Quill and Quire

REVIEWS

« Back to
Book Reviews

The Devil in Babylon: Fear of Progress and The Birth of Modern Life

by Allan Levine

“Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses…/Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Anyone who has come within sight of the Statue of Liberty cannot but be moved by the stirring and uncompromisingly generous sentiments enshrined in immigrant Emma Lazurus’ ultimate tribute to democracy’s open-door policy. What historian and novelist Allan Levine demonstrates so persuasively in The Devil in Babylon, however, is how aggressively and articulately “proper” and “decent” North American society rallied to slam that door shut, lest civilization itself be lost to the contaminating tide.

In this brief but compelling and gracefully written work of popular history, Levine examines North America in the early decades of the 20th century primarily as a confrontation between a contented white Protestant establishment and the exploding immigrant class (largely East European Jewish or Catholic), which the establishment fretted endlessly would destroy society and lead directly to a degraded gene pool characterized by laziness, imbecility, and licentiousness. Deacons of decent moral society roared and thundered while captains of industry – alarmed by insurgent demands for fair wages and humane working conditions – seized the anti-immigrant, anti-socialist initiative to conveniently make bloody war against the nascent labour and social reform movements.

Levine’s portraits of the characters on both sides of the divide are fascinating, including the inventive entrepreneurs who built enormous fortunes fulfilling the appetites of the new hedonism. The stock market crash and the rise of Nazi Germany essentially ended the party as social energies were refocused and redirected to more immediate ends. Oddly, the “fear of progress” theme featured so prominently in the title feels underexplored. It seems that society feared not progress but change; not necessarily the same thing and a distinction Levine might have made clear. Nevertheless, The Devil in Babylon is an engrossing and somewhat prophetic book, a reminder that a commitment to social justice and fairness is an evolving covenant.

 

Reviewer: Jonathan Schmidt

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

DETAILS

Price: $36.99

Page Count: 352 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 0-7710-5273-1

Released: Apr.

Issue Date: 2005-5

Categories: History