A Feeling of Confidence

While the recounting and recanvassing went on, some analysts mistook the closeness of the November election to mean that U.S.citizens were uneasy and plagued by doubt. They had refused to give a vote of confidence to either political party. Were they fearful and doubtful about the future of the U.S.? Last week, from one coast to the other, there were ringing indications that the prevailing mood in the U.S. is not doubt, but confidence.

One index was the stock market, reflecting the feeling of investors. The elections set off a surge of buying; the Dow Jones industrial average climbed to its highest level since 1929. Evidently, investors accepted the Republican vow to avoid creeping socialism and the Democratic pledge to prevent creeping unemployment. The middle of the road might be crowded, but it was comfortable.

Signs of confidence spread far beyond Wall Street. In Detroit, confident automobile manufacturers pushed production to a record high (see BUSINESS). Elsewhere, the furnaces in U.S. steel mills burned brighter and hotter than they had for many months. Television-set production hit a record high; the building boom continued unabated; electric power output passed all previous levels.

Paralleling this confidence at home was the constant, world-wide tension of the Cold War. But even here there was improvement (see FOREIGN NEWS). And in the Cold War there could be no better omen for the U.S. than the clear signs that came last week from a healthy economy. After a political struggle, after talk of recession, in the midst of world tension, the people of the U.S. were steadfastly reaffirming their faith in dynamic American capitalism as an economic system and as a social order.

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