Unsanctioned Voice; Rose Wilder Lane; John L. Lewis, Resettlement Administration

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note , Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3, Chapters 4-6, Chapters 7-10 , Chapters 11 and 12 , Chapter 13 , Chapter 14 , Chapters 15 and 16 , Chapters 17-19 , Chapter 20 , Chapters 21 and 22 and Chapters 23-25 of Bruce Ramsey's Unsanctioned Voice.




Chapter 26 chronicles the relationship between Garrett and Rose Wilder Lane.

Ramsey describes a trip that Garrett and Lane took through the midwest in 1935. They visited farmers that the New Deal's Resettlement Administration wanted to "resettle" and "rehabilitate." [pp. 183-184] (quoting Garrett, Saturday Evening Post, "Plowing Up Freedom," November 16, 1935).

The trip was the basis of an article by Lane in the Saturday Evening Post which later influenced Lane's book, The Discovery Of Freedom. [p. 184]. Lane's prior books shared subject matters in common with Garrett's writings - Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford. [pp. 181-182].

Chapter 26 relies on a Lane biography, a collection of Lane letters and Lane's own books (in addition to Garrett's writings).



Ramsey reveals that Garrett was missing two fingers [p.184 and note 6] in the course of discussing an apparent brief romantic flirtation between Garrett and Lane [pp. 184-185].

Pages 186 and 187 describe (quoting Garrett's letters to Lane) Garrett's meeting with John L. Lewis of the UMW.

Ramsey also describes their differences of opinion [pp. 187-188].

Click here for a discussion of Chapters 27 and 28, including a discussion of Garrett's writings on World War II and the crackdown against anti-New Deal writers and publications.

Unsanctioned Voice; Fighting back against the New Deal; National Recovery Act (NRA); Frank Fetter; Alf Landon; Rose Wilder Lane

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note , Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3, Chapters 4-6, Chapters 7-10 , Chapters 11 and 12 , Chapter 13 , Chapter 14 , Chapters 15 and 16 , Chapters 17-19 , Chapter 20 and Chapters 21 and 22 of Bruce Ramsey's Unsanctioned Voice.




Chapter 23 describes Garrett's opposition to the New Deal policy of supporting minimum prices and wages.

On page 162, Ramsey describes the New Deal's NRA (National Recovery Act) as having been run by the general whose previous experience included drafting the conscription act in World War I. Under the NRA, new investment to expand industrial capacity could be accomplished by permission only. It was "sort of" voluntary (Ramsey's quote), but once enough businesses signed up, it became mandatory. Parades and public relations campaigns demonized those who did not comply. Ford was the only major automaker that did not join the NRA [p. 165]. The NRA would eventually be struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court [p. 164]. The blue eagle NRA symbol would later appear on the cover of Ramsey's Salvos Against the New Deal.



Garrett quotes FDR [p. 163] as referring to new industrial plant and machinery as "weeds." Saturday Evening Post, "Fifth Anniversary N.D.", March 5, 1938.

Garrett argued that prices and wages should be allowed to fall to encourage new investment, innovation and full employment. [pp. 162-166].

Ramsey briefly discusses the deepening of the Depression in 1937-1938 and Garrett's response to FDR blaming "economic royalists." [165]. Today, instead of blaming "economic royalists," FDR's intellectual heirs blame the "1%." Slogans change, but the policies remain the same.

Ramsey far too optimistically argues that modern Democrats have abandoned the idea of propping up wages and prices (citing advice by the Clinton administration to South Korea in 1997) [p. 166]. The Obama administration would later enact or advocate a number of programs designed to prop up prices and wages - cash for clunkers, first time home-buyer credits, stimulus bills, minimum wage increases, Obamacare, fossil fuel restrictions, etc. It is today far too common even among "conservative" businessmen to say that "we need a little inflation" in order to stimulate business. All of these programs and the thinking behind them reflect the opposite of what Garrett advocated in Chapter 23.

Chapter 24 is about two concepts. (1) Garrett specifies that his major reason for opposing the New Deal is the loss of liberty that the New Deal brings (as opposed to mere economic arguments). [pp. 167 - 170]. (2) "Fear" brought about by this new loss of liberty prevented long term investment and lengthened the Depression until the start of the war. [pp. 170 - 172].

Garrett wrote to Frank Fetter (p. 167) that arguing about "what works" ignores the basic issue of liberty. Austrian economist Fetter is introduced here and in footnote #1 (p. 173).

Ramsey summarizes the battle over the Commerce Clause, FDR's court packing plan and the agencies that still survive as the New Deal's legacy [pp. 167-169]:

Government power was sudden and threatening, its purpose transformative. And it was new. People read about it in the same newspapers in which they read of Hitler's belligerence and Stalin's show trials. The destination was not clear.

p. 169. Ramsey makes the same mistake as many political commentators when he argues that government power since the New Deal has rarely been "in leftist hands" because "[b]usiness has large influence over it." [p. 169]. As we have seen numerous times, business owners can be and often are leftist.

Ramsey includes a Garrett quote in which Garrett argues that we should not expect the New Deal to make economic sense or to be consistent on economic grounds. All of the New Deal actions (and those of government since that time) are consistent in that they support increased government power (except in those rare cases where some old right winger manages to repeal something). Garrett quotes FDR to the effect that the New Deal would shackle liberty if such power were in someone else's hands. But FDR stressed that the power was held in his own hands. (pp. 169-170).

