SPEED IN AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1934, Page 16

SPEED IN AMERICA.

DAZZLES BRITISHER. I 0 HOW HE SUMS IT UP. SHUDDERS AT QUICK MEALS. (By SIR PERCIYAL PHILLIPS.) CHICAGO, December 28. When the low-geared foreigner accustomed to the easy pace of Europe arrives for the first time in the United States he is smitten with a kind of paralysis. Life within these frontiers appears to him to bo a mad race around an alarm clock, with no fixed goal in sight but the grave. He must cither fall into step and be whirled from one day to the next, with indigestion and discontent riding him like twin furies, or lag behind and become an outcast on the rim of time. Business men are already at their desks at an hour when ho expects to find charwomen sweeping up yesterday's debris. Before he has breakfast the streets are filled with* an army of workers pressing feverishly toward typewriters and tabulating machines. They swarm into quick-lunch cafetarias like ravenous locusts while his morning is yet young, and strip the platters clean before a low-geared appetite can digest even the menu. Taxis that defy the law of gravity rock him on the verge of Morning newspapers greet him the night before. Such discoveries in his first day ashore build for him a very substantial nightmare. The New Deal in speed further complicates his mental processes by yielding certain surprises of a pleasing nature. Interpreted in terms of service it compels his admiration. He gives his hotel the soiled linen accumulated during a week's voyage with the modest request that it be returned, if possible, within three days. Lo! the same night it is found, spotless and still warm from the iron of an expert, in orderly array upon his bed. Magic Way With Luggage. Clothes from the presser that are expected before dinner reappear within the hour. Luggage for a distant city vanishes, as if by magic, from his room in response to a telephone call and arrives a few minutes after him, in another room, a thousand miles away, in exchange for two pieces of pasteboard.. Iced drinking water comes from a special tap to avoid the delay of bringing it in a jug. He posts his letters in a chute just outside his door. His telegrams are received by a smiling young woman at a desk which is never closed and shot by pneumatic tube to a transmitting office. He wishes to telephone to a friend in a city as far away as Zurich is from London. Memories of leisurely trunk calls in his own country haunt him as he debates whether he can a/Ford the half hour or more of waiting to be put through. He decided to risk it, asks for the number, and prepares to read the evening paper. Before he is comfortably settled in a chair alongside the telephone booth he is "through." Thirty seconds have 6ufficcd to connect him with the •wanted number. If he goes to a bank to draw money, fortified with passport and other credentials, he expects a mild third degree and an interval devoted to red Jape. Before he can produce Ms papers f, cashier, illuminated by the convenional "goodwill" grin, has honoured his .signature and slammed a bundle of bankJotes into his hand. He goes away feellg that the speed with which the transaction has been concluded is almost indecent, and an. insult to the highest q _ ,v

On hie way out he is surprised to see bank officials, from the highest to the lowest, planted in full view of the public around the unpartitioned floor, like shop assistants ready for the next thing, each with his name on a miniature signboard at a corner of his desk.

Why so accessible? For closer contact with clients and the great speed, of the money machine. Likes Name Plate Idea. Tho name-plate idea rather pleases him. It is so friendly. When he goes to the tobacco stand in the hotel to ask for the English mixture they have not got, ho knows that the marcelled and tinted blonde behind the counter is Mies Uobinson. If afflicted with the soda water habit he can stroll the length of a long marble bar and decide whether to take his drink from the red-tipped fingers of Miss O'Riordan or Miss Cassetti. Tho non-alcoholic barmaids carry their family names, engraved on neat metal brooches fastened to their blouses. They are quick in repartee, but by no means rapid in behaviour. The bright jester who suggests that their addresses should bo added to their identity discs will receivo a frozen stare or a metallic Oh yeah ?" But other aspects of the craze for speed soon become disagreeably obvious. Meals are bolted in A way that shows no mercy • for the delicate machinery dedicated to food. The intent occupants of public restaurants rush in to refuel; they never really lunch or dine. They can be seen bowed ovef the latest timesaving invention, a form of circular ebina. trough divided into compartments yhich bring the main ingredients of the midday ration simultaneously within range. This is called a "club plate" luncheon; a club, indeed, with which to flog the laggard through his hasty meal. Ordered by a number on the food combination card, it is snatched deftly, all hot and quite appetising, from an aperture in tho serving hatch —I suspect that a moving platform for quick assembly is. concealed behind—and brought to rest by a cog in the chain of waitresses trained in the mass transportation of vitamins. H© finds it depressing to watch his fellow men in a better class restaurant consume their portions at a rate that leaves him far behind. There will be parties of tense business men, grimly absorbed in. •- their plates, and mixed groups with a social tinge, but subordinating conversation to the task of eatin a lfurry. Half an hour carries them to the coffee stage. _ Breakfast is a marathon, and dinner, with its inevitable foundation of iced water, drunk copiously, very often a dance still nearer death. Last Call to Dinner. On tour, he shudders in liis armchair in the luxurious lounge car of a Pullman express when, at half-past five in the afternoon, a white jacketed negio introduces his "Old Man River bass voice into the restful scene with the unpleasant news: "Dinnah is now being served; first call." The next announcement, threequarters of an hour later, is made with greater determination. If the rebel against speed still sits tight, a lonely outcast, amid empty chairs, the whip-per-in for the chef is likely to bay his last, desperate appeal-with an expression which is mingled curiosity and despair, as though to say: "Well, boss, haven't you got the price of a dinner or is you fastin'?" Kow that America has become airminded the slaves to speed can give the obsession full play. This country possesses tbe finest network of day and night airplane services in the world. The railways are building streamline trains that look like elongated, sharpnosed shells. One destined to enter into competition • with the air routes will begin running next spring at a speed of 110 miles an hour. Already a rival lino is experimenting with another model which is expected to travel 130 miles an hour. Speed, always more speed. I asked a "booster" for the airways what practical benefit would result from paring three hours from the trans-con-tinental running time. "Well, you will have that much more time for whatever you want to do next. Don't you understand? It saves time." (NuLN.A.) . ~ , t