Word: americanize
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...situation which prove his point and neglect the other pertinent but obscure factors. Edward J. O'Brien is not a trained social experimentalist. In "Dance of the Machines' 'he does succeed in focussing a brilliant spot-light upon many of the deadening influences of the machine upon the American mind, but he is far from successful in proving that the machine and its concimmitants give rise to all the deplorable aspects of the American scene...
...proper criticism of Mr. O'Brien's social theories would take one beyond the scope of this review and would in fact necessitate the employment of most of modern economics and sociology. He is particularly exercised over the increasing standardization of American production and even goes so far as to deplore President Hoover's campaign to reduce varieties of pipe fitting from 17,000 to 610. Perhaps this reviewer is biased, but an intimate acquaintance with a summer water supply dependent upon the cooperation of a Michigan-made pump and the usual New Hampshire assortment of pipe fittings makes...
...much better case is made against standardization as applied to the American short story, perhaps because this is more closely allied to the author's usual sphere of influence. The implications of his economic theories cannot well help being too much for the treatment afforded by the hundred or so pages allowed this section of the book, and, after all, who is to tell whether mankind is more happy working eight hours a day on a production line or tolling sixteen on the hereditary farm? True it is, as Mr. O'Brien points out, that machines are becoming the masters...
...readers. As stated in the preface, that is the real purpose of the book, and throughout its pages are scattered exhortations to the reader to disagree if he likes but to do some sort of thinking anyway. But there is little to disagree with in the criticism of the American short story with which the book ends. Mr. O'Brien is on familiar ground here and he succeeds in making a pretty concise exposition of what is wrong with those tales which so innocuously while away so many Thursday nights
...program of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for this afternoon and tomorrow night at Symphony Hall, Serge Koussevitzky will offer one novel selection, Gruenberg's Symphony Poem, "Enchanted Isle" Gruenberg is a Russian, born in 1885, now living and working in New York, best known in American concert halls by a swirling setting of Vachel Lindsay's "Daniel Jazz...