The Great Tradition

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Excerpt from The Great Tradition: An Interpretation of American Literature Since the Civil WarThe planting aristocracy, which the war had destroyed, had been not only the chief political rival of industrial capitalism but also the principal critic of commercialism as a way of life. There seethed to be nothing to oppose the triumph of business enterprise. Both the farmers of the West and the workers of the East had made common cause with the industrialists against the South, and they were slow to distinguish between their interests and those of the ruling class. The revolution in agriculture had destroyed the farmer's self-sufficiency, and the Greenback Movement testified to the existence of unrest. Many Workers, seeing how small a share they received of the nation's increased wealth, organized into unions. But the promise of the frontier was always there to lure the venture some, and the sight of great fortunes, seemingly built so casu ally, by the exercise oi such familiar attributes, encouraged even the least self-confident American to hope for Comfort if not for wealth. Movements of protest received little support, and at best they offered no fundamental criticism of the conf duct of industry, for they merely expressed the eagerness of the less fortunate to share in the prizes that were being so lavishly distributed. Farmer and mechanic alike admired the heroes of financial battles, dreamt of speculation, and looked forward to riches. If many were pushed away from the table so luxuriously laden with the fruits of mechanical ingenuity and the gifts of nature to the nation, they knew that the table was there, and they did not despair of finding a place at it.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.