Socialism of the Heart in William Dean Howells’ Annie Kilburn.
The Common Sense of Socialism at the turn of the 20th Century.
Are we witnessing a revival today?
Burton Weltman
“61% of Americans aged between 18 and 24
have a positive reaction to the word ‘socialism.’”
Axios Poll. 6/27/19
Historical Recycling: Gilded Ages then and now.
“What is the chief end of man? To get rich. In what way? Dishonestly if we can, honestly if we must.” Mark Twain on moral values in the Gilded Age in which he lived.
Setting the scene: Widespread poverty. Increasing gun violence. Enormous gap between the incomes of the rich and everyone else. A predominant ethos of selfish individualism. Large-scale uncontrolled immigration and widespread hostility toward immigrants. Rising racism and ethnocentrism. Rabid right-wing demagoguery. Political violence and dangerous threats to democracy. Widely spreading infectious diseases and deadly pandemics. Contaminated food and drugs. Serious and rapidly increasing environmental problems. And more…
If this situation sounds much like that in the United States today, it is. But it is also a description of the state of affairs in the country at the turn of the twentieth century. It was an era that contemporaries such as Mark Twain derided as a Gilded Age, a time when the rich thrived and gilded their lilies, while the rest struggled to survive. It was also a time when political discussion turned toward a serious consideration of socialism as a solution to the country’s problems, and when luminaries such as William Dean Howells identified themselves as socialists.
Howells, who lived from 1837 to 1920, was a literary star whose light has faded but whose gravitational influence can still be felt. His works are rarely read today except in college English classes, and less frequently even there. But Howells was a major cultural arbiter for the country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, what we might today call an “influencer.” He was widely hailed as “The Dean of American letters,” which was much more than a play on his middle name, and when Howells spoke, people listened. And that influence lingers to the present day.
Howells came from a politically active family and he was politically precocious as a young man. He wrote Abraham Lincoln’s campaign biography in 1860 when he was only twenty-three, and remained politically well-connected and active throughout his life. Over the next two decades, he moved ideologically from a liberal Lincoln Republican to an outspoken Christian Socialist.
It was a path to socialism that was taken by many in his day, both luminaries and ordinary people. It was reflected in the rise of the Socialist Party at the turn of the twentieth century, and in the enactment by federal and state governments of progressive legislation based on socialist ideas. Invented as a political term in the 1830’s, socialism had become a main topic of conversation and controversy by the late 1800’s, with Howells in the forefront of the discussion.
Howells is significant both as an influencer of public opinion in his time and as a reflection of it. He was the popular author of some forty novels plus several books of poetry, literary criticism and plays over the course of more than fifty years. A best-selling book by Howells was almost an annual event. And, as a long-time editor and literary critic at the Atlantic Monthly, the premier magazine of that time, he befriended and promoted many of the most important cultural innovators of the era. These included Henry James, a founder of the modern psychological novel, William James, a founder of pragmatic philosophy, Henry Adams, a founder of modern historical methods, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a founder of modern jurisprudence.
Howells also discovered and promoted a generation of the best new American writers at the turn of the century. These included Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Hamlin Garland, Abraham Cahan, Sarah Jewett, and Paul Dunbar. And he introduced to American audiences the writings of European authors such as Ibsen, Tolstoy, and Zola.
Politics, which to Howells meant trying to make a better world, was embedded in almost everything he wrote and did. Most of the authors he promoted were, like himself, on the political left, including his best friend Mark Twain, a staunch anti-capitalist.[1] Socialism was in the cultural air of the time, a minority opinion as a whole but very influential in parts. “Socialist” was a respectable designation and an acceptable adjective. Even conservative opponents of socialism, such as Henry Adams and Oliver Wendell Holmes, had to respect its influence.
Déjà vu all over again, we may be going through a similar time. Another Gilded Age in which the social problems are similar and the public reactions are as well. On the one hand, a significant portion of the population, mainly among elderly, isolated, rural and small-town Americans, have been embracing rabid right-wing demagoguery and conspiracy theories that threaten democracy. There is a desperation among some of these people who seem to feel that they have nothing to lose in embracing extremist ideas and actions.
At the same time, liberal ideas are seeming to be taking hold among younger people, and especially among urban, highly educated young adults. This political trend seems to be the culmination of several decades of liberalization. Every generation of young people since the 1960’s has been more progressive than the last, and today socialism seems to be gaining a level of respectability and acceptability similar to that in Howell’s time. This is exemplified by the success in recent years of socialists such as Bernie Sanders. It is also indicated in polling numbers that have been trending in favor of socialist ideas, with more than 50% of young adults having a positive view of socialism.[2] A turn toward socialism similar to that at the turn of the twentieth century may be occurring today.
