EDWARD EVERETT HALE. "WE, THE PEOPLE' L^ ^ A Series of Papers on Topics of To-day By EDWARD EVERETT HALE Author of " The Man Without a Country," " Memories of a Hundred Years," Etc., Etc. NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1903 Copyright, 1902, By W. R. HEARST. Copyright, 1903, By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. BURR PRINTING HOUSE, NEW YORK. Contents PAGE INTRODUCTORY v NATION AND STATE AMERICA Nation and State 3 Government by the People 7 Government by the People 10 What is the American People? .... 14 Bet on the Country 17 Forests . . 20 Forests . 27 We, the People : or, War Lords ... 30 People or Kings? Taxes 34 Local Option 37 CO-OPERATION AND COAL Our Wealth in Common 40 CO-OPERATION . ... . . . .46 CO-OPERATION AGAIN . . . . . .50 CO-OPERATION AGAIN . '. . . . .52 Fire and Water . * .. . . .60 His Majesty the People . . - . .63 Old-Fashioned Fuel 65 Better and Better . . ... . .68 The President's Arbitration . . . . .72 WOMEN'S CLUBS Mrs. Stanton 78 Women's Clubs . ., 82 What Do the Girls Need? 85 Open-Air Life for Women 88 THE NEW CENTURY Half a Million Dollars 92 What Next? 96 The New Journalism ..*... 100 [Hi] CONTENTS PAGE Space Writing . . 103 The City of Washington 113 Sodom and Gomorrah 116 Charity Corporations 121 Industrial Education 127 Old-Age Pensions 133 The Boston Forum 137 The Larger World 143 The Pan-American Railway 148 A Wider Programme 153 Around Home 158 ANNIVERSARIES HISTORY October Twenty-one What? 165 Daniel Webster 169 Forefathers' Day 173 The Way and How They Found Christmas . . 182 The New Year 189 SUNDAY AND SUNDAY-SCHOOLS SUNDAY AND HOME How Shall We Spend Sunday? . . . . IQ5 The Ideal Sunday 201 Sunday in Cities 206 "Everyman" 212 Religious Education 216 Sunday and Monday 220 The Chicago Convention 223 Right or Wrong 228 Duty Men Who Succeed 231 THE FIVE GREAT DUTIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY APPENDIX The Five Duties . . . . . ' .239 The Educated Citizen ....... 259 Old-Age Pensions . . . , . . 278 [iv] Introductory In the autumn of 1902, Mr. Hearst, of the New York American, asked me if I would fur- nish three articles for that paper in every week of the next three months. I was very glad to have this opportunity for addressing a great number of people every few days. Mr. Hearst is kind enough to permit me to collect these papers and print them together. In the collection, mixed in with the other papers, I have included articles which I wrote at the same time and later in the winter for The Record of Lend a Hand, and for the Christian Register. My younger friends think that the younger readers of the new century will not know that to us old fellows "leader" means a leading article. But for some doubt here, I should have called this collection "Thirty-Nine Leaders.*' I find in the Century Dictionary that Mr. David J. Hill in writing of William Cullen Bryant says, "He was the first of our journalists to adopt the [v] INTRODUCTORY English practice of 'leaders,' which has since become the universal habit of our journalism." And the Century gives in its sixth heading this statement: Leader, that which precedes . . . the principal editorial article in a newspaper; one of the longer articles in a newspaper appear- ing as its own utterance or expression of edito- rial views, whether written by the ostensible editor or by leader-writers or contributors." In New England we do not regard Mr. Bry- ant as introducing the English custom in Amer- ica. Old men have told me, and I believe, that my father, Mr. Nathan Hale, introduced it in the Weekly Messenger as early as 1810. For the American newspaper of either of the cities had been made up till that time by contributors who signed some name, fictitious or real, or by the paragraphs of news which were collected from shipmasters, travellers, or others. But in England the custom and the word were much older. DeFoe wrote "leaders." Lestrange wrote "leaders." What we call the Tattler, the Spectator, the Idler, or the rest was a col- lection of "leaders" which Addison, Steele, and such men wrote for those journals. The Oxford Dictionary quotes no earlier use of the word than Disraeli in "Coningsby" in 1844. "Give me a man who can write a leader." [vi] INTRODUCTORY They cite from Matthews's "Americanisms," 1892, "The American calls that an editorial which an Englishman calls a leader." But I am quite sure that as early as 1840 the word was perfectly well known in American journalism. The foreman of the printing office would him- self come down into the editorial room, and say to whoever was in charge, "What shall we lead with?" By which he meant, "which of the edi- torial articles shall be the leader?" Of course in a book made up as this is, some suggestions will be repeated again and again; no harm, according to me, if it is repeated thirty- nine times. It would be ridiculous to try to digest these chapters into one treatise. That is precisely what they are not. In the second part of the book will be found some longer papers which discuss the same sub- jects with further illustration. I have made no attempt in editing these papers, long or short, to strike out sentences or paragraphs which repeat in one what has been said in another. In such a collection repetition is a matter of course. The leading article is the expression of the thought of the day as to the necessities of the day. There is a very fair ques- tion, which I understand as well as this reader does, whether there is any need of reproducing [vii] INTRODUCTORY it all. But if it is to be reproduced, it must be "in its entirety." This is as good a place as any to tell for the last time one of the office stories of 1848. Its merit is that it is true. In February, 1848, the Journal des Debats was the Government paper. It had stood bravely by Guizot, whom the radical opposition called the Valpoule of the Government, meaning Walpole, which I suppose he was. The Pari- sian Revolution took place, which Guizot had brought on his head. The King had run away, Guizot had run away, everybody who could run away had done so. The miracle was that the office of the Journal des Debats was standing. The mob hated the Journal and could naturally have broken the windows first and set fire to the office next. But there was no such good excuse. The editors had not run away, or at least some of them remained. And the paper must appear the next morning. Of course there must be a leader. And the leader must be about something, or pretend to be. What should this something be? Not royalty, oh, no! Not Democracy, oh, no! Not Socialism, oh, no ! Not anything which the last fortnight had discovered, oh, no! All these [ viii ] INTRODUCTORY were dangerous. But there must be something 1 "We cannot lead with a blank half column as they do in St. Petersburg!" No! But the gentleman on duty was equal to the occasion. There is one central subject which may be dis- cussed in any ill-fitting dinner party, and the excellent editor wrote his column and sent it to the frightened foreman. The Journal appeared on the first morning of the New Born Republic. The leader was an article on "The Independ- ence of the Judiciary." In my younger days, as young editors parted at midnight for the last hour's work, the stand- ing joke was, "What shall you lead with, Charles?" "Oh, we will lead with the Independence of the Judiciary." In this volume we lead with AMERICA. [ix] NATION AND STATE "WE, THE PEOPLE America NATION AND STATE. THE great difficulty of the American people in the American Revolution was their need of a National Govern- ment. In truth, men hardly knew what the word "nation" meant. On the other side of the ocean very few people know now what it means. The great victory of the American Constitu- tion was that for us it defined the word "nation." The "States" were to be independent for all local purposes; they were united and are one for all "National" purposes. So the National Constitution defined the duties of our National Government. There are six important ones : i. The care of intercourse with foreign nations. And now no State and no man can [3] 'WE, THE PEOPLE" carry on private negotiations on matters of state with England or Russia. 