STANDARDIZATION 139

The picture of American standardization in the
passage quoted from Mr. Sinclair Lewis is cer-
tainly not overdrawn. He describes the facts
correctly. But I think he misinterprets them, or
at least places them in a light where his readers
are likely to do so, and it is somewhat regrettable
that so accomplished a student of civilization as
M, Siegfried should have followed his lead. For
my own part, I interpret the facts quite differently*
Having suggested what seems to me the true
interpretation there can be no harm, therefore, in
adding a few more particulars about American
standardization to the account given by Mr. Lewis
and M, Siegfried, always hoping that the reader
will interpret them in the light of the principle
just laid down.

Something akin to the spirit of standardized
mass production seems to have animated the mind
of the demiurge when he created the American
landscape. As many travellers have remarked,
there are regions where you may travel for a
. thousand miles and look out all the time on a
landscape that seems to repeat itself endlessly, It
is much the same with the scenery of America as
it is with her natural resources; all varieties of it,
both ugly and beautiful, exist in enormous quan-
tity. If nature takes to swamp-making in
America—and in some of the Southern States
she seems to have had a deplorable turn for that
kind of creative activity—she will either give you
a single swamp hundreds of square miles in