The Metropolis

An excerpt of a review from "The Literary Digest," Volume 36: IF we may judge by Mr. Sinclair's story, he knows just about as much of New York fashionable society as New York fashionable society knows of him. It would be impossible to burlesque this story, as it is a burlesque itself. The description of the hotel in which "Ollie Montague" had his bachelor apartment is virtually a copy of a certain Fifth Avenue hotel's advertisement of its attractions-the 'hot ' and 'cold' switch, the electric clock, the automatic ventilation, all are there. The rest of the story reads as though it had been copied from the yellowest pages of the yellowest journals, and I dare say that it will get yellower and yellower as it goes on. If you want a good hearty laugh, let me recommend 'The Metropolis.' It "is" very, very funny. The publishers call it 'Upton Sinclair's amazing novel of New York Society.' It is amazing, but the most amazing thing about it, to my mind, is that it should have found a place in "The American Magazine."" The book has just been published in England and has evoked from "Claudius Clear" (Dr. Robertson Nicol) a three column letter in "The British Weekly" (London), which the writer promises to follow up in the next issue with a second part. That the book is staggering to this writer is evidenced by the benefit he is willing to allow the doubt. The extent of his notice is presumptive evidence of the veracious effect the work had on him. He observes: "Happily the Americans are now taking to criticism of themselves. The criticism of others has been resented, but the meekness and patience with such books as those of Mrs. Edith Wharton are received in the United States are very wonderful. It is even a presumption in favor of the truth of her delineations. How Mr. Upton Sinclair's book will be received I do not know." He goes further into detail than Mrs. Wharton does, but she describes for us a world-wearied and corrupt society, and he does no more. This writer's account of Mr. Sinclair's book is in part as follows: "Mr. Sinclair describes for us without preaching the social life of the very rich in New York. Nothing could be more awful than his delineation. The one human quality that seems to survive is a kind of careless good nature. There is no such thing a honor and truth. Every one is a cheat, and known to be a cheat. The corruption extends to the judges, and it will be hard to tell who is not infected by it. The worst consequences are to be seen in the second generation. Often a man who has risen from the ranks preserves something of his native simplicity and industry. But the sons of the rich, and in part the daughters also, become degenerates. "They seek their pleasures in the most debasing vices, and The sanctity of the marriage tie is laughed at, and a system of almost undisguised free love prevails. Where every man is a cheat and every woman is vile, the rest is not difficult to guess. One of the ghastliest fea tures of the whole is that the corrupt rich occasionally take to church-going as a new sensation, and pay for ornate services and for preachers who are men of the world. "Can all this be true? No, it could be only one side of the truth, for a society without higher elements than any depicted by Mr. Sinclair would perish in a debasement of animalism.... ..."It is not the America of those who, like Roosevelt and Hughes and Taft and Bryan, steadily make them appear to the moral sense of the people. But it is the section of America in which wealth has largely been concentrated, and one day America will ask questions about the source and the use of that wealth. It is an America without conscience, with pity, without God!"