Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/355

Rh not delegate large power to individuals—and the let-alone theory have gone hand in hand in our public policy. But, curiously or otherwise, the compact of thought of the fathers with its traditional acceptance by intervening generations does not hold pure in deed at this time. There was aggressive statesmanship in founding the republic; the statesmanship since that day has not been aggressive. The most distinguished names in civil affairs since that day have been Jackson and Lincoln, whose aggressiveness has been that of repelling innovations or evils; Lincoln broke the back of the slave-power and of the rebellion by his Emancipation Proclamation, and attained the highest point of inspiration and daring ever yet reached by an American statesman; but it was the heroic stroke of defense, not of aggression. No statesmanship arose, during the forty years that it was practically an issue, that was able and aggressive enough to keep back the war for slavery and secession, although it was proved immediately after the war was over that it was a war for an abstraction—an abstraction of selfishness, ignorance, and prejudice that was dissipated in the light of a new day, and an abstraction that might have been dissipated a generation earlier, without the bellows of war, with a different order of statesmanship.

While we may be proud of our founders, we need not be proud of all the statesmanship that has preceded us, nor accept the belief that a final orthodoxy has been reached in this country for the government of a great nation.

It is certainly not the highest order of society that it should be automatic; it is so in China. Accepting this to be the fact, we need not fight off innovations as though in them were the seeds of destruction.

What is it that now confronts us in the status of the transportation companies, the monopolies par excellence of this country?

The chief proprietors have life-leases of power, to be bequeathed to whom they will, while civil officers and legislators have to go frequently back to the people to be reinstated or deposed.

They have wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

They build up a subsidiary class around them, who establish colossal fortunes by special rates, rebates, and drawbacks, and are exempt from the American principle of competition. Of this class the Standard Oil Company is the great type.

They possess great power over the incomes and savings of the people by controlling avenues of investment, and can and do greatly use this power to absorb such investments for themselves.

They have the power to tax commerce arbitrarily, and so tax it all they think it will bear, barred only by one strong influence, their internal jealousies.

They check personal ambition, independence, and enterprise, as success in very important fields of activity can only be obtained through them.