LEISURELY AMERICA.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8830, 5 June 1907, Page 4

LEISURELY AMERICA.

Another idol shattered! The American is not really a “hustler” ; he merely mistkes noise for speed. Mr A. W. Gamage, the bead of a Loudon emporium, has came back from the United States with the conviction that the wonderful “hustle” of tho American is a myth. ‘‘ So far as my observances went, there is not really so much ‘hustle’ in Hew York and Chicago as there is in Loudon. In my opinion an up-to-date Loudon firm ‘hustles’ in a more telling manner than tho great American houses. ’ ’ Mr Gamage was struck with the waste of time in tho American shop, largely because of the want of trust in employees, necessitating an elaborate system of checking. Ho also thinks that tho American assistant treats his customer in -a particularly off-handed manner, which would never do in England, and never takes the trouble to ‘ ‘ press a sale. ’ The case against American “hustle” is put a good deal more strongly by the writer in the Monthly Review, who spent four years in tho country. America, he declares, is a laud of leisure. Tho New Yorker gulps his food, but spends longer over his lunch than the Londoner, because he has to wait so long to be served ; shopping in the big emporiums is a painful business, owing to the unconscionable time wasted in waiting for parcels and change ; more clerks are employed in the average office in New York than in Loudon, but tho Londoners get through more work. Tho repairing department of one of the largest shops required ten days to put a ferule on the end of the writer’s walking stick. Rapid transit in New York is a delusion. Trams are so hampered by stoppages and blocks that their average speed is not more than eight miles an hour. “But an American in a hurry will unhesitatingly take a car for two or three blocks rather than cover the same distance more quickly by walking, just as he will wait two or three minutes for an elevator to take him down a flight of ten steps, or w ill bring the resources of his typewriter to bear upon a postcard which could be more speedily written by hand. ’ ’ Another example of American leisure is that of a boy in Cleveland, Ohio, who was injured by a railway train ten years ago, when he was eleven. His action for damages is still “sub judice,” and it has lately been ruled that whatever results have so far been readied are now invalidated Jby the fact that he is an adult, and must plead in his pwu name. In January, 1905, a firm of importers obtained a refund of a dollar a dozen pairs on a consignment of gloves imported, sold, and worn ■ out in 1893, thirteen years before, j The American makes the mistake of i thinking that speed and incidentally j efficiency can be measured by the noise made in doing a thing.