The following is an essay by Lloyd Douglas entitled, “Demos in the Saddle,” which was published in the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian, in October 1919. By “Demos,” he is referring to the Greek word Dēmos, which means “the people” or “the common people.” The word “democracy” is derived from it. And when he speaks of “the submerged tenth,” he’s talking about those living in poverty, at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Hopefully these references will help you in understanding this essay. It seems to me that, on this occasion, he is trying to hint at his point rather than coming right out with it.
Here’s the essay:
“We have a very widely known porkitect, up our way, who, in obedience to the public clamor for fancy cuts of meat, determined to build a hog registering 99.76% pork; no waste, scrap, scrapple, or souse, but chops.
“So, after much patience and many studious hours spent over his blueprints, he constructed an oblong hog with a tiny, highly artistic foot at each corner thereof.
“The evolution was watched with respectful interest by all of the skilled porkitects in this and many other lands. They said in one voice, ‘When fully completed this will be some hog!’
“Yet, when the logical conclusion had been achieved, the perfected pork-chop hog was unable to locomote upon his fragile foundation. His defect was obvious. He needed legs to stand on. The porkitects of the world turned away, saying, ‘What we want is a hog with stronger legs.’
“Now they will try to outdo one another building better legs.
“You can carry any good thing too far. So soon as the general public realizes the good thing has been carried too far it rushes off in the opposite direction for a remedy — but doesn’t know when it has found the remedy. Once started in that direction, it keeps going until everybody on earth knows it has carried the good thing too far again. Trying to find a general specific that will cure all the ills of the social order now and forevermore is much like the search for the city of Detour. One sees the pointing hand indicating the way to Detour — but nobody seems to report having arrived there.
“Take aristocracy, for example. If you had asked anybody, a couple of parasangs ago, who were the aristocrats, he would have replied, ‘The Pedigreed.’ A little later the same query would have been answered, ‘The Rich.’ Of late we have fallen into the pleasant habit of saying, ‘The Intellectuals.’
“It’s quite too long of a story to account for these changes in the definition of ‘aristocrat.’ Perhaps you know the tale. It is bound in many volumes. And the books are all red. When it was required that one be pedigreed to be worth notice, that was undoubtedly a good thing — at the start — else it wouldn’t have started. But they carried this good thing too far. There was a reaction. Then the despised merchant (which might mean trader or highwayman — just as in these present days of profiteering) came into his own. The Rich told the Pedigreed where to get off. The supremacy of the Rich was succeeded — in our country, at least — by the supremacy of the Intellectuals. You and I know that the best people are the college-trained, and that we have an inalienable right to dictate to our current social order. But we seem to have carried this idea too far.
“Just now young Demos is in the saddle, galloping a mad Tam-o’-Shanter to goodness-knows-whither. The dinner-pail is not only dictating to the limousine but hooting at the laboratory.
“College opens again. Thousands of students take up their old task, or their new one, assured that the present ‘trend’ is to be ephemeral. In a few days the ‘restlessness’ will be quieted. The ‘submerged tenth,’ having come up for air, will close the hatches and duck again, presently.
“Don’t be too sure about that.
“What’s to be done, then? Obviously, we ‘college-trained’ must mind our step in the precarious travel of the hour. We had carried a good thing too far. We had bred a college type with too much chest and crust, and not quite enough friendly grip in the fingers of the right hand. Moreover, we had pooh-poohed some of the older instincts of mankind, on the ground that they were vestigial race-fears, etc. Many of us had swapped God for bunch of formulae deduced in the chemical and physical laboratories. We were trying to rid ourselves of untenable superstitions. Then we made war upon our own racial instincts. We went too far.
“A newly-rich man was strolling through The Louvre. He had not troubled to provide himself with a catalog. He made a brief inspection of a few of the paintings, leaning across the rail in an effort to get as close to them as possible. Presently, in a voice of fretfulness and annoyance, he said to the old verger, ‘I’ve been hearing, all my life, about these masterpieces. I’ve just looked at them. I’m frankly disappointed. I don’t see anything in them at all. They’re very ordinary, I should say.’
“‘Sir,’ replied the verger, ‘these pictures are not on trial, but the spectators are!’
“Not many college students will have the discernment to appraise the present crisis or sense the present need. The few who do so may have much to say of future interest. These few will be men of spiritual vision, to whom God is a tremendous Reality.
“Our world is very ill of a disease that indicates a prompt infusion of Vital Faith. If you have it, you can help.”
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 