An American Idyll by Cornelia Stratton Parker

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But outside of myself,--and I was only able to keep up with him by the
merest skimmings,--and one or two others at most, there was no one who
understood what he was driving at. As his reading and convictions grew,
he waxed more and more outraged at the way Economics was handled in his
own University. He saw student after student having every ounce of
intellectual curiosity ground out of them by a process of economic
education that would stultify a genius. Any student who continued his
economic studies did so in spite of the introductory work, not because
he had had one little ounce of enthusiasm aroused in his soul. Carl
would walk the floor with his hands in his pockets when kindred
spirits--especially students who had gone through the mill, and as
seniors or graduates looked back outraged at certain courses they had
had to flounder through--brought up the subject of Economics at the
University of California.

Off he went then on his pilgrimage,--his Research
Magnificent,--absolutely unknown to almost every man he hoped to see
before his return. The first stop he made was at Columbia, Missouri, to
see his idol Veblen. He quaked a bit beforehand,--had heard Veblen might
not see him,--but the second letter from Missouri began, "Just got in
after thirteen hours with Veblen. It went wonderfully and I am tickled
to death. He O.K.s my idea entirely and said I could not go wrong. . . .
Gee, but it is some grand experience to go up against him."

In the next letter he told of a graduate student who came out to get his
advice regarding a thesis-subject in labor. "I told him to go to his New
England home and study the reaction of machine-industry on the life of
the town. That is a typical Veblen subject. It scared the student to
death, and Veblen chuckled over my advice." In Wisconsin he was
especially anxious to see Guyer. Of his visit with him he wrote: "It was
a whiz of a session. He is just my meat." At Yale he saw Keller. "He is
a wonder and is going to do a lot for me in criticism."

Then began the daily letters from New York, and every single letter--not
only from New York but from every other place he happened to be in:
Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cambridge--told of at least one intellectual
Event--with a capital E--a day. No one ever lived who had a more
stimulating experience. Friends would ask me: "What is the news from
Carl?" And I would just gasp. Every letter was so full of the new
influences coming into his life, that it was impossible to give even an
idea of the history in the making that was going on with the Parkers.

In the first days in New York he saw T.H. Morgan. "I just walked in on
him and introduced myself baldly, and he is a corker. A remarkable
talker, with a mind like a flash. I am to see him again. To-morrow will
be a big day for me--I'll see Hollingworth, and very probably Thorndike,
and I'll know then something of what I'll get out of New York." Next
day: "Called on Hollingworth to-day. He gave me some invaluable data and
opinions. . . . To-morrow I see Thorndike." And the next day: "I'm so
joyful and excited over Thorndike. He was so enthusiastic over my
work. . . . He at once had brass-tack ideas. Said I was right--that strikes
usually started because of small and very human violations of man's
innate dispositions."

Later he called on Professor W.C. Mitchell. "He went into my thesis very
fully and is all for it. Professor Mitchell knows more than any one the
importance of psychology to economics and he is all for my study. Gee,
but I get excited after such a session. I bet I'll get out a real book,
my girl!"

After one week in New York he wrote: "The trip has paid for itself now,
and I'm dead eager to view the time when I begin my writing." Later:
"Just got in from a six-hour session with the most important group of
employers in New York. I sat in on a meeting of the Building Trades
Board where labor delegates and employers appeared. After two hours of
it (awfully interesting) the Board took me to dinner and we talked
labor stuff till ten-thirty. Gee, it was fine, and I got oceans of
stuff."

Then came Boas, and more visits with Thorndike. "To-night I put in six
hours with Thorndike, and am pleased plum to death. . . . Under his
friendly stimulus I developed a heap of new ideas; and say, wait till I
begin writing! I'll have ten volumes at the present rate. . . . This visit
with Thorndike was worth the whole trip." (And in turn Thorndike wrote
me: "The days that he and I spent together in New York talking of these
things are one of my finest memories and I appreciate the chance that
let me meet him.") He wrote from the Harvard Club, where Walter Lippmann
put him up: "The Dad is a 'prominent clubman.' Just lolled back at
lunch, in a room with animals (stuffed) all around the walls, and
waiters flying about, and a ceiling up a mile. Gee!" Later: "I just had
a most wonderful visit with the Director of the National Committee for
Mental Hygiene, Dr. Solman, and he is a wiz, a wiz!"

