AMERICA OF TO-DAY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5168, 22 August 1927, Page 3

AMERICA OF TO-DAY.

PROSPERITY IN ABUNDANCE. HAPPINESS NOT YET FOUND. The prospertiy of America to-day is simply staggering. The- average income of every person “gainfully employed” was £3OO in 1921. In 1926 it was ovev 400—the highest standard of living for a whole nation that has ever been reached. This increase is not counter-balanced by any increase in the cost of living. A group of financiers recently bought the Dodge automobile property with a single cheque for a hundred and forty-six million dollars. The General Motors Co. has recently paid a dividend of 50 per cent., and its net profits for the first half of last year were eightythree million dollars. The Woolworth sales were nearly two hundred and fifty-three million dollars in 1926. The United States Steel Corporation has a share capital of one billion seventyone million dollars. American employees now own billions of dollarsworth of stock in .the concerns where they work. The- new securities offered in the United State® in the first half of 1926 aggregated more than four billion dollars, while Great Britain issued lees than two-thirds of a billion. In 1924 there were only 75 taxpayers with an income of more than a million dollars ; in 1925 there were 207. A very ordinary stenographer in New York gets £350 a. year. At the first night of a new musical comedy to be produced shortly in New York the best seats, will be £lO ; the back seats will be £3. So much for American prosperity.

If wealth brings happiness—as is commonly supposed-surely Americans should be the- happiest people on the face of the eqrth to-day. But are they ? If we can judge by what we read and hear, the very reverse is the- case. This subject. forms the basis of a remarkable article appearing in a recent issue of the British Weekly, in which it. quotes extensively from the writings, of a very able and prominent American, William Lyon Phelps, who declares that while America., is the most prospei ous nation in the world to-day, there is no serenity and little happiness. To prove 'his statements Mr Phelps refers to three symptoms of moral disturbance and spiritual sterility. First there is the disquieting outbreak of suicide, which is assuming sbrious proportions- throughout America. More than 1200 young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four took their own lives in a year. The explanation offered is that when they went to college or entered business life in cities they were caught up in a whirl of new ideas. Study of history and philosophy revealed new authorities who conflicted with the teaching of childhood. Faith fails and all is meaningless chaos. They face the conflict of sex, they discover the sordidness of the world, their minds are confused, their personalities wa.rped, and they are drawn into the abyss.

Then there is- divorce. It can be proved by authentic statistics that if divorces increase at their present rate, in eleven years’ time every marriage will end in divorce-. “The law,” says Bishop Fiske, “ forbids continuous polygamy, but we are substituting foi it consecutive polygamy.” The present fashion amongst well-to-do people- is to get a divorce- in Paris. Couples who are- uncomfortably mated—or who imagine they are —take a trip to Paris, see the battlefields, do some shopping, and, without any .embarrassing and distaseful publicity, shake off the shackles of matrimony.

And the third indication that all is not well in America is to be seen in the follies of its “flaming youth.” Can we wonder that thoughtful people in America are worried when they discover that 80 per cent, of all crimes- are committed by boys and girls under twe-nty-two years of age, that 51 per cent, of automobile thefts are committed by children under eighteen, and that 42 per cent, of the unmarried mothers are schoolgirls averaging sixteen years of age ? Recently the “Atlantic Monthly published a series of articles by a.. “Returning American,” who went back to New York after spending some time in Britain. He said : “I asked myself whether America had gone crazy, and where this wild dance, this bacchanalian orgy was to end. The American, he says, “has no sense of simple enjoyment. Conversation is a lost art. I- find lots of excitement here, but very few genuinely happy and contented people. We are looking for happiness in what we can buy, and I doubt if it can be found there. We have motor-cars-, bathrooms, telephones, and all the other mechanical accessories to an extent undreajned of in Europe, yet I do not find the people who enjoy them any happier.” Thi: is a subject that is of great interest to psychologists, and to every thinking person. America’s experience is an object lesson to the whole world, and we would be foolish indeed not to benefit from the lesson that all should learn—that wealth and material goods do not always result in happiness to the- possessor. Bishop W. F. Andrews, of America, goes to the crux of the question when he declares : “We must hark back to vital religion and downright Godliness oi we are lost.”