“Then let telegraph clerk in the country be considered a special election official. With a reasonably efficient system of intermediate clearing and tabulating, the final figures should be in the President’s hands within an hour after the closing of the polls.”
Perry nodded his head. “Yes, that is feasible, entirely feasible. You make me feel rather stupid that I couldn’t see it.”
“You needn’t feel so. I have simply described with a few minor changes some of the provisions of the original implementing act. You had adequate organization and sufficiently rapid communication in your day. All that was needed was the decision to use them. As a matter of fact the method has worked practically perfectly since it was adopted.”
“It has been used, then?”
“Three times since it was adopted. Each time the people rejected war and each time, in my opinion, history has justified them. And so the United States has not committed suicide. Yet in each case you may take it for granted that Congress would have plunged us into war. The simple fact that it called the referenda indicates that. You made another point, however, the point about the strategic necessity for a quick decision. This arrangement not only lost no time, valuable in strategy, but actually gained time.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because the first draft is mobilized the day after war is declared. That saves at least six weeks over all previous methods of conscripting an army. Furthermore adequate preparations could be made in peace time to provide fully for such an army, and any amount of training or arming that prudence indicated could be undertaken without fear that arming itself would lead us into war. It was a means whereby a peaceful, non-imperialistic, civilian-minded people could be fully prepared for any possible war.”
Perry nodded his head vigorously. “It certainly sounds like a foolproof scheme. I admire the professional features about it quite as much as the political. I’m glad you pointed them out. There were a lot of peace plans afoot in my day, but I didn’t have much use for any I ever heard about. Most of them seemed to be based on the notion that the United States being unarmed and untrained would keep us out of war. I’ve read some history, and I was convinced that it was the one sure way to get into a war.”
“I believe you are right, Perry. Of course there is one objection to the referendum plan that was made by a number of people.”
“To wit?”
“It appeared in many different forms, but it always boiled down to the same thing. A contention that the people didn’t know what was good for them and were too stupid to be trusted with so much power. It amounts to a total disbelief in the democratic form of government. Strangely enough it came from the very groups who are loudest in their protests of affection for the American form of government, and ‘Americanism’ whatever that is, if it is not democracy. The people who made this objection were schoolteachers, preachers, officers of veterans and patriotic organizations, professional demagogues et cetera. Interestingly enough the army and navy did not oppose the scheme, even though they were denied the right to vote in the referendum.”
“I’m pleased to hear that but not surprised. The professional military man is the last to believe any romantic nonsense about war, even though he may be calloused to it.”
Diana took advantage of a momentary lull to put in a word. “I don’t want to interrupt this conversation but I’m getting sleepy. Master, do you have to go back tonight?”
“No, but I want to get away first thing in the morning. Will you put me up over night?”
“Of course. Happy to have you any time. You men can stay up as long as you like and fight all the battles you wish. I’ve fixed a pot of coffee and you’ll find a tray of sandwiches by it. Nighty-night.” She patted Perry’s cheek, blew a kiss to Cathcart and glided off into the shadows at the far end of the room. Perry followed her with his eyes. Cathcart noted his gaze and spoke:
“That’s a fine girl there.”
“Hunh?—Oh! Yes, yes.”
“I suggest we emulate her example shortly. However as I must go back in the morning, let’s trot over the past eighty years as quickly as we can and bring you up to date. Give me a quick sketch of the salient features of the history of the country from the turn of the century.”
“Well, the war was over in 2004. We have just been talking about the results. Hard times commenced to settle on the country about 2006, but it took several years for it to develop into a full sized depression, partially because the Bank of the United States didn’t fold up and partially because of the premature retirement of war bonds and payment of a war bonus. But unemployment mounted steadily each year. In 2010 Wendell Holmes was elected president. Between 2011 and 2015 he instituted the economic reforms that are now the current practice. Business picked up and things ran along pretty smoothly until the late twenties, when a movement started that was known as the New Crusade, or Neo-Puritanism. It seems to have been some sort of a religious revival that eventually caused a lot of trouble. It reached its height in the middle thirties and then for about a year there were riots all over the country. President Michele straightened out that mess and some constitutional reforms grew out of it. From then until the present time I don’t recall any outstanding event. Lots of little ones of course and a lot of new inventions but nothing that appeared to change the course of history.”
“Yes, that is true. The past half century has been a period of steady development with no spectacular changes but rather a slow growth and steady social progress. We appear to have reached a period of dynamic equilibrium in which mankind can develop his arts and perfect his sciences in reasonable comfort and safety. It might surprise you to see all the change since the end of the New Crusade, but it would be impossible for me to put my finger on any one thing and say ‘Here the change occurred’. However, it is not necessary. You will gradually see for yourself now that you have the general framework. Do you have any questions about this period?”
“Yes, two things are bothering me. I don’t understand the economic reforms under Holmes, and I don’t see what this New Crusade was all about. It sounds screwy.”
