BOOKS
53
tury United States. Here is your true antidote for the sugar of mytho-
logies. The mass and impact of these facts are overwhelming. They are
not new or unknown facts-indeed,
among so many, drawn often from
such obscure corners, the accusers may be correct in finding a number
in error (which would make not the slightest difference to the book
taken as a whole). What Lundberg has done is to assemble the facts,
to form and direct them.
There are, then, no "classes" in the United States? Read, then,
about these mighty families, richer and more powerful than any monarch
in history, their personal lives more wildly lavish than the maddest
dreams of falling Rome. The government is, you say, of, by and
for the people? Read, then, not an abstract theory of the state, but the
names, dates and places in the story of how these dynasties control every
man and act of the government. But the great fortunes perform an
indispensable social function in making possible science, charity, educa-
tion? Read the detailed story of the Foundations and Endowments;
note their actual social role.
That war for democracy, which we are asked to fight again in the
nearly threatening future? 'Learn more about that last war, whose war
it was and what was done about it. How the members and agents of the
great families (names, dates, offices) swept hungrily down upon Wash-
ington, gathered in the contracts and orders, replenished and extended
with the war funds their mines and factories, how they manipulated
the war crisis to double and triple their fortunes and to consolidate their
control over every key section of the life and industry of the country.
This book is not in the least mere neo-muckraking. It is journalism,
perhaps, but serious flesh and blood and bone journalism: a report, in
spite of the Constitution, one of the few ever truly given, on the state
of the Union.
It is unfortunate that Lundberg has borrowed the title and some
of his conceptions from the "Two Hundred Families" of French Popular
Frontism. This exaggerates the individual role of his protagonists, and
obscures their integral relationship to the entire social order of which
they are a crowning part. It is altogether fantastic that he should be-
lieve the political comments he occasionally makes: "The Roosevelt Ad-
ministration also addressed itself to the ...
problem of neutrality, at
least insuring that the American people will, if called upon to participate
in the next general war, join the belligerents with their eyes open."
"The C.I.O., by organizing workers in heavy industry, was making it im-
possible for heavy industry and the banks during the next down-swing
of the business cycle to institute arbitrarily . . . wholesale lay-offs."
Lundberg finished his book before either Roosevelt's Chicago War Ad-
dress or the current "downswing in the business cycle." How would he
write these sentences today?
However, if Lundberg wishes to make a critical re-examination of
his own reformist opinions, no better advice could be given him than
to re-read thoughtfully his own book.
JAMESBURNHAM
