XII
EVOLUTION: POLITICAL GOVERNMENT
OUR nation has been fairly prosperous and successful thus far, in spite of our previous and present method of dealing with social, industrial, and political problems, which is no method at all, but mere muddling. However, we had no serious foreign competition to meet; we had at our disposition the vast and untouched resources of a virgin continent, the intellectual stores of the Old World, and the continuous supply of skilled and unskilled labor, in the despised immigrant, who, after all, has made America what it is to-day. The most desirable immigration—from England, Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia—practice<ally ended years ago, and now, as the result of the war, all immigration threatens to stop, except perhaps that from the least desirable nationalities. Intellectually, our nation has now advanced so far and on a path so divergent from that of
Europe that we cannot expect much further help. The resources of our continent, which appeared inexhaustible to the early settlers, are practically exhausted, and the time is nearly here when we will have to stop living as a parasitic nation, consuming what we have not produced, but we will have to live on our income; putting into the soil as fertilizer what we take out as crops; planting and raising the trees which we cut down for lumber; raising the food which we feed to our sheep and cattle, and that with a reorganized, highly efficient Europe in competition.
In our industrial age the essential requirements of an efficient national organization comprise: Continuity, competency, and responsibility of the administrative organization.
In our complex civilization, it usually takes years before any work undertaken by an administrator is completed, many more years before its results are seen. Thus when the administration changes frequently, as in our political offices, constructive work is done blindly, started by men who never can follow the work to completion, see the results appearing and direct or modify the plans to secure the desired results most effectively; or men are called upon to continue and complete work which they have not started, which they possibly only incompletely understand, or with which they are out of sympathy. It is only in those side lines of our political government where the office is held more continuously, under civil-service rules or because the office is not sufficiently important to warrant its inclusion in the "distribution of spoils," that constructive work is accomplished,, as in the building of the Panama Canal, the reclamation work by the Federal Government, some of the supervisory work by State commissions, etc., and even in these there is the continuous danger of political interference, of the work of many years being undone, or perverted to vicious purposes by some temporary political influence. It is so much easier to destroy than to construct; it takes so long a time to accomplish constructive work, and so short a time to destroy the work of many years.
Thus there can be no efficiency without continuity of the administration.
That competency of the director of the work is necessary for the success of any work is so obvious that nobody would think this even a subject of discussion, but as a matter of course, in legal matters everybody employs a competent lawyer, in matters of health a competent physician, in matters of administration an administrator. But, strange to say, as soon as we come to the consideration of political offices we disregard all these obvious and self-evident truisms, and have no hesitation to place a man who has failed in every business he undertook, in charge of the business management of the municipality; a man who cannot run his own household, in administrative charge of the community. If, then, continuity of office, held by competent men, is necessary for the efficiency which is the fundamental requirement of successful co-operation, there must be an effective responsibility, at least until such time when all men are angels, or at least sufficiently many that all offices can be filled with men who are and remain unselfish, industrious, progressive, and beyond the possibility of being perverted by the power of office.
What, then, are the structural elements in our American nation from which a continuous, competent, and responsible government could develop by evolution—a government such as is required for the efficient industrial co-operation of all citizens in the interest of all, under democratic principles? In such organization there can be no industrial competition, but by the co-operation of all producers duplication of work and all waste effort is eliminated. The production is controlled to correspond with the legitimate demands for the product, and all production for mere profit, without regard to the demand for the product, ceases, and with it all organization for the purpose of creating a demand where it does not exist. As a matter of course, this eliminates the periodic fluctuations of production, which give rise to the successive periods of business depression and business prosperity, and which are the bane of our present chaotic industrial system. In engineering, architecture, design, etc., instead of a number of men doing the same work independently, necessarily inferior, due to the limitation of each individual, and then having somebody select one of the propositions—often somebody who himself has not the professional qualifications to judge which is the best—one proposition would be made by the co-operative effort of all the men competent professionally, and so embodying the collective experience and knowledge of all. Instead of having a number of separate and competitive sales organizations, each describing and representing—or misrepresenting—their product, with the result that the prospective user gets little reliable information, one organization will supply complete and correct information, as there is no further reason to misrepresent, no reason to dwell extensively on the favorable features, and omit altogether, or skip lightly over the unfavorable features, but every interest is toward correct representation of all features.
Competition between industries would cease; thus, in transportation, the country's waterways would be used to the fullest extent, in combination with the railroads, and no interest would tend to deflect to the railroads what could more economically be carried by water, or inversely, and both forms of transportation would become much more economical by co-operation.
There would be no desire to graze cattle on lands adapted for wheat-raising, nor attempts to raise wheat on farms unsuited thereto, nor would forest growth be destroyed by sheep-raising, or the value of the river valleys, of the country's water-powers, be destroyed by reckless deforestation of the headwaters. With the same interests controlling all these activities it is obvious that no activity would be permitted which does more harm in one respect than it profits in another, and no interference would be allowed between the different industrial activities, beyond that incident to human imperfection, and thus unavoidable.
All this is not a mere impracticable dream, but it has long been an established fact, has been the operating principle within all the more progressive large industrial corporations, and all that is necessary is to extend methods of economic efficiency from the individual industrial corporation to the national organism as a whole.
Thus there will be competition between water transportation and railway transportation, to decide which in each individual instance is more economical, considering quality of the transported material, distance, time, etc., while now the waterways may stand idle for lack of a railway connecting with them, or for lack of transfer facilities, or hundreds of millions are wasted in the construction of waterways which can never economically pay for their cost, but the only legitimate purpose of which is to keep the railroad freight rates down by their competition.
