A Challenge

I

AFTER a generation of lavish spending, which we disguised under the title of ‘a high standard of living,’the great middle class in the United States, which is the backbone of the nation, has been forced to come down to earth and make drastic reductions in its family budgets. During that period the life of the wage-earning male was devoted to providing the money necessary to enable his ambitious family to keep up with the Jones’s, a race which became almost a religious rite. Like most religious movements, this one took stronger hold on the women than on the men; but the men testified to their faith by working harder and harder in order to stay in the game, although it often converted them into mere money-making machines. The panic of 1929 put an end to this merrygo-round which fed the body but starved the spirit of the nation. Incomes could not be maintained and, to avoid bankruptcy, expenditures had to be cut down. One may note in passing that this process of deflation, though painful, was on the whole salutary.

The same process of reckless expansion went on in government expenditures, particularly during the last fifteen years of the period, with the aid of new revenue raised by taxation. But when revenues were sharply reduced by the depression, the governments, instead of following the practice of individuals and reducing their expenses, adopted the opposite course. Expenditures continued to increase, and the savings of the hard-pressed taxpayers were confiscated. After three years, however, the end of this programme is clearly in sight. The geese that elected the governments and laid the golden eggs are ready to give up the ghost. Our large cities are on the edge of bankruptcy — some of them have gone over it; a few states are in the same predicament; and even the Federal Government, after three staggering deficits in its budget, has arrived at the point where it is hard to see how anything but drastic economy can avert disaster.

Although governments face a simpler problem than individuals, because they can operate for a time with unbalanced budgets, even governments must ultimately balance their accounts or go bankrupt. In many parts of the country that time has arrived. Increased taxation has passed the point of diminishing returns, so that governments as well as individuals have now come to the place where economy is the only prudent course.

But at this point we face a startling fact. The revenues of governments are spent largely for wages and salaries, the total of which in our great cities is grossly excessive; for, even where the salaries paid to individuals are not too high, the number of individuals employed is. It is a matter of common knowledge that many of our cities could be run better with less money than is now paid to their public servants. And yet it is becoming more obvious every day that these necessary and profitable economies will not be made because the organized power of the government employees, whose jobs are threatened, will prevent it.

We are being forced to admit that our cities, and even many of our towns, have ceased to have a republican form of government. They are oligarchies, controlled by organizations of officeholders, supported by the taxpayers. Some of the states are in a similar position, and even the independence of the Federal Government is gravely threatened. It piled up a deficit of over $2,500,000,000 last year and will have a deficit of about $1,500,000,000 this year. This should be met by drastic economy, but new taxes may have to be added to an already overburdened people because the economies cannot be made. A miracle would be necessary to clear the road for them. Two great leaks in the federal budget are the salaries of federal officeholders and the payments to World War veterans. A saving of a billion dollars could probably be made in these two items without impairment in government efficiency or injustice to any deserving veterans. But it will take a miracle to bring this about. The organized power of the federal employees and of the veterans is so great that Congress under normal conditions dare not oppose them.¹

The fact is that the servants and pensioners of the federal, state, and municipal governments have got a strangle hold on the nation which threatens our political freedom. This situation is not new, but it has been greatly aggravated during the last twenty years. It has crept up on us like a thief in the night, and there are even some who are naïve enough to welcome it. One commentator, who computes the number of citizens who now work directly or indirectly for the government at eight or nine millions, states with apparent satisfaction that the growth of this army has been a major factor in the relief of technological unemployment, and, as a solution of the problem of depression, he urges that additional taxes be levied at once to increase it. Perhaps in his enthusiasm he has set the figure high, but, in view of the fact that one quarter of the national income is now eaten up by taxes, the figure must be approximately correct.

II

Few of us have realized how vast the number of government employees has become; still less what it indicates. Bluntly put, it measures the decay of representative government. During the last generation, and particularly since the war, we have got into the habit of looking to our governments to do our work for us. After the panics of 1873 and 1893, when the country was going through a similar period of trial, our fathers took a more rugged and self-respecting view. They felt that it was their business to help the government, while now we feel that it is the government’s business to help us. This is partly the cause and partly the result of the vast bureaucracy which has been built up during the interval. The time has come when we must consider where it will end. It appears that the arteries through which the processes of government must flow have become so encrusted with parasites that the life of democracy is threatened. If these government employees knew their power and were properly organized, they could control the government completely and democracy would be at an end. Perhaps that point is already reached; in the large cities they control the government now, except during comparatively brief periods of revolt.

