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The Benjamin Franklin Lectures
of the
University of Pennsylvania
SEVENTH SERIES
T h e Benjamin Franklin Lectures
CHANGING PATTERNS IN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

by Dixon Wecter, F. O. Matthiessen, Detlev W. Bronf^, Brand
Blanshard, and George F. Thomas
Preface by Robert E. Spiller
T H E FUTURE OF DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM

by Thurman W. Arnold, Morris L. Ernst, Adolf A. Berle, Jr.,
Lloyd K. Garrison, and Sir Alfred Zimmern
Introduction by S. Howard Patterson
T H E ARTS IN RENEWAL
by Lewis Mumford, Peter Vierec\, William Schuman, fames
A. Michener, and Marc Connelly
Introduction by Sculley Bradley
T H E SCIENTISTS LOOK A T OUR WORLD

by W. V. Houston, W. Albert Noyes, Jr., Curt Stern, Alan
Gregg, and Wendell H. Camp
Introduction by John M. Fogg, Jr.
T H E CULTURAL MIGRATION
by Franz L. Neumann, Henri Peyre, Erwin Panofsfy, Wolf-
gang Köhler, and Paul Tillich
Introduction by Rex W. Crawford
SOCIAL CONTROL IN A FREE SOCIETY

by Loren C. Eiseley, Carl G. Hempel, Gilbert Seldes, George
J. Stigler, and Willard Hurst
Preface by Robert E. Spiller
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
TRENDS IN MODERN
AMERICAN SOCIETY
by
John M. Blum, John K. Galbraith, Alexander H.
Leighton, Jonathan E. Rhoads, Eero Saarinen, David
B. Truman, Daniel D. Williams, Richard
W. B. Lewis
Edited, with a Preface, by

Clarence Morris
PHILADELPHIA
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
© 1962 BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF PENNSYLVANIA
PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN

BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND KARACHI
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 62-11262
7358
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Preface
M r AIM IN WRITING THIS PREFACE IS TO STATE A VIEWPOINT FROM
which the seven papers that follow can be read comparatively. I

am emboldened to state this viewpoint because it helped me unify,
to some extent, the wide range of our lecturers' ideas; that it will
be similarly useful to others is only a hope.
Established ways are, generally speaking, the backbone of our
everyday lives. Our accustomed roles usually make one day much
like the one before it and the one after it. Of course we all sud-
denly shift routines when we enroll in and leave schools, when
we marry, when we change jobs, when we move to new com-
munities, and when we are retired. Cataclysms, like wars and
economic upheavals, may push many of us out of our established
patterns at the same time. Most of us, however, live channeled
lives, by and large, with only occasional concern for the character
of the future.
When, however, we gather to hear an eminent man talk on an
important topic we are likely to expect him to play the seer. The
earlier published six volumes of Benjamin Franklin Lectures all
7
arc pointed at changes in the offing. This seventh volume is cast

in the same mold. Whenever our committee starts to plan a new
series we seem to turn naturally to what is ahead.
Perhaps we do this because our own interests are mainly in the
past, the present, and the very immediate future. Perhaps we are
attracted to prophecy because it is an energizing change from our
intellectual diets.
I am inclined to believe, however, that our motive in asking
speakers to peer into the future is more significant; it is a re-
flection of the character of the Western world—especially of the
character of the United States. By asking able visitors to talk
about the future we make occasions for concern with the gospel
of progress—with our aspirations (what they are and what they
should be), with emerging opportunities for getting on, and with
occasions for avoiding turns that could thwart our hopes. Nearly
all of us hold (with varying degrees of conviction and articulate-
ness) to this gospel of progress; hence our anxious concern about
the future.
All nations have aspirations. But progress has been especially
the hope of the West. Eastern countries are not always similarly
bent: dynastic China, for example, rarely attempted progress—
for two millenniums it aspired, mainly, to emulate the golden age
of the reigns of the Five Ancient Emperors.
All nations have aspirations. But this does not mean that all
their people aspire. Workers exhausted daily by struggles with
starvation rarely have energy for aspirations that are more than
vain hope. Serfs or peasants, tied to land and steeped in philo-
sophic acceptance of flood and drought, seldom have courage
enough for aspirations that are more than desire for good luck.
Artisans, whose pride in craft skills (whether polishing diamonds
or practicing ballet) absorbs all their existence, are too self-centered
for aspirations other than complimentary notoriety. Only a com-
8
PREFACE
munity that frees its members from overwork, insecurity, and

narrowness produces a society of properly aspiring men. This the
West has not yet fully accomplished; but few nations have seen
such melioration and hope for melioration as that which we
enjoy.
Widespread participation in formulating the public's aspira-
tions can come about only after three conditions are met. (1)
Adults must, generally, have a real (not merely theoretic) right
and opportunity to participate in an opinion-making that can,
in turn, influence the behavior of public servants. Widespread
suffrage is not enough; there must be ongoing opportunity to
contribute to public opinion—a right that counts. No nation has
implemented such a right; but we have no special reason for
despair. (2) The definition of public servant must both broaden
and become more meaningful. Power elites in business and pro-
fessions must recognize that they at times deal with public,
rather than private, matters. Public toleration of their power on
these occasions is not oversight; it is enfranchisement coupled
with responsibilities to the public rather than to shareholders,
associates, and fellow professionals. Public servants (in or out of
governmental office) must recognize that they are enfranchised
to implement public aspirations and that whenever they act as
principals (rather than as the public's agents) they act for them-
selves and not in execution of their trust. Even those who are
utterly well-meaning in their attempts to do what is best for the
public, but who act without regard for public aspirations, rule—
but do not serve. (3) Technology bearing on public problems
must be more widely explained and understood. The public can-
not aspire to less unemployment, better mental health, sounder
city planning, etc, unless it knows more about how these ends
are achieved. We have learned that ends considered apart from
means are likely to be futile or misunderstood; we are now learn-
9
ing that dissemination of knowledge about means stimulates

formulation of new ends of which the uninformed would never
even dream.
Still to be proved, however, is whether a pluralistic, alert, edu-
cated, and emboldened public can formulate aspirations that can,
in turn, be translated into action. If a people's will is so diverse
and unrestrained that it will not tolerate public servants who do
anything but mark time, its aspirations become its greatest liabil-
ity. Survival and enhancement of American democracy through
depression and war are some bases for believing in our ability
to translate a still wider public's aspirations into programs of
action.
Our desire to look to the future is, of course, not limited to im-
plementing our hopes for health, affluence, and the importance
of the common man. W e aspire also to more scientific knowledge,
and greater beauty, more understanding of the human condition.
In our Western fashion we harbor some hopes for progress in
science, art, and religion.
W e are not foolish enough to suppose that progress in all sci-
ences depends on either our type of political background or our
opportunities for free thought. Many sciences have flourished in
the U.S.S.R. and many are likely to flourish in Red China. We
have yet to see, however, great development of pure social science
in these countries. If all knowledge of society must conform to
the Marxist-Leninist prescription, then knowledge of society is
seldom worth looking for, and may be dangerous to see. Only
when stubborn facts conflict with official theory is skill brought
into play, and then merely to explain a seeming contradiction. It
is a good guess that progress in social science is more likely to be
accomplished in the West. With that progress to build on we may
be more likely than the Communists to find ways of feeding both
the resulting knowledge and the fruits of physical and biological
10
PREFACE
sciences into the unofficial, indeterminate processes of formula-

tion of the aspirations of our public.
W e are not so sure about the gospel of progress's application to
the arts. W e hold to towering beauties in our cultural heritage,
sometimes without hope that they will ever be equaled, much
less surpassed. But our tradition of progress makes us reject con-
temporary attempts of artists, writers, or composers to work in
by-gone styles. In China a seventeenth-century Ming painter
could be the leading landscapist of his time while trying to paint
in the style of the fourteenth-century Yuan painter, who in turn
avowedly had tried to produce additions to the work of an
eleventh-century Sung artist. We, however, want no twentieth-
century Mozarts, Shakespeares, or Michelangelos. Even when we
are unhappy with modern works we nevertheless demand that
contemporary artists create appropriately for our times.
In religion the place of progress is still more doubtful. T o the
orthodox no progress is possible, even though they live uneasily
with primitivisms of doggedly unchanging human institutions.
T o the unreligious only disregard for (or of) religion is progress,
even though they live uneasily with dampers on their own rever-
ential twinges. If progress there is, it must lie between these two—
for those who wish to search for it. It is interesting to see that so
strong a supporter of orthodoxy as Jacques Maritain nevertheless
can hold for progress, and assert man's increasing knowledge of
natural law.
Those who read these papers but did not hear them delivered
have missed a pleasure that we at the University of Pennsylvania
enjoyed. W e are grateful to the seven lecturers for their contribu-
tions.
This preface cannot be closed without acknowledging impor-
11
tant debt to Dr. William Ε. Miller, bibliographer of the Furness

Memorial Library, who with perceptive restraint carefully pre-
pared these papers for the printer and checked the proofs. His
conscientious and skillful work is greatly appreciated by the
editor of the volume and the University Lecture Committee.
Clarence Morris
Philadelphia
February, 1962
12
Contents
PREFACE 7
by Clarence Morris
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF W O R K : SUCCESS AND SATIS-
FACTION IN RECENT AMERICAN CULTURE 17
by John M. Blum
T H E STRATEGY OF PEACEFUL COMPETITION 37
BY JOHN K. GALBRAITH
CULTURE AND MENTAL HEALTH 57
BY ALEXANDER H. LEIGHTON
T H E IMPACT OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES U P O N NATURAL
SELECTION 83
BY JONATHAN E. RHOADS
PROBLEMS FACING ARCHITECTURE 101
BY Ε ER Ο SAARINEN
T H E POUTICS OF THE N E W COLLECTIVISM 115
BY DAVID B. TRUMAN
RELIGIOUS ISSUES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CULTURE 143
BY DANIEL D. WILLIAMS
LITERARY POSSIBILITIES OF THE N E X T DECADE 171
by Richard W. B. Lewis
13
University Lecture Committee
Donald K. Angell
Thomas C. Cochran
Lee C. Eagleton
John M. Fogg, Jr.
Gary Goldschneider
Sarah Guertler
James Kilcoyne
Clarence Morris
G. Holmes Perkins
John J. Sayen
Donald T. Sheehan
Robert E. Spiller
Elizabeth K. Spilman
Mervin Verbit
S. Reid Warren, Jr.
Lee H. Weinstein
Charles Lee—Secretary
Roy F. Nichols—Chairman
Exegesis of the Gospel of Work:
Success and Satisfaction in
Recent American Culture
John M. Blum
M A R K HANNA, ACCORDING TO A STORY AS THOMAS BEER RELATED IT,
was one day reading in his suite at the Arlington Hotel. He was
lost in a book, somewhere in Egypt or Assyria, when a caller
entered the room. Looking up, Hanna said suddenly: "Isn't it
funny, Jackling, that money and machinery came into the world
at the same time?"
Perhaps Hanna had been reflecting that, since birth, neither
had ever been able to leave the other long alone. Expanding
through continuing interaction, they swelled the stock of goods.
The diversion of a fraction of the surplus put Hanna in his com-
fortable suite. Had Jackling asked, the senator would probably
have told him bluntly that anyone who labored hard enough
could earn a likely chance for a comparable apartment. Investiga-
tion of Egyptian history, he might have added, was just digres-
sion.
Yet in the fifty years since Hanna's contemplations, machinery
and money have inverted the priorities by which he lived. In the
culture of today's advanced technology, Americans are increas-
17
ingly anxious about leisure, whereas less than three generations

