Shall the Republic live / by Bernard Suttler

Skall the Republic Live
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By
Bernard Suttlet*
Atlanta, Georgia
Paper Cover 25 Cent*
Atlanta A. B. Caldwell PubUbin Company
1917

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Copyright 1917
By BERNABD SUTTLER
Atlanta, Ga. All ritfht. reserved
KUBAI48T PBJC88. INC.. ATLANTA. GA.

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This Book is Dedicated to
GIFFORD PINCHOT
of Washington, D. C. and Milford, Pa.
a private citizen, -who -while in the public service set such a high standard of fidelity to the common -welfare as to make it a model for public servants to imitate, and -who as a private in the ranks by his active and unselfish labors in every effort to pro mote the interests of his country exempli fies in his daily life those qualities -which to make up the "Ideal Citizen."
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CONTENTS
Foreword. I. Government. II. Government and Business. III. Labor and Capital. IV. Politics and Parties. V. The Socializing Trend. VI. The Fanner. VII. The Private Citizen. VIII. Patriotism.
Afterword.

FOREWORD
'T*HE chapters following are written mainly for * the benefit of the average men and women who compose the mass of our people, and who need an interpreter who speaks their language. For the vast literature bearing upon the sub jects treated in these brief chapters is appar ently intended for the learned and the majority of us have to dig mighty hard for the little we get out of it.
These chapters are written in plain, every-day language. There is no hair splitting as to the meaning of words. Some friendly critics think I have not gone into sufficient detail, overlooking the fact that I am not trying to show the carpenters just how to build the house, but am trying to show them what kind of a house we must have if it is to stand.
Changing the metaphor, I may say that the pic ture is painted with a wide house brush rather than with a finger wide sash brush. Nevertheless, though I have avoided much detail In order to spare my readers, there will be found in each chapter, practical suggestions as to the things which ought to be done. The main purpose is to help along good citizenship, by presenting in a large way the dangerous evils of our civic life, and in an equally large way presenting remedies. I am not undertaking to tell in Infinite detail how
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FOREWORD

things must be done, but am telling that there are certain things which must be done. All per sonal or partisan bias has been eliminated and an earnest effort has been made to present funda mental truths.

Some criticism is to be expected from each class by those who can only see through class
spectacles, but I trust that in view of the inspir ing motive which is service to my countrymen, and the brevity with which the subjects are treat ed, I shall have a measure of kindly judgment. Lest some may think the criticisms found in Chap ter V are not in accord with a preceding para graph, I desire to say that those criticisms are not born of partisan bias or enmity, but are simply expressions of righteous indignation, because of evil doing such as the world has not before known.
No attention has been paid to the canons of book making, nor has literary style been given an inning.

My earnest wish is that these pages may be helpful to the plain folk who are more concerned about the substance than they are about the dress ing up, and that they may arouse thought which will result in action along right lines.

Shall the Republic Live?
CHAPTER I
GOVERNMENT
THE subject we are starting with is government You will think I am slow in getting around to it, but you have to lay the foundations before you can build a house. Tou are all thoughtful people, and you will be able, as this is very simple, to follow it; but I would like for you to follow it carefully as what is said is the result of pretty close observation covering many years. Even if you disagree with me, that does not matter, though I believe most of the conclusions I have come to you will be forced to accept. The one merit to which I shall lay claim for these is that the thinking is absolutely straight. I make no apology for what may seem to some of you elemen tary for it is precisely at this point we break down.
Competition Versus Co-operation
The social ills of humanity have grown mainly out of the acceptance of an erroneous theory of natural law. We have accepted as natural law the theory of competition and this has resulted in great disaster to the world. There is no such thing as the natural law of competition. The natural law is co-operation, which is the precise reverse of competition. The Apostle Paul sensed this as the true law in his epistles to the Corinthians, Romans and Ephesians when he spoke to them of
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the necessity of co-operation and referred to the
different members of the church body as the
hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears, but together
making up one body. Again, in the growing of the grain from which our bread is made, we find co-operation between the man, the horse, the land, the sun, the rain and the seed. All these enter into co-operation to make that crop of grain. The only competition comes from the weeds. Do you think the farmer considers the weeds that com pete with him a valuable factor in farming, a nat ural law that helps him make a crop? There, as everywhere else, the result of competition is evil.

We are governed by the law of co-operation. Every union, every organization, every church, every corporation, every government indeed is a recognition, sometimes unconscious, of the law of co-operation, but this recognition is limited and partial. Man has not yet progressed far enough to recognize the oneness of humanity and the ad vantages of universal co-operation. Therefore, his recognition of the law of co-operation stops always short. It is only in little groups, little parties and little factions that the law is, to his mind, worth using. I will not here touch upon the evils of competition as this will come later.

Government, however despotic or absolute, im plies some measure of co-operation by the govern ed. That is a fact. We cannot get away from it. While our historical knowledge is limited back of a certain point, we know that organized govern ment has existed for 5000 years. Notwithstanding

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this long experience, governments are still in the experimental stage.

Political and Governmental Facts

The dictionary will tell you that "politics is the science of government." I don't suppose there was ever a more glaring misstatement. It was taught me in my youth and for a long time I accepted it. One day it dawned on me that there was no science of government and if there is no science of government, where does that leave poli tics? Why, it leaves it as the practice of govern ment and it would not he far from the truth if I said it was the malpractice of government. There has never been a science of government and for a very good reason. Science means exactness. The chemist knows by experimental proof that if he combines certain substances he will obtain a specific, definite result; but the chemist deals with inert or passive substances. Government's raw material is the human mind. No two human minds are exactly alike. Nothing is so variable, so flex ible, so uncertain, so active, so slow, so obstinate, so narrow, so liberal, as the human mind. No governmental chemist, if I may use that expres sion, can ever combine the human material into a formula that will invariably produce a definite result.
Let us briefly consider some of the older govern mental forms. Whether a Sennacherib in Assyria, a Thothmes in Egypt, an Artaxerxes or Cyrus or Darius in Persia and Babylonia, the dominant idea was always absolutism which was to some extent

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modified by custom varied by assassination. In this earlier period the Jewish theocracy stands out as a remarkable divergence from the prevail ing idea. Coming down the line to Greece we find so-called democracies with Sparta and its limited monarchy isolated from the rest in governmental ideas. The little Grecian governments were not true democracies but rather little republics con trolled by a ruling caste. Then comes Rome, a military republic, in which, while the common people had representation through their tribunes and sometimes consuls, the government was dis tinctly in the hands of an aristocratic senate. We must give Greece credit for some democratic thought far in advance of the times, but the Gre cian practice did not measure up to the Grecian theory* Each of these in turn Imposed its civ ilization upon a large area, each of them ruled these areas for a time and each of them went down in time to ruin as the result of the human failure to guard against the evils of power and prosperity. That has been the universal rule.

One hopeful thing needs calling to your atten tion. However complete the ruin, and though it has involved aeons of time, each succeeding cycle of civilization has traveled further than the pre ceding before being overtaken by destruction.

Some History We Should Know
Now, when the western Roman Empire went down and the "Dark Ages" as we justly term the centuries between the third and the tenth cen turies of the Christian era settled down upon the

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world, the outlook was most hopeless for the human family. But a new factor had come into

the equation. The Christian faith came into life

and action and during the black millenium the

leaven was at work in the minds of men. As we

look back upon the monstrous crimes of the Dark

Ages it seems almost incredible that any good

seed could survive such a carnival of murder,

savagery and misgovernment. Government had

literally become a matter of the strong and brutal

hand. Venice and Genoa, Spain and Poland, with their centuries of warfare against the infidel built up a belief in the Christian faith which, supple mented by the Crusades and the shrewd manage ment of church authorities, gave to a nominal Christianity a complete domination over 95 per cent of Europe. Notwithstanding church abuses, however, there were pure and pious men who be lieved in the practical application of Christian ethics and here we come upon the seeds of a real democracy. The seed was feeble, the soil mostly was not fertile and the growth was slow. The Barons who wrested Magna Charta from King John were fighting the battles of all succeeding ages, though they did not know it. The Swiss at Morgarten, at Sempach, at Morat and at Nancy were doing the same thing. Martin Luther in Germany, the Waldenses, the Vaudois and the Huguenots in France, bloody minded old Henry VIII, "a great blot of blood and grease," as Dick ens calls him, were fighting our battles, though only an inspired vision could have then seen it.

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Coming down to the seventeenth century we find in Eastern Europe a huge, loose-Jointed empire, under despotic government, just emerg ing from practical barbarism. Turkey, another despotic government, ruled by wholesale mur
der In the Balkans, Germany was a congeries of little independent states having nothing in common but language. Italy was in like case, ex cept that many of its provinces were under for eign rule. Poland was a misgoverned common wealth with elective kings. Spain, the greatest power in Europe and under despotic government, had vast colonial possessions. France, a com pact and fertile country, was in the last stages of exhaustion because of the constant wars of the despotic Louis XIV. The Netherlands had not fully achieved independence of Spain, though it was in sight. Austria was the dominant power in the so-called German empire. In England the seed was being sown for the desperate struggle soon to eventuate in bloody civil war between King and Commons.

Switzerland and the Netherlands represented the concrete democratic sentiment of Europe with England lagging along behind. The first English settlement in America was just being made. A cursory glance would seem to justify the opinion that 130 or 140 generations--say 40 centuries-- had not done much for humanity, but the big drift had set in and, as we shall see, with vastly accel erated momentum.
Jump 200 years. We find an independent re publican United States, a republican France and

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Switzerland; limited constitutional monarchies in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Great Britain, a weakened Spain, Austria and Turkey, and a powerful kingdom of Prussia in Germany. The gains of those two centuries had surpassed all the gains of all the ages before!

Jump another 100 years and we find astonishing results. From 1600 to 1800 the world had made greater progress than in all the previous ages, but from 1800 to 1900 the progress was immense ly greater than in all previous ages including the 17th and 18th centuries. Governmental changes had been enormous. All North and South Amer ica had come under democratic institutions. France, Switzerland and Portugal in Europe stood for republicanism. Turkey had been reduced to a shadow, Russian autocracy was showing weak ness; only in Germany, Austria and Japan had the belief in the "divine right" of kings persisted.
Notwithstanding this apparent gain for demo cratic ideas, old theories had maintained sway over the minds of men and many thoughtful men have been impressed with the seeming failure of democratic government. We come now to the root trouble.

We Have Had the Wrong Foundation

In every age, in every civilization, in every form of government, the moral has been subordinated to the material and the downfall of each recurring civilization has been primarily due to the subordi nation of the moral to the material.

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This is an inversion of the proper order which

has exacted fearful penalties in the past and will

continue to do so as long as we permit it to remain.

During the past 100 years, this subordination of

the moral to the material has become more mark

ed than ever before. Men are more frankly wor

shippers of material success than even in the

Dark Ages and efficiency has become a fetish

both in business and in government because effi
ciency is supposed to make men more certain of material success. To show you the unsoundness of this idea, I need only cite the case of Germany which is the nearest approach to a scientific and efficient government the world has ever seen and that wonderful government has carried, as a direct result of its science and efficiency, its philosophy of materialism so far as to boldly proclaim that "might is right." "Let him take who hath the power and let him keep who can," is its doctrine. Even our materialistic and unmoral world is shocked and stands aghast at such a rank reversion to barbarism.

