He who wants this cheap freedom he can find it in the Western style. He who wants human freedom, he can find it in the East, where the freedom of spirit is above the freedom of the body and the freedom of the intellect. This life will triumph one day, when those who are swelled by Western modernity have disappeared from the scene.” 49 Sayyid Qutb, “Said Qutb on the Arts in America,” trans. Daniel Burns, in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 9 (2009), 152. 50 Ibid., 154.

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Notes to pp. 197–201

51 As Calvert notes, “Qutb’s activities in California, educational and otherwise, are obscure; he did not document this stage of his journey to the same degree that he did his stays in Washington and Colorado. Although some sources claim that while in Palo Alto Qutb enrolled in Stanford University, Stanford’s Registrar has not been able to produce records suggesting that he ever attended that institution” (Calvert, Sayyid Qutb, 151–152). 52 “Said Qutb on the Arts in America,” 154. 53 Ibid., 154–155. The Huet painting still hangs in one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the Legion of Honor museum near Golden Gate Park). It hangs in a room with twenty-six other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French paintings as well as several sculptures and ten pieces of furniture, including a sofa once belonging to Marie Antoinette. In the summer of 2014, I visited the museum and reenacted Qutb’s little experiment, though without the benefit of a bench in the room. I stood in the room for two hours and watched a total of 222 people pass through the room. The longest anyone stopped at the painting was for approximately 75 seconds. Standing before the painting, the woman commented to her male companion on the size of the rooster: “It makes it look like he is bigger than the fox”; and she noted that “there is a lot going on” in the painting. She also pointed to the rooster’s “claw” (i.e., talon), which grips the head of the fox. Her male companion walked over for a brief glance and then together they moved away to look at other paintings. Most visitors took no notice of the painting at all. One young woman stopped for a few seconds and took a photo of the painting with her phone. Some who did stop for a moment seemed more interested in the seventeenth-century writing desk over which the Huet painting hangs. 54 “Said Qutb on the Arts in America,”156. 55 Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen,” 14. 56 Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion after September 11. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 57 Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, trans. John B. Hardie. Trans., rev., and with an intro. by Hamid Algar (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2000), 22. 58 Berman, Terror and Liberalism, 90. 59 Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, 21. 60 Ibid., 25. 61 Ibid. 62 Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 350. 63 Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, Vol. 1, trans. and ed. Adil Salahi and Ashur Shamis (Leicester, UK: The Islamic Foundation), 460. {AU: Add to refs?}{Yes} 64 Wright, The Looming Tower, 23. 65 Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 154–155. 66 Ibid., 90–92. 67 Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), 7. 68 Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism, 60, fn 20. 69 Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006, 27. See also Russell Shorto, “Keeping the Faith,”

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Notes to pp. 201–206

70 71 72 73 74 75 76

271

New York Times Magazine (April 8, 2007); www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/ magazine/08pope.t.html?pagewanted=all; Albert J. Bergesen, editor, The Qutb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2008), 17. See Gregory, The Unintended Reformation; Berger, The Sacred Canopy. Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 30. Ibid., 33. Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion after September 11, 4. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 350. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb, 142. Joseph Ratzinger, Europe, Today and Tomorrow: Addressing the Fundamental Issues (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 22.

Notes to Conclusion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17

18

Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 136 and 234. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 302. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 101. Chesterton, Sidelights, 523. Ibid., 580. Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 248. Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 113. Beaumont, Marie, 141. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 42. Ralph Barton Perry, Characteristically American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 5. Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 67. Ibid., 95–100. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 41. Claude S. Fischer, citing Robert M. Collins, in Made in America, 12. National character studies in sociology include such important works as Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd and Seymour Martin Lipset’s The First New Nation, as well as more recent studies like Robert Bellah and colleagues’ Habits of the Heart and Christopher Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism. Fischer, Made in America, 12. As David Kennedy notes, ambivalent assessments are not limited to outsiders’ views; “admiration and dread” of America is found “both at home and abroad” (David Kennedy, “A Question of Character,” Boston Review [November/December 2010]); Maritain even noticed the severity with which “Americans, and the best among them, criticize certain aspects of their own culture and nation” (Maritain, Reflections on America, 17). As Maritain puts it, “The various criticism I have just brought up invalidate in no way my praise of the American political system. They only show that this system is human, not angelic; and that, precisely because it is a great human conquest, it demands from me a perpetual effort to surmount its

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19

20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Notes to pp. 206–209

imperfections, and to keep it working, and to keep improving it” (Maritain, Reflections on America, 174). This is a feature of American character identified by Fischer (Made in America, 30–37). Philip Slater also highlights this quality of the American national character (Philip Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point [Boston: Beacon Press, 1976], 38–61). Tocqueville, Journey to America, 107–109. Chesterton, Sidelights, 531. “The American,” wrote Qutb, “is by his very nature a warrior who loves combat. The idea of combat and war runs strong in his blood” (Qutb, “The America I Have Seen,” 14–15, 24). BL Add. MS 73471-0066, 73471-0033, 73471-0034, 73471-0035, 73471-0036. BL Add. MS 73473-148. See, for example, John Branch and Ken Belson, “For the N.F.L., a Question of Hazing and Abuse,” New York Times, November 5, 2013, A1, 3; Frank Bruni, “Violence, Greed and the Gridiron,” New York Times, Sunday Review, November 9, 2013. Bruni discusses, for example, how it was learned that the New Orleans Saints squad had once “put bounties on rivals, promising thousands in cash to any defensive player who knocked an opposing team’s quarterback out of the game.” For a recent example of public concern about gun violence see Eric Lichtblau and Michael D. Shear, “Tearful Obama Outlines Steps to Curb Gun Deaths, New York Times, January 6, 2016, A1, 12: “Tears streaming down his face, President Obama on Tuesday condemned the gun violence that has reached across the United States as he vowed take action to curb the bloodshed with or without Congress.” Du Bois, “Die Negerfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten, 243. Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 195. “Democracy and Aristocracy in American Life” [“Demokratie und Aristokratie im amerikanischen Leben”], Heidelberger Zeitung, no. 72 (26 March 1918), 3. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 154. Toth, quoting Milestones in Sayyid Qutb, 67; The Shade of the Qur’an as cited in Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 154. “Christianity destroyed servitude,” wrote Tocqueville, “Christians in the sixteenth century reestablished it” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 326). Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 169. Ibid., 337. Ernst Moritz Manasse, “Max Weber on Race and Society,” 312. Scaff, Max Weber in America, 110. BL Add. MS 73471-0165. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 256. Where Americans discriminated against blacks and engaged in “an organized extermination of the Red Indian race,” Islam, according to Qutb, condemned “any suspicion of discrimination between men or of superiority of one over another” (Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 59. See also Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, 70–72).