ago, with Hanna they worried more often about work. The oc-
casions for that change are inseparable from its implications, for
like money and machinery, the economy and the culture have
developed in uninterrupted reciprocity. Their current forms
ordinarily have puzzled Hanna's spiritual heirs.
In the United States of Hanna's childhood, there was no rea-
sonable alternative for work. While society was passing from an
agrarian through an industrial stage, hard work provided the
necessities for subsistence and the surpluses for investment in
further growth. Industry and frugality were essential virtues for
social progress. They were concurrendy sometimes the real and
ordinarily the presumptive qualities for personal success and its
attending social status.
That had been the case at least since the time of Benjamin
Franklin and the cluster of ideas which he so self-consciously
represented. His was the first great American success story, the
model, one hundred per cent genuine, for latter-day heroes of
myth and reality. The pattern has the soothing familiarity of
legend. A poor boy, self-educated and self-made, Franklin be-
came the first citizen of the colonies and one of the first of the
western world. A shrewd statesman and able scholar, he was
also a bort vivant who often abjured the temperance he preached
and practiced abstinence only so long as he had to. Yet the self-
image he constructed in his Autobiography accorded with those
virtues he praised in his role of Poor Richard, the virtues of the
cult of success.
"The way to wealth," Poor Richard instructed, . . is as plain
as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry
and frugality. . . . He that gets all he can honesdy, and saves all
he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become
rich." And therefore, Franklin often implied, respected. Working
and saving brought riches and riches brought status.
18
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF WORK
H e was, of coursc, describing himself and his own formula for

an incomparable social ascent, but he was also describing a dream
which could in his time materialize most readily in America. H e
was a symbol of the possibilities inherent in an open society, a
symbol dear to his countrymen. Patendy Poor Richard also em-
bodied the system of values that Weber and Tawney have called
the Protestant ethic. It was a system of the first importance for
the development of an economy far richer in land than in labor
or capital. Work and thrift supplied the necessary compensatory
force to transform the magnificence of the continent.
The transformation was not yet complete in the decades after
the Civil War. The national gospel of work then received a vul-
gar but pervading rephrasing from Horatio Alger, Jr., who
repressed a reckless hedonism only when he wrote.
Alger's message took its characteristic form in the story of
" H o w Johnny Bought a Sewing Machine." Johnny was the son
of the Widow Cooper, who had lost her husband at Fredericks-
burg. Though the boy wanted to go to work, she insisted he re-
main at school while she sewed to supplement her pension. De-
termined to ease her lot by buying a sewing machine, Johnny
labored after school and during week ends, picking cranberries
at two cents a quart, running errands, turning the grindstone. H e
accumulated only $50 in a year, but he persevered. One morning,
crossing the fields near a small pond, he heard a gentleman in a
boat call out that his daughter was drowning. Unhesitatingly
Johnny plunged in and seized the child as she sank for the third
time. The grateful father pressed upon the boy a $100 bill. " N o w , "
Johnny cried, "I can buy Mother a sewing machine." Then the
whole story spilled out. T h e girl's father arranged to purchase the
machine and have it sent to Johnny's mother in time for her
birthday. When it arrived, "Her eyes glistened with pride and
joy as she heard, for the first time, how [Johnny] . . . had worked
for months." H e did not know it, but the machine had cost lots
19
more than $100. More marvelous still, he received a letter from his
benefactor containing $100 for himself. "Continue to love and
help your mother," it read, "and when you are old enough to go
into a store I will receive you into mine." There was, Alger con-
cluded, great joy in the little cottage that evening.
Doubtless Alger's readers felt the joy themselves, for the story
was a perfect metaphor of a national faith. Johnny was a dutiful
son of a fond mother who saw to his education. That showed
he had the right stuff in him. Johnny had worked and saved, not
in spite of adversity, but because of it- That was pluck, a folk-
word for character. Johnny had happened upon an accident
which made his main chance. That was luck, a folk-word for a
secular divinity. Johnny had won commercial opportunity, and
simple projection assured him of eventual success and social
position. Santayana, for many years a neighbor of aspirant
Johnnies, summed up their metaphysic well: "Irreligion, dis-
soluteness, and pessimism—supposed naturally to go together—
could never prosper; they were incompatible with efficiency. That
was the supreme test." That was the exegesis of chapter and
verse, James, i. 22, "Be ye doers."
Early in the twentieth century, however, the problem of suf-
ficient production no longer existed within the United States.
The nation's superb natural endowment had always contained
the promise of abundance. The massive movement of peoples
to the country and westward within it had provided a necessary
pool of labor and a market for goods. The advantages of a free
society and a vast, free market had encouraged the accumulation
and investment of capital. As enterprise flourished, American
business had completed the organization of conditions of plenty.
The consolidation of industry made possible the efficiencies of
integration and diversification, the acceleration of technology,
and the professionalization of management. The twentieth cen-
20
tury was still young when Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor,
devoted disciples of the gospel of work, accomplished their prod-
igies of production, when during World War I the United
States supplied not only its own ordinary and emergency needs
but also the extraordinary demands of most of western Europe.
Certainly by 1915, probably years earlier, the nation had in hand
the resources and the techniques to furnish luxuries as well as
necessities for a far larger population than it contained.
By that time the cult of work, thrift and success had lost some
of its following. Labor was persuaded that the earth would spin
just as swifdy if the work day were nearer eight than ten hours.
The owners of the machines that helped to encourage that per-
suasion still resisted it, often with the argument that hard work
never hurt anybody, but some of them were also in their own
ways violating the cult. Vacations had become more common
and longer. More sons and daughters of wealth were deliberately
unemployed. With success, moreover, frugality frequently yielded
to ostentation.
Though conditions had changed, and the culture, too, the idea
of work survived the era of its basic relevance. Theodore Roose-
velt, by any measure a national hero in 1903, then told one audi-
ence that work was "absolutely necessary; . . . no man can be
said to live in the true sense of the word, if he does not work."
At times self-consciously a Jeremiah, he attacked most viciously
the idleness and folly of the rich. In a similar vein, Thorstein
Veblen chose the leisure class as the particular target for his
censures, reserving his fondest blessings for the "engineers," crea-
tively productive men whose fulfillment came from work.
Roosevelt and Veblen were members of a generation that
lived through the stage of mechanization which carried the
United States once and for all across the brink of industrial
abundance. The engineers, by the time Veblen arranged their
21
apotheosis, had already worked their powerful magic on the

price system; and the strenuous life, when Roosevelt lived it, had
to spend its furious energies seeking adventures as substitutes for
productive labor. Yet those who in their youth had covenanted
with the gospel of work clung, not surprisingly, to their obsoles-
cent ethic.
So strong was the national faith that it instructed at least one
later generation. Twenty years after Roosevelt's most successful
campaign, the chairman of the board of a large corporation em-
ployed Algerine language to explain the promotion of a company
officer. "I'd put it this way," he said. "Albert Salt was the best
office boy we ever had, the best clerk we ever had, the best sales-
man we ever had, the best purchasing agent we ever had, and he
never knew when the whisde blew." Such incantations struck
notes to which the middle class still responded. The popular
novels and stories of the 1920's, repeating the success theme, held
up to Albert Salt and his would-be companions a mirror in
which they could admire themselves. The same novels suggested
that indolence and elegance alike encouraged licentiousness, a dis-
ease to which artists and intellectuals, presumably marginal work-
ers at best, were particularly subject. Greenwich Village and the
Left Bank were the havens of exiles, as one of them recalled, who
were fleeing the culture of their high schools, the still virulent
cult of work. Even Franklin during the 1920's was rather less
popular as a symbol than was Albert Salt, for unlike him, Frank-
lin had a cultivated taste for wine and women, rest and specula-
tion. Those diversions from productive work and careful thrift
were the undoing of Sam Dodsworth. As middle class readers
pitied him, so they esteemed without stint that most virtuous of
American engineers, Herbert Hoover, an Albert Salt of an heroic
scale.
Esteem was the ultimate article of the total faith. Work and
22
thrift, pluck and luck brought success which earned man status.
That progression was central to the creed which faced a shatter-
ing challenge during the 1920's when Americans were shown a
short-cut to esteem—a short-cut, moreover, that reckoned thrift a
vice. With the problem of production solved, industry's next
problem was sales, and its next solution, advertising, which had
to reach and stimulate the national market. In order to teach
Americans to buy more than they needed, though rarely as much
as their growing enterprises were producing, advertising had to
disseminate an abbreviated image of the good life. It sold esteem.
Of course it also sold many other good things. Advertisements
for soap sold cleanliness; for orange juice, health; for mouth
wash, romantic love. But most of all advertising sold success.
These clothes, that furniture, this correspondence course, those
houses, and especially these automobiles were made the appurte-
nances of success. Ownership brought success itself, ordinarily in
company with a beautiful woman, and ownership was simpli-
fied. One could buy today and pay tomorrow in regular, small
installments. No need to wait, no need to save, and the interest
rate, while hideous, was hidden.
As the advertising profession has so often claimed, its tech-
niques exposed demands and did not create them. The exposure
necessarily associated available and marketable commodities with
more remote and sometimes impalpable aspirations. Powerful
aspirations, after all, long predated the layouts that translated
sex into antiperspirants, appetite into electric grills, and vigor
into breakfast cereals. So, too, and emphatically, with status. If
success had not already become an American fetish, advertising
could scarcely have invented it. The triumph of advertising de-
rived from divorcing esteem from sweat and denial.
Similarly advertising encouraged waste. Alfred Sloan under-
stood the situation exactly. Just as General Wood had realized
23
that the drift of population to the cities would give Sears, Roe-
buck a larger stake in retail stores than in mail-order catalogues,
so Sloan realized that mechanization permitted General Motors
to manufacture cars much faster than its customers could use
them up. As one executive put it, "The old factors of wear and
tear can no longer be depended upon to create a demand."
Neither could beauty or performance alone, but advertising
could hasten obsolescence, and though some company engineers
were unhappy, GJvi. made fashion the pavement of its road to
glory. As with automobiles, so with many consumer items, the
date and packaging determined the measure of esteem.
Yet here again advertising was rather more revealing than
revolutionary. Waste, as David Potter has pointed out, had al-
ways attended American experience in abundance. The nation
had condoned a profligate use of land and minerals and a reck-
less spoilage of timber, water, even air. Indeed a willingness to
waste may have been an indispensable part of the essential spirit
of bullish speculation that force-fed innovation and overbuilt
facilities in expectations of unending growth. These expectations
in turn supplied the means for their own ultimate satisfaction.
But if waste had long existed, and with importance, it had not
been counted a quality of success. Rascals were spendthrift, but
good men, wise and frugal, until advertising drew a beard on
savers and shaved clean the purchasers of fashion.
In attaching esteem to ownership, as it did, advertising sub-
stituted a static value for the kinetic attributes of the Alger story.
The fact of acquisition replaced the process of achievement. The
success image lost its motion. This was a portentous but possibly
essential change, for the professionalization of American life,
especially of American business, had increasingly separated the
Alger myth from reality.
Whatever the absolute values of work and thrift, they had be-
24
come in themselves weaker and weaker levers for success. A s the

