Ahove The tars

By Kenneth $nith

Assistant to tbe Presid.ent Tbe Pacifc Lumber Company San Francisco, Calil ornia

Address d.eliuered, at tbe annual meeting ol the Pacifc Logging Congress at Portland., Oregon.

In January, 1922, nearly twenty-sevell years ago, at a time when we were just starting to pick ourselves up from the crash of our beautiful post-World War I dreams, I clipped from an editorial in Colliers, about competitiorr, 28 words that I wish to read to you :

",The important part of the competition will take place not in factories, nor in the offices, nor on the rOad: IT

The idea of that Collier's editor, that the important thing in this r.vorld is what takes place above the ears of men, has lived with me all these years and today, if I may, I lvant to discuss rvith you the extreme importance of what goes on above the ears of men in these most critical days of our lives that lie just ahead.

But, before rve do that let's take a couple of minutes to do a little supposing.

I-et's suppose that your Chairman l.rad asked everyonc to star-rd up r'vho is disturbed about the years ahead and recognizes that our freedom of opportunity system is in danger.

I have no doubt that every man here would have risen. No business man can possibly be unaware there is grave doubt as to rvhether rve shall not ourselves become a collectivist state. In fact, the current definition of an optimist is a man who is uncertain about the future.

Let's suppose that he had then asked how many had made financial contributions to one or more of the organizations that are making the most of the fighting chance we yet have to preserve our system. A very large number of you would undoubtedly have been able to stand up and be counted on that one.

But now let's suppose that he had asked those to stand rvho have worked out for yourselves easily understood, common sense explanations of what you think and why about government debt; about inflation; about risk capital ; about jobs; about wage levels; about tickets call- cd money; about taxation ; about regimentation ; rvho have hammered out for yourselves your own philosophy of individualism and then made a personal contribution of your olvn time and energy to the saving of the system that gave you the opportunity to be what you are and where you are by reselling your employees and your neighbors on your own faith and belief in the American way.

What then ? Horv many of you could have conscientiously answered that challenge ?

In all probability no Chairman of any meeting rvill ever ask such a question, but I suggest to you that that does not mean that you are not going to have to ansrver it.

The one great issue that tran5cends in importance every other issue in the rvorld today is r,vhether coercion shall everyrvhere supplant freedom, whether the creeping paralysis of paganism shall again engulf civilization, whether he:e in America rvhere tl-re seemingly illimitable light of freedom has burned brightest and developed the greatest r-ration )'et on earth rve shall fail to meet the challenge of history.

Each of us is going to take one side or the other of this question. We cannot dodge it by just ignoring it. DOING NOTHING AUTOMATICALLY

PUTS US ON THE SIDE OF THE COERCIONISTS AND COLLECTIV.

ISTS, because that is the way we are automatically headed.

I\{r. Earl O. Shreve, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, said in San Francisco, earlier this year:

"America must see to its psychological defenses ! . . The time is past when each of us could safely 'mind his own business' and let nature take its course on larger matters. Those larger matters have become very much 'our businegs.' Unless we set the course and fix its direction others will do it for us-and in directions from which there will be no easy return. . . We face an all out ofiensive against our American business civilization. It is an offensive expertly or- ganized by great masters of the strategy and tactics of confusion. Let no one shrug off the seriousness of the threat-the urgency of the challenge."

Meeting this challenge is not a job that can be done just by making financial contributions to the N.A.M., the U.S. Chamber of Com,merce, or the State or local Chambers of Commerce, or to the Foundation for Economic Education, important as such organizations all are to spear-heading the job.

It is a job that must be clone by you and I ar.rd the tens of thousands of businessmen luho actually run our free competitive enterprise system. We are either going to think hard enough and clearly enough and act vigorously enough to save it or, as Mr. Shrer-e suggests, we are going to become pawns in a regimented nation.

I cannot imagine an audience u'hich should be more acutely aware of this problem than you gentlemen of this I.ogging Congress.

Throughout most of the long years you har.e been lvorking together in tl.re American tradition of cooperation. through this Logging Congress and its regional affiliates. to improve logging practices and vour orvn individual efficiency, our industry has been under constant attack by collectivist public officials.

