ew remarkable exceptions like the _Atlantic
Monthly_, the _World's Work_, and the _Century_, the overwhelming
majority of the monthly and weekly papers have gone over to a system
by which the tail of the stories and articles winds itself through the
advertisement pages, and all the advertising sheets are riddled by
stray pieces of reading matter. The immediate purpose is of course
evident. If the last dramatic part of the story suddenly stops on page
15 and is continued on page 76, between the announcements of breakfast
food and a new garter, the publisher, or rather the advertiser, hopes,
and the publisher does not dare to contradict, that some of the
emotional interest and excitement will flow over from the loving pair
to the advertised articles. The innocent reader is skilfully to be
guided into the advertiser's paradise.

We claimed that here the economic innovation, whether profitable or
not, has its cultural significance. The sociologists who have thought
seriously about the American type of civilization have practically
agreed in the conviction that the shortcoming of the American mind
lies in its lack of desire for harmony and unity. It is an aesthetic
deficiency which counts not only where art and artificial beauty are
in question, but shows still more in the practical surroundings and
the forms of life. The nation which is and always has been controlled
by strong idealistic moral impulses takes small care of the aesthetic
ideals. The large expenditures for external beautification must not
deceive. Just as the theatre is to the American essentially
entertainment and amusement and fashion, but least of all a life need
for great art, so on the whole background of daily life a thousand
motives show themselves more effectively than the longing for inner
unity and beautiful fitness. The masses who waste their incomes for
beautiful clothes, not because they are beautiful, but because they
are demanded by the fashion, patiently tolerate the dirt in the
streets, the crowding of cars, the chewing of gum, the vulgar slang in
speech, and shirt-sleeve manners. But this undeveloped state of the
sense of inner harmony has effects far beyond the mere outer
appearances. The hysterical excitement in politics, the traditional
indifference to corruption and crime up to the point where they become
intolerable, the bewildering mixture of highest desire for education
and cheapest faith in superstitions and mysticism and quacks, all