網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

has a design to put in the place of what it criticizes; it looks into the error it is attacking, to see what truth it was attempting to express. It is to the credit of Europe that it is able to appreciate both of these demands upon its attitude toward democracy. It sees the truth at which the heresy was aiming; it sees the great ideal; and it conceives a sweeping constructive idea, which it is already beginning to put into practice.

It takes the word 'democracy' with the connotation Lincoln gave it-government of the people by the people for the people. It analyzes that famous sentence. Government of the people is a pleonasm, for all governments are governments of the people; we are not talking of governments of wild animals or governments of desert tracts. Government by the people has not yet been attained, and is not thought attainable. If it were attainable, it would mean that capacity and wisdom could be dominated by brute numbers. But there is a third meaning in the word 'democracy,' which, when analyzed, is valuable: government for the people, government in the interests of the people. Now such a government need not necessarily have any association with the vote, for even a despotism may be enlightened and benevolent. But a government certainly ought to be benevolent. Now there are two ways of obtaining benevolence; one is by moral influences, and the other is by agreement with those to whom the benevolence is offered.

At last we reach a valid meaning for democracy in Europe: it means that the benevolence of a government is to be attained, not merely by the character of the governors, but by a formal consultation with the governed. The vote gives public opinion an opportunity to express itself. Wherever there is an electoral system, wherever a government is called parliamentary,

a courtesy is offered to the voters, a compliment is paid them, and their governors have a valuable opportunity of gauging their feelings. Now it is just that convenience, just this courtesy, which are at stake in democracy. And they are so important that no system will flourish which refuses them. The present problem of Europe is not to rid itself of public opinion, but to use it to the best advantage.

The ventures therefore are, first, to give the voters, once they are enlightened, a real in place of a pretended opportunity to express themselves; secondly, to found the unity of the State, not on the false theory that voters are individuals, but on the true theory that they have rights only in virtue of their function, which is corporate; so that the unified society - the State- may ordain to the common good the heterogeneous forces of production and industry. On the old democratic theory, the State, an absolute entity, suffering from the suicidal tendencies of exaggerated nationalism, everywhere weakened and disfigured by anomalies, put politicians and bureaucracy in the place of the governor, and proved what is always true, that the less government there is, the better. Yet the government must be powerful enough to have an absolute authority over the trades-union as well as over the individual. The requirement of the modern age is to evolve a system of government which, recognizing the great productive organizations out of which the complex and enormous system of our age has been evolved, will give them and their members consideration accordingly, yet reserve the authority to coördinate them with one another and with the functions both of leaders and of minorities.

Three dangers will still threaten such a State, as they threatened

democracy. One is the mania of nationalism, which ignores the international complexity and interdependence of modern nations through their commerce; the second is the mania of materialism, which obscures the fact that the governing reason, to be efficient, must be moral, and to be moral is generally religious; and the third is the mania of centralization, which forgets that there are not only corporate but also local interests, and that local self-government is not an absurdity. With the mob absolute, none know where they are. In the householder having a voice in the affairs of his town or district, the idea of selfgovernment has a real validity.

Such is the theory of government which Europe is building into a solid structure, now that she has tired of blowing bubbles. Its peculiarity is its emphasis on duty. Its motto is: First men's duties, then their dues. It conceives society in terms of function. That principle, said John of Salisbury in the twelfth century, is the principle 'that a well-ordered constitution consists in the proper apportionment of functions to members, and in the apt condition, strength, and composition of each and every member; that all members must in their functions supplement and support each other.' And Europe's task is to coördinate this principle of functions with the authority of government, so that not the will of the people but the good of the people must prevail.

When Americans use the word 'democracy,' they think not merely of a theory of politics, but of their own national ideal. They associate it with their grand insistence that class distinction shall not be absolute; that men, as such, have dignity; that all must have an opportunity to express their power to act; and that the only

VOL. 137-NO. 6 E

ground for pride is excellence of work. These are the great principles inseparable from the greatness of the United States. All true systems of government must be built upon them. But Europe does not necessarily associate them with any definitions of democracy that have been given her - definitions which in theory and by experience she has in the last two or three years shown to be bubbles, because they burst.

