Years ago the railways were so tainted with sin that they became national campaign cries throughout the land. To be against the railways was the final test of morals in political life. The scientist, however, brought onto our highways the gas engine, the automobile, the truck, and onto our waterways the Diesel tug, and as a result the Government regulation of the railways as a means for holding down rates has been turned into a device for holding them up so the railways can live. They have become tainted with poverty and therefore with respectability.
It is scarcely five years since the anthracite-coal industry was, in the view of many people, so infected with the sin of monopoly that it demanded instant Federal action. In the meantime the scientists have found so many substitutes for anthracite that the industry is now struggling for its existence. Today it is possible to burn anthracite in one's grate without feeling of participation in wickedness.
Today the primary evil is electrical power. We must all agree that especially the electrical current developed from water has become mortally sinful. That sort of electricity is supposed to come like manna from Heaven and consequently can be produced and distributed free. And yet the busy scientist and engineer have steadily discovered methods by which power can be made more cheaply from fuel than by water. They have gotten so far on this line that today probably 80 per cent of the water power in this country has no possible economic value at all and has been permanently returned to the lovers of scenery.
Do not derive from this that I am opposed to Federal regulation of interstate monopolies. I am strongly of the belief that during the period when the scientist must labor in his laboratory inventing relief the Government must have restraint against excessive sin. I am merely saying that science and initiative are the cure of many national headaches.
For instance, not long ago it was demanded that the miseries of unemployment from speculative crashes should be cured by Government doles or unemployment insurance, yet today we see them being cured before our eyes by voluntary cooperation of industry with the Government in maintaining wages against reduction, and the intensification of our construction work. Thereby we have inaugurated one of the greatest economic experiments in history on a basis of nation-wide cooperation not of charity.