7. The Old Home

The thrilling fact about those early days is that the people’s lives were insecure from the homemade cradle to the homemade coffin. They were not afraid of hunger or the cold. True—their lives were full of hardship. Their babies were born without skilled assistance. They wove their own clothes, made their own furniture, cut their own hair, and buried their own dead. But they kept the one thing to be cherished above all other things: THEIR INDEPENDENCE OF PUBLIC ALMS.

We all know how this independent spirit has changed. A few years ago, the federal government became aware that a large number of people in the United States should have a higher standard of living. It may be surmised that this sentiment was developed mostly by investigations made in the slums of large cities where malnutrition, overcrowding and inadequate sanitation were shockingly on display. Such wretchedness certainly needed attention, and it is a credit to the government that measures were taken to alleviate these conditions. The cities themselves should have attended to it of course, and doubtless would have done so if their own political systems had been any less disreputable than the slums.

Once the government had assumed this parental interest in the welfare of the people the program of freeing everybody from want took on size and unction. Things were to be made easier for all of us. Life in this country was to be relieved of its anxieties. First of all, we were to be guaranteed a living whether we worked for it or not. If your job was distasteful, you could quit. Arrangements had been made for Unemployment Compensation. Instead of encouraging you to keep your job and give it your best attention, in the hope of promotion and a higher wage, the government had glamorized your temptation to roll down your sleeves and walk out.

It was no longer the country of my childhood. Honest thrift was openly denounced. Economy was an old-fogy idea. Spend your way into prosperity. Save nothing for a rainy day. Let the government keep you!

And so began the era of paternalism that has so gravely afflicted the spirit of the once proud America. The administration has done its level best to make our people soft; to pauperize them; to shear them of their independence; but it hasn’t been able to complete the job. The country has been badly handled, but it is a mistake to think that the damages to its spirit are beyond mending. We must not lose our belief that the people of America were destined to remain free and independent.

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