Chapter XIII - General Conclusion

There is little in democratic institutions to change human nature, little to alter human selfishness and ambition; little to enlarge human mentality. The worldwide and age-old experience of humanity con stantly repeats the same lesson: that man should not attempt too much! All organic life repeats the same old cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decay and death; with the significant variant, that· overgrowth invariably begets structural weakness, hastens dis integration, and brings existence to premature end. No patriot wishes a premature end of his country. Let me sum up by once more saying that the business of modern government, with its numerous indispensable activities, must be, at the very best, so complex as to overtax the mentality and physical powers ofthe human beings who must constitute it. All that democracy can do, in self-preservation, is to minimize the activities of government and reduce them to their very lowest terms.

This, however, is but the logical expression of that utmost liberty of the individual, which lies at the [ 391 ] Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation very foundation of democracy. Least government must mean greatest liberty. Here in America, as in Europe, popular government is the resultant of two great opposing currents of thought-radical and con servative; the former discontented with, and the latter believing in, things as they are. In the long run, the conservatives have, and probably always will have, the best of it; because things as they are have already survived the test of time; and have actually proved themselves to be in accordance with natural law and human nature-otherwise they would not persist. Government itself is one of those things that are; and its continued existence has demonstrated throughout all history that it is a necessary factor in social life. Nevertheless, it is but a very small part thereof; and the smaller it is the better. Most of us come but rarely· in conscious contact with government; the greater part of our lives being spent in our daily vocations and private concerns. We are not one hundredth part as con scious of it as of the clothes we carelessly wear and the air we heedlessly breathe; and all that most of us ask of government is that it shall unobtrusively enable us to live, and work, and save, and enjoy, in peace and quietness.

Such, however, is seldom the limit of the intent of those who govern, whether in the form of democ racy or autocracy. The love of place and power, and the love of money, always will inspire those who govern to enlarge their own bailiwick, complicate government function, and swell taxation. Such is markedly the case in America to-day. Not only our Socialist politicians, but our Republicans and Demo crats as well, vie with each other in overloading free government with bureaucracy and taxation; while the masses of our people are as yet confused by the [ 392 ] General Conclusions collectivist projects, and proriIises of all the parties. Nevertheless, we are beginning to rebel against class coercion and excessive taxation. Writers here and there are pointing out the decadence of the two great parties in virility and principle and their substantial identity of political purpose; which last seems to be simply to seize government, to enlarge government, and to multiply taxes.

As the writers referred to convincingly point out, the time is ripe for the appearance of a new political party. I, for one, devoutly hope that the popular disgust with all three of the great existing parties, Republican, Democratic, and Socialist, in these United States will beget a new and enduring majority whose simple and eternal slogan shall be "Least Government, Least Taxation; Greatest Liberty, Greatest Prosperity." For I love my country and its free institutions; and would fain have them endure for more thousands of years than history yet records of all the empires of the past. The simpler they are, the longer they are likely to last. Their greatest danger is from the demagogue and his gospel of envy and jealousy of the rich; his eternal preachment that numbers and muscle must be arrayed against brains, instead of using them and rewarding them. Some cynic has said "democracy is the most monstrous of all jokes., it is power without thought." , But, thank God, most of us Americans are not so dense or so petty as to be afraid or jealous· of trusting with power the few among our number who show themselves able to think and do great things, or even those who inherit great opportunity and tradition from .able and industrious parents. It is natural and right, we admit, for a man to work and save for his children. Indeed it· is well for us all that the few [ 393] Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation who can and will save should do so. There are none too many of them. If my neighbor can do greater service for the community than I can, and earn far more in return than I can, God bless him!

Let me not be so contemptible as to stand in his way. Let him grow rich, and enlarge his works, and pay more poor men for honest toil. He does more for them than I, and deserves greater reward than mine. Nor do thinking Americans believe in "power with out thought." If my neighbor shows ability to build and manage great private business, let him by my free election be my public representative, to build and manage the greater public business that is mine and his as well. Give him and men like him legisla tive power, concentrate it in few and able hands. Load full responsibility also on the same broad shoulders, able to bear; with most to lose when held responsible. In short, use human nature in politics instead of trying to alter it; remembering that men are the material of government. Do not use that material if poor, nor overstrain it if good; and waste neither material nor motion not needed for the work in hand.

Such is the simple law of good engineering. As for governments, they are merely the banks that retain, and the bridges that cross, or the boats that float on, the great streams of national life and industry. The better they conform to natural flow, the less they cross or divert it, the longer they last. Per contra, the more tortuous their course, the. greater their resistance to the current, the faster and more deadly the erosion that ensues. If dams are built and spill ways not provided, overflow and burst barriers and devastation is inevitable. Once more let me plead for good political engineering. As this book goes.to press come out the "Letters [ 3941 GeneralConclusions of a High Minded Man," the late Franklin K. Lane; the most illuminating review or moving picture of contemporary American political thought that I, at least, have been so fortunate as to see. All through the book shows the gold of unselfish idealism, the copper of common sense, and the steel of courage.

