The Freeman 1969

the

FreemanVOL. 19, NO.2. FEBRUARY 1969

From Spencer's 1884 to Orwell's 1984 Henry Hazlitt 67In The Man Versus the State, Herbert Spencer warned prophetically of "thecoming slavery" of oppressive taxation and government control.

Our Saving Grace Paul L. Poirot 76Despite powerful pressures to "live it up," we owe our lives to the long-standinghabit of saving for a rainy day.

The Rise and Fall of England:12. The Fabian Program Clarence B. Carson 81

Describing the steps from municipal to national control of industry and trade.

The Squeeze on the Middle Class William Henry Chamberlin 91The welfare state grows at the expense of those who gave strength to the ideasand institutions of political and economic freedom.

Consider Your Stand Gottfried Dietze 98A reminder to academicians that the promotion of learning involves responsibilitiesas well as rights.

Education in America:5. Discipline or Disaster? George Charles Roche III 101

When parents delegate to teachers, and teachers to pupils, the responsibility foreducational content, the result must be undisciplined disaster.

Pricing Ourselves Out of World' Markets? M. E. Cravens 109Protectionism weakens a nation's capacity to cope with foreign competition.

Technological Status John W. Campbell 113Concerning the fiction that backward countries can jump to a high level of industrialachievement without experiencing the horse-collar revolution.

Book Reviews 123"An American Dictionary of the English language" by Noah Webster

(Facsimile of the original 1828 edition)"The Birth of the Nation" by Arthur M. Schlesinger"The America We lost" by Mario Pei

Anyone wishing to communicate with authors may sendfirst-class mail in care of THE FREEMAN for forwarding.

the

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"From Spencer's 1884 to Orwell's 1984," "The Rise and Fall of Eng

land," and "Technological Status."

HENRY HAZLITT

FROM SPENCER'S1884TO ORWELL'S 1984

IN 1884, Herbert Spencer wrotewhat quickly became a celebratedbook, The Man Versus the State.The book is seldom referred tonow, and gathers dust on libraryshelves - if, in fact, it is stillstocked by many libraries. Spencer's political views are regardedby most present-day writers, whobother to mention him at all, as"extreme laissez faire,". and hence"discredited."

But any open-minded personwho takes the trouble today toread or reread The ]}fan Versus theState will probably be startled bytwo things. The first is the uncanny clairvoyance with whichSpencer foresaw what the futureencroachments of the State wereMr. Hazlitt is the well-known economic andfinancial analyst, columnist, lecturer, andauthor of numerous books.

This article will appear as a chapter in aforthcoming book, Man vs. the Welfare State,to be published by Arlington House.

likely to be on individual liberty,above all in the economic realm.The second is the extent to whichthese encroachments had alreadyoccurred in 1884, the year inwhich he was writing.

The present generation hasbeen brought up to believe thatgovernment concern for "socialjustice" and for the plight of theneedy was something that did noteven exist until the New Dealcame along in 1933. The agesprior to that have been picturedas periods when no one "cared,"when laissez faire was rampant,when everybody who did not succeed in the cutthroat competitionthat was euphemistically calledfree enterprise - but was simply asystem of dog-eat-dog and thedevil-take-the-hindmost - was allowed to starve. And if the presentgeneration thinks this is true

l\7

68 THE FREEMAN February

even of the 1920's, it is absolutelysure that it was so in the 1880's,which it would probably regard asthe very peak of the prevalence oflaissez faire.

The Seeds of Change

Yet the new reader's initial astonishment when he starts Spencer's book may begin to wear offbefore he is halfway through, because one cause for surprise explains the other. All that Spencerwas doing was to project or extrapolate the legislative tendenciesexisting in the 1880's into the future. It was because he was soclear-sightedly appalled by thesetendencies that he recognized themso much more sharply than hiscontemporaries, and saw so muchmore clearly where they wouldlead if left unchecked.

Even in his Preface to The ManVersus the State he pointed outhow "increase in freedom on form"was being followed by "decreaseof freedom in fact...."

Regulations have been made inyearly growing numbers, restrainingthe citizen in directions where his actions were previously unchecked, andcompelling actions which previouslyhe might perform or not as he liked;and at the same time heavier publicburdens . . . have further restrictedhis freedom, by lessening that portion of his earnings which he canspend as he pleases, and augmenting

the portion taken from him to bespent as public agents please.

In his first chapter, "The NewToryism," Spencer contends that"most of those who now pass asLiberals, are Tories of a new type."The Liberals of his own day, hepoints out, had already "lost sightof the truth that in past timesLiberalism habitually stood for individual freedom versus State-coercion."

So the complete Anglo-Americanswitch of reference, by which a"liberal" today has come to meanprimarily a Stflte-interventionist,had already begun in 1884. Already "plausible proposals" werebeing made "that there should beorganized a system of compulsoryinsurance, by which men duringtheir early lives shall be forced toprovide for the time when theywill be incapacitated." Here is already the seed of the AmericanSocial Security Act of 1935.

Spencer also pays his respectsto the antilibertarian implicationsof an increasing tax burden. Thosewho impose additional taxes aresaying in effect: "Hitherto youhave been free to spend this portion of your earnings in any waywhich pleased you; hereafter youshall not be free to spend it, butwe will spend it for the generalbenefit."

Spencer next turns to the compulsions that labor unions were

1969 FROM SPENCER'S 1884 TO ORWELL'S 1984 69

even then imposing on their members, and asks: "If men use theirliberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves?"

In his second chapter, "TheComing Slavery," Spencer drawsattention to the existence of whathe calls "political momentum"the tendency of State interventions and similar political measures to increase and accelerate inthe direction in which they havealready been set going. Americans have become only too familiarwith this momentum in the lastfew years.

Spencer illustrates: "The blankform of an inquiry daily made is- 'We have already done this; whyshould we not do that?'" "Thebuying and working of telegraphsby the State" [which already existed in England when he wrote],he continued, "is made a reasonfor urging that the State shouldbuy and work the railways." Andhe went on to quote the demandsof one group that the State shouldtake possession of the railways,"with or without compensation."

The British State did not buyand work the railways until 64years later, in 1948, but it did getaround to it, precisely as Spencerfeared.

It is not only precedent thatprompts the constant spread of interventionist measures, Spencer

points out, "but also the necessitywhich arises for supplementingineffective measures, and for dealing with the artificial evils continually caused. Failure does notdestroy faith in the agencies employed, but merely suggests morestringent use of such agencies orwider ramifications of them." Oneillustration he gives is how "theevils produced by compulsorycharity are now proposed to bemet by compulsory insurance."Today, in America, one could pointto scores of examples (from measures to cure "the deficit in thebalance of payments" to the constant multiplication of measuresto fight the government's "war onpoverty") of interventions mainlydesigned to remove the artificialevils brought about by previousinterventions.

One Turn Deserves Another

Everywhere, Spencer goes on,the tacit assumption is that "government should step in wheneveranything is not going right. . . .The more numerous governmentalinterventions become ... the moreloud and perpetual the demandsfor intervention." Every additionalrelief measure raises hopes offurther ones:

The more numerous public instrunlentalities become, the more is theregenerated in citizens the notion thateverything is to be done for them,


and nothing by them. Every generation is made less familiar with theattainment of desired ends by individual actions or private agencies;until, eventually, governmentalagencies come to be thought of asthe only available agencies.

Forms of Slavery

"All socialism," Spencer concludes, "involves slavery.... Thatwhich fundamentally distinguishesthe slave is that he labors undercoercion to satisfy another's desires." The relation admits ofmany gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of theindividual to the community asa whole. "The essential questionis - How much is he compelled tolabor for other benefit than hisown, and how much can he laborfor his own benefit?"

Even Spencer would probablyhave regarded with incredulity aprediction that in less than twogenerations England would haverates of income tax rising above90 per cent, and that many anenergetic and ambitious man, inEngland and the United States,would be forced to spend morethan half his time and labor working for the support of the community, and allowed less than halfhis time and labor to provide forhis family and himself.

Today's progressive income taxprovides a quantitative measure-

ment of the relative extent of aman's economic liberty and servitude.

Those who think that. publichousing is an entirely new development will be startled to hearthat the beginnings of it - as wellas some of its harmful consequences - were already present in1884:

Where municipal bodies turn housebuilders [wrote Spencer], they inevitably lower the values of housesotherwise built, and check the supplyof more.... The multiplication ofhouses, and especially small houses,being increasingly checked, theremust come an increasing demandupon the local authority to make upfor the deficient supply.... And thenwhen in towns this process has goneso far as to make the local authoritythe chief owner of houses, there willbe a good precedent for publicly providing houses for the rural population, as proposed in the Radical program, and as urged by the Democratic Federation [which insists on]the compulsory construction ofhealthy artisans' and agriculturallaborers' dwellings in proportion tothe population.

One State intervention Spencerdid not foresee was the futureimposition of rent controls, whichmake it unprofitable for privatepersons to own, repair, or renovate old rental housing or to putup new. The consequences of rentcontrol provoke the indignant


charge that "private enterpriseis simply not doing the job" ofproviding enough housing. Theconclusion is that therefore thegovernment must step in and takeover that job.

What Spencer did expresslyfear, in another field, was thatpublic education, providing gratiswhat private schools had to chargefor, would in time destroy theprivate schools. What, of course,he did not foresee was that eventually the government would provide free tuition even in tax-supported colleges and universities,thus more and more threateningthe continuance of private colleges and universities - and sotending more and more to producea uniform conformist education,with college faculties ultimatelydependent for their jobs on thegovernment, and so developing aneconomic interest in professingand teaching a statist, pro-government and socialist ideology.The tendency of government-supported education must be finallyto achieve a government monopoly of education.

Ancient Roots of Tyranny

As the "liberal" readers of 1969may be shocked to learn that therecent State interventions whichthey regard as the latest expressions of advanced and compassionate thought were anticipated

in 1884, so the statist readers ofSpencer's day must have beenshocked to learn from him howmany of the latest State interventions of 1884 were anticipated inRoman times and in the MiddleAges. For Spencer reminded them,quoting an historian, that in Gaul,during the decline of the RomanEmpire, "so numerous were thereceivers in comparison with thepayers, and so enormous theweight of taxation, that the laborer broke down, the plains became deserts, and woods grewwhere the plough had been."

Spencer reminded his readersalso of the usury laws underLouis XV in France, which raisedthe rate of interest "from five tosix when intending to reduce itto four." He reminded them ofthe laws against "forestalling"(buying up goods in advance forlater resale), also in early France.The effect of such laws was toprevent anyone from buying "morethan two bushels of wheat atmarket," which prevented tradersand dealers from equalizing supplies over time, thereby intensifying scarcities. He reminded hisreaders also of the measure which,in 1315, to diminish the pressureof famine, prescribed the pricesof foods, but which was laterrepealed after it had caused theentire disappearance of variousfoods from the markets. He re-


n1inded them, again, of the manyendeavors to fix wages, beginningwith the Statute of Laborers under Edward III (1327-77). Andstill again, of statute 35 of Edward III, which aimed to keepdown the price of herrings (butwas soon repealed because itraised the price). And yet again,of the law of Edward III, underwhich innkeepers at seaports weresworn to search their guests "toprevent the exportation of moneyor plate."

This last example will uneasilyremind Americans of the presentprohibition of private gold holdings and gold export, and of theJohnson Administration's attemptto put a punitive tax on foreigntravel, as well as the actual punitive tax that it did put on foreigninvestment. Let us add the stillexisting prohibitions even by allegedly advanced European nationsagainst taking more than a tinyamount of their local paper currency out of the country!

The federal Bulldozer Then

I come to one last specific parallel between 1884 and the present.This concerns slum clearance andurban renewal. The British government of Spencer's day responded to the existence ofwretched and overcrowded housing by enacting the Artisans'Dwellings Acts. These gave to local

authorities powers to pull downbad houses and provide for thebuilding of good ones:

What have been the results? Asummary of the operations of theMetropolitan Board of Works, datedDecember 21, 1883, shows that up tolast September it had, at a cost of amillion and a quarter to ratepayers,unhoused 21,000 persons and provided houses for 12,000 - the remaining 9,000 to be hereafter provided for,being, meanwhile, left houseless. Thisis not all.... Those displaced ... forma total of nearly 11,000 artificiallymade homeless, who have had to findcorners for themselves in miserableplaces that were already overflowing.

Those who are interested in athorough study of the present-dayparallel to this are referred toProfessor Martin Anderson's TheFederal Bulldozer (M. 1. T. Press,1964; McGraw-Hill paperback,1967). I quote just one short paragraph from his findings:

The federal urban renewal program has actually aggravated thehousing shortage for low-incomegroups. From 1950 to 1960, 126,000dwelling units, most of them low-rentones, were destroyed. This studyestimates that the number of newdwelling units constructed is less thanone fourth of the number demolished, and that most of the new unitsare high-rent ones. Contrast the netaddition of millions of standarddwelling units to the housing supply


by private enterpri~e with the minute construction effort of the federalurban renewal program." (p. 229)

There is an eloquent paragraphin Spencer's book reminding hisreaders of the eighties of whatthey did not owe to the State:

It is not to the State that we owethe multitudinous useful inventionsfrom the spade to the telephone; it isnot the State which made possibleextended navigation by a developedastronomy; it was not the Statewhich made the discoveries in physics,chen1istry, and the rest, which guiden10dern manufacturers; it was notthe State which devised the machinery for producing fabrics of everykind, for transferring men and thingsfrom place to place, and for ministering in a thousand ways to our comforts. The world-wide transactionsconducted in merchants' offices, therush of traffic filling our streets, theretail distributing system whichbrings everything within easy reachand delivers the necessaries of lifedaily at our doors, are not of governmental origin. All these are resultsof the spontaneous activities of citizens, separate or grouped.