You have had to battle constantly to retain the right of home rule by the States in 'rvhich vou live, and if vou expect to win this battle for States' rights you have no cl.roice except to go out and do an eclucational jolr rt,herc you live, so that people evervn'here mar. unclerstancl thc danger to their personal liberties of encroachment of the Federal Government.

This long, continued and unabated clemand of the U. S. Forest Service for power to regulate private lcigging practices is just one facet of the program to supplant goveltment by law r,vith government by men. BUT it is one you have seen work at close range and understand.

We hear a great deal about business lobbies, and t'c pass laws to regulate the con<luct of those rvho speak for business and for the maintenance of our freedom. of opportunity system, but there is no lobby anvu'here nearlv so powerful or persistent as those rvhich Fecleral ltureaucracy operates around the clock every dav of the vear.

When Federal bureaus are successful in nrolrling public opinion and generating popular support for their ou-n predetermined objectives, as the U. S. F<irest Service so persistently tries to do, we shall incleed have arrived at a system of Federal thought control n'hich exactly parallels the mechanics of dictatorship.

It makes no difference whether the purpose of ltropaganda of Federal bureaucrats is good or bad. The act of propagandizing us is what is rvrong. Individuals libcrty and free institutions will not survive rvhen the vast porver of this greatest government on earth is marshailecl agair-rst the peopie for any purpose, good or bad.

C)ne of the major first objectives of the collectivists rvho u.ould have us march in the totalitarian.parade is natiorralization of our natural resource industries.

To stem this trend, there is a greater need than evel. before for understanding, for sound thinking, and for forethought in planning, by the individuals rvho run those units of our freedom-of-opportunity system rvhose ran' material is timber.

Along with all others in a position of leadership in this rnarvelously conrplicated and delicate mechanism rvhich \\.e commonly call our industrial system rve must rvin the fight for men's minds, we must create by education a universal understanding and appreciation of the miracle that is America, or be content to abdicate leadership.

We have to do the job our schools and you and I have failed to do-teach all rvho are under 35 rvhat kind of an economic svstem it is they n'ere born into and u.hat makes it tick.

We must prove to them that the marvelous accomplishments of America \\,e so blithely take for granted are, in fact, the fruits of a form of government that left men free to do their on'n planning-, and that a "planned economy" rnttst of necessit.r be run bv a government that keeps men from cloirrg 'rvhat thev plan to do.

We must teach all men that government is not a cow to be milkecl, that you can only confiscate and redistribute n'hat thrifty lren have saved in the past, and that every dollar the government spends colnes out of the pockets of producers.

\\re must make it clear to all men why no gorrernment can give you something you did not earn. or give arvay 'n'hat you have produced to a foreigner n.ho did not rvork for it, except b-t- taking it a.rvay from someone else* either norv here or not yet born.

We must teach all nten that a bond of the United States Government is in reality merely a promise that its citizens t'ill pay it o11 n-ith u-ork yet to be done by themselves.

\\re have to find a \\'av to get all men to nnderstand r,vhy \\,e cannot continue to collsume all rve prorluce as ne have norv for 17 1'ears. ancl u'hy something must be savecl from current productior.r to buv nelv plants, tools, ecluipment, technical education-all the things that lift the productive po\\'er of men.

\\'e must revitalize the old American traits of self-reliance, ambitiorr arrd thrift. We must teach all men again rr hat all once kne'rv : that the greatest motivating incentive in America ha; been the right and the opportunity of the individual to "set ahead."

\Ve must rekindle the rvill to .work and reverse the habit of dependence on go\rernment rvhich is slon-ly throttling that spirit of self-reliance which u.as the springhead of America's progress.

We need to get back to the kind of thinking and kincl of teaching that rve rvere brought up on. \\re need to get Horatio Alger out of his grave and back in the hands of every school boy.

Freedom of opportunity plus rvork-plain old-fashiorred hard'ivork-built America.

The philosophy of less u'ork for more pav, couplccl .rvith bartering our freedcm for a fancied "security," can destrol it as surely as it is destroying France and England todav.

Notv if I were not on this platform and t\re \,vere instea<l sitting around a table somewhere it's just about at this point that some of you rvould be saying: "Yon say it's a job that is up to lne ancl every other businessman, ltut n'hat can I do ?"

\\rell, I have already iirdicated the first and most inr, l)ortant thing you can do-and must do-THINK. you