37
BUSINESS—SEVEN GOOD DOCTORS AND TRUE
BUSINESS—SEVEN GOOD DOCTORS AND TRUE
CAPITALISM AND THE CONSTITUTION
I have tried to make it abundantly clear in these pages that the Constitution can be whatever the people say it is—not what the judges say it is, as the present Chief Justice once maintained. [As we have seen, Mr. Hughes has progressed far since he said this. He has rendered some very liberal opinions, particularly in civil liberties cases.] But I hope that I have made it equally clear that the people must be a free people with a stake in the land and the water. Once the people of America allow themselves to become the passive victims of great and cruel floods, dust storms, unemployment, eviction, farm "holidays," bankruptcies, foreclosures, hunger marches—suffering, misery and poverty (and, don't forget, all this and more has happened in America)—once the American people do this, they have lost their constitution.
Even if, either now or in the future, there is some economic "recovery" over past conditions which were worse, that is no reason for people to be satisfied with what they have if common endeavor and justice can give them more. Nor is it even for those who now have a good share of the earth's blessings to feel smug about it, for they may be storing up trouble and breakdown for themselves in their complacency.
If one man—either because he is smart or born lucky—piles up all the bear skins in one place, if another gets all the arrow heads, and there is not fair distribution of these things of the earth, trouble is surely ahead. If one or more corporations get various monopolies, there is trouble ahead, too.
Throughout the book, I have treated liberty in terms of land. By land, I mean not only the very earth itself, from which comes all the wealth, all the groceries, all that we eat and wear; but also the entire economy, all the farming and manufacturing built up on the land and its resources. So, we may say, a society in which the people have no fair share in the land is also a society in which the people have no fair share in the Constitution either.
Now everyone knows that the accepted basis of economic life in this country is "business." The average American has a rather vague notion of what "business" is, but he firmly believes that as "business" goes, so goes the universe.
We still call our economy "capitalism," even though it is far different from what it was a half century ago. We often proudly refer to some huge monopoly as an example of capitalism, even though that very monopoly is helping to destroy capitalism itself.
Capitalism is based on private ownership of most things used to produce goods, and operates through the competitive struggle for profit. The American people, by and large, believe that capitalism can be made to work—that it can provide work for all, security—even plenty, and peace. But if someday they should decide that it won't work, they can establish a socially planned economy—either all planned, or partly so—and under our written Constitution. But that is not the issue today. American psychology is capitatlist. There is no sense in talking about abandoning capitalism, because the American people are not even thinking about it.
So the big practical problem before the American people who want to keep their living constitution alive and growing is that of making capitalism serve their needs. The job is to keep capital working. How can we do this? How can we put capital to work? Because there is no other way generally to increase production, employment and consumption.
The big-money people are not using their surpluses, but are putting them in cold storage—either in vaults or more often in government tax-free bonds. Thus the people do not get the use of the money, and in effect, must themselves pay the taxes on it. And since the money is locked up, there is less employment. Thus the general run of people are going in the hole deeper and deeper: there is idle money, a heavier burden of taxes, and no work with which to pay the taxes.
Such a situation, obviously, cannot last forever without more serious unemployment, a further lowering of the standard of living, and finally breakdown. Something, obviously, must be done to get capitalism hitting on all cylinders.
By general admission capitalism has been in a bad way since the big burst of the boom in 1929, but the doctors and the people have not given up the case as hopeless. If capitalism is to be saved and made literally to deliver the goods, the best thought in America must get up and get busy, for problems are not solved by labeling critics—or unemployed people—with abusive names. For the conservative and well-fixed to do so is stupidity, a sort of capitalistic hari-kari.
Of course the "haves" have always stuck to their property against the "have-nots" as a matter of personal interest, and human nature. It has not been because the "have-nots" were "reds" or "radicals." It has been because the "haves" naturally wanted to keep on having. Throughout history the property interests—whether the great Roman landowner, the Chinese landowner or the French landowner; whether the Southern slaveowner, or the modern factory owner—have always resisted the attempts of the people to improve their condition—to secure a greater interest in the land.
The "have-nots," the people as a whole, have rarely put up an intelligent and well-organized fight. Usually most of them have, with apathy or bitterness, suffered on the side lines. It is my idea that the people must get off the side lines and into the scrimmage for people's rights in land and liberty.
As I am finishing this book, a new book (you can read it in about three hours) has been issued, called An Economic Program for American Democracy. It was produced by seven doctors of political economy in Harvard University and Tufts College, in the good old rock-ribbed state of Massachusetts. Having diagnosed the patient up and down, forward and back, round and round, they prescribed the medicine. They tell us what is troubling capitalism and then give us a prescription.
