98
PARTISAN REVIEW
methods of these sociological measuring sticks remain admirably
calculated to make work, and recruit followers. Most surveys are
"exploratory." They are designed to obtain some hints as to
methods that might be practicable for the measuring of such and
such social phenomena. The first hundred years, concerned solely
with methodology, are the hardest. After that it becomes necessary
to evaluate the methods used in making these methodological deter–
minations. Next it is in point to evaluate the methods of the evalua–
tors. By this time the original sociological pair have multiplied by
a process
of
normal academic proliferation to three hundred thou–
sand six hundred and sixty-six, and if they had been rabbits, the
·exasperated ranchers would have driven them into the Grand
Canyon long ago.
6.
Community of Interest
This, in the end, is what the muckraker dies of. Sooner or
later he firtds that he cannot attack anything without attacking
everything; simultaneously, he discovers that this creeping com–
munity of interest of a defensive, dying economy has robbed him
of his means of production, which are a pay check and an avenue
of publication. Accordingly he ceases to function, while muck
'accumulates, and the society moves nearer to the pseudo-catharsis
of fascism.
Commercial magazines have sacred cows, liberal and radical
non-commercial magazines have sacred cows, government keeps
sacred cows and is kept by them. The cigarette industry, for
example, combines a maximum of sanctity with a maximum of
anti-social noxiousness. As the hard-boiled Westbrook Pegler
pointed out in one of his most acrid columns, "we live by our
vices." Since our Federal, state and municipal governments derive
important revenue from the various cigarette taxes, they all have a
vested interest in the perpetuation and extension of the vice. This
interest is shared by the newspaper, magazine, and radio busi–
nesses, to which the Big Four cigarette manufacturers contributed
well over thirty million dollars
~orth
of advertising .in 1938.
Although cigarette tobacco contains a multitude of drugs, includ–
ing several active poisons such as nicotine, carbon-monoxide,
ammonia, pyridine, prussic acid, wood-alcohol, collidine, formal–
dehyde, tar, lead and arsenic, the Food and Drug Administration
