Watchman, What of the Night?
I
THE only excuse for the existence of a political party is public service. Of course it is true that very often there is departure from that principle. Unfortunately in many instances each of our major parties has been actuated by other and less worthy motives, and the acquisition and retention of mere office, with its emoluments, with its opportunity to plunder, have been the impelling force in the effort for political domination. Wherefore the American people have acquired a cynical attitude, not unnatural but none the less regrettable, toward both politics and politicians.
This notion has been cultivated in the popular mind by the politicians themselves. Too frequently there is the disposition in both parties to demonstrate that everybody and everything in the other party are wholly lacking in merit or dependability. The effect of such tactics, while perhaps at the moment beneficial to one side, has been to create distrust in parties as such and thus to begin to break down the party system. To-day in American public life are several striking figures who, though forced by the exigencies of our political system to run on one ticket or the other, give in only rare instances even lip service to the party with which they are supposedly allied, and in their practical actions prove themselves wholly outside the pale of party regularity or party responsibility. Without attempt ing to argue either the wisdom or the impropriety of such a position, attention is called to it here as one of the important present factors in American political life, one that may have a decisive bearing upon the course of legislation in the next two years.
All this aside, however, it is suggested that as long as the present party system prevails — and certainly the vast majority of our people believe in this system — the cause of good government requires that there be two strong parties, as nearly equal as possible, each compelling the other when in power to give the best possible administration. Then arises the question. What is the duty of the minority party? Obviously to watch with unflagging diligence the conduct of the government, to inspect with care measures the majority may offer, to approve those measures if worthy, to try to better them if unworthy or to offer constructive substitutes in their stead, and at all times to keep the country informed in every proper way as to the progress of its affairs.
Since President Wilson retired on March 4, 1921, at the conclusion of his second term, the Republican Party has been in undisputed control of both the executive and the legislative branches of the government. Indeed, it had captured the Congress two years before. In the by-election of 1922 there were marked Democratic gains, but not enough to upset Republican dominance, and in the Coolidge and Hoover landslides of 1924 and 1928, respectively, such Congressional majorities were secured by the Republicans as to give them overwhelming power. The severe losses in the electoral college in the last presidential campaign, throwing strong Southern states into the Republican column, were so disheartening that there was serious discussion of the probable disintegration of the Democratic Party, and little disposition on the part of many leaders to continue the fight.
It was in this dark hour that a plan was evolved by National Chairman Raskob, himself newr to politics but experienced as one of the notable executives of the country, to apply business principles to a national political party. With this in view he set up at Washington a permanent Democratic headquarters. There were two primary objectives: first, to build a competent organization in each state, giving to this important work the time that it actually requires instead of trying to crowed the necessary details into the brief space of three months before a presidential election; second, through properly directed publicity to furnish an adequate idea of what might be going on under a Republican administration, with the double purpose of educating the electorate and affording some proper understanding of the Democratic point of view. The activities of these headquarters have been carried on diligently, and undoubtedly they played an important part toward bringing about the results that were attained in the recent, election.
It is true, of course, that numerous factors contributed: the unwise tariff bill foisted upon the people at a most inopportune time; the disappointment of the farmers in the outcome of the legislation for agricultural relief; the smash in the stock market, with the resulting severe and continued business depression under an administration that had made most extravagant and unnecessary promises as to its ability to maintain and even to increase prosperity if given the lease of governmental power; in several states and in numerous sections of others discontent with prohibition and resentment at the apparent attempt to shelve this widely discussed question through the appointment of one of the numerous commissions that have become almost synonymous with the Hoover administration. All of these things counted, but it is suggested that unless the Democratic Party through its Washington headquarters had been in a position to get its story to the people throughout the country there would not have been so definite or so widespread a Democratic victory as was witnessed on November 4 last.
