Cornell University Library JK1759 .J82 The call of the nation : olin 3 1924 030 479 160 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030479160 THE CALL OF THE NATION THE CALL OF THE NATION A PLEA FOR TAKING POLITICS OUT OF POLITICS By DAVID STARR JORDAN Chancellor of Leland Stfuiford Junior University "For after all, it is the People's Country." —WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE BOSTON THE BEACON PRESS 25 BEACON STREET ev. Copyright, 1910 THE BEACON PRESS, he. h-'^'flzk TO JOSEPH SWAIN PRESIDENT OF SWARTHMORE COLLEGE. A STANFORD PIONEER OF '91 ' I 'HE genius of our people is all for peace, ''' the peace of strength and self-control, not that of cowardice or indifference. It is our privilege among the nations to spread this spirit. This we may do by the power of example. We have no enemies. We hate no nation. No nation hates us. We have no revenges for old defeats, no ranklings of old victories, no altered boundaries, no banished dynasties. We have only our own affairs to attend to, with the dignity that befits a nation which minds its own business. It is f(S us to say. We will not threaten, we will not fight, we will not prepare to fight, we will not load ourselves with weapons which tend to provoke a fight. We will not mortgage our future to the Invisible Empire which owns and controls militant Europe. We will leave our disputes to the decision of a tribunal of just men. The word War shall be erased from our national speech 1 CONTENTS Page Politics m Politics 1 The Control of Government by Party . 3 The Significance of Party 4 The Spirit of the West 9 Democracy a Training School in Civics 9 The Duty of the Nation . 10 Democracy and Expert Service . 12 The Function of the Primary Election . 13 The Fimction of the Scientific Bureau . 15 The Smithsonian Institution . 16 The New Politics .... . 17 The Cost of Living .... . 19 No Right Without a Duty 21 The Dartmouth College Decision 21 Franchise not Property 24 TTie Tariff for Protection 26 The Conservation of Natural Resources 32 The Preservation of the Forests 32 The Rules of Forestry . . . . 34 The Conservation of Rivers . . . . 36 The Conservation of Water Power 37 The Work of Irrigation . . . . 39 The Conservation of the Coal Measures 40 The Conservation of the Fbheries 40 The Fur Seal Herd 41 An Intemational Game Law 42 The Development of Water Ways 42 Page The Ownership of Public Utaities ... 45 Immigratioii .... . 46 The Panama Canal . 50 Cuba and the Philippines . 51 Corporations as Competitors . 53 National Control of Corporations 54 Great Fortunes Held in Trust . 56 Civil Service Reform 58 National Sanitation , . 59 Floating Matter in the Air , 60 The Yellow Fever , , 64 The Bubonic Plague m London , 66 The Bubonic Plague m Calif(»nia 73 The Bubonic Plague at Oberammergau 75 The Plagues of the Tropics 76 The White Plague 77 The Small-Pox 78 The Red Plague . 79 The Hook Worm . 79 The Pure Food Movement 80 The Bureaus of Science 81 The National Needs 82 The Cause of Peace 83 The Invisible Empire 84 The Canadian Boundary 85 The Cost of Sea Power 88 The Genius of Our People 89 Above All Nations is Humanity 89 THE CALL OF THE NATION THE CALL OF THE NATION Some twenty-five years ago, more or less, a Politics in young man of my acquaintance once told me of Politics an experience in New York politics. He had found an ardent Democrat working tooth and nail for the election of a Republican alderman. My friend expressed surprise, but the henchman explained: "You are a very young man, Mr. Roosevelt, but when you are as old as I am, you will know that there is no politics in politics." In this phrase, the word politics has two dis- tinct meanings. In the one case, it is synonymous with partisanship; in the other with plunder — "We play no favorites when we are working the people." This statement, likewise in slang, fairly expresses thfe meaning of the other. In our democracy, the word politics should be a most lofty one. Politics is the science of citizenship. Only in a democracy has citizen- ship a definite meaning. Individual citizens banded together to look after their common affairs and learning by their own mistakes, — this is democracy; and politics is the science which treats of the citizen's functions and opera- tions. But in our vulgar usage, as in the thought of the New York henchman, the word politics [1] THE CALL OF THE NATION stands for the mackineiy by which men gain money through the struggles of pohtical parties. It is the traffic in the loyalty of the blind partisan. It is the building up of a sort of feudal system, with the boss at the top and the voter of straight tickets at the bottom, as the natural serf. This feudal system we must eradicate. This traffic we must drive out of our national life. Hiis is the politics which must be taken out of politics, if the nation is to endure. There is no short and easy way of doing this. It is the work of a generation. It must follow the education of another generation. This education is now going on. It began long ago with the Mugwump move- ment. It received a vigorous impetus from the first address on Conservation by the Presi- dent of the United States, at Palo Alto, I think, in 1903. It was continued by the address on "The Square Deal" two or three years later, at Austin, Texas. It was the President of the Republic who spoke, not the leader of the party. What the party leader may say is intended for immediate use. It can have no permanent sig- nificance. The President is in a position to make history. This education is still continuing from day to day with many teachers, some of them [2] THE CALL OF THE NATION •with cliscordant voices, but the whole leading back to the fundamental principles of our repub- lic: equality before the law; no privilege without a corresponding duty. If in our political life we are to rise above the mere "doing of politics," it must be because we as a nation have something better to do. It is be- cause by working together we can reach great constructive ends. It is because we see in the welfare of our people ends more desirable, as well as more interesting, than those of party triumph or defeat. It is because united action for definite aims shall replace the gambler's interest in the issues of an election. It is often taken as an axiom that a free country must be governed by a party; that a party of action in control of affairs must be accompanied by a party of opposition whose function is to thwart it at every corner. The machinery of British government is framed on this theory, and from its operation the British people cannot even for a moment escape. I believe that the theory is inherently wrong,— that party government as we know it, in England or in America, is but a temporary phase in the history of democracy. [3] Control of Govern- ment by Party THE CALL OF THE NATION Sooner or later the practice of party govern- ment must spell disaster, for the party in power can maintain itself only by concession after con- cession. These concessions* are not made in the public interest, else they would not be conces- sions. They are of the nature of bribery, — sops given to the floating vote in order to secure its support for purposes of mere partisanship. The old age pension movement in Great Britain may be most worthy, if the leaders of the party have decided on this as a legitimate and helpful use of the public funds. It is a most degrading move- ment if the motive is to attract the vote of those who become its beneficiaries. TTie same re- marks apply equally to the pension of soldiers in America. Whether such use of public money is statesmanship or bribery depends on the motive, whether of patriotism or partisanhip. Once the current parties in the United States had a definite meaning in the traits of human nature. One party rested its claims on its sound 'In an Australian state, for example, under the British system, the government may control 45 votes in Parliament, the opponents 40. The floating vote of 1 5 may demand and does demand its own terms for ensuring to either side a majority. A small group, willing to sacrifice everything else to have its own way, or for a piece of caste legislation, is thus able to dictate to both parties alike. And legisla- tion thus dictated tends always towards waste and towards evil. Even good statistics secured by political bribery leaves a vicious residumn. [4] THE CALL OF THE NATION theories of government, its upholding of the The Sig- fundamental principles of equaHty before the law, nificance and of the right and duty of each community or ^^ Party state to govern itself, uncontrolled by the bias of other communities under other conditions. TTie other party was the party of action, the party of the young men, of pioneers, of icono- clasts. Its leaders stood for the thing that needs doing here and now, regardless of academic theories, regardless of political consistency. This is a motor nation. To do things even heedlessly, but to do them, is the instinct of the American people. Even if things be ill done, they can be done again. All this means movement, and movement is life. Besides this, fundamental theories need the test of action before they can be accepted as valid. Not all the theories of the party of consistency have stood in the rush of today. TTie party of action has had the upper hand in most of our recent history. It saved the Union. It abolished slavery. At least, the nation did these things under its auspices and by the agency of its greatest leader of men. It has populated and exploited the West. It has developed our national resources. It has played [s] THE CALL OF THE NATION into the hands of the most gigantic of financial combinations, and these combinations have worked for its retention in power. Little by little they have come to direct the party move- ment, to claim ownership of the results of its activities. The party of conservatism or of reaction might have been even more easily controlled if it had been indeed worth while. It is not worth while, for among our people action will always take precedence over theory. A recent journalist has cleverly said that the recessive party of to-day, like the dominant one, "has bowed down before the Golden Calf, with- out, however, receiving reciprocal attentions from that animal." Because the original purpose of the party has been lost in partisanship, these names of Repub- lican and Democrat have now no significance. The recent revolt within the party in power indi- cates no movement towards the other except as a temporary expedient. Some thirty years ago, the relations of the two parties at the Capital was expressed in these words: "I see a band of fat hogs, each with a foot in the trough. I see a band of lean hogs, each struggling and squealing in a vain effort to replace the first." [6] THE CALL OF THE NATION The relations of the parties to the working man in England are thus vividly set forth by Thackeray: "What are the two great parties to him or to those like him? Sheer and hollow humbug! Absurd claptrap! A silly mummery of dividing and debating, which does not in the least, however it may turn, affect his condition. It has been so ever since the happy days when Whigs and Tories began, and a pretty pastime no doubt it is for both. August parties! Great balances of British Freedom!" Today, these party names mean nothing of any importance. It is of no earthly consequence to you or to me if a Republican as a Republican be Governor of Massachusetts or a Democrat as such be Mayor of Chicago. One may be interested in the results of an election as in the results of a baseball game or a boat race. One may like to see Cornell win at Poughkeepsie, or Harvard at New London, or the White Sox victorious over the Giants and the Pirates, but after the game is over we turn to other things. The matter which concerns us in the election is not the supremacy of one or the other of our make-believe parties, but in the choice of honest and effective men. The Republican party is not [7] THE CALL OF THE NATION dominant in New York because the Governor happens to call himself Republican. It is righteousness which leads, impersonated in a real man, a real representative of enlightened de- mocracy. The only good Republican is one who places manhood above Republicanism, His fellow is the good Democrat who does the same thing. These men may vote the straight ticket. The only straight ticket an honest man can vote is one "which has the crooked names scratched off from it." If by chance the only choice left is among crooked names, it is my duty as a good Republican to vote for the crooked Democrat, to help save my own party from still further dis- grace. The sheep and the goats never break evenly in our politics. The sheep are never all on one side and the goats on the other. The burden erf tariff legislation has been placed on the shoulders of the dominant party by the votes of their supposed opponents. Half the sheep are really goats, as it appears, and, by the same token, half the goats are really sheep in disguise. This disguise is their pretense of partisanship, essential to political regularity,— a make-believe of party where no party really exists. [8] THE CALL OF THE NATION The movement against party dominance and in favor of higher political ideals has its impetus largely with the men of the West. This is be- cause the West is the home of the young men, of college men, of men who think and act. The people are the leaders, and the members of Con- gress who voice their spirit are for the most part the followers of their ovra constituents. The movement is Western only in this sense, that the West is still young and full of exuberent optimism. It is said of Boston that it is "a state of mind," rather than a geographical designation. So with the West, it is a state of mind. It is as possible, though not so easy, to be a man of the West at Pittsburg or Lowell as at Seattle or St. Paul. The spirit of the West is felt wherever young men think and act; and the new democracy, the democracy of action and effectiveness, is a part of its political creed. In the revival of democracy we must not expect