2. The relations with Indian tribes. 3. Regulation of commerce among the States. 4. A part of this, if you please, the Post Office and the coinage of money. 5. Justice between every American and every other. A Georgian is as good as a man in the Bowery if he behaves as well. 6. And this was intentionally left indefinite "the common defence and the general welfare." This accurate distinction between the duties of the nation and the duties of the local govern- ment gives their glory to the men who made the Constitution. Mr. Gladstone said of them, and he is right, that they struck off in a few days the most important piece of work which was ever done in that time in that line. And this is true. But besides Mr. James Bryce, nobody of any importance in the British Empire seems to under- stand it. If a thousand men in the British Em- pire understood it, there would be no quarrel between the English Government and Ireland. I sat in the gallery of the House of Commons once for half an hour to hear a discussion whether the British Empire, Empress-Queen, Privy Council, Bishop, Lords and Commons in Parliament meant to pay a pension to an Irish [4] AMERICA school-mistress on whose head a blackboard had fallen. That is, the nation was asked to inter- fere in a local affair. So is it that an eminent European publicist wrote last week to the Amer- ican Journal, talking about the right of Eminent Domain, while he does not know more than a baby whose the eminent domain is. Mr. Bryce says that a Swiss schoolmaster knows about the distinction of State and Nation. But I never saw his book. For the first half century, public parties formed themselves here on questions regarding the rights and privileges of the National Gov- ernment and the State Government. But we have got well beyond that now. We found out in the Civil War that this was a Nation and not a Confederation. We found out that the State of Massachusetts must fly the United States flag on the State House in Boston. We have found that the rule of God requires that the United States mail shall be carried through the State of Illinois without the detention of one-thou- sandth part of a second. And, at the same time, we know that the National Government leaves to the forty-five States the local government to settle their own affairs as they choose. Mr. Harris, the Superintendent of Education, must not tell the State of Massachusetts what spelling [5] ', THE PEOPLE" book shall be studied in Cranberry Centre. But, on the other hand, when the matter relates to any of the six Constitutional articles, or to the general welfare, the general Government must take hold must, because this is a Government of Laws and not of Men. For instance, in the State of Maine, a man may not legally buy liquor at an open bar. In the State of New York he can. But if the man in New York chooses to put his drink into a vial and send it by express to the man in Maine, the man in Maine may open the bottle and drink it in the presence of the Supreme Court and all the magistrates of the State; because the State of Maine cannot interfere with the regulation of commerce be- tween the States. True statesmanship in America cultivates a passionate loyalty to the nation; because the nation has the charge of national affairs, and at the same time passionate loyalty to the State where the State is engaged in its local affairs. The fine distinction drawn between the two in the Constitution has made the nation the America that it is. [6] AMERICA GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE. THERE is a curious balancing of opinion and belief about government by the people. The scale which is up to-day is down to-morrow. Mr. Wiseman, for instance, is quite clear that some measure shall be carried through. He wishes, perhaps, that the open season for par- tridge shooting shall begin a fortnight later or a fortnight earlier. He writes a nice article about it, and sends it to the Extinguisher. The editor does not read it, for the ink is too pale; but he prints it. But only three people read beyond the seventh line. The legislature meets, and the governor does not even refer to Mr. Wiseman's wishes in his message or speech. Mr. Wiseman is indignant. He retires to Paris for a year to spend his dividends or to reinvest them. He is much pleased with the cleanness of the sidewalks in Paris. He asks the Count of Monte Cristo to dinner. And, as they chat "over theirwalnuts,"he tells the Count that there is no government by the people in America, that the streets are very dirty there, and that no gen- tleman can live there. At the same moment his friend and classmate, Mr. Horace Holworthy, is riding up from the [7] , THE PEOPLE* gare in Paris to his hotel. One of the French gentlemen of the quarter is not pleased with his appearance, and throws a ruta-baga, weighing three or four pounds, at his head. It is well aimed, and, for a minute, Mr. Holworthy is not able to converse. When he does converse, he says that he does not find the streets of Paris more agreeable than those of Boston. People who write for the press, especially say people like me are signally apt to take in this way some special grievance or some special triumph for a text, and on this text to work out a conclusion, "that which must be demonstrated," the Q. E. D. of the logicians, as to the great question whether the people does govern or does not. Mr. James has cited a fine story of Carlyle, which applies here. Dear Margaret Fuller had perhaps taken herself the least bit too seriously. She had said that she had determined "to accept the universe." "Gad! she had better!" said Carlyle. Our practical friend from Ecclefechan had himself tried some experiments in that direction. Now if, in his college days, Mr. Wiseman had looked in at the East Cambridge prison once or twice, had once or twice walked through the Riverside printing-office, had learned the meth- [8] AMERICA ods of the Prospect Union, had perhaps taken a subdivision in the Associated Charities, he might have learned two things. First, he might have known, what he does not know, what sort of persons make up the American people. Sec- ond, he would have learned how little the doc- trinaires, people like himself, affect the average intelligence of the American people; and he would know why the doctrinaires are of so little use as they are. Freeman Clarke once said of a great peace congress : "The effect of such meetings is often exaggerated. To bring together those who hold certain opinions does not necessarily increase their number. . . . The members mistake the sentiment of the meetings for public opinion." This wise statement of a wise man precisely fits the case of the critical and exclusive Mr. Wiseman. He meets at his club, or union, a certain set of men he knows; and they all agree, perhaps, that gray is a mixture of black and white, and that they should be mixed in the pro- portion of 43 to 57. Every time they meet, they talk of the shade of gray, so they think everybody else is talking about it. They see nobody else, and they are angry that no one does anything about it. They perhaps write books about it which nobody reads. [9] , THE PEOPLE" Meanwhile the People does not know that there are any such people as Mr. Wiseman in the world. It never heard of the club, and does not know that there is any question about "gray." The people goes about its business in a rough sort of way, in a way which could be improved upon. But its improvement does not come from the Girondists, or the doctrinaires, or the exiles in Paris. It comes from the Abraham Lincolns, the Booker Washingtons, the John Workmans, and the Nathan Spinners. The