Ethics in Service

by William H. Taft

Eugenic reformers, for instance, plan to rush right into regulation of human society and arrange marriages just as horses are bred at a stock farm. It has made some progress in Wisconsin, where they have required examination of those about to marry and certificates of health before issuing the marriage license. But I don't think the American people are quite ready to submit to that kind of regulation. If it could be enforced, it might be a good thing for the race, but a strong sentiment on the other side makes it impractical. In Wisconsin the law is being ignored and in foreign countries where restrictions upon marriages are rigorously enforced, marriage is dispensed with and concubinage results.

There is another feature of this present hysterical condition that, I hope, is going to disappear. But we might as well recognize it. That is this wish to exculpate the sins of those who are unfortunate by putting the blame on society at large. The desire seems to be, if possible, to make scapegoats of those who are fortunate. It is this sentiment that has given rise to investigations into the cooperative stores in order to charge their managers with responsibility for the prostitution of some of their employees because of the wages they pay. As the investigation shows, there never was a more unfounded charge, but the very fact that it was used is an indication of what I mean. It manifests itself in the movement to dispense with all reticence and amplify in every way sex education on the theory that society is to blame because it is not telling young people of the danger of sin. You do not have to stand over a sewer and breathe in the bad smell in order to recognize that it has a bad smell when you meet it again.

I am strongly in favor of having young men and young women know certain things about sex matters, the young men through lectures in school or college, and the young women through instruction by women who can tell them in a short time all they need to know; but this idea of emphasizing and expanding the subject and of cultivating a free interchange of thoughts between the sexes is most dangerous. For one hundred years these subjects have been suppressed in America to the great benefit of society and it is well that they should remain so. So-called reforms in this direction are made the excuse for pruriency in drama, in novels, in moving pictures and in other ways that are distinctly vicious in their effect. They promote lubricity and although such literature and exhibitions may have the support of good people who think they are advocating great principles, they should be condemned.

Take another instance. Of course we all wish penitentiaries to be free from disease, and we are interested in prison reform to the extent of making them as healthful as possible for the prisoners. But this idea of making society a scapegoat and ridding everybody from responsibility for his sins, on the theory that his grandfather or grandmother was wicked and he is only doing it because of his heredity, makes the preservation of law and order impossible, and destroys the peace and comfort of those who are law-abiding. The penitentiary is a place for punishment and reformation. It is not a rest cure or a summer hotel. I have no doubt that prison discipline can be improved; but changes based on the theory that convicted criminals are disguised heroes who only need an appeal to their honor and freedom from restraint to make them good citizens will have humiliating but perhaps instructive results.

But these extravagances should not blind us to the real benefit of this growing sense of brotherhood among men. It is shown not only by the fact that it is preached in the pulpits and emphasized in the press and in magazines, but, still more, by the fact that it has been taken up by politicians. When they get hold of a subject and believe it needs elaboration, you may know that it has a lodgment with the people. Nor can we ignore the fact that this feeling has been increased by indignation at the political and social corruption incident to our enormous material development. The people have become ashamed of it in a sense.

With many, this growing sense of brotherhood stimulates the movement toward state socialism. Our excessive paternalism leads on to this. The view that the government can do anything, remedy every evil, level every inequality and make everybody happy, would have a most disastrous effect on production and individual effort and enterprise. The next step will be to curtail the right of property. It is difficult to define Socialism as a practical plan of government. The plan as set forth in a little book published in Austria called "The Quintessence of Socialism" is as definite as any that I know. It involves such governmental restriction of individual freedom of action and such real tyranny that the American people could not stand it. In fact, the regulation of the details of life by a system of awards for particular work, made by committees instead of by the operation of the law of supply and demand, would bring about a condition that would burst itself in a very little time. As "Billy" Sumner used to say, "If you have that kind of a system, I choose to be on the committee."

Another sign of the times is trades-unionism. Trades-unionism is essential in the cause of labor. One man as a laborer is in a position where it is utterly impossible for him to deal on an equality with his employer. The employer has capital and can get along without his services, but he cannot get along without the wages which the employer pays him. Therefore, laborers unite and contribute to a fund which enables them to withdraw together and say to the employer: "Here, we propose to deal with you on a level. We have great force. We have a fund which will enable us to live while out of work and we are going to embarrass you as far as possible by withdrawing from your employ unless you do justice to us in the matter of terms of service." That power of union cultivated in organized labor has done a great deal to raise wages and bring about equitable terms of service.

Organized labor is only a small part of labor generally; but organized labor exercises great influence in legislatures. It is thought to hold the balance of power at the polls and has undoubtedly exercised beneficent influence in securing laws to control healthy conditions for work, safety appliances on railroads, limitation upon the hours of labor and a number of other laws that would not have been passed if organized labor had not brought political influence to bear upon members of the legislature.

On the other hand, a sense of their power has sometimes given leaders of labor unions a lack of discretion, a truculence and an unreasonable and unjust attitude. Like the employers, they have been dependent upon public opinion and after a time public opinion has controlled them. Probably the greatest evil that stands out from all the good work unions have done, is the dead level to which they seek to bring the wages of skilled manual labor. Organized labor insists on making a class and then having that class receive the same wages, and it does nothing to encourage individual effort by consenting to the payment of higher wages to the man of experience, industry and skill than to the mediocre and lazy. It will in some way have to obviate that difficulty which works against the cause of labor and the interest of society. Moreover, its leaders do not discourage, as they should, lawlessness as a means of achieving their industrial ends. The history of the dynamiters in California and of the civil war in Colorado shows this.

On the other hand, we find many in the ranks of labor offering the most effective opposition to the increase in socialism. The leaders of trades-unionism have no sympathy with the I. W. W. The I. W. W., however, led by Haywood and others, serve a useful purpose by furnishing an awful example for the average workingman. When they go around with the signs, "No God, No Country, No Law," creating disgust and conservatism in the ranks of organized labor, they do not know what a good thing they are doing. They act blindly, but they are offering a sample of what may be expected if organized labor is tempted to excesses. We are going to have organized labor for all time, and we ought to have it. While I would go to the fullest extent with courts and even with the army to protect a non-union man in freedom of labor, if I were a workingman myself I would join a labor union because I believe that if such unions can be properly conducted, they are useful to promote the best interests of labor and of society. What trades-unionism needs is leaders to teach its members common sense.