Book Reviews

That set the Gablers off on a hunt. They looked into other history texts used in the Texas schools. It distres sed them to see George Washington downgraded and Patrick Henry 570 CtGiveme liberty or give me death") ignored. In three of the economics textbooks which Mel Gabler duti fully read there was no effort to present fairly the American free en terprise system. The questions in most of the economics texts seemed designed to ttsubtly move the think ing of the student to the left." Textbooks on Trial by James C. Hefley. Foreword by former Congressman John Conlan. Published by Victor Books, 1825 College Avenue, Wheaton, Ill. 60187, $6.95. The Gablers had played a part in the local Parent Teachers Associa tion, but it was ttritual" work. Be lieving that school personnel ttknew best," they had not questioned the TEXTBOOKS ON TRIAL 571 work of the Texas Education Agency in recommending appointees to the State Textbook Committee. When they asked about parents' rights in the matter of influencing textbook choices, they were told they might appear before an investigating committee in the State capital at Austin. Norma went to Austin and made a speech, her knees ~Jellied"

and her voice quavering. When son Jim, who had accompanied her, asked for the right to uspeak as a student" who had been aftlicted with the questionable texts, he caused a commotion. The legislator in charge of the hearing uttered a ~~Well, uh, we've never had a student speak before." Jim was put off for a week, but he returned and presented his analysis of a book that had left him with the impression that, in the American Revolution, uWashington did little more than Baron von Steuben or Benedict Arnold." Repor ters described Jim as a ~~gum chewing East Texas kid," and quoted liberally from his remarks. When the Gablers first took their cause to the investigating commit tee in Austin, they didn't know they were embarked on what was soon to become a lifetime crusade. There were so many school books to read, and nobody seemed to care very much that it took the tenacity of a leech to get early copies of the texts from the ttsystem" that was debating their acceptance for use. The job of questioning the assumptions gov erning the recommendations of texts involved a thousand subtleties.

The Supreme Court interpreta tion of the Constitution forbade the teaching of religion in the schools. How, then, to acquaint students with a national heritage that stems, in. good part, from the eighteenth century acceptance of the Christian ethos? The right of parents to over see the moral training of their chil dren would seem to be incontestable. This would justify parental objection to the use of pornography in the classroom. But when is literature pornographic, and when is it simply realistic? And what about Usituation ethics"? How is one to teach a stu dent to think if he is not to ask questions about the absolute and the relative? Darwin is part of scientific history, and evidence for evolution is written in the rocks. How to square this with the fact that there are gaps in the assumed evolution ary sequence? Even though the Biblical story of Genesis may be questioned in detail, the Cre ationists have not been routed. In deed, evolution may very well be the Creator's way. But how do you give the theory of Creation, whether it be special or evolutionary, an equal standing in school biology courses without mentioning God, which gets us back to the Supreme Court's rul ing that religious instruction in the schools is verboten.

572 THE FREEMAN September Fairness and Objectivity In pushing their crusade for better textbooks in the public schools, the Gablers have had to rely on good taste and common sense. They have combined humor and persistence. In telling their story in Textbooks on Trial, James C. Hefley has caught the essence of their personalities. They are neither dogmatic nor fanatical. They don't expect mira cles. They would be satisfied with a balance. Norma, speaking to Mel, put it this way: (CIt's our children, our tax money, and our government ... If textbooks can't teach Christian principles, then they shouldn't teach against Christianity." As for eco nomics, the Gablersthink it is again a question of fairness and objectiv ity. They expect the Keynesians to have their say, but when a single textbook, McGraw-HilI's Economics for Our Times (1963), came out with ((onepage on the free enterprise sys tem, six pages on socialism and Communism in which it defends lib eral socialism, and two chapters on Big Government," it seemed that ((objectivity" was getting the worst of it.

For years the evaluation of textbooks was an after-hours moon lighting proposition for Mel Gabler. Norma had to do the traveling and the public speaking. But now, with his early retirement from the oil business, Mel has turned to fqll time work with Norma in running their foundation, Educational Research Analysts. Their main business con tinues to be with Texas school boards and the Texas Commissioner of Education, but they do advisory work for concerned parents everywhere. During the controversy in West Virginia over textbooks they helped the embattled citizens of Kanawha County present their case for texts that would not ttdemean, encourage skepticism, or foster dis belief in the institutions of the United.States of America and in the Western civilization." Although the country may have gotten the im pression that a bunch of West Vir ginia hillbillies were trying to ttcen_ sor" good literature in the mountain schools, the truth is that the West Virginia parents had a good case.

