Not Great, But Good

The memo that crossed Lyndon Johnson's desk sounded a disturbing note. Written by an aide who had just returned from a tour of the West and Midwest, it reported that the Great Society has yet to kindle any great enthusiasm in the nation as a whole. "People just aren't going to get excited or go crusading for an antipollution program, for beautifying America, even for bettering its educational standards," warned the aide. Most Americans endorse these goals, he concluded. They just don't get stirred up by them.

The President--who last week added yet another worthy program to the package by signing the Arts and Humanities bill in the Rose Garden of the White House--might well have wondered why this was so. The likeliest answer is that life in the prosperous U.S. of 1965 seems vastly better to most Americans than the flawed society often pictured by Lyndon Johnson in support of his legislative program. At times during the 1964 campaign--and even since--L.B.J. sounded as if he had been handed an old F.D.R. speech by mistake: People were hungry, old folk homeless, farms drying up; children were going without schooling, grownups without jobs.

"Perhaps the major danger today is only that we will be catch-phrased and crisis-mongered to death," writes Ben J. Wattenberg, a 32-year-old native of New York who has collaborated with former U.S. Census Director Richard M. Scammon on a book called This U.S.A. To be published next month, it is a product of 18 months that Wattenberg spent analyzing findings of the exhaustive 1960 decennial census, with Scammon's expert guidance. The book's refreshing and detailed conclusion is that the current proliferation of "capital-lettered afflictions" is largely a mirage. Wattenberg writes: "There is a balanced, historical view available that can better tell us where we have been, where we stand, and hint at where we are going. The approach is not nearly as melodramatic, to be sure, but it has a redeeming feature: it comes closer to the truth." Highlights of Wattenberg's U.S.A.:

> Hard-core poverty statistics are misleading, since the accepted criteria (less than $4,000 a year for a family or $2,000 for an individual) classify as poor many elements of the population, notably students, servicemen and many small farmers, who live reasonably well. Many of those who are considered "impoverished" today are clothed, housed, fed, educated and entertained (TV in 93% of U.S. homes); hunger and exposure have "statistically disappeared" as causes of death in the U.S.

> At most, there are 600,000 married men with families in the U.S. who can be classed as longterm, hard-core cases of unemployment. Though the commonly cited figure for the jobless is nearly 5,000,000, among them are close to 1,000,000 youths under 24, more than 2,000,000 "short-term" jobless and many others who are seeking only part-time work.

> The population explosion is more myth than menace in the U.S. Since World War II, the nation has experienced a modest growth of 18% per decade, one-half what it was 100 years ago--and right now the birth rate is declining.

> Highway death rates are rising (in absolute terms), as more and more people drive more and more cars. But the death rate per 100 million auto miles driven has dropped from 7.6 in 1950 to 5.3 in 1962.

> The nation still urgently needs more teachers and classrooms, but much has already been done. Teachers' salaries rose 45% from 1950 to 1960, while the average increase for all jobs was 29%; the pupil-teacher ratio declined from 27.7 in 1954 to 25.7 in 1960; the classroom shortage eased even as enrollment rose. As for the dropout problem, only 53% of Americans in the 25-to-29 age bracket had completed high school in 1950; last year the figure was 69%.

> There are more wide-open spaces today, and they are more accessible, than "at any time since the closing of the frontier."

> The divorce rate of 9.2 each year per 1,000 married women is substantially lower than it was in 1946 (17.9) and slightly lower than 1950 (10.3).

Few intelligent Americans dispute the gravity of many ills that afflict the nation, from hard-core unemployment to rotten-core cities, poisoned air to polluted waters, or question the need to attack them vigorously. No amount of legislation will root out racial prejudice or inspire the excellence that is dismayingly absent from many aspects of American life. Nonetheless, as Author Wattenberg points out, "in American history, the evidence suggests that it is the optimist who has been the realist." At least, this side of the Great Society, Americans do not have to be ashamed to count their blessings.

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