Aggravated Waste

Our present-day statists arebusily trying to change all this.They are seizing billions of additional dollars from the taxpayersto turn them over for "scientificresearch." By this compulsorilysubsidized government competi-

tion they are discouraging anddraining away the funds for private scientific research; and theythreaten to make such research,in time, a government monopoly.But whether this will result inmore scientific progress in thelong run is doubtful. True, enormously more money is being spenton "research," but it is being diverted in questionable directions- in military research; in developing greater and greater superbombs and other weapons of massdestruction and mass annihilation; in planning supersonic passenger airplanes developed on theassumption that civilians mustget to their European or Caribbean vacation spots at 1,200 or1,800 miles an hour, instead of amere 600, no matter how manyeardrums or windows of groundlings are shattered in the process; and finally, in such BuckRogers stunts as landing men onthe moon or on Mars.

It is fairly obvious that all thiswill involve enormous waste; thatgovernment bureaucrats will beable to dictate who gets the rerearch funds and who doesn't, andthat this choice will either depend upon fixed arbitrary qualifications like those determined byCivil Service examinations (hardly the way to find the most original minds), or upon the granteeskeeping in the good graces of the


particular government appointeein charge of the distribution ofgrants.

But our Welfare Statists seemdetermined to put us in a position where we will be dependenton government even for our future scientific and industrial progress - or in a position where theycan at least plausibly argue thatwe are so dependent.

A Denial of Private Property

Spencer next goes on to showthat the kind of State intervention he is deploring amounts tonot merely an abridgment but abasic rejection of private property: A "confusion of ideas, causedby looking at one face only of thetransaction, may be tracedthroughout all the legislationwhich forcibly takes the propertyof this man for the purpose ofgiving gratis benefits to that man."The tacit assumption underlyingall these acts of redistribution isthat:

No man has any claim to his property, not even to that which he hasearned by the sweat of his brow, saveby the permission of the community;and that the community may cancelthe claim to any extent it thinks fit.No defense can be made for this appropriation of A's possessions for thebenefit of B, save one which sets outwith the postulate that society as awhole has an absolute right over thepossessions of each member.

In the final chapter (just preceding a Postscript) Spencer concluded: "The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings.The function of true Liberalismin the future will be that of putting a limit to the. power ofParHaments."

In endorsing some of the arguments in Spencer's The Man Versus the State, and in recognizingthe penetration of many of his insights and the remarkable accuracy of his predictions of the political future, we need not necessarily subscribe to every positionthat he took. The very title ofSpencer's book was in one respectunfortunate. To speak of "the manversus the State" is to imply thatthe State, as such, is unnecessaryand evil. The State, of course, isabsolutely indispensable to thepreservation of law and order, andthe promotion of peace and socialcooperation. What is unnecessaryand evil, what abridges the libertyand threatens the true welfare ofthe individual, is the State thathas usurped excessive powers andgrown beyond its legitimate functions - the Superstate, the socialist State, the redistributive State,in brief, the ironically misnamed"Welfare State."

But Spencer was certainly rightin the main thrust of his argument, which was essentially that


of Adam Smith and other classical liberals, that the t,vo indispensable functions of governmentare first, to protect the nationagainst aggression from any othernation, and second, to protect theindividual citizen from the aggression, injustice, or oppressionof any other citizen - and thatevery extension of the functionsof government beyond these twoprimary duties should be scrutinized with jealous vigilance.

Weare deeply indebted toHerbert Spencer for recognizing

with a sharper eye than any ofhis contemporaries, and warningthem against, "the coming slavery" toward which the State oftheir own time was drifting, andtoward which we are more swiftlydrifting today.

It is more than a grim coincidence that Spencer was warningof the coming slavery in 1884, andthat George Orwell, in our time,has predicted that the full consummation of this slavery will bereached in 1984, exactly one century later. ~

The 1940 hardcovered Caxton printing of Herbert Spencer's

The Man Versus the State, with foreword by Albert Jay

Nock, 223 pages, fully indexed, is available at $3.50.

Order from: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.

Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533

SavingPAUL L. POIROT

THE LATE Lord Keynes and hisdisciples have heavily bombardedmodern man with the theory thathe can carelessly consume his wayto prosperity. Laws without endhave been enacted to implementthis false doctrine of consumerismand compulsive spending. Yet,despite that trend, there are thosewho continue to save and investin the essential tools of production to which most of us owe ourvery lives. Call it our savinggrace!

Even the most ardent advocatesof equality acknowledge a certainrespect for the aims and desires ofthe individual. The ultimateformula for compulsory collectivism would afford "to each according to need," implying thateach somehow is important. It isdifficult to think of any philosophyof man and society that wouldwholly and consciously deny thedignity of the individual as a hu-

76

man being with a purpose. Thepoint of divergence among philosophers concerns how far intothe future the individual shouldbe free to proj ect his purpose.

The attitude toward privateproperty is really the point at issue here. Is the individual to befree to save and invest his ownproperty for his own purposes,however complex and futuristicthe eventual fulfillment of suchpurposes may be? And, especially,will his fellow men respect anddefend these savings, this privateproperty of the individual? Inother words, will society's organized agency of force, its government, be dedicated to the protection of life and property; or willit function instead as an instrument for plunder?

Whether plunder is deemed tooharsh a word to describe the governmental processes of the welfare state will depend primarily

1969 OUR SAVING GRACE 77

upon one's understanding of therelationships between saving andinvestment and production andconsumption. Is it right, for instance, to expropriate from thebaker of bread the stove he hassaved and needs for that purpose,but wrong, on the other hand, totake the bread from the mouth ofa babe? Or is it just as wrong tointerfere with the production ofbread as to prohibit its consumption? The hungry babe may bequite unaware that the stove is anessential part of the bread hewants, that this and other toolsinvolved in the roundabout processes of production in an industrial age are forms of saving towhich the great majority of usowe our lives. Otherwise, many ofus never would have been bornand most of us never would havesurvived.

Lifelong Immaturity

Unfortunately, an understanding of the vital importance ofsavings and tools does not comeautomatically as one emergesfrom childhood. Many so-calledadults are content to warm theirbodies with the stoves they haveseized from bakers - or let thegovernment confiscate in their behalf. And if they want bread, theyexpect that the government alsowill provide it. They have notseen that government is neither

a producer nor a saver; at best,it may be a protector, but eventhen the government itself is aconsumer. In order for the government to give goods and services to anyone, it first must takethose goods and services fromsomeone. And in the process ofcompulsory redistribution, thereis a heavy loss or attrition of resources. The government is alwaysa consumer, withdrawing fromthe market scarce resources thatindividuals otherwise could consume or use in further productionaccording to their own choice andbest judgment.

Any grouping of two or moreindividuals will reveal differencesin ability and in habits of spending and saving - very often,marked differences. Under conditions of comparative freedom,some few of the population willattain great wealth in contrast tothe vast majority of their fellowmen, simply because those few areexceptionally talented in their understanding of human wants andhow to satisfy such wants.1 The

1 Some readers may object here thatthe free market rewards the designer oftail-fins or enriches the Beatles. Whetherthese fads stem from freedom or from in~

terventions of one kind or another mightbe debated; but it seems reasonably clearthat the market serves the most urgentwants of consumers, however peculiarsome of us might think the tastes ofothers.


scope of their understanding willinclude appreciation of the importance of tools in the productiveprocess. They will best know howto accumulate and combine resources under prevailing conditions for the optimum service ofhuman wants. They will know howto draw from each individual hisbest performance, with his hands,his mind, his savings.

A Power to Serve

Now, what makes these talentedfew so wealthy in a free societyis not a power to confiscate or taxthe resources or to force the compliance of others. On the contrary,they become wealthy through supplying most efficiently what otherswant. Consumers thus expresstheir appreciation and satisfactionfor work well done. And the mostremarkable thing of all is thatthe consumers themselves, who enrich the most efficient suppliers,are better off economically thanthey could hope to be under anyother arrangement. The profitearned by the most successfulcompetitors costs consumers lessthan nothing.

Every shopper knows that secret when he looks around for thebest bargain. But not every shopper knows this lesson well enoughto remember it in the privacy ofthe polling booth. No housewifewould think of proposing a tax on

a can of beans before she buys it.She wants the best bargain shecan find. But she may not realizethat voting for an "excess profitstax" against the most efficientsupplier of beans amounts to thesame thing as paying more ratherthan less for beans. The verysame consumers who volunteertheir patronage to create millionaires will turn right around andask the government to confiscatethe property businessmen needfor efficient production of goodsand services. Voters thoughtlesslyassume that redistributing property politically will have no harmful effect upon the processes ofproduction. They think that theycan thus give added spendingpower to poorer consumers,. overlooking that in the process theydrive from the market the verygoods and services the poorestotherwise might have been able toafford.

Every enlargement of the "public sector" that authorizes thegovernment to use scarce resources necessarily diminishes theprivate sector that allows man toproduce and save and consume ashe chooses. The military machinein Vietnam functions as a giantconsumer. The multifaceted domestic welfare program in theUnited States, along with the foreign aid program, divert resourcesto consumption. The Space pro~

1969 OUR SAVING GRACE 79

gram is a consumer of goods andservices. Whether governmentspending on education, airways,highways, seaways, subways, andnumerous other subsidized operations constitutes a net investmentfor productive purposes is highlydebatable, to say the least. In general, the small part of government spending that goes towardkeeping the peace, insuring j ustice, protecting life and property,and maintaining the essentialmarket climate for open competition and trade· may be deemedproductive; the great balance ofgovernment spending constitutesconsumption of scarce resources.

The Impact of Taxes

To view the matter in anotherlight, consider the nature and impact of the various taxes to covergovernment expenditures. Do theyhamper or do they encourage production?

There seems little doubt thatcorporation income and excessprofit taxes - progressive, in thesense that the burden falls mostheavily on the more efficient operators - must tend to hinder production. They take earnings thatwould most likely have been invested in further production bycompetitors who thus would havetended to bring costs and pricesdown.- The personal income tax, as

thought of generally, is also progressive and thus tends to fallmost heavily upon incomes thatotherwise would most likely havebeen saved and invested productively. The exemptions tend to encourage consumption. The SocialSecurity tax also is a personal income tax, though it is regressivein nature, falling hardest on thoseof least income and applying notat all in the higher income brackets. It tends to encourage manyworkers to quit productive employment and rely on tax-exemptrelief payments instead.

Property taxes often fall heavilyon business properties and thusraise costs of production. This hasspecial impact in areas where muchof the real estate is owned bychurches, schools, and other taxexempt organizations that generally fit the consumer definition,leaving a correspondingly greaterburden on tax-paying producers.

Licenses and tariffs and similarprivileges at the expense of potential competitors necessarilynarrow the market or keep downcompeting suppliers, thus raisingprices.

Finally, there is the tax-likephenomenon of inflation, the legalized printing of money to payFederal bills, letting the government draw goods and services outof the market without supplyinganything of value in exchange.


The process tends to hurt those onfixed incomes or pensions; it discourages traditional saving andencourages wasteful spending inattempts to hedge against furtherinflation. It may make for an appearance of busy-ness in commerce and industry, but often inlines of production that otherwisewould be neither sound nor useful- a malinvestment of productive resources in boomtime, thusaggravating the problem of ultimate correction.

So, there is a two-pronged attack upon productive private enterprise as a result of the expansion of the "public sector": (1)the excessive government spending is heavily concentrated onconsumer goods - on consumptionrather than production; and (2)the methods of taxing and financing government expenditures, incontrast to voluntary spending inthe market, tend to penalize anddiscourage thrift and productivity- to reward and encourage indolence and waste.

Trading for Mutual Gain

It is well to bear always in mindthat voluntary trade occurs onlyif and when each party sees a gainto himself from the transaction.That both parties gain from freetrade is the reason why either orboth will tend to specialize andbecome skilled and efficient in a

given line of production. This isthe great advantage the marketeconomy affords in contrast to socialism or other coercive arrangements. But that advantage can bewiped out by government intervention, taxation, and confiscationof private property. Taxes onearnings and on transactionseasily can become so burdensomethat men lose the incentive to specialize and trade; the do-it-yourself business is the only one thatthrives under such conditions, andcivilization reverts toward the lowlevels of self-subsistence.

The followers of Keynes arewrong when they assume that theproblem of production has beensolved, that the world is plaguedby an abundance of goods andservices of all kinds, and that consumer desire "is the final scarcitythat needs to be overcome."2 Whatthey will not see is that humanwants are now and forever insatiable and that the scarcity ofproductive resources is man'seternal problem. M,eanwhile, if weare to survive and hope for economic progress, we must continueto curb our appetites for currentconsumption and continue to accumulate the tools and capital thatare needed to expand production.This is indeed our saving grace. ~

2 See George Reisman, "Productionversus Consumption," THE FREEMAN,October, 1964.

CLARENCE B. CARSON

f1£uglnub

12. THE FABIAN PROGRAM

THE MOVEMENT toward socialismin England was guided, directed,and pressed by the Fabians. Ofcourse, others had a hand in it:Marxists, cooperative commonwealthers, Christian socialists,land nationalizers, syndicalists,utopians, Liberals, and laborunions, to name a partial list. Butthe Fabians ,vere central to theundertaking. From the mid-1880's,they pressed vigorously and alongmany lines for the socialization ofEngland. Most of the big names inEnglish socialism eventually eitherbecame Fabians or were closely associated with them. The Fabiansmoved most unerringly towardpolitical power, provided addi-

Dr. Carson, Professor of History at Grove CityCollege, Pennsylvania, will be remembered forhis earlier FREEMAN series, The FatefulTurn, The American TradItion, and TheFlight from Reality.

tional impetus to every rising current, gave the movement its auraof intellectual respectability, andtrained so many of the leaderswho would move into the politicalsphere. An examination of the Fabian program, too, will show thatthe means employed in the movement toward socialism in Englandwere generally those advocated bythe Fabians. What follows is· anoutline of the Fabian program asit was set forth from the 1880'sinto the early twentieth century,mainly in the Fabian Tracts.

The goal of the Fabians wassocialism. They never made anysecret of this, and, indeed, onmany occasions affirmed it. Forexample, Tract #7 proclaims that"The Fabian Society consists ofSocialists." It goes on to explainwhat that means:

81


It therefore aims at the re-organization of Society by the emancipation of Land and Industrial Capitalfrom individual and class ownership,and the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit.- ...