studies of William Miller demonstrate, in business as well as in
law and politics, the elite of each generation since the early nine-
teenth century had been recruited in increasing proportion from
the ranks of the children of the elite, children blessed with the
advantages of economic security, higher education, and influen-
tial friends. Careers in America remained more open to talent
than they did in any other society, education remained more
readily available, and self-made men still received invitations to
join old and exclusive clubs; but the percentage of those who were
born to families of farmers or workingmen, and yet rose past the
level of farmers or foremen, was diminishing continuously. This
deceleration of social mobility, a function of the institutionalizing
of American life, threatened to destroy the old success image and,
with it, one fetching promise of the past.
By redefining the image, the hucksters distorted it, to be sure,
but they also preserved it. The Alger story was among other
things only one expression of a larger image of a society of op-
portunity, plenty, and human dignity. Madison Avenue, con-
triving a new recipe from old ingredients, simply associated op-
portunity and dignity with shared abundance. That association
made the standard of living as well as the nature of work a gauge
of esteem, perhaps especially of self-esteem. With high wages, a
laborer, however mean his job, could be fashionable, and there-
fore, in his view and that of many others, successful.
Under the pressure of advertising, the conspicuous consump-
tion and conspicuous leisure that had so worried Veblen gradu-
ally became aspirations of Americans in all walks of life. Those
who so aspired, including a sizable fraction of the middle class,
suffered special frustrations during the great depression. Be-
ginning with the New Deal, however, there has been a broad
redistribution of wealth, public provision of marginal economic
25
security, and a rapid growth of labor unions. Along with these

developments, the extraordinary economic recovery that the war
effort spurred and the continuing prosperity of the postwar years
have placed the expectations advertising nurtured within the
range of probable fulfillment for the majority of an affluent so-
ciety. Perhaps necessarily, ownership and fashion now weigh far
more in the scales of the image of success than do industry and
thrift.
Along with other twentieth-century developments, advertising
affected earlier ideas about work. Artificial obsolescence was a
continuing charge against the integrity of a product and conse-
quently against the satisfactions of manufacturing it. There
could be small sense of purpose in making something only to
have it sold and thrown away. Doubtless mechanization itself,
as Ortega observed, cost laborers much of their involvement in
their jobs and perhaps all of their identification with their prod-
ucts. Advertising, by acclaiming waste, at the very least exag-
gerated the resulting loss of dignity in work. Albert Salt never
knew when the whistle blew, but he was an office worker. His
counterpart at a punching machine, employed in a routinized
job fabricating a disposable artifact distinguished primarily by
its salability, heard the whisde loud and clear. So also increasingly
did office and professional workers whose own functions were
made more and more mechanized, more and more specialized,
more and more routine. The Algerine view of virtuous industry
could not persist where labor lacked mission and work lacked
joy.
Perhaps just in time, the changing culture endorsed the ready
compensations of more income and more leisure, luxuries that a
bountiful technology made possible. Advertising did not destroy
the old cult. Rather, it expressed the values of a society in which
there were no real problems of production. The culprit, if there
26
was a culprit, goes often by the name of progress. There are still
no major problems of production. T h e national stock of resources
and skills can amply satisfy the foreseeable needs of a growing
population for consumer and producer goods and for national
defense. There are other problems, of course—problems of so-
cial goals and social organizations, problems of pace and alloca-
tion, problems of priorities for individuals, for neighborhoods,
and for the whole nation. Many of these defy easy solution, but
none can be solved primarily by more or harder work as Alger's
generation thought of work. Like higher real wages, greater
leisure has probably come to stay.
Indeed under contemporary conditions the old exhortations
are no longer convincing. Johnny wants to buy a Chevrolet, not a
sewing machine, and his mother, whose pension is now generous,
approves. She is also not so sure that hard work never hurt any-
body. That may have been true of picking cranberries and turn-
ing the grindstone, physical work out in the fresh air. Johnny
will do well to mow the lawn. But hard work at a desk or in a
laboratory or with a group of people, work involving primarily
intellectual or interpersonal skills and their application, can hurt
almost anyone who fails to find the time for rest and recreation.
Johnny's modern benefactor is doubdess at his office every year
more nearly sixteen hundred than thirty-six hundred hours, and
Johnny knows it. Johnny has still the right stuff in him. H e goes
to school, loves his mother, heeds the example of his elders, wants
to become a useful and prosperous lawyer or engineer, but he
considers Alger's Johnny (if he must consider him) "out, man,
way out." He has no compelling cause for thinking otherwise.
Entirely apart from its relation to success, work, of course, pro-
vided satisfaction for a fortunate few. They derived from it a
sense of identification and fulfillment, a sense of self and self-
expression. Such satisfaction, however, was elusive, even when
27
goods and leisure were less plentiful than they have become.
W o r k without dignity had little to recommend it except as a
means for survival. Furthermore, identification and fulfillment
escaped men from every stratum of society, including many who
rose relendessly from tier to tier.
Such men, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once suggested, wanted
either an instinct for recognizing their personal genius or an op-
portunity for giving it release. " A man is a beggar who only lives
to be useful," Emerson wrote, and beggars there had to be while
the economy commanded the bulk of human energy and the
culture condemned an unproductive use of time. Beggars there
still are in a routinized economy where fewer and fewer jobs
afford scope for self-expression. Consequendy, for most of the
laboring force, less work for more pay comes as an unmitigated
gain.
T h e apparent agencies for that gain, rather than the oppressive
jobs, naturally evoke the workers' loyalties. On that account the
labor union receives the grateful allegiance accorded to political
machines seventy years ago. Today's locals, like yesterday's pre-
cinct houses, are clubs, whose members are true to each other
and to their leaders, united against their opponents, hostile or
uncomprehending toward criticism. Today's union officials, like
yesterday's bosses, take care of their following and also of them-
selves, sometimes with scant regard for means, in rare but trou-
bling cases with small regard for law. When they are attacked,
whether jusdy or unjusdy, their constituents also feel embatded,
and consequently respond like partisan fans outraged by an un-
favorable call at second base, whatever the umpire's vision or wis-
dom. T h e rank and file of labor arc not dishonest, but they are
devoted, and they are apprehensive of change lest change reduce
their share in plenty, their share in the appurtenances of success.
They value the results their leaders get; they are less concerned
with process.
28
That is precisely the attitude also of a host of men whose over-

alls have an Ivy cut—teachers not the least. They value the in-
come from their jobs or the prestige of their professions; they
are not involved in work, but in success. Their lack of satisfaction
is regrettable, for it breeds unhappiness, but it is not immoral, and
it is most decidedly not attributable to abundance or to advertis-
ing. It has yet to be demonstrated that comfort damages char-
acter, and it is manifest that the cult of work often honored labor
less for itself than for its utility in achieving status.
There is, however, a pathos in the lives of those who seek suc-
cess by sending dollars out in chase of goods. John Maynard
Keynes was surely right about deficits and depressions, but a
society made up of men attempting to spend their way to status
is scarcely a beguiling goal for 1984. It is all too dear that the
salesmen of fashion have dealt in envy, not in satisfaction. Yet
only a romantic nostalgia can dignify a subsistence culture. Con-
formity did not develop because of abundance. Indeed, abundance
threatens it, for as Martin Mayer has said, conformity is the
special burden of impoverished communities where people work
to exhaustion and have neither the money nor the leisure to ex-
press their tastes. In contrast, the fashions of affluence, for all
their fraudulence, at least have variety and sometimes even ele-
gance.
What those fashions lack is the capacity to provide lasting
satisfaction to either their producers or their consumers. And
that capacity is, among other things, an attribute of style—of an
excellence of purpose, form and execution that endures while
vogues decline. It is a lack of style that permits the expensive vul-
garity now imitated on a wider scale than Veblen's nightmares
contemplated. Here advertising, ambassador extraordinary to
vogue, exemplifies the problem, for advertising rarely ministers to
style. That function has no commercial basis, for by enduring,
style rejects the claims of artificial obsolescence, and those who,
29
with style, find lasting satisfactions of their own, need not in-
dulge the whims of salesmen of esteem. Those salesmen, their
clients, and the media they employ have displayed small sense
of obligation to propose a separation of fashion from esteem, or
of status from the image of success. Indeed probably the obliga-
tion is not theirs, for neither advertising nor its servants should
be expected to renounce the profits of a gospel preached so many
years. Alger, after all, did not let Johnny drown.
Style, in any event, is not susceptible to mass production. The
man who recognizes it, like the man who contrives it, does so
alone. It is akin to what Emerson meant by genius, the disciplined
expression of a creative instinct. Only exploration of the self
and of its world can disclose that kind of genius, that path to
style and to satisfaction. But such exploration, which demands
spare time, is not universally rewarding. For those who resist it,
leisure can be frightening at worst and at best drudgery, from
which one escape is pointless or compulsive work. Yet leisure,
far better than toil, can help uncover genius and give it vent, can
bring a man to design a style of his own.
Leisure, moreover, the most common coin of national plenty,
has often been in recent years the medium of inflating opportu-
nity. In spite of all the confusions imbedded in the culture to
which Madison Avenue adheres, there is impressive quantitative
evidence that Americans have seized their chance to spend their
wealth for time and tools to use it. There are, most obviously,
the power saws in the cellars and the dry flies on the lakes; there
are the gardens, the sailboats, the skis, the bedrolls from Albany
unfurled in Montana. For hundreds of the growing thousands
who can acquire them, these are more than diversions, more
than toys. They are instead the instruments of a process chosen
to engage a legitimate pride in skill or a poignant rapport with
nature. Those satisfactions are neither mean nor silly nor, in the
30
balance, expensive. They are, in Emerson's sense of the word,

