Book Reviews

E. G. WEST'S Education and the State (London, the Institute of Economic Affairs, 40 shillings) is typical of the new "freedom" lit erature that is coming out of Eng land. The author is stuck with liv ing in a rather advanced welfare state in which compulsion is the order of the day in all too many fields. To write abstractly about libertarian principles seems to Dr. West rather futile in the circum stances. He is preoccupied not with the possibility of establishing total freedom of the individual, but with providing at least relatively liberal alternatives within the framework of the compulsory state welfare which all the political parties, La bor, Conservative, and Liberal, seem to have accepted as the per manent human condition. Dr. West's aim is depressingly modest. Before we in the United States look down our noses at Dr. West's cautious approach to the problem of freedom in education, however, we might consider that Americans accepted the principle of the "free"

compulsory school way back in the nineteenth century, when Horace Mann was still alive. We tied it to the municipalities and states, but this did not mitigate the compul sion on the taxpaying adult to sup port the school system, and on the child to attend the school up to a certain age. The system was "free" only to the extent that the poor who paid no property taxes got the presumed benefits of the compul sory courses. So, though the United States may still have a larger measure of general voluntarism than Britain, Dr. West's observations about the State's role in education are equal ly applicable on both sides of the Atlantic. Reviewing a hundred and fifty years of history, Dr. West reminds us that the classical economists, who are usually associated with the laissez-faire principle, were almost unanimous in their agreement that the State must compel families to educate their children. The classi cal economists justified this de parture from laissez faire on two grounds. First, they believed that it was a State duty to protect mi nors. Second, they were convinced 61 62 THE FREEMAN May that the "neighborhood effects" of illiteracy were damaging to a free political economy. They thought of illiterates becoming juvenile de linquents and criminals and im posing a huge social cost on soci ety. They also thought an unlet tered man made a poor prospective employee.

Dr. West, however, notes that most of the classical economists did not argue from their "protection principle" and their "neighbor hood effects" analysis that it was the necessary duty of the State to set up its own schools in order to compel the education of the citi zens. Shrewdly, he remarks that the British, long before the Forster Act of 1870 had established state board schools, were making an al most total voluntary approach to universal primary education. Pri vate education was a great and growing industry. The problem was a minimal one of dealing with "problem families" at the bottom of the economic scale and with a few of the more irresponsible rich. If the State had made a selective approach to handling its duty to "protect" minors, it could have avoided plunging governments into the· business of providing schools on "the rates." W. E. Forster's idea in 1870 was to set up School Boards to fill the "gaps" in the, private provision of schooling. But he went considerably beyond the idea of municipal subsidies to private and voluntary nonprofit schools, an idea which, in practice, was already filling the gap over most of England. Once State schools had been created, the tendency of the taxpayer was to send his children to them in order to escape double financial jeopardy.

He was paying for the schools un der compulsion anyway, so why shell out extra money to a church supported or a private nondenomi national school? To meet the necessity of provid ing education for poor families who couldn't afford to pay the school "rates," Forster hit upon the idea of "free tickets" for those who were in extreme poverty. This leads Dr. West to his constructive idea for getting away from de pendency on State schools in the welfarist England of 1966. "If free tickets could be given to poor fami lies for board schools," he asks, "why not for any school?" (Dr. West's own italics.) The idea of the free ticket, or educational voucher ,has been suggested in America by Dr. Milton Friedman. But it already existed in embryo in F'orster's thinking as of 1870. Forster simply failed to draw the proper conclusion from his "free ticket" provision. The voucher idea could indeed be used to provide free choice of educational mediums within the 1966 "EDUCATION AND THE STATE" 63 larger framework of legal compul sion to absorb a certain stipulated amount of schooling. Applied to America, it opens some interesting perspectives. Armed with an edu cational voucher representing his proportionate share of the' public funds available for schooling, the parent would be freed from most of the problems that have recently been bedeviling professional edu cators. The parent who insisted tha t his child be exposed to re ligious instruction in school could present his voucher to a private academy that opens the day with prayers. And the Negro family, oppressed by "de facto" seg"rega tion in its own particular neighbor hood public school, could take a voucher across town to an inte grated private school. Under reviv ing free market conditions made possible· by the voucher idea, the integrated private school would surely become one of the more heartening features of the' land scape.

