On Using the Government; R. Bradford

He has mellowed considerably. As we exchanged ideas recently he was distressed about the na tion's deteriorating financial situ ation. Rather surprisingly, he in veighed against "spending billions as though they were millions"; and he expressed great concern about the inevitably disastrous re sults of long-continued deficit financing. But he still looks back nostal gically to the events of the Nine teen Thirties; and I suspect he secretly feels that he participated in a kind of sanctified crusade. Suddenly, after a thoughtful siMr. Bradford is well known as a writer, speak er, and business organization consultant. He now lives in Ocala, Florida. 24 " theGovernment lence, he made a casual remark (or made it casually) that slowly dawned on me as significant, and led finally to the writing of these paragraphs. "We were terribly excited in those days," he said, "about mak ing America great. We thought nothing of long hours or hard work. We welcomed ideas, and we used government as I think it ought to be used."

They used government as they thought it ought to be used! He was not being facetious, and certainly no irony was intended. It was a simple statement of an operating principle or method that required no justification, and that apparently aroused no question in his mind. He and many of his political as sociates of the New Deal era were men and women of humanity and good intention. They had lived through several years of economic 1974 ON "USING" THg 'GOVERNMENT 25 depression. It was not limited to America but was a world. catas trophe. It was not as bad as they liked to paint it, but it was bad enough in all conscience, and there was hardship and suffering along with business failures and bank ruptcies. Something was wrong, they felt, with a politico-economic system in which such a disaster could occur. They wanted to do something about it. They wanted to see a better and more stable society, in which people could all be safe and happy.

And so they decided to have the government take charge of all their good intentions. They would "use" the government in the way they thought it ought to be used which, though some oJ them. did not realize it, was as a coercive agency to compel everybody to ac cept, be governed by, and pay for their particular ideas for insuring economic stability, spreading wealth, curbing greed, abolishing poverty, and generally improving the lot of mankind. Many Demands That all this could be done by "using the government as it ought to be used" they never doubted. That others were intent on "us ing" the government for different and often opposing ends did not deter them. The idea was strong and constant in the Washington of that era. I once heard one of their number, who happened also to be a noted labor leader, express the same idea with respect to his program. "I look upon govern ment," he said, "simply as a mech anism for getting things done."

While he was generally sympa thetic to the wide-ranging pro gram of theN ew Dealers, the things he especially wanted to get done by force of governmental ac tion were primarily pieces of leg islation that favored the aspira tions of union leaders. And he was not alone in his self-centered "use" of government. There were others in Washington who wanted to use the government as they thought it ought to be used namely, for their own interest and benefit and that of their friends or constituents. They included rep resentatives of particular lines of business or industry, various trade associations, community develop ment federations, certain kinds of state and regional organizations a small army of special pleaders, as there always had been. But for the time being the administration forces were in control. Because of a kind of nationwide intellectual paralysis, they had first call on the "use" of government.

And so the country entered the long period of political and eco nomic tinkering that came to be known as the New Deal in capital 26 THE FREEMAN January letters - so named because of a poker player's phrase in the ac ceptance speech of their Presiden tial nominee, in which he called for a "new deal" for the Ameri can people. The New DealBy Men of "Vision" Soon Washington was thronged with those who were intent on "saving the country." Many of them, like myoId friend, were also concerned, as they expressed it, with making America "great" - a purpose that ignored the fact that our country was already great, very great indeed, in the eyes of the whole world, and in the fervent belief of most Ameri cans. Experts crowded the corri dors-economists, sociologists, spe cialists on urban problems, ditto on rural conditions,'financial ana lysts, tax·· counselors, market men - you name it. The Academy, especially, was heavily represented. Theory was at a premium; experience was dis counted. Men of experience, it was alleged, had "got us into this mess." It was up to men of theory and academic standing (and of course "social vision") to get us out of it. New ideas were, indeed, welcomed, as myoId friend as serted, though most of them turned out to be not new at all, but very old. Most anybody could get a hearing, especially if he had something radical to propose.

