EDITORIALS
THE PINCHOT-BALLINGER CONTROVERSY THE controversy between Chief Forester of the United States Gifford Pinchot and Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger is one in which every citizen has an...
...The people must be as ceaseless in their struggle for the right as the forces of plutocracy are sure to be for the wrong...
...It is adding insult to injury for the attorneys of the water power interests to paint as patriots the timber land speculators who gobbled up our school lands...
...and when it comes to making sacrifices for the sake of national efficiency, the captains of industry should be more ready to take the role of high and noble action than the privates...
...but the corporations are so intrenched that the people must keep themselves nerved up to the struggle for year after year, and election after election, or the tide for a moment dammed back will reflow and sweep away the work already done...
...It might be economically wrong, but Wood Wilson, the lathe man, would reason that disemployment is economically wrong, too, and vastly more unpleasant than "standardizing the day's work...
...Ballmger's policy is very satisfactory to Big Business...
...He found the courts, from the city tribunals up to the Supreme court, organized against him, and one victory after another was snatched from him by injunctions, "ripper" bills, and the like...
...Ballinger's declaration at the convention of the National Irrigation Congress in Spokane last week, that his policy was to encourage the development of irrigation and water power projects by private capital, together with his statement that in his opinion the irrigated lands of the West were no place for a "poor man," and his action in throwing open the lands containing the water power sites to entry, can mean nothing else but a conviction on his part that the future of the West should be placed in the hands of large aggregations of capital instead of parcelling the lands out to the settler and the homesteader to make into farms and homes under the patronage of the government...
...Ballinger had not gone on for many weeks, when the President began to hear from the public...
...Pinchot, the Interests would be still better pleased...
...They may seem to be wiped out in politics, they may seem to have quit...
...It does not remove Mr...
...The interests again had a clear field...
...Ballinger was forced to modify his first order...
...The religion of the Sepoys forbade the biting of the tallow...
...The labor union man, whether he admits it or not, is confronted by the necessity of cutting down output...
...He found the city organized against him, and he beat the local gang...
...but they have not...
...But, assuming that nobody is going to do the noble and statesmanlike thing, what would President Wilson do were he in a labor union instead of in the Federation of Possessors of Degrees...
...The Cleveland people were nerved up for a long time, and stood by their own interests...
...Labor is so efficient that it loses its job...
...However that may be, restoration was made, to a degree, but not until an opportunity had been given the water power magnates to get in on the ground...
...More than this, he seems to assume that the minimum day's output is made the standard, and that production is curtailed, and national efficiency impaired by this leveling down to the weakling and incompetent...
...Mr...
...And then certain of these lands were again withdrawn...
...There must be a possible system of social organization under which labor would receive so large a proportion of its output that it would have a purchasing power capable of absorbing what the mills and factories would turn out, so that the more labor made the more it would have...
...He would adopt the very foolish opinion that goods are made primarily for consumption, and that the industrial system which keeps laborers in such straitened circumstances that they cannot, on the whole, use all the goods they make, is wrong, since it is inconvenient to starve, and when people are out of work they do not use up the surplus very fast anyhow...
...H. L. Twining of Los Angeles is experimenting with a "ornithopter," a flying machine with wings designed to operate like those of the eagle...
...a failure for the Standpatter...
...On the one side is an army of citizens who are determined upon the wise conservation of our natural resources and the protection of the rights of the public in these resources...
...The act required of the Sepoys was quite as abhorrent to them...
...One class of men, in a position of superiority, failed to understand the most obvious human factors in the problem of dealing with men under them, and history was blackened, and the seeds of we know not how much of woe were sown, because of that failure...
...The lesson is this, the corporations are never beaten...
...No one who has done these things has failed...
...It will, at least, if the present interest in gardening continues, for there is on record at least one authenticated case of the reconciliation of two bitter political enemies over the back fence...
...The foremost ornithologists, from Mr...
...On the other side are the hosts of Privilege, bent upon securing at any cost, for private exploitation, the natural resources that still remain in the hands of the public...
...The labor unions would not accept the state of facts assumed by Dr...
...At last at the critical moment, because newspapers threw dust in their eyes, and there were some inconveniences in the street-car service, the people balked and threw themselves down in the harness...
...The masses all over the world are limited in their buying because capital in various forms takes so much of what they make that the purchasing power of the people is cut down—or rather, the purchasing power is transferred to capitalists and monopolists and is used in satisfying desires along lines that do not reduce stocks of goods...
...Wilson, as the true situation...
...The Sepoy mutiny in the history of British India is a dark illustration of the importance of getting the other man's point of view before exerting authority, or definitely making up judgment...
...He has beaten his enemies time after time...
