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Show American InKvidaaUsm A Timely Message to the American People By HERBERT HOOVER Secretary of Commerce. 4 ECONOMIC PHASES Urged field for Initiative,, and at the same time reduce many of the great wastes of over-reckless cempetltlon In production and distribution. Those who either congratulate themselves or those who fear that co-operation la an advance toward socialism need neither rejoice or worry. Oo-operatlon In Its current economic sense represents the initiative of self-interest blended with a sense of service, for nobody belongs to a co-operative who Is not striving to sell his products or services for more or striving to buy from others for less or striving to make bis income more secure. Their members are furnishing fur-nishing the capital for extension of their activities just as effectively as if they did It In corporate form and they are simply transferring the profit principle prin-ciple from Joint return to Individual return. Their only success lies where they eliminate waste either In production produc-tion or distribution and they can do neither If they destroy Individual Initiative. Initi-ative. Indeed this phase of development develop-ment of our Individualism promises to become the dominant note of Its Twentieth Twen-tieth century expansion. But It will thrive only In so far as It can construct con-struct leadership and a sense of service, serv-ice, and so long as It preserves the initiative in-itiative and safeguards the Individuality Individual-ity of Its members. THAT high and increasing standards of living and comfort should be the first of considerations in public mind and in government needs no apology. We have long since realized that the basis of an advancing civilization must be a high and growing standard of living for all the people, not for a single class; that education, food, clothing, housing, and the spreading use of what we so often terra nonessentials, are the real fertilizers of the soil from which spring the finer flowers of life. The economic development of the past fifty years has lifted the general standard of comfort far beyond the dreams of our forefathers. The only road to further advance in the standard of living is by greater Invention, greater production and better distribution of commodities and services, for by increasing their ratio to our numbers and dividing them justly we each will have more of them. i use of capital by crushing the initiative initia-tive that makes for its creation. Some discussion of the legal limitations limita-tions we have placed upon economic domination Is given later on, but It Is desirable to mention here certain potent po-tent forces In our economic life that are themselves providing their own correction to domination. The domination by arbitrary Individual Individ-ual ownership Is disappearing because the works of today are steadily growing grow-ing more and more beyond the resources re-sources of any one individual, and steadily taxation will reduce relatively excessive Individual accumulations. The number of persons In partnership through division of ownership among many stockholders Is steadily Increasingthus Increas-ingthus 100,000 to 200,000 partners In a single concern are not uncommon. The overwhelmingly largest portion of our mobile capital Is that of our banks, Insurance companies, building and loan associations, and the vast majority ma-jority of all this Is the aggregated small savings of our people. Thus large capital Is steadily becoming more and more a mobilization of the savings of the small holders the actual people themselves and Its administration becomes be-comes at once more sensitive to the moral opinions of the people In order to attract their support The directors and managers of large concerns, themselves them-selves employees of these great groups of Individual stockholders, or policyholders, policy-holders, reflect a spirit of community responsibility. , The economic system which la the result of our Individualism Is not a frozen organism. It moves rapidly In Its form of organization under the Impulse Im-pulse of Initiative of our citizens, of growing science, of larger production, and of constantly cheapening distribution. distribu-tion. A great test of the soundness of a social system must be Its ability to evolve within Itself those orderly Bhlfts in Its administration that enable It to apply the new tools of social, economic, and Intellectual progress, and to eliminate elimi-nate the malign forces that may grow in the application of these tools. When we were almost wholly an agricultural people our form of organization and administration, both In the governmental govern-mental and economic fields, could be simple. With the enormous shift In growth to Industry and commerce we have erected organisms that each generation gene-ration has denounced as Franken-steins, Franken-steins, yet the succeeding generation proves them to be controllable and useful. The growth of corporate organizations, or-ganizations, of our banking systems, of our railways, of our electrical power, of our farm co-operatives, of our trade unions, of our trade associations, and of a hundred others Indeed develops both beneficent and malign forces. The timid become frightened. But our basic social Ideas march through the new things In the end. Our demagogues, dema-gogues, of both radical and standpat The superlative value of individual-1 Ism through Its Impulse to production, Its stimulation to invention, has, so j far as I know, never been denied. Criticism of It has lain In Its wastes but more Importantly In Its failures of equitable sharing of the product. In our country these contentions are mainly main-ly over the division to each of his share of the comforts and luxuries, for none of us is either hungry or cold or without & place to lay his head and we have much besides. In less than four decades we have added electric lights, plumbing, telephones, gramophones, gramo-phones, automobiles, and what not in wide diffusion to our standards of living. liv-ing. Each In turn began as a luxury, each in turn has become so commonplace common-place that seventy or eighty per cent of our people participate In them. To all practical souls there is little use In quarreling over the share of each of us until ne have something to divide. So long as we maintain our individualism we will have Increasing quantities to share and we shall have time and leisure and taxes with which to fight out proper sharing of the "surplus." "sur-plus." The Income tax returns show that this surplus Is a minor part of our total production after taxes are paid. Some of this "surplus" must be set aside for rewards to saving, or stimulation stimula-tion of proper effort to skill, to leadership leader-ship and Invention therefore the dispute dis-pute Is In reality over much less than the total of such "surplus." While there should be no minimizing of a certain fringe of Injustices In sharing the results re-sults of production or In the wasteful us made by some of their