Cathcart grinned. “It’s a good thing my professional research gives me some knowledge of the idiom of your period. It was screwy. But let’s take ’em in order. We discussed before the cause of economic depressions and I asked you to take on faith the idea that the only thing that caused depressions was a financial system that automatically caused a spread between goods to be bought and money to buy them, or ‘over-production’ as it was euphemistically called. I’m not going into the mathematical theory even now. You can take it up later with an economist or in several books I can recommend. But President Holmes was one of the few men to occupy the White House who had sufficient insight and mathematical ability to see the trouble, the reasons behind it, and to devise a cure. He had a powerful weapon to work with, the Bank of the United States, and he had the free intellect necessary to do what needed to be done without clouding the issue with a lot of moralistic tape. In fact he helped to formulate a realistic social ethic that justified his new departure. To begin with he saw the ‘over-production’ or, as he looked at it, under-consumption or shortage of purchasing power. He directed a staff of actuaries to supply him with approximate figures showing the percentage of under-consumption and its dollar value for the past year. Then he undertook to make up the missing purchasing power by literally giving away through the Bank of the United States the necessary amount of money. He was aware that to do so without some control over prices would result in inflated prices and a new spread between production and consumption. So he held back about half of the newly created purchasing power and used it to control prices in the following manner: All of the retailers of consumption goods in the country were invited to join in the New Economic Cycle. If a dealer joined he agreed not to raise his prices over what they were when the new regime started. On the contrary he was to sell all his goods at a ten per cent discount, and the Bank of the United States would hand him the
difference on presentation of his sales records. Then Holmes proceeded to give away through the Bank twenty-five dollars per month to anybody who would take it. Naturally business boomed. Prices didn’t go up because all of the business went to the merchants who had joined the agreement. Presently all the other merchants joined, too, in order to get in on the rush of business. Factories re-opened, labor was needed and unemployment disappeared like snow in July. The country hummed. And that is a thumbnail sketch of the present situation, Perry. No unemployment, plenty of well paid work for anybody that wants a job, and enough credit issued every month to anybody that wants it to keep body and soul together in decency.”
Perry looked bewildered. “Wait a minute. It looks fine at first glance, but where did he get the money? Not from taxes, surely, with the country already broke. And not from the private bankers. They were ruined in the war.”3
Cathcart grinned. “He got the cash money the same way we have gotten all cash money since Roosevelt put the gold back in the ground—right off the printing presses. But he didn’t have to print much of it. The checks were issued at the Bank and the merchant and a great many others had accounts at the Bank and very little cash money changed hands. The bulk of it was mere bookkeeping entries, made by the bank clerks. Holmes had implemented what the bankers had known for centuries but were barred by LaGuardia from doing—taking money out of an inkwell. What’s the matter, son? Still not satisfied?”
“Well, I don’t know. Everything you have said seems okay, but how about this? If you keep pouring money into a country indefinitely, you are bound to get inflation, fixed prices or no fixed prices.”
“You don’t pour it in. You add just enough to keep it running. Each fiscal period the additional amount is the closest possible approximation of the amount necessary to prevent a spread between consumption and production, based on the value of the nation’s inventories.”
“But why do you have to keep adding money all the time?”
“I said I would stay away from theory but I’ll give you this hint to chew over: the amount necessary to add each period is theoretically equal to the amount of savings invested as capital in the preceding period. And one more hint: Doesn’t it take more money to run the country’s industry now than it did when George Washington was President? But now let’s pass on to the New Crusade. It’s getting late.”
“OK.”
“It is difficult to assay the causes of any religious movement. There appear to be mass movements of the human spirit that we do not fully understand. Karl Marx attempted to interpret all history in terms of a rigid materialistic causation, but how does that account for the Children’s Crusade? Carlysle would have us believe that history is no more than the acts of certain great men, heroes. I find that equally hard to believe. Would George Washington have been more than a gentleman planter if England’s rule of the colonies had been more liberal? It is my belief that history is a story of the action of individuals, acting according to their characters in the environments in which they find themselves. A change either in character or in environment would change the resulting action. In the interplay of lives there are strong characters—Carlysle’s Heroes—who exert powerful influences of personality and intellect on their fellow men, and thereby shape the environment in which less dominant creatures act. If these strong characters are born in a period and are able to reach an environment in which their peculiar talents find maximum expression, they will write their names large on the pages of history. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.’
