A National Sign of the Times
By L. A. S.
MANY are the omens to-day, visible to discerning minds, of coming political revolution in the United States. One of the latest spokesmen on this subject is Judge Peter S. Grosscup, of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, who writes in the February number of McClure’s Magazine on “How to Save the Corporation,” and presents facts which show that unless the corporation in this country can be regenerated, and that speedily, the republic is doomed. From his position as judge of a federal court, this writer’s view of the subject is certainly not that of a visionary. In a preface to the article the editor says:— This article, written at a time when there is so much public discussion regarding6the exact status of the great railroad corporations and trusts in this country, possesses a peculiar significance, force, and finality as coming from a federal judge so distinguished as Judge Grosscup. All of Judge Grosscup’s decisions and public addresses have been marked not only by a breadth of knowledge of the law, but by a keen sensitiveness to all the immediate problems and conditions of American life. He is more than a judge; he is a statesman. Judge Grosscup raises the query, “What shall it profit our country if it gain the world and lose its soul?” regarding which he says:— The soul of republican America is not in our ambition, as a people, to be great commercially and politically; nor in our ambition for increased national territory, national power, or national wealth. The soul of republican America, as a civil government ordained to promote the welfare and happiness of its people, is individual opportunity—the opportunity and encouragement given to each individual to build up, by his own effort and for himself and those dependent upon him, some measure of dominion and independence all his own. In that one phrase—measurable individual independence, and the opportunity to measurably exercise individual dominion—is comprised the civil history of the Anglo-Saxon race. . . . The loss that republican America now confronts is the loss of individual hope and prospect. . . . This means that, as a republican political institution, America will have lost the spirit which alone promises it life. It means social and, eventually, political revolution. The thing at which I point is no apparition. It is an approaching fact,—a fact that the people of this country have intuitively discerned. The institution of private property, which, as Judge Grosscup says, is “the foundation of civilization,” now rests upon a shifting foundation. “The proprietorship of the private property of the country, by the bulk of the people,” says Judge Grosscup, “is radically narrowing.” A generation ago the artizans of the country lived in the country towns. In the country towns were made the shoes we wore, the wagons and carriages, the stoves, the saddlery we used—all the appliances of life; and over the door of each shop hung the sign of the proprietor within. A generation ago the farm work was done by men living on the farms.
All this is now changed. Nearly one half the population of the United States—twelve million active workers, supporting as dependents twenty-four millions more—are now connected with the mechanical trades. The men who, in the time of which I have just spoken, with their own hands did the planting and cultivating and harvesting, are now in the manufacturing centers, making the machines that plant and cultivate and harvest. The artizan proprietors in the towns have been succeeded by artizan employees in the great factories. The whole scene of industrial activity has been shifted from town and country to the cities; from the numerous small dominions exercised by individuals, to colossal corporate dominions. The hoards of the working people, which constitute the greater proportion of the deposits in savings-banks, show, within recent years, a marked increase, which means that the bulk of the proprietors of the “active” properties of the country are withdrawing their money from these smaller enterprises, and placing it where it goes into the hands of corporations which are absorbing the business of the lesser concerns. This is proved by the fact that while the growth of wealth per capita from 1880 to 1900 was about ten per cent, the bank deposits of wage-earners and people of ordinary means increased during this same period over five hundred per cent. The continuation of this process will, says Judge Grosscup, surely produce a nation of dependents. On this point he says:— But the transformation strikes deeper than mere economic conditions, or the natural laws that govern monopoly and competition. The transformation of the ownership of a country’s industrial property from its people generally, to a few of its people only, reaches the bed-rock of social and moral forces on which alone the whole structure of republican institutions rests; for, under such conditions, instead of depending, each on himself and his own intelligence chiefly for success, the great bulk of our people, increasingly, will become dependent upon others. Those who possess investible means will come to rely solely upon the great financial institutions, and those who possess nothing but capacity for labor, upon the great organizations of labor. That is paternalism,—paternalism in almost its final form,—the paternalism that will eventually divide the country into two hostile camps—the camp of those who have, and the camp of those who have not,—the paternalism that speedily descends into actual state socialism, or a dry-rotted citizenship as nerveless and squalid as state socialism. Here, then, in our day, and at this early hour of the day, is the parting of the ways. Ahead lies the road to paternalism. To the left is the open road to state socialism. They now look like distinct ways, these two roads, over bogs and precipices all their own. But a little way ahead, within the distance that any clear eye can carry, the two roads meet. For let it not be forgotten by those who preach the so-called rights of “industrial liberty,” that the out-and-out socialists and radical labor men are not the only influences that are pushing our country to the edge of the socialistic precipice. These have allies, and the ally on which they most rely, and justifiably rely, are just those men who, regardless of all considerations other than those of money and power greed, are launching the dishonest corporate contrivances that, under our existing corporation policy, obtain without hindrance the credit and sanction of the government’s great seal. From the standpoint of Christianity the situation possesses an additional significance, which is that the process described is bringing men more and more under the influence and domination of man, and destroying those features of environment and qualities of character which have favored the work of God for men’s salvation. It is a process which is binding the souls of men in the fetters of him who stands at the head of the world’s confederacies,—the devil. But at the future point where, from the world’s standpoint, men see political revolution and the break-up of republican government, to result in they know not what (unless the down grade of the nation can be stayed), the Christian student of the prophecies sees the consummation of earth’s course of sin and evil, and the coming of earth’s divine and rightful Sovereign, to set up his everlasting kingdom of righteousness and peace.