Radio Script #49
Little Talks On Common Things,
January 1, 1950
Here we are at the time of beginning again, the time of new resolutions and new hopes, the time when merchants take account of stock and when it is well for individuals to take account of their lives. This New Year’s Day is especially significant, because it marks the middle of the century. Those of us who have lived through all of it know what a wonderful yet terrible half century it has been. How peacably and comfortably it began back there in 1900, when there were no automobiles, no airplanes, no radios, and no world wars. Our little one-round skirmish with Spain was over, William McKinley was in the White House, our troops were putting down insurrection in the Philippines, business was good, the savings banks paid four per cent interest, and there were very few divorces.
What changes the half century has brought, not only in material inventions, in rapidity of communication, in the horrors of global war, but also in the relationship of the American to his government. The Central Maine farmer or merchant or manufacturer of 1900 believed in free enterprise and independent responsibility; for his American democracy was government of and by the people; he could not think of it as government simply for the people.
Frankly, the less he had to do with governments, the better he liked it.
No one in his right mind thinks we are going back to those independent days. The changes that have come are to a degree inevitable results of the new technology, creating new relationships between the individual and his government.
Yet it is quite possible that the pendulum is swinging much too far in the direction of government for the people. The next half century may very well see renewed emphasis upon the duties and responsibilities of democracy, rather than upon its benefits. Social security provisions, minimum wage laws, and other benefits will certainly continue, but they can permanently continue only if the voters in our democracy clearly understand that when a government which claims to be for the people is no longer made up of the people and controlled by the people, the real freedoms of those people are forever lost.
OUr listeners are still calling me up about Waterville cows. ~ere are many who think that Napoleon Marshall was an unusually’·lucky; bs>y, if Samuel Osborne paid him 25 cents a week for driving a cow to and from pasture. According to the experience of other young cow drivers, 25 cents would seem to have been millionaire wages. ‘ Bert Drwmnond who, seventy or more years ago, drove Homer Percival’s cow to pasture in what is now Averill Field on the County Road, received ten cents a week. Warren Moses, former proprietor of the Appleton Inn, received two dollars for the whole season, from the time the cow was first turned out to pasture to the time when she was put in the barn for the winter. He was customarily paid one-half of his wages the munificent sum of one dollar — a few days before the fourth of July, so that he might do a bit of celebrating on the national holiday.
Did you know that once the Waterville-Winslow community had a benefactor much like the Bible character Joseph? You will recall that by shrewd planning Joseph, as Pharaoh’s prime minister in Egypt, had stored up grain in years of plenty as protection against years of famine. Then, when the famine came, Joseph’s hungry brothers came down from Palestine to be fed.
Well, over on the Benton Road in Winslow still stands a corn barn, where in 1815 the great-grandfather of Herbert Simpson, the present owner, had stored a quantity of corn. Then came the memorable and terrible year of 1816, the year that was afterwards called the year without a summer. There was frost in every month of that. year. The corn crop was a complete failure, and very little else was grown. Real hardship hit the settlements of the Kennebec Valley.
In the spring of 1817 word got around that there was corn on one Winslow farm.
People came on horse back, even on foot, from as far away as forty miles to get just enough corn for seed. A few brought money, others brought things to barter, most brought nothing at all. But no one was turned away empty-handed.
Through the whole region from Ticonic Falls to Wesserunsett those hard-hit, scattered farms of the early settlers could have another crop of corn, thanks to the foresight and the generosity of that Winslow Joseph in Egypt.
Very early in the half century that has just closed, one of our nation’s most aggressive and dynamic presidents entered the White House. In 1901 the assassination of President McKinley brought Theodore Roosevelt into the presidential chair. How well we now remember the independence and initiative with which the first Roosevelt wielded his Big stick and flashed his toothy smile.
It is hard, so long after the event, to realize that there were many who thought that Theodore would only be another tool of Mark Hanna and the Ohio gang. In that September of 1901, Senator Frye of Maine had said: “Business men of the country have confidence in President Roosevelt, and are going on just the same as if President McKinley were alive.”
