YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

(hkAm^

AMERICA
FACES THE FUTURE

BY
DURANT DRAKE
A.M. (Harvard): Ph.D. (Columbia)
Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College
Author of Problems of Conduct, Problems of Reliffion,
Shall We Stand by the Church f etc.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMEBICA

Copyright, 1922,
Bt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up itnd printed. Published March, 1922.

"1> 7 i>
(f-c)

Presa of
J. .T. Little & Iveg Company
New York, U. S. A.

PREFACE
Many books have been written to explain to foreign
peoples what we are; such books naturally tend to
self-congratulation and eulogy of our virtues, for it
is an instinct to speak highly of ourselves to others.
This volume takes a graver and more critical attitude ;
it has been written not as a description of what we
are but as a reminder of what we ought to be. Its
readers are asked to consider in these pages what our
priceless heritage of American ideals actually is, and
how far we are being faithful to our inheritance.
There is perpetual need of thus clarifying and forti
fying our own traditional ideals, of renewing our
understanding of them and evoking within our breasts
a deepened loyalty. For the American spirit is con
tinually endangered by sectionalism, class rifts, the
selfishness of the fortunate and the bitterness of the
unfortunate, the cynicism of the sophisticated and the
complacency of the prosperous. We do not want to
rubber-stamp our fellows ; but we do want to produce
a common devotion to the dreams that have made our
nation great, and a widespread demand for their real
ization. Our future will be safe if we can instil into
all classes and groups a true American-mindedness.
With this end in view the book has been divided
into flve Parts, each of which describes one of our
fundamental national ideals, and discusses its appli
cation to various contemporary problems, each chap
ter treating of one such sphere of application. The
reading-lists have been carefully selected from the

vi PEEFACE
great mass of material available, and refer in general
to books that are both interesting and of real merit,
books that should be found in every public library
of any size. The periodical-references are, similarly,
in most cases to such periodicals as may be found in
the ordinary library, rather than to the learned peri
odicals which are not so generally accessible. In
order to cover the field, this volume can only sketch
many matters of great importance. It is hoped, how
ever, that it will prove a stimulus to these further
readings, where the specific problems may be found
treated with the attention to detail which they deserve.
This is no time in the history of our country for
inert complacency ; the gravest problems loom before
us. We are but at the threshold of our national
achievement. Our greatest danger lies in the astonish
ing ignorance of masses of our people, including many
of the so-called educated, with respect to existing
social and political conditions. Our greatest hope lies
in education upon these topics, together with a re
newed loyalty to the spirit that has actuated the no
blest of our countrymen. It is the hope of the author
that here and there one will be led to be truer to that
spirit by the perusal of these pages.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I Introduction 

PAGE 1

PAKT I. LIBERTY

II
Political Liberty 
. 11
III
Civil Liberty 
. 19
IV
Constitutional Guaranties .
. 28
V
Individualism 
. 40
VI
Free Speech 
. 49
VII
Lam^ and Order 
PAET 11. EQUALITY
. 59
VIII
Justice for All 
71
IX
Racial Equality 
. 82
X
Education for All ....
94
XI
Health for All 
. 105
XII
Work for All 
. 115
XIII
Prosperity for All ....
. 128
XIV
The Square Deal 
PART III. DEMOCRACY
. 141
XV
Political Democracy.
. 157
XVI
Political Honesty ....
. 168
XVII
Representative Government
. 181
XVIII
Democracy in Journalism . .
. 196
XIX
Democracy in Industry . .
. 210
VU
VIII

XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII XXIV

xxv
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII XXIX

CONTENTS
PAGF
PART IV. EFFICIENCY
Big Business  225
Collective Bargaining .... 238
Morale  250
Conservation  260
The Common Good  271
PART V. PATRIOTISM
America First  285
Peaceableness  296
Hands Across the Seas .... 308
Americanization  320
Faith in America  331

AMERICA
FACES THE FUTURE

AMERICA FACES THE
FUTURE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Few nations have been as self-conscious in their
ideals as ours. Its birth was signalized by an explicit
and passionate declaration of the principles that jus
tified its separate existence and were to be its guid
ing-star. For approximately a century and a half
that Declaration has received the wholehearted alle
giance of our people and has drawn to our shores
millions who saw in it the hope of salvation, the sign
of the Promised Land.
This is, as the kaleidoscope of history turns, a long
time for so specific a tradition to persist. The insti
tutions and avowed ideals of Great Britain, of France,
of most of the older nations, have undergone profound
modification during this period within which our
ideals have hardly been challenged. Germany and
Italy are new nations, the other American republics
are our younger sisters. We have seen within a gen
eration revolutionary changes in national ideals in
China, in Japan, and other ancient lands. The dom
inance of democratic ideals in Russia and the several
mid-European nations is of yesterday. So that we,
1

2 AMEEICA FACES THE FUTUEE
who were once the pioneer republic, are now the
oldest, stablest, as well as the most prosperous; and
probably the most truly conservative force in the life
of the world.
There can be no doubt that this stability, this pros
perity, this eminence which we have attained among
the nations of the earth, is due in large measure to
the spiritual vision of our fathers. Our success has
indeed exceeded all expectations ; and it is surely not
without reason that Americans are proud of their
country. But it is a rare event in history for such a
vision to remain unclouded under the stress of internal
and external strains, and the many temptations to
a lower moral code. Not always have the noble sen
timents of our Founders guided our national policies
or our individual efforts. And in spite of the crusad
ing spirit in which we entered the Great War, to make
the whole world safe for such a democratic life as we
had here established, there are many signs that a
spiritual weariness has followed this patriotic fervor,
and that all sorts of acts and attitudes inconsonant
with our acknowledged ideals are increasingly prev
alent. M. Guizot once asked the poet Lowell, how long this
republic would last; the reply was, "As long as the
ideas of the men who founded it." Certainly business
prosperity and victory on the field of battle are no
guaranty of any nation's future ; the cardinal requisite
is that its heart be sound, its moral fibre on a par
with its material achievements. It may be said, of
course, that other ideals than those which we have
followed would lead us to an even greater destiny,
and that we should substitute for Americanism the
spirit, say, of international Socialism or Communism,
or some other exotic theory and hope. Certainly there

INTRODUCTION 3
is much to be said for some of these alien ideals and
dreams. But the substitution of such an untried
program for the tested traditions that have been our
guide would be to forsake a proved good for an un
certainty, a stable policy for a vaguely charted and
dangerous course. By all means let these experiments
be tried in lands where change is needed ; let us watch
with sympathy and lend a helping hand. But for us
there can be no hesitation. We know our own hearts,
the path is straight before us. Our duty is still to
follow the gleam that has led our people so far, and to
bring to realization these long-cherished hopes.
Without arguing, then, the relative merits of Amer
icanism as compared with other moral principles that
have been adopted elsewhere, or can be conceived, it
is for us to define as clearly as possible these ideals
to which we, at least, are committed, and to seek to
win for them, in this country, a universal and hearty
allegiance. To break with them would be to plunge
into chaos ; we must grow in the line of our past. No
party can possibly succeed here if it ignores the
psychology and traditions of our people. And on the
other hand, no essentially new ideals will be necessary
if we are genuinely loyal to the old. If we can make
men true Americans there will be no need for them to
seek elsewhere for the impulse that will eventually
solve our hardest problems. As Stanton Coit once
wrote, "Convert men to democracy and you will have
no occasion to convert them to socialism."
It is unhappily true, however, that the word "Amer
icanism" is often used as a cloak for selfish interests
and a buffer against progress. As Roosevelt said,
"There are plenty of scoundrels always ready to try
to belittle reform movements or to bolster up existing
iniquities in the name of Americanism." More recently

4 AMEEICA FACES THE FTJTUEE
Professor John Dewey has called our attention to
this situation : "I find that many who talk the loud
est about the need of a supreme and unified Ameri
canism of spirit really mean some special code or
tradition to which they happen to be attached. They
have some pet tradition which they would impose upon
all." A "League for Americanism" in one of our
great States has recently been organized, apparently
for the actual purpose of defeating health insurance
and other "welfare" bills. An organizer of the
League is quoted as saying to one of its paid lecturers,
"The Americanism part of it is a joke. . . . You can
go ahead and stir up sentiment on Americanism, and
other men will follow after you to attend to the freak
legislation." This pseudo-patriotic propaganda is but a camou
flage for the self-seeking of various selfish interests.
Or it may be the expression of an instinctive hatred
of aliens. We have lately seen, for example, foreign
musicians of genius and refinement, men whose con
duct and manners were irreproachable, humiliated
and persecuted by those who call themselves "One
hundred per cent Americans." Surely, as the flrst
commandment to the ancient Jews was, "Thou shalt
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," so
the first demand upon our honor should be not to use
this name of ours that symbolizes the noblest and most
unselfish aspirations except as our hearts are gen
uinely devoted to those ends.
No doubt, much of this reactionary spirit is hon
estly deemed American by its possessors. Washington
and Hamilton were reviled as un-American by the Jef-
f ersonians, Lincoln by the anti-abolitionists, Roosevelt
by the stand-patters. Any reformer who seeks to
bring about, even by the most legitimate and peaceful

INTEODUOTION g
means, better political or industrial arrangements is
looked at askance by those who think that wisdom
came to an end with the passing of their fathers. This
complacency, this stubborn inertia, is, on the contrary,
the most dangerous foe of the true American spirit,
which has always been adventurous, forward-looking,
liberative of new energies and a growing hope. We
can not advance by breaking with our traditions ; but
we must forever be applying these great traditions
to the new situations that arise, and discovering new
meanings in their well-worn words. If Americanism
meant the petrifying of our social order in Eighteenth
or Nineteenth Century grooves, then, indeed, we
should do well to turn to other creeds, or found a
new tradition for ourselves.
The fact is, however, that the dreams of our fathers,
embodied in their memorable phrases, have never yet
been more than half realized. It is for us to carry
on the work of actualizing these dreams, of working
out into practice what was for them a hope and an
ideal. Our history has been a zigzag, bungling ex
periment in self-government. Democracy is a simple
concept, but extraordinarily difficult to live up to.
We need continually to renew our faith in it and to
attack the dangers which still beset it and threaten
to make it little more than a name. We must beware
the spirit, then, that would consecrate our mistakes
as well as our achievements, or look upon the task
that our fathers began as completed. Those fathers
of ours had great courage and a clear vision of the
road that leads to man's social salvation. But all
they could do was to make a start. If we have caught
their spirit we shall not sit still, content with their
work. On the contrary, as our own poet wrote, "New
occasions teach new duties" ; it is yet a long task to

6 AMEEICA FACES THE FUTUEE
complete the building of the ideal democracy whose
foundation-stones they laid.
It cannot, then, be too forcibly said that our her
itage is not a set of perfect institutions but a set of
inspiring ideals. Just as Christianity for centuries
has been hindered with superstitions and errors taken
over from the Jewish and pagan faiths, and has had to
struggle long to rid itself of these corruptions and
realize its own ideal, so Americanism has been subject
to all sorts of compromises and cloudings, and has
never yet fully expressed itself in the general prac
tice. No one of us is exempted from the task of scru
tinizing our social and political life, to determine how
far it truly reflects our avowed ideals, and how far
it yet fails to do so. There is still need not only of
devotion but of criticism; Americanism should be
taken to mean not what we actually have achieved,
but what the best of us are trying to achieve. The
temptations that prosperity and power have brought
to us make it peculiarly important that we renew the
visions of our nation's youth. As the Red Queen
found, in Alice in Wonderland, it takes a lot of run
ning to stand still — to keep from backsliding.
The chapters that follow will, therefore, continually
remind the reader "to distinguish between idealism
and the idealization of ourselves." They are written
in the conviction that the true solution for the ills —
which every candid student recognizes — ^in our body
politic is more liberty, m,ore equality, more democ
racy, more efficiency, more patriotism. In short, that
the way to save America is to genuinely Americanize
Americans.

INTRODUCTION

SUGGESTED READINGS

N. Foerster and W. W. Pierson, Jr., American Ideals.
M. S. Fulton, National Ideals and Prohlems.
C W. Eliot, American Contributions to Civilization,
H. W. Mabie, American Ideals.
H. van Dyke, The Spirit of America.
G, Eodrigues, The People of Action,
H. Miinsterberg, American Traits.
J. G, Brooks, As Others See Us.
E. A. Steiner Introducing the American Spirit.
C. S. Cooper, American Ideals, Chapters I, IV, V, X,
B. M. Sheridan, The Liberty Reader.
C. A. and M, R. Beard, American Citizenship.

PART I
LIBERTY

CHAPTER II
POLITICAL LIBERTY
Liberty is the foremost of the great ideals to whose
service our nation was dedicated. We still stamp
the word upon our coins, the famous statue in New
York harbor still welcomes the oppressed of every
land ; millions have come to our shores to breathe this
freer air, and millions of others have kept up courage
through the thought of American freedom.
First among the various embodiments of this ideal
we may speak of that political liberty that was as
serted in the historical Declaration of Independence —
"these colonies are, and of light ought to be, free and
independent States."
Of the Revolution which won this political inde
pendence. President Wilson has said, "It was not
urged on by disorderly passions, but went forward in a
love of order and legality." The Declaration recites
the reasons that necessitated the step, and urges that
"when a long train of abuses and usurpations . . .
evinces a design to reduce [a people] under absolute
despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such government, and to provide new guards for
their future security." But, it goes on to say, "a
decent regard to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them
to the separation."
It is clear to any one who reads the history of the
Revolution that the British rulers of that day were
11

12 LIBERTY
stupidly blind to the needs and instincts of their sub
jects over seas. The slowness of communication made
an adequate representation of the Colonies in the
British Parliament impossible; but this physical
difficulty was less serious than the mental barriers
that were interposed. It is probable, indeed, that
a greater patience would have presently solved the
problems, and ended the tyrannies under which the
colonists suffered, and that the mother country would
in time have granted us autonomy of her own free
will, without the cost of war. But it was impossible
for our forefathers to foresee the growth of liberalism
in England ; and in flghting for liberty and democracy
they were tearing old ties for what they cherished as
most precious in life. Patrick Henry voiced this
spirit in his memorable speech before the Virginia
Convention of Delegates, on the twenty-third of March
1775: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be
purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"
The American colonists were not a backward peo
ple, to be autocratically ruled from across the ocean.
They were trained in self-government, politically as
intelligent as any of their contemporaries; and they
deserved what we now call self-determination. That
this should have been granted them only after a long
and unhappy war is a matter for profound regret.
Not only because war is always a great evil, but be
cause the memory of this war has made an "ancient
grudge" between us and the British people, who are
blood-brothers to many of us and spiritual brothers
to us all. At this day their ideals, and those of the
English-speaking peoples throughout the world, are
on the whole probably nearer to our own than those
of any other people.
But the political separation has had many excellent

POLITICAL LIBERTY 13
results. It taught England a salutary lesson, as
Burke acknowledged ; it showed her how not to treat
her colonists, and paved the way for the present-day
autonomy of her self-governing Dominions. It proved
a great impetus to political and social thinking and
organization in this country, and advertised to the
world the principle of Liberty as perhaps nothing else
could have done ; so that the years following it saw the
assertion of similar principles in many other coun
tries. It enabled us to acquire the Western lands —
which never would have been allowed to pass peace
fully into British hands — and thus to extend our
sovereignty from the Atlantic to the Paciflc. The
loss of efficiency which naturally comes through the
political division of a larger unit was scarcely felt,
owing to the meagre and slow communications with
the Old World. Doubtless in some ways a provincial
spirit was encouraged. But certainly patriotism was
vastly stimulated; and through the stress of the
emergency the spirit and hopes of those pioneers were
crystallized into the principles that we today call
Americanism. Happily, the schism has long been healed in spirit,
although no political reunion has been attempted.
For well over a century there has been no war, and
scarcely a rumor of war, between us. Many English
men at the time of our Revolution sided with us ; and
even in Parliament we had staunch defenders. Now
all Englishmen acknowledge that these were in the
right, and unite in honoring our Washington and
Lincoln, and the other great men that our nation has
produced. And they, with the rest of the world, agree
now in principle, if not always yet in every concrete
case, with our assertion of the right of every people
to determine its own destinies.

14 LIBERTY
This principle was put by President Wilson, when
stating our war-aims, as the rule that "no people
must be forced under sovereignty under which it does
not wish to live." Again he spoke, in his Address to
the Senate, on January 22, 1917, of the "principle
that Governments derive all their just powers from
the consent of the governed, and that no right any
where exists to hand peoples about from sovereign
ty to sovereignty as if they were property. . . .
[This is aj political principle which has always been
held very dear by those who have sought to build up
America." America was naturally foremost in sympathy with
the ideals of the French Revolution, with Kossuth,
with Garibaldi, with the Greek patriots, and the Rus
sian revolutionists. Our Monroe Doctrine was the
announcement to the world that we stood ready to
protect the freedom of the South and Central Ameri
can republics. And in the Great War, we fought to
save the oppressed nationalities of Europe from alien
domination. Our action in setting Cuba up as an in
dependent nation, after we had spent money and lives
in ousting her earlier oppressors, was almost unpre
cedented in the history of the great nations, and
proves that we practise what we preach.
In the light of all this, it is obvious that we can not
permanently retain our sovereignty over the Philip
pines, if the majority of the natives desire their inde
pendence. As they are alien to us by race, by lan
guage, and by their traditions, it is altogether prob
able that the mass of them will wish to be free, in spite
of possible advantages for them of American rule.
It is true that we paid twenty million dollars to Spain
for the Islands, besides the cost of the war. And

POLITICAL LIBERTY 15
since then our government has expended over three
hundred million dollars in bringing to them the bene-
flts of civilization. But we are rich and prosperous,
they were poor and ignorant ; we should not begrudge
the help we have given them or allow our flnancial
outlay to blind us to their elemental right to their
freedom. In spite of our unprecedentedly altruistic
rule, there have been some wrongs inflicted, there has
been friction, such as inevitably arises when one race
rules another. As Lincoln said, in the often-quoted
words, "No man is good enough to govern another
man without that other man's consent."
The problem of the right moment at which to free
them is one of expediency, so long as the release is
not too long delayed. It may be wisest to wait until
they have had a more widespread education and longer
experience in political affairs, until the various tribes
have become more homogeneous and more capable of
getting along peaceably together. It would surely
be wrong to withdraw our flag without the acceptance
by the other Powers of treaties guaranteeing their
freedom. But in many ways the outlook for the
future of the Islands under their own flag looks prom
ising, even now. There is no royal dynasty whose
members might attempt to recover lost power, there
are no slaves, there are no vexing boundary questions.
Many of the Filipinos have proved themselves able
and honest in business and in politics. Governor
Harrison, after intimate experience in working with
them, declared, "I have found the native Filipino
official to be honest, efficient, and as capable of ad
ministering executive positions as any men I have
met anywhere in the world ... By temperament, by
experience, by financial ability, in every way, the ten

16 LIBERTY
millions of Filipinos are entitled to be free from
every government except their own choice . . . They
are intelligent enough to decide for themselves."
Even if this picture is too optimistic, if disorder
and confusion should follow the flrst attainment of
their liberty, this is no more than usually happens
when a new nation is launched, no more than hap
pened in our own case. And, after all, it is not for
us to judge what is best for them; it is their own
right to decide.
At the very outset of our rule. President McKinley
announced that we came as "a liberating rather than
a conquering nation." "The Philippines are ours, not
to exploit, but to develop, to civilize, to educate, to
train in the science of self-government. This is the
path of duty which we must follow or be recreant
to a mighty trust committed to us."
President Roosevelt declared that the honor of the
United States was pledged to the doctrine of "the
Philippines for the Filipinos," and caused many steps
to be taken during his administration increasing the
measure of self-government accorded to them.
President Taf t, who had been Governor General of
the Philippines, and knew the situation intimately,
espoused the same policy: "The Filipino people,
through their officials, are making real steps in the
direction of self-government. I hope and believe that
these steps mark the beginning of a course which will
continue until the Filipinos become flt to decide for
themselves whether they desire to be an independent
nation." In recognition of this long-proclaimed principle of
Americanism, Congress in 1914 pledged the United
States "to withdraw their sovereignty over the Philip
pine Islands and to recognize their independence as

POLITICAL LIBERTY 17
soon as a stable government can be established there
in." President Wilson later declared, "We must hold
steadily in view their ultimate independence, and we
must move toward the time of that independence as
steadily as the way can be cleared and the foundations
thoughtfully and permanently reared."
When this is flnally accomplished, it will be another
rebuke to our cynical critics in the Old World, who
have distrusted the sincerity of our promises, and a
relief to those South or Central American republics
that fear the growth of an imperialistic policy in this
country. That fear is not without justification, in
view of the high-handed methods that our officials
have sometimes used, in Santo Domingo and Haiti,
in Nicaragua and other neighboring republics. But,
however autocratic our officials may at times be, and
however unjust some individual act, there can be no
possible doubt that Americans will loyally maintain
in every case their right to national independence.
It may, indeed, be asked why, believing as we do
in self-determination, the North refused to the South
the right to secede, in 1860. And at once we must ad
mit that the ideal of Liberty often conflicts with that
other great ideal of Union which we shall presently
discuss. At this point we may be content to point
out that North and South were essentially one peo
ple, one in language and political experience, in es
sential traditions and beliefs — except for the issue
of slavery — as well as in race. The case was very
different from that of an alien race in far-off islands,
or even from that of the democratic American colon
ists and their monarchical rulers across the ocean.
The advantages of union and disadvantages of separa
tion were immeasurably greater. And further, the
case was heavily complicated by the fact that the

18 LIBEETY
South wanted secession in order to perpetuate slavery.
That is, the ideal of Liberty itself fought against them.
The present complete and happy reunion of North
and South and the eminence that the united nation has
attained, purged of sectionalism and of slavery, testi-
fles that although both sides fought for genuine ideals,
the ideal of the North was the higher.
Our nation will tolerate no disintegration of its
own unity. But it will maintain, to the last drop
of its blood, its right to its own national liberty. And
it will maintain an equal liberty as the birthright of
every other people, the weakest as well as the strong
est, yellow, black and brown as well as white.
SUGGESTED READINGS
The Declaration of Independence.
Patrick Henry, Liberty Speech.
Daniel Webster, Oration on Adcums and Jefferson, (Both of
these reprinted in Foerster and Pierson, op. cit.)
Woodrow Wilson, Address to the Senate, Jan. 22, 1917. (Ee-
printed in Why We are at War, and in Foerster and
Pierson, p. 233.)
F. M. Gregg, The Founding of a Nation.
L. E. Heller, ed., Ea/rly American Orations.
P. M. Brown, International Realities, Chap. II.
M. M. Kalaw, Self -Government in the Philippines.
F. N. Thorpe, History of the American People, Chapters
XIV-XY.
E. L. Ashley, The American Federal State, Part I.
M. C. Tyler, The Declaration of Independence in the Light of
Modern Criticism,, North American Review, vol. 163, p. 1.
(Eeprinted in Fulton, op. cit., p. 158.)
H. Fielding-Hall, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. Ill, p. 577.
Bernard Moses, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. Ill, p. 585.
G, F. Barbour, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 24, p. 1.

CHAPTER III
civil liberty
The liberty of a nation, as a nation, to choose its own
rulers and policies is a precious right. But the ab
sence of such independence does not necessarily mean
any loss save a sentimental one to the people thereof.
A colony governed by a wise mother-country may well
have more security and attain a higher civilization
than would have been possible if it had stood on its
own feet. Indeed, where agitation arises for political
independence it is usually because of violations of the
civil liberties of the people. So it was in the case of
America. The civil rights which were more or less explicitly
asserted by the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution include :
(1) Liberty of person. No one to be deprived of
life or freedom of movement except by due
process of law. No one to be made a slave or
serf. No one to be arrested or imprisoned
without a warrant.
(2) Security of property. No one to be deprived
of anything that he owns except by due process
of law.
(3) Freedom of belief and worship, of speech, and
of the printed word.
(4) Freedom from needless restrictions and tyran
nies by the law, even when approved by the
majority. Personal affairs to be interfered
19

20 LIBEETY
with only in so far as is necessary for the
common good.
(5) Freedom from a tyrannical public opinion. No
one to be persecuted or ostracized because he
acts or lives in a different way from that ap
proved by the majority.
No people, perhaps, have ever been so sensitive to
encroachments upon personal liberty as ours. This
passionate libertarianism had one of its roots in the
Calvinism of the Puritans. According to that highly
individualistic faith, every man was directly responsi
ble to God ; the State had no authority over him com
parable to that of his creed and conscience. Another
root was the sturdy self-reliance fostered by pioneer
life. An unusual number of men in this country have
been "self-made" men, men who carved their own for
tunes and asked nothing better than to be left free to
do so. Still another source lay in the past experience
of the early settlers, and indeed of many later immi
grants, which made them distrust all government as
being naturally tyrannical. The fear lest the repub
lican form of government which they set up would be
captured by ambitious men and usurp too great power
lies behind many of the clauses of the Constitution
and persisted long as a bugaboo in the thought of
American statesmen. Emerson expressed this ideal
and this fear in his well-known lines,
"For what avail the plough or sail
Or land or life, if freedom fail?"
The glaring inconsistency in a people that sing of
their country as the "sweet land of liberty" was, of
course, the toleration of negro slavery. Almost every
one took for granted the rightfulness of this long-
established institution, Christian ministers as well as

CIVIL LIBEETY 21
worldly-minded, those who lived in the industrial
sections of the North as well as the plantation-owners
of the South who proflted, or thought they proflted,
thereby. But the clash between ideal and practice
was inevitable ; personal liberty could not forever be
worshipped as the highest good and at the same time
denied to a large section of the population. One by
one conscientious men awoke to the inconsistency.
In 1830 Garrison wrote, "I shall strenuously contend
for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave popu
lation. . . . On this subject I do not wish to think,
or speak, or write, with moderation. I am in earnest
— I will not equivocate — I will not retreat a single
inch — and I will be heard!" Later, when the South
demanded its independence in order to ensure the per
petuation of slavery, Lincoln said the flnal word:
"They who deny freedom to others deserve it not for
themselves." The Civil War decided the issue, and removed for
all time this blot from our escutcheon. The great
hymn that flred the hearts of the Union soldiers made
its appeal to this elemental passion :
"As He died to make men holy, let us die to make them free."
Freedom, in this case, required a long and terrible
war to secure. It often requires elaborate and some
times apparently tyrannical laws to maintain. The
old naive notion that if the government would but
keep its hands off, every one would have the greatest
amount of liberty has long been known to be falla
cious ; bitter experience has shown that such a laissez-
faire policy allows the strong and unscrupulous to
prey upon the conscientious and the weak. We must
have a considerable body of law in order to have the
greatest attainable amount of liberty for all. As

22 LIBEETY
President Wilson recently wrote, "If Jefferson had
lived in our day he would see what we see, that the in
dividual is caught in a great confused mix-up of all
sorts of complicated circumstances, and that to let
him alone is to leave him helpless as against the ob
stacles with which he has to contend."
Many people suppose that because a man has legal
freedom he is really free. But, in the words of a great
English jurist, "Necessitous men are not free men."
In the pioneer days, a laissez-faire policy was far
less inadequate than now. The transition from small-
scale to large-scale industry, from personal direction
of business to corporate control, the crowding of
great masses of people in cities, the complexiflcation
of our social and political order, have forced all sorts
of new relationships upon us that require legislative
control if they are not to be allowed to curtail seri
ously the liberty of many.
The British Labor Party has advertised the phrase,
"effective personal freedom," meaning thereby such
freedom as can actually be taken advantage of. A
recent American writer elaborates this conception as
follows : "If you drive a man up a tree and station a
bear at the foot of it, it does not gratify him to be told
that he is now free to do as he chooses. If you dismiss
your son from your door without food, money or edu
cation, and tell him that the whole wide world is now
open to him, you have not given him 'effective per
sonal freedom.' Circumstances may compel him to
accept your terms, hard and dictatorial though they
may be. Freedom in such a sense is a threat and not
a promise. Similarly if you rear a man in a low social
station, in the midst of poverty and ignorance, with
the necessity of livelihood forced upon him from an
early age, and then tell him that he may rise even

CIVIL LIBEETY 23
to be President of the United States, he is to be for
given if he does not appear enthusiastic and grateful.
If you throw a man into stormy waters far from land,
and then tell him that there is nothing to prevent his
swimming to shore and making a nice dry warm place
for himself there, you do not confer a boon on him.
For flrst he has got to keep his head above water.
Even if by great and prolonged exertions he can do
that, there is little chance of his living to achieve
more. The man who demands 'effective personal
freedom' wants to be put on shore to start with. He
understands that there is a tyranny of circumstance
more fatal than that of man."
Our love of liberty, our hatred of the regulation of
our conduct by any authority other than God and our
individual conscience, has made it difficult for any
form of socialism to win favor with us. We distrust
a bureaucracy, we dread paternalism ; our forefathers
deliberately sought to restrict the powers of the gov
ernment, to allow the widest possible scope for private
initiative. As Professor Mecklin says, "The measure
of an efficient government at the beginning of the na
tional life was the least possible interference with the
affairs of the individual, in fact, just enough of govern
ment to facilitate individual ends. Government was
at best merely the policeman to keep order and protect
property." Doubtless a great many of our immigrants
came to these shores to get away from the restrictions
upon their personal liberty in their homelands; and
we must continue our vigilance in preventing the
growth of needless impediments to freedom in our
own land.
But on the other hand, we have learned that one
man or group of men may abuse their liberty in such
a way as to interfere with the liberty of others. As

24 LIBERTY
Mr. H. G. Wells says of his country, "We must get rid
of these spendthrift liberties that waste liberty."
Liberty and law are not contradictories; law is the
servant of liberty, the means to its attainment. We
may well fear a corrupt government, oppose class
legislation, flght the many bills offered to further
this or that special interest. But a genuinely demo
cratic government is simply the expression of the
common will — our will. For we, after all, are the
State; and what we collectively decide upon as best
for the general welfare is not tyranny but self-expres
sion. Those who fare well under existing conditions usu
ally raise the cry "Hands off!" when legislation is
proposed that would restrain their conduct in any
way. They fail to realize that restraint upon unsocial
conduct is necessary precisely in the interests of lib
erty — the liberty of the greatest number. A manu
facturer resents a law restricting child-labor; his
liberty to employ whom he will is infringed. But
that liberty was a predatory liberty ; it lived at the ex
pense of the far more precious liberty of those children
to have their playtime, their schooling, their health.
Or a group of mill-owners may insist upon their lib
erty to shut down their mills in order to lessen pro
duction and raise the price of their product, ignoring
the fact that they thereby would deprive thousands of
men of the liberty to work and earn their living, and
their families of all the liberty that a decent income
alone makes possible.
In general, we have been far too blind to the true
implications of the ideal of Liberty, which we so
highly prize in the abstract. We have been too toler
ant of the exploiters, the grafters, those whose clever
ness or good fortune has enabled them to grab for

CIVIL LIBEETY 25
themselves rights and privileges which ought to have
been our common inheritance. The old notion that if
everybody "looks after number one" the general good
will automatically be attained must give way to the
verdict of bitter experience, that to preserve the rights
and liberties of everyhody, clever and stupid, fortun
ate and unfortunate, requires the unceasing watchful
ness of the law.
In pursuance of this wiser view we now forbid
householders to empty their refuse into the streets,
as was done in some of our cities a generation ago;
we no longer tolerate the existence of private toll-
gates upon the highways ; we interfere in a hundred
ways with the conduct of private business, with the
erection of private homes, with personal habits, such
as gambling, drinking intoxicating beverages, and
using narcotic drugs. Now and then, of course, an
unwarrantable law is passed. But in general, this
extension of legislative vigilance is in the interests of
true liberty. And the average man of today is far
freer from dangers, from fears, from the encroach
ments and aggressions of other men, and from the
fatal effects of his own shortsightedness, selfishness
or passion, than was the man of older days.
The ideal of Liberty is that every one should be
unhampered in his conduct except as that conduct
would interfere with the welfare of others ; or rather,
that every man should be helped to make his conduct
a positive contribution to the common welfare. We
need to think of Liberty in terms of the group. We
do not want the docility and blind obedience to a State
ruled by an upper-class, of pre-war Germany ; we want
to preserve the individual initiative and energy for
which we are famous. But we want to exercise our
collective intelligence in guiding that initiative and

26 LIBEETY
energy into social rather than unsocial channels; we
want to use the inventiveness and ingenuity of the few
not so much for the winning for them personally a
freer and more expansive life, as for the winning of
such a larger and freer life for the people as a whole.
Not every man for himself, but every man for America.
Not liberty for you, or for me, at the expense of others,
but such mutual adjustments and restraints as will
make for the greatest liberty of all.
The same problem that faces us here, in the relation
of the individual to the community, has been met and
in some degree solved in the relation of the several
States to the Nation. In the name of liberty the
various attempts of the people as a whole, through
the national Congress, to regulate matters of national
concern have been strenuously opposed. The CivU
War silenced for all time the doctrine that the rights
of the individual States transcend the rights of the
Nation; and we have a steadily increasing body of
federal statutes. But we still find it impossible to
regulate child-labor nationally, save in a roundabout
and partial manner; some States refuse to give up
their right to exploit the health of their children. We
find it difficult to regulate the killing of even the
migratory song-birds ; some States resent interference
with the right of their citizens to make pot-pies out of
robins and bobolinks. A Constitutional Amendment
has been necessary to bring certain backward States
to relinquish their right to refuse the ballot to women.
The separate States must not be allowed in their
supposed self-interest to block the way toward the
freest and happiest life for the people as a whole;
that principle has been deflnitely decided, although
its full application will long give rise to debate and
disagreement. Similarly, no individual or group of

CIVIL LIBEETY 27
individuals, no corporation, or "interest," must be
allowed to block the way toward the freest and hap
piest life for the people as a whole. We must not let
the reaction from war-restraints bring us back to the
easy-going tolerance of personal and corporate selfish
ness into which we had drifted. The energies of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were neces
sarily taken up with the winning of the rights of
peoples as opposed to tyrannous governments. The
latter part of the nineteenth century and the twen
tieth century have had to add to this task that of pre
venting these rights from becoming the perquisite
of the strong and the fortunate among the people, and
ensuring them for the people as a whole.
SUGGESTED READESTGS
The Constitution of the United States of America.
C. M. Gayley, Shakspere and the Founders of Liberty in
America. (An excerpt from this is reprinted in Fulton,
op. cit., p. 152. See also the extract from F. H. Giddings,
p. 191.)
J. S. MiU, On Liberty.
J. H. Tufts, Our Democracy, Its Origins and its TasJcs, Chap
ters XI-XVII.
Bertrand Eussell, Why Men Fight, Chapter II. (Also in
Atlantic Monthly, vol. 120, p. 112.)
E. S. P. Haynes, The Case for Liberty.
John Burroughs, The Light of Day, Chapter XIII.
C. S. Cooper, American Ideals, Chapter VII.
A. T. Hadley, Freedom and Responsibility.
J. W. Burgess, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty.
H. J. Laski, Authority in the Modem State.
Publications of the American Civil Liberties Union, 138 W,
13th Street, New York, N. Y.

CHAPTER IV
CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTIES
In the preceding chapter we have seen that liberty is
preserved only through law. To this end we have the
common law — the great mass of precedents to be found
in earlier decisions, the State and National laws, and
the State and National Constitutions. Of these, the
written constitution is the distinctively American
contribution, and deserves our special attention.
The fundamental purpose of written constitutions
is to prevent majorities from tyrannizing over minori
ties — ^for the tyranny of Demos may be as crushing as
that of an oligarchy. This restraining power is exer
cised in two ways. In the first place, a larger than
majority vote is usually necessary to amend a consti
tution; often the process is an involved and difficult
one. In the second place, the rights guaranteed by
a constitution have such prestige that even a majority
would be apt to be wary of annulling them.
This, then, is the chief guaranty of our civil liber
ties. Legislatures can not limit the rights asserted
by the State and Federal Constitutions, or executives
ignore them — unless the people lose their vigilance
and acquiesce in their violation. Jefferson in his
Inaugural Address, in 1801, expressed the heart of
the matter: "All too will bear in mind this sacred
principle, that though the will of the majority is in
all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful must be
reasonable; that the minority possess their equal
28

CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTIES 29
rights which equal laws must protect, and to violate
which would be oppressive." In short, the individual
has certain rights that not even the elected represen
tatives of the people have the right to destroy. Our
government is one that is controlled not only by the
views of the officials and legislators temporarily in
office, but, fundamentally, by principles passed on
from generation to generation and subject only to a
purposely rather remote possibility of alteration.
An essential feature of this plan is that the meaning
of these Constitutions is to be determined not by the
legislatures — which then might declare their laws
proper, against whatever outcry — ^but by a non-law-
making arm of the government, the Courts. As a
matter of fact, the action of State legislatures has thus
been declared unconstitutional some hundreds of
times; and more than a score of times the Supreme
Court has annulled a law passed by Congress.
To many Americans, and perhaps to most foreign
ers, this power of our courts seems too great. M.
Rodrigues, a French admirer of our people, calls it
"a dreadful obligation, an exorbitant power, if ever
there was one. The judge is the judge not only of
cases, but of laws; he is the judge not only of parties
but of legislators!" Mr. Walter Weyl, in The New
Democracy, likewise declares that "this right of the
Supreme Court finally and unreviewably to declare a
law void, in opposition to the opinion of a majority,
constitutes, in the absence of ample facilities for a
popular amendment of the Constitution, a flat and
uncompromising negation of democracy."
This situation deserves careful attention. Here
is an institution conceived by our fathers for the
purpose of checking legislation oppressive of the fun
damental rights of any class or individual, now re-

30 LIBEETY
garded by many acute observers as a grievous clog
upon needed social reforms.
The problem is, flrst, as to the facts, and then as to
the proper policy.
John Marshall, the flrst Chief Justice of the Federal
Supreme Court, maintained the view that the Consti
tution is to be interpreted in such wise as to make
for the truest welfare of the people, rather than in a
spirit of technicality and literalism. Many of his
successors were animated by this same liberal spirit,
which may fairly be called the historic American tra
dition in the matter. It was expressed by Roosevelt
in 1912, when he wrote, "My plea is that the courts
act with ordinary statesmanship, ordinary regard for
the Constitution as a living aid to growth, not as a
strait-jacket." It must be admitted, however, that on many occa
sions during the past century the exercise of this con
stitutional veto by the courts has actually blocked
needed legislation and been a bulwark of special
privilege. To cite a few out of many cases: The
Federal Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a
New York State law limiting the hours of work in
bake-shops, on the ground that it deprived the em
ployees of their personal liberty to work as long as
they chose. This in spite of the fact that a large
proportion of the bake-shops were underground, and
unhygienic, that the health of many employees had
been ruined by the long hours of work required of
them in such surroundings, and that the law which
had been passed was their only prospect of prompt
relief from the intolerable conditions. What the em
ployees wanted was to be able to work a reasonable
number of hours and still retain their positions. That
would have been for them a real increase in liberty.

CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTIES 31
Yet the right of the legislature to procure for them
that liberty was denied by the courts on the ground of
a purely theoretical liberty which no one, or almost
no one, wanted to exercise; a liberty which simply
gave the owners of the bake-shops the right to make
big profits through the overwork of their employees.
Similarly, the New York State Court of Appeals
declared unconstitutional a State law prohibiting the
making of cigars in tenements, on the ground that
this law interfered with personal liberty and private
property; it forced the worker "from his home and
its hallowed associations and beneflcent influences!"
The situation was that the employers were saving
money through being able to go without a factory,
while the workers were injuring their health through
overlong hours of working — made necessary by the
unregulated competition and very low pay per hour;
little children, aged and sick people were kept at work,
to add to the family income, and the health of both
workers and the consumers was seriously endangered.
It is universally admitted by students of social condi
tions that tenement-industries are a menace to the
community. And these industries received a new lease
of life by this widely advertised decision of the Court.
Mrs. Florence Kelley, one of the ablest of our social
workers, wrote in 1905, that if the new State law had
been upheld instead of being annulled, "it is safe to as
sert that the odious system of tenement manufacture
would long ago have perished in every trade in every
city in the Republic."
The Illinois Supreme Court, in 1886 and subsequent
years, annulled acts of the State legislature requiring
mine-owners to weigh the coal mined and pay the
miners on the basis of such weight. In 1892 and 1904,
it held as void legislative acts regulating the keeping

32 LIBERTY
of truck stores by the owners of coal mines and fac
tories. In 1900, it anulled a law prohibiting the use
of the American flag for advertising purposes; in 1901,
an act prohibiting more than six persons from sleeping
in one room in a lodging-house; in 1906, an act re
quiring owners of mines to provide a washroom at the
top of the mine for the use of the miners ; in 1909, an
act regulating the practice of assigning future wages
as security for borrowed money by requiring the
assignment to be signed by the wife of a married man
and recorded.
These cases, cited out of a great number, make it
clear that the passing of desirable reform measures
has often been blocked by the Courts. And a very
great number of other reforms have been postponed,
or are still impossible of achievement, because it is
recognized that the courts would annul them. Our
constitutions are so difficult of amendment that this
veto power of the courts is usually decisive. We are
the only great nation that handicaps progressive legis
lation in this way. And it is generally conceded that
we are behind most of the more civilized nations in
our social-welfare legislation.
In particular, the cause of labor has often suffered
from the exercise of judicial interpretation. It is
scarcely to be wondered at that delegates of labor con
ventions often declare that they have lost all hope in
legal procedure and want to try lawless methods for
ameliorating the lot of the laboring classes. The
Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution,
which declares that property must not be taken with
out due process of law, has been used over and over
again by judges to justify the annulment of laws
passed by legislatures and desired by the people. The
result is that property rights have been given in this

CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTIES 33
country a more protected status than anywhere else
in the world, and often ranked above what we call
human rights. So much use has been made of that
Fourteenth Amendment that it has been specifically
proposed that whenever an act is passed by two differ
ent sessions of a legislature, and approved by the
electorate upon a referendum, it shall be held not to
infringe the "life, liberty, and property" clause in
that amendment.
The reasons for this obstructionist attitude of some
of our courts must be sought in the training that
judges receive. The law schools have trained their
students rather in a legalist, backward-looking tem
per, than in a constructive, forward-looking spirit.
One of the judges of the Federal Supreme Court has
written, "The training of lawyers is a training in
logic . . . The logical method and form fiatter that
longing for certainty and for repose which is in every
human mind. But certainty generally is illusion,
and repose is not the destiny of man. Behind the log
ical form lies a judgment as to the relative worth and
importance of competing legislative grounds, often
an inarticulate and unconscious judgment, it is true,
and yet the very root and nerve of the whole proceed
ing. ... To measure them justly needs not only the
amplest powers of a judge and a training which the
practice of the law does not insure, but also a freedom
from prepossessions which is very hard to attain. It
seems to me desirable that the work should be done
with express recognition of its nature."
In short, the courts have been taking upon them
selves what is not merely an interpretative but a
political function. But they are made up not of rep
resentatives of all classes, but solely of lawyers, who
almost inevitably come to have the property point of

34 LIBERTY
view. Their work lies largely in the sphere of the en
forcement of property interests. They do not con
sciously mean to be servants of organized property
interests, but their unconscious prejudices make them
often its ready tools.
To realize to what extent the supposedly interpre
tative function of the courts is actually determinative,
we have but to read the opinions of the dissenting
judges, which are usually the most drastic criticisms
of the majority decisions, and show how far the social
philosophy of the judges colors their arguments. A
legal foundation can be brought up for almost any
decision, through the selection of the precedents to be
followed. A student of the law has recently declared
that "there are so many principles and precedents run
ning in different directions, that a judge can generally
find some principle, precedent, or construction to
justify in legal form the conclusion he has arrived at
on the facts . . . With the courts of forty-six States
and several English-speaking jurisdictions handing
down decisions at the rate of several hundred bulky
volumes every year, it is not difficult to find authority
and reason for almost any practicable view ; and even
when certain precedents seem to stand in the way of
the judgment the court would like to render, these
can often be distinguished from the case at bar by
some slight difference, or perhaps quite marked and
vital difference in the facts and circumstances."
For example, the majority of the Massachusetts Su
preme Court recently stated the opinion that the
legislature could not legally give authority to the
cities of the State to establish municipal coal and
wood yards, for the purpose of providing their citizens
with fuel at a reasonable price. The ground for this
decision lay in the fact that the judges thought it

CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTIES 35
would be an unwise thing for municipalities to go
into such business and that it would open the way
for further "socialistic" enterprises. But Mr. Justice
Holmes (now a member of the Federal Supreme
Court) dissented vigorously from this view, declaring
that "when money is taken to enable a public body to
offer to the public without discrimination an article
of general necessity, the purpose is not less public
when that article is wood or coal than when it is
water or gas or electricity or education, to say nothing
of cases like the support of paupers, or the taking of
land for railroads or public markets."
In this case the fact that a majority of the judges
were unfavorably disposed, owing to their social class
or education or thought, to the extension of munic
ipal activity, led them to block legislation which a
majority of Mr. Holmes' type would have passed as
legitimate. It can clearly be seen that the political
and social temper of our judges may well be a more
serious matter than that of our legislators and execu
tives; and, in our system, the judges have the last
word. Even though there be a large popular majority
in favor of a law, and a majority in the Congress or
State legislature, and even though the welfare of the
people, as well as their will, is embodied in the law,
the courts can keep it off the statute-books.
Do we wish to allow the courts this right to obstruct
the will of the people? Certainly, if we allow them
to retain it, we must be free to criticize their action
when we disapprove it. Time has shown that not a
few court decisions have been undesirable. Our
greatest American, Abraham Lincoln, felt free to
condemn the action of the Supreme Court of the
United States. Of the Dred Scott decision he said,
"we think this decision erroneous. We know that

36 LIBERTY
the court that made it has often overruled its own
decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it
overrule this , . ,1 do not resist it . . . We abide
by the decision, but we will try to reverse that
decision." Similarly, Theodore Roosevelt criticized the New
York State Bakeshop decision, above described:
"The Supreme Court of the United States possessed,
and unfortunately exercised, the negative power of
not permitting the above to be remedied. By a five-
to-four vote they declared the action of the State of
New York unconstitutional, because, forsooth, men
must not be deprived of their 'liberty' to work under
unhealthy conditions . . . The Court was, of course,
absolutely powerless to make the remotest attempt
to provide a remedy for the wrong which undoubt
edly existed, and its refusal to permit action by the
State did not confer any power upon the nation to
act. The decision was nominally against states'
rights, but really against popular rights."
Shall we go further than to bring the pressure of
public opinion to bear upon the judiciarj'? Many
publicists have advocated the "recall" of judges whose
interpretations run contrary to the majority will.
Without going so far as this, we might propose, as
Roosevelt did, the "recall of judicial decisions," i.e.,
a referendum which would let the people decide
whether, in a given case, they wished to uphold or to
annul the interpretation of the court. This plan
seems preferable to the recall of the judge himself,
since the fear of losing his office might tend to make
a judge too sensitive to public opinion. The inde
pendence of the judiciary is a valuable asset in a
democracy. Yet where the recall of judges has been
available it has been used with moderation and wis-

CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTIES 37
dom ; and it is not to be forgotten that it is a possible
last resort.
Again, it would be possible to take from the
judiciary its power of constitutional veto and give
the Congress and State legislatures the power to
determine the constitutionality of their own acts,
with, perhaps, a popular referendum when desired
by a sufficient number of people. This, however,
would be a sharp break with our traditions. And it
is highly questionable whether this taking off the
brakes would not encourage hasty and extremist
legislation, and do more harm than good. We are a
conservative nation, and will not lightly abrogate,
because of the dangers that inhere in it, a policy that
has appealed to most Americans as, on the whole, rea
sonable and wise.
Perhaps the best solution, on the whole, will be to
leave the Courts their power, and to make the process
of amending Constitutions somewhat easier. Thomas
Jefferson wished that constitutions might be deliber
ately revised every nineteen years. Attempts are
periodically made thoroughly to revise antiquated
State constitutions; but because of the clumsy pro
cedure involved, they rarely achieve a marked success.
However, the passing of the eighteenth and nine
teenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution
shows that instrument to be still plastic to the popu
lar will. And incidental changes are constantly
being made in State constitutions. When a court,
through its interpretation of constitutional provi
sions, blocks a generally desired law, an alteration
in the Constitution can be made, if enough people
want it. And although this process has hitherto been
often heartbreakingly slow, and although judges are
sometimes sadly lacking in social vision and prone

38 LIBEETY
to give a narrowly legalistic interpretation, one that
concerns itself more with property rights than with
human rights, yet the idea behind this Constitu
tional barrier is a sound one. It comes down to a
question of political policy. Do we need checks upon
over-hasty legislative action? Or do we need rather
to progress more freely than our constitutional bar
riers permit?
The ideal is undoubtedly that expressed by Dr.
Lyman Abbott: "The Constitution is not like the
hoops of a barrel that hold the staves together . . .
It is like the bark of a tree that grows with the growth
of the tree and expands with its expansion." If we
can keep our Constitution as flexible as this analogy
suggests, we can, if we choose, repeal or amend
clauses in it that come to be interpreted by the
Courts in a manner contrary to the popular will.
New laws can then be passed that will not be subject
to annulment, at least on the old grounds. In this
manner we may unite caution with experimentation,
a wise conservatism with a progressive regard for
human needs and interests. SUGGESTED READINGS
F. J. Goodnow, Social Reform and the Constitution.
Frank Parsons, Legal Doctrine and Social Progress, Chap. IV.
H. M. Kales, Unpopular Government in the United States,
Chapters XVI, XVII.
G. G. Groat, The Attitude of American Courts in Labor Cases,
L. P. Edie, Current Social and Industrial Forces, pp. 223-229.
T. M. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, seventh ed,
Theodore Eoosevelt, The New Nationalism: Criticism of the
Courts.
J. H. Tufts, Our Democracy, Chapter XXVI.
Brooks Adams, The Theory of Social Revolutions.
J. A. Smith, The Spirit of American Government, Chapters
V, XI.

CONSTITUTIONAL GUAEANTIES 39
0. G. Haines, The American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy.
A. L. Hudson, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, p. 679.
G. W. Alger, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. Ill, p. 345.
K. T. Frederick, in Athmtic Monthly, vol. 110, p. 46.
Louis Bartiett, in Atlantic Monthly, vol, 126, p, 289.

