However, let me return to my theme. I am trying to sketch briefly some of the conditions that are at the bottom of what I conceive to be going on nowadays in American writing. When we Americans had got our country pretty well settled and had fought and won our Civil War, something else happened. There came a revolution more widespread and deep in its meaning than any other revolution that has ever happened in the western world. Starting out as we did as an agricultural people we Americans found ourselves suddenly landed in the very midst of the industrial age. From being a nation of farmers, craftsmen and merchants we became, almost within a generation, the leading industrial nation of the world. We became factory hands rather than craftsmen, owners of factories rather than land owners. We had got into a new age almost over night. What had happened to us? Standardization, for one thing. Let me explain. As a natural result of industrial growth came standardization. As anyone will understand, the man who owns a factory for the making of women’s dresses, chewing gum, cigars, automobiles, men’s hats, must, if his factory is to grow to the huge output he desires, create in the public mind a widespread demand for one kind of cigar, one kind of hat, one style of dress, one make of automobile. Advertising as a force in our American life began to grow and here it is that the present day American writer came into flower. As a natural result of the demand for standardization of taste and material desires came the modern magazine. The magazine with a circulation of a million or two million became not unusual. The real purpose, as everyone understands, was to create through advertising, a nation-wide demand for certain commodities. The magazines were business institutions run by business men with business ends in view. They have served the purpose for which they were created admirably and taken for what they are, that is to say at bottom merely as propaganda instruments for business expansion, no man can quarrel with them.