Focusing on William Dean Howells, this essay discusses the idea of socialism as it was promoted in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century and as it may apply to the political situation today. The discussion centers on Annie Kilburn, a novel by Howells that reflects his socialist ideas and ideals. It exemplifies an ethos of “socialism of the heart” and “the common sense of socialism” that was widespread at that time and that may be resurfacing again today.
Defining Socialism: Socialism of the Heart and Socialist Practice.
Socialism is a word with many different shades of meaning, ranging from totalitarian communism to libertarian anarchism. Since this is an essay about Howells, I will use the word the way he and his colleagues used it which, in turn, is essentially the way most self-styled socialists today would define the term. In this regard, I will distinguish between what we might call socialism of the heart, which Howells called “complicity,” and socialist practice.[3]
Socialism of the heart can be described as a feeling that we are all in this world together, and so we ought to share the burdens and rewards of our collective efforts. It is a feeling of mutuality and interdependence, and a sense of fairness. It is exemplified in the Golden Rule that we should love our neighbors as extensions of ourselves and that we should do to others as we would have others do to us. It is an ethos of individuality, as opposed to individualism, through cooperation. One for all and all for one, as the Three Musketeers would put it, instead of all for me and mine, as Donald Trump, for example, would have it.
Socialist practice can be defined as the ways and means of institutionalizing socialism of the heart. Howells described a socialist society as one that implemented the Golden Rule, and promoted liberty through equality and equality through fraternity. Whereas conservatives generally claim that liberty is inconsistent with equality and fraternity, Howells argued just the opposite. Without equality, he claimed, there could be no real liberty, just universal resentment, resistance and reaction. Without fraternity, in turn, there could be no equality, just a Social Darwinian struggle for advantage over others. This was just common sense to Howells and to most socialists then and now.[4]
Socialist practice for Howells meant socialized solutions to social problems, making use of government and other public institutions. This, too, was just common sense to Howells and most socialists then and now. A socialist political system could be described as a democratic regime of majority rule with minority rights, the most important of which is the right of the minority to possibly become the majority someday. The last clause of that sentence is crucial because logically flowing from it are virtually all the civil liberties we associate with our Bill of Rights.
In economics, socialism could be described as a democratic system based on the presumption of public ownership or control of big businesses, unless it is in the public interest for businesses to be privately owned and/or controlled. Socialists generally assume that small businesses would be privately owned and operated as part of a mixed public-private economy. In social relations, socialism could be summarized as promoting a culture of diversity coupled with cooperation, and of support for people who respect others, opposition to people to the extent that they disrespect others.[5]
Socialism in Flux: Now you see it, now you don’t. What goes around comes around. Maybe.
“So, what’s so bad about that?”
“That’s just common sense.”
Students reacting to the idea of socialism.
The idea of socialism has had an up-and-down history in the United States. Socialist ideas trended upward during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Then downward in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In flux now, socialism maybe trending up again.
If you came of age during the late twentieth or early twenty-first century, you might not realize that socialism was an idea and ideal that animated most American reform movements from the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century. Ideas derived from socialism underlay the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society, reforms that became the foundation of America’s social welfare programs, health and safety regulations, economic controls, and environmental protections.
Socialists were regular participants in the political conversation in this country during that time, and socialist ideas were generally considered to be within the political mainstream, albeit on the left bank of the stream. Many prominent citizens, such as William Dean Howells, considered socialism to be desirable and even commonsensical, as did large numbers of ordinary people who supported the socialist movement and the Socialist Party.[6]
Socialism was an ideology of the urban working class for the most part, but it also appealed to small farmers and business people. Socialists fought against the exploitation of workers, but they also fought against the oppression and exploitation of small businesses and small farmers by big corporations and banks. The state with the highest percentage of Socialist Party members and voters in the early twentieth century was Oklahoma, an overwhelmingly rural state of small farmers, the predecessors of the Dust Bowl Okies struggling to avoid what became their fate.
Self-styled socialists won elections and occupied important government positions . One of the most colorful of these was Golden Rule Samuel Jones, a successful businessman and Christian Socialist who was mayor of Toledo, OH for several terms at the turn of the century. Taking the Golden Rule as his mantra, Jones implemented numerous pro-labor and pro-consumer reforms in his businesses and in the city.
