SOURCE: "Progressive Visions of War in 'The Red Badge of Courage' and 'The Principles of Scientific Management'," in American Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1, March, 1991, pp. 46-72.

In the following essay, Mulcaire argues that Stephen Crane's depiction of war in The Red Badge of Courage as mechanical and systematic indicates the widespread acceptance at the end of the nineteenth century of Taylor's principles.

As Henry Fleming turns his back on war at the end of The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Stephen Crane describes Henry's retreat with a biblical allusion that collapses the difference between war and peace. "He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquility," Crane writes, "and it was as if hot plowshares were not." His text is the famous passage from Isaiah 2:4: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up swords against nation, neither shall they...