The Elk Mountain pilot., 1923-02-08
ON FRYING TO GET
SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

lem. He who induces humanity to
adj pit social system which gives
something for something and nothing
for nothing (quid pro quo) will have
solved the social problem. The SUI
prene issue challenging mans best
effort is this: to separate the shirkers
from the workers, and give to each
his proper reward-all the product to
the workers, nothing to the shirkers
Lincoln once alluded to the "hu-
man wriggle to live without work"
On another occasion Lincoln said:
Sitting here, where all the avenues
to public patronage seem to come to-
gether in a knot, it does appear to
me that our people are fast approach
ing the point where seven-eighths of
them are trying to find out how to
live at the expense of the other
eighth" Julian Laughlin, in his His
of Civilization" reduced the, teaching
of history to the following terse
propositions: THE state, that is, the
unproductive classes, of the ancient
world, began by taking one-tenth of
all that the producing classes made;
this was increased, first to one-fifth,
then to two-fifths and the whole so
cial system broke down under the ef-
fort to make it three-fifths." At last
the worm turned
w. D. Howells once remarked that
the severest Indictment that could be
formulated against America is that
the average American would proba-
bly, rather be Jay Gould, with all his
crookedness, than James Russell Low
ell Assuming that there is, in many
people, this terrible disease to get
something for nothing, then it would
seem that the duty of government is
to discourage, rather than to encour-
age, such spirit Gladstone put it
thus: ut is the duty Of the govern
ment to make it difficult to do wrong
and easy to do right" Has the Amer
lean Government faithfully pursued
that ideal? Beginning with the wide
spread graft of Grants administra-
tfon. coming down through an. epoch
whose dominating personalities were
such men as M. A. Hanna Nelson w,
Aldrich. M. S. Quay. T. c. Platt, and
SO on ad nauseam, the conclusion is
unacceptable that the government has
thrown all Its iafiuence, In the past
so years, to the building up OF those
special privileges whose sole purpose
Is to get something for. nothing. If
the government had worked as hard
to discourae the creation of these
agencies as it did to encourage them,
they never could have attained their
present baneful and all but fatal SUI
premacy. II the Department Of JUS
tlce had used the same vicious teeth
in invading the offices and extracting
the innermost secrets Of the meat
controllers and the oil crowd that 1t
did in invading the offices Of the pa
cifists In the late war, there never
would have been trust. In every
possible way, the three branches of
the government threw the egis of
their influence around the men who
built up the monster combines that
now throttle nearly every field of
human activity. The government en-
abled Big Business to erect into a
principle, a very religion, the system
of GETTING SOMETHING FOR
NOTHING.
Never before in the history of the
world were so many agencies at work
promising something for nothing"
and "getting way with it." But in
terest is at the bottom of all these
major raids on the wealth produced
by the workers. Interest on ficticious
values or on public bonds-this is the
hand that beckons high finance to its
criminal carnival.
Every man." said Emerson, sis
consumer and should be producer"
In strict justice no able-bodied per-
son has the right to consume more
than he produces; that in reality is
stealing.
The happiest hunting ground of
those who seek something for nothing
is in the field of public debts Here
the velvet is so much in evidence
that there is much reason to accept
the opinion of those who hold that
high finance promotes wars for the
express purpose of securing more
bonds. There is no escape from the
burdens imposed by these debts on
the citizen except by emigration.
But even this is no longer of much
use. Not without bitterness do those
whose labors must pay all these debts
reflect that while sportsmen have
been able to obtain the reservation