Wednesday, October 9, 1963
The Future For America: Uncomfortable Change
. Sti;
“To Grow More Civilized” is
the last of thde lectures la tho
Oivcr Wendell Holmes series de
livered this year at the Univer
sity, Oct. 1-3. Dr. Sutherland is
Bussey Professor of Law at Har
vard University.
BjT ARTHUR E. SUTHERLAND
A peculiar virtue of our politi
cal tradition is absence of any ...
felt necessity to give it a doc
trinal name. In this respect we ,
live fortunately apart from a
world overdominated by political
theories. Wisely, and to our
good fortune, we ascribe our
selves only an “American way
of life” without stopping to ana
lyze its elements. On balance
this has been a good way of life;
it has had its sorry parts, but
it has had its splendors; it gives
us as good hope for a future as
man in his uncertain existence
may reasonably require of fate.
To a surprising extent we have
deferred ourselves against the
tyranny of labels. On the con
trary, we make political and so
cial changes quite
ly, continuing to call new insti
tutions by the old familiar names
we used for the discarded institu
tions of the past, so saving our
i (selves the discomfort of ac
knowledged change, and so the
necessity of apology for it.
Indeed we are more afraid of
labels than we are of substance.
In that remarkable paper, “Law
and the Court" which Holmes
read at a dinner of the Harvard
Law School Association in 1913,
he spoke of a vague terror which
had gone over the earth when
the word socialism began to be
heard around 1893. I can remem
ber hearing of socialism about
1913 when I was a boy. I recall
mention of this frightening sys
tem by elders in my native west
ern New York; it carried vague
overtones of foreigners with
strangely cut beards, consort
ing with wcmen who smoked
cigarettes. Os its economic sub
tance I had no idea, nor I think,
had many of the adult members
of that profoundly conservative
society. Our doctrinal ignorance
Pepsi Cola-Bottling Co.
of DURHAM
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Special Notice To
1
I
I
University Employees.
I
&
•
Hospital Care Association’s Blue Cross-Blue Shield group for University
Employees will be reopened for the addition of new members on Thursday,
October 10. If your family is not protected by Blue Cross-Blue Shield, don’t
miss this opportunity to get Comprehensive hospital and medical care at
group rates on a payroll deduction basis.
For further information without obligation see our representative, Mr. John f
Chapman
Thirsday, October 10
0:30 A.M.-1 P.M.; 2 PJM P.M.
YMCA LOBBY
> J
• feS HOSPITAL CARE ASSOCIATION
“ DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
hut c«oss nut smtut
was a good thing for us; it saved
us a lot of trouble. I remember,
four decades later, a friend of
mine, who was Supervisor of
one of the hill towns in western
New York. Except in its great
cities, the State of New York is
basically governed by such
Townships in which the Super
visor is the principal of
ficer. Not only is he the ad
ministrator of the town but he
is the town's representative in
the county legislature, known as
the Ooard of Supervisors. My old
friend, the Supervisor, was one
of the most useful public officers
I have ever known. He conduct
ed most governmental af'airs of
about six thousand people from
an office in the front parlor of
his farm house, with equipment
consisting of a steel filing cab
inet and an old fashioned tele
phone. Like almost all human
beings, he was profoundly con
servative, in that he wished to
see continued the formulas of
life to which he was personally
accustomed. He was willing to
change only those things which,
of course, ought to be changed.
He was also a man of somewhat
local views. I remember one
time his denouncing to me the
intrusion into our county of what
he described as “foreign corpo
rations.” Our conversation went
on for quite a while before I real
ized that he was talking about
business entities having their
principal oFiee outside the boun
daries of the County!
