BACK TO METHUSALEH

Mr. Clarence Mackay's fervid and interesting attack on the modern tendency to place life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under bureaucratic control" is unfortunately based upon a slight error of historical analysis. New Jersey's well advertised Blue Laws unmistakably prove that "the pursuit of happiness", especially on Sundays, was carefully regulated by the government long before the present generation of "self-seeking people" arrived on the scene. And if Mr. Mackay pushed his historical inquiries a little further he would discover that the price of bread and ale in England was wont to be fixed by town authorities.

As public policies go, that of permitting free competition is very modern. All through the Middle Ages the government of nation, church, and guild prohibited as far as possible all tendencies toward unregulated competition, and only in the first hectic days of the Industrial Revolution was it allowed full sway. Even before its full evils could become manifest it was checked by the factory and labor legislation of the early nineteenth century. When Mr. Mackay declares that "we must change our present tendencies and get back to the public policies of our fathers" he runs the danger of advocating what he proposes to abolish.

It is true, however, that in recent years the "activities and powers of the Federal bureaus" have increased; yet it is obvious that more regulation by the government has been made necessary by the flagrant abuses which sprang up during the brief period when competitive activities ran riot. The cases of the Standard Oil Company, the Chicago meat packers, and the railroads are too recent to have been quite forgotten; and they serve to prove rather pointedly that the "spur of competition", for which Mr. Mackay pleads, leads but to monopoly and its evils. His case rests upon the assumption that the private entrepreneur bitterly pressed by keen business rivals will always act for the eventual good of the public.

It is a mere sophistry to declare that "this country became great and prosperous because it was the least governed of all nations" and that Europe retrograded because of the "load of bureaucratic control". Natural resources are the keynotes to modern industrial progress--the United States had them and comparatively Europe did not. Industry in this country has now reached the point which Europe reached some time ago where it is no longer so dynamic that governmental control can prevent natural progress. And rather than argue for a return to unfettered competition, which as far as it was permitted quickly forced remedial measures to be taken, the time has come for a consideration of the most beneficial means of applying the necessary governmental control.