AN AMERICAN CONGRESS
November 18, 1918
The election of a Republican Congress a fortnight ago was first and foremost a victory for straight Americanism. To the Republican Party it represents not so much a victory as an opportunity. To the American people, including not only Republicans and independents, but all patriotic Democrats who put loyalty to the Nation above servility to a political leader, the victory was primarily won forstraight-out Americanism. A very important feature to remember is that this victory was won in the West. On the whole, the East also showed gains, but the greatest gains were in the West. The South, of course, and most unfortunately, never permits its political or patriotic convictions to alter the result at the ballot box.
Now the Westerners, the strong, masterful, self-reliant men who won such exacting victories in Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota, are just as opposed to what may be called Kaiserism in our political and industrial life as they are to Bolshevism. I firmly believe that this is true of the rank and file of the Republican Party everywhere. They haven’t the slightest patience with Townleyism in agricultural districts or I.W.W.-ism in labor circles. But resolutely they intend to shape our internal policy for the real substantial benefit of the average man, of the ninety per cent of our people who are farmers, working-men, small shopkeepers, doctors, and the like. They haven’t the slightest patience with the Bolshevist desire to establish proletariat class tyranny, which is just as odious as aristocratic class tyranny. They haven’t the slightest patience in persecution of, or failure generously to reward, the man who by nature or by training is a leader in industrial matters. They want to see farming, for instance, offer a chance to the man of ability to become a scientific farmer on a large scale. They wish to see the young business man whose leadership in manufactures or commerce is of incalculableworth to everybody receive in generous fashion the big reward to which he is entitled.
But they wish to do all this as an incident to securing not only this right to, but a much better chance for, the average man. They wish the tenant farmer class to be made a diminishing instead of an increasing class so that tenant farming itself may not be a permanent status, but a step toward farm ownership by the hired man or the son of the small farm owner. They wish to see the working-man, and especially the working-man in such huge businesses as those connected with transportation, steel production, mining, and the like, become not a mere cog in an industrial machine, but a man whose self-respect and reasonable prosperity are guaranteed if the business succeeds, and he is entitled through representation on the directory to have his voice heard at the council board of the business, even although at first and until the ability to use power is slowly developed by the habit of using it, the control may have to do primarily with the things of which he has special knowledge and in which he has special interest. Moreover, there are plenty of great natural resources, such as water power, where small ownership cannot provide capital for the development, but where the outright ownership of the people should not be disposed of. The happy line must be struck between the all-pervading straight regimentation, which would be as deadening as paralysis, and the regimentation of mere individualism. The Government must exercise control in a spirit of justice toall concerned and with a stern readiness to check injustice by any of those concerned.
The Republican leadership in Congress has on the whole been singularly patriotic and singularly free from the vice of mere partisanship during the lifetime of the present Congress. We can be certain that it will continue to be so in the new Congress. In the future as in the past the President can count on the hearty and ungrudging support of the Republican Party at every point where he is endeavoring efficiently and in good faith to serve the interests of the Nation. But he can also rest assured that the Republican Party will judge its duty by the standard of loyalty to the country and will scornfully refuse to adopt that extreme baseness of attitude, worthy only of slaves, which shrieks that we must stand by the Administration whether the Administration is right or wrong. Moreover, the Republican Party will certainly demand to have an accounting of some of the enormous sums of money that have been expended and will in due time doubtless demand to know what explanation there is of the Administration’s persistence in hidden and secret diplomacy in so many important matters. Every question will be approached from the standpoint of a generous desire, without any higgling or dealing on small points, to do whatever the Administration demands that is proper and to give it a full chance to declare, and perhaps develop, its policy; but the Republican Congress will understand how to show that it is not a rubber-stamp body, but an integral and self-respecting partof the American governmental system, wholly and solely responsible to the American people.