===== PAGE 1 ===== 'DEAS ON L1ggRyy — — | | A LESSON IN SOCIALISM Tomas J. SHELLY ~ thirty-five years a teacher of eco- nomics and history — attempted to explain the meaning of socialism to his Yonkers High School class as follows: I shall now take 20 points from you, John, and give them to Dick. Thus, each of you has 75, adequate for passing. “John, you made a grade of 95; and yours, Dick, was 55. | “Here I have applied the socialist-communist principle as set forth by Karl Marx: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ “Now, let us examine this in practice. You, John, won't work because you have had your incentive removed. And, you, Dick, won’t work because you are getting something for nothing. “We can’t exist unless we work and produce. Thus, in order to get the work done, we'll need someone with a whip or a gun. Socialism must lead to authoritarian controls.” — — Fi HE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC gp Irving fon. on UCATION, INC. Hudson, Now, York ===== PAGE 2 ===== 4 “MAXIMUM RETURN | | on your investment with SAFETY, through A progressive, yet conservative manage- | ment —plus insurance on each account. FEDERAL wymicamiuiny Offers | LEGAL INVESTMENT i for trust funds. Savings | me | | Air Mail. (We pay postage both ways). PER ANNUM RESOURCES OVER ONE Carer QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS | RESERVES over $24 million. “LET'S GET ACQUAINTED"— Write today for this booklet and financial statement, to: COAST FEDERAL SAVINGS | VAR ETY DEPARTMENT H of accounts, Individual, Joint, Trust and 9th and HILL : Corporation. LOS ANGELES 14, CALIF. ~\ P Member—Federal Home Loan Bank—Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. "CORT FEDERAL SAVINGS JOE CRAIL, PRESIDENT 4 | ===== PAGE 3 ===== Where does atomic-electric power come from? 1 It grows out of new tools and equipment like this reactor assembly built by Wes- tinghouse for testing atomic fuel element designs. These are developed and tested by engineers and scientists of electric com- panies and manufacturers, with the cooper- ation of the Atomic Energy Commission. 9 7 Finally, atomic-electric power comes from new kinds of electric power plants that use atomic fuel made from the uranium. Such a plant is the one photographed at right now being developed ncar Chi- cago, Illinois, by a num- ber of electric companies. More are being planned or built by power and light companies in other parts of the country. 3 The electricity from an atom-powered plant is just like the electricity you use. The difference is in producing it. For each plant has to be designed, developed and built as a “first of its kind”’—a very expen- sive way that makes the electricity costly to produce. That’s why hundreds of electric company people are working to find the best ways to make atomic electricity more eco- nomical in the future. America’s Independent Electric Light and Power Companies* * Company names on request through this magatine ===== PAGE 4 ===== ®. An cconomical answer to machining large quantities of identical pieces. The experience gained from pioneering and Full responsibility for building automatic process machines for over a designing equipment to ter century (one every 1214 days during the machine all flat surfaces quar y ery 12 y gt and bores of a new V-8 last three years) makes it possible for us to build engine block, was given heavy, rugged equipment which will stand the Ingersoll by American abuse of continuous operation with a minimum Motors at their Kenosha, . Wisconsin plant. of downtime. The engine castings, as received from the foundry, THE | N GS = RR S oO L L progress automatically through the 36 stations of this heavy MILLING MACHINE COMPANY ROCKFORD, ILL. Ingersoll process machine. ===== PAGE 5 ===== Mountains move over when = or A f Y . A x Billions of cubic yards of earth and stone must be moved to make way for modern buildings, highways, tunnels, railroads, airports, and dams. This takes an army of bulldozers, dump trucks, power shovels, drag lines, loaders, graders, and scrapers. These products of the Earth Moving Equipment Industry prepare the way for nearly every type of construction. The newer models feature multiple attachments for single units, greater reaches, stur- dier steel components, and improved power. Only steels with unusual resistance to impact and abrasion are rugged enough to stand the punishment these machines must take. J&L steels meet the specifications of this progressive industry. Jones & Laughlin STEEL CORPORATION: PITTSBURGH STEEL ===== PAGE 6 ===== THE TOCA A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF IDEAS ON LIBERTY MARCH 1958 Vol. 8 No. 3 LEONARD E. READ President, Foundation for Economic Education PAUL L. POIROT Managing Editor THE FREEMAN is published monthly by the Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Irving- ton-on-Hudson, N. Y. Any interested person may receive it for the asking. The costs of Foundation projects and services, including THE FREEMAN, are met through voluntary donations. Total ex- penses average $12.50 a year per person on the mailing list. Donations are invited in any amount — $5.00 to $10,000 — as the means of maintaining and extending the Foundation’s work. Accepted as controlled circulation publication at Irvington, N. Y., with additional entry at New York, N. Y. Copyright, 1958, The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Printed in U.S.A, Additional copies, postpaid, to one address: Single copy, 50 cents; 3 for $1.00; 25 or more, 20 cents each. Permission is hereby granted to anyone to reprint any article in whole or in part, providing customary credit is given, except ‘Lo, the Poor Taxpayer,” ‘“‘Imprisoned Ideas,” and ‘'The Psychology of Leadership.” Any current article will be supplled in reprint form If there are enough inquiries to justify the cost of the printing. ===== PAGE 7 ===== LO, THE POOR TAXPAYER BLAKE CLARK Under the Indian Claims Act of 1946, the government may have to pay out ten billion dollars to repurchase our land from the Indians, THE INDIANS are on the warpath after pay for your property. In the — not for scalps but for money, West, Midwest, and South, various and using law books in the place tribes have their bows’ drawn on of tomahawks. The white man took title to entire states. their lands without just compensa- Why this avalanche of claims? tion, they say; now they intend to Almost every year since 1881, get paid for it. Indians are laying when the Choctaw were allowed legal claim to reimbursement for to bring a land claim suit against 1,320,000,000 of the 1,900,000,000 the government in the U. S. Court acres of land that constitute the of Claims, some Indian tribe has United States. Though many of persuaded Congress to pass at least these claims overlap, with two or one special bill permitting them more groups asking money for the also to sue. The political pressure same acres, the net is staggering. behind these requests was tremen- If you live in West Tennessee or dous, particularly on senators from Arkansas, chances are that the the Western states. In 1946, hoping Chickasaw or the Quapaw have to end a perennial nuisance, Con- claimed money for the land you gress set up a three-man Indian occupy; if your home is in Ne- Claims Commission to get the facts braska or Minnesota, the Oto-Mis- and see that justice was done. souri or the Chippewa are probably President Truman named as chief Mr. Clark is a roving editor of The Reader’s Digest. ===== PAGE 8 ===== 6 THE FREEMAN March commissioner Edgar E. Witt, The Ottawa claim money for former Lieutenant Governor of Chicago, the Creek for Atlanta and Texas, and as his associates, Louis Birmingham, the Arapaho for O’Marr, former Attorney General Denver, and the Apache for of Wyoming, and William M. Holt, Phoenix. a prominent Nebraska lawyer. All By 1951 fewer than 500,000 of them are still serving. Indians of the United States had The Indians had five years, from demanded settlement for three- August 13, 1946, to August 13, fourths of the continent in 852 1951, to file claims. Accepting this different claims which may well wide-open invitation, various total 10 billion dollars — an aver- groups who never before had made age of about $25,000 for every In- a claim of any kind discovered that dian man, woman, child, and they, too, were owed something by papoose. the government. Some tribes, aided and abetted by their lawyers, made A Precedent fantastic representations. The Ridiculous — they'll never get it, Sioux asked 15 million dollars’ rec- you think? That’s what Assistant ompense for the hides of all buf- Attorney General Perry Morton falo, elk and deer slain on their thought when he took over the De- land by the white man between 1865 partment of Justice’s Lands Divi- and 1880. The Quapaw, who sion in 1953. Morton was shocked never exceeded 600 in number, to find a staff of 17 Department soberly demanded $54,397,110.34, lawyers — now 25 — with as many plus interest since 1818, for 43 clerical helpers spending full time million acres extending into Okla- on the apparently endless task of homa and Texas. The Miami laid preparing to defend the govern- claim to seven million acres in In- ment against these preposterous diana, with the city of Indianapolis claims. Their work, with that of as its hub. The Scaticook or Kent anthropologists and other experts, Indians have filed a petition stat- was costing the taxpayer over ing that their forebears did not $500,000 a year. “Let's clear the sell Manhattan Island to Peter docket of these cases right away,” Minuit for $24.00 — they leased it Morton said, “and settle the matter for 99 years — the lease has ex- once and for all.” pired! They claim also that West- A typical case was coming up. chester, Putnam, and Dutchess Hig plan was to win it and use the Counties in New York were taken decision as a precedent that would by the Dutch without payment. quickly dispose of all others like ===== PAGE 9 ===== 1958 LO, THE POOR TAXPAYER 7 it. This was the suit of the Oto them unique rights and privileges. and Missouri tribes demanding Other Americans who wait more compensation for Kansas and Ne- than six years to file a case against braska lands ceded to the govern- the government are too late — the ment and paid for in 1833 and 1854 statute of limitations applies to to the tune of $502,833. Ralph A. them. But Congress waived this Barney, Chief of the Indian Claims statute for all past Indian claims, Section, showed in court that the some of which go back to 1795. United States had long ago paid Again, if your property is con- in full the sums then agreed upon. demned and taken over at the go- The Supreme Court had ruled that, ing real estate rates, you cannot after the coming of the white man, later sue the government even the Indians never really owned any though you foresaw a sharp rise land. All the land the Indians in- in values and would not willingly habited, according to the court, be- have parted with it for twice the longed to the Sovereign, the fed- sum paid. The Oto-Missouri, how- eral government, by “virtue of dis- ever, sued and recovered for their covery.” The Indians, therefore, ancestors’ property. had only squatters’ rights —not Other Indians’ legal counsel lost ownership. Any payment, Barney no time following the Oto-Missouri reasoned, was simply a gratuity, decision. The Kaw, whose ances- and it is impossible, he argued, for tors were paid in 1846 for land in a gratuity to be unfair. He felt he Kansas, now said the compensation had an airtight case. received was not enough. So the Barney was scalped. The Oto United States bought it again, pay- and Missouri got a net judgment ing the descendants of the tribe of $1,156,033.25 from the Com- $2,493,688.75. So far the govern- mission. It was later upheld by the ment has been ordered to pay ex- Court of Claims, and the Supreme tra for 36,900,000 acres after trial Court declined to review the case. on only a few cases involving The precedent was established, but aboriginal title and the total num- in favor of the Indians. ber of other cases waiting in line How had it happened? Had a is 249. white man presented a similar case in an ordinary court of law, he Lawyers’ Paradise would not even be heard. Yet Con- With astronomical sums at gress, in its eagerness to do right stake, the Indians command im- by the Indians in accordance with pressive legal talent which in- the Indian Claims Act, had given cludes a former Assistant Secre- ===== PAGE 10 ===== 8 THE FREEMAN March tary of Interior in charge of In- during the Revolutionary War and dian Affairs, a one-time Assistant had continued their hostilities Attorney General of the Justice against Americans after the Department’s Lands Division, a Treaty of Peace with Great Brit- former senator and a university ain in 1783. They signed the president. Some 20 law firms, from treaty agreeing to stay within an New York to San Francisco, con- area north and west of the so- tributed $21,000 each to a war called “Greenville line,” which ran chest from which expenses are for 325 miles from near Cleveland paid to researchers, anthropolo- south and west to Indiana, and gists, and other specialists. Indian cease their hostilities. cases are the lawyers’ uranium — speculative but fabulously profit- Title by Treaty able. The average barrister does The Commission has now held not in a lifetime have a suit in- that this treaty gave them ‘“recog- volving a million dollars and few nized Indian title” to 136 million Indian claims are for less. The acres. Thus when any of these legal fee is usually 10 per cent, tribes subsequently made another plus expenses. Legendary in the treaty waiving any part of the 136 profession is the $2,800,000 which million acres, the Commission has a Washington counselor, Ernest said that the waiver itself is Wilkinson, and his colleagues re- enough to prove the boundaries of ceived for a $31,938,473.43 settle- their ownership without any proof ment reached on behalf of the Ute. of actual use and occupation. The Counsel for a number of tribes, decision means that no tribe whose unable to determine exactly what “title” was “recognized” by treaty areas these groups had long ago will be required to establish as a inhabited, cleverly introduced the fact that the sweeping areas in- 163-yecar-old Treaty of Greenville. volved were actually theirs. This was negotiated in 1795 by This is another legal concession General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, to Indians. The Supreme Court after the Battle of Fallen Timbers once clearly stated that to estab- in Lucas County, Ohio, where he lish “title” by original occupancy, decisively defeated the Wyandot, Indians had to prove that they ac- Delaware, Shawnee, Ottawa, Chip- tually used and occupied the land pewa, Potawatomi, Miami, Eel — had mastery over it to the ex- River, Wea, Kickapoo, Pianka- clusion of others. shaw, and Kaskaskia. All of these Indians’ lawyers promptly tribes had sided with the British pressed this advantage and ob- ===== PAGE 11 ===== 1958 LO, THE POOR TAXPAYER 9 tained from the Commission a and their counsel came back to the ruling that the Treaty of Prairie Capitol. “We originally requested du Chien of August 19, 1825 was twice the amount received,” they also a “recognition of Indian title” explained. “Now we would like the to 55 million acres in Illinois, Iowa, rest.” and Wisconsin; that the 1851 The Indian Claims Commission Treaty of Fort Laramie gives title denied the request, but, on appeal to 161 million acres in Montana to the Court of Claims, the Creeks and Wyoming to Indians who will succeeded in doubling their money. not be asked to prove their ances- tors occupied it. Favorable deci- The Whole of California sions already rendered in the Easily the largest case is that realm of recognized Indian title presented by the Indians of Cali- involve more than 342 million fornia, claiming every acre of the acres whose value is yet to be de- gtate, together with all the inland termined. The significance to tax- waters. The land when taken was payers is tremendous. Potential orth $1.25 an acre, they allege, liability is enormous. Whether the nq there are 100 million acres. government will be any luckier in Anthopologists say that more dif- its appeal to higher courts than ferent tribes — probably 500 — lived it was in the Oto-Missouri case there than in any other area the remains to be seen. same size. Their tribal identity was disrupted so they are now suing Back for More on behalf of all, as if they were a An unexpected expense to the single group. U. S. liability has al- taxpayer arose when claims Con- ready been tacitly established; the gress considered completely settled issue pending before the Commis- came up again. A group of Creeks sion is merely the extent to which who had remained loyal to the fed- Indians occupied the state. A corps eral government during the Civil of anthropologists have testified War lost much of their property that they used only areas near when forced to seek refuge behind their permanent dwellings; the In- Northern lines. In 1901, after dec- dians’ lawyers contend that their ades of agitation for reimburse- clients’ ancestors inhabited much ment, Congress gave them $600,- of the state and are justified in re- 000, which they accepted in full covering for all California. Either satisfaction of their claim. way, the Indians can hardly lose. With the new opportunity to sue The time, trouble, and expense the government, the Loyal Creeks of defending these cases is tre- ===== PAGE 12 ===== 10 THE FREEMAN March mendous. The government must fathers “fell first upon their own hire anthropologists, historians, knees; and then upon the aborig- ethnologists, archeologists, lin- ines.” guists, and appraisers. In nearly But the historic fact is that, every case, a general accounting after the Declaration of Independ- has to be supplied of all govern- ence, practically all land obtained ment dealings with the tribe by the United States from the In- throughout history. At present, dians was bought and paid for in some 87 claim examiners, titlists, probably the greatest series of real and file clerks at the General Ac- estate transactions in history. The counting Office spend full time try- late Felix S. Cohen, Assistant So- ing to keep up with these requests. licitor for the Department of the The detail required is incredible, Interior and compiler of the au- and each job takes months. In the thoritative Handbook of Federal Sioux case before the Court of [Indian