University of Virginia Library

GOVERNMENT COMMITTED TO A SOCIALISTIC POLICY.

By Congressman Driscoll of New York.

Extracts from Congressional Record, April 29, 1912.

Mr. Chairman, efforts have been made nearly all the time since I
have been in this House, by a certain gentleman and certain sections
of this country to commit the Federal Government to the construction
of the ordinary roads throughout the country. And those agitations
and efforts to commit the Federal Government to the policy of
construction of ordinary country highways have come largely from
Southern and Western States of the Union. Because these States
are large in territory and sparse in population and taxing power they
would like to have the Federal Government to build their roads.

I will not assume to discuss the constitutional aspect of this question.
I do not think it is constitutional, but I certainly believe if it
is within the limits of the Constitutional power for the Federal Government
to go into the State of New York and build common, ordinary
highways, then it is within the same power to go into the

City of Syracuse, where I live, and build asphalt pavements and
concrete sidewalks.

I analyzed a batch of bills introduced into this House for the
construction of roads several years ago. I found there were then
eighteen of them, nearly all by Democrats and the great majority
Southern Democrats, although there were some Republicans from
Kentucky who had introduced bills. I do not know but that the
late Mr. Brownlow of Tennessee was the father of these good road
bills. These bills were of two or three classes. Some provided
that the surplus in the treasury every year be divided among the
States pro rata for the construction of roads, the money to be spent
by the executive officers of the State. Those bills were introduced
by the State-rights Statesman of the House. But none of
them were fair, because they all provided that in the distribution of
these funds among the States the cities would not be counted in
the population in order to determine the proportion of the money
to be given to the several States.

Some of them provide that cities of fifty thousand should be excluded
from the count, and some provide that cities of thirty-thousand,
and some that cities as low as ten thousand, should
be excluded. Everybody who introduced a bill figured up the
cities in his own State, and estimated the proportion that his
State would receive, by the exclusion from the count of cities above
the figured population in order to give his State the greatest possible
advantage. I opposed those bills then and I have opposed them
in every possible form in which they have come up since, because
a law providing for the distribution of money according to the
population and excluding cities would exclude eighty per cent of
the population of New York State, and that State would get only
one fifth of what it would be entitled to according to its population,
because New York is a State of cities, although it is a splendid
agricultural State as well. Those bills were introduced by States-rights
Democrats who did not want, in theory at all events, the
United States of America government to send its agents into the
States and build the roads. They wanted the money delivered to
the officers of the State and the roads built by them. There was
another class of gentlemen who introduced bills providing that the
Federal Government send its agents into the several States and
construct the roads and maintain them.

States Fully Able to Build Roads.

I shall attempt to analyze in a few minutes the bills introduced
in this House, and I think there are thirty-nine such bills and resolutions
providing for the construction of such roads by the Government.
Twenty-nine have been introduced by the Democrats and
ten by the Republicans, but not one from an Eastern State, not
one from a middle State, very few from the Mississippi Valley, but
all from the great broad States of the South and West, of large areas,
long roads and sparse population and small taxing power.

The farmers in those States have been unusually prosperous during
the last ten or twenty years, and there prosperity has been increasing
from year to year. The mortgages and other encumbrances
which were on their farms a few years ago have been lifted. Many
of them have deposits in the savings banks and many others are
able to afford automobiles. I saw a statement a short time ago that
there were 76,000 automobiles owned by farmers west of the Mississippi
River. Those machines are luxuries; and usually automobiles

are considered liabilities rather than assets. Old Dobbin and
a cheap wagon would do their necessary business quite as well,
whereas those are used for comfort and pleasure, because the farmers
are so prosperous that they can enjoy the luxuries of life. But
they are not satisfied. They are jealous of the manufacturers and
business people of the East, who they think have been getting more
than their share of the country's wealth. This jealousy, envy and
antagonism have been manifestly developing during the several years
past, and while they were not in a nebulous condition they were
constantly developing and organizing for a general assault on what
they considered concentrated wealth in the East, and just now it
is in the form of a wave of national socialism, sweeping up the great
West and Southwest. It is very largely the same spirit and motive
which is back of this proposition to buy up all the express companies
of the country. They want to commit the Federal Government,
not only to build the country's roads, but to the policy of
buying up all the old junk of the many express companies of the
country—the old wagons, horses, trucks, and old stuff of every kind
—which will be of no use to the Post Office Department when once
acquired.

The Federal Government did not authorize or encourage the organization
of the express companies, and the Federal Government
is under no obligation to them in any possible way. It can develop
its parcel post or postal express if it seems wise to do so, and if
they act on that proposition the Government tends to reduce the
profits of the express companies or drive some of them out of business,
they have no cause for complaint against the Government or
against the people, whose agent the Government is, for they have
taken advantage of their opportunities and have made all the profits
their business would stand without regard to the complaints of the
people who were obliged to patronize them.

