Vanishing Landmarks

Leslie M. Shaw

Vanishing Landmarks The Trend Toward Bolshevism

IN JUSTIFICATION

There are several types of intellect, with innumerable variations and combinations. Some see but do not observe. They note effects but look upon them as facts and never seek a cause. Tides lift and rock their boats but they ask not why. They stand at Niagara and view with some outward evidence of delight a stream of water and an awful abyss, but they lift neither their thoughts nor their eyes towards the invisible current of equal volume passing from Nature’s great evaporator, over Nature’s incomprehensible transportation system, back to the mountains, that the rivers may continue to flow to the sea and yet the sea be not full. That class will find little in this volume to commend, and much to criticise.

A man is not a pessimist who, when he hears the roar and sees the funnel-shaped cloud, directs his children to the pathway leading to the cyclone cellar. He is not a pessimist who, after noting forty years of boastful planning, realizes that war is inevitable, and urges preparedness. But the man is worse than a pessimist – he is a fool – who stands in front of a cyclone, rejoicing in the manifestation of the forces of nature, or faces a world war, expatiating on the greatness of his country and the patriotism and prowess of his countrymen.

It is commonly believed that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Conceding that he did, it was relatively innocent folly compared to the way many Americans fiddled, and fiddled, and fiddled, and fiddled, until Germany was well on the way to world domination. Coming in at fabulous cost and incalculable waste, and saving the situation at the sixtieth minute of the eleventh hour, we not only claim a full day’s pay but seem to resent that those who toiled longer, with no more at stake, are asking that honors be divided.

We are now facing a far worse danger than the armed hosts of the Central Powers – a frenzied mob each day extending its influence, and multiplying its adherents. Shall we again fiddle and fiddle, and fiddle and fiddle, or shall we both think and act?

For six thousand years the human race has experimented in governments and only China boasts of its antiquity. During this period almost every possible form of government was tried but nothing stood the test of the ages. The few surviving pages of the uncertain history of nations that have existed and are no more, give ample proof that the task of self-government is the severest that God in his wisdom has ever placed upon His children.

When this government was launched the world said it would not endure. It has both existed and prospered for more than a century and a quarter, but there is no thinking man between the seas, and no thinking man beyond the seas, who does not recognize that representative government, in the great republic, is still in its experimental stage. Even Washington declared he dared not hope that what had been accomplished or anything he might say would prevent our Nation from “running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.”

It is said that when Galusha Grow entered Congress he carried a letter of introduction to Thomas Benton, then just concluding his thirty years of distinguished service. Naturally, Senator Benton was pleased with the brilliant Pennsylvanian, for he said to him: “Young man, you have come too late. All the great problems have been solved.” Ah! they had not been. Mr. Grow lived to help solve some; others have since been solved; more confront us now than ever before in our history, and the sky is lurid with their coming. If we are to continue a great self-governing and self-governed nation, we must spend some time in the study of statecraft, the most involved, the most complex, and, barring human redemption, the most important subject that ever engaged the attention of thinking men.

About the only subject which vitally affects all, and yet to which few give serious thought, is the science of government. Our farms and our factories, our mills and our mines, together with current news, much of it frivolous, and little of it thought-inspiring, engage our attention, but statecraft, as distinguished from partisan politics, is accorded scant consideration. In the first place we are too busy, and, secondly, we do not improve even our available time. A young New Englander was asked how his people spent their long winter evenings. “Oh,” said he, “sometimes we sit by the fire and think, and sometimes we sit by the fire.” It is the hope of the author that the following pages will invite attention to some problems that in his humble judgment must be thought out at the fireside, and must be wisely solved, if we expect to keep our country on the map, and our flag in the sky until the Heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll.

Recent years have demonstrated the abiding patriotism of the American people and their faith in the ever-increasing greatness of America. Few there be who would not gladly die for their country. The only thing they are not willing to do is to think, and then hold their conduct in obedience to their judgment. The future of our blessed land rests with those who can think, who will think, who can and will grasp a major premise, a minor premise and drawing a conclusion therefrom, never desert it.

It has become painfully commonplace to say that the American people can be trusted. While their good intentions can be relied upon, no nation will long exist on good intentions. The nations that have gone from the map have perished in spite of good intentions. The future of America rests not in the purity of motives, nor upon the intelligence, but in the wisdom of its citizens. In the realm of statecraft some of the most dangerous characters in history have been intelligent, pious souls, and some of the safest and wisest have been unlearned.