Jones was not alone. In 1911, there were some seventy-four Socialist mayors of American towns and cities. Socialist ideas were becoming so popular that there was even serious speculation the Socialist Party might replace the Democratic Party as the second political party in our country, just as the socialist Labor Party was replacing the Liberal Party in England as the major alternative to the Conservative Party there. The Democratic Party was identified at this time with the slave, segregationist and Confederate South and had elected only one President since the 1850’s, the conservative Grover Cleveland twice. The Socialist Party, representing workers, small farmers and small business people, seemed to be a perfect foil to the Republican Party of big capitalists. This did not come to pass.
The Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1912. He received only 41% of the vote in a four-way race, but his election broke the downward spiral of the Democrats. With America’s entry into World War I, President Wilson decimated the Socialist Party, which opposed the war, by jailing the Socialist Party’s leaders, banning Socialists’ speeches and publications, and prohibiting their meetings and most other political activities. The Socialist Party never recovered from this persecution and never became a major political player. But socialists, socialist ideals and socialist ideas continued to be influential for many years thereafter, perhaps reaching a high point during the 1930’s.[7]
The political situation changed dramatically with the start of the Cold War in the 1940’s. Socialism became widely equated with totalitarian Soviet Communism, first by conservatives and later by liberals who defensively followed suit. Socialist ideas were identified by conservatives with repressive Communist dictatorships. As a result, the idea of socialism became anathema in most political circles and “socialist” became an insult, a way for political conservatives to excoriate their opponents and put them on the defensive.
Conservatives during the Cold War labelled anything that smacked of progressive social reform or bigger government, except for the military, as a socialistic slippery slope that led inevitably to Communist totalitarianism. As proponents of competitive individualism and winner-take-all capitalism, conservatives also equated ideas of cooperation and economic equality with Communism. That equation was a smack-down for liberals as well as socialists.
One of the main playbooks for this Cold War political tactic was Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative in which he claimed that liberals and socialists were more dangerous to America than outright Communists.[8] Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964, contended that Communists who showed their true colors openly could be readily identified and resisted. But liberals and socialists falsely colored their Communistic proposals with ostensibly benevolent intentions. In reality, both were either Communists in disguise or, even more insidious, Commie dupes who promoted Communism without knowing it.
In either case, Goldwater insisted, liberals and socialists sugarcoated their Communistic policies and sweettalked the ignorant masses into bondage. Progressive programs, he proclaimed, are Trojan horses for a Communist takeover. They look good but they are a form of “creeping socialism” that will end in totalitarian Communism. The process was compared to a frog sitting in a slowly heating pot of water who is boiled to death without ever realizing anything is wrong.
In sum, socialism was widely equated during this time with oppression, and the word “socialist” became an expletive. To be labelled a socialist was political death. Until recently.
The times they may be changing: Come gather round young people.
A person coming of age today might not be able to appreciate the intense fears of Communism and antipathy toward socialism that were so widespread during the Cold War, or understand conservatives’ anti-government ideology which is rooted in those fears. The Cold War is long over. The Soviet Union is long gone. Communism is a dead letter. And progressive government programs that began as socialist ideas, such as Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act in the field of medical care, are ubiquitous, useful and popular. To most young people today, these programs seem commonsensical. If this is creeping socialism, they say, then what is the problem? [9]
Contrary to much popular opinion, mainstream socialism is not a radical ideology. By definition, radicals want to get to the roots of what they see as a wicked society, tear up those roots, and plant something entirely new. It’s the right-wingers who want to tear up the roots of the social welfare state and social justice movements that have been developing in the United States over the last one hundred years. They are the radicals.
Mainstream socialists, to the contrary, do not reject the foundations of American society. They claim to build on the social ideals that most Americans already hold and on social instincts that most Americans already display. Mainstream socialism is designed to be democracy taken to the next level, and socialists do not have to start from scratch. They can build on the democratic institutions and ideas that already exist in capitalist America and, thereby, move gradually toward a socialist society. This pragmatic gradualism – which conservatives condemn as creeping socialism – has historically been one of socialism’s strengths.
And, after some seventy years as a fringe idea in political limbo, socialism seems to be making a comeback, especially among young people. Exemplified by the popularity of socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the pendulum may be swinging back toward normalizing the idea of socialism as it was at the turn of the twentieth century.
While most conservatives still preach the same fearsome sermon about socialism as a stalking horse for Communism, and try to scare up support with horror stories about creeping socialism and Communist conspiracies, those jeremiads don’t seem to resonate with most younger people today. Communism is still a scare word to many older people and socialism with it, but Communism is ancient history to most young people. And most seem willing to consider the idea of socialism on its own terms and not on the basis of some alleged connection to Communism.
These recent changes in the attitudes of younger people toward socialism are consistent with the trending changes in political attitudes among young people since the 1960’s. Starting noisily in the 1960’s among what was actually a relatively small percentage of politically progressive young people – there were at least nine young George Bushes and Donald Trumps for every Abbie Hoffman or Tom Hayden – every generation of young people since then has been quietly more progressive than the last.
