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No. 94 "Time To Stop" Speech of Dr. Neil Carothers, Director, College of Business Administration, Lehigh University at the American Liberty League Dinner, January 25, 1936. American Liberty League. 400dpi TIFF G4 page images Digital Library Services, University of Kentucky Libraries Lexington, Kentucky Am_Lib_Leag_94 These pages may freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. No. 94 "Time To Stop" Speech of Dr. Neil Carothers, Director, College of Business Administration, Lehigh University at the American Liberty League Dinner, January 25, 1936. American Liberty League. American Liberty League. Washington, D.C. 1936. This electronic text file was created by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). No corrections have been made to the OCR-ed text and no editing has been done to the content of the original document. Encoding has been done through an automated process using the recommendations for Level 1 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Digital page images are linked to the text file. I AN INVITATION TO JOIN THE AMERICAN LIBERTY LEAGUE We extend to every American citizen who believes in the fundamental principles which gave birth to the Constitution of the United States an invitation to become a member of the American Liberty League. You may indicate your acceptance of this invitation the necessary information as to your name m the enrollment blank below and mailing «n Liberty League, National Press Building, D. C. 10 fees or dues. If you are willing and able to give monetary help for the League's support your contribution will be appreciated, as our activities are supported entirely by the voluntary gifts of our members. by filling ii and address it to Ameri Washington There are ENROLLMENT BLANK Date_ I favor the principles and purposes of the American Liberty League and request that I be enrolled as a j regular 1 Contributing Signature_ • member. County *As a contributing member I desire to give $_ to help support the activities of the League: Cash herewith_ Installments as follows: _ ★ ★ Time To Stop ★ ★ ★ Speech of DR. NEIL CAROTHERS Director, College of Business Administration, Lehigh University and Member, National Advisory Council of the American Liberty League American Liberty League Dinner Washington, D. C. January 25, 1936 AMERICAN LIBERTY LEAGUE National Headquarters NATIONAL PRESS BUILDING WASHINGTON, D. C. Document No. 94 Time To Stop HEN you have finished with thit pamphlet please pass it on to some friend or acquaintance who might be interested, calling his attention to the membership blank on page 12, ★ I FACE you tonight with an acute consciousness of the fact that I am the only economist on your program. A vain man might construe that to mean that when he had finished there would be nothing more to be said about our economic situation. But a wiser man would construe it to mean that in these distressful days one economist is all any audience can stand. With that gloomy interpretation before me it behooves me to be brief. It also behooves me to confine myself to economics. Of my distinguished colleagues on this program one is a great jurist, Judge Dawson. I shall, therefore, like other men beset by emergency, make every effort to evade the Constitution. Another of my distinguished colleagues is a great statesman, the Hon. Alfred E. Smith. I shall, therefore, try to evade the political issue, even though I am, like other citizens, becoming dimly conscious of the fact that there is to be an election in 1936. But before I undertake to discuss briefly our economic situation, I want to say a word about the Liberty League. It is not an easy thing to oppose one's government. It is not an agreeable task to oppose intrenched power, when that intrenched power is armed with every instrument of propaganda, is hypocritically callous to its own mistakes, is arrogantly hostile to aU criticism, and is savagely determined to silence all opposition. The opponents of such intrenched power must expect to endure the imputation of false motives and the defamation of personal character. Any opposition to intrenched power appears to be in any language, Italian, German, Russian, or even English, a gang. The opposition was a gang when it was merely a tiny handful of thoughtful men, with courage enough to protest unwise measures. In the beginning it was a slender David, armed only with truth, opposing a mighty Goliath, intoxicated with power and armed with control of the people's money. And David was a gang. The opposition is still a gang when it now includes an overwhelming majority of the editorial wisdom of the country, an overwhelming majority of economic understanding, an overwhelming majority of business men, large and small, the judgment of the Supreme Court, and, according to that interesting journal the Literary Digest, some 63 per cent of the population as a whole, even including the twenty odd millions receiving government largess in salaries or in relief. It is getting to he quite a gang. .MEN do not lightly undertake to oppose such a government. They must be moved by a strong conviction that their cause is just. The Liberty League was called into being by such a conviction. Three years ago the whole nation, in the fell grip of a prolonged and tragic depression, looked with universal hope toward a new government. No government of this nation ever had greater responsibilities or greater opportunities. The first measures of this new government were measures of confiscation and breach of obligation, measures of destruction of vital institutions, measures of hysterical interference with the processes of recovery from depression. My profession frowns upon public participation in controversial issues. I deplored