OCR Text |
Show Credit Due Americans An article in a recent issue of Liberty Magazine by Jay Franklin, the extremely critical and iconoclastic Washington publicist, calls attention to a factor in the present depression depres-sion that has got far less attention than it deserves namely, that the American people lately have been displaying a great deal more common sense and levelheadedness than most people peo-ple gave thenx credit for possessing. Franklin points out something that everyone knows that the depression is highly painful and a trying- experience. Then, reminding us that our highbrow writers have spent the past decade calling the .average American a colossal dumbbell, he adds: "You'd expect a bunch of morons like the American people peo-ple to turn in a riot call, barbecue their politicians and take the bankers for a ride. But they didn't. In the worst panic of our national history we've had no Coxey's army, no big riots, no big strikes and no martial law. "The American people has kept its temper and kept its head, and made monkeys out of the panicky 100-pcr cent patriots who have acted as though high wages were all that stood between tha country and bloody revolution. The American Ameri-can people may be foolish, but they don't act like fools in an emergency." 1 With a minor exception or two, the gentleman is right. . We have a bad coal strike on our hands these days, and the textile trade has had labor troubles here and there. For the rest, however, his statement holds good. The nation has been singularly peaceful in the face of trouble. Six million men have lost their Jobs and the most radical move that has been made has been the mild suggestion that the federal government gov-ernment might help them buy food until they get their jobs back ! All in all, it is a remarkably encouraging record. The American workman has had plenty of excuse for falling for various "isms" if he cared to, but he hasn't done it. Instead he has simply said, "Let me have a job again and we'll call it quits." |