VIII
PUBLIC OPINION: ITS EFFECT ON BUSINESS[1]
In the preface to his friendly volume “The United States in the Twentieth Century,” M. Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, one of the keenest of foreign observers of conditions in the United States, and a noted economist, uses this striking language:—
“Moral worth, which includes the recognition of duties as well as of rights, self-respect, and respect for one’s fellows, has contributed, fully as much as the magnificent resources of their country, to the brilliant success of the American people. Of the qualities that have coöperated to elevate them so rapidly to such a commanding position, the most impressive is a great, a tireless energy. Now that the obstacles raised by nature have been overcome, now that the country is already so wealthy that the individual cannot always hope to see his efforts as richly compensated as was formerly the case, there is danger that this precious quality may be to some degree lost. It seems to me that the first care of the Americans should be to maintain it in all its integrity. The essential condition to the development of energy is liberty. Every restriction on liberty, with however good purpose, diminishes the individual responsibility and initiative. Yet we often hear mooted in America, as elsewhere, measures which, under the pretext of correcting abuses, would immeasurably extend the state’s field of action, and reduce the liberty of citizens. It is my earnest hope that the American democracy will reject such enervating proposals, and will remain true to the virile and liberal traditions that have insured the United States so wonderful a growth.”
In this short space a foreign observer and admirer has placed his finger on one danger that threatens the American people to-day, namely, the tendency to take away by law the freedom of action of the individual and to attempt to shift upon numerous and often half-digested laws burdens that the individual himself should carry, and to try to solve problems by law that public opinion should settle,—based on a few of the great fundamental laws of life that no legislature or commission can change.
M. Leroy-Beaulieu is right in declaring that a tireless energy characterizes the American people, and the economic progress of the country has been so rapid as to astonish foreign students of American social and business conditions. It has wrought great changes in our methods of business and of living. The average American enjoys luxuries and conveniences which were not dreamed of twenty-five years ago, and the inventive genius of Americans is daily placing in the hands of every man new and improved tools with which to do his work. Our prosperity has increased the complications of government, and the close attention given by our people to business has resulted in less personal attention to public affairs, about which there is not the feeling of interest and responsibility that characterized the American people when there were fewer people and less wealth.
The average American must realize that with a more complex civilization and government the duties that devolve upon him individually are more important than before. He must take a broader and better view. He must not consider the law a crutch to take the place of a direct and personal responsibility that our system of government places upon him. He should realize that he is one of many who make government in this country and determine whether it shall be lax or efficient. The law is only the expression of the sound public opinion of many individuals.
During a hundred years Americans have taken a pride in the extent of the country, in its great natural wealth and resources, in its development, and in the large machinery of business and industry that has grown up under their hands. We have been proud that we are big; so much so that we have exposed ourselves sometimes to the smiles of foreigners, who have thought us boastful.
It is related that a French business man accepted the invitation of a prominent man of that city to visit Chicago. The two started from New York and began to talk about the rapid development of the country, and the visitor remarked: “You Americans are a boastful people. I will wager a sum of money that before we have been in Chicago thirty minutes, at least two of your fellow-citizens will have proven it to me.” The wager was made. Upon alighting from the train the Chicago man met a friend and introduced his guest. Almost in a breath the friend saluted the French visitor, and urged him to visit the stockyards at once, because “they are the largest in the world!” Fifteen minutes later, at a club, the Frenchman won his wager, when a prominent merchant invited him to tour the business district in an automobile and see the “greatest commercial center in the world!”
Such pride is natural in a peop!e who have done great things in a short period of years. Our commerce is great, and our trade extends to the corners of the earth,—the product of a hundred years. Our transportation system, with a capitalization which is the lowest in any civilized country in the world, with the lowest rates, and with the highest efficiency of service and ability to meet the demands of business, is second to none. An elaborate system of public education has been built up, and is aided by many universities and schools created by private gifts, which rank with the best institutions of learning in other countries. In the common things of life, corresponding progress has been made, and the average American lives better, profits more from his labor, and has greater opportunities of advancement than the citizen of any other country.
