THE SEARCH FOR SANITY

In October, 1929 something happened to a bull market in New York and America has been living in a valley of regret over since. Hard on the collapse of the Exchange there followed an economic depression which seemed at first an immediate result that could only he temporary. The country had been prosperous too long to believe in poverty. This belief was buoyed up by the political opinions of Washington and by the announcements of the most able economic minds. But as the years have gone on, it has become more and more apparent that depression was no ephemeral transition while to some it seemed almost eternal. The country is in the midal of an economic crisis which in the more terrifying because it seems irremediable.

A nation steeped in depression becomes introspective. Some of the evils which brought on the collapse are now becoming apparent to the more thoughtful. For ten years after the war America had been living without any standards behind which her complex civilization might seek refuge. The moral, economic, and social fabric of the country was shot through with shoddy. There were no foundations, no guiding principles, no goals to direct the forces which men had set at work. There was only a vast and orunte superstructure builded upon a pediment of strawless brick.

The explanation for all this is not easily deciphered in the wreckage. Economists speak hopefully of industrial flaws, psychologists unearth a mental hysteria, moralists write dolefully of the Jazz Age. All are probably in part correct, but with the myopia of the specialist they lose sight of the complexity of the situation. The depression appears not to be the direct result of any single factor, it is not solely an economic, social, or political thing. But out of the welter of plausible arguments one fact persistently rises, that economically, socially and politically the world had lost its balance, its stability. There was over-production, there was too much marginal buying, there was too much of everything.

It is a treacherous thing to attempt an explanation of all this intellectual gourmandizing, but there is some substantiation for the belief that it arose from the continued urban existence of a large part of the country. There is nothing natural about city life in America today. All entertainment is artificial, it can be obtained with no more effort than the muscular activity involved in loosening the purse strings. Theatres, dances, movies, speakeasies, tabloids, all the conventional forms of amusement are at the beck and call of every man. His mind is a blank screen upon which no impressions are made; his intellect has been allowed to lie fallow for years. Beyond this there is the acceleration of every life. There is no relaxation, no tranquility, no time to take stock, and no stock to take. There is only the surpassing desire to make money with which to supply new creature comforts. And out of all this chaos comes a superb self satisfaction, a sophistication, an intolerance, a feeling of omnipotence, which is accompanied by a lack of self criticism, of sincerity, and above all of standards.

To offer as a panacea an exodus into the corn fields and rolling prairie land is obviously Utopian and quite impossible under the conditions of the present civilization. But it is not too much to expect, and it is almost an essential to continued existence, that something of those principles of sincerity, steadfastness, and of courage, which are found in the country may be transplanted in the city. There is something wrong with a civilization which forces twenty men in a single October afternoon to jump out of tall buildings because a stock fell ten points. It is a lack of any values, principles, of standards which can be relied upon when monetary support has been withdrawn.