“Such a dominant character was Nehemiah Scudder, founder of the New Crusade and leader of the Neo-Puritans. He found the opportunity to use his exceptional talents in the Middle West in the third decade of this century. He was first heard of about 2030 as an itinerant evangelist of an obscure fundamentalist sect. He preached over most of the Mississippi valley, and although not prominent enough to make a splash in the news of the day, he had a reputation in his denomination for the forcefulness of his preaching, and the virulence with which he called the vengeance of the Lord upon the erring brother. But his fortunes took no great change until the death in 2023 of a Mrs. Rachel Biggs, the septuagenarian relict of a wealthy shoe manufacturer. Mrs. Biggs left four million dollars outright and that much more in trust to establish and maintain a tabernacle and television station to be used by the Reverend Scudder. We have had our radio priests and our political preachers many times before, but while most divines are tuned out at once, Brother Nehemiah was able to project his magnetic personality through the broadcaster and those who heard him once were thereafter his followers, if they were temperamentally ready for his brand of fire and brimstone. He was able, also, to choose and inspire other preachers to help him in the organization of his rapidly growing spiritual following. About 2024 he interpreted certain passages in the Apocalypse to mean that the new Jerusalem was here and now, that Armageddon was at hand, that his followers were called on to take up the fight. He organized the Knights of the New Crusade to implement him for Armageddon. This organization was modeled in nearly every respect after the Ku Klux Klan of the previous century, even to many details of ritual, uniform and constitution, which Brother Nehemiah had not bothered to change.
“In order to understand what happened subsequently and to appreciate the great power which Scudder wielded, it is necessary to understand the man and the people among whom he worked. He was a man of tremendous physical vitality and nervous energy, of middle height but powerfully built. His manner and speech suggested his backwoods origin. Deep set eyes under bony brows burned and gleamed and glared. His voice was normally low and mellow, but could scream and shout praise if need be. His mouth was large, his lips full and loose. In rest they were sensuous but in speaking they expressed a sadistic delight in his work. As to his private life, not much is known. He was married and his wife accompanied him and served him, but from time to time other female acolytes were added to his staff. The obvious conclusion is possibly not true, as there is a persistent story that the man, in spite of his great strength, was actually sexually impotent.
“A large portion of the population was ripe for such a leader. In the New World, since it was first settled, there have been two strongly dissident elements in the social body. One was anarchistic, and tolerant; the other sternly authoritarian and fanatically moralistic. It is a mistake to believe that our forefathers came to this continent in search of religious freedom. On the contrary they sought a place in which to exercise their own brand of religious totalitarianism. It is probable that the religious persecutions and moralistic intolerances practiced on dissenters by the colonists of New England were more severe than any from which they had fled. It is surprising that the Constitution contained an apparent guarantee of religious freedom. This seeming oversight may be attributed to two things, the mutual suspicion with which each colony viewed the other, and the staunch feeling for liberty felt by Thomas Jefferson who wrote the provision. It is very significant to note that the religious freedom clause was an injunction to the federal government. It did not limit the states. At one time the State of Virginia had an established church, and religious intolerance had been practiced, under the law, in every state in the Union. In addition to the puritanical factor in the American culture, there was the Roman Catholic strain, strong in some parts of the country, which supported many of the same intolerances as the Protestant churches.
“All forms of organized religion are alike in certain social respects. Each claims to be the sole custodian of the essential truth. Each claims to speak with final authority on all ethical questions. And every church has requested, demanded, or ordered the state to enforce its particular system of taboos. No church ever withdraws its claims to control absolutely by divine right the moral life of the citizens. If the church is weak, it attempts by devious means to turn its creed and discipline into law. If it is strong, it uses the rack and the thumbscrew. To a surprising degree, churches in the Unite
d States were able, under a governmental form which formally acknowledged no religion, to have placed on the statutes the individual church’s code of moral taboos, and to wrest from the state privileges and special concessions amounting to subsidy. Especially was this true of the evangelical churches in the middle west and south, but it was equally true of the Roman Church on its strongholds. It would have been equally true of any church; Holy Roller, Mohammedan, Judaism, or headhunters. It is a characteristic of all organized religion, not of a particular sect.”
Perry interrupted. “All this may have been true in 2020 but I saw no particular evidence of it in my day. There were churches of course and I went to Sunday School when I was a kid and chapel when I was a midshipman, but Lord, I didn’t notice them after I grew up. They didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother them.”
Cathcart smiled wryly. “What one has never had one doesn’t miss. It might be instructive if I were to name over a number of the laws, and customs having the effect of law, prevalent in your period whose origins may be traced directly to some powerful organized church or churches.”
“Please do.”
Cathcart ticked them off on his fingers. “Sunday closing laws; tax exemption for church property; practically all laws relating to marriage and the relations between the sexes—including laws forbidding divorce, country-wide rule permitting only monogamous marriages, laws against fornication and other taboo sexual relationships, and laws forbidding birth control; laws prohibiting the teaching of certain scientific doctrines, especially man’s kinship to other animals; all laws of censorship, for moral reasons, of the press, stage, radio, or speech; certain taboos of word and speech forms; laws prohibiting certain parts of the body being exposed to view; laws prohibiting the drinking of alcohol per se; laws against smoking cigarettes; any law which takes a paternalistic attitude toward the citizen with the purpose of ensuring his moral perfection rather than the purpose of regulating his conduct to prevent him from damaging other persons and, vice versa, prevent others from damaging him.”
For Us, the Living Page 9
