A CLOSE-UP OF AMERICA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 928, 22 March 1930, Page 10

A CLOSE-UP OF AMERICA

HOLLYWOOD IN BED BY TEN O'CLOCK Did you know that you cannot get a good pot of tea in America? Did you know that you cannot buy a walking-stick in America —unless you spend a lot of time hunting for it? Did you know that when you die in America they take you to a “funeral home,” and your family goes with you and lives in rooms at the “funeral home” until you are buried? Did you know that Hollywood is in bed by 10 p.m.? About 10,000 people have been in America, come back, and written books about it, generally telling you everything you already know, but Sir Charles lgglesden, in his book, “A Mere Englishman in America,” tells about many things that are not generally known, including the above. One day a waitress in a “cafeteria,” seeing that Sir Charles was an Englifehman said: “i will let you have a pot of tea made in the same way as in England.” She brought a teapot and some tea-leaves in a small muslin bag. “She also brought a jug of water,” says Sir Charles, "not very hot, and certainly not boiling, and poured it into the pot. Then in went the little muslin bag. The result may be imagined by my tea-loving friends.” Another dreadful thing about America is that you cannot obtain any kind of drink, not even coffee, in an hotel lounge. In one hotel Sir Charles was told that he might be able to have coffee in one of the rooms, so he and a friend went into one of the rooms, and they first had to pay 8s as “table money,” and then they had to pay another 4s for two cups of coffee!

Sir Charles lgglesden says that the people in America who can afford to drink told him that prohibition is the saviour of the country. Middle-class working people generally agreed with this vietv. “Today,” he says, “the full percentage of employees turn up each Monday morning, and, instead of spending money on drink, the middle and working classes save money, dress better, live better, buy motor-cars, and own their houses.

“On the face of it, therefore, prohibition should be doing much good in the United States, but, as a matter of fact, the morals of the country are being thoroughly underminded. “The effect is said to be far-reach-ing. It is,” says Sir Charles, “more than a tragedy. Love of the freest kind is said to prevail among the younger people of the better classes, and the same is said of the undergraduates, where the two sexes mix freely in the universities.” Sir Charles describe scenes that he watched in Chicago and Los Angeles, which he puts down as “the result of mad drinking,” in connection with football matches. “In each case,” he says, “It was a large hotel with several hundred window's looking on to a courtyard. For tW'O' nights, the one preceding and the other succeeding the match, there was pandemonium. No one whose bedroom faced this square could sleep. The noise started when windows were thrown open, and young university students, both boys and girls, and their friends, yelled the war cries of the competing teams, while within the rooms they could be seen, openly drinking intoxicating liquors. “As the early hours of the morning approached the yelling was fearful, jugs, bottles, glasses, and earthenware of all sorts being hurled out of the window's.

“This exhibition of debauchery went on into the second night, and 1 was told that the damage in the bedrooms was enormous. “Worst of all were the scenes enacted along the corridors. Personally, I had almost to fight my way past excited and intoxicated young men and women, the latter mostly pretty girls in evening dress, but in such a state that they were dancing and singing in the manner of an East End virago.”