But the editor of the Waterville Mail was a better prophet than Senator Frye. In his issue of September 25, 1901 he wrote: “Roosevelt has a way of telling newspaper men just as much of his business as he thinks fit, and then with a pleasant smile shutting his mouth and the door on them simultaneously. Things may not go so smoothly for business with this man as president. He is likely to show both Mark Hanna and Wall Street that he is his own master.”
Those well remembered attacks of the first Roosevelt on Big Business have not died down during the fifty years, but in spite of all the attacks big business is bigger than ever. As we review the past half century, we have a right to ask whether the bigness of business has really been harmful to American life. Big Business, we have persistently been told, is crushing out small business. We are informed that four companies provide 92% of all our electric lamps, four others make 90% of all our cigarettes, and four others produce 80% of our soap. Pretty soon there will be.DO such thing as small business, the critics shout. That is just what they said fifty years ago.
The truth is otherwise, as U. S. News and World Report so clearly pointed out in a recent issue. Big business could not exist without little business; it is in fact little business’s best customer. One big electrical manufacturing firm depends on 31,000 dffferent suppliers of materials and parts.
To sell its products it uses more than 290,000 dealers — small business men.
One of the big tobacco companies does direct buying and selling with 80,000 other firms, most of them small businesses.
Big business units, unless they become real monopolies, shutting off competition, are by no means evil. Without them we could not have modern American industry and the world’s highest standard of living. Mass production could never have reached its present efficiency without huge reserves of capital concentrated in large units. One company spent $27 million in eleven years, developing a synthetic material before the product became commercially successful.
Another company spent more than a million developing a garbage disposal unit which took fifteen years to find a market.
We should remember these facts when loud voices in Washington say they are going to put an end to Big Business, even if they have to socialize the industries to do it. And while you’re remembering those facts, just remember something else as well. Right now, when we still think we are a long way from the socialized state, the biggest business in America is the government of the United States.
In spite of the quantities of oil and natural gas now used in industry, the nation’s factories still depend chiefly upon coal. Coal is absolutely essential to our biggest manufacturing process, the making of steel.
What is the coal situation now with the miners on Mr. Lewis’ three-day week? Obviously it is not what Mr. Lewis intended. Production stays relatively high because the miners are working harder. Though they are fed up with strikes, they believe totally . in Mr. Lewis. So they will strike again if he calls them out. But meanwhile· by working harder under the plan by which most mines’ pay, by the tonnage produced, not by the hours worked, the miners are fattening their earnings against the day when Mr. Lewis may call them out again.
Coal stocks are ample. The steel companies say they have plenty and are not worried. Production keeps level with use. As long as the three-day week continues, there will be no shortage.
The coal operators are in no hurry to settle on Mr. Lewis’ exacting terms.
Even if they did, the miners would soon be worse off, because there would then be too much coal. One operator is on record as saying that a permanent 3; day week would supply all the coal the nation would need except in a rare emergency like war.
But Mr. Lewis is a stubborn man. The miners know that they already owe him a lot. We’ll let Drew Pearson do the predicting on what Mr. Lewis will do, but it doesn’t take much of a prophet to hazard a guess. If only to save face, Mr. Lewis may well call another strike. John L. has a real decision to make.
He must decide whether his true interest is the welfare of the mine workers or to save . t.I’le face of John L. Lewis.
Recently Sir Stafford Cripps, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a statement that every American as well as every Englishman ought to take seriously to heart. Bear in mind that Sir Stafford is an officer of Britain’s present labor-socialist government and a staunch member of the British Labor Party. A press interviewer asked Sir Stafford this question: “As a general proposition, though it is politically popular, do you believe that social security can be made economically sound in a democracy where people can vote themselves bigger and bigger benefits?”
Note carefully Sir Stafford’s reply. He said: “That depends upon the responsibility of the democracy. If it takes an irresponsible view of its obligations so that it only regards the treasury as a deep till into which it can perpetually dip its hand, we had better give up democracy. But I believe, by giving the people information and knowledge of the ecomomic facts, responsible leaders can instill into the voters the realization that they themselves are in fact paying for their own social benefits through taxation, and they must therefore exercise restraint in the way they utilize those benefits and in the amount of their demands.”
The give-away boys in Washington will do well to heed those words of Sir Stafford Cripps.
Year: 1950