A Republic— Digital Proofer If We Can A Republic--If We Ca... Authored by Lawrence W. Reed 6.0" x 9.0" (15.24 x 22.86 cm) Keep It Black & White on Cream paper 352 pages ISBN-13: 9781572460317 ISBN-10: 1572460318 Lawrence W. Reed Please carefully review your Digital Proof download for formatting, grammar, and design issues that may need to be corrected. We recommend that you review your book three times, with each time Burton W. Folsom, Jr. focusing on a different aspect. Check the format, including headers, footers, page 1 numbers, spacing, table of contents, and index. 2 Review any images or graphics and captions if applicable. 3 Read the book for grammatical errors and typos. Once you are satisfied with your review, you can approve your proof and move forward to the next step in the publishing process. To print this proof we recommend that you scale the PDF to fit the size of your printer paper. ©2011 Foundation for Economic Education. Published under Creative Commons license; excerpts up to the length of complete chapters may be reprinted with prior consent, provided that publication includes apprpriate credit to the author and the Foundation for Economic Education, and is not presented in such a way as to state or imply the support of either the authors or the Foundation for Economic Education. Citation must include “www.FEE.org.” For further information or to arrange reprinting of longer sections of the book, contact the Foundation for Economic Education. ISBN-10: 157240318 ISBN-13: 978-1-57246-031-7 Also available in Kindle and ePub formats, ISBN 9781572460171 . Cover design by Courtney Hechler To those many young people whom we’ve been blessed to teach over the years and who are helping to keep the torch of liberty lit. Original versions of the included articles can be found on the website of The Freeman , www.TheFreemanOnline.org, or that of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, www.Mackinac.org. Find us online at: Facebook.com/FEEonline Twitter.com/FEEonline (@feeonline) Contact us directly at: 1-800-960-4FEE (4333) Foundation for Economic Education 30 S. Broadway Irvington, New York 10533 260 Peachtree St. NW Suite 2200 Atlanta GA 30303 FEE.org Preface Economics as it is taught today is replete with fallacies. So is History. Combine the two into Economic History and you frequently get a witch’s brew of mumbo jumbo. The Industrial Revolution was a setback for workers. Free markets caused monopoly and exploitation. Government intervention was required for economic growth and for economic recovery. These are but a few of the many misconceptions that constantly need revisiting, and are addressed within this volume. The authors recognize that both economics and history must be about much more than numbers. That’s why many of the offerings here focus on the interesting contributions of people who changed the course of events. One of the essential points we hope readers of this anthology will come away with is the critical importance of specific individuals in shaping the course of the amorphous collective known as “society.” Almost all of the chapters herein first appeared in The Freeman, the journal of the F oundati on for Economic Education (FEE). We invite readers to visit FEE’s website, fee.org, and also our Facebook pages. Our original intent in assembling this anthology was to provide teachers of history, economics and economic history with a companion text of readings. We hope this collection will be of interest to a wider audience as well, especially to those who support the ideas and philosophy of the free society. We thank our friend Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute for his assistance in organizing the chapters and devising the unit headings. We also thank Micha el Nolan of FEE for his assistance in editing and layout. We give special thanks to the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan for its support of this volume. Table of Contents I. Principles of Limited Government 3 Chapter One: The Holiday That Isn’t 7 Chapter Two: The Founders, the Constitution, and the Historians 11 Chapter Three: Madison’s Veto Sets a Precedent 15 Chapter Four: Principled Parties 19 Chapter Five: Andrew Johnson and the Constitution 23 Chapter Six: A Supreme Court to be Proud Of 27 Chapter Seven: Two Presidents, Two Philosophies, and Two Different Outc omes 31 Chapter Eight: Andrew Mellon: The Entrepreneur as Politician II. The Trials of Unlimited Government 37 Chapter Nine: Where Are the Omelets? 