Socrates taught by asking questions. So far as possible he who is interested enough to read this volume will be expected to draw his own conclusions. The facts stated are historically correct. What deductions I may have drawn therefrom is relatively immaterial. The question of primary importance to you will be, and is, what conclusions you draw. And even your conclusions will be worthless to you and to your country unless your conduct as a citizen is in some degree influenced and controlled thereby.

From the monument that a grateful people had erected to a worthy son I read this extract from a speech he had made in the United States Senate: “He who saves his country, saves himself, saves all things, and all things saved bless him; while he who lets his country perish, dies himself, lets all things die, and all things dying curse him!”

Leslie M. Shaw.

Washington, D.C., March, 1919.

CHAPTER I

REPUBLIC VERSUS DEMOCRACY

Representative government and direct government compared.

The Fathers created a republic and not a democracy. Before you dismiss the thought, examine your dictionaries again and settle once and forever that a republic is a government where the sovereignty resides in the citizens, and is exercised through representatives chosen by the citizens; while a democracy is a government where the sovereignty also resides in the citizens but is exercised directly, without the intervention of representatives.

Franklin Henry Giddings, Professor of Sociology of Columbia University, differentiates between democracy as a form of government, democracy as a form of the state, and democracy as a form of society. He says: “Democracy as a form of government is the actual decision of every question of legal and executive detail, no less than of every question of right and policy, by a direct popular vote.” He also says: “Democracy as a form of the state is popular sovereignty. The state is democratic when all its people, without distinction of birth, class or rank, participate in the making of legal authority. Society is democratic only when all people, without distinction of rank or class, participate in the making of public opinion and of moral authority.”

The distinction, briefly and concisely stated, is this: One is direct government, the other representative government. Under a democratic form of government, the people rule, while in a republic they choose their rulers. In democracies, the people legislate; in republics, they choose legislators. In democracies, the people administer the laws; in republics, they select executives. In democracies, judicial questions are decided by popular vote; in republics, judges are selected, and they, and they only, interpret and construe laws and render judgments and decrees. I might add that in republics the people do not instruct their judges, by referendum or otherwise, how to decide cases. Unless the citizens respect both the forms of law and likewise judicial decisions, there is nothing in a republic worth mentioning.

When we speak of individuals and communities as being democratic, we correctly use the term. My father’s family, for instance, like all New England homes of that period, was very democratic. It was so democratic that the school teacher, the hired man and the hired girl ate with the family. We sat at a common fireside and joined in conversation and discussed all questions that arose. It was a very democratic family; but it was not a democracy. My father managed that household.

In very recent years we have been using the word “democracy” when we have meant “republic.” This flippant and unscientific manner of speaking tends to lax thinking, and is fraught with danger. A good illustration of careless diction is found in the old story that Noah Webster was once overtaken by his wife while kissing the maid. She exclaimed: “I am surprised!” Whereupon the great lexicographer rebuked her thus: “My dear Mrs. Webster, when will you learn to use the English language correctly? You are astonished. I’m surprised.”

It is a well known fact that the meaning of words change with usage. Some recent editions of even the best dictionaries give democracy substantially the same definition as republic. They define a republic as a “representative democracy” and a democracy as a government in which the people rule through elected representatives. This gradual change in the meaning of the word would be perfectly harmless if our theory of government did not also change. Probably our change of conception of representative government is largely responsible for the evolution in the popular use of the word democracy.

A far more important reason why the term “democracy” should not be used improperly lies in the fact that every bolshevist in Russia and America, every member of the I. W. W., in the United States, as well as socialists everywhere, clamor for democracy. All of these people, many of them good-intentioned but misguided, understand exactly what they mean by the term. They seek no less a democratic form of government as Professor Giddings defines it, than a democratic society as he defines that, and likewise financial and industrial democracy. They want not only equality before the law, but equality of environment and equality of rewards. Only socialists, near-socialists, anarchists and bolsheviki clamor for “democracy.” Every true American is satisfied with representative government, and that is exactly what the term republic means.

EQUALITY

The expression, “All men are created equal,” does not signify equality of eyesight, or equality of physical strength or of personal comeliness. Neither does it imply equal aptitude for music, art or mechanics, equal business foresight or executive sagacity or statesmanship. Equality before the law is the only practicable or possible equality.

Why educate, if equality in results is to be the goal? Why practice thrift, or study efficiency, if rewards are to be shared independent of merit? Those who clamor most loudly for equality of opportunity, have in mind equality of results, which can be attained only by denying equality of opportunity. Equal opportunity in a foot race is secured when the start is even, the track kept clear and no one is permitted to foul his neighbor. But equality of results is impossible between contestants of unequal aptitude when all are given equality of opportunity.