For generations our County’s
principal medical facility had
been its Memorial Hospital. This
had been founded generations
earlier; for its original estab
lishment and subsequent support
we were indebted to the generos
ity of charitably-minded old lad
ies, who died leaving their com
fortable estates to the hospital,
end to the bounty of local bus
inessmen. who came to the end
of long lives in which they had
risen if not to the yank of cap
tains of industry, perhaps at any
rate, to very honorable grades
as second lieutenants. By the
time I am talking about, in the
1940’5, the Memorial Hospital
had fallen on sad days. Inheri
tance taxation had been unkind
to the settled fortunes or our
county families. The old ladies
were no longer as well to do as
they used to be. Graduated in
come tax had somewhat impair
ed the capability of our local
magnates to accumulate funds
for the hospital. The many other
services required for unfortunate
people, not only from govern
ment but from multiplying pri
vate organizations, competed
severely for the shrinking funds
of the well-to-do. The hosoital
looked a little shabby. Its build
ings dated from the 1890’s. The
diet kitchens were archaic. The
radiological equipment was suit
ed to a museum of science; and
the roof of the nurses’ cottage
had begun to leak. My friend,
the Supervisor, who was fully
aware of the needs of people in
our part of the State, and of the
difficulty and expense of look
ing to distant large cities for
hospital services, gladly took ov
er the chairmanship of e com
mittee of the Board of Supervis
ors charged with matters of pub
lic health.
He showed energy and imagi
nation .on behalf-of the hospital.
If I had expostulated with him,
quoting Herbert Spencer’s* super
cilious chapter about the limits
on the duty of the state to adopt
measures for protecting the health
of its subjects, he would quite
rightly have said I was heart
less and unrealistic. My friend’s
County Board, under his active
leadership, appropriated County
funds and rebuilt a better and
brighter hospital. He brought in
new equipment and subsidized
new doctors with public funds.
He saw to it that people in need
of health services, not only in
his town and our County, but in
adjacent counties for whom the
Memorial Hospital was most
convenient, had medical services
when they needed them, and had
those services whether or not
they had means to pay.
Now this was in a time when
the British National Health Serv
ices were coming under heavy
criticism in the papers of our
country. England had a Labour
Government which the Conserva
tives always took pains to de
nominate the “socialistic” govern
ment. Something called “social
ized medicine” was going on
there at e great rate. I do not
think my friend the Supervisor
was widely read in philosophy of
government, or in the comparative
political theory of England and
the United States. I do not think
he knew very much about what
was going on in England. But I
am quite sure he viewed what
ever it was with decided aver
sion. If I had suggested to him
in our rock-ribbed County he was
a leader in the substitution of
public medicine for private en
terprise; that he was indeed in
troducing socialistic practices in
to our polity, which had long
been and continued to be dis
tinguished for fidelity to quite
opposite political slogans, I am
sure he would have reacted with
his infrequent and selective pro
fanity and ended up calling me
a certain kind of f ool. And. on
the whole, I think that my friend
in this would have been entirely
correct.
In our time, it has become
fashionable, even among those
who speak well of Holmes' gen
eral philosophy, to say that his
views of economics were back
ward and naive. Here I discreet
ly express no judgment of these
criticisms, for the vocabulary
and the quantitative mathematics
of the economic science is quite
beyond my limited competence.
Nevertheless, I am impressed
with the wisdom of some things
Holmes said, again in “The Law
and the Court” in 1913.
"If I may ride a hobby for
an instant, 1 should say we
need to think things instead of
words to drop ownership,
money, etc., and to think of the
THE CHAPEL HILL WEEKLY
stream of products; of wheat
and cloth and railway travel.
When we do, it is obvious that
the many consume them; that
they now as truly have sub
stantially all there is, as if the
* title were in the United States;
that the great body of property
is socially administered now,
and that the function of pri
vate ownership is to divine in
advance the equilibrium of so
cial desires which socialism
equally would have to divine,
but which, under the illusion of
self-seeking, is more poignantly
and shrewdly foreseen.”
