Part 5

The same qualities that have enabled Americans to conquer the wilderness, and to attempt tasks like the building of the Panama Canal and the sending of the battle fleet around the world, need to be applied now to our future problems; and these qualities, which include the power of self-government, together with the power of joining with others for mutual help, and, what is especially important, the feeling of comradeship, need to be applied in particular to that foremost of National problems, the problem of the preservation of our National resources.

The question has two sides. In the first place, the actual destruction, or, if this is not possible, at any rate the needless waste, of the natural resources must be stopped. In the second place, so far as possible, these resources must be kept for the use of the whole people, and not handed over for exploitation to single individuals or groups of individuals.

The first point I shall not here discuss at length. It is rapidly becoming a well-settled policy of this people that we of the present generation hold the land in part as trustees for the next generation, and not exclusively for our own selfish enjoyment. Just as the farmer is a good citizen if he leaves his farm improved and not impaired to his children, and a bad citizen if he cares nothing for his children and skins the land and destroys its value in his own selfish interest; so the Nation behaves well if it treats the soil and the water and the forests as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value, and behaves badly if it leaves the land poorer to those who come after us. No farm should be so used that the soil is permitted to depreciate in value; no forest so used as permanently to impair its productivity.

The second part of the question relates to preserving and using our natural resources in the interest of the public as a whole. We do not intend to discourage individual excellence by improperly diminishing the reward for that individual excellence; on the contrary, our desire is to see that the fullest reward is given to the men of exceptional abilities, up to the point when the abilities are used to the detriment of the people as a whole. We favor the sheep man who feeds his sheep on his own range in such manner that the range increases instead of diminishes in value; and we are against the big man who does not live in the country at all, but who sends migratory bands of sheep with a few hired shepherds to wander over it, destroying pasturage and forests, and seriously impairing the value of the country for actual settlers. We are for the liberty of the individual up to, but not beyond, the point where it becomes inconsistent with the welfare of the community as a whole.

Now, to preserve the general welfare, to see to it that the rights of the public are protected, and the liberty of the individual secured and encouraged as long as consistent with this welfare, and curbed when it becomes inconsistent therewith, it is necessary to invoke the aid of the Government. There are points in which this governmental aid can best be rendered by the States; that is, where the exercise of States’ rights helps to secure popular rights, and as to these I believe in States’ rights. But there are large classes of cases where only the authority of the National Government will secure the rights of the people, and where this is the case I am a convinced and a thoroughgoing believer in the rights of the National Government. Big business, for instance, is no longer an affair of any one State; big business has become nationalized; and the only effective way of controlling and directing it, and preventing abuses in connection with it, is by having the people nationalize this control in order to prevent their being exploited by the individuals who have nationalized the business. All commerce on a scale sufficiently large to warrant any control over it by Government is nowadays inter-State or foreign commerce; and until this fact is heartily acknowledged, in particular by both courts and legislative bodies, National and State alike, the interest of the people will suffer.

Take the question of the control of the water power sites. The enormous importance of water power sites to the future industrial development of this country has only been realized within a very few years. Unfortunately, the realization has come too late as regards many of the power sites, but many yet remain with which our hands are free to deal. We should make it our duty to see that hereafter the power sites are kept under the control of the general Government for the use of the people as a whole. The fee should remain with the people as a whole, while the use is leased on terms which will secure an ample reward to the lessees, which will encourage the development and use of the water power, but which will not create a permanent monopoly or permit the development to be anti-social, to be in any respect hostile to the public good.

In this country, nowadays, capital has a National and not a State use. The great corporations which are managed and largely owned in the older States are those which are most in evidence in developing and using the mines and water powers and forests of the new Territories and new States, from Alaska to Arizona. I have been genuinely amused during the past two months at having arguments presented to me on behalf of certain rich men from New York and Ohio, for instance, as to why Colorado and other Rocky Mountain States should manage their own water power sites. Now I am sure that those men, according to their lights, are good citizens; but, naturally enough, their special interest obscures their sense of the public need; and as their object is to escape efficient control, they clamor to be put under the State instead of under the Nation. If we are foolish enough to grant their requests, we shall have ourselves to blame when we wake up to find that we have permitted another privilege to intrench itself, and another portion of what should be kept for the public good to be turned over to individuals for purposes of private enrichment.

Our people have for many years proceeded upon the assumption that the Nation controls the public land. The coal should be kept for the people, and those who mine it should pay part of the profit back to the people.

Remember also that many of the men who protest loudly against effective National action would be the first to turn round and protest against the State action if such action in its turn became effective, and would then unhesitatingly invoke the law to show that the State had no Constitutional power to act. I am a strong believer in efficient National action; and if there is one thing which I abhor more than another, it is the creation by legislative, by executive, or by judicial action of a neutral ground in which neither the State nor the Nation has power, and which can serve as a place of refuge for the lawless man, and especially for the lawless man of great wealth, who can hire the best legal counsel to advise him how to keep his abiding-place equally distant from the uncertain frontier of both State and National power.

Let me illustrate what I mean by a reference to two concrete cases. The first is the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Knight Sugar Trust case. This was really a decision rendering it exceedingly difficult for the people to devise any method of controlling and regulating the business use of great capital in inter-State commerce. It was a decision nominally against National rights, but really against popular rights, against the democratic principle of government by the people.

