Lost in the Fifties, Too

Random Notes and Thoughts

By Walter L. Matt (RIP) Written on July 6, 1950 With the Korean situation in mind and, in fact, with all the ominous developments of the past decade and more, I’ve been thinking of those famed poets who, like Virgil, Ovid and others, used to speculate about the five ages of mortality. These five ages, they maintained, are broken down as follows: The first age is the "golden age," which they said was under Saturn, and was without wars or inclination to wars. In that great ‘age’ humanity was really united and men were neither "contentious or clamorous." The next ‘age’ was the "silver age," under Jove, where the spirit of war with its hateful concomitants became the gradually manifest. The third was the "brazen age," where, as Vives wrote in his commentaries, "war hurls all upon heaps, and quaffeth lives and blood," and where there were those "who thought they loved justice, yet their bosoms harbored an eager thirst of wars." The fifth ‘age’ was so-called "iron age," where "mischief goeth beyond bound and limit, and all miseries breaking their prisons assault men’s fortunes" and "open deceit, open hate, open wars, slaughters, vastations, burnings, rapes, and rapines are all open, violent, and common."

And today the sixth age is upon us, the Age of Enlightenment and human progress, the Scientific or Technological Age, where material things have been increased and multiplied without let-up, but where the human spirit, the soul, has been pawned. Today is the Atomic Age, the age of unprecedented world revolution and unrest, the age of mass bombings and rocket projectiles, of infanticide and genocide, the age where the most sacred contracts and covenants no longer are honored because they lack the seal and spirit of God.

Truly, modern enlightenment and progress have not brought us even to the ancients’ "golden age," much less to that tranquil realm of the spirit which is born of Faith!

A married woman wrote to me recently about the Cana Conference. "God knows we need it," she said. "The other day a friend made some shocking statements in favor of birth control. When asked what her confessor had to say about that, she replied: "I don’t tell him. It’s none of his business!"

A top-ranking New York dress designer told reporters last week the reason for her successes as a fashion expert. Said she: "I do not dress the young person, I dress the young body. That is the prime concern!" Interesting to know that bodies, not souls, are being cared for!

And that as far as people are concerned they might as well send stuffed dummies out on the street to represent them!

No wonder even the NEA thinks that half of the native special talent in this country is being wasted in the same way that soil erodes—from neglect. And, we might add, from soul neglect!

Speaking of neglect, modern television is increasingly held responsible for nervous and distraught school children.

In Cleveland, for instance, a high school principal took a recent sample poll of 274 pupils and found that 41 percent of them were handicapped by having TV sets in their homes. According to the poll, 32 percent watched the set more than an hour a day, with the result that scholarship and attendance records were "sub-standard."

One of the explanations, no doubt, for the ever increasing trend toward centralization, paternalism, State Socialism, or whatever you want to call it in this country is the fact that one out of every five Americans is currently living in whole or in part off a Government check! This figure was given last week by Federal statisticians checking to determine how many people currently receive pay, pensions, insurance or relief payments from Federal, State and local government.

Added together, the report shows that 27,404,858 people are receiving Government payments.

The total includes only those actually receiving payments—not dependents who may be supported by them—and it does not include such Federal support to farmers.

The 27,404,858 figure includes present and retired Federal and local servants and military personnel, veterans receiving pension or disability payments, veteran dependents receiving Government pensions, recipients of temporary unemployment compensation insurance, Social Security beneficiaries, those on local relief rolls and recipients of such Federal aids as old-age assistance, aid to dependent children and aid to the blind.

The most expensive item on the list is the Federal and State payrolls.

Total dollars for State payrolls are not available in Washington, but figures show that the cost of the Federal civilian employees in January and February of this year averaged approximately $525,000,000 a month—three and onehalf times as much as the same payrolls cost in pre-war days!

In 1939 the total of Federal civilian employees was 969,000. That jumped to 3,569,000 in 1945, dropped to a "low" of 2,066,000 in 1948 and was back up to the reported 2,111,000 figure as of last April.

Total State payrolls of 3,090,000 in 1939 dropped to a 3,116,000 "low" in 1944 and began a steady post-war climb to the 3,911,000 average for the year 1949.

These figures do not include the number of pensioned local and state employees, a figure not tabulated in Washington.

Also left out are employees of street railway, water and other utilities owned by local governments.

The figures will go higher when the President and Congress finish with the new Social Security bill, which adds 10,000,000 new workers to the 35,000,000 now paying payroll taxes, along with their employers, in order that they may ultimately benefit from retirement checks.

No danger, you say? Strange, that’s what they said in Germany and other Socialist countries too! ■