Chapter 14 of 15 · The Mainspring of Human Progress by Henry Grady Weaver
PART FOUR–FRUITS OF FREEDOM
PART IV
FRUITS OF FREEDOM
Chapter 18
INVENTIVE PROGRESS*
WHEN the American revolution had its beginning, living conditions had scarcely changed since the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. The colonial woman gathered her own firewood and cooked over an open fire, just as women had cooked since the dawn of history, and just as more than two-thirds of the women on earth are cooking today. She spun thread and wove coarse cloth, with a spindle and loom handed down from the early Egyptians. Every housewife made her own soap and candles and carried water from a spring or well. A crude millstone, dating back to ancient Babylon, ground the grain that the American farmer cut and threshed with knives and flails that were older than history.
These were the conditions existing when our forefathers threw off the shackles of Old World tyranny in order that human beings might be in control of their own lives and make full use of their individual initiative.
The outburst of human energy was terrific, and in no way is it better illustrated than by the inventive progress that immediately took place.
In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which could do the work of four dozen men. But that’s only part of the story. Whitney’s invention made it commercially profitable to cultivate the short-fiber “green-seed” cotton that grew wild in the foothills of Virginia and the southeastern states. In contrast to the long-staple or sea-island variety, the lint stuck so tenaciously to the short-fiber seed that only a few ounces a day could be separated by hand.
The lower processing costs increased the market for all varieties of cotton. Acreage was greatly expanded, and the southern states entered an era of high prosperity. In less than ten years, the annual production of cotton in America had increased from less than 5,000,000 pounds to over 50,000,000 pounds.
New England shared in this prosperity; the availability of cotton in such large quantities and at such low prices stimulated the development of carding and weaving machinery. A few years later in Waltham, Massachusetts, for the first time in history, raw cotton was turned into finished cloth under the roof of one factory.
Clothing could now be obtained at prices within the reach of all. It was no longer necessary for the housewife to work overtime at her spinning wheel and hand loom. Thanks to Eli Whitney, she could have an occasional evening for rest and recreation.*
Mass Production
In 1799, the same Eli Whitney, through the influence of Thomas Jefferson, was given a contract to build muskets for the War Department. His work on that project was one of the most important milestones in the development of modern mass-production technique.
Whitney is frequently spoken of as the inventor of mass production, but that is hardly accurate. In England in the early 1680’s, a man named Sir Dudley North had outlined a program of mass production, with particular reference to the building of ships. Sir Dudley’s analysis and proposal were presented in a paper entitled Considerations Upon the East-India Trade, which stands today as a remarkable document on the fundamentals of mass production.
Sir Dudley was much concerned about the confusion and perplexity to which the workingman was being subjected as a result of his having to switch back and forth from one type of job to another. He wanted to “abate” such unnecessary confusion by advance planning and by assigning jobs of different variety to different artisans of different skills and talents.
No Decrease in Wages
Sir Dudley also foresaw the possibilities of reducing costs “tho’ Wages shou’d not be abated.”15 But he was ahead of his time. The idea of increasing production through systematic planning was too revolutionary to be given serious consideration. And the idea of making things easier for the workers was downright anti-social.
Little Progress
A hundred years later, Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, expanded on the principles laid down by Sir Dudley North. But mass production had made little headway. Ships were still being built in the old way – with no abatement in the confusion. Production-minded Americans, who probably had never heard of Sir Dudley, were the first to produce ships on a mass-production basis – and they didn’t get around to it until World War I.
About all that Adam Smith could find to report along lines of practical progress was that the principle of specialized operation was being applied to the manufacture of dressmakers’ pins. That was in the year 1776.
On this side of the Atlantic, in that same historic year, a rumor came out of Rhode Island that a tack maker named Jeremiah Wilkinson had perfected a new invention which would boost his production to several thousand tacks a day per man. Jeremiah’s “new invention” turned out to be nothing more than a scheme for fastening a dozen bits of metal in a vise, so that, with a broad-faced hammer, the heads could all be pounded at the same time.
Today such a procedure seems perfectly obvious, but in those days, it was startling news and represented an important step toward modern manufacturing efficiency.
Interchangeability
But mass production, if applied to anything beyond the simplest kind of article, depends not only on division of labor and multiple operations, but also on uniformly accurate, interchangeable parts. Whitney pioneered the idea of interchangeability as a fundamental principle of production, and he successfully applied the principle to a product that must be made with the greatest precision.
Guns had always been built by hand. Each part had to be laboriously filed, lapped, and fitted together by highly skilled gunsmiths. There was no division of labor. No one had ever worried about “abating the confusion.” Each worker made everything from the stock to the trigger spring. Each gun was slightly different from every other gun, and each part in each gun was different from the corresponding part in any other gun.
Whitney proposed to substitute highly specialized machine operations for the less uniform hand operations. Thus, each piece would be made exactly as it ought to be in its final form.
Simplified Repairs
This would not only reduce the assembly operation to a routine procedure, but would greatly simplify the problem of repairs. It would no longer be necessary to do a lot of expert filing and fitting to replace a worn or broken part. The principle of interchangeability would make it possible to repair a gun right on the battlefield, without the aid of a professional gunsmith.
Whitney’s contract called for the manufacture of 10,000 muskets over a two-year period; and government officials, thinking in terms of piecemeal or handicraft production, naturally assumed that deliveries would be made at an even rate of about 100 per week. But it is a characteristic of mass production that, while it’s a quicker way and a better way to build things once you get started, it takes a long time to get started.*
Around a hundred different machines are required to produce uniform guns on a mass-production basis – not to mention the special tools, jigs, fixtures, etc., that have to be made to order. Even with the highly perfected techniques, facilities, and know-how of today, it would take about six months to buy and install the machinery and equipment needed to produce quality guns on a quantity basis.
But back in 1799, it was not just a matter of going out and buying the machinery. That was before the age of the specialized tool industry. Most of the equipment that Whitney had to have just didn’t exist. It had to be designed and built from scratch.
The brilliant, ambitious, and audacious Whitney, unwittingly perhaps, had taken on the job of laying the groundwork for the modern machine-tool industry, without which few, if any, of our manufactured products of today would be available at prices within the reach of the average person.
It would have been much easier to go ahead and make the guns by hand, and presumably the first of them were made partly by hand; but at the end of a year, only 500 muskets had been delivered. The War Department was getting impatient and demanded a showdown.
Whitney was summoned to Washington to appear before a committee of experts. He knew he was in for trouble unless he could get them interested in his broad undertaking. He appeared before the committee with a box containing the loose parts for ten guns. Without ceremony, he dumped them on the conference table and, like a jubilant child with a new toy, put on a demonstration of what could be accomplished through the use of special machinery, tools, jigs, and fixtures. With parts chosen at random, and without any filing or fitting, he assembled two guns before their very eyes and passed them around for inspection.
Impressive Demonstration
It was an impressive demonstration, but the committee had to consider the practical aspects. The government had ordered, not ten guns nor 510, but 10,000 guns. The time was half up, and Whitney himself had to admit that he wouldn’t be able to meet the schedule. But he fared better than did Sir Dudley North; and with the support of his friend, President Jefferson, the contract was extended.
As time went on, Whitney had to get additional extensions; but the order was finally filled, and the United States entered the War of 1812 with 10,000 of the most perfect muskets that had ever been made. For the first time in history, precision firearms could be produced in almost unlimited quantities.
The War of 1812 was won; and in the years that followed, the conquest and settlement of the West were greatly expedited by Samuel Colt’s application of Whitney’s techniques.