In our country we have achiev
ed a political balance, a balance
between that which is privately
done and that which is govem
mentally done, a balance which
we perpetually readjust. Indeed
were it not for the fact that we
accept the existence of a con
trast between what we call pub
lic and what we call private
without thinking too much about
it, the difference would be some
what puzzling. We call General
Motors Corporation an example
of greatly successful private en
terprise private, I suppose,
because the whole public has
no vote in who shall be its com
mander-m-chief and the com
manders of its Corps and its Di
visions. To be sure many, many
thousands of our people get some
voice, but one wonders whether
they have a voice any more ef
fective in selecting, say, the
Undersecretary of State or the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
The function that General Mo
tors performs, in everything but
our habitual vocabulary, is sure
ly a public one. The great ag
glomerates of people and ma
chines which make up our cities
could not exist without the bright
colored automotive corpuscles
that circulate in what are right
ly called arteries, bringing the
means of existence, both animate
and inanimate, to every part,
just as red and white corpuscles
flow through the arteries of
man, bringing the substances of
life to every extremity. And Gen
eral Motors Corporation in many
respects comes under rather in
timate governmental supervision,
sometimes, I am sure, to the
great irritation of its officers.
Since 1937 there has been no
doubt of the Constitutional com
petence of Congress to regulate
the relation between General Mo
tors and its employees, and the
government does so in rather
surprising detail. The Congress
has recently enacted a statute
governing the relations between
motor manufacturers and their
local dealers, who are nominally
independent contractors, but who,
viewed realistically, have a much
more subordinate relationship
to the whole entity. The federal
government exercises a vigilant
relationship to the whole entity.
The federal government exercis
es a vigilant supervision over
the pricing policies of great man
ufacturers like General Motors,
and the reports of the Supreme
Court frequently contain accounts
of litigation in which favoritism
in pricing is penalized. Govern
mental vigilance is not limited
to the relation between General
Motors and its employees, its
dealers, and its customers; gov
ernment vigilantly oversees any
arrangements between General
Motors and other great corpora
tions. The Supreme Court of the
United States has recently dem
onstrated that under the Anti-
Trust Laws there has grown an
unduly close relation achieved
by stock ownership between Gen
eral Motors and DuPont and has
made a rather drastic decree
about it. At any rate, one says
to oneself, General Motors is in
business for private profit; pri
vate people get its earnings.
Well, so it is and so they do; ex
cept that a very large share
of whatever profits General Mo
tors may make is taken by the
government which thus in a true
sense becomes not only a super
visor but a sort of a partner in
the enterprise: nor are General
Motors’ profits solely shared by
virtue of taxes imposed on the
corporation itself, for the govern
ment also demonstrates its par
ticipation in this profitmaking
venture by taking a share in the
avails of its products as they
come to the hands of its officers
and employees through pay-
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checks, and to its stockholders
in the form of dividends.
That is to say, something epit
omizing the maximum of private
enterprise under the terminology
to which we have comfortably
accustomed ourselves takes on, if
we chose to look at it with a
hard eye, a good deal of public
coloration.
Furthermore, enterprises ad
mittedly public have begun to be
have more and more like those
traditionally private. Hie State
of New York is a large public
corporation; but it engages in
the mineral water business and
on its products pays taxes to
United States of America, like
any other manufacturer. Through
her largest city, that State owns
and operates one of the busiest
railroad carriers of passengers
in the world. She builds and rents
dwellings. She lends money. She
sells water, electricity, and gas.
She runs colleges, uni
versities, hospitals, a radio
broadcasting station. Is the Gid
eon Putnam Hotel on the Sara
toga Springs Reservation an ex
ample of public or private en
terprise? Perhaps the answer is
that the political theory of that
hotel is not very important to
us. We do not give it thou^it.
I suppose that the dominant
characteristics of life in today’s
America are its immensely in
creased population gathered in
comparatively small areas; the
steadily increasing complication
of the inanimate and human ma
chinery required to keep this
greet City-State going; and the
continual increase in the degree
of political control of all aspects
of this great intricate mechan
ism. Another way to say the
same thing is that not only in
the United States but all over
the world, men have suddenly
become conscious of their collec
tive ability to influence, by a
union of voices and demands,
their material fates. We saw this
abundantly demonstrated in the
peace-time period of the 1930’5;
we have seen it more abundantly
demonstrated anew in the cur
iously intermingled war-and
peace that has been with us ev
er since.
So for the changes of the past
century 1863 to 1963. What
may one reasonably foresee in
,“ mm y |lL |L M I
“THIS NEW CONCRETE ROAD
WILL LAST A LIFETIME"
Driving one of today’s new concrete roads is a real
experience in comfort. <
Smooth, steady, sure-footed are the words to
describe your ride. And you’ll keep on getting this
wonderful ride year after year. Concrete is solid
clear through— strong! And concrete gains strength
with age—as much as 20% in the first 5 years alone.