As a matter of fact, that victory was far more sweeping than appears upon the surface. A New York newspaper compiled figures of the thirty-seven states where there were state-wide contests which show that these states gave Mr. Hoover more than five and a half millions of his 1928 majority and in 1930 went Democratic by more than two millions, an overturn in two years of over seven million, seven hundred thousand votes. In numerous Congressional dist ricts, heretofore regarded as impregnably Republican and remaining in the Republican column now, Democratic nominees received unprecedented support. Many of the foremost Republican House leaders of the present Congress were returned by majorities so small as to have seemed unbelievable a year ago. With the reduction of the Republican Senate control from fifteen down to one, with the sweeping change in the Republican House majority from more than a hundred down to two, with Democratic governors elected in such states as New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Idaho, with a return to the Democratic column of all the Southern and border states which left the party in 1928, with huge Democratic totals in even the strong Republican states which the party did not carry, — such as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Iowa, for example, — there can be no question as to the scope and the importance of the Democratic sweep.
It is true that the Democratic Party may not organize either house of the national legislature. The prediction is here made that if the final results place upon the party the duty of organization it will assume it without shirking or evasion, but it will not attempt through devious combinations to secure the few votes necessary to effect organization. Whatever the final Congressional situation, however, it is certainly true that the Republican administration will not be in control of the Seventy-second Congress. Thus the Democratic Party faces a new and a serious responsibility.
How will it meet it? Upon the answer to that question probably depends the outcome of the next presidential election.
The party is no longer in the minority. The scope of its duties and its opportunities goes beyond the point ol mere opposition. It will hold equal legislative power in the ensuing Congress. It must have a constructive and an appealing programme. And, most important of all, it has been called to share in a very definite way, probably in a decisive way, in governmental responsibility at a time of panic. Without attempting to enter into a discussion of the causes of the country’s present unhappy condition, it is indubitably true that the electorate has shown lack of confidence in the ability of the Republican administration to solve the problems which beset our people and in no uncertain voice has summoned the Democratic Party to assist in that solution. Thus is offered the opportunity for patriotic service.
II
Immediately after the election, with its doubt as to the party control of Congress, wide speculation was indulged in by the newspapers relative to the effect on business. Already in a condition of depression and discouragement unequaled in modern times, there was general discussion as to the possible further adverse influence on it of uncertainty as to the legislative course. It was a situation almost as serious as the crisis of war. It seemed an hour for necessary action. Imbued solely with the purpose of effecting something constructive, seven Democrats who occupy positions of party prominence promptly issued a statement, to the people of the country. These men were the three living former candidates of the party for President, its elected leaders in the two houses of Congress, and the heads of its constituted national organization. It was not assumed that they could commit the party to a definite policy. It was recognized that only a National Convention could do that. Nor did these spokesmen attempt to specify how the chosen representatives of constituencies should vote on any question. It was known that individual conviction should and would govern.
But, in so far as they might speak for the party or suggest a course in the difficult and dangerous situation which confronts the country, the statement offered cooperation with the President and the Republican membership of Congress in the passage of beneficial legislation to meet the grave emergency. Further, it proposed that such action should be taken promptly and without attempt to seek mere partisan advantage. To this end it was urged that there should be no delay in the granting of necessary appropriations, that there should be no rejection of fit appointees, that the business of government should go steadily forward, that legislation should be steered in a straight line toward the goal of prosperity, that every honest industry should be aided and not hindered in the necessarily slow progress back to profitable operation, that labor should be protected in maintaining a proper wage scale, that all possible means should be employed for correcting the appalling menace of unemployment which is sapping the very lifeblood of the people. The Democrats were pledged to public service in its broadest sense, not only because such a course is the righteous one, and the only one whereby the country can be rescued from its present plight, but also because it was realized that only by public service can the party hope to retain the nation’s confidence. Beyond these non-factional fundamentals the statement did not go, nor was it intended to go.
No suggestion here of abdication. No remote thought of derogation of the party’s ability adequately to perform the work that lies ahead. No promise cither expressed or implied to accept unwise legislation or to abandon a proper party programme. Only the assurance to the country that in a crisis of extreme moment it might depend upon the Democrats to chart and follow a constructive and a patriotic course.
