SA' V \ RADICALISM REPULSED BUT NOT DEFEATED Address by JAMES A. EMERY Counsel, Association of Manufacturers RAILWAY BUSINESS ASSOCIATION ANNUAL DINNER DEC. 11, 1924 JAMES A. EMERY Counsel National Association of Manufacturers Who bade the annual dinner audience not only take heart from Ihe anti- radical elections both in America and Great Britain, but from successful ef- forts here to solve problems without leaning upon the government, such as the shippers’ and carriers’ Regional Advisory Boards ' 7 -/ 6 '**' 4 RADICALISM REPULSED BUT NOT DEFEATED By James A. Emery Counsel, Association of Manufacturers Address delivered at the Annual Dinner of the Railway Business Association, the Commodore, New York, Dec. 11, 1924 T HE administrators, ministers, and students of transporta- tion gather at your hospitable board under circumstances ex- citing reflective satisfaction. The con- temporaneous rejection of radicalism by the English-speaking people is no accident. It bears all the character- istics of mental recovery following de- moralizing reaction to the shock that rocked civilization. It marks a return from chimeras to realities. It indi- cates that in both countries painful ex- perience and enlightening discussion convinced an overwhelming portion of the electorate that sincere radicals are not always intelligent, nor intelligent [ radicals always sincere. RADICALISM REPUDIATED But the verdict is cause for relief rather than complacency, particularly in the field of transportation. We still confront its real enduring prob- lems. But at least we continue the study more normally minded. Polit- ical sanitation has made marked progress. The threatening ravages of economic contagion have been checked and sharply localized ; pink pills for a pale nation examined and declined. The new eclectic school opened with enthusiasm is abandoned in silence while the certificates of its founders are threatened with cancellation by suddenly courageous practitioners of the regular course. However comforting these develop- ments, social well being is not perma- nently assured by confidence in a pre- siding medical genius. The individ- ual must still take the usual precau- tions. Fortunately he gives evidence of his intention to do so. For we have witnessed a decisive test of popular ad- herence to fundamental American principles and practical public policy. PARTY RESPONSIBILITY We may fairly interpret the Novem- ber verdict as an encouraging tendency to turn from legislative blocs, groups, or classes, however plausible in pur- pose, to a representative Congress with a working party majority led by a re- sponsible Executive. We have de- cisively rejected the definite sugges- gestion of an omnipotent legislature and reaffirmed our faith in the limita- tions of a written Constitution judi- cially interpreted and enforced in every conflict between the asserted rights of the individual and the alleged authority of our political agencies. Throughout the States every serious proposal for organic change, enlarged with public authority, or radical experiment was sharply rejected. Emphatically declining to empower the federal legislature to take plenary and exclusive control of the occupa- tional life of all under 18, Massachu- setts reasserted the traditional Ameri- can doctrine of community responsi- bility for the reform of local condi- tions through local regulation resting upon local opinion. Realizing the best of institutions de- pend for their successful operation upon the quality of their human ad- ministrator, the people, without re- gard to party, expressed their over- whelming confidence in an Executive that personified the traditional and practical qualities of American indi- vidualism. REPULSED, NOT DEFEATED But let no one be deceived. Revolu- tionary innovation and the determina- tion to enlarge the governmental con- trol of life is repulsed, not defeated. The partnership of formal socialism and radical suggestion save to unify American opinion. The very nature of the threat to cherished institutions stirred a new appreciation of their sig- nificance and rallied a color guard at their base. But ever the armies of error must be met in new fields, and old truths be learned again in a chang- ing day. But the immediate argument proceeds with new hope and unmistak- able determination. Every circum- stance of the recent election indicates a return to the major premises of American life. VOTERS SOUND ON TRANSPOR- TATION Nor were pending issues of trans- portation untouched by the November verdict, The most persuasive and per- sistent proponent of more restrictive railroad regulation or public operation urged his proposals under the most favorable conditions to a national audience. One hundred ninety mem- bers of Congress who recorded their opposition to the Howell-Barkley Bill proposing the abolition of the Railroad Labor Board and the substitution therefor of the personal plan of the Railroad Labor organizations, were officially black-listed by the powerful group whose designs they obstructed. One hundred seventy were re-elected. Twenty who declined re-nomination for various reasons are succeeded by men of similar view point. The re- mainder retired under varying circum- stances which in no instance are attri- butable to the political anathema. The casualties, however, among supporters of the proposal suggest the familiar prayer for delivery from friends. The best assurance of sound public policy is informed opinion. Extraordi- nary improvement in the operating- efficiency of the American Railroad system particularly during the past two years is a fact too perceptible to escape public notice. The determination of the carriers to imperil their credit to assure the facilities for adequate service made a permanent and favor- able impression on the public mind, while the fact that improvement grows as government administration recedes is not a lost lesson. Every improve- ment in working relations of railroad management and those whom they serve makes less necessary