X.

_THE CASE OF THE FORGOTTEN MAN FARTHER CONSIDERED._

There is a beautiful notion afloat in our literature and in the minds

of our people that men are born to certain "natural rights." If that

were true, there would be something on earth which was got for nothing,

and this world would not be the place it is at all. The fact is, that

there is no right whatever inherited by man which has not an equivalent

and corresponding duty by the side of it, as the price of it. The

rights, advantages, capital, knowledge, and all other goods which we

inherit from past generations have been won by the struggles and

sufferings of past generations; and the fact that the race lives,

though men die, and that the race can by heredity accumulate within

some cycle its victories over Nature, is one of the facts which make

civilization possible. The struggles of the race as a whole produce the

possessions of the race as a whole. Something for nothing is not to be

found on earth.

If there were such things as natural rights, the question would arise,

Against whom are they good? Who has the corresponding obligation to

satisfy these rights? There can be no rights against Nature, except to

get out of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle

for existence stated over again. The common assertion is, that the

rights are good against society; that is, that society is bound to

obtain and secure them for the persons interested. Society, however, is

only the persons interested plus some other persons; and as the persons

interested have by the hypothesis failed to win the rights, we come to

this, that natural rights are the claims which certain persons have by

prerogative against some other persons. Such is the actual

interpretation in practice of natural rights--claims which some people

have by prerogative on other people.

This theory is a very far-reaching one, and of course it is adequate to

furnish a foundation for a whole social philosophy. In its widest

extension it comes to mean that if any man finds himself uncomfortable

in this world, it must be somebody else's fault, and that somebody is

bound to come and make him comfortable. Now, the people who are most

uncomfortable in this world (for if we should tell all our troubles it

would not be found to be a very comfortable world for anybody) are

those who have neglected their duties, and consequently have failed to

get their rights. The people who can be called upon to serve the

uncomfortable must be those who have done their duty, as the world

goes, tolerably well. Consequently the doctrine which we are discussing

turns out to be in practice only a scheme for making injustice prevail

in human society by reversing the distribution of rewards and

punishments between those who have done their duty and those who have

not.

We are constantly preached at by our public teachers, as if respectable

people were to blame because some people are not respectable--as if the

man who has done his duty in his own sphere was responsible in some way

for another man who has not done his duty in his sphere. There are

relations of employer and employé which need to be regulated by

compromise and treaty. There are sanitary precautions which need to be

taken in factories and houses. There are precautions against fire which

are necessary. There is care needed that children be not employed too

young, and that they have an education. There is care needed that

banks, insurance companies, and railroads be well managed, and that

officers do not abuse their trusts. There is a duty in each case on the

interested parties to defend their own interest. The penalty of neglect

is suffering. The system of providing for these things by boards and

inspectors throws the cost of it, not on the interested parties, but on

the tax-payers. Some of them, no doubt, are the interested parties, and

they may consider that they are exercising the proper care by paying

taxes to support an inspector. If so, they only get their fair deserts

when the railroad inspector finds out that a bridge is not safe after

it is broken down, or when the bank examiner comes in to find out why a

bank failed after the cashier has stolen all the funds. The real victim

is the Forgotten Man again--the man who has watched his own

investments, made his own machinery safe, attended to his own plumbing,

and educated his own children, and who, just when he wants to enjoy the

fruits of his care, is told that it is his duty to go and take care of

some of his negligent neighbors, or, if he does not go, to pay an

inspector to go. No doubt it is often in his interest to go or to send,

rather than to have the matter neglected, on account of his own

connection with the thing neglected, and his own secondary peril; but

the point now is, that if preaching and philosophizing can do any good

in the premises, it is all wrong to preach to the Forgotten Man that it

is his duty to go and remedy other people's neglect. It is not his

duty. It is a harsh and unjust burden which is laid upon him, and it is

only the more unjust because no one thinks of him when laying the

burden so that it falls on him. The exhortations ought to be expended

on the negligent--that they take care of themselves.