We seem to have forgotten what our fathers knew, that democracy can never be an efficient form of government. Efficiency was not its purpose. By deliberately making it inefficient, its founders aimed to promote selfconfidence and efficiency in the citizen, so that he could, and would, do things for himself. Their objective was a weak government and strong individuals. During the last generation, however, individuals appear to have become less self-reliant, while the governments, though given more work to do, have not become more efficient. They are not likely to. If we want to preserve democracy we must act at once. Perhaps it is too late, or perhaps we may not want to preserve it, for President Hopkins of Dartmouth, one of our great educational leaders, has raised the pertinent question whether democracy as we now have it is safe for the world. As he says, it has become so cumbersome and so vacillating in action that it is unable to deal with rapid change. Change is now the fabric of our environment, and a form of government which cannot deal with change is obsolete. The cumbersomeness and the vacillation are in part the results of bureaucracy, in part a weakening in the character of the voters. As an efficient method of government, democracy never stood high, even among its friends, but there is value in its inefficiency, for, if clearly perceived, this should force us to rely upon ourselves and not on the government. Personally, I would not give up democracy without a struggle, for I value its by-products highly.

To recover our freedom, two things must be done. We must first kill off some of the parasites which live upon our government activities. The tendency to breed them is a congenital disease of bureaucracy, which under a democratic form of government is incurable, but, like the potato bug, its ravages can be kept under control. Such treatment might give immense relief, particularly in our cities, where the disease is most acute.

But that alone is not enough. The areas subject to the disease must be walled off and reduced to a minimum by curtailing government activities wherever possible. We must learn to carry on ourselves, or go without, many of the operations now assigned to our governments if democracy is to be preserved. The choice lies between simplification of governmental functions and reorganization of the whole structure. Our tendency to load the government with new burdens is evidence of our ignorance of the purpose for which this particular piece of machinery was designed. If we go on, the machine will break down.

Already there are signs of breakdown. The Federal Government is a notable example of this abuse. The towering structure of the federal bureaucracy rests upon constitutional foundations which are pronounced by competent lawyers to be very insecure. If the attention of the voters, staggering under the burden of taxation, were concentrated upon this point, the seats of the mighty might become unsafe. Some of the bureaus whose legality is challenged are the Bureau of Education, under the Department of the Interior, and under the Department of Labor the Children’s, Women’s, and Labor Statistics Bureaus and the United States Employment Service. These bureaus and others are said to have no constitutional justification.

It may be, of course, that all systems of government — like men — are subject to degeneration, and that the disease of bureaucracy is incurable. If this is true, civilizations have a limited life cycle and ours is walking toward the sunset.

It is a depressing prospect which cannot be waved aside by our congenital optimism. This condition will not cure itself, but we should not abandon hope, even though the battle to recover our health is likely to be desperate. The army of officeholders, government employees, and pensioners is now so large and so well organized that under normal conditions neither Congress nor state and local governmental bodies dare oppose it. While our legislators are generally honest and well-meaning men, it is too much to expect that they will be resolute enough to resist these organized groups who are fighting for their lives, unless they are supported by an equally well-organized force of overwhelming superiority. ‘Safety first’ is a motto that appeals to legislators as well as to other men, and until the anger of the voters at the loss of their power has reached the boiling point, the bureaucrats are safe behind their entrenchments.

At present the individual voter, though aware of the ignominious position into which he has fallen, is helpless because unorganized. Individual sniping at trained troops in entrenched positions is a heroic but a futile business. A successful attack can only be made by superior forces of organized and determined men. The voters of the nation possess, of course, an overwhelming superiority of numbers, but they lack both the other essentials — organization and determination. The softening effects of a generation of prosperity are staggering, and the character of the voters may have been so undermined that the recovery of our political freedom is now impossible. But the early action of the new Congress shows clearly what an aroused public opinion can do under skillful leadership. If we want political freedom we can get it.

