The paradox of "the crowd" was a subject of intense scrutiny in the newly emerging discipline of sociology at the turn of the twentieth century. Jack London, a socially conscious writer and a voracious reader, contributed to the contemporary discourse on this subject, most notably in The Iron Heel (1908), but also in "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity," a 700–word essay new to scholarship which explores what an "intellectual entity from another planet" would make of New York City and the enigmatic differences between "the actions of man by himself and the actions of men in a crowd." ¹

London wrote "Piedmont, Alameda, Co. Calif." on the first page of "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity" but did not date this handwritten essay. He lived in a bungalow on Blaire Avenue in the Piedmont Hills northwest of Oakland between February 1902 and July 1903, and during this period he visited New York City twice: late in July 1902 on his way to England where he researched and wrote a draft of The People of the Abyss (1903) and in early November 1902 upon his return. While the precise date of the essay remains uncertain, it is safe to place it after London's trip to New York in July 1902 and before he moved out of the Piedmont bungalow in July 1903.

"Telic Action & Collective Stupidity"

New York City presents one of the most splendid of human paradoxes. On the one hand, it portrays man's wonderful achievements, and on the other, [End Page 83] man's monumental stupidity. As an adventure, it is so colossal as to dwarf all adventures of the elder world which have descended to us; and as a colossal blunder, not even Babylon or Rome may compare. At first glance, it would appear that stark and blithering stupidity increases in direct ratio with wisdom, that the wiser man becomes, the greater his foolishness.

For instance, in the case of New York City: Its engineering achievements, from the great Subway to the cloud-brushing skyscrapers, is as remarkable as any man has yet produced anywhere on the planet. Men hold up their feet and rest their legs, and are whisked about from place to place, under the earth, on the earth, and above the earth. And, as Gerald Stanley Lee says, the elevator is that democratic device that gives to all men the privilege of first floors though they be twenty stories above the ground.

In brief, in New York City are to be found the most perfect of the many inventions man has made to aid him in the pursuit of happiness. But here, where the pursuit of happiness has received man's ripest wisdom, is to be found not only a prodigious sum of happiness, but a correspondingly prodigious sum of misery.

People, by hundreds upon hundreds of thousands, are crowded into screaming tenement districts; and the stench of their being is an offense to high heaven, and an offense to the nostrils of their more fortunate fellows. The congestion of living & of traffic causes incalculable suffering, friction, and loss of time and nervous power; while evil and hurtful sights and sounds abound.

The splendid business organization of many industries is counterbalanced by the arrant idiocy of the political organization; the happiness and comfort of Fifth Avenue, by the sorrow and misery of the East Side; the swiftness and ease to go places, by the absurd distances between places and the ridiculous number of places; the facility to enjoy things, by the inability to stop long enough to enjoy things. In short, an intellectual entity from another planet would regard this gigantic city as a vast conglomeration of insanity shot through here and there with stray gleams of rationality.

On closer investigation, however, the intellectual entity from another planet would find the clue to the mystery, and he would find it in the difference between the actions of man by himself and the actions of men in a crowd. In other words, the individual is capable of, and does perform, telic actions—that is, adjusts his acts to remote ends; a thing which society never does.

For instance, the young man elects to take a thorough education in order that this education will fit him to receive in the distant future a corresponding return of profit and happiness. It will enable him to get the most possible out of his life. All really intelligent individuals mould their lives in this manner; two or three individuals, or a score, may organize a company or corporation and collectively perform telic actions; but all the individuals of society, coming together in a crowd, prove to be incapable of telic action.

Thus, the building of the Subway is a telic action on the part of the men who planned it; the Subway is necessary only because of the collective foolishness of the crowd that is to take advantage of it; and if this crowd had been collectively wise, it would have so organized its affairs as to have prevented the congestion of New York City and to have made the Subway unnecessary. [End Page 84]

And so, the paradox of New York City, (which is the paradox of society, or the paradox of the crowd), comes to be understood; and we can only conclude that we, as reasoning beings, are as individually wise as we are collectively foolish. And we may further conclude, from the facts of our past history, that the trend of our development is toward greater and greater collective wisdom, so that ultimately we shall be as collectively wise as we are individually wise. This is the verity which underlies the conception of democracy, and it is the failure to grasp this verity which has to a certain considerable extent made democracy a vain thing and without avail.

—Jack London

Although London is widely regarded as a popular fiction writer who created exotic settings, virile characters, and adventure-filled plots appropriate for juvenile readers, he was primarily a writer of ideas. As we see in this essay, he also commented on issues relating to society and the fabric of our social condition while chronicling an outsider's awe of New York's iconic immensity, hurried pace, sleek skyscrapers, and squalid poverty. His best-selling works are imbued with ideas, such as devolution (The Call of the Wild), adaptation (White Fang), and individualism (The Sea-Wolf). The same applies to his less well-known works. For example, The Kempton-Wace Letters ² treats eugenics and The Star Rover addresses penal reform. Although London was primarily a writer of ideas who wrote social non-fiction as well as fiction, much of his non-fiction, including "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity," remains uncollected and virtually unknown.

