for warnings against the perils lurking in the enormous expenditures
and the extraordinary enlargement of the duties of the state. Officials
are usually so deeply impressed with the importance of their positions
and so anxious to magnify the worth of their labors that they are prone
to take the rosiest view of any part of the great clanking machine
intrusted to their care. With the keenest pride they point to their
achievements in furthering the work of human welfare. If modesty does
not restrain them, they are certain to paint, with an artless faith
in their own abilities, the still greater work that could be done
with a slight increase of funds and a little more assistance. Not all
officials, however, permit themselves to indulge in the natural vanity
of bureaucrats. They refuse either to be blinded to the perpetual
failure of state-made civilization, or to deceive the impoverished
victims of the same costly system of modern magic. Of the very few of
this class Mr. James H. Roberts, for five years Comptroller of the
State of New York,[A] is perhaps the most conspicuous. Astray as he is
on the question of a graded inheritance tax, and trustful as he is in
the virtue of State supervision, he puts himself beyond criticism in
his opposition to the policy of State socialism, now the rage at home
and abroad. Indeed, no one could hold it up to graver reproach.
[A] He was in office from January 1, 1894, to January 1, 1899.
Whenever an observer of the signs of the times in the United States
ventures to say that they offer little food for hope, he is branded as
pessimistic or unpatriotic. He is told that if he had the confidence
in democratic institutions of a man with a good digestion and a fair
intelligence, he would know that they possess a vitality, a power of
rejuvenation, that does not belong to an autocracy nor an aristocracy.
If he is particularly despondent, and seeks to justify himself with
fact and argument, he is denounced as a dangerous agitator, or, what
is a shade more odious, as an absurd _doctrinaire_. But Mr. Roberts
has not been consigned to any such depths of contempt. He is known
as a “hard-headed business man,” a title of honor that always frees
the most ridiculous optimist from any suspicion of the theorist or
sentimentalist. Yet, as the supervisor of the finances of a great
State, he was brought in contact with a mass of phenomena that forced
upon him the conviction that something is wrong, and that if it is not
righted it will bring disaster. Indeed, I do not recall a pessimist,
however dyspeptic, nor a _doctrinaire_, however visionary, that has
struck a more melancholy note than he. In all his reports much will
be found that indicates anything but a belief that a democracy that
plunders and enslaves a people is any better than any other despotism
guilty of the same offense, or that the practice in the one case will
be productive of greater prosperity and happiness than in the other.
It is, however, in the report for 1897 that Mr. Roberts gives the
fullest expression to his apprehensions. “This country,” he says
in an elaborate argument for a graded inheritance tax, which he
believed would bring some relief to the poor and discontented, “has
just passed through the most threatening political campaign in its
history. The portents in 1896 were vastly more dangerous than those of
1860, when peace and internecine war hung in the balance. Issues were
advanced last year, and vigorously supported by a large element of the
American electorate, which, if adopted, would have undermined the very
foundations of American institutions. These issues were largely the
outgrowth of discontent among the people. The farmer, as a class, the
work people, and the small trade folk were in distress.... Hundreds
of thousands of industrious people were out of employment, the best
efforts of the farmer had been attended with poor results, and the
small tradesman and business man were worse off than if they had been
doing nothing.” In the report for the following year he spoke again of
the “public discontent and dissatisfaction with existing conditions
in this State.” Instead of joining the comfortable and contented in a
denunciation of them as a delusion, born of envy or criminal instincts,
he expressed the opinion that they had a very substantial basis. “My
four years of close official study of the State finances,” he says,
“compels me to say there is serious ground for complaint.” After giving
an impressive summary in another place of the enormous increase of
public expenditures within recent years he is moved to ask, “Whither
are we drifting?”
The answer commonly given to this question is one quite flattering
to American vanity. It is that we are drifting away from “parochial”
things and taking our proper place as a great “world power.” Having
solved all the petty problems that have absorbed our thoughts and
energies for a hundred years, we have gone forth to “take up the white
man’s burden,” and to solve the greater problems that a discriminating
Providence has so wisely confided to our ability and philanthropy. At
the same time we are going to have our say as to how the affairs of
the world outside of our narrow and cramping borders shall be managed.
