The new agrarianism; a survey of the prevalent spirit of social unrest, and a consideration of the consequent campaign for the adjustment of agriculture with industry and commerce

Preface

WHEN a litigant takes an appeal to a higher court, he is required to have printed in a book the record of the suit in the lower court, for use at the argument in the appellate court. The first requisite of the book is that it contain a brief statement, couched in the most general terms, of the questions involved, which in some States must not exceed half a page, on pain of having the appeal quashed.

The present book is also an appeal, and the preface is a statement of the questions involved, which, like the statement of the questions involved in the appeals prepared by the lawyers in the courts of justice, has been made both brief and general, in order that the argument of the book may be given consideration by those to whom the appeal is taken.

The appeal is from the widely expressed verdict which confuses evils apparent in the conduct of political, economic, and sociological matters into fundamental errors in the structure of government and in the operation of those public and private instituiv Preface

tions which control the industry and commerce of the country. The argument is an elaboration of the contention that the complaints of public and private shortcomings, while attributable in part to many causes, are yet primarily the result of the unequal progress being made between agriculture, and industry and commerce, with a discussion of measures for bringing agriculture to a parity with them, and an account of what has been accomplished in this direction in other countries.

The appeal is taken to that class of thinkers who comprise the supreme tribunal of the people, which has the final decision of every great question which agitates the public mind, and which, uninfluenced by stress and storm, has the wisdom to distinguish the gold from the dross, with a true desire for the correction of existing evils, and the ability and determination to devise means for meeting the exigencies of modern life as they arise, without that impetuosity which attempts to cut loose from all traditions, and to supersede existing systems by plunging the country into a sea of doubtful experiment.

C. W. D.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May, 1 913.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — A Time of Idealism . . i

II. — The Evolution of Business . 25

Chapter I A Time Of Idealism

MANY books, and innumerable magazine and newspaper articles, have been written about the movement toward an idealistic goal which has been going on among the peoples of the earth during the last fifteen years. No nation, no country, has been left untouched. A large section of the public press pronounces it the "Great Unrest." It has been largely an altruistic movement ; and to such persons as are more philosophic than the writers who are responsible for the effusions appearing in the radical press, it is nothing more than the idealism which accompanies the transition that is always taking place in national life. Pronounced as it is, it is yet barely keeping pace with the tremendous progress being made in government, in industry, and in commerce, the abuses in which have stimulated its growth. D. H. Macgregor, the English economist, strikes the keynote of the movement when he declares that "many changes now go by the name of social reform which are little more than the removal of the most obvious abuses" 1 that surround society.

In world politics, altruism has been a resistless force. In the distant Transvaal the heroic Boer farmers, overwhelmed by numbers, went down in defeat, but from the ruins of a sluggish civilization there has arisen, under English dominance, a new nation, comprising the four Boer countries of South Africa, under the premiership of a hero of the Transvaal disaster. By a masterstroke of statesmanship, the United States acquired on the Isthmus of Panama the only territory practicable for a canal to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, and the canal is now nearing completion. In many far countries democracy

1 The Evolution of Industry, D. H. Macgregor, New York, pp. 74-75.

broke the leash which bound her to some throne. In Turkey the "Young Turks" forced the abdication of the Sultan, and, with a new sultan on the throne, they obtained a parliamentary government. Russia bowed to the spirit of the age, and granted its subjects the right to assemble in parliament. A new light dawned on Portugal, and it became a republic, as did also the long benighted Chinese Empire. Persia received a parliamentary government. The enfranchisement of women has made rapid progress, and the women have received a more or less equal suffrage with the men in nine of the States of the United States and in the English colony of New Zealand, in the six Australian states, and in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and in the new republic of Portugal. z

Religion and medicine were affected no less than politics. France disestablished her

1 "The World Movement for Woman Suffrage," Ida Husted Harper, The American Review of Reviews, New York, December, 1911, pp. 725-729; "Woman Suffrage," Gwendolen Overton, The North American Review, New York, August, 191 1, pp. 271-281; "The Expansion of Equality," The Independent, New York, November 14, 1912, pp. 1143-1145.

Church. Spain, ever the most intolerant nation in Europe, conceded freedom of public worship. In the United States a movement for the union of all Christian religions was inaugurated by the last General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Medicine has greatly reduced the death rate. Infectious diseases were brought under magnificent control. Tuberculosis and typhoid fever were rendered harmless by being prevented, and yellow fever was practically exterminated.

