America needs a new Roosevelt

Between Grant's Pass, a pleasant retirement town in southern Oregon, and the Californian fishing port of Crescent City, chiefly noted for the nightmarish state prison known as Pelican Bay, stretches route 199. It runs alongside the spectacularly beautiful Smith River ravine for some 50 miles.

To drive it, particularly on holiday weekends, can be a teeth-grinding, bumper-to-bumper affair. But this last Memorial Day weekend, on a late Sunday afternoon, I shot through in record time, meeting as little traffic as I normally would at 2am.

For the first time since the national trauma known as the great gas shortage of 1973, Americans are experiencing a collective shock as they adjust to gasoline prices that are now three times higher than they were four years ago. Many families looked at

the $4-per-gallon basic price of gasoline and either stayed at home or crept round the corner to the local mall. Hence my pleasantly rapid drive home.

Of course Europeans, paying roughly twice as much to fill their tanks, snigger unfeelingly at American moaning at these prices. But the median family income in Crescent City is about $20,000 a year. A third of the population lives below the poverty line. As in thousands of American towns across the country, there's no slack in the family budget to accommodate a fuel bill that's shot up 300 per cent.

A family of four that decides - as many will this summer - that it cannot afford to drive 1,200 miles from Seattle to Disneyland is making a decision that spells slim business for motels, roadside restaurants and the tourist industry overall. As for long-distance truckers, it now costs well over $1,000 to fill the tank of an 18-wheeler with diesel fuel averaging around $4.20 a gallon. More than 1,000 trucking firms have already gone bankrupt this year.

Roman emperors knew well that political tranquility marched arm in arm