Vanishing Landmarks

A century and more of matchless development, wherein money getting had been the chief aim of life, especially with those possessing aptitude and enough energy to pay the price of achievement, divided the people into classes. Those possessing aptitude for acquisition won wealth, those with aptitude for discovery won distinction, those possessing aptitude for statesmanship, or for war, won fame. Many of those who won wealth became arrogant, overbearing, snobbish and some of them despisedly mean. Logically – for everything in this world proceeds from cause to effect – those who did not possess the particular type of aptitude necessary for acquisition, together with those who were unwilling to pay the price, denounced riches and the possessors thereof. Some of these became envious, threatening, even rebellious, and not a few despisedly mean. The result is a different America than the one our fathers knew, and it does not require an old fogy to see it. A man is not a pessimist simply because he recognizes self-evident facts. Noah came far nearer being a statesman than a pessimist. History simply repeats itself. Macauley, singing of the “brave days of old,” says:

“Then none was for a party,Then all were for the State,Then the rich man helped the poorAnd the poor man loved the great.”

Now the poor man first envies the rich man and then hates him, the rich man hates the richer, and the richer snubs the would-be rich. As a matter of fact, there was never as much sympathy for the poor as now, never as much being done for him as at present. But sympathy and charity are not what he needs, as I hope to be able to show.

IS THE SITUATION HOPELESS?

If the human race has reached a condition where further progress is impossible, and nothing but class antagonisms are left, it would seem that a second occasion has arisen when Jehovah might “repent that he had made man.” Patriotism demands a solution, without which no sane man dares hope for anything except what the socialist predicts in language more ominous than any direct threat.

Permit a few excerpts from a chapter, “The Revolution,” added by its author to a pamphlet containing a debate on socialism, and which he used extensively in his campaign for Congress in 1916. The author is a man of excellent presence and seeming patriotism. I believe him to be as sincere in his belief as any evangelist of the olden times. He commends the vision of Ignatius Donneley in prophesying the approaching cataclysm: “The people cannot comprehend it. They look around for their defenders – the police, the soldier, where are they? Will not this dreadful nightmare pass away? No, never! This is the culmination – this is the climax, the century’s aloe blooms today.” He adds: “These are the grapes of wrath which God has stored up for the day of His vengeance; and now He is tramping them out and this is the red juice – look you – that flows so thick and fast in the very gutters… Evil has but one child – DEATH. For years you have nourished and nurtured evil. Do you complain if her monstrous progeny is here, with sword and torch? What else did you expect? Did you think she would breed angels?” And then after explaining that he does not speak “these bitter words in the spirit of a challenge, but with the kindliest, deepest feeling of love for all humanity, and with the most fervent and patriotic feelings of veneration for my country – the grandest country in the world, but now being systematically robbed,” he warns “the masters of the bread” thus: “I warn them that if they want ‘red hell’ with all the accompanying fireworks – with all the attendant brutality, and crime, and suffering, and misery, and degradation, and sorrow and death, with the destruction of their cities and the wiping out of their so-called civilization, they can have it just when they most desire. It is up to them. The revolutions of the past will be but kindergarten affairs compared to the revolution now pending and coming when some one strikes a match in the powder house.”

CHAPTER XXIX

CAN THE CRISIS BE AVERTED?

Our troubles have all resulted from false teachings which are leading us farther and farther afield. The very rich will spend nothing to correct the public mind and legislation seems powerless to afford a remedy.

All this might have been prevented and possibly even now can be avoided. It has been brought upon us in part by false education but largely through evolution in our form of government, in our purpose of government, and in industrial conditions. It could have been prevented by correct education both inside and outside the schoolroom. It may possibly be avoided by a speedy return to fundamental Americanism. But whatever happens, no citizen can boast of patriotism until he has sought a remedy; and no one is a patriot who will not sacrifice everything to save the situation.

In this connection let me warn you not to expect any considerable portion of the necessary work to be done by the very rich. They have so long believed, and their experience has justified the conviction that money will buy anything, that many of them seem to think their wealth will enable them to buy liberty of a mob. A mob is always venal but it can never be bribed by what it has the power to take. Did the wealthy of France escape? They were the first to die. Have the rich of Russia been spared? They have been the first to suffer. Possibly the rich may be able to buy their choice of being mutilated before or after death. The history of all revolutions of the kind that seems impending justifies the prediction that the more money a man has the greater certainty of his torture and ultimate death. Quite recently a very rich man was asked to contribute to a campaign of education against bolshevism. He wrote a patronizing letter acknowledging the importance of the work, but expressed the opinion that it should be financed, not by the rich, but by men worth thirty or forty thousand dollars. “Accursed be the gold that gilds the narrow forehead of the fool.”