Recent polls show a majority of young adults have a negative opinion of capitalism.[10] At the same time, a majority of young adults have positive opinion of socialism.[11] And large majorities support progressive policies and progressive social programs. Even 56% of young Republicans say they want the government to do more to reduce income inequality in the country, a position that their Republican elders deride as socialist anathema.[12] And young progressives have generally remained progressive as they have grown older, thereby gradually tilting the overall American population toward the political left.
This trend toward the political left among young people has not been without opposition. Conservatives and, even more, radical right-wingers have mounted virulent attacks on progressives. Many of these attacks are racist, sexist, antisemitic, and otherwise bigoted. The viciousness of this right-wing backlash against progressives and progressive programs, and even against democracy, can be taken as a sign that right-wingers realize they are losing the long-term demographic battle. They are desperate to do something, no matter how radical, to stop the leftward movement of the country. But, as the saying goes, demography is destiny.
Socialism of the Heart in everyday life.
Most Americans today seem to suffer from cognitive political dissonance. Taught the Golden Rule and the virtues of sharing and cooperation in childhood, they are then inducted into a culture of Social Darwinian dog-eat-dog competition as they grow older. As a result, most tend to be ideologically individualistic and conservative but instinctively socialistic and liberal.
This contradiction helps explain polling results over the last seventy-five years in which, when Americans are asked broad ideological questions, a majority of them give conservative answers. But, when they are asked pragmatic human interest questions, they give liberal answers. Asked, for example, if they favor government welfare programs, a majority of Americans say “No.” Asked if the government should feed hungry children, a large majority say “Yes.”
In sum, Americans seem to be individualistic by indoctrination and acculturation, but socialistic by nature. That is, they may espouse individualism, but most of them seem to retain a sense of socialism of the heart as part of their underlying psychological makeup. Take the following hypothetical example from everyday life:
Six people in a family are sitting around a kitchen table, two parents and four children of various ages. The family has limited financial resources. They are discussing how to manage their finances so as to maximize the opportunities of each person and promote the success of the whole family. All see themselves in the same boat, and each is looking out for the other.
What are we to call this scenario? Conservatives might offer it is an example of family values, and evidence of the strength of nuclear families as opposed to the broader society. But progressives could cite it as an instance of socialist values, and as evidence of underlying socialistic feelings that most people have, no matter what ideology they espouse.
Take these other hypothetical commonplace examples:
Six people are on a basketball court. They have not been previously acquainted. They split into two teams of three people each, and begin a half-court game of basketball. Within five minutes, the players on each team have bonded with each other. They are positioning themselves to play to their teammates’ strengths, passing to each other, blocking for each other, compensating for each other’s weaknesses, each finding a role that plays to their strengths while helping the team, and each subordinating their egos to promote the success of the team. Is this merely smart competitive strategy? Or is it also instinctive mutuality, socialism of the heart?
Six workers in a workshop are standing around a machine. They are discussing how to organize a project so as to complete it most efficiently and effectively. They dole out assignments based on the relative skills of each worker, so as to play to the strengths of each and promote the success of the group. The joint project is the center of everyone’s attention. Is this just good competitive business practice or is it also an underlying common sensibility of socialism?
These scenarios are only a few of the millions of similar situations that play out every day in reality. They seem to represent socialism of the heart in widespread practice, and illustrate how most Americans are instinctively socialists of the heart. For William Dean Howells, this sort of everyday practice of socialism was the foundation of the common sense of socialism that he promoted. In turn, everyday scenarios such as these make up the core of Howells’ novels
The How of William Dean Howells: Realism as a way of life and literature.
Howells was a self-proclaimed realist in his approach to literature, adamantly so. He was strongly opposed to the romanticism that had been the predominant literary style during most of the nineteenth century. Romantic literature was full of heroes, heroines and lurid villains, and focused on extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. It conveyed extremes of emotion in its characters and aimed to evoke similar emotions in its readers. Howells, while acknowledging that romanticism had been a welcome replacement for the overly formalistic classicism that predominated during the eighteenth century, claimed, nonetheless, that romanticism had itself become stale and formulaic.[13]
Artistic styles come and go, Howells explained. They come as fresh ways of looking at things and go when they become conventional and trite. The romantics in the early nineteenth century were “making the same fight against effete classicism which realism is making today against effete romanticism.” Romanticism has had its day. It had been appropriate for the heroic era of revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but the more prosaic time of the turn of the twentieth century required a more prosaic literary style.[14]
Realists portrayed ordinary people making difficult but ordinary choices and doing difficult but ordinary things. Not heroic persons or unique personalities who rise above their situations. Just ordinary people who make do, or don’t make do, in the types of situations with which most people can identify. Howells aimed at a bottom-up form of literature and he longed for a “communistic era in taste” when ordinary people would be the arbiters of art.[15]
Realists, according to Howells, attempted to write the truth about people, as opposed to the exaggerations and idealizations that the romantics created. Realism consisted of “fidelity to experience and probability of motive.” Novelists should not be preachers. They should convey the facts of a situation and then let the facts speak for themselves. Res ipsa loquitor, as the lawyers say. If an author hopes that readers will reach a certain conclusion, such as that socialism is the way to go, the author must let the readers reach that conclusion themselves through seeing the facts.
