2022

I have returned from New York and, while my journey was trouble free, not long after returning home some doorknob-licker passed on their head cold. I'm not dead but I'm a little stuffy so, rather than do a whole post on the loot - that will be a later post - I want to talk about one purchase:

The World And The 20s: The Best From New York's Legendary Newspaper, edited by James Boylan, published Dial Books 1973, bought at the Argosy. 

I trust you can work out why I bought this one. For a CoC & ToC enthusiast this is a no-brainer. History as talked about by the folks who were there to witness it, and to publish same in the New York World, Joe Pulitzer's paper. At this point in its run Joseph's sons Ralph, Joseph and Herbert run the show, with famed Herbert Bayard Swope as its editor. 

I shan't do a potted history - again, head cold - but at one point the boys in the print room decided to pontificate. What would life be like, they wondered, a hundred years hence? What would the United States be like in the year of our Lord 2022?

Well.

Shame to pass that up, really.

To begin: 

David Wark Griffith (yes, the fella who directed The Birth of a Nation) thinks we'll do our reading on the screen. Talking pictures will have been perfected (remember, this is published early 1923) and perhaps have been forgotten again. For the world will have become picture-trained, so that words are not as important as they are now. All pictures will be in natural colors, the theatres will have special audiences, that is, there will be specialty theatres. 

Absolutely spot on so far as it goes. However, he goes on to say that I do not foresee the possibility of instantaneous transmission of living action to the screen within 100 years. There must be a medium upon which the dramatic coherence can be worked out and the perfected result set firmly ...

He didn't anticipate reality TV, streaming or news broadcasts, and he has a writer's eye for content. Writers aren't always the best judge of what makes a good performance. Otherwise, very perspicacious.

Henry L. Mencken thinks the United States will become a British colony. Its chief function will be to supply imbeciles to read the current British novels and docile cannon fodder for the British army. Mind you, he also thinks that Woodrow Wilson will be a talking point in 2022. Sarcasm detected.

William H. Anderson thinks that Prohibition will still be in place. The beverage use of [alcohol] will be utterly unknown except among the abnormal, subnormal, vicious and depraved, which classes will largely have been bred out of the race in America.

Oops. 

Mind, this is the fella who did two years in Sing Sing for fraud, over the Anti Saloon League's bogus financials. That would happen about two years after this article was published.

Cordell Hull thinks that The principles of democracy being eternal, they will necessarily exist a hundred years from now, and the achievements of government through the application of those principles to changing conditions will logically be greater than they have been in the last 100 years. That there will be two political parties then as now seems almost inevitable ...

He's not wrong, exactly, but recent events seem about to make him a liar.  

Margaret Sanger thinks that Birth control will have become part of education in health and hygiene. Women especially will be keen in demanding it. They will realize that it is a foundation of freedom and intellectual development for them. Women cannot make real progress today so long as they are haunted by the fear of undesired pregnancy. The results, in much shorter time than four or five generations, will be happier homes, greater mutual respect between husband and wife, honeymoons lasting two to three years before children arrive, with husband and wife thoroughly equilibriated to each other, because there has been time for mutual understanding ...

Another one with their finger on the pulse. Ms. Sanger is a bit more optimistic about the end result than perhaps she ought to have been, but she nailed the details.

Mary Garrett Hay thinks that Women's drudgery in the household will be eliminated, her care of the family will be lessened, as new inventions come in and new methods of work. Broadly true. Keeping house is certainly easier than it would have been in 1922. Politically, women will be powerful. They will share with men the real constructive work of government. Many will hold office. If there is not a woman President, the thought of one will shock no-one. That last bit isn't 100% accurate but it's getting closer to 90%. Co-operation will be the magic word in 2022.  Oh dear. The thought bubble burst. Still, it was a good run.

John S. Sumner thinks there will be no censorship. I do not foresee a censorship over books in this country, nor any official censorship of the stage. Um. I mean, compared to the censorship that existed in 1922 he's not wrong, but ...

James Weldon Johnson thinks there will be no lynching or racial antagonism. The Negro problem will probably be reduced to a thin and wavering line of opposition to social recognition and intercourse. Long before 2022 such a primitive manifestation of racial antagonism as lynching will be unknown, for the reason that the Negro will be in a position not to tolerate it and the country will be sufficiently civilized not to want to indulge in it.

Again, compared to the situation as it existed in 1922 he's not wrong. He's a bit starry-eyed and optimistic, but he's not wrong.

What strikes me about all of these articles is how optimistic they are. Admittedly, the World wouldn't have printed doom & gloom. The bits here are only a selection of what was actually printed in 1923 but I suspect, for example, that anything which predicted a second world war or some kind of jeremiad against the future would have been toned down or cut.

The only exception is Mencken, and I wish he'd taken the assignment seriously. It would have been more interesting, even if he was flat wrong, to read his actual thoughts, not his scattershot attempt at humor. 

That said, consider: these are people who just came out of a catastrophic military conflict. Who just survived a global pandemic. Economic conditions aren't exactly rosy, not in 1923 at least (it would get better). Yet they are full of optimism about the future a hundred years hence. Not one of them predicts disaster, yet it won't be long before a global depression seems to threaten global anarchy, and fascism at home and abroad threatens the roots of democratic government. 

They think they can survive. Thrive.

It would be interesting to see a similar article written today. I wonder what thought leaders would say about the United States, and the future, a hundred years from now?