men of the peo- ple, who know the people, have to trust the peo- ple, to commit power to the people. It was the People of America who settled the Mississippi Valley in opposition to all the Wise- mans of their time. It was the People of America who made the Constitution of America. It was the People of America who abolished American slavery. GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE. YOU cannot make an European writer understand what government by the People is. It takes ten years for a man who has come over from Europe to America to understand it. They all think generally that if the people turn out and choose [10] AMERICA a king, and he does exactly what a king would have done in Wurtemberg or Bavaria, you have government by the People. In precisely this way Napoleon III. persuaded or compelled the people of France to vote that he should be emperor, and then he was emperor. He was as much an autocrat as the Emperor of Russia is, and yet that is called "government by the Peo- ple." At the present moment the French Re- public is called a republic. If you choose to name it so, you can name it so; but the French people do not know what government by the People means. You have Government by the People when the people of North Norumbega get together and vote that the bridge over Otter Creek shall be moved twenty-five rods and rebuilt there. When they appoint a committee to see to this, there is government by the People. When the people of Greater New York vote as to this system of license or that, or another, there will be govern- ment by the People. When the National Acad- emy of Fine Arts votes to give a medal to Mr. Sargent or Mr. Chase, there is government by the People. When the Second Church of the Secession in Stand-Still Corner votes to shingle the meeting-house, there is government by the People. , THE PEOPLE' On the other hand, when the Department of Roads and Bridges in Paris sends down M. Champernoon from Paris to select the place for a bridge at Fontleroy, that is not government by the People, even if the people choose the presi- dent who appoints the Minister of Bridges, who appoints the engineer to build the bridge. Now it is worth while to remember this dis- tinction, because the rule which America has over the world and is going to have more and more, results from the habit here of government by the People. The Parliament of England comes together when King Edward VII. bids it come together. It acts as a body of his loyal subjects whom he has called together to advise him. The Assem- bly of New York, on the other hand, comes together because the People of New York in- structs it to come together. In that Assembly any man can be a member who has obtained so far the confidence of the people round him that they like to send him there. The people of New York have said that members of the Assembly must be so many years old, but with that excep- tion the only condition for his membership is that the neighbors think he is a man of sense enough to assist in making the laws. What happens from this is that the prime [12] AMERICA advances in the legislation of the world are made from the suggestions of men who are sent by their neighbors to such legislative assemblies. Albert Paine of Bangor, a man still living and active, took it into his head that persons indicted for offences had a right to tell their own story in court if they wanted to. He went to the legislature of Maine, and said so in the legis- lature of Maine. The legislature hesitated, because the law of England and America did not permit a person to testify. But Paine saw the sense of it, and the legislature gave way and passed an act by which if a person wish to tell his story, he might tell it. The good sense and humanity of the act proved itself in Maine, it was copied by State after State in America. It worked well where it was tried; it gained more and more approval every day, and now it has been copied here and in England and in Aus- tralia, and this is now the law of the more im- portant part of the civilized world. That sort of thing happens all the time, when the people are permitted to send men of the people into an assembly of the people. Judge Hoar used to re- mind us that ever since the days of the Fathers the Public Proclamation has been, "Whereas, . . . JOHN HANCOCK [or any other] has been chosen GOVERNOR, the people of the Common- wealth may GOVERN THEMSELVES accordingly." , THE PEOPLE" WHAT IS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? THE American People is the sovereign of America. We cannot say this too often. It is as well that people of other countries should begin to under- stand it. Governors, Presidents, Secretaries of State, editors of newspapers, are not the persons who rule the country. The American People rules the country, and all these personages are the officers of the American people. I am saying this all the time in the pulpit, from the platform, in conversation and in print. I say it in any way, because I think it is very necessary that the servants of the people shall not take on airs and think they are the barons or squires or knights of the shire. People who come from other countries and write about our affairs are apt to make mistakes. Every one in Europe makes the mistake, excepting the Swiss schoolmaster of whom I have written in this col- umn before. Whoever says this, however, is apt to run against some fool like the mock soldier who made Hotspur so mad, the man who, if it had not been for gunpowder, would like to have been a soldier himself. Somebody who wrote an article for a newspaper about the way in which AMERICA he wanted to govern America, and then was disappointed because seven million people did not agree with him, turns around and says that the people have no will in the matter, that they are led by some tricky designer, and that they no more govern America than the flag of the ship governs the master who takes it to port. It is, however, just such people as he who do the snif- fling, the snuffing, and the snorting which make republics very disagreeable to the looker-on from the outside. The truth remains that the people of America govern America. It is quite worth while before we put too much trust either in critics on the other side of the ocean or any heartsick critics at home, that we open our eyes and ears and find out what the American people is. In the first place, the American people is made up in a very large proportion of men and women who can read and write, who know enough for the formation of an intelligent opinion, and who mean on the whole to do what is right. All Shakespeare's sneers at the groundlings, at the rabble, and the mob were true enough when he described people of Rome in Julius Caesar's time. They are not true of the American peo- ple now. Four per cent of the people of the State of New York are people who can bring [is] , THE PEOPLE" only their muscle and their weight to their daily work. These are the people who dig the drains, the sewers, who "lay the stun wall," as Yankees say, who carry buckets of coal up five stories or ten. The other ninety-six per cent of the work- men of New York are persons who work with their brains, such men as an expressman, who keeps a delicate account of three hundred and fifty customers in the course of a day and in the course of a year does not make ten mistakes. That man is as fit to read his newspaper and to make a judgment between Judas Iscariot, if he is a candidate, and Joseph of Arimathea, if he is a candidate, as is any intelligent reader of these lines. It was the American people who colonized the West; it was the American people who de- veloped our world-wide commerce; it was the American people who contrived to carry through the system of internal improvements; it was the American people who freed the slaves. You cannot ascribe one of these triumphs to any Charlemagne or any Augustus Caesar. They illustrate the