Garrett concludes prophetically:

. . . conquest of power for purposes of all-doing . . . would involve many inconsistencies of immediate policy, because the peaceable course to the seizure of great political power is a zigzag path.

Saturday Evening Post, "National Hill Notes," February 29, 1936 [quoted by Ramsey, p. 170].

Ramsey concludes the chapter with a discussion of the "fear" that gripped investors over the sudden increase in government power. While short-term investment returned in the mid-1930's, long-term investment did not [pp. 170-171]. The reason that long-term investment did not return was the political instability that the New Deal created. Investors feared their government and viewed long-term investment as unsafe.

Chapter 25 discusses the election of 1936, and the advice Garrett gave to Alf Landon (pp. 175-177). He advised Landon to challenge the very idea that a recovery had taken place:

There has been no recovery . . . Recovery, with ten million unemployed? Recovery, with money at one per cent? The cheapness of money is a sign of disease. It means we have ceased to perform creative works for the future. It means we are creating no new industry.

[p. 176].

Garrett's advice was of little effect, as Landon did not directly challenge the New Deal. Garrett felt that each piece of advice to Landon was being dropped ". . . down a dry well. There is no splash." [p. 177]. H. L. Mencken shares Garrett's concerns. [p. 177].

Ramsey quotes at length from Garrett's correspondence with Rose Wilder Lane, including those letters revealing Garrett's despair after FDR's reelection in 1936. [pp. 177-180].

Garrett understood the stakes and the natural base that each side would rely on:

It is the hardest intelligence test we have ever faced. Roosevelt will get the entire moron vote. Most intelligent Republicans will have to vote the Republican ticket in spite of Landon. I am sick with disappointment. All he has said is that he will go on doing as much for people as they expect the New Deal to do for them, only in a Constitutional manner, and it will cost less. Merdes.

[p. 178.]

The post-election letters are valuable for understanding how socialism wins so many votes, despite such a miserable record [pp. 179-180]. Garrett's explanation ("They want manna and water out of the rock" (pp. 179-180)) is a precursor to certain ideas that would later appear in People's Pottage.

Click here for more detail about Garrett and Lane in Chapter 26.

Unsanctioned Voice; The New Deal transition; The Driver; Henry Galt; Gold; Austrian Business Cycle theory

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note , Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3, Chapters 4-6, Chapters 7-10 , Chapters 11 and 12 , Chapter 13 , Chapter 14 , Chapters 15 and 16 , Chapters 17-19 and Chapter 20 of Bruce Ramsey's Unsanctioned Voice.




Chapters 21 and 22 show, through Garrett's writings, the transition from the pre-New Deal depression era to the New Deal itself. The New Deal was the most momentous event in the history of the modern world. Because of the New Deal (and its more consistent counterparts of that era in Europe) millions have died, were never born, were born to different parents in different places and/or lived under tyranny (or the threat of tyranny) over the past 80 + years. Most importantly, the most prosperous and free nation in the history of the world (and western civilization itself) will die a premature death - thus bringing on chaos, tragedy and worldwide misery that will eclipse that associated with the fall of Rome. Garrett had a greater grasp of the significance of these events than most writers of his (or any) day. These chapters (and the articles they cite) give us a glimpse into the world at that transition point.

Chapter 21 features Garrett's articles advocating economic solutions that are based on individual investment and capital accumulation. Without citing The Driver (1922) specifically, Garrett recommended the actions taken by Henry Galt (pp. 148-149). Garrett proclaimed essentially that a downturn is the time to buy. Click here for a discussion of The Driver and its resolutions to the Panic of 1893 (including a lengthy quotation from Henry Galt).

While the idea of "buy low, sell high" is accepted as obvious by today's investors, it is implicitly rejected as a solution on a national scale. Instead, we let the government take actions that keep prices high and then wonder why recovery is slow or nonexistent while industry continues to disappear.

Chapter 21 recounts briefly a meeting with President Hoover where Garrett's ideas were ignored (p. 149).

Ramsey briefly identifies Garrett's theories as most closely (but not completely) associated with the Austrian school of economics (p. 145). Chapter 21 thus reminds one that while Garrett serves an invaluable role as a journalist and historian, only actual economists such as Mises can thoroughly diagnose business cycle theory from an economic perspective. (Garrett's acquiescence to the idea of a central bank (p. 145) came before the Austrian business cycle theory was known in America (see below)). Writers like Garrett, Rand, etc. provide both a philosophical justification for the economic theory of the Austrians and historical context that demonstrates our slide into tyranny.

Austrian Business Cycle theory:



Garrett's explanation of the Panic of 1893:



Ramsey notes on p. 151 that "The people were ready for the New Deal" (based on a Garrett article from October 1932). This point is debatable, as I do not believe that a people can ever be truly "ready" for tyranny until after it is imposed and takes effect. Only through the creation of dependence does a formerly free nation come to accept tyranny. Opposition to tyranny had been softened by economic conditions, but was the country really "ready" for what followed? What would Americans of 1932 say if they could see the U.S. of 2015 (and all that has happened in between)? It depends on what one means by "ready".

Chapter 22 explores briefly Garrett's opposition to the New Deal. The passion of Garrett's opposition comes through (p. 154) without the lengthy discussions that one will find in Ramsey's Salvos Against the New Deal. The discussion in Chapter 22 focuses mainly on the New Deal's seizure of gold and subsequent use and manipulation of fiat money (pp. 155-159).

