Intellectual Malnutrition
John Luxton
[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April
and May-June 1936, published with the original title, "Intellectual
Malnutrition, an Evil Arising From the Depression That is More
Sinister Than Physical Starvation."]
One of the most important developments of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries was the science of nutrition. Up to now we
have come to understand the truth of the saying that man is what he
feeds upon, and as time goes by we are learning more and more about
the wise use of food. The laws of nature, having contrived out of
several elements obtained from the earth and air a living substance
called protoplasm, also endowed that substance with the ability to
continue its existence by means of fresh supplies drawn from the
material world. But in the course of centuries the various forms of
life in which protoplasm manifested itself developed certain likes and
dislikes. The reasons for such development are not the concern of this
article.
It is sufficient to say that they developed in response to certain
natural laws. So it came to pass in our day and generation that
certain foods would have certain effects upon certain people, also
upon domestic animals and plants. To keep in good health, to be
physically fit, means that we mortals must have a diet suited to our
individual needs. Livestock raisers and growers of plants must know
the requirements of animal and plant tissue or they fail.
Undernourishment means failure, probably extinction for individual,
species, or race. Undernourishment does not necessarily imply a lack
of food. Very often it means the wrong kind of food. From the
knowledge we now have undernourishment is no longer the result of
ignorance. It is the result of economic conditions, it is the
inability to obtain the proper foods because of the inequitable
distribution of wealth.
With the growth of education in the world and with the spread of
knowledge it is but natural to suppose that mankind would accept the
truths discovered in the study of nutrition as it has come to accept
sanitation. Of course, here and there, one may find sections where,
because of isolation, superstition, or blind obedience to some outworn
theology, the truths of nutrition are unknown or ignored, but in the
march of human progress such localities are becoming fewer. Therefore,
if malnutrition exists in any large degree it is due to inability to
prevent it by the use of proper food. When this happens due to a
famine, drought, inundation, or to a shipwreck or mine disaster, the
end for many may be death by starvation, but such deaths would not
impair the health nor the morals of the rest of the human race, nor
any large part of it. The cause would be clear to all and all would
accept it as a regrettable accident, such as will happen in spite of
every precaution we might take.
It would not be accepted as something to expect as a regular thing.
But in no way, physical or mental, would the rest of humanity be
injured. Tissue would keep on growing according to the plan of nature,
and minds would develop according to environment and heredity. The
worst that can be said of physical starvation is that many, perhaps
thousands or millions may die and be over their troubles. And it may
have its good points as when it drives people to rebel against
intolerable conditions. The French Revolution was caused by starvation
as much as by anything.
As the physical tissue needs food of the proper kind upon which to
grow and from which to draw energy the mind of man needs food of the
proper kind in order to grow and make deductions and thus fit the
physical man into a society composed of other physical men endowed
with minds. And what sort of food does the mind of man require? It
requires a food that will enable the man to meet all situations in
which other men figure. Is it to be a food that will cause him to
ignore the rights of other men and seek the advancement of himself and
family? Is it to be a food that will make him efface himself in the
presence of others, forget his obligation to defend his own rights and
those of others, and quietly accept the state of slavery or of
subjection? Or is it to be a food that will make him jealous of the
rights of man, all men, of the blessings of liberty and democracy, of
man's right to live upon the earth as a heritage from his creator?
We who believe implicitly in the truths put forth in the Declaration
of Independence and in the principles laid down in the Constitution of
the United States believe that the proper mental food for a free
people, for all men in fact, is food that will stimulate us to a
greater faith in liberty and democracy, in the inalienable rights of
man as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, and in the undisputed right of
every man to draw sustenance from the earth of which he is a part. And
what is democracy? If our mental food must stimulate a greater faith
in democracy let there be no misgivings as to the meaning of the term.
And likewise let us consider liberty.
Democracy is that state in which every man has the right to live his
own life as he sees fit provided he does not interfere with the right
of every other man to do the same Liberty can be but the carrying out
of democracy.
Considering the mass of literature from the pens of college
professors, statesmen, so-called economists, and laymen in general,
with which our newspapers and magazines have been crammed during the
past five years and the great mass of radio addresses by the same
persons are we getting the nutrition for the intellect that will meet
the requirements that we have laid down for the mental growth of man?
Let us consider some recent attempts to provide the mind of man with
intellectual nourishment and see if the diet is suitable for a people
who aspire to freedom of thought in a world of men.