We have noted the constantly increasing rate of speed in certain sort of progress during the past 300 years. Every sign indicates that this rate of speed is likely to be accelerated rather than lessened during the present century. It I am right in my forecast, one of two things must happen before the century ends. The destruc tion of our civilization and universal anarchy
if we let things drift; or a finer civilization than the world has ever dreamed, provided we have

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the virtue to substitute a moral for a material base.
Which will It be?
I am neither hopeful nor pessimistic. There is much to be said on both sides of the argument, but the strongest argument in favor of changing our base is the frightful chaos which now obtains as a result of unmoral and immoral national con
duct.
History reveals to us that government fatalities in each cycle of civilization have been 100 per cent. Is that not a pregnant fact which should arouse the most profound thought? Curiously enough, we find men jogging along in the old ruts and chattering about theories which have already failed.

The Contrasting Theories of Government

While there are many shades of opinion as to
government and its functions there are two domi nant schools of thought: the Conservative (or Standpatter) and the Liberal (or Radical). In
every country but our own these two schools work under well defined party organizations, but in our country chaos reigns. We find Democrats who are standpatters, Republicans who are liberals, Pro
gressives who are moderates and others who are radicals, Socialists in like case and a new phe nomenon of late years in the States' Rights Re
publican. Party names mean but little in America now.

The essential difference in the two dominant schools of thought is that the Conservatives be lieve the first duty of government is to property,

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while the Liberals believe that its first duty is to man. This means that the Conservatives believe in the material base and the Liberals in the moral base.
Our Revolutionary fathers were probably neither better nor worse than ourselves. They were the product of an age which had been dominated by the Conservative idea. It was not, therefore, sur prising that in the making of a Constitution they tied us up so tightly as to hamper forward move ment along right lines, while on the other hand they showed, in many ways, remarkable acumen for men who had grown up under the conditions which had environed them. That they were pa triots no man can doubt and their failures were due to their training and to the marked limitations of human foresight. It took one of the bloodiest wars in all history to correct one of their errors and in the process of correction other evils took root which now have overshadowed the Republic and threaten its very life.
For fifty years we have been trying to amend admitted evils by the process of statutory laws, which has resulted in the creation of a vast mass of complicated legislation. It seems to me we have been trying to "muddle through" in the Anglo-Saxon way because we have lacked the courage to face the situation by making a new organic law and providing explicitly therein what government is. I am forced to believe that this step must be the first one taken if we are ever to put ourselves on firm ground. I very much ques tion if any generation, however wise and patriotic

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it may be, Is wise enough to legislate for future generations. The dead hand cannot be trusted safely to guide living people. No reflection is
made by that statement on those who have passed on. It is merely a statement of fact.
I am rather of the opinion that government should be defined every fifty years for fear that we drift under the influence of the "dead hand" which inevitably leads to the hardening of the governmental arteries and senile decay.
What, then, is government? Man, in the patriarchal and tribal states, pre ceded organized government. Then man created organized government. Undoubtedly the motive was to supply himself a tool which would more effectively promote the general welfare. He did not contemplate this tool as an end, but as a means to obtain a desired end. This is true, re gardless of the form of government. In autocra cies, the strong and the unscrupulous, by hook and crook, drew to themselves all the powers and benefits of government, making of the commons mere beasts of burden. Conservatism, or stand-
patism, was the natural outgrowth of those who were (or are) the beneficiaries of a prevailing system, however bad the system might be for the masses. Liberalism, on the other hand, is the growth of the altruistic spirit and its seed is found in Christian ethics which for 19 centuries has been seeping into the minds of men. The natural trend of conservatism' is toward a magni fying of government and a minimizing of the in dividual. The very flower of this trend Is in evi-

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dence in a modern Germany where the accepted doctrine is that "the State is everything, the in dividual nothing" and that "man exists for the state." This is the exact opposite of the truth, for it makes the thing created greater than the creator. On the other hand, we in our country and the English in their country have so magni fied the individual as to impair our ability to co operate and have thus in a large measure con tributed towards lessening our government's

value. Ideal government, therefore, would be one where
full recognition is given to individual values, and

the sovereignty of the people, while at the same time giving such popular co-operation as would enable government to meet every emergency with prompt and effective action. This would involve a closer affiliation between the people and the governing body than has ever obtained in any modern democracy. The governing body should be the leader, the suggester, and the means should be provided whereby prompt response could be se cured. I will not discuss here how best that may be done, though I have opinions as to the methods, but will pass on and show you briefly the utter failure of the bi-cameral or double chamber sys tem of legislation.
In Latin America governments the Senate is everywhere an insignificant figurehead, all real legislation coming frdm the house of representa tives, or deputies, as they are in some places called. In England, the House of Commons is supreme, while in France, Italy, Spain, Holland,

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Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Greece the chamber of deputies (or as we say the lower bouse) rules.
The exceptions to this rule are Germany and the United States. In Germany all real power, outside of the Kaiser and his coterie, is lodged in the Bundesrat, or upper house, the Reichstag be ing merely a place where the people play at gov ernment. In our country the Senate claims and holds equal power with the House of Representa tives and is the strong intrenchment behind which reactionary forces of the country lie in wait to defeat progressive measures, or, failing to defeat them, to obtain concessions.
We have recently seen how a dozen senators were able to hamstring the government in a great emergency and yet one of this dozen disloyal men still remains at the head of the Committee on Foreign Relations. One does not need to go furth er to see that the Senate has outlived its use fulness.
I would call your attention here to another pe culiar fact. Ours is the only democratic country In the world where a Supreme Court can nullify an Act of Congress. This brings us down to a vital matter. A supreme court, consisting of nine men, holding office for life, actually controls the government. Can you conceive of a more un democratic state of affairs?

Where We Fail in America
I come now to two reasons why our government is not all that it should be. One of these reasons

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deals with the private citizen and will be discussed at length in a later chapter. The other deals with office-holding and will be briefly referred to here. Let me lay down a premise which I believe to be a fundamental truth. In a Republic, outside of clerical positions, office-holding should be an hon orable incident in the life of the citizen and not a lifetime pursuit.

It is the violation of this principle which is largely responsible for governmental ills. Should we establish a new organic law, under which no President or senator could succeed himself, and no representative could serve continuously for more than four years and then take all patronage from these officials beyond the appointment of their private secretaries, we would see an im provement so great it would be startling. As long as we permit men to make careers of office-hold ing, we encourage them to fritter away the brain and energy and time which belong to the public (during their terms) in building up their political machines, either to hold what they have or to enhance their political fortunes. In this system lies one of the greatest dangers which faces us in the future. It has already done us much evil.

Governments do not as a rule rise above the average level of the people who maintain them. Thus, when we have poor government, it is be cause the supporting people average low in quality and when we have good government the support ing people average high in quality. It is well to remember this when we criticize government.

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Under every form of government the shrewd, the unscrupulous, the ambitious, will endeavor to pervert government into a tool for their personal enrichment and advancement. By the measure of their success in accomplishing their ends, we can gauge the general intelligence of the people who maintain the government.

Definition of Democratic Government
I wish to give here a definition of what I be lieve to be a correct form of democratic govern ment:
Government Is the combined strength of all the people to do for the general welfare of all the people those things which acting individually or in groups the people are not strong enough to do.
There Is no perfected science of government and it Is therefore essential that the conduct of the government shall be entrusted to men of lib eral and progressive minds who will not allow the governmental usefulness to be crippled by be ing bound In a strait-jacket made of ancient tra ditions and precedents. For lacking a perfect ed science of government it is appearent that gov ernmental policies and even principles must change with the changing conditions of humani ty. A democracy that is not fluid must inevitably perish from hardening of the arteries.
I believe that is a correct definition of what democratic government ought to be. Anything short of that is stationary. But life is not sta tionary. It has been said that there is only one

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unchanging thing in the world, and that is change. Everything is changing. Now to undertake to build a government on a foundation which never

changes is ridiculous, when you come to think about it, because the law of life is change. The world keeps moving forward and government is like everything else. The foundations you build today will be out of plumb one hundred years

hence. It has always been so and will always be so as long as the mind of man is the mind of man.

Therefore, I am a radical; I can't help but be a radical. I could not be a standpatter, because it

is contrary to the law of life, but until we get to

the point that we are willing to base government on actual conditions we will always be experi menting and the lost motion is frightful to con template. I am not one of those who believe that this is the worst government on earth. It does a great deal of fine work, and there are a thousand

and one ways in which our government serves us excellently and effectively, but there is a lack of that close spirit of co-operation between the gov

erning body and the people which should enable the government to serve us promptly in great

emergencies. The reason lies in the political sys

tem we have allowed to grow up and which is go ing to destroy us unless we destroy it. We allow men to put their political fortunes, and the for tunes of the political organizations which they uphold, before the interests of the whole people.
This can only be amended by taking away from men the opportunity of making office holding a career. In conclusion, it must be accepted that

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Government has unlimited power tn so far as the rights of its own citizens are concerned; that vested rights must never for an hour be permitted to stand in the way of the general welfare, and for those who are shocked at such a statement, let them consider for a moment the fact that the power of condemnation granted public utility cor porations is a frank recognition of that principle.

CHAPTER II
GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS
IN the last chapter I wrote about Government. I tried to show where government had started from, what had developed, what sorts of govern ment the world had had, what we have now and I worked out finally what I thought was a fair definition of democratic government. That defini tion I want to repeat as the starting point of this chapter.
"Government is the combined strength of all the people to do for the general welfare of all the people those things which, acting individually or in groups, the people are not strong enough to do."
I think that is a fair definition. I explained a little further that there was ho perfected science of government. I may add that there never will be so long as the mind of man is the mind of man.
"There is no perfected science of government, and it is therefore essential that the conduct of the government shall be entrusted to men of lib eral and progressive minds who will not allow governmental usefulness to be crippled by being bound in a straight jacket made of ancient tradi tions and precedents. For lacking a perfected science of government it is apparent that govern mental policies and even principles must change with changing conditions of humanity. A democ racy that is not fluid must inevitably perish from hardening of the arteries."
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Now, this is true: It does not matter what form of government you may have, whether it is an autocracy, an oligarchy, a democracy, a repub lic or a constitutional monarchy, certain things must he conceded to government. It controls our lives, our liberties and our property. But we have narrowed our conception of government in a way which has worked us a great deal of harm, and remember what I have just said, "to do for the general welfare of all the people those things which acting individually or in groups the people are not strong enough to do." That is not a limi tation of the functions of government. I speak of democratic government. The only limitation is the limitation of opportunity. If the government has the opportunity then it is its business to do anything necessary for the general welfare.

May Governments Enter Business?
I am going a step further in this chapter, taking up government and business, and I am going to show, if I can, that it is a perfectly legitimate function of government to go into business, if by so doing it can serve with advantage the general welfare. One of my friends recently said to me something like this: (By the way, he is an office holder. I don't know whether or not that fact has anything to do with his views). He said he could conceive of Its being right and proper for a gov ernment to go into business, so long as it did not make any profit on that business. I said: "Why stop there?" He replied that profit-making was not a proper function of the government. Let us

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see how that looks. There is a government in the world of only twelve hundred thousand people, which has a public debt of $250,000,000. That it about 40 per cent of the people of Georgia, with a public debt of two hundred and fifty millions of dollars! It is incredible! But that public debt was created for public utilities. That is, the public owns and operates its telegraph and telephone lines, its railroads, its harbors, and even its coal mines. It owns all public utilities in that country, but it does not operate the coal mines except occasionally when the private mine owners get too greedy.

