the american as philosopher

h.l. remarks that if you can't make a living in the usa (in 1922), you're not trying, or you're trying to sell americans something they could not understand what it would mean to want. "Whenever I hear a professor of philosophy complain that his wife has eloped with some moving picture actor or bootlegger who can at least feed and clothe her, my natural sympathy for the man is greatly corrupted by contempt for his lack of sense. Would it be regarded as sane and laudable for a man to travel to the Soudan trying to sell fountain-pens, or Greenland offering to teach double-entry book-keeping or counterpoint?. . . Let him bear in mind that, whatever its neglect of the humanities and their monks, the Republic has never got half enough bond salesmen, quack doctors, ward leaders, phrenologists, Methodist evangelists, circus clowns, magicians, soldiers, farmers, popular song writers, moonshine distillers, forgers of gin labels, mine guards, detectives, spies, snoopers, and agents provocateurs." (from prejudices: third series).