A youngster gets out of school and finds himself a job in a field of work that appeals to him. He has to start pretty well at the bottom but since Samuel Lucky is a hard working, intelligent, honest lad, he slowly works his way up the ladder of success. Early in the game he finds Lois, the girl of his dreams and they marry and start up a household.

As time goes by the Luckys better their way of life. That is, at first they drove a second hand Chevrolet but after a time they graduate to a new Pontiac. Children come along and they sell their first house and buy a newer and larger one out in the suburbs in a nicer section than they could at first afford.

Most of the neighbors drive Buicks or Oldsmobiles and Mrs. Lucky complains that she isn't dressed as well as her friends and the size of their TV screen is smaller than that of the people next door. So Sam Lucky takes to bringing home work from the office in the evenings and working late into the night, and Lois gets a job as secretary in the office of the local clinic. The children are left at a nursery school part of the day.

Sam continues to bring work home and three times a week he goes to night school where he takes some pretty stiff courses to increase his worth to the firm. After awhile he gets another pro­motion and a raise and they can afford a new Buick, and that larger TV set, although in order to swing them Mrs. Lucky has to continue her secretarial job.

Time goes by and there are more promotions and the Luckys are able to move to a still better neighborhood, complete with Cadillac, a whole flock of supergadgets, and a maid. Lois, of course, can finally quit her job. Still later they acquire a cook and a chauffeur but in order to achieve these Mr. Lucky continues to bring home work at night. His only recreation these days is playing golf which is invariably done with company customers so that Sam can work on sales at the same time he plays. Mrs. Lucky enter­tains quite a bit these days—mostly the wives of executives of company customers.

By now Sam Lucky has an ulcer and Lois is going every week to her psychiatrist. The children are off in finishing and prep schools.

At the age of 65 Mr. Lucky, who is a vice president in the company now, decides to retire. They do and buy a place in Miami Beach, taking the maids, the cook and the chauffeur along with them.

Next year, at the age of 66, Sam drops dead of heart failure. He hadn't been having a very good time anyway. After forty-five years of continual work he'd forgotten how to have a good time.

That's the way the American success story is supposed to go.

But doesn't.

At least not for the overwhelming majority of us.

This is the way life is more apt to be.

A youngster gets out of school and starts looking for a job. Jim Average might have liked to have become a doctor or engineer but it didn't work out that way. For one thing, his people couldn't afford to finance eight years of pre-med and medical school. The first job that opens up for Jim is in a local print shop where they teach him to do job printing. The pay isn't too good but they tell him he's learning a trade.

He works in the print shop for a couple of years and the com­pany puts in some new automatic equipment and Jim Average is let go. Not that he particularly cares. He never did like printing anyway. However, he's started going with Sally who works in a bakery so he needs to get another job as soon as possible. You can't get married on unemployment insurance.

The best job he can locate is clerk in a local super-market and he does his best to please a manager he can't get along with at all. He and Sally get married but since it's necessary for her to keep working if they're going to be able to live in a decent apart­ment and buy a car, they decide against having children.

Down through the years Jim has a series of jobs. Factory jobs, construction jobs, a job in a shipyard during the war, another print shop job. Once he and Sally even save enough money to open a service station but for one reason or other it doesn't go over and they lose all the money they invested. Once a depression comes along and for long months the family has no work at all. They have to move in with Sally's parents who can't really afford it.

Children come in spite of planning to the contrary and Jim and Sally sit up nights trying to figure out how to make ends meet. Except for when she's carrying a baby, Sally works at full time jobs. It's the only way they can keep going at all.

Some years aren't too bad. During the war and the boom that follows, Jim does pretty well. They even make a deposit on a house and buy a bigger, flashier car. They also go into the hole for a TV set, a new refrigerator, and an electric stove. After which they sit around nights some more, worrying about what's going to happen if either of them lose their jobs.

At the age of 55 Jim stops being able to find work except such positions as night watchman or elevator operator in one of the run down buildings in the industrial part of town. And Sally can only occasionally find employment when her health is up to it, doing housework.

At 65 Jim Average gets his Social Security money and they sell their house and move down to Southern California to retire. How­ever, the amount of Social Security money coming in hardly pays for living on the simplest standard. They get by only because one of the children is able to send them a few dollars each month.

These may sound bitter, the above accounts, but they aren't far off the beam. In one case you have a success and in the other you have an average life.

For my money, neither of them are worth the living. If I had to make a choice I'd probably choose to be Sam Lucky rather than Jim Average, but neither of them has lived a full life. And as far as retirement is concerned, both of them wound up retired at the age of sixty-five in circumstances which neither can enjoy.