But of far greater importance, Whitney had laid the foundation for quantity production of complex civilian products – bicycles, typewriters, linotypes, motion picture machines, electric refrigerators, motor cars.
It has been estimated that even the simplest, cheapest, skimpiest kind of automobile could not be built for less than $20,000 without machine tools and the interchangeability of parts which they make possible – and the cost of keeping it in repair would be even further out of line.
Luxurious Gadget
Inspired by what he had learned of Whitney’s undertaking, Eli Terry, a clocksmith of Plymouth, Connecticut, announced that he was building 500 clocks – all of the same, identical design – which he would sell for around $10.00 each, as against the customary price of $25.00.
This was even more startling than Wilkinson’s new method of making tacks. A tack was a very simple thing; but a clock was a mysterious, delicate, and highly complicated mechanism. Clocks had been built back in the days of the pharaohs, but up to the time of Eli Terry they had always been the ornamental luxuries of kings and princes. The common man had depended on the sun and the stars.
From the Old World viewpoint, time was unimportant, and the conservation of human energy also seemed unimportant. It is only when men are free that they begin to place a value on their time; and when men begin to place a value on human time, they begin to realize the importance of preserving human life.
Down through the ages, the principal business had always been war. When a people won a war, they made slaves of the defeated people; if they lost, they became slaves of their conquerors. In either case, there was always a surplus of burden-bearers. Long hours of drudgery helped to keep the slaves submissive, so there was no incentive to develop labor-saving techniques – no point in worrying about time.
Under such conditions, there was no place for the Eli Whitneys or the Eli Terrys. If any had cropped up, they would have been frowned upon as “enemies of the social order.” That is why Sir Dudley’s forward-looking ideas were thrown into the discard. Certain of his more daring writings were suppressed until years after his death, when they were published anonymously by a group of cautious admirers.
Terry was no newcomer to the clock business. For some years past, he’d been canvassing the New England countryside, selling high-priced clocks on the installment plan. But the idea of producing clocks of uniform quality at prices low enough to make them available to every family was something new and radical.
Eli Terry, as far as I can find out, was the first to put into practice the American idea of low cost and big volume through mass production and wide distribution. By the end of three years, he and his partner, Seth Thomas, had built and sold over 5,000 clocks.
Others were attracted to the field. Competition increased. Quality improved. Wages went up. Prices went down. The unique American formula was in the making!
One manufacturer, a man named Peck, saw possibilities in the export trade. His first shipment of low-priced clocks to England was held up at the Liverpool Customs House on grounds of suspicion. The Customs officials knew the value of clocks, and they knew that clocks just couldn’t be produced at the low prices shown on the Peck invoice – fraudulent payments must have been made on the side in order to avoid the full effect of the tariff.
British law provided that under such conditions the goods in question would be confiscated by paying the amount of the invoice plus 10 per cent. The clocks never reached the consignee. They were taken over by the government. What the government did with them, I don’t know.
But Peck, being a practical man, didn’t put up any argument. He was a hardheaded manufacturer, not a salesman. The 10 per cent extra profit was “pure velvet,” and he rather relished the idea of disposing of his output without any sales expense or credit risk. He added more workers and continued shipping his clocks to Britain and collecting from the Customs Office until they finally got wise to him.
Although the records are incomplete, I like to think that the British, at about that time, began to think that perhaps Sir Dudley had something. However, it took another hundred years to develop and extend mass-production techniques to a point where the worker could switch from one job to another without confusion and perplexity.
Sir Dudley’s dream was fulfilled – not in England, but here in the United States. It was brought to its fruition through the ingenuity of American production engineers. But scarcely had it reached full perfection when other forms of confusion were injected into the situation. Although of an artificial, man-made nature, they are so befuddling that even a Sir Dudley North might have difficulty in pointing a way to the solution.
6000 versus 160
For thousands of years under the Old World concept of a static economy, operating under bureaucratic control, human beings lived in hunger, filth, and disease. They worked ceaselessly at back-breaking drudgery to keep life in wretched bodies. They died young. For thousands of years, when not fighting wars, they managed to build pigsty shelters, to sow grain, cook meat, yoke oxen, and chain slaves to mills and oars.
Then in this New World, in a brief period of 160 years, Americans created an entirely different mode of life, with improvements and advances in the scale of living beyond the utmost imaginings of all preceding ages. Americans have disproved the pagan superstition of a static universe and have given a new meaning to the word progress.
If our progress is to continue, it is important that we do not forget the things which have brought us thus far.
Economists and statisticians are inclined to take the end of the Civil War as the milepost marking the beginning of America’s first great era of accelerated progress. In terms of the increased output and higher standard of living, that is true; but the seeds of that progress had been sown by the preceding generations.
Most of the things we have today are traceable, directly or indirectly, to what was going on in the minds of those who were blazing trails 100 and 150 years ago. That’s when the basic foundations were being laid, and it is doubtful that there has ever been a time when human energy and original, independent, creative thinking were so intense and so well-directed as in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War.
Elusive Lag
In the progress of a nation, just as in the decline of a nation, there is always a lag between cause and effect. This is an extremely important point, and failure to recognize it seems to account for most of the mistakes and misery of mankind down through the ages. Progress, or lack of progress, at any given time depends on what was happening in the minds of men and women at some previous time. The histories of Greece, Rome, and Spain afford abundant evidence.
Looking to the future instead of to the past, America’s progress in the years ahead depends on the American thinking of today. The long range prospects depend, not on us older folks, but on the thinking of the younger people who will be at the helm 10 years, 20 years, 30, 40, 50 years hence.
As individuals, what is their outlook on life? Are they fatalistic or self-reliant? What is the influence of the home, and how does it compare with that of 50 and 100 years ago? What’s going on in the schoolroom? What is the philosophy of our educators and of men in public office?
One of the best ways to insure future progress is to keep clearly in mind the things which have been responsible for our past progress, as well as the things which may have kept America from being as great as it might have been.
This chapter is supposed to deal with inventive progress as affecting our economic growth and our high scale of living. And yet I’m not sure that I should apologize for this digression because it all comes back to the effective use of human energy, and the effective use of human energy depends on the mental and moral outlook of the individual persons who make up a society.
Parallel Efforts
As already indicated, it is difficult to trace the “genealogy” of any invention or discovery, and any attempt to do so is accompanied by the danger of omissions and inaccuracies.
Economic needs have a way of permeating society. It is a commonplace in the history of invention to find minds far distant from one another in time and space wrestling with the same problems – working independently but producing results that are roughly identical.
Rarely does anything spring full-blown. Progress advances by degrees, each improvement paving the way for the next; and since the advent of the printing press and the growth of scientific societies, the benefits of the independent efforts have pyramided on one another to an increasing degree and at an accelerated rate.
The more complicated the product, the harder it is to trace the genesis of its development. To tell the story of the steam engine, for example, would take a sizeable volume, with a “begat” chapter as long as the Book of Chronicles.
James Watt is usually thought of as its inventor, and it is true that Watt, more than any other individual, was responsible for the type of engine which ushered in the modern age of power. He introduced the condenser principle and translated reciprocating motion into rotary motion. But steam engines of a crude variety had been used to pump water out of English coal mines before James Watt was born.
As a matter of fact, the principle of the steam engine had been understood back in the days of ancient Greece; and we know that in Alexandria, Egypt, a man named Hero built a steam turbine in the year 130 B.C. But an invention, like a natural resource, doesn’t amount to much unless and until something is done about it.
It always takes time to bring an embryonic idea to its full fruition – and the unavoidable lag is often prolonged by well-meaning people who still cling to the pagan concept of a static universe.
