The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1923-06-02
American
mdiuiduaIism
A Timely Message to
the American People
By HOOVER
Secretary OF Commerce.
IY.-Ecnnomic Phases


ards of living and comfort
should be the first of eonsidera-
tons in public mind anu IN government
needs no apology. We have long since
realized that the basis of an advancing
civilization must be a high and grow
ing standard of living for all the peo-
pie, not for a single class; that educa-
ton, food, clothing, housing, and the
spreading use of what we so often term
no~nessentials, are the real fertilizers of
the soil from which spring the finer
flowers of life. The economic develop
ment of the past fifty years has lifted
the general standard of comfort far be-
yond the dreams of our forefathers.
The only road to further advance in
the standard of living is by greater in
vention, greater production and better
distribution of commodities and serv-
Ices, for by increasing their ratio to
our numbers and dividing them justly
we each will have more of them.
The superlative value of individual
ism through its impulse to production,
its stimulation to invention, has, so
Ia oS hAohB ACNOl DCCA QCAACd.
Criticism of 1t has lain in its wastes
but more Importantly in its failures of
equitable sharing ofethe product. In
our country these contentious are MAIN
ly over the division to each of his
share of the comforts and Injuries, for
! none of us Is either hungry or cold
or without a place to lay his head-and
v-o hoya rnt1oh hncfAnc II lace than
four decades we have added electric
lights, plumbing, telephones, gramo-
phones, automobiles, and what not in
wide diffusion to our standards of liv-
ing. Each in turn began as a luxury,
each in turn has become SO common
place that seventy or eighty per cent
of our people participate in them.
To all practical souls there is little
use in quarreling over the share of
each of us until We have something to
divide. So long as we maintain our
indiyidualism we will have increasing
quantities to share and we shall have
time and leisure and taxes with which
to fight u proper sharing of the sur
plus" The income tax returns show
thdh Lii SUI piuo Al q lnllOi part VI OuT
total production after taxes are paid.
Some of this surplus" must be set
aside for rewards to saving, or stimula-
ton of proper effort to skill, to leader
ship and Observation-Disclosures the dis.
pute Is In reality over much less than
the total of such surplus" While there
should be nc minimizing of a certain
frinn no nf fnirctiaac In choripn tho ro-
suits Of production or in the wasteful
use made by some of their share, yet
there is vastly wider field for gains to
all of us through c%heapening the costs
of production and distribution through
the eliminating of their wastes, from
increasing the volume of product by
each and every one doing his utmost,
can think out a method of abstract
Justice in sharing which did not stife
production of the total product.
1t Is a certainty we are confronted
with a population in such numbers as
car only exist by production attuned
to a pitch in which the slightest reduc-
ton of the impulse to produce will at
once create misery and want. If we
throttle the fundamental impulses Of
man our production will decay. The
world in this hour is witnessing the
most overshadowing tragedy of ten
centuries in the heart-breaking life
and-death struggle with starvation by
a nation with a hundred and fifty mil
lions Of people. In Russia under the
new tyranny a group, in pursuit of So
eial theories, have destroyed the pri-
mary self-interest impulse of the indi-
yidual to production.
Although socialism in a nationwide
application has now proved itself with
rivers of blood and inconceiyable mis-
cry to be an economic and spiritual fall
lacy and has wrecked itself finally up
on the rocks of destroyed production
and moral degeneracy, l believe it to
have been necessary for the world to
have had this demonstration. Great
theoretic and emotional ideas have
arisen before in the worlds history and
have in more than mere material bank
ruptcy deluged the world with fearful
losses OF life. A purely philosophical
view might be that in the long run hu-
mainly has to try every way, even
precipices, in finding the road to bet
terment.
But those are utterly wrong who say
that individualism has as its only end
the acquisition and preservation of pri-
vate property-the selfish snatching
and boarding of the common product.
Our American i~ndividualism, indeed,
Is only in part an economic creed. It
aims to provide opportunity for self
expression, not merely economically,
but spiritually as well. Private prop
erty is not a fetch in America. The
crushing of the liquor trade without a
cent Of compensation, with scarcely
ever a discussion of II, does not bear
out the notion that we give property
rights any Roadway over human rights.
Our development of in~dividualism
shows an increasing tendency to regard
right of property not as an object in
itself, but in the light of a useful and
necessary instrument in stimulation of
initiative to the individual; not only
stimulation to him that he may gain
personal comfort, security in life, pro-
lection to his family, but also because
Individual accumulation and ownership
is a basis of selection to leadership Il
TJnyI7sC