Announcer: The American Enterprise Institute, presents the distinguished lecture series on The Bicentennial
of the United States. Our host for this thought-provoking series is Vermont Royster, Pulitzer Prize-Winning
Journalist, with "The Wall Street Journal," and Professor of Journalism and Public Affairs
at the University of North Carolina.
Vermont Royster: I'm Vermont Royster with another in the American Enterprise Institute series
of distinguished lectures on the American Bicentennial. In honor of the 200th birthday
of the United States, AEI has invited some of the nation's leading scholars to discuss
their views on the American Revolution, and how it still affects all of us two centuries
later. The AEI is a non-partisan, non-profit research institution based in Washington DC.
Its goal is to promote the public discussion on the major issues of our time. The distinguished
lecture series is a basic part of that program. Today's lecture will be delivered by Edward
C. Banfield Professor of Public Policy Analysis and Political Science at the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Banfield level's his lecture from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
The Institute is designed to be a permanent memorial to Benjamin Franklin, one of Philadelphia's
favorite sons.
In its a 150-year history, the Franklin Institute has grown from room with a display case to
a huge institution. Displaying many of the latest advances in science and industry, the
institute had to be large and diverse to honor a man as complex and accomplished as Benjamin
Franklin. Franklin has been described as a man who snatched the lightning from heaven
and the scepter from tyrants. In the Philadelphia of the late 1700s Benjamin Franklin was a
towering figure. He was a scientist, a statesman, a journalist and a philosopher, and he was
successful at each. Paintings and exhibits of the Franklin Institute today honor many
of the man's achievements.
In his later years, Franklin had trouble reading, his solution to the problem is still in use
today. He invented Bifocal. Franklin combined his talents with journalism and philosophy
into the framed Poor Richard's Almanack. Through the Almanack and some of his other writings,
Franklin taught the world that, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy,
wealthy and wise, that God helps them that help themselves, that people can be snug as
a bug in a rug, and a word to the wise is enough, and that there was never a good war
or a bad peace."
At Independence Hall when he was signing the Declaration of Independence, Franklin cut
short arguments between some of the founding fathers when he pointed out, "We must all
hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Franklin's early experiments
were electricity and made some major contributions to the development of today's push-button
society. And displays on the nature of energy rank among the major exhibits at the Franklin
Institute. Children and grown-ups too are encouraged to experiment for themselves on
machines that demonstrate the workings of energy and gravity.
Another purpose of the institute is to present papers and lectures by distinguished scholars
in the arts and sciences. In the field of urban research and commentary, perhaps no
one is more distinguished than today's AEI, lecture Dr. Edward C. Banfield. Dr. Banfield
is introduced by the eminent historian and political scientist, Dr. Rexford Guy Tugwell.
Dr. Tugwell: I'm delighted to be able to present to this distinguished audience an old colleague
of mine. A colleague that goes way back to the new deal days for one thing, but for another,
we were together at the University of Chicago. While he was at the University of Chicago
he wrote a book which was recently described by one of our other colleagues there as a
classic, that the moral basis of civilization, that is backward. "The Moral Basis Of A Backward
Civilization." And it's a beautiful book. If you've never read it I recommend it to
you. I have difficulty in understanding that his more recent book which was called, "The
Unheavenly City," has caused controversy. Because when I read the book I was delighted
with it. I thought it was the first really sensible thing that's been said about cities
for a long time. Some people don't seem to agree. However, I don't know what he's gonna
say to you this afternoon, but I'm quite sure it will be important, and I'm delighted to
be able to introduce him to you. Professor Edward Banfield, of the University of Pennsylvania.