Inventions that benefit mankind received a renewed impetus. The air was all but conquered; the law of gravitation was set at naught. " Darius Green and his flying machine" of our childhood days has ceased to be a poetic fiction. The perfection of gasoline engines has enabled men to go sailing through the air in aeroplanes. In dirigible balloons, experts have made voyages covering over a thousand miles of distance. Sending telegraphic messages through the air without the aid of wires has become a commercial success. The horseless carriage was perfected, and the building of automobiles became an industry of such magnitude that in the United States alone, in 1912, three hundred and seventy-five thousand machines were built for pleasure and commercial use. 1

It has been a period of great ethical development, and the world-wide forward movement has had a more far-reaching effect in the United States than in any other country. While the nation was young, while the soil was of virgin richness, while land was to be had in the West for the taking, every public or private act, unless flagrantly bad, went without criticism. Now that a string of cities extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, that the cattle ranches have been cut up into farms, that colleges and schools dot every hill and valley, that public libraries exist in every city and town and almost in every village, men take a hypercritical view of moral conditions. Passable roads reach every farmstead, the Rural Free Delivery Post brings the mail to every farmhouse, newspapers reach every home, and satisfactory worldly circumstances allow men leisure to appreciate the higher aims in

1 Automobile Trade Journal, Philadelphia, December, 1912, pp. 71, 96.

life. A spirit of chivalry has taken possession of them, and they are waging a war the object of which is the elimination of all public and private abuses.

The high moral altitude which these men have attained is not, however, solely the result of work done in recent years. It is the fruit of a process of evolution, inaugurated by master-minds, which has been going on for more than half a century. It was the idealists of the Civil War time who commenced the present campaign against civic wrongs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Gerrit Smith, in striving for the overthrow of human slavery, began the movement in the United States for righteousness in public and private affairs.

When the Civil War closed, the political party in power, with the glamour of a successful war as its inheritance, appeared immaculate in the eyes of the country. The party's leaders were honest and patriotic, but they were partisans first. To them party triumph meant all. It meant the preservation of the Union, the prosperity of the country, the welfare of the people. Therefore the party must be perpetuated. With the wise and conciliatory Lincoln in his grave, the partyenacted extremely harsh laws for the reconstruction of the governments of the States lately in revolt. The consequence was that the men who had just emerged from slavery, led by unprincipled adventurers from the North, gained the political ascendancy. Soon corruption ran riot in half a dozen States, continuing until the men lately in rebellion against the national government, aided to some extent by the changing opinion in the North, again wrested the political control from the negroes. But the political corruption which had almost pauperized the South, and perhaps as a direct consequence of the influences by which it had been brought into life there, under the spur of party loyalty, also gained more than a foothold in the North. As the politicians realized that they could not hope to retain their grip on the Southern States, they turned their attention to strengthening their political organizations in their own States. Men were selected for office solely because of the votes they could command; honesty or efficiency was not a necessary prerequisite for election or appointment to office.

Favors at the expense of the government were granted freely if the recipients were in a position to render assistance to the party in power. Offices were multiplied needlessly; extravagance in the management of public affairs became an evil of great magnitude. Scandals in politics were a stench in the nostrils of every self-respecting citizen. A number of Congressmen and a Vice-President were openly charged with accepting stock in the Credit Mobilier, a corporation organized to finance the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad, both then in course of construction, the stock being given for the purpose of influencing the official acts of the accused men. A combination of distillers and Federal officials was discovered to have defrauded the national government out of large sums due for internal revenue taxes. A Secretary of War was accused of having accepted bribes in dispensing the patronage of his department. Laws were enacted for a price paid. Men high in official place were charged with awarding public contracts to concerns in which they were financially interested. Congressmen were said to be profiting by selling information obtained by them in the course of their public duties. It was common to see Senators and Representatives accept retainers for appearing in the interest of private clients, both before the bodies of which they were members and before the executive departments of the government, although, since 1864, this had been a criminal offense, punishable with fine and imprisonment. This deplorable condition extended into State, county, and municipal governments. Here, too, the officers were changed with every incoming administration; here, too, the only requisite for obtaining office was the power to influence voters.

While this history was being made in the political world of America, a new class of thinkers had come upon the stage. Men of courage were everywhere arising and protesting against the evils that were besetting the national government. A vigorous minority was opposed to continuing forever indifferent to governmental abuses. They realized that the first step in the direction of purifying politics would be to secure a better class of men for the public positions, io The New Agrarianism

and that to do this it would be necessary to enact laws which would guarantee to the government employees a permanent tenure of office, contingent on efficiency and good behavior. Their efforts bore fruit as early as 1869, during General Grant's first term as President, when a law was enacted authorizing the President to prescribe such rules for the admission of persons into the civil service as would promote its efficiency, and giving him authority to employ suitable persons to institute an investigation of the subject. The law failed of producing the results anticipated by its originators, for the reason that President Grant, and the politicians surrounding him, had not yet been converted to the new doctrine of efficiency in public life. But the reformers continued their efforts; they were not to be terrified by the cries of ''undemocratic" and "un- American" uttered by the opponents of a more permanent tenure of office, who were interested in obtaining office, and whose only qualification was the desire for place.