In Harper's Magazine for August, 1935, there appeared an
article entitled "Chemistry Wrecks the Farm." The first
paragraph says that the farm is the nation's "largest single
business still remaining" in private hands and that it is about
to die because of chemistry and technology taking over control of
agriculture. This is true enough, a scientific revolution is taking
place. This provides food for thought and is supported by fact. And in
a smaller way agriculture has been undergoing control since the first
plow was made. The history of industry will show this. The farm in the
United States has been changing in aspect ever since the first settler
broke the first sod.
The agricultural methods of the European were different from those of
the Indian who raised corn and squash. Indian agricultural methods had
to give way to the more progressive ways of the immigrant, but it is
also true that the settlers learned a thing or two from the aborigine
so that in one decade slightly more American agriculture was quite
different from the agriculture of the old world. With the extension of
roads into the backwoods, the harnessing of mountain streams
throughout New England, and the improvement in plows and wagons, the
farm in America continued to change. The cotton gin, McCormick's
reaper, the gang plow, the tractor, the various bureaus of the
Department of Agriculture, certainly revolutionized farming in
America.
Superficially the farm of yesterday resembled the farm of our
grandfathers but our grandsires would have been lost if a premature
resurrection had brought them to the farm again after ten or more
years in the grave. We might go on, but the foregoing facts are enough
to show that the wrecking of the farm as we know it is to be expected
in a changing world. Why then should we bother when there are more
important things to do for man's happiness and the race's progress? It
is true that the race will last as long as the food supply holds out
and the article in question does not suggest that there will ever be a
scarcity of food. The changes are now more swift than formerly because
we have progressed further, we have more wealth of knowledge because
of the intellectual strivings of the human race in the past. The
forward movement of industry has accelerated each generation as the
speed of a falling body is accelerated in ever increasing degree as it
approaches the center of gravity of the earth. To suggest, even in
veiled language, that agriculture was an industry, fixed and
unchangeable until this day, when the facts are otherwise, is to
present an unwholesome diet for mental growth.
But this is not all that is untrue in this first paragraph. The farm
is referred to as "the final refuge from a mechanized and
goose-stepped civilization." The insinuation is that we must
accept the mechanized and goose-stepped civilization after the farm is
a memory. Upon the authors' say-so we are to take mechanization and
goose-stepping as accepted facts. No other alternative is suggested.
Man might ask if no other way out were possible if the words "final
refuge" did not stand as a detour sign to his thought tracks.
Such mental food is adulterated. Why should the terms "mechanized"
and "goose-stepped" be coupled as literal Siamese twins? Is
it logical to think of mechanization as something to take refuge from?
Are machines, are any time or labor saving devices, enemies of the
state of society known as democracy and the condition known as
liberty?
Superficial thinking believes that the machine condemns man to
unemployment, poverty, and finally, support by the state. The intent
of the inventor of any machine is to release labor from the
imprisonment of toil without end, not to separate man from the need of
a certain amount of toil to sustain himself. To reduce the amount of
energy and shorten the time needed for man to produce enough to
satisfy his wants, thus freeing him to develop along cultural lines as
his fancy determines, is the purpose of any machine. That the purpose
has not been carried out so far is because we have not developed
sufficiently to know that "man shall not live by bread alone."
When all trivial jobs have been reduced to machine tasks, and no man
or group of men can appropriate to himself the benefits that should be
enjoyed by all men, there will be no voice raised against
mechanization. We shall not need to be advised to accept it as the
inevitable, we will welcome it as a blessing, a gift of the
intelligence of man. We shall seek no refuge from mechanization.
As for goose-stepping we can not accept it and remain worthy of the
name of men. Call it regimentation, communism, social planning,
economic planning, social security, cooperation in a cooperative
state, call it anything you will, it will remain a denial of liberty
of body, conscience, and intellect. It will be a denial of democracy,
a subservience to the ideals of Hitler and Mussolini. Such a condition
of slavery is far more despicable, far more destructive to man's soul
than the bondage of the Hebrews in Babylonia and Egypt and the chattel
slavery of the negroes in America, for neither the Hebrews nor the
blacks became slaves of their own free will. When it is suggested in
an article published in a magazine read by the elite of the higher
intellectual circles that this is a goose-stepping civilization, as if
it were settled for ever by all men, when in fact it is the delirium
of but a part of the human race, we will not say that the wish is
father to the thought but we do say that such mental food is unfit for
a people who love liberty.
