Prejudices, third seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, third series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
On the whole, as a neutral in such matters, I prefer the forward-looker
to the right-thinker, if only because he shows more courage and
originality. It takes nothing save lack of humor to believe what
Butler, or Ochs, or Bishop Manning believes, but it takes long practice
and a considerable natural gift to get down the beliefs of Sinclair.
I remember with great joy the magazine that he used to issue during
the war. In the very first issue he advocated Socialism, the single
tax, birth control, communism, the League of Nations, the conscription
of wealth, government ownership of coal mines, sex hygiene and free
trade. In the next issue he added the recall of judges, Fletcherism,
the Gary system, the Montessori method, paper-bag cookery, war gardens
and the budget system. In the third he came out for sex hygiene, one
big union, the initiative and referendum, the city manager plan,
chiropractic and Esperanto. In the fourth he went to the direct
primary, fasting, the Third International, a federal divorce law, free
motherhood, hot lunches for school children, Prohibition, the vice
crusade, _Expressionismus_, the government control of newspapers,
deep breathing, international courts, the Fourteen Points, freedom
for the Armenians, the limitation of campaign expenditures, the merit
system, the abolition of the New York Stock Exchange, psychoanalysis,
crystal-gazing, the Little Theater movement, the recognition of Mexico,
_vers libre_, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, cooperative
stores, the endowment of motherhood, the Americanization of the
immigrant, mental telepathy, the abolition of grade crossings, federal
labor exchanges, profit-sharing in industry, a prohibitive tax on Poms,
the clean-up-paint-up campaign, relief for the Jews, osteopathy, mental
mastery, and the twilight sleep. And so on, and so on. Once I had got
into the swing of the Sinclair monthly I found that I could dispense
with at least twenty other journals of the uplift. When he abandoned
it I had to subscribe for them anew, and the gravel has stuck in my
craw ever since.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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