The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1919-01-17
PROGRESS, REAL AND SPURIOUS
wall Street Journal.)

1t is difficult, and anything but pop
ular, to convince u people that
change is not progress. 1t is almost
impossible to make them see that
progress is spiritual and moral and
not material. No people of the world
more readily adapted ueful inventions
of all kinds than the Germans. And
yet, in course of half a century, lead
ing the world industrially, they had
morally relapsed to the middle ages.
Government ownership Of public
utilities, for instance, is not a step in
advance. Analysed, it is reversion to
feudalism, or to like systems of gov
erning mankind, with the added dis
advantage of that most detestable of
all tyrannies-stupid bureaucracy. At
least the ancient lord Of the manor
had kindred interests with his free
men and serfs. But government own
ership inevitably mean politician own
ership and political control. It tends
to create petty despotisms, with the
governing Of the many by a small
class, by no means the most %intelli-
gent.
Progress has always been the result
of an aggregation of individual
thought and aspiration. The Declara-
tion of independence and the Consti-
tuition Of the United States, to say
nothing of Magma Charta and the Pc
tition Of Rights, r milestones in hu-
man progress, spiritual and moral. But
invention, of itself, is not necessarily
progress, and may even be retrogres-
sion where it lowers the mar to a ma
chine. The telephone is an immense
convenience, but it is easy to talk
nonsense over it.
And in a strictly physical sense gov
eminent ownership, so far as repre-
senting progress, is not even improve
ment. Real progress in our railroads,
for instance, has been entirely through
private effort, where the Interstate
Commerce Commission, to say nothing
of the initiative commissions Of forty
eight states, has tended to paralyze
the growth of transportation. And yet
the development Of our railroads rep
resented moral and spiritual progress
in an important sense.
In this country alone, or with the
single exception Of Canada, private
railroad enterprise broke open new
areas, and preceded the settler. This
was SO much the case that it might
be said that previous to the present
devastating government regulation,
the worst managed and the most over
capitalized railroad north Of the Rio
1larande was the aforementioned
Canadian Northern, while perhaps the
best managed railroad was the pri-
vately-owned and even undercapital-
lied Canadian Pacific.
!, Whatever may be said Of the advo-
Gates Of government ownership, the
plan has proved an impedinaent in
South Africa, Australia and New Zea-
land. Those British Colonies do not
compare with this country or even
Canada in growth of population. Aus
tralia is, roughly speaking, about as
large as the United States. The rail-
roads do not break out into it's unde-
veloped and almost unknown interior,
because the spirit Of private enterprise
which abolished the so-called '::'Ameri-
can desert" we can remember on the
maps of our childhood, is not encour-
aged. The railroad is merely extend
ed to districts where there are enough
votes to stimulate the politician.
The idea of public ownership, ir
fact, has all the incurable sterility OF
socialism. Individualism is another
name for progress, and the worlds