Now, those people make a profit on their gov ernmental business--they make a profit so great that they do not know that they carry that debt. They have alsolutely no interest to pay, no taxes to pay, in order to carry it; the profits take care of the investment. It is a country in which there is equal suffrage. Men and women vote on equal terms. A man now living, and who is at the head of that government, made a statement that twentyfive years ago, when suffrage was first considered, he thought it was a mistake and opposed it. In the light of twenty-five years of experience he was forced to admit that he was mistaken. It is, in deed, the purest democracy on earth and has the largest percentage of voters in its elections of any nation in the world. In other words, if in the United States we were to vote 80 per cent of the citizens in any election the country would be abso lutely startled, and yet 80 per cent of the regis tered vote is a customary thing in that country.

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That la an illustration of what the extension of governmental functions has done for those people. It has made them take an active, intelligent inter est in that country and its affairs, resulting in which they have been able to break up land monopoly. They have more home-owners in pro portion to the population than any other nation except France. This country is 'way over at the antipodes--at the other end of the earth. It is New Zealand. Yet the people are mainly of the same stock as ourselves -- English, Irish and Scotch. The reason why they have done these marvellous things is that they made up their minds to break loose from tradition and preced ent. What I am telling you is not theory. It is something that has been done. What else do they do?
Why, the government will insure your life at half the rate we pay in this country. They will haul fertilizer free to the farmer on the govern ment railroad, on the theory that it helps him make a bigger crop and the higher freight on the grain in harvest season will make the free haul ing profitable. In other words, the common wel fare is the first consideration. They find it profit able to have government related to business in that way. In America that sounds "academic." Our people are not educated up to it. If we should take one hundred as the standard of gov ernment (of course no government is perfect), then I should say that our government was about fifty per cent effective. The reason is that we are no more than a fifty per cent people. A good

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friend said the other day that the curse of Ameri
ca was mediocre people, and added "one of whom I am which," and as a matter of fact there was a
good deal of truth in what he said. Do you know that the establishment of the Post Office Depart ment was viciously fought? It is a fact. After the federal government was established and the constitution adopted, the establishment of the postal department was fought by gentlemen who did not believe that handling the mail was a gov ernment function. That it was an interference with private business which was unwarranted. At that time, it cost twenty-five cents to send a letter from New York to Philadelphia, and at that rate it would have cost about $5.00 to send one from New York to San Francisco. You can see the narrowness of the idea of the conservatives who did not believe in any extension of government functions.
Now, in the last chapter I touched upon com petition and co-operation. I want you to get this idea: that competition is not a natural law. You know it's not so. The natural law is co-operation. It is susceptible of proof, but we cannot stop here to go into argument. Competition is a man-made device, born perhaps of the original sin, greed and weakness of the human animal, whereby he seeks to take advantage of the other fellow. If you do not believe it, see how the so-called law of com petition is working in Europe now.

How We Bred Trouble

At the outset of our country, we had a very thin population along down the Eastern fringe and an

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immense area of virgin soil. No roads, no fac tories, no schools to amount to anything, and the subduing of this continent created, or brought about a race of men who were unusually selfreliant, unusually independent and they developed a remarkably individualistic trend. Now, in these excellent qualities lay the seed of much of the trouble which has come upon this country by reason of business conditions and business growth. The ability to co-operate was lost. It you will go back and read the story of the American Revolu tion, you will wonder how they ever won the struggle when the colonies were at cross purposes, refusing to co-operate, jealous and hampering each other, driving Washington to despair at the fail ure of our people to unite, and it is said that our General Greene, in the South, was heart-broken over the conditions which confronted him and which he could not mend. It took men of unusual character to overcome conditions created by the character of the people. As we increased in numbers, and in facilities, the virtues in our char acter--self-reliance, independence and Individual ity--became vices because we refused to become a co-operative people. I have heard a lot of people who were strong on tradition and precedent and short on sense talk about "competition being the life of trade." In other words, it is the "life" of trade for me to try to cut my neighbor's throat, and for him to try to cut mine. It is the life of trade for him to destroy me, or the life of trade for me to develop good muscles and good legs in order to escape. Competition comes right down

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to that sort of cut-throat proposition. When I

began to take notice of conditions many years ago,

I found this to be true, that every default in busi ness, every sharp practice in business, and every bit of greed in business was justified by the theory that it was necessitated by the law of competition --a law which never had been a law, which never had existed, which was only a man-made device. And as we grew in wealth--as always happens-- man's greed kept pace with the increasing wealth of the country. When I was a boy, a man worth $25,000 in my county was a pretty substantial citizen, a man worth $50,000 was a nabob; and a man worth $100,000--I don't think there was any in my section--was very wealthy, he was a prince, as a friend used to say: "Why that man is rich!" What is $100,000 now? Just get in your minds that immense jump in a few years until we have fifty million and twenty-five million dollar men, and men worth ten and five million all over the country. You see, therefore, that man's appetite has increased with the ability to gratify that appe tite, and I mention it because it brings into line what I want to show directly. I don't know, some times, if I am grateful that the Lord gave me a head to think with, because it has occasioned me much trouble, and deprived me of a lot of pleasure I might have had in things that didn't take any brains. Thinking is troublesome business. Still, I had to do it. And here is a thought that dawned on me--that the fellows that got this big money never rendered the big service. Now, don't mis understand me, I am not making a fanatical at-

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tack on them. There have been very few men in the world who have ever been worth to the world fifty million dollars, and therefore few men en titled to take from the common wealth that sum, or anything near it. There have been men occa sionally who were worth that much to the world, but they never collected it. Edison is worth it. Walter Reed, who discovered the yellow fever mosquito, was worth it, but you find it absolutely true in every case that the men who have done the big service for humanity never collected the big reward, and the men who have done less service have been reaping the profits.

The Evolution of Business
The corporations began to take shape about forty years ago. It did not take the corporations long to relaize the advantages of limited co-opera tion and it was only a few years later when two, three, five or more corporations began coming together to get still greater strength, and the next idea on which they hit was how to manipu late the stock proposition. The New York Stock Exchange became the vehicle. That institution has done more evil to the people of the United States than everything else I know anything about. It has absolutely corrupted the business morality of these United States. Its operations last year amounted to twenty-three billions of dollars, more than the total value of all the railroads, twice the value of the farm crops and eight times the value of the mineral product. All this wealth involved in one year's gambling transactions in New York.

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And there you get the secret of these fifty million dollar fortunes. The stock is exploited by men who stack the cards. We hear much about the railroad question, and the condition the railroads are in, and the reason why is that there are 1387 living railroad corporations in the United States, capitalized with watered stock to the extent of eight billion dollars more than was ever invested.
The street railways operate on the same watered stock plan. I came to the conclusion that either we had to run all our railroads as one corporation under the regulation of the United States, or else we had to take them over as a direct government proposition--one of two things. Now the reason
the railroads are in that shape is that the stock of the railroads has been used as counters in the gambling game in New York City. The manage ment of the railroads has been made secondary to the gambling manipulation.
Now let us take cotton. The future board of the New York Cotton Exchange, which is a gambling institution, was established in 1868. In the 49 years of its existence, it has cost the cotton pro ducers eight thousand millions of dollars. You don't know what that means. Neither do I. The human mind cannot grasp such figures. How do I arrive at them? I want you to get the process so you can understand what goes on under the name of "business." I took the forty years pre ceding the creation of the future board, leaving out the four years of the Civil war, which were abnormal. I took the average price of cotton per pound and the number of bales grown. Then I

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took the following forty years and figured the same way and found that though there was a greater per capita use of cotton in the second than in the first period, the price was $18.50 per bale less. What made the difference? The future board. The other day a good business man said to* me that all business was a gamble. I wrote a paper on "What Is Business," and a magazine which does not often agree with me reproduced it be cause in that case it did agree with me. That magazine is "American Industries," the official organ of the National Manufacturers' Association, and when those people agree with me, I think I have said something.
But read the article for yourselves:

What Is Business?
"No word in our language is so misused as 'business.' Nor in any other one thing under the sun is there greater misconception than there is as to what constitutes 'business.'
"The dictionary, or academic meanings have been largely lost sight of in the economic changes and growths which have made 'business' the most potent word in our language.
"It is important, therefore, that we get a real grasp on what 'business' really means.
"A broad, though correct definition, would be that business is the exchange and distribution of the products or commodities resulting from the labor of man and the result of which exchange and distribution is that we live.

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"The farmer, the miner, the manufacturer, the fisherman, for example, are producers. The mer

chant, the banker, the shipmasters, the railway

men are distributors. Here and there one finds a

lapping over, but generally speaking, these defini

tions are correct. All these are 'business men.'

Going a step further we find doctors, lawyers,

scientists, authors, explorers, etc. These men are

both producers and distributors, for they add to the world's useful knowledge by their labor and research, and then give it out for the use of all men. Certainly it would be fair to class them as a valuable division of the army of business men.

"There is another class which poses as a part of the business army which has no claim to member ship in the army of producers and distributors, because it renders neither the one nor the other service. This class is composed of 'speculators' as they term themselves, but who are in fact simply parasites and gamblers. These men do more harm to legitimate business and real business men than all other causes combined. They produce nothing but paper contracts and distribute only evil prac tices. When we produce fifteen million bales of cotton, and the speculating gentry turn over 300 million bales we know that 285 million bales are gambling deals where no actual delivery of pro ducts was ever contemplated or made.

"So of wheat, if we produce 600 million bushels, and the turn over is 3,000 million bushels, we know that 2,400 million bushels represented the gambling deals.

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"In 1916 the speculative transactions on the New York Stock Exchange represented some 23 billions of dollars--more than the total value of all the rail ways of the country combined, more than twice the total value of our farm products, eight times the amount of our mineral products.
"Remember that these men were neither pro ducers nor distributors--merely gamblers and par asites. Who reaps the profit of this enormous volume of paper dealings? The profits go to that shrewd contrivance of ordinary gambling houses known as "the Kitty," and these parasites own and operate "the Kitty."

"It may be laid down as a truism that parasites and barnacles are never helpful to the men or things to which they attach themselves.
"In preceding paragraphs you have read what business is and who are business men, now re member this, the speculator, or accurately speak ing, the gambler, is not legitimately a business man. The reason why can be briefly stated. In a legitimate business transaction both parties are always benefited, whereas in speculative trans actions all the benefit goes to 'the Kitty,' but comes out of the legitimate industry or business of the country."
In a legitimate business transaction, both parties ought to be benefited. I want a pair of shoes. The man across the street sells shoes. He gets a profit on my purchase and I get what I require. He performs a useful service in the community. Both parties receive a benefit. It is not always in the shape of money.