The rest of the article states some facts that are un- assailable,
and some theories that have not been proved. In regard to the latter
we again have an adulterated menu. With synthetic food and rainement,
dyes and drugs, one would take it as a proved fact that we can do
without plant life. The essential materials for a beefsteak, a pair of
shoes, a rubber tire, a tent, a bottle of gin, or a bottle of attar of
roses, would be obtained in the laboratory from ores and sands and
clays taken from the earth. Some of these articles and many others
have been manufactured successfully in the chemical laboratory. We do
not know what would be the effect of synthetic food upon the human
body.
True it is that we are quite capable of producing food containing all
of the elements found in plant and animal food and in the right
proportion and without waste, thereby making it possible to carry a
whole day's rations in a small pill bottle. And we can do this without
recourse to any plants or animals. But we have never tried such diet
upon the human race in sufficient amount to know whether man has
arrived at that wonderful state of intellect when he can dispense with
all life but human. There are strong reasons for suspecting that there
is a mysterious something developed in the chemical laboratory of the
leaf, under the influence of solar radiation, that is essential for
the activation of living cells of protoplasm in plant and animal life,
and without which life can not continue. This mysterious something is
not subject to chemical analysis, therefore is non-existent
chemically. Synthetic food can not obtain this by chemical action. Yet
the authors of the article insinuate that we are on the eve of
synthetic production of life-continuing material. The most that can be
said truthfully is that we have learned many things about the secrets
of food but still have much to learn. Any statements that claim more
than this are merely speculative. Such intellectual diet, while,
misleading, is not as dangerous to the mind as that which suggests
that liberty is a thing of the past and regimentation the next step in
man's development. But we can not permit one theory that the authors
state as a proven fact to pass unchallenged. It is the rejection of
Ricardo's Law of Rent.
The authors claim that Ricardo's theories were upset immediately by
changes that came about. They very graciously admit that his theories
were without fault over a century ago. They base their astounding
claim upon the fallacy that production in the future "will have
little relation whatever to the land itself." Is it possible that
in this day and generation there is any intellectual so dumb as to
suppose that land in the economic sense will play but a small part in
production? Let the learned gentlemen tell us where in the synthetic
age the materials will come from if not from the land, and where will
the synthetic laboratories, workshops, and storehouses be located if
not on land? And where will the ultimate consumers of the synthetic
products set the soles of their feet, if not upon land? And if the
answer be nowhere, and how can it be anything else, we would like to
know whether all lands would be of equal value for the purpose
mentioned, or whether some lands would be poorer and some better. If
the latter is the answer then we say beyond all possibility of
contravention that some land will yield more economic rent than other
land, and that this will not be due to anything man may perform as an
individual, but will be due to man collectively and to the natural
features of the land. Ricardo's law of rent may have been based upon
agricultural land but it is natural law and applies to all land used
by man.
It is as true today as when first brought to the attention of
thinkers. And because it is true those of the human species who
control land are able to collect of the product from those who use it.
All of which is perfectly proper if all mankind benefit by the use,
but if certain individuals or groups are the sole beneficiaries of the
toil of others upon their lands then is mankind reduced to the status
of slave and slaveholder.
Such intellectual food as the above is disastrous to the race in that
it seeks to justify the cause of all evil among men in civilized
societies, the private ownership by a few men of natural resources
from which all men are compelled to draw the physical nourishment for
their bodies. And when such diet is presented by men occupying high
positions in intellectual circles the full extent of the disaster is
comprehensible to even the slow witted. By propaganda we were urged
into a World War when we had arrived at the necessary mental state for
it. By propaganda we are being led into a mental state that will
prefer perpetual slavery to a liberty that we were approaching
gradually. The authors of this amazing article are Wayne W. Parrish,
formerly a journalist on the Herald Tribune of New York, and Dr.
Harold F. Clark, professor of Economics at Teachers College, Columbia
University. It can be seen that false doctrine coming from such men
will be accepted by the general mass of magazine readers and by those
molders of the youthful mind, our teachers, who take summer courses
and extension courses to make themselves better instructors and
citizens. The damage done to the young mind that falls a prey to such
teaching is irreparable.
In the same number of Harper's appears an article by Stuart Chase who
is reputed to be a writer on economic subjects. It is entitled "The
Parade of the Gravediggers." It is an attempt to justify the New
Deal by showing up the critics of it as self-interested individual:
who refuse to recognize the fact that the old prosperity regime of the
G. O. P. is gone forever, and who still believe in all the fallacies
of the former economic era. In seeking to justify the violations of
the spirit of freedom and human rights by the present administration a
Washington, Mr. Chase does not hesitate to use language that so
befuddles the mind that one could not be blame for getting nothing at
all out of the article. Also he does not shun fallacies but hugs them
to his breast as if part of himself. This article is to be part of a
book in which he includes other articles published in the past, and
which the kindest thing we can say is that the author is mistaken more
often than he is right. We can say that whatever Mr. Chase's article
seeks to explain does not explain economics. Take his definitions of
Capitalism for example.
