Sinclair Lewis

Assignment Five -- Sinclair Lewis
Babbitt

Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis was born and raised in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Despite a comfortable life as the son of a doctor, Lewis yearned to escape the provincial, small midwestern town. After preschool at Oberlin, he attended Yale. He dropped out for a year during which he traveled and briefly worked as a janitor at Upton Sinclair's socialist colony, Helicon Hall. Upton Sinclair had created a sensation with his best-seller The Jungle (1906) in which he deplored the working conditions in the meat packing industry.

Upton Sinclair

Lewis was strongly influenced by Sinclair's socialism and the older writer's belief that fiction could be an instrument of social change. After graduating from Yale, Lewis began writing as he worked as a journalist. and manuscript reader for a publishing firm.

Between 1910 and 1920 Lewis published numerous stories and five novels. Many critics dismiss these early novels as insignificant, but with the publication of Main Street in 1920 Lewis suddenly became the best known author in America. Main Street, which satirized the narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, intolerance, and resistance to change in small town America, sold over a half million copies. The novel narrates the heroic, but failed, effort of the idealistic Carol Kennicott to transcend and transform the smug pettiness of Gopher Prairie.

During the 1920s Lewis published a series of novels that satirized several aspects of American society: small town business in Babbitt (1922), the medical profession in Arrowsmith (1925), evangelical religion in Elmer Gantry (1927), and big business in Dodsworth (1929). Each of these books was a best seller, and in 1930, he became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. He continued to publish until the 1950s, but of his later work on It Can't Happen Here (1935), the story of a proto-fascist who takes over the American government, receives much critical attention today.

H. L. Mencken

Some critics have said that the literary decade of the 1920s was dominated by two writers: Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken. These authors expressed the social disatisfactions of the era, happily "debunking" the sacred political and social beliefs of their countrymen. The Mencken link above to Gibbons Burke's Mencken page includes a wealth of quotations that reflect Mencken's often cynical view of life and politics: "Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

1904 Socialist Party poster

Babbitt and other citizens of Zenith City frequently worry about socialists and radicals like the lawyer Senaca Doane. The most famous socialist of their era was Eugene Debs . Debs received 6 percent of the popular vote for President in 1912, the high point of public support for socialism.

Deb deliviering anti-war speech in 1916

After delivering an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio in 1918, Debs was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to ten years in jail under the harsh free speech restrictions of the recently approved Espionage Act. Americans' fear of socialism had increased when bolsheviks took control of Russia in 1917. Their anxiety was fueled by President Wilson's Attorney General, A. Palmer Mitchell, leading to the Red Scare of 1919. In 1920, one million Americans voted for the jailed radical as the socialist candidate for President.

Cream of Wheat ad, 1921
In Babbitt, George Babbitt and the other white citizens of Zenith repeatedly make shocking, racist remarks, but as the two advertisements that appeared in national magazines during the 1920s indicate, racism of the sort they evidence was commonplace and thoughtlessly accepted in the white America of the time. The Ku Klux Klan reached its greatest influence during the early 1920s. Many politicians across the country (including the majority of the Indiana legislature and several governors) openly proclaimed their membership in the Klan and thousands of hooded Klansmen paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Blatz Gum ad, 1928

KKK March, Washington, D.C., 1926

In 1926, Hiram Wesley Evans, the Klan's Imperial Wizard and Emperor, published "The Klan's Fight for Americanism" in the North American Review. His clam presentation of the Klan's purpose in a mainstream publication demonstrates the general acceptance of the KKK at this time.

In the 1870s, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) promoted the use of public education for the cause of temperance. They succeeded in getting their propaganda in textbooks and, by 1902, every state and territory except Arizona had a law requiring temperance instruction in the schools. The WCTU fought not only for the cause of prohibition, but represented most progressive reform groups of the day: suffrage, the 8-hour work day, prison reform, and the Social Gospel.