III

Before we advance to the attack, we must see clearly the nature of the problem which confronts us, and the conditions necessary to its solution. We must decide whether a democratic form of government can deal effectively with the problems of modern industrial life, and whether it is likely to prosper in that environment. Decisions on these questions made a century ago must now be reconsidered. The tools of government which we have were fashioned for use in an agricultural country whose inhabitants were poor. For a highly mechanized industrial civilization, where high living has been common during the last twenty years, they may be wholly unfit. Of late, constructive thinking on problems of government has been notably rare, and a period of training may be needed to fit us to decide the difficult and subtle problems now presented.

This training is a major task of our educational system, in which it is unlikely to succeed unless it can be kept completely free from political control. An educational system under political control will never restore to us political freedom. Unless our educational institutions, which are the central nervous system of an industrial democracy, can be kept free, the death of our civilization may result, for if education in this country should be completely incorporated into the same circulatory system with government, the diseases which afflict our government will certainly be communicated. There is grave danger that this will occur — in fact, it has already occurred to an alarming degree. Our public school system and our state colleges are already under complete political control. Only the private schools and our endowed institutions of higher learning and of research remain free, and some of these are menaced by the present depression.

Political control of the school system need not perhaps give us immediate concern, for it is not to the elementary part of our educational system that we are looking for help in the solution of our present problem. But if the hand of the government is once firmly laid upon our institutions of higher learning, the Rubicon has been crossed. It is hardly too much to say that our salvation depends on keeping our higher education completely free from the control of government, for only in this way can we hope to maintain a method of rejuvenation and renewal on which the life of our civilization depends. The evolving life of an industrial democracy hangs on the thread of educational freedom. If this gives way, our future is very dark.

It is, therefore, alarming to hear a prominent educator like President Hutchins of the University of Chicago urging more extensive government support for our institutions of higher learning. The panic which has overwhelmed the markets seems to have spread to the universities, which ought to be immune. What we need is not more government support but more private endowments. Even President Hutchins seems to be conscious of this, for he is reported to have said: ‘The private institutions have struggled to maintain the right of the scholar to exercise his intelligence even though it led him to criticize established policies or institutions. Their example has enabled most state universities to take the same position with infinite profit to the states.’

About the infinite profit to the states there can be no doubt. But one thinks that President Hutchins is too sanguine about the independence of these statecontrolled institutions. They have little independence now, and it cannot be expected to survive. When an institution is wholly, or mainly, dependent on annual grants from a legislature, it must ultimately bow to the legislators’ will. The working of cause and effect is obvious. ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’ This is what is actually taking place, and it is futile to expect that a system of education supported, and therefore controlled, by the state can long maintain its independence.

Our best hope of regaining our political freedom, and of keeping it when regained, lies in a vigorous system of higher education completely free from political control. Such a system may be composed of endowed institutions, like those we now have, but the system must be greatly strengthened, and any vigorous movement in this direction is likely to draw the fire of the politicians because it will threaten their power. In fact, we have already witnessed the beginning of the war. It takes the form of attacks on our endowed institutions because their endowments are partly the gifts of men who have made their fortunes in business, and who are suspected of being prejudiced in favor of industry and somewhat blind to the national welfare. Such charges are groundless; in fact, irrelevant. The case is not comparable to that of the state institutions, because these are endowments, which have passed completely out of the hands of the donors, once and for all, into the hands of trustees, who owe them no obligation whatever except to maintain the freedom of the institutions. In view of the obvious motive for such attacks, they can safely be disregarded.

At the present time our most urgent need is more endowed institutions of higher education and foundations for research, staffed by teachers and scholars of the most powerful and most independent minds. In the past we seem to have failed to attract a sufficient number of such men, and the reason is not far to seek. During the last century, and especially during the last fifty years, the prizes in business have been so attractive that the best brains of the nation have gone into that field. Business has been the great adventure of our time and has attracted the great adventurers.