...He sent experts into the field who reported that the water power interests already had their men out getting maps of the desirable locations...
...But not without protest...
...What are these policies...
...Minds of men of all classes and colors are so very much alike that the mystery of the other fellow's conduct is likely to disappear when we put ourselves in his place...
...When all the laborers of the world work ten hours a day, they make more goods than the world can buy...
...what would happen...
...Pinchot and Ballinger now occupy the center of the arena...
...The machine has no motor...
...The opening up of these lands by Mr...
...Then one day, over the back fence, from the Radical to the Conservative side came a whole new set of sturdy tomato-plants...
...His first official act was a reversal of the Roosevelt policy and an open sesame to wholesale land grabs...
...But back of them are two great opposing iorces...
...Indeed it is a success whether or not he has forwarded it...
...Over the Fence is Out" "OVER the fence is out" was one of the rules of the old-fashioned game of "One Old Cat," a mild form of baseball which required so little space that it could be played in the door-yard...
...Walmsley down, now agree that the eagle, especially the North American bald eagle, has no motor.—The Kansas City Star Times...
...Such a monopoly would be in a position to levy tribute upon the people of the country for years to come, for water power will soon replace coal in the production of electric current to turn the wheels of industry...
...National efficiency might be greatly benefited if the great employers, accepting as the minimum the wages upon which men may live—and even the poorest average workmen would seem to have the right to live—would then build up from this as a datum plane by paying more money to the more than ordinarily competent...
...In his implacable opposition to the monopolistic acquirement of the public's water power sites, they find the most serious obstacle to the carrying out of their program...
...Tired of hearing Aristides called the Just, and weary of the stress of the struggle toward Justice, the people quit—thereby spoiling their own work, not Johnson's...
...The rule meant that if the ball was accidentally sent over the fence, the batter was "out" and that, no matter how fierce the contest had been, hostilities were to be suspended until the ball could be brought back...
...The government will slip back into their hands the moment the vigilance of the people is relaxed, the moment the issues can be confused...
...If he has forwarded the larger cause, his work is a success...
...This story, which is a true one, suggests that when we find ourselves at odds with our fellow-men, because they will insist on thinking their own thoughts and not ours, we would better take to gardening, for understanding and tolerance grow out of a common interest in raising things as surely as tomatoes grow out of the ground...
...At one time every city charter in Ohio was invalidated by the litigation waged to keep Johnson from winning the streets of Cleveland for the people of Cleveland...
...Shortly before the close of his administration, President Roosevelt got wind of the fact that certain water power interests, and their business allies, were quietly proceeding to get control of the choicest available water power sites on the government lands...
...Johnson from the ranks of the potent workers for the general good, but it is a defeat, and a stinging one...
...They were men like the Catholics, Dissenters and Episcopalians of the British ministry and army...
...but all the evidence indicates that they arise from a radical disagreement as to the disposition of the public domain...
...That is, if their captaincy is worth anything to the race...
...There are indications that "Over the fence is out" will become the signal for the suspension of hostilities in other forms of strife than those involved in "One Old Cat...
...Failing to understand this apparently obvious human fact, the British drove the Sepoys to mutiny...
...There would be no incentive to standardization of day's work then...
...If Mr...
...That, however, was in the winter when the back fence was folded under the snow...
...Woodrow Wilson on Unionism WHEN men in masses deliberately adopt a certain policy, it is well to look into it deeply before condemning it as reasonless...
...He will rally from this...
...The people must take sides in this fight, for at bottom it is the people's fight...
...Suppose an army of Christians were commanded by non-chris-tian officers to do as a part of the military routine some act in desecration of the sacramental elements...
...It seemed so however, only because the British did not place themselves in the Sepoys' places...
...But the people, in whose interest and in whose children's interest, Roosevelt, Garfield and Pinchot prevented the public rights from falling into the hands of Big Business, will have only condemnation for a public official with so little regard for their interests or with so little understanding of the consequences of his trust-favoring policy...
...His last act as President was for the public Brood...
...The drifting would be steered by the corporations...
...He would be in favor of cutting down hours of labor until only enough production would take place to meet consumption...
...Tom Johnson's Fight for a Free City THE DEFEAT of the Schmidt franchise in Cleveland on the 3rd was a defeat for Tom Johnson...
...Men got millions that were the public's.—The Milwaukee Journal...
...And, in the future as in the past, it will pay him to watch Tom L. Johnson, First Citizen of Cleveland...
...And so misunderstanding was put "out," hostilities ceased, and an era of good feeling and of exchange of experiences in gardening ensued...
...What was the use...
...The differences between Pinchot and Ballinger may be of a personal nature...
