Social Democracy and West Point

THE comparison suggested by the title of this paper will appear a contradiction in terms to many persons who have been accustomed to think of West Point and the army as a nursery of caste rather than of democracy. In reality, however, the fundamental principle of the socialist propaganda is one which is put into actual practice in the Military Academy Service and is found to work; and the system enforced there, considered apart from the strictly military end in view, is in miniature an ideal social democracy. It may seem a strained effort to attempt a parallel between the life of a small and select body of men, organized for a special purpose and controlled by absolute external authority, and the life of the great world outside; but human motives, like the force of gravitation, are unchanged by the circumstances of their exercise, and the smaller example is therefore not without instructive application to the larger.

In keeping with the thoroughly democratic origin of the student body at West Point are the rules and regulations by which it is governed. There is absolute uniformity in treatment, duties, and privileges, an entire absence of favoritism and of all distinctions of wealth, and a prohibition of secret societies with their petty likes and dislikes, and of practices which foster the snobbishness and heartburnings characteristic of so much of American school life. Particular stress is laid upon the practical enforcement of the principles of honesty, fidelity, courage, justice, and the like, which must, of course, lie at the foundation of any social system if it is permanently to succeed. While West Point has always maintained this democratic simplicity, with little modification from external changes, the tendency of school life outside is distinctly away from it. This is to be deplored, not only because of its adverse influence upon the; happiness of student life, but because that influence is necessarily projected into after-life, and thus affects society as a whole. In the opinion of many thoughtful observers, there is required an awakening on this subject, and an effort to restore to our schools something of the equality of the West Point system. It is a matter no less essential to the citizenship of this country than the mental training which is ordinarily considered the primary object of youthful education.

This only in passing. The purpose of the present paper is not to discuss methods of education, but to show by a practical example that the fundamental aim of social democracy is not visionary or hopeless, but on the contrary eminently practical. Reduced to its final analysis, this purpose is an ever nearer approach to equality of opportunity, and to an equitable distribution of the products of labor. Few will deny that such equality and equity are of the very essence of justice. This does not mean that social goods shall be divided on a communistic basis, or that differences in physical and intellectual capacity shall be ignored and mankind reduced to a dead level of mediocrity. It means rather that natural inequalities shall have free play, so that society may reap the full benefit of superior capacity; but it also means that such capacity shall be restrained from that unjust exploitation of wealth which results in a distribution without any definite relation to actual human needs.

Deeply fixed in the thought of the more well-to-do, is the belief that anything like equality of opportunity or condition would be incompatible with their own enjoyment, and with efficiency of work in the lower classes. The dignity of self-sustained leadership on the one hand, and the spur of necessity on the other, seem to them the only forces which can keep the world moving. But this belief has really no higher authority than that of tradition and long-established custom; and in the example here chosen for comparison, every argument in support of it is disproved by experience. West Point, and in only a less degree the service outside, demonstrates the impotence of wealth or privilege as a necessary spur to endeavor. Equality of opportunity, privileges, and pecuniary rewards is found to be in no sense incompatible with individual initiative, with efficiency in work, and with the general happiness. No loss results — rather the reverse — from the absence of all extraneous advantages, and from compelling every one to stand on his own merit, performing the work for which he is fitted, without any reference to the pecuniary compensation which he receives.

Conscience is so far a creature of education, and so little a matter of abstract justice, that in the present, state of civilization it fails to perceive the lack of equity in a system which gives to superior capacity, and to superior service resulting therefrom, a superior share of the fruits of human labor. It quite overlooks the fact that this gift of superior capacity is an advance payment to the recipient of dearer worth than any pecuniary reward can be, and one which his utmost efforts can never adequately repay. It is he who is the debtor to society, and it is a reversal of his obligation to hold that society is a debtor to him. Every candid individual recognizes in his heart the truth of this. The possessor of superior natural gifts would not exchange places with his less favored fellows for any conceivable pecuniary gain; yet without a qualm he uses his advantage to tax them to the limit of his ability to extort, or of their ability to pay. And the tax thus imposed, in the form of high salaries or fees or outright exploitation without any pretense at return service, is converted into an engine of additional extortion (through interest, rents, profits, etc.), until the accumulation, like a huge snowball, growing faster the larger it becomes, soon loses all relation, not only to reasonable personal needs, but even to assumed superiority of service. Passing on through transfer, bequest, or inheritance, it eventually results in giving to mediocre talent precedence over superior, and in fixing almost immovable barriers in the way of equal opportunity.

