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oligopolies that people it, knows no Yankees, no Southerners, no Plains–
men. Park Forest (Illinois) and Levittown (New York) are enough
alike sociologically to make the geographic difference unimportant.
The sanctity of the Organization derives from the fact that it is
the trustee of American prosperity. And prosperity is, in turn, the his–
torical successor to the Protestant conscience. (Americans do in fact
believe that what is good for General Motors is good for the country.
Secretary Wilson simply cannot learn that private truths must not be
spoken in public places.) The Organization-the business organization
in particular-leads the American male firmly up the mountain of
temptation, and trains him to accept, with thanks, all the suburban
kingdoms of this world. Salvation has been worked out in the personnel
office; one need only conform to the benevolent will of the Organiza–
tion. With patience and prudence (and an expanding economy ) , the
Organization Man may confidently expect to arrive at his final destina–
tion-the home office and the senior dormitory suburb.
Whyte is half admiring, half shocked at our imaginary fall upwards
into the good life. In this respect, his ambivalence is similar to that of
other fascinated reporters of this curious fall- David Riesman, for
example. It is not the good life that Whyte suspects. Like Riesman,
he cherishes a secret nostalgia, not for scarcity, but for that contentious
moral athleticism of the Protestant type. From the vantage point of
this nostalgia, Whyte gauges the supine hedonism of the American
temper today, implying that some higher temperature is still possible
in our present-centered culture. Perhaps it is, in rare cases. But be–
cause, like Riesman, he is a hopeful man, Whyte does not emphasize
how thoroughly unfit the American environment is for a recreation
of Protestant ruthlessness-personified as 'autonomous' man or under
any other guise. The world-rejection that underlies the Protestant style
of individuality is not a viable attitude today. Even the ongoing re–
ligious 'revival' in America is a further world-acceptance-the accept–
ance of 'religion' as another national good to which all Americans
are entitled. Having begun to get religion, the American is reaching
toward the point where he has everything.
To Whyte, as to Riesman, the future of American culture revolves
mainly around the question of rehabilitating the individual. Whyte as–
sumes, with the old Protestant Ethic, that there is a core in every
person-unique, incommunicable, indestructible. Further, he assumes
that, thus endowed, the person is not exhausted by the social relations
into which he must enter, no matter how exhaustively these relations
enter into him. Here Whyte has the authority of contemporary social