all acts of the people to turn out well. Democracy is no guarantee of good government. An ignorant democracy may be anarchy or tyraimy. An intemperate democracy may be the rule of fiends. But in the long run manhood asserts itself. Men learn by their own mistakes. The Spirit of the West Democ- racy a Training School In Civics [9] THE CALL OF THE NATION They provide against like mistakes in the future. Democracy has a higher function than mere good government. We could get law and order, if that is all we want, on cheaper terms. Democ- racy is the great training school in citizenship in which the rules of good government are worked out by experiment. Its success is the best guarantee of good government in the future. When the people know what hurts them, that particular wrong must cease. No nation was ever long held together by force, and all that is worth while in a nation's life endures because it has its seat in the hearts of the people. And in the long run, any people must get as good a government as it deserves. No one ever had permanendy a kind of rule which was better than its merits. Duty of It was said by Aristotle that it is the duty of the Nation the nation to do those things which the people need, which the nation can do better than the individual. This, I think, is a sound doctrine even down to our day. There is some middle ground between absolute collectivism and abso- lute individualism, some stopping place midway between socialism and anarchy. There are some things which are best left to the interest or [10] THE CALL OF THE NATION the patriotism of the individual. Each man must eat his own food, must breathe his own air, must rear his own family, must save or waste the resuhs of his own activities. If we allow him to save, we must allow him to waste. If we leave Him free to rise, we must leave him free to fall, if he has not the strength to maintain himself in competitive society. On the other hand, there are vital needs which can be met orJy by those concerned work- ing together. To be crowded in society demands protection of the individual from society and pro- tection of society from the individual. Neither of these forms of defense is possible without col- lective action. The individual cannot build his own roads, dig his own sewers, maintain his own jails, fill his own graveyards, educate his own children, without the aid or the regulation of others. The line of progress in our democracy is that of the right choice of the proper direction for collective action. These things which the indi- vidual cannot do are the work of the nation. It is our duty to know the highest and to work for its accomplishment. By meeting the best needs of die whole people, party spirit becomes [11] THE CALL OF THE NATION Democ- racy and Expert Service merged into national spirit. As factionalism and sectionalism have become merged in party divi- sions, so must party spirit and the petty tricks by which party domination is secured give way to the larger needs of the larger people. Here in our republic a thousand things need to be done, — things beyond the reach of the single individual or of private associations, but all possible to the united action of all of us working together. To take politics out of politics, we must set politics to doing things we want done. In this we must reconcile the two diverging needs of democracy, that of self-government and that of expert service. We must manage our own affairs because they are ours. We must have the highest skill to help us do it, because they must be done aright. In the republic men govern themselves. The will of the individual is the source of all collective authority. In matters of general relations of free- dom, of duty and rights, our safety lies in the nearness to the people. At every turn the people must be consulted. They are the masters and they must rule. It is the promotion of democracy which [12] THE CALL OF THE NATION justifies the change from the caucus to the prim- ary election. Some consultation must take place before any group of candidates can enter the field. This mutual understanding vitally con- cerns the people. The primary law is a device by which the people are consulted rather than self-constituted party managers. Local option laws of whatever sort have the same justification. Representative government must first represent before it can be effective in carrying out the people's will. Primary laws have been some- times crude, sometimes inefficient; but their pur- pose is a righteous one. It brings our political life out into the open. It clears away the atmos- phere of the saloon. It frees us from the methods of the Star Chamber. In my judgment, the primary election caimot serve its purpose so long as candidates spend unequal sums of money in making their purposes and personeJities knovra to the public. This bur- den must be lifted from their shoulders and trans- ferred to the people themselves. In one of our western states, at present there are four avowed candidates for the nomination as governor in the dominant party. One of these candidates has placed his portrait in almost Function of the Primary Election [13] THE CALL OF THE NATION every saloon in the state. Another has done the same for almost every other meeting place of men. A third is speaking in almost every town on the fundamentals of democracy. The fourth is apparently "lying low," perhaps hoping to profit by the enmities stirred up by the others. Each of these methods is expensive. A success- ful canvass along such lines involves more than an ordinarily good citizen can afford to pay for the honor. If others pay the expenses, they will presumably hope for a reward, and this reward, whatever it may be, will be paid for by the people. Financially "the game is not worth the candle." If the office is ever to seek the man, that is, if the people really want good service, they must themselves, collectively and openly, pay what publicity costs. The elections, primary and final, should have safeguards like those thrown around a jury. Whatever expenditures are deemed necessary the people should meet. No candidate should be allowed to spend any of his own money nor any money contributed by his fol- lowers. When the matter of legitimate cam- paign expenses is properly defined, and the bud- get assumed by the people, a primary law can be devised which shall promote the welfare and the dignity of democracy, [u] THE CALL OF THE NATION However fully we may trust the people, there are matters, difficult and dangerous, in which the people are not experts. TTie common man cannot master the details of conservation, of sanitation, of corporate control, of banking, of finance. The people must approve the principle at stake, and leave the details to those who give their lives to such subjects. In this way, scientific bureaus and executive commissions are built up as necessary adjuncts to democracy. The people must learn from those who know what should be done. This knowl- edge should be crystallized in legislation and legislation should be vitalized by administration. It is the duty of administration to protect the public interest to the utmost limit. Not a foot of ground, not an object of value, should be ceded by public into private hands unless the law makes obligatory such concession. Tlie administration should not move in the middle of the road buttressed on every side by explicit statute. It should be always on the firing line of the public interests to protect them from the encroachments of the individual or of predatory bands of indi- viduals. It should oppose effectively the schemes of all those who would make of public interest a [16] Function of the Scientific Bureau THE CALL OF THE NATION The Smithson- ian Institution matter of private gain, in whatever guise this element of self-seeking shall show itself. This effort has been called "the struggle for democracy, the struggle for the small man against the overpowering influence of the big, politically as well as financially, the struggle to establish that every American is entitled to equal justice in the public service as well as in the courts; that no official is so highly stationed that he may trample ruthlessly and unjustly upon even the humblest American citizen." It was the dream of Spencer Fullerton Baird, the honored Secretary of the Smithsonian Insti- tution, that the little fund in his hands should furnish the nucleus of the expert science so vital to the welfare of democracy. Professor Baird looked forward to the day when groups of men of science working together for the public good in the nation's capital should apply their methods in research to useful ends. They should find out the truth in all matters where truth is useful, where truth brings abundance of life, and the people should make use of this knowledge in legislation and administration. It dignifies scientific knowl- edge to bring it into practical service. The best test of truth is to make it work, and with the [16] THE CALL OF THE NATION Smithsonian Institution, in some cases a direct growth from it, have arisen the National Museum, the Bureau of Fisheries, the Bureau of Forestry, the PuUic Health and Marine Hospital Service, the Geological Survey, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Naval Observatory and the many bureaus of the Department of Agriculture. Be- sides these permanent bureaus all devoted more or less to the exposition of available truth, we have had many special commissions for the pur- pose of the acquisition and the assimilation of expert knowledge of special subjects. Along these lines lies the highest politics. Through the aid of applied science we shall rise from partisan- ship into patriotism. It is not true, of course, that all political ills The New will disappear, even when politics is taken out Politics of politics. Frank Buffington Vroomeui in his lecture at Oxford well says: "It is not claimed by the new politics that legislation will recreate human character or reform the world, or that the State, centralized or decentralized, can ever be- come what Bentham characterized as a 'mill to grind rogues honest.' The vain regret is as old as the memory of Antisthenes, who implored the Senate of his time to make horses of asses by [17] THE CALL OF THE NATION official vote. Tlie new democracy of nationalism claims for itself that it offers the forms of a rational association in a sphere of the state, enlarged and moralized, which will constitute a political en- vironment where everything in the individual that is the best and worth preserving will be encouraged instead of thwarted, and where the kindly impulses of the human heart shall have at least even chances for existence. If the State will offer a political environment which will make the public well-being possible, the public will look out for itself. The pathetic message of history is that the people have never had a chance. An ethical democracy would offer them a chance. Whether the legislative and economic forces which environ the daily lives of multitudes are rational, ethical and social deter- mines the limitations, and to a large extent, the destinies of their lives. Whether these have the constructions of rational foresight or the unplanned and unintelligent accidents of chance will decide whether individuals shall walk in blind alleys or in open avenues." Let us consider a few directions in which the higher forms of national action may now be possible. Lowest of all in real importance, [18] THE CALL OF THE NATION though closest to the thought of the average citizen, are the matters of finance. And very directly in the mind of everyone The Cost comes this fact of the increased price of necessities, o' Living We know that the cost of living on all hands is rising rapidly and uncomfortably. You and I catmot help it. We caimot with certainty find out the cause. We cannot apply any remedy. We must ask our men of science to search for the cause, and if by chance such causes be under public control, we must press our legislators to supply the antidote. To my mind the basal cause in this case is beyond our reach, while the subordinate causes are too many for us to remedy at once. But this may serve as an illustration of our need of expert knowledge, well-considered legislation and forthright action. We may, perhaps, find the fundamental cause to lie in the cheapening of gold, — not through accumulation of masses of it, which may or may not lower its price as measured in terms of service, but through the improvement of metal- lurgical processes by which a pound of gold may now be had for the effort it once took to get six ounces. We know that once a mine required forty dollars of gold to the ton of ore for success- [19 1 THE CALL OF THE NATION ful working, while now a dollar and a half or two dollars will suffice. In the Sierra Nevada the tailings or refuse of old mines are now success- fully worked — for the lost gold — for the third or fourth consecutive time. If this be the basal cause of the rise of prices, the phenomenon must be world-wide, for gold is everywhere, even in so-called silver countries, the measure of all financial values. But if this measure is thus fluctuating, — fallen to half its former value in fifteen years, — and if its running mate, silver, is still less stable in this regard, we may well look to some better standard of value. The students of finance may find out for us whether a firmer standard can possibly exist. Perhaps there is no such thing as stability in the measure of values. Perhaps there is a limit to the science and art of metallurgy. Perhaps in checking the minor or contributory causes in the rise of prices we may mitigate the symptoms of a disorder we cannot heal. For the stress of tariff taxation; the joy of the automobile; the scarcity of food products as compared with the growth of city populations; the general rise of values making it easy to pay off old debts, — easier still to make new ones, — all these are, without question, contributing [20] THE CALL OF THE NATION causes. It is for our collective wisdom to find out what, if an)rthing, there is for us to