establish for itself a dynamic principle of organiza-
tion. It is in the spirit of this recovered concern
with material "content" as a basis for form that we
approach a judgment of
The People, Yes.
We need not enter here into detailed errors of
social theory to be found in Sandburg's poem; it is
the movement and inflection Of the whole mass that
concerns us.
Warmly believing in the intelligence,
the good-
will, the vitality, and the suffering of the great mass
of the people, placing his faith in the spontaneous
"heart" of American men and women, Sandburg,
through the reality of direct experiences of Amer-
ican life itself, reveals the act that the term "the
people" has come to mean, mainly, the working class
and the small folk of the town and countryside,
the
people who are poor and who toil without reward.
Other social elements,
"those who have forgotten
work and the price at which life goes on" appear as
"the refuse of humanity,
the off-scourings,
the en-
cumberings." It is the knowledge of the working
population that comprises his scores of pages of
aphorisms,
legends, jokes, yarns, opinions,
typical
instances, queries. It is the knowledge of the worker
at his machine that he vaunts in the magnificent
section
2 2
of the poem:
Knowing in the mystery of one automatic
m.achine expertly shaping for your eyes
another automatic machine
Knowing in traction,
power-shafts,
transmis-
sions, twist drills, grinding gears-
Knowing in the night air mail, the news-reel
flicker,
the broadcasts from Tokio, Shang-
hai, Bombay and Somaliland-
The people
a
knower whose knowing grows by
what it feeds on
The people wanting to know more, wanting.
The birds of the air and the fish of the sea
leave off where man begins.
A profound and devoted statement! It penetrates
deeply into the true meaning of labor and the prod-
ucts of man. It accepts modern industrial production
as the highest stage in man's history-yet
a stage
which can be surpassed.
But is Sandburg conscious of the implications of
the division he has discovered for himself between
the working population and the non-laboring off-
scourings and encumberings? Hardly.
For him the
People is still one mass, and the offscourings are a
disease germ within the mass, which the mass will
overcome or absorb through the vitality of its white
corpuscles.
In short, so great is Sandburg's self-effacement be-
fore the majestic multitudinousness
of the people
that he overlooks the actual situation of the working
masses. Once again, it is the absence from his poetry
of any inkling of the war of contradictions which
moves modern society. Once again, it is the old un-
critical, one-way optimism,
fostered by America's
24
easy and spontaneous successes of the past, the be-
lief that without planning, without a conscious gaug-
ing of forces, its will and mysterious election will
carry it through to the needed solutions.
Yet, in reality, what does the people's knowing,
both the old knowing through sayings and yarns and
the new knowing through machines and mass-labor,
what does this popular,
multiform and formless
knowing actually mean in a society ruled by other
people who never touch a machine? Is the knowl-
edge of the working portion of the People the same
knowledge as the knowledge of the rulers, so that
the whole People knows as one being? Or is the
knowledge of the great masses of people in a society
which is divided into classes the genial knowledge
of slaves? The rulers have a species of knowledge
and a species of contact with social reality which is
concealed from the great masses of people. The
knowledge of the rulers is a rude and close-reckon-
ing knowledge-and
Sandburg has great contempt
for it-in fact, the over-contempt
which grows from
his idealistic position.
The rulers are hypocrites,
and think only of mon-
ey. This judgment satisfies Sandburg. He fails to see
that behind this outer disguise of morality, which he
has succeeded in penetrating,
the rulers conceal not
merely greedy little human beings, "like the rest of
us," but a great cunning and a great knowledge,
which manifest
themselves in their acts, in their
power as a force. This ruling-class knowledge is part
of the knowledge of the people only in the sense that
two enemy strategies are part of the same war. The
desire to see a war as a whole does not, however,
justify regarding it as a parade.
Sandburg's People
simply parades forward into the future like some all-
containing organism,
multiplying itself, cleansing it-
self, and searching its way, but never meeting an
enemy, never learning to reconnoiter,
never captur-
ing a position, never experiencing the responsibility
of saving the future from the past. His poem closes
with:
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief the
people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march:
Where to? What next?
So much for the mystically optimistic and undynamic
character of Sandburg's conception of history and
social life. And what of the quality of labor and the
people's'
knowledge and life in the present day of
struggle? Can that be uncritically celebrated,
as it
was by Whitman in his day of the triumph of the
Union forces over slavery and reaction? Is there joy
and human amplitude in this labor and the knowl-
edge it brings? Or is it not rather a fact of this
divided society of ours, that what fills the mind of
the worker in any given industry, or in the reminis-
cences of his rest, or in the story swapped with the
boys, is isolated from the knowledge,
experiences,
OCTOBER,
1936
