Fashionable Discontent
FASHIONABLE DISCONTENT I F ANYBODY is looking for confirmation of the old adage that modern civilization is based upon property rights and thrift, he can look out of his window in almost any...
...One is glad to see that the President has insisted firmly upon a settlement prior to the fall...
...Change depends, one may say, upon the fashionableness of discontent...
...Similarly, the unemployment statistics are quite as much a source of gratification as of dismay...
...Throughout the world signs of discord have displayed a tendency to increase...
...It is, you know, a circumscribed world...
...The confused fortunes of gold and silver, the second of which has fallen so hard that the entire commercial activity of the Orient has been affected, are not referred to on any soap box of which we are aware...
...One hardly thinks so...
...FASHIONABLE DISCONTENT I F ANYBODY is looking for confirmation of the old adage that modern civilization is based upon property rights and thrift, he can look out of his window in almost any direction just now...
...Another portion can definitely be attributed to the circumstance that thrift has become fashionable...
...Nothing in American history has been so permanently identified with graft and log-rolling of every character as the pension system...
...It can be accounted for, but the account is not a tribute to the Capitol...
...Recent news from Washington is of this character...
...Possibly that is why we can still afford to go in for governmental farces that might wreck other nations...
...Some such truism, diluted into thin but penetrating prose, is very likely the cause of the circumstance that ours, the youngest nation in the world, may also be the most conservative, the least revolutionary and dissatisfied of countries...
...Such matters by no means eliminate the numerous injustices, inequalities and cruelties of the existing social order...
...The census figures, for example, indicate the extent to which what was recently an immigrant population has been able to work its way out of metropolitan slums into more livable suburbs...
...These facts reveal themselves in many places and fashions...
...The bank account grandfather left is so good that his children can smash china and wreck a chair or two...
...And so we go about our business without flashing many teeth—a population which is the despair of the prophet and the creature of advertising, but which is probably not so poorly off, after all...
...but whether he will succeed or not remains to be seen...
...Judging by the earnestness with which Congress heeded his remarks anent the pension bill, Admiral Jones will still be talking in 1936...
...Business has not righted itself, as benevolent prophets assured us it would...
...The average citizen is as willing to endorse the government as he is to put up with existing social conditions...
...There Mr...
...However all this may be, there are solid facts of which the public generally is, in a measure, conscious and which breed that confidence in the established order which nothing or nobody has been able to shake...
...All in all, Washington has been debating with the umpire instead of playing ball...
...And the tariff...
...From several points of view this is a remarkable situation...
...In New York City, the congested Borough of Manhattan reports a decline in numbers of almost half a million, despite the very considerable new apartment building that has been completed during recent years in the upper reaches of the island...
...He knows that, comparatively speaking, things are pretty sound—a splendid constitution, at least a few excellent public servants with the President at their head, newspapers to expose any far-reaching defections, even a prohibition bureau not overenthusiastic about prohibiting...
...Why be disturbed...
...And yet we are probably, at least here in this country, more conservative than we were some months ago...
...The measure which Congress adopted by a heavy majority in spite of White House opposition contravenes the experience of fifty years and merely pours a few million dollars into the laps of men by no manner of means entitled to them...
...A fad is the first definition of itself every revolution must achieve...
...Dickinson apparently proved that he was a better friend of the President than Mr...
...Is this the old American grain uncovered after surplus prosperity has been washed off...
...The political situation has grown worse rather than better...
...On the subject of this bill, moreover, Mr...
...But they do testify to so much achievement in a necessarily limited world that the average man is quite willing to accept them as a better pledge of the future than piebald theories eagerly marketed about...
...They reveal what is of course a lamentable blot on our social picture, but they tell us also that in spite of a very real industrial set-back the United States has been able to maintain a level of employment security relatively unrivaled...
...And existing discontent in the United States is hardly more than a well-groomed acceptance of a slowing up process in the permanence of which hardly anyone believes...
...Continued inactivity, even depression, on the exchanges seems to interest comparatively few...
...Hoover was absolutely right...
...Hammill—and that the farmers are not so dead-set against the proposed tariff as one might have supposed...
...Possibly some of it is pure lethargy...
...Is popular discontent with political inefficiency on the increase...
...The rain may be as valuable, when everything has been said and done, as the rainbow...
...To date its greatest usefulness has been to serve as a dubious test of Republican orthodoxy in Iowa...
...And as for the revolutionary-minded, their demonstrations have apparently been postponed until cooler weather...
...Observers will tell you that almost every other citizen they meet has brushed up on Poor Richard and is curtailing his purchases to a minimum, with something like a flourish...
...The public appears to be dominated by a blend of pessimistic psychology and conservative acceptance of things as they are...
...Haggling over the London treaty will apparently never reach an end...
...Finally the ease with which new enterprise—particularly in the utility field—can be financed testifies to an underlying monetary soundness upon which the average citizen banks firmly, almost without realizing it...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 7