Paternalism Would Be the Outcome of Federal Aid.

What next? Why if the Government goes into the business of
postal express it will need the use of many cars in order to handle
the express business. The railroad companies are now charging the
Post Office Department very much higher rates for transporting
its mail matter than they are charging the express companies for
transporting express matter; and if the Department can not make
what the people or Congress consider satisfactory rates, will the
railroad companies? In the future the people will demand that the
Government buy its own cars and fit them up for express business,
which will be more commodious, and it will be claimed that they
will be cheaper. Then if the Government buys one car, why not
two? Why not ten? Why not the whole train? The express company
will be very large if carried out according to the conceptions
of the gentlemen who agitated this measure. This means the nationalization
of all railways and also all the ships and steamboats in
this country, and it means national socialism.

Your people from the South and West who have been agitating
for the construction of the country roads by the Federal Government
are bent on getting money into the treasury with one hand
and drawing it out with the other to build your roads, and do many
other things in the way of domestic improvements which the States
or the municipal divisions thereof should do for themselves.

The people in this country have got the idea into their heads that
with a parcel post or postal express the express wagon will come

up to the farmhouse door every morning and take the butter, eggs,
apples, berries, grapes, chicken, hens and turkeys, and that they can
put a two-cent postage stamp on the box and that the express
agent will haul them away.

That may be the next step in this comprehensive scheme of paternalism.
They think that for that stamp they will send these
things to the consumer in New York City or Chicago or St. Louis
or San Francisco. Then they expect to buy everything they want,
from a piano to a paper of pins from the catalogue department house,
and that all those things will come back and be delivered in nice
packages, and set on their front porch, all for a two-cent stamp.
They are going to eliminate the small merchant, not only in the
village but in the city. They are going to save all the expense and the
farmer is going to get all that the consumer pays, less the two-cent
stamp. That is the idea some people have now, and that is what
has been drummed into some farmers' heads by the champions of
this measure, who are putting before us this first step in socialism.
Can these dreamers expect to persuade any considerable part of
either the city or county residents that this service can be done
without being paid for by somebody; and if done by the Government,
do they not know that it will cost very much more than if
done by a private concern? Do they not know that all work done
by the Government costs at least fifty per cent more than if done
by private concerns or individuals? This service will be paid for
out of one pocket or the other; either by the people who patronize
the Government express or by the people at large in making up the
deficit in the Post Office Department, and I am one of those who believe
that a service of this kind, either in the form of parcel post
or parcel express, should be paid for by the people who patronize
it; in the transportation and distribution of merchandise the people
for whose benefit it is done should pay the necessary expense of the
service, and not shift the burden on the body of the people.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to say a word to those thirty-nine gentlemen
who prepared those thirty-nine separate bills. Some of you
who in theory are States-righters would prefer to have the money
sent to your State and there spent by your own officials. But you
can not always have your own way in this regard, and when an appropriation
is before you by which your district or State may get
some advantage it is then a condition and not a theory that confronts
you. You are human, and yield to the demands of your people at
home who are constantly looking for help from the Federal Government,
and you waived your academic views and grabbed for the
appropriation. This is your practical notion of States' rights, to
dip into the Federal treasury as deep and as often as possible.

You came together, you thirty-nine gentlemen, and made up this
composite bill. You have reduced thirty-nine to one. You think it
looks mild and harmless and that it will appeal to one State as
much as to another and thus commit the Congress to a policy of
giving Federal aid to country roads. But let us not be deceived;
when you get this bill into law on the statute books you will demand
more. You will then demand that the Federal Government
build your roads in some States, and send the money into others for
that purpose.

I have been watching the development of this Federal aid for ordinary
highways movement for some years, and I think I understand
the motive of the gentlemen who are back of it. There is a
National Good Roads Association of which some years ago Mr.

Final Contestants in Reading

MISS ATKINSON

MISS ELIZABETH RICE

KEYSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL

NEW LONDON ACADEMY

KEYSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL, WINNER
1914-1915

Batchelder was president. He was also a Granger and an officer
in that organization. He went into the State of New York, as I
was informed, and made some speeches and circulated some literature and
persuaded some New York Grangers to submit to this policy. I
made a speech here in Congress against it and the Grange of my
county sent for me to come home and explain my position. I did
so and discussed the matter before them for two or three hours and
explained to them that it was to their advantage to stay in partnership
with New York and other great cities of the empire State for
the construction of country roads in our State rather than go in
pool with North Dakota, Montana and other large States with long
roads for the construction of country roads out of the Federal treasure
and at the common expense, and I think they saw it that way.