BOOKS OF THE DAY

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Middletown Again (S. K. Ratcliffe) • • 354 Soviet Understanding (E. H. Can) .. • • 355 Dear Youth (E. E. Kellett) .. • • 355 An Unheroic Dramatist (Graham Greene) . . .. 356 The Last Invasion of Ireland (Sean O'Faolain) • - - 356 Farewell Spain (John Marks) The Life of Jesus (Evelyn Underhill) .. Four American Scientists (A. J. Ayer) ..

Fiction (E. B. C. Jones) .. .

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MIDDLETOWN AGAIN

By S. K. RATCLIFFE 1924 Robert and Helen Lynd established themselves with a small staff of assistants in a smallish town of Indiana with the purpose of making a detailed survey of the place. Social and Civic investigations had multiplied in America since the first decade of the century, when the great Survey of Pittsburgh organised by Mr. Paul U. Kellogg provided the model for the technique and caused a deep disturbance in the steel metropolis and beyond. The design of the Lynds, none the less, was a pioneer enterprise, because of their type of subject and the fact that it was of the right size to be handled by a small group of experts working upon a plan which made possible a rounded picture of a community and an exposition of its life. The result was a brilliant success. " Middletown " became immediately famous. The name stood for a characteristic unit of American civilisation, as well as for a valuable achieve- ment in social science.

There was, naturally, no secret about the identity of the place. Middletown is Muncie, Indiana. The Lynds chose it for a number of good reasons. In size, character, and situation it was right for a survey of this kind. Middletown lies in the Middle West, and is basically American. That is to say, its population is drawn mainly from the region, European immigration has been slight, and the negroes numbered less than 6 per cent. Forty years earlier oil had brought a sudden boom, but this was very brief. Middletown had settled down to the middle station of life, with varied manufactures, the normal institutions of small-town America, and a population of something over 30,000 (now nearing 50,000). Its history did not go back much before 1890. The nearest large city is 6o miles away. The Lynds devoted eighteen months to their task, studying work and earnings, politics and public health, schools and churches, religion, amusement, the family and the home. They finished this first remarkable task in 1928, and their book found its appropriate public in every English- speaking country. In 1935 they returned to the scene and went over all the ground again. Middletown in Transition is the result-600 pages packed with material of fascinating interest. • The Middletown of the first survey was on the tide of Coolidge prosperity. By the time the record was in print this chapter was drawing to an end. Middletown since then has endured six years of depression, and is now making every effort to believe in the permanence of recovery. The townsfelk, we learn, refused for a long time to recognise the facts of the slump. The "business leaders" continued to assert that economic depression was mainly mental depression and it must be shaken off. The most illuminating facts noted in this connexion have to do with General Motors. When that great concern closed down in Middletown the whole place succumbed, and when three years later the plant was restored the town rejoiced over the unmistakable sign of new life ; by common consent good times were come again. The Lynds record, as the most conspicuous phenomenon of their second period, the extraordinary dominance of the reigning X family. The basis of their fortunes was a glass factory ; they are said to be the largest manufacturers of fruit jars in the world. The firm was built up by 'five brothers, two of whom are still at the head :

"both men in their seventies alert, capable, democratic, Christian gentlemen, trained in the school of rugged individualism patrons of art, education, religion, and of a long list of philanthropies . . . high exemplars of the successful, responsible manipulators of the American formulas of business enterprise. In their conscientious and unhypocritical combination of high profits, great philanthropy, and a low wage scale they embody the hardheaded ethos of Protestant capitalism."

Middletown in Transition. By Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd. (Constable. as.) The X glass factory employs only about t,000 people, but that is no measure of the X power in Middletown. It controls the banks and the credit system, and so has command of retail business and of many industries. The best law firms in the city are retained by one or another of the X interests. The local college, the schools, the churches, the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A., the libraries, the welfare agencies, the municipal government—all alike move within the orbit of this dominant family. Its power over real estate has carried the development of the residential district in the direction of the x properties : rising citizens of Middletown gravitate of necessity to the north-western quarter. The picture here drawn contains a remarkably interesting commentary upon present-day developments in America, probably influenced to no small extent by the grim actualities of the long depression. A feudal authority of this kind, obviously, cannot be detached from the definite social functions which it discharges.

The ruling family of Middletown, as we see, rettresents industry and finance. Social leadership, it is remarked, has been lost to the professional families ; the business interests are every- where in command, and there can be no doubt that in small- town America these interests are resolved to maintain the older notions of competitive enterprise, regularity, and loyalty to the established order. Middletown hitherto has been no place for organised labour, and the experiences of the unions during the depression make a pitiful story.

In the first survey the Lynds gave a large part cif their attention to Middletown's ways of making the home; running the household, controlling the young (or not), and handling the problems-of marriage. It is plain enough that Middletown in transition is a community carrying its full share of doniestic and kindred troubles. The basis of the older small-town economy would seem nut to have been materially altered— except, of course, as regards the number of children Four- fifths of the families still live in small detached houses, spread over neighbourhoods which, as disclosed by the map, are decidedly marked off by money and class distinctions. Middle- town is a marrying city. A large majority of the young people marry early, and the statistics show a clear increase in the percentage of married women gainfully employed. The depression and partial recovery brought important changes in the balance of men's and women's labour, one point of interest being that the age-limit Of women's employment tends to be a good deal higher than that of men. All the inquiries made into the condition of the churches seemed to prove a continued decline in attendance and influence, although the maintenance of formal orthodoxy is still the rule. Middletown could not be deseribed as an especially moral community. Divorce was quick and easy a dozen years ago ; the later evidence implies an increasing laxity. The judges confess that divorce procedure is a scandal. One surprising fact brought out is the considerable number of secret marriages between boys and girls still attending high-school, while evidence is quoted as to the prevalence of drinking and sexual licence among the youth of similar ages which, we may assume, must make plenty of anxiety for parents and school authorities alike.

The Lynds remark that after their first enterprise they were condemned by not- a -few" of the " Middletown folks as cold- blooded. Upon going back they were not too sure of their reception "You sorts made us out as a town of hicks." But they need have had no misgiving : the people gave them the most Cordial co-operation, with facts and opinions in abundance. This leads one to wonder how a corresponding team would get on in this Country. An English Middletown—would it

be ready to co-eperate in an enterprise of thorough self- . .