Draft Chapter II - Overall Report

September 11, 1957

# PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES AT HOME

## CHAPTER II

### THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

#### I

The word "America" encompasses so many concepts -- a geographical area, a political entity, a military power, a set of moral beliefs -- that Americans sometimes forget that they themselves are its crucial component. Each person tends to be more aware of other social contexts -- of being a member of a family, a resident of a village or town, an employee, a member of a union, a citizen of a particular state -- than of the larger whole which with fine disregard for the fact that it is only part of a Hemisphere he calls America. It is only when he finds himself upon the unfamiliar soil of a foreign land or involved in some great national emergency like a war that he consciously perceives himself as an active unit within the great multitude of human beings that compose the American people. It is then that he realizes the distinctive-ness of America, the homogeneity behind the variety of ethnic and linguistic groups comprising it, the centripetal force that has enabled us to grow through the rise and fall of other nations while at the same time absorbing a never-ending influx of new citizens from other lands.

Thus any consideration of America's prospect must necessarily begin with a close look at the people from whom the nation derives its identity, and for whom, in the final analysis, it exists. To arrive at any unified, composite portrait is a task which has defeated many a sociologist, anthro-

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pologist, novelist and visiting observer since the early and far less complex
days of the infant republic. And this is no accident. For it is difficult for
any observer, however profound, to encompass the meaning of a society.
The essence of a people is dynamic; a society continually renews itself.
Generations come and generations go and the future coexists at the same in-
stant with the past. But the vantage of an observer is static; an observer
sees a people only at a given moment in its development. The present is all
around him but the past which gives it perspective and the future which
confers direction are much more illusive. What intrudes most in the con-
scionness of an observer are the current manifestations of any problems; the
immediate pressures of any challenge.

The nature of a people resides in intangibles, less in the problems
that confronts than in the concern which *produced* these problems; less in
the challenges imposed on it than in those it selects. For any problem de-
fines a concern. It is this which creates the challenge and its opportunity.
If we were not concerned with equality of opportunity, we would not face
the task of lifting the distressed sections of our economy to the general
level of wellbeing. If we did not believe in the dignity of the individual,
there would be no problem of integrating the Negro into society and no
opportunity for it either. If we were not an optimistic people and if the be-
lief in the possibility of growth both personal and material were not an
essential part of this optimism, we would not constantly challenge the future.

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A society not conscious of any problems is also a society without opportunity. Such a condition reflects not an equilibrium but stagnation. Any statement of our problems and opportunities as a people must therefore begin with an awareness that many of our problems are such only because of the kind of people we are, and many of our opportunities result from an effort to be true to ourselves.

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II

Before one can ask what the American is like, it is necessary to pose
simpler questions such as: How many of us are there? What do we do for a
living? Where do we live?

At the present time we number about 170 million, making us the fourth largest country in the world after China, India and the Soviet Union. Every day of the year 11,200 babies are born -- nearly 500 every hour, more than eight every minute. And every day of the year another 500 new Americans arrive among us by immigration. Considered in relation to the ever-declining death-rate -- and the possibility of additional subsequent declines as additional diseases are conquered by medical science -- the existing birth rate indicates that the population of the United States will reach a figure of 220-225 millions by the year 1980. It has been estimated that if the present birth rate is maintained the population of the United States a hundred years from now will reach the staggering figure of one billion.

As remarkable as the increase in numbers is the mobility of the
American people. During an average year about 20 percent of the American
people move from state to state, county to county, city to city, or perhaps
merely from house to house. During the year 1954-1955, for example,
31,500,000 Americans changed their places of residence, many of them over
distances of thousands of miles. This is not a new phenomenon. It reflects

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individualism of our society and its history of conquering a wilderness by solitary effort. In the days of the pioneers it was said that when one could see the smoke of one's neighbor it was time to move on. And this psychology remains to this day. The American does not derive security from living in dwellings handed down in a family through generations or in cities whose main features have remained unchanged for centuries. On the contrary, in a society based not on status but achievement, mobility became a measure of attainment, one means of confirming progress. This accounts for the ease with which Americans change residences, the lack of concern with which we replace traditional landmarks.