He speaks of the system under which we have been living as being "roughly
identified as capitalism." Then he says as his own contribution
that "the typical business man is not a capitalist, for he works
rather than invests for a living." So here we learn that a
capitalist is one who invests for a living and does not work. A
shoemaker who owns his machinery is not a capitalist, although he has
capital invested in his machines to help him make a living, if he as
much as lifts a hammer to nail on a sole or a heel? Such a statement
is pure nonsense, and shows ignorance of capital. Not knowing what
capital and capitalists are is it of any use for Mr. Chase to attempt
to explain Capitalism? He does though, and gives us six choice bits to
choose from. He says that the word itself constitutes a "high-order
abstraction," and goes on to give us a chain of "subtractions"
from which Capitalism is built up. We find the terms "profit,"
"the free market," "labor," "credit," "contract,"
"property," "income," "savings," and "costs,"
only two of which are economic terms, terms that bear upon the
production and distribution of wealth. The economic terms are labor
and property. All the others are trade or business terms. He states
that it is absolutely necessary to conceive of this chain or the word
Capitalism remains pure metaphysics, full of emotional content and
nothing else. Perhaps he is trying to say that before we use the term
we should understand what it means. If so it would be a good rule for
him to follow. As we shall see he has his own interpretation. But why
he should suggest that there is any great chain behind the proper
conception of "democracy" and of "freedom" we do
not know, yet he does, for he says that they and "fascism"
are similar terms to Capitalism.
He gives six abstractions or definitions of Capitalism, none of which
is a definition in the strict sense and all of which violate the rules
of logic. For example:
- "The total of human acts and behavior involved in the
process of providing for the physical wants of Western societies
under the economic system recently prevailing.
- "That part of the system devoted to private enterprise.
- "That part of private enterprise devoted to free
competition. The area of rugged individualism.
- "The private ownership of income-producing property, and
the resulting production for pecuniary profit rather than for
specific human use.
- "The exploitation of the working class by the owning class".
His definition of a capitalist as one who invests rather than works
for a living would seem to throw out number "1". At least it
needs revising to harmonize with his definition of a typical business
man. Number "2" removes all publicly owned and operated
industries from the blight of Capitalism although such enterprises are
paying interest on bonds to private enterprise. Num- ber "5"
separates mankind into two classes, the workers and the owners, but
does not explain that such division is a fallacy, some workers being
also owners. It does not distinguish between owners of wealth and
owners of natural resources. Owners of wealth can not exploit the
workers. They can only pass on the exploitation that comes as a
natural result of the monopolization of land. When industry must pay
tribute to the private owners of natural resources as well as taxes to
society in proportion to its industriousness it is being robbed,
penalized, hindered in production, and for this interference it is
recompensed by society only, in the form of social services. It gets
nothing from the landlords. That means that there is less to share
with labor. Does industry, the owners of capital, the product of
labor, exploit the worker, or does the land owner who produces nothing
yet demands a share of production in advance?
Let us look at the definition that Mr. Chase accepts for himself. It
is number "6", as follows:
"A productive mechanism depending for its stability
upon a flywheel of reinvestment in so called capital goods."
So this is Capitalism! Does he mean that industry will produce as
long as there are consumers able to purchase? It seems to us that he
has given nothing but a "highfalutin" definition of
industry. This may or may not concern Capitalism in the sense that he
has in mind.
We take it that in speaking of Capitalism Mr. Chase has in mind big
business such as The Standard Oil Company and The United States Steel
Corporation, also Mr. Morgan's banking interests. This view of
Capitalism is too limited. It is the Socialistic concept but it is not
economic. Capitalism means a state or condition in which capital is
used to assist labor in the production of wealth. Capital is wealth
devoted to the aid of labor in production of wealth. It owes its
existence to labor, can not exist without labor, and must be
continually replaced by fresh capital produced by labor. A capitalist
is a lender of capital, or an owner of capital. He may also be a user
of capital as a laborer, as when a farmer plows with his own
machinery. Therefore the system of using capital to assist labor in
less wasteful methods of production is a system of Capitalism. What
has the exploitation of labor, the private enterprise, the stability
of capital, the reinvestment of capital, the purchase of capital
goods, got to do with the definition or the correct concept of the
term in the human mind? Mr. Chase's concept of Capitalism needs the
rigid inspection of a department of Intellectual Nutrition. It is not
adulterated, it is a fraudulent substitute.
