Measuring the
General Agony
of the Nation

Like most Americans, columnist Jay Franklin (1897 – 1967) was an eyewitness to the pain that had taken root in the United States during the Great Depression – and in the attached article he proposed an additional duty be thrust upon some agency in FDR’s ever-expanding government:

“…I propose that some branch of government… make it it’s business to collect and report daily, through the press, information which could indicate whether the human being in America is suffering, desperate, sanguine, or resigned [such information could be gleaned by studying]

• the number of children in foster homes and [other such] institutions,

• the number of visits made by people to free clinics,

• the number of calls paid by visiting nurses and physicians,

• the number of children in urban day nurseries (reflecting maternal employment),

• the number of meals and beds furnished to transients,

• the rise and fall of juvenile delinquency,

• the cases of wife-desertion, and the like

– all of which would cast light on the extent to which the human being was suffering.”

Today the economic unit of measure we use in order calculate prosperity is the yearly Order of Durable Goods.