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Notes to pp. 209–212

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39 King scholar Jonathan Rieder asserts, “Nothing is more central to King than his Christian faith . . . There was nothing opportunistic or shallow about his Christianity . . . [T]he core of his theory is a love of humanity, and he saw black hatred of whites as just as sinful as white hatred of blacks, and he couldn’t abide either. Once again, in Christ there is no east or west, no black or white” (In interview with Joseph E. Davis, “Martin Luther King and the American Dream: A Conversation with Jonathan Rieder,” Hedgehog Review 15, no. 2 [Summer 2013]). 40 In his famous “I Have a Dream Speech,” for example, King stated: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” See also King’s 1957 speech, “The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation’s Chief Moral Dilemma,” in Davis W. Houck and David Dixon, eds., Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement (Baylor: Baylor University Press, 2006), 217–224. Here he states, “Racial segregation is a blatant denial of the unity which we have in Christ. Segregation is a tragic evil which is utterly un-Christian,” 218. 41 Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 2. See also David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 42 Maritain, Reflections on America, 49–57. In terms of complicity Maritain writes: “It is hard to condone the timorous inertia that Catholic as well as Protestant communities showed in the past with respect to the requirements of the Gospel as far as the Negro question is concerned. The very idea of separate pews in churches, and racial segregation at the communion table, is an intolerable shock for the mind,” 55. 43 W.E.B Du Bois, “Die Negerfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten (The Negro Question in the United States) (1906),” The New Centennial Review 6, no. 3 (Winter 2006), 264. 44 As cited in Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 213. 45 BL Add. MS 73402 083–084. 46 Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound, 112. 47 Ibid., 125. 48 Ibid., 128. 49 Pierson, Tocqueville in America, 49. 50 Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, June 9, 1831. Zunz and Goldhammer, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America, 39. 51 “I think America’s religion of industrialism, building, building, building,” said Chesterton, “is an outgrowth of Puritanism” (BL Add. MS 73403 056). Chesterton also observes in What is Wrong with the World: “As he entered the gloomy porch of Puritanism, so he entered the gloomy porch of Industrialism” (Chesterton, What Is Wrong with the World, 42). 52 Sayyid Qutb, “Hama’im fi New York” (“Pigeons in New York”), Al-Kitāb no. 8 (December 1949): 667. 53 Ibid., 668. 54 Qutb, Milestones, 95. 55 Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, Vol. 1, trans. and ed. Adil Salahi and Ashur Shamis (Leicester, UK: The Islamic Foundation), 460. 56 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 270.

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Notes to pp. 212–213

57 Ibid., 514. 58 Robert Wuthnow, for example, writes, “Materialism has in fact become a topic of growing concern in recent years. Analysts of American culture suggest that we are increasingly preoccupied with how much or how little we earn, with shopping, with having the newest electronic gadgets at our fingertips, with buying designer sneakers, with wearing the latest fashions, with buying luxury automobiles, and with creating an ambience of material ease in our homes” (Robert Wuthnow, God and Mammon in America [New York: Free Press, 1994], 154–155). Fischer notes that criticisms of American materialism have been around for a long time. Interestingly, as evidence for this observation, he cites our first and last visitors (Tocqueville and Qutb). Tocqueville, who noted that, “the desire to acquire the good things of this world is the dominant passion of Americans,” and Qutb, who more than a century later observed that “Americans measure man by his income, according to his bank balance” (Fischer, Made in America, 85–86). 59 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 109–124. 60 Maritain, Reflections on America, 30. 61 “The vocal expression [about money] seems perhaps to be a little cruder and more naïve here” (Ibid., 32). 62 Ibid., 30. 63 Fischer, Made in America, 85–86. Robert Wuthnow cites the same statistic and observes that “most Americans believe materialism penetrates the far corners of their society” (Robert Wuthnow, Poor Richard’s Principle: Recovering the American Dream Through the Moral Dimension of Work, Business, and Money [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996], 246). Another survey reveals that three-quarters of Americans think that “materialism” is a serious or extremely serious problem in the United States. Approximately the same percentage thinks there is “too much emphasis on money” in American society (Wuthnow, God and Mammon in America, 171–174). 64 McKibben, Deep Economy, 44. In another survey, respondents were given a list of possible reasons for choosing their current line of work. The reason selected most often was “the money” (Wuthnow, Poor Richard’s Principle, 86). 65 Stanley Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 146–163. 66 Richard Layard, for example, argues that in spite of greater affluence, “happiness has not increased since 1950. In the United States people are no happier, although living standards have more than doubled” (Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science [New York: Penguin, 2005]), 29. Peter Whybrow concludes the same: “For the majority of Americans the nation’s dramatic increase in material wealth has not been translated into a subjective sense of enhanced well-being” (Peter C. Whybrow, American Mania: When More Is Not Enough [New York: W.W. Norton, 2005], 3. 67 McKibben, Deep Economy, 37. Arthur Brooks also comments on the relationship between wealth and happiness in his reference to a vast literature of psychological analyses. The findings from these studies: “Whether they examine young adults or people of all ages, the bulk of the studies point toward the same important conclusion: People who rate materialistic goals like wealth as

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Notes to pp. 213–217

68 69 70

71 72 73

74 75 76 77

78

79 80

81

82 83 84

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top personal priorities are significantly likelier to be more anxious, more depressed and more frequent drug users, and even to have more physical ailments than those who set their sights on more intrinsic values” (Arthur Brooks, “Love People, Not Pleasure,” New York Times, Sunday Review [July 20, 2014], 1, 6–7). Wuthnow, Poor Richard’s Principle, 32. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 32. See also Mary Ann Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 85–91, for a discussion of high levels of job dissatisfaction among lawyers. Mary Ann Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers, 84. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998), 22; Wuthnow, Poor Richard’s Principle, 34. In another survey, cited by Wuthnow, 91 percent of Americans agreed that “it is better to work at a lower paying job that one enjoys than at a higher paying job that is not satisfying (Wuthnow, Poor Richard’s Principle, 87–88). Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, 294. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 65. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 529. Claude Fischer makes note of this proclivity, observing that as early as the eighteenth century, “Yankee farmers kept detailed ledgers of income and outgo even before the expansion of commercial agriculture; they seemed to be capitalists-in-waiting” (Fischer, Made in America, 206). See, for example, Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002); Edwin C. Hagensterin, Sara M. Gregg, and Brian Donahue, eds. American Georgics: Writings on Farming Culture, and the Land (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Sayyid Qutb, “The America That I Have Seen,” 12–13. In Wendell Berry’s view, the triumph of industrial capitalism, as such, has resulted in the destruction of “communities, neighborhoods, families, small businesses, and small farms” (www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/ wendell-e-berry-lecture). Carolyn Dimitri, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin, “The 20th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy” (United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Information Bulletin, No. 3), 2. www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0824.pdf www.agday.org/media/factsheet.php usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-05-29/fracking-environmentgas/55845708/1 www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/opinion/global/the-facts-on-fracking.html? pagewanted=all www.gmo-compass.org/eng/agri_biotechnology/gmo_planting/506.usa_cul tivation_gm_plants_2009.html

