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Upton Close on
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"Freedom of individual initiative" has made America great . . , and while it's not a "state of perfection," we seem to overcome difficulties as they arise.
IN AN effort to clarify some of our catch words, let's take the word "Americanism." Instead of being an empty word for orators, Americanism is really and factually just the difference between life in the United States of America and life in Europe or Asia today. Viewed in that light, you can take your stand on whether or not you want Americanism for yourself.
Americanism is an historical develment. In Jefferson's day it meant a farmer community in which men were more prosperous and happy than in the peasant communities of old Europe whence they came, simply because they were not government-ridden and were given the freedom of individual initiative in America which was denied to them in Europe. In our day Americanism means an industrial community which, since the invention of the automobile, has pioneered forty new basic industries while all the rest of the world has pioneered just one — that one being rayon. This is simply because the American inventor and investor and workman were not government-ridden but were given the freedom of individual initiative in America which was denied in Asia and Europe. If you want a factual report of the difference between products and industry and the lives of workmen in one system and in the
other, read William L. White's new book, "Report on Russia," the first installment of the condensed version of which appears in the December Reader's Digest. — But read the whole thing!
Americanism is not a state of perfection, but a process of overcoming difficulties as they arise. It is the process of overcoming both surpluses and dearths of production in industrial articles. Americanism is the business of applying brains and effort to overcoming both booms and de' pressions; but it is overcoming these extremes while conserving what we have got, not v^hile destro^'ing everything with debt and political chicanery and emotional violence. Europeanism and Asianism have the problems of boom and depression, surplus and dearth, too — although a good deal more depression and dearth than boom and surplus. The difference between the distress and destruction which Europe and Asia have so far got into as they go about solving these problems, and our present condition, still, in this country, is the difference between Europeanism and Asianism on the one hand, and Americanism on the other. It is the difference between bosses who can be popularly influenced and controlled and regulated, because they are called capitalists and industrialists, and bosses that cannot be pop