Rotary Won Over Its Earliest Critics

As Rotary clubs grew exponentially in the 1920s and 1930s, not all of attention the movement received was positive. Among the most outspoken critics of Rotary were authors George Bernard Shaw and Sinclair Lewis.

 

This book excerpt from, A Century of Service: The Story of Rotary International, details how Rotary ultimately won the public image battle over its critics.

 

"As the Rotary movement spread across America and Britain, it became a favorite target for cynical writers and social critics. One newspaper editorial opined: 'The Rotary club is composed of businessmen. The functions of a Rotary club are summed up in one word - talk. That is about all the members of the club do. The Rotary club never takes any action. Its members simply talk, or listen while others talk'."

 

"Where is Rotary going? It is going to lunch," sneered playwright George Bernard Shaw. Rotary's most outspoken critics in the 1920s and 1930s included Shaw, Sinclair Lewis, Clarence Darrow, H. L. Mencken, and G. K. Chesterton. Mencken, the acerbic editor of the American Mercury, wrote of his contempt for Rotary's "commercial civilization."He also derided Rotarians for their habit of greeting one another by their first names or nicknames: "The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist, 'Jack," he scoffed.

 

Sinclair Lewis touched on the same point in his 1920 novel Main Street but it was his 1922 novel, Babbitt that caused howls of protest from Rotarians.In it, the title character was a bumbling middle-class small-town businessman who was a follower, whose weekly highlight was the backslapping singing camaraderie of like-minded men at his booster club. Taking their lead from such famous authors, other writers joined in the parody parade with potshots of their own. They were rarely scathing attacks, but Babbitt, especially, was such a best seller that the criticism endured for decades.

 

By then, the word Babbitt had even entered the official national vernacular. Dictionaries started ncluding it, with the definition in Webster's New Collegiate: "A business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle class standards." When in 1934 another dictionary leaked that it was considering equating its own definition of Babbitt with Rotarian, Editor Leland D. Case of The Rotarian had had enough. One steamy August morning he took matters into his own hands and paid an unannounced visit to Sinclair Lewis' summer home in Vermont.