Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 October 1951 — Page 22

-

- From the Truth

About Middle Class

WHITE COLLAR:

CLASSES. By C. Wright

versity Press. : By HENR

THE “ AMERICAN MIDDLE

Mills.. New York, Oxford Uni-

Y BUTLER

In the drama of American progress, a myth is as

good as a mile. Somebody certainly has in connection with C. Wrigh Mr. Mills, a Columbia University sociologist, has done a tremendous and important job of interpretation in A his study of he ) 3 middle class— what thev are, what they think they are and how they became what they are. Our whole mid- & dle-class tradi-§ tion rests on a group of personages now slowly becoming extinct. That group historically was made up of the small businessman, the small entrepreneur, in the technical word. In his heyday, he invented much of the mythology of the American Way. Freedom to him meant a free market and a mimimum of gov-

Mr. Mills

---SFRMeRial--interference. But, as Mr. Mills points out, the small

businessman discovered that freedom could be too free. Competition was a good thing in his mythology. In practice, it was bad. So the small businessman, with plenty of “quiet support . from manufacturers, lobbied like crazy for “fair trade” laws and got them. Price-cutting is against the law in probably most states today.

‘" » » THAT'S ONE example of the current cleavage between myth and fact in middle-class thinking. ‘Mr. Mills introduces a good many other examples. He is careful always to trace the gully, gulch or canyon between fact and_professed belief. And thus he does what conscientious newspaper men wish could be done more often: He shows that truth is various and quicksilver-like, Mr. Mills shows us how the typical pattern in business now is that bigness gets bigger, while smallness goes hroke. The conspicuous exceptions

: a

{

| said that before, but it's &pt|

t Mills’ WHITE COLLAR.

are not important. Meanwhile, | however, the ideology of competition persists, It may and prabably de€s have much to do with the near-insane extravagance of

competitive spirit during basketball season. The basketball players, as sociologists often have pointed out, vicariously perform competition for the spectators

who are either unwilling or unable to compete actively in their working day

" Ld uo THERE'S NO. ITARM in myths by themselves. When they become a complete substitute for fact, then they can do damage. . Mr. Mills thinks the American middle class today is in sad shape intellectually and emotionally because the bright myths have tarnished, and there's nothing to take their place. The old catch-words of initiative, hard work for long hours, ‘grit, stamina, aggressiveness, and S80 on, have lost their emotional kick because they've lost ‘their factual relevance. Mr. Mills and Sen. Kefauver undoubtedly would agree on the widespread and dangerous demoralization Qf American society as a result of a new kind of cynicism. Effort, aggres‘tiveness, virtue mean nothing to the small man trying to compete with the large outfit that has money, efficiency and adroit publicity. The “What's the use?” frame of mind has spread even to youngsters of middle class Tamilies, with resultant sharp increase in delinquency. Some of the worst problem kids come from good homes, and it isn’t, enough,

New Biography Gouverneur Morris, American Revolutionary leader, financier and diplomat, is the subject of a| new biography by Howard Swig- | gett. Entitled THE EXTRAOR-! DINARY MR. MORRIS, it is! ‘scheduled by Doubleday for pub- |

statistically lication next spring. *

entombment in

your community's own

TURNABOUT—"The Contrast" is the apt title of this pair of prints by an unknown British craftsman of the early |9th Century. Evidently a piece of contemporary propaganda, the pair of prints contrast gentle treatment given French prisoners in England with harsh treatment given English prisoners in France. The engraving is a recent gift to Herron Art Museum from William George Sulli-

van, Indianapolis print; collector.

as psychologists attempt, to

blame their delinquency on “emotional insecurity’” in the home.