Capitalism produces two kinds of goods—consumers' goods and producers' goods. The former, the people eat or wear out. The latter are machines and the like to make more goods. When capitalism is well and out of the hospital it is always expanding, that is, making big machines, building railroads, and building big power plants, as well as making shoes and soap.
It has to keep expanding to keep alive.
Now, the reason capitalism fell sick in 1929, the seven good doctors and true tell us, is because it had reached the limits of swelling up and out. The owners of railroads and factories had all the plants which they could use profitably. The American continent had been rounded out and exploited up. The age of swelling had come to an end, and there were few places for capitalists profitably to invest the profits they had previously piled up. So something had to be done.
Now comes the doctors' prescription. Since private capital cannot find profitable investments, the government must step in and put that desperately needed capital to work—put it into circulation, into the wages, food, and goods the people must have. Or, if one wishes to use a very hard word brought into our vocabulary by a great conservative hero I shall soon mention, the government should "intervene."
The doctors do not prescribe pump priming. They agree with Al Smith and other leading conservatives that one shot in the arm must be followed by another and that makes trouble.
No, they are against pump priming.
They say that the government must have a long-term policy of intelligent spending and investment, and that they money must be spent for things that really add to the wealth of the country, that is: houses, conservation of the soil and natural resources, highways, city planning, improvement of the people's health, public sanitation, and better education. They are against mere leaf-raking to solve unemployment, and I think we all are, too, including the leaf-rakers themselves.
We might as well realize that there never will be permanent recovery if the government merely abandons the people, or rather if the people are stupid and dumb enough to abandon themselves to a complex economic anarchy, wherein vast economic empires have set up their third forms of government.
We can't refuse the social challenge of monopoly domination—not unless we are ready to surrender the living standard and the liberties we now have. So let's have at the monopolies, and tell them we either take them over, or control them—whichever we, not they, decide is best.
That reminds me—I know a certain gentleman who is considered a great statesman, a mighty constitutional lawyer, a veritable arsenal of knowledge of the wise sayings of the justices of the Supreme Court, and even of the judges who have lain a-moldering in their graves for six or seven centuries past. This statesman thunders against Mo-nop-o-lee year in and year out. Sirs, our forefathers never visioned these Mo-nop-o-lees. Something must be done about them. What, sirs, would Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln say? The great man is blowing like a whale at sport in the South Seas. The average American listens, and it sounds good. The monopolist listens and knows it is bunk. So the great man keeps on being re-elected, still thundering against Mo-nop-o-lee and "for" the Constitution; the American keeps on being gypped, and the monopolies never worry—perchance they make a campaign contribution to such statesmen because they say they are safe and sound, are for the Constitution, and will leave monopoly alone.
But some other fellow who really opposes monopolies comes out and says that they should be owned or controlled by the people, the government. Such a fellow becomes a demagogue—for the average American gobbles up the propaganda of the Big Boys—the monopolists put on the screws on election day, and the dirty demagogue, by now a flaming Red, is defeated. At least, that has been what has usually happened so far.
But to get back to the doctors' prescription and to what we're going to do about monopoly. I have a great conservative authority, as I already intimated, who backs up the good doctors on government interference and government spending. This gentleman is accepted as the last word on the Constitution by the Supreme Court, and therefore no one can question either the man or what he says.
The authority is Alexander Hamilton, who was not only the brilliant man I told you about, but the man whom the conservatives say is still the greatest Secretary of the Treasury, not excepting Andrew Mellon, who when he died left an art gallery (which is in everybody's way in the National Capitol) where the worthy poor may culture their crude and unworthy souls in periods of adversity and unemployment.
Nevertheless, in Hamilton's "Report of Manufactures," dealing with the protection of industry, commerce, and business, he says: "To be enabled to contend with success, it is evident that the interference and aid of their own government are indispensable."
But the first and greatest Secretary of the Treasury, who also took over the duties today performed by Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins (latest lover of the businessman), had much more to say; and he was a century and a half ahead of Mr. Hopkins—in fact, a century and a half ahead of the Supreme Court, which is just beginning to catch up with him in its decisions. Although he did say that in wealthy nations the rich could make voluntary contributions, he also said that in the United States "the public purse must supply the deficiency of private resources." Mr. Hamilton was probably talking about making the rich richer; but he, gentlemen and conservatives, did advocate government intervention and public spending—and "bounties," my good sirs, to "supply the deficiency of private resources."