There will be competition, whether gas-engine or electric motor is to be used, whether a local steam-turbine plant is to be installed, or power bought from a long-distance transmission system. But the decision will be made on the basis of the relative economy of the various propositions, uninfluenced by commercial or financial considerations alien to economy.
Financial manipulation for the mere acquisition of more money, without regards to constructive economical organization, necessarily must be impossible.
There must be an active co-operation between all producers, from the unskilled laborer to the master mind which directs a huge industrial organization. Such active co-operation presupposes that everybody feels personally interested in the industrial economy. This presupposes that the fear of unemployment, of sickness, and old age has been relegated into the relics of barbarism, and everybody is assured an appropriate living, is assured employment when capable to work, and protected against want, maintained in his or her standard of living, when not able to work, not as a matter of charity, but as an obvious and self-evident duty of society toward the individual.
This can be done by effective social legislation, as it has been done in other countries; it is being actively considered within our industrial corporations as well as by the public at large; some work in this direction has been done by legislation, more still within many industrial corporations, and the development of this social activity would probably have progressed still further in our corporations if the disorganization by legislative interference had not hindered here, as in most other directions, the progress of industrial organization.
It is obvious that "industry" here means not merely the manufacturing industries, but equally includes transportation and communication, agriculture, the animal industries, dairying, etc.—in short, all the human activities which deal directly or indirectly with the necessities of life.
The economic development of the world, accelerated by the world's war, has made such a co-operative industrial organization of our nation a necessity of self-preservation.
As structural foundation, on which to build such structure by evolution, in correspondence with our democratic national temperament, we have our political governments—Federal, State, and municipal—our large national societies, and our industrial corporations.
Of these, the political government is the only one which is all-embracing, is controlled by and responsible to all citizens, at least nominally. Therefore, while its constructive power may be practically nil, due to its form of organization, it has a vast inhibitory power, far greater than any other power in our country. We have seen this, and continuously see it in the action toward corporations, in the national conservation movement, even in the power exerted by subordinate governmental bureaus.
Thus, no organization which does not include the political government as an essential part of the structure can hope to succeed.
The natural suggestion, then, would be to have the Federal Government, with its subordinate State and municipal governments, organize, control, and administrate the country's economic-industrial system.
Thus the political government would acquire and operate all means of transportation and communication—railroads, canals, pipe lines, mail and express, telegraph and telephone. It would supervise and control all corporations and their relations with each other and toward the public. It would control the relation of employees within the corporations, by mandatory arbitration, by unemployment, sickness, and old-age insurance; control the hours of work, and working conditions, etc. There is a considerable sentiment in favor of this organization, and this sentiment is growing in strength.
It can be done, because it has been successfully accomplished abroad, in Germany, and has united all classes of people, and given the economic efficiency expected from it.
However, in our nation it would require not merely that the political government take over the industrial control, as was the case in Germany, but a government would first have to be created, capable to do this, a problem which is far more difficult than that which Germany solved, and appears impossible with the democratic temperament of our nation. It presupposes a powerful, centralized government of competent men, remaining continuously in office, and no political government of this kind can exist in the America of to-day—nor in the America of to-morrow.
It is true that our political governments—Federal, State, and municipal—are steadily becoming stronger, undertake more activities, and successfully accomplish what they could never have undertaken twenty years ago; that a higher class of men enter governmental service than formerly; that the quality of governmental work improves—graft, corruption, and mismanagement for selfish purposes steadily decrease. On the surface the latter may not appear so, and we hear as much to-day of political mismanagement and graft as we did twenty years ago. But if we look deeper into it we cannot fail to see that the reason of this is that many things are now resented by the voters as improper, and lead to political death of the office-holder, which twenty years ago were not noticed at all, but passed as natural and general characteristics of political office.
Thus our political governments are becoming better, stronger, and more capable of constructive work, and apparently are gradually progressing from the weak and inefficient government of the democratic nation, toward the strong and efficient government of the monarchical nations.
But is this really so, and are we really changing from the democratic concentral attitude toward the monarchical decentral attitude of governmental activity? Looking deeper into it, there appears nothing to warrant such assumption, but the increasing strength and efficiency of the political government is shown almost exclusively in concentral direction. That is, with the continuing development and progress of our nation, more and more problems, starting from individual effort and passing through group, municipal. State action, finally reach the Federal Government and require codification, on true democratic or concentral principles, and therefore of necessity created the more efficient governmental machinery required to deal with them. But where our Government has attempted to deal decentrally with problems, whether national, State, or municipal—that is, attempted to solve problems which had not been solved and completely worked out before on smaller scale by smaller organization—it has failed and is failing to-day. Such, for instance, is the case in the dealing with corporations, with the national conservation movement, etc.
Thus our national character and our Government have remained the same, and a solution of the industrial problem by the initiative of the political Government remains as improbable as ever.
Our national societies have done much successful industrial organizing work. Such, for instance, as the engineering standardization, which was undertaken and accomplished by American national engineering societies, and from here has spread to other countries and is now concentrally beginning to reach our Government. The movement for industrial safety originated and developed in this manner. In the field of morality and temperance, national societies have been active, also, though perhaps not always wisely.
However, the organization of even the largest national societies necessarily is so limited that with the exceptions of certain definite fields of activity they cannot be counted upon for more than assistance and co-operation in the industrial reorganization of the nation.