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PART I. THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
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GUARANTEED IN WRITING
1. The Way It Was
It
is the latter days of what shall be called
"The
American Century."
And is this a great country, or
what?
It
started out like any other day in yesteryear.
However, on July 4, 1776, our Founding Fathers,
pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, made
it official with a one-page Declaration that said, in
effect,
"We 're in charge here!"
The comforts most Americans enjoy today and at
the turn of another century might make life over 200
years ago seem like hardship. Yet closer study shows
that the colonists generally were a prosperous and
contented people -- already turning America into the
"land of opportunity." By 1780, there were only 2.5
million Americans -- excluding Indians -- about the
population of the state of Arkansas today.
However, we were a different kind of people back in
the 1780's. According to the American . Economic
Foundation, nearly half the citizens were 15 or younger.
Most people farmed the land for a living. Life was
rigorous and tough. Work was a sun-up to sun-down
regimen six days a week. Little wonder that the
average male could look forward to only about 38 years
of life, compared with almost 75 years today. Only one
in 1,000 had completed college in 1776, compared with
one in seven today.
Inflation was rampant during the War for
Independence. By 1780, paper money authorized .by
the Continental Congress was practically worthless and
was replaced by a new currency at an exchange rate of
1