LEGISLATION OFFERS NO REMEDY

It is recorded that the children of Israel once upon a time got into serious difficulty through worshipping a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain getting the Moral Law. If American civilization is idolatrous – and it seems not to be free from that sin – the object of its worship is statute law, to the neglect of underlying principles which make most laws unnecessary. In the last ten years over sixty-five thousand statutes have been enacted by Congress and the state legislatures and approved by executives. Meanwhile the evil we are now considering, in common with most others recognized a decade ago, has in the main increased. Neither the laws of nature, nor the laws of economics, nor the laws of society, can be reversed by statute. We have proceeded upon the theory that a republic can accomplish anything by popular edict, but the tides come in whether prohibited by sovereign king or by sovereign people.

A DIAGNOSIS

Before a disease can be treated with any hope of success, its cause, no less than its manifestations, must be studied. American industries and internal improvements were begun with American labor. I can remember when girls in northern New England spent their winters in the factories at Lowell and Manchester and returned to teach school during the summer. When our industries outgrew the supply of American labor, agents were sent abroad and immigrants were brought over under contract. When Congress forbade the admission of contract labor, and wages still advanced, the world heard of it and a polyglot mass of all kindreds and tribes and complexions came flocking to our shores, because, as we have seen elsewhere in this volume, labor was better rewarded here than elsewhere, and relatively better rewarded than capital. Naturally, American-bred boys and girls did not fancy working side by side with foreigners who did not speak the English language, who had not imbibed American ideas and were strangers to American standards of living. So they ceased to accept work, and commenced looking for situations.

I visited a mill in Passaic, New Jersey, where the rules were posted in five languages, and a teacher in one of the schools told me there were nineteen languages spoken in her room. In thousands of establishments, laborers, many of whose names are unpronounceable, are known by numbers. Think of an American citizen, outside of a penitentiary, being identified and known by number. Will any wage satisfy that man? What wage or salary will you accept and be known to your boss only by number, and stand in line and accept a pay envelope at the end of the week as “437”? An increased wage may temporarily satisfy the intellect of a man thus environed but it will not satisfy his heart hunger.

There are only two demands that a laborer knows how to make: He can ask shorter hours, and he can demand more wages, but neither will satisfy, for neither is the thing he needs. Would you like to know what it is for which the very soul of every man – laborer no less than capitalist – cries and without which he will not be appeased? You do not need to be told. You have only to hark back to the days of your youth. You have only to study mental philosophy, using your own inner consciousness as a text book, and you will find the answer. What the American laborer demands, what the American citizen, regardless of his surroundings, needs, is recognition. He wants a voice. His very being demands some measure of responsibility. He needs to feel that in some way he has contributed to results and that someone besides himself knows it. God save America from a generation in whom these divinely implanted aspirations have been stifled.

Being unable to formulate these longings, the laborer limits his demands to the two things which the walking delegate tells him are the only things necessary – shorter hours and more pay. When he gets them the real need of his being remains untouched and he repeats his demand. When his employer seeks to do something for him, instead of doing something together with him, he resents both his charity and his sympathy, and spurns his advice.

Men who are required to deal with men ought to give primary study to human nature, and omit the study of angelic nature until they join the angels. Suppose we continue this analysis of human nature for therein we may find the seed of truth that shall, if nurtured, fructify in blessing to us all.

A few years ago the Chamber of Commerce of one of our very large cities gave a Lincoln Day Banquet at which the speaker of the House of Representatives of Congress was the guest of honor. Among other wise philosophies that fell from his lips was this: “I do not know your personal genesis but I will guess that less than fifty years ago nine out of ten of the intelligent, virile leaders of production, who own and represent capital, as well as the high officials of your state, and of the nation, who sit at this table, were bright-faced schoolboys in the common schools, ‘building castles in Spain.’ If this Chamber shall repeat this banquet a half century hence, you can find your successors in the public schools of today ‘building castles in Spain.’” The thought I gather is not the trite expression that “The youth of today is the adult of tomorrow,” nor that the public school is the nursery of greatness. The thought I get is that he who is destined to achieve prominence in any walk of life is the youth who “builds castles in Spain,” who imagines, who hopes, and who goes out to fight for the fulfillment of his dreams.

What is the probability of a man who cannot speak the English language, and who receives nothing more tangible than a pay envelope and its contents, handed to him by number, sitting by the cot of his son and inspiring the imagination of the coming American? If he says anything, is he not likely to say – are there not a million homes where this is the only appropriate thing that can be said: “My boy, I am sorry that I brought you into the world. I see nothing in life for you. The future is not only dumb but awful dark.”

