The New Freedom by Woodrow Wilson
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Woodrow Wilson >> The New Freedom
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It is one of the happy circumstances of our time that the most intelligent
of our business men have seen the mistake as well as the immorality of the
whole bad business. The alliance between business and politics has been a
burden to them,--an advantage, no doubt, upon occasion, but a very
questionable and burdensome advantage. It has given them great power, but
it has also subjected them to a sort of slavery and a bitter sort of
subserviency to politicians. They are as anxious to be freed from bondage
as the country is to be rid of the influences and methods which it
represents. Leading business men are now becoming great factors in the
emancipation of the country from a system which was leading from bad to
worse. There are those, of course, who are wedded to the old ways and who
will stand out for them to the last, but they will sink into a minority
and be overcome. The rest have found that their old excuse (namely, that
it was necessary to defend themselves against unfair legislation) is no
longer a good excuse; that there is a better way of defending themselves
than through the private use of money. That better way is to take the
public into their confidence, to make absolutely open all their dealings
with legislative bodies and legislative officers, and let the public judge
as between them and those with whom they are dealing.
* * * * *
This discovery on their part of what ought to have been obvious all along
points out the way of reform; for undoubtedly publicity comes very near
being the cure-all for political and economic maladies of this sort. But
publicity will continue to be very difficult so long as our methods of
legislation are so obscure and devious and private. I think it will become
more and more obvious that the way to purify our politics is to simplify
them, and that the way to simplify them is to establish responsible
leadership. We now have no leadership at all inside our legislative
bodies,--at any rate, no leadership which is definite enough to attract
the attention and watchfulness of the country. Our only leadership being
that of irresponsible persons outside the legislatures who constitute the
political machines, it is extremely difficult for even the most watchful
public opinion to keep track of the circuitous methods pursued. This
undoubtedly lies at the root of the growing demand on the part of American
communities everywhere for responsible leadership, for putting in
authority and keeping in authority those whom they know and whom they can
watch and whom they can constantly hold to account. The business of the
country ought to be served by thoughtful and progressive legislation, but
it ought to be served openly, candidly, advantageously, with a careful
regard to letting everybody be heard and every interest be considered, the
interest which is not backed by money as well as the interest which is;
and this can be accomplished only by some simplification of our methods
which will centre the public trust in small groups of men who will lead,
not by reason of legal authority, but by reason of their contact with and
amenability to public opinion.
I am striving to indicate my belief that our legislative methods may well
be reformed in the direction of giving more open publicity to every act,
in the direction of setting up some form of responsible leadership on the
floor of our legislative halls so that the people may know who is back of
every bill and back of the opposition to it, and so that it may be dealt
with in the open chamber rather than in the committee room. The light must
be let in on all processes of law-making.
Legislation, as we nowadays conduct it, is not conducted in the open. It
is not threshed out in open debate upon the floors of our assemblies. It
is, on the contrary, framed, digested, and concluded in committee rooms.
It is in committee rooms that legislation not desired by the interests
dies. It is in committee rooms that legislation desired by the interests
is framed and brought forth. There is not enough debate of it in open
house, in most cases, to disclose the real meaning of the proposals made.
Clauses lie quietly unexplained and unchallenged in our statutes which
contain the whole gist and purpose of the act; qualifying phrases which
escape the public attention, casual definitions which do not attract
attention, classifications so technical as not to be generally understood,
and which every one most intimately concerned is careful not to explain or
expound, contain the whole purpose of the law. Only after it has been
enacted and has come to adjudication in the courts is its scheme as a
whole divulged. The beneficiaries are then safe behind their bulwarks.
Of course, the chief triumphs of committee work, of covert phrase and
unexplained classification, are accomplished in the framing of tariffs.
Ever since the passage of the outrageous Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act our
people have been discovering the concealed meanings and purposes which lay
hidden in it. They are discovering item by item how deeply and
deliberately they were deceived and cheated. This did not happen by
accident; it came about by design, by elaborated, secret design. Questions
put upon the floor in the House and Senate were not frankly or truly
answered, and an elaborate piece of legislation was foisted on the country
which could not possibly have passed if it had been generally
comprehended.
And we know, those of us who handle the machinery of politics, that the
great difficulty in breaking up the control of the political boss is that
he is backed by the money and the influence of these very people who are
intrenched in these very schedules. The tariff could never have been built
up item by item by public discussion, and it never could have passed, if
item by item it had been explained to the people of this country. It was
built up by arrangement and by the subtle management of a political
organization represented in the Senate of the United States by the senior
Senator from Rhode Island, and in the House of Representatives by one of
the Representatives from Illinois. These gentlemen did not build that
tariff upon the evidence that was given before the Committee on Ways and
Means as to what the manufacturer and the workingmen, the consumers and
the producers, of this country want. It was not built upon what the
interests of the country called for. It was built upon understandings
arrived at outside of the rooms where testimony was given and debate was
held.
