THE BOTTLE NECK OF THE CABINET, AND WHAT IS IN THE BOTTLE
Mr. Mellon's associates in the Cabinet were most of them chosen on
substantially the same principles as he was, namely, that success in
business or professional life implies fitness for public life. We have
no other standard. The present Cabinet is an "exceptionally good"
Cabinet. Many of its members are millionaires.
Some of them owe their place to the rule that those who help elect a
President are entitled to the honor, the advertising, or the
"vindication," of high public office.
That is to say, the same considerations that rule in the selection of
Senators rule in their selection. They were recruited from the class
from which Senators are recruited. I can not say the mental level of the
Cabinet is above that of the Senate. Take out of the upper house its two
strongest members, its two weakest, and half a dozen of the average
sort, and you construct a body in every way equal to the Cabinet of Mr.
Harding in intelligence and public morals.
Most of them, never having been members of the upper house, have not
suffered from the depreciation in the public eye which attends service
in the legislative branch. They come rather from the wonderful business
world.
There are, moreover, few of them compared to Senators. Smallness of
numbers suggests careful selection, superior qualifications.
And the secrecy of Cabinet meetings makes them impressive. If reporters
were present, the public would realize that the Cabinet as a Cabinet was
mostly occupied with little things.
The records prove it.
The biweekly meetings of the Cabinet are commonly followed by the
announcement: "The Cabinet had a short session today. Nothing of
importance was discussed"; or, "Details of administration were
discussed." Now, of course, reasons of state may occasionally restrain
the disclosure of what actually was the subject before the Cabinet. Yet
Mr. Harding's administration has been in office more than a year, and
how many important policies has it adopted? How much wisdom has emerged
from the biweekly meetings?
Sample announcements of the Cabinet meetings run like this: "The Cabinet
listened to the Postmaster General, explaining how much it would
facilitate the handling of the mails if people would distribute the
mailing of their letters throughout the day, instead of keeping most of
them to mail late in the afternoon when they are leaving their offices.
The Postmaster General pointed out that the government departments were
offenders in this respect." Useful; but why should the whole nation worry
about who advises with the President over the inveterate bad habits of
the people as letter writers?
Or this: "The Cabinet spent an hour and a half today discussing what to
do with the property left in the government's hands by the war. There
are millions of dollars' worth of such property." A mere detail of
administration, but it came before the Cabinet as a whole because more
than one department was left in control of the property.
Moreover, you may estimate the importance of cabinets from the fact
that, after all, every administration takes its color from the
President. Mr. Wilson's administration was precisely Mr. Wilson. Mr.
Harding's is precisely Mr. Harding.
Listen to the experience of a Cabinet adviser. One of the most important
Secretaries was explaining to some friends a critical situation. "But,"
interjected one of the listeners, "does President Harding understand
that?" "The President," replied the Secretary, "never has time really to
understand anything."
And remember how Secretary Hughes told the President that the Four Power
Pact covered with its guarantees the home islands of Japan, and how a
couple of days later Mr. Harding informed the press that it did not
cover the home islands of Japan; when it transpired that the information
of Mr. Hughes on this point had effected no lodgement in the President's
mind.
The Presidential mind; that is the bottle neck through which everything
has to pass.
Suppose we had today the greatest statesman that this country has ever
produced as Secretary of State. Let us say Alexander Hamilton, for
example. What could Alexander Hamilton do as the head of Mr. Harding's
Cabinet? We shall assume that Alexander Hamilton had the mind to grasp
the problem of this country's relations to the world and of its interest
in the world's recovery from the havoc and the hatreds of the war, and
the constructive imagination to reach a solution of it. What could
Alexander Hamilton do? His avenue of approach to world problems would be
Mr. Harding. All that was in the mind of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary
of State, would have to pass through the mind of Warren G. Harding,
President, before it would become effective.
The passage through would be blocked by many obstacles, for Mr. Harding
has a perfectly conventional mind; that is why he is President. One of
the pictures in Mr. Harding's head is the mechanistic, the God's Time
picture. "Things left to themselves will somehow come out all right."