The Steamboat
A boat propelled by steam was launched on European waters in the year 1707. It was built by the French scientist, Denis Papin, who was living in Germany at the time. He made a successful voyage down the Fulda River. But at the town of Munden, he was attacked by an organized gang of boatmen. His new contraption was destroyed, and Papin barely escaped with his life. Thus, the pressure groups, through the use of violence, retarded the development of steam propulsion for almost a century. It was in 1807, just an even 100 years after Denis Papin had run afoul of the river gangsters, that Fulton’s Clermont made its maiden trip from New York to Albany.
Robert Fulton is usually thought of as the inventor of the first American steamboat, but he was more of a promoter than an inventor. No less than 16 steamboats had been built and operated in this country before the launching of the Clermont.
Before Fulton
The half-forgotten genius, John Fitch of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, built a steamboat in 1786; and during the following ten years, with the aid of Harry Voight and others, he built five additional steamboats – all of them successful, and each one better than its predecessor.
Fifteen years ahead of Fulton’s Clermont, Fitch’s fourth boat, the Perseverance, was operating on a daily schedule up and down the Delaware, carrying passengers between Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey. But unlike Fulton, John Fitch was a poor promoter, and he was too engrossed in his work to bother about the political angles.
Then there was the able engineer, Col. John Stevens, who launched his first boat in 1802. His third boat, the Phoenix – completed simultaneously with the Clermont – was equipped with an improved engine, designed and built by Colonel Stevens himself, whereas the Clermont’s engine was imported from England.
But Stevens was at a disadvantage because Fulton’s backer, Chancellor Livingston, through political pull, had obtained a 20-year monopoly on the operations of steamboats in and around New York State. Also, it seems that Nicholas Roosevelt, a former associate of Stevens, had thrown his support to Fulton’s group.
At any rate, the monopolistic setup was too much for Stevens to buck. So while the Clermont was chugging its way up the peaceful Hudson, the Colonel braved the waters of the Atlantic and took his new boat from Hoboken to Philadelphia – the first ocean voyage ever made under steam power.
Livingston and Roosevelt tried to extend their monopoly over the entire United States; but the newly-freed Americans didn’t like the idea of governmental restraint – in less than a generation, independent operators had covered the western waters with steamboats of their own contrivance. In the meantime, the dynamic New World had challenged the static Old World by making the first ocean crossing in a boat powered by steam. It was the good ship Savannah, which crossed to Cork, Ireland in the year 1818.
Little Things
The demand for houses following the Revolutionary War was as great or greater than it was following World War II.
Lumber was plentiful; the bottleneck was nails. Iron nails had been in use in the Roman Empire at the time of Christ, but they had always been laboriously made by hand; the forging of nails for the building of a house took about as much time as the construction of the house itself. Legend has it that in colonial days old houses were deliberately burned to the ground and the ashes sifted in order to salvage the hand-wrought nails.
Nails sold by the dozen, at prices not much lower than they now bring in antique shops. Thomas Jefferson kept a dozen slaves busy forging nails just to keep up with the building activities on his Monticello estate. But this was all changed when, in 1795, Jacob Perkins of New-buryport, Massachusetts developed a machine that would turn out 60,000 nails a week.
The history of nails is paralleled by that of many other ordinary household items which today are bought at the nearest dime store without a second thought.
The thrifty colonial housewife could have told you without a moment’s hesitation just how many pins, needles, and buttons she had in her sewing basket; the head of the house carried a mental inventory covering his meager stock of nails, tacks, screws, and scraps of metal.
Brass buttons sold for ten cents each until Paul Revere, in 1801, worked out a machine that would roll brass of uniform thickness. Then the button manufacturers of Waterbury, Connecticut began stamping out buttons on presses operated by a water wheel.
Pins and needles were especially treasured. They were larger than those in common use today and far more expensive – especially pins, as the heads were made separately and welded or brazed in place. Selling pins “by the paper” didn’t come into practice until 1844, when a small manufacturer in Derby, Connecticut worked out a way to produce them entirely by machine at the rate of 2,000,000 a week. Up to that time, ordinary pins sold for as much as 20 cents each and were looked upon as appropriate gifts for weddings and at Christmas time. They also took the place of small change to supplement barter between neighboring families – which, incidentally, is the origin of the phrase pin money.
Far-reaching Effects
As in the case of the cotton gin, it is almost impossible to measure the value of any useful invention. The dollar volume of the increased industrial production is only a part of the story and may be greatly exceeded by the gains in human efficiency. Consider the effect of steamships, railroads, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, etc., in releasing time and energy for other purposes. Or, to take a less spectacular example, imagine the time wasted by the colonial housewife in searching for one of her 20-cent pins.
Consider the saving in time and human energy and the thousand-and-one improvements in living that we owe to electricity. Its story is so involved and so far-reaching that it would take a whole book to develop it – even if I had the necessary knowledge and talent for calculations of such astronomical proportions.
But here’s just one example, a rather simple example – certainly less spectacular than either electricity or steam power. It has to do with plows.
Plows had been in use since the dawn of history, but they had remained practically unchanged down through thousands of years. At the time of the American Revolution, they were still being made from the prongs of trees, sometimes with a bit of metal fastened to the tip.
It was not the type of problem that appealed to the high-brow scientist. Tilling the soil had always been left to peasants and slaves, so why worry? But in the New World where men were free, a vast agricultural empire was opened up as a result of American ingenuity applied to the improvement of this ancient tool.
In colonial days, the vast midwestern prairie lands and a good part of the Mississippi Valley were looked upon as worthless. Early visitors spoke of the sweeping plains as a “land ocean” that would forever remain wild and uncultivated.
Several Reasons
This conclusion was not without a reason. In fact, it was based on several reasons.
The prairie country, in contrast to the eastern area, was not covered with forests; and although cutting down trees and clearing land had been the bane of their existence, the pioneer settlers looked with suspicion on any land that didn’t have to be cleared. They reasoned that if it wouldn’t grow trees, it just couldn’t be of any value for growing crops.
The prairies were covered by a tough, primeval sod. When this sod was dry, the ordinary plow wouldn’t cut through; and when it was softened by rain, the rich loam underneath was so sticky that it clung to the plow blade. The fertile soil of the river valleys was described as “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”
Cast-iron plows had been tried, but without much success. They wouldn’t “scour.” They were too heavy to handle. And there was an age-old superstition that a plow made of metal would poison the crops.
But John Deere, a Yankee blacksmith who migrated from Vermont to the Mississippi Valley, was not so skeptical. Instead of using iron, he made a plow out of the very finest steel then available. From an old buzz-saw disc, he trimmed out the required parts; and on patterns carved from a log, he carefully pounded the sheets into the proper shapes and bolted them to a well-constructed hardwood frame.
When you come right down to it, John Deere’s plow could hardly be called an invention. About all he did was to find a new use for an old material and to carry out his ideas in a thoroughly workmanlike manner.*
But John Deere’s plow cut through the sod like a razor, and the sticky loam slid off the plowshare like butter sliding off a hot knife. True, it was heavier than its wooden predecessor; but John Deere was a giant of a man, and he trudged across the prairie lands with his new-fangled plow thrown over his shoulder, just to overcome the weight argument.
And after John Deere had a few seasons of increasingly good crops, the realistic, free-minded settlers cast aside the superstition that metal would poison the soil, and the prairie country was on the boom.
Just Reward
A big industry grew out of John Deere’s simple invention, and a number of other industries followed in its wake because binders, reapers, tractors, and other advanced types of farm machinery were developed as a natural result of his having found a way to plow the prairie sod.
