Social and Economic Conditions
in Modern America
E. Guy LeStourgeon
[An Independence Day oration delivered 30 June, 1915,
before the San Antonio, Texas Rotary Club and the Civilians' Training
Camp. Reprinted from the Single Tax Review, January-February
1916]
No one could be prouder than I to address you on this occasion.
Although the toastmaster has introduced me as being of French descent
perhaps no one here has a better right to appear before you. My great
grandfather, my grandfather, my father and myself have followed that
flag in the various wars that have been waged by the Republic.
Addresses delivered on the Birthday of our Nation are likely to be
trite and hackneyed. There are certain things that are usually said on
this occasion that I shall refrain from saying. You have heard them
many times delivered in more glowing terms than I can ever hope to
command and presented with graces of oratory and rhetoric that I do
not possess. I shall discuss other phases of the life-history of
America and certain things that have grown out of the establishing of
this great Republic.
I do not mean by that to slight the glorious sacrifices made by the
Fathers, but I desire to interpret their work in the light of present
day conditions and in line with the ultimate desire that was in their
hearts when the Declaration was signed.
I want to correct some erroneous impressions concerning the facts
that surrounded the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the
condition of America in the eyes of the world today. For instance, we
have been taught to believe that our nation is a new nation and that
our experiment in government is a strange and unique thing among the
families of the earth. America is not a new nation, but one of the
oldest. That flag is an older flag than many of the flags today
battling on the fields of Europe. It is in the memory of men now
present that the German confederation of States was organized and the
present German flag adopted. It was in 1866, after the close of our
Civil War, that the Italian flag as it flies today before the cohorts
of Italy was first flung to the breeze. The English flag has been the
outgrowth of the amalgamation into one united empire of the States of
Scotland, Ireland and England. Since the Declaration of Independence
was written in 1776, the armies of France have been led by no less
than five separate flags and for less than forty years the tri-color
flying from the fortress of Verdun today has been unfurled. The same
is true of modern Russia, of Portugal, of almost all the nations of
the earth. If, then, the flag of America does not today present to the
world the foremost spirit of liberty and represent the freedom of all
the people, it is the fault of the generation of today and the
followers of the founders of this Republic, and not of them.
If the ideas and desires of the Fathers have not been carried out and
realized it is your fault and mine. The signing of the Declaration and
the action of the founders of this nation was the crystalization into
words of the ideals that had been fermenting in the minds of men for
centuries towards political liberty. The fight of mankind for
political freedom was analogous to the fight for religious freedom.
For four hundred years prior to the signing of the Declaration the
people of the earth had struggled and the fields of Europe were
empurpled by the blood of the martyrs on one side or the other of the
great conflict. Catholics fought with Protestants, and Protestants
fought with Catholics, but both were desirous only to give the
heritage to their children of the right to think as they pleased in
matters of religion, and to worship God according to the dictates of
their own conscience and of their own hearts. The desire for political
liberty and religious liberty has been awake since feudal times. Magna
Charta and the beginning of the Reformation were almost contemporary.
The Declaration expressed no new idea. It was only the putting into
concrete form of an ideal already accepted by mankind. In proof of
this it is only necessary to remind you that in less than twelve years
after the memorable meeting in Faneuil Hall, France burst into flame
with the same ideal. The movement which there crystalized soon swept
over all of Christendom.
A more fundamental idea was in the hearts of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence than merely to secure for their children
political freedom. Political freedom was necessary for the furtherance
of the ideals that they had and was the first step in the direction of
industrial and economic liberty which they desired. I have recently
had the pleasure of reading one of the greatest speeches delivered at
the time of the agitation in furtherance of the desire of the colonies
to secede from England. Samuel J. Adams stated in an impassioned
address that the people of England had become merely a nation of
shopkeepers and that they were exploiting their colonies for their own
gain. That they were loading their ships with the fruits of the
industries of their colonies and bearing it home. That they were
placing around the colonies annoyances and restrictions upon their
commerce that had become intolerable. In your school days, when you
learned the history of that time, you were told of the Stamp Tax, the
Tea Tax, and the demand that only English bottoms cany the oversea
trade, and of other shackles and impediments that were thrown about
the commerce and industry of the colonies. If you will recall the
records you will be struck as I have been with the fact that economic
and industrial freedom was the need, the ideal and the desire of
America, and that the struggle for political equality and liberty was
but a means to gain the end. The founders of this government had seen
the vision of economic liberty and were desirous to place in the hands
of their children political freedom, in order that by its use they
could obtain the greater blessing that they had in view.
Economic liberty has not yet been obtained. We are still striving for
it as the people of Europe had striven for four hundred years for
religious and political freedom. Let us see what the Declaration of
Independence itself said. I read here in the second paragraph that, "Governments
are established among men to secure certain inalienable rights."
Another erroneous impression that I wish to remove is the accepted
meaning of this word "secure." If one possesses a thing,
then the word "secure" means to protect, to hold firm, to
maintain and make permanent the possession of the thing that has been
secured. But if one does not already possess a thing, "to secure"
means to obtain that thing. The ideal in the hearts of the founders of
the Republic was that the people of America should be permitted to
secure certain rights that were enumerated. They did not then have
them, they could not possess them, they could only put in the hands of
their children a tool whereby they could secure them in the future and
they stated in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration that it was
their intention and desire that these things should be secured and
that a government should be established that would secure in the
future certain rights for the people of the western world.