Next day: "Had a remarkable visit with Dr. Gregory this A.M. He is one
of the greatest psychiatrists in New York and up on balkings, business
tension, and the mental effect of monotonous work. He was so worked up
over my explanation of unrest (a mental status) through
instinct-balkings other than sex, that he asked if I would consider
using his big psychopathic ward as a laboratory field for my own work.
Then he dated me up for a luncheon at which three of the biggest mental
specialists in New York will be present, to talk over the manner in
which psychiatry will aid my research! I can't say how tickled I am
over his attitude." Next letter: "At ten reached Dr. Pierce Bailey's,
the big psychiatrist, and for an hour and a half we talked, and I was
simply tickled to death. He is really a wonder and I was very
enthused. . . . Before leaving he said: 'You come to dinner Friday night
here and I will have Dr. Paton from Princeton and I'll get in some more
to meet you.' . . . Then I beat it to the 'New Republic' offices, and sat
down to dinner with the staff plus Robert Bruere, and the subject became
'What is a labor policy?' The Dad, he did his share, he did, and had a
great row with Walter Lippmann and Bruere. Walter Lippmann said: 'This
won't do--you have made me doubt a lot of things. You come to lunch with
me Friday at the Harvard Club and we'll thrash it all out.' Says I, 'All
right!' Then says Croly, 'This won't do; we'll have a dinner here the
following Monday night, and I'll get Felix Frankfurter down from Boston,
and we'll thrash it out some more!' Says I, 'All right!' And says Mr.
Croly, private, 'You come to dinner with us on Sunday!'--'All right,'
sez Dad. Dr. Gregory has me with Dr. Solman on Monday, and Harry
Overstreet on Wednesday, Thorndike on Saturday, and gee, but I'll beat
it for New Haven on Thursday, or I'll die of up-torn brain."

Are you realizing what this all meant to my Carl--until recently reading
and pegging away unencouraged in his basement study up on the Berkeley
hills?

The next day he heard Roosevelt at the Ritz-Carton. "Then I watched that
remarkable man wind the crowd almost around his finger. It was great,
and pure psychology; and say, fool women and some fool men; but T.R.
went on blithely as if every one was an intellectual giant." That night
a dinner with Winston Churchill. Next letter: "Had a simply superb talk
with Hollingworth for two and a half hours this afternoon. . . . The dinner
was the four biggest psychiatrists in New York and Dad. Made me simply
yell, it did. . . . It was for my book simply superb. All is going so
wonderfully." Next day: "Now about the Thorndike dinner: it was
grand. . . . I can't tell you how much these talks are maturing my ideas
about the book. I think in a different plane and am certain that my
ideas are surer. There have come up a lot of odd problems touching the
conflict, so-called, between intelligence and instinct, and these I'm
getting thrashed out grandly." After the second "New Republic" dinner he
wrote: "Lots of important people there . . . Felix Frankfurter, two
judges, and the two Goldmarks, Pierce Bailey, etc., and the whole
staff. . . . Had been all day with Dr. Gregory and other psychiatrists and
had met Police Commissioner Woods . . . a wonderfully rich day. . . . I
must run for a date with Professor Robinson and then to meet Howe, the
Immigration Commissioner."

Then a trip to Ellis Island, and at midnight that same date he wrote:
"Just had a most truly remarkable--eight-thirty to twelve--visit with
Professor Robinson, he who wrote that European history we bought in
Germany." Then a trip to Philadelphia, being dined and entertained by
various members of the Wharton School faculty. Then the Yale-Harvard
game, followed by three days and two nights in the psychopathic ward at
Sing Sing. "I found in the psychiatrist at the prison a true wonder--Dr.
Glueck. He has a viewpoint on instincts which differs from any one that
I have met." The next day, back in New York: "Just had a most remarkable
visit with Thomas Mott Osborne." Later in the same day: "Just had an
absolutely grand visit and lunch with Walter Lippmann . . . it was about
the best talk with regard to my book that I have had in the East. He is
an intellectual wonder and a big, good-looking, friendly boy. I'm for
him a million."