do about it. By far the most important of all matters re- garding financial interests in the United States is the establishment once for all of a proper defini- tion of franchise or privilege as distinct from property. A franchise or a privilege is granted to some individual or group of individuals by the people at large, to the end of mutual advan- tage. As the franchise will be a source of finan- cial gain to its holder, so should it be of recip- rocal advantage to the public as well. If the franchise allows no corresponding advantage to the people, it has been given away in wantonness. Every privilege involves a re- turn. '"Pas de droit sans devoir," "No right without a duty," is an old French epigram. Yet in most of our franchises, from the tariff for pro- tection to the disposal of coal lands, there has been no thought of the final interests of the public. Over all our procedure the trail of precedents set by the Dartmouth College decision of Justice Marshall and Justice Story still holds sway. The case, in brief, is this. In the year 1 769, [21] No Right Without a Duty The Dart- mouth College Decision THE CALL OF THE NATION King George III granted Letters Patent to the infant Dartmouth College, then chiefly a school for Indians. This charter involved certain privi- leges, supposed to be in the general interest of civilization, but without corresponding reciprocal duties. Long afterwards, when Dartmouth Col- lege became part of the State of New Hampshire, the Commonwealth sought to amend this charter against the will of the College. It was then that Daniel Webster closed an impassioned appeal with the words: "Dartmouth is only a small college, but there are some of us who love her." It was decided that the State could not alter this charter without full consent of the College, even though the public interest be promoted by such change. The charter or Letters Patent constitutes a contract which the state cannot im- pair. In the long opinion of Justice Marshall these words occur: "Any act of legislation which takes away any power or franchises vested by its charter in a private corporation or its corporate officers or which restrains or controls the legitimate exercise of these or transfers them to other persons is a violation of the obligations of that charter." This means that the privilege once granted is [ 29] THE CALL OF THE NATION irrevocable, however negligent the corporation may be in regard to its implied duties toward the public. Still worse in our procedure, a privilege granted to a corporate body in one common- wealth is valid for all others, however repugnant to the policy of these states its operations may be. For such reasons, we have, throughout the Union, corporations formed under the laws of New Jersey, of Kentucky, of Arizona, districts which in some regards, at least, have shown greater laxity than the states in which the corporations in question desire to carry on their business. For such reasons, very lately a water power trust controlling the four chief rivers of Michigan has been incorporated in Maine, after being refused recognition in Michigan. With the vast number of lost franchises now in existence, on which great fortunes have been built up at our expense, we can perhaps do very little. A charter or franchise is "a contract the state cannot impair." We must charge up the past to profit and loss. We must accept the diversion of huge fortunes into private hands as a price we have paid for the sake of the rapid settlement of the country. But it is time to look out for the future. With [23] THE CALL OF THE NATION the new century we should turn over a new leaf. And we are turning it over. The young men, the University men of the country especially, are becoming alive to these issues. Franchise We shall find a way to reverse the precedents Not created by the Dartmouth College decision, Property much as we may love old Dartmouth College. A franchise or privilege granted in the public interest should be a public trust, to be carried out for the welfare of the people, not in opposi- tion to them. A franchise should not be a "vested right" of the holder, but an invested right of the people which the holder of the franchise should be bound to respect. Hitherto these transactions have been largely on the basis of something for nothing, and no one is more convinced of his undeniable right to hold what he has got than the man who has got it for nothing. Something for nothing is the basis of the divine right of kings and lords, of barons, robber barons, coal barons, and all the class of those who hold, not through their own efforts, but through the efforts of others. It is said in the Orient that "one may always know a lord; he loves the cheerful giver." In the supposed public interest men created kings and lords. In British [34] THE CALL OF THE NATION polity, it has been assumed that the nation is strengthened by taking a few men, — eldest sons of eldest sons, — and relieving them from all industrial responsibility and from all financial worry, thereby allowing them to develop as harmonious and perfect examples of our race. Physiologically the experiment is a failure, as men grow strong by effort, and by the surmount- ing of obstacles. But, at bottom, the institution of orders of nobility is a kindly thought of the people at large, at whose expense these orders are instituted. " Fall to each whatever befall. The farmer he must pay for all." And the farmer has been generally willing to do this whenever privilege is acknowledged to be, not a right of caste, but an opportunity for public service. In the United States, the conception of heredi- tary nobility was swept away in the interest of the basal principle of our republic, — that of equality before the law. But the spirit of privi- lege, of rights without duties, still remains, and throughout our history, as in the history of all other nations, it has been potent for evil. And without malice, without confiscation, [26] THE CALL OF THE NATION The Tariff For Protection without violence, personal or financial, it is for us to correct the errors of the past. It is for us patiently, conservatively, but effectively, to elimin- ate all violations of the principle that the law is no respecter of persons, and that the holder of every franchise, of every privilege, is responsible to the people for its right use. A franchise is a trusteeship, not a holding in fee simple. It is certain in the final issue, as between the state of Michigan and the corporations of Maine, as between the needs of the people and the holders of privilege, that the nation must be the final arbiter. As stated by Frank Hendrick,* of Harvard, "there is common law jurisdiction in federal courts, and under that jurisdiction the federal courts, as the ultimate authority of the federal government, must have a final determina- tion of rights arising from contract or the use or possession of property." "After all, it is the people's country. Tliey rule — even the courts." It is here that the two questions of the pro- tective tariff and the conservation of natural re- sources become live problems of today. In the early years of our national life, we were mainly •Quoted by William Allen White: "The Old Oidei Changeth," p. 227. [26] THE CALL OF THE NATION an agricultural people. Farming and fishing, with a modicum of trade, made up the bulk of our economic interests. The tariff is a tax on commerce. It has its chief convenience as a means of raising money, that no one feels its stress, as no one knows where the stress really falls. It falls somewhere, of course, but it does not awaken resentment. Indirect taxation tends to raise the prices of the objects taxed, but its incidence falls on no one in particular. The individual does not foot the bill directly. He never knows what he has to pay, hence he is not so likely to protest when bills are extrava- gant as he is when his resources are strained by direct taxation. Being easily levied and col- lected with little protest, tariff taxation has been a favorite expedient with statesmen of all lands. Its primary purpose is the raising of revenue. Its secondary purpose is the exclusion of competi- tion. Another avowed purpose is the equaliza- tion of wages, allowing higher prices for pro- ducts than in regions where lower wages are paid. Much has been said of "tariff for revenue with incidental protection." This, as Beecher used to say, is "like beefsteak with incidental arsenic." For, always and everywhere, the [27] THE CALL OF THE NATION protection afforded by the tariff has become a violation of our fundamental national principle of equality before the law. It is a privilege originally granted in the supposed interest of the general good, but which has become a form of ownership used for private ends. Tariff pro- tection is universally regarded by its benefici- aries as a vested right, and any attempt to regu- late it is often proclaimed to be a "crime against property." The original purpose of the protective tariff was to encourage diversity of industries. A nation of farmers is dependent on outside manu- facturers, A great nation should be efficient and sufficient, industrially taking care of itself. So the infant industries were sheltered from outside competition. As the nation grew, these grew also, and they grew much more rapidly than the nation, until they now bestride the world, hold- ing senators and ministers, statesmen and men of action, at their beck and call. And their power is such that the American people, still willing to give them all shelter from competition with what they call the pauper labor of other countries, is yet powerless to regulate the bonus they receive. The tariff can be revised only by its friends, that [28] THE CALL OF THE NATION is, by employees chosen by its beneficiaries. We, the people, are generous in giving, but we would like a word to say as to what our gifts shall be. It would be futile to deny that the tariff has served its main purpose. It has diversified our industries; it has added to our aggregate wealth; it has added to our average individual wealth. If it has not added to your wealth or mine as individual persons, it has at least allowed us to bask in the light of opulence, to shine in the reflection of others' splendor. In the same way, we could add to the aggregate wealth or to the average wealth of the nation by any other device which should take money from the poor to give it to the rich. The poor waste their substance in poor ways. The rich, that is, the men of econ- omic power, know how to make money grow. If we could take half the holdings of the common run of men and place these in the hands of the upper class, financially speaking, the exchange would in a short time greatly increase our aggre- gate wealth. It would raise the per capita average. But your condition and mine is a matter of fact. It is not a question of per capita; it is not a matter of average. Increase of average wealth avails nothing for us, if we do not partici- [29] THE CALL OF THE NATION pate in it. And the increase of average by such means is a direct violation of the principle of equality before the law. Every protective tariff is the parent of abuses, because the very basis of it is abuse. It is a privilege without duty. It is a franchise treated as property, and the allowances made to the infant industry never come to an end as the infant matures. It lieeds its milk bottle though grown to be a giant; and the alliance among giants, — the log-rolling among their de- pendents, — have thus far rendered futile every attempt to change the system. There is no scientific tariff, no logical method of benefiting a group of men, however large or however worthy, at the general cost. The only real problem before our excellent tariff commis- sion, beyond postponement of action, is that of devising means of coming back slowly and patiently to just methods of removing protection from the system of taxation, without producing a chaos of values and a financial crash. For every wrong, like a right, becomes vested in time, and to remove a vested wrong works as much imme- diate hardship as to destroy a vested right. This is the meaning of Lowell's words: "They enslave their children's children who make compromise [30] THE CALL OF THE NATION with sin." He may be a dangerous man indeed who would insist on the immediate removal of all shackles. But sooner or later in freedom shackles must fall. It is not that the tarifl is a burden on our trade. We could pay the price of this. It is a burden on our freedom. It is a breach of the principle of equality before the law. As a financial matter, this is of relatively litde importance. It is as a source of moral evil that the protective tariff must receive its condem- nation. In a discussion of the tariff in the Parliament at Ottawa, in 1 877, the Premier, Mr. Mackenzie, used these truthful and suggestive words: "A very slight knowledge of the laws of trade and commerce must satisfy the House, and the country that if any trade is to be fostered, it must be fostered at the expense of some other trade or party. We cannot make money out of air. The mere passing of an Act of Parliament will never establish any trade and it will never foster any industry unless it be to change, from one pocket to another, the industry of the country." In the same vein, Sir Richard Cartwright, in 1878, spoke as follows: "All taxation, however disguised, is a loss per se. It is the duty and the [31] THE CALL OF THE NATION Conserva- tion of Natural Resources The Pre- servation of the Forests sacred duty of the government to take from the people only what is necessary to the proper discharge of the public service. Taxation by any other mode is, in one shape or another, legalized robbery." It is not a far cry from the problem of tariff reform to that of conservation of natural resources. To exploit all our holdings at once is to swell our population, to magnify our assets. "Whatever is not nailed down is mine." This is the motto of the exploiter. "Whatever can be pried loose is not nailed down." This is the second maxim in a country where