“You have given me your ideas and objections in regard to the
present state of affairs”, I commenced my next conversation with
Mr. Forest, “you have expressed, occasionally, your conviction that
the organization of society at the end of the last century needed
reformation. Will you, now, kindly state how you would have reformed
the evils of my time?”
Mr. Forest smiled. “I do not pretend to be a reformer who can perfect
mankind or even all human institutions. Please do not forget that we
are all cooking with water. What many people style the social question
is insolvable. The variety established by nature will always be felt.
You can never create conformity. We will always have smart and stupid,
industrious and lazy people. The clever women and men will not submit
to an equal distribution of the product of labor, nor feel satisfied
under such a state of legal robbery. And if the results of labor are
distributed according to the ability of the workers the people earning
less than others will always grumble. It is, therefore, impossible to
make all men content with their lot, no matter how you may distribute
the earnings of the working force. But the fact that it is impossible
to make everybody absolutely happy does not release us from the
obligation to use our best efforts toward improving the lot of mankind”.
“I understand your position. But let me hear what reforms you would
have inaugurated or proposed, if you had lived at the close of the last
century”.
“The society of your day suffered chiefly”, said Mr. Forest, “from
unsystematized production, the monopolies that made possible the
amassing of immense fortunes at the expense of the people, and the want
of intelligence on the part of the workers who would either submit
to these extortions or strike, instead of forming mutual producing
associations. Another great evil was the injustice of your taxation. In
all the fields of human activity the workers produced values without
a clear knowledge of what was really required. There was, generally,
such a surplus of the products of farming that the farmers had to
sell everything so cheap that they could hardly earn a living. Some
factories worked day and night until the markets were overstocked with
goods. Then these goods were sold at any price obtainable, sometimes
below cost. Numerous bankruptcies followed, the factories had to stop
their work, and the manufacturers as well as the working women and men
had to suffer from a term of idleness until the surplus of goods was
exhausted. Then a feverish activity commenced again”.
“How would you have remedied this evil?” I asked.
“A national bureau of statistics should have ascertained both the
average yearly consumption and the capacity of the different trades
and their plants for the production of the necessities of life”.
“Should the government have given to each trade an order for the work
to be done during the year?” I queried, “and how should the trades have
divided such an order among the members so that all would be satisfied?”
“The National Government should simply have ascertained the amount of
the yearly consumption of the various articles, the capacity of the
respective trades for furnishing such articles, and should then have
left the regulation of production to the members of each trade. Such
an arrangement would have given each trade a clear idea of its task.
The chosen representatives of each trade could have subdivided the
work. A heavy overproduction would easily have been prevented, while
competition both among the factories and the individual members would
have been maintained, thus securing the best kind of work, while under
the present system of production we are suffering from a want both of
quantity and quality”.
“But if any trade should have produced more goods than needed”, I
objected.
“That would have been its own fault, and it would, as a matter of
course, have had to stand the consequences”, Mr. Forest replied.
“But, suppose, the members of a certain trade had formed a trust,
thereby forcing the people to pay exorbitant prices for the products of
their guilds?” I objected again.
“A national law should have protected the people against an attempted
robbery of this kind, threatening all guilty parties with confiscation
of all their property and with the operation of all the plants by
men hired by the administration, until the plants could be sold to
operators. The importation of the respective goods from other countries
would cover the deficiency until all the plants were again in full
operation”.
“But how would you have stopped the frequent strikes of our days?” I
asked.
“By encouraging the workman to start mutual producing associations”,
Mr. Forest answered. “I have mentioned already how mutual producing
associations could easily have been started. A dozen tailors or
shoemakers could have rented lofts with steam power, purchased a few
sewing and other machines and sold their products directly to other
workmen, thus securing the profits of the manufacturer, wholesaler,
retailer and workman, or in other words all the profit that was in
the labor of the members of the association. There was no law in your
time to forbid such enterprises or to prevent all other workmen from
buying their boots, shoes, clothing, furniture and all other articles
from such associations solely. As soon as the manufacturers noticed
that all the laborers were commencing to deal with mutual associations
they would gladly have sold their plants at a very fair price, and yet
cheaper than a new association could have procured them. I imagine
there was very little pleasure in conducting a factory or any other
business having many employees in 1887, judging from the frequent
strikes that made it almost impossible for many business men to figure
on prices six months ahead, or to close contracts. Therefore, the
owners of factories would, I fancy, have sold their plants at very fair
prices. And the workmen could not have done a smarter thing than to
cause the former manufacturers to remain with them as business managers
at a fair salary. This would have secured a smooth running of the
concern. Under such an arrangement the workers would have become the
owners of the business concerns, paying for them in installments, they
would have secured full pay for their work, and the former owner would
have disposed of all his former cares, receiving a fair compensation
for his plant and his services”.
