Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 139, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1910 — THE OLD AMERICAN. [ARTICLE]

THE OLD AMERICAN.

A'o Poverty, Little Jeuloutt Rivalry, but Great Good Humor. Recently a letter written by G. P. R. James, an English novelist, while on a visit to America about 1850, was sold at auction in New York. The document, written at New Haven, is of interest outside of autograph collectors and reads as follows: “In passing through this land one sees no poverty, no squalid wretchedness, no hovels and old huts. Great good humor, too, is visible everywhere among the people; each man seems to feel that by industry he can get on as well as another. There is little of that jealous rivalry, none of that irritable envy that we see in older lands, where we are all struggling for -that bread which is not sufficient for the whole.” Here is an echo of the old American, says the New York Globe. Great good humor prevalent, a minimum of jealous rivalry and irritable envy, general belief lhat a kind Providence had called the people of this land to dwell in a pretty good place. Would an English novelist visiting America now so wjdte? Yet if Americans today were called on to occupy the houses that satisfied In 1850 they would deem themselves ill used. In New Haven wages are nominally four times higher than sixty years ago, and measures in purchasing power twice as high. The average American stomach is filled with more and better food, and the average American back is covered with finer raiment. It is the spirit rather than that with which the spirit exercises itself which has changed for the worse. It is now almost unfashionable to praise America as formerly it was deemed unpatriotic to have any doubts.