the inter- vention of government. SHIPPERS’ COOPERATION Tonight we stand in the presence of the most significant working experi- ment in practical cooperation between shipper and carrier in the history of transportation. In the Northwest, the Mid-west, the . Southeast and Southwest, in the valley ■ of the Ohio, the Great Lakes, through r the Atlantic States, Central West, over Missouri and beyond Kansas and spreading over the Pacific slope, ten Regional Advisory Boards composed of 5500 leaders in agriculture, com- merce and industry, the free selection of their fellow shippers, because of superior knowledge, experience, and character, are organized to study, ana- lyze, estimate, and anticipate in con- tinuing cooperation with corresponding committees of railway traffic officials the requirements of each locality in terms of its own production and dis- tribution and its relation to adjacent territories. No railroad official is a member of these Boards or votes on their conclusions. They represent ex- perts selected by the shipping public, | organized into commodity committees, i masters of the facts, working in har- mony in each region with a district manager of the Car Service Division of the American Railway Association and the traffic representatives of the regional carriers. They learn to know ! each other, their needs present and future, how to employ most efficiently ■ the units of transportation and to meet and dispose of the frictions of clashing interest. The first Board was boldly^ estab- , lished two years ago in the presumably i most prejudiced States of Minnesota, ■ j South and North Dakota, and Mon- tana. It assembled, united in service, and harmonized the most conflicting interests, of most delicate situation. In rapid succession nine additional j bodies have been established in dis- tricts of common concern. Resting E i the firm basis of common interest have builded a fabric of human dons woven in mutual confidence and respect. They are gradually sub- stituting facts and reason for opinion and prejudice. Knowledge and under- standing for surmise and suspicion, and conference for conflict. NO APPEALS NECESSARY They have preserved undiminished the independence of carrier and ship- per, yet found a means of reconciling their differences. Requiring in the first instance that each should exhaust its resources of reconciliation before ap- pealing to the commodity committees or Regional Boards, they have been so singularly successful in adjustment that in two years not a single complaint among 137 major disputes has passed beyond their committees or Boards to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Recognizing that accelerating the car unit of transportation is the basis of improved service, these Boards have organized 64 terminal committees in as many principal unloading centers and assure a quicker handling of per- ishable products, a higher price to the producer, and a greatly expedited movement of equipment. They have stimulated a more rapid movement of Western empties through voluntary action than has hitherto been attained by mandatory regulation. They have vastly aided heavier loading of equip- ment by shippers and better care and prompter release by receivers of freight. In the Northwest they have procured the adoption of uniform prac- tice for the distribution of grain cars between cooperative, independent, and old line elevators and at the height of the largest grain movement in the memory of Duluth laid a voluntary embargo upon the most sensitive of grain markets without incurring an unfriendly criticism. In the last two varying years, the first of evenly dis- tributed car demand, and the last breaking all the records of transpor- tation history, car service remained adequate without congestion, without shortage of equipment, and without shipping complaint and with a notable increase in serviceable locomotives and cars in storage. ENLARGED FACILITIES It would be erroneous to attribute this remarkable result to these new forms of cooperation alone. No less essential was the vast addition to phy- sical facilities and plants made by the carriers and the systematic cooperation in car distribution through the Car Service Division of the American Rail- way Association. But without the in- formed, sympathetic, and continuing cooperation of the public through the Regional Advisory Boards this splen- did mechanism of coordinated effort had lacked a vital element. Which is the better, that shipper and carrier shall each among themselves pursue their different ways presenting their inevitable differences to public Boards and Commissions, to fasten upon the most sensitive and complex of essential social instrumentalities the inflexible rule of a statute, or, that they join hands in working out locally, re- gionally, and nationally the best means of utilizing this vital form of social service ? SUPERSEDING GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE Nor is this heartening spectacle without its larger lesson in an hour like this. Lord Moulton in his masterly analysis of the domain of law finds it divisible into that of the positive stat- ute, the domain of manners and that of liberty. The first represents the field of rigid rule ; the second the vast domain of custom ; the third that of freedom which insensibly merges into the former. We have witnessed in the past decade, we shall see now and here- after, the continuing effort of those determined to enlarge the field of posi- tive law, and ever lessen that of either manners or liberty. As our industrial civilization becomes daily more com- plex it must find self-imposed restraint increasingly growing within the struc- ture, by the voluntary action of en- lightened self-interest or in social self- defense it will be increasingly imposed by law. As each business establishes its ethical standards, it builds custom as a constructive substitute for legal coercion and by the acts of individuals and groups makes less necessary the intervention of public authority.