Mr. Chase believes in laws. Whether he believes in the natural laws
of economics or not would be difficult to say. We have never seen
anything in his writings that suggests economics, that is true
economics. He gives a mathematical formula, governed by the laws of
compound interest, to show the distribution of income received in
production. He claims that the division between owners and workers is
a constant, about thirty per cent for the owner, and seventy per cent
for the workers, making it necessary for the owner to reinvest or
spend his share to maintain equilibrium in the system. He means the
industrial system though he thinks he means Capitalism. This spending
and reinvesting, according to Mr. Chase, both put men to work, and
thus provide purchasing power, again to be divided 30-70, in an
endless spiral. It all seems very plain to Mr. Chase, and
unfortunately it will seem so to thousands who read the article and
have never had any other mental food to choose from, that the owners
must reinvest because they can spend but a fraction of their income,
and that this reinvestment "results in more plant capacity which
demands an expanding market."
There are three fallacies in the above explanation. One is the
dividing of income between owner and workers. Under such a division
30-70, whether sanctioned by the law of compound interest or not, is
ridiculous. As owner the owner is entitled to nothing. He is entitled
only to what he produces, either by his services or for the use of his
capital. Allowing ten per cent for the use of his capital, and ten per
cent is very liberal and based upon artificial or false interest and
not true interest, then twenty per cent is too much for the services
of one man when his workers must share seventy per cent.
Suppose the income was $100,000 a year and he employed fifty workmen.
By Mr. Chase's formula the owner would get $10,000 interest, $20,000
for wages or services, and each of his workmen would receive an
average of $1,400. We have no doubt that this is actually so but it is
all wrong. The owner's services could never be worth four- teen times
as much as the average yearly earnings of his employees. But Mr. Chase
has forgotten rent. We assume that by income he means what is left
after all deductions are made for rent, taxes, insurance, and
incidental expenses such as donations, etc. In that case he is making
his employees pay his rent and taxes, paying them wages equal to
seventy per cent of what is left. Thus we have the inequitable
division of 30-70. If the owner shared the rent and taxes with his
employees, as he should since he is the owner, the distribution would
be more like 15-85 if the owner gave services. Then he would get
$5,000 for his services while the average wage for his men would be
$1,700 per year. Deliberately ignoring the part of production that
goes to the land owners for no service whatever is done for the
purpose of winning the minds to a conception of state ownership or
control of industry.
The vast amount of wealth that is diverted from labor and capital to
the owners of land can not be spent by the landowners nor can it be
consumed by them. It has resulted in a division of income for the
United States that Mr. Chase does not mention; eighty-five per cent of
the income goes to five per cent of the population. If five per cent
of the population are normal individuals this means that they have
families, so that eighty- five per cent of the income goes to support
twenty per cent of the population. This means that eighty per cent of
the population must get along on fifteen per cent of the income.
Furthermore, the eighty per cent includes all wage earners from day
laborers to corporation presidents, and all government officials. This
constant drain of so much produced wealth to so few of the people will
result in ruin no matter how much of the wealth is reinvested. This
comes about because the figures mentioned are not constant but move
further apart with each new production, so that proportionately the
poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.
Now let us look at the fallacy in Mr. Chase's explanation of
Capitalism. It is the old wages fund theory, that men are paid wages
out of capital. The spending and reinvesting both put men to work and
thus provide purchasing power. So men could not begin work until
somebody spent something and nobody could buy until somebody spent
something! Very simple! For a long time now it has been known that men
go to work in response to a demand. When there is a demand for goods
owners of plants will attempt to supply that demand. Men will not
reinvest when there is no demand. And the spending, according to Mr.
Chase, could never be more than thirty per cent from the owners, most
likely but a fraction of one per cent. It would have to come from
those who receive the seventy per cent to make it profitable to
reinvest. So the men who want to pro- duce the articles to meet the
demand of the people able to purchase really put the capital to work.
Mr. Chase puts the cart before the horse. When do people stop
spending? When they can not produce? And when do they stop producing?
When production becomes unprofitable because of high land rents. Then
purchasing power ends.. And just as soon as industry can get land
cheap enough to produce without loss industry employs capital to
assist it. Labor creates its own wages as it goes along. The employer
is in debt to labor until he settles the account in pay envelope or by
check. Labor is never in debt to the employer unless wages are
advanced before production starts. Thus labor employs capital and
capital does not employ labor. And once labor has the opportunity to
create its own wages it starts purchasing. Thus a spiral starts in the
opposite direction from Mr. Chase's.