Howells’ three most well-known books are The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)[16], A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889)[17], and A Traveler from Altruria (1894)[18]. His books are often intended as bildungsromans for their main characters and for us readers as well. The characters are morally tested with success and failure. With failure through success and success through failure. And we readers are morally tested as to where and how we place our sympathies.
In The Rise of Silas Lapham, for example, a successful small businessman, Lapham, starts to make it big, rise in social status, and conspicuously consume his newfound wealth. He is then morally challenged by having to decide whether or not to make a really big deal based on taking unfair advantage of the ignorance of a potential investor in his business. It was an act that would likely be legal but could morally be considered a fraud. The alternative was to confess the full situation to the investor, in which event, the investor would almost certainly back out of the deal and Lapham would likely go bankrupt.
After much soul searching, Lapham decides to fess up to the investor and the investor predictably backs out of the deal. Lapham goes bankrupt, but he morally rises even as he financially falls. Reflecting on his decision, he says that “I had to tell him how things stood. I had to tell him all about it…I couldn’t let that man put his money into my business without I told him.”[19] Lapham’s conscience prevails – his sense of doing unto others as he would have them do unto him. In the end, he goes back to running a small business in which he works cooperatively with his employees.
Lapham learns a lesson about pride and the vanity of victory, which is a theme in many of Howells’ books. As portrayed by Howells, victorious pride often precedes a moral fall. And vaingloriousness in victory is not only ugly but also foolish since winning is only temporary. No sooner do you gain a victory than you have to compete for the next. Insecurity is a consequence of competition.
Many of the main characters in Howell’s books gradually come to accept what we could call the common-sense of socialism or, at least, socialism of the heart, with most of these having to overcome bourgeois middle class resistance in themselves as well as from others. And so do we readers. In A Hazard of New Fortunes, the central character, March, is a decent, moderately liberal editor of a new New York magazine. He is a newcomer to a big city and we see the social problems and conflicts of that time through his eyes. A variety of social ideas are presented and represented by characters in the book, even an argument in favor of slavery.
At the end of the book, March is still unresolved as to his social ideas, but it is an old socialist working man Lindau who is the most sympathetic character. Lindau is a German political refugee who came to the United States after participating in the democratic revolution of 1848. In America, he became an ardent abolitionist and volunteered to fight in the Civil War, losing a hand in battle. A highly educated person who knows several languages, Lindau has been living in poverty since the war while supporting the labor union movement. He is a selfless person who helped March when March was younger and whom March hires to work at his magazine.[20]
Lindau weaves in and out of the story, invariably engaging March or one of the other characters in a tirade against capitalism and the enormous wealth gap between the rich capitalists and the poor workers. “It is the landlords and the merchant princes, the railroad kings and the coal barons (the oppressors to whom you instinctively give the titles of tyrants” who rule and ruin the country. Excoriating the idea of philanthropy, Lindau says of rich do-gooders that “Yes, when they have gathered their millions together from the hunger and cold and nakedness and ruin and despair of hundreds of thousands of other men,” then they give a pittance to the poor.[21]
Lindau is the moral center of the book, the strongest statement of a clear and consistent moral life. His social commitment is, in turn, reflected in Conrad Dryfoos, the son of a wealthy businessman, who dies while trying to support Lindau and some striking workers, and in Margaret Vance, a society girl who turns to what we would call social justice activities. Socialism of the heart is the underlying message that arises out of the arguments and events of the book.[22]
Howells’s socialist views were most explicit in a series of three utopian novels that contrast life in an imaginary land of Altruria with life in the United States. Altrurian society is explicitly based on the Golden Rule. The country was supposedly founded by disciples of Jesus Christ who emigrated from Palestine some two thousand years ago and who established a genuinely Christian society in which everyone works and lives as one big family, and shares all things.[23]
In the first of the books, A Traveler from Altruria, a visitor, Mr. Homos, comes from Altruria to the United States. He says that he particularly wanted to visit the United States because of the country’s celebrated dedication to the ideals of liberty, equality and democracy, ideals to which his country was also dedicated. The gist of the book consists of showing that the United States does not practice what it preaches. When the Altrurian compares how workers, women, poor people, artists and other social groups are treated in America as compared to people in his country, it is clear that people are better off in the ideal Altruria than in the real United States.[24]
