University of Virginia Library

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.