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We have permitted to grow up in this country

a condition, however, whereby nearly all the profit

goes into the hands of gamblers and exploiters. You will say that is a broad statement. The United States Steel Corporation made $333,000,000 last year which was applied to dividends on their common stock. When this corporation was organ ized 16 years ago, it did not invest a single dollar in its common stock. It was issued on the strength of bonds issued by the old companies when the United States Steel Corporation was promoted. It was water. And that is the common stock which last year brought these dividends. When we talk about the "wonderful prosperity" of the United States Steel Corporation we are talking about the wonderful prosperity of a group of high grade gamblers. What is the government going 'a do with them? Is our democratic government con tributing to the welfare of all the people of the United States when it permits things like this to happen? You and I may not be conscious of this wrong. It may not be direct. But you and I con tribute our mite to that concern. If I buy a pound of nails, I contribute to it. If I rent a house, I contribute to it, because I help reimburse the builder of that house for the nails and other hard ware he has bought to put in it. Now this is a sad reflection upon the moral sense of the Ameri can people. These things happen and the people will not look back, nor take the trouble to invest! gate. They are tco lazy. And most people whc know won't take the trouble to tell them. I have made it my job to preach some of these things

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because I think people ought to know them, and it is a function of our common government to cor rect them. It is the most arrant and silly non sense to talk about "unscrambling" these corpora tions through suits. There is but one way to get at these people, after we have allowed things to come to this point which should never have been permitted, and that is by taxation. We have got to educate our people so that these corporations can be taxed out of their unjust profits. Perhaps someone will say that we don't need the money. Don't we need the money? Ask my friend Logan to tell us his experiences in our city of Atlanta. I was thinking about a cartoon for the papers on the school situation. I thought of drawing a school building so filled with girls and boys that the sides of the house were all puffed out. That would illustrate the way our schools are over crowded. And our school teachers--are they properly paid? Most of them are women, and they are paid little more than a laborer's wage. There are a thousand and one places where we need money. I could talk for the next three hours about where we could use this money. We have got to take from these men this money which they have unjustly taken from the American people. It is unjust, because the stock does not represent a real investment.
They have loaded us with watered stock to the extent of billions of dollars and are taking the profits of the country to pay dividends on it, and we have got to take these fortunes back for the general benefit of all. Now you may say that

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sounds Socialistic. I have been called a Socialist

and an Anarchist. I am neither the one nor the
other. But I have an abiding faith in Justice. We speak of these men as "great financiers" when they are plain, every-day robbers and very high class gamblers. Captain Kidd, who used to sail the seas and sink a little ship occasionally, and get a few bags of gold was an Infant--a little, innocent baby, alongside these modern financiers. He would not have been fit for an office boy. The wages he earned would not have paid for a private secretary to one of these financiers. But we have practically made them a gift of this money. I made the statement a while ago to a man who comes in contact with some of these financiers, that they had very ordinary ability, and he said: "Why, I found that out myself." The faculty of acquiring money in certain cases is not by any means an evidence of a very high order of intelli gence and these people have simply used us, be cause our government is not effective, and our government is not effective because we do not make it so. Do you not see why it is necessary for our people to be educated and the only way to educate them is to keep hammering it into them? Sometimes I feel like an old professor when I was at the university, who used to say: "I wish the Lord would permit me to bore into the heads of you boys with an auger. I don't see any other way in the world to get any sense into your heads." People are too busy, they are too indifferent; or they are hysterical; they lack stability and a people like that are in danger.

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They are in danger of destruction as a nation be cause they refuse to inform themselves. We have got to go to them.

Government In Business
As will be shown in Chapter V, our government has done and is doing a great deal of business. Our Postofflce Department is a tremendous busi ness run solely for the public benefit--hence it is conducted at low cost to the users.
Our land reclamation work, our forestry work, our ship-building and food control work (caused by the war), our munition plants and arsenals, are all examples of the government in business for the purpose of contributing to the common welfare. Only recently California has gone into the land business as a State by placing a consid erable sum of money in the hands of a board which is authorized to buy large tracts of land, divide into small tracts, and sell to actual settlers on long time, and at prices no more than sufficient to pay cost and operating expenses of the board. Slowly it may be, but surely, the people are learn ing that their power may be used through govern ment to contribute to their business welfare.

Government and Business
This brings us to the basic thought on the sub ject of this chapter.
Democratic government as the voice of all the people has the right, and as the strength of all the people has the power to control, supervise, and direct every kind of business so that the

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common welfare will be promoted, and if such control, supervision or direction shall fail to make any business a genuine contributor to the promo tion of the common welfare then government has both the right and power to expropriate or abolish such business as may seem best for the public interest. Socialism? Not a bit of it. Just plain common sense, and it is this underlying truth which is killing off the liquor business.
The next enemy to be assailed is speculation which is in no sense an honorable business con tributing 'to the common welfare, but a game rigged up by the few for the benefit of the few, and which in fact operates to the injury of the great majority. For no man has the moral right to engage in a pursuit which injures the many that he may gain, and when government gives him the legal right to do so, while it does not indeed transcend its powers, it does show a criminal in difference to the common welfare. When govern ment so acts it is high time for the people to change their public servants.

CHAPTER III
LABOR AND CAPITAL
LABOR precedes capital. There would be no capital but for its antecedent labor. Labor is the living man. Capital is the dead dollar. The dead dollar can only become the live dollar by the application of the labor of the living man. The laborer with empty pockets may look with envy over a vast acreage of untilled fertile land representing capital, but it is as certain as fate, that the untilled lands will produce no dividends until the empty-pocket laborer and others like him have applied their muscle to the growing of crops on that land. Capital is merely the stored up fruits of labor and to give capital the prior claim over labor is to put the plow before the horse and to say that the thing created is greater than the creator. It is the wrong view of these two factors in our economic life which is responsi ble for many of our economic ills.
It is true that morally speaking, no man has a right to profit by the labor of another man, but as not more than one man in a million believes that truth it is not now a practical question and no time need be wasted in discussing it. We can only strive for the establishment of more equity in human relations.
A little gain has been made. The holding of human beings as chattels, slaves, which was Com monly accepted only a little while back is now uni versally recognized as immoral and uneconomic.
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For that system we have substituted a wage

slavery which has quite as many evils as chattel

slavery had, and our next great step will be to

grasp the truth as to wage slavery and to do battle for a more righteous system. Human greed

is at the bottom of all our ills. Out of human greed has grown the infernal competitive system

which fathered, first chattel slavery, and then wage slavery-

As a logical sequence there followed great for

tunes in money, land, and personal property of various kinds. It will take us a long time to learn that limitations must be placed by law on the amount that any one individual may take from the common earnings of mankind and the amount of land any one person may hold.
It is sheer nonsense to claim that one individ ual can in an ordinary lifetime render such service to the world as to justify his taking in payment 50 to 500 million dollars, or many thousands of acres of land.

The few men in history who have rendered service of such transcendent value have never collected the millions they justly earned by their service to humanity. If you doubt this consider such men as Timoleon, John the Baptist, Savona rola, Martin Luther, John Wesley, George "Wash ington, Abraham Lincoln, and even our own Edi son, greatest inventor of all the ages, does nol rank with the big multi-millionaires. The shrewd the strong and selfish, the cunning, the unscrupu lous, are the beneficiaries of the present system

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45

But the world does not exist for the benefit of the few, even though that few be elect men, and humanity must come to a proper knowledge of real values, and see that men are rewarded not according to their greed, but according to their deserts.
Naturally it will occur to the reader to ask how this change for the better is to be brought about.
That question brings us back to co-operation. There are but two possible roads for the economic life of the world to travel. One is the road of competition, which after thousands of years has brought us into a quagmire of hatred, envy, and bloodshed. The other is the way of co-operation. This way means more kindness, more justice, no bloodshed, no multi-millionaires. It means a hap pier and a more contented humanity. It may not spell such rapid progress in some directions, but in view of the results of the world's phenomenal progress in the last two centuries we may well question if that progress has been an unmixed blessing.
The primary difficulty lies in the fact that nearly all the human family are "tarred with the same stick."
Practically all are striving not for a world in which equal Justice shall prevail for all but for a world in which each striver shall gain some ad vantage over his fellow.
At heart the laborer is no whit more unselfish nor more just than his capitalistic neighbor.
World history' abundantly proves that state ment. But world history also proves that each

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cycle of civilization breaks down because of its iniquities. If, therefore, we are to save our civili zation and make it better we must realize the necessity of a change of policy. The ideal policy would be the practical application of the Golden Rule, and for that we should work diligently but while waiting for that good day to come we must fall back on an enlightened selfishness. This en lightened selfishness will teach us that in order to make the world more tolerable for ourselves we must consent to let it be tolerable for the other fellow. It will teach us that human nature improves so slowly that we may not hope for the ideal system becoming operative all at once, and therefore, we must be content to mend things a bit at a time, always keeping in view the main purpose of a more tolerable world. The world today is not socialistic, and from all present in dications is not likely soon to be. We must there fore, accept present conditions as the starting point in our equation, and then see if we cannot work out to a conclusion which will be equitable to all who work.

Under present conditions labor and capital are essential to each other. That is the starting point. Those who advocate socialism are crying for in stant change of economic conditions, but some of us who have been studying economics and the human animal for a long time know that they are butting their heads against a stone wall.

Only in sporadic and rare cases will men blow up the building they have with the idea that the} can put up a better one the next day.

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47

The human mind is habituated to the thought
of labor and capital as complementary to each other. It is, therefore, easier and more certain of results to shape the tools we have in such manner as to work steadily towards betterment of social conditions, rather than to destroy our tools and start over again with naked hands.
No intelligent man will deny the existence of evils, but every intelligent man must realize that we cannot eliminate those evils at one fell swoop, except at a cost so appalling that the human race will not face it.

Co-operation is the key, and the improved social order must be built upon that, each year pushing ahead a little, and each year cutting out some of the evils which have resulted from unrestricted competition.

The practical question is what shape shall this co-operation take?
Many experiments have already been made, bonuses, profit-sharing, co-operative colonies, etc., but there has not been up to this time a general and frank recognition of the principle of partner ship between labor and capital. To a sorrowful degree the present position is one of sullen oppo sition to each other by two parties who must work together, and who have so far been unable to see that working in harmony would be more con ducive to the welfare of both than the present attitude of each seeking the advantage.
It becomes imperative as the very first step that the men of labor, and the men of capital must

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disabuse their minds of the wicked and dangerous fallacy that the one can prosper only when the other loses.
That theory is not based on sound business principles, but on the gambling idea that the one must lose in order that the other may win.
The resources to be handled by men are ample to maintain all in comfort, provided all of us are willing to concede that each worker in whatever capacity he may work, is entitled to his share of the general proceeds.

In the past much unwisdom has been shown by both labor and capital. No one can deny that Hard and fast systems and institutions have grown up to which both parties are wedded. To better conditions, and to eliminate evils, we must open up our minds, let the pure air of fair play and justice get into our mental lungs, and meet on the plane of friendship, rather than that of hos tility. Let each side give to the other a patient hearing, let it be understood in the beginning that the thing desired is to get together on an equitable basis, rather than to get the advantage. Recog nize the human equation. Let it be fully under stood that while the laborer must live in some degree of comfort, the capitalist cannot continu ally do business at a loss, for that would spell the coming of the day when he would be forced out of business.
The spirit of comity will always get better re suits than the spirit of enmity.
Great as may be the evils of the day they arc not comparable with the evils of bygone centurle*

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when war was men's steady vocation, and peace

only a vacation season.

We have made some gain, and these troubles which seem to us so acute and distressing are only the incidental growing pains in man's onward march toward that perfect industrial state which is his ultimate goal. We stand today at the part ing of the ways. If we continue to travel along the road we have been following we will find the obstructions becoming constantly more numerous, the ruts deeper, the rocks bigger and we will finally come to the end of the road in a quagmire where we will all perish together.
On the other hand if we switch over to that branch of the road outlined in preceding para graphs, we will find it not altogether smooth traveling, but the roughness will decrease with each passing year, and we will finally debouch upon the pleasant plains of peace and plenty.
Why should we not choose the better way? The only reason that can be given is the surviving bad streak in humanity from that far gone day when every man considered every other man as his enemy. The good in us develops slowly, the evil dies hard. There is no essential difference be tween the mental bias of the laborer and that of the capitalist. If they refuse to accept the bet ter way because it is the better way, then let them accept it because even an enlightened self ishness teaches that it is the more profitable way.
For strife is not profitable either to winner nor loser. There is no sort of doubt that if every dollar of wealth in the world was equally die-

i;

Jf

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tributed among all men today, and no other change made in the social order, in ten years the mass of mankind would he poor and the minority would have the wealth.