u = vy A BRIEF REVIEW, with a reviewer's customary haste, can't do full justice to WHITE COLLAR. Mr. Mills is comprehensive, keen and often penetratingly satirical, as, for example, in his long discussion of “The Great Salesroom.” der if he’s not being a biased “in this treatment of

rRElEspeople; particularly C&S res

gards department stores, As even a casual visit to any one of the big stores here will demonstrate, department stores have a continuous apd quite entertaining drama®® What the workers may lose in actual freedom (in the sense of the freedom of a general store proprietor at a gravel crossroads in the sticks), they gain in excitement and stimulation. And even though they have to exert themselves being pleasant to nasty customers, that very discipline in itself probably is good for them. At least, it compels them to be actors in the well-lighted drama, with its symbolic columns of customers slowly ascending and descending the escalators, like a kind of hopped-up tableau vivant from Dante. But I think Mr. Mills is correct, profound and timely in his analysis of what monopoly practices masquerading as traditional free enterprise actually are doing to us. His book should stimulate a lot of thinking.

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I won- | little |

About Andy Duel-Fighting

THE PRESIDENT’S LADY. By Irving Stone. New York,

Doubleday, $3.50.

he lived with Gauguin who Maughan’s THE MOON AND SIXPENCE. The paintings of the tortured and eccentric Van Gogh—who once cut off ail ear, gift-wrapped it and sent it to a bistro cutie who teasingly had agked for one of his ears as a souvenir—inspired Mr. Stone to delve into the life of Van Gogh in an effort to find what made him tick on canvas. The result was’ the biography of Van Gogh, LUST FOR LIFE, a hauntingly tragic story

which hit the bestseller lists and’

which has been selling ever since.

After the LUST FOR LIFE success, Mr. Stone put away the sin of writing plays and magazine stories and has written out(standing biographical novels on Jessie Benton Fremont, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Eugene [V. Debs and John Noble, | ~ » = NOW MR. STONE turns his talents to the story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory himself and pipe-smoking Aunt Rachel, whose lives, it would seem, were cut to pattern for Mr, Stone. They lived a novel -

the eternal conflict, the drama, the fortunes, the reverses, the happiness, the heartbreaks are there .and Mr, Stone writes it herewith. Mr. Stone is a careful re-

searcher, a great scholag, and some historians could well take a lesson from the painstaking and honest Mr. Stone. As you probably know, Andy Jackson all but made a career of {defending his wife's good name

|(he once killed a man’ in a duel .

for slurring Rachel) and that defense, when Jackson became President, precipitated a cabinet |crisis. The question was, did Andy and Rachel live together in sin at one time. The slanderous stories got around because of a mixup. Both Rachel and Andy had been assured that Lewis Robarts, an insanely jealous man, had divorced Rachel. So Andy and Rachel (were married. Later, .when they {learned that the divorce had not |been granted at the time of their marriage, but much later, the

“couple remarried. The confusion

resulted from the meager rommunication. facilities of the frontier. Mr. Stone's story — and the ‘truth while perhaps not stranger than fiction but often far more linteresting and intriguing- -covers [the courtship of ‘Andy and Rachel, [their Tife on the Tennessee fron[tier, his militia days, Jackson's {victory over the British troops at [New Orleans. The book clotes as Andy, battle-scarred ‘national hero, and Aunt Rachel, sit in the Hermitage, having earned a life of peace and quiet, and receive

|

{the news that Jackson has been late Samuel Putnam, now is elected President of the United available in Viking's popular- | States, : priced edition ($2.50). : CROSSWORD PUZZLE [ Sly 0 0[0Z] -|313[d[3[ 1] [3 ACROSS 36 ~parsia, h 5 - LJ — [i re 39—S8end fort = an 1—FEnemy 40—'Fransgression TIN 1 [ld 3IN3 Y 4—Poets 41—1ce pinnacle 9—Once around 43—Runs NL | | track 45—Nights before Vv 3 19 13—Grain 47—Before 13—Fagle's nest 48—Dormant | 14—TInit B0—Candies NE 15—Small needs 53—Hail! SI 17—Brickworkers 54—Indian tent 19—~Fondle 56—Collection of SINIO| SIN 1 | 20—Shade trees animals N v | 21~Precious stone b7—Aeriform fluid v | 25—~Beef fat (pl.) bR—Dagger €Y : |28—Encore (Fr.) §9—Lamprey “| 29=Defaces : 4 8[ZZNg PIOMES0ID 0} JemSuy 31—Fat away DOWN

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©THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES : Sino _ SUND! © I'Grass Harp' Is Picturesque Novel

By CARL VICTOR LITTLE SOME YEARS AGO Irving Stone went to an exhibition of the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch artist who did his painting, and drinking, in Arles, France, where.

