the public are protected, and the liberty of the individual secured and
encouraged as long as consistent with this welfare, and curbed when it
becomes inconsistent therewith, it is necessary to invoke the aid of the
Government. There are points in which this governmental aid can best be
rendered by the States; that is, where the exercise of States’ rights
helps to secure popular rights, and as to these I believe in States’
rights. But there are large classes of cases where only the authority of
the National Government will secure the rights of the people, and where
this is the case I am a convinced and a thoroughgoing believer in the
rights of the National Government. Big business, for instance, is no
longer an affair of any one State; big business has become nationalized;
and the only effective way of controlling and directing it, and
preventing abuses in connection with it, is by having the people
nationalize this control in order to prevent their being exploited by
the individuals who have nationalized the business. All commerce on a
scale sufficiently large to warrant any control over it by Government is
nowadays inter-State or foreign commerce; and until this fact is
heartily acknowledged, in particular by both courts and legislative
bodies, National and State alike, the interest of the people will
suffer.
Take the question of the control of the water power sites. The enormous
importance of water power sites to the future industrial development of
this country has only been realized within a very few years.
Unfortunately, the realization has come too late as regards many of the
power sites, but many yet remain with which our hands are free to deal.
We should make it our duty to see that hereafter the power sites are
kept under the control of the general Government for the use of the
people as a whole. The fee should remain with the people as a whole,
while the use is leased on terms which will secure an ample reward to
the lessees, which will encourage the development and use of the water
power, but which will not create a permanent monopoly or permit the
development to be anti-social, to be in any respect hostile to the
public good.
In this country, nowadays, capital has a National and not a State use.
The great corporations which are managed and largely owned in the older
States are those which are most in evidence in developing and using the
mines and water powers and forests of the new Territories and new
States, from Alaska to Arizona. I have been genuinely amused during the
past two months at having arguments presented to me on behalf of certain
rich men from New York and Ohio, for instance, as to why Colorado and
other Rocky Mountain States should manage their own water power sites.
Now I am sure that those men, according to their lights, are good
citizens; but, naturally enough, their special interest obscures their
sense of the public need; and as their object is to escape efficient
control, they clamor to be put under the State instead of under the
Nation. If we are foolish enough to grant their requests, we shall have
ourselves to blame when we wake up to find that we have permitted
another privilege to intrench itself, and another portion of what should
be kept for the public good to be turned over to individuals for
purposes of private enrichment.
Our people have for many years proceeded upon the assumption that the
Nation controls the public land. The coal should be kept for the people,
and those who mine it should pay part of the profit back to the people.
Remember also that many of the men who protest loudly against effective
National action would be the first to turn round and protest against the
State action if such action in its turn became effective, and would then
unhesitatingly invoke the law to show that the State had no
Constitutional power to act. I am a strong believer in efficient
National action; and if there is one thing which I abhor more than
another, it is the creation by legislative, by executive, or by judicial
action of a neutral ground in which neither the State nor the Nation has
power, and which can serve as a place of refuge for the lawless man, and
especially for the lawless man of great wealth, who can hire the best
legal counsel to advise him how to keep his abiding-place equally
distant from the uncertain frontier of both State and National power.
Let me illustrate what I mean by a reference to two concrete cases. The
first is the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Knight
Sugar Trust case. This was really a decision rendering it exceedingly
difficult for the people to devise any method of controlling and
regulating the business use of great capital in inter-State commerce. It
was a decision nominally against National rights, but really against
popular rights, against the democratic principle of government by the
people.
The second case is the so-called New York Bake-Shop case. In New York
City, as in most large cities, the baking business is likely to be
carried on under unhygienic conditions, conditions which tell against
the welfare of the workers, and therefore against the welfare of the
general public. The New York Legislature passed, and the New York
Governor signed, a bill remedying these improper conditions. New York
State was the only body that could deal with them; the Nation had no
power whatever in the matter. Acting on information which to them seemed
ample and sufficient; acting in the interest of the public and in
accordance with the demand of the public, the only governmental
authority having affirmative power in the matter, the Governor and the
Legislature of New York, took the action which they deemed necessary,
after what inquiry and study were needed to satisfy them as to the
conditions and as to the remedy. The Governor and the Legislature alone
had the power to remedy the abuse. But the Supreme Court of the United
States possessed, and unfortunately exercised, the negative power of not
permitting the abuse to be remedied. By a five to four vote they
declared the action of the State of New York unconstitutional. They
were, of course, themselves powerless to make the remotest attempt to
provide a remedy for the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and their
refusal to permit action by the State did not confer any power upon the
Nation to act. In effect, it reduced to impotence the only body which
did have power, so that in this case the decision, although nominally
against State rights, was really against popular rights, against the
democratic principle of government by the people under the forms of law.