“I think that most of the manufacturers and businessmen of my days were
so worried by the constantly increased demands of their employees, that
they would have gladly sold their property”, I remarked, “but what
would have become of the wholesale and retail dealers?”
“They could have sold their goods and have either joined the producing
associations as salesmen or gone into another business”, Mr. Forest
replied. “And in a similar way the workmen of your time could have
organized one trade after another, until the entire manufacturing
industry had been based on large guilds, the latter consisting mostly
of mutual producing societies”.
“But our workmen preferred to avoid the responsibility, care and risk
of business enterprises. They would rather have worked for wages
and, occasionally tried to increase them, sometimes by striking and
preventing other laborers taking the places of the strikers”, I said.
“You are aware of this state of affairs?”
“Yes”, Forest answered, “and it must have been a sad spectacle to see
intelligent men who could just as well have been independent, remain
journeymen, trying to bulldoze their employer to pay them more than he
volunteered, and to intimidate other workers from performing duties
at a rate of wages that would have satisfied them. The fact that your
workingmen did not possess sufficient enterprise, mental discipline
and independence, to establish mutual producing associations, has
driven humanity into communism. That this damnable form of society
is a failure is a matter of course. When humanity was at so low a
standard that shoemakers had not spunk or smartness enough to start
and run the shoeshops on a co-operative basis, and tailors could not
manage tailorshops on a similar plan, it was simply impossible to
make successful an organization which had the power to regulate all
production and all consumption. But the principle of mutual productive
associations is, in my opinion, the one best adapted for the solution
of the labor question, because it secures for the members of the
associations the pay for the full real value of their labor and keeps
alive competition, the strongest factor in securing the progress of
mankind. But whether we shall ever reach this solution of the labor
question seems doubtful”.
“I am inclined to believe in your plan”, I admitted, “so far as
laborers engaged in manufacturing establishments are concerned. But
how would you have organized the work on the farms, the employment
of professional man, railroad officials and laborers, employees on
streetcars, merchants and bankers and their clerks and those who follow
many other avocations?”
“Let us go slowly”, Mr. Forest answered with a smile. “Let us first
look into the agrarian question. Reformers of society have always
met the greatest difficulty when they came across the farmers. Under
communistic rule the country people have but very little love for the
soil they are tilling because they know it is not theirs, that their
toiling does not benefit them, and they feel that the city people are
favored at their expense. If I had been asked at the end of the last
century how I would treat the land question I would have advocated a
law ordaining that no farmer should have more than forty acres of land.
If any farmer had more at the time of the passing of the bill he could
keep it during his lifetime, but he would be compelled to dispose of it
in his last will, so that a single person should not receive more than
forty acres. On a forty acre piece a farmer can make a fair living,
and although the farmers were by no means prosperous in your days, yet
there was still a fair prospect for the increase of the value of land
by reason of the increase of the population, augmented as it was by
immigration”.
“But how would you have proposed to stop overproduction by the farming
population through which the agricultural interests were suffering in
1887?” I inquired.
“The National Bureau of Statistics would have served the farmers just
as well as the rest of the people. The farmers should have formed
state associations and should have laid out plans for the production
according to the capacity of the farms. And, after ascertaining that
their capacity of production was far ahead of consumption, they should
have used the surplus of land for the production of new things that
could, perhaps, find a market, or they could have saved their labor by
not producing more goods than they could sell in supplying the real
demands of the market, thus working less.”
“Under your plan every person would not have had a right to land”, I
remarked.
“Yes, everybody would, who could pay the price the owner demanded for
it”, Mr. Forest said. “Not everybody can own a farm. Did you own one?”
“I did not”.
“Very well. Under your communistic system nobody owns a piece of ground
large enough to put a stick into”.
“How would you have regulated the professional services?”