The kind of “democracy” which the socialist and the anarchist demand, confessedly hobbles the fleet, hamstrings the athletic and removes all incentive to efficiency. The keystone of representative government is rewards according to merit, and the buttresses that support the arch are freedom of action on the one side, and justice according to law on the other.

Republics keep a one-price store. Whoever pays the price, gets the goods. Democracy, on the contrary, expects voluntary toil, popular sacrifices and then proposes to distribute the resultant good either pro rata or indiscriminately. No one can read socialistic literature without recognizing that political, social, industrial and financial democracy is the goal of its endeavor. When the supreme conflict comes between organized government, organized liberty, organized justice and bolshevism under whatsoever garb it may choose to masquerade, I do not intend anyone shall “shake his gory head” at me and say that I helped popularize their universal slogan and international shibboleth. Unless we speedily give heed we shall be fighting to make America unsafe for democracy. Then we may have difficulty in explaining that we have meant all these years a very different thing than our language has expressed.

CHAPTER II

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

The republican character of the constitutional convention, the qualifications of the delegates, and the extent to which they trusted to the wisdom of the people.

The Constitutional Convention was a republican body, and not a mass meeting. George Washington presided. He was a delegate from Virginia. James Madison was another representative from the same state, and he wrote the greater part of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson was in France, and had nothing whatever to do with drafting the great document, or in securing its adoption. Benjamin Franklin was a delegate from Pennsylvania. Roger Sherman was a representative of Connecticut. New York sent no delegate, but Alexander Hamilton, who with George Washington had early recognized that the League of Nations, or League of Sovereign States, which means the same, and which the old Articles of Confederation created, was proving an utter failure in practice, and had, therefore, urged from the beginning “a more perfect union,” attended and he was seated as a delegate from New York. His matchless vision led him to seek the incorporation of additional safeguards against bolshevism, as it is now called, and though his advice was not heeded it was Hamilton, more than any other man, with John Jay and James Madison his able supporters, who secured the ratification of the Constitution as drafted.

These, and the other delegates, representing the people of the several states, after much deliberation formulated the historic document beginning, “We the people.” It provides among other things that its ratification by delegated conventions in nine of the thirteen states shall make it binding upon the states so ratifying the same. It also provides that it can be amended in a similar delegated convention called at the request of chosen representatives in the legislatures of two-thirds of all the states, or by joint resolutions passed by two-thirds of the representatives of the people, in Congress assembled, when ratified by representatives of the people in three-fourths of the states, in their respective legislatures assembled.

Those who talk about “taking the government back to the people” would do well to remember that the American people have never voted upon any provision of the National Constitution, and there is no way provided by which they can, in any direct way, express their approval or disapproval. I repeat, the Fathers created a republic, and not a democracy. Washington speaks of “the delegated will of the nation” – never of the popular wish of the people.

THE FATHERS CONSULTED HISTORY

The members of the Constitutional Convention were worthy of their seats. They were men of both learning and experience. They had read history. They knew that many attempts at representative government had been made and that all had failed. They also knew the path all these republics had taken on their way to oblivion. They were fully alive to the fact that the first step had always been from representative government to direct government; from direct government to chaos, from chaos to the man on horseback – the dictator; thence to monarchy. The discussion in the convention makes it abundantly clear that the Fathers sought to save America from the monarch, and to protect her from the mass. They chose the middle ground between two extremes, both fraught with danger.

They even went so far as to guarantee that no state should be cursed with a democratic form of government, or a monarchial form of government or any other kindred system. The provision is in this language: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government.” That excludes every other form.

CONFIDENCE IN THE PEOPLE JUSTIFIED

The members of the Constitutional Convention, having been selected because of their aptitude for public matters, their knowledge of public questions and their experience in public affairs, very naturally had confidence that men of like caliber and character would always be selected for important representative positions. They believed the people would choose legislators, executives and judges of aptitude, at least, and would retain them in office until they attained efficiency through experience.

Presumably these delegates anticipated that men would be born with no aptitude for public positions, but they confidently believed even these would be able to select men of aptitude. They may have realized that some men would be unfit for Congress, who, nevertheless, would be competent to select able congressmen. For these, as well as for other reasons, they provided no way by which those whom no one would think of sending to Congress, and who naturally give no attention to public affairs, could instruct their congressmen, who alone must bear the responsibility of legislation. Had such a thing as legislating by referendum been thought of at that time, the Fathers certainly would have expressly prohibited it. Legislation by representatives was considered and express and detailed provision therefor was made.