the very essence of genius.
Other quantities measure different satisfactions. There are the
palettes and pianos, the titles in soft covers, the records, the tents
for summer symphony and theater. Never anywhere have in-
tellectuals had larger audiences, the arts more patrons, or patrons
wider choice. Leisure and abundance have set off an explosion of
high culture throughout America, and hundreds of the growing
thousands who paint or play or listen have found both joy and
style in the processes of their minds. That represents a genuine
success—a success devoid of status and achieved during a leisure
curiously akin to work.
The quality as well as the quantity of goods and leisure Ameri-
cans consume has been rising. Perhaps there has been no relative
increase in the number of great artists. Certainly ugliness still
abounds. But with abundance there has been a discernible edu-
cation of taste and a mounting demand for beauty. There is evi-
dence of these changes in architecture, city planning, and com-
mercial design. There is also evidence in the offerings of the
movies, television, and the printed media. So, for example, the
incidental music of the omnipresent westerns has been acquaint-
ing children with subde harmonies their parents rejected as dis-
cord.
Refinement, as always, has proceeded through stages, and the
sophisticated, as always, have tended to deplore its pace, but
pessimism need not accompany their meritorious impatience.
Culture, as it were, has moved in the pattern that George Fitz-
hugh ascribed to labor. There has been at the bottom an unavoid-
able mudsill of slaves to the vulgar and the banal. Yet each cul-
tural quake has lifted mudsill and mountain peak alike. As one
American recently reminded British critics who deplore the
horrid and the sham they see across the ocean, the cultural
31
tribulations of Americans arc not their own alone, but the shared
experience of mass society in this century. Compared to other
peoples. Americans have done well. Indeed, under conditions of
plenty, conspicuous emulation has proved to be an effective
agency for communicating gradually the advancing standards of
an intellectual elite.
A better agency of communication is education, through which
leisure has scored its largest triumphs. Half a century ago illiter-
acy thrived on child labor. Now both are substantially erased.
American children have the spare time to learn to read, though
the means they employ may sometimes be inefficient, and the
time to go at least through secondary school, though not all of
them elect to. Most of the marginally talented can find the time
and means for college, and more would do so were there avail-
able the necessary public funds and private motivations.
For all its shortcomings, the national performance in education
has set significant precedents during the past fifty years. The
elongation of schooling has depended upon a distribution of
general wealth in the form of leisure and facilities to individuals
of less than average means, including those in communities of less
than average standing. Those individuals who have labored at
that leisure have confirmed the promise inherent in the fading
cult of work. Their productive use of time has opened to them
opportunities for both kinds of success—for the careers that so-
ciety esteems and, more important though less honored, for the
satisfactions that trained minds achieve.
The gospel of work always made an allowance for education
as a factor in the success of esteem. "Learning," Franklin said,
"whether speculative or practical, is . . . the natural source of
wealth and honor." Alger's Johnny's mother insisted on her son's
completing school. Though it was the success of satisfaction that
meant more to Emerson, education, in school or out, was in his
32
view the dowser for the genius for which he sought release. "Half
engaged in the soil, pawing to get free," he wrote a century ago,
"man needs all the music that can be brought to disengage him.
. . . If trade with its money; if Art with its portfolios; if Science
with her telegraphs through the deeps of space and time can set
his dull nerves throbbing . . . make way and sing." The kind of
education he endorsed pointed that way. It exposed, thus invit-
ing adventure, which then with experience made discipline the
haversack of discovery.
Without denying education that non-directive inspiration, Al-
fred North Whitehead demanded for it a sharper aim. "Culture
should be for action," he wrote; and formal liberal education, he
believed, taught men to act, for it whetted their perceptions and
instilled a sense of manner. It taught them style, in Whitehead's
phrase, "the last acquirement of the educated mind, . . . also the
most useful." "With style," he wrote, "you attain your end and
nothing but your end. With style the effect of your activity is
calculable."
Useful for men who take their satisfaction in their work, style
in Whitehead's sense is no less useful for those who must seek
like rewards in leisure. The very abundance of spare time invites
action disciplined by education, action no less fulfilling because it
is essentially private. "Style," Whitehead concluded, "is the ulti-
mate morality of the mind." With it, a new freedom of time
makes possible a new plenty, not of more goods and services, but
of creative experiences that set man's dull nerves throbbing, and
lift him beyond Emerson's depths of space and time.
In an age of leisure, the want of a liberal education, the ab-
sence of a morality of the mind, too frequently converts spare
time to anguish, especially because society persists in unthinking
incantation of the values of the cult of work. The resulting per-
plexities have disturbed particularly those at or near retirement.
33
Lacking a positive, private mission, most elder men and women

have suffered from a sense of uselessness that derives from equat-
ing both use and good with work. American society has been
rich enough to support advances in medicine and public health
that have lengthened life expectancies, and rich enough to pro-
vide generous, almost universal pensions. American culture, how-
ever, has yet to develop a corollary gerontology. The aged espe-
cially need to understand the uses of productive leisure, and to-
day's children will be aged very soon.
Even sooner many of them, trained to operate the complex
machines, mechanical or organizational, of a sophisticated econ-
omy, will reach a ceiling of responsibility and performance be-
yond which lies the risk of overwhelming ennui. Such was the
brief experience just fifteen years ago of most men now middle-
aged—the men who mastered radar and then sat with Mister
Roberts, preferring danger to another night alone. Most of them
still dread to sit alone. Their peacetime radar conquered, they
fly from the privacy they fear to another flickering scope or to
the empty company of togetherness. There they meet their
wives, resourceless fugitives from time saved by electricity and
prepackaged foods. They waste their leisure as their forbears
wasted abundant land and water. So also will their sons and
daughters if education emphasizes trades.
A n advanced technology perforce demands longer and better
schooling of technicians to manipulate its engines and its laws,
but a leisure culture demands much more. It needs to educate
its citizens to use their time; it needs to teach them a morality
of the mind, or, as aimless artisans a century ago corrupted work,
and thus themselves, they will corrupt their leisure, and thus
their opportunity and their society's.
So many Americans have found themselves in leisure that
there is strong reason to believe that in the future, few need be
34
lost. But education has to help much more than it yet has.
It cannot wait for cultural quakes; it must precipitate them. It
cannot wait for languid and complacent office holders to offer
assistance for a function they do not begin to understand. It
must instruct them, and their constituents.
"It is shocking," Walter Lippmann wrote not long ago, "and
indeed something in the way of a disgrace, that this country,
which . . . is so rich, has not had the purpose or the will . . . or a
sufficiendy responsible sense of the future to provide an adequate
school system." It is also shocking, and equally a disgrace, that
educators have so often measured their crisis in bricks and
mortar and aspirant Ph-D.'s.
There is a greater urgency. There is need to demonstrate that
a system productive of wealth can also produce satisfying in-
dividuality. There is need to prove that men welcome freedom
from want because they value freedom to discover and to ex-
press themselves. Any rich society can, if it will, suffuse its
members with fashionable goods. Any can inflate its members'
traffic in purchasable esteem. Any can give them time to spare.
Leisure time is susceptible to massive use in contemplation and
creativity, but leisure time has yet to be directed to those ends
by a gospel of confidence, a gospel as powerful and pervasive as
the outmoded cult of work.
It can be. It can be if educators transfigure the gospel of work
by elucidating the best meaning of success. In so doing they
will propound a gospel of leisure for men to believe and to
follow. Its chapters lie deep and sure within the culture. They
have been for decades the core of the content and of the purpose
of liberal education, of the arts and sciences and newer social
sciences which society can now ill afford to deny to any boy or
girl.
The message of these arts and sciences, taught with the convic-
35
tion and the vigor, the duration and universality that once at-
tended instruction in the cult of work, opens for exploration the
boundless life of the mind. That is the cradle to Emerson's
genius, by which each individual first finds and then differ-
entiates himself. That is the crucible of Whitehead's style, which
directs the actions of each differentiated man. Only such men are
finally successful, for only they are satisfied. Only such men, in
the last analysis, are free. They will not long remain so if they
suffer the contemporary Algers their wasteful affluence. They
have instead to teach the new, the now inclusive leisure class
to work to find the private satisfactions so abundant in their
plenitude of time.
36
The Strategy of Peaceful Competition
John K. Galbraith
O N E OF THE NEW AND COMPARATIVELY ENCOURAGING PHRASES THAT

have recently come into the language of international relations
has been peaceful competition. W e are being told, with that
impressive combination of certainty and unction that we use
when we do not know, that our relations with the Soviet
Union will increasingly be governed by such competition. Since,
in this world, we may safely seize on any encouraging trends
without being unduly encouraged, we may hope that this will
be so.
In any case, this is the only kind of competition on which
anyone can reflect with any comfort. And we should not be
without hope. Clearly there is a growing appreciation of the
new dimensions of destruction by modern weapons. That these
had changed the calculus of war was urged by the well qualified
after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps so large a lesson re-
quired time to sink in. And certainly we were fortunate in
having had these years during which it could penetrate the
refractory materials protecting the human intelligence. For
one senses that even the professionally bellicose are becoming
more restrained these days. Even the professional global strate-
gists—those whom World War II gave an exciting insight into
37
the theory and attractively remote practice of mass destruction

—have, one feels, been losing their enthusiasm for universal
annihilation.
It would be wrong, surely, to imagine that this modest accre-
tion of wisdom and caution is confined to our side of the Iron
Curtain. Whatever the peculiarities of the Russian temperament
or the Communist commitment to its faith, there is no reason
to think that these include a predilection for high temperature
incineration. This being so, perhaps we shall have an increase
in peaceful caution and a diminution in bellicosity on both
sides. But my purpose is not to argue for this prospect but to
assume it and to examine the nature of the resulting behavior.
The goal of military competition is relatively simple, even

though the common feature of military strategists from Da-
rius to Hitler has been a grievous inability to make things go
according to plan. The goal, if the occasion arises, is to sub-
due the enemy with a minimum of damage to yourself. Indeed
war has become impractical because this simple goal has be-
come impractical. With modern weapons, even given a con-
siderable superiority, there is no way a country can minimize
damage to itself—even its own weapons may, under some cir-
cumstances, do it irreparable harm. And planning is almost
certainly now more subjective than ever, although the planner
is protected by the unlikelihood that he will survive to learn
that he was wrong.
The alternative to military competition, it is usually assumed,
must be economic competition. The first having become too dis-
38
THE STRATEGY OF PEACEFUL COMPETITION
agreeable, we turn to the next most unappetizing thing. As com-

monly envisaged, this competition amounts to a production
contest. The Soviets seek to outproduce us so we must seek to
outproduce them. They seek to surpass us so we must sur-
pass ourselves. In this race, the prize is awarded to the country
with the greatest annual increase in its Gross National Product.
In recent years our Gross National Product has been in-
creasing at a rate of rather less than three per cent; the Soviet
increase has been better than seven per cent. Those with a con-
siderable sense of urgency say our immediate job is to raise
our rate of growth and so to protect our considerable headstart.
Those who wish to reassure us say not that we should allow
the Soviets to overtake us but that their figures are wrong.
A small but flourishing industry is now devoted to proving
statistically that the Russians' growth isn't what it is cracked
up to be. Its Mike Todd is Mr. Colin Clark, the Australian
and Oxford economist, who all but establishes that Russia is
going backward.
Our rate of economic growth has not been satisfactory in
recent years. There has been unnecessary unemployment. In-
comes of important groups have lagged. Our present machinery
of public finance gets revenues for urgent public purposes with
ease only out of expanding revenues. Growth settles many other
problems—of this let there be no doubt.
And the Soviets are, indeed, challenging us to a production
race. They proclaim their intention of overtaking us in every
park and factory. One of their most successful industries must
be the production of pictorial statistics for posting on walls.
We certainly must assume they are serious.
But to imagine that our competition with the Soviets con-
sists in meeting their production challenge would be a major
mistake. Economic growth means one thing to the Soviets and
39
something very different to us. To a point they can win by