Edward C. Banfield: Thank you, Dr. Tugwell. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a particular pleasure
to me to be introduced to this audience by Professor Tugwell. It was Professor Tugwell
who enabled me to become a part of academic life, and he has been for many years my much
admired and respected friend. It would be very pleasant on such an occasion as this
to find that the American city has been and is a unique and unqualified success. And to
be able to show that its success is all derived from inherence to principles established and
given the institutional form in the revolution, the approaching bicentennial, of
which we are here to commemorate. Unfortunately, it is all too evident that even if this were
the 4th of July, I would not have license for that sort of oratory. In many important
respects, the American City is a great success, but there are certainly many things about
it that are certainly unpleasant. And some that are or ought to be intolerable, moreover
it is obvious that in most important respects, the good and the bad alike, the American city
differs more in degree than in kind from cities elsewhere.
What we have to be proud of and what we have to worry about are for the most part features
of modernity, not of anything specific to our country. Americans, Thomas Low Nichols
wrote in 1864, are sanguine and hope to succeed in the wildest speculations, but if they do
not they have little scruple about repudiation. A man cares little for being ruined. And as
little about ruining others, but then ruin in the United States is not like ruin in older
countries where a man can fail a dozen times and still go ahead and get credit again. Ruin
does not amount to much. In search of the dollar, the American has been constantly on
the move. Stephan Thernstrom, the historian, has estimated that over the past 170 years
probably only 40% to 60% percent of the adult males in most cities at any point in time
were in the same city 10 years later.
"A migratory race," Tocqueville called us, which he said, "Having reached the Pacific
Ocean, we'll retrace it steps and destroy the social communities which it will have
formed and left behind." The ethnic diversity of our cities has been unparalleled. As early
as 1890, one-third of the residents of cities of over 100,000 were foreign-born. Ten million
foreign-born were counted in the 1970 census. And their median family income it's interesting
to note was not appreciably lower than that of all U.S. families. The American city has
always provided a high level of living for the great majority of its residents. it was
because of what he saw in Europe that Thomas Jefferson came to loathe the city. The American
City has always had more and better schooling, housing, in 1900, one-fourth of the families
in most large cities owned their own homes, sanitation, transportation, more of all of
these and other things than city dwellers elsewhere
Let me turn to civility. Organized philanthropy has always been conspicuous in the American
City, museums, libraries, symphony orchestra's, asylums, hospitals colleges, parks and playgrounds.
The number and variety of such undertakings begun and supported in whole or part by service
clubs, foundations, and other private efforts. It's impressive, and I believe the peculiarly
American. Most of these achievements are largely to the credit of the go-getter, but he must
also be mentioned as a doer of evil. As one who to get things done has been willing to
go to any length. "Politicians took bribes," Lincoln Steffens told us, "because businessmen
paid bribes." And so it was they the businessmen who were the real corruptors of politics.
The extent of corruption in American cities has long been the wonder of the civilized
world. Some have tried to account for it by pointing to the masses of poor and politically
inexperienced immigrants. This is surely only a partial explanation. Boss Tweed, and his
"Forty thieves," there were at that time 40 members of the New York City Council. Boss
Tweed and his "Forty thieves," were in business before the immigrants most of them arrived.
Frank J. Goodnow, the author of the first, or I think one of the first textbooks on,
city government written about the turn of the century stated the puzzling facts, "Philadelphia,
with a large native-born and home-owning, and a small tenement house population, with
a charter which is largely based on what is considered to be advanced ideas on the subject
of municipal government, is said to be both corrupt and contented." Stephens, phrase you
recall. The experience of cities like Philadelphia, Goodnow, concluded, "Encourages the belief
that there must be something in the moral character of the populations." If corruption
was common in American cities, so was violent crime. As far back as records go, and that's
as much as 100 years in only two cities I think, the homicide rate has been extraordinarily
high by the standards of other countries
Vermont Royster: We're lightening to Dr. Edward C. Banfield trace the development of large urban
areas in the United States. In just one moment he will continue his lecture from the Franklin
Institute in Philadelphia. Unlike many museums, the displays at the Franklin Institute, are
meant to be touched and worked and truly experienced. Young people don't just look at an airplane,
they climb aboard, sit in the cockpit, and do just about anything they want except fly
it. Even the human heart called here the engine of life becomes a learning experience at the
Franklin Institute. In the auditorium at the institute another kind of learning experience
is in progress as Dr. Edward C. Banfield continues his lecture on the American city.
