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The sources of power and energy are choked. For fourteen years wehave been struggling blindly, not knowing what to do, hoping thatin some mysterious way some stroke of luck would boost us out ofit. Instead, we have become entangled in a war that will push usdeeper in, and we must face again the stark realities of a returningeconomic crisis. We are now at that point in development, thoughof course on a different level, reached by Germany and Italy beforethe last war.We are, of course, not so deeply mired as these European countries.Our natural endowment is great; theirs was not. Our resourcesare immense; theirs are not. A combination of circumstances forwhich we are indebted to a kindly good fortune has set us downin a frame far more hospitable to the ways of democracy. We haveenjoyed immense growth in the last fifty years in health, education,economic well-being. Thus while the nation moved fitfully up anddown the curves of the business cycle there was a steady advancein the general welfare of the people. And a larger number of peoplewere enjoying these advances.The trouble lies in this—that while we enjoyed this growth, therewas at all times a very large number of people who did not sharein it or who did not get as large a share as they believed just, andthe whole society was subject with increasing frequency andvirulence to the disastrous interruption of its well-being by thesegrowing crises—persisting poverty among so many and deepeningcrises for all. Now the present crisis is the first in our history ofthe same general character as European crises.It is not necessary to review here the incidents of this period.Readers will recall that it evoked a whole train of messiahs withevangels of plenty—Milo Reno and his Farm Holiday, Dr. Townsendand his pensions, Huey Long with his Share-the-Wealth movement,Upton Sinclair and his Epic plan, Major Douglas and social credit,Howard Scott and technocracy, Dr. Warren and his gold-purchaseplan, General Johnson and his NRA, Henry Wallace and his plowingunder of pigs and grain and, of course, the eternal inflationists.Almost at the same time that republican Germany was drinking thebitter beer of its exploded postwar boom, victorious America wasdoing the same thing and with much the same episodes and in-169