As a result, the percent of the American population who leave the state of their birth has remained relatively constant; it is now almost exactly the same as in 1900 -- 32 percent. However, the nature of their movement has changed from generation to generation. Since the incipient days of the republic the movement has been largely westward, and the westward wanderer was a farmer seeking new fields and pastures. In the thirties he was a refugee from eroded, worn-out or drought-stricken lands, seeking employment in the rich valleys of California. Today he is likely to be an industrial worker, drawn to the great new industries that have sprung up on the Pacific Coast since World War II. But he is also drawn by sunlight and warmth, and this motivation has deflected the western movement in recent years somewhat to the south. Today the fastest growing states are in the southwest --

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California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada -- and in the east, Florida, swollen by an influx of elderly, retired people who, by virtue of the new prosperity, can retreat from northern winds and snows to the gentle airs of the Gulf Stream and the Gulf of Mexico.

An even greater change has been wrought by another kind of migration -- the movement from rural to metropolitan areas. Only fifty years ago we were primarily a rural people; fewer than one-third of Americans lived in cities. By 1930, the average American lived in small towns of 5,000 - 10,000 inhabitants. By 1950 more than one-half (55.9 percent) had moved to big cities or their suburbs. By 1975, if existing trends continue, more than 70 percent will be city dwellers. Within the last decade, America's farm population has decreased at the rate of over one million a year. In 1920 there were 30 million Americans living on farms or 28 percent of the population. Today, despite a far larger national population, there are only 22 million or 13 percent of the population. And farm experts estimate that less than two-thirds that number would suffice to feed our population.

Another notable aspect of the mass movement of the American people is the fact that the greatest population increase has occurred not in central metropolitan areas, but upon their peripheries -- in the suburban and "exurban" fringes that ring them in ever-expanding concentric circles. The rapid growth of Connecticut and New Jersey in recent years actually reflects the growth of New York City, as does the growth of Maryland and Virginia reflect the growth of Washington. The growth of the suburbs tends

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to blur the distinctions between rural and city life. For, as on the one hand, country people move to the cities, on the other hand the cities are swiftly expanding into the countryside. Four-fifths of the nation's entire growth between 1950 and 1955 took place in these urban fringes of the great cities. In the next generation, if present trends continue, well over half of the American people will live in the suburbs. Suburban living "is becoming the American way of life."* The result is the great city belts which stretch in almost unbroken lines along our coasts and the large city-states which mushroom out from Chicago, Pittsburgh and similar centers. Overspreading city, country and even state lines, posing new problems and meanings for "local" government, these vast metropolitan complexes constitute an increasingly large living environment for America.

The causes for the twin migrations from the farm to the cities and from the cities to the countryside are to be found in the explosive growth of our economy. For in the city are found the opportunities for economic advancement unavailable in the more static regions of our rural economy. However difficult conditions may be in the city, they are a sufficient lure to millions in the countryside as their first step up the economic and social ladder. By the same token the growth of the suburbs is a symptom of our constantly multiplying middle-class. The suburbs are a symbol of success in the struggle for advancement and status; and however standardized some may

*Dudley Kirk, Director of the Population Council, Inc.

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appear they are a reflection of the fact that America is rapidly becoming a one-class country and this class the middle class.

But while the metropolitan complexes are growing at their periphery their vital center is in severe jeopardy. The core of almost all our great cities faces serious problems of transportation and of access. The concentration of low-income groups in the cities and of the middle classes in the suburbs has led to a deterioration of many of our metropolitan centers, particularly of their residential areas. It has been estimated that in 1950 about 20% of the dwellings in our cities were in blighted areas. Another 17% though not in slums fell below good standards and were a menace to their neighborhoods.* The result is a line of demarcation which can be found in nearly every great American city today: in the center, extreme contrasts of luxury and decay; on the periphery, growth and orderliness of environment.

The decay of the inner city involves economic consequences of vast magnitude; it also has social consequences which slum conditions permit and encourage; the problem of juvenile delinquency for example. And the solution of many of these problems is complicated by the fact that the exodus of the more enterprising and civic-minded element to the suburbs tends to create a vacuum of leadership.

What gives the problem of the core city its special character and urgency is that a large proportion of the low-income residents are Negro.

* USA in New Dimensions - A Twentieth Century Fund Survey by Thomas R. Carskadon and George Soule.

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In the single decade between 1940 and 1950 the non-white population more
than doubled in 30 big U.S. cities and increased by an average 44.3 percent
in <u>all</u> cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants. As the Negro population has
expanded, the white population has moved outward to the suburbs. Between
1940 and 1950 the Negro population of Los Angeles increased by 116 percent;
the Negro population of Buffalo, Detroit and San Francisco doubled; and
Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and New York had increases of 60 percent. It
has been estimated that within the next three decades Negroes will con-
stitute between one quarter and one-half of the total population of at least
ten of the biggest cities in the U.S. The proportion may become even
greater as the "pull" of the northern cities becomes stronger with the growing
solidity and stability of the resident Negro communities and an increase in
their economic opportunity. One fact is universal, in the North as well as
in the South: Negro residences are segregated. Crowded and confined
within their Harlems in every city, the Negroes are compelled to pay far
higher rents in proportion to their accommodation than white people. In
order to meet the exorbitant rents exacted of them, families double up and
triple up within dwellings designed for single family units. Given the
disproportion of their generally lower income to the generally higher rents
they have to pay, and given the evil effect of over-crowding, the growth of
Negro residential sectors inevitably means the deterioration of the heart areas
of many of the greatest cities into slum districts.

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To be sure the Negro migration into the city has its hopeful aspects.
For if the separateness of the Negro is a standing indictment of our failure to
realize fully our historic ideal of the dignity of the individual his dispersion
from his original home in the South represents a symptom that the Negro is
finally and perhaps belatedly entering the mainstream of American life. For
the route to the city is the classic avenue of economic advancement taken
before the Negro by successive waves of foreign immigrants. In many re-
spects the problem of adjustment of the Negro migrants does not differ sub-
stantially from that of low-income urban groups from abroad in previous
decades. In both cases, an essentially rural population bringing with it
rural patterns of behavior has had to adapt to a society of mass-production,
of gaining a sense of identity and dignity while striving for economic and
social advancement. In the case of the Negro as in that of the immigrant
from abroad, before him there is every prospect that his social status will
be at least ameliorated as his economic position improves.

There is no reason to be complacent about the position of the American
Negro. We can be true to ourselves as a nation only when all vestiges of
discrimination based on race or color are eliminated. The position of the
Negro remains the greatest single moral flaw in our society. But equally we
must not let our flaws obscure our achievements. The most hopeful aspect
of the racial problem in the United States is the general recognition that it
in fact constitutes a major national concern in the effort on all levels to
integrate the Negro more closely with the rest of the community, ranging from

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seeking to improve the level of education and skill of the Negro population, particularly those newly arrived in cities to the quest for integration in schools.

As for the physical problem of the slum, there is no doubt that the core of many of our cities requires rebuilding. This requires large-scale planning and rezoning, the successive elimination of blight, the reintro- duction of green space into crowded city areas. On a limited scale such restoration of the central city has already taken place in such cities as Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Philadelphia and New York. Yet the ultimate solution requires planning on a national scale. Urban redevelopment looms as one of our major challenges for the next decade and a half.

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III

No less significant than the changes in numbers and the geographic
distribution of the American people is the change in our component age
levels. For the changing age composition of the nation presents implications
of far more than statistical interest. A great increase in the number of
young people, for example, makes excruciating demands on the educational
system. A great increase in the number of old people, makes equally grave
demands on all our medical facilities, agencies of social welfare and re-
sources for the fruitful use of leisure time. Today we are confronted with
both exigencies. The rising birthrate of the last decade has added millions
to the age group at the bottom of the population pyramid. Progress in
public health and medicine has added millions to the old-age group at its
apex. Hence, the American people are at the same time growing younger
and growing older. The pressures that are already being felt now by the
administrators of elementary schools, particularly in suburban areas, will
be transferred a few years hence to the administrators of high schools, and
a few years later to the colleges and universities of the land.