Edward C. Banfield: Class differences have of course existed in all countries, but in America,
where there's probably been more upward mobility than anywhere else to be socially defined
as no account has been crushing in a way that it could not be where everyone knew that rising
in the world was out of the question. Well, that's because most have expected to rise,
if not themselves and to their children. The American City, unlike cities in other countries,
has never produced a radical working-class movement. Perhaps because some have been demoralized
by their failure to rise in the society in which one is supposed to rise. The American
city has had a lumpenproletariat. A lower as distinguished from the working class. One
more conspicuous and possibly more resistant to absorption, than that of most other countries.
If the openness of American society has produced total alienation in some, it has probably
created disaffection in many more. In a society preoccupied with getting and spending, those
who have not managed to get as much as others with whom they compare themselves are likely
to feel poor and perhaps to blame themselves as well as the society for being relatively
badly off, even if they are in absolute terms reasonably well off.
Turning now to government, what is perhaps most conspicuous to the foreigner is the localism
of our politics. Localism in two senses, first that every city, even every village has by
the standards of other countries an extraordinary degree of independence in dealing with a wide
range of matters, including usually police and schools. Where else could the voters of
a small town decide not to permit the construction of a $600 million, oil finery. Localism also
in the sense that city politics turns on local, often neighborhood, concerns and not upon
national issues or ideologies. Our cities have been and still are run to the extent
that one can say they are run at all by politicians, meaning persons whose talent is for managing
conflict, not by career civil servants or planners, persons whose talent is for laying
out consistent courses of action aiming toward agreed upon goals. To be sure thousands of
documents called plans have been made under the auspices of American local governments.
But I think it would be hard to find one that has been carried into effect unless by the
chances of politics.
The problem of metropolitan organization exists in this country in a form that may be unique.
Actually, it is two quite different problems, one consists of the multiplicity of more or
less overlapping jurisdictions within a single metropolitan area. And the other of the absence
within any such area of a general purpose government having jurisdiction over the whole
of the area. It is a peculiarly American practice to refer a great many matters to the electorate.
Not only the choice of Mayors, and Councilors, but also in many places and judges as well
as decisions about capital expenditures, zoning, governmental structure. Finally, it is remarkably,
easy for a small number of persons. Especially if they are organized to prevent an American
local government from carrying out undertakings that are alleged to be and indeed may be in
the interest of the large majority. Political parties in the United States are not really
national organizations. Rather they are shifting coalitions of those who by winning elections
or otherwise have assembled enough pieces of authority to count. Because there is power
at stake locally, able and ambitious men and women have exerted themselves to get it. They
have always been able to afford to offer the voter, enough voters anyway to make a difference,
inducements more substantial in ideology, jobs, favors, ethnic recognition.
Politics in the American city has been serious business. That is the politician has been
a sort of businessman. Just as the businessman has been a sort of politician. Obviously,
this would be impossible if power were highly centralized. The fragmentation of authority
not only permitted but encouraged its informal centralization by means notably the machine
and the boss that were corrupt. "If then," Stephan said, "businessmen gave bribes, because
they had to, because it was impossible to operate a street railroad without doing so."
It was also true that politicians took bribes because they had to. Because to centralize
enough power to get things done they had in one way or another to purchase pieces of authority
from voters and others. Without this easy access to power on the local scene, the go-getter
would not have had the opportunity to go get. As it was he could extend the grids of non-existent
cities into the hinterland confident that he could induce some public body to build
the canal, railroad, highway, arsenal, or whatever that would send land values up. Even
the new immigrants ties, ethnic ties, had a political value that could often be converted
into the small amount of capital he needed for a start.
These incentives released prodigious amounts of energy, the freedom near anarchy in places
of the politician, businessman, entrepreneur, was a necessary condition of the great scramble
to advance which Thomas Nichols said, "Left all troubled, and none satisfied." In Europe,
Nicholas wrote in a part of a passage that I didn't quote, "As a rule, a poor man knows
that he must remain poor and he submits to his lot. Most men," he said, "live and die
in the position to which they are born."
