Word: authors
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Result, in 1939: big U. S. incomes are taxed up to 75%. Within sight, if U. S. leveling tradition holds good, says Author Myers, is the time when taxation will have done for inherited wealth what the repeal of primogeniture and entail did for the great landed estates. In 1930 a Van Rensselaer heir died leaving...
...horse, Socialist-minded Chicago publisher printed a small edition of Gustavus Myers' History of the Great American Fortunes. Its author was a fact-worshipping reporter of Philadelphia and Manhattan who had spent eight years digging out his facts. No other publisher would touch it-they feared it was "of such a nature ... as to get us into a great deal of trouble." Declared a typical nose-holding review (New York Times): "It leaves such a bad taste in the mouth that readers may be cordially advised to read something else...
...book. But its word-of-mouth reputation grew; Congressmen took to quoting it; its facts were a gold mine for left-wing cribbers. By 1936 the Modern Library edition (sales: 25,000) could say honestly that the History of the Great American Fortunes was a semi-classic of research. Author Myers has never been sued for libel...
That tradition got off to a flying start with the fight against the colonial laws of primogeniture and entail, which permitted handing down intact such estates as that of the Van Rensselaers (3,000 farms, 436,000 acres). Far more complicated is Author Myers' tracing of that tradition in the struggle against "corporation aristocracy" and inherited wealth. From Andrew Jackson v. the Bank of the U. S. down, it is a fight in which inherited wealth wins the battles and loses the war. Value of Author Myers' documentation is that he keeps his eye on the whole...
Thus considered, the novel is far from fascinating. What gives it its considerable interest is Author Holden's dogged, intelligent exploration of precisely those matters which run-of-the-mine novelists shirk: namely, the ambiguous complexities of even the most "normal" motives and actions. These subtleties and minutiae are themselves the true substance of this story. Lacking entirely the brilliance of the best work in its field, lacking no less the textbook glibness of the cheap work, as a psychological novel, Believe the Heart is definitely to be respected...