Although the comparisons are done ironically, humorously and without rancor, we readers come away with a feeling that the Altrurian way is obviously the better way to live. The Altrurian visitor is, for example, continually doing things that he is told by his bourgeois hosts he shouldn’t, such as helping a porter carry his bags, helping a waitress carry a heavy tray, and talking with a poor person in the street. The situations are comical but we instinctively think Mr. Homos was in the right. And we come to see that his way of treating people is more humane than the class-based and status-ridden American way. Howells makes his case by setting up situations that appeal to our better natures, that is, to the socialism embedded in our hearts.[25]
That is the key to Howells’ method. Set up the situations and then let the facts speak for themselves to our better natures.[26] Annie Kilburn is one of Howell’s less well-known books, but it is a prime example of his realistic and socialistic style.[27]
Socialism of the Heart in Annie Kilburn
Annie Kilburn (1888) is the story of a young woman, the eponymous Annie Kilburn, who inherits a fortune and returns from sojourning as an expatriate in Italy to the small New England town from which she originally hailed. She returns with the philanthropic intention of doing good things with her wealth for the lower-class workers and poor people there. The book is a record of her efforts in this regard and the maturation of her thinking.
The novel consists for the most part of dialogue in which the characters debate social issues and the question of doing good in the world. It is not, however, a didactic book. The conversations are realistic and weave naturally in and out of the action. Each character’s argument has both strong points and weak points. Howells’ intention seems to be for us to see for ourselves that socialism makes sense. He is not going to tell us what to believe, albeit he seems to expect that we will reach conclusions consistent with his ideas of complicity, what we might call socialism of the heart. And I think we do.
Annie is the central character in the book and the focus of the debates. Everyone is trying to convince her of their ideas, and her education is what drives the story. Annie is not, however, an infallible or flawless heroine, and her conclusions are not necessarily the same as ours or those of the author.
While Annie is the central character, the moral and intellectual center is the local minister, Mr. Peck, who preaches a socialist gospel that attempts to put the Golden Rule into practice. Peck’s goal is a society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. Americans proclaim theirs is a land of the free, but liberty, Peck claims, cannot survive without equality and fraternity. Liberty must be used “to promote equality; or in other words, equality is the perfect work, the evolution of liberty.” And this, he concludes, will form the basis for “the universal ideal of fraternity.”[28]
Peck proposes that the means of achieving this ideal society is through labor unions in which workers become brothers to each other in their collective struggle for a better society, and through communal living and working arrangements which are cells of the new cooperative system within the old capitalist order. Toward this end, he supports labor organizing and intends to establish a commune among workers in a neighboring town, practicing what he preaches. [29]
Peck heaps scorn on Annie’s philanthropic plans. He claims that philanthropy demeans the poor and demoralizes the rich. “When the philanthropist offers help,” Peck says, “it is not as a brother of those who need it, but a patron, an agent of the false state of things” in which we live. It is “a peace-offering to his own guilty consciousness of his share in the wrong.”[30]
He claims that in “the truly Christian state, there shall be no more asking and no more giving, no more gratitude and no more merit, no more charity, but only and evermore justice; all shall share alike, and want and luxury and killing toil and heartless indolence shall all cease together.”[31]
When Annie complains that she does not know how to help the poor, Peck responds “Yes, it is difficult to help others when we cease to need help ourselves.” She is rich and does not think she needs anything that poor people could give her. So, she cannot connect with them. The only way to genuinely help others is in a cooperative effort in which they help you as well. That is the gist of the Golden Rule. It is also the gist of socialism.[32]
There is, however, a troubling gap between Peck’s preaching about the Golden Rule and his practice. His wife having died, Peck is solely responsible for the care of his young daughter and, in pursuit of his political goals, he is very neglectful of her. She is shabbily dressed and wanders around the town on her own. She seems in large part to be fed and cared for by kind neighbors. Peck, when questioned about whether he cares more for strangers than for the members of his own household, retorts “Who are those of our own household?” And answering his own question, he proclaims that “All mankind are those of our own household.”[33]
It is a response that raises perpetually perplexing questions about the priorities of social reformers. Peck is seemingly unable to reconcile his love for humankind with his responsibilities to his daughter, essentially sacrificing her to the cause. It is a problem that faces all activists. What limits are there to the risks and hardships to which reformers may subject their friends and families? And how does one practice socialism at home in a capitalist society?