As previously said, the mental bias of laborer and capitalist does not essentially differ, but the mental capacity of the one is greater and the faculty of acquisitiveness is more largely devel oped, hence an equal division would not mend mat ters. The only way out, therefore, lies along the road of comity between men. With fair wages to men, sick and accident benefits, old age pen sions, and educational advantages on the one hand, and a fair return to capital on the other, it would only take a couple of generations to put humanity on a plane so much higher than the one we now occupy that our grandchildren would pon der with amazement on the stupidity of their an cestors.
To bring about this comity we must free our selves from some of our inherited beliefs, and re verse our way of stating things.
Thus we must free ourselves of the idea that! capital is the older brother who alone may decide what labor, the younger brother, shall receive. We must accept the truth that labor and capital are not an aggregation of men and masters, but! a firm consisting of equal partners in which labor, by reason of greater age, is the senior partner.! This will not mean that the senior partner shall) decree arbitrarily what the junior shall receive, I which would simply mean harking back to the! old way, with dictators reversed, but it would!

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mean that the partnership interests must he agreed upon after thorough investigation and mu tual agreement.
Prophecy is a dangerous thing, but it requires no gift of prophecy for any intelligent and thought ful man to see that to continue to travel in the road which has brought so much woe upon the world will inevitably lead to anarchy where we will all perish because we have failed to use the intelligence which God has given us.

CHAPTER IV
POLITICS AND PARTIES
"POLITICS," as previously stated, is not the * science of government, there being no such
thing as the science of government, but is the practice of government.
Practice of any calling, or profession, or trade, calls for tools, and the tools used in the practice of government we call "parties."
It is a fact, grasped by few people, that the words or names, which we use in speaking of the things of life, have a tremendous influence in shaping our mental attitude and our actions towards things of vital importance.
If we belittle a great matter by misleading words, or titles, or slang, we create in the public mind a condition which results in great harm. Our American people are the greatest sinners in the world in this respect. We have unfortunately a gambling streak which makes us class every thing as a "game." And so politics has grown to be a "game" with us. In like manner we speak of men who are candidates for public office as being in a "race." It does not matter whether it is a presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, may oralty or aldermanic campaign, the candidates are "racers."
We degrade the greatest of our public functions, government, to the level of a "game." We de grade men who are striving for the most import
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53

ant positions in our civic life to the level of four* footed beasts. They are "racers." This flippant way with which we deal with matters of gravest importance has brought us to the point where too many of our people seem unable to think soberly, and intelligently, and the most important prob lems are dismissed with a joke, or else dealt with from the standpoint of inherited or class prejudice rather than from the standpoint of reason and patriotism.

Another misstatement of terms is responsible for many of our woes. Men constantly speak of belonging to the Democratic, or Republican, or Progressive, or Socialist, or Prohibition parties. This erroneous method of speaking works enor mous damage. The political party is merely a tool designed theoretically by men of similar views with the idea of getting their political ideals put into effect. As such tool it belongs to the men who created it. It follows, therefore, that a small fraction of the party "belongs" to each citizen affiliated with it, and the partners in the party do not "belong" to it any more than the partners in a mercantile business belong to it, for we all know that the business belongs to the partners.

Out of this misstatement of fact, or miscon ception of the party has grown a host of evils. Men have so long claimed that they "belong" to a given party that they become the willing tools of the men who manipulate parties, and are so anxious to have a regular "party" record (for that way preferment lies) that they follow the "party" through numerous campaigns, though its platform

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declarations may be a thousand miles away from their real beliefs, and in that way millions of voters are led by party allegiance, the mere party name, to support men who will do officially things that a large number of the voters abhor.

The reason that the unscrupulous politicians and bosses are able to so manipulate parties as to defeat the wishes of the people is found in the ignorance and credulity of the voters combined with the foolish desire to be "regular" in the party. One can easily understand the place hunter crying out for party regularity, but it is rather more difficult to understand why the average man who never expects office should hold party regu larity so sacred. The only possible reasons lie in his ignorance and his credulity plus heredity in some cases.

This brings us up against the question of "who should vote." No thoughtful man can long study our politics and parties without losing, to some extent, his grip on universal suffrage. "Manhood Suffrage" Is a very catchy phrase, but has not that virtue in its practical application ascribed to it by all politicians and many thoughtless people. To speak of the "voting franchise" is to admit at once that voting is not an inherent right, but is a grant agreed upon by the government makers to be allowed to certain persons in order to get a basis for Democratic Government. This fran chise has been restricted in many nations, at many places, and in many periods. Today the voting franchise is denied in many States of our country and in many other countries, to women. And yet

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suffrage is not universal if women are denied, and certainly there are just as many good reasons for giving all women the vote as there are for giving it to all men.

Here we strike an unpopular truth. There is no good reason for universal suffrage either for men or women, and there is every good reason for demanding certain qualifications of all voters whether men or women. This demand that the voter shall he qualified for full citizenship should not he based on a property qualification and need not he based altogether on an educational quali fication. A fair system would he for each candi date for registration at the age of twenty-one to stand an examination before the registrars to ascertain if such candidate has an understanding of the simpler fundamentals of democratic gov ernment and a practical knowledge of the struc ture of his government--national, state, county. Failure to pass the examination and obtain a diploma of citizenship would mean not permanent disfranchisement, but that the candidate might return again year after year, for a fixed term of years, for a new examination. If at the end of the period fixed the candidate has failed to pass and obtain a diploma, the disfranchisement would be permanent. On the removal to another county or State of the holder of a diploma, the presentation of the diploma to the registrars in the new local ity would entitle the holder to registration in the new locality.

This system would insure a more intelligent electorate and make it more difficult for bosses

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to manipulate the parties. Compulsory voting would add much to the strength of the non-officeseeking public and be a factor in securing good government. Wilful failure to exercise the fran chise right should result in its forfeiture for the very life of the Republic hinges on the exercise of that right.

The voting franchise should be a badge of honor, and to some extent a certificate of good citizen ship. Another and most dangerous defect in our system is the habit of so many of our people to belittle politics, and count it a reproach for one to be keenly interested in politics.

Every citizen should be a keen politician, for "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The man who prides himself that he "takes no stock in politics" is not only a fool, but it also a bad citi zen. Under an intelligent franchise system there would be a larger percentage of the voters cast ing their ballots, whereas under the present loose system the franchise is not valued, and anywhere from 25 to 50 per cent of the votes do not go to the polls. Many men who think they are intelli gent often do not vote for years and years.
Organized political parties should be held to a strict accountability for their platform declara tions. These platform expressions should be counted a contract with the people to be carried out when the people entrust the platform-makers with the power to make the laws. This would tend to briefer and more concise platform declarations, and then if upon gaining power the party refuses

POLITICS AND PARTIES

57

to carry out their promises the people should hare the power of recall against such unfaithful serv ants.

The common practice by the party in power of putting the supposed Interests of the "party" before the interests of the country as a whole can not be too strongly condemned, and the legislator should be as truly the servant of the whole people as the postmaster, even though the legislator be pledged to certain platform promises which a minority does not like. A common abuse of the party system is the passage of laws which are nullified by the courts declaring them unconstitu tional. For this there is absolutely no excuse. Prom 60 to 80 per cent of the American Congress are always lawyers. For such a congress to pass a law which is later declared unconstitutional is an outstanding proof of the legal incompetence of the men who passed it, and it is obvious that men of such small legal ability have no proper place in the legislative body.

There are two reasons for this failure in our law-making. One is the small ability of the men who phrase the law and muddle it with a world of unnecessary verbiage, and the other is the fact that the "party" feels committed to some legisla tion it does not want to pass, and purposely draws a bill that the courts are certain to destroy, and the "party" thus saves its face with the public and makes a scape-goat of the courts.
If the practice of politics was pure the legal committees of the Congress would be so strongly organized, and so careful in the phrasing of new

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laws that there would never be any unconstitu tional laws.

Citizenship, politics, should be made a part of the curriculum of every public school, starting with a primary catechism in the third or fourth grades and enlarging the scope each year until the child passes out of the schools.

All of us are familiar to some extent with the corruption in American politics, but how to meet and overcome it is an unsolved problem. Some things may be suggested that might be helpful. The public school curriculum could be made use ful as a basis by inculcating in the minds of the young that a public man who is tricky is as dis honest and dangerous as a burglar, aye, more so, because he damages more people and should be dealt with as vigorously as we deal with the burglar. The holding of parties to strict account ability as suggested in preceding paragraphs would be helpful. A drastic and effective remedy would be for the people to outlaw avowed candidates, and to select proper condidates by means of peti tions or mass meetings, with the demand that the men so selected should serve as a civic duty. Can didates so selected should not be expected to spend a lot of their own money in making a cam paign.
Some of our States are already moving effec tively in limiting the amount of money which may be spent in campaigns.

Greater than any of these suggestions as a means of betterment would be for the national government to spend two or three millions yearly

POLITICS AND PARTIES

59

for employing able, upright, competent men, one to each congressional district, whose sole husiness it should he to meet the people at regular times

and places and teach them not only as to the structure of government, hut also explain defects

and how these can he cured by the exercise of good citizenship. This would be going to the very root of the disease which lies in the body of the voters, and would do more than all else to secure quick results. These teachers would of necessity be non-partisan. They should not be young men fresh from the schools and colleges able to pass "Civil Service" examinations, but men of mature years and wide experience drawn from all walks of life.

CHAPTER V.
THE SOCIALIZING TREND
M UCH is being said of Socialism and Socialistic ideas, but it looks as if Socialism was a long way from winning its way to general acceptance. For this there are a number of reasons. Marxian Socialism, which is the prevailing brand, is of German origin, and yet we see the German Social ist contentedly accepting the worst militarism the world has known, and endorsing, the horrible atrocities committed by the German armies. It would appear from this that the German Socialist cares for nothing but the filling of his belly, and his military masters can have his aid to murder half the world provided he Is given plenty of swill.
The avowed Socialists have proved a tremen dous disappointment to those who, like the writer, regarded them as honest people who were preach ing some truth and some error, and whose truth might some day be of service to the world. Now, we have lost confidence in their honesty. Their doctrine that government should "own all the means of production and distribution" has never commended them to the masses of our people, be cause it is not founded on an intelligent under standing of the American character. The Ameri can, who like the Englishman or Scotchman, has always been a pronounced individualist, is begin ning to learn through his own dearly bought expe rience that his institutions have got to be Social ized, but that does not bring him to Socialism.
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61

Rather the reverse, because when he has done a certain amount of essential Socializing he will find his condition so improved, with his individuality still unmpaired that he will thereafter not waste a moment looking in the direction of orthodox Socialism.

