This being so, how much one would like to assume, with certain of our critics, that the American writer is a sort of Samson bound with the brass fetters of the Philistines and requiring only to have those fetters cast off in order to be able to conquer the world! That, as I understand it, is the position of Mr. Dreiser, who recently remarked of certain of our novelists: “They succeeded in writing but one book before the iron hand of convention took hold of them.” There is this to be said for the argument, that if the American writer as a type shows less resistance than the European writer it is plainly because he has been insufficiently equipped, stimulated, nourished by the society into which he has been born. In this sense the American environment is answerable for the literature it has produced. But what is significant is that the American writer _does_ show less resistance; as literature is nothing but the expression of power, of the creative will, of “free will,” in short, is it not more accurate to say, not that the “iron hand of convention” takes hold of our writers, but that our writers yield to the “iron hand of convention”? Samson had lost his virility before the Philistines bound him; it was because he had lost his virility that the Philistines were able to bind him. The American writer who “goes wrong” is in a similar case. “I have read,” says Mr. Dreiser, of Jack London, “several short stories which proved what he could do. But he did not feel that he cared for want and public indifference. Hence his many excellent romances.” _He did not feel that he cared for want and public indifference._ Even Mr. Dreiser, as we observe, determinist that he is, admits a margin of free will, for he represents Jack London as having made a choice. What concerns us now, however, is not a theoretical but a practical question, the fact, namely, that the American writer as a rule is actuated not by faith but by fear, that he cannot meet the obstacles of “want and public indifference” as the European writer meets them, that he is, indeed, and as if by nature, a journeyman and a hireling.