Vermont Royster: From Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Dr. C. Banfield, is discussing the city and
the revolutionary tradition. In just one moment he will continue. Well, the thousands of young
people who visit the Franklin Institute have probably nothing more exciting than watching
an old-fashioned locomotive in action. Oh, hanging bells and hooting whistles are fascinating
enough. But here the children or the grown-ups can climb into the cab turn the valves and
before you know it Casey Jones is alive once more. The building of the railroads in America,
and the subsequent mobility it provided the American people played a major role in the
development of widely scattered urban areas in the United States. The development of our
cities is the subject now being discussed by AEI lecturer Dr. Edward C. Banfield.
Edward C. Banfield: The explanation that I've offered for the distinctive features of the American
city, would be more convincing if I could show that in another country an opposite principle
produced opposite results. I believe I can. The history of urban development in Canada
provides such a test, for the Canadian political system has always been the opposite of ours
in what for me is the crucial respect. I'm not of course implying that the Canadians
have been any less attached to democracy than we, rather that their conception of it has
been essentially different. In Canada, the British tradition was never interrupted. The
duty of government has always been to govern, not as in the United States to preside over
a competition of interests. "Canadians," writes Professor Tom Truman with Master University,
"Canadians insist on strong stable executive government. Which once it is made up its mind
on what the public interest requires, should take the necessary action quickly and with
determination to see it through completely."
It goes without saying that the comparison with Canadian experience cannot provide a
wholly satisfactory test of my argument for there are manifestly many differences between
the two countries that may account for much of what I'm trying to explain. Although Canada
is larger in area than the United States, its great natural resources have been especially,
in the 19th century, much less accessible. It's always had an important French-speaking
minority. And it's always been profoundly influenced by events south of the border here
in the United States. The influence of these and other circumstances on urban development
has certainly been great. But I believe that the centralized structure of political authority
in Canada accounts better than any other single principle for the differences between Canadian
and American cities with respect to the features that I've listed.
Now a detailed account of Canadian experience is obviously out of the question here. But
let me call your attention a few relevant facts. First, the growth of cities in Canada
was slow. As late as 1911, Canada had only six cities of 50,000 or more population, of
which only two had more than 300,000. The go-getter business men boosters speculator
has been, at least until very recently, conspicuous by his absence. Horatio Alger, heroes it seems
have never been popular in Canada. It may be indicative incidentally of the difference
in business ethos since there are about twice as many lawyers per capita in the United States
as in Canada. In 1955, the only year for which I have any figures, there was one lawyer in
private practice per 868 persons here, for one per 1630 there. Immigration into Canada
was until well into this century mainly from the British Isles. British immigrants were
long favored by law. By American standards assimilation of non-British and non-French
speaking immigrants was slow not until this century, I believe was such an immigrant elected
to public office. Generally speaking, the level of public services has been low by American
standards. Organized philanthropy began late by World War I, an import from the United
States. Large-scale corruption has never been a feature of Canadian city government. There
has been very little violent crime. Social mobility has been less, although radical working
class movements have been able to form governments on the prairies, they have always had more
supporters in the urban areas than among the wheat farmers.
Urban Canada does not seem to have had a lumpenproletariat on anything like the American scale. "The
incessant exercise of voting power," Lord Bryce remarked in his essay on Canada, "has
never possessed any special fascination for the Canadian." Toronto has a metropolitan
government, one much admired by American reformers. It was created in 1953 over the objections
of most local governments concerned by the provincial government on recommendation of
the Ontario Municipal Board, a quasi-judicial body. The possibility of a referendum was
never seriously discussed. Can these features of Canadian development be accounted for in
large part by the centralized structure of government? I don't have time to develop the
evidence in support of this claim. But I must quote one of many pertinent passages from
the work by a Canadian sociologist S. D. Clark. He writes in "The Developing Canadian Community"
book published in 1962. "A force of Royal Engineers put an end to lawlessness in the
mining camps of British Columbia. Settlement of the Western Prairie's and the gold rush
of the Klondike took place under the close control of the North West Mounted Police.