government by the people. [16] AMERICA BET ON THE COUNTRY. OH, it was years ago. Purkett was alive, the great banker. We were all sit- ting at the club, some smoking, some gaping, and all talking or listening, when Questionmark said to Purkett, "Purkett, you never make a mistake. You are never cleaned out like us poor lambs. Tell us the secret. How do you do it?" Purkett never smoked, so he did not have to take his cigar from his mouth. He only laughed and said, "My secret?" "Yes, of course," the other men said. But if it was his secret it was the club's secret. What was our motto? We had taken it from "The Three Musketeers." "All for each, each for all." The club was entitled to the secret and would have it, if Purkett meant to be treasurer of the club after this next election. Purkett did not seem to me to care much for the office of treasurer. But he laughed again and said he would just as lief as not tell us the secret. He made us take out our pencils and our note-books, to be sure we got it right, and when he had made a lot of fun with this, he said, "All ready, go! This is the secret: 'Bet on the country.' ' [17] , THE PEOPLE* I knew Purkett very well, and Purkett always succeeded. But this was the only rule I ever heard him lay down about investments. It is a right good rule for an American in everything. He must "bet on the country." First in mere outside matters, coal, oil, wood, salt, iron, and the other things. A country where iron lies loose on the ground, all the way from Alabama to Lake Superior, will be rather apt in the long run to get the better in the matter of iron of countries where you have to dig a kilometre into the ground and dig out the ore with pickaxes and dynamite. So it is a good thing to bet on a country where a farmer in Illinois can dig his coal out of the side of a road- way on his farm and carry it home in his wheel- barrow. In that country you do not pay fifteen dollars a ton for coal many weeks together. But this was not Purkett's first reason for bet- ting on the country. He bet on the country, be- cause in the long run the right man has so good a chance to do the thing you want done. A man like Edison makes your electricity for you and handles it. A man like Roebling builds your bridge for you. A man like Abraham Lincoln runs the whole machine for you. And you do not have to inquire whether his grandfather's great-grandfather did or did not fight at this or [18] AMERICA that battle of Armageddon, or whether his grandmother's great-grandmother was or was not a favorite of King Egbert the Eleventh. It is as well to bet on the country of which one of the mottoes is, "Get the Best." And there is Sam Patch's motto, which be- longs to the nation : "Some things can be done as well as others." I would not bet on a country where they kept the Custom House business blanks, or the Law Courts, or the Assembly Houses, in the language of 1701, because nobody had dared to change a word in the form. I want to bet on a country where if a man invents a telephone to-day, the man in the government office will use it to-morrow, if it be the best thing to use. You bet on a country where the "ins" like to stay in, and where they cannot stay in long till they learn how to "get there," how to "get the best," and that "some things can be done as well as others." But all this means that you and I keep up the standard to the very best mark. We must see that the country has good water, good air, good wood, good coal, good newspapers, good books, good women, and good men. And this we shall not have unless you and I take hold. [19] , THE PEOPLE" FORESTS. THE protection of forests, not to say the creation of forests, begins to assert itself among the national duties of the United States. It is interesting, in- deed, to see that the Nation is thus resuming a duty which it took almost of course in the be- ginning, but which has been gradually lost sight of as time went on. Even in the days of "strict construction," when men who called themselves statesmen could not spend money on the National Road, there was no scruple whatever about providing and maintaining forests. The earlier reports of the Secretaries of the Navy went into detail every year as to our live-oak forests at the South. Perhaps some spirited youngster in the Navy Department may like to see what has become of them. It was not until wood was no longer needed for shipbuilding that the national care of forests disappeared from the annual reports of the Navy Department. And what may be called the inborn hatred of a tree has always asserted itself in the national life. They say at Andover that half a century ago one of their young stu- dents thought to ingratiate himself with his new [20] AMERICA teachers by going out with his axe at daybreak and cutting down two of the beautiful trees in their great avenue, before anybody was awake. The story illustrates what we may call that sort of inborn hatred of a tree in which traces linger in the blood of a nation where men are not many generations off from pioneers. It is like the inborn hatred of a snake, which lingers still among some of the daughters of Eve. But the time has come for the Nation to assert again, not simply its right to take care of forests, but the duty of maintaining them. The duty springs from the necessity. For if the nation, as a nation, does not take care of its forests, no one will. In the management of most property, there is a certain class of people who are called capitalists, because they wish to preserve the property for its uses. But, with regard to for- ests, no such private interest shows itself. If a man owns a ship, he wants to keep it in good con- dition as long as he can. And some ships have lasted a hundred years. But if the same man buys a forest, he cuts it down, perhaps in the first year. That is, he makes money by its destruc- tion and not by its use. Why is there this dif- ference ? It springs from a certain natural indifference or doubt which men have about a distant future. [21] "WE, THE PEOPLE' I can go among business men with a new inven- tion, or a new discovery, which will be profitable say two or three years hence in 1904 or 1905 ; and I can find men who will take stock in my plan or patent. But if, on the other hand, I explain that the value of the invention cannot be developed until 1910, everybody will laugh at me. Nobody will take one share in my com- pany. This is so entirely understood that old business men will tell you squarely that they never look forward more than six years. This, in few words, is the reason why in all civilized communities the preservation of forests eventually falls into the hands of the govern- ment, of the people collectively, if the forests are preserved at all. The states of the conti- nent of Europe derive large revenues from the public ownership of forests. The state, as a state, does not die. The State, as a state, there- fore, can look forward more than six years. The State, as a state, can take care of this generation and the next and the next. So, Frederick the Great, a hundred years ago, took such care of the Prussian forests that the taxes are lighter on the people of Prussia to-day. On the other hand, the State of Massachusetts a hundred years ago left its forests to the greed of individ- uals. The annual product of those forests is [22] AMERICA probably not now worth so much as it was then. And thus the State of Massachusetts to-day is hesitating whether it will buy a few acres on the top of Mt. Tom, while the Kingdom of Prussia to-day collects millions of dollars from the prod- ucts of its forests. The State does not die. Individuals do; but the State means to be eternal. It is, therefore, to the advantage of the state to invest in forests, while no individual man pares to bet even on his own life, if the bet looks forward more than six or eight years. It is only occasionally that there is an exception. When Watson, known