One Out of Six

THE CRISIS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS--Lewis Corey--Covici, Friede ($2.50).

With The House of Morgan (1930) and The Decline of American Capitalism (1934), Lewis Corey established himself as a vigorous and well-informed historian of contemporary U. S. economics. His works were characterized by their impressive accumulation of little-known facts, by their revolutionary conclusions and by their repetitious and mechanical prose. Last week his third book revealed that Lewis Corey could combine his scholarly knowledge with an emotional appeal. Addressed to small businessmen, minor executives, white collar workers, architects, engineers, The Crisis of the Middle Class is designed to show them the hopelessness of their future under Fascism, to persuade them to accept Socialist ideals. Differing from his previous books in its greater conciseness, it is also more pungently phrased, rises in a few passages to what can be called economic eloquence.

Briefly recounting the parts played by members of the middle class in the Eng- lish Rebellion of the 1640's, in the French Revolution and in the American War of Independence, Lewis Corey finds that they have been alternately revolutionary and reactionary, at times struggling against the monarchy or the nobles, at times suppressing lower-class radical movements. Thus, before the War of Independence, small shopkeepers, artisans, craftsmen, made common cause with dispossessed laborers against wealthy British merchants and colonial aristocrats, turned on their allies when the "independent plebeian phase" of the movement became strong.

Readers raised on textbook history may scarcely recognize the Revolutionary War that is fought along strict Marxist lines in The Crisis of the Middle Class, but they are likely to remember Author Corey's account of the intrigues and maneuvers of a professional revolutionary of the middle class named Samuel Adams. In Boston, Adams organized a secret and illegal branch of The Sons of Liberty, originally a mechanics' society, urging demonstrations, boycotts, violence, to force changes in British laws that blocked colonial enterprise. Although concessions were granted in 1770, wealthy merchants were not won over to the idea of independence, preferred the handicaps of British rule to the dangers of widespread unrest for which the mechanics were responsible. Consequently, "the middle class radicals, among them Samuel Adams, deliberately excluded mechanics from the revolutionary councils and destroyed the Sons of Liberty." Yet their achievement was progressive despite such double-dealing: "Untiringly and systematically, with a rare understanding of revolutionary strategy and tactics, the middle class radicals mobilized the forces of the coming struggle for independence. Under the creative leadership of Samuel Adams . . . they were flexible in immediate tactics and inflexible in final aims."

The most eloquent passages in The Crisis of the Middle Class are those in which the author pictures the present plight of the U. S. middle class. "Large numbers of small producers, storekeepers and independent professionals are always killed off by depression. But mere assassination now becomes massacre. In only three years of the depression, from 1930 to 1932, 578,000 independent enterprisers in industry, trade and the professions, were driven out of business: one out of six. The massacre is still on; the survivors tremble." Lewis Corey sets the low point of unemployment among salaried employes at 35% of the total. In 1933. 65% of all U. S. chemists were out of work, 85% of all engineers, over 90% of all architects and draftsmen. Analyzed in terms of goods and services that might have been produced if prosperity had not broken down, "there was, in the five years of depression 1930-34, a loss of $185,000 million. . . . This is stupendous and unparalleled, almost ungraspable in its immensity. . . . There never was economic waste on this gigantic scale." Lewis Corey holds that Fascism is no answer, but middle-class readers, visualizing the grim alternatives before them, are likely to experience despair, implore, like Milton's Satan as he stumbled toward the Pit: "Which way the neerest coast of darkness lyes?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.