Political Writings

Part One: 1895-1910

Part One 1895–1910 Historical Commentary In the decade and a half around the turn of the century, Dreiser addressed political issues in three main ways. As editor of Ev’ry Month from 1895 to 1897 he expressed trenchant criticism of contemporary American society, largely in moralistic and philosophical terms. Ev’ry Month also evaluated various attempts at social improvement on the part of individuals and groups, a focus that Dreiser went on to extend as a freelance writer, and on his return to editorship in 1905. From 1907 to 1910, as editor of the masscirculation The Delineator, he adopted a “humanitarian editorial policy” that favored a feminist and Progressive agenda. Ev’ry Month belonged to a wave of cheap illustrated magazines starting publication in the 1890s, spurred by population growth and advances in printing technology, especially the numerous illustrations made viable by cheap halftone engraving. Its original raison d’être was to publicize the songs of Howland, Haviland and Company, in which Dreiser’s brother Paul Dresser was a partner, and was thus notionally aimed at middle-class housewives with access to a piano, though it doubtless also appealed to women aspiring to this status.1 Dreiser’s tenure as editor coincided with a severe economic depression that exacerbated political dissensus, setting wealth against labor, farmers against financiers, Southerners and Westerners against the East, Populists against the political establishment, and those who wanted “free silver” to ease the money supply against those who wished to retain the gold standard to protect banks and lenders. He took sides, ranging himself with suffragists, Westerners, farmers, striking garment workers, and immigrants, against centralized wealth, corruption, privilege, and social prejudice. For his editorials Dreiser adopted a title, “Reflections,” and a persona, signing them “the Prophet”; both signaled a critical distance from which to comment upon contemporary America. The editorial columns habitually opened with a topical or seasonal reference, for example, to the marriages of wealthy Americans to European nobles (December 1895), the bond issue intended to resolve the 1896 financial panic (February and March 1896), upcoming presidential elections (September and November 1896), the true meaning of patriotism (October 1896), Christmas sentiment (December 1896), or the Bradley-Martin Ball (March 1897), and went on to put it into a wider philosophical and historical context. This was then followed by between five and nine commentaries on various topics, in which 4 • Theodore Dreiser Dreiser frequently expressed sympathy for many of the marginalized groups of the period and made stinging moral criticism of the wealthy, privileged classes, who, he suggested, had usurped control of the nation’s economy and its political and juridical institutions. “It has been the curse of every age,” he argued, “this centralization of wealth—gathering where it least belongs” (November 1896).2 Dreiser offered “a good word” on the “great and sure-to-be-victorious cause” of “woman suffrage” (see 15–17), sympathized with striking garment workers (October 1896), defended immigrants (April 1897), and polemicized about the state of public schools (May and June 1897). He inveighed against what he saw as the intrigues of the Republican Party (October 1895); systematic political corruption (January, April, and July 1896); “the evil of money influence in the courts” (July, November, and December 1896); and, in what would be a long-term concern, corrupt charitable organizations (November 1896). He also picked up on and recast the popular press rhetoric that called for military intervention in support of Cuba’s struggle against Spanish colonial rule (November 1895, April 1896, July 1896, and January 1897). The “Reflections” column’s moral condemnation of wealth and power often embraced Populist criticism of the power of trusts (April 1896, March 1897), and occasionally employed overtly Populist rhetoric mistrustful of the “silent company” of financiers and capitalists who controlled the money supply (February 1896). Ev’ry Month focused closely on William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 campaign for the presidency on a populist “free silver” platform . In the five months leading up to the election, “the Prophet” evaluated Bryan’s potential to bring about significant change without ever referring to him explicitly, in ways that a politically aware readership (and Dreiser obviously assumed the readership of Ev’ry Month was politically aware) would have easily decoded. Thus, on the eve of Bryan’s triumph in winning the Democratic Party nomination, the July 1896 “Reflections” opened with a meditation on the contradiction between the “ceaseless demand of the good citizen for...