Mr. Chase's third fallacy is contained in these words: "The new
investment results in more plant capacity which demands an expanding
market." So American business, or any other business, is
accustomed to going ahead with preparations for producing vast amounts
of goods and then setting out to make a market? Does Mr. Chase really
believe this? We doubt it. Business men who do work upon such theories
usually wind up with a court order pasted on the front door and an
unpleasant session in a United States District Court in which all
details, personal and otherwise, are thoroughly retired for the
benefit of creditors. The sound businessmen wait until the market
demands the expansion before enlarging the plant. Then if they are
forced into bankruptcy it is because of the fickleness of human nature
as expressed in fads such as those of dress and adornment. This last
fallacy is a very dangerous one to allow to persist. It leads to war,
privation, loss of liberty, and causes a stop in the onward march of
the human race toward its final goal that may last for centuries and
entail endless misery.
It is of no value to look further into Mr. Chase's menu or those who
prefer canned thinking. The rest of his article is as bad as the parts
we have pointed out. Is his meat fit for the intellect of a free
people who wish more freedom, or is it fit for abject slaves of
monopoly? The sad thing is that Mr. Chase's articles hold prominent
place in our most respectable magazines and newspapers and are read by
many thousands of our best minds. His sphere of influence is immense
and his power for evil is un-measureable.
In the same number of Harper's appears a discussion of
liberty by Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, formerly president of Amherst
College. It is entitled: "Liberty For What?" It is plainly
an expression of the confusion in his own mind of the various concepts
of liberty held by Americans, especially those of our scholars and
practical men who call themselves "realists," and an attempt
to justify his own concept of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the
sum total of these, democracy.
He is sound in his own concepts. We would wish for no better result
of the American educational system than that each and every young
American should leave school with the concept of liberty possessed by
Dr. Meiklejohn. But we feel that the doctor has treated us to some
mental food that will counteract the effect of his very sound
doctrine. We do not see why he needed to do this. In education it is
never wise to present conflicting ideas or theories when the intention
is to have the students reject the false by logical reasoning unless
the true is well supported by facts. Yet the doctor admits that his
evidence in support of his assertion that Americans still love
equality and fraternity is not of the laboratory type, but merely his
own interpretation of events of history and of the state of mind of
the American people. Who would ask for better proof? The Chinese do
not attempt to prove by laboratory methods what is perfectly obvious.
Even as they, the doctor is depending upon something inherent in all
men, intuition, but his admission weakens the case in the eyes of many
who will say that his belief is merely his own personal opinion.
The doctor speaks of the paradox in our interpretation of liberty. It
is that liberty forbids the interference with certain of our
activities and requires that we interfere with others. The First
Amendment to the Constitution prohibits Congress from interfering with
religion the freedom of the press, or of speech, or with the right of
the people to assemble peaceably, and to petition their government for
a redress of grievances. These are things in which we are guaranteed
absolute freedom. The Fifth Amendment, says Dr. Meiklejohn, suggests
that people may be deprived of life, liberty, or property, with due
process of law. Later on the doctor explains this seeming paradox by
showing that the Constitution guarantees in the Fifth, and in the
Fourteenth Amendments, in regard to ownership and management of
property, not freedom from restraint, but restraint in conformance to
justice and regularity. He does not attempt to explain the reason why
the government may take life but not interfere with a man's religion.
We believe that the Fifth Amendment expresses the ideas prevalent at
the time of its formulation and does not imply that the Congress may
or must regulate and restrain, even take, life, liberty, or property.
At the time of the adoption of this amendment no one questioned the
right of the state to take life or property or to deprive a man of his
liberty. The Fifth Amendment was intended to prevent the state from
doing so except for good and sufficient reasons after due process of
law. There is no need of implying that the state may do what everyone
admits it has the power to do. But human opinion had not developed at
that time to the point of seeing that the state has no right to take
what it can not give, that is life. And the Declaration made it
perfectly clear that the right to live is inalienable. No man is fit
to be judge of the right to life of any other man, and no man may take
life except as a means of protecting his own or that of another. What
applies to the individual applies to society. We have reached a point
in our civilization where we may question the right of society to take
life except as a means of preserving life. We had not reached such a
stage when the Fifth Amendment was adopted.