Have these rights been secured even now? Is it true that the people
of America today have the right to liberty, the right to the pursuit
of happiness? What is the right to the pursuit of happiness? Is it not
the right to labor, free from the fear of exploitation, and to enjoy
the fruits of our labor and of our industry? Is it not true today that
men face the fear of poverty; do not women and children slave in
workshop and factory; do not little children starve in this land of
plenty, even in this city of San Antonio, for the barest necessities
of life? Are there not shackles and annoyances today placed about
industry and thrift even as they were in the time of the Revolution?
Does not business and the result of industry have to bear today in
taxation many times its share? Do not you as business men feel that
some hidden force is behind the scenes taking from you month by month
and year by year the fruits of your toil and energy? Some vicious
element in our society seems to have thwarted the ideals of Jefferson,
the author of this Declaration, who said, "The land belongs in
usufruct to the living."
If it is true that in a land of plenty, a land with factories running
overtime, with warehouses filled to bursting with the fruit of
industry; if it is true that our grainaries are filled with grain,
that our storehouses are filled with merchandise, and that at the same
time poverty stalks abroad in the land; if the same civilization
produces millionaires and the wanton expenditure of wealth, while men
live in poverty and thousands of people are cooped together in
tenements in our cities-then we have not fulfilled the ideals of the
founders of this republic. There is still something for the minds of
men to attain. The duty of this generation, your duty and my duty, is
to find the way for economic freedom, to find out what it is that is
hampering industry in this country, what it is that is keeping the
toilers of the earth from their just reward and from the enjoyment of
the fruits of their labor.
The best and most effective tool in the world today, the hardest
implement on earth today, is the human brain. The human brain has been
hard enough to cut diamonds, it has driven its way in tunnels through
mountains, it has riven a continent in twain that a waterway may be
opened to the world. The human brain is the hardest tool, the best
tool, the most effective tool on earth today, and the human brain must
solve this problem as it has solved others, when it shall have been
presented to it and when the intelligence of man has turned its
energies in that direction.
The work of mankind industrially is almost done. In the last
eighty-five years there has been built on the face of the earth six
hundred thousand miles of railway. Communication and channels of trade
have been opened between the peoples of the earth. In electricity we
have almost finished the work that can possibly be done. We have
chained the lightning and put it to our use in every way. In reaping
and binding machinery, in harvesting machinery there has hardly been
an improvement in the last twenty-five years. The brain of man has
chained all the forces of nature to facilitate manufactures and to
distribute to the four corners of the earth the raw materials of
nature and the fruits of labor and industry. It has done all this, but
it has not found the way to remove the artificial barriers to trade
that designing interest have built about it.
The human brain cannot be idle. It must find some other field in
which to work. Industrially it has done everything to develop the
possibility of creating wealth for the world, but it has not turned
itself upon the idea of freeing industry from the shackles and
annoyances that have been placed upon it by those who for their own
interest have turned the wealth of this republic into their own
coffers. It is our duty to determine why it is that in this republic
we have not fulfilled the ideal of the fathers-. We should go to work
now to make that flag really a banner of the free; to make the flag
really fly over a people not only politically and religiously free,
but who have the freedom to engage in the creation of wealth and also
to enjoy the wealth after they have created it. It is our duty to
determine why it is that poverty and prosperity go hand in hand and to
banish from our civilization the forces and influences that divert
from you and me and all who labor the enjoyment of the products and
fruit of our thought and industry.
If our country is one of the oldest countries on the earth today; if
our own flag is no longer a new flag among the children of men, and if
at the same time we have not fulfilled the ideals of the founders of
this republic, if in the republic today there are reproaches staring
us in the face because of the fact that we are permitting the
diversion into the coffers of the few of the wealth created by the
many, then it is our duty now to turn our minds into channels looking
towards the correcting of these evils and make that flag really a flag
of an unshackled people.
If we do that, America will again take its stand in the foremost
front of the nations bearing aloft the torch of Liberty. It was only
twelve years after the Declaration was signed, crystallizing for once
and all the ideals that had been in the hearts of men for centuries
toward political freedom, that the flames broke out in Europe and the
banner of political freedom was unfurled there. It would be the same
thing again if it were possible for us to lead the way. That would be
the true preparedness, the preparedness of a peaceful, prosperous
people. The nations of the earth again would follow the example of the
great leader nation of the West, and in a very few years they would
emulate our example by the establishment in their countries of the
same ideals of freedom that had found birth with us.
I can see in the accomplishment of the ideals of Jefferson, of Adams,
and of Madison, a fulfillment of the words of the prophet, that "Every
man should be permitted to sit under his own vine and fig tree and
enjoy the fruits of his labor." I can see the flag of this
Republic again the emblem and gonfalon of Liberty, leading the
children of the earth into the ways of prosperity and peace!
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