Mr. Roberts, however, does not appear to take any such pleasant view
of the future. He has none of the blood of Don Quixote flowing in his
veins. The bestowal of the blessings of a Christian civilization with
machine guns upon breech-clouted savages has no attractions for him. He
sees that we have made such a disgraceful failure of the management of
the contemptible things in which we have been so ignobly absorbed that
we are threatened with national decadence! “While the contests against
unjust and oppressive taxation,” he says in his report for 1899, “have
been the contests of freedom and civil and religious liberty in the
world, it must not be forgotten that unjust and burdensome taxation
has been in all ages the most prolific cause of national decadence
as well. There are nations in Europe, once great and prosperous,” he
adds, thus recalling the warnings of Lord Salisbury’s famous speech
on the same subject, “which to-day seem dying of dry rot because, to
meet their immense expenses and to pay interest on their great bonded
debts, taxation has been increased beyond the safe limit, and the very
sources of national prosperity have been taxed so that they run dry,
or send down a rill where it should be a river. Few national diseases
are more dangerous or harder to cure than burdensome taxation. Can
any one charged with the responsibility of making tax laws,” he asks,
profoundly stirred by the startling facts that have come under his
observation, “afford to ignore the undoubted lessons of history or the
manifest tendency of the times in the matter of revenue raising and
expending?”
Obvious as is the fitting answer to this question, it is one that few
people stop to give. Both the lessons of history and the tendency
of the times are willfully and incessantly ignored. Not only are
they ignored by demagogues, who thrive most when public distress is
greatest, and by misguided philanthropists, who seek to relieve it in
ways that only intensify it. Even publicists, whose studies in history
ought to make them more familiar with the signs of social decadence
than a man of affairs with vision less extended, ignore them also. They
seem to be as insensible to the real significance of what is going
on before their eyes as the wooden totems of a burning tepee. But to
minds more alert and penetrating, even if less congested with musty
lore and fine intentions, the flight of the farming population to the
cities is something besides “a great natural movement toward urban life
that accompanies an advance in civilization”--it is a desperate but
futile attempt to escape conditions that have become too hard to be
borne. The swarms of impoverished and degraded humanity that crowd the
slums to suffocation are not altogether the product of willful sloth
and incapacity; they are due, in a measure, to the growing taxation
that has wiped out the narrow margin that separates independence
from dependence--self-support and self-respect from destitution and
pauperism. The hatred of the rich, the denunciation of capital, the
contempt for the Church, the bloody insurrections of labor, the
general feeling of rancor, accompanied by an increase of the tyranny
of trades unions and government regulations, are not the inevitable
manifestations of envy, ignorance, and criminal instincts; they are
the inevitable fruits of the perpetual aggressions in a thousand forms
that spring from politics and war. But instead of acting upon this
natural interpretation of the signs of the times and seeking to solve
the social problem in the only way that it can be solved, the “new”
reformers tormenting the world are engaged in the invention of schemes
that add to the public burdens and hasten the nation’s decay.
The reckless expenditure of public money in the United States has
not been confined to any particular political division nor to any
particular geographical section. The national, State, and municipal
governments have seemed to vie with one another in the plunder of the
taxpayer. From the North, the South, the East, and the West have come
the same complaints of excessive burdens.[B] But figures are needed to
give these statements the vividness of reality. Beginning with national
expenditures, Mr. Roberts says that during the decade from 1820 to 1830
they were $1.07 per capita; from 1851 to 1861, they were $2.06; and for
the year 1894, $6.08. “In a word,” he adds, “the per capita expense of
the national Government in 1894 was nearly six times as great as it
was in 1820, and nearly three times as great as it was in the decade
before our great civil war.” The per capita expenditures of the State
of New York in 1830 were $1.30, thirty years later they were $1.89, in
1890 they were $2.15, and “in 1897 the estimated per capita expenditure
reached the alarming amount of $4.95.” That is to say, the combined
expenditures of the State and national governments gave a rate as high
as that prevailing in France before the outbreak of the Revolution.
“The tendency to increase,” says Mr. Roberts, commenting on these
figures, “is a persistent one. In 1881 the amount expended by the State
was $9,878,214.59; in 1884, $10,479,517.31; in 1887, $14,301,102.48;
in 1890, $13,076,881.86; in 1893, $17,367,335.98; and in 1896,
$20,020,022.47.” Coming to municipal expenditures, where the hand of
the prodigal has been most lavish, Mr. Roberts says that “between 1860
and 1880 the municipal debts of our Union increased from $100,000,000
to $682,000,000, and in fifteen cities, believed to represent the
average, the increase in taxation was 362.2 per cent, while the
increase in taxable valuation was but 156.9 per cent, and of population
but 70 per cent. In the year 1860 the direct taxes for State, county,
town, and city purposes in New York were $4.90 per capita, in 1880 it
was $8.20, and in 1896 it had reached $10.43, an increase in thirty-six
years of 213 per cent.” It should be added that the bonded debt--State,
county, city, town, village, and school district--in the State is
estimated by Mr. Roberts to be $450,000,000. Is it any wonder that
people so mercilessly plundered feel that the times are out of joint?