A few figures will illustrate the magnitude of the problem. In 1956
elementary school enrollment stood at thirty million, an increase over
1945 - 46 of 10 million or nearly 50 percent. By 1960 this number will have
swelled by another four million. The high schools have not yet felt the
impact of the post-war baby boom yet their enrollments have risen 30 percent

number of the best-way people but their enrollments have risen 30 percent
awed by another four million. The high schools have not yet felt the
1948 - 49 of 10 million or nearly 20 percent. By 1960 this number will have
elementary school enrollment stood at thirty million, an increase over

A few figures will illustrate the magnitude of the problem. In face
a few years later to the colleges and universities of the land,

be transferred a few years hence to the administrators of high schools, and
administrators of elementary schools, particularly in urban areas, will
and growing older. The pressures that are already being felt now by the
shock. Hence, the American people are at the same time growing younger
public health and medicine has added millions to the old-age group at its
to the age group at the bottom of the population pyramid. Progress in
both efficiencies. The raising standard of the first decade has added millions
sources for the sufficient use of leisure time. Today we are confronted with
demands on all our medical facilities, agencies of social welfare and re-
system. A great increase in the number of old people, makes equally grave
Aging people, for example, makes exorbitating demands on the educational
of far more than statistical interest. A great increase in the number of
levels. For the changing age composition of the nation presents opportunities
distribution of the American people is the change in our component safe

No less significant than the changes in numbers and the age structure

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Dial Chapter II - Overall Report
September 11, 1967

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since 1945 - 46 partly because the birthrate of the 1940's was higher than that of the early 1930's, partly because more students finish high school than previously. By 1969 the number of students in high school will exceed present enrollments by between 50 - 70 percent.

It is at the college level that the pressure of increased enrollments will present perhaps the most serious difficulties. The number of students in colleges and universities has roughly doubled since 1945 - 46 from just under 1.7 million to 3.2 million. This is not due so much to the increased birthrate which has not yet had its impact at the college level as to the increasing value placed on a college degree. More and more young people feel themselves unequipped for competition without a college degree and the employment policies of a growing number of business concerns tend to bear them out.

When the increasing proportion of young people wishing to go to college is coupled with the growing numbers of those of college age, the magnitude of the problem becomes apparent: by 1970 present enrollments in institutions of higher education will at least double again.

This presents a drastic challenge to all levels of our educational pyramid but particularly to the privately endowed institutions. Neither the physical plant nor the teaching staffs of our educational system are adequate to this influx of students. But while tax supported institutions can hope to profit from a legislative recognition of their financial difficulties, private institutions, particularly those of higher learning, face the additional difficulty that their endowments have not kept pace with rising costs and the

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demands of a constantly growing student body. Pressed on the one hand by
ever increasing clamor for admission and on the other by a consciousness of
their inadequate facilities, institutions of higher learning face a desperate
struggle to maintain standards while meeting the demands of the next decade
and a half.

This situation is complicated by the fact that even full tuition pays
for only a part of the real costs of education. One of our leading technical
institutes has estimated that full tuition covers at best 70 percent of the cost
of educating a student. And their desire to attract the ablest students of
whatever social background as well as for the widest geographic distribution
has induced most privately endowed institutions of higher learning to engage
in a substantial scholarship program. As a result much of higher education
is subsidized either directly or indirectly. To some extent this subsidy is
furnished by low faculty salaries. The college professor who a decade and a
half ago was a substantial member of the middle class finds inflation con-
stantly shrinking his salary. It has been estimated that in order to restore the
situation of before World War II, present salaries of university faculty members
would have to be almost doubled.