Another is the racial inferiority complex. "Man is inadequate to attempt
control of his own destiny. There are the forces to be considered." A
third is the great business-man illusion. Mr. Morgan going abroad to
consider reparations may accomplish the wonders which mere statesmen can
not. All these induce avoidance of responsibility, and Mr. Harding has
the human liking for avoiding responsibility. Pressed by Mr. Hamilton,
Mr. Harding would say: "But I can not move the Senate." Pressed further,
he would say: "There is Public Opinion. We shall lose the election if we
become involved in European affairs. You and I know those Allied war
debts are worthless, but how can we make the people realize that they
are worthless?"
Like the rest of us, Mr. Harding perhaps has none of these pictures so
firmly in his head as before the war; but the damage to the pictures
only makes him more vacillating. I am assuming in all this that Mr.
Hamilton has a free mind, which he had, relatively, when he operated a
century and a half ago. At that time he had not to think much of Public
Opinion or of parties. And the mechanistic theory of Progress, that
things come out all right with the least possible human intervention or
only the intervention of the business man, had not then assumed its
present importance.
"Mind," says a nameless writer in the _London Nation_, "is incorrigibly
creative." It has created so many vast illusions like those above in
the last century and a half that like the American spirit in Kipling's
poem:
"Elbowed out by sloven friends,
It camps, at sufferance, on the stoop."
Where our actual Secretary's mind falls short of our supposititious
Secretary's mind is in the valuable quality of common sense. I am even
prepared to maintain that as a measure of reality Mr. Hughes's mind is
distinctly inferior to Mr. Harding's, which is one reason why he never
did become President and Mr. Harding did. I can not better explain what
I mean than on the basis of this quotation from a recent book of Mr.
Orage, the British critic:
"Common sense is the community of the senses or faculties; in its
outcome it is the agreement of their reports. A thing is said to be
common sense when it satisfies the heart, the mind, the emotion and all
the senses; when, in fact, it satisfies all our various criteria of
reality."
Mr. Hughes has only one criterion of reality, his mind, which has been
developed at the expense of all his other means of approach to the
truth. He lives in a region of facts, principles, and logical
deductions. He does not sense anything. And only men who sense reality
have common sense. For Mr. Hughes facts are solid; you can make two
nice, orderly little piles of them and build a logical bridge over the
interval between them. A true statesman builds a bridge resting on
nothing palpable, and nevertheless he crosses over it.
Mr. Hughes's mind operates in a region of perfect demonstration; he even
demonstrates things to himself. A true statesman never succeeds in
demonstrating anything to himself; he uses demonstration only in dealing
with others. Yet he arrives in other than logical ways at a sureness for
himself which is never Mr. Hughes's. For the Secretary of State
statesmanship is an intellectual exercise, for the true statesman it is
the exercise of a dozen other faculties. An extraordinary but limited
mind, Mr. Hughes impresses us as the boy lightning calculator does, and
leaves us unsatisfied.
Take Mr. Hughes's handling of Mexican relations as an example of what I
have called statesmanship made a purely intellectual exercise. The
practical result which was to be desired when Mr. Hughes took office was
stability and order in Mexico, the safety of American property there,
and a restoration of diplomatic intercourse.
Mr. Hughes does not seek to obtain these results. Instead he works out
the following problem: _a_ + _b_ = _c_, in which _a_ is the fact that
Carranza had issued a decree making possible the confiscation of
American property in Mexico, _b_ is the principle of international law
that at the basis of relations between peoples must be safety of alien
property, and _c_ is a note to Mexico.
Mr. Hughes was excited over the perfection of this intellectual
operation. He read his note with all the jubilance of the Greek
philosopher who, having discovered an important principle of physics,
exclaimed: "Eureka." Mr. Hughes's Eureka is always a piece of paper. He
is a lawyer whose triumphs are briefs and contracts.
Now the facts were not merely that Carranza had made an offensive
gesture, issuing the famous decree; but that Mexico had not confiscated
American property and lived in such fear of her strong neighbor that she
was never likely to do so, that the Mexican supreme court had ruled
confiscation to be illegal, that the Obregon government was as stable
and as good a government as Mexico was likely to have, and that it was
to our interest to support it morally rather than encourage further
revolution there. They all pointed to recognition.
The validity of the piece of paper that Mr. Hughes demanded of Obregon
would rest upon international law. But so did the validity of our right
to have our property in Mexico respected. We should not be in any
stronger legal position to intervene in Mexico if she violated the
contract Mr. Hughes wanted, than if she violated our property rights
there unfortified by such a piece of paper. Both rested on one and the
same law.
