Educational Department
THERE are thousands of boys and girls, some in the schools and colleges, some not, who are anxious to learn to develop themselves andrise. Many, many things they yearn to know which the class-room teachers do not teach. Many a subject they are eager to study, if somebody will but show the way. Often there are speeches to be made, essays to be written, debates to be prepared, and the boys and girls simply do not know how to start about it. For instance, they are suddenly required to write or speak on the question: “Should the Government own and operate the railroads?”
They have never read anything about it, perhaps. Therefore they inquire: “Where can we get some literature on the subject?” These young people do not want someone else to write their speeches or essays; they want nothing more than to be told where to get the materials to work with—the data upon which to construct their own argument.
When I was a boy I felt the need of that kind of help very keenly. How was I to know what books contained the information sought? Who could tell me? I soon found that teachers did not love to be bored by inquiries of that character, and therefore I had to browse around in the library at random for what was wanted. If the book needed was there, I generally found it, after wasting much time in the search. If it was not there, as frequently happened, I was at my row’s end. I had to debate without the full preparation which should have been made.
To help out many a student who may be troubled as I used to be, I am going to improvise and conduct in this Magazine a modest little Educational Department. Primarily it is meant for the young people. But the rule will be made as flexible as I feel like making it. Age limits are not fair—no matter whether Osler was joking or not. It is not my plan or purpose to write anybody’s speech or essay; but, where there is a subject of real importance to be discussed by word or pen, I am willing to direct the preparation of the student by telling him or her where the necessary information can be had. It would, perhaps, not be improper for me to suggest some general ideas on the subject to be discussed—these ideas to be worked out and put in form by the student. Often I may render good service to the boys and girls by telling them where the books they need can be bought at the lowest price. It took me many years to learn how to buy books, and it is a thing worth knowing—unless you have more money than I ever had.
The letters written to me in this department will be published as written; but the names of the writers will be withheld. Therefore, no correspondent need be embarrassed in making inquiries. My replies will be given in the Magazine.
Hereafter all letters asking for information—historical, literary, political, economic—will be answered through theEducational Department.
T. E. W.
University School,Stone Mountain, Ga., April 17, 1905.Hon. Thos. E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.Dear Sir: Would you kindly contribute to your magazine an article something like this:“Should a young man enter politics?”I have always had a strong desire to enter politics, and have thought the matter over a long time, but have as yet failed to reach a conclusion. If you can do me the very great favor to advise me on this line you may feel assured of my hearty appreciation.Faithfully your friend,C—— W——.
University School,Stone Mountain, Ga., April 17, 1905.
Hon. Thos. E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.
Dear Sir: Would you kindly contribute to your magazine an article something like this:
“Should a young man enter politics?”
I have always had a strong desire to enter politics, and have thought the matter over a long time, but have as yet failed to reach a conclusion. If you can do me the very great favor to advise me on this line you may feel assured of my hearty appreciation.
Faithfully your friend,
C—— W——.
It all depends on the motive. A young man who feels the inclination to enter politics for the purpose of contributing his share to honest administration should, by all means, do so.
Government does not take care of itself any more than a cotton crop does. Both require cultivation, management, head-work and hand-work.
We can never have good government unless good men become interested in politics. Perhaps there is not a nobler calling known to man than that of working for the public welfare in matters governmental—and this is politics.
A high-minded, warm-hearted philanthropist, like Mr. J. G. Phelps-Stokes, of New York, acts admirably when he ministers to the poor in the slums; but his work is still more effective when he gives his thought and his work to the removal of those abuses of government which producethe greater part of the miseries of those slums.
The grandest task which human intellect can set for itself today is the redemption of the government from the usurpers who have used the machinery of government to enrich themselves and to plunder their less fortunate brothers.
It is true that Henry Clay advised his sons, “Be dogs rather than politicians,” but this exclamation was made when Mr. Clay was in a fury of disappointment because he could not get to be President.