people are rich, caring little in their present prosperity what shall become of the future. To give national property away creates a vested right in the expectation of receiving further concessions. In the early days, and in the East, the states and the nation gave everything away. Land, forests, coal, water power, all were had for the asking. This created wealth, not wealth by industry, but wealth through luck and skill, wealth through the chances of gambling and adventure. All this was granted in the interest of the rapid filling up of a scantily populated country. The nation grew at the cost of a waste without parallel in the history of the world. [32] THE CALL OF THE NATION This waste was in a large degree necessary under the circumstances, but the time has come when we are no longer forced to continue it. The time is here when those who receive public aid must be held to render a corresponding public service. How this shall be done is a problem for scientific investigation. When the facts are in, it will be a problem for wise legislation and for just and fearless administrators. In the West and Northwest our people still have holdings of tremendous potential value. The greatest forests of the world are those of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade Range and the Coast ranges of Cali- fornia. Tliese are not yet all given away. It is not too late to save them, nor is it too late for us to require that these forests which have passed into private hands be managed for conservation. Millions of acres have been deforested and destroyed, the best lumber taken, the rest burned, and the soil with it, leaving a scar on the earth to the end of time. We have the right to say that even the private owner shall not murder the forest or burn the soil in taking the merchantable trees. It is time for us to enforce the principles of forestry in every lumber camp wherever it may be. And as we require the forest owner to [33] THE CALL OF THE NATION The Rules of Forestry behave himself as a member of a community, so should we, in equity, abate the taxes on standing timber to such a degree that the owner can afford to allow it to stand. TLe purpose of the Forestry Service is de- fined as to insure the permanent benefit of the many rather than the temporary enrichnient of the few. There are, according to Mr. Overton W. Price, two planks in its platform: "To insure through public owTiership and administration the fullest permanent use of those forests which are essential to the public welfare. "To teach American citizens how to make the best use of forests in private hands and of their product, by finding out and telling them how." As between cheap lumber with forest de- struction and dear lumber with forest preserva- tion, no patriotic American should take long to choose. The forests come first in the problem of conservation, because to protect them we must act now or never. The hills of Maine, the fields of Northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota offer a scene of desolation where once crowded the forests of white pine. Other wooded regions, in California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, [34] THE CALL OF THE NATION Colorado, have gone the same way and gone forever. What the lumberman left the fire has taken, root and branch, and the soil as well. We have a lien on the forests that remain. If collec- tively any wisdom is left in us, we shall provide that our children shall also know and love the forests. "Our forestry work has grown," says William Allen White, "from the unselfish work of less than one hundred men, mostly college men, originally devoted to the cause of saving our forests and mines and rivers. They have spent little money, but they have given the best service that trained minds and tireless bodies can give. " 'The sweet serenity of books' never has done so much for this world in so short a time." Said the President of the United States at the Forestry Convention in Washington in 1905: "I ask with all the intensity I am capable of, that the men of the West vnW remember the sharp distinction I have drawn between the man who skins the leind and the man who develops the country. I am against the land skinner every time. Our policy is consistent, — to give to every portion of the public domain the highest possible amount of use." [36] THE CALL OF THE NATION In the Eastern states, where the pine forests once grew, there springs up a second growth of spruce and fir and birch, with other underbrush. But this, too, is doomed in the land-skinning process. The pulp mill swallows it all. It is said that forty acres of second growth may be deforested for a single Sunday edition of a popular newspaper. It may be that this is as it should be. But the people want the judgment of scien- tific experts, and they want legislation and administration in accordance with the advice these men may give. The Con- The forests preserve the rivers. "If the servation Mississippi is the father of waters, the forests are of Rivers the father of the Mississippi." The rivers are raised from the sea by the summer sunshine. The great sun in the West works till he is red in the face pumping up water to the mountains. As it flows to the sea every unit of force it has taken to raise it is given back to the rocks down which its currents fall. This force can be har- nessed and turned to our use, reappearing as heat, as light, or as dynamic power. The waterfalls in the East, mostly small, have long since been given away. Those of the great West, of the long line of the Rocky Mountains, the Sierras, [36] THE CALL OF THE NATION the Cordilleras and the Cascades, are still in part at our disposal. We shall turn them over to private hands for utilization. But if we are wise, this will not be in fee simple, the franchise which is property. We shall retain an interest in them — for ourselves and for our children's children, and above all for the future of the great nation which shall always be greater theui the sum of all its parts. // is home-making, not money making, which builds up the republic. The principles which should rule in the con- servation of water power are set forth by the President of the United States in a message vetoing the bill for the utilization in private hands of the vast water powers of the Rainy River, in which he said: "In place of the present haphazard policy of permanendy alienating valuable public property, we should substitute a definite policy along these lines: First: There should be a limited or carefully guarded grant in the nature of an option or opportunity afforded within reasonable time for development of plans and for execution of the project. [37] The Con- servation of Water Power THE CALL OF THE NATION Second: Such a grant or concession should be accompanied in the act by a provision expressly making it the duty of the designated official to see to it that in approving the plans the maximum development of the navigation and power is assured, or at least in making the plans, these may not be so developed as ultimately to inter- fere with the better utilization of the water or complete development of the power. Third: There should be a license fee charged which, though small or nominal at the outset, can in the future be adjusted so as to secure a control in the interest of the public. Fourth: Provision should be made for a termin- ation of the grant or privilege at a definite time, leaving to future generations the power or authority to renew or extend the concession in accordance with the conditions which may pre- vail at the time." In a later veto of the plan to utilize James River in Missouri another paragraph is added: "Fifth: The license should be forfeited upon proof that the licensee has joined in any con- spiracy or unlawful combination in restraint of trade, as is provided for grants of coal lands in Alaska by the Act of May 28. 1908. I will [38] THE CALL OF THE NATION sign no bill granting a privilege of this character which does not contain the substance of these conditions. I shall esteem it my duty to use every endeavor to prevent this growing monopoly (of electric power), the most threatening which has ever appeared, from being fastened upon the throat of the nation." Besides the use of water as power, we have an equal value in its use for irrigation. In an arid land no river should be allowed to flow to the sea, for every drop of water has its value on the soil. In regions which have been desert, in the central valleys of Idaho, and in many parts of Colorado, Nevada, Utah and the great Southwest, the desert, with the joint action of water and sun- shine, already goes beyond our conceptions of paradise. "The land that God forgot," below the sea level in Imperial County, California, is now the most fertile portion of that most favored state. No one man can accomplish these results working alone. Irrigation is collective in its scope and its initiative, or at least must be undertaken by the nation. There are other things we have to conserve. The coal mines of Alaska outweigh perhaps those of Pennsylvania. We shall not give them [39] The Work of Irrigation THE CALL OF THE NATION The Con- servation of the Coal Measures The Con- servation of the Fisheries all away at once, still less to one man or one group of men, — less still without a suggestion d reciprocal duties. Whatever we do with them should be in our own interest, for our own pur- poses, not in the sole interest of exploitation com- panies. It is not necessary to condemn these companies. Their work in the West has formed one of the most splendid chapters in our national achievement. They have their functions and they should have their reward, but our dealings with them should not all be one-sided. We can afford to scrutinize our contracts with them. We can afford to guard our own interests and those of our children and those of the future of our nation. The same remark applies to our fisheries. Every year Alaska pays the whole cost of her purchase money through her salmon fisheries. The salmon fisheries of Eraser River and Puget Sound, of the Columbia and the Sacramento, are scarcely less important. All these may be thrown away by reckless methods of exploitation. Timely legislation has saved the fisheries of Alaska, it may save those of Puget Sound, but those of the Columbia have been wantonly destroyed by lack of co-operation between the [40] THE CALL OF THE NATION states concerned. The enormous fisheries of the Great Lakes, the most important fresh water fisheries on the globe, have suffered greatly from exploitation, only lately remedied by the fish hatching stations of the United States, and of the provident commonwealths of Ohio and Penn- sylvania. TTie fur seal herd of the Pribilof Islands, St. The Fur Paul and St. George, has likewise yielded its Seal Herd millions in revenue and it will do so again when once we can agree to prohibit the reckless and cruel destruction of breeding females at sea. To kill in open water is a right given to other nations by international law as it now reads, although righteously forbidden by our own statutes to our own people. If Canada and Japan cannot be shamed into abandoning this right, it is for our plain financial interest to pay them to do so. Where there were once on the Pribilof Islands two or three millions of breeding females, there are now less than fifty thousand. But the great herd will come back when the killing is once more, as before 1 885, confined to the young males. Twenty-nine out of every thirty of these, in this group of polygamous and fiercely fighting beasts, are destined to be superfluous, never being able to break their way into the breeding herd. [41] THE CALL OF THE NATION An Inter- national Game Law The Develop- ment of Water Ways Some day, no doubt, the nations will agree on an International Game Law, whereby to the great beasts of the sea the open ocean shall be a sanctuary, as the open streets of our cities are free to men of all nations. Then the killing of whales, fur seals, sea otters, sea lions, hair seals, sea elephants, walruses and the rest will be con- fined to the three mile limit from the shores to which they repair for the breeding season. This being once accomplished, we shall next hope for an International Game Law for man, the most important of all seafaring animals. In this law the sea shall be an open haven, an open sanctuary, and there shall be no killing, "no war and no war engines," beyond three miles from shore! Along with the conservation of the water goes the development of water ways. In discus- sion of this I may quote from a message of the President of the United States in 1907, trans- mitting to Congress the report of an Inland Water- ways Commission which should consider plans for a waterway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a "practical extension of our coast line into the very heart of the country." "Our river systems are better adapted to the [42) THE CALL OF THE NATION needs of the people than those of any other country. In extent and distribution, navigability and ease of use, they stand first. Yet the rivers of no other civilized country are so poorly devel- oped, so little used, or play so litde part in the industrial life of the nation as those of the United States. In view^ of the use made of rivers else- where, the failure to use our own is astonishing, and no thoughtful man can believe that it will last. "The Commission finds that it was unregu- lated railroad competition which prevented or destroyed the development of commerce on our inland waterways. TTie Mississippi, our greatest natural highway, is a case in point. At one time the tragic upon it was without a rival in any country. The report shows that commerce was driven from the Mississippi by railroads. While production was limited, the railways, with their convenient terminals, gave quicker and more satisfactory service than the waterways. Later they prevented the restoration of river traffic by keeping down their rates along the rivers, re- couping themselves by higher charges elsewhere. They also acquired water fronts and terminals