the prospect of such participation. But I deplored even more governmental policies that retarded recovery and sapped away at the foundations of the economic life of the people. And I saw in the Liberty League the one organization with the courage, the independence, the resources, and the nonpartisan character essential to combat these unsound policies. It HAS been charged that the Liberty League is interested in property. It is a salutary thing if this is so. Property and human welfare are 4 synonymous things. It is well for the nation that somebody should be concerned about property when we have a government whose policies for three years have been directed toward its destruction. As a student of history I have observed that when people are contemptuous of property, it is always the property of other people. And in all history there are none so recklessly contemptuous of property as those who are supported by taxes on the property of others and contribute nothing to its production. It has been charged that the League represents big business. The charge is untrue, but if it were true it would not reflect on the League. In our economic system business is the source of the entire living of the people, of the wages of labor, of the very food, clothing, and shelter of the nation. On the orderly and successful operation of business there depend the continuance of our civilization and the existence of our government. It is high time that men who live soft lives from taxation on business cease their attacks on the institutions that make our civilization possible. It has been charged that the League is indifferent to the small business man. I hesitate to speak ill of the dead, but I cannot avoid reference to the N.R.A. That late-lamented guarantee of a new era of universal prosperity reminds me of the definition of a fugue, as a complicated musical performance in which the theme keeps coming in and the audience keeps going out. The NRA. would have destroyed the small merchant and the small manufacturer. When the Liberty League fought that raucous bird of ill-omen, the Blue Eagle, it was fighting for the little man in business. It was not the Liberty League that put a New Jersey pants-presser in jail. It HAS been charged that the League is hostile to labor. I have been an impartial critic of the League's stand on economic issues, and I know no instance where its position has been against the interests of American labor. It has fought S and will no doubt continue to fight selfish minorities of labor attempting to force a pliant government to pass some such suicidal measure as the thirty-hour week. In opposing such measures the League is fighting the cause of the real forgotten men and women of this nation, the unorganized and politically helpless millions for whom this government has done absolutely nothing in three years, the domestic servants in the homes, the farm laborers in the fields, and the workers in professional lines. In its relentless fight against debasement of the currency the League has been the friend of all labor, more especially of those helpless victims of inflation, the forty million working people whose life-savings are in small savings accounts and small life-insurance policies. And in its unceasing war on the A.A.A. the Liberty League has been fighting a battle for the standard of living of the American people. It has been charged that the League is a partisan organization fighting the administration. As I see the matter, the League is not fighting men hut measures. It has not opposed all the measures of the present administration. It has opposed only those that are unsound. If it has happened, unhappily, that nearly all these measures have been unsound, that does not reflect on the League. On the contrary. So I esteem it a privilege tonight to appear before you at this simple, modest, nonpartisan $5 dinner, which might appropriately be called a tax-payers' dinner. And as an economist I bring you a note of cheer, tempered by a word of warning. Recovery is still on the way. Retarded by the N.R.A., obstructed by the A.A.A., discouraged by the attacks on investment, burdened by the weight of taxation, frightened by the debasement of the currency, and terrorized by the squandering of public money, recovery none the less grows apace, inevitably and relentlessly, because of the laws of economics. It has been retarded by government action, but it has not been stopped. 6 For three years we have had government by experiment, the nation's economic life at the mercy of a motley crew of ever shifting, itinerant advisers, whose movements resemble those of people going through a hotel revolving-door. For three years the people have had to read the papers every morning to find out whether hitchhiking back-seat drivers were guiding the car of state to the right side of the road or to the left, the machine careening from one side of the road to the other. Three years ago the visionary plans of these amateur planners were forced upon the country under the pretext of emergency. And three years later there is still an emergency. There is a new emergency every time the Supreme Court reports to the people. And as these plans have failed, one after another, the only justification offered for them has been that of the man who was asked why he jumped through the plate-glass window and replied that it looked like a good idea at the time. J 1 IS grim testimony to the strength of our economic system and the truth of economic law that recovery has come despite these experiments. Recovery of business began with the collapse of N.RA. Now that the A.A.A. has collapsed, we may expect prosperity in agriculture. But even now recovery is jeopardized by certain conditions that may make it feverish or morbid or partial. We have no