At first, during his early professional career as publisher, lawyer, and politician-in the best sense shows also that inexperience in big business, that unfamiliarity with the laws and the limitations of trade, which has led so many of our purely political leaders astray-men like Roosevelt and, to give him the benefit of every doubt, Woodrow Wilson. Lane was a Democrat, a California Progressive, a friend of Organized Labor in his day as newspaper publisher. For a few years he was active in California local poli tics; then was Interstate Commerce Commissioner under Roosevelt; and finally Secretary of the Interior under Wilson. He reflects the mental color of his crowd. As late as 1909 he writes of the Money Power as prone to bring on panic and depression for Wall Street selfish benefit; although that same year his growing experience as I.C.C. Commissioner leads him to call railroad rate-fixing a "matter of politics,"

and to say that Courts,. knowing nothing about rail rates, should pass merely on their constitution,ality, and leave their economics to "experienced men." By I 91 I, he writes of the vain struggle with express rates, to which with a large corps of assistants he had given "some year or two of more or less pro fane contemplation" -seeking a way out of· the in extricable maze of figures presented by the express companies, but doubting whether he will find one before the Infinite Hand shall cut the cord of life. Meantime, he reflects that our people are likely to come to use the machine called Government as a [ 3951 Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation cooperative institution; holding nothing political to be sacred, except as it expresses general sentiment and proves workable. "If we have," he says, "made tremendous fortunes out of privileges granted by the whole people, we can correct this by change of law."

In 1912, less radical, he calls democracy an experi ment to find more equitable distribution of wealth, "without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual capacity and imagination." By 1913 he writes with some discouragement of the poor results of reclamation work done by his own Department; and deprecates the Government's "gold bricking" the settler on reclaimed lands. In 1917, his anxiety to win the war seems to affect his judgment, and he proposes to the President to establish the "Closed Shop" throughout· all industry, pending the war; also a method for nursing into life the patriotism of the union leaders, which was dying of strike fever, by frequent conference ,with them which course would have suited Mr. Gompers down to the ground. After that, throughout the strain of the conflict, he grows more and more conscious of the weakness of collectivism, of government ownership and operation, of bureaucracy. In his notes· on Cabinet Meetings and letters to Ambassa dor Page, in 1918, he rages at six months wasted in merely trying to let a contract for a cyanide plant; at stupid delay in settling to which department war-gas produc;tion should belong; at demagogic handling of Labor by the Shipping Board and the Railway Ad ministration; at a Hoover list of 800 cars left un heeded on McAdoo's desk for a week while Europe was crying for food. "Politics, politics, curse of the country," he groans; "the thing that democracy is short on is foresight."

By July he loses faith in Collective Bargaining. [396 ] General Conclusions "Every man in an industry ought to be tie<;l up in some way, by profit-sharing or stock-owning arrange ments; and we should get as large a proportion of our people on small farms as possible. . . . The man who has something is the man that will save the country. . .. The one thing that the Bolsheviks do not understand is that the world is not divided be tween Capital and Labor; but there is a great class unrepresented in these two divisions, the managing class that furnishes brains and direction. No Social isticscheme provides for the selection and reward of these men." By September, 1918, he decides, "I am against a standardized world; an ordered Prussianized world. I am for a world in which personal initiative is kept at work." In 1919 he goes further: "Progress means the discovery of the capable. They are our natural masters. They lead because they have the right.

Everything done to keep them from rising is a blow to what we call civilization." In 1920, advising the re-election of Senator Phelan, "These are to be most momentous times. Just where we are going no one knows; but clearly the people here~ as elsewhere, are bent upon testing the value of democracy, as a cooperative organization of men and women, and are determined to make it a fuller expression of human capacities and hopes. We must feel our way carefully • • . sympathy must be checked by wisdom-that we do not take on burdens we cannot ·safely carry-What can this democracy do for men and women-that is the super question. The answer must be wrought out of the sober though~ and the proved experience of our statesmen." A little rhetorical, this last; and written evidently for publication. Lane's failing health and death in [397 ] Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation 1921 ended a life of growing power and usefulness.