...Wilson seems to think the unions chargeable with active opposition to the doing by any workman of more work than the average...
...Union labor's interest in the problem, how-ever, js something more than academic, since it is labor that has to do the hungering when employment stops...
...Perhaps President Wilson, in his next baccalaureate address, will give us his notions of that...
...But with the spring came the tomatoes: a healthy crop for the Socialist, who was an experienced gardener...
...They had met before on the street and in the cars but they had looked at each other askance and passed each other coldly by...
...He might even connive at the "standardizing of the day's work" by looking with disfavor at the speeding up which adds urduly to the accumulating surplus which always menaces the stocks of the world...
...Under-consumption—called overproduction—results in business depression, and Labor finds itself idle because of this very "national efficiency" which President Wilson is so very properly desirous of maintaining...
...He found the state government organized against him, and he carried the fight into the politics of the state...
...This attitude on their part seemed perverse, and indeed, actually devilish, to the British...
...Pinchot is trying to carry forward the Roosevelt policy...
...All this apropos of the baccalaureate address of President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton University, in which he used language suggesting censure of the labor unions for what is termed "standardizing the day's work...
...They were placed in a position in which they were obliged, men as they are, to mutiny to save their own self-respect...
...They were tired...
...He has had defeats before, and has rallied from them...
...He has gone on in pursuit of the vision of a free Cleveland, owning all its public utilities, and taking all public values for the public good...
...His statement that the administration would expend no more money upon irrigation projects gives added force to this conclusion, since without government aid, no other way is left open for the construction of such works except private enterprise, which in this case unquestionably means ultimate monopolistic control...
...Now union labor understands this quite as well as the university economist...
...Not to have mutinied would have been to forfeit all right to call themselves men...
...Their intelligence for a few years seemed almost human...
...Johnson has had them beaten time and again, but they have never ceased the fight...
...Washington correspondents state that President Taft summoned Secretary Ballinger and ordered him to restore these lands again to public control...
...It involves an issue of tremendous importance...
...This fact must not be forgotten...
...Its outcome will determine to a great extent whether or not this generation and future generations will have saddled upon them another monopoly, more powerful than any of our present trusts, —a gigantic water power combination...
...Johnson has never had a fair chance to win...
...For they fear the Chief Forester...
...It was easier to drift...
...He would look at the matter from the viewpoint of the Sepoy ordered to bite the cartridge, rather than that of the officer in gold and lace voicing the command...
...A bit of very recent history contains an answer...
...If Lord Clive had been a Sepoy in the ranks, he would have mutinied...
...His fealty is pledged to a cause far higher and nobler than that of mere success...
...It is the old problem of the age...
...THE PINCHOT-BALLINGER CONTROVERSY THE controversy between Chief Forester of the United States Gifford Pinchot and Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger is one in which every citizen has an interest...
...For the moment they are the principal figures in the struggle...
...It would be an interesting experiment...
...And it does not square with intelligence for the progressive to get tired—for then he ceases to "progress...
...It all came about because they both planted tomatoes, the Standpatter on one side of the fence, the Socialist on the other...
...It shows the Machiavellian wisdom of their policy of never giving up even when it seems that all is lost...
...Ballinger has a policy of his own, which is quite different...
...If President Wilson were in the labor ranks, he would prefer to have production cut down by some means which would accomplish the result with a minimum of hunger—and national effi eiency might go hang...
...The enterprises and the capital behind this scheme, as well as the wide scope of its operation, convinced the president that here was the beginning of a great, national water power trust...
...Prof...
...He has spent himself for this, and not merely for three-cent fares...
...Mutiny, of course...
...The union men would claim that there is nothing in the union rules forbidding the employer to pay higher wages to the better men, and that the union scale is the minimum wage on which men can live the lives demanded by this age...
...The Sepoys mutinied, and all the horrors of the Black Hole, the siege of Lucknow, and the rest of it followed, because the Hindu soldiers were required to bite tallow when loading their muskets with the old-fashioned cartridges...
...Then he had withdrawn from entry government lands containing water power sites to the extent of millions of acres...
...It is a great victory for the corporations...
...for he has been true to his own inner promptings, and has fought the fight...
...So he promptly took steps to thwart it...
...Mr...
...Now the Socialist is sure that the Standpatters are not so black as they are painted and the Standpatter is finding all kinds of good in Socialists...
...It contains a lesson for the progressives of Wisconsin and all other progressive states...
...The agents and representatives of the corporations who are seeking control of the lands in question were among his loudest defenders at the irrigation congress...
...Ballinger pushed his policy to the extent of securing the removal of Mr...
...Secretary Ballinger had no sooner taken office than he threw open these lands to entry...
Vol. 1 • August 1909 • No. 33