But we are talking about today. To make a long story short, the seven doctors offer an economic program which includes all the good and wise things the New Deal has done. They say in effect: Let's go ahead doing these things, more and better, to keep the money flowing, the people employed, and capitalism running the only way it can in our times and circumstances. It is a program on which really conservative people can stand together to keep the economy running, to save the land, and the living constitution which everybody loves.
All this may involve more efficiency in government—more effectiveness in government—and new techniques which we do not now understand. Will these Big Boys, the monopolists, have eyes with which to see? Will these Big Boys understand that society can only be preserved by the intelligent and scientific approach?
I am afraid not, but I hope so.
Still, if the people understand, and make the welkin ring about conditions, maybe—maybe—we can work things out. This will take courage in acting and courage in thinking—in fact, an exceptional use of intelligence by the conservatives themselves.
It all gets back to the old proposition that if the Old Guard insits on everything being done as the Old Guard did it 150 years ago, not only the Old Guard, but the nation itself, will have a hard time—much harder than any of us think. In fact, we will get so hard and brittle we will crack and blow up. Personally, I think all of us Americans like the old conservative idea of homes and farms and families and happiness the best. I know I do; but if we are to have this sort of conservatism, the conservatives themselves must see that the big job is for them to save themselves by seeing new light.
Light . . . for as I complete this, way down here in the tail end of Texas, high on the hill I stand this night, and look at the full moon. All the great clouds of dust have swirled in the Texas sun, eroding lands, testifying to our human follies, choking us, choking my father's and my brother's cattle. Land torn up, and roiling in the sky. . . . In the darkness I stand, and the sky is steel-black blue. The moon is like a deep round hole in the sky, a hole of blurred edges, a weak light far, far away.
Earth in the sky . . . six miles awys is the old Spanish city of San Antonio, where I was born. Great Neon lights, airplane beacons, usually stand clear and bright in the sky. But tonight these lights seem to blink on and off, sometimes going out for minutes, for the dust is in great moving masses, covering up the lights like black clouds passing the moon and stars.
People, People, where are you? Down in the depths of the earth in Manhattan, rushing on at Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central, over the prairies of the Dakotas and Nebraska, in the mountains and valleys, up in the sky, slithering through the space a hundred times faster than our fathers; and down on the ground again, in banks, homes, villages, cities, streets.
Bugles cry in this night which is dead and murky. They are at the military school two miles away, down in the valley of San Antonio. War. . . . Do I hear the cadenced march of world death? Of armaments gutting our good earth? Of armies grimly, silently, plodding on to the mass kill, and is civilization using the great engines of science for its death? Well . . . let's get back to the constitution of the earth, for war is the constitution of death, and is not a part of this story.
The Constitution. May God preserve it; that is, may God give us the light to preserve and keep it living. The Law of the Land. Modern science. Knowledge. Humanity struggles on, in the earth. May our souls be free . . . may we live in the earth, and in peace.
Even if, either now or in the future, there is some economic "recovery" over past conditions which were worse, that is no reason for people to be satisfied with what they have if common endeavor and justice can give them more. Nor is it even for those who now have a good share of the earth's blessings to feel smug about it, for they may be storing up trouble and breakdown for themselves in their complacency.
If one man—either because he is smart or born lucky—piles up all the bear skins in one place, if another gets all the arrow heads, and there is not fair distribution of these things of the earth, trouble is surely ahead. If one or more corporations get various monopolies, there is trouble ahead, too.
Throughout the book, I have treated liberty in terms of land. By land, I mean not only the very earth itself, from which comes all the wealth, all the groceries, all that we eat and wear; but also the entire economy, all the farming and manufacturing built up on the land and its resources. So, we may say, a society in which the people have no fair share in the land is also a society in which the people have no fair share in the Constitution either.
Now everyone knows that the accepted basis of economic life in this country is "business." The average American has a rather vague notion of what "business" is, but he firmly believes that as "business" goes, so goes the universe.
We still call our economy "capitalism," even though it is far different from what it was a half century ago. We often proudly refer to some huge monopoly as an example of capitalism, even though that very monopoly is helping to destroy capitalism itself.
Capitalism is based on private ownership of most things used to produce goods, and operates through the competitive struggle for profit. The American people, by and large, believe that capitalism can be made to work—that it can provide work for all, security—even plenty, and peace. But if someday they should decide that it won't work, they can establish a socially planned economy—either all planned, or partly so—and under our written Constitution. But that is not the issue today. American psychology is capitatlist. There is no sense in talking about abandoning capitalism, because the American people are not even thinking about it.
So the big practical problem before the American people who want to keep their living constitution alive and growing is that of making capitalism serve their needs. The job is to keep capital working. How can we do this? How can we put capital to work? Because there is no other way generally to increase production, employment and consumption.