The second case is the so-called New York Bake-Shop case. In New York City, as in most large cities, the baking business is likely to be carried on under unhygienic conditions, conditions which tell against the welfare of the workers, and therefore against the welfare of the general public. The New York Legislature passed, and the New York Governor signed, a bill remedying these improper conditions. New York State was the only body that could deal with them; the Nation had no power whatever in the matter. Acting on information which to them seemed ample and sufficient; acting in the interest of the public and in accordance with the demand of the public, the only governmental authority having affirmative power in the matter, the Governor and the Legislature of New York, took the action which they deemed necessary, after what inquiry and study were needed to satisfy them as to the conditions and as to the remedy. The Governor and the Legislature alone had the power to remedy the abuse. But the Supreme Court of the United States possessed, and unfortunately exercised, the negative power of not permitting the abuse to be remedied. By a five to four vote they declared the action of the State of New York unconstitutional. They were, of course, themselves powerless to make the remotest attempt to provide a remedy for the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and their refusal to permit action by the State did not confer any power upon the Nation to act. In effect, it reduced to impotence the only body which did have power, so that in this case the decision, although nominally against State rights, was really against popular rights, against the democratic principle of government by the people under the forms of law.

If such decisions as these two indicated the Court’s permanent attitude, there would be real and grave cause of alarm; for such decisions, if consistently followed up, would upset our whole system of popular Government. I am, however, convinced, both from the inconsistency of these decisions with the tenor of other decisions, and furthermore from the very fact that they are in such flagrant and direct contradiction to the spirit and needs of the time, that sooner or later they will be explicitly or implicitly reversed. I mention them merely to illustrate the need of having a truly National system of government under which the people can deal effectively with all problems, meeting those that affect the people as a whole by affirmative Federal action, and those that merely affect the people of one locality by affirmative State action.

In dealing with future problems like this one of Conservation, we need to keep in mind the lesson taught by the American pioneer. It is a lesson that is to be found in the fact that the pioneer is so good an American. He is an American, first and foremost. The man of the West throughout the successive stages of Western growth has always been one of the two or three most typical figures, indeed I am tempted to say the most typical figure, in American life; and no man can really understand our country, and appreciate what it really is and what it promises, unless he has the fullest and closest sympathy with the ideals and aspirations of the West.

The great lesson that all of us need to learn and to keep is the lesson that it is unimportant whether a man lives North or South, East or West, provided that he is genuinely and in good faith an American; that he feels every part of the United States as his own, and that he is honestly desirous to uphold the interests of all other Americans in whatever sections of the country they may dwell.

The Tariff: A Moral Issue

Whenever men just like ourselves—probably not much better, and certainly no worse—continually fail to give us the results we have a right to expect from their efforts, we may just as well make up our minds that the fault lies, not in their personality, but in the conditions under which they work, and profit comes, not from denouncing them, but in seeing that the conditions are changed. This is especially true of tariff-making. It has been conclusively shown, by experiments repeated again and again, that the methods of tariff-making by Congress, which have now obtained for so many years, cannot, from the very nature of the case, bring really satisfactory results. I think that the present tariff is better than the last, and considerably better than the one before the last; but it has certainly failed to give general satisfaction. I believe this country is fully committed to the principle of protection; but it is to protection as a principle; to protection primarily in the interest of the standard of living of the American workingman. I believe that when protection becomes, not a principle, but a privilege and a preference—or, rather, a jumble of privileges and preferences—then the American people disapprove of it. Now, to correct the trouble, it is necessary, in the first place, to get in mind clearly what we want, and, in the next place, to get in mind clearly the method by which we hope to obtain what we want. What we want is a square deal in the tariff as in everything else; a square deal for the wage-earner; a square deal for the employer; and a square deal for the general public. To obtain it we must have a thoroughly efficient and well-equipped tariff commission.

The tariff ought to be a material issue and not a moral issue; but if instead of a square deal we get a crooked deal, then it becomes very emphatically a moral issue. What we desire in a tariff is such measure of protection as will equalize the cost of production here and abroad; and as the cost of production is mainly labor cost, this means primarily a tariff sufficient to make up for the difference in labor cost here and abroad. The American public wants the American laboring man put on an equality with other citizens, so that he shall have the ability to achieve the American standard of living and the capacity to enjoy it; and to do this we must see that his wages are not lowered by improper competition with inferior wage-workers abroad—with wage-workers who are paid poorly and who live as no Americans are willing to live. But the American public does not wish to see the tariff so arranged as to benefit primarily a few wealthy men.

As a means toward the attainment of its end in view we have as yet devised nothing in any way as effective as a tariff commission. There should be a commission of well-paid experts; men who should not represent any industry; who should be masters of their subjects; of the very highest character; and who should approach the matter with absolute disregard of every outside consideration. These men should take up in succession each subject with which the tariff deals and investigate the conditions of production here and abroad; they should find out the facts and not merely accept the statements of interested parties; and they should report to Congress on each subject as soon as that subject has been covered. Then action can be taken at once on the particular subject concerned, while the commission immediately proceeds to investigate another. By these means log-rolling would be avoided and each subject treated on its merits, while there would be no such shock to general industry as is implied in the present custom of making sweeping changes in the whole tariff at once. Finally, it should be the duty of some Governmental department or bureau to investigate the conditions in the various protected industries, and see that the laborers really are getting the benefit of the tariff supposed to be enacted in their interest. Moreover, to insure good treatment abroad we should keep the maximum and minimum provision.

The same principle of a first-class outside commission should be applied to river and harbor legislation. At present a river and harbor bill, like a tariff bill, tends to be settled by a squabble among a lot of big selfish interests and little selfish interests, with scant regard to the one really vital interest, that of the general public. In this matter the National Legislature would do well to profit by the example of Massachusetts. Formerly Massachusetts dealt with its land and harbor legislation just as at Washington tariff and river and harbor laws have been dealt with; and there was just the same pulling and hauling, the same bargaining and log-rolling, the same subordination of the general interest to various special interests. Last year Governor Draper took up the matter, and on his recommendation the Legislature turned the whole business over to a commission of experts; and all trouble and scandal forthwith disappeared. Incidentally, this seems to me to be a first-class instance of progressive legislation.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.