It is an especially vicious extension of the false doctrine above

mentioned that criminals have some sort of a right against or claim on

society. Many reformatory plans are based on a doctrine of this kind

when they are urged upon the public conscience. A criminal is a man

who, instead of working with and for the society, has turned against

it, and become destructive and injurious. His punishment means that

society rules him out of its membership, and separates him from its

association, by execution or imprisonment, according to the gravity of

his offense. He has no claims against society at all. What shall be

done with him is a question of expediency to be settled in view of the

interests of society--that is, of the non-criminals. The French writers

of the school of '48 used to represent the badness of the bad men as

the fault of "society." As the object of this statement was to show

that the badness of the bad men was not the fault of the bad men, and

as society contains only good men and bad men, it followed that the

badness of the bad men was the fault of the good men. On that theory,

of course the good men owed a great deal to the bad men who were in

prison and at the galleys on their account. If we do not admit that

theory, it behooves us to remember that any claim which we allow to the

criminal against the "State" is only so much burden laid upon those who

have never cost the State anything for discipline or correction. The

punishments of society are just like those of God and Nature--they are

warnings to the wrong-doer to reform himself.

When public offices are to be filled numerous candidates at once

appear. Some are urged on the ground that they are poor, or cannot earn

a living, or want support while getting an education, or have female

relatives dependent on them, or are in poor health, or belong in a

particular district, or are related to certain persons, or have done

meritorious service in some other line of work than that which they

apply to do. The abuses of the public service are to be condemned on

account of the harm to the public interest, but there is an incidental

injustice of the same general character with that which we are

discussing. If an office is granted by favoritism or for any personal

reason to A, it cannot be given to B. If an office is filled by a

person who is unfit for it, he always keeps out somebody somewhere who

is fit for it; that is, the social injustice has a victim in an unknown

person--the Forgotten Man--and he is some person who has no political

influence, and who has known no way in which to secure the chances of

life except to deserve them. He is passed by for the noisy, pushing,

importunate, and incompetent.

I have said something disparagingly in a previous chapter about the

popular rage against combined capital, corporations, corners, selling

futures, etc., etc. The popular rage is not without reason, but it is

sadly misdirected and the real things which deserve attack are thriving

all the time. The greatest social evil with which we have to contend is

jobbery. Whatever there is in legislative charters, watering stocks,

etc., etc., which is objectionable, comes under the head of jobbery.

Jobbery is any scheme which aims to gain, not by the legitimate fruits

of industry and enterprise, but by extorting from somebody a part of

his product under guise of some pretended industrial undertaking. Of

course it is only a modification when the undertaking in question has

some legitimate character, but the occasion is used to graft upon it

devices for obtaining what has not been earned. Jobbery is the vice of

plutocracy, and it is the especial form under which plutocracy corrupts

a democratic and republican form of government. The United States is

deeply afflicted with it, and the problem of civil liberty here is to

conquer it. It affects everything which we really need to have done to

such an extent that we have to do without public objects which we need

through fear of jobbery. Our public buildings are jobs--not always, but

often. They are not needed, or are costly beyond all necessity or even

decent luxury. Internal improvements are jobs. They are not made

because they are needed to meet needs which have been experienced.

They are made to serve private ends, often incidentally the political

interests of the persons who vote the appropriations. Pensions have

become jobs. In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats,

because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them.

Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have

political power, to corrupt them. Instead of going out where there is

plenty of land and making a farm there, some people go down under the

Mississippi River to make a farm, and then they want to tax all the

people in the United States to make dikes to keep the river off their

farms. The California gold-miners have washed out gold, and have washed

the dirt down into the rivers and on the farms below. They want the

Federal Government to now clean out the rivers and restore the farms.

The silver-miners found their product declining in value, and they got

the Federal Government to go into the market and buy what the public

did not want, in order to sustain (as they hoped) the price of silver.

The Federal Government is called upon to buy or hire unsalable ships,

to build canals which will not pay, to furnish capital for all sorts of

experiments, and to provide capital for enterprises of which private

individuals will win the profits. All this is called "developing our

resources," but it is, in truth, the great plan of all living on each

other.

The greatest job of all is a protective tariff. It includes the biggest

log-rolling and the widest corruption of economic and political ideas.