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Notes to pp. 217–221

85 Hannes R. Stephan, “Revisiting the Transatlantic Divergence over GMOs: Toward a Cultural-Political Analysis,” Global Environmental Politics 12, no. 4 (November 2012): 105. 86 Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Appears to Defend Patent of Soybean,” New York Times (February 20, 2013), B1, B5. 87 Vernon Hugh Bowman, Petitioner v. Monsanto Company et al. No. 11-796 (May 13, 2013), 6. 88 Hannes Stephan, of the University of Stirling in Scotland, makes a compelling case along these lines (Stephan, “Revisiting the Transatlantic Divergence over GMOs”). 89 Ibid., 104–124. 90 www.biodynamics.com/content/community-supported-agriculture-introduc tion-csa 91 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 251. 92 Ibid., 160; “Democracy and Aristocracy in America” [“Demokratie und Aristorkatie in Amerika”], Heidelberger Neueste Nachrichten, no. 71 (March 25, 1918), 5. 93 Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, 188. 94 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 160. 95 Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 324. 96 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 244. 97 S. M. Lipset in Rupert Wilkinson, The Pursuit of American Character (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 106. 98 Scaff, Max Weber in America, 175. 99 Ibid., 175. 100 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 161. 101 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 585; Max Weber, “A Letter from Indian Territory,” 134; and Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 252. Maritain observed the same: “the American people are anxious to have their country loved; they need to be loved” (Maritain, Reflections on America, 43). 102 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield and Winthrop, 663; Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 248; Sayyid Qutb, “Hama’im fi New York,” 666-667; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart,” Harvard Commencement Address, June 8, 1978. 103 Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 251. 104 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Nolla (notes in margin), 1180. 105 Ibid., 882. 106 Perry, Characteristically American, 9. 107 Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 191. 108 Ibid., 192. 109 Marwick writes that these new “technologies have enabled the infiltration of neoliberal, market-driven values and ethics into day-to-day relationship with others and even into ways that we, as users of social media think about ourselves” (Marwick, Status Update, 279–281).

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Notes to pp. 221–226

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110 Christine Rosen, “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissim,” The New Atlantis (Summer 2007), 24. 111 Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy in Germany,” in Weber Political Writings, ed. Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 99; see also Scaff, Max Weber in America, 189. 112 “The danger of democracy is not anarchy, it is convention” (Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 247). 113 In his speech before the Democratic National Conference in 1957, Adlai Stevenson spoke of the American “flight to the suburbs” and observed the disposition of Americans to be “complacent, prosperous and well fed.” “They have averted their eyes,” said Stevenson, “and busied themselves with their new suburban homes” (Adlai Stevenson, February 17, 1957, New York Times). William Dobriner likewise, in his 1963 book on the America suburbs, noted that “Gardening is a big thing in the suburbs. Suburban gardening is compulsive, and has, it seems, all kinds of insidious linkages to the status structure.” What distinguished the suburbs, according Dobriner, was the “extent and degree of informal relationships at the neighborhood level; degree of home-centered activity, such as gardening, do-it-yourselfing, and the like” (William Dobriner, Class in Suburbia [Greenwood Press, 1963], 9, 58). 114 Maritain, Reflections on America, 163. 115 Robert Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community (New York: Free Press, 1994), 6. 116 Turkle, Alone Together, 19. 117 Fischer, Made in America, 158–159. Fischer also reflects: “Finally while voluntarism is central to American culture, its expansion could have – may have had – problematic consequences. If families, congregations, neighborhoods, associations, and friendships increasingly depend on meeting each individual’s whims – if group entryways are revolving doors – then groups may not operate reliably” (Fischer, Made in America, 160). 118 See www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf and www.census.gov/hhes/ families/data/cps2013H.html 119 Olds andSchwartz, The Lonely American, 2, 79–87. 120 Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 45. 121 A journalist from New Delhi, for example, told Bayles that as a boy “everyone saw America as a lawless, dangerous place, based on Hollywood movies.” Following more direct contact with Americans, “we realize that you are not criminals but people like us. You work hard, have families, and worry about daily problems.” Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 33–34, 53. 122 Weber, “Churches and Sects,” 10. 123 BL Add. MS 73403 086 and 73403 091. 124 Graf, “Friendship between Experts: Notes on Weber and Troeltsch,” 217–218, 226. 125 Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 155. 126 Jeffrey Hadden summarizes the secularization thesis as such: “Once the world was filled with the sacred – in thought, practice, and institutional form. After the Reformation and the Renaissance, the forces of

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127

128 129 130

131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140

141

142

Notes to pp. 226–230 modernization swept across the globe and secularization, a corollary historical process, loosened the dominance of the sacred. In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private realm” (Jeffrey Hadden, “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory,” Social Forces, 65, no. 3 (March 1987): 598. “[I]n religion,” says Berger, “as in every other area of human endeavor, individual personalities play a much larger role than most social scientists and historians are willing to concede.” (Peter Berger, “Secularism in Retreat,” National Interest, no. 46 [Winter 1996/1997], 7, 9). Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 307. Ibid., 309 and 727. Christian Smith notes that, given widespread acceptance of the secularization thesis, many in the academy were surprised by continuing and growing religiosity in America and in the world: As a consequence, beginning in the late 1970s, they were unprepared “to make good sense of a born-again president, the Iranian revolution, liberation theology, a world-transforming Catholic pope, the religious right, Poland’s Catholic Solidarność movement, militant ‘base communities’ in Latin America, the cultural resurgence of American evangelicalism, revolutionary priests in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the spread like wildfire of Pentecostalism in the Global South, the successful theological challenge to South African apartheid, the church’s undermining of Eastern European communism, the growth of militant Islamism, the explosion of religion in China, and so many other worldhistorical events and processes” (Christian Smith, The Sacred Project of American Sociology [Oxford University Press, 2014], 151). Ibid., 46–47. Lincoln, Holy Terrors, 59. Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 44. Lincoln, Holy Terrors, 16. Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 155. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 152. Pew Research for Global Attitudes Project Spring 2012 Topline, 60. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 287. As noted in Chapter 2, he wrote forebodingly to Theodore Sedgwick, seven years before his death: “I do not need to tell you that, on our continent, you are not in good odor. Governments loathe you. They view the United States as the pit of the abyss from where nothing but a putrid stench comes out; and the people reproach you for having made them believe in the Democratic Republic” (Craiutu and Jennings, Tocqueville on America After 1840, 136). “Democracy and Aristocracy in America” [“Demokratie und Aristorkatie in Amerika”], Heidelberger Neueste Nachrichten, no. 71 from March 25, 1918, 5; “The Commission for Freedom and the Fatherland” [“Der Volksbund für Freiheit und Vaterland”], Heidelberger Tageblatt, no. 71 (25 March 1918), 3. Chesterton, Sidelights, 584.