Law, stated before the Claims, the accounting went back House Subcommittee on Indian 127 years to 1831 and took nine Affairs that, except for a region years to complete. GAO had 200 including Death Valley in Califor- cases on hand in October 1957; 128 nia and an area in Louisiana and were being worked; 72 were still Texas where Indian rights were untouched. wiped out before we took posses- sion, there was federal dealing for That Guilty Feeling every square mile added to the Why is this allowed to continue? United States. Behind it all is a sense of guilt Even after we paid Napoleon 15 for supposed ancient wrongs. We million dollars for the huge areas have the shameful feeling that the embraced by the Louisiana Pur- white man, by deceit and brute chase, we sought out Indian tribes force, drove the Indians from their and paid them more than 20 times homes without compensation. Some that amount for the same terri- of this guilt feeling is justified. tory. These Indians, far from being Much of it is not. “taken” "by the whites, drove a It is true that many individual better bargain than the French white settlers dealt with the In- and reserved to themselves sufli- dians pretty much as they pleased. cient land to bring them an income And Massachusetts Puritans dis- that annually exceeds the lump regarded Indian claims to unim- sum we paid the Emperor. proved lands, giving rise to Mark Did the Indians receive a fair Twain's crack that our Pilgrim price for all their lands? Except ===== PAGE 13 ===== 1958 LO, THE POOR TAXPAYER 11 in a few instances when soldiers A Confusion of Objectives helped force a treaty, the sums On the whole, our government's satisfied the Indians at the time. high standard of dealing with na- These amounts were not niggardly. tive peoples is unequaled by any One tract obtained from the Chero- other nation. As Mr. Cohen said, kee in 1835 cost five million dollars, “No one who looks at the record a substantial percentage of the an- can say that we have willfully ig- nual budget then. In all, we paid nored Indian property rights in the Indians nearly a billion dollars. any part of our public domain.” We pay from $70 to $100 million Legitimate Grievances a year to build Indian schools, Some Indians have legitimate roads, and irrigation systems, pro- grievances against the U. S. gov- tect Indian resources of land, ernment, and the Indian Claims forests, and ranges, and help In- Commission is an excellent place dians find jobs. Indian spokesmen to settle them. The Potawatomi have long said that the Indian is tribe showed, for example, that the a good soldier, an excellent citizen, government provided for the sale and needs only to be helped to in- of surplus reservation lands at a dependence and equality with his price far below fair market value, white brother. Stirring up hopes and in 1862 took without adequate of a fortune to be gained through payment 1,454 acres of tribal land suing the government is no way to for a railroad right-of-way. The reach this worthy goal. Commission has assured present- The trouble arises from the fact day descendants fair compensa- that, in parts of the Indian Claims tion with interest for 94 years — Act, Congress confused a social a total of $359,460.61. Andrew problem — how best to help the In- Jackson was so eager to protect dians— with a legal one. Accord- the Union by a buffer area against ing to the Justice Department, the Spaniards in Florida that in most of the absurdity could be 1814 he forced the Creek to sur- taken out of the situation by a re- render 25 million acres without vision of the Act. The Indian today payment. The Commission has held needs sympathetic understanding the United States liable. In some of his problem, whether he is on other cases the United States has a reservation or finding a place been proved negligent in handling in our industrial society. If money Indian affairs turned over to us in is needed, Congress should appro- trust. The Commission is correct- priate it, but this endless and ex- ing these mistakes. pensive legal farce should be ex- ===== PAGE 14 ===== 12 THE FREEMAN March amined with a most critical eye. see if, after eleven years of opera- Did Congress really intend us to tion, the Act is accomplishing what repurchase most of the continent? was intended. Until this is done, If not, Congress should take a good the Indians and their lawyers will look at the legal precedents they continue to collect big wampum have forced on the Commission and from the American taxpayer. ® o | 10aas ®0 L00E00Y | Wards of the Government THE RESERVATION INDIAN is becoming less self-sufficient and more dependent upon what he calls “the Great White Father in Washington.” Instead of freedom, the Indian has government- guaranteed “security.” Instead of individual responsibility, he has a government bureau to handle his personal affairs. There are special laws governing his right to own land and to spend tribal money. Under that system of bondage it should surprise no one to find that many thousands of Indians have remained uneducated, hungry, diseased, and ‘mismanaged. DEAN RUSSELL Life on the Reservation WHATEVER the pre-reservation Indian was, and his faults were real, he was able to take care of himself and had a character becoming to his culture and religion. He was a responsible person. Today he is far from that. The wretched security he has had, beginning with the food and clothing dole of early years, designed to enforce the reservation system and destroy Indian resistance, has sapped him of character. The average Indian knows that he can gamble and drink away his earnings and still be sure that his house and land will remain his own, and, with his hunting rights, he can always eke out some kind of existence. Government men too often hamper and impede the man with initiative and character. This is because their program inevitably must be formulated in terms of the lowest common denominator, the weakest Indian. In addition, the provisions of the govern- ment for the “welfare” and “security” of the Indians remove the consequences from their sinning and irresponsibility. The result is a license to irresponsibility which all the touted govern- ment projects cannot counteract. THE REVEREND R. J. RUSIHIDOONY ===== PAGE 15 ===== 2 oJ 3 |. | EE CI A XN )} NS 350 A I AN SA CA — W. J. BROWN HERE ARE MANY classifications into which men and women may be divided — as upper, middle, gradually to slay the idea which or lower class; rich, well-to-do, gave it birth. and poor; religious, skeptical, and We may see this process at work atheist; Conservative, Liberal, La- in many fields. Let us take one or bour; Catholic, Protestant; master two by way of illustration. and man; and so forth and so on, In the field of religion a prophet, ad infinitum. an inspired man, will see a vision But, as I think, the only cate- of truth. He expresses that vision gorization which really matters is as best he may in words. He will that which divides men as between not say all he saw. For every ex- the Servants of the Spirit and the pression of truth is a limitation Prisoners of the Organization. of it. But he will, so to speak, ex- That classification, which cuts press the sense of his vision. right across all the other classifi- What he says is only partly un- cations, is indeed the fundamental derstood by those who hear him; one. The idea, the inspiration, and when they repeat what they originates in the internal world, understand him to have meant, the world of the spirit. But, just there will already be a consider- as the human spirit must incar- able departure from the original nate in a body, so must the idea vision of the prophet. Upon what incarnate in an organization. his disciples understand of the Whether the organization be po- prophet’s message, an organiza- litical, religious, or social is im- tion, a church, will be built. The material to my present argument. half-understood message will erys- The point is that, the idea having talize into a creed. embodied itself in organization, Before long the principal con- the organization then proceeds cern of the church will be to sus- The Honorable Mr. Brown, British journalist, politician, and television personality, was a Mem- ber of Parliament for Labour (1929-31) and as an Independent (1942-50). This article is re- printed here by permission from The Spectator of September 19, 1947. 13 ===== PAGE 16 ===== 14 THE FREEMAN March tain itself as an organization. To discovered in the old. What this end any departure from the emerges is not freedom and social creed must be controverted and if justice, but a more comprehensive necessary suppressed as heresy. and totalitarian control, used to In a few score or few hundred maintain a new privileged class, years what was conceived as a ve- which, because of the earlier ex- hicle of a new and higher truth perience of its members, is still has become a prison for the souls more ruthless than the old. of men. And men are murdering Similar illustrations could be each other for the love of God. The drawn from all fields of life. But thing has become its opposite. these two will suffice to demon- In the field of politics the dis- strate the truth with which IT am possessed dream of a social order here concerned. It is that, the idea which shall be based on righteous- having given birth to the organi- ness, a system in which men shall zation, the organization develops not exploit their fellow men, in a self-interest which has no con- which each shall contribute ac- nection with, and becomes inimical cording to his capacity and each to, the idea with which it began. shall receive according to his need. Now the thing which permits this Upon this conception a political process of diversion to take place, party is built. It gives battle, over so that the organization comes to the years, to the existing order of stand for the opposite of the idea things. As with the church, it is which originally inspired it, is the not long before the primary con- tendency in men and women to cern of the party is to sustain it- become Prisoners of the Organiza- self. Here, again, any departure tion, instead of being Servants of from the political creed must be the Spirit. repressed. The “party line” must be kept straight and dissent kept IN THIS TENDENCY there are many under. elements. There is a sense in which In the course of time the party you cannot run an organization achieves power. By this time it is without becoming its prisoner. Or- led no longer by starry-eyed ideal- ganization has its own necessities, ists, but by extremely tough guys in the interests of which the origi- — who then proceed to use their nal idea has to be somewhat quali- newly acquired power to establish fied. As soon as the idea passes a stronger despotism than the one from the unmanifested and em- they overthrew, and to sew up all bodies itself in the actual, it be- the holes in it that they themselves gins to be invaded by what the ===== PAGE 17 ===== 1958 IMPRISONED IDEAS 15 poet called “the world’s slow it is necessary sometimes to hold stain.” In this there need be no a candle to the Devil. conscious infidelity on the part of Another element is this. Proph- the leaders. Better, they may well ets always stand a good chance of argue, that the great idea should being bumped off. This chance is be only partly manifested than increased if they come down from that it should remain merely an the hills into the market place, and idea in vacuo. Better half the still further increased if they come ideal loaf than no bread at all. down unarmed. Prophets should Next, the wider the area to only go unarmed into the market which the idea is introduced, the place if they think that their work larger the circle of men and wom- is done, and are prepared to de- en to whom it is propagated part hence. Some prophets take to through the organization, the more arms. Even where the original it must be “stepped down” for prophet does not, his disciples may propaganda purposes. The idea do so. The organization which they which gives birth to a party which build will almost certainly do so. wants to establish the cooperative The Devil must be fought with the commonwealth must be translated Devil's weapons. into practical proposals, such as This is argumentatively sound the eight-hour day, the five-day but practically disastrous. For it week and what not, if it is to at- means that the servants of God, tract a mass backing. And so the the disciples of the idea, tend to organization becomes less the ve- descend to the Devil's level. As the hicle of the idea than a channel organization grows, it deterio- through which particular interests rates. Its leaders are not the men must be served. they were. The service of such particular Among the rank and file many interests attracts the backing of things combine to keep them in other organized bodies more in- the organization, even when they terested in the limited objectives become uneasily conscious that which the organization has now there is a dawning, and even a adopted than in the great idea it- yawning, gap between organiza- self. And the pressure of such tion and idea. First there is the bodies is felt by the organization, force of inertia. It is easier not to with the result that the idea tends resign than to resign. Drift is to retreat into the background in easier than decision. Next there is favor of less ambitious objectives. the factor of personal humility, In this world the Devil walks, and the tendency to assume that, diffi- ===== PAGE 18 ===== 16 THE FREEMAN March cult as the thing seems, the lead- attitude to it should be one of par- ers, after all, probably know best. tial detachment. We must be above Next there is the factor of senti- 1t even while we are in it. We ment. All of us tend to project on- should join it in the knowledge to the organization of which we that there we may have no abid- are members the virtues we would ing-place. We should be weekly like it to have, and to be blind to tenants, not long-lease holders. We its defects. And, finally, men are should accept no such commit- gregarious creatures and dislike ments as would prevent our leav- falling out of the ranks away from ing it when circumstances make the comrades of years. this necessary. We should reckon Gradually the organization on being in almost perpetual re- changes. As it changes, it attracts bellion within it. Above all, we new elements which approve the should regard all loyalties to or- change. Not because of conscious ganization as tentative and pro- calculation, which comes much visional. The whole concept of “my later, when the idea has been de- party, right or wrong,” “my union, serted, but because organization right or wrong,” “my church, develops its own logic, its own right or wrong” should be utterly raison d’étre, and because men alien to our thinking. tend to become the prisoners of We must be Servants of the the organization, the organization Spirit, not Prisoners of the Or- can finish up by standing for the ganization. We must keep in touch precise opposite of the idea which with the sources of life, not lose called it into being. ourselves in its temporary vehicles. And whenever the demand of the WHAT IS THE MORAL to be drawn spirit, the categorical imperatives from all this? One moral, it would of the soul, conflict with the de- not be wholly facetious to suggest, mands of the organization, it is might be that the first rule for any the first to which we must listen. organization should be a rule pro- But all this was said long ago. It viding for its dissolution within a is all contained in one of the leg- limited period of time. “This or- endary sayings of Jesus, and bears ganization shall be dissolved not all the marks of authenticity: later than. ...” But the deeper “This world is a bridge. Ye shall moral is concerned with our atti- pass over it. But ye shall build no tude to organization as such. The houses upon it.” moral is that even when we are Bivouacs. Yes! Tents. Maybe! members of an organization, our Houses. No! 00 ===== PAGE 19 ===== FREDERIC BASTIAT (1801-1850) Ww: CANDLEMAKERS are suffer- tains, and blinds — that is, all ing from the unfair competi- openings, holes, and cracks tion of a foreign rival. This for- through which the light of the sun eign manufacturer of light has is able to enter houses. This free such an advantage over us that he sunlight is hurting the business floods our domestic markets with of us deserving manufacturers of his product. And he offers it at a candles. Since we have always fantastically low price. The served our country well, gratitude moment this foreigner appears in demands that our country ought our country, all our customers de- not to abandon us now to this un- sert us and turn to him. As a re- equal competition. sult, an entire domestic industry We hope that you gentlemen will is rendered completely stagnant. not regard our petition as mere And even more, since the lighting satire, or refuse it without at least industry has countless ramifica- hearing our reasons in support of tions with other native industries, it. they, too, are injured. This foreign First, if you make it as difficult manufacturer who competes as possible for the people to have against us without mercy is none access to natural light, and thus other than the sun itself! create an increased demand for Here is our petition: Please pass artificial light, will not all domestic a law ordering the closing of all manufacturers be stimulated windows, skylights, shutters, cur- thereby? 