It is true that John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster died broken and disappointed men, but Mr. Webster had also set his heart upon being President, and Mr. Calhoun had devoted himself to an impossible program.
If a young man enters politics for the mere sake of getting office or personal advancement, his motives are sordid, and his life will be worth nothing to his fellow-man and nothing creditable to himself; but, if in conjunction with honorable ambition, he entertains the earnest desire to be useful to the community in which he lives by exercising his energies in political work, there is a glorious field for him.
If this combination of motives inspires you, my young friend, by all means yield to your inclination and “enter politics.”
Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., April 1, 1905.Mr. Thomas Watson, 121 West Forty-second Street, New York City.Dear Sir: Being in the midst of preparations for a scholastic debate to be held here on the —th, kindly permit me to ask your views on the following: Our question is, “Resolved, that the Government should own and control all the railway lines.”What, in your opinion, are the strongest arguments to sustain the affirmative side of this question?Thanking you for this favor, I remain,Very respectfully,E——.
Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., April 1, 1905.
Mr. Thomas Watson, 121 West Forty-second Street, New York City.
Dear Sir: Being in the midst of preparations for a scholastic debate to be held here on the —th, kindly permit me to ask your views on the following: Our question is, “Resolved, that the Government should own and control all the railway lines.”
What, in your opinion, are the strongest arguments to sustain the affirmative side of this question?
Thanking you for this favor, I remain,
Very respectfully,
E——.
The strongest arguments in favor of government ownership of railroads are:
First.Under modern conditions, the railroads are simply the public highways over which freight and passengers must pass, and public highways should never be owned by private citizens.
If freight and passengers go by water route, they must use navigable rivers, bays, gulfs, oceans. These public waterways belong to the public, and all men admit that they should.
Under modern conditions, freight and passengers are compelled to go by rail. We have to use the railroads whether we want to or not. In traveling any distance, it is no longer possible for the public to transact business by the use of the dirt roads, consequently the transportation lines are public in their nature and their uses, and should belong to the public.
They were not built by private capital, as a rule. In almost every case the railroads were paid for by public and private donations, and the charters granted represented simply a license issued for a public purpose; and of course that license can be revoked at any time, just compensation for vested interests first having been paid.
Second.As now operated, the railroads are ruinously oppressive in their charges. Enormous sums of money are being wrung from the people to pay dividends on watered stock—a fictitious value which has no existence except in ink on paper.
Third.Under the present system, the railroads have co-operated with excessive tariff rates in building up the trust, which publicly says to the people: “Pay my price for food, or starve”; “Pay my price for tools to work with, or let your fields become deserts.”
By the secret rebate, by discriminations of one kind or another, the independent operator has been driven out of the field everywhere and the tyranny of the trusts established.
Fourth.It would remove the greater part of the corruption which is the bane of our politics.
Railroad corporations maintain theirlobbyists at the capital of the nation and at the capital of every state. They corrupt representatives, judges, aldermen, editors, politicians.
They finance national and local campaigns; their filthy finger-prints are to be found on almost every page of our public record.
The only possible way to get rid of this is to remove the motive. Put the railroads where the Post-Office Department is, and there will be no more motive for rebates, discriminations and wholesale bribery than there is in the operation of the Post-Office Department.
Fifth.Government ownership would make the service uniform, simplify it in every way and save vast sums by the consolidation of all the various lines into one great national system.
It would not need so many high-priced presidents, high-priced lawyers and high-priced lobbyists.
One very intelligent writer upon this subject, C. Wood Davis, figures out a saving of $160,000,000 on this item by consolidation.
Government ownership would abolish deadheadism.
Under our present system, the men who are most able to pay their way on the railroad ride free. The man who is least able to pay, not only has to pay for himself, but in the long run has to pay also for the deadheads who ride free. This will become obvious to anybody who will think about it for a moment.