The preceding differentiation between republic and democracy has no reference, of course, to political parties. Long before the republican party, as now constituted, had an existence, democratic orators grew eloquent over “republican institutions,” meaning thereby representative institutions.

Every protestant church in America is a republic. Its affairs are managed by representatives – by boards. Otherwise there would be no churches. Every bank and every corporation is a republic, managed by boards and officers selected by stockholders. The United States Steel Corporation, for instance, is analogous to a republic, the stockholders being the electors, but if the stockholders were to take charge of that corporation, and direct its management by initiative or referendum, it would be in the hands of a receiver within ninety days.

The United States of America is a great Corporation, in which the Stockholder is the Elector. Stockholders of financial and industrial corporations desire dividends, which are paid in cash. Not desiring office, the stockholders are satisfied to have the corporation managed by representatives of aptitude and experience. The dividends paid by political corporations like the United States and the several states are “liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” “equality before the law,” an army and navy for national defense, and courts of justice for the enforcement of rights and the redress of wrongs. But stockholders in political corporations are not always satisfied with these returns. Some prefer office to dividends payable only in blessings.

In banks and other business corporations, stockholders are apt to insist that representatives and officers who show aptitude and efficiency shall be continued in office so long as dividends are satisfactory. In political corporations the people have recently been pursuing a very different course. They have been changing their representatives so frequently that efficiency, which results only from experience, is impossible.

While stockholders of a corporation would certainly wreck the institution if they attempted to manage its affairs directly or by referendum, it is very appropriate for stockholders, acting on the recommendation of their representatives – the board of directors – to determine an important measure like an issue of bonds, or whether the scope and purpose of the concern shall be enlarged or its capital increased. Analogous to this is the determination of governmental policies at regular elections where the people choose between the programs of different political parties as set forth in their platforms. Thus the people sometimes ratify the policy of protection, and sometimes the policy of free trade, demonstrating that they do not always act wisely by frequently reversing themselves.

Political parties usually omit from their platforms the details of legislation. The only exception that occurs to me was when every detail of a financial policy was incorporated in the platform submitted for ratification. The coinage was to be “free,” it was to be “unlimited,” and at the “ratio of 16 to 1.” If the people had approved this at the polls their representatives would have had no discretion. There would have been no room for compromise. While the people are presumably competent to choose between policies recommended in the platforms of political parties, it is a far stretch of the imagination to suppose that the average citizen is better prepared to determine the details of a policy than the man he selects to represent him in the halls of Congress. The congressman who concedes that his average constituent is better prepared to pass upon a proposition than he is necessarily admits in the same breath that his district committed a serious blunder in sending him. It ought to have selected a man at least of average intelligence.

The fact that neither stockholders en masse, nor employees en masse are able to manage a business enterprise does not imply that the principle of a republic may not be advantageously applied to industrial concerns. This question is again referred to in Chapter XXX, and the possible safe, middle course between the industrial autocracy demanded by capital, and the industrial democracy demanded by labor, is suggested and briefly discussed.

CHAPTER III

STATESMEN MUST FIRST BE BORN AND THEN MADE

Some fundamental qualifications for statesmanship. Integrity and wisdom compared.

How are lawyers obtained? Admission to the bar does not always produce even an attorney. And there is a very marked difference between an attorney and a lawyer. But when a young man is admitted to the bar who has aptitude for the law, without which no man can be a lawyer, industry in the law, without which no man ever was a lawyer, then with some years of appropriate environment – the court room and the law library – a lawyer will be produced into whose hands you may safely commit your case.

How are law makers obtained? Many seem to think it only necessary to deliver a certificate of election, and, behold, a constructive statesman, of either gender. I would like to ask whether, in your judgment, it requires any less aptitude, any less industry, or a less period of appropriate environment to produce a constructive law maker, than to develop a safe law practitioner.

I will carry the illustration one step further. Do you realize that it would be far safer to place the man of ordinary intelligence upon the bench, with authority to interpret and enforce the laws as he finds them written in the book, than to give him pen and ink and let him draft new laws? We all recognize that it requires a man of legal aptitude and experience to interpret laws, but some seem to assume neither aptitude nor experience is necessary in a law-maker. If legislators in state and nation are to be abjectly obedient to the wish of their constituents, what use can they make of knowledge and judgment? They will prove embarrassments, will they not?