Very shortly, beginning with the famed One Hundred Days, a spate of legislation was ground out by a Congress that had virtually abdi cated its power to originate law. Some of it was regulatory legis lation that was long overdue. Much of it was costly experimen tal tinkering. There was an Act to help Agriculture. Quite simply, it subsidized farm operations at the expense of the rest of society, with the two basic provisions that the government would guarantee the farmers a certain price for their produce, and that it would actually pay them for holding a portion of their land out of culti vation in order to create artificial shortages and keep up prices. Per haps the climactic absurdity was reached when farmers were re quired to kill a certain percentage of their little pigs, or plow under a specified number of cotton rows. (Quite recently we have wit nessed a throwback to those days in the spectacle of poultry raisers destroying thousands of baby chicks because a governmentally controlled grain market and ceil ings on retail prices made it im possible to bring the chicks to table size without actual loss to the grower.) There was also an industrial re covery Act, so called. It was sup1974 ON "USING" TH:E GOVERNMENT 27 posed to restore health to a falter ing economy. Among other meas ures, it. pifQvided a program under which peop~e: engaged in the same line of business or industry could organize under government sanc tion". and by the adoption of what were called "Codes'" could agree on prices, credit, production and other matters, all in defiance of long-established law, and certain ly in contravention of the public interest.

To catalogue and examine all that was undertaken would fill a book. Indeed, it has filled many books already. Some of it has gone by the board because it was de clared unconstitutional. Some of it has been merged into later pro grams. But much remains, not ably parts of the farm subsidy program, and an elaborate system of old age pensions and medical benefits. These latter have sur vived and been expanded under the semantically "good" name of Social Security. It is not my purpose to attempt a detailed analysis of all this vast program. Two points, however, should be made: First, that this was not the first time (nor will it, in all probability, be the last) that men have "used government as they thought it ought to be used." And second, that such well-meant efforts result in the creation of self-perpetuating bureaucracies, and in keeping expensive and re strictive programs going long after the need for them, real or ::fancied, is past, or their failure has been demonstrated.

Some Ancient Recipes As for newness or modernity, the "codification" of industry is at least as old as the European Guild system of the Middle Ages. The compulsory old-age pension system was instituted in Prussia by Bismarck about a hundred years ago, but the idea was not new, even then. And controlling or attempting to control agricul tural production and prices by the destruction of growing crops goes back at least as far as the Roman Emperor Domitian during the first century after Christ. As for bureaucratic self-per petuation, Washington is full (and so, I suppose, are most State capi tals) of agencies whose original purp.ose has been well-nigh for gotten. But try to get one of them discontinued! Woe betide the con scientious official who would at tempt such sacrilege! At once an indignant howl ascends to heaven. A pressure group is formed, clear back to the grass roots. Congress men are besieged with letters, tel egrams, phone calls and delega tions. The heat is applied to their important supporters back home.

The deprivation syndrome also 28 THE FREEMAN January comes into play. If the bureau was originally started to provide some sort of "benefit" (financial or otherwise) to segments of the pop ulation, then no matter how waste ful, inefficient, or no-Ionger-need ed it may prove to be - hands off! It has become a sacred cow - not only to its scattered beneficiaries, but to its small army of employ ees. To abolish it would be to de prive worthy people of their rights, and their employment. Shame on you for trying to do such a cruel thing! And this sort of reaction is not limited to small-fry recipients of governmental aid or employment. It is practiced equally by the scheming housewife who skips from job to job in order to collect so-called unemployment benefits during the idle periods, and the big corporation executive who uses more sophisticated methods of see ing to it that his company retains its full share of the Washington favors. Colleges, universities, states, regions, big business, little business, labor, merchants, bank ers, manufacturers, teachers powerful and influential sections of the society are equally vocal, energetic, resourceful andpersua sive in protecting their slice of the Federal pie. They are convinced and dedicated disciples of using the government - as they think it ought to be used.