If such decisions as these two indicated the Court’s permanent attitude,
there would be real and grave cause of alarm; for such decisions, if
consistently followed up, would upset our whole system of popular
Government. I am, however, convinced, both from the inconsistency of
these decisions with the tenor of other decisions, and furthermore from
the very fact that they are in such flagrant and direct contradiction to
the spirit and needs of the time, that sooner or later they will be
explicitly or implicitly reversed. I mention them merely to illustrate
the need of having a truly National system of government under which the
people can deal effectively with all problems, meeting those that affect
the people as a whole by affirmative Federal action, and those that
merely affect the people of one locality by affirmative State action.
In dealing with future problems like this one of Conservation, we need
to keep in mind the lesson taught by the American pioneer. It is a
lesson that is to be found in the fact that the pioneer is so good an
American. He is an American, first and foremost. The man of the West
throughout the successive stages of Western growth has always been one
of the two or three most typical figures, indeed I am tempted to say the
most typical figure, in American life; and no man can really understand
our country, and appreciate what it really is and what it promises,
unless he has the fullest and closest sympathy with the ideals and
aspirations of the West.
The great lesson that all of us need to learn and to keep is the lesson
that it is unimportant whether a man lives North or South, East or West,
provided that he is genuinely and in good faith an American; that he
feels every part of the United States as his own, and that he is
honestly desirous to uphold the interests of all other Americans in
whatever sections of the country they may dwell.
The Tariff: A Moral Issue
Whenever men just like ourselves—probably not much better, and certainly
no worse—continually fail to give us the results we have a right to
expect from their efforts, we may just as well make up our minds that
the fault lies, not in their personality, but in the conditions under
which they work, and profit comes, not from denouncing them, but in
seeing that the conditions are changed. This is especially true of
tariff-making. It has been conclusively shown, by experiments repeated
again and again, that the methods of tariff-making by Congress, which
have now obtained for so many years, cannot, from the very nature of the
case, bring really satisfactory results. I think that the present tariff
is better than the last, and considerably better than the one before the
last; but it has certainly failed to give general satisfaction. I
believe this country is fully committed to the principle of protection;
but it is to protection as a principle; to protection primarily in the
interest of the standard of living of the American workingman. I believe
that when protection becomes, not a principle, but a privilege and a
preference—or, rather, a jumble of privileges and preferences—then the
American people disapprove of it. Now, to correct the trouble, it is
necessary, in the first place, to get in mind clearly what we want, and,
in the next place, to get in mind clearly the method by which we hope to
obtain what we want. What we want is a square deal in the tariff as in
everything else; a square deal for the wage-earner; a square deal for
the employer; and a square deal for the general public. To obtain it we
must have a thoroughly efficient and well-equipped tariff commission.
The tariff ought to be a material issue and not a moral issue; but if
instead of a square deal we get a crooked deal, then it becomes very
emphatically a moral issue. What we desire in a tariff is such measure
of protection as will equalize the cost of production here and abroad;
and as the cost of production is mainly labor cost, this means primarily
a tariff sufficient to make up for the difference in labor cost here and
abroad. The American public wants the American laboring man put on an
equality with other citizens, so that he shall have the ability to
achieve the American standard of living and the capacity to enjoy it;
and to do this we must see that his wages are not lowered by improper
competition with inferior wage-workers abroad—with wage-workers who are
paid poorly and who live as no Americans are willing to live. But the
American public does not wish to see the tariff so arranged as to
benefit primarily a few wealthy men.
As a means toward the attainment of its end in view we have as yet
devised nothing in any way as effective as a tariff commission. There
should be a commission of well-paid experts; men who should not
represent any industry; who should be masters of their subjects; of the
very highest character; and who should approach the matter with absolute
disregard of every outside consideration. These men should take up in
succession each subject with which the tariff deals and investigate the
conditions of production here and abroad; they should find out the facts
and not merely accept the statements of interested parties; and they
should report to Congress on each subject as soon as that subject has
been covered. Then action can be taken at once on the particular subject
concerned, while the commission immediately proceeds to investigate
another. By these means log-rolling would be avoided and each subject
treated on its merits, while there would be no such shock to general
industry as is implied in the present custom of making sweeping changes
in the whole tariff at once. Finally, it should be the duty of some
Governmental department or bureau to investigate the conditions in the
various protected industries, and see that the laborers really are
getting the benefit of the tariff supposed to be enacted in their
interest. Moreover, to insure good treatment abroad we should keep the
maximum and minimum provision.
The same principle of a first-class outside commission should be applied
to river and harbor legislation. At present a river and harbor bill,
like a tariff bill, tends to be settled by a squabble among a lot of big
selfish interests and little selfish interests, with scant regard to the
one really vital interest, that of the general public. In this matter
the National Legislature would do well to profit by the example of
Massachusetts. Formerly Massachusetts dealt with its land and harbor
legislation just as at Washington tariff and river and harbor laws have
been dealt with; and there was just the same pulling and hauling, the
same bargaining and log-rolling, the same subordination of the general
interest to various special interests. Last year Governor Draper took up
the matter, and on his recommendation the Legislature turned the whole
business over to a commission of experts; and all trouble and scandal
forthwith disappeared. Incidentally, this seems to me to be a
first-class instance of progressive legislation.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.