Kitabı oku: «Vanishing Landmarks», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XXVI
EQUALITY OF INCOME
The inevitable effect of equality of income, assuming it could be accomplished, is discussed.
Two or three years ago George Bernard Shaw had a prize article in the “Metropolitan” in which he advocated “Equality of Income” as a panacea for all the ills that afflict civilization. I remember he urged that if all had equal incomes the race would be improved; for there would be greater freedom of selection. He seemed to deplore the fact that under present conditions “men and women meet in parks and other public places, recognize natural affinity” so promptly responded to by some but are nevertheless kept apart because of this iniquitous inequality of income. However much the man may be attracted by the personality of the lady he will not humble himself to make advances if she gives evidence of being financially beneath him; while his advances will be spurned if he bears the marks of a more meagre income than she enjoys.
It was the same old free-love doctrine, and the author argued at length to show that inequality of income thus seriously interferes with the free course of “natural affinity” and hence retards the coming of the “superman.” He did not in that article suggest how he would equalize incomes. Suppose we study, for a moment, not how to accomplish it, but the effect of its consummation.
If equality of income would be a panacea now – if it would solve the ills we have and prevent others – it would have worked well from the beginning. Imagine therefore that instead of following the divinely implanted impulse to acquire, to hold, to exercise sovereignty, to achieve, the race had remained as it was when it had no income, and therefore when no inequality of income existed. Would churches and cathedrals have been built? Would colleges and universities have been founded? Would art and literature have flourished? Would America have been discovered? Equality of income would have left Queen Isabella with no jewels to sell with which to purchase the Santa Maria. In fact there would have been no Santa Maria to purchase. The race would have remained where the race started. Inequality of income began when incomes began. Inequality of income marks the birth of civilization, and if civilization ever dies “equality of income” should be the title of its dirge.
The wealth of the United States is about twenty-five hundred dollars per capita. Assume, if you please, that all our property could be and has been converted into cash. Then assume that the rest of the world is able and willing to supply our every need and our every want so long as our money lasts! We would eat up and wear out the accumulation of the centuries in about three years; and henceforth would go about clothed in skins, and our own skins at that. The world lives from the income and accretion resulting from the accumulations of the ages, but in order to make it effective it must be kept in circulation, going first to labor, thence to the producer – the manager – by way of the merchant, and again to labor.
CHAPTER XXVII
AN HISTORICAL WARNING
The teachings of Rousseau, which logically resulted in the French revolution, wherein the confiscation of property was the prime purpose, is compared with some of the teachings of today. History that should constitute an ample warning is cited.
We have been sowing what Rousseau was permitted to sow and from which was reaped the French revolution. The “Social Contract” taught that property as understood today did not exist. The citizen simply held it in trust for society. For under the “Social Contract” each “surrenders himself up absolutely, just as he actually stands, he and all his resources, of which his property forms a part.” The next logical step in the revolution was to discharge or recall the trustee, and thus vest the property again in society itself. That was done. George W. Hinman in “Can We Learn Anything from History?” summarizes this recall of trusteeships as follows: “Society proceeded to recall its trustees as fast as ‘Society’ needed the property. It recalled the trusteeships of all the church property, $800,000,000; of all the property of exiles, $600,000,000; of all the property of the guillotined and condemned, $200,000,000; of all the property of hospitals and charitable institutions, $200,000,000; of all the state domains sold and rented in the last three hundred years, $400,000,000; of all the gold and silver vessels and specie, $100,000,000; of all the property of other institutions, valuables and common goods, $700,000,000. Then it recalled the trusteeships of coats and trousers, growing crops, pots, kettles, pans and mattresses. In one town it recalled the trusteeship of ten thousand pairs of shoes from ten thousand pairs of feet, and thus condemned ten thousand former custodians of this property to go about their tasks barefooted in the snow.”
Not only this but the government extended confiscation by means of income tax until the whole of every income in excess of six hundred dollars was to be taken. Taine, the historian, summarizes thus: “Whatever the grand terms of liberty, equality and fraternity may be, with which the revolution graces itself, it is in its essence a transfer of property. In this alone consists its chief support, its enduring energy, its primary impulse and its historical significance.”
Hinman summarizes thus: “The people in a body is infallible; unlike individuals it can make no mistakes. Therefore we should not trust government to individual representatives or agents but to the pure and direct democracy. But we cannot have direct democracy at its purest without equality of condition. To get equality of condition we must get equality of property. To get equality of property we must correct the inequalities of the past and present. Therefore to correct these inequalities we invent the theory of trusteeship of property, recall the trustees, and take possession of all unequal properties in the name of society.
“That is the whole cycle; that is the great revolution! Twenty-five years in preparation, eleven years in actual practice, fourteen years in immediate consequences; fifty years all told and that is sum, substance and essence from the beginning to the end, a transfer of property! A transfer of property without compensation! A confiscation of property beyond appeal and beyond recall! There were movements also against the church, and against the family, but the transfer of property far surpassed them both in size and in significance.