I am not even now suggesting corrupt influence. That is not my point.
Corruption is a very difficult thing to manage in its literal sense. The
payment of money is very easily detected, and men of this kind who control
these interests by secret arrangement would not consent to receive a
dollar in money. They are following their own principles,--that is to say,
the principles which they think and act upon,--and they think that they
are perfectly honorable and incorruptible men; but they believe one thing
that I do not believe and that it is evident the people of the country do
not believe: they believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon
the arrangements which certain party leaders make with certain business
leaders. They believe that, but the proposition has merely to be stated
to the jury to be rejected. The prosperity of this country depends upon
the interests of all of us and cannot be brought about by arrangement
between any groups of persons. Take any question you like out to the
country,--let it be threshed out in public debate,--and you will have made
these methods impossible.
This is what sometimes happens: They promise you a particular piece of
legislation. As soon as the legislature meets, a bill embodying that
legislation is introduced. It is referred to a committee. You never hear
of it again. What happened? Nobody knows what happened.
I am not intimating that corruption creeps in; I do not know what creeps
in. The point is that we not only do not know, but it is intimated, if we
get inquisitive, that it is none of our business. My reply is that it is
our business, and it is the business of every man in the state; we have a
right to know all the particulars of that bill's history. There is not any
legitimate privacy about matters of government. Government must, if it is
to be pure and correct in its processes, be absolutely public in
everything that affects it. I cannot imagine a public man with a
conscience having a secret that he would keep from the people about their
own affairs.
I know how some of these gentlemen reason. They say that the influences to
which they are yielding are perfectly legitimate influences, but that if
they were disclosed they would not be understood. Well, I am very sorry,
but nothing is legitimate that cannot be understood. If you cannot explain
it properly, then there is something about it that cannot _be_ explained
at all. I know from the circumstances of the case, not what is happening,
but that something private is happening, and that every time one of these
bills gets into committee, something private stops it, and it never comes
out again unless forced out by the agitation of the press or the courage
and revolt of brave men in the legislature. I have known brave men of that
sort. I could name some splendid examples of men who, as representatives
of the people, demanded to be told by the chairman of the committee why
the bill was not reported, and who, when they could not find out from him,
investigated and found out for themselves and brought the bill out by
threatening to tell the reason on the floor of the House.
Those are private processes. Those are processes which stand between the
people and the things that are promised them, and I say that until you
drive all of those things into the open, you are not connected with your
government; you are not represented; you are not participants in your
government. Such a scheme of government by private understanding deprives
you of representation, deprives the people of representative institutions.
It has got to be put into the heads of legislators that public business is
public business. I hold the opinion that there can be no confidences as
against the people with respect to their government, and that it is the
duty of every public officer to explain to his fellow-citizens whenever he
gets a chance,--explain exactly what is going on inside of his own office.
There is no air so wholesome as the air of utter publicity.
* * * * *
There are other tracts of modern life where jungles have grown up that
must be cut down. Take, for example, the entirely illegitimate extensions
made of the idea of private property for the benefit of modern
corporations and trusts. A modern joint stock corporation cannot in any
proper sense be said to base its rights and powers upon the principles of
private property. Its powers are wholly derived from legislation. It
possesses them for the convenience of business at the sufferance of the
public. Its stock is widely owned, passes from hand to hand, brings
multitudes of men into its shifting partnerships and connects it with the
interests and the investments of whole communities. It is a segment of the
public; bears no analogy to a partnership or to the processes by which
private property is safeguarded and managed, and should not be suffered to
afford any covert whatever to those who are managing it. Its management is
of public and general concern, is in a very proper sense everybody's
business. The business of many of those corporations which we call
public-service corporations, and which are indispensable to our daily
lives and serve us with transportation and light and water and
power,--their business, for instance, is clearly public business; and,
therefore, we can and must penetrate their affairs by the light of
examination and discussion.
In New Jersey the people have realized this for a long time, and a year or
two ago we got our ideas on the subject enacted into legislation. The
corporations involved opposed the legislation with all their might. They
talked about ruin,--and I really believe they did think they would be
somewhat injured. But they have not been. And I hear I cannot tell you how
many men in New Jersey say: "Governor, we were opposed to you; we did not
believe in the things you wanted to do, but now that you have done them,
we take off our hats. That was the thing to do, it did not hurt us a bit;
it just put us on a normal footing; it took away suspicion from our
business." New Jersey, having taken the cold plunge, cries out to the rest
of the states, "Come on in! The water's fine!" I wonder whether these men
who are controlling the government of the United States realize how they
are creating every year a thickening atmosphere of suspicion, in which
presently they will find that business cannot breathe?