Furthermore, Mexico being weak and sensitive, an arbitrary demand that
she "take the pledge," such as Mr. Hughes made, was sure to offend her
pride, and delay the consummation everyone wished--stability across the
border and a restoration of good relations. Yet Mr. Hughes was immensely
satisfied with his intellectual exercise _a_ + _b_ = _c_, _c_ being not
a solution of the Mexican problem, which at this writing is still afar
off, but a piece of paper, a note to Mexico. The sheer logical triumph
of the deduction of _c_ from _a_ and _b_ is to Mr. Hughes an end in
itself.
Now, of course, it is not wholly overdevelopment of mind at the expense
of the other criteria of reality which leads Mr. Hughes to vain
exercises like _a_ + _b_ = _c_. He has what a recent writer has
described as "an inflamed legal sense." He has, moreover, by an
association of ideas all his own oddly transferred to law that
sacredness with which he was brought up to regard the Bible. "Sanctity
of contracts," is his favorite phrase, the word "sanctity" being highly
significant. He has, besides, Mr. Harding over him, and the Senate to
reckon with. And in the case of Mexico he has as a fellow Cabinet
member, Mr. Fall, the picture in whose head is of a "white man" teaching
a "greaser" to respect him. He has to think of winning elections, of his
own political ambitions. All these inhibitory influences which generally
produce negation do not estop Mr. Hughes. His mind is too vigorous for
that. It pursues its way energetically to results, such as _a_ + _b_ =
_c_.
Now, of course, the handling of Mexican relations is not Mr. Hughes's
major achievement. But even his major achievement, the Washington
conference with its resultant nine pieces of paper, was more or less a
lawyer's plea in avoidance.
The major problem which confronted Mr. Hughes was this: The Great War
had been followed, as Mr. H. G. Wells aptly says, by the Petty Peace. It
was threatening, and still threatens, to flame up again. The problem of
a real peace confronted Mr. Hughes, because Mr. Wilson had sought to
establish one and failed, and had thus set a certain standard of effort
for his successor. Moreover, Mr. Hughes had said that every man, woman,
and child in the United States was vitally interested in the economic
recovery of Europe.
Mr. Hughes had either to face this task or divert the mind of the court
to some other issue. He chose to find his _a_ + _b_ = _c_ elsewhere. The
problem of establishing peace where there was war was difficult; perhaps
it was too hard for any man, but has not humanity--I say humanity
because it is Mr. Harding's favorite word--has not humanity the right to
ask of its statesmen something more than timidity and avoidance? The
problem of establishing peace where there was peace, in the Orient, was
relatively easy.
The war had left the great sea powers with excessive navies and
insupportable naval budgets. All wanted naval limitation. It was only
necessary to propose an agreement for reduction to have it accepted.
Even the dramatic method of making the proposal, with details of the
tonnage to be scrapped, was not Mr. Hughes's idea. Let us do the man in
the White House justice. He conceived it on the _Mayflower_; read it to
Senator James Watson who was with him, and wirelessed it to the State
Department.
There was the further problem, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Mr. Hughes
wanted it ended. Japan and England wanted it substituted by a compact
which should be signed by its two signatories and the United States.
All that Mr. Hughes had to do to establish peace where there was peace
was to offer an agreement upon naval armament and accept the
Anglo-Japanese plan for a wider pact in the Pacific. The details would
involve discussion, but the success of the general program was assured
in advance.
The conference was called, hurriedly, because, as Mr. Harding once
explained, if he had not hastened someone else would have anticipated
him in calling it. This shows how obvious was the expedient. The idea of
naval limitation was no more original than the idea of the conference.
Mr. Borah had proposed it. Lord Lee had proposed it, in the British
Parliament. The idea of the Four Power Pact was made in England--it had
long been discussed there--and brought over by Mr., now Lord, Balfour.
He laid it at Mr. Hughes's feet.
Mr. Balfour sought no triumphs. They should all go to Mr. Hughes. He has
the art of inconspicuousness, the result of many generations of fine
breeding. As you saw him in the plenary sessions clutching the lapels of
his coat with both hands and modestly struggling for utterance after an
immense flow of words from our chief delegate, you could not help
feeling patriotic pride in the contrast.