Garrett foresaw the connection between fiat money and the ultimate loss of trust and character that would plague all human interaction in the United States. If money is not real and does not maintain a stable value, then contracts do not mean what they say and words themselves cannot be trusted:

All our economic undertakings above the level of solitary savage existence come to rest at last upon the security of words. Hence the importance of documents, bonds, statute books and records, lest people should dispute afterward what the words were. Then what if a sense of security in words should fail? What if it were no longer possible to trust the word of a government, that of your own or of any other; or to trust the word of a bond, the word of the law, the word of a contract, the word of a platform? . . . It requires no reflection to be able to say what the effect of this would be upon the sense of economic security.

Garrett, "The Great Moral Disaster," Saturday Evening Post, August 18, 1934 (as cited by Ramsey, p. 157).

Page 155 contains (citing a letter from Garrett to Rose Wilder Lane) Garrett's explanation of the purpose of the "Gold standard." Garrett's explanation is not fully "Austrian," but it is based on the same basic principles.

The discussion on page 157 is an abbreviated explanation of the debt crisis of the 1920's and 1930's as it related to World War I loans and reparations. A more thorough explanation appears in Garrett's Bubble That Broke the World.

Click here for a discussion of Chapters 23-25 and Garrett's opposition to the New Deal.

The Cinder Buggy - part 12 - chapters XIV, XV, XVI; Agnes Gib

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 of my review of The Cinder Buggy.

In Chapter XIV, the personal conflict among the characters intensifies subtly.

In Chapter XV, the stage is set for that conflict to intensify more dramatically. Enoch's reclusive daughter Agnes takes center stage in Chapter XV. That her role is rooted in factual history was hinted at in the hand-written inscription that I copied in part 4. A major difference between Garrett's and Rand's fiction is the nature of the personal stories and conflicts. In Cinder Buggy, the personal conflicts are at least partially rooted in history. They do not appear to be an extension or objectification of the main philosophical point of the book. With Rand, every action of the characters demonstrates a philosophical point. In Cinder Buggy, Garrett's ability to summarize and illustrate grand historic trends served as a landscape, a canvas and a backdrop for the personal conflict that continues building and increasing in complexity throughout the middle chapters of the book. History and philosophy served as more than these elements in Randian fiction.

The party scene in Chapter XVI is reminiscent of Dagny Taggart's (from Atlas Shrugged) debutante ball (even though Agnes appears to be headed for a very different future than was Dagny). With Garrett, the failure of the ball was due to circumstances unique to the Cinder Buggy story. In Atlas Shrugged, the ball flopped because the men who attended, having been softened by decades of New Deal paternalism, were not worthy of Dagny.

The different treatment of these "coming out" parties reflects the different times in which the books were written. Garrett wrote pre-New Deal, and thus could truthfully develop stories that were not overshadowed and influenced by the ever-growing federal leviathan. Once the New Deal became entrenched in the United States, any fictional story, in order to be credible, would be forced to use characters that either were forged and strengthened in resistance to the ever growing socialist state or that were weakened and pacified by it. The all-powerful state has become so pervasive that even a fictional story must recognize the effects of such influence on its characters. Without such recognition, modern fiction often seems unrealistic. Such recognition was not necessary for Garrett in the 1920's, so he was free to resolve his plots solely on bases traditionally recognized by literary analysis.

It becomes harder to analyze and discuss the plot without spoiling it at this point, but Chapter XVI hints that the main conflict that has dominated the story is about to turn violent. This is the old Aaron-Enoch conflict in a new form and results from Agnes' "coming out" party instead of any issue related to iron or steel.

Click here for part 13.

Cinder Buggy - part I - introductory comments

Cinder Buggy was the third of Garet Garrett's major works of fiction. Published in 1923, it was labeled "A Fable in Iron and Steel." This focus on one industry provided a similarity with The Driver (railroads) and Satan's Bushel (wheat). I have referred previously to Garrett's books as "industrial novels" for this reason.

I have read only a small portion of the book thus far. I will post updates as I read each portion. The discussion of the plot may become vague, as I seek to avoid plot spoilers.

From what little I have read, it appears that there may be similarities between the Cinder Buggy characters and those of Ayn Rand's novels. The characters do not appear to be identical, only similar with overlapping and rearranged elements. These similarities reinforce my belief that Garrett was one of many influences upon the later works of Ayn Rand. I have written at length about this issue in part 13 of my review of The Driver (and elsewhere). I will write more about these characters and their similarities as this review goes on.

Cinder Buggy preview from Satan's Bushel dust jacket

The inside of the Satan's Bushel dust jacket is pictured above, containing an original advertisement for Cinder Buggy.

While I will avoid revealing too much of the plot, I hope to provide information and background from the book on how this story fits into Garrett's philosophy and the political and economic situations that currently plague the United States and the western world.

The Driver was much more obviously relevant to the current financial crisis, as The Driver explicitly focused on the Panic of 1893. I do not expect Cinder Buggy to present such obvious parallels. Even without such clear battle lines as are drawn in Driver (and in the U.S. of 2010), it is possible to present industrialization as fiction in a way that promotes the idea of economic liberty.