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Notes to pp. 230–231

279

143 For example, 83% in Egypt, 87% in Jordan, and 78% in Turkey viewed negatively the spread of American ideas and customs in their country. Such attitudes, however, are not isolated to the Middle East. Sentiments in Western Europe are nearly as high, with 71% in France, 72% in Germany, and 71% in Spain viewing as a bad thing the advancement of American ideas and customs in their countries (Pew Research for Global Attitudes Project Spring 2012 Topline, 59). 144 A majority of respondents in eighteen of the twenty countries surveyed reported that the United States did not take into account their country’s interests when making foreign policy decisions. Again, this view was particularly pronounced in the Middle East, where, for example, 80% in Egypt, 84% in Lebanon, and 78% in Jordan thought the United States gave little or no attention to their country’s interests. In Europe, however, one finds similar perceptions of U.S. foreign policy: 82% in Spain, 79% in Greece, and 69% in France, and 63% in Britain reported that the United States considered their country’s interests “not too much” or “not at all” (Pew Research for Global Attitudes Project Spring 2012 Topline, 57). 145 Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 238. 146 Robert McNamara, James Blight, Thomas Biersteker, and Herbert Schandler, Argument Without End: In Search of Answers for the Vietnam Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 392. 147 Euben, Enemy in the Mirror, 51–53. 148 See discussions on this point in James Davison Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War (New York: Free Press, 1994) 190–211; Joseph E. Davis, “Crossing Cultural Divides: Moral Conflict and the Cairo Population Conference,” in The American Culture Wars: Current Contests and Future Prospects, ed. James L. Nolan, Jr. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996) 189–212; and Joseph E. Davis, “Culture and Relativism,” Society, 45 no. 3 (May/June 2008): 2007–276. 149 Arguing against this type of trivialization – in a related discussion of democracy and multiculturalism – James Hunter states that “culture is nothing if it is not, first and foremost, a normative order by which we comprehend ourselves, others, and the larger world and through which we order our experience” (Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins, 200). Christian Smith agrees that at the heart of culture are the morals and beliefs (essentially religious in nature, even if they are not always recognized as such) that animate human actions. Yet, in our foreign policy, our public discourse, and even in many sociological theories of culture, this central feature is ignored – evidence, arguably, of the pervasiveness of Taylor’s third type of secularization. By disregarding religious beliefs and motivations, Smith argues, we are missing and thus misrepresenting the essence of human social life. “Human animals,” writes Smith, “are in fact profoundly and nearly inescapably moral and believing animals.” As long as we do not recognize this fact, “our theories of culture and action will be badly deficient” (Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 43).

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280 150 151 152 153 154

155 156 157 158 159 160 161

162 163

164 165

166

167

Notes to pp. 231–234 Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 214. As cited in Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 217. Balyes, Through a Screen Darkly, 217. See Nolan, Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing, 2001. Davis uncovered unexpected common ground among groups who opposed the conference’s initial Draft Programme and who questioned “the moral foundations of the West” while feeling “alienated from Western and Westernized elites.” In opposition to the draft, for example, Pope John Paul II argued against the imposition of a “lifestyle typical of certain fringes within developed societies . . . which are materially rich and secularized”; while a Muslim scholar similarly objected: “The draft’s authors wish to establish a universal dictatorship in which the tastes of what is still a small minority, mostly in wealthy countries, are dictated to the whole of mankind on such crucial issues as sex, love, procreation, marriage and family” (Davis, “Crossing Cultural Divides,” 196, 202). Davis, “Culture and Relativism,” 270. Ibid., 276. Ibid. Balyes, Through a Dark Screen, 216. Ibid., 225. “Voice of the Metro,” and John Munro, “Manichean Rhetoric,” Cairo Times (September 27–October 3, 2001), 14. A recent study by historian Thomas Albert Howard, which gives considerable attention to more stridently negative European views of America, characterizes both Tocqueville and Weber in terms of ambivalence. Tocqueville, according to Howard, was “sympathetic,” but “far from adulatory” and Weber was “at once fascinated and disquieted” by what he found in America (Howard, God and the Atlantic, 59,137). Something along similar lines, as we have seen, could be said of Chesterton as well. Bayles, Through a Screen Darkly, 18. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Cavendish Farewell,” February 28, 1994, in Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney, The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947–2005 (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), 607. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Détente, Democracy and Dictatorship (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 55. Originally an address delivered in Washington, DC on June 30, 1975. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, interview with Spiegel on July 23, 2007 (the year before his death in 2008). Published in Spiegel (www.spiegel.de/inter national/world/spiegel-interview-with-alexander-solzhenitsyn-i-am-not-afraidof-death-a-496211.html), and in Solzhenitsyn, Détente, Democracy, and Dictatorship, 103. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in interview with Paul Klebnikov in the May 9, 1994 issue of Forbes magazine and then republished online two days after Solzhenitsyn’s death: www.forbes.com/2008/08/05/solzhenitsyn-forbes-inter view-oped-cx_pm_0804russia.html, posted August 5, 2008. Solzhenitsyn, Détente, Democracy, and Dictatorship, 55.

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Notes to p. 235

281

168 169 170 171

Maritain, Reflections on America, 190. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 174. James Wood, “Tocqueville in America: The Grand Journey, Retraced and Reimagined,” The New Yorker (May 17, 2010). 172 As cited in Scaff, Max Weber in America, 176. 173 Chesterton, Sidelights, 583.

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Index

Abbas, Ahmed, 183–186 Adams, John Quincy, 5, 37, 52 Addams, Jane, 5, 72–74 Adler, Felix, 111–112 Agrarianism capitalism and, 78–81 contemporary movements in, 218 CSA farms, 140, 218 East Elbian Report, 74–77 Germany, internal colonization in, 77–78 land ownership among, Native Americans, 86–87 modernity vs. tradition, Qutb on, 165–167, 173–178 overview, 7, 215–218 small towns, family farms, 130–133, 149–151, 153–157, 216, 249–250, 261, 275 Southern Agrarians, 155–156 stewardship, propriety, 156 Agribusiness model, 216, 275 Albany, NY, 15–16, 19–20, 25–26, 36, 42, 70 Alone Together (Turkle), 223–224 Al-Qaeda, 164–165 America as melting pot, American creed, 204–206 America in the Eyes of an Easterner (Hitti), 173 American culture cheerfulness, optimism, 142–143, 260

class distinctions, indifference to, 5, 32–33, 43–44, 71, 89–92, 120, 136–138 communal spirit, lack of in, 187–189 entertainment industry, 224, 228–230 enthusiasm, optimism, 143–144 exportation of, 204, 224–225, 230, 232, 237, 271–272, 279 foreign students perception of, 185, 267 happiness/satisfaction and acquisitiveness, 211–213, 274–275 human values, undermining of, 174–175, 180, 196–202 materialism, work ethic, 210–215, 274 mobility, restlessness, 26–28 national character, 204–206, 277 restless energy, 26–33, 80–81, 141–142, 171–173, 242–243 slavery as degradation of, 56–57 violence in, 39, 47–48, 84–85, 206–207, 272 American exceptionalism, 18–19 American frontier, 23, 81–85 Americanization, Chesterton on, 150–152 American pioneer, Tocqueville on, 83 American primitiveness, 195–198 The Americans (Münsterberg), 79 The America That I Have Seen (Qutb), 174 American Tobacco Company, 154–155