Is it any wonder, either, that in 1896 Mr. Roberts was moved to say
that, without the discovery of new sources of revenue, “a low tax rate
would never again be enjoyed in this State”? Is it any wonder, finally,
that he declared again that if “we have not yet passed the danger limit
of taxation,” we have reached “a point where there is a deep feeling of
unrest and dissatisfaction, and where a halt should be called or there
will be danger”?
[B] From the mass of proofs of this statement in my possession
I will select only one. In a call for a convention at
Portland, Me., on the 10th of June last, of all persons
“interested in the revision of the present system of State
taxation and a more economical management of the State
affairs,” it is stated that “the expenses of the State
have increased fifty per cent in ten years, while the
wealth and population of the State have steadily declined.”
The object of the convention was “to protest against the
course of extravagance that is rapidly bringing reproach
upon the government of the State and reducing the farmers
and taxpayers to automatons to grind out revenue to be
absorbed by a rapacious and ever-multiplying horde of
office-holders, who devour the people’s substance as fast
as they produce it.” After showing how “once prosperous
farming towns and townships have been reduced to but
little better than a howling wilderness,” the call says
in conclusion: “These once prosperous farming communities
were redeemed from the native wilderness by men who were
no more temperate, industrious, or economical than the
farmers of to-day, and the prices they received for their
products were as low as, and in some instances lower than,
to-day, but the fruits of their honest toil were not drawn
from them as fast as acquired by national, State, county,
and, in many instances, by municipal extravagance, as it
is to-day.” The plundered peasantry of Spain, Italy, or
Russia, army ridden as they are, could not have made a more
just complaint.
The stock explanation of this growth of expenditure is that with
the advance of civilization the cost of government must increase in
like degree; there must be more regulation and supervision of the
activities becoming more numerous and complex. But this means, if it
means anything, that the more enlightened and humane people are, the
more difficult it is to maintain order and enforce justice, the more
inclined are they to attack and plunder one another--in a word, the
more barbarous they are. Preposterous as this theory of civilization
is, it is precisely the one upon which the American people are acting
with unparalleled energy. While we should naturally think them moving
toward a point where they could get along without government, they are
moving toward a point where they will have nothing but government.
Referring to the increase of expenditures already mentioned, Mr.
Roberts says it “corresponds almost exactly with the increase of
the number of commissions and departments.... These departments and
commissions,” he continues, “are largely for the purpose of extending
social supervision and regulation over many things which, in the
earlier days of our Commonwealth, were left to the localities or to
self-regulation.” Again he says: “The amount of State inspection
has become very great, reaching out constantly over new fields, and
employing in the aggregate an army of inspectors.... The system of
_laissez faire_, which was the rallying cry of democracy and free
government at the beginning of the century, has yielded gradually to a
system of supervision and control which monarchies never attempted....
What our State has done in this line can not probably be undone,” he
says in a repetition of his warning, “but this tendency to expand
and multiply and differentiate and segregate State supervision and
regulation must cease, or the burden will soon become too grievous to
be borne.”
But there is no warrant for the assumption that the more civilized we
are--that is, the greater our self-control--the more are we in need
of inspection and regulation. Such an explanation of the enormous
increase in public expenditure is worthless. The true explanation lies
in the greed of politicians and the delusion of social reformers. To
both of these causes must be attributed the evils that Mr. Roberts
deplores. “The truth of history,” he says, referring to the thirty-six
new offices and commissions created since 1880, “compels the statement
that it looks as if many of these creations were made not so much to
satisfy a public want as to relieve a political situation.” That is
to say, they were designed to provide spoils for the insatiable maw
of politicians. One of the most flagrant examples of this popular
method of forwarding the beneficent work of civilization and hastening
the dawn of the millennium is the State Board of Mediation and
Arbitration, created in 1886. Up to the present year it has cost the
taxpayers $195,828.57. For this expenditure little can be shown but a
shelf full of reports seldom read, and a pigeon hole of vouchers for
salaries never earned. With one of the former members of this board,
who served thirteen years and received $39,000 for his able services,
I am personally acquainted. Of my own knowledge, I can say that for
nearly three years at least his duties as commissioner never interfered
perceptibly with his duties as editor. That most of the other offices
and commissions are equally worthless there can be no doubt. Altogether
they have cost the State the startling sum of $31,768,899.85, and are
increasing the public burdens at the rate of more than $1,000,000 a
year. But their true character as asylums for decayed politicians,
or as stepping stones for ambitious young ones, and at all times
as centers of political intrigue and personal profit, is gradually
dawning upon the public. Already several Governors have demanded, in
their annual messages to the Legislature, that they be consolidated
or abolished. As yet, however, it has been impossible to relax their
grip on the taxpayer. Obedient to the instincts of their kind, they are
inventing new arguments to establish their claims to the confidence and
gratitude of the victims of their greed and incompetency.
