Evening star., 1931-05-31
CHANGE In AMERICAN LIFE
HOLDS CURRENT THOUGHT
Shifts in Manner of Living and Govern
ment Freely Predicted by
Present Thinkers.
BY MARK SULLIVAN
n HERE is afioat in important circles
of American education, politics
and business, a group of ideas
Il which the average American

dEIG is aTOaC III important Circles
Of American education, politics
and business, group of ideas
Il which the average American
newspaper reader has never
heard Of, or at least never paid any
attention to. The ideas, to describe
them very briefly and very roughly, are
facets of one central thought. and the
central thought is that there is just
ahead of us in America a revolutionary
~xlange In life as we know 1t.
The quantity of this sort of thought,
SNa colleges, in some portions of the
Business world. and in some areas of
fUlfics, Is very great. The amount Is
Slready great and it is increasing both
in quantity and momentum Yet the
fact is that line of ideas as sensa-
tional as this can exist in great guam
titles in the circles named without ever
coming to the attention of the average
newspaper reader in Lewiston. Me, or
Decatur, Ill. If the prophets Of revolu-
tionary change are correct then the
average American is going to be living
within a few years. in world that
will seem very strange to him. If, how
ever, the prophets are overexcited and
if the predicted change does not come,
then the average American will be JUS
titled in declining to let his peace Of
mind be disturbed.
experienced BEFORE.
1t happens the latter way more often
than the former Such waves CT start
ling thought have passed over America
rather frequently in our century and
a half of history. They are especially
prone to arise in times of business de-
preston. A few such waves of ideas
have materialized into concrete events.
Most of them have ebbed back with
the return Of prosperity and are known
in our history as merely eccentric mani
feStations, or lost causes. or movements
that got nowhere, such as the Free Sill
yer movement, the Greenback and
Granger and Populist movements. the
Single Tax or Land Tax movement
(long dead In America but just revived
In England)
1 refrain from using the terms the
present-day prophets use, not because
their terms are inexact, but because
they will not convey to the average
reader quite the same ideas that are
in the minds of the prophets. The VOL
unteer thinkers use the familiar words
and phrases of social Organization
capitalism Communism" 'in6ivid-
ualism," democracy" and the like. But
the thing they mean, the thought that
they assert, will be better understood
by the average reader If we drop all
such technical terms.
Customs Well Founded.
What the prophets are talking about
Is the kind of organized society we have
in AmerSa, the life in which a young
man grows up goes as far in education
as his ambition, leads or his circum-
stances permit. gets job where he can
at SUCH wages as he can command, mar
rieS, starts a savings bank account,
takes out life insurance policy. buys
or rents home and raises family
All these and the other familiar as
poets of American life compose a sys-
tenn. way of living, which 80 out of
a 100 Americans take completely for
granted as they take the air they
breathe or the seasons or the weather
To most of us it is a way of life familiar
and dear Most of us cherish it.
Yet it Is just this that the prophets
say is going to be fundamentally
changed. The milder and more cautious
OF the prophets say the American sys-
tenn is ION trial" Those words 'on
trail" compose precisely the phrase used
bv Dean Wallace B. Donham of the
Harvard School of Business Adninistra-
ton. Let not the reader suppose that
because Mr.. Donham has a university
connection he is, therefore, an academic
theorist only. He is, in fact, a business
man, a lawyer, a director of the Old
Colony Trust Co. in Boston, and of
the Clinchf1eld Coal Corporation and
of the Haverill Gas Co., and Of the
Cambridge, Mass, Savings Bank. This
authority. high in both his educational
and business associations, says that
'our present situation is a major
breakdown Of capitalism spitalism
being, I repeat, merely Mr.. Donham's
word for the familiar system under
which we live in America.
Slow Decline Seen.
Another authority of the same type is
DR.. Oliver M. w. Sprague, professor of
banking at Harvard University. He,
too, has business status as we'll as an
academic one; he Is deemed by the
Bank of England worthy of employment
by them in role called economic ad-
visor" It would be inaccurate to repre-
sent Dr. Sprague as predicting destruc-
ton of the present American system.
He only goes SO far as to say that
unless certain things are done (and he
seems to doubt whether they will be
done, the American system of organ
lied society is headed for "a slow de-
cline" before the competition of the
Russian economic regime. There seems
to be-" DR.. Sprague says. "a growing
unwillingness or incapacity in an in
dividualized society to adjust itself to
changing economic condition"
The present wave Of prophecy of
revolutionary change in America is in
spired by Russia, though not in the
sense of propaganda. What has hap
pened is that a large number Of per-
sons in elevated positions in America
have observed that an extraordinary
experiment is being attempted in
Russia. Seeing that, they start reflect
ing about America. Some of them
Ohese are likely to be the more excite
able) are pleased by what they see in
Russia, and think America should
initiate it. Others are alarmed by what
they see in Russia, and think that
America, in order to defend itself, must
make revolutionary changes in its own
system.
The sum Of it all amounts to a great
outpouring of talk and writing, to the
effect that great changes are immedi-