to an extent which made competition impossible. [43] THE CALL OF THE NATION Throughout the country the railways have secured such control of canals and steamboat lines that today inleuid waterway transportation is largely in their hands. This was natural, and doubtless inevitable under the circumstances, but it should not be allowed to continue unless under careful government regulation. "Comparatively litde inland freight is carried by boat which is not carried a part of its journey by rail also. As the report shows, the successful development and use of our interstate waterways will require intelligent regulations of the relations between rail and water traffic. When this is done the railways and waterways will assist in- stead of injuring each other. Both will benefit, but the chief benefit will accrue to the people in general through quicker and cheaper trans- portation. "The report rests throughout on the funda- mental conception that every waterway should be made to serve the people as largely and in as many different ways as possible. It is poor busi- ness to develop a river for navigation in such a way as to prevent its use for power, when by a little foresight it could be made to serve both purposes. We carmot afford needlessly to sacri- [44] THE CALL OF THE NATION fice power to irrigation, or irrigation to domestic water supply, when by taking thought we may have all three. Every stream should be used to the utmost. No stream can be used unless such use is planned for in advance. When such plans are made we shall still find that, instead of inter- fering, one use can often be made to assist an- other. Each river system, from its headwaters in the forest to its mouth on the coast, is a single unit, and should be treated as such. Navigation of the lower reaches of a stream caimot be fully developed without the control of floods and low waters by storage and drainage. Navigable channels are directly concerned with the pro- tection of source waters emd with soil erosion, which takes the materials for bars and shoals from the richest portions of our farms. The use of a stream for domestic and municipal water- supply, for power, and in many cases for irriga- tion, must eJso be taken into full account." The present writer has no sympathy with the economic theories which lead cities to engage in industrial work, to establish factories, laundries and beJ^e-shops in competition with or in sup- pression of ordinary enterprise. But there are strong reasons in favor of muni- [45] The Owner- ship of Public Utilities THE CALL OF THE NATION cipal ownership of public utilities, and especially of those which in the nature of things constitute a monopoly. Waiving all discussions of the general principles involved, it may be claimed that municipal ownership is an antidote to petty partisanship, to "peanut politics," and to the lower forms of politicad activity. Granted that municipal ownership in a badly governed com- munity leaves chance for waste and graft, it also ofiers ein opportunity to engineering skill and to financial integrity. If we accept the boss's dic- tum that "the people always get what is coming to them," it is only necessary for a city to deserve good service in order to receive it. Responsibility for action is the best inducement to attract cap- acity for it. Good men can be had for the public service when conditions are such that they can do their work as it ought to be done. Political corruption is a static condition. Graft thrives where there is "nothing doing," — when men's interest is drawn away from public affairs. Immigra- In no field is there greater need for expert tion knowledge and scientific patience than in the questions which cluster about foreign immigra- tion. Shall this nation be the "Melting Pot" to 146] THE CALL OF THE NATION which all people of the earth freely contribute, to their own advantage if not to ours? If so, what will be the final result to our people and to our institutions? And if we wish to admit those irrunigrants only who have, in potentiality, the genius of co-operative citizenship, who shall decide? What lines can we draw in Asia or in Europe between those who by industry and self- control can do their part as citizens and those who caimot? The "predatory rich" and the desultory poor are not good citizens. Sometimes the predatory poor are even worse. A good citizen is one who can take care of himself, and who can rear his family without overreaching, — v«thout demanding special privi- leges or special support. There are some strains of blood from which no good citizens come. The industrial interests demand and need un- differentiated labor, such as Asia, in unlimited amount, can supply. But unskilled labor, of whatever race, means bad citizenship. An economic good may be a civil and social menace. A democracy can know no class consciousness, no class spirit, no class legislation. The dis- tinctions of aristocracy, bourgeois and proletariat, are foreign to America, and their persistence [47] THE CALL OF THE NATION would be fatal to democracy. We are none of these. We want none of these. But the quaran- tine of democracy cannot keep them from our shores. TTie nations are so closely bound to- gether in this narrow world that whatever ill comes to man anywhere, in some degree comes also to us. The most vital question concerning immigra- tion, and the one most hard to solve, is the prob- lem of eugenics, the problem of building up our nation with folks of sound heredity. " Like the seed is the harvest." This is the great law of biology. It is the great law on which national permanence depends, as well as agricultural prosperity. The strength of the Republic can be maintained orJy by strong men, and the sons of strong men. There is nothing in forms of government which will maintain a nation if manhood fails. Men who can take care of themselves are by that fact a part erf democracy. Men who caimot are by that fact the subjects of tyranny. It matters not whether that tyrant be a czar, or a trades union, or the warden of a poorhouse. The tyrant controls where men are not masters of their own fate. The tyrant is the creature of the weakling and the mob. [48] THE CALL OF THE NATION No part of these immigration problems can be solved offhand. None of them is ready yet for final solution. But there is no solution which shall break up our people into caste and class. Neither high nor low, but just plain citizens, — this is the old and the new and the perennial demand of democracy. The movement towards intelligent action on the part of the nation does not involve socialism nor any movement toward socialism, nor in the direction of any other remedy by which it is pro- posed to cure our economic ills. As President Eliot has clearly pointed out, the American people will adopt a given line of action only so long as it is practical. They turn from it at once when it ceases to yield useful results. This quality will save them from the provincialism of following any one idea to its ultimate results, regardless of other ideas which come in at cross- purposes. There is no chance in America for socialism, anarchism, individualism, collectivism or any other "ism" as an exclusive and excluding finality. William Allen White observes that the Ameri- can citizen "now finds himself thinking not merely in cities, not merely in states, but as an [49] THE CALL OF THE NATION American. TTie great achievement of the past ten years is the exaltation of the individual by putting him in accord, not with the opinion of the leaders in business, of politics, of the college world, butwith the opinion of his kind, — a co-ordi- nated, definitely formed, characteristic American conviction of the iheaning of life." It is no longer true of any of us. North or South, as of Randolph of Roanoke, and of the best of his contemporaries: "Beyond Virginia's border line. His patriotism perished." Since Randolph's day we have many experiences and some of us have lived in many states. Our interests in the nation, the interests of humanity, are not hemmed in by these artificial boimdaries. And what is already national becomes very soon international. America has been called "the one international country of the world," and in the best states of her public opinion she is rapidly coming to deserve this tide. The The same national spirit is promoted by Panama great governmental undertakings, like that of the Canal Panama Canal. Whatever we may think of the various stages in this work, the fact remains that the nation is achieving a gigantic service to the [sol THE CALL OF THE NATION world. Such a work cannot be that of a party, the diversion of a party leader. It is the work of a nation in co-operation, done in the open before the eyes of the world. The tendency of such enterprises is to elevate our political life, to raise action above partisanship, to "take politics out of politics," And one must confess that the same observa- Cuba and tion applies in a degree to our operations in the the Philip- Philippines and especially to our relations with P^^^s Cuba. The writer of this litde book has never had much respect for the avowed motives, and none at all for the actual ones, which led us into the war with Spain. He believes that the later war of subjugation of the Filipino peoples was one which a wise statesmanship, to say nothing of common decency, should have avoided. He does not believe that a people too weak or too quarrelsome to govern themselves will ever be well governed by an outside nation. He believes, with Walter Walsh, that "military civilizations are a curse to citizens, a blight on citizenship, a mockery of every civic ideal." Moreover, in his judgment the theory and the machinery of our republic are especially ill-fitted for any manage- ment of affairs not our own. [61] THE CALL OF THE NATION Nevertheless, we may admit that a policy we do not approve has been ably and patriotically carried out. Nothing in the history of national occupation has been more worthily handled than our own recent occupation of Cuba. To take charge of a dependency in a state of anarchy and infested by foul disease, to give it peace, order and sanitation, and then to withdraw abso- lutely from all occupation and from all repayment, is the very knight-errantry among nations. Such an attitude towards weaker powers will have its ultimate reward, for as Mr. Roosevelt once said, "It always pays for a nation to be a gentleman." But it is an attitude wholly new in the history of military occupation, and wholly opposed to all its methods and traditions. The full stoiy of the Philippines is not yet written. The case offers many complications and many difficulties, not the least of which is that the islands are so far away that most of our people have but a dim notion of what takes place there. Yet on the whole, with some blunders, some lapses, and with many incidents which may be either or neither, our behavior since peace was established has been on the whole creditable to us. In any event, we have not occupied the [S2] THE CALL OF THE NATION Philippines as Republicans, nor will we aban- don them as Democrats. Our relation, what- ever it may be, is national, and whatever its evils, it has had one virtue: it has helped us to take politics out of politics. But at the same time it has plunged us into the crooked game which we are pleased to call "world politics," a game not dependent on justice and reason but on "sea-power" and the threats which make militarism effective. To return from world politics to local affairs. Corpora- One of the greatest problems before our people is ''O^s as that of the control of corporations. These huge ^ "artificial persons," as they were styled in the Dartmouth College case, compete with the in- dividual on unequal terms. The individual is moral and mortal. The corporation is immoral and immortal, — non-moral and non-mortal, if you choose. The individual has to square his life with the rules of hygiene, the rules of dietetics, the rules of ethics, the conventions of society. His span of life is three score years and ten, or if by virtue of strength it be four score years, the last years must be devoted to other interests than business. It is only late in life that the individual is established in business at all, and at the end [53] tors THE CALL OF THE NATION National Control of Corpora- tions of his period his estate is subject to division and settlement. The honest, well-managed corpora- tion becomes a competitor with great advantages on its side. The bankrupt corporation, devised perhaps for the purpose of robbing its stockhold- ers, is even more dangerous when it comes into competition with the individual. The corpora- tion as such, knows nothing of conventionalities. It is controlled only by statutes, and as its opera- tions may be as wide as the nation, these local statutes are difficult, conflicting and ineffective. The corporation may live on indefinitely through many generations. It is virtueJly immortal, so far as its relations to competitors are concerned. It is clear that some national treatment of these problems is necessary. It is evident that the answer is not found in fighting corporations as such, or in attempting to destroy them individually by adverse legislation. Too many reformers fail to see the line which separates reform from black- mail. But there is such a line. The corporation is a permanent part of our civic organization. It has come to stay. The problem for our scientific advisers is two-fold: how to protect the individ- ual from undue overreaching on the part of the corporation, and how to protect the corporation [5*] THE CALL OF THE NATION from wanton attacks on the part of theindividual, — in other words, to reduce the stress of competition as far as may be to the plane of justice, I do not know how this is to be done. Perhaps no one knows. It may be the problem involved is likewise insoluble. But to attempt to solve it is a legitimate effort on the part of our economists and statesmen, and the final answer will be a national one. Our efforts in this direction will go, — have gone, — a long way towards showing