A Social Disease So. much for what may be called the pragmatic or practical or bread-and-butter aspects of "us ing" the government. But the mat ter goes far deeper. These atti tudes are surface things - symp toms of the inner malaise that can affect a government and its people when it has ceased to be a govern ment and become a mere collec tion and disbursement agency for the enhancement of privilege and the distribution of largesse. When such a state is reached, the gov ernment, if it survives at all, emerges either as a tyranny or as a collectivist regime. In either case, the general economy ulti mately stagnates, initiative is stifled, and freedom, as men have known it and died for it, perishes. In either case, it is a dream gone bankrupt. What, after all, is government? It is a device created or evolved by men to protect them in their in herent or acquired rights, and to insure their liberty. A good state ment of the purpose of any gov ernment in an advanced stage of society is to be found in the Pre amble to the Constitution of the United States. "To form a more perfect union, establish justice, in sure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to our1974 ON "USING" TH:E~ 'GOVERNMENT 29 selves and our posterity." In a more primitive society it might have been expressed in simpler terms: "We must organize to keep our several jealous tribes in order, see that everybody gets a fair deal in his relations with others, take care that criminally-minded peo ple can't rob us and destroy our property, have some men specially trained to repel our enemies if they attack us, see to it tha t everybody has a fair chance to make a Iiving and get ahead in the world, and fix things so that our children will be free."

In post-Colonial America more than a decade of experience and experiment had demonstrated the need for a strong central govern ment. The old Articles of Con federation simply would not suf fice.Thirteen separate, jealous, and often mutually antagonistic States loosely federated was not the answer .to the question of American survival. The problem was, how to attain the degree of unification· that would insure sta bility· ,and freedom without get ting eaught in the toils ofa cen tralism that would invite tyranny. Hence the long thirteen years of delay; hence the protracted de bate; hence the elaborate precau tions ·aga'instconcentrated .. power; :hence the three great divisions of government; hence the so-called ,checks .and balances. There was a notable intellectual content in the political leadership of that time. They were well grounded in a kind of empirical idealism. Those who hammered out the Constitution were men of education and vision, heavily se'a soned with uncommon common sense. To think of them as un tutored colonials is to misunder stand completely the kind of life and experience that had molded them. Most of them were highly sophisticated, well educated men, thoroughly grounded in Latin and Greek, careful students of classi cal literature, and especially familiar with the writings of such philo$ophers as the Baron Charles de Montesquieu .and John Locke, and such legal savants as the great b William Blackstone.

On the Shoulders of Giants From Blackstone they derived an understanding of the nature and purpose of government and law. From Montesquieu they learned the principle of a separa tion of governmental powers, re membering that the wise French man, himself a magistrate, ·had written: "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can ,be no liberty." From Locke they in herited the idea of "natural rights" (which he said consisted 30 THE FREEMAN January of life, liberty and property) and the concept of the "social con tract" - i.e., government. From all of them and others, as well as from their own abundant common sense, they had developed the con viction that the state was the ser vant of the people, and not the other way around. They also were committed to the idea of a duality, or diffusion, of power; and so they were careful to provide for, and reserve certain rights and powers to the governments of the several states. Through all their delibera tions and decisions ran a salutary fear of too much, too powerful, and too concentrated government.

They were careful, therefore, to hedge each branch of government about with definite restrictions upon the nature and extent of the power it should exercise. The purpose was to provide the authority and strength needed to protect the nation against aggres sion from without, to guard against civil disorders within, and to make citizens secure in their civil and property rights. And the ideal constantly aimed at was to do this with the minimum of ma chinery - in short, to avoid the burden, and the danger, of too much government. So what happened? Perhaps the best answer to that question is to be found in one simple but appal ling statistic: The number of civilians now employed by our govern ment is TWO MILLION, EIGHT HU~DRED AND NINETEEN THOUSAND, SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE! I have put the word "civilian" in italics to empha~ize that we are not now talking about soldiers, sailors, marines and air force per sonnel. They are something else, and a problem in themselves. We are here considering only those employees who are hired to run the innumerable departments, bu reaus, commissions, committees, boards and other agencies that have resulted from the determina tion of the American people to "use" the government.

