(Summer is now officially over, but I thought this story from Rose Wilder Lane, whose work I reviewed and excerpted a couple of days ago, was worthy of a repost)
In 1926, Rose and her friend Helen Dore Boylston, both then living in Paris, decided to buy a Model T Ford and drive it to Albania. Their adventure is chronicled in the book Travels With Zenobia
Acquisition of the cara “glamorized” 1926 model which was maroon in color rather than the traditional Ford blackwent smoothly. Acquisition of the proper government documentation allowing them to actually drive itnot so much:
Having bought this splendid Ford, my friend and I set out to get permission to drive it, and to drive it out of Paris and out of France. We worked separately, to make double use of time. For six weeks we worked, steadily, every day and every hour the Government offices were open. When they closed, we met to rest in the lovely leisure of a cafe and compared notes and considered ways of pulling wires…
One requirement was twelve passport pictures of that car…But this was a Ford, naked from the factory; not a detail nor a mark distinguished it from the millions of its kind; yet I had to engage a photographer to take a full-radiator-front picture of it, where it still stood in the salesroom, and to make twelve prints, each certified to be a portrait of that identical car. The proper official pasted these, one by one, in my presence, to twelve identical documents, each of which was filled out in ink, signed and counter-signed, stamped and tax-stamped; and, of course, I paid for them…
After six hard-working weeks, we had all the car’s papers. Nearly an inch think they were, laid flat. Each was correctly signed and stamped, each had in addition the little stamp stuck on, showing that the tax was paid that must be paid on every legal document; this is the Stamp tax that Americans refused to pay. I believe we had license plates besides; I know we had drivers’ licenses.
Gaily at last we set out in our car, and in the first block two policemen stopped us…Being stopped by the police was not unusual, of course. The car’s papers were in its pocket, and confidently I handed them over, with our personal papers, as requested.
The policemen examined each one, found it in order, and noted it in their little black books. Then courteously they arrested us.
No one had told us about the brass plate. We had never heard of it. The car must have a brass plate, measuring precisely this by that (about 4 x 6 1/2 inches), hand-engraved with the owner’s full name and address, and attached to the instrument board by four brass screws of certain dimensions, through four brass holes of certain dimensions, one hole in each corner of the brass plate.
The problem was resolved only by a combination of American feminine wiles and French chivalry:
“Gentlemen, we are completely desolated,” I said. “Figure to yourselves, how we are Americans, strangers to beautiful France. Imagine, how we have planned, we have saved, we have dreamed and hoped that the day will arrive when we shall see Paris…We seek to conduct ourselves with a propriety most precise. In effect, gentlemen, what is it that we have done?…You see our passports, our cards of identity, our permission to enter France and to remain in France and to enter Paris and to live in Pris, and, unhappily, to leave France and to depart from Paris, for all joys must end, is it not?…But, it must be, the good logic always, is it now? It sees itself that we, we have committed no fault. It is not we who lack the brass plate; it is the car. Gentlemen, one must admit in good logic that which it is that is your plain duty; arrest the car. Good. Do your duty, gentlemen. As for us, we repudiate the car, we abandon it, we go__”
We were detained. The policemen accepted my logic, but courteously they said that the car could not stand where it was; parking there for even one instant was forbidden. My friend suggested that the salesman would take it back. Courteously the policemen said that, without the brass plate, the car could not move an inch from where it stood; that was forbidden.
“In all confidence, gentlemen,” we said, “we leave this problem in your hands.” We hailed a taxi and went home.
Mysteriously next day the car was in the salesroom. In two weeks the brass plate was beautifully hand-engraved. Exactly two months after we had paid for the car, we were able to drive it.
In 1926, this level of bureaucratically-driven difficulty was surely almost unimaginable to most Americans (at least among those who had been born in the U.S. and had never traveled outside the country.)
Today, the distance between the typical American ‘s experiences with bureaucracy and the experiences that Rose and Helen had in France is surely much shorter.
Discssion question for the 2019 update: Can progress of the bureaucratization of American life be stopped and maybe even to some degree reversed? Or are the experiences of Rose and Helen with their Model T…and maybe without even the courtesy…our inevitable fate?
It is unlikely to be much more than slowed and that temporarily. With the coming generations thoroughly indoctrinated with the need of government “solutions” to an ever increasing number of imminent physical, social and political catastrophes, we can look forward to increased bureaucracy, limits on freedom and stagnation.
At some point those content to sit in their cubicles and telling others what they must do, must not do and report their activities to will certainly come to outnumber those who want to actually do something constructive. The information age will certainly make it easier to enforce compliance. Think on the Chinese ruling group’s use of social scoring and information control. We might be closer to such things than we like to admit.
Death6
“Can progress of the bureaucratization of American life be stopped and maybe even to some degree reversed?”
No, of course not.
But if you wanted to try, what needs to be done right now (a few decades too late, most likely) is to do anything possible to break up “one person one vote” since urban centers have all the political power, and people in cities are inherently less independent than people in small towns or rural areas, and correspondingly less supportive of ever-growing government bureaucracy. Unfortunately I think we’re already a few states short of being able to amend the constitution in that way.
Other than that, you’re stuck with hoping for civilizational collapse, which is probably a looooong way away.
The young woman who would marry Gerald Murphy, Sara Wiborg, and her mother and sisters took an auto trip through France in 1914, before the war began. They made it to Spain before returning.
re Bureaucracy, Peter Drucker offered some intelligent thoughts:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/36645.html
Bureaucracy is of course a thing in businesses as well as in governments…indeed, some of the most frustrating experiences that Americans suffer over the course of a typical year are probably those perpetrated by the healhcare/insurance industries and various “customer service” operations. (Although the first of these is substantially due to governmental influence…the second can’t usually be blamed on that factor.) I suspect these experiences cause a lot of people to reason subconsciously that “a government healthcare bureaucracy CAN’T be any worse than what we have now.” (Similar to the character in ‘Little Man, What Now?’ who was so frustrated about getting his healthcare reimbursement that he resolved to vote Communist in the next election)
Socialists care about money, yes. But what they really value–what they want to make more precious by making it scarce and subject to constant control from above–is PERMISSION.
This ain’t going away, folks.
Bureaucracy: Unfortunately, the insolent and threatening bureaucracy already exists.
Name a single bureaucracy one dares to offend.
Anyone care to cross TSA?
Or, from personal experience, agencies that collect child support?
How about the local DA and police force?
And that’s just off the top of my head. Offend any of the above and every single one of them has the ability to ruin your life.
The only way to slow or reverse things is getting rid of people. Retire personnel out and don’t rehire. Which we all know doesn’t happen.
Yes, it can be reversed. However, it will be ugly. “The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice.” -Linda Bowles. The only way to extricate ourselves is literally to reduce the size and scope of government. 60% would be ideal, 40% would be sufficent. Put those public teat suckers back to work creating wealth, instead of destroying it. The only thing government does well is destroy wealth, for it in no ways creates it…
Good job! Hope to have time with you and share mine about apartments for sale