Behind the Mirrors Part 12

Taxation and credit are the big stakes today and Congress has them in its atrophied grasp.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SENATOR JAMES E. WATSON OF INDIANA]

The question what is the matter with Congress has received more answers than any other question asked about American inst.i.tutions. For almost a generation the national legislature has been regarded as the one great failure in self government. For years it has been the home of small men concerned with petty things which it approached in a petty spirit, incompetent, wasteful, and hypocritical, a trial to the Executive, almost a plague to the country. It has shared with state legislatures and munic.i.p.al boards of aldermen the impatience of the people. In spite of searchings of the public conscience it has gone from bad to worse till it is at its lowest point today, in personnel, in organization, in capacity to transact business.

What has brought Congress to this state has been the unimportance of its work, "doing such little things," as Mr. Root said after his six years in the Senate. Natural economy prevents the sending of a man on a boy's errand even if the man would go.

The great power which legislatures have, that over the public purse, has not been of enough importance to make Congress a great legislature.

Taxes were light and before the war fell so indirectly that the public gave them little attention. The control of the budget virtually pa.s.sed out of the hands of Congress, for executive departments habitually exceeded their appropriations and Congress always made up the deficiencies. There was no tax upon incomes. Taxpayers were indifferent.

A few hundred millions more or less was of no account.

Dispensations to business in the shape of protective duties upon imports, a form of taxation which once made Congress a dominant factor in national life, had become steadily less important as American industry grew strong enough to hold its own market against compet.i.tion and to compete itself in other markets. With the subsidence of the tariff as an issue Congress lost its last power to impose taxes in which the country was deeply interested. Where the control of the public purse and taxes are unimportant, legislatures are weak, unless executive authority is vested in a Cabinet formed from among their members.

With the enfeeblement of Congress through the growing unimportance of the taxing power, its great function, came the tendency to magnify the Executive. Power has to go somewhere, and it went down Pennsylvania Avenue. And this movement coincided with the development of centralization. Congress, which was full of the spirit of localism, was not a perfect instrument of centralization. The Executive was.

To elevate the President it was necessary to depress Congress. It became the fashion to speak sneeringly of the Legislative branch, to sympathize with presidents who "had Congress on their hands," to write of "the shame of the Senate," and when any issue existed between the two parts of the government to throw the force of public opinion on the side of the executive. The press printed endless criticism of the Senate and the House. Theories of government were invented to reduce Congress to a subordinate place.

Meanwhile Congress, having regard for the character of its membership, was agreed that incompetence should suffer no disabilities. All that was required for political preferment within it was political longevity.

The seniority rule, by which committee chairmanships went not to ability but to long service, favored mediocrity and second childhood. Even more, incompetence banded together jealously to protect itself against competence and shunted it into minor a.s.signments. While the public was regarding Congress with contempt Congress was well satisfied to make itself contemptible.

Suppose we had developed a capacity for breeding statesmen in this country, which we have not, would any man of first-cla.s.s talents seek a public career in such an inst.i.tution as I have described? In the first place, the people were visiting Congress with indifference, or worse than indifference, and ambition will not serve under indifference. In the next place that great power which makes legislatures dominant, the power to tax and to distribute the fruits of taxation, had become temporarily unimportant; and again, Congress itself was organized for self-protection against brains and character.

Senator Root quit the Senate in disgust. Senator Kenyon has just followed his example in even deeper disgust. A Tammany Congressman after one term said, "They tie horses to Congressmen in Washington."

Congress is upon the whole a faithful reflection of the American political consciousness. Democracy is a relatively new thing. It has not taken hold of the minds and hearts of men. Shadowy and half-unconscious faiths dispute its place. De Gourmont writing of the persistence of Paganism in Catholicism, says that no religion ever dies but lives on in its successor. So no government ever dies but lives on in its successor.

Why take the trouble to govern yourselves when your vital interests are so well directed by the higher governments, of Progress, of economic Forces, of heroes and captains of industry who ruled by a sort of divine right? The less you try to muddle through by means of poor human instruments in this well-ordered world the better.

For the limited tasks of self-government, why should special talents be required? We are still near enough the pioneer age to adhere to pioneer conceptions. Roosevelt, unfortunately, is the national ideal.

We look hopefully for great amateurs like him among insurance agents, building contractors, lawyers, country editors, bankers, retiring, with modest fortunes made, into public life. We put the jack of all trades everywhere. Into the Presidency--and I don't know why we should not in that office, for it is a waste of material and a misdirection of effort in self-government to throw away a first-cla.s.s public man on a four-year job. Into the Senate and the House, into the Cabinet, where a lawyer without previous experience of international affairs conducts our foreign relations in the most difficult period of the world's history, matching the power of his country against the wits of other countries'

practiced representatives, and thus obtaining a certain forbearance of their extreme skill.