Besides, Mr. Balfour was captivated. He became, for the nonce, perfectly
American. Mr. H. Wickham Steed said to me, hearing the chief British
delegate speak: "It is a new Balfour at this conference." Certainly as
you heard the voice, moved and moving, emotional perhaps for the first
time in his life, you realized that it was not Mr. Balfour, "proceeding
on his faded way" as the _London Nation_ expressed it, who was speaking.
It was Mr. Balfour as he might be at a great revival meeting, such as
Mr. Hughes in his youth must have often attended.
On the Four Power Pact the best comment ever made was Mr. Frank
Simonds's, "It was invented to save the British Empire from committing
bigamy."
[Illustration: ARTHUR BALFOUR]
The results of the Washington conference were substantial. They put off
war where none was threatening. Perhaps in the longer future they
will be seen to be no more than a prolongation of the intent of the
Versailles treaty, confirming the dichotomy of powers which that
instrument created. Germany, Russia, and China were treated as outsiders
in both conferences.
But the great _a_ + _b_ = _c_ of last winter left peace where there is
war still unwritten. The problem which "humanity" posed to Mr. Hughes is
as yet unattempted. It is as exigent as ever. Immensely plausible as he
is, events have a way of overtaking him. Remembering what happened on
election night in 1916, I think one cannot sum him up better than by
saying that he has the habit of always being elected in the early
returns. As in the case of the lightning calculator, after you have
recovered from your first surprise at his mental exhibition you are
inclined to ask, "But what is the good of it all?"
The two most important advisers to the President in the existing Cabinet
are Mr. Hughes and Mr. Hoover. The limitations of the Secretary of State
are the limitations of a legalistic mind. The limitations of Mr. Hoover
are the limitations of a scientific mind. Men, considered politically,
do not behave like mathematical factors nor like chemical elements.
Someone asked Mr. Hoover recently why he sent corn to Russia instead of
wheat. "Because," replied the Secretary of Commerce without a moment's
hesitation, "for one dollar I can buy so many calories"--carrying it
out to the third decimal place--"in corn, and only so many"--again to
the third decimal place--"in wheat. I get about twice as many in corn as
in wheat."
Mr. Hoover is at his best in feeding a famished population. He then has
men where he wants them--I say this without meaning to reflect upon Mr.
Hoover's humanitarian impulses; perhaps I should better say he then has
men where for the free operation of his scientific mind he requires to
have them. For in a famine men become mere chemical retorts. You pour
into them a certain number of calories. Oxidization produces a certain
energy. And the exact energy necessary to sustain life is calculable.
In a famine men cease to be individuals. They can not say, "I never ate
corn. I do not know how to cook corn. I do not like corn." They behave
in perfectly calculable ways. So many calories, oxidization; so much
energy.
Conceive a society in which results were always calculable: so many men,
so much fuel, so much consequent horsepower, and Mr. Hoover would make
for it an admirable benevolent dictator; for he is benevolent. If
Bolshevism at its most complete exemplification had been a success and
become the order of the world, Mr. Hoover might have made a great head
of a state; with labor conscripted and food conscripted, all you would
have to do would be to apply the food, counted in calories, to the
labor, and production in a readily estimable quantity would ensue. I am
not trying to suggest that this represents Mr. Hoover's ideal of
society; it surely does not. I am only saying that this is the kind of
society in which Mr. Hoover would develop his fullest utility.
Science inevitably reduces man to the calculable automaton, otherwise it
can deduce no laws about him;--such as, for example, the legal man, a
fiction that haunts Mr. Hughes's brain; the chemical retort man, of Mr.
Hoover's mind; the economic man, another convenient fiction; the
scientific socialism man, another pure fiction, derived from the
economic man and forming the basis for Bolshevism at its fullest
development.
Now if Chemistry should somehow acquire eccentricity, so that two
elements combined in a retort would sometimes produce one result and
sometimes another totally different, the chemist would be no more unsure
in his mind than is Mr. Hoover, operating for the first time in a
society of free, self-governing men. Or perhaps it would be a better
analogy to say that if the chemist when he put an agent into a retort
could not be sure what other elements were already in it, and could not
tell whether the result would be an explosion or a pleasant and useful
recombination, he would be somewhat in the position of Mr. Hoover.