There are signs, however, that we are near the end of that era. It is unlikely in the future that the adventure element in business will be predominant. In fact it cannot be, for, unless we can stabilize and control our present economic system, it will be superseded by some other system which can be controlled. Capitalism, as we have known it in the past, must be tamed and socialized. If this cannot be done, it will be abandoned. Personally, I have no doubt that it can be done, but this will necessarily deprive capitalism of some of its most attractive aspects for the adventurous and the powerful. The attraction of the magnetic field of business has already sensibly weakened, and the next generation may well discover that the fields of education and government offer to men of exceptional ability at least equal opportunities.

This will be true whether perceived or not. In an industrial democracy, industry rests on government and both rest on education. The rapid changes in the last two decades have so altered our environment that both our methods of government and our methods of education may need to be redesigned. Until this work has been done, the healthy development of our industrial life is a hit-or-miss process with the chances in favor of missing. The progress of a nation might be compared to a man walking. During the last fifty years our industrial advance has been immense. This must now be balanced by corresponding advances in education and in government. Otherwise, we shall topple over. It it be true that genius knows instinctively where it will be most effective, genius will gravitate in these directions. Great victories in the field of education must clear the road for us.

IV

That the career of education now offers great prizes is beyond question. Think of the power which a great educational leader could exert. Many, even of our solid citizens, are bedeviled by constant ‘alarums and excursions’ about technological unemployment, which they fear may overwhelm us.² Clearly seen and wisely dealt with, it is not a threat, but a magnificent opportunity — perhaps one of the greatest. Granted the boon for which men have always prayed, — namely, relief from the burden of labor, — we stand dismayed before it. We call our leisure unemployment, and we are asked to regard it as a sudden and damaging blow. It is not sudden, and will not harm us unless we bungle it. Technological improvements, to which some of our unemployment may be due, have been going on for generations, and we have been adjusting ourselves to them by reducing the working hours. But we have done this rather like men walking in their sleep. The hours of leisure of the great majority have been increasing for two generations, but we have not realized that we faced a problem demanding action, with the result that during the last fifteen years or more the burden of our leisure has become overwhelming, particularly for the wives of the middle class. The schools have taken away their children, and electricity and canned goods have taken away most of their housework, so that they have been forced to take refuge in shopping, bridge-whist, and other forms of idleness — truly a terrible burden.

Training for the profitable use of leisure is another major task of education. Hereafter we may hope that men can produce abundance in a relatively small amount of time, so that, if they choose, they may devote a major part of their lives to the development and use of the creative faculties which all possess, in some measure. Many have believed that this process — or the development of character, which is akin to it — was the purpose for which God gave us life. Some still believe it. From the first settlement of this country to the present day, labor has occupied the whole life of this nation. During the last century we have conquered, scalped, and partly disemboweled half a continent, and it took all our strength to do it. For the great mass of our people, labor and life were roughly synonymous. Labor was the routine and the training of and for life, so that labor was education as well as a method of keeping alive. Labor was also a method of controlling emotion and imagination — the great creative and explosive forces of the human soul — through the fatigue which it inevitably produced.

During the last fifty years or more, however, accumulated wealth or the introduction of machinery has greatly reduced the burden of labor. By shortening the years of labor for practically the whole population we have found time for schooling for all and for a college training for many. For the masses, fatigue is still relied upon as an instrument of emotional control, but for a relatively small upper class the control of fatigue has vanished, and education is relied upon to take its place. With the decline of religious teaching in home and church, this burden seems to have become too great for our educational system, for during the last few years the children of the upper class have been notably lacking in self-control. We might take comfort in the thought that this failure has damaged only a small group, but we are likely soon to be deprived of even that consolation, for in the future machines should be able to lift the burden of labor from the masses, thereby shifting the centre of gravity of the nation’s life. It is therefore quite possible that the controlling influence of fatigue may be removed from the masses, as well as the classes, so that on all fronts we shall face the riddle of the profitable use of leisure.