CHAPTER V
INDIVIDUALISM
We have been discussing certain restrictions upon
liberty that are necessary for liberty's sake. It is
by no means true, however, that our only danger lies
in an unrestricted and heedless individualism. On
the contrary, there are ways in which we need more
rather than less individual liberty.
Much that is best in our national life has come from
the self-reliance bred by pioneer conditions, the love
of overcoming obstacles, the zest in what Roosevelt
named the Strenuous Life. In general, the people
who left their home-lands and dared the dangers of
the ocean and of a new country were the bolder,
hardier folk. They found here abundant opportuni
ties for personal initiative. Owing to their diversity
of race and traditions they were slow in developing a
"consciousness of kind." They wrote their individu
alistic creed into their laws and constitutions; their
writers and poets glorifled that fearless and energetic
individualism and crystallized it into an explicit and
avowed ideal.
All this is to the good. Our aim should be, not to
cramp, but so far as possible to liberate, these indi
vidual energies. It is with us an established right
that each young man and woman shall choose his or
her vocation, friends, religious faith, home; shall
carve out an individual life, rather than be sub
ject to family dictation or pressure, as is so often
40

INDIVIDUALISM 41
the case in Europe. Hundreds of young men every
year, with little more than their natural talents to
help them, succeed in carving out a career for them
selves and lifting themselves to positions of profit
and power. And in increasing numbers the young
women of America are following their example and
becoming independent individuals, able to support
themselves and make a distinctive personal contribu
tion to the country's life.
But this individualistic spirit is as yet only par
tially developed. In some matters public opinion
still presses too hard upon the individual, seeking to
make him conform to generally accepted standards
of manners and morals, at the expense of the com
plete development of his personality. This is partly
the result of our Puritan tradition, which allowed no
variation from a supposedly infallible code, and
partly the instinctive expression of a very widespread
human attitude, the dislike of conduct that varies
from our own.
More serious even than this is the fact that there
are whole classes of workers who, while being cogs
in a great industrial or commercial machine, have no
least share in shaping the conditions of their daily
work or the policies of the industry they serve. They
are simply "hands," not human beings, to be ordered
about, never to be consulted or even listened to; they
are what the agitators call "wage-slaves." This state
of things is undesirable, not primarily out of consid
eration for abstract justice, but because this stifling
of individuality narrows unnecessarily the lives of so
many people, deprives them of zest in their work, and
deprives the industries of the ideas that would be
evolved from their participation in their manage
ment. Emerson boasted of our people that we are

42 LIBERTY
"a nation of individuals." But we are in danger of
becoming, if we have not already become, an upper
class of individuals controlling the daily life of a
great mass of laborers who have little opportunity
to develop their individuality or to express it if it
were developed.
The fact seems to be that most of the present
managers of industry are so confident in their own
judgment, so afraid of the ignorance or shortsighted
ness of the workers whose help they use in carrying
on the business — ^in short, so undemocratic in their
outlook — that they are afraid or unwilling to share
the responsibility of decision, except perhaps with
their technical experts or heads of departments. Yet
where some measure of industrial democracy has been
tried, the results have usually been salutary, not only
upon the workers admitted to participation in con
trol, in developing their individuality and giving
them a new interest in life, but in contributing ideas
of value to the business. As Professor Mecklin says,
"among the thousands of human beings working like
bees in a vast plant there are countless precious
human capacities that lie dormant or are absolutely
ignored, 'Mute inglorious Miltons,' men with scien-
tiflc, artistic, or moral gifts, are forced to fit their
varied geniuses into one colossal mechanistic scheme
that knows but one measure of value — earning
capacity," Some way to develop and utilize these
latent energies and talents must be devised.
Curiously enough, in American politics the opposite
practice rules. Our idea here is that almost anybody
can flU any position ; we do not demand professional
training for high political office. As an acute foreign
observer wrote, some years before the war, "The need
of specialized experts is not felt; and the result is an

INDIVIDUALISM 43
ineffective triviality which repels the best men and
opens wide the door for dishonesty." When Mr.
Bryan was arguing for free silver he was reported to
have said that the opinion of all the professors of the
United States would not affect his opinion in the
least. And this same distrust of the trained student
permeates our government. Mayors are elected in
our great cities who have had no experience in
managing municipal affairs. Senators are appointed
to committees with no thought as to their previous
training in the flelds in which those committees must
prepare legislation. Debates take place continually
upon the floor of Congress which are ridiculous to
any one who is a competent student of the matters
discussed. Plainly the ideal, both for politics and for industry,
is to combine the fullest self-expression for all with
the utilization of the greatest natural talent that can
be discovered and the most thorough training that
can be devised. Every one of age should participate
in the choice of those who are to govern ; but the peo
ple must be educated to realize the value of talent and
training, so that they will try to choose those who
will be most competent for the work in hand. Such
a democracy, encouraging individuality everywhere,
and bringing the individuals of greatest worth to the
top, would be inflnitely superior both to the easy
going "he's-a-good-fellow" of contemporary politics
and the autocratic control of contemporary industry.
As a matter of fact, the two realms are not so unlike
as would appear. Political officials are actually
chosen for the most part by small groups of poli
ticians rather than by any real popular decision;
the voter is consulted not as to whom he wishes but
only as to which of two or three he wishes. What we

44 LIBERTY
need is a means by which a really popular will can
be created and expressed, as well in politics as in
industry. In the early days of the Republic, when
both politics and industry were on a small scale,
there was ample scope for the individuality of any
one who had ideas to contribute. But the develop
ment of our highly complex political and industrial
machines has throttled the individuality of all but
the fortunate or clever few who can push their way
into the inner councils. Many proposals will be dis
cussed and tried out before we agree upon the best
way to restore something like the splendidly demo
cratic individualism of the old days. But a clear
recognition of the partial eclipse of this ideal is half
the battle for its regaining.
There is another way in which the free individual
ism of our American tradition is in danger of being
lost. That tradition was voiced by Emerson when
he wrote, "Why was man bom, if not to be a re
former, a re-maker of what man has done?" It has
recently been expressed by a French critic, M.
Rodrigues, who writes, "The mission of the American
people is a mission of renascence and renovation."
The spirit behind the Declaration of Independence
was the impulse toward free experimentation, toward
detachment from the past, toward giving free play to
imagination and thought. The Founders were radi
cals, not afraid to voice their radicalism. They wel
comed to these shores men of radical opinions, and
make of our country the great political asylum. They
were not afraid of trying out a new plan of govern
ment. The several States became so many experi
ment stations in democracy. Change, growth, free
criticism, progress, were in the air.
But in these latter years a new timorousness has

INDIVIDUALISM 45
appeared in American life. Prosperity has begotten
contentment, conservatism, the let-well-enough-alone
attitude. What was radical in the days of the
Founders is now accepted as a matter of course ; but
the radical thought of today is branded in some
quarters as dangerous and deserving of ruthless sup
pression. The result is that we are in danger of
becoming actually the most convention-ridden and
unprogressive of the great nations. Many modem
observers have, in fact, given that as their mature
opinion of American life. Even de Toqueville found
this tendency to the crystallization of a new conven
tionalism; "one would say," he wrote, "that minds
have all been formed upon the same model in
America, so exactly do they follow the same routes."
Matthew Arnold was impressed by the drab uni
formity of our civilization and the absence of fresh
currents of ideas. Lord Bryce, America's most
sympathetic critic, has written of our cities that
"their monotony haunts one like a nightmare" ; and,
again, has pointed out that we have "so few indepen
dent schools of opinion." Very recently an acute
English critic, Mr. Graham Wallas, writing in the
Atlantic Monthly, declared that American thought
on social and political matters is "timid and con
ventional." The fact seems to be that too many of us have come
to tolerate the wrong kind of individualism and to
frown upon the right kind. Individualistic activities
— activities which further private fortunes, at no
matter whose expense — are acquiesced in, out of a
sincere belief in the wisdom of leaving the individual
unhampered no matter how the public is plundered,
or out of a more or less conscious realization that we
should like to feather our own nests in the same way

46 LIBERTY
if we had the opportunity. But individualistic
ideals, ideas at variance with the accepted point of
view, are increasingly the cause of social obloquy and
persecution. It is a serious question whether the tyranny of the
majority opinion in a democracy may not be as bane
ful as the tyranny of an oligarchy. If a reformer to
day, a man who is earnestly seeking a juster and hu-
maner order, ventures to label his vision "socialism"
or "communism," he is in danger of jail ; or — if he is
an alien — of deportation. Even if he does not so label
it, and if in fact he differs essentially from these ostra
cized views, he may none the less have these labels
bestowed upon him by undiscriminating authorities
and be equally in danger. It has been said that at
the conclusion of a war the victor and vanquished
exchange characteristics. It would actually seem as
if a breath of Prussianism had been wafted to this
land that once boasted of its individual liberty.
Instead of seeking the liberation of new ideas, the
free development of new ideals, there are many
Americans today who are deliberately trying to stamp
out ideas which they consider heterodox or radical,
and, paradoxically enough, calling themselves in the
doing it "One hundred per cent Americans!"
The psychologist can readily understand this reac
tionary attitude. "The average brain is naturally
lazy and tends to take the line of least resistance.
The mental world of the ordinary man consists of
beliefs which he has accepted without questioning
and to which he is flrmly attached ; he is instinctively
hostile to anything which would upset the established
order of his familiar world. A new idea, inconsistent
with some of the beliefs which he holds, means the
necessity of rearranging his mind; and this process

INDIVIDUALISM 47
is laborious, requiring a painful expenditure of brain-
energy. To him and his fellows, who form the vast
majority, new ideas, and opinions which cast doubt
on established beliefs and institutions, seem evil
because they are disagreeable.
"The repugnance due to the mental laziness is in
creased by a positive feeling of fear. The conserva
tive instinct hardens into the conservative doctrine
that the foundations of society are endangered by
any alterations in the structure. It is only recently
that men have been abandoning the belief that the
welfare of a state depends on rigid stability and on
the preservation of its traditions and institutions
unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel
opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as annoying,
and anyone who asks inconvenient questions about
the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is
considered a pestilent person."
The attitude is intelligible, but it is not one hun
dred per cent American; it is not one per cent
American. It is the continual application of new
ideas that has made possible the great development
of American business, the great strides of American
mechanical invention. We need that same current
of fresh ideas turned upon our political and social
mechanisms. No doubt there is, and always will be,
much individual thinking upon public affairs that is
silly, one-sided, or Utopian, inspired by resentments,
unfruitful. But even so, it pays to cultivate indi
viduality. In the realm of mechanics a hundred
suggestions are made for one that proves useful.
Many years of experimentiiig, and many costly fail
ures, preceded the building of the airplane that could
really fly. So in political matters, it is easy to criti
cize and to propose, and it will be a long process tp

48 LIBEETY /'' /
disentangle what is good in the babel of voices from'
what is of no constructive value. But it is only by
the utmost encouragement of criticism and the wel
coming of variant ideas that we can hope to move
on at all.
The true American, then, will not attempt to stifle
discussion by calling it "agitation," he will not label
ideas with which he disagrees, however vigorously, as
"dangerous" ; instead of focusing his attention upon
the apparent folly of Utopian schemes he will seek
to understand the motives that lie behind their con
struction and the evils that they are meant to remedy.
He will realize that from even the wildest radical
there may be something to learn; he will, therefore,
look for something suggestive in every man's opinions,
and glory in that absence of servility to tradition,
that prevalence of a critical spirit toward our insti
tutions, and that fertility of inventive thought, which
are the best fruits of American individualism.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Sinclair Kennedy, The Pan-Angles, Chap. III.
E. W. Emerson, Self -Reliance (in Essays, vol. I).
Warner Fite, Individualism,
J. M. Mecklin, Introduction to Social Ethics, Chap. III.
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom.
C. W. Eliot, The Confiict between Individudlism and Collec
tivism, in a Democracy.
Josiah Eoyce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, Chap. II.
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, pp. 403-408.
W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, Chap. IV.
J. A. Smith, The Spirit of American Government, Chap. XII.
J. W. Burgess, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty.
0. E. Merriam, American Political Ideas, Chapters XI, XII.
Fabian Franklin, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 120, p. 270.
H. C. Brown, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 26, p. 177.
A. K. Rogers, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 26, p. 323.
V. S. Yarros, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 29, p. 405.
E. A. Ross, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 30, p. 58.

CHAPTER VI
FREE SPEECH
Most precious, perhaps, of the forms of freedom on
these shores has been the freedom of belief and of
public utterance. This has been conspicuously true
in the fleld of religion. We know that the Pilgrims
came hither for "freedom to worship God." So it
was with the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, the
Huguenots, the Quakers, and many others.
True, religious freedom for these early immigrants
meant merely the right to hold their views, not the
right to hold any views. Roger Williams, a heretic
among these heretics, was persecuted almost as
flercely as he would have been in the Old World.
Through his efforts, however, together with the gen
erous spirit of Lord Baltimore and William Penn
and their followers, farther south, the principle was
gradually accepted that the Government should not
meddle with religion at all, and that every one should
be free to live by the dictates of his own conscience.
This ideal of liberty of conscience, so early devel
oped in America, is one of our most distinctive con
tributions to civilization. Nathaniel Shaler once
declared it "the most unique accomplishment of our
people." In its application to religion it was em
bodied in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 2,
1776 : "All men are equally entitled to the free
exercise of religion, according to the dictates of
conscience." The Constitution of the United States
49

60 LIBERTY
forbade the use of any religious test as a qualification
for office, and the First Amendment declared that
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establish
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof." This tolerant attitude has been universally ac
cepted in America. All churches are protected, none
is to have political control. No sectarian teaching is
to be allowed in the public schools. No individual is
to suffer disabilities of , any sort because of his reli
gious beliefs or disbeliefs. As Roosevelt wrote, in his
American Ideals, "We maintain that it is an outrage,
in voting for a man for any position, whether state
or national, to take into account his religious faith,
provided only he is a good American."
This does not mean that we are an irreligious peo
ple. On the contrary, religion fiourishes most vigor
ously where it is free. Political control is never in
this country to be used to push any one Church ; and
conversely, the power of the Church is never to be
used to sustain a particular political regime or a
privileged social class. But this very divorce of reli
gion from politics means a relaxation of sectarian
animosities, an emphasis upon what the religious
movements have in common, a growth in mutual re
spect, which may eventuate in the union of all men of
good will in the common, unending war against evil.
The ideal of individual liberty is still incompletely
realized while the thought of the various churches is
pocketed, each group reading its own denominational
literature and living an intellectual and spiritual life
of its own. What we need, for the fulfilment of our
ideal, is the interfiowing of these varied currents of
thought, the growth out of them of something larger
and more inclusive. We must work to the end

FREE SPEECH 61
that, as Dr. Stanton Coit puts it, "the thoughts and
feelings on religious subjects of all individuals in a
nation shall, like the thoughts and feelings in one
single brain, be allowed unimpeded interaction and
shall constitute one unified and common fund to
which each person shall have access."
However far we may be as yet from this ideal, the
fight for perfect freedom of belief and utterance in
the religious sphere has been definitely won. In the
political and economic sphere, on the contrary, there
has been recently a reactiona?ry movement, engen
dered by war-psychology and by the sight of revolu
tionary chaos abroad, toward the restriction of these
elemental rights. Perhaps we may say that freedom
of speech in religious matters is unquestioned today
largely because people do not take religious differ
ences so seriously as they did; they no longer think
that a person will be damned if he has heretical ideas.
But they do take differences of economic doctrine
seriously; they fear the destruction of society if any
radical reorganization of the industrial structure is
openly advocated. Or perhaps they fear mainly the
restriction of their own privileges and the limitation
of their own income. In any case, their dread of eco
nomic innovation is so great that it seems to them
necessary to curb the time-honored freedom of belief
and speech of which America has always been so
proud. Consider, for example, the following facts. During
the past few years permits for speeches in halls and
out-of-doors have been repeatedly refused to people
suspected of radical ideas — ^including Christian min
isters of high reputation, professors in theological
schools, editors of reputable journals, and labor lead
ers of unquestioned personal character. Meetings

52 LIBEETY
gathered to listen to speakers obnoxious to the
authorities have been roughly broken up and the
speakers forcibly ejected. Not only have the mails
been closed to specific issues of various newspapers
and journals, but the second-class mailing privilege
has been refused altogether to certain periodicals —
the result being, in some cases, to put an end to their
publication. Books and pamphlets containing pass
ages disapproved by the authorities have likewise
been declared unmailable.
Further, raids have been conducted by the Govern
ment against schools, clubs, workingmen's associa
tions, political party headquarters ; all persons on the
premises have been indiscriminately arrested, regard
less of the absence of specific evidence as to their
beliefs or utterances. Property has been seized and
held without warrant. Great numbers of people have
been arrested and sent to jail without warrant. Spies
and underground agents have been used by the whole
sale to disclose to the Government the names of per
sons and organizations professing radical ideas. In
many cases, the "radical" ideas for which men have
been jailed have been in reality no more radical than
the ideas of the founders of our nation — as, for
example, protests against the infringement of the
right of free speech or against the continued impris
onment of political prisoners beyond the immediate
emergency, the pointing out of obvious evils in the
present industrial or social order, the calm discussion
of possible improvements upon or alternatives to
contemporary institutions.
In the case of aliens in this country suspected of
radical sympathies the procedure has been even more
violent. Thousands of unoffending working-men
have been suddenly summoned before an inspector of

FEEE SPEECH 53
the Bureau of Immigration and subjected to a search
ing inquisition into their beliefs. Whether or not they
have ever joined any radical party or publicly uttered
any radical opinions, if their private beliefs, as
extracted by this inquisition, are unsatisfactory to
the inspector, they can be summarily banished from
the United States; and many hard-working men,
innocent of all offence save that of holding a minor
ity opinion in the sacred sphere of property or indus
trial organization, have been arrested, handcuffed,
and dragged through the streets like common crimi
nals, sent to jail, without a jury trial, and presently
banished from the country.
The various socialist and communist parties, such
as exist unmolested in all countries of Europe —
fiourishing openly even under the Hohenzollems and
Hapsburgs — ^have lately been treated in this country
by the majority in power as criminal organizations.
Membership in some of them has been held by the
Department of Justice as sufficient ground in itself
for the deportation of otherwise unoffending aliens
who may have established a home in this country and
be looking forward to citizenship. Socialist repre
sentatives have been excluded from their seats in our
legislatures because of the party to which they be
longed; some of these, when re-elected, have again
been expelled.
Worse than all this, bills have been passed by State
legislatures that lay violent hands upon freedom of
teaching. According to these bills no schools are to
be allowed whose teachings are not approved by the
State authorities, and no teachers are to be given
teaching certificates who do not promise to be "loyal
to the institutions and laws" of the State — "disloy
alty" meaning the advocacy of any important change

54 LIBEETY
therein. City Boards of Education have passed reso
lutions to withhold diplomas from all public school
children who do not sign a pledge that they will
oppose all movements "antagonistic to the laws of
the United States or tending to subvert the Consti
tution," — under which heads any fundamental re
form can, of course, be classified. Students profess
ing socialistic ideas have been refused diplomas in
law. Many public school teachers have been dis
missed because they were suspected of radical lean
ings or known to be readers of radical publications.
Not a few college and university professors have lost
their positions for similar reasons. It no longer is
wise for a teacher in many of our educational institu
tions to profess beliefs unpopular with the Powers
that Be,
All of this persecution of opinion, which would
have seemed incredible in America a few years ago,
is the outgrowth of the War, It will, no doubt,
gradually die out. But it has persisted, with little
public disapproval, for over two years, at date of
writing, since the cessation of hostilities; and the
extent to which this wave of intolerance has spread
over the country is ominous. It shows how little our
people have been trained to cherish our American
heritage of liberty of opinion.
Yet there is no ideal deeper-rooted in our history.
Thomas Jefferson urged, "If there be any among us
who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change
its form, let them stand undisturbed. Let them stand
undisturbed as monuments to the safety with which
error of opinion may be tolerated when reason is free
to combat it,'^ Daniel Webster declared that what
he would most proudly leave to posterity was his
record that in all circumstances he had favored free-

FEEE SPEECH 55
dom of opinion, especially freedom for opinions that
were in bad repute. President Wilson summed up
our national ideal in these words: "If there is one
thing we love more than another in the United States,
it is that every man should have the privilege, unmo^
lested and uncriticized, to utter the real convictions
of his mind."
That many public-spirited Americans have kept
this ideal alive in their hearts during the wave of
repression following the Great War may be witnessed
by the protest against the Government's policy signed
by twelve of the most prominent lawyers in the
country. These eminent and conservative men wrote,
"We make no argument in favor of any radical doc
trine, as such, whether socialist, communist, or an
archist. No one of us belongs to any of these schools
of thought. Nor do we now raise any question as to
the Constitutional protection of free speech and a
free press. We are concerned solely with bringing
to the attention of the American people the utterly
illegal acts which have been committed by those
charged with the highest duty of enforcing the laws —
acts which have caused widespread suffering and
unrest, have struck at the foundation of American
free institutions, and have brought the name of oui*
country into disrepute."
We must beware of assuming that America belongs
to us alone, and not to those who disagree with us.
We must remember what Lincoln said: "This coun
try, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
inhabit it," To those who seem to us "radicals," or
"bourgeois," or "Bourbons," as well as to those who
agree with us. It takes many kinds of people to
make a great country. It may happen that one class
of people, getting into power, is able to run things

56 LIBEETY
in its own way for a while, and to make it unsafe for
another class of people to advocate another way of
doing things. But nothing could be more disastrous
than for them to exercise that power.
The imperious reason why freedom of speech is
desirable is not the hardship brought upon those who
differ from the dominant views, but the need of the
ideas that every one has to contribute. New and
better ideas are always at first in a minority, always
unpopular, usually deemed dangerous and immoral
by the more conservative majority. It was so with
the ideas of Socrates, and with the ideas of a greater
than Socrates, the Founder of our own faith. It was
so with the early Christians, whose views were so
universally thought to be immoral that they were
persecuted even by the wise and gentle Marcus
Aurelius. In a given case we may feel certain that
the opinion or ideal we are repressing is highly unde
sirable ; but we fail to realize that the repressive atti
tude is even more dangerous. As Lecky has said,
"The persecutor can never be certain that he is not
persecuting truth rather than error, but he can
always be certain that he is suppressing the spirit
of tmth."
Democracy implies not only government by ma
jorities, but freedom of criticism and agitation by
minorities, the facilitation of the development of
minorities into majorities, the maintenance of oppor
tunities for the hearing of everyone's opinion and for
the making of whatever social or political changes
the majority can be brought by open agitation to
approve. How can we be sure that we have the best
possible system unless we listen to what every critic,
every agitator, every idealist, has to say? The proper
way to combat one-sided and impracticable ideals ia

FEEE SPEECH 57
to show their unreason, to meet argument by argu
ment, to put no artificial barriers in the way of free
discussion, but to trust to common-sense (reinforced
by the inertia of conservatism) to put the brakes upon
unreasonable proposals. Mr. Justice Holmes has
stated the true American attitude in memorable
words : "When men have realized that time has upset
many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even
more than they believe the very foundations of their
own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better
reached by free trade in ideals — that the best test of
truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted
in the competition of the market. . . . That at any
rate is the theory of our Constitution."
The seriousness of the repressive tendency lies not
merely in the shutting of the mouths of the actual
radicals, but in the inevitable lumping together by
the repressionists of all liberals and reformers with
the radicals, and thus the checking of all movements
for genuine political or social progress. It may well
be argued that the policy of the American Govern
ment has suffered greatly since the signing of the
Armistice through the lack of enlightened public
criticism, the result of the censorship and repression
of discussion unfavorable to the policies of the
administration. At any rate, however exceptional may be the case
in wartime, an era of peace should welcome the de
velopment of individual thought, however contrary
to accepted doctrines it may be. We should say, as
Voltaire said to Helvetius, "I wholly disapprove of
what you say and will defend to the death your right
to say it." Or as Elihu Root lately put it, "Men in
a self-governing democracy must have a love of liberty

68 LIBERTY
that means not merely one's own liberty but others'
liberty," Radicalism is not one single, united, sinister, red-
handed thing. Radicalism is a name for a great
number of very diverse theories, largely incompatible
with one another, and mostly actuated by idealistic
and humanitarian motives. Selflsh and anti-social
motives are probably no commoner among radicals
than among conservatives. What we should do,
then, is to encourage discussion of radical ideas to
the utmost, develop our Open Forum movements, our
Neighborhood Centers, our political clubs, air these
new ideas, develop newer ideas, confront them in
reasoned debate with older ideas. The fear that
America will be destroyed by such a procedure is a
childish fear. We are not so near the brink of
collapse that we need to fear what anyone has to say.
On the contrary, if the method of repression grows
upon us and becomes a settled policy, much that is
best in American life will already have disappeared.
SUGGESTED READESTGS
J. B. Bury, History o.f Freedom of Thought.
Zechariah Chaffee, Jr., Freedom of Speech.
Publications of the American Sociological Society, vol. 9.
Graham Wallas, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 125, p. 116.
J. H. Robinson, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 120, p. 811.
John Dewey, in The New Republic, vol. 12, p. 128.
Vida Scudder, in Century Magazine, vol. 70, p. 222.
Alexander Meiklejohn, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 121, p. 83.
J. M. Catteil, in School and Society, vol. 6, p. 421.
H. J. Laski, in New Republic, vol. 21, p. 335.
Roscoe Pound, in Harvard Law Review, vol. 28, pp. 445, 453.
American Civil Liberties Union ; Report upon the Illegal Prac
tices of the United States Department of Justice (May,
1920).
Publications of the Free Speech League, 120 Lexington Avenue,
New York, N. Y.
E. Ritchie, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 14, p. 161.

CHAPTER VII
LAW AND ORDER
There is one sort of person, and only one, that the
machinery of repression should be turned against —
the person who breaks or urges the breaking of the
laws of the land. Detest as we may a man's opinions,
we most give them free room unless they call for the
violation of laws, or the use of violence to subvert
the existing order. On the other hand, however we
may sympathize with the ideals of some revolutionist,
and much as we may desire with him to see some
obnoxious law repealed, we cannot tolerate the pro
posal to disobey it while it remains upon the statute-
books. The lawabiding spirit is the prime essential
for the success of a democracy.
It is true that we all sympathize with the great
revolutionists of the past — with Gambetta and
Kossuth and Garibaldi, with the French and Russian
revolutionists, and our own forefathers, who refused
to obey the laws of their sovereign and by violence
achieved a new political order. It is true that, as
Gladstone said, "If the people of this country had
obeyed the precept to preserve order and eschew vio
lence, the liberties of this country would never have
been obtained." But these resorts to violent means
were justifled because no peaceful channel was open
for reform, and because the beneflt sought by the
arbitrament of war was for a whole people, not for
a section or class. In a democracy like ours any alter-
59

60 LIBERTY
ation in the political or industrial order is possible;
it is merely a question of winning the approval of a
majority of the people. And no change ought to be
made without the verdict of that approval. The
South attempted a sectional schism, and was deci
sively defeated, as any section or class will be that
seeks to free itself from the common law of the land.
The issue of that war decided that, as Lincoln put it,
"among free men there can be no successful appeal
from the ballot to the bullet."
The evil of violence lies not merely in the speciflc
bloodshed and economic destruction effected, but in
the precedent set. Human nature is all too prone
to resort to blows instead of argument; and if this
group or that were to win their point by lawbreaking,
or some illegal coup d'etat, other groups would be
powerfully encouraged to yield to their impatience
with the slow growth of public opinion and try the
same short cut to the result they desire. There is no
case in the whole fleld of morals where it is more
important that everyone shall keep to a code, in spite
of whatever immediate sacriflce. The code of law-
abidingness must have the loyalty of every citizen,
or we shall soon flnd ourselves drifting into chaos.
Moreover, even a successful revolution achieved by
a class or group within the nation would not be
stable; no change in the mechanism of politics or
industry would be permanent that did not rest upon
the sincere conviction of the majority of the people.
And when that majority is secured, violence is no
longer necessary to secure the change. Violence,
on the contrary, stimulates opposition, increases
estrangements, encourages the use of counter-violence,
makes it harder for classes to work together and
understand one another. Yet work together we must,

LAW AND OEDEE 61
in the end, and learn to use peaceful means for
making changes. The slow road of education, propa
ganda, campaigning, and the ballot, will be in the
long run the quickest road to the attainment of any
reform that is genuinely desirable.
Unhappily, respect for the slow processes of law
is not a mark of a pioneer country ; and our nation,
strong with the strength of youth and rich with the
exploitation of the virgin resources of a continent,
has not yet fully learned the necessity of restraint.
Lord Bryce has declared that our greatest fault is
"the disposition to be lax in enforcing laws disliked
by any large part of the population, to tolerate
breaches of public order, to be too indulgent to
offenders generally."
The most flagrant example of our lawlessness is,
of course, the lynchings we tolerate. In the past
thirty years over three thousand people have been
put to death by mobs in this country — a record worse
than that of any other contemporary civilized State,
up to the time of the Great War. The number of
annual lynchings has begun to decrease appreciably ;
but some of the most brutal and inexcusable of these
mob murders have been perpetrated within the past
few years. The fact that more than three-quarters
of the victims were negroes points to the factor of
race prejudice but does not in the least palliate the
crimes. The offence charged has by no means always
been rape — the suspicion of which most arouses
human passions ; in many cases the alleged crime was
of a trivial character. And in very many cases the
evidence of the guilt of the victim has been meager.
Certainly in a number of cases an innocent man has
been tortured and hanged or burned to death. It is
true that the most progressive sections of the country

62 LIBEETY
are free from this horror. But the stain rests upon
the Nation as a whole; and it is nothing short of
grotesque to make a great hue and cry about imagined
Bolshevists in our midst when men and women of
American descent thus practise the most brutal forms
of violence and go unpunished therefor.
As a matter of fact, violence by "Bolshevists," by
anarchists, by radicals of any sort bent on terrorizing
and bloodshed, has existed to very slight extent in
this country. There has been more or less open
advocacy of revolutionary methods, of the destruc
tion of property, by the propertyless, of sabotage, by
underpaid and underfed workers, of armed revolu
tion, when the "proletariat" could be brought to the
point of revolution. But the sporadic cases of vio
lence actually attempted have been vigorously con
demned by the rank and flle of labor; and there is
absolutely no danger of armed revolution in the
present temper of the masses. The fact is, we are
too prosperous; revolution thrives upon hardship and
hunger. In spite of much that is unjust and exas
perating in our social order, conditions are not such
as drive men to bloodshed and anarchy.
It is, indeed, a fair question whether more actual
lawbreaking and violence has not been committed by
the noisy advocates of "law and order," the "hundred
per cent Americans" who -uel every critic of con
temporary institutions a "Bolshevist," who raid
illegally the offices of radical newspapers, break up
Socialist meetings and parades, threaten labor or
ganizers, and urge the jailing or deportation of every
"red." There has been no more flagrant violation of
law than the Bisbee deportations, in 1917, carried out
by the bitter enemies of organized labor — an outrage
for which no punishment was ever inflicted. There

LAW AND ORDER 63
has been probably more violence committed in time
of strikes by the strikebreakers and hired servants
of the employers than by the strikers.
In any case, whatever the facts may be as to the
past, we must be stem to repress illegal action in the
future, whether committed by a lower class or an
upper class, by an I. W. W. agitator or the hired thug
of a great corporation.
But it is not enough to repress violence, we must
seek to counteract the influences that lead to it.
Among those influences there are three of chief im
portance. In the flrst place, there is the conviction,
current here and there among the lower classes, that
the social order is weighted against them, that they
have no hope of securing their share of the good
things of life except through some violent convulsion.
This conviction we must combat by promoting a dis
cussion of their grievances, real or supposed, and
focusing the attention of publicists and legislators
upon their cure. If these disaffected people can be
shown that their government is sincerely interested
in their welfare^ — shown by acts as well as by plat
form promises — they will cease to look to extra-
governmental means for improving their condition.
In the second place, the upper classes, those who
are well off under our present system of laws, must
cease to regard that system as sacrosanct. Reverence
for law and order means properly the insistence upon
using the ballot alone for altering the legal struc
ture, not the insistence upon retaining unmodified a
given social system. Criticism of our laws, even of
our Constitution, is not equivalent to advocacy of
disobedience to these laws while they remain on the
statute-books. To brand as "disloyal" every honest
thinker who holds that our present system can be

64 LLBERTY
improved upon is to cheapen respect for that system.
It has often been true that the most devoted patriots
have been the keenest critics of their country's poli
cies and laws. It is possible to criticize our existing
political or industrial system, not because we do not
love our country, but precisely because we love her
too well to be content that she should have any but
the most ideal system that can be devised. To assume
that wisdom died with our fathers, and that the laws
they conceived are to be petrified and made un
changeable is to belie the spirit of those valiant
reformers and to supplant Americanism with Bour-
bonism — the maintenance of what is, simply because
it is to some people's advantage to keep it as it is.
In the third place, and most important of all, if
lawlessness on the part of the disaffected is to be
avoided, they must be given every opportunity to air
their opinions openly and without fear. Deny men
the right of free speech, and you foster in them the
revolutionary spirit. Nothing cheapens the author
ity of the laws more than the browbeating of those
who protest against them. Free speech, and plenty
of it, is the great safety valve; conversely, as
President Wilson has put it, "repression is the seed
of revolution.^'
This, then, is an argument for free speech perhaps
even more important than those we discussed in the
preceding chapter. No argument for any existing
law or custom will weigh with those who chafe under
it unless they feel perfectly free, with safety, to
express their arguments against it. The utter
futility of the repression policy is obvious to any
careful observer, or, indeed, to any student of psy
chology. The suppressed ideas do not vanish, they
work underground, and, like steam without an outlet.

LAW AND OEDEE 65
become more and more explosive. On the other hand,
as Mr. Justice Holmes recently wrote, "with effer
vescing opinions, as with the not yet forgotten cham
pagnes, the quickest way to let them get fiat is to let
them get exposed to the air."
In a society as complex as ours, there is bound to
be disaffection. No sensible person can suppose that
our present civilization achieves the maximum of
human welfare obtainable. If there were no unrest,
there would be no hope of progress. Our danger is
not in unrest, it is in unrest that is suppressed,
ignored, inarticulate. Our hope is in unrest that
crystallizes into concrete proposals which can be
debated until they convert the majority or disappear
through the impact of sound and fair-minded argu
ment. Institutions inherently justifiable will never
be overthrown by iconoclastic agitators, they may be
overthrown only if they are artificially protected
from criticism and hence come to be regarded as
without reasonable justification.
One of the sanest proposals of recent years is that
of the eminent sociologist. Dr. Edward T. Devine:
"Let all of those who have grievances be openly . . .
invited to voice them. Let President Wilson and
every governor and every mayor designate great
public meeting places — ^in halls and in public parks —
where the freely chosen representatives of every
group . . . may express their views. Let the secret
service men attend, not to find victims for prosecu
tion, but to catch the faintest whisper of a just com
plaint. Let legislative assemblies give patient hear
ing to delegates who come to them from such assem
blies. Let grand juries weigh their complaints,
whether against individuals or against any existing
abuse which might be remedied. Let the industries

66 LIBERTY
be represented by their detectives, not to spot agita
tors to discharge them, but to make careful notes of
any bad practises which might be reformed, . . . Let
it be considered bad form to characterize any man as a
Bolshevist merely because you do not agree with him.
. . . Let us have parades of Socialists or Communists,
or Christians, or any other sect that can muster
enough enthusiasm and confidence in their cause to
make a showing. Let us make it the greatest offense
against morals and manners to silence the voice of a
prophet; to refuse a respectful hearing to those who
speak in the name of a more perfect justice, in the
name of a better social order."
So we are brought to the conclusion that as law is
not the enemy of liberty, so lawlessness is the product
not of liberty but of its denial. It is not less liberty
that we need, but more. If we would avoid the law
less state through which Mexico, for example, has
been passing, we must guard against that assumption
of despotic power and that denial of popular rights
which has engendered there a contempt for the ballot
as the means of reform and an impatience of the
restraints of law. Obedience to law can be expected
only if the law represents the free will and sincere
convictions of the people. The Pilgrims, drawing up
the Famous Mayflower Compact, November 11, 1620,
pledged to yield to their laws "all due submission and
obedience" ; but they offered their allegiance because
the laws were their own, not imposd upon them from
above. Washington, in his Farewell Address, declared
that "the very idea of the power and the right of the
people to establish Government presupposes the duty
of every individual to obey the established Govern
ment." Jefferson, in his First Inaugural, asserted

LAW AND ORDER 67
that liberty is to be secured only "by absolute acqui
escence in the decisions of the majority; the vital
principle of republics, from which there is no appeal
but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent
of despotism."
This principle was reaffirmed by Lincoln in these
well-known words: "Let every American, every
lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity
swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate
in the least particular the laws of the country, and
never to tolerate their violation by others. As the
patriots of '76 did to the support of the Declaration
of Independence, so to the support of the Constitu
tion and the laws, let every American pledge his life,
his property, and his sacred honor; let every man
remember that to violate the law is to trample upon
the blood of his fathers and to tear the charter of his
own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the
laws be breathed by every American mother to the
lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught
in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be
written in primers, spelling books, and almanacs.
Let it be preached from the pulpits, proclaimed in
legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.
In short, let it become the political religion of the
Nation." And flnally, Roosevelt, speaking at Columbus, Sep
tember 10, 1910, declared, "The flrst essential to the
achievement of justice is that law and order shall ob
tain, that violence shall be repressed, that the orderly
course of law shall be unobstructed, and that those
who commit violence shall be sternly punished."
This is the American tradition. It is broken by
anyone who urges bomb-throwing, assassination, dis
obedience to the laws, arrest without warrant, punish-

68 LIBERTY
ment without due trial by jury, the incitement of class
against class, suppression of free speech and a free
press, the branding by opprobrious names of those
with whom we disagree, the use of any means but
open argument and the ballot-box either for the
attaining of a better order or the maintenance of the
order that now is. We are passing through perilous
times, and may have to pass through times still more
perilous. But no harm will come to the American
Republic if we remain true to our heritage of liberty
for all within the law. SUGGESTED READINGS
Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism: Law, Order and
Justice,
W. H. Hamilton, Current Economic Problems, pp. 637-646.
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, pp. 410-413.
P. F. Brissenden, The Launching of the I. W, W,
J. E. Cutler, Lynch-Law.
J. G. Brooks, American Syndicalism,
Ole Hanson, Americanism vs. Bolshevism.
G. Sorel, Reflections on Violence.
J. Spargo, Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism, and Socialism,
Thorstein Veblen, On the Nature and Uses of Sabotage,
Eoland Hugins, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 123, p. 701.
Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, published by
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.
H. R. Mussey, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, p. 441.

PART TWO
EQUALITY

CHAPTER VIII
JUSTICE FOR ALL
The Declaration of Independence asserts that "all
men are created equal." This is not, of course, the
announcement of a biological law, but an emphatic
way of saying that all men ought to have equality of
treatment — equal security for life and limb, equal
access to the means for developing their capacities,
equal opportunities for the pursuit of happiness.
There must be here no hereditary office or rank, or
social class ; every career must be open to anyone who
can make good in it. "Every American is as good
as his brains and character and manners, and no
better." This is the second great principle of
Americanism. De Tocqueville hardly exaggerated
when he said that we were so devoted to it that we
had rather be equal in slavery than unequal in
freedom. Equality cannot be secured by a mere absence of
discriminatory laws and customs. Life is like a
handicap race; much must be done for the weaker
among us to secure for them an opportunity for hap
piness equal to that of their stronger or more for
tunate neighbors. But the foundation must be laid
in an absolute equality of all citizens before the law.
Not only must every citizen have the protection of
the law from injustice and injury, anywhere in the
world, on land or on sea, and a right to fair trial by
due process, whenever accused of wrongdoing, but,
71

72 EQUALITY
most essential of all, he must have assurance of an
administration of justice that is impartial toward
rich and poor, high and low, educated and ignorant,
white and black.
If we have had no personal experience to refute our
optimism, we shall naturally assume that this is the
case in America. But a little study of the facts shows
that our ideal is not completely realized. Many of
our conservative statesmen and lawyers, as well as
more radical writers, have expressed opinions similar
to that of ex-President Taft: "Of all the questions
which are before the American people, I regard no
one as more important than the improvement of the
administration of justice. We must make it so that
the poor man will have as nearly as possible an equal
opportunity in litigation with the rich man; and
under present conditions, ashamed as we may be of
it, this is not the fact."
In what respects is it not the fact? Well, in the
first place, it costs more than a poor man can afford
to hire a good lawyer to defend his case. The rich
offender has at his command the services of the
cleverest attorneys, who are skilled in the many tech
nical devices by which justice can be delayed or side
tracked altogether. At least, every extenuating cir
cumstance will be emphasized, every precedent favor
able to his case will be hunted up, every resource of
dialectic and persuasion brought to bear upon the
witnesses and the jury. A highly paid alienist may
testify to a temporary fit of insanity on the part of
his client. Altogether, cases are well known in which
rich men guilty of the worst crimes have escaped with
light penalties or with none.
The law does, indeed, provide for the defense of
every man accused of crime, by assigning counsel to

JUSTICE FOR ALL 73
those who cannot afford their own lawyers. But
these are usually unsuccessful lawyers, no match for
the rich man's attorneys, and often little interested in
the cases assigned to them. It is a common belief
among the criminal classes that conviction or ac
quittal depends upon the sum they can pay to their
counsel. There are a great number of "shyster"
lawyers who get what fees they can collect from the
poor, and render little or no service in return; in
some cases they do not even take the trouble to go
to court when the case comes up.
An ex-convict, writing in the Outlook for Decem
ber 27, 1916, declares that among the men who went
to trial "a majority seemed to believe that freedom
or imprisonment was largely a matter of money. If
they could raise enough of this to secure certain
lawyers, the result was almost foreordained. And
certainly there appeared solid ground for this belief
in that these men did secure verdicts of 'not guilty'
for several scores of prisoners who had made little
secret of their guilt while among us. . . . Study of
the situation reveals that not more than ten per cent
of criminals have the means to engage really capable
attorneys. And usually these are of the types most
dangerous to society. . . . The criminal lawyers . . .
have taught the professional criminal that he can
'get away with anything short of murder' if he has
the money."
Now, however common or unusual this situation
may be, it is intolerable that even the suspicion of
it should rest upon our judicial system. At least this
much should be done: defense, like prosecution,
should be recognized as a public matter; there should
be Public Defenders, as well paid as prosecuting at
torneys, well enough paid to attract to the position

74 EQUALITY
men of ability and experience. The securing of jus
tice requires as great skill in defense as in prosecu
tion, and an equal skill available to rich and poor.
If this plan, already in practice in some American
communities, is universally applied, we may hope to
substitute in the minds of the poor a genuine respect
for the law for the contempt and fear that they now
too often feel. Society must be protected equally
against jugglery of law and evidence in favor of the
rich offender, and an inadequate hearing of the case
of the poor.
Still more serious than this weighting of the scales
of justice in favor of rich offenders is the trend of
judicial decisions and interpretations in favor of the
possessing classes as against the working-man. It
has been often said, and not without show of reason,
that the majority of our lawyers and judges, coming
from the upper stratum of society, are unconsciously
prejudiced in favor of property rights as against
human rights. This, at least, is a widespread con
viction among the poorer classes; and it must receive
the gravest attention; for nothing could bode more
ill for our Republic than the growth of this conviction
that justice is a class affair.
To realize the extent of this conviction we have
but to read the resolutions unanimously adopted by
the American Federation of Labor at its convention
in 1919. An extract follows: "Our organization of
law presents a mass of inconsistencies and contradic
tions. While organizations of capital are encouraged
and protected, combinations of workers are con
stantly attacked. While employers may unite and
combine against workers and against the buying
public, the right of the workers to resist encroach
ments and to right admitted wrongs is constantly

JUSTICE FOE ALL 75
toeing interfered with. . . . Whenever an officer of an
incorporated financial, industrial, or commercial en
terprise exceeds the power specifically delegated to
him, the courts declare his act ultra vires and the
company is absolved from all responsibility. But
when a labor man at a trade union meeting makes
utterances which are condemned by those in author
ity, the union and its members may be robbed of their
funds and savings.
"It was the spirit of the jurisprudence of slavery
which forbade the slaves the opportunity to read to
defend themselves; and so it is the jurisprudence of
employers of today to continue doctrines which deny
the workers a full opportunity of defence. The time
has passed, however, when our courts should be
longer permitted to devise legal doctrines and design
local fictions by which to deny the wage earners equal
rights and privileges before the law . . .
"The power of our courts to declare legislation
unconstitutional and void is a most flagrant usurpa
tion of power and authority by our courts and is a
repudiation and denial of the principle of self-govei'n-
ment recognized now as a world doctrine. The con
tinued exercise of this unwarranted power is a blas
phemy on the rights and claims of free men of
America." We have already had occasion to notice that there
have been a great number of cases in which humani
tarian legislation, legislation favoring working-men
and women, has been set aside as unconstitutional by
the courts because it interfered with property rights.
Eight-hour, and even ten-hour, laws; laws forbidding
tenement-house labor of certain sorts; laws forbid
ding child-labor ; laws requiring payment of wages in
cash instead of truck; a law forbidding employers to

76 EQUALITY
discharge employees for being members of a labor
union, have thus been annulled by the courts. In
1917 the Supreme Court went even further, and
declared that a Labor Union has no right, against an
employer's wish, to urge his workmen to join the
union. The New York State Supreme Court declared
the workman's compensation law unconstitutional,
and it required a constitutional amendment to make
it operative.
At the same time that the Courts have thus been
annulling laws passed in the interest of the weaker
members of society, they have been sustaining the
powers of the great Corporations, and making possi
ble the prodigious proflt-takings of the past few dec
ades. It is no wonder, then, that not only the repre
sentatives of the laboring classes, but many members
of the professional classes, have felt that the Courts
were essentially a class-institution. A distinguished
student of public affairs wrote with some bitterness,
in 1919, "Within the last year the case of the United
States against the Standard Oil Company for viola
tion of the statutes directed against rebates was dis
missed by the courts, while the officers of the Ameri
can Federation of Labor were committed to jail for
alleged violation of a court order."
It is useless to expect, of course, that prejudice will
not enter into judicial decisions. All men are full
of prejudices; lawyers and judges are no exception.
The fact that there are precedents available for
almost any possible decision, and that judges differ
upon almost every disputed case, means that the ele
ment of unconscious bias must be a considerable fac
tor. What is essential, then, is that judges should be
drawn from all classes of cociety, subject to all the
conflicting prejudices, and that decisions of impor-

JUSTICE FOE ALL 77
tance should be made only by a two-thirds vote, or
even perhaps a unanimous vote, of a panel of judges
representing all schools of thought.
It is also important that the law should be con
ceived not merely as a mass of precedents, a binding
grip of the past upon the present, but that fresh inter
pretations shall keep our laws in touch with changing
conditions. It is necessary that judges be men "who
have a large comprehension of our country's needs,
wide conceptions of social justice, and who have
creative minds — who can make legal interpretations
contribute to the structure of our government." To
this end the law schools should teach their students
and the legal profession should inculcate among its
members the realization that their ultimate aim must
be to serve the welfare of the country.
But justice must go farther than to treat the rich
and poor alike, and to rate human needs above prop
erty interests. It must take account of the influences
that lead certain people almost irresistibly into
crime; it must seek to give them a fair chance by
counteracting as far as possible these evil forces.
It must see to it that the punishment inflicted for
crime is not of such a nature as to brutalize and make
a hardened criminal out of a flrst offender. It must
see to it that a man who has fallen once has every
possible opportunity to recover his self-respect and
the respect of society. In these aspects of what we
might call the Broader Justice, we must confess that
we are only at the beginning of imperative reforms.
Our penology may compare favorably with that of
some other countries. But nothing should content
America but the best. And our present penal system
is far short of what it ought to be.
It is an axiom of modern criminology that most

78 EQUALITY
crime is preventable. In the phrase that has become
famUiar, "All men are possible criminals, and all
criminals possible men." The number of convicts
released for war-service who won commissions and
medals, and the greater number who made good in
less spectacular ways, should convince the most re
luctant of the needless injustice in branding a man
as a criminal for life because of one offence. It should
also show that what a man becomes depends largely
upon the nature of his environment and opportuni
ties. We have been too slow to discriminate between
the pathological, hopeless criminal, and the man
whom we might call a chance offender, a victim of
circumstances. Toward the latter we need the hum
bler and more generous attitude expressed in the
words attributed to various godly lips, "There but
for the Grace of God go I !"
Perhaps a third of the inmates of our prisons
showed signs in childhood or youth of abnormality.
They should have been carefully watched by the
school medical examiners and either given a special
corrective treatment or education, or, if necessary,
removed from the pressure of an environment in
which they were practically sure to go wrong. Most
of these defectives and abnormal individuals could be
kept from crime and made into self-supporting citi
zens by proper precautions. The more hopeless ones
should have been put where they could never have
been dangerous to society, without waiting for the
harm to be done and the stigma of "criminal" to
attach to them.
As to the other two-thirds of our criminals, prob
ably more than half would have kept clear of crime
but for the pressure of poverty, of over-hard and
unpleasant work, of crowded, noisy, unsanitary.

JUSTICE FOR ALL 79
uncomfortable homes. The provision of adequate
housing accommodations and decently pleasant work
ing conditions, with reasonable hours and wages ; and
the securing of education for everyone, so that all
can earn an honest living and have resources for their
leisure hours, — these are the minimum requirements
of our American ideal of justice for all.
There will still be those who will yield to passion
or seductive temptation and commit anti-social acts.
With these our aim should be not revenge but refor
mation. Most of these offenders, if treated kindly
and trained in social co-operation, would come to
regret their mistake and would emerge from their
imprisonment with a resolve never to return. But
this is a matter for expert treatment, as far removed
as A from Z from the incredibly stupid treatment that
prisoners now sometimes receive. Many of our
prisons are scandalously unhygienic ; the wardens are
often men without special training for their office,
if, indeed, they are not coarse and of a lower moral
grade than some of their charges. Little is done usu
ally to train the unskilled prisoners in any vocation ;
in many cases they are even required to pass their
days in idleness. Often young offenders are allowed
to associate freely with men who are hardened and
who take pleasure in teaching them criminal ways.
Little is done, if anything, to remedy the defect of
character which caused their fall. They are kept
under restraint for a period of unhappiness and
brooding, and then turned loose upon society again.
There is no need to labor the point that we are not
fair to our criminals. Many of them haye never had
a fair chance to become reputable citizens; many
others who have abused their opportunities could
also, by proper training and environment, be made

80 EQUALITY
over into men of use to society. Some will, no doubt,
prove hopeless. But a more discriminating treatment
would salvage most of the human wreckage that now
disgraces our civilization.
As a scientiflc penology proved the possibility of
restoring most offenders to normal citizenship, the
people at large would become less wary of accepting
the services of those who had served prison terms,
and there would be a mitigation, at least, of that cruel
suspiciousness which makes it all but impossible now
for a man who has once fallen to regain the respect
of his fellows and build for himself again a respect
able life. Another chance for everybody, should be
our demand. If our prisons were all scientiflcally
managed our faith in their efficiency as reform-
schools would be justified, and the professionally
criminal class would lose the many recruits that join
it out of desperation at the attitude toward them of
society. Human life can never be made to offer equal oppor
tunities to all. We shall be to the end different in
brains, in good looks, in health, in a thousand things
that contribute to the determination of our conduct.
But if we sincerely cherish our ideal of Justice to
all, we must realize that far more is necessary for its
attainment than the judicial and penal systems that
we as yet possess. SUGGESTED READINGS
Frank Parsons, Legal Doctrine and Social Progress, Chap. VIII,
E. B. Fosdick, American Police Systems,
E. H. Smith, Justice and the Poor.
G. G. Groat, The Attitude of American Courts in Labor Gases.
E. P. Edie, Current Social and Industrial Forces, pp. 223-229.
C. E. Merriam, American Political Ideas, Chap. V.
P. A. Parsons, Responsibility for Crime,

JUSTICE FOE ALL 81
A. H. Currier, The Present Dcuy Problem, of Crime,
E. M. McConnell, Crimiruil Responsibility and Social Con
straint.
T. S. Mosby, Crime and its Causes and Cures.
F. Tannenbaum, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 125, p. 433.
H. A. Overstreet, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 25,
p, 277.