So I take it to be a necessity of the hour to open up all the processes of
politics and of public business,--open them wide to public view; to make
them accessible to every force that moves, every opinion that prevails in
the thought of the people; to give society command of its own economic
life again, not by revolutionary measures, but by a steady application of
the principle that the people have a right to look into such matters and
to control them; to cut all privileges and patronage and private advantage
and secret enjoyment out of legislation.
Wherever any public business is transacted, wherever plans affecting the
public are laid, or enterprises touching the public welfare, comfort, or
convenience go forward, wherever political programs are formulated, or
candidates agreed on,--over that place a voice must speak, with the divine
prerogative of a people's will, the words: "Let there be light!"
VII
THE TARIFF--"PROTECTION," OR SPECIAL PRIVILEGE?
Every business question, in this country, comes back, sooner or later, to
the question of the tariff. You cannot escape from it, no matter in which
direction you go. The tariff is situated in relation to other questions
like Boston Common in the old arrangement of that interesting city. I
remember seeing once, in _Life_, a picture of a man standing at the door
of one of the railway stations in Boston and inquiring of a Bostonian the
way to the Common. "Take any of these streets," was the reply, "in either
direction." Now, as the Common was related to the winding streets of
Boston, so the tariff question is related to the economic questions of our
day. Take any direction and you will sooner or later get to the Common.
And, in discussing the tariff you may start at the centre and go in any
direction you please.
Let us illustrate by standing at the centre, the Common itself. As far
back as 1828, when they knew nothing about "practical politics" as
compared with what we know now, a tariff bill was passed which was called
the "Tariff of Abominations," because it had no beginning nor end nor
plan. It had no traceable pattern in it. It was as if the demands of
everybody in the United States had all been thrown indiscriminately into
one basket and that basket presented as a piece of legislation. It had
been a general scramble and everybody who scrambled hard enough had been
taken care of in the schedules resulting. It was an abominable thing to
the thoughtful men of that day, because no man guided it, shaped it, or
tried to make an equitable system out of it. That was bad enough, but at
least everybody had an open door through which to scramble for his
advantage. It was a go-as-you-please, free-for-all struggle, and anybody
who could get to Washington and say he represented an important business
interest could be heard by the Committee on Ways and Means.
We have a very different state of affairs now. The Committee on Ways and
Means and the Finance Committee of the Senate in these sophisticated days
have come to discriminate by long experience among the persons whose
counsel they are to take in respect of tariff legislation. There has been
substituted for the unschooled body of citizens that used to clamor at the
doors of the Finance Committee and the Committee on Ways and Means, one of
the most interesting and able bodies of expert lobbyists that has ever
been developed in the experience of any country,--men who know so much
about the matters they are talking of that you cannot put your knowledge
into competition with theirs. They so overwhelm you with their familiarity
with detail that you cannot discover wherein their scheme lies. They
suggest the change of an innocent fraction in a particular schedule and
explain it to you so plausibly that you cannot see that it means millions
of dollars additional from the consumers of this country. They propose,
for example, to put the carbon for electric lights in two-foot pieces
instead of one-foot pieces,--and you do not see where you are getting
sold, because you are not an expert. If you will get some expert to go
through the schedules of the present Payne-Aldrich tariff, you will find a
"nigger" concealed in almost every woodpile,--some little word, some
little clause, some unsuspected item, that draws thousands of dollars out
of the pockets of the consumer and yet does not seem to mean anything in
particular. They have calculated the whole thing beforehand; they have
analyzed the whole detail and consequence, each one in his specialty. With
the tariff specialist the average business man has no possibility of
competition. Instead of the old scramble, which was bad enough, we get the
present expert control of the tariff schedules. Thus the relation between
business and government becomes, not a matter of the exposure of all the
sensitive parts of the government to all the active parts of the people,
but the special impression upon them of a particular organized force in
the business world.
Furthermore, every expedient and device of secrecy is brought into use to
keep the public unaware of the arguments of the high protectionists, and
ignorant of the facts which refute them; and uninformed of the intentions
of the framers of the proposed legislation. It is notorious, even, that
many members of the Finance Committee of the Senate did not know the
significance of the tariff schedules which were reported in the present
tariff bill to the Senate, and that members of the Senate who asked Mr.
Aldrich direct questions were refused the information they sought;
sometimes, I dare say, because he could not give it, and sometimes, I
venture to say, because disclosure of the information would have
embarrassed the passage of the measure. There were essential papers,
moreover, which could not be got at.