17 ===== PAGE 20 ===== 18 THE FREEMAN March For example, if more tallow is of the candlemakers and other per- consumed, naturally there must be sons in related industries. more cattle and sheep. As a result, The manufacturers of lighting there will also be more meat, wool, fixtures — candlesticks, lamps, and hides. There will even be more candelabra, chandeliers, crystals, manure, which is the basis of agri- bronzes, and so on — will be espe- culture. cially stimulated. The resulting Next, if more oil is consumed for warehouses and display rooms will lighting, we shall have extensive make our present-day shops look olive groves and rape fields. poor indeed. Also, our wastelands will be The resin collectors on the covered with pines and other res- heights along the seacoast, as well inous trees and plants. As a re- as the coal miners in the depths of sult of this, there will be numerous the earth, will rejoice at their swarms of bees to increase the higher wages and increased pros- production of honey. In fact, all perity. In fact, gentlemen, the con- branches of agriculture will show dition of every citizen of our an increased development. country — from the wealthiest The same applies to the shipping owner of coal mines to the poorest industry. The increased demand seller of matches — will be im- for whale oil will then require proved by the success of our pe- thousands of ships for whale fish- tition. eo 0 ing. In a short time, this will re- sult in a navy capable of upholding Translated and slightly condensed by the honor of our country and grat- Dean Russell from Selected Works of jo AR ; Frederic Bastiat, Volume 1. Paris: Guill- ifying the patriotic sentiments gumin, 1863. pp. 58-59. IDEA8 ON 100607 | HOW COME? ToM TALMAN Though I’ve taken my legal deductions (My tax-form acumen’s transcendent), There doesn't exist Any place I can list The Government as a dependent! Reprinted by Specinl Permission of THE SATURDAY EVENING PosT, Copyright 1966 by the Curtis Publishing Co. ===== PAGE 21 ===== FREEDOM RESTS ON PRIVATE PROGERTY | or HE QUESTION of “what is mine universe. Call it Natural Law if and what is thine” is one of tre- you will, or God, or the Super- mendous importance throughout natural. But by whatever name you the world today. It has always been choose, I believe there are certain a basic issue, but with all our laws of cause and consequence material progress — our vaunted which you and I are powerless to educational advantages — and our change. We may violate them — world-wide communication of break them — but they cannot be ideas, it seems safe to say there changed. We see this very clearly has never been more confusion in the physical sciences — the law over this relatively simple concept. of gravity, the principles of aero- The way in which we answer this dynamics, and many many others. question will surely shape the But in the area of human relations events which lie ahead. the laws are not nearly so clear. A libertarian believes in the The fact that these Natural Laws private ownership of property, in are not entirely revealed to us, the supreme importance and dig- however, does not prove that there nity of individuals, and in the right are no such laws. of a person to the fruits of his own So, the idea of an ordered, moral labor. He believes an individual universe suggests a timeless right should have the right to make and wrong; causes have conse- choices — conceding that many of quences just as surely as night us will make unwise choices, at follows day; and we cannot change least in the sight of others. these principles. These are eternal Underlying such libertarian con- truths and they exist whether or cepts are various foundation not we have discovered them. stones. First, and perhaps most In contrast to this view is the important, is a belief in an ordered growing belief that people can de- Dr. Curtiss is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education. 19 ===== PAGE 22 ===== 20 THE FREEMAN March cide right and wrong by majority of man that seem to spring from vote. This assumes a completely them. capricious universe wherein an First, and perhaps foremost, of action is judged right or wrong by these rights, is the right to life popular opinion and by how well itself. There seems to be a natural it seems to work at the moment; right to life, in harmony with Na- there are no eternal truths —no tural Law. In speaking of this as laws that cannot be changed by a “right,” I do not mean to imply man. that life, as we observe it, cannot This, of course, gets into a phil- be taken from one; a man can be osophical area difficult to document deprived of life, and this has hap- statistically. Some call it the area pened. Nor would I agree with of faith — this belief in Natural those who think that the right to Law or God. But how can one view life means that society owes them the wonders of the universe — and a living. That seems to me to be of man — without some such faith a perversion of the individualistic in an ordered, moral force back of concept of man. it all? If one has the right to life, then Tied closely to this first assump- it follows that one has the right tion — and perhaps a part of it — to sustain his life with his own is the question: What is the nature time and means, so long as he does of man? Why are we here? The not infringe on the same right of great minds of the ages have di- others. rected their attention to this ques- If one has the right to sustain tion and it probably will be pon- his life, then he has the right to dered as long as man is here. But whatever he is able to produce with for the moment, let us assume that his own time and means. It follows man’s primary purpose is to de- that he has the right to consume velop, to the fullest extent he can it, or keep it, and thus arises the in his lifetime, those creative po- right of private property. tentials with which he is endowed. If one has the right to own prop- erty, then he has the right to ex- The Right to Life change it, sell it, or give it away From these two basic assump- on any terms acceptable to the re- tions — that this is an ordered, cipient. moral universe and that man’s pur- If we accept these basic human pose is to develop his creative po- rights as being in harmony with tentials in harmony with these the Natural Laws of an ordered laws — we can derive certain rights universe, then we can begin to ===== PAGE 23 ===== 1958 FREEDOM RESTS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY 21 build thereon certain codes of has been exchange — producers human conduct. Interestingly trading with one another, or the enough, we find running all trading of labor for money and through the many centuries of re- money for things or for services. corded history a code of human In the primitive economy, such as rights resembling to a considerable prevailed as recently as 150 years extent Christianity’'s Golden Rule ago in this country, most people and the Ten Commandments. The were farmers. Nine out of ten various versions differ in their families lived on farms and were wording, but the ideas are there. It essentially self-sufficient. They seems no accident to me that these provided their own food, their own codes have been formulated by clothing, their own shelter; and peoples at widely different times there was little else. There was and in different places. I am will- little exchange and the level of ing to accept them as at least an living was very low by our stand- approach to an understanding of ards today. Capital and tools were Nature’s moral laws. Truth is scarce, and all able-bodied mem- something man probably always bers of the family worked from shall pursue, and he may catch a dawn to dark just to provide the glimmer of it here and there. bare necessities of life. Contrast this primitive economy The Practical Application with what we find today. We are So far, all of this may seem fabulously wealthy by comparison. hypothetical. It’s the stuff philos- Even low-income persons today ophers feed on, but has it really have things which heads of state any practical value? I think so, and never dreamed -of having in the will try to show why such a con- past — things such as better health cept as the right of private prop- and medical care, education, tele- erty has practical application. I vision and radio, transportation by submit that the entire structure of air and auto, super highways, our advanced economy rests on the modern housing, and all the rest. foundation stone of private owner- The availability of these things ship of property. When we lose may be traced to the accumulation sight of that, the structure is in of capital for the tools of produec- danger of collapsing. Though the tion, which enormously multiply arguments may sound a bit mate- man’s creative capacity, and to a rialistic, bear in mind that they highly efficient though complex rest on moral grounds. system of exchange. The key to our material progress The capitalistic system of pro- ===== PAGE 24 ===== 22 THE FREEMAN March duction and exchange rests upon result was a so-called shortage of a few simple, but important, basic meat. So a system of rationing, by principles of economics: means of tickets, was used to de- termine who got what. There is a better system of de- All things of an economic na- ciding who gets what, one that we ture are scarce and wanted. If a used for many decades, and it thing is not scarce, like the air worked beautifully. More about we breathe, then it is not of eco- that later. The point here is that nomic concern. But the things we all economic goods and services talk about in economics are scarce. are scarce and must be rationed in These include food, clothing, hous- some way. Who gets what is very ing, highways, automobiles, medi- important. cal service, the services of teachers and ministers, and a long list of 2. The Principle of Least Effort other goods and services. Another important economic The fact that all these goods and principle is that we all seek the services are scarce and wanted by greatest amount of satisfaction in persons means that somehow a way life with the least amount of sweat. must be discovered to decide who Economists say we tend to maxi- gets what. Many attempts have mize our satisfactions with the been made through the course of least possible effort. On first history to solve this problem. For thought, this may seem like down- example, one method is for the right laziness and not a very strong simply to take what they worthy trait. But further reflec- can from the weak. Another way tion will reveal that it is a highly is for government — the State — to worthwhile device — the very es- expropriate all production and dole sence of conservation — the founda- it out to the citizens according to tion of our exchange system. some plan. This is the plan ad- Here's the way it worked in a vocated by the Marxists — “from primitive economy: One man was each according to his ability and highly skilled in catching fish. An- 1. Scarcity of Economic Goods to each according to his need”— other was skilled in growing vege- the rulers, of course, deciding on tables. The vegetable grower found needs. that he could trade some of his Remember wartime rationing of products for fish and have a meat? The price was arbitrarily greater total than if he had to set by government below what stop his gardening and catch his people were willing to pay, and the own fish. Both gained by the cx- ===== PAGE 25 ===== 1958 FREEDOM RESTS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY 23 change, less effort being required greatest satisfaction from a large than if each had tried to be self- family of children. The variety is sufficient. So they traded to their endless, simply because of the indi- ‘mutual benefit. viduality of human beings. Any It is no different today. What is centrally planned scheme for di- the easiest way to get an automo- viding the world’s production in- bile? For most of us, the answer volves a forced conformity to one is to get a job, save part of our pattern of wants and satisfactions wages, and buy one. That is doing and is certain to miss the mark by things the easy way. Call it lazi- a wide margin in the case of prac- ness if you will, but it gets results. tically everyone. The more man Now, if this “least effort” prin- has, the more he wants, and the ciple is followed indiscriminately, more important it becomes that it leads to trouble. Some people dis- the satisfactions be left to the cover that the easiest way to get choice of the individual. something is to steal it. But that system soon breaks down for a society generally. Besides, it vio- A third economic principle im- lates our ideas of moral law and portant to an exchange economy the rights of private ownership of is that specialization increases property. productivity. Persons possess a It is only a slight variation of tremendous variety of talents and simple theft for people to join abilities. Some make good doctors, together and, by majority vote, others are fine lawyers, respected take property from those who have teachers, skilled mechanics, master it and give it to those who have it farmers, and so on and on. By ex- not. When doing things the easy changing with one another the way is carried to this extreme, it abundance of production that re- has serious consequences as we sults from the application of these shall see. highly specialized skills, each is It must be recognized, of course, enabled to gain a maximum of the that wants and satisfactions vary satisfactions he seeks. tremendously from person to per- The facts that economic goods son. One person may find his great- are scarce and must be allocated est satisfaction in leisure; another by some method, that people try to finds his gratification in truly maximize their satisfactions with charitable activity; a third prefers the least effort, and that speciali- above all else living in a beautiful zation leads to high productivity home; and still another gains — all point to free exchange as the 3. Specialization and Productivity ===== PAGE 26 ===== 24 THE FREEMAN March most nearly perfect system by it to a person of his choice at a which individuals may fulfill their price agreeable to both parties. mission in life, developing their The evils of rent control are espe- own creative potentialities to the cially vivid in European countries greatest possible extent. where such controls have been in effect since World War I. The Importance of Private Ownership In England, a man may think This system works satisfactorily he owns a farm, but unless he only when it rests firmly on the farms it in a manner acceptable to foundation of private ownership the government, it may be taken of property. What is mine is mine away from him. Ownership with- and what is thine is thine. Other- out control is not ownership at all. wise, how could there be voluntary In this country a farmer may grow exchange? I would hold that this wheat for his chickens, but if his is in harmony with Natural Law acreage exceeds the government and the moral laws of the universe. quota, he is penalized. The right to private property Isn’t it a violation of property simply means that a man has the rights to forcibly take money from right to what he has honestly ac- the citizens of one community and quired, either by production or ex- give it to other citizens in the change. He has a right to what he form of subsidized rates for elec- produces. He must be free to use tricity? That is exactly what is it if he so desires, to exchange it done through TVA and other river with anyone anywhere on any valley authorities. terms agreeable to both parties, Aren’t property rights violated to keep it if he wishes for future when a citizen of one country is use, or to give it away. A man’s willing to exchange his product labor is his property. He must be with a citizen of another but is free to work for himself, or for prevented from doing it by gov- another person on whatever terms ernment exchange controls or by they agree to, free to donate his quotas? efforts to any voluntary cause or Isn’t it a violation of property simply to remain idle if he chooses. rights to compel a railroad to hire But every day, on all sides, we firemen for diesel locomotives or sce violation of the rights of pri- other workers it considers not es- vate property. We still have rent sential? control in New York State. This Isn't it an immoral act and a vio- means that the owner of a property lation of property rights for a gov- is prevented by law from renting ernment to seize half the value of ===== PAGE 27 ===== 1958 FREEDOM RESTS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY 25 pension funds individuals have set cance are these concepts? Let’s be aside for their old age? We have quite pragmatic. An economy based seen it happen right before our on private rights in property, with eyes, through inflation. a free exchange system, can pro- A moment's reflection will reveal duce fabulous results. We have many other invasions of the indi- seen what it has done in this coun- vidual’s right to his own property. try in 150 years. There are simply Anytime a new proposal comes no limits to what it can do. And along, just make this test: Does it even more important than the ma- forcibly take property from some terial wealth which this kind of persons for the alleged benefit of freedom can produce is the kind others? of people it develops. Is there an- Suppose 51 per cent of the other system that enables — yes, people, by majority vote or through encourages — an individual to de- their representatives, say that it velop his own creative potentials is perfectly proper to do these to the fullest? things. Does that make it right? But interfere enough in the mar- Can right and wrong be deter- ket place — deny these rights to mined by majority vote? Are you private property — and the system willing to be guided in your reli- will surely come to a slow grinding gious views by the test of majority halt. Remove the incentives to pro- vote? Shall the majority decide duce and exchange, and in place of whom you shall marry? Or where a flowering economy we will see a you can travel? No, there are still muddled mess of bureaucracy, some things men will not have de- loafers, people looking for some- cided for them by the majority. thing for nothing, and an entirely But where is the line to be drawn? dejected, unmotivated, unhappy, Majority vote has its place, of and immoral mass of humanity. course. I see no better way of elect- ing the officers or a board of di- Self-Development rectors of a corporation, or church Man’s purpose on earth is to de- officers, or the officials of a state. velop himself as well as he can in But there are many questions harmony with an ordered universe which should never be put to this regulated by Natural Law. This test. Among them is the question is at once his right to life and his of what you do with your private obligation to live long and wisely. property, so long as you do not in- To sustain life, he must have a fringe on the rights of others. right to own what he has honestly Now, of what practical signifi- come by — private ownership of ===== PAGE 28 ===== 26 THE FREEMAN March property. He must be free to own books, magazines, and newspapers it, to use it, to exchange it, to sell — opinion molders — thought it, or to give it away on any terms leaders. It is a long, tough educa- agreeable to those involved. No tional job, and I see no short cuts third party, whether a person or to getting it done. combination of persons, has a right We haven’t developed our pres- to intercede in the production and ent philosophy in this country exchange process. Ownership of overnight, and it will not be property is an empty, meaningless changed overnight. At least a gen- term if the owner is not allowed eration has grown up in the belief to control the property. that government can and should Interference with private owner- give something for nothing. If ship, whether it be in the market your village needs a new sewerage place or elsewhere, violates moral system, ask your congressman for law. It doesn’t change moral law. a handout from the Federal Treas- It doesn’t change right and wrong, ury —and it won’t cost anyone any- but only violates the laws; and thing! So long as such ideas pre- the penalties will be levied just as vail, we have the mechanism all set surely as they are when any of for continually expanding the inva- Nature's laws are violated. sion of the rights to private prop- erty. The Truth Will Stand The chief dangers to our econ- I could become quite pessimistic omy do not lie in Moscow or be- about our situation if I had no hind the iron curtain or in some faith in an ordered universe that far away place. They are right responds to Natural Law. Along here — all around us —now. The with this faith in an ordered uni- solution to this problem will not verse goes a faith that free men be found by electing the right will act wisely. IT am convinced that president or congressman, or city truth will prevail however much councilman, or member of the local we disregard it at the moment. As school board. It is not that easy. Jefferson explained: The answer, as I see it, is in under- “It is error alone which needs standing, by business leaders, the support of government. Truth teachers, clergymen, writers of can stand by itself.” 