But the creation of new and needless offices is not the only
manifestation of what Mr. Roberts fitly calls “the vicious tendencies
of legislation.” More demoralizing are the laws that actually encourage
the robbery of one class of people for the benefit of another. A
familiar example is the bounty law for the destruction of fishing
nets. Almost as soon as passed it produced a new industry--namely, the
manufacture of cheap nets, which were deposited in fishing waters,
subsequently discovered and seized by a pre-arrangement, and made the
basis of demands upon the public treasury out of proportion to their
value. So great have been the frauds perpetrated under it that the
cry for its repeal comes from every quarter. Another law even worse
morally was passed to meet the clamor of the bicyclists and bicycle
manufacturers. It provides that twenty-five per cent of the cost of
so-called good roads to be built under it shall be paid by the State.
As cities and villages are exempt from its provisions, this sum, which
comes out of the pockets of all taxpayers, urban as well as rural, is,
as Mr. Roberts says, simply “a gratuity to the towns for the benefit
of country roads.” As a sign of the moral decadence of the times, I
ought to add that one of the most powerful and effective arguments in
favor of the law was this very discrimination. Still more shameless
was one of the chief arguments in favor of the Raines liquor law. With
a moral callousness truly astounding, its advocates framed tables of
figures to show how great a percentage of taxation it would shift from
the country to the city districts. In the heated political campaign
that followed, these tables were made to do service again to save from
defeat the party responsible for the enactment. To indicate, finally,
how legislation may encourage vice, I must not omit to mention the
provision that created the Raines hotel. Under it assignation houses
have multiplied to a degree that Satan himself could not have foreseen
nor have been more enchanted with.
But the greatest inroads on the pockets of the taxpayer have been
made under the pretense of charity. I say “pretense” because it is a
gross misuse of language to decorate with so fine a word the seizure
of a man’s property under the forms of law and to devote it to the
ostensible relief of want and suffering. It is the infliction of an
aggression that has no more warrant in a court of sound morals than the
seizure of his property in disregard of the forms of law. Yet this evil
has reached such vast proportions that Mr. Roberts was moved to protest
against it. After speaking of “the tendency of the State in building up
a gigantic system” that “will call for an enormous and ever-increasing
annual expenditure for maintenance,” he expressed the belief in 1896
that “the time has come to call a halt before this burden of taxation
becomes too heavy.” He then mentioned the significant fact that while
the State spent $6,000,000 for charity, $4,800,000 for public schools,
$800,000 for the militia, it spent only $500,000 for judges’ salaries!
He pointed out also that the expenditures under the head of charity had
increased from $1,468,471.58 in 1887 to $5,888,193.74 in 1897, or over
four hundred per cent in ten years. He added the prophecy that it would
be “a matter of a short time only when the annual expenditures for
charity alone in this State will reach $10,000,000.” At that time five
large State charitable institutions were in process of construction,
and were soon to be thrown open to the public. In the following year
he reverted to the subject in still stronger terms. “God forbid,” he
says, “that I should put a straw in the way of charity rationally
directed; but my four years’ experience as comptroller ... compels me
to say that charity is dispensed in this State with an almost lavish
hand, and in my judgment it is in many cases unwisely dispensed.” In
his last report to the Legislature the aggregate cost of the fourteen
great institutions in operation, with a population of 6,621, is put at
$6,898,304.52.
That this enormous largess, wrested from the taxpayers without the
slightest consideration for their own wants and sufferings, is unwisely
dispensed in many cases Mr. Roberts furnishes the amplest proof. The
charges that he brings against this form of State activity are most
serious. They reveal the same odious traits that characterize the
management of public affairs in no wise connected with the love of
humanity. “Nearly every locality,” says Mr. Roberts, “having a State
charitable institution deals with it as though it were established
to afford that locality an avenue through which to reach the State
treasury, and in most cases, where a majority of the managers live
under or are dominated by local influence, the avenue has been
profitably traveled. The result of such predominance is combination
among local dealers, a division of the furnishing of the supplies among
them at greatly advanced prices, the palming off upon the institution
of inferior articles which would find no sale in the market, a row
with the superintendent if he undertakes to expend money outside of
the locality, and, through friction and disturbance, the work of the
institution is more or less demoralized.” He charges that “the only
aim” of some institutions “seems to be the expenditure of their entire
appropriation, irrespective of the number of inmates provided for or
the results obtained.” Putting the same charge in another way, he says
that “the cost of an institution is more frequently based upon the
amount of the appropriation granted by the Legislature than upon its
real or apparent necessities.” When it is remembered that the managers
of the institutions against whom these astonishing charges are brought
are picked people, representing much more than the average character
and ability, the conclusion is not unnatural that ward heelers and
caucus packers have no monopoly of the rotten ethics of politics.