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292

Index

Anti-Americanism. See also Imperialism; Qutb, Sayyid ambivalence in foreign policy benefits, 230–235, 280 American culture, foreign perceptions of, 204, 224–225, 230, 232, 237 boastfulness as cause of, 16–20 ignorance, indifference in, 8–9, 200, 230–235, 238–239, 279 origins of, 1–3, 228–230, 237–238, 278–279 race relations, American vs. Islam, 179, 185–187, 272 ‘Aqqad, Abbas al-, 167–168 Aquinas, Thomas, 77 Arab-Israeli War, 168–169, 194–195 Argument Without End (McNamara), 8–9 Aristocracy, formation of, 32–33, 113–114, 148, 152–156, 160–161 Art appreciation experiment, Qutb, 196–198, 270 Auburn model, 15 Auburn prison, 20–21 “Avoiding the Inevitable” (Chesterton), 159 Baltimore, MD, 47 Banna, Hassan al-, 175–178 Baptists, 109 Barna, G., 269 Barrett, G., 45 Bauman, Z., 152 Baxter, Richard, 77 Bayles, M., 9, 204, 224, 231, 237 Beaumont, Gustave de on attitudes toward mulattos, 89–90 journey of generally, 14–16, 36 motivations of, 12–13 observations of generally, 4, 14, 35, 243 Benedict, R., 204–205 Berger, P., 152, 225–226, 278 Berry, Wendell, 139–140, 153–156, 160–161, 210, 218, 220–221, 275 Biltmore Hotel, 122 Bin Laden, Osama, 164–165 Bixby, Tams, 87 Bixler family, 136–138, 221–225 Blond, P., 153, 262 Bobo (Bourgeois-Bohemian) class, 214–215 Boston, MA, 36–38, 110–111 Bowling Alone (Putnam), 222 Bowman v. Monsanto, 217–218

Bridges, Horace, 119 Bring Home the Revolution (Freedland), 150–151 Broadway, 124 Brogan, D., 3 Brogan, H., 246 Brooks, A., 274–275 Brooks, D., 214–215 Brown University, 111–112 Bruni, F., 272 Bryce, James, 96–97 Buffalo, NY, 23 Burdick, Eugene, 200 Calvert, J., 164, 167–168, 170, 264, 270 Calvinism, 78, 99–100, 103, 258 Canada, 26–27, 80–81 Canandaigua, NY, 21–23 Capitalism America vs. Canada, 26–27, 80–81 aristocracy, formation of, 32–33, 113–114, 148, 152–156, 160–161 Beaumont on spirit of, 25, 27 Chesterton on, 129–133, 180 Chesterton on spirit of, 135 Chicago labor strike, 71, 249 dehumanizing effects of, 31, 71–73, 127–128, 178 despoilment of nature by, 25–26, 81, 131 education as form of, 108 energetic, restless pace of, 26–33, 80–81, 171–173, 242–243 happiness/satisfaction and acquisitiveness in, 211–213, 274–275 immigrants, conditions of, 71–73 industrialization, iron cage of, 30–32, 198, 214 Islam as remedy for, 181, 194, 202, 228, 269 landed aristocracy vs., 75–76, 250 overview, 7 political power relationships to, 33 promotional advertising, 142–143 Qutb on, 171–173 self-fulfillment and acquisitive spirit in, 211–213 slavery as, 148–149, 210 social class inequalities, 71, 119–120, 127, 207, 243–244 as threat to democracy, 147–150 Tocqueville on spirit of, 27–33

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Index Carrel, Alexis, 200 Carroll, Charles, 47–48 Catholicism, 54, 78, 99, 250 Channing, William Ellery, 37–38, 52, 99–100 Charleston prison, 45 Chase, Salmon P., 55 Chase, Samuel, 39 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 13, 20 Château de Tocqueville, 112–113 Chesterton, Frances, 4, 130, 138, 141–142, 145–146, 173, 206–207 Chesterton, G. K. journeys of generally, 119–121 motivations, roles of, 116–119 observations of generally, 1, 3–6, 119, 123, 203–204 personality, 142 Chevalier, Michel, 28, 244 Chicago, IL, 66–68, 70–74, 84, 106–107, 121, 188–189, 206–207 Chicago labor strike, 71, 249 A Child from the Village (Qutb), 165–167 Churches membership in social standing, creditworthiness, 93–96, 101, 112, 191–193 Qutb on, 190–195 sects vs., 96–100, 104, 253 as social clubs, 190–195 “Churches and Sects in North America” (Weber), 70, 93–94, 100, 107–108, 112 Cinema, theater, 198 Citizens United, 148 Civic engagement. See Voluntarism Clark, Jane E., 89, 208 Clark, N. M., 267 Class distinctions, indifference to, 5, 32–33, 43–44, 71, 89–92, 120, 136–138 Colleges, universities, 105–109, 111–112, 254 Collins, Dorothy, 4, 116, 119, 126, 138, 257–258 Collins, Michael, 117–118 Colorado State College of Education, 183–184, 189–190 Columbia University, 111–112 Communism, 179–181 Conformism. See Individualism and conformism