the futility of partisanship in the face of national needs. They have helped us to take politics out of politics. It is true that great fortunes have been made in America, fortunes unduly great, by the appro- priation of the great natural resources we have so lavishly thrown away. It is true that other great fortunes have been made by taking advantage of the laxity of our statutes governing co-operative enterprise. Apparently the time has come when both of these chemnels to affluence must be closed. Good morals as well as good policy demand that even the strong and the wise, the leaders in enterprise and the kings of finance, shall no longer count on something for nothing as a base of their operations. [S5] THE CALL OF THE NATION Great Fortunes held in Trust But in the appalling concentration of wealth in America there is this much of encouragement: our masters are of our own kind. They are members of our democracy. They are believers in democracy. They aim not to be tyrants over slaves, but men among men. In great part they have recognized that the possession of great wealth is a stewardship. It involves public duties of its own. In Europe the men of great wealth have striven constandy and insistendy to make that wealth greater, to build families and dynasties, and to hold the property together by all the force of entail. We never hear that the great lords who own English cities like Sheffield and Devonport and Arundel give money to the nation or to any great work which shall elevate Great Britain. At the most, they give to promote partisan suc- cess. They may throw coin to beggars or largess to dependents, but their names are associated with no universities. They found no schools of research. They afford no help to education or sanitation or temperance or peace. Even more hopeless is the case of Continental Europe. From the first Mayer Amschel, with the sign of the Red Shield over his dingy pawn- [56] THE CALL OF THE NATION broker's shop in Frankfort-on-the-Main, to the last of the great bankers of Europe, not a sovereign once amassed finds its way back into the service of the people. From the Battle of Bunker Hill, after which the Red Shield acted as agents for the sale to England of the hireling soldiers of Hessen-Cassel, receiving twenty millions for their services, the need of the nations has been the Rothschilds' opportunity. From the next of the family, in London, who heaped untold millions through seizing his chance at Waterloo, to the end of the chapter in all the nations of Europe, the same story is told again and again. Piling higher and higher to the end of time, — this seems to be the function of great wealth in Europe. Great wealth in America does not always blind its possessor to the fact that the nation which gave the opportunity for enterprise has also a lien on its results. It is safe to predict that with- in three generations every vast accumulation of property made in the United States will be dissipated or else applied to public uses, — the latter in some cases almost as a matter of course. No such tendency has yet appeared among the great fortunes of Europe. [57] THE CALL OF THE NATION Civil The reform of our Civil Service, — the work Service of good men for more than a generation and now Kerorm practically accomplished, — has been a most efficient means of "taking politics out of politics." It has in large degree removed the merely pecu- niary reward for personal or partisan service. But the writer can remember when an illiterate but clever Indiana politician who could not write his name was made head of a clerical bureau at Washington, at the order of an honored Sena- tor. The spoils system was then in full sway and vitiated almost every branch of govermnent activity. In those days. Professor Baird once tried to place a naturalist instead of a politician as guardian and investigator of the animals in the Yellowstone National Park. His choice fell on a young man in the University of Indiana, now a curator in one of our great museums. The Congressman of the district heard of the appoint- ment and claimed it as his own. He had never shown such interest and alacrity in anything before. His first choice was a young man, a henchman of his, who could not take the appoint- ment, being confined at the time for larceny in the Monroe County jail. The second choice was [58] THE CALL OF THE NATION a young man from Morgan County, who received the telegram announcing the appointment just as he was trying to ride a horse on Sunday morning through the door of a Martinsville saloon. The horse was sober and would not budge. The young man, in due time, died of alcoholism at the Mammoth Hot Springs. It is impossible to over-estimate the moral change in the politics of the whole country when the burden of the spoils system was lifted from it. And this change is especially marked at the National Capital. Our administrative service is not perfect; it may not be ideal; but it ap- proaches as near perfection as any similarly vast body of employees in any nation of the earth. Important and pressing as are the long array of matters in which politics impinge on finance, there are other needs of the people even more pressing, — needs to be met by co-operative action alone, and which, therefore, become of nationeil interest. In the fore-front among these comes the National matter of sanitation. It is scarcely forty years Sanitation ago that the world had its first conception of the reasons for cleaning up. It is only lately that we have known that all infectious or epidemic [59] THE CALL OF THE NATION diseases are the work of parasitic organisms with- in the tissues of the body. These pareisites, — especially the smaller ones, animals or plants, microscopic and composed each of one cell, — are known collectively as microbes. The words bacteria, bacilli apply to microbes of the nature of plants, while the parasite protozoa or animal microbes have more or less in common with the minute formless creatures called Amoeba. Floating In the decade of the seventies, Dr. Bastian of Matter in London filled tubes vnth organic infusions or soups, heated them to the boiling point, sealed them up, and found later that these infusions teemed with microscopic organisms. From this he inferred that these organisms were spontaneously generated in these infusions, and that life could be produced from matter which was no longer alive. At about the same time Dr. Tyndall, in Lon- don, was endeavoring to throw a beam of light through a metallic tube without losing any part of this light as it passed through the air. Al- ways some part of the light was stopped by motes in the air. These motes may be shown and "made to dance naked in the beams," if a slender line of light rays be sent across almost [60] THE CALL OF THE NATION any dark room, especially one inhabited by man. Tyndall found that by heating his tubes these motes would be destroyed and the light rays would pass unchecked. This would show that the motes are of organic nature, for heating would not destroy sand or inorganic dust. From these experiments, Tyndall learned of the existence of "floating matter in the air," that this floating matter was organic, and that if sown in proper infusions, it would grow and multiply, each cell dividing into two cells over and over again. In brief, this organic dust is made up of dried bacteria. By many trials Tyndall reached the conclu- sion that the experiments which seemed to show spontaneous generation were simply defective. The germs, of one sort or another, present almost everywhere, had not been all destroyed in the boiling, or else fresh germs were admitted when the tubes were sealed. In any case, Tyndall was able to show that with experiments thorough- ly carried out, or carried out in the high Alps away from possible germ contamination, there was no evidence of spontaneous generation. The old dictum, "Otnne Vivum ex Vivo, " "All life from life," seemed to be fully vindicated. [61] THE CALL OF THE NATION At about the same time in Paris, Louis Pasteur, chemist, undertook the study of a contagious disease of silk worms. He found that the "virus," which was the term then in use to describe the instrument of contagion, was made up of living organisms. These living organisms caused the disease. Such organisms were of many species, and these species could be reared separately. Each one could cause its own par- ticular kind of disease. It was found that there were also many species which were not related to disease. Pasteur demonstrated that the process of fermentation, the decomposition of sugar, form- ing among other compounds alcohol and car- bonic acid gas, was due to the growth of mi- crobes in the sugar solution. He called fermen- tation "life without air," the molecules of sugar being broken up by a process analogous to breathing. Pasteur showed that all putrefaction, all mortification, all decay of flesh, was due to the presence of microbes in the albuminous tissues. Carlyle once said that there must be force still in a fallen leaf, else how could it rot? It rots because there is force within it, life within it, the life of the included microbes which tear the dead leaf to pieces. [62] THE CALL OF THE NATION Referring to the rapidity of generation, Linnaeus once said that three flies (with their progeny) would devour a dead horse as quickly as a lion. Three bacteria with their progeny would do it still more quickly. In these same days, Dr. Lister, in the hospital at Eldinburgh, worked at his problem of antiseptic surgery. An antiseptic is a substance which arrests decay. We know now that antiseptics are those substances fatal to microbes. With clean knives, in clean air. Lister was enabled to do surgical operations without the danger of gangrene. Gangrene or mortification was the bane of surgery until Lister's time. The dis- covery of the germs which cause gangrene en- abled him and all his competent successors to avoid mortification and blood poisoning. Tyn- dall declared that now that we have learned to know our enemies, we shall know how to fight them. Since his time, most wonderfully has this prediction been carried out, and a knowledge of these organisms and of the means of destroy- ing them lies at the basis of the greater medicine, the medicine of prevention, — the science and art of sanitation. To understand what national sanitation means [63] THE CALL OF THE NATION The we may refer to the once recurrent ravages of Yellow yellow fever. Not only was this disease present at all times in Havana, Vera Cruz and other ports of tropical America, but summer Jifter summer it came to New Orleans, and at inter- vals to Savannah, Charleston, Memphis and recurrently even as far north as Philadelphia. The deaths were many, the communities were fear-stricken, but there was nothing to be done, save for those to flee who could, — the rest to wait for the frost. We now know, thanks to the heroic men who have taken their lives into their hands to find the truth that makes men free, that the yellow fever is caused by a microbe of animal nature allied to the forms that cause malaria. We know that malaria comes not through bad air or bad water but from the bite of a mosquito which has already bitten an infected patient. We know that the common mosquito (Culex) does not sin in this regard, but that the poison carriers are among the forms called Anopheles and Stegomyia. We know that yellow fever is carried by these mosquitoes and in no other way. In the infected districts men no longer trust alone to appeals to saints, nor yet to the whitewashing of outbuild- [64 1 THE CALL OF THE NATION ings. Our trust is in kerosene, which, spread over stagnant waters, destroys the mosquito brood. We may also at times trust to corrosive subHmate, which will reach some cases which coal oil will not touch. The sanitation of a town is a collective and not an individual action. Only the Government can establish and enforce quarantine. At the late epidemic of yellow fever in New Orleans nothing could be simpler than the work of the Marine Hospital Service in stamping out the disease by exterminating the mosquito. As men are more valuable than property, in our expendi- ture of public money, we have no work more im- portant than this. It is not a question of schools of medicine nor of rivalry between one and an- other group of physicians. There is really but one possible school of physicians under the con- ditions of today: it is composed of all men and women devoted to the work of healing whose training rests on the applications of tested science to the saving of men's bodies. There can be no application of science without science itself. National sanitation is the application of scien- tific knowledge to prevent the needless waste of human life. The people of the Republic are [65] THE CALL OF THE NATION The Bubonic Plague in London entitled to the best knowledge and the most effective enforcement. In the year 1 664, the Black Death, known now as the Bubonic Plague, visited the city of Lon- don, and in a few months one hundred thousand of its inhabitants died. In 1 903 the same Black Death came to another great city as large, as reckless, and as wicked as London was in those days, but San Francisco was in the grasp of science, and but two hundred people perished. The difference lay in the strong arm of a govern- ment which had access to the truth about such plagues and visitations and which acted upon its knowledge. The strength of the United States Marine Hospital Service, directed by the intelli- gence of Dr. Blue, Dr. Rucker and their associ- ates, saved the lives of a hundred thousand people in the State of California. In London the plague ran its course until the cause was exhausted. It was noticed that myriads of rats died in the London streets, but it was two hundred years before the thought came to anyone that the sickening animals caused the Black Death. Now we know that the disease is an affection of the rats and that the microbe is carried by the flea from rat to rat and [66] THE CALL OF THE NATION from rat to man. So in San Francisco every rat was killed, every rat hole closed, every