Millions of acres of the most productive soil in the world were brought into use. Prosperous towns and cities sprang up in the vast prairie “wastelands”; and John Deere’s plow, along with the more intricate inventions of Cyrus McCormick and others, opened up similar opportunities for increased agricultural production in all parts of the world – including the Russian Ukraine.
It staggers the imagination to think how John Deere’s simple contribution increased the wealth of mankind. Perhaps it would have come without freedom to invent and freedom to share in the rewards of inventive efforts; but there’s no escaping the fact that plows had remained practically unchanged down through the ages, while the peoples of the world were going hungry.
I don’t know how much money John Deere made as a result of finding a way to plow the rich prairie lands; I doubt if he got any more than he deserved – although I wouldn’t attempt to say how much he was entitled to get, nor would I know how to go about estimating it.
I guess one way to do it would be on the basis of how many hours it took him to think up the idea and to develop the experimental model. The trouble is that inventive genius doesn’t operate on an hourly basis. More often than not, worthwhile ideas come in leisure moments, as a result of an interest in the job that extends beyond working hours.
From all I can gather, John Deere had been turning the problem over in his mind for about a year before he hit on the solution. But a year’s pay would hardly be enough – even if you figure it on a portal-to-portal basis, at maximum ceiling rates, and triple time for overtime.
Then too, it’s quite possible that John Deere may have followed some false leads and spent time on other ideas that didn’t “pay off.” It might be that some of these futile efforts were the steppingstones which led him to a solution of the plowing problem. But no matter how liberally we might deal with him on an hourly basis, there would be the danger of shortchanging John Deere – and I want no part of it!
Ability to Pay
So let’s take another approach and go at it from the standpoint of “ability to pay.” Since Deere’s sodbuster turned worthless land into highly valuable land, one might argue that he was entitled to a rather liberal percentage of the increased wealth. This might be arrived at by calculating the before and after value of the vast Mississippi Valley – including the fertile farmlands of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, to say nothing of the Russian Ukraine.
Roughly speaking, this represents the area that Jefferson bought from Napoleon for $15,000,000; but when this land was brought under cultivation, the value increased to about $20,000,000,000, which would mean an added wealth of $19,885,000,000.
But that doesn’t throw any light on what John Deere’s share should have been because it took the co-operative efforts of millions of free men during several generations to provide the follow-through and to get the job done.
True, John Deere played an important part in getting things started; but I’m using his name more as a symbol, and much of the credit belongs to Cyrus McCormick, James Oliver, and other inventors – none of whom could have gotten vary far without the help of still others who supported their efforts. These included those who put up the money to build the factories and equip them with tools; those who used the tools; those who helped to develop new and better tools; those who worked out new and better methods for using the new and better tools; those who contributed to management, distribution, and service; and last but not least, the up-and-coming farmers who were willing to take a chance – to leave their comfortable homes in the East and risk their money, and their lives, to open up a vast new country. I don’t know of anyone who would be smart enough to figure their various shares of the increased wealth.
A Tough Problem
It’s a tough problem any way you look at it. I guess the only way to solve it is the way it actually was done – through a free and unhampered balancing-out of the incentives and the rewards among the various individuals who played a part. Perhaps it’s fortunate that in the days of John Deere, the major emphasis was on increasing wealth, rather than on how it should be divided.
Too much stress on how it should be divided might easily have reduced the amount to be divided because it would have taken more people to do the figuring than to do the job. But that’s really getting off the subject; I’m merely trying to emphasize the wealth-producing possibilities of new ideas.
No matter how much money John Deere may have made, it would be insignificant in comparison with the tremendous over-all benefits shared by millions of people. And it’s just possible that good old John Deere wouldn’t have bothered his head about the plowing problem if he hadn’t been living in a free country, where an ambitious blacksmith had a chance to become a prosperous manufacturer. Free minds are inventive minds. That is why America has always been a land of inventors.
Other Inventors
Benjamin Franklin invented a new type of stove which pointed the way to our modern base-burner. He invented the rocking chair and the first pair of bifocal spectacles, and his scientific experiments played an important part in laying the foundation for the great electrical development which took place long after his time. And it was the sly, tolerant, and benign Franklin who invented the American sense of humor, based on the idea: Don’t take yourself or anyone else too seriously.
Thomas Paine also had an inventive mind. Not only was he highly creative as a writer and welder of words, but with geometry as his hobby, he also drew up the plans and supervised the construction of the first single-span iron bridge with crisscross struts.
Jefferson’s home at Monticello demonstrates his ability as a master of structural design, and the fittings and furnishings disclose many evidences of his mechanical ingenuity. It was Jefferson who designed the first scientifically curved moldboard for a plow. Also, he played an important part in laying the foundation for the more effective administration of patent law, which, as Abe Lincoln later observed, added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius. Since the time of Jefferson, the United States has led the world in the number of patents registered – twice as many as in Great Britain or France and four times as many as in Germany.
In addition to the cotton gin, the modern steamboat, the prairie sodbuster, the reaper, and the binder, Americans invented the sewing machine, the typewriter, the linotype, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the motion picture, the airplane, the washing machine, the electric refrigerator, and dozens of other electrical appliances.
And Americans developed the techniques of quantity production. In a broad, over-all sense, one might argue that mass production, as we know it in this country, is the most important of all inventions because it is only through mass production that the practical benefits of other inventions can be extended to the millions.
But mass production rests on the foundation of another, and an even greater invention. It is our new and original concept of a political structure based on a principle that is just as true, just as real, just as inexorable as any law of physics – the principle of individual liberty and freedom, the principle that each person controls his own life-energy and is responsible for his own acts and for his relationships with others.
This, the first and foremost of all our inventive contributions, is not ordinarily thought of as an invention. But the fact remains that it is the greatest of them all because it serves as the foundation for all the others and provides the opportunity for their full fruition.
*This chapter is based on material gathered over many years from a wide variety of sources, some of which are listed on page 267. But I especially want to express appreciation to my friend, the late Carl Crow, and to his book The Great American Customer (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943).
*By way of anticlimax, it’s disappointing to note that Whitney himself made not one red cent out of the cotton gin. Section VIII of the Constitution provided that inventors should, for a period of time, be granted the exclusive right to their original ideas – not so much to protect the inventor, but to make sure that new ideas were made public. As Whitney found, to his sorrow, property rights as applied to inventions were not generally understood. Patents didn’t afford much protection on a thing like a cotton gin, which could be made in any blacksmith shop.
*As Charles F. Kettering has aptly observed, this is analogous to the publishing business. It takes considerable time to set the type, make the engravings, correct the proofs, take care of make-ready, etc.; but once the presses get going, it’s just about as easy to run off a million copies as it is to run off a few thousand. In the printing business, the necessity for all this preliminary work is rather generally recognized, but it is not generally understood that all mass manufacturing involves the same problems – only more so. The story of Whitney has its parallel in the early days of World War II, when industry was being heckled by people who were ignorant of this principle – who thought it was just a matter of turning on the spigot.
*Years ago, someone down on the farm told me that John Deere invented the knife-edge wheel which runs ahead of the plowshare and makes an incision for it to follow. But that’s not true. The rolling colter was in use before the time of John Deere, and his plow wasn’t even equipped with one. Indeed, it would be difficult to prove that there was anything entirely original in John Deere’s plow. The efforts of other Americans, directed along similar lines, paralleled and even preceded those of Deere. When I ran into these disconcerting facts, I started to throw out the story. Then I thought that perhaps they made it an even better story because it illustrates the very important point that human progress doesn’t depend so much on flashes of genius as on the person who does a bang-up job of carrying out his own ideas or the ideas of others. While I am using John Deere’s name primarily as a symbol, there can be little argument that he, more than anyone else, was the man who got things started in the prairie “wastelands.”