‘Uuto every one that hath shall be given,’is an aphorism which has done duty in defense of privilege ever since it was first uttered. Yet it is clear that its Author intended to make duty performed, not possession of ability, the justification of reward. He punished the faithless servant, not because he had lit tle, but because he did not use what he had. He rewarded the faithful servants, not because they had much, but because they used what they had. And the real reward was not in material things, but in honor and authority — from ruler over few things to ruler over many. It is a gross perversion of this beautiful lesson to hold that it justifies superior ability in exploiting the less favored mass of humanity. With something of effrontery, a recent apologist for this doctrine said, ‘A great house on the Avenue is a receipt from society for value received.' An inventory of these houses, and a fair estimate of the services to society of their owners and of others who do not own such houses, would rudely upset that theory. If ownerships along the Avenue could be suddenly readjusted on the basis of value received, there would result a boom in the local record and abstract business such as it has never yet dreamed of. In a majority of cases the statement above quoted is not true in fact; in none is it true in principle. It is the right of society to exact superior service from superior capacity, and that without any ‘house on the Avenue’ either as a bribe or as a reward.

The world now has before it a great object lesson upon this question of reward for service. A few years ago the chief executive of this nation was casting about for men to lake charge of building the Panama Canal. Seeking them among the great railway corporations of the country, it was necessary to offer salaries commensurate with those paid to the higher officials of such corporations. Yet he had within reach a body of men competent to handle that work, with whom the question of salary beyond their regular pay as public servants would have cut no figure whatever, and with whom the distinguished character of the service would have been extra reward enough. These men are now in charge of that work, and although they stepped into the shoes of their predecessors to a certain extent in the matter of pay and are actually receiving largely increased salaries, every one, from the President down, knows that this increase was not necessary to secure the highest efficiency of which these men were capable. If they had gone down there with only such reasonable increase over their slender army pay as increased risk and expense would naturally require, not a man of them would have rendered any less valuable service on that account.

And this is not the only example. Much of our best public service — in our wars, in the engineering work of the Army, in the Reclamation service, in the scientific bureaus of the government — has been and is being done upon salaries which even inferior talent in much of the work in private life would look down upon with contempt. Likewise the supremely important service which the educators in our colleges and universities are rendering in equipping youth for the work of life is done with as pure devotion and as strenuous effort as many times their pay commands from the servants of great corporations.

The question here discussed is not the adequacy or inadequacy of a given salary, but the relation of salary to efficiency. The point insisted upon is that high salaries are necessary to high efficiency only as a false convention of society makes them so. Change this convention, as is done in the Army, and it would be found that just as high results — most probably higher — would follow comparative equality of wages as now are secured through exaggerated differences. The honor of service, the sense of authority, the love of recognition, are motives enough to call forth all that is worth calling forth in any man. Does any one believe that if an approximate equality^ of wages existed in the railway service from lop to bottom there would be any less strenuous seeking for promotion? any less devotion to duty? any less efficiency in the different grades of employment? Would the ambitious youthful telegraph operator look forward any less hopefully to some day becoming president of the road if that position carried a salary of only five thousand dollars instead of fifty thousand? West Point answers this question in the negative. The striving for advancement and recognition there could be no more strenuous if there were corresponding increase in pay instead of no increase at all. In the Engineer Department of the Army, where the responsibility and character of work vary greatly, and it often happens that an officer of no higher rank or pay (sometimes less) than another may be charged with more important duties, that fact makes not the slightest difference in his devotion to duty or efficiency in work. There is a distinct degradation of our finer ideals in the prevalent notion that the character of service should be gauged by the salary attached to it. Perhaps the most regrettable incident connected with the building of the Panama Canal was an impression which at one time got abroad of an apparent indifference to these ideals, and a subordination of the sense of honor attaching to so great a work to considerations of mere pecuniary reward.

