Show released by western newspaper on AMERICAN SYSTEM AND OUR TOTAL WEALTH WE ARE INCLINED to envy those who have more than we have haij af 6 what we refer to as money we fre fail to differentiate between money and wealth but they are auevery very diff different erent those who demand more equal distribution of the at a of the nation fail to realize j just money U st h how w little such a division would mean today we have more actual money than ever before in the entire his tory of the nation in amount it ts is three times more mor than ethan it was in 1912 1918 the total is i just about 15 billion ollars dollars ct and that total is increasing at the rate of about one half billion ollars dollars per month such an amount and such a monthly increase adds addi to the danger of uncontrolled iffla tion an uncontrolled inflation would prove more disastrous to our amer ican institutions our american way of life than the war in which we are engaged but dangerous as such a sum of total money actually is and large as it may seem if it were ed equally among all of us we would each receive as our full share less than that is about two weeks wages for the average worker in a war industry plant of the wealth of the nation money is but ii a small part that wealth consists of the plants in which we work and the machinery they contain the railroads our homes and buildings mines forests and utilities the automobiles trucks and busses in which we ride our clothing and home furnishings the livestock and equipment on our farms and the farms themselves wealth consists of everything on which a value can be placed the total of it all is estimated at around billion dollars or a little over 2000 for each one of us any attempt to equally divide the wealth of the nation would mean the destruction of that wealth it would mean the destruction of our production facilities and our jobs but through the jobs we hold week by week and month by month we are continually distributing what our wealth cro duces we do not all receive an equal share of what is produced but in a fairly reasonable way each one receives that share which his ability as a producer warrants we do not all have equal ability but we all do have equal opportunity to develop our productive ability some farmers can produce more from an acre ol of ground because of applying better methods than others can just as some men in factories can do a better or more intricate job than others but each has the same opportunity to do his best and is rewarded in prop proportion to what his ability 4 warrants such is the me american system the american Americ anway way of life that system has given us as a people the highest standard of living the world has ever known it has raised the standard of those with least ability proportionately with those of greater ability we will never attain the millena um by an effort to pull all down to a common commo n level RURAL AUDIENCE SHOWS fundamental CULTURE ON A RECENT EVENING I 1 sat on the platform of a rural comma anity hau hall and listened to a war correspondent tell a rural audience what he had personally seen on the battle fronts of europe france asia and the par far east the speaker was not an orator but hi he was a keen well trained observer he had none of the mannerisms of a trained orator he was not delivering a prepared address he had a story to tell of things he had seen and ana people he had talked with he told that story in a simple unaffected way which appealed to that rural audience 1 I was as much interested i in watching people of that audience as I 1 was in listening to the speaker they were there to get information they were appreciative of what th at young man told them they did not miss the lack of oratorical effort a city audience would have classed as essential to a cultural presen presentation presentac tat ion these rural people wanted facts they wanted the truth and to that anai correspondent they gave their eliw un divided enraptured red attention HOYI st different from the cynical blase of many a city audience or the undue effusiveness which covers cove a lack of understanding of what h been heard such things are accepted cep but the fun i as evidence of culture da mental culture was to be found P that rural audience it is su such cap peo and P pie e who cause cause america to tick ke keep p us going in these strenuous times |