pursuing this goal; we shall surely lose if we do so.
The U.S.S.R. was until recent times a backward and mainly
agricultural country with a low standard of living. In such a
country, a rapid rate of industrial growth and a rapid increase
in agricultural productivity are important. They allow for an
increase in present living standards and pave the path for future
advance. They enable increased investment in technical and scien-
tific advance. They provide a surplus for overseas use in support
of foreign policy. It would probably be foolish in this world
to imagine that military calculations will be absent from the
most peaceful of peaceful competition. To a point, increased
industrial capacity has a bearing on military effectiveness. How-
ever, this is a relationship that is much misunderstood and I will
return to it presendy.
In the U.S.S.R. there is a special need for increased production
in a world where other countries have a more advanced industrial
plant and a much higher standard of living. For the demonstra-
tion effect, as economists have come to call it, of wealth and
well-being in other countries creates a presumption of inferiority
—of being second-best. Everywhere in the world this is the
effect of American living standards. It operates with special
force in a socialist or Communist country, for there inferiority in
living standard carries the implication of inferiority of system.
But these considerations do not hold, and certainly not with
equal force, for us. The Russians want more because we have
more. But we must ask ourselves why we want more. There
must be a better reason than merely seeking to keep ahead. A
mere statistical race, in which we turn in the best results for
the sake of the bars on the charts, would be a futile thing. It
would stir us to no enduring sense of national purpose. It would
arouse no enthusiasm save among the statisticians, and no one
40
but a statistician would be able to judge between the competing

claims of the statisticians as to who had won.
When we examine the industries we would be seeking to
expand with greater economic growth, we see with even more
force how litde there is for us in such a contest. Would we seek
to increase food production? Obviously not. Surpluses are al-
ready vast. Obesity is now rather more a problem than malnutri-
tion, and far more ingenuity now goes into the packaging of
food than the producing of it. (Even here the end is in sight.
The unopenable package, the goal of the container industry, is
just around the corner. Thereafter the package cannot be further
improved.) Similarly the need for clothing is not pressing. We
now design clothes for their aesthetic or exotic, but rarely for
their protective, effect. An annual automobile output of eight
or ten million cars is within sight. It will bring appalling prob-
lems of storage and driving space. More of our countryside will
be subject to the ghasdy surgery of the superhighway. And it is
a question whether the discards, wrecks, and derelicts can be
recycled fast enough to prevent a hideous metallic blot from
spreading out from the service stations to cover the whole land.
Some will wish to suggest that there are many individuals
and families with insufficient food, poor clothing, bad housing,
or who are subject to other kinds of privation. This is true. And
to provide decendy for these people would require more produc-
tion. But first of all these people require the income or the educa-
tion, health, skills and abilities which enable them to earn the
income with which to buy that production. Given that income,
the production that satisfies it will be forthcoming. The income
or the opportunity for access to income is the place we have to
start. There is no assurance merely from expanding output per se
that the benefit will accrue to those at the bottom of the pyramid
who need the goods the most.
41
It is commonly assumed that the Russians are investing in

industrial plant—steel capacity, machinery and machine tools
production, chemical plant—for the sake of expanding their
military power. T h e greater such investment, the greater their
power.
No one can know for sure what the Soviets have in mind.
And there is also the possibility that they, like us, are guided
in economic matters less by thought than by its inconvenience.
What is reasonably certain is that they must be reaching the
point where further increases in their industrial capacity and
output add but little to their military power. In old-fashioned
wars, in which steel was projected against steel, there were limits
to the amount of heavy industry that could be brought into use
against the enemy. In World War II, Germany, with much less
steel capacity than the Soviets now have, had more than enough
to equip her vast armies. With slight effort, she could have
produced more steel from her available capacity; much was used
for low priority purposes.1 But modern weapons, as they are
graciously called, make far less use of steel or other heavy in-
dustrial capacity than the old-fashioned kind. Also steel provides
no defense against them. Unless the Soviets expect, one day, to
mobilize and equip the vast armies which operated in World
W a r II from the Baltic to the Black Sea—and believe that the
plants which would do so would be allowed to operate without
hindrance—then further increases in their industrial capacity can
have little military relevance. A much smaller industrial plant
than ours did not keep the Soviets from forging far ahead of us
in the development of rockets and missiles.
If the Russians are reaching the point of diminishing returns

on the military value of industrialization, then we have almost
42
certainly passed it. Apart from its effect on public revenues,

purely quantitative growth in our industrial plant adds nothing
that is essential to our military strength. A much better case
can be made that it weakens military capacity. Such growth
provides us with goods and gadgets which we quickly come to
consider necessary and which we would surrender with vast
reluctance in emergency. Some of them—the automobile is a
warning—may be bringing the final atrophy of our physical
capacities. We are reminded of how hard it was in Korea to
learn to fight an enemy that didn't ride in jeeps. Other advances
—oil furnaces, motor transport, highly specialized food produc-
tion—make us dependent to the death on intricate and highly
vulnerable supply lines.
Finally it is said that production provides us with an exportable
surplus which enables us to support our allies and to strengthen
our position in the underdeveloped lands by contributing liberally
to their development. But it is not a shortage of production that
has been handicapping such efforts in the past. Rather it has
been reluctance to employ production for these purposes—and
to appropriate the necessary funds. And as this is being written,
another problem is on the horizon. That is the high cost of
much of our industrial output—a high cost in which an egre-
giously expensive steel supply plays a central role—which together
with poor design is making it increasingly difficult to sell goods
abroad and increasingly profitable or agreeable to supply our-
selves from foreign sources. While our foreign aid and assistance
help create exports, it is also the difference between large exports
and more modest imports which we use to help other countries.
The prices of our products—in particular the prices in heavy in-
dustry—have now become more important than their quantity.
Our ability to produce a surplus for export is unimportant if
it is too costly for others to buy.
So even though we may wish for a more rapid and reliable
43
economic growth for other reasons, a production contest with

the Soviets will not much advance our cause. Without further
action it would not supply the goods to the people who most
need more. It would add nothing in itself to our military or
economic power. And it could divert attention from more im-
portant things.
The objectives of the competition with the Soviets—the things

which score on the board—are most vividly illuminated by the
Sputniks and the lunar probes. To contemplate these for a
moment is to see the true nature of the competition.
Coupled no doubt with the military threat, but by no means
dependent on it, these achievements added enormously to the
Soviet prestige. They modified the world-wide tendency—a tend-
ency by no means confined to the non-Communist lands—to
assume that such achievements come normally from the United
States. A myth of American scientific omnipotence was dispelled.
But scientific achievement has long been a source of national
prestige. In Germany, France, Britain, the United States—notably
also in Czarist Russia—scientific accomplishment has been a
major source of national renown. In a day when science is so
closely allied not only with military power but also health, phys-
ical well-being, and economic advance, it is natural that scientific
prowess should be a special source of esteem. One may add that
the Russians have also hit upon a form of scientific achievement
with a unique capacity for advertising itself.
What the space exploration has shown is the vitality and vigor
and cultural dynamism in one important dimension of Soviet
society. It is this which has impressed the other people of the
44
world, including ourselves. The Soviets have also been careful

to moderate the military threat implicit in their achievement.
This threat also is impressive but at the price of giving a warlike
overtone to the accomplishment which detracts from the image
of the boldly scientific society. The Soviets have seen that to
impress, they should not unduly frighten.
If we take the Soviet success as our guide, the competition is
in those things which reveal the quality and effectiveness of the
social order and hence its attraction to, and repute among, the
varied inhabitants of the globe. It is not a purely scientific con-
test. Anything which manifests the quality of the society is
important in the competition so defined. Any weakness is
damaging. The society with the most points of vitality and
strength and the fewest of weakness will command the most
respect and support. It will, one assumes, have the better chance
of surviving. This, one further assumes, is the object of the race.
So to define matters is to see with some clarity our problems

