Ethics in Service

by William H. Taft

Another sign of recent times which will repay consideration has been aptly termed "muck-raking." Mr. Roosevelt took the word from Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" to describe the irresponsible and slanderous attacks upon public officials, which were made merely for the purpose of selling the wares of penny-a-liners. To eliminate corporations from politics and to bring them under government control, as I have described, it was doubtless necessary to formulate charges against individuals and political leaders and it was not to be expected that misstatements would not creep into such personal attacks. While many people were doubtless injured unjustly, it was essential that general corrupt conditions should be revealed to the public. But there were a great many who were induced to go into outrageous muckraking solely for profit, and magazines filled with such stuff and spreading real poison among the people were sent in the mails at a much less rate than it cost the government to carry them. I am glad to say muckraking is not so profitable now and it has been greatly reduced in volume.

But the opportunity for attacking prominent and powerful men in this way has served to create a condition that we still suffer from. It has brought about a feeling that nobody is to be trusted, and it has spread too far the idea that all men are corrupt. In fact, it has led to the feeling that everybody is on the same level in matters of character, learning, skill and effectiveness of labor, and, in short, that every man is as good as everybody else in everything. The idea is that men are on a dead level. There is no room for leadership in such a view. Inequality is essential to progress. If you make a dead level there will be no interest in life or motive for effort, and you will destroy the very spring of progress and the fountain of Christian civilization.

We now have political parties that are made by vertical divisions among the voters. In each party we have the intelligent and the fortunate, with those who are not so intelligent nor so experienced nor so well circumstanced. What will be the tendency of this refusal to recognize intelligence and high character in those who deserve it? It will make the parties horizontal layers in the body politic. It will unite in one party those who are ignorant and unfortunate, and array them against the intelligent and those who have the ability for leadership. When that comes about, the Republic will be in danger, because the permanence and usefulness of the Republic rests upon the controlling influence of men of intelligence, experience, patriotism and character. This array of a proletariat against intelligent and successful leadership produces factionalism in society. Factionalism is a class spirit which will sacrifice the interest of the whole to the interest of the class. It sometimes permeates a majority, but more frequently a minority. It is illustrated for us by the militancy of English women suffragists, who will sacrifice property, art and even life, in order to convince the majority that unless they receive the vote they will destroy all society.

We cannot, of course, yield to such a force. Nor can we yield to trades-unionism when it seeks to promote so-called labor interests by lawless violence and dynamite. The bonds of society will be loosed if we do. I would not for a moment be thought to say that those who are in favor of more democracy, through the initiative and referendum, are factionalists, and insincere in their view that that system will work a good result in the fight against corruption in politics. I only think that they are idealists in this matter, and don't fully understand the practical operation of the system which they recommend.

In this movement against corruption in politics and corporate control, it was necessary that corporate control should be attacked. The muckraking added to it aroused a spirit against all success in business, whether the methods pursued were honest or not. The result has been a hysteria that prompts hostility to capital even when it is working in honest lines and earning an honest profit. In many states it has led to excessive restrictive legislation and has terrorized capital; it has shrunk investments and frightened those who have money until today there is lots of money in the banks everywhere but it can't be borrowed for any length of time because nobody will put it into permanent or active investment.

This state of affairs is likely to continue for some years. I am not complaining about it because it is part of what we had to pay for the great reform that was accomplished. After a while confidence will be restored, and we shall come to our senses, just as they did in Kansas in the Populist days. The Kansas farmers concluded that all their unhappiness, and they suffered real stress, was due to the wicked mortgagees who had lent them money on mortgage security and who insisted on the payment of interest and even the principal when it was due. So they elected a Populist legislature and passed a law providing that a mortgagee could not foreclose his mortgage under two years. They did this by stay laws and by requiring an obstructive procedure in collection of debts. As a result, capital fled the state as men would flee yellow fever. When there was no money at all left in the state and they found that they couldn't get any, they began to recognize the benefit in money loaned on mortgages. Their next legislature repealed all these laws and devoted its attention to advertising their change of attitude in Eastern markets where money could be had and mortgages could be floated, promising to be good thereafter, and in general welcoming the capitalists who would advance money on farms.

The next sign of the times is pleasanter to dwell upon, that is, the spread of the fraternal spirit that has grown out of this great material development. Material development in this country had grown into corruption, undue luxury and waste at the hands of men who did not realize the responsibility of having been fortunate in accumulating money, and this absorption in the chase for the dollar began to pall on the people. They tired of statistics of the growth of business, and began to look about for some justification for our activities. The change has brought a greater popular interest in the less fortunate who have fallen behind in the race.

This feeling has much weakened the influence of the laissez faire school of political and economic thought which was largely in control when I was in college. Professor Sumner was a strong member of this school. He was sure of his opinions and taught them. But we have now drifted away from some of his moorings, and today a good many professors are giving way to their imagination in suggesting remedies that have not stood the test of experience. Yet it is generally conceded that the government can do a lot to help the people that individual enterprise cannot do. We have also gone far in the matter of regulation, though there again we are likely to go to excesses.

It is quite probable that we shall find out by hard knocks that the government cannot perform everything now expected of it. Nevertheless, under the influence of a greater fraternal spirit, we have done a great deal. The housing statutes, the safety appliances both for passengers and employees, the restrictions on the hours of labor, the rules against child labor, the pure food law, the white slave law, the thorough health regulations, the control of public utilities, the growth in the public charitable institutions of the state, the parcels post and the rural delivery, all are instances of what the government has done to help the individual by applying the results of public taxation and restrictive laws. Moreover, we find among rich men a greater feeling of responsibility for their fortunes, which is proven by their large donations. Among those less wealthy we find an activity in philanthropic organizations and in work of a charitable character that has vastly increased during the last decade. In education, too, we have widened out, especially in vocational study, by preparing the pupils directly for wage earning by skilled labor.

Unfortunately, however, many good people in social settlements and in philanthropic work devote their attention so exclusively to the sore and rotten spots of society that they lose their sense of proportion, and bring hysteria even into this movement. Persons so affected come to think that if suffering, wickedness or squalor is permitted to exist anywhere, society must all be bad. There must always be sin, and there must always be neglect and waste until we get to the millennium, which is not yet so near that we can see and feel it. In making our estimate of human progress, we must size up the whole situation and take the average condition. Similarly in attempting to remedy a local or special evil, we must avoid the injustice of unduly sacrificing the general welfare. By extreme measures planned to accomplish what may be good in the abstract but is still not practical, we can make the cause ridiculous.