Preface

When the Puritan Fathers came to New England, they and their forbears had been "fed up" for cen turies with over-government, hereditary monarchs, class legislation, restraints upon civil and religious liberty. They determined to sweep out of existence everything in the way of class or hereditary privilege; to elect for themselves their rulers great and small, [ v ] Preface and see to it that their power and terms of office were so limited as to preclude their using one to prolong the other. There was to be no permanent class of governors or officeholders living in luxury upon the industry of the people. The old New England town meeting was to come once a year-where every free man might arise and discuss every affair concerning the community, and might be candidate for every office; indeed was considered rightfully entitled to his turn at public office now and then-and well ex pressed the crude idea, later crystallized in words by Abraham Lincoln of" Government of the people, by the people, and for the people." The small concerns of the little villages, which then made up the colony, were placed each under its elective officer; the roads under the road master, the pound under the pound master, the taxes under the assessor, the ordinances under the selectmen, and so on; and terms of office were limited to a single year. The New England theory was once a year "to turn the rascals out"

before they got too rich and powerful; and the New England practice became one of rotation in office. For the larger affairs of the colony, in which the villages combined for common purposes, such as the making of laws, establishment of courts, maintenance of prisons, defense against Indians, construction of highways, etc., the same principles of decentraliza tion and local autonomy, of restriction of authority and brevity of term were still religiously guarded. Each little community was represented at the Gen eral Court by one of its own residents, who was sup posed to look after and protect the special local in terests of the village as against that of other vil lages, and to some extent against that of the colony. His term also was limited. In general, the organiza[ vi ] Preface tion of government, in the day of our New England ancestors, was based apparently upon the principle of extreme distrust of those endowed with power; that is, of jealousy of government, carried to the last degree.

Later, when the colonies evolved after the revolu tionary war into a Federation, and finally into the United States, the same general principle of distrUst of the governors, and jealousy· of government, was carried into the Constitution. There is like brevity of term, the same limitation of constitutional power; and a system of checks and balances by which, for instance, the Senate may reject the action of the House, the House that of the Senate, the Executive can veto both, the Supreme Court can over-rule all three; while the Executive, by reason of the pardon ing power in criminal cases, can bring to no effect the finding ofthe jury and the verdict of the judge. This principle of distrust, of giving power with one hand and taking away with the other, has been developed still further by the adoption in many states of the Initiative and Referendum, through which the mass of the people can compel or review the action of their representatives; and it has been seriously proposed that the people may recall the judges, and thus, by and by, reverse judgment of the Suoreme Courts.

It is curious indeed to note how much broader and wiser was our forefathers' theory of representative government, as disclosed in the Constitution of the United States, than was their practice of it, as em bodied in the local, state, and national governmental machinery actually set up. We can realize to-day that they must have been men of small experience in organization of large affairs; and we cannot but wonder at their broad vision yet narrow range of . [vii r Preface action. Following them religiously, however, and ac cepting their rather primitive institutions almost as sacred, we have struggled in a patient, blind way for more than a century with the growing burden of a political system so complex and multifarious that it constantly breaks down of its own weight and. cost. As our institutions stand, there never was in all his tory so unlimited an opportunity for crass demagogy.

We deserve indeed to be ridden as we are by the law maker and the tax gatherer; because by way of hating the tyrant we become stupid enough to love the demagogue. Especially for the last thirty years have we been bitten by the German bug of COLLECT IVISM, until we habitual,ly run to Washington, or the State House, or the City Hall (though always in vain), to correct the mistakes of the Almighty, in making men, or events, or things, as they are, or as they change from day to day. The great American demagogue is on top; and is likely to stay there, until we simplify politics, and make things a little less pleasant for him. For the first ninety years of our existence as a na tion we acted on Jefferson's principle, "That gov ernment governs best which governs least," and so reaped the benefits of unheard-of freedom of business (within our own borders at least) in the shape of unheard-of prosperity. The Civil War and the aboli tion of slavery gave us also the added benefit of ut most freedom of labor; say until 1880, when trades unionism began to shackle the workers. About the same time the social gospel of Karl Marx, "made in Germany"-his cult of class-consciousness and class-solidarity, of collectivist control of industry and wealth by the State, in place of free individ ualistic capitalism subject only to natural eco nomic law-began to spread among us, under val viii] Preface rious .guises. First came the Granger movement attacking the railways; then Populism, attacking the gold standard; Progressivism, attacking big busi ness, Wall Street, the bankers, and the trusts, etc., and finally Woodrow Wilson's vague doctrine of "The New Freedom," working out as Government Ownership and Operation. All of these, and their first cousin, Trades Unionism, are but variants of the Marxian attack on "Capital." Curiously like them, in substituting state control for natural econo . mic freedom, yet born of the selfishness of capitalism itself, there have tangled themselves in our politics the contradiction of shutting out instead of trading with foreign industry; and in our commerce the con tradiction of monopoly, or combination in restraint instead of in development of trade.