in the race and also our possible courses of action. W e see again
how barren the production race is—at least for us. It would add
to our well-being. W e should have more luxuries than before.
But the rest of the world—including Russia—is already impressed
by how well in general we live. Indeed we have already made
too much of the American standard of living as a mark of our
virtue. Consumption, conspicuous and otherwise, has always
had its greatest appeal to the consumer.
W e ought not assume that the competition is confined to
space mechanics, as we show some signs of doing. Certainly
45
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Whoever ventures an exposure of the fashionable vices of
influential circles—whoever assails the citadels and strongholds of
crime and corruption, must not expect to elude numerous and deep-
laid conspiracies for the sacrifice of life, which, if he escape falling a
victim, he will be more than fortunate. Even so far, the author has
bitterly experienced all this. The marvel is that he is yet alive and
determined to continue in stronger terms than before exhibited—
relying on invincible truth and the better portions of society to bear
him up through the ordeal which he has to encounter. Although he
has suffered much, and has had many “hair-breadth escapes” from
the plots and snares laid for his destruction.
The subsequent part of the Appendix will inform the reader of
several infernal concoctions for assassination when attempts at
intimidation failed. The first of these will embrace particulars in the
period betwixt the publication and the author’s arrest, and the other
about three years after the trial had terminated. The period betwixt
publication and arrest cannot be devoid of interest to the reader—it
is a prelude to the important trial which followed. The incidents
involved during the time here referred to have ponderous bearings,
in a circumstantial point of view, toward establishing the substantial
correctness of Copeland’s confessions, although intended to
invalidate them and make a nullity of the whole.
During imprisonment Copeland seemed to fully comprehend the
profound plans and commanding power of one by the name of
Shoemake. This is the man who played so conspicuous a part
before and on trial in combination with the three prosecuting parties
of Mobile. The arch-enemy of all mankind cannot surpass him in
perfidious deception.
“With smooth dissimulation well skilled to grace,
A devil’s purpose with an angel’s face.”
He who it was who first addressed a letter of almost matchless
duplicity to the author, while residing in Perry county, under a forged
or fictitious signature. He who it was who next visited the author in
person, first to try the arts of persuasion, and then the designing
influences of intimidation, but in either case without the desired
effect. After this, he it was who entered into compact with the
prosecuting three, of Mobile, bore the requisition from the Governor
of Alabama to the Governor of Mississippi for the rendition of the
author, and, in the circumstances connected with the arrest, acted in
such a mysterious and suspicious manner as could leave no doubt
that he contemplated the life of the author under a plausible pretext
of resistance to lawful authority. But this object was signally
defeated. A considerable number of good citizens quickly collected
together, well armed for protection, and volunteered to accompany
the author under arrest to Mobile, which they accordingly did, and
effectually secured his safety.
The trial followed next. By careful attention to the circumstances
connected with it much information may be gathered, showing the
force of political considerations, and how hard the task for truth and
justice, in the first efforts, to gain a triumph over a combination of
wealth and intellect leagued together for bad purposes. For instance,
the presiding Judge, McKinstry, could have had no personal
prejudice or enmity against the author, and in his heart might have
rejoiced over the dissolution of the clan, but his palpably
reprehensible conduct on trial furnishes convincing evidence that he
was influenced by other considerations than those of law and justice.
To this fact Dr. Bevell, one of the impaneled jurymen on the case,
had his eye turned in the references to the Judge’s conduct and
political considerations, which references will be found in his letter
published in another part of the work.
On the days of trial the notorious character of this said Shoemake
was made public and manifest. He was the principal witness relied
on in the prosecution. Another, equally infamous, as demonstrated
by the most satisfactory of testimony, by the name of Bentonville
Taylor, was brought from afar in rags and poverty, and sent back in
costly attire with money in profusion. Does the impartial judgment
require anything more to produce conviction of the shameful features
of the prosecution? If so, he will find much more before he gets
through the particulars of the trial. Added to this, the almost universal
outburst of sympathy in behalf of the author, with letters of
condolence from distant parts, all of which will be found in the proper
places of the work.
Under circumstances so adverse it is not to be expected that
Copeland, in his confession, could give more than a small fractional
part of the transactions of the whole clan. Since then a number and
variety of interesting matters have been collected from the most
authentic of sources, and will be found in the appropriate place of
this pamphlet.
The subject of crime opens an almost inexhaustible expanse for
expatiation. An elaborate treatise on its causes and remedies is too
prolix for a work of this nature—only a few passing observations on
this theme will be found interspersed, which are relevant and have a
direct bearing on the main topics discussed.
And now, in closing this introductory part, the author wishes the
public to understand that he has no personal animosity against those
who so wrongfully deprived him of his liberty, ruined him with
expenses, and encompassed his life in so many intricate ways. He
has not indulged in any revengeful passions, but has endeavored to
strictly confine himself to the unprejudiced and impartial province of
the historian and biographer—according merit where due, and with
propriety denouncing crimes, corruptions and unhealthy conspiracies
whenever they come in the way. And, if in so doing, he is to endure a
repetition of persecutions and prosecutions, with fresh dangers
added, he will try to bear them with all the fortitude he can command,
with the hope that the peaceably and honestly disposed parts of the
community will rally for the pulling down the edifices of vice, and for
establishing a better, a purer and a healthier condition of society.
PREFACE.
The number of years during which the Copeland and Wages Gang
of Land Pirates pursued a successful career of robbery, incendiarism
and murder in the United States; their final dismemberment, disgrace
and violent end at the hand of retributive justice; and the stern moral
lesson taught by their history and fate, have induced the
undersigned to publish the confession of one of the leaders of the
gang, as made by himself, in anticipation of his death at the hands of
the hangman. Its accuracy may be relied on; and indeed it is hardly
possible to doubt the truth of its statements, so minutely,
consecutively and clearly are they related, and so consonant are
they with the various localities and the characters of the men.
This confession was given to me, principally by the aid of copious
memoranda which Copeland had kept for years in his diary, and
which materially refreshed his memory.
James Copeland, the subject of this memoir, was born near
Pascagoula river, in Jackson county, Miss., on the 18th day of
January, 1823. He was the son of Isham Copeland and Rebecca
Copeland, his wife—formerly Rebecca Wells. The parents had
resided for many years near Pascagoula river.
Isham Copeland was a farmer in easy circumstances, with a good
farm, several negroes, plenty of horses and mules and other live
stock; and, in fact, he might be said to have everything about him
that a family in moderate circumstances could require to enable him
to live comfortably. He was the father of several sons; but, alas! this,
which is by most men deemed a blessing, proved to him a curse;
and after encountering many trials in youth and manhood, just when
he thought to enjoy the peace and repose of old age, his son’s
misconduct drew on him many severe reverses of fortune, and finally
drove him to the grave broken hearted.
J. R. S. PITTS.
LIFE AND CAREER
OF
JAMES COPELAND,
THE SOUTHERN LAND PIRATE, AND HIS INTIMATE ASSOCIATES,
AS RELATED IN DETAIL, BY HIMSELF, IN PRISON, A FEW DAYS BEFORE

HIS EXECUTION, TO DR. J. R. S. PITTS, THEN SHERIFF OF PERRY COUNTY,
MISS.
When I was about ten or eleven years of age, my father sent me to

