Book Reviews

Well, as Chesterton once said, any stigma will do to beat a dogma. Hoover, through the "smear" cam paign instituted by Charles Michelson, the publicity director for a victory-hungry Democratic National Committee, had been iden tified in the public mind with what was then being trumpeted as the outmoded doctrine of Rugged Individualism, which made him Mr. Dogma personified. But if Hoover had not been a handy devil to beat about the ears (or horns), the "liberals" would have found someone else. The point is that the counter-dogma of Let-the State-Do-It was riding high. The Fabian campaign to put collectiv ism over on a one-~ite-at-a-time basis had done its work in the schools and the opinion magazines (The Nation, the New Republic), and, in the post-1929 atmosphere, no 636 proponent of classical liberalism could have stayed for long in the White House. Indeed, no less a person than Murray Rothbard, a shrewd analyst, has indicated that Herbert Hoover himself was so well aware of the power of the Fabian drift that he was intimidated by it. In his uncompromising way Rothbard has condemned Hoover for "anticipat ing" the New Deal. Hoover created the Farm Board to help circumvent the workings of the free market in agriculture. He also allowed the Reconstruction Finance Corpora tion to come into being. I remember Isabel Paterson's response to the creation of the RFC. "If J. R Morgan can have his dole," she said, "then nobody can keep the voters out of the trough. What's fair for one is fair for all:' And so it turned out after March of 1933. But Hoover, even though he had temporized with his own basic philosophy as the social pressures mounted, fought a rather gallant 1976 HERBERT HOOVER: PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 637 battle to save a traditional America.

Edgar Eugene Robinson and Vaughn Bornet, in a comprehensive accoun t of a sing Ie four-year White House term, Herbert Hoover: Presi dent of the United States (Hoover Institution Press, Stanford Univer sity, $12.95), present a purposeful individual doing the best he could under a snowballing succession of terrifying handicaps. This is a most lucid book, though its very fairness makes it unexcit ing. Hoover took office in 1929 with some clear-cut ideas of what a Presiden t should do. He wan ted to take the tariff out of politics. He wan ted to keep the government out of business. At the same time he proposed to be a Teddy Roosevelt conservationist in handling the wealth in the public domain. He hoped that farmers could be brought to solve their own problems with the help, but not the subsidy, of the government. And he had ideas of international cooperation that were calculated to keep the peace with out running the risk of entra pmen t through ill-considered economic embargoes or "sanctions:' A Party Divided Hoover believed in party govern ment' but the joker in the deck was that Republican "unity" was a mirage even in the Coolidge years.

The western insurgents -"sons of the wild jackass" -were always ready to follow Fighting Bob La Follette of Wisconsin or George Norris of Nebraska off the reserva tion. Hoover, a Californian, should have been able to get along with the westerners, but Senator Borah of Idaho had stereotyped Hoover as an "easterner" at heart. This was a travesty, for Hoover did not agree with the Pennsylvania Grundys on the tariff. And Hoover was sym pathetic with Borah's rural Ameri ca when it came to supporting Prohibition as long as it was the law of the land. Where Hoover disagreed with the Norrises and the Borahs was on the subject of compromising rural individualism by invoking State subsidies of all kinds. Hoover was willing to dam a river (as part of the public domain), but he was against using the State to market electric power. And he wanted no truck with export debentures to help farmers get rid of surplus crops.

In 1931 Hoover wrote to a friend that "if you could sit in the middle of the Government and see the tools with which we have to work and the disasters which confront us at all times in the use of these tools, you would not want us to extend the area of government but rather to keep the government as nearly as we can in its greatest function-the safeguarding of human rights." These were brave words. In 1931 they seemed anachronistic to a 638 THE FREEMAN October growing majority, and nothing that Hoover could do had the slightest effect on the political impasse that followed the mid-term 1930 elec tions. The Democrats had a majority in the House of Repre sentatives. In the Senate, the Re publicans still had a margin - but the sons of the wild jackass might just as well have been Democrats. From Bad to Worse Everything broke badly for Hoover. To get his theory of a "flexible" tariff considered he felt he had to temporize with the high Smoot-Hawley rates, which meant that flexibility would have to start from impossible peaks. He could have vetoed the final Smoot-Hawley, or "Grundy;' tariff bill, as hundreds of economists urged him to do. But he thought the times required a settlement of the issue. Robinson and Bornet let him off charitably by remarking that "henceforth, tariff policy was numbed by economic uncertainty and would inevitably come to be blamed for contributing to that uncertainty."

The tariff, which encouraged the world drift to economic nationalism, was a premonition of things to come. Hoover was right when he saw things getting better in the U.S. But after the stormy local American financial waters had been calmed by his declaration of an international debt moratorium, things kept breaking badly abroad. The "postwar" period ended when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. In spi te of everything, the economic indices in the Summer of 1932 foretold the breaking of depression. But the voters, bemused by a dreadful three years, couldn't catch up with reality in time for November of 1932. They wanted a diff eren t man with a more prag matic way of doing things, and they found him in Franklin D. Roosevelt. The joker here is that FDR found such Hoover-created or Hoover tolerated mechanisms as the Farm Board and the RFC made to his hand. In All Fairness In being fair to Hoover as a Presiden t, Robinson and Bornet are playing fair with the present.

