“’I don’t mean to say we’re perfect.  We’ve got a lot to do in the way of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it’s the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round!

“’That’s the type of fellow that’s ruling America to-day; in fact, it’s the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there’s to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old planet!  Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction.

“’Our Ideal Citizen—­I picture him first and foremost as being busier than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business, but putting the zip into some store or profession or art.  At night he lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old ’bus, and maybe cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home.  He mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he’s ready for dinner.  After dinner he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit about their friends and the topics of the day.  Then he goes happily to bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account.

“’In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him pick out the best, every time.  In no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on parlor walls as in these United States.  No country has anything like our number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world’s highest-paid singers.

“’In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show as big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry!  But, mind you, it’s the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him as to the authors themselves.

“’Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed nations of Europe.