school, and I went at intervals from time to time, to several good
teachers. I might, with proper training and management, have
received a liberal education. My father often insisted, and urged it
upon me to study and try to obtain a good education, and he told me
that he would send me to school as long as I wished to go. But being
misled by my associations with bad company, I was engaged,
instead, in studying mischief, and other things no way profitable to
myself or advantageous to youths. It was my misfortune, that my
disposition led me on to study how to cheat, defraud and swindle my
comrades and school-mates, out of their pocket-knives, their money
or anything they might have, which I wanted, and I was generally
successful in my undertaking. If I could not effect my object in one
way, I would resort to some other, and finally obtain it before I
stopped. Indulging in this rude and mischievous disposition, I
naturally became more hardened, and when at school, it was my
delight to see the scholars whipped or otherwise punished, and I
would often tell lies on any of them that would displease me, so as to
cause them to get a flogging; and very often I would tell a lie on an
innocent scholar, so as to clear a favorite and guilty one, and have
the innocent one punished. It most generally happened, that I
managed my villainy so as to get clear; it sometimes happened,
however, that I got punished. This I did not care for any longer than
the punishment lasted. So soon as I was released, I would commit a
worse misdeed than the one I was chastised for, and any of my
school-mates that were the cause of my punishment, I was certain to
wreak my vengeance on, by having them punished in some way.
From my bad conduct in school there was no teacher that would
permit me to go to his school long at a time, and whenever I had any
difficulty with my teachers, my mother would always protect and
indulge me in what I would do; and being so indulged and protected,
this excited me to commit crimes of greater magnitude. And I am
frank, here to say, that my mother has been the principal and great
cause of all my crimes and misfortunes, by stimulating me to the
commission of those deeds that have brought me to what I am.
When I was about the age of twelve years, my mother one day
sent me with a sack to a neighbor’s house (Mr. Helverson’s), to
procure some vegetables or greens. I communicated my errand to
Mrs. H., who told me to go to the garden and take what I wanted. I
had no knife with me. I asked Mrs. H. to loan me a knife, which I
knew she had, and she pulled out a very pretty little knife from her
work-pocket, and told me not to lose or break it, for it was a present
made to her by a friend. This I listened to and promised her that I
would be careful. Now, while I was in the garden procuring
vegetables or greens, my whole mind and wits were employed in
devising some mode by which I could cheat the lady out of her knife.
Finally, after I had procured my vegetables and placed them in the
sack, I put the knife in the bottom of the sack; I then returned to the
house, and told the lady that I laid the knife down in the garden, and
had forgot the place and could not find it; I asked her to go with me
and help me hunt for it, which she accordingly did, and we both
hunted diligently, but to no effect. The lady was very anxious about
her knife and much regretted its loss, while I was all the time
laughing in my sleeve, to know how completely I had swindled her.
This trick of mine passed off very well for a time. It was, however,
found out that I had the knife, and that created some noise and
trouble. I was accused of stealing the knife. But I denied all
accusations and stated that I had bought the knife I had, in Mobile,
and proved it by my mother, who always upheld me in my rascality.
This may be said to have been my first successful feat in stealing,
although I was in the habit of stealing little frivolous things from the
school boys, before that time.
My father living a very close neighbor to Mr. Helverson, whose
family is related to ours, their stock run together in the same range.
My next onset in stealing was from Mr. H. again; he had a lot of very
fine fat pigs, and these were at that time selling at a high price in
Mobile. My brother Isham (nicknamed Whinn) and myself geared up
a horse in a cart and started, pretendingly for a camp hunt to kill deer
and haul to Mobile. We went a short distance that night and camped.
During the night we went to Helverson’s hog bed, and stole a cart
load of his finest pigs, fifteen in number, hauled them to Mobile and
sold them at two dollars each. Although Mr. H. was satisfied in his
own mind that we had stolen his pigs, yet he could not prove it; and I
escaped again. So I was stimulated with my success, and being still
more encouraged and upheld by my mother, and not exceeding
fourteen years of age, I believed that I could make an independent
fortune by thieving, and became insensible of the danger which
awaited me. A short time after the incident just related had
transpired, I made a second rake upon Mr. H.’s pigs. But in my
second adventure, I was not so fortunate as I was in the first, for Mr.
H. rather got me that time. The proof was sufficiently strong, and I
was prosecuted, for the first time, for pig stealing. Well knowing my
guilt as I did, and the evidence against me, I thought my case
extremely doubtful. I was arrested by the sheriff of Jackson county,
and had to give bond to appear at the Circuit Court of Jackson
county, to answer an indictment preferred against me by the State of
Mississippi, for the crime of larceny. The bond required me to attend
the Court from term to term, and from day to day, until discharged by
due course of law. My poor old father employed the best counsel to
defend me, that could be obtained in all the country. This cost the
poor old man a large sum of money. My counsel, after learning the
facts of the case, advised me that my only chance of acquittal, was
to put off the trial as long as possible. This he did from term to term,
in hopes that something might occur to get me acquitted. I well knew
if my case should be brought to a hearing, I would be convicted, and
I dreaded the consequences; for I knew that there would then be no
chance on earth to prevent my being sent to the penitentiary.
Fully sensible of my situation, young as I was at that time, it
became necessary for me to devise some plan to get out of the
scrape, and I reflected for weeks how to manage this matter. One
day, in a conversation with my mother and some other confidential
friends, she and they advised me to consult Gale H. Wages; and my
mother said she would send for Wages and see him herself, as he
was a particular friend of hers. This she accordingly did, and he
came to our house. There were several of the clan at our house
then, though I did not know them at that time as such; but my mother
did, as I afterward found out when I joined them. Among the many
plans proposed by the clan, none seemed to suit my mother or
Wages. Some were for waylaying and killing the witnesses; some for
one thing, and some for another. Finally Wages made his
proposition, which was seconded by my mother. This was the
proposition I had been waiting to hear, for my mother told me that
whatever plan Wages would pursue, he would be certain to get me
clear. His plan was, that we should, in some way or other, endeavor
to have the Court house and all the records destroyed, and so
destroy the indictment against me. By that means there would be
nothing against me, and I should be acquitted, as no charge would
rest against me.
With this plan I was highly pleased, and much elated with the idea
that I had a friend fully able and competent to bear me out, and who
would stand up to me at any and all hazards, and bring me out clear.
Wages pledged himself to me in private to do this, and he was as
good as his word. We set a time for the accomplishment of our
design, and we accordingly met. The precise date I cannot recollect,
but it was a dry time, and a dark night, with a strong breeze from the
North. After procuring sufficient dry combustibles, we entered the
Court-house, went up stairs, and placed our combustibles in the roof,
on the windward side of the house. Wages went down stairs to patrol
around. After reconnoitering around sufficiently, he gave me the
signal, by a rap or knock on the wall; I immediately sprung open the
door of my dark-lantern, applied the match, and made my escape
down stairs, and Wages and myself left the place in double quick
time. We halted on an eminence some five or six hundred yards to
the southeast of the Court house, to watch the conflagration. Such a
sight I never had before beheld. The flames seemed to ascend as
high, if not higher than the tops of the tallest pine trees; they made
everything perfectly light for over two hundred yards around. After
the Court-house, records and all were completely consumed, and
the flames had abated and died away, we took our departure for
home, rejoicing at our success in the accomplishment of our design.
There was a great deal of talk and conjecture about the burning of
the Court-house, and we were accused—at least, I was strongly
censured, but there never was any discovery made, nor any proof
sufficient to get hold of either Wages or myself; so I again got clear
of a crime of which I was guilty and for which I ought to have been
punished.
The assistance, advice and protection I had received from Wages,
gave me the utmost confidence in him, and he had unbounded
influence over me; I looked on him as my warmest and most
confidential friend, and I eventually pinned my whole faith on him
and relied upon him for advice and directions in everything. Although
a villain, as I must now acknowledge Wages was, yet he had some
redeeming traits in his character. At his own home he was friendly,
kind and hospitable; in company, he was affable and polite; and no
person at first acquaintance, would have believed for one moment,
that he was the out lawed brigand that he finally proved himself to
be; and I firmly believe he would have spilt the last drop of blood in
his veins to protect me; yet I must say that he was the principal
author of my misfortunes, and has brought me where I am.
After the burning of the Court House, the intercourse between
Wages and myself became more frequent. We became strongly
allied to each other, and confidence was fully established between
us. Wages one day made a proposition to me; to join him, and go
with him, alleging that we could make money without work, and live
in ease and genteel style; that there were a great many persons
concerned with him, in different parts of the country, some of them
men of wealth and in good standing in the community in which they
lived; that they had an organized Band that would stand up to each
other at all hazard; that they had a Wigwam in the city of Mobile,
where they held occasional meetings; and that they had many
confederates there whom the public little suspected. To this
proposition I readily acceded; it corresponded with my disposition
and idea of things, and then, being the age I was, and stimulated by
my past success, I feared nothing.
I went to Mobile with Wages, and there he introduced me to some
of his comrades, who were members of his Clan. They accordingly
held a meeting at their Wig-wam, and I was there introduced by
Wages, (who was their president,) as a candidate for membership, I
should have been rejected, had Wages not interceded for me. I was
finally passed and admitted to membership. Wages then
administered to me the oath, which every member had to take. I was
then instructed and given the signs and pass-words of the Clan; and
above all was cautioned to keep a watchful eye, and not to let any
person entrap me; nor let any person, under pretence of belonging to
the Clan, or wishing to join, obtain in any way information from me in
relation to the existence of the Clan, or their plan or mode of
operation. The oath was administered on the Holy Bible. (Oh! what a
profanation of that good book!) The form of the oath was: “You
solemnly swear upon the Holy Evangelist of Almighty God, that you
will never divulge, and always conceal and never reveal any of the
signs or pass-words of our order; that you will not invent any sign,
token or device by which the secret mysteries of our order may be
made known; that you will not in any way betray or cause to be
betrayed any member of this order—the whole under pain of having
your head severed from your body—so help you God.”
Wages was President and Chief of the Clan. All important
business of the Clan was entrusted to his care. He called meetings,
gave all notices to the Clan for their gatherings, and when
assembled he presided in the chair. In all matters, he had the
preferred right to introduce resolutions for the benefit of the Clan.
There were present at this meeting, Charles McGrath, Vice-
President; McClain, Secretary; John Eelva, Henry Sanford, Richard
Cabel and Sampson Teapark, Vigilant Committee; William Brown, of
Mobile, Tyler.
After I was thus initiated, and invested with all the signs, words
and tokens, and fully instructed in the mysteries of the Clan, I was
taught their mode of secret correspondence, by means of an
alphabet or key, invented by the notorious Murrell, of Tennessee. I
was furnished with the alphabet and key, and in that same mystic
writing I was furnished with a list of all the names that belonged to
our Clan, and a list of several other Clans, that ours was in
correspondence with, their several places of residence, and the
locations of their Wig-wams; so that when we stole a horse, a mule,
or a negro, we knew precisely where to carry them, to have them
concealed and sold.
After I had been thus fully initiated and had become identified with
the Clan, Wages and McGrath, knowing my ability, and that I was a
keen shrewd and cunning lad, took me under their immediate special
charge. We had a rendezvous at old Wages’ about twelve miles from
Mobile, and another at Dog River, about the same distance in a
different direction. We ranged that season from one place to the
other, and sometimes in town, stealing any and everything we could.
Sometimes killing beef, hogs and sheep, hauling them to town and
selling them; sometimes stealing a fine horse or mule and conveying
it to some of our comrades to conceal; and occasionally a negro
would disappear. All this while, we pretended to be engaged in
making shingles, burning charcoal, and getting laths and pickets,
each for himself. We always managed to furnish the family with all
the meat they could use.
We worked on in this way until late in the summer or early in the
fall of 1839, when most of the inhabitants had left the city; and we
having six of our Clan then employed as City Guards, we rallied our
forces and Wages ordered a meeting. It was there resolved that we
should prepare ourselves with boats and teams—the boats to be
stationed at a particular wharf in Mobile, on a certain night, and the
teams at a landing named, on Dog River the next night. It was also
ordered that we should assemble at our Wig-wam on the first night at
seven o’clock. The meeting then adjourned.
The promised evening came, and every member was punctual in
his attendance. It was a full meeting of the Clan. We all rigged
ourselves out with false moustaches, some with false whiskers,
some with a green patch over one eye, and many of them dressed
like sailors, and thus fitted out and disguised, we were ready for
action, with all kinds of false keys, skeleton keys, lock picks, crow
bars, &c. At nine o’clock the City Guards turned out, and by a
previous arrangement, those of our comrades who mounted guard,
were on the first watch. They immediately sent two of their number to
inform us where to make the first break. They had reconnoitered
previously and knew what places had the richest and most valuable
goods, and they had also procured false keys for several stores.
Thus armed, each man with his revolver, bowie knife and dark
lantern, about ten o’clock we started out. Our first break was a fancy
dry-goods store which we opened with one of our keys. We took
over $5,000 worth of goods from that store, fine silks, muslins, &c.
We next entered a rich jewelry store, and made a clean sweep there.
There were no fine watches; we got some silver watches and two or
three gold watches, left, we supposed, to be repaired. Our raise
there was about four to five thousand dollars. Our next break was on
a large clothing store. There we took $3000 worth of the finest and
best clothing. While we were at this, some of the clan were packing
off and storing in their boats. We had procured two butcher carts,
which would stand a short distance off and our men packed and
loaded the carts, which they hauled to our boats. About half-past
eleven o’clock, knowing that there would be a new guard out at
twelve o’clock, we dispersed and set fire to each of the stores we
had robbed. Soon there was the cry of fire; the wind commenced
blowing, and the fire spread rapidly. Our Clan now commenced
operations anew; we seized and carried out goods from any and
every store we came to, still retaining the carts. We kept them
constantly employed; and before daylight we had loaded two large,
swift boats, and had a large quantity of merchandise in a “wood flat.”
A little before daylight, we left with our boats for Dog River. We
arrived there about eight o’clock, ten miles from the city, and went up
the river to our landing place, where we secreted our goods until that
night, when we had our teams at work, hauling off and concealing
goods, which we finally accomplished the second night. Wages then
ordered a meeting of the clan, and punctual attendance was
required. The object of this meeting was for a report from each
member of the amount of goods he had obtained, so that an equal
distribution might be made. From the report then made, we had
procured over twenty-five thousand dollars worth of goods of almost
every description. We had an abundant supply of groceries and
liquors. Our friends in the city had a bountiful supply of almost
everything. We made a division of our plunder, and Wages, McGrath
and myself got for our share about six thousand dollars worth. We
were permitted to select the finest and most costly goods, such as
the jewelry, fine silks, muslins etc., which we could carry in our
trunks.
Having properly stowed away our effects, we took a trip from
Mobile to Florida by way of Pensacola, carrying with us some of the
jewelry, watches and dry goods. We traveled from Pensacola
through Florida, with our pack of goods, as pedlars, each taking a
different route, and all to meet at Apalachicola on a certain day.
Wages went the middle route, McGrath the southern route, and I
went the northern route. I traveled some distance, occasionally
selling some of my plunder. I eventually arrived at a very rich
neighborhood, near the Chatochooca river, not far from the Alabama
line. There I soon disposed of most of my goods.
I fell in with a house where a very rich old widow lady lived. She
bought a good deal of my jewelry and other goods for her two young
daughters. I pretended to be sick, for an excuse to stay there. This
lady had a very nice mulatto girl about seventeen years old. During
the time I was there pretending to be sick, I made an arrangement
with this girl to run away with me; I promised to take her for a wife,
and carry her to a free State. She was to meet me on a certain night
at the landing on the river, about one mile from that place. I left the
house pretending to go to Columbus, Ga., and traveled up the river
some thirty miles, where I stole a canoe. I procured some meat and
bread and started down the river. On the night appointed I was at the
landing, and about ten o’clock the mulatto girl came. She had
provided bed clothing and provisions in plenty. I then started down
the river with my girl. We went about thirty miles that night, and lay
by in the river swamp all next day. The next night we made about
fifty miles down the river. The third night we reached Apalachicola,
two days previous to the time appointed to meet Wages and
McGrath. I landed a short distance above town, and left my girl in a
swamp just after daylight, and then went to the city. In looking
around I fell in with John Harden, he being one of our clan. He soon
gave me an introduction to a place where I could conceal my girl,
and stay myself. The next day McGrath arrived; I met him in the
street, and gave him a sign to follow me to our rendezvous. I showed
him my girl and told him the way I had got her; he then told me that
he had stolen a likely negro fellow, and had him concealed in a
swamp about four miles from town. After dinner, and a little before
night, McGrath and I went out to the swamp, brought in his fellow,
and concealed him at the same place where my girl was.
The next day about eight o’clock Wages came up; we were all on
the lookout for him. We gave him a hint to come to our place. We
showed Wages what a raise we had made; he then told us that he
had stolen two negroes and two fine horses, and that they were
concealed in the swamp about five miles from town. In fear of pursuit
he said we must leave instanter. We made an arrangement with
Harden and our landlord to take the horses. They gave Wages
twenty-five dollars a piece for the horses, and our board bill. That
night Wages and Harden went out to the swamp; Harden took the
horses and left, and Wages brought in his negroes and placed them
with ours. That night while Wages was gone after his negroes
McGrath and I went to a coffee house, and while there we met some
Spaniards that had a little schooner there, and which was then
loaded for New Orleans. We made the arrangement with them to
carry us and our negroes to New Orleans, returned to our place, and
had everything prepared. About ten o’clock Wages came in with his
negroes, and we all went on board the vessel, which weighed anchor
and sailed down the bar. Next morning the captain cleared his
vessel, and by ten o’clock we were over the bar and under way, with
a good breeze. On the second night, a little before day, we landed at
the Pontchartrain railroad, and left in the first cars for the city. We
went into one of our places in the city, got breakfast for ourselves
and negroes, and at nine o’clock we left in a steamboat for Bayou
Sara. We landed there, crossed the river and went to one of our clan
—a rich planter—where we sold our negroes. I got one thousand
dollars for my mulatto girl; McGrath sold his fellow for eleven
hundred dollars, and Wages sold each of his boys for nine hundred
dollars. We took our money and left for Mobile. My girl made
considerable fuss when I was about to leave, but I told her I would
return in a month, and rather pacified her. I must here acknowledge
that my conscience did that time feel mortified, after the girl had
come with me, and I had lived with her as a wife, and she had such
implicit confidence in me. My conscience still feels mortified when I
reflect how much better it would have been for me to have kept her
and lived with her than to come to what I have.
On our way to Mobile we stopped in New Orleans three or four
days. During our stay there was one fire. We made a small raise on
that of about one hundred dollars each. McGrath came very near
being caught by attempting to make a second haul. We left next day
for Mobile; landed at Pascagoula, and walked home by land, with our
money and the small amount of goods we had stolen in New
Orleans.
We then deposited our money, and gathered all the balance of our
fine goods that we had stolen in Mobile at the great fire, and what we
had stolen in New Orleans, and prepared ourselves for a second
tour. We had realized about four thousand five hundred dollars,
which we hid in the ground, and we took each of us about one
hundred and fifty dollars for our expenses, and an equal share of the
goods.
On the 25th day of March, 1843, Wages, McGrath and myself left
Mobile bound to Texas; we went to New Orleans, where we landed
the next day. We remained there about three days and sold a great
quantity of our goods, such as were too heavy to carry. While we
were in the city Wages won about seven hundred dollars from a
Tennessee corn dealer by the name of Murphy. McGrath and myself
had lost about one hundred and fifty dollars each. We left New
Orleans, went up the Mississippi, and landed at the house of an old
friend that belonged to our clan. His name was Welter. We spent one
day and night with him; we had seen him in the city a few days
before, and were invited to call, but when we approached his
residence we all pretended to be entire strangers. This was a strict
injunction upon our clan—when traveling never to meet any of our
comrades as acquaintances, but always treat them as entire
strangers, that we had never seen in our life.
Wages pretended to have some business with the old gentleman,
and introduced himself, McGrath and myself under fictitious names.
The old gentleman had two very nice genteel daughters. They were
sociable and refined, well educated, and highly accomplished every
way; he was wealthy, and had a good reputation in his
neighborhood, and no one would for one moment have suspected
him of belonging to our clan. But I afterward learned from Wages that
this old gentleman had belonged to the Murrell Clan for many years;
and that was what carried Wages there, to get some information
relative to some negroes that had been stolen and carried to
Louisiana near the Texas line. Wages also informed me that this
same man made all his property by stealing and kidnapping negroes
from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
Having obtained the information we wanted, we made preparation to
leave. We offered to pay our fare, but this was promptly refused. We
were well entertained; the old gentleman furnished us each with a
flask of good brandy, and, after thanking him and his family for their
kind, hospitable treatment, we bid adieu, and took our departure for
Texas.
We got on a steamboat and went up the Mississippi to the mouth
of Red river, and up that river to a landing called the New Springs.
There we paid our passage and went on shore, each with his pack
and his double-barrel gun. We stopped at a house about one mile
from the river, where we called for our dinner, which we got, and we
all remained there until next day, during which time we sold a
considerable amount of our goods at that house and in the
neighborhood, which made our packs much lighter. We left next day,
stopping at all houses, and selling our goods, which we did at a rapid
rate, as we had stolen them and were not sufficient judges of their
value to know what price to ask, and in consequence we often sold
them at one-half their value, and so soon got rid of them.
Having disposed of the principal part of our goods, about the
fourth day after we left the New Spring landing, we were
approaching the prairie county on the Texas border. We provided
ourselves with bread and salt; we had ammunition. Shortly before
night, we came to a small piece of woodland, by a ravine. There was
a large drove of cattle of all sizes there; McGrath shot a very fat two-
year old heifer; we skinned the hind quarters and tenderloin; we built
up a fire, salted some of our meat and roasted it by the fire and
feasted sumptuously. The wolves came near our camp and made a
dreadful noise, but at daybreak we shot and killed three and the
balance ran off. They had devoured all the heifer’s meat, but we had
provided sufficient for our journey that day. We set out and traveled
in a direction to find a settlement, then made about twenty-five miles
south of Shreveport. That was the place where Welter had told
Wages that the negroes were, that we were after. We traveled about
thirty miles that day, and suffered very much for water. We reached a
settlement a little before night, on some of the waters of the Sabine
River. It was the residence of some stock keepers; there were some
three or four families, and some fifteen or twenty Mexican drovers,
and horse thieves; they had just been to Natchitoches, and had a full
supply of rum; a few of them could speak English. We quartered with
them, and that night we opened the little remnant of our goods and
jewelry, and had a general raffle. By the next day we had realized
from our raffle, sufficient to purchase each of us a good Spanish
saddle and bridle, and a good Texas horse. We learned from one of
these Mexicans the residence of the man who owned the negroes
that we were after, and we also learned that he and his family were
strict members of the Methodist Church. Now it was that one of us
had to turn preacher, so as to reconnoiter around the place. Wages
and I put that on McGrath. We all mounted our horses and started,
having procured plenty of lassoes, &c., McGrath being an Irishman
and his tongue tipped with plenty of blarney.
We traveled for two days very moderately, and, our chief
employment was drilling McGrath, how to pray and sing, and give
that long Methodist groan, and “Amen.” He having made
considerable progress, we went to Natchitoches. McGrath entered
that town by one road, and Wages and myself by another. McGrath
went among a few of his brethren that evening.
To our astonishment it was posted at every corner, that the “Rev.
Mr. McGrath, from Charleston, South Carolina, would preach at the
Methodist Church that evening, at half-past seven.” We attended
church. McGrath took his stand in the pulpit. He made a very genteel
apology to his audience, saying he was much fatigued from his
travel; that he had caught cold and was very hoarse and could not
sing; but he read out the hymn. It was: “Hark from the tombs a
doleful sound.” One old brother pitched the tune to Old Hundred, and
they all chimed in, Wages and myself among the rest; Wages sang
bass and I tenor, and we all made that old church sound like distant
thunder. After singing, McGrath made a very good but short prayer;
he then took his text in the 16th chapter of St. Mark, at the verse
where Mary the mother, and Mary Magdalene found the stone rolled
from the door of the sepulchre. “And he said unto them, Be not
affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified; he has
risen; he is not here; behold the place where they laid him.” He read
several verses in that chapter, and then made some very good
explanations relative to the parables, and prophesies on the coming
of the Messiah, and the mysterious way in which he disappeared,
and wound up his discourse by telling the audience that he had been
a great sinner in his young days, that it had been but a few years
since the Lord had called him to preach, and he thanked his God
that he was now able and willing to lay down his life upon the altar of
God; he then raved, and exhorted all to repent and turn to God; and
after raving about half an hour called all his hearers that wished to
be prayed for to come forward. The whole congregation kneeled
down; he prayed for them all, and finally finished, sang another hymn
and dismissed his congregation, and we all retired, Wages and
myself to a gaming table, and McGrath with some of his brethren.
Next day the members of the church there waited on McGrath to
know what was his pecuniary situation. He told them that he was
very poor, was on his way to see a rich relation of his, about two
hundred miles from there; that he carried his gun to keep off wild
beasts, etc. They made up money to buy him a fine suit of black, a
new saddle and saddle-bags and fifty dollars in cash. We remained
there two days, when McGrath left. Wages and I left by another road.
We all met a short distance from town and made the proper
arrangement for our operations. McGrath was to go on to the house
of this man that had the negroes, and there make what discoveries
were necessary. He was to join Wages and myself at San Antonio on
the first day of September following. Wages and I left in the direction
for the Red Land on the Irish bayou.
POISONING THE OVERSEER.
A few days after we passed the residence of an old bachelor who