Hoover's central philosophy is no longer the laughable thing it was when John Dewey was proclaiming that "President Hoover's constant appeal to self-reliance, enterprise, private initiative, is simply puerile; it is a voice from the grave in which human hopes and happiness are buried." Today, with inflation stran gling a dozen economies around the world, it is the constant appeal t9 socialism that is burying our hopes and happiness. So, Hoover is justified when our presen t Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon says, in a notable 1976 HERBERT HOOVER: PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 639 essay contributed to a book titled The Ethical Basis of Economic Freedom (American Viewpoint, Chapel Hill, N.C., $12.50), that our home-grown enemies of a free society "have never asked them sel ves why a country like the Soviet Union, with some of the largest, richest tracts of grainland in the world, but with a government owned-and-run agricultural system, cannot even feed its own people without turning to American far mers who own their own land, make their own economic decisions, and feed not only their own people, but millions of others as well."

Incidentally, Mr. Simon echoes Herbert Hoover when he says that a successful free enterprise requires a sound ethical base. Simon has a lovely quotation from Benjamin Franklin: "If the rascals knew the advantages of virtue, they would become honest men out of rascality." This would have pleased the Hoover who, in 1931, spoke of "the wrongs and cruel ties that take place through greed and selfish ness." After forty years of government promoted greed and selfishness that has outdone any recorded capitalistic iniquity, we are ready for Hoover's ideas of an ethical free market. It is good that Robinson and Bornet have brought the thirty first President of the U.S. out of limbo. ~PHILIP MAZZEI: -Jefferson:s "Zealous Whig" by Sister Margherita Marchione. (New York: American Institute of Italian Studies. 1975. H East 69th St., New York City 10021) 352 pp., $9.95 cloth, $5.95 paper. Reviewed by Haven Bradford Gow.

ONE OF THE UNSUNG HEROI~S of the American Revolution was Philip Mazzei, whose writings provided moral and intellectual sustenance to the colonists in their struggle for independence. Mazzei was born in Italy in 1730, received a degree in surgery, but decided to move to London, where he organized a firm devoted to the importation of cheese, wine, and olive oil. Here he met Thomas Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who pleaded with him to come to America. Mazzei headed for Virginia in 1773, and it was in Virginia that Mazzei, during 1774-1775, one year before the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. wrote a series of newspaper articles under the pseudonym "Furioso" for The Virginia Gazette. "All men are by nature equally free and indepen dent;' wrote Mazzei. "Such equality is necessary in order to create a free government. All men must be equal to each other in natural law." Like Jefferson, Mazzei was an ardent admirer of the French "philosophes," and shared their com mitment to equality. He was a fitm 640 THE FREEMAN October advocate of the belief that every citizen has an equal right to the benefits and honors of his society, and should not be depri ved of these benefits and privileges except for some crime. '1'0 deprive a citizen of his equal right to the privileges and honors of his society, contends Mazzei, is "an obvious injustice"

that should "horrify anyone con vinced that all men are born equally free and independent." Here he makes the pernicious and common error of confusing "born" and "cre ated." According to Mazzei, the Declara tion was based on the "great truth" that "all men are born equally free and independent"; but Mazzei's contention, it seems to me, is wide of the mark. For the Declaration does not say that "all men are born equally free and independent"; it affirms that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unaliena ble rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happi ness." One hesitates to criticize so well-intentioned a person as Mazzei, but one would like to ask him what he means by "equality" and by "equally"? What does he mean by "free and independent"? Are men "equally free and indepen dent" because they share a common nature? Or because they are "equal in the eyes of God"? And it is obviously untrue to say of people li ving under a dictator that they are all "born equally free and indepen dent."

Mazzei worked to eliminate every barrier that might prevent any person from participating fully in the life of his society. He opposed slavery, championed the rights of women, and contended against those who would limit voting to the rich. He argued, for example, that we often find good parents, who though owning no property, have acquired, through hard work and self-sacrifice, the means of educat ing their children, thus making them capable of holding leadership roles in society. Would it not be unjust, asks Mazzei, to deprive such persons of the right to vote? Would it not be unjust to exclude such persons from leadership positions in society? Indeed, observes Mazzei, riches and property often "dazzle and hide defects in those who possess them, while poverty encum bers him whose extraordinary merit is not publicized." America is deeply indebted to the intellectual contributions made by men of other nations, one of whom was Philip Mazzei, whose life and work is worthy of further study.

Sister Margherita Marchione deserves thanks for bringing to our attention an unsung hero of the young Republic. f) tt1e Freeman VOL. 26, NO. 11 • NOVEMBER 1976 Reflections on Amusement ParksAmong Other Closed Systems Clarence B. Carson 643 The customerstands and waits when the market is not allowed to functioneffectively. A New MessageVII. On Amendment XVII Jackson Pemberton 654 Words of courageand counselfrom the heartsof the FoundingFathersto theirchildrenin a troubled nation. The Proper Role of Government Ezra Taft Benson 661 Any attempt through government interventionto redistributethe material rewards of labor can only result in the eventual destructionof the productivebase of society. The Birth of an Idea Charles ~ Kettering 669 How radio emerged from an idea going back to 600 B.C. Is Our Economic Future Limited? Warren T. Brookes 671 An answerto doomsdaythinking-for it is ideas, not materials,that determineprogress.