In all this wonderful progress, there is one weakness which many Americans realize. Our progress has been largely material, and public opinion has been busy with purely material things. In transportation, business, invention, and the spread of learning, our achievements are equal to or superior to those in foreign countries. What we have done in one hundred years is due largely to the tireless energy, individual responsibility, and initiative spoken of by M. Leroy-Beaulieu. If we turn to our national life, the welfare of which is dependent upon the degree of personal responsibility felt by the average citizen, a less favorable result comes to our attention. There are defects of political and governmental machinery which are apparent to every one. Efforts toward better standards are made, yet there are still preserved, in the methods of government in most of the cities of the land, customs and practices which are not thorough, efficient, and economical, or equal to the methods insisted upon in ordinary business. In private business affairs the progress toward genuine efficiency is more rapid than in national, state, or municipal government. This may be attributed to the lack of a vigorous public opinion insisting that a man in the service of the public shall work just as long and as hard as the man in private business.
The American people are divided in their views about present conditions. The ultra-conservative are content to watch their income grow with not much thought of public duty. The sentimentalists and the radicals, actuated more by the heart and self-interest than by reason, declare that all things are wrong and that we must tear down and begin over again, introducing doubtful principles and ideas often obsolete and unpractical. It is probable that the true view is between these extremes,—that there is sound public opinion in this country, but that it is not making itself felt as it should, because the pressure of material things and personal interest prevents proper expression of it. Society as a whole needs a stronger sense of personal responsibility, creating a foundation upon which a really sensible and constructive public opinion may be built.
Few people realize the number of men in this country entitled to vote who fail to do so. In 1900 there were in the United States 21,329,819 males of voting age, or potential voters; and there would be some increase each succeeding year, and yet the vote for President was in 1896, 13,827,212; in 1900, 13,970,134; in 1904, 13,524,349; in 1908, 14,887,133; or about 35 per cent not voting. This is certainly not a good showing of interest. Public opinion should arouse people to take more interest in selecting the men who are to make and administer the laws that affect their daily lives in many directions.
One result of this indifference and neglect is that there is a class described generally as “politicians,” who make the laws—and make too many of them. That is their business, and the more elaborate the governmental machinery and the more laws to be made and unmade, the better for the “politician” and his friends, who are living at the expense of the rest of us because we are too busy to express our real views about matters of grave importance.
The disposition to try to adjust everything by passing laws is nowhere more strikingly shown than in the number of laws introduced into Congress. While the largest number of proposed enactments submitted to any American Congress, during the ten-year period ending in 1909, was at the Sixtieth Congress, when 38,388 bills were introduced, the more deliberate and careful methods of the English are shown in the fact that the largest number of bills before any Parliament in that period, that of 1900, was only 621. Less than 2 per cent of the bills before the Sixtieth Congress became law, while 67 per cent of the bills proposed in Parliament in 1900 were enacted. During this ten-year period, our national Senate and House considered 146,471 different bills. During the same period the English Parliament considered but 6251 measures. The congressional “mill” added 15,782 measures to the law of the land; Parliament enacted but 3822 new laws. The figures in both instances include both public and private bills, and it should be added that Parliament considers and acts upon many subjects which are considered by state and municipal bodies in the United States.
The state legislatures for 1911 considered, as a part of new railroad legislation proposed, a total of 512 bills affecting the physical operation of railroads. These proposed bills related to hours of service, terms of employment, the kind of uniforms to be worn and other matters affecting employees, compulsory and voluntary arbitration, train rules, regulations for the operation of freight- and passenger-trains, equipment, car-supply, claims, signals, clearances, crossings, maintenance of tracks, and many details to which it would be supposed that the long experience and extensive knowledge of railroad managers under the varying conditions of business would be a better guide than the judgment of a legislative body, no matter how excellent its intentions.
Legislation that is a response to a real public opinion should not be objected to by any conscientious citizen. Such laws, backed by the will of the people, will be enforced. But the deluge of new laws that is dumped upon the country has the effect of weakening respect for the law, because too many laws prove unwise in practice, and are not enforced, with the result that too many people grow up with a lack of respect for law and order and do not obey promptly those who have the right to give orders.
There is a very proper concern because of railroad accidents, and no one is more concerned about them than the railway owner and manager: they have the greatest incentives to avoid them,—pride in their profession, the natural desire of all men to prevent sorrow and suffering and the loss of money and reputation. And yet most accidents are due to three fundamental causes: disobedience by some one of a rule that if followed would have prevented the accident; negligence of some individual somewhere in doing his particular work, making the car-wheel, or rail, laying the track, inspecting the track, throwing the signal, etc.; recklessness among passengers and employees. This disobedience, negligence, and recklessness cannot be eliminated by law, but public opinion can have a marked effect upon it.