The Society accordingly works forthe extinction of private property inLand and of the consequent individualappropriation, in the form of Rent,of the price paid for permission touse the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils and sites.

The Society, further, works for thetransfer to the community of the administration of such industrial Capital as can conveniently be managedsocially....

State Socialism Exclusively

The Fabians proposed to achievethese ends by the use of governmental power. The matter isbluntly stated in Tract #70: "TheSocialism advocated by the FabianSociety is State Socialism exclusively." More comprehensively,"Socialism, as understood by theFabian Society, means the organization and conduct of the necessary industries of the country andthe appropriation of all forms ofeconomic rent of land and capitalby the nation as a whole, throughthe most suitable public authorities, parochial, municipal, provincial, or central."

However, Fabians claimed to favor constitutional means of taking over the government in Eng-

land and to be advocates of democracy. Sidney Webb claimed inTract #70 that the "Fabian Society is perfectly constitutional inits attitude; and its methods arethose usual in political life inEngland." Moreover:

The Fabian Society accepts theconditions imposed on it by humannature and by the national characterand political circumstances of theEnglish people....

Elsewhere, he affirmed that "allstudents of society who are abreastof their time, Socialists as well asIndividualists, realize that important organic changes can only be... democratic, and thus acceptable to a majority of the people,and prepared for in the minds ofall...."1 It should be clear, however, that considerable constitutional changes in the structure ofEnglish governmental powerwould have to be made before socialist programs could be made into law and that democracy in theirhands would take on new connotations.

Emphasis on Equality

If George Bernard Shaw can beaccepted as a spokesman for theFabians, they believed in equality.

1 J. Salwyn Schapiro, ed., Movementsof Social Dissent in Modern Europe(Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1962), p.161.

1969 THE FABIAN PROGRAM 83

In a speech before the NationalLiberal Club in 1913, he had thisto say:

When I speak of The Case of Equality I mean human equality; and that,of .course, can only mean one thing:it means equality of income. It meansthat if one person is to have half acrown, the other is to have two andsixpence. It means that precisely....The fact is that you cannot equalizeanything about human beings excepttheir incomes....2

The chances are good, however,that Shaw was going beyond whatthe Fabian Society would havewanted to declare. Perhaps, somesuch equality was an ultimategoal, but, in practice, the Fabiansonly pressed toward it, as wastheir way, in gradual increments.

The favorite tactic of the Fabians for pressing England toward socialism was one they called"permeation." "In its most general sense, it meant that Fabiansshould join all organizations whereuseful Socialist work could bedone, and influence them.... Taking a broad interpretation of themeaning of Socialism and havingan optimistic belief in their powers of persuasion, the Fabiansthought that most organizationswould be willing to accept at least

2 James Fuchs, ed., The Socialis'rft ofShaw (New York: Vanguard Press,1926), p. 49.

a grain or two of Socialism. Itwas mainly a matter of addressingthem reasonably, with a strongemphasis on facts, diplomatically,with an eye to the amount of Socialism they were prepared to receive, and in a conciliatory spirit."3 In the following, Shaw tellshow they actually achieved "permeation" in 1888:

We urged our members to join theLiberal and Radical Associations oftheir districts, or, if they preferredit, the Conservative Associations. Wetold them to become members of thenearest Radical Club and Co-operative Store, and to get delegated to theMetropolitan Radical Federation andthe Liberal and Radical Union if possible. On these bodies we madespeeches and moved resolutions, or,better still, got the Parliamentarycandidate for the constituency tomove them, and secured reports andencouraging little articles for him inthe Star. We permeated the partyorganizations and pulled all the wireswe could lay our hands on with ourutnl0st adroitness and energy; andwe succeeded so far that in 1888 wegained the solid advantage of a Progressive majority, full of ideas thatwould never have come into theirheads had not the Fabian put themthere, on the first London CountyCouncil. (Tract #41.)

I t is not ~necessary, of course,

3 A. M. McBriar, Fabian Socialism andEnglish Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1962), pp. 95-96.


to accept at face value all theclaims· of success of the Fabians,for they were never modest intheir claims, in order to see thatthis is how they intended to operate by "permeation."

In Tract #7, the Fabians described the activities which theywere to pursue in the followingway:

1. Meetings for the discussion ofquestions connected with socialisnl.

2. The further investigation of economic problems, and the collection of facts contributing to theirelucidation.

3. The issue of publications containing information on socialquestions, and arguments relating to socialism.

4. The promotion of socialist lectures and debates in other societies and clubs.

5. The representation of the society in public conferences anddiscussions on social questions.

W ide Range of Activities

Actually, the Fabians engagedin a wide range of activities:holding their own meetings, issuing tracts, doing research, joining organizations, engaging in socio-political gatherings, usingtheir individual talents in subtleways to promote socialism, writing letters to editors, makingspeeches, and so on.

They cast their nets as wide as

possible to draw in as many aspossible of the wide range of people with beliefs amenable to somedegree of socialist activity. Whilethey usually rejected any particular panacea, as, for example, syndicalism and revolution, this didnot mean that they rejected thepeople of these persuasions. TheFabians did not neglect to appealto Christian socialists. Several ofthe Tracts are devoted to this subject. They attempt to show thatthere is a close affinity between socialism and Christianity and, indeed, that the attainment of socialism is a necessary frameworkfor realizing the ideals of Christianity. The Reverend John Clifford conveys this character of theappeal in the following excerptsfrom Tract #78:

Another sign of the closer kinshipof Collectivism to the mind of Christis in the elevation and nobility itgives to the struggle for life. Collectivism does not extinguish combat,but it lifts the struggle into theworthiest spheres, reduces it to aminimum in the lower and animaldepartments, and so leaves man freefor the finer toils of intellect andheart; free "to seek first the Kingdomof God...."

Again, Collectivism affords a betterenvironment for the teachings ofJesus concerning wealth and theideals of labor and brotherhood. Ifman is ... only "the expression of hisenvironment," if, indeed, he is that


in any degree, then it is an unspeakable gain to bring that environmentinto line with the teaching of JesusChrist.

Nor were the Fabians above appealing to communists. In Tract#113, they published a lecturethat had been delivered by William Morris in which he held that"between complete Socialism andCommunism there is no differencewhatever in my mind. Communismis in fact the completion of Socialism: when that ceases to bemilitant and becomes triumphant,it will be Communism."

All Things to All People

The Fabians, then, tended to beall things to all men that theymight win people to socialism.Nowhere is this clearer than inthe particular programs they advocated. Here they appeared to becompletely eclectic. They had fewbiases against any type of program so long as it was in thegeneral direction of socialism.Such eclecticism has come to beknown as pragmatism in reformistcircles, but this is only another instance of how socialists take wordsout of context and give them theirown content. For the English Fabians have been no more pragmatic in testing the value of theirprograms against their ultimateresults than have American reformers. They have only been

pragmatic in the sense that theytested an approach by how successful it was in actually gettinga program put into effect.

In any case, the Fabians advocated, from the first, a wide rangeof programs. They embraced government intervention and ameliorative reform, though these were,from their point of view, half-waymeasures at best. For example, anumber of the Tracts are concerned with changes in and administration of the Poor Laws. Thefollowing argument, in Tract #54,is clearly melioristic:

The expense of relieving the poor,who are not wilfully improvident, ispart of the ransom that Property hasto pay to Labor; and it is a ransomwhich is not begged as a charity butdemanded as an instalment of justice.With the growth of enlightenmentand the spread of humane ideasamongst all classes, and consequentlygreater intelligence amongst the massof voters in the use of their political power, we shall have better lawsbetter administered. The worn-out,deserving worker will be maintainedin self-respect in his old age; thetemporarily disabled will be helpedwithout pauperization....

Of a similar ameliorative character was the proposal for a national minimum wage law advanced in Tract #127. (Incidentally, the title of this Tract is "Socialism and Labor Policy," and it


was published in 1906.) The proposal reads, in part:

Of far greater urgency and importance is the need for a minimum wageby law.... Every worker in a civilizedstate must receive a wage highenough to give him the food, clothingand house-room necessary to physicalhealth and efficiency....

The first step towards this endshould be the determination of a realminimum of food, clothing and housing by an authority appointed by thegovernment.... Then the governmentshould be pressed to put its own housein order by the institution of a minimum in the public service throughoutthe kingdom. A Minimum WagesBill should follow, bringing allsweated trades within the scope ofthe law, and punishing all employerswho, after a certain date, pay lessthan the legal minimum....

Government Ownership and Control

The Fabians worked at manylevels and addressed themselves tomany different audiences. Eventhe different Tracts were apparently aimed at people of widelyvarying degrees of receptivity tosocialism. One might be addressedto something as unrevolutionaryas the Poor Laws. On the otherhand, the next might deal withthe intricacies of socialist theory,while a third might be burdeneddown with statistics about conditions in laundries in England. Theimmediate thrust of the Fabians

was to get the government involvedin as many economic activities aspossible. The long range aim, ofcourse, was to achieve governmentownership and control over themajor means of production anddistribution of goods and services.This goal could be painlesslyachieved, or so they claimed.Tract #13 put the matter thisway:

The establishment of Socialism,when once the people are resolvedupon it, is not so difficult as might besupposed. If a man wishes to work onhis own account, the rent of his placeof business, and the interest on thecapital needed to start him, can bepaid to the County Council of his district just as easily as to the privatelandlord and capitalist. Factoriesare already largely regulated by public inspectors, and can be conductedby the local authorities just as gasworks, water-works and tramwaysare now conducted by them in varioustowns. Railways and mines, insteadof being left to private companies,can be carried on by a departmentunder the central government, as thepostal and telegraph services are carried on now. The Income Tax collectorwho to-day cans for a tax of R fewpence in the pound on the income ofthe idle millionaire, can collect a taxof twenty shillings in the pound onevery unearned income in the countryif the State so orders....

This was the large plan, buteach step had to be taken in its


own time, and particular arguments were advanced for eachone. A favorite mode of argumentwas to use analogy with someservice government already performed to claim that anothershould be brought under the armof government. For example,here is the argument for municipal milk supply in Tract #90:

If we want good milk, let us establish our own dairy farms in the country and our milk stores in the city.Many of our large towns have spentenormous sums of money to providetheir citizens with water: why shouldthey not also provide them with milk?The arguments in favor of municipalwater apply with greatest force tomunicipal milk. ...

Municipalization

In the early years, the Fabiansdirected much of their attentionto getting local governments totake over enterprises. The Tractscalled for "municipalization"much more frequently than fornationalization. Tract #91 calledfor municipal pawnshops. Tract#92 advocated municipal· slaughterhouses. Tract #94 advanced thenotion of having municipal bakeries. There appears to have been noparticular order of priorities, formunicipal hospita'ls did not gainthe limelight until Tract #95. Municipal steamboats got full attention in Tract #97. The argumentfor municipal slaughterhouses was

similar to the others in many respects, so it may be presented inbrief:

Many of our private slaughterhouses are in so insanitary a condition that the meat is exposed to foulemanations from drains, decomposing blood, offal, etc. They may easilybecome a source of grave danger tothe surrounding districts. In municipal slaughterhouses, on the otherhand, the buildings are especially designed for their purpose; they arekept in good sanitary condition, andthe meat is therefore not subject todeterioration. . . .

The Fabian Society had earlier,in Tract # 86, called for the municipalization of liquor traffic.

Provisions existed from 1890onwards for municipalities tobuild houses for private occupancy, and the Fabians wished toaccelerate this kind of activity.In Tract #76 they noted that the"provision of housing accommodation for the industrial classes hashitherto been left almost entirelyin the hands of private enterprise,with the inevitable result thathigh rents are exacted for theprivilege of occupying squaliddwellings whose very existence isa grave social danger." They givethis advice: "In order to get theActs utilized by the local sanitaryauthority, it is advisable to carefully collect facts relating to insanitary areas and dwellings, and


thus to prove the necessity formunicipal action. In large townsthe work of demonstrating suchneed is only too easy."

A Middle Way

Of course, the Fabians did notoverlook a prominent role for thenational government and for nationalizing. Local governments inEngland are, in their inception,creatures of Parliament, and theiractivities have been at one timeor another authorized by thatbody. Thus, whatever body undertook socialization directly, its activities would be authorized andcould be directed by Parliament.In Tract #108 the Fabians advocated "National Efficiency," and a"National Minimum" for workingconditions, for housing, for standards of living, and for education.

To achieve this, they proposedthe use of grants-in-aid, a devicewith which Americans have sincebecome familiar. Their argumentfor the grant-in-aid is sufficientlyrevealing of the way they advanced an idea to be worth examining briefly. They descrihed itas a middle way between centralization and local autonomy. "Themiddle way has, for half a century, been found through thatmost advantageous of expedients,the grant in aid. We see this in itsbest form in the police grant." According to the Tract, local police

were frequently ineffective, andpoorer districts were not financially able to maintain efficientpolice. "A grant in aid of the costof the local police force was offered to the justices and ,towncouncilors - at first one quarter,and now one half, of their actualexpenditure on this service, however large this may be."

Nationalization

But for activities which werenationwide, the Fabians proposednationalization. It is clear, too,that even where the activity wasnot truly nationwide, they werethinking of national planning forand control of it. For example,Tract #125 deals with the question of electricity and streettransportation. The author (s)argues that the provision of theseservices efficiently extends beyondthe bounds of any municipality.He proposes, then, that the country be divided into several provinces, in each of which therewill be a provincial board empowered by Parliament to plan forthese services. Nationalization,however, appears to be the ultimate aim. For they say:

The establishment of a system ofprovincial boards as here indicateddoes not exhaust the possibilities ofcoordination of area in connectionwith local government and the collective control of industry. In course


of time it will be found possible tocarry· the development· a stage further, and from the Provincial Boardsto elect National. Boards, which wouldstand in the same relation to theProvinces as the Co-operative Wholesale Society does to the various societies which are its component parts.For instance, a N ationalBoardelected from the provincial Transitand Electricity Boards might be empowered to carryon the work of building rolling stock by direct employment in its own workshops for thewhole of the publicly owned transitservices of the country.. It might alsostart factories for the manufactureof traIuway rails and motor cars. Itcould undertake the work of constructing plants of all kinds for publicly owned electric light and powerinstallations. Various local authorities build their own vans, carts, andwagons, and there is no reason whytramcars could not be built in a public workshop with equal ease....