293

Craiutu, A., 33 CSA farms, 140, 218 Cultural sensitivity, importance of, 230–235, 279 Dajani, Saeb, 168–169, 184–187, 189–195 Dajani, Wajeeh, 189–190, 195 Damrosch, L., 18, 49, 55 Darrow, Clarence, 119, 158–159, 227 Davis, J., 232 Death, American attitudes towards, 177–178 Debs, Eugene, 146–147 Dehumanizing effects of capitalism, 31, 71–73, 127–128, 178 “Democracy and Aristocracy in American Life” (Weber), 113 Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 17–18, 21, 23–24, 28, 31, 42 Detroit, MI, 23, 130 Dickens, Charles, 47, 116–117 Diggins, J. P., 99–100 Digital communities, 223–224 Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 46 Distributism, 133–140, 153–156, 180, 262 Douglas, Frederick (nee Bailey), 48, 209–210 Drinkwater, John, 119, 133–134 Du Bois, W.E.B., 5, 87–88, 90–91, 207–209 Duels, 84–85, 251 Duke, James B., 154–155, 160–161 Dulles, John Foster, 200 Durkheim, E., 166–167 East Elbian Report, 74–77 Eastern State Penitentiary (Cherry Hill), 45–47 Economy and Society (Weber), 91 Egalitarianism vs. freedom, 43–45, 48–49, 254 Entertainment evangelism, 190–195 Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (Gobineau), 90 Everett, Edward, 37–38 Fahey, W., 156 Fallenstein, Fritz, 93 Fallenstein, Laura, 111

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294

Index

Family farms, 130–133, 149–151, 153–157, 216, 249–250, 261, 275 Family structure, 157 Farouk I, 163–164 Fifth Day Meeting service, 109–110 Fischer, C. S., 205–206, 223, 274–275, 277 Football (American), 110–111, 114, 138–139, 189–190, 206–207, 272 Ford, Henry, 5, 119, 130 Foucault, Michel, 46, 49 Fourth of July celebrations, 16 Fracking (hydraulic fracturing), 216–217 France, 11–12, 50–51, 157, 246 Franklin, Benjamin, 29–30, 102–105, 253–254 Freedland, J., 150–151, 204 Freedom, egalitarianism vs., 43–45, 48–49, 254 Frenchman’s Island, 20, 80–81 Fulton, Julia, 17 Gallatin, Albert, 15, 22, 39 Gandhi, Mahatma, 118–119, 256–257 Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft, 97 Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), 217–218 Germany, Americanization of, 114 Germany, internal colonization in, 77–78 Gesellschaft, 253 Globalization, 150–152, 250 Gobineau, Arthur de, 90, 126–127, 208 Golobie, John, 84 Government structure Chesterton on, 147, 152, 157 plutocracy/oligarchy, formation of, 32–33, 113–114, 148, 152, 153–156 Tocqueville on, 19–20, 42–43, 49 Gray, Francis, 37–38 Great Beef Strike, 1904, 71, 249 Greeley, CO, 183–184, 187–189, 268 Green Bay/Great Lakes, 24–25 Greer, Frank, 84 Gregory, B., 104–105, 214 Guns, violence, 84–85, 206–207, 272 Gusfield, Joseph, 125–126 Guthrie, OK, 84 Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al.), 222 Hadden, J., 277–278 Hakimiyya (God’s sovereignty), 168–170 Hamilton, Cosmo, 119, 142

Hanson, R., 1 Happiness/satisfaction, acquisitiveness and, 211–213, 274–275 Harding, Warren, 146 Harrah, Ezra, 186–187, 268 Haupt, Hans, 70, 74 Hazlitt, Henry, 160 Henry Street settlement, 111–112 Hensel, Paul, 70–71 Heyworth-Dunne, James, 176–177 Hitti, Philip K., 173 Hotel design uniformity, 69–70, 122–124, 218–219 House of Reformation, juvenile offenders, 45 Houston, Sam, 5, 55–61 Hull House (Chicago), 72–74 Human values, undermining of in America, 174–175, 180, 196–202 Hunter, J., 279 Hussein, Taha, 166–167 Hutchins, Richmond, 187–188 Hydraulic fracturing (fracking), 216–217 I’ll Take My Stand, 155 Imperialism. See also Anti-Americanism cultural, Chesterton on, 118–119, 150–152 overview, 7–8, 228–230 Qutb on, 168–169, 179 Tocqueville on, 19, 33 Weber on, 229–230 Indian (Hindu) nationalist movement, 118–119, 151, 256, 256–257 Indian Removal Act, 59–60 Indians. See Native Americans Individualism and conformism Chesterton on, 144–147 as competing, copying, 144–145 egalitarianism vs. freedom, 43–45, 48–49, 254 hotel design uniformity, 69–70, 122–124, 218–219 individualism vs. individuality, 43, 220, 245 levels of conformity, 40 localized government structure, 19–20, 42–43, 49 lynch mobs, 39 majority vs. individualism, 38–45, 245 overview, 7–8, 218–221

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Index prisons as despotism, 48–49 self-interest, 40–41, 52 in social media, 220–221, 276 Tocqueville on, 144 tyranny of the majority, 38–40, 43, 146–147, 181–182, 219–220, 244 uniformity, 122–124, 145–146, 218–219 utilitarianism, 40–41, 222 voluntarism, 42–43 (See also Voluntarism) Weber on, 114 Individualism vs. individuality, 43, 220, 245 Industrialization. See Capitalism Insari, Ibrahim, 184, 187 In the Shade of the Qur’an (Qutb), 164, 187 Irish independence movement, 117–118, 151 Islam as remedy, 181, 194, 202, 228, 269 Jabri, Safiq, 173 Jackson, Andrew, 5, 37, 55, 64 Jahiliyya (ignorance), 169–170, 184, 193–194, 265 James, William, 5, 107–108, 111–112 Jefferson, Thomas, 126–127, 155–156 Jennings, J., 33 Jihad, 170, 265 Jim Crow laws, 56–57 Jones, Aaron, 79–80 Journeys, general comparisons, 4–6 Judges, effects of public opinion on, 21–22 The Jungle (Sinclair), 71–73 Junkers, 75–76, 250 Kapp, Friedrich, 102 Keller, Helen, 5, 119, 130 Kelley, Florence, 111–112 Kent, James, 15 Kentucky, 56–57 Kepel, G., 164–165 Ker, I., 143–144 Kin, Yamei, 219–220 King, Martin Luther Jr., 209–210, 273 Klock, Otto von, 111 Lasch, C., 152 Layard, R., 274 Lederer, William J., 200 Lewis, Sinclair, 119, 128, 133–136, 167 Lichtenstein, Paul/Alfred, 112 Lieber, Francis, 42