V

The impact of science on industry is a striking phenomenon which has struck some of the light-headed ‘all of a heap.’ It even produced a group called technocrats, led by a successor to the renowned Cagliostro, who in the eighteenth century made himself one of the most interesting figures in Europe by his skill as a magician. Our contemporary Cagliostro modestly indicated his willingness (with the aid of his friends) to direct the destinies of the nation by a set of new scientific formulæ apparently so complex and so powerful that they could not safely be made public. The technique of a Cagliostro must always be based on mystery, for otherwise no one would listen to him. Only the gullible do, but the skillful charlatan can make fools out of sober burgesses — at least for a time.

There is some danger that men of this type may attract a following under present conditions, for it seems to be a law of our nature that when we are overwhelmed by the terrible realities of our world we take refuge in illusion, whose ready servant is magic. This may be the origin of the insistent demands for ‘aggressive leadership’; they may be merely an expression of our childlike yearning for a magician who will pull a rabbit out of a hat.

One of the remedies proposed by our contemporary Cagliostro was the abandonment of the price system, which has controlled the distribution of goods for centuries, and he did this with the confidence of a man who had a patent remedy in his pocket — which in fact he had. From the fleeting glimpses of it which we have been permitted, we can only guess at the nature of the new system, but it is certain that neither he nor anyone else has ever tested it. New inventions need testing, for all experienced persons know that they are tricky things, prone to failure at critical moments. The vast majority of them prove to be liabilities rather than assets, and this one is likely to follow suit.

Our old tool the price system, on the other hand, has had a long trial, and it has been quite successful in overcoming the most ingrained weakness of human nature — namely, sloth. It is hazardous to disregard the fact that ever since his creation man has worked under compulsion, and that with comparatively rare exceptions he will not work without compulsion. This is the rock on which the proposed substitutes for the price system are likely to split. The notion that men will work to the limit of their strength if paid only according to their needs as judged by someone else is a beautiful ideal, but men will have to be remade before it can be achieved. Now, and for a very long time to come, compulsion in some form will be needed to make most men work.

Communism — another remedy for our troubles which is often suggested — is merely compulsion in another form. Those who have searched it deeply know that it begins in a form of compulsion far more brutal and thoroughgoing than the price system ever contemplated, and that until it ceases to be communism the pressure cannot be relaxed. Without attempting to defend the price system as a wholly satisfactory method of distribution under modern conditions, we shall do well to remember that it is a very ancient system of education which aims to overcome man’s congenital sloth without making him a slave. In fact, it aims to make him free. Communism is merely a competing system of education which frankly takes away all freedom at the outset while holding out hopes that freedom will be restored at some later period. These hopes are pure illusion. Communism begins and ends in slavery, and has little to recommend it except for a nation which desires to be enslaved and will be content in that condition.

VI

This nation need not take too seriously the notions of these technocrats and communists, but no intelligent person is likely to minimize the importance of the changes which machinery has produced. They have thrown a new and heavy responsibility on education. It seems certain that in the future men can have far greater freedom to develop their lives according to their own choice. Like all freedom, this can be abused, and it is likely to be, unless men are trained for it. At present we have not been trained for such a life. We have been trained for labor, and must now be reëducated for freedom. That we have not been trained for freedom is proved by the willingness of men to labor day and night so that their families might ‘ keep up with the Jones’s,’ while starving their intellectual life almost into unconsciousness. The craving for industrial adventure is another example. Being wholly in the material world, it gives little exercise to the finer qualities of the intellect or those emotions connected with the love and understanding of beauty, so that success can be achieved by highly vitalized men without much cultivation or intelligence.

Being untrained for it, we have failed to appreciate or to seek intellectual adventure, although it is far more adventurous and satisfying. Moneymaking, as most men find after it is too late, is an attainable goal which when reached leaves the pursuer hugging a skull. This is not true of adventures of the intellect or of the spirit — these are infinite and unattainable, and therefore are an endless source of joy for the true adventurer. What is now required of us is to turn round and face the sunrise. During the last half century we have worked an industrial miracle by the application of machinery to production. Our present problem is to use it wisely, which we cannot hope to do unless corresponding advances are made in the fields of government and education.

Two great responsibilities, therefore, have been laid on education by industrial changes which are comparatively recent. Man must be trained to desire freedom, and also to use it wisely when obtained. As our training in the past has been for labor, we have the instincts of caged birds, fearful of the outside world.

