Mr. Wood is President of Wood Brothers Manufacturing Company of Oregon, Illinois. This article, condensed from a recent speech, expresses his concern over the growing tend­ency of organizations and groups to turn from voluntary to coercive methods.

Many thoughtful people have be­come alarmed about the rapidly growing power of government. Those who have advocated govern­ment interventions have thought they had all the answers. Now their socialist chickens are coming home to roost. Every such scheme of government intervention has been tried and tried again — and almost without exception the fail­ure has been a dismal one.

It has often been noted that a problem is close to solution once it has been clearly and adequately de­fined. As I have observed the prob­lem from the vantage point of a free enterpriser, it seems to me that it can be expressed this way. People want to do things to uplift themselves or others. This alto­gether commendable desire has been widely encouraged by the teachings of our religious leaders. But as soon as we decide to do things for ourselves or others, we bump into a limitation of resourc­es. Although some people have more resources than others, every­one has his limitations. Thought­less or careless dissipation will soon exhaust the material means of anyone.

Now, finding ourselves in this situation, there are two things we can do: Each of us can do what he is able to do within his own limita­tions or he can seek to augment his resources by those of others. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the combining of resources to do a job. A great deal can be accom­plished in this way; examples are all around us. The physical facili­ties of a church organization are a good example. However, when we decide to mobilize the resources of others to assist in carrying out our plans, there is one other choice we have to make. This is whether or not to rely on the voluntary help of other people.

The rawest forms of coercion are rejected by almost everyone. There are very few who think they should take a gun and hold up the local bank in order to get the re­sources they think they need. But there is a way to do the same thing that has long been sanctioned by our society. This way is to levy a tax and hire a policeman to enforce its collection.

This, in my opinion, constitutes a perversion of the police power. Policemen and courts should pro­tect us in our lives and the enjoy­ment of our private properties. Our private property is the fruit of our labor and it should be ours to enjoy as we see fit so long as we injure no other peaceful person. The police­men and courts should not be used to take from some to give to others or to take from all of us for the benefit of a privileged few.

This may seem like a radical doc­trine, and it is today! However, it was well understood by the authors of our Constitution and the prin­ciple was quite well observed for the first century and a half of our country’s existence.

There are no doubt many rea­sons for our failure to successfully support and defend the limited gov­ernment our forefathers so wisely created. It seems to me that one of the main reasons for our failure has been the popular glorification of the idea of majority vote.

It is true that there are many things which must be decided by majority vote. There appears to be no other satisfactory way. But just because majority vote is a good way to decide some things doesn’t mean that it is a satisfactory way to decide all things. A typewriter may be excellent for writing let­ters, but that doesn’t make it a good adding machine! The limita­tion that should be put on majority vote is a moral principle. We should refrain from doing anything by majority vote that we would not have a moral right to do as individ­ual people.

When this idea is taught, all kinds of practical objections occur to everyone. This is simply because violations of the principle are so widespread that we find it hard to imagine any other way of doing things. A good example is a public swimming pool as has been financed by taxes in many communities. Now a swimming pool is a won­derful thing. Our family has one. It has been a source of enjoyment to the neighbor’s children as well as our own. It is fine for a com­munity to have an adequate swim­ming pool. Still, it must be admit­ted that many children have suc­cessfully reached adulthood and many adults have successfully lived out their lives without ever going near a swimming pool. If exercise is desired, it can be had in other ways. If recreation is needed, the children can play baseball or foot­ball. There is nothing essential, then, about a swimming pool.

However, in spite of its being nonessential, given the present frame of mind of the American people, there is little problem about getting a majority vote and levying the subsequent taxes to finance a swimming pool. By so doing, we require the elderly per­son who lives on a pension to pay part of the cost of the swimming pool. The widow who may hardly be able to support herself finds the taxes on her home increased.

This is usually accomplished by a simple majority vote of those voting — a very small minority of those who will pay the price. This is a process which seems to me to be immoral and unjust.

Are there alternative ways by which these things can be done? Of course, there are! Many com­munities raise funds by popular subscription for swimming pools. This method has been very suc­cessful and the promoters are not then burdened by any question as to the morality of their actions. Many country clubs provide swim­ming pools. In some communities, small groups of people get to­gether to finance a pool for their mutual enjoyment.

It is difficult to convince people that this principle should be ad­hered to so rigidly. However, it is likewise hard to convince people that they should always be honest! Or that they should never steal!

The laws of God are violated every day and many times. A principle, however, is not invalidated by our failure to observe it. The sound principles of a moral order are in­dependent of our observing them. It is similar to the law of gravity — if we jump off a cliff, we’ll land just as hard whether or not we believe in the law of gravity!

It is easy, of course, to be dis­couraged when actual society is compared to any ideal. How can we do things differently when par­ticular ways have become woven into the pattern of our lives? This is not an easy question to answer except in one respect: each one, as an individual, can easily quit ad­vocating the extension of govern­ment into any areas where gov­ernment action is questionable.

We should have a well-financed police department for the suppres­sion of crime. Our courts should be provided with adequate facili­ties for judging the cases which come before them. All citizens should cooperate with government in its legitimate function of pre­venting injustice. This work has nothing to do with swimming pools, parking lots, airports, re­newal of blighted business areas, or the thousand and one other government interventions that dis­rupt our lives, destroy our secur­ity, and limit our opportunities.

Frederic Bastiat, a French economist, statesman, and author who died in 1850, wrote a remark­able book called The Law. As a deputy to the legislative assembly, Mr. Bastiat opposed the socialism to which France was rapidly turn­ing at the time. In the course of his opposition, he explained each socialist fallacy as it appeared:

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:

1)             The few plunder the many.

2)             Everybody plunders everybody.

3)             Nobody plunders anybody.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: A conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would re­quire volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

These two evils are of equal con­sequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposi­tion to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so wide­spread that many persons have er­roneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it….

Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice — under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility—that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve —slowly no doubt, but certainly — God’s design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.

It seems to me that this is theoreti­cally right, for whatever the question under discussion — whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, mo­rality, equality, right, justice, prog­ress, responsibility, cooperation, prop­erty, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or govern­ment — at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my re­searches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the prob­lems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.