295

Lincoln, Abraham, 209–210 Livingston, Edward, 15 The Lonely American (Olds/Schwartz), 223–224 The Lonely Crowd (Riesman), 145 The Looming Tower (Wright), 3 Lutheranism, 78, 103 Lynch mobs, 39 Lynds, Elam, 20–21, 28, 39, 241 Ma’adawi, Anwar al-, 168–170 Made in America (Fischer), 205–206 Madison, James, 55 Main Street, Chesterton on, 133–140 Main Street (Lewis), 133–136, 139–140 Majority vs. individualism, 38–45, 245 Mansfield, H., 29–30 Marie or Slavery in the United States (Beaumont), 23–24, 33, 35, 48, 89–90 Maritain, Jacques, 32, 123, 209, 222, 234–235, 243, 260, 271–272 Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens), 116–117 Marwick, A., 220–221 McClendon, Jaime, 184, 186–187, 189–190, 196–198 McLean, John, 55 McNamara, Robert, 8–9, 238–239 Mead, M., 204–205 Meeker, Nathan, 183 Memphis, TN, 59 Mencken, H. L., 128 Mercantilism. See Capitalism Methodists, 53–54, 94–95, 107 Michener, James, 187–188 Middletown (Lynd), 139 Milestones (Qutb), 164, 184, 187, 194 Mobility, restlessness of Americans, 26–28 Modernity vs. tradition, Qutb on, 165–167, 173–178 Monsanto, Bowman v., 217–218 Morals, sexual promiscuity, 172, 175, 194–196, 199–202 Morsi, Mohamed, 233 Mousalli, Ahmad, 194–196 Mullon, James, 24–25 Münsterberg, Hugo, 79, 111 Munters, Q. J., 249–250 Music appreciation, Qutb on, 196–198 Muskogee, OK, 83–84, 131, 218–219

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296

Index

Muslim Brotherhood, 164, 175–177, 183–184 Myrdal, Gunnar/Alva, 205 Napoleon of Notting Hill (Chesterton), 117–118, 152 Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 164 National Consumers’ League, 111–112 Native Americans agrarian communism, 86–87 forced relocation of, 59–60, 85–87 land auction, money distribution, 87 land ownership among, 86–87 Qutb on, 179 religion among, 60–61 Tocqueville on, 23–24 Nat Turner rebellion, 48 Nature, American attitudes toward connection between people and land, 123–124, 166, 187–189 despoilment of nature by capitalism, 25–26, 81, 131 Jones on, 79–80 overview, 7, 215–218 Qutb on, 166, 173, 187–189 Tocqueville on, 33–35, 80–81 Weber on, 79, 81–85 New Orleans, LA, 61, 88–89 New York City, 14–15, 43–44, 68–70, 111–112, 120, 122–124, 171–173, 257 Niagara Falls, 25–26, 81, 131 Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, 109 Northwestern University, 105–107 Nuqrashi Pasha, Mahmoud, 163–164, 175–176 Obama, Barack, 209–210 Occupy movement, 153 Ohio, 56–57 Oil fields, 83–84 Oklahoma City, OK, 130–133 Oklahoma Territory, 25 Olds, J., 223–224 On the Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France (Beaumont/Tocqueville), 21, 48–49 An Outline of Sanity (Chesterton), 133 Owen, Robert Latham, 86–87 Peace Ship campaign, 130 Perry, R. B., 204–205, 220–221

Pierson, G., 14 Pittsburgh, PA, 55–56 Ploetz, Alfred, 90–91, 208 Plutocracy/oligarchy, formation of, 32–33, 113–114, 148, 152–156 Poggi, G., 254 Poinsett, Joel, 55, 64 Polish immigrants in Germany, 74–77, 250 Poor Richard’s Principle (Wuthnow), 213–214, 274, 275 Pride and patriotism (American) air of superiority, 18 defensiveness, 17–18, 240 egotism, 143–144 Germany, internal colonization in, 77–78 insecurity, 18 irritable patriotism, 18–19 love of praise, 17 Tocqueville/Beaumont on, 16–20 Weber on, 84 Privacy, 135–136 Privatdozent, 108 Private land ownership, 153–156 Prohibition (Volstead Act), 125–129, 148–149, 257–258 Prostitution, 71–73 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber), 68, 77, 100, 102–105, 109–110, 254 Protestantism (American). See also Religion asceticism in, 109–110 calling in, 103 capitalism and, 70, 103–104 churches as social clubs, 190–195 church membership in social standing, creditworthiness, 93–96, 101, 112 overview, 51 predestination in, 103 Tocqueville on, 99–100 work ethic/utilitarianism in, 29–30, 77, 97, 129 Prozac, 143–144, 260–261 Public opinion Chesterton on, 39 religion, public institution support by, 49–50 Tocqueville on, 21–22 tyranny of the majority, 38–40, 43, 146–147, 181–182, 219–220, 244 uniformity, influences on, 146–147, 219–220

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Index Puritanism, 125–129. See also Protestantism (American) Putnam, R., 222 Quakers, 45–46, 109–110 Quincy, Josiah, 37–38, 42 Qutb, Mohammed, 164–165 Qutb, Sayyid journey of generally, 171–172, 189, 270 motivations, personal history, 163–165, 194–195, 264 observations of generally, 1, 3–6, 9–10, 95–96, 203–204 other's perceptions of, 184 radicalization of, 164, 167–171, 264–266 Race, racism. See also Slavery blacks, disenfranchisement of, 56–57, 113–114 on college campus, 185–187 differences in attitudes, free vs. enslaved, 62 Greeley cinema, 185–186 mulattos, attitudes toward, 89–90 overview, 7, 207–210 Qutb on, 179, 185–187 race relations, American vs. Islam, 179, 185–187, 272 segregation, 126, 187, 209, 268, 273 socialization in, 91 Southern white attitudes, theories, 89–92 violence associated with, 39, 47–48 voting rights, free blacks in Pennsylvania, 39 Weber on, 87–88, 113–114 Radkau, J., 74–75, 99, 249–250 Rational action, Wertrational/ Zweckrational, 52 Ratzinger, Joseph, 200–202, 228 Reflections on America (Maritain), 32 Reider, J., 273 Religion. See also Protestantism (American) Adams on, 37 Baptists, 109 Calvinism, 78, 99–100, 103, 258 Catholicism, 54, 78, 99, 250 churches, Qutb on, 190–195 churches, sects, 96–100, 104, 253 church membership in social standing, creditworthiness, 93–96, 101, 112, 191–193

297

commerce relationship to, 27, 29–30, 191–193 democracy and, 50–55, 156–162, 246, 259 doctrine of interest well understood, 52–53 doctrine of the love of God, 52–53 as entertainment, 190–195, 225 in Fourth of July celebrations, 16 individualism in sects, 97 Lutheranism, 78, 103 meaning-making via, 158–159 Methodists, 53–54, 94–95, 107 modernization in undermining of, 158 NYC, churches vs. skyscrapers in, 69–70 overview, 7, 225–228, 272–273 privatization of, 104–105 Protestantism, 51. See also Protestantism (American) public institution support by, 49–50 Puritanism, 125–129 Quakers, 45–46, 109–110 as relief from industrialization, 31–32, 74, 213–215, 273 Second Great Awakening, 54 Shakers, 15–16 as stabilizing structure, 157–158, 161–162, 199 survivability of, 161–162 Unitarianism, 52, 99–100 voluntarism, 96–100, 104, 253. See also Voluntarism work ethic/utilitarianism and, 29–30 Richard, Gabriel, 23 Riesman, D., 145 Robertson, C. K., 191 Rockne, Knute, 138, 206–207 Saginaw, MI, 23 San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, 197–198 Schermerhorn, Peter, 27 Schwartz, R., 223–224 “Science as a Vocation” (Weber), 108, 114, 178 Second Great Awakening, 54 Secularization activism, 227, 278 churches as social clubs, 190–195 colleges, universities, 105–109, 111–112, 254

