Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/29

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of pestilence, for the wiping out of hook-worm, and yellow fever, and tuberculosis, and cancer, and all forms of communicable disease. And it appeared to me obvious that the American people believe in health and youth, and are anxious and happy to invest heavily in them; and that they disbelieve in whatever is incompatible with health and the preservation of youth. There is another definite point for belief and religious gratitude.

I asked what was the most significant and farreaching enterprise upon which the states of the Union had expended large sums of money during the last thirty years. Obviously, I said, upon the public schools and the state universities, the most inspiring and hopeful phenomenon in America in our time. I don't need to dwell at all upon this. You all know what it means. It means that the American people believe in becoming intelligent just as fast as they can, and that they disbelieve in whatever is incompatible with that. And we may add, that somehow the intelligent man mostly seems to take hold of circumstances at the right end.

I turned in another direction. I asked what large new expenditure the business men have been going in for, from one end of the country to the other. The reply was: They are going in heavily for advertising, for publicity. They believe in publicity. Every enterprising business man wishes to be known to as many as possible of his hundred million countrymen. He wishes his product to be under the national limelight. He wishes as a business man