Leslie Shaw - Vanishing Landmarks

I will carry the illustration one step further. Do you realize that it would be far safer to place the man of ordinary intelligence upon the bench, with authority to interpret and enforce the laws as he finds them written in the book, than to give him pen and ink and let him draft new laws? We all recognize that it requires a man of legal aptitude and experience to interpret laws, but some seem to assume neither aptitude nor experience is necessary in a law-maker. If legislators in state and nation are to be abjectly obedient to the wish of their constituents, what use can they make of knowledge and judgment? They will prove embarrassments, will they not?

To interpret the laws requires aptitude improved by experience; it demands special knowledge, both of the general law and of the particular case under discussion. It takes a specialist.

I would rather have the ordinary man stand over my dentist and tell him how to crown my tooth than to have him stand over my congressman and tell him how to vote. He knows, in a general way, how a tooth should be crowned, and further than that I refuse to carry the illustration. Then, I can stand a bad tooth better than I can a bad law. No man ever lost his job because of a bad tooth. But millions have stood in the bread line, and other millions will suffer in like manner because of unfortunate and ill-considered legislation.

We all demand integrity in office, but integrity is the most common attribute of man. I can go on the street and buy integrity for a dollar a day, if it does not require any work; but aptitude, experience and wisdom are high-priced. If I had to choose between men of probity but wanting in aptitude and experience, and men of aptitude and experience known to be dishonest, I should unhesitatingly choose the crook rather than the fool; either for bank president or congressman. Banks seldom fail because of dishonesty. Banks fail because of bad management. The thief may steal a little of the cream but the careless and the inexperienced spill the milk.

Thus far in our history no man has ever walked the street in vain for work, no man has gone home to find his wife in rags and his children crying for bread, because of dishonesty in public office. The United States can stand extravagance, it can stand graft, it has stood and is standing the most reckless abandon in all its financial expenditures. The worst this nation has yet encountered – and may the good Lord save us from anything more dreadful – is incompetency in the halls of legislation. Extravagance and graft stalk forth at noonday when incompetency occupies the seats intended for statesmen.

None but bolsheviki would consider subjecting an army to democratic command. The personnel of an army may possess equal patriotism without possessing equal aptitude for war. Recent experiences have only emphasized what was said more than a thousand years ago: “An army of asses commanded by a lion will overthrow an army of lions commanded by an ass.”

Strange, is it not, that every one should recognize this principle when applied to an army and to business, and an overwhelming majority overlook it when applied to governmental matters?

The capacity of the people to select representatives wiser than their constituents illustrated by historic facts.

America has passed through several crises, and each time has been saved because the people’s representatives were wiser than the people. In this respect, the expectation of the Fathers has been realized. I will mention but three instances.

During the Civil War the government resorted to the issuance of paper currency, commonly called greenbacks. While conservative people assumed that these greenbacks would be redeemed whenever the government was able, nevertheless, there being no express provision for their redemption, they went to depreciation, and passed from hand to hand far below par. All this resulted in inflation which inevitably led to a period of depression.

In this connection it is well to remember that whenever we have had a period of depression, and whenever we shall have such a period, there always has been and ever will be a group of people with a panacea for our ills. During the period referred to, a political party, calling itself the “Greenback Party,” came into existence and advocated the issuance of an indefinite volume of irredeemable paper currency which, in their ignorance, they called “money.” The specious argument was to the effect that when “money” can be made on a printing press, it is silly to have less than enough. They expressly advocated issuing all the currency the people could use without making any provision for its retirement. Whenever the people wanted more, they proposed to print more.

Fully seventy-five percent of the American people, without regard to political affiliation, favored some phase or degree of “greenbackism.” While much of this sentiment failed of crystallization, quite a number of congressmen were elected on that issue. If the direct primary law, with which most of the states are now cursed, had been in force at that time, it is probable that no man could have been nominated for Congress, by any party, who was not avowedly in favor of inflation by some method. But the people were saved from themselves exactly as the Fathers had anticipated. The representatives of the people, being wiser than the people, refused the people what most of them desired and gave them what they needed, resumption of specie payment.

Again, in the ’90’s we had a period of depression, and the panacea then recommended was the free and unlimited coinage of silver, at the ratio of 16 to 1 with gold. The difference between “greenbackism” and “free silverism” was simply one of degree. The greenbacker desired the government to print the dollar mark on a piece of paper, thus producing currency one hundred percent fiat, while the free silverite asked that the government stamp the dollar mark upon a piece of silver, thus producing currency fifty percent fiat.

Fully nine-tenths of the American people desired the free and unlimited coinage of silver. William McKinley, willing as he was to run for president on a gold standard platform in 1896, when in Congress had voted for a clean-cut free silver measure. The lower house of Congress actually passed a free silver bill. But, exactly as the Fathers expected, the people’s representatives in the Senate, wiser than the people who had placed them there, refused the people what ninety percent of them wanted and gave them what one hundred percent needed – sound money.

Outside of Russia, there is scarcely a man in all the world who would now recommend the issuance of irredeemable paper currency, what three-fourths of the American people wanted in the ’70’s; and there is not more than one man in all the world who would now recommend the free coinage of silver, what four-fifths of the American people wanted in the ’90’s.

The direct primary in 1896 would have nominated a free silver republican, and a free silver democrat in each and every congressional district of the United States, and we would have had a solid free silver House. If the United States senators had been then elected by the people, preceded by a direct primary, the Senate of the United States would have been solidly for free silver; and we would have passed, as everyone now recognizes, to financial ruin. We were saved, because the United States of America was a republic and not a democracy – because, if you please, we had representative and not direct government.

More recently, Germany and the Central Powers made war upon the United States. This they continued for more than two years. Finally, the President, in his message of April 2, 1917, advised Congress to “declare the course of the Imperial German Government to be, in fact, nothing less than war against the country and the people of the United States.” A resolution to that effect was thereupon passed on April 6, 1917.