Peck’s socialist ideas are the main thesis of the book around which most of the discussion turns. The book consists mainly of characters’ reactions to Peck’s ideas and his reactions to them. And all of it is directed toward educating Annie. Prime among the discussants are Mrs. Munger, Mr. Gerrish, Dr. Morrell, and Mrs. Bolton.
Mrs. Munger is a well-meaning, well-to-do do-gooder socialite for whom philanthropic activities are a way to help her feel good about herself. Public-spirited for egoistic purposes, she organizes lavish benefits that are ostensibly to aid the poor but that often cost more than they raise. Dismissing Peck’s insistence on learning from the poor, she also promotes worker education through which the rich can indoctrinate the poor with middle-class ways and mores.
Although Mrs. Munger feels real sympathy for the downtrodden, and makes convincing appeals in favor of helping the disadvantaged, her philanthropic activities ultimately seem demeaning and disrespectful to workers and the poor. For these reasons, Peck is dismissive of Mrs. Munger’s activities and won’t support them. And it is in large part from watching Mrs. Munger, and being dragooned into helping her, that Annie comes to conclude that philanthropy is a form of vanity that serves mainly to puff up the rich rather than elevate the poor. It is a conclusion that we readers come to feel as well.[34]
Mr. Gerrish is a self-made successful local merchant who, like Peck, is an opponent of philanthropy, but for very different reasons. His opposition is Scrooge-like. Espousing conventional views in favor of capitalism and individualism, Gerrish condemns labor unions, the mollycoddling of workers, and aid to the poor. He repeatedly boasts about his financial success and high standing in the community and his harshness toward his own workers who better not speak out or step out of line. He claims to be a model for the poor to emulate.
“I came into this town a poor boy without a penny in my pocket,” Gerrish exclaims, “and I have made my way, every inch of it, unaided and alone. I am a thorough believer in giving everyone an equal chance to rise and to – get along; I would not throw an obstacle in anybody’s way; but I do not believe – I do not believe- in pampering those who have not risen, or have made no effort to rise.” He favors what might be called equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome.[35]
Although he is clearly a boor, Gerrish makes some strong arguments in favor of self-reliance – it builds character and promotes innovation – and against labor unions – they protect the lazy and incompetent, and they disrupt efficient business operations. But Annie and we readers come to feel repelled by the callousness of his arguments and actions. His boasting also seems to reveal an underlying insecurity that is endemic to capitalism. It is a system in which people are constantly engaged in zero-sum competition, with today’s winner in danger of becoming tomorrow’s loser. Our instinctive humanity is provoked against Gerrish’s Social Darwinian inhumanity.[36]
Dr. Morrell represents enlightened bourgeois opinion, sympathetic to the plight of the workers and the poor, but sufficiently satisfied with the way things are not to want to upset the status quo. He is a decent man, and he is amused and attracted by Annie’s enthusiasm for social reform. But he is too skeptical and self-satisfied to seem to Annie or to us like a hero. Morrell calls Peck “a dreamer,” which is not a compliment, and facetiously derides Peck’s insistence on working with the poor and sharing their lot. The doctor remarks that when Peck says “that as long as there was hardship and overwork for underpay in the world, he must share them. It seems to me that I might as well say that as long as there were dyspepsia and rheumatism in the world, I must share them.”[37] Morrell cautiously courts Annie and seemingly catches her at the end of the book.[38]
Mrs. Bolton, Annie’s hardworking housekeeper provides a facetious view of the rich people who take their vacations in the town. She wonders, for example, what the rich women who visit the town mean when they say they come there for a rest. She declaims “I don’t know what they want to rest from; but if it’s from doing nothin’ all winter long, I guess they go back to the city boot’ near’s tired’s they come.”[39] Some of them are rich busy-body do-gooders, like Mrs. Munger, but most are rich do-nothings.
Mrs. Bolton and most of the townspeople have mixed feelings about Peck. Most respect his idealism but think his ideas are utopian. The narrator explains that “They revered his goodness and his wisdom, but they regarded his conduct of life unpractical…and he could not himself have kept the course he had marked out.”[40] They are supportive but skeptical. Except for Annie.
Annie is enthralled by Peck’s ideas and his example, and she comes to a decision to join him in working and living with a group of poor people in what we today might call a commune. This romantic venture does not come to pass, however, and the ending of the book is realistically anti-climactic. Peck is killed in an accident before Annie can effectuate this drastic change of life, and she is secretly relieved.[41] Annie had regretted her pledge to join Peck in his project almost immediately after making it, but had felt bound by her word to him. His demise relieved her from that pledge.