The above has been quoted atlength because it indicates howFabians would move from localactivity to regional control to nationalization to socialism.

Some nationalization was to bemore directly undertaken, as theyenvisioned it. Tract #119 calledfor the direct nationalization ofthe railways and merchant marine. This would involve somekind of confiscation, as they foresaw. Of course, the owners shouldbe compensated, but the Fabians

proposed that the compensationshould only constitute a paymentof profits to shareholders, not thereturn of their capital investment.In short, the capital would simplybe expropriated. As for agriculture, Tract #123 says.: "Our ultimate aim is to bring the whole ofthe land into national ownership....." Land would be acquiredin much the same way as railroadsand shipping. "The Committeewould have power to acquire landcompulsorily. If a fair rent hadalready been fixed, then the purchase would proceed on the linesof securing to the vendor his netincome, that is, the rent.... Ifsuch a rent has not been fixed,then its ascertainment wouldform a preliminary to purchase."

Each Step Forwarda Prelude to the Next

Thus would England proceedstep by step toward complete socialism. This involved no necessaryorder to action. Each step woulddraw the country inexorablytoward the next, or toward others.Government ownership at anylevel of anything would preparethe English mentally for ownership at another level of somethingelse. Government planning of oneactivity would make necessary theplanning of associated activities.Since an economy is ultimately inextricably intertwined, it must all


be eventually socialized to attainnational integrity. The productivity and flexibility of private enterprise could be continued without what were for them the infelicities of private ownership,and all could be achieved withoutanyone being greatly hurt.

This was the Fabian blueprintfor England. The Fabians wereremarkably provincial. The rest ofthe world concerned them hardlyat all in the early years. ThatEngland was the world's financierduring the years in which they

were constructing their pipe dreamhardly concerned them. But theywere probably as innocent ofknowledge about international finance as they were of how to milkcows. Yet the English people weregreatly attracted to these notions,and they were drawn into the political efforts by which the blueprints were supposed to result in anew edifice. That these were blueprints for the Fall of England,they were not told. To see thatthey were, we must now turn tothe actual course of development.

~

The next article of this series will trace the implementation of

"Reform Ideas into Political Action."

The Power of the Press

JOURNALISTS, always chary of saying that which is distasteful to

their readers, are some of them going with the stream and adding

to its force. Legislative meddlings which they would once have

condemned they now pass in silence, if they do not advocate them;

and they speak of laissez-faire as an exploded doctrine. "People

are no longer frightened at the thought of socialism," is the

statement which meets us one day.... And then, along with

editorial assertions that this economic evolution is coming and

must be accepted, there is prominence given to the contributions

of its advocates. Meanwhile those who regard the recent course

of legislation as disastrous, and see that its future course is likely

to be still more disastrous, are being reduced to silence by the

belief that it is useless to reason with people in a state of political

intoxication.HERBERT SPENCER, The Man Versus the State (1884)

THE~U~~ ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

WILLfAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN

THE MIDDLE CLASS, the large groupof many occupations - professional men, engineers, skilled mechanics, farmers, small businessmen, salaried employees, farmers,to list only a few - that standsbetween the extremes of wealthand poverty has always been thestandardbearer and the surest andmost solid support of a societybased on political liberty and economic freedom. It began to emergewith increased power and influence with the decay of the medieval feudal system and waxedstrong in the struggle to curb thearbitrary power of monarchy andestablish free representative institutions.

The middle class was active inthe leadership of the three principal revolutions of the Western

Mr. Chamberlin is a skilled observer and reporter of economic and political conditions athome and abroad. In addition to writing anumber of books, he has lectured widely andis a contributor to The Wall Street Journaland numerous magazines.

world, the British in the seventeen'th century, the American andthe French in the eighteenth. TheFrench was perverted and distorted to some extent by thegreater misery of the masses, especially of the Parisian mob,which lent itself to the manipulation of extremist demagogues, intoxicated with doctrinaire ideasof establishing not equality of opportunity, the American ideal, butcomplete material equality, to beenforced by dictators operatingin the name of virtue and usingthe guillotine whenever moral suasion failed. Out of all the turmoiland excesses of the French Revolution, its Napoleonic aftermathand the various royal, imperial,and republican regimes that followed during the nineteenth century, middle-class social and economic values acquired a firm footing. France supplied some of themost eloquent and erudite expon-

91


ents of the free economy, suchmen as Frederic Bastiat and JeanSay.

It is the nature of absolutepower, whether it be that of aking surrounded with inheritedpomp, ceremony, and pageantry orthat of a revolutionary dictator,to recognize no limits on what itmay do with regard to those under its rule. So it is significantthat John Locke, the outstandingphilosopher of the British constitutional revolution whose ideasvery much influenced the leadersof the American Revolution, insisted upon the natural right ofman to "life, liberty, and property."

There was never any doubt inLocke's mind, or to those of theeducated middle class for whomhe spoke, that property, far frombeing opposed to liberty, is one ofthe essential rights of free men.Locke, a true liberal in the original sense of a word now often perverted and misapplied, went so faras to describe the preservation oftheir property as "the great andchief end of men's uniting intocommonwealths."

The rising and expanding middle class was open to any able andindustrious citizen, whatever hisorigin and background. What theymore or less consciously wantedand needed was a state authoritystrong enough to protect honestly

acquired possessions against spoliation but not so strong as to engage in spoliation itself.

No TaxationWithout Representation

It is not surprising that someof the movements that led to theestablishment of the supremacy ofParliament in Great Britain andto the separation of the UnitedStates from Great Britain weretriggered by one specific propertyright: the right of the individualnot to be taxed without his consent. In his effort to govern without the inconvenience of havinga Parliament in session, KingCharles I resorted to an old taxknown as ship money. In the pastit had been levied only in time ofwar and in certain maritime partsof the country. Charles imposedthe levy in peace, and withoutgeographical limitations.

One of the leaders of the opposition in Parliament, JohnHampden, refused to pay the tax,contending that it was illegal.Seven out of twelve judges whoheard the case, under strong pressure from the Crown, ruledagainst Hampden. But his standaroused nationwide attention andsympathy and, as soon as Parliament was again called, "shipmoney" was ruled illegal. Hampden, a country landowner, was aswilling to fight for liberty as to

1969 THE SQUEEZE ON THE MIDDLE CLASS 93

speak for it. When the differencesbetween King and Parliamentreached the point of civil war,Hampden raised a regiment amonghis tenants and lost his life in oneof the many skirmishes and smallbattles that followed.

In the United States, also, "taxation without representation" wasa fighting issue. Like many othersmall causes of big events, theBritish levies on stamps and teawere petty in immediate impact;but the underlying claim that aParliament in London three thousand miles away might lay impostson colonists who were not (and,under the travel and other circumstances of the time probably couldnot be) represented there excitedjustified suspicion and resistance.The colonists knew very well thattaxation accepted without protestwould probably mean double ortreble taxation in the future.

Irresponsible bureaucracyranked high with arbitrary taxation among the causes which ledthe American colonists, when protests and remonstrances hadfailed, to take up arms. This isevident from the following clausein the indictment of King GeorgeIII in the Declaration of Independence:

He has erected a multitude of NewOffices, and sent hither swarms ofOfficers to harass our People, andeat out their substance.

How surprised and shockedwould have been the men whofought against a foreign tyrannyat Lexington and Bunker Hill andSaratoga and Yorktown if theycould have foreseen today's bureaucratic monster, in the shapeof Federal, state, and local governments, costing almost $9,000 asecond to operate, and doubling itsexactions from the labor of itscitizens every ten years.

Design for Limited Government

N a such monster was envisagedin the Constitution which the deliberations of a representativegroup of leading citizens of thevarious states yielded as the constructive fruit of the achievementsof the American revolutionaries inarms and diplomacy. It is an uncommonly useful and instructiveexercise periodically to read overthis charter of American laws andliberties. And one of its moststriking features is the sparsenessof promises as to what the newgovernment will do for the people(indeed, there are practically nosuch promises), compared withthe many explicit guaranties as towhat the government may not doto the people as a whole or as individuals. These immunities included, until the adoption of theSixteenth Amendment in 1913, assurance against the imposition ofthe graduated income tax.


The kind of government outlined by the American Constitution is in line with the politicalphilosophy of John Locke andAdam Smith that "every man isby nature first and principally committed to his own care." What theConstitution promised is not tomake each citizen healthy, wealthy,and wise - something beyond thepower of government - but to remove state obstacles to his achieving these objectives by his own efforts.

This was the logical outcome ofthe struggle against absolute monarchy and feudalism, a struggle inwhich the middle class played aleading role. It was under this phi10sophy that the middle class prospered and expanded, because it wasno closed hereditary caste but agroup in the community which anyone might join with the requisiteconditions of industry and ability.

Social Security?

But today, at first gradually andimperceptibly, then more boldlyand blatantly, a completely different philosophy of statism has tended to supplant individualism, bothin the United States and in GreatBritain and in varying degrees inother Western countries. (Oneneed hardly refer to the Europeanand Asian countries where the individual has lost all liberties -economic, personal, and political, to

the grasping thrust of an all-powerful state).

Under this philosophy the government promises its citizens various forms of alleged security, inreturn for which it exacts a firstlien on what they earn by their labor, a lien that is indefinite andever-expanding. The benefits maylook good on paper; but their realvalue is steadily sapped by inflation, the erosion in the purchasingpower of the currency that is theinvariable accompaniment of vastgovernment spending. Increasingamounts are taken from everyone's salary to pay for what is euphemistically called Social Security, while the dollars which may besome day paid out steadily diminish in value.

Following British Lead

This process has gone further inGreat Britain than in the UnitedStates, so that a visit to Britaingives a preview of what may be theplight of the United States ten ortwenty years hence. There was atime, before World War I and to alesser extent in the interwar years,when the British pound was considered a desirable currency, notonly to earn and spend, but to save.No longer. Malcolm Muggeridge,leading British television commentator, wrote recently:

Our currency is gently expiringwhich lets us off any form of saving.


It would be as sensible to save nextwinter's snow as the Pound Sterling.

We have come to think of our currency as an ailing elderly uncle; yesterday he had a good day, this morning he. was feeling a little better, andable to sit up and take a little nourishment, only in the afternoon to suffera slight relapse. One day, of course,he will pass away - dear old PoundSterling. It had to happen, hut evenso he'll be missed.

Mr. Muggeridge has a habit ofsatirical exaggeration; but thereis plenty of evidence to support hisdim view of his national currency.What were once called gilt-edgedsecurities are selling at fantasticdiscounts on the London Stock Exchange. New Zealand recently floated a loan in London at 63;4 per cent,but with an interesting proviso:the value of the loan was to be reckoned in German marks, with correspondingly higher interest andprincipal payments in the event ofa devaluation or writing down ofthe value of the pound in terms ofother currencies. Such a devaluation did occur after the loan wasfloated.

The "English Disease"

The lack of adequate incentivesto capital and to labor - due to inflation and the steady depreciationin the real value of the pound - isa basic reason for what is called onthe European continent the Eng-

lish disease: the inability of Britain, year after year, to balance itsinternational payments, paying outmore than it takes in.

In America also the middleclass finds itself more and moreground between the two millstonesof inflation and ever higher taxation at all levels, Federal, state,and local. It is, of course, a basicpart of the welfare state theorythat government bureaucrats canspend an individual's money betterthan he would spend, or save, thatmoney himself if it were not siphoned off in taxes. Some aspectsof the 1968 election in the UnitedStates can only be interpreted asthe desperation of -certain taxpaying, self-respecting, substantialcitizens confronted with continually higher tax bills while theirwives complain of ever-higherprices at the supermarket.

The Tax Foundation recently reduced to specifics the impact of inflation and higher prices on animaginary character named Charlie Green. Charlie is in relativelyfavorable circumstances; he earns$12,000 a year, up from $7,500 tenyears ago. But not all is gold thatglitters in, Charlie's pockets, eventhough his income is about $3,000more than that of the averageAmerican family of four. Charliehas a 17-year-old son and a 15year-old son and financing themthrough college, where board and


tuition charges have been rising asfast as taxes, is not the least ofhis worries.

Between 1958 and 1968, Charlie's Federal tax is up from $1,266to $2,169: his state tax from $169to $610; his local property taxfrom $590 to $1,301. All have beenrising faster, the state and localtax considerably faster, than hisincome. And rising prices havewiped out $489 of his after-taxpay boosts.

What makes the outlook evengloomier for the economic survival of the millions of CharlieGreens who comprise the middleclass is the cumulative effect ofmany existing taxes. The full impact of the expense of much ofthe social welfare legislation enacted by the spendthrift eightyninth Congress has not yet beenfelt. This is also true .·of the costof Social Security, which went upagain, and appreciably, at the beginning of 1969. As invariablyhappens with such hand-outs, theprice tag of Medicare, Medicaid,and similar social patent medicines is much higher than theoriginal estimate.

And there is no lack of ingenious schemes for taking whatothers have earned, for reapingwhat has not been sown, for stillfurther pillaging the thrifty forthe supposed benefit of the thriftless. When, in a time of normal

industrial activity, there are onemillion people on the welfare rollsof New York, when those whoprovide the most essential services, teachers, policemen, firemen,sanitation employees, hold up analmost empty municipal treasuryfor raises out of all proportion tothe rising cost of living, it isclear that something is radicallywrong.

A Backbreaking Burden

If present trends continue andaccelerate, it is not difficult toforesee a time when incentive tocreative work by hand or brainwill disappear, because its fruitswill be eagerly plucked by half adozen sets of tax collectors. Oneroot cause of the trouble is thechange from the time when theAmerican taxpayer was supposedto have done his civic duty whenhe supported himself and his family and the religious, philanthropic, and educational causes of hischoice. Now, he is expected tocarryon his shoulders the weightof supporting millions of workless indigent in this country, assuring the triumph of democracyin countries that hardly know themeaning of the word, relievingthe age-old poverty of Asia andAfrica and Latin America, andpaying the cost of such sociological experiments as busing childrenfor miles from their homes and


rebuilding slums which he nevermade.