Into the diplomatic posts, where an editor, Colonel Harvey, noted only for his audacity, holds the most important amba.s.sadorship. Those who have seen the Colonel at meetings of the Supreme Council tell the amazing story that he was a silent and uneasy figure in the conferences of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Briand, perhaps because he is only an observer, perhaps also because he was in the company of practiced statesmen and diplomats.

However, our system has its compensations. The picture of the robustious Colonel uneasy in Zion is one of them.

In another great diplomatic post is Mr. Richard Washburn Child, a quant.i.ty producer of fiction, or sort of literary Henry Ford. In another, Paris, the second most important in the world, Mr. Myron Herrick, a retired business man. Senator Foraker said of him, at a critical moment of his public career, "_De mortuis nil_." "Don't you wish to finish that quotation, 'nisi bonum,'" asked the reporter who was seeking a statement. "No," said the Senator sharply; "De mortuis nil."

Of the amba.s.sador to France nil, except that he comes from Ohio.

But when we, given all these causes for the weakness of Congress, the frail hold which the idea of self-government has upon the popular mind, the unimportance of the taxing power, the tendency to concentrate on the executive at the expense of the legislative, the obstacles to ability which mediocrity has erected in Congress, we have not explained the present extraordinary confusion and demoralization in the legislative branch. Most of these causes have been operating for some time, yet Congress has been able to function. Only since Mr. Harding became President has the breakdown of Congress been marked.

If you ask observers in Washington why the last Congress failed more completely than any of its predecessors, with one voice they reply: "Lack of leadership." Everybody cackles of leadership as if lack of leadership were a cause and not a symptom. What is it that makes a leader and followers unless it is a common purpose?

[Ill.u.s.tration: REPRESENTATIVE FREDERICK H. GILLETT OF Ma.s.sACHUSETTS]

The weakness of Mr. Harding, Mr. Lodge, Speaker Gillett, Mr. Mondell lies partly in themselves, but it is made more apparent by the difficulties that confront them. It traces back to the uncertainties in the national mind. Who could lead representatives of taxpayers staggering under the costs of the war and representatives of soldiers striving to lay an added burden on the taxpayers? Who could lead representatives of farmers who demand that a large share of the credit available in this country be mobilized by the government for the subvention of agriculture and representatives of commerce and manufacture who wish to keep the government from competing with them for the stock of credit? Or labor which insists that the way to improve business is by stimulating demand at home through liberal wages, increasing consumption; and the other cla.s.ses which insist that the way to restore business is by making increased consumption possible to them through lower prices only to be accomplished through lower wages? The conflict runs across party lines. The old rallying cries fall on deaf ears.

The Republican party was based on the common belief that government favors delivered at the top percolated down, by a kind of gravity that operated with rough justice, to all levels of society, like water from a reservoir on a hill reaching all the homes of a city. When you called for loyalty to that you called for loyalty to everybody's stomach, expressed in the half-forgotten phrase: "The full dinner pail."

Now, the various elements of society are doubtful of what may reach them by the force of gravity from the top. Each insists that government favor shall enter at its level and be diffused from that center. Would you make the nation happy and rich, give the soldiers a five-billion-dollar bonus and start them buying? Give the farmers a several-billion-dollar guarantee of their staples and start prosperity on the farm. Give labor high wages and start prosperity there by stimulating consumption. Give the consumer lower prices by cutting wages and start prosperity there. Shift the burden of taxation somewhat from wealth and start prosperity once more in the good old way by favors at the top.

One might compare the breakup that has occurred in this country to the breakup that took place in Russia after the first revolution, the peaceful and ineffective revolution of 1905. All parties in Russia united against absolutism. A measure of representative government being established and the main object of the revolution being achieved, all parties fell to quarrelling among themselves as to which should profit most by the new inst.i.tutions.

Under Mr. Roosevelt and his successors a mild revolution was accomplished. People turned against economic absolutism. They had begun to question the unregulated descent of favors from the top. They doubted the force of gravity that used to fill dinner pails. They demanded some representation in the process of filling dinner pails. They set up a government at Washington to control credit and transportation.

And now they have fallen apart over who shall pay the taxes, who shall have use of the credit, who shall profit by lowered freight rates, rebates in principle, special favors in transportation, under a new name.

When men today deplore the lack of leadership they are comparing Mr.