The story will seem less focused than we might expect, as the New Deal was still a decade away at the time Garrett wrote Cinder Buggy. The New Deal drew the battle lines that define the eight decades (and beyond) that have since elapsed. From 1933 onward, economics and politics have been little more than a battle between those who favor greater government control over the economy and those who oppose such control. The battle takes many forms and is fought in many arenas, but the goals of the opposing sides remain the same (even though the opponents of gevernment control have substantially watered down their message as the decades have dragged on). A decade before the New Deal brought this battle to Washington D.C. (and beyond) in a permanent way, writers like Garrett wrote more generally and without the urgency and focus that we would expect of one who was trying to stop a government takeover.

My approach with each Garrett novel I read is to enjoy the story without looking for a political or economic message. Usually the nuggets (such as this one and this one and this one) start to appear shortly after the story begins.

Click here for part 2.

Garet Garrett on the first 100 days

The left has attempted to compare Obama's upcoming time in office with Roosevelt's New Deal. In particular, it seems that the new administration is poised to take measures that will impose sweeping changes on the U.S., far beyond those changes that would address the economic situation or any other current issue. In order to understand what the next 100 days might do to this country and how irrevocable such changes might be, we must examine the effects of Roosevelt's first 100 days and how they affect us today.

Here is Garrett's summary of the first 100 days of the New Deal, written only a few weeks after those 100 days had passed (as it appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on August 12, 1933). I have excerpted a few passages:

By this definition, the country is in a state of revolution. It was unpredictable. When Congress assembled on March ninth, under an emergency call, no one knew what it was going to do, nor did it know itself what it was going to do, either at the beginning or day by day thereafter. It went from one step to another, with that kind of uncertain uncertainty peculiar to sleepwalking. It received the demands of the revolution serially in the form of pre-prepared laws, and enacted them with practically no debate and no drama. In the early morning of June sixteenth it adjourned. The entire life on the session had been one hundred days. That was all the time it took to erect a complete temporary dictatorship in the person of the President, standing for the popular will.

. . . . .

The powers transferred to the President were such, among others, as these:

1. To control and administer all business and industry in the public interest;
2. To govern production, prices, profits, competition, wages and the hours of labor;
3. To determine the economic policy of the country; that is to say, whether it shall be national or international;
4. To debase money in behalf of the debtor class;
5. To produce inflation in the interest of certain classes;
6. To reapportion private wealth and income throughout the nation, in his own judgement;
7. The power specifically to reduce the gold value of the dollar one-half - or, that is to say, the power, simply by proclamation, to double the price of everything that is priced in dollars, and to halve the value of every obligation payable in dollars, such as debts, bonds and mortgages, insurance policies, bank deposits.

Read it all.

These powers were never repealed, yet 76 years later we find ourselves in what the MSM/DNC calls a similar crisis. The difference now is that our manufacturing base is largely gone - having disappeared over the past four + decades. The track record of the New Deal (and all that followed) can be found in the headlines of the past four months. But the track record of the next 100 days will be worse.

The Driver - part II

Click here for part I.

Chapter I ("Phantasma") of The Driver demonstrates a point that would later introduce Garrett's most famous work, The People's Pottage. I have written previously about the effect of the New Deal on Garrett's writings. The New Deal was the focal point of the American socialist movement. Prior to 1933, leftism in America was not backed by the power of government. The New Deal changed that. The New Deal turned leftism into a powerful and pervasive force that effects every area of our lives. More than any other factor, the New Deal turned leftism into "The Drumbeat." Garrett wrote about this transformation in the introduction to People's Pottage:

A time came when the only people who had ever been free began to ask: What is freedom?

Who wrote its articles – the strong or the weak?

Was it an absolute good?

...Since it was clear to reason that freedom must be conditioned, as by self-discipline, individual responsibility and many necessary laws of restraint; and since there was never in the world an absolute good, why should people not be free to say they would have less freedom in order to have some other good?

What other good?

Security.

What else?

Stability.

And beyond that?

Beyond that the sympathies of we, and all men as brothers, instead of the willful I, as if each man were a sovereign, self-regarding individual.

Well, where there is freedom doubt itself must be free. You shall not be forbidden to interrogate the faith of your fathers. Better that, indeed, than to take it entirely for granted.

So long as doubts such as these were wildish pebbles in the petulant waves that gnaw ceaselessly at any foundation, perhaps only because it is a foundation, no great damage was done. But when they began to be massed as a creed, then they became sharp cutting tools, wickedly set in the jaws of the flood. That was the work of a disaffected intellectual cult, mysteriously rising in the academic world; and from the same source came the violent winds of Marxian propaganda that raised the waves higher and made them angry.

Even so, the damage to the foundations might have been much slower and not beyond simple repair if it had not happened that in 1932 a bund of intellectual revolutionaries, hiding behind the conservative planks of the Democratic party, seized control of government.

After that it was the voice of government saying to the people there had been too much freedom.

pp. 5-6 (1953 edition)

Why does this matter in a discussion of the The Driver? The Driver was written in 1922, 11 years before the New Deal began. Socialism in America constituted nothing more than the ". . . wildish pebbles in the petulant waves that gnaw ceaselessly at any foundation. . . " to which Garrett referred in People's Pottage. They were just beginning ". . . to be massed as a creed." Garrett would have no way of knowing that the revolutionaries would soon seize control of government.