The efforts of the WCTU and the Anti Saloon League made temperance attractive to numerous reformers. Progressives, for example, viewed Prohibition as a way to attack the bosses of urban political machines, whose headquarters were often located in saloons. Prohibition represented the desires of rural and small-town, middle-class Americans, who thought of themselves as Anglo-Saxon and were generally fearful of African-Americans, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. By 1918, 28 states had passed prohibition laws. With the passage of the Volstead Act over President Wilson's veto in January, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transporation of alcoholic beverages, was enacted. It remained in effect until the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. During the Congressional debate, Representative John Tillman of Arkansas was one of the more articulate advocates for passage.

The article "Cultural Conflicts" from Who Built America? summarizes some of the important cultural issues that separated Americans in the 1920s.

During the 1920s, while marketing was emerging as a conscious business strategy, advertising matured as an important industry. The maturation of advertising in the 1920s and the creation of marketing departments and marketing strategies by major firms both promoted consumer values in American society and reflected the rise of the consumer society. Read "The Rise of Marketing and Advertising" from Business Enterprise in Americdan History. The advertisement to the left appeared in 1921.

For a description of some of the dramatic changes that were occuring to American homes and the patterns of American consumer purchases during the 1920s red "Daily Life and the New Consumer Culture" from "Who Built America?

Politically, the decade began with Warren G. Harding's promise to return America to "normalcy," after the traumas of World War I, the Boshevik Revolution, the Spanish flu pandemic, and the Red Scares of 1919, but Harding died in office and his reputation was ruined by posthumous revelations of corruption in his administration. Read "Conservatism and Corruption in Political Life."

Bruce Barton was an outstanding copywriter, and many of his phrases and advertisements became classics. He coined the unofficial motto of the Salvation Army, "A man may be down, but he’s never out." He also wrote a famous slogan for Andrew Carnegie of U.S. Steel, which read, "He came to a land of wooden towns and left a nation of steel."

Barton founded an advertising agency and wrote several books of an inspirational and religious nature, including the best-selling The Man Nobody Knows, in which he argued that Jesus' teaching were sound business advice. From 1937 to 1941, he served in the United States House of Representatives.