It was said that there would be a rebellion if the taxes were not taken

off whiskey and tobacco, which taxes were paid into the public

Treasury. Just then the importations of Sumatra tobacco became

important enough to affect the market. The Connecticut tobacco-growers

at once called for an import duty on tobacco which would keep up the

price of their product. So it appears that if the tax on tobacco is

paid to the Federal Treasury there will be a rebellion, but if it is

paid to the Connecticut tobacco-raisers there will be no rebellion at

all. The farmers have long paid tribute to the manufacturers; now the

manufacturing and other laborers are to pay tribute to the farmers. The

system is made more comprehensive and complete, and we all are living

on each other more than ever.

Now, the plan of plundering each other produces nothing. It only

wastes. All the material over which the protected interests wrangle and

grab must be got from somebody outside of their circle. The talk is all

about the American laborer and American industry, but in every case in

which there is not an actual production of wealth by industry there

are two laborers and two industries to be considered--the one who gets

and the one who gives. Every protected industry has to plead, as the

major premise of its argument, that any industry which does not pay

_ought_ to be carried on at the expense of the consumers of the

product, and, as its minor premise, that the industry in question does

not pay; that is, that it cannot reproduce a capital equal in value to

that which it consumes plus the current rate of profit. Hence every

such industry must be a parasite on some other industry. What is the

other industry? Who is the other man? This, the real question, is

always overlooked.

In all jobbery the case is the same. There is a victim somewhere who is

paying for it all. The doors of waste and extravagance stand open, and

there seems to be a general agreement to squander and spend. It all

belongs to somebody. There is somebody who had to contribute it, and

who will have to find more. Nothing is ever said about him. Attention

is all absorbed by the clamorous interests, the importunate

petitioners, the plausible schemers, the pitiless bores. Now, who is

the victim? He is the Forgotten Man. If we go to find him, we shall

find him hard at work tilling the soil to get out of it the fund for

all the jobbery, the object of all the plunder, the cost of all the

economic quackery, and the pay of all the politicians and statesmen

who have sacrificed his interests to his enemies. We shall find him an

honest, sober, industrious citizen, unknown outside his little circle,

paying his debts and his taxes, supporting the church and the school,

reading his party newspaper, and cheering for his pet politician.

We must not overlook the fact that the Forgotten Man is not

infrequently a woman. I have before me a newspaper which contains five

letters from corset-stitchers who complain that they cannot earn more

than seventy-five cents a day with a machine, and that they have to

provide the thread. The tax on the grade of thread used by them is

prohibitory as to all importation, and it is the corset-stitchers who

have to pay day by day out of their time and labor the total

enhancement of price due to the tax. Women who earn their own living

probably earn on an average seventy-five cents per day of ten hours.

Twenty-four minutes' work ought to buy a spool of thread at the retail

price, if the American work-woman were allowed to exchange her labor

for thread on the best terms that the art and commerce of today would

allow; but after she has done twenty-four minutes' work for the thread

she is forced by the laws of her country to go back and work sixteen

minutes longer to pay the tax--that is, to support the thread-mill.

The thread-mill, therefore, is not an institution for getting thread

for the American people, but for making thread harder to get than it

would be if there were no such institution.

In justification, now, of an arrangement so monstrously unjust and out

of place in a free country, it is said that the employés in the

thread-mill get high wages, and that, but for the tax, American

laborers must come down to the low wages of foreign thread-makers. It

is not true that American thread-makers get any more than the market

rate of wages, and they would not get less if the tax were entirely

removed, because the market rate of wages in the United States would be

controlled then, as it is now, by the supply and demand of laborers

under the natural advantages and opportunities of industry in this

country. It makes a great impression on the imagination, however, to go

to a manufacturing town and see great mills and a crowd of operatives;

and such a sight is put forward, _under the special allegation that it

would not exist but for a protective tax_, as a proof that protective

taxes are wise. But if it be true that the thread-mill would not exist

but for the tax, or that the operatives would not get such good wages

but for the tax, then how can we form a judgment as to whether the

protective system is wise or not unless we call to mind all the

seamstresses, washer-women, servants, factory-hands, saleswomen,

teachers, and laborers' wives and daughters, scattered in the garrets

and tenements of great cities and in cottages all over the country, who

are paying the tax which keeps the mill going and pays the extra wages?