The argument that mere capacity for service is not a true criterion of wages should not be taken as a plea for uniformity of wages regardless of the service rendered. It is, at most, a plea that the needs of the individual as a human being should be the primary and controlling factor. If the pecuniary demands of a position were limited solely to the individual necessities of the occupant, uniformity might be practicable and just. But they are not. Position itself imposes varying demands dependent upon its importance. The drain upon the private purse of a cabinet officer or a railway president, arising solely from the necessities of service, is much greater than upon that of a fourth-class postmaster or a locomotive engineer. A perfectly equitable adjustment of wages could scarcely mean equality. Consideration for society rather than for the individual prevents it. The true criterion would seem to be the individual necessities of livelihood (essentially the same for all men) and the added needs which the position itself imposes.

But even on this basis a practical difficulty in the way of a strictly equitable system is found in a condition of things with which society, in spite of the marvelous progress of civilization, has yet scarcely begun to reckon. What is service, and what are legitimate individual needs? In common acceptation, service is the specific work which an individual does for some employer, and compensation is determined upon this narrow basis, and is practically uniform in any locality for any given grade of work. It takes no account of that other, and often more important, service which is done for society in the rearing of children. It takes no direct account of the increased necessities which this larger service requires. Under the present imperfect system the individual who assumes nothing of this universal duty receives as large compensation as the one who assumes it in full. It may be replied that, inasmuch as most adults do marry and rear children, the grand average of wages has a definite relation to the grand average of needs — and this is probably true. But the system is nevertheless full of inequity through inability to take cognizance of individual needs — something quite impossible in the present organization of society, owing to the detail-work involved and the lack of permanence in the relation of employer and employed.

The system of pay in the Army offers an interesting example on an elaborate scale of an effort to devise an equitable wage-system on the basis of average needs. Promotion roughly keeps pace with increasing family responsibilities, and the resulting increase of pay thus meets increased personal needs and increased demands of position. To compensate in part for irregularities in promotion, there is an arbitrary increase of pay, based upon lengt h of service alone. This takes place every five years, beginning with entry into the service, and continues for four successive increases, or during a period of twenty years at that time of life when domestic burdens are presumably most onerous. From that time on t here is no further increase except that which comes with promotion in rank, or with increased demands of position. When t he age of retirement comes and the demands of position cease, and the work of rearing a family is presumably complete, the pay is arbitrarily reduced and all perquisites are cut off, thus again roughly adapting compensation to actual needs.

On the basis of grand averages, this is perhaps as equitable a system as it is possible to devise. It leaves to the officer of high rank not much more of a surplus over his necessary outgo (often less) than to the officer of low rank, or even the enlisted man himself. The character or importance of the service rendered does not enter the question at all. Neither does the question of individual capacity for service. It is assumed that every man will do his best, regardless of the pay he receives. As his special ability discloses itself he may be assigned to special work and be given difficult and important duties to perform, and he may, as is continually the case, distinguish himself above his co-equals in rank. But there is never any thought that such superior service entitles him to increased pecuniary compensation. If given promotion on account of such service, it is not primarily a reward to himself, but for the good of the service, that he may be in a position where his abilities can have a larger field for their exercise.

On a less elaborate system the general principle applies to the gradation of wages paid to our educators. Certain it is that differences of salary do not measure differences in capacity to serve, nor differences in services actually rendered. They are probably not much, if any, greater than differences in individual needs and demands of position dependent upon length of service.

It is when we pass to the great business enterprises outside the salaried professions that the differences between extremes of wages become such as to arrest attention. One naturally asks what there is in the insurance business, for example, which calls for a president’s salary fifty times as great as that of a clerk who may himself rise to the rank of president, while the pay of the highest officer in the Army is less than five times that of the lowest, and the range of salaries in educational institutions is little if any greater. This discrepancy is certainly not necessary for efficiency of service. It is the result, of definite causes, all of which are an outgrowth of the still venerated system of laissezfaire. In the first place, there is unregulated competition, with the exaggerated extremes which such competition always brings. But this is only a part, and the least objectionable part, of the system. Its chief evil lies in the power of the managers of great enterprises to give themselves, in the form of salaries, an undue share of the revenues. It is the survival of an evil which has characterized all history, and has flourished under a variety of hideous forms. To-day it is shorn of the bald iniquities of the past and sanctioned by the plausible theory of value received (for superior service); but it is none the less a relic, undemocratic in principle, and its inevitable tendency is to perpetuate those conditions which are a principal barrier to equality of opportunity.