He was fast, in "proved experience" and "sober thought," heading, it seems to me, for the true democratic go~l of "Least Government." At first he was powerfully influenced, by, the "Square Deal" slogan of Roosevelt and the "New freedom" of Wilson, toward rather vague collectivism; to regard democracy as the aforesaid cooperative organization for the expression of human capacities and hopes; to ask what it can do for men and women. Then he saw his chief, the "greatWilson"-whom he came later to distinguish from the "little Wilson" -make the hugest experiment, and failure, of gov ernment in business known to history; loading the na tion with useless ships, idle war plants, needless debt; loading administration with bureaucracy, and in dustry with an impossible labor situation; appar ently merely to prevent the conspicuous captains of trade and finance from putting their means and skill at the service of their country lest they should "profiteer." By and by he saw his President obliged, by ghastly failure all about him, to "discover the capable," and call in Schwab, Ryan, Willard, Morgan, to build ships and airplanes, run railroads, and sell Liberty Bonds. Lane did not live to see the coal and railway strikes of 1922; but he clearly saw the betrayal of manufacture and transportation to Organized Labor, "by the Shipping Board and the Federal Railway Control of 1918 and 1920. Toward the end he was evidently about ready to ask, not what democracy could do for 'men and women, but what it could stand out of the way of, and let them do for themselves.

Just so, it seems to me, the whole world is slowly learning to cut industry loose from demagogy. Even in Soviet Russia, though all is foggy and uncertain, [ 398 ] General Conclusions there seems. to loom up growing organization of the peasantry, as after the French Revolution, for in dividual ownership and cultivation of the land. Even at Moscow, collectivism as yet shows no sign of permanent success in government. In Germany, the great Stinnes has cut loose from politics and ad ministrations, and has gone to direct dealing with Frenchmen entitled to Reparations, proposing to furnish labor and material to .devastated France, as a business proposition, without waiting the end less delays of either government. In England, the conservative factions have consolidated in the face of threatened Labor domination of Parliament, creating a strong majority against radical departures. In Ireland, even the Catholic masses ask rest from civil war, and a chance to work out their own salva tion in peace. In France, still obsessed with fear of Germany, and hunger for Reparations, militarism perhaps still holds first place in popular purpose. In Japan and China, everywhere indeed but in Turkey and France, the sound medicine of work for wages seems to be taken with avidity by sick nations.

In this enumeration let me not overlook Italy, whose Fascisti movement is the most powerful and unexpected reaction against the Marxian gospel of envy and jealousy of riches that can well beimag ined. To me, so far as one may judge him by the cabled translations of his words, Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fascisti, is to-day the dominating figure of the world's political stage. "I am not afraid of words," he says, "so I pro nounce myself the prince of reaction. Yet I would not oppress the proletariat, but enrich it materially and spiritually. Great nations can be built only of well-fed and contented workingmen. I am not drunk with success. The rudder of the Italian ship [ 399 ] Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation of state is strongly in my hand, and I will not yield it to anyone. I have no fetiches, even the fetich of liberty. People forget that liberty is a duty, not a right." What a magnificent conception of true democracy lies in those few pregnant phrases t Historians often note that from the womb of time and strenuous cir cumstance leaps out the man that voices the in articulate conviction of the multitude, forthwith to shape the event. May we of this fortunate country, we loyal, generous, patriotic Americans, be so fortu nate, in the years of engulfing demagogy that lie immediately before us, as to find a Mussolini of our own-a man not afraid of words, willing to call him self a prince. of reactiona Leader who will swing our heart and conscience back to the honest gospel of our fathers; back to the Constitution; back to the Jeffersonian doctrine of Least Government and its faithful application; and with this last (if we can judiciously mix brain with heart and conscience) not back .but forward, to Least Taxation and Greatest Prosperity.

{4OO ] APPENDIX I THE VOLSTEAD ACT. TOO MUCH REGULATION THE President's Message to Congress on Prohibi tion suggests an afterthought. Undoubtedly, the hardest line to draw between Too Much and Too Little Government is that which the 18th Amend ment and the Volstead Act attempt to lay down. It is perhaps too soon yet to submit conclusive proof that what we call Prohibition is a failure. "All signs fail in dry time," says the old Yankee farmer proverb; subject to which aphorism I may remark that all signs certainly point to substantial failure of the intention of the dry law (to stop drunkenness and save drunkards and their families from the curse of liquor) very much as on the daily weather maps the wind-arrows all vortex about and point toward the area of low barometric pressure. The strain put upon human nature, and the money premium offered for violation of the law in bootlegging, are too great for the average man and ·the machinery of govern ment to resist; it is morally certain, indeed is already in evidence, that corruption and demoralization of the officials charged with enforcement of the Volstead Act must be as widespread as in General Grant's Administration; when, as the elderly reader will re member, the United States Bench was tainted, and the President's official family disgraced by the frauds of the Whiskey Ring. As for our so-called upper classes, our better element, the fibre of our educated [4° 1 ] Appendix citizenship, it has never in our history, in spite of perhaps a majority acceptance of the principle of Prohibition, been so contemptuously defiant of the law. More of this hereafter.