to old-fashioned theo- logians as the Watson of "The Apology," was made Bishop, he was very angry with Charles Fox because he gave him what Watson would have called the poorest see in England. It was, alas, the only bishopric Fox could give him. But Watson was that sort of man that he was always on the attack, and, finding himself in the north of Wales, where the savagery of genera- tions had destroyed all the wood, the young bishop spent all his spare sixpences and shillings in planting firs upon ground which seemed worthless. He outlived the six-year period which most capitalists make their limit. He kept on raising his seedling firs and planting [23] , THE PEOPLE" them, and when he died his children found themselves, to their own surprise, among the rich men in England, because the trees had grown even while their father was sleeping. That was Dugald Dalghetty's phrase, as it had been embodied in his dying father's counsels. "Plant trees, Dugald," said the dying man; "they will grow while you sleep. My father said so to me when he was dying; but I have never had time to attend to it." Unfortunately, Dugald himself never found more time for this duty than his father had. But States do not die, or ought not die. States take that name because they are established. And any American State which has a statesman at the head of its finance department will do well to invest its sinking funds, so called, in forests. Take the State of Massachusetts, again, for an instance. It is our excellent plan here when we contract a loan to begin to pay it at once. If the loan is for fifty years, one per cent of the amount is paid in the first year into the sinking fund of that loan. It is "invested" for the benefit of that loan. The proceeds of the investment go into the sinking fund. And when fifty years are past the sinking fund is more than ready to re- deem the bonds. This is an admirable plan. It keeps the credit AMERICA of Massachusetts at the very highest point. Still, it is only a paper plan after all. One can imag- ine a hundred ways in which it should break down. A hard-pressed legislature might bor- row from the sinking fund, as English parlia- ments have borrowed from their sinking funds once and again. It is even to be conceived that the bonds which belong to the sinking fund might disappear before fifty years are over, if some irresponsible clerk got hold of a key which he should not handle. But, on the other hand, if the Governor had a right to invest this one per cent annually in forests or in trees, why, at the end of fifty years, Massachusetts would have a great landed property which had been im- proving itself every hour of every day. Massachusetts could do what no man or woman could do Massachusetts could make the proper laws to protect her property and detail the proper officers to enforce them. If a man flung away a cigar in a Massachusetts forest, he could be treated as the King of Saxony would treat a man who flung away a cigar in the Black Forest. Saxony received in 1900 a million and a half dollars, after all expenses of administra- tion were paid, from her forests. Prussia re- ceived in the same year from hers nearly ten million dollars, after a similar amount had been , THE PEOPLE" charged to the forests for their development and care. And this is no matter of accidental detail. There are many things which states can do and individuals cannot. This is the reason why men found states and especially why they found re- publics. States can maintain the post office bet- ter than individuals can, and so of lighthouses; so of justice between man and man; so of the coining of money; so of the regulation of com- merce; so of preserving the public health. When, therefore, "we, the People of the United States," made the nation of that name, our Constitution stated six definite objects which the Government of the nation may and must attend to. Besides these, the Constitution au- thorized the National Government to "provide for the common defence and the general wel- fare." Under this clause, sometimes with much discussion and sometimes with none, the Govern- ment undertakes other national duties. Such are the protection of the national health. This may be called a part of the common defence. The nation would have been fully justified in its war with Spain had it been made simply to keep out yellow fever. Again, the General Government appropriates money freely for rail- roads and even for other roads. When it needs, AMERICA the General Government builds telegraphs and maintains them. Since the States of the Rocky Mountain slopes were established, the nation has found out that it must assume as a national duty the business of irrigation, and with every year Congress legis- lates in that direction. For precisely the same reason, it has now assumed the business of main- taining national forests. The appropriation of five million dollars for a forest on the water di- vides of the southern Appalachians will be an important step in this direction. It is most important because it shows that we have statesmen who are alive to one of the most central of national duties. FORESTS. THIS nation ought never to be surprised when new conditions bring new duties. It is no fault of the makers of the Constitution that they did not state in advance all the details of duty which would de- mand our attention a century after their time. Thus, in their time it took Carver the better part of a year to go from the Atlantic to Lake Mich- igan; and it took him as long to come back the next year. Now I can go from New York to [27] WE, THE PEOPLE* Lake Michigan in a day, and it is not queer that the nation which has to regulate commerce be- tween New York and Lake Michigan should have some duties in 1902 which it did not have in 1789. Among these duties which belong to the na- tion, is the duty of preserving or maintaining the forests of the nation. In a small way, the National Government undertook this a century ago. The Navy Department used to have its preserves of trees for shipbuilding, because it did not choose that the nation should be depend- ent on private resources or be the victim of pri- vate rapacity. And in those days, at the begin- ning of the last century, the average American still regarded the forest as his enemy. But now the forest is no man's enemy. On the other hand, the world knows only too well that the destruction of forests has been the signal for the decline and downfall of empires. In Asia Mi- nor and in Syria were once the finest regions of the civilized world. Those regions received the first blow to their civilization in the wanton 'destruction of their forests. The United States has turned over a new leaf in reserving the control of large districts in the west, so that their forests cannot be cut away without the permission of the central Govern- [28] AMERICA ment. We are now carrying the same policy farther in the reservation of a great national park in the highlands of Tennessee and North Carolina. The bill providing for this great park went through the Senate last year by a handsome majority. We may hope that even in the stress of the short session it may go through the House without serious opposition.