Chapter I - Our Present Overload of Government

[ I ] Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation Meantime, as we are a self-governing people, the work involved in thus choosing our own governors, the whole business of elections, is supposed to be the voluntary, unpaid job of good citizens; and no provi sion whatever is made, by constitution or statute, to pay even the living expenses of many thousands of political workers, without whose constant attention most of our minor elections would be positive jokes, for lack of votes and voters. Well-those workers don't starve! They merely turn to those whom they elect to office for reward; and they get it, as follows: First. From campaign funds, collected before election. Second. From salaries of office, or percentages thereon. Third. From contract graft on government purchases. Fourth. From legislative graft. Fifth. From blackmail graft. Sixth. From protection of vice and crime graft. The first two sources of reward are legitimate enough in principle; but, if also legitimate in amount, are insufficient to pay both governmental and poli tical workers. The last four sources thus become perhaps not the mainstay, but at least the backstay of politics. Meantime, the more government there is and the more elections there are, the more money there is in handling both. Here, then, in a nutshell, is very nearly the whole problem of government of, by, and for the people, viz., how to cut the various kinds of graft out of politics.

Better stated, the problem is how to make honest administration profitable, both in reputation and cash, as it ought to be, to those who run govern ment; while making honest politics profitable, as [ 2 ] Our Present Overload of Government they should be, in reputation, but not in money, to those who run elections. Both questions, let me say once more, are but questions of good political engineering; and fortunately neither seems to me insoluble. Broadly speaking, the necessary, vital, sovereign, and primary functions of government are limited to the making and enforcement of peace and law-to protection of life, liberty, and property from foreign or domestic violence; while its secondary, merely cooperative functions, not vital, but known by long experience to be advisable, include the establishment of standard moneys, weights and measures, of public works and service--such as roads, bridges, water supply, mails, and certain other utilities-of educa tion, sanitation, recreation, poor relief, and the foster ing of trade, art, and science.

In this secondary group of merely advisable func tions lies most of the modem mischief of too much government; in the sixth category aforesaid, which we will now review . For to mere fostering of in dustries and utilities our collectivists, from tempera mental jealousy of the rich, and for supposed beneht of the poor, do not hesitate to add their govern mental ownership· and operation at public risk, with all the enormous bureaucracy involved. Already it would take several books as large as this to make a complete survey of our superfluous national, state, and municipal activities. I will, therefore, cite but a few conspicuous examples to prove my rather sweeping assertions, and will leave the reader to pick up a hundred more on every hand for himself; commencing with the campaign of government against Big Business, that ran so fast and far before the Great War.