If the sewing-women, teachers, servants, and washer-women could once be

collected over against the thread-mill, then some inferences could be

drawn which would be worth something. Then some light might be thrown

upon the obstinate fallacy of "creating an industry," and we might

begin to understand the difference between wanting thread and wanting a

thread-mill. Some nations spend capital on great palaces, others on

standing armies, others on iron-clad ships of war. Those things are all

glorious, and strike the imagination with great force when they are

seen; but no one doubts that they make life harder for the scattered

insignificant peasants and laborers who have to pay for them all. They

"support a great many people," they "make work," they "give employment

to other industries." We Americans have no palaces, armies, or

iron-clads, but we spend our earnings on protected industries. A big

protected factory, if it really needs the protection for its support,

is a heavier load for the Forgotten Men and Women than an iron-clad

ship of war in time of peace.

It is plain that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman are the

real productive strength of the country. The Forgotten Man works and

votes--generally he prays--but his chief business in life is to pay.

His name never gets into the newspapers except when he marries or dies.

He is an obscure man. He may grumble sometimes to his wife, but he does

not frequent the grocery, and he does not talk politics at the tavern.

So he is forgotten. Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and

social philosopher ought to think of before this man? If any student of

social science comes to appreciate the case of the Forgotten Man, he

will become an unflinching advocate of strict scientific thinking in

sociology, and a hard-hearted skeptic as regards any scheme of social

amelioration. He will always want to know, Who and where is the

Forgotten Man in this case, who will have to pay for it all?

The Forgotten Man is not a pauper. It belongs to his character to save

something. Hence he is a capitalist, though never a great one. He is a

"poor" man in the popular sense of the word, but not in a correct

sense. In fact, one of the most constant and trustworthy signs that the

Forgotten Man is in danger of a new assault is, that "the poor man" is

brought into the discussion. Since the Forgotten Man has some capital,

any one who cares for his interest will try to make capital secure by

securing the inviolability of contracts, the stability of currency, and

the firmness of credit. Any one, therefore, who cares for the Forgotten

Man will be sure to be considered a friend of the capitalist and an

enemy of the poor man.

It is the Forgotten Man who is threatened by every extension of the

paternal theory of government. It is he who must work and pay. When,

therefore, the statesmen and social philosophers sit down to think what

the State can do or ought to do, they really mean to decide what the

Forgotten Man shall do. What the Forgotten Man wants, therefore, is a

fuller realization of constitutional liberty. He is suffering from the

fact that there are yet mixed in our institutions mediaeval theories of

protection, regulation, and authority, and modern theories of

independence and individual liberty and responsibility. The consequence

of this mixed state of things is, that those who are clever enough to

get into control use the paternal theory by which to measure their own

rights--that is, they assume privileges; and they use the theory of

liberty to measure their own duties--that is, when it comes to the

duties, they want to be "let alone." The Forgotten Man never gets into

control. He has to pay both ways. His rights are measured to him by the

theory of liberty--that is, he has only such as he can conquer; his

duties are measured to him on the paternal theory--that is, he must

discharge all which are laid upon him, as is the fortune of parents. In

a paternal relation there are always two parties, a father and a child;

and when we use the paternal relation metaphorically, it is of the

first importance to know who is to be father and who is to be child.

The _rôle_ of parent falls always to the Forgotten Man. What he wants,

therefore, is that ambiguities in our institutions be cleared up, and

that liberty be more fully realized.

It behooves any economist or social philosopher, whatever be the grade

of his orthodoxy, who proposes to enlarge the sphere of the "State," or

to take any steps whatever having in view the welfare of any class

whatever, to pursue the analysis of the social effects of his

proposition until he finds that other group whose interests must be

curtailed or whose energies must be placed under contribution by the

course of action which he proposes; and he cannot maintain his

proposition until he has demonstrated that it will be more

advantageous, _both quantitatively and qualitatively_, to those who

must bear the weight of it than complete non-interference by the State

with the relations of the parties in question.