CHAPTER IX
RACIAL EQUALITY
The toleration of negro slavery was, of course, the
great crime, the great inconsistency, in a nation
founded upon the principle that "all men are created
equal." That crime was atoned for by the blood and
tears of the Civil War, and ended by the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
Now Lincoln, the Emancipator, is known and rever
enced by the poorest child who earns or is given a
copper cent.
Scarcely less serious a stain upon our record has
been our treatment of the natives of our land, the
American Indians. They were subjugated with com
parative ease by the superior numbers and weapons
of the European settlers, and thereupon denied citi
zenship, banished to the far West, cooped up upon
Reserves, and treated in a way that justifies the title
of a recent volume, A Century of Dishonor, A com
mission appointed by President Grant to report upon
Indian affairs published this conclusion: "The his
tory of the Government connection with the Indians
is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled
promises. The history of the border white man's con
nection with the Indians is a sickening record of
murder, outrage, robbery and wrongs committed by
the former, as the rule, and occasional outbreaks and
unspeakably barbarous deeds of retaliation by the
latter, as the exception." 82

RACIAL EQUALITY 83
The nation has now generally recognized the wrong
that was done the negro and the Indian. What re
mains of the latter race seems in a fair way to be
absorbed into the common American stock. But the
negro race remains a sharply distinct race, whose
intermarriage is not usually regarded as desirable.
Human nature being what it is, a certain racial an
tipathy seems unconquerable; and the presence of
eleven millions of negroes in this country gives rise
to a very serious problem.
It is not that the negroes are an "inferior" race.
Modern biology has been undermining that compla
cent assumption of innate superiority which the white
man has until recently taken for granted. Recent
investigations seem to indicate that there is no very
great difference in average mental ability between the
members of the white, red, yellow, brown and black
races. It may be — though it has not yet been deci
sively proved — that the average of negro capacity is
somewhat below the average capacity of the white
race. But in any case, the range of capacity within
each race is so great as compared with any average
difference that there may be between the races, that
no difference in attitude toward any race as a whole
is justified because of different mental capacity.
It would seem, if these biological investigations are
trustworthy, that the apparent lower capacity of the
negroes, as of every backward race, is to be explained
mainly, if not altogether, by the absence of an
environment favorable for development. Give the
negroes equal educational and cultural advantages,
and in a generation there will be no more problem of
a backward race there than there is with the
Japanese, who, in a generation, have leaped from a
semi-civilized status to be one of the world's great

84 EQUALITY
Powers. The poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the
great educational achievement of Booker Washington
—possibly the greatest educational achievement of
the past generation, the undisputed genius of many
negroes in this and other countries, reveals the poten
tialities in a hitherto cramped and suppressed race.
The problem of the negro is not so much the problem
of the negro as the problem of the white man who does
not want to extend to him equal advantages.
It is easy, of course, for a Northerner, who sees few
negroes, to preach equality of treatment. It is quite
another matter for a Southerner who lives in a region
where, perhaps, the blacks outnumber the whites, to
practice such equality. But it should be unnecessary
to insist that the denial of equal rights and privileges
to any race is fundamentally un-American. The
negro in many parts of the country does not get equal
justice. He is brutally treated by the police. If there
is a quarrel between whites and blacks, it is usually
the blacks that are arrested. In the recent Chicago
race-riots — which started with the shameless murder
of an innocent colored boy — twenty-three colored and
fifteen white people were killed ; but the arrests and
indictments of negroes were five times as numerous
as those of whites. The lynchings that disgrace our
land have usually negroes for the victims, although
the statistics show that the negroes are a compara
tively law-abiding race. More cases of rape are re
corded annually as committed by white men in a
single Northern city than by all the negroes in the
South. Apart from this fiagrant injustice, the petty indig
nities to which the negro population is subject in
many parts of the South show how undeveloped the
sense of human equality still remains. The nasty

EACLAL EQUALITY 85
waiting-rooms and railway cars which negroes must
use, the discourtesies of conductors and ticket-agents
and hotel men, make travelling for the refined negro
extremely disagreeable. Employers cheat their negro
helpers, storekeepers insult them, politicians indulge
in coarse jests and vituperation at their expense, a
venal press fans the flame of race prejudice by mis
representing facts and exploiting whatever cases of
negro criminality come to hand. There is a wide
spread effort to keep the negro in a position of
inferiority; and to justify this injustice, there is a
continual stream of abuse poured upon him, to prove
that the discrimination is deserved.
Most serious of all is the denial of educational
privileges. The recent constitutional amendments in
most of the Southern States withhold the ballot from
the illiterate blacks; and there is therefore a wide
spread desire to keep them illiterate in order to pre-
s^ent their obtaining political power. No Southern
state permits white and negro children to attend the
same public schools ; four states prohibit even mixed
private schools and colleges. One state goes so far
as to forbid whites from teaching negroes ! In many
parts of the South the sums available for negro educa
tion are shamelessly small — far less than the sums
available for white children, though the negro chil
dren may outnumber the whites. Figures available
some years ago showed that although the negroes con
stitute eleven per cent of our population, they get the
benefit of but two per cent of the school funds of the
country. As a result, ignorance still prevails amongthe
negroes ; and it is no wonder if poverty, crime and vice,
the concomitants of ignorance, too largely prevail.
Thus, instead of solving the problem by helping the
negro to rise to a higher level, many of their white

86 EQUALITY
neighbors are doing their best to keep the negroes
down, retarding the only possible solution. What
with the educational disqualification, from which
most of the illiterate whites are exempt, and the poll-
tax laws, and the pressure of white disapproval of
negro participation in politics, the negroes are not in
a position to relieve their own situation at the ballot-
box. It is necessary to awaken the conscience of
their white compatriots to the true implications of
Americanism. The act of freeing and giving the franchise to the
negroes was, as Professor Hartley Alexander has said,
"the most heroic act of political faith in history."
They have not had a fair chance to justify that faith.
But some of their leaders are making heroic efforts
to uplift their people. The return of negro soldiers
from participation in the War, with its broadening
outlook, the growing appreciation of the economic
value of the negro in a time when farm-labor is
increasingly scarce, the work of the few endowed
negro schools, and of such bodies as the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
offer hope for the alleviation of an intolerable situa
tion. At any rate, the negroes are not dying out, not
emigrating, not being blended with the rest of the
population. Their degradation involves the degrada
tion, in some degree, of their white neighbors; as
Booker Washington used to say, "You can't keep a
man in the ditch without staying in the ditch with
him." The only possible solution of the negro prob
lem lies in a frank recognition of the American prin
ciple of equality. This does not imply intermarriage
or unnecessary social contact. It does imply equal
rights — to education, to the ballot, to all the privi-

RACIAL EQUALITY 87
leges available to the white population. America is
theirs as well as ours.
The crux of the negro problem lies in the fact that,
on the one hand, we do not want to assimilate them
biologically, and, on the other hand, the presence of
an unassimilated race so different from our own
creates an unhappy social situation. The situation
seems permanently unsatisfactory, with no way out.
We can, and must, insist on fair treatment for the
negroes ; we must respect them and cease to look upon
them as inferiors. But we should learn the lesson of
our fathers' blunder in bringing them to our shores,
and make sure that another such situation does not
arise. Yet just such another situation might arise if the
Chinese or Japanese or Hindus were to be allowed to
enter our country in any considerable numbers. It is
not, again, that these are inferior races. The Chinese
and Hindus were civilized while our Caucasian an
cestors were still savages; and the Japanese have
already shown a capacity for modern methods that
everyone admires. It is likely that within a compara
tively short time, as history goes, these nations will
all be as civilized as our own.
But do we want to intermarry with these races?
Are we sure that it would be wise? Certainly most
of our people would vigorously repudiate the idea;
and these Orientals would form a separate race in our
midst, not so ignorant, and — ^let us hope — not so ill-
treated as the negroes have been, but still aliens,
separate, and made to feel their separateness.
Candidly, we cannot count on our courtesy to such
an alien race living in our midst. Race-prejudice
rests on deep-seated human instincts, and it is

88 EQUALITY
Utopian to expect it to disappear. It is far wiser to
avoid situations that infiame it. We can respect and
admire the Orientals in their own homes; we can
gladly learn from them and have a happy interchange
of students and scholars, travellers and technicians.
But occasions for friction and race-wars wUl be best
averted by restrictions which will, in general, keep
each race to its own continent.
The policy of Oriental exclusion, then, does not,
or should not, rest on any denial of the doctrine of
human equality. It rests on the obvious fact that the
hybridizing of races, once done, can never be undone.
And the complementary fact that another unassimi
lated race in America would be a constant source of
friction and a danger to democracy. These sources of
friction we must be wise enough to avoid, whenever
possible. "With the two races physically on different sides of
the ocean, we can develop our common national and
international interests. But with any considerable
immigration to this side, causes of friction would
inevitably develop. They might be our fault, but we
could not prevent them. Our people have learned
their racial lessons in a dangerous school. . . , We
have dealt unjustly with the Negro and he submits.
We have dealt unjustly with the Indian and he is
dead. If we have many Japanese, we shall not know
how to deal otherwise than unjustly with them, and
very properly they will not submit. The only real
safety is in separation."
With the various Caucasian races ("white men")
the situation we have discussed will not arise, or, at
least, be permanent ; for they are all assimilable, and
rapidly being assimilated into the American stock.
But the question may still be raised whether for other

RACIAL EQUALITY 89
reasons some further restriction of immigration is
not desirable.
There seems to be no abstract right of the inhab
itants of one country to emigrate to another. If for
any reason it seems best for the general welfare, our
people may properly reserve to themselves the right
to say who shall come and who shall not come to live
here. But there is much to be said for the policy of a
comparatively unrestricted immigration. It is diffi
cult to devise laws that will shut out the less desirable
and admit the more desirable immigrants — except for
the exclusion of people of obviously sub-normal
mentality and those suffering from contagious or
inheritable diseases, or likely to become a public
charge, or likely to indulge in crime or flagrant vice.
The illiteracy test now in force keeps out a good many
who have had no educational opportunities, but is no
fair test of mental capacity or race-value.
It is doubtful if, as is so often assumed, the people
from southern and eastern Europe are really inferior
on the average in their potentialities to the immi
grants from northern and western Europe. It is
certainly true that they have ideals and ideas to
bring us, as well as muscle. The cessation of immi
gration during the war brought about a shortage of
unskilled labor particularly irksome to the owners
of factories and mines, but of moment to us all. Why
not welcome their brains and brawn, rejoice in the
bettering of their condition over here, in the relief
to overcrowded districts of Europe, and in the return
flux of ideals and ideas to the lands from which they
came and with which they usually remain in touch?
In answer, we may say that while there is any
doubt as to the average mental capacity of a given
race, we may well hesitate to admit great numbers of

90 EQUALITY
that race into the melting pot out of which is to come
the American stock of the future. More clearly, the
admission of great numbers of ignorant and un
trained foreigners makes it very hard to raise the
standard of living not only of their own families but
of the American laborers with whom they compete.
Many of these immigrants are willing to work for
low wages, because they were used, in the Old World,
to poor living conditions. It is difficult to organize
men of many different races into unions which can
demand a living wage and proper working conditions.
The presence of multitudes of these servile laborers is
welcome to the owners of some of our factories and
mines, but is undesirable from the public point of
view. Apart from this economic situation and a possible
eugenic disadvantage in certain racial mixtures, the
immigrant-problem is, as we said of the negro-
problem, not so much their problem as ours. It is
the problem of treating the immigrants fairly, pro
tecting them from exploitation, giving them decent
housing conditions, facilities for education, and in
fluences that make for moral upbuilding rather than
for demoralization. It is, unhappily, by no means
always true that the influence of America upon immi
grants is wholesome. Many of them degenerate
morally here. The children of immigrants form, more
than any other class, the supply for our criminals and
prostitutes. The traditions of the immigrants them
selves persist sufficiently to keep them "straight," for
the most part. But we do not take enough pains to
see to it that their children have American ideals to
take their place.
The two traditional American attitudes toward the

RACIAL EQUALITY 91
immigrant may be illustrated by the following
stanzas, by Bryant and Aldrich respectively :
"There's freedom at thy gates and rest
For earth's down-trodden and opprest,
A shelter for the hunted head.
For the starved laborer toil and bread."
"O Liberty, white Goddess ! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded ? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate.
Lift the down-trodden, but with hands of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom."
Neither of these attitudes, however, is very largely
pertinent to our present problem. The European
countries are now, for the most part, as democratic
as ours ; there is little oppression from which we need
to succor them. There is poverty, partly the result
of ignorance, largely now the result of the War. But
there is much work to be done over there, hands are
needed; to bring millions of the ablest-bodied over
here is to rob Europe of the strength that she needs
just now more than we.
On the other hand, there are few who come to these
shores with any destructive or anti-social intent.
Almost all of our immigrants come eagerly, ready to
love and serve America, happy at the prospect of
being Americans. All they need is the right treat
ment to make them patriotic and useful citizens. If
other results accrue it is more apt to be our fault
than theirs.
The plan of restricting the number of immigrants
to be admitted from any race or people annually to a
small percentage of the people of that race already
here, is an excellent plan. It rests on the sound ob-

92 EQUALITY
servation that immigrants are for the most part
received into an environment of their own former
compatriots. Too many newcomers cannot be assimi
lated; they remain foreigners in our midst and pro
duce, temporarily, the sort of undesirable social
situation that the presence of unassimilable races
permanently produces. Moreover, this plan, with
out discriminating against any particular race, and
so offending national susceptibilities, automatically
checks the immigration from those peoples that are
most alien to our existing American stock.
But in addition to our immigration laws, we must
cultivate the temper of fair-mindedness and hospi
tality toward newcomers. Aliens in our land should
be regarded as guests of the nation, and should be
treated as courteously as we wish our own compatriots
to be treated when they reside abroad. Nothing is
more offensively un-American than the epithets such
as "dago," "sheeny," and the like that are so com
monly applied to these foreigners. To any who still
have a contemptuous attitude such as is expressed by
these words we should recommend the reading of
Robert Haven Schauffler's noble poem, entitied Scum
o' the Earth, Or the words which a school-principal
used in rebuking some pupils for discourtesy to for
eigners : "I want you boys and girls, especially those
that go to the Catholic Church, always to remember
that the Pope is a dago ; and you who don't go to the
Catholic Church might bear in mind that America
was discovered by a dago. And I don't want any one
of you to forget that Jesus himself was a sheeny."
An Irish believer in Equality used to say, "One man
is as good as another — ^if not better!" The true
American spirit is to say that these immigrants who
come to us to live with us, work for us, share our

RACIAL EQUALITY 93
common life, are as good as we — if not better.
America has been made by such as they — men who
were poor, ignorant, hard-working, but full of energy
and hope. Our fathers were probably such as they —
of another race and speech, perhaps, with other ideas
and traditions behind them, but essentially the same
in their belief in progress and democracy, in liberty
and equality for all. The glory and hope of America
lies in the fusion of races here going on; from that
blending of types, if accelerated by mutual kindness
and forbearance and understanding, there may
spring a race, the American race of the future, with
a destiny beyond that of any race the world has
yet known, SUGGESTED READINGS
Booker Washington, Up from Slavery,
W. E. B. Du Bois, Darhwater; The Souls of Blach Folk.
P. L. Ha worth, America in Ferment, Chap. V.
J. M. Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction,
H. J. Seligmann, The Negro Faces America,
Stephen Graham, The Soul of John Brown.
H. M. F. H. Jackson, A Century of Dishonor.
Frances Kellor, Immigration and the Future,
H. G. Wells, The Future in America, Chap. IX.
Mary Antin, They Who Knock at Our Gates.
T. S. Adams and H. L. Sumner, Labor Problems, Chap. III.
Jenks and Lauck, The Immigration Problem.
H. P. Fairchild, Immigration,
E. A. Steiner, The Immigrant Tide; On the Trail of the
Immigrant,
F. J. Warne, The Immigrant Invasion.
C. S. Cooper, American Ideals, Chap. VTII.
D. S. Lescohier, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 123, p. 483.
W. E. Weyl, in Harper's Magazine, vol. 129, p. 615. (Eeprinted,
abridg^, in Fulton, op. cit., p. 47.)

CHAPTER X
EDUCATION FOR ALL
Of all the aspects of equality in America there is
none in which we have taken more pride than in our
universal free education. Our educational system is
crude as yet, and only in the making. But America
has always believed passionately in education. Our
rich men have vied with one another in founding
colleges and universities, poor men have sacriflced
much that their children might have schooling.
Nearly a century ago Cobden wrote, "The univer
sality of education in the United States is probably
more calculated than all other things to accelerate
their progress towards a superior rank of civilization
and power."
It has been said that the typical American phrase
is, "I want to know !" Certainly the typical Ameri
can does want to know, believes, indeed, in what a
recent essayist has called "the moral obligation to be
intelligent." He believes in the educability of com
mon men, and in the importance for the common
welfare that the common man be educated. Washing
ton, in his Farewell Address, bade his countrymen
promote, "as an object of primary importance, in
stitutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In
proportion as the structure of a government gives
force to public opinion, it is essential that public
opinion should be enlightened." 94

EDUCATION FOE ALL 95
It is, indeed, true that the mistakes of democracy
have always been due, essentially, to the ignorance of
the people, the lack of a widespread enlightenment on
political and social matters. The one source of fear
for the Republic is the apprehension lest our people
are not intelligent and well-informed enough to meet
successfully the exigencies that may arise. The an
swer of America to these fears must be, "we will make
the people intelligent and well-informed." The motto
graven on the exterior of the Boston Public Library
should be stamped upon our hearts: "The Common
wealth requires the education of the people as the
safeguard of order and liberty."
In purely flnancial terms, education pays. The
boy who stays in school until he is eighteen has re
ceived, on the average, by the time he is twenty-flve,
two thousand dollars more than the boy who left
school at fourteen, and is earning at twenty-flve,
nearly a thousand dollars a year more. From this age
onward his salary is likely to rise still more rapidly,
while that of the boy who left school at fourteen is
likely to rise but little.
A similar ratio holds between community-earnings
and the general education. Where education is
longest and most widespread, there is industrial
efficiency and national wealth. The backwardness of
Russia, of Turkey, of Mexico is fundamentally due to
lack of education. In our own country the produc
tivity and wealth of our several States is in a pretty
constant ratio to the amount of schooling of their
inhabitants. For example, the average schooling
given, some years ago, in Massachusetts was about
seven years, and the average daily productiveness of
the citizens of that State was eighty-flve cents. For
Tennessee in the same year the average schooling was

96 EQUALITY
about three years and the average daily productive
ness thirty-eight cents.
There is a certain tendency among our "self-made"
men and their admirers to belittle the value of
schooling. And we must admit that a boy of excep
tional force has often, when favored by opportunity,
made his way to wealth and eminence without the
advantages of formal education. This was oftener
possible, however, in the frontier and formative con
ditions of American life than it is now. More and
more the successful man must be an expert, must
depend upon exact knowledge rather than solely upon
personal force and cleverness. A study of Who's
Who in America reveals the fact that "out of the
nearly 5,000,000 uneducated men and women in
America, only 31 have been sufficiently successful in
any kind of work to obtain a place among the 8,000
leaders catalogued in this book. Out of 33,000,000
people with as much as a common-school education,
808 were able to win a place in the list, while out of
only 2,000,000 with high-school training, 1,245 have
manifested this marked efficiency, and out of 1,000,-
000 with college or university training, 5,768 have
merited this distinction." That is to say, a man with
college education is eight hundred times as likely
to become a notable factor in his country's life as an
unschooled man.
We have spoken only of the more conspicuous fruits
of education. They are such as to justify the words
of Chancellor Kent: "A parent who sends his son
into the world uneducated and without skill in any
art or science does a great injury to mankind as well
as to his own family ; for he defrauds the community
of a useful citizen and bequeaths to it a nuisance."
Far the greater number of our paupers and prosti-

EDUCATION FOE ALL 97
tutes and criminals come from the ranks of the un
educated. Victor Hugo once said that every school
that is opened causes a prison to be closed. A Sing
Sing prisoner recently declared, "Most of the in
mates of the prisons are there because they could not
compete successfully with others. They did not know
how to meet the conditions of free life."
But in addition to these social aspects of educa
tion, its value in enhancing the personal life should
not be forgotten. Education gives interests, adds to
our resources, helps us to an innocent and profltable
use of our leisure. Nothing is more pathetic than
the waste of leisure hours on the part of men and
women who have never cultivated a taste for read
ing, for art or music, or any of the higher activities
of the mind. "The educated man is one whose life
is characterized by increasing richness, safety, and
control." He is "at home in the world, has at least
a part of it under his intelligent control, and has
opened up to him new avenues of intellectual and
emotional enjoyment."
The educated man is an intelligent consumer. He
is not the dupe of unscrupulous advertisers and deal
ers; he knows what is good from what is shoddy or
inferior. He is safe from the wiles of quacks and
charlatans^ — notoriously numerous in America. He is
relatively free from superstition and prejudice. His
life has range and variety and dignity.
It is important to emphasize this enrichment and
safeguarding of the personal life that results from a
liberal education, because there is a strain in Ameri
can thought and character that looks upon "culture"
as impractical and useless. We are, in general, of the
"motor type" ; our men are happiest "in the harness",
and are apt to be lost and resourceless when on a va-

98 EQUALITY
cation. A contemporary French critic finds that
"the American concerns himself but little with cul
ture, considering it a luxury good for a few dilettanti,
but which does not 'pay', and which, as such, appears
somewhat suspicious to the practical Yankee mind."
A recent American writer expresses it thus: "We
have few or no social habits that encourage the life
of reflection. The average American, especially in
the great industrial centers, is catapulted from the
cradle to the grave in the mad hurly-burly of a head
long civilization that never pauses to get its bearings
or to ask the meaning of life."
But even vocational education has been neglected
here, as compared with the extent to which it has been
developed in several European countries. Munich,
a city of 500,000 inhabitants, had, in 1912, fifty-two
vocational schools, with nearly 17,000 pupils. Berlin
had 40,000 students in trade and commerical schools.
The small state of Saxony had 115 technical insti
tutes. France, Denmark, Norway, Great Britain, and
other countries, have established systems of industrial
and commercial education that surpass, in per capita
extent and efficiency, our still rudimentary and frag
mentary national system. A commission of eminent
German scientists, visiting this country shortly be
fore the outbreak of the Great War, reported to their
government that they need have no fear of American
competition in trade and manufacture, that we were
complacently relying upon our unexhausted natural
resources and neglecting to train our youth in indus
trial and commercial efficiency. The fact that the
German technique was misused, at the beck of a
selfish military clique, should not blind us to the ex
cellence of the technical education that Germany
had established for her citizens.

EDUCATION FOE ALL 99
Every vocation is becoming more scientific. The
world needs its work well done, and could have it
far better done than it ever has. Apprenticeship and
home-instruction are inadequate for the new era.
Happily, the Federal Government is awakening to the
need, and is now encouraging the States by appropri
ating federal funds for inaugurating and improv
ing vocational education in the public schools. There
is hope that we may yet realize our traditional aspira
tion toward an educational system that shall give
to every boy and girl in the land access to the world's
store of experience, and a training that will make
them all self-respecting and skilled artisans — whether
with hand or brain — at some work that has a useful
place in the national life.
We must frankly admit that we have yet a long
way to go. A recent government bulletin reveals the
fact that we are eighth on the list of countries ranked
with respect to the proportion of literacy among their
inhabitants. Our illiteracy rate is close to 7 per cent
for people over ten years old. The rate in Switzer
land is one half of one per cent, in Germany the pre
war rate was three one-hundredths of one per cent.
Of the young men of draft age during the War, some
700,000 were found to be unable to read and write;
our total adult illiterate population is about ten
times that number, besides many more millions who
can barely read and seldom do. Secretary Lane re
cently computed that this illiteracy means an annual
economic loss to the country of |825,000,000.
When it comes to higher education our relative
standing is equally disappointing. Some years ago,
when comparative statistics were available, there
were, for each ten thousand of our population, twenty
students in our colleges and universities. At the same

100 EQUALITY
time there were fifty-six students per ten thousand in
habitants in British colleges and universities, sixty-
five in Germany, seventy-seven in Italy, eighty-one
in France, and a hundred and seventy-eight in
Switzerland, The fact is, in spite of much recent improvement in
our educational system, we are not spending nearly
enough for education. The rise in prices during the
War has made our educational expenditures prac
tically far less than a few years ago. Even before
the War we were spending much less in proportion to
the national wealth than in earlier days. Everywhere
people grumble about high taxes, and fail to realize
that education is the best possible investment. Nearly
twice as much money is spent in this country upon
tobacco as upon education ; while the money saved by
the prohibition of alcoholic beverages, if applied to
education, would treble its efficiency.
It is a well known fact that teachers are among the
poorest paid wage-earners in the country ; in spite of
recent salary-increases, the figures for the average
salaries of teachers in even the most advanced States
are too low, while in the more backward States they
are disgraceful. There is no work more important
than that of moulding the minds of the young, no
career that calls for more talent or more careful
preparation. But the vocation has become a by-word,
for its niggardly rewards ; able young men and women
are turning from it in disgust. Unless radical im
provement is made, our children will more and more
be taught by the incompetent and the ambitionless ;
positions will have to be increasingly filled by those
who lack the proper temperament and training. And
this when our country is far richer than ever before —
incomparably the richest country in the world !

EDUCATION FOE ALL 101
Nothing should satisfy us, nothing will fulfill the
visions of the founders of the Republic, short of the
best educational system, the highest educational at
tendance, and the lowest illiteracy rate, in the world.
Indeed, there is no excuse for illiteracy at all; it
should be stamped out like a plague. There is no ex
cuse even for the stopping of the schooling of any
boy or girl, save in exceptional cases, short of high-
school graduation. Nothing less than that is conson
ant with our ideal of Equality of opportunity. Yet
as things are, the average schooling of Americans
lasts but a little over six years — and the school
"years" are often very short. The average schooling!
That means, since so many go on through the eight
years of the elementary school, the four years of high
school, and the four years of college, that very many
of our children have considerably less than six years'
schooling. As a matter of fact, a little over half of the
children who enter the elementary schools reach the
fourth grade; something over a quarter reach the
eighth grade; about an eighth get to high school,
and less than a twentieth graduate from high school.
About two per cent go to some college or higher insti
tution of learning, and only a fraction of those gradu
ate therefrom.
To relieve the gloom of these statistics we should
add that there are many hopeful signs on the educa
tional horizon. The number of pupils in high schools
is increasing far faster than the increase in the popu
lation. And most of our colleges and universities are
badly overcrowded. The national Bureau of Educa
tion is doing a great deal to raise standards and to
encourage the extension of opportunities. It is
earnestly to be hoped that Congress will authorize
bigger and bigger appropriations from the national

102 EQUALITY
treasury, to be used by the several States on condition
of their appropriating equal or larger amounts. Our
educational system is very decentralized, as com
pared with some European systems; and our plan,
that throws the burden of organization and finance
upon the local communities, has its advantages. But
in the manner above indicated, and by its constant
supervision and advice, the Federal Government can
do much to equalize the now very unequal educational
facilities of the different sections of the country, and
to raise the general level of efficiency.
Among the most important tendencies is the move
ment which is opening the school-houses to the adult
population. More and more the schools are becoming
coinmunity-centers, from which radiate educational,
cultural, socializing influences of the highest import
ance. We are realizing that education is something
not merely for the child but for every citizen. Farm
ers are being taught, through the public schools and
State universities, to raise bigger crops; craftsmen
are taught to improve the technique of their profes
sion ; housewives are taught better methods of cooking
and canning, groups of men and women are taught
a readier use of the English language, are instructed
in current events, and in the various branches, his
tory, economics, sociology, and the like, that will help
to make them more intelligent voters. This "exten
sion" work of the schools and Universities is only in
its infancy, — but it is gathering momentum ; we may
hope eventually to see practically the whole nation
at school.
The old idea was that only the select few were cap
able of intelligence or deserving of education. The
American idea was that practically all the people
would respond to education and become intelligent

EDUCATION FOE ALL 103
citizens. This idea is corroborated by modem sociol
ogy. Professor Lester Ward, for example, in his well-
known work on Applied Sociology, affirms that "capa
city is latent everywhere. It is opportunity that
is rare, not ability." As it is, "only ten per cent of
[our human] resources have been developed. An
other ten per cent are somewhat developed. There
remain eighty per cent as yet almost undeveloped."
Education is really the fundamental human need,
and the one great hope for the future. The task of
progress is not so much in devising progressive laws,
or a just and efficient industrial and political order,
it is in getting people to want the laws, to realize the
defects in our present social order and the means by
which they can be remedied. The danger to America
consists far less in any lack of patriotism or loyalty
among its citizens, in any destructive intent of "Bol
shevists" or "reds"; the danger to America can be
summed up in one word — ignorance. Let the people
know the facts, understand the situations with which
they have to deal, let their minds be trained to think
clearly and dispassionately, to weigh the evidence pro
and con, let them be taught to appreciate the mean
ing and value of old institutions, and at the same
time to realize the necessity for continual criticism
and the application of new ideas — ^in short, let them
be truly educated, and we may breathe freely when
we think of the future of the Republic.
SUGGESTED READINGS
R. W. Emerson, The American Scholar.
C. S. Cooper, American Ideals, Chap. VI.
C. E. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, Chapters XII,
XIII,
A. S. Draper, American Education.
C. W. Eliot, Education for Efficiency.

104 EQUALITY
Scott Nearing, The New Education,
G, Kerschensteiner, Schools and the Ncdion; Education for
Citizenship,
Irving King, Education for Social Efficiency.
G, H. Betts, Social Principles of Education.
E. S. Bourne, The Gary Schools,
John Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow.
C. A. Scott, Social Education.
H. S. Person, Industrial Education.
A. Flexner, The American CoUege.
J. W. Hudson, The College and New America,
Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America.

CHAPTER XI
HEALTH FOR ALL
It is only in recent years that health has come to be
thought of as in any considerable degree the concern
of the State. In fact, our fathers thought very little
about health. When half of their children died in
infancy, when their wives showed the marks of age
at forty, when epidemics decimated the population,
they resigned themselves to the workings of a myster
ious Providence. Physical exercise most of them got
in abundance, sanitation was less necessary in the
sparsely settled communities of the pioneer days, and
so the evils of a careless individualism were less
serious than now. Today we are made to realize that
no man liveth to himself alone; that individual ill-
health is a community loss and a community danger;
that a large part of the illness and premature death
of our people is preventable, and that it is the duty
of the community to prevent it. In the words of Dr.
Thomas Wood of Columbia University, "Better health
is to a striking extent a purchasable commodity ; and
national economy demands that we purchase it."
Certainly there is no more important natural right
than the right to health and long life. And an organ
ization of society which practically denies that right
to a large part of the population is seriously incon
sistent with our ideal of Equality. Not only does
health constitute itself a large part of the intrinsic
worth of life, it means opportunity for range of ex-
105

106 EQUALITY
perience, and for the formation of those qualities of
character that come through a rich and normal life-
experience. Health is one of the most important
factors that make for morality; bodily depression
warps the judgment, causes irritability and discour
agement, lowers resistance to temptation, weakens the
will. It affects immediately the interest in one's work
and the quality, as well as quantity of work done.
As Horace Mann, our great educator, wrote, "All
through the life of a feeble-bodied man, his path is
lined with memory's gravestones which mark the
spots where noble enterprises perished for lack of
physical vigor to embody them in deeds." From a
purely utilitarian and flnancial point of view, the
conservation of health is of extreme importance.
As compared with most other peoples, the Ameri
can average of health and longevity is good. Yet
thirty million American wage earners lose from sick
ness every year an average of nine days each, a wage
loss, at |3.50 a day, of nearly a billion dollars, besides
a cost for treatment of perhaps |200,000,000. Three
hundred thousand babies die annually in this coun
try ; it is estimated that at least half of these deaths
in infancy could be easily prevented. Tuberculosis
alone costs the country |350,000,000 a year, and
malaria |100,000,000. Both of these diseases are pre
ventable by known means. The annual death rate
for the United States as a whole has been, in recent
years, about 14 per thousand population. Some
States have rates as high as 16 or 17, in normal years,
and some cities have rates over 20 per thousand. On
the other hand, some States have rates around 10 ; the
State of Washington has kept close to 8. Australia
has kept close to 10, New Zealand between 9 and 10.
With proper care, the rate might be lowered through-

HEALTH FOE ALL 107
out the country to the level attained in these more
advanced communities. To lower it from 14 to 10
per thousand would mean an annual saving of 400,000
lives. So Secretary of Commerce Redfleld was hardly
too sanguine when he declared that "we can save the
lives of 500,000 people a year if we choose."
The two prime causes of this needlessly high death-
rate are poverty and ignorance. The importance of
the latter factor is revealed by the fact that while
in our cities there has been in general a marked de
cline in the death-rate in recent years, the rate in the
country, where hygienic knowledge has been less dis
seminated, remains close to the older levels. Country
folks as a whole pay less attention to ventilation, and
to the provision of a normal and wholesome diet.
There is much malnutrition found in rural districts,
and a startling ignorance of the proper care of chil
dren. Country people are more apt to ignore defects
of the eyes, ears, teeth, or throat. A recent investiga
tion sums up its conclusions in the following words :
"The standards of living on the American farm, when
tested by the accepted principles of physiology, sani
tation, and hygiene, are alarmingly defective."
In some parts of the South, conditions are intoler
able. Dr. Frederic T. Gates of the General Educa
tion Board, writing in 1916, estimated that there were
two million children in the South between six and
sixteen years of age stunted physically and mentally
by the hookworm disease, while many thousands died
annually from its effects. School-inspectors have in
some districts found over half of the school children
defective or more or less disabled from other prevent
able or curable ailments.
The effect of poverty upon the death-rate can be
clearly seen in available statistics. A bulletin issued

108 EQUALITY
by the Children's Bureau in Washington shows the
following relation between income and infant death-
rate: Income $ 450 and imder, infant death rate 242
649 " " " " " 174
" 849 " " " " " 162
" 1,049 " " " " " 125
" 1,250 and over " " " 58
Poverty means under-nutrition, lack of proper liv
ing-conditions, lack of care during illness, and, often,
over-work and worry, which greatiy lessen resistance
to disease. Dr. Wood states that one child in every
flve in the United States is suffering from insufficient
nutrition. Dr. William Emerson, a Boston authority,
recently reckoned the number even higher. In 1917,
medical examination discovered 160,000 children in
the high schools alone of New York City who "show
the stigmata of prolonged undernourishment."
The parents of these undernourished children
usually age quickly, being often past their prime at
forty or forty-flve, whereas professional men and the
employing class very commonly keep efficient and
hearty until seventy. Professor Lester Ward, in his
Applied Sociology, shows that the average longevity
of the rich is practically double that of the poor.
John Spargo flnds the death-rate among the "well-to-
do" about 10 per 1000, among the best-paid laborers
15, among the lower paid laborers 35. These divisions
and flgures are, of course, more or less arbitrary;
but the general situation is unquestioned. The poor
have far from an equal chance for life and health.
A recent federal investigation in Montclair, N. J,
disclosed an average infant mortality of 84 per thou
sand. Among the babies of business or professional

HEALTH FOR ALL 109
men the rate was 41 ; among the higher-paid laborers
the rate was 74 ; among the low-paid laborers, it was
130, In the tenement district of Johnstown, Pa., the
rate, recently, was 271. Statistics compiled a decade
ago revealed the fact that the children of the lower-
paid workers weighed, at sixteen, nineteen and a half
pounds less, on the average, and were three and three-
quarters inches lower in stature, than the children of
the well-to-do. Miss Esther Lovejoy, in Democracy
in Reconstruction, draws this obvious conclusion:
"The great predisposing cause of premature death is
poverty. , . . Any social scheme that insures a fair
standard of living will reduce the death-rate. . . .
We should have not only minimum wages, upon which
men and women can live without working themselves
to death, but we should have minimum standards of
living, below which human beings should not be per
mitted to fall. ... It is self-evident that conditions
that condemn millions of people to premature death
are public nuisances that should be legally abated
without loss of time."
Surely every child that is bom an American should
have the best possible chance for health and long life.
If the children of the poor die in great numbers, or
grow up stunted, coarsened, dull of mind and sickly
of body, society has failed in its duty. As Mr. Walter
Weyl forcibly puts it, "Every preventable death is a
reflection iipon the good will or the intelligence of the
community which suffers it." "On a mere calculation
of dollars and cents, it is a foolish extravagance to
allow a baby to die for lack of a few dollars' worth of
pure milk, or to allow an expensively bred workman
to die for lack of a few hundred dollars spent in pro
tection and prevention. But we do not yet realize
that it is we as a community who pay for these deaths,

110 EQUALITY
although we only too clearly realize that it is we who
pay for their prevention."
England and America have attained their indus
trial pre-eminence at the cost of the lives and health
of their workers. The appallingly large percentage
of volunteers and drafted men rejected because of
poor physical condition in both countries shows, more
than anything else, the result of the working-condi
tions in our factories and mills and mines, and the
living conditions of the poorer half of our population.
Tuberculosis will always be with us while we have
congested slums. Men below weight, under-developed
muscularly, and weak in resistance to disease, will
always exist in great numbers while they are thought
of as mere "hands," to be hired at the lowest rate for
which they will work, and crowded into uncomfort
able and unsanitary homes.
Many movements for the amelioration of this shock
ing situation are under way. Wages of some of the
poorest paid workers have been raised. Factories are
becoming cleaner, lighter, less dusty, better ventil
ated. Housing laws are making impossible the worst
types of earlier tenements. Bad as conditions are in
New York City today, the tenement-house legislation
of recent years has had a large part in the reduction
of that city's death-rate from nearly 19 to 13.5 per
thousand. Pure food and pure milk laws have like
wise been of great value. Motherhood classes are
teaching ignorant women not to expose milk to air,
heat, and flies, and averting many other perils from
their babies.
Most important of all, perhaps, is the extension of
physical education in the public schools. School
nurses are discovering defects and contagious diseases
in the children, and are explaining to their parents

HEALTH FOR ALL 111
the necessity of treatment. The annual physical ex
amination of school children will soon, it is to be
hoped, become universal. It is said that from twenty
to thirty per cent of our school children have defects
of vision — ^which often result in headaches, stomach
troubles, or nervousness. A smaller number have de
fects of hearing, a great many have nose and throat
troubles, and perhaps nine out of ten have defective
teeth — often the obscure cause of serious ailments
which appear in later life.
In addition to these periodic examinations, with
the correction of defects revealed, and to the constant
watchfulness of the school nurses, the public school
children are being trained in personal health-habits
and taught the principles of modem hygiene and sani
tation. Clean, airy, sunny, well-ventilated school-
houses are an object-lesson of the first importance.
Some States go further and provide for physical
training, in the form of supervised exercises, for
every pupil. In such ways a new generation is grow
ing up with a keener realization of the importance
and the attainability of health. The notable result
attained through the teaching of the evils of alcohol
ism in the schools shows what advances in the
general health may be expected to eventuate from this
education of the children. They will not be content to
endow hospitals to care for the sick; they will see
to it that the causes leading to illness are radically
diminished. In addition to the work in the schools, various
agencies are engaged in improving the national
health. The United States Public Health Service
controls the quarantine stations up and down our
coasts, and has a splendid record of efficiency in
stamping out plagues that might easUy have assumed

112 EQUALITY
very serious proportions. It also maintains a number
of laboratories for the investigation of diseases, and
maintains a careful inspection of the private estab
lishments that sell serums, anti-toxins, and vaccines.
It has conducted sanitary surveys in several States
and secured the passage of many ordinances that reg
ulate the disposal of waste, the safeguarding of the
water-supply, the prevention of fly-breeding and other
hygienic measures.
Another very efficient organization for the improve
ment of health, both in this country and in various
foreign countries, is the Rockefeller Foundation,
whose annual reports show remarkable results. In
particular, it is waging a campaign for the eradica
tion of yellow fever and malaria, with the hookworm
disease and tuberculosis and infantile paralysis also
the object of vigorous onslaughts. It is fostering
medical education and research, and in various other
ways fighting to lower the death-rate.
The National Tuberculosis Association has dem
onstrated, especially in its work at Framingham,
Massachusetts, that that widespread disease can be
almost entirely eradicated. The town of Framing-
ham, by its help, raised its annual per capita expendi
ture for public health from 39 cents to |1. Before
the experiment was made the death-rate in Framing-
ham was about 16 or 17 per thousand, and the infant
death-rate about 85 or 90. The first year's attack
upon the causes of ill-health reduced these rates to
about 12 and 69 respectively. The following year
(1918) was the year of the influenza epidemic. But
the flgures for 1919 show a retention of the gain.
Deaths directly due to tuberculosis have entirely
ceased. In these various ways the opportunity for health

HEALTH FOR ALL 113
is being extended to more and more of our citizens,
and we may hope to see eventually something ap
proaching a real equality in this respect. In the
meantime, health insurance is of great importance
in enabling the poor to deal with illness. Even if the
present number of something like three million people
seriously ill at every given moment in this country
is considerably lowered in the near future, there
will still be need of provision for those who cannot
afford proper doctoring, proper food and care for
their sick, and cannot afford the loss of income caused
by the illness. Hundreds of thousands are cast into
serious flnancial straits every year through the ill
ness and the death of wage-earners. Most of these
people cannot afford the premiums which private
companies charge for life and disability insurance.
Indeed, these premiums are usually far too high —
more than half the money spent on them going, in
some cases, to operating expenses and profits, leaving
less than half to be paid in insurance.
Whether health and disability insurance should be
left in private hands, or managed by the State, or by
the several industries, can not be here discussed.
But in some way the vicious circle must be broken
whereby poverty leads to ill-health and ill-health
increases poverty. A wise insurance system will do
more than keep the sick and their families from des
titution, it will include early diagnosis and advice,
the insistence upon proper hygienic precautions, and
the education of the community in the prevention of
illness. In such ways, and in ways yet to be devised by the
coming generation, we may hope not only to see
America made the healthiest nation on earth, but to
see health and long life the perqiiisites of every

114 EQUALITY
American, the humblest as well as the most gifted
and most highly rewarded. This would be but the
logical carrying out of our founders' dreams of Equal
ity, rudely upset by the conditions of a close-com
pacted industrial society, but secured and made per
manent by the vigorous efforts of our people.
SUGGESTED READESTGS
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, Chap. XV.
L. H. GuHck, The Efficient Ufe,
Woods Hutchinson, Handbooh of Health,
C. R. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, Chapters IV,
V, XIV.
Lawrence Veiller, Housing Reform,
Jacob Eiis, The Battle with the Slums.
p. A. Woods, The City Wilderness.
W. H. AUen, Civics and Health,
T. C. Horsfelt, The Improvement of the Dwellings and Sur
roundings of the People.
J. S. Gibbon, Infant Welfare Centers,
L. D. Cruikshank, School Clinics at Home and Abroad.
Florence Kelley, Modern Industry, Chap. II.
Charles Zueblin, American Municipal Progress, revised ed..
Chap. VII.
W. A. Brend, Health and the State.
H. W. Hill, The New Public Health.

CHAPTER XII
WORK FOR ALL
Another corollary of the American ideal of Equality
is the demand that every citizen shall be a worker,
whether with hand or brain ; that neither the posses
sion of wealth or position, or the possession of a rov
ing and vagabond disposition, exempts any one from
the duty of contributing his share to the productive
work of the nation. In the Old World from which
our founders came, there had always been a leisure
class, that looked upon labor as menial, debasing,
ignoble; a gentleman might be a warrior, showing
prowess in killing, he might be an employer, exploit
ing others' labors, but he must not handle tools him
self, or earn his living by the sweat of his brow.
Because the life of gentlemen and ladies was a life of
leisure and lazy trifiing, the Heaven pictured by wist
ful souls of all classes came to be dreamed of as a
place where all work should have an end; and labor
was looked upon as the primal curse.
This, however, is not in accordance with the in
stincts of normal human nature, which finds one of
its deepest satisfactions in work. And it is this more
normal attitude which has received the stamp of
American approval. The late President Harper of
Chicago University said on his deathbed that he was
looking forward to the world beyond not as a place of
rest but a place where he would have more work to
J15

116 EQUALITY
do. Our best-loved poet crystallized this American
spirit in the now so familiar lines,
'Act, act in the living present. . . .
Let us then be up and doing . . ."
President Roosevelt, using an adjective that has come
to be peculiarly associated with him, declared that
"our country calls us not for the life of ease, but for
the life of strenuous endeavor."
The title of a recent volume on America by a dis
tinguished Frenchman is significant: The People of
Action. The Author, speaking of the apparent pas
sion for money-making, declares that "it is a question
not of being rich, but of becoming so. . . . To be rich,
for an American, is not to be a social parasite, but a
social force." We do not seek to become rich in
order then to stop working; our rich men on the
average work about as hard as the poor. Emerson, in
his essay on Wealth, said that the American "is bom
to be rich ; not to amass money, which is despicable ;
not to enjoy it, which is trivial ; but to master himself
in mastering it." The power that expresses itself in
conquering obstacles, and the new power that comes
from success in the game, appeals to our manhood.
We despise the idler, whether a tramp or the son of a
millionaire. It is not that work is "noble" in some mysterious
way, it is that working is interesting, working calls
into play our powers, develops our character, gives
us the solid satisfaction of feeling ourselves of use,
and a vital part of the nation's life. And from the
social viewpoint, a life of productive work is the only
fair life to live. For there is so much work that
must be done ; and if one man shirks his part, othera
must do more than theirs.

WORK FOR ALL 117
Indeed, there is a vast deal of work that cries
to be done but must go neglected for lack of hands
and brains to do it. We need thousands of miles of
roads built in this country — only twelve or fifteen
per cent of our roads are surfaced. We need more
railway tracks laid, more terminal facilities, more
engines and cars built, more tunnels and bridges. We
need canals, and deepened waterways, levees and
reservoirs and irrigating channels. W^e need plants
to utilize our waterpower, over ninety per cent of
which is now wasted. We need the planting of mil
lions of trees to replace the lumber that has been
cut. We need hundreds of thousands of houses built
for those who are now packed too closely in tene
ments. We need more schools, we need more teachers,
we need — but the list is too long to complete.
There is a perennial tendency in this country
toward the aping of the old-world aristocracies and
the growth of an idle class. During the War this
tendency was overborne by the pressure of an aroused
public opinion ; and even upper class women who had
hardly done a stroke of useful work before donned
their khaki, rolled up their sleeves, and got into the
game. With the coming of peace again, there has
reappeared the type of rich man whom the French
call the flaneur, and our irrepressible American slang
terms the "lounge-lizard." Still more in evidence is
the well-to-do woman, who has servants to do her
house-work, and spends her time in a round of social
calls, bridge parties, or other trivialities, with per
haps a little ineffective "social work" to salve her
conscience, and piano-practice to keep her essential
uselessness from being too apparent.
This social approval, or tolerance, of a class of
drones in our busy American life, must be vigorously

118 EQUALITY
fought. It is to be hoped that we shall not have to
resort to a conscription of labor — although William
James, and other distinguished Americans, have
thought that, if properly managed, an excellent pro
posal. But we must keep in the foreground our
fathers' ideal of a life of useful activity for all — which
is the Biblical ideal also — : Six da/ys shalt thou labor.
We command you, that if any would not work, neither
should he eat.
The sin of uselessness becomes more obvious when
it is contrasted with the overwork of so many others
in our society. With all our labor-saving machinery,
we have not lessened the labors of many of our citi
zens. Some industries still employ thousands of men
for twelve hours a day and seven days a week. Many
other industries require nine or ten hours. And this
is not at agreeable and easy work, but at the hardest
and most monotonous, and sometimes the most dan
gerous, of human occupations. In the steel industry,
for example, according to the Report of the Inter-
church Commission of Inquiry, in 1919, approxi
mately half the employees were subject to a twelve-
hour day, the percentage of employees subjct to this
schedule having increased during the ten years pre
vious. In the blast-furnace departments of twenty-
four establishments, 4,049 men out of 6,315 worked
eighty-four hours a week. In many departments a
seven-day working week was standard.
The two wrongs, idleness and overwork, are sep
arable. But in general it may be said that idleness
at one end of the social scale involves overwork at
the other end ; if you shirk your share of the nation's
work, some one else must do more than his share.
Leisure is desirable, and necessary, for every one;
not chronic leisure, but leisure coming after work.

WORK FOR ALL 119
This leisure is necessary if our citizens are to be any
thing but unthinking "hands"; if they are to read,
and think, and be developed human beings, if they are
to become intelligent enough to participate wisely
in the sustaining of our democracy. For the mere
matter of greatest efficiency in one's work, overlong
hours are a mistake. Experiments have pretty con
clusively shown that in most occupations the average
man can accomplish more in an eight-hour day and a
six-day week, than when working more continuously ;
employers who have given most careful study to the
problem of industrial fatigue are practically unani
mous in favor of the shorter working-periods. From
the broader human point of view, it is evident that a
forty-eight hour week is the maximum that can de
cently be demanded of a man or woman in any routine
occupation. There must be some energy left to put
into reading books, enjoying pictures, listening to
music, digging in a garden, or in some other way
developing one's capacities as a human being.
Professional people, employers, sometimes fail to
realize this, because their own work often spreads
out into ten or more hours a day. But their work is
varied, and interesting; it develops their minds, it
brings them in touch with other minds, whether
through personal contacts or through reading. It is
one thing to work ten hours a day, at one task or
another, as a college student, a manager of a large
concern, a lawyer, a doctor, or a minister. It is far
more fatiguing to work ten hours as a mill-hand.
Moreover, the work of the student or professional man
or employer is largely under his own control ; he can
stop if he is tired, he is not some one else's servant.
The mill-hand, if the mill runs for ten hours a day,
is forced to work for those ten hours every day, at the

120 EQUALITY
risk of losing his job. This is not exactly slavery,
but it comes altogether too near it.
Particularly disastrous is the overwork of women.
For a man may be seriously overtired and beget
healthy children; but an overtired mother means a
sickly or abnormal child. Many children today are
suffering from overworking of their mothers; and
with the increasing movement of women into industry
the danger becomes more and more alarming. This
is no argument against the participation of women in
industry. Work in moderation is healthy; and
women, if they are not needed at home, for house
work or the care of children, ought to work outside
the home. The time is past when a woman can be re
garded as essentially an ornament, a mere useless
luxury for some man to possess; though that, of
course, was never more than a badge of upper-class
status, for the great majority of women since life be
gan have worked as hard as men, if not harder. But
while it is no argument against utilizing the labor of
women, it is a decisive argument against overworking
women. Unjust as it is to force any human being to
overwork, it is utterly disastrous when that overwork
is bound to weaken the vitality of the coming genera
tion. It seems Utopian to expect all employers to be hu
mane enough to consider the welfare of unborn chil
dren, or of the State as a whole. It is therefore neces
sary to have stringent legislation on the statute-books
forbidding the labor of women beyond the limit which
physiologists and psychologists may agree upon as
safe for any given occupation. Probably certain occu
pations should be forbidden to women altogether^
though these will not be many. In particular, the
law must forbid work, of many sorts, before and

WORK FOR ALL 121
after child-birth. And if this enforced abstention of
women from wage-earning necessitates State support
for mothers and infants, or something of the sort, then
to that we must come. Such proposals must not be
damned as "socialistic" ; they must be considered on
their own merits. The American principle of
Equality demands a fair chance for every mother and
child; whatever devices may be necessary to procure
that must be accepted.
Particularly inexcusable, in our prosperous land, is
the stealing from children of their playtime and
school-time, to save the hiring of more expensive
adult workers. In spite of the efforts of reformers for
a generation, child-labor on a great scale remains, a
disgrace to our civilization. Something like two
million children under sixteen are wage-earners in the
United States. The Keating-Owen Federal Child-
Labor Law, passed in 1916, was declared unconstitu
tional by the Supreme Court, by a five to four vote,
and the safeguarding of the vitality of the American
people by preventing the labor of young children in
mills and factories, thereby relegated to the States as
a matter of purely local concern. Unhappily, the
laws of many of the States are extremely lax. A
clause in a revenue bill passed by Congress after the
Supreme Court's decision was announced, seeks to
restrain child-labor by levying a tax upon the profits
of establishments where too young children are
employed, or older children are employed too long.
This bill has been taken to the Supreme Court for
consideration ; its decision has not, at time of writing,
been announced.
A number of States permit children under fourteen
to work in factories and mUls. Some States permit
boys of twelve to work in mines. Many States permit

122 EQUALITY
young children to work on night-shifts. Few States
set an eight-hour maximum for the child's working-
day. Where humane restrictions are written into the
Statutes, they are commonly waived for the benefit of
certain industries — as for the canning industry, be
cause of the perishable nature of fruits and vege
tables. Moreover, such laws as exist are seldom
strictly enforced. A Government Commission investi
gating the matter in 1918 found that in New York
City in one of the largest industries over ninety-six
per cent of the factories employing women and chil
dren were violating some provision of the child-labor
laws. In three months of a recent year, one hundred
and fifteen prosecutions were instituted in Ohio for
violations of the child-labor and woman's-labor laws.
In three-fourths of these cases the fines imposed were
remitted or suspended. In other States there is
scarcely even an attempt at prosecution, public opin
ion being unfavorable to enforcement. This state
of things is likely to continue until the people in
general awake to the serious public menace of this
exploitation of the children.
The National Child-Labor Committee is responsible
for the statement that during the first half of 1920
there was an increase of child-laborin fourteen States.
Most of this can not be restricted by the existing
laws. On the farms, and in the cotton fields, chil
dren are set to work by their parents; in some cases
children five years old have been found doing a pretty
long day's work. Instances are cited by investigators
where parents have insisted upon their children's
working, that they might add a little to the family
income and purchase an automobile or some other
luxury !
It seems to be not enough to plead for the child's

WORK FOR ALL 123
right to play and to schooling, to point out that to
spend his days in productive labor, while normal for
an adult, is a misuse of the formative years, when
a child should put all its energies intO' learning about
the world and building up a sound foundation of
health. Even to point to the demoralization of child-
workers, the increase of juvenile delinquency, which
is very striking among these working-children, arouses
little attention. We must address our appeals to
the pocket-book!
Well, the argument on this basis is conclusive. Sta
tistics show that "for every dollar earned by a child
under fourteen, tenfold will be taken from its earning
capacity in later years." There is an immediate gain
to the employer; but in the long run the State loses
far more than it gains by the premature entrance of
children into industry. The total earning capacity
of a man during his working-life is far greater if he
waits until his health is secured upon a firm basis
by a carefully safeguarded childhood, and a reason
able degree of education is secured, before he enters
the ranks of the wage-earners.
Recent studies show clearly the increase of dis
eases among children who gO' to work; the normal
exercise and growth of their bodies is interfered with ;
they become prematurely old or unfit. In addition to
this almost universal effect, children are far more apt
to be careless in their handling of machinery; in a
recent year twenty thousand children under sixteen
were killed or injured in industry in Massachusetts
alone. If carefully prepared figures were available
for the country as a whole, they would be appalling.
The eugenic loss is of serious import ; we are impair
ing the vitality of future generations by this sacrifice
of our children to the greedy jaws of industry. This

124 EQUALITY
utilitarian consideration should move those who can
coldly contemplate the sight of thousands of boys
and girls, pale and listless, ignorant, uneducated,
"weeping in the playtime of the others.
In the country of the free."
The pathos of the overwork of women and children
is heightened by the realization that the involuntary
unemployment of able-bodied men is a chronically
recurrent aspect of our industrial order. Some in
dustries, such as coal-mining, never offer continuous
employment; the average coal-miner is unable to find
work for more than two-thirds of the working days of
the year. Nearly all our industries, under their pres
ent management, are subject to great fluctuations in
the number of workers to whom they offer employ
ment. And it has become a common phenomenon for
a mill or factory to shut down for a few weeks or
months, at a moment's notice, in order to produce a
scarcity of goods and raise the price of the product.
The amount of involuntary unemployment in the
United States varies in normal times from four or
five per cent of the workers upward. In January,
1915, forty per cent of the workers in New York City
were reported out of work. In January, 1921, statis
tics showed that over two million workers were out of
work, the country over. That such a situation works
severe hardship needs no argument; few of these
workers have been able to lay aside a reserve of sav
ings sufficient for a period of enforced idleness. The
problem is a difficult one, and cannot be discussed
within the limits of this volume. But we must insist
here upon the essential right of every citizen to work,
as a corollary of his duty to work. There must be
no considerable idleness at either end of the scale —

WORK FOE ALL 125
among the rich, who can afford to idle, or among the
poor, to whom idleness is the great horror. The prob
lem is not impossible of solution; many proposals,
tried here and there, offer ways to ameliorate or cure
this evU of our industrial system. We may hesitate
to commit ourselves to this or that "radical" proposal.
But somehow America must ensure to every able-
bodied person the opportunity to work — ^if possible,
at a vocation congenial to his powers and tastes — but
at least at a job that will maintain his self-respect
and ensure him and his family against destitution.
Work is a universal need, and must always be open
to all.
We may go further, and say that reasonably pleas
ant work is the due of every American citizen.
Whether all necessary work can be made, by the
progress of human invention, reasonably pleasant,
and, if not, who is to do the hopelessly disagreeable
work, are questions not easy to answer. Possibly we
may some day accept William James's suggestion, and
through a six month's or a year's conscription of our
youth, require every citizen to do his share of the
dirty and disagreeable work that must be done. But
certainly most work can be made reasonably pleasant
for the healthy adult. And there is no excuse for the
dusty, sunless, poorly ventilated, unsanitary factories
and mills that still so largely disgrace our civiliza
tion. It is useless to speak of the "dignity of labor"
to men and women whose labor is spent in ugly and
unhealthy surroundings. Nothing is more important
than to maintain a good morale among workers ; their
degree of zest in their work will affect not only the
quantity and quality of goods produced, but their
health, their attitude toward their fellowmen, and
their happiness. "In some way we must get the

126 EQUALITY
spiritual appeal of the job." It cannot be got when
work is too monotonous, too hard, too disagreeable, or
carried on amid too disagreeable surroundings.
In spite of the unpleasant and unhygienic working
conditions that still so largely persist, this is a point
in which America is taking the lead. There are al
ready a great many factories and business houses that
are healthful and delightful places to work in; and
their number is increasing yearly. Needless to say,
in such concerns the employees are very loyal and
the labor troubles small. A Swedish industrial ex
pert who recently visited this country has published
a book whose title, translated, reads Joy of Work:
Lessons from America. "At sight of all this beauty,"
she writes, "which enhances existence and makes
labor lighter to the many workers, one feels that man
kind has actually advanced."
It should be needless to add that work in America
must be made as free as possible from preventable
injuries. We have been incredibly careless in this
respect. In our mines and on our railways we kill
and injure two or three times as many employees an
nually as in the advanced countries of Europe. In
our factories and millsi, likewise, preventable acci
dents are far more frequent. During the nineteen
months of our participation in the War, some forty-
eight thousand American soldiers were killed or died
from wounds. During that same period thirty-five
thousand men, women, and children were killed in
American industries. This casualty-list goes on, year
after year, but little mitigated as yet by the reforms
and legislation of the past few years. Yet most of
these casualties are needless, and occur only because
the expense of safety devices postpones their install
ation. But human life is costly, too. And the pro-

WOEK FOR ALL 127
duction of cheap goods, or coal, or transportation, at
the expense of thousands of deaths and injuries an
nually is a shameful aspect of our American life.
To sum up. Equality of opportunity implies a so
ciety in which every able-bodied person does his or her
share of the work that is to be done ; in which every
person is guarded from having to work too hard or
too long, but given an opportunity to work continu
ously, a reasonable number of hours a week, during
his working-life, at an occupation made as pleasant
and as safe as American ingenuity can make it. Play
time and school-time for our children, care for our
mothers and prospective mothers, employment for all,
and such social pressure as will require that every
one does his bit — that is surely the American ideal,
the ideal that must be attained,
SUGGESTED READINGS
Theodore Eoosevelt, The Strenuous Life.
W. C. Gannett, Blessed Be Drudgery.
E. C. Cabot, What Men Live By, Part I.
Dorothy Richardson, The Long Day.
J. Eae, Eight Hours for Worh.
Scott Nearing, Social Adjustment, Chapter X. The -Solution
of the Child-Labor Problem.
John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children.
E. N. Clopper, Child Labor in City Streets,
T. Oliver, Diseases of Occupation.
J. A. Hobson, Worh and Wealth, Chapter XV.
Florence Kelley, Some Ethical Gains through Legislation,
Chapters I-IV.
Josephine Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency.
J. A. Hobson, The Problem of the Unemployed.
W. H. Beveridge, Unemployment.
Edmund Kelly, The Elimination of the Tramp,
C. S, Loch, Methods of Social Advance, Chapter IX.

