



Produced by Mike Pullen






UTOPIA OF USURERS AND OTHER ESSAYS

By Gilbert Keith Chesterton




CONTENTS

     A Song of Swords

     Utopia of Usurers
      I. Art and Advertisement
      II. Letters and the New Laureates
      III. Unbusinesslike Business
      IV. The War on Holidays
      V. The Church of the Servile State
      VI. Science and the Eugenists
      VII. The Evolution of the Prison
      VIII. The Lash for Labour
      IX. The Mask of Socialism


     The Escape
     The New Raid
     The New Name
     A Workman's History of England
     The French Revolution and the Irish
     Liberalism: A Sample
     The Fatigue of Fleet Street
     The Amnesty for Aggression
     Revive the Court Jester
     The Art of Missing the Point
     The Servile State Again
     The Empire of the Ignorant
     The Symbolism of Krupp
     The Tower of Bebel
     A Real Danger
     The Dregs of Puritanism
     The Tyranny of Bad Journalism
     The Poetry of the Revolution





A SONG OF SWORDS

  "A drove of cattle came into a village called Swords;
  and was stopped by the rioters."--Daily Paper.

  In the place called Swords on the Irish road
  It is told for a new renown
  How we held the horns of the cattle, and how
  We will hold the horns of the devils now
  Ere the lord of hell with the horn on his brow
  Is crowned in Dublin town.

  Light in the East and light in the West,
  And light on the cruel lords,
  On the souls that suddenly all men knew,
  And the green flag flew and the red flag flew,
  And many a wheel of the world stopped, too,
  When the cattle were stopped at Swords.

  Be they sinners or less than saints
  That smite in the street for rage,
  We know where the shame shines bright; we know
  You that they smite at, you their foe,
  Lords of the lawless wage and low,
  This is your lawful wage.

  You pinched a child to a torture price
  That you dared not name in words;
  So black a jest was the silver bit
  That your own speech shook for the shame of it,
  And the coward was plain as a cow they hit
  When the cattle have strayed at Swords.

  The wheel of the torrent of wives went round
  To break men's brotherhood;
  You gave the good Irish blood to grease
  The clubs of your country's enemies;
  you saw the brave man beat to the knees:
  And you saw that it was good.

  The rope of the rich is long and long--
  The longest of hangmen's cords;
  But the kings and crowds are holding their breath,
  In a giant shadow o'er all beneath
  Where God stands holding the scales of Death
  Between the cattle and Swords.

  Haply the lords that hire and lend
  The lowest of all men's lords,
  Who sell their kind like kine at a fair,
  Will find no head of their cattle there;
  But faces of men where cattle were:
  Faces of men--and Swords.




UTOPIA OF USURERS


I. Art and Advertisement

I propose, subject to the patience of the reader, to devote two or
three articles to prophecy. Like all healthy-minded prophets, sacred and
profane, I can only prophesy when I am in a rage and think things look
ugly for everybody. And like all healthy-minded prophets, I prophesy in
the hope that my prophecy may not come true. For the prediction made by
the true soothsayer is like the warning given by a good doctor. And the
doctor has really triumphed when the patient he condemned to death has
revived to life. The threat is justified at the very moment when it is
falsified. Now I have said again and again (and I shall continue to say
again and again on all the most inappropriate occasions) that we must
hit Capitalism, and hit it hard, for the plain and definite reason that
it is growing stronger. Most of the excuses which serve the capitalists
as masks are, of course, the excuses of hypocrites. They lie when they
claim philanthropy; they no more feel any particular love of men than
Albu felt an affection for Chinamen. They lie when they say they have
reached their position through their own organising ability. They
generally have to pay men to organise the mine, exactly as they pay
men to go down it. They often lie about the present wealth, as they
generally lie about their past poverty. But when they say that they
are going in for a "constructive social policy," they do not lie. They
really are going in for a constructive social policy. And we must go in
for an equally destructive social policy; and destroy, while it is still
half-constructed, the accursed thing which they construct.