Actually, it can be a great deal tougher than even the life of Jim Average which we've painted above. At least he reached the age of sixty-five, which a good many people never do, the pace of modern life being what it is. And at least Jim was able to get jobs until he was 55, a good many find themselves on the scrap heap long before this.

And I didn't even deal with the fact that while both Jim and Sally were working, trying to make ends meet, their kids were out on the streets probably taking their master's degree in juvenile delinquency. Nor did we mention that in the life of Sam Lucky he had a fine chance of becoming an alcoholic along the way in view of the pressures upon him. Or that Mrs. Lucky, in spite of her psychiatric visits, had a strong chance of winding up in a mental institute under the tensions of her frustrated life.

We haven't dealt, either, with the probability that after the age of thirty or so there was no longer any real love between Sam and Lois nor Jim and Sally. You don't lead the kind of existence they did and still retain the affection with which you started marriage.

Never in the history of any nation has there been such a large percentage of a people in mental institutions. Never has there been such a degree of juvenile delinquency. Never have there been so many divorces. Never has there been such insecurity in the hearts of a people, and our suicide rate is second highest in the world.

We Americans, as a people, by no means "have it made."

§

This book is devoted to those who rebel against being a Sam or Lois Lucky or a Jim or Sally Average.

It's devoted to the man or woman of whatever age, from 21 and up, who has no money but does have a burning desire to get off the modern treadmill.

Or it's devoted to the man, woman, or family having a small income and a desire to retire but a feeling they have insufficient funds with which to do it.

It's devoted to the person who wishes to see life. Who wants to travel. Who wants the stimulating experiences to be found in a free way of existence.

It's devoted to he who would relax, go fishing, go hunting, go hiking, swimming, sailing, mountain climbing. Who would enjoy life's pleasures while still young enough to enjoy them in full.

Above all it's devoted to that person, man or woman, aged 21 or aged 71 who wishes to spend the balance of his life profitably. And when I say profitably I mean by following a heart felt desire to practice an art, or to pursue a study, or to ride a hobby.

It is not devoted to that person who wakes up in the morning and goes down to a hurried breakfast and then to work. At work he spends eight hours or so, with a short lunch period during which he again bolts his food so as to get back to the job again on time. In the evening he comes home to a dinner, hurriedly prepared by a wife who either works or whose time is so taken up with the children and household duties that she too is exhausted at day's end. After dinner he sits for an hour or two watching television or perhaps going to the local bar or movie. In the morning, the same routine again. By week's end there is a day and a half or two days for relaxation, so that work can be resumed at top efficiency on Monday. For two or three weeks each year the family can pile into the car and dash off on a hurried tour of some national park, or an attempt at rest in some mountain or beach resort. Then back to the grind again. Year in, year out, and the best that can be hoped for is occasional raises in pay—and that a depression or lay off will not come to steal one's livelihood.

I repeat, this book is not for the person who will exist in such a way of life. If any reader has got this far and still subscribes to such an existence, I say right now that he might as well read no further. He will never see eye to eye with me and is wasting his time. If this sort of existence is supposed to be the American Dream, I say it is not a dream but a nightmare.

And to him who complains that what I say is against the Ameri­can way of life, that our people must live in this manner and that it is the best way of life. That we owe a duty to our fellow man, or our country, or the world in which we live to live such an ex­istence. To him I pound on the table top and shout that it is not so.

The greatest men that the world has ever produced did not, could not, live such a life. No great scientific discovery, no great work of art, no great book, ever came from a man or woman who remained in such a rut.

Man makes his great discoveries; he leads a good and full life; he enjoys and gives enjoyment; only when he has leisure and the opportunity to develop himself.

Lord Byron, Shelley and Keats were great poets. But they never would have written verse had they spent their lives in the textile mills of Manchester.

From Phidias to Picasso there has never been a great artist except those who had freedom to pursue their art, who had the ability to escape, by whatever means, from the drudgery of life which besets ninety-nine out of a hundred of us.

The great inventions, the great scientific discoveries of our world have been made by men who were able to pursue their driving interests in freedom from an eight hour day or more devoted to drudgery.

What musical composer could have worked in his off hours, after a grueling day on a meaningless treadmill? What philosopher could have spun his theories after sitting at a desk working in an advertising agency trying to make people buy things they didn't really want with money they didn't really have?