Then his visit with John Dewey. "I put up to him my regular
questions--the main one being the importance of the conflict between
MacDougall and the Freudians. . . . He was cordiality itself. I am
expecting red-letter days with him. My knowledge of the subject is
increasing fast." Then a visit with Irving Fisher at New Haven. The next
night "was simply remarkable." Irving Fisher took him to a banquet in
New York, in honor of some French dignitaries, with President Wilson
present--"at seven dollars a plate!" As to President Wilson, "He was
simply great--almost the greatest, in fact is the greatest, speaker I
have ever heard."

Then a run down to Cambridge, every day crammed to the edges. "Had
breakfast with Felix Frankfurter. He has the grand spirit and does so
finely appreciate what my subject means. He walked me down to see a
friend of his, Laski, intellectually a sort of marvel--knows psychology
and philosophy cold--grand talk. Then I called on Professor Gay and he
dated me for a dinner to-morrow night. Luncheon given to me by Professor
Taussig--that was _fine_. . . . Then I flew to see E.B. Holt for an hour
[his second visit there]. Had a grand visit, and then at six was taken
with Gay to dinner with the visiting Deans at the Boston Harvard Club."
(Mr. Holt wrote: "I met Mr. Parker briefly in the winter of 1916-17,
briefly, but so very delightfully! I felt that he was an ally and a
brilliant one.")

I give these many details because you must appreciate what this new
wonder-world meant to a man who was considered nobody much by his own
University.

Then one day a mere card: "This is honestly a day in which no two
minutes of free time exist--so superbly grand has it gone and so
fruitful for the book--the best of all yet. One of the biggest men in
the United States (Cannon of Harvard) asked me to arrange my thesis to
be analyzed by a group of experts in the field." Next day he wrote: "Up
at six-forty-five, and at seven-thirty I was at Professor Cannon's. I
put my thesis up to him strong and got one of the most encouraging and
stimulating receptions I have had. He took me in to meet his wife, and
said: 'This young man has stimulated and aroused me greatly. We must get
his thesis formally before a group.'" Later, from New York: "From
seven-thirty to eleven-thirty I argued with Dr. A.A. Brill, who
translated all of Freud!!! and it was simply wonderful. I came home at
twelve and wrote up a lot."

Later he went to Washington with Walter Lippmann. They ran into Colonel
House on the train, and talked foreign relations for two and a half
hours. "My hair stood on end at the importance of what he said." From
Washington he wrote: "Am having one of the Great Experiences of my young
life." Hurried full days in Philadelphia, with a most successful talk
before the University of Pennsylvania Political and Social Science
Conference ("Successful," was the report to me later of several who were
present), and extreme kindness and hospitality from all the Wharton
group. He rushed to Baltimore, and at midnight, December 31, he wrote:
"I had from eleven-thirty to one P.M. an absolute supergrand talk with
Adolph Meyer and John Watson. He is a grand young southerner and simply
knows his behavioristic psychology in a way to make one's hair stand up.
We talked my plan clear out and they are _enthusiastic_. . . . Things are
going _grandly_." Next day: "Just got in from dinner with Adolph Meyer.
He is simply a wonder. . . . At nine-thirty I watched Dr. Campbell give a
girl Freudian treatment for a suicide mania. She had been a worker in a
straw-hat factory and had a true industrial psychosis--the kind I am
looking for." Then, later: "There is absolutely no doubt that the trip
has been my making. I have learned a lot of background, things, and
standards, that will put their stamp on my development."

Almost every letter would tell of some one visit which "alone was worth
the trip East." Around Christmastime home-longings got extra strong--he
wrote five letters in three days. I really wish I could quote some from
them--where he said for instance: "My, but it is good for a fellow to be
with his family and awful to be away from it." And again: "I want to be
interrupted, I do. I'm all for that. I remember how Jim and Nand used to
come into my study for a kiss and then go hastily out upon urgent
affairs. I'm for that. . . . I've got my own folk and they make the rest of
the world thin and pale. The blessedness of babies is beyond words, but
the blessedness of a wife is such that one can't start in on it."

Then came the Economic-Convention at Columbus--letters too full to begin
to quote from them. "I'm simply having the time of my life . . . every one
is here." In a talk when he was asked to fill in at the last minute, he
presented "two arguments why trade-unions alone could not be depended on
to bring desirable change in working conditions through collective
bargaining: one, because they were numerically so few in contrast to the
number of industrial workers, and, two, because the reforms about to be
demanded were technical, medical, and generally of scientific character,
and skilled experts employed by the state would be necessary."