0 0 THE MAINSPRING of human progress is individual liberty, and individual liberty decreases as federal power increases. ===== PAGE 29 ===== Ewing Galloway, N.Y. DEATH of a COLONY vedas L VOLLIE TRIPP They talked endlessly about socialism. 0B HARRIMAN, noted lawyer, the coyotes and desert jack friend of the late Clarence rabbits. Darrow, was an ardent socialist, This Ramona Ranch had an and he-tried to promote at least abundance of gravity water which two communal colonies. One cost nothing. It had perhaps a colony, planted in Antelope Valley, hundred acres of fertile river in the barren country north of bottom soil, several hundred bear- Los Angeles, failed for good rea- ing apple trees, as well as plums, sons. The loose desert soil would pears, peaches, and other fruits. not grow crops, and the weather There were huge shade trees on was too cold for most things. The the place, many good farm build- pitiful remnants of stone founda- ings, and quite a few farm imple- tions may still be seen here, the ments. Coming to this pleasant evidence of much hard work by well-watered valley should have someone. raised the spirits of the most dour Along in the early twenties, Mr. among them, after their former | Harriman bought the Ramona bleak prospects in the desert. Ranch, just three hoops and a hop News that we were to have a over the hills from our old home- communal colony for neighbors ' stead, in Riverside County. created the greatest interest. Soon Thither he moved the Antelope we called on the folks to see how Valley colony, now abandoned to the colony operated. They were Mr. Tripp, retired from the building business, now devotes full time to travel, writing, and promotion of free enterprise. 27 ===== PAGE 30 ===== 28 THE FREEMAN March very friendly, and all eager to ex- gardener. It was his duty to pro- plain their economic theories. vide the colonists with nice, fresh There were, as I recall, about green vegetables. Handy sort to 24 members in the colony, ranging have in a colony, this Farmer from young children to several fellow. people over 60. They prepared There was an old lady whose their meals in a big community name escapes me. Apparently kitchen, ate together at one long senile, she often had a “call” to table. The women took turns at declaim at length, a rambling dia- K.P. duty. Everyone seemed en- tribe “agin” things in general, thusiastic about his new life, with emphasis on her poor treat- where “all for one and one for all” ment at the hands of those about was a cardinal principle. her. The others paid no attention Here competition would be done to her, and she often found her- away with in favor of cooperation. self preaching to empty chairs. Communization was the only anti- Undaunted, she kept on till un- dote for the cruel, wicked, heart- wound. less capitalist system. From now We got to know the Taylor on it would be: “From each ac- family best of all, J. Peter, Mrs. cording to his ability; to each ac- Taylor, and the several young cording to his need” —and so children. J. Peter was a tremen- forth. dous man, at least 6'4”, weighing We came to know some of these well over 220, thin. He, too, was folks quite well. Nice folks they “well versed” in history, philos- were, too. Take the Woosters. ophy, economics, law, and the Wooster was a tall grave bean pole theory of socialism. of a fellow, well versed in philos- You could go over to the colony ophy, political theory, with a most any time of day and find the smattering of science, and a sin- folks expounding profoundly on cere belief in communal life. He various economic and political was a kind of general overseer. theories. The shade of the big um- Mrs. Wooster kept the colony books brella trees was fine for expound- and helped manage the domestic ing, in the long hot summer days. details. She was quite young, alert, Leading the discussion, most curvaceous, as well as vivacious, likely, would be J. Peter Taylor. and not a bit hard on the eyes. He had a natural gift for that sort Then there was a fellow named of thing. Farmer, the gardener, Farmer, and his little girl, about was seldom to be found among 13. Farmer was a professional the debaters. He was too busy ===== PAGE 31 ===== 1958 DEATH OF A COLONY 29 working with his vegetable patch. Disaffection with Mr. Harriman To join the colony, you had to now began to be whispered about. dig up a thousand dollars. J. Peter He did not come down from his used to boast how his wife took in big city office as often as before. washing to help raise this con- When he did come, the money he siderable sum. From time to time left was inadequate for the col- Mr. Harriman came down from lective needs. Came a day when his big city office to check on Mr. Harriman did not come down things. Supposedly, he doled out at all anymore. grocery money for his subjects, Adulation now turned to fury. since the colonists continued to Had he brought his people to this eat and no one worked outside. place, only to let them starve? What about the thousand dollars SPRING CAME. We expected to see they'd given him? What about the soil turned, crops planted, the Ramona Ranch? But Job Harri- apple trees pruned and cared for. man could not be found to answer It was our understanding that the their questions. colony hoped to produce nearly all their own food, with enough THE NEXT BLOW fell when Farmer surplus to buy sugar, spice, coffee, up and left, just like that, taking and the like. This money would his little girl with him. I was sorry be placed in a common pool, the to see Mr. Farmer leave. I thought joint property of all, to be used his little girl was real nice. No one for the common good. knew why Farmer left, though I June came and went. Then July have a theory or two. and August. Still no plow dis- Fortunately for the colonists, he turbed the eager fertile loam. did not take his garden with him. Weeds grew taller and taller. The For a little while yet the colonists premises took on a doleful half- continued to eat the ripening corn, deserted look. The men of the squash, and things. But there colony continued to polish apple came a time when the last of boxes under the big shade trees, Farmer's turnips and things had discuss endless socialist theory, been pulled and eaten. The colony and cuss the wicked capitalist sys- now faced an “exceeding misery.” tem. Only cheerful spot on the The Woosters, astute people, ranch was Farmer’s garden, now recognized trouble when they saw resplendent with ripening melons, it coming down the road. They left corn, squash, tomatoes, and other for parts unknown. One by one the good things. others left. All but Peter Taylor. ===== PAGE 32 ===== 30 THE FREEMAN March Peter was made of sterner stuff. years, as I recall, Taylor and his He vowed he’d sit there till a cer- lawyer had used up all their legal tain place froze over. Or, until he recourse. The Taylors were to be got his thousand dollars back. put out into the county road, by Now, my father, Dan Tripp, was force, if necessary. not a man to sit by and let a family However, the representative of starve. Many the sack of vege- the legal owners, as a last gesture tables, side of bacon, gallons of to avoid force, offered Taylor all milk found their way to the Tay- the furniture in the house where lor’s table from our place. Even they had been living, plus $250 in better for Pop: here was a cash, if he would sign quit claims CAUSE. Virtue outraged. Justice and go away quietly. At Pop’s urg- trammeled. Innocence persecuted. ing, he accepted the offer. We took up the Taylor cause with We had a ton truck and agreed a vengeance. to haul Taylor’s things to San Ja- Mr. Harriman had undoubtedly cinto, about 25 miles north. We made a down payment on the Ra- went over the next morning. It mona Ranch, expecting to pay the was a sad, tense time. The owner balance when due from sale of was there. Taylor's lawyer was membership in his colony. I per- there. Mrs. Taylor was crying. The sonally doubt that he had any children were hushed and fright- other intention in the world. I be- ened. As a youngster, I was deeply lieve he was sincere in his beliefs impressed and shocked at this and had only the best interests of treatment of a poor family by rich his people at heart. Certainly he and “soulless men.” was a warm, friendly man, an in- The owner, on advice; refused teresting man. to pass over the $250 directly to But the money could not be Taylor. He insisted it be paid raised. The legal owners wanted through a third party. Funny their ranch back. They ordered thing, this law. Pop was suggested Taylor to move. He would not. as an intermediary. There being no objection, the money was IT 1S DIFFICULT to dispossess a handed to him, and a second later family under any circumstances he passed it over to Taylor. if they're determined to stay. Tay- As the last of the furniture was lor was determined. The law puts loaded onto our truck and as we the legal owner to much incon- were about to leave, Taylor sud- venience, delay, and expense. But denly jumped out and ran back in the course of events, about two into the house. With a mighty ===== PAGE 33 ===== 1958 DEATH OF A COLONY 31 heave he yanked out the kitchen prove itself with a minimum of sink and came running with it. interference from external forces. The owner blinked but said noth- The colonists found themselves ing, doubtless glad to be rid of among friendly interested neigh- him, at any cost. bors, anxious to help any way they But this sink thing brought me could. The ranch was fertile and up short. By all the rules of the could easily have produced food in game, it was a part of the house. abundance for all, with a ready It was not furniture to which he sale of surplus to take care of was entitled. So my hero Taylor, money needs. the sage, the prophet, the epitome Farmer, the only one of the doz- of justice and abused innocence, en or so able-bodied men willing had a flaw or two on his own ac- to work, simply grew tired of feed- count. I was upset about this. It ing the rest, and quit. I fear he just about ruined my simple clas- was a capitalist at heart. sic hero-villain concept of things. The others lacked incentive to From now on, thinking about such do much for themselves because matters would be much more com- they could see no direct, compel- plicated. ling personal reason for doing so. Why should they? They had “so- So ENDED Job Harriman’s Ra- cial security.” If one man could mona Rancho communal experi- not, or would not, pull his load, the ment. Another theory, beautiful in others would. At least, they were a dreamy sort of way, went up in supposed to. smoke, or down in ashes, as you It failed, too, because something prefer. It had failed for the same in man rebels, and finally dies, reason Governor Bradford's com- when his personality and individ- munist experiment had failed, uality is taken from him, and he’s some 300 years before. merged into “the group.” We have Communization just isn’t natu- a right and a sacred obligation to ral. It doesn’t meet man’s needs, be ourselves, to work out our own hopes, ambitions, or temperament. destiny, and to see the total result Nor can a little communism suc- of our effort. Man wants to be able ceed any better, though obviously to stand back and say: “This 1 a small dose isn’t as lethal as a have done.” The experiment failed big one. for other reasons, any one of Here, if ever, the basic idea of which would have doomed it from communism had a fair chance to the start. * eo eo 0 ===== PAGE 34 ===== HE CURRENT REVIVAL of interest may be argued that the very sur- in religion in America has been vival of free private enterprise de- variously interpreted. At the very pends as much on getting these least, it means that many of us cultural factors back into proper may be disposed to re-examine the focus as it does in knowing the spiritual foundations on which our case for the free market. culture has been erected. Our In the philosophy underlying heritage of free churches — reli- the practices of capitalism the gious bodies possessing an author- market is used as a device for ity of their own, independent of the State — is obviously rooted in Se ee memes me the unique intellectual and cul- tural soil of the West. | But we need to be reminded that | (& 2 \ ) 27 (I our other cherished institutions a < spring from the same soil. Modern | science, education, our tradition of limited government, and our taste for free enterprise or capitalism 17% are all anchored to the same spiri- tual foundation; and, as super- structures, they are all affected by the decay or the loss of prestige EDMUND of their foundation. Shoring up this spiritual foun- I dation directly is one thing; de- fending it against the indirect erosion which results from an at- making economic decisions — the tack on one of its autonomous off- “market” being the pattern pre- spring such as science, education, cipitated by the voluntary buying or free enterprise is another. habits of free men and women. Science and education have able Men engaged in economic activity defenders, so the attack on our at any level may be guilty of coer- culture often centers on economics cion and fraud, just as they may where it sometimes achieves a be guilty of coercion and fraud in semblance of plausibility. It was any other context. When this is a unique combination of cultural the case, they may properly be factors which encouraged the censured for their malpractices. emergence of capitalism, and it This is worlds apart, however, 82 ===== PAGE 35 ===== from the wholesale condemnation is a necessary means to these ends. of the institution of the free mar- If its integrity as a means to these ket by collectivists, or the thought- ends is not respected, it may be- less criticisms of otherwise come the instrument to destroy thoughtful people. them as well as to impair the Economic activity, subject to spiritual foundation they rest the same ethical and institutional upon. restraints that hedge all human A great social upheaval occurred actions, is no more properly sub- several centuries ago —one of those great, deep, tidal changes in the human spirit manifesting it- self on the level of society as new institutions and a new outlook on AISI (SIINVI life. Different aspects of this ~ transformation were labeled the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation, the whole affair being religious in na- ture. Men felt the urge to love God for himself ; and, as a parallel development, to pursue truth for its own sake. This latter urge is . OpITZ the wellspring of the scientific method. But like other people, specialists in science easily lapse into an atti- tude of unawareness of the unique ject to political invasion than is spiritual and social conditions religion or science or any other which make their specialty pos- human venture. Economics, more- sible. They are ‘radically igno- over, occupies a strategic position rant,” writes Ortega y Gasset, of among the various activities of “how society and the heart of man man. Economic activity is not are to be organized in order that merely the means to material there may continue to be investi- ends; it is also the means to all gators.” And so we now have our ends. Thus, while it may serve science perverted, and some scien- on a humbler level than science, tists placing their talents at the education, and religion, economics disposal of politicians in the The Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education. 