Young men without politics

WILLIAM HARLAN HALE

■ We have gone through a most pleasant campaign. Some of us expected a tornado of invective; we got the soft zephyrs of disagreement. We believed we might be torn by the winds of doctrine; but only the airs of sundry dispute played about us. Like a lull, suspicious, vacuous, and unreal, in the midst of a vast storm and crisis, the election period hovered over the nation.

Who would now say that any deep issues had been raised, outside of that noisy perennial, Prohibition? Who would claim that either one of the great parties had pronounced anything really worth remembering? And who would try to point to one man, one idea, one speech, and be able to say—without party and without bias—"There is leadership!"

But it seems futile to repeat the old catalogue of abuse against politicians. The thesis that their mentality moves on an average of thirty years behind the mentality of other citizens does seem amply confirmed. And in a time of vast stress, imminent change, and untenable conservatism, there were not (after the Conventions) any electoral passions, any Favorite Sons, any hopes for a Cabinet of All-the-Talents. Much was said about Forgotten Men; but none were so easily forgotten as the politicians and speakers themselves, whose words died an empty death in the cold print of next morning's newspapers.

■ A politician has no right to forget. He is supposed to be adroit, resourceful, quick at sizing up popular feeling and support. He is not supposed to ignore his possible backers. And yet one distinct feature of this campaign was that the politicians did forget, did ignore something like five million votes. They did not seem to know that these votes existed.

These five million—or more—are the votes of American young people. In 1928. fatherly advice, majority influence, and industrial hope kept the votes of youth safely in the Republican fold. But since then vast numbers have reached voting age. Armed with diplomas, pedigrees, certificates, and advanced courses in Business Administration, they stand knocking at the door of the economic world of 1932. Only at the rarest intervals is the door opened. The masses stand outside and wait. Fatherly advice no longer makes them support the party which favored their now jittering sire's business. Majority influence—discredited and planless—does not bind them. Industrial hope does not hold them. They stand empty-handed, awaiting the new leader, the different prospect, the word which might arouse them. They stand waiting, and their votes stand with them.

Nothing happens.

The amazing fact of the campaign of 1932 is this: American youth—to all intents an economically disenfranchised class—is playing practically no part in the present political scene. It is making no collective effort to win itself a place to insure its own future in our economic life. It feels itself quite out of the picture.

The fact that for a long time the two great parties have had little appeal for American youth is a commonplace. It is borne out by the prevalent disgust which college men have expressed for politics as a career. It was symbolized during the twenties by the popularity of Menckenism among the young, and by the decline of all political youth-movements. During a period when all our possibilities lay with business, and when government was regarded just as a corrupt and pestering policeman, this cynicism was quite understandable. The glorious doctrine of Individualism satisfied all needs.

Today, however, all that implicit reliance on the genius of the business man has vanished—from the minds of young people anyway. The Rotary ideal wears the clothes of a scarecrow'. The booster seems as empty as the crooner; the self-made man in many cases seems to have unmade himself; there is a nation-wide call for a new economics of existence. Yet still, when the necessity for positive action in the governmental sphere is imminent before us, and when all the hopes of our jobless young ought to lie with political effort, these young stay remote from the scene. They do not agitate, they barely argue, many will not vote.

Their apathy may he due to some strange flaw, some lack of virility. The point is difficult to maintain. More immediately, it is due to the universal lack of a political leader who might inspire them. American young people are passionate "joiners", but they need someone to invite them. They inherit that much-noted sheepish quality of the race. They need —if nothing else—a slap on the back, a worthwhile admission card, a promise. They do not even get that. The Republican and Democratic parties are so ingrown, so limited to their own personal games of give-and-take, that they become utterly removed from the actual currents in the American mind, Young people, without jobs and without allegiances, have been the first to realize that this campaign has dealt almost exclusively in unrealities— in issues which barely touch their private destinies. Prohibition and the Bonus are by no means the only problems of their present life. While yearning to give support to some cause that might insure their betterment, they find themselves quite unable to cheer for the Republican and Democratic planks. They do not even find a slogan to repeat—not even a Brown Derby to cheer for.