In 1916, near the end of his life, when London was asked to identify which of his works was his favorite, he named a work of social non-fiction: "As to my favorite of my own books—that is a hard question to answer. I think I put more of my heart into The People of the Abyss than into any other book." ³ "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity" may fairly be regarded as a preliminary study for The People of the Abyss. London visited the "screaming tenement districts" on the Lower East Side of New York during the week of 23–29 July 1902. He arrived in New York en route to South Africa to interview African officials about post-Boer War conditions for the American Press Association only to learn that his trip to South Africa had been cancelled because the African officials had left for Europe. Although disappointed that this trip fell through, he immediately decided to use the money advanced by the APA to "cross over to England & the Continent for a couple of months," as he explained on his first day in New York. ⁴ Five days later, he wrote that he thought he would "do some writing of the London slums, possibly a book, though as yet everything is vague & my main idea is to get a vacation." ⁵

Apparently his plans coalesced after he left New York. In a letter to Anna [End Page 85] Strunsky written on board the ship to Liverpool on 31 July 1902, he revealed his intention upon arrival in London to "sink down out of sight in order to view the coronation [of Edward VII on 9 August 1902] from the standpoint of the London beasts. That's all they are—beasts—if they are anything like the slum people of New York—beasts, shot through with stray flashes of divinity." He also wrote in this letter, "I am doing quite a lot of essay work aboard ship." ⁶

The appearance of the phrase in the essay, "shot through here and there with stray gleams of rationality," and the strikingly similar one in his letter to Strunsky, "shot through with stray flashes of divinity," suggests but does not prove that London wrote the essay at roughly the same time as this letter. "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity" may have been one of the pieces London wrote while confined to the ship for eight days with impressions of New York fresh in his mind. Throughout his career, London meticulously recorded the date he sent out each magazine submission as well as the amount he received (or was owed) for each sale. ⁷ No mention of "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity" appears in these exhaustive lists. Through some enigmatic process, the manuscript survived without ever finding its way into print until now.

London alludes throughout the essay to the scientific theories of society developed by the progressive sociologist Lester Frank Ward. The word "telic" in his title comes from telesis, which refers to the intelligent direction of effort toward the achievement of an end. Ward coined the term to denote his theory of planned social progress. Ward grounded his theory in a science of society that revised the notion of a ruthless social Darwinism. Ward's theory of social telesis represented the antithesis of the doctrine of laissez faire or survival of the fittest. In stark contrast to the views of Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and others, Ward theorized that people could direct the evolution of human society by using the power of mind, education, and the scientific method. London had embraced Ward's theories in an early essay titled "Pessimism, Optimism and Patriotism," which appeared in the Oakland High School publication The High School Aegis in 1895. In this essay, London represented class antagonism in terms consistent with those articulated by Ward. Two of the concepts that London appropriated were "telesis" and "synergy," which Ward defined as the systematic working together of opposing forces. London depicted the "pessimists" in this Aegis essay as the anarchists, socialists, labor leaders, and the masses, who "always ultimately triumphed." ⁸

"Telic Action & Collective Stupidity" also illustrates London's familiarity with Gerald Stanley Lee's ideas about "the crowd" and the role of the great [End Page 86] man. He cites Lee in reference to the glorious engineering achievements (the Subway and the skyscrapers) that counterbalance the "monumental stupidity" of the actions of the crowd. He even quotes Lee: "the elevator is that democratic device that gives to all men the privilege of first floors though they be twenty floors above the ground." This line comes from Lee's "Making the Crowd Beautiful," published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1901. Lee described the kind of art a democracy or crowd civilization produced, stating that the new mechanical arts had made possible things or inventions that were "waiting to be made beautiful." The Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in May 1883, epitomized such a work of art "because it tells the truth, because it is the material form of a spiritual idea, because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of New York in the way that the Acropolis was . . . of Athens." As the Bridge symbolized democracy through the "bringing together of things that are apart," the elevator, "an invention for making the many as well off as the few" and for "putting all men on a level at the same price," symbolized the Constitution of the United States. The problem Lee identified was that the crowd must be made beautiful for it to produce any art, and "the crowd can only be made beautiful by the great man in it." That great man would have "the spirit of the artist, who is a sharer and spectator at once; living above the crowd enough to lift it, and living in the midst of the crowd enough to be loved by it, so that it will let him lift it." ⁹

London was a member of a group in Carmel, including Strunsky, Jim Whitaker, and Charmian London, who called themselves "the Crowd." This circle of friends met for picnics in Piedmont while London lived there. The Crowd may have seen themselves in Lee's terms, as enlightened leaders or visionary prophets living at once above the crowd and in the midst of it. In any event, in "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity," London presented the perspective of a reasoning being both individually wise (above the crowd) and collectively foolish (in the midst of it).

As "Telic Action & Collective Stupidity" demonstrates, London, like Ward, was interested in understanding how knowledge and intelligence could be made germane to the organization of society. Like Lee, he undoubtedly viewed himself as one of the agents of this intelligence. The structure of the essay suggests that, although the telic action of individuals is counterbalanced by the collective stupidity of the crowd, the overall balance that is maintained does not benefit all members of society alike. The consequences of preserving harmony within society are "not only a prodigious sum of happiness, but a correspondingly prodigious sum of misery." [End Page 87]