“By passing laws establishing rates to be charged for professional
services. And the laws I would have simplified by doing away with the
abominable confusion resulting from the innumerable decisions forming
precedents. For a long time I did not believe it until I found positive
statements to the effect that a trading nation like the Americans, at
the end of the nineteenth century, had neither a national criminal law,
nor a national commerce law. This fact and the confusion caused by the
conflicting precedent decisions that could always be quoted by either
of the contesting lawyers in a suit must have made the United States,
in your days, a paradise for swindlers and for lawyers who cared not so
much for the upholding of the law, as for a retainer”.
“Such were the charges frequently made against the law and lawyers in
my days”, I said. “But now tell me what you would have done with the
railroad and telegraph employees, with--”
“Let us stop right here”, Mr. Forest interrupted. “I would have
purchased all the railroads and all the telegraph lines of the country
at a fair price. I would have issued United States bonds to pay for
them. I would have used the income of the roads and lines to pay
running expenses and the interest on the bonds issued, and the surplus
in the United States treasury I would have applied to paying off the
bonds”.
“But would not this proposition of yours, if carried into effect, have
brought about the same horrors you declare the concentration of power
in the hands of the administration has brought down on humanity of the
twentieth century?” I asked.
“No. For that the officers would not be numerous enough”, Mr. Forest
replied; “and I remember distinctly, that in your days civil service
reform had been instituted, to a certain extent, in the appointment
of federal officers. I have read conflicting opinions about it. Some
writers claimed a frequent change of the officers to be a fundamental
principle of republican institutions. Others ridiculed this notion.
Every man of common sense would keep a man who knew and performed the
duties of his position well. And the nation should simply do the same
regardless of the party affiliations of the employee, thus securing
a good public service. I remember that letter carriers and other
employees of the postoffice department could not be removed without
cause. Now, if this principle had been applied to all the clerical and
subordinate officers, if all the railroad and telegraph officials,
when the nation took charge of these institutions, had been retained
at the salaries they were receiving at that time, so long as they did
their work well, then there would have been no trouble. Uncle Sam would
have paid just as much, if not more, than the former corporations did,
and by retaining the whole force he could have united the railroad
and telegraph lines with the postal service after the fashion already
prevailing, at that time, in Germany”.
“That theory sounds very plausible, certainly”.
“It is very remarkable that such a smart and energetic people,
_trading_ as much as our forefathers did, should have allowed the
principal means of commerce, the railroad and telegraph lines, to be in
the hands of private corporations which, as a matter of course, managed
them simply with a view of paying as large dividends as possible to
the shareholders,--sometimes for “a wheel within a wheel”, for members
of the inner circle. In the historical works of your time I frequently
note expressions of astonishment and wrath because knights, during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Europe, stopped merchants passing
the roads below their castles, and demanded a part of the travellers’
goods as a toll, or the payment of a certain sum of money for which
they agreed either to let the merchants travel in peace or to furnish
them with protection for the rest of their journey. These knights had
to risk their lives when they undertook to collect a toll from the
merchants, for the latter not unfrequently showed fight; they knew how
to handle a lance or a sword and they had their goods protected by
armed men. More than one of the enterprising, toll-levying knights died
on the highway, where he had tried to attach a share of the merchant’s
earnings. But the gentlemen controlling the highways of traffic at the
end of the last century could levy new tolls, whenever they pleased.
All they had to do was to sit down in Delmonico’s or some other good
restaurant, and over a few bottles of champagne resolve to do so. There
was no danger connected with this business of toll levying in your
days, Mr. West, except the danger of a headache when the champagne
happened to be poor. It was a very remarkable state of affairs, and
it is a striking proof of the general fairness and good nature of the
railroad magnates of 1887 that they treated the people as well as they
did. Still, it was a ridiculous spectacle to see the principal highways
of such a business people controlled by private corporations that
virtually did precisely what they pleased”.
“The gas works, street railways and waterworks of cities you would have
had managed by the city authorities, I suppose?” I said.
“Indeed, that is what I would have done”, Mr. Forest replied. “But I
would first have extended the power of the national administration over
all the forest and mining lands then in the possession of the United
States. If the national government had taken care of the remnants of
the immense forests that once covered the larger part of this vast
territory, we would not at present suffer from a lack of timber”.
“What would you have done with the bankers and merchants?”