Educational vouchers could, as Dr. West suggests, be offered on an across-the·-board basis, or on a selective "poor family" basis. The latter, under any new approach to freedom, of course would be pref erable. If all this business about vouchers seems temporizing with the true principle of laissez faire, let us reflect that beggars, in the contemporary political climate, can hardly be choosers. It would he a distinct advance over the present system if, within the compulsory framework of Federal "aid to edu cation," the individual choice of school and college were to be left absolutely free. The voucher idea is, of course, applicable to other fields which the twentieth century State has un fortunately marked out for its own. Just before he died at the ter ribly young age of twenty-seven, Robert Schuchman suggested that social security money might be re turned to the individual in the form of a voucher "cashable" at any insurance company that is in the business of writing annuity policies. Well, if we must have com pulsory social security, why not provide a choice that would enable people to take advantage of insur ance companies that know how to deploy their capital productively?

Dr. West says he is not "reveren tial" to the idea of the "organic State" or to theories of compelled "social harmony." In his Educ'Or tion and the State he is trying merely to make the best of the bad job of having to live in a Britain that has been subjected to ninety years of Fabian propagandizing. His book is the sort of thing we will be writing in America tomor ro~ • 64 THE FREEMAN May THE SCARCITY OF SILVER PAUL L. POIROT TODAY'S so-called scarcity and ris ing price of silver might remind us that all this has happened be fore in America. For instance, the price of an ounce of silver at Boston rose from 7 paper shillings in 1700, to 20 in 1730, to 60 in 1749.1 One might conclude that silver had grown scarce in Boston dur ing that period. But, scarce in terms of what? In terms of the paper money of the Colony of Massachusetts - which was any thing but scarce! The amount of paper money outstanding in the colony rose from 28,000 colonial pounds in 1705, to 311,000 in 1730, to 2,135,000 in 1748. More than a million pounds in bills of credit were issued to cover "war costs"

in the year 1745 alone. 2 Silver must have been "scarce" again during the years of the Revolutionary War when the in1 A. H. Cole, Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700-1861, (CambridKC: Harvard University Press, 1938), p. 119. 2 B. V. Ratchford, American State Debts (Durham: Duke University Press, 1941), pp. 26-28. dex of wholesale prices, based on figures in the Philadelphia area, rose as follows. 3 1775... 100 1776... 133 1777... 423 1778. . . 769 1779 3,806 1780 13,518 The conclusion of merchants then was that government bonds are "not worth a continental" as money. The deficit financing of the war in Vietnam, the· war on poverty, and other Federal expenditures, resulting in a constant increase in the supply of paper money in the United States in our time, is bound to be reflected in a "scar city" of silver and gold - and ris ing prices. The scarcity involved in such situations, however, is not an absolute shortage of the pre cious metals but a lack of public faith in the paper promises issued by governments. ~ 3 Derived from U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D. C., 1960). Series Z 336, p.772.

Also available in standard clothbound volume, $2.50 io a new, attractive, low-priced paperback: $ .95 2.00 6.00 45.00 Single copy 3 copies 10 copies 100 copies t " . ~~~ ~::of MAINSPRING (279 pp., indexed) was published in 1947. Since Mr. Weaver's passing, this great book has been the property of FEE. Previous to this new paperback edition, 350, 000 copies have been pri nted. One large company's circulating library for em ployees required 150 volumes to meet the demand. Based on FEE's experience, MAl NSPR IN G tops all books as a starter for any aspiring student of liberty. Easy reading - indeed, exciting - the be ginner becomes so interested in freedom that he can hardly help pursuing the subject further. FEE's recommendation: Keep a good supply of the paperbacks on hand to present to any individual who shows a spark of interest in freedom. THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC.

IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK, 10533 The dignity of man requires that he must act on his own judgment and responsibility-with freedom and not under coercion. JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY, S.l.