PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

needs to be lengthened, and others when it needs to be shortened.
The man who says that it does not matter if 15,000,000 Chinese die of
famine, because in two generations the birthrate will make up the
loss, has used a time perspective to excuse his inertia. A person who
pauperizes a healthy young man because he is sentimentally
overimpressed with an immediate difficulty has lost sight of the
duration of the beggar's life. The people who for the sake of an
immediate peace are willing to buy off an aggressive empire by
indulging its appetite have allowed a specious present to interfere
with the peace of their children. The people who will not be patient
with a troublesome neighbor, who want to bring everything to a
"showdown" are no less the victims of a specious present.
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Into almost every social problem the proper calculation of time
enters. Suppose, for example, it is a question of timber. Some trees
grow faster than others. Then a sound forest policy is one in which
the amount of each species and of each age cut in each season is made
good by replanting. In so far as that calculation is correct the
truest economy has been reached. To cut less is waste, and to cut more
is exploitation. But there may come an emergency, say the need for
aeroplane spruce in a war, when the year's allowance must be exceeded.
An alert government will recognize that and regard the restoration of
the balance as a charge upon the future.
Coal involves a different theory of time, because coal, unlike a tree,
is produced on the scale of geological time. The supply is limited.
Therefore a correct social policy involves intricate computation of
the available reserves of the world, the indicated possibilities, the
present rate of use, the present economy of use, and the alternative
fuels. But when that computation has been reached it must finally be
squared with an ideal standard involving time. Suppose, for example,
that engineers conclude that the present fuels are being exhausted at
a certain rate; that barring new discoveries industry will have to
enter a phase of contraction at some definite time in the future. We
have then to determine how much thrift and self-denial we will use,
after all feasible economies have been exercised, in order not to rob
posterity. But what shall we consider posterity? Our grandchildren?
Our great grandchildren? Perhaps we shall decide to calculate on a
hundred years, believing that to be ample time for the discovery of
alternative fuels if the necessity is made clear at once. The figures
are, of course, hypothetical. But in calculating that way we shall be
employing what reason we have. We shall be giving social time its
place in public opinion. Let us now imagine a somewhat different case:
a contract between a city and a trolley-car company. The company says
that it will not invest its capital unless it is granted a monopoly of