The burden is backbreaking andit will not be surprising if someAmericans, despairing of relieffrom an intolerable situation, aretempted to· experiment with quackremedies that may be foolish andharmful. What is most needed iseducation in economic realities,education that will lead to remedial action.

When more people see the stateas a robber baron that takes fromthem, not as a Santa Claus thatgives to them, the prospects willhave improved for the dismantlingof the bureaucratic monster. (Howcompletely out of hand this monster has grown is evident fromthe fact that the national budget,which only passed the billion dol-

lar mark early in this century,now stands at $186 billion). Oneessential condition for reform isfor the voter to use the power ofthe ballot more intelligently anddiscriminatingly than he does atpresent. Every legislator, everyexecutive, at state and nationallevels, who makes new taxes necessary should be marked for defeatthe next time he runs for office.

When the majority of the peoplerecognize that the free-spendingleviathan state is the main sourceof their financial and economicgrievances and insist on drasticretrenchment at any cost, theprospect of the survival of theindependent middle class will bemuch brighter than it is at present. ~

Contract or Status

Using the word co-operation in its wide sense, and not in that

restricted sense now commonly given to it, we may say that social

life must be carried on by either voluntary co-operation or com

pulsory co-operation; or, to use Sir Henry Maine's words, the

system must be that of contract or that of status; that in which

the individual is left to do the best he can by his spontaneous

efforts and get success or failure according to his efficiency, and

that in which he has his appointed place, works under coercive

rule, and has his apportioned share of food, clothing, and shelter.

HERBERT SPENCER. The Man Versus the State (1884)

98

Consider Your Stand

GOTTFRIED DIETZE

Last fall, Students for a Democratic Societyurged teachers to refuse to teach on

November 5 (Election Day) in order to"protest an election without choice."

The following memorandum of November 3,1968, was addressed to "Teaching Assistants

Concerned" by Dr. Gottfried Dietze,Acting Chairman, Department of Political

Science, The Johns Hopkins University,Baltimore, Maryland.

MEMORANDUM

SUBJECT: Your refusal to teach on November 5 in order to "protest an

election without choice."

Let me urge you to do your regular teaching on November 5, unlesssuch teaching is canceled by the university. You should not interferewith the process of learning, but should fulfill obligations you assumedwhen you accepted admission as a student, fellowship' aid, and a teaching assignment for the current academic year.

The relationship between student and university is a contractual one.Implicit to that contract is the promotion of learning. This precludesinterference with learning as it is offered by the school in conformitywith its program which is available, to everyone who applies for admission. A student who interferes with the process of learning commits abreach of contract. This applies a fortiori to students, who by actionof the university, receive financial aid and are given a teaching assignment in the expectation that they will excel in the promotion oflearning.

The university extended a special trust to you. It was under noobligation to admit you for the current year, to assure you financialaid, or to provide you with a teaching opportunity. The fact that youdid enroll indicates that you preferred its program over that of otherschools and that you considered this university's offer more attractiveand more generous than offers from other schools. Please reciprocate.Although you are free to resign, as long as you enjoy the privilege ofbeing enrolled, the university has every right to expect that you fulfillyour obligations.

This by no means excludes legitimate protest. Universities areplaces of protest by definition. Research and teaching - learning - areunthinkable without the possibility of protest. Protest is the lifebloodof academic freedom, a prerequisite for progress. However, universities can be havens for protest only if the process of learning is notcurtailed. For learning promotes rational protest which is to be preferred to irrational demonstrations. Although the scope of university

99


programs will always be limited (which is obvious in catalogues), itis conceivable that university officials will arbitrarily impede theprocess of learning. In that case, protests through the proper university channels are in order. But never must such protests interfere withlearning.

You refuse to teach because "the democratic process has failed."It so happens that the Johns Hopkins Press just published my newbook, A merica's Political Dilemma,* a study turning around the decline of rational democracy as a result of the pseudo-liberalism thathas determined governmental policy since the New Deal. However,this regrettable. fact could never induce me not to teach. I believe withJefferson that through education we can improve the democraticprocess and achieve a rational, working democracy which protectslife, liberty, and property.

Your complaint that the coming election is one without choice is inno way connected with the policies of this university. You do not blamethe university for the failure of the parties to nominate candidatesthat are more to your liking. Yet, you intend to let the universitysuffer for something it has not done. You intend to deprive undergraduates who pay tuition of the instruction they are entitled to,although they were not involved in the nomination of candidates forthe presidency. You do not protest to the university authorities becauseyou have no cause for protest. Yet, in refusing to teach, you interferewith learning - an action you would not be entitled to even if the university had given you such cause.

If A hits you, you may want to strike hack, although it often maybe wise to complain before striking the second blow. But would youhit the innocent B in retaliation for A's act?

Won't you reconsider your present stand?

*EDITOR'S NOTE: Reviewed in THE FREEMAN, June, 1968, by Edmund A. Opitz.Admiral Ben Moreell, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Americans forConstitutional Action, commented on this book: "Vitally important ... easilyreadable, yet scholarly and well-documented a closely argued, systematicand provocative study of the American scene It is a timely book which cando tremendous good. I strongly recommend that everyone interested in constitutional government and the preservation of freedom read it."

EDUCATIONIN

AMERICAGEORGE CHARLES ROCHE III

5. Discipline or Disaster7

MODERN MAN'S collapse of valuesand intel1ectual decline must beattributed at least in part to hisundisciplined nature. In no otherage have men seemed so unwillingto exercise or accept any restraintupon individual appetite. We nolonger seem to know how to discipline our young, perhaps becausewe no longer know how to discipline ourselves. If we could uncover the philosophic underpinnings of this nondiscipline, muchof what is happening today in oureducational structure would per-

Dr. Roche is Director of Seminars for theFoundation for Economic Education. He hastaught history and philosophy in college andmaintains a special interest in American education.

haps become more understandable- and less acceptable.

Schools, of course, are not solelyto blame for the collapse of valuesand discipline in our society. Yet,at a time when individuals cry outfor spiritual meaning and direction in their lives, all too many ofour schools seem to play down therole of discipline, pinning theirhopes upon more elaborate physical facilities, more of the "selfexpression" and "recreation" thatalready reflect the undisciplinedvalues of our age.

If we fail to sow the seeds ofvalues and of discipline among ouryoung, we should not be surprisedat the harvest. As Albert Jay Nock

101


phrased it in The Theory of Education in the United States:

Nature takes her own time, sometimes a long time, about exactingher penalty - but exact it in the endshe always does, and to the lastpenny. It would appear, then, that asociety which takes no account of theeducable person, makes no place forhim, does nothing with him, is takinga considerable risk; so considerablethat in the whole course of humanexperience, as far as our records go,no society ever yet has taken it without coming to great disaster.

To educate the young in propervalues and proper self-disciplineis not unduly complicated. Children have no stronger urge thanto be "grown up," and are quickto imitate the adult behavior theysee around them. The inculcationof proper values and proper selfdiscipline requires that we act aswe wish our children to act. If wewould discipline our children, webegin by disciplining ourselves.

But, here is the problem: Howcan we expect the exercise of selfdiscipline by parents who arethemselves products of a permissive educational system? Thesound idea that a child's interestsshould be taken into account inplanning an educational programhas been twisted to mean that achild should be given whatever hewants. Parents first abandon tothe schools the responsibility for

teaching values and discipline; theschools in turn reply that discipline and value-education can bestbe left to the children themselves.Small wonder that children rebelwhen thus abandoned by theirelders.

Much of the revolt againstauthority came, in the wake ofWorld War 1. The 1920's saw thecrystallization of an attitudewhich totally rejected any standard outside the self. Freudian psychologists insisted that restraintof any natural desi:re is bad. The"new era" theorists taught us thatart was the unplanned result ofa head-on collision between theartist's personality and the medium of his work. The professional educationists made the cyclecomplete in telling us that ouryoung should do only what theywish to do. Such evidences of antidiscipline, in psychology, in art,and above all, in education, arenow so commonplace that we takethem for granted. All of this hasgone hand in hand with the subjugation of intellect to emotion,impulse, and instinct.

Freedom Becomes License

A certain balance of freedomand order is essential, not only ineducation but in all human endeavor. The importance of freedom in the educational process hasalready been discussed at length.

1969 DISCIPLINE OR DISASTER? 103

But the peculiar conception of"freedom from" rather than "freedom for" carries with it a rejection of all the values and innerdisciplines which are necessary togive freedom any real meaning.Today "freedom" has a qualitytending suspiciously toward whatan earlier generation would havecalled "license." "Do what youwant when you want to do it,"modern society tells its young, andthen is surprised when the youngdo just that!

One of the- ultimate contraststhat presents itself in a subject ofthis kind is that between habit asconceived by Aristotle and natureas conceived by Rousseau.

"The first great grievance of thecritical humanist against Rousseau isthat he set out to be the individualistand at the same time attacked analysis, which is indispensable if one is tobe a sound individualist. The secondgreat grievance of the humanist isthat Rousseau sought to discredithabit which is necessary if right analysis is to be made effective. "The onlyhabit the child should be allowed toform," says Rousseau, "is that offorming no habit." How else is thechild to follow his bent or genius andso arrive at full self-expression? Thepoint I am bringing up is of the utmost gravity, for Rousseau is by common consent the father of modern education. To eliminate from educationthe idea of a progressive adjustmentto a human law, quite apart from tem-

perament, may be to imperil civilization itself. For civilization (anotherword that is sadly in need of Socraticdefining) may be found to consistabove all in an orderly transmissionof right habits; and the chief agencyfor securing such a transmission mustalways be education, by which I meanfar more of course than mere schooling.1

Babbitt was right, of course;learning is rapidly declining inmost of our schools, through asteady erosion of standards, intellect, and discipline. The latePresident Eliot of Harvard epitomized the tendency of our timewhen he insisted, "A well-instructed youth of eighteen can selectfor himself a better course ofstudy than any college faculty, orany wise man who does not knowhis ancestors and his previous life,can possibly select for him....Every youth of eighteen is an infinitely complex organization, theduplicate of which neither doesnor ever will exist." The libertarian, of course, centers his caseupon the individual, upon a personality whose very uniquenessnecessitates freedom of choice;but the libertarians must also helpto provide a proper value structure within which that choicetakes place, else the choice itselfbecomes meaningless. It is such a

1 Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticis1n, p. 292.


meaningless choice to which President Eliot and most modern educationists have condemned ouryoung people. In Irving Babbitt'sphrase, "The wisdom of all theages is to be· as naught comparedwith the inclination of a sophomore."

Underlying this willingness toallow the young person to pick andchoose without discipline or direction is the tacit assumption thatno body of knowledge exists as aproper explanation of the humancondition. The great point becomesriot to teach knowledge, but toteach students. If no standards exist, how can they be passed on tothe young?

Simply, it may be called the philosophy of "doing what comes naturally." At the intellectual level, forexample, it is held that there is somemagic value in the uninhibited anduninformed opinion if freelyexpressed. And so discussion groupsare held in the grade schools and thehigh schools on such subjects as"What do you think about the atombomb?" or "teen-age morality" or"banning Lady Chatterley's Lover"or "implementing freedom among underprivileged nations" or what not.The poor little dears have scarcely afact to use as ballast. But no matter.The cult of sensibility believes thatcontinuing, free, uninhibited discussion will ultimately release the inherent goodness of natural instincts andimpulses. The fad for "brainstorm-

ing" has passed, but not the philosophy behind it.2

Today it seems to be assumedthat any opinion whatsoever isjustified so long as it is held withsufficient sincerity -and emotionalfervor. One shares with IrvingBabbitt the feeling that "perhapsthe best examples of sincerity inthis sense are to be found in insane asylums."

In part, this endless capacityfor "dialogl,le" and "the openmind" stems from the same philosophic roots producing our declineof standards and decline of intellect. Unless the individual finallyuses that open-mindedness as apreparation for the final act ofjudgment and selection, that is,uses his free inquiry and factgathering as a means of finallyreaching a conclusion, then openmindedness becomes only thedrafty, valueless cavern throughwhich blow the cold winds of decline and death.

A society unwilling to discipline its thinking and its young isa society doomed to extinction.

A Disciplined Elfort Required

for the Education of Leaders

Good or bad leaders will alwaysbe with us, and no amount ofRousseau's "General Will" or

~ Calvin D. Linton, "Higher Education:The Solution - or Part of the Problem ?"Christianity Today, Feb. 16, 1968.


democratic faith in numerical majorities can change that fact. Wewill be no better than the qualityof the leaders within our society,and the quality of leadership in ademocracy will be no higher thanthe level of popular understandingpermits. Unfortunately, a low levelof understanding is foredoomed ina society lacking a disciplined educational structure.

We seem unwilling to accept thediscipline of genuine languagestudy. Many future voters cannottell the meaning of such words asgrammar, logic, or rhetoric, muchless use or appreciate the skillsinvolved. The study of history hasfared little better. Through modern "social studies," the soberingtruth of history has been carefullyconcealed from our young. Man'sachievements and his failures, thepainful reality of the fate awaiting the self-indulgent society andthe self-indulgent individual, havebeen carefully buried in reams ofuninformed nonsense centering on"group dynamics" or misinformedpropaganda slanting the studenttoward collectivism as a means ofsolving all our "social problems."

All too many of the subj ectstaught to America's young peoplereflect this headlong flight fromany meaningful discipline of themind. A society which thus educates its leaders may expect roughsledding ahead.

"Progressive Education" at Work

The lack of discipline noted inour educational institutions stemsfrom both external and internalweaknesses. Many modern educators cannot control or properly direct their students, nor can theydisplay the internal discipline ofmind and heart to control theirown intellectual and spiritual behavior. Small wonder that thoseteachers who are themselves undisciplined prove such poor examples to the young.