In 1877, the efforts of these high-minded men began to bear fruit. In that year Carl Schurz, who was among the earliest of the

A Time of Idealism n

idealists in American politics, became Secretary of the Interior in President Hayes's Cabinet ; and he declined to permit removals in his department except for cause. To Mr. Schurz belongs the credit also of inducing President Hayes to forbid the officers of the government from taking part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, and election campaigns, their activity in which had done much to debase the public service. Mr. Schurz was likewise responsible for the order prohibiting assessments for political purposes on officers and subordinates, and for the introduction of competitive examinations for appointment to office in the New York Custom House and the New York Post Office.

A strong sentiment was growing up in favor of civil service reform, and when Chester A. Arthur was President, on January 6, 1883, a comprehensive civil service law was enacted which provided for a board of three commissioners to aid the President in preparing rules for the government of the civil service. The law was laughed into statute books. Delegate Flannagan of Texas, in the Republican National Convention of 1880, which nominated James A. Garfield for President and Mr. Arthur for Vice-President, in opposing the resolution adopted by the convention, advocating civil service reform, had blurted out: "What are we here for, if not to get the offices ?" The remark became the shibboleth of the civil service reformers in the election campaign of 1882, and the ridicule which it occasioned was largely instrumental in changing the Republican majority in the House of Representatives into a Democratic majority in the next Congress. It was after this that the Republican Congress, then still in power, reluctantly carried out the platform of its party, and enacted the civil service law. From that time forward the civil service has continually improved. Where there had been doubt as to the merits of the system, confidence in its value soon appeared. The classes of offices to which the civil service rules applied were constantly extended, and with the thirtysix thousand fourth-class post offices added, on October 15, 1912, by President Taft, the rules now apply to more than half the Federal offices, for the salaries of which there is paid out considerably over two thirds of the entire amount disbursed annually by the United States Government for salaries. A better class of men fill the governmental positions, the permanency of their tenure having increased their efficiency and enabled them to do their work better and more expeditiously. This statement is amply proven by the reports of the Civil Service Commission. In their annual report for 191 1 the Commissioners say:

"One striking effect of the merit system has been an increase in the amount of work performed with a relatively smaller number of employees. Thus while there has been a growth in public business and in its complexity during the year, there has been a decrease in the number of appointments." 1

The civil service reform movement also served to direct public attention to another abuse in the government service. For many years it had been a common occurrence for government employees to farm out the duties of the office to which they had been appointed, paying the substitute a meager compensation for the work done, the differ-

1 Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the United States Civil Service Commission, Washington, 1912, p. 19.

ence between the sum so paid and the salary constituting the profit of the holder of the office. The higher officials knew of and connived at the custom. It seems to have flourished for a longer period among the employees of Congress than among the employees of the other departments of the government. In 1895, however, Congress enacted a law forbidding the practice among the employees of the House and Senate, and it was discontinued.

The national government has moved to a higher plane in other respects. The iniquities wrought by the Louisiana Lottery, the Havana Lottery, and the hundred other lesser lottery schemes for gaining the money of the credulous, are not yet forgotten. The degrading traffic in lottery tickets, whereby the poor lost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, has been stopped, by excluding from the mails all matter connected with lotteries. Prosecutions were instituted against faithless Senators and Representatives in Congress who had besmirched their high offices by accepting bribes, or by advocating, for pay, claims against the government, before its departments. In 1903,

Edward H. Driggs, a Representative in Congress from New York, was charged with accepting remuneration for having aided in procuring a government contract, but escaped punishment on a technicality. x The next year Senator Dietrich of Kansas was indicted for accepting a bribe for procuring for one of his constituents the office of postmaster, but failed of conviction on the ground that he had not yet assumed office. 2 Later in the year, however, two Senators were tried and convicted, both for accepting fees for advocating private claims before departments of the government, Senator Joseph R. Burton of Kansas for appearing before the Post Office Department, and Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon before the Commissioner of the Land Office. Senator Burton, after vainly appealing his case twice to the Supreme Court of the United States, paid the penalty of his crime by serving nine months in a Missouri jail and paying a fine of twenty-five hundred dollars. 3

1 United States vs. Driggs, 125 Federal Reporter, 520.

2 United States vs. Dietrich, 126 Federal Reporter, 676.

3 United States vs. Burton, 131 Federal Reporter, 552. This case rose on the defendant's demurrer to the indict-

Senator Mitchell was sentenced to six months imprisonment and to pay a fine of one thousand dollars, but took an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, and died before the appeal was decided.

