The Public and the Politicians

LIEUT.-COLONEL GEORGE A. DREW, the President, introduced the speaker.

MR. GRATTAN O'LEARY: Colonel Drew and Gentlemen of the Empire Club: In listening to your Chairman introducing me and extolling my virtues and achievements, I was reminded of the case of a Dr. Jones who was called as a witness in a New York trial not very long ago. The counsel for the defence, in calling upon Dr. Jones said that he would now call upon a man who was the greatest physician in the United States. So, when the counsel for the prosecution came to cross examine Dr. Jones he said to him: "Dr. Jones, is it true that you are the greatest physician in the United States?" arid Dr. Jones said, "Yes". The next day the newspapers carried headlines saying how Dr. Jones had said that he was the greatest physician in the United States. When Dr. Jones got back to the John Hopkins hospital his associates said, "Jones, did you tell them in New York that you were the greatest physician in the United States?" Jones said, "Yes". They said, "Good God, Jones how did you come to say that?" He replied, "Well, I had to. I was on oath". (Laughter.)

Not being on oath here today I shall have to dissent from some of the things said by your Chairman because, as a matter of fact, whenever I arise to discuss anything in public, whether it be politics or anything else, I always feel like a Harvard professor who, everytime he was called upon to make a speech in public invariably made four: first, the speech he made to his wife before going to his audience; then the speech he made to his audience; next, the speech he made on the way home and wished to God he had made to his audience; and, finally the speech he made the next day in the press. (Laughter.)

Your Chairman has told me that this is an organization or a club which welcomes frank discussion and as that is the only discussion which is worth while I shall try to be frank in what I say today.

I have taken for my subject, as you have been told, "The Public and the Politicians". I have taken that subject for two reasons: first, because it is the one subject in the world upon which I ought to be competent to speak with some small degree of authority; and, second, because it is a much more vital topic than the average citizen is perhaps inclined to believe.

All of us seem to be agreed that there is something wrong with politics. Everywhere you go in this country and no matter where you go, you will find people challenging our public life. We are told that representative government is on trial. We are told that the word "politician" has come to be a term of reproach and all over this continent, in Canada and in the United States, millions of our people proclaim their indifference and their apathy by complete absence from the polls.

Now, why is this? Why is it that politics which, after all, is the science and the art of government which proclaims the right of people to assert their rights as free men, why is it that politics has thus fallen into disrepute? One answer, I think,, and certainly a partial answer, is the growing propensity among all of us to question, to criticize, to misrepresent and to villify the politicians as a class.

I am perfectly aware that the tendency to belittle politicians has existed, at least in a limited degree, for very many years. I think that it was Carlyle who denounced all politicians as "Fools in frock coats" and some of you may be familiar with a very famous definition given by Mr. Labouchere, a famous English wit. Mr. Labouchere was asked to define the difference between a politician and a lady. He said: "If a politician said 'Yes', he meant, 'Perhaps'; if he said, 'Perhaps', he meant 'No'; and if he said 'No', he wasn't a politician. If a lady said 'No'" she meant, 'Perhaps'; if she said, 'Perhaps', she meant 'Yes'; and if she said, 'Yes', she wasn't a lady." (Laughter.)

These, of course, are but the opinions of men who were rebels in their day and I think that it is historically accurate to say that for many years in the past parliaments and politicians and public men were held in respect and reverence by the public in most parts.

The war seems to have brought a change. Why or how it brought the change is difficult to say, but the fact remains that to be a public man today is to be a shining mark. In the press, in reviews, in the popular novel and upon the stage, in the corner grocery and even in the pulpit, the politician is held up as a fool or a knave.

There isn't a young man one year out of University; there isn't a young parlour Bolshevik, a lawyer, a doctor, a journalist or a plumber, who doesn't think he could run the country better than those who are running it.

Why is this? Just how much of this public attitude is justified by the facts? I have been watching parliaments and politicians for twenty-three years. Because of my duties as a newspaper man I have observed the functioning of six parliaments. I have seen the rise and fall of six ministries and I have had the privilege of knowing most of the leaders of our parties from Sir Wilfred Laurier, to Mr. Bennett, and because of what I have observed from a vantage point of criticism, I am convinced and profoundly convinced that most of the current criticism of politicians is untruthful, that a great deal of it is exaggerated, and most of it is criminally unjust. (Applause.)

Let us look (as Al. Smith would say) let us look for a moment at the record. One of the things we are constantly told in this country is that the politicians are inefficient, that they lack vision, that they have brought us to near-ruin, and that what we really need are more business men in politics to give us honest and competent direction.

