The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
know, how much I appreciate a thing that comes from you and how
poverty stricken I am when it comes to making adequate return. I
can prove that I have been working hard, but my work does not
crystallize into anything which is worth sending to a friend.
The fact is that I have never worked as hard in my life as I have
lately. I get to my office about nine, and without going out of my
room (for I take my lunch at my desk), stay until six, and work at
home every night until half past eleven, and then take a volume of
essays or poems to bed with me for half or three-quarters of an
hour, and so to sleep.
If the man in the White House had as much sense as I have, he
would name you for the Supreme Bench without asking, and "draft"
you, as Roosevelt says. By the way, I gave the suggestion of
"draft" in a talk I had with him a month or so ago.
The political situation is interesting, but altogether un-lovely.
... It looks as if Clark might be the nominee on the Democratic
side. Taft is gaining in strength, and somehow I cannot feel that
Roosevelt will ever be in it, although you know how I like him.
The situation seems a bit artificial.
Give my love to Mrs. John. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO GEORGE W. LANE
Washington, February 23, 1912
MY DEAR GEORGE,-- ... Yesterday I delivered an address before the
University of Virginia on A Western View of Tradition--which when
it is printed I will send out to you--and in the afternoon was
taken up to Jefferson's home, Monticello. It is on a mountain, the
top of which he scraped off. It overlooks the whole surrounding
country, most of which at that time he owned. He planned the whole
house himself, even to the remotest details, the cornices and the
carvings on the mantels, the kind of lumber of which the floors
were to be made, the character of the timbers used, the carving of
the capitals on the columns, the folding ladder that was used to
wind up the clock over the doorway, the registers on the porch
that recorded the direction in which the wind was coming, as moved
by the weather-vane on the roof, the little elevator beside the
fireplace ... and a thousand other details.
... I would like nothing better if I had any kind of skill in
using my hands than to take a year off and build a house. It is a
real religion to create something, and you do not need a great
deal of money to make a very beautiful little place. You must have
one large room, and the house must be on some elevation, and you
must get water, water, and water. ... It is water that makes land
valuable in California or anywhere else. Affectionately yours,
F. K. L.
TO CARL SNYDER
Washington, March 6, 1912
MY DEAR CARL,--I have this minute for the first time seen the copy
of COLLIER'S, for February 24, 1912, and therefore for the first
time my eyes lighted upon your most delicious roast of the
Commerce Court. ...
I do not know what the outcome of this movement will be. The only
settled policy of government is inertia. The House of
Representatives Committee on Appropriations, I believe, proposes
to abolish the appropriation for the Court, which looks like a
cowardly way to get at the thing, but perhaps it is most
effective. However, I really doubt if they will have the nerve to
do this. It is a mighty critical year, I think, in our history. It
looks to me as if the reactionaries were going to get possession
of both parties, and that a third party will be needed and nobody
will have the nerve to start it. Roosevelt has got everything west
of the Mississippi excepting Utah and Wyoming, in my judgment.
That he will be able to get the nomination I am not so sure; but
he does not care a tinker's damn whether he gets it himself or
not. That is the worst of it because the people won't give
anything to a man that he does not want. ... Well, we are living
in mighty interesting times anyway.
As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
On February 22, 1912, Lane delivered the annual address at the
University of Virginia. He spoke on American Tradition, saying
that as Americans are physically, industrially, and socially the
"heirs of all the ages" our supreme tradition is a "hatred of
injustice." That one of the great experiments that a Democracy
should make is to find a more equitable distribution of wealth
"without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual
capacity and imagination." This address brought a letter from
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Court.
TO FRANKLIN K. LANE
March 17, 1912
MY DEAR SIR,--Let me thank you at once for your Virginia address,
which I have just received and just read--read with the greatest
pleasure. I admire its eloquence, its imagination, its style. I
sympathize with its attitude and with most of its implications. I
gain heart from its tone of hope. I am old--by the calendar at
least--and at times am more melancholy, so that it does me good to
hear the note of courage. One implication may carry conclusions to
which I think I ought to note my disagreement,--the reference to
unequal distribution. I think the prevailing fallacy is to
confound ownership with consumption of products. Ownership is a
gate, not a stopping place. You tell me little when you tell me
that Rockefeller or the United States is the owner. What I want to
know is who consumes the annual product, and for many years I have
been saying and believing that to think straight one should look
at the stream of annual products and ask what change one would
make in that under any REGIME. The luxuries of the few are a drop
in the bucket--the crowd now has all there is. The difference
between private and public ownership, it seems to me, is mainly in
the natural selection of those most competent to foresee the
future and to direct labor into the most productive channels, and
the greater poignancy of the illusion of self-seeking under which
the private owner works. The real problem, under socialism as well
as under individualism, is to ascertain, under the external
economic and inevitable conditions, the equilibrium of social
desires. The real struggle is between the different groups of
producers of the several objects of social desire. The bogey
capital is simply the force of all the other groups against the
one that is selling its product, trying to get that product for
the least it can. Capital is society purchasing and consuming--
Labor is society producing. The laborers unfortunately are often
encouraged to think capital something up in the sky which they are
waiting for a Franklin to bring down into their jars. I think that
is a humbug and lament that I so rarely hear what seem to me the
commonplaces that I have uttered, expressed. Your fine address has
set me on my hobby and you have fallen a victim to the charm of
your own words. Very truly, yours,
O. W. HOLMES
P. S. Of course I am speaking only of economics not of political
or sentimental considerations--both very real, but as to which all
that one can say is, if you are sure that you want to go to the
show and have money enough to buy a ticket, go ahead, but don't
delude yourself with the notion that you are doing an economic
act. I make the only return I can in the form of the single speech
I have made for the last nine years.
TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
Washington, March 20, 1912
MY DEAR MR. JUSTICE,--I sincerely thank you for the warmth and
generosity of your comment on my Virginia speech. Your economic
philosophy is fundamentally, I think, the same as mine--that the
wealth produced is a social product. And men may honestly differ
as to how best that stream of foods and other satisfactions may be
increased in volume, or more widely distributed. May I carry your
figure of the stream further by suggesting that the riparian owner
in England has the superior right, but in an arid country the
common law rule is abandoned because under new conditions it does
not make for the greatest public good? The land adjoining feels
the need of the water, and society takes from one to give to the
other.
The last century was devoted to steaming up in production. This
century, it appears to me, will devote itself more definitely to
distribution. It is nonsense, of course, to say that because the
rich grow richer the poor grow poorer; but the poor are not the
same poor, they, too, have found new desires. Civilization has
given them new wants. Those desires will not be satisfied with
largesse, and with the machinery of government in their hands the
people are bound to experiment along economic lines. They will
certainly find that they get most when they preserve the captain
of industry, but may it not be that his imagination and
forethought may be commanded by society at a lower share of the
gross than he has heretofore received, or in exchange for
something of a different, perhaps of a sentimental nature? ...
Please pardon this typewritten note, but my own hand, unlike your
copper-plate, is absolutely illegible. I have been raised in a
typewriter age.
Again thanking you for your letter, believe me, with the highest
regard, faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Washington, April 3, 1912
MY DEAR JOHN,--You overwhelm me. ... You have no right to say such
nice things to an innocent and trusting young thing like myself.
The flat, unabashed truth is that I appreciate your letter more
than any other that I have received concerning that speech. By way
of indicating the interest which it has excited I send you copies
of some correspondence between Mr. Justice Holmes and myself.
Our plans for the summer are very unsettled. The probability is
that we will go up to Bras D'Or Lakes, in Cape Breton, where we
can have salt-water bathing and sailing and be most primitive. I
should like greatly to run over with you to Europe, and, by way of
making the temptation harder to resist, let me know how you expect
to go, and where.
Give my love to the Lady Wigmore. As ever yours,
F, K. L.
TO DANIEL WITTARD PRESIDENT, BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY
Washington, June 19, 1912
MY DEAR MR. WILLARD,--That was a warm cordial note that you sent
me regarding my University of Virginia address, and what you say
of my sentiments confirms my own view that property must look to
men like yourself for protection in the future--men who are not
blind to public sentiment and whose methods are frank. The worst
enemy that capital has in the country is the man who thinks that
he can "put one over" on the people. An institution cannot remain
sacred long which is the creator of injustice, and that is what
some of our blind friends at Chicago do not see. Very truly yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN MCNAUGHT NEW YORK WORLD
Washington, March 23, 1912
MY DEAR JOHN,--I am very glad indeed to hear from you and to know
that you are in sympathy with my "eloquent" address at the
University of Virginia. You give me hope that I am on the right
track. As for Harmon and representative government, you won't get
either. ... Please see Mr. R. W. Emerson's Sphinx, in which occurs
this line:
"The Lethe of Nature can't trance him again
Whose soul sees the perfect, which his eye seeks in vain."
Fancy me surrounded by maps of the express systems of the United
States, digging through the rates on uncleaned rice from Texas to
the Southeast, dribbling off poetry to a man who sits in a tall
tower overlooking New York, who once had poetry which has per
necessity been smothered! Dear John, read your Bible, and in
Second Kings you will find the story of one Rehoboam, that son of
Solomon, who was also for Harmon and representative government.
I am looking out of the window at the funeral procession for the