The Citizen's Privilege

Emerson said, "Hitch your wagon to a star." The citizen should demand of himself and for himself tho best that life affords, and devote his energies in an evergrowing measure to public service, for the real joy of life is service to our fellow men. This is the land of "equality of opportunity." The citizen alone can determine the measure of his participation in freedom's field. What he does and how he does it will be dependent upon his will to work, the thoroughness of his education, and the quality of his ideals. We are a country of 118,000,000 people, speaking one language, having an enormous consuming power and an adequate transportation system for prompt distribution. We are not restricted within our wide limits by artificial barriers. We produce where it is most advantageous and distribute to the consumer where he may live. Here in the East we may eat the apples and use the timber from the Northwest, and the Pacific slope may buy cotton cloth from the Carolinas and motors from Detroit. Nowhere in the world does there exist so large, so varied, and so unrestricted a market as the United States. There is a force underlying these factors and one which to me is all important. I mean the initiative and energy of the American people. We are willing to work. We have that divine restlessness which will not permit us to accept things as they are but drives us to find something better. We are constantly improving our machinery, our methods, ourselves. Here no man accepts the level into which he has been born as fixing his status for life. Ability is quickly recognized; to rise is easy. * * * There is movement, not fixation, in our life in America. - Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury.