of literature have refused to pay unstinted tribute and honor to
men of wealth, the lower grades have paid almost as lavishly as life
itself.

Multitudes of poor boys in popular fiction rise to affluence by the
practice of the commercial virtues. To be self-made, the axiom tacitly
runs, is to be well-made. Time was in the United States when the true
hero had to start his career, unaided, from some lonely farm, from some
widow's cottage, or from some city slum; and although, with the growth
of luxury in the nation, readers have come to approve the heir who puts
on overalls and works up in a few months from the bottom of the factory
to the top, the standards of success are practically the same in all
instances: sleepless industry, restless scheming, resistless will,
coupled with a changeless probity in the domestic excellences. Nothing
is more curious about the American business man of fiction than the
sentimentality he displays in all matters of the heart. He may hold as
robustly as he likes to the doctrine that business is business and that
business and sympathy will not mix, but when put to the test he must
always soften under the pleadings of distress and be malleable to the
desires of mother, sweetheart, wife, or daughter. Even when a popular
novelist sets out to be reflective--say, for example, Winston
Churchill--he takes his hero up to the mountain of success and then
conducts him down again to the valley of humiliation, made conscious
that the love, after all, either of his family or of his society, is
better than lucre. Theodore Dreiser's stubborn habit of presenting his
rich men's will to power without abatement or apology has helped to keep
him steadily suspected. The popular romancers have contrived to mingle
passion for money and susceptibility to moralism somewhat upon the
analogy of those lucky thaumaturgists who are able to eat their cake and
have it too.

A similar mixture occurs in the politician of popular tradition. He
hardly ever rises to the dimensions of statesmanship, and indeed rarely
belongs to the Federal government at all: Washington has always been
singularly neglected by the novelists. The American politician of
fiction is essentially a local personage, the boss of ward or village.
Customarily he holds no office himself but instead sits in some dusty
den and dispenses injustice with an even hand. Candidates fear his
influence and either truckle to him or advance against him with the
weapons