41 Chapter Ten: The Times That Tried Men’s Economic Souls 45 Chapter Eleven: The Forgotten Robber Barons 49 Chapter Twelve: Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive Vision of History 53 Chapter Thirteen: Of Meat and Myth 61 Chapter Fourteen: Our Presidents and the National Debt 65 Chapter Fifteen: The Progressive Income Tax in U.S. History 69 Chapter Sixteen: Cigarette Taxes Are Hazardous to Our Health 73 Chapter Seventeen: A Man Who Knew the Value of Life and Liberty 195 Chapter Thirty-Seven: Lessons from the First Airplane III. Our Cousins Stand for Liberty 199 Chapter Thirty-Eight: Subsidies Hurt Recipients, Too 203 Chapter Thirty-Nine: A Tribute to the Jitney 79 Chapter Eighteen: Scotland: Seven Centuries Since William 207 Chapter Forty: In the Grip of Madness Wallace 83 Chapter Nineteen: Happy Birthday, Adam Smith! VI. Depressions, Poverty and Inequality 87 Chapter Twenty: A Man Who Didn’t “Grow” in Office 91 Chapter Twenty-One: Prophets of Property 213 Chapter Forty-One: Great Myths of the Great Depression 95 Chapter Twenty-Two: Wilfrid Laurier: A Canadian Statesman 243 Chapter Forty-Two: The 1932 Bait-and-Switch 99 Chapter Twenty-Three: From Crystal Palace to White Elephant 247 Chapter Forty-Three: Child Labor and the British Industrial in 100 Years Revolution 255 Chapter Forty-Four: Government, Poverty and Self-Reliance: IV. The Positive Power of the Entrepreneur Wisdom From 19th Century Presidents 271 Chapter Forty-Five: The Silver Panic 105 Chapter Twenty-Four: From Kleenex to Zippers: The 285 Chapter Forty-Six: Public Money for Private Charity Unpredictable Results of Entrepreneurs 289 Chapter Forty-Seven: Equality, Markets, and Morality 109 Chapter Twenty-Five: A Camera Reaches 100 113 Chapter Twenty-Six: Charles Schwab and the Steel Industry VII. Individuals Against Government Injustice 129 Chapter Twenty-Seven: Herbert Dow and Predatory Pricing 137 Chapter Twenty-Eight: Witch-Hunting for Robber Barons: The 295 Chapter Forty-Eigh t: The Inspiring Story of Thomas Clarkson Standard Oil Story 303 Chapter Forty-Nine: The Liberty Tradition Among Black 149 Chapter Twenty-Nine: John D. Rockefeller and His Enemies Americans 153 Chapter Thirty: It Wasn’t Government that Fixed Your Clock 307 Chapter Fifty: The Costs of Segregation to the Detroit Tigers 157 Chapter Thirty-One: History for Sale: Why Not? 311 Chapter Fifty-One: Elijah McCoy and Berry Gordy: Ingenuity Overcomes V. The Negative Power of the Bureaucrat 315 Chapter Fifty-Two: The Story of Nicholas Winton 163 Chapter Thirty-Two: John Jacob Astor and the Fur Trade: VIII. The Big Government Warfare State Testing the Role of Government 173 Chapter Thirty-Three: Why Did the National Road Fail? 323 Chapter Fifty-Three: James Madison: The Constitutional War 177 Chapter Thirty-Four: Should Government Build the Railroads? President 187 Chapter Thirty-Five: Death by Public Works 191 Chapter Thirty-Six: The Origin of American Farm Subsidies 327 Chapter Fifty-Four: The Economic Costs of the Civil War 333 Chapter Fifty-Five: Spanish-American War: Death, Taxes, and Incompetence 337 Chapter Fifty-Six: Don’t Expect Much From Politics Part I 341 About the Authors Principles of Limited Government 1 Chapter One The Holiday That Isn’t By October, most people have already begun to think of the holidays just around the corner. We each observe the traditional ones according to our personal wishes—a precious right won for us by past and present patriots. Allow me to advise you, however, not to let this year end without taking note of “the holiday that isn’t.” It’s not recognized officially, and few Americans really know of it. I had to be reminded of it by a frie nd from Arizona, Roy Miller, one of the founders of the Goldwater Institute. The day is December 15. It was on that date in 1791 that the fledgling United States of America formally adopted what we know as the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Miller says, “Few days in American history were more critical to securing or proclaiming the principles behind the nation’s founding.” A “Bill of Rights Day” is not on the calendar, but a free people don’t have to wait for Congress to declare a holiday to celebrate one. On December 15, take a moment to reread the Bill of Rights and reflect on its importance. Call it to the attention of friends and family. Without an agreement that a Bill of Rights would be added or without a consensus 3 4 A Republic—If We Can Keep It The Holiday That Isn’t 5 of what they would do, the Constitution itself would probably not have and limited government. Even the least libertarian among them would been accepted. The ten amendments ultimately adopted guarantee be horrified if he could see how later generations have ballooned the freedoms of religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly and petition; size and intrusiveness of the federal establishment. It never occurred to the rights of the people to keep and bear arms, and to hold private the most ardent Federalist that government should rob Peter to pay property; rights to fair treatment for people accused of crimes, Paul for his health care, art work, alternative energy, prescription drugs, protection from unreasonable search and seizure and self- hurricane relief, or his notions of regime change in Somalia.