33 ===== PAGE 36 ===== 34 THE FREEMAN March planned State. This is bound to revolutionaries, however, had em- happen when the metaphysical ployed this strategy much earlier. foundations of science are ignored. G. Zacher, in 1884, wrote in The Red International, “Whoever as- Spiritual Foundations sails Christianity assails at the A human culture is born as same time monarchy and capital- something “cultivated,” something ism!” developed by education, discipline, If our common Judeo-Christian and training. Its spiritual founda- heritage paved the way for the tion is constructed slowly and rise of capitalism, then a subtle painfully, like the building of a way of causing a decline of capi- breakwater by throwing in bag talism would be to refrain from after bag of cement until finally openly attacking it while concen- the top of the pile appears above trating on weakening the founda- water. Modern culture had been tion which holds it up. This would in preparation for centuries be- kill two birds with one stone, in fore it erupted in the sixteenth the manner advised by the French century and allowed a new out- revolutionist two centuries ago look, a new spirit, and a new set who said, “Don’t attack the mon- of values to release and direct arch, attack the idea of monarchy.” human energy. Men threw off the dead weight of ancient restraints The East and the West — the various justifications for the Perhaps the importance of the tyrannies of political government, spiritual and cultural foundation the controls on man’s productive of the West may best be illustrated energy, the discouragement of by comparispn between the Orien- efforts to investigate the natural tal and the Western scene. A trav- universe. eler in the Orient is struck im- The material prosperity we mediately by the amount of know and have known in America human muscle power still used is a direct outgrowth of the spiri- to do the heavy work of society. tual and social upheaval which sur- The streets of an Indian city are faced about four centuries ago. crowded with men carrying things, The critics of capitalism became pushing things, and acting as aware of this connection at least beasts. of burden. The strong im- fifty years ago when Max Weber pression which these scenes evoke published his enormously influen- is that the Orient needs machines tial book, The Protestant Ethic so that horsepower can relieve and the Spirit of Capitalism. The manpower. ===== PAGE 37 ===== 1958 CAPITALISM AND OUR CULTURE 35 Questions and Answers These are questions that can- Why doesn’t the Orient have not be answered on the level of the machines which would lighten technology or on the level of polit- human toil? Is she too poor to buy ical and social organization. The them? So was Europe a few cen- answers must be sought at those turies ago; and then the energies deeper levels where vital decisions of Europeans poured out and are made which permit or repress channeled themselves in patterns the emergence of a belief in the of relief from much of the back- dignity of man, and in freedom, breaking toil which is still the fate and in such of its natural corol- of their brothers in the Far East. laries as science and technology. Might it be that the people of Natural resources and opportuni- the Orient are not bright enough ties are of secondary importance; to invent and build their own ma- what is of primary importance is chines? To the contrary, many of the possession of a religious herit- her people are bursting with crea- age —or an attitude toward the tive energy, and they have inven- ypiverse — which encourages men tive minds, as witness their philos- {5 take hold of natural opportuni- ophies, their arts, their handi- (jes This heritage Europe had in crafts. And rich natural resources {po Judeo-Christian tradition in are available to them. which was embodied elements of Perhaps the Oriental society has 01 culture — the whole being been shackled oy its prevailing called Christendom. When that tra- orms 0 espotic gOVernment. giiion came to renewed life at the There has been despotism in the . dawn of the modern era, it was i ins DUS he the fountainhead of great changes ’ in Western society. Population in- over the centuries quietly con- . . sented to submit to tyranny? Why creased many times; simultane. ously the well-being of individuals has the idea of limited govern- | : ) ment gained so little foothold increased. Famines disappeared; among them? Why doesn’t the Some diseases were eliminated al- Orient invent the machines, em- together, and the ravages of others brace the technology, and set up Were mitigated. Education spread the industries which would pro- to the outermost edges of society. vide the goods and lighten the During the same period of modern burdens that now lie so heavily history Oriental society has been on the backs of half a billion virtually static — until the ferment people? of the last few years. ===== PAGE 38 ===== 36 THE FREEMAN March Equal Before God more than 175 years ago. Perhaps At the heart of the great West- the keynote of this new kind of ern upheaval was the idea that the government was struck by James individual worshiper could come Madison in his thirty-ninth Fed- into the presence of God without eralist Paper when he wrote of the mediation of any special class the determination “to rest all our of men, or of any group, or of any political experiments on the capac- nation. According to this faith, the ity of mankind for self-govern- Creator and Sustainer of life, the ment.” This cannot be construed to Lord of the universe, is neverthe- mean that Madison suffered from less, and paradoxically, close to any illusions as to the utopian every person and interested in the possibilities locked up in the aver- most humble. age human breast. But for the first Think what this belief, strongly time in history the individual per- held, would do for the humble who son was not to be a creature of walked the earth, how it would government or its minions. In- straighten their backbones and herent rights were lodged in each lift their chins! Think what this person as his natural endowment belief would do to tyranny. If from God, and the exercise of his every man thought of himself as individual energies was strictly a the creature of God and poten- matter of his own business — until tially God’s child, he certainly he trespassed on the rights of would not long submit to being the other individuals. creature of any other man or of In the American scheme, men any group of men or of any gov- had a larger measure of political ernment! No longer could it be liberty than men had ever had be- regarded as right, or as the will fore, and they obtained their meas- of God, that any man be placed at ure of freedom by limiting gov- the disposal of any other man or ernment to taking care of the one group. Thus, every person was con- interest men have in common — ceived to have “rights” which no the removal of barriers to the one should impair, and out of this peaceful exercise and exchange of came a concept of government as human energy. a social institution set up volun- The American concept of gov- tarily by men to secure each of ernment did not spring into being them in his “rights.” full blown from a few brains; it We are proud, and rightly so, of was hammered out in the course the experiment in government set of long experience and debate. By in motion on these shores a little the middle of the eighteenth cen- ===== PAGE 39 ===== 1958 "CAPITALISM AND OUR CULTURE 37 tury Americans were protesting properly called ‘‘capitalism.” that the exactions of the British There is no more warrant in com- crown were violating their rights mon sense or in theory for fetter- as men, whereas but a generation ing men’s economic activities than earlier they had demanded their there is for arbitrarily curtailing rights as Englishmen. A revolu- his scientific, educational, or re- tion in thought and outlook sepa- ligious activities. But by constant rates the former concept from the repetition of untruths and half- latter. In drawing the lines of truths, it has been made to appear battle on their rights as English- that every ill from which our so- men, the colonists had in mind the ciety suffers is due to freedom of concessions which their ancestors, economic enterprise, whereas the beginning with the barons at Run- real cause of many of these ills is nymede, had wrung from their actually the result of the impair- sovereigns. In standing on their ments of that freedom. rights as men, the colonists drew In recent years, business and upon another dimension, the theo- industry have gone through the logical. This is probably what de wringer. Businessmen, who are as Tocqueville had in mind in 1835 good and as bad as any other when he wrote of Americans that group of men, have been singled “religion ...is the first of their out for special treatment. Industry political institutions.” as a whole has been tied down with a network of laws and controls. Religious Aspects of Political Liberty While some branches of it were When religious considerations treated to special privileges by are introduced into political government, other branches suf- theory, government is ideally fered from political discrimina- limited to securing the ends of tion. liberty and justice for all men During this same period a new alike. Political liberty thus has conception of government has spiritual antecedents, and it serves gained popularity. It is the very spiritual ends by providing the concept against which eighteenth social conditions which enable per- century Americans protested and sons to achieve the goals appro- fought — the concept that govern- priate to human nature. ment is the seat of ultimate power Political liberty also serves in society and therefore possesses man’s creaturely needs. Under all the rights which it dispenses political liberty a certain pattern provisionally to people as political of economic activity emerges, expedience dictates. Thus the older ===== PAGE 40 ===== 38 THE FREEMAN March American concept of the relation til recently, have so taken for of government and people is granted. turned inside out. In our present situation, the Whenever men have yielded to most immediately oppressive the lust for power and the greed things seem to emanate from an for possessions, there have always overgrown, bureaucratic govern- been impairments of political and ment. Merely to remove these re- economic liberty of great or less straints and directives is of little degree. In the past when the going use, however, if we leave intact got rough, men pulled in their the concept of omnipotent govern- belts, grumbled, and consoled each ment — or the seeds of this con- other with the literature of free- cept — to spawn more restrictions. dom, sacred and secular. They An erroneous idea of government were sustained by their faith that must be replaced by a correct idea. those who loved liberty were on But when we seek to refurbish the the side of the right, and that the American idea of limited govern- right would eventually triumph. ment, we find that originally the They might perish, but their prin- concept stemmed from a spiritual ciples would outlast any tyrant. foundation which is itself badly in But now the situation is different. need of rehabilitation. It is at this Values have been transvalued, and fundamental level that the most impairments of political and eco- intensive work needs to be done. nomic liberty are made on prin- But because so few people are ciple. Thus the blows struck at aware of the importance of this limited government and free enter- level, almost no one is working at prise do not stop after doing their it. Unless this spiritual foundation damage there. They go deeper and is rehabilitated, work at the less strike at the spiritual and cultural profound levels cannot endure, bases of our society, at that sub- touching as it does only the mar- stratum of our life which we, un- gins of the problem. ® 0 0 IDEAS EW 0000007 § Spiritual Collapse ROME FELL because the nation collapsed spiritually; because a hardy race succumbed to the insidious poison of the idea that “the government will do it”; because rulers bought power at home and favor abroad by gifts of treasure and food; because integrity and thrift and industry gave place to corruption and waste and indolence; because the nation bartered its ancient heritage of hard-won freedom for the specious ease and false security which a corrupt government promised it. FRANKLIN BLISS BNYDER, I'resident Kmeritus, Northwestern University ===== PAGE 41 ===== . f a + WORDC" —— NC WALTER J. BLUM The following article is an experimental exception to Foundation policy against the use of satire for educational purposes. “| wrote it for my own entertainment,” says the author. But perhaps it may encourage business managers and stockholders to re-examine some of the modern innovations of corporate practice. HE TURN in events leads me to the Chairmanship in 1937 was to speak a few words about Con- insist that it was wrong to allow solidated Supercorporation before the bitter company-wide strike to stepping down from the Chair- continue. By refusing to meet the manship of its Board of Directors, terms of the union which was or- after twenty years at the helm. ganizing our plants, we were de- I, for one, am extremely proud priving the public of our products. of the role which our company has As I then said, it was as much a played on the American scene in wrong to block the creation of our the past two decades. The people goods as to plow under little pigs. regard our company as a model. Both deny the consumer his right- From being a self-centered or- ful freedom of choice. ganization viewed with suspicion, Two years later, in 1939, we it has won the reputation of being pioneered a new relationship be- an almost sacred trust operated tween industry and advertising. for public benefit. We were the first company to Let me trace briefly with you sponsor a radio program designed the important milestones on this not to gain customers, but to fur- road we have traveled. nish the country with enlighten- My very first act upon assuming ment which otherwise would be Mr. Blum is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He is co-author with Harry Kalven, Jr. of The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation, University of Chicago Press, 1953. 39 ===== PAGE 42 ===== 40 THE FREEMAN March monopolized by a privileged few. goods so as to avoid having any I am sure all of you then on the such profits. Thus we were the Board vividly recall, as the high- only large government supplier water mark, our series of twenty- whose contracts were never once four lectures, each by a different renegotiated throughout the whole outstanding philosopher. What of the war. Just think how much must be hard to believe today is wrangling would have been that only once during each hour avoided had our policy been cop- program were listeners interrup- ied by all contractors! ted in their thoughts to be in- When the war ended, we were formed of the sponsor’s identity. in danger of losing our enviable reputation because more and more As THE AMERICAN economy was corporations were beginning to re- responding to the beginning of tain public relations counselors. World War 11, our company cap- You must admit that we met this tured a new “first.” Without any challenge forcefully. No single ac- hesitation, we announced a policy tion during the postwar period of full compliance with the gov- was more dramatic than our an- ernment’s efforts to hold down nouncement, in 1946, that each prices through voluntary means. year 5 per cent of the company’s Not once did we refuse to coop- income would be donated to local erate with the maximum prices community funds throughout the suggested by the Price Adminis- country. Does it seem possible to trator. Steadfastly we held the you now that some stranger nearly line, even when not a single other succeeded in undermining this firm in the industry was willing to noble program by suing us? What make that sacrifice for the good of hurt me most was that the nervy the country. fellow held only a measly 25 shares Early in the war an excess out of our 16,000,000 which were profits tax was enacted on the then outstanding. Even to this day theory that war resulted in ab- it aggravates me to think that this normally large profits due to the selfish individual succeeded in situation at hand and not to the forcing us to reduce our annual efficiency of enterprises. Upon pas- contribution from 5 per cent of sage of this tax, your company re- gross income to 5 per cent of net sponded in characteristic fashion. income. We immediately proclaimed our During the slight recession of position that since excess profits 1948, we were much tempted to are unfair, we would price our close several of our obsolete plants ===== PAGE 43 ===== 1958 “FAMOUS LAST WORDS” 41 and move the operations to other company played in the Point Four areas more favorably situated as program by which the United to labor and transportation costs. States undertook to provide tech- Indeed, the leading management nical assistance to underdeveloped firm in the country strongly ad- areas. The response to the govern- vised this. As usual, we acted in ment’s appeals for expert techni- the best traditions of democracy. cians was discouraging. Most of We held innumerable meetings the competent people were already with the townspeople and our em- under contract and their employ- ployees who would be adversely ers were reluctant to lose their affected, and learned of the bur- services. In an effort to break the dens that would be imposed upon bottleneck, we offered to lend any them. In the end we were per- of our trained personnel for for- suaded to stand pat. My, there was eign duty and to continue paying great rejoicing around the old half their regular salaries. There plants; and who among us here is no need for me to remark on the will not say that these displays thrill we received when the Presi- were heartwarming? I only wish dent of the United States singled that the celebrations had been wit- us out for special commendation nessed by the cranks who com- at his press conference. But I will plained about our decision — espe- emphasize that our plan was suc- cially those merchants, landown- cessful: many of our best engi- ers, and workers who thought they neers did go to the four corners of might personally profit from the the earth, and some of them have relocation. yet to return. Another bit of farsightedness TWO YEARS LATER, in 1950, we car- on our part likewise pleased the ried this policy to its logical con- administration. Ever since the clusion. Learning that several mid-thirties, some economic ad- marginal firms in the industry visors have concluded that our were preparing to liquidate be- economy would be more stable if cause they were operating at a the acquisition of capital goods loss, our company, to avert that were less cyclical. Our contribu- tragedy, acquired the firms and tion to making this a reality was continued to operate them as sub- the novel long-range capital expan- sidiaries. Thus did we do our duty sion program we inaugurated in to prevent society from suffering a 1954, under the title of “Automa- waste of its capital resources. tion of Expansion.” Every econo- I must not overlook the role our mist has commented on our pledge ===== PAGE 44 ===== 42 THE FREEMAN March to increase our capital outlays by referred to in the press as the 614 per cent a year regardless of American answer to the Welfare economic conditions. While natur- State —the welfare corporation. ally I relished the publicity that And the