But life is more than meat, liberty and equality of opportunity are more precious than health. And in seeking to preserve these, the work of our Government during the last few years has made of official activity something very different from the conceptions and standards of 1787 or 1850—something which is no doubt open to abuse, but which, we are persuaded, has thus far been largely beneficial in its practical manifestations.
When the Government takes hold of the evil of railway rebating with a strong hand, it is not alone a question of enforcement of the law, but of striking down an insidious and dangerous form of special privilege. The real offense in the old rebate system, now happily so nearly a thing of the past, was not alone its secret favors to a secret few, but its gross discrimination against the unprotected many. It was the denial of the right to compete on equal terms. This is the intolerable thing in a free democracy. It can endure the sight of great wealth, of vast fortunes honestly gained, but it cannot submit to a method of accumulating property which destroys the opportunities of thousands in order to give unfair advantages to one. It is the determination to keep the career open to talent, not to shut it up to favoritism, which has been the animating spirit in the long struggle to prevent the railroads from virtually creating private fortunes at their own sweet will, and bringing whom they please to penury by means of rebates.
A like attitude and animus are seen in the other forms of legislative restriction upon great corporations. All the anti-monopoly laws and anti-trust suits, all the regulating statutes and the public-utilities commissions, have one principle at bottom, and it is to make all men stand equal before the law. On the one hand to strike down oppression, on the other to equalize opportunity, has been the intent of these new activities of government which, whatever else they show, leave no doubt of an altogether changed view of what governments owe.
In all these matters, the greatest peril that lurks in our path is that of being misled by abstractions. If we talk overmuch of “government,” we are in danger of forgetting the human beings who make it up. If we are afflicted by bad rulers, it is no help to us to fall back upon an ideal conception of “the state.” The state is simply men acting. Much amusement was created in Paris by an innocent peasant who passed from one public building to another demanding that he be allowed to see l’état. He had heard of it all his life; he thought it was something at the capital; being there, he wanted to inspect it at close range. He was an unsophisticated rustic, but was he not right in his instinct? We are not, after all, governed by an “entity.” Government is the most concrete of human affairs. It is vested in mortal men. And in all the agitations and the hopes and fears of our day respecting the extension of governmental functions, and the quickening of the whole idea of what the state owes to citizens, it would be fatal to forget that government cannot be made better except by putting better men in charge of it.
THE TWO-BILLION-DOLLAR CONGRESS
A NATIONAL BUDGET THE REMEDY FOR EXTRAVAGANCE IN APPROPRIATIONS
THE time is overripe for a fundamental change in our method of making annual appropriations for the cost of the National Government. A glance at the result of the work done by the various congressional committees charged with the duty of preparing appropriation bills is enough to bring conviction that order and system must be substituted for the present chaotic methods; while, if we could penetrate the secrets of the committee-rooms, the country would stand appalled at the ignoble tricks and devices by which the “pork-barrel” is filled and the money of the taxpayers wantonly and wickedly wasted.
The Democrats in their platform of 1912 “denounce the profligate waste of money wrung from the people by oppressive taxation through the lavish appropriations of recent Republican Congresses,” and they demand “a return to that simplicity and economy which befits a democratic Government.” How did they keep faith with the people under this self-denying ordinance? In the session of Congress immediately following, the second regular session of the Sixty-second Congress, which adjourned on March 4, they passed appropriation bills aggregating $1,098,647,960, and authorized contracts on public works committing the Government to a further expenditure of $76,956,174, making a total demand upon the treasury for the year ending June 30, 1914, of $1,175,604,134, a sum that surpasses all previous congressional achievements in extravagance. Not only that, but the grand total of the appropriations and contracts authorized in the two years of the Sixty-second Congress was $2,238,470,990, which is to be compared with $2,151,610,940 of the Sixty-first Congress. This is democratic economy and simplicity with a vengeance. The Democrats surpassed by more than $86,000,000 the exploits of the previous Republican Congress, which they had denounced as profligate.
But the Republican pot cannot call the Democratic kettle black. The blame falls upon both parties, for both have been profligate. Not only is the method of drawing up the appropriation schedules indefensible, but many of the senators and congressmen of both parties exhibit a degree of greed and rapacity in grabbing for the people’s money that is fairly comparable with the behavior of a drunken army looting a captive city. The river-and-harbor appropriation of $41,000,000, and the public-buildings appropriation amounting to $45,000,000 more, cover multitudes of log-rolling sins, of costly improvements of streams never navigable, of imposing buildings for small towns, veritable “grabs” of money to foster local pride, put district constituents in a good humor, and lay the foundation for safe majorities in the next congressional elections. The sin here is not alone that of profligate wastefulness; it is a pretty direct form of bribery of the voter. The staggering appropriation for pensions belongs in this category. The Service Pension Act added $25,000,000 to this item of expenditure, which in this fiscal year is raised to the great sum of $180,300,000. And we are now observing the fiftieth anniversaries of events of the war!
The national balance-sheet for the year which this “return to that simplicity and economy which befits a democratic Government” presents for the scrutiny of the voter and the taxpayer stands thus: estimated revenue of the Government under existing laws, $991,791,508; direct appropriations, $1,098,647,960; deficit, $106,856,452. But there must be added to the appropriations $76,976,174 of contract commitments authorized, raising the deficit to the colossal total of $183,812,626.