THE RESULT OF THIS POLICY
The policy defined in the preceding chapter is illustrated and
its wisdom shown by the logical results thereof. The source and
constant course of wages is also discussed.
After spending seventy-five years of our national life in the
discussion of state rights, and then four years of bloody fratricidal
war, the fact that the United States of America is a nation and not
simply a confederation of sovereign states was definitely determined.
Occasionally, we still hear people speak of “_these_ United States.”
But there are none. This one is all there is. The term “these United
States” comes dangerously near a treasonable utterance. The court of
last resort rendered its decree at Appomattox that the United States of
America is “one and inseparable, now and forever.”
After this perplexing question was settled, the government proceeded to
foster industry in the largest possible way. For instance, certain men
proposed that, if properly encouraged, they would construct a railroad
to the Pacific coast. They were reminded that only a few years before
it had been said that not even a wagon road could be builded across the
Rocky Mountains. “Yes,” says General Dodge, “but we will build a
railroad.” They asked a subsidy of money, to be returned as soon as
possible, and one-half of a twenty mile strip of land in perpetuity.
They were given both. The land was then worthless. Do you realize that
if the land that was given to the Union Pacific Railroad on condition
that the road should be builded to the Pacific Ocean, had been given to
the Astors, on condition that the Astors should go out and look at it
each year, it would have broken the Astors. There was no way to go out
to see it. In effect, the government kept most of the land for
homesteaders and gave half of certain adjacent tracts to railroads on
condition that they make it worth while for homesteaders to occupy the
reserved portions. What is the result? The Rocky Mountain Empire,
yielding all the minerals, all the metals, lumber, fruits, vegetables,
with millions of people living in happy homes, and all because the
government fostered enterprise and said: “Achieve and be happy.”
Where there is incentive there will always be achievement.
ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION
Permit one more illustration. One thousand can be furnished as well as
one. Certain men proposed to the government that on certain conditions
they would build a silk mill. The government exclaimed: “A silk mill in
the United States! We produce no raw silk.” This was promptly
acknowledged and likewise the higher wages necessary to be paid in
America. Still they promised to build a silk mill if they were
permitted to buy their raw silk wherever they could find it without
paying anything to the government for the privilege, and, provided
further, that foreigners who might bring manufactured silk to this
market, in competition with the product of their mill, should be
required to pay sixty cents out of every dollar received, into the
treasury of the United States for the maintenance of this government,
and go home contented and happy with forty cents. The government
replied: “Go build your mill. If you cannot live on those terms, we
will make the foreigner pay sixty-five cents.” What is the result?
Ninety million dollars’ worth of raw silk is annually imported and
forty-five million dollars are paid in wages to the workmen
manufacturing it. Achieve and be happy!
WHAT BECOMES OF WAGES?
What becomes of this forty-five million dollars in wages annually paid
by the silk mills of America? Every dollar of it is spent. We all spend
all we get. We spend it for necessaries or comforts or luxuries or
taxes or foolishness, or we expend it for a house, or a bond, or we
deposit it in a bank and someone else spends or expends it.
Let us assume that this particular forty-five million dollars of silk
mill wages is paid to western farmers for food. The western farmers
send it east for knit goods and shoes and these factories pay it out
again to labor and labor sends it west again for food. How often will
wages make the circuit?
A man earns, say, five dollars and spends it at night for food and
clothes. The merchant spends his profit and pays the balance to the
producer of food and clothes. The producer keeps it as a reward for his
toil or pays it for wages. In either event, it goes again for food and
clothes. William McKinley estimated that wages would thus make the
circuit and come back to the wage earner ten times per annum. I believe
the estimate conservative. A million men annually earning one thousand
dollars each, makes one billion dollars in wages. This billion dollars
going to the merchant ten times a year and back to labor as often,
makes an aggregate of ten billion dollars in trade every twelve months.
A SUMMARY OF ACHIEVEMENT
Now, hold your breath. The figures showing the material result of fifty
years of applied common sense, will stagger you.
When the European war began, our farms were producing more than the
farms of any other country on the map. Our mines yielded gold by
trainload annually, and we unloaded from coastwise ships and railways
on the soil of Ohio alone more iron ore than any other country in the
world produced. In fifty years we had builded as many miles of railroad
as all the rest of the world, and these roads, before the government
began fixing rates, were carrying our freight for one-third of what was
charged for like service elsewhere beneath the sky. We cut from our
forests one hundred million feet of lumber for every day of the
calendar year, and annually pumped from the earth beneath 250,000,000
barrels of petroleum, over sixty-five percent of the world’s gross
product. Owing to the rapid exchange of wages for necessaries and
comforts and then again for wages, our domestic trade had become five
times as large as the aggregate international commerce of creation. Our
shops and factories turned out more finished products than all the
shops and all the factories of Great Britain and France and Germany
combined, plus five thousand million dollars’ worth every twelve
months, and we paid out as much in wages as all the rest of the human
family. Achieve and be happy!
I hope you will understand that I am not defending either our form of
government or our policy. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton,
Benjamin Franklin and those other immortal men, may have been
blithering idiots when they chose to create a republic instead of a
democracy. I only cite the fact that they did create a republic. We
_might_ have accomplished more had the government tilled the lands,
built the ships, constructed and operated the railroads, erected the
factories, opened the mines, transacted the business and put everyone
on the public payroll. I only seek to make it clear that this was not
done and that we did fairly well, considering.
During all this period, the government accepted as its appropriate
function the protection of the citizen, while the citizen sought
happiness and secured it through achievement. The government sought to
protect him from murder, but did not always succeed. It tried to shield
him from robbery, but sometimes failed. It aimed to prevent extortion
but was not always successful. It did its best to see that opportunity
should knock once at every door, but did nothing to force an entrance
or insure a second call. Still, notwithstanding errors, weaknesses and
admitted inefficiency, the American citizen has been afforded better
protection against all the evils that assail mankind, than the people
of any other country and, in the pursuit of happiness, Americans have
enjoyed far wider liberty of action, and an infinitely greater percent
of realization.