CHAPTER XIII
prosperity for all
America is the most prosperous nation in the world.
The rich are richer than anywhere else, and there are
more of them. The poorer classes are, perhaps on the
whole, better off here than in any other land ; perhaps
better off than at any other period in the world's his
tory. There are here at least no fixed social classes,
no rigid barriers that make it impossible for the
poorest youth to make his way to fortune. Nor is
there, perhaps, any land where wealth carries with it
less prestige. We have no first, second, and third
class railway carriages and waiting-rooms. Except
for certain snobbish smart sets, which are not rep
resentative of the true American spirit, a genuine
sense of social equality has persisted since pioneer
days. The rich man is the lucky fellow; but, in
general, we feel that he is one of us and wish him
well. It has never been an implication of our ideal of
Equality that wealth or income should be equally dis
tributed. He may take who can get ; and so long as
the race is open on equal terms to all, we shall take
the other man's success in a sporting spirit.
It is a grave question, however, whether this atti
tude can be maintained much longer if inequality
of wealth and manner of life continues to be more and
more marked. We have developed during the past
few decades what is commonly called a plutocracy;
128

PEOSPEEITY FOR ALL 129
that is, a comparatively small group of people who
have vastly greater wealth than the great body of the
people, and proportionate power over industry, and
even over politics, journalism, and education. The
wealth of our prosperous land is being divided far
more unevenly than it used to be ; a much sharper line
separates the rich from the poor. Discontent is rais
ing its head among what are sometimes called the
"disinherited classes" ; not so much because of social
istic or Bolshevist propaganda — these doctrines are
exotic on our shores, and make no very widespread
appeal — but out of a natural desire for a fair share of
the good things of life. We must, therefore, seriously
consider whether some modification of the present
inequality in the distribution of wealth is not de
manded by our ideal of Equality.
There are various estimates as to the present dis
tribution of the wealth of the country. One statis
tician declares that one per cent of our people own
eighty-five per cent of the national wealth. A far
more conservative estimate is that of the United
States Industrial Commission of 1915, which reported
that two per cent of the population own sixty per
cent of the national wealth ; another thirty -three per
cent own thirty-five per cent, and the remaining sixty-
five per cent of the people own but five per cent of
the total wealth of the country. One man gets an an
nual income said to be in the neighborhood of fifty
million dollars — an income equal to that of fifty
thousand poorly-paid laborers. Or, to put it another
way, it would take one of the laborers fifty thousand
years to earn what this man gets in a single year.
The twenty-five or thirty biggest fortunes in the coun
try probably amount to five billion dollars; and, ac
cording to an estimate in the New York Times in

130 EQUALITY
1920, one hundred and sixty-two men have annual in
comes of a million dollars or more apiece.
On the other hand, the incomes of our poorer fami
lies are sadly inadequate for the maintenance of a
minimum American standard of living. As prices go
in 1921, |1,500 a year, or thereabouts, is necessary to
maintain the average family of five in even a moderate
degree of comfort. Yet probably fifty per cent of the
families in the country receive less than that. Re
liable recent figures are hard to get. But in 1919, an
investigation by Dr. Harris, of the New York City
Health Department showed that twenty per cent of
the thousands of poor families investigated in that
city had an income of less than |600 a year! Thirty
per cent had less than |900. In Massachusetts, in
1917, more than half the men in the industries of the
State received less than $20 a week — 11,000 a year.
Of the women workers, about a third received less
than |10 a week. In Baltimore in 1918, seventy-six
per cent of the working women and girls were receiv
ing less than f 10 a week. The Interchurch Report on
the Steel Strike, in 1920, reported that the annual
earnings of seventy-two per cent of the steel workers
(who, with their families, aggregate three quarters of
a million people) "were, and had been for years, be
low the level set by Government experts for families
of five."
The most serious aspect of the matter is that in
recent years the situation has been growing distinctly
worse. Father Ryan, in 1906, estimated that between
sixty and seventy per cent of American laborers were
getting less than a living wage^ — ^which he then set at
the very low figure, |600. The cost of living in 1921
is probably, for the whole country, nearly a hundred
per cent higher than then. And in spite of a good

PROSPERITY FOE ALL 131
many exceptions, the average earnings of the laboring
classes have not kept pace with this increase. If be
tween sixty and seventy per cent of "working-class"
families were living in 1906 on less than a fair "living
wage," it is probable that more than seventy per cent
were so situated in 1920.
Many figures could be cited in support of this con
clusion, drawn from such reliable sources as the docu
ments compiled by the Treasury Department from in
come tax returns, and Poor and Moody's Manual.
In his testimony before the United States Railroad
Labor Board, since summarized in a pamphlet en
titled Relation between Wages and the Increased
Cost of Living (1920), Mr. W. Jett Lauck gave clear
proof of his conclusion that, in general, "wage in
creases have lagged behind price increases; and usual
ly they are far behind." Behind not only in amount,
but in time ; that is, increases in prices were followed,
not preceded, by increases in wages. The situation
is well known to workers among the poor. For ex
ample, the Charity Organization Society of New York,
in 1919, had a Committee on Home Economics, which
reported that, "in spite of the common belief that
wages generally had advanced, only two-fifths of the
families interviewed reported an increase in the fam
ily income. In most cases the wage increases were
slight in amount and far less than the proportionate
increase in living costs."
It is probable, however, that we are now to see a
long period of falling prices. If wages are not too
generally and drastically cut, the workers may pres
ently be better off than they were before prices and
wages went up. Certain classes of workers, now
relatively overpaid, should receive less than they now
receive. The whole matter of remuneration for labor

132 EQUALITY
is in chaos. He takes who can get; while those who
are not in a position to demand much, are fain to be
content with little. Evening-up to some extent there
should be. But we must not be content with a return
to the status quo ante. We must be satisfied with
nothing short of the abolition of undeserved poverty
— the securing to every willing worker an adequate
livelihood. We are very far from securing that now. To realize
that this is so, one has only to go and see how "the
other half lives." The housing conditions of a large
section of the city and town population in the United
States are a national disgrace that can hardly be
exaggerated. Lack of air and sunshine, lack of sani
tary arrangements, above all, lack of room, are the
conditions under which millions of children are grow
ing up in this country today. Out of thirty-eight
compositions written by New York school-children
from the East Side, describing their homes, seen by
the writer some years ago, twenty-one spoke of the
bad smell. If the others did not mention it, it was
merely because of their habituation thereto. There
are many thousands of occupied rooms in tenements
throughout the cities of this country with no win
dows at all, and, of course, hundreds of thousands
of rooms with windows opening only on to narrow air
shafts where no adequate ventilation is possible. In
one of the compositions above referred to, a little girl
said of her room, "It is so dark it seems as if there was
no sky."
It may be doubted if there is any more significant
aspect of a nation's life than the conditions under
which its children are growing up. The overcrowded,
noisy, dark, unsanitary homes which at present are
the lot of a large percentage pf them today are a men,-

PROSPERITY FOE ALL 133
ace to the nation's future, both from the point of
view of health and of morals. Much can be done by
enlightened housing legislation. But unless the in
comes of the poorer people are considerably increased,
conditions are bound to remain very bad. What
with the wretched home-conditions and the under
nourishment referred to in an earlier chapter, the
physique and the morale of a large section of our peo
ple are in a fair way to be seriously impaired.
It is not that the country is poor. On the contrary,
the national wealth is increasing by leaps and bounds.
But it is becoming more and more concentrated in the
hands of the wealthy classes. During the past decade
there has been a far greater percentage of increase
in the larger incomes than in the smaller. One ob
vious reason for this lies in the fact that whereas
practically the whole income of the poor is spent upon
the necessities of life, which doubled in cost within
a few years, the greater part of the income of the
rich has been invested in securities, which have been
purchasable at far lower prices than usual, and has
been accumulating at a very high rate of interest. If
the tendencies of the past decade continue unchecked,
most of the surplus wealth of the country will be in
the hands of a small class of rich people, within a
generation. If this surplus wealth were to accrue to the "capi
talist" class only after the poorer classes had all re
ceived a living wage, and were to be used by them
for reinvestment in industry, we might be content.
Even then, the great power concentrated in so few
hands would have dangerous potentialities; and it
is a question whether the control of industry by a
comparatively small set of people, implied by such a
situation, is consonant with our American ideal of

134 EQUALITY
Democracy. But the actual situation is much more
obviously wrong. For on the one hand we have hun
dreds of thousands of families with less than enough
to live on in comfort, and on the other hand a class of
rich people who spend extravagantly for the satisfac
tion of luxurious personal wants.
The indulgence in luxury, and extravagant spend
ing, are comparatively new traits in American life.
But they have been growing rapidly, so that recent
estimates assert that a quarter of the national in
come goes today for luxuries. The rich set the pace,
and a great many who are not rich catch the infection
and spend more than they can afford. The result is
that instead of being, as we once were, a thrifty folk,
we have become the most spendthrift nation on earth.
Most of this expenditure is innocent in itself, much
of it is intrinsically desirable. Man does not live by
bread alone; and the billions of dollars spent every
year by Americans on automobiles, pretty clothes,
jewelry, candy, soft drinks, tobacco, theatres and
movies, and the other enjoyments classifled as "luxu
ries," are by no means wholly wasted. But the pro
duction of these luxuries limits correspondingly the
production of necessities; and it is a question how far
any one has moral right to indulgence while others
are suffering. Every dollar spent on personal en
joyment of any sort means so much labor withdrawn
from the production of other goods. Ought we, as
patriotic Americans, to look tolerantly upon extrava
gant expenditures of any sort, while our poor are
wretchedly housed and underfed? Should we not
consider seriously the motto adopted by the British
Labor Party at a recent election, "No cake for any
till all Lave bread?"
It is not enough to say, as we said at the beginning

PEOSPEEITY FOE ALL 135
of this chapter, that the poor in our country today
are, on the whole, better off than the poor have ever
been before. It has always been a bad world for the
poor, and it is still a pretty bad world for them.
Their status, though it has improved in some respects,
has not improved in proportion to the increasing pros
perity of the country. In the Old World the "common
people" were not considered of importance, anyway;
they swarmed and were swept away by famine and
pestilence, with little pity from the ruling class. But
the American ideal was that every human being has
intrinsic worth, and a right to his share of the good
things of life. So deeply rooted has this ideal become
in our soil that we can never hope henceforth to have
a stable social order until it again approaches some
approximate realization. If class conflicts are ever
to cease, if the "unrest" that we hear so much of today
is ever to be cured, it can only be by the setting in of
a vigorous tide in the direction of a greater equaliza
tion of the benefits of our national prosperity. Many
observers would put the case even more decidedly;
Professor Edward Ross, for example, in Changing
America, warns us that "unless democracy mends the
distribution of wealth, the mal-distribution of wealth
will end democracy."
It is not, perhaps, in terms of regard for an abstract
ideal, or in terms of a concrete pity for the sufferings
of their less fortunate fellow-countryman, that we
can most surely arouse the attention of Americans to
day. It is in terms of national efficiency and pre
paredness. We are wasting our man-power, lessening
our productive efficiency, by permitting poverty, in
adequate housing, underfeeding, anxiety over subsis
tence, the destruction of health, premature death. A
division of the national wealth which allows a small

136 EQUALITY
percentage of our people, at one end of the scale, to
pamper and soften themselves by luxurious living,
and refuses comfort, health, leisure to a considerable
percentage at the other end of the scale, is not a
sensible division. What we should seek is efficiency
in consumption, as well as in production ; that is, the
greatest attainable welfare for the amount of wealth
consumed. Luxury consumption is inefficient con
sumption ; the same amount of money would produce
more valuable results if consumed in the form of more
necessary things by more people.
The problem of the ways in which money can most
efficiently be spent to forward human happiness is
a matter for very careful study. But it is clear that
our present methods of consumption are far from the
norm. Certainly more money should be spent upon
food for the undernourished, comfortable homes to
replace the squalid and unhealthful tenements into
which the poor are crowded, care for the sick, edu
cation for the ignorant, and public works that benefit
the whole community; less money, therefore, should
be allowed for fine clothes, elaborate meals, and the
costlier forms of amusement. Our present system of
distribution, which permits a great expenditure for
needless luxuries on the one hand, while on the other
hand it denies the amenities of life to others, is an
inefficient and inherently unstable system. And any
nation that permits such a system to perpetuate it
self will, in the long run, fall behind a nation that
evolves a more efficient distribution of wealth.
Here and there one may discern signs among the
upper classes of a realization of this tmth. An Ameri
can financier of note recently declared that in his
judgment the interest in acquiring wealth was be
ginning to give way, in this country, to the interest

PEOSPEEITY FOE ALL 137
in performing public service. Perhaps we shall wit
ness a revival of the spirit of the Greeks of the best
period, by whom, Professor Butcher says, "money
lavished on personal enjoyment was counted vulgar,
oriental, inhuman." Perhaps we shall take Walt
Whitman's utterance as our motto :
"I speak the pass-word primeval — I give the sign of democracy ;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms."
Several distinguished Americans have recently
urged "self -limitation in regard to wealth." The well-
to-do, one holds, should "take for their own use only
what they require for the essentials of a civilized life,
and regard the rest as a deposit for the general good."
Another, writing in the Atlantic Monthly a "Word to
the Rich," urges them to spend their fortunes during
their life-time in good works. "The strong man has
reached his goal, but it is not time for resting. The
day has come for him to show other men that his
life and his work are henceforth for them, and not for
his own gratification. He must prove that he has la
bored for the common good, and that he knows the
rightful, wise use of his profits. , , , This plan gives
occupation and happiness to the giver, explains, and,
if you please, atones to his fellows for his success.
It blesses the receiver and the giver; it cultivates
kindly relations and feelings between the lucky and
the less lucky men; it takes a long step toward the
making of a great, healthy nation; and what higher,
more pressing duty can the citizen have than this
task?" Such instances as the following are becoming more
and more frequent. The daily papers for November
29, 1920, announced that a young Bostonian had re-

138 EQUALITY
nouneed his right to a legacy of about a million dol
lars left him by his father. "I refuse to accept the
money," the young man declared, "because it is not
mine. A system which starves thousands, while hun
dreds are stuffed, condemns itself. A system which
leaves a sick woman helpless and offers its services to
a healthy man condemns itself. It is such a system
that offers me a million dollars."
Other, equally conscientious, young men and
young women, instead of refusing to handle wealth
bequeathed to them, or accruing to them in the form
of rent, interest, or profits from industry, are main
taining a simple manner of life and spending their
surplus money for social or philanthropic purposes.
Others are returning the greater part of their profits
to the workers on some profit-sharing plan. Others
are investing their surplus in the expansion of indus
try, while keeping the ownership of the wealth in
their name. It is a gravely puzzling question, which
is the best way, the most socially desirable way, of
disposing of the surplus wealth of the nation. It is
clear, however, that its use for luxurious and extrava
gant living is not its best possible use. Surplus
wealth should be used, for the most part, in ways
that are socially efficient and just. The ideal of
Americ: must be, not unlimited enjoyments for those
who are fortunate or clever enough to command them,
but a widely diffused welfare.
Our existing industrial system could easily produce
enough to provide plenty of food and clothing and the
other necessities of life for everybody. If it does not,
it is partly because too much of its energy is con
sumed in producing superfiuities for the well-to-do,
partly because production is often purposely kept
below its maximum by the owners of industry, in

PROSPERITY FOE ALL 139
order to keep prices high, and partly because the
workers often fail to give their wholehearted energy
to the work. The War showed that with most of the
able-bodied young men drafted from industry more
goods than ever could be produced. And although
that feverish energy could not be permanently main
tained, there is no doubt that we can all live in com
fort if we utilize to the full the resources and
inventions and human abilities now at our disposal.
It is possible that some people are incorrigibly
lazy ; but a proper system of vocational guidance and
training would certainly discover for almost all men
and women some work to which they would be willing
to give a reasonable amount of energy. Some people,
of course, are stupid; but appropriate education can
make all of these useful producers except the ex
tremely sub-normal; and these the State must look
after — if for no other reason, to prevent their having
children. Some people will be improvident, and fail
to provide for illness and old age; a proper system
of health and old-age insurance will remove this
gambler's risk and protect people against misfortune.
Differences in productive ability will remain, but
not such as to deny to anyone a decent livelihood.
There is no need of anything more than sporadic
poverty and want, overwork, undernourishment, or
indecent housing. It is our fault, our national crime,
that these evils exist on a large scale.
The fact is, we have not yet realized our national
unity. We are, iii reality, one big family; the mis
fortune of one class is the misfortune of the nation.
As Professor Leacock well says, "Every child of the
nation has the right to be clothed and fed and trained
irrespective of its parents' lot. . . . The ancient
grudging selfishness that would not feed other peo-

140 EQUALITY
pies' children must be cast out. In the war time
the wealthy bachelor and the spinster of advancing
years took it for granted that other peoples' children
should fight for them. The obligation must apply
both ways. No society is properly organized until
every child that is born into it shall have an oppor
tunity in life."
The lot of the children is most important, for a
man's whole life is commonly made or marred by his
opportunities during a few years of childhood. But
the lot of the adult wage-earner should also be a
matter of national concern. And we should be con
tent with nothing short of a reasonable amount of
comfort — at least food enough, enough warm cloth
ing, and a decent home, for every citizen of America,
SUGGESTED READINGS
E. T. Devine, Misery and its Causes,
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House.
Eobert Hunter, Poverty.
Jacob Eiis, How the Other Half Lives,
W. I. King, The Wealth a/nd Income of the People of the
United States,
Scott Nearing, Wages in the United States; Poverty and
Riches,
C. B. Spahr, The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United
States.
P. L. Haworth, America in Ferment, Chapter IX.
W. Eauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, Chapters
V, VII.
H. E. Seager, Introduction to Economics, Chapter IV, sees.
43-45.
E. J. Urwick, Luxury and Waste of Life,
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, pp. 236-242.
Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class.
H. G. Wells, The Future in America, Chapter VT.
T. W. Higginson, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 107, p. 301.

CHAPTER XIV
THE SQUARE DEAL
It is perhaps hopeless to expect any great proportion
of the well-to-do to give the bulk of their surplus
wealth to raise the level of life for the less prosperous.
Neither patriotic nor religious appeals can counter
act, for most people, the lure of the personal enjoy
ments, of one sort or other, made possible by money.
"The money has been fairly won," they will say;
"it is ours; let these others earn their own money;
the race is open to all on equal terms."
Nor is it to be expected that any socialistic or
communistic plan of equalizing wealth will commend
itself to our people. We are confirmed individualists
in our attitude toward the problem of distribution.
Is there then no hope for a more diffused pros
perity, for a completer access for all to the good
things of life? Yes, the hope lies in our American
ideal of the Square Deal. Individualism in the
acquisition of wealth can be retained if the race is
really kept open to all on equal terms, if every citizen
is given a really fair chance to acquire a competence.
The threat to our American system lies in the
growing sense in the hearts of many people that they
have not really had a fair chance. They had to go
to work young, and could not afford an adequate
education ; they have not been able to live under such
conditions as would safeguard their health ; they have
no capital with which to draw themselves up out of
141

142 EQUALITY
the status of the day-laborer, and their wages as
laborers are low. On the other hand, healthful living
conditions, inherited means, acquaintance with the
right people, pull, leisure for proper training of the
faculties, together with a measure of acquisitive
ability, give their possessors a tremendous start.
The race is not to all on equal terms, it is to the rich,
the clever, the fortunate, those "on the inside," or
those to whom some combination of lucky circum
stances and mental qualities gives the necessary start.
We may waive discussion of the relative impor
tance of these various factors. Men who have made
fortunes usually attribute their success to their
superior ability ; while if they lose out, they attribute
their failure to bad luck or to the unscrupulousness
or more advantageous situation of their rivals. All
these factors, and many others, enter in, so that it is
difficult in any given case to know in what degree
success results from superior ability; and still more
obviously impossible to generalize with respect to the
class of earners as a whole.
But even where it is clearly ability that wins the
prize, it is apt to be an acquisitive ability rather than
a productive ability. It is business strategy quite as
much as productive efficiency that brings returns.
The inventor who perfects some new process, the
manager who evolves an efficient organization, the
artisan who develops uncommon skill at his craft, are
far less likely to grow rich than the owner of a plant
who knows how to use the brains and industry of
others for the creation of profits for himself. In fact,
skill at making money seems to be in considerable
degree a specialized skill, with little relation to public
service or intrinsic desert.
But far more embittering than the realization of

THE SQUAEE DEAL 143
these personal differences in environment and endow
ment is the growing consciousness of what is coming
to be called, in a more specific sense. Privilege, This
term connotes the fact that a comparatively small sec
tion of the population have succeeded in getting for
themselves the greater part of the natural resources
of the country and the manufacture and distribution
of certain monopolizable necessities of life; this
ownership and control enables them to divert to them
selves an increasingly large share of the national in
come. Indeed, any combination of producers in a
given line, whether formal or virtual, so as to create
a practical monopoly, gives them just such a privi
leged position in our industrial system, making
possible what we call today Profiteering. It is this
situation, above all, which must be corrected or neu
tralized if we are to attain a stable and generally
prosperous society.
For example, some sixty thousand people own a
quarter of the land of the United States ; a compara
tively small number own a large proportion of the
most valuable city land. As the population grows,
this land becomes more and more valuable. The
farm-lands of the country have increased in value
over two hundred per cent in twenty years. New
York City real estate is increasing in assessed valua
tion at a rate of about a hundred and fifty million
dollars a year. The annual rent received from land
in New York City is said to be about four hundred
million dollars. The Astor fortune, of several hun
dred millions, had its foundation in this rise in value
of the land upon which that city is built. One farm
for which one of the earlier Astors paid |4,500 is said
to be worth today |50,000,000. This is an extreme
case. But the general truth is that there is a con-

144 EQUALITY
tinual increase in land-values, and that the fortunate
owners of valuable land are in a position to demand
an enormous amount of money each year from the
rest of the population in the form of rent.
Now we are not going to question the intrinsic
justice of the private appropriation of rent. When
a man has worked hard, saved his money, and put
it into real estate, he is as much entitled to interest
upon it in the form of rent as if he were getting
interest on bonds, or on a savings-bank account. But
apart from the fact that a man may inherit the land
he owns, without having earned it himself — ^which is
equally true, of course, of the other forms of Privi
lege — there is the other fact that the increase in the
value of land is socially created. Land increases in
value because the population increases. Specific
lands increase more rapidly in value because good
roads are built, and schools, and water-supplies and
sewerage-systems, all at public expense; and because
other people move into the neighborhood and build
homes, and shops, and make the land in question
thereby more desirable. Because of this socially
created situation, many fortunate land-owners are
able to get a rental considerably in excess of the
average interest obtainable on the sum for whicb they
purchased the land. They are in a strategic position.
They are able to say : "You cannot use this desirable
land except by paying me this high rent." This is one
aspect of what is today commonly called Privilege.
What is true of land is true of all the natural re
sources of the country — the ore deposits, the coal, the
oil, the natural gas, the forests. A comparatively
small class of people have been fortunate or clever
enough to get the ownership of practically all of the

THE SQUAEE DEAL 145
sources of supply of these indispensable things. The
great mass of poor people couldn't buy them up; a
few rich people could. And now these people are in
a situation to ask, and get, high prices for iron and
copper and coal and oil and gas and lumber. In cer
tain cases, owners of some of these natural resources
have received profits of a thousand per cent in a year
on their investments. Coal we must have, or freeze
to death ; lumber we must have for buildings and for
furniture, as well as wood-pulp for paper. Copper
and iron are essentials in an industrial age. And in
almost equal degree a long list of important commod
ities. But because we must all of us have these
things, is it right that we should have to pay for them
whatever the owners of the sources of supply
demand? Any one of a number of other factors may likewise
give a privileged position, an inside track, in the race
for fortune. It may be a franchise that gives its
possessor exclusive right to supply a community with
electricity, or gas, or street-car service, or to develop
and sell water-power from a given site. It may be
the possession of trade-secrets or patents. It may be
the ownership of a railroad, or of refrigerator cars,
or of storage-warehouses. It may be a tariff law
which chokes off foreign competition and enabled a
manufacturer to demand a higher price than he could
get in an open market. It may be a sudden increase
of demand foi certain commodities, or a sudden de
crease in the available supply — as happened so strik
ingly during the Great War. But whatever the cause,
or combination of causes, that makes possible the high
profits, there are few human beings who will refuse
the opportunity. In their own minds these fortunate

146 EQUALITY
ones are reaping the just reward of their foresight
and cleverness. To the less fortunate they are just
— profiteers. Some recent instances of profiteering will illustrate
what is meant. The profits of the United States Steel
Corporation were, approximately, $23,000,000 in
1914 ; owing to the demand created by the War they
rose to 1450,000,000 in 1917. The Baldwin Locomo
tive Company's profits rose from |350,000 in 1914 to
16,000,000 in 1916 ; the Niles-Bement Bond Company
from 135,000 in 1914 to $5,000,000 in 1916; the
AUis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company from f 25,000
in 1914 to 13,000,000 in 1916. A considerable num
ber of fortunately situated corporations were able
to pay dividends on their stock of over a hundred per
cent yearly. Besides this, they gl-eatly increased
their reserve funds; the Steel Corporation, for ex
ample, in four years increased its undivided surplus
from 1135,000,000 to $493,000,000. In November,
1919, Mr. McAdoo testified before the investigating
committee of the Senate to the existence of profits
in the coal-mining industry running up to two thou
sand per cent on the capital stock. Indeed, the coal
mines were said to be yielding their owners in 1916 a
billion dollars in excess profits every eight weeks.
The point is that these profits resulted only in
minor degree from increased production; in some
cases production was actually less than before. They
resulted primarily from increased demand. Where
there is a virtual monopoly, as in the case of the
Standard Oil Company, the Harvester Trust, the
Tobacco Trust, or the Pullman Company, the price
that can be asked is limited only by the possibility
that consumers can do without the article. But ex
perience shows that monopoly is not a prerequisite

THE SQUARE DEAL 147
of "charging all the traffic will bear." When a wave
of high prices sets in, manufacturers and dealers who
have what the public needs will raise prices gen
erally, as if by concerted action. To be sure, a reac
tion is apt to follow, a wave of low prices, during
which many manufacturers and dealers barely sub
sist, and many fail — to the more or less avowed satis
faction of the consumers who have resented the high
prices! But one evil does not atone for another.
Neither profiteering nor bankruptcy is desirable.
And the net result of these fluctuations is, in general,
the increasing concentration of production and sell
ing in the hands of a class of capitalists, who, because
of their monopoly, will be in an ever more favorable
position for proflteering.
According to a recent report, the amount of profits
exacted from the consumers by the sugar manufac
turers and dealers in 1920 was in the neighborhood
of $600,000,000— an average tax of $30 on every
American family. In 1913 the margin between pro
duction cost and the retail price of a pound of sugar
was less than one cent; in 1920 it was ten cents or
more. Even in 1917, when the retail price of sugar
was seven or eight cents a pound, the beet-sugar
producers earned an average of about sixty per cent
profit on their invested capital, while cane sugar
producers earned an average of two hundred thirty-
eight per cent on their invested capital. In addition
to the profits of the producers, many middlemen and
retailers have been shown to have made profits on
sugar running up to a hundred per cent and more.
Much the same story can be told with respect to
shoes, and clothing, and scores of other articles. The
American Woolen Company, for example, was shown,
in an investigation by the Department of Justice, in

148 EQUALITY
1920, to be making profits running up to one hundred
per cent and more. A case argued before the Courts
in 1919 brought out the fact that a certain Brooklyn
Cloak and Suit Manufacturer who could neither read
nor write had within a few years amassed a fortune of
half a million dollars. The five leading meat packers
of the country, who pull together and have a practical
monopoly of the business, are said to have accumu
lated $178,000,000 in net profits during the years
1915-1917. Their rate of profit was said to be about
four hundred per cent upon invested capital.
One expert estimates that the corporations of the
country received $4,800,000,000 more in net profits
during the years 1916-1918 than during the three pre
ceding years — which were by no means lean years.
These excess profits would amount to a tax of $240
upon every family in the country. Another expert
calculates that during four years the corporations of
the country gathered in total net profits (that is,
profits remaining after the payment of all their taxes)
of $34,000,000,000. Not all of the corporations in the
country made large profits, of course; on the con
trary, many corporations, not in a strategic position,
earned very meagre profits, or no profits at all. This
immense sum went to those corporations that were
in a favorable position to exact it. Besides the cor
porations, many individuals and unincorporated
firms made fat profits. So that it is clear that a very
large part of the total income of the country within
the past few years has gone, in the form of "excess
profits" — that is, profits beyond what is considered
the normal rate of interest upon investment — into the
pockets of a comparatively few corporations and
business men.
Even the summation of frankly acknowledged prof-

THE SQUAEE DEAL 149
its by no means completes the tale. For there are
other channels by which the rewards of successful
industry are distributed. A large sum is retained
every year for the expansion of business, or for a
reserve fund, or to pay off bonded indebtedness. This
results ultimately in increased profits to the stock
holders. Again, the declaring of stock dividends
permits a really very high percentage of profit to be
disguised as a normal dividend upon the amount of
stock outstanding. A great deal of the capital stock
of the more prosperous concerns is nothing but
"water" ; that is, it represents no money invested, it
is simply a claim to an income from the industry.
To some extent these great profits accruing to the
fortunate industries and to the owners of natural
resources are distributed among a class of stock
holders. But this is not a large class of people. And
the bulk of the stock is owned by a comparatively
small fraction of this class. The "insiders," also,
have usually been the ones to buy the stock at a low
price and so to make a large profit on their invest
ment, whereas the other stockholders are apt to get
their shares only at an advanced price and therefore
to receive a smaller return for their money. Another
way in which the "insiders" can increase their share
of the booty is by paying high salaries to themselves
as officers of the companies. For example, the
American Metal Company was reported recently to
be paying $1,000,000 a year in salaries to six officers,
A firm of Wall Street brokers, according to the testi
mony of its president, was paying recently nearly a
million dollars a year for the salaries of its twelve
highest officers and directors; the president and first
vice-president receiving $161,000 apiece, and four
other officers close to or above $100,000 apiece.

150 EQUALITY
There are, of course, all sorts of methods of getting
big profits in business— if one has a strategic position.
Perhaps the most anti-social method is that of cur
tailing production in order to make the article
scarcer, and hence saleable at a higher price. For
example, in the winter of 1917, when the world was
facing famine, a combination of middlemen who had
bought up a large part of the potato crop allowed a
considerable percentage of these potatoes to rot in
the ground, because they could make more money if
there were fewer potatoes on the market. So, when
cargo space was desperately wanted and available
tonnage was not nearly adequate, bananas were being
dropped overboard outside of New York harbor, in
order not to reduce the price of that fruit by glutting
the market. For a long time during which many
thousands of children and babies were suffering, and
actually dying, for want of milk, in the city of New
York, milk dealers refused to bring into the city some
two million quarts of milk produced within market
able distance — and even posted notices suggesting to
farmers that they cease producing this surplus milk
which they did not wish to distribute. Naturally the
price of mUk remained very high, and babies of the
poor died.
These are not very unusual occurrences. In the
South there is a recurrent crusade yearly against the
"overproduction" of cotton. The Rubber Growers'
Association, in 1920, suggested to plantation-owners
that they reduce their tappings of rubber trees so as
to effect a twenty-five per cent reduction in the output
of rubber. This would have the effect of keeping the
price of rubber high. The consumers would suffer,
but the rubber producers would make a lot of money.
Profiteering is, of course, not a new phenomenon.

THE SQUARE DEAL 151
But the War gave it an enormous boost. Business
men have learned how to make the most of their
opportunities. And while there are not a few
Americans who refuse to make all the money they
can, and find their happiness in producing or retail
ing needed goods at the lowest possible cost, the
general trend has been heavily in the direction of
reaping the greatest possible financial harvest. And
this is the chief cause of that very great inequality
in the distribution of wealt^h which we noted in the
preceding chapter.
It seems obvious that Privilege and Profiteering
must be curbed if our American system is to be re
tained. For a while we can muddle along with a
comparatively small class of people raking in large
profits, at one end of the scale, and a larger class of
people at the other end of the scale lacking the essen
tials of life. But not forever. It will mean even
tually reform or revolution. And by revolution much
that is precious in our American tradition might be
lost. So the conservative people, who make up the
bulk of our population, must find some method of
preventing the fortunate holders of the strategic posi
tions in our economic life from profiting inordi
nately from their situation, and, at the same time, a
method of ensuring to the poorest laborers a decent
livelihood. This is the aim of much of the "progressive" legis
lation of the past generation. A beginning has been
made. But — as the experience of the last few years
shows — only a beginning. We have minimum wage
laws now in many States; the minimum is usually
set below the standard of comfortable or even efficient
living, is quite too low to be satisfactory ; but it is a
beginning. We have the machinery of taxation used

152 EQUALITY
to divert a part of the excess profits of fortunate in
dustries to the State. The Excess Proflts Tax —
which leaves an eight per cent proflt untaxed, and
takes only a small percentage of the proflts above
eight per cent — went but a little way toward recti
fying the situation ; but the idea behind it was sound.
The graduated Income Tax and Inheritance Tax go
much further toward paring down the fortunes of the
rich, and enable the State to raise its revenue without
exacting too much from the poorer classes.
Of particular interest is the movement toward dif
ferentiating between "earned" income (wages, sala
ries up to a flgure that can be honestly thought
earned, professional receipts — i.e. what a man gets
for his labor) and "unearned" income (interest on
bonds, bank-deposits, and loans, dividends on stock,
rent from land and property owned, excess proflts
from industry). It is no part of the American tra
dition to denounce unearned income. But it is an
implication of our ideal of Equality that one class
of society should not be allowed to divert to itself
by this means such a large proportion of the national
income that there is too little left for the greater
numbers who are not property owners. To allow
that is not a legitimate Individualism — which would
seek to give every individual a fair chance — but indi
vidual or class selflshness.
It is doubtful whether taxation alone can remedy
the excessive distortion of our distribution of wealth.
It is quite possible that we may have to resort to
State regulation of prices and wages. Perhaps we
must come to State ownership of natural resources —
the coal-mines, the oil-wells, the forests, the water-
power sites. It is no part of the plan of this volume
to discuss the pros and cons of the highly intricate

THE SQUAEE DEAL 153
economic problems involved. The point of this chap
ter is simply that ways must be found and utilized to
cure the generally recognized evils of Privilege and
Proflteering. The continuance of our American tra
ditions depends, among other things, upon our success
in this undertaking.
Success in this undertaking would be the realiza
tion of what Roosevelt meant by the Square Deal. In
his address to the Ohio Constitutional Convention,
in 1912, he declared, "This country, as Lincoln said,
belongs to the people. So do the natural resources
which make it rich. ... It will help the people little
to conserve our national wealth unless the beneflts
which it can yield are secured to the people."
The fact is, in a nutshell, that prosperity — and all
the human goods that material prosperity makes pos
sible — has been far too dependent upon the accident
of birth. To give every child, so far as possible, an
equal start in the race, we should see to it that, how
ever poor his parents may be, he has a chance for
health and education and an adequate livelihood. We
must recognize that every child belongs not only to
his parents but to the nation ; he is a potential asset —
or a potential weakling, incompetent, or even criminal.
We must send him into life fairly equipped for the
struggle. And on the other hand, we must see to it
that the possession of the strategic positions by a
group of owners of land and resources and important
industries does not make it too difficult for him to
succeed, and win for his family a fair share of the
good things of life. It is not that we begrudge luxury
and power to the fortunate and clever, but that we
must have a Square Deal for those who are less for
tunate or less clever in the acquisitive line. As
Wilson has written, "America was set up that she

154 EQUALITY
might be different from all the nations of the world
in this: that the strong could not push the weak to
the wall." SUGGESTED READINGS
J. A. Ryan, Distributive Justice,
J. M. Mecklin, Introduction to Social Ethics, Chapter XVII.
H. George, Jr., The Menace of Privilege,
F. C. Howe, Privilege and Democracy in America,
H. D. Lloyd, Wealth against Commonwealth.
W. J. Ashley, The Tariff Problem.
F. W. Taussig, Principles of Economics, Chapters 36, 37.
H. W. Hamilton, Current Economic Problems, pp. 268-343.
Stephen Leacock, The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice,
W. L. Tucker, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, p. 480
H. A. Overstreet, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 25,
p. 165.
A. K. Rogers, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 28, p.
143, 406.
J. H. Hollander, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 110, p. 492.

PART THREE
DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER XV
political democracy
The Declaration of Independence declared that gov
ernments "derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed." Lincoln deflned Democracy as
"government of the people, by the people, for the
people"; and defended it by the assertion, already
quoted, that "no man is good enough to govern an
other man without that other's consent."
More concretely. Democracy implies the choosing
of legislators and executives by the people. In an
autocracy the rulers are not chosen by the people; or
even if, on rare occasion, they are so chosen, they are
not responsible to the people when once in office.
Democracy does away with the doctrine of the divine
right of monarchs to do as they please ; it makes the
voice of the people the ultimate authority. Practi
cally, that means the voice of the majority of the
people; for if action is to go forward, there can be
no waiting for unanimous agreement. But no indi
vidual or class in a democracy has a privileged posi
tion. Every adult counts for one; and the prepon
derance of opinion or desire determines policy.
Not only do all the people, in a democracy, have
a share in the election of officials to govern, but every
individual has the right to seek and hold office. There
is no hereditary ruling class; anyone can attain the
highest political position who can persuade his fellow-
157

158 DEMOCRACY
countrymen of his fltness therefor. In this way, too,
Democracy dares to trust the common man.
American Democracy did not spring into being
fullgrown. On the contrary, it has been in process
of realization from the days of the early settlers, and
is still but partially achieved. Maryland was the
flrst State to proclam universal manhood suffrage.
The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
ratifled in 1920, flnally included womanhood suffrage
in the national policy. But so long as Privilege sits
in high places, so long as "the Interests" have an
undue control of legislation, so long as masses of
people remain politically uneducated, the prey of
clever bosses, demagogues, and a propagandist press,
so long as millions of workers have no say whatever
as to the conditions of their workaday life, democracy
is still but partially achieved.
Still, America has already achieved a large measure
of its democratic ideal. And most of us will agree
with Ambassador Choate's dictum that "the cardinal
principle upon which American institutions rest, the
absolute political equality of all citizens with uni
versal suffrage, is the secret of American success."
It is important, then, to ask. What is the advantage
of Democracy? Why should we be so eager to main
tain and extend this ideal?
The apologists for autocracy can make out a per
suasive case for that system. Democracy, they say,
is hopelessly inefficient; it "lowers the aims of the
best to the standard of the masses, while aristocracy
must push the masses with their lower interests into
a striving toward higher ends."
We must admit that genuine aristocracy — that is,
a government by the best people — would push the
masses toward higher ends. But actually, an autoc-

POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 159
racy is seldom an aristocracy. The chances are al
most overwhelming that hereditary and irresponsible
rulers will be self-seeking, oblivious to the real needs
of the people, blinded by class-prejudice, and very
likely by imperialistic dreams. Even with respect to
efficiency, apart from ideals, autocracies have seldom
achieved striking success. Neither have democracies.
But it is an open question whether there is not, on
the whole, more likelihood of efficiency, in the long
run, in a democracy than in an autocracy.
The one undoubted advantage of an autocracy is
that it permits of quicker decisions and quicker ac
tion. There is no need to wait for deliberation by
popular assemblies or a popular vote. The few who
control the national destinies can act instantly in
any crisis. This is of particular value in declaring
war, and carrying out a truculent foreign policy in
general. But this alleged advantage is, after all, a
dangerous and undesirable one. Autocracies lead
their subjects into wars and embroilments. The
slower processes of democracy make for a wiser
caution in action and a greater friendliness in
international relations.
The rule of kings and a Junker-class has been en
dured so long in the world's history largely because
they offered vigilant protection against foreign inva
sion. With the evolution of an international mechan
ism to prevent invasions and imperialisms, democracy
can develop unafraid. And our own country, because
of its great size and strength, and the protection of
the oceans, has no need to subject itself to a military
caste for protection.
Democracy makes war less likely, because it de
mands publicity. As Wilson has said, "Wars are not
made because of the passions of the many, but because

160 DEMOCRACY
of the intrigues of the few; and those intrigues are
possible because they are pursued in the dark."
Imperialism is not likely to go far when diplomatic
methods are open and aboveboard. Democracies
sometimes approve of wars, sometimes even of un
righteous wars; but history shows clearly that they
tend to be more pacific than autocracies.
It is not true that autocracy implies a greater cen
tralization of power or a greater subordination of the
individual to the State. Democracy can have these
things precisely in the degree that it desires. It may
put experts in office if it wishes, and give them as
much authority as it deems wise. An autocracy can
never develop so long as these officials hold office for
but a limited period, or are subject to recall if they
do not satisfy the electorate. Our democracy is the
result of a revolt against autocratic and irresponsible
power. Hence we are still afraid of the centraliza
tion of authority, and distrustful of professional
statesmen. But there is nothing to prevent us from
training a body of men in the art of government and
utilizing their services for the attainment of the
collective will. Democracy can, and must, learn that
efficiency need not mean tyranny.
Even with our as yet clumsy mechanism of democ
racy we have been able in most matters to make wiser
decisions than are likely in an autocracy. It is a
mistake to assume that ruling classes will have a
better judgment, or higher ideals, than common peo
ple. Lord Bryce, in his great book. The American
Commonwealth, asserted that "where the humbler
classes have differed in opinion from the higher, they
have often been proved by the event to have been right
and their so-called betters wrong." A distinguished
American^ himself a highly^ cultured gentleman, has

POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 161
gone so far as to say that "there never has been a
period in our history, since the American nation was
independent, when it would not have been a calamity
to have it controlled by its highly educated men
alone." It is not, then, merely a matter of "rights," it is a
matter of actual expediency to cleave to democracy.
For democracy is the method that brings the most
widespread and diverse intelligence to bear upon
public problems. The prejudices of one class are
neutralized by the opposite prejudices of another
class. The self-seeking of one group is cancelled by
the interest of other groups. Only by thus giving
expression to the needs and ideas of every vocational
group, every cultural interest, and every geographical
section, can we get a resultant effective force best rep
resentative of the general welfare.
And we must not forget the educative influence of
democracy. In an autocracy decisions are made for
the people; in a democracy decisions are made by
the people. To be governed never so well misses
something of the value that comes from helping to
govern. Mr. Elihu Root has declared that "the
greatest, most useful educative process ever known
in the world occurs every four years in the United
States when, during a Presidential election, some
flfteen million voters are engaged for months in
reading and hearing about great and difficult ques
tions of government." With all allowance for the
buncombe that they hear on the platform, the unfair,
partisan arguments that they read, the meaningless
eulogies and the mudslinging, there is a solid nucleus
of serious attention to public problems, and a good
deal of fruitful thinking engendered. One of the
great advantages of the extension of the democratic

162 DEMOCRACY
principle to include women lies in the impetus thus
given them to interest themselves in the problems of
city. State and Nation.
The belief in democracy implies the belief in the
ballot as the means of effecting needed changes in
legislation or administration ; belief in the ballot not
only as contrasted with the bullet but as contrasted
with what is today called "direct action." This is
not to say that all strikes are unjustiflable. On the
contrary, a strike to bring pressure to bear upon
selflsh and proflteering employers to grant a living
wage, reasonable hours, or what not, may be the best
means available to a highly desirable end. But the
use of a General Strike, or sabotage, or ca'canny, or
the expropriation of owners by workers (as recently
in Italy), to effect fundamental changes in our insti
tutions, is sharply opposed to our democratic ideal,
which demands the attainment of political ends
through political channels.
It is necessary to emphasize this point because
there seems to be a growing group of those who de
spair of reform by the ballot and advocate the em
ployment in far greater degree than hitherto of eco
nomic pressure. The editor of a brilliant American
weekly recently expressed his attitude as follows:
"When the economic organization wants anything
enough to insist on having it, nothing else really
matters. In an editorial some weeks ago we have
already adverted to the passage of the Adamson bill.
The railwaymen wanted the eight-hour day, and
wanted it enough to insist on having it. They got it
promptly from the existing Administration, and
would have gotten it just as promptly from any
other. They now seem to want the Plumb plan, and
have the support of the miners in this desire. We do

POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 163
not think much of the Plumb plan except by way of
its educative value; but if the railwaymen really
want it, want it as they wanted the Adamson bill,
they will get it and get it on demand. It is clear to
this paper, in short, that actual power lies in the eco
nomic organization, and that whatever power the
political organization has, is purely factitious and
exists on sufferance. Hence the political organiza
tion comes flnally to nothing but a set of dummies
and may be regarded accordingly. No President,
Congress or Supreme Court will ever be found in the
way of any demand of the economic organization,
provided such demand has the backing of serious
purpose such as was behind the Adamson bill.
"The thing is, then, in our judgment — without stir
ring up revolutions, which usually mean the mere
exchange of one form of tyranny for another and
hence do little good and great harm; without array
ing oneself against the existing political or institu
tional order — the thing is to get the economic organ
ization to want the right things, the fundamental
things, and to be in earnest about getting them.
"Let the existing political organization take its
own course. It is keenly aware of the power of the
economic organization ; and whenever it becomes con
vinced that the intelligence and will of the economic
organization is really functioning behind that power,
it will yield without any serious trial of strength."
What of this argument? As a matter of fact, the
experience of "direct action" in recent years does not
corroborate this editor's assurance of its success.
Both in England and in France a general strike of
the railway workers was beaten. Volunteers were
found to do the work of engineers and trainmen,
automobiles were used to transport people and goods,

164 DEMOCEACY
and the people showed so great resourcefulness in
getting along without the regular railway workers
that nothing came of the demonstration. From the
study of these and other cases a great many of the
most ardent labor leaders and most radical advocates
of social change admit that unless the public in gen
eral sympathizes heartily with the strikers and is
willing to endure privation for the sake of furthering
their cause, the attempt at direct action is bound to
be futile.
It is also obvious that there is, and will be, no uni-
fled "economic organization." There are a number
of different groups of workers, some wanting one
thing, some another. If the railway-workers seek
by direct action to force the nationalization of the
railways, will the textile-workers, the metal-workers,
the carpenters, plumbers, farmers, and teachers sup
port them? Not unless they have become convinced
that such a change of policy is advantageous for the
country as a whole. And if they are convinced of
the desirability of the change, it can be attained by
the ballot. They will never consent, and they ought
not to consent, to the dictation of public policy by a
single group or combination of groups which is not
strong enough or persuasive enough in its arguments
to win in a fair contest at the polls.
Direct action is the attempt of a wilful minority to
have its way. It means inconvenience to the public,
very likely actual suffering. In engenders bitterness,
and almost inevitably leads to bloodshed. If it repre
sents the wish of a majority in the community it is
unnecessary, because its end could be attained by the
ballot. If it represents the attempt of a minority
who feel themselves in a strategic position to hold

POLITICAL DEMOCEACY 165
up the community's life until they are granted what
they wish, it is the very negation of our ideal of
Democracy. Instead of seeking to decide matters of
public policy by discussion, persuasion, and a ma
jority vote, it proposes to attain its end by a threat,
by browbeating the rest of the people into accepting
the policy of a minority. Under an autocracy, such
a method matches power against power; it may be
the best way of breaking the back of tyranny. In a
democracy the one thing most needful is to preserve
a general respect for the attainment of political ends
by the ballot. And any economic organization that
makes use of the public's need of its services to force
its program upon the State is guilty of grave dis
service. On the other hand, we must recognize that groups
of workers are right in pointing out that the owners
of industry are making use of their strategic position
to divert a large share of the proflts of labor into their
pockets. Owners of valuable land and natural re
sources are making the most of their strategic posi
tion to make fortunes by demanding high rentals and
prices. Inheritors of fortunes are using their stra
tegic position to add to their fortunes at compound
interest. Why should not groups of workers, who
have no other advantage in the race, use their stra
tegic position to extort such terms as they can get?
The answer is. Two evils do not make a good. By
all means let us seek to curtail Privilege and Profi
teering and devise a fairer distribution of the fruits
of industry and the natural resources of our conti
nent. But let us do it by political means; that is,
by educating people to see the need of reform until a
majority vote can be obtained for measures and men

166 DEMOCEACY
that will rectify existing evils. To seek a shorter cut
to this end is to compromise the good sought, and
to undermine the foundations of democracy.
The fundamental need in a democracy, then, is
political education. The responsibility for State
policy in America rests, ultimately, upon all the
people; it will be wise or foolish, fair or unfair,
skilful or blundering, in the long run in proportion
to the insight of the electorate on public problems.
The big problems of public policy are not beyond
the comprehension of the people. But they are ob
scured by prejudice and self-seeking, by the rhetoric
and sophistry of a propagandist press, by the passions
and greed of groups accustomed to think in terms of
personal or class advantage. What we need is state-
mindedness, patriotism, Americanism — call it what
you will — the habit of thinking in terms of the gen
eral good; and a widespread determination to study
all problems from that angle. We need so diffused
an education on civic matters that the mass of voters
will no longer be helpless in the hands of political
bosses, spellbinder orators, and a partisan press. We
must think for ourselves, every one of us; in the for
mation and utilization of an enlightened public
opinion lies our salvation.
On the other hand, we must not expect the impos
sible of human nature. The great mass of Americans
are busy, hard-working, people, with little spare time
and energy to study political situations and inform
themselves with regard to candidates. We must be
ware of putting too heavy a burden upon them, for
in so doing we shall defeat our end. We must devise
such improvements in our political mechanism as wUl
make the obf ustication of issues less easy, and smooth
the way for the formation and direct application to

POLITICAL DEMOCEACY 167
public policy of a genuine public opinion. Ways and
means to this end will be considered in succeeding
chapters. SUGGESTED READINGS
James Eussell Lowell, Address on Democracy, (Eeprinted in
Fulton, op. cit., p. 166.)
Matthew Arnold, Democracy, in Mixed Essays.
J. H. Tufts, Our Democracy, Chap. XXII.
Maurice Maeterlinck, Universal Suffrage, in The Double
Garden.
W. H. Allen, Efficient Democracy, Chap. XI.
Stanton Coit, and others, in Ethical Democracy.
J. A. Smith, The Spirit of American Government,
W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, Chap. XX.
J. M. Mecklin, Introduction to Social Ethics, Chap. I.
Warner Fite, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 102, p. 611.
J. D. Miller, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 25, p. 213.
E. B. Perry, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 28, p. 449.
W. Fite, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 18, p. 1.
T. Davidson, in Intemational Journal of Ethics, vol. 10, p. 21.
J. J. Mackenzie, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 16,
p. 129.
Sylvester Baxter, in Forum, vol, 52, p, 313.