* * * * *
Take that very interesting matter, that will-o'-the-wisp, known as "the
cost of production." It is hard for any man who has ever studied
economics at all to restrain a cynical smile when he is told that an
intelligent group of his fellow-citizens are looking for "the cost of
production" as a basis for tariff legislation. It is not the same in any
one factory for two years together. It is not the same in one industry
from one season to another. It is not the same in one country at two
different epochs. It is constantly eluding your grasp. It nowhere exists,
as a scientific, demonstrable fact. But, in order to carry out the
pretences of the "protective" program, it was necessary to go through the
motions of finding out what it was. I am credibly informed that the
government of the United States requested several foreign governments,
among others the government of Germany, to supply it with as reliable
figures as possible concerning the cost of producing certain articles
corresponding with those produced in the United States. The German
government put the matter into the hands of certain of her manufacturers,
who sent in just as complete answers as they could procure from their
books. The information reached our government during the course of the
debate on the Payne-Aldrich Bill and was transmitted,--for the bill by
that time had reached the Senate,--to the Finance Committee of the Senate.
But I am told,--and I have no reason to doubt it,--that it never came out
of the pigeonholes of the committee. I don't know, and that committee
doesn't know, what the information it contained was. When Mr. Aldrich was
asked about it, he first said it was not an official report from the
German government. Afterward he intimated that it was an impudent attempt
on the part of the German government to interfere with tariff legislation
in the United States. But he never said what the cost of production
disclosed by it was. If he had, it is more than likely that some of the
schedules would have been shown to be entirely unjustifiable.
Such instances show you just where the centre of gravity is,--and it is a
matter of gravity indeed, for it is a very grave matter! It lay during the
last Congress in the one person who was the accomplished intermediary
between the expert lobbyists and the legislation of Congress. I am not
saying this in derogation of the character of Mr. Aldrich. It is no
concern of mine what kind of man Mr. Aldrich is; now, particularly, when
he has retired from public life, is it a matter of indifference. The point
is that he, because of his long experience, his long handling of these
delicate and private matters, was the usual and natural instrument by
which the Congress of the United States informed itself, not as to the
wishes of the people of the United States or of the rank and file of
business men of the country, but as to the needs and arguments of the
experts who came to arrange matters with the committees.
The moral of the whole matter is this: The business of the United States
is not as a whole in contact with the government of the United States. So
soon as it is, the matters which now give you, and justly give you, cause
for uneasiness will disappear. Just so soon as the business of this
country has general, free, welcome access to the councils of Congress, all
the friction between business and politics will disappear.
* * * * *
The tariff question is not the question that it was fifteen or twenty or
thirty years ago. It used to be said by the advocates of the tariff that
it made no difference even if there were a great wall separating us from
the commerce of the world, because inside the United States there was so
enormous an area of absolute free trade that competition within the
country kept prices down to a normal level; that so long as one state
could compete with all the others in the United States, and all the others
compete with it, there would be only that kind of advantage gained which
is gained by superior brain, superior economy, the better plant, the
better administration; all of the things that have made America supreme,
and kept prices in America down, because American genius was competing
with American genius. I must add that so long as that was true, there was
much to be said in defence of the protective tariff.
But the point now is that the protective tariff has been taken advantage
of by some men to destroy domestic competition, to combine all existing
rivals within our free-trade area, and to make it impossible for new men
to come into the field. Under the high tariff there has been formed a
network of factories which in their connection dominate the market of the
United States and establish their own prices. Whereas, therefore, it was
once arguable that the high tariff did not create the high cost of living,
it is now no longer arguable that these combinations do not,--not by
reason of the tariff, but by reason of their combination under the
tariff,--settle what prices shall be paid; settle how much the product
shall be; and settle, moreover, what shall be the market for labor.
The "protective" policy, as we hear it proclaimed to-day, bears no
relation to the original doctrine enunciated by Webster and Clay. The
"infant industries," which those statesmen desired to encourage, have
grown up and grown gray, but they have always had new arguments for
special favors. Their demands have gone far beyond what they dared ask for
in the days of Mr. Blaine and Mr. McKinley, though both those apostles of
"protection" were, before they died, ready to confess that the time had
even then come to call a halt on the claims of the subsidized industries.
William McKinley, before he died, showed symptoms of adjustment to the new
age such as his successors have not exhibited. You remember what the
utterances of Mr. McKinley's last month were with regard to the policy
with which his name is particularly identified; I mean the policy of
"protection." You remember how he joined in opinion with what Mr. Blaine
before him had said--namely, that we had devoted the country to a policy
which, too rigidly persisted in, was proving a policy of restriction; and
that we must look forward to a time that ought to come very soon when we
should enter into reciprocal relations of trade with all the countries of
the world. This was another way of saying that we must substitute
elasticity for rigidity; that we must substitute trade for closed ports.
McKinley saw what his successors did not see. He saw that we had made for
ourselves a strait-jacket.
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