The Example of the Arts

Now I propose to take, one after another, certain aspects and
departments of modern life, and describe what I think they will be like
in this paradise of plutocrats, this Utopia of gold and brass in which
the great story of England seems so likely to end. I propose to say what
I think our new masters, the mere millionaires, will do with certain
human interests and institutions, such as art, science, jurisprudence,
or religion--unless we strike soon enough to prevent them. And for the
sake of argument I will take in this article the example of the arts.

Most people have seen a picture called "Bubbles," which is used for the
advertisement of a celebrated soap, a small cake of which is introduced
into the pictorial design. And anybody with an instinct for design (the
caricaturist of the Daily Herald, for instance), will guess that it was
not originally a part of the design. He will see that the cake of soap
destroys the picture as a picture; as much as if the cake of soap had
been used to Scrub off the paint. Small as it is, it breaks and confuses
the whole balance of objects in the composition. I offer no judgment
here upon Millais's action in the matter; in fact, I do not know what
it was. The important point for me at the moment is that the picture
was not painted for the soap, but the soap added to the picture. And
the spirit of the corrupting change which has separated us from that
Victorian epoch can be best seen in this: that the Victorian atmosphere,
with all its faults, did not permit such a style of patronage to pass as
a matter of course. Michael Angelo may have been proud to have helped an
emperor or a pope; though, indeed, I think he was prouder than they
were on his own account. I do not believe Sir John Millais was proud of
having helped a soap-boiler. I do not say he thought it wrong; but he
was not proud of it. And that marks precisely the change from his time
to our own. Our merchants have really adopted the style of merchant
princes. They have begun openly to dominate the civilisation of the
State, as the emperors and popes openly dominated in Italy. In Millais's
time, broadly speaking, art was supposed to mean good art; advertisement
was supposed to mean inferior art. The head of a black man, painted
to advertise somebody's blacking, could be a rough symbol, like an inn
sign. The black man had only to be black enough. An artist exhibiting
the picture of a <DW64> was expected to know that a black man is not so
black as he is painted. He was expected to render a thousand tints of
grey and brown and violet: for there is no such thing as a black man
just as there is no such thing as a white man. A fairly clear line
separated advertisement from art.


The First Effect

I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if
we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will
entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be
advertisement. I do not necessarily mean that there will be no good art;
much of it might be, much of it already is, very good art. You may put
it, if you please, in the form that there has been a vast improvement in
advertisements. Certainly there would be nothing surprising if the head
of a <DW64> advertising Somebody's Blacking now adays were finished
with as careful and subtle colours as one of the old and superstitious
painters would have wasted on the <DW64> king who brought gifts to
Christ. But the improvement of advertisements is the degradation of
artists. It is their degradation for this clear and vital reason: that
the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase
their riches; which is a considerable step lower. After all, it was as
a human being that a pope took pleasure in a cartoon of Raphael or a
prince took pleasure in a statuette of Cellini. The prince paid for
the statuette; but he did not expect the statuette to pay him. It is my
impression that no cake of soap can be found anywhere in the cartoons
which the Pope ordered of Raphael. And no one who knows the small-minded
cynicism of our plutocracy, its secrecy, its gambling spirit, its
contempt of conscience, can doubt that the artist-advertiser will often
be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control, and
of which he could feel no moral approval. He will be working to spread
quack medicines, queer investments; and will work for Marconi instead of
Medici. And to this base ingenuity he will have to bend the proudest
and purest of the virtues of the intellect, the power to attract his
brethren, and the noble duty of praise. For that picture by Millais is
a very allegorical picture. It is almost a prophecy of what uses are
awaiting the beauty of the child unborn. The praise will be of a kind
that may correctly be called soap; and the enterprises of a kind that
may truly be described as Bubbles.


II. Letters and the New Laureates

In these articles I only take two or three examples of the first and
fundamental fact of our time. I mean the fact that the capitalists of
our community are becoming quite openly the kings of it. In my last (and
first) article, I took the case of Art and advertisement. I pointed out
that Art must be growing worse--merely because advertisement is growing
better. In those days Millais condescended to Pears' soap. In these days
I really think it would be Pears who condescended to Millais. But here
I turn to an art I know more about, that of journalism. Only in my ease
the art verges on artlessness.