Chapter 19
HOPE VERSUS FEAR
No one nation or race of people has a monopoly on creative and inventive talent; but new ideas, like natural resources, don’t amount to much unless and until something is done about them. Many of the things we have today are based on inventions of Old World origin. America’s first century of industrial progress was largely a matter of getting something done with the half-baked ideas that had been around collecting dust for centuries – while the vast majority of people were doing without.
Inventions and discoveries were being made in the Old World long before the White Man came to America. They are still being made, and they will continue to be made by the few unsquelchable geniuses who, in spite of the static surroundings, persist in their independent thinking – without much hope of reward unless the brain child has military possibilities.
But when creative workers find themselves entangled in artificial restrictions and bureaucratic red tape – in addition to the natural, normal, and unavoidable difficulties surrounding their work – much of the potential talent will die on the vine. Even the irrepressible genius can accomplish very little without the help of others.
To extend the benefits of a new invention or discovery requires complex networks of supporting talents, skills, and physical facilities. Thus, progress in the direction of more and better things for more people depends on maintaining conditions that provide opportunities and incentives extending over a wide area. There must be opportunities and incentives to invent and opportunities and incentives to use; and in between, there must be opportunities and incentives to produce and exchange. Here in America, such opportunities and incentives have been more far-reaching and more favorable than anywhere else in the world.
Freedom of Choice
It all comes back to the matter of individual freedom. We’ve been free to invent, free to try out new ideas and new methods, free to back up the other fellow’s business or go in business on our own, free to take a chance on making a profit or going broke. We’ve been free to trade with each other over wide areas, free to buy what we please from whom we please – from Maine to California, and from Key West to Seattle.
That, incidentally, is one of the outstanding contrasts between the Old World and the New World. Try to imagine the problems we’d be up against if our country had been set up like Europe, with each state a separate nation, isolated by customs barriers, different languages, and different monetary systems. Contrast that with conditions as they actually are, and remember that we barely escaped following the European pattern.
Absence of trade barriers has kept us away from the strained artificiality of each area’s trying to be self-sufficient. This has resulted in logical specialization on the basis of natural resources and climate: cotton in the South, flour in Minneapolis, movies in Hollywood, and copper mining in Montana.
We’ve been free to choose our own jobs and free to compete with one another for better jobs, without any overriding authority dictating to us as to where we should work, what we should be paid, and how we should spend it. We’ve been less afflicted by monopolies, cartels, and restrictive labor organizations than any other country.
There may be exceptions, but I’m inclined to the view that objectionable monopolies cannot exist without the acquiescence of the state – either by unwarranted legal protection or by failure to perform its proper police functions in suppressing commercial gangsterism. I am aware that such transgressions usually result from the efforts of private interests or pressure groups to obtain governmental aid to help them “pull their chestnuts out of the fire.” But two wrongs don’t make a right. Double guilt lies at the door of those who propose all-out governmental monopoly as a remedy for the lesser evils of the infrequent private monopoly.
A private monopoly can usually be broken in one of two ways: People can stop patronizing it and find substitutes or do without, or the state can force it to dissolve. But government monopoly is total monopoly; and since there is no higher power to which to appeal, there is no relief short of rebellion and war. The only safeguard against the evils of monopoly lies in maintaining competitive conditions which provide maximum freedom of choice for the consumer.
Please note that I am not using the term free enterprise. This was once a sound term, but the propaganda (both for and against) has given it a pressure-group connotation.
The only sound program for free competitive enterprise – the only program that has a chance to succeed – is one which concerns itself, first, last, and always, with maintaining freedom for the individual citizen – let the chips fall where they may. It’s a matter of keeping the way open so that any business or trade group, large or small, may be continually challenged, kept on its toes, even put out of business, by any runner-up who can demonstrate an ability to serve the customer better.
It may be argued, and it frequently is, that free competition is a ruthless and cruel process. But it is not nearly so ruthless and cruel as the opposite philosophy, which down through the ages has kept the majority of people ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, embroiled in wars, and dying of famine and pestilence.
Hope versus Fear
There is no escaping the fact that human effort is motivated by hope of reward on the one hand, and by fear of punishment on the other. The ideal combination is rewards that are great and reasonably attainable and punishments that are not too severe.
America’s economic progress is the result of conditions which have provided maximum opportunities for reward, but which have limited the penalties to personal insecurity and business bankruptcy. At the other extreme is the totalitarian state, which promises security at the expense of freedom and which attempts to “encourage” initiative by the threat of the concentration camp or firing squad.
Under free competition based on personal responsibility and voluntary co-operation, our production of useful goods and services has exceeded anything ever before accomplished. True, we are far from perfect, and in some respects we seem to have been drifting backwards.*
The big point is that our progress to date is the result of an entirely new and different form of political structure which made it possible for human energy and individual initiative to work under their own natural control.
But now let’s get away from broad generalities and make a little closer analysis of the effect of political structure on creative thinking and of the benefits growing out of such thinking. For illustrative purposes, we will continue to talk in terms of technical inventions. However, it should be borne in mind that conditions affecting inventive progress in the realm of physics or mechanics have an equal bearing on the development of new ideas and new methods in any field – from statistical techniques to diaper service.
Dynamic versus Static
The inventive mind is an inquiring mind, and the inquiring mind is the mind of a doubter and challenger. Creative thinkers are never satisfied to let well enough alone. They are continually straying off the beaten path and getting out of step with the normal routine. Such people have no place in an authoritarian society. Even though their explorations may be confined to the area of physical things, there’s always the danger of their turning up something that might disturb the planned economy and discredit the superior wisdom of the overlords.
But what’s wrong with a government setting up its own bureaus of carefully chosen scientists and inventors to explore new frontiers of progress, under the supervision of those responsible for the over-all planning? Why won’t that work?
Part of the answer is that nobody is smart enough to select them. What governmental bureau back in the 1890’s would have picked Henry Ford, the powerhouse helper, to pioneer the production of low-priced automobiles? Even his friends and neighbors had him labeled as a scatterbrained tinkerer.*
Who among present-day Washington officials would be able to pick the Edisons and the Ketterings of 25 years hence? Who among the most ardent and self-assured advocates of centralized planning would be so bold as to try to define the next great advance in the realms of scientific development, invention, and production techniques?
Certainly, those assuming the responsibility for mapping out the future would have to consider the disrupting effects of changes due to progress. To ignore the necessity of looking beyond the horizon of things already known would make them self-confessed advocates of a static society.
Stubborn Facts
The difficulty lies in the fact that human energy doesn’t work according to any foreordained plan or pattern. This is especially true in the field of original exploration. In the higher realms of scientific research, you can’t even tell the researcher what to find out – the biggest part of his job is to find out what there is to be found out.
You can’t order a person to have an inspiration. Creative ideas spring from within; they can’t be forced from without. Genius is an unpredictable quality. It doesn’t work according to fixed rules or patterns but turns up in the most unexpected quarters.
Inventive and scientific talent of a high degree can’t be produced by bureaucratic edict. Nor can it be discovered through any formalized procedure – the only way it can be done is through natural selection. In other words, let the creative mind discover itself. That’s the only effective process, and it can only be fully effective in an atmosphere which doesn’t prevent anyone from using his own initiative.
As a result of personal freedom here in the U.S.A., the process of natural selection sifts the embryonic geniuses from 145,000,000 people. That’s how we found Eli Whitney, Charles Goodyear, Thomas Edison, Michael Pupin, Luther Burbank, Ottmar Mergenthaler, Elias Howe, Samuel Morse, and the Wright brothers. Nobody selected them. Given an opportunity in a free land, they selected themselves and forged ahead of their rivals. No governmental bureau can ever compete with this natural process of self-selection on a free and highly competitive basis.