In regard to liberty we do not see that the Fifth Amendment does
anything but guarantee justice for those who have sold their endowed
rights by the disregard of the endowed rights of others. A man who
takes the life or property of another man without good and sufficient
reason has violated the inalienable rights of all men including his
own, and has thus forfeited his right to liberty. It is the business
of the state, or of society, to restrain him from further violations
of the inalienable rights of all men. To restrain him does not mean to
kill him nor to confiscate that which is rightfully his. We think now
of crime as due to maladjustment to society. We may not know the cause
but at least we have reached the point where we are considering the
social rehabilitation of criminals. If we kill the man, we are
admitting that we are doing so as the easiest way of solving the
problem, or we are satisfying revenge. The trouble with both reasons
is that the problem is not solved and revenge upon one criminal does
not deter others.
What we have said in regard to life and liberty applies with equal
force to property. The Fifth Amendment is a safeguard, not necessary
in a highly developed state of civilization, but we are not in such a
state as yet. Our ancestors had fled from a continent where the few
personal belongings, even the daughters and wives of tenants, were not
secure from the greed of the overlord. The confiscation of property in
America in retaliation for acts of insurrection against the royal
governors and the British crown was not very long past. The
possibility that patriots might try the same thing against persons
they disliked was very real. Therefore the Fifth Amendment guaranteed
security in possession of property. But the conception of property was
wrong then and is still wrong in the minds of most people.
Property at that time referred to the material products of labor, and
to natural products, men and land. We have modified our conception to
the extent of abolishing property in men by the Thirteenth Amendment.
We still believe that one may own property in land. In course of time,
if we do not succumb to mental malnutrition, we shall realize that
private property in land is as wrong as private property in men. Then
we must revamp the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments so that land
and natural resources shall be recognized as common property, and
private property, in which the owner has title due to his own
production of the property, or to exchange or surrender of title by a
former owner, shall be free from confiscation or regulation as long as
the owner does not use it or maintain it in such a way as to limit or
obstruct the right of any one to life, liberty, and property. The
state has no business to interfere in any man's affairs, internal or
external, unless that man is interfering in any way with the rights of
all men to life, liberty, and property. In interfering with these a
man forfeits his own rights. We do not see the implication in the
Fifth Amendment that Dr. Meiklejohn sees. We do see an effort to make
us more secure in our inalienable rights, which was a great step
forward at the time of its formulation.
Let us consider, in passing, the First Amendment, which prohibits
Congress from establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof. Does this amendment prevent Congress from making laws to
prevent the practice of polygamy among any religious sect, or the
offering of human sacrifices should such a sect appear, or the buying
of slave girls to be temple prostitutes should a sect from Asia be
transplanted to our dominions by conversion of native born? Or suppose
a sect similar to the Doukhobors should begin one of their millennia
by shedding their clothes and marching on the capital of the United
States? Would not restraining legislation be a prohibition of the free
exercise of religion? We believe it would. Therefore we refuse to see
paradoxes in the amendments mentioned, nor in any part of the
Constitution. We understand the background and agree with Dr.
Meiklejohn that Americans loved the spirit of liberty, equality, and
fraternity in those days and continue to do so today, but we believe
that his efforts to confound the enemies of this spirit have served
but to make them more sure of their position. Dr. Meiklejohn seems to
assume that we have always enjoyed these ideals in actuality but that
we have been discarding them in practice while we have been conquering
a continent. The fact is that we have never enjoyed any but a small
fraction of liberty, either economic or spiritual, and naturally,
never the full blessings of democracy nor justice. We have been
getting near to these ideals as we have progressed in education and
liberality, but economically, we have been getting further away from
the opportunity to enjoy health and happiness, because such
opportunity depends upon the bargain we can make with the owners of
the natural resources of the nation. Truly, we must pay the price
demanded by the owner of land for the chance to live. As long as this
condition exists liberty is an abstraction.
The most dangerous mental diet, however, is not presented in the
better magazines, since their food, dangerous as it is, reaches a
small proportion of our body politic. That food which nourishes blind
adherence of the vast number of workers who live on the verge of
starvation to the false and self-interested doctrines of demagogues is
more destructive of ideals of justice and democracy. Take the tabloids
such as The Mirror and The Daily News, and all of the Hearst press.
Just now they are trying to inflame the workers against Japan and
Japanese goods. Recently the Daily News declared that it was
impossible for American girls earning $2.98 per week to compete with
the labor of Japanese women who are "willing" to work for
$2.50 a week. Other such statements for those accustomed to think are
to the effect that the workers of Japan are willing to work long hours
for a bare subsistence and that American laborers and skilled workman,
at five days of eight hours can never hope to compete with such labor.