The great difficulty with the English lies in the absence of something
one may call democratic imagination. We find it easy to realise an
individual, but very hard to realise that the great masses consist of
individuals. Our system has been aristocratic: in the special sense of
there being only a few actors on the stage. And the back scene is kept
quite dark, though it is really a throng of faces. Home Rule tended to
be not so much the Irish as the Grand Old Man. The Boer War tended not
to be so much South Africa as simply "Joe." And it is the amusing but
distressing fact that every class of political leadership, as it comes
to the front in its turn, catches the rays of this isolating lime-light;
and becomes a small aristocracy. Certainly no one has the aristocratic
complaint so badly as the Labour Party. At the recent Congress, the real
difference between Larkin and the English Labour leaders was not so much
in anything right or wrong in what he said, as in something elemental
and even mystical in the way he suggested a mob. But it must be plain,
even to those who agree with the more official policy, that for Mr.
Havelock Wilson the principal question was Mr. Havelock Wilson; and that
Mr. Sexton was mainly considering the dignity and fine feelings of Mr.
Sexton. You may say they were as sensitive as aristocrats, or as sulky
as babies; the point is that the feeling was personal. But Larkin, like
Danton, not only talks like ten thousand men talking, but he also has
some of the carelessness of the colossus of Arcis; "Que mon nom soit
fletri, que la France soit libre."


A Dance of Degradation

It is needless to say that this respecting of persons has led all the
other parties a dance of degradation. We ruin South Africa because it
would be a slight on Lord Gladstone to save South Africa. We have a bad
army, because it would be a snub to Lord Haldane to have a good army.
And no Tory is allowed to say "Marconi" for fear Mr. George should say
"Kynoch." But this curious personal element, with its appalling lack of
patriotism, has appeared in a new and curious form in another department
of life; the department of literature, especially periodical literature.
And the form it takes is the next example I shall give of the way in
which the capitalists are now appearing, more and more openly, as the
masters and princes of the community.

I will take a Victorian instance to mark the change; as I did in the
case of the advertisement of "Bubbles." It was said in my childhood, by
the more apoplectic and elderly sort of Tory, that W. E. Gladstone was
only a Free Trader because he had a partnership in Gilbey's foreign
wines. This was, no doubt, nonsense; but it had a dim symbolic, or
mainly prophetic, truth in it. It was true, to some extent even then,
and it has been increasingly true since, that the statesman was often an
ally of the salesman; and represented not only a nation of shopkeepers,
but one particular shop. But in Gladstone's time, even if this was true,
it was never the whole truth; and no one would have endured it being the
admitted truth. The politician was not solely an eloquent and persuasive
bagman travelling for certain business men; he was bound to mix even his
corruption with some intelligible ideals and rules of policy. And the
proof of it is this: that at least it was the statesman who bulked
large in the public eye; and his financial backer was entirely in the
background. Old gentlemen might choke over their port, with the moral
certainty that the Prime Minister had shares in a wine merchant's. But
the old gentleman would have died on the spot if the wine merchant had
really been made as important as the Prime Minister. If it had been
Sir Walter Gilbey whom Disraeli denounced, or Punch caricatured; if
Sir Walter Gilbey's favourite collars (with the design of which I am
unacquainted) had grown as large as the wings of an archangel; if
Sir Walter Gilbey had been credited with successfully eliminating the
British Oak with his little hatchet; if, near the Temple and the
Courts of Justice, our sight was struck by a majestic statue of a
wine merchant; or if the earnest Conservative lady who threw a
gingerbread-nut at the Premier had directed it towards the wine merchant
instead, the shock to Victorian England would have been very great
indeed.