CHAPTER XVI
POLITICAL HONESTY
A BRILLIANT American student of politics, in a book
published a few years ago, writes : "We talk about the
evils of democracy. We have not yet tried democ
racy. Party or 'interests' govern us with some fiction
of the 'consent of the governed.' "
A conservative professor of law in one of our lead
ing universities declares, "In other forms of unpopu
lar government the central figure has been the mon
arch, the autocrat, the oligarch, or the aristocrat. In
ours it is the politocrat (i.e., the boss). We have
avoided monarchy, autocracy, oligarchy, and aristoc
racy, only to find ourselves tightly in the grasp of a
politocracy." Another contemporary writer has recently de
clared, "The name of self-government is noisy every
where, the Thing is throttled."
A valuable work on Social Ethics, published in
1920, states this as a truism : "The average American
prides himself upon his energy, his business astute
ness, his industrial efficiency; but in many ways his
civic stupidity makes the world stand aghast."
These are undoubtedly exaggerated statements.
But they are examples of a very widespread disgust
with politics in this country. This is not a new state
of things ; on the contrary, inefficiency and graft have
existed in our politics from the beginning. Charles
Lee described the Continental Congress as "a stable
168

POLITICAL HONESTY 169
of stupid cattle that stumbled at every step." It is
doubtful if standards are lower today than formerly.
But certainly they are not as high as our ideal of
Democracy demands. We must seek to discover the
causes of this unsatisfactory situation.
It is obvious to any observer that there is a great
deal of ignorance and incompetence in high places,
even in such conspicuous positions as those of Con
gressmen. In 1917 a well-known political critic,
writing in one of our conservative weeklies about a
tax bill that had been under discussion in Congress,
said, "The House did its part in framing the bill with
a looseness and carelessness which were almost terri
fying to anyone who understood the gravity of the
country's circumstances." The chairman of the
committee that framed it "was, in the field of finance,
an awkward child — almost a wilful child, and , . .
to say it in the only word that is adequate — ^igno
rant." A man who was for years a leader in the Senate
recently made the statement that by the application
of proper business methods the cost of conducting
the United States Government could be reduced
$300,000,000 a year. Other observers have made other
estimates; but there is general agreement as to the
existence of enormous waste.
A professor of politics in one of our great univer
sities, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, declares that
"consideration of Congressional procedure from the
standpoint of comparative politics causes a feeling
of blank amazement at the national tolerance."
In another important American weekly the editor
wrote, "This last session of Congress has been an
ominous exhibition. From first to last it was calcu
lated to destroy all confidence in the machinery of

170 DEMOCRACY
representative government. ... It was garrulous,
wasteful, amorphous, frivolous and foolish. It
wasted money like a drunken sailor and time like a
babbling idiot. It could not think, it would not
imagine, it could not organize, it could not act."
Still another observer wrote, "Among Americans
who have watched Congress closely, who have deal
ings with it on any public matter, the legislature of
this nation is cordially despised. There isn't a decent
public servant in Washington who doesn't breathe a
sigh of relief when Congress adjourns. There isn't
an official interested in his work who can't work bet
ter when Congress is gone."
Mr. Bryce described the situation clearly in his
American Commonwealth, though he was too courte
ous, in his rdle of foreign critic, to put the matter so
boldly as this. "Congressmen," he wrote, "are not
chosen from among the best citizens. . . . They do
not pretend to lead the people, being, indeed, seldom
specifically qualified to do so."
Now, making all allowance for the exaggeration of
these statements, the fact remains that, with excep
tions, our system does not get the ablest, the best
trained men, the men with deepest insight into public
problems, into Congress. The situation is even worse
in the State legislatures and municipal councils.
However we may hesitate to criticize our legislators
and officials in the presence of foreigners, we all
admit to ourselves that these are usually not very
efficient bodies, to say the least. There is a vast deal
of legislative blundering; important bills are held
up year by year, or amended so as to ruin their value,
and vicious bills are constantly passed. To point this
out is the sheerest commonplace. It is when we come
to ask why this is so that we are forced to realize

POLITICAL HONESTY 171
how little most of us understand the actual workings
of our democratic system.
Does the trouble lie in the fact that the ablest and
most scrupulous men will not run for office? Or is it
that the people are too ignorant to vote for the better
candidates whose names appear on the ballots? Or
is it that the nominating machinery does not get the
best men upon the ballots? The answer seems to be
a partial yes to all these questions. The best men
do not usually run for office, because, among other
reasons, they know that they have small chance of
being nominated, or, if nominated, of being elected.
The nomination of candidates for public office,
whether it takes place at conventions or at direct
primaries, is usually controlled by party organiza
tions, and these organizations will usually put up
only candidates whom they trust to further the party
interests. Even if independent candidates are nomi
nated, the chances are that — unless the candidate is
unusually conspicuous — a preponderant number of
voters will follow the party standards and defeat the
independents. In short, our government is a govern
ment, ultimately, by party organizations. And these
organizations — or the controlling element in them —
are concerned in general, whether consciously or not,
rather with their own maintenance and advantage
than with the public welfare.
Even if there were no parties, incompetent men
would of course, be put up for office, and individual
dishonesty would not be absent. But actually, what
happens is that the party leaders look first, usually,
for a candidate who will be "regular," who will be
pliant to the wishes of the Interests that support the
party, and appoint as office-holders deserving party
men. For this the ablest and most scrupulous men

172 DEMOCRACY
are far less likely to be available. For some con
spicuous office, indeed, a man of fearless and inde
pendent character and of special training may be
nominated by the party leaders. Owing to the scat
tering of responsibility in our political system, such
a man cannot do much to dislodge the party grip upon
power; and the prestige of having such a man in
office may be a needed asset. But in general it is a
good party man who is put up and pushed; if he is
able, so much the better; but his party allegiance is
a sine qua non.
Now parties are inevitable and useful organizations
in a democracy, to formulate principles and carry on
political propaganda. It is inevitable, also, that they
should try to elect men who approve their principles
and can be counted on to further them. It is, per
haps, also inevitable that they should degenerate
largely into organizations for the securing of office,
with principles a secondary consideration. But what
must be clearly realized is that, as things are, it is
the party-organizations that get most of our public
officials into office. The incompetence of legislators
and administrators is incompetence winked at by the
party-leaders. The graft is party graft. When pub
lic moneys are wasted, it is not that the money is lost;
it goes into the pockets of the party bosses, or into
the pockets of people whom they are depending upon
for help.
It is this situation that makes "reform" so difficult.
An independent free-lance politician who tried to get
his share of graft would find it a difficult matter.
His best chance would lie in threatening to expose
his colleagues if he were not let in on it. But he could
be sure that the party organizations would do their
utmost to oust him from politics and chastise his

POLITICAL HONESTY 173
sins. The vast preponderance of graft is collective
graft. It wears the camouflage of party policy, and
is connived at out of party loyalty by many men to
whom it has perhaps never occurred that it is essen
tially selfish and dishonest. It is the accepted game
in politics.
As a matter of fact, politics are probably no more
"corrupt" than business. People are in business
mostly for their pocketbooks. A love of wielding
power plays a large part in both business and poli
tics, but making money is the main thing. The dis
interested public servants in either are few. The
average man accepts the situation, and takes his place
in the game ; the man who does not want to play that
sort of game keeps out.
Thus when the voter scrutinizes the names of can
didates on his ballot, the chances are that: first,
there are few if any candidates who have a more
idealistic conception of politics, or who, if they yearn
for it, do not realize that they must conform to the
general practice in order to get on at all; secondly^
that if there are any such candidates, the voter, con
fused by the eulogies uttered on them all, or entirely
ignorant of their qualifications, does not know which
of them are these abler and more honorable ones;
thirdly, that if he takes the pains to form an intelli
gent opinion on the matter and vote for the fearless
independent, his candidate will be swamped by the
great number of votes cast blindly, loyally, in favor
of the candidates that the party organizations trust
and back.
If any reader doubts this party control of our poli
tics, let him seek appointment to office. The recog
nized route is through service to one of the leading
party organizations and recognition by its loqal boss

174 DEMOCEACY
as a deserving party man. If you are a successful
worker in furthering the party cause and are reason
ably presentable, you may, if you seek it, presently
receive the party nomination for some minor office.
You will be opposed by a rival who has been serving
the other leading party organization. Unless some
unusual situation arises, one of you will win. If
then you back the party measures, and so far as your
position allows, help get party men upon the public
payrolls, you may be boosted to higher office. But if
you oppose the will of the party leaders, you will
receive no further nomination.
There are, of course, exceptional cases. A man of
remarkable personality, like Roosevelt, may win the
ear of the public and succeed in spite of the party
bosses. Even in his case, however, it took a war and
an assassination to lift him to the presidency. He
came back from the Spanish War a popular hero.
He was nominated to the Vice-Presidency by the
Republican party leaders in order to shelve him —
the office being, in our system, one of singular impo
tence. If McKinley had not been shot, the political
career of even so extraordinary a man and consum
mate a politician would probably have gone no far
ther. He was renominated because, once in the
Presidential chair, he created a popular demand for
his re-election that was irresistible. But when, in
1912, the popular will again demanded his nomina
tion, the party leaders were able to thwart it.
And the great revolt against the control by the
"insiders" of the Republican party, although led with
Roosevelt's customary enthusiasm and skill, came in
the end to nothing.
In every age and country there have been those
who have sought to control the government for

POLITICAL HONESTY 175
selfish ends. In the old days the method was crude;
a ruling class perpetuated itself and denied the peo
ple any share in decisions. Nowadays a government
has to be controlled in subtler ways. The main reli
ance of the groups of people who make it their busi
ness to profit by controlling government is upon
party loyalty. In the name of a great party they
nominate some one who can be trusted to work with
them; they then eulogize his virtues and abilities in
campaign speeches and personal conversation; the
newspapers which are working with them join in
praising him and disparaging his rival; his election
is made to seem a matter of vital principle; and in
the general ignorance of his actual qualifications, the
party loyalty so assiduously cultivated can be usually
trusted to fioat him into office.
The rewards of this control of government are
manifold. Offices are distributed to party-workers,
including purely sinecure offices, for which no work
to speak of is done. Appropriations are made for
public improvements, for schools, postoffices, harbor
dredging, or what not, and contracts awarded to
friends of the party leaders. Water-power fran
chises, public utility franchises — all sorts of measures
benefiting this set of people or that are passed. Bills
which would curtail the powers and privileges of this
or that business are throttled — not, however, until
the Interests threatened realize the danger they were
in. There are, of course, all sorts of ways in which
those who benefit by the passing or knifing of these
bills reward their friends who pull the wires. There
may be a cash payment for services, there may be an
election to a valuable directorate, there may be a
purchase of property owned by the deserving poli
tician at a handsome price. In some way or other

176 DEMOCRACY
we may be sure that the unseen helmsmen are
profited by their labors.
Volumes could be filled with concrete instances of
these methods. In a certain city is a house and lot
advertised for sale for months at $10,000. The City
decides to erect a school on that lot, and pays $17,500
for it. We may be sure that the greater part of that
added sum goes to the party leaders, perhaps to a
single boss, who was able to dictate the necessary
votes. Again, a new boulevard, or the widening of a
street, is decided upon. Some agents have bought up
the lands along the new avenue, which are going to
be worth double their former value. We may be sure
that the party leaders are making their profit there.
Important "welfare" laws are blocked year after
year : a law limiting the working-day of some workers
to ten or eight hours, a law requiring seats for sales
girls, a law requiring costly fire protective devices.
We may be sure that there are those who are sharing
the profits thus saved to the employers.
Some of these methods are quite obviously and
cynically dishonest — as when the agent of a gas com
pany approaches the chairman of a legislative com
mittee that has framed, for this express purpose, a
gas bill which would curtail the company's profits,
and asks, "Well, how much do you want?" The gas
bill is never reported out of committee ; it was decided
to be inexpedient, on grounds, of course, of public
policy. Very likely it was inexpedient. But it could
have been passed, and it was worth a good deal to
the gas company to keep it from passing.
Millions of dollars are collected in our cities annu
ally from gambling houses, "disorderly" houses, and
other institutions of commercialized vice, for "protec
tion." Even many innocent people have to pay, as a

POLITICAL HONESTY 177
price of not being persecuted, subjected to annoy
ances, or refused privileges really their due.
But these cruder forms of bribery and blackmail
are a small part of the story. More often the direc
tion given to legislation seems intrinsically desirable
to the party men. It is really too bad to compel a
department store owner to put in seats for his sales
girls; they would sit down and be lazy when they
ought to be on the alert for customers. To be sure,
the store owner advertises largely in certain news
papers, and these newspapers boost the party leaders
in question. If the bill to require seats were to be
passed, the store owner would withdraw his full-page
advertisements from these newspapers, and the news
papers would discover that the party leaders in ques
tion were unworthy of support. Perhaps, indeed,
one of the party bosses owns the newspaper. More
likely the newspaper owner has some direct or indi
rect way of rewarding him. The quid pro quo game
has infinite ramifications. Reformers speak of "log
rolling," and the "pork-barrel," or use goodness
knows what other disparaging terms. But to the
people in the game it is not dishonesty, it is just —
the way the game is played. If you can get people
with money or infiuence to do favors for you in return
for your favors for them, you are no more dishonest
than the average business man. Politics is business;
and business exists for personal profits.
The result of it is, however, that "big business"
pretty generally has its way, because it can afford
to pay for it. As Governor Hughes of New York said
in 1912, "There is a constant effort by special Inter
ests to shape or defeat legislation, to seek privileges
and to obtain favors in the administrative depart
ments," And that effort is pretty generally success-

178 DEMOCRACY
ful. There are always reasons discoverable for oppos
ing or pushing bills, apart from the really controlling
motives. Many a politician, being "in with" the
Interests in question, sincerely believes it to be his
duty to protect them from inadvisable legislation.
The fact that he receives a splendid "legal fee" for his
advice — or a stock-exchange tip — or a nomination for
a higher office — or a complimentary write-up — or
social recognition for his wife — or what not — ^is sim
ply the due reward of his political soundness. He
has the business prosperity of this great nation at
heart. So, vitally important bills are defeated year after
year. Special Interests fatten. Privilege is undis
turbed. Profiteering goes on uncurbed, local constitu
encies are favored at the general expense, vast sums
of public money fiow into the pockets opened to re
ceive it, incompetent "party men" sit in our legisla
tive halls, untrained men grapple with complex
administrative problems, able men are defeated for
office because they are not subservient to the party
organization. It is not really quite so bad as all this ! Even party
bosses may have some sort of conscience; and the
average politician is not a bad fellow. Other motives
than the selfish ones enter in to mitigate the sordid
scramble. Moreover, bosses fall out with one an
other sometimes, to the profit of the public. But the
fact remains that the welfare of the people is con
stantly thwarted, and a great deal is done that has no
popular will behind it. Or if the popular approval
exists, it is because it has been created by the Inter
ests, the politicians, and the newspapers who are
working hand in hand for their common profit. This
is the "Invisible Government," the "machines," the

POLITICAL HONESTY 179
"rings," whose dominance in our public affairs is
matter of common knowledge. They work by under
hand methods, methods which, though usually not
recognized as such by those who use them, are funda
mentally dishonest.
Mr. Elihu Root, in his farewell address to the New
York Constitutional Convention in 1915, said, "We
found that . . . the majority of the legislators were
occupying themselves chiefiy in the promotion of
private and local bills, of special interests . . . upon
which apparently their re-elections to their positions
depended." The situation there was thoroughly
typical. Our rulers are elected by the people; but
to a large extent they do not represent the people.
They do not, primarily, owe their election to the
people, but to the "machine" that brought about their
nomination. And to the dictates of those party lead
ers, rather than to the popular will, they are, for the
most part, loyal. They forward the Interests which
their party is backing. They dare not — often they
are convinced they ought not — to deviate from the
party policy, on matters where the party demands
their allegiance.
Can we then hope to purge the party machines of
self-seeking and graft? Or can we hope to launch a
new party whose leaders will maintain a more ideal
istic and disinterested attitude? Or can we devise
a plan whereby the sovereign people will be more
independent of party control and able oftener to elect
men of expert qualification for office and a genuine
public-mindedness? One of these things must be
done if we are to justify the faith of our fathers in
democracy. There is no problem more pressing for
this generation. Democracy is still on trial. As the
writer quoted at the opening of this chapter con-

180 DEMOCRACY
eludes, "With the inclusion of all men and women in
the suffrage, with the rapidly increasing acceptance
of direct government, the extensive work of the demo
cratic impulse has ended. Now the intensive work
of democracy must begin."
SUGGESTED READINGS
Theodore Roosevelt, American Ideals, Chapters III-VT; The
New Nationalism, Chapters on The Grooh, and Corruption.
H. G. Wells, The Future in America, Chap. VIII.
E. C. Brooks, Corruption in American Politics and Life.
Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities; The Struggle for
Self -Government.
W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, Chap. VIII, X.
A. T. Hadley, Standards of Public Morality, Chapters IV, V.
Edmond Kelly, Evolution and Effort, Chap. IX.
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, Chap. XXIV.
James Bryce, The Hindrances to Good Government,
C. E. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, Chap. XI.
Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics,
H. George, Jr., The Menace of Privilege, Book VI.
Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Politics,
A. M. Kales, Unpopular Government in the United States.
C. C. P, Clark, The Machine Abolished.

CHAPTER XVIII
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
Our problem is, to make government truly repre
sentative of the interests of the people as a whole,
instead of, as it too largely is today, representative
of the interests of the party bosses and the business
organizations that can afford to give money and
energy to influencing legislation. It is possible that
by a more efficiently socialized education we might
bring up a generation far more public-spirited than
the present, and so raise the average level of con
science in politicians. Religious revivals, patriotic
appeals — something may touch the hearts of bosses
here and there and bring them to quit the game. But
when a politician becomes too disinterested he will
flnd the highly organized forces of the machine
against him. And when one boss gets converted an
other will be ready to step into his shoes. The system
has become self -perpetuating ; and nothing is likely
to uproot it short of such changes in our political
system as will make it cease to be a profitable means
of livelihood.
Certainly the history of reform movements in this
country is very discouraging. Nearly all of our big
cities are ruled, practically, by a Democratic or a
Republican machine, or a working-agreement of the
two. A wave of popular disgust, the exposure of some
particularly flagrant case of graft, the nomination by
a temporary independent organization of some con-
181

182 DEMOCRACY
spicuously able and honest man, may lead to his
election and a few years of relatively efficient and
honest government. But the reform administration
will inevitably be hampered from within and without
by the "regulars" who do not want it to succeed. And
at the next election, when the popular attention has
lapsed, the machine will quietly come back into
power. Reformers are never tired of telling us that it is
our fault, that we have the kind of government we
vote for, that we must take more interest in politics,
learn the qualiflcations and past record of candidates,
and vote more intelligently.
" 'Why don't they keep the streets a little cleaner ?'
You ask with keen annoyance, not undue.
'Why don't they keep the parks a little greener?'
(Did you ever stop to think that 'they' means you?")
But as a matter of fact, these appeals are nearly
futile. The way by which you and I can hope to
reform politics is too arduous and discouraging. We
have other things to do. The Dosses can give their
whole time to politics, it is their business ; the chances
are they will circumvent us. No political system will
work well which necessitates for its success too much
work or presupposes too much intelligence on the part
of the electorate. We must adjust political duties to
human nature, and not expect too much of people.
One great and permanent gain has been made in
recent years, the erection and extension of the Civfl
Service. This means that for thousands of subordi
nate offices a man may no longer be appointed simply
because he is a friend or supporter of the leaders of
the dominant party. He must show by passing a
standard examination that he has the training and

EEPEESENTATIVE GOVEENMENT 183
abilities requisite to the duties of the position.
Fitness, not party allegiance, is the criterion of selec
tion. This deprives the party bosses in so far of their
hold upon their supporters. It also raises the level
of efficiency in the service, saves the country millions
of dollars, and attracts able young men to govern
ment positions. They no longer need to fear dis
missal when another party comes into power. Their
pride in their work is thereby increased, and their
loyalty is given to the service itself rather than to
their party. There is less personal dishonesty and
slacking; as President Alderman of the University
of Virginia says, "You can trust men if you will
train them."
The principle of the Civil Service should be ex
tended to many positions not yet included. Instead
of the easy-going assumption that anybody can fill
any office, we must aim to have all public duties per
formed by experts, trained for their particular work,
and proving their fitness by examination. Congress
men, instead of wasting a large part of their time, as
they now do, in making petty appointments and ap
portioning the party spoils, can then give their full
attention to matters of public policy. Except for the
highest positions, the party convictions of an official
have no bearing upon the efficiency of his work, and
should be disregarded.
It would be impossible, however, to extend this
principle to legislators and the highest executive
offices, because in their case it is not merely efficiency
and expert knowledge that is required, but convic
tions and principles which are to determine their
policy. These principles must be such as to com
mend them to the people whom they are to represent.
Moreover, in these responsible positions the factor

184 DEMOCEACY
of personality enters in, which cannot be adequately
tested by an examination. It might, indeed, be an
excellent thing if candidates for Congress, as well as
for State and municipal office, were required to take
standard psychological and information tests, and
the results published, as part of the data bearing
upon the voters' decision. But examinations alone
can never show to the people who can best serve them
in those positions that require important decisions.
Those representatives must be chosen not only for
their ability but because they can be depended upon
to represent faithfully the needs and wishes of their
constituents. If it were only a matter of expressing the ideas of
the people, we might replace representative govern
ment to considerable extent by direct legislation, such
as has bcome increasingly popular in several States
of the Union. The movement toward direct legisla
tion — the Initiative and Referendum — is a natural
consequence of the thwarting of the popular will by
the party machine. But it cannot succeed to any
great extent in breaking the power of the machine;
and it implies the renunciation of the ideal of expert
ness in government. Legislation should embody not
only what the people think will be for their interests,
but what trained students of public policy decide,
after mutual discussion and investigation, to be for
their interests.
Direct legislation does have the advantage of
giving the voters a chance to express their will on a
specific issue, disentangling it from the jumble of
issues which complicate any election of representa
tives. And it may have an educative value not to he
despised. But it is too much to expect the mass of
voters to become competent to decide most questions

REPRESElTTATrVE GOVEENMENT 185
of public policy; they are too intricate, they require
expert knowledge and study. Legislators are elected
for the express purpose of deliberating and studying
out the best solution of such problems. A popular
verdict will usually be a snap judgment, based chiefly
upon superflcial newspaper arguments, the speeches
of clever orators, or sectional interests and preju
dices. The party organizations have the advantage
in creating these prejudices and misunderstandings;
the newspapers are controlled by deflnite Interests.
Thus direct legislation can be used by party machines
to thwart a too public-spirited legislature as well as
by an aroused public to thwart a party-dominated
legislature. The people should be able to elect to the highest
offices the men they trust and honor — as they very
often can not today. They should decide, by the choice
of their representatives, the big questions of public
policy. If their representatives are thus men whom
they trust and honor, men who represent their general
attitudes toward public policy, they should, in gen
eral, leave to their more deliberately formed opinion
the decisions as to ways and means. This certainly
is the ideal of traditional Americanism. Direct inter
position by the people should, perhaps, be available
for exceptional cases. But it should be employed
with caution. If we can but make our representatives
truly representative it will seldom be necessary to
resort to these heroic measures.
The Recall, likewise, is a double-edged and danger
ous weapon. When there appears a wave of popular
indignation at some office-holder, because of the dis
closure of his dishonesty or treason to the interests
of the people, the Recall may be used to salutary
effect. But we are m used to bad government that

186 DEMOCRACY
such waves of effective indignation are rare. And the
Recall, if it is available at all, can be instituted by the
party machine as well as by reformers. The machine
organization can reach the ears of many voters;
selflsh advantage and blind party loyalty can always
command for it many votes. And a campaign of
slander and vilification can, at least temporarily,
arouse masses of suggestible voters against the hap
less victim of party ostracism. The Recall need not
be often used, but it can be held as a threat over the
heads of party members to keep them in line. Hence
it is desirable that — at least as long as office-seeking
party organizations dominate our politics — the Recall
should, if available at all, be so restricted and hedged
about with conditions that it cannot be used to
intimidate independent and honest officials. If we
devise a surer plan of getting the best men into office,
it will seldom be needed.
The crux of the problem of democracy is, how to
get the right men into office. The voters cannot judge
fairly of the qualiflcations of candidates for office, in
any case, unless they are conspicuous leaders with
easily ascertainable recordsi, or unless they are elected
from so small a constituency that most of the voters
know them personally. Moreover, the number of
offices to which election must be made is usually so
great that the voter has neither time nor energy to
ferret out their past record, study their character, and
make a reasonable decision as to which of the can
didates offered is the best for each office. The result
is, as we all know, that we go to the voting-booth
with a clear idea of why we should vote for this man
or that for a few leading offices, and for the rest we
accept the nominees of the party-organization with
which we have, for one reason or other, affiliated our--

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 187
selves. We may knife the party nominee for
Governor or Mayor, but we tamely follow the party
lead in nine cases out of ten. What else is there for
us to do? Hence the party -bosses go on putting up
second- and third-rate men for these offlces, men whom
they can count on as tools for their ends. And we are
helpless. As a matter of fact, for State and municipal offices
it usually matters very little, if at all, that a candidate
belongs to the Republican or Democratic or some
other party, because the issues that divide these
parties refer to matters of national policy, and have
nothing to do with efficiency in State and local
government. It is quite feasible, then, to remove the
party emblems and designations from the ballot or
voting-machine, and to vote for these candidates
simply as individuals of such and such a record and
character, making such and such promises. Inde
pendent candidates would thereby be encouraged to
put their names up for election (there are ways of
discouraging candidates who would have no chance
of election), and it would become common, perhaps,
to have a really excellent candidate for every office
rather than a mere choice between third-rate men,
as now so often happens.
But the insuperable obstacle of our ignorance
would still intervene. How should we know which
of the candidates for all these offlces were really
worthy? In our distraction we should, in most cases,
either not vote at all, or vote more or less hit or miss,
or fall back upon a slate recommended by our party.
One method of correcting our ignorance and blind
party loyalty is the publication of a pamphlet by some
non-partisan organization run by men of standing in
the community, summarizing the qualiflcations of the

188 DEMOCEACY
candidates. But if the number of candidates is large,
it is doubtful if a sufflcient number of voters can be
got to study up and remember their qualifications,
even when thus compactly presented. Moreover,
such a statement, to be truly non-partisan, must con
fine itself to facts, and cannot fill in the picture with
the appraisal which is necessary to truly guide the
voter. The statement of the past record of a candi
date will mean little to a voter who has not been
conscientiously following the course of government
in his State and city. And a man's legislative expert
ness can often not be expressed in terms of the fact
that he introduced this bill, voted for that, against
this other, and so on. Administrative efficiency is
even harder to describe in impartial terms; and so
closely are the duties of various offices interwoven
that it is impossible to present except in terms of
personal judgment the expertness and energy of the
various officials.
There is only one way out of this situation. We
must not be asked to vote for so many people. Our
forefathers were so afraid of autocracy that they
planned to have almost all offices filled by popular
election. This was feasible under the conditions of
a small and simple society. But with our great
increase in population this plan of having many
elective offlces defeats its own end. What we should
aim for now is to have only the most important
officials chosen by popular vote, leaving to them the
appointment of their subordinates. In this way the
ballot to be presented to the voter will contain the
names of the candidates for but one or two, at most
not more than four or five offices. The voter will
concentrate his attention on the candidates for these
conspicuous offices, the newspapers will discuss them.

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 189
and their qualifications for office will be readily
ascertainable. With this spotlight turned on the
small group of candidates, the party organizations
will discover the necessity of nominating men whose
qualifications will bear inspection. And if indepen
dent candidates are put up, there is considerable
likelihood, if they are clearly superior to the machine
candidates, that they will be elected.
That this shortening of the ballot is the imperious
necessity in our political system today is the judg
ment of most impartial students. Ex-President
Eliot of Harvard has spoken of it as "absolutely the
gist of all constructive reform." Mr. Albert Kales,
professor of law in Northwestern University, con
cludes a valuable book on politics with the emphatic
declaration that the three words "The Short Ballot"
are "the emancipation proclamation for our govern
ment," expressing the need which is, of all our present
political needs, the most pressing.
This plan has several great advantages besides that
of evoking a much wiser vote than is now obtained.
For one thing, it concentrates responsibility. Our
present plan of electing many officials divides govern
mental powers in such a way that the responsibility
for bad government can be easily evaded. All sorts
of State and municipal officers divide up administra
tive functions ; because they are elected by the people,
the Governor or Mayor cannot be blamed for their
inefficiency. Often jurisdictions and duties overlap;
often there is friction between different arms of the
Government. Deadlocks often arise, the difficulty of
passing and executing legislation becomes great, and
the public finds it impossible to ascertain who really
is to blame. This situation creates, of course, a happy
hunting-ground for the machine politician.

190 DEMOCRACY
It is a mistake to think that as little power as
possible should be given to any one official. On the
contrary, where, for example, a small body of com
missioners is elected to manage all the affairs of a
city, these few men can be held directly responsible
for everything that is done. If one commissioner is
chosen from each of several sections of the city, the
voter will have but one official to elect. He will
concentrate his attention upon this one choice; and
if the candidate he elects does not fulfil his wishes,
it will be because of the confiicting policy of the few
other men on the Council. Their votes can be fol
lowed in detail, and a close watch kept upon their
administration. All the other municipal officials not
appointed through the Civil Service will be their
appointees, and the responsibility for their conduct
will be theirs. As there will be frequent re-elections
to this municipal Council, there will be comparatively
little danger of autocratic or fundamentally dishonest
government. Detection and location of responsibility
are too certain, and the mechanism of changing the
Government too easy.
In the national election the voter will have to
decide, at most, upon his choice for President, Vice-
President, Senator, and Representative. No other
officials should be elected at the same time, so that
his attention may be concentrated upon the candi
dates for these high offices. The President appoints
his Cabinet officers, and is responsible for their con
duct and for that of their appointees. Similarly,
when the State election takes place, the voter should
be called upon to vote only for Governor, Lieutenant
Governor, and Representative — with the addition of
State Senator if the State legislature is bi-cameral.
The other State officers should be appointed by the

EEPRESENTATFVE GOVERNMENT 191
Governor. It may be that we shall ultimately merge
the executive and legislative branches in our State
governments, as we have done so successfully in many
of our municipal governments, electing a Commission
to have complete control of all State business. But
whatever the exact form of government, the most
important point to bear in mind is — the election of
few officials and the concentration of responsibility
upon their shoulders.
Government by a small Council or Commission is
the ideal form of government. One-man government
is bound to be too highly colored by a single point of
view; the mutual deliberation of several minds, the
reaction upon one another's ideas, the correction of
one another's idiosyncrasies, leads to a greater
wisdom. But our government has more often
suffered from too wide a diffusion of power. As
Lord Bryce wrote, in The American Commonwealth,
"There is in the American government, considered as
a whole, a want of unity. The branches are uncon
nected and their efforts are not directed to one aim,
do not produce one harmonious result." The plan
of concentrated responsibility here urged will correct
this generally recognized fault in our political
mechanism. Our Government will still be as demo
cratic ; the appointees of our few elected officials are
actually more likely to represent the interests of the
people than those who, under our present complicated
and confusing plan, are nominated by party leaders
and blindly elected by the voters.
The City Manager plan has proved to be the best
political mechanism yet devised in this country. A
small City Council is elected by popular vote. This
Council appoints an expert administrator — the City
Manager, he is usually called — to take complete

192 DEMOCRACY
charge of the municipal business. The members of
the Council are men whom the voters trust, but not
necessarily experts in the profession of running a
city government. Nor could the voters be trusted to
judge of the qualifications of candidates for this
skilled vocation. But by this indirect method, city
administration can be made an expert profession.
A young man may enter it as he would enter the law,
or medicine; he may offer his services first to some
small town, and work his way up to the administra
tion of a great city. This will not be possible untU
we take city government "out of politics," that is, out
of party control. But a non-partisan, small city
Council, entrusted with the entire responsibility for
the City's welfare, and closely watched by the elec
torate, will have every possible incentive for seeing
to it that the City's business is efficiently done.
Such a City Manager finds it to his advantage to
satisfy the citizens as a whole — not a particular
party or section. His continuance in office, and his
whole future career, depend upon the reputation he
makes. If he makes good, a change in the personnel
of the Council will not necessarily remove him from
office; there is more likelihood of stability of govern
ment under this than under any other form of demo
cratic government.
Similar plans of delegated government are appli
cable to State and National affairs. Appointed offi
cials and commissions should do a great deal of the
expert work that is now handled by elected officials.
The elected officials are responsible to the people, and
will therefore keep a sharp eye upon their appointees.
But they need not make politics their vocation, and
may retain their regular professions. In this way

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 193
the ablest and best known citizens can accept these
high offices, decide upon the best available trained
experts to call in to carry on the various functions
•of government, without themselves having to devote
their time to becoming expert in those manifold
duties. We can thus have specialization of function,
and expert service, combined with quick responsive
ness, through the elective Council or Executive, to
the popular will.
Coupled with this mechanism of indirect govern
ment and concentrated responsibility, we should
elaborate a plan for a greater participation of the
people in public discussion. These open forums
should not be party affairs, or confined to occupa
tional groups, because we should then have a parti
pris, a one-sided point of view. We do not want more
meetings to defend a party dogma, to whip people
into line with a platform. We want meetings of
people with varying views, for the purpose of mutual
understanding, the clarification of ideas, and their
integration, through reciprocal suggestion, into some
thing more nearly representing a Common Will.
Neighborhood units, not so large as to be unwieldy,
but large enough to bring together men and women
of diverse convictions and experiences, and to evoke
leadership, make the best political groups. Such
groups, meeting periodically for discussion of public
questions, would produce a public opinion in far
greater degree than now independent of the manipu
lated party-opinion and the manipulated newspaper-
opinion now so overwhelmingly dominant.
Perhaps eventually we shall use such Neighbor
hood Groups as electoral units, and send a represen
tative from each one — some one who is personally

194 DEMOCRACY
known and approved by the group, and has shown the
qualities of leadership therein — to our elective Coun
cil. At any rate, we must not be afraid of trying
new methods. Our politics have got into a rut. The
system perhaps once adequate needs revision in the
light of contemporary experience. The revision must
always be for the purpose of realizing our traditional
ideals. But it is those ideals, not the particular
ways and means that our fathers devised, that are
sacred. Washington himself criticized the Constitu
tion sharply, finding in it "a host of vices and inex
pediencies." We must be as critical in our attitude —
not destructively but constructively critical.
Once and for all, we must give up our complacent
reliance upon exhortation to the electorate and abuse
of the politicians. Human nature will continue to
be human nature ; we must utilize it as it is. Instead
of abortive or purely transient attempts to "purify"
politics, we must put into operation methods that are
practicable and that do not so readily lend them
selves to anti-social practices. The devotion of the
youth of the land is needed to evolve a system of
representative government of which we may properly
be proud. SUGGESTED READINGS
James Bryce, The American C omrwonwealth.
W. H. Taft, Four Aspects of Civic Duty.
Elihu Root, The Citizen's Part in Government.
D. F. Wilcox, Government by all the People,
C. E. Henderson, The Social Spirit im, America, Chap. XI.
H. G. Wells, Social Forces in England and America, p. 293, ff.
M. P. Follett, The New State.
E. S. Ohilds, Short Ballot Principles,
E. S. Bradford, Commission Government in American Cities.
W. B. Munroe, The Government of American Cities.
0, E. Eightor, City Manager in Dayton.

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 195
Charles Zueblin, American Municipal Progress, .revised ed..
Chap. XX.
Evans Woolen, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 110, p. 41.
J. Bourne, Jr., in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, pp. 122, 429.
J. N. Larned, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, p. 610.
H. A. Overstreet, Forum, vol. 54, p. 6.

CHAPTER XVIII
DEMOCRACY IN JOURNALISM
We HAVE been considering how, in our democracy,
public opinion can get itself faithfully represented
and its dictates expertly carried out. But behind
that problem lies the problem of how a well-informed
and wise public opinion can be created. Open-forum
meetings for free discussion of contemporary affairs
might be of great value. But these meetings would
be held only at intervals, whereas the newspapers are
read daily. Whether or not their readers realize that
their views are being formed by the papers they read,
it is to a very great degree the fact. Americans read
their newspapers more than the people of any other
nation. Hence it is of the utmost importance that
the news furnished in the daily press be accurate and
impartial, reporting every event of importance and
reporting it uncolored by the bias of the newspaper-
owners. If one set of facts is ignored and another
set of facts emphasized or exaggerated, public opinion
is in so far misled, and its resulting judgments
warped. The importance of a free and impartial press was
recognized by our fathers. The Virginia Declaration
of Rights, of June 2, 1776, declared that "freedom of
the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty."
No more fearlessly honest journal than Benjamin
Franklin's Gazette was ever published. In general,
196

DEMOCRACY IN JOURNALISM 197
a newspaper was published to furnish the news; and
editors were given a free hand.
In recent years, however, the situation has been
seriously altered. Practically all of the great papers
of the country are now owned by men of wealth. A
few rich and ambitious men control a good many of
them. It is not impossible that any year might see
one or two men in absolute control of hundreds of
our leading organs of public opinion. Lord North-
cliffe in England is the controlling shareholder of a
great trust which owns some sixty publications.
Herr Stinnes in Germany was reported recently to
have bought up sixty-four papers to push his propa
ganda. With the strong forces making for central
ization and combination in American business, it is
surprising that no greater mergers have been made as
yet in this field. Possibly there is already more cen
tralization of control than is made public. At any
rate, we have Mr. Hearst, with his many newspapers
and magazines, and certain other fairly large-scale
manipulators of opinion.
Then we have the Associated Press, which has al
most a monopoly of the news-gathering service. The
Manager of this agency is said to have remarked re
cently that he was more powerful than the President
of the United States. If his censorship of the news
is as autocratic and as drastic as is commonly re
ported, that remark may well be true. He who can
select the news upon which millions of readers are
to be fed every day has an enormous, if unseen, in
fiuence upon the creation of the popular will. A few
rich newspapers can afford to maintain their own
special correspondents. But the great majority of
them are almost wholly dependent, and all are very
largely dependent, upon the despatches which the

198 DEMOCRACY
Associated Press correspondents send and the Asso
ciated Press office allows to get by.
Any one who knows the newspaper business from
the inside knows that most newspapers are very auto
cratically run. The editors and reporters know what
topics must be avoided, what news hushed up, what
men and movements must be given no publicity. They
know, on the other hand, the individuals and the cor
porations, the events and movements, which are to be
written up. Not only are the editorials thoroughly
partisan — that we expect, and discount — ^but the news
itself is editorialized. The headlines emphasize what
the policy of the paper intends to thrust upon the
attention of the readers. The position, prominent or
out-of-the-way, given to an article, the manner of the
write-up, the excisions and emphases, all work to the
same end. The result is that, to an extent not realized
as yet by most readers, our newspapers have become
organs of propaganda rather than impartial records
of fact.
The motives behind this warping of the news are
not difficult to understand. In the first place, a news
paper is a money-making enterprise, like any other
business; the owner knows his public, and, other
things equal, wishes to print the sort of thing that
will sell the greatest number of copies. What this
will be, depends upon the particular clientele of the
paper; Mr. Hearst's papers pander to the poorer
classes, while the Boston Transcript must please its
Back Bay buyers. It is not surprising, therefore,
that we find the former papers portraying financial
magnates as brutal profiteers, and headlining every
scandal affecting big business, whereas the latter
harps upon thd unreasonableness of labor and its
grafting leaders.

DEMOCRACY IN JOtTENALISM 199
But our newspapers do not live on the money paid
for copies, they live on the money paid in by adver
tisers. Over two-thirds of the total receipts of the
average newspaper today come from advertising; in
some cases the proportion is said to run as high as
ninety per cent. It is obvious, therefore, that to incur
the displeasure of the big advertisers would mean
financial ruin. The loss of the department-store ad
vertising alone might well make just the difference
between success and bankruptcy. Naturally, then,
scandals that involve their owners must not be pub
lished, conditions in the stores refiecting upon the
management must be ignored, legislation whose effect
would be to involve the owners in expense must
not be advocated, or must perhaps be vigorously op
posed. There are many other ways in which a newspaper
can serve the financial interests of its owner. For
example, if, as is the case with at least one of our
great newspaper-owners, he is the possessor of rich
oil-lands in Mexico, he will be likely to advocate in
his paper a "strong" policy toward that unhappy
country. Headlines and sensational reports will em
phasize the unsettled condition of policies there, every
case of injury to Americans or their property will be
exploited; and in all sorts of indirect ways the im
pression will be spread that intervention is necessary
and righteous.
If the owner of the paper has invested heavily in
steel, he will naturally hush up any news that refiects
upon the conduct of that great industry. He will op
pose agitation tending toward the raising of wages or
shortening of hours for the laborers, lest dividends de
crease. If there is a strike, the paper will be full of
indignation at the labor-unions, and give space to

200 DEMOCEACY
every item of news and every rumor that will dis
credit the strikers in the eyes of the public.
These are not mere hypotheses. This is just the
sort of thing that is going on continually. Usually
the reader knows nothing about the owner of the
paper he reads — ^what his particular interests are,
and the interests of his friends. If he is naive, he lets
his mind absorb the attitude of the paper; if he is
worldly-wise, he becomes cynical with regard to every
thing he reads. But even the most cynical reader,
unless he is continually on his guard, will be in
fluenced unconsciously by the subtle "suggestion" of
the "stories" in the paper.
Of course, most papers are partisan when it comes
to politics. Even the "independent" papers are not
impartial; they simply reserve the right to change
sides when platforms or candidates present a new is
sue. A Democratic paper fllls its readers' minds
with "news" and editorials that show the worthiness
of its cause; a republican paper has no difficulty in
flnding news that points to the necessity of a Repub
lican administration, and its editorials would move
the hardest-hearted to the conviction that the true
patriot will vote that ticket. Since the Democrats
read their papers and the Republicans theirs (few
people read more than one daily paper), every one is
strengthened daily in his own convictions. Of dis
passionate search for truth and presentation of all
sides of a question there is hardly a sign.
Political issues change from decade to decade, can
didates come and go. And it often makes little
enough difference in the end which party won at the
polls. But there is something of far deeper import
than the alignment between the two traditional
parties. It is the fact that almost all of the daily

DEM0I3RACY IN JOURNALISM 201
papers of the country, except a few labor and socialist
papers, which have few readers outside their own
particular clientele, represent the "upper class" point
of view. Their presentation of that point of view
may be interrupted now and then by the "human
interests" of a story ; as when the misery of strikers'
families is played up, or some scandal affecting the
employers. The desire to get a "beat," together with
some measure of natural human sympathy, and all
sorts of other motives, enter in. And pf course there
is no one homogeneous "upper class point of view" ;
there are. all sorts of conflicting ideas, jealousies, dis
putes, all of them more or less represented in the
press. But the underlying fact remains that year in
and year out the daily press of the country reflects
the point of view, the judgments and desires, of the
wealthy class. Because of the power of the press,
that general point of view has an influence upon
affairs far out of proportion to the numbers or intel
lectual ability of this class.
Perhaps we think that this point of view of the
wealthy class is the right point of view, and so re
joice in its grip upon the organs that form public
opinion. But this is not the democratic ideal. That
ideal was not the ideal of a class-government, but of
a government by the people. The idea of a free press
was the idea of a press that should freely represent
the ideas of all classes of the people. It has become
increasingly clear that this ideal cannot be attained
merely by a ladssez-faire policy on the part of the
Government. Every one is free to publish a paper, if
he chooses, and to say what he wills ; the Government
will not interfere — except during a war, or while the
war-psychology lasts. But it has become the case
that to publish a paper requires a great deal of

202 DEMOCEACY
capital; and it is impossible to make a paper finan
cially successful if the great financial interests dis
approve its policy. In the older sense, we have a
"free press." But that sort of freedom is not enough.
Practically, a great deal of opinion gets very inade
quately represented in the press; a great many facts
of importance are exaggerated, played up, colored,
twisted, so that a false impression results. Most peo
ple who would like to get their facts before the public
are not really free to do so, because they cannot
afford to.
We must not suppose that there is any conspiracy
here, or even a universal scramble for money, regard
less of ideals. The "upper-class" people who run
our newspapers are, for the most part, average hu
man beings morally, as well as above the average in
tellectually. Many of them have personal ambitions,
of one sort or other, to serve, and all of them are
bound to make their papers pay a good return on the
investment. But a very large part of the bias of their
papers is the natural expression of sincere convictions
on their part. A man who has a thousand shares of
steel is likely to believe with all his heart that trade-
unions are vicious, and that excess-profits-taxes are
inexpedient. A strike even in a textile-mill in which
he has no financial interest is apt to arouse his honest
condemnation. We are all prejudiced, though we
would all resent the accusation.
The radical press, the socialist and labor papers,
are just as prejudiced as the more widely read dailies.
Their prejudices are, indeed, more conscious and more
obvious, and for that reason less subtly dangerous;
they are avowedly partisan organs. In any case,
their circle of readers is comparatively small. And if
the big dailies were trustworthy venders of news,

DEMOCRACY IN JOURNALISM 203
their readers would be still fewer. The real problem,
then, is with these big metropolitan newspapers which
purport to be colorless media for the transmission of
news but are actually controlled and colored by the
policy of their upper-class owners.
What is wrong, let us repeat, about this class-con
trol of the press is not that this particular class is
worse than other classes. If the rich are, on the
whole, over-complacent with things as they are, and
over-callous to the wrongs of the poor, the poor, on
their part, are apt to be bitter and unintelligent.
No other class of people would run the papers better,
perhaps. What is wrong is that any class should have
such monopoly-control.
The harm done by our profit-seeking journalism is
of many sorts. There is, for one thing, the sensation
alism of the "yellow" press — the sickening succession
of murders, suicides, divorces, scandals, crimes, and
gossip with which the papers that cater to the less
educated are filled. These stories appeal to deep-
rooted human intincts; and the strength of the in
stincts grows by feeding. It is not socially expe
dient that men and women, boys and girls, should
live on this diet. But the papers that exploit all this
human vice and passion sell well. It is very doubtful
if a democratic control of journalism would tolerate
this; a people that has voted to deny itself alcoholic
drinks could rather easily be aroused to the moral
harmfulness of this daily flaunting of the cruelty and
sensuality in men. But while a few private owners
have autocratic control of these yellow papers, we
are helpless.
A far less obvious, but in the end perhaps more seri
ous, evil is the constant reflection on the part of
nearly all of our "respectable" papers, of the common

204 DEMOCRACY
and accepted ideas of the time. A newspaper cannot
hope to succeed, against well-established rivals, if it
champions unpopular opinions. We are in desperate
need of new ideas and ideals, or at least of new
applications of old ideals. But to break away from
established respectabilities would mean severe criti
cism ; and newspapers can not afford to run that risk.
They can choose between a Republican or Democratic
policy ; occasionally, when some great popular revolt
takes place, such as the Populist or Progressive move
ments, they may swing with the tide. But in general
they must cling to familiar and safe ideas. This
means the stereotyping of opinion. It means an un
fair advantage to the conservatives and stand-patters
— and, consequently, the increase of unrest and un
derground revolutionary propaganda. If the Ameri
can press were more hospitable to minority views,
gave space to accounts of meetings and addresses
representing the newer movments of thought, instead
of, as is now commonly the case, either ignoring or
misrepresenting and ridiculing them, we should be
less in danger of mental stagnation among the upper
classes, with class-consciousness and bitterness on
the part of those who flnd it so difficult to get the ear
of the public.
The respectable point of view, which the news
papers instinctively represent, usually rests upon
some deep-rooted human instinct. For instance, the
instinct of patriotism, together with the combative
instinct, ensures the popularity of a paper which
adopts a jingoistic tone. The responsibility for
arousing a war-fever rests largely upon the shoulders
of the newspaper-owners. If the war is, indeed, a
necessary one, they can be thus of enormous service.
But if the war would be an unnecessary and un-

DEMOCRACY IN JOURNALISM 205
righteous one, there will still be many papers to rattle
the sword and insist upon the satisfaction of our na
tional honor. As this is written, a few of our dailies
are apparently trying to stir up war with Mexico,
with Japan, with Great Britain. Facts are twisted,
or even invented outright ; mere rumors are headlined,
the country in question is pictured as seeking to out
wit us, as infringing our rights, as preparing secretly
for war with us. The worst sort of nationalistic
spirit is thus kept inflamed; and statesmen who are
trying to preserve amicable relations between our
country and these others are seriously handicapped.
What the owner's motive is, must be inferred. It may
be a desire to further the value of his investments ; it
may be a knowledge that he could become a war-
proflteer; it may be a desire to influence the stock-
market; it may be a mere desire to sell more papers
by appealing to the wide-spread jingoistic instinct ; it
may be a native and honest truculence of tempera
ment ; it may be any one of a number of other things.
Whatever the motive, or combination of motives, this
power which a few men have of inciting popular pas
sions is extremely dangerous.
Of course American newspapers have been strongly
opposed, as the American people have been, to the
Soviet Government in Russia. The constant stream
of editorial comment on Russia has naturally, and
legitimately, been unfavorable — though, even here,
justice and the ideal of free speech demand that those
who have something good to report, or some plea for
approval to make, with regard to this or any other
movement, should have ample opportunity to do so.
But the fact is that the press in general has done more
than oppose that movement editorially, it has persist
ently misrepresented the facts. Ever since the flrst

206 DEMOCRACY
months of the Communist regime the public has been
led to believe that it was on the verge of falling. One
after another of the anti-Bolshevist leaders was re
ported as about to win his campaign. Day after day,
the news as reported in the American press was col
ored by the hopes or policy of the correspondents, or
of the managers of the Associated Press, or of tlie
newspaper-owners, or of all together. How much
conscious suppression and distortion of the news
there was, an outsider can not judge. To a large ex
tent, no doubt, all of these people were gulled by their
hopes. But the point is, that there were other news-
gatherers in the fleld who had other reports to make,
which time proved to be more accurate. These report
ers had no way of getting their news and their prog
nostications before the public.
Now this it not in the least an argument for Bol
shevism. Bolshevism is obviously quite alien to
Americanism. The point is, that however we dislike
Bolshevism, we ought to be able to get the truth about
it from our newspapers. At least, we ought not to be
so steadily and persistently misled as we have been.
Time after time, the reports and prophecies of our
greatest newspapers turned out to be mistaken. This
means that with respect to one of the most critical
events going on in the contemporary world, the
American people could not get correct information.
This instance has been speciflcally cited, because a
very searching non-partisan investigation was made
of the distortion of news of the Russian situation, and
the facts are easily accessible. But a similar un-
trustworthiness could be shown to exist in the report
ing of many matters where strong feelings and vital
interests are involved.
It may be that much of the trouble resides in the

DEMOCRACY IN JOURNALISM 207
lack of adequate training of reporters and correspond*
ents. But if the newspaper owners demanded ac
curacy and impartiality, "the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth," they could certainly come
much nearer to getting it. We must not be surprised
that many people today are speaking of the "kept
press." Not only the socialists and agitators, but
many people of very respectable views. It would be
easy to quote page after page of the most vigorous
indictments from the pens of ex-newspaper men. It
is easy to get greatly excited over the unfairness and
unreliability of our most efficient and honored news
papers. It is more to the point to ask, what can be
done about it?
The main trouble obviously lies in the fact that the
control of our press is highly autocratic. A more
democratic control would serve at least to correct the
bias and neutralize the selfish interest of the present
owners. If the newspaper men themselves, the editors
and reporters, were allowed to determine the policy
of the paper, with regard to news and editorials, we
should doubtless fare better than we do. But after
all, a comparatively small group of men would still
have a dangerous power. The public as a whole must
reserve the right to ultimate control of that great
public institution, the Press. It is as important, in
its way, as the public schools. The only ultimate
solution can be a Press which is, by law, made omni-
partisan. Its columns must be open to reports of
facts and expressions of opinion from every stratum
of public opinion.
One way to attain this democratic ideal would be
to require that a certain number of columns should be
at the disposal of each of the national parties, and
perhaps of other important groups, such as employ-

208 DEMOCEACY
ers' associations, the trade-unions, an association of
college-graduates, etc. These columns must be un-
censored by the newspaper owner or editor. In this
way facts and opinions that seem important to any
respectable group could be got fairly before the pub
lic, and every newspaper would become, instead of a
more or less unrecognized organ of private opinion
and selected news, a real open forum for discussion of
contemporary affairs, a way by which the members
of a democracy may talk to one another and learn of
everything important that is being done and said.
There are various ways in which the impartiality
of the Press could be secured ; there is no space here
to discuss their relative advantages. Every reform,
however, must recognize that the Press is an institu
tion of public service. Its potentialities for the educa
tion of the people are almost limitless. It could be
used to create an intelligent democracy, by voicing the
various existing opinions upon every problem and
noting accurately all relevant facts. If this ideal
can be attained under the individualistic system of
private ownership, well and good. But if the owners
of the Press and of the great newsgathering agencies
persist in using their power irresponsibly, for the
furthering of their own particular views and interests,
the public will find a way to limit or end that power.
A "free press" must be taken to mean not a press that
any one who can afford to can buy and run as he
chooses, but a press free from dictation at the
hands of any interest, free to serve the people as a
whole. Nothing short of that wUl realize our ideal
of Democracy in journalism.

DEMOCEACY IN JOURNALISM 209
SUGGESTED READINGS
Theodore Eoosevelt, The New Nationalism,: The Public Press,
Henry Holt, Commercialism and Jourrudism.
W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, Chap. IX.
Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News.
O. G. Villard, Press Tendencies and Dangers.
Upton Sinclair, The Brass Chech.
D. Dibblee, The Newspaper.
J, E. Eogers, The American Newspaper,
E. A. Eoss, Changing America, Chap. VII.
Henry George, Jr., The Menace of Privilege, Book VII.
G. H. Payne, History of Journalism in the United States.
"Lysis", in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 121, p. 815.
C. H. Grasty, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 124, p. 577.

