Let's Wreck the Gravy Train; E. Coleson

LET'S WRECK THE GRA VY TRAIN LET'S WRECK the "gravy train" before it ruins our coun try. Independent, self-reliant men and women, who were willing to stand on their own feet, do a day's work, and look after themselves, made America the great nation it is, has been, and can remain. But a multitude of Ameri cans will have to rise with "firmness in the right" if this nation is going to survive. The facts are almost overwhelming. Starting from de pression days the list of federal dependents has been growing continually. Five years ago Senator Byrd said that 37 million people were then receiving federal pay ments. To these would have to be added an unknown number of relatives plus a good many others who were benefiting indirectly from government handouts. The Senator warned us"... the spread of government pa ternalism is frightening." But Americans are a complacent people and don't Dr. Coleson is Professor of Economics at Spring Arbor College in Michigan. This is a slight condensation from an article which appeared in the August 1962 issue of The Flying A magazine of the Aeroquip Corporation.

174 LET'S WRECK THE GRAVY TRAIN 175 frighten easily-certainly not as long as the stream of checks from Washington continues. Indeed, many more have boarded the "gravy train" in the last five years and there is an ever-increasing queue of would-be passengers jostling one another for the best position in the waiting line. Apparently almost the entire population is clamor ing to get on board. The resulting situation is ridiculous and would be funny if the future of our country were not at stake. Seemingly no one is immune. The educators of the na tion who ought to know better are pleading for their share of the federal bounty as a right and a good many others can think of equally convincing reasons why they should be included. Certainly the rest of us could just as logically demand "reservations" as those already "on board," but the practical fact is that the conveyance is already seriously overloaded.

The resulting spectacle reminds the writer of a little narrow gauge train he once boarded out in the bush in Africa. The coaches were crammed with natives, bundles, chickens, and pigs in the wildest disarray until no one else could even hang on. The only trouble was that when the train reached a hill, it couldn't make the grade and the passengers had to pile out and push. But our fellow Americans don't want to be inconvenienced: they ex pect a streamlined, air-conditioned ride all the way through-no pushing for them except crowding to get more benefits. And in this space age they see no reason why it shouldn't be possible. The simple truth is that government is not productive: 176 EDWARD P. COLESON we, the people, must support ourselves plus Uncle Sam and all his poor relatives. But, as many of us have no ticed, often Uncle's hangers-on seem more prosperous than the rest of us, and parasitism no longer carries even a stigma: it has become a way of life. The net result is that the decreasing number of producers find it harder and harder to maintain themselves and all the free load ers, until they too are tempted to give up the struggle and run to Washington with a tin cup like everyone else.

Increasingly people are saying that we must have federal help; we simply can't make it on our own slender re sources. But as more people are subsidized the burden becomes even more impossible for the few independent Americans who are still trying to go it alone. Nor does government assistance offer more than the illusion of re lief: we pay it all plus the cost of bureaucratic in efficiency. Thomas Jefferson described our present-day situation with prophetic eloquence: If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements . . . as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must ... be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves (to the govern ment) to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.

A large fraction of every budget simply goes to placate the pressure groups-buy our votes with our own money. Most of our fellow countrymen know this and have LET'S WRECK THE GRAVY TRAIN 177 known it all along. Their justification usually is that we might as well get our share while it's going around. In deed, in the tomorrows when the historian takes pen in hand to describe the Decline and Fall of the United States) (should present trends continue) he will have to record the fact that the fault lay mainly with good, well-meaning people. The demagogues could never have gotten their way had not a multitude of respectable peo ple gone along because it was easy, profitable, and the thing being done-"fellow travelers" on the road to ruin. Let's each start a one-man campaign to close out the federal give-away program by pledging ourselves to stand on our own feet and encouraging our friends to do the same.