“Nothing”, Mr. Forest answered. “The different mutual productive
associations would have needed men to manage such business affairs
as were outside the management of the factory, attended to by the
former manufacturer. For the workmen would soon have found out that it
required more than the manual labor of the toilers to build up and run
a large business establishment. And the owners of grocery stores would,
if similar establishments had been started by consuming societies, have
sold their stock on hand and secured places as managers or clerks of
the new stores”.
“I suppose that under the system proposed by you all the old-fashioned
stores would have been forced to close out”, I said, “because the
different guilds would have purchased goods at wholesale and would have
sold them to their members at a low cash price. The storekeepers that
were not able to secure positions in the stores of the different guilds
would have been forced to look out for some other employment;--a rather
hard lot for many of them”.
“The change in the mode of production would not have been sudden”, Mr.
Forest explained, “but would have been brought about gradually, thus
giving the business people, perhaps thirty years time to let their
children join guilds instead of becoming storekeepers and traders. And
there is no reason why enterprising merchants who had a fine taste in
selecting goods, should not have retained a large number of customers.
It is not cheapness alone that attracts buyers, and in the country,
where there were no factories, etc., close at hand, stores would have
to be kept”.
“You said you would have passed laws preventing farmers owning more
than forty acres of land”, I said, “Would you have also limited the
amount of city property to be owned by any one man?”
“The possession of one house ought to have satisfied every fair-minded
man”, Mr. Forest continued. “Nobody can deny that the accumulation of
fortunes amounting to many millions in the hands of a few people,
while hundreds of thousands could earn hardly more than a living, was a
state of affairs which made this damnable communism possible”.
“But how would you have been able to prevent this?” I queried with some
curiosity.
“By making the taxation of inherited property the principal assessment
for the maintenance of the national, state and local governments as
well as of the schools. I would have proposed a tax of one percent on
all property inherited by a single person, amounting upward to $10,000.
An inheritance amounting to $20,000 I would have taxed two percent,
$30,000 three percent, $100,000 ten percent, $200,000 twenty percent,
$500,000 fifty percent. If anybody left a fortune yielding a larger sum
than $250,000 to each heir, the surplus should have been considered
as an income to humanity, the national, state and local governments
sharing therein in a just proportion”.
“Would not such a law have acted as a check upon the ambition and the
enterprise of the people?” I asked.
“If it had prevented people amassing immense fortunes it would have
served a good purpose. It would not have lessened but protected
competition”, Mr. Forest answered. “Men possessing twenty or fifty
millions of dollars and using them without regard for the rights
of other people, were very dangerous. They were in a position to
annihilate their competitors, and they frequently used their power
unmercifully. Thus by increasing their millions and by killing
competition they were paving the way for communism. And was it not
unfair that a man who had amassed by all manner of means such an
enormous fortune could leave it to a son who would continue the work of
killing competitors with smaller means? What could the most able man
accomplish in an avocation, if he had against him a man who possessed,
perhaps, very little ability, but who was unscrupulously using his
millions to attain his ends? Parents might leave their children enough
to place their dear ones beyond the reach of want but they should not
enable them to prevent the children of poorer parents having a fair
show to get ahead in life”.
“You would have met with considerable resistance to such a proposition
in my days”, I remarked.
“I fancy the millionaires would have objected”, Mr. Forest assented.
“Still, I think that such a law would have served the best interest
of both the children of rich parents and humanity in general. Nothing
but a law of this kind could have stemmed the tide of communism and
anarchy. A child inheriting $250,000 ought to be satisfied with his lot
and ought to let the surplus go to the defraying of the expenses of the
government. By sacrificing a part of their enormous fortunes, the heirs
would have saved the rest, and would have weakened the communistic
tendency of your days. And it appears more than doubtful to me whether
the possession of such enormous properties made these wealthy people
good, or even happy and contented”.
“If such a law had been passed in 1887 most of the millionaires would
have converted their property into cash and emigrated to Europe”, I
objected.
“I suppose they would have done so”, Mr. Forest admitted. “But I am,
nevertheless, convinced that a law of this kind would not only have
been just but that it would have done a great deal to save humanity
from communism. Civilized countries would have been obliged to pass a
similar law at the same time”.
“The temptation to avoid the consequences of the statute would have
been very great”, I remarked. “Many people would have tried to evade
the tax by declaring to the authorities a smaller amount of property
than they really owned, or by presenting during their life time, a part
of their fortune to their children”.