The kind of men who made this country were told a different story at their trundle beds. They were inspired with hope, for their parents were full of hope. They were filled with expectation, for they knew their parents were expectant. If we revive contented, hopeful Americanism we must inspire “castle building.” We must fill the youth with hope and whet his imagination to keenest edge until he will intuitively seek literature instead of twaddle with which to express his aspiration.

“I stand at the end of the past, where the future begins I stand,Emperors lie in the dust, others shall rise to command;But greater than rulers unborn, greater than kings who have reignedAm I that have hope in my heart and victories still to be gained.Under my feet the world, over my head the sky,Here at the center of things, in the living presence am I.”

CHAPTER XXX

INDUSTRIAL REPUBLICS

While democracy as a form of government spells ruin, democracy in society spells America in her best estate. The possibility of industrial republics is suggested.

While talking about democracy in government we seem to have lost our conception of democracy in society. What better can we expect from democracy in government than France’s experience, when the voice of the people was declared to be the voice of God? But social democracy is a very different thing from a democratic form of government, and has well nigh become a lost blessing.

When the socialist talks about “Industrial Democracy” he means a democratic form of government, with all industries under popular management. That is one extreme. The capitalist demands industrial autocracy. That is the other extreme.

In a previous chapter I have tried to show that when the Fathers formed this government, their experiences, as well as their knowledge of history led them to fear the monarch. The French Revolution was about to burst into what its promoters promised should be the purest form of democracy which the world had ever seen, and the Fathers were justly apprehensive. Dreading the mass quite as much as they feared the monarch, they chose the middle course. They chose representative government.

I wonder if there be a middle course between industrial autocracy and industrial democracy. Is it possible for business concerns and manufacturing plants to create within their organizations industrial republics where each employee shall have some actual voice, and through their representatives sitting in deliberative bodies, analogous to our legislative branch, originate and recommend or approve reforms and improvements subject, of course, to a veto by a cabinet?

Many methods of profit sharing have been tried and they have usually worked advantageously, but admittedly they fall far short of the requirements. So-called cooperative industrial concerns have been created with some measure of success, yet the real problem remains untouched and as complex as ever. Labor has never established a cooperative industry worthy of the name, except as Mallock shows in “The Limits of Pure Democracy,”3 when the actual operation of the concern has been placed in the hands of an oligarch whose administration is as arbitrary as that of any captain of industry. Only in that way has it been possible to supply management, the most essential element, as we have seen, in any enterprise. Labor has sometimes found the capital, but capital and labor without management are impotent. A goodly number of corporations have encouraged and even assisted their workmen to buy stock, which is a very good and meritorious policy. It may tend to alleviate but it fails to cure.

Mallock clearly shows that every successful government unites the elements of autocracy and democracy. Even the Imperial German Government granted certain powers to the people, while the Constitution of the United States clothes the president with powers in certain respects rivaling those of the kaiser. The power of veto which the Constitution vests in the president exceeds any prerogative possessed by the king of England. On the other hand the power to make war rests with Congress, while in Great Britain it requires no parliamentary act. Mallock enlarges upon this thought and shows that socialist organizations and labor unions are successful only because they are arbitrarily managed. Their so-called leaders are, in fact, oligarchs. The Russian Revolution, like the French Revolution, was avowedly of democratic origin, but in fact both were as despotic as anything the world has ever seen. The strength and grandeur of the government of the United States, as established by the Constitution, lies in the most happy combination and blending of these two fundamental principles, popular sovereignty and centralized strength.

The primary difficulty in solving the so-called labor question lies, I think, in failing to recognize the individuality – the personality of the employee. Some tiny share of profits is offered in lieu of increased wages and it is accepted as a mere sop. The offer of stock at a price below the market, with easy payments, is looked upon as a cheap way of tying the hands of the employee, and as an insurance against strikes. I think I am safe in saying that in a very large majority of cases where any of these methods have been tried the men have resented them, and in some instances spurned them. Then the employer concludes that labor will not accept decent treatment, closes his ears, his mouth and his heart and proceeds to get all he can and to give as little as can possibly be forced out of him.

If the basis of masculine happiness is, as I have tried to show, the divinely implanted desire for creatorship, sovereignty and achievement, then we will find it impossible to satisfy the subconscious longings of the human heart with shorter hours, increased wages, or with some slight share of profits in lieu of increased wages. If I am right in my analysis the pathway of access to the real man in the overalls – and a real man is in the overalls and must be discovered – is by some scheme that will necessarily recognize him as a real, thinking and potential entity.