In consequence we are being flooded with goods of Japanese manufacture
which will drive American articles off the market and throw millions
out of work, thus prolonging the depression. The average working man
or woman, finding it hard to live on the low wages or relief funds
prevalent here readily accepts such statements as facts. Carry this
out to its end and we shall have no trouble in getting the people to
approve of high tariffs, overlooking the fact that the highest tariff
in history did not prevent the present depression.
The assumption that Japanese workers are content to work long hours
for small wages is simply not so. In Asia, an authoritative source
available to all who read, there are articles and pictures that give
us a truer conception of things in the Orient than any newspaper can,
for news articles are momentary, and merely reproduce current events.
They can not show causes nor trends. These are continuous and must be
treated in the entirety by those fitted for the task. A scholar might
keep track of events from news articles over a long period but the
average reader does not. Not so long ago the labor situation in
Japanese factories in the larger cities was discussed in Asia. Long
processions of kimona-clad Japanese girls, marching four abreast,
proceeded through the principal streets of the industrial sections of
Yokohama and Tokyo, and strange to say, with police protection and
guidance. They were striking, and protesting in mass against low wages
and long hours. This would be a revelation to the American working man
or woman. Not so long ago another thing happened for which we are
indebted to the New York Post and one of its staff writers. If such a
thing happened in the United States we would wonder what we were
coming to, yet it happened in the land of emperor worship, where
soldiers gladly offer themselves as human bombs upon the altar of love
for fatherland. The soldiers of the Imperial Army of Japan protested
in the following terms against conditions of living:
"It (Japan's economic system) creates class
differences, enables the few to hoard wealth, causes poverty and
unemployment among the masses and makes life for the people insecure
All our people must be placed in a position to obtain an income in
ratio to their labor. Taxation must be readjusted to obtain fairness
and justice."
Is it possible that a people whose army makes such protest are
willing to slave long hours for just a living wage so that the
industrialists of Japan may sell goods cheaply in foreign countries?
But of course the readers of the Mirror, News, and the Hearst press
will never know this side of Japan as long as they read nothing except
the papers mentioned.
The average working man never stops to consider that Japanese goods
are sold here for American goods. Money does not flow from here to
Japan but credit does. But if money did flow, the cost of
transportation, etc., would net the manufacturer in Japan no more than
he could get for his goods in Japan or China. When we consider
Japanese goods for American goods we see that to purchase an American
electric sewing machine at the lowest price in this country and not
considering transportation charges a Japanese would have to give the
equivalent in goods of 11.6 weeks work. The lowest price offered now
is $29.00. At $15.00 per week, and this is considered a living wage in
the United States as a whole, an American could get the machine for
the equivalent of two weeks' work. Who is getting the worst of the
bargain when the labor of twelve men must be given to get in exchange
the labor of two men? Beyond doubt the Japanese are the losers in
spite of high tariff propaganda.
With free trade it would require under present wages six Japanese
workers working at least forty-eight hours a week to keep one American
employed the same length of time, for we must never lose sight of the
fact that we do not buy Japanese goods, nor any other goods, with some
fund laid away for such purposes in the dim and distant past. We buy
with the products of labor producing now. If Japanese or any other
goods, can be sold in the United States, some one must be producing in
order to buy them. This disposes of the claim that such goods drive
Americans out of employment. And one thing more; have any of the
advocates of exclusion of Japanese goods examined any of these cheap
articles and compared them with the American made article of higher
price? We have, and we wish to state that in our opinion the average
low priced Japanese article would be dear at half the price. The final
touch of the ridiculous was the statement that Ruby Bates, of
Scottsboro notoriety, at $2,98 a week in the Southern cotton mills
could not compete with Japanese who work for $2.50 for a week of 84
hours!
So the system that breeds Ruby Bates must be protected from
competition? And what guarantee will these gentlemen give us that the
system will improve with a tariff? Didn't the Southern cotton industry
begin because of cheap labor costs in the South compared with the
North while a high tariff was in effect? It is to laugh.
The foregoing illustrations are sufficient to show that we are being
supplied with intellectual nutriment that must be shown to be just the
sort that will prepare us for all the social evils we are trying to
escape, Hitlerism, Fascism, Communism, all of which mean loss of
liberty of mind and body. If we want that sort of thing it is proper
that we should have it. But have we a right to prepare the coming
generation with such diet? We believe we have no such right.
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