Harding with Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Lodge and Mr. Mondell with Senator Hanna and Senator Aldrich. Today's chiefs of state are of smaller stature. Mr. Harding has been a drifter all his life; he has not the native force of Mr. Roosevelt, the sheer vitality which gloried in overcoming obstacles. He has not the will of Mr. Wilson. The petulant Lodge is not the same order of being as the brutal, thick-necked Hanna, or the more finished but still robust Aldrich.

But beyond this personal superiority which the leaders of the past had, they enjoyed the advantage of standing upon sure ground. Mr. Hanna belonged to that fortunate generation which never doubted, whether it was in religion or morals or politics. He may not have put it so to himself, but behind everything that he did lay the tacit a.s.sumption that the business system was divinely ordained. The hand of Providence was conspicuous everywhere in America's rise, but nowhere more than in the rapid turning, unprecedented in the world's history, of minerals and forests into a civilization.

In times of daily miracles it is easy to believe. Mr. Hanna believed, the public believed, Congress believed. Mr. Hanna spoke for this divinely ordained system which was developing an undeveloped continent as one had never been in the memory of man, making us all richer, with a certain rough justice, according to our deserts.

He himself was a pioneer. He himself had created wealth. He knew the creators of wealth. He delivered the commandments handed down to him on the mountain. With G.o.d so much on his side a much lesser man than Hanna would have been a great leader. G.o.d isn't on the side of Mr. Lodge. That is the difference.

Mr. Aldrich represented a less pure faith. What had been a primitive religion had become an established church. He had behind him a power of organization in business and Congress that Hanna had not. The public may have been less faithful; still the religion he represented was the official religion.

Like Hanna, he was rich and a creator of wealth; in addition he was connected by marriage with the richest family in the United States. He was the spokesman of business, and even if faith was decaying no one seriously questioned the sacred character of business as the instrument of Providence for making America great, rich, and free.

The chief aim was the creation of wealth. No one could doubt that the business organization was accomplishing it with unparalleled success.

Perhaps the heads of the business organization kept a little too much of the newly created wealth to themselves, but at least everyone shared in it and it was wise to let well enough alone. Where there is such substantial unity as existed at that time, no great personal qualities are required for leadership.

And Mr. Aldrich was not endowed with great personal qualities. He has been gone from Washington only a dozen years, and yet no tradition of him survives except that he managed the Senate machine efficiently. In type he was the business executive. He represented more fully than anyone else in the Senate the one great interest of the country. He stood for a reality, and it gave him tremendous power.

His mind was one of ordinary range. He traded in tariff schedules and erected majorities upon the dispensing of favors. He bestowed public buildings and river improvements in return for votes. Leaders have not now these things to give or have them in insufficient quant.i.ties and on too unimportant a scale.

No great piece of constructive legislation serves to recall him.

Primarily a man of business, he nevertheless attached his name to the grotesque Aldrich-Vreeland currency act. The work of the monetary commission of which he was the head, and which led to the present Federal Reserve Law, was the work of college professors and economists.

Naturally a better leader than Mr. Lodge because he met men more easily upon a common ground and had more vitality than the Ma.s.sachusetts Senator has, he was no better leader than any one of half a dozen present Senators would be if the aim of business were accepted today by the country as the great social aim, as it was in his day, and if any one of the six now spoke for business in the Senate as in his time he did.

Give Mr. Brandegee or Mr. Lenroot or Mr. Wadsworth a people accepting that distribution which worked out from extending to the heads of the business organization every possible favor and immunity, as the distribution best serving the interests of all, and add unto him plenty of public buildings and river improvements, and he could lead as well as Mr. Aldrich.

CHAPTER X

INTERLUDE. INTRODUCING A FEW MEMBERS OF THE UPPER HOUSE b.o.o.bOISIE AND SOME OTHERS

There is a saying that in American families there is only three or four generations from riches to shirt sleeves. Mr. Hanna is the first generation, Mr. Aldrich is the second generation. In Mr. Penrose and Mr.

Lodge you reach what is a common phase of American family history, the eccentric generation. And in Senator Jim Watson and Senator Charles Curtis, who are just coming on the scene as "leaders," you reach once more political shirt sleeves.

The American family dissipating its patrimony, produces invariably the son who is half contemptuous of the old house that founded his fortunes, who is half highbrow, who perhaps writes books as well as keeping them, or it may be bolts to the other side altogether.

So the Hanna-Aldrich stock produced Henry Cabot Lodge, a sort of political James Hazen Hyde, who stayed at home and satisfied his longing for abroad by serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But perhaps it would be fairer to Mr. Lodge to say of him what a witty friend of mine did, "Lodge is what Henry James would have been if Henry James had remained in America and gone into politics." Or he is what Henry Adams might have been if Henry Adams had been less honest in his contempt for democracy.