Stimulus
The greater the competition, the better the quality of the persons who reach the top. This is due, not only to the greater number of aspirants, but also to the fact that genius thrives on rivalry. It’s not much fun to be an expert in a field which is completely and entirely beyond the understanding of everyone else; nor is there much incentive to widen the gap by becoming even more expert – why increase the loneliness? Galileo would doubtlessly have risen to greater heights if there had been other astronomers, even lesser ones, to criticize and challenge his work on the basis of factual merit.
There is also a highly important, practical, down-to-earth by-product of personal freedom which can only come through the process of competition and natural selection. The maintenance of our American way of life depends just as much on the runner-up as it does on the outstanding genius. Thousands of men of varying degrees of talent and skill are needed to work out the less spectacular details – details which must be taken care of before even the simplest invention or discovery has any practical value for improving the conditions of mankind on a wide scale. Thus the man who doesn’t quite win the race is a necessary adjunct to the top-flight genius, who has neither the time nor the temperament to handle the follow-through.
Rewards
The progress and contributions of scientists, inventors, and innovators depend on the opportunities for reward for extra effort. The reward may take various forms. It may be the endorsement of others engaged in the same or similar work. It may be the emotional stimulation resulting from intelligent debate, argument, and criticism from rivals. It may be widespread fame and acclaim – this presupposes some degree of intelligent interest on the part of the general public. Underlying all these is the inner satisfaction of doing a good job; but that’s not much of a reward unless it is magnified by recognition from others.
And last, but not least, there is the more tangible form of reward – the pay check or its equivalent. But financial gain is not always the most important incentive. Its importance depends on the individual. Among creative workers, there are those who would find more satisfaction in a complimentary letter from a rival than they would in a salary raise. But the number of Galileos is limited, and even a Galileo can do with some extra cash.
The possibility of fortune, along with fame, insures a bigger crop of geniuses – as well as of runners-up. And in the less dramatic, down-to-earth fields of practical invention and technological progress, the opportunity for financial reward becomes increasingly important as an incentive.
In the final analysis, the size, and hence the effectiveness, of the financial reward – whether it comes through a cash settlement, a royalty payment, a promotion, or a business venture of one’s own – depends on the size and vitality of the market for the product or service. Here in America, this vitality is greater than anywhere else. We have less than 7 per cent of the world’s population – but we also have the dynamic qualities of 145,000,000 free people.
Here in America, the consumers play a role which extends considerably beyond the function of providing a market. As investors, they supply the tools without which large-scale, economical production with high wages would be impossible. In addition, the consumers provide something else which, although less tangible, is of equal or even greater importance. It is the readiness to try new things – a distinctly American trait, which has a deeper significance than appears on the surface.
Just by way of illustration, I’d like to tell the story of an experience which may help to illustrate the point. In fact, it’s two stories, based on two experiences, illustrating several points which started me thinking along these lines.
Some years ago, just before World War II, I read an article on inventions and technical progress. In the early part, it summarized various stories of American inventions and experiments – including the one about Ben Franklin flying his kite during the electric storm, with a brass key attached to the kite string. Considerable emphasis was placed on the fact that many great things had sprung from humble or accidental origin.
That was the general tenor of the first part of the article; but along toward the end, the author began to discuss some theories on over-all social planning. He seemed to forget the unpredictable things that had happened in the past; and in theorizing on the future, he tried to draw some hairsplitting distinctions between useful inventions and nonessential gadgets. He was particularly critical of automobile design and made special mention of the trend toward automatic transmissions as an example of “gadgetry gone wild.”
To make a long story short, it added up about like this: At a time when the world was tottering on the brink of disaster, when so many important things needed to be done, the automobile industry – prostituting its talents and diverting its engineering genius – was devising gadgets to relieve people of the inconsequential task of shifting gears by hand.
It is quite true that the world was tottering on the brink of disaster, and it is also true that some of the automotive engineers had worked out a way to shift gears automatically. I don’t quite agree that it was a useless gadget, but perhaps I am just biased.
The Brink of Disaster
Anyway, my thoughts turned back to Ben Franklin’s going out in that storm to fly his kite, and it occurred to me in passing that the world was tottering on the brink of disaster even back in those days. If things had been under “proper control,” Mr. Franklin might not have been able to get a priority for the brass key used in his experiment.
That was back in the 1750’s, and I’m talking now about the year before Pearl Harbor. The scene shifts to the following year – the summer of 1942, when the world really was tottering on the brink of disaster. We and our allies were taking quite a licking in the air, and one of the most urgent problems of military aviation was to outdo our enemies in altitude flying.
Some engineers felt that a hydraulic clutch, similar to the one used in the new automatic transmissions, might help solve the problem. But the idea had been considered quite impractical. A little promotion seemed in order, and I was asked to help write a booklet on the general subject of airplane engines and altitude flying, with a special chapter on superchargers and hydraulic clutches.
Before the book could be published, it had to be passed by the censors. They approved it all right – from the standpoint of military censorship – but they rather questioned the advisability of mentioning the hydraulic proposition. Since, from our standpoint, that was one of the main reasons for publishing the book, we balked a little and asked, why?
They explained that the Germans had tried to use the hydraulic clutch in their altitude engine but were giving up the idea. In spite of all their technical skill, the Germans had never been able to make them work properly.
A Successful Gadget
I’ll skip the next part of the story, except to say that the booklet was published – and without pulling any punches on the hydraulic clutch proposition. I don’t know that the booklet had anything to do with it, but the prejudice faded away; and shortly thereafter, the experience gained in building hydraulic clutches for automobile transmissions was diverted to the building of high-altitude super-superchargers.
A little later, tanks were equipped with automatic transmissions not basically different from those used in some of the present-day motor cars. This made driving a tank so simple that the operator could be trained in a matter of hours instead of weeks. The job no longer called for a muscular giant – and in a pinch, the driver could help with the fighting. Of even greater importance was the fact that the gears could be shifted without bringing the tank to a stop, thus reducing the danger of getting hit. So, in spite of the trouble experienced by the Germans, hydraulic clutches made in American automobile factories played an important part in winning the war, on land as well as in the air.
Adding it all up, my thoughts began to turn back to the article which tried to distinguish between “essential inventions” and “unnecessary gadgets.”
And then it dawned on me that the responsiveness of 145,000,000 free people provides American industry with a better proving ground than could ever be set up as an adjunct to any factory, in either peace or war. Mass production could never have gotten beyond the experimental stage – in fact, it never could have gotten started – without the support of a public which is alert to progress and which refuses to accept any preconceived boundary between the necessities and the luxuries.
A Contrast
That’s an outstanding difference between a free people and a people whose needs, tastes, and desires are regimented in line with some arbitrary, over-all plan. True, the Germans had a lot of trouble trying to make hydraulic-drive superchargers; but America is not Germany. In this country, we don’t wait for a war to get experience in the quantity production of precision products. Here in America, around a half-million hydraulic clutches for motor cars had been built before we entered the war. And if we could build them for peacetime use, we could – and did – build them for war!
Thus it is that here in this country the experimenters and the innovators are not confined to the research laboratories, the proving grounds, and the factories. Everyone plays a part, and everyone has a chance. It is impossible to draw any hard and fast boundary lines between the top-flight inventors, the runners-up, the amateurs, the everyday users. No such boundary lines have a chance of staying put. They are shifting back and forth even as this is being written.
