The True Spirit of '76; J. Lacy

Like him or not, he is still fascinat ing to. Americans. The reasons are Mr. Lacy is Executive Director of the Junction City-Geary County [Kansas] Economic Devel opment Commission. This article is here reprinted from the Fall 1975 issue of The Compass, published by Topeka Savings Association. 8 not hard to find. For one thing, the gTeat fortunes in America were built through entrepreneurial acti vity. America's social structure is a product of the milling efforts of thousands who came to these shores seeking their fortunes and hoping Lady Luck would beam on them. Those upon whom she smiled became great figures of power and .in many cases estab lished family dynasties persisting through many generations. But there is considerably more than this behind the allure of the entrepreneur. His values and acti vities have become a part of .. the character of America and inti mately related to our ideas of per sonal freedom, success, and, above all, individualism. He represented the rags to riches theme in its pur est sense, for he rose on his own by building a solid structure beneath him, not by social climbing. He got there by what he knew, not who 1976 THE TRUE SPIRIT OF '76 9 he knew. His resources were all inside, not outside.

The story of this man is a drama in which the protagonist challenged the established order and forged ahead toward the glow ing light called "success" using only native wit, ability, and hard work-with perhaps a bit of luck and Calvinistic fate thrown in for good measure. He was successul because he stuck to the simple and obvious American virtues. He built a better mousetrap or provided a better service and he did these things in the best way he knew. Today there is a connotation of manipulation, greed and avarice, and grasping acquisitiveness asso ciated with doing business for· a profit. We are taught that while it is true the entrepreneurial hero built railroads,. canals, communi-' ties, industries, and great systems of trade, there is also the implica tion that in the process he befouled nature, sullied valleys, denuded forests, muddied and contaminated the rivers and streams, scarred Mother Earth, and generally rav ished the natural order of things.

We are told Nature and God's creatures, including ordinary folk, all suffered at the hands of those who sought to impose their will on the natural order. Noone speaks on behalf of the enterprising man. No one says he was more constructive than destructive. Noone tells us it is more important to seek opportunity than to languish in security. Noone re minds us that each performance of the enterprising man . . . each new business ... is a renewal of the democratic notion that all men are born equal and .that the value of the individual to society does not depend upon family or social class~ No longer are we told that America is· the only place on earth where a man,· through his own efforts, can go out and achieve the status of success. The deeper traditions of our society, its history, myths and many of its heroic figures are fall ing into oblivion, buried beneath a plethora of politics that seeks to control, rule, regulate and restrict.

The symbolism expressed in the American image of the enterpris ing man is a. profound reflection on our national history and charac ter. We are a people who for nearly twelve generations went through the recurrent process. of imposing man's will and men-conceived structures on a wilderness of pri meval forests, rugged mountains, mighty rivers, unending plains, and waterless deserts. Though this resurgent effort at the moving edge of the frontier has long since ended, the spirit and the imagery must live on if free enterprise is to survive. It is the spirit of free dom that is truly the spirit of '76., The Bureaucratic Incubus CLARENCE B. CARSON The bureaucracy is like the weather: everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. Presidents often complain upon taking office that the bureaucracy is so deeply entrenched that they can gain only a tenuous control over the government. Congressmen find that wrestling with bureau crats for their constituents occu pies a considerable portion of their time. Businessmen have to learn to thread their way through a maze of bureaus in order to do business. "Bureaucrat" is an epi thet to the general public: he reDr. Carson has written and taught extensively, specializing in American intellectual history.