people wholeheartedly followed, I took most pleasure in have been on our side. Their ap- working with that smart little preciation, as shown by the chart economist — oh, what is his name? over on the wall, has resulted in a — who conclusively showed us — tenfold increase in our dollar vol- on his slide rule, mind you — that ume during my two decades as 6 per cent per annum would be too Chairman of the Board. small and 6 per cent too large an increase. I know you will excuse I WOULD CLOSE my remarks here me if I digress just to wonder were it not for the depressing what’s become of him since then. news, conveyed to us earlier in this I could go on at length reminisc- meeting, that some creditors have ing about the forward-looking today filed a petition to reorganize achievements of Consolidated Su- the company under the Bank- percorporation, but I shall limit ruptcy Act. There is no hiding the myself to selecting only one more fact that this is an event for which — our latest dedication to living I was little prepared. The company the good corporate life. Come now, certainly deserves better. But far confess, didn’t all of you really more important than its immedi- enjoy returning to the University ate fate is the need to make sure this summer for a refresher course that no wrong conclusions are in the liberal arts? Speaking for drawn from our experience. It is myself, I got a real kick out of to this end that I have spoken. reading Plutarch’s Lives! But So I come to my last words as even if not all of you were com- Chairman. Our policies were pletely comfortable in the class- sound. If our fortunes have suf- room, surely you will agree that fered, it is not because of our good our executive retraining program works and ideals but because the will in time do something to Amer- fates were unkind. The long and ican business. Who knows, it might short of the matter is simply this: cven improve the moral force that Even though our competitors our country can bring to bear on failed to live up to the standards other members of the United Na- of corporate good citizenship tions. which we set, they were luckier. No wonder, then, that Consoli- Somehow their costs just were dated Supercorporation often is lower than ours! eo ===== PAGE 45 ===== igi jaunched the La he Br did not last guard? ro d to national and _ They move : ona fields. When my friend Adol T WE SPIRIT OF / 4 7/7 i i me, Berle was leaving, he se ao / it ry we | “Bob, It'S all ve ory / +h street openings. n° 4 hy ig to settle the Chinese WALKER estion.” ) « ’ FO mes Magarine atrocities of religious wars, mass § Spt B 1887 murder of innocent men and women and children, the physical and mental enslavement of man by man, the burning of “witches,” the purgings by guillotine and ma- chine gun. Certainly, the power of the sword, of the mob, and of Wess the Chinese question is mighty armies is seldom, if ever, still with us, and Adolf Berle wielded in humility. did not settle it. We did not expect Nor is the historical evidence of him to; what surprises us is that ruthless, arrogant action confined he thought he could. Such delu- to these examples of war and forth- sions denote a serious shortage of right violence. The destructive humility. force often is concealed and works How often, in thumbing through indirectly in the area of public history, we can see leaders and affairs, political action, govern- followers alike shed all humility ment enforced reforms of all kinds. as they relentlessly drive to im- The modest sense of his own pose their well-intended reforms significance, displayed by many a on a skeptical and reluctant so- person in his private life, seems ciety. Roman soldiers are seen to desert him when he turns to crucifying One whose message was public affairs. A man who can’t or love and persecuting those who won't make a simple personal de- sought to practice the ideal of cision, or advise his wife or child peace on earth, good will toward all concerning small matters of his men. Add to this the violence of own household, can and will tell the Crusades, the horrors and emphatically how he’d run the Mr. Walker is a public relations consultant and journalist much concerned with the methodology of freedom. 43 ===== PAGE 46 ===== 44 THE FREEMAN March state or the nation if he were Gov- traffic control, overcrowded schools, ernor or President. rising taxes, water shortage, sew- age disposal, juvenile delinquency, Arbitrariness Breeds Trouble and congestion generally. If the One soon learns, when dealing good intentions of such persons with family or friends or business were accompanied by an equally associates, that arbitrary action fine sense of humility, they might and a cocksure attitude may lead attend to the problems on their to trouble. At that level of affairs, own doorsteps before remodeling a mistake comes home to roost in the rest of the world. a hurry. But there isn’t that same “Whereas I formerly believed it direct personal confrontation in my bounden duty to call other per- case of an error in public policy, sons to order, I now admit I need even though it affects millions of calling to order myself.” Dr. Carl people and causes untold harm. The Jung, in making this statement impersonality and vastness of pub- about himself, also might have of- lic affairs may explain why they fered it as a basis for political tend to be advocated and conducted action. What would have happened with so much arrogance — so little in this century if the demonic po- humility. litical figures who have led the For example, who ever heard of world into confusion, war, and a farmer’s killing his own little chaos had felt as Dr. Jung does? pigs, or urging his neighbors to Conceive, if you can, such a humil- slaughter theirs, as a sound busi- ity in a Marx, a Hitler, a Lenin, a ness procedure? But this destruc- Stalin; they were all too certain tive theory once was enforced on that they must call other people to a national basis by “farmers” who order. The results are all about us. had lost all humility when put in Coming home, we have heard our charge of the United States De- leaders, supremely confident of partment of Agriculture. their own rightness, tell us that The organization of United war “would end war” and “make World Federalists, designed to tell the world safe for democracy.” everybody from Madagascar to Omsk how to achieve a peaceful The Anomalous Mr. Cobden utopia is perhaps the most gran- One of the most successful polit- diose and lofty political concept ical leaders and reformers of all of all time. Yet, this is a principal time was Richard Cobden. That enthusiasm of suburbanites who Victorian statesman accomplished face insoluble local problems of many things and without bitter- ===== PAGE 47 ===== 1958 THE SPIRIT OF HUMILITY 45 ness. Why ? There was no arrogant, sons. Very rarely, if even ever in antagonistic sense of self-right- history, has a man achieved so eousness about him. According to much by his words — been victor Walter Bagehot, “Mr. Cobden was in what was thought at the time very anomalous in two respects. to be a class struggle — and yet He was a sensitive agitator. Gen- spoken so little evil as Mr. Cobden. erally, an agitator is a rough man We may on other grounds object ... who says anything himself, and to an agitator who lacerates no lets others say anything. ‘You peg one, but no watchful man of the into me and I will peg into you, world will deny that such an agita- and let us see which will win,” is tor has vanquished one of life’s his motto. But Mr. Cobden’s habit most imperious and difficult temp- and feeling were utterly different. tations.”* Can such praise be He never spoke ill of anyone. He Tormeoiy, ron Biographical Stud- arraigned principles, but not per- jes by Walter Bagehot. THE CITIZEN AND THE LEGISLATOR ALIKE to the citizen and to the legislator, home-experiences daily supply proofs that the conduct of human beings baulks calculation. He has given up the thought of managing his wife and lets her manage him. Children on whom he has tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method; and no expostulation prevents their mother from treating them in ways he thinks mischievous. So, too, his dealings with his servants, whether by reasoning or by scolding, rarely succeed for long; the falling short of attention, or punctuality, or cleanliness, or sobriety, leads to constant changes. Yet, difficult as he finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom he knows, not one-hundredth of whom he ever saw, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in ways he foresees, and fulfill ends he wishes. Is there not a marvellous incongruity between premises and conclusion? HERBERT SPENCER, The Man Versus the State ===== PAGE 48 ===== 46 THE FREEMAN March truthfully accorded any political forward? A little more humility, a figure in our own time? little slower pace, and many evils The confident feeling of certainty which now afflict us could have that what we believe is right and been avoided. therefore should become public The global reformer or revolu- policy has motivated too many of tionist, absolutely certain of his us. Much of what is now described rightness, becomes an absolutist as Toryism or reaction is merely when he gains power, killing those humility in operation — a lack of who disagree, or consigning them confidence in the new proposals de- to slave labor camps or exile. The signed to supplant principles which lack of humility can go no further. have stood the test of time. What There is light for all of us in what is in operation can be seen; what we can see happening. Too cock- is proposed for future operations sure, too certain, and we, too, is far less obvious. Certainly the could become political absolutists. violent upheavals and revolutions ‘After all,” said Montaigne, “it is of our time are not conducive to setting a very high price on one’s a whole-hearted commitment to so- convictions to burn a man alive for cial reform. “Progress is commonly them.” the substitution of one nuisance A great teacher of nearly 2,000 for another,” wrote Havelock Ellis. years ago offered his life as a Czarist Russia was an absolutist lesson in humility. Would that we state in process of moderation; in this twentieth century might who would claim now that the sub- understand and practice that mes- stitution of communism was a step sage! LI | meas 0 10B0ATY | A Poor Wise Man 1 HAVE ALSO SEEN this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it; and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded. The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. ECCLESIASTES 9:13-18 (From the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyrighted 1046 and 1952) ===== PAGE 49 ===== F. A. HARPER \Y LIBERTARIANS have scars nally listen to his speech. He will on their shins, suffered from be allowed fifteen minutes for his trying — in a certain way — to kick formal statement, including sev- around some popular socialist sa- eral minutes for the chairman’s cred cows. Experience is one way eloquent introduction. At the end to learn how to avoid some of the there will be five minutes for ques- bruises, but we may also learn tions and answers. from the experience of others. His audience seems spellbound The libertarian is not a com- by the speech. He may mistake as placent soul, happy with things admiration a reaction which is, in just as they are. Once he has fact, nothing but just plain won- grasped the concept of a society of derment; it is as though they were free men, he sees vividly many im- watching some strange animal. perfections in the contemporary Most of the audience will surely scene. He sees liberty being vio- miss his point completely, never lated on every hand, and is in- having studied seriously the un- censed when others bow down be- derlying concepts of the Declara- fore idols of socialist design. The tion of Independence, the Consti- situation is urgent, it seems, and tution, or the works of persons so he is likely to become a crusad- such as Locke and Paine and Lord ing idealist. Acton. So why shouldn’t these Finally, a golden opportunity libertarian ideas amaze them? arrives for the freshman liber- Then comes the five-minute tarian. The local club invites him question period when the speaker to be its speaker. Hurrah! is to stand trial. A freshman liber- The club will first have its feast, tarian is likely to perform in the then transact some business and manner of the proverbial lrish- indulge in some levities, and fi- man who, with his bare hands, Dr. Harper is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education. 47 ===== PAGE 50 ===== 48 THE FREEMAN March tangled with the bull in the pas- the view that he is guilty, he has ture lot. At the funeral, a friend no chance of acquittal unless it is was heard to observe that he had to be a hearing where there will exhibited more courage than judg- be ample time for him to present ment, evidence in his own defense — de- The parade of socialist sacred fense of the beliefs he holds, that cows begins: “You mean you are is. opposed to ———? Why?” One by one, these sacred cows are turned Judgment after the Facts loose in the arena as though they A perfectly proper and safer ap- were prima facie evidence of his proach is suggested by our tradi- guilt. tional legal processes. When a case “I must defend myself as one comes up for hearing before the accused,” he thinks, “and answer judiciary, it is accepted as simple any question thrown at me. It justice that the accused shall be would be cowardly to fail to give allowed a full hearing. All facts my opinion on every issue pre- may be presented without any ar- sented in the time available.” bitrary time limit, as a matter of justice. Only then, after all the No Time for Explanation facts have been brought out, is a But there is time for him to judgment presumed to be in order. give nothing except bare conclu- Imagine, for example, being ac- sions which he throws back at his cused of a crime while at the same questioners — conclusions shame- time you are allowed only a speci- fully unclothed in any supporting fied number of minutes during evidence and reasoning. There just which to present the case for your isn’t time for anything more. own defense. Imagine being sub- So the herd of sacred cows all jected to a trial where your guilt survive the fray quite unblem- or innocence will depend on how ished, whereas the poor speaker much evidence you can present in emerges deeply bowed and with the few minutes before the judge badly bruised shins. Why? has to leave in order to make his The mistake of this courageous golf appointment at 1:10. About libertarian was to submit to trial all you would have time to do at in such a courtroom where his such a trial would be to reassert views on any subject could be your innocence-—an approach judged in the absence of any op- hardly convincing to anyone al- portunity for a complete hearing. ready presuming your guilt. With a jury overwhelmingly of Trying to answer an involved ===== PAGE 51 ===== 1958 SACRED COWS AND BRUISED SHINS 49 question about some socialist pana- all these questions at that time cea in one or two minutes is hope- and place. less and unfair by the test of in- The wise libertarian is one who tellectual justice, for the same uses his time to the best advan- reason. Unless ample time is avail- tage, who employs whatever hon- able and willingly offered by those est strategy will best defend the who will be judging your case, it concepts he holds dear. To do that is probably better not to enter is not cowardice. Why suffer that particular courtroom at all; bruised shins battling the keepers it would be better to refuse to of the sacred cows in an arena of accept its jurisdiction. In other injustice and disadvantage while words, it would be better to re- so many fertile fields for liber- frain from offering your views on tarian talent remain untilled? ® © 0 {mass ON] 00BeOH] Sta nd-by Controls THE EVIDENCE against controls, even during emergencies, is so overwhelming—by logic, and as revealed in the historical record — that one wonders how their enactment has gained so much credence in this “land of the free.” The most kindly charge that can be made against one who favors stand-by controls for emergencies, it seems to me, is that he does not understand the workings of a free market and that he lacks confidence in the performance of free men working with private property in a voluntary exchange economy. And if that be his belief, why does he not propose government controls of everything, «ll the time? Why not use the “strength” of con- trols all the time, not just in emergencies? To enact stand-by controls would mean putting into the law of the land a permanent endorsement of a basic tenet of socialism — the principle that control of the vital mainstreams of com- merce and confiscation of the rights of private property are sound and just practices. A nation of freedom cannot enact even stand-by controls and remain basically free. F. A. HARPER, A Just Price and Emergency Price Fixing A copy of this leaflet is available on re- quest from The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York ===== PAGE 52 ===== THE PSYCHOLOGY GF LEADERSHIP FRANZ E. WINKLER ANY PEOPLE in the world to- What we fail to realize is that day are facing the future man has not yet reached the state with a sense of helplessness and of evolution in which he is en- frustration. Buried and forgotten tirely free to build a world in the is the optimism of the past few image of his ideals. The vast ma- centuries, when man believed he jority of all people want this world held the reins of destiny in his to be one of peace, justice, and hands; and gone is his faith in a freedom, but the path leading to new age of reason and enlighten- it runs through uncharted lands ment. Although the vast majority which no one but the prophet and of people want peace, happiness, poet have been able to penetrate. and freedom, they have not seen And thus the worst blunders of the fulfillment of their aims in mankind have come from the im- spite of all their labors. patience of some people with their Even when democracy had given fellow man’s seeming unwilling- power to the masses, when revolu- ness to build a better world. tions had swept away feudalism, Among these impatient ones and modern concepts had replaced were all kinds of men such as medieval superstitions, man failed Savonarola, Marx, and Lenin. to bend fate to his will. And it is Their efforts have ended or will exactly this paradox, this contrast end in disaster and bloodshed, for between hope and achievement, man in his present state of im- that has thrown our generation perfection is neither as powerful into political fallacies and filled it nor as free as he thinks he is. The not only with a profound sense of degree of man’s freedom depends insecurity but with doubt in the on his inner development today; human race itself. it does not exceed the freedom of Dr. Winkler, Austrian-trained psychologist, psychiatrist, and physician, now practices internal medicine in the United States. This article is extracted from an address of February 6, 1957 before the Myrin Institute, of which Dr. Winkler is President, 50 ===== PAGE 53 ===== 1958 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP 51 a navigator in a river of no return. strength of these predictions, some This river may well signify all momentous political decisions have those changes in man’s conscious- been made with the poorest pos- ness which take place independ- sible results. Nor should this sur- ently of his own volition. How im- prise us; as far as shaping of the pressive is the flux of trends and future is concerned, factors are impulses within the life span of at work which have eluded all at- one single generation! Did those tempts at intellectual analysis and who risked their lives for the sake classification. of liberty in the French Revolu- Thus with all his power and tion dream that their sons and scientific achievements, modern younger brothers would worship man faces the world of today as at Napoleon’s feet? While many helplessly as a child lost in the explanations have been given for wilderness. Not only has he failed such enigmas of human conscious- to solve any of the great political ness, none has proved satisfactory. issues of his age; he seems to have grown ever less capable of Cloudy Patterns of History coping with the problems of his However, one thing is certain: own personal life. He expects psy- irrespective of their causes, and chologists, no less bewildered than of the extent to which they may he is, to solve these problems for have been brought on by man him- him; or he tries to forget them self, historic changes in human under the influence of alcohol and consciousness are not wholly the tranquilizers. But the riddles of result of intellectual and volun- life demand an increase rather tary planning. Consequently, his- than a slackening in wakefulness: tory itself, the physical manifes- a wakefulness which concerns the tation of man’s progress on carth, intuitive as well as the intellectual is determined, at least in part, by faculties of man. For only in full currents flowing below the level and dynamic cooperation between of conscious volition. Can we chart intellect and intuition lies the key these currents and learn to steer to the future, and no problem can a self-determined course within be solved without it. them? Scientific thinking itself vre- Many attempts have been made quires such ‘a cooperation. Al- to accomplish this. Experts in though preceded by painstaking every country have drawn conclu- intellectual research, all the truly sions about the future from past great discoveries of the past were and present events; and, on the conceived in the lightning flash ===== PAGE 54 ===== 52 THE FREEMAN March of intuitive insight. Not until re- types of guidance. For this much cent times has there been the prev- is certain: while the free world alent tendency to rely exclusively is in desperate need of leadership, on mass experiments and chain such leadership must be qualita- investigations; but, if the trend tively, not merely quantitatively, continues at the present rate, it different from the concepts of au- will threaten to make the genius in thoritarianism. man obsolete; and should this be Our generation is wrestling carried to the extreme, the free with the problem of freedom. If world will find itself entirely with- men were unequivocally devoted out leaders, for the inventive spirit to it, they would have freedom — in man is also his genius for and talk about it less. Actually, leadership. however, our longing for freedom is counterbalanced by a deep- Leadership Needed seated fear of its price in indi- Leadership is all-important. It vidual responsibility. Thus modern was the free world’s failure to see man is beset by two conflicting this, rather than economic and so- emotions: one utilized by the cial circumstances, that enabled leader who speaks for fearless dictators to usurp so much power championship of liberty, the other in such vast areas of our planet. by him who proclaims reckless Actually, deep down in our hearts, denial of freedom. we fear and mistrust all leaders; for we have not yet learned to No Genius Required make a clear distinction between To lead Toward Oblivion authoritarianism and moral Dictators all over the world leadership which in reality are have received voluntary and opposites. powerful support from that part According to Webster's New of man’s soul which fears personal Collegiate Dictionary, “to lead” respongibility. The myth still means “to draw ovr direct by in- exists that such leaders as Hitler fluence, good or bad.” Thus the or Stalin, whose actions affected word itself initiates the confusion the course of history, were pos- which has wrought havoc with the sessed of tremendous individual minds of people all over the world. strength. Actually, however, a In order to overcome these mis- man needs neither great intelli- understandings, new words must gence nor strength of will to be- be found to permit a distinction come a leader of their kind. Even between two diametrically opposed a child can release the brakes of ===== PAGE 55 ===== 1958 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP 53 a truck parked on a steep hill, individuality and, with the help climb into the driver's seat, and of weird tunes and rhythms, to for a while control its increasing sink into the ecstasies of purely momentum. biological consciousness. Freedom and individualism make up the battle cry of our age; Two Kinds of Leadership but in the soul of modern man So far, I have refrained from there also exists the opposite, the drawing a line between moral and longing for extinction of the self, immoral leadership. Nor is it easy for a lapse into those subhuman to draw such a line in view of realms ruled by animal instincts the good intentions which have rather than by the stern demands swept the world into ever worse of moral responsibility. disasters during the course of the This is especially so in the case past decade. Even many a com- of our unhappy youths who dread munist believes he is heading the task of facing the world as it toward a moral goal when he pro- is today. No wonder they respond motes an anti-type society sup- to those who can show them the posed to be immune to internal way to self-abandonment! Inevita- strife and individual excesses. But bly they are drawn to a per- the river of no return streams former whose eyes do not focus — toward individualism, and nothing whose legs seem to return to a truly good can emerge from at- crawling position, renouncing the tempts to block it. If this be true, upright posture of man — whose then moral leadership can be de- rocking and rolling motions recall fined as guidance contributing to the swayings of a medium in the wholeness of man. trance. In these manifestations Still, a man is whole only when our young people find a conscious- he is fully conscious; and there- ness without ego, a consciousness fore no leadership can be moral un- that is biological rather than spir- less it directs itself to the con- itual. Should this idol choose to be scious mind. Immoral leadership, a leader, he could command thou- on the other hand, may be defined sands, for unwittingly he. has be- as an attempt to rule by appealing come the personification of an im- to man’s subconscious or uncon- pulse that tempts the hearts of scious nature, and by circumvent- countless modern youths: the im- ing his conscious self-determina- pulse to abandon the struggle for tion. spiritual self-assertion, to forget Moral leadership can have one all the fearful responsibilities of purpose alone: to help the indi- ===== PAGE 56 ===== 54 THE FREEMAN March vidual to find himself and to ful- existence has been linked to man’s fill the commands of his higher na- search for his own spiritual na- ture. How is it possible to visual- ture, a search which found its ize this divine spark in man? expression in the ancient appeal: The principle of moral leader- “Man, know thyself.” Yet our self ship rests on one basic assump- does not lie in the subconscious or tion: the assumption that there is unconscious hunting ground of supernal purpose and meaning in modern psychology, but lives in life. Without such conviction any the daylight of clear consciousness. individual is likely to feel the But it has grown faint, so faint urge to supply that meaning ac- indeed, as to be almost overgrown cording to his own lights, and to by subconscious and unconscious force it on his fellow men. impulses; it desperately needs Now we are told that belief in strengthening. But how? By a a higher purpose is a matter of never-ending conscious effort to faith, and therefore has no place solve the problems which life it- within the realm of scientific cog- self offers as a challenge to all of nition. Personally, I have never us; by seeking meaning in all the been able to see the logic of such trials and joys which are not of a contention, for man is born with our own making. a sense of purpose which induces Fate itself is the guide on this even a child to ask his persistent quest, and every problem and “why’s”’; and, even as a young riddle of life is but another sign- plant must be the offshoot of an post on its path. The great tasks older one, man’s innate sense of and tests which play such a vital purpose must be considered the part in the legends, myths, and incomplete replica of a higher fairy tales of all peoples, the reality. Such reasoning can serve Sphinx’s riddles to be solved, and as the intellectual basis for an the great deeds to be done, are but intuitive experience. And I have the problems of life seen in their never found anyone who, starting deeper meaning. Every problem with such an attitude, has not contains its solution within itself: eventually arrived at an inner, un- the solution which, when found, shakeable conviction that purpose enriches man immeasurably and and meaning rule his life. brings him closer to his goal. The darker the riddle into which fate “Man, Know Thyself" leads him, the greater the treasure Since time immemorial the ques- that can be found in it, but the tion after the purpose of human stronger must be the light of con- ===== PAGE 57 ===== 1958 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP 55 sciousness that illumines the way. answer to the riddle which has And this is where one can help blinded us. another through moral leadership. The principles of moral leader- Not that anyone can hope to solve ship are the same on all levels of another person’s problem, but he social relations: they govern the can -hold a torch for him. The leading of a nation and the master- light needed for inner vision is ing of a craft as well as the coun- born out of an equilibrium be- geling of a friend in need. They tween the three principles of demand an intensive work on one- human psychology. An excessively self, for there is no such thing as intellectual person is as incapable leading others without first being of seeing reality as a highly emo- able to lead oneself. tional or impetuous one. Of course, it is often beyond Freedom Lies in Self-Mastery human capacity to create or sus- Man is free only insofar as he tain a state of true equilibrium in is capable of ruling himself. How- the face of a personal crisis. In- ever, as said before, self-mastery deed, no one would expect a doctor depends on the existence of a cer- to perform a serious operation on tain equilibrium between the basic his own child, or a judge to pass principles of human soul life. All sentence on his closest friend. Yet real problems and crises of life almost daily we are confronted demand for their solution an effort with such problems, too close to toward such equilibrium, and are our hearts to permit equanimity; therefore the building stones of and on these occasions we are that masterpiece of creation which prompted to turn for help to some- man should one day become. Since one less intimately involved. We no human being is strong enough ourselves may not be fully aware to put these building stones in of it, but the last thing we want their right places all by himself, in a crisis is persuasive advice. he must learn to give and to ac- Shock, grief, surprise, or even joy cept that kind of mutual assistance have, for the moment, extin- which I have called moral leader- guished the light of our own rea- ship. If this concept be correct, it son which can glow only in an explains why leadership can be equilibrium between our intellect, moral only when it recognizes the our feeling, and our will. Thus it spiritual nature of freedom; with- is a torch we crave when we ask out such recognition it must for guidance, so that in its bor- either turn into compulsion as in rowed light we may find the communistic countries, or fade ===== PAGE 58 ===== 56 THE FREEMAN March into abstraction as in the free Attainment of leadership quali- world of today. ties is a spiritual and moral aim, To become a leader in the real but one that can be reached by sense of the word means to be- means of reason and discipline. A come truly human. And it is hu- man who learns how to master his manity itself which is at stake to- thinking to the point where it be- day. The worst danger of com- comes a clear mirror of reality, munism is that its methods could who strives to expand his emo- dehumanize a whole generation, tional life beyond the narrow con- and worse than the schemes of its fines of egotism, and who gains champions is the readiness of mil- control over his will forces, de- lions to submit to them. Since the velops an inner clarity that per- victims of dictatorships cannot be mits him glimpses into a reality considered inferior by nature to usually distorted by the chaotic the still free peoples of the world, soul life of the untrained. Need- the existing danger for humanity less to say, leadership training must be universal. It may be alone does not suffice to create a granted that countless people are permanently harmonious being; still fully human; yet these hold this is up to the moral will of the to their humanity by instinct individual himself. But training rather than by reason. Religious can give the knowledge and skill persuasion helps modern man in which make the attainment of a his plight, but it does not reach moral goal easier. It can also show all, nor can it forever hold at bay how an inner equilibrium can be the creeping doubts of a material- established, at least for moments istic age. of need. These moments give man a clearer perception not only of A Spiritual and Moral Aim physical realities but also of the As | see it, there is only one way spirit, and leave him with a long- to solve the crisis of our time, and ing for further development. to supply the world with indi- The free world does not require vidualities whose strong inner se- a professional clique of leaders, curity enables them to control but it needs the largest possible themselves and to lead their fellow number of individuals who know men. This way calls for the attain- how to accept and how to offer ment of a minimum degree of ob- leadership. The greatest enemy of jective intuitive perception as the modern youth is frustration and only reliable basis for self-recogni- apathy. And indeed what is there tion and insight into others’ needs. in the promise of ever bigger ===== PAGE 59 ===== 1958 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP 57 Fi cities, of more and faster airplanes delinquency; for it is not evil but and cars and sputniks, that can frustrated energy that is at the inspire enthusiasm? root of most juvenile crimes. If Our civilization has now come only a fraction of that energy were to a point where it must start on directed into channels of moral an inner quest or face decline. leadership, the free world would Youth needs a new adventure, an have little cause to fear its future. adventure that leads to the neg- LA lected treasures of the inner life. EpiTor’s NoTE: In the address, Its first steps are self-knowledge, from which this article was ex- divination of the purpose of man’s, tracted, Dr. Winkler concluded with existence on earth, and the means Some examples taken from the work to lead others who are in need. ©°f the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf While adult education can do no Steiner, © show how the Intuitive ol faculties of man can be trained. more than show a way, it is the : } Copies of the full address are doubt in the very existence of such available upon request through the a way that has led thousands of Myrin Institute at Adelphi College, young people into addiction and Garden City, New York. ; 00066) ] Two Kinds of Influence ONE CAN DO THINGS fo others destructively, but not creatively. Creatively, one must confine himself to what he can do for others. One can do things for others materialistically by having money or tools to lend or give, or goods and services to exchange; in- tellectually by having knowledge and understanding for those who are in search of knowledge and understanding; spiritually by possessing insights that can be imparted to those who want them. Self-interest can best be served by minding one’s own business — that is, by the process of self-perfection. It isn’t that this idea has been tried and found wanting; it is that it has been tried and too often found difficult, and thus rejected. Actually, coer- cive meddling in other people’s affairs has its origin in the re- jection of self-perfection. Many persons conclude that they can easily improve others in ways they refuse to attempt on them- selves. This is an absurd conclusion. Thus it is that in our deal- ings with our fellow men, we so often try to coerce them into likenesses of our own little images instead of trying to make of ourselves images that are attractive and worth emulating. LEONARD E. READ ===== PAGE 60 ===== A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK John Chamberlain THE TRULY HUMANE SOCIETY I" the beginning of modern eco- modern debts and credits were nomics was Say’s Law —the unknown. The United States in the law (first formulated by the thirties had a President — Frank- Frenchman J. B. Say) which dem- lin D. Roosevelt — who publicly onstrates that production creates disbelieved in the Say formulation its own purchasing power. It (see Daniel Fusfield’s revealing seemed quite obvious to our The Economic Thought of Frank- fathers, who were used to such lin D. Roosevelt and the Origins of things as the gold standard and a the New Deal published by the stable money system, that funds Columbia University Press). Far handed out by a producer for raw from “clearing the market,” goods materials, wages, interest, divi- in the thirties seemed intermin- dends, repair of wear-and-tear, ably stuck in transit. People with and the purchase of new capital purchasing power refused to buy; equipment, must all turn up in the employers, therefore, ceased to em- system somewhere as possible con- ploy; and the interest rate seemed sumption funds. Given no political to hang in air as a regulator of distortion of the money supply, the investment. purchasing power thus released A host of lesser prophets — would he sufficient to “clear the Major Douglas, the “stamped market.” scrip” addicts, the Marxian be- This simple explanation — John lievers in sterilized “surplus Stuart Mill phrased it another way value,” the technocrats — tried to by saying “the means of payment explain the “leak” in Say’s Law. for commodities is simply com- But nobody really succeeded in modities” — has been swamped in accounting for the fact that mar- recent years by the so-called Key- kets were not being cleared until nesian revolution. During the de- John Maynard Keynes published pression years of the thirties it his famous General Theory of Em- became fashionable to argue that ployment, Interest and Money in Say’s Law belonged to Robinson 1936. Crusoe and his island where This is the book which has hung 58 ===== PAGE 61 ===== 1958 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK 59 heavy over our heads for a full politics of the factory, the indus- generation. It is a most plausible try, or of society as a whole. Infla- book — for the short run (and tion, so the Sumner Schlicters of Keynes was fond of saying that this world tell us, is preferable to in the long run we're all dead). wage cuts. This is a decision in How to deal with it? Ludwig von politics, psychology, and sociology, Mises has dismissed it by calling not a decision motivated by pure it “the Santa Claus fable raised economics. ...to the dignity of an economic doctrine.” And there is no doubt A One-Way Street that Mises is right — for the long The problem, then, is not so run. much to assail the long-run rele- Say’s Law, it should be noted, vance of Keynes's economics but to doesn’t work all at once; mani- tackle the master on the score of festly it doesn’t take hold immedi- politics and sociology, even mo- ately for overbuilt and overde- rality. Keynes is an embarrassing- veloped sectors of the economy. An ly slippery customer if you try to enterpriser can make a serious deal with him on economic grounds mistake in estimating just what alone, for his works abound in pas- types of goods will clear the mar- sages that can be quoted against ket. Under classical theory the en- other passages. terpriser’s error will serve as a When pressed during his life- warning signal for investors to time, Keynes willingly admitted deploy their capital elsewhere. The that a failure in demand provoked unwanted goods will eventually by bad entrepreneurial decisions, clear the market at a sacrifice, and or a discrepancy between savings the wounded enterpriser must and investment, or a period of either cut his costs or take up some overstimulated expectations of other line. But in the meantime, profit, would, in time, tend to cor- Say’s Law, working on what might rect itself. He was no advocate of be called a staggered shift, has re- perpetual inflation as the cure for sulted in some temporary unem- the short-term failures of Say’s ployment. Law. In fact, he thought in terms To put the unemployed back to of a reversible system of counter- work again, either a flexible wage cyclical measures — a jolt of infla- policy is required or real wages tion for a depression period, a cor- must be adjusted by inflation. But responding measure of forced sav- to cut wages has always been hard ing (via taxation and debt-extinc- politics, whether considered as the tion) in periods of overfull employ- ===== PAGE 62 ===== 60 THE FREEMAN March ment and general economic eu- thing extra,” a flywheel which, phoria. running concurrently with other Unfortunately for his hopes, wheels, would keep the whole ma- however, Keynes had no savvy chine spinning merrily. Govern- when it came to understanding the ment “investment” would have a nature of political man. In a “multiplier” effect. Part of it searching little book, Welfare, would go to swell the “propensity Freedom and Inflation (London: to consume.” Part of it would go Pall Mall Press, 70 pp., 59¢, intro- into savings — and, by way of the duction by Graham Hutton), banking and insurance system, into Wilhelm Ropke, a German econo- new investment which would ray mist now resident in Geneva, goes out into more consumption and straight to the heart of Keynes’s still more investment. deficiencies as a political scientist. He has tackled Keynesianism where it is at its weakest: in its But Ropke cannily directs our failure to understand that reversi- attention to the fact that govern- ble counter-cyclical action is vir- ment “investment,” which begins tually impossible in a democratic as a policy of robbing rich Peter political system. A dictator can to pay poor Paul, ends up by rob- cancel inflation, yes. (Nobody bing Paul to pay Paul. The Key- dared complain in Russia when nesian “multiplier” effect is paral- the Kremlin wiped out the savings leled by something which might be of thousands of Soviet citizens by called a “divisor” —or at least a suspending interest on govern- ‘subtraction’ — effect. For, while ment bonds.) But in a democracy, government spending undoubtedly politics tends to work by ratchet- stimulates demand — and more in- action. What has been granted can- vestment in some areas to meet not easily be retracted. Inflation, that demand —it also serves to barring heroic forebearance by a scare free investors into hiding. majority of the electorate, can only With the “divisor” effect cancel- be corrected by more inflation. ing the “multiplier” effect, a gov- Keynes thought that govern- ernment under the spell of Key- ment spending — or “investment” nesianism must resort to more and — designed to take up the slack in more massive doses of taxation employment would be “neutral” in- and/or inflation simply to stay in sofar as its effect on the basic office. structure of capitalism is con- As Ropke says, the point is cerned. It would merely be “some- eventually reached where taxation, Robbing Paul to Pay Paul ===== PAGE 63 ===== 1958 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK 61 far from bearing down exclusively animal in the State’s big stables, on the rich, begins to rob the crammed together with other middle class of its potential sav- similar animals.” ings and even some of its ‘“pro- Changing the metaphor, Ropke pensity to consume.” Even the argues that the Welfare State masses come more and more under pumping apparatus eventually de- the tax collector’s gun. With all grades human beings to “the sta- classes paying in taxation and/or tus of minors.” When a people inflation, “money is juggled from reaches this stage, it is lucky to their right-hand into their left- lose a total war totally. Then, at hand pockets.” This practice, says least, it can begin over again, as Ropke, is not only “nonsensical” ;it West Germany has done. means the death of society as an entity which is counterpoised to The Immorality of Intervention the State. “Quite apart from its The objection to Keynesianism dampening effect on individual ef- is not that it won’t work economi- fort and responsibility,” so Ropke cally — after all, if it is a mere writes, “it involves the expendi- question of balancing input. and ture of large sums on a vast public output, any system can, theoreti- machine constantly growing in cally, do as well as any other. With size and power.” force, “full employment” is always The ultimate social price is a attainable. The Incas of Peru “dull, grey society, in which public “balanced” their economy. And in spirit, voluntary service to the Russia there is “full employment,” community, creative leisure, even though the State had to mur- brotherliness, generosity, and the der three million kulaks at one true sense of belonging to a human point to get it. family are all smothered by re- The real objection to Keynesian- sentment in the higher and envy ism is, as Ropke notes, a matter of in the lower income groups. What morality; it debases the nature of is left is the pumping system of man. Since the ratchet-action of Leviathan....” This “pumping politics makes a return to the vol- system is an illusion for all, a pur- untary society more and more un- pose in itself.” The operators of likely, people become universally the pump acquire a vested interest cynical. Bastiat’s definition of the in its gigantic back-and-forth State becomes all too true: the movement. And the citizen runs State is “the grand fiction by the risk of being reduced “to the which everybody lives at the ex- status of an obedient domesticated pense of everybody.” And, since ===== PAGE 64 ===== 62 THE FREEMAN March nobody has an individual surplus ¢ Bending the Twig—The Rev- to use for cultural expenditure, olution in Education and Its patronage of the arts, or buying Effects on our Children. time for creative leisure, all of By Augustin G. Rudd. Chicago: these things must be taken over Heritage Foundation, Inc., 1957. by government. Ropke’s final 291 pp. $3.95. damning statement is “charity, As A GRADUATE student in educa- honorary functions, liberality, con- tion at a large Midwestern uni- versation, leisure, everything that yeysity, I was frequently assigned Burke included in the expression, outside readings in books written ‘unbought graces of life,” all these py William H. Kilpatrick, Harold are strangled by the State.” Rugg, George S. Counts, and other Répke has explored the alterna- liberal-leftist educators. One class tives to Keynesian manipulation in jn curriculum construction had as larger, more fundamental works jts primary reference material Na- than Welfare, Freedom and Infla- tional Education Association pub- tion. A good longer introduction to ications. Augustin G. Rudd in his his thought — which is moral, so- Look, Bending the Twig, clearly cial, and political even more than points out the implications of such it is economic — is his Social Crisis, program of teacher training and of Our Time published by the Uni- tg effect on the public schools of versity of Chicago Press or Civitas the United States where the no- Humana: A Humane Order of So- tions of Progressive or New Edu- ciety published by William Hodge cation have directly or indirectly in London. But Welfare, Freedom influenced every level of our edu- and Inflation is a first-rate tract cational system. Much of this ma- for the times. One hopes that it terial about the New Educators will be widely read on both sides jg not known to the general public. of the Atlantic. ooo Professional critics of New Education, Arthur Bestor, Alfred Lynd, and Paul Woodring, have analyzed the defects of the public system of education and its cost to the nation in respect to loss of Any book reviewed in this Book Section (or : , , ] , any other corromt book) supplied by return skills and knowledges. Layman mail. You pay only the bookstore price. We Rudd intelligently reviews these pay the postage anywhere in tho world. Catalogue on request. THE BOOKMAILER, Box 101, New York 16 modern school program. Part 11 of the book is especially deficiencies in the light of the ===== PAGE 65 ===== 1958 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK 63 valuable for its definition of the using their centralized power, they path the social educators are fol- eliminated it. lowing. He contrasts the concept This return to the essentials of of a free society based on the pri- education may have aided Russia macy of the individual with the in making her recent technological concept of the statist order advo- advances. cated by many of the New Educa-- After reading this book, one tors who choose to use the schools comes away with the feeling that as an instrument for social change as generation after generation of rather than an agency for instruc- students graduate from our tion in the skills, knowledges, and schools conditioned to the tenets heritage necessary to maintain our of socialism, we will eventually culture. lose our republican form of gov- It is interesting to know that ernment and individual liberty be- the Russians experimented with cause our citizens will lack even progressive education until its the basic knowledge of our herit- bad results became evident. Then, age. FRANK B. KEITH We invite your subscription to MODERN AGE A CONSERVATIVE REVIEW Vor. II, No. 1 (Winter 1957-58) Edited by RusseLL Kirk A special number on Education and Society: “The Restoration of American Learning” Contains a Symposium on “INTELLECTUALITY AND Wispom” “Intellectuals, Experts, and the Classless Society” by Thomas Molnar; “The Foremost Philosopher of the Age” by Francis Graham Wilson; “A Footnote on Academic Freedom” by Robert Raynolds; and “The Present Impasse of the Idea of Progress” by Peter Stanlis. Three dollars per year One dollar per copy Address: FounpATION FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INC. 64 East Jackson Boulevard, Chicago 4, Illinois Free sample copy ===== PAGE 66 ===== the will to liberty and therefore Th e ) 1] I reme 0 ou rt want to use the Constitution to serve ends its authors never in- tended. The document can be used CHALLENGED for this purpose, for it is composed of words; and words are inert things until they are interpreted or misinterpreted by men. The Constitution is not an apt instru- ment for those who seek to in- crease the power of the State at the expense of society, but the Con- stitution is venerated by the people HE MEN who drafted the Con- stitution did not design a streamlined political structure. Madison and the others had been once burned by a government, and they Were fuvice shy. [hey created so it is easier to subvert its intent § boltica structure in A be : © under the cover of its form than ternally welf-governe 3 by A to replace it with a 1958 statist separate but balanced powers, and the several states were to retain their original sovereignty in order to act as a counterpoise to the cen- tral authority. This entire political equilibrium was balanced on the sovereign individual; the only ex- cuse for government was to secure him in his rights. The Founding Fathers knew that a free govern- ment implies an unfree people, so in the interests of personal liberty they pinned down their govern- ment to strictly limited and dele- gated functions. Since the carly days of the Re- public there has been a dying back of the will to liberty; we have gradually made our adjustment to . NI = major losses of liberty in impor- of government which is implicit tant segments of our life, and the 'P these decisions. loss is causing us little pain. And While the supply lasts, a free the Constitution, which admirably copy of The Runaway Court is implemented the will to liberty, available upon request tothe Foun- can be and has been pressed into dation for Economic Education. the service of those who have lost EDMUND A. OPITZ model. Dubious judicial interpre- tation could then be a means of social engineering. The Runaway Court is a 5,000- word pamphlet, comprised of an editorial series which recently ran in the courageous Midwest news- paper, The Indianapolis Star, and which provoked a widespread re- sponse among lawyers and other students of American history. “Something has gone wrong at the roots of America’s government,” reads the opening sentence. “The three-way balance of constitutional. authority is tipping crazily.” The pamphlet then goes on to a hard- hitting analysis of recent Supreme Court decisions and the philosophy 64 ===== PAGE 67 ===== by Fred G. Clark General Chairman The American Economic Foundation Private Enterprise has one, all important identifying feature. Whereas non-competitive sys- tems provide a slim market in which customers compete for scarce merchandise, Private that enable Government to Enterprise provides a bountiful compete with private produc- market in which the producers ers. Political pressures inevita- compete for the customers. bly force Government to sell By forcing producers to com- at less than cost, and recover pete, our American system the losses by taxes. Govern- disciplines them to be efficient. ment is thus exempted from the The well-known result hasbeen economic pressures that make an ever better living standard private producers efficient. for all. In its own interest, it is up Yet, there are some who to an enlightened citizenry to would vote arbitrary laws that see to it that Government .en- exempt favored groups from gages only in those business the all-important competitive activities that lie unquestion- disciplines. ably beyond the capacity of Among such laws are those private industry. The above comments are condensed from an article by Fred G. Clark. A copy of the complete article may be obtained by writing to: The Public Relations Division RAILWAY EXPRESS AGENCY, INC. 219 East 42nd Street, New York, New York A PRIVATE ENTERPRISE IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE ===== PAGE 68 ===== THE re Cllld EXT 1958 oo Lo, the Poor Taxpayer . . . . . . . Blake Clark imprisoned Ideas . . . . . . . . W.J Brown The Candlemakers’ Petition . . . . . Frederic Bastiat Freedom Rests on Private Property . . . W. M. Curtiss DeathofaColony . . . . . . . . Vollie Tripp Capitalism and Our Culture . . . . . Edmund A. Opitz “Famous Last Words”! . . . . . . . Walter J. Blum The Spirit of Humility . . . . . . . Frederick Walker Sacred Cows and Bruised Shins . . . . F. A Harper The Psychology of leadership . . . . Franz E. Winkler The Truly Humane Society . . . . . . John Chamberlain Other Reviews 13 17 19 27 32 39 43 47 50 58 62