At the time this is written (December 8) Congress has been in assembly only one week. Little progress has been made toward even the routine business of the short session. Individual Senators have demanded that certain legislation must be acted on if the supply bills are to be allowed to pass. They are the crux of the situation. If they do not go through before March 4, an extra session of the new Congress becomes imperative. If they are passed, it is a question for presidential decision whether the exigencies of the situation require an extra session. Apparently the President is most anxious to avoid this contingency. The leaders of the so-called regular group of his party and most of the Democrats who have expressed themselves seem to share his view that in prevailing circumstances the country will benefit from a legislative vacation.
On the other hand, there are at least two measures that have passed the Senate and are pending before the House on which there is popular demand for a vote — the Muscle Shoals resolution and the proposed constitutional amendment doing away with the ‘lame duck’ sessions of Congress. The Republican leadership of the House, apparently with presidential approval, has throttled these measures. They should be allowed to come to a vote without further delay whatever that vote determines. An administration pursuing any other course is scarcely entitled to serious consideration when it seeks help from others to enact its supply bills. But, granted such vote is alloed, it seems within the realm of probability that an extra session can be avoided, though any persuasive prediction in that regard is impossible before the middle of February.
III
In the short session now in progress the responsibility of the Democrats, far outnumbered though they are, is yet very real. If they cooperate in pushing the departmental appropriations, they will have the approval of the country. But at this writing it looks as if they must do an even more important thing. In his message to Congress the President dealt only in glittering generalities with reference to possible plans to meet the unemployment situation. True, there is the suggestion of appropriations for public works that will help to relieve distress. These should be worked out quickly in such a way as to assure an immediate beginning. However, it does no good to have Congress appropriate money and then have the Administration cover a considerable part of it back into the Treasury as was done at the close of the last fiscal year. Likewise it is folly for the President to call on leading business executives, as he has done, to maintain their pay rolls without reduction of personnel, and then to permit, perhaps even to order, the wholesale reduction of government employees in at least two important branches of the service. The country is not so much interested just now in the details as in the fact of governmental expenditures, and both Congress and the Executive would do well to bear that in mind.
But there is yet another duty which seems peculiarly to devolve upon the Democrats in the present short session. That is the passage of legislation following in substance the outline of the measures so sedulously pressed over a term of years by Senator Wagner of New York in his effort to have the government prepared to handle scientifically and intelligently just such a situation as has confronted us the past year. It was, perhaps, not unnatural, though extremely unwise, that this legislation should have been neglected during a long period of general prosperity, but it is almost unbelievable that when widespread business depression covered the land, when the Administration was floundering without facilities even to learn the extent of unemployment, when the very basic provisions of the Wagner bills would have been of inestimable value to the government, they still should have been frowned upon and defeated. They passed the Senate. It was in the overwhelmingly Republican House that they were emasculated and destroyed. They must be revived, expanded, and promptly passed. It is an important service for the Democrats to perform in the present session.
And may it not be suggested here that this incident has a very real psychological bearing upon events just ahead? Democratic leaders in good faith have attempted on behalf of their party to offer a programme of cooperation. It must be remembered that it takes two to cooperate. All of it cannot and will not come from one side. If the President and his Congressional spokesmen want cooperation, they must show that they endorse worthy legislation, no matter who may sponsor it. They may be assured that the Democrats will not accept unwise or improper measures merely because leading Republicans or even the President himself suggests them, nor will they consent to have their own constructive proposals shunted aside lest credit for their enactment go to a Democrat. Further, it may be presented that the President would be well advised to refrain from attempting to appoint as Democrats, where the law requires or custom implies bipartisan representation on important boards, men who have bitterly opposed the last Democratic national ticket and whose names are anathema to those constituting the vast majority of the party. Such action is a challenge and an insult.