In government the different nations of Europe are in their different ways working out another ideal, which is not founded on individualism, and is therefore neither democratic nor capitalist - an ideal which will not be attained till the State becomes that immortal feature of loveliness and perfection that Milton saw with a young man's vision. Instead of viewing men as divided, it sees them merged into families and interests. Instead of an abstraction, a man is one among many workers. Instead of a monstrous machine, the world is a verdant garden, waiting to be worked to the fertility man needs in it. Instead of stampeding herds, society is a complex, mobile, and subtle body, in which each constituent whole has a unique and necessary function. Its fabric is not the result of primitive forces of heterogeneous numbers, but of producers, learning their true advantage from the governing genius of wiser minds. Its principles are not the laws of supply and demand, but the dominance of right and reason. Its example and its end are not the play of natural tastes and passions, but the city of God. It realizes that no government can unaided make men perfect, and its heroes are those saints who, though poor, are making many rich. Its theme is not liberty, equality, and fraternity, but learning and justice and mercy. Its privilege is not idleness, but work.

FAVORED FARMERS

BY E. T. H. SHAFFER

For twenty years I earned my living as a small-town supply merchant, my field of operations covering a radius of thirty miles. My forbears, for many generations, had been large farmers in a distant state planters, as one would say here, with sub-Potomac particularity. But because my father had been obliged to begin life anew, landless and without fortune, I was to learn farming vicariously. My early memories are not of long, wind-swept furrows, but of long, dusty counters extending down both sides of a barnlike wooden structure at a corner of the village streets. Brick, in those days, we knew only as a material proper for building chimneys; America had not yet evolved brick-store civilization in the remote provinces.

So with ploughs and planters and distributors and like gear I became familiar, but I knew them only in their new and shining state, fresh from the factory and sticky with vivid red and black paint. Also containers and fertilizers and various farm products were early friends of mine as they journeyed through our establishment between manufacturer and farmer or between farmer and distant market. Likewise the most intricate details of farming lore were of necessity mine, as a chief element of our commercial success consisted in our being able to function at all seasons as a bureau of general agricultural information. The circle around the big box stove that glowed

I

red in the centre of the main storeroom was the farmers' community club; close within easy range of the sawdust-filled box stood or squatted the men. In the regions farther back, just beyond the firing line, were country-made rockingchairs of unpainted hickory with cowhide seats, where women might rock and soothe fretful babies with 'store bread' and at the same time exchange neighborhood gossip. Our inner office was a closed sanctum, to which the farmers were admitted one at a time to receive agricultural advice and commercial guidance.

In short, we functioned not only as merchants but as a community club, ladies' restroom, and farm demonstration office; only no one had yet invented these high-sounding names. It was all comprehended as 'gettin' advances and tradin'. Our store also handled small farm products of many kinds. Eggs and chickens (sometimes in combination), butter, fresh and canned vegetables, home-cured meat, lard, beeswax, honey, cane syrup, hides, grain, and seed cotton were one and all legal tender in our rural emporium. Looking back, I realize that this branch of our business was similar to the community or curb market now maintained in many towns for the farmers. The chief difference was that under our old plan the farmer was assured of sale for all he carted to town; the ultimate disposal of the varied assortment was up to the merchant.

Farmer customers depended upon our advice in determining their crop, in selecting seed, and also in respect to the quantity and analysis of fertilizers. Our credit department regulated the extent of the individual's annual operations, making its decision after due consideration of the integrity and efficiency of the farmer, and often, in addition, an actual inspection of lands and equipment. In fact, in the South, thirty years ago, local agricultural enterprise depended almost entirely upon the 'factor' or supply merchant, who accomplished much of the work now carried on by state and Federal departments of agriculture, local and farm-loan banks, and state agricultural colleges. A similar condition probably existed then or earlier in other parts of the country.

I do not claim that our simple system functioned as scientifically as these later and more elaborate agencies, but somehow one heard less of discontent among farmers then than one hears now. For one thing, no one was ever encouraged then to produce more than there was an assured sale for, as the whole arrangement from start to finish was frankly a commercial one. Still, long years of business and personal contact naturally led to personal friendships, so that the supply merchant's commercial life was humanized by his intimate knowledge of the hopes and disappointments, the triumphs and failures, that formed the simple lives of his agricultural

customers.