How, then, about the radicals—the pinks and the reds, with all their intermediate gradations from John-Dewey cerise toWilliamZ.-Foster scarlet? Is the movement of Leftward, Ho! carrying youth off its feet? The thirty-three Third Parties—do they appear to he growing into a youthful threat against all the Powers That Be? Surely it there is any political current alive in young America today, it is the radical one. But its managers through the last years have made such great tactical blunders that they have succeeded in withholding from themselves much young support. Any really potent spread of orthodox Communism among Americans has effectively been stopped by the Communists' own insistence on the doctrinal terms "proletarian", "bourgeois", and "class-warfare", backing them up with a whole barrage of Marxian verbal artillery. American young people of fairly conventional origin of course can make no sense of this bewildering balderdash. They have never seen a "proletarian", because every worker they know won't admit that he is the underdog, and dreams only of being a white-collar man or boss. They don't know what that terrible phrase "bourgeois class'' means, unless it he all of America. Pretty soon they realize that the Marxians are talking a language that had bearing on Russian serfs and German professors, but which takes practically no account of the social realities of this country. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are studying the methods of Soviet Russia, and seem to be getting inspiration from its reforms and successes; but only a small group dream of applying strict Marxism to the American soil. The Communist party is no American leader. It has tried continuously to retain its precious status as an alien.

No, it is only among the Norman-Thomas Socialists—the G.O. P. of radicalism that any real upswing is taking place. The position of the party may be a bit hazy, lying somewhere between class revolution and "state capitalism"; the personality of candidate Thomas may by this time seem a bit cut-and-dried; but at all events the party has ideas, and American ideas at that. Young people are rather refreshed. Where the mild and mellow Roosevelt "commends" the work of the Federal Employment Service, Mr. Thomas calls for a compulsory system of unemployment insurance. Where Roosevelt mumbles something about lower tariffs (which will probably turn out to be higher), Thomas goes boldly for the international principle. Where Roosevelt calls for government economy—just as blatantly as candidate Hoover would call for it, had the Democrats been in power—Thomas goes beyond the partisan accusations and formulates methods of catching the tax-dodger. Where the Republicans stick to the ludicrous fiction of "opposing the cancellation of debts", Thomas recognizes the force we could bring to bear on Europe in exchange for our cancelling them—since they are uncollectable anyway.

Naturally the virility of a platform such as this, when opposed to the emasculated offerings of the old parties, brings forth support. Its over-idealism together with its traitorous title "Socialism" drives many thousands off, but many more are being attracted by the evident integrity of the ticket. The "disgusted" vote doubles and redoubles as the conscience of the electorate awakens.

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The Socialist party is also gathering under its wings the majority of this spring's passionate enthusiasts for Third Parties, Social Planning, Technocracy, and all the other grand-sounding reform ideals. Since many of these Third Parties have proved themselves to he either abortive or utopian, their membership is slipping directly into the Thomas fold.

On the basis of considerably wide contact with young voters, through college groups, magazine literature, and correspondence, the following is suggested as the general alignment of the young people's voting trends:

Hoover and conservatism—of course in melancholy decline, to no small extent due to the President's utter lack of personal attractiveness to youth, when compared to Roosevelt. Yet. beside the stand-pat sentiment especially noticeable in far western universities, there is a considerable presence of Hoover-Democrats—young men whose loyalty to A1 Smith is so intense that rather than cast their ballot for "eight years of Roosevelt" they prefer another term of Hoover, hoping for a happier Democratic choice in 1936.

Roosevelt and liberalism—enormously preferred as against Hoover, but preferred without enthusiasm; the chief incentive being the mere desire for a change from a discredited Administration. The "Forgotten Man" ballyhoo has had no effect upon the imagination of youth.

Thomas and the planners—the objection to "throwing away your vote" has rapidly dwindled as both older parties stay safely astride the political fence and avoid all commitments that are not absolutely required. The enthusiasm for Thomas among young people seems to be from five to ten times as large as it was in 1928.

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Foster and the revolutionaries—the exclusive and waspish behavior of the warring factions of the Communist party has driven away most of those who were drawn to the party through the current vogue of Russian sympathies. The Foster hold on youth is much smaller than the radicals believe.

And this alignment is not merely a voting analysis for November 8th, which loses its significance after that date; it displays the general political trends which will probably motivate young people in the next years. Above all is revealed the profound bewilderment of the generation. Very few convictions stand behind the placing of the vote; and very few enthusiasms.

The two old parties show not the slightest aptitude at catching the vote of the young. They will probably never again have it. They are the parties of old men. On the other hand, sentiment for a third party is not only coalescing, hut it is growing in command. And if there is anything definite to be said about our future, it is this: the party thus formed will be an all-important political figure by 1936.

What will be its platform? Who will he its leader? How far will it go—to communism, to fascism, or to state socialism? These are things we do not yet know. But there is a prophetic note in the present air: a note of vast change, an imminence of a new era.