Sixth.It would take away the power of the railroads to destroy any individual, any business or any community. It would save the thousands of lives which are now lost every year for lack of double tracks, safety appliances and reasonable hours of labor.
It would enable the cotton grower of the South to exchange his products with the corn grower of the West in such a way that the railroad would not get more for hauling the corn than the man who raised it got for it when he sold it.
At present the Southern farmer pays seventy-five and eighty cents per bushel, cash, for corn which the farmer of the West sold for thirty-five cents. The transportation companies get the lion’s share of that enormous difference.
It would put an end to strikes, and would put into the hands of the people a weapon with which they could destroy any combine among capitalists in any article of commerce.
Among other things, it would save the tremendous sum of $65,000,000 which the Federal Government now pays to the railroads every year for the carriage of the mails, and that saving could be applied to extending the Rural Free Delivery to the remotest parts of the country.
If the Government owned the railroads and carried its own mails in steel cars, the Post-Office Department would show a profit instead of a loss, and railway mail clerks would be able to insure their lives. At present they cannot insure their lives, for the reason that the Government allows them to be hauled around in flimsy dry-goods boxes, whose cost of construction is less than the annual rent which our Government pays for their use and which invariably get smashed to splinters whenever there is a collision.
Locust Grove, Ga., April 21, 1905.Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.My Dear Sir: As affirmative debaters on the subject: “Resolved, That the democratic principles of the United States are in danger of being superseded by those of an aristocracy,” we have secured very valuable help from your articles in the April number ofTom Watson’s Magazine, and knowing that you, being a student of political economy, could give us some personal suggestions, we would appreciate your sending us material on the subject at our expense.Very respectfully yours,—— ——.
Locust Grove, Ga., April 21, 1905.
Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.
My Dear Sir: As affirmative debaters on the subject: “Resolved, That the democratic principles of the United States are in danger of being superseded by those of an aristocracy,” we have secured very valuable help from your articles in the April number ofTom Watson’s Magazine, and knowing that you, being a student of political economy, could give us some personal suggestions, we would appreciate your sending us material on the subject at our expense.
Very respectfully yours,
—— ——.
A Democracy—it being the government of all by all and for the benefit of all—cannot continue to be a true democracy unless the laws conform to the democratic standard laid down by Thomas Jefferson—namely, “Equal and exact justice to all men, without special favors to any.”
An Aristocracy is a government inwhich the few make the laws for their own benefit, and rule the country for their own good.
Therefore it must be apparent to the most casual student that if we, by law, confer special favors upon any class of our citizens, we are building up an aristocracy and are departing from democratic principles.
(1) For instance, the power to create money and to regulate the volume thereof is a sovereign power belonging to the state.
In countries ruled by kings that power has always been one of the prerogatives of the crown, as was the power to make war and peace, to negotiate treaties and to levy taxes. It was recognized that the king could not continue in the full exercise of his kingly authority if he parted with the tremendous power of creating money.
Not until the English crown rested upon the head of the most dissolute of the Stuarts, Charles II, and he had become the slave of an abandoned woman—who was in turn the tool of a grasping corporation, the East India Company—was the power to create money transferred from the king to a corporation.
Ever since that day Great Britain has suffered from this surrender of sovereign power, and it was this mistake of the king which Alexander Hamilton, either through mistake or by design, adopted when he came to frame a financial system for the American people.
It was his express purpose to create an aristocracy of wealth, and he must have realized that when he took from the government the power to create money and put it into the hands of a private corporation he was creating an aristocracy of wealth.
The national banks of today represent an aristocracy of wealth, supported by the governmental function of creating currency.
There are, in round numbers, 5,000 national bankers who have in circulation $400,000,000 of their “promises to pay,” which the law practically makes legal tender.
In other words, their“promises to pay” are used as money.