“Any attempt at fraud should have been punished by a confiscation
of all the property”, said Mr. Forest. “And as for gifts they could
have been taxed at the same rate as inheritances from one percent up
to fifty.--But such a law would have been necessary only during the
first fifty or sixty years of a new order of things. As soon as mutual
producing associations were in general operation, selling their goods
directly from the factories to the consumers, and buying all the
necessities of life and commodities, as far as possible, at wholesale,
and selling them a little above cost price, there would have been
little occasion for men to amass millions of dollars. The number of
middlemen and traders would have largely decreased. Everybody would
have been compelled to do work of some kind and would have received
a compensation according to both the quantity and quality of his
performances”.
“But would not cliques like the one you are charging with having
control of your government have taken possession of a mutual producing
association, thus depriving the clever workers of a part of their
earnings and paying the poorer men more for their work than they
deserved?” I queried.
“In such a case the good men could have left an association, where
they were cheated and joined another partnership. Good laborers are
always appreciated wherever competition rules. But the association,
thus driving away their ablest members, would soon have been unable to
compete with others. Difficulties, therefore, could have been regulated
without much trouble”.
“You must advocate, as a matter of course mutual insurance companies
among the guilds for the protection of the members against accidents,
sickness, infirmity and old age, and these mutual insurance companies
would, perhaps, have also written life and fire policies?” I suggested.
“That would, indeed, have been a consequence of the whole system that
would unite the few advantages of communism with the benefits of
competition”, Mr. Forest answered.
“Would you have encouraged immigration?” I asked. “At the end of the
nineteenth century, many honest, liberal and fair-minded people, whom
nobody could fairly class as know-nothings, were of the opinion that
the United States had all the foreign elements the country could
assimilate, and that the rest of the public lands should be preserved
for the children of the people living in the Union, in the year of our
Lord 1887. The objection against further immigration was largely due to
the actions of the German and Irish dynamiters”.
“I can imagine”, Mr. Forest answered, “that some of the customs and
notions of the numerous immigrants of your time were objectionable to
the native Americans, and that the crimes of the anarchists, their
crazy revolt against the laws of a country that had offered them
hospitality, must naturally have created a deep emotion among the
Anglo-Americans. But I think they had, nevertheless, many reasons for
encouraging immigration, especially under your form of production. A
strict execution of the laws of the country”, he continued, after a
pause, “against _all_ transgressors, native as well as transplanted,
would have done the country good and have made all attempts to restrict
immigration entirely unnecessary, all the more so, as the really
objectionable foreigners could reach the United States via Canada or
Mexico if they desired strongly to become inhabitants of the United
States.”
“These arguments were frequently used in my time,” I remarked.
“The comparatively small harm done by immigrants was largely
over-balanced by the many advantages the citizens of the United States
obtained through the large influx of people from Europe”, said Mr.
Forest. “The very fact that hundreds of thousands of able-bodied
people, whose rearing and education had cost the European countries
millions of dollars, landed on American shores was a great gain to the
United States. The very presence of these men and women increased the
value of the lands or city lots where they settled, _thus enriching the
property owners_. Many of the immigrants were well trained laborers and
mechanics, others artists and scholars. All these men and women were
not familiar with the ways and means of their new country, many of them
were unable to speak the English language, and they all had, therefore,
to start in the very lowest places of American business life--_thus
naturally elevating all the inhabitants of the United States in a more
or less degree, to higher positions in life_. Many of these people,
coming from all parts of Europe, were ably and well trained, and
they became successful competitors of those, who were here before
their arrival. But the constant stream of people from Europe to the
United States _was, nevertheless, steadily enriching and elevating
the American people_, and all the blows aimed at immigration were,
therefore, unwise, and the legislators who proposed such blows remind
me of the man who intended to kill the goose that laid the golden
eggs”.
“It is, of course, impossible to advance social theories to which
everybody will agree”, Mr. Forest said in conclusion. “I maintain,
however, that all such theories should be based on two fundamental
principles. They should have as an aim the establishment of a state
of society, where everybody should be protected against an undeserved
poverty, where the brain-cancer, fear of an undeserved poverty, should
be cured; and they should preserve competition, the power that is
permanently spurring everybody to use his best efforts to elevate
himself and humanity”.