In Some Ways New Yorkers “Take It Easy”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26780, 25 May 1948, Page 6

In Some Ways New Yorkers “Take It Easy”

The third of a series of articles on the American scene written by a Dunedin scientist at present doing research work in New York. NEW YORK, May 13. The radio shouted, “Do you realise what is making you tired and listless? Do you realise it is AIR, the air you breathe? I have been breathing air for 40 years, and I am half dead. Even a fish has sense enough to keep out of the air. My grandfather worked all his life in a night-club and never breathed fresh air, and after he died he looked fresher than I do now ...” and so on. This turned out to be a skit in the current style of radio advertising, which jars you from 20 odd stations, about 20 hours of the day. Mostly it is poor stuff, designed, as one critic wrote recently “ for the more illiterate third,” often with a vocal chorus to drive home the wearisome point. It seems to be philosophically accepted, many will tell you because education has not brought Americans to expect anything else. An Italian friend told me, “Education is no good. My grandamother in Sicily, she cannot read, but she cannot be led. These people are educated so you can tell them anything.” Children certainly seem at first sight precocious, often rebellious, and frequently in public I have seen an eieht-year-old fetch father an unrequited and telling blow as he passed after a disagreement on the ferry gangway, or a family dispute on the subway platform that momentarily delayed the train till ended by the closing doors. Such incidents as a seven-child rifle attack on a Brooklyn teacher’s house to persuade her to pass the whole class ‘in algebra, and of three youths who arrived from Texas with pistol and stolen cheque book which they promptly used, seem to suggest a misdirection of talent. There have been several shootings in the past week, such as those of a union leader who had come, out against his Left Wing, and of a labour-hiring boss near the docks, besides a number of others mentioned almost in passing when a suspect is arrested. / A Little Too Easily Perhaps everything comes a little too easily, and the vast restlessness of this city aids to dispel regard for stability and the more usual humanities. Through the ceaseless Sunday night crowds on Neon-lit Broadway I saw two women pass, one carrying a suitcase, and heard, “ But how you going to eat? ” and the reply, “ I don’t care if I eat grass.” A few feet off F roadway an elderly figure in shirts! seves lay limp and unheeded across a shut doorway, blood dried on his forehead, and all the time the crowds passed. There seems significance, in a catchphrase of the moment: “Take it easy now.” On the other hand, American education, with its lack of inhibition, produces a useful adult assurance which non-Americans sometimes lack, and it can also be claimed that the present (Republican) Speaker of the House got himself an education after leaving his father’s blacksmith’s shop to sell newspapers at the age of seven. Incidentally, it seems likely that he. will continue as Speaker for at least the next three years—his party says nine —since no one appears to believe there will be other than a Republican President after next November. Stassen-Eisenhower?

The Republican nominee seems likely to be Harold Stassen. From being an unconsidered outsider a month ago, this ex-Governor, ex-naval commander has by outright victories in three States’ Repubiican primary ballots jumped to first place as likely nominee, for the apparent reasons that he is middle-western, middle-road, neither general nor industrialist, and (perhaps more important) that he has been assiduously travelling the country, farmer-talking and baby-kissing for a year or, more. But it is as certain as a Republican victory now seems, that if General Eisenhower were persuaded to reverse his four firm denials of presidential hopes, he would be elected, and it is interesting to watch a Democrat “ Eisenhower for President ” movement growing behind his political back. There is even an ingenious and wishful theory that he is to be sprung as a last-minute, darkhorse candidate on a war-minded electorate, to explain the present war-talk. But the general moved in yesterday as president of Columbia University, and says he is there to stay.