Leslie M. Shaw

“ Who is an American, worthy to be placed on guard tonight? Is he American born? He may be, and he may have been born beneath any flag and under any sky. An American is one who believes in and is ready to defend this republic. To be ready to defend our territory, or even our flag, is not enough.
Though we continue our socialistic bent and either undermine or overthrow our form of government through peaceful evolution or forceful revolution, with sword or by ballot, the land will remain. ”

“ INTEGRITY VERSUS WISDOM We all demand integrity in office, but integrity is the most common attribute of man. I can go on the street and buy integrity for a dollar a day, if it does not require any work; but aptitude, experience and wisdom are high-priced. If I had to choose between men of probity but wanting in aptitude and experience, and men of aptitude and experience known to be dishonest, I should unhesitatingly choose the crook rather than the fool; either for bank president or congressman. Banks seldom fail because of dishonesty. Banks fail because of bad management. ”

“ Do you realize that it would be far safer to place the man of ordinary intelligence upon the bench, with authority to interpret and enforce the laws as he finds them written in the book, than to give him pen and ink and let him draft new laws? We all recognize that it requires a man of legal aptitude and experience to interpret laws, but some seem to assume neither aptitude nor experience is necessary in a law-maker. If legislators in state and nation are to be abjectly obedient to the wish of their constituents, what use can they make of knowledge and judgment? ”

“ If equality of income would be a panacea now—if it would solve the ills we have and prevent others—it would have worked well from the beginning. Imagine therefore that instead of following the divinely implanted impulse to acquire, to hold, to exercise sovereignty, to achieve, the race had remained as it was when it had no income, and therefore when no inequality of income existed. Would churches and cathedrals have been built? Would colleges and universities have been founded? Would art and literature have flourished? ”

“ Socialists do not object to these inequalities. While they seem to welcome millionaires in art, in music, and in athletics they all point to millionaires in business as an unanswerable indictment of America’s political system. They rejoice that it can produce an Edison, but mourn that it can also produce a Rockefeller. Yet the success of these two wizards is traceable alike to extraordinary aptitude in their respective fields of achievement, plus extraordinary application. ”

“ It has become painfully commonplace to say that the American people can be trusted. While their good intentions can be relied upon, no nation will long exist on good intentions. The nations that have gone from the map have perished in spite of good intentions. The future of America rests not in the purity of motives, nor upon the intelligence, but in the wisdom of its citizens. In the realm of statecraft some of the most dangerous characters in history have been intelligent, pious souls, and some of the safest and wisest have been unlearned. ”

“ Both capital and labor ignore the most important factor of production—management.
A century and more of matchless development, wherein money getting had been the chief aim of life, especially with those possessing aptitude and enough energy to pay the price of achievement, divided the people into classes. Those possessing aptitude for acquisition won wealth, those with aptitude for discovery won distinction, those possessing aptitude for statesmanship, or for war, won fame. Many of those who won wealth became arrogant, overbearing, snobbish and some of them despisedly mean. ”

“ HOW WOULD YOU BUILD A SUBMARINE? Suppose the government should delegate to some congressional district the responsibility of building a submarine. Would anyone think of undertaking the task except on the principle of a republic? You would select some man of mechanical aptitude, plus mechanical experience, and you would hold him responsible for the result. Would you require your representative when selected to listen to popular sentiment, as expressed on the street corners or in the press? Would you have him submit his plans and blue prints to the “people,” by referendum or otherwise? ”

“ Our purpose is to substitute morality for egotism, honesty for honor, principles for customs, duties for proprieties, the empire of reason for the tyranny of habit, contempt of vice for indifference to misfortune, dignity for insolence, nobility for vanity, love of glory for love of money, good people for society, merit for intrigue, genius for intellectual brilliancy, the charm of contentment for the satiety of pleasure, the majesty of man for the high breeding of the great, a magnanimous, powerful and happy people for amiable, frivolous and wretched people ”

“ Thus far in our history no man has ever walked the street in vain for work, no man has gone home to find his wife in rags and his children crying for bread, because of dishonesty in public office. The United States can stand extravagance, it can stand graft, it has stood and is standing the most reckless abandon in all its financial expenditures. The worst this nation has yet encountered—and may the good Lord save us from anything more dreadful—is incompetency in the halls of legislation. ”