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Index

Secularization (cont.) doctrine of interest well understood, 52–53 human agency and, 160–161 as inevitable, 226–227, 277–278 Islam as remedy for, 181, 194, 202, 228, 269 overview, 7, 225–228 plutocracy/oligarchy, formation of, 32–33, 113–114, 148, 152, 153–156 process of, Weber on, 100–104, 112, 254 Qutb on, 198–202 separation of church and state, 23–25, 49–50, 54, 157, 199–202, 225, 227–228 Sedgwick, Catherine Maria, 243 Sedgwick, Theodore, 19, 33, 36, 62–63, 243–244, 278 Segregation, 126, 187, 209, 268, 273. See also Race, racism Self-fulfillment, acquisitive spirit and, 211–213 Self-interest, 40–41, 52 Selfridge, 151 Sense of place, 26–27, 29 Separation of church and state, 23–25, 49–50, 54, 157, 199–202, 225, 227–228 Sering, Max, 79 Settlement movement, 73–74 Sexual promiscuity, morals, 172, 175, 194–196, 199–202 Shakers, 15–16 Shakleton, Ernest, 119 Shaw, George Bernard, 128, 133, 153, 161–162 Shepard, W., 168–169 Shoenfelt, J. Blair, 87 Sidelights on New London and Newer York (Chesterton), 116, 150–151, 256 Sinclair, Upton, 71–74 Sing Sing prison, 15, 17 Sivan, E., 164 Slaughterhouses (Chicago), 71–73 Slavery. See also Race, racism Adams on, 37 American character, degradation of, 56–57 capitalism as, 148–149, 210 Chesteron on, 126–127, 207 Christian influences on, 54–55, 208

lack of restraint as form of, 195–196 power dynamics, 58–59 Tocqueville's attitude toward, 62–63, 208 Small towns, 130–133, 149–151, 153–157, 216, 249–250, 261, 275 Smith, Adolph, 72–74 Smith, C., 160–161, 227, 278 Smith, George Washington, 39 Social class inequalities, 71, 119–120, 127, 207, 243–244 Socialism, 72–74 Social Justice in Islam (Qutb), 169–170, 178–182, 199, 229, 265 Social media, 220–221, 276 The Society of the Free and Easy, 104 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 179–181, 200, 234 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 88 Southern Agrarians, 155–156. See also Agrarianism Southern loop journey (Tocqueville), 55–63 Sparks, Jared, 37–39 Spencer, John Canfield, 21–23, 39, 241 Spencer, Mary/Catherine, 22–23 Spirituality, denial of in America, 199–202 Sports, 110–111, 114, 138–139, 189–190, 206–207, 272 St. Louis, MO, 74–77 Steamboat travel, 56 Stevenson, Adlai, 277 “Still Standing” (Berry), 155 Symbolic Crusade (Gusfield), 125–126 Tales of the South Pacific (Michener), 187–188 Taylor. C., 226–228, 231 Tea Party movement, 153 “The World Is an Undutiful Boy!” (Qutb), 194 Thomas, Allen, 109–110 Through a Screen Darkly (Bayles), 9 Tobacco industry monopolization, 154–155 Tocqueville, Alexis de illness, 57–58 journey of generally, 14–16, 36, 239, 254 motivations of, 12–13 observations of generally, 1, 3–8, 14, 203–204 personal history, 11–12, 50–51, 246 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 97 Toth, J., 164, 166–167, 264

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Index Toussaint, Sylvester, 186–187 Trail of Tears, 59–60 Trappist monasteries, 31–32 Troeltsch, Ernst, 4, 66–71, 74 Trollope, Frances, 116 Turkle, S., 223–224 Tuskegee Institute, 88–89, 208 Two Weeks in the Wilderness (Tocqueville), 23, 33–35 Tyranny of the majority, 38–40, 43, 146–147, 181–182, 219–220, 244 The Ugly American (Burdick/Lederer), 200 Uniformity. See also Individualism and conformism in diversity, 204–206 in hotel design, 69–70, 122–124, 218–219 overview, 122–124, 145–146, 218–219 public opinion, influences on, 146–147, 219–220 Unitarianism, 52, 99–100 United Nations Population Conference 1994, 232, 280 Universities, colleges, 105–109, 111–112, 254 University of Northern Colorado, 183–184, 189–190 University of Notre Dame, 120–121, 138–139 Utilitarianism individualism and conformism, 40–41, 222 in Protestantism (American), 29–30, 77, 97, 129 religion and, 29–30 Viereck, George Sylvester, 161 Vietnam War, 8–9, 238–239 Violence, 39, 47–48, 84–85, 206–207, 272 Virtue, commerce relationship to, 29–30 Volstead Act (Prohibition), 125–129, 148–149, 257–258 Voluntarism colleges, universities, 105–109 digital communities, 223–224 disconnectedness, 224, 277

individualism and conformism in, 42–43 overview, 7, 221–225 as pro-democracy force, 149–150, 153 in religion, 96–100, 104, 253 secularization process effects on, 100–102 Tocqueville on, 42–43, 97–99 Weber on, 96–100 Walker, Timothy, 57 Ward, Lilian, 111–112, 219–220 Washington, Booker T., 88–89 Washington, DC, 63–64, 173–178 Watines, Louis des, 20 Weber, Marianne, 4, 66–70, 73–74, 81, 88–89, 93, 105–106, 109–112, 119–120, 126, 203–204, 208, 249 Weber, Max journey of generally, 66–68, 93, 110, 112–113 observations of generally, 1, 3–6, 25, 54, 74, 99, 203–204, 248–250 Webster, Daniel, 5, 37–38 Wells, H. G., 152 Weltanschauung, 108 Wertrational, Zweckrational, 97 Wethersfield prison, 45 What I Saw in America (Chesterton), 116, 116–117, 124, 156, 158, 257 White, Pearl, 119 Wilderness excursions. See American frontier Wilson Teacher’s College, 173–175 Winthrop, D., 29–30 Wolin, S., 30–31, 48 Work ethic in American culture generally, 210–215, 274 in capitalism, 56–57 in Protestantism (American), 29–30, 77, 97, 129 religion and, 29–30 World War I, 114, 130, 146, 229–230 Wright, J. George, 87 Wright, L., 3 Wuthnow, R., 213–214, 223, 274–275 Zawahiri, Ayman al-, 164–165

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