The Beginning of American Socialization

Our postal service was our first really serious effort in the direction of taking under public con trol a great and necessary utility. As far back as 1639 there had been attempts at making the carrying of the mails a public function and these were, continued with more or less success down to the establishment of the Republic under the Constitution and the inauguration of Washington, when the Postal Department was one of the first established. Even at that late date there were men of ability who contended that the carrying of the mails was essentially a matter for private enterprise, and not a governmental function. But the conservatives did not prevail and the life of the postal service has been co-terminous with that of the government. The man who today should declare that the carrying of the mails was not a governmental duty would be regarded as a lunatic.
The care and control of public highways was accepted by all as a governmental duty, but the government was very negligent of its duty, and many franchises were granted to individuals and companies to operate toll gates, toll bridges and toll roads, but government never for a moment

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waived its general rights in this matter. Canals were recognized as matters for governmental over sight and could only be built by government or by persons having special charters from government.
The great expansion of our country into unoc cupied territory presented a big problem, and was solved by the government becoming the greatest land-owner of the world, and then practically giv ing away its great estate bit by bit to those who would go in and open up the wilderness. Thus the government became a land dealer. Here a little and there a little, there was always a slow but steady increase of governmental functions. The conservatives, or strict Constructionists ol the Constitution, fought a hard but losing fight.

The Coming of the Railroads

With the coming of the railroads a new chapter was opened that is not yet closed. As soon as the people recognized the possibilities of the steam roads they went wild with enthusiasm, and inaug urated what has proven the greatest speculative campaign the world has ever known. This speculative era has lasted many years and is not yet ended. But startling abuses grew out of the sys tem of using the great railroads as chips in a gambling game, and little by little the government which in the earlier years had been neglectful of its rights began to put on the brakes. The battle has been long and hard fought, but steadily gov ernment has won its contentions until today no man questions its absolute power over our rail way lines.

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63

The Cities Move

The rapid growth of cities occasioned chiefly by the development of the country by means of the railway lines brought its local problems of water works, gas plants, street car lines, electric light plants and telephone lines. Again the division came between the conservatives who wanted every thing owned by private corporations, and th3 lib erals who wanted everything done by cities. All over the continent the local struggles raged and have continued to rage. It would be fair to say that the battle has up to date been a draw, with private ownership having somewhat the best of it in number and value of public utilities owned. Bearing in mind that at the starting point private owners had everything and the public as repre sented by city government had nothing, it will be easily understood that private owners have lost much ground. The fatal mistake of private owners was that in their haste to accumulate millions they anticipated profits by watering stocks and continue to do so, learning nothing from the past, and their downfall is inevitable.

The Panama Canal

A great factor in this socializing trend has been the building of the Panama Canal. Here was a tremendous enterprise. A vital necessity to the nation, because it meant not only the linking of the West with the East in an extra bond, but also meant the doubling of our ship power. Its stu pendous size, the enormous amount of money in-

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volved, and the certainty that the ordinary capi talistic methods could not be used, forced its build ing as a governmental enterprise. We now see and understand how vitally necessary it was, re gardless of cost. But we also see that we have a great national asset worth hundreds of millions, which because it represents no watered stock, will in the not remote future be earning dividends upon cost to say nothing of the national value which cannot be computed in money. Here is an object lesson which cannot be shut out from sight even though some of us might wish to do so.

Land Reclamation

In the arid and semi-arid West are millions ol acres of fertile lands which must be watered by irrigation if they are to be fruitful. Many thou sands of home makers began to look at these lands with eager longing years ago. But there was no water. Private capital was doing a little towards bringing into use some of these idle acres, doing the work in its own way, and at its own price. It became apparent that to depend on private capital would not serve the purpose, and so government stepped into the breach. Great dams and reser voirs and irrigating canals have been built; mil lions of acres have been reclaimed, and many thousands of prosperous families are domiciled on these lands. The cost of the work without a profit is apportioned out over a long term of years so as to make it easy for the home makers to pay.
This work is a splendid illustration of the prin ciple that "Government is the combined strength

THE SOCIALIZING TBEND

65

of all the people to do for the general welfare of

all the people those things which acting individu

ally or in groups the people are not strong enough

to do."

Other Socializing Tendencies

The Departments of Agriculture and Labor with their manifold activities; the Bureau of Health with autocratic power in times of epidemic and supervisory power at all times; the recognition of the State's duty in the matter of education are all but expressions of the widening of our horizon, and the growing demand that democracy should fulfill its mission of giving a constantly better service to the men and women who uphold its banner.

The Recasting of Our Views
Despite the natural conservatism of the race; despite the traditions of centuries; despite our human stupidity; despite the powerful reactionary influences of those who profit by the system that is; despite all these things and more, we are rapidly recasting our views as to governmental functions and powers.
The conditions created by this thing we call modern civilization are forcing us to see, often against our will, that we must accept new methods, demand new standards, and widen the field of governmental usefulness.
We are beginning to learn that no limit can be placed on the power of the whole people repre sented by government where the general welfare

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is concerned. We are beginning to realize that Democracy is not our little set rules, our little States' rights, our little forms of procedure, but rather a tremendous "Force" representing all the power of all the people which "Force" the people have concentrated In the thing called government, and which Force the people propose rhall be exerted for the benefit of all the people through the tool created for that purpose, which tool is
government. For government belongs to us and not we to
government.

Are Our Liberties in Danger?

Not a bit. As we Increase in popular intelli gence, as we begin to clearly grasp the utility of this governmental force which we have created, we will constantly keep a check on those who would pervert the community power to their own uses. Those timid souls who fear centralized power should bear in mind that the power is always with us; if decentralized it is unregulated, uncontrolled and liable to be destructive, whereas when centralized it is controlled and made useful A mighty river running over rapids represents wasted power, whereas, the same river dammed and controlled represents useful power. It is the province of the people to learn how to control and use the power which lies under their hands. We must admit that this they have not done in the past, but he is a poor observer who does not see the dawn of a better day. It is quite possible that this good day will not come to its full splendor

THE SOCIALIZING TREND

67

until oceans of human blood have been spilled; the years may be filled with human suffering; but the seed has fallen on some good ground and our children and our children's children will see the full glory of the beneficence of Democratic power when that power is harnessed so that its full force is exerted for the common welfare.

What the Great War Has Taught Us
It has taught us much both as to our strength and our weaknesses, but probably the biggest thing that has come out of it is a more general knowledge that human greed must be limited by governmental agency. That means socializing our activities in ways that would not have been contemplated for long years but for the lessons taught by the war. Consider the railways. At the outbreak of the war they were in parlous con dition. The long years of "high finance" had finally cost them the confidence of the country and investors had grown shy of railway securities, and distrustful of railway management.
The war acted as a tonic by creating more traffic thus enabling the roads to get money for some urgent needs, and though by no means able to get all their needs, it seems possible that the roads may come to the end of the war in better physical condition than they were at the begin ning. It must be admitted that railway managers have responded nobly to the demands made by the government for war service, and yet there is a constantly growing feeling that the final end of the railway problem is government ownership,

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and this feeling is as certain to be concreted into action as anything yet in the future can be certain.
The telegraph and telephone lines, the gas and electric plants, the street car lines and water works, all these things are traveling the same road. In these things which we class as public utilities the trend is plain.

But the war has opened up a new field, and one constantly hears the suggestion that the public should own and operate the coal, and iron, and copper mines, and the oil fields. Will it come to that? I am no prophet, but can reason a little, and it would not be surprising if at no distant period the government should expropriate these sources of raw material. All the big things re ferred to being governmentally owned, and closed to speculation, there would yet remain an enor mous field for private exploitation. The release of a part of the capital now employed in the inter ests above mentioned would be helpful to mer cantile, banking, agricultural, mechanical, ship ping and manufacturing interests. It would not be surprising if the general prosperity of the country would be greatly enhanced, for with unerring Judg ment the public has pointed its finger at those interests where public ownership would be most helpful to the public.
It is a notable fact that no one who suggests public ownership as above indicated, ever goes outside those lines, except an occasional Socialist. And the, Socialists are now utterly discredited among real Americans, and justly so. The Ameri can people are going to Socialize their institutions

THE SOCIALIZING TREND

69

in BO far as seems wise to them, but they are not going to accept a Socialism which indulges in cant about the brotherhood of man and denies God; which prates about elevating humanity, and winks at loose family relations; which prates of its love of peace and gives its support to the most bloody minded people the world has known; which wants to reform human institutions, according to its word, but has no real love for any principle above swill.

CHAPTER VI
THE FARMER
The Problem Presented
GRICULTURE is the basic industry. Upon it as a foundation we have pyramided a huge and complex civilization. For two generations we have expanded the upper stories until the weight resting upon the foundation is growing too great. We must proceed intelligently to strengthen that foundation, or face the certain sinking .of the entire structure.
Manufactures, Banking, Commerce, these three interests which should be merely the incidents of life, based on essentials, have been allowed to usurp places in our economic life which do not belong to them, and this usurpation has created a condition which forbodes evil beyond imagina tion.
This forced development of these collateral interests has resulted in a system which makes the economic life of the world revolve around what we call "Foreign Trade," or the International Trade as distinguished from Intranational Trade.
But the Foreign Trade of the world as compared with the internal trade of the nations is at the most liberal computation not over 8 per cent of the total.
Our manufacturing, banking and commercial
interests are increasing by tremendous leaps; our cities are growing like Jonah's gourd; our indus trial population is reaching gigantic proportons;
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71

our population settled on the land is decreasing in

relative strength, and by reason of these things

our cost of living constantly rises, while Foreign

Trade cannot increase at a rate sufficiently rapid

to take care of the surplus accumulated by the

collateral interests. The trouble grows out of the

lack of understanding of real values. The Manu

facturer with his shops full of his wares, repre

senting great values in money, must starve If his

bread supply happens to be cut off. The Banker

with his vaults full of gold dollars would starve

with the sudden stoppage of transportation and

the cessation of the inflow of food products. The

Merchant with his warehouses full to bursting of

valuable wares can live only so icng as he can

convert his wares into food.

The problem, then, is how to so co-ordinate the

various interests which go to make up the world's

business, that there will be no overwhelming pre

ponderance of certain interests and corresponding

atrophy of others. Above all must we protect the

basic interest--Agriculture.

In the Beginning. Agriculture
Food, clothing, fuel, these are the primary neces sities of human life. All else is but a mass of frills and trimmings which we have added as we have become more "civilized." The primary necessities all come from the land.
Therefore, in the beginning, we had but the tiller of the soil, the shepherd, and the herdsman. All these belong to what we term Agriculture, which also embraces the fruit grower and the hor ticulturist.

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Prom the beginning down to one hundred years ago, Agriculture was the paramount industry of the world. With the cessation of the Napoleonic wars, manufacturing began to move forward by great jumps, and this forward movement was greatly accelerated by the application of steam

in industrial pursuits.

In so far as such countries as England and Bel

gium were concerned this was a logical growth, because the population of these countries had even then become too great to be fed from the scant

area occupied.

The growth of Great Britain, and the volume of its outside trade, stimulated other European nations to follow suit, and in comparatively brief time much of Europe was a busy hive of industry, and the movement of population from country to town had taken shape.

We became Infected in America, and "tariffs" became the bone of contention between political parties. It is well to bear in mind that the pro tective tariff idea was born coincidentally with this forward movement in manufacturing.
There had been no protective tariffs so long as the Agriculutral interest was predominant in the world.

Then--Manufactures

In 1861 there came into power in our country a party wedded to the idea that all the country needed to become great was to develop its manu factures to the nth power, and that this could best be done through the stimulating influence of a pro tective tariff.

