The Profit of Reform
minated finally in the repudiation of the gold standard by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the establishment of inflation as a national policy. It began as an attempt to get rid of private debts and ended up as a devious taxing scheme; that is, the reform redounded to the benefit of the State. And now that the State has taken inflation under its wing, the bureaucracy that "controls" it is a very busy institution, employing thousands of operatives, including learned professors of economics. Whether the debtors ever got a penny out of their cherished reform is questionable.
Another reform that loomed large in the early days was the agitation over protective tariffs, pro and con. Nothing came of it except the Civil War and higher tariffs—and a considerable army and navy of collectors and snoopers and tariff "experts"; that is, a bureaucracy. The fact that protected industries have had a record of bankruptcy equal to that of unprotected industries indicates that the advocates of higher tariffs did not profit much by their reform. The State did.
It was not until some years after the Civil War, when three centuries of productive effort bore fruit in a general increase of wealth and leisure, that reform became a major interest in this country. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century there was a hatful of reforms from which the citizen could take his pick, and every one of them began with the premise that political power could improve the lot of man economically, socially, morally, and even culturally. There was prohibition, woman suffrage, direct election of senators, free coinage of silver, subsidies to farmers, extension of the educational system, antitrust measures, control of railroads, and what not. In the main, the redistribution of wealth stirred up the most violent enthusiasm, and most of the reforms advocated had all the earmarks of envy. The have-nots 120