+

Jackson's Career

was fictionized in Somerset

New Text Out By Gastette y Gastetter L. L. Gastetter, Indianapolis businessman, author, teacher and lecturer, has written FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN ENGIsucaase NEERING, just published by the William Mitchell Printing Co. of Greenfield. The new book has been written a8- a text for colleges and schools. It outlines a method of analyzing human beings and prescribing a means of develing gredter human efficiency and generally improving human welfare, according to the writer. Mr. Gastetter is the author also of . WHAT 18 THINKING? A MINUTE A DAY and THE MATHEMATICAL. BASIS OF LOGIC. He is founder and head of the Institute of Human Engineering, and has served as instructor in Butler University's night classes and lectured throughout the country.

Mr. Gastetter

Zach Taylor Bi h ography Holman Hamilton, member of a famous Hoosier literary family, has written a biography, ZACHARY TAYLOR: SOLDIER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, which Bobb s- Merrill will - publish tomorrow, Mr. Hamilton, formerly editorial writer for the Ft. Wayne Jour-nal-Gazette, earlier wrote ZACHARY TAYLOR; SOLDIER’ OF THE RE PU BLIC, which won him a Guggenheim Fellowship that assisted him in writing the second volume on Taylor. Born in Indiana 41 years ago, he received his education in Indiana, Alabama, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. A graduate of Williams College, he currently

is a graduate student at the University of Kentucky.

Mr. Hamilton

Don Quixote 1s Back THE PORTABLE CERVAN-

TES, including the 1949 transiation of DON QUIXOTE by the

+—-Rind of fowl (

8—Shuts tightly 9—Free from restraint 10—Girl's name 11—Footlike part 16—~Comparative ending 18—Self-satisfied 21—Satan 22—RBishop’s hat 23—Tardy 24—Musical instruments 26—Implied | 27—Webh-footed birds 30-—Cut . 34—Scattered 37—Rugged mountain crests 38—Part of church 40— Violent expulsion of breath | 42—~Coins {

HM—Anger 46—Cook slow 48—Fall behin 49—~Hummingbird 50—~Weight of

THE GRASS HARP. A novel.” By Truman‘ Capote. - New. York, Random House, $3. Truman Capote, one of our flourishing young authors _of southern - extraction, is on the

market with ‘another Dixie ‘jumble, a novel entitled THE GRASS HARP. THE. GRASS HARP. is at least '8ix times as abundantly picturesque. as Great-Aunt Aspidistra’s attic. It is all about an old lady {Who manufactures dropsy cure and eats practically nothing but

'|chicken’s brains and cinnamon : amma

rolls. This old lady, hurt by an ynkind ‘remark made by “her bossy younger sister, goes to live in a tree house, taking. with her a Ié-year-old boy and an -ancient colored wonmran who, thinks she’s an Indian; ; : These adventurers joined by other characters in search of escape, and things’ get mighty, crowded, though reasonably jolly,. in the tree. 1 don't know if you've ever noticed, but somé folks just can’t bear to let, other folks enjoy themselves, par-

Aare

SOHR

— 4 .

SUNDAY, OCT. 7, 1951

themselves in a way that's just the least little bit different from the usual, Anyway, in Mr. Capote’s book, the tree people arouse the violent. hostility of an antitree groyp,.and things get tense for a spell, - a dd oA jght —T had had . quite enougfof Deep South jmbecilities, but. I must own I was quite diverted hy Mr. Capote’'s extravaganza, which has an insane air of credibility about it. One of these days 1 must slip below the MasonDixon Line and bottle .a little local color myself. There sure is

ticularly if the other folks enjoy

money. in it.

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