The relatively low salary scale of teachers at all levels produces a
vicious circle. It is generally recognized that our society cannot meet its
demands for high talent without improving the standards of teaching. But
the lower the pay scale the less attractive will teaching appear when com-
pared with other professions. Already many high schools have had to

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drop courses in chemistry and physics and mathematics because of their inability to find adequate teachers. And this does not yet take into account the inevitable deterioration of quality when salary scales increasingly tempt only the less adventurous and sometimes the less talented. One of the major challenges of education is to insure that the proper share of the nation's top talent is attracted into teaching, a condition which does not now exist.

There is no question that the whole American philosophy of education is undergoing rigorous re-examination. Up till the present epoch America's most brilliant educational achievement has consisted in its ability to cope with quantity in providing universal education for an ever increasing population. It was a major achievement to establish universal education in a largely agricultural community and to assure a greater degree of equal opportunity at all levels of our educational system than any other society. The price we have had to pay is a failure to devote similar concern to the problem of quality, a certain neglect of the individual of unusual talent or potentialities. The whole trend among our professional educators, since the heyday of John Dewey, has been to homogenize the process of learning, to politely understate differences in individual capacity (save on the athletic field), to herd the gifted and the backward into the same classroom corral, to keep the gifted and backward alike in the same routine of yearly promotion and to confuse educational objectives with a species of compassionate social psychiatry.

As a result, though our educational achievement has been impressive in terms of numbers and in some areas even in terms of quality we are wasting

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an enormous share of the nation's talent by failing to develop adequately the abilities of many young people. In many of our schools, the ablest students are also the most handicapped for the system is geared to the capacities of the average if not the backward student. One index of the resulting waste is that of the upper 25 percent of our high school students, one-half, or 200,000 each year fail to continue their education into college. Some lack the economic means; but at least as many others lack the motivation often because their earlier schooling has failed to challenge their curiosity and their zest for learning. No society can afford to deprive itself of so large a percentage of its top talent, particularly today when the need for excellence at all levels has never been greater.

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IV

In addition to the educational challenge, an equally serious long-range social problem is presented by the rapid increase in the multitudes of the elderly and aged. For, year by year, advances in medical science have prolonged the life span of the American individual and multiplied the number of elderly people in the nation. By 1930 most of the major epidemic diseases -- smallpox, yellow fever, cholera -- had been eliminated from the North American continent; by 1950 most of the serious infectious diseases--pneumonia, syphilis, diptheria, scarlet fever -- had been conquered by the discovery of sulfa drugs, penicillin, and other antibiotics. Now the challenge of medical researchers is to find means of checking or curing the major organic diseases -- heart and circulatory ills, which presently account for one-half of all deaths today; and cancer which, according to current rates, will bring death to 40 million Americans now alive. If the brilliant breakthroughs of the past with respect to the epidemic and infectious diseases can be repeated with respect to chronic diseases, it will not be long before our present life expectancy of the Biblical "three-score years-and-ten" will be extended upward into the eighties or even nineties.

This looms ahead as one of the most serious contingencies that each family in America will presently have to face. In the decades preceding World War I, households often encompassed several generations -- great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and children. The trend toward

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urbanization has largely disintegrated the multi-generation family however.
The average American household has come to consist of parents and children
alone with grandparents living apart. Thus the physical disabilities of old
age have in many cases been compounded by the psychological torment of
loneliness. That is the situation that prevails today in most American families.

Among the psychological problems the loneliness of solitary living is
dwarfed in significance by the spiritual and material waste of our retirement
policies. In a society where the individual defines himself by his achieve-
ment, retirement too often takes on the poignant overtones of the end of
meaningful life. It becomes doubly difficult when coupled with solitude.
Our retirement age has constantly gone down partly because of the mistaken
notion that it is a reward for strenuous exertion, more importantly because of
ever increasing pressure to achieve fluidity in the most desirable positions.
Where position defines achievement, rewards for exertion cannot be too long
delayed. Thus the typical retirement age is now 65 and it is creeping down-
ward.