Genuine creative capacity involves more than the natural talent of a child. A properly disciplined atmosphere must surroundthe child to allow his creative capacities to come to light. Childrencannot be creative in a vacuum,but a vacuum is exactly what weprovide when our. teachers aredrawn from a philosophic systemdenying standards and discipline.One of the last century's greatcommentators on education, Matthew Arnold, once remarked:

It is ... sufficiently clear that theteacher to whom you give only adrudge's training, will do only adrudge's work, and will do it in adrudge's spirit: that in order to ensure good instruction even withinnarrow limits in a school, you mustprovide it with a master far superiorto his scholars.3

3 G. H. Bantock, Freedom and Authority in Education, p. 98.


It should go without saying thata vast number of America's teachers are anything but drudges;many of them show great selfdiscipline and high standards,which they constantly reflect inthe educational experience theyare attempting to impart to ouryoung people. Even so, we find fartoo many teachers of the othersort, lacking discipline and lacking standards. Moreover, even ourbest teachers are severely handicapped by an educational structure whose underlying philosophyminimizes proper discipline. Manyproponents of progressive education insist that learning be setaside in favor of the unreflectiveand spontaneous desires and attitudes of the child. The child isto be encouraged to follow his owndesires in what he studies. Intellectualeffort is to be displaced byspontaneous "activity." Competition and a disciplined system ofgrading are to be shunned, sincethey imply superiority and inferiority. The child is assumed tobe able to meet his own educational needs without external pressures. In a word, we are to achieveeducation without discipline.

A Line of Least Resistance

True education, of course, implies discipline. The disciplineof competition, the discipline ofstandards, the discipline of re-

sponsible adults who have determined what is of real and enduring purpose, the discipline of concentration, these are among theessentials of true education. Anything less soon leads to what Irving Babbitt described as a typicalresult of the "new approach" tolearning:

Having provided such a rich andcostly banquet of electives to satisfythe "infinite variety" of youths ofeighteen, President Eliot must besomewhat disappointed to see hownearly all these youths insist onflocking into a few large courses; andespecially disappointed that many ofthem should take advantage of theelective system not to work strenuously along the line of their specialinterests, but rather to loungethrough their college course along theline of least resistance.4

The new motto in education alltoo often seems to be "jack of allideas, master of none" apparentlyimplying that, if our young peopledabble in enough subjects, nevermind whether they ever masterany particular subject, "education" will somehow have takenplace. Genuine enlargement of themind presupposes sufficiently disciplined study to achieve a graspof a subject. This must be coupledwith the equally necessary discipline of viewing all subjects as por-

4 Irving Babbitt, Literature and theAmerican College, p. 35.


tions of a single reality expressiveof human existence. An educational philosophy which never allows the student to master anyparticular subject and which denies the existence of universallyapplicable general principles is asystem calculated to retard themental growth of its pupils. Wehave become so concerned aboutproviding "real life situations" inthe classroom, so concerned aboutproviding a cultural potpourribased on technological developments in radio, the movies, andtelevision, that the young peopleeducated in our system are nolonger in touch with reality, veryuncertain as to just who and whythey are.

Undermining the Teacher

When no inviolable standardsremain, it is natural that theteacher will no longer think ofhimself as being in authority. Alldiscipline must go, since the teacher has no concepts to impart andis to function only as a leader,synchronizing the amorphous collective development of his participants. Thus, external disciplinejoins internal discipline in thediscard. In such a system, one ofthe keys for genuine education islost. The relationship between themaster and the pupil, between theone who has achieved disciplineand the one who has yet to achieve

it, ceases to exist. Also lost ismuch of the traditional authorityand prestige of the teacher.

The child-centered school may beattractive to the child, and no doubtis useful as a place in which the littleones may release their inhibitionsand hence behave better at home. Buteducators cannot permit the studentsto dictate the course of study unlessthey are prepared to confess thatthey are nothing but chaperons, supervising an aimless, trial-and-errorprocess which is chiefly valuable because it keeps young people from doing something worse. The free electivesystem as Mr. Eliot introduced it atHarvard and as Progressive Education adapted it to lower age levelsamounted to a denial that there wascontent to education. Since there wasno content to education, we might aswell let students follow their ownbent. They would at least be interested and pleased and would be aswell educated as if they had pursueda prescribed course of study. Thisoverlooks the fact that the aim ofeducation is to connect man with man,to connect the present with the past,and to advance the thinking of therace. If this is the aim of education,it cannot be left to the sporadic, spontaneous interests of children or evenof undergraduates.5

Social Effects 01 the "New Education"

Most civilized men have appreciated the fact that they must de-

:> Robert M. Hutchins, The HigherLearning in America, Pp. 70-71.


cide certain things for their children, at least until the childrenattain sufficient capacity to decidefor themselves. True freedom isthe freedom of self-discipline, afreedom to choose within acceptable standards and values. Takeaway the values and standards,take away the discipline, andmeaningful freedom is taken awayas well.

In the education of our futureleaders, we might well rememberthat men without moral discipline, men who deny any allegianceto standards higher than themselves, are likely to become leadersor to follow leaders who stand fornothing but brute force. As modern educationists struggle to"free" man from the old "limiting" standards, they justify theirstance with constant reference tothe democratic way of life. Anyattempt to impose standards isthus labeled "undemocratic." It isworth remembering that democracy is a political concept and thatall applications of that concept toother aspects of human life, education included, are the tacit admission that the architects of thenew order intend that all valueswill ultimately be political values.In all of the endless talk about"growth" that fills our discussionof education, we steadfastly re-

fuse to answer the one centralquestion, growth for what purpose?

"Growth for what purpose?"Weare told at various times thatthe goals include "self-expression,""life adjustment," "adaptation todaily living." The school seems tohave become a center in which theindividual is told that he will besubjected to no disciplinary standards, that he can be "himself."

How does the student realizehimself? By adj usting to his peersand to the society around him.He must learn to "get along." Hefulfills himself in his capacity towork with others . . . in and ofhimself he is nothing. If he hasstrivings or attitudes not in conformity with the world aroundhim, he must "adjust." He, notsociety, is in the wrong. The individual, stripped of the standardsof self-discipline which would allow him to be his unique self, isthus educated in the new value ofconformity.

How can this conformity be described except as a mass of standardized mediocrity? How can sucha society hope to generate theleadership necessary for its continued existence? The choice, finally, is between discipline anddisaster. ~

The next article of this series will discuss "The Perpetual Adolescent."

M. E. eRAVENS

WHETHER OR NOT we're pricingourselves out of world markets isa moot question. But there's nodoubt that competition from foreign producers has intensified. Wemay hold an edge on quality, butforeign products often are cheaper. Auto manufacturers, for example, are re-evaluating their policies in an effort to meet competition. Like many other industries,they are building plants abroadand hiring foreign labor to produce for sale in other countriesand also in the U.S. market. Anumber of U.S. industries are asking for increased tariff or quotaprotection against imports.

Foreign competition plagues agricultural as well as industrialproducers. Currently, some 20 percent of our agricultural exportsare subsidized in some way. Someother countries also follow thepractice; but it is ironic that theU.S. farmer, who is producingenough for himself and 40 otherpeople, cannot compete with less

Dr. Cravens is Professor of Agricultural Economics at Ohio State University.

Pricing OurselvesOUT01 World Markets?

productive farmers elsewhere. Forinstance, in cotton, the U.S. isnow a net importer instead of anexporter; in tobacco, we havebeen losing ground rapidly inworld markets since 1949.

Actually, the inability to compete in certain things is not necessarily a sign of lack of productivity in our economy. It happens allthe time. For instance, in 1889Ohio was the leading apple-producing state with 14 million bushels, and ranked fifth in the production of potatoes with 16 million bushels. Today, Ohio is eighthin apple production and sixteenthin potato production, with about3 million bushels of each - lessthan enough for its own use.

Shifts of Production

So it is with specific agriculturaland nonagricultural products inother states and areas in the U.S.and among countries of the world.Shifts in production, no matterwhere in the world, occur in response· to certain factors. The advantages of specialization and

1i\O


voluntary trade are world wide.As economies develop, as trans

portation systems improve, as demands change, the most profitablecombination of resources in agiven area may change. The land,labor, capital, and managementare shifted to the use that will paythe highest return. This flexibilityof adjustment to changing conditions is one of our major advantages. A market-oriented economyprovides the mechanism to signalneeded shifts.

Today, however, there is widespread belief that the governmentcan and should do something toprevent these economic "laws"from working to the hardship ofpresent businesses and employees.We are encouraged to reject thepossibility that someone else cangrow peanuts more efficiently thanwe can. Because peanuts was themost profitable crop for our grandfathers and our fathers, and theymade a living growing peanuts, weshould be secure in the right to dothis too!

In the past 30 years we haveabout convinced o'hrselves that wecan "eat our cake and have it,too." In other words, that wecan have foreign aid and foreigntrade without foreign competition.Recent trade and payments problems have brought us face to facewith the fact that the rules stillapply to us.

Why Are Costs Higher?

If prices and costs are rISIngin the United States relative tothose of our foreign competition,how does this happen? Severalreasons have been suggested. Labor leaders say profits are toohigh. Spokesmen for managementsay wages are too high, labor isunproductive, and taxes are toohigh. Some say that the rate ofinvestment in new plants is toolow. And each faction is likely tobe so well satisfied with its ownanswer that it ignores the answergiven by others.

In the world of business, it'snot uncommon that a firm mayfind it is operating at a loss.There's no doubt that lack ofprofits in many domestic industries is a major problem. And thetypical result is a reduction inoperations and the laying off oflaborers. The reason often givenis that foreign competition hastaken customers by offering products for lower prices.

On the other hand, the businessfirm that successfully sells muchof its output abroad is likely toshow profits higher than averagefor that industry. The fact thatsome business firms are losingmoney because of inability to compete in foreign markets, whileothers with above average profitscan compete, suggests that highprofits are not the basic cause of

1969 PRICING OURSELVES OUT OF WORLD MARKETS? 111

the inability to meet foreign competition. Since business profits arewhat is left over after meetingbusiness costs, high profits inthemselves mean only that thebusiness is efficiently operated andcompeting successfully. Low profits mean the opposite.

Wage Levels

Wages in the United States havebeen higher for many decadesthan those in most countries.High-wage industries are our maj or exporters. This was true evenbefore the United States hadwidespread unionization or minimum wage laws. The parents andgrandparents of millions of us migrated here in the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries partly because of attractive wages plusthe fact that work was availablefor all at going wage rates. Letus hope for still higher wages inthe future, because this is a maj or indication of our level of productivity.

Regarding the productivity oflabor, there appears to be noquestion that some so-called"featherbedding" and other laborinefficiency exists. This is a netdrain on the real wages of thegainfully employed wage-earningworker, as well as on everyoneelse. The "featherbedding" workerreceives wages, and has a claimon goods produced, yet produces

little himself. However, a limitedamount of featherbedding has existed for many years, and thereis no evidence that it has increasedenough in recent years to explainthe increasing pressure of foreigncompetition.

Why are American workersmore productive than most foreign workers? Why does one American farmer produce enough foodfor himself and 40 others whilethe Russian farmer producesenough for himself and only 5others? Do American farmerswork harder or longer or what?The higher output per man in theUnited States is due primarily tothe use of more and better toolsand equipment, the superior knowhow and management ability ofthe American farmer, and hisgreater freedom to make decisions.Nonfarm workers also have moreand better tools. Business management is more skilled and has morefreedom to make decisions in theUnited States than in Russia andmost other foreign countries.

This .dependence of labor productivity on the availability ofmodern tools and equipment andthe funds to finance them posesanother problem. Any policy, government or private, that preventsor discourages the purchase ofnew and improved tools also reduces the efficiency of labor.

Taxes and tax policies are prob-


ably thegreatest governmentalhindrance to the financing of newand better tools although restrictions by licensing, franchising,and exchange control are also important. Taxes which bear mostheavily on the growing and moreefficient firms tend to penalize anddiscourage such efficiency. Inflation also creates special problemsin retooling for firms that fail toallow for it.

In recent years taxes often havehad a double-barreled effect. Theynot only have reduced the abilityof individuals and business firmsat home to finance new and improved equipment but also havebeen shunted as "foreign aid" tohelp the foreign competitor buyequipment. The result is that today the foreign competitor sometimes has a plant quite as modernas any in the United States, hepays lower wages, and he maypay a corporate tax rate lowerthan that of the U. S. businessfirm that helped finance him.

A major cause of inflation is thespending by the government inexcess of its income and the resulting need for creating newmoney supplies. Inflation can stoponly when voters quit expectingmore services from the government than they are willing to payfor in taxes.

Our Competitors

Competition from foreign producers seems likely to increase.Our urge for protection and security leads to more and moreintervention by government in theaffairs of our farms and factoriesand family life. This interventionon behalf of the inefficient producer in agriculture and industryweakens our capacity to compete.

We are becoming increasinglyprone to consider present pricesor perhaps a bit higher than present prices, as the "just" or "fair"price. It follows that we considerthe present producers as havinga "right" to continue to produce.If either of these "rights" is challenged by a competitor, the inefficient producer is encouragedto look to the government for helpinstead of trying to find betterways to serve consumers.

Future pressures of foreigncompetition will depend in largemeasure on domestic policies concerning price supports, importquotas, tariffs, and other interventions; on other "welfare" measures of the government; and onthe extent of inflation in theUnited States. High tariffs, highsupports, market quotas, and othersuch practices may hide the problem for awhile, but will not solveit. ~

JOHN W. CAMPBELL

IT HAS BEEN said that "technologywe can't understand appears to bemagic." Actually, this applies onlyto technology more advanced thanour own - for frequently we seesome great technological deviceand, by familiarity, fail to recognize it for what it is.

Perhaps the Grade A #1 primeexample is one which is now generally considered the perfect symbol of non-technology - the epitonlization of the failure to developtechnology.

The peasant-farmer, ploddingalong behind his horse-drawn plowas he sweats to till his fields, does

Mr. Campbell's editorial is reprinted here bypermission from ANALOG Science FictionScience Fact. Copyright 1968 by the CondeNast Publications, Inc.

seem, to us, about as untechnicalas you can get. Yet in that pastoral scene is a technical breakthrough that properly ranks slightly behind harnessing fire, and perhaps a bit ahead of the wheel.(After all, all the native Americancivilizations got along without thewheel!)