The lack of public opinion of sufficient weight to compel the enforcement of many of the laws passed in the United States is one of the causes of our homicides. Every day of the year murders are committed somewhere in the United States. Many have tried to point out the reason. It is probable that several factors rather than one are responsible, and that they may be summed up in the laxity of public opinion and the consequent laxity of law and its administration. For this death-roll every individual of the American people should feel a responsibility. It is the lack of such public opinion that caused the Indiana Railroad Commission to make this sad comment in its accident bulletin issued in March, 1910: “Trespassers continue to pay the usual toll in blood for the fatal right to make thoroughfares of the railroads. If the railroad ties were three times as many, and were saturated with oil and burning all the time; if dynamite were placed on the track every ten feet, and people walked on the tracks, nevertheless the deaths would be no more certain than in a country whose laws do not prohibit such use of the tracks, and whose customs and carelessness of human life permit these astounding fatalities.”
From 1901 to 1911, 50,708 persons lost their lives by “walking on the railroad tracks,”—taking chances of death that were obvious. Add 54,183 more who were injured, and you have a total of death and destruction because the American people have not developed a public opinion upon this question that makes a person who recklessly takes such chances of death feel the opprobrium of his associates. Three pretty Iowa maids walked from Burlington to Chicago last autumn. Interviewed by a Chicago paper, they said: “Last Sunday we must have walked four hours on the road, though without seeing a soul. So we got back on the tracks, walking ‘goose fashion’ along the cinder path. It was n’t long before trains were going by, the people waving their handkerchiefs at us. That was great fun.” A railroad statistician posted on the death-roll among those who walk the tracks “for fun,” adds the comment: “What’s the use of signals, colored lights, or other forms of warning!”
The accident-record of the American railroads has often been made a weapon in the hands of their critics, but the press and the public do not set forth clearly the true facts. From the total number of employees killed and injured must be deducted the number of casualties due to their own recklessness, carelessness, or willingness to take chances, of which Mr. William J. Cunningham in speaking in February, 1911, before the New England Railroad Club said: “American railway employees are proverbially chance-takers, and are not as amenable to discipline as British railway trainmen, who have a greater respect for authority and instructions. Americans are noted for always being impatient and in a hurry. These national differences in both passenger and employee bear a relation to accidents, indefinite to be sure, but nevertheless important, particularly in the ‘chance-taking’ by employees.”
An analysis of the railroad accidents in the United States for the year ending with June, 1911, shows that out of 356 passengers who were killed, there were only 96 persons killed while riding on trains in accidents for which railroads were probably responsible. In the same year the railroads handled more than 900,000,000 passengers. For 1909 the results showed that a passenger could travel 4000 times around the earth without being killed, or he could travel 60 miles an hour for 220 years without being killed! During 1908, 316 railroad companies hauled 455,365,447 passengers without the death of a single passenger in a train accident. In 1909 there were 347 railroad companies, hauling a total of 570,617,563 passengers, without a single accident to a passenger in a train accident. These figures cover a mileage of railway equal to that of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France combined, and present a record of immunity from fatalities among those who travel unequaled except in the United States in previous years.
Incomplete records for 1910 show that 156 lost their lives in automobile fatalities. The death-roll of the automobile for eleven months of 1911 was 257, more than two and a half times the death-roll of passengers in train accidents for which railroads were responsible. One hundred persons met death by accident during the hunting-season of 1911, in the Northwestern States.
What a vigorous public opinion might do in diminishing the railway death and accident list is well shown in the remarkable figures of Fourth-of-July accidents which have recently become public. The death-roll from the celebration of this holiday was for years a matter of anxious concern to many. In nine years it meant 39,219 killed and injured. It was within recent years that the vigorous agitation for a “safe and sane Fourth” started. The figures for 1911 show but 57 killed, while in 1910 the death-list was 131 and in 1909 it was 215. Within a little more than two years’ time a vigorous public opinion intervened between the American small boy and a time-honored method of celebrating a national holiday, changed the customs of a people, and reduced the death-list from 215 to 57.
