This Noble Land by James A. Michener

strongly in favor of the traditional American family. Statistically it is the preferable solution, and our black population would be better served if it could move in the direction of the stable family. But for this to happen, there must be jobs for the fathers.
    5. We should mount a national program to encourage black families to adopt black babies. And we should halt the ridiculous propaganda from black social workers who claim that only black families can adopt black babies. Along with Oscar Hammerstein, I served on the board of Pearl Buck’s Welcome House, an orphanage specializing in the placement of half-caste babies, especially black Asian, usually in the homes of white families, and we had conspicuous success. In fact, we almost never had a failure, and we had the same good luck with the all-black orphans weplaced in all-white homes. I understand the cultural basis for the rule that black babies must go only into black homes, and I can see why adult black social workers would try to enforce that rule, but I fear they do so for their own personal reasons and to the detriment of the black orphans.
    6. I repeat, contentious race relations may be the most serious threat to the stability of American life. Anything we can do to achieve reconciliation must be done.

T he problem explored in this chapter was illustrated in newspaper articles about three significant interrelated events in America’s economic life. The first was headlined: JOB CUTS AT AT&T WILL TOTAL 40,000. The second announced that Wall Street was so excited about AT&T’s move that the Dow Jones industrial average rose sixty points. The third development appeared in the day’s quotations, which showed that AT&T’s common stock had also jumped upward 2⅝ and that the company was responsible for 7.6 index points in the Dow.
    The meaning of this news was easily deciphered. First, the company had discovered that it could wind up the year with a better bottom line on profits if it got rid of its marginally surplus workers. Second, the stock market’s exultation in the prospect of AT&T’s growing profits took precedence over all else, including the fate of company workers and their local economies. Third, the rise in AT&T’s stock meant that American business approved of the drastic cuts in personnel, because investors who held the stock would probably enjoy an even greater increase in the value of their holdings. It was, all things considered, a banner day for American business.
    But there was gloom among the forty thousand employees who found themselves without jobs on the third day of the new year and with dismal prospects for replacing them. Belatedly, weare beginning to realize that such cuts are going to hit even families whose incomes range in the $70,000–$120,000 bracket. And if the husband does find a job, it will be at a salary much reduced from what the family was accustomed to. In that case, the wife, if she is not already working, must also go to work to contribute a second salary. A deplorable result is the latchkey child, who finds no one at home when he returns from school. Families in this group are severely hurting, with many unable to afford to send their children to college.
    News about the downsizing of companies has become common in recent years, and its significance is always the same. Like AT&T, the overall American economy is doing fine, but its employees are not—their earnings are not even keeping up with inflation. The nation’s total income is rising, but 97 percent of the increase falls into the hands of the wealthiest 20 percent of the population. Money is
not
‘trickling down.’ The spectacular rise in the Dow Jones industrial average means that citizens who already possess wealth and have it wisely invested have grown richer. The stock market directly affects only a small percentage of the population, although added wealth injected anywhere in the economic system occasionally produces some carryover to the general