The Curse of Bigness, Miscellaneous Papers of Louis D. Brandeis
edited by [Viking, $3.00]
A GROUP of practical and theoretical economists was recently holding one of those wearisome autopsies over the Era of Prosperity. The usual tall talk and the veteran clichés did service for explanations—‘disequilibrium in the price structure,’ ‘disproportion between saving and spending,’ ‘technological unemployment,’ and all the rest. An impatient young legal sprite whipped up the sluggish flow of conversation by the remark, ‘I know the cause of the depression.’
Having sufficiently satisfied the sadism of the young by teasing his elders, be gave this explanation: ‘ When all of you fell victims to belief in a new era, when the most authoritative assured us that we should live, world without end, on a new plateau of prices, a man named Mr. Justice Brandeis, in the com-se of his judicial duty, uttered different views. Unfortunately the ballyhoo of the times completely drowned his quiet voice. After examining price movements throughout our history and their relation to major social and economic forces, he quietly remarked: “For the assumption that there will be a plateau there is no basis in American experience. The course of prices for the last 112 years indicates, on the contrary, that there may be a practically continuous decline for nearly a generation; that the present price level may fall to that of 1914 within a decade; and that, later, it may fall much lower.” ’
This was said on May 21, 1923, and it is now a matter of history how completely Mr, Justice Brandeis’s prophecy of 1923 was vindicated. ‘Unfortunately,’ the young lawyer concluded, with a young man’s smartness, ‘the vindication of Brandeis s insight is scant comfort to the unemployed millions.’
The miscellaneous papers of the Justice are, like the young lawyer’s quotation, mostly echoes of the past of immediate relevance to the present. Mr. Fraenkel’s collection needs, of course, no sociological justification. To say that a seminal mind like that of Louis D. Brandeis is one of the ultimate expressions of civilization, and gives it its quality, is not to tie oneself to Carlyle’s great-man conception of history. And the unfolding of such a mind — the autobiography, as it were, of his ideas — is illumination of the creative process. We are just beginning to he aware of the subtle intricacies in the generation of opinion; and the systematic study of the evolution of great minds, especially those concerned with problems of social arrangement, is one of the most exciting of the new fields of inquiry. Supreme Court Judges are willy-nilly practitioners of statecraft. The history of their minds to no inconsiderable extent is the history of the United States.
All the basic problems which Mr. Brandeis canvassed before he went on the bench are still with us, and now we see them largely in the perspective of his own analysis, twenty-odd years ago. For years he had been immersed in the problems which modern industry and finance had created for society. Probably not another lawyer had amassed experience over so wide a range and with so firm a grip on the details that matter. The intricacies of railloading, finance, insurance, public utilities, conservation of natural resources, and industrial relations yielded to him their meaning. In all these fields the impact of the concrete instance started his inquiries, but apparently it was always a craving of his mind to explore a subject until he saw it in all its social bearing.
With impressive simplicity these old papers pose and give answers to major problems with which for five years an unparalleled depression has challenged our minds and seared our consciences. The Justice’s philosophy presupposes a society in which liberty is cherished as a central good, but in which the contradiction between political liberty and ‘industrial slavery,’ or insecurity, cannot long be maintained without extinguishing political liberty. His views also presuppose a conception of a world for which no absolute is adequate. It is a world of more or less, of give and take, of live and let live. The essential postulate of Mr. Justice Brandeis, as these papers again reveal, is effective and generous opportunity for the pursuit of reason. He is not theory-ridden himself, and would not impose theories on others. For he is mindful of the limited range of human Foresight, of the wisdom of generosity, and of the generosity of wisdom.
FELIX FRANKFURTER