Hillary Clinton Looks Back To The Future
"Harrisburg, Pa. -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton nodded knowingly last week as Joe Rebarchek described his struggle to pay for his oldest daughter to attend Villanova University and still save tuition money for his two younger children.
"'I hear about this everywhere,' Clinton said at the Capitol Diner, her voice tinged with sadness.
"Any longtime resident could lead you to the other sites where the men of Levittown found muscular, good-paying work — Vulcanized Rubber and Plastics; Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M); Thiokol, a defense contractor; the big General Motors plant across the river in Trenton. They worked their shifts and came home to their young families and their little patches of green. Many had moved here from the cramped neighborhoods of Philadelphia’s blue-collar 'river wards' or from coal country in upstate Pennsylvania.
"You could call the Levittown experience the American dream, but that does not get to what was best about it: its concrete, earthbound specificity. The union wage. The house you could purchase in the mid-1950s for $8,990, with a down payment of $100. The elementary schools that Levitt & Sons put right in the neighborhoods, so that no young child would have to ride a bus. The Olympic-size public pools and the Levittown Shop-a-Rama, with its department stores and soda fountains and its parking for 6,000 cars."
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