You will observe that I am trying to dissociate the real Hoover from the
myth Hoover, always a difficult process, which may require years for
its accomplishment. I do not pretend that this is the final
dissociation. All we know with certainty of the real Hoover is that when
he has society at the starvation line and can say "so many calories, so
much energy," he works with extraordinary sureness.
When he operates in a normal society he takes his chemical agent in hand
and consults Mr. Harding, Mr. Daugherty, or Mr. Weeks as to what agents
there are in the political retort, and whether the placing of his agent
in with them will produce an explosion or a profitable recombination.
So you see the practical utility of his mind is conditioned upon the
minds of Mr. Harding, Mr. Weeks, and Mr. Daugherty. It is a fertile
mind, which invents, however, only minor chemical reactions, neither he
nor Mr. Harding being sure enough about the dirty and incalculable
vessel of politics to know when an explosion may result, and neither of
them being bold enough to take chances.
Mr. Hughes, Mr. Hoover, and Mr. Daugherty are the only outstanding
figures in the Cabinet. The Attorney General lives in an unreal world of
his own, which at the moment of this writing threatens to come tumbling
down about his head.
The clue to Mr. Daugherty's world is found in a sentence of Thomas
Felder's letter apropos of the failure to collect the $25,000 fee for
securing the release of Charles W. Morse from prison, in which he tells
how he associated with himself Mr. Daugherty, "who stood as close to the
President as any other lawyer or citizen of the United States."
"Standing close," men may laugh at the gods, may "take the cash and let
the credit go." It is a world of little things without any tomorrow.
Long views and large views do not matter. Forces? Principles? Perhaps,
but the main thing is all men should "stand close." It is an immensely
human world, where men if they are not masters of their own destiny may
at least cheat fate for a little brief hour, if only they remain true to
each other no matter what befalls.
Mr. Harding, one side of him belongs to that world of Mr. Daugherty's,
while another side belongs to that larger political world where morals,
wrapped in vague sentimental words, hold sway. It is because he belongs
to that world that Mr. Daugherty is Attorney General. Mr. Daugherty
"stood close" to Mr. Harding all his life. "Standing close" creates an
obligation. Mr. Harding, as President, must in return "stand close" to
Mr. Daugherty.
He does so. To the caller who visited him when the Morse-Felder letters
were coming out daily, and who was apprehensive of the consequences, the
President said, "You don't know Harry Daugherty. He is as clean and
honorable a man as there is in this country." In such a world as this,
your friend can do no wrong. Goldstein, who received the $2,500 from
Lowden's campaign manager, belongs to it. Therefore, he can do no wrong.
Therefore, his name goes from the White House to the Senate for
confirmation as Collector of Internal Revenue at St. Louis.
To go back to the time before he became Attorney General, Daugherty
practiced law in Columbus, Ohio. His cases came to him, largely as the
Morse retainer did, because he "stood close" to somebody, to the
President, to Senators, to Governors of Ohio, or Legislatures of Ohio.
His was not a highly lucrative practice, for Mr. Daugherty is one of the
few relatively poor men in the present Cabinet. You may deduce from this
circumstance a conclusion as favorable as that which the President, who
knows him so well, does. I am concerned only in presenting the facts. At
least Mr. Daugherty did not grow rich out of "standing close."
Nor did he accumulate a reputation. When men "stand close" those who are
outside the circle invariably regard them with a certain suspicion. Your
professional politician, for that is what Daugherty was, always is an
object of doubt. And for this reason he always seeks what is technically
known as a "vindication." Conscious of his own rectitude, as he measures
it, he may come out of office cleared in the world's eyes, and with a
fine title, to boot, ready for life upon a new level. And this
"vindication" sometimes does take place.
I have no doubt that Mr. Daugherty entered office with the most
excellent intentions. He had everything to gain personally from "making
a record" in the Attorney Generalship, a title and a higher standing at
the bar. Moreover, he was the loyal friend of the President and desired
the success of the administration.
But it is not so easy. You cannot one moment by "standing close" laugh
at the gods and the next range yourself easily and commodiously on the
side of the gods. The gods may be unkind even to those who mean to be
with them from the outset, establishing their feet firmly upon logic or
upon calories; how much more so may they be with those who would
suddenly change sides?