Given the advances of medical science, this age rarely coincides
with the impairment of either psychic or physical abilities. The damage
done by our retirement policies is therefore two-fold. For the individual, it
creates grievous and unnecessary problems of adjustment. For society, it
means the deprivation of a vast reservoir of our most experience talent, at
a time when high talent was never in shorter supply. There is a need for
change in our private and public retirement provisions, but also the redesign

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of certain positions to fit them better to the capacities of older people. Our policies and even more our attitudes with respect to the aged stand in need of drastic revision.

V

Any survey of the problems and opportunities of the American people derives its meaning not from a catalogue of challenges but from the psychological and social environment in which these appear and must be resolved. And here one of the most characteristic traits of the American people is of crucial importance: it is the national habit of optimism. All through our history we have plunged headlong into a future. We have insisted on the perfectibility of man both morally and materially. It is this quality which has kept our problems from being static; it has caused us to treat each problem as an opportunity.

The American optimism has shaped our attitude in many directions: For one thing, it made us highly receptive to change. Innovation in American life is not something to be feared because it upsets well-established patterns, but something to be actively sought because it reinforces a view of life. Optimism infuses our approach to individual opportunity, our belief that each man is entitled to the position his talent, energy or even luck warrant and that by perseverance he will be able to attain it. On the material plane we are convinced both as individuals and as a nation that intelligence, effort, good will and careful planning will bring us closer to any goal we seek. And morally we have taken an extremely positive view about the perfectibility of man.

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Foreign observers have often noted the shallowness of this optimism and philosophers have pointed out that we sometimes confuse moralising with morality. It would be idle to deny that there is a measure of merit in these charges. Our optimism sometimes does less than full justice to the full complexity of human experience and our view of morality has occasionally produced impressive displays of hypocrisy.

But these failings must not obscure the tremendous momentum our optimism has conferred on the American people. We have achieved a greater degree of well-being and equality of opportunity than other societies partly because we have been fortunately endowed with resources but more importantly because we have **believed** that zeal must be rewarded and perserverance triumph. Our moral concern has sometimes lacked philosophical dimension; it has also produced a never-ending stream of reform movements and programs of social and personal improvement. Our optimism has cushioned the strains of our competitive way of life. It softens the impact of defeat and loss because it gives rise to the belief that no setback need ever be final. Above all, our optimism is the essential ingredient of our political system; the belief in the perfectibility of man is the core of democratic faith. The pre-requisite to great achievement is a belief in the possibility of great achievement.

It is perhaps in our ability to maintain our traditional optimism that the future will test us most severely. For while optimism can activate progress, it cannot feed on itself. Frontiers must remain to be conquered,

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great challenges and the obstacles to great achievement alike become more subtle. In a society in which growth will henceforth depend on technological innovation and not territorial expansions, the frontiers are no longer on the fringes of settlement - they are on the fringes of knowledge in science, technology and human values. In an increasingly interdependent society, many of the challenges will lie in adjusting its internal relations and into liberating creative energies.

On this task, the trend towards ever larger organizations in all walks of our national life poses a serious challenge. For while the leadership at the top of these organizations requires creativity and originality of a high order, the method of conducting affairs at the middle or lower level may run counter to producing these qualities. The concern of a bureaucracy is for minimum risk; it is run by a standard of average performance. But the task of leadership is to break through routine, to galvanize energies for tasks of innovation. The concern of a bureaucracy is with equilibrium; but the need of leadership is to prevent equilibrium from turning into stagnation. There is a danger that the qualities which are encouraged on the rise to the top of large organizations are not the qualities which are most useful when eminence is reached. They very smoothness of operation of bureaucratic machines in many walks of our life may tempt our most talented individuals to set their sights to low.

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The danger ahead derives from the eternal tug of war, more acute
today perhaps than ever before, between the democratic idea of equality on
the one hand, and the democratic ideal of rewarding excellent performance,
regardless of the performer's antecedents, on the other. William James once
said, "Democracy is on trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal..
What its critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the
inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be world without
end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing everything superior
from the highway, this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny."

The momentum of a society which measures status by achievement -
as our's does - derives from the emphasis it places on excellence. The result
of our traditional optimism has been an orientation towards individual per-
formance, the belief that great exertion will inevitably find its own reward.