The Driver reflected this 1922 perspective (even though the story took place beginning in 1894 - "Fourth year of the soft Money Plague" - p. 1). Chapter I is sprinkled with random pebbles of leftist references in the quotations attributed to bit characters:

But a great majority of them were earnest, wistful men, fairly aching with
convictions, without being able to say what it was they had a conviction of, or
what was wrong with the world.

[p. 17]

"They blamed the money power . . . . " etc. [p. 17].

These references provided only a small influence on the plot, but the very nature of this minor role for these references reflects the times in which Garrett wrote.

---------------------------------------------
Part III of the review of The Driver.

The Driver - part I - Introductory comments.

click here for E.H. Harriman's review in Time Magazine - 1923.

The Driver (1922) is interesting for many reasons:

• The book is known as an Ayn Rand "relic", as there were some similarities between Rand's books and the elements and themes of The Driver.
• The Driver focuses on economic cycles of "boom and bust." Many of the plot elements will sound familiar to those of us that lived through the stock market bubble of the 1990's.
• The Driver is Garrett's most orthodox novel. Most of Garrett's other novels were more allegorical in nature. The Driver contained a more traditional plot.

(1) While The Driver has been the subject of much speculation over the years as it relates to Ayn Rand, such speculation is only partially valid. Having read The Driver, I found numerous elements that the book has in common with Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, including one nearly identical character name and some generally similar characters and plot lines. But the main plot of The Driver is unique and no language is identical among Garrett's work and Rand's. Rand's novels contained unique plots whose basic structure can be traced back to Rand's early writings such as Red Pawn.

While Ayn Rand may have been influenced by Garrett, the plots of her novels were far more developed and intricate than those of Garrett. Rand's novels conveyed more themes and delved more deeply into philosophy.

I will not reveal plot spoilers from the The Driver or what I call the various Rand relics that appear from time to time in the novel. Instead of trying to prove a point one way or another, simply enjoy each Rand relic as it appears. Consider yourself to be conducting an archeological dig, in which you unearth relics in the form of characters or events that presage some element of a Randian novel.

(2) The Driver centers on the immediate aftermath of the panic of 1893. Garrett does not propose solutions or advocate a position. Instead, he dramatized the steps taken by private individuals to deal with the crisis as it was. Garrett focuses on the ups and downs of one railroad in the aftermath of this panic. Keep in mind that Driver was written years before the Depression and more than a decade before the beginning of the New Deal. The idea of a government solution to this type of situation was not yet ingrained into our minds as it is today. In The Driver, calls for extreme government action form the background, while individual action by the hero forms the main plot. I wrote about the change in Garrett's focus following the New Deal in my review of Blue Wound (and some of the comments).

The Driver deals in fiction with some of the themes of the nonfiction Bubble that Broke the World. The Driver is much milder because Bubble was written at the height of the Depression around 1930. Driver was written almost 30 years after the panic of 1893, 15 years after the panic of 1907 and just as the bubble that eventually brought us the Depression was beginning. We can only wonder how the plot would be different (and sharper) had Garrett fully understood the momentous events that were only beginning to take shape as he wrote Driver.

(3) As I have written before, Garrett's novels often took the form of industrial novels:

I note here also that Garrett often writes extensively about industry. The railroad industry formed the backdrop for The Driver. Cinder Buggy was labeled "a fable of iron and steel." Satan's Bushel focused on agriculture - specifically wheat.

The Driver featured an active plot full of action, dialogue and characters - much more so than Satan's Bushel or Blue Wound. But Satan's Bushel and Blue Wound were more thought provoking than The Driver. Many modern readers blast through The Driver and cry "plagiarism" against Ayn Rand without understanding Garrett's deeper meanings. That mistake can't be made with Garrett's other novels.

The Driver - 1922 edition



As I mentioned before, I will review the book without revealing plot spoilers or the Ayn Rand relics. Half of the fun of reading The Driver is discovering the relics on one's own. I will focus, instead, on the deeper implications for the business cycle, for history and for our own times.

Click here for part II.

The Blue Wound - part IX - retrospective; Isolationism and today's world; New Deal, Jeffrey Tucker

Check here for parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and VIII of the Blue Wound live blog.

As I wrote earlier, I am glad that I read Blue Wound slowly. I have met many people that have read the large novels of Ayn Rand. Most of them tell me that they read the whole book (Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged) within a couple of days. I began to realize that those who blast through these books that quickly are missing a great deal. They forget the point of the books. The books become little more than one more book that they read one day years ago. The books are forgotten and their message is lost.

Garrett's books are much shorter than Rand's, but they present their own problems that require slow absorption. Garrett's philosophy is impossible to pigeonhole. While many authors want to use Garrett as a weapon in today's political battles, the true story is not so simple. It is not common to find such a staunch opponent of the New Deal that also happens to be an isolationist. The very concept of isolationism is not simple to define. Isolationism does not mean that the U.S. should never fight a war. Nor does it mean that we should never fight on foreign soil. It does mean that we should remain independent in every way - economically, militarily, etc. Isolationism and "anti-war" are not necessarily the same thing.

Isolationism is neither the concept that has been demonized by today's conservatives nor the concept that has been hijacked by today's leftists. In fact, many of today's leftists that hasten to flee from every war would also be the first to subjugate ourselves to the U.N., foreign treaties, foreign governments, etc. The same leftists hasten to weaken our economy and destroy our domestic industries with minimum wage increases, environmental legislation, union friendly policies, high taxes, etc.