garbage box made inaccessible. When this was done, the affliction was over. But the fleas carried the disease from the rats to the ground squirrels or spermophiles in the country, and so it was neces- sary that these too should be exterminated in order to make immunity secure. The following description is taken from Daniel De Foe's Journal* of the Plague in London: "It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbors, heard, in ordinary discourse, that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1 663, whither they say it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia, others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again. "We had no such thing as printed news- papers in those days to spread rumors and reports *As quoted by Dr. William Freeman Snow, Bulletin California Board of Health, 1909. [67] THE CALL OF THE NATION of things; and to improve them by the invention of men as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who conesponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only, so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over, but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumor died off again, and people began to for- get it as a thing we were very little concerned in and that we hoped was not true, till the latter end of November or the end of December, 1 664, when two men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the Plague in Long Acre, or rather at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in en- deavored to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighborhood, the Secretaries of State got knowl- edge of it; and concerning themselves to inquire about it, in order to be certain of the truth, two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the house and make inspection. This they did, and finding evident- tokens of the sickness upon [68] THE CALL OF THE NATION both the bodies that were dead, they gave their opinions puUicIy, that they died of the plague; whereupon it was given in to the parish-clerk, and he also returned them to the hall; and it was printed in the weekly bill of mortality in the usual memner, thus: — 'Plague 2. Parishes in- fected 1." "It was now the beginning of August and the plague grew very violent and terrible in the place where I lived; and Dr. Heath coming to visit me, and finding that I ventured so often out in the streets, earnestly persuaded me to lock myself up and my family, and not to suffer any of us to go out of doors; to keep all our windows fast, shutters and curtains close, and never to open them; but first to make a very strong smoke in the room, where the window or door was to be opened, with rosin and pitch, brimstone, or gunpowder, and the like; and we did this for some time: but as 1 had not lain in a store of provision for such a retreat, it was impossible that we could keep within doors entirely." "And here I must observe again that this necessity of going out of our houses to buy pro- visions was in a great measure the ruin of the [69] THE CALL OF THE NATION whole city, for the people catched the distemper on these occasions, one of another; and even the provisions themselves were often tainted, at least I have great reason to believe so; and therefore I cannot say with satisfaction, what I know is repeated with great assurance, that the market people, and such as brought provisions to town, were never infected. "As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe that the Court removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them; for which I cannot say that I ever saw they showed any great token of thankfulness, and hardly anything of reformation, though they did not want being told that their crying vices might, without breach of charity, be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible judgment upon the whole nation." "The apprehensions of the people were like- wise strangely increased by the error of the times; in which, I think, the people, from what prin- ciple I carmot imagine, were more addicted to prophesies and astrological conjurations, dreams and old wives' tales, than ever they were before or since; whether this unhappy temper was [70] THE CALL OF THE NATION originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it, that is to say, by printing pre- dictions and prognostications, I know not; but certain it is, books frightened them terribly; such as 'Lily's Almanack;' 'Gadbury's Analogical Pre- dictions;' 'Poor Robin's Almanack,' and the like; also several pretended religious books: one entitled — 'Come out of her, my people, lest you be partaker of her plagues.' " "On the other hand, it is incredible, and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and comers of streets were plastered over with doctors' bills and papers of ignorant fellows quacking and tampering in physic, and inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which were generally set off with such flourishes as these, viz. INFALLIBLE preventive pills against the plague. NEVER-FAILING preservatives against the infection. SOVEREIGN cordials against the corruption of the air. EXACT regu- lations for the conduct of the body in case of an infection. Anti-pestilential pills. INCOMPAR- ABLE drink against the plague, never found out before. AN UNIVERSAL remedy for the plague. The ONLY TRUE plague water. [71] THE CALL OF THE NATION The ROYAL antidote against all kinds of in- fection; and such a number more that I caimot reckon up, and if I could would fill a book of themselves to set them down." "One thing I cannot omit here, and, indeed I thought it was extraordinary, at least it seemed a remarkable hand of divine justice, viz., that all the predictors, astrologers, fortune-tellers, and what they called cunning-men, conjurors, and the like, calculators of nativities, and dreamers of dreams, and such people, were gone and van- ished, not one of them was to be found. I am verily persuaded that a great many of them fell in the heat of the calamity, having ventured to stay upon the prospect of getting great estates, and indeed their gain was but too great for a time, through the madness and folly of the people; but now they were silent, many of them went to their long home, not able to foretell their own fate or to calculate their ovra nativities. Some have been critical enough to say, that every one of them died. I dare not affirm that; but this I must own, that I never heard of one of them that ever appeared after the calamity was over. "A plague is a formidable enemy and is [72] THE CALL OF THE NATION armed with terrors that every man is not suffi- ciently fortified to resist, or prepared to stand the shock against." "I must here take further notice that nothing was more fatal to the inhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the people them- selves, who, during the long notice or warning they had of the visitation, yet made no provision for it." Certain records of the Board of Health of the State of California in 1906 may be con- trasted with these records of De Foe as showing the attitude of science as contrasted with that of ignorance and superstition. May, 1906. "I visited San Francisco and conferred with President Regensburger and Dr. Blue. The cases of the plague in the Latin Quarter, and also the finding of an infected rat outside of China- town, had caused alarm. We felt that the rat must go, and President Regensburger sent a communication to the City Board asking them to make war upon them. I also sent to all news- papers in the State a short article urging the cities and people to aid in the work." [73] The Bubonic Plague in California THE CALL OF THE NATION May 17. 1906. "I met Dr. Currie and E>r. Blue of the U. S. Public Health in Oakland to discuss the question of the plague among squirrels. These rodents have been dying off in Alameda, Contra Costa Counties and elsewhere in the State, and as several human cases of plague have occurred where the epizootic is worst, there is a possibility that the squirrels have the disease. As this is of national importance it should be investigated by the general government. . . ." October 2, 1906. "Two more human cases of plague . . . both probably traceable to squirrel infection." November 6, 1906. "The federal authorities have now foimd six counties .... Alameda, Contra Costa, San Benito, Santa Clara, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin . . . having foci of plague infec- tion among squirrels. One wood-rat has proved to be infected. No rabbits or ground-owls have thus far shown infection. It was feared there might be a coimection between the plague in the rodents and that in man. One man who died August 9th had been hunting squirrels just before being taken sick, eJso a man at Pinole. The man [74] THE CALL OF THE NATION from San Ramon worked on the railroad con- struction gang and could easily have been bitten by fleas from sick squirrels." November 16, 1906. "I learned that a Chinaman had died with symptoms suspicious of plague on the steamer 'J. D. Peters.' Located the rooms in which he stopped and had them fumigated. "On account of the Plague having shown itself in Contra Costa County, I wrote to General Wyman asking that the ships laying at anchor in the bay at Martinez be fumigated for the de- struction of rats." At about the time of the plague in London, the "Black Death" came also to Oberammergau, a village of herdsmen and wood-carvers in the Oberland of Bavaria. One third of the people died, it is said, and the others made 'a vow that if God should stay the plague, they would on every tenth year forever after repeat the story of the tragedy of the cross.' When this vow was taken, the records tell us, the plague ceased, and not another person perished, and ever since then on every tenth year, with varying fortunes and interruptions, and with a rare reverence and [75] The Bubonic Plague at Oberam- mergau THE CALL OF THE NATION The Plagues of the Tropics artistic grace, the people of Oberammergau have shown their Passion Play. But to the eye of science, the turning point in Oberammergau, as in San Francisco and in Lon- don, was the death of the rats and their attend- ant fleas. That the human race may always outlast the rodent is encouraging proof of its vitality, but the use of science for the purposes of government will forever render this test of endur- ance unnecessary. Besides the plagues, black and yellow, the one the curse of tropical Asia, the other of tropi- cal America, the one borne by the Heas, the other by the mosquitoes, there are many similar plagues, borne from diseased animals to men by insect agencies. The common house fly is care- less where he wipes his feel, and he may bear the germs of typhoid fever, of scarlet fever or of diphtheria. The tsetse-fly in Africa carries the germs of the sleeping sickness from the crocodile to men. The mountain spotted fever of the Northwest is transferred from ground squirrels to man by the wood tick. The mosquito in Samoa carries the minute worm, Filaria, which pro- duces the hideous distortion of elephantiasis. A friend investigating trachoma tells me that the [76] THE CALL OF THE NATION germ of this almost incurable disease of the eye- lids is borne by the horse-fly. Some other insect probably bears the dread pellagra. The slums of Asia and Africa doubtless include many another noxious organism, parasitic on man and animals, which may be brought to our shores, and which can be stamped out only by knowl- edge and power working together, — by the brain of the investigator and the strong arm of the United States. Other such plagues we have already. The The white plague of tuberculosis or consumption white decimates our population. We know that its germ thrives in close, damp rooms. We know that sunshine and air are fatal to it. We know that there is no case of this malady without infection from some sufferer from tuberculosis, and we know that such infection is everywhere. The germs are in eJmost every dwelling house and in every railway carriage, in every public hall. They are destroyed in the healthy normal resistant body. The phagocytes or protective cells in the blood devour them before they have gained a foothold with you and me. We are relatively immune thus far, else we should not be here today. But there are hosts of men and THE CALL OF THE NATION women less fortunate than we, who are not naturally immune. Only science and the Govern- ment can save these from infection. It is be- lieved that resolute action on the part of civil authority could stamp out this curse, and we have a right to hope that this twentieth century will see this result accomplished. It was the pious Dr. Watts, who sang in the old pre-scientific days: "Diseases are thy servants. Lord, They come at thy command." This is not the first time that men have identified the Providence of God with their own improvidence. Some forms of disease have been met by a serum which destroys the attacking germs, or which otherwise renders the patient definitely immune. By such means diphtheria, among other germ diseases, has been taken from the list of fatal maladies. This line of attack is now being extended in every direction. The In our country vaccination has almost con- Small-Pox quered the small-pox. There was once a time in Europe when pox disfigurement was almost a matter of course. A servant who had not suffered from small-pox, and who was not, there- fore, immune, could not find service in the houses of the rich. In many villages of Mexico small- [78] THE CALL OF THE NATION pox still rages as in mediaeval Europe, but in our country the arm of the law has provided for its elimination, and the few who still defy vaccina- tion are relatively safe in a community which has provided for its own security and therefore for theirs. With the plagues, black, white and yellow, and not less terrible than any of these, are the two parasite diseases collectively termed the red plague. The amount of hideous distress caused by these associates of vice can not be exagger- ated. In time, the people will be alive to this menace. These murderous plants, like the rest of