Political Writings

Introduction

INTRODUCTION Struggles over Theodore Dreiser’s political significance and the importance of politics for Dreiser’s reputation were evident at his memorial service on 3 January 1946. The funeral party was addressed by both the communist John Howard Lawson, later to become one of the “Hollywood Ten” indicted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Dr. Allan Hunter, a minister in the Congregational Church. Though representative of contrasting views on the importance of politics to Dreiser—and of Dreiser to politics—both men concurred that his life and his work could be seen as a whole. Hunter acknowledged Dreiser’s “limitations,” but he also insisted that Dreiser “had going in him, like a fire in his bones, not just a wistful desire but a demand that power be cut up and passed around among men, and that the dignity of these men be recognized, and that they be given a chance to fulfill themselves in this world, beginning now.” Dreiser’s political writing makes explicit these demands. Like his novels, Dreiser’s political writing concerns itself with human dignity and self-fulfillment, and the obstacles to both. It extends the scope of his fiction, seeking what he called “the Golden Rule” or “equity” between people, classes, and nations, in what he believed to be an amoral universe. A substantial, multifaceted, and often passionate engagement with the major controversies, themes, issues, and movements of the half-century from the mid-1890s to 1945, it remains relevant to contemporary political debates. If the essential subject of Dreiser’s literary work is the American scene, the overarching concern of his political writing is America-in-the-world. From the outset, his keynote as a social critic was his attack on American exceptionalism—that is, entrenched beliefs that American institutions, and capitalism in general, held a monopoly on what was moral, democratic, or liberating. Throughout his career, Dreiser devoted himself to unmasking the invidious effects of institutionalized moral frameworks, especially in the forms of religion and what he called “moralistic mush,” and later expanded to include critiques of nationalistic and individualistic ideologies. Yet Dreiser ’s view of society as fundamentally amoral in no way precluded a sense of responsibility for others—a combination that differentiated him from fellow skeptics such as his friend H. L. Mencken, and that both complicates his political engagements and adds to their interest. He therefore concerned himself with campaigns on behalf of victimized individuals and groups from xviii • Introduction destitute children to women denied the vote, from the Scottsboro boys to civilians bombed during the Spanish Civil War, and supported a series of specific campaigns to reform “abuses” and extirpate “evils.” Over the course of his career, these commitments brought Dreiser into contact with successive political movements that in very different ways sought to invigorate American democracy. Many of the issues he engaged, ranging from racial problems to responsibility for childcare, from the United States’s military interventions abroad to the relationship between its political and financial institutions, are of continuing importance. In addition to recording these engagements and making these criticisms, Dreiser’s political writings seek positive values, a search that would ultimately lead him to a philosophy of socially beneficial work, creativity, and a democratic internationalism that drew heavily on radical American traditions. Dreiser’s political trajectory is outlined in the preface to this volume; here follows a more detailed overview of the development of his political thought in its historical contexts. Dreiser’s earliest social criticism, in his 1890s editorials for the magazine Ev’ry Month, employed an empirical measuring stick based on the workings of “Nature” to unmask what he viewed as the corrupt or compromised character of American politics, finance, economics, and urban life in the age of the robber barons. At Ev’ry Month Dreiser gave critical support to reform movements such as suffragism and William Jennings Bryan’s populism. A decade later, while editor of the prestigious fashion magazine The Delineator, Dreiser adopted a “humanitarian editorial policy,” promoting Progressive campaigns to reform the care of destitute children and to promote child health. Commending the examples of activist reformers like Jane Addams and “municipal housekeeper” Caroline Bartlett Crane, Dreiser regarded such women as playing a crucial role in ensuring that the aims of Progressive reform were realized in the face of resistance from male elites. This overt appeal to women’s political agency, and its underlying assumptions about the importance of women as social actors, is particularly significant since, aside from the...