STANDARDIZATION 133

As to the latter, the opinion may be ventured
that if they opened their eyes more widely they
would be struck by something else. M. Andr6
Siegfried is, indeed, too wise an observer and too
practised a student of human affairs to select
standardization as " the thing that struck him
first; " but even he is responsible for the state-
ment that " the 100,000,000 individuals in the
United States are astonishingly alike " and cites,
as though it were a proof of this, a passage from
Sinclair Lewis' Main Street to the following
effect:

" Nine-tenths of the American towns are so
alike that it is the completest boredom to wander
from one to another. Always west of Pittsburg,
and often east of it, there is the same lumber
yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford
garage, the same creamery, the same box-like
houses and two-storey shops. „ . . The shops
show the same standardized, nationally advertised
wares; the newspapers of three thousand miles
apart have the same syndicated features; the boy
in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyant ready-
made suit as is to be found on just such a boy in
Delaware, both of them iterate the same slang
phrases from the same sporting pages and if one
of them is in college and the other a barber, no
one may surmise which is which/*

All this is true to fact and corresponds fairly
well to my own experience in wandering among
American towns " ea$t and west of Pittsburgh*