Reform in municipal affairs has also been of overshadowing interest in recent years. The proportion of the population in the cities of over 25,000 inhabitants, as compared with the population in the country, has been constantly rising. In 1880 it was 17.2 per cent.; in 1890, 22.2 per cent.; in 1900, 26 per cent., and in 1910, 31. 1 per cent., or almost one third of the entire population. The increase has been so rapid, and is composed of such diverse elements, that it has remained largely an undigested mass, causing a condition to arise much like that prevailing in the South immediately after the Civil War, when the negroes were given the franchise, and bands of unscrupulous politicians, bent on their own aggrandizement, the demurrer being overruled. The decision was, however, reversed by the Supreme Court in United States vs. Burton, 196 U. S., 310. The conviction afterward obtained was sustained in United States vs. Burton, 202 U. S., 344.

ment, assumed leadership over the forces of ignorance and indifference. The banner of revolt has been raised against this leadership in municipal affairs, and there is a large and growing class all over the United States believing in, and bent on having, municipal governments administered at least as well as is the average successful business. Wastefulness and inefficiency are not, however, the greatest evils against which this new revolution is being directed. For years these revolutionists have been working for an ideal. Their entrance into the fight for improved municipal government has been usually brought about by some condition which had become intolerable. A common cause of corruption in the smaller cities was where the executive, or some official under him, for a consideration, permitted gambling, prostitution, and illegal liquor-selling. This particular form of corruption was not, however, confined to the small cities, some of the very largest being also honeycombed with the atrocious vice. The most recent example occurred in the city of New York, where certain of the police officials were said to have been collecting from this source annually the enormous sum of two million four hundred thousand dollars, and where a gambler who, because he had turned informer was brutally murdered, the murder, it was alleged, being instigated by no less a person than a police lieutenant in active service. The most deplorable feature of the entire shameless business is the fact that the accusation was true. The police lieutenant was tried for the murder, found guilty, and sentenced to death, the four men whom he was charged with employing to commit the crime being later also tried, and found guilty and sentenced to death.

In most cities, however, the depravity was generally the result of two causes: first, the corrupt manner in which the public contracts were awarded; and second, the actions of the men who controlled the granting of public franchises and privileges, in demanding that they be paid for granting that, which if right and proper, should be given gratuitously, and by the only too willing agreement of certain wealthy men to pay the price demanded of them. The rapacious rule of William M. Tweed in New York, from 1865 to 1871, whereby the city was robbed of millions of dollars, was the most notorious example of the first cause of debauched municipal government; of the other, there are the more recent instances of bribery in St. Louis, in San Francisco, in Pittsburgh, in Detroit.

The men in control of the municipal governments realized that fortunes might be made by controlling the public utilities within their respective municipalities. In the early days they secured for themselves franchises for horse-car lines, for water and gas companies, for railroad and telegraph lines. When electricity as a motive power, and for light, became a commercial success, they procured the enactment of laws for the incorporation of companies to transact the business of supplying this new force; and the laws, in some cases at least, were so drawn that no previous notice of any intended application for incorporation was necessary. Immediately upon the laws becoming effective, incorporation papers were presented to the proper authorities, who, being friendly, at once approved them. Later application for municipal consent was made, and, proper methods for insuring success being employed, the franchises were granted without question, the only interests to be safeguarded being those of the incorporators. The political speculators then proceeded to build operating plants if they were financially able, or they sold their franchises at handsome profits. They also procured the grant of franchises for the benefit of whoever employed them for the purpose.

Efficiency in the conduct of municipal affairs was not sought after. Although ordinary mechanics were required to serve an apprenticeship of from two to five years, before being allowed to exercise their trade, for the more complex employments under a city government, no previous preparation whatever was required. The administration of cities was, in consequence, particularly inefficient; there was a complete lack of organization and discipline in the police and fire departments; petty robberies were numerous, fires were unnecessarily disastrous. The methods of keeping the accounts were entirely devoid of system; even in some of the larger cities, neither the treasurer who received the tax duplicates, nor the authority who delivered them to him, could ascertain from the duplicates the total amount of the taxes to be collected. Almost every municipal function was performed without regard to the well-being of the community. A low standard of public morals prevailed.