CHAPTER XIX
DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY
The ideal of Democracy demands that every adult
human being should have a voice in every decision
that directly affects his welfare. Toward this ideal
the impulses that we may group together under the
term "The American spirit" have been pushing us.
But powerful forces have been blocking the way. The
discovery that politics can be made to yield a sub
stantial livelihood to the "insiders" has gone far
toward thwarting the popular will and nullifying the
achievement of political democracy. The discovery
that the Press can be bought up by a few people and
used to push their personal and class interests, ahd
the causes in which they believe, has gone far toward
robbing the people of a Press really free to tell the
whole truth and to express all shades of opinion.
But the Ballot and the Press are, after all, pri
marily means to an end — the control by the people,
for the people's good, of the conditions of their life.
And there is a discovery that has done more to
thwart democracy than either of the two we have men
tioned — the discovery that industry and commerce
can be largely bought up and controlled, in their own
interest, by a comparatively few rich men. So Big
Business has arisen, feudal in its conception ; a great
mechanism whereby a small class of men have, within
certain legal limits, complete dictation over the main
activities of the country and the conditions amid
210

DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 211
which the masses of men and women must work and
live. These conditions are, as we saw in earlier
chapters, often such as to take the heart out of the
workers, and to wear out their lives. They may be
remedied, one by one, by piecemeal legislation forced
upon the owners of industry. But the fundamental
reason for their existence is that the big industries are
autocratically controlled. If those who suffer from
these evils were to have direct voice with regard to
them, they would quickly be mended.
When the great economists of an earlier day advo
cated the laissez-faire policy in business, they saw
in that policy an opportunity of escape from a tyran
nous state. They did not realize that it would result
in "the exploitation of the economically weak by the
economically strong, and the increase among the
masses of that hopeless form of poverty which we call
industrial poverty." But this has been the actual
result of a system based upon the principle
"Let him take who hath the power,
And let him keep who can."
There are many employers who treat their employees
kindly ; there are some classes of employees better off
in the conditions and rewards of their work than some
employers. But because the despotism is at times
a benevolent one, it is none the less a despotic system,
far from the ideal of a true democracy.
Our working life is, for most of us, far the most im
portant part of our life. And yet the tardiness of our
application of the democratic principle to industry is
easily explicable when we remember the very recent
growth of the power of capitalism. The founders of
our republic were independent farmers and artisans,
or professional men, or in business on such a small

212 DEMOCRACY
scale that they could know their hired helpers per
sonally. The rise of the great soulless corporations
is a matter almost of yesterday ; the power of organ
ized wealth is a new power in America. We have
hardly had time to realize the momentous change that
has quietly been taking place in our institutions,
and making Democracy for masses of people little
more than a name.
A large proportion of our people are still independ
ent workers, controlling their own hours and condi
tions of work. But an increasing proportion have
become simply "hands" — a labor commodity, to be
bought as cheaply as possible, and used for the mak
ing of profits for the owners of the mine or factory
or mill or business house. The impersonal nature of
the corporation tends to make it heartless. It exists
to "get results" ; in many cases the owners know little
of the conditions under which the laborers work or
the scale upon which they are paid. The result is that
it takes years of effort and the bitterest struggles to
win for many of the workers even the minimum decen
cies of life.
The rest of us suffer too, not only indirectly, as
from the danger of the disease- and vice-breeding
slums in which underpaid laborers are forced to live,
but directly, through the indifference of powerful
money-making corporations to the public interest. It
took many years of struggle to get our pure food
laws, our meat inspection laws, our safety device
laws, and the like. We still find ourselves helpless
when some corporation or group of corporations de
cide to stop production in order to create a relative
scarcity and raise the price of their product. If the
move is skillfully executed, a few owners may make
a considerable profit. In the meantime thousands

DEHOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 213
of families suffer privation for want of work, and the
public has to pay a quite unnecessary price for what
it buys. A speculator corners the ice supply in sum
mer; we all pay high prices for ice; in the poorer
homes the babies die; a few men make handsome
profits. Perhaps the bulk of our business is carried on with
a reasonable degree of public spirit and fairness. The
opportunities for exploitation are checked not only
by the inertia of those who do not realize their oppor
tunities, and by human kindliness or public spirit that
refuses to seize them, but also by the pressure of pub
lic opinion, by the competition of rivals, by the power
of organized labor, and by various other forces. Still,
benevolent as for the most part our Big Business may
be, it can not be called democratic. And the argu
ments for democracy that we discussed in Chapter
XV apply nowhere more forcibly than to this situa
tion. It is not right for any single individual or small
group of men to have such power over the lives of
masses of men as the rulers of our large-scale indus
tries and business-houses have. Our forefathers did
not foresee this situation when they expounded the
ideal of Democracy ; it is for us to apply their ideal
to present-day conditions.
Does this mean Socialism? Not at all. Socialism
is a particular theory, with much truth in it and much
error, not very widely held in this country, and at
any rate outside the province of this volume. What
is indicated is simply the recognition of the demo
cratic principle as applying to the conditions of a
man's working life. Every industry of sufflcient size
to need it should have a board of representatives of
the workers, and a written code of procedure. There
must be no more arbitrary decisions by owners or

214 DEMOCRACY
managers; the people who do the work must be con
sulted; or, rather, decisions must be made in accord
ance with jointly accepted objective standards, and
impartial investigation. Industry must be ruled by
a code of laws and precedents that commend them
selves to the workers in the industry and to the public
at large, instead of being subject to the caprices and
selfish interests of the men who supply the capital.
For example, no worker should be discharged with
out fair trial — "due process of law" ; he should not be
subject to dismissal, as is now often the case, because
he has joined a Union, or because he is suspected of
holding "radical" ideas, or because the foreman has
conceived a grudge against him. In these days of
specialized skill, especially in the industries that are
highly organized, for a man to lose his job may be
sheer ruin. His life should not thus be at the mercy
of caprice or grudge or prejudice. He must have a
fair hearing before his peers, and be dismissed only
for just cause.
So with regard to safety appliances, sanitary condi
tions, fire protection, hours of work, and the like.
These are matters that affect the workers more than
anybody else ; it is their right to have a share in the
decisions with regard to them. When it comes to the
more important questions, concerning wages, business
policy, and price of product, the public too has its
rights, and must have its voice in the decision. The
working out of the particular plan by which workers
and public shall share responsibility with the owners
of the capital is a matter too detailed for this little
volume. But many such schemes are in operation
already, and the general idea is accepted by a number
of the most conspicuous owners of industry. The
process of democratization of industry will run

DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 215
parallel, perhaps, to the process by which abso
lute monarchy gave way to the constitutional mon
archy of such a country as England. It is earnestly
to be hoped that capitalists generally will have the
vision and the patriotism to co-operate in this move
ment. An obstinate refusal, if persisted in, would
be a fruitful soil for revolution.
Of course it is a nuisance to have to keep to a code,
or to consult a board of representatives, or to yield
to a majority vote. Autocracy is always simpler than
democracy, and more agreeable for the autocrats.
And of course the present "owners" of industry will
often be inclined to look upon the democratic move
ment as trespassing upon their "rights." But the
private ownership of the capital used in an industry,
the taking for private profit of the excess wealth pro
duced by the industry, and the lodgment of exclusive
control in the hands of these owners, are not the only
conceivable conditions of the carrying on of the indus
try. Our system of private ownership of this wealth,
which is socially produced, will be tolerated only if
it consents to such abridgement of its concentration
of power as will make it tolerable. On our economic
system the owners take what they choose of the profits
of an industry for their own enjoyment and keep what
they choose as capital to produce more wealth. We
believe that this is the best system; at any rate, we
mean to give it a thorough trial before discarding it.
But such grave abuses have crept into the system that
unless they are corrected there will certainly develop
a growing movement toward the abolition of the sys
tem, root and branch, as happened in that unhappy
country, Russia.
The development of democracy in industry will
not only ensure reasonable hours and conditions of

216 DEMOCRACY
work, and security of employment, for the workers,
it will ultimately make for a fairer division of the
profits of industry, now so absurdly apportioned. Our
present concentration of wealth results in large meas
ure from our present concentration of power. The
distribution of the profits of the great industries that
employ thousands of workers ought to be decided not
by a handful of men but by the community as a whole.
The few "owners" now usually take an exorbitant
share for themselves. This exorbitant share is partly
squandered in luxurious living, partly used to in
crease, by investment, the wealth of the already
wealthy, and partly used to maintain the political
bosses in existence and through them to push or
strangle legislation. It is safe to predict that we
shall never have a diffusion of wealth consonant with
our ideal of Equality, or a political system free from
organized large-scale graft, until we have a consider
able measure of democracy applied to industry.
This is what is meant, or should be meant, by the
dictum that the cure for the ills of democracy is more
democracy. The money that makes political "corrup
tion" a profitable game comes chiefiy from the rich
owners of industry, and the owners of our natural re
sources — to a large extent the same set of people.
These men, we must repeat, are not usually dishonest
in intent. They think of themselves as protecting
their legitimate interests. But the thwarting of the
popular will that results, and the fortifying of the
privileges of the rich, put off by so much the realiza
tion of the American ideal. A valuable remedy for
political corruption may be found in a Short Ballot,
with concentration of responsibility and delegated
government. That reform would enable the people to
wage a more successful war against the bosses who

DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 217
are in politics for their personal profit. But there
will always be a war between the vigilant among the
people and the bosses so long as a class of owners are
free to take as much as they can grab of the proflts
of industry and to use a large slice of that wealth for
the direct and indirect subsidizing of legislation.
The main motive for the opposition to democracy
in industry is, of course, the natural desire of those
who enjoy the power and the proflts to keep them.
Democracy will mean a limitation of power, and,
in the case of the proflteers, a limitation of proflt;
because neither the irresponsible power nor the con
gestion of wealth is socially justiflable. Concentra
tion of power there must be, for efficiency, and for
the location of responsibility. But it must be re
sponsible power, power exercised in the interests of
the industry as a whole, the interests of the workers
and of the public, as well as the interests of the
owners. Workers will still be discharged for incom
petence or laziness, managers will still have pride in
their departments and strive for efficiency. But the
value of the results attained will be measured by
the well-being secured for the workers and the low
price secured for the public rather than by the proflts
secured for the owners. As it is now, we worship the
god of Business Prosperity. But Business Prosperity
means big proflts for the owners ; it may coincide with
starvation wages or cruel tyranny for the workers and
high prices for the consumer. Democratic control
would not tolerate the worship of such a god.
But would not democratic control, by limiting the
proflts of the owners, lessen their interest in the
business and slacken their energy? Would managers
bound by a democratically determined code of pro
cedure have the same incentive for striving for effi-

218 DEMOCEACY
ciency? Would the workers, if freed from the arbi
trary despotism of owners and managers, work as
hard as they do now? It is a matter of psychology;
the results would certainly be complex. We lack ex
perience of a thoroughly democratized society. As
it is, the brainiest men keep clear, in general, of the
various attempts at democratic enterprise — produc
ers' co-operative societies, and the like — because they
can make far higher proflts for themselves in the
scramble of private business. If all the Big Business
of the country were democratized, the men of brains
would be forced to find their fleld of activity within
it. And there is no real reason to suppose that their
energy and ingenuity would be lessened because they
were on salary instead of facing an uncertain but
unlimited proflt.
If it is true that salaried men, or men whose possi
bility of proflts is limited to the approximate level of
a high salary, and whose power is constitutional
rather than autocratic, will not work, as a class, so
hard as those who have unfettered opportunity of
power and proflts, then we must put up with that loss
of energy. To this subject we shall return in discus
sing our American ideal of Efficiency. It may be
enough at this point to suggest that this possible loss
of interest on the part of the present entrepreneur
class would probably be insigniflcant as compared
with the increase of interest on the part of millions
of workers who would gain a stake in their life-work.
It would become their business as well as their em
ployers'. The gravest problem in industry today is
how to get the workers to put their heart into their
work, how to develop their morale. It is safe to say
that the only ultimately successful way of reviving
our waning industrial morale is through the admis-

DEMOCEACY IN INDUSTEY 219
sion of the workers to participation in the control of
the industry.
The big industries are at present the seat of a con
tinuous class-conflict. Simmering beneath the sur
face there is always agitation and unrest. The small
owner-class are the legal "insiders" in industry, the
great mass of workers are simply hirelings, with no
security of tenure, no personal stake in the business.
No wonder the sight of big proflts going to the owners
awakens resentment; no wonder that decisions and
policies that affect the lives of the workers adversely
engender bitterness. There is no need of "Bolshevist"
propaganda to explain this ever-latent hostility. The
interests of owners and workers are obviously op
posed. So long as this is the case, we shall have
strikes and sabotage and soldiering on the job. The
only escape is to diminish the separateness of function
between the two classes, to merge their interests.
Peace may exist in an ignorant and convention-ridden
society between autocrats and their hirelings; not in
a democracy. The old idea was that laborers should
be docile, tame, submissive ; the American spirit makes
them independent in thought, eager to flnd scope
for initiative and personality, determined to have
their share of proflts and power. It is too late to
hope to stabilize the autocratic ideal ; we must put our
backs into making the democratic ideal work.
It is not the extension of bureaucratic government
control that we need ; government undertakings have
not often been truly democratic. What we need is
more self-determination, more individualism, more
participation by everybody in the decisions in the fleld
of his particular work. Industry must be conceived
as a communal affair instead of as a private enter
prise hiring multitudes of servile workers. Only in

220 DEMOCEACY
this way can we give dignity to the average man's life,
a far horizon, and zest in his work. This is what we
all really want, or would want if we thought about
it enough — to be members of a self-governing com
munity of workers. It is what Mr. Gerald Stanley
Lee means when he says, "The people have decided
to be parts of We-Machines. We have been cogs in
other people's I-Machines long enough."
It is certain that a more democratic management
of industry will lead to many blunders, and to much
"graft." Whether to more blunders and more graft
than our existing system, no one can say. Our pres
ent system is probably not on the whole more than ten
per cent efficient; its striking successes are few and
its failures many. But however that may be, progress
has to proceed by trial and error. Political democ
racy has blundered so much, and been so honey
combed with corruption, that its enemies have deemed
it far worse than autocracy. Yet it has spread and
spread, until it is obviously to be the universal policy.
The adventures of democratized industry will be
many. But it is surely coming; because the masses
are learning to want it, and learning that they can
have it. The ballot is the camel's nose in the tent;
nothing can prevent the camel from coming all the
way in now. To dam the current will be but to make
its eventual coming more tempestuous and destruc
tive. That energy is wasted that opposes it ; only that
energy and thought are fruitfully spent which go to
the working out of concrete plans and to the educa
tion of the people to use wisely their coming power.
Business men will, of course, resist the transition;
not only those who proflt by their power, but millions
of others who have grown up to think in their terms.
With their warnings of the danger of costiy blunders,

DEMOCEACY IN INDUSTEY 221
decreased production, and a possible industrial chaos,
we may sympathize. But if they raise the cry of
loyalty to American principles, we shall know what
to say. Efficient, feasible, democracy may or may
not be; but it is at least the ideal to which we are
committed, the ideal for which our forefathers bled,
the ideal for which but just now our sons and brothers
bled. To be obliged to argue this point at all shows
how many people have as yet failed to grasp what the
idea of Democracy really implies.
During the War a brilliant speaker before the
American Academy of Social and Political Science
uttered these memorable words: "We stand com
mitted as never before to the realization of democracy
in America. We who have gone to war to insure
democracy in the world will have raised an aspiration
here that will not end in the overthrow of the Prus
sian autocracy . . . We shall call that man unAmeri-
can and no patriot who prates of liberty in Europe
and resists it at home. A force is loose in America
as well." That this force may be used not for destruc
tion but for construction should be our prayer and
our earnest concern. Not only must the world be
made safe for democracy, but democracy itself must
be unfolded into its completest meaning. What fur
ther developments may lie before democracy we can
not now say; but just now it needs much effort to
free it from the forces which are strangling it in pol
itics, in journalism, and in industry.
SUGGESTED READINGS
J. G. Brooks, The Social Unrest.
Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, Chapters IV, V.
H. G. Wells, Social Forces in England and America, pp. 112-154.
Bertrand Eussell, Political Ideals, Chap. II.
G. H. D. Cole and Mellor, The Meaning of Industrial Freedom.

222 DEMOCRACY
Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Industrial Democracy.
R. W. Sellars, The Next Step in Democracy.
J. Mackaye, Americanized Socialism,
W. W. WiUoughby, Social Justice, Chap. IX.
T. N. Carver, Essays in Social Justice, Chap. VT.
C. H. Douglas, Economic Democracy.
John Spargo, Americanism and Social Democracy.
P. W. Litchfield, The Industrial Republic.
W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, Chap. XVII.
Ordway Tead, in Atlamtic Monthly, vol. 122, p. 178.

PART FOUR
EFFICIENCY

CHAPTER XX
BIG BUSINESS
We are all, in our patriotic moments, proud of our
ideal of Democracy, and of the extent to which it has
already been successfully embodied in our institu
tions. But as an actual working motive in the lives
of successful Americans it does not begin to have
the potency of another ideal — efficiency. Efficiency
it not one of the great historic slogans that we re
peat on the Fourth of July, and attribute to Washing
ton or Lincoln. But when the American traveller
boasts of his country abroad, what he is most apt to
speak of is the success of our big business, of our great
transportation systems, and the other achievements
in organization of our industrial order. And most
foreign observers have given a verdict similar to
that of Arnold Bennett's: "It seems to me that
the brains and the imagination of America shine
superlatively in the conception and ordering of its
vast organizations of human beings, and of machin
ery, and of the two combined . . . For me they were
the proudest material achievements, and essentially
the most poetical achievements, of the United States."
Because of this widespread pride in organization
and efficiency, America has often been sneered at as
a land of "materialists." But efficiency means the
saving of human labor, its consequent release from
concern with the mechanics of life, and greater free
dom to pursue ideal ends. The simple peasant life
225

226 EFFICIENCY
idealized by Tolstoy, the cottage handicraft life ideal
ized by Ruskin, have their allurement for an age of
machinery. But actually, such a life means longer
hours of work, a harder, less human life, than
efficiently organized industry necessitates. It is true
that the end has often been lost sight of in preoccupa
tion with the means ; masses of workers have not yet
won the greater leisure, the pleasanter conditions of
work, the larger purchasing power, for which the effi
cient organization of human labor opens the way.
The beneflts of our industrial efficiency have not yet
been properly distributed. To be a worthy ideal.
Efficiency must lose its savor of tyranny and ruth-
lessness and self-seeking, and go hand in hand with a
true Equality and Democracy. But in this way, as
an integral part of our national ideal. Efficiency
can not be overemphasized.
Just what efficiency in the ordering of human rela
tions requires is a problem at which generations to
come must work. But there is one tendency in Ameii-
ica so far-reaching in its influence on the lives of our
people that it must have our immediate attention.
This is the movement toward combination and cen
tralization in business. There is no doubt that Big
Business is an American ideal, and that, whatever
impulses toward the exercising of power and the rak
ing in of proflts may enter in as motives, its justiflca-
tion is its efficiency. Already we have many splendid
examples of the saving of human labor and the dim
inution of the price of commodities, through the
formation of our great corporations or "trusts." And
there can be little doubt that the next generation
will witness a great increase in this co-ordination in
the business world.
That, in general, the replacement of competitive

BIG BUSINESS 227
business by closely co-operative or highly centralized
business does make for efficiency is indubitable. Lack
of organization means, for one thing, unnecessary
duplication of plant and equipment. For example,
it has been estimated by reliable statisticians thai
the flour-mills of the country could grind all the wheat
produced in a year in 157 days, and that the saw
mills could saw all the lumber consumed in a year
in 120 days. Hundreds of millions of dollars are
thus wasted by competitive business. Moreover, a
great deal of time and money is lost in cross-routing,
in separate purchasing and keeping of accounts.
A great many economies possible to a large-scale
organization are not practicable for the petty manu
facturer or tradesman. The big concern flnds it
profltable to utilize by-products. It can buy raw
materials in larger quantities, and needs to keep less
material on hand than was necessary in the case of
the smaller concerns it replaces. It can afford ex
penditures beyond the means of the smaller concerns,
it can avail itself of the most expert advice, and strike
out more boldly into new lines. Having many strings
to its bow, it needs less to fear a single mistake, and
can be more enterprising than the small-scale manu
facturer or trader can usually dare to be.
The wastefulness of competition is most striking
in the field of distribution, including middlemen and
retailers. In almost every line we see thousands of
unnecessary shops, delivery wagons, and employees.
For example, several years ago a survey was made
of the distribution of milk in the city of Washington,
D. C. "Sixty-five dealers supplied the city, by a
wasteful process of duplicating storage, pasteurizing,
cooling and delivery plants; in some apartment
houses substantially every tenant was served by a

228 EFFICIENCY
different dealer. On one city block seventeen milk
wagons were counted one morning, each serving one
to three customers . . . Competitive conditions made
it impossible to enforce proper care of bottles. Wash
ington was paying about $120,000 annually for mUk
bottles ! A public service monopoly, enforcing penal
ties, as gas, water, and electric companies do, would
save most of this. Under competition, the dealer
attempting it would lose his trade to more lenient
dealers . . . There was testimony of considerable
quantities of milk going to waste at seasons when
supply exceeded demands. Small dealers could not
afford manufacturing plants to convert their surplus
into butter, cheese, condensed and powdered milk.
Under centralized control, the single distributor
would utilize the surplus at all times." It is no won
der that it cost as much to distribute milk in Wash
ington as to produce it and get it into the hands of
the distributors.
This situation is fairly typical. A committee of
the New York legislature stated, after investigation,
that "under present competitive conditions it takes
almost as many men to bring the dairyman's milk to
the consumer as there are dairymen engaged in the
production of milk, with all their employees. This
is the result of the purely competitive basis upon
which the business is handled."
Or take testimony presented before a recent Con
gressional committee: "The conditions of the retail
merchandizing business are very uneconomical. There
are two or three times as many people, in my judg
ment, engaged in the retail business as should be." In
a later statement, this witness said he "believed it
would be nearer the truth to state that five times as
many people are making a living out of the retail

BIG BUSINESS 229
shoe business as would be necessary to serve the
public. This, of course, connotes that other retailing
expenses are likewise excessive — rent, capital invest
ment, insurance, fixtures . . , and many more."
One of our best-known retail merchants, Mr. Ed
ward Filene, in a magazine article published in 1920,
declares that retail distribution, as at present con
ducted, practically doubles the price of the manufac
tured article to the consumer. "There is doubtless
profiteering here and there in isolated cases, but the
real criminal profiteer is unscientific method — gen
eral inefficiency of organization."
In addition to this needless multiplication of equip
ment and effort in the process of distribution itself,
there is an enormous waste in competitive advertis
ing. Hundreds of thousands of drummers spend their
energies in persuading retailers, contractors, or con
sumers, to buy their goods rather than the other
man's. Millions of dollars are spent in advertise
ments in newspapers, magazines, and circulars, and
on billboards. The buyers, of course, have to pay this
expense. Mr. Henry Holt has recently written,
"Those who use the finer kinds of soap probably pay
more for having it dinned into them to use a certain
brand, than they pay for the soap itself." And "the
country probably pays more for having its elementary
schoolbooks argued and cajoled and bribed into use,
than for the books themselves," These are two cases
of a general truth. Wary buyers avoid much-adver
tised articles, realizing that in buying them they will
have to pay for the advertising. It is said that the
cost of advertising means an overhead charge of
twenty-five per cent on American industry.
The money spent in advertising is not wholly lost.
It is desirable that new articles, as well as the merits

230 EFFICEENCY
of familiar articles, should be called to the attention
of potential purchasers. Unhappily, competitive ad
vertising is so widely untrustworthy in its statements
that it is, on the whole, perhaps as misleading as
enlightening. It works on the mind rather as a
quasi-hypnotic suggestion than as a channel of infor
mation. A more important aspect of the matter is the fact
that advertising supports our newspapers and maga
zines. If, because of the unification of the various
industries and distributing agencies, advertising were
no longer necessary to draw trade from rivals, most of
these dailies and weeklies and monthlies would either
have to increase very greatly the subscription price
or receive a subsidy. The increase in price of news
papers and magazines would be a calamity, since it
would decrease the number of readers. On the other
hand, their release from the need of pleasing the big
advertisers would permit a great gain in honesty
and nonpartisanship in presenting the news and ex
pressing opinions. A number of our most useful
weeklies, and a few dailies and monthlies, are now
endowed, and so independent of advertising. But in
general, the problem of efficiency in business is wrapt
up with the problem of journalism, as it is with the
problem of politics, and many another problem. And
this tangled inter-relation of problems is one reason
why social progress in this direction, as in many
others, is so slow.
There are many other advantages of business amal
gamation, as over against the anarchic struggle of
nineteenth century business. Everyone's good ideas
and methods become available for the whole business;
whereas in a regime of competition, secrets are «are-
fidly guarded, patents give exclusive use of labor-

BIG BUSINESS 231
saving inventions to a few, and outdated methods and
materials are perforce used by most. Further, Big
Business can afford to maintain laboratories and ex
perts for the investigation of new inventions and
methods. It passes fewer positions on, "in the fam
ily," to inefficient workers and managers, and offers
more opportunity for the young man or woman of
brains but without business conections. In these and
other ways, a completely organized business can
serve the public better than cut-throat business, in
most cases, can.
It is, of course, not always true that Big Business
is more efficient than small-scale business. It depends
upon the particular nature of the article manufac
tured or sold. Some businesses are in their nature
local — as, a street-car system, a lighting-system. In
other cases, as in the matter of coal, steel, oil, fertiliz
ers, etc., the whole world should be organized as one
economic community. But whether its sphere is
local or national or world-wide, the ideal of Efficiency
demands that every business should, within its sphere,
be free from waste and duplication of effort. This
implies the elimination of the sort of competition
wherein rivals seek to perform the same service.
There may still be much rivalry between the different
departments of a given business, between different
plants, between diffierent producers or salesmen.
But it will be a rivalry in the performance of co
operating tasks, not the sort of rivalry in which one
man's success means another man's failure.
The gain through this steering of effort into co
operative instead of antagonistic work is not merely
material, it is mental and spiritual. Competitive
business encourages hardness of heart and penalizes
kindness. Man is pitted against man, not in a gener-

232 EFFICIENCY
ous spirit of emulation, as in competitive sports, but
in a veritable struggle for existence. Legislation and
government regulation can eliminate some of the more
unscrupulous and anti-social acts devised in this
struggle but it can never put an end to the manifold
ways in which, under a competitive regime, one man
or firm will selfishly seek to get the better of its
competitors. The result of this struggle is, as we all
know, a constant series of business failures, each
meaning an economic loss to the community, often
of considerable magnitude; and each meaning God
only knows how much heartache and despair.
It is often thought that this high tension under
which competitive business lives — this perpetual fear
of failure and this constant impulse to get the better
of rivals — makes for a greater expenditure of energy
and initiative; that monopolistic business tends to
become slack and unenterprising, through the relax
ing of this pressure. The results achieved by the
"trusts" in this country do not seem to bear out this
contention; if there is a diminution of energy from
this cause, its baneful effect is more than counter
balanced by the gains. It may be said, however, that
it is neither normal nor desirable for human beings
to live under such a strain as competitive business
often entails, and that enough motives remain — pride
in achievement, promotion and retention of position,
increase in product and hence in financial return, and
so on — to keep human energies whipped to the degree
desirable. A more democratic control of business
will undoubtedly tap new sources of energy and in
terest. And if, in the end, we should find that a
completely organized industrial system was somewhat
more easy-going than the feverish pace of some con
temporary businesses, we must remember that human

BIG BUSINESS 233
welfare is a bigger thing than material productivity.
Freedom from strain, and a sense of security, are
worth paying for.
But there still remains the question. If the busi
ness of the country is thus fully organized, will not
the benefits accrue to a small class, and further accen
tuate the inequalities of wealth and power already
so marked? The remarkable achievements of our
great corporations have had as their corollary the
accumulation of great private fortunes, with a con
sequent power over journalism, politics, and legisla
tion that has awakened considerable popular distrust.
It is not that we have had, usually, to pay higher
prices for what we buy from the trusts. The old
notion that competition suffices to keep prices down
has gone by the board. The experience of recent
years shows that there is as much profiteering by
small concerns as by Big Business. When credit can
be got, and the general impression of scarcity be
comes widespread, manufacturers and dealers will
seize their opportunity for raising prices without any
formal conspiracy or co-operation. In general, with
certain exceptions, the formation of trusts has low
ered rather than raised the price of commodities to
the consumer.
But even if the public is actually no worse off, it
is far more inclined to resent the concentrated profi
teering of a few big firms than the more diffused
prosperity of many smaller firms. The profit-taking
is far more conspicuous, and benefits fewer people.
Moreover, there is a sense engendered of being at the
mercy of these industrial autocrats which is repug
nant to our democratic sensibilities. And of course,
there is a continual protest against absorption or
elimination, on the part of the small manufacturers

234 EFFICIENCY
or dealers who find themselves elbowed out or threat
ened with ruin by their bigger rivals. The process
by which the great corporations have won their power
has often been unscrupulous, and still oftener is the
result of a struggle which, however fair according to
our current standards of business practice, has ac
tually resulted in the ruin of their former rivals.
The effect upon the employees of this organization
of business into large units has many aspects. The
wealthy corporation can usually afford to pay better
wages, to build more sanitary and comfortable fac
tories, to make working conditions in many ways
pleasanter. Its conspicuousness makes it more liable
to public criticism, and it is apt to feel more keenly
the need of heeding such criticism. In many cases
"welfare work" is being carried on by our big firms
which would never have been possible to the smaller
houses. On the other hand, the big corporation has so much
more power, that when it chooses to lower wages, to
oppose the unionization of employees, or in any other
way to resist the desires of labor, it is a far more for
midable antagonist than the smaller competing firms.
There is less personal contact of employer with em
ployees; it is usually harder for the employee with
a grievance to get his case before his employer. And
the ownership of stock by absentee shareholders
makes a continuous urge for dividends which some
times results in a policy that is inhuman in the
extreme. The opposition to Big Business comes, then, from
several quarters. It comes from the owners of small
factories and shops, who do not want to give up their
independence and become parts of a larger concern.
It comes from labor-unions, that fear the increase of

BIG BUSINESS 235
power of the employers, which may make it harder
for them to succeed in their efforts to get fairer re
muneration and better working conditions. It comes
from the public, that sees with apprehension this con
centration of wealth and power. The result has been
a series of "anti-trust" laws, and repeated pronounce
ments like that of the Democratic party platform of
1912, which declared that "the control by any one
corporation of so large a proportion of industry as
to make it a menace to competitive conditions" is
"indefensible and intolerable," and demanded "the
enactment of such additional legislation as may be
necessary to make it impossible for a private mon
opoly to exist in the United States,"
The lessons of the Great War, however, were in no
respect more striking than in their emphasis upon the
need of the pooling of interests, and the incapacity of
a divided industrial regime. Temporarily, men
worked together under a unified governmental plan,
and achieved results in production and distribution
which amazed us all. Almost as much energy was
spent in organizing industry and commerce as in
moving armies and fighting the enemy. A machinery
of co-operation was built up, an economic integration,
which, in spite of the drawing away of several million
young men from industry, speeded up production to
a point far above pre-war possibilities. We have
since drifted back into much of the old disorder of
effort and undisciplined confusion. But the lessons
of the War have graved themselves deeply upon many
minds. It is true, of course, that the government control
exercised over firms, small and great, and tolerated
in the emergency, became irksome when the emer
gency had passed. It is also true that much blunder-

236 EFFICIENCY
ing and graft appeared in this hasty and unprece
dented organization, of the nation's effort. But it
would seem as if our efforts ought to be directed
rather toward improving the machinery of organiza
tion, and eliminating the blunders and the opportuni
ties for graft, rather than in discarding the ideal of
co-ordination and unity. As our population grows,
and our natural resources yield less exuberantly, the
problem of efficiency in production and distribution
will become more and more acute ; and it would seem
wise for us to be working in the direction of that
unification of effort to which we must eventually
come. As a matter of fact, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
never accomplished its purpose. The process of
amalgamation has gone pretty steadily on, and recent
judicial interpretations have followed the principle
that only those combinations which actually work
to the injury of the public are to be condemned, not
the process of combination itself.
We should be proud of this genius for organization ;
it is one of our most distinctive American traits, and
ought to be one of our proudest ideals. It requires
great intellectual power, executive ability, imagina
tion, and faith, for its completest realization. But
there must be more than that. There must go hand
in hand with this organization of production and
distribution such a measure of democratic participa
tion in control by the workers as shall ensure them
a self-respecting life and their just share of the results
of the new efficiency. And there must be an increased
oversight of these great private organizations by the
State, to ensure the public against exploitation,
Delicate problems these. But as industry is the back
bone of a nation's life, so these problems are the fun-

BIG BUSINESS 237
damental problems, whose solution is imperative if
its future is to be secure.
How to preserve and increase that individual
initiative and energy in which we so firmly believe,
how to increase the dignity and power of individual
men, and yet harmonize their efforts into one great
synthetic purpose, — that is the task set for our young
business men to think out. We shall be proud indeed
if America leads the way in solving this great
problem. SUGGESTED READINGS
C. E. Van Hise, Concentration and Control.
F. C. McVey, Modem Industrialism.
Florence Kelley, Modern Industry.
J. W. Jenks, The Trust Problem,
E. von Halle, Trusts and Industrial Combinations,
S. C. T. Dodd, Combinations, their Use and Abuse.
E. T. Ely, Monopolies and Trusts,
E. A. Eoss, Sin and Society,
H. E. Seager, Introduction to Economics, Chap. XXII.
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, Chap. XXVT, and pp.
379-381.
L. D. Brandeis, Other People's Money.
P. E. Haworth, America in Ferment, Chap. VIII.
Ida Tarbell, History of the Standard Oil Company,
A. K. Fiske, Honest Business,
Bruce Wyman, Control of the Marhet,
C. P. Steinmetz, America and the New Epoch.
A. D. Noyes, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. Ill, p. 653.

CHAPTER XXI
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
The combination and co-operation of business men
have made possible the great achievements of Ameri
can business — greater production, improved product,
larger profits, lower prices. But these economic
gains have not, for the most part, resulted in any
great improvement in the status of the employees,
except as the latter have been able, in their turn, to
bring pressure to bear through organizations of their
own. The labor-unions thus necessitated have also
many other achievements to their credit. They have
helped to assimilate and Americanize heterogeneous
groups of immigrants, have promoted friendliness and
mutual help among the laboring classes, and in many
ways served their welfare.
Thus the unions are now an accepted part of our
American life. Theodore Roosevelt, speaking at
Columbus, September 10, 1910, said, "If I were a wage
worker, I should certainly join a union. ... In our
modem industrial system the union is just as necesr
sary as the corporation, and in the modern field of
industrialism, it is often an absolute necessity that
there should be collective bargaining by the employees
with the employers; and such collective bargaining
is but one of the many benefits conferred by wisely
and honestly organized unions that act properly."
To offset this good record, it must be admitted that
the unions have often retarded industrial progress
and even the efficient working of existing machinery.
They have at times sought to restrict the number of
238

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 239
apprentices in a trade, opposed trade schools, opposed
scientific management, in order to make more work,
insisted on the retention of incompetent employees,
and upon a uniform wage to all, without regard to
efficiency. They have sometimes been in the grip of
grafting leaders, who have sought to use their power
for their personal enrichment. They have some
times broken their agreements with employers, and
declared strikes in violation of contract. In short,
like all other forms of human organization, they come
under the control, from time to time, of all sorts of
leaders, wise and unwise, scrupulous and selfish, and
have a mixed record of good and evil — whether better
or worse than that of business firms, trusts, and
financial rings, or than that of political parties, it
would be difflcult to say.
It is fair to say, however, that some or all of the
above-mentioned tactics have been adopted by unions
because, in their judgment, they were necessary
means for the attainment of their end — the bettering
of the status of labor. And however shortsighted
their methods at times have been, it is beyond dispute
that they have been the greatest force that has made
for higher wagesi, shorter hours, and better working
conditions. Even the attainment of decently humane
conditions for working women and children has been
mostly the work of the unions, in the face of stren
uous opposition from the employers. It is no wonder
that organized labor thinks of itself "not as a selfish
group which is extorting all it can from the com
munity, but as a group which, under the conditions
of a modern industrial society, is now occupying the
firing line in the battle for human liberation."
The labor-unions are able to ameliorate the lot of
the workers in two ways, by influencing legislation,

240 EFFICIENCY
and by direct bargaining with the employers. The
latter has been by far the more efficacious method
hitherto. There has been little agreement among
labor-leaders upon political measures, and no con
certed action at the polls. But economic pressure
brought to bear upon the owners of industry through
the power of the workers to cease working has had
marked effects.
Whether we shall approve of the exercise of this
power depends upon our judgment as to the desir
ability of the ends sought. Undoubtedly in many
cases organized labor has demanded more than could
reasonably be granted under existing conditions.
But in general, the status of the workers has been
unnecessarily low, and the gains won through col
lective action desirable, for the community as a whole,
as well as for the workers. Hence nearly all disin
terested students of the industrial situation have
approved the principle of collective bargaining.
Public Commissions on Industrial Relations, Church
Conferences, Presidents of the United States — practi
cally everyone except certain representatives of the
employing class declare the method necessary ; so that
it is now flrmly established as a principle of Ameri
canism. Recently the Federal Council of the
Churches declared that "the safety and development
of the workers, the best interest of the employers,
the security and progress of the community all
demand it."
The success of collective bargaining depends, obvi
ously, upon the completeness with which the workers
are organized. If only a part of those in a given
industrial concern belong to the unions, and the rest
refuse to obey their leadership, the employer can defy
their demands. Hence the earnest effort^ to ujiionize

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 241
laborers, and the bitterness of the resentment felt by
the members of the unions toward the "scabs" —
workers who continue to work when the union decides
to strike, or who take the places of strikers. If it is
true that the betterment of the lot of the workers is
made, for the most part, only by the collective effort
and sacriflce of the workers united in their unions,
then the worker who refuses to join in this effort and
sacriflce, who continues to accept his pay when his
comrades are wageless, and helps to make their effort
and sacriflce fruitless, is naturally regarded as a
traitor to the common cause and deserving of the
utmost contempt.
The organization of laborers along the lines of
their separate crafts has stood in the way of their
collective action. Hence the movement toward indus
trial unions whose membership shall be coextensive
with the workers in an entire industry. And hence
the demand for the Closed Shop, that is, a shop in
which only union members are allowed to work. If
such a requirement were to become universal, all
the workers would join the unions, and no one would
be excluded from positions. But of course, this is
precisely what the autocratically-minded employers
do not wish. They follow the ancient maxim. Divide
et impera. In particxdar, the owners of some of the
greatest corporations have fought the unionization of
their employees, under the slogan. The Open Shop.
The Open Shop idea appeals to our American spirit
of individualism; it insists upon the right of each
laborer to decide for himself whether or not he will
join the union. But if the unions are right in saying.
United we stand, divided we fall, they must blame
this individualistic attitude as vigorously as a nation
at war condemns the citizens who disrupt its unity.

242 EFFICIENCY
The employer, or the owner of industrial securities,
is not disinterested; the success of a labor-movement
may lessen his profits or his dividends. And so his
conscientious fervor for the open shop ideal is not
quite convincing. And when we find directors of
corporations quietly discharging men who have
joined the unions, and even employing, as many do,
spies among the workers to spot those who show
signs of favoring union ideas, we realize that their
avowed advocacy of the Open Shop often masks an
actual determination to keep the employees unor
ganized and so helpless.
That acute critic of American institutions, Mr.
Dooley, saw clearly the laborers' side of the Open
Shop controversy.
"What's all this that's in the papers about the open
shop?" asked Mr. Hennessey.
"Why, don't you know?" said Mr. Dooley. "Really
I'm surprised at yer ignorance, Hinnissey. What is
th' open shop? Sure, 'tis where they kape the doors
open to accommodate th' constant stream av' min
comin' in t' take jobs cheaper than th' min what has
th' jobs. 'Tis like this, Hinnissey : Suppose wan av
these freeborn citizens is workin' in an open shop
f'r th' princely wages av wan large iron dollar a day
av tin hour. Along comes anither son-av-gun and he
sez to th' boss 'Oi think Oi could handle th' job nicely
f'r ninety cints.' 'Sure,' sez th' boss, and th' wan
dollar man gets out into th' crool woruld t' exercise
his inalienable roights as a freeborn American citizen
an' scab on some other poor devil. An' so it goes on,
Hinnissey. An' who gits th' benefit? Thrue, it saves
th' boss money, but he don't care no more f'r money
thin he does f'r his right eye.

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 243
"It's all principle wid him. He hates t' see men
robbed av their indipendence. They must have their
indipendence, regardless av anything else."
"But," said Mr. Hennessey, "these open shop min
ye menshun say they are f'r unions iv properly con
ducted." "Shure," said Mr. Dooley, "iv properly conducted.
An' there we are : An' how would they have thim con
ducted? No strikes, no rules, no contracts, no scales,
hardly iny wages an' dam few mimbers."
If this is often the actual psychology of the em
ployer, it must be admitted that the motives and
ideals of the unions are often equally open to criti
cism. But since there is an inevitable conflict of
interest between proflt-seeking employers and em
ployees seeking better working and living conditions,
it seems necessary to forward by whatever means are
consonant with our American ideal of Liberty, the
organization of employees, in order that the two
parties may be fairly equal in the contest. At any
rate, the fight against unionization usually results
in the spread of restlessness and radicalism ; workers
who find themselves unable to help themselves by fair
means will fall back upon foul means. If labor is
opposed too generally in its efforts toward organiza
tion, it is likely to become destructively pugnacious
and tend more and more to sabotage, slacking on the
job, and other forms of "direct action." There can
be little doubt that the Report of the United States
Commission on Industrial Relations, in 1915, was
right in declaring that "the most effectual course that
can be pursued to bring about general contentment
among our people ... is the promotion of labor
organization."

244 EFFICIENCY
What then? the reader may say. The chief weapon
by which the unions can win for labor its due share
of the national prosperity is through the strike. And
can we approve the strike? Every one suffers during
a strike — the employers and stockholders, the wage-
earners and their families, and the general public.
The total economic loss to the community from strikes
is very great; and the cost of living is appreciably
raised thereby for all of us. A large proportion of
the strikes are unsuccessful, sheer waste for every
one. Even when the workers are successful, their
gains in wages are often not enough to compensate
them for the losses they have suffered. And always a
strike engenders bitterness, class-division, and angry
passions. In general, strikers in America have exer
cised great self-control, and have been guilty of rela
tively little violence— such violence as has occurred
being usually the result of unfair and provocative
conduct on the part of the employers. But certainly
the strike is at best a hateful thing, to be tolerated
only if it is the only means available for the attain
ment of justice for the workers.
The laboring classes believe, almost universally,
that it is a necessary and therefore a legitimate
weapon — ^in the last resort, if employers are obdurate
to considerations of justice and humanity, the only
available method of obtaining their rights. It is,
therefore, useless to dwell upon the evils of the strike
— which every one admits. If the workers believe
that they have a serious grievance, and can get it
remedied in no other way, they will strike, and noth
ing but the use of the power of military mobilization
can make them work. This is a very dangerous power
to use, and would probably not be tolerated in this
country unless public sympathies were overwhelm-

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 245
ingly against the strikers. We must face the fact,
then, that strikes will occur from time to time, until
the workers feel that they have their fair share of the
profits — and perhaps of the control — of industry, and
are satisfied with the conditions and hours of their
work. Or until some other method proves equally
efficacious for the attainment of these ends.
To say "equally efficacious" is not to say very
much ! Strikes, for all their cost, have not actually,
as yet, accomplished a great deal. It is a question
whether the energy spent in strikes would not have
accomplished far more if it had been put into getting
legislation enacted. The wage-earning classes form
the largest block of the population; if they could
agree upon the laws they want, they could undoubt
edly get them upon the statute-books. Why should
not political action, in a democracy, be substituted
for economic action?
Undoubtedly it should. The era of strikes must be
conceived by every hopeful American as a transient
era. The strike is a form of coercion, whereas the
principle of democracy is persuasion, and the domi
nance of enlightened public opinion. The strike is a
method by which one group seeks to win its end with
out having to convince the majority that it is in the
right. Might does not make right ; and the victory in
a strike goes to the stronger side ; not necessarily, and
not, perhaps, in a majority of cases, to the side that
is in the right. The strike is a form of private war
fare, in which the public has to suffer from the ina
bility of the two groups at war to agree.
When we contemplate the terrible possibilities of
a "general strike," we see clearly that another method
of settling industrial disputes must be devised. A
strike of the railroad workers throughout the country

246 EFFICIENCY
would quickly become a calamity of vast proportions
— babies would die for lack of milk and ice, the big
cities would be in serious straits for food and coal,
the whole activity of the country would be paralyzed.
A general strike of coal miners in winter would
quickly result in the stoppage of trains, and actual
freezing to death in the cities. If the workers in the
key industries of our country ever unite in a cause
which they feel to be just, and steel themselves to
suffering as ruthlessly as the fighting nations did in
the Great War, the disaster to the nation might be
even greater than that of war.
It is no wonder that a great deal of agitation has
been carried on for compulsory arbitration of labor
disputes. If justice can be secured by the verdict of
an impartial tribunal or court, all the suffering and
bitterness and economic loss caused by strikes can
be saved. Labor can be sure of getting its due even
when it is not strong enough to make a successful
strike. Other disputes are settled by legal means,
why not these? Surely right, not might, should have
the deciding voice.
As a matter of fact, however, it is impracticable at
present to compel arbitration in these matters. The
labor-unions are almost all violently opposed to it;
and even in New Zealand and Australia, where the
wage-earners once welcomed it, they have lost their
faith in it. It has not actually resulted in improving
their status; and while once it was thought that in
these lands the age of strikes was over, they have
again become common. So that in 1919 the Federated
Business Men's Organization of Australia declared,
"It is obvious after an experience of twenty years
that our industrial laws have lamentably failed to
secure industrial peace."

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 247
If compulsory arbitration is not successful in se
curing justice, it actually works out in favor of the
employers. Success in a strike demands sudden ac
tion. During an enforced delay, employers can be
gathering together strike-breakers and preparing to
get on without their former workers.
At any rate, to compel a body of wage-earners to
accept arbitration by a body which they distrust is
not feasible. Fines cannot be collected from thou
sands of poor people, men cannot be imprisoned by
the thousand, nor can they be made to work, save
under military rule. The attempt to force a verdict,
in an important case, upon laborers who believed it
to be radically unjust would be to invite revolution.
The point is that the basic matters in dispute be
tween labor and capital— the proper wages, hours,
working conditions, and division of control — are non
justiciable. There are no generally approved prin
ciples from which to decide a particular case. Labor
wants not a static condition, perpetuation of the
status quo, but progress toward better conditions.
The so-called impartial judge, however, usually
thinks in terms of the existing distribution of profits
and power; his verdicts usually tend to standardize
conditions at their present unsatisfactory level.
Judges and arbitrators seldom have the laborer's
point of view ; they are apt to be thinking of business
prosperity, reasonable dividends, the public conven
ience, rather than of the welfare of the workers.
The public is instinctively inclined to resent the extra
cost of commodities necessitated by, or at any rate
usually resulting from, an improvement in the status
of the wage-earners, and usually thinks of them as
disturbers of the peace. Thus the workers feel that
the scales are weighted against them, and that arbi-

248" EFFICIENCY
tration, ihstead of getting for them their just de
mands, actually serves as a means of keeping them
slaves in an unjust socidl order.
Certainly peace at any price is not the ideal. The
industrial pacifists must realize that a peace resting
upon an unjust distribution of profits and power, of
inhumane working conditions, cannot be a lasting
peace. The various plans for conferences and com
mon decisions within an industry — Shop Committees,
Industrial Councils, and the like, seem promising.
An opportunity to present their case to one another,
to come to a mutual understanding, to participate in
policies that make for the common advantage, can
obviate much of the friction between employers and
wage-earners. Investigation and mediation by out
side tribunals may often be useful. But in the pres
ent condition of industry, obviously a transition
situation, we must hesitate to take from the wage-
earners the one weapon that they feel they can depend
upon to remedy intolerable conditions. Wretched as
the strike-weapon is, we have not yet worked out an
industrial order in which it is safe to make it illegal.
The hope for the future lies in education — the edu
cation of the workers to understand their own needs
and duties and to use the ballot as the means of reme
dying their wrongs; the education of the employing
class, that they may understand the laborers' point
of view and put into operation industrial methods
that will bring about a diffused prosperity and a self-
respecting life for their employees ; the education of
the general public, that it may understand the rights
and wrongs of the intricate industrial problem and
put its weight on the side of humanity and justice.
Strikes, "direct action," economic pressure — these are
war-methods; they must in time give way to the

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 249
methods of open discussion and decision by the
majority vote. What stands in the way of this is —
ignorance, and prejudice, the child of ignorance. A
better and longer school-education, a more wide
awake and socially useful Church, a non-partisan, or
omni-partisan, press, these are to be the means of
our salvation. In the meantime we must be content
to let labor meet the power of organized business with
its own organized power, and hope that through their
bargaining and bickering some genuine progress may
be made.
It is also to be hoped that the labor-unions will
more and more use their organized power not merely
to wrest higher wages and humaner working con
ditions from their employers, but to improve the
efficiency of their members and to co-operate with
capital in bettering the technique of production.
They are at present mainly, and necessarily, fighting-
organizations. The gradual satisfaction of their
aspirations for labor should transform them ulti
mately into constructive agencies of great value for
the future of American industry.
SUGGESTED READINGS
J. E. Commons, Trade-Unionism and Labor Problems.
F. T. Carlton, History and Problems of Organized Labor;
Organized Labor in American History,
John Mitchell, Organized Labor,
Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, Chap. V.
C. E. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, Chap. IX.
H. E. Seager, Introduction to Economics, Chap. XXI.
J. G. Brooks, Labor's Challenge to the Social Order.
G. G. Groat, Introduction to the Study of Organized Labor,
T. S. Adams and H. L. Sumner, Labor Problems, Chapters VI,
VII.
W. H. Hamilton, Current Economic Problems, p. 577, ff.
C. N. Fay, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, p. 758.
J. P. Frey, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 28, p. 485.

CHAPTER XXII
MORALE
Disputes and divergences of viewpoint there will
always be in industry, as in every other field of co
operative action. But when these disputes merge
into a continuous and deep-seated confiict between
labor and capital, we have a state of things obviously
destructive of efficiency. The maintenance of Ameri
can industry and commerce upon a high level of effi
ciency is in no small degree dependent upon corps
d'esprit, team-play, a genuine spirit of co-operation.
And that is dependent upon the mental attitude of
the workers — what we have in recent years learned
to call morale.
Many observers declare that the morale of Ameri
can wage-earners has been lowered in recent years.
The antagonism between their ideals and the policies
of their employers has become more conscious.
Workers refuse to exert themselves greatly, they
repeat the phrases, "take your time," "go easy," "no
hurry" ; they take vacations from their jobs when they
feel like it, they are less and less docile and depend
able. One writer declares that "this growing reluc
tance of wage-earners to give more than they get is
the Achilles-heel of our modem industrial system."
Another writer puts the situation thus: "Let us re
member that such habits of industry as we can still
count on were established under an earlier order,
when the relation between reward and effort appeared
250

MORALE 251
closer, in the skilled trades, and when the unskilled
workman, illiterate and oppressed, was more amen
able to discipline. We are trading on an inherited
capital of industrious habits. This is the road to
bankruptey, unless we can learn to create similar
habits that may serve for the future."
Certainly we can never again expect, and should
never want, to see laborers meek and spiritless, with
overseers cracking the whip over them, like so many
"dumb, driven cattle." That is not a thinkable
American solution for the problem. The development
of morale among the workers must come through the
awaking of their interest in their work, through the
tapping of new sources of creative energy, and the
development of a voluntary code of honor, and tra
dition of loyal service, like that which exists in an
army that believes in its cause and in its leaders.
The workman who is industrious and faithful must
command the admiration of his fellows instead of
their suspicion. The slacker and floater must come to
be regarded with contempt. In short, morale must
be created by the active attitude of the mass of wage-
earners themselves, and cannot be imposed upon them
from without.
To some extent, this tendency to work slowly and
do as little as possible for his wages, this lack of
interest in the success of the business for which he
is working, is due to the natural laziness and selfish
ness to which man is prone ; in so far it can only be
overcome by the diffusion of higher moral or reli
gious standards. But human motives and attitudes
are largely formed by environment; and the wide
spread lack of morale among workers is to a large
extent the result of external causes that can be re
moved. The situation cannot be cured by preaching

252 EFFICIENCY
the necessity of production, or by scolding at labor.
We must put ourselves in the place of the workers
and consider what can be done to increase their
loyalty and enthusiasm for their work.
One important means to this end, alluded to in an
earlier chapter, is the extension of vocational educa
tion. Interest arises through an intelligent compre
hension of the task one is performing, and a realiza
tion of its relation to the related tasks which one's
fellows are performing. The skilled worker is far
more apt to put his heart into his work than the
untrained laborer. And the analyses of industrial
processes made in recent years by physiologists and
technicians reveal an enormous waste of human labor
that could be saved by teaching the humblest manual
workers the best way to perform their tasks. For
the positions requiring more thought and decision,
the necessity of trained intelligence is even more
obvious. But as yet a very small per cent of
American wage-earners receive any sort of scientific
training for their work.
This is strikingly the situation in agriculture. The
farmers, except for the "hired men," are not "wage-
earners." But they are to an increasing extent
dependent upon the big industrial and commercial
concerns — the packing houses, the milk distributors,
the middlemen, and brokers; and those who do not
own their farms have to pay increasingly high rents.
Many of them have felt in recent years that the dice
were weighted against them, that the prices which
they are forced to pay for seed and feed and fertilizers
and equipment, coupled with the price at which they
were obliged to sell their produce, left them too little
opportunity for an honest living. The result has
been, in some quarters, a lowering of morale among

MOEALE 253
farmers, and a disinclination of our young people to
take up the farm-life. And yet the trained farmers
have been making, in general, good proflts. Govern
ment bulletins, experimental stations, agricultural
colleges, and agricultural courses in the public
schools, are doing a good deal toward bringing in the
age of scientiflc farming. But we have, as a nation,
a discouragingly long way yet to go.
Another extremely important means toward the
development of morale is vocational guidance. Our
present methods of flnding the right person for every
job and the right job for every person are, in general,
quite rudimentary. A son drifts into the business of
his father. An employer picks a man from a number
of applicants, on the basis of his momentary impres
sion, or because he is vaguely recommended by some
one. The result is a trial and error method, with
square pegs constantly trying to flt themselves into
round holes. A large proportion of our population
never flnd the work for which, by temperament and
ability, they are actually best fltted. No one can
estimate how much enthusiasm, how much ability,
how much real genius, is wasted because never
applied to its proper fleld. The universal use in the
public schools of careful p^chological tests, and the
steering of boys and girls into the lines of study, and
later into the vocations, for which nature has adapted
them, will mean not only a far more general interest
and happiness in work, but an incalculable increase
in its productivity, both in quantity and quality.
In all sorts of ways up-to-date employers are seek
ing to cultivate good-will among their workers, and
to utilize their instinct of workmanship. They are
encouraging their employees to get acquainted with
one another, and to have social good times. They are

254 EFFICIENCY
providing them with reading-rooms, rest-rooms, ball-
flelds, gymnasiums. They are giving them a chance
to learn about the various departments of the busi
ness and so to feel a pride in it. They are encourag
ing them to hand in "suggestions." They are employ
ing "labor managers," to adjust their minor griev
ances and to manifest their employers' interest in
their comfort.
But all this fails to go to the root of the matter.
The fundamental reason why the wage-earner is so
often listless and indifferent to the interests of his
employer is precisely because they are his employer's
interests, and not his. If our society expects to get
loyalty from the wage-earner, it must treat him not
as a mere "hand," a seller of labor, but as an integral
part of the industrial structure. The fact is that at
present most American business is run solely in the
interests of owners' proflts, with only that degree of
regard which is expedient, for the interest of either
the public or the workers. "Business prosperity" —
which means large proflts to the owners — ^is the scale
by which even kindness to employees is measured.
The workers, gradually becoming more intelligent
and observant, are realizing this more and more
keenly, and becoming more resentful and class-
conscious. Take the matter of scarcity of employment. What
enthusiasm for his work can a wage-earner have when
he knows that he may be discharged at any time at
the will of his employer, no matter how faithful or
even how efficient his work? A wave of business
depression occurs ; or the employers in a given indus
try simply decide to curtail production in order to
raise the price of their product. Men are turned off
by the score or by the hundred. It is not ea^ for

MOEALE 255
them to get other employment. Their families suffer
from want. Is it any wonder that they have a low
morale? In the words of a recent student of the
situation, "If we can devise nothing better than the
regulation of industrial relations by commercial
principles alone, if we cannot rid ourselves of the
preconception that labor is a commodity, to be taken
from the market when needed and thrown back
when not needed, we may as well prepare ourselves
for a period of progressive disintegration of labor
efficiency." As matters stand, the zealous and faithful worker
is naturally regarded by his fellows as on the em
ployer's side. He gets through with work quickly
which might be made to last longer, and thus in
creases the risk of future unemployment. Further
more, he sets a pace which will be demanded of his
fellows, compelling them also to use up too soon the
available work. This fear of losing their jobs haunts
many wage-earners day and night; it is the cause of
much of their unrest, and of much of their deliberate
slacking. The development of morale requires
security of employment for the faithful worker.
The problem is a difflcult one to solve. But some
solution of it better than the present is demanded,
not only from humane considerations, but for the
building up of an efficient industrial system.
Moreover, underpaid workers can hardly be ex
pected to feel a zest for strenuous production when
they see the proflts of their energy going into the
pockets of their already rich employers. The "scien
tiflc management" of efficiency-engineers is silently
or openly opposed by laborers because they flnd the
speeding up process inuring chiefly, if not wholly, to
the beneflt of the stockholders. Conversely, firms

256 EFFICIENCY
that have increased the wages of their employees have
sometimes found their profits greater than ever,
through the reduction in labor turnover and the in
creased good-will and energy of their workers. What
constitutes a "fair wage" is, of course, always a moot
question. But it can be laid down as an axiom that
such a distribution of the national income as we saw
in an earlier chapter to prevail at present will not
call out anywhere near the maximum of energy from
the nation's workers.
Even, however, if wages are generous, it is doubt
ful if labor will give of its best in the years ahead of
us without a greater stake in the enterprises upon
which it is engaged. We urge the "free play of
initiative" as essential to efficient business. But we
give opportunity for such exercise of initiative to a
comparative few, in our industrial system. Much
more thought and enthusiasm is devoted to work when
the workers have a share in the management. To
quote a recent acute observer, "The wage incentive
and other stimuli, such as profit-sharing, do not make
the workers feel fundamentally interested in their
tasks. If the full productive capacity which is at
this time both consciously and unconsciously with
held from society is ever to be released, labor must
participate in the conduct of industry."
This development of democracy in industry should
only take place as the workers are educated to under
stand both their own individual tasks and the wider
economic principles that underlie the efficient con
duct of business. It must be introduced with caution,
step by step, lest a mass of ignorant laborers bring
disaster upon a business through their advocacy of
mistaken policies. But it is a goal to work toward.
The older conception, that an industry belongs ex-

MOEALE 257
clusively to those who furnish the capital, and may
be run precisely as they please, with the workers
merely a part of the necessary machinery, must give
way to the conception that the workers have an in
herent right to responsibilities and power. Undoubt
edly, this participation by the wage-earners in the
management of our industries, if coupled with proper
education and vocational guidance, and sponsored by
the labor-unions, could greatly accelerate the develop
ment of a scientific technique and result in a great
increase in output.
The fact is that the autocratic conduct of industry,
like the autocratic control of nations, may be benevo
lent and efficient, but cannot be trusted to be so. We
have many instances of paternalistic benevolence —
welfare work, improvement of working conditions,
voluntary profit-sharing or distributing of bonuses —
that hearten the observer of American business. But
on the other hand, we have conspicuous instances
such as the steel industry, where, as a distinguished
economist has recently put it, "the mass of workers
are driven as large numbers of laborers, whether slave
or free, have scarcely before in human history been
driven." It is with such instances in mind that President
Wilson, in his First Inaugural, said, "We have been
proud of our industrial achievements, but we have
not stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human
cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies over
taxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual
cost to the men and women and children upon whom
the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen piti
lessly the years through."
Real efficiency is something bigger than financial
efficiency; the ability to pay big dividends, or even

258' EFFICIENCY
to produce at low cost, is only part of the story. Real
efficiency is the ratio between the human effort and
sacrifice given, and the results in production. To
make cheaper goods at the cost of human happiness
is not real efficiency. Nor, in the long run, can this
kind of financial efficiency last; inhumane methods
are bound to generate dissatisfaction and slackness,
if not actual sabotage. But unhappily, human nature
is shortsighted ; and there is likely to be a perpetual
tendency on the part of employers to slight the
claims of such abstract ideals as Liberty, Equality,
and Democracy, in their interest in immediate finan
cial returns. For this evil there seems to be no per
manent remedy save some form of democratic con
trol over the power of capital.
After all, "the good will of labor is the most valu
able asset in business." It is foolish to expect the
utmost from workers when their attitude is one of
docile, unthinking obedience, still more foolish when
their attitude has become that of resentment and
bitterness. In the chaos of plans and suggestions
and experiments, we must expect a long period of
clashing ideas, with much friction and much loss to
production. But in all our musings on the tangled
situation, we must never forget that the workers of
the country must be fairly treated, treated as self-
respecting citizens; more than that, they must, if
possible, be led to feel that they are fairly treated.
For only so can we have a high morale in business;
and without a high morale we can have neither happi
ness nor efficiency. SUGGESTED READINGS
H. Schneider, Ednication for Industrial Workers.
J. S. Taylor, Handbooh of Vocational Eduoation,
H. S. Person, Industrial Education.