Even in Canadian cities, serious threats to law and order have been met by the decisive
use of force."
The result he says, "Was to establish a tradition of respect for the institution of law and
order." The population generally did not feel the need of taking the law into its own hands
through mob action or the organization of vigilantes. There was lacking that intense
jealousy of local rights which in the United States, made it difficult for federal forces
to intervene. The way in which the Northwest Mounted Police came into being was in striking
contrast with that of the Texas Rangers. In the United States, the frontier bred a spirit
of liberty which often opposed efforts to maintain order. "In Canada," he writes, "Order
was maintained at the price of weakening that spirit."
One of the great ironies of history it seems to me is to be found in these developments,
for it was a centralized system like the Canadian and not a fragmented one like the American
that the principal figures among the founding fathers intended to create. "The revolution,"
John Adams, wrote in a letter in 1818, "The revolution was effective before the war. It
was in the minds and hearts of the people, a change in their religious sentiments, of
their duties and obligations. So long as the king and all in authority under him were believed
to govern according to the laws and constitution derived to them by their ancestors, the colonist
thought themselves bound to pray for them as ministers of God, ordained for their good.
But when they saw those powers renouncing all the principles of authority and bent upon
the destruction of their lives, liberties, and properties. They thought that they're
duty to pray for the Continental Congress and the 13 state Congresses."
On this field the intention of the revolutionaries, if you want to call them that, was to bring
about a change of regime, not of political principles. Rulers who had not acted as ministers
or ordained by God were to be replaced by others who would. There's nothing to contradict
this in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson in writing that, "Governments derive their
just powers from the consent of the governed," did not assert anything novel since 1689.
British monarchs had needed the consent of the House of Commons to raise revenue. And
as Martin Diamond pointed out in one of the first of this series of lectures, the Declaration
says that "Consent is required to institute or establish a government. Not for the conduct
of its affairs." The unchallenged principle was that the conduct of affairs belonged in
the hands of those authorized to govern.
Vermont Royster: Were listening to Dr. Edward C. Banfield of the University of Pennsylvania, discussing
the city and the Revolutionary tradition. In just one moment his lecture continues.
In addition to his other talents Benjamin Franklin was a noted printer and the tools
he worked with in the 1700s are graphically displayed at the Franklin Institute. But in
keeping with the institute's policy there are more than just pictures of old printing
presses. Here Franklin's own flatbed press which once cranked out copies of Poor Richard's
Almanack is still in use. While the press is too valuable to open for public use, skilled
printers actually operate the machinery displaying the same techniques used by Franklin two centuries
ago. The development of our cities over the past two centuries is the subject of today's
speaker Dr. Edward C. Banfield. And he now concludes his remarks.
Edward C. Banfield: Adams wanted not only to follow the principles of the British system, but
so far as American conditions allowed, to recreate its forms as well. That the executive
authority was to be in the hands of one chosen by election did not seem to him or others,
most others, to constitute a fundamental change. It had long been understood that in British
government almost all real as opposed to nominal authority was in the hands of ministers not
of the King. As Governor Morris, put it later when addressing the Constitutional Convention,
"Our president will be the British minister." It was in that convention that the distinctively
American political arrangements were arrived at. They represented neither the re-establishment
of the essential principles of the British system nor the assertion of contrary principles.
They were compromised. That is the acceptance of contradictory principals, expediency prevailed.
And the result was not a plan but something that no one quite intended. In "The Federalist,"
Hamilton and Madison, acknowledged that, "The deliberate sense of the community, should
govern the conduct of those in office." But they added that, "This did not require an
unqualified complacence to every transcendent impulse of the people." When occasions present
themselves, they wrote, "In which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations,
it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests
to withstand the temporary delusion. The humors of the legislature did not require unqualified
complacency either."
