AN AMERICAN JOURNEY

Evening Post, Issue 6, 8 January 1935, Page 10

AN AMERICAN JOURNEY

J. B. PRIESTLEY AGAIN

UNBIASED VIEWS

These notes are based, of courge, on a brief and superficial experience. But they are the notes of an unbiased ob- • server, who for some time now has ; been, paid to notice things. Let us begin with the general appearance of the United States. It does not show as many signs of the depression as I expected it would, writes J. B. Priestley in the "New York Times." When I was here last the slump had just begun, and I notice a number of comparatively small differences between then, and now. Thus, things seem to be cheaper and people more anxious to have your custom than they were before. , Possibly in my hurried journey across the continent I have missed the places that have suffered worst, but certainly I have seen remarkably few sign's of real distress. I could take you to places in England that are a thousand times worse than anything I have seen here, whole districts in our industrial North that have been murdered by the slump. HNDS PRESIDENT POPULAR. Most of the people I have listened to, from New York to Arizona, have a curiously mixed attitude towards the political authorities. First, they have' a loyalty to and affection for the President himself. No British statesman commands such loyalty and affection. No member of the present British Government deserves them. People give Mr§Rooseyelt the credit for making a, gr,eat creative effort. Our world is in more need of such efforts today than it .is of anything else, for we have arrived at a time when the organisers of social, economic, and political life are centuries behind the skilled producers, the engineers, the manufacturers, even the very farmers.; But along with this personal loyalty to the chief there goes a tremendous suspicion of "the Government." When you are talking in railway dining cars, hotel lounges, and the like you do not ask a man to define his terms, so that I do not know exactly what is meant by this ""government." It seems to represent an unnamed bunch of extravagant and perhaps crooked politicians, who care about nothing but taking great wads of the taxpayer's money and spending it recklessly. : On the other hand, like people in other democratic countries, the ordinary American citizen still makes the mistake of supposing that politics is, in some mysterious fashion, other people's affair and not his own, of■ aslsuming that he is not master in his own country. ' . . It is political words and not political measures .that seem to frighten! the American. Thus, he will approve _of Government action tha.t is really socialistic in principle, but on the other hand he will still talk of Socialists, Eadieals, and "Beds" as if they were strange, horrible monsters, eaters of children. In the same way, though he is peaceably enough inclined himself and only too ready to deplore the war-mongering in Europe he reads about, he talks of pacifists as (if they, too, were creatures who ought to be outlawed from decent society. The fact is that he has carried over 'from the pre-slump period the violent prejudices aroifsed by these mere names, although actually by this time he himself is probably both a Badical and a pacifist. But I for one would never dare to tell him so to his face. It would be the names themselves, and not the principles ' suggested by . them, that would outrage him. ' .. ." ■ Being a democrat, ,1 like the -democracy of America, and' prefer it to the social muddle of English life, which is neither a democracy nor an aristocracy, but an uneasy snobbish mixture of both. I have no'patience with some of your writers ' here. who profess a great contempt 'for democracy and advocate an aristocratic system. 'These writers, I fancy, assume a little too easily that under an aristocratic system they would be among ) the aristocrats, and forget that they might be wedged in among the lower classes, touching their caps at the great man's lodge- gates. They are like Bernard Shaw, who prof esses a like contempt for liberty of speech but takes care to goon living in a country where he is allowed to say what he likes. There are, however; two democracies in America, it seems to me. There is the democracy of bad manners and the democracy of good manners. You meet the first chiefly in the cities, and it is not pleasant. It assumes that democracy means that everybody has a right to be rude to everybody else all the time. The "Say, listen, brother" man is typical of these democrats, who appear to* suffer from a bad inferiority complex. ..-■.•■. You seem to find the other democracy, tßat of easy but good manners, well outside the cities, and perhaps at its best- in the West. To' an Englishman, heartily sick of the .uneasy class prejudices and snobberies of his own island, there is something very refreshing about "these Westerners, with their friendly quality, free alike from, patronage or servility. Will this real democracy last or is it merely a lingering relic of1 cattle-punching and prospecting days? . Here, anyhow, is the germ of that classless society, in which men are really)jfree and equal,, whicK most good' people* would like to see established in the world. " • In my trip across the States this time I noticed the great differences there are in people here. In the big cities you meet fine people, but you also,seem to see, about the streets, more shifty-look-ing men, more potential scoundrels, than you ■ see almost anywhere else in the world. I am quite prepared to believe, as your criminal records would no doubt prove, that most of these fellows are among Europe's fairly recent contributions to your population. Possibly a very small proportion, of them, are Americanborn citizens. But there they are, thousands of them, complete city rats, and I can well beli,eve that they constitute one of your major problems. No wonder you need a police force like an. army to cope with their activities, or that, every morning paper .tells its tale of horror. But'away from this scum your people present grand types and especially— to ' English eyes—among your hardworking outdoor men, whether they are driving trains or tractors, rounding up cattle, or taking their own share in your gigantic engineering feats. These men are finer creatures than their European equivalents, and they justify a good deal of boasting. They are worth working for these ' people are worth the newest and best deal that can be given them. , And' let me admit this, that during this trip I have met three fellow-coun-trymen of mine who have settled here; one was a barber, another was a clerk, and the third a caterer's manager. And depression or no depression, not one of them had the least desire to return, except for V holiday, to the land of Ms birth and of mine. America had done this, that, and the other for them, they told me, and they were glad to be over here you bet! _ _.' _ . And now, so that you will not imagine I am simply out to flatter you, let me conclude by remarking that I still think your rooms are too hot/ your children too precocious, your cities too noisy, your trains too slow, and your automobiles too fast, your make-up too thick, your tobacco too sweet, and your glorious pies all too plentiful and fattening. ~..',.