The Executive Branch This fantastic bureaucratic army, .it should be noted, is almost entirely attached to the Executive branch of the government - nat urally enough, because that is where the action is. The Legisla tive branch merely orders things done by passing a law and voting an appropriation. The Judicial branch merely says whether you can or can't do it under the Con stitution. It is up to the Execu tive, or Administrative, branch to do the job. And so we find that the Legislative branch (both houses of Congress) employs only 33,688 people aside from Congress men and Senators. The Judicial 1974 ON "USING" TH]~ GOVERNMENT 31 branch is still more modest in its demands for help. It employs a relatively insignificant army of only 8,243. (Only! That slight quake you felt just then was John Marshall turning over in his grave.) So that leaves the snug little total for the Executive branch of 2,769,848 employees.

In any overview of the govern ment one starts out, of course, with the great Departments, such as State, Defense, Commerce, Jus tice and the rest, numbering now eleven, with Defense being actu ally a kind of umbrella department covering the operations of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Each Department has its duties, defined by law originally and enlarged by the zeal and ingenuity of its de voted bureaucrat~. 'And this is not said critically of them. Many are ,devoted public servants, doing the job expected of them; but they would be less than human if they did not work to expand the area of action in which their lot is cast.) The names of these great Departments indicate generally the job each was created to do: Commerce - obvious; Labor ditto; Treasury - our finances; and so on. But then we come to the so called Independent Agencies. These have been set up from time to time, occasionally to meet a recognizable need, often as a resuIt of pressure-group activities.

They are all, of course, lodged in the Executive branch. What are they? I' can't possibly even list them in an article of this compass; and besides, if I did you probably wouldn't believe me! I suggest, instead, that you get a copy of the United States Government Organ ization Manual for 1972-73. It is published by the government itself and is available for $3.00 from the Superintendent of I!ocuments, Government Printing Office, Washington. It is a well organized documentation; and it has 710 pages; so in sheer bulk you will get your money's worth. The section on Independent Agencies begins o'n page 372 and runs through page 538-166 pages of rather small type just to nime and describe these Agencies, of which there are now 61. One of them is the General Services Ad ministration, whose job is to pro vide a system for the manage ment of government property and records, including the construc tion and operation of buildings, procurement and distribution of supplies, utilization and disposal of property, stockpiling of stra tegic materials, and so on. In addi tion to its Washington establish ment, it h{ts ten regional offices and operates Information Centers in 35 cities; and it requires five pages of the book just to list the 32 THE FREEMAN January Administrators, Deputy Adminis trators, Directors of Proj ects, and other officials.

So what? Is this written to be little or discredit the General Ser vices? Not at all. For all I know it is manned by very fine men and women. So' far as I am aware, it is a necessary agency, in view of all those Federal buildings and other property. Given the existing set-up, it probably could not be dispensed with. And if that be true, it simply serves to support the theme and purpose of this article, which is not to attack agencies or individuals, but to point out the size, complexity and enormous cost that have resulted from the determination of people to "use. the government as they believe it ought to be used." A Case in Point On my desk as I write is a re cent issue of my home town news paper. In the "Letters" section, Mr. Brent Hall, Athletic Director of one of our high schools, writes: "I am angry and more than a Iittle scared." Why? Well, he says he is angry "because the U. S. Senate will soon vote on S-2365, a bill which, if passed, would create a Federal Board with practically un limited power over high school and college athletics."

