Middle european scientific bulletin issn 2694-9970

MIDDLE EUROPEAN SCIENTIFIC BULLETIN 
ISSN 2694-9970 
212 
Middle European Scientific Bulletin, VOLUME 10 March 2021 
 
II. Main Part 
Dreiser emerges as an artist with an avowed purpose of exposing the evils of his day with a view 
to reforming the society. Cowperwood is more real than fictional figure caught in the misdirected 
American dream. Dreiser maintained innumerable paper-clippings was in the habit Of Visiting the 
Scenes of crimes, prisons, coal mines and slums. 
Dreiser describes the Supreme Court as the breeding place of corruption. He cites several 
examples of how judges and judicial machinery joined hands with aristocrats and corporations in order 
to make them more and more powerful. According to him, through the whole of its history until his own 
time, the American Supreme Court had consistently held to the doctrines that facilitated the march of a 
small favoured class to the control of the great industries and needs of his country. The Professor of
Christopher Newport University Roark Mulligan says in his recent critical edition: «The 
Financier stands at the intersection of the literary tradition of the business novel, with the early 
twentieth-century political tendency known as Progressivism, which sought to reform and regulate 
American business»
3
.This novel captured a major political controversy at the American financial 
system. Bankers’ manipulation of the money supply had caused financial panics in 1893 and 1907, 
which resulted in deep and lengthy economic depressions, and caused widespread discontent. However, 
when reform was finally achieved in December 1913, a year after The Financier was published, it was 
the work of Progressives intent not on social justice but efficient regulation.  
Although “The Financier” clearly belongs to the literary tradition of the business novel, and 
Dreiser related the nature of the novel to the orientation of financial system of the country. The one 
reformer figure in the novel Skelton P. Chief of the Citizens’ Municipal Reform Association, is 
portrayed fairly negatively, his moralistic reform program easily manipulated by the Philadelphia 
financial and political elites. More striking is the combination of admiration and condemnation in the 
novel’s depiction of central protagonist Frank Cowperwood, whose character and career Dreiser traces 
as exemplifying the “American Dream.” Cowperwood’s most salient characteristics are his immense 
personal power and charm, and his skepticism towards conventional morality. Following the motto “I 
satisfy myself,” he views society in terms of a struggle between individuals, with personal strength 
trumping all other considerations. 
At the beginning of the novel Dreiser places an incident whereby the young Frank witnesses the 
life and death struggle of a lobster and a squid, which have been deposited in a tank and displayed to the 
public. Since the squid has no weapon with which to defend itself, and has no means of escape from the 
tank, the lobster’s triumph is inevitable. The incident makes a great impression on Frank. 
Cowperwood’s subsequent conduct in business affairs reflects this lesson, contrasting significantly with 
that of his father Henry, a conservative bastion of the Third National Bank of Philadelphia, whose 
watchwords are honesty and personal integrity. For Frank, these terms have only a limited market value, 
and he takes advantage of the corrupt system whereby favoured bankers were allowed to invest money 
from Philadelphia’s treasury without paying interest, so long as the funds were returned by the end of 
each month. As Roark Mulligan notes: “Dreiser portrays Cowperwood dialectically, as both a challenge 
to the robber barons through exposing their hypocritical morality, and the epitome of their excesses”
4
. 
Beyond these moral and political criticisms, the novel reflects a more widespread Progressive society 
3
The Critical Edition.Ed. Roark Mulligan. Urbana: 2010, p. 567
4
The Critical Edition.Ed. Roark Mulligan. Urbana: 2010:560

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