X. On Doing Something About It
CHAPTER X
On Doing Something About It
A YOUNG FELLOW has to have a “cause.” Utopianism is as natural a disease for the boy of college age as was measles in his childhood. My malady was anarchism. I don’t know whether I took to Kropotkin and Prudhon because they furnished me with arguments with which to refute the socialists on the campus or because they wrote much about individualism, which seems to be ingrained in my make-up.
XI. Isolationism
CHAPTER XI
Isolationism
WHEN WORLD WAR I broke out in 1914, the Chicago Tribune announced with considerable pride that it was sending a parcel of reporters to Europe to “cover” the battles and the capitals of the warring nations. This was something new in American journalism. What had constituted foreign news previously were reports of what royal families were doing, affairs in which peeresses were involved, or a “passion” murder. Most of these stories were taken bodily from the European press.
XII. The Alchemy Of Adjustment
CHAPTER XII
The Alchemy of Adjustment
THE ALACRITY with which the American people took to the multitude of interventions imposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, known collectively as The New Deal, simply emphasized the capacity of the human being to adjust himself to any conditions put upon him. So long as these conditions permit him to live. Within a year after he had got into office Mr.
XIII. A Problem In Psychology
CHAPTER XIII
A Problem in Psychology
IN A PREVIOUS CHAPTER I made some mention of the mentality of the politician. Because this subject has always fascinated me, I beg leave to expand upon it, in a speculative way. I have never had the opportunity or the inclination to make an exhaustive study of the mind of the politician, but believe this to be a promising subject for some enterprising psychologist. It might throw some light on the mysteries of political science.
XIV. Albert Jay Nock
CHAPTER XIV
Albert Jay Nock
IN NEW YORK, in the fall of 1936, I happened in one night at the Players Club. As I sat at a table with a couple of men, I noticed a dignified, elderly gentleman playing pool. He was very deliberate—painfully so to his opponent—in the selection of his shots, and quite accurate, too. At the end of the game he came over to our table, on request, and I was introduced to Albert Jay Nock.
XV. Flight To Russia
CHAPTER XV
Flight to Russia
IN THE INTEREST of science fiction, I offer herewith, free gratis, and with no strings attached, the makings of a novel, one that could well make the best seller list and might even be a good book. The fictioneer would have to bring to my idea a reasonable knowledge of the social, rather than the natural, sciences; that is, he must know something about economics, political science and what makes the human tick. If he can dip his imaginative brush into these pigments he could come up with a canvas rivaling Orwell’s famous “1984.”
XVI. I Watch Westerns
CHAPTER XVI
I Watch Westerns
MY WIFE AVERRED that there must be a touch of sadism in my unconscious; otherwise, why should I be watching those “shooting pictures” as she called them. She may have been right, because when she presumed to turn the dial when a western was on the screen I felt an inclination to commit mayhem.
XVII. Don’T Buy Government Bonds
CHAPTER XVII
Don’t Buy Government Bonds
IN 1800 the United States Treasury owed $83 million. The population was then three million. Every baby born that year was loaded down with a debt-burden of about $28; if the interest rate was 6%, the new-born citizen could look forward to paying a service charge on the national debt of $1.68 per year. Today the debt-load of the nation comes to well over $290 billion, and the population is, in round figures, 180 million.
XVIII. St. Paul And The Communists
CHAPTER XVIII
St. Paul and the Communists
The dogma that the State or government is the embodiment of all that is good and beneficial and that the individuals are wretched underlings, intent on inflicting harm on one another and badly in need of a guardian, is almost unchallenged. It is taboo to question it in the slightest way. He who proclaims the goodness of the State and the infallibility of its priests, the bureaucrats, is considered an impartial student of the social sciences. All those raising objections are branded as biased and narrow-minded.
XIX. The Radical Rich
CHAPTER XIX
The Radical Rich
THERE WAS A TIME, in these United States, when a candidate for public office could qualify with the electorate only by fixing his birthplace in or near the “log cabin.” He may have acquired a competence, or even a fortune, since then, but it was in the tradition that he must have been born of poor parents and made his way up the ladder by sheer ability, self-reliance and perseverance in the face of hardship.