Business men in politics! Well,, as I have said, I have been watching business men in politics for many years and I think the time has come in this country when we should make up our mind that because a man may be successful in some business, that does not endow him with the talents to lead us ire all human relationships, or to give us guidance in political problems. If there is one myth in this country greater than the myth of a strong silent man, it is the superstition that business men are invariably or necessarily successful in public life. The actual truth is-and I think I can be supported by the record-the actual truth is that one of the things wrong with the world today, and certainly one of the things wrong in Canada today, is that we have had too many business leaders trying to give direction who are not competent to give it. We have had too many business men interfering in government or trying to interfere to the detriment of the public weal. We are told that between 1925 and 1930 the politicians didn't see what was coming. Well, I ask you, Gentlemen of the Empire Club, if you think, in the light of what has happened in the last few years, whether the business men of this country saw what was coming? If you think they did and you don't want to become cynical, then I ask you never, never to go back and read the annual statements of our bankers and financial magnates those pompous, pontificial statements they gave us during the past ten years. r have taken the trouble, myself, for a certain reason, to go back and read in newspaper files, the annual statements of our railway leaders, our banking leaders and our financial leaders, telling us what would happen in Canada, what should happen in Canada and if they were right in a single instance, I have been unable to discover it

These were in the days of 1928 and 1929 and 1930 when all of us were offering incense before the altars of the Insulls and the Kreugers and the Lowensteins and before the alters of some other super-men, so-called, living not quite so far from home.

And what happened? Well in 1928, 1929 and 1930, we counted that day lost whose sun did not rise upon some new trust company, upon some new holding company, upon some new financial proposal or promotion that was to make us all happy and rich. They piled trust company on trust company, and holding company on holding company, and some other kind of company on some other kind of company, and they built a Babel of Finance on a foundation of water and, finally, after they had bedevilled industry and bewildered themselves, the whole structure crashed down with disaster to most of us.

And these are the people, who go around telling us that politicians and governments must keep out of business. O, we heard that cry in Canada in the years of 1928, 1929 and 1930-"Governments must not interfere with business". Do you know why they told us that? They told us that when prosperity was enabling them to make great profits and they didn't wish governments to intervene in those profits but when prosperity ceased, when the rising markets became a falling market then the people who talked about "rugged individualism"--the rugged individualists--became rugged "chissellers," they came to Ottawa like locusts to ask the government to save them from their owns folly with public money and to give them special privileges and favours. The rugged individualists of 1928 and 1929!

The actual truth is that there is perhaps not a single case during the last five years where the interference of certain capitalists in government redounded to the benefit of the country.

Take the case of Great Britain. In 1931 England passed through a great financial crisis. They passed through the crisis successfully but not because of the help or aid or advise of her business men. When the two well-known politicians, Mr. Stanley Baldwin and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald went to the Bank of England and asked that great magnate of finance, Sir Montagu Norman for advice, he said, "Whatever you do, you must not depart from the gold standard". And he sent an economist, a Professor Clay, I think, to go to the British Broadcasting Company and tell the people of England that if they departed from the gold standard every stock exchange in England would be closed on the following day.

Well, England departed from the gold standard because of her politicians, held so much in contempt, and by departing from the gold standard saved herself.

In, the case of the United States: There was a man in the United States-you may have heard his name of late-a Mr. Edward G. Mitchell-a colossus of finance in the United States. He was one of those super-men who go about telling of the dreadful things that are done by politicians. Mr. Edward G. Mitchell, Chairman of the New York National City Bank,, was in the habit of going to Washington and telling the Senate and telling Congress what it ought to do about governing the United States and what it ought to do about balancing the budget. In 1928 Mr. Edward G. Mitchell's contribution was to sell 18,000 shares of the National City Bank to a friend--the friend turning out to be his wife--thereby evading the payment of his income tax to the United States in a year when his gross personal income was $3,000,000.

These are the people who are loudest in their shouting that the politicians are ruining the country and that we should turn the government over to the financiers, the capitalists and the big business men.

