Footnote 31:
From the Chicago Evening Post.
We beg the advocates of the Postal Telegraph scheme not to stop. The
justification of what they propose to do, if in accordance with their
theories of government, will cover many other things necessary to be
done. After having taken possession of the telegraph lines, and
increased the number of officers necessary to insure the harmonious
working of their plan, let them turn their attention to the Express
business of the country, in which there is room for great reform. This,
we are told, is practically a monopoly, by the greed of which the
transmission of merchandise and valuables from one part of the country
to another is often slow, and always expensive. If it is the province of
the government to take charge of the telegraphic correspondence of the
people, surely there is no abuse of authority in undertaking to carry,
and in making a monopoly of carrying, their express packages; and the
reasons which commend this telegraph scheme cover and justify the
extension of governmental interference with the small freight that the
express lines usually convey. We state these reasons _seriatim_, just as
the advocates of governmental telegraphing rehearse them. They are,
first, cheapness; second, certainty; third, celerity; fourth, promotion
of intercourse and traffic between different sections of the country;
and consequently, fifth, the wider dissemination of intelligence. If
these are sufficient,—and no promoter of the telegraph scheme can doubt
that they are,—they admit of still wider application. Most of the
telegraphic correspondence of the country is of a business character,
and so most of the service rendered by the express is of the same sort.
The telegraph and the express are the adjuncts of our great commercial
transactions by which people are fed, warmed, clothed, and supplied with
the implements and raw material of labor. There is, then, no reason why
the railroads, which are only larger instruments of the same kind,
should be omitted in the list of things that the government may manage
and monopolize. It is surely of as much moment that a train-load of
flour or butter should be carried with cheapness, certainty, and
celerity from Chicago to New York, as that the despatch announcing its
shipment or arrival should be sent in the same way; and if we cannot
manage the latter to our satisfaction, how shall we expect to manage the
former? As it will never do to have a competitor in this carrying trade,
the government must also take possession of all the canals. Of course
these recommendations will, if adopted, largely increase the salaried
officers of the country, and make our political contests tenfold more
corrupt, acrimonious, and dangerous than now; but as the Pennsylvania
editor said about protection—“If protection is a good thing, we cannot
have too much of it!”—so say we of officials, the more the better.
But we see still larger fields that the government may occupy, this
interference theory being established as the rule of its relation to the
people. As the growing of wheat and the production of meats, to supply
the prime necessity of our nature for food, are of far more importance
than the correspondence which occurs in getting the wheat and beef to
the consumer or than the method of their transit; as the people must die
if they have nothing to eat; as farming, as now done, is a careless,
haphazard business, pursued without the aid of adequate machinery or the
proper division of labor; as the cost of farm produce might, by the
universal adoption of improved methods, be greatly cheapened, thus
promoting the increase of the race, and adding immensely to the general
happiness, the government ought, first of all, to take the agriculture
of the country into its keeping. Then how easy, if it should be imposed
upon by the men who make agricultural implements, to turn manufacturer
at some hundred convenient places and make all the tools it might need.
Just think of the immense advantage of being able to go to a government
warehouse and get a barrel of flour for half what it now costs, or of
stepping into government shambles from which, of course, the people will
be fed, and getting a rib-roast or tenderloin steak at a figure that
would make our city butchers ashamed. Of course, every farmer would be a
government officer, sure of his pay, and without the most powerful
stimulus to exertion; but if each man who handles a letter or sends or
delivers a despatch is to have the livery of public service on his back,
why not? Finally, as food is useless unless cooked, we see the
necessity—still reasoning on premises which the telegraph men furnish—of
having the cooking and management of the kitchens of the country turned
over to such officers as the government shall select. For doing this,
just as soon as the plan of governmental telegraphing is put into
operation, the reasons will be entirely conclusive. What, we ask, can be
of more importance than that our food should be of good quality,
healthfully prepared, quickly and neatly served, and peacefully eaten.
Put the National Telegraph by the side of the National Dinner, and see
how it is dwarfed by the comparison. Contrast the annoyance of a
telegram overcharged, missent, or delayed, with the unutterable horrors
of indigestion. Look at our hotels, restaurants, and private houses, and
see how cruelly the people suffer; then think how perfect, how quick,
and how cheap the relief that the government might extend. We well know
that, had government cooking always been the rule of the nation, the
great rebellion would not have occurred. The war was the result of the
bad food and worse kitchens of our brethren of the South. It had its
origin in hot bread and hog, which ruined the stomachs, perverted the
morals, and inflamed the worst passions of the South. As we have already
sacrificed half a million of lives, and ten thousand millions of
treasure to repair the consequences of government carelessness in
suffering national cookshops to remain unestablished, we cannot make too
much haste in opening them now.
But we have adduced examples enough to show the absurd conclusions to
which the reasoning of these telegraphic schemers logically leads. Our
government, good as it is, has objectionable features enough now. The
disparities in the condition of the people are due more to the operation
of unjust law than to differences in natural gifts; and the great source
of mischief is in the usurpation by government of functions it ought
never to exercise. We do most assuredly need reform; but we shall not
find it in enlarging the sphere within which the government may act, nor
in curtailing or circumscribing the liberty of the individual. Let us go
in the other direction; and instead of making the paternal rule of
Continental monarchies the object of imitation, let us extend the
application of the American idea. Instead of clothing government with
new powers, let us take from what it has. Instead of creating an army of
new officers, let us dismiss half we have got. Instead of increasing the
patronage of the executive and the causes of political contention, let
us give greater simplicity to our system and greater security to the
citizen and the state. Instead of training the people more and more to
rely upon the government to supply their business, social, and
educational wants, let us give greater scope to their individuality, so
that they may more and more rely upon themselves. Our government differs
from all other governments in the world in nothing so much as in its
capacity of letting the people alone in their houses, their business,
their religion, and their pleasure. Our people differ from all other
peoples in nothing so much as in the fact that, comparatively, they are
let alone. All that the country is, it owes to the partial freedom of
its citizens to go where they please, do what they please, and think and
speak their own thoughts; which freedom, by cultivating strength,
self-reliance, enterprise, intelligence, and patriotism, has wrought the
work we see before us. This freedom is to be still more extended over
ground which inherited abuses now occupy, and the consequences will
astonish the world!
No, no! Our government is not a wet-nurse for all the schemes which the
ingenuity of men may invent, or which incomplete and half-seen
considerations of public convenience may recommend. It is primarily an
organization for the protection of person and property, and the
punishment of crime. And to keep it within its sphere, and to
disassociate it, as far as possible, from the usual business of the
citizen, is to insure its life. Leave to the people all that individual
or corporate effort may do, and they will do it well. Leave to the
government the preservation of order and the punishment of crime, and
the governed will have no reason to complain.