Time-tested Iiterary classics had been crowded out in favor of books whose obscenities appalled har dened newspaper editors when they were asked to print some samples in a full-page advertisement. A Vexing Problem Philosophically, the Gablers might favor private schools over public. But in Texas, which is where the Gablers were fated to live, they were confronted with the fact that there are few private schools. For their own three sons the Gab lers had a choice: they could teach them at home, or they could fight what they call ttthe self-anointed 1978 TEXTBOOKS ON TRIAL 573 system of secular humanism" in the public schools. If, like the late Frank Meyer, they had chosen to teach their own children everything from reading to mathematics, they would probably have made a success of it. But this would not have solved the problem for other Texas parents. Although the state, in public edu cation, is not to be trusted, Mel and Norma Gabler think the pendulum is swinging their way. Says Norma, ttdisgusted parents" are calling everywhere for ttgoing back to the basics-learning skills, traditional math, phonics, morality, patriotism, history that is really history, science that is science, and fair play for free enterprise economics."

The question is how to sustain embattled parents in their Hdis gust." Mel and Norma Gabler are giving it a good try, but what they really need is a wide revival of pri vate schools to provide a competition that will force the public educators' hands. i WELFARE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WELFARE REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES by Martin Anderson (Hoover Press, Hoover Institution, Stan ford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305) 251 pages. $10.00 Reviewed by Henry Hazlitt A FEW OF us, over the last dozen years, have attacked the proposal of the guaranteed income and the Unegative income tax" in its many guises; but it has remained for Mar tin Anderson of the Hoover Institu tion to devote a whole book to the subject, and to do such a thorough job of theoretical and factual analy sis that it would seem hereafter im possible for anyone with a candid and open mind to read it and still take the guaranteed income serious ly. Dr. Anderson's book can now stand as the definitive refutation.

Anderson brings to his task a tri pIe advantage. He is first of all a first-rate academic economist. Sec ond, he was himself once a bureau crat. He was Special Assistant to President Nixon and a consultant to President Ford in the development of the Family Assistance Plan and the Income Supplementation Plan respectively. He knows how bureau crats work, propagandize, and com pile their data. And finally, what is so rare among 574 THE FREEMAN September academic economists, he writes clearly, simply, incisively and with flavor. Frequent sentences relieve the tension of following his close analysis, such as: ((In the sea of dark gray and blue that surrounded Nix on, Moynihan, in his cream-colored suit and red bow tie, gleamed like a playful porpoise." The Arguments Assembled and Fully Documented Anderson goes about demonstrat ing his case carefully and systemati cally. Each of his eight· chapters is preceded by a like-numbered ((thesis," which he then proceeds to demonstrate in almost Euclidian fashion.

His first thesis is that the ((war on poverty" that began in 1964 has been won; that the growth of jobs and income, combined with an ex plosive increase in government spending for welfare and income transfer programs, has virtually eliminated poverty in the United States. In showing this, he is obliged to refute the influential findings of the Bureau of the Census that in spite of the hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at the poverty prob lem, there were 26 million persons, or 12 percent of the population, still below the poverty level in 1975 almost as many as when the «war on poverty" began. With the help of his own analysis, and of expert testi mony, Anderson shows that the Census estimates are wildly inaccurate one reason among others being that the Census estimates completely ig nore transfers in kind. ((People are not even asked," he writes, ((if they received food stamps, live in public housing, or are eligible for Medicaid." Over $40 billion a year, Anderson points out, is spent by the federal government alone on such programs.