"The Federalist Paper," say, "It is certainly desirable that the executive should be in
a situation to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and decision. It is one thing to
be subordinate to the laws and another to be dependent upon the legislative body." In
his farewell address, Washington warned that all combinations and associations, under whatever
plausible character with a real designed to direct, control, counteract, or all of the
regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities are of fatal tendency. It's fair
to say that until John Quincy Adams left the White House in 1829 there had been no revolution
so far as any of the presidents were concerned. If by revolution one means fundamental change
in political principles. One might even say they'd been a counter-revolution.
A return to the established principles of the British constitution which were as Dicey
later said, "Supremacy of law and the omnipotence or undisputed supremacy throughout the whole
country of the central government." Nevertheless, there were signs before the second Adams left
the White House that the government of the United States would never be the Monarchical
Republic that the elder Adams and some of the other founding fathers had intended it
to be and imagined that it was. The same forces that prevented the national executive from
establishing its mastery led to the development of political parties on a local. rather than
as in Canada, a national basis. The parties were coalitions within each state of local
interests which every four years formed loose federations to nominate and elect the president.
By the 1830s the American political system had assumed its characteristic and lasting
form, the president was indeed an elective monarch, but only with respect to matters
in which he was willing to invest the whole force and energy of his office. The nature
of things there could be few such matters at any one time. With respect to other matters,
the system functioned to accommodate competing more or less parochial interests, not to deliberate
about, much less to enforce, a conception of the common good.
State and local governments were organized in imitation of the much revered national
one. But the invitations did not extend to the feature which the founding fathers had
considered crucial, a strong executive. A minister ordained of God for the people's
good. Governors and mayors, as I remarked before, were little more than ceremonial figures,
in state and local government the principle of interest balancing was supreme. Those with
a taste for irony will relish the fact that by the time the American Revolution had worked
itself out to this conclusion, the British system, the corruption of which in the 18th
century had set the revolution in motion, had somehow reformed itself and was now operating
on the principles that most of the founding fathers and unqualifiedly admired and meant
to copy. As I said at the outset, this is not a Fourth of July oration. But I do not
wish to leave the impression that I consider the Revolution to have been a mistake. Even
if I were sure that a strong central government, operating with consent and under law, would
produce effects that are on the whole preferable to those produced by a system of interest
balancing, even then I would not think that the Revolution was a mistake. For there is
no doubt that without the American example, other nations, including the British and the
Canadian, would not have succeeded as well, perhaps not at all, with their brand of democracy.
But the more important thing is that the people could buy a deliberative process, accomplish
what has always been regarded as the highest and noblest of all tasks, the creation of
a political order that assures to the makers and their posterity the blessings of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That this could have been done as had not only for us but for the whole world, a significance
that no other event could possibly have had. But if there is great reason for pride in
the achievement, there is also reason for apprehension. Certainly for pondering such
questions as those asked by Thomas Low Nichols in the book from which I quoted several times.
Nichols wrote, "If the only source of power is the will of the people expressed by the
votes of a majority, what are the institutions that may not be overthrown? What are the institutions
that may not be established to hold people on the whole property? What shall hinder them
from doing with it as they will? So the people are above their institutions and may frame,
modify, or abolish them according to their sovereign will and pleasure. Right is a matter
of opinion, and to be determined by a majority. Justice is what the majority chooses. Apparently,
expediency is the only rule of conduct." Clearly, Thomas Low Nichols thought justice is not
what the majority chooses. And that expediency is not the only rule. And I must say, do I.
Thank you.
Vermont Royster: We have just had Dr. Edward C. Banfield discussing the cities and the Revolutionary
tradition. Dr. Banfield said that the lack of a strong centralized government in the
United States led to the development of cities in America quite distinctive from those in
other countries. This lecture has been just one in a series presented by The American
Enterprise Institute, representing several differing points of view on the American Revolution
and its meaning for us today. If you would like a copy of Dr. Banfeld's lecture or of
the entire series, write to The American Enterprise Institute, that's AEI, post office box 19191
Washington, DC 20036. Until next time, this is Vermont Royster. Thank you for joining
us.
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