The Horse And The Stag

The belief prevailing in some circles that the poverty of our country is due to unequal distribution is patently erroneous, If the belief were well-founded, the total income of the nation should show on per capita division a higher figure. The total poverty is due to lack of adequate national production, whatever the cause may be. In the old days rich people hoarded their income. This is no longer so. It can now be asserted even that no one believes in hoarding. The little of hoarding that is done is due to the laws which make some incomes a crime and render the public investment of such incomes difficult and dangerous. If these laws are cleared out of the way, then no one would resort to hoarding in the present times. All savings would be quickly reinvested in enterprises. If savings are not hoarded but properly invested and men resolve to work hard, we shall be doing our utmost to improve the position. Opportunities for profitable investment should be created, and such investment as would carry with it the highest employment potential, should be encouraged. It is employment that distributes wealth evenly among the people, not the sporadic raids of the Government on previously earned wealth for giving doles out of it to the poor.

     If poverty leads men to class hatred and that, in turn, leads to Statism, it will land the country in squander policies well-described by the Arkansas poet H. P. B. Jenkins:

“What harm would keeping profits do?” asked Little Wilhelmine.
“A profit-dollar”, Kaspar sighed, “is held to be unclean
Until it’s spent for workmen’s beer
Or squandered in the public sphere.”

     With State-capitalism taking a dominant part in the economy of the country, the nation loses liberty. Liberty flourishes when goods are privately owned and distributed. “When the means of production are mostly owned by Government, or by a restricted and self-perpetuating group who control the powers of Government there is no real freedom for the people,” as Dr. Dean Russell Wrote.

     Horace refers to the horse-and-stag fable of Aesop to illustrate the folly of losing liberty in order to cure poverty. A horse and a stag, feeding together in a meadow, began fighting over which of the two should have the best grass. The stag with his long, strong horns got the better of the horse. So the horse sought the help of Man. And Man agreed to help him, put a saddle on the horse’s back and a bridle in his mouth, and rode and drove away the stag from the meadow. Then, when the horse asked Man to remove the bridle and saddle and set him free, Man answered, “I never before knew what a useful animal you are. And now I have known it, you will do well to continue to be a drudge.”

     Statist economy is the conversion of free men’s energy into slave-labour. State-capitalism is not the way either to frugal management or happiness. Life, liberty and property are so bound together as to be essentially one. “To give a man his life but to deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him liberty, but to take away from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave,” said Justice Sutherland of the Supreme Court of America. Liberty surrendered by the people of a country to their government, in an effort to get more of the material things of life, will lead to the fate of the horse in Aesop’s fable.