Garrett truly is an orphan in today's political spectrum. But it was not always so. Garrett's philosophy, as expressed in Blue Wound and elsewhere, has its roots as far back as the founding of this country. But because it cannot be easily pigeonholed in today's false political dichotomy, it takes more than one book (and more than one author) to fully grasp the concepts. As an example, It takes reflection, study and time to realize that it was proper to support America's fight in the cold war while also remaining an isolationist.

Many free market advocates are uncomfortable with Garrett's negative treatment of international trade. But they overlook the fact that Garrett's writings are not really a proposal for specific policies, but a description of consequences of present policies. Garrett seeks to understand history and the future through fictional scenarios. Whether we advocate particular policies or not, we should not dismiss Garrett's scenarios.

The main item that limits the usefulness of the Blue Wound is the event that intervened ten years after Blue Wound's publication. The New Deal was the largest single step in the U.S.' march to tyranny. Overnight, the government went from a simple republic to an empire. (See "The Revolution Was" for details.) In some cases, the New Deal accelerated the problems of which Garrett warned. In some cases, the New Deal dwarfed those problems. To the extent that Blue Wound (or any other pre-New Deal Garrett writing) attempted to predict the future, the New Deal stands as a prism that distorts the image projected from those writings to our eyes. It is a pity for us that Garrett did not write novels post New Deal. [American Story and A Time was Born come close to filling this role.] I would have enjoyed a novel that presents the New Deal as an allegory or a parable.

Jeffrey Tucker has expressed some concerns with Blue Wound's analogies and its failure to isolate those problems that result solely from government action:

I suspect that this early in his career, Garrett wasn't quite as alert as he would be later to the distinction between the state means and the economic means.

To the extent that such concepts were blurred in Blue Wound, the New Deal's arrival ten years later forced Garrett and other writers to face and define such distinctions much more clearly.

My advice to anyone that is interested in Blue Wound is to read it, absorb it and let its ideas ferment in your mind for an indefinite period while pursuing other reading on isolationism and the America's march toward tyranny. You will eventually find the proper context for the ideas from this and other Garet Garrett books.

The Blue Wound - part VI - Ivory and Apes and Peacocks

Check here for parts I, II, III, IV and V of the Blue Wound live blog.

The key to understanding Garrett's writing is the New Deal. The New Deal was the defining moment not only for the United States and its journey from republic to empire, but for Garrett's writing. Read the Foreward to People's Pottage for more details. With the coming of the New Deal, all of the class envy propaganda that had existed for decades found an outlet and came sharply into focus. As a result of this revolutionary government program, the battle lines were drawn. All other issues took a back seat. Garrett (and others) would write specifically against the very concepts of class warfare, envy and anti-rich demonization.

But in the decade prior to the New Deal, it was not unusual for Garrett to pursue arguments on tangential subjects in which the class envy issue was obscure. In "Ivory Apes and Peacocks" - Chapter 11 - Garrett appears to be critical of wealth and ostentation. In fact, the truth is more subtle. Garrett is critical of those who waste labor for the purpose of ostentation. He points out that the "unrich, aping the rich, waste very much more in the same spirit." (p. 104). Garrett argues that ostentation is one's way of showing superiority by wasting the labor of others. Singled out for special criticism are those who waste the labor of others while complaining about waste, ostentation and their own poverty.

The character Mered refers to ostentatious waste as "conspicuous . . . and for that reason it provokes social complaint and excites envy in the hearts of the multitude." (p. 102). This sentiment conflicts with Garrett's "Notes of These Times," October 8, 1932 (chapter #1 of Salvos Against the New Deal). The difference is that by 1932, Garrett was more focused on the class envy issue and the need to be clear that his opposition to destructive conduct was not intended to support class warfare and other weapons that the left would exploit for the purpose of social revolution.
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update
Click here for part VII

Blue Wound - part II - the perspective of time.

Click here for part I or here for part III.

I have read three chapters of the Blue Wound thus far. I have noticed an element that I often see in Garrett's writings. Garrett writes allegorically.

It is often impossible to discuss ultimate issues in the language of a simple narrative. It is impossible to understand ultimate issues unless the writer adds some element to the story. In Garrett's case, that element is perspective. Garrett's writings have always been about perspective and Garrett always finds a way to provide perspective.

In the early chapters of Blue Wound, Garrett provides the perspective of time. Garrett presents the image of an open plain in which many cities rise and fall, such as would happen over many centuries. The main character is permitted to watch, from a distance, as cities spring into being, become wealthy and ostentatious and are destroyed by marauding hordes. He provides the following explanation:

A city is like a giant hanging by the umbilical cord. Its belly is outside of itself, at a distance, in the keeping of others. Cut it off from its belly and it surrenders or dies. As the first city was so the last one is. No city endures.

pp. 23-24 (italics added)

The narrator then sees multiple cities rising on the same distant plain, only to attack one another. The surviving city possessed a "great tower" and ". . . was the most beautiful one and I had almost prayed that it should have the victory, for I hated to see it fall."









But even that city succumbed. It succumbed to internal strife instead of marauders from beyond its walls. The result was the same. "The tower burned and fell." (p. 25).

I read and promote Garet Garrett not because I believe him to have possessed psychic powers. I read his works because he had perspective. He could observe events of the 1920's and draw the right conclusions. By thinking forward, ignoring petty political arguments of the moment, and remembering history, he could write words that future generations might confuse with prophesy.