MORALE 259
Meyer Bloomfield, The Vocational Guidance of Youth.
J. R. Commons, Industrial Goodwill.
E. F. Hoxie, Scientific Management and Labor,
Helen Marot, The Creative Impulse in Industry,
Ordway Tead, Instincts in Industry,
H. F. Ward, The New Social Order, Chap. IV.
F. W. Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management.
H. N. Gautt, Organizing for Worh,
F. A. Cleveland, Organized Democracy, Chap. XXXV.
E. M. Friedman, etc., American Problems of Reconstruction,
Chap. VII.
W. C. Eedfield, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 110, p. 411.

CHAPTER XXIII
CONSERVATION
Proud as we Americans are apt to be of our efficiency
in business, it is probably safe to say that, by con
trast with an ideal mechanism of production and
distribution, our existing processes are not more than
ten per cent efficient. Few of our industries are
much more than at the beginning of the development
of their technique. The discoveries and inventions
of modem science, the education of human skill, the
organization of human effort, open endless vistas of
progress before us. Eventually, when every able-
bodied citizen works, a far shorter working day
should suffice for a satisfaction of human needs far
above the present average standard of life. Even
now, if we had exercised a wise prudence in the de
veloping of our national estate, we should be far
richer than we are.
The inertia of the human mind — even of the
American mind — is great. Trade journals and asso
ciations are doing a good deal to advertise the more
efficient methods ; and there is a visible improvement
from year to year. But the opposition to a scientific
organization of the national industry and commerce,
and to the wise conservation of our resources, is more
than a stupid conservatism ; it comes largely from the
deliberate opposition of individuals and groups that
profit by the general loss. The fact is that business
is run too exclusively to benefit the pocket-books of
260

CONSERVATION 261
the owners, and too little as a public service. Unhap
pily, the two ends often conflict.
It is doubtful if America has any more important
duty than to conserve with a reasonable prudence the
natural resources of the continent. Yet we have
actually been wasting these resources with criminal
prodigality. There has been no intelligent, compre
hensive plan for this utilization. The nation's heri
tage has been allowed, for the most part, to fall into
the hands of private owners; and these owners have
been chiefly concerned with making immediate proflts
for themselves rather than with conserving this in
heritance for future generations.
Take, for example, the destruction of our forests.
There were over 800,000,000 acres of forests in this
country when the white men came. Five-sixths of
this area has now been cut over, culled, or burned.
We are now taking twenty-six billion cubic feet of
wood out of our forests annually, and growing only
six billion cubic feet to replace what we take. The
depletion of the lumber supply has already seriously
affected the whole population. Hundreds of thou
sands of needed homes remain unbuilt because of the
high price of lumber. Many industries have been
seriously crippled. A report of the United States
Forest Service, in August, 1920, contains the follow
ing statements: "The timber of the country as a
whole is being used and destroyed four times as fast
as new timber is growing; and the saw timber, the
most valuable and most needed part of the stand,
is being cut flve and one-half times as fast as it is
produced. More than 80,000,000 acres of land that
should be growing timber is unproductive waste,
much more is only partially productive, and flres are
steadily causing further deterioration."

262 EFFICIENCY
The Forest Service deserves the highest praise for
what it has done. But the policy of forest-reserva
tion came too late to save the wanton despoiling of
the greater part of our timber-supply. Methods of
cutting have been exceedingly wasteful, reforestation
has been neglected, and forest fires have been allowed
to complete the destruction. Altogether, about ten
million acres of forest are devastated annually by
fires — a yearly loss of between one and two hundred
million dollars' worth of the national wealth. About
forty billion feet, board measure, of merchantable
lumber are cut annually, and another seventy billion
are wasted in the forest and at the mill in getting it!
In a comparatively few years more, at this rate, our
reserves will be nearly exhausted.
Moreover, an expert has recently estimated that
"in the yellow pine belt the values in rosin, turpen
tine, ethyl alcohol, pine oil, tar, charcoal, and paper-
stock lost in the waste are three or four times the
value of the lumber produced. Enough yellow-pine
pulp-wood is consumed in burners, or left to rot, to
make double the total tonnage of paper produced in
the United States."
This is what our reckless individualism has brought
us to! In Europe, forest-cutting is carefully regu
lated by the various nations, so that there may be as
little waste as possible, and no depletion of the sup
ply. Fortunately, it is never too late to plant forests.
There are hundreds of millions of acres of land in our
country, not suitable for other purposes, upon which
enough timber can be grown to meet our needs. What
is wanted is a comprehensive national policy, strict
regulation of timber-cutting, and a greatly increased
organization for fire-patrol.
Forests can be replaced, in time. But the wasteful

CONSERVATION 263
destruction of oil and coal is irremediable. The
owners of oil-wells, and the distributors of oil, have
made their thousands of millions of dollars; but at
a cost to posterity of which we should be deeply
ashamed. In the words of an American business man
who has studied the situation: "The wastes in our
petroleum industry have been shocking and stupen
dous. Fields are abandoned with from thirty to
ninety per cent of the oil still underground; vast
areas have been ruined by admitting water into the
oil sands; fires take heavy toll. In all, not more than
twenty-five per cent of the oil underground reaches
the pipe-line, and less than half of that is utilized to
the best advantage."
The United States Geological Survey has recently
estimated that our natural oil is already more than
forty per cent exhausted, and that the native supply
is not likely to last more than sixteen years longer.
Our natural gas is likewise approaching exhaustion.
A billion feet a day have been allowed to escape. An
expert has lately told us that we have wasted more
natural gas than we have used.
However accurate these estimates may or may not
be, it is certain that our oil-supplies, and our supplies
of natural gas, will be practically exhausted before
many years have passed. The large wastes represent
a loss of wealth that can never be replaced. So it is,
likewise, with our coal-supplies, which will last
longer, but which will be exhausted, at best, within
a brief period, as human history goes. Mining-
methods are so wasteful that one expert declares that
in West Virginia alone "for twenty years the waste
has been equivalent to dumping each minute a forty-
five ton car of coal into an abyss from which it can
never be recovered."

264 EFFICIENCY
Another student of the situation points out that
"as business is now organized it is actually more
profitable to waste nearly 50 per cent of the coal that
is mined than to preserve it by standardized methods
of operation. If this situation persists it is probable
that the fuel supply of the country will be entirely
exhausted in 100 years. Under the present 'business
like bungling,' approximately 500,000,000 tons of
coal are lost per year. The only remedy is a thor
ough reformation of mining methods by experts in
the field, not by operators who see no further than
their own immediate interests in profits."
Indeed, a large proportion of the coal that is now
transported on the railways ought to be transformed
at the collieries into its various derivatives. The
processes now available yield for every ton of raw
coal up to 1,500 pounds of smokeless, dustless arti
ficial anthracite, together with from 7,000 to 10,000
cubic feet of fuel gas. In addition, valuable by
products are recovered: some twenty or twenty -five
pounds of ammonium sulphate, excellent for fer
tilizer; from one and a half to three gallons of benzol,
a substitute for gasoline; about eight gallons of coal
tar, from which, as we all know, an endless number
of extremely important products are made, including
the aniline dyes, perfumes, fiavors, drugs, and explo
sives. The value of these various products is fifteen
or twenty times the value of the raw coal from which
they were made. The processes by which they are
made are well known. But still these potentialities
are, for the most part, wasted. Even in the plants
where coke and gas are made, the valuable by
products are often lost.
Besides the recovery of these by-products, the plan
of splitting up the coal at the mines has other great

CONSERVATION 265
advantages. For one thing, the mines could then be
operated continuously instead of, as now, with a great
seasonal fluctuation. The average coal-mine is idle
about one-third of the year now, because of the falling
off of demand in the summer and the difficulty of
storing great quantities of coal. Some 600,000 men
work, on an average, about two hundred days in the
year, and are out of work the rest of the time, unless
they can flnd some other job. If the mines were
worked continuously, 400,000 men would suffice ; they
would be steadily employed, and the other 200,000
men released for productive work elsewhere.
Incidentally, the smoke caused by the burning of
raw coal would be eliminated, and the damage done
by smoke to property and health — estimated at over
a billion dollars a year — would be ended. And think
how much pleasanter our cities would be to live in,
and how much more beautiful, if the smoke were
done away with.
Moreover, if the gas produced at the collieries were
piped to the nearest cities, and only the smokeless fuel
shipped, the number of coal-cars needed could be
greatly reduced, and the railways freed from conges
tion. Of course it is profltable to the railway-owners
— who are largely also the mine-owners, or hand in
glove with them — to haul these thousands of carloads
of raw coal, together with the dirt, slate, and water
that the shipments contain, half way across the con
tinent. But it is not economical from the public
point of view.
Indeed, a large part even of this hauling of fuel
would be done away with if it were to be burned near
the collieries for the generation of electric power.
Transmission-wires could take this power to the fac
tories at a great ultimate saving of energy. This

266 EFFICIENCY
same system of transmission would be available for
the hydro-electric power which must ultimately, it
would seem, take the place of power produced from
coal. We must not blame the coal-operators too severely
for their lack of social vision. So long as they can
make large proflts by existing methods they can
hardly be expected to think in terms of the welfare
of the public and of future generations. The guiding-
star of almost all business is — ^proflts. If a public
service is done, well and good. But how many of our
business men sacriflce their opportunities for making
money out of a disinterested regard for the public
good? Some do; and they are greatly to be honored.
But in general, the public must look out for itself.
The public, of course, is mostly ignorant, and kept
in ignorance, of the facts. And all attempts at public
regulation of business are vigorously opposed. Dis
aster is predicted; the evils of democratic inter
ference with private business are eloquently de
scribed. Nevertheless, the public must learn how to
conserve its interests. Until it does, we shall have
not only much proflteering — which is not so serious
a matter, after all, since some one gets the wealth —
but much actual waste of human effort and of valu
able and irreplaceable natural resources.
The growth of democracy in industry will undoubt
edly improve matters. Constant pronouncements are
being made by organized labor, like that of the
twenty-seventh Convention of the United Mine
Workers: "The incomparable natural resources of
America, particularly those of timber and coal, are
being despoiled under a system of production which
wastes from thirty-three to flfty per cent of these re
sources in order that the maximum amount of divi-

CONSERVATION 267
dends may accrue to those who have secured owner
ship of these indispensable commodities. Our coal
resources are the birthright of the American people
for all time to come ; and we hold that it is the imme
diate duty of the American people to prevent the
profligate waste that is taking place under private
ownership of these resources."
The older countries cannot, of course, afford to
waste natural products as lavishly as we. We have
had so much to use that we have not realized that we
were squandering our inheritance. But the day of
reckoning is drawing near. Our grandchildren will
bitterly reprove our selflsh shortsightedness. We
must, then, flnd men of vision, experts in their several
flelds. We must draw up a national plan for the
prudent utilization of the resources that remain to
us, and insist that private interests subordinate them
selves to this plan.
Such a comprehensive plan formed a part of the
program of neither of the great political parties at
the last election; we have a way, common to all
democracies, of getting excited over trivial issues and
ignoring the really vital matters. No doubt there are
those who exercise their skill in thus diverting public
attention, for their own reasons. But if the poli
ticians will not take up this matter, the ear of the
public must be reached by other channels, that we
may salvage what remains to us of our fast vanishing
heritage. We should, for one thing, greatly accelerate the
rate at which our water-power is being developed, in
order to save our dwindling supplies of coal. At
present less than flve per cent of our available water-
power is utilized. The total supply is estimated at
two hundred million horse-power — enough energy to

268 EFFICIENCY
do all the present mechanical work of the country,
but not enough for all its future needs. There is peat
available, there is lignite; but the supply of these is
likewise limited. Where future generations will get
all the energy they need, and the heat, and the light,
no one now can say. All the more reason, then, for
making our coal last as long as possible.
A few great corporations have been buying up
water-power sites; and there are signs that we may
have before very long a gigantic water-power trust,
which, when oil and coal are approaching exhaustion,
might easily become the dominating power in Ameri
can industry. For without power nothing can be
done. It is of the utmost importance that the nation
should keep its water-power under public control,
that it may be utilized in the public interest instead
of for the beneflt of a small group of people.
Parallel with water-power development should go
the effort to make our streams navigable, and create
a system of connecting canals. Water-borne traffic
consumes less than half as much energy as freight
carried by rail. If at the same time we improve our
highways — only about twelve per cent of our roads
are as yet improved by any sort of surfacing — we can
save many hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
In the face of all this need for work, the continual
involuntary unemployment of thousands of men
caused by the clumsiness of our industrial system is
seen to have not only a personal but a public aspect.
We need the labors of these men, at once, and badly.
The term conservation may well be stretched to
include the conservation of public health and life,
and all conservation of human effort. The move
ments to eliminate preventable accidents, to eradicate
the diseases that can be stamped out by concentrated

aONSERVATION 269
control, the child-labor movement, the spread of the
use of labor-saving devices, the development of scien
tific management, the diminishing of friction between
the members of the industrial mechanism — all this,
and much more, might be covered by the term. But
these movements we have discussed in other chapters.
What we are here specifically concerned with is the
prudent use of the raw materials with which nature
has so generously endowed us.
The leaders of our national life have not failed to
warn us of our extravagance. Roosevelt gave stren
uous efforts to make Conservation one of our Ameri
can ideals. "It is time we should wake up the coun
try," he said in 1910, "to the need of using foresight
and common sense as regards our natural resources.
We of this generation hold the land in part for the
use of the next generation and not exclusively for our
own selfish enjoyment."
Gifford Pinchot, former chief forester of the United
States, has put the case even more trenchantly : "We
are prosperous because our forefathers bequeathed
to us a land of marvellous resources. Shall we con
serve those resources, and in our turn transmit them,
still unexhausted, to our descendants? Unless we do,
those who come after us will have to pay the price of
misery, degradation and failure for the progress and
prosperity of our day. . . . Business prudence and
business common-sense indicate as strongly as any
thing can the absolute necessity of a change in point
of view on the part of the people of the United States
regarding their natural resources. The way we have
been handling them is not good business. Purely on
the side of dollars and cents, it is not good business
to kill the goose that lays the golden egg — to bum up
half our forests, to waste our coal, and to remove

270 EFFICIENCY
from under the feet of those who are coming after
us the opportunity for equal happiness with our
selves." As this chapter is being revised for the press, the
February, 1921, number of the Atlantic Monthly
appears, with a vigorous article by a chemical engi
neer of wide experience, who sums up his conclusions
as follows: "We need sadly to develop a national
common-sense, and to apply it to the spending of our
natural resources, which are the basis of our national
wealth. More than ever before is the whole world
under a heavy responsibility to use its resources
wisely; and the major portion of that burden falls
upon us who are the most richly endowed of all. . . .
We must substitute co-ordinated development by
planning for opportunist development designed pri
marily for the enrichment of the individual."
SUGGESTED READINGS
C. R. Van Hise, The Conservation of Natural Resources in the
United States.
Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation.
H. J. Spooner, Wealth from Waste.
E. Cronau, Our Wasteful Nation.
American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, The Con
servation of Natural Resources,
H. M. Gregory, Checking the Waste.
J. J. Hill, Highways of Progress,
J. H. Patton, The Natural Resources of the United States.
O. W. Price, The Land We Live In.
C. G. Gilbert and J. E. Pogue, The Energy Resources of the
United States,
Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism: Chapters on
Natural Resources, Conservation.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE COMMON GOOD
The selfishness and shortsightedness that have shown
themselves so flagrantly in the exploitation of our
natural resources are to be found in a hundred ways
impeding the socially efficient conduct of American
business. Money is thrown into ventures that prom
ise quick returns, and withheld from undertakings
far more imperative from the public point of view.
The bankers, who lend the funds for new enterprises,
enlargements of plant, or production for future sale,
have it within their power to considerable extent to
favor or withhold favor at their discretion. The peo
ple as a whole, and their representatives, have little
opportunity to decide whether, for example, agricul
ture or manufacturing or transportation should be
aided with credit, whether housing should be encour
aged, whether the savings of the American people
should be invested in this country or abroad. Yet
these are matters that vitally concern the nation as
a whole.Take the matter of housing. For several years we
have been in dire need of hundreds of thousands of
homes. The building of private houses, apartments,
and tenements has fallen far behind the growth in
population. The result is a widespread discomfort,
much serious inconvenience, and, for the poor, an
overcrowding that is undermining the health and the
morals of a considerable section of the population.
271

272 EFFICIENCY
Yet theatres and garages have been going up in un
precedented numbers; money has poured into for
eign investment in a great volume, lured by the low
exchange rates; all sorts of socially unnecessary
undertakings have been launched. The country is
prosperous, but it apparently can not get, under the
present management of its savings, the homes it
imperatively needs.
Moreover, in the conduct of a given business, the
criterion of success has been the amount of profits
it has paid to its stockholders, rather than the
service it has rendered to the public. Recently an
advertising circular of a well-known moving-picture
concern stated, with pride, that it had taken in five
million dollars in less than three years from an origi
nal investment of $114,000. In other words, movie
patrons had been made to pay for their seats enough
more than the cost of producing and showing these
pictures to pile up this yield to the producers. But
this is not social efficiency, it is merely efficiency in
making money for a few people by charging unneces
sarily high rates to the rest of the people.
So, to take another example, has it been in life-
insurance. The companies pay high salaries to their
officers and high commissions to their agents, with
the result that fifteen per cent cost of doing business
has been considered reasonable. The United States
government during the war insured four million
Americans at an overhead cost of less than two per
cent. It is needless to multiply instances. Mr. Roger
Babson, the conservative financier, has expressed the
point of the matter in the following words: "The
dominant thought in our whole industrial machinery
is not how we can produce the most, but how we can
profit the most,"

THE COMMON GOOD 273
Individual energy and initiative in business must
indeed be encouraged. But the public must find ways
to control that energy and initiative in the interests of
the common good. The laissez-faire policy has shown
its insufficiency. It is not merely the selfishness of
men that needs checking, it is their honest stupidity,
their shortsighted folly. Every year there are many
thousands of business failures in this country. These
usually involve economic waste and confusion, un
employment, a partial paralysis of the industrial-
commercial system, as well as an incalculable amount
of anxiety and despair. The great majority of sui
cides are due to business reverses; and suicides are
increasing in this country far faster than the popula
tion. It is clear, from every angle, that private busi
ness must be far more carefully watched and con
trolled than heretofore.
It is not that we are fundamentally a selfish people.
On the contrary, no people are more generous than
we in giving to the needy. The record of our philan
thropies astonishes the world. But this is still, for
the most part, private altruism; "business is busi
ness," still. And it can hardly be otherwise, if it is
left free from legal control. For the contagion of
profit-making is inevitably irresistible to most par
ticipants in the struggle. It is not merely for the
money, it is for the pride in success; and success,
according to present standards, means large profits.
The business man who puts the public service first
is in danger of being elbowed out by some less scru
pulous rival. How can one employer refuse to use
child-labor when his rivals, by using it, are under
selling him? Or when the stockholders, whose servant
he is, are demanding dividends as large as those his
rivals produce? The game of business as it is played

274 EFFICIENCY
at present is a hard game; and unless one is excep
tionally able or favorably situated, one must play it
according to the accepted rules. If the results are
often socially undesirable, the rules of the game must
be altered.
Our fathers were so afraid of governmental tyranny
that they wanted the power of the State as slight as
possible. But the tyranny of today is not the tyranny
of the State, it is the tyranny of money-making busi
ness. "Don't deceive yourselves for a moment,"
President Wilson has written, "as to the power of
the great interests which now dominate our develop
ment. They are so great that it is almost an open
question whether the government of the United States
can dominate them or not." In the pioneer days, all
were fairly equal in possessions and opportunities;
free land was available for every one ; the State could
leave them to work out their individual salvation.
Today our lives have become endlessly interlinked;
and the men who hold strategic positions have enor
mous power over our pocketbooks and our lives. The
personal morality of the older preaching must he
supplemented by a "social gospel," a doctrine of
common responsibility for the common welfare.
President Wilson, even when championing the
"new freedom," pointed out that freedom alone is an
insufficient ideal. "The individual is caught in a
great confused nexus of all sorts of complicated cir
cumstances ; and to let him alone is to leave him help
less as against the obstacles with which he has to
contend ; and therefore, law in our day must come to
the assistance of the individual." The weak must be
protected against the strong, the scrupulous against
the unscrupulous. And nothing but law can accom
plish this.

THE COMMON GOOD 275
For we must not expect a new social-mindedness to
replace the selfishness in men's hearts through the
mere preaching of a gospel of repentance. Exhorta
tion will accomplish little, in the face of daily temp
tation and the sight of others "making their pile."
Moreover, it is not right to expect any business man
to run the risk of failure — itself a social loss —
through trying to live by a higher code than his
fellows observe. No, the more socially-minded con
duct of business will come only through the patient
construction of a system of guiding and restrain
ing laws. This legislation will not be irksome to
the socially-minded, who will see its value, but it
will restrain the unscrupulous and the greedy from
conduct which tends to lower the standard of practice
all along the line.
We must recognize the fact that the capital which
is invested in business has come out of the pockets
of the people as a whole. For example, the Federal
Trade Commission recently pointed out the origin
of the capitalization of the meat-packing concerns.
One of these concerns has put into its business about
fourteen million dollars got from the sale of stocks
and bonds, and about a hundred and forty million
dollars gathered from the profits on sales. This is
the public's share of the investment — about ninety
per cent. Add to this the fact that the site-value of
their plant has increased enormously owing to the
growth in population, and we must realize that most
of this property, though legally and legitimately
theirs, has been contributed by the public, and must,
therefore, be administered in the public interest.
Most business men themselves, if they are educated
to realize the social harmfulness of certain practices,
will vote for laws to prohibit them, although if there

276 EFFICIENCY
is no law they will not refrain therefrom. This is
partly because the law will restrict the other fellow
too; and the harmfulness of his practices is more
apparent to us than that of our own. But it is also
because each of us has two selves; and the more
public-minded self, which votes, is often willing to
erect barriers to restrain the more individualistic
self which the stress of business fosters. Such bar
riers to selfishness, when imposed not by an auto
cratic government upon its subjects but by free men
upon themselves, are absolutely necessary steps in
social progress. By this blocking of the pathways
to anti-social activity, many a man whose impulses
would have seized upon opportunities for exploitation
will find perforce other channels for his activity that
will lead him into a more useful and actually happier
life. The cry of "hands off" is raised, to be sure, by many
business men; and not wholly for selfish reasons.
They remind us of our national ideal of Liberty, and
point to the proud record of our individualistic tra
dition. But they forget that the ideal of Liberty
exists to protect the weak, and must not be used to
justify the strong in so acting as to impair the common
good. Liberty means the right not to be exploited,
not the right to exploit others. And individualism
must mean the right of every citizen to have his share
in determining what is for the public good, not the
right of a single class of people to run the country's
business in their private interest.
From another angle, individualism is seen to be
always a half-truth ; our great achievements have been
accomplished quite as truly through our power of
organization and mutual adjustment as through our
high degree of individual energy. What is needed now

THE COMMON GOOD 277
is to increase the span of organization and mutual
adjustment until it includes the whole nation, instead
of leaving it a mere organization of business men for
purely private ends.
True, legislation has often been ill-considered and
blundering. Resentment at the selfishness of many
of the trusts has crystallized in laws which have some
times needlessly hampered the organization and effi
ciency of industry. Loosely-devised statutes, con
strued this way and that by different judges, have
given opportunity for subterfuge and chicane. Never
theless, the work must go on. If laws are harmful,
they must be improved. Ways must be found to en
courage industrial progress while restricting unscru
pulous and anti-social practices — ^whatever is obvi
ously unfair to business rivals, to employees, or to the
public. It is inevitable that the devising of the new
controls over industry should be experimental and
sometimes unfortunate in their results. Political
democracy will require perhaps centuries yet to grope
its way toward the best attainable forms of public
control. But the only way out is through. And oppo
sition to the great movement only creates friction and
retards its achievement.
The principle of public control in the interest of the
common good extends, of course, far beyond the field
of industry, though that is its most important sphere
of application. We have recently seen the successful
consummation of the Prohibition Movement, which has
interfered with the personal habits of millions. There
can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who has studied
the physiological and psychological effects of alcohol
that our people are vastly better off, and on the whole
and in the end far happier, to do without that nar
cotic. This voluntary self-abnegation on the part of

278 EFFICIENCY
a great nation is almost unexampled in history, and an
event of which we may well be proud. There is no
more reason to declaim against the prohibition of
alcohol than against the prohibition of the opium and
cocaine derivatives. Any drug that seriously under
mines the health and efficiency of our people must be
banished as rigidly as possible, however pleasant its
use may be to many.
But the precedent established by the Eighteenth
Amendment has its dangerous side. The majority —
even the sweeping majorities needed to pass an amend
ment to the Constitution — should beware of interfer
ing more than is absolutely necessary with the per
sonal morals of individuals. For not only does such
interference awaken resentment and excite against
itself the passion for liberty, but there is also the
danger of ignoring individual needs, repressing
desirable variations in conduct, and producing a
stereotyped and conventional conformity instead of
the variety of experiments and variations which is
the fertile seed-bed of progress. In general, it may
be said that in the spheres wherein success and hap
piness depend largely upon organization and mutual
adaptation, as notably in industry, a great deal of
restriction upon individual rights is necessary;
whereas in the fleld of personal habits and morals,
religious beliefs and worship, artistic activity, and
intellectual research and discussion, only the prac
tices universally recognized as vicious, or shown by
scientiflc investigation to be seriously harmful, should
be forbidden.
The problem of individualism vs. social control is
an intricate one, to which no glib solution is possible.
Every case must be decided upon its merits. In some
cases the joys and potentialities of unrestricted

THE COMMON GOOD 279
liberty are more precious, in other cases the public
need must weigh the heavier in the balance. Hith
erto, in America, we have worshipped individualism,
and — according to the judgment of nearly all foreign
observers — lacked "statemindedness," the willingness
to subordinate ourselves to the general welfare.
But the Great War, with its conscription of men and
money, and its steam-rollering of minority opinions,
revealed a hitherto unrealized willingness to exercise
compulsion in what the overwhelming majority deems
the public interest. That this new sense of the moral
and legal precedence of public over private interests
may be used for good rather than unfortunate ends
needs our utmost vigilance.
Washington, in a letter to the Constitutional Con
vention, pointed out that "individuals entering into
society must give up a share of liberty to presei've the
rest." To learn to subordinate sectional to national
interests has taken us many years; the lesson was
driven home by the crushing defeat of the Secession
movement, but it has not yet been thoroughly learned.
Bills are constantly introduced into Congress that
favor one section of the country at the expense of
the country as a whole. Projects of obvious beneflt
to the nation are blocked because of the opposition of
certain States or cities that fear the diversion of
their trade or the diminution of their prestige. We
still lack such a sense of solidarity as would ensure
us against this geographical selfishness.
A century or so ago the several States were prac
tically self-sufficing ; comparatively few undertakings
crossed their boundaries. Now State lines mean
almost nothing. Our railways, telegraphs, tele
phones, have bound us together in one industrial and
political unit. It remains for us to work out a

280 EFFICIENCY
greater harmony between State laws. As it is, to
quote a recent writer, "In one State you may do busi
ness for which in another State you would go to jail;
in one you may be married and crazy, in another
single and sane." This variety in codes is of great
educative value; but in the cases mentioned, and in
other respects, it is high time for us to seek a greater
national uniformity. The American of today seldom
thinks of himself as first a citizen of New York, or
Illinois; he is first and foremost a citizen of the
United States, and only secondarily a citizen of the
particular State in which he happens to reside. It is
an anomaly, then, that the disparities in State laws
should ever produce such confusion and injustice as
that to which the sentence above quoted alludes.
Geographical sectionalism is probably waning.
But we must beware lest a class or occupational sec
tionalism take its place. There are powerful divisive
forces at work. The development of Big Business
has pushed the employer class and the wage-earners
farther apart; they live differently, have different
interests, read different newspapers, think differently,
and perhaps in an increasing degree fail to under
stand one another and to work together as comple
mentary elements in one harmonious industrial
scheme. Thus America, at first so homogeneous in her social
order, now faces the old-world problem of class-
stratification. Fifth Avenue is far from Second
Avenue, Beacon Street from the North End. If this
nation ever loses its unity it will be through a hori
zontal split between the property-owning classes and
propertyless labor. To avert such a calamity must
be our constant aim and prayer. We should remem
ber Roosevelt's solemn words : "Other republics have

THE COMMON GOOD 281
failed because the citizens gradually grew to consider
the interests of the class against the whole; for, when
such was the case, it mattered not whether the poor
plundered the rich or the rich exploited the poor ; in
either case the end of the republic was at hand. We
are resolute not to fall into such a pit. This great
Republic of ours shall never become the government
of a plutocracy and it shall never become the govern
ment of a mob."
The way of our duty lies clearly in cultivating the
sense of common American ideals as transcending the
interests of group or class. Party loyalty must cease
to be blind or selfish ; it must be a matter of tempo
rary union to achieve some definite political ends
seriously believed to be for the general good. Special
interests must cease to use their wealth and power to
defeat measures that will make for the public welfare.
The conscious aim of both parties to the industrial
struggle must be to work out an industrial system
both just and efficient. Or — since it is Utopian to
expect such a voluntarily maintained wide-spread
subordination of private and group interests — the
public must watch its component groups, and by a
series of carefully devised checks and restraints,
reduce to a minimum their power to thwart the
common good.
Finally, in all sorts of positive ways, the people,
through their legislators, must forward the general
happiness. We already provide parks and play
grounds, hospitals and asylums, public schools and
universities, libraries and museums, and many other
privileges, freely to every American citizen. All sorts
of other public benefits are being discussed — health
and old age insurance, maternity benefits, public em
ployment for the unemployed, and the like. Each of

282 EFFICIENCY
these projects must be accepted or rejected on its par
ticular merits. But we have definitely abandoned the
conception that the function of government is purely
negative, to prevent wrongdoing. Our government is
the American people using its sovereign power to
forward in every possible way the common good. The
record of what our government already does for us
is an inspiring one ; and doubtless the future will see
its beneficent activity extended in many directions.
May its aim ever be, not sectional advantage, not
class control, not the advancement of special inter
ests, but the good of the American people as a whole !
SUGGESTED READINGS
Webster's Reply to Haynes, Jan. 26, 1830 (Eeprinted in Foer
ster and Pierson, op. cit., p. 17).
John Fiske, American Political Ideas, II.
James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Book I, Chapters
XXIX, XXX.
Theodore Eoosevelt, The New Nationalism: chapters on The
Nation and The States.
J. H. Tufts, Our Democracy, Chapters XVIII-XXI.
C. E. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, Chapters VIII,
X.
Ida Tarbell, New Ideals in Business,
Gerald Stanley Lee, We,
E. D. Page, etc.. Morals in Modern Business,
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, Chapter XXVII.
H. R. Seager, Social Insurance,
J. B. and J. M. Clark, Control of the Trusts,
Florence Kelley, Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation.
E. A. Eoss, Social Control.
J. W. Jenks, Government Action for Social Welfare.
F. L. Stetson, in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 110, p. 27.
Arthur Euhl, in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 123, p. 686.

PART FIVE
PATRIOTISM

CHAPTER XXV
AMERICA FIRST
Washington, in his Farewell Address, said to his
countrymen : "Citizens, by birth or choice, of a com
mon country, that country has a right to concentrate
your affections."
The American of today yields to no one in patriot
ism ; certainly we make more noise about it than any
other nation ! The fact that we are a composite peo
ple, gathered here from many lands with mutually
hostile traditions, has not worked to make us less
united, or less loyal to this country of our birth or
adoption. On the contrary, there is actually, beyond
doubt, a greater spiritual homogeneity here than in
most of those older lands. It is not common ancestry
that makes national unity, it is common ideals, and
common hopes. The Great War showed that men
of all racial stocks were equally eager to give their
money, their labor, and their lives to the national
service. There are varying degrees of sympathy for,
or hostility toward, the several nations of the old
world ; but for us all it is "America first."
There is, indeed, in some quarters, a distrust of
this patriotic sentiment. Here and there a band of
"internationalists" disavow it. A small group of
pacifists, among them men of the highest motives, and
a few leaders of distinction, speak of the nationalistic
emotion as a primitive and dangerous passion, to be
superseded by the boundaryless brotherhood of man.
285

286 PATRIOTISM
And we must all recognize the force of their argu
ments. Patriotism often functions as a collective
selfishness, more disastrous by far than individual
selfishness. It easily degenerates into chauvinism,
or, as we call it, jingoism, inspiring men with the lust
of conquest, provoking jealousy and hatred of other
nations, impeding the unification of mankind. If it
were not for patriotism, it would be impossible to
get the peoples to go to war with one another. And
when we see the suffering and the ruin that war has
brought to man, we may well ask if the value of
patriotism can counterbalance this harm.
Even when patriotism is not truculent it is —
speaking in nationalistic terms — self-centered. It
tends to ignore the achievements, to dislike the man
ners and morals of other peoples. It thinks of them
as "foreigners," that is, as being essentially different
from us, and prefers to believe that everything we do
is better than what they do, that every opinion we
hold is truer than theirs. Thus it tends to be pro
vincial, to erect barriers that impede the free ex
change of ideas and ideals, and to deprive each nation,
to some extent, of what the other nations could con
tribute to its development.
When patriotism goes even farther in this direction
and becomes "spread-eagleism," it is insufferable.
The boastful American, bragging endlessly of his
country's prosperity and power, curling his lips
patronizingly at the lower buildings or slower trains
or less comfortable hotels of some foreign land, and
making it plain that he will be thankful to get back
to "God's own country," brings us into serious dis
repute. As a matter of fact, while our civilization is
in some respects superior to that of most other coun
tries, it is in other respects inferior; we have much

AMERICA FIRST 287
to learn as well as much to teach. And the compla
cent self-satisfaction of the unmannerly tourist is
one of the developments of our national life of which
we have least reason to be proud.
Even worse is the bigotry that, parading under the
cloak of patriotism, seeks to stamp out all criticism
of our contemporary institutions or of the policies of
the party in power, on the ground that such criticism
is "unpatriotic." During a time of war this intoler
ance of minority opinions is less inexcusable; the
successful prosecution of the war may require a tem
porary willingness to submerge differences and unite
on the policy that approves itself to the majority.
But even then, the suppression of criticism is highly
dangerous. Administrations commit serious blunders
for the lack of the light that such criticism might
have shed. And since even a democracy may be led
into an unrighteous or inexpedient war, the right to
discuss the whole matter with perfect freedom is of
the utmost importance. It takes courage to maintain
unpopular opinions, it takes individuality to think
up new ideas; such courage and individuality are
among our best assets, and should be encouraged
rather than repressed. We are far too apt to swing
with the tide, to be carried off our feet by a wave of
popular feeling, or to stick in the rut of unthinking
habit. Men who differ from the majority by no means
always do so from selfish or traitorous motives; on
the contrary, they may be actuated by ideals far
higher than those of their persecutors.
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton recently wrote, "I have
passed the great part of my life in criticizing and
condemning the existing rulers and institutions of
my country : I think it is infinitely the most patriotic
thing that a man can do." The real anti-patriots

288 PATEIOTISM
are not the critics and would-be reformers of our
institutions, not those who hold unpopular views
or oppose contemporary policies, but rather the ill-
mannered and truculent, who give us a bad name
among neighboring peoples or inflame our feelings
against them ; the advocates of "national expansion,"
who would have us trample on the rights of other
nations to increase our own power and prosperity;
the idle and frivolous, who fail to contribute their
share to the nation's work ; the proflteers, who think
in terms of their own pocket-books instead of in terms
of public service; the groups that put sectional or
class interests above the national interest and think
in terms of group-loyalty rather than in terms of the
common good.
Professor J. M. Mecklin, in a recent volume, points
out that the American "is patriotic. But the state
that elicits his patriotism is a hazy idealistic entity
that bears about the same relation to actual politics
that the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount does to
the 'rules of the game' in business. These shadowy
ideals find expression at Fourth of July celebrations,
or are evoked by the name of Lincoln or the sight
of the flag. Seldom do they provide moral dynamic
in dealing with the problems of the immediate poli
tical situation."
There is no doubt that as a people we are lacking,
as Mr. Wells and many other observers have pointed
out, in "state-mindedness." The complacency with
which we have allowed politics to become the happy
hunting-ground of self-seeking politicians, or with
which we have allowed our precious natural resources
to be recklessly wasted, are examples of this ineffec
tiveness of our patriotic emotions. Our patriotism
has been too largely oratorical, a pride in what our

AMERICA FIRST 289
fathers did, rather than a concrete impulse to make
sacriflces ourselves for our country. Our young men
are, indeed, ready to die for their country, ready to
serve her unselflshly in time of war. But in the ordin
ary times of peace there seems to be too often a hiatus
between their sentiment of patriotism and the duties
and sacriflces to which it should lead them.
The fact is, that patriotism, like religion and love
and every other great passion, is capable of great
good and of great harm. Edith Cavell, as she went to
her death, uttered four words which many people
have declared the greatest saying of the war —
"Patriotism is not enough." The critics of patriotism
are right, with reference to the wrong kind of patriot
ism, the kind that is nothing but a larger egotism, a
bias of the emotions and the judgment, an intolerant
bigotry, a latent hostility to other peoples, or a ruth-
lessness in attaining national ends. But on the other
hand, at its best it is one of the noblest sentiments,
and far too valuable a motive force to be allowed to
wane. Just in itself, as a joy and addition to life, it is
worth much to us. Edward Everett Hale's familiar
story, "The Man Without a Country," drives home
this truth. We have many beautiful mountains and
seas, rivers, lakes, cities, and park-like countrysides;
we may well be passionately attached to the land and
sing with genuine emotion "I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills." We have splendid
public buildings, noble works of art and literature.
We have a roll-call of heroes of which we may be
deeply proud. We have traditions of high idealism
which should be a stimulus to the apathetic and a
rebuke to the selflsh. To glory in all this is our right
and our high privilege.

290 PATRIOTISM
What a pity then, that we Americans should often
seem to glory above all else in our prosperity and
wealth, our mere size and power! It is not particu
larly to our credit that our ancestors found an empty
and unexploited continent awaiting them, or that this
abundance of free land and rich natural resources
has made us richer than the older, crowded nations.
Nor is it particularly to our merit that we have been
able to keep relatively free from wars, with the oceans
protecting us on either side. The question is rather.
What have we done with this lavish wealth, this un
exampled opportunity? Are we building therewith a
beautiful, brotherly, happy civilization? We have
much of which to be ashamed. Pride is legitimate,
and desirable ; but it should be discriminating, evoked
by what is really deserving of pride, and coupled
with a genuine humility as we consider our faults
and face the unformed future.
Above all, we must make our patriotism "not the
will to power but the will to serve." We should be
proud to be honorable, generous, and conciliatory.
We should desire for our country not its enrichment
or power at the expense of other peoples, but such
achievements as will redound to our common advan
tage. Our rivalry should be a rivalry in service. In
the words of Mr. Stuart Sherman, "the new type of
patriot no longer cries 'My country against the
world I' but 'My country for the world !' "
Roosevelt did much to awaken this higher form of
patriotism. "So far," he once wrote, "from patriot
ism being inconsistent with a proper regard for the
rights of other nations, I hold that the true patriot,
who is as jealous of the national honor as a gentleman
of his own honor, will be careful to see that the nation
neither inflicts nor suffers wrong, just as a gentleman

AMEEICA FIEST 291
scorns equally to wrong others or to suffer others
to wrong him." And again, "True patriotism carries
with it not hostility to other nations, but a quickened
sense of responsible good-will towards other nations."
Admiral Decatur is reported to have said, in words
that have become famous, "Our country! In her
intercourse with foreign nations may she be always
in the right; but our country, right or wrong!" In a
very real sense we can all say Amen ! to these words.
Whatever wrongs our country may commit, she is still
our country, and we shall love and serve her with un
diminished ardor. But if these words mean that we
should back an iniquitous policy, if our officials
should be led into it, or even if a temporary popular
majority should approve it, they are sinister words,
deserving the sternest rebuke. Precisely the most
patriotic service, on such an occasion, would consist
in opposing to the last ditch the act that in our opinion
would stain the national honor. Our country, right
or wrong, yes; but if our country seems to you or to
me to be, in any instance, in the wrong, it is our
sacred duty not to connive at her wrongdoing, but
to use whatever infinitesimal influence we may have
in the effort to turn her back to the right, that her
record may be untarnished and her name held in high
honor among nations.
It is an old fallacy that a nation's honor requires
it to be touchy and quick to resentment, that the way
for it to be great is through making itself feared. It
should be the pride of America that in spite of her
great strength she is not feared but loved. It should
be our boast that in our dealings with other countries
we are always generous, always considerate of their
interests as well as of our own ; that we practice no
secret intrigues, seek to get the advantage of no one,

292 PATEIOTISM
but do unto other nations as we would have them do
unto us. If this reputation were everywhere to be
ours, how proud we should be to be Americans!
On the whole, as compared with the world's long
history of international intrigue and chicane, our
record is excellent. Secretary Hay stated our policy
as follows: "The principles which have guided us
have been of limpid simplicity . . . We have set no
traps ; we have wasted no time in evading the imagin
ary traps of others . . . There might be worse repu
tations for a country to acquire than that of always
speaking the truth, and always expecting it from
others. In bargaining we have tried not to get the
worst of the deal, always remembering however, that
the best bargains are those that satisfy both sides
. . . Let us hope we may never be big enough to out
grow our conscience."
This statement, by one of our greatest Secretaries
of State, of his working ideal, carries out the admoni
tion of Washington : "Our politics must have for its
basis the purest principles of private morality; and
the same virtues which commend the good man to the
esteem of his fellows must commend our republic to
the esteem of the world." President Wilson voiced
this same ideal in an address to Congress, when he
said, "We are at the beginning of an age in which
it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct
and responsibility for wrong done shall be observed
among nations and their governments that are ob
served among individual citizens of civilized states."
Magnanimity and absence of rancor, courtesy
toward our neighbors, a readiness to listen to what
other peoples have to say, and a serious effort to
understand them and adjust our needs to theirs, have
distinguished the greatest Americans, and made

AMERICA FIRST 293
them not only national heroes but men whom all the
world delights to honor. But the path is not easy
to tread; and we must be constantly on our guard
lest we lapse from this high ideal. It is easy to see
the motes in our neighbors' eyes; their traditions
and problems are not ours, and we can readily per
suade ourselves that we should have been juster,
more disinterested, more generous, in such and such
a case, than they. It would better behoove us to listen
with open minds to the criticisms of our own conduct
on the part of these others. For abstract ideals easily
go by the board in the face of concrete exigencies;
and to see ourselves as others see us is a salutary
discipline. In a word, it is not more patriotism quantitatively
that we need, but a higher quality of patriotism ; not
the sort of patriotism that has a chip on its shoulder,
but the sort that seeks to make our nation first in
justice, honor, and international service. And even
more imperatively, the sort of patriotism that will
make us conscious of our national solidarity, and glad
to sacrifice our personal interests to the greatest wel
fare of our people as a whole. "America first" should
mean precisely that; — the welfare of our country be
fore our personal advantage. In the words of Mr.
Elihu Root, "True love of country means a little
different feeling toward every American because he
is an American. It means a desire that every Ameri
can shall be prosperous; it means kindly considera
tion for his opinions, for his views, for his interests,
for his prejudices, and charity for his follies and his
errors." This sort of patriotism will not develop unaided,
from Fourth of July celebrations and salutations of
the flag. It must be carefully fostered, by systematic

294 PATEIOTISM
and skillful training. It requires the vigilance of
every high-minded citizen to keep it from lapsing into
its more primitive forms. But if it can be developed
in masses of our countrymen into the noble passion
that it has been in our greatest leaders, it will be a
dynamic of incalculable power and beneflcence.
"Out of a land of comfort and of ease.
Holding for conscience' sake the world well lost.
Our dauntless fathers dared the winter seas.
The savage arrow, and the hungry frost,
Xnowing the danger, counting well the cost.
The legend of their courage we recall —
We thrill with pride to know that in our veins
The glow of that heroic blood remains.
We thrill — and that is all.
"We pile our heroes' cairns, each year a stone;
It is our joy the starry flag to wave
For those who died for freedom of our own
And those who died for freedom of the slave.
Laying our laurel on each patriot's grave.
Proudly we tell of liberty's great price
And echo with a glibness undismayed
Words bled from the deep hearts of those who paid.
Shall not their blood suffice?
"We who have grown so perfect in the word.
Where is the holy lightning of the deed?
We of the facile heart so quickly stirred
And soothed with dreams ere it has time to bleed,
Vainly we call ourselves the Pilgrim seed —
Where is the Pilgrim soul that braved the sea
For a pure conscience ? God awake the men
Of power to make America again
A country of the free!"
SUGGESTED READINGS
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,
J. M. Gathany, ed., American Patriotism in Prose and Verse.
G. K. Chesterton, Patriotism', in The Defendant.
George Santayana, Reason in Society, Chap. VII.
E. B. Perry, The Free Man and the Soldier, Chap. III.

AMERICA FIRST 295
Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals, Chap, V.
Eabindranath Tagore, Nationalism.
GifEord Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation, XII.
L. A. Mead, Patriotism and the New Internationalism.
I. W. Howerth, in Educational Review, vol. 44, p. 13. (Ee
printed in Fulton, op. cit., p. 210).
Arthur Bullard, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 119, p. 491.
F. M. Stawell, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 25, p. 292.
Alfred Jordan, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 15, p. 1.