Back again in New York, he wrote: "It just raises my hair to feel I'm
not where a Dad ought to be. My blessed, precious family! I tell you
there isn't anything in this world like a wife and babies and I'm for
that life that puts me close. I'm near smart enough to last a heap of
years. Though when I see how my trip makes me feel alive in my head and
enthusiastic, I know it has been worth while. . . ." Along in January he
worked his thesis up in writing. "Last night I read my paper to the
Robinsons after the dinner and they had Mr. and Mrs. John Dewey there. A
most superb and grand discussion followed, the Deweys going home at
eleven-thirty and I stayed to talk to one A.M. I slept dreaming wildly
of the discussion. . . . Then had an hour and a half with Dewey on certain
moot points. That talk was even more superb and resultful to me and I'm
just about ready to quit. . . . I need now to write and read."

I quote a bit here and there from a paper written in New York in 1917,
because, though hurriedly put together and never meant for publication,
it describes Carl's newer approach to Economics and especially to the
problem of Labor.

"In 1914 I was asked to investigate a riot among 2800 migratory
hop-pickers in California which had resulted in five deaths, many-fold
more wounded, hysteria, fear, and a strange orgy of irresponsible
persecution by the county authorities--and, on the side of the laborers,
conspiracy, barn-burnings, sabotage, and open revolutionary propaganda.
I had been teaching labor-problems for a year, and had studied them in
two American universities, under Sidney Webb in London, and in four
universities of Germany. I found that I had no fundamentals which could
be called good tools with which to begin my analysis of this riot. And I
felt myself merely a conventional if astonished onlooker before the
theoretically abnormal but manifestly natural emotional activity which
swept over California. After what must have been a most usual
intellectual cycle of, first, helplessness, then conventional
cataloguing, some rationalizing, some moralizing, and an extensive
feeling of shallowness and inferiority, I called the job done.

"By accident, somewhat later, I was loaned two books of Freud, and I
felt after the reading, that I had found a scientific approach which
might lead to the discovery of important fundamentals for a study of
unrest and violence. Under this stimulation, I read, during a year and a
half, general psychology, physiology and anthropology, eugenics, all the
special material I could find on Mendelism, works on mental hygiene,
feeblemindedness, insanity, evolution of morals and character, and
finally found a resting-place in a field which seems to be best
designated as Abnormal and Behavioristic Psychology. My quest throughout
this experience seemed to be pretty steadily a search for those
irreducible fundamentals which I could use in getting a technically
decent opinion on that riot. In grand phrases, I was searching for the
Scientific Standard of Value to be used in analyzing Human Behavior.

"Economics (which officially holds the analysis of labor-problems) has
been allowed to devote itself almost entirely to the production of
goods, and to neglect entirely the consumption of goods and human
organic welfare. The lip-homage given by orthodox economics to the field
of consumption seems to be inspired merely by the feeling that disaster
might overcome production if workers were starved or business men
discouraged. . . . So, while official economic science tinkers at its
transient institutions which flourish in one decade and pass out in the
next, abnormal and behavioristic psychology, physiology, psychiatry, are
building in their laboratories, by induction from human specimens of
modern economic life, a standard of human values and an elucidation of
behavior fundamentals which alone we must use in our legislative or
personal modification of modern civilization. It does not seem an
overstatement to say that orthodox economics has cleanly overlooked two
of the most important generalizations about human life which can be
phrased, and those are,--

"That human life is dynamic, that change, movement, evolution, are its
basic characteristics.

"That self-expression, and therefore freedom of choice and movement, are
prerequisites to a satisfying human state."

After giving a description of the instincts he writes:--

"The importance to me of the following description of the innate
tendencies or instincts lies in their relation to my main explanation of
economic behavior which is,--

"First, that these tendencies are persistent, are far less warped or
modified by the environment than we believe; that they function quite as
they have for several hundred thousand years; that they, as motives, in
their various normal or perverted habit-form, can at times dominate
singly the entire behavior, and act as if they were a clear character
dominant.

"Secondly, that if the environment through any of the conventional
instruments of repression, such as religious orthodoxy, university
mental discipline, economic inferiority, imprisonment, physical
disfigurement,--such as short stature, hare-lip, etc.,--repress the full
psychological expression in the field of these tendencies, then a
psychic revolt, slipping into abnormal mental functioning, takes place,
and society accuses the revolutionist of being either willfully
inefficient, alcoholic, a syndicalist, supersensitive, an agnostic, or
insane."