Concrete’s ability to serve
traffic is unequaled. This was
confirmed in the recent Na
tional Road Test, sponsored
America as it will come to be
the country of our great-grand
ch’ldren, three generations
hence? A continued rapid in
crease in population, in tech
nology and in our dependence on
it for existence, in the volume
and intimacy of government
all of these things seem clearly
indicated for the future by the
movement of the United States
during the last few years. One
wonders what to foresee that we
must watch out for in these im
pending changes; what perils lie
ahead.
Immediately one sniffs tyran
ny in the tainted breeze of gross
government. But, of course, we
are all governed by others to a
large extent all our lives; we
always have been; as great uni
versity regulates m/ goings out
and my comings in, probably
more than any political govern
ment does A man who works
for General Motors or (lie Bell
Telephone Company probably
has his daily existence much
more specifically directed by his
immediate industrial superior
than by a policeman or a govern
ment administrator. The question
one asks oneself is how far dur
ing the foreseeable future, how
far, say during the century that
begins in 1963 will political di
rection substitute itself for the
present degree of our govern
ance which we like to call pri
vate. Will increased public ec
onomic power diminish private
control of property, private gov
ernment, then? The century last
pest has seen a decided move to
ward economic levelling. Will
this continue and will we then
see no more great fortunes ac
cumulated and hence no more
Ford Foundations and Rocke
feller Foundations established?
Anyone, who has worked to in
crease the endowment fund of a
modern college or university
knows that a multitude of small
gifts can not accomplish the
same success e few great ones
will achieve. What is to be the
fate of private, universities? And
if, as 1 believe quite possibly
turn out to be the case, there
cease to be truly private univer
sities in the next century and all
institutions of learning, some
qujte probably retaining private
trappings, in fact become de
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A national organization to improvt and axtand the uses of concreta
pendent on government and sub
ject to political direction, can
we achieve the necessary inde
pendence or ■ our universities,
adequate support and still ab
sence of intimate supervision,
which will encourage the self
confidence essential to scholar
ship and intellectual progress?
In nations where the state is the
normal support and matrix of
■the university, there are great
universities which have develop
ed great scholars. It is not im
possible that we should achieve
this. But a vigilant man can be
a little concerned at reading, in
the reports of the Supreme Court
of the United States, a discussion
whether State authorities were
justified in imprisoning a wit
ness for refusing to answer cer
tain questions put by the State's
Attorney General to a man who
had been delivering a university
lecture.
“What was the subject of your
lecture?”
“Didn't you tell the class at
the university on Monday,
March 22, 1954, that socialism
was inevitable in this Coun
try?
starts ’em right... §
keens ’em bright! A
...you bet!
by the American Association of State Highway
Officials, with your state sharing in the cost. The
test was the most scientific study ever made of both
concrete and asphalt pavements.
The proved strength and durability of concrete
have a direct effect on your pocketbook. For concrete
roads cost far less to maintain than any other type,
“Did you in this last lecture
on March 22nd, or in any of
the former lectures espouse
the theory of dialeticel ma
terialism?”
Have I, a crusty and tradition
bound lawyer and one-time sol
dier, now turned Professor, have
I suggested some horrid heresy
in these Holmes Lectures? This
is to say, are we apt to have
along with our material levelling,
an intellectual levelling, in which
a government settles for a sort .
of intellectual least common de
nominator; and one must speak
softly of the obvious or run the
risk of official visitation?
There are other perils in the
future. As the national govern
ment grows, and the responsi
bilities and capabilities of the
states diminish, there is neces
sarily lost some sense of local
initiative. The more remote the
government from the citizen,
the less his sense of direct cap
ability of changing its course;
the more he feels himself re
signed to watching the function
-ing of a great machine whose
conduct he has little or no pow
(Continued on Page 6-B>
and as a result save your tax
dollars. Because there is no
substitute for strength, there
is no substitute for concrete.
Page 1-B