CHAPTER XXVI
peaceableness
A patriotic people need not be militant ; and in spite
of the half dozen wars that we have waged during the
brief span of our national life, we are a peace-loving
folk. We have tried to observe Washington's injunc
tion to "observe good faith and justice toward all na
tions," and to live in relations of mutual esteem and
good will with the rest of the world.
We cannot control the spirit of other nations. But
to no small extent, their attitude toward us will be
determined by our attitude toward them. Emerson
thus expressed the fearlessness with which a peace-
loving people faces the future : "Whenever we see the
doctrine of peace embraced by a nation, we may be
assured that it will not be one that invites injury;
but one, on the contrary, which has a friend in the
bottom of the heart of every man, even of the violent
and the base ; one against which no weapon can pros
per; one which is looked upon as the asylum of the
human race and has the tears and the blessings of
mankind." Our hatred of war results from no lack of daring or
ambition. On the contrary, our people have sprung
from the more adventurous and hardy of the Old
World, who had the courage and persistence to cross
the ocean and make a new life for themselves in a far
away land. When we have had to face war we have
fought as flercely and as fearlessly as any. But our
296

PEACEABLENESS 297
composite origin, our distance from the ancient feuds
of Europe, and the relative security afforded by our
isolation, have given us a calmer outlook and enabled
us to see war for the horror that it is. It was our
General Sherman whose dictum "War is hell" has
become so famous. And the boys who made such a
gallant record for America on the flelds of France
have for the most part come home resolved that if they
can help it, no such horror shall recur.
But the American spirit is not that of non-resis
tance to evil. We were very reluctant, as a people, to
enter the Great War;' but the day came when it
seemed a worse evil to stay out than to go in. There
are wrongs so intolerable that even the horrors of war
are to be preferred. And we must face the fact that
such a situation may, possibly, arise again. If an
aggressive military imperialism again seeks to enslave
a weaker country, to seize its territory, crush its peo
ples' spirit, and plunder its resources for its own ag
grandizement, and if no other way than war seems
open to prevent that black and cruel tyranny, then
war there must be again. Better that millions should
die on the fleld, better that civilization should perish,
if need be, than that such injustice should be done.
So speaks the traditional American spirit.
America's passion for justice has been voiced by
no one more eloquently than by Roosevelt. "Peace
is not the end," he declared, "Righteousness is the end
... It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right
and wrong." "The chief trouble comes from the en
tire inability of these worthy people to understand
that they are demanding things that are mutually in
compatible when they demand peace at any price and
also justice and righteousness." "The golden hopes
of mankind can be realized only by men who have iron

298 PATRIOTISM
in their blood; by men who scorn to do wrong and
equally scorn to submit to wrong; by men of gentle
souls whose hearts are harder than steel in their
readiness to war against brutality and evil," "The
only peace of permanent value is the peace of right
eousness." The trouble with the peace-at-any-price attitude is,
that if there is any people bent on ruthless aggression,
it plays into their hands. This was what Roosevelt
saw so clearly. "The existence of soft timidity in one
nation puts a premium upon brutality in another."
"The ultra-paciflsts have exerted practically no in
fluence in restraining wrong, although they have
sometimes had a real and lamentable influence in
crippling the forces of right and preventing them
from dealing with wrong."
It is unhappily true that the highest ends can
sometimes be attained only by the most tragic means.
Many of the goods that we value most have been won
only through the willingness of our fathers to fight
for them. In the words of another American of inci
sive thought and speech. Professor A. O. Lovejoy of
Johns Hopkins, "That youths should be sent out
armed to kill or maim other youths is an unspeakably
abominable thing; but it is yet more abominable that
through horror at this evil, the lovers of peace should
become the silent partners of those that make and
would perpetuate war, and that our youth should be
bred to sit by with folded hands while others are
made the victims of lawless violence."
Our participation in the Great War was directed
by such motives. The question before us was, should
we allow these unoffending peoples to be enslaved and
dominated, against their passionate protest,' by an
ambitious and ruthless nation? Their youths were

PEACEABLENESS 299
dying by the million to preserve their liberties ; could
we sit by and see their sacriflce vain? President Wil
son voiced the mind of our people in his reply to the
Pope, August 29, 1917 : "The object of this war is to
deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace
and the actual power of a vast military establishment
controlled by an irresponsible government, which,
having secretly planned to dominate the world, pro
ceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to
the sacred obligations of treaty or the long established
practices and long cherished principles of interna
tional action and honor ; which chose its own time for
the war; delivered its blow flercely and suddenly;
stopped at no barrier, either of law or of mercy, swept
a whole continent within the tide of blood — not the
blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent wo
men and children also, and of the helpless poor — and
now stands balked but not defeated, the enemy of
four-flfths of the world."
President Wilson delayed long our entrance into
the war. "Never shall I forget," he wrote, "that the
sword is not to be drawn until the last moment, to
defend public liberties, and that it is to be returned
to the scabbard at the first moment when those liber
ties are safe." "The choice we make for ourselves
must be made with a moderation of counsel and a
temperateness of judgment befitting our character
and our motives as a nation. We must put excited
feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge, or the
victorious assertion of the physical might of the na
tion, but only the vindication of right, of human right
... we have no selflsh ends, to serve. We desire no
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for
ourselves, no material compensation for the sacriflces
we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham-

300 PATRIOTISM
pions of the rights of mankind; we shall be satisfied
when those rights have been made as secure as faith
and the freedom of nations can make them . . . The
day has come when America is privileged to spend her
blood and her might for the principles that gave her
birth and happiness and the peace which she has treas
ured. God helping her, she can do no other."
Four years earlier, when a clamor rose among the
hot-tempered for intervention in Mexico, Mr. Wilson
had shown the same spirit of generosity and modera
tion. "Impatience on our part would be childish, and
would be fraught with every risk of wrong and folly
. . . We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of
a really great nation which realizes its own strength
and scorns to misuse it."
This declaration of national policy should be put
side by side with Washington's "I have always
thought that no nation should meddle with the inter
national affairs of another nation." And with Presi
dent Harrison's "In no case do we desire territorial
possessions which do not directly form one body with
our national domain ; and we nowhere desire a domain
acquired by criminal aggression."
These sentiments have been repeated over and over
again by our statesmen, and express the true spirit of
Americanism. But it is wise to repeat them often,
since there are not wanting jingoes in our midst, and
those who would gladly find profit or prestige in an
other people's humiliation. Certain newspaper own
ers have been persistently trying to infiame our fears
and our resentment toward other nations. And not a
few citizens of the nations to the south of us suspect
us of imperialistic designs. Our interventions in
Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Nicaragua, our acquisition
of Porto Rico and the Canal Zone, may easily seem to

PEACEABLENESS 301
be the first steps in an attempt to extend our sway
over the relatively feeble nations below our borders.
And we must confess that our diplomacy has not al
ways been such as to remove these fears. A South
American of eminence is reported to have said re
cently, "To live on the shady side of the big stick is
not pleasant."
It is unfortunate that the Monroe Doctrine, intend
ed for the protection of our weaker neighbors, should
have come to be construed in some quarters as an
attempt to dominate them. President Monroe's
words were "The American continents, by the free
and independent condition which they have assumed
and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered
as subjects for future colonization by any European
powers." They were intended as a warning to the
world that we should not allow any further perman
ent occupation of territory or acquisition of political
control in the American hemisphere by a non-Ameri
can power.
Now that some of the South American peoples have
become stable in their government, and powerful na
tions, it would be courteous to cease talking of our
selves as the guardian of their liberties, and to con
sider the Monroe doctrine as upheld by the united
will and might of the peoples of North and South
America. In Mr. Wilson's address to the Pan-Ameri
can Conference, he declared that there is in it "no
claim of guardianship or thought of wards, but in
stead, a full and honorable association as of partners
between ourselves and our neighbors, in the interest
of all America north and south . . . All the govern
ments of America stand, as far as we are concerned,
upon a feeling of genuine equality and unquestioned
independence,"

302 PATEIOTISM
The Monroe doctrine is, after all, nothing but a
special application of the principle of the self-deter
mination of nations, for the sake of which we fought
in the Great War. Indeed, Mr. Wilson has proposed
"that the nations should with one accord adopt the
doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the
world ; that no nation should seek to extend its policy
over any other nation or people, but that every people
should be left free to determine its own policy, its
own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened,
unafraid, the little along with the great and power
ful." Nothing is of more vital moment than that we
should convince the world of our pacific intentions,
our absolute determination to infringe on the rights
and liberties of no other people, together with an
equal determination to stand with the other moral
forces in the world in opposing such aggression on the
part of any other nation. While maintaining a reas
onable preparedness for possible emergencies, we
must avoid belying our pacific declarations by seek
ing to outbuild the navies of other nations or by
maintaining a large standing army. As we are the
strongest and securest among the nations, it is our
plain duty to lead the way toward disarmament.
Happily we are so situated that we can avoid the crea
tion of a great military establishment — which, as
Washington warned his countrymen, is always "in
auspicious to liberty, and particularly hostile to re
publican liberty,"
The common sense of the American people refuses
to believe that the war of man against man is a neces
sary evil, ineradicable fromi human life. We confi
dently look forward to the time of man's coming of
age, when he shall lay aside his foolish passions, his

PEACEABLENESS 303
insensate will to destroy, and learn to put all his
energy and his devotion into the great common war
against nature. That this time may come quickly, we
must keep before our people the remembrance of the
horror and the wickedness of war — not to belittle the
heroism of our forefathers, or of the youth of today,
but to remind ourselves that such terrible sacriflces
must not again be necessary, that a better way must
be found to maintain justice among men.
The Great War took the lives of some eight mil
lion men in battle, and was directly or indirectly re
sponsible, according to the Danish Bureau of Statis
tics, for at least forty million deaths. We, to be sure,
because of our tardy entrance, lost but one in two
hundred of our young men. But England lost one
in four, and France one in three. The great increase
in the prevalence of many diseases will take many
years to offset. The influenza epidemic, due to the
war, killed its millions — very largely the young and
strong ; tuberculosis has a new hold all over Europe ;
syphilis has been widely spread; famine and pesti
lence are not yet under control. In the third year
after the Armistice, millions of people are close to
starvation; many of these must still succumb.
The suffering of this war touched our people but
lightly. But it has come close enough to us to teach
us its lesson. The horrors of the trenches ; the heart
break of wives, sweethearts, and mothers ; the miseries
of the inhabitants of occupied territory — property
plundered, homes destroyed, women violated, whole
sections of the population deported; the terror on
land from the air, the terror at sea from the sub
marine; the constant strain, the lack of food — ^it is
a wonder that any human beings remained sane after
the ordeal.

304 PATEIOTISM
The lesson should be seared into us. For if another
great war comes it is likely to be far worse than this.
The potentialities of destructiveness in high explo
sives have been but half revealed. Whole cities could
be wiped out in a night by bombs from a fleet of giant
airplanes. Submarine warfare is capable of indeflnite
expansion. Already many new poison gases have
been discovered; and, in spite of international agree
ments, any big war will almost certainly make
greater use of this type of weapon. Tank warfare,
warfare by means of poisons and disease-germs — ^with
the experience of this war to build on, we should flnd
another great war far more terrible and involving
more and more completely the entire population.
Materially, Europe has thrown away the progress
of a generation. Scores of thousands of towns and
villages have been wiped out of existence, fruit-trees
and shade-trees have been cut down over great areas,
the soil has been so torn up and buried under the sub
soil as to be in some places irrecoverable. The enor
mous waste of the world's none too large supplies of
oil, coal, copper, platinum, and many other natural
resources, is a permanent loss to mankind. Much
of the machinery of the world is badly worn, railways
are in poor shape, tools and raw materials are every
where lacking. In addition to this loss of capital,
the warring nations have incurred two hundred bil
lion dollars' worth of debts which it will take genera
tions of toil to pay off, if indeed they can ever be paid.
Even we, who got, relatively speaking, but a taste
of the war, have found the cost of living practically
doubled for the time being. And our expenditures
for war, past and prospective, will continue to eat
up far the greater part of our revenue. According
to a report of the United States Bureau of Standards

PEACEABLENESS 305
for the year ending June 30, 1920, the national ex
penditure for that year was divided as follows : 1 per
cent for public welfare, including agriculture, de
velopment of natural resources, education, public
health, and labor; 3 per cent for public works; 3.2
per cent for the administration of the government;
92.8 per cent for war and the maintenance of the mili
tary establishment.
Moreover, the loss is not merely material, it is
moral. There comes, to be sure, a wave of patriotism
and courage, of fortitude and national solidarity,
that for the time being makes war seem a moral
blessing. But with the relaxing of the strain there
follows the inevitable moral exhaustion, a tired ac
quiescence in selflshness and graft, a wave of restless
ness and crime, a great increase in license of all sorts,
prodigal expenditure, wild frivolity, and sensuality.
Cruelty, callousness to suffering, and contempt of
life are, of course, from the first engendered, as well
as the spirit of animosity toward the nation's
enemies; and these linger long after peace is signed.
We have been sad witnesses in this country to the
prevalence of prejudice and hatred, directed not only
toward our enemies, but toward those who have
differed from the majority in their views. Minority
opinion has been persecuted, and intellectual dis
honesty has been fostered. It will take us as a people
some time yet to quite recover from the distorting
effect of the war-passions, and see many matters in
their true perspective.
Finally, every war turns men's energies away from
the other problems that cry to be solved, diverts their
enthusiasms from the undertakings of peace and the
reforms that are needed. We have to pay for the
hatred stirred up against the enemy nation by a

306 PATEIOTISM
relative cessation of hatred against the evils in our
own body politic. The enemies of reform know this;
many wars have been made, and many more urged, in
order to distract attention from social or political re
forms that seemed imminent. War is always the occa
sion for the accentuation of abuses for which the
disengaged vigilance of peace would not have allowed
so free a field.
So we shall refuse to believe that wars must yet
be. We shall put all our weight on the side of a gen
erous friendliness and mutual helpfulness between the
peoples of the earth. We shall sternly repress the
voices and the acts of those who seek to embroil us
with any of these peoples, and vigilantly endeavor to
refrain from any policy that would tend to arouse
suspicion or fear among our neighbors. We shall fol
low William James's suggestion and find substitutes
for war to engage the energies of our youth, in out
door sports and achievements, in the adventures of a
fully democratized politics and industry, and in the
long campaign against privilege, inefficiency, graft,
and all forms of private and collective selfishness.
This greatest of all wars needs to enlist us all. And
the same spirit that led Nathan Hale to regret that he
had only one life to give to his country, the spirit
that would make twenty million men leap to arms if
our fair land were invaded, must be kindled during
the long, drab years of peace, for the routing out from
our national life of all that is not worthy of the
long line of heroes whom we honor, who paid the ulti
mate price, that government of the people, by the peo
ple, and for the people, should not perish from the
earth.

PEACEABLENESS 307

SUGGESTED READINGS
Monroe's Message to Congress, Dec. 2, 1823. (Eeprinted in
part in Foerster and Pierson, and in Fulton, op. cit.).
Woodrow Wilson, Why We are at War.
Theodore Eoosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part.
William James, The Moral Equivalent of War in Memories
and Studies,
Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, Chapters I, VIII.
Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, Chap. XXIII.
E. L. Godkin, Peace, in Reflections and Comments,
Norman Angell, The Great Illusion,
D. S. Jordan, War and Waste; War's Aftermath.
H. R. Marshall, War and the Ideal of Peace.
G. R. Kirkpatrick, War, What For?
J. H. Hohnes, New Wars for Old,
E. W. Perry, The Free Man and the Soldier,
M. E. Einehart, The Altar of Freedom.
Frederic Lynch, The Christian in War Time,
Josiah Eoyce, The Hope of the Great Community, Chap. I.
Publications of the International Conciliation Association.
Hiram. Bingham, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. Ill, p. 721.

CHAPTER XXVII
hands across the seas
Peaceableness is not enough. If the world is to be
saved from a recurrence of the tragedy of 1914, it will
be by more than a passive pacificism on our part. We
must learn how to co-operate with the other great
nations in the building up of a common world-wide
civilization and the removing of the causes that have
hitherto made human history one long record of wars.
Just now we are conscious that we want no more war
and intend to have no more war. But we remember
that in less than a century and a half we have fought
six wars. We are not likely to escape future situa
tions as acute. If we seriously mean to root out this
intolerable, fratricidal way of settling disputes, we
must do something about it. And we must set about
doing it now, before the critical situation arises. We
have been a leader in peace-propaganda ; that proved
in the event, to be of no value in averting war. It
is now our opportunity and privilege to take a leading
part in the construction of a world-order that shall
put an end forever to the settlement of disputes by
the ordeal of battle.
In the early days of our national life it was wise
for us to remain aloof from the conflicts that perpetu
ally ravaged Europe. We were young and weak,
groping our way toward a new form of society, and
separated by a long and dangerous voyage from the
old world. We had little intercourse with Europe,
308

HANDS ACROSS THE SEAS 309
her problems were not ours ; and we could best serve
the world by concentrating our thought and energy
upon our own difficult experiment in self-government.
Washington and Jefferson were right, then, in coun
selling their fellow-countrymen to keep clear of Euro
pean feuds, and to make no "entangling alliances"
that might drag us into war. Thus Lord Bryce was
able to write of us, in The American Commonwealth,
"America has lived in a world of her own. Safe from
attack, safe even from menace, she hears from afar
the warring cries of European races and faiths, as the
gods of Epicurus listened to the murmurs of the un
happy earth spread out beneath their golden dwell
ings." But the times have changed. The lesson of 1917
has taught us that we can not remain isolated any
longer from the rest of the world, if we would. We
have an enormous interchange of commodities, of
letters and travellers, of investments, with Europe.
We are now full-grown. Our experiment has suc
ceeded. One by one the European nations have adopt
ed our democratic ideals, until now we stand as one
member, the richest and probably the strongest, in
the family of democratic nations that encircles the
globe. Our future is wrapped up with theirs. They
look to us for aid. By the side of Jefferson's Decla-
ation of Independence we must now put Wilson's
Declaration of Interdependence. The only way now
to make our democracy safe is to make the world safe
for democracy.
This does not mean "entangling alliances" — or
promises to help any one nation against another. It
does mean a willingness to co-operate with the rest
of the world in constructing a mechanism of world-
justice and peace. The experience through which we

310 PATRIOTISM
have passed in welding a number of separate States
into a single nation should make us particularly use
ful in the difficult task of establishing for the diverse
peoples of the earth a working world-policy. This is
the flnest possible extension of the ideals which ani
mated our Founders. They sowed the seeds of free-
dom-in-co-operation on these shores; the plant has
flourished, and may now be more widely spread.
"What was in the writings of the men who founded
America," asks Mr. Wilson, — "to serve the selflsh
interests of America? Do you flnd that in their writ
ings? No; to serve the cause of humanity, to bring
liberty to mankind."
Many of us had hoped that the Great War would
deflnitely mark the end of the period of our self-
centered and self-sufficient isolation. As a recent
writer in the Century Magazine points out, "History
does not tell a very reassuring tale of peoples that
have striven to live apart, any more than memoirs
give a comforting recount of recluses . . . No nation
can cut itself off from the world without stunting its
material and spiritual growth." It is not merely
out of sympathy and altruism that we should stretch
out our hands across the seas, but for our own souls'
good, and to prevent the recurrence of a situation that
may otherwise again arise, in which, as in 1917, we
shall be drawn against our will into a maelstrom
which we have not created, but which we have done
nothing to avert. Whether we like it or not, whether
we recognize it or not, we are now interdependent.
Our future is linked with that of Europe and Asia.
The endowment of peace-societies, the teaching of
the horrors of war, should be continued. But war can
not be stopped by education and propaganda alone,
any more than crime can be. "Hating war is quite

HANDS ACROSS THE SEAS 311
unproductive unless you are thinking about its nature
and causes so thoroughly that you will presently be
able to take hold of it and control it and end it." We
must do all we can, through pulpit, platform, and
press, to cultivate a genuine international-minded-
ness — not as a substitute for American-mindedness,
but as its highest expression. But a mere subjective
attitude, however generous and honorable, will not
suffice, unless it expresses itself in an objective order,
a world policy.
As a means to that end, and for their own sake, we
shall do well to cultivate friendly intercourse with
neighboring peoples — exchange professorships and
student scholarships, international sports, interna
tional professional organizations, and such world
wide societies as Clarte and Corda Fratres. But in
crease of intercourse means increased occasions for
friction. It is by no means true that the more we see
of people the more we like them. The contact of dis
similar social systems often results in mutual anti
pathy, ridicule, or contempt; manners and morals
different from our own affect us unpleasantly, and
defects in alien customs tend to become exaggerated
in our memory and discourse. It is hopeless to expect
that we shall be brought by commercial, professional,
or personal intercourse to any widespread under
standing of and sympathy for the diverse standards
of foreign peoples. Moreover, at times they will do or
say what is really unfair and unjust. So, very likely,
shall we. Human nature being what it is, we can not
expect to avoid misunderstandings tand resentments.
But they need not lead to war, and will not, if we have
an accepted alternative means of dealing with them.
Hitherto our efforts to devise a mechanism to settle
misunderstandings have been conflned to arbitration

812 PATEIOTISM
treaties and the reference of disputes to the Hague
Tribunal, The flrst arbitration-treaty of modem
times was the Jay Treaty of 1794, between the United
States and Great Britain; and we had the honor of
being the flrst nation to submit a dispute to the Hague
Tribunal, something over a century later. At date of
writing, America is party to some thirty treaties, in
which we agree that all disputes between us and these
other nations, "of every nature whatsoever, to the
settlement of which previous arbitration treaties or
agreements do not apply in their terms or are not
applied in fact, shall, when diplomatic methods of
adjustment have failed, be referred for investigation
and report to an international commission" ; we fur
ther agree "not to declare war or to begin hostilities
during such investigation and before the report is
submitted." These terms do not bind us to refrain from declar
ing war with these nations, as a last resort. But the
required delay may be of immeasurable value in giv
ing hot heads time in which to cool ; and the report of
the international commission should lift the dispute
out of the realm of passion and prejudice into that of
reason. This will not suffice to restrain a nation that
is bent on war. But if our own people and the other
peoples to whom we are thus bound are genuinely
eager to maintain amicable relations, this method
provides a way for us to preserve peace with self-
respect. We may well be proud of this pioneer work in con
structive statesmanship. But time has proved that
we must go farther. Roosevelt pointed out with em
phatic reiteration that "peace treaties and arbitration
treaties unbacked by force are not merely useless
but mischievous in any serious crisis. . . . The police-

HANDS ACROSS THE SEAS 313
man must be put back of the judge in international
law, just as he is back of the judge in municipal law."
Such a mechanism must be made operative that no
nation will dare to make of a treaty a "scrap of paper"
when it feels strong enough to repudiate it. The
whole force of the world must stand back of inter
national order and security. The single nation should
no more have to worry about protecting itself than
the private individual in a state ; the family of nations
should see to it that each of its members is free to
live its own life undisturbed and unintimidated by
any other. No nation must be allowed to act as its
own advocate, judge, and inflicter of punishment.
Each nation must have the fullest opportunity to
present its case ; but the common opinion of mankind
must be the judge; and punishment — or rather,
reparation — must be required only when the common
opinion of mankind demands it.
Moreover, it is not merely to prevent war that we
need international organization. We need it to
remedy the injustices that lead to war, to guide and
harmonize the increasing number of activities that are
world-wide in scope. Questions of the distribution of
shipping, and of raw material, the control of disease,
the distribution of labor, and its status, and a hun
dred other matters, can no longer be settled by the
nations severally. To fail to co-operate in these mat
ters is not only to lose in efficiency, but to invite mu
tual hostilities.
This is not necessarily to say that the existing
League of Nations is the best means to these ends.
No one can foresee at the date of this writing what
decision the American people will come to on this
point. But it is to say that some sort of international
organization must replace the older anarchy, and

314 PATEIOTISM
replace it soon. Any scheme is sure to have defects.
But "if we were to postpone the setting up of any
machinery for the conduct of human affairs until we
were certain that it could not possibly go wrong, or
even until all objections were finally and completely
answered, we should never get anywhere and never
do anything."
We must welcome, then, all honest criticism of the
existing League, and of any other scheme that may be
proposed or attempted. But beneath all the pros and
cons of this discussion, we must recognize that in
some way or other we must co-operate. The era of
national isolations is over, we are now an integral
part of the world. Far from being inconsistent with
our national spirit that we should take our place in
this world-order, it would be fatally inconsistent that
we should refuse to do so. When we think of our
own personal desires and interests, it must always be
"America first." But when we think of the other
peoples who need our help and co-operation, it must
be "America for the world."
We must frankly admit that co-operation may in
volve sacrifice; sometimes material sacrifice, some
times sacriflce of prestige or supposed "national
honor." It is, however, a false conception of honor
that would lead us to refuse the compromises inherent
in co-operation. We must take the lead in the willing
ness to see the general interest of mankind prevail, if
there is a conflict, over our national desires and ex
pectations. We must be willing to abide loyally by
the decision of the international tribunal, even if we
feel it to be unjust or mistaken. If it falls to our lot
to make a concession for the general good, we must
be ready to make it. There are few precedents upon
which to base decisions in international matters, there

HANDS ACROSS THE SEAS 315
are few judges not unconsciously biased. Impartial,
absolutely just and wise decisions we hope there will
be; but there are bound to be some that seem, and
perhaps are, one-sided, unfair to some nation, based
upon an insufficient grasp of the facts, or -colored by
passion and prejudice. The essential thing is that
we take these decisions, when they are made, as
good sports; just as in baseball the game cannot go
on unless both sides accept in good humor the um
pire's decisions.
The federation of the world is coming. But how
fast? How great a leap forward will statesmen dare
now to take? And, whatever plan they try to put into
operation, will it work? The answer to these ques
tions depends upon the state of mind of the people of
the nations that are to be thus federated. It is not
exclusively a problem for statesmen and students of
international law, though their expert services will
be needed. It is in even greater degree a problem for
the moralists, the educators, the editors and preach
ers, and all who can help mould the minds of men.
For difficult as it is going to be to complete a just and
workable system of international law and administra
tion, that difficulty is as nothing to that of persuading
the people of the component nations to give that loyal
allegiance to this new authority which alone can
transform it from a paper plan into a working system.
It should be a matter of pride with us to be foremost
in this next step in the world's progress.
There is, then, no duty more pressing than to
awaken our people to the realization of the imperative
need of world-organization; not merely that such an
organization may be elaborated, but that it may be
loyally upheld through the long period of readjust
ments and necessary concessions. We must not let

316 PATEIOTISM
the world lapse into a complacent self-congratulation
on the collapse of Teutonic militarism and the exit of
Kaisers and kings. Other nations may yet become
powerful, arrogant, imperialistic; the lessons of his
tory are quickly forgotten by the ambitious and the
proud — and, indeed, there are examples of successful
aggression as striking as those of defeated ambition.
Sources of friction and bitterness will long persist,
injustices will still rankle, thwarted ambitions still
smoulder. The growing complexity of international
relations will produce more occasions than ever for
friction. Nothing is more likely than that this will
not be the last war, unless we set to work with utmost
determination and create a mechanism which shall
make the penalties for aggression so instant and cer
tain that it will be universally recognized as suicidal.
Nothing is more certain than that injustices will be
committed and inequities persist, unless we flnd a
way to settle the world's problems in peacefid co
operation. We must combat by might and main that vague
optimism that expects things to come out all right
if they are left alone, that inertia that would let the
peoples sink back into another era of unchecked na
tionalistic rivalry. It is to be hoped that the paci
fists, i. e., the passivists, who counted on the efficacy
of non-resistance in touching the hearts of .the preda
tory and the proud, who thought that words, and
paper treaties, could shame them or win them to a
brotherly spirit, have learned their lesson. Isolated
instances to the contrary, human nature is, unhappily,
such that its fiercer impulses cannot be tamed by
charity and patience. The ingenuity for evil and the
blind passions of men must be counteracted by a
greater ingenuity in devising the good and a greater

HANDS ACEOSS THE SEAS 317
and wiser passion in embodying it. Effort, effort of
organization, of thinking, of training, of education, is
the inexorable price of progress.
And then, our plain duty is to forget our fears and
suspicions of other nations' intentions, our bitterness
and hatred and scorn of their wrongdoing, and to cul
tivate sympathy and understanding. For the former
mental attitudes create trouble just as surely as the
latter heal it. Our great danger now is not from
Germany, or Japan, or any other nation, it is from
ourselves. We are unchastened by years of suffering,
we are rich, proud, unbeaten; we want our way in
everything. Lately we have been hearing all about
us the cries for revenge of those who would have us
punish more severely an already prostrate enemy,
keep our clutch on her throat, treat her as her auto
cratic rulers would have treated us. In no such way
can a lasting peace be established. Might does not
make right simply because it is our might. The time
has come to apply the Golden Rule in politics. What
we should be thinking of is not an enemy's past sins,
but the future of the family of nations. It is not a
weak surrender to return good for evil, it is safe
guarding the future welfare of man.
Patriotism, like charity, begins at home. But it
does not end there. It is rather a matter of concentric
circles. Loyalty to one's family, or to one's club or
college, does not imply disloyalty to the city or vil
lage in which one lives; nor does civic pride involve
disloyalty to State or nation. Similarly, love and
loyalty to our country does not rightly require dis
loyalty to the great brotherhood of man which not
only Christianity but the most elementary common
sense holds up to us as the supreme object of our
sacrifice and service. Surely we must cultivate "the

318 PATRIOTISM
international mind" — it is our most pressing duty
just now, because international sentiment has as yet
been so little cultivated. " But to suppose that the
era of international co-operation and loyalty is going
to lessen our national pride and patriotism is a seri
ous blunder. It is going to clarify and purge them,
it is not going to make them less coercive or less beau
tiful. Certainly if we fail to achieve a successful interna
tional organization in the near future, the effort and
sacrifice of the War will have been largely wasted.
The organization of an enduring peace is the only
result which could compensate the world for these
years of destruction and death, and the serious set
back to civilization. Mr. Wilson, who, whatever his
mistakes, has been the prophet of the new era, stated
clearly what was implied in the slogan, "The war to
end war." He declared, in an address to the Senate,
on January 22, 1917, that "if the peace presently to
be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure,
by the organized major force of mankind ... It is
inconceivable that the people of the United States
should play no part in that great enterprise ... It
is clear to every man who can think, that there is in
this no breach in either our traditions or our policy
as a nation, but a fulfilment of all that we have pro
fessed or striven for." SUGGESTED READINGS
Washington's Farewell Address.
W. H. Taft and W. J. Bryan, Addresses at Lake Mohonk, 1916.
(Eeprinted in International Conciliation, no. 106).
Woodrow Wilson, The Hope of the World, (Addresses, 1918-
1920).
A. Lawrence Lowell, H. Holt and others, in Towards an Endur
ing Peace.

HANDS ACROSS THE SEAS 319
C. W. Eliot, The Road toward Peace, Chap. XVII.
R. Goldsmith, A League to Enforce Peace.
H. N. Brailsford, A League of Nations.
J. A. Hobson, Towards International Government,
Norman AngeU, America and the New World State,
William H. Taft, The United States and Peace, IV.
D. H. Trueblood, The Federation of the World.
L. Curtis, A Commonwealth of Nations,
D. J. Hill, American World Policies,
S. P. Duggan, The League of Nations,
J. B. Moore, American Diplomacy, its Spirit amd Achieve
ments,
Raymond Fosdick, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 125, p. 845.
Pamphlets of the International Conciliation Association.

CHAPTER XXVIII
AMERICANIZATION
We have now completed our survey of American
ideals, from the stout assertion of political independ
ence, of 1776, to the keen realization of interdepend
ence, of 1917. It remains to ask whether our people
as a whole, or certain classes of our people, are clearly
enough conscious of these ideals; and whether forces
should be set at work to accelerate their spread, and
to deepen devotion to them. It is that process of
awakening comprehension of, and loyalty to, these
ideals, that we call today Americanization.
Between a seventh and an eighth of our population
today are foreign-born. Concerning these no sweep
ing statement can be made. They are of all types,
of every nationality, of all degrees of education.
Among them are some undesirables, as among the na
tive-born. But the great mass of them are hard
working, honest, and loyal. The majority of them be
come citizens; and if they do not, their children are
citizens by birth. In general, these aliens, when they
arrive, are eager to learn our language, our customs,
our ideals. If some of them become indifferent and
cynical and lawless, it is usually because we have
failed in our duty to them.
It may be questioned, however, whether, on the
whole, the immigrant needs Americanization more
than the native. From many schools comes the report
that the children of immigrants are more eager and
320

AMERICANIZATION 321
industrious and patriotic than the children of the
older stock. From many public libraries comes the
report that the immigrants and their children read
the serious books while the children of the upper class
read novels and detective stories. In some towns,
indeed, the public library does not welcome the immi
grants ; or at least they do not feel at home there, and
have not the boldness to intrude. But where an effort
is made to show them that they are welcome, they
often turn out to be ardent readers of history, science,
poetry, biography, and the drama.
The boys and girls of American parentage are very
apt to have a sense of superiority which is not war
ranted. As a matter of fact, most of them know little
enough about the duties of citizenship, and think little
about either the history of our country or its present
problems. They become citizens automatically, by
growing up, and are less apt to be conscious of the
meaning of citizenship than the alien to whom it is
granted as a privilege. We hear of the danger of the
"foreign element." But on the whole, the ignorance
of the foreigners is no more dangerous than the
apathy of the natives. The bigger part of the task of
Americanization is that of Americanizing our native
youth, keeping alive in them the vision that fired their
fathers, and adding to it the wisdom that our national
experience has brought.
There are, of course, special needs of the immigrant.
If he does not speak or read English, we must offer
him every facility to learn the language of his adopted
country. There is no difficulty here except that of the
cost of providing instruction and of finding spare
energy for learning on the part of tired, hard-working
men and women. There is no lack of desire to learn ;
the immigrant has every reason for teaming, it is to

322 PATRIOTISM
his advantage more obviously than to ours. There
is no need of coaxing him to learn ; and it is a tactical
error to require him to learn, by compulsory legisla
tion. There is so much forcing of the national lan
guage upon minority races in Europe that many immi
grants instinctively resent it ; it is a sign of the sort
of thing they have come to America to escape. We
must remember that a knowledge of English by no
means ensures loyalty ; and we must beware of sacri
ficing the end to the means.
Many an immigrant who can not speak English is
intensely loyal. And if the conditions of his life and
work are such that it is practically impossible for him
to find the time or energy to learn, we must blame our
selves rather than him, and worry more over a harsh
industrial order than over his ignorance of English.
His children will learn it in the public schools, and
will use it in preference to their parents' speech. (Of
course it goes without saying that all the public
schools in the land must be conducted in English.)
Meantime, the foreign-language press can do, and is
doing, a valuable service in teaching the non-English-
reading aliens about America and reporting for them
the events of the day. With few exceptions, this
foreign-language press has been loyal, and of great
service in the Americanization process. To attempt
to censor it is unnecessary, and would be extremely
unwise, undoing our best attempts to describe Amer
ica as the land of liberty, and showing it to be actually
a land of mistrust and repression.
Every effort, also, should be made to teach the
various groups of immigrants the meaning and history
of our institutions. Much can be done through the
trade unions, the churches, the public libraries, the
social settlements, community centers, and open

AMEEICANIZATION 323"
forums, and, of course, the evening schools. Often
valuable seed can be sown by some holiday celebra
tion, pageant, or special meeting. Neighborhood sing
ing and neighborhood theatres could be utilized far
more than they yet have been. The Boy Scout and
Girl Scout movements reach not only the children,
with their admirable discipline, but through the chil
dren bring often new ideas and attitudes to their
parents. In addition to these diverse means, much
might be done by the sending of lecturers to speak to
various immigrant groups in their own halls, on
topics in which they are interested, combating what
ever un-American propaganda there may be with open
argument and the exposition of American principles.
The work with the children is, of course, of para
mount importance. And we should forget the dis
tinction between the children of immigrants and the
children of natives. We need a great deal more for all
of them than the lifeless "civics" of the typical school
course. Mr. Arnold Bennett, in his recent volume.
Tour United States, writes, "I do positively think
that American education does not altogether succeed
in the very important business of inculcating public
spirit into young citizens." The statement is mod
erate; in most cases we ignominiously fail. We must
teach every child, not only the outward forms of our
government and social institutions, but their meaning
and spirit. We should teach the ideals that have been
wrought into the laws of the land, and show their
reasonableness. The great body of our laws are
plainly just and righteous; a code of morals is exem
plified in them, and can be taught without partisan
ship or bigotry. Thus the laws and institutions of
America will come to seem beneficent instead of re
pressive. And if there are bad laws, this study of

324 PATEIOTISM
reasons and principles will serve to breed critics of
them — the best possible outcome.
Indeed, one of the dangers of which we must beware
is that of inculcating a complacent attitude toward
our institutions as they are. Americanism should not
be thought of as something static, but as something
in process of realization. The evils in our present
political and industrial order should be frankly faced,
and the youth of our land encouraged to consider
seriously and with open mind the various reforms
proposed. For the danger ahead of us is less that of
unrest than that of fatuous optimism and inertia. If
we look backward with pride to our past history, it
should be to draw fresh inspiration to help us in
grappling with the problems of the present. The alien
agitator's ignorance of the worth of our institutions
is a less menacing evil than the native American's
ignorance of their defects. Civics must be taught
not as the description of a finished political system,
but as the description of a changing set of laws and
institutions, which are attempting ever more and more
adequately to embody certain fundamental ideals —
liberty, equality, and the like — ^but which need the
energies of generations yet to perfect.
There is no present danger that alien ideals will
undermine our American traditions. The foreigners
among us are a comparatively small group ; and their
prestige is even less than their numbers. Everywhere
the older Americans have things in their own hands.
Our danger is not that of overthrow by hostile ideals,
it is rather that of decay from within. Indeed, the
analysis of the "radical" vt>te in recent elections
shows that it has less strength in the States where
the immigrant population is largest than in certain
Western States where fewer aliens live. And radical-

AMEEICANIZATION 325
ism by no means always goes with either ignorance or
disloyalty. The real strength of radicalism today
lies in groups of university graduates, men and wo
men who are perhaps more or less impractical theor
ists, but who for the most part are idealists and in
tensely devoted to the welfare of their country. The
complete stoppage of immigration would make little
difference in the amount of radical thought. The only
way to meet this thought is to meet it ; to let it express
itself openly, and to answer it in earnest but good-
tempered discussion. Met in that manner it will be
a salutary ingredient in our national life, balancing
the inert standpat-ism of other groups and contrib
uting its insights to our counsels.
The Freudian psychologists have taught us of the
danger to our mental life from the isolation and sup
pression of certain ideas and "complexes." So in our
social life, the danger lies in the isolation of groups,
whose ideas become more and more set and fanatical
from lack of contact with other currents of thought.
If there is suppression by an unsympathetic majority,
we have all the conditions of social hysteria. What
we need is the application of the "melting-pot" con
cept not only to racial stocks, but to their ideas.
Above all things we must beware of allowing a dom
inant majority to attempt to rubberstamp our people
with their particular beliefs. We must welcome the
contributions of diverse races and schools of thought,
seeking to learn something from each and to weave
them all into the texture of our growing civilization.
We have in this country a unique opportunity to
profit by the rich cultural heritage of the various im
migrant groups. The American of the future is to be
a composite photograph, a blend of these diverse
traits. Each strain has its values, has something to

326 PATEIOTISM
contribute to the symphony of American life. Profes
sor Dewey has recently put it thus : "The way to deal
with hyphenism is to welcome it, but to welcome it in
the sense of extracting from each people its special
good, so that it shall surrender into a common fund
of wisdom and experience what it especially has to
contribute. All these surrenders and contributions
taken together create the national spirit of America."
Mr. Rabindranath Tagore has sharply criticized the
mania for stereotyping manners and ideas that he,
like many other observers, finds in this country.
"America lacks respect for unlikeness, for otherness.
Its democracy seeks to make all men alike, to run
them into one mold, to rob them or shame them out of
their picturesqueness or diversity. Americanization
seems to mean that when all accept a certain formula
it is enough ; but old racial traits and cultural charac
teristics can not be ironed out of humanity. Nor
should they be. It is not a melting-pot that is needed,
but a fiower-garden, where each race may bloom and
add its beauty to the commonwealth."
Above all things, we must banish that patronizing,
contemptuous air that so many Americans of the older
stock assume toward the more recent immigrants.
We must sternly rebuke the use of those derisive
nicknames that prolong antipathy and beget resent
ment. If their ignorance and low standard of living
irks us, the remedy is obviously to give them educa
tion and better living conditions. If they become
a menace to our institutions, or to our standards of
living, it is far less due to their recalcitrancy than
to our neglect.
We must remember, also, that the teaching the alien
receives is a small part of the influences that are at
work upon him. In the words of a recent bulletin of

AMERICANIZATION 327
the federal Department of Education, "The immi
grant is becoming either Americanized or anarchized
by every experience which he undergoes, every condi
tion to which he is subjected. Americanization is in
a measure the problem of the school. But it is also
a matter of prevention of exploitation, of good hous
ing, of clean milk for babies, of adequate wages, of
satisfactory industrial conditions, of the spirit of
neighborliness between Americans, old and new.
Everything that touches the immigrant's life is an in
strument for his Americanization or the reverse."
In general it may be said that if the immigrant finds
himself well treated in this country he will be loyal.
Kindness, courtesy, justice, opportunity for a normal
human life for himself and his children — ^this is the
obvious way to make the newcomers to these shores
patriotic American citizens.
We must confess that our record is far from clean
in this fundamental respect. Listen to the words of
one who is thoroughly conversant with the situation —
not an agitator or alien but a conservative and
earnestly loyal American : "The immigrant arrives at
the port of entry. After passing his examination
(during which time not a friendly word of greeting
is given him, or a personal interest taken in him) he
is turned loose upon the city, to be met at the gate
by cabmen, porters, runners, crooks, thieves, and every
conceivable kind of exploiter interested in getting his
cash money. This is America's first reception line.
He then meets our second reception line — the employ
ment agent, the private banker, and 'steering agent,'
who derive profit from his labor before it has even
become productive. When the immigrant actually
goes to work, he has generally lost his money and is
in debt. He then meets our third American reception

328 PATRIOTISM
line, the employer interested only in his labor output,
and he is treated accordingly ... By the time the
immigrant has shaken hands along these various re
ception lines he feels he knows everybody, and he has
a very definite idea of liberty, justice, freedom, law,
order, and measures of happiness, which in no sense
accords with our forefathers' ideal of America."
This same writer describes an industrial plant
where immigrants are employed. "His men sleep flve
to flfteen in a room, often on the floor and in their
clothing; they have no care and eat badly prepared
food. They crowd family houses, destroying privacy
and morality . . . One native-born American con
trols the health, decency, morality, and efficiency of
some 8,000 immigrant workmen, whose only protest is
to move on, and whose only future is high enough
wages to return to their home country. And the
worst of it is that men get used to these conditions,
believing them to be American ; and with this belief go
the dreams, the visions, and the ambitions which are
the essence of good citizenship. The prospective good
citizen is sacrificed to the demand for cheap labor,
which is a native- American demand."
Conditions are, of course, by no means always so
bad as this. But they are sometimes as bad, and they
are seldom anywhere near what they ought to be.
This is the crux of the problem of Americanization.
These people are being fashioned not by what we
preach to them, but by what we do to them. How
can they believe in the sincerity of our professions
of idealism when they find themselves exploited on
every hand and unable to live a decent human life?
Actions speak louder than words ; and what they see
is a scramble for profits, a race in which the clever
and the aggressive and the fortunate push their way

AMERICANIZATION 329
to a competence, while the timid and conscientious
get pushed to the wall. They see honest and brave
men deported or sent to prison for daring to voice
opinions contrary to the accepted creed. They find
themselves with little "effective liberty," little actual
equality of opportunity; their democratic rights are
apt to seem a mockery. Only efficiency seems a genu
ine American ideal — an efficiency in whose name they
are treated as mere unthinking "hands." Often they
are bitterly disillusioned in their dreams of America.
No doubt they are often partly to blame. But the
greater blame rests upon the rest of us, who allow
them to be so bewildered and exploited and driven to
a disillusionment so rapid and so harsh.
The writer of a magazine article that has appeared
since the above words were set down has so well ex
pressed the root of the matter that some sentences
of his are best appended: "You may give the alien
evening schools and continuation schools; you may
teach his wife in the home and his daughter in the
factory; you may fiood him with reprints of the
Declaration of Independence and the speeches of Lin
coln; and when you have finished, you will be no
farther along the road of winning his heart and his
co-operation than when you began.
"What we have to do is, therefore, clear enough.
It is not, as the now popular phrase has it, that we
must Americanize the Americans. It is much more
than that. Before the immigrant can be won over, we
must Americanize America herself. We must lift
American institutions and American practices to the
high plane of America's own traditions. We must
come to look upon the immigrant as he is, a boon to
us and an equal, instead of a nuisance and an unin
vited invader. And we must somehow meet his ideal

330 PATRIOTISM
of us and our country by fashioning them in the
mould of the ideals and the aspirations of the twen
tieth century. When we have done this much, life
itself will take care of the future. For America is
still very much in the making, and it will require
the energy and the goodwill and the traditions of all
the peoples of the earth, working together, to make her
what she started out to be, a greater and a freer and
a nobler Europe," SUGGESTED READINGS
E. A. Steiner, Nationalizing America,
Woodrow Wilson, Speech at Philadelphia, May 10, 1915.
(Eeprinted in Foerster and Pierson, op. cit., p. 178).
U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin: America, Americanism,
Americanization.
Mahoney and Herlikey, First Steps in Americanization,
Mary Austin, The Young Woman Citizen,
R. L. Ashley, The New Civics,
C. A. and M. R. Beard, American Citizenship.
A. W. Dunn, The Citizen and the Community,
Moley and Cook, Lessons in Democracy,
W. H. AUen, Universal Training for Citizenship and Public
Service.
Alissa Franc, Use Your Government.
E. W. Adams, A Community Civics.
Frances A. Kellor, Straight America.
Winthrop Talbot, Americanization.
Gino Speranza, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 125, p. 263.
John Kulamer, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 125, p. 416,

CHAPTER XXIX
FAITH IN AMERICA
This volume has been concerned rather with criticism
and warning than with eulogy and congratulation.
We are far too prone to brag of our achievements and
too little disposed to acknowledge our shortcomings.
If the American spirit is to find its splendid fulfil
ment, it will be not through a complacent acquies
cence in things as they are, but through our earnest
efforts to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way
and to embody that spirit more completely in legisla
tion and practice.
But the picture must not be drawn too dark. We
have not yet fully realized our fathers' dreams, but,
on the whole, we have done well. And the signs of
the times are full of promise. There is more criticism
of our institutionsj more fault-finding, more clash of
interpretation and program, than ever. But that is
because more people are taking our historic ideals
seriously, more people are interesting themselves in
their realization. We perceive the difficulties more
keenly, we realize the mistakes that have been made,
we are not so blindly optimistic. But we have not
lost faith. And precisely this spirit of criticism,
this chorus of proposals, this growing soberness of
reflection, warrants our faith and pledges its fulfil
ment. Already the relative success of our experiment in
self-government has had an enormous effect upon the
331

332 PATRIOTISM
rest of the world. And more than ever we have the
opportunity to play the rdle of spiritual as well as
material leader. In the inspiring words of Roose
velt, "We are not only custodians of the hopes of our
children, but in a peculiar sense we are custodians
of the hope of the world." "Our nation is that one
among all the nations of the earth which holds in its
hands the fate of the coming years. We enjoy excep
tional advantages, and are menaced by exceptional
dangers; and all signs indicate that we shall either
fail greatly or succeed greatly. I firmly believe that
we shall succeed; but we must not be foolishly blind
to the dangers by which we are threatened, for that is
the way to fail."
Not only will our future have an influence far
beyond our geographical frontiers, but millions more,
scores of millions, are coming to these shores, to join
their fortunes with ours. What they are to become
rests very largely with us of the older American
stock. By the middle of this century we shall doubt
less have a population of more than a hundred and
fifty million, by its close probably two hundred mil
lion. And this within the lifetime of people now liv
ing! What a challenge to our idealism! We are a
very young nation, not yet a hundred and fifty years
old — a mere moment in the history of man. Infinite
vistas stretch before us. Why should not our nation
endure for thousands of centuries? Surely there
could be no object more worthy of our effort and sacri
fice than to help shape the polity and guide the devel
opment of this youthful giant among the nations.
Kings and Kaisers have fallen; the battle against
political autocracy, of the sort that has so long
plagued the earth, seems won. But the democracies
are still far from safe. They will not be safe from

FAITH IN AMERICA 333
one another until they have perfected an international
organization that will secure justice and peace for all
the world. They will not be safe from internal dis
ruption until they succeed in establishing a complete
internal justice and liberty. One long epoch of man's
history is over; it is time to gird ourselves for the
next struggle. The War is over ; the War bpgins.
We must definitely realize that moral and social
progress are not automatic, they come through human
effort. And there are powerful forces making for in
justice, materialism, license, for decadence and dis
ruption. It is a perpetually shifting battle. Our
codes have to become continually more intricate to
meet the new methods of exploitation, the new forms
of inequity, the new follies, that are forever being
devised. We have by no means reached a point of
safety. The belief in social progress has become al
most a dogma with us, a dogma supported by the ma
terial progress that nothing now apparently, save a
prolonged world-war, can check. But moral and
social degeneracy may go hand in hand with material
progress, with national power and pride. Thus it
may be that our greatest dangers lie ahead. Our fu
ture is still problematic. Faith in it we must have;
but faith without works is dead.
It is a salutary exercise, then, to consider the newer
forms of sin, for which the growing complexity of our
social life has opened the way. Certain industrial
evils, certain forms of profiteering and graft, certain
forms of commercialized vice, that have become al
ready widespread, were unknown to our founders.
We live, in our cities, less in one another's eyes than
our fathers lived. Our social restraints have in some
ways become greatly relaxed. We have drifted far
from what Mrs. Wharton rather ironically calls the

334 PATRIOTISM
Age of Innocence — as recent a period as the eighteen
seventies. Privilege has become bolder, sinister "in
terests" more powerful, the congestion of wealth and
the wanton luxury of the rich more marked, poverty
more acute, class consciousness more widespread and
bitter. But when we look back and remember that we have
succeeded in abolishing political tyranny, and human
slavery, have risen above the bitter sectionalism of
our early years, have devised and put into operation
a thousand ingenious plans for the checking of private
selfishness and the forwarding of the common good,
we turn to the future with confidence. These newer
evils can also be overcome. Our people are becoming
better and better educated ; the churches are awaking
more and more to their duty as teachers and fortifiers
of our national ideals. The number of voluntary as
sociations devoted to the forwarding of specific causes
is increasing yearly. Great potentialities for good lie
in professional associations, in trade unions, and
other organizations along vocational lines. The con
ception is gaining headway that the government exists
not merely to protect the individual in his rights but
positively to forward the general welfare. Our pio
neering is nearly done ; a larger and larger part of our
surplus energy can be freed for attention to the moral
and social problems that confront us. The new gen
eration includes many thousands of young men and
women who are studying these problems and are de
termined to find solutions.
In 1910 Mr. William Allen White published a book
with the titie, "The Old Order Changeth." At a date
so recent as that it was common to hold, with this
author, that the days of bossism, of the "invisible
government," of graft and corruption, were numbered.

FAITH IN AMERICA 335
The experiences of the past few years have shown us
that the millennium is not yet at hand. But they
have also shown the tremendous latent energy and
idealism in our people. The problem is, how to
arouse it, to focus it upon the evils to be cured, and
make it effective for progress.
Two things we must cease to be afraid of. We must
not be afraid of "unrest," of "agitation," of open dis
cussion and experiment. Stagnation, acquiescence in
evil, apathy, and blindness to the defects in our social
order, are worse than unrest. We cannot afford yet
to settle down and take our ease. Our forefathers
were not afraid of unrest when they threw the tea
overboard in Boston Harbor, when they resisted the
redcoats at Lexington and Concord. The real cause
of revolutions is never the spirit of unrest; that is
secondary. The real cause is the existence of injus
tice, the autocratic and selfish riile of man over man,
the poignant contrast between power and impotence,
or between wealth and poverty. The ostrich-policy
will not save us. The danger is not in wrong think
ing, it is in not thinking at all, in letting things drift.
Every serious alteration in our political or social
system has been dubbed un-American, and its spon
sors persecuted as traitors. Roger Williams was ban
ished from Massachusetts for his advocacy of religious
liberty. Garrison was dragged through the streets of
Boston for daring to oppose slavery. The secret
ballot, the gold standard, the conservation policy, the
civil service — these and many other reforms were red
rags to the self-styled "true Americans." Yet these
reforms have been accepted, as many more will yet
be, as embodying better than the older forms the true
American spirit.
The other thing we must cease to be afraid of is

336 PATRIOTISM
spending money raised by taxes. We cannot evolve
the America of our dreams without spending very
much greater sums than we have yet been willing to
spend for public education and health, for reforesta
tion and irrigation, for social insurance of many
sorts. These expenditures, if wisely made, will far
more than pay for themselves in dollars and cents,
in the increased efficiency of our people. They will
pay a thousandfold in heightened happiness, and in
the deepened loyalty of a contented and prosperous
people. There is no sign more hopeful for our future
than our growing willingness to spend money in
ways that will redound to the benefit of all the people,
making their opportunities for self-development more
equal and securing for them a more effective liberty.
Another hopeful sign lies in our growing national
solidarity. In spite of our being at first a union of
originally separate States, and in spite of our being
a composite people, drawn from all the diverse races
of Europe, we have now far more homogeneity, far
less sectionalism, than most European countries. It
is often impossible from manner or habits or point
of view to tell whether a man comes from Boston or
from San Francisco, Nowhere else in the world does
this homogeneity hold true of so large an area. The
people of Maine and Florida, of Oregon and Texas,
have confidence in one another, think of one another
as neighbors and as like themselves. Washington
warned his countrymen in his Farewell Address that
"every portion of our country finds the most com
manding motives for carefully guarding and preserv
ing the union of the whole." Such a warning is no
longer necessary; the permanence and integrity of
our union is now beyond question. The best thought

FAITH IN AMERICA 337
of our citizens from Maine to California is at the
service of a united country.
There is no excuse, then, for pessimism. We must
retain the faith of our founders. They had for
midable difficulties to meet, but they believed firmly
in the future of their new people. Our .recent
hysteria over the "reds" is a sign of lack of faith.
Our ideals are strong enough to stand shocks. Our
future is safe if, in Wilson's words, "We be but true
to ourselves — to ourselves as we have wished to be
known in the counsels of the world, in the thought of
all those who love liberty, justice, and right exalted."
We want, not a blind faith in our country, but a
fighting faith, an open-eyed faith, a faith that nerves
us to action. We must look to the future not with
distrust and apprehension, but with eager expectation
fortified by a determined resolve. This is the spirit
of the often-quoted words of our best-beloved poet :
"Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears.
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears.
Are all with thee — are all with thee."
We can still have unclouded faith, in spite of the
lapse in our practice, so long as the American spirit
is taught to our youth. Our national literature is a
literature shot through with ideals, our history is a
record of heroic deeds. So long as our schools and
our churches, our poets and our orators hold up these
high ideals to fire the hearts of our boys and girls,
we need not fear for our future. Mr. Edward Steiner
has touched the heart of the matter when he says,
"I do not believe that the future of a nation is written
in the land it occupies or in the language it speaks.

338 PATRIOTISM
or in the tradition it inherits; its future lies written
in its mil, . . . What shall we be? That which we
want America to be, and determine it to be. . . . And
may God grant that to be an American may, in the
future, mean something better and more significant
than what we now understand it to mean."
The lover of his country will dream of a land far
more beautiful than that which now is. The smoke
and grime of our cities must go, the crowded, ill-
smelling tenements, the dreary unloveliness of our
slums. City-planning must replace the careless
anarchy of the past. Civic centers, with noble build
ings and ample open spaces, must be created. Beauty,
which in the old days was but for the few, shall here
be for all. Our national parks and forests are already
the wonder of the world. The next generation must
see the reservation of public playgrounds in still more
generous measure. This country is not for the rich
alone, but for every citizen's pride and joy. We must
take more interest in beautifying our countryside,
our schools and public buildings, our river fronts and
highways. So shall our countr-y be dear and grateful
to the outward eye as well as to the hearts of those
who love her.
"O beautiful for patriot's dream,
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears ;
America ! America !
God shed His grace on thee.
And crown thy good with brotherhood.
From sea to shining sea."

FAITH IN AMEEICA 339
SUGGESTED READINGS
Lincoln's Addresses.
Emerson's Essay on Lincoln, in Miscellanies.
J. H. Finley and J. Sullivan, American Democracy from
Washington to Wilson.
M. G. Fulton, ed., Roosevelt's Writings.
E. A. Steiner, From Alien to Citizen,
R. W. McLaughlin, Washington and Lincoln.
Mary Antin, The Promised Land,
Jacob Riis, The Making of an American,
Anon: Undistinguished Americans.
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life.
Henry Van Dyke, Essays in Application, Chap. I.
Felix Adler, The World Crisis and its Meaning, Chap. III.
G. A. Turkington, My Country.
J. C. Small, ed., Home, Then What?
S. C. Bryant, I am an American.
John Dewey, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 26, p. 311.

YALE UNIVERSITY

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