* In the highlands, which will thus become national prop- erty, are the headwaters of the rivers which water Maryland and Virginia, both Carolinas, Ken- tucky, Tennessee and the Gulf States south of them. We now know that for regular water supply you must retain the forests, which arrest the moisture of the passing clouds and feed with it the headwaters of the rivers below. This is the proper time for all the citizens of New England and New York to see to it that their alpine highlands also are taken into the great National Park system. The alpine regions of the United States are not extensive. One could wish they were more extensive than they are. Some summits in the Carolinas, Mt. Mar- cy and other high summits of New York, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and Mt. Katahdin in Maine are the only four alpine sys- *Alas ! It did not. But hopes remain , THE PEOPLE* terns on the Atlantic side of the Rocky Moun- tains. The care and oversight of the forests in all of these regions belongs to the National Gov- ernment. It must not be left to lumber men or pulp men or mill owners. The water which flows from these summits is the water of the Nation; the forests which clothe them at their bases must be maintained for centuries to come, and this necessity can be commanded only by such perpetual and systematic care of the Nation. We are glad to see public movements in this direction in the centres of opinion in the States most interested. WE, THE PEOPLE: OR WAR LORDS. A "WAR LORD" on a visit to another "War Lord" in Europe, has to receive a regiment at the first moment after he arrives at his friend's house. It is just as you think you must have a decanter of whiskey ready when certain people come to see you. But when a leader of men comes to see you, you do not offer him a glass of whiskey. When Edison calls on you, or Mitchell, or Howells, or Bishop Potter, you know your man, and you do [30] AMERICA not offer him a glass of whiskey. King Edward knew his man. He, therefore, gave him a chance to review a regiment when he made him a visit. This is what an old-fashioned king, who still keeps up the traditions of "War Lords," has to do when another "War Lord" comes to see him. Each of them has to dress up like a soldier and to ride on a horse and to show each other how well they could do if they went out to fight. In point of fact, bluff old King George, the second of that name, as you remem- ber, is the last of the House of Hanover or the House of Cobourg who ever smelled gun- powder in battle. How do "We the People" entertain our guests when "We the People" put the "War Lords" into their fit place and when "We the People" have a distinguished stranger coming up the Bay? In the days just after the Civil War, I had a good deal to do with an accomplished Russian gentleman who had come up the Bay on a command from the Czar. They have a capital institution in the government of Russia which provides what is known as the Civil Staff for the Emperor. Just as the gentlemen on his military staff know about "right shoulder shift," and percussion caps, and embalmed beef, the gentlemen on his Civil Staff have to know about [30 , THE PEOPLE" the administration of government. They are kept in motion all over the world where there is any good governing done. Now, it happened that the Emperor of Russia emancipated the serfs of Russia; it happened that "We the Peo- ple" on this side of the Atlantic had emancipated our negroes, and so my friend had been sent over to spend two or three years in studying the ar- rangements which "We the People" had made and were making in local government. I wish that I had and could print in this book the quarterly reports which that man made to his Chief of Staff. For when he went away, he knew more of the detail of the local administration of all our States north of the northern line of the Carolinas and of Tennessee than any other man who was living at that time knew. He would spend a month on the frontier to find out how the pioneers built their roads and established their schools. He would spend another month in a back county in Virginia, to see how the local justices under their old English forms of law decide cases between man and man whose ox gored whose cow. And after two such years of life in villages, and at cross-road inns, he appeared again in our civilization with his dress coat of evenings, and still learning something new. AMERICA "Well," he said to me one day, "it is two years that I have been knocking about in America, and I have never seen a soldier." "Why should you?" I said. "What do you want of soldiers?" "Well why perhaps don't you think that the sight of a soldier reminds people that there is a government, that there is such a reality as law?" To which ques- tion of his, I said that I thought it was a very good thing that people should be reminded of the government. But, I said, fortunately with us, sovereigns do not sit on a throne supported by bayonets. I said that the sovereign here showed himself in his acts of beneficence to everybody. I remember I put to him this question: "Have not your letters been well delivered here?" And he said that they had been admirably delivered, that the mail service of the country was the best which he could conceive of, giving me the history of the way in which a particular letter had fol- lowed him. I said, and I was proud to say, that in such service to each of the people, "We the People" were able to show what government is and what it is for. Government is an arrange- ment which all the people make for the benefit of each of the people. The Swiss Confederacy has put it on its coat of arms, "All for each, and each for all." [33] , THE PEOPLE" This is a new discovery to the people who have been trained under feudal institutions, un- der aristocratic institutions, or autocratic insti- tutions. But it is the old habit of people who havebeen trained as Americans have been trained, who have been of the government and of the gov- erned for nearly three hundred years. A great deal better preparation for the busi- ness of government has the average American citizen who has worked out his taxes on the high- way than any man who has known nothing but the forms of the military institutions of Europe, as those Russian gentlemen had been trained, or this unfortunate "War Lord" of Germany, who is going a-visiting. Governments, like other things, are tested by their fruits, not by their fuss or feathers, by their epaulettes or their dress parades. "We the People" have a good many servants. We expect them to earn their wages, and, on the whole, they do. PEOPLE OR KINGS? TAXES. IN the old-fashioned government of the Old World, taxes were imposed for the use of the King or the Emperor. He wanted an army, or he wanted a palace. The people who worked for him, therefore, put on [34] AMERICA the taxes where the money could be most easily collected. And the whole system of revenue, as it is understood in the books, began in that system. It was natural enough, and from the King's point of view it answered every purpose. But in the absolute change of everything, between government by an autocrat and govern- ment of the people, all this changes in a republic, or ought to change. The people needs taxes. It is willing to pay them. But it does not need, as the King did, to place them here or there, where it is handiest for the publicans to get to- gether the money. On the other hand, it wants to collect the money, not by taxing articles of prime necessity, but by taxing such luxuries as those who like them can afford to pay for. Take the central instance of water again. Everybody, literally everybody, needs water, must have it. How absurd it would be to tax water. We say everybody shall pay for the water he uses, just what it costs us to bring it to him. We cannot do this precisely. But we do it as nearly as we can. And when the water dues afford more money than the cost of the service and of the money which was needed to bring it, we reduce the water rates. We do not tax the water. Another necessity of life is wood. In a [35] 'WE, THE PEOPLE' country like ours we need wood right and left, everywhere. We need it to burn, we need it for the shingles over our head, and the floors under our feet. We need it for the chairs we sit on, and for hoe handles and for ships, and for the backs of clothes brushes, as a friend at my side reminds me. Wood was, therefore, an excellent thing to tax in the European system of government. "Oh, yes! see, all these poor things must have wood. So we will tax their wood and they will have to pay." Natural enough. But suppose these "poor things" become the