A great improvement has taken place in the conduct of municipal governments, notwithstanding the scandals which yet affect them. The troubles arising from human depravity still remain, but in a lessened degree, and a decidedly more efficient administration has taken place. The civil service reformers did not stop at reforming the departments of the national government but gradually extended their efforts to municipal affairs, and now in over a hundred cities more or less stringent civil service laws are in force, which, while often evaded by unscrupulous executives, or other officers charged with their execution, provide a decidedly improved method for the appointment and retention of officials. r

During the last twelve years, reform in municipal affairs has also taken a wider scope than the mere improvement of the

1 Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the United States Civil Service Commission, Washington, 19 10, pp. 30-31.

civil service. Entirely new systems for governing municipalities have been devised. The one most commonly advocated is a non-partisan and commission form of government. The doctrine of non-partisanship in municipal affairs has been in effect in a few municipalities for more than a quarter of a century, but government by commission has been in operation only for something over eleven years. It originated with the Southwestern city of Galveston, after the great inundation caused by the high-tide of September 8, 1900, when the place was almost entirely destroyed. The city was rebuilt by a commission, and has been governed by one ever since. Since its introduction in Galveston, the plan of commission government has been many times improved, that in operation since June 20, 1907, in the city of Des Moines, Iowa, being the one most generally commended. The municipal elections in Des Moines are non-partisan in character. The city council consists of a single body elected at large, composed of the mayor and four councilmen, in whom is vested all the executive, legislative, and judicial functions, the duties of the councilmen being practically coordinate with those of the mayor.

The connection of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers marks the beginning of a new era in government in America. Heretofore it was considered treason to advocate any other doctrine than that of a separation of the powers. The doctrine of a separation of the powers had been incorporated in the national, and in many of the State constitutions shortly after the time when the country tore itself loose from monarchical England, when the fear existed that a unity of the powers would lead away from liberty and toward a new despotism greater than the one which the country had just thrown off. The convention which framed the United States Constitution did not have the previous experience of any other country to guide it in respect to a division of the powers. It adopted the theory of Baron Montesquieu, as elaborated in his brilliant Spirit of the Laws, which historians now agree was not a true exposition of the fact as contained in the Constitution of England, which instrument the work pretended to describe. Dire experience has proven the fallacy of the theory so far as municipalities are concerned. Separation of the powers is a clog on efficiency, and renders possible practically all the evils that can be charged to maladministration in municipal affairs. Cities are corporations with large and diverse business interests to be cared for, and, because their functions are of a public character, no person who has the best interests of the municipality at heart would suggest they be conducted differently from private business corporations ; and no one who is at all familiar with the management of private business corporations can say truthfully that in the conduct of such corporations the president should not take part in the meetings of the board of directors. Under the theory of a separation of the powers, the mayor has no part in the deliberations of the council, nor have the councilmen any executive powers. Because the system originated in the Southwest and the West, sections once famous as the birthplace of the wild fantasies advocated by the Greenback Labor party and of the free silver fetish, should not create prejudice against it. " Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? " was once asked concerning the Son of God.

Chapter II The Evolution Of Business

THE agitation against the abuses prevalent in public affairs was already at its height when an uneasiness developed in regard to the rapid growth in wealth and power of industry and commerce, and of the railroads. At the close of the Civil War, many branches of industry were in an infantile state. The railroads were of comparatively recent origin, but had already spread out in many directions. The old sectional question of slavery was forever settled, and labor, which had been scarce during the four years of war, became plentiful again when the million soldiers who had been serving in the Northern armies returned to their homes and reentered upon their old employments; and an era of unexampled expansion ensued. Far-seeing men realized the immense possibilities to be attained by improving 25 and by adding to the railroads and bybuilding additional railroads, and in the establishment of new industries such as would have the government tariff as a protection against foreign competition. The energy of these adventurers was soon felt, and railroad building began with a rush. From 1865 to 1875, thirty-nine thousand miles of railroad were built, being more than double the entire mileage of the country prior to the former year. Small railroads and telegraph companies which had been constructed to connect a few cities and towns, were consolidated and formed into great systems extending through from two to ten States. In manufacturing, the forward movement resulted in new rolling mills being built in the iron centers, in new coal mines being opened in the coal-mining districts. In New England, additional lines of manufacture were added in the cotton and woolen mills. Everywhere old establishments were enlarged. The manufacturers prospered as they had never before prospered; the workmen received higher wages than the country had ever known.