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73

We have seen the development of that idea. We have seen hamlets, under that impulse, grow into towns, villages into cities. We have seen a steady decrease in the relative number of our people engaged in Agriculture, until now less than half our people live on farms, and it is said that only one in eight of our total population is actually en gaged in labor on our farms. We have seen aban doned farms in our most thickly populated states.

We have seen such a development of transporta tion facilities as the world had never before imag ined possible.

We have seen speculation enthroned and men become millionaires without ever creating product of the value of a single dollar. We have seen a flood of securities running into many billions, sums so inconceivable that the mind cannot grasp them. We have seen financial panic after financial panic.

We have seen an almost miraculous increase in wealth and co-incident with the increase of wealth an increase of poverty appalling in its extent.

We have seen the product of our factories climb to twenty billions of dollars value in a single year, while our boundless acres were at the same time producing less than ten billions in value.

Agriculture has been dethroned and Manufac tures rule as monarch.

This stimulated production from our factories has created a population of many millions which must be fed, and while our farmers make enough to feed them we have allowed a system of com-

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SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE?

plez distribution to grow up which has enhanced the cost of the workingman's dinner to a danger ous point. One cannot but question if the gains have been worth the cost.

Foreign Trade
If every factory in the world was run at full speed for one year, the world could not consume the output in two years. In other words Manu factures have outrun the need. This means that few factory employees can count on full time year in and year out. It also means that there is a fierce competition between the manufacturing nations for the small plate of Foreign Trade pie. Each country is trying to get the lion's share so that its factories may run more time each year.
As an illustration of the marvellous capacity of our modern machinery, the little country of Bel gium, with seven millions of people on an area equal to our small state of Maryland, had, prior to the present war, a foreign trade one-third as great as that of the United States with fourteen times its population and three hundred times its area. Belgium is purely a manufacturing country, barring a few truck gardens.
The total volume of International or Foreign Trade is estimated by competent authorities at thirty-five billions of dollars annually. The total volume of the Internal Trade of the United States is estimated by the same competent authorities at sixty-five billions of dollars annually.
In other words, the United States, with about one-sixteenth of the world's population, and less

THE FARMER

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tban one-sixteenth of the land surface of the globe, does an internal trade nearly twice as great as the foreign trade of all the world.

And yet, so dominating is this minority fraction of the world's total trade that the outbreak of the European war by dislocating foreign exchanges has caused acute distress to neutral nations thou sands of miles distant. The reason is not far to seek. Undue value and prominence has been given to foreign trade by the desperate international struggle to secure these crumbs to assist in mov ing the machinery.

Where Intelligence Rules
In one country alone of all the world has there been a high degree of intelligent foresight used in developing its economic life.
Germany has shown that a mighty expansion of its industrial life was not necessarily harmful to its agricultural interest.
While building up immense manufacturing interests and securing the second largest share of foreign trade, it has so jealously guarded the interests of its farmers, that all interests alike prospered, and for a number of years no other country has been so free of economic unrest. More than that, on a rather infertile country smaller than our State of Texas, the Germans have so developed their agricultural interests as to feed sixty-five millions of people and concurrently have built up a great merchant marine and in a short forty years have changed a rather poor country into one of the creditor nations of the world,

L

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SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE?

whereas the rich United States is still a debtor

nation.

How has Germany done this?

By adhering consistently to a fixed policy, which may he defined as a determination to conserve all the time the whole interest of the whole German people.

No one class has been permitted to enrich itself at the expense of another class, and no one interest has been allowed to overshadow all others. This has not called for any superhuman intelli gence, but it has called for a sane purpose, exact knowledge of conditions and steady patriotism. The stand now being maintained by Germany against the great powers of the world has demon strated the colossal strength which any nation may develop by subordinating all special interests to the welfare of the whole people.

What Other Nations Can Do
France, Spain, Italy, Russia, United States, Argentina, can every one of them, work out as good economic results as Germany, with the same intelligent methods.
Grant to Japan the hegemony of Eastern Asia and by utilizing Korea and part of Manchuria, it can accomplish the same result. Australia and New Zealand are making headway along progres sive lines.
Great Britain and Belgium, by reason of dense populations on small areas, must, to a great extent, look to overseas trade, but even in Great Britain much better results could be obtained quickly had

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not that country foolishly allowed its agricultural interest to be destroyed in the interest of its fac
tories. China presents the best future market for the
surplus of other nations, but China is a long way In the future, and a great development of its trans portation facilities must precede any great increase in its consuming power of foreign products.

The Present Outlook

It cannot be denied that the present outlook is decidedly bad. Nowhere outside of Germany has there been any appreciable advance towards a sound economic system.
Men lack vision, as a whole, and especially nar row is the vision of men engaged in large manu facturing, banking and commercial operations, who gauge the future by the past, and are per suaded that they can go on indefinitely duplicating the abnormal increase of the past.
But we are now in the second stage of the machine. Where they were few forty years back they are now found in multitudinous number, and the consuming power of humanity has not kept pace with the increase in machinery.
Nothing can be expected of the men in the game. Relief must come from the thoughtful outside the ring.

If we pursue the let-alone policy, the road to destruction is plain.

A constantly increasing army of industrial work ers in our cities, with no certainty one month, or

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SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE?

one season, of work for another month or another season. A constantly growing of the hosts of chronic needy and a constantly growing intelli gence, due to the public schools, will breed revo lution just as surely as gunpowder thrown on fire will explode.
For an ignorant people will endure suffering much more patiently than an intelligent popula tion, even though that intelligent population be not of the stature of statesmen or financiers.

What Must We Do?

Certainly we must speed up on Agriculture. This can be done promptly and effectively so that in a few years this end of the problem can be put in proper shape.
With equal certainty we should slow down on Manufactures, and this presents a much more difficult question.
Much preaching is now being done to the farm ers of America, the greater part of which preach ing is not worth a pinch -of snuff. What is demanded is less talk and more action.
The present perilous situation has been brought about through the laches of all of us, and, there fore, all of us must take a hand in the recon struction.
By all of us is meant the Federal, State, Munici pal, County and Township Governments, the Bank ing and Commercial interests and the Fanners themselves. Every ounce of power in the country must be applied to the task. And the road to be travelled is by no means a blind alley.

THE FARMER

79

We must build good roads so the farmer may get his products to the market town or transportation line at a minimum of cost.

We must provide the farmer with educational advantages equal to those enjoyed hy towns and cities.

We must see that sanitation is made a part of the life of the farmer, as it is of the townsman.

We must provide efficient telephone service for the farmer and show him how to install cheap water works and other conveniences.

We must see that the farmer Is provided with ample capital at long-time and low rates of inter est, not exceeding 5 per cent, with easy terms of payment, this capital to be provided only to pro ducing farmers and not to speculating land barons.

(It might be pertinent here to show the shame less exploitation of farmers by middle men and financial interests, but as this discussion i~ cMefly concerned with most pressing conditions as they exist and to pointing out a remedy, it is unneces sary to elaborate on that detail.)

We must help him to learn how to increase the productive power of his acres and thus cheapen his cost of production.

We must provide the means whereby the land less man may acquire land on such terms that he may pay for the land out of the products of his own labor on the land.

We must provide a more efficient system of dis tribution whereby instead of farm products pay ing toll to the transportation lines and from three

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SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE?

to a half dozen middle men, this toll may be cut out except as to the transportation lines and, at most, one middle man. Does all this look like a large order? It is not nearly so big a task as it looks if all the people will apply all their power. The objection has been made that with all this done farm products would be so cheapened that farming would not be an attractive occupation. Not so. The farmer would get as much as he now gets in price with a larger yield per acre, while the consumer by the elimination of needless expense
would buy cheaper.

Let me illustrate:
I have seen Michigan farmers growing 100 to 150 bushels of Irish potatoes per acre and selling them at 25 cents per bushel, and I have seen those same potatoes retailed in Georgia at $1.20 per bushel, a 400 per cent increase between the con sumer and the producer. Under the new system the Michigan farmer could get 200 bushels per acre, sell at 25 to 35 cents and the Georgia con sumer could buy them at 75 cents per bushel. Both sides would be helped. A few middle men might have to turn farmers.

As to the slowing down of Manufactures, there would be necessary a bureau or governmental department so organized as to be able to give man ufacturers clear and definite information as to consumption in our own and other countries, and with this definite knowledge available men would not be scrambling to double capacity at every little temporary spurt, nor would outside men be so eager to embark their capital in such ventures

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81

because A or B happened to have a good year. There would be less haste and less waste.

In Conclusion

In the last analysis, the great war in Europe is largely a product of economic conditions. This ought to be sufficient warning to world leaders to cause them to take stock of world conditions.
The economic system must be reformed if our civilization is to stand, and the reformation must begin by strengthening the basic industry.
No country has been more criminally negligent than our own, but, fortunately, no other country is so well situated to take prompt and effective action.
May the God of Nations inspire with wisdom the men who are charged with the conduct of the affairs of the nations!

Note 1
Prince Bernhard Yon Bulow, one of the great figures of Modern Germany, was criticised by a friend for his very evident partiality to the Agri cultural interest. Pointing to a passing ship, he made this reply:
"A ship without sufficient ballast, with too high a mast, and too heavily rigged, will turn turtle. Agriculture is our ballast. Commerce and indus try (manufactures) are to be our mast and sails. The ship cannot advance without them. But with out ballast it will capsize."

Commenting on his own reply he adds: "The captain of a ship must certainly try to make good

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headway. But he must not acquire speed at the expense of safety."

Note 2

This chapter was written nearly three years ago and published under another title. In the inter vening years there has been a slight awakening to the facts, and some effort has been made along the lines of improvement indicated, but we have only made the beginning. The whole program must be carried out or we must pay the penalty.

Note 3
In Chapter V there is criticism of Germany. In this chapter Germany is praised. In the first case the criticism is because of evil doing, while in thiB case the commendation is for right doing. Both statements are just.

CHAPTER VII
THE PRIVATE CITIZEN
WE come now to the man who is the foundation of the State and the master of the State-- the private citizen. To this class the majority of us belong, but notwithstanding our obscurity the welfare of the State depends on us, the private citizens. Few of us recognize the dignity which belongs to us as the foundation, the pillars and the capstone of the State, for we are the State. Still fewer appreciate the dignity which attaches to private citizens in a Republic where each citi zen is a sovereign in his own right. But sover eignty carries with it responsibility just as privil eges and honors are always balanced by obliga tions and duties.
Responsibilities of Citizenship
The responsibilities of the private citizen are quite as various in kind as those of the President. On him more than on the President rests the obligation to make for his country a good impres sion upon the outside world, for the world sees many of his class and rarely a President, where fore the world bases its opinion of America on the private rather than the official American.
Then there is the responsibility of the blood. His fathers worked and fought, bled and went hungry, knew penury, wounds, suffering and often death that he might be at ease in a fair land of freedom. If he shirks the duty of his day he is unfaithful to the blood that runs in his veins.
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Not so would his fathers have done. If he fails to struggle to improve his children's condition as his fathers struggled to better conditions for their children he is unfaithful to the blood. If he refuses to defend his country against an alien foe, or internal discord, he is unfaithful to the blood. Not so did his fathers who fought and fell at Lexington and Bunkers Hill, at Trenton and Brandywine, at Guilford and Camden, at King's Mountain and Cowpens, at New Orleans and Tohopeka, at Bull Run, Antietam, Chickamauga, Manassas, Shiloh, Mansfield, Perryville, Atlanta, Malvern Hill, Petersburg, Gettysburg, and the countless other fields where his fathers and grandfathers died for their convictions and country, and so dying left him a heritage so sacred that he cannot neglect it in one jot or tittle without being unfaithful to
the blood.
And so he is under bonds both to those who have preceded him and those who are to come after him. We come now to another class of obliga tions, those which each citizen owes to the com munity, the state. "No man liveth to himself" is both scriptural and a great truth. The private citizen lives surrounded by the men of his day, doing their work as he is doing his, well or ill, each according to his several ability, and his quality of citizenship.