At least it is a matter that admits of no compromise. What is he going
to do in office with those who "stood close" to him as he "stood close"
to President Taft? All the "close standers" turn up in Washington. For
example, Mr. Felder, who "stood close" in the Morse case and who perhaps
for that reason appears as counsel in the Bosch-Magneto case, where the
prosecution moves slowly, and who moreover permits himself some
indiscretions. There is a whole army of "close standers." There are the
prosecutions that move slowly. Neither circumstance is necessarily
significant. There are always the "close standers." Prosecutions always
move slowly. But the two circumstances together!
I present all this merely to show what kind of adviser the Attorney
General is, his limited conception of life on this little world, and
life's, perhaps temporary, revenge upon him. No one at this writing can
pass judgment, so I give, along with the facts and the appearances, the
best testimonial that a man can have, that quoted above from the
President.
In physique the Attorney General is burly, thick-necked, his eyes are
unsteady, his face alternately jovial and minatory,--I should say he
bluffed effectively,--rough in personality, a physical law requiring
that bodies easily cemented together, and thus "standing close," should
not have too smooth an exterior. His view of the world being highly
personal, his instinctive idea of office is that it, too, is personal,
something to be used, always within the law, to aid friends and punish
enemies. He wrote once to a newspaper, which was opposing his
appointment, in substance that he would be Attorney General in spite of
it and that he had a long memory.
Secretary of War Weeks is the only other general adviser of Mr. Harding
in the Cabinet. He is politically minded. Like Mr. Harding he is half of
the persuasion of Mr. Daugherty about organization, and half of the
other persuasion about the sway of moral forces. All in all he is
nearer akin mentally to the President than any other member of the
Cabinet, but with more industry and more capacity for details than his
chief. He is of the clean desk tradition; Mr. Harding is not.
[Illustration: ATTORNEY-GENERAL H. M. DAUGHERTY]
Half politician and half business man, he interprets business to the
politician, and politics to business. He is a middle grounder. He quit
banking satisfied with a moderate fortune, saying, "The easiest thing I
ever did was to make money."
His bland voice and mild manner indicate the same moderation in
everything that he showed in making money; his narrowing eyes, the
caution which led him to quit banking when he went into politics.
Politics intrigues him, but he has not a first-class mind for it, as his
experiences in Massachusetts proved.
Frank to the utmost limits his caution will permit, people like him, but
not passionately. Men respect his ability, but they do not feel strongly
about it. He never becomes the center of controversy, as Daugherty is,
as Hoover has been, and as Hughes may at any time be. I have never seen
him angry, I have seen him enthusiastic. A Laodicean in short.
Secretary Fall hoped to be one of the chief advisers, but has been
disappointed. Mr. Harding had said of him, "His is the best mind in the
Senate," but he has found other minds more to his liking in the Cabinet.
With a long drooping mustache, he looks like a stage sheriff of the Far
West in the movies. His voice is always loud and angry. He has the
frontiers-man's impatience. From his kind lynch law springs.
He wanted to lynch Mexico. When he entered the Cabinet he said to his
Senate friends, "If they don't follow me on Mexico I shall resign." He
has been a negative rather than a positive force there regarding Mexico,
deviating Mr. Hughes into the ineffective position he occupies.
He has the frontiers-man's impatience of conservation. Probably he is
right. His biggest contribution to his country's welfare will be oil
land leases, like that of Teapot Dome.
The Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Wallace, is an excellent technical
adviser, as unobtrusive as experts usually are.
The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Denby, with his flabby jowls and large
shapeless mouth, has a big heart, and more enthusiasm than he has
self-command, judgment, or intelligence. He committed political suicide
cheerfully, when the Cannon machine in the House fell into disfavor. He
would do anything for a friend, not as Mr. Daugherty would because it
pays, but because he is a friend. A cause commands an equal loyalty from
him. Just because his head is not as big as his heart he is a minor
factor.
Mr. Davis, Secretary of Labor, is a professional glad hand man,
appointed because the administration meant to extend nothing to Labor
but a glad hand. When a crisis presents itself in industrial relations,
Mr. Hoover, who spreads himself over several departments, attends to it.
At the conference on unemployment, which was Mr. Hoover's, the best and
only example of the unemployed present was the Secretary of Labor.