The railway-owner may make a very fine physical machine, but when it is done it must be operated with all of its complications by human beings, who are not perfect, and who make mistakes.
In our country of large distances and large cities, the question of feeding people and keeping them warm means that transportation must be regular, sufficient, and continuous. What would happen to New York or Chicago or Minneapolis if for one week all railroad transportation were abandoned?
The railway-owner may make rules and regulations and make effort to continue in business, but he cannot always do so unless public opinion in time makes it clear that when a man chooses as his means of livelihood work on a railroad, he assumes a duty to society as a whole to give absolute obedience to rules, and to remain at work until suitable arrangements are made to relieve him. So dependent is the welfare of the whole country upon regular transportation that in time public opinion will declare that men on a railroad have no more right to disobey reasonable rules than have the men in the army, have no more right to leave in a body than have the men in the army. When they act thus in the army they are punished for mutiny and desertion. Probably no law could be framed at the present time that would cover these ideas, because it is contrary to our American ideas to say that a man shall or shall not work as he may wish. But public opinion would in time crystallize so that in some way strikes or industrial war would be things of the past, and men could only leave in a body by being mustered out in some orderly manner. We hear much about quasi-public corporations, and public opinion has gone a long way in taking away from the owner of public-service corporations the right to manage his own property, to name his own rates or prices, to decide about his methods, and has imposed on him the responsibility of providing safe and adequate public service from his private means, but so far has exerted little influence upon the men who have to make the quasi-public corporation of use to the public. If a man decides to work for a quasi-public corporation, he becomes a quasi-public servant, and he has a moral duty and responsibility to society just as much as the owner has, to see that society is not deprived of the service necessary for its existence.
The railroad manager is hampered in obtaining absolute precision and reliability, not alone by the human equation, but by the operation of the force M. Leroy-Beaulieu points out. Over many of the employees his authority is divided with the labor unions, which exercise a powerful influence in determining the extent of the authority he is to be permitted to exercise over their members. To the unions he must look for acquiescence not alone in the rates of pay and terms of employment, but in the rules he makes, the authority he exercises over men charged with various duties, and the obligations under which a large number of men work. His power to cull his forces and discard not only the unfit, but those who do not demonstrate their entire capability, is limited.
The American people have corrected some of the errors in corporate management and realize that organized capital is necessary to the welfare of the country, but that it must be controlled and regulated. Organized labor is a great force that makes for good or evil of labor and of society as a whole, depending on the wisdom and patriotism of the leaders. Most men want to work and support their families, but they fear the ridicule of their fellows and sometimes follow too blindly an unwise leader who may do them a real harm.
Public opinion at one time justified burning and torturing people because they did not follow the same religious practices as those in authority. In old Salem it justified hanging women who were thought to be witches. Less than one hundred years ago it justified one man’s killing another in a duel because of some insult, real or fancied. To-day physical violence and social ostracism are still in practice toward those who do not wish to join a labor organization but who do wish to work. But public opinion will change and say to organized labor, as it has said to organized capital, “You must be fair to all.” J. B. McNamara, in his confession, said, “I did what I did for principle.” It is only necessary for an aroused public opinion to speak out and show the unfortunate men like the McNamaras that the many good men in the ranks of labor and the many good men in the other walks of life will not stand for that kind of principle.
The transportation business, now trying to readjust itself physically to the growing needs of a great country which has developed rapidly, has been subjected to severe attack and criticism. That transportation is a vital part of commerce, and the greatest element, after agriculture, in business success, has been ignored. With other kinds of business it has felt public opprobrium, because an element of the people have revolted somewhat against alleged improprieties of the past. Railroads have had to struggle for existence, as have other forms of business. Their history is similar to the history of other forms of business of contemporaneous development, and their present critics, forgetting all that has been done to bring the American railroad to its present high plane of efficiency, have been led into a somewhat unfair attitude.
Of the 609,994 miles of road in the world, which is the mileage as of 1908, nearly 40 per cent, or 233,468 miles, were in the United States. The railroad-mileage operated has grown from 159,272 in 1890, to 239,652 in 1910. The number of employees of railroads has grown from 750,017 in 1890 to 1,502,823 in 1909, and there are at least 1,000,000 holders of securities. These 2,500,000 owners and employees represent about 10,000,000 of our population, and their rights should be considered and protected just as much as those of other classes of people.