Now, to these men, his compatriots, he owes certain duties and they in turn are under the same obligation to him. If each discharges his duty faithfully we have a model community; if onequarter fail in the discharge of community duty

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we have an average community; if one-half fail in duty we have a non-progressive community and unwholesome conditions; if three-quarters fail in duty we have a community unfit for decent men and women. This may sound harsh, but it is un varnished truth. The civic health, therefore, rests in the hands of the private citizen. Not only the present, but the future, rests on him. Has the President any different responsibility, except in degree--for he deals with a larger mass? The private citizen, indeed, in his own community counts more for the weal or woe of his community than the President does for the whole country.

As the Units, So the Mass
The Republic is made up of a great number of these communal units, some great, some small. The average quality of the whole will decide the average quality of the Republic. If you doubt this analyze conditions in as many countries and nations as you may please, and you will find it
everywhere to be true.
These units are good or bad exactly in propor tion to the degree of honor which the private citizen accords to his own citizenship. Find a small town where its citizens are pleased to serve as Mayor, Alderman, Councilman, and one can safely guarantee it to be a town where good citi zenship is the predominant note.
On the other hand find a small town where these little civic positions are sneered t and ridiculed, and one can be reasonably certain that such town is cursed with too many "lewd fellows of the

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baser sort." American civic life presents at pres ent a curious paradox. It is quite certain that there has been a deterloation in the average qual ity of citizenship during the past forty years, but on the other hand it is equally certain that the quality of the national government is quite as good as It was forty years back, and in some respects is probably better. It would not be profitable here to stop to discuss this peculiar fact as it would require much space to fully dis cuss, and a cursory discussion would ba of no value.

Prosperity Responsible for Many Ills

That the nation has prospered materially be yond anything known to history is true. That this prosperity has not been equally distributed is true. But this prosperity has been sufficiently distrib uted to give to every class in our country a higher standard of living than is known to the corres ponding class in other countries. One might reasonably expect that the greater comfort and leisure which have come to the American people as a result of this prosperity would be reflected in an improved citizenship, but the faithful chroni cler cannot say that such has been the case.
What has happened? Extravagance, love of luxury, a mania for inane amusements, flabbiness of soul and to a great extent flabbiness of body, loss of the ability to think seriously or logically, absolute preoccupation with one's own little scheme, a mad scramble for money with which to gratify these lusts of the eye and flesh, so

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called comic supplements to the newspapers, im modest fashions among women, and silly styles
for men, the use of ever changing slang to such an extent that an old style English speaking per son is often at a loss as to the meaning of words used in daily conversation. To crown all a nation of neurotics. Does not this suggest that the pri vate citizen needs to bestir himself to better these evil conditions?

Is the Private Citizen a Shirker?

Candor compels the admission that to far too great extent the private citizen is a shirker. He shirks taxes and jury duty; military or vocational training; he is too anxious to start making money to take the time to train himself for the largest usefulness; as our court records show, to a scan dalous extent he shirks his family obligations; and most of all he will but rarely move for the improvement of civic conditions or the remedying of an abuse because in so doing he might make an enemy of some man who is more powerful than he, and who would thus sometime be in a position to injure him. This lack of moral courage may be accounted as the greatest failing of the private citizen, and the one most fraught with danger. When it comes to a matter of physical courage he is not often found wanting, but his lack of moral courage is appalling. He bows down slavishly to the exploiting rich, he declines to give aid or countenance to movements for amendment fearIng to antagonize the particular interests or men who may happen to control his town or city.

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He has reason for his fears, for the exploiters have shown themselves merciless in crushing those who oppose their will. The private citizen, there fore, who fears not poverty, who endures with calm philosophy the slings and arrows of adverse conditions, who Is willing to be misunderstood for righteousness* sake, who preserves his own selfrespect because he knows he must live with him self, who does not envy the honest rich nor hate the dishonest rich, who year after year travels the straight road of civic duty, always sowing the seed of civic righteousness, is not only one of God's elect, but is also one of that handful whose work In the years to come will abide to the saving of the Republic. To such an one it matters not that his name is left out of the local 400, that the newspapers are never complimenting him as a prominent and useful citizen, that he is often referred to as a Socialist, or an anarchist, or breeder of strife. These things he knows must be endured as a good soldier in that army which has endured every hardness that America may live.

The Vision of the Private Citizen

But the private citizen with all deficiencies duly charged up to his account still has some assets on the other side of the ledger. His vision is clearer In many things than that of great statesmen and financiers, because it is not obscured as in the one case by opportunism and as in the other by money. For the private citizen In the mass is not rich in this world's goods, and has no ambi tion to carry on the government as one of the ruling officials.

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As a result of this clearness of vision his mutterings against an unwise policy often lead to a change of policy, and his demand for some betterment often leads to a forward movement.

I cannot go as far as those observers who claim
that the mass mind and the mass conscience spell
infallibility in governmental matters, but it is
true that the mass mind and conscience are so
often right that it becomes the part of wisdom to
lend an attentive ear when the expression of the
mass mind and conscience is clear-cut and
expressed by those who speak with authority.
And here comes in one of our greatest difficulties. The private citizen is mostly inarticulate; he feels and to some extent he thinks, but he cannot put his feelings and thoughts into words. And so there are found spokesmen, who think little and feel less, but who are glib of speech, and these in far too many cases become the mouthpiece of the mass. Some of these utilize their gift of speech to ride into office, some of them make money, some break down utterly from the weight of their disloyalty to the mass they pretend to represent, and perhaps one per cent continue steadfast and loyal to the end in the cause which they have espoused. If the private citizen had his union like the labor men, or his association like the employing class, he would have a vehicle through which his real mind and his real aspirations could find true expression. In view of this lack of a proper vehicle, which is almost universal, it is amazing that even a little of concrete result flows

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from the vagarious thought and feeling of the private citizen.

How Shall We Leaven the Mass?

To leaven this largely inarticulate mass, which is rich in material, which the world has never known how to utilize we must go back to the A B C of things as they are and get the right start. We must cease our demagogic twaddle about our splendid citizenry, and recognize that while our raw material is rich in possibilities, we must find a way to so incorporate that raw mate rial in the soil of our civic life that it may be absorbed by the soil and become the fertilizer which will produce great crops of civic Improve ments instead of lying in the soil, an inert and for all practical purposes a dead mass.
One advantage we have; the private citizen may be slow, stupid, dull, foolish, Inarticulate, but he is a living human and we need never despair of growth as long as we have a living something with which to deal. And so our problem becomes simplified a little. It becomes not a question of using a chemical reagent, but a question of how to kindle into flame the immortal spark in that sluggish but living body. Flint struck on steel makes fire. If our subject is as hard and as resistant as steel, we who see must ourselves be the flint, and once the flickering little spark bursts into flame we must nurse it and feed it until it becomes a mighty blaze which will burn away the dross and folly and corruption of our civic life, and leave to our children a clean, a healthy, a

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purified commonweath. Is this merely a dream? Let us hope for humanity's sake that it is a fore cast of what is to be.

The Final Word

And so we come to the final word. This private citizen is of many kinds; dull, wise, silly, shrewd, lazy, industrious, honest, dishonest, thrifty, waste ful, stingy, liheral, hrave, cowardly, learned, ignor ant, generous, greedy, he combines all the quali ties, good and bad. Not in one sample, but often we find many opposing qualities in the same man. Such as he is, he is all we have. As we look at him from one angle we despair of humanity, and as we look at him from another angle we conclude that the world is safe in his hands.

So that at the last, if we be wise, we will work with him and for him, and in so doing we will be working for ourselves and all humanity. But we may be pardoned, if despite our labors, we find our civic life imperfect, our statesmen foolish and our administration corrupt, when we turn upon the private citizen, the wrong doer in that case, and say to him as Nathan said to David, the wrong doer in another case; "Thou art the man."

CHAPTER VIII
PATRIOTISM
'TPHE dictionary definition of patriotism is-- * "love of one's country." I think it was the cynical Dr. Sam Johnson who defined it as "the last refuge of scoundrels." But Dr. Johnson was less interested in strict truth than he was in say ing things that would catch the public ear. It is true that scoundrels have used the cloak of patriotism to further their designs just as scoun drels have used the cloak of religion in the same way. But those abuses of good things have not lessened their intrinsic value to the world. Patri otism which is one of the finer virtues of our humanity must be an active force if it is to strengthen the nation and shape its destiny. It is not enough that we feel patriotic, we must act patriotic. And this action must be just as much a living force in time of peace as in time of war. The Spartans who, for love of country, died at Thermopylae, were patriots of the best type, as were the Americans who died at the Alamo, because their hearts burned with passion for liberty and they hated injustice. But these heroes were not more patriotic than Henry Clay, who in his love for that which was right, was willing to sacrifice the great office of President; or than Benjamin Franklin who, in his old age, fared forth over stormy seas that he might bring France to the support of his hard pressed country; or than Wilberforce, who stood like a tower for humanity and humanity's rights, or than Clara
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Barton, whose name will ever be associated with the splendid Red Cross philanthropy. Not to multiply examples it is sufficient to say that patriotism can find myriad forms of expression when one's heart is filled with love of one's coun try, and one's fellow men. We suffer much more from the lack of active patriotism in time of peace than in time of war. This is due largely to our Inability to think straight, which leads us to con fuse partisanship, or party spirit with patriotism. We allow ourselves to be diverted from funda mental things by hot political fights over matters of passing interest, and while the public mind is thus engaged crafty men who have no other use for their country than to exploit it for their per sonal gain get in their deadly work, and later on the people have to spend years of laborious effort to correct the abuses which have become an integral part of the national structure. Thus national progress is hindered in its march toward civic righteousness, and we have to use up 50 years of time to do what ought to be done in 10 years.

But that is not all. Well meaning people con tribute to the making of the road difflcult to travel because of that streak in humanity which makes each class seek its own special advantage, and the effort to twist government into a tool to be used for class advantage creates many evils. My idea of patriotism is that it is the love of one's country and one's fellows, not in part, but as a whole, and until we get that big conception into our minds and hearts we will continue to obstruct the upward progress of humanity and to create

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instead of one great massive column of Republican liberty and Human Rights a lot of little columns with our class rights and privileges as labels. ,,

AFTERWORD
THE title page of this booklet asks a question. What is the answer? He is dull indeed who having read the brief chapters preceding, yet fails to see the line we must travel in order to perpet uate the Republic and make it a great blessing to humanity. The line is plainly marked and by no means impossible, but it is not the line of least resistance, and it calls for a considerable degree of individual virtue and therefore of national integrity. However, we have lived through 140 years of tribulation and hard work, and despite our multitude of errors we have devel oped strength and shown that we really have a national conscience. One cannot resist the belief that an All-Wise God has given us His counten ance, and stands ready to continue His favor pro vided we show ourselves worthy. Despite our mistakes, if we honestly strive for amendment, and stand up starkly for justice, national and International, we will justify the opinion of those who believe that this government was divinely ordained to lead humanity upward to a finer civil ization, and the Republic Will Live.
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