Sovereign? Why should the sovereign annoy himself? Why should he forever be taxing his toothpicks, the wheels of his carriage, the floor of his house and the shingles on his roof? When he learns what it is to be sovereign, he will make his own business as easy for himself as he can. In our affair, why do we tax the Canadian lumber? Every man of us wants to have lumber cheap. Nobody wants to have our forests cut down, and our streams dried up, except the lumber lords, who want to steal from the future, to pile up what is stolen in barns to-day. [36] AMERICA Everybody literally wants cheap fuel, quite as much as cheap water. Why should the sov- ereign tax his own fireplace and palace furnace? The place to begin is the duty on Canadian wood and the duty on imported coal. LOCAL OPTION. U T OCAL OPTION" has been and is spoken of as if the two words meant -1 -^ of course something about drink- ing. In one place an Optionist is a man who wants an eleven o'clock or an eye- opener. In another place, he is a man who wants his water straight and filtered. There is much danger that a great principle of govern- ment may be neglected by such careless talk. Local Option gives to the people of a town, or even of a county, a sort of responsibility in the management of their own affairs, which can be gained in no other way. What makes the dif- ference between a neat, clean village in Switzer- land and the God-forsaken dirt and abomina- tions of other parts of Europe which could easily be named, but Local Option? If it is my vil- lage, my street, my public square, my Town Hall, I am ashamed when it is neglected or defiled. If it is the baron's, or the squire's, or the knight of the shire's, why the knight of the shire, or [37] , THE PEOPLE" the squire, or the baron, may take care of it. If he takes my money, why he may see to the pavements. You cannot make the rulers in Europe under- stand what self-government means. They real- ly think that when you have said that once in two or three years the men of a community go and vote for Mr. A. or Dr. Z. to be a public officer, these people govern themselves. And then Mr. A. or Dr. Z. may send down to my town an officer from the capital of the country to tell me where to build my bridge, or how to grade my road, or whether the schoolmaster shall spell honor with two n's or not, according as they like at headquarters. Now, the truth is, that when you have real self-government, John and Tom and Dick and Harry and I, and a lot more of the neighbors, get together. "Together" is the word. We talk this thing over. We say we will have the schoolhouse here, and we will buy our spelling- books there. The road shall turn off the ledge by the Widow Slocum's, and it shall go on the level by John Hill's. We say that we will turn out and mend the road on such a week in May. And what is more, we do it. I carry my spade, and the boys carry the shovels and drive the oxen, and we build the new road together. [38] AMERICA You cannot do that sort of thing everywhere. But it is a mighty good thing when we can do it. And self-government is the government of peo- ple who carry that thing as far as they can. Local Option means thatyou are trying to do this. It does not refer to liquor merely. It may refer to schools, to roads, to the choice of public ser- vants, to half the affairs of administration. No county in New York would like it much if a "prefect" were sent down from Albany to run it. Nor would any school in Connecticut like it much if the people were told they must buy the school chairs at No. 999 North Main Street in Hartford. Yet that is what would happen if we had not now a certain measure of "Local Option." [39] Co-operation and Coal OUR WEALTH IN COMMON. IN a letter which I wrote to be read at a pub- lic meeting about the coal strike, I said that the Pennsylvania strike led the way directly for the only logical solution, the ownership of the coal properties by the State of Pennsylvania, or eventually by the nation. It is really pathetic to see on how many sensible people this idea falls as if it had never been broached before. I may say, of course, that the great majority of thinking men have studied the importance of such a solution; but a good many people whom you would class among thinking men have spoken to me of the suggestion as if it were an absolute novelty. To New Englanders in particular the sugges- tion is not a novelty, and you are happy to find that it is generally peoplewhohave been educated under absolute governments or under feudalism who think of it as a novelty. Not always, but generally. The truth is that so soon as the men [40] CO-OPERATION AND COAL trained to English views of freedom landed here and could kick off the superstitions of feudalism, as Winthrop and Winslow and the people of both colonies did at once, they went into the gov- ernment ownership of the essentials. The gov- ernment owned the roads from the beginning and almost to the end of the eighteenth century. For a little while turnpikes owned by incorpora- ted companies were the fashion; but their failure was so apparent that most of the turnpikes of the country are now a part of the pub- lic property. Originally, all churches were the property of the public, all schoolhouses were, as schoolhouses are to this hour. Indeed, in practice every church edifice is now so far a part of the public property that no tax is imposed upon it more than would a tax be imposed upon the State house or court house. It is interesting to see that the light-houses in New England, as now in all the United States, are a part of the property of the public. It is only under the artificial system of the English courts that the light-houses in England are held to this hour by private boards. Naturally, in such a system, when they came round to whale fisheries and mackerel fisheries on any considerable scale, the fishing was carried on by partnership as large as the business required. , THE PEOPLE" The State did not send fishing boats to sea, but the men who took the boats to sea clubbed to- gether to do it. No one was paid special wages ; but they shared, each man according to a lot de- termined upon, in the profits or in the charges of the voyage. Just as soon as it became evident that towns and cities must be provided with water by aque- ducts or reservoirs, under the natural genius of republican life the cities and towns undertook this work; and they now own the reservoirs and the water. We have advanced so far in this natural system that the cities and towns now own large libraries which provide everybody with reading. They own large hospitals, where every- body may be cured, as the State, from a very early period in the last century, has owned its own hospitals, and has refused to send its wards to what they call private institutions. In this way we have become familiarized with the ownership of wealth in common. Mr. Ernst tells us that Winthrop first used the word "Com- monwealth" for a political organization, the use of it previous to that time having been its use to represent the property owned by all, as commons for the feeding of cattle or the privilege of fuel in the public forests. To take other instances, the State preserved the beaches as landing-places CO-OPERATION AND COAL for all sorts and conditions of men or women, and the shores between high water and low water are to this moment held in common. So the great ponds, as they are called in distinction from ponds which can be enclosed by private ownership, are used for the common right of all the people in the towns in which they are. When the time for the Erie Canal came, and the Cham- plain Canal; the State of New York built them; and it now owns them, to its great profit. To the profit of this reader, also, and of this writer; for the bread on our tables to-day is materially cheaper because the State owns these great water- ways. The rule is perhaps nowhere put down as mat- ter of