Mr. Boyd is President of the Chapin & Bangs Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut and a director of the Steel Service Center Institute. This article is from his statement to the Board of Directors of the Institute in October, 1967.
Of course, I am as vitally concerned as anyone in the import troubles of the steel industry, but these troubles are only a part of a much greater problem and I think we must lift our gaze above the morass of statistics and political maneuverings — above and beyond the steel industry itself —to see what is really happening here. We must take a look at the basic principles involved.
I know we can all agree that the proper way to solve a problem is first to find its cause and then to remove that cause. The people of the American Iron and Steel Institute assume that their troubles come from foreign governments and producers, low foreign wage rates, and our State Department. Certainly these are contributing factors, but I believe that by far the most important cause is the actions and interventions of our own government —all departments and all levels —and of the labor unions to which government has given such great powers and privileges. Consider how our costs are skyrocketing because of high taxes, depreciation of our money, harassments, controls, regulations, strikes, union-imposed uneconomic wage levels, and inefficient work practices. These are the results of government actions, and they are forcing us to price ourselves right out of the market.
If you don’t believe it is our own government that is at fault, consider an industry which is little if at all affected by foreign governments, foreign producers, and foreign wage scales. Take the railroads — the New York, New Haven & Hartford in particular.
This road has been murdered by our own government and its creatures, the railway unions. It has been heavily taxed by all levels of government, its rates have been controlled, its operations have been regulated, it has suffered from strikes, featherbedding, and uneconomic wage rates, and on top of this, government has built competing highways along its tracks and subsidized competing modes of transportation. It has been ruined by its own government without the aid of foreigners and now, no doubt, will be completely taken over by government. And this will be the fate of many more industries if the present trend is not reversed.
Why is government doing these things? The people in government are taking these actions because they believe the proper function of government is to guide and control our economy for “our own good” — that we are too stupid and greedy to run our own affairs. And we have such a government because the overwhelming majority of the people in this country have accepted and believe in statist ideas.
If this is so, then it would be futile to run to government — the very perpetrator of our troubles — and ask for yet another political intervention to compensate for uneconomic practices already in effect. It would also be inconsistent with belief in the free market which we profess.
So what we need is not positive government “help” (tariffs, quotas, embargoes, subsidies) but negative government help (revision of the labor laws to strip the unions of special privilege and power, reduction of taxes, a balanced budget, sound money, abolition of government controls and intervention in business) — in other words, a move to the free market and a constitutionally limited government.
Ideas must be fought with ideas, not with force. What we should do is demolish the prevalent ideas of statism and then win acceptance of the sound ideas of the free market, private property, limited government system.
This is a tall order and not something to be done overnight, but it seems to me the only sound way. It is a matter of enlightenment and education because ideas precede and determine actions; people act in accordance with their beliefs. Good politics will follow good thinking. First, then, we must develop our own understanding; for light attracts, and thus the ideas of freedom will spread.