I hesitate somewhat to give his programme as set forth in this paper. I
have already mentioned that it was written in the spring of 1917, and
hurriedly. In referring to this very paper in a letter from New York, he
said, "Of course it is written in part _to call out_ comments, and so
the statements are strong and unmodified." Let that fact, then, be borne
in mind, and also the fact that he may have altered his views somewhat
in the light of his further studies and readings--although again, such
studies may only have strengthened the following ideas. I cannot now
trust to my memory for what discussions we may have had on the subject.

"Reform means a militant minority, or, to follow Trotter, a small Herd.
This little Herd would give council, relief, and recuperation to its
members. The members of the Herd will be under merciless fire from the
convention-ridden members of general society. They will be branded
outlaws, radicals, agnostics, impossible, crazy. They will be lucky to
be out of jail most of the time. They will work by trial and study,
gaining wisdom by their errors, as Sidney Webb and the Fabians did. In
the end, after a long time, parts of the social sham will collapse, as
it did in England, and small promises will become milestones of
progress.

"From where, then, can we gain recruits for this minority? Two real
sources seem in existence--the universities and the field of
mental-disease speculation and hospital experiment. The one, the
universities, with rare if wonderful exceptions, are fairly hopeless;
the other is not only rich in promise, but few realize how full in
performance. Most of the literature which is gripping that great
intellectual no-man's land of the silent readers, is basing its appeal,
and its story, on the rather uncolored and bald facts which come from
Freud, Trotter, Robinson, Dewey, E.B. Holt, Lippmann, Morton Prince,
Pierce, Bailey, Jung, Hart, Overstreet, Thorndike, Campbell, Meyer and
Watson, Stanley Hall, Adler, White. It is from this field of comparative
or abnormal psychology that the challenge to industrialism and the
programme of change will come.

"But suppose you ask me to be concrete and give an idea of such a
programme.

"Take simply the beginning of life, take childhood, for that is where
the human material is least protected, most plastic, and where most
injury to-day is done. In the way of general suggestion, I would say,
exclude children from formal disciplinary life, such as that of all
industry and most schools, up to the age of eighteen. After excluding
them, what shall we do with them? Ask John Dewey, I suggest, or read
his 'Schools of To-morrow,' or 'Democracy and Education.' It means
tremendous, unprecedented money expense to ensure an active trial and
error-learning activity; a chance naturally to recapitulate the racial
trial and error-learning experience; a study and preparation of those
periods of life in which fall the ripening of the relatively late
maturing instincts; a general realizing that wisdom can come only from
experience, and not from the Book. It means psychologically calculated
childhood opportunity, in which the now stifled instincts of leadership,
workmanship, hero-worship, hunting, migration, meditation, sex, could
grow and take their foundation place in the psychic equipment of a
biologically promising human being. To illustrate in trivialities, no
father, with knowledge of the meaning of the universal bent towards
workmanship, would give his son a puzzle if he knew of the Mecano or
Erector toys, and no father would give the Mecano if he had grasped the
educational potentiality of the gift to his child of $10 worth of lumber
and a set of good carpenter's tools. There is now enough loose wisdom
around devoted to childhood, its needed liberties and experiences, both
to give the children of this civilization their first evolutionary
chance, and to send most teachers back to the farm.

"In the age-period of 18 to 30 would fall that pseudo-educational
monstrosity, the undergraduate university, and the degrading popular
activities of 'beginning a business' or 'picking up a trade.' Much money
must be spent here. Perhaps few fields of activity have been
conventionalized as much as university education. Here, just where a
superficial theorist would expect to find enthusiasm, emancipated minds,
and hope, is found fear, convention, a mean instinct-life, no spirit of
adventure, little curiosity, in general no promise of preparedness. No
wonder philosophical idealism flourishes and Darwin is forgotten.

"The first two years of University life should be devoted to the Science
of Human Behavior. Much of to-day's biology, zooelogy, history, if it is
interpretive, psychology, if it is behavioristic, philosophy, if it is
pragmatic, literature, if it had been written involuntarily, would find
its place here. The last two years could be profitably spent in
appraising with that ultimate standard of value gained in the first two
years, the various institutions and instruments used by civilized man.
All instruction would be objective, scientific, and emancipated from
convention--wonderful prospect!

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