the brood of destroyers, can be made to yield to medical skill and to persistent cooperative efforts toward their extermination. Very lately Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles has aimounced the fact of the prevalence of the hook worm, Undnaria, among the people of our southern states. This little blood-sucking parasite in the intestines causes a condition of feebleness and anaemia. It is the main cause of the physi- cal laziness so long notorious among the poor whites of the sandy regions of the South. It is estimated that a million people, white and colored, are affected with that worm. It is one [79] The Red Plague The Hook Worm THE CALL OF THE NATION of the most fearful legacies of all those left by slavery, as Africa seems to be the region of its origin. Fortunately unciniariasis is one of the most easily cured of all infectious maladies. Now that we know what our enemy is, we shcJl know how to attack it. But this attack cannot be made successful unless it is collective. Besides the skill of the Marine Hospital Service, and the generous help given to the work by Mr. Rocke- feller, we need the strong arm of the people. The work of public sanitation transcends all party lines. It outweighs in importance all parti- san aims or efforts. It thus contributes in most potent fashion to the end of taking politics out of politics. The Pure Of the same nature as public sanitation and Food approaching it in importance is the movement Movement for pure food and pure drugs. The influence of this work touches every home, and it makes im honesty in every line of manufacture. One phase of the pure food movement is the Meat Inspection Act. As to the operations of this law, Mr. Vrooman observes: "Taking at ran- dom a period of four years, the Bureau of Animal Industry inspected two hundred and twenty-seven [80] THE CALL OF THE NATION million animals per year, and one hundred and forty-eight million for slaughter. I find in a report from the Bureau a certain table of the causes of condemnation of carcases, in which, roughly speaking, nineteen thousand cattle, twelve thousand sheep, four thousand calves, and ninety- one thousand hogs, besides as many parts of each, were condemned and thrown away on account of the presence of forty-five different diseases. These diseases included tuberculosis, cholera, Texas fever, erysipelas, cancer, tumor, abscess, gangrene, tapeworm, trichinae, and thirty-five others. Under laissez faire we used to eat all this. And we didn't know what was the matter with us!" It is not the purpose of this book to give The statistics of any kind, nor to exhibit in any detail Bureaus the work of our govemment in making life safe, ^ acieace in making business just, in promoting individual prosperity. Were I to undertake this, I should describe not only the Marine Hospital Service, the Forestry Service and the Bureau of Animal Industry, but each one of the many cooperating bureaus of the Department of Agriculture, the study of breeds, of soils, of manures, and of agencies for promoting the growth of plants, the [81] THE CALL OF THE NATION study of parasites, of bacteria, those useful as well as of those destructive, of insects, birds and mammals, of fishes and their protection and multiplication. I should need to discuss the work of promoting navigation, of the lighthouse boards and life saving stations, and in brief, to consider all the activities of the government except two, those related to war and those related to partisan politics. I have wished only to em' phasize those activities which touch and which promote the real life of the nation, and to insist on the fact that these realities are the genuine functions of government, and that by moving to- wards them we shall escape the evils of low ideals. By making life better worth living to the individ- ual man because he is a citizen of this republic, we shall accomplish our final end of taking politics out of politics. The The great needs of our people, so far as National government can meet these ends, are summed up Needs Jn these words: justice, education, sanitation, temperance, peace. Education and temperance are best cared for within the state, and we may leave them out of the discussion. But the cause of peace stands first of all among our national duties and privileges. The [82] THE CALL OF THE NATION end of international war is coming, and coming The Cause very soon. The crime of it, the sorrow of it, the of Peace folly of it, the danger of it, the terrible waste of vitality through the killing of the strong and the persistence of weakness through heredity, — all these appeal to the people of the nations today as never before. The wars of the past have left Continental Europe mortgaged for all time to the Invisible Ejnpire of Associated Bondholders, who have paid all bills since Moscow and since Waterloo, the Rothschilds, the Cassels, the Sterns, the Goldschmidts, the Pereires, the Mendelssohns, the Bleichroders, the Warschauers, the Bischoffheims and the rest who, for all the years of civilization, will extort the crushing interest on their loans.* *" The European peoples are no longer under the governments o( their respective nations. They have passed under another scepter. They have become the subjects *ot another power, a power unseen but (eh in palace as in cottage, in Russia as in Spain, by every poten- tate and every laborer from the Pillars o( Hercules to the uttermost dominion of die Great White Czar. No great nation of the European Contiment has any longer an independence which is not merely nominal. The political autonomy oi every one of them has been sunendered to a despotism before which every kingdom and repub- lic fawns in the most abject subservience. " Twenty-four billions of dollars 1 Such is the debt of Europe. Ima^nation falters in the face of so enormous a sum. It seems merely an endless caravan of ciphers. And every dollar of it owned by the Unseen Empire. , . i , n ■ "While civilization endures, as long as mankmd shall be organ- ized into nations, so long will this great shadow hover over European politics." — (E. Alexander Powell) [83] THE CALL OF THE NATION The The wars of the future, never to be fought, Invisible demand an equivalent toll. "There can be no iinipire peace so long as standing armies serve as imple- ments for the subjugation of nations and the maintenance of the authority of a class." In Europe*, the "sad kings" pile up the fuel for their own burning because they are all entangled in mediaeval rivalries, and none dares to be the first to stop. This is the opportunity of America. She has no fears and no illusions. She can look the monster in the face with no doubt of its nature, and it is hers to conquer by the sheer force of that power inherent in the rule of an enlightened citizenship. It is true, no doubt, that the late career of our nation has been in some degree a disappoint- ment to our well-wishers in Europe. This is because we have in some things drifted with the current, taken the gambling chance rather than the dictate of high ideals. The cause of this lapse is found in the truthful words of a recent joumalt, "in the sudden uprush of our military expenses •In 1905, Queen Alexandra is reported to have said: "I have always mistrusted warlike preparations o( which the nations never teem to tire. Some day this accumulated material o( soldiers and guns will burst into flames in a frightful war that will throw humanity into mourning on earth and grieve our Universal Father in Heaven. +New York Ebening Post, June 30, 1910. [84] THE CALL OF THE NATION until they are now relatively higher than in any country in Europe, the unexpected turn of Ameri- can democracy towards foreign conquests and the holding of subject colonies: the foolish em- bracing of the notion that we cannot be a world power without mighty armaments and the show of irresistible force behind irresistible reason. This is the kind of thing which has really done most to shatter the old European ideal of the United States." This is the sort of thing which, in our growing sanity, we shall soon lay away forever. As a nation we have the right to be proud The of many things, but there is nothing more to our Canadian honor than this. We have a border line, as boundary artificial as a boundary may be, miming for nearly seven thousand miles, adjoining the great- est rival nation on the globe, — a boundary traversing lakes, rivers, meadows, forests, cities, moimtains and archipelagoes of islands; a bound- ary questioned all the way, fiercely disputed in four or five regions "with all the brutal frankness of near relatives." And for this tremendous distance, there is not a warship on either side, not a fortress, not a gun. It has been so for almost a century. All this seems so natural, so reasonable, so much in the nature of things, that [85] THE CALL OF THE NATION most of us never give it a thought. It is true that we as a nation spend today on past w^ars and in preparation for wars that can never come, two dollars for every dollar we spend on justice, sanitation, conservation and co-operation. But this is the effect of bad habit. It is the residuum of past misunderstandings and past suspicions. We mean nothing by it. We are so busy and prosperous that the drain upon our substance as yet gives us no alarm. While our people can fight with the fiercest when necessity seems to arise, we are not a fighting folk and do not enjoy killing for killing's sake. Our militarism is not ingrained. It is all unreal, the militarism of the citizen soldier, — not the hard, pitiless, self-sufficient militarism of Con- tinental Europe. Ours is a sort of "Knights of Pythias parade" on a large scale, even to our pageant of the ships. Our most costly armament, however well constructed and however skillfully managed, exists for the purpose of completing our world-power decoration, not for any grim destruction expected or intended. If we must have engines of war, this is the best purpose for which we can use them. Meanwhile, the next step forward is for us to lead in using these as the [86] THE CALL OF THE NATION nucleus of an international police force of the sea, which shall keep the ocean open and safe to all merchant-ships of whatever land, — free from belligerents and pirates of whatever flag or class or order. It is our two ingenious but undem- ocratic devices, indirect taxation and deferred pay- ments, which make possible the tremendous expenditures demanded by the outworn maxim: "In time of peace prepare for war." If we could pay as we go, and if we were allowed to know what we pay, the monstrous absurdity of this max- im would appear. In time of peace prepare for more peace, — not by a display of fire-arms to awe their neighbors, but by the development of the arts and sciences: of the elements of individ- ual well-being, which alone can make a nation powerful, respected by its own people or by its neighbors. "Men must know," said Cromwell, "what they are fighting for, if they are to fight to any purpose." If we have no purpose, we have no need to fight. There is nothing in the world for us to fight for, — at least, not with sword and gun. Waste and greed and folly must be fought, but against these we need better weapons. [87] THE CALL OF THE NATION The Cost Many years ago Charles Sumner showed of Sea that the little battleship Ohio, long since in the h'ower scrap heap, had cost as much as Harvard College. The expense of maintenance was greater, for Harvard had then a budget of less than a hun- dred thousand dollars a year. Its captain was paid more than the College president, whose salary was then $2300, yet as a contribution to national defense as well as to national intelligence. Harvard College outweighed any conceivable number of battleships. Since that time Harvard University has in- creased almost twenty-fold in usefulness as well as in cost of maintenance. Yet it could be almost duplicated for the price of a single batdeship, an engine of war never to be used for any conceivable purpose, and to be torn to pieces before the first quarter of our century is passed. We do not need such things. TTiere are no enemies against which we could use them, no friends which we could even for that purpose turn into enemies. The war scares with Germany and with Japan are made up for a purpose, by foolish and vwcked men. They rest on nothing which is real on either side of either ocean. To exploit these scares is a crime against decency, but the good [88] THE CALL OF THE NATION sense of great nations renders such exploitation futile. Tlie genius of our people is all for peace, the peace of strength and self-control, not that of cowardice or indifference. It is our privilege among the nations to spread this spirit. We may do this by the power of example. We have no enemies. We hate no nation. No nation hates us. We have no revenges for old defeats nor rankling of old victories, no altered boundaries, no banished dynasties. We have only our own affairs to attend to, with the dignity that befits a nation which minds its own business. It is for us to say: we will not threaten, we will not fight, we will not prepare to fight. We will not load ourselves with weapons which tend to provoke a fight. We will not mortgage our future to the Invisible ELmpire, which owtis and controls mili- tant Europe. We will leave all disputes to the decision of a tribuneJ of just men. TTie word war shall be erased from our national speech. "Above all sects is truth." This is the motto given by Goldwin Smith to Cornell University. In like maimer, "above all nations is humanity." This again is the motto of the cosmopolitan clubs of our universities, made up of men of all races. [89] The Genius of our People Above All Nations is Humanity THE CALL OF THE NATION Still further above all victory is the spirit of fair play. Above all success is "the square deal." "All wars among nations, as among men, have their origin," so Benjamin Franklin tells us, "in the evil passions of men." A great, patient, reso- lute nation can control its passions in the interests of freedom, justice eind the welfare of the world. 1901