had a large number of negroes; he was absent at Natchitoches and
had left his overseer in charge. We stopped there, and remained two
days; we procured some whisky from a grocery store a short
distance off; prepared some of it with poison, and induced the
overseer to drink freely. We gave him a full dose of the poison, and
before day on the third morning he was dead.
Meanwhile Wages and I had made arrangements to steal a likely
negro woman and two young negroes, a boy and girl, about ten
years of age, besides two of the finest horses on the place. We sent
out runners to let one or two of the neighbors know that the overseer
was dead; we had our negroes and horses concealed about five
miles distant, and about sunrise we offered to pay our bills and left,
pretending to go to New Orleans. After we had got out of sight of the
plantation we made a circuit and went to the place where the
negroes and horses were concealed. Having provided ourselves with
provisions, we remained secreted at that place all that day. That
night we started with our negroes and horses. Wages took the lead;
our horses and negroes were all refreshed. We traveled a brisk gait

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Trends in Modern American Society

Clarence Morris (Editor)

Shifting Grounds Landscape in Contemporary Native

The Modern Law of Land Warfare Morris Greenspan

Notices of the American Mathematical Society 1st

Economic Justice in American Society Robert E. Kuenne

American Religion: Contemporary Trends - Second Edition

Chaplains in Early Modern England Patronage Literature

Journals and Journeymen A Contribution to the History

The Therapeutic Revolution Essays in the Social History

CHANGING PATTERNS IN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

T H E FUTURE OF DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM

T H E SCIENTISTS LOOK A T OUR WORLD

SOCIAL CONTROL IN A FREE SOCIETY

Edited, with a Preface, by

PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 62-11262

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

M r AIM IN WRITING THIS PREFACE IS TO STATE A VIEWPOINT FROM

which the seven papers that follow can be read comparatively. I

arc pointed at changes in the offing. This seventh volume is cast

munity that frees its members from overwork, insecurity, and

ing that dissemination of knowledge about means stimulates

sciences into the unofficial, indeterminate processes of formula-

tant debt to Dr. William Ε. Miller, bibliographer of the Furness

ingly anxious about leisure, whereas less than three generations

H e was, of coursc, describing himself and his own formula for

apotheosis, had already worked their powerful magic on the

come in themselves weaker and weaker levers for success. A s the

security, and a rapid growth of labor unions. Along with these

That is precisely the attitude also of a host of men whose over-

balance, expensive. They are, in Emerson's sense of the word,

Lacking a positive, private mission, most elder men and women

O N E OF THE NEW AND COMPARATIVELY ENCOURAGING PHRASES THAT

the theory and attractively remote practice of mass destruction

The goal of military competition is relatively simple, even

agreeable, we turn to the next most unappetizing thing. As com-

something very different to us. To a point they can win by

but a statistician would be able to judge between the competing

It is commonly assumed that the Russians are investing in

If the Russians are reaching the point of diminishing returns

certainly passed it. Apart from its effect on public revenues,

economic growth for other reasons, a production contest with

The objectives of the competition with the Soviets—the things

world, including ourselves. The Soviets have also been careful

So to define matters is to see with some clarity our problems

AS RELATED IN DETAIL, BY HIMSELF, IN PRISON, A FEW DAYS BEFORE

When I was about ten or eleven years of age, my father sent me to

POISONING THE OVERSEER.

A few days after we passed the residence of an old bachelor who

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