“That the convulsions attending the movement were more spectacular than the movement itself; that a million persons were stabbed, drowned, shot, beheaded and hunted to death within the borders of the nation; that wars were started that strewed Europe with 5,000,000 dead; that the oppression was far more ferocious than under Louis XIV, that the waste of government was arithmetically four times greater than under the most wasteful monarchy; that a whole nation was bathed in blood, bankrupted in morals, and rotted in character to the core – all of these things, hideous and appalling as they may be, distracting and absorbing as they may be, are still but as colossal incidents. The chief movement through this sea of blood and wilderness of death was the transfer of property.”
Nevertheless, Robespierre – the bloodiest man who had ever lived, the bloodiest man who ever has lived outside of Russia, and the bloodiest man who ever will live unless socialism gets control in the United States – was an idealist. He resigned the bench rather than pronounce sentence of death upon a convicted criminal. He read Rousseau’s “Social Contract” every day. He was the leader in the “uplift” movement of the age in which he lived and sought to produce Utopian conditions of “liberty, equality and fraternity” throughout France. While an Internationalist he sought to reform and transform France before extending his field of influence.
But being self-willed as well as self-opinionated, at the first appearance of opposition he threw down the challenge. There was “some fight in him and he liked it.” He appealed directly to the people and condemned to the guillotine everyone who had the temerity to resist his efforts to ameliorate human conditions. While seeking everywhere for property to confiscate, and heads to guillotine, he made the most elaborate speech of his career:
“Our purpose is to substitute morality for egotism, honesty for honor, principles for customs, duties for proprieties, the empire of reason for the tyranny of habit, contempt of vice for indifference to misfortune, dignity for insolence, nobility for vanity, love of glory for love of money, good people for society, merit for intrigue, genius for intellectual brilliancy, the charm of contentment for the satiety of pleasure, the majesty of man for the high breeding of the great, a magnanimous, powerful and happy people for amiable, frivolous and wretched people; that is to say, every virtue and miracle of the republic in the place of the vices and absurdities of the monarchy.”
I submit that is pretty good rhetoric and excellent diction. Though it means absolutely nothing it must have sounded well to the proletariat. The people idolized Robespierre for a while at least, as they always idolize an orator who has great command of indefinite and high-sounding language. Idolizing an idealist they followed him and were led to the extremes of democracy. The whole population of France was transformed into an organized mob, doing everything that a mob can do but, in the main, preserving the forms of law.
CHAPTER XXVIII
CAPITAL AND LABOR
Among the dangers threatening the republic is the warfare which admittedly exists between capital and labor, the manifest tendency of which is in the direction of bolshevism. Some citations are made showing its imminence.
One need not to have read the preceding pages to know that the United States is fast approaching a crisis. Industrial and social unrest is everywhere apparent. Capital and labor are at grips in many places, while management, the all-essential factor, seems helpless to accomplish reconciliation.
When given free rein, capital enforced unbearable terms. This resulted in legislation forbidding combinations for the purpose of limiting output or advancing prices of the products of labor. Thus far labor has enjoyed express exemptions from anti-trust laws, and it is now making unbearable exactions. I would like to warn labor unions that they are liable to exceed the limits of prudence. Admittedly Congress has the same power to forbid combinations of labor as it had to prohibit combinations of capital. Combinations of every kind are beneficial so long as their purpose is legitimate.
There is an old fable of a man who had an ox that he worked with a donkey. One day the ox refused to work and at night he asked the donkey how matters had progressed without him. “I had a very hard day, but I got through with it,” said the donkey. “Did the boss say anything about me?” asked the ox. “Not a word,” said the donkey. The next night the ox again inquired and received the same reply: “A very hard day, but completed.” “Did the boss say anything about me?” asked the ox. “Not a word,” said the donkey, “but coming home he stopped in and talked awhile with the butcher.” It might be well for us all to understand that if one million or ten million bankers, if one million or ten million farmers, or if one million or ten million organized labor men should ever attempt to rule America in the interest of any one class, and should assume to dictate the terms on which production can be continued, it will be only a question of time when one hemisphere will be freed from organized coercion. But every organization of labor, every combination of capital, and every association of farmers, might be dissolved and it would not more than temporarily relieve the situation. It is a condition that confronts us and no amount of theorizing will improve it.
Recently an official of the Department of Labor, in a carefully prepared article, made the profound declaration that warfare between capital and labor will continue until justice is assured. Grant, if you please, that a court of exact justice could be created, with a judge wiser than Solomon on the bench. Its decisions would satisfy neither capital nor labor. Arbitration boards occasionally seek to do exact justice. They usually ignore that element and aim simply to effect a workable compromise, that will temporarily save the situation. When the terms are accepted and acquiesced in, both sides profess to be satisfied, but neither side is satisfied. Capital thinks it is entitled to everything because without capital labor would starve, and it demands that labor remove its shoes from off its feet in its presence. Labor thinks it is entitled to everything because without labor capital would languish. It goes further and declares capital to be a myth. It says that all so-called wealth is the product of labor; and if labor had not been robbed there would be no accumulated wealth – and all such socialistic and anarchistic nonsense which emanates largely from German-bred or German-educated teachers of political economy and sociology, emphasized by a large number of public speakers both within and without the church, and by demagogues generally. Hence “labor claims the full proceeds of its service less enough to keep the tools and machinery in repair.” It asks that capital remove its shoes. Both capital and labor ignore the most important factor of production – management.
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 poor
And 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.