In America, to a greater degree than in any other country, there has been the opportunity for self-expression, self-development, and advancement on the basis of merit – regardless of race, creed, or class distinction.
The recognition of the fact that the individual is a responsible human being, free and self-controlling and capable of looking after himself, keeps down the overhead of bureaucratic red tape and the cost of policing. This makes low taxes possible, with the result that any enterprising person may reap a good share of the fruits of any extra effort that he is willing to put forth.
Not having to worry about being robbed of his life, his liberty, or his property, the American has been free to concentrate his energies on the production of useful goods and services. Under such conditions, the habit of thrift has been ingrained. Instead of spending all our earnings on goods for personal consumption, there have been strong incentives to save and invest. The capital resulting from such savings made it possible to build up tremendous resources in the form of more efficient tools of production, thus multiplying the effectiveness of human energy to an unbelievable degree.
Through the extra efforts of millions of people who were willing to work a little harder and to spend a little less than they earned, American workers have been provided with more and better tools than have any other workers in the world, with the result that output and wages are higher here than anywhere else. It has been estimated that our superior tools (mechanical power and laborsaving devices) have expanded our natural human energies to the equivalent of a billion extra workers!
The dreams of Sir Dudley North and Eli Whitney could never have become practical realities except under conditions which provided the incentives to save and invest. Not only have superior tools and equipment made possible the production of more things at lower prices, but also many of the more complex products which we have come to take for granted simply couldn’t be made at all, were it not for our highly developed manufacturing facilities.
A Natural Outgrowth
In the last analysis, all of these advantages are the natural, normal outgrowth of a political structure which unleashed the creative energies of millions of men and women by leaving them free to work out their own affairs – not under the lash of coercive authority, but through voluntary co-operation based on enlightened self-interest and moral responsibility.
That’s why plows are now made of steel. That’s why America has led the world in production accomplishments. That’s why we’ve been able to win wars started by nations that make a regular business of fighting. That’s why we are able to feed the victims of pagan aggression.
And last but not least, that’s why the people of the United States, who occupy only 6 per cent of the world’s land area and who represent less than 7 per cent of the world’s population, own:
85 per cent of the world’s automobiles
60 per cent of the life insurance policies
54 per cent of the telephones
48 per cent of the radio sets
46 per cent of the electric power capacity
35 per cent of the world’s railway mileage
30 per cent of the improved highways
92 per cent of the modern bathtubs
Before the war, Americans consumed:
75 per cent of the world’s silk
60 per cent of the world’s rubber
50 per cent of the world’s coffee
40 per cent of the world’s salt.
That last item may sound a bit trivial. I was tempted to leave it out, but some of my economist friends tell me that the amount of salt used is one of the best indications of a nation’s production and general standard of living. If so, that statement leads to the startling conclusion that the people of the United States are exactly nine times better off than the people in the rest of the world.
* To tell the complete story, with all the pros and cons, would take another book; and sooner or later I hope to write such a book, unless someone beats me to it. Among other things, it would include some “thought starters” covering three proposals that might help to reduce the fluctuations in the business cycle.
* And assuming that he had been picked, would his contributions have been as great? Bureaucratic red tape always works at cross-purposes to the development of independent thinking. It saps energy that might otherwise be directed into channels of creative usefulness. Read John Randal Baker’s highly significant little book, Science and the Planned State (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1945).
Chapter 20
MORAL VERSUS MATERIAL
THE third attempt to set men free has made the great-grandchildren of the revolutionary leaders the best-fed, the best-clothed, the best-housed, and the most prosperous people on the face of the globe. Many of the things that we have come to take for granted as commonplace necessities of life would have been beyond the fondest dreams of luxury-seeking kings and potentates a few years ago.
Perhaps I’m laying too much stress on material accomplishments, as against the cultural and moral aspects, but I can’t see that there are any clean-cut dividing lines. It is generally agreed that the necessities of life must be taken care of before there can be any widespread progress in other, more important directions. But I’d like to suggest that the interrelations are far deeper – that neither the chicken nor the egg comes first.
America’s outstanding progress in the realm of material things is the result of an approach which was based on sound moral principles; which threw aside the pagan superstition of a static universe; and which admitted no limitations to man’s progress so long as he directs his imaginative abilities and creative faculties in harmony with truth and rightness.
Consider the futile efforts of the ancient alchemist who, laboring under the delusion that things are governed by the whims and fancies of the mythical gods, attempted to change the nature of materials in-the-mass by waving his magic wand and uttering his mystical incantations. His intentions were good, but his beliefs were false; and progress was at a standstill until modern research workers reversed the procedure. In contrast to the ancient alchemist, they delve into the secrets of the molecule and the atom – working from the specific back to the general – with the abiding faith that there is no limit to what can be accomplished, so long as man conforms his plans to the “higher plan” which governs all things.
Voluntary Co-operation
The same principle applies in the fields of industry and commerce. America’s accomplishments in quantity production and in the widespread distribution of complex products and services would not have been possible except through the voluntary co-operation of free individuals. This voluntary co-operation depends on the observance of ethical standards based on the recognition of human rights, human obligations, and individual responsibility. It is a practical manifestation of the brotherhood of man, and it is good business. To rely on force and coercion – courts of law and police regulation – is too expensive. It slows things down, adds too much to the overhead, and saps energy that might otherwise be directed to the production of greater abundance.
In the static world of the pagans, the only way to gain a benefit was to take something away from someone else. Under that philosophy, human energy which might have been used to increase wealth was always wasted in fighting over existing wealth. This went on for thousands upon thousands of years; in the process, material wealth was destroyed, human energy was dissipated, and desolation prevailed.
Then, here in America, after 160 years of voluntary cooperation between free individuals, we have pointed the way to a world of peace and plenty. Although we’ve just barely reached the threshold, we’ve gone far enough to disprove the age-old superstition that for one person to make a profit, the other must suffer a loss. Under the American formula, the soundness of the Golden Rule becomes increasingly apparent; and for the first time in history, we have witnessed the paradox of higher wages, lower prices, more things for more people – and we’re only just getting started!
Not Perfect, But…
It is true that America is far from perfect; and being a self-critical and progressive people, we find it easy to visualize a much better world. But in admitting our shortcomings and laying our plans to overcome them, there are three questions which might well be asked:
1. To what degree are our shortcomings traceable to the form of political structure under which our country was founded?
2. To what degree are they due to our having drifted away from that concept?
3. How does our record compare with the records of countries which have tried to operate under the opposite philosophy?
And in drawing the comparisons, it’s important to bear in mind that we’ve been at it less than 200 years, as against thousands of years of experience with various forms of regimentation.
Counterrevolutionists
Today we hear a lot of talk to the effect that our original form of government has been outmoded; that it’s old-fashioned and needs to be brought up to date; that you can’t resist the trend of history; and that we are now in the midst of a new world-revolution.
But the truth of the matter is that the American revolution for human freedom is the only thing that’s really new, and it did not end with the surrender of Cornwallis nor with the signing of the Constitution. It’s still going on, and the counterrevolutionists – the enemies of freedom – are on the march. Their major attack is not on the open battlefield. It is in the fifth-column technique of skillfully boring from within – a program of infiltration and attrition.
The principal secret weapon is traceable to Lenin, who allegedly instructed his followers to first confuse the vocabulary. Lenin was smart. He knew that thinking can be done only in words and that accurate thinking requires words of precise meaning. Confuse the vocabulary, and the unsuspecting majority is at a disadvantage when defending themselves against the small but highly disciplined minority which knows exactly what it wants and which deliberately promotes word-confusion as the first step in its efforts to divide and conquer.