statute or constitutional right, but the principle seems to be simple. It is well for the State to keep its direct control of those properties or rights in which every person is directly inter- ested. Such are the rights of water to drink, the rights of health and air. The State exercises absolute control. The State, so to speak, owns the air; and no individual may poison it, because fresh air is one of the necessities. The State controls the use of light, and places the limits by which my neighbor is restricted from cutting off the light from my home. In the case of fuel the practical question which [43] "WE, THE PEOPLE' arises is whether the fuel considered is or is not a matter of prime necessity for all the people of the State. In 1825, when a man was laughed at who bought a ton of anthracite coal, it would have seemed preposterous to compare the supply of that coal with the supply of water. And peo- ple have got into the habit, therefore, of think- ing that the profit on anthracite coal is a sort of God-given privilege to what is, after all, a hand- ful of people only a few hundred thousand at the most living between the Susquehanna and the Delaware rivers. But this is a mere acci- dent; and, if the supply of anthracite coal be- comes necessary as an important part of the fuel supply of the nation, why, the State, which of course has the power, seems to have the duty of asserting again the control which it had in the beginning over these properties. Only one is coolly told now that the rights of property must be respected. Of course they must, precisely as the rights of the people of West Boylston were respected when the State of Massachusetts found that it needed most of that town for the metro- politan water supply. And the people of West Boylston knew perfectly well that, as citizens of Massachusetts, they must stand out of the way; and they gave up their beautiful town to be made into a beautiful lake. They had to. The peo- [44] CO-OPERATION AND COAL pie between the Susquehanna and the Delaware rivers must be taught the same lesson. When they took their lands, they were citizens of the State of Pennsylvania; and they have held their lands subject to the conditions that, when the people needed the land, the people, which is the sovereign, would take them back and would use them. It seems to me rather curious that in a com- munity like ours people of the average intelli- gence choose to forget how much of all our property is now our wealth in common. This is certain : that for taking care of it and manag- ing it we people in Eastern Massachusetts prac- tically pay more than a quarter of our income. The truth is that more than a quarter of our property is in our wealth in common. I find that at present those of my friends who have any property are very glad if they can get 5 per cent interest upon it. I observe at the same time that for supplying them with the prime necessities of justice, health, education, easy intercourse be- tween house and house and between town and town, for providing them with books and open churches, and hospitals and public parks, the State of Massachusetts and the city of Boston re- quire them to pay a third part of this 5 per cent into the public treasury. [45] , THE PEOPLE" The more cynical among them growl because of this requisition. But I observe that the same people send their children to public schools, walk on the sidewalk when they go to make afternoon visits or to cut off their coupons, that they send to the public library if they want to read their Adam Smith, and come to church if they want to hear Mr. Edward Cummings. Why the grum- blers of this sort are disinclined to any simple measure which will save us from coal panics or famines, I can understand they will always grumble. But why people who are used to own- ing Boston Common and the Boston Public Li- brary and Washington Street and Tremont Street in common, who know that the school- houses, the city hospitals, and the Franklin Park are owned in common, why they should think it would be a very exceptional thing to own coal mines in common I do not see. CO-OPERATION. THE TOM, DICK, AND HARRY SOCIETY. LAST May, on one of those pleasant after- noons in the first half of the month, Richard Roe and Thomas Hazeldon found themselves sitting side by side, smoking on one of the seats in Madison Square. [46] CO-OPERATION AND COAL This had happened several times lately. They bought the afternoon Journal in the car, got out as it passed the Square, and as long as the cigars lasted they sat in a shady place they had found. That fruit man, the same who is with those Cuban people Smith his name is, Harry T. Smith, joined them. They both knew him, but they do not generally sit on the same seat to smoke. But this time when Smith joined them he said at once, "I say, fellows, how much coal do you lay in for a winter? I have been talking with one of the Philadelphia men. I met him at Cienfuegos last year. He wants to bring me three hundred tons of hard coal and deliver it where I say before the first of June. I don't want five tons myself. But a lot of my neigh- bors up at Yonkers have chipped in and some men in the cars this morning chipped in and I asked every man I met at lunch if he did not want some. We are going to share and share, and pay them on the first of June just what the coal cost over at Hoboken when it gets there." Well, Hazeldon took eight tons for himself and his sister, and Roe took three tons for his house and three for his office. This was the beginning of the "Tom, Dick, and Harry Combination" which has been talked [47] , THE PEOPLE" of so much by all the people who have heard of it, in which all those men who chipped in in May are so comfortable just now, while all the rest of us are cursing and swearing. If co-operation sometimes succeeds as well as this, why does it not succeed so always? If I spoke to five sensible men this morning about co-operation, they would notably all say that co- operation had always failed. The truth is that co-operation in manufacture has won its best successes in France. Co-opera- tion in insurance and buying and building of houses has won its success in the United States. Co-operation in such affairs as this of the "Tom, Dick, and Harry" coal purchase has succeeded marvellously in England, in the great Rochdale co-operative system. But that has not succeeded in America. Co-operative house-building has hardly been attempted in France, and though there are a few co-operative factories in England and America, they make no part of our system. The difficulty in America which first appears in introducing the Rochdale system here is the willingness, even eagerness, of our workmen to move from place to place. Every man of us has emigrant blood, not many generations back. We all "thirst for the horizon." While in Rochdale, or I might say any other manufacturing town [48] CO-OPERATION AND COAL in England, almost every serious man wants to stay there until he dies; in America, every intel- ligent workman wants to be foot-free, to start at a fortnight's notice with his family for Seattle, for Denver, or for Manila. Just as your nice and neat Rochdale co-opera- tive store No. i gets established in New Shef- field, Nahum Stringfellow comes in, one of the best men on its board, and he says to Mr. Many- penny, the treasurer, "Manypenny, I am going to take my family to Luzon, and I shall want to take out all my stock here next Saturday." Now, the shops on the Rochdale system cannot stand this long, and we must contrive in America a system of our own, by which the co-operative plan can be fitted in with our habits. This we can do, for if America has some disadvantages it has many advantages. A country in which a thousand men can club together to buy and build their homes can certainly make arrangements by which a thousand men can buy their coal, their flour, their butter, their coffee and their tea. [49]