“ He can ask shorter hours, and he can demand more wages, but neither will satisfy, for neither is the thing he needs. Would you like to know what it is for which the very soul of every man—laborer no less than capitalist—cries and without which he will not be appeased? You do not need to be told. You have only to hark back to the days of your youth. You have only to study mental philosophy, using your own inner consciousness as a text book, and you will find the answer. What the American laborer demands, what the American citizen, regardless of his surroundings, needs, is recognition. ”

“ They seek no less a democratic form of government as Professor Giddings defines it, than a democratic society as he defines that, and likewise financial and industrial democracy. They want not only equality before the law, but equality of environment and equality of rewards. Only socialists, near-socialists, anarchists and bolsheviki clamor for “democracy.” Every true American is satisfied with representative government, and that is exactly what the term republic means. ”

“ It must be that the United States will revert to representative government in its original simplicity. It cannot be otherwise than that a wise citizenship will again select their representatives because of aptitude and will retain them in positions of responsibility until they shall have acquired efficiency through experience, gauging their worth, the while, by results rather than by subservient obedience. An ambitious people, resourceful and hopeful, virile and expectant will certainly take their government out of business, and confine its operations to the legitimate functions of government. ”

“ If I have failed to make it clear that for more than one hundred years the government fostered every industry and fathered none, I have made 230 poor use of the material at hand. I have sought to show that the government merely safeguarded the liberties of the people, while her citizens pursued their happiness and won it in achievement, which, in regular sequence, made the nation great. If the argument has any force, it should lead irresistibly to the conclusion that if America expects to make further advancement, the only sure way is to return to these fundamental principles. ”

“ As the train passed a cinder lit in the eye of the enthusiast, when immediately he denounced the road, cursed the management and swore at all four tracks.
In a country like ours, where conditions have been superb, resources matchless and resourcefulness unequalled, none should be surprised at the speed we have developed and no one ought to use language unfit to print simply because there are cinders in the air. Admittedly there are. We have all had them in our eyes. They are more than annoying, but the only way to prevent cinders is to tear up the tracks. ”

“ Inequality of income began when incomes began. Inequality of 195 income marks the birth of civilization, and if civilization ever dies “equality of income” should be the title of its dirge.
The wealth of the United States is about twenty-five hundred dollars per capita. Assume, if you please, that all our property could be and has been converted into cash. Then assume that the rest of the world is able and willing to supply our every need and our every want so long as our money lasts! We would eat up and wear out the accumulation of the centuries in about three years ”

“ I repeat, three coordinate branches of government with no subordinate branch! In the America which the world knows, and which we love, laws must be enacted by the legislative branch, and not by the executive or by the proletariat. Laws must be interpreted by an independent judiciary, fearless and unrecallable except by impeachment. ”

“ Those who come with any enthusiasm whatever make very rapid advancement in efficiency, but in a very few years the enthusiasm vanishes and hope of advancement is based entirely on seniority of service.
Before leaving the Department I recommended—and am now more convinced than ever of its wisdom—that government positions should be filled, as now, under the rules of Civil Service but that all new clerks should come facing a statute limiting the periods of their service to five years. Five years of government service, especially in the city of Washington, is in itself an education. ”

“ Not desiring office, the stockholders are satisfied to have the corporation managed by representatives of aptitude and experience. The dividends paid by political corporations like the United States and the several states are “liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” “equality before the law,” an army and navy for national defense, and courts of justice for the enforcement of rights and the redress of wrongs. But stockholders in political corporations are not always satisfied with these returns. Some prefer office to dividends payable only in blessings. ”

“ A constitution is little less than a firm and binding contract between the majority and the minority, entered into for the sole protection of the minority, with regularly constituted courts to enforce its provisions.
The Supreme Court of the United States, from which every root of the Judiciary Department—one of the three coordinate branches of government—derives its vitality, is our only continuing and unchanging bulwark of liberty. ”

“ Mallock enlarges upon this thought and shows that 220 socialist organizations and labor unions are successful only because they are arbitrarily managed. Their so-called leaders are, in fact, oligarchs. The Russian Revolution, like the French Revolution, was avowedly of democratic origin, but in fact both were as despotic as anything the world has ever seen. The strength and grandeur of the government of the United States, as established by the Constitution, lies in the most happy combination and blending of these two fundamental principles, popular sovereignty and centralized strength. ”