But we need not be poets, writers, painters, scientists or phil­osophers to want and need a life free of drudgery and worry. No man can enjoy the potentials nature has awarded him without free­dom from the pressure of modern existence. He must escape, he must free himself from the rut in which most are sunk, he must get off the treadmill.

The best manner in which a man or woman can serve the society to which they belong is to be happy and at peace with themselves. You cannot make others happy unless you yourself have achieved happiness. The persons who are best suited to mak­ing this a better world are those who have achieved serenity and peace of mind.

CASE HISTORY No. 1. Perhaps the happiest person this writer has ever met was Harvey White who died a few years ago in Wood­stock, New York. There must have been literally hundreds of artists, writers, composers, musicians, actors and other artists who mourned his going, not to speak of hundreds of the less talented whose lives he had affected. Harvey never had a great deal of money but he had achieved a way of life that contented him and he managed to spread his good will to almost everyone with whom he came in contact.

While still a young man he bought up a tract of several hundred acres of cheap land in the Maverick section of what was later to become the artist colony of Woodstock in the Catskill Mountains. Friends bought other sections and practicing artists and students were invited to enjoy the advantages of this bargain paradise. And at that time, bargain paradise Woodstock was although located only a hundred miles north of New York City.

As time went by, Harvey White added small cabins to his property, usually building them himself or with the aid of local friends. He built a simple summer theatre too, and a concert theatre. Remember, he had little money but lots of friends. And what money his various projects did bring in, went to increase the size of his little colony, not into some of the unnecessities of life. Harvey never bothered, for instance, even to bring plumbing into his own cottage.

When I met him, I was a boy in my late teens. He taught me to print on the little press he used to put out a literary weekly and to do up programs for his concert theatre and little play house. He also taught me the value of serenity and that the most important thing in life was to enjoy it to the utmost and to try and bring enjoyment to those about us.

Harvey was interested in people who were interested in things. He didn't care what it was, but if you burned with interest in one of the arts, or politics (any shade would do, although Harvey wasn't particularly interested himself), or science, or whatever, Harvey respected you. If an artist was broke, but really working at his art, Harvey would "rent" him a cabin. Rents were ridiculously low, but somehow Harvey never got around to collecting it unless you had just sold a painting or something. Often, indeed, when he knew one of his tenants was up against it he'd drop around causally with a basket of groceries, or perhaps a cash loan.

But the thing that will stick in my mind forever was one time when I went over to his place, my mind beset by my teenage troubles, and, of course, troubles at that age are just as real as those later in life. Harvey, who looked something like Walt Whit­man, was stretched out on the ground in his front yard, his head propped against a fallen log. It was a beautiful mid-summer day and he was enjoying the sun. A chipmunk played about him. He said easily, "Hi, Bob. Stretch out."

So I stretched out, immediately relaxing in his relaxing presence. Without a word being spoken, already my troubles were the less. Finally he said, "How are things going?" And I thought about that for awhile and finally I said, "All right, I guess." So we went back to silence and contemplation of a beautiful sunny day.

Just then a flashy car approached and stopped in front of the house. It was a monstrously big thing. Out of it stepped a young man dressed in the latest and the loudest of Hollywood type ap­parel. From Harris tweed sport jacket to custom made suede shoes, he was the most. Harvey looked up and said interestedly, "Hi, Jimmy. Haven't seen you for a long time. Stretch out."

Jimmy looked at the ground worriedly, then took out a hanky and dusted off the tree stump before sitting on it. Harvey said, "It's fine to see you again, Jimmy. Where've you been?"

Jimmy said hesitantly, "Well, I've been out on the West Coast."

"Oh? Getting any composing done? How's that opera of yours going?"

Jimmy said, "Well, no. I have a job with Paramount, Harvey. Doing arrangements for musical comedies, that sort of thing."

With real distress in his voice now, Harvey came to one elbow and said, "Golly, Jimmy, you don't have to do that. You can always come back here. I can always find one of my cabins for you!"

This is typical of Harvey White. He just couldn't imagine any­body wanting to get into the Hollywood rat-race.

I would estimate that hundreds of the American painters, writers and other artists who have achieved success in the United States today have been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by this man. He himself had achieved peace of mind, serenity and hap­piness in his own way, and in achieving it for himself couldn't help but spread it to others. Not only was Harvey White the happiest man I've ever met but probably the one with the most goodness in his heart.

I don't contend that everyone could, or even should, try to live life the way Harvey White did. Each must work out his own way of life. But Harvey is certain proof to me that the good life can be led without being part and parcel of today's rat-race.

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