It might be described in modernterms as "a solid-state power-handling device for coupling a heavyduty power source to heavy tractive loads." Or, more simply, asthe device that freed human slavesfrom service as draft animals.

One of the reasons the Romansand Greeks needed so many slaveswas that there was no known wayof harnessing animals to heavy

113


draft loads. Man, because of hisbipedal posture and his hands,could have a harness slipped overhis chest and shoulders, and byleaning into it, exert all hisstrength in pulling the load. Itwas literally true that a man couldexert more pull than a 1,500pound horse.

A horse's sloping chest, andlack of shoulders or graspinghands, made it impossible to tiehim to a load except by putting arope around his neck. Do that, andas soon as he pulls, he's choked bythe rope at his throat; he can pullonly lightly before his wind is cutoff and he has to stop. True, somepowerful horses can exert enoughpull to move a relatively lightchariot at a good speed that waybut as a coupling device it's exceedingly inefficient. The horsecouldn't pull a plow, or a heavydray.

Oxen, equipped by nature withsome well-anchored horns, coulddo considerably better - but it wasextremely tiring on even an ox'sheavy neck muscles to hold hishead down against the backwardpull of the load.

Rapid, Heavy Transport

The horse collar, invented somewhere, sometime during the Middle Ages in Europe, was Man'sfirst really successful device forharnessing powerful animal mus-

cles to do the heavy hauling workthat was needed. It made possibleheavy transport - even on the horrible mud ruts they called roads.It vastly increased the amount ofagricultural land that could beprepared and used during a singlegrowing season; there was farmore food available for men andmotive power. Where before,horses and other animals hadtransported goods primarily aspack animals, transportation wasexpanded, quite suddenly, as greatly as it was a few centuries laterwith the invention of the steampowered railroad.

Naturally, with the potential ofheavy, relatively rapid transportation available, the sedan chairwent out of use as the coach camein, and pack-trains were replacedby loaded wagons. Inevitably thedemand for more roads wideenough - and good enough! - forhorse-drawn vehicles came, andthe entire economy began speeding up.

The contact with the highly sophisticated and educated society ofIslam was undoubtedly a tremendous factor in the development ofthe renaissance in the seacoastregions of the Mediterranean,where ,vater transport made transportation reasonably effective. Butit was the horse collar thatbrought an economic renaissanceto most of Europe.

1969 TECHNOLOGICAL STATUS 115

It's not at all easy to recognizetechnological importance - particularly when we're used to it. Certainly a horse collar seems a simple enough idea....

Most moderns haven't actuallyseen and handled one, or studiedone closely. Take a good look atthe structure of a horse's chestand shoulders, and without studying a horse collar, try devising aform that will fit snugly onto thosesloping curves and planes, allowthe horse free movement of neckand forelegs, avoid concentratingthe load on prominent bony areas,and so distribute it that the horsecan exert his full strength withoutpainful chafing. Then make it stayin place without aid of adhesivetapes, glue, or surgical implants!

The agricultural technicians ofthe Middle Ages who developedthat gadget were not fools, evenif they hadn't ever had a course inmechanical engineering, or forceanalysis. And they did achievesomething that the learnedGreeks and the great Roman engineers did not; they harnessedthe most effective power source inthe world at the time.

And be it noted that that animalpower__ source is still used as thebasis for measuring our mechanical tractive engines - as Watt originally defined it in his sales-promotion literature for his newsteam engines.

However, two horses can do alot more plowing than a two-horsepower gasoline-engined tractorcan; the gas job can't slow downin a tough spot, dig in its hooves,bellydown to the earth, and lungewith half a ton of hard-tensedmuscle to drag the plow through.

Of course, the tractor is alsonot capable of self-repair, automatic routine maintenance, livingoff the fields it works, self-replication, or sense enough not to destroy itself by ramming itself overa cliff. In addition to operating onlocally-available fuels, a horse isapproximately twice as efficient asa tractor in conversion of chemical to mechanical energy.

Current Applications

The moral of this little story isnot to be applied just to humansvisiting alien planets; it appliesvery cruelly to situations righthere on our own crazy, confusedworld. Backward nations - I willnot be euphemistic and call them"underdeveloped" because they'vehad the same thousands of yearsto develop that Europe and America had, and simply didn't do sodo not recognize the importanceof what could be called "the HorseCollar Revolution."

Those economically depressednations want, most ardently, tojoin "the modern world" - Le., toachieve the industrially-developed


status of the high-level technological nations.

Now there are two kinds of"status"; one is what your neighbors think you are, and the otheris what you actually have' and cando. The first type of status is, ofcourse, far and away the mostpopular, and the most eagerlysought.

One type of individual, if hehappens to inherit a f.ew thousanddollars, or hit it lucky in gambling,promptly puts it into fancy newclothes, a down payment on afancy new car, and a fancy newwoman or two, and has himself awhee of a time being admired andrespected because man, he's got allthe symbols of Status!

So in three months the fancycar is repossessed, the fancy woman moves off, and the fancy clothesprove to have poor durability.

Another approach is to spendthe little inheritance on getting asmall business started - maybe aneighborhood grocery, or a newsstand. Doesn't get you muchStatus, of course, and not muchspectacular fun . . . but put towork that way a few thousand cansupport you for life.

It's just that it is not as muchfun, and a few thousand won't doit unless you get in and work justas hard yourself, and that makesthe whole idea much less popular.

Status Symbols

The national equivalent nowshowing up among the backwardnations is that foreign aid - winning the numbers game, in theinternational lottery! - is spent onfancy Status projects. Hydroelectric plants are Status Symbols,man! That means you've got it!

Even if you don't have manyelectric lights or power machinesin grass huts and fields plowedby men and women pulling woodenstick plows through the earth.

Steel mills are great international Status Symbols, too. Ofcourse, what would really makeone of those nations have Statuswith all its neighbors would be tohave something really technicaland ultra-fancy, like a few nuclear bombs.

Trouble is, nobody, except a fewexperts, in a few major Westernnations, have the wisdom to seethat the horse collar is one of thegreatest technical developments ofhuman history.

The basic plot in ChristopherAnvil's "Royal Road" stemmedfrom an actual disaster of WW II ;it didn't have the comfortable ending Anvil's story did. The lesson,bitterly learned then, is being relearned most reluctantly by thebackward countries today.

The Allies had a tremendous military need for roads and barracksand airfields in an area where


there simply were none. It was aremote area; shipping simplywasn't to he had for sending inearth-moving machinery, bulldozers, power shovels, and so on.So local natives were hired, athigh pay, to do the work.

The men who set up that operation didn't know what a subsistence-level economy was; theyfound out that fall and winter.The men they'd hired to work atsuch fine wages were, of course,the native farmers - who therefore didn't farm that year.

In Anvil's story, the thing wasplanned, and the aftermath waspart of the plan; in the real eventit wasn't planned that way - itjust happened. There was no shipping to bring in food that winter,just as there had been no shippingto bring in earth-moving machinery. It was a horribly grimdemonstration of the oft-repeatedremark of philosophers that "youcan't eat gold." There was a lot ofmoney around - but no crops.

Repeating the Error

What's happening again andagain in backward countries today is of the same order. Themagnificent new dams and hydroelectric plants employ thousandsof workers at good wages - andhire them away from food-production in a near-subsistence economy. The result is inadequate food

production, incipient famine, anda desperate plea for help to feedthe sta.rving millions. But theysure have a great Status dam!

Oh, they get irrigation water,too - only sometimes the resultshaven't been any better thoughtout than the economic disaster offamine was. Many areas of theworld have fairly fertile land lying on top of extremely salineunder-soil - practically salt beds.When rain falls, the fresh waterseeps downward, and keeps washing the salt back down to theunder-soil where it is harmless.But run in irrigation water - thesalt from below dissolves, andevaporation from the surface soilpulls the now-saline water up,where it in turn evaporates, andthus rapidly builds up a salt cruston the surface.

It takes several years of nonirrigation, and no crops, for natural rainfall to wash the salt backdown so the land can be usedagain.

But don't you forget - that bigirrigation dam and project is aninternational Status Symbol ofhigh value!

If a nation has a primitive subsistence-level economy, this simplymeans that its food-and-goods production has economic value justbarely sufficient to keep the population from starvation. And thatin crop-failure years, there will be


famine, and people will die ofstarvation.

In many, many such subsistence-level areas, if such faminesoccurred, there was literally nothing whatever anyone could do tohelp them. The thing happenedrepeatedly in India and in China;India, under the British, had railways and His Majesty's government did everything humanly possible to relieve the starvation. Butthe food needed to feed 300,000,000 starving people can't be gathered from the surrounding areas;they're subsistence-level e'conomies, too. And the railroadsweren't vast, heavy-traffic networks such as Europe and America had developed; they didn'thave enough cars or engines. Andshipping from half around theworld took so long that even if thetransport and grain were freelydonated, it wouldn't get there intime to be very helpful.

In China, because of bad roadsand no railroads at the time, therewere huge areas where the onlypossible transport was by porters.(Mules can't climb ladders, andsome of the routes required ladders to get up mountain "passes.")Since porters had to start in carrying their own food for the roundtrip, it was fairly easy to figurewhat distance of penetration waspossible before the porter had consumed his total load in his own

round-trip supply. No food whatever could be shipped into anymore distant point. People in thoseinner areas simply starved todeath because help was physicallyimpossible.

Breaking the Habit

In subsistence-level economyareas today, what sort of help canthe industrial nations give?

Well, first is the fact that Step#1 is to break down the culturalpattern of the people that holdsthem at the subsistence level. Andat this step, naturally, the peoplewill do all they can to destroy thevile invaders who are seeking todestroy their Way of Life, whichis the Good, the True, and theBeautiful and Holy Way.

You can't do it by telling themthat they should stop growingthose inefficient crops, those cropsthat produce protein malnutrition,and learn how to raise these newand far more efficient nutritivecrops.

There are problems involvedthat aren't economic or technical.The Israeli, for instance, haveworked out techniques for growing watermelons, wheat, variousfruits, and grains on sandy gravelirrigated with salt water. Theycan make the barren Negev Desert produce fine crops of excellentfood - techniques that can be applied anywhere there are sand


dunes, gravel, and sea water, orsalt-water springs. It would workfine in huge areas of the Sahara.No vast irrigation dams neededfor this project!

Unfortunately, the Arabs don'tseem enthusiastic about acceptingand applying this Jewish technique.

Even if it were an Arab development, the peoples of the areaare tradition-oriented; it wouldtake at least a generation to putover the idea of doing preciselythose things which they know arewrong. For every farmer knowsthat salt water kills plants, andyou can't grow plants in sand andstony gravel.

The odd thing is that the saltwater irrigation can not be usedin "good soil"; it works only inthe worst kind of gravel-sand soil.

Resistance to Change

The proper development of thebackward areas requires recognition that the people don't 'want tochange. They want their results tochange - they want to have thefine things other nations have, butnot to build them.

To pull up from a subsistencelevel economy, the first step isbuilding better roads, and a moreefficient agriculture. Not irrigation projects, not tractor manufacturing plants and hydroelectricprojects and establishing an inter-

nationally known air line, completewith twenty or so Boeing 707 jets.Man, those are real Status SymboIs!

What's needed is the Horse Collar Revolution and its results.Draft animals can live off the local fields; they don't require exchanging scarce goods for foreignfuel supplies and replacementparts.

The road network has to bebuilt up slowly; too many farmers diverted to vast constructionprojects and you have famine.

You need schools - schools thatteach agriculture and medicineand veterinary medicine and simple local-irrigation techniques andpublic hygiene and basic nutrition.Not electronics, industrial chemistry, and jet-engine maintenance- not for a generation will that bevalid. The few natives who arereally cut out for that sort ofwork can be taught in other nations, where schools of that orderare needed, and already exist. Butdon't expect them to come homethere will be nothing for them tocome home to for a generation.

But no High Status schools?Sorry - getting out of a sub

sistence system can't be achievedon Status - it has to be achievedby Status, the hard-work-andpractical-learning kind of real accomplishment.

The ancient truth prevails: God


helps those who help themselves.Because even God can't help someone who won't help himselfthat's what the ancient concept ofFree Will implies!

Help Is Where You Find It

The more developed nations canhelp effectively only where the national leaders have the wisdom towork for real accomplishment, notfor high Status projects.

And be it noted - that "more developed nations" does not mean theU.S., the U.S.S.R., and other Western nations alone, by any means.One example has been cited; Israelhas a technique that could immensely aid many backward nations right now.

The Philippines have developeda spectacularly productive newbreed of rice by careful botanicalresearch; they've done a bang-upjob of it, and have a strain thatyields three to four times as muchfood from a given area. It's abreed that could release two outof three rice-farmers in a subsistence-level nation to work onthose needed roads and dams andother projects, without bringingstarvation to the country.

The water buffalo is an extremely economic animal; it's onebeastie that the Western worldneeds to accept and use as a domestic animal - and is needed farmore widely in the world. The

water buffalo yields high-qualitymilk, high-quality meat, and is anenormously powerful draft animalcapable of working under muddyconditions which ruin the feet ofmost creatures. Moreover, thecritter can yield meat, milk, andpower when fed on an incrediblediet consisting solely of rice stubble! The Thais have carried on acareful program of breeding forsome decades, and now have breedsof water buffalo that run over aton in weight.

Rather surprisingly, about theonly area outside of the SoutheastAsia region where water buffaloes are used in any numbers isin Italy, where some 40,000 ofthem are kept. The familiar Mozzarella Italian cheese - in its original, genuine form - is made fromwater-buffalo milk.

Only when many thousands, ormillions, of agricultural workerscan leave the farms for work without producing the inevitable famine - only when the agriculturaleconomy gets above the subsistencelevel- can any nation become "advanced." Argentina isn't an industrial power - but has a highly developed agricultural economy. Allof the highly industrialized nations first became highly successful agricultural nations.

Yet we - and unfortunately thebackward nations! - see the horsedrawn plow and the farmer as


symbols of ",.low-status, nonindustrial economies.