Bruce Barton

Return to course syllabus

updated June 16, 2006

Sinclair Lewis	Sinclair Lewis was born and raised in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Despite a comfortable life as the son of a doctor, Lewis yearned to escape the provincial, small midwestern town. After preschool at Oberlin, he attended Yale. He dropped out for a year during which he traveled and briefly worked as a janitor at Upton Sinclair's socialist colony, Helicon Hall. Upton Sinclair had created a sensation with his best-seller The Jungle (1906) in which he deplored the working conditions in the meat packing industry.	Upton Sinclair
Lewis was strongly influenced by Sinclair's socialism and the older writer's belief that fiction could be an instrument of social change. After graduating from Yale, Lewis began writing as he worked as a journalist. and manuscript reader for a publishing firm.
Between 1910 and 1920 Lewis published numerous stories and five novels. Many critics dismiss these early novels as insignificant, but with the publication of Main Street in 1920 Lewis suddenly became the best known author in America. Main Street, which satirized the narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, intolerance, and resistance to change in small town America, sold over a half million copies. The novel narrates the heroic, but failed, effort of the idealistic Carol Kennicott to transcend and transform the smug pettiness of Gopher Prairie.		During the 1920s Lewis published a series of novels that satirized several aspects of American society: small town business in Babbitt (1922), the medical profession in Arrowsmith (1925), evangelical religion in Elmer Gantry (1927), and big business in Dodsworth (1929). Each of these books was a best seller, and in 1930, he became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. He continued to publish until the 1950s, but of his later work on It Can't Happen Here (1935), the story of a proto-fascist who takes over the American government, receives much critical attention today.
H. L. Mencken	Some critics have said that the literary decade of the 1920s was dominated by two writers: Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken. These authors expressed the social disatisfactions of the era, happily "debunking" the sacred political and social beliefs of their countrymen. The Mencken link above to Gibbons Burke's Mencken page includes a wealth of quotations that reflect Mencken's often cynical view of life and politics: "Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
1904 Socialist Party poster	Babbitt and other citizens of Zenith City frequently worry about socialists and radicals like the lawyer Senaca Doane. The most famous socialist of their era was Eugene Debs . Debs received 6 percent of the popular vote for President in 1912, the high point of public support for socialism.	Deb deliviering anti-war speech in 1916
After delivering an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio in 1918, Debs was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to ten years in jail under the harsh free speech restrictions of the recently approved Espionage Act. Americans' fear of socialism had increased when bolsheviks took control of Russia in 1917. Their anxiety was fueled by President Wilson's Attorney General, A. Palmer Mitchell, leading to the Red Scare of 1919. In 1920, one million Americans voted for the jailed radical as the socialist candidate for President.
Cream of Wheat ad, 1921	In Babbitt, George Babbitt and the other white citizens of Zenith repeatedly make shocking, racist remarks, but as the two advertisements that appeared in national magazines during the 1920s indicate, racism of the sort they evidence was commonplace and thoughtlessly accepted in the white America of the time. The Ku Klux Klan reached its greatest influence during the early 1920s. Many politicians across the country (including the majority of the Indiana legislature and several governors) openly proclaimed their membership in the Klan and thousands of hooded Klansmen paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.	Blatz Gum ad, 1928
KKK March, Washington, D.C., 1926
In 1926, Hiram Wesley Evans, the Klan's Imperial Wizard and Emperor, published "The Klan's Fight for Americanism" in the North American Review. His clam presentation of the Klan's purpose in a mainstream publication demonstrates the general acceptance of the KKK at this time. In the 1870s, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) promoted the use of public education for the cause of temperance. They succeeded in getting their propaganda in textbooks and, by 1902, every state and territory except Arizona had a law requiring temperance instruction in the schools. The WCTU fought not only for the cause of prohibition, but represented most progressive reform groups of the day: suffrage, the 8-hour work day, prison reform, and the Social Gospel.
The efforts of the WCTU and the Anti Saloon League made temperance attractive to numerous reformers. Progressives, for example, viewed Prohibition as a way to attack the bosses of urban political machines, whose headquarters were often located in saloons. Prohibition represented the desires of rural and small-town, middle-class Americans, who thought of themselves as Anglo-Saxon and were generally fearful of African-Americans, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. By 1918, 28 states had passed prohibition laws. With the passage of the Volstead Act over President Wilson's veto in January, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transporation of alcoholic beverages, was enacted. It remained in effect until the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. During the Congressional debate, Representative John Tillman of Arkansas was one of the more articulate advocates for passage.
The article "Cultural Conflicts" from Who Built America? summarizes some of the important cultural issues that separated Americans in the 1920s.
		During the 1920s, while marketing was emerging as a conscious business strategy, advertising matured as an important industry. The maturation of advertising in the 1920s and the creation of marketing departments and marketing strategies by major firms both promoted consumer values in American society and reflected the rise of the consumer society. Read "The Rise of Marketing and Advertising" from Business Enterprise in Americdan History. The advertisement to the left appeared in 1921. For a description of some of the dramatic changes that were occuring to American homes and the patterns of American consumer purchases during the 1920s red "Daily Life and the New Consumer Culture" from "Who Built America?
Politically, the decade began with Warren G. Harding's promise to return America to "normalcy," after the traumas of World War I, the Boshevik Revolution, the Spanish flu pandemic, and the Red Scares of 1919, but Harding died in office and his reputation was ruined by posthumous revelations of corruption in his administration. Read "Conservatism and Corruption in Political Life."
Bruce Barton was an outstanding copywriter, and many of his phrases and advertisements became classics. He coined the unofficial motto of the Salvation Army, "A man may be down, but he’s never out." He also wrote a famous slogan for Andrew Carnegie of U.S. Steel, which read, "He came to a land of wooden towns and left a nation of steel." Barton founded an advertising agency and wrote several books of an inspirational and religious nature, including the best-selling The Man Nobody Knows, in which he argued that Jesus' teaching were sound business advice. From 1937 to 1941, he served in the United States House of Representatives.		Bruce Barton