But, to return to the central theme of this review, it is with the advent of the Seventy-second Congress that the real responsibility of the Democrats begins, whether the party organizes either or both houses or neither, whether the Congress is called in extra session or does not convene until December of 1931. What shall be its course then? Obviously it must have a programme. Even more important, that programme must be positive, it must be timely, it must be patriotic. I almost used the word progressive. With the thought of a progressive programme I have the fullest sympathy, but the word has been so abused by charlatans as to have lost its real meaning. If progressive, however, then progressive in a broad and true sense; not merely a rehash of outworn sophistries or a polyglot of impractical and undigested isms.
Specifically, the party should cooperate in the later as in the short session in all worthy legislation that the Administration may originate. If, prior to March 4, effective means are not found to deal with unemployment, that should be a primary and an immediate concern. Federal work in the construction of roads and public buildings should be pushed and expanded. We appropriated money without stint to meet the demands of war. In the same spirit we should expend whatever sum is necessary to care for the present severe crisis of peace. And we should not be too much concerned over the possibility that there may be a deficit in the Treasury.
If there is any merit in the present Farm Relief legislation, it should be encouraged. But if, after a trial of two years or more, it is shown conclusively to be a failure, even with a half billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money to carry out its provisions, some proper substitute should be found. And in this connection Democrats should not be unmindful that they embodied in the Houston platform the most comprehensive agricultural plank which any political party has yet written. They need not seek elsewhere. Incidentally, too, the position enunciated meets the registered approval of every important farm organization of the country.
IV
As to the tariff, might it not be well to take a leaf from the book which the Democrats of the House in the Sixtysecond Congress so successfully wrote in 1911 and 1912? The Republicans of the Taft administration had passed the Payne-Aldrich Act, which aroused the serious antagonism of the country. As a result the Democrats elected a House majority in 1910. There remained, however, a Republican Senate and a Republican President. Obviously it was not possible to repeal the obnoxious tariff or to enact a comprehensive substitute. So the Democrats selected the most objectionable single provision, the item of wool, the famous Schedule K of unhallowed memory, and made their fight for its elimination. Of course they did not succeed. But their record was clear to the country, and an entire Democratic administration was the result of the subsequent election.
In the present instance, contrary to the expressed suggestion of their President, the Republicans have foisted upon the people at a fatally inopportune time the most inept and unwise tariff legislation which has ever been written into law. It was a serious issue in the last campaign — not the only issue, perhaps not entirely predominant, but beyond question important. The act contains certain schedules against which there is widespread popular resentment. Might it not be wise to select the most striking of these and concentrate the Democratic fire upon them? For be it remembered that, despite Mr. Hoover’s message to the Congress of his party calling for a limited revision of the tariff so far as industrial rates were concerned, he signed this enormity providing for the most general revision that might be well imagined. This, too, against the advice of more than a thousand of our leading economists, despite the protests of almost every foreign nation with which we have important trade relations, and regardless of the insistent opposition of the entire independent press and a considerable proportion of the Republican press. In view of these facts it may be inferred that, even if the Democrats could get through Congress a repeal of this law, the President would veto their proposal.
And then there is the impossibility of securing such action at the hands of Congress. Authority after March 4 will be almost evenly divided. The Republican excuse for the passage of the bill was the platform promise to increase agricultural tariffs. Of course all informed men know that most of the provisions of this character are wholly ineffective and carry no real benefit to the farmers. But some of them do. And if the bill were repealed such repeal would necessarily apply to the agricultural as well as the industrial schedules. In these circumstances it could not be gotten through Congress.
Then there is another consideration. The President keeps emphasizing the opportunity to improve the bill through the recommendations of the Tariff Commission, which he, unfortunately, rather than the Congress, is empowered to make effective. Regardless of one’s individual opinion as to what may be accomplished in this wise, there is certainly a possibility, perhaps a likelihood, that the new Congress will not convene until December. The Democrats must deal with the tariff as it then is, not as it now appears, and must make their plans accordingly.