The great trouble is that peopledon't want to change. It's not iustthe peoples in backward countries;the great economic advantages ofthe water buffalo have beenaround for centuries, yet onlyItaly among all the Western na

tions has accepted them. Whyaren't they being raised in southern Louisiana, for instance, wherethere's plenty of land and climateof the type they particularly love?

In Africa, millions of childrendie of protein malnutrition because the natives raise traditionalcrops that do not provide the essential amino acids - and can't beinduced to change their customs.

Indians in Central America suffered the same type of proteinmalnutrition; their one and onlystaple was corn - maize. Andcorn, like most grains, is deficientin lysine to an extent human beings can't live on it.

Anthropologists and nutritionists could get nowhere changingtheir dietary habits; finally, botanists succeeded in breeding astrain of corn that did containadequate lysine, so the nativescould go on doing as they'd alwaysdone - eating corn - and still getthe food they needed to live.

That is not a solution to theproblem.

Sure, it keeps the children alive

- but it does not achieve the cru..cially important necessity. Thosepeople will remain forever back..ward people unless they change.

A change in government does nogood, for a government cannot remain in power if the people actively hate it. And so long as people insist on not changing theirGood, Beautiful, Familiar, andHoly Traditional Way of Lifeeven if it's killing them! - the social system will not change. Andthey'll kill anyone, any government, that seeks to change them,if they possibly can. Only a powerfully entrenched and ruthlesslydetermined dictatorship can impose on them the basic changesthey, the people, must make.

If, that is, you insist the changemust be made in this generation.

Otherwise, you'll have to havepatience, and wait while slow,steady, continuing pressures alterthe Established Way of Thingsdecade by decade.

Agriculture First

And the greatest, fastest progress will be made in the backwardnations which gain least Technological· Industrial Status Projects - and develop their agriculture most.

In a rice-eating nation, if onethird of the rice-growers, raisinghigh-production strains, using newand more efficient techniques, can


sell twice as much rice for onlyseventy-five per cent of the costthe rice farmer who would notchange his traditional ways willbe forced out of agriculture. Hispoor harvest won't be wanted.He'll lose his land, his home, allthe things he has lived by andwith.

Here, the ruthless dictator whoforces him to change his way oflife is not human - it's economic.It's even more ruthless and relentless. But it, too, has the samecompelling message: "You mustlearn a new way of life - or die I"~

At the same time, of course, thefine surplus of cheap rice means

that industrial workers, road anddam builders, all sorts of people inall sorts of newly developing occupations, are living much better.The old near-starvation level ofrice is gone - there's plenty toeat, at last.

Look, friends - industry didn'tproduce a high standard of living.A high standard of agricultureforced people to learn a new highstandard of living and industry.

And that's the only way it willbe - unless a completely ruthless,dedicated tyrant oppresses hishelpless people into learning thenew way of life fast. ~

Beneficiaries of Capitalism

THE STANDARD OF LIVING is high in the United States because of

capitalism, but not all of our people are capitalists. The wages

of a truck driver in our country are much higher than the wages

of a coolie with a wheel-barrow in China, mainly because of the

truck which the American drives. The truck is the result of

capitalism, but the driver benefits as much as anyone else from

the truck. Not everyone in our country owns stock in companies

that make farm machinery, but everyone of us profits by the

fact that wheat is sown, reaped, transported, and milled into flour

by equipment produced by capitalism. How much bread would

we have and what would it cost if it were not for these products

of capitalism? The farm machinery industry has created a number

of millionaires, but the return to all of them combined is only a

drop in the bucket compared to the benefit conferred upon the

consumers of our farm products.HOWARD E. KERSHNER, Christian Freedom Foundation

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

Webster's 1828 Original

AT FIRST BLUSH it strikes one asrather strange that the Foundation for American Christian Education should have chosen to publish a facsimile edition of NoahWebster's original AnAmericanDictionary of the English Language. After all, so one says tooneself, the definition of wordsmight take one anywhere, to God,Buddha, or the devil himself.What has a dictionary of 70,000words, most of them neutral sofar as any religion is concerned,to do with Christian education?

One's skepticism, strong at theoutset, does not survive a carefulreading of the remarkable introductory essay which Rosalie J.Slater has provided to go with thisbeautiful reproduction of the textwhich left Noah Webster's lovinghands in 1828. The theory behindWebster's "American Dictionary"was republican theory, for NoahWebster, a good citizen of Federalist Connecticut, was very much

aware that the Founding Fathershad given a rather special NewWorld twist to a whole politicalvocabulary. The word "congress,"in Britain, might be defined as "ameeting of individuals," but inAmerica it also stood for "theassembly of senators and representatives of the several states ofNorth America, according to thepresent constitution or politicalcompact, by which they are unitedin a federal republic; the legislature of the United States, consisting of two houses, a senate anda house of representatives." Thiswas something that represented achange from Dr. Johnson's dictionary. In all, Noah Websteradded 12,000 new words to the70,000 of the latestJohnson edition.

A good Calvinist in his laterlife, Noah Webster preferred Congregational Yale in his home townof New Haven to "unitarian"Harvard. Rosalie Slater tells us

1,)~


that he considered that words like"govern," "government," "constitution," "fast-day," "republic,""democracy," and others "reflectthe uniqueness of America's Christian founding and God's purposefor her." In other words, the language of politics in America couldonly be understood by people witha knowledge of the whole Christian heritage. The very separationof the powers in America derivedfrom the Biblical injunction torender unto Caesar the things thatare Caesar's, and to God the thingsthat are God's. And the Westerntheory of inalienable rights,brought to linguistic perfectionin the various writings of theFounders, came from Biblicalsources.

Webster's Qualifications,Master of Many Languages

As Emerson said, an institutionis always the lengthened shadowof a man. Webster studied - andapparently mastered - twenty languages in order to give exactmeaning to "the primary sense ofevery word." He wanted to trackhis meanings to their verbalheadwaters, thereby freeing himself as a lexicographer "from dependence on synonyms as substitutes for exact meaning." (Thesequotations are from RosalieSlater's essay.) But life, as NoahWebster lived it in New Haven,

Connecticut, and (for an interlude) in Amherst, Massachusetts,before the Jacksonian Revolution,contributed as much to the dictionary as any study of Hebrew,Gaelic, or the combination ofFrench and Gothic that the N01"

mans superimposed on the AngloSaxon tongue of eleventh centuryBritain. Noah Webster's republicwas founded on a theory of manas a property holder, but theFounders believed in earned property, not in estates kept unnaturally large through a legal theoryof entail which prevented youngersons from becoming owners.

As Rosalie Slater puts it, "TheChristian concept of individualliberty and property establishedunder the United States Constitution had produced, for the firsttime in human history, unlimitedopportunity for every man andwoman. An explosion of interestand exploration in every field occurred and invention and the artsflourished. Every man needed toknow everything and thus a literary, J ohnsonian type of dictionary was not sufficient for anAmerican. New terms in science,industry, and commerce were multiplying daily and these were significant in a country where menwere independent and 'masters oftheir own persons and Lords> oftheir own soil.'" (The italics areRosalie Slater's.)

1969 WEBSTER;S 1828 ORIGINAL 125

It could be that the italicizedquotation has special reference toNoah Webster as an entrepreneurial character and as a parttime farmer. Webster said, "Letthe people have property and theywill have power." He built hisown modest competence on histhree-part A Grammatical Institute of the English Language,which included his 1783 AmericanSpelling Book (the famous "bluebacked speller"), his 1783 Grammar, and his 1785 Reader. As thedates of publication show, thesepreceded the Constitutional Convention.

Webster went up and down thecolonies - or the states - to sellhis own books. Over a hundredyear period, one hundred millioncopies of the Speller "were wornout by Americans as they learnedtheir letters, their morality, andtheir patriotism" from Webster'ssubtle combination of words andphilosophical substance. The Speller, says Rosalie Slater, "was compatible with the hearthside of alog cabin in the wilderness, ittravelled on the flatboats of theOhio, churned down the Mississippi and creaked across the prairies of the far west as pioneermothers taught their childrenfrom covered wagons. Whereveran individual wished to challengehis own ignorance or quench histhirst for knowledge, there, along

with the Holy Bible and Shakespeare, were Noah Webster's slimand inexpensive Spellers, Grammars, Readers, and his Elementsof Useful Knowledge containingthe history and geography of theUnited States."

Literary Property Rights

To protect his literary property,Webster fought for copyright legislation at both state and nationallevels. It was his Speller that paidthe family bills during the leanyears when he was learning twentylanguages and compiling his dictionary. To balance his sedentaryhours at the desk, he enjoyed anactive life as a small farmer. During his years in Amherst (hemoved there in order to conservehis money), he made the cultivation of his own land "a delight anda resource," employing "the tenacres of meadowland surroundingthe house agriculturally." RosalieSlater gives us an unforgettablepicture of the lexicographer setting out an orchard. He "graftedthe finest kinds of apples andpears he could find, growingpeaches and cherries from thestones. His large, sweet whitegrapes, raIsed from a fine nativevine taken out of his father'sfarm in West Hartford, wereknown as 'the Webster vine.' Hisflowers and the vegetable gardenalso flourished and prospered and


he could say reverently, 'for someyears past I have rarely cast myeyes to heaven or plucked the fruitof my garden without feeling emotions of gratitude and adoration.' "

When he was not working onthe dictionary or cultivating hisacres, Noah Webster took an active part in public life. He was oneof the founders of Amherst Acad-

emy, which became Amherst College. For a time he served asPresident of the Amherst Boardof Trustees.

He was a whole man, and it isgood to have his example set before us in an age when wholemen are considered rather square.Would that our hippies could getto know him. ~

Copies of the 1828 Webster"s Dictionary may be ordered di

rectly from the Foundation for American Christian Education,

2946 Twenty-fifth Avenue, San Francisco, California 94132.

$15.00.

OTHER BOOKS

~ THE BIRTH OF THE NATIONby Arthur M. Schlesinger (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968),250 pp., $7.95.

Reviewed by Robert M. Thornton

IT IS sometimes forgotten that ourhistory as a nation began long before the momentous events atPhiladelphia. The signing of theDeclaration of Independence wasthe moment of birth following 167years of gestation as English colonies.

What were the colonists like onthe eve of separation from GreatBritain? What sort of civilization

was to be found on the easternseaboard of America? The lateProfessor Schlesinger, a pioneerin writing social history, gives usa cultural portrait of the American people instead of another political account. His effort is exhaustive in scope if not in detail.Each chapter treats a particularphase of colonial culture -- thefamily, the church, towns, education, science, the arts - demonstrating that American colonistswere not country bumpkins orbarbarians but a highly civilizedpeople. They lagged behind Europe in some matters but excelled

1969 OTHER BOOKS 127

the Mother Country in others - inliteracy, for instance. They wereserious readers, as evidenced bythe fact that a Philadelphia publisher brought out 1,000 sets ofBlackstone's Commentaries himself after selling 1,000 importedcopies, a fact remarked on, I believe, by Edmund Burke in hisspeech about the political sophistication of the American colonists.

Burke's term, "salutary neglect," best describes Britain's relation to the colonies until afterthe French and Indian War.Britain then introduced a seriesof regulations and in a dozenyears came the separation thatfew if any wanted or predicted.The colonists were proud to beEnglishmen but prouder still tobe free men.

The colonists, Professor Schlesinger points out, were not radicals. First, they sought to preventa usurpation of their ancient liberties and, second, even after provocations, did not interpret political separation from Great Britainas a wiping the slate clean oftheir English heritage. This bookshould make clear the differencesbetween the American strugglefor independence and the revolutions that have taken place sincethat time.

Prior to 1776 the colonists hadbuilt up a remarkable civilization,especially considering all the ob-

stacles they had to overcome. Theywere eminently capable of governing themselves and had done sothrough the years with astounding success. Regarding themselvesas responsible and mature, theyresented the Mother Country's useof the rod to dominate their affairs, especially as colonial institutions had produced leaders whooutclassed the Britishers. Europeans were highly impressed bythe stature of the men who sat inthe Continental CongressesGeorge Washington, John Adams,Thomas Jefferson, and BenjaminFranklin, just to name the giantsof that glorious age.

In this day of "instant nations,"we need to re-examine the American people on the eve of independence; hopefully we might thenunderstand the institutions whichproduced such an abundance ofgreat men. ~

~ THE AMERICA WE LOST (TheConcerns of a Conservative) byMario Pei (New York & Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1968). 177 pp., $4.95.

Reviewed by Robert M. Thornton

THE AUTHOR, Professor of Romance Philosophy at ColumbiaUniversity, offers no systematicdefense of conservative values;here instead is a collection of


short pieces containing his reflections on what is wrong with America. Several have been publishedbefore in Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Modern Age,and other magazines. It is gratifying to come across a scholarwho, though not a professionaleconomist or political scientist,can write with so much good senseon these subjects.

Many "liberals" would declarethe only thing wrong with ourcountry is that it has not changedenough. Professor Pei disagreesand makes the observation thatinstead of limiting change to thereforms necessary to ensure justice for all we have for years beencasting aside what made this nation great - throwing out the babywith the bath water, as the German saying has it.

What is the matter with theUnited States? The answer, in aword, is Statism. A nation foundedon the principle of personal freedom under limited government hasembraced collectivist ideas opposed to individual liberty andglorifying the State. This is manifested in progressive income taxes,compulsory social security taxes,

inflationary fiscal policies, bureaucratic controls and regulations,and astronomical Federal spending.

Of course, totalitarianism is notsimply a political or economicproblem; it signifies, basically anethical and moral decline. Weare,for instance, very happy to shrugoff personal responsibility; and nolonger held responsible, we findlife dull and meaningless. Thenthe cry goes up for constant handouts and entertainment instead offor opportunity and challenge.

Although imperfect, as all nations of men must of necessity be,this country was once the mostrespected and admired in theworld. But as we embrace alienideologies, we succumb to the demands of our critics to do penancefor our prosperity, as if our prosperity were at the expense of othercountries instead· of being the consequence of values held by the menwho founded this nation andshaped its institutions.

So, concludes Professor Pei,having made the wrong turn several decades ago, we should returnto the fork in the road - and takethe Right turn. ~

Documents

The Freeman 1969