If these demands on education do not offer an opportunity worthy of commanding genius, it would be hard to conceive one.

VII

To those who feel that our present education has risen to the occasion, and is now training us for freedom, I would recall the Jones’s to whom I have before referred. While these Jones’s are doubtless admirable people in their way, it is their way and not other people’s. Keeping up with the Jones’s is a slave complex. Those who spend their lives in imitating others have not been educated for freedom, but for slavery. Educators can hardly escape some share of responsibility for this failure.

There seem to be many who believe that our educational problems can be solved by mere changes in the curriculum, and much ingenious experimentation in this field is now going on. But the root of the trouble in the upper strata of our educational system is not in the curriculum. While it is certainly true that the curriculum of our schools and colleges needs attention, the main weakness is not in the subjects taught. What is needed is not so much the strengthening of the curriculum as of the staff, for, whatever the name of the course of study, the objective is always the same — namely, to teach a way of life. Men cannot teach what they do not know. We urgently need men who can teach a larger view of life, and the cloistered scholar with profound knowledge of Greek, literature, or history is often ill-qualified to teach this most essential thing. That requires talent of a different order, and to enlist this talent in the field of education is perhaps our major problem. We must first decide what sort of men we want, and then where to look for them. All great teachers teach a larger view of life, and men who cannot teach this will not serve us now.

The supply of such men appears to be inadequate to meet even our present standards, and some pessimists, who believe that teachers are born and cannot be made, say that the number born will never be adequate. If this is true, our problem is insoluble and we are destined to fail. But such pessimism, like most pessimism, is unimaginative. No one familiar with what has gone on in this country during the last generation will deny that there have been thousands of men engaged in industrial activities who had just the quality of mind and imagination required in a great teacher. For the problems which have faced many of these men are in fact problems of education, and their success proves their competence in this field. It is not always, or even commonly, true that money has been the dominant motive in such men. Their dominant motive was the creative instinct eager for expression, which is the very motive needed in the teacher or searcher for new truth. We need not despair of the supply of good, or even great, teachers if the demand is urgent. ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ The trouble in the past has been that the pull in other directions has been too strong.

But such men must live, although often they will work for starvation wages, and immense new endowments are essential. If we want well-rounded men, we must make it possible for them to live normal lives, and the younger members of the staff must therefore be paid enough to enable them to marry and give their children the sort of education they received themselves. Otherwise, their lives may be distorted so as to impair their power. But there is good reason to believe that the necessary endowments can be obtained, for it is clear that under modern conditions we shall want to divert the profits of industry to social uses to an increasing degree. While most social capital is not expected to earn a profit, capital devoted to the endowment of education — the best of all social uses — will earn profits in the future, for capital so invested, if wisely used, is the best of all insurance against the risks to existing capital. It seems, in fact, the only way in which such capital can be preserved, for, unless we have an adequate educational system as a foundation for industrial democracy, all industrial investments are unsafe.

Our wisest capitalists have long known that the best way to protect their capital was to invest their surplus in education and in research, and they have done so. Unfortunately, we have not yet emerged from the Stone Age, so that much of this endowment has been invested in bricks and mortar instead of in brains. Investments in buildings are subject to rapid obsolescence, so that, as the profits are far in the future and must be reaped in other fields, the results have sometimes been disappointing. But investments in brains — that is, in good teachers — are not wasting investments. There is nothing more nearly immortal than creative thought, and we may hope that the capital invested in education in the future will go into this more permanent form.

The notion that the hard-boiled individualists who have made their fortunes in business will voluntarily divert them into education may seem rather fanciful. But it is not. It has occurred in the past on a considerable scale and will occur in the future on a far greater one. These men may be tight-fisted, but they are not stupid, and, when faced with the alternative of investing some of their money in education or having it taken away from them by taxation, they will choose the first course. This alternative is not fanciful, but a serious probability, as any alert observer of the trends of our time can testify. We may conclude, therefore, that the endowments needed can be obtained. If only education and research can be kept vigorous and free, and the number of institutions large, so that the problems will be attacked by many independent minds from many angles, our problem can be solved.