share, yet there Is vnutly wider field for gulns to all of us through cheapening the costs of production and distribution through the eliminating of their wastes, from Increasing the volume of product by each and every one doing his utmost, than will ever come to us even If we can think out a method of abstract Justice In sharing which did not stifle production of the total product It is a certainty we are confronted with a population In such numbers as can only exist by production attuned to a pitch In which the slightest reduction reduc-tion of the impulse to produce will at once create misery and want. If we throttle the fundamental Impulses of man our production will decay.' The world In this hour Is witnessing the most overshadowing tragedy of ten centuries in the heart-breaking llfe-and-death struggle with starvation by a nation with a hundred and fifty mil- gngues, or Dotn radical ana stanapai breed, thrive on demands for the destruction de-struction of one or another of these organizations as the only solution for their defects, yet progress requires only a guardianship of the vital principles princi-ples of our Individualism with Its safeguard safe-guard of true equality of opportunity In them. (TO BE CONTINUED.) (Copyright 1923, by Doubleday. Pag-e A Co. Published by arrangement with Western Newspaper Union.) Large masses of capital can only find their market for service or production produc-tion to great numbers of the same kind of people that they employ and they must, therefore, maintain confidence confi-dence In their public responsibilities In order to retain their customers. In times when the products of manufacture manufac-ture were mostly luxuries to the average aver-age of the people, the condition of their employees was of no such interest inter-est to their customers as when they cater to employees In general. Of this latter, no greater proofs need exist ex-ist than the efforts of many large concerns con-cerns directly dependent upon public good will to restrain prices In scarcity and the very general desire to yield a measure of service with the goods sold. Another phase of this same development de-velopment In administration of capital Is the growth of a sort of Institutional sense In many large business enterprises. enter-prises. The encouragement of solidarity solidar-ity In ail grades of their employees In the common service and common success, suc-cess, the sense of mutuality with the prosperity of the community are both vitul developments In Individualism. lions of people. In Russia under the new tyranny a group, In pursuit of social so-cial theories, have destroyed the primary pri-mary self-interest Impulse of the Individual Indi-vidual to production. Although socialism in s nation-wide application has now proved itself with rivers of blood and inconceivable misery mis-ery to be an economic and spiritual fallacy fal-lacy and has wrecked itself finally upon up-on the rocks of destroyed production and moral degeneracy, I believe it to have been necessary for the world to have had this demonstration. Great theoretic and emotional Ideas have arisen before In the world's history and have In more than mere material bankruptcy bank-ruptcy deluged the world with fearful losses of life. A purely philosophical view might be that In the long run humanity hu-manity has to try every way, even precipices, In finding the road to bet-rniont There has been In the last thirty years an extraordinary growth of organizations or-ganizations for advancement of Ideas In the community for mutual co-operation and economic objectives the chambers of emmerce, trade associations, associa-tions, labor unions, bankers, farmers, propaganda associations, and what not. These are Indeed varluble mixtures of altruism and self-interest. Nevertheless Neverthe-less in these groups the Individual finds an opportunity for self-expression and participation In the molding of Ideas, a field for training and the stepping tones for leadership. The number of leaders In local and national life whose opportunity to service and leadership came through But those are utterly wrong who say that Individualism has as Its only end the acquisition and preservation of private pri-vate property the selfish snatching and hoarding of the common product. Our American individualism, Indeed, Is only In part an economic creed. It alms to provide opportunity for self-expression, self-expression, not merely economically, but spiritually as well. Private property prop-erty Is not a fetich In America. The crushing of the liquor trade without a cent of compensation, with scarcely even a discussion of It, does not bear out the notion that we give property rights any headway over human rights. Our development of Individualism these associations has become now of more Importance than those through the direct lines of political and religious reli-gious organisation. At times these groups come Into sharp conflict and often enough charge each other vlth crimes against public Interest. They do contain faults; If thpy develop into warring interests, if they dominate legislators and Intimidate Intimi-date public ofllcluls, If they are to be a new setting of tyranny, then they will destroy the foundation of Individualism. Individual-ism. Our government will then drift Into the havls of timorous mediocrities mediocri-ties dominated by groups until we shall become a syndicalist ration pji a gigantic sca'e. On the other hand, each group it a realization of greater mutuality of Interest, each contains some eleinei't of public service and each Is a sclreol of public resjHmslblll- shows an increasing tendency to regard right of property not us an object In Itself, but in the light of a useful and necessary Instrument In stimulation of Initiative to the Individual; not oidy stimulation to him that he may gain personal comfort, security In life, protection pro-tection to his family, but also because Individual accumulation hihI ownership Is a bawls of selection to leadership In administration of the tools of industry indus-try and commerce. It Is where dominant domi-nant private property Is usM inhlcd In the hands of the groups who control the Mate that the Individual begins to feel capital as un oppressor. Our American demand for equality of opportunity op-portunity Is a constant militant check upon capital becoming a thing to be feared. Out of fear we sometimes even go too far and stlrle the reproductive ty. In the main, the same forces that permeate the nation at large eventually permeate these groups. The sense of service, a growing sense of responsibility, responsi-bility, and the sense of constructive opposition to domination, constantly recall in them their responsibilities as well us their privileges. In the end, no group can dominate the nation and a few successes In Imposing the will of any group Is Its sure death warrant. Today business organization Is moving mov-ing strongly toward co-operation. There are In tl.it co-operative great hopes that we ran even gni iu Individuality, equulrty of opportunity, and an cu- |