In fact, Garrett drew on the lessons of Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Babylon, Dehli, and countless other cities that fell to internal strife or marauding hordes or both. From those lessons and the trends Garrett observed in his own time, it was not hard for Garrett to filter out the "issues of the day" and predict the events of the future.

Garrett presents his story by speeding up the chronology and allowing one observer to narrate centuries of history in two or three pages. When we see the centuries unfold before our eyes, we gain perspective. We see the forest instead of a few trees.

Garrett was not some Nostradamus, predicting specific future events like an oracle to be deciphered. He possessed wisdom and experience, not intuition. He provides perspective, not revelation.

Garrett wrote in the age when the skyscraper was rapidly overtaking the landscape of modern cities. Knowing the fate of previous civilizations, knowing the reasons for those fates and seeing the path upon which America was then beginning to embark - it was not difficult for Garrett to foresee the future of our greatest cities. He never knew of the World Trade Center and did not predict which marauders would destroy it. But had Garrett seen the film from our own recent history that has become ingrained in our own memory, he would not have been surprised.

At the time of Blue Wound's publication (1921), the New Deal was little more than a decade away. The intellectual forces that propelled us down that road already existed. Those forces had found voice in academic institutions and were rapidly remaking the intellectual landscape of our culture. By the 1920's, those voices were quite loud and militant. Those voices had already found safe haven around the world. America was one catalyst away from crossing a Rubicon of its own making.

I don't expect all of the answers from Blue Wound. But I expect a little more insight into the world of 1921 and how we fell into the clutches of the New Deal and, ultimately, our present situation.

Empire of Debt

There has been a recent Garet Garrett sighting in the newly published book, "Empire of Debt," by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin. "Empire" was published in November 2005.

Garrett is quoted on pp. 87-89 of the book. The authors missed a great opportunity by quoting only some anti-war comments of Garrett's. The authors failed to quote the majority of Garrett's work over the decades, much of which focuses on the very same financial issues with which "Empire" deals.

"Empire" touches only lightly on the role of the New Deal in creating an all-powerful government. Garrett's signature work, "People's Pottage" as well as "Salvo's Against the New Deal" provide much greater insight into that era and the New Deal.

"Empire" focuses heavily on World War I. But the authors get sidetracked with discussions of internal European politics and battlefield movements instead of the financial issues. By contrast, Garrett's "Bubble that Broke the World" addresses the WWI loans from the United States that worsened the war and hastened the post-WWI world wide financial crisis.

The authors also became bogged down in a lengthy discussion of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, French military tactics and other peripheral issues.

The authors gave the impression of having read a few mainstream books (plus one book of John Flynn) on various topics. The authors then cobbled these works together into a brief history of the world. The authors tried to do too much. The authors' goals might have been better served had the authors stuck to Garrett, Flynn, Will Durant and a few other writers not so strongly influenced by modern thought fashions.

But "Empire of Debt" does have its moments. The authors provide the following quotation on page 290 (writing about financial bubbles and their aftermath):

Generally, the force of a correction is equal and opposite to the trend that precedes it. And the pain it causes is directly propertional to the pleasant deception that went before it.

The authors also write in favor of gold and correctly identify 1971 as the year President Nixon closed the gold window. (But they ignore the numerous anti-gold steps that preceded this action, including the outlawing of private ownership of gold from the New Deal through the middle of the Ford administration). Any author that speaks of gold's history to any extent deserve some credit.

On page 329, the authors say the following:

Gold was around millions of years before the U.S. dollar was invented. It will probably be around a billion years after. This longevity is not in itself a great recommendation. It is like buying a suit that will last longer than you do; there is no point to it. But the reason for gold's longevity is also the reason for its great virtue as money: It is inert; it yields neither to technology nor to vanity.

The authors suffer also from the tendency to try to squeeze every octogonal problem into the round hole labeled "empire." The authors ignore the political reality that has pitted empire builders at home against those who seek to stop them. The authors merely label all policies since 1913 as being products of American "empire."
Garrett provides a much more realistic explanation, labeling Roosevelt's New Deal policies as imperial, while marveling at the naivite of New Deal opponents who warn that "empire" might arrive if we don't stop additional New Deal policies.

Click here for Sue Bob's commentary on "Empire of Debt".

Most importantly, the authors predict dire consequences from the current real estate bubble. These consequences will be compounded by our growing national and individual debt, the lack of manufacturing in the United States and our growing dependence on manufactured goods from China and other foreign countries.



I recommend the final chapter, if for no other reason than it contains warnings and facts regarding the financial situation of the last five years. As for the rest of the book, writings of previous "Cassandras" are more thorough, consistent and enlightening.

Weblog Awards - final results

Thank you to all who voted for this blog in the recent Weblog Awards online poll. As you can see from the results, this blog finished near the bottom, but it received more attention in that two week period than it had received in weeks.

Numerous like-minded people discovered Garrett's works and someone even bought a copy of Insatiable Government through the Amazon button on this blog (btw, I have yet to see a dime from all of the online purchases that have been made through my two blogs).

For those who are new to this blog and to Garet Garrett, please check back in from time to time. I have renewed incentive to post more items here now that I have a small audience.

This blog will never challenge the major blogs for traffic, but the specialty nature of this blog insures that those who have a specific interest in constitutional government, early 20th century literature, the New Deal, etc., will have a place to go for information and enlightenment.

