DOLLAR-WORSHIP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 281, 10 November 1944, Page 18

DOLLAR-WORSHIP

Are Americans Guilty ? 7s is the second in the series of W.E.-A., lectures by SYDNEY GREENBIE, . Special Assistant to the American Minister, and head of the United States Office of War Information in New Zealand. Mr. Greenbie's first talk, it will be remembered, was an answet to the question, "Are Americans Vulgar?" In this. talk he asks ~and answers another question: _"Do Americans worship the dollar?" Our report is a condensation.

ce ES, Americans worship the dollar. But are we different fron’ any other people in the world in that regard? Is there a nation where wealth, property or money is not revered? Whether it is acquired by honest means or not, wealth stands for social distinction, for class, for power. About the only thing that makes America different in its attitude to wealth is that we do not camouflage it. Wealth with us is ngt confused with culture, with manners, with aristocracy. It is just plain money -something we need to live by. "Money -making in America was never regarded as disgraceful. People came from all over the world with one object in view — to get money. They were not Americans. From all over the world people rushed to America expecting to find the streets paved with gold. If there was any true worship of the dollar it was by those who came to America greedily seeking it. Some, like the gentlemen of Virginia in 1607, refused to soil their hands’ with labour. Their colony did not prosper. Those ‘regions like’ New England, where honest toil and _ puritanical thrift obtained, where the rigours of an austere, religious sobriety prevailed, not only prospered, but along with that. prosperity came a sharp, clear beauty, a. taste for living which has. made its mark ‘on the culture of our entire country. Not Ashamed of Trade "Wherever else in’ the world there grew a civilisation based not on the ‘frank acceptance of the value of money, there arose an aristocracy. of power. This power was based on the fighting abilities of the soldier class, That class went out into the world seeking wealth other men created; they regarded that wealth as just spoils. Much. of that spirit remains in the countries we are to-day fighting. Germany and Japan are ex-amples-of the contempt *of the soldier

class for money. The Japanese samurai had a code based on contempt of business and trade. This soldier never carried money. He just took what he needed. The German Junker class, though it did not hesitate to sell its fighting services for money (I refer to the Hessians in the American Revolution), nevertheless always regarded _itself. as above the money-maker. Some of the English, too, believed that being in trade was socially not quite right, To this day there is a slight sense of demeaning in the acts of buying and selling. Lord Byron refused to accept any of the royalties for his poetry. Three or four of the repertory plays I have. seen here in New Zealand deal with the struggle of lords and ladies to sustain themselves in their comforts without visible means of support. The characters strive by devious ways to trade off their social position for clothes, food, and so on. Honest dressmakers and working people were more than willing to exchange dresses and food with the Lady Frederic®s just for the sheer joy of being invited to the homes of the titled upper class. Now, distasteful as out Hollywood pictures are to New Zealanders and to many Americans because of the social striving in them, to us Americans this type of striving is even more distasteful. Escape from Servility "America was settled by humble people trying to escape that very thing. Feudal society gave Europeans no prospect of rising above the status of serf and labourer. But with a little money in America one soon found release from servile clinging. Hence two things run through American life like corpuscles in the veins-respect for trade and respect for labour. Through trade and: labout, man found. his freedom. Americans early Jearned that the only way they could conquer the continent and put it in order was. by making money with their own hands. In that

way, we developed through the generations almost a cult of labour. No one was respected who did not earn his own living, who could not wield an axe or handle a_ plough. This cult of labour, with the dream that a man could with his own hands carve out his destiny and be the equal of any man, has dominated the conscience and heart of America. There developed with it a contempt for a leisured class; a revolt against leisure. "While on the one hand we overrated, perhaps, the merchant as the captain of industry, and gave him a higher status than he received anywhere else in the world, the captain of industry himself became only too keenly aware of the fact that to survive in American society he would have to put on a pretty good show of working. "A story is told of the Rockefeller sons at their summer home not far from where we live in Maine. When someone asked the Rockefeller boys why they did not have cars of their own, one of them answered, ‘Who do you think we are-the Vanderbilts?’ It is a commonplace in America for the sons of rich people to start in life working their way to the top. No Primogeniture "We have no such thing as primogeniture in America. We may worship the doilar, but we do not seek to perpetuate the unity of property which primogeniture imposes. Property is split up among the children and fortunes are thus dissipated. "Tt is this tendency on the part of Americans to dissipate their property that has. sometimes made a wrong impression. Money comes easy and it goes easy, and Americans spend it It was this feeling that somehow a rich man must earn his riches, and when he has them he must do something with them that led to the dissipation of some of our greatest fortunes. Andrew Carnegie said that he was determined to die poor, and began to give away his money. The Rockefellers have been giving away hundreds of millions of dollars. The head of Sears-Roebuck, the mail-order house, left a fund of some 25 to 50 million dollars, with the proviso , that. every cent of it. was to be spent within 25 years after his death. He did not want, as he said,:the eae x 7 the dead: on: the living.»

"Americans want. to do things. With the increase of leisure and free time, we are training our people more and more, not merely in the skills of making things, but in the skills of using things. The art of consumption is as important (continued on next page)

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to industry as the art of production. If we make pianos, we must see that people learn to play them. Why manufacture golf clubs if people do not play golf? Attack on Drudgery ‘How is this reflected in the economic life of America? It is reflected, first of all, in the universal attack on drudgery.. America has, with its gadgets and its efficiency, sought to eliminate slavery, to raise the standard of living with shorter hours and better wages, and it has given everyone the feeling that making money is not only possible, but worthy. We have 13 million Negroes in America, who represent, on the aggregate, the lowest standard of living in the country. Yet these 13 million Negroes have acquired two and a-half billion dollars worth of property. We have poverty in America, yes, but we do not regard it as a virtue. "Even the National Association of Manufacturers, which makes no pretence about its Wesire for profit, holds up to the masses of people in its pamphlets and its publications the philosophy of higher wages and lower costs in the effort to spread well-being. During the depression the nation spent its future without stint. Billions of dollars went to’ relieve want. Social security programmes have come into being, but the claim now is that social security is benefiting only a portion of the population. The cry is that it must be spread to touch the country as a whole, And now the leading thinkers of America, such as Vice-President Wallace, are championing the cause of lifting the standard of well-being the World over as the only solution of our own — of freedom from’ warit:" 7