recognizable or identifiable money system. What we have is an indescribable hash of sterile gold, dishonored silver, and irredeemable paper. Our banks are gorged to suffocation with government bonds. Our Treasury is burdened by an endless series of ever-mounting deficits. Our fiscal policy reminds one of the Irish policeman's testimony at the inquest that the driver "approached the coroner at sivinty miles an hour." Wolfish minorities bent on extorting special privilege from a supine government menace the future. Those ill-favored quintuplets, paper-money inflation, the inflationary bonus, the thirty-hour 7 week, the Townsend plan, and the Douglas social credit scheme, are the natural and inevitable offspring of a government that for three years has been willing to try anything once. But we shall survive all these menaces. It is not too late to stop. We are not yet doomed to go over the dam. The people are growing weary of economic miracles that do not work. A long time ago that brilliant satirist, Dean Swift, described a man as having spent eight years in a project to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Three years is enough for the American people. They will not long support a government, whatever its objectives, when its only program is experiment, its only policy is expediency, and its only philosophy is opportunism. Fundamentally the American people realize that a promise is something to be kept, that a contract is something to be fulfilled, that an obligation is something to be honored. IN COMMON with all decent citizens I want to see a better life for the American people. I want to see a better living for the ordinary citizen, a better opportunity for the ordinary man. I want to see a reduction in hard labor and in privation. I want to see an end to poverty and insecurity in this land. I do not believe that these wistful ideals of man's hopes through the ages are unattainable. If I thought that these objectives would be promoted by debasing the currency or sharing the wealth or passing the Townsend lunacy, I should face you tonight and urge them upon you with the fervor of an Elmer Thomas or a Dr. Town-send. But I know that these precious objectives of a better life in America can be attained only by larger production and increased investment and greater saving and hard work and frugal living and intelligent government. They cannot be attained by waste and debasement and destruction and scarcity. They cannot be attained by economic juggling and industrial terrorism and class legislation. They cannot be promoted by policies that discourage 8 saving and stifle enterprise and restrict production and waste capital. They cannot be promoted by policies that undermine independence and self-reliance and self-respect in the people. Such policies were old in history in the days of the bread-and-circuses rulers of Rome. In aU history such policies have led to decay, to revolution, or to dictatorships. I do not believe that the American people will suffer a continuance of such policies. PAMPHLETS AVAILABLE £J0PIES of the following pamphlets and other League literature may he obtained upon application to the League's national headquarters. Statement of Principles and Purposes American Liberty Leagne Its Platform The $4,880,000,000 Emergency Relief Appropriation Act The Bonus Inflation The Thirty Hour Week Bill The Holding Company Bill The Bituminous Coal Bill Price Control The Labor Relations Bill The Farmers* Home Bill The TVA Amendments The Supreme Court and the New Deal The Revised AAA Amendments The President's Tax Program Expanding Bureaucracy Lawmaking by Executive Order New Deal Laws in Federal Courts Potato Control Consumers and the AAA Budget Prospects Dangerous Experimentation Economic Planning Mistaken But Not New Work Relief The AAA and Our Form of Government Alternatives to the American Form of Government A Program for Congress The 1937 Budget Professors and the New Deal The President Wants More Power (leaflet) The National Labor Relations Act Summary of Conclusions from Report of the National Latoyers Committee Straws Which Tell An Open Letter to the President By Dr. Neil Carothers How to Meet the Issue Speech by W* E. Borah The Duty of the Church to the Social Order Speech by S. Wells Utley The American Bar The Trustee of American Institutions Speech by Albert C. Ritchie PAMPHLETS AVAILABLE (continued) Two Amazing Years Speech by Nicholas Roosevelt Legislation By Coercion or Constitution Speech by Jouett Shouse The Impediment of Democracy Speech by Fitzgerald Hall The Spirit of Americanism Speech by William H. Ellis The Test of Citizenship Speech by Dean Carl W. Ackerman Today's Lessons for Tomorrow Speech by Captain William H. Stayton "Breathing Spells" Speech by Jouett Shouse The Duty of the Lawyer in the Present Crisis Speech by James M. Beck The Constitution and the Supreme Court Speech by Borden Burr The Economic Necessity in the Southern States for a Return to the Constitution Speech by Forney Johnston The National Lawyers Committee of the American Liberty League Speech by Ethan A. H. Shepley Our Growing National Debt and Inflation Speech by Dr. E. W. Kemmerer Inflation is Bad Business Speech by Dr. Neil Carothers The Real Significance of the Constitutional Issue Speech by R. E. Desvernine Arousing Class Prejudices Speech by Jouett Shouse The Fallacies and Dangers of the Townsend Plan Speech by Dr. Walter E. Spahr What of 1936? Speech by James P. Warburg Americanism at the Crossroads Speech by R. £. Desvernine The Constitution and the New Deal Speech by James M. Carson The American Constitution Whose Heritage? Speech by Frederick H. St inch field The American Form of Government Let Us Preserve It Speech by Albert C. Ritchie The Redistribution of Power Speech by John W. Davis