Where Could I Be Better Off

The National Broadcasting Company in conjunction with the Fund for Adult Education presents Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Well, Tocqueville, what are you thinking about as you stare at these picturesque shows? Are you thinking about America?

About America? No. I do not see America. I see more than America. I am trying to make out the image of democracy itself with its inclinations, its prejudices, and its passions. A study in Jacksonian America. Where could I be better off?

The month of May 1831, the President, old Hickory, General Andrew Jackson. And this is New York City. Over 200,000 people live here. Across the clear freshwater of the East River, we look at Brooklyn, New York's Derry, a countryside of breezy heights and pasture land and cows.

And looking across the beach is a New York clam dealer in an orange cheque, check, Westcutt, tight-fitting grey gators, and a plug hat as tall and stately as a belfry with rips and the sides as if to let the noise of the bells out.

Clams, choice clams, here's your rockaway beach clams, fine sand clams. But his mind is on the New York Consolidated Lottery. To be had in the greatest variety of lucky numbers at Arnold 3-13 Broadway opposite the Masonic Hall.

Ten years ago the state legislature had forbidden the famous old New York lotteries, but the The proprietors are still finding loopholes to satisfy their customers who swarm through the bright-maced streets to produce the busiest community that any man could desire to live in.

In the streets all is hurry and bustle, the very carts instead of being drawn by horses at a walking pace are often met at a gallop, always in a brisk trot. Omnibuses are racqueting and terry-hooting through the New York streets with as much hubbub, hullabaloo, and general unmitigated uproar as the most optimistic man might expect in a city seven times.