The fee system, which results to a large extent in restricting the benefits of high professional service to the very wealthy, is another form of the same evil. Still further removed from organized equity is the system of profit in which unrestrained competition, with its temptation to fraud and corruption, leads to almost unlimited evils; while at the bottom of the scale is that social parasitism which makes no pretense at real service but battens on the vices, weaknesses, and credulity of human nature. West Point and the public service demonstrate that these features of the existing order are not in themselves necessary, either to the highest professional excellence, the distribution of social goods, or the general happiness. It is not because they are indispensable that they are retained, but because society, through natural inertia, is reluctant to assume those broad responsibilities which the progress of civilization has now made it practicable and desirable that it should assume.

A salaried basis for all human industry, except possibly agriculture in certain of its phases, and an adjustment of wages on the basis of needs, are necessary if we are to realize the ideal of equal opportunity. That the tendency of the times is in that direction can scarcely be doubted. The great department store, the railway system from coast to coast, the vast consolidation of industrial enterprises, are healthy symptoms of the universal movement. It is the public duty to help, not hinder, this tendency, and to favor its growth, while restraining unhealthy and corrupt excrescences. With this progressive development will come a greater degree of public control, greater permanence in the relations of employer and employed, and an increased practicability of reaching down to the individual needs of humanity.

Would the universal application of such a system banish discontent from human life? It is not a question of discontent, but of injustice; not of altering human nature, but of restraining its selfishness. The utmost that social progress can hope to accomplish is to remove those causes of discontent which are based upon injustice. And it is a distinct tribute to human nature that discontent with social conditions is relative rather than absolute. The actual quantity of goods which one possesses is of less consequence to most men than inequity of distribution. The pioneer settlers of this country, on a footing of comparative equality, though possessing little of what are deemed necessities to-day, unquestionably enjoyed more real contentment than do their richer posterity, who are confronted at every turn by the unjust distribution of wealth. And to-day the life at West Point, and in a less degree the garrison life at army posts, proves that the more effectually artificial distinctions can be removed, the more genuinely wholesome is the comradeship and good-fellowship of social life.

The grand lesson of West. Point is that this ideal system of equality of opportunity, with all that it implies, is a practical working system; and that, wherever put into operation, it does produce the results expected from it. It is the evidence, which many despair of ever seeing, that true democracy may exist in the midst of great social wealth. The word true is used advisedly, for the democracy of West Point is quite as far removed from ochlocracy (dead-levelism) on the one hand, as it is from oligarchy and plutocracy on the other. It recognizes that no social system can march which does not make use of the basic principles of military organization and discipline. Distinctions and grades there must, always be, for nature has so decreed; but the only gradation which West Point recognizes is that founded upon justice, and rank therein is determined by worth, and not by wealth or privilege, whether inherited or acquired.

At the recent graduation exercises at the Academy, the Secretary of War said to the graduating class: ‘In a world where money is too often made the measure of men . . , the chief reason why the nation has such traditional faith in the graduates of this Academy is because it believes them to have higher ideals and nobler standards.’ And on the same occasion a Professor, who was about to retire from active service under operation of law, left in his farewell address this noble conception of service and its reward: ‘The law of life is labor, and the joy of life is accomplishment.’

These ideals, and the democratic simplicity and equality of its social life, are the precious gift of West Point to the nation — more important even than the specific technical work which is its official raison d’être. War may pass away, and with it the necessity of purely military service; but for every step away from that necessity there will be a longer step toward the necessity of a wider application of these fundamental principles of our military system. We may conceivably cease to need an army, but we shall never cease to need West Point.

Steadily, yet surely, public authority is laying its powerful arm upon all human activity. More and more it is grappling with those vital problems which have been looked upon hitherto as being outside its legitimate province. Entrenched opinion affects to view this tendency with alarm; but if it be held to be true to the democratic ideal of West Point, then every fresh advance will be a new triumph for civilization.