All of these devices-whether of the predatory state to plunder the individual and thereby enrich the people or of the predatory individual to plunder the people, and thereby enrich himself-are bound to fail, because contrary to economic law; and the former have failed, signally and conclusively, in a very few short years of trial. The latter, also, in my personal conviction, .can never pay anybody, and must go into the discard. It is the business of this book, without questioning the patriotism of those responsible either for primitive over-organization of our government, or for modern over-extension of its activity into fields of commercial industry (where government meddling is superfluous and worse than useless) to point out the consistent and inevitable weakness and failure of both; and the natural and logical limitations that should fix our conception of, and determine our return to, our original constitu tional purpose of utmost liberty, and least govern ment.

[ix.J Preface Here is in simple language our modern situation: Written history now dates back five or six thou sand years. From the earliest times, government has been duplex. On the one side it is protective, with waste of force and money, and sacrifice of liberty, merely to protect the peaceful from the predatory; on the other, it is cooperative, with economy of both, in providing at common expense for certain universal needs, otherwise not possible universally to provide for. The carrying out of these purposes constitutes the business of govern ment-for business it is, subject to the rules of busi ness. Yet neither of them is productive; both, on the contrary, cost heavily and add nothing to the wealth of the community; both must be paid for out of property otherwise created-that is, by taxation. While no people has managed to do without government, history is one long record of the rise and fall of peoples; and of government after government for each people. Indeed, there is no one thing so firmly established by history as the sure and certain decadence and fall in due time of every government; yet I have nowhere happened to see the plain and simple reason for· such failure pointed out by the historian.

It is, in my belief, merely that government is, necessarily, the largest and most difficult of human undertakings, even in its simplest and most primi tive form-tending always to overgrowth; whereas nature on its part abhors overgrowth, and destroys it. In our day of great states, vast peoples, and huge cities, the simplest government operates on such a giant scale, and in so many different fields of effort, as rapidly to outgrow the mental powers of the man or men at the top. For there can be but one govern ment in the normal community; and like every living Ix] Preface organism, that government can obey but one head, in order that its various parts shall co-ordinate; yet the brain of man can work only so fast and so far. In overgrowth, in overloading the mental power of its executives, lies its inevitable breakdown, decay, and death; for government, like other living things, cannot keep on growing forever, and .when sound growth ends, death begins.

Even during its heyday government never func tions as well or as economically, man for man, as private or commercial organization; and for the same old reason-overload of personnel and red tape. There is indeed no such thing as efficient government, measured by.commercial standards of efficiency. In private industry, carried on for profit, the cost of overload and red tape is prohibitory; business cannot stand it, and it is cut out. To simplify work and concentrate it in the fewest hands is vital to success. But with government, not run for profit, and paid for by taxation increased to cover whatever the cost may be-often carefully camouflaged to hide that cost, however excessive-it is well-nigh impossible to check its overgrowth, or' to hold its vast and varied activities down to the measure of human managing capacity. , Two fundamental weaknesses in governmental organization-that it is not, and indeed ought not, to be run for profit; and that it must lack the constant automatic check on overload and waste that comes to business with the grim necessity of paying its own way-these are far more responsible for its invariable breakdown, as recorded in history, than the mere crookedness of politicians. Yet these inherent weak nesses seem to me to be very little understood; per haps because, prior to the unheard-of growth of modern transportation and industry, there had been [ xi 1 Preface no form of human organization big enough to measure government by, or compare it with.

To-day, on the contrary, there are, especially in these United States, many great corporations whose territory, personnel, and scale of operation exceed in· size, though not in complexity, those of most local and many state governments, and fairly compare with our national government. With their growth there have grown up during the last half century standards of corporate efficiency; and a considerable group of great captains of industry, who have added to unusual mental powers worldwide experience in successful modern trade. Such men realize the difficulty, the human im possibility, involved in too much government. They alone, perhaps, can forecast from ample experience its sure and costly consequences, of small service and large taxes. The rest of us, average men and women, who merely earn and spend a modest weekly wage, without the least suspicion that government is a costly burden for which everyone of us is paying every day; a lot of guileless folk-who for the last fifty years have been cajoled with the socialistic theory "made in Germany" that, given but enough government, its vast machinery will pump from some imaginary reservoir of boundless supply a plenty of everything for everybody; we, I say, have not stud ied and hardly heed the long story of the breakdown of one government after another, for 6,000 years, as told in history. It all means little to us, and says nothing at all to our demagogues-who plan for us vast political machinery and unlimited taxation, in the good old political way; for the good old politi cian's purpose of running that machinery, of levying and personally spending those taxes.