Haloes for Employers

Now something very like that is happening; the mere wealthy employer is
beginning to have not only the power but some of the glory. I have
seen in several magazines lately, and magazines of a high class, the
appearance of a new kind of article. Literary men are being employed to
praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They
not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes--that they
have done for some time past--they also find moral defences for the
commercial schemers. They describe the capitalist's brain of steel and
heart of gold in a way that Englishmen hitherto have been at least in
the habit of reserving for romantic figures like Garibaldi or Gordon. In
one excellent magazine Mr. T. P. O'Connor, who, when he likes, can write
on letters like a man of letters, has some purple pages of praise of
Sir Joseph Lyons--the man who runs those teashop places. He incidentally
brought in a delightful passage about the beautiful souls possessed
by some people called Salmon and Gluckstein. I think I like best the
passage where he said that Lyons's charming social accomplishments
included a talent for "imitating a Jew." The article is accompanied with
a large and somewhat leering portrait of that shopkeeper, which makes
the parlour-trick in question particularly astonishing. Another literary
man, who certainly ought to know better, wrote in another paper a piece
of hero-worship about Mr. Selfridge. No doubt the fashion will spread,
and the art of words, as polished and pointed by Ruskin or Meredith,
will be perfected yet further to explore the labyrinthine heart of
Harrod; or compare the simple stoicism of Marshall with the saintly
charm of Snelgrove.

Any man can be praised--and rightly praised. If he only stands on two
legs he does something a cow cannot do. If a rich man can manage to
stand on two legs for a reasonable time, it is called self-control. If
he has only one leg, it is called (with some truth) self-sacrifice. I
could say something nice (and true) about every man I have ever met.
Therefore, I do not doubt I could find something nice about Lyons or
Selfridge if I searched for it. But I shall not. The nearest postman or
cab-man will provide me with just the same brain of steel and heart
of gold as these unlucky lucky men. But I do resent the whole age
of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets
becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath, nor led us
into any battle.


III. Unbusinesslike Business

The fairy tales we were all taught did not, like the history we were all
taught, consist entirely of lies. Parts of the tale of "Puss in Boots"
or "Jack and the Beanstalk" may strike the realistic eye as a little
unlikely and out of the common way, so to speak; but they contain some
very solid and very practical truths. For instance, it may be noted
that both in "Puss in Boots" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" if I remember
aright, the ogre was not only an ogre but also a magician. And it will
generally be found that in all such popular narratives, the king, if he
is a wicked king, is generally also a wizard. Now there is a very vital
human truth enshrined in this. Bad government, like good government,
is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but
mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the great
employer. The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense,
an enchanting sight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter. As
they say in the gushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a
fascinating personality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to
rabbits; and so is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted sort of people
that ladies and gentlemen have allowed themselves to become. He does,
in a manner, cast a spell, such as that which imprisoned princes and
princesses under the shapes of falcons or stags. He has truly turned men
into sheep, as Circe turned them into swine.

Now, the chief of the fairy tales, by which he gains this glory and
glamour, is a certain hazy association he has managed to create between
the idea of bigness and the idea of practicality. Numbers of the
rabbit-witted ladies and gentlemen do really think, in spite of
themselves and their experience, that so long as a shop has hundreds
of different doors and a great many hot and unhealthy underground
departments (they must be hot; this is very important), and more people
than would be needed for a man-of-war, or crowded cathedral, to say:
"This way, madam," and "The next article, sir," it follows that
the goods are good. In short, they hold that the big businesses are
businesslike. They are not. Any housekeeper in a truthful mood, that
is to say, any housekeeper in a bad temper, will tell you that they are
not. But housekeepers, too, are human, and therefore inconsistent and
complex; and they do not always stick to truth and bad temper. They are
also affected by this queer idolatry of the enormous and elaborate; and
cannot help feeling that anything so complicated must go like clockwork.
But complexity is no guarantee of accuracy--in clockwork or in anything
else. A clock can be as wrong as the human head; and a clock can stop,
as suddenly as the human heart.

But this strange poetry of plutocracy prevails over people against their
very senses. You write to one of the great London stores or emporia,
asking, let us say, for an umbrella. A month or two afterwards you
receive a very elaborately constructed parcel, containing a broken
parasol. You are very pleased. You are gratified to reflect on what
a vast number of assistants and employees had combined to break that
parasol. You