ARE WE STANDARDIZED?
Almost all modern European critics of the United States agree in complaining that our telephones and sleeping cars are objectionable, and that we are "standardized" in everything.

Their criticism of the telephone seems to be that the state of perfection to which it has been brought in this country causes it to be widely used, while their disapproval of our sleeping cars is invariably based on the assumption that they have no compartments--which is not the fact, since most of the great transcontinental railroads do run compartment cars, and much better ones than the best _wagons lits_, and since, also, all our sleeping cars have drawing-rooms which are incomparably better than the most comfortable European compartments.
The charge of standardization will, however, bear a little thought.

It is true that most American cities have a general family resemblance--that a business street in Atlanta or Memphis looks much like a business street in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, St.
Paul, Kansas City, or St.Louis--and that much the same thing may be said of residence streets.

Houses and office buildings in one city are likely to resemble those of corresponding grade in another; the men who live in the houses and go daily to the offices are also similar; so are the trolley cars in which they journey to and fro; still more so the Fords which many of them use; the clothing of one man is like that of another, and all have similar conventions concerning the date at which--without regard to temperature--straw hats should be discarded.
Their womenfolk, also, are more or less alike, as are the department stores in which they shop and the dresses they buy.

And the same is true of their children, the costumes of those children, and the schools they attend.
Every American city has social groups corresponding to similar groups in other cities.