His second thesis is that the vir tual elimination of poverty has had costly side effects-the most impor tant of which has been the almost complete destruction of work incen tives for the poor on welfare. In many cases families make almost no financial gain when the breadwin ner works instead of staying on wel fare. To cite a single instance, a Tennessee father who is eligible for food stamps and the unemployment insurance maximum gains only $4 a week by taking a part-time job pay ing $75 a week. As even the Joint Economic Committee of Congress pointed out in 1972, current gov ernment programs discourage work by imposing ((the equivalent of con fiscatory tax rates" on the resump tion of work. Spending Cuts Advocated Anderson's third thesis, based on various opinion polls, is that the overwhelming majority of Ameri cans favor welfare programs for those who cannot care for them1978 WELFARE: POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REFORM 575 selves, while at the same time favor ing large cuts in welfare spending because of their strong belief that many welfare recipients are cheat ing. A guaranteed income is flatly opposed by a two-to-one margin.

His fourth thesis is that the clamor for radical welfare ((reform" comes essentially from a small group of committed ideologues who want to institute a guaranteed in come under the guise of welfare re form. His fifth thesis is that the institu tion of a guaranteed income will cause a substantial reduction perhaps as much as 50 percent-in the work effort of low-income work ers, and that such a massive with drawal from the work force would have the most profound social and economic consequences. His esti mate of this withdrawal from work is based not only on theoretical con siderations, but on what happened historically (in the Speenhamland period of 1795 to 1834 in England, for example), and what various fac tual studies show has already been happening today. His sixth thesis is that any vari ety of a guaranteed income is politi cally impossible; that no radical wel fare reform plan can be devised that will simultaneously yield minimum levels of welfare benefits, financial incentives to work, and an overall cost to the taxpayers that are politi cally acceptable. Anderson's elegant demonstration that when any two of these three basic elements of radical welfare reform are set at politically acceptable levels, the remaining element becomes unacceptable, is perhaps his most original contribu tion in this book.

A Debatable Point His seventh thesis is that practi cal welfare reform demands that ((we build on what we have" -that we reaffirm our commitment to the philosophical approach of giving aid only to those who cannot help them selves, while abandoning any thoughts of radical welfare reform plans that will guarantee incomes. This is the only thesis in Anderson's book about which this reviewer would have some reservations. I agree entirely that we should aban don the ((guaranteed income"-the unconscionable idea that all citizens have the right to be supported by the government, regardless of any effort they mayor may not make to sup port themselves. But I think that Dr. Anderson neglects or underesti mates the grave· problems we have already created for ourselves by the mixed, haphazard, duplicative, and extravagantly costly relief system we have now built up. Anderson's final thesis deals with President Carter's welfare reform plan, which he first presented in May of 1977, accompanied by state ments that it would add only $2.8 576 THE FREEMAN billion to previous welfare costs.

Anderson finds that the program would add nearly 22 million more Americans to the welfare rolls (mak ing the ultimate total some 66 mil lion); that the federal cost of welfare would actually increase by about $20 billion a year, and that most of that added money would go to families with incomes above the poverty level. It would act as a seri ous disincentive to work. Though presented as a cCsimplification,;' it would be far more complex, require more welfare workers, and be more difficult to administer than the cur rent welfare system. CCIt is a potential revolution of great magnitude that could result in social tragedy." In an appendix Dr. Anderson lists and spells out in detail no fewer than ninety-one social welfare pro grams operating in 1974. Nobody knows exactly how many more have since been added. I have been able to give only the sketchiest outline of the wealth of theoretical and factual analysis to be found in this book. But if one conclusion emerges above all others, it is that would-be reforIl)ers must abandon completely their search for any utopian solution to welfare problems. , HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS $3.00 Order from: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC.

IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 the Freeman VOL. 28, NO. 10 • OCTOBER 1978 How to Break up OPEC Carlos Henkel and Robert Poole, Jr. 579 The availability of natural gas in the U.S. depends on a natural (market) price. How Safe Is Your Bank? Hans F. Sennholz 589 Some of the major banks face serious problems of malinvestment as inflation rages. World in the Grip of an Idea 22. The United States: A Bemused People Clarence B. Carson 593 The deliberate breakdown of social standards and norms leaves the individual confused. Liberty for Older Americans Perry E. Gresham 603 The opportunity to grow gains importance as one grows older. A Decision Against Meritorious Achievement Anne Wortham 611 Special favors can hurt, as do laws which discriminate against us. The Ideology of Underdevelopment Manuel F. Ayau 616 If a false ideology is the problem, explore the case for freedom at the highest intellectual level.