This Side of Paradise [109]
it that."
"What was it?"
"Writing copy for an advertising agency."
"Lots of money in advertising."
Amory smiled discreetly.
"Oh, I'll admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starve any more. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw your magazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time for your theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found a harmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved his own niche. But beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artist who doesn't fit the Rousseau, the Tolstoi, the Samuel Butler, the Amory Blaine" "Who's he?" demanded the little man suspiciously.
"Well," said Amory, "he's ahe's an intellectual personage not very well known at present."
The little man laughed his conscientious laugh, and stopped rather suddenly as Amory's burning eyes turned on him.
"What are you laughing at?"
"These intellectual people"
"Do you know what it means?"
The little man's eyes twitched nervously.
"Why, it usually means"
"It always means brainy and well-educated," interrupted Amory. "It means having an active knowledge of the race's experience." Amory decided to be very rude. He turned to the big man. "The young man," he indicated the secretary with his thumb, and said young man as one says bell-boy, with no implication of youth, "has the usual muddled connotation of all popular words." "You object to the fact that capital controls printing?" said the big man, fixing him with his goggles.
"Yes-and I object to doing their mental work for them. It seemed to me that the root of all the business I saw around me consisted in overworking and underpaying a bunch of dubs who submitted to it."
"Here now," said the big man, "you'll have to admit that the laboring man is certainly highly paidfive and six hour daysit's ridiculous. You can't buy an honest day's work from a man in the trades-unions."
"You've brought it on yourselves," insisted Amory. "You people never make concessions until they're wrung out of you." "What people?"
"Your class; the class I belonged to until recently; those who by inheritance or industry or brains or dishonesty have become the moneyed class."
"Do you imagine that if that road-mender over there had the money he'd be any more willing to give it up?"
"No, but what's that got to do with it?"
The older man considered.
"No, I'll admit it hasn't. It rather sounds as if it had though."
"In fact," continued Amory, "he'd be worse. The lower classes are narrower, less pleasant and personally more selfishcertainly more stupid. But all that has nothing to do with the question." "Just exactly what is the question?"
Here Amory had to pause to consider exactly what the question was.
AMORY COINS A PHRASE
"When life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education," began Amory slowly, "that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, a conservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. He may be unselfish, kind-hearted, even just in his own way, but his first job is to provide and to hold fast. His wife shoos him on, from ten thousand a year to twenty thousand a year, on and on, in an enclosed treadmill that hasn't any windows. He's done! Life's got him! He's no help! He's a spiritually married man."
Amory paused and decided that it wasn't such a bad phrase. "Some men," he continued, "escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no social ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerous book' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did and were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can't bribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren't just popular grab-bags for a half-dozen women and children."
"He's the natural radical?"
"Yes," said Amory. "He may vary from the disillusioned critic like old Thornton Hancock, all the way to Trotsky. Now this spiritually unmarried man hasn't direct power, for unfortunately the spiritually married
"What was it?"
"Writing copy for an advertising agency."
"Lots of money in advertising."
Amory smiled discreetly.
"Oh, I'll admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starve any more. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw your magazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time for your theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found a harmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved his own niche. But beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artist who doesn't fit the Rousseau, the Tolstoi, the Samuel Butler, the Amory Blaine" "Who's he?" demanded the little man suspiciously.
"Well," said Amory, "he's ahe's an intellectual personage not very well known at present."
The little man laughed his conscientious laugh, and stopped rather suddenly as Amory's burning eyes turned on him.
"What are you laughing at?"
"These intellectual people"
"Do you know what it means?"
The little man's eyes twitched nervously.
"Why, it usually means"
"It always means brainy and well-educated," interrupted Amory. "It means having an active knowledge of the race's experience." Amory decided to be very rude. He turned to the big man. "The young man," he indicated the secretary with his thumb, and said young man as one says bell-boy, with no implication of youth, "has the usual muddled connotation of all popular words." "You object to the fact that capital controls printing?" said the big man, fixing him with his goggles.
"Yes-and I object to doing their mental work for them. It seemed to me that the root of all the business I saw around me consisted in overworking and underpaying a bunch of dubs who submitted to it."
"Here now," said the big man, "you'll have to admit that the laboring man is certainly highly paidfive and six hour daysit's ridiculous. You can't buy an honest day's work from a man in the trades-unions."
"You've brought it on yourselves," insisted Amory. "You people never make concessions until they're wrung out of you." "What people?"
"Your class; the class I belonged to until recently; those who by inheritance or industry or brains or dishonesty have become the moneyed class."
"Do you imagine that if that road-mender over there had the money he'd be any more willing to give it up?"
"No, but what's that got to do with it?"
The older man considered.
"No, I'll admit it hasn't. It rather sounds as if it had though."
"In fact," continued Amory, "he'd be worse. The lower classes are narrower, less pleasant and personally more selfishcertainly more stupid. But all that has nothing to do with the question." "Just exactly what is the question?"
Here Amory had to pause to consider exactly what the question was.
AMORY COINS A PHRASE
"When life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education," began Amory slowly, "that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, a conservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. He may be unselfish, kind-hearted, even just in his own way, but his first job is to provide and to hold fast. His wife shoos him on, from ten thousand a year to twenty thousand a year, on and on, in an enclosed treadmill that hasn't any windows. He's done! Life's got him! He's no help! He's a spiritually married man."
Amory paused and decided that it wasn't such a bad phrase. "Some men," he continued, "escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no social ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerous book' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did and were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can't bribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren't just popular grab-bags for a half-dozen women and children."
"He's the natural radical?"
"Yes," said Amory. "He may vary from the disillusioned critic like old Thornton Hancock, all the way to Trotsky. Now this spiritually unmarried man hasn't direct power, for unfortunately the spiritually married