The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1927. WHY AMERICA IS RICH

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 177, 17 October 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1927. WHY AMERICA IS RICH

THERE is a great deal more in American life and activities than bootlegging, murder, robbery with violence, the Ivu Klux Klan and Big Bill Thompson, the champion hater of the British Throne. Though the chroniclers litter the world with these crude by-products of the United States, a better kind of history is always in the making. And this is a fine record of genuine achievement. The Department of Commerce at Washington, for example, lias announced that America’s favourable trade balance for the first nine months of this year topped £71,000,000, as compared with only £.17,000,000 odd for the corresponding period of last year. Exports totalled, in round figures, £701,000,000, and imports £630,000,000. These colossal amounts reveal almost a fabulous national prosperity and explain why legions of leisured Americans are able to roam up and down the earth in pursuit of pleasure and blow the trumpet of success. Though there are many streaks in the popular picture of America’s wealth, it may be agreed that, whatever else the United States has failed to do, it at least has achieved, for the majority of its people, a standard of life much higher than that allowed so grudgingly to the masses in other countries. Leaders in business and industry realise that there will be little revolt against the relatively few fortune-takers if the real makers of these fortunes are given material prosperity. In most other countries the highest rewards for workers are placed m the next world. It is much easier to extol American prosperity than to explain it. Many fortuitous circumstances have contributed to the abounding wealth of the noisy Republic, but such advantages as natural resources on a vast scale and certain benefits accruing from and through the economic distress of other nations must be taken into account and given full credit for their immense service to America, but they need not be exaggerated to undue importance. They do not represent anything like the full range of reasons for American prosperity. Perhaps the most effective reason is the faet, which is not yet comprehended in this country and other easy-going British communities, that the prosperous worker in the United States has to work harder for his prosperity. And so with the American capitalist and industrialist. He has been compelled to displace inherited power and indolence by initiative and inexhaustible energy. When labour forced him to pay higher wages he retaliated with a development of machinery so that the speed and efficiency of his industrial plant would extract every available 4unce put of the worker. The slacker automatically falls back to the bread-line, while the efficient artisan or mechanic toils like a machine at his daily task and earns good money which enables him to command a pleasant leisure. Cheap production promotes bigger sales and millions of cents in profit are finally counted in thousands of dollars. It may be noted that the only exceptions to the rule of prosperity in the United States are the agricultural and mining industries. There is a limit to their scope for increased production at lower cost. In everything else a skyscraper tariff wall shelters the American worker who enjoys Free Trade within the States. It is not surprising that the average prosperous American believes that the best seat for the revolutionary Communist is the electric chair.

THE GIRL OF TO-DAY

THE girl of to-day ? She is so well known, so much more in the limelight—and the sunlight—than was her sister of a generation back that she hardly requires describing. Probably because she is the most charming thing in the universe, she is the most talked about —and the most maligned. If some people were to be believed, she is heading straight for the bottomless pit; she has no mind save for pleasure, no domesticity, no realisation of her responsibility as a prospective mother of the race. This deprecation of the modern miss is not confined to the few stern moralists in Auckland who occasionally let themselves go” on the alleged iniquities of young feminine life—those critics Miss Jean Begg referred to in an address at St. Andrew’s Church last evening as “the older generation which should set an example to the younger.” In England, too, where it is proposed to give the vote to women between the ages of 21 and 30, thus tremendously increasing feminine influence in the national life, there has been an onslaught, seemingly inspired, on the foibles and frailties of the sex. “I wish,” wrote Robert Blatchford in a London publication last month, “there were not, in such plenty, censorious curmudgeons in this blessed plot. Out upon those grudging spirits who never give thanks! Here in an English newspaper an anonymous medico is grousing about our English girls. The modern girl does not know how to walk, he says, she thinks too much of games, she despises the domestic chores and she cannot scrape a potato! Now, I will stand to it that she walks well. Only last month in London I was mightily pleased with her free brisk step -and upright easy carriage. Who would find it in his heart to grumble at girls so brave and charming? Arcturus draws no brighter jewels in his train. We would not have them march like Grenadiers; but they walk as it would warm one’s heart to behold them. They walk quickly, they walk lightly, they walk happily, as who should say:—‘On with the dance, let joy be unconfined.’ ” Mr. Blatchford thinks the modern girl has no need to scrape potatoes, or does not want to scrape potatoes. And, he asks, is the scraping of potatoes so vital to the State, or so difficult ? If the girl married, and her husband desired his potatoes scraped, well, no doubt she would soon learn to scrape them. He refers to this carping criticism of the girls of to-day as “surly nonsense.” There is not much to know about girls that Miss Jean Begg, for many years a well-known social worker, does not know. Miss Begg is now secretary in Auckland of tlie Young Women’s Christian Association. She has hundreds of girls under her eye daily; and she says that the very characteristics which are condemned in the girl of to-day were present in the girls of the Victorian period. There was too much talk of “training” girls. Training, says Miss Begg, should be replaced by example. VeTy wisely, this lady adds that it is better to be foolish between the ages of 10 and 20 than later in life. One fears that it is the critics whose foolishness has been delayed. There is altogether too much uncalled-for criticism of the girls of to-day. They are at least learning to think for themselves, and advancing along original lines—for which men should feel very thankful. In deportment and in morals they are every bit as good as the past generation; in physique, in facial beauty, in general ability, in frankness and in comradeship, they leave that generation hopelessly behind. With perfect confidence tlieir future may be left to themselves.