You will notice that the budget of the United States is being balanced by a man of great courage and ability--not by the captains of Wall Street and their advice, not by the business men or the bankers--by a plain, old-fashioned politician, a man who knows something about the traditions of responsible government. It is being balanced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

There is the case of war debts. We have been told, and I think with truth, that war debts are at the bottom of most of the world depression and they are at the bottom of the world depression because the creditor nation, the United States, has made it difficult for the war debts to be paid in the only way they can be paid, that is in goods and services. They have done that in the United States by raising their tariffs again and again. Why did they raise it? If you ask the average man, the politicians did it, the Congress and the Senate did it. Gentlemen, Congress did nothing of the kind! All Congress did was to react to the constant pressure of lobbeyists sent to Washington by the business interests of the United States-by those so-called supermen of finance. If you want the proof of that, take the official report of the United States Chamber of Commerce as published November 17th last. In that you see the conclusion that high tariffs in the United States are the consequence of business men--greedy, avaricious, short-sighted men who think a nation can go on selling without buying--men who compelled Congress to take the action they did.

Let us come nearer home and take our own Imperial Conference of last year-that Conference that met in an atmosphere of great hope-in an atmosphere which offered every possible hope of some vast and great achievement for the British Empire. That Conference did not quite fulfill the expectations of the British Empire or the expectations of those who called it. True, it didn't fail entirely, but to the extent it did fail, it failed not because of the failure of statesmanship, not because of the politicians--it failed because of the greed, the avarice, the short-sightedness of business men who flocked to Ottawa from England, and Canada as well, who could only see their own personal, private profit: And Mr. Amery, a former Secretary of the Dominion, summed it up perfectly well when he said: "This Conference had ceased to be a great gathering of Empire statesmen and had become an assembly of exporters with conflicting interests and aims."

But, we are told by these supermen of business to look at the Canadian National Railways and they say to us: "Look at what the politicians have done to this great legacy, this great heritage of the Canadian people." It may be that the politicians have visited injury on the Canadian National Railways. I ask you, as fair minded business men, whether anything the politicians ever did to the Canadian National Railways excelled in violence to the public interest what business men and certain capitalists in this country have done to a great national heritage like Beauharnois or another great national heritage like the newsprint industry of this country? (Applause.)

There is one thing of which I am certain: that no matter what may happen under public ownership, no matter what politicians may have done in the public ownership the things that happened to Beauharnois under private ownership and capitalist control,, the things that happened to the newsprint industry of this country could not have happened had control been vested in the politicians of this country.

The truth is that business and government are two vitally different things. One is as wide only as the particular need of the particular interest of the particular industry, but government is as wide as humanity and, in the light of the events of the past five years, it is my firm conviction that the task of government to date is not to get business men to run it, but to keep business men, or a certain class of business men from trying to run it. In other words, one of the great problems before Canada today is not to save Capitalism from Socialism or communism, but to save Capitalism from certain capitalists.

And that brings me to the next count-to the charge that politics is corrupt. We are told all over this country--I heard it in a pullman train coming from Ottawa--that politicians in this country as a rule are corrupt and, again, what does the record say?

Since Confederation the politicians of this country have administered between four and five billions of dollars of public money. I challenge any man in this audience now to arise and tell me when any of that money was diverted from the proper channels. Well, one of you could rise. If you did, you would have to go back into a political history of more than a quarter of a century. I sat in the Press Gallery some years ago and I heard an Ontario Member" Mr. Porter, rise to move impeachment proceedings against a Minister of the Crown of that day. In moving that resolution, Mr. Porter said a very wonderful thing. He said that he had been hampered in drafting his resolution because of the fact that he couldn't find a precedent for the crime he wished to condemn.. He couldn't find a precedent in all political history for the crime he wished to condemn. Mind you, the crime he wished to condemn was not the use of public funds for private gain but simply that a Minister of the Crown had used information gained in the Cabinet to save himself from financial loss.

Take the case during the War: During the War the politicians of Canada spent something like two billions of dollars. They spent the money in desperate haste; they spent it without experience to guide them; it was spent at a time when it was impossible for the public or for parliament to scrutinize the accounts and yet, despite post-war investigations, despite investigation after investigation by the opposition, despite investigations by people only too anxious to show wrong-doing, every enquiry was a glorious vindication of the honesty and the patriotism of the politicians. Yet, during all those years years which, as I have said, were a marvellous indication of the honesty of public life, the critics of the politicians and the retailers of cloakroom gossip flourished like green bay trees. There are four classes of people in this country who constantly assail politicians: First, there are the merely malicious" moved by partisan, or financial, or political reasons. There are the well meaning, unthinking people--people seemingly ready to swallow anything told against politicians as a class. There are the people incapable of distinguishing between gossip and rumour and demonstrated fact. And, finally, certain journalists, people of my own profession-people belonging to the underworld of journalism--who are more concerned with sensational statements and gossip than with the well-being of the government of their country. (Applause.)

