Views on Government

Hill was a great champion of free markets. He was particularly critical of tariffs, calling them “a great enemy of conservation” and pointing out that by prohibiting imports of such products as timber from other countries, the United States was accelerating the depletion of its own. Regarding the federal government’s ability to conserve resources, he once said, “The machine is too big and too distant, its operation is slow, cumbrous and costly.” (Source)

A 1910 speech to the National Conservation Congress in St. Paul summarizes Hill’s views on government. He remarked:

Shall we abandon everything to centralized authority, going the way of every lost and ruined government in the history of the world, or meet our personal duty by personal labor through the organs of local self-government, not yet wholly atrophied by disuse. . . ? Shall we permit the continued increase of public expenditure and public debt until capital and credit have suffered in the same conflict that overthrew prosperous and happy nations in the past, or insist upon a return to honest and practical economy?

Summing up, Hill once said, “The wealth of the country, its capital, its credit, must be saved from the predatory poor as well as the predatory rich, but above all from the predatory politician.” (Source)