Therefore I appeal in this book to the few whose [ xii] Preface large affairs teach them the limitations of human brain power, the boundaries beyond which successful human organization cannot ·hope to go~I.mean the men who actually create our great commercial cor porations with their unrivalled efficiency-I urge them to educate the rest of us! As an appropriate text for this preface, let me quote a recent eulogium upon the master of Standard Oil-so far·perhaps the most successful of human organizers in his chosen tasks-spoken of his father by young John D. Rockefeller: "If there is one thing above all others I admire my father for," said the young man, "it is that in the great business he has built up he has always applied the principle of sticking to that business. My father has been interested in many other things, but he has kept his attention centred on one thing." So, indeed, by concentrating on one thing, he has accomplished many things. No doubt many of those who chance to read this book will have been trained by most fluent Scribes and Pharisees, who never cre ated a useful thing in their lives, to denounce the elder John D. and all his works; but no one can deny that "Standard Oil" is magnificently alive and successful in its chosen field, or that its master mind is still clear and going strong. On the other hand, nothing looks deader or smells worse than the huge, unsavory, yet unburied carcasses left by Too Much Government, say in the shipping and nitrate, the railroad and telegraph, the food, coal, and labor fields-the reek of which brings flocks of tax-gather ers like buzzards about us; unless perhaps it be the rotting of Soviet Russia-of unlimited state mono poly, which, as I write, seems to carry with it the rotting also of its master minds.

For us here at home there never was a more favor[ xiii] Preface able psychological moment, a more opportune time, to realize that unless we limit our government to its fewest, simplest, and most vital functions, it must in our great modern states and cities become an affair too huge for human genius; one which even at its best must always fall far behind our simplex, profit seeking corporations, in results attained. We have but to look about us to wake up to the fact that we free and self-governing Americans, whose ancestors came to the barren shores of Massachusetts to get away from tyranny and taxes, have now for many years presented the extraordinary spectacle of deliberately piling on our own backs, with infinite pains and stupidity, a growing burden of collectivist control, bureaucracy, and taxation, that would have delighted the souls of Engel and Karl Marx. They indeed swore by those "good old German gods" -Envy and Jealousy; whose cult decrees that no one man shall be better off than another! To be sure, these are ever the smallest, the meanest of motives; while, with nations as with men, they are the stupidest as well-inevitably bound to wreck things. But we Americans swear by our country and our free institutions. It may be foolish for us to dream that they can last forever, prosperous and mighty as they are to-day; but we would do our ut most to that end. The time is at hand for better political engineering; for simplification of govern ment; for reversion to the sound American prin.ciple of unlimited reward for great and greater service; for rejection of imported new-fangled creeds of class advantage, of state-spoliation and brute-coercion.

As the boys used to say in France, it is the Zero hour; "Let's go." [ xiv] TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE. V I. OUR PRESENT OVERLOAD OF GOVERNMENT 1 II. GOVERNMENT MEDDLING WITH BIG BUSINESS DuPont Powder 4 Bell Telephone . 7 Western Union Telegraph. 10 Typewriter Trust . 13 U. S. Steel Corporation 14 Standard Oil 23 American Tobacco . 28 Packers 28 Other attacks on Business 40 Diagrams of Prices and Stock Markets 43-44 III. GOVERNMENT WAR CONTROL OF Sugar 47 Wheat . 66 Railroads 72 IV. GOVERNMENT ATTITUDE TOWARD Labor 87 Great Strikes 99 Railway Strike, 1922 • 149 Coal Strike. 153 V. USELESS U. S. BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS Interstate Commerce Commission. 160 l xv] Table of Contents CHAPTER PAGE Federal Trade Commission. 168 Railway Labor Board 180 VI. USELESS STATE AND LOCAL BOARDS Multiplex Government Activities . 184 Railroad and Warehouse Commissions 188 Chicago Gas Experience 194 City Halls and Street Railways 196 VII. Too MANY OVERLAPPING LOCAL GOVERNMENTS AND TAXING BODIES. 207 VIII. Too MANY ELECTIVE OFFICES, CHECKS AND BALANCES 213 IX. Too LONG BALLOTS. COMPLEXITY OF INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM • 220 X. Too MANY ELECTIONS. Too SHORT TERMS.