In that very well known book, "Barchester Towers"u Mr. Arabin says, "I know of no life that must be so delicious as that of a writer for some newspaper-to thunder forth accusations against men in power; to show up the worst side of everything that is produced; to pick holes in every coat; to be indignant, sarcastic, moral or supercilious; to damn with faint praise or crush with open calumny".

I have wished, though I do not favour censorships, that some tribunal existed before which these cocksure writers could be hailed to make good their accusations and charges which they level against our public men.

I have in mind a case which occurred during the War. There was in this country at that time an eminent Divine, a man whose pulpit influence made him known from the Atlantic to the Pacific. During the course of the War this man went in the pulpit and made the most outrageous charges against the government of the day. A committee of Parliament was sitting in Ottawa and he was brought before the committee. I was present in the committee room and when the statements made by this gentleman were submitted, to him and he was asked to state in simple language what his charge was based on" do you know what he said? He said that what he had charged from the, pulpit was told to him by a man he met in a pullman train between Toronto and Winnipeg and he didn't even remember the man's name.

But the great trouble is that for every lie that is nailed, a hundred go unanswered. They are swallowed by the public; they are seized upon by every discontented and every inefficient individual in our midst and they gratify, particularly that class which Disraeli had in mind when he said: "The defects of the great man are the consolation of dunces".

There are other critics of public life. There is the. man who sneers at the "talking shop" on the Hill. There is the man who assures you that there is absolutely no difference between the parties. There is the chap who tells you that all the statesmen are dead and there is the man who, thinking it splendid to appear sophisticated or cynical, hints darkly that he has inside knowledge of some dreadful corruption.

I have met these people over a period of twenty years. I have investigated their statements and their standing and I assure you they are frauds to a man. I am not personally persuaded that the intellectual calibre of parliament is as high as it ought to be, and with about two thirds of our people too indifferent to vote, that in itself, is no miracle. I am satisfied that, taken as a whole, our politicians are at least the equal of their constituents, whether the test be morality, honesty, capacity or intelligence.

And there is something else. You hear people these days assailing taxation and saying that we have reached the limit and wondering what the politicians do with all the money they are taking from us. Gentlemen, the politicians have very little to do with it. Governments have no salesmen; what we are paying for in taxation we are paying for in goods and services that we got from the government and which we demanded from the government. No government came and said that we must have certain social services; that we must tie up four million dollars in highways; that you must have this, that, or the other thing. These things were demanded by the people. In all the years I have been in Ottawa, I have never yet seen a deputation come to Parliament Hill, demanding a government not to make a certain; expenditure but I have seen parliament stormed, day after day, and week after week, by people demanding social services, branch lines or railways., or some other expenditure. These are the things that you are paying for now. You are paying for them because of yourselves and not your politicians, and I say in passing that the time has come in this country when the people of Canada must make up their minds whether they need these social services and if" needing them, they are in a position to pay for them. Doing that would be a sensible thing, instead of merely abusing the politicians.

My main point is this: Constant abuse of politicians, constant attacks upon the efficiency and the integrity of public men is having a bad effect in this country, resulting in the destroying of public confidence in our representative constitution and instilling in the minds of our younger generation that public life and all politicians are corrupt.

Everywhere we look in the world today we find representative government on trial-a Stalin inn Russia, a Mussolini in Italy, a Hitler in Germany-these people proclaim the decline of democracy and representative government and I believe in all sincerity, unless and until the people of this country come to value more the things their ancestors bled to win for them, we, too, will be in peril of losing the heritage which for a thousand years has been one of the greatest things in the British Empire.

I recall a few years ago in London hearing that gifted novelist, Rebecca West, speak at Westminster. She told of the various governments that had come,, had risen to power, fallen to defeat, and risen again with the hope of a new movement-although good men and bad men and corrupt were there, the fact remained, and the most cynical interpretation of history could not deny that most of the men who came there through the centuries had cared a little for the common good. It is the same in our own country. We have had good men at Ottawa and bad-and some of the pages of history they have made for us, we would gladly wipe out-but when the last word of censure is said, it still remains true that in the main, for the most part, most of our public men have cared a lot for the common good. Those who hold differently betray ignorance and malice and certainly invite peril. They invite the peril that has come to the great Republic to the south, where, largely because of criticism, muck-raking and fault finding, Congress has sunk to the lowest level within half a century. (Applause.)