Having been saved from her own foolish romanticism, Annie resigns herself to a privileged existence, albeit henceforth doing small deeds of goodness with others, and not just philanthropically for them. Annie adopts Peck’s daughter, and spends time on local community projects, working well with people who are socially her inferiors, even including people she does not like. She no longer gives money. No philanthropy, just common work. She finds that it’s the work that makes the relationship. In this, she keeps some allegiance to Peck’s philosophy.
In the end, no one wins the debate in the book, and Annie, is still adrift in her ideas and inconsistent in her actions. But we readers are left with the feeling that the socialist minister Peck has had the best of the argument even if he, too, is inconsistent in his actions. I think we are left with the feeling that Annie’s contradictions, and seemingly ours as well, stem from being well-off and unable to reconcile our responsibilities to ourselves and our families with our responsibilities to humankind. We have difficulty giving up our privileges to fully join the cause with others. We are left feeling socialist in our hearts but inconsistent in our actions. But maybe that is all right and all that Howells would have hoped for and expected of us.
The Food and Drug Administration, Workers’ Compensation, Social Security, the Wagner Act, the Civil Rights Acts, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, these are just a few of the programs that were part of the socialist agenda and that have been spurred by socialism of the heart. This was an agenda and an attitude that was promoted by Howells and many others in his time. To them, socialism just made common sense. The key was to help other people to realize that fact. Howells hoped that presenting the facts and letting them speak for themselves would help people to recognize the underlying socialist message in the facts and in their hearts.
It worked to a great extent in Howells’ time. Maybe it is working again now? I was a college history professor off-and-on from the 1960’s to the 2010’s and what I increasingly heard from my students over the years was, “If this is socialism, what is wrong with it?” “That’s a good question,” I would usually reply, “What do you think?”
What do you think?
BW 2/23
[1] William Dean Howells. My Mark Twain. Literary Friends and Acquaintances. 1910. P.52.
[2] Laura Wronski. Axios/Momentive Poll: Capitalism and Socialism. 6/15/21.
[3] Jason Puskar. “William Dean Howells and the Insurance of the Real.” Project Muse. American Library of History. Oxford University Press, 2006.
[4] William Dean Howells. Annie Kilburn. Braschi Digital Publishing. P.124
[5] Michael Harrington. Socialism: Past and Future. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1989.
[6] Axel Honneth. The Idea of Socialism: A Renewal. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017. p.10.
[7] David Shanon. The Socialist Party of America: A History. New York: MacMillan Press, 1955.
[8] Barry Goldwater. Conscience of a Conservative. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960.
[9] Robert Kuttner. “Socialism rears its ugly head.” The American Prospect. 4/9/19.
[10] Julia Manchester. “Majority of Young Adults in the United States have a negative view of capitalism: Poll. The Hill. 6/28/21.
[11] Felix Salman. Axios Poll. 6/17/19.
[12] Laura Wronski. Axios/Momentive Poll: Capitalism and Socialism of June 15, 2021.
[13] William Dean Howells Criticism and Fiction. A Public Domain Book. 1891. P.11.
[14] Howells. Ibid. P.7.
[15] Howells. Ibid. P.5.
[16]William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham. American Classics Series. Musicum Books, 2017.
[17] William Dean Howells. A Hazard of New Fortunes. American Classics Series, 2015.
[18] William Dean Howells. A Traveler from Altruria. New York: Harper & Bros., 1894.
[19] Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham. Pp.307-308, 320.
[20] Howells. A Hazard of New Fortunes. P. 80.
[21] Ibid. Pp. 75-76, 152-153, 230, 250.
[22] Ibid. Pp.314, 333-334
[23] Howells. A Traveler from Altruria. P.27.
[24] Ibid. Pp.10, 13.
[25] Ibid. Pp.2, 5, 35.
[26] Howells. Criticism and Fiction. Pp.3-4, 7.
[27] Christopher Key. “Willaim Dean Howells and the Genteel Socialism in Annie Kilburn.” Academia Proceedings. University of West Bohemia, 1999.
[28] Howells. Annie Kilburn. P.124.
[29] P.125.
[30] P.124.
[31] Pp.124-125.
[32] Ibid. P.89.
[33] Ibid. P. 118.
[34] Ibid. P.136.
[35] Ibid. P.46.
[36] Ibid. P.141.
[37] Ibid. P.155
[38] Ibid. P.173.
[39] Ibid. P.26
[40] Ibid. P.165
[41] Ibid. P.153.
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