It was in the offices of successful supply merchants that I first heard preached practical doctrines of crop rotation, home production of home necessities, soil building, and livestock raising on the small farm. Such instruction was not, of course, given from a spirit of pure altruism. In encouraging and enlightening the

farmer customer, in extending him judicious credit, the merchant was seeking a profit - his own living. He knew that only by keeping each farmer a going concern could he hold his line of customers. Again, success of the farmers meant the general upbuilding of the community, and so indirectly benefited all business and property interests. But is there any practical assistance given the farmers of to-day without some similar hope of reward, direct or indirect?

Yet, taken by and large, we supply merchants were not viewed as benefactors or even as economic necessities by any class in the community. Even the farmer was taught by politicians of a certain type to regard us as a favored class, who neither toiled with our hands nor knew the heat of the midday sun, but who managed to gather incredible harvests where we had not sown. Many among the professional and political ranks, while personally our friends and neighbors, were prone to hold us up en masse as grasping middlemen who with wiles and cunning robbed the simple sons of the soil. Any instance of sharp practice or of usury on the part of some petty shopkeeper was blazoned far and wide as another bit of evidence that the merchant princes were fattening off the farmer. But, looking back now over a rather wide contact, I can recall no great fortunes and but few competencies amassed from factoring farmers. Bad crop years brought disaster alike to dealer and customer, but there seemed far more often another merchant ready to give the farmer another chance than jobber and banker ready to view lightly the failure of a merchant.

The men engaged in rural mercantile pursuits - that is, in supplying extensive credits to farmers were as a rule rather above the average for those days in general and business education;

many were real community builders. As in all walks of life, there were found good men and bad. Competition and public opinion, however, soon terminated the careers of the flagrantly unscrupulous. Still, as I say, merchants were assumed to be heartless if not actually dishonest; farmers as a class were assumed to be hard-working and honest. After some years of intimate dealing with farmers I grew at times skeptical of this doctrine of universal agricultural integrity; farmers appeared to me like other men no better, no worse.

For robbers and parasites, the old order of merchants had curious careers, since, as I have said, few made more than a decent living, while the majority ended in business misfortune. Yet no one ever introduced legislative measures for our relief; no one claimed that the merchant who toiled was entitled to a comfortable return. The only laws that I recall concerning us were regulations aimed to limit our profits on our own goods competition being deemed inadequate to curb us - and the many and detailed rules for picking the commercial bones of those who fell by the wayside. And these pickings were many and constant. In the ceaseless warfare of commercial competition the weak, the inefficient, vanished beneath the seas of commerce, frequently without leaving a trace. Still none appeared to mourn the fallen. It was all a part of the game, and this constant functioning of the survival of the fittest probably maintained the worth and high standards of the old mercantile guild. Lawmakers who wept pearls of oratory at seasons of depression among farmers seemed able to view with equanimity the constant elimination of the merchants. I recall hearing a rural lawyer say, long ago, in commenting on some commercial failure: 'It's a good thing

to thin them out; where there are so many merchants to be supported they have to charge the farmers higher prices for their goods.' If consistent in his reasoning, he must have believed that to wipe out all competition and leave but one storekeeper, preferably a dyspeptic old bachelor, in each community would have meant rockbottom prices. His observation first led me to suspect that the legal mind sometimes differs from the commercial mind.

II

At length, as my physical welfare required a life more in the open air, I disposed of my mercantile interests and became a real dirt farmer. The moment that I made the change I discovered that I occupied a new position in the eyes of society - I might almost say of the law. But now, even though I am one of the 'poor' farmers, I cannot agree with all popular beliefs concerning my occupation. Let me say here that, while my transactions are now from the outside of the counter, I find that I face as honest a class of citizen as I did when I stood behind it.

I make an effort to conduct my farming operations with the same degree of prudence and judgment that I exercised in my store, and, taken year in and year out, I am making about the same income. Now, however, it is far easier for me to save my money. My dwelling is larger and better equipped than the one I owned when a merchant, but it is situated several miles outside the city limits. Not only is the tax rate lower here, but I soon discovered that no mere farmhouse is supposed to be returned at as high a value as a town house of the same cost. In all this there is of course a considerable saving to the owner, but a far greater saving is in the matter of

« 上一頁繼續 »