A Drift In A Strange Sea

Tremendous, far reaching, sweeping events have taken place in the last fifty years. Huge waves of migration across the country and immigration from abroad. Industrial developments everywhere changing the face of the country and leaving patterns.
 
Two world wars and one near-world war. Two depressions and a half-dozen recessions.

Like a terrible tornado, these events have sucked up tens of millions of Americans, whirled them about like grains of sand, and scattered them to all corners of the land.
 
Millions of people, young and old, have been cut loose from their roots, from their familiar soil, from the people, and traditions to which they had been accustomed. They have been dumped down in the midst of strange people, strange customs, and strange ideas, to make out as best they could.
 It is as though they were adrift in a strange sea, with thousands of cross-currents pulling them this way and that.
And the people are without a compass or star to guide them, without a chart of landmark to steer by.