He ~oes on to assert that high school and college athletics are two of the most self-policed and regulated institutions in our so ciety, and he adds: "It is a crime that our political system has be come so overloaded with people who think they know what is best for society without consulting those whom they wish to regulate. The whole point of 'competition in a free society is that it is by choice and not by edict of govern ment." He is scared, he adds, be cause he fears the Bill may pass by default. His fear and his anger are both justified; but he should not have been surprised - and I am sure he was not. An effort to put high school and college athletics under Federal control and reguiation is a logical extension of what has been going on in other areas for many years. I have not seen the Senate Bill in question, and can only guess at all its provisions; but if it passes we can be sure of two things: First, the Washing ton Bureaucracy will be enlarged to include another Bureau or Agency or Commission. Just how big it will be is anybody's guess; but there are over 2600 colleges in this country, and about 14,700 high schools with athletic activi ties; so with some 17,300 athletic programs to monitor and direct, an extensive and costly Bureau will be required. But second, and more important, volunteerism, the 1974 ON "USING" THE GOVERNMENT 33 principle of local self-regulation, will have been dealt another blow.

And the blow will have been ad ministered at the vulnerable high school and college level, where the minds and attitudes of young peo ple are being formed. Good Intentions It is a merry whirl, but a dis astrous one, this business of "using" the government. And per haps its grimmest irony is that it is seldom evil in purpose. On the contrary, it usually springs from good social and humani tar ian motives. The intent is not to weaken or destroy the govern ment, but to help some element of society - the poor, the handi capped, the under-educated; the small industry so it can thrive and get to be large; the large indus try so it can meet foreign com petition, pay dividends, and fur nish employment; young people so they may have a better chance in life; old people so they may face age without penury; farmers so they may be on a par with other industry; education so people may better cope with life ... and so on and on. Nobody wants to inj ure the government. They just want to "use" it - for the greater glory.

And so, in addition to the 11 great Departments, we have the 61 Independent Agencies and 70 Selected Boards, Committees and Commissions. And at latest count, and not including the Armed Ser vices, we have, as we have seen, nearly three million people work ing in those departments and agencies. When you add to these the number of people working for State and local governments, in clude those in the armed services, and count in the more than thirty one million who are now on Social Security, we find that there are in round numbers sixty-two million Americans who are now receiving regular monthly checks from gov ernment. One result of all this is that for years now we have had annual budget deficits of from ten to twenty billion dollars; tpat our na tional debt has been jswollen to over $400 billion; that, nobody in authority has made any serious effort to pay anything on that debt; and that-inevi-tablywe have experienced a constant and ruin ous destruction of the value of our money. Not only has this created an intolerable living-cost burden for the average citizen; on the in ternational plane it has weakened the prestige and influence of our country among the powers of the world.

The other result, which is even more disastrous in terms of real welfare and security, is this: that as a people we seem to have reached the point where we no 34 THE FREEMAN January longer see any alternative. We ac cept the "use" of government, and demand more; so much so that in all the clamor of recent months about the cost of food and other life necessities, almost nobody ever mentions the debt and its effects, or seems to see the need for gov ernmental economy. Instead, the well-nigh universal cry has been for more government action: more cost-of-living studies, more wage and price freezes, more controls on the market - in short, for the application of additional expensive and ineffectual adhesive plas ters instead of the surgery that is needed! The simple remedy that nobody mentions can be briefly stated: stop the annual deficits; reduce the size of government; abandon in flationary monetary policies; free the market and let prices find their level.

Will this ever be tried? Or will well-meaning zealots continue to demand that the government be used as they think it ought to be used? ~ IDEAS ON ~ LIBERTY Power Abused How MANY times throughout history this same mistake has been made: Power given to someone who is trusted; then another, to whom the people would never have given power, inherits that which was given to a trusted one. You can guess what happened. Joseph died. An Egyptian in herited the power that had been Joseph's. He didn't assume any power that had not been in the hands of the kind and compassion ate Joseph. The only difference was that he used it differently. He used it to make of the Israelites the abject slaves described in the Bible. Today we have empowered people in our own government to do things for us without realizing the fearful extent of that power. We don't yet realize it because the pe9ple who now hold it have generally not chosen to exercise it in all the awfulness implicit in it. When they do, we will wonder how we could ever have been foolish enough to have given that power to anyone.

From the article "Two Ways to Slavery" by James M. Rogers in Essays on Liberty, Vol. Ill, Foundation for Economic Education, lrvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.