In the United States the railroads have lowered their rates, largely by voluntary action, about 25 per cent since 1888, but the tons of freight carried have increased 257 per cent, the mileage of freight-trains 80 per cent, and the average haul per ton in miles 14 per cent. The lowering of rates saves the shipper $1 out of every $4 he formerly paid, and on the tonnage moved by the railroads in 1910 effected the saving of $615,928,000.
As compared with $275,000 per mile in the United Kingdom, $109,788 per mile in Germany, $80,985 in Russia, $139,390 in France, and $112,879 in Austria, the capitalization of the railroads in the United States is smaller than that of the railroads of any country of the first class, and especially low when considered from the standpoint of comparative service to business, for in this country the citizens command the service of five miles of a railway to one mile that serves the average European.
The Railroad Securities Commission says in its report transmitted by the President to Congress, December 11, 1911:—
“Neither the rate of return actually received on the par value of American railroad bonds and stocks to-day, nor the security which can be offered for additional railroad investments in the future, will make it easy to raise the needed amount of capital. The rates of interest and dividends to outstanding bonds and stocks of American railroads is not quite four and one half per cent in each case.”
Public opinion must be exerted to see that railroads are fairly treated, so that the money needed for increased and improved transportation facilities can be obtained and spent rapidly and freely.
Every age has its problems, and we sometimes think that ours are different from, and much more difficult than, those that others have had to deal with. I read the following the other day: “The merchants form great companies and become wealthy, but many of them are dishonest and cheat one another. Hence the directors of the companies who have charge of the accounts are nearly always richer than their associates. Those who thus grow rich are clever, since they do not have the reputation of being thieves.” This sounds familiar, as if it might have been said very recently, but it was published in the Chronicle of Augsburg, Germany, in 1512, four hundred years ago; so the modern reformer who thinks business is all wrong, and that he has discovered the trouble and can remedy it, is somewhat behind the times.
The following also came to my notice: “It is impossible to limit the size of the companies, for that would limit business and hurt the common welfare. The bigger and more numerous they are, the better for everybody. If a merchant is not perfectly free to do business in Germany he will go elsewhere, to Germany’s loss. Any one can see what harm and evil such an action would mean to us. If a merchant cannot do business above a certain amount, what is he to do with his surplus money? It is impossible to set a limit to business, and it would be well to let the merchant alone and put no restriction on his ability or capital, Some people talk of limiting the earning capacity of investments. This would be unbearable and would work great injustice and harm by taking away the livelihood of widows, orphans, and other sufferers, noble and non-noble, who derive their income from investments in these companies. Many merchants out of love and friendship invest the money of their friends—men, women, and children—who know nothing of business, in order to provide them with an assured income. Hence any one can see that the idea that the merchant companies undermine the public welfare ought to be seriously considered. The small merchant complains that he cannot earn as much as the companies. That is like the old complaint of the common laborer that he earns so little wages. All this is true enough, but are the complaints justifiable?” This is from a report of a committee appointed by the Diet of Nuremberg to investigate monopolies, and they made their report in 1522. And the committee found then, as is true now, that they could not change the situation very much without doing more harm than good!
I read in the “Literary Digest” a few days ago four paragraphs which are said to represent the Chinese view of certain business practices. They read as follows:—
“Those who deal with merchants unfairly are to be beheaded.”
“Those who interrupt commerce are to be beheaded.”
“Those who attempt to close the markets are to be beheaded.”
“Those who maintain the prosperity of commerce are to be rewarded.”
The Chinese seem to recognize that injustice, interruption of business, and control of markets are undesirable things and that the expansion and growth of commerce is a good thing! They suggest pretty drastic remedies, which can hardly be followed out in this country; and they suggest rewarding those who expand commerce, while in this country the tendency is to condemn them.
Public opinion, however, in this country, if created wisely by the action of the true majority, can accomplish the desired results without beheading anybody. Public opinion can insist:—
To create an enlightened public opinion, every one must contribute, and not leave the formation of that opinion to a small minority who make a great deal of noise but are not always very wise. Every one can do a little toward helping out.
Maltbie says:—
“We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift.
Shun not the struggle; face it, ’t is God’s gift.”
This is good advice.
THE END
- ↑ Address delivered before the Publicity Club of Minneapolis, January 10, 1912.