There are 80,000,000 natural persons in this country; there are 5,000 corporations called national banks! The 80,000,000 natural persons may sign promissory notes for five dollars each, and these notes are simply commercial paper, having no circulation as money. The 5,000 national banks sign their promissory notes to the same amount—$400,000,000—and these notes constitute, for all practical purposes, a national currency—a national money.
The law gives them the special privilege of getting rich on what they owe.They have also the more dangerous power ofenlarging and contracting the volume of currency, thus unsettling values, destroying markets and producing panics, as they did in 1893.
(2) The democratic principle of equal and exact justice to all men requires that the government should derive its revenue from a system of taxation which deals fairly with every citizen. Each man should contribute to the support of the government in proportion to his ability. And taxes should not be laid for the purpose of building up one man’s business at the expense of another’s.
Our tariff system, from which the government derives the greater part of its revenue, violates democratic principles.
Its purpose and result is to build up manufacturers at the expense of everybody not engaged in manufacturing. It gives the manufacturer a price which he could not get without the law which insures him the monopoly of the home market.All the world can compete with our laborers by sending immigrants to our shores; all the world can compete with our farmers; but nobody is allowed to compete with our manufacturers,and the result is the Trust, under which Americans combine to rob the helpless American citizen, who is not allowed to buy his food or his clothing or tools to work with from anyone except the American manufacturer.
By this system, which lays the taxes on the things which man buys, acitizen who is worth only a few hundred or a few thousand dollars pays just as much to the support of the Federal Government as is paid by the man who is worth tens of millions of dollars.
Consequently the inevitable tendency of the tariff system is to create a class which controls the government for its own enrichment;in other words, an aristocracy.
(3) Consider our corporation laws. Early in the history of our Government Chief Justice John Marshall decided that a charter granted to a corporation was a contract and could not be changed by the sovereign power of the state. This decision was not good law, and no good lawyer has ever considered it so. John Marshall had a great mind, but he was one of the rankest partisans that ever lived. He stretched every constitutional power in the effort to build up what Hamilton wanted—an aristocracy of wealth.
Just as a natural person is born into a community and lives in it subject to having his status changed by the will of the majority, expressed in a legal way, so a corporation, born into a community through its charter, should have been required to take the same chance of having its status changed, in a legal way, by the will of the majority.
A railroad corporation comes to the legislature and procures a charter to build a railroad;but the state cannot compel the corporation to build that railroad.In other words, the state cannot compel the execution of the powers granted under the charter; thereforesuch a charter lacks the very first element of a contract, because a contract is one in which each party can be compelled to perform his part or pay consequent damages. But, in pursuance of the decision of John Marshall in the Dartmouth College case, our state and national governments have erected a rule of the corporations, and they are now more powerful than the governments which created them.
The great transportation companies exercise the power to tax, and the people, who pay the taxes, have no representation in the councils of those who levy the taxes. This surely constitutes an aristocracy of the most powerful kind.
The railroads have the power to tax the life out of any industry, out of any section, out of any city or town;with rebates and discriminations they build up the Trusts which plunder the people.
By reason of the fact that they enjoy the privilege of taxing other people,they pay no Federal taxes to support the government. Whatever they may pay in the way of tariff on material which they use in the construction of roadbeds and rolling stock, they simply charge up to expense account and levy their rates so as to make the utmost possible profit over and above what they have paid out. The public cannot escape the freight rates and the passenger rates which the corporations levy. The public cannot help itself. The public is made to pay, in those freight and passenger rates, every dollar of tax which the railroads have paid to the state and Federal governments. Therefore, as in the case of the national banks and the manufacturers, we have a great class of corporations given special powers by law which are exercised at the expense of the masses of the people, and which escape all the burden of supporting the national Government by reason of the immunities and privileges which the law has made for their exclusive benefit.
Here, then, we have a complete illustration of aristocracy—the government of the few, by the few and for the few, instead of the ideal of Jefferson and Lincoln, “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
The man who makes a corner in wheat thinks he can relieve all the suffering he caused by endowing a bed in a hospital.