But there is a further thought that should challenge the attention of every interested citizen. Under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson the Democratic Party took the first long step toward treating the tariff as a scientific, economic question rather than as the football of politics. That was in the establishment of a Tariff Commission. It is true that the two succeeding Republican administrations departed very far from the original intent. It is true that under Mr. Harding and Mr. Coolidge this body, designed to be a most important free and independent agency, became but a feeble exponent of presidential pleasure, a disgrace to the original conception. But that was because there was improperly conferred upon the Executive as an emergency provision to meet the post-war conditions in Europe the power to raise or lower rates upon the recommendation of the Commission. This was done by a clause of the Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922, and thereupon the fate of the Commission was sealed. Immediately it became a mere rubber stamp.
Now, in the recent tariff fight the Democratic Party offered a far-reaching substitute for the administrative provisions of the new bill. Through the so-called Simmons-Norris amendment it sought to restore to Congress the power to tax, it sought to re-create the Tariff Commission into a body of dignity and importance, it strove to do away with the swapping and trading that have disgraced recent tariff legislation. These vital reforms were to be obtained by providing that an authoritative and informed commission make to the Congress recommendations of changes in individual schedules and that consideration be confined to such recommendations as made, thus substituting for the general revisions which inevitably upset the business of the country a scientific manner of dealing with the most important of our economic questions.
Could the Democratic Party in the next Congress do better than to adhere rigidly to that plan? It had its origin in the Democratic administration of that practical idealist, Woodrow Wilson. Its wisdom is attested by every student of government. It offers a new and a better and a wiser method of dealing with one of the most disturbing subjects which have ever entered into American public life.
V
Of recent years there has been advanced more and more persistently the theory of a five-day week. At first the goal set by labor, it has been endorsed with increasing vigor by the captains of industry, who have come to recognize it as a just and a wise change, both social and economic, in the industrial life of America. If such a programme is to be inaugurated, the place to make the start is with the employees of the government itself. There is every justification for the experiment. The Democratic Party is the recognized friend of labor. What more upstanding work could be performed by the Democratic membership of Congress than to initiate legislation making immediately effective such a schedule to apply to the hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the land who are rendering intelligent service to the United States in its various departments?
But with this change or without it, whether in government circles or in private enterprise, there must be no reduction in existing wage scales. The present basis of pay has been reached only after a century of effort. It represents a culmination of ideals that has meant the raising of American citizenship to a status that compels the admiration and envy of the world. No true prosperity can be reached by restrictions or retrogression that will cause a lowering of our standards of living or the attempt to reduce compensation to the basis of foreign employment.
There is another burning question which occupies the thought and challenges the discussion of a large majority of our people. That is prohibition. Upon it the Democratic Party has thus far taken no national stand. I am not attempting to speak for anyone except myself. But I do not hesitate to express the hope that in its next national platform my party may face this vexed problem with courage and without equivocation. That a large number of thoughtful people everywhere are seriously dissatisfied with present conditions there can be no doubt. The underworld has built up the illicit sale of liquor into the most profitable business which it has ever been allowed to propagate. Allied with it is every kind of crime and racketeering, and until some sweeping reform is accomplished there seems no possibility of a beneficial change in conditions. It is idle to suggest that prohibition is not a political question. Only through political action can its correction be had. And until existing provisions are repealed the contempt for law engendered as the result of present methods may be expected only to spread. A straightforward recognition of prevailing conditions and an honest effort to correct them constitute perhaps the foremost duty of good citizenship that confronts America to-day.
In the recent election the Democratic Party achieved a remarkable victory. But it is less a victory than an opportunity. The party faces a vital period in American development. With business prostrate, with millions of men out of work, with soup kitchens and bread lines in every city of the land, with the bitterness of winter exacting its toll of want, with fear and discouragement in the hearts of our people, there is the demand for constructive and patriotic service. Let our party offer every proper cooperation to enact all measures that may redound to the welfare of the country. Let it father and perfect and conclude such legislation as will meet the present trying conditions. Let it earn and hold the confidence and the respect of the country. Then it will win a sweeping victory in 1932. But, better still, it will deserve to win.