Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington. Gilbert Clinton Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ value to them, went to the Senate as their spokesmen. Able and ambitious men in both Houses of Congress, wishing power and influence, became their agents. The chairmen of the important committees of both houses were in their confidence and spoke with authority because of what they represented. Some of the virtue of the great, some shadow of divine right, descended upon them. Among valets the valet of the king is king.

      We forget, in the great outcry that was raised a few years ago over the "invisible government," that the invisible government was once sufficiently visible, almost consciously recognized, and fully accepted. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that the men who were making the country rich, making it a nation economically, should work their will freely at Washington. We jealously guarded their liberties. Woe unto the legislator who would interfere with their freedom to contract, for example, for the labor of children, which we described as the freedom of children to sell their labor advantageously. Adult labor banding together to arrange terms of its own sale was felt to be a public enemy. Every age has its fetish; the medicine man who could exorcise the evil spirit in stone and bush was not a more privileged character than his successor at whose touch prosperity sprang out of the earth, at whose word the mysterious economic forces which might in their wrath prove so destructive, bowed and became kind.

      Make a few individuals the embodiment of a national purpose that has long existed, unconscious and unquestioned, give them as you inevitably do in such a case the utmost freedom that is possible on this earth, let them be limited enough mentally so that they are blind to any other possible purpose; do all these things and you produce great men. It was an age of great men, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, Hills, Ryans, Harrimans, and a host of others, richer in personalities than any other period of American life except that which produced Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson, and Marshall. They were the flowering of the whole pioneer civilization.

      One hundred and fifty years of freedom has produced few free men. Perhaps these were all. They may not have been free intellectually. Charles Francis Adams writes of their kind: "I have known, and known tolerably well, a good many successful men, – 'big' financially, men famous during the last half century; and a less interesting crowd I do not care to encounter. Not one that I have ever known would I care to meet again, nor is one of them associated in my mind with the idea of humor, thought, or refinement."

      Never mind. They were free in all the essential ways. The men of whom Adams wrote had no such sense of their limitations as he expressed. Only an Adams would then have had it, and the Adamses were not what M. Galtier of Le Temps suggested when, hastily absorbing the American spirit at Washington, he said to me: "I am reading The Education of Henry Adams: He was what you would call a typical American, was he not?"

      An Adams, even Charles Francis Adams, writing of that time, was untypical enough, to have missed the point, which was not whether these men "'big' financially" were interesting, witty, thoughtful, or refined, but whether they were free. And they were; they were so sure of themselves, and public opinion was so sure of them, that they concentrated on the one great aim of that simple day, and did not waste themselves upon non-essentials like "humor, thought, or refinement."

      I have a theory that we are wrong in ascribing the poverty of American literature and statesmanship to the richness of our business life. "All our best and ablest minds went into commerce," we say. We flatter ourselves. Mr. Carnegie, born in the days of Elizabeth, might not have been Shakespeare. Mr. Harriman was perhaps, after all, no mute Milton, Mr. Morgan no Michaelangelo.

      These brave spirits developed in business not so much perhaps because of the national urge to "conquer a continent" as because in business, enjoying the immunity it then did, they found the utmost opportunity for self-expression, the one great measure of freedom which this free country afforded. A jealous public guarded their divine right from impious hands. They believed in themselves. The people believed in them. So the flowering of the pioneer age came, in such a race of men as are not on the earth today, and the rule of business reached its climax.

      It was an autumn flowering, rich and golden like the Indian summer of New England culture, a sign that a cycle was run. Adams sniffing from the transcendental heights of Boston wrote: "a race of mere money-getters and traders." Remember the sneers in our cocksure press of those days at the "culture" of Boston? Boston has had its revenge. The words "mere money-getters" bit in. There were other objects in life beside pioneering the industrial opportunities of a whole continent just brought together into commercial unity. Mr. Morgan began to buy art. Mr. Carnegie began to buy libraries and started authorship himself. The men "'big' financially" began to look over their shoulders and see the shadows – as we all do now – where they a little before kept their eyes straight forward and saw the one clear vision, the truth, such as it was, that made them free.

      I have traced that element in the American political consciousness, government by business, to its highest moment.

      "Divine right" is only safe when it is implicit. When you begin to avow it, as Mr. Baer did, it is already in question. The national passion for equality began to work. Had not Mr. Carnegie confessed the weakness in his soul's fortress by writing a book? Had not Mr. Morgan by buying art suggested the one aim of pioneering on a grand scale might not be life's sole end?

      Mr. Baer with his avowal, Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morgan with their seeking of the broader satisfactions, Mr. Schwab behaving like a king in exile at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, may have invited what followed. But they were only expressing in their own way the sense becoming general that pioneering was over and that its ideals were too narrow and too few – even if no clear sense was coming of what state and what ideals were to take their place. Men turn from leaders whose day of greatest usefulness is past and set up new leaders against them. Against the government by business the first great national unity that entered the American consciousness they began to erect the state, the national government at Washington.

      No one meant to end government by business and substitute for it government by the people. Not for a moment. We devised a new set of checks and balances, like that between the various branches provided for in our Constitution, a new political organism which should equal and coexist with the one we already had. The government personified by Mr. Roosevelt was the check and balance to the government personified by Mr. Harriman and Mr. Morgan. Governments never die but merely recede in the national consciousness, like the old clothes which we keep in the attic. Thus revolutions never effect a revolution; democracy is only a Troy built upon nine other prehistoric Troys: beneath, you find aristocracy, rule by divine right, despotism, theocracy, and every other governance on which men in their invincible optimism have pinned their faith.

      The revolution which Mr. Roosevelt brought about was the kind which exclaims loudly "malefactors of great wealth" while writing to Mr. Harriman "we are both practical men." It was the kind of revolution this country desired. The nation wished to eat its cake and have it, to retain government by business and have alongside it another government, as powerful, as interesting, as colorful, as rich in personalities, as the late autumn of pioneering had brought into gorgeous bloom.

      Mr. Roosevelt's method with the new government was this: Senator Aldrich and Speaker Cannon representing the still powerful coexistent government by business in Congress, would call at the White House and tell the President just how far he could go and no further. They would emerge. A moment later the press in response to a summons would arrive. Mr. Roosevelt would say: "I have just sent for Mr. Aldrich and Mr. Cannon and forced them to accept my policy, etc." Nobody was deceived. Unlike the philosopher who made all knowledge his province, Mr. Roosevelt made all knowledge his playground, and not only all knowledge but all the arts, including the art of government.

      In Mr. Roosevelt's day the two governments, government by business and political government, existed side by side, of about equal proportions; and no one really wished either to overtop the other. We were indulging in revolution with our customary prudence.

      The human passion for equality which had risen against the last of those dominant figures, the last СКАЧАТЬ