Of Bread and Circuses; B. Moreell

2 Ibid. Admiral Moreell is Chairman of the Board, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. This essay is from an address of October 5, 1955, to the National Association of Purchasing Agents at Houston. [402 ] prising thing about this insidious progression is that, at the time, few realized that they were witnessing the slow destruction of a people by a corruption that would even tually transmute a nation of self-reliant, courageous, sov ereign individuals into a mob, dependent upon their government for the means of sustaining life. "We Never Had It So Good~~ There are no precise records that describe the feelings of those for whom the poet, Juvenal, felt such scorn. But using the clues we have, and judging by our own experience, we can make a good guess as to what the prevailing sentiments of the Roman populace were. If we were able to take a poll of public opinion of first and second century Rome, the overwhelming response would probably have been-"We never had it so good." Those who lived on cCpublic assistance" and in subsidized rent free or low-rent dwellings would certainly have assured us that now, at last, they had cCsecurity."Those in the rapidly expanding bureaucracy-one of the most efficient civil services the world has ever seen-would have told us that now government had a "conscience" and was using its vast resources to guarantee the cCweHare" of all of its citizens; that the civil service gave them job secu rity and retirement benefits; and that the best job was a government jobl Progressive members of the business community would have said that· business had never been so good, that the government was their largest customer, which assured them a dependable market, and [403 ] that the government was inflating currency at about· 2 per cent a year, which instilled confidence and gave everyone a sense of well-being and prosperity.

And no doubt the farmers were well pleased, too. They supplied the grain, the pork, and the olive oil, at or above parity prices, for the government's doles. The government had a continuous program of large scale public works which were said to stimulate the economy, provide jobs, and promote the general welfare, and which appealed to the national pride. The high tax rates required by the subsidies discour aged the entrepreneur with risk capital which, in tum, favored the well-established, complacently prosperous businessman. It appears that there was no serious objec tion to this by any of the groups affected. An economic historian, writing of business conditions at this period, says, "The chief object of economic activity was to assure the individual, or his family, a placid and inactive life on a safe, if moderate, income.... There were no tech nical improvements in industry after the early part of the second century." There was no incentive to venture.

Inventions began to dry up because no one could reason ably expect to make a profit out of them. Rome was sacked by Alaric and his Goths in 410 A.D. But long before the barbarian invasions, Rome was a hollow shell of the once noble Republic. Its real gran deur was gone and its people were demoralized. Most of the old forms and institutions remained. But a people whose horizons were limited by bread and circuses had [404 ] destroyed the spirit while paying lip service to the letter of their· once hallowed traditions. The falIof Rome affords a pertinent illustration of the observation by the late President Lowell of Harvard University that "no society is ever murdered-it commits suicide." Symbols of Moral Decay I do not imply that bread and circuses are evil things in themselves. Man needs material sustenance and he needs recreation. These needs are so basic that they come within the purview of every religion. In every religion there is a harvest festival of thanksgiving for good crops.

And as for recreation, we need only recall that our word c'holiday" was originally '''holy day,'7 a day of religious observance. In fact, the circuses and games of old Rome were religious in origin. The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excite ment of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can· never appease. The moral decay of the people was not caused by the doles and the games. These merely provided a measure of their degradation. Things that were originally good had become perverted and, as Shakespeare reminds us, c'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." More than fifty years ago, the great historian of Rome, Theodore Mommsen, came to our country on a visit. At [405 ] a reception in his honor, someone asked him, "Mr.

Mommsen, what do you think of our country?" The great scholar replied, 'O:Withtwo thousand years of Euro pean experience before your eyes, you have repeated every one of Europe's mistakes. I have no further interest in you." One wonders what Mommsen would say today in the light of the increasingly rapid destruction of our tradi tional values during the past 25 years. Many of our people have been converted to the idea that liberty has been tried and found wanting, just as many believe that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. They do not know that what has been found wanting is not the true values of liberty and religion but only perversions, worthless counterfeits. So when we urge upon them those true values, they shy away. They have been fooled before, so they want to try something which they think is O:'new." Departure from Traditional Values How far have we departed from our traditional values'?

There is no mystery here. It is well known that the basic policies of the two major political parties with respect to the intrusion of the State into the economic and social lives of the people differ only in degree and method. There is no discernible difference in fundamental prin ciple. Prominent political figures of both parties pay lip service to the letter of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, while they violate the spirit. [ 406] The proponents of an all-powerful centralized govern ment have erected a bureaucratic colossus which imposes upon our people controls, regimentation, punitive taxa tion, and subsidies to pressure groups, thus paralleling the "organized mendicancy, subvention, bureaucracy, and centralization" which played so great a part in the downfall of Rome! Weare demoralized by an indecent competition. Each one denounces government handouts and privileges for the other fellow-but maintains that his special privilege is for the "general welfare." The slogan of many of us seems to be, "Beat the other fellow to the draw"-i.e., "draw out of the. public treasury more than you put in, before someone else gets it."

I am no prophet of inevitable doom. On the contrary, 1 am sounding an alarm that disaster lies ahead unless present danger signals are heeded. ProposedCorrectives What specific steps should we take? I believe. that neither I nor anyone else, no matter how exalted his position, can determine for 165 million people their day to-day economic and social decisions concerning such matters as wages, prices, production, associations, and others. So I propose that these decisions, and the prob lems connected therewith, be returned to the people themselves. This could be done in four steps, as follows: First-Let us stop this headlong rush toward collectiv ism. Let there be no more special privileges for employ[407 ] ers, employees, fanners, businessmen, or any other groups. This is the easiest step of all. We need only refrain from passing more socialistic laws. 'Second-Let us undertake at once an orderly demo bilization of many of the existing powers of government by the progressive repeal of those socialistic laws which we already have. This will be a very difficult step be cause every pressure group in the nation will fight to retain its subsidies, monopoly privileges, and protection.

But if freedom is to live, all special privileges must go! Third-Of the powers that remain in government, let us return as many as possible to the states. For on the local level, the people will be able to apply more critical scrutiny to the acts of their government agents. Fourth-Above all, let us resolve that never again will we yield to the seduction of the government panderer who comes among us offering "bread and circuses," paid for with our own money, in return for our sovereign rights! [408 ] A CASE OF CORRUPTION DIONYSIUS, the storied tyrant of Syracuse, was a consum mate financier. His gift stood him in good stead on the day he found himself in bankrupt condition, having bor rowed from the citizenry more than he could repay. He might have increased taxes and satisfied his creditors with their own money, but he did not because, presuma bly, his levies had reached the point of diminishing returns; an increase could have discouraged production, or ,caused a flight of capital, and thus dried up the source of his income. That would not do. And yet, the debts had to be met, because repudiation would have blem ished his reputation and impaired the national credit; no one would have lent him a plugged Syracusan dime thereafter.