Most humans prefer to be called “citizens” rather than “subjects.” Autocrats speak of their subjects. In republics there are no subjects. All are fellow citizens. If this thought can be carried into the industrial world, the “citizens” therein will find their heart hunger appeased, their hope inspired and they will lift their heads into the clearer atmosphere of industrial opportunity, and possibility of ultimate social recognition. If the theory of evolution has any foundation in fact the species began to lift its head with the first impulse of hope, and its whole body stood erect when the consciousness dawned of being human. A free, brave and hopeful people never went mad. Desperation and failure of recognition is the parent of revolution. Most anyone will fight when called “it.”

Pardon a little personal observation which has direct bearing upon increased efficiency resulting from no other cause than recognition and hope. Forty years ago immigrants from both Germany and Sweden came from Castle Garden to my town every few days. They had been born “subjects” and they toiled after their arrival as they had toiled before as “subjects.” They moved with the air of “subjects.” In my imagination I can see those German families coming up the middle of the street in wooden shoes, single file, the man ahead empty handed except his long pipe, the wife close behind with a baby in her arm, and a big bundle on her head, and the children in regular succession according to age, which seldom varied more than two years. There must have been some hope in the man’s heart or he would not have left his native country. But neither his gait nor his other movements betrayed it. These immigrants immediately sought and secured employment, but they were not worth much the first month or so. It did not take long, however, until it would dawn upon them that opportunity had actually knocked at their door. A few Sunday afternoons on the porch of friends who had left the Fatherland as poor as they, and who were now comfortably situated, plus a wage scale of which hitherto they had only been told, transformed those big fellows. I am not exaggerating when I say they would do without urging from fifty to one hundred percent more work six months, and often six weeks, after their arrival than when they came. They had begun “building castles in Spain.” They were dreaming dreams and the central figure in every vision was a home of their own, and personal recognition. Instead of being subjects they had determined to become citizens.

Can this transformation still be wrought? If it can all danger is past. Of one thing I am certain. It cannot be done by legislation.

CONCLUSION

I came to man’s estate thoroughly believing that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest chart of liberty ever penned by man; and nothing that I have seen, nothing that I have heard, and nothing that has transpired in all my mature life has shaken my faith.

I think I must have been born an optimist. From earliest recollection I have liked the rooster that crows in the morning better than the owl that hoots in the nighttime. And what is best of all, the surroundings of my childhood and youth were exceedingly hopeful. I have seen few hours of discouragement and none of despondency. Despising the pessimist, I have resolved, and am resolved, that nothing shall dim my hope or weaken my confidence either in my country or in the American people, and yet in spite of myself I sometimes feel a very unwelcome impulse.

I observe the teachings of Jefferson forsaken and instead of the minimum of government and the maximum of liberty, more and more of government and less and less of liberty. I see ignored the warnings of Washington against weakening the energy of our governmental system by making changes in the Constitution. I mark the trend away from representative government towards direct government, a policy that has wrought ruin whenever and wherever it has been tried. I note the growing disrespect for authority in the home, in the school and on the street, coupled with certain slurs at the forms of law, as well as for judgments and decrees rendered in harmony therewith, emphasized by bald and naked threats to undermine and, if possible, overthrow our entire judicial system. I overhear the subtle suggestion to our youth that they need give no thought for the morrow, for the government will soon insure employment; that it is folly to make themselves efficient, for the government will sooner or later guarantee wages regardless of merit; that they need not practice thrift, for the government will ultimately pension their old age regardless of profligate habits or vicious living. I discover a growing recognition of capitalistic, industrial and even servant classes, with attempts at class legislation, all subversive of republican ideas, republican traditions and republican institutions. When I realize that all this is as yet only a verdant growth from socialistic, not to say anarchistic seed sown broadcast with scarcely a protest, and knowing that a harvest must yet be garnered, I am at times apprehensive.

But I am reminded that this is the people’s government. If they want it this way it is their business and not mine. If they make a mistake they are abundantly able to respond in consequences. All of which is true, but the fact that it is true, and awfully true, only emphasizes the importance of alert men in the watch towers.

Recognizing the existence of the greatest crisis of all time, a crisis wherein all that we call Christian civilization is imperiled, and being unable to hold my peace I have produced what I hope shall be considered an argument. I have tried to prove scientifically that the fathers were wise beyond their generation. Nothing is scientific that will not stand the test of application. I consider the unschooled George Stevenson a scientist of the first order. He thought out, and worked out, a safety lamp for the protection of coal miners, who during every hour of their toil stood in imminent danger of explosions. Then to prove that he was scientifically correct he had himself lowered into the mine in the nighttime, and, standing there alone, thrust his lighted lamp into the escaping gas. The achievements of the past afford proof positive that our form of government, our policy and our purpose of government were scientifically correct. It cannot be exploded or overthrown. Its only danger is from those of its own household, the children of its own institutions, who may undermine it.