CHAPTER X.

VALUE OF PRIVATE OWNERSHIP AND INTERESTGOVERNMENT CONTROL: ITS INADEQUACY.

When anything goes wrong in the world, or seems to go wrong, the ignorant and thoughtless everywhere, rise up and call upon the government to interfere, as if a perfunctory body, made up of agents, loosely selected at best, were more trustworthy than the masses, from which it derives life. Government interference is the sine qua non of young people, the hopeful, confiding, and simple. It is the panacea of cranks and schemers. It is never fully adequate. It lacks in intelligent interest, energy, and adaptability. It, moreover, has the effect to weaken personal interest and individual effort. Its substitution for private effort is to trade off the practical experience and enthusiasm of a nation for the service of hired men. But in questioning the ability of governments to carry on affairs effectively and economically, the basis of objection should not be misunderstood. It is not that the subordinate officials of a government, those who really do its work, are not able and trustworthy, but that they lack the peculiar kind of executive and administrative talent that is needed.

The carrying on of government is a business in which the government employe performs duties

somewhat analagous to those of a merchant, manufacturer, or banker. He both originates and directs. He is not fitted for such duties. His genius lies in another direction. He lacks the self-reliance, the aggressiveness, the foresight, the instinct of trade, the amiability, that the merchant possesses. If he had these qualities, he would not be working for the government; he would be a trader, manufacturer, banker, or capitalist. Moreover, the incentive of personal gain, the propelling force of the world, is lacking. Thus essential qualities, necessary to carry on any kind of business successfully, are wanting. Their absence is fatal. This is why everything a government does is poorly done compared with the achievements of private individuals.

Nothing that the industry, ingenuity, or enterprise of a people leads them to do on their own account, should be undertaken by a government.

The intervention of governments in the affairs of business emasculates men, dulls their inventive genius, chills their ardor, robs them of their independence, lessens their patriotic instincts, reduces their sense of personal obligation. It takes the affairs of a nation (so far as the intervention extends) out of the hands of natural leaders, and puts them into the hands of clerks; it is to substitute mediocrity for talent, mechanical effort for creative genius, perfunctory service for interested effort. The few men of wise judgment and great experience, who have charge of the great departments and bureaus of a government, are not sufficient in number

our Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Board of Trade, of England, with their staffs, while made up of men of great ability, are as a drop in the bucket. They are, in fact, only equal in number to the practical men that every railroad finds it necessary to employ for its own use.

Governmental management lacks spirit, alertness, and a desire to please. It is at once meddlesome, slow, cumbersome, and bumptious. The absence of gain robs it of energy and a desire to please. Its acts are lacking in promptness and natural adjustment. It is slow to make changes; is loth to run counter to established practices, even when the interests of a country demand it. It is governed by precedent, instead of practical needs; by formulas, instead of principles; by the adaptations of theorists, instead of business men. It lacks commercial shrewdness. Under it, circumlocution, instead of being a mere incident of business, becomes a ruling principle, impossible to overcome or mitigate, because carried out ostensibly in the interests of the people.

In the ratio that corporate service falls below the high standard of private endeavor, so does governmental service fall below that of private corporations. It lacks the vitalizing force infused into corporate life by the owner; it lacks his directing energy and intelligence, his genius and self-interest, his personal concern, and supervisory usefulness. It is mechanical and plodding. Thus in no instance has the train-service of railroads managed by gov

private corporations, either as regards safety or efficiency.

Under every form of government, the methods of the operative are all-important. Public convenience is secondary with him, although he is unconscious of the fact. As the representative of the people, he is not to be lightly disturbed. Invention and innovation are synonymous terms with him. Change and betterment do not add to his comfort or fortune. But they do add to his labor. Moreover, they may occasion criticism. Under him, complexity gradually usurps the place of simplicity; it adds to his importance, and affords him a screen behind which he can hide. Clericalism envelops everything he does. Obsolete tools are his favorite utensils. He is familiar with them. He makes up in metaphysical dissertation what he lacks in practical sense and usefulness. The railroads he constructs are such as the engineer wants, rather than the trader. In operating them, cost is in the inverse ratio to efficiency. His tariffs are based on mathematical formulas, rather than the needs of trade. In everything he is a stickler for uniformity. It saves mental labor. In railway practice, it is his desire to base rates on expenses and interest, rather than on quality of service or value.* The picture is not exaggerated.

No kind of business can be carried on by govern

*And when we remember how greatly cost of operation is heightened by his inefficiency and cumbersome methods, we may form some estimate of what his tariffs are, so far as he can control

ment, whether it be the operation of a railway, or the carriage of express or mails, so economically or effectively as by individual effort. The government servant lacks in fertility of resource-in inventiveness. Hired to serve, he is superior to his employers in everything but energy, intelligence, and experience. He is a hard master instead of a docile creature. There are, of course, exceptions. The government service has produced many men of exalted wisdom and unselfishness, with a genius almost godlike. It possesses many others of lesser talent, who are capable and obliging, the equals of the best. But they do not form any appreciable number of the whole. The conditions are not such as to engender them.

Governmental management is nowhere the equal of private effort. It is objectionable, because of the excessive cost that attends its operation, because of its lack of facility, its lack of public spirit, its unapproachableness, the high prices it engenders. A government monopoly is the most objectionable monopoly in the world, because, however baneful, it is superior to assault, because carried on ostensibly in the interest of the public. It points to its performances as creditable, without the people having the ability to judge by comparison whether they

are so or not.

Men who are themselves failures, or who do not discern the certainty with which mankind achieve great commercial ends when left to themselves, turn to the government just as a child learning to walk