2005 Weblog Awards

This blog has been nominated for the 2005 Weblog Awards in the Best of the Rest category. This is the category for the smaller blogs that do not yet generate much traffic.



For those of you that have been directed here from the awards/voting page, this blog promotes the writings of early 20th century conservative writer Garet Garrett. I seek to rediscover conservatism's roots by reviewing Garrett's little known novels and, ultimately, Garrett's political essays during the New Deal.

Garrett has long been rumored to have influenced the writings of Ayn Rand. Many similarities exist between Garrett's novels, particularly The Driver, and various Rand novels and plays.

Garrett is enjoying a mini-renaissance lately due to the recent publication of various compilations of his Saturday Evening Post essays. You can find links to and descriptions of these and other works of Garrett throughout this blog.

The rules allow you to vote early and often, please do so here.

Satan's Bushel - II

Click here for part I.

On further reading of Satan's Bushel, I discovered a speech that rivals any of the great speeches I have read in any work of fiction. It certainly deserves its place with the speeches of Roark or John Galt (although it is not as comprehensive as the speeches from those characters).

One of the main characters, Absalom Weaver, sits listening to a sales pitch for the local farmers to join a marketing cooperative. At the end of the sales pitch, the farmers persuade Weaver to rise and give his opinion:

. . . He had not yet begun to speak, but he was peering about in the grass, stooping here and there to pluck a bit of vegetation. He walked as far as the fence for a bramble leaf. Returning he snapped a twig from the elm above his head and faced them.

"This towering elm," he began, with an admiring look at the tree, "was once a tiny thing. A sheep might have eaten it at one bite. Every living thing around it was hostile and injurious. And it survived. It grew. It took its profit. It became tall and powerful beyond the reach of its enemies. What preserved it - cooperative marketing? What gave it power - a law from Congress? What gave it fullness - the Golden Rule? On what was its strength founded - a fraternal spirit? You know better. Your instincts tell you no. It saved itself. It found its own greatness. How? By fighting. Did you know that plants fight? If you could only see the deadly, ceaseless warfare among plants this lovely landscape would terrify you. It would make you think man's struggles tame."

"I hold up this leaf from the elm. The reason it is flat and thin is that the peaceable work of its life is to gather nourishment for the tree from the air. Therefore it must have as much surface as possible to touch the air with. But it has another work to do. A grisly work. A natural work, all the same. It must fight. For that use it is pointed at the end as you see and has teeth around the edge - these. The first thing the elm plant does is to grow straight up out of the ground with a spear thrust, its leaves rolled tightly together. Its enemies do not notice it. Then suddenly each leaf spreads itself out and with its teeth attacks other plants; it overturns them, holds them out of the sunlight and drowns them. Marvelous, isn't it? Do you wonder why the elm does not overrun the earth? Because other plants fight back, each in its own way. I show you a blade of grass. It has no teeth. How can it fight? Perhaps it lives by love and sweetness. It does not. It grows very fast by stealth, taking up so little room that nothing else minds, until all at once it is tall and strong enough to throw out blades in every direction and fall upon other plants. It smothers them to death. Then the bramble. I care not for the bramble. Not because it fights. For another reason. Here is its weapon. Besides the spear point and the teeth the bramble leaf you see is in five parts, like one's hand. It is a hand in fact, and one very hard to cast off. When it cannot overthrow and kill an enemy as the elm does, it climbs up his back to light and air, and in fact prefers that opportunity, gaining its profit not in natural combat but in shrewd advantage, like the middleman. Another plant I would like to show you. There is one nearby. Unfortunately it would be inconvenient to exhibit him in these circumstances. His familiar name is honeysuckle. He is sleek, suave, brilliantly arrayed, and you would not suspect his nature, which is that of the preying speculator. Once you are in his toils it is hopeless. The way of this plant is to twist itself round and round another and strangle it."

"This awful strife is universal in plant life. There are no exemptions. Among animals it is not so fierce. They can run from one another. Plants must fight it out where they stand. They must live or die on the spot. Among plants of one kind there is rivalry. The weak fall out and die; the better survive. But all plants of one kind fight alike against plants of all other kinds. That is the law of their strength. A race of plants that had wasted its time waiting for Congress to give it light and air, or for a state bureau with hired agents to organize it by the Golden Rule, or had been persuaded that its interests were in common with those of the consumer, would have disappeared from the earth.

"The farmer is like a plant. He cannot run. He is rooted. He shall live or die on the spot. But there is no plant like a farmer. There are nobles, ruffians, drudges, drones, harlots, speculators, bankers, thieves and scalawags, all these among plants, but no idiots, saying 'How much will you give?' and 'What will you take?' Until you fight as the elm fights, take as the elm takes, think as the elm thinks, you will never be powerful and cannot be wise."

This speech is the ultimate rejoinder to those who preach "compassion" as the justification for socialist economic policy. This speech denies and disproves any policy that would use government obstacles and barriers against those who must fight for survival (all of us - not just farmers). This speech helps us understand our own nature and how that nature is suited to the capitalist economic system.

While Weaver's speech needs context for it to have the most impact, that context would soon be provided by the policies of the New Deal. We can forgive Garrett for failing to apply Weaver's lesson to broader government policy. Such a comprehensive approach did not seem as imperative in the pre-New Deal days of 1923.