Lenin was an able strategist, and his instructions have borne fruit. There are evidences of it on every side. The result is that the communication of logical thought has become increasingly difficult, until today we are living in a world of sugar-coated fallacies, clichés, false meanings, and double talk.
Offhand, one would assume that free Americans, with their unprecedented record of progress, would be completely immune to the propaganda of those who advocate a reversion to pagan ideology. But paradoxically, people who have lived their lives in a civilization founded on Christian ethics are at a serious disadvantage when defending themselves against the surreptitious tactics of those who deny all moral values and who are obsessed with the immoral fallacy, the end justifies the means. As Henry J. Taylor expressed it, the best prize fighter, accustomed to following the boxing rules, is not invulnerable when an opponent carries lead in his gloves and has no compunction about hitting below the belt.
The Jujitsu Technique
We in America are up against the problem of protecting ourselves against the jujitsu tactics of those who would have us commit suicide by using our own strength to destroy the very things which are responsible for that strength. Without regard for moral principles of decency and fair play, their techniques are skillfully designed to take advantage of our virtues and to turn them into weaknesses.
Our habit of self-criticism, which is so largely responsible for our progress, makes us particularly vulnerable to distorted propaganda which exaggerates our deficiencies and holds out false promises of a short cut to the millennium. Thus it is that some of our most patriotic, high-minded, and well-meaning citizens succumb to the overtures of those who would make them the innocent tools of subversion.
The fact that we are a progressive and open-minded people, always on the alert for new ideas, makes us susceptible to old ideas when they are attractively camouflaged and presented as something new.
Being a hospitable, tolerant, and fair-minded people, we are inclined to consider both sides of every question. That’s all right up to a point, but when it comes to the eternal verities of moral truth, there are no two sides to the question. Right is right, and wrong is wrong; and any concession to the pagan viewpoint – whether in the name of expediency or open-mindedness – paves the way for the destruction of all moral values.
Look at the Record
I repeat that America is far from perfect. It would be easy to write a whole book on the negative aspects; but in recent years, that side has been so overstressed that I make no apology for concentrating on the doughnut instead of on the hole. On any honest basis of comparison, the record of America speaks for itself.
In this republic, less than 7 per cent of the earth’s population has created more new wealth than all the other 2,010,000,000 people in the world; and the benefits of this great wealth have been more widely distributed here than in any other country – at any time. In addition to, or rather as a result of, such accomplishments, we have more churches, more schools, more libraries, more recreational facilities, more hospitals. Americans have gone further than any other people in the elimination of abusive child-labor practices, the reduction of back-breaking drudgery, the spread of literacy, enlightenment, health, longevity, general well-being, and good will toward others.
Ours is the only continent on which there has never been a general famine. Aside from the early settlers, few people in America ever have gone hungry. Even in the depths of our worst depression, Americans who were on relief were living better than most of the fully-employed in other countries.
There is more laughter and more song in these United States than anywhere else on earth. In shops, streets, factories, elevators, on highways and on farms – everywhere – Americans are friendly and kindly people, responsive to every rumor of distress. Someone in America will always divide his food and share his gasoline or his tire tool with a person in need.
It would seem that insecurity, the price of freedom, has bred a degree of human sympathy that is without parallel in the history of mankind. It is only in America that rank-and-file citizens, over and over again, have made millions of small sacrifices in order to pour wealth over the rest of the world, to relieve suffering in such faraway places as Armenia, Russia, China, and Japan.
Opportunities
With the shortest working hours on earth, we have greater opportunities for self-improvement and personal advancement. But please note that the emphasis is on the word opportunities. The matter of taking advantage of opportunities is up to the individual. It cannot be otherwise. There are no substitutes for self-faith, self-reliance, self-development, individual effort, and personal responsibility. Life is no bed of roses. The end of man is not self-indulgence, but achievement. There are no short cuts, no substitutes for work.
Human life came into being and aspires to advance in the face of conflict, struggle, pain, and death. In the last analysis, no person’s security can exceed his own self-reliance; when anyone denies this self-evident truth, the chances are that he has for too long depended on someone else to do his fighting for him.
If, down through the ages, men and women hadn’t stood up to the job of living – if they hadn’t taken risks, faced dangers, suffered exhaustion beyond exhaustion, and kept on fighting and working in the faint hope of victory – then there would be no human being left to tell the story.
Living is a tough job. Only good fighters can make a go of it. The tragedy is that we waste our energies in fighting one another, instead of fighting the common enemies of mankind – famine, pestilence, disease, and other destructive forces of the nonhuman world.
Chapter 21
FREEDOM VERSUS WAR
UNDEB the pagan fallacy of a static universe in which new wealth cannot be created, the only way to gain an advantage is to take something away from someone else. When men are free, they soon learn that wars of aggression are unprofitable; that human energies are far more productive when applied to the peaceful pursuits of creating and exchanging useful goods and services.
But when war is forced upon them, they always give a good account of themselves. The reasons for this are not far to seek:
1. Military strength rests on a foundation of economic strength.
2. Economic strength depends on the number of people engaged in productive work, as against the number on public payrolls.
3. Free individuals have greater initiative. They are more ingenious and more resourceful in adapting themselves to the emergencies of war and in matching wits with the aggressors – from a military standpoint as well as from a technological standpoint.
4. They have more to fight for and do not need to be egged on by spurious propaganda.
Force and Trickery
From Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, the standard practice in the Old World has been to appropriate the goods of others through the use of brute force. To justify their aggression, those in authority have used propaganda designed to frighten their subjects into believing that they are surrounded by enemies about to attack.
Under their gods of superstition – the will-of-the-swarm, the despots, the dictators, and the führers – the peoples of Europe and Asia have carried on an almost uninterrupted war since the beginning of history. During the past 30 centuries, for example, only one year out of every 15 has been free from war; and even in the brief intervals of peace, the preparations for war have sapped energy which might otherwise have been directed toward constructive pursuits. Imagine what kind of world this would be if the energies of its 2,155,000,000 people were removed from war efforts, freed from bureaucratic regimentation, and applied to the invention, production, and exchange of useful goods and services.
The Cause of War
Down through the ages, human beings have always tried to stop war by utterly crushing the enemy. There has been no progress, for the simple reason that the underlying cause of war is not the enemy. Combat on the battlefield is merely a symptom. War is caused by a false notion of human energy, based on the ancient superstition that men and women should be reduced to the status of the beehive. When the majority of people on this earth come to realize that they are free, self-controlling, responsible for their own acts and for their relationships with others, there will be no war.
Until that time, Americans must continue to lead the struggle against the forces of paganism – in time of peace as well as in time of actual war. We’ve always given a good account of ourselves on the battlefield, and we’ve played an important role as the arsenal of democracy – or rather, as the arsenal of freedom. The victims of paganism always look to America for help in fighting off their aggressors. And America always plays the major role in helping its friends, as well as its enemies, to get back on their feet.
But there are definite limits to how far we can go in that direction. Perhaps we would be doing the peoples of the world a greater and more enduring service if, along with each item of food, clothing, money, and equipment, we sent a simple, matter-of-fact statement of the reasons underlying our ability to make contributions which are so far out of proportion to our population and our natural resources.
And I rather like this idea from another standpoint. In the role of salesmen for America, perhaps we might become more appreciative of our own product, more steadfast in holding to the faith of our fathers, more alert in resisting the alluring promises of false Utopias, which for over 6,000 years have kept the vast majority of people underfed, poorly clothed, embroiled in wars, and surrounded by famine, pestilence, and human degradation.
THE END
The Mainspring of Human Progress
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