But the reverse side is equally noticeable. Achievement may be an
acceptable definition of status to the individual who has the energy, the
ability or the will to succeed. It will seem much less attractive to the person
who lacks these qualities. There will consequently always be a pressure
to rewrite the rules of the contest, to diminish the traditional emphasis in
performance as the determinant of status. We find such institutional defenses
in many walks of our national life. Trade union practices and civil service
rules governing seniority and tenure are efforts to erect defenses in favor of

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average performance and to lower the emphasis on ability and exceptional
devices. The academic routine of advancing the talented and untalented alike
by one grade each year and the provision in many of our states that the state
university must accept all high school graduates are devices to prevent
invidious comparisons among individuals.

This root dilemma of democracy resides in a paradox, brilliantly ex-
plored by John Gardner:

"...On the one hand it (democracy) is the form of society which says most convincingly, 'Let the best man win', and rewards winners regardless of origin. On the other hand, it is the form of society which give losers the widest latitude in rewriting the rules of the contest. No one who has not thought long and hard about these paradoxical facts is in a position to understand the tug of war between equality and excellence in a democracy. When the rewriting of the rules is prompted by the standards of fair play, by elementary considerations of justice, by basic value judgments as to what sort of a 'best man' the society wants, democracy can have no quarrel with it. Indeed, it is the core process of a democracy. But when the rewriting of the rules is designed to banish excellence, to rule out distinguished attainment, to inhibit spirited individuals, then all who pray for the continued vitality of democracy must protest.

"Every democracy _must_ encourage high individual performance.
If it does not then it closes itself off from the mainsprings of its dynamism
and talent and imagination; and the traditional democratic invitation to the

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individual to realize his full potentialities becomes meaningless. Because of the leveling influences which are inevitable in popular government, a democracy must, more than any other form of government, maintain what Ralph Barton Perry has called 'an express insistence upon quality and distinction'. When it does not do so, the consequences are all to familiar: the deterioration of standards, the debasement of taste, shoddy education, vulgar art, cheap politics, and the tyranny of the lowest common denominator.

"....For whatever reason, there are large numbers of individuals who will not necessarily find unrelieved exhilaration in a system that emphasizes high performance. If these large numbers come to believe that the system exposes them unnecessarily to frustration and defeat, and if they enjoy the freedom of social action characteristic of a democracy they will create elaborate institutional defenses to diminish the emphasis upon performance as a determinant of status. We can observe such institutional defenses not only in education but in every aspect of our national life."

"Such defenses -- in one form or another -- will always be with us. In their origin they are often healthy reactions to excessive or exclusive emphasis upon performance. But carried far enough these defenses too can constitute excesses and can contribute a fatal rigidity to the society."

Today, no less than a half century ago when William James uttered his warning, the threat remains that in our emphasis on equality and our concern with fair play and justice and protection of the weak -- we may

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also be supplanting excellence with mediocrity, inhibiting creative and
gifted individuals, discouraging distinguished attainment, and enthroning
the inferior. No more crucial task confronts the American people today
than to reconcile the conflict between quantity and quality, between
equality and excellence, on all levels of national existence. How best
can we distribute widely the rewards of self-esteem and self-respect which
release the energies and provide the motivations of the whole population,
and at the same time dedicate ourselves to that cultivation of distinction
and the striving for excellence which alone can produce great achievements:

"We have to defend the country against mediocrity," said Abraham Flexner
many years ago. "Against mediocrity of soul, mediocrity of idea,
mediocrity of action. We must also fight it in ourselves."

medicinity of action. We must also fight it in ourselves. We have to defend the country against mediocrity, said Abrahams Flexner and the striving for excellence which alone can produce great achievements, are at the same time dedicate ourselves to that cultivation of distinction which can we distribute widely the rewards of self-efficacy and self-respect which equality and excellence, on all levels of national existence, how best than to reconcile the conflict between quantity and quality, between the interior. We more essential task confronts the American people today: to end individualism, disintegrating distributed attainment, and encroaching

Draft Chapter II - General Report
September 14, 1945