The big-money people are not using their surpluses, but are putting them in cold storage—either in vaults or more often in government tax-free bonds. Thus the people do not get the use of the money, and in effect, must themselves pay the taxes on it. And since the money is locked up, there is less employment. Thus the general run of people are going in the hole deeper and deeper: there is idle money, a heavier burden of taxes, and no work with which to pay the taxes.
Such a situation, obviously, cannot last forever without more serious unemployment, a further lowering of the standard of living, and finally breakdown. Something, obviously, must be done to get capitalism hitting on all cylinders.
By general admission capitalism has been in a bad way since the big burst of the boom in 1929, but the doctors and the people have not given up the case as hopeless. If capitalism is to be saved and made literally to deliver the goods, the best thought in America must get up and get busy, for problems are not solved by labeling critics—or unemployed people—with abusive names. For the conservative and well-fixed to do so is stupidity, a sort of capitalistic hari-kari.
Of course the "haves" have always stuck to their property against the "have-nots" as a matter of personal interest, and human nature. It has not been because the "have-nots" were "reds" or "radicals." It has been because the "haves" naturally wanted to keep on having. Throughout history the property interests—whether the great Roman landowner, the Chinese landowner or the French landowner; whether the Southern slaveowner, or the modern factory owner—have always resisted the attempts of the people to improve their condition—to secure a greater interest in the land.
The "have-nots," the people as a whole, have rarely put up an intelligent and well-organized fight. Usually most of them have, with apathy or bitterness, suffered on the side lines. It is my idea that the people must get off the side lines and into the scrimmage for people's rights in land and liberty.
As I am finishing this book, a new book (you can read it in about three hours) has been issued, called An Economic Program for American Democracy. It was produced by seven doctors of political economy in Harvard University and Tufts College, in the good old rock-ribbed state of Massachusetts. Having diagnosed the patient up and down, forward and back, round and round, they prescribed the medicine. They tell us what is troubling capitalism and then give us a prescription.
Capitalism produces two kinds of goods—consumers' goods and producers' goods. The former, the people eat or wear out. The latter are machines and the like to make more goods. When capitalism is well and out of the hospital it is always expanding, that is, making big machines, building railroads, and building big power plants, as well as making shoes and soap.
It has to keep expanding to keep alive.
Now, the reason capitalism fell sick in 1929, the seven good doctors and true tell us, is because it had reached the limits of swelling up and out. The owners of railroads and factories had all the plants which they could use profitably. The American continent had been rounded out and exploited up. The age of swelling had come to an end, and there were few places for capitalists profitably to invest the profits they had previously piled up. So something had to be done.
Now comes the doctors' prescription. Since private capital cannot find profitable investments, the government must step in and put that desperately needed capital to work—put it into circulation, into the wages, food, and goods the people must have. Or, if one wishes to use a very hard word brought into our vocabulary by a great conservative hero I shall soon mention, the government should "intervene."
The doctors do not prescribe pump priming. They agree with Al Smith and other leading conservatives that one shot in the arm must be followed by another and that makes trouble.
No, they are against pump priming.
They say that the government must have a long-term policy of intelligent spending and investment, and that they money must be spent for things that really add to the wealth of the country, that is: houses, conservation of the soil and natural resources, highways, city planning, improvement of the people's health, public sanitation, and better education. They are against mere leaf-raking to solve unemployment, and I think we all are, too, including the leaf-rakers themselves.
We might as well realize that there never will be permanent recovery if the government merely abandons the people, or rather if the people are stupid and dumb enough to abandon themselves to a complex economic anarchy, wherein vast economic empires have set up their third forms of government.
We can't refuse the social challenge of monopoly domination—not unless we are ready to surrender the living standard and the liberties we now have. So let's have at the monopolies, and tell them we either take them over, or control them—whichever we, not they, decide is best.
That reminds me—I know a certain gentleman who is considered a great statesman, a mighty constitutional lawyer, a veritable arsenal of knowledge of the wise sayings of the justices of the Supreme Court, and even of the judges who have lain a-moldering in their graves for six or seven centuries past. This statesman thunders against Mo-nop-o-lee year in and year out. Sirs, our forefathers never visioned these Mo-nop-o-lees. Something must be done about them. What, sirs, would Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln say? The great man is blowing like a whale at sport in the South Seas. The average American listens, and it sounds good. The monopolist listens and knows it is bunk. So the great man keeps on being re-elected, still thundering against Mo-nop-o-lee and "for" the Constitution; the American keeps on being gypped, and the monopolies never worry—perchance they make a campaign contribution to such statesmen because they say they are safe and sound, are for the Constitution, and will leave monopoly alone.
But some other fellow who really opposes monopolies comes out and says that they should be owned or controlled by the people, the government. Such a fellow becomes a demagogue—for the average American gobbles up the propaganda of the Big Boys—the monopolists put on the screws on election day, and the dirty demagogue, by now a flaming Red, is defeated. At least, that has been what has usually happened so far.
But to get back to the doctors' prescription and to what we're going to do about monopoly. I have a great conservative authority, as I already intimated, who backs up the good doctors on government interference and government spending. This gentleman is accepted as the last word on the Constitution by the Supreme Court, and therefore no one can question either the man or what he says.
The authority is Alexander Hamilton, who was not only the brilliant man I told you about, but the man whom the conservatives say is still the greatest Secretary of the Treasury, not excepting Andrew Mellon, who when he died left an art gallery (which is in everybody's way in the National Capitol) where the worthy poor may culture their crude and unworthy souls in periods of adversity and unemployment.
Nevertheless, in Hamilton's "Report of Manufactures," dealing with the protection of industry, commerce, and business, he says: "To be enabled to contend with success, it is evident that the interference and aid of their own government are indispensable."
But the first and greatest Secretary of the Treasury, who also took over the duties today performed by Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins (latest lover of the businessman), had much more to say; and he was a century and a half ahead of Mr. Hopkins—in fact, a century and a half ahead of the Supreme Court, which is just beginning to catch up with him in its decisions. Although he did say that in wealthy nations the rich could make voluntary contributions, he also said that in the United States "the public purse must supply the deficiency of private resources." Mr. Hamilton was probably talking about making the rich richer; but he, gentlemen and conservatives, did advocate government intervention and public spending—and "bounties," my good sirs, to "supply the deficiency of private resources."
But we are talking about today. To make a long story short, the seven doctors offer an economic program which includes all the good and wise things the New Deal has done. They say in effect: Let's go ahead doing these things, more and better, to keep the money flowing, the people employed, and capitalism running the only way it can in our times and circumstances. It is a program on which really conservative people can stand together to keep the economy running, to save the land, and the living constitution which everybody loves.
All this may involve more efficiency in government—more effectiveness in government—and new techniques which we do not now understand. Will these Big Boys, the monopolists, have eyes with which to see? Will these Big Boys understand that society can only be preserved by the intelligent and scientific approach?
I am afraid not, but I hope so.
Still, if the people understand, and make the welkin ring about conditions, maybe—maybe—we can work things out. This will take courage in acting and courage in thinking—in fact, an exceptional use of intelligence by the conservatives themselves.
It all gets back to the old proposition that if the Old Guard insits on everything being done as the Old Guard did it 150 years ago, not only the Old Guard, but the nation itself, will have a hard time—much harder than any of us think. In fact, we will get so hard and brittle we will crack and blow up. Personally, I think all of us Americans like the old conservative idea of homes and farms and families and happiness the best. I know I do; but if we are to have this sort of conservatism, the conservatives themselves must see that the big job is for them to save themselves by seeing new light.
Light . . . for as I complete this, way down here in the tail end of Texas, high on the hill I stand this night, and look at the full moon. All the great clouds of dust have swirled in the Texas sun, eroding lands, testifying to our human follies, choking us, choking my father's and my brother's cattle. Land torn up, and roiling in the sky. . . . In the darkness I stand, and the sky is steel-black blue. The moon is like a deep round hole in the sky, a hole of blurred edges, a weak light far, far away.
Earth in the sky . . . six miles awys is the old Spanish city of San Antonio, where I was born. Great Neon lights, airplane beacons, usually stand clear and bright in the sky. But tonight these lights seem to blink on and off, sometimes going out for minutes, for the dust is in great moving masses, covering up the lights like black clouds passing the moon and stars.
People, People, where are you? Down in the depths of the earth in Manhattan, rushing on at Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central, over the prairies of the Dakotas and Nebraska, in the mountains and valleys, up in the sky, slithering through the space a hundred times faster than our fathers; and down on the ground again, in banks, homes, villages, cities, streets.
Bugles cry in this night which is dead and murky. They are at the military school two miles away, down in the valley of San Antonio. War. . . . Do I hear the cadenced march of world death? Of armaments gutting our good earth? Of armies grimly, silently, plodding on to the mass kill, and is civilization using the great engines of science for its death? Well . . . let's get back to the constitution of the earth, for war is the constitution of death, and is not a part of this